129 TABS

 My tapestry has many unknotted threads. It's overdue to clear my cache.

The Lifecycle of an Almond

After a trip to California, where there were groves of trees that provide so much of our food even this far away that were growing in near desert conditions. This article gives the perspective of this that took me a drive through the San Joaquin Valley to realize.

Villa Diodati

Did you know that the stories Frankenstein and Vampyre were both created in a villa in Switzerland in 1816, the year that was called "the year without summer". This was due to the volcanic eruption called Mount Tambora in Indonesia the year before. Lord Byron rented the villa, and was visited by friends that included Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin(to be Shelley).

Muskellunge

I saw this fish on a sunny day paddle boarding along the St. Laurence "Lac St Louis". It was a thrill compounded by seeing a Kingfisher on the same trip, and the fact that I didn't fall down (or stand up!)

Claude Theberge

I have spend many hours exploring the art and architecture of the metro system, and I was surprised to see a concrete design in the De L'Eglise station attributed this artist I knew well from pop art that I first saw with vibrant colours raincoats and umbrellas, mostly from Quebec City.

Jordi Bonet

Similarly, this artist has done remarkable artwork for the metro.  In this case, his Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger) mural in the mezzanine of Pie IX metro. This is the motto of the Olympic Games adopted by Pierre de Coubertin since its renaissance in 1894.

I found him in the foyer of Place des Arts during an entracte at Les Grands Ballets. I suspect I have seen his work on doors somehere in a church.

Notably, his biography notes that he was born in Barcelona, and died where he had set up his studio in St. Hilaire on Christmas Day.

Micheline Beauchemin

This female textile artist has a piece along the windows of the Place des Arts called Curtain of Light. 

Telfair Museum

My one foray into Georgia was a day trip to Savannah from Hilton Head. There are many highlights including this museum tour, and I love that I can visit from afar and relieve the architecture tours of the Jepson Center and the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarter's.

Escape room puzzle ideas

Clue in a balloon

Oil on glass

Bold letters in a chocolate box menu

Invisible ink - lemon juice, oil on glass

Padlock a pair of scissors

Set a broken clock or watch as a combination clue

Cypher on popsicle sticks

Lockets

Photoshop a framed picture

Write in a foreign language

Craft a cryptex with styrofoam cups

Bilingual law language

Massey Lectures to listen to on Ideas

Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution

Nobel Peace Prize, credited with saving over a billion people from starvation

The Difference between dilly dally and lollygagging

Dilly dally, from "dallier" in French, "to amuse oneself slowly". Today it refers timewasting and indulgent. The pair of words doubles the effect, called reduplication.

Lollygagging, from lally.  Also timewasting, but usually describes the way two people in love would act around each other, sometimes referring to bawdy public behavior between couples

The Evolution of the Nutcracker Ballet

Achalandé English bustling (full of people) or well-stocked (store)

Antidote writing assistance software - get hi

Stonewall Riots 1969, Greenwich Village bar, mafia run, haven for LGBTQ, police raid leads to mob, no injuries, 1970 First Gay Pride parade begins from Stonewall

Raëlism Rael was a French born self-proclaimed profit, announcing the future arrival of extraterrestrials called Elohim. A connection to Quebec of this Swiss based "UFO" cult was a branch that moved near Valcourt in 1992, with a museum opened called UFOland (closed as financially unviable). A female "secret society" formed called the Order of Raël's angels (1998). A claim was made that the first human clone, named Eve, announced by Rael's partner and successor Bousselier in 2002. In 2004, Raël's Girls were the subject of Playboy issue.

Who By Fire Leonard Cohen song (spanish guitar and poetic paradoxes), Who shall I say is calling?

W. H. Auden 

Herman Melville (quoted by Louise Penny's Gamache in Still Life)

Evil is unspectacular and always human

And shares our bed and eats at our own table.

CEGEP program (technique de bioécologie) I hoped for my budding naturalist

McGill's Ciphers of The Times (Victorian Agony Column Game)

Mayan Number to Decimal/Arabic converter

Lectin - found in food, carbohydrate-binding proteins

Starling murmurations

Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies, by Yolanda and Alberto's son, f, now a scholar and leader

English words of Arabic origins T-Z

E la verita - sung with a dementia patient and her daughters

Pluvio restaurant - nice food with big prices, diminished by the company who was rude and irritable and made a scene

Nanaimo Bars recipe

BOOK REPORT: BIG MAGIC

 This is one of the most inspirational books I have read in a long time. I have enjoyed reading Elizabeth Gilbert on a few occasions, but this nonfiction book about « Creative Living Beyond Fear » is my favourite.

I was like many others,  being introduced to the author with her autobiographical hit « Eat, Pray, Love », which was a travelogue as much as a good story made into a great movie. 

After that, I read another autobiographical nonfiction called Committed, which explained her complicated international monogamous status, and gave an even more intimate look at her personal life.

Next, I read her fiction « The Signature of All Things » , which was a opus that was both beautiful in its details and a little strange (some might find it sacrilegious or too sexual).

« The City of Lost Girls » was a disappointment to me, in the vein of fictitious hyperbole that I disliked in « The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugh ». Set in New York, I found her characters unemotional and vapid.

16 years ago, Ms. Gilbert gave a TED talk about creativity that I found inspiring. Now, reading her treatise on creativity, I am even more inspired! 

Very early on, her stories allow the skeptic in me to embrace her hypothesis. Creative living is a choice, and its « Big Magic » is waiting for an open channel to use to allow genius to occur. It’s compelling to embrace her line of thinking, and suspend disbelief in the logic that can prevent my imagination from growing and inventing new ideas.

The table of contents flows well, starting with courage, moving on to enchantment, commenting on permission, recommending persistence, developing trust, and ending with divinity.

Highlights include:

« Done is better than good. » p.176

TUTSI AND HUTU

 The Tutsi are a Bantu-speaking ethnic minority from the Africa Great Lakes (Horn of Africa/Rift Valley). At the time of the Rwandan genocide, they were the minority ruling class.

When Belgian colonists (colonialists) conducted censuses in the 1920s, they defined Tutsi as anyone who owned more than 10 cows(a sign of wealth) or the physical features of a longer thin nose, high cheekbones, and over six feet tall.

The Hutu are a Bantu-speaking ethnic minority

Rwanda was ruled by Germany from 1897 to 1916, and by Belgium from 1922 to 1961.

The Hutu majority in Rwanda revolted against the Tutsi in 1962, taking power and killing up to 200, 000 Hutu. Rwanda and Burundi declared independence that same year. While many Tutsi fled, exile communities gave rise to rebel movements (Rwanda Patriotic Front was primarily in Uganda).

In 1990, with Ugandan support, and experience from the Ugandan Bush War, the RPF attacked Rwanda with the intention of taking back power, sparking a three year civil war that ended with the Arusha Accords on August 3, 1993. Intended as a negotiation to share powers between the rebels and the government, it favoured the RPF.

In 1993, Burundi’s first democratically elected president Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was assassinated by Tutsi officers, sparking a genocide in which Tutsi and Hutu losses were each as many as 25,000.

In 1994, the Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, a Hutu, was shot down in an airplane flying to Kigali, while the UN Security Council presence was initially 2,548 soldiers. This was a catalyst for the Rwandan civil war/ genocide, which spanned 100 days and led to over 1 million deaths, at least half of which were Tutsi. The genocide was markedly violent, with neighbours often murdered and murdering each other, and sexual violence with up to 500,000 million women raped. The war ended in the RPF defeating the government, and many Hutus involved in the massacre of Tutsi fled to Zaire (now DRC or Democratic Republic of Congo), contributing to regional instability and triggering the First Congo War in 1996.

Since the 2000 Arusha Peace Process, Burundi has a more equitable share of power betweeen the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority.

DACHA

 A dacha is a Russian country second home that’s often used in the summer. They can range in size from a small shed to a grand villa. The word means gift, originally referring to land allotted by the tsar to his nobles. In the Soviet Union, land for gardening or growing vegetables were similarly given to good workers as a reward.

RUNNING AND REPAIR

I have long been obsessed with ultra runners, having first read Born To Run and Natural Born Hero’s by Christopher McDougall, as well as Scott Jurek’s Eat and Run. I listened to a number of inspiring Ultramarathon podcasts, so riveting that I still remember where I was for some of the inspiring and sometimes crazy interview.  

Recently I have fallen into some other resources thanks to YouTube’s algorithms that have kicked me back into training videos on running, like the Running Channel and an Australian group of trainers for runners over the age of 50.

The biggest change in philosophy that I have adapted is that running needs additional strengthening to stay uninjured. What I used to do was just run, with a few sparse activities as “cross-training”. Being younger, I mostly got away with it, but I did stop running a couple of times from a self-diagnosed meniscal tear in my right knee. I stopped for a prolonged period of time after the marathon in part because I wasn’t prepared for the down side of the marathon. 

What I learned watching those videos is the concept of zone 2-3 training. The concept is basically that when you push your body to its limits, you can avoid injury if you spent a large part of your training in a low impact zone instead of pushing your limits constantly. Here is a nice summary of the concept:

The basic proportion is 2/3 1/3,  with the goal of building endurance by staying in the cardiac aerobic zone of 60-75% of maximum heart beat for 60-75% of the activity.

DROID

Growing up, Star Wars was a family favourite, especially with my two brothers owning many action figures that I still remember. 

R2D2 

ADVICE TO LOVE BY

Romance Movie on Global Freeplay

1. Signal interest - flirtation, intention

2. Connect meaningfully - life goals, dependability, humour

3. Demonstrate worth - share dreams, crack defenses, respectful

4. Establish trust - consistency, reliability, openness

First date

Movie, Coffee, Picnic

Second date

Leave comfort zone, physical activity

Third date 

Discover new things together

Fourth Date 

Show romantic side to partner

Fifth Date

Meet the family

Sixth Date

CHERISH YOUR WILDERNESS AND DATING PERRY

STROM SPA AND FUTURE PLANS

My boyfriend and I went to the Strom Spa located at "Saint Sauveur" (Piedmont), 74 km away, that used to be the Polar Bear's Club. The deal was a good one, but it was a little complicated. We bought gift certificates in advance, which appeared full price for thermal entry fee but only cost $47.83 for a November weekday Mon-Thu.  It was well explained, and extensive. It was also the first time that either of us had taken seriously the spa cycle of heat, cold and relax. 

Highlights for me were the eucalyptus steam room, a hot tub with a grotto behind a waterfall, a cold dip in the river, sitting outside by a fire watching ducks during the daily, watching the rapids from a warm room, and eating a really nice pretty meal in a bathrobe!

It was hard not to be annoyed when people were talking, but it was not easy to be quiet when you had decisions to make. I had brought a book and pen, so we could write in those moments.

It was such a hit, that we had researched prior, so here are the fruits of our search so that we plan the next visit!

Strom St Hilaire 43 k, Ile-des-Soeurs, 

La Source Rawdon 70 k

Mon-Thu 17-20 $42  5h from 10-17 $69 18-21 $52  5h from 10-18. Bring your own robes.

Balnea Bromont 99 k

Forena, St Bruno- whisper baths

Nordic Station Magog

Amerispa Morin Heights

Scandinave Mt Tremblant (old port)

---

Montreal

Bota bota

Beaux Reves - ladies (Yo's idea) lunch and yoga Wednesday $99

Spa Finlandais Rosemere 4 hours Mon -Thu $54 Bring robe and towel or pay $10

SLOW PRODUCTIVITY

The Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport

(From Big Think)

1. Do fewer things (at once) - avoid attention "residence" (the cost of task switching)
2. Work at a natural pace (accept seasonal differences) Ed. sunshine, monthly cycles, menopause
3. Obsess over quality (Invest in better tools and create better systems)

Ed. In other words:
Do less, better

Other links: 

Atomic Habits by James Clear
1.Success is an aggregation of small wins
2. First, we make our habits, then our habits make us. 
(Holly Bardutz of Brain Health Institute would say: First we make our brains, then our brain makes us!)

3. Consistency beats intensity.

4. Eliminate friction for good habits. 

5. Master the art of habit tracking.

6. Optimize your work environment.

7. Good habits take time to form.

8. Choose your social circle carefully.

9. Don't fumble hard-earned progress.

10. Make the path of least resistance.

11. Find an accountability partner.

12. Fall in the love with the process.

13. Winners and losers have the same goals.

14. Success is a lifestyle, not an event. Ed. a direction, not an ending

15. Talk is cheap; you are your actions.

16. Good habits take a long time to build.

17. Your identity is your future.

18. Results are a lagging indicator of habits.

19. Trajectory is more important than the current position.

20. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Ali Abdaal's How I Manage My Time Without Burning Out

Backlog and Active Projects

Each project has an overhead tax. The fewer active things, the more effective the overhead tax

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

(elephant and rider)

Warren Buffett's 5/25

It may be falsely attributed, but it's probably still true.

1-3-5 Rule 

SPARK 2025 HABITS AND QUARTERLY QUESTS

It is clear from neurodevelopment and behavioural psychology that the only way to change is to overcome old habits and create new ones. Will power is a finite resource that requires a lot of energy. Habits are key to personal growth.

"You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems." - James Clear

Ali Abdaal has a productivity youtube channel with simple life hacks and book reviews. He models a practice of achieving goals that are evidence based on how to achieve good habits. He breaks them down into:

Quarterly Quests, Weekly Reset, Morning Manifesto (Daily Review/Journaling).

This comes from How to actually achieve your goals in 2025 (Evidence Based) that lists the references in the shownotes.

1. WRITE THEM DOWN

Set your goals. This is so simple. Just write them down! He references Jim Rohn and his own book called FeelGood Productivity. The evidence implies an increase of 42% in your likelihood to achieve them. Don't pick too many, though. Write down all of them if you like, but focus on 3-5.

2. REVIEW THEM WEEKLY OR DAILY

The reticular activating system is located at the base of your brainstem, and it determines what information your brain pays attention to. The brain filters out what you are not focusing on. 

3. MONITOR YOUR PROGRESS

What were my weekly goals? How are they going? It can be simply binary - yes or no, or green/yellow/red. Consider a visual with small steps e.g. word count. Monitoring goal progress has a modest impact on performance.

4. VISUALISE OBSTACLES

Mental contrasting goal setting by Gabriele Oettingen: 

WOOP 

Wish, Outcome (Goal), Obstacle (feelings like demotivation, time restraints, interpersonal resistance), Plan (to address the obstacles)

What could go wrong? What to do about it?

5. TIE THEM TO AN IDENTITY

Doctor, Entrepreneur, Author, Husband, Healthy, High Performer, Voter

"The strongest force in human personality is the need to stay consistent in how we define ourselves." 

Tony Robbins

Slow Productivity

Cal Newport

Who am I by achieving my goals?

Identities:

Sane and happy

Mother

Sister

Daughter

Friend

Neighbour

Athlete, healthy body

Doctor

Teacher

Mentor

Partner

Lover

Writer

Mortal

Artist

Art lover

Animal lover

Domestic goddess

Artisan

Hostess

Home owner

Financially Independent

-----------------

For myself:

GOALS:

*Fit back into snow pants (athlete, lover)

*Rehab ankle and restart running (athlete, sane and happy)

*Fix basement (Domestic goddess, mother, sister, partner)

*Teacher/Osler Fellow/Wellness (doctor, teacher, mentor, sane and happy)

*Edit Chateau Laurier (writer)

*KonMari home (Domestic goddess, hostess)

Simplify menu prep

*Seasonal invites

Rehab garden

*Repaint interior (domestic goddess, artisan)

Get ready for girls/guests (mother, sister, partner)

*Return to work

*Synthesize the memories

Quarterly Quests

Solstices: Winter Spring Summer Fall vs. January 1 April 1 June 1 Sept 1 

Meet 3 ring goals daily with stretching, strengthening, and cardio

List and request losses from flood, and get quotes for work on house, roof and floor

Document CME 

List wellness resources

Repaint windows and install curtains upstairs

Weekly Reset

MONDAYS 

First quarter: Jan 20, 27, Feb 3, 10, 17, 24, Mar 3, 10

Repeat: 60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Jan 20

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

List with google doc, then data enter on link given

Repaint dining room and hang curtains

Jan 27

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Call Darlington, Elder, Bernard

Book Osler

Review CME for 2024

Repaint library and install blinds

Plan for hosting dinner

Feb 3

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Repaint Kitchen and install curtains

Review finances for 2024

Finish wellness finances

Feb 10

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Feb 17

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Feb 24

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Mar 3

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Mar 10

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Morning Manifesto

Workdays and Freedays are different

On free days, plan for 4 hours of concentrated work. Consider a second installment if not too tired or if the tasks vary.

On workdays, get the basic physical in as priority

MI’KMAQ

 Not Mic Mac

Mig Ma

BOOK REPORT: MESSY BY TIM HARFORD

INTRODUCTION

How German teen’s failure to get the right piano for a jazz concert turns into magic in a bottle thanks to the willingness and skill of Keith Jarrett to play within the limits of the instrument, recorded for posterity as the Köln Concert of 1975

Argument: sometimes we are better served by embracing a degree of mess instead of a tidy-minded approach 

“I will stand up for messiness not because I think messiness is the answer to all life’s problems, but because I think messiness has too few defenders. I want to convince you that there can sometimes be a certain magic in mess.”

CREATIVITY

Brian Eno, West Berlin music studio 1976

Oblique Strategy Cards 

Shuffle and deal (don’t pick and choose)

Takes you out of your comfort zone

eg Be the first not to do what has never not been done before, Emphasize the flaws, Only a part not the whole, twist the spine, look at the order in which you do things, change instrument roles, Water, Honor thy error as a hidden intention, think like a gardener

NP-hard problem in mathematics

Like a combination lock: given a solution, it’s easy to check if it works. Finding the solution is near impossible because you have to try every possible combination

Algorithms serve as recipes to work through possibilities

Randomness “simulated annealing”

Graeme Obree “The Flying Scotsman”, 1990s

Cyclist with random experimentations

Big gains until Union Cycliste Internationale banned this new ideass. Since then, only “marginal gains” have been possible

2014 London commuter strike

1/20 did not return to their habitual route. The unexpected forced them to a better route

Harvard test, Shelley Carson

Distractable brains have an innate tendency to allow creativity

Bernice Eiduson, 1958, scientists who switched topics frequently were more highly productive

Alexander Fleming/Louis Pasteur vs James Watson/Jonas Salk

Michael Crichton 1994

most successful novel (Disclosure), TV show (ER), movie (Jurassic Park)

Creativity researchers 

Keith Sawyer/Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Flow”

Howard Gruber and Sara Davis

Pattern of different projects at different stages of fruition - “network of enterprises”

Four clear benefits:

Knowledge cross-fertilization amongst projects

Fresh content is exciting

Subconscious processing of other projects while paying close attention to another

Escape from the others (Soren Kierkegaard refers to this as “crop rotation”)

Twyla Tharp choreographer

Keeps a box for each project

“One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it in a safe place” I don’t worry about that because I know where to find it. It’s all in the box.”

MOVIE REVIEW: DUNE

 I finally read this sci-fi novel last year, and I was surprised that I didn’t know it more. It had a lot of similar elements to Star Wars, with Arabic sounding names and desert worms. The pace of the book was very laconic, and I looked forward to seeing the modern movie, even though I hadn’t seen the first one.

Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya were predicable great on screen, and the grandeur of the desert and the interior shots were amazing. I really loved the presence of Oscar Isaac, and Jason Mamoa, but the scene with the Bene Gesserit testing Paul was the most terrifying.

It was an impressive adaptation, and I highly recommend seeing the movie after reading the book! 

Next is Dune Part II. I think we are due for more water, if memory serves!

RHUBARB MUFFINS

 Talking to my friend, married to a farmer, she was making rhubarb muffins. Turns out she uses a recipe from a book I have, The Best of Bridge! 

I learned a lot about harvesting rhubarb differently than I had been. It's hard to kill a rhubarb plant, but neglect doesn't get the best outcome either. I had been cutting them, but when my friend said she pulls hers from the outside, I remember seeing the rhubarb in markets looking like that. 

MOVIE REVIEW: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

 This was the second of the Jordan movies, and a friend came over to watch it with me, even though it was the longest one. Although it did include a short intermission and a black screen to start, the movie was listed as 3 hours and 47 minutes! 

Lawrence of Arabia was the best picture Oscar of 1962. Based on a true story, I had only known T.E. Lawrence from the translation work of The Odyssey. Indeed, it was the story of his military life that was spent rallying a group of disparate Arabs, from the Bedouin desert to conquer Aquaba and move towards Damascus. 

Set as a heroic story for an antihero, it was good at very prolonged suspense. It avoided all exposition, but I didn’t know what was going on sometimes. It needed editing, and a little more explanation. However, the story of the Arab uprising against the Turks as part of Britain’s WWI campaign was interesting. 

While Lawrence was changing from his uniform to a desert costume, the main Arabic characters were played by western actors like Alec Guinness and Omar Sharif. 

One highlight was when they rode by a rock I had stood on, with a photo to prove it!

Classic, interesting, strange dislikable character finding a way to belong.

MOVIE REVIEW: THE MARTIAN

 This was the shortest of a trilogy of movies that I wanted to watch on returning from a trip to Jordan.

The Martian is one of the three films

Comparisons

Contrasts 

That desert, full of satellites, rovers, and solar panels, was last full of litter and bedouins in headscarves and camels in my memory

As much as the stars fill the sky on film, there were not so many in the light haze of camp see you 

Criticisms: 

Why did they go out again in the storm? Without cinching themselves together in case electronics fail?

Where did he get all that plastic and tape?

How did we solve the problem of oxygen? Especially since H2O molecules take two each

Potatoes are far from enough nutrition

Why is he adding up meals, not calories? protein ability? Weight of the potatoes?

Plutonium : radiation poisoning?

NASA rooms: too many men

So many British actors for an American movie

A ribbon, not a knot? Really?! They were doing so well being realisticky!

The thing about space travel stories that I have read(The bio of Yuri Garagan, the autobiographies of Chris Hadfield and Dave Williams) is that they all return to earth firmly convinced that we much defend what we have more than pursue more desolate places to colonized. In this movie (I didn’t yet read the book, and I may not), there is a nod to a plant growing in pebbles, but then they are on to space travel again. I think we need to apply our energies to world cooperation in climate control, and less on dreaming of spitballing for aerospace disasters.

TREASURE HUNT IDEAS

 Darkest day of the year (December 21st)

ALLAN CARR'S AGATHA CHRISTIE

Greenway manor National Trust (Dead Man’s Folly - boathouse)
James Pritchard - grandson
Torquay, Torbay (born, bought 1938 her summer home, to her death)
English Riviera
Beach where she swam (ABC murder)
Beacon cove beach, microclimate allowed all year round
Rollerskating on the pier
Horse riding to cockington
Honeymoon hotel
Burgh (BURR) Island Hotel  (And Then There Were None, Evil under the sun)
Palm Court
Art deco
Black Tie
Sea Tractor
Mousetrap 
St. Marten’s theater
Harrowsgate Spa
Mystery

WATERCOLOUR

Paper brought from China by Marco Polo to Amalfi coast

90lb

Soak soft brush first, to prevent pain to get in brush, making it easier to clean later

Keep paper from curling by using four sides with butcher tape

Masking-cut tape, friscate, rubber cement- leaves white

Leave white between colours, or they will blend

PLAN!!!!!

Light to dark colours

Put drop in each cake colour to start

Use cheap brush to mix colour, expensive to paint

Bleeds

Try watercolour pencils

Toothbrush splatter à la Andrew Wyeth

Transfer paper- add in colour after the fact

Frank Hyde

Koy 

Acrylic gel medium, with comb, then silver leaf into dried gel, then topped with acrylic resin, then painted 

ZERO, A GIFT FROM INDIA

Naught (naughty meaning coming from nothing, now wicked)

"The concept of zero as a written digit in the decimal place value notation was developed in India." 

"The word zero came into the English language via French zéro from the Italian zero...first known English use of zero was in 1598."

"The Italian mathematician Fibonacci (c. 1170 – c. 1250), who grew up in North Africa and is credited with introducing the decimal system to Europe, used the term zephyrum."

0 Wikipedia

Zero Marks the Spot: Stuff the British Stole 

Other gifts from India:

Chess (7th century, Chaturanga)

Buttons (Indus Valley, Kot Diji era, used as ornaments or seals rather than fasteners (circa 2800-2600 BC)

Shampoo (boiling a lychee with dried Indian gooseberry (amla)

Ayurveda (alternative medicine with eight components: general medicine, perinatal care of mother/pediatrics, surgery, upper cavities including eyes and ENT, pacification of possession spirits, toxicology, rejuvenation/anti-aging, aphrodisiacs )

Cashmere (goat hair from Kashmir in NW Indai)

USB (Did you know it stood for Universal Serial Bus?) This is a stretch since Indian born Ajay Bhatt was working for Intel in the US as a computer architect when he did it. We'll call him a "global Indian". I get it. As a Canadian, we do like to keep our global exports near and dear.

SEMAPHORE

 What is a semaphore?

An apparatus for signaling, usually within visual distance, dating back to the signalling systems of the Greeks with fires on fixed towers along the coast that would be lit one at a time in sequence with preset codes. 

Modern examples are flags, lights, traffic lights, railway signals, telegraphs, and morse code.

MOSHE SAFDIE HAIKU

Communal Projects

Modular Exposition

Jewish Prodigy

ALPEN ROSES AND EDUCATING WOMEN

Bavarian's Kings' museum in Füssen near the Alpensee (with swans!)

Queen Marie (Ludwig's mom) - an avid hiker and club leader gave the Alpenrose with a pink bow to ladies who hiked a local mountain with her
Queen Theresia - given an unusual life of travel and science  and was awarded an honorary degree at two Universities, one being Munich. The audioguide state that she was embarrassed by the attention.
Maximillian - given swan gifts

THE SPECTRUM OF PSYCHOLOGY

 According to the overview given to me by Princess Pirate’s first year college friends, there are two themes. On one end is Freud’s psychoanalysis (evaluate personality from our unconscious mind) and Skinner’s Behaviourism (Measure what we do, no matter what we say and think). On the other is Carl Rogers’ Humanism (growth potential, and self-actualization).

AGATHA CHRISTIE’S TOP TEN PICKS

I am on a mailing list for Agatha Christie newsletter, and they supplied a list I have folded up in my copy of her autobiography. It’s the list of all her books, with short stories and plays, in order, and it’s so long that I am pretty sure I will never make my way through it. The letter started with a self-selected top ten list, and I think that’s a great place to start!

I am in the middle of Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, and I have only read one of those above (and watched the play AND the movie). I will work towards expanding to the titles above!

EIGHTEEN

Princess Pirate had a birthday today. I spent it with her and three of her closest friends, with red velvet multilayer cake with cream cheese icing, and fluorescent mini-golf at the Spheretech Putting Edge . She is not what I was like at eighteen, and she is not entirely independent, but she is an adult, and I am glad to know her. 

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

I am sitting on my bed in a snowstorm, reflecting on the brilliant writing of the pilot for Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV, and how it only begins to show the arc of complexity that a singular life can have.

I am thinking how it’s hard to write without getting lost in the character, but that that writing a screen play forces dialogue and pacing of interwoven characters and plot.

I am thinking about how incredibly strong the themes spoke to me, moving me to tears when the protagonist in a more patriarchial gender disqualification role is validated in her colleague.

She walks in at the pinnacle of her tv show fame, confident, decisive, and obviously in charge. 

We see her next, in her past, working as an overqualified lab assistant who also serves as 50s housewife, making coffee and cleaning up, while being excluded by her male peers and only able to work

She exists in the best version of her self within her limits until she intersects with a valuable but difficult colleague, and together they offer a better world than on their own. 

There are flashbacks, though, and the show ends in her fleeing this new arrangement based on fear propagated from a previous yet to be defined, but clearly traumatic event.

In between there is a meeting of the minds, and the chemistry of a man and a woman seeing and valuing each other in a beautiful relationship that makes me crave more. There are sweet endings (how does she get out of an obligatory beauty contest at work that only objectifies the women further) and gorgeous food, and a burgeoning relationship that is bound to get beautiful and messy. The themes run deep and the chemistry is gripping. What happens next is the brainchild of talented writing, and I am hooked! How do I take my ideas, and transform them into something resembling that?

I can’t quite get the pacing and the tension, but I was sitting here on my bed, singing The First Noel from the pages of a Christmas magazine where I made notes about the epiphany cake that I just made last night. We have visitors, and Rebecca is being a good sport in a curtainless living room on a pullout couch. Meanwhile our guests came, and realized that one is highly allergic to our cat, despite us living in an apartment within our house, with the litter underfoot in the bathroom, and the living room and dining room off limits. In my head, and some of my correspondence, I carry the impending death of a woman I spend 4 hours trying to save the day before yesterday, and the myriad complicated patients that I left behind. 

Surely that story could be just as interesting, if I could just write it! 

IDEAS: 

Write as a screen play (simplified but strong dialogue, scenes present but not written advancing plot)

State the obvious, brilliantly

Find an object to carry through (pencil)

Create a cast for my favourite characters

Don’t be limited by typical life. Write an extraordinary

Create chemistry

Think sound, visual, (smell)

QUILTING VOCABULARY

 Quilting Vocabulary 

Stitch-cut-press-repeat

Block (square)

Chain stitch

Nest seams (while pressing, same direction)

Flimsy(just the quilt top)

Toppiece(quilt)

Sandwich (quilt top, batting, backing)

Charms 5x5 “

Layer cake 10x10”

Fat Quarter 18x20-22” (quarter yard is 9x44”)

• quilting yards are 41-45”, not 36”

Jelly Roll 2.5”x42”

Sashing-between blocks

See into blocks, rows, neighborhoods

Selvage(factory edges)

Square up (edges)

Long arm quilting

Hand sewn

STASH- special treasures all secretly hidden (things hoarded and forgotten)

UFOs -unfinished objects 

Mount Scrapmore

WIP work in progress

WHIMM works hidden in my mind 

Seam alliance

Fussy cut ( cutting out for special use

Fusing interfacing (for stretchable and slippery fabrics)

Disappearing 9 block (9 squares, cut into 4)

Log cabin block

Baste with safety pins

Stitch in the ditch

Narrow colour palate 

Pay attention to value

Avoid too much contrast

Roll as you go

Quilt Sizes

• Crib: 36” x 52”
• Throw: 50” x 65”
• Twin: 70” x 90”
• Full: 85” x 108”
• Queen: 110” x 108”
• King: 110” x 108”

MISTAKES

“It's better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.”

Sophia Lauren

GIVING A MESSAGE

If the advice from “Daddy King” was good enough for Martin Luther Jr., it’s good enough for us.

“Make it plain. Make it clear. Make it real.”

From John Lewis, in Carry On

“Speak the language of the people. And make sure to understand with whom you are communicating. Who are they? What are their values? What are their needs? Your job as a communicator is to figure all that out and apply that knowledge to what you are saying.”

GOOD TROUBLE

John Lewis was the youngest member of the “Big Six”, that included Martin Luther King Jr. A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer, Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins. He helped organized and lead the march on Washington, and spoke on that iconic day.

He was born in Troy, Alabama in 1940, and was 11 years old when he first saw how a desegregated society could look like when he went to visit relatives in Buffalo, NY.

He met MLK Jr AND Rosa Parks when he was 18, and attended workshops let by Reverend James Lawson on nonviolent protesting while a student in Nashville. That was the beginning of him following their example, and getting into “good trouble”, and becoming a Civil Rights Leader.

This led to the Nashville Student Movement which began staging sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in 1959. 

He was one of the original Freedom Fighters who rode interstate buses to protest segregation in the south. He was assaulted and arrested over 2 dozen times in the years between 1961 and 19631234-.

He was one of many protestors that walked over the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965.  He suffered a fractured skull, and many other demonstrators were hospitalized following the assault of baton-wielding police. This was referred to as “Bloody Sunday”, and the televised images may have spurred President Johnson to submit a voting rights bill to congress.

He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981, where he lived with his wife Lillian and his son John-Miles.

He was elected to the US House of Representatives from Georgia’s 5th district in 1986, and was reelected SIXTEEN times as “the conscience of Congress”, according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He introduces a bill to create a national African American museum in 1988, which is blocked 15 successive years by the Republican Senate. The bill passes in 2003, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture officially opened in 2016 in DC, affectionately called Blacksonian.

He continues to sit-in, calling for immigration reform in front of the Capitol in 2013. This leads to his 45th arrest, for getting into “Good Trouble”.

He leads a sit-in on the House floor in 2016 when the vote on gun control is refused by Republicans.

He endorses Barack Obama, who in turn delivers his eulogy when he dies with pancreatic cancer in 2020, saying:

“He, as much as anyone in our history, brought this country a little bit closer to its highest ideals.”

Chronology from Carry On, his last book. It may be small, but it carries big messages, just like the Congressman did. 

CBC GEM has a documentary called Good Trouble, that is worth watching.

He wrote a graphic novel trilogy called March, a memoir called Walking with the Wind, and Across that Bridge. 

Read about John Lewis, and you can’t help but be inspired.

SATURDAY NIGHT: A HERO'S JOURNEY

Nod to Joseph Campbell's HERO OF A THOUSAND FACES and the concept of MONOMYTH

DEPARTURE

The Ordinary World - introduction of the protagonist anti-hero

The Call to Adventure - shifts

Refusing the Call to Adventure - Sick call

Meeting the Mentor - bad bosses, charming colleagues, paying it forward, role model

Crossing the Threshold - signover 

INITIATION

Test, Allies, and Enemies - blue light, catching mistakes (rib fractures, MRI delays, transfer errors)

Approach to the Inmost Cave - catching up and other calculated moves

The Ordeal - psychiatrist pushback, missing bedtime, eating late, code stroke at dinner

The Reward - RN support

RETURN

The Road Back - countdown to signover

Resurrection - the golden hour of catchup

Return With the Elixir - homeward bound

Jonah

Life in Niniveh

Called by God 

Shirking responsibility

In the Belly of the Whale (inmost cave)

Vomited on the beach

A second life to live

POTENTIAL SPACE

The space between my thoughts.

Giving space for ideas.

Holding space for others.

LEMON POPPY SEED BISCOTTI

Recommended by my friend and former roommate (one year by chance, and one year by choice!), who makes biscotti a regular breakfast decision.

It seems ironic that the website that supplies the recipe is Lord Byron’s Kitchen, as he was famously known to have a suspected eating disorder, and was probably body dysmorphic.

In any case, cookies look good, and I will try them as soon as I buy flour.

Today was a pyjama day, but tomorrow I will get dressed, and make it to the store!

LEMON POPPY SEED ALMOND BISCOTTI

COURSE: BRUNCH, DESSERT, SNACK

CUISINE: NORTH AMERICAN

 

PREP TIME: 15MINUTES MINUTES

COOK TIME: 55MINUTES MINUTES

TOTAL TIME: 1HOUR HOUR 10MINUTES MINUTES

SERVINGS: 12 SERVINGS

 

CALORIES: 289KCAL

AUTHOR: LORD BYRON'S KITCHEN

Sweet, tart, and a whole lot of fresh lemon flavour is what makes this Lemon Poppy Seed Almond Biscotti so delicious. Perfect for dunking in an afternoon hot drink!

INGREDIENTS

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon poppy seeds
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 whole lemons, zested and juiced
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
• 1 cup whole blanched almonds
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 3 teaspoons lemon juice

INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat oven to 325°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
• In a large mixing bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Next, wish in the poppy seeds.
• In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, and butter until light and fluffy - about 5 minutes. 
• Add the lemon zest and lemon extract to the butter mixture. Beat well to incorporate.
• Transfer the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Beat on low until just combined.
• Stir in the blanched almonds.
• Form the dough into a long log on the baking sheet. The dough log should measure 6" wide by 12" long. (Dust hands with flour if dough it too sticky to form into a log.)
• Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and place baking sheet onto a wire cooling rack for 5 minutes.
• Gently transfer the log to a cutting board. Slice across the log to get slices of 3/4 inch thick.
• Lay the slices, cut side down on the baking sheet. Return to oven and bake for 12 minutes. Turn over each slice and bake for 12 more minutes.
• Remove from oven and allow to cool on a wire cooling rack.
• When completely cool, whisk the confectioner's sugar with 2-3 teaspoons of lemon juice until smooth.
• Drizzle over cooled biscotti or dunk the tops into the glaze. Sprinkle iced biscotti with extra poppy seeds if desired. Allow the glaze to set and harden before serving or storing.

NOTES

Lemon extract is used in the biscotti dough rather than lemon juice.  The extract is much more concentrated, ensuring a good amount of lemon flavour.  

NUTRITION

Calories: 289kcal | Carbohydrates: 50g | Protein: 7g | Fat: 8g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 47mg | Sodium: 116mg | Potassium: 185mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 27g | Vitamin A: 68IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 75mg | Iron: 2mg

www.lordbyronskitchen.com