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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-12-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2011. PAGE 5. Christmas, in all its weirdness, is coming. Of course it’s weird – flying reindeer? Trees in living rooms? Legions of non-union elves toiling above the Arctic Circle for room and board and one day off a year – you think that’s normal? And isn’t it just a tad weird to look forward to a Beard-o in a red suit slithering down the chimney in the middle of the night? To welcome a Break and Enter by a guy whose entire vocabulary consists of three Ho’s? We Canucks are pretty happy-go-lucky about it. The Dutch? Not so much. Dutch folklore features an Old Testament Santa, more Mafia don than jolly saint. In the Netherlands, Sinterklaas rewards good kids with candy. Bad kids? Fuggedaboutit. They get a lump of coal. Personally, I’d go for the lump of coal. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, for starters. Besides, it’s been a long time since I held an actual chunk of anthracite. When I was a kid our cellar was half full of the stuff every winter. I wasn’t that enamoured of coal then because I had to shovel the stuff into buckets and hump them upstairs to the fireplace. So I can empathize with rebellious Dutch kids. Back when coal was the common source of domestic heat, getting a present of a chunk of the stuff was a bit like being slapped with a wet haddock. Times change. Why just last month a chunk of coal about the size of your ear sold at Sotheby’s auction house in Geneva, Switzerland. For a little over $12 million. True, it was a rather special lump of coal – found in a mine in South Africa last year and lovingly cut and polished by the finest craftsmen in New York. And they don’t call it a lump of coal. They call it The Sun-Drop – the world’s largest pear-shaped yellow diamond. (The buyer remains anonymous but I like to imagine he’s some faceless, filthy-rich Goldman-Sachs junk bond trader who parlayed some of his bailout money into a rock that he hopes will help him get lucky tonight.) It’s no secret that expensive things come in small packages, but usually those small things are intrinsically valuable, like the Sun-Drop diamond, a gold nugget or a baggie of Colombian marching powder. But tin? Whoever heard of paying a million dollars for a piece of tin? New York cabbies, that’s who. One million dollars is the going price for the medallion that must, by law, be affixed to the hood of every legal Yellow Cab in New York City. What’s more – it’s a bargain. It would have been smarter to pick one back in 1937 when they first came out. The medallions sold for 10 bucks a pop then. In the last three decades the price of a New York cab medallion has soared by a gob-smacking 1,900 per cent, making it more profitable than gold or oil. The reason? Same as diamonds – scarcity. There are just over 14,000 medallions in circulation – a number that’s hardly changed in 75 years. The New York Taxi and Limousine Commission prefers to keep the medallions rare and treasured. So treasured that there’s a company called Medallion Financial Corporation that exists solely to provide loans to cabbies who want to purchase their own medallion. And how does a guy earning a hack’s wages manage to do that? Simple, according to Andrew Murstein, president of Medallion Financial. “A guy comes to this country, drives a cab six days a week, 12 hours a day, after three years, takes his whole life savings and puts it down to buy a medallion,” Murstein said. “This is a way for him to get a piece of the American dream.” Sounds more like a nightmare to me, but then so does living in New York. My pal Eddie says I’m a wuss and I’ve got it all wrong. He used to drive cab in the Big Apple. “People say New Yorkers can’t get along,” says Eddie. “Not true. Once I saw two New Yorkers – complete strangers – sharing a cab. One guy took the tires; the other guy took the radio.” Arthur Black Other Views Of diamonds and medallions… Well it’s Christmas time once again and everyone must be in the Christmas spirit. But unfortunately for many people that isn’t exactly the case and it may take Christmas Eve abruptly showing up to do the trick. It’s because of Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye and White Christmas. Because of that pair, it just doesn’t feel like Christmas unless it’s snowing outside. We can all relate to that feeling. There’s always the first time wearing shorts after a long winter and a cold spring that makes you “feel like summer” and on the other end of the seasonal spectrum, there’s the first summer night you leave the house and it “smells like fall”. With the exception of a light dusting of snow here and there, I’d bet three out of four golfers haven’t quite retired their clubs for the year, thinking there will still be that magical day where one more round of golf is possible. And really who can blame them? The grass is still green outside and I still haven’t peeled the dry cleaning plastic cover off of my winter coat from last year. Things have certainly changed over time. Earlier this week Denny and I had a lengthy conversation about a story he wrote where he interviewed Blyth Ward Councillor Brock Vodden. Vodden described Christmases in Blyth from decades past with a single-car tunnel running along Highway 4 through the village and snow banks as high as hydro poles. I told Denny that couldn’t be true and that he had misconstrued something Vodden had said. But I was wrong. Sure, we’re not talking about five or six years ago, but even I remember there being more snow on the ground when I was a child 20 years ago. I remember shovelling our driveway and having to lift the shovel over my head to get it over the snowbank that had developed on either side of our driveway. Sure, there are plenty of theories out there, but whether it’s global warming, snowplows on the road, salt and deicers, but the plain fact of it is that it just isn’t snowing the way it used to. So back to this year... there have been some positive aspects to the lack of snow. The unseasonably warm weather has helped development in Goderich along in the wake of the August tornado, as contractors have had nearly two months of unexpected temperatures that have made it easier to work and it certainly has made driving easier. However, from a selfish standpoint, I’m sure there are plenty of us that can’t help but hope for some of the white stuff this weekend, no matter the consequences. Now I guess that all doesn’t have to fall on the shoulders of Crosby and Kaye, it’s just the way we’ve been conditioned. In talking to local Grade 1 students describing Santa Claus’s house, there wasn’t one summer cabana in the lot, but in saying that, the big man does live at the North Pole. So hopefully whether snow is falling or not, everyone will find time with their families relaxing and enjoy the wonders of Christmas despite what’s going on outside. With your family all gathered around the Christmas tree, exchanging gifts and enjoying Christmas dinner, you should be filled with that holiday feeling. So to all readers of The Citizen, everyone here wishes you the best this holiday season, even if you can wear shorts and flip-flops when you go and take out the garbage. White Christmas? First off, I suppose many thanks need to go to two of the other employees at The Citizen; Marg Steele and Brenda Sjaarda. A conversation we were having that started with Christmas gifts and wound its way through many other subjects before I had to take my leave the subject of tea came up. Now I’ve said before how much I love coffee and all things java jive, bean brew and jet fuel- related, but what I may not have mentioned is that my love of coffee came from a love of tea. When I was young, I found I had a love of tea. While I was supposed to be the typical wild and rebellious Huron County teen drinking far too early and getting into other, harder substances, I found myself sipping on a cup of tea while I sat in front of screens. Sure, I did eventually get into things I shouldn’t have, but I found myself learning about black, white, clear and herbal tea first. And who knows, maybe my mother would have preferred I didn’t, I know I got on her nerves with the constant ‘clink-clink’ of me stirring my tea and routinely leaving tea bags on the counter. (One of the first things I learned about tea was that tea bags were reusable, and it made sense to me to have them on the edge of the sink, where any excess could drain there.) Anyway, the way the conversation started and ended revolved around hot drinks and how I had once worked at a local café. While there were many irksome properties to the job (don’t get me started on some of the disgusting things people do in restaurant bathrooms), few were as annoying as people not knowing the terminology for ordering tea. Now, if you don’t typically order tea and find yourself in a situation where you need to, I can understand not knowing the difference between black and white and red tea, and I can even understand the confusion of clear tea versus hot water, but if you’re serving it, you should probably know when I ask for a clear orange pekoe, I mean orange pekoe tea without any additives (and please don’t serve me that burned, over-brewed “pre-brewed” tea please). So, in an attempt to spread the good word about tea, a typically healthy alternative to dancing the java jive from the caffeine carafe, I’m going to educate you on what tea terminology is important. • Tea – tea is a beverage produced by adding dried or cured leaves from the camellia sinensis plant to (typically) boiling water. It is the second-most drank beverage in the world and is only bested by plain old water. The exact origin of the beverage has never been discovered, but it was first recorded in China. • Green Tea – Variations on tea are many. Green teas, for examples, are created by immediately curing, freezing or baking tea leaves when they are picked to prevent oxidization and maintain as much of the original content of the plant as possible. This maintains many of the natural properties of the plant. • Black tea – Also known as red tea in some areas due to the colour of the beverage, black tea is made from plants that have been allowed to oxidize. It creates a deeper, stronger flavour than green tea but may not have as many of the natural properties that green tea has. • Oolong Tea – Oolong tea covers a wide spectrum of teas that are somewhere between green (not oxidized) and black (completely oxidized) and have flavours that match the amount of time the leaves have been allowed to oxidize. • Pu-erh - Pu-erh tea is... unique to say the least, I wouldn’t suggest reading this if you ever want to try it, but it does have a very unique flavour. Pu-erh tea is technically a form of black tea but, before the leaves are allowed to oxidize, harmless bacteria cultures are allowed to grow on them. These lead to a fine layer of harmless mold that is reputed to have medical effects by the Chinese. • Flavored Tea – Flavored tea is usually made from a base black tea but the leaves are soaked in a flavour solution after oxidization. There are many different flavoured teas, but the most well known is likely Earl Grey tea. • Herbal tea – Herbal tea isn’t actually tea since it doesn’t contain the leaves of the camellia sinensis plant or tea bush. Herbal teas are typically made from plant and herb parts and can be made with the intent of curing illnesses. • White tea – White tea is quite expensive, comparatively speaking, due to the process through which it’s created. Leaves to be used in white tea creation are picked before they have fully opened from bud forms and are created from that. They are thought to have more antioxidants than black or green tea and be good for many different maladies. • Clear – Clear tea is tea without additives. No sugar, no milk no cream and no honey. Clear tea is tea brewed with nothing else. • Bag-out – If you order tea with the “bag out,” you’re basically saying “Give me a cup of hot water and a tea bag on the side and charge me 10 times the price of the tea bag.” If you’re looking for tea without a tea bag in it, you’ll need to order it at least five minutes ahead of time, that’s the minimum time needed for properly brewed black tea. Enjoy your tea this holiday season, it’s an especially great drink to follow those large family meals. Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Denny Scott Denny’s Den One sure way to get me tea’d off “Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!” - Hamilton Wright Mabie Final Thought