Cyberisms

How did Cyber Monday get its name? It got it recently - November 28 2005 at Shop.org, coined by Ellen Davis and Scott Silverman to get people to shop online.  This is recent - think about Black Friday. Supposedly the term's origin is an early 17th century phrase and was school slang for "Friday on which an examination is held".  I don't see that repeated anywhere but the Google definition. Black Friday in the U.S. was first seen as the term used for the financial crisis of the U.S. gold market in 1869.  It was due to a gold buying/selling scheme. The original shopping Black Friday was theme given to mayhem in Philadelphia in the 1950's when shoppers flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game on the Saturday. The myth of retailers going 'into the black' on the day after Thanksgiving started in the 1960s.  It is considered inaccurate but is 'officially sanctioned'  as it is a positive story. The going from red into the black is positive compared to other Black Friday origins which have a negative connotation. There's more about this at snopes.com. Today we're looking the macro images of the boats stored on shore in the parking lot at Port Dalhousie.  These are bits of wear and tear from the many layers of paint.  The lines that follow the textures are created with the Flaming Pear India Ink filter.

Two of a Kind

Jazz FM knows a lot of musical stuff.  The other day I found out that Paul McCartney tried to meet Johnny Mercer to collaborate with him in the 1970's.  But Johnny Mercer was already ill and near the end of his life.  Johnny Mercer had remarkable musical accomplishments besides being a composer- he was the co-founder of capital Records, where the Beatles were signed in 1963.  JazzFM frequently plays is Mercer's "Two of a Kind" - and Mercer sings it with Bobby Darin. This is the most famous version. Two other American vocalists sang this - Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.  Recently I think John Pizzarelli and Harry Conick Jr covered it.  Here are the delightful lyrics of this American classic. Two of a kind For your information We're two of a kind Two of a kind It's my observation We're two of a kind Like peas in a pod And birds of a feather Alone or together you'll find That we are two of a kind What's so wrong thinkin' life is a song and reachin' for a star And who's to say if we'll go the whole way - at least we got this far Sharin' our lot, our vittles and viands, we're two of an ilk Say, what if we've got rare Chateaubriands or crackers and milk Makin' it plain Explainin' it fully We're simila-la-larly inclined Because we're two of a kind Two of a kind When he's out of rhythm, I'm singin' off key (I never heard ya do that, John) Say, never you mind, cause I'm stickin' with 'im, to C above C (He's-a for me) Oh, need we explain When he warbles sweetly, I'm flat and completely behind Because we're two of a kind I get kicks when I meet the cute chicks who hang around this lad And especially when they whisper to me, "Hey, honey, who's your dad?" Two of a sort Like two pomegranates from off the same tree I'm with ya sport, whatever you plan it's-a goes double with me (It's-a goes double with you, huh?) (Yeah!) Yeah, I got a terrible thought Most frightfully upsetting And yet we are getting resigned To being two of a kind We're two of a kind We like workin' single Or workin' in twos Keep us in mind, give us a jingle, we've got taps on our shoes (We'll dance!) We're both of us like, the Tower of Pisa I'm-a lean-a like he's-a inclined Because we're two of a kind Because we're Two of a kind So our pictures today show the CosMic orchid growing facility in Beamsville.  More than 800,000 orchids in production with Mike in front of their well know branding.  Maybe Orchids and Poinsettias are two of a kind.

Niagara's Purple Stuff

I worked at the Welch's Grape Juice factory for two summers.  When grape juice was being bottled, the factory smell was a combination of grapes and hydraulic machinery, and that's what I found yesterday at Foreign Affair Winery.  They were processing cabernet sauvignon outside, and were kind enough to let me take some pictures.  What a lot of purple stuff in those big bins.  I bet those big bins are worth a lot of money. I don't know what was happening in the process of grapes going from one bin to another.  And the workers were busy working. The internet information is about wineries and not grape processing.  I expect that might be too mundane for most people.  I'll have to go and ask about the grape to wine processes.  So it is American Thanksgiving today.  As with last year, it can be celebrated with orange Poinsettias - a new hybrid to take advantage of the Thanksgiving's proximity to Christmas which has the poinsettia flower as its floral tradition.  For those of us who prefer variation from the red and white, there's a beautiful hot pink hybrid this year. We saw it at the Poinsettia Trials two years ago and are pleased to see it in production. An American Thanksgiving joke: John: What did the turkey say to the computer? Will: What? John: “Google, google, google.”

The Mad Rush...For Christmas Greens

It was the mad rush.  And what were they in pursuit of? Winter Greens - yes winter greens.  The frenzy must be created by the sight and scent of pine and cedar. This is part of the Canadian experience, deep in our psyche, in our collective unconscious. I was at one of Niagara's best garden and floral centres  3 successive days - on Thursday, Friday  and Saturday.  I was there purchasing urn inserts and wreaths for the Fantasy of Trees.  It will open this week in the Grimsby Museum.  These will be silent auction and raffle items, along with 42 trees decorated in creative and fun themes. Each one will go to a new home after the raffle. On Thursday, as far as you could see there were mosaiculture designs, Christmas plants, and decorations - everything artful.  I saw a few people there purchasing, with the majority in the back doing an urn workshop.  Friday was a little busier with the Cheesy Guys and others giving out samples of food and beverages.  There was a festivity on Friday. Saturday's event was a different experience.  There was the necessity for overflow parking in the church next door.  And that lot was full too.  Then there were the hundreds of people purchasing - comparing urn inserts, deciding on wreaths, and enjoying the beautiful designs.  Some people were loaded up with carts and others had just a few items.  No one seemed worried to be in line. And consider this:  this wasn't a sale.  There were no reductions.  This was pure excitement to be in the Watering Can's Christmas experience.  The visual impact of this winter beauty was heightened by the scent of pine and cedar.  This is the adult wonderland experience of Christmas where Niagara's farm theme and traditional Christmas is on display.  Where plants rule the day and not mass production of consumer goods. Earl, the creator and owner of the Watering Can, posed for me in the last picture. I am among those who are  grateful for the wealth of Niagara artistic garden centres. We purchase our plants at the Watering Can and Cole's - we support their combination of artfulness and business sense.

The Five Minute Best Practice

Best practices are an important area of organization operation.  There can be dozens, hundreds and thousands of employees doing the similar things in different ways resulting in lesser and greater degrees of success in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and quality.  The idea of best practices is to use/do what is best to improvements.  Most often best practices can be small changes that make a big difference. What about best practices at the individual human level?  We've had a few decades of performance improvement and quality management in the organization.  Let's explore how this wealth of knowledge has been applied to living our lives. Here is the start of looking into this topic: The First Five Minutes:  Best Practices Approach to Motor Vehicle Collisions. This site -fireengineering.com is advice for what to do when you are involved in or arrive at a collision.  Small Changes in Teaching:  The Last 5 Minutes of Class. This article comes from The Chronicle of Higher Education - chronicle.com - the author proposes two questions to students:  What was the most important thing you learned today?  and What question still remains in your mind? James M. Lang has a number of practices like this - the First 5 minutes of class, small changes in teaching, etc. Five Good Minutes:  100 Morning Practices to Help You Stay Calm and Focused All Day Long (The Five Good Minutes Series). This is a book available on Amazon and its summary says that with five minutes of mindfulness, relaxation, or imagery techniques during their morning routes, readers can set their intentions and greet the day feeling calm, centred and energized.  This is part of a series titled Five Good Minutes. I think they have a similar practice for the end of the day. The Five Minute Journal - Simplest most effective way to be happier...from self-improvement theory to action.  There's an app for this one at intelligentchange.com  Today we're looking at a Grimsby Painted Lady garden with Floyd Elzinga's pine cone as the sculptural focal point.  This a calm, meditative garden, perhaps a best practice for gardeners.

A Dog's Breakfast

How did a dog's breakfast get such a bad reputation? in the 1937 Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, the expression is listed as "a mess."  It is suggested that this dates from before the time of canned dog food when a dog's breakfast consisted of dinner leftovers from the night before.  This should not be confused with "a dog's dinner" which means the opposite and is normally expressed as "all dressed up like a dog's dinner" and sarcastically means over-dressed or showy.  This comes from makingheadsortailsofidioms.com where the list of expressions is quite fun.  More on the dog's dinner from a New York Times article ON LANGUAGE: Dog's Breakfast: "Why have you got those roses in your hair?" asked a character in "Touch Wood," a 1934 novel by C. L. Anthony. "You look like the dog's dinner ." This expression was defined by the Oxford English Dictionary Supplement as "dressed or arranged in an ostentatiously smart or flashy manner," probably derived from the 1871 usage "to put on the dog ."   And lest we forget, the New York Times examines the well-worn expression - 'dog-eared.' I found this picture of Dezi on a spring search under the wisteria.  Is it for a dog's breakfast or a dog's dinner?

Finding Good News

There's lots of bad news that's easy to find.  What about looking for good news?  I found some right away at Lifevestinside.com.  They have an impressive set of projects and ways to get involved in spreading kindness and hope.  They are action-oriented with clear initiatives.  For example, you can open a Life Vest Inside branch in your town. To bring kindness to children, their LVI Kindness Curriculum "provides a framework for scaffolding immersive experiences using critical thinking skills focused on kindness with the goal of benefiting not only the student and teacher, but also the community."  They reference Bloom's Taxonomy for 'growing skills.'  I checked it out.  The Vanderbilt University Centre for Teaching provides an overview: "In 1956, Benjamin Bloom with collaborators Max Englehart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwohl published a framework for categorizing educational goals: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Familiarly known as Bloom’s Taxonomy, this framework has been applied by generations of K-12 teachers and college instructors in their teaching. The framework elaborated by Bloom and his collaborators consisted of six major categories: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation." I worked at Ryerson from 1985 - 1995 and went to many teaching seminars and workshops. Somehow the Bloom's Taxonomy got missed out in all this education about education. I've reproduced it below for you - a great pyramid of learning, and one we will apply right away. That's because here in Niagara, there is a big shift in the weather - a little dusting of snow on the ground.  The weather report says it is -5 and feels like -13 Celsius. The 3 day severe weather outlook says no severe weather expected.  This means we 'understand' in the Bloom's Taxonomy - we 'recognize' this is normal weather.  We next 'analyze' by looking at the historical record low -8.8 in 1991 and the record high 20.5 in 1999.  So we are experiencing normal weather. Finally with today's picture we 'blur out' on the weather and end our trip through the hierarchy at 'evaluate' - justifying, arguing, and defending 'blurring out' as a valid approach to the weather.

Potato Chip Alert

When I was a child, there was a potato chip factory in St. Catharines.  It was beside our community swimming pool.  We passed it on the way to downtown shopping all the time.  The smell was glorious to us children.  The Lever's Potato Chips factory was around for quite a few years.  A St. Catharines Standard article tells us exactly where to look on Grote Street for the original site - the ServiceMaster business is where the factory was.  One of the Levers daughters says that if you go downstairs there, you can still smell the oil.  Front and centre in the Globe and Mail today is the conflict between the Canadian Health Agencies and the Food producers over the warning labels on potato chips.  A potato chip bag will indicate the contents are high in trans fats, sodium and sugar. The various warning symbols under discussion include red circles, yield signs, exclamation marks and magnifying glass.  I knew that potato chips are a poor food choice.  We would guess the bad choices to be chicken nuggets, french fries, pop, and fast-food hamburgers. I didn't realize that white rice is in the group:  this was in a huffingtonpost.ca article Ten processed foods to remove from your diet now.  It made me realize that people probably need significant warning labels. Our first picture is in Queenston - the Soaring Brock's Monument. Our bottom 2 pictures today come from Niagara-on-the-Lake's "Paradise Grove and the Commons".  This is one of the old forest stands in Ontario with an Oak Savannah located here.  Oaks have been planted along with native wild flowers and the natural habitat is naturally regenerating. The oldest oaks date from before the War of 1812.  The Commons walk towards NOTL comes to Fort George and to Butler's Baracks, two historic sites of the War of 1812.

Four Pips

Four pips - that's four of a kind in poker.  In fact it is a small but easily countable item, such as dots on dice or symbols on playing cards. "The Five Orange Pips" - this is a Sherlock Holmes story. If one were involved in the exchange rate, a pip is the smallest price move that a given exchange rate makes based on market convention. For most major currencies that is 1/100 of 1 percent, or one basis point. And you could also wear a pip - it is a decoration worn on a military uniform to denote rank. Could we forget Pip from Great Expectations?   With its association with smallness, I assume that's how we get to pip squeak.  This is a person considered to be insignificant, because they are small or young. It helps if they are 'puny, weak, frail, and easily defeated'. 'A dream that's a pippin' - that's a dream or idea that's impossible to accomplish - and comes from "I'm Just A Lucky So and So" composed by Duke Ellington, and sung by many Jazz greats. Our two pictures today are about the same garden.  The top picture is the McLaughlin Estate House in miniature - the pip squeak version - at the Niagara Falls Showcase Greenhouse. It moved from Cullen Gardens Miniature Village in Oshawa a few years ago. The bottom pictures are from "Great Public Gardens in Your Own Backyard". These are images I took of the McLaughlin Estate gardens - a great visit when paired with the Peony Festival in May.

Wheresomeness

When searching for odd words, such as wheresomeness, one retrieves equally odd results.  Here's a quote from a short poem: "Every morning dawns with an ache, a pang of wheresomeness and shallow water." In terms of definitions, "Ness" is an English suffix  forming abstract nouns denoting quality and state - darkness, goodness, kindness, preparedness. There are places, organizations, people, and myths where "Ness" occurs.  One could be named Ness Ness as it is a given and surname.  And if one were an Irish princess from mythology one could be Ness Ness Ness.   Typically a movie or toy character pops up with names that are unusual.  Ness is a game and a playable character in Super Smash Bros.4.  There's nesstheband and their tag line is "whatever's unclear to you, it's the same for me - ness." And there are many products on Amazon with "Ness" in their names - from Scottish clothing to soup ladles, hats, mirrors, motorcycle handlebars, and cat litter pans.   Today our pictures show the Chrysanthemum display at the Niagara Showcase Greenhouses.  It is a popular festival every year throughout the world.  Longwood Gardens has the thousand flower tree display right now. Japan has Chrysanthemum Day - one of five ancient sacred festivals.  Korea, Germany, China, and more have displays where Chrysanthemums are used in mosaic culture displays. The Niagara Parks display always has a Romantic section with pinks, purples and whites, and a contrasting primary colour display section.

Comfort Maple

This is The Comfort Maple.  It is located in Pelham, near us.  I saw it on the weekend.  It is estimated to be one of the oldest sugar maple trees in Canada at about 500 years old.  It is 80 feet tall with a trunk that is 20 feet in circumference at the base. It even has some brick work repair due to at least one lightning strike. If you want to know the oldest trees in Ontario, they are listed HERE - the site is Ancient Forest Exploration & Research and one can see a map of old-growth forests in Ontario.  There is an old growth forest at Ball's Fall's in the Twenty Valley, at Decew Falls and the Niagara Gorge,  The Niagara Glen, Paradise Grove in Niagara-on-the-Lake and a few more areas in Niagara.  Even with a wide angle lens and 9 images to make a vertical panorama, the tree evaded full capture on the weekend.