Marvel Comics versus DC: The Great Interior Design Face Off

Here is a fun infograph about Marvel Comics versus DC interior decorating.  I hope you enjoy it a great deal.  Try to guess the winner.

- Joanne



Marvel vs DC - The Great Interior Design Face Off by Terrys Fabrics.

Trump and Terrorism

When I heard the news about the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France.  I felt like screaming "NOT AGAIN!  OH NO, NOT AGAIN!  A truck rammed into a crowd of revellers celebrating France's national holiday on the city's famed Promenade des Anglais Blvd.  At least 84 innocent people were killed in the attack.and hundreds were injured.  Police fatally shot the driver of the truck, 31-year-old  Mohamed Bouhlel, a Nice resident,   Bouhlel, a delivery driver and small-time criminal, was originally from Tunisia (He could just have easily been French-born), and has never been the subject of a terrorist investigation.  As of this writing, the motivation for the attack is unclear and it has not yet been determined if the attacker acted alone or in conjunction with a terrorist organization.

2016 has been a tumultuous year so far and there appears to be no abating.  It feels as if this is the summer of our discontent. The world news is dominated by stories of terrorism, racial unrest and an unsettling presidential campaign in the United States. The Republican convention begins on July 18th.  It is being held in Cleveland, Ohio.  The presumptive Republican nominee for president is a bombastic real estate billionaire by the name of Donald Trump.  Trump is a polarizing figure and he is also very dangerous.  Nothing I can say, however, will do much to change the minds of his most ardent supporters.  Despite his tycoon status and his luxurious lifestyle, "The Donald" is considered "one of us," not one of the "Washington elite."  Many older, blue collar white males have found a champion in the blustery New York tycoon.  He expresses their fears and their misconceptions. What he says may be racist, misogynistic and patently untrue, but he speaks their language.  They perceive themselves as being oppressed and marginalized. They feel their concerns are not being addressed. They anger needs an outlet. so they blame immigrants, women, blacks, Latinos and Muslims for their predicament.

Trump

Immigrants can't win with Trump supporters.  If they are gainfully employed, they are accused of taking jobs away from "real Americans."  If they don't have a job, they are described as lazy welfare bums.  Trump advocates don't blame the real culprits. They don't blame Wall Street moguls who caused a painful, debilitating recession in 2008. They don't blame American financial institutions.

This is not to say that the alienation and frustration of a significant number of Americans should be cavalierly dismissed.  Yes, of course their concerns and fears should be properly addressed. However, Donald Trump's solutions are faulty and divisive.  What Mr. Trump fails to understand is that true leadership is all about building bridges, not walls.

Donald Trump is a master of playing to the fears of his constituency, especially to their legitimate fear of terrorism.  His followers are of the mistaken belief that Trump will make America safer, that he will protect them from terrorists. Nothing can be further from the truth.  In fact, Trump is the terrorists' presidential candidate of choice. Extremists hope that he will win the election because he intends to build walls (literally and figuratively).  Trump's policies will convince young Muslims (native-born or immigrant) that they are not welcome in the United States.  Terrorist leaders will use Trump's rhetoric and his actions to recruit and radicalize Islamic youth. They will tell them that they will always be rejected by Western society and that only ISIS or Al-Qaeda will truly accept them.  They will give them a feeling of belonging, a common cause.

That is why a Trump victory in November will most certainly lead to an increase in recruits to extreme terrorist organizations.  It is these recruits who actually execute terrorist acts.  Many are disillusioned home-grown radicals.  It is they who are willing to sacrifice their lives for their cause. Extremist leaders simply provide propaganda and encouragement.  If Donald Trump ever occupies the Oval Office, terrorist leaders will have plenty of fodder for propaganda purposes.


- Joanne

A Tribute to E.B. White

E.B. White

''E. B. White was a great essayist, a supreme stylist. His literary style was as pure as any in our language. It was singular, colloquial, clear, unforced, thoroughly American and utterly beautiful. Because of his quiet influence, several generations of this country's writers write better than they might have done. He never wrote a mean or careless sentence. He was impervious to literary, intellectual and political fashion. He was ageless, and his writing was timeless"  

- William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker from 1952 until 1987

E.B. White's literary achievements were incredibly diverse.  Herbert Mitgang, in his New York Tines obituary for the great writer, stated that "Mr. White's writing was appreciated by generations of readers of every age,"  Not only was E.B. White the author of such beloved children's classics as Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little and The Trumpet and the Swan," but he published over 17 books of prose, poetry and sketches.  His adult books include One Man's Meat, The Second Tree from the Corner, Letters of E. B. White, The Essays of E. B. White, and Poems and Sketches of E. B. White.  He also revised and expanded The Elements of Style, William Strrunk Jr.'s influential guidebook for American English usage.

Elwyn Brooks White was born 117 years ago today (July 11, 1899) in Mount Vernon, New York.  He was the youngest child of Samuel Tilly White, the president of a piano company, and Jessie Hart White, the daughter of Scottish-American artist William Hart.  Samuel and Jessie had moved their family from Brooklyn to Mount Vernon because as E.B. put it,  ''Mount Vernon sounded tonier.''

In 1921, E.B. White graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree.  White, who was editor of his school's newspaper, The Cornell Sun, decided to pursue a career in journalism.  After graduation, he worked as a reporter for the United Press and the Seattle Times.  In 1927, he joined the staff of The New Yorker and was a contributor to the magazine for almost six decades.  He was best known for his essays and "Notes and Comments" pieces.

When cartoonist and author James Thurber came to The New Yorker, also in 1927, the two shared an office and played an integral and distinctive role at the magazine.  Thurber described his colleague as a private man who shunned publicity.  In his profile of E.B. White in Credos and Curios, Thurber wrote about how during their time at The New Yorker, White would slip away to a nearby restaurant to avoid a visitor he didn't want to see.  E.B., he said, "avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, and the Stork Club (a prestigious, upscale Manhattan nightclub from 1929 to 1965)."

At The New Yorker, White and Thurber were packed into small quarters with, according to White, "just room enough for two men and two typewriters."  Still, they managed to collaborate on The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" section.  In 1929, the duo co-wrote a takeoff on psychology titled Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do, a book that featured Thurber's cartoons.  Thurber, however, left The New Yorker in the mid-1930s.

In 1929, E.B. White married Katharine Sergeant Angell, who served as fiction editor for The New Yorker from 1925 to 1960. They met in 1926 at the magazine.  E.B. recalled the moment of their first meeting in a 1980 interview with Nan Robertson for The New York Times.  He had already submitted "two or three short things" to The New Yorker, a then-fledgling publication.  "She came striding out into the reception room where I was waiting.  'Are you Elwyn Brooks White," she said, and I said, 'I am.'  She had a lot of black hair and was very beautiful."

According to White, their love affair was "stormy."  "She was a divorced woman," he told Robertson, "but a conscientious mother with two children."  "I was six years younger than she. We finally went off and got married one day."  Years after the wedding, he wrote: "I soon realized I had made no mistake in my choice of a wife. I was helping her pack an overnight bag one afternoon when she said, 'Put in some tooth twine.' I knew then that a girl who called dental floss tooth twine was the girl for me."

Katharine

Katharine and E.B, had a son, Joel White (born 1930), who became a prominent U.S. naval architect and boat builder.  E.B. was also stepfather to Roger Angell (born September 19, 1920),and Nancy Angell Stableford (December 7, 1916 - August 3, 1996), Katharine's children from her first marriage to Ernest Angell, the President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1950 to 1969.

In 1933, E.B. White and his wife purchased a spacious old farmhouse in Maine.  They lived there almost steadily from 1938 on. It became White's refuge, the placed where he enjoyed the privacy and serenity he had always sought.

While living on that farm in Maine, E.B. White was inspired to write his great children's classics Chartlotte's Web and Stuart Little.  He told American photographer Jill Krementz, “I like animals and it would be odd if I failed to write about them. Animals are a weakness with me. When I got a place in the country I was quite sure animals would appear, and they did.”

E.B. thought up the idea for Charlotte's Web after observing a spider at his farm. “I had been watching a big grey spider at her work and was impressed by how clever she was at weaving. Gradually I worked the spider into the story that you know, a story of friendship and salvation on a farm.

In 1959, Macmillan and Company commissioned E.B. White to modernize and revise William Strunk's English style manual The Elements of Style.  Strunk, who had been White's English professor at Cornell University, originally composed the manual in 1918.  The following year, Strunk's guidebook, was privately published for in-house use at Cornell.  It was then republished by Harcourt Press in 1920.  The original version  was a slim book containing eight "elementary rules of usage," ten "elementary principles of composition," "a few natters of form," 49 "words and expressions commonly misused" and a list of 57 "words often misspelled."

E.B. White's update of The Elements of Style was highly successful and it became know informally as "Strunk & White." Professor Strunk and his his student were both advocates of concise writing. Strunk's recommendation was to "omit needless words."  White, for his part, described the professor's little book as a "summation for the case for cleanliness, accuracy and brevity" in the use of English.

In 1961, Katharine White developed a rare and debilitating skin disease.  Cortisone treatments affected her appearance and caused her bones to disintegrate.  Toward the end of her life, she suffered five congestive heart failures.  She passed away in 1977.

E.B. White died on October 1, 1985 at his home in North Brookin, Maine, where he had lived for almost half a century.  He was 86 years old at the time of his death and had suffered from Alzheimer's disease.  William Shawn, onetime editor of The New Yorker, said of White:  "His connections with nature were intimate and ardent. He loved his farm, his farm animals, his neighbors, his family and words."


END NOTES

* In 1963, President John F. Kennedy presented E.B. White with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  In 1971, White received the National Medal for Literature,

* E,B, White never liked his given name, Elwyn.  He said, "My mother just hung it on me because she'd run out of names.  I was her sixth child."  In college, he acquired the nickname "Andy," after Andrew D. White, the first president of Cornell University.  It was customary at Cornell to bestow that moniker on students with the last name of White.

* E.B. White and Katharine were married for 48 years, until her death on July 20, 1977 at the age of 84.  It was difficult for White to adjust to life without her.  In 1978, when Onward and Upward in the Garden, based on Katharine's New Yorker writings, was published, he wrote in the introduction: ''Life without Katharine is no good for me.''

* Joel White died of lung cancer on December 5, 1997 at his home in Brooklin, Maine.  He was 66 years old at the time of his passing.  His obituary in the The New York Times stated that he was "one of the country's foremost designers of wooden boats."

* E.B. and his stepson , Roger Angell, were very close.  Angell now 95 years old, is an accomplished writer, essayist and baseball writer.  He was the chief fiction editor of The New Yorker for many years and a regular contributor to the magazine.  In its February 14, 2005 issue, The New Yorker published an article by Roger Angell about his renowned stepfather.  It is simply titled "Andy" and here are its opening lines:

Lately I have been missing my stepfather, Andy White, who keeps excusing himself while he steps out of the room to get something from his study or heads out the back kitchen door, on his way to the barn again. He’ll be right back. I can hear the sound of that gray door—the steps there lead down into the fragrant connecting woodshed—as the lift-latch clicks shut. E. B. White died in 1985—twenty years ago, come October—and by “missing” I don’t mean yearning for him so much as not being able to keep hold of him for a bit of conversation or even a tone of voice.

Roger Angell

* Roger Angell's older sister, the late Nancy Angell Stableford was a biology teacher.


- Joanne

Companies in Film: Where Would You Work?

Here is an infographic about companies in film.  I hope you find it interesting and fun.

- Joanne



Where in the World (of Movies) should you work? by Euroffice.

Why Canada is Special

This is an imperfect world and no country is without it's blemishes.  Canada is no exception. However, today is not the day to dwell on Canada's shortcomings.  There will always be a time and a place for that, as there should be.  Today is a day to celebrate all that is special about this great land of ours.  I am proud to be a Canadian, but I try to express my pride without being smug.  I am patriotic, but I try to avoid jingoism.

On this Canada Day, let me provide you with some images that represent the essence of this country. Let me describe the indomitable spirit of some remarkable Canadians.  Let's reflect on Canada's accomplishments.


Canada is the National Dream, the Last Spike and Pierre Berton.

Canada is the Fathers of Confederation and Sir John A.

It is Nellie McClung and The Famous Five.

Canada is the lighthouse at Peggy's Cove.  It is the Bluenose at Lunenburg.

It is The Rock, Bytown, Cowtown, The Big Smoke and Spud Island.

Canada is L.M. Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables.  It is P.E.I. potatoes.

Canada is Expo 67 in Montreal. It is Pearson's peacekeepers.

Canada is road hockey and pickup hockey and outdoor skating rinks.

Canada is a lacrosse stick.

It is farms and factories and big city lights.  It is downtown museums and restaurants.  It is shops and malls, theatres and vast concert halls.  It is churches and synagogues and mosques.

It is snowy days in January, summer nights in July and autumn leaves in October.

It is Yorkville in Toronto and Gastown in Vancouver.

Canada is two founding nations.  It is people of many lands and many tongues and many colours.

Canada is diversity.

Canada is Cape Breton Island.and the Cabot Trail.

It is the Covered Bridge in Harland, New Brunswick.  It is the Magnetic Falls

Canada is Six Nations, Acadians and Metis.

It is Signal Hill and Cape Spear.  It is the wooden homes of Newfoundland.  It is down East hospitality. It is a sleepy Maritime fishing village.  It Halifax harbour and Pier 21.

Canada is the joie de vivre of Montreal.

It is skyscrapers in Toronto.  It is Oktoberfest in Kitchener.

Canada is the passion of Tommy Douglas and the dedication of Joey Smallwood.

It is Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights and Trudeau's Charter.

Canada is tulips in the spring in Ottawa.  It is Parliament Hill and the Peace Tower.  It is a stroll along Sparks Street.  It is skating on the Rideau Canal.

Canada is a a space nation.  It is the home of Marc Garneau, Roberta Bondar, Chris Hadfield and the Canadarm.

Canada is maple syrup in Quebec.  It is nickel in Sudbury and steel in Hamilton.

Canada is butter tarts and McIntosh apples and BeaverTails.  Canada is poutine and peameal bacon.

Canada is St.Catherine Street in Montreal and Yonge Street in Toronto.

It is a drive along the Trans-Canada Highway.

Canada is picturesque Niagara-on-the-Lake and historic Queenston Heights.  It is lush Niagara vineyards.  It is the Maid of the Mist and Niagara Falls.

Canada is Winnipeg's Golden Boy.

It is a sunset on the Prairies.  It is a wheat field in rural Saskatchewan.  It is a curling rink in Saskatoon.  It is Rider Pride.

It is the pristine beauty of Lake Louise in Alberta..  It is the Jasper hot springs and the Icefields Parkway.

Canada is the poetry of Pauline Johnson.  It is the Yukon Gold Rush.  It is "The Cremation of Sam McGee."

Canada is Henderson and Cournoyer celebrating a winning goal.

It is the Rocket's red eyes and Bobby Hulls's slapshot.

It is Banting and Best's insulin.

It is Alexander Graham Bell's phone call.

It is Marshall McLuhan's Global Village.

It is Naismith's basketball, the Expos of Montreal and the Blue Jays of Toronto.

Canada is the CN Tower and the streetcars of Toronto.  It is Greektown on The Danforth and Chinatown and Little Italy.

It is Emily Carr's paintings of native peoples..  It is the Group of Seven's landscapes and the wildlife of Robert Bateman.

Canada is the fruit of Okanagan Valley and the legend of Ogopogo.

Canada is Stephen Leacock's Mariposa tales.

Ir is W.P. Kinsella'a baseball yarns.  It is Margaret Atwood's novels and Alice Murnro's short stories.  It is Mordecai Richler's St. Urbain Street.

It is Glenn Gould's piano and Ashley MacIsasc' fiddle. It is Oscar Peterson's jazz and Karen Kain's ballet.

Canada is the Bonhomme and the Quebec Winter Carnival.  It is the St. Lawrence River and the Plains of Abraham and the Chateau Frontenac.

Canada is the Grey Cup, the C.N.E., the Calgary Stampede and the Queen's Plate.  It is Northern Dancer.  It is Foster Hewitt's "He Shoots, He Scores" and Danny Gallivan's "canonizing" slap shot.

It is the CBC and the National Film Board.  It is universal health care.

Canada is Stompin' Tom Connors and "The Good Old Hockey Game.  It is Rush and Shania Twain and The Tragically Hip..  It is Winnipeg's Guess Who, Nova Scotia's Anne Murray, Quebec's Celine Dion and Ontario's Gordon Lightfoot.  It is the voice of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and Michael Buble.

Canada is Terry Fox on a mission to conquer cancer, doggedly running along the highway on one leg.

Canada is the Arctic.  It is the Inuit of Labrador and Nunavut.  It is the Inukshuk.  It is Farley Mowat, the midnight sun and the northern lights.

Canada is the puffin and and the polar bear.  It is the plaintive call of the loon.

It is Hudson Bay and kayaks and canoes.

Canada is the Banff National Park.  It is the Rocky Mountains.  It is Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island.  It is a totem pole.  It is the forests of British Columbia.

Canada is urban and suburban and rural.  It is tractors and snowshoes and snowmobiles.  It is SkyTains and gleaming glass towers.

Canada is coast to coast and sea to sea.

Canada is home.

Editor's Note:  I couldn't include everything.  I am sure some people will say I've left out some things.  However. it's impossible to please everyone.



- Joanne