200929 Covid Day two hundred and three Christmas US Thanksgiving

    

Chestnuts picked up at the roadside are hatching! They look polished and their subtle markings are like wood grain. Lovely to hold in your hand.

Covid day 203, Sept.29

Tamar writes to say that Indre is doing fine attending virtual school on-line. She enjoys new friends and gets her schoolwork done each day. Robin's class got a teacher several days after school started: the school board has been scrambling to find extra teachers and Early Childhood Educators for the younger grades. Robin is learning on-line too, but the young children need in-person play and socializing. They are just developing their social skills and physicality at his age. I have spoken with him on Facetime and he is a good communicator on-line, displaying good verbal skills and interactive show-and-tell with his ipad. 

Robin's hair is curling as it gets longer. K, Nick, Robin and Elf's son, Cricket, are all growing their hair - the pandemic has restricted hair salon visits until recently and I'm hoping that long hair is going to be the covid look of the next couple of years. I like that fashion reflects the plague's impact on our lives. In addition to long hair and masks, perhaps we will see fashion frugality, less emphasis on "latest style", more on long-wearing, sturdy clothes, modest and less formal, to reflect at-home work and school. Instead of expensive once-worn  party dresses, warm functional outdoor wear and proper boots for playing and walking in snow and slush, will be the new season's look. 

Like-wise, it is perhaps time to reconsider women's (and men's) make-up, since the mask is the new public face we put on. Skin- and hair-care products eat up millions of dollars that might be much better spent on less superficial things like healthy food, books, outdoor sports, family life. The newspaper's fashion columns are fluffy at the best of times, but since the pandemic I have been almost shocked to see articles trying to put a pre-covid serious face on the triteness of lip-gloss and eye-shadow in a time of illness and hardship.

It is three months until Christmas. The pandemic fell on the heels of last year's holiday season and next Christmas was a year away. It seemed to be on the other side of the strange sea of covid-19 we were wading into. Still in mid-ocean (amid a second wave), we are unlikely to see the other shore before December. Rather than trying to put holiday glitz and ribbons on the sanitizer and masks of social-distancing, we could drop the obsessive gift-shopping, chocolate boxes and pink-foil Champagne: re-visit Christmas as the celebration of Jesus' birth, the secular celebration of family, love and giving, of presence not presents or an older ritual of winter solstice, with candles and fires. Cook together, prepare midwinter foods of warmth and comfort, traditional recipes from grandmothers; put heirloom ornaments on the tree and popcorn strings, instead of the latest tree-trends and must-haves. We'll stay home with our families and close friends and keep warm, and safe.

Thanksgiving in Canada will be subdued without the family gatherings and weekend getaways. But Thanksgiving in the United States; I am apprehensive as it approaches. Not only is it a family holiday on a bigger scale than Christmas for our neighbours to the south, it also carries a tradition to remember the first ever arrivals from Europe and their early struggle to survive and, significantly, the kindness of the Indigenous peoples. In this year's movement to grasp true equality, (not just lip-service); along with the tearing down of confederate statues and racist statutes, will they strike down the outdated fairy-tale of harvest harmony? It is a tale that belies the hate and destruction visited upon the Indigenous and their world since that first immigration.

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Rain clouds moved in yesterday with a little rain, today the wind has picked up and the leaves are snowing down.

Tonight we enjoy roasted beans, heirloom carrots and little sweet potatoes. Spray or brush pan and veg with oil, season if desired, bake at 400 degrees until soft and a little browned. Most veg take 15 to 20 minutes while root veg take 20 to 30 if they are cut into carrot-sized fingers. Roasted cauliflower (bite size bits) is delicious as a popcorn substitute for snacks. Roasting is also a tasty way to prepare vegetables for soups. 

Mumma Yaga is still in Quebec. Keep safe.