What A Wonderful World!

In December, 1961, a painting of Henri Matisse was hung upside down in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

What’s even stranger than that?  

Well, the painting stayed like that for 46 days without anyone noticing it!

Did you know that Picasso could draw before he could speak, and that his first word was “pencil?”

By the way, did you know that the pencil was discovered in England in 1565?

Did you know that Leonardo Da Vinci – as he was left handed – had written all of his personal notes from the right to the left? So, if anyone wanted to read them, they would use a mirror!

Da Vinci also invented high-heel shoes and rumors say that he colored Mona Lisa’s lips twelve years later than the rest of the painting!

Speaking of colors, although people have been drawing for more than 20,000 years, until 1880 you couldn’t find and buy ready mixed paints!

Well, apart from art, the rest of our world is equally strange.

For example, an Italian town councilman supported an ordinance forbidding goldfish in a bowl because the still water doesn’t permit the fish’s proper oxygenation, and they get a distorted image of reality!

I wonder if they know a goldfish has a memory of only three seconds!

On the other side, since 1992 Singapore has outlawed the importation, sale and making of gum! However, after the last commercial deal with the U.S.A., they permit the selling of gum in the pharmacies – only with the prescription of a doctor!

Here is more proof that we live on a strange planet: Virginia Wolf wrote all her books standing up; the Hawaiian alphabet has only twelve letters; horses and rabbits can’t vomit; crickets hear through their knees; sea stars don’t have a brain; the heart of a shrimp is in its head; the heart of the blue whale – the biggest mammal in the planet – is the size of a car; it’s impossible to sneeze with our eyes open, and our eyes remain the same size from birth, but our nose and ears grow constantly during our life!  

And if this world and this era seems crazy to me, imagine how it seems to my grandmother!

Electricity arrived in her village when she was about 15 years old! The people had to bring water to their homes from a fountain outside of the village in containers carried by mules!

She knew that “a refrigerator” was a box with a big piece of ice in it, in order to keep food fresh.

She lived without knowing the word “television” or “toilet paper” until she was 25! She was already a grandmother at 45. She now has a washing machine, but as far as she is concerned, the clothes are really clean only when she washes them by hand with green soap!

Is our world crazier than it already was 50 years ago?

My grandmother can’t understand how I can “find” anything on the internet, as I can’t imagine how it was fifty years ago going to sleep without asking “where is the remote control?”

I understand her wonderment about the Internet . . . “How can you talk with your sister through Internet? I can’t see her, I can’t hear her, where is she . . . what do you mean you have viruses . . . can it be contagious… don’t get too close.”

And the last one: “Please, can you find this recipe for me that I have seen on television? They said it is on the internet and the address starts with www, but I couldn’t write down the rest because they showed it very fast . . . and it was in English. Can you find it?”