May 5 2024 - There's a Woke Generation

 

Remember the Scrabble Story?  Who is that Woke Generation that is being ridiculed?  "Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) originally meaning alertness to racial prejudice and discrimination. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights." - Wikipedia One article says this:  "Gen Z is also (arguably) one of the most “woke” generations since the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. Many members are outspoken advocates of social injustice, and are interested in topics including racism, homophobia, misogyny, poverty and climate change." But it didn't end there.  It has evolved or maybe it has been hijacked.  Mirriam Webster Dictionary says: "By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning." Poor Gen Zers - from self aware to commie cult zombie.  Woke, wokeness, woke culture, woke capitalism, woke washing.  What about "woke mind virus?" It has its own acronym - WMV.  Now woke lives in the land of insult and has spread all over the planet.  In New Zealand, one politician used the phrase "woke guilt industry"  - doesn't this all get so complicated in the Global Village!     There's nothing like wonderful blue skies, artistic clouds and a blossoming orchard.

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May 1 2024 - Universities vs Corporations

 

Can a student be suspended from a University for protesting?  That question came up in my mind yesterday as I read the articles on the protests across the U.S. and Canada.  But then I realized how complicated this research would be, so I have turned my attention to the Merry Month of May.   Joke of the Day:  A roman walks into a cafe holds up 2 fingers and gets 5 coffees.   Joke of the Day for Work:  Someone has stolen my Microsoft Office and they are going to pay for it... You have my Word.  Joke of the Day for the elderly:   An old man and a 20 year old are paired together at a golf tournament. They’re playing a long par 5 that dog legs around some tall trees. As the 20 year old sets up his tee shot to hit onto the fairway the old man notes “when I was your age we used to hit over the trees - not around to the side.” So the 20 year old readjusts and tries to hit over the trees - but can’t clear them and loses his ball. He tries again and loses that one too… Then the old man says “of course, when I was your age, the trees were only 6 foot tall.” Joke of the Day for elementary schoolers:   Why did the kid cross the playground? To get to the other slide.   Isn't this amazing?  I found this yesterday on Martin Street in Vineland.  This is the best ever combination of blossoms on the trees and on the ground.

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Apr 26 2024 - Grimsby UK

 

There are a few towns of Grimsby -  Grimsby Ontario,  Grimsby ILlinois Little Grimsby, England Great Grimsby, UK New Grimsby, and Old Grimsby, on the island of Trresco, England  It is Great Grimsby that Grimsby ON is often compared to.  It seems to have had a name change. "Between 1918 and 1983 it was known simply as Grimsby; following the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, the seat will be subject to boundary changes which will incorporate the neighbouring town of Cleethorpes. As a consequence, it will be renamed Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, to be first contested at the next general election." We might want to experience their upcoming sunny weekend with temperatures of 9 degrees C.  The Grimsby UK news features a son being banned from contacting his mother after he attacked her, a Grimsby man, 35, dying of cancer, and a strange news item: a sexual attack on a corpse at the Grimsby Hospital mortuary.  Then back to the mundane with a two-piece dress from Marks and Spencer being showcased. In comparison Grimsby, ON has a Saturday weather forecast of 10 degrees C with 90% chance of rain.  The Casablanca Beach Park project is three-quarters finished, the Beamsville cannabis shop robbery investigation continues, at least 8 homes were broken into in 1 night in Grimsby and Beamsville, and there will be a  joint police, MTO campaign to focus on Niagara vehicle inspections.  That's because trucks have been bypassing the Vineland station inspection.   Isn't this a great Niagara orchard image - with theold-fashioned ladder.  This is from a few years ago, so these trees aren't blooming yet.  There was frost last night and it is on the roofs of the houses, so there will be concern overwhether there was damage overnight to the blossoms.

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Feb 3 2024 Winter Weather

 

We are supposed to get ready.  Mid-February is the time to expect a major pattern change from this mild weather to...a polar vortex.  And we know that causes colder weather. So we might be expecting cold weather and need a bit of good humour along the way, Let's vote on which weather joke we like best. bHere are two groups of jokes. 1. What did the icy road say to the car? Wanna to go for a spin? 2. What does a barbershop serve in winter? Cold cuts! vs. 1. A young couple got tired of the cold weather and decided to take a trip down to Florida. Because their work schedules didn't work together, it was decided that the husband would fly down first, with the wife following the next day. When the husband arrived in Florida, he decided to send an email to his wife, but unknowingly sent it to the wrong email. Meanwhile, in a different town, a widow had just gotten back from her husband's funeral, and decided to check her email. It said, "Hello dear, just checking in. I am looking forward to your arrival here tomorrow. Love, your husband." P.S. "It sure is hot down here!"  2. A couple of icebergs in Antarctica are best friends. They grew up together and have known each other since they were ice cubes. One iceberg decides he's tired of all the cold weather, he tells his best friend he's going on a warm vacation for a couple weeks. A couple weeks pass by and he returns to Antarctica. His best friend immediately takes notice of the amount of weight his friend lost while on vacation.  He says "you look amazing my friend, you really slimmed down! Was the vacation everything you thawed it would be?" Icy orchards waiting for Spring Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 9 2-23 - Opinion

 

Opinion.  There's a lot of it about. In fact, it seems to be edging out the factual event news.  Take the Coronation on the weekend.  There are many opinions being stated about various seating positions and hats and so on.  Newspaper opinion came into its own in the 20th century. The op-ed page was created in 1921 by Herbert Bayard Swope of The New York Evening World. It was further developed in 1970 under the direction of The New York Times editor John B. Oakes.  Well, that's newspapers.  Now, with social media, we the public have access to communicate our opinions broadly - just like newspapers.  The definition of public opinion seems to be outdated now:  "free and public communication from citizens to their government on matters of concern to the nation."    There is the idea of private opinion, but I think that private opinion is declining because of easy access to "the public" through social media.  The public likes this public access. Then a question came to my mind:  What if we had to use this phrase - in my humble opinion -  to present non-professional opinions - particularly those opinions without expertise backing them.   "A phrase used to present one's viewpoint or beliefs with an awareness or cautiousness that the listener might disagree or be offended." Oh well, just a thought. Other trees have straighter branches - this row seems particularly interesting.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 1 2023 - Throuples it is

 

The New York Times had a headline on the right way for a throuple to break up.  What is a throuple?  Spellcheck, like me, doesn't know - it thinks it is throttle or trouble.  I figured that was a good guess. Taylor offers this definition: “A throuple is a relationship between three people who have all unanimously agreed to be in a romantic, loving, relationship together with the consent of all people involved.” You may also hear a throuple referred to as a three-way relationship, triad, or closed triad. This is where those Frequently Asked Questions come in handy: What are the rules of a throuple? Do throuples sleep in the same bed? What's the difference between polyamory and throuple? Is it illegal to have a throuple? Can a throuple have a baby? I actually don't want all the answers, or even most of the answers.  There are full guide books to throuple relationships, as though a how-to book is needed.  Maybe that's because the answer to "How common are throuples?" is this:  one in six people express interest and one in nine have engaged in it at some point. That explains all the articles on stars who've been in throuples - there are so many that Cosmopolitan had an article on 11 celebrities who've "opened up about non-monogamy".  Those are the ones who want to talk about it. There are the "hottest celebrity throuples", "famous throuples in history", famous throuples on tiktok". So now that I am aware of this form of relationship, I look back at how I got here.  What got my attention was the word itself - a portmanteau word - blending two or more words.  Somehow throuple doesn't show up in the list on grammary.com HERE.   The word that did get attention and was fun is threepeat (three + repeat) – a situation or event with the same outcome three times, typically in reference to a sporting event, like a championship. So a person could have a threepeat throuple. This orchard is in Jordan and if you look at the far end - that's the QEW with trucks racing by.  I  stopped for some pictures because the trees were such interesting shapes.

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Apr 23 2023 - A Regular Guy

 

It turns out that every expression is used up - take the expression "a regular guy."  It is a novel by Mona Simpson.  It is about Tom Owens, actually,  Steve Jobs.  That's her late brother. They were orphans separated by adoption who later found each other.  There was no "regular" childhood for them.  "The Urban Dictionary defines a regular guy as “a guy who is humble, down-to-earth, open and honest, easy to get along with, and generally well-versed about all the usual things people do. Someone who isn’t power-hungry, arrogant, super competitive, insecure, or egotistical. A guy you’d want to have a conversation with about things like sports, fishing, camping, hard work, relationships, home repair, music, cars, movies, power tools, etc. A guy who will never embarrass you or cause problems socially and has nothing to prove.” Given that mythical sort of definition, one wonders about the title of the book. I wouldn't use "guy" around him or about him at all, in fact.  And definitely not "regular." So it isn't surprising that the book is considered a "scathing expose... Mona changed the names and sold the book as fiction, but the world knew better." I guess a deceitful pretense needs an expression that matches.  I say that as this expression seems to be targeted to white North American men.  Romcom movies seem to be about regular guys.  Ask the question:  Ask it for different countries.  Are there regular guys in France?  And the answers are about dating, stereotypes and demographics.   Regular guys in Germany?  It is about height, then dating, and then demographics. Regular guys in China?  It is about why they are the most single in the world, then average height.   Now this is interesting.  The myth vs. the reality.  All good fun.

What a rain day yesterday!  We were back to the Niagara Street cherry tree and then on Stewart Road where this orchard had just been trimmed.  I've added the rainbow to the bleak sky.  Today looks like a blue sky day.  But those fallen branches will be wilted by today.

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Dec 25 2022 - Charles' First Christmas

 

Silly me!  Of course there is a Royal Family Channel.  And what was on it yesterday?  King Charles' First Christmas Speech.  That was a long time in coming.   Last year's speech with the queen spoke of  "passing the baton" to the next generation.  Gone are the colourful dresses and pretty (expensive) jewels, replaced by a sombre suit.   The BBC gave its view: "In terms of changes in style, the King delivered his first message standing up, rather than a formal address from behind a desk, and his themes addressed more current social issues. But there was much that was traditional. This was a Christmas Day message delivered in a chapel with a choir singing, touching on themes of faith, hope and the importance of serving others. The choir finished, as it had last year for the Queen's last message, singing the carol O Little Town of Bethlehem, with the King highlighting its message of "light overcoming darkness". And what about that Royal Channel?  Are two of them.  One says that the Royal Family Channel is a British YouTube channel that uploads daily videos that are related to the news revolved around the British royal family.  It says it was launched in 2010 and has 2 million subscribers.  Then there's another statement saying that the  Queen launched it in 2007, with her Christmas message .  Vanity Fair says they launched their channel in 2021 with "better late than never."   Do William and Kate want more press - have they been squeezed out by the "new" Royal Family? It seems very busy on the RoyalTube front.  The "Harry & Meghan" docudrama on Netflix just came out.  Is this their offering of what a Christmas special is now?  Thegardian.com website has  the synopsis - a blow by blow of the milestone moments - or more accurately "complaints and grievances."   I wondered if Harry and Meghan had launched their own Youtube channel, and find out instead that Anti-Meghan Markle Youtube channels  were deranked earlier in 2022. That was around the Oprah Winfrey  interview time.   And back to us "common folk" on Boxing Day.  This used to be a buying day for North Americans.  But we had our Boxing Day, Boxing Week and Boxing Month Sales all through December already.  So we will have a day not so dissimilar from the  Royals.  It is a private day for them.  Mind you, it is full of  fancy food and shooting pheasants.  Like the servants of the original boxing day, they all work on Christmas Day attending Church and giving the famous speech.  They get to take the day off on Boxing Day.  I wonder if they give the presents filled with gifts, money and Christmas leftovers to each other.    We are the snowiest Christmas Day country in the world.  Niagara's blossom orchards are dormant right now.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Nov 24 2022 - Angels Sing

 

I get a quick sense of my generation (and age) when I search for a phrase.  Today's is "looking for angels".   What comes up is Skillet Looking for Angels - official music video and lyrics.  A mournful song about the woes of the world.    At the other end of the spectrum of angels is the long list of angel sightings, angel encounters and true stories, real pictures and videos.   The most recent fact-checked angel cloud sighting over Kyiv proves to be from around 2008.   But we so want angels with us in our lives.   The largest gathering of people dressed as angels is in the Guinness Book of Records.  There were 1,275 people gathered in Winnipeg on December 1st 2015.  There are sand angel records and snow angel records - 8,962 people flapping their arms and legs in unison on the State Capital grounds of North Dakota in 2007. I wonder about this after John Milton's Paradise Lost and the Angel escorting Adam and Eve from Paradise.  Where was the angel when they needed help?  Aren't angels supposed to be guardians not guards? Where to find the answer?  On Quora.  Lots of opinions and explanations are offered.  Here are the top two posts.  First from "Sherry Claire - Author has 798 answers and 858,500 views, and next from Dick Harfield with 25,700 answers and 68.8 Million answer views.   This is McLuhan's  global village now and here's the current approach to biblical questions with millions of people checking out the answers.   Just a few posts down comes Stu Lewis' answer - "Questions like this are sort of pointless. You could ask similar questions about any work of fiction or mythology. What if Gatsby had anticipated Wilson’s act of revenge and taken precautions rather than going for a swim? What if Hamlet had not been foolish enough to stab at the curtain before checking to be sure who was behind it? What if Macbeth had understood that a prophecty was bound to come true even if he sat back and waited for the inevitable rather than killing the king? The list is endless."    This is the John Street orchard on a winter foggy day a few years ago.  We've had a lot of mist and fog in the air this autumn and that makes for  beautiful sunrises in orange and peach tones.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Oct 31 2022 - X Marks the Spot

 

X - is any real number.  In fact, x is a lot of things.  Then why does x mark the spot? The common answer is that it was first recorded in 1813.   As the location on a map for hidden treasure.   Another repeated usage is that it was supposedly  put into common usage by the British army, who performed executions by marking a piece of paper with a black x and positioning it on the heart of someone sentenced to death.  This seems strange to me, more of a form of torture.  I would think the British army knew how to shoot accurately. Another reference is that at the height of Chicago gangsterism in the 1920s that the specific phrase x marks the spot took on specific meaning.  When newspapers started to abstain from publishing pictures of actual corpses in the scenes of murders, the x was used on the bodiless photos to indicate where it had been positioned. As a result, spotted came to mean ‘murdered’, in the slang of that time, and to be put on the spot took on a specific implication. These seem more like urban myths.  These seem so unsatisfying for a letter that has many applications.  And it has a long, long history.  I wondered why Wikipedia's entry was about movies.  I eventually found the most comprehensive history of the letter X at symbolsage.com HERE. The picture below comes from the article.  It is the unknown and the known, it is rejection and a kiss, it is death and danger.  So much going on with x.

The articles conclusion: "Each of the letters in the alphabet has a history, but X is the most potent and mysterious. Since its inception, it has been used to represent the unknown, and has more social and technical uses than any other letter in the English alphabet. Nowadays, we use the symbol in mathematics, to mark places on a map, to indicate our choice of candidates on a ballot, to indicate an error, and many more." That seems to me to be "spot on". And our photo?  Lake effects fog and mist yesterday morning shrouded the landscape.  I thought the pictures I'd taken would be poor, but it turns out with some processing, some of them are quite nice.

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May 24 2022 - "The Great"

 

Do you consider this interesting?  There are many people in history who were known as "The Great".  The list is so long that it is alphabetical rather than by year.  There was even a "The Great" in the 1770s.  What makes me mention that?  These are usually kings, military rulers, religious figures and so on.  An elected ruler has never been called "The Great".   But then "the Great" was equivalent to saying "Great King" so not that surprising.  Who do we consider the most famous "The Great"?  Alexander seems to me to be the best-known.  On google he is listed as "the greatest great." What did we get in the 20th Century?  We got "The Great War"  and "The Great Depression." There are many expressions that begin with "The Great"  - HERE they are on Wikipedia.  This seems more a testament to our social longing for importance and significance.  And the legacy of Alexander the Great in our time? What do Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh have in common? Same middle name. I took this picture last year - the contrast of the ancient Maple trunk on Honsberger Road  with the blossoming orchard tells a story of passing time and the optimism of spring. I went there two weeks ago to take pictures.  The ancient trunks is gone.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

March 28 2022 - Is that How Uncle Oscar Behaves?

 

I watched the beginning of the Oscars last night and really enjoyed what I saw.  The experience of female hosts was very satisfactory.  I didn't have to worry about the nasty jokes that past Oscars allowed. And there was no long walk to the microphone where we waited endless seconds as the academy 'held us hostage' to its display of female stars. Things going smoothly seemed to mean that the Oscars might become enjoyable again.  But after I went to bed, what happened?  There was a real-life outburst.   "While presenting the award for Documentary Feature (won by Summer of Soul), Chris Rock made a joke about Will Smith‘s wife Jada Pinkett Smith that prompted an unbelievable exchange. After Rock joked to Smith that he was looking forward to a sequel to G.I. Jane starring Jada, Smith stood up from his seat near the stage, strode up to Rock and slapped him. After sitting back down, Smith shouted — twice — at Rock to “keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth.”  " I am so unaware of celebrity circumstances in the news.  Will's wife, Jada has a medical condition alopecia - extreme hair loss. It became so pronounced that she shaved her head in July 2021.   So there we were at the Oscars, in a time warp of those nasty jokes.  I had been lulled by the opening that things would be fine. You can find 30 Oscar Jokes that totally bombed Here.  I notice that there aren't a lot of articles on Oscar's worst jokes.  Maybe not one is interested in how bad the Oscars can get or maybe they suppress how many awful events occurred in those shows. Today CNN has been busy analyzing the insult and the response.  Social media is covering the public opinion on violence.  What's the latest?  Chris Rock isn't pressing charges against Will Smith for the Oscars slap. We're looking at white blossoms on the trees can this picture ompared to snow on the ground today when I look out the window.

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