Marilyn's Photos - Mar 25 2026 - Arriba

 

Yesterday at the Y there was a special class - an Arriba exercise class.  Do you remember this type of exercise?  The precursor to this was Zumba in the mid to late 1990s into the 2000s.  Exercise classes that had fun upbeat music and had lots of foot work involved, so dance-like. That’s  the definition of Arriba - “it is a high-energy dance-based fitness class that combines Latin, Bollywood, and belly dance moves set to upbeat music.  It focuses on various Latin rhythms such as Sala, Merengue, Cumbia, and Reggaeton.”  Participants can expect fun is the implication of such great Latin music. Men never come to Arriba classes - they are hip-wiggly with girly-girl wavy arm movements.  Our Arriba class had 10 people, the strength training class that followed had 35.     I wondered if there were any pictures of men doing arriba - there must be some men who try this out.  No, there is a refusal by google to retrieve articles, videos  or images of men doing Arriba exercises. Google agrees and supports the male refusal to get involved in arriba.  My proof is this picture retrieved to show men doing arriba. All the images retrieved are consistent - muscular men doing push-ups mostly show up.   Having taken part in the class yesterday, I side with the men on this one.  Arriba is too wiggly with girly-girl arm waving.  I am happy today that we’ll be doing lunges, jumping jacks and similar cardio-vascular activities.  OK, the burpees I can do without. Think July, and garden tour time.  Here’s a pretty scene from one of the gardens that will be on the Grimsby tour this year.

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Marilyn's Photos - Mar 24 2026 - National Geographic 1964

 

There it was - a National Geographic 1964 magazine - sitting in the Physiotherapy office.  That seems old - almost 60 years.  It looked perfect, too.  But it wasn’t a March issue of JFK and the Moon - that would get between $200 - $800 while a normal issue gets $1 to $15.  Still it would buy you a coffee at the Tim Horton’s across the street, or even a subway sandwich next door. There are a lot of magazines to collect - National Geographic Society was founded in 1888.  With such a long history, there must be a lot of National Geographic jokes.  I could  find a few that are relevant for my age group and perspective. Here’s a geography lesson for today: According to National Geographic, 80% of US adults could not find Ukraine on an unmarked map.  They're really ahead of their time. Here’s one that relates to my age: "You know when you go to a garage sale, and you find a dusty old box of National Geographics? Yeah, well you're kind of like that... You've got issues going way back." Here’s one that says volumes about American culture in the 1960s: What's the difference between a naked white woman and a naked black woman?  One is on the cover of playboy while the other is on the cover of National Geographic. This is the moment when we have a little thought for Cole’s Garden Centre. There is construction equipment in front of the Christmas Cottage this week, dispensing any fond memories that might have popped up. They were appreciators of Spring and had a huge Spring flower display each year.  I don’t know if there is going to be a sea of Pansies like this again.  At least we have it preserved in pictures - like a 1964 National Geographic.

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Marilyn's Photos - Mar 23 2026 - Airborne Shepherds

 

Is it true that sheep and cow herding dogs had their tails clipped to avoid being grabbed by the tail and thrown about?  That’s the story I was told  by an Australian Shepherd owner.  I have no farm experience and find this very interesting - that cows would be aggressive like this. This is the case.  Tails can be stepped on, grabbed or broken by livestock.   There’s also hygiene - e.g. burrs in the tail, and identification as a working dog - that’s related to historical taxing of pets vs working dogs not taxed. The other aspect this owner talked about is that the tails are not docked, they are tied immediately after birth as per the umbilical cord and similarly “fall off.”  This is a less invasive method than surgically docking the tail.   And then about 30% of Australian Shepherds are born with a natural bobtail. Here’s a benefit of the internet - let’s go find a picture out of the millions available - of a dog being thrown by a cow.  Ok - so I found just two -  the first  smacked by a cow  and the second - who knows what in the second image.  Definitely a dog is in the air.  The third image is one that I took from a video and that definitely showed the cow flinging the dog in the air. The video is HERE.   Mostly the pictures show the dogs being very aggressive and biting at the cows. Here’s a happy spring image.

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Marilyn's Photos - Mar 22 2026 - Thomson Highway - What's in a Name

 

The Globe and Mail has a big article on Tomson Highway.  Born in 1951, he is a national icon - playwright, novelist and musician and celebrated for works like “the Rez Sisters and Kiss of the Fur Queen.  He was one of 12 children in northwestern Manitoba where his parents were caribou hunters. It says his father was a legendary caribou hunter and world championship dogsled racer and his mother a renowned artist in beadwork and quilt-making.  He was sent to residential school.  Somehow he attended the University of Manitoba,  and then Western University, where he studied music and English literature, and worked with playwright James Reaney.  He graduated in 1975 and 1976 with degrees in music and literature. Might I have  encountered Tomson Highway in the English Department where I took a course in 1974/75? It makes one wonder, don’t you think?   But my curiosity is how he was able to do this financially as one of many children in an Indigenous family.  It seemed there would be many challenges and barriers. He got a library technician diploma from Fanshawe in 1973 and was able to support himself through this work. He credits his father as inspiring him to go to university - his father regretting that he was able to.  My first question was how he came by his first name - Tomson. Isn’t it a different sort of spelling! The story goes that his father, Joe Highway, lived in Northern Canada with Scandinavian trappers/hermits. They had names ending in “son” like Larson, Johnson, and Peterson.  Joe used that naming tradition. Tomson’s older brother was named Swanson, and he was named Tomson. Highway himself speculated that the surname of Highway may have Irish roots when he noticed similar names in England.   Just having the surname Highway seems magical to me, as there are so many associations, myths to create for a name like that.  What could Bansky have done with this wall?  So inviting.  This is many years ago, on Nicholas Street, the Segovy Restaurant.  All gone now - a big condo tower took over the old buildings on Nicholas Street.

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Marilyn's Photos - Mar 21 2026 - Banksy's Other Names

 

Stories on Banksy’s identity ‘revealed’ has been come out in 2017, 2023, 2024.  Burt now in 2026, this is the reveal.  What a let-down.  How good can this be when it is revealed that his identity is Robin Gunningham, from Bristol, England in his early 50s. He has changed his name a number of times with the latest, in 2008, being David Jones, one of the most common names in Britain.   And the Banksy name?  It says it was a pseudonym from a play on his rumoured real name Robin Gunningham, evolving from the tag Robin Banks into Banksy.  Or maybe after the famous England Goalkeeper Gordon Banks. Or from an interview in 2023 when asked if Banksy is called Robert Banks, he responded that his forename is Robbie.” His repeated reason for anonymity is that graffiti is illegal.  He’s so astonishingly creative.  Here’s just one story from Wikipedia: £10 Notes In August 2004, Banksy produced a quantity of spoof British £10 notes replacing the picture of the Queen's head with Diana, Princess of Wales’s head and changing the text "Bank of England" to "Banksy of England". Someone threw a large wad of these into a crowd at Notting Hill Carnival that year, which some recipients then tried to spend in local shops. These notes were also given with invitations to a Santa's Ghetto exhibition by Pictures on Walls. The individual notes have since been selling on eBay. A wad of the notes was also thrown over a fence and into the crowd near the NME signing tent at the Reading Festival. A limited run of 50 signed posters containing ten uncut notes was also produced and sold by Pictures on Walls for £100 each to commemorate the death of Princess Diana. One of these sold in October 2007 at Bonhams auction house in London for £24,000.  He did mention he wanted anonymity because graffiti is illegal…so forgery can be added to that.  And he said in his film Exit Through the Gift Shop he has forged a total of £100 million notes, saying he still owns most of them.  OK that makes the forgery charge seem possible. What about the criminal damage and property defacement.  There are thousands of images over a career spanning more than 30 years. Under UK law, a maximum of 20 years in prison would be likely, or not.  Who knows?  The person who removed the Banksy mural in Ukraine faced up to 12 years in prison. The theft of a Banksy work in Paris got sentences up to 4 years. A man who defaced Banksy murals in Utah got 5 years of probation.  So it looks like a game of Banksy defacing versus defacing Banksy, Banksy jokes are few and mostly just odd.  I choose this one: Banksy walks into a bar. Or did he?  No one knows because “he” left a stencil of a rat holding a pint on the wall and he vanished before the tab came. Take a look at this small representation of the hundreds of “Rat Holding Something” images. And here’s one of Toronto’s own Banksy’s - this was in February 2011 - in an alleyway beside the St. Lawrence Market.

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