Feb 14 2023 - Valentine's Day - Pagans Galore

 

Valentine must have been a popular name as there are three different saints named Valentine.  They are noted as they were all martyred. And that salutation greeting - "From your Valentine" started with one of these. Of course, Valentine's Day starts as a pre-Roman Catholic Festival - these pre-Catholic festivals are all now referred to as "Pagan".  Somehow by the 5th century Pope Gelasuis declared February 14th as Valentine's Day.  That would be the pattern to Christianize a favourite festival. But how did Cupid get involved?  Isn't that a "Pagan" figure? Yes, Roman. The original Eros used golden arrows to incite love and leaden ones to sow aversion.  Later on he was portrayed as a mischievous, chubby boy. And another of course, religious countries would ban Valentine's Day.  Saudi Arabia - one of the most conservative countries in the world, Muslim countries - Indonesia and Pakistan see it as a Christian celebration and have made it  illegal.  Other countries include Uzbekistan, Malaysia and Iran. The principle is that people who are not married cannot mingle.  One site says that because Valentine's Day goes back to Roman times, not Islamic times, it belongs exclusively to the Christians not to Islam.  But it seems there is a distinct view that this time it is  the Roman Catholics who are the "pagans" on a holiday. Here we are in North America with a holiday that is commercially dominated.  No religious celebrations here.  I am told this is the one day that Cole's can count on men to come in and buy flowers.    A collage of hearts. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 13 2021 - 61 Metrics for ?

 

Welfare got associated with government "hand-outs" - assumed to not be a good thing. Let's take New Zealand's version of welfare. New Zealand's "wellbeing budget" - outlined how new budget funds will go to the most serious causes - mental health, child poverty and family violence.  That was in 2019.  It is quite remarkable that New Zealand had changed how it spends on new things/projects.  There are 61 indicators tracking everything from loneliness to trust in government institutions.  So what about a government concerned about happiness?  There are a few - Bhutan is the most notable. The articles about Bhutan describe the paradox of happiness.  "This paradox asserts that, when individuals or groups actively pursue happiness as the singular ultimate goal, the inescapable result is, ironically, increased unhappiness. While this paradox may at first seem puzzling, evidence of its validity is easy to see, particularly in western culture."  The article goes on to say that western economic models conflate happiness with materialism and wealth. Studies repeatedly show there isn't greater happiness with greater wealth.  There was opposition to the NZ approach in 2019 according to the NY Times review of the 2019 change.  The Western world consensus is that it is the key government responsibility to look out for overall economic success.  The historical things like protecting from invading armies, maintaining social order, protecting from natural disasters and similar crises, facilitating transportation across the geographic expanse and other key public services - seem lesser, don't they? So back to happiness. We'll have to wait till after COVID-19 to see NZ results.  Ih the meantime, are there happiness jokes that aren't sarcastic?  I found these jokes (related and unrelated) very satisfying:  My boss told me to have a good day. So I went home. My teacher gave us an assignment and one of the questions was "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I answered “Happy”. The teacher said I didn’t understand the test, I said to her that she didn’t understand life. Two dogs are walking along a street. They are passed by a third dog driving a lorry load of logs. One turns to the other and says: “He started fetching a stick and built up the business from there.” Two nuns were driving through a Transylvanian forest when the road was blocked by a fearsome looking vampire. “What do we do now?” the passenger asked. “Get out and show him your Cross,” said the nun in the driver's seat. So the nun on the passenger side stepped out onto the road, wagged her finger and exclaimed: “Get out of our way, you stupid vampire.”

Pursuing happiness may be an unanswerable activity.  Here's a favourite image from Toronto's St. Clair area quite a few years ago.  And then the wonderful Ringling Circus miniature layout with its crazy clowns.

Feb 13 2020 - The Shape of a Heart

Who would guess it?  The seed of a plant is considered the origin of the heart shape used to depict the human sense of love and romantic emotion. It was known as silphion, laserwort, laser, and used as a seasoning, perfume, aphrodisiac, and medicine.  It was used as a contraceptive by ancient Greeks and Romans.  It was critical to the Cyrenian (Libya today) economy, and their coins bore a picture of the plant.  Its seed/fruit was what we today call 'heart-shaped".   This is an extinct plant, so there are numerous theories as to how it became extinct since it was so important to the economies of countries at the time.  Then we speed ahead to the 1250s with the first depiction of a heart shape, presented by a kneeling lover who offers his heart to a lady. It is similar to a pine cone and is upside down. Researchers assume it is a heart. While much earlier Aristotle described it in ancient texts with three chambers and a dent in the middle, it was Middle Ages scientists who went about translating this visually.   The heart symbol became widespread in medieval art. It was in the 14th century that the heart was turned 'right-side up'. And then it gains traction everywhere.  It is easy to trace with trade - it reaches Japan between 1543 and 1614.  A samurai helmet dated 1630 has hearts on it. Today, the traditions are many and interwoven in our society completely. Take our scientific approach to things as demonstrated by Wikipedia.  It shows us an animation of a cardioid generated by a rolling circle.  It is one of a number of "parametrisations of approximately heart-shaped curves."  It is fascinating - take a look at the bottom the entry HERE.  Today's images - what else?  Hearts.

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Feb 10 2020 - Doggie Talk Bubbles

How would my little dog Dezi's words look in 'talk bubbles'?  Would she speak in Comic Sans?  Vincent Connare, the inventor of Comic Sans wrote the casual script typeface for Microsoft.  They wanted something that would work with cartoon bubbles for children. It became one of the default fonts in Windows 95, much to his surprise.  It was extensively distributed - by Apple, and others. In an interview with CBC on Saturday, he didn't complain about not receiving any special compensation. He said it was unusual to have a job as a typeface designer and that he loved his job at Microsoft.  He was young - the font came out in 1995.  He was born in 1960, and currently lives in France.  So he's made enough to retire on his various typeface creations. His website is quite brief - it is HERE. Comic Sans is loved and hated -  its intended use was specific - to be casual in informal documents and children's material. The CBC interviewer asked - should Rudy Giuliani use Comic Sans as a font in one of his submission letters to the Department of Justice?  Connare laughed and then responded that there are restrictions on the fonts that can be used in legal documents.  Comic Sans MS is not likely not allowed anywhere. Could it be used for a sandwich shop sign?  He found that a curious choice. Not a typical use. It got me thinking. Which font would Dezi and Baxter speak in if I were to write a story?  Baxter's tail tells many stories. He swooshes and wags his tail often - he is most curious about things and attentive to all movements in the yard.  I interpret his swooshing as friendly and dominant.  You can look up cat charts that show variations of cat speak. Dezi's tail wags a lot but doesn't swoosh that I've seen.  I don't know of any dogs who swoosh their tails.  Supposedly wagging to the right is friendly and wagging to the left is trepidation or anger.  And then they have lots of things to say with their body positions, ears, and mouths, and their various wiggles.  It seems they have lots more to say than cats do. This makes me think they each need their own font. Our Valentines continue today in graffiti and grunge findings.

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Feb 9 - Parentese with Dezi the Dog

I find that the way I 'talk' to Dezi the dog - high pitched, exaggerating words, and 'patronizing tone' is known as Parentese.  It is proven to increase baby vocabulary significantly.  A CBC radio interview told me this yesterday. The Guardian article is perfect so HERE it is. It is as good as all the jokes I can find.  This is the opening excerpt: Name: Parentese. Age: Popular since the mid-80s. Sounds like: A bit like you’re being patronised. I don’t like being patronised. Oh yes you do. Yes you do. Yes you do, my little sweetheart. What on earth are you doing? I’m talking parentese to you. And by the look of it it’s working. Yes it is. Yes it is. OK, let’s track back a little. What is parentese? I’m glad you asked. It’s a method of communicating with babies that utilises vowel hyperarticulation, pitch modification, slow speech rate and simplified wording. That didn’t help. OK. You know the way you talk to a baby? It’s that. Goo goo ga ga? No, that’s baby talk - when you don’t use any words and just make strange, cutesy noises instead. Baby talk is useless. Talk baby talk to a baby and you are just going to end up with a baby who talks baby talk. But talk parentese to a baby and you are going to end up with a baby with a colossal vocabulary." The CBC reporter interviewed the University of Washington researcher referenced in the article.   Here are the instructions: "Over-enunciate in a high-pitched sing-song voice, repeating words with a happy tone. “Hellooooooo bayyyyybe, doooo youuuu want a baaaaaanaaaaanaaaa? Oooooh, niiiiiiiice baaaaaanaaaaanaaaa.” The font used here is Comic Sans MS -  I heard the originator of this font interviewed on the CBC a little earlier than the parentese story. I'll report on that wonderful interview tomorrow.  Our Valentine theme is accompanied today with railroad images of the layout of Sam Furukawa in Seattle. We visited it in 2006.  He's a dedicated railroad modeller who comes to all the conventions.  What a great view from his house.

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Feb 6 2020 - Chocolate Day x 365

How many chocolate days are there in the year?  World Chocolate Day is July 7th. Or maybe October 28th, or December 28th.  And there's International Chocolate Day on September 13th.  Variants such as National Milk Chocolate Day, National White Chocolate Day and National Cocoa Day join the days.   EuroChocolate is an annual chocolate festival in Perugia, the capital of Umbria in Italy. It is such a good idea, that Rome and Turin also have chocolate festivals.  But Perugia's is huge: it starts on October 16th and ends of October 25th this year and has over one million visitors.  I guess chocolate is popular in Italy. I decided to find out if there are chocolate days all year long. If it is this popular in Italy, it is popular everywhere.  So the situation is that you can celebrate chocolate pretty well every week.  The list of chocolate holidays is HERE - there are celebrations every month - think things like National chocolate cupcake day or bittersweet chocolate with almonds day.  Don't forget Office Chocolate Day - that's the suggested day to give your colleague a vegan chocolate present.   What kind of candy is never on time? ChocoLATE What is a French cat's favorite dessert? Chocolate mousse! Why did the Oreo go to the dentist? Because it lost its filling  Today's Valentine was found in a back alley of Queen Street West.

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Melting Chocolate Month

As we navigate February, we bounce between weatherperson's day with cold snaps and snow flurries and chocolate fondue day. Chocolate fondue is a recent offering in the culinary landscape.  Konrad Egli, owner of Chalet Suisse in New York City, created chocolate fondue with chocolate, heavy cream and kirsch.  This was in the early 1960s.  Such a long gap between chocolate and the earliest published cheese fondue recipe which dates to 1699. But it took a while for chocolate to become a dessert - it needed the chemists to get involved.  They transformed it into a sweet, smooth and creamy texture.  That was the mid-1800s. There are many fondue recipes now - chocolate is one of the most beloved foods. It took more invention to make chocolate fountains. They became popular in 1991 when they were displayed at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago.  The chocolate fountain resembled a stepped cone, standing 2–4 feet tall with a crown at the top and stacked tiers over a basin at the bottom. The basin is heated to keep the chocolate in a liquid state so it can be pulled into a center cylinder then vertically transported to the top of the fountain by an Archimedes screw. From there it flows over the tiers creating a chocolate waterfall in which food items like strawberries or marshmallows can be dipped.   It was in 2004 that Hellman began marketing a fountain for personal use.  Chocolate has fluid dynamics that are unusual.  "The gravitational forces are much lower than the viscous forces." A small chocolate fountain needs a lot of vegetable oil and the best chocolate - couverture chocolate - which is high in natural cocoa butter.  Who knows about the tallest chocolate fountain?  Guinness of course!  It is 12.27 meres high, and was recorded in Austria, on April 11 2019.  The picture is HERE. The chocolate fountain is at Pralines World - dedicated to the magic, taste, history, and manufacturing of pralines and chocolate and includes the chocolate academy, a knowledge and learning centre. It is countdown to Valentine's Day - and the theme is the Ringling Circus.

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There's a Prequel and Sequel to Valentine's Day

Did you know that there's a valentine for each day leading up to the BIG DAY Feb 14th?     Did you know that Valentines week is followed by an Anti-Valentine week from the 15th to the 21st?  I didn't know about this at all.  Here are the days.     Huffington Post has 33 Anti-Valentine's Day Gifts for People Who Despise Valentine's Day.  Oh dear.  Such  spiteful sentiments being expressed.  How did it get to being this way? One is able to retrieve many entries for Valentine's Day battlefield. Of course, a number of these are titles - songs, books, games - lots of games. Here's a definition from cuepoint.com on the notion of the discordancy of Valentine's Day. "Valentine's Day is frequently a battlefield—not just for single people, but for people in general. If you're unpartnered, Valentine's Day is like some Noah's Ark-style party you're barred from attending; but if you're dating someone, it's all too often a compulsory party that fills you with a nameless dread. Having to prove your romantic devotion on an arbitrarily selected day can seriously backfire (ask any of your server friends about the carnage they witness while waiting tables on Valentine’s Day)." Here's our picture to match today's battleground story - a tarnished, worn and weathered boat.

Queen of Hearts

Legend has it that the ancient Romans may be responsible for the name of our modern day of love. Emperor Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on Feb. 14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine's Day. Of course, there are contending legends for the origin of Valentine's Day.  history.com outlines these. What about playing cards and the King and Queen of Hearts?  This seems to have such an affinity to Valentine's Day.  But it is not so.  Playing cards have their own ancient beginnings. The Chinese invented playing cards before AD1000.  It is a long evolving history of shapes to represent suits.  The wikipedia entry has English, French, Italian, Spanish, Swiss-German and German.  And that's for contemporary playing cards.  The U.S. Bicycle brand is very familiar to most of us.  It has been in continuous production since 1885.  More about that company at their website.   Here are some associations that have been made: 52 cards represents the 52 weeks in a year 4 suits represents the 4 seasons 13 cards in each suit represents the 13 weeks in each season 12 Royals represent the 12 months 2 red and 2 black suits represent the 4 different solstices Our pictures today are thumbnails of the images in my Heart Felt Redbubble portfolio.  Some are accidental hearts found, and others created.  When RB started more than 11 years ago, it was an art print site.  Today, there are all kinds of products available.  The bottom picture shows some of these - clothing, home decor, cases, bags, duvet covers, and so on.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today is the Chocolate Day!  Somehow over the centuries, the Feast of Saint Valentine has evolved into a chocolate festival.  Whenever I look up a notable day, its history is sourced in religious events and commemorations.  So today, we find that numerous early Christian martyrs were named Valentine.  The first link of St. Valentine's Day with romantic love is associated with Geoffrey Chaucer:  For this was on seynt Volantynys day Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.   ["For this was on St. Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."] - for those of you who did not take first year English in University, or have forgotten, like me. Chocolate has been associated with Valentine's since the 1900's and Diamonds came along in the later part of the 1900's as a Valentine's Day gift. So today is a day of greetings and gift giving. Enjoy!  View this email in your browser