Dec 15 2022 - Countdown to Everything

 

Have we always counted down to significant events?  My guess is "No".  What do you think?  So looking it up, it turns out that Fritz Lang filmmaker used it to "create suspense?  Who would guess that?  And yet it makes great sense, as we use it to create excitement and anticipation for the upcoming festival of Christmas.  Our social order now orients to the number of shopping days. Fritz Lang's movie was a science fiction "Woman in the Moon" and the countdown was to create suspense in then story's lunar-bound rocket launch.  It seems to me that Fritz Lang spoke it and NASA fulfilled it.   I am thinking of New Year's Eve countdowns, and the U.S. Time Square Ball started in 1907.  The Babylonians recorded their New Year's celebration over 4,000 years ago.  They were celebrating the spring equinox in late March.  The Romans moved the date to January 1st when Caesar fixed the calendar so it was better synced with the seasons. It started with Janus, the God of new beginnings.  Things went bumpy for a while with the Church trying to dissociate from the Roman holiday, but it returned to January 1st eventually. There is a website - your countdown.to/everything - which shows the countdowns to various things, including movie releases. There are 4,253 countdowns in their list and the top one is Avatar the movie, followed by Christmas Eve. In the middle is the countdown to the year 2023 - I wonder whose timezone it is based on. The Y2K Countdown pretty well topped the list of countdowns for anyone who was here in 2000. We are now used to countdowns for anything and everything.  Any top "N" list now is presented in countdown format.  It builds excitement as to who/what will be identified as number 1.  It works. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Dec 28 - Christmas Past is Passed and...

We have the 'sugar-high' of Christmas and the next day the 'so sad' feeling that Christmas is over.  This is made worse by the extended analysis of everything that happened last year, as though it will close the door on the year that is passing. So much Christmas Past right after Christmas has passed! Mayim Bialik, of the Big Bang, has posted on social media about her 2 cats that are using the bed as a dominance battleground, and waging peeing and pooing battles.  Her post made the top news this week.  You can see it HERE.  How many people tried to cheer her up with comments?  More than 10,000 people.  The screen shot in the article showed 91,970 likes.   This likely explains why the Christmas thud rebound is to lead into the new year with comedies and comedians who distract and entertain us.  So I've found a few New Year's jokes: A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. New Years Eve is the only acceptable time to wear body glitter without being mistaken for a stripper. My New Year's resolution is to stop hanging out with people who ask me about my New Year's resolutions. I have only one resolution. To rediscover the difference between wants and needs. May I have all I need and want all I have. What happened to the man who shoplifted a calendar on New Year's Eve? He got 12 months! Our picture today is a flowering wisteria - it looks like fireworks for the New Year.

Swans or Squabs

Swans or Squabs? That's what would be a-swimming today in our 12 Days of Christmas.  Through the many years of variations, it is dominantly seven swans a-swimming with only one version in 1900 of squabs a-swimming.  This doesn't make much sense as 'squabs' are pigeons, and they don't swim. Squab in culinary terms is a young domestic pigeon, typically under four weeks old. They have been raised commercially in North America since the early 1900s.  It is remarkable given that they are fed by both parents until four weeks old, so one keeps pairs of pigeons to produce squabs.  A pair can produce 15 squabs a year.  This used to be the staple of Chinese-American restaurants, but industrial chicken has taken over.  Squab is still is part of Chinese holiday banquets, such as Chinese New Year. As time has gone by, squab has become a specialty item and is served in haute cuisine restaurants by celebrity chefs.  "Squab at Alinea"  in Chicago, an acclaimed restaurant, is one of the courses in a 14 course tasting menu.  Or how about the Old Homestead restaurant in New York City.  It offered a four person meal for $8,750 a person and one course included squab alongside the turkey.  This was in 2015.  And Now Magazine in Toronto covered T.O.'s top 5 game dishes and there was Pigeon Pie (Squab) at Borealia. The article covers game dishes including quail, rabbit, Ontario venison, and game meat sausages. Our year concludes today and we count anew tomorrow.  Here are two images of Jordan Valley from yesterday's walk - they represent the sunset of one year and the new dawn of the next.