Vitamin D, Sunshine and Dahlias

It's mid October, and big, fat Dahlias are still brightening Toronto gardens with their vivid colours.  A Sunday afternoon walk with my camera (okay, the Samsung phone), is so beautiful, I don't even notice the cold wind. 

It's quiet.  The park next door is undergoing a major multi-year reservoir reconstruction project, and only a few of us seem to know the secret path to the Volunteer Garden.  The bees are still softly buzzing from blossom to blossom.  It's an afternoon of blue skies, sunshine and pretty pink flowers!

It's known as the Sunshine Vitamin.  Your body produces vitamin D when your skin is directly exposed to sunlight.  Actually, the ultraviolet-B (UVB) rays of sunlight do the trick.  Black people absorb more UVB in the melanin of their skin than whites, and need more sun exposure to get the same amount of vitamin D.   

In parts of the world where the hours of sunlight nearly disappear for months at a time (think of Canada from November to April), where sunlight is obscured by heavy air pollution, or people live and work indoors from sunrise to sunset, lack of vitamin D is a real issue. An estimated one billion people have vitamin D deficiency.

Almost one hundred years ago, a link was found between vitamin D, and the prevention of rickets (a disease which causes bone deformaties).  Six years ago, the National Centre for Biotechnology Information, part of the US National Institutes of Health, published a report by the Journal of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapeutics, that vitamin D "may play a role" in preventing "cancer, heart disease, fractures and falls, autoimmune diseases, influenza, type-2 diabetes, and depression".  For the past several years, many Canadians have been supplementing their diet with a daily dose of 1,000 units of vitamin D, or more.

Then, earlier this month, a controversial review of 81 vitamin D studies showed the vitamin had no effect on increasing bone density, or preventing bone fractures.  In New Zealand, Aukland University's Associate Medical Professor, Mark Bolland reviewed nearly 54-thousand cases, and found that even in higher doses, vitamin D had no preventative effect.  His conclusion is that if you are healthy, you don't need extra vitamin D to prevent fractures, however, if you are seriously deficient -  take vitamin D.  

The review did not cover vitamin D and cancer or heart disease.  Right now, more than 100-thousand people around the world, are in vitamin D trials, including research into cancer and heart disease. 

The weather forecast shows sunshine most of the week, and I plan to be outdoors enjoying the UVBs!  Although, midweek could see thick clouds of smoke covering the sunlight in many Canadian cities...October 17th, marijuana becomes legal, and this country's skies could be a little hazy.

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated

Cherry Blossoms, Little Richard and Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream

Imagine Little Richard screaming across the stage, A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom!  That's the perfect description of the arrival of Spring in Toronto.  Winter drags on for months, then - kaboom - an explosion of Spring colour, as everything bursts into bloom all at once. 

Little Richard's 1955 release, Tutti-Frutti takes its name from tutti i frutti, Italian for "all fruits".  With Spring in full bloom here in Toronto, ice cream shops are reopening their doors, and tutti-frutti ice cream is an ever popular choice.

These photographs remind me of cherries, lemon peel, grated orange, lime - and dollops of whipped cream!  Searching through recipes, tutti-frutti ice cream is often made with dried and fresh cherries, raisins, candied citrus, papaya and pineapple.  There are as many variations as there are ice cream shops around the world.

If you have an ice cream churner (who doesn't???), this is a great recipe for homemade Tutti-Frutti ice cream, using fresh stone fruits and berries:

500 ml (2 Cups) peaches, apricots, and/or cherries chopped into small pieces
175 ml (3/4 Cup) sugar
350ml (12 oz) evaporated milk
250 ml (1 Cup) whipping cream (35% MF)
15 ml (1 Tbsp) lemon juice
45 ml (3 Tbsp) orange juice
5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla
2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) almond extract
500 ml (2 C) mashed raspberries, and/or strawberries

If you haven't already, remove all the pits from the peaches, apricots, and cherries (otherwise, you'll find out the hard way why they're called stone fruits).  Also, remove the skins from peaches, and apricots by blanching them in boiling water, and peeling the skins off.

Puree all of the ingredients, except for the berries.  Chill.  Churn in the ice cream machine.  Pour into a large bowl, and stir in the mashed berries.  If you like soft ice cream, get a spoon NOW!  If you plan to scoop the ice cream into cones, then it has to harden in the freezer.

What's with the derogatory word "wop", all through Little Richard's Tutti-Frutti?  The word has been around since the early 1900's in America.  Many think it stands for "without papers", or "without passports", and described illegal Italian immigrants to the US.  Impossible, since not having immigration papers wasn't an issue until the World War I era.  Actually, the word originates from the Sicilian, guappo, which means a swaggering thug.  That in turn, came from the ancient Romans, who described a worthless man as vappa, meaning sour wine.

As far as I've been able to determine, lyrically speaking, wop is just a sound, like sha-boom.  Don't read anything into the lyrics.  Little Richard described the wop-bop-a-loo-bop line as the drum beat sound inside his head.  Boom!

With the exception of the song title, nothing in the song Tutti-Frutti has anything to do with Italian ice cream.  The original lyrics - which might not be approved by today's censors, let alone censors back in the mid 1950s - had to do with gay sex.

Little Richard's original song was "cleaned up" by a woman he referred to in a Rolling Stone interview, as, "some chick".  Dorothy LaBostrie used to like going to the neighbourhood drug store to buy ice cream.  One day she and her girlfriend, went into the drug store and discovered a new flavour, Tutti-Frutti.  "Right away I thought, 'Boy, that's a great idea of a song'.  So I kept it in the back of my mind until I got to the studio that day."  Years later, all through the 1980's, that "chick" made ten to twenty thousand US dollars a year in royalties from the song.  Aw rooty is slang for, all right!

A musical genre that works with Italian ice cream (besides authentic Italian music) is Doo-wop (sometimes called Do-wop).  It wasn't created by Italian-Americans, but they certainly made it their own.  Think of urban street corner and subway acappella groups in the late '50s and early '60s.  Just Google, Denise by Randy and the Rainbows, or, A Teenager in Love, by Dion and the Belmonts, Hushabye, by The Mystics, Juke Box Saturday Night, By Nino and the Ebb Tides, or the Capris hit, There's a Moon Out Tonight, to get a sense of the Italian influence on the genre.

There's a lot to be said for a full multi-sensory experience...sights, sounds, tastes, fragrances.  If you're going to venture out to photograph this Spring's lovely blossoms, bring music with you, and perhaps pick up some ice cream cones on the way!

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.

World Photography Day

Of all my senses, I most cherish my sense of sight.  It is a gift to look into the expressive eyes of another; to see the ever changing colours of the evening sky; to gaze in awe at the unique colours, patterns and shapes of flower petals.

It is part of what makes us human, that we desire to share our experience of the world with others. Long ago, a friend who had gone on an Outward Bound adventure - days of which had to be hiked in isolation - said that he saw so many amazing landscapes, skyscapes, birds and animals, yet there was no one to share the glory of the moment with.  No one to nudge and say, "hey, look at this!"

All of our ancestors must have felt the same desire.  Pick a flower, press it between the pages of a book, and try to describe what it looked like when it was fresh and alive.  Draw a picture.  Paint a picture. 

  

  

Just over two hundred years ago, all that changed.  French inventor, Joseph "Nicephore" Niepce, took the first photographic image, using what was called a camera obscura.   Unlike today's cameras, his 1814 camera needed eight hours of exposure to light to produce an image.  Once the image was formed, Niepce couldn't keep it, because the image blackened the longer it was exposed to light. Now you see it, now you don't.

Then, in 1825 or '26 (or '27, depending on what you read), Niepce took what is now regarded as the world's oldest surviving photograph.  Point de vue de la fenetre du Gras, or View from the Window at Le Gras.  He used a combination of chemicals including bitumen of Judea (asphalt), and lavender oil to prevent light from further blackening the image.

The photograph has since been retouched, so that we are better able to see what Niepce saw from his window, overlooking his family estate in Burgundy.  

The first photograph of a recognizable human figure happened either by accident, or experimentation. In 1837, Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerrotype process, was photographing the street view from his high window, overlooking Boulevard du Temple (near the Knights Templar temple). The exposure was "only" 10 or 15 minutes long, however, people moving about their daily lives are blurred into invisibility...with the exception of a man who stood still long enough to be captured in the photograph.  The world's first person to have his picture taken, was a man having his boots shined on the street corner!  You can see him in the bottom left corner of the picture.  The shoeshine boy, is only recognizable as a human figure, once his customer is identified.

There's some discussion about just how accidental this shot was.  Some say, that a skilled shoeshine boy wouldn't take 15 minutes to shine one boot - what customer would want to stand that long? What's more, the figures appear to have been strategically placed at a visual point of interest, with the tree lined street pointing from the temple to their corner.

Up until 1900, photography had been the realm of wealthy inventors, artists and entrepreneurs.  The Brownie camera, invented for Eastman Kodac by Frank Brownell, brought photography to the masses.  It sold for one dollar (not including the cost of a roll of film).  Colour film came along in 1941.  The beginning of the end of those rolls of film came in 1984, when Canon introduced the first digital camera.  By 1999, the first mobile phone with a camera and video device was introduced. Now, everyone is taking pictures!  We're the most photographed people ever!

We're entering a new era of Computational Photography, which uses multiple cameras and collected data to produce 3D and HDR (high dynamic range) images to create photographs with lighting and detail which is at once super real and surreal.  

Floral photography is my natural pain and stress reliever, thus the company name Widow's Endorphins.  Hours pass, and I am blissfully focussed on a new series of floral images, and eager to share them with you!  Hey, look at this! 

World Photography Day is Saturday, August 19th.  Take your camera, or phone with you wherever you go, and record the gift that is today.

Photographs by Joseph Nicephore Niepce and Louis Daguerre taken from Wikipedia.

Photographs Copyright:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.