KFC

Tags

Canada, Climate, elections, KFC, PEI

Colonel Sanders who founded the chicken food chain KFC lived in Canada after 1964 and owned a home until his death in 1980. The house was/is located at 1337 Melton Drive in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto. He lived there from 1964 to 1980. After his death the house was sold and the new owner found in a closet 2 of the Colonel signature white suits, left behind.

Harland Sanders’ suit were made by a tailor Walter Beauchamp at 145 Wellington street West in Toronto. Few know of the Canadian connection of Colonel Sanders who many thought was a Kentuckian. Harland David Sanders was born on September 9, 1890, in Henryville, Indiana. KFC was acquired in October 1986 from RJR Nabisco, Inc. by PepsiCo, Inc., for approximately $840 million. It was Governor Ruby Laffoon who in 1935 made him a Kentucky Colonel due to the popularity of his fried chicken. After he sold his KFC company in 1964, Sanders continued to visit the KFC restaurants around the world as an ambassador spokesman. He died on December 16, 1980, at the age of 90, in Louisville, Kentucky.

This photo of Colonel Sander’s Canadian house in Mississauga was taken in October 2022.

I cannot remember the last time I had KFC but I would venture to say it was in the 1980’s, I am not a fan of fast food. We never had it at home as kids and I may have eaten it at friends or at an office party.

Well yesterday the big storm was not as predicted, the weather on PEI is never quite as predicted. We did have a lot of high winds and the bridge to the mainland was closed, on the bridge the wind reached 105 Km which is dangerous and makes driving over the strait impossible. This means that grocery stores will be short of some essentials for a few days. The rain and the southerly winds melted the snow so we are back to grass. In the meantime, we are told that the world is coming to PEI for the Winter Games, numerous charter flights and more commercial flights to accommodate the traffic. Given that we are in the off season, not sure where people will eat, many restaurants are closed until May. Again our politicians and the PEI Government have not planned accordingly, feels like a fly by night operation all around. With no snow, will they have to move locations elsewhere off Island? The feel of these games is that it is done for attention by the rest of Canada and the population is not wanted or involved.

It looks like Provincial Elections are coming, politicians currently sitting are announcing that they will not be running again. Last night someone told me that they expect the current Conservative government to win all the seats in the Legislature or at least so many that there will not be any opposition. This can happen easily in small population areas like ours and this is not good for democracy. PEI has a Legislature with 27 seats, we are the smallest province in Canada with a total population of 160,000. persons. Compared with Nova Scotia with a population of 995,000 persons and a Legislature of 55 seats or New Brunswick 49 seats and a population of 780,000 persons. PEI has lots of serious social issues and not much as been done but Premier King has a way of talking to people charming the birds off the trees.

Well the skating rink across the street is now officially open, the ice is beautiful kept this way by artificial freezing by generator. Lots of people have come to skate despite the weather not being very cold. No winter yet and people do not seem to mind going into February with no snow. It is starting to enter people’s mind that this is what climate change looks like.

23 January 2023

Today is the first snow storm of the year in PEI. A bit late for Winter, prior to this we only had mostly rain and above normal temperature. This current storm has closed businesses and schools in PEI, again it is mostly a mix of freezing rain and heavy wet snow. Staying home with no reasons to go out at all.

Yesterday I received in the mail from Amazon.ca, 3 non stick pans for cooking various veg and other things like eggs and food. They are high quality non stick and very nice to use. We do a lot of home cooking and for dinner I will usually have 3 different vegetables. Last night Will had made pizza dough and my toppings were, tomato rosé sauce, pre sautéed mushrooms, thin slices of Brie, thin slices of red onions and green lightly sautéed Broccolini also known as rapini. It was wonderful, I do like Pizza with toppings to what is found in Italy.

I am always puzzled now that the pizza industry is run by big corporations how standardized it has become and what people think of pizza toppings is very limited. Same with the cheese used, you do not have to use only mozzarella, you can use other cheeses or no cheese at all. White sauce is used instead of tomato sauce, in Rome at the pizza stand I remember some pizza were brushed lightly with olive oil and topping with a creamy mushroom sauce or goat cheese and arugula put on before serving, no tomato sauce. Certainly the crust was always either thin Rome style or thick Naples style. The dough was always made that day and fresh, a very un- corporate approach to pizza making. Some pizza will have an egg on top or zucchini slices or fresh anchovy, etc. All cooked in very hot stone ovens for best results.

photos taken from Pizzeria da Baffetto in Rome.

So today Will wanted to make his Japanese White Bread and discovered we had no yeast, so that will have to wait til tomorrow. In the meantime he is making his spaghetti sauce with a mix of ground veal, beef and Italian pork sausage meat. Always good.

The weather is truly awful today, it snowed just a little and now high winds and freezing rain at least until midnight and then some more snow. You can imagine how slippery all this is and dangerous.

The Canada Winter Games are coming to PEI on 18 February for a week. I received the full program today (embargo) it will be published tomorrow. Very busy indeed, lots of music, events of all sorts. The airport announced 11 charter flights coming, hotels are booked and Air Canada is putting on special flight to handle all this abnormal traffic, given that this is the dead season and no one really comes this way. I do hope they get some snow for the period what we have now is really insufficient and we have more ice than snow. There is no sea ice this year, weather is far too mild. It will be 8 C tomorrow, almost summer like, we do have some people walking around in shorts. However we are suppose to get 100 Km or 65 Miles per hour winds and people have been told to be very careful. Such winds can uproot mature trees and damage structures.

Well we shall see what happens in the next 48 hours.

If you wish to know

Tags

Canada, Coronation, King Charles III, King of Canada

Just watched a fascinating and very interesting video on You tube by Allan Barton entitled

What will Charles III wear at his coronation – the history and meaning of the king’s robes.

Given that the press usually get all this wrong and then start inventing stuff, not to mention all those

so called experts who confuse meaning and reality. This video is precise and simply tells you what will

happen on May 6, 2023.

Barton explains the meaning of the colours, red and purple, the meaning of Imperial, of the Cap of Maintenance and the 2 Crowns worn at coronation. It is a complicated affair and there is a strong religious signification to it all.

This Coronation painting hangs in the Lobby of the Senate of Canada in Ottawa. King George VI wearing purple as a symbol of his Royal authority. King George VI is the grandfather of King Charles III.

9 years ago

Tags

Anniversary, France, Louis XVI, Revolution

Today marks 9 years of blogging at WordPress, prior to that I was blogging on Blogspot for 5 years. So I have been blogging for many years and read also many other blogs from around Canada and the world.

Recently I was speaking with a writing group at the Club about blogging, many did not know what a blog was, they were more in tune with writing the old fashion way pen and paper. It seems that typewriters like my favourite the IBM Selectric are no longer in use.

I also have lots of followers, I think around 524 now, but only a handful actually comment regularly.

On the 21 January 1793 in Paris, some 230 years ago, Louis XVI (1754-1793) was executed on what is now known as Place de la Concorde. Our knowledge of his time and life and that of his family is much better understood now than they were ever in the past. The layers of historical myths or made up stories are in a large part dismissed as inaccurate, he was in many ways the victim of political intrigue in his own family and amongst ambitious politicians, the population in general did not hate the king nor did they want his death, at the Convention many delegates abstained for a guilty verdict and a simple majority of 5 persons, including his cousin Orleans vote his death. His wife Queen Marie-Antoinette would follow him just a few months later, after a kangaroo Court on invented charges, would sentence her to death, shocking public opinion and creating a political problem for the Assembly in power. This also created conditions for war in Europe with other Kingdoms which will lead to the rise of Napoleon from obscure Corporal to General and Emperor of the French. The two brothers of Louis XVI would become king and restore the Monarchy, Louis XVIII and Charles X both engineered a lot of the troubles to overthrow their brother Louis, including the famous march from Paris to Versailles on a rainy day by a bunch of women, and then the horrors at the palace of killing bystanders at Court.

Both brothers did not help at all in trying to obtain the freedom of their nephew the young Dauphin 7 yr old Louis XVII from the jail in the Temple where he would die in solitary confinement and disappear. Naked ambition at play you could say. Their niece Madame Royale, 10 year old Princess Marie-Therese would be freed and exchanged for French prisoner of war, she would return to Vienna to live at the Court of her uncle the Austrian Emperor. This was possible because of the Salic Law forbidding her from succeeding her dead father.

Louis XVI was a modern king for his time, abolished torture, closed and reformed prisons, the Bastille was about to be closed and demolished when the mob arrived on July 14. The building was pulled down not by the crowds as popular history says, but by the workers hired by the previous Royal Government. The many economic problems and famines could have been better handled but too many at Court were ambitious/incompetent and playing politics.

The king was a man of science and was interested by modern reforms, the Church and the Aristocracy were a formidable opposition to him. The new Civil Code introduced by Napoleon was in fact written by Louis’ ministers. One element, the pamphlets, the early precursors of yellow journalism was used widely by the enemy of the King and Queen to create fictitious and sensational scandals. During the early days of the revolution or civil war, the king refused to have the army fire on the crowds, he believed people could see him as a good person. Same thing happened when the flying family was arrested in Varennes, faithful Dragoon guards could have cleared the place in minutes to free the King but he did not want blood spilled. Napoleon would remark famously around 1799 that Louis should have fired with cannons on the mob, as he did not hesitate to do, crushing the revolution and imposing his rule.

Louis XVI spoke several languages, French, German, English, Spanish and he also spoke ancient Latin and Greek. Very tall for his time at 6.1 feet. Most historians now see the whole episode of the French Revolution as a civil war to allow the bourgeoisie, merchants class to take over, it did not end the monarchy, France would have to wait until 1870 for that to happen and see an elected republican government come to life with President Adolphe Thiers.

My 5th shot

Tags

climate change, covid, dachshunds, Nora, shots, Vaccine, winter

Today I went to see my pharmacist and he gave me my 5th shot of the Covid vaccine in the new improve formula for the current strain. Few people are following through with regular at 6 month interval of the Covid vaccine, in fact the new stat about vaccination in general in Canada is that only 2% of the 38 million Canadians have all their current vaccinations. With Covid the % is going down since the second shot was given out 2 years ago, the drop in people getting their first and then second booster is low around 21% of the population. The reason, people do not understand the need to keep ahead of this disease by improving their immunity in general. Sadly the ignorance of the population and the conspiracies on the internet have create a real problem of credibility for Health practitioners.

This is the 16 January and still no snow, the temperature hovers around 39 to 45 F. that is not Winter weather in PEI, normally it should be around -12 C at night and 0 C. in the day time. We have no snow and the Canada Winter games are in 28 days. This could be a huge financial failure if the snow does not materialize. None is forecasted before the end of January. Many will tell you that this happened in 2015 and suddenly we had several major snow storms over one month, making it a record snow year. But I think that with climate change this is not likely to happen. People still believe in miracles, unfortunately the age of miracles is long past.

2023 is the 150th Anniversary of PEI joining the Canadian Confederation, despite the fact PEI hosted the Conference in August of 1864 that would lead to a union of the British colonies to form one united Canada, the decisive conference took place in September of 1864 in Quebec City. The famous painting by Robert Harris shows the Father of Confederation in Quebec City, and when the time came to sign up in March of 1867, PEI refused, preferring to stay a colony of Britain. Only in 1873 PEI being bankrupt and Britain refusing to help did the PEI government finally decide to join Canada if we paid their debts. It’s the Island way.

I told you all about Nicky but we should not forget our Eleonora AKA Nora. Will picked her at the kennel because at one week she was already feisty. When Will picked her up from the litter box the first thing she did was to suckle his index finger and would not let go. Nora’s markings are different from Nicky, he is blonder around the face and has more the Boar colouring. Nora has large black fur in her face and just a bit of blond under her chin. This gives her an intense look when she fixes you. Nora does not look away when you stare at her, while other dogs would. She is also very stubborn, she will pretend to listen to you only to do exactly what she wants once your back is turned. If you scold her, she puts on this show of incomprehension. If you speak sharply to her, she will give you the big puppy sad eyes look or she will be even more defiant. She takes on any dog no matter what the size. Nicky would never do that. Nora is like a little tank and is very dominant. Our other female Dachshund short hair, Bundnie who was born in Egypt in 1989 was also defiant and knew how to play her cards to get what she wanted. Bundnie lived to the grand old age of 17. We do remember her very fondly.

Lately Nora has been giving signs of doggy dementia, she temporarily appears lost or will stark to shake. She will bark at people she knows as if she has forgotten who they are. We always reassure her as best we can and it seems to pass. But it is a new development, she too is 14 but is a week older than Nicky.

She is very fond of food and the kitchen is her favourite room. Nora comes from a family of tracking dogs and she could have been easily trained to do tracking for the hunt. Her mother was an Italian National Champion at tracking. This gives her a completely different personality compared to Nicky.

She is very lovable and loves cuddles but she can also be very jealous if she thinks we pay too much attention to Nicky.

Eleonora di Capena AKA Nora

Nicholas aka Nicky

Tags

Capena, dachshunds, Italy, Lazio, Nicky

Nicky will be 14 years old next month and he is starting to have some health issues. At first it was his eyesight, he was becoming progressively blind, despite treatment this has sped up and he is now mostly blind and this affect his walking and his overall need to feel secure at all times. So we spend a lot of time making him comfortable. However in the house we cannot leave a room now and leave him on his own, he start to whine if he sense he is not near us. I do his eye drops every day but I wonder to what extent this is helping him now, except to keep his eyes moist. He has taken to come to me by the sound of my voice and then tilting his head as if to catch what I am saying, he also walks beside me now, my foot step guiding him, surprising how he adapted to changing circumstances. He also like to sleep next to me on the sofa knowing he is safe all wrapped up in his blanket.

Nicky and Eleonora aka Nora who is older than him by 7 days, have been with us since their birth, so they are truly a part of our little family and a presence in the house. Yes we have spoilt them and given them the best life possible. I know that it is extra care to look after Nick but he is very dear to us, we have to understand that he like Nora will not be with us forever.

Here in Capena at the home of Tiziana Tola who is very well known in dog breeding circles in Italy and her husband Dr Massimo Buzzanca. Will with our week old Nicky and Nora. Their mothers where also with us in the room, we came back to fetch them 7 weeks later.

Nicky in our home in Rome in 2010, my favourite photo of him. He loves the sunshine and sleeping in the sun is his thing, our sunshine boy. It is said that you will forgive your dog almost anything instantly, however we are not so forgiving for other fellow humans. I do not know why that is but maybe it is the relationship you have with your dog. Maybe is it because they are very perceptive, we have had dogs, all Dachshunds, for the last 34 years, so you learn a thing or two about them after all this time. Yes they are stubborn and will often only listen when it suits them, they are difficult to train and it requires persistence, however they are great companion and can be little clowns. I really cherish my time with Nick now more than ever.

Halifax, N.S.

Tags

Canada, Halifax NS, mail, Moose, Royalty, Tim Horton, winter

I travelled to Bedford a suburb of Halifax to retrieve my 7 oriental prayer rugs at the cleaners. They need special cleaning and this is the only location in the Maritimes, East of Montreal. When I left Charlottetown on Tuesday morning, we were having our first wet snow storm of the Winter, a non event except that there was fog and slush all over and getting sprayed by long haul trucks on the highway happened every couple of minutes. The road to the bridge to cross to the mainland was not busy, never is and then once on the mainland I was in an area called Mouse Alley, on either side of the road is swampy ground and woodland, where Mouse roam, so you have to have your eyes open until you reach the roundabout on the highway about 26km from the bridge exit.

Yes I stopped for a donut and a coffee at Tim’s, that is the only outlet on the highway. I know my friend in Phoenix will be happy, I believe he is a share holder.

Then you make a left and on your way East towards Amherst, Truro and Halifax. The wet snow persisted until Truro when it became sunny, as if I had crossed a curtain. Truro is about 45 minutes from Halifax. I did not drive fast not knowing how slippery the road would be. After 3 hours of driving and stopping twice for coffee and stretch I arrived at the shop and picked up my rugs and continued to the hotel in downtown Halifax just below the old Citadel. The city of Halifax is a sea port and an important strategic naval base for the Royal Canadian Navy. The citadel well above the city dominates and the city has a lot of history attached to it, going back to 1749 by Edward Cornwallis, who previously in his military career played an important role in suppressing the Jacobite rising of 1745. After fighting with the victorious British soldiers at the Battle of Culloden, he led a regiment of 320 men north for the pacification (wholesale massacre) and clearing of the Scottish Highlands. He chose the location of Halifax (Chebucto) because it is an ice free natural sea port all year round. He will be for many years governor of Nova Scotia and will finish his career as Governor of Gibraltar. First named Chebucto, it was renamed Halifax in honour of George Dunk, Earl of Halifax and Chief Lord of Trade and Plantations, who masterminded its settlement.

The capital has many good restaurants, lots of historical places to visit, beautiful scenic area and has an international airport. The weather for my visit was cold but sunny. It is a pleasant change from PEI, more cosmopolitan and has a more big city feel.

Each time I am in Halifax I love to have dinner with friends in one of the many restaurants, this time it was at a new Italian restaurant called aMano in Bishop’s Landing. The food was very good, great atmosphere, good wine list.

The clock tower of the Citadel built in 1800 on the orders of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and father of Victoria, the fortress itself is hidden behind the hill. This is Winter in Halifax, breezy cold but no snow.

The drive back was under sunny sky and pleasant and it always appear shorter though it is not. I did stop in Masstown and at the Buttery near Amherst, it is a big grocery store on the highway serving the area and their produce is outstanding quality, everyone raves about it. They also have a shop of wines produce in Nova Scotia, and great deli and meat counter, offering freshly made quiche and meat pies. The Buttery across the street is all about fresh bread and an enormous selection of cheeses, impressive selection. So it is a good place to stop if you want to relax from the drive.

Got home to learn that King Constantine II of Greece had died, he was a nephew of Prince Philip and cousin to the late Queen Elizabeth. He was forced from office by the coup in 1967 of the Colonels who instituted a dictatorship. His son Prince Paul is now the new pretender to the Kingdom of Greece and the Greek Government will not give him a State Funeral but will offer all the usual niceties associated with the death of a former head of State. His wife the Queen Anne-Marie is the sister of Queen Margaret of Denmark. Constantine’s sister is Queen Dowager Sophia of Spain. He was also godfather to Prince William. He will be buried in the Royal Cemetery of Tatoi near Athens.

In Bulgaria, King Simeon II another cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth II, won a second court victory to have his properties restored to him after a 14 year trial, the Supreme Court in Sofia declared in 2018 that the hunting lodge at Tsarska Bistritsa was his property and had been illegally confiscated by the Communist in 1946. Today the Royal Palace at Vrana just outside the capital Sofia was also returned to him and his family. Simeon was forced as a child into exile with this family in the communist takeover of 1946. They lived in Egypt and then Spain. Returning to Bulgaria in 2001 and then he was elected Prime Minister and governed until 2005.

Today in Charlottetown we had what I call Moose Weather, it snowed, it rained, it was cold and now it is warm at 10C. Slush all over, very unpleasant and high winds which now are drying the streets and sidewalk. It is suppose to rain tomorrow, again no snow, it all melted. Many now are waking up to the fact that this is what Climate change looks like, humans are funny it takes death and disaster to make people wake up to reality.

We are schedule to have the Canada Winter Games in February however the way things are going with no snow, will they cancel? The activities are outdoors, only the artificial ice surface will be ready as for the rest, who knows.

Another very strange thing happened this morning, we got a message from Amazon about an impending delivery of a package at 09:30am. So we waited and by 11:20am no package but a new notice that they could not deliver given no one was at home. We were at home and we were waiting. Suddenly a friend of ours who lives on Prince street about 2 blocks away from us, sends us a message to say he has a package for us from Amazon? He did not understand how he got our package. We do not understand either, how can a package clearly marked for us end up on someone else doorstep at random? Lucky us this is a friend of ours who got our package. I would say Amazon goofed on this one. Tried to call Amazon all day, they take no calls, you cannot complain.

Tonight I got a notice from Post Canada formerly known as the Royal Mail, that a package has arrived and can I go and pick it up at the Post Office. I know this package is from my sister in NYC.

in the last week

Tags

Japan, Milk Bread, Montreal, Shokupan, US Congress

Again a busy week, I was sort of following the circus in Congress with Kevin McCarthy who was desperate to become Speaker of the House. Tried 15 times, finally got the job after giving away major concessions to a bunch of extremists. Not a good idea, will the extremists rule the day? Make Congress dysfunctional to a point where nothing gets done?

I did not realize that the job of Speaker was so powerful. In Canada the Speaker of the House and the Speaker of the Senate does not have this kind of power. The Speaker of the House of Commons follows the rules the House gives him and he moderates the debate, calls votes and has them recorded and he can refuse to yield the floor to some unruly Member of Parliament by disciplining them or have them removed for a day by the Sargent at Arms for breaking a rule on language or behaviour. The Speaker of the House of Commons is the third person in line of succession if the Prime Minister is incapacitated, after the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, but this is a moot point. It would appear that in the USA it is very different system.

An analysis stated that all this disfunction started with the zero-sum policies of Newt Gingrich, then we had the Tea Party gang, then the MAGA gang and now a very badly divided Republican party, which appears to be on the road to self-destruction.

I put away all the Xmas decorations today, there was not much this year, it took 2 hours. The weather is blustery but still no snow at all. Now it appears it may snow on Tuesday when I am scheduled to drive to Halifax and Wednesday for my return to PEI it will be sunny. Not much else is happening at the moment. I am going to Halifax to pick-up my oriental 7 carpets after their cleaning at Tabrizi in Bedford, they specialize in cleaning and repairing oriental rugs.

Will made some Japanese Milk Bread or Shokupan today, it is so good. He is going to make a pudding with the remaining Ginger Bread.

I also found this photo of Old Montreal in winter, you see the dome of the Bon secours Market

and the steeple of the 350 year old Chapel of Notre Dame de Bon secours, the sailors church. This chapel is closely associated with the founders of Montreal in 1642, my family arrived in 1662.

Every afternoon

Tags

history, Potsdam, Prussia, reconstruction, steuben, USA

Almost every afternoon we have visitors around 2pm for coffee and some baked goods for conversations, Will enjoys it and it is nice to see people on this regular basis, we could not do the Xmas season parties, so this is the next best thing, it’s good for his morale.

Well another warmish early Spring like day in the middle of what should be Winter. The lack of snow is starting to look very strange and foreboding, climate change can certainly be dangerous if you think of the future. A month from now PEI is hosting the Canada Winter Games, I believe that we will have snow by then, I hope but this does not look good at all.

Continuing to look at various architectural sites in Germany on reconstruction of cities the way they were prior to 1939 and the destruction of the war. By the way, Russia did the same thing in St-Petersburg and so has Austria, Poland and Hungary. I remember visiting sites where nothing remained and in Warsaw they resurrected the old town including the Royal Palace and many parks and other palaces and churches.

All of these countries had communist government under the boot of the Soviet Union and all had an ideology of erasing the past as inappropriate for the new man and the communist age. Often coming up with very ugly dehumanizing architecture of concrete and cement done very cheaply.

One city which has seen its centre resurrected is Potsdam, the secret royal capital of Prussia, where the kings lived and governed, Berlin was more for pomp, ceremony and administration. Frederick II the Great did not like Berlin or Berliners much and this is why he lived mostly in Potsdam.

I visited Potsdam several times between 1998 and 2011, each time the city changed. At first it was to see the progressive baroque reconstruction of the palaces and private mansions many of which were in a distinctive Palladian style. Most of the important work was done in the Royal Park where the palace of Sans Souci and the New Palace are located including all the many pavilions, chinoiserie so in fashion in the 18th century. Later it was to see the transformation around the old market place which is still under construction.

One building which was taken down 3 years ago was the faculty of the University of Potsdam housing the economic department. Very ugly building and derelict, the last time I was in the building it was empty and about to close, only a small tourism office was left. The building was demolished and now the buildings of the 18th century who existed on that spot until 1939 are being rebuilt to match architecturally the City Palace across the street, the St-Nicholas Lutheran Church, the old city hall with Atlas on the roof, and the Barberini Palace museum. The plan is eventually to recreate as much of old Potsdam and pushing the old communist building out.

The building being rebuilt have the old facade of the 18th century but the insides is modern to meet requirements of today.

Here is a glimpse of the centre of Potsdam, with the dome of St-Nicholas, the City Palace in pink now use as the parliament of the province of Brandenburg, to the left of the church the roof of the old City hall with the golden statue of Atlas on the roof and next on the left of the City Palace is the rebuilt Barberini Palace now an art museum. Under construction is the quarter which is a series of buildings waiting for their baroque facade to be added on this year.

A view from the steps of the old City Hall

When I first came to Potsdam, none of what you see in this photo existed, it was still a field of ruins leftover from the war in 1945. A very sad looking perspective. The obelisk was damage and the colonnade of the church still needed repair. Prince Charles was involved at the beginning with the reconstruction effort through his interest in architecture.

Finally here is a picture of the faculty building of the Univ of Potsdam which was demolished to make way for the reconstruction going on now. This picture was taken at the time when the City Palace was being rebuilt.

Also in the future the statue of Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben a Prussian army officer who served as inspector general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He taught the Continental Army the essentials of military drill and discipline, helping to guide it to victory. His statue will be moved to the square named after him next to the city palace.

Prosit Neu Jahr, Bonne Année!

Tags

cakes, Canada, Halifax, Moose, Musikverein, New Year, Vienna, Weather

The day started with a thick fog and warm mild weather. We heard the fog horn of a laker as it was coming into port but could not see it. I heard the engines but again no sight of the ship, the fog was that thick just 200 feet away. It is hard to believe that today is 1 January, the weather is very mild and it rained all day, very similar to the weather of yesterday in New York. I do not need to say that this is highly unusual, if not abnormal for this time of the year. It seems that in the last 5 years the weather has become warmer and warmer in Winter. Gone are the days of massive snow falls and frigid weather. I do not doubt that we will eventually get a big snow storm, when?

A quiet day with not much going on, which is perfectly fine. Friends dropped by to have coffee and conversation with Will. In fact almost every afternoon someone will drop by for coffee, it is good for Will to see people and have a chat. We have lots of good treats, gum drop cake, ginger biscotti, pistachio-zest of orange-cranberry cookies shortbreads, stollen and some dark chocolates and some Geld.

Again beautiful concert from Vienna on New Year’s day with the Vienna Philharmonic in the Musikverein.

Today we went to visit our friends G & M and their 10 month old baby Max, he is so funny and very animated. At 10 months now you are starting to see his personality, we first saw him at birth and then through out this first period and he changes constantly as he matures, first teeth coming out. He loves to grab peoples glasses and giggles all the while. He also likes to grab men’s noses, it amuses him.

The weather is still warmish and I am going to Halifax to fetch my carpets next week, they called from the shop and they are ready now. The drive is 3 hours and looks like it will be fine, no signs of winter storms in the forecast. When you leave the Island the bridge toll is $51. dollars now, it was set to go up to $59. in 2023 but the Federal Government who owns the bridge and leases the operation to a private company thought otherwise. The toll is essentially for maintenance, there is insufficient traffic at 4,000 cars and trucks per day if compared to Montreal where one bridge alone across the St-Lawrence river see 170K cars/trucks/buses and now trains daily.

I always like to go to Halifax, it is a big city, always something to do and great restaurants.

On New Year’s day we had the traditional Levee at the Club and some 500 people dropped in for a glass of Moose Milk and a piece of cake. I stayed away, that is far too many people for me and a concern for Covid spread. Moose milk is a traditional Canadian alcoholic mixed drink with roots in the historic celebratory events of the Canadian Armed Forces. It is served at the Levée, a New Year’s Day celebration in honour of the King of Canada.

Moose milk is composed of five different ingredients:

• Spirit a combination of Canadian whisky or dark rum
• beverage: Kahlua 
• Dairy: a combination of whole milk, cream, eggnog, or vanilla ice cream
• Sweetener: maple syrup
• Spice: nutmeg

I assure you it’s a very good drink. God Save the King!