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