July 8 2023 - Past Lives

 

Some days I find fascinating topics and other days I seem to be in a swamp of junky information. Today was the swimming in the swamp day - the phrase past lives has been overtaken by a movie.  Reviews, trailerss and clips, wikipedia entries, the songs, everything. I keep thinking of the revenue that Google makes from paid retrieval listings. After three pages, the spiritual organization named Eckankar shows up.  We're now in the second set of paid-for retrievals. This is intriguing: I've never heard of this and find out it is a religious spiritual group founded in 1965 in the U.S with Harold Klemp as its community leader. Its platform is that all people are eternal spiritual beings currently existing in a physical realm.  Well, that sounds familiar for our religions.  It believes in reincarnation and karma.  Soul Travel and Hu Meditation are two of its practices.   There is a Living Master, isn't there?  The Living ECK Master, or Mahanta, is currently Sri Harold Klemp, who took on the position in 1983. The previous Mahanta was Darwin Gross, and the founder of Eckankar was Paul Twitchell.  One scrolls past all of the ECKANKAR listings and then the cult articles start.  These are things like:  "Eckankar Survivor Speaks Out."  In these articles this religion is referred to as a cult.   Do you know how many cults there are today? In the range of eleven, thirteen, fifteen, twelve and so on.   This is an interesting experience in terms of keyword searching. How things have changed in the keyword search realm.  It is fluid, not at all consistent.  Who pays to be retrieved drives what I get to see. Unless I am very specific and focused. This is my experience naming photographs, too.  Expressions and words are co-opted into commercial movies and religions with trademarks and copyrights. Take down notices pop up and I have to defend the use of words like "demure." Past lives is a common phrase related to reincarnation and has been studied scientifically for 50 years. So one would hope for something more balanced in retrievals.   I am curious, though, and find the University of Virginia - the one academic institution which undertakes reincarnation research.  They have studied 2,500 individual cases of childhood past-life memories.  The article is HERE.  It concludes with this:  "the idea that consciousness is merely a product of brain activity, like software on a computer, does not have much empirical or philosophical support."   And the best headline in my search today - a true example of irony:  "Past Lives:  Advance Screenings" Here's a Flexify manipulated image of a lily pond.  Makes me think of consciousness.  What would it look like visually? Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 27 2023 - The Frog Princess

 

The Frog Princess is a fairy tale that has multiple versions with various origins. It is classified as type 402, the animal bride, in the Aarne–Thompson index.   Another tale of this type is the Norwegian Doll i' the Grass. Russian variants include the Frog Princess or Tsarevna Frog (Царевна Лягушка, Tsarevna Lyagushka) and also Vasilisa the Wise. The Frog Princess is a Slavic folktale focusing on the importance of recognizing someone’s inner beauty, regardless of their outward appearance, as well as the possibility of redemption after failure. The tale has many variants and appears in Czech, Hungarian, Italian, and Russian folk works as well as many others. The Frog Princess, named Vasilisa the Wise, is a beautiful, intelligent, friendly, skilled young woman, who was forced to spend three years in a frog's skin for disobeying Koschei.  The Frog Princess sheds her skin, and the prince then burns it, to her dismay.   She sat down on a bench, sorely grieved, and said to Prince Ivan, "Ah, Prince Ivan, what have you done? Had you but waited three more days I would have been yours forever.   Trekking far and wide to find her, the Prince meets an old man.  "Take this ball of yarn and follow it without fear wherever it rolls."   It rolls on and on with many adventures. And of course, the Prince is reunited with his beautiful Vasilisa the Wise and they live in peace and happiness to a ripe old age. aka HAPPILY EVERY AFTER.

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Jan 23 2021 - What time do birds get up in the morning?

 

What time do birds get up the morning?  This winter morning the sun is rising and no birds are singing.  But it is bitter cold winter, and birds don't do a lot of singing in January.   I find out that birds generally begin singing 30 – 90 minutes before the sunrise. That's around 4:00am in the spring time.  Different birds will chime in at different times. Blackbirds, robins, and thrushes are among the first to begin singing. Others will soon join them and this chorus will last until the sunrise fades.  Intensity of sunlight makes for earlier wake-up times.  It is winter now, so birds wake up at about 7:00am in winter. They will begin singing their dawn choruses, but not with so large a chorus.  Birds tend to wake up whenever they sense daylight. The time that birds wake up varies a lot among different species and different environments where there is light pollution and changing seasons. Yesterday, it was past 7:30am and there aren't any birds on the feeders out front.  At 7:50am a flock of sparrows come in to the feeder and start their chatter.  But then the sun was shining on the horizon.  Today is an overcast day, so it will be interesting to find out what time they come to the feeder. Yesterday I was alert to the visiting hawk.  I checked that it wasn't out there.  There was one the day before, and Baxter was at the office window staring up at it.  It flew off when it saw me come in  and sit in the chair.  Last year, a hawk was attacking the sparrows in the hedge next door.  It was jumping into the hedge from the ground.  Later that day, I watched Baxter who proceeded to repeat the technique.  Neither were successful - both get my admiration for ingenuity. These pictures are from 2014 - this is Jordan Harbour looking towards the Lake.  It froze over so smoothly that people were playing hockey and ice sailing.  I've not seen this since, although my sister said people were skating on the lagoon pond at Charles Daley Park.  That's just down the road a bit on the Lake side of the highway.

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September 23 2020 - Head Lines in the Headlines

 

I don't think this would be considered helpful to the people arranged in it. Its title is: Hollywood's Leading Men, Arranged in a Helpful Graphic.  Moreover, it weighs in at the low end of the height scale of 5 fleet tall and ends at 5'9".  What is wonderful is that the graphic puts all these people on one page at one time for us to marvel at the different heights.     Here's the alternate way of considering this graphic with more celebrities  and the concentration at the high end of the scale this time.  What makes this so much fun is that when we are watching movies we don't know who is the tallest or who is the smallest.  Hollywood does its magic with the camera and the lens.     This is one of those Google-curated retrievals - with the first few pages carefully put together to retrieve articles by paid sponsors.  By page 4, the retrievals go "off-topic" and turns to the shortest celebrity marriages in Hollywood.  My assumption is that these are also sponsor-paid retrievals. There are one or two articles on height related to income analysis but mostly these are jaunts through Hollywood with breezy and witty commentary that is very engaging. The interest in this topic is substantial as there are many variations on the theme.  Here's one:  short actors who appear taller - e.g. Tom Cruise, Gillian Anderson, Dave Franco.   We learned about camera lenses and their impact on the appearance of width/weight.  They also relate to height and articles assert that shorter actors are easier to film than tall ones.   As we enter Fall, this is the time of checking reflections in the water.  This is the case at Toronto Botanical Gardens, where there is great colour next to a stream at the perfect time of day.

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June 1 2020 - Name that Joke

Here we are in June - the wedding month.  As I look out, there are three shrubs blooming white - the largest is the Bridalwreath Spirea, named appropriately. But I was actually thinking about how we turn names intojokes and how amusing they can be, so I went and found a few.  What do you call a man with no shins? Neil. What do you call a woman with a frog on her head? Lilly. What do you call a man with no arms and no legs on your front door step? Matt What do you call someone hanging on a wall? Art. What do you call someone under a pile of leaves? Russell. What do you call a girl with one leg short than the other? Eileen What do you call a guy who falls overboard and can't swim? Bob. What do you call a man on the barbershop floor? Harry. What do you call a man with a car on his head? Jack. What do you call a scientist that makes up everything? Adam (atom). What do you call an American drawing? Yankee Doodle. What do you call a lady in a Roman dress? Sara-toga. Rosewood Winery is the location of our pictures today. This is the comparison between yesterday's view and the winter storm view on December 1st.  I got to stopping because there is a wisteria in full bloom at the water's edge.  The Lake view was extensive and the Toronto skyline easily seen.

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Frogs into Princes

So today we wonder how frogs and princes got associated together.  This wonderful frog was in the pond of a garden we toured in May.   Here's what I found about the frog metaphor from frog-life-cycle.com: In fairy tales and many folklore stories, the frog is one of the main creatures that appear.  Whether the frog is being kissed to turn into a prince or the frog’s eyes are being boiled in a pot and stirred by a witch, there are many different frog myths that are constantly floating around in all sorts of different stories. Long ago in medieval Europe, the frog was something to be attributed to the devil because of their use in many witch spells.  Frogs are definitely not the sign of the devil, they are actually some of the most harmless creatures in the world and are definitely should not be associated with Satan any longer.    Another misconception about frogs is the fact that if you touch one, you will develop warts instantly.  Warts have now been proven to be caused by a human internal viral infection, but way back when, toads and frogs were handled by glove-wearing humans or not handled at all. While frogs have gotten a bad reputation a lot of the time, there are still quite a few countries and cities that hold the frog up high.  For instance, Egyptians take the frog as a symbol of life and fertility since millions of them were born after the inundation of the Nile.  They had many different myths about there being a frog-goddess named Heget (which means frog in Egyptian).  Heget was essentially a woman’s body with a frog’s head and this goddess was highly-respected and sought after, even though she was just a myth. In China, the frog represents the lunar yin.  They have even created a frog spirit, Ch’ing-Wa Sheng, which is associated with healing and good fortune, which is one of the main reasons why you will see a lot of frog relics around businesses and in homes.

On Grenadier Pond

Looking south at Grenadier Pond, High Park, Toronto, Ontario Canada, this high rise is quite an urban mountain.  This makes me think of the 'City in a Park' slogan on the city park signs.  Look down at the water and there are mallard ducks, swans and a migrating heron.  Look up at the sky and there are condo high rises.

Do you have a favourite view that fits Toronto's slogan 'City in a Park'?  Let me know about it.