Food connection

Tomorrow is a big food day all over the country so i decided to dedicate this week’s blog to food and some of its remarkable abilities to connect us all up and help with the big picture.

i’m going to skip foods development and history and go straight to how important it is to eat together.

Studies done on the outcomes of positive future human behavior seem to come up with one common thread. Daily meals, usually dinner, eaten together as a family appeared most frequently in the list of research subjects whose overall mental and physical health was located at the top of the charts.  Those test subjects found with more negative social behaviors tended not to have engaged in communal eating while developing.

My kids are grown now but one thing i remember about eating together every night was the long discussions.  Lots of great talk about how to solve problems, how someone was feeling whether it was negative or positive, current events and questions about something learned in school.  We ran the gamut, no subject was taboo, and everything was discussed and debated openly.

Lots of families today can’t find the time to meet up for dinner.  Work and after school activities play havoc with the limited time available in the evenings so that too many families eat on the run.  A hectic lifestyle makes eating together difficult but certainly not impossible.  Even if you and your children’s schedules are full, try and find one or two days a week when everyone can sit down and enjoy a meal together.  i guarantee the benefits will accrue for all of you and will become apparent in no time.

Eating together creates a sense of belonging, it gives parents the opportunity to teach social skills like how to listen, speak and think; and gathering together for a family meal has emotional, health, and educational benefits that last a lifetime.

My husband and i still eat dinner together every night.  We work together to make the dinner and clean up after, we even set place mats and turn TV’s and radios off.  It is our connect up time, where we really focus on each other without any other distractions.

But families eating together are not the end of the story.  Friends play a role in our overall emotional and physical health and eating with them is just as important.  The sharing of food with friends is an essential ingredient of our social and cultural well-being.

Here on St. Croix a group of us has been meeting up every Friday night for as long as i can remember to eat.  We change the location, eat at one of our homes if the weather is bad or someone is sick, but hardly ever cancel that time together.  We are definitely bonded.

Contrary to those that believe society is falling apart, friends eating together is alive and well.  All over the country people get together for pot-lucks, barbecues and intimate dinners either at home or on the town.  We eat with our friends because that is what humans have always done since our earliest ancestors from the Stone Age.  Those stone agers understood the importance of establishing and maintaining the reciprocal bonds and loyalties that were essential to survival and that hasn’t changed to this day.

Tomorrow, food banks all over the nation will be at full tilt boogey.

Church’s, non-profits that cater to the needy, schools that collect canned goods to donate have all been working non stop all through the year to tend to food instability; this is a regular thing for them.  Too many will not be able to provide a complete meal for their families tomorrow but hopefully they will find open doors where food will be available to them.

Everyone here knows i hate war…well there is a group called Food not Bombs that shares free meals with the hungry in over 1,000 cities around the world to protest war, poverty and the destruction of the environment.  With over a billion people going hungry each day they ask how we can spend another dollar on war.

If you’re looking for a place to donate this holiday season consider them.

Within us is a universe of trillions of cells that need nourishment.  Outside us billions of people also need nourishment so please think about that tomorrow while enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with your family and friends.  Serving food and communing with those you feed is way better than dropping bombs on them.

Hope you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving see ya next week.

PS..Blueberries---are the new hot food.  They are being touted for their ability to zap free radicals, those nasty baddies that can cause cancer, attack the collagen that keeps you from wrinkling, or affect your LDL.  Scientists at Tufts University are claiming that ½ cup of blueberries a day may slow down the cancer, wrinkles, dementia and even failing vision. 

discover normal

Well to start off this piece i have to state categorically that i don’t believe there is any set of criteria that any group of human beings can fit into which would describe them all as normal.

Normal implies something ordinary, something regular, average or typical, something that is the opposite of abnormal(whatever that is).  To be normal you have to fit into prescribed codes of behavior and follow common standards of doing things.  i don’t think any one of us follows a sharply defined life style that would categorize us as normal.

i have friends that do all sorts of things that are outside the bounds of normal(whatever that is), but are natural and normal to them.  One friend feels it is normal for him to watch  a particular football team no matter what else is going on around him.  Another thinks exercising to the point of physical pain is normal.  Another friend thinks it is normal to work a million hours a day even though they don’t have to.  A lot of us think it is normal to accumulate a whole houseful of goods that we then have to pay for to maintain and store. 

All of us living on St. Croix think it is normal to drive on the left, but our visitors don’t.

All of us living on St. Croix think it is normal to feel chilled in seventy degree weather but our visitors don’t.

Normal is collecting water off our roofs and using it for all our needs but that’s not normal in other parts of the world or even here on the island where some have potable water.

What is normal to us personally may be abnormal to our family, friends and visitors.   

So what is really normal? 

The use of the term normal is ambiguous; it can have positive and negative aspects and yet we all use it in our daily speech as if there is some underlying understanding that we all get.  We all think we are part of some "normal" group that are all going about their lives in a similar "normal" manner.  

Well, we all get it(normal), as long as we don’t think about it. We think we know what "normal" is but when we actually start comparing ourselves with others we realize quickly that we have no bloody idea what "normal" is, because none of us do anything the same way.

The common aspects all over the world are the need for food, shelter and nurturing, beyond that there is nothing common or "normal."

One friend of mine thinks normal has to do with looking backwards and not forwards.  He sees it as a major problem and a primary block to just living.   

Not a one of us is “normal.”  Got that?

We do things that we think make us normal, but none of us really understand that “normal” is not possible.  The way we live our lives is normal for us alone but not for anyone else, and it might not even be normal for our partners whose normal is different than ours.

Partnerships, friendships and family life is where this all plays out.  Expectations for certain behaviors create tension when those expectations go unmet.  It’s an unusual person that can recognize this and mold themselves to others requirements.  The easiest way to live in this world is to just accept everyone for who they are not any lofty expectation for how they should behave or live their lives.  If they don't get it in social circumstances well then they don't get it but it doesn't make them abnormal.

All of us follow our own set of patterns that have helped us navigate the world as we know it, only as we know it.  Steering our way through life doesn’t make us “normal” it makes us adaptable.   We adapt to the daily events that confront us, we mold ourselves to negotiate those tasks and daily interactions with as little stress as possible.

So where is all this going?  Its simple... pinch yourself the next time you are considering why some family member, friend or acquaintance hasn’t acted the way you had expected.  Remember, for all of us, that they are not normal and neither are you.

How to live longer

TED, which is a great compendium of speakers from around the world, has a speech up on line that discusses longevity and how it is achieved.

The speaker and researchers decided to investigate pockets of long life that were found in particular communities around the world.  Their question was why were more healthy elderly found in these areas and what circumstances, be it diet, lifestyle, climate, proximity to cities and pollution were common to all.

The researchers picked half a dozen localities ranging from Asia to California where more than one person was living to over 100 years.  Their idea was to find some kind of common thread that might explain why these places had more healthy elderly.

What they found was that it wasn’t location, it wasn’t a particular diet or exercise plan, and it wasn’t even proximity to pollution or stress full environments.  The overriding commonality was interpersonal relationships.

All members of the over 100 group were heavily involved with family first, friends, their church’s or some other aspect of their communities that had them interacting on a daily basis.

One thing i noticed that the study didn’t mention was that except for two places’ all were on islands, i wonder if that had any significance?

Anyway it appears from this study that seclusion tended to kill you off. 

All of these elderly had stayed in one place for a very long time.  They had developed social structures that included other women or men that they had aged with.  One group in particular was a group of Asian women in their late 90’s and early 100’s that had met regularly since their twenties.  They claimed to have met to discuss everything in their village and their personal lives.  They argued, fought, hated and got over it.  They loved and continued it.  They involved themselves in all aspects of the emotions and communal spirit and found ways to thrive and prosper from all the interaction.  They claimed that without this support and their families they wouldn’t be where they are today.

The group of men that aged well lived on an island and did the same thing.  Only they drank, fought, got involved in physical activities, some even smoked, and they spent a lot of time with their friends and family.  All of the elderly men and women lived with some family members, whether they were in the states or some other country.

And that’s where i’m going today.  In the US we have created a market that caters strictly to the elderly.  We have built retirement homes that warehouse our most treasured seniors, keeping them away from daily interactions with their children and grandchildren. We have separated them from society.  We can’t farm their wisdom the way we used to and our children aren’t learning from them because we don’t have ready access to them.

We have made it a goal to prove that each one of us can live independently and take care of ourselves, not be a “burden” and this may be killing us off sooner than necessary.

i just wanted to throw that out there today as food for thought.  Why don’t we keep more of our elderly close by, would it help them to live longer, and would it help us to live longer too?

It is pelting and lashing here, thundering and lightning and has been for weeks it seems.  Of course its still in the high 70’s and low 80’s, but we are getting waterlogged. The ocean has had beautiful swells which the surfers love but the rain has muddied up things. i didn’t get out to make new photos this week so i’m putting up some from this morning.

Paradise in the rain.

See ya next week.

Road maintenance

i’m not going to talk about the election.

This is the morning after and all across the nation people are waking up happy or sad.  Some may already be digging in for the next fight.

Locally, i’m happy about most of the outcome.  i hope all of you out there are also happy with your local outcomes.  Kudos to those that lost but never gave up trying and congrats to those that won.

Over the past few months the media has revolved so much around this election it is a relief to have the results and get back to the business of life.

Here on St. Croix roads and bush are bedeviling all of us.  Our roads are substandard to say the least.  They were created first by widening the donkey cart tracks, packing down the dirt, and allowing all manner of transport on them.

Historically, the donkey cart tracks were instrumental in moving the sugar cane from the fields to the ships and moving other goods from the ships to the estates.  Most of the tracks just went to the closest shore so boats could move the cane up and down the coast to the two towns. St. Croix had a small population and didn’t need many roads.

As the island became more developed and the need for roads, not just tracks increased, the donkey tracks found themselves being paved over.  Estate owners in the early 1800’s banded together and laid out dirt roads that we still use today.  Unfortunately, none of the new roads were ever meant to be used by cars and trucks and so our problems with them have just multiplied.

When it was decided to pave over the old dirt roads nothing was done to create a better substratum.  Four or five inches of asphalt were slapped on and hoo boy a lovely paved road that started showing wear and tear in the first year of life.  This has been the way roads have been built on the island ever since.  No concern for drainage, or slope, or longevity.

Today we have two lane roads that you can barely call two lane roads for much of the year.  Our annual rainfall is upwards of 45 inches and the plants love it.  They love it so much that you can see the bush grow inches in as little as a few hours after a rain.  These fast growing plants quickly eat into the roads making passable lanes smaller and smaller.  Those with newer cars not wanting to scratch their finish end up riding down the center line causing all kinds of havoc.

Not only does all this rain make the bush grow, it also comes down in such torrents that it deposits rocks and silt everywhere; it gouges out potholes on asphalt roads and creates mini grand canyons on dirt roads.  Runoff is a problem that our engineering department has never been able to solve.

This year, and the year isn’t over yet, we have had over 60 inches of rain and our roads are a mess;  we have car eating potholes, bush that has grown so far into the road that some are only one lane now. 

Back in the day when the planters had to tend and pay for the roads, there weren’t many of them.  Today, taxes have given us paved roads but seemingly not enough money to maintain them all.  i don't want to go back to donkey carts and dirt roads and the wealthy maintaining them or only the wealthy able to drive over them by paying tolls.  i think this is a problem all over the country that we need to address.

Anyway for us here in the islands the roads are a pressing concern.  i hope our new legislators are up to the task and can find the money to cut the bush and patch the holes.

So until next week keep this in mind, be quick to listen and slow to unhinge.