I is for Is It an Illusion?

or Is It really spring?

With snow showers happening most days recently, it doesn't feel very much like spring. However, nature is trying to tell me differently. As well as snow showers, we are getting above freezing temperatures every day. Flowers are blooming, trees are budding, and birds are singing away. I think it's time for me to stop complaining about the weather and see what's around me. You know, take a Second Look.

Here are a few signs of spring I've seen in my yard recently.

Crocus I planted last fall are blooming. 

There are only a few daffodil here, but they are blooming.

The ornamental pear has small white flowers.

Male cardinal in the rain/snow. Cardinals don't migrate so they have been here all winter. However, it's only recently that I've found them at our feeders.

Violets

The lilac bush is budding.

The unnamed bush is blooming.

Forsythia

Junco. Juncos actually come here for the winter and return to colder places for the summer. This is not a sign of spring, but I just like juncos.

Ornamental plum.

Extra points if you can identify the white and grey round object.

H is for Hold Still

or Hold on, this gets a bit creepy.

So the theme of this post was holding still for a photograph. I was going to talk about how it is especially hard for kids and compare pictures of a little Wally with Prince George and how they were both trying to walk away in their family portraits.

Then I was going to use this as a lead in to a picture of my great, great grandmother, Anna, and how in her day they had to hold still for so long for a photo that they had stands to help with that. The interesting thing was going to be that you could see evidence one of these stands with the black bump on top of her head in the picture. Usually the stands were hidden behind hats or hair. But when I looked into the details, things didn't quite stand up. (Pun intended.)

First a bit of photography history that caused the confusion. The first photograph in 1826 took 8 hours of exposure and by Civil War time in the mid-1800s the time was down to 3 seconds. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, exposure time needed was under 1 second and they were starting to take snapshots. Anna was born in 1845 and died in 1926. So for most of her later life, photographs were taken quick enough that under normal circumstances, she shouldn't have needed any extra assistance from something like a stand.

Then things turned strange and a bit morbid. While researching the stands, I learned that it was common to use them during Victorian times (late 1800s-early 1900s) to take pictures of dead people.* We don't know when this photograph of Anna was taken, but it looks like she was at least 60 and more likely in her 70s. That would make it likely that photo was taken in the 1900s well after the time that stands were needed for pictures. That begged the question, "Was this a picture of a dead Great, Great Grandma Anna?"

I promptly called Mary Ellen, my sister who is into genealogy, and asked her what she knew about the picture and did she think it was possible this was a post-mortem picture? She was sure that it wasn't, but had no evidence to support it. We both felt that that Anna was alive when the picture was taken, but circumstantial evidence suggested other possibilities.

Next step was to show the picture to Ward and Theo and get their opinion. They studied the photo carefully and said her eyes had too much expression in them to be from a dead person. So I conclued that she was alive in this picture and I had let my imagination get away with me.

What do you think?

*Lots of discussion on the internet whether this is true or not. The best I could sort out is that the practice did happen, but not everyone with a stand in the picture is dead as many believe. The timing of this picture is what raised my question.

But wait there's more:
Reasons Anna could be using a stand for the photo when stands were not common place any more.
1. The photographer was using an old camera.
2. The photographer believed that even with new equipment, that was still the best way to do things.
3. Anna had back problems and sitting up straight for the photo was a problem.
4. That's not really the top of a stand, but something else.
5. ?

G is for Goody, goody, gumdrops

The other day I was saying, "Goody, goody, gumdrops," and my friend, who is a non-native speaker of English, asked what I meant. It was easy to explain that was a phrase meaning delight that originated with the happy prospect of getting candy. But it was a bit harder to explain that it is also used sarcastically which is how I usually use it. That got me thinking about other idioms we use everyday and never think twice about.

So in the theme of sayings starting with G, I here are a few more:

Go against the grain means go against natural tendencies. It refers to going against the grain when working with wood which is hard work. Shakespeare popularized this phrase.

Go fly a kite go away, stop bothering me. Kite flying is an activity that could keep some busy and away from you.

Go Bananas means go crazy.  This came from the association of bananas with monkeys and monkeys are thought to have silly, uncontrolled behavior.

Gone to pot means that something is ruined. This came from the 1500's and refers to animals that couldn't do work, so they were more likely to end up in the cooking pot.

Goody-Two-Shoes means person who is trying to be perfect.  This saying comes from a nursery tale in the mid 1700's about a girl who only had one shoe and who was then given another one. She showed off her shoes saying, "Two shoes."

Grasping at straws means to try something with little hope of it succeeding. This saying was popular by the 1600s and referred to someone drowning who only had had reeds along the banks to grasp onto.

Green with envy means extremely jealous. Shakespeare popularized green with the envy when he referred to it as the green sickness in Antony and Cleopatra.

Source: Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms, 1996, Scholastic, Inc.

F is for Food Rules

Are you as confused by all of the advice out there these days on the best way to eat to live forever? I am. However, I found a book that explains good eating in terms I can understand, Food Rules, an eaters manual by Michael Pollen. He wrote the book in 2009, but I think it's still relevant today.

Here are a few of his rules:

No. 13  Eat only foods that will eventually rot.

No. 19  If it came from a plant, eat it: if it was made in a                 plant, don't.

No. 20  It's not food if it arrived through the window of                   your car.

No. 45  It's not food if it's called by the same name in                       every language
              (Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or Pringles.)

No. 25  Eat your colors.

No. 36  Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color                 of the milk.

No. 39  Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

No. 45  Eat less.

And my favorite:
No. 64  Break the rules once in a while.

Do you have any rules you try to follow for eating?

E is for Embarrassing Ellen

I was scanning through Facebook the other day and came upon a comment that puzzled me a bit. A friend had taken some kind of quiz or another and said that maybe the results were a bit skewed because she had to say that she had watched the Ellen DeGeneres TV show.  But then she added that it was when she was home on a sick day like it was an embarrassing thing to admit that she had watched Ellen. That was puzzling to me as to why she said that.

This person watches TV because she mentions other shows, but now that I think about it, they may all be on PBS. I don't know if the fact that she was watching network TV was the problem. I also know this person has no problem with Ellen's sexual orientation, so I don't think it was that.

I don't see Ellen often, but enjoy watching it when I'm home that time of the day. I find the show funny and pleasant and generally a feel good experience. Sometimes it's silly, but that adds to the fun. So what am I missing? Is Ellen a guilty pleasure that I shouldn't admit that I watch like Dancing with the Stars? Is there a cultural thing I'm not aware of? (Wouldn't be the first time.) Have you ever seen the Ellen show? What do you think of it?

Oh, wait. It just occurred to me that she might have been referring to the Ellen sitcom from the 1990s. As I remember it, it was an okay show, but nothing to write home about. If that's what she watched, her comment makes more sense. In the words of Emily Litella from Saturday Night Live, "Never mind."

Note: Ward just read this and he doesn't know why you should be embarrassed about watching the Ellen sitcom either. It's a mystery.