Nature is awesome

by Ruth Griffiths

Nature has the power to heal us, connect us and build community. Nature is awesome.

Nature is a prescription for good health. Studies have shown that as little as 20 minutes in a green space can help children with attention deficit disorder cope better with the challenges of everyday living. A walk in the park can soothe your mind, lower your stress levels and aid digestion.

Our bodies were made for movement. It feels good to get outdoors in the fresh air and feel the sun and the wind on the skin. Getting away from artificial lights, noise and technology creates an oasis of peace in a crowded day.

After my husband retired, he occasionally picked me up from work at noon and we took a picnic lunch to Little Red River Park. After eating our sandwiches, we took a short walk to admire the new growth that was always in abundance. That 45-minute picnic in the middle of the day was a relaxing as a vacation.

The beauty and grandeur of nature inspire awe. Awe is defined as “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.” Standing before a waterfall, you can’t help but feel inspired by the power of the falling water. The waterfall is awesome in its extreme beauty and potential for harm.

Nature can also be awesome when it connects us with others. Looking out from the top of the ski hill at Big River, I felt small in comparison to the vastness of the valley spread out before me. But I felt connected to the people who were standing with me to view that wonderful panorama.

Some of my most memorable days have been spent in outdoor activities with others: picking berries, searching for wildflowers, identifying birds. Picking berries helps me feel connected to the thousands of generations of women who have foraged for their families. Looking for wildflowers and birds is an intellectual pursuit that never fails to enrich me.

When my grandmother was 95 she still had her bird books spread out in front of her living room window, ready to identify the feathered friends who flew into her farm yard. Learning about our natural world is a hobby I hope to pursue as long as I live.
I believe that if we want our lives to be awesome, we need only to acknowledge our place in nature. As a community, we are interconnected in our awesome world.

Mothering roles change as we age

by Ruth Griffiths

As my mother and I get older, our roles are reversing in some ways. Being a daughter has quietly morphed into a mothering role with my own mother. Gradually my sister and I are assuming more responsibility for our mother.

My mother took care of everything at home and allowed me to grow up mostly carefree. When I produced children of my own, she was there to support me, but not smother me. She did what she could from a distance to help me learn how to be a mother myself.

But gradually, as she enters her 10th decade, I am taking on more of the caregiver roles: remembering the birthdays, organizing family gatherings, arranging her medical care, assuming financial responsibilities, shopping for her clothes. As my mother has become less mobile and less energetic, I have taken on the necessary role of mothering the one who gave me life.

We enjoy each other’s company, but it is difficult to discuss deeper issues with my mother, now. Her world has become smaller and her memory of recent events is short. So we chat about the things she remembers well… laughable moments from my childhood, such as the time we fed watermelon seeds to a mouse who lived under the bureau in the hall of our farmhouse. My mother seems to come alive when she discusses the events of her youth, so that has become a welcome topic during our visits. I love to hear about her growing up years and she seems to enjoy telling me her stories.

When I take my mother for a medical appointment, for example, I zip up her coat, remind her to wear her gloves and steady her as she gets into the car. I don’t mind going slowly with her because she was the one who held both my hands when I was taking my first steps. It’s my turn to be the helper.

Sometimes I miss being just the daughter. Sometimes I want to cry on her shoulder and have her tell me it will be all right. But I know that, as we get older, it is more difficult to handle stressful emotions, so I try to keep our conversations light. It’s my time to be the mother and I can reassure her that it will be all right.

It’s been a joy to write this column for 20 years

by Ruth Griffiths

Mother’s Day is the 20th anniversary of my column in Rural Roots.

Rural Roots used to be published on Sundays, but switched to Thursday publication to accommodate production and distribution schedules. Rural Roots is published by Prince Albert Daily Herald and distributed free to homes in North Central Saskatchewan. It’s an area that I know well, having grown up in Tisdale.

I moved to Prince Albert as a bride in 1969 and worked for a year in the lab at Victoria Union Hospital, before returning to classes in Saskatoon to finish a Bachelor of Science degree. I interned at the Prince Albert hospital and became a Registered Laboratory Technologist. My first job was in the lab at Prince Albert Medical Clinic. In 1975 left behind my science career to become a stay-at-home parent.

I started work in 1981 as the Women’s Editor for the Daily Herald. I thought it would be for just a year or two, but I ended up working 29 years for the Herald. I moved to being Assistant City Editor, then City Editor and finally Rural Roots Editor in 1997. I was laid off in May 2010, along with eight other people, when editorial and composing functions were centralized in Moose Jaw. I returned to the newsroom part-time and was laid off again in December.

After my husband died in 2006, I became a certified fitness instructor. My first regular class was with seniors at the Heritage Centre. It’s an age group with whom I feel a special kinship.

Since 2009, I have been the instructor for the Easy Adult Fitness program offered by the City of Prince Albert at the Margo Fournier Centre. I also teach chair-assisted yoga for the Acquired Brain Injury group, Abbeyfield House and Calvary United Church.

You can see that the continuous thread through the last 20 years has been writing this column, which I continue to do from home. Writing this column has been a special privilege. I hope to be able to continue it for years to come.

What shall we chat about today?

by Ruth Griffiths

People often ask me how I come up with the topics I write about in this column. Today we will explore that at length.

I usually write about the things that I have recently discussed with my family and friends. I share my ideas with them first and get some feedback. That process helps me to form an opinion. Usually some research is required too, but my personal experiences usually colour my opinions more than facts do.

Often I write for a specific date such as Valentine’s Day, Easter or Mother’s Day. But other times I write for a date that is not well known because it is the anniversary of something in history. Usually I look for an item that has some personal meaning for me so that the topic can be a vehicle for expressing my opinion.

For example on April 27, 1810, Beethoven composed Für Elise. Almost anyone who has taken piano lessons will have learned to pick out this tune. You might also have heard it on a music box. Such was the case for a black jewelry box that belonged to my maternal grandmother.

I visited her one summer during my teens and admired the black lacquered box in her bedroom. It was decorated with paintings of flowers in an Oriental style. She gave me the box and I have treasured it for its function and my memories of her.

When the lid was opened the box used to play Für Elise. Alas, the mechanism has become damaged and it no longer plays a tune.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized the irony of the tune. My grandmother’s name was Elizabeth, but most called her Elsie. The music box played its tune “For Elsie.”

Sometimes the thoughts I share with you are as insignificant as an heirloom music box, but your positive responses to my columns encourage me to continue to write them.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to tell me what they have liked (or sometimes disliked!) about what I have written. For me, writing a column is like chatting with family or friends. I hope you enjoy our chats as much as I do.

The sew-sew history of sewing machines

by Ruth Griffiths

This winter I have enjoyed helping to produce practical quilts for men and women in Prince Albert shelters. So far this season we have delivered 76 quilts. Margaret Ferguson runs the program out of her well-equipped basement sewing room. Helpers are mainly from her church and Girl Guides. Over the past several years the volunteers have produced 298 quilts.

Good coffee and conversation fuel the fingers that piece together tops for the quilts. A commercial batting is sandwiched between the top and a plain backing (often a repurposed sheet). All three layers are tied together at four-inch intervals so the layers won’t shift around with use and laundering. Tying the quilts by hand takes some time, but is the most social part of the process.

At home, while I was sewing together squares of fabric for a quilt top, I wondered about the history of the domestic sewing machine. It seemed that the basic working mechanism has changed little in my lifetime.

According to Wikipedia, the English inventor Thomas Saint designed the first sewing machine in 1790. It used a single-thread chain stitch and was used for sewing leather into saddles and canvas into ship sails.

Chain stitch rips out easily. You might have ripped it out of the top of a potato sack. Today the lockstitch is more common. It uses two threads to produce an interlocking stitch and mechanisms to hold and move the fabric along as it is sewn together. Several types of lockstitch sewing machines appeared in North America around 1832. According to Wikipedia, Isaac Merritt Singer pulled together ideas from several machines to produce the first Singer sewing machine in 1851… and the sewing machine wars were off! It was a typical American business story. There were legal disputes over patents and mergers to starve the competition. Machines were sold on credit plans.

Clothing manufacturers were the first sewing machine customers and used them to produce the first ready-to-wear clothing and shoes. But by the 1860s, sewing machines became common in middle-class homes.

Before sewing machines became common, women spent much of their time maintaining their family’s clothing. Middle-class housewives, even with the aid of a hired seamstress, would devote several days of each month to this task. According to Wikipedia, it took an experienced seamstress at least 14 hours to make a dress shirt for a man; a woman’s dress took 10 hours; and a pair of summer pants took three hours. Most individuals would have only two sets of clothing: a work outfit and a Sunday outfit.

Sewing machines reduced the time for making a dress shirt to an hour and 15 minutes; the time to make a dress to an hour; and the time for a pair of summer pants to 38 minutes. Women were freed from the long hours spent stitching clothing by hand. Factory produced clothing further reduced the amount of time women spent sewing at home.

Very few people sew their own clothing today, either by hand or by machine. But when I help to produce quilts for the homeless, I can appreciate the long hours that inventors spent perfecting the sewing machine.

Christians agree on Easter date this year

by Ruth Griffiths

For the first time in many, many years Christians from both the Eastern and Western traditions will celebrate Easter together on April 16.

Easter is the most important Christian feast, and the proper date of its celebration has been the subject of controversy as early as the meeting of Anicetus and Polycarp around 154.

In 325CE, the Council of Nicaea established that Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. From that point forward, the Easter date depended on the ecclesiastical approximation of March 21 for the vernal equinox.

In 1583, the Catholic Church began using March 21under the Gregorian calendar to calculate the date of Easter, while the Eastern Churches have continued to use March 21 under the Julian calendar.

The earliest and latest dates for “Western” Easter are  March 22 and April 25. However, in the Orthodox/Eastern Churches, while those dates are the same, they are reckoned using the Julian calendar; therefore, on the Gregorian calendar those dates are April 4 and May 8.

According to the Bible, Jesus held the Last Supper with his disciples on the night of the Jewish festival of Passover, died the next day (Good Friday) and rose again on the third day (the following Sunday). Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus on that Sunday.

The beginning of Passover is determined by the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which can occur on any day of the week. To ensure that Easter occurs on a Sunday, the Council of Nicaea therefore ruled in 325AD that Easter would be celebrated on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. But there’s a twist: if the full moon falls on a Sunday, then Passover begins on a Sunday, so Easter is then delayed by a week to ensure that it still occurs after Passover.

To confuse matters further, the council fixed the date of the vernal equinox at March 21, the date on which it occurred in 325AD (though it now occurs on March 20), and introduced a set of tables to define when the full moon occurs that do not quite align with the actual astronomical full moon (which means that, in practice, Easter can actually occur before Passover).

We celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25, why couldn’t Easter be on a fixed date? In 1928 Britain’s parliament passed a law, which has not been implemented, that would define Easter as the Sunday after the second Saturday in April. Another proposal would define Easter as the second Sunday in April. Several churches, including the Catholic church, say they are open to the idea of setting the date of Easter in this way, but until there is widespread agreement, its date will continue to jump around within a five-week window. Hoppy Easter!

What’s good about getting older?

By Ruth Griffiths

North Americans spend billions every day fighting the inevitability of aging. We are all getting older and it doesn’t look pretty but, as Woody Allen said, “Consider the alternative.”

Of all the forms of discrimination in our society, “ageism” is the most prevalent. Ageism is defined as discrimination against persons of a certain age group. In general, we have “a tendency to regard older persons as debilitated, unworthy of attention, or unsuitable for employment.”

Ask an actor to portray an old person and they will shuffle along, complaining about their lumbago and shouting “speak up Sonny.” It’s not an image that we strive to achieve. Most older people agree with Rodney Dangerfield, “I don’t get no respect.”

We have painted an ugly picture of aging, but if you scratch beneath the surface, you will find that there are proven benefits to getting older.

As you get older you tend to care less about what other people think. I see this every day in my fitness classes for older adults. Younger women tend to be more competitive during a workout, but the older women are there to maintain health and have fun. They support and encourage each other, rather than trying to be the strongest and fastest in the exercise class.

Similarly, as you age you tend to get to know yourself better and focus more on what you want for yourself. Of course not everyone over 55 is totally satisfied with their life.

But those who age successfully learn to love themselves. We look in the mirror and proclaim, “You’ve come a long way, baby!”

After a certain age we stop trying to be someone else just to make others happy while ignoring our needs. We embrace the freedom to be ourselves.

We may come to realize that our true value and worth has little to do with how we look or what we do in the world, and everything to do with who we are at the centre of our being.

Contrary to the stereotype of the grouchy old man, studies have shown that we can expect to be happier in our early 80s than we were in our 20s. We actually experience less stress, possibly because we learn to “let go of the small stuff… and everything is small stuff.”

As we age we leave behind the emotional rollercoaster of our younger years and learn to enjoy life for the treasure that it is.
One of the stereotypes of aging might actually be true. We become wiser with age, possibly because we have more life experience.

A University of Michigan study found that older people are better at reasoning when it comes to social dilemmas and conflicts.

When presented with various stories about conflict, they specifically are more adept at understanding different perspectives, suggesting compromises and coming up with several reasonable resolutions.

When it comes to aging, “resistance is futile.”

But resisting ageism is worthwhile and necessary.

Start with yourself; tell yourself each day that it is not just OK but desirable to become older.

Stop thinking of aging as a disease and see it as a natural progression of life.

Embrace change and the wonderful things that are going to happen in your life.

Ruth Griffiths is the former editor for Rural Roots and a long-time resident of Prince Albert.

That ‘thickening’ feeling

by Ruth Griffiths

When I put on my Capri pants for the first time this season I got that “thickening” feeling. The pants seemed a lot tighter than I remembered them being last summer. I might be able to fool the bathroom scales, but waistbands don’t lie. There is definitely more to me than there used to be.

Losing weight appears to be a self-defeating process. When you eat fewer calories than you consume, your body must use up some of your stored fat and you lose weight. But it doesn’t end there. The body now thinks you are entering a period of famine and starts to conserve energy by slowing your metabolism. Your body becomes more efficient and it takes even fewer calories to accomplish everyday living. That’s why it seems you can eat less than you did years ago, but still gain weight.

We also tend to become more sedentary as we age. We’re content to sit and enjoy life, rather than jumping up every five minutes to rush around and do something as we did when we were much younger. And of course, while you’re sitting there you need a little tea and toast!

Exercise can actually reduce your appetite. You might feel so tired that you don’t want to eat. (Unfortunately this rarely happens to me. I’m always ready to eat.) Exercise also speeds up your metabolism so that you are burning more calories, even while you sleep.

What’s the best exercise for the over 55 crowd? It’s the exercise that you DO. In order to maintain a fitness program month after month, you need to enjoy what you are doing. Life’s too short; if it’s not fun, don’t do it.

The same goes for dieting. Any changes you make to your meal plans need to become a part of your lifestyle for the rest of your life. So don’t do anything drastic. Don’t cut out whole groups of food unless you have some medical condition requiring you to do so.

Whatever you choose to do to lose your weight, you need to keep doing to keep it off. Choosing a diet you don’t enjoy is just a recipe for putting the weight back on. If you are going to keep it off you’ve got to like how you’ve lost it enough to keep doing it.
Ruth Griffiths is the former editor of Rural Roots.

Birthdays around the world

by Ruth Griffiths

Today is my birthday. It’s the 68th anniversary of my birth, a very important event … at least in my life. I’ve noticed that women of a certain age are no longer reluctant to announce their age. And when you reach a century, you begin to announce your age is fractions again, like the very young do. You are 99 and a half or 100 and a quarter.

One of the oldest recorded birthdays was over 4,000 years ago when King Pharaoh celebrated his birthday by making a feast for his court followers. Another Bible story tells how King Herod made a birthday supper for his lords, high captains and other special friends in Galilee.

Today most people celebrate their birthday with greeting cards and a decorated cake. Birthday celebrations in the European tradition evolved as attempts to fend off the evil spirits that people believed were attracted to a person celebrating a birthday.

Centuries ago, birthdays were considered a time when the bad spirits, as opposed to the good spirits, were able to harm you. It was believed that the only way to keep the bad spirits at bay was to have your friends and family surround you with their good wishes.

 The custom of lighting candles originated with people believing that the gods lived in the sky and by lighting candles and torches they were sending a signal or prayer to the gods so they could be answered. When you blow out the candles on your cake and make a wish this is another way of sending a signal and a message.

I remember getting the birthday bumps as a child at school. Apparently this tradition originated in Ireland and where the birthday child is lifted and “bumped” on the floor for good luck.  The number of bumps given is the age of the child plus one for extra good luck.

Different cultures celebrate in different ways.

In Brazil, well-wishers pull on the earlobes of the birthday girl or boy for good luck. The party includes candies shaped like fruits and vegetables.

In Australia, a children’s birthday feast includes “Fairy Bread”… buttered bread covered with colourful candy sprinkles. (I’ll bet someone invented this when the cake flopped.)

In India, children wear new clothes on their birthday.

Mexican children smash piñatas at their large birthday gatherings. The piñata is a decorated container for candy. The piñata actually originated in China where they were used to celebrate New Year’s.

I plan to celebrate my birthday with a quiet meal with family, but if I really wanted to keep my birthday secret I would have thought up a different topic to my column, wouldn’t I.

Statistically there are more birthdays at this time of year, so a “happy birthday” wish to all you other spring lambs.

Are Canadian newspapers dying?

by Ruth Griffiths

Canadian newspaper history dates back more than 250 years. Like most industries, newspapers have waxed and waned, but now they seem to be in serious decline. Could it be that newspapers will disappear?

On March 23, 1752, Canada’s first regular newspaper, the Halifax Gazette, began publication. According to Wikipedia, the two-sided paper contained public notices, ads from booksellers and wholesalers, notices about slave auctions, poems and elegies, and excerpts from notable publications.

The Gazette was succeeded in 1874 by the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the oldest existing newspaper in North America. The Halifax Chronicle-Herald is owned by Sarah Dennis of Halifax. It is the largest independently-owned newspaper in Canada.

But the newspaper’s newsroom staff have been locked out of work since January 2016. The newspaper continues to publish but has lost ground to online competitors as well as the free daily Metro Halifax, which is now the most-read newspaper in Halifax.

A month ago, CBC reported that the union that represents 55 striking newsroom staff at the Halifax Chronicle-Herald says contract talks have broken off.

Union president Ingrid Bulmer says union members have already agreed to a longer work week, a five per cent wage cut, fewer vacation days, a freeze to their pension plan, lower salaries for new hires and other concessions.

The newspaper’s management has said big changes are required to meet business challenges.

At one time, owning a newspaper was “a license to print money.”  Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch once described the profits flowing from his newspapers as “rivers of gold”, but several years later said, “sometimes rivers dry up.”

According to the same Wikipedia article, Warren Buffett commented: “If cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the Internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed.”

Newspapers have consolidated with electronic media and cut staff so that today there are fewer reporters. In 2016, for the third year in a row, the CareerCast survey of the best and worst jobs in the U.S. reports that a newspaper reporter is the worst career. It pointed to fewer job prospects because of publications closing down, and declining ad revenue providing less money for salaries. Being an over the air broadcaster was the third worst, and advertising sales is in the bottom 10.

My career with the Prince Albert Daily Herald began in 1981 when the newspaper was owned by Thompson. I have personally witnessed the computerization of the newsroom and production. A new owner, Transcontinental, removed the printing press in 2001 and had the paper printed in Saskatoon. I lost my job when most production and editorial functions were consolidated in Moose Jaw in 2009.

Will we always be willing to have our news delivered to us on paper? Are newspapers dead?