Feast of the bean king, by Jakob Jordaens (1593–1678). Wikimedia Commons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jakob_Jordaens_016b.jpg
I don’t know about you, but I’m finding having people over for dinner for any occasion is getting more and more complicated.
First, there are the scheduling issues. Who is available when, and can we please—please!—manage to get together, all of us, just this once this year? Okay, how about once this decade? This lifetime?
And then there’s the food. With every invitation I send out, I’m tempted to include a dietary-needs declaration form to be filled in and returned with the r.s.v.p. Maybe guests can arrange for their family doctors to sign it, too, or have it notarized. You know, in case they forget something critical.
One friend calls our circle of mutual friends the Picky Eaters’ Club. We include the usual assortment of celiacs, nut and dairy allergies, vegetarians, and blood-sugar problems. We also have some well-meaning foodists—those who choose a particular life or eating style for moral or philosophical reasons, or for just plain personal preference….
Continue reading this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist.…
Saint Nicholas taking on new experiences by exchanging reindeer and sled for a goat. Image: WikiCommons
A friend rings me in December every year and warbles, “Santa baby, slip a sable under the tree for me.” Her sometime-Eartha Kitt, sometime-Madonna Material Girl imitation morphs into one of a 10-year-old requesting a hippopotamus for Christmas.
Then she moves onto the greedier lines of Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, and ends with a rousingly nasal rendition of the Chipmunks demanding hula hoops and planes that loop the loop. We call this annual singsong The Gimme, Gimme, Gimme Medley. It seems to suit the season.
Yet, despite singing about wantin’ stuff, Bev and I inevitably end up talking about events and activities. The concerts we attend during December. The dinners with friends. The family gatherings, the anticipated holiday vacations, the quiet days with good books… .
Some of the activities we talk about come with price tags. Some require only time and effort.
Chances are, those experiences will influence our emotions to greater, longer-lasting and more positive effect than any possessions we acquire during the season, no matter how much we may covet the objects.
According to San Francisco State University psychologist Ryan Howell, people who invest in acquiring experiences over obtaining possessions report greater happiness and life satisfaction. Experiences can include anything from attending concerts or theatre to spending time at the spa, to travel or even going for walks….
Read the rest of this editorial in the Victoria Times Colonist….
Holiday menus and tasty treats figure largely at this time of year. Already, the festive dinners and seasonal parties have begun. Groaning boards are groaning, and horns of plenty are plentiful and overflowing.
The sharing of food, I’ve come to realize, is both a basic human expression of community and a universal means to create community. Around the world, we share food to reinforce traditions, beliefs and values we hold in common.
We punctuate our rituals and beliefs with the exchange of food. Friends and family gather over food to celebrate events or just celebrate the ending of another day or week.
And while we exchange food, we exchange stories. We talk, share news, discuss experiences, debate, argue, laugh, shed tears, get angry, comfort one another. Even though we profess to eschew fat, we still chew the fat.
Once we did this around the campfire, while gnawing on slabs of roasted auroch or bison. That sharing of food and stories brought us together. We communed and became community.
Read the rest of this editorial in the Victoria Times Colonist….
Quiet may be extinct, I thought atop the Highlands’s Jocelyn Hill. I was far from the nearest road, but the whine and hum of traffic climbing the Malahat drifted across Finlayson Arm.
And then a helicopter whirred into view below, drowning out pretty much everything else.
My friend Don tells me he found true quiet once. He had to climb to the top of the El Teide volcano on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, to find it.
That’s a long way to go to find absence—absence of sound.
For the record, I don’t classify sounds of nature as noise. There are exceptions: the shotgun-crack of acorns hitting the rooftop, or predawn choruses of birdsong … or monkey screams or jackal howls or Nature Boy’s snores, depending on where I’m trying to sleep.
Research indicates we humans find run-of-the-mill everyday nature sounds relaxing. Serenades of birdsong and squirrel chatter soothe our usual stress responses, lower our blo.od pressure and heart rate, and slow and deepen our breathing….
Continue reading at the Victoria Times Colonist…
“Sea otters, bah!” Nature Boy says, tongue in cheek. “They’re too easy to love. How can you respect a plush toy?”
Nature Boy is responding to recent reports of sea otters off Langara Island, in Haida Gwaii, and elsewhere on our coast. Although still not common in mid-B.C. waters after its 1970s’ re-introduction, the small marine mammals are slowly repopulating their historic range.
The sea otter’s return is one of Canada’s conservation successes. Confirmed as extirpated by the 1920s, listed as “threatened” in 2002, the sea otter is now considered a “species of concern.”
Nature Boy continues, “Now, the sea urchin—that is a remarkable animal. It has these amazing, intricate jaws….”
“—No match for sea otter jaws,” I interrupt. “Nor is the sea urchin a species at risk. Unlike the sea otter. Or the abalone.”
“Abalone are pretty cool, too,” he admits. “They have those weird breathing holes in the shell, and of course lovely mother of pearl. And they taste real good, too.”
Always a disadvantage for an animal….
Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist.
Nature schools are popping up like mushrooms around here. The preschools and kindergartens immerse kids in local parks and green spaces for half-days and full-days at a time. The kids play outside. They stay outside. They learn about plants and animals, they look at bugs and pond critters, they make friends with trees.
Colwood’s Sangster Elementary program started the trend. Parents have even camped out overnight to register their children in the program.
Saanich’s preschool at Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary started September fully booked, and takes advantage of nature programs offered by sanctuary education staff. The Cridge Centre also started a nature preschool this year. Kiddie Kapers operates out of Commonwealth Recreation Centre, and Victoria Nature School runs out of Mount Doug park and Gordon Head Recreation Centre.
Programs like these put the kinder into the garten — the child into nature. They capitalize on the benefits of being active and outdoors on kids’ mental, physical and emotional health and development….
Read the rest of this editorial in the Victoria Times Colonist….
