Mar 25 2025 - Don't like that portrait?

 

Trump's "personal" news story is his dislike for a portrait hanging in the Colorado State Capitol. It's been there for 6 years, but he has suddenly decided it is "truly the worst."  The artist is Sarah Boardman.  Her quote: "I consider a neutrally thoughtful, and non-confrontational, portrait allows everyone to reach their own conclusions in their own time..." Another version of the story from newrepulic.com goes like this:  "President Donald Trump threw a temper tantrum Sunday, demanding that an unflattering portrait of him be taken out of the Colorado state Capitol.  “Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote in an outraged post on Truth Social. To me, he looks like there's food in his mouth.  My guess is there's a substantial portion of a muffin in there. Food that he doesn't want to swallow.

If we turn to photography, people hating their picture is common as 95% of people hate having their picture taken, and one answer is that we are used to seeing our mirror image that seeing the real one seems strange and odd to us.  The author is a photographer and included these two images of himself as a demonstration.  Isn't this so fascinating to see a mirror image.

Here's a mouse-view of crocuses.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Aug 24 2021 - Soda Jerk

 Would you want to be a soda jerk or a soda clerk?  The term soda jerk was a pun on soda clerk, the formal job title of the young male drugstore assistants who operated soda fountains. It was inspired by the "jerking" action the server would implement to drive the fountain handle back and forth when adding soda.  That was in the 1030s and 1940s. Here's the article on the "lost lingo of New York City's Soda Jerks HERE.  

It got me thinking about how anyone would want to be called a jerk rather than clerk.  That's because, in contrast, a jerk is defined as a "contemptibly obnoxious person. " That was American slang that started showing up in the 1930s.  It is thought it developed via  "jerkwater' which dates from the 1860s and came to mean an insignificant or hick town.  It evolved to "small-time, second-rate, mediocre" and was abbreviated to jerk, so was the start of "jerk" the obnoxious person.

But what about "jerk chicken"?  Jerk is a style of cooking native to Jamaica, and meat is dry-rubbed or wet marinated with hot spice. That word jerk comes from charqui, a Spanish term for jerked or dried meat.  That's another world altogether and not to be considered with the clerks and jerks above. 

The original word "jerk" means a quick movement, and then the verb "jerk" meant to strike or lash, so that the noun became a stroke or lash.  Both verb and noun are considered echoic - sounding like what it meant.  

But what about the sexual slang aspects of the word? The grammarphobia.com article chronicles the word's sexual slang aspects through a lengthy history. It repeats the American reference to Alexander Portnoy in Philip Roth's novel Portnoy's Complaint, 1968, as the sexual verb was "so beloved of Alexander Portnoy".   So when I looked through a lot of the "lost lingo" terms for types of sundaes, it seemed to me this might have been a part of the underground world of sexual slang.  Being called a soda jerk might have been considered smirky and rebellious.  When I look at the pictures of those teenage boys, this makes perfect sense.

What do you think?


This wonderful painterly background makes this a pleasing floral portrait.

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Winter Comes Fast

Welcome to Meterological Winter.  Notice the 'logical' in the word that doesn't seem fair - we didn't want this much winter so soon.  Meteorologists and climatologists start winter on December 1st.  They want consistency - they don't want a season that varies between 88 and 94 days.  That's a lot of extra work to make things comparable.  Meterological seasons have been tracked since the late 1700s.  The term for measuring the winter season is "meteorological reckoning".   And what happened in Niagara on our first day of winter?  We had rain, that formed ice, followed by power outages, and snow.  With scattered flurries predicted today, we could have more power lines felled from trees, and more power outages.   So I guess the start of winter this year has begun to fulfill the prediction of the Polar Coaster.  As I looked through the news articles, an expression caught my attention:  "the highway looked like a skating rink".  That seems to me to be particularly Canadian.  Other expressions we can expect in winter:  cold snap, snowed under.  And last year's term was "bombogenesis" - a powerful nor-easter affecting the East Coast that brought heavy snow to the Canadian Maritimes.  And there is a soft snowflake that looks more like sleet than snow - it is called "graupel".   I found The Outdoor Swimming Society website and they have 35 ways to say it's cold.  There are words in the list such as brumal and hiemal. Do you remember the expression snug as a bug?  I brought a wreath inside from the front door yesterday.  I wanted to put some decorations on it, and a fly few out of it, and then a walnut dropped off of it.  It seems the fly was no longer snug and the squirrel's secret stash is now gone. I took this picture of Robert Walhout, Grimsby Rotarian and actor.  He was in the Lamplighter Play this year, in the role of the School System Superintendent.  He came costume to the Fantasy of Trees Celebration evening.

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