Dec 15 2023 - Lost Boy Found

 

There's a headline today in the British press about a British boy who was kidnapped at age 11 six years ago.  He has shown up in France, and wants to go home and live a "normal life". He had been kidnapped by his mother in 2017 and lived in a luxury house in Spain in a spiritual community with his mother.  He was walking near Toulouse and his intention was to return to Britain to see his grandmother.  There are many picture of Alex then and now.  From little boy to adult. How many missing children are there every year?  There are over 460,000 in the U.S. each year.  In Canada there are approximately 500 cases left unresolved each year out of the over 45,000 children reported missing.  I guess that's why amber alert came about.  That's a lot of children.   And returning to the LEGO theme: Q: What is the most common procedure in a LEGO hospital? A: Plastic surgery! Q: What do LEGO minifigures do for fun on the weekend? A: They throw a block party!

Here's 13th Street Winery then and now (2020) - a bustling gathering place now. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

June 20 2021 - Hollywood Cigarette, please

 

Terry O'Reilly is a podcaster whose program "Under the Influence" covers advertising and marketing topics.  Yesterday he covered fake Hollywood brands.  His CBC podcast is HERE. Maybe you know all this - about Hollywood brand cigarettes and beer.  Cigarettes are the most interesting:  Red Apple is Quentin Tarantino's brand.  It is fake, and shows up exclusively in his movies.  It first showed up in Pulp Fiction in 1994. But the first appearance of the Hollywood brand of cigarettes is Alfred Hitchcock who brought Morley's to life in the movie Psycho.  That was in 1960.  The name Morley is a play on Marleys for Marlboro cigarettes.  It was created by a prop packaging service - The Earl Hays Press. This gets around clearance and fees for real brands. Where else did it occur? The MeTV article HERE says: "The brand would soon repeatedly pop up in tobacco form on The Twilight Zone. Jack Klugman, William Shatner and Telly Savalas all carry packs of Morleys in the classic fifth season episodes "In Praise of Pip," "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Living Doll." The smokes also surface in "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" and "Stopover in a Quiet Town."   The brand's earliest known television appearance is April 5, 1961, on an episode of Naked City. At the opening of "Tombstone for a Derelict," a young punk played by Robert Redford offers a cigarette to a bum, before his gang murders the poor fellow. After the credits, the police show up, and a pack of Morleys is discovered as a key piece of evidence.  The really well-known appearance is Richie's "chocolate treat"  on the Dick Van Dyke show when Pickles the wife of Buddey Sorrell visits the Petries and pulls a pack of cigarettes from her purse - "Here I brought you a pack of chocolate cigarettes".  And where do the cigarettes occur in Psycho? At the end of Psycho, Dr. Fred Richman shakes a smoke from a pack of Morleys before explaining what happened. I should have told you about this earlier, as you can buy a prop pack for $26.00 online.  Consider this a great gift - you can put it beside Jack's All Play and No Work Book from The Shining.   And what is this sculpture today?  It is at 13th Street Winery in their greatly expanded Sculpture Garden - Floyd Elzinga's pinecone scale cut-outs are in the in the bundles. They look like shovel pieces. And then consider Locust Lane Winery - can you see the skyline of Toronto on the left?  That Skydome half-circle is the marker.  Another great location.

Noel

My knowledge of latin is centred around plant names.  I hadn't remembered that Noel comes from the Latin verb nasci and natus, meaning to be born, or natalist, pertaining to birth or origin.  It travelled through Old French then Old English to become Noel in the late 14th century to represent Christmas, the Feast of the Nativity. In Christmas carols, noel is a lyric that expresses joy. How many carols are there with Noel?  On the lyrics search site, the results for a 'noel' search retrieved 1,476 lyrics, 30 artists and 100 albums. There are more than 30 artists with the name Noel, almost 100 albums listed, and then a seemingly unending list of The First Noel lyrics with every artist imaginable - the second on the list is Annie Lennox. Would you like to prepare for Christmas with a pun list?  Here are a few of the entries for Noel from punpedia.com: Know* → Noël*: As in, “A little noëledge is a dangerous thing” and “Don’t I noël it” and “I don’t noël why” and “Be the first to noël” and “Better the devil you noël than the devil you don’t” and “General noëledge” and “Goodness noëls” and “Takes one to noël one” and “The end of the world as we noël it” and “Noëledge is power” and “Secure in the noëledge that…” Nail → Noël: As in, “Another noël in the coffin” and “Fight tooth and noël” and “Hit the noël on the head” and “On the noël” and “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a noël.” Check out punpedia - it is amazing in its comprehensive coverage of the words around Christmas. There's no 'about', etc to find out who has put together this remarkable information. Given the flexibility of the word, there are a few silly noel jokes to be found: What kind of medal would Santa Claus win? A Noel Prize Why don't we call it Christlmas? Noel. My sister said she didn't need a hymnal because she knew the lyrics to every Christmas song. I told my brother, "Don't mind her, she's just a big noel-it-all." Our snowstorm images show Peninsula Ridge Winery - the wonderful Kitchen House in the background, and then looking from the property towards Grimsby.  There's a wonderful Lake view at the winery.

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

What happens the day after do nothing day?  Could it be a day of something and knowing about something?  Today isn't Epistemology Day, though.  There doesn't seem to be a day that celebrates the theory of knowledge, of knowing.  It could be Ontology Day - that's the study of existence.  No day of celebration there, either.   So perhaps the day after doing nothing is the day of knowing nothing or not knowing something. We can trace this back to the Greeks.  "You don't know what you don't know," and  "Wisdom is knowing what you don't know."  These are attributed to Socrates. Modern variations on this: "Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do".  Jean Piaget "Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant".  Charles Munger So today we can be practical, as it is Ditch New Year's Resolutions Day or we can wait for tomorrow and celebrate Thesaurus Day. We're looking at the historic house at Peninsula Ridge Winery.  These are pictures from previous winters.

Niagara's Old Smokey

Niagara is home to many wineries but Rosewood is special - it produces honey and mead along with wine.  The family has been beekeeping for three generations.  This story was in their newsletter yesterday - a story worth sharing. The result of a series of (un)happy accidents, Old Smokey began as liquid honey & with a quick slip of the hand it was accidentally completely burnt.  In the spirit of experimentation we decided to ferment it dry. Following fermentation it was matured in tank for over 1.5 years before the refrigeration truck it was being stored in malfunctioned, dropping the internal temperature to Arctic like conditions - completely freezing the mead. Thinking we were going to completely discard it after thawing, we were curious to taste this enigma. To our surprise, the mead tasted better than ever! We transferred it into french oak barriques for several months to allow the journey to continue. To finish, it was aged in freshly emptied Kentucky Bourbon barrels for the last 6 months. Bottled at 19% abv, unfined and unfiltered, we expect this mead to continue aging gracefully for many years to come. Old Smokey can be purchased at $60/500 ml with a 2 bottle maximum per person.  Find out more at rosewoodwine.com. Our pictures today are from our Colorado visit.

Intention on Neglect

I went to Thirteenth Street Winery on Saturday to catch some pictures of the Magnolia Tree.  I experienced quite a shock.  The pretty red barn beside the tree is gone.  Entirely gone.  The magnolia sits alone on a bare landscape.  The great new magnificent facility has nothing 'old' to detract from it. This is the second barn that disappeared in the last few weeks.  I got to take pictures of this one over the years and capture what made it such an enjoyable experience.    And I was lucky to start in 2012 as the greenhouse in the first picture was removed by 2014 along with the blackberry bushes in it.  The running dogs sculpture is just behind where it was.  Thirteenth Street continues its movement towards a major winery destination.  I'll take pictures of the new facility for you - it is very beautiful. I hadn't thought about capturing this in a more disciplined way over time, so as to have a sequence of images.  I thought the winery was perfect and it would stay  "Whitty Bakery Market and Thirteenth Street Winery".  This has a parallel to Toronto: seeing what is gone and what has replaced it every time I am there.  For the Greenlane barn,  I hadn't taken any pictures.  It first came to my attention this winter and it never seemed to be the right circumstance - cars in front that couldn't be cloned out sufficiently, and the light was wrong - things like that.   It wasn't a shock to see the blank space, though, because of the constant cars and the new house slightly up the hill behind it.  A lesson learned from this - seize the moment. So I did a lot of stopping on Saturday to take pictures of dilapidated buildings that may be at risk.  I expect this is a new Portfolio Series on old buildings with the Wabi-sabi sense.  Stay tuned.

Welcome Spring and Roadwork

Just a few days ago, I captured the last of the ice at Grimsby Beach.  Yesterday it was a sea of green grass and happy dogs. Today we rush ahead to May with flowering fruit trees as our picture of the day.  This one is at Peninsula Ridge winery, on the road that leads up to the restaurant.   This will be the site of much construction this year.  A roundabout is being built at the intersection of Greenlane, Durham, Highway 8, and the entrance to Peninsula Ridge.  The work is underway already.

Megalomanic Fun

It looks like fun at the Megalomaniac Winery.  It is perched on the escarpment with views of Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Port Dalhousie, Toronto, and Hamilton.  That's quite the panoramic view.  And it has quite the personality to go with it.  The wine has names like Bigmouth and Vainglorious.  Tables and chairs are sculptures made of wood, and the winery is full of young people.  Our visit include a party of girls in hats. The owner is John Howard and the location is in Vineland at 3930 Cherry Ave.

Stoneyridge Winery - A Garden to See

Stoneyridge Winery is in Vineland Ontario in the Niagara Peninsula. It has a wonderful garden with a Seven Sons Flower Tree Grove, and one of the largest curly willows in Niagara.  I was there in mid-October and found the garden as pretty as in the summer.  Here are a few images.

Hidden Bench This Week

Autumn at Hidden Bench was marvellous in this last week - the third week of October, 2010.  The storm clouds were moving across the horizon to the south of the vineyards, with the full sun shining on the golden foliage.

The signature Hidden Bench label.

Do you have a favourite Niagara Vineyard with a few?  Let me know where you've found wonderful vistas and rolling hills!