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Food farming interest enjoying rebirth
Not the renaissance of Leonardo and Michelangelo and the rebirth of interest in ancient art. No, what's happening here, right now, is another kind of renaissance - the rebirth of interest in food farming.
The zany story of where pants come from
Did you know there's a thread tying your pants to an old Italian theatre tradition, a thread your pants share with the Barber of Seville, Marriage of Figaro, slapstick comedy, Punch and Judy, and Shakespeare?
Heritage or blockbuster
Recently, the words heritage and museum have been springing up in the local papers as insistently as the dandelions in my lawn.
Something cool about awesome and neat
The waitress waited while I studied the menu. "A hamburger, please, and coffee," I said.
Speaking of the papal election
Over the next few weeks, the resignation of Pope Benedict and the election of his successor will be a recur-rent topic in the news worldwide.
Saint Valentine's story has an unexpected twist
On Feb. 14, more than 12 saints line up for their feastday.
What we've inherited from warriors of the past
Authors say that when they're writing a story, the characters often take on a life of their own.
Keeping local history alive
Last summer I heard a lecture at the University of B.C. about the importance of preserving family records and the increasing difficulty of doing so, since most informal records are now created electronically and quickly deleted.
Who's that wild man with Santa?
Good storytelling depends on tension to captivate the audience. This was as true at the beginning of time as it is today. Ancient legends, like modern tales, rely on the play of conflicting elements to keep the storyline taut.
They say good hosts make bad guests
A friend's claim that good hosts make bad guests, and vice versa, left me feeling skeptical.
Food labels don't tell the whole story
People buying and selling old art are concerned about provenance - they need to know where the work of art comes from, who previously owned it.
When you need to answer a call of nature
Last month, when there was an outcry about the lack of public sanitary facilities at Richmond's Canada Line stations, the local papers reported on it, using the words washroom, toilet, loo and restroom, which they chose from among a multitude of terms, nearly all of them oblique references.
Hang on to that jack-o'-lantern
From the air, Richmond's farm fields appear covered with orange polka-dots during this season. Close up, the polka dots become pumpkins, soon to be pressed into service as jack-o'-lanterns - tops sliced off, seeds scooped out and faces carved into monstrous leers, all to delight the children at Halloween.
Have your plate and eat it too
Years ago, after a delicious pub lunch in London, a friend declared that I was a good trencherman (in those days the suffix man was used for both sexes).
Out with packaging, in with loose
Nowadays, many supermarkets offer customers a range of unpackaged foodstuffs in what they call the bulk food section. That name, however, is a misnomer because bulk - from the Old Icelandic "bulki," meaning cargo, heap, large quantity - properly identifies the kind of retailing done by a store like Costco, where large quantities are purchased at a discount.
Got leftovers? Make some fritters
Aunt Sara and I were plucking blueberries when she confessed that her favourite columns were those in which I mention food.
It's so easy to get words wrong
When I learned to speak English as a child, my main bugbear was pronunciation, not vocabulary. When I moved to Florence and learned Italian, my biggest problem was coming out with the right word at the right time.
