1.
An exercise Since watching this video, more than a year ago, I still do this exercise, pausing a moment in the hallway while talking to Christian or boiling water for tea, to sit on the floor and put my elbows against the wall. It's short, and my back feels massaged after doing it.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYA9TpRx/
2.
Comptometers My mother-in-law in her youth left school to take a job at Eaton's and help her mother by earning an income after her father's death at age 43. She would have worked at the department store in the early 50s, and she will often recall how she was trained to use a Comptometer to track inventory in large ledger books. A little while ago I finally googled the term and discovered that it is something like the grandfather of the calculator. From the youtube videos on the subject, it looks complicated to use. (This video presents the various models of comptometer from 1904 to 1950.) This snippet of information brings to the fore an object that represents how something was done not even a century ago, when people like my grandma would have thought the world was modern. It’s a detail, but it’s precisely the granularity of such a detail that thrills me and has become one of my favourite ways to criticize historical television series!
3.
Reading I really appreciate the Libby app... browsing biography this week I came across Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston and have been listening so much I drain the airpods of their battery life.
4.
Recipe It is common to find pea soup on the menu at food venues at Festival du voyageur. This past Sunday I made our favourite version yet from Anita Stewart's Canada. CBC offers the recipe on their website.
5.
Matter Wowed by this image of the Milky Way, it's hard not to consider how iota-like life can seem. It made me laugh when I noticed this sign along a walk, put there by some well-meaning person...
Matter has many meanings... it's 18th in the OED is "the substance, or the substances collectively, of which something consists; constituent material, esp. of a particular kind." And so, poetically, one could read the sign and recognize that unlike the importance it is meant to confer on the reader, it is a statement, that like anything, you too are a bit of dust in a galaxy of stars. Perhaps the only difference is love. I wouldn't put it so lightly had a friend not plugged in her stereo, unfolded the cd case of collected songs by Yves Duteil and made me listen to "Le bûcheron." (Here Yves Duteil sings it; here, someone else sings it more slowly and the lyrics are in the description.) Wayne Johnston ends his memoir with this final sentence: “I have come to believe that unlike my childhood illnesses, life is not idiopathic. It has a discoverable cause and whatever its duration, many purposes.” Yves Duteil ends his song with this refrain:
Je n'étais qu'un maillon dans cette chaîne immense
Et ma vie n'est qu'un point perdu sur l'horizon
Mais il fallait l'amour de toute une existence
Pour qu'un arbre qui meurt devienne une chanson.
Happy Friday!