The Eyes Have It.

Elizabeth Taylor died recently. She was one of the most beautiful ladies of all times, a classic beauty and a great actress and truly a star. As I was watching the reports on TV, I heard of her beautiful violet blue eyes, a color very special and rare but I didn't know she was also born with a double set of eyelashes which added to her allure and beauty.

Eyes do make a lot of difference to a person. If you are like me , it's the person's eyes that can make all the difference to my understanding of them. It is the part of the face that I can't help but notice and also the part I am drawn to. The eyes are supposed to be”the window to the soul” and I quite believe that. What is it that makes one person so special to us and another one, we can't abide. Could it be a glance in the eyes gives you a glance into the soul or being of that other person?

I think the color has something to do with our fascination with eyes. Think of some of the famous people you know, Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra and immediately you think “blue, blue eyes”. I read somewhere that the blue eyes gene does not mutate like the brown eyes gene does . There have been people over the last 6000 to 10000 years that have had blue eyes and so in fact because of this blue eye gene, they are all related to each other. I am sure both my daughter in law and granddaughter will be very pleased to hear that they might be related to Paul Newman , Frank Sinatra and even Elizabeth Taylor.

And thinking about Paul Newman and his car racing career , I think there is something very special about racing car drivers and their eyes. They all have very penetrating eyes, no matter what the color. Is this something they are born with or does it develop with their skill? In the high speed sport in which they are engaged and where a lack of concentration can mean life or death, is this a trait they must have?

Now good actors , on the other hand, have the ability to show within their eyes different emotions and different characters .Even so, some are very much typecast by their eyes and how they appear. I can't imagine Robert Redford playing a nasty or cruel person not with his friendly eyes . Likewise Antony Hopkins just makes you shudder. Just think of him in “Silence of the Lambs” his eyes are just scary. Now we have such great technical make up and effects that can change a person's eyes and features so even Brad Pitt could become a monster.

 Bette Davis must have had outstanding memorable eyes because she even had a song named after her eyes. Remember “she had Bette Davis eyes,” kind of soft,sultry and sexy at the same time.

It's the same with cats' eyes . I don't mean the great device for helping us see along roads in the dark although I can quite see why those are called cats' eyes. Catch a real cat out in a dark yard and cat eyes really glow. 

Cats ,unlike dogs, do not show affection within their eyes but seem , at least to me, to be analyzing the situation and deciding on what their next move will be. That is not to say their eyes aren't beautiful because it is also a thing much noted in a cat. A cat's eyes are actually blue for the first 9 weeks and only gradually change color and sometimes what wonderful colors they end up with as well. Colors you would never see on a dog. Marmalade orange and emerald green and even yes , sometimes blue .

Dogs on the other hand have open, readable  eyes and you can see what they are thinking. Their emotions come through. See that sparkle when a dog gets a treat or you pick up a leash to go for a walk. No escaping the happiness gleam coming through. Likewise check out the dogs in a cage in a shelter .Nothing so pathetic and heart breaking as a sad dog's eyes waiting for someone to take him home.

Then of course there are the people and pets with odd color eyes. Most disconcerting in both I find. With animals, it can be a mark of deafness or some kind of eye problem but in people it has long been a note of high superstition . It led to accusations of being a witch or of possessing the evil eye , not a good quality to have in ancient times. I only remember Margaret, a lovely lady, who had odd eyes, a brown eye and also a green eye and she was the kindness and most loving and considerate person you could ever wish to meet, Certainly no witch but she did have outstanding but disquieting eyes.

NB. I do know my title should be 'The Ayes have it” not “The Eyes have it”but who wants to think about politics these days!!

Rambling along the Green Path

Saint Patrick’s Day came and green was everywhere You could even see it in the pool and fountain at the White House in Washington. The Irish green beer was being drunk in plenty in Chicago and New York and probably in lots of other places as well. I bet there were lots of green ties ,shirts and blouses , funny green hats and funny green shoes to be seen  in offices, shops, pubs and parties.

I'm not sure why green is associated with Saint Pat or why it comes at this time of the year but we know Ireland is a very green place. Fly over it at any time. There is no doubt green is the color of Ireland.

Green is also the color of a Texas spring. It is just wonderful to see all the bright leaf greens appearing after most of the blossom fades. One thing that surprises me is the many shades of green of the leaves and how quickly the pale green turns darker as the days progress.

As a painter the color green is the one I have most problems in mixing to get the shade I need. I know to get a basic green you mix blue and yellow but I can never quite get the tone I like. My color green is always too intense or primitive.

I suppose it's this variation and the link of the color green and growing plants that has come to symbolize the Green movement. I am happy that it is still moving along and progressing, be it very slow at times but there are still signs of life .

Finally we have curbside recycling in my part of Texas even though we do have to pay for it extra to our garbage pick up fee. I can remember if you wanted to recycle you had to collect all your cans and papers and haul them away to collection bins. That's if you could even find one. I understand there is big money in all these recyclables so I never can understand why we have to pay to have ours collected. Still we would recycle anyhow to do our bit to keep the earth green.

I shudder every time I think of that huge swath of plastic bags and junk that is said to be floating around somewhere in the Pacific ocean that is about the size of Texas just because people are downright lazy and will not clean up after themselves and recycle.

At least a a few countries have started the ball rolling and outlawed the useful but everlasting plastic bag. Finally shopping bags are becoming fashionable again. Maybe there is hope for the oceans yet.

Any plastic bags we do get, I collect to give to a friend who has taken on a self imposed volunteer job to go around clearing up the lanes and roadsides around where she lives as she wants her part of the world to stay green. She uses the bags to collect the bottles and cans that are thrown there by definitely NON green people.Cheers to her. She sets a great example.

I did wonder if these plastic bags and plastic items are made from oil could there not be a process found that could turn them back to oil?That could solvea lot of problems.

I am always amazed at the huge piles of garbage that is still being collected and not recycled. Travel all over the place and new mountains and hills are being made from all the junk we throw away. We have a couple of these mountains close to us. They will make good ski slopes if it ever snows long enough.

The problem is we have too much these days and are very wasteful of our resources. When I was growing up everything was saved. It was during the war and so everything was in short supply and used as much as possible. String was saved to be used over and over again. Paper bags were used as wrapping paper especially at Christmas and for mailing packages. Newspaper was one of the most useful items to be reused. Some of you will remember the time when 'fish & chips” was always wrapped in yesterdays newspaper. Glass jars were very usable and I can remember collecting a halfpenny each for each one I found when I sold them back to the store. Old habits die hard I suppose so recycling is not such a strange idea to older folk.

Just think how quickly nature takes back an area that man has discarded and believe that in the end, green will prevail

Please try to recycle and reuse as much as you can.

What did you say?

Grandad's Loblob car

“Butinski?” said Mike.

“What?” I said. Mike was doing what he always does at breakfast besides eating his very healthy meal of bran flakes, banana and raisins. He was trying to solve the puzzle on his daily MENSA calendar. Usually he can do these puzzles quite easily on his own and I only get called into adding my wise(?) thoughts if he is stuck. Not of course if the puzzle has to do with numbers or math. I'm useless at those.

” Any other clues?” I said.

“Well MENSA says it's a common uncapitalized English word.”

Now I'm the reader of the family so usually I know many obscure words or at least can hazard a guess at what they might mean. “Sounds like a Polish thing to me ...maybe a general” I said. “Or on second thoughts, maybe a person that invented something scientific.”

I left him to ponder the answer and went out to do my daily walk. While I walked, I let my mind ramble about strange and different kinds of words. I glanced down at my walking shoes. I really need to get a new pair. The shoes I call walking shoes are I think often called sport shoes these days. I can remember a while back when the term for them was running shoes. I know some people called them trainers and some called them pumps. Maybe today the kids call them by the brand name, Nike or Adidas or whatever is in fashion now.

When I came over from England and taught in Montreal, I faced a first grade class that looked like the offspring of the United Nations. There were English and French Canadians, English, Scottish, Irish, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Romanian and West Indian children facing me. I am sure all those children's mothers called running shoes something different as well but in my class they were refered to as “plimsolls” because that is what I knew them as at that time.

Wysiwig

A while back when I was first learning about computers, I adopted two darling kittens and we were trying to think of neat names for them both. Have you noticed that a lot of new words come about because of computer use? Well our kittens became Pixel, because his coat had many blended colors and a Wysiwig because “what you see is what you get".

Friend is another word which is definitely being changed because of the internet. Now it's a verb, “May I friend you?" still sounds strange to me. Still on the whole I like the inventiveness of the new computer words.  Mike tells me some people have a dongle on their computer. Well I haven't found it yet. Widget I like as well. Not sure what it is but it sounds like it would be helpful. Can't be that long before some of these new words become part of the official English Dictionary

Pixel

Kids invent words all the time and they become part of the individual family's vocabulary. When TIB was a baby and he saw an commercial on TV that featured slow motion photography of the kind where two lovers are running together through a beautiful meadow that became “soft running”. Very descriptive. I think "anbulince" came from him and we still use it today.

Half the fun of hearing toddlers learning to talk is the way they make up great new words to make their point. RMB always refered to Grandad's car as a loblob car, short for Ford Popular Prefect car. 

I remember there was radio program on the BBC eons ago and one of the characters was a small child ,Horace, who talked in baby talk which only certain people could understand and the catch phrase from the show was “ What did Horace say?” Well that became standard in our family for all kinds of situations when we encountered someone we couldn't understand or who talked in gobbledegook.

One of the old & famous comediens Stanley Unwin became a great star by using made up words to perform in a language that is both clever and hilarious. Check out his videos at Youtube. They are hilarious.

Probably the best known nonsense words that strangely enough made sense are the well known words of the poem by Lewis Carrol. He was a master of strange and unique words and very  peculiar stories if you think Of “Alice in Wonderland”

                                         Jabberwocky

'TWAS brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Check out the link for further verses http://theotherpages.org/poems/carrol01.html.

By the way, we had to look up the word butinsky on the web and found out that it was American slang for One who is prone to butt in, interrupt, or get involved where (s)he is not welcome.

Hardly a common English word MENSA!

Feeling Blue

It's a blogging kind of day today. We have had a very Spring like episode in the weather here in Texas with blue skies and sunshine when outside activities have dominated our days. We finally managed to get outside to start tidying up the garden and enjoying the daffodils and the blossom trees l after a longer and colder winter than we are used to. Now today we are back to gray skies and cold winds so inside activity is the thing to do.

Yesterday we painted our hallway , which tends to be a bit dark and a bit gloomy at times. Hallways are a bit like that. So to brighten it up we chose a yellow paint and I'm still not sure I like it.

Yellow once was my favorite color. Choose a new blouse or dress and I'd opt for a bright yellow. I was young . It was fresh and I loved yellow.

As I got older. like a lot of other things, even my choice of colors has changed. I have to think that now blue in all its many variations is my my color of choice. I began to let my mind ramble on why that might be. For sure a bright blue sky can do wonders to lift a flagging spirit. Even if it is really cold as it often is in Canada, a bright blue sky makes it feel less so. We are blessed in Texas to have many bright blue sky days but in the dog days of summer when it gets hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, the sky looses its blueness and becomes almost white and just add to the feeling of malaise and inactivity.

Crater lake painting by SAB

Have you noticed how the blue in the sky changes? You would if you tried to paint it.

A year ago we visited Crater lake in Oregon. A wonderful trip and a must see if you visit out West. When I came back I tried to paint an oil painting of Crater lake but it was the sky with all the variation of blue that I had the most trouble with getting right. The lake itself was the deepest color blue for a lake that I had ever seen , rich and strong without being that ominous dark blue you see in some lakes.

Wedgwood blue ,that lovely light blue, is such a wonderful tone. Paint a room with it and you don't get tired of it. It always looks fresh and gives a sense of calm and peace.

I've always thought how great it would be to have blue eyes. Not so many people seem to have blue eyes anymore and we all miss Paul Newman who had outstanding , penetrating blue eyes. I met a girl once, a friend of friend and she had such intense blue eyes that I couldn't help staring at her. They mesmerized me. I had never seen eyes so blue. It was not till afterward I was told they were only colored contact lenses. I should have guessed. They had been too blue to be real. What a disappointment.

Blue also brings to mind my blue cat. Blue was a stray cat that was hiding out in our barn

Blue Cat

and at first he looked a bit like a cat out of a horror movie. His coat was dirty and almost black ; he was scrawny and thin and very very scared. It took months for him to become the beautiful Russian blue cat he became. His blue was a very special blue, a silvery blue grey. He loved sitting on your lap and I can guarantee the best kind of Blue to have.

There are a lot of songs with blue in the title and as I think of them it brings back memories. “Blue Moon' brings to mind an intense young man I danced with years ago.”Blue Skies” always makes me feel happy but the “the Birth of the Blues' makes me think of the other feelings associated with blue. The dark side. Are you feeling blue? That's not a nice wedgewood blue feeling more like a dark navy blue tinged with charcoal with maybe a mournful trumpet playing in the background.

Definitely not my kind of blue.

Here's one more blue song much more to my liking by one of my favorite singers, Neil Diamond of his greatest and well known. “Song Sung Blue.”

Listen and enjoy , courtesy of youtube.com 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ighSddnnaPE&feature=related

Just looked outside and there in the clouds is “enough blue to make a Dutchman's pair of trousers “ so be assured grey skies are clearing and it will be a nice day after all.

Seeds of an Idea

        "I wonder what it could be?" I looked down in my red tin of seed packages and saw all kinds of packets and seeds .There at the bottom was a seed that was quite large and I couldn't remember it from last year. Well I set it in some potting soil, watered it and left it and maybe if it grows, the penny will drop, and I'll say "Oh yes, it was so and so..."

The best part of gardening to me is planting seeds. I am always just amazed that from these tiny little fragments can grow such wondrous things. Not only that, they all seem to know if they should grow into a dahlia or a daisy. They know if they like an abundance of water or sun and if they will be large or small .They know what kind of leaf they should grow, what color to be and  if they like bees or butterflies best .However the most amazing thing is  they produce new seeds that will look just like them. Within that little miniscule seed is all that information.

I read somewhere that every different kind of seed from all over the world is being collected into huge seed banks to be stored for future emergencies. Can you just imagine how big the building would have to be to store seeds from every kind of flower, tree, bush and growing thing? It's like an Ark for seeds.

 See Wikipedia for more info.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedbank

Banksia seed pod

Most plants make seeds in great abundance. Open a seed package and there are just too many to count. Look at the acorns underneath our oak trees in the garden and know nature is planning ahead to make sure at least some new oak trees will grow.

I suppose with humans and other living things our seed package would be in our genetic DNA and the miraculous thing is that is also packed into  tiny spaces and has a wealth of information. From a single particle of a hair, all kinds of things about me as an individual can be known. Not only that, information about my mother and father and what I might also pass on to my children and even their children is there for the reading if you know how to do it. I wonder one day if there will be a home machine where we can read our own DNA seed just like we look at our blood pressure readings. Now wouldn't that be interesting?

  

That sounds like the seed of an idea. But where do these abstract ideas come from? Is there a seed for ideas already planted in our DNA?. Maybe Great Grandma Millicent originated different ideas but didn't use them and so passed them on to me. So do we have ideas already buried deep within our DNA? Seeds passed on through generations of ancestors. Does that account for the prodigies of early age we hear about?

Or just maybe an idea is a new original seed that is just being evolved. How would it happen? An idea springs in your mind but comes from where ? Maybe it's an idea seed particle that you have read about or seen or heard or touched and it lodged in your brain. Maybe there are trillions of idea seed particles floating about in the universe all around us that we haven’t discovered yet.

Who knows, maybe there will be a machine to collect and read those floating idea seeds one day too. Now that would be truly amazing.

Rambling Around in Circles

Happiness runs in a circular motion
Thought is like a little boat upon the sea.
Everybody is a part of everything anyway,
You can have everything if you let yourself be.

As I listened to the song “Happiness Runs” sung by Donovan, my mind drifted into a circular thought and I asked Mike if he had any thoughts about circles. He said,

” Did you know that anyone who can draw a perfect circle is considered clinically insane?” . Well I tried to draw a perfect circle and realized that drawing any kind of circle freehand is ultra difficult if not impossible. I have to think, if you did manage by trying over and over to draw the perfect circle, you would in fact, go insane. I did ask Mike where this information came from and he said according to Jack Farley, an old friend, this was well known and came from the Department of They.

Of course I fell for it.” Never heard of it .What is that?” I said.

“Oh surely you have heard of them…. They said this and They said that…” Obviously an old version of Wikipedia

So I looked around and started noticing circles everywhere and some important ones at that. The most obvious ones are the wheels on our cars. Have you noticed how many different kinds there are now? Some seem even more fancier than the car itself. Probably if there hadn’t been circular wheels we’d all be a long way behind in civilization. Square wheels don’t work too well unless you are Fred Flintstone

I’ve always liked circles Remember those playground games where everyone held hands in a circle and chanted various rhymes.” Ring a ring a rosie, a pocket full of posies”. Little kids love that one and I found it to be a good ice-breaker for the kindergarteners.

Think of all the ball games you know- where would they be without a circle to start. - Tennis balls, soccer balls, cricket, baseballs and ping-pong balls. The list goes on. Yes I know a few have squished the ball to make it an oval but that probably came about after the circular ball got sat on a few times.

Our world is a big huge circle as well. When we think of the planets and stars not many rectangle or square ones come to mind. I really don’t think there are any, well at least none that we have found as yet. Maybe the square planets are somewhere in those black holes that everyone talks about.

And what about the circles, the ones we can’t see. My ramblings circle through my mind and link one to another circling round and round. I expect you’ve noticed that by now.

 Have you ever walked a labyrinth? It is a circular type pathway maze once used by pilgrims. Now it is used as an experience for expanding the mind. You walk on pathways that go round and round in circles. If you ever find one, try walking it and let your mind circle as you walk. It’s very satisfying and calming for the soul..

If you think about it, life seems to go in circles anyway. From birth the baby grows, becomes a child, becomes an adult, gets married, has offspring. gets old, get incapacitated, becomes like an infant again and then dies thereby circling life.  Just one gap in this circle, the one between birth and death which is still a mystery but I am one of those people who think there is surely a closure to complete the circle. I’ll save that deep ramble for another day.

The Numbers have it or do they?

Counting  the cardinals ( photo by Mike)

Inch worm, inch worm, Measuring the marigolds
Could it be, stop and see, How beautiful they are….

Frank Loesser

We have a lot of trees on our acre yard. Mike will tell you there are about 300 and he’s more than willing to go out and actually count them to make sure. That’s the difference between us; he is a “numbers person” and I am not.

I have to make a big effort to learn any new phone numbers, driving license numbers or car license numbers and even now I have to look up my social security number even though I’ve had it for a lot of years. Now Mike on the other hand, can remember a tremendous amount of phone numbers even of homes we lived in ages ago. He knows all the license numbers, even mine, which is very helpful when I have to fill out forms.

The numbering system I use is fairly loose. I use a lot, not many, quite a few, far too many to count, etc rather than basic numerals, That is not to say I can’t understand or do mathematical problems. I was taught the basic skills, recited my times tables until they came out of my mouth automatically and even mastered algebra and calculus when I was young but never really truly enjoyed it or found much use for it. Combine that with growing up in England and figuring out pounds, shillings and pence and pounds, (different kind), ounces and stones and you can see why my love for numbers is not pronounced.

 

When I was teaching grade 1 in the 60s, New Math was all the fashion. Can you imagine a class of 35 kids 6 years old each with their own box of Cuisenaire rods, a clever system of colored blocks based on a numerical size. By manipulating them in different patterns, numbers and basic math was taught. The kids loved them. The noise of all these blocks of color being shifted about was incredible. The rods were forever falling on the floor getting lost. Kids stuck them up their nose and in their ears. Lots of interesting structures were built. How much the kids learned about numbers is debatable.

Trying to visualize large numbers is incredible difficult too. All those huge crowds that gather for large events and someone always seems to be able to say just how many there are. Quite amazing really and not always believable. I liked the idea of the school that was collecting 1,000,000 cents to give to charity but also to let the children visualize a million.

I’ve also noticed that we don’t seem to use millions so much anymore as billions and trillions are much more in fashion. I doubt if many people can even imagine a trillion so it becomes just another word. Writing it is entirely a different puzzle. Just how many zeros would that be? A lot!!

Maybe that’s why I never buy lotto tickets. I can’t imagine those huge amounts of cash and whatever would I do with it if I won it. Lucky numbers feature in many people’s choice for choosing lotto numbers and most people seem to have a regular lucky number.

Now is it a coincidence or just luck that my house number when I first met Mike was 171 and I found out shortly after that his house number was also 171. Did that seal our destiny? Our house number now is 1177 so I can only think luck and good fortune  is still with us.

So numbers except for the few I need to use, hold no fascination for me.

You won’t find me playing Bingo. Meanwhile Mike is fixated on Sudoko but I give up on it after the first line.

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