Squeaky Clean

I knew it! Being too clean is not good according to scientists who work with friendly and not so nice bacteria. We need those little things inside us to keep our alimentary canals in order and they just love a little dirt now and then. Apparently, it makes their lives interesting and productive. I have always harboured a suspicion that houses with pristine corners and counters or those who put bleach in the water to wash their vegetables have deeper problems than a bit of grime. I always ask myself on entering these domains of super cleanliness, "What are these folks really trying to clean up? Their lives?"  Now it seems we should not worry over-much about scrubbing little junior germ-free but rather, allow him to get his pound of dirt going early on. Also, running to the doctor for a load of antibiotics every time the kiddies bloom runny noses and slightly sore throats isn't a good idea. Recommendations say, find some other way to relieve those minor discomforts for fear of using antibodies that destroy all bacteria, even the good guys lurking inside us that we need for healthy lives. Apparently, a bit of a battle goes on in our intestines when the good bacteria battle it out for dominance and usually win. Scientists say it makes them stronger and last longer. Squeaky clean innards are apparently not as much fun as we were once told. Those little things in our bodies just love a good fight once in awhile. So next time the little one kisses the dog, don't panic. Or when mud pies in the back yard are served up by tykes who take an experimental bite occasionally, no need to run screaming out with a toothbrush and mouth wash. A few bad boys in the mouth, don't necessarily do the harm we think they do. Not to say we should loll in  mud or let the house go to rack and ruin, but rather, we needn't be fanatics about scrubbing those apples or potatoes to a shine. Also, the foods with the pro-biotics are not quite as effective in our bodies as just plain old dirt. Not that we want to go out and feed it to the kids. Fibrous foods remain king and things like red wine, EV olive oil, garden veggies or naturally pickled items such as sauerkraut, for example, do lots of good work in the body. The difference between slim and fat surprisingly has more to do with how many of those little workers inside your intestines can be mustered up and not by counting the calories. By the way, nice to know that dark chocolate is one of the good fellows!

Elderly? What's That?

Apparently, one is a Senior around the age fifty-something and in the newspaper, "elderly" is an age number, not one's condition. I have always assumed that an elderly person is someone who, through no fault of their own, is in poor health and has trouble getting around. They take on the "elderly" look. Unlike general incorrect opinions, it has really nothing to do with grey hair, a stoop or wearing something unfashionably outdated. (The latter could be as a result of trying to live on a pension that allows nothing more fashionable than canned tuna fish and macaroni or the big M. On a good day.)  It riles me to see someone referred to as "elderly" when they are more active than most forty year olds. And anyway, it's an attitude toward life that denotes young or elderly. While a person's years may be beyond fifty, sixty or even seventy, some can't, fairly, be called "elderly". Then again, I do know certain people my age, who adore being elderly. They work very hard at whining about their ills and troubles and the "state of the world today" and how much better it was when they were "young". Often times, they fall into the laps of their families because they are simply lonely. Being alone can be a boon. It doesn't mean being lonely. I know too many individuals who are living with others and complain that they always feel "lonely".  Living alone is what we did when we were young folk just out into the world making a living. We loved our small apartments or rooms and had fun doing them up the way we liked them. We valued our independence. Being older might mean you no longer have your former mate with you but it can become a learning experience. You learn how to do the things your mate did and find it a revelation that you can, indeed, cook, clean, use repair tools and deal with business matters quite well all by yourself. You find ways to get around and to enjoy the new kind of life that you are so fortunate to be living. But when, after all that you have strived to do and did accomplish, you are called "elderly", it sucks. Yes, let's use that term. It's one of the new words you hear and you think privately, now that's a good way to describe it! While I don't advise one to be running around in a mini skirt and six inch heels when you are over the hill a bit, you also don't need to give up on life and collapse into a soggy heap. Your family will congratulate you on working at your independence and you will feel very successful and personally rewarded for your efforts. You are not "elderly" until you decide to be. Maybe never!

Whistler

No, I'm not speaking of the fantastic BC ski location or of the Seven Dwarves, but just whistling. What you do when you put your lips together and blow. You don't hear whistling these days of little plastic blobs stuck in ears and pockets full of small things festooned with buttons and keys clicking away non-stop. The world seems to have forgotten the "instrument" that we all carry around constantly, and can use any time; electricity, micro towers and airwaves, notwithstanding. What made me think of it, a long past recollection, was an old, classic melody I happened to hear today on my sound system. It seemed very familiar and suddenly I realized why that nostalgic memory arose. My mother whistled it. She passed away some time ago and strangely I had forgotten completely how beautifully she whistled tunes. She was no singer, nor am I, but she could whistle songs like a lovely little bird. And on key. The music she chose to whistle, was usually show music, the old romantic kind about lasting love and also, the loss of it. The music I heard that made me remember her whistling, remains nameless but it is one of those things that resonate. Mom was a worker. She was a small, pretty little woman, with great drive and determination. She couldn't sit still but used her hands tirelessly, to make pretty things not only for us, her family, but also for others. She wasn't paid in dollars to do it, but did it for the sheer joy of making friendship something pleasurable and was repaid in kind. While she sewed or baked, did crafts or house chores, she whistled. I don't think she was aware that she was, in fact, whistling. It came naturally for her to whistle while she worked, just like the Seven Dwarves. Warbling, sweet notes came flitting out of her tiny mouth puckered up kiss-like and while her hands flew at whatever task she chose, so did, in same time, the tweets and lilting music. Once in awhile, if she was particularly engrossed in a certain problem to do with a turn of a seam or the basting of a complicated dart, she'd stop momentarily but then, continue on, unaware entirely that she had been in the middle of a passage of complicated notes. When she began again, not a beat was missed. No one mentioned her gift for whistling because lots of people did it in her era. All kids that I knew, tried whistling. Some had a hard time at first but everyone caught on eventually. Whistling is a lost art and could be revived as a valuable, stress relieving tool today. It's free, it's easy and you can do it anywhere, any time. If you know a song, try it. I dare you. Just put your lips together, remember a song and tweet. The real kind.

Let There Be Light

Lighting is a dicey subject. Some like blinding globs of it, while others prefer the dim dark. I am sort of in-between on the subject, but my bark today is that light is largely ignored. Within one's abode, the subject is not an issue; there are a million choices. And they affect only who is under that roof. Outside is another matter. Street lights emblazon our ways and ugly up the landscape but nobody sees the wires and poles for some reason. They will put up a fight for a mail box or a sign that bothers them, but completely ignore the bevy of lighting that disallows a glimpse of stars at night. If you asked an urbanite what planets it could see from its high-rise balcony, it would look at you as though you were insane. Stars?  You only do that in the country, not here. Oh yes, we have a lovely view of the moon, but stars? Nope. To see the gorgeous array of diamonds in the firmament, you need a dark sky. The milky way is something most children have not been introduced to. It is a shame because it is a sight that makes us know that our little world, this planet, may not be the only one in the galaxy. It is space space for dreaming and imagining. We disallow ourselves in cities, the pleasure of this stress relieving activity, by having not just too much light, but light of the wrong kind. One of the small places where I once lived, passed a bylaw in their seaside town, that  lighting was not to be the white, harsh glaring street lighting but that which is soft-toned and beamed downwardly to not offend. Some towns have street lighting that goes on only if there is human movement below. Some places have by-laws that prohibit lighting that is too bright and appears uninvited in someone else's yard. Where I live  in a complex, there are very pleasant garden lights that shine on pathways and not upwards. All lighting has what we can call "switches". Some are automatic and set to go on when needed. Others are manual. Why lighting at all?  On the farm in the good-old-days, we used oil lamps. We children were given the job by our farm grandparents of carrying lanterns in the farmyard at night. It was a big responsibility and we took it seriously. There were full milk pails to consider and farm dogs weaving amongst people's legs to avoid. Furthermore, there was real fire to be careful of. And that is ominous to youngsters. But the best times were star gazing when the lights were not on and constellations could be seen. Later, flashlights replaced the lanterns and then, those horrid garish gas lamps were introduced, the ones that some inconsiderate folk use in campsites. But it is progress and that's okay. Progress, however, should be harnessed for control, before it controls us. Every kind of lighting has its purpose, even the horrible gas lamps occasionally in some situations. Security lighting is essential because thieves and their ilk don't like to carry on their miserable trade under spotlights.  But even lighting placed to protect the honest people from those who aren't, can do its job without offending the good guys. Work spaces where residential neighbours can't see the offensive shine are fine, but they should be directed where they need to be, not into the upper sky. That isn't hard to do. People in residential districts can keep their lighting in their own yards for security but be respectful of others.  Let there be light, and let it be put there with careful thought.  Lighting is to help see, not offend.

A High School Ago

At my high school, a rather pompous little thing of around three hundred kids, mostly progeny of the snob set, there were invitational clubs. There was another school not far off,  that most students went to, on the other side of town. Educationally speaking, it was better. The small city had a history of a class system stemming from its industrial roots. It was a nice little town on a hillside over-looking a river that once saw paddle wheel boats plying up and down its shores. Later on these craft became larger ships to sail off with the area's natural resources: jam, tins of fish and boards. Like most old towns on the coast, there were well defined management  and worker sections. They were a sort of ghetto system that nobody talked about. If you came from one side of the street that divided the rich from the poor, you knew it. Everyone knew it. I happened to live on the "good" side, in the gardener's cottage of a once fine mansion that was home to the biggest timber magnate in the city. My dad was a worker but the house price was right so that's where I ended up. My friends at school were all "well off" being the children of the white collared professionals and business folk who made their living off the poorer set. For some reason, however, I fit in and was accepted - to a point. In those days, schools were less regulated than now. Parents pretty much left kids alone to do what they expected them to do - get  ready to go to university and become something. Universities were different too. If you could afford it and make a pass mark, you got in. Whether you stayed there or not, didn't matter. Most of the girls married by the second year and became housewives. The boys at the U tried to find rich girls to support them. It turned out, ironically, that the poorer kids who managed through jobs on weekends and nights, were the ones who stayed in post grad  and became the noveau riche down the line. About that time, the town began to curl up at its edges, perhaps out of shock that its decline could happen. Anyway, the fashionable part of town latterly became a collection of post and beam box houses and little strip malls on the top of the hill. Later, the mansions below were apartmentized and the once popular main street sadly fell into a haven for drug dealers and gambling addicts. The town is now desperately being "revitalized", but it's glory days are forever gone. What memories I have of my young life there, are positive for the most part but school attitudes stayed with me as they do with everyone who went to a high school. The exclusive invitational clubs were cruelly insular. Parents of those invited in, ran them using their own sorority and fraternity experience to bear. Membership was kept small and the boys and girls who sported club sweaters and pins, were revered not only by the students but also by the teachers. Of course, I was not invited. I found other non-invitational clubs and activites that kept me busy and happy. But the knowledge that I would never have been invited in to one unless I wore the right clothes or had the right parents and lived in a mansion, stayed with me.  I could feel the hurt while understanding the system. It was a perfect lesson in reverse tolerance. Noblesse oblige was seen, not heard in my town. But it was okay, because I developed a determination that put me eventually on an equal plane with my peers further down the road of life. Much later, during reunions of the school that no longer exists, I learned that none of my peers knew I was not invited into their clubs. Our indoctrination then, did not allow comparisons, we just lived the times and put up with what it presented. Wouldn't happen today!

Recycle Rethink

I am a firm believer in recycling and trying to reduce land fill. There is a "but" involved here. The other day on the garbage room door. A notice stuck to it told us not to put plastic bags into the recycle bins. My reaction was 'What?". Being that businesses continue to hand out their products in plastic bags, we end up with a dearth of them. We used to put them into the recycle bins but now what do we do with them? I, faithfully, as most do, wash out bottles and squash tins, rinse wrap with food on it, separate this kind of thing from that and religiously follow the posted rules for garbage collection. There are three receptors under my sink and I play the sorting game every and all day. I used to put my plastic bags duly knotted into the recycle bin but that is no more. It was one thing to not be able to put beverage alcohol bottles into the bins even though they are glass albeit apparently not the same as the mayo bottles. I have to gear up my polluting car and take the wine bottles to a depot where in the smelly and dirty place I mingle with the guy who makes his living doing this. I wait in line while this chap puts through his weekly collection of hundreds of bottles and cans. Now, I am not complaining about this wonderful guy who helps us keep the streets clean, but I really do not want to spend time in this noisy and rather unpleasant place being the little old lady that I am. It was bad enough trying to find a parking spot to get in here not to mention the three or four miles worth of gas to do so. But that is another tale. Back to the plastic bags. Yes, I do take my cloth bags duly washed from time to time and duly forget them in the trunk of my car, but I try just as you do. But that doesn't mean I am free of the plastic situation. On line purchases come in plastic, other stores with large items, clothing stores and so on, use plastic bags. Are they biodegradable? And if not, why not? Then we could perhaps have them join up with the other stuff that seems to be unrecyclable to the experts. I went on line to find out why plastic bags are not to go into recycle bins and there were reasons, but there was no help with the question, okay what do I do with all of these bags other than use them as real garbage sacks. There are just too many of them. I know, I know those of you folks who have lots of time and commitment have no sympathy for crybabies like me but the news is that most people are me. We are kind of lazy and maybe not as easy to convince. The bottom line is, that if the powers that be, don't make this recycle movement easy enough for slobs like me, we just opt out. Advice is: make it simple enough and sensible enough, that all people will put forth an effort to recycle because if that doesn't happen, there will be cheating. I will do my part to change. Now the recyclers should do theirs. Give us a place to put ALL bottles and ALL plastic bags and for sure, you will get ALL cooperation and no sneaky petes. They'll busy doing what they can, I promise you - and more - to keep this planet going as long as we can.