Save-a-stamp time
July 16, 2003 at 9:17 pm | In yulelogStories | Comments OffWhen we lived in Vancouver in the early 80s, we used to joke that Canada was the Italy of the north because you never knew what or who was going to be on strike next: anything could go at almost any time. When we moved to the US, we were amazed to have mail delivery on Saturdays, brought up as we were on the strictures of work to rule, with weekends sacrosanct time-off. And Reagan being President then, any US postie union member suggesting collective action would probably have been shot on sight. (Which is basically what R.R. did with the air traffic controllers, who can now go postal without benefit of a contract.) Well, next week it will likely be the Nada Post Service here since the Canadian postal union is set to strike, starting this Friday. Oh Canada.
Canadian Kraft, a triple medley
July 16, 2003 at 4:23 pm | In yulelogStories | Comments OffCheck out this alarming but funny article by David Olive of The Toronto Star, Kraft cooks up a plan to avoid obesity lawsuits. Aside from real information, there’s trivia, too: did you know that company founder J.L. Kraft was the “second-oldest of 11 children in a Mennonite farm family, was the Henry Ford of food, a trailblazer in the mass marketing of cheese, caramels, marshmallows and jams and jellies,” and was from Canada? How about that the food industry is a US$ 1 trillion business which spends US$ 4.5 billion annually on advertising? If you read books like Rick Gallop’s The G.I. Diet (”glycemic index diet”), the fast food and obesity linkage becomes even more apparent. Every molecule in processed & fast food is designed to be converted as quickly as possible into sugar (glucose) in your bloodstream, with your body incapable of putting up any resistance. The G.I. Index was developed by Dr. David Jenkins, a professor of nutrition at the University of Toronto. Another Canadian, eh, and because the diet is NIH (that doesn’t stand for National Institutes of Health, it stands for “not invented here”), you won’t hear much about it in the US. But it’s great if you need to watch heart health & weight. Or need more ammunition to convince your kids to stay away from white bread, commercial peanut butter and jam. And speaking of the kids: the Canadian Home Economics Association is disbanding. As the local paper here puts it, it’s “a sign of modern times now that home ec is no longer taught in many schools and the group doesn’t have the numbers to keep up its credibility.” I learned to make muffins in home ec. I never make them now, but my husband does, for breakfast, and he never took home ec, which might prove the value of disbanding the Home Ec Association. On the other hand, learning to cook has become an upper-middle class aspiration: the gourmet touch, showing that you’re worldly, that you’re more sophisticated than that, meaning that you’re better than white bread and peanut butter. So my kids will keep getting exposed to kitchen chemistry, to exotic foods, and to pretensions of gourmet skills at the stove and food prep counter. You should see our collection of knives! The pots! The Kitchen Aid appliance! The spices! The pizza stone! The Reggiano in a solid (and expensive) wedge! Yeah, yeah, no problem. But what about the kids who are getting raised on white bread junk, with no upper-middle-class aspirations to learn gourmet cooking? Disbanding home ec in those cases just helps the fast food industry get more customers down the road.
Lap topless
July 16, 2003 at 4:01 pm | In yulelogStories | Comments OffI’m still laptopless, it’s in the shop, the guy who fixes Apples is on vacation, and that’s how it will stay until at least next week. Meanwhile: I hate desktops, chairs, and the fact that you’re obliged to sit up straight or suffer the consequences (torqued shoulders, eg.). As the dinner guests in Plato’s Symposium did, a laptop allows you to lounge while you type. Much more civilized than sitting rigid. I’d rather curl on a couch than sit at a desk. Peel me a grape.
Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
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