Nov 3 2024 - On the Street Where Margaret Lives

 

Margaret Atwood is a living legend - one of our greatest poets and authors.  She's written 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, 9 collections of short fiction, 8 children's books, 2 graphic novels and other small press editions of poetry and fiction.  So how many book launches and signings would she have attended?  A lot.  How many people would have met Margaret Attwood?  A lot.  I realize that would be a substantial part of her work life. If one wanted to see Margaret Atwood in a more natural setting, one would head out to Admiral Road in the Annex where she lives.  Virtual Globetrotting tells me this. And Admiral Road is a beautiful old street with restored Victorian brick houses.  It is between St. George and Bedford. The Google Map images were taken July 2024, so are full of leafy trees and pretty gardens.  I ad a virtual walk along the street.  How ironic that there was filming of the Handmaid's Tale in Toronto. A Bridle Path mansion was used for the outside shots.That seems the perfect setting, the Bridle Path.  It is full of vast and gaudy mansions of the rich. Are there other houses that show up in movies and TV series?  The Schitt's Creek Rose family mansion lives at 30 Fifeshire Road in Toronto's York Mills area.  It is 24,000 square feet.   Casa Loma has shown up in movies - X-Men, Chicago, Scott Pilgram vs. The World.  One of my favourites is Parkwood Estate in Oshawa, with its beautiful gardens.  It has shown up in X-Men, Murdoch Mysteries and Cow Belles.  The Bridle Path though, seems to gather the most attention - it is considered the most inhabited area for celebrities - Drake, of course.  Did you know that Prince owned a house on the Bridle Path?  Celine Dion, and others.  This is a moment to reflect on the fun of the internet - a virtual tour without leaving the corner office with a view of the rising sun.  Mind you, the internet is still showing me various crazy socks.

I don't think I've posted any garden pictures recently - this is from 2 weeks ago, and you can see the Autumn display in the back garden.

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June 25 2024 - Milionaires at Living

 

We've become so focused on money that when "millions" or "billions" comes up, we can only think of money.  We've traded off living for wealth, which seems a poor decision.  "It is widely reported that, a person at rest takes about 16 breaths per minute. This means we breathe about 960 breaths an hour, 23,040 breaths a day, 8,409,600 a year. The person who lives to 80 will take about 672,768,000 breaths in a lifetime." "Your heart beats about 100,000 times in one day and about 35 million times in a year. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times." "An average moderately active person takes around 7,500 steps a day. If you maintain that daily average and are fortunate enough to live until the age of 80, you'll have walked approximately 216,262,500 steps in your lifetime."  (That's like walking around the planet four-and-a-half times). "You'll blink about 513 million times, sneeze 70,000 times, laugh out loud 290,000 times, sweat out 74,000 gallons of water, and spend over 27 years of your life sleeping. "You'll spend two-and-a-half years cooking, and over three-and-a-half years eating. You'll eat about 35 tons of food, which is like seven elephants." "Your fingernails will grow a total of nine-and-a-half feet. And you'll grow six-and-a-half feet of nose hair." "You'll personally use 4,239 rolls of toilet paper. That's about 50 a year. And you'll spend one-and-a-half years of your life in the bathroom." We're millionaires and billionaires. Here's the garden on tour day.

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Apr 17 2024 - Moody Weather

 

The Spring weather forecast for Ontario is mild but moody.  What is moody weather?  How did we get to turning the weather into emotional upset?   The "moody" prediction is even more flowery - "profound mood swings" - and what is that? The article doesn't say.   Another article says that when it's too hot or too cold, our bodies have to work harder to maintain that ideal balance which can lead to feelings of discomfort.  That comes from "The Weather and Your Mood:  How the Two Are Connected"  It might be that things are changing now that Climate Change is here.  We're on alert for the weather, not just attentive to it.  Journalists are interviewing people with climate change phobias.  This is  described in the term  eco-anxiety.    What about this term - solastalgia - it is the distress produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.  I think we're in for some of that as well.   I found this postcard of my garden in the archives.

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Music Gets the Grade

The Globe and Mail has a front page article that a large scale study has shown music performance education in high schools increases overall grade performance.  This isn't the first time music has been heralded as a contributor to improving general intelligence and performance.   I was recently considering how expanded our studies of any field are.  I expected that the music field now would be much more complex than  fifty years ago when I was in school.  So I went to the University of Toronto (UofT) website to find out more.  And yes - this turns out to be a fascinating exploration of human progress.   Before we look at this, I did see something that I found amusing. One university in the U.K. offers a related masters - the applied acoustics, M.Sc. It was its terminology that got my attention.  "At a time when there is a shortage of highly qualified noise consultants in the UK, gaining this MSc in Applied Acoustics at University of Derby will give you a real edge in your acoustics career."  I quote this one because of use of the term 'noise'.  I had had veered off into the engineering realm of acoustic, noise, and vibration . So back to the UofT and on the topic of music.  This is the introduction and a list of the new courses for 2019-2020.  The full set of course descriptions are HERE. Home to a diverse and dynamic community of scholars, performers, composers, and educators, UofT Music offers a supportive community in one of the world’s most diverse and dynamic cities. We provide a superb learning environment, an internationally renowned teaching faculty, multiple performance halls, and an outstanding music library collection. With degrees and diplomas available in numerous areas of study, our array of courses and programs provides our 900 students an exceptional opportunity to explore various fields within music.” – Don McLean, Dean Here are their new courses for 2019-2020 MUS1069H – Remix Music, from Analogue to Digital MUS1070H – Music, Genre and Variation MUS1169H - Listening to Cities: Music, Sound, & Noise in Urban Environments MUS1280H - Analysis and its Futures in Ethnomusicology MUS2186H – (Un)Popular Music Education MUS2224H – Conducting for Composers MUS3316H - Cognitive Perspectives in Music Theory MUS3421H - Composing for Theatre MUS4439H - Flute-Guitar Masterclass MUS4616H - Topics in Interactive Media and Performance MUS4617H - The 21st Century Creative Performer: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry to Performance and Performance Practice One scrolls through the regular set of ensemble, performance, history, composition and theory courses. Past the many pages are course in music and health sciences - these are fascinating.  What about the Music & Health Doctoral Research Project? This is what a bus load of garden visitors looks like on a garden tour day. The Flamborough Society is a great group and were willing to pose for a group shot after visiting the three gardens on my street - my next door neighbour and the neighbour across from her.  All similar houses, similar plots and lots, and different garden designs.  People find it wonderful to see how different the gardens are.

Taking Labels for Granted

Here's our website:  tedium.co - it answers my question about putting our clothes on front-ways is easy because of the labels on the back.   The answer is unusual:  the roots of modern clothing labels start with unions.  At the turn of the 20th century, union labels were used by a variety of labor groups, both inside and outside of garments. In fact, the first example of such labels came from cigar-makers in 1874, who used it as a way to highlight the higher product quality compared with products made elsewhere. But the most famous use of this tactic came from clothing-makers, particularly the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), which used the tags almost as a branding strategy for the union. In fact, the union became noted in the ’70s and early ’80s for its television commercials, in which members of the union sing a ditty called “Look for the Union Label.” Now labels convey many things - place or origin, materials, warnings for hazardous materials.  And there are labels on everything - remember when bananas didn't need to have a label on them?  Labels are now regulated requirements.   The internet covers labels today in various ways:  Ways to remove clothing labels, get custom clothing labels made, get name stickers for your kids, how to sew a label into a garment, and so on.  Tomorrow we'll explore more things we take for granted - things that make our everyday activities easy and efficient. Our pictures today are the front garden - taken yesterday.  I am always amused to see vertical perennials in the front garden tilting - they do whatever the wind tells them.  There is definitely a southern wind here on Sunnylea Crescent.

Oscar's No Host Moments

Here's the beginning of  an article on the 2018 Oscar predictions: "It is crunch time as now I am forced to put up or shut up".  It continues with  "stick-a-fork-in-it" and "take-it-to-the-bank" calls.  I would pronounce this writer an idiom-addict. So on to the "Academy Award of Merit", now called the "Oscar".  It is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony.  It started in 1929.  Motion pictures were born in 1885 with the Lumber brothers' short films in Paris. The first studio was built in 1897, and in the 1900's permanent theatre showings occurred.  The first feature length multi-reel film was in 1906.  Newsreels were shown from 1910 on.   By 1914 commercial cinema was established.  So the beginning of awards by 1929 seems to make sense. The first broadcast of the Oscars on television was in 1953. Bob Hope and Conrad Nagel were the first televised hosts.  The next year it was Donald O'Connor and Fredric March.  My remembrance is of Bob Hope and he hosted many times.  Even Frank Sinatra was a host - in 1963.  All the hosts are listed HERE. Did you know that there was no host from 1969 - 1971 and in 1989?  In 1989, it was Lucille Ball's last appearance.  She was a co-presenter with Bob Hope at that Oscar ceremony.  She died a month later at 77.  Bob Hope lived to be 100, and died in 2003. The viewing audience size and the advertising revenues are the Oscar performance measures.  The biggest Oscars were in 1998, and it is attributed to the movie Titanic. 55.25 million people watched.  You can see an amazing piece from Vanity Fair on the 1998 oscars.  It is full of clips and funny lines. Here's our garden snow scene after the storm last week.

Winter Gardens

I submitted a few photos to Lee Valley for their Newsletter.  Here is one in the February issue of the Gardening Newsletter.  This image is from my garden, where the Sweet Autumn Clematis climbs over the Lavender Twist Redbud.  Redbuds are beautiful in the spring, with their small fuchsia coloured blossoms.  In the autumn, the Sweet Autumn Clematis flowers are in full display.  And for the first part of the Winter, the seed heads are pretty as well.  Now just for Spring to come our way, to repeat the cycle.  See the Gardening newsletter here:

http://www.leevalley.com/en/newsletters/Gardening/9/2/Article1.htm