Marilyn's Photos - Aug 8 2025 - To Wish

 

I saw the headline - "I wish I'd known" - it sounds like "Why didn't anybody tell me?"  Maybe it is the word "wish"  that phrase is about a strong desire or hope for something that is not easily attained so there's a sense of longing, yearning and desire.  And then put it in the past as in I wish I'd known - isn't that about regret.     We have a more positive view of wish today.  It is often paired with best wishes - and likely the most used version is with a birthday - a greeting that gives a positive sentiment for the year ahead.  It is still considered good etiquette.  Best wishes is much more positive than good luck.  That implies it is up to the fates and that we are not our own masters.  And best wishes greetings have been with us for centuries.  Think of Shakespeare and his many greetings.   Here are a few ways that he said best wishes in his work:   “Heaven give you many, many merry days.” [Mistress Page, Merry Wives of Windsor. Act 5, Scene 5] “Heaven send thee good fortune.” [Mistress Quickly, Merry Wives of Windsor. Act 3, Scene 4] “Your heart’s desires be with you.” [Celia, As You Like It. Act 1, Scene 2] “Lack nothing: be merry.” [Shallow, Henry IVp2. Act 5, Scene 3] “All days of glory, joy and happiness.” [Lewis, King John. Act 3, Scene 4] “Fair thought and happy hours attend you.” [Lorenzo, Merchant of Venice. Act 3, Scene 4] “I wish you all the joy you can wish.” [Gratiano, Merchant of Venice. Act 3, Scene 2]

We are almost at the end of the Trillium Season for Grimsby's front gardens - just two weeks left.  This week's winner is a very pretty house and garden composed of graceful curves.

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Marilyn's Photos - Aug 7 2025 - From Sodom to Sodomy

 

How does one get from Sodom the place to sodomy, typically referred to as anal sex and acts against nature.  What did Sodom do to get this permanent infamy?   Way back in Genesis 19, the story goes that the city of Sodom was destroyed by God.  No reason given in Genesis.  The reason came later and was inferred to be because Lot's male guests were assaulted by the men of Sodom.  So the Sodom to Sodomy story is an interpretation.  Other Old Testament books - Deuteronomy and Ezekiel mention Sodom and Gomorrah associating them with sins such as adultery and lying.  Go in the opposite direction and you will find that badminton, the sport is named after Badminton in England.  Bikini?  We know that's the Bikini Atoli where atomic bombs were tested in 1946.  The bathing suit supposedly had an "explosive" effect on the male libido. Cologne the perfume originated in Cologne, Germany.  The duffle coat comes from Duffel, Belgium.  Isn't it a delight that the tuxedo is named after Tuxedo Park in New York.   So back to Sodom and sodomy - why would they name a road Sodom Road in the Niagara Falls area? It started out as Concession Road 3 in the late 1700s - and then somehow it changed names.  "The first written reference to the name “Sodom” for this road appeared in 1851 when Henry Ort applied for a license for his new tavern on the town line at New Germany. His license was dated December 28, 1851."  What a mystery to choose to change it from Concession Road 3 to Sodom Road  - an infamous reference.This isn't anything like calling it Badminton Road.

Start at one point and watch the evolution to something quite different.  Our picture of a watercolour paint palette went through a few versions of Flaming Pear's Flexify - and example is the second picture - and then the various pictures were composed in the Diptich application.

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Marilyn's Photos - Aug 6 2025 - Magic Tricks

 

How many magic tricks should we learn?  We may want to amaze any crowd.  Or do we want to improve critical thinking skills? Magic tricks are there to "enrich our lives."  Should we watch the youtube video of the most famous world magic tricks revealed?  The dove is stuffed inside a box and then flies out rather than coming alive from a picture.  And so on.   It isn't fun to find out the answer - whether it is the top 10 or the greatest 100.  The point of magic tricks is that they are illusions and we like mystery and the unknown as long as there is humour.  What about breaking the Magician's Code? This shouldn't happen should it?  And to make it worse, it was a TV program in the late 1990s that revealed some of the oldest tricks and some sleight of hand tricks.  There were lawsuits by professional magicians over who invented what, criticisms that the explanations were inaccurate.  And then some had to change tricks as the underlying method was revealed so where's the mystery and fun? And how did David Copperfield make a plane disappear?  With smoke and mirrors.   The answer is HERE.

This first illusiosn was at Disney World in Orlando - a bit of magic through the disguise of ivy and the acrobat on stilts.  And below that?  The magic of the natural world - this is the Titan Arum in the green house in Niagara Falls 10 years ago.  These are the plants that smell like rotting flesh, and this particular variety is the largest plant in the world.  I have a 2 foot tall variety of Arum  - still very stinky.

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Marilyn's Photos - Aug 5 2025 - Where's Waldo Now?

 

Where's Waldo?  How old was he in 1987? It looks like it started out as Where's Wally? in the U.K. and Where's Waldo in the U.S.  The originator/author is Martin Handford. As the series goes on, Wally progressively becomes harder to find, reducing his size on the page and surrounding him by more characters.  There were 225 characters in the first book to 850 in the last book's first page.  There's a great picture of attendees at the 2011 Where's Waldo? World Record event in Dublin, Ireland - all dressed as Wally/Waldo. In 2009 a re-creation took place in Chicago, featuring all the characters hiding throughout downtown Chicago.   Waldo came to mind after I saw this dog picture in the Bing feed - find the cat in the picture.  Is there only one cat?  Are all the small-eared ones cats, or just the one with whiskers?

Here's the opposite sort of picture - a little bit of found grunge.

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Marilyn's Photos - Aug 4 2025 - Simple Math

 

It is simple math time. Here's the headline:    Easy-looking math sum leaves people confused - can you solve it without a calculator?  5+5 x 5+5  The article shows the two ways to go wrong.  In one method the answer is 100, and in the other the answer is 55. The article says to use the acronym PEMDAS - p stands for parenthesis, then exponents, multiplication and division and then adding or subtracting.   We who took arithmetic know the answer is 35 and we never learned the PEMDAS acronym. You can find all kinds of math tricks. One of the websites is  Interactive Mathematics and it has lots I didn't know about.  And these are real tricks.  We'd have to memorize them - and as I said, there are lots.  Some of them are fun - the butterfly method for adding and subtracting fractions.  Go take a look at them HERE.

Knowing how to do all of this is great  What will I use it for? We'd have to start doing some of the following every day: cooking and baking, budgeting and finances, shopping, time management, home improvement, driving, sports and games, travel, gardening (planting in rows) and so on.  The article concludes:  "Just think how often you encounter numbers in your daily routine." I didn't mean to work on a winter picture yesterday but this bridge over Wilket Creek at the Toronto Botanical Gardens seemed a perfect candidate for simplification in a watercolour image. Here's the original and the watercolour version.

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