White versus black in a woke world

In our ridiculous world with its changing fashion and hypes, “Woke” has become the word for a new adverse attitude.

Everything seems to have become woke. We speak about a woke class, a woke capitalism, there is even spoken about a church of woke. You can’t imagine how crazier it gets.

In Dutch for example we may not speak any more of a “blank” person (a Caucasian) but has to say a “white person”, though it is not done anymore to speak about a “black person” when talking of a brown-coloured person.

It has taken me some time before I came to understand what people really meant with Woke, because that adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination“, deemed to be used for so what everything.  Inappropriately, that word woke was used by many people in their conversations, even when they talked about cows and calves. It seemed “cool” to use that word.

A Black Lives Matter die-in over rail tracks, protesting alleged police brutality in Saint Paul, Minnesota (September 20, 2015)

Though the phrase stay woke had already emerged in AAVE by the 1930s, in some contexts referring to an awareness of the social and political issues affecting African Americans it only recently after the international social movement, formed in the United States in 2013, Black Lives Matter movement, following the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Pamela Turner and Rekia Boyd, among others. Very quickly the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter founds its way internationally on social media.

Up to 2020 the support for the Black Lives Matter movement had grown so much it had also created a social awareness, something had to change. Black Lives Matter also voiced support for various movements and causes beyond police brutality, including LGBTQ activism, feminism, immigration reform, and economic justice and by doing so a new movement arose, being a “Woke generation”.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines woke as ‘originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice’.

Surely being alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice isn’t a bad thing? {‘Why’s it so wrong to be called woke?’}

Suddenly it no longer seemed appropriate to talk about men, women, homosexuals, bisexuals, sexless, and transgender people in a certain way. Asexuality being distinct from abstention from sexual activity and from celibacy, after all the pedo sex scandals there had come an “anti-paedophile activism” encompassing opposition to paedophiles, paedophile advocacy groups, child pornography, and child sexual abuse. But several people presenting too openly their sexual acts, like on Pride parades, all other people to have to accept their actions, otherwise to be labelled not only ‘conservative’ but even “anti-” when it was or is not so.

There have been incidents in which vigilantism intended to be against pedophiles has been mistakenly directed against the wrong person, including:

• A mob confusing a pediatrician with a pedophile, due to the similarities between the words.^[8]
• An incident where a man was misidentified as a pedophile because he was wearing a neck brace similar to the one a sex offender was wearing when pictured in a newspaper.^[9][10] {Wikipedia on Anti-pedophile activism}

In the same vein of misunderstanding and misinterpreting, the whole woke movement has arisen and has grown into something very annoying and discussion limiting something.

In the present time not allowed to say one can see a “community of igloos” or temporary winter homes or hunting-ground dwellings of Canadian and Greenland Inuit (Eskimos) (Illustration from Charles Francis Hall’s Arctic Researches and Life Among the Esquimaux, 1865)

In many museums in the world the curator started relabeling the historical objects and artworks, often making it they had to describe the object with several words instead of previously but now not accepted ‘one word’. As such people have become not allowed to use words like “hut” or “cabane” “or “shag” / “Shack”  you even may not say anymore “primitive dwelling” or “shanty” not allowed to say “roughly built, often ramshackle building”, “igloo“, “Eskimo“, etc.. In some museums, the labels by the works have become so full of words most visitors even do not take time any more to read them. (Proof that all that woke thing creates just the opposite and gives people even less insight into the world events and customs of many peoples. )

I do agree we may not speak about “savages” when there are those pictures of Africans who are depicted as “savages” or vicious or merciless, brutal, not domesticated or cultivated, wild people. But I think there is nothing wrong by saying those white people considered the coloured people they found in Africa, to be very wild and uneducated or regarded as primitive.

White people do have to live with the Atlantic slave trade which played an important role in spurring the Industrial Revolution in its early decades and helping to birth a new financial system. We can not ignore the shameful treatment of coloured people from that time regarded as illiterate areas.

Insofar as the trade encouraged the emergence of a new British commercial class that in turn lobbied for modernising reforms through Parliament, it may even have played a paradoxically pivotal role in the birth of modern democracy. We should never deny or downplay the dark side of Western history – nor the strangely double-edged story of Western freedom.

In concealing certain events and in not being allowed to mention them or not being allowed to use certain words, one misses the ball and is more likely not to achieve the intended goal of integration and respect.

Sherelle Jacobs writes

The evil “whiteness” stuff is getting out of hand. Everywhere one looks there are excesses.
Take the decolonised university courses that seek to purge Dead White Men (the intellectual cousin of the Evil White Male) from the curriculum. Or the obsession with toppling statues of figures such as Cecil Rhodes. {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

Where she refers to the constituent college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, Oriel College that the majority wanted the statue to be removed and that the King Edward Street plaque should be removed. Previously in 2016, Oriel College had decided to keep the statue following a consultation, despite protests from campaigners.  Some of the university’s geography dons published a statement saying it is a “source of shame” for the city that the imperialist Cecil Rhodes was still “honoured” with a statue.

When Sherelle Jacobs attended a colourism workshop at her old university not long ago, mixed race women, including her, were prohibited from speaking on account of their “proximity to whiteness”. There you see but how that whole woke business has twisted the whole system and made many not think and act soberly anymore. Rightly she reamerks

Even worse is the trend towards barring white people from black spaces altogether. Two Canadian theatres have sparked an outcry by limiting performances to an “all black-identifying audience”. {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

We should know that taking away historic statues, plaques, memorials or monuments is also going to take away the remembrances to those people and events, making the next generations not even thinking any more about what happened in the past.

Wiping out the past will not correct the things that have gone wrong. By hiding what really happened, one is also clearly not taking any blame but prefers to deliberately conceal what really happened. Which I think is a much more shameful attitude.

In Monroeville, a flyspeck of a town in Alabama, Jacobs recently saw an amateur performance of To Kill A Mockingbird in which local white men in the audience were invited on stage to be part of the jury.

It really worked: residents of this Deep South town, where African-Americans can still remember being forced to sit in a separate part of the cinema, pondering their history and how it made them feel without outside judgment or virtue signalling. Sadly, Monroeville is a rare case. {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

she writes and adds

Banner at 2017 Climate March in Washington D.C.

It doesn’t help that some conservatives have reacted to all this with downright denialism. It cannot be right that, in some Deep South schools, pupils are being taught that the American Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

We have to be very careful by taking away statues and remembrance plates. There are enough people who would love to see the terms Holocaust denial and AIDS denialism to disappear so that the denial of the facts and the reality of the subject matters would not matter anymore. In the States of America we have a beautiful example of the dangers of the denialism that is going on in this “woke world”.

In 2020, cultural scientists Akane Kanai and Rosalind Gill described “woke capitalism” as the “dramatically intensifying” trend to include historically marginalized groups (currently primarily in terms of race, gender and religion) as mascots in advertisement with a message of empowerment to signal progressive values.

On the one hand, this creates an individualized and depoliticized idea of social justice, reducing it to an increase in self-confidence.

On the other hand, the omnipresent visibility in advertising can also amplify a backlash against the equality of precisely these minorities. These would become mascots not only of the companies using them, but of the unchallenged neoliberal economic system with its socially unjust order itself. For the economically weak, the equality of these minorities would thus become indispensable to the maintenance of this economic system; the minorities would be seen responsible for the losses of this system. {Kanai, A.; Gill, R. (October 28, 2020). “Woke? Affect, neoliberalism, marginalised identities and consumer culture”. New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory & Politics. 102 (102): 10–27. doi:10.3898/NewF:102.01.2020. ISSN 0950-2378. S2CID 234623282.}

We must always make sure that everything is kept in perspective and that the institutions will make sure that everything is neatly laid out and will not conceal anything even if it ‘discriminates’ against a certain group. We will always have to strive to expose an open honesty.

In his new book Colonialism, Nigel Biggar points out that the British Empire did some good, establishing peace in warring societies, alleviating rural poverty and building infrastructure. Some routinely use facts such as these flippantly to claim that the Empire definitively did more good than bad. But, as Biggar himself observes, the positives and negatives are incommensurable: “How much racism is worth immunisation against disease?” {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

According to Jacobs it would be far more constructive if conservatives focused on challenging the toxic Evil White Male reading of history. She writes

For one thing, it distracts us from the truth of our past: namely, that it was driven not so much by a cabal of racist megalomaniacs but by inescapable ideas in which we are all still, to this day, complicit. {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

Forever, certain groups of people will have to face their past. It does no good, on the contrary, to cover up the past by bringing up all kinds of newer concepts and naming things differently. By honestly stating what those ancestors were doing, future generations will be able to get a fair picture of what was done, which cannot be reversed anyway.

Every generation has flaws and in every demographic one can find people who do not want to face the truth of the times at the time when bad things are happening before their eyes. A great example of this are the young people today who all want the hottest phone but don’t want to think about how several children have been exploited for it.

How different are the hypocrisies of our ancestors from our own? {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

asks Jacobs, who does not see people smashing their smartphones in protest at the Congolese children who have died mining the rare cobalt that is crucial to powering their gadgets.

Fixating on a few Evil White Males is a convenient excuse not to face up to such things. {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

she writes.

And the Evil White Male view of history is feeding Western declinism. Some activists have taken to linking certain values or trends with empire and slavery in order to discredit them. People are, in turn, reluctant to challenge these spurious views for fear of being labelled a sympathiser with the Evil White Male of history – or even worse, compared to them.  {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

Jacobs asks us to

Consider also the post-modernist academics who denounce “objective, rational linear thinking” as Western-centric (as if the idea that words and language are fundamental expressions of an external reality can be simply waved away as a “white cultural trope”).

If societies attitudes’ to their past shape their future, then we should be concerned indeed. Unless the West can shake off some of this racialised self-loathing, its decline seems guaranteed.   {The West is doomed if it blames all its problems on Evil White Males}

It is much too easy to blame racism. With the killing of Tyre Nichols, lots of people shouted “racism”, not seeing that it where five “black” cops that went mad at one of their own folks. Those coloured police officers showed the world how American police is not trained enough and have a superior feeling, wanting to show their power over others, be they white or black persons. Too often we can hear the language of such officers, shouting words which should not be allowed to be said by people of the law. We also should recognise in what happened, how education but also social, institutional, and cultural systems play a significant role in shaping people their behaviour and how their formation and culture may contribute to negative outcomes.

Let us be aware

There are also many people who use ‘woke’ as a pejorative in an attempt to silence those who protest against bigotry. It’s often a word that racists, misogynists and others attempt to hide behind. Ed, Portsmouth {‘Why’s it so wrong to be called woke?’}

So using ‘woke’ as name-calling has become the default for the oafish who hate people daring to challenge their rather one-sided mindset. Unfortunately, ‘woke’ has become a blanket term that is used by those who don’t want to have their views challenged. Matthew, Birmingham {‘Why’s it so wrong to be called woke?’}

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Interesting to read:

1. The actual behaviour of big business continues to confound its stated wishes
2. The Telegraph Frontpage for 2022 November 08
3. The Telegraph for Monday 21 November 2022
4. The Telegraph Frontpage for Friday 2022 November 25
5. Green lending tops fossil fuel for first time
6. Anglo-Saxon era church bringing the church into disrepute
7. New term names at London School of Economics
8. Not to tell people that God loves them
9. Evil “whiteness” stuff is getting out of hand

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Related

1. Martyr by cop
2. ‘Why’s it so wrong to be called woke?’
3. A breakfast restaurant called “Woke” opened in Conn
4. Connecticut breakfast restaurant called Woke sparks political debate
5. S3: E4 – Wokeback Mountain
6. ‘You People’ Review: Everything Wrong with the Modern Comedy
7. It Depends on What The Means
8. 85 ”The Funeral of a Great Myth,” or Evolution and Hegelian Optimism
9. European ‘Christian state’ faces criticism for banning woke lessons, immigration laws: ‘Will of the people’
10. Blind logic, arrogant conclusions
11. How Wokeism Works | Theo Von – YouTube
12. The problem with Atiku is he thinks Buhari just woke up to get 12m votes because of ethnicity—Keyamo
13. Freedom is …
14. Woke culture threatens academic freedom in social sciences at the University of Amsterdam
15. “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom” – A New Documentary on Gender and Sexual Ideology Politics and Disney Going Woke & Broke
16. Not Woke Up: Breakfast Cafe Name Sparks US Conservative Rage | Connecticut
17. Go Woke, Go Broke: Paperchase Goes Into Administration
18. Technological Innovations – Episode 1
19. De omgekeerde wereld
20. Wakker of Woke! Lezing door Simon van Groningen.
21. ‘Wakker of Woke?’ Lezing voor Stichting Sense
22. Wokeness is een groot probleem aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam, mede omdat ervoor wordt weggekeken
23. De zwarte gemeenschap zou excuses van Rutte voor slavernij niet moeten accepteren
24. Biologische studies naar gender laten minder maakbaarheid zien dan de progressieve pers graag zou willen
25. Hoe links mij tot zondebok maakte als klokkenluider van woke extremisme

A culture of “democratic cleansing” – Elders and youngsters versus respect

The generation born between 1930 and 1960 had no choice but to listen to father‘s law and do as we were told.

Father’s will is Law!

When we asked

Why?

We got a very short but very well to understand answer.

Therefore!

Now those generations from before the 1960s have become the “oldies”.

We live with the thought that we taught some good and interesting things to our kids, but sometimes seem to wonder what they did with what we taught them and what went wrong with the present generation.

What did we do wrong?

For sure, though we did not always agree with our parents, and dared to go on the streets in 1968 to question our way of living and our society, we always still showed respect for our parents and grandparents. In many cases, there were no great-grandparents. Our grandparents, to us, looked already

so old

at an age that we now already survived a few years.

Unlike our parents, we taught our children to dare to question everything and not just accept or consider everything.

John Humphrys in the Daily Telegraph of 26 December 2022 wonders if he perhaps had a ridiculous dream.

Well yes, and a bit of a nightmare too. I can’t think of anything much worse than my kids sitting in respectful silence while I bang on.

At home and at school we learned courtesy rules. But what is left of it? Some of the things we learned, such as keeping the door open for ladies, are not always anymore appreciated but are viewed as a sexist attitude.

Humphrys writes

If I’ve taught them anything at all – pretty unlikely I know – it’s that healthy scepticism beats the pants off reverence. Always has. Always will.

And yet… maybe just the teeniest smattering of respect might not come amiss? Possibly not boys doffing their caps to ladies in the street as my school ordered us do. After all, who wears caps nowadays? (And is ‘ladies’ sexist? What if they’re trans?)

But perhaps an acknowledgement that we oldies just might have picked up some useful stuff during our decades of experience on this planet that could come in useful? That’s tricky in today’s climate. Just that word “experience” is fraught. It has to be a “lived” experience now and I’m not sure I know what that is.

We have also been brought up to check the past and present and to seek the truth each time.

Our parents taught us that if we did not know something, we should go and look it up in the encyclopaedias provided. Those writers were expected to have undergone sufficient schooling and presented well-founded articles under editorial authority to inform the reader and provide further knowledge. We found it great to find such reference works that contained information on all branches of knowledge or that treated a particular branch of knowledge in a comprehensive manner.

For more than 2,000 years encyclopaedias have existed as summaries of extant scholarship in forms comprehensible to their readers. But in the last two decades, we saw several well-known encyclopaedias disappearing from the market.

At our house, the 1968 Encyclopaedia Britannica, as the oldest English-language general encyclopaedia, was just one of the many other encyclopaedias we could use daily.

The researchers and authors and publishers of encyclopaedias had to face technological changes, beginning in the 1980s with the development and spread of personal computers. It really became a world that opened up, making it possible to look up documents from all over the world. The computer business evolved so fast, quickening in the 1990s and 2000s through the Internet and widespread diffusion of broadband access, it radically altered the publishing world generally and the encyclopaedia business in particular.

The 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1974), was designed in large part to enhance the role of an encyclopaedia in education and understanding without detracting from its role as a reference book. It represented very much the way we were brought up, finding it necessary to educate and to spread knowledge. Its three parts (Propædia, or Outline of Knowledge; Micropædia, or Ready Reference and Index; and Macropædia, or Knowledge in Depth) represented an effort to design an entire set on the understanding that there is a circle of learning and that an encyclopaedia’s short informational articles on the details of matter within that circle as well as its long articles on general topics must all be planned and prepared in such a way as to reflect their relation to one another and to the whole of knowledge.
For those who wanted to learn more or wished to delve deeper into a particular fact or topic, the Propædia became a great help for self-study. The propaedia was a reader’s version of the circle of learning on which the set had been based and was organised in such a way that a reader might reassemble in meaningful ways material that the accident of alphabetisation had dispersed.

In 1981, under an agreement with Mead Data Central, the first digital version of the Encyclopædia Britannica was created for the LexisNexis service. In the early 1990s Britannica was made available for electronic delivery on a number of CD-ROM-based products, including the Britannica Electronic Index and the Britannica CD (providing text and a dictionary, along with proprietary retrieval software, on a single disc). A two-disc CD was released in 1995, featuring illustrations and photos; multimedia, including videos, animations, and audio, was added in 1997.

John Humphrys seems to find it a waste of money that his parents scrimped to pay a weekly shilling to the Encyclopaedia Britannica door-to-door salesman so that they as kids would always have the world’s knowledge at their fingertips.

He gives the impression that those modern machines and the evolution of artificial intelligence is one of the many reasons why respect between the generations matters.

We do admit that many young people do not understand how the elderly can or cannot handle today’s modern gadgets.

Millennials (born 1981-1996) tend to put the boomers (born post-war) into a category. Specifically, men. Usually “old white men”.

How come that usage is tolerated? Substitute “women” for men and it wouldn’t be. It would be sexist. Substitute “black” for white and it would be racist.

He observes

Those who once wore the badge of old age with a certain pride must now carefully guard their tongues less they cause offence, even when it’s patently obvious that none was intended. Was it necessary to humiliate Lady Susan Hussey when she was seemingly too curious about the origins of a black woman who was wearing a vivid tribal dress? Her offence, it turned out, was being old.

Getting old happens to all of us. How we deal with it is very different. But it is also very different from how outsiders deal with elders.
Especially in recent years, there has been an unpleasant skew there, with many viewing elders as a burden.
Similarly, few can empathise with the world of understanding of those elders who have been brought up with certain ways of thinking, some of which are also sometimes difficult to distance themselves from or continue to think stereotypically.

We all pursue dreams and shall one day be confronted with that older body, becoming aware that there is not only a tendency to forget people’s names, but having more than once looking for the right words, having forgotten (for a moment) certain things. And then in confrontation with the youngsters, they not always understand or want to give some time to get the memory back.

For some elderly it is also not evident to have to rely on others. And the children are not so pleased anymore to be a safety net for their parents, as we looked after our parents when they were already starting to reach a reasonable age. Some may be annoyued that those above 65 do not want to retire. It might be those in their 60s whose mind is fooling them in which case they will rely on others around them to let them know that it is time to retire.

How many times do those who passed the 50s have to hear from the youngsters that their ideas are old fashioned or that they are not anymore from these times? Many younger people find it not appropriate that the elderly are still pursuing ideas and aspirations. Is it a form of respect to accepting that they express their feelings as well as their dreams and aspirations?

Most young people don’t sense time as being a high-speed train, because for them it often looks ages, before there is another hour, another day. That makes them also to express their impatience so often. But then again, the fact that some elders become a bit too slow bothers those younger ones, in that it seems that that time is taken up by that elder, who then keeps them from renewing moments. Some younger ones do not mind letting the older ones know that it is time to retreat, or to get silent.

At a certain age, it can be that we feel that there has come a time we need to withdraw from the hurly-burly of the life we once knew. But it does not always feel so nice, when those younger people say it in our face. (We never would have dared to say such a thing to our elderly.)

In his book, The War On The Old, English literature professor John Sutherland wrote about what he called a culture of “democratic cleansing… a state-condoned campaign against the nation’s old”.

He describes an overwhelming sense of blame that younger generations attribute to “the wrinklies” who voted for Brexit, comfortable in the mansions they bought for a pittance. The once-dignified badge of seniority is becoming synonymous with “narrow-minded”, “outdated” and “incipiently senile”.
The elderly are bed-blockers, job-blockers, pension-drainers. {We used to respect our elders – whatever happened to that? by John Humphrys}

Normally, one went from one generation to the next with improvements, but today that no longer holds true. Today’s 30-year-olds have it much harder than their parents did. The age-old argument over which generation has had more advantages has been settled – at least where finances are concerned.

Adult life is harder to afford now than it was 30 years ago and it has forced today’s young to delay big life events, which tend to happen around this milestone age. Today’s generation are buying their first home two years later, having ­children three years later and getting married six to seven years later than they were in 1992. {Six reasons why boomers have it better than millennials by Jessica Beard}

Due to the pressures of the outside world, those in their twenties and thirties may have become a bit “shorter” in their statements, and it is not always easy for them to be patient with those older people who are, as it were, still watching them or ready with criticism.

Dependence on two earners can make taking time off to care for children ­trickier, and to care for older people, even more, trickier or not so wanted. So it should not always be viewed so negatively by the elderly when those young people now show a little less time than their parents who could make more time for their parents and grandparents.

Many today are so engrossed in their work and the expectations of fellow peers that they have little time left outside their work sphere for their own spiritual formation, religious pursuits and many family activities outside their own families.

It can well be that certain actions and reactions of youngsters are sometimes unjustly interpreted as respectless, or not showing enough respect. It must not be disrespectful, but just because of these other times with much more pressure on the youngsters, that the gap between young and old has widened somewhat today compared to previous decades.

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Preceding

A more recent discrimination: Old Age

A Cranky Old Man

Readers, likes and comments

Thought on the birthday of an encyclopaedia

Available information for the youngsters and readers of my websites

Redeeming Our World

The Way You Live Your Life

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan back with a bang

Mishmash of a legal code but importance of mitzvah or commandments

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Additional reading

1. Ageing and Solidarity between generations
2. Who is considered Old
3. Man in picture, seen from the other planets
4. Subcutaneous power for humanity 1 1940-1960 Influenced by horrors of the century
5. Justififiable anger or just anarchism
6. A trillion words
7. Looking at an era of international “youth culture”
8. Did the picture change for Working dads
9. Living in this world and viewing it
10. Hippies, a president, a damaged ozone layer and knights
11. This Week Twenty-Five Years Ago: The Velvet Revolution Succeeds, December 1989
12. Our brothers in Kyiv’s northwest suburb Irpin
13. Russia not wanting it neighbours countries to cooperate with the West
14. Left behind for economical emigration
15. 2014 Social contacts
16. 2014 Human Rights
17. Time to consider how to care for our common home
18. Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #7 Education
19. Martin Luther King’s Dream Today
20. This fighting world, Zionism and Israel #5
21. Another Jewish Voice on Trump’s plan: No peace without equality and mutual respect
22. The truest greatness lies in being kind
23. Agape, a love to share with others from the Fruit of the Spirit
24. Approachers of ideas around gods, philosophers and theologians
25. Cleanliness and worrying or not about purity
26. Today’s thought “Teachers will be judged with greater strictness than others” (December 09)
27. Perspectives
28. Hungarian undermining of European freedoms

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Related

1. A reflective Morning
2. Time Hobbles On
3. Beautiful, she said
4. I am old.
5. Learning to be Old–5
6. The effects of just being you… Age.
7. When You Grow Old
8. The Age Old Question…
9. Ageism in the workplace
10. Life is Short
11. Pursuing dreams to stay young in mind
12. What We Need, in Order to, Age Gracefully
13. I Can’t Breath Through It All
14. Thirty Five Years and Old.
15. How to be Old
16. 75 And Counting
17. Age 90+
18. Stillness
19. Dealing with Age Discrimination: Workers’ rights and strategies
20. “The best gift you can give your children, is the love and respect you demonstrate for their mother.”
21. Respect for life…
22. … the taste of respect
23. life will teach you to honor and respect balance.
24. I do respect people’s faith
25. High recognitions . . . Honor and respect them, though you no longer worship them
26. Paris attacks darkning the world
27. Holidays break – Day 7

To Blog or Not to Blog?

Many people have lots of desires to belong to a community and to share ideas, whilst they are feeling part of a group where they are accepted, and their thoughts are appreciated.

On the net we can find a girl with the name Lola, who looks at what a blog is and questions to blog or not to blog.

She considers the word “blog” to be the short form for the word weblog, referring to an informal website or an informal discussion on discrete topics and written in a conversational way. But the latter is certainly not true of most blogs, which over the years have evolved to present a wider range of topics with extensive descriptions or detailed discussions.

She requests:

Let’s compare a blog to a diary. The blog site is the book and the entries in the diary are the posts. In the diary we write our personal encounters – family, social activities and travel experiences. We also write our thoughts and opinions on certain situations and events in this book. {What is a Blog?}

One may love to write, but that does not one want to write on the net. The old-fashioned diary was always for private writing and reading, but now the internet has offered a place for many to write their own thoughts, readable by millions of people.

Some like the writer of the reblogged article look at a blog being it like a diary.

But while a diary is kept private, a blog is shared either with a small group of readers or published in the World Wide Web. {What is a Blog?}

She also thinks Blogs are displayed in reverse chronological order, but that should not always be so. The owner of the blog may decide to place the oldest blog on top or have them ordered by category.  But we agree that the majority chooses for the most practical and easiest way for being updated with the writings, meaning the most recent entry showing on the top of the blog page in one or more columns vertically downwards or with pictures horizontally per three or more. Furthermore

Aside from pictures, a blog’s content may also contains videos and scanned copies of offline documents. {What is a Blog?}

Some may find immense gratification in writing down something, which they know shall be read by several people. They do not mind if they do not know all those readers, though they do hope several of their friends will be some of their readers. It is for those friends, and acquaintances that many go behind the keyboard to let words roll over the screen.

For some, at first, there is that obstacle that wants to limit them and keep them on the “unknown” side of town. Some keep their blog private, while others (the majority) publish them on the World Wide Web, where we are overloaded with millions of texts luring for our attention.

Zillions of reiterations of topics could make people not want to blog at all. At first, there were the many message and fora platforms that caught the pen of many, but where not so many ‘full articles’ could be found. With the greater accessibility and dissemination of internet possibilities, more people could also find their way to that internet and felt stimulated to interpret their say there too.

In the last few years, we also can find more journalistic webblogs where journalists, historians and several blog writers have joined hands to bring truthful journalism or bringing the news of events of the day from a particular angle. Our blog Some View on the World wants to bring such an up-date of what happened in our world, providing the newsfacts as well as extra commentaries.

With the vast abundance of material to borrow on the internet, it is so what that one can no longer see the forest for the trees, and that one drowns in the swirling water mass of copious text material seeking our attention on all sides.

There are loads of articles out there, which may bring up that question:

 Why should I blog about it? Why would readers want to read mine?

Because is it not that when we write something on the net, we also want someone to read what we have written?

In any case, to start blogging, it is best to plan in advance which direction you want to go. Will it be a personal blog, or will it rather be a blog where you want to sell something or put forward a clear opinion?

It is nice that everyone can find a type of blog to his or her liking. There are political, religious, travel, historical, archaeological, cultural and so many other blogs, allowing us to tap from an infinitely full wine barrel.

To remember further

• blogging industry = millions of bloggers
• wanting to share ideas, opinions + experiences with other people
• wanting to maintain communication with others => we blog.
• writing blogs requires a lot of communication skills = to be good in grammar & punctuations, word usage & spelling, formats + a lot of creativity.
• Receiving comments from readers = rewarding experience.
• to blog or not to blog > depends on your desire + determination to learn + excel in this endeavour

 

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Preceding

Blogging into the New Year

“Our World” Moving from Blogspot to WordPress

Asking for a Re-Blog

When you think you have nothing to say or to show

Readers, likes and comments

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Additional reading

1. Wagner the NAR and new wineskins
2. Traditional News Turns into The Journalism We Know Now
3. Presenting views from different sources
4. What do we know about the future of journalism?
5. Hello world!
6. A convinced voice to debunk false allegations
7. A busy 2017 #3 Fake, gossip and real news
8. WordPress appears to have fallen off its best horse
9. A Classic Editor versus Block Editor
10. From old times and sites to new linkings
11. Five years on WordPress
12. From MSN Groups and MSN Spaces via Multiply to Blogspot now transferring to WordPress
13. In case Blogger goes further with her new interface
14. Blogger seems too slow to be practical
15. Our World on Blogger coming to its end
16. “Our World” Moving from Blogspot to WordPress
17. Notification and news feed for Facebook users
18. Walking alone? (Our World) = Walking alone? (Some View on the World)
19. What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
20. Companionship
21. Presenting views from different sources
22. Newspapers: Dying or Changing
23. Pleased to find Christadelphian World on the net
24. 2010 – 2014 in review
25. First blog post
26. My World…
27. Blogging in the world for Jesus and his Father
28. Immanuel’s first two years of blogging on WordPress
29. If no one died because of War – how different would worlds appear to be
30. 💬 Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic: 🧠 Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity 🦠

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Related

1. WordPress on Linux Servers
2. Why I will be writing a blog, and why you should too.
3. To blog or not to blog? (Asha Seth)
4. To blog or not to blog (Miss A.J. My thoughts exactly)
5. 5 fun facts to celebrate 100 years of broadcasting
6. Glasgow community newsroom shows how local news can return to the UK high street
7. Journalism and Mass Communication Syllabus
8. Journalism On The Front Lines In Ukraine
9. Causality Journalism: Can Academics Help?
10. Beyond The Labels
11. For Whom Do You Write?
12. Overwrought Reflection about Blogging “Anonymously” & a PSA
13. If You Don’t Post a Bloated Reflection on Writing, Are You Even a Blogger?
14. A Goal on the Horizon
15. My 2022 Year in Books
16. What kind of blog reader are you?
17. This Little Light o’ Mine
18. Devising a social media strategy – a step by step guide
19. The Potpourri of Blogging Comments
20. Draft Queen
21. No Way Home
22. 4 things that helped me make affirmations work for me
23. Carol Anne asks
24. An Ode to Courage
25. 2022 Wrap Up | 2022 Favourites and 2023 Goals
26. A Fresh Start
27. The Mystery of January
28. The Column: Read all about it!
29. A Brave New Year
30. Happy New Years
31. My New Year’s Resolutions 2023
32. How strong are your resolutions as we face a Brave New Year?
33. Daily Blog #412: It’s been weeks (Part Two) Weird Dreams, Manifestations/Goals, New Years Blog
34. As Horrific As Lord Of The Flies
35. guest posting is super OK
36. December wrap-up!
37. The Morning After
38. 3 Reminders for the New Year
39. About Those New Year’s Resolutions …
40. A random memory
41. Happy New Year!
42. Share Your World 2nd January: my response
43. Share Your Blog 2023
44. Author Journey (January 2, 2023)
45. Confusion Rant- Not my best Post, a break from PVX
46. My first collaborative project !

The Lola Talks

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash

To blog or not to blog? That is the question.

Every now and then we find ourselves wanting to share ideas, opinions and experiences with other people. Furthermore, we also want to maintain communication with our clients and customers online. For this reason, we blog.

Receiving comments from readers on our blogs is a rewarding experience. More so when the number of readers and loyal site visitors increase. It’s like being compensated for the hard work we have put into writing our posts.

But writing blogs requires a lot of communication skills. We need to be good in grammar and punctuations, word usage and spelling, formats and a lot of creativity.

We have to remember that in the blogging industry, there are not only a few but millions of bloggers. Thus, we really need to write our materials exceptionally well to stand…

View original post 65 more words

Everyday activities to keep you fit and healthy

For years, choreologist Marcus Ampe also tried to convince people during his teaching practice as a therapist that it was bad to exercise excessively and shortchange the body. He is still convinced that one should exercise well-balanced regularly, instead of going out of control now and then, or once a week and then overloading the body.

Photo by Daniel Reche on Pexels.com

The last few years, what he taught is more confirmed by medical magazines. A new study, published in the monthly peer-reviewed medical journal Nature Medicine, indicates that truly tiny quantities of commonplace activity can have a serious impact on your health, if done with a little added oomph.

Marcus Ampe also believes that one should train or exercise both body and mind and balance them with one’s personality. As such, it is already good exercise to have a daily walk in nature. Daily, we in a sort of way should consider how we move, sitting straight, walking straight, and breathing calmly. At the same time, we should consider how we want to see ourselves and how we orient and describe ourselves in the world. It is not bad to have our thoughts wander when walking.

Photo by Laura Tancredi on Pexels.com

Mr Ampe is convinced our world is going to face a big problem with the younger generations because they have become a sitting society where youngsters eat too many damaging foods. He fears that these overweight youngsters will later cost our community a lot of money by suffering from all kinds of diseases of affluence, such as chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) including Parkinson’s disease, autoimmune diseases, strokes, most heart diseases, most cancers, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, cataracts, Alzheimer’s disease and others. Every year about 2.8 million die from being overweight. High cholesterol accounts for roughly 2.6 million deaths and 7.5 million die because of high blood pressure. An increasing proportion (more than one-third by some estimates) of the U.S. population is currently overweight, and health problems associated with it are increasing.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

Mr Ampe is convinced that even small reductions in excess weight can improve health. Even though it takes a lot of time and energy to lose a few kilocalories, you can steadily work on ‘bodybuilding’ by walking or jogging regularly and doing a variety of physical exercises throughout the day, where even climbing stairs can help.

Today more scientists are convinced that leisure-time exercise, like gyms, running, or competitive sports have many health benefits. For professor Emmanuel Stamatakis this was good reason to examine 25,000 people in the UK, aged between 40 and 69, who don’t exercise – or, at least, don’t think that they do.  For a medical study, led by a team at the University of Sydney, they wore activity trackers on their wrists, and were then monitored for almost seven years.

The NHS recommends that adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate activity (a couple of doubles tennis matches, say), or 75 minutes of vigorous activity (one-and-a-bit aerobics classes) every week to reduce our risk of heart disease or stroke. But, says Stamatakis,

“we understand less about the health potential of those activities that are done as part of daily living and which often reach vigorous intensity… stair climbing, bursts of very fast walking, walking uphill, walking carrying backpack or shopping bags, vigorous domestic housework or gardening.”

For some the results of the study were surprising.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

Engaging in just three to four bouts of VILPA (vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity) a day, even if each bout lasted only for between one and two minutes, was associated with a nearly 40 per cent reduction in overall mortality risk (including from cancer) and nearly a 50 per cent reduction in cardiovascular disease related deaths. Most interesting of all, says Stamatakis, is this:

“there is a good chance that participants in this study did not even know that they were doing vigorous intensity physical activity.”

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

Ultimately, the outcome of this study should convince doctors, but also ordinary citizens, to start paying more attention to what such normal daily activities may be. During the day, this way everyone can easily build certain ‘exercises’ into their routine, taking the stairs instead of the lift, for example. So one doesn’t need to throw a lot of money against an exercise session. If one looks around, one can find plenty of opportunities to exercise the body.

“Many day-to-day activities can be converted to a VILPA burst, just by tweaking its intensity,”

says Stamatakis. In other words:

“do it in a more energetic and vigorous way.”

How to tell if you’ve stepped up the pace with sufficient intensity?

“The first sign is getting out of breath, followed by an increase in heart rate, both of which should be felt after about 15-30 seconds, depending on the person’s fitness level and whether the starting point is rest, light, or moderate-intensity activity.”

says Stamatakis. If you can still sing, your activity is light in intensity, he says. Able to speak? You’ve hit moderate intensity.

“When we can hardly speak a few words, we are hitting the vigorous intensity zone,”

he says.

“This is high quality movement, with great health enhancing potential if repeated regularly.”

If that sounds like your kind of exercise regime, then read on.

The two-minute workouts that could add years to your life: From climbing stairs to running for a bus, research suggests short bursts of activity can have long-lasting health benefits

Incorporate these small changes into your daily routine – without feeling like it’s a struggle: 10 health resolutions to start now

> With a little creative thinking, you can still have your Christmas cake and eat it this festive season: How to avoid Christmas weight gain – and still indulge

Ecogreen Christmas ideas for gifts

Although Christmas is a pagan festival that is also anchored in many Christian communities, this period is also a time of cosy togetherness that no one can be against.

In these dark days, many families make time for socialising as well as giving presents and wishing each other all the best for the coming year.

It’s not a bad idea to think about these gifts and how to make them as pleasant as possible for those around us.

THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS

Do you really want to save the planet and the lives of your children and grandchildren?
Then buy gifts that don't destroy nature.
Make the right choice.

Here are 10 supportive and sustainable gift ideas:

Books printed on recycled paper, notebooks and diaries made from recycled paper.

Gift voucher from an NGO or a non-profit organization.

Gift certificate from WWF, Greenpeace or SeaShepherd.

Give a tree.

Fair trade products.

Cosmetics not tested on animals
Sustainable and natural clothing.

Today more than ever it is important to choose consciously because our choices as consumers are the only possible tool to be able to really change things. Unfortunately we tend to forget it (me first of all) and let ourselves be carried away by compulsive buying, but we must learn more and more to ask ourselves questions when we buy goods or services, because only in this way can we hope to…

View original post 313 more words

The Power of Women in 2022

Coming to the end of 2022

Facing another year nearly going to be part of the past, we still might say we had a year where lots of attention was given to certain men, but where women had to prove more than men, that they “could stand their man”.

At this site and also on our other sites, we do hope we could find a balance and give the necessary women some attention. Also for the matter of reblogging, we came across some women’s writings which deserved our attention and found you should get to know them too.

Just look at our previous postings where we mentioned and took some texts from the Jewish Young Professional (JYP), one of those female bloggers who regularly know to bring a smile to our face, with her playful take on the world and finely crafted poetry laced with some Jewish humour.

Besides JYP, a lot of women in 2022 passed the review. You could find in our reblogs, writings from the following women: Shambhavi Yadav, Barbara Leonhard, Cindy Georgakas, Saania Sparkle, Leona Cicone, Shalini Garg, Hola Luna, Maya Angelou, Urvashi The Little Mermaid, Sohair, Jane Park, Nethmie Dehigama, Deanna, Melissa from Working Zillennial, Susan Reimer, Brenda Davis Harsham, Noor Putteneers, Sofie Terryn, Ines Udelnow, Beverley Doreen Wright, an Ukrainian refugee, Kyrian Lyndon, Christa Noteboom, Joyce O’Day, Christine McNeill-Matteso, and D from Introverted Thoughts. So there are a whole bunch of them that we were allowed to introduce alongside the male writers.

Regarding “following authors”, we have to say that we do not always get updates on the publications of people we follow. For instance, Cindy Barton Knoke has been out of the picture this year, so we have missed her very nice prints. It seems there has gone something wrong in the WordPress system that they did not yet manage to solve after one year. In any case, she is still one of our favoured bloggers, whose site Cindy Knoke we still recommend as one not to miss next year.

Furthermore, we could not ignore Angela Merkel as a remarkable woman of the 2020-2022s. But for 2022, there were some women whose positions and/or statements more than deserved our attention.

The Power of Women

The American magazine Forbes announced its picks for the world’s most powerful women of 2022. Meet the three trailblazers who topped the list.

Image: John MacDougall—EPA/Alamy

1. Ursula von der Leyen

The first female president of the European Commission, she earned the top spot largely for her unwavering support of Ukraine following the Russian invasion in February. Learn what other gender barriers von der Leyen has broken.

2. Christine Lagarde

This year Lagarde, the first woman to head the European Central Bank, drew praise for her handling of various economic challenges, especially rising inflation and concerns about a worldwide recession. What other crises has she faced in her pioneering career? (To be honest: we would not place her in our top listing of most important people for 2022.)

3. Kamala Harris

U.S. Vice President Harris made news in 2022 with her advocacy of voting rights and reproductive freedom. Both were major issues of the midterms, which saw her Democratic colleagues perform better than expected.

When the mountains call, you listen

The boom that alpinism had in Europe in the 19th century did not pass by the women of the time – even if their alpine achievements were often not recognized to the same extent.  The strongest enticement to engage in mountain adventures probably existed for those women who lived in the mountain regions or were wealthy enough to discover them while travelling. Physically, these women were in the thick of it, yet so far away due to social constraint. Still, some brave individuals defied convention. When the mountains called, these amazing women listened and plunged into daredevil adventures.

One of them was the Irish woman Elizabeth Alice Frances Hawkins-Whitshed. In 1880, she visited Chamonix and discovered her passion for the mountains. Soon after, she stood on Mont Blanc for the first time and even made the first ascent of the Bishorn East peak, Pointe Burnaby. She was also the founder of the “Ladies Alpine Club” in London in 1907, the first alpine club in Great Britain. Lucy Walker, the first woman on the Matterhorn, was also later a member of the Ladies Alpine Club.

AN ACT OF LIBERATION For many female mountaineers, alpinism was an act of liberation, a sense of freedom from the constraints of the “dull” predetermined life, confined to clothes and stereotypes. “It is one of the chief difficulties for women who undertake an expedition of this kind that any man thinks he knows better what ought to be done than they do.”  – Annie Smith Peck, founding member of the American Alpine Club, after climbing Mt. Huascarán in Peru in 1908

SPECTACULAR ACHIEVEMENTS

An important day in the history of women mountaineers was September 3, 1838: on that day, Henriette d’Angeville (1794-1871) climbed Mont Blanc unaided. Although Marie Paradis had already been up 30 years earlier, she was supported with direct help at that time.

Fanny Bullock Workman already succeeded in setting an altitude record for women with her ascent of the 6952m Pinnacle Peak in the Himalayas in 1906.   A few years later, she made a clear statement with a photograph on a high glacier with the feminist magazine “Vote for women” in her hand. The early mountaineers made an important contribution to overcoming social stereotypes and breaking through the narrow image of women. After all, isn’t that the beauty of the mountains: in front of them, gender and origin don’t matter, because they unite all mountain lovers with a sense of awe, freedom and enthusiasm. For even more inspiring female mountaineers, check out the full story: Read more

 

A selection of articles for Healthy Living – December 2022

Three stories you should read today How to shift midlife weight gain for good We’ve identified five reasons your stomach might be less svelte now than in your youth – and what you can do to regain your waist ‘The NHS said I had to wait three years – so I went to Lithuania’ Seeking treatment abroad is often cheaper than going private in the UK and there are no lengthy NHS waiting lists, but there are risks The black mould hotspots in your home – and how to beat them Those dreaded spots could pose a bigger threat than ever this winter. Here’s how to fight the fungus

Three things to do now to avoid the winter sniffles

Don’t let the yuletide lurgy get you down this Christmas – use these easy preemptive steps to boost your immunity To help you out today There is a sense that we have moved on from the pandemic – but for our children, this is not the case, writes Bryony Gordon. Find out why – and how you can help. Gaslighting is officially the word of the year – and the meaning is evolving. Find out how it could be happening to you with Shane Watson’s guide to the seven different types. Rates of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are skyrocketing, particularly among over-40s. Find out what’s behind the rise of midlife ADHD, plus the telltale signs. ‘Every year my husband volunteers in a homeless shelter – but he never lifts a finger at home,’ writes our anonymous author. Find out why she’s tired of being a Christmas widow.

To nurture your relationships

A former mental health professional writes

nurture your relationships.

and advices

It is important to take stock of your emotional bank accounts. Boundaries are important in your financial and emotional life. Marriages need to be nurtured as the effects can affect more than the husband and wife.
Self-care is not just a yuppie or selfish term. Take care of yourself and you can take care of everything else.

I am a better wife, mother, and friend when I get in the gym for an hour. I am more patient. My husband calls the gym my therapist and temple. I missed a few workouts during my daughter’s visit. I found myself a bit short with my husband and our kids. My oldest daughter laughed and said mom hasn’t been in the gym. I used to shop when I was stressed out. {Monday’s Money Moments:}

New form of body exercises gaining popularity

Physical therapies and body exercises

Regularly, some body technique is promoted. Since the 1980s, techniques have thus passed where the utmost of the body was demanded, while other techniques focused on just a few parts of the body. In addition, yoga techniques have come and gone only to reappear in a different form.

Photo by Cliff Booth on Pexels.com

In recent years, many even went so far as to make exercise an essential part of their lives or even came to adhere to a body cult. Thus, in the early 21st century, a kind of new religion or body cult began to replace traditional religions.

People wished to feel good in their skin and were willing to go very far in this and even invest a lot of time, energy and money in it. But there were also many who actually wished to distance themselves from money and matter. For them, materialism was the enemy of our society and dependence on the matter was reprehensible and one had to train the mind to become master of the body again, through appropriate exercises on both spiritual and physical fleets. Several people were convinced that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them.

Because of the augmented stress in our industrialised world or so-called developed countries, a lot of therapies were also doled out.

Physical therapy is a professional career which has many specialties including musculoskeletal, orthopedics, cardiopulmonary, neurology, endocrinology, sports medicine, geriatrics, pediatrics, women’s health, wound care and electromyography. Neurological rehabilitation is, in particular, a rapidly emerging field. PTs practice in many settings, such as private-owned physical therapy clinics, outpatient clinics or offices, health and wellness clinics, rehabilitation hospitals facilities, skilled nursing facilities, extended care facilities, private homes, education, and research centers, schools, hospices, industrial and these workplaces or other occupational environments, fitness centers and sports training facilities

Fitness, a United States-based women’s magazine, focusing on health, exercise, and nutrition, launched in 1992.

As we entered this century, a lot of health mags found the publishing market while only fitness magazines left the magazine shelves. Though there appeared men’s and women’s magazines which also centred largely on well-being, body form, exercise, nutrition, health, and beauty. For a while, wellness was the fashion word. Lots of magazines presented several adverts for wellness farms and all sorts of wellness programs.

After all the years of hard, intense exercise with a lot of sweating, place was made for gentil exercises and feel good cures.

An aerobics class

All the brutal violence of the 80s with Aerobics, among others, now seems to have been pushed under the carpet for good. It has finally dawned on several people how bad such ‘good sweat and suffering’ programmes are bad for the body. It has taken several medics years to rid people of such techniques that do more harm than good.

However, a large part of the population has become aware that one has to take care of the heart and treat the body respectfully to know how to handle multiple things smoothly. One came to see that for doing cardio or cardio-respiratory exercise there is no need in such high intensity exercises but has to come to low-intensity enough that all carbohydrates are aerobically turned into energy via mitochondrial ATP production. Medium- to long-distance running or jogging, swimming, cycling, stair climbing and walking, have proven to be more effective and less damaging than the overpopular Jane Fonda Workout or Aerobics. The American actress, political activist, and former fashion model spawned imitators and sparked a boom of women’s exercise classes, opening the formerly male-dominated fitness industry to women, and establishing the celebrity-as-fitness-instructor model. The horrible “Feel the burn!”, became a common saying lots of people really started to believe, along with the proverb, “No pain, no gain.” The exercise motto that promises greater value rewards for the price of hard and even painful work, has been luckily now pushed in the corner. It is true that one has to put in the effort to achieve something and it is not all that simple. Effort is a must, but it should not be at the expense of a healthy body.

Something of a revelation to devotees of hard, intense exercise, Zone 2 is one of this year’s key fitness talking points. Influential US well-being podcasters such as the American neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and the Canadian-American physician Dr Peter Attia who focuses on the science of longevity, have been recommending Zone 2 to their many thousands of listeners.

In January 2021, Huberman started the “Huberman Lab Podcast”, focused on neuroscience and science-based tools.In those podcast s he gives attention to breathing/breathwork and the visual system influence the autonomic nervous system, stress, and other brain states, including sleep.

On his podcast Huberman said:

“Getting 180-200 minutes of Zone 2 cardio per week has enormous positive effects on longevity and general health.”

Stress, he says, is not just about the content of what we are reading or the images we are seeing. It is about how our eyes and breathing change in response to the world, as well as the cascades of events that follow. Both these bodily processes also offer us easy and accessible releases from stress. By doing body exercises the wrong way we build up negative stress.

If you need to run and catch your train, you want all the things that go along with stress to go pursue that train. But if the stress response is spontaneous or excessive, it can start to feel pathological.

In the previous decades those exuberant fitness programs won terrain because lots of women wanted to lose weight.

“Despite reaching epidemic proportions, obesity has been wandering in the wilderness of medical lexicon.”

says Attia.

It is striking and distressing to see how several fat people have been added in recent years. Notwithstanding so many fitness programmes and all kinds of diet items and drinks, obesity has increased enormously. (Today the definitions of overweight and obesity are based primarily on measures of height and weight—not morbidity.) Since obesity is often the on-ramp to cancer, heart disease and even Alzheimer’s, we sincerely need to do something against this worrying increase.

The prevalence of overweight and obesity varied across countries, across towns and cities within countries, and across populations of men and women. In China and Japan, for instance, the obesity rate for men and women was about 5 percent, but in some cities in China it had climbed to nearly 20 percent. In 2005 it was found that more than 70 percent of Mexican women were obese. WHO survey data released in 2010 revealed that more than half of the people living in countries in the Pacific Islands region were overweight, with some 80 percent of women in American Samoa found to be obese. {Encyc. Britannica}

The fattening population has everything to do with culture and lifestyle habits among which eating and exercise habits are the main ones.

People need to be aware that it is not about being physically engaged to the point of giving up. On the contrary, one should exercise in a balanced way and not overload the body. It comes down to finding the right balance.

Zone 2 training means exercising at a level of exertion where your body is working, but not very hard – at this level your body is able to use fat as fuel rather than carbohydrates. As you work harder and move up into Zone 3 and beyond you will switch to using carbohydrates, a quite different state in which your heart, lungs and muscles are under stress and will need time to recover. (You know this switch is happening when breathing becomes harder and you are gasping or panting.)

Thanks to its turbocharging effect on our cells’ mitochondria Zone 2 cardio exercises have a very positive effect on the metabolism, improving blood sugar levels and reducing insulin resistance.

The cardio is linked to lower rates of a whole raft of diseases including type 2 diabetes, dementia, stroke and heart disease.

Dr Richard Blagrove, senior lecturer in physiology at Loughborough University, says:

“In terms of both health and performance, Zone 2 training can be really advantageous. I don’t feel bad about getting on my stationary bike and reading a book for an hour.”

Photo by Rui Dias on Pexels.com

Yes, even in a simple and not too strenuous way, one can train their body and work on it. Of course, it is even better to get out now and then, say twice a week, to fully focus your mind on movement in, say, a beautiful green environment. Though such ‘biking’ can lay down an “aerobic base” before one goes training further and build to more intense modes of exercise for competition later in the year.

For the rest of us, Zone 2 can be transformative.

Blagrove points out.

Former professional cyclist and fitness coach at ATP Performance Andy Turner lost 24kg through this kind of movement.

“Zone 2 makes you better at utilising fats as a fuel source and it can help level out your blood sugar. Longer-duration aerobics work can sometimes be forgotten, now it’s all about time-efficient, 30-minute, High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).”

HIIT cannot be done every day without strain and risk. It can take 48 hours or more for your body to recover from a session and unsurprisingly this does not speed up as you grow older, whereas Zone 2 provides its many benefits in a sustainable way.

Zone 2 works best in a mix with some high-intensity training – three Zone 2 sessions a week with two HIIT blasts is a good mix.

Zone 2 is the place where your body is working, but not very hard. Technically this is 60-70 per cent of your maximum heart rate, but I would recommend an easier way, namely to check the Talk Test. If one trains properly and performs breathing correctly, one should be able to simply converse without getting out of breath. If you were to call someone during a Zone 2 workout, you should be able to use complex sentences, not just sentiments such as “Help!” or “Taxi!”.

I hope now some more people will put aside that wrong thought of having to suffer to have some successful training. One should not do penance for having sinned by going to a dinner or party. Physical exercise should never continue as a punishment. It should be an enjoyable activity so that it is also a liberating activity.

Always take of your body, because it is the only one you got.

Photo by Chevanon Photography on Pexels.com

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Preceding

Happy First Day of Spring: Spring Cleaning!

What would you do if…? Continued trial

”For The Moment Of Happiness”

Anxiety Management During Pandemic Days~

7 Ways To Boost Your Immune System in Lockdown

Be it in May or September: Run the race

Do you have painful creaky knees

Reasons to be cheerful

++

Additional reading

1. Strength of older people can be boosted by resistance training
2. Self-development, self-control, meditation, beliefs and spirituality
3. The focus of multiculturalism in Europe on Muslims and Jews
4. Why are we surprised when Buddhists are violent?
5. Spreading good cheer contagious

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“Celebrate” – channelled spiritual message from The Circle of The Light of The Love Energy – Channelled by Kay Meade.

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5. Simple way of getting fit at home.
6. How to Squeeze Fitness into Your Day?
7. Relaxation or exploitation? The commodification of yoga as a colonial practice
8. How do you prepare for yoga as a beginner?
9. Today: “Now we have to understand…how we can tune our mind to Infinity. ” – Yogi Bhajan
10. Trusted Sources: a Journey, Comfort and Wheeeeee
11. Is Hot Yoga Right for Me? @ClevelandClinic
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13. I Tried Nude Yoga…And It Was Nothing Like What I Expected (via Yoga Journal)
14. Kicking it old school on Fitness Friday
15. My Day At The 3rd Lehurutshe Annual Mandela Cycling & Sports Day
16. CHA Celebrates 10 Years of Helping Residents Lose Weight, Lower Blood Pressure and Reduce Cardiovascular Risk
17. Fitness Tips: Monitoring Aerobic Exercise Intensity
18. Step Aerobics Routines You Can Do At Home
19. Exercise #18 – Leg Warmers and Raving Lunatics
20. Aerobic Training Workouts That Benefits Your Entire Body
21. Aerobics and ale
22. Looking On For More
23. Today’s Health Tip ~
24. Sprint Triathlon Training 101
25. Dance with all your might
26. Pilates et yoga : comment choisir ?

Not having the space for large trees in your garden

In case you are able to have a garden, it is not always to have enough space for planting trees.

A small garden does not mean you cannot experiment. Not everyone has the space for large trees, but there are some smaller specimens that not only provide structure and interest to a garden, but are prized for their scented flowers.

You might be surprised what can still be planted in a small garden to have nice fragrances and fine colours throughout the year.

Although it is not advisable to plant trees too close to the house, Tom Brown would suggest that you consider planting these trees near the house so that you can enjoy and appreciate the perfume when they’re in full bloom.

Azara microphylla

Please come to know more about the Crataegus monogyna (or the common hawthorn), the Azara microphylla, the Acacia dealbata, or sweet mimosa, the Magnolia salicifolia, and the Hamamelis mollis (or the Chinese witch hazel) you could plant in your garden to bring some variation colour and smell.

Get to read more about scented flowers: A small garden doesn’t mean you can’t experiment – try planting one of these

Some wanting a #childfreemillennial in an ‘overpopulated’ world

In the late 1970s and early ’80s by the central government of China there was an official program initiated to restrict the amount of children, reduce the growth rate of China’s enormous population, making that today there are not enough youngsters to pay for the older generation. There were even forced abortions and sterilizations (the latter primarily of women).

The one-child policy produced consequences beyond the goal of reducing population growth. Most notably, the country’s overall sex ratio became skewed toward males—roughly between 3 and 4 percent more males than females.

It seems now several youngsters also have preference not to have children. They seem to forget that when they would be over 60 there shall be no children able for them to take care. The consequence of not wanting children is not providing a generation who shall be at work whilst the elders would be retired, so that there would not be money to provide for those retired people. Something which has become a huge problem in China.

We wonder if those who now say it will be great to have a child-free life still would say that when they passed the age to have children. shall they still say

“You’ve slept in, woken up to a tidy home, it’s quiet, and you’ve got the rest of the day to potter around, no interruptions. A child-free life is a good life.”

when they find themselves in that quiet home where they are just with themselves and nobody to continue their family generation.

The above message floats over a video that captures a scene of serene domesticity. Posted on TikTok a few days ago, it has already racked up more than 100,000 views.

The video’s creator, “Danni ‘childfree’ Duncan”, who seems mainly to be concerned about his own freedom, is among those who have been able to start a movement under their generation which clearly has decided not to have children. That movement even has its own hashtags (#childfreebychoice and #nothavingkids).

One could easily think that all this is a whim of short duration. But we rather have the impression that these young people do not really realise what their childless life might be in a few years.

However, we obviously cannot ignore or overlook this movement, because it involves not just a few but thousands of women all over the western world.

This craze is just one small part of a wider, and highly significant, demographic issue: across much of the world, birth rates are plummeting.

On Nov 15 this year, the global population is expected to reach eight billion. The United Nations predicts it could grow to about 8.5 billion by 2030 before peaking at 10.4 billion in the 2080s. After that – and some predict it will happen 20 years earlier – the world’s population will start to fall.

Some on the other hand argue that we here in the West should curb births because in the poorer countries, far too many children are coming into this world and thus will overpopulate it. In certain countries they thought lots of children would die because of Covid or because of global warming disasters. In the industrialised countries there was a growth of babies born.

“About nine months after the pandemic, we see what we call a ‘baby bump,’”

said Martha Bailey, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the authors of a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

After more than a year, lots of people having been in lockdown, in those countries with economic unemployment we could notice more children being born than normally in the same period over a year. In several countries, lots of 80+ and 90+ people died from the Coronavirus, but still, we can see that the number of 70-79 year-olds increased a remarkable percentage.

We should be aware that usually in countries where conditions for survival are more difficult that more children will be born there, but also more deaths will occur. In the West, similarly, with improved living conditions and a reduction in child deaths, we have had a reduction in births.

The few decades of projected global population growth that remain will be driven by a small number of undeveloped countries, many in the Sahel region of Africa. In countries like Niger, which has the world’s highest fertility rate, economic conditions remain so harsh that women continue to have an average of six or more children in order to survive.

In contrast, for most of the rest of the world – including Britain – it’s a baby bust. And it’s happening now. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), women born in 1975 had on average just 1.92 children. This compared with the average 2.08 children produced by their mothers’ generation (taken as women born in 1949) and is far below the 2.1 children needed for the existing population to replace itself. For a country it is accepted that, to maintain stability in a country, an overall total fertility rate of 2.1 is needed, assuming no immigration or emigration occurs. A total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 is known as the replacement rate. Generally speaking, when the TFR is greater than 2.1, the population in a given area will increase, and when it is less than 2.1, the population in a given area will eventually decrease, though it may take some time because factors such as age structure, emigration, or immigration must be considered.

Last year, the French were urged to have more children after the number of births in the country slumped to its lowest level since the Second World War, with 1.83 children born per woman, compared with 2.02 more than a decade earlier. The birth rate in Spain also dropped to a historic low last year, hitting just 1.19 children born to every woman – a 29 per cent fall compared with a decade earlier.

And in parts of Asia the situation is even worse. South Korea’s fertility rate sank to its lowest ever in 2020, a meagre 0.84 children per woman, giving the country the lowest birth rate in the world.

If, on average, women give birth to 2.1 children and these children survive to the age of 15, any given woman will have replaced herself and her partner upon death.

If young people have now decided not to have children, it means that in a few years’ time, we will indeed have a reduced number of people in several countries but there will also be a very ageing population for which not enough young people will be able to care, a problem China is now facing.

Europe and the U.S.A are already facing a similar problem too because although fertility rates remain well above the replacement rate in many parts of the world, the global TFR has declined significantly since 1970. The decline may be so drastic that populations are expected to halve by 2100 in more than 20 countries, including Spain, Portugal and Japan.

While some may think that humans will have to move to other planets due to overpopulation, some also realise that there will be an emerging population reduction. Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla chief executive, has called it

“one of the biggest risks to civilisation”.

But why, when living standards and freedoms have never been higher, are women across the globe having so few children or rejecting the concept of motherhood altogether? And what if anything can policymakers do to reverse the trend?

What we should be concerned about is why young people, if not out of selfishness, do not want to bear children. Is it because those twens consider children an economic drain caused by housing, education cost and other costs.

Economic stresses and spiralling house prices mean more couples will feel they can’t afford children,

explains Lyman Stone, chief information officer at Demographic Intelligence.

To promote “no children” may also just be an excuse to avoid such an obligation to share each other with a third party and if they find they can no longer have children, hide it behind their so-called “no children policy”. It looks like many youngsters do not want to invest time or money in any other beings in their relationship. Most of them want leisure time, and time to focus on their own well-being and development.

The reverse of the leisurist coin is the “workist” mindset, in which they value their job very highly as a source of meaning and purpose in their life. Getting higher in work has become a very important factor, and that goal of reaching a high position is considered much more important than having children.

Like leisurism, it is not hugely compatible with parenthood. More than one study has suggested a correlation between workist attitudes – which Stone says are prevalent among a growing share of adults – and lower fertility.

A survey last year by the Pew Research Center in the US found a rising share of childless American adults said they were unlikely to ever start a family. Some 44 per cent of non-parents aged 18 to 49 fell into this category, up from 37 per cent in 2018. While some cited financial reasons, climate change or their lack of a partner as a reason, the majority (56 per cent) said they probably wouldn’t have children because they just didn’t want to.

It’s a group that’s becoming more vocal. In 2015 and 2017, the NotMom Summit – billed as one of the world’s first major conferences for women without children – was held in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2021, Erin Spurling, a British woman in her mid-30s, created the Childfree Lounge, an online community for women without children.

Many of those no-children lovers say they love their freedom, spontaneity and peace and quiet. They often also value time alone or just with a partner or even want to change partners regularly.

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Find also to read

Child-free by choice: The birth rate crisis gripping the West

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Additional reading

1. How the pandemic created an unexpected “baby bump”
2. Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #4 The Family pact
3. Ecological economics in the stomach #3 Food and Populace
4. How to look back at Cop26
5. What effect does population have on climate change?
6. Overpopulation not the cause of overusing our earth

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Related

1. Boomers miss the boat: Qld population shift leaves two age groups stranded
2. A Small Circle in Asia Contains More Than Half the World’s Population | HowStuffWorks
3. Book review: ‘Letter to the American Church’
4. Sexual Selection In Men
5. Special Release on 2020 CPH, Municipality of Cabusao7
6. Top 10 Most Populated Countries in Europe #shorts #facts – YouTube 채널: Swapna Ideas
7. Is Large Population a Problem?

The best way to shape up? Reconsider everything you think you know about your diet

From the by the Telegraph

Professor Tim Spector has advised that we all delay our first meal of the day if we want to stay healthy and lose weight Credit: Jason Ford

By Katherine Lovage, NEWSLETTER EDITOR

Good afternoon, Are you enjoying summer so far? It’s been a very busy time for me, with weddings, birthdays and a few live events. However, there has been an unfortunate downside to my stuffed schedule: my diet has well and truly slipped. For example, I’ve been devouring every fried food and carbohydrate in sight. In fact, I rustled up some focaccia two days ago and have single-handedly powered my way through the entire loaf. In my defence, it was delicious; mastering bread was one of the few silver linings from my 2020 lockdown. Unfortunately, my slap-dash approach to eating has left me bloated and weighed down, an uncomfortable feeling which is magnified by the hot weather. So, I welcomed this handy article about 11 of the most common diet myths and what to do instead to point me in the right direction. In this feature, epidemiologist and microbiome expert Professor Tim Spector says that our obsession with calorie counting can be incredibly unhelpful. Drastically restricting the amount one eats can lead to yo-yo dieting. In better news, cheese and coffee may not be as bad for us as we have been led to believe. Spector also usefully lists eight of the best foods for the gut, from artichoke to kimchi. We might also need to reconsider our relationship with ‘the most important meal of the day’. It transpires that everything we know about breakfast is wrong – but adjusting what and how we eat in the morning can have a positive effect on our health, from cognitive function to stress levels. If you’re ready to reconfigure your diet then good luck! I’ll be making my first change this week: all homemade focaccia must be shared with at least one other person. How do you keep track of your diet? Let me know by emailing me at katherine.lovage@telegraph.co.uk. PS I almost achieved full marks, scoring 9 out of 10 in this week’s news quiz. Can you chalk up that elusive 10?

To help you out today

	The everyday foods sneaking salt into your diet – and 11 easy ways to cut down. Try these simple swaps to lower your intake.
	Diana Henry’s best French-inspired tart recipes. From a nectarine and lavender tarte tatin to a cherry and chocolate frangipane, these feel-good bakes are simple yet showstopping.
	The secret supplement that can fix brain fog. Unable to concentrate or feeling exhausted? Your body may be running low on a key vitamin…
	The surprising new approach that could ease arthritis. Discover the unexpected treatment that could improve your symptoms – medication-free.

Iedere tuin biedt op zijn eigen manier mogelijkheden

De tuin van Tessa en haar man Jaap is een bijzondere tuin. Ze wonen samen met hun twee dochters Michelle en Senna in een voormalig graanpakhuis in Lekkerkerk. Een oud, hoog huis met een prachtige gevel en loopbrug. Onder de loopbrug vind je een unieke tuin; een klein terras met veel hoogteverschillen. Benieuwd hoe ze dit hebben aangepakt? Bekijk hier de video en het gehele artikel.

Favorieten van Tessa Benieuwd welke eyecatchers Tessa in haar tuin heeft staan? Je vindt haar favoriete meubelen hier.

Modewereld en Oekraïne

Noor Putteneers

Wereldwijd zetten steeds meer modemerken samenwerking met Rusland stop

View original post 108 more words

Mode-industrie en Oekraïne

Noor Putteneers

Mode-industrie toont solidariteit met Oekraïne tijdens ‘fashion month’

“We see you, we feel you, we love you”

Tijdens de modeweken in onder andere New York, Milaan, Londen en Parijs uitten meerdere modemerken, maar ook individuele figuren, hun steun aan Oekraïne. Dat melden verschillende modebladen, kranten en de modehuizen zelf. Zo bracht de creatief directeur van het Spaanse modehuis Balenciaga een gedicht voor de Oekraïense bevolking voor de show van start ging. Ook het Franse modemerk Dior en de Italiaanse modemerken Giorgio Armani en Valentino bleven niet stil over de situatie.

Ook de mode-industrie steunt Oekraïne

View original post 493 more words

Be it in May or September: Run the race

The last two academic years have been very weird with many restrictions. September is here again and soon it will be October, the month when everybody is back at work or back in school. Once more we faee a new academic and church year. Once more we are reminded we have work to do on this earth. We have our obligations and we have to strive to get some results in what we are supposed to do.

In Belgium, last year, sports were more a thing for one person on his own, because no group events were allowed. Everyone had to stay in isolation and contact sports were not allowed. The text underneath normally was to be published in May, when we had the underneath ‘prayer theme’ for the month, but we got somewhat behind with a lot of work, because other matters, like taking care of people, providing food to isolated people and help for those in need, certainly after the floods, required our attention.

In the Covid period it might not have been easy for many. Now it could well be that this year may be a year of transition, for becoming back to normal.

Jane Edwards has a look at what happened mostly in May. In her country that is the time the sun starts showing herself more and more attention is given to outside sports. She then thinks of the race which we have to finish.

Be it May or September, each day we are confronted with a lot of matters. Every day of the year, we have to get on and continue our way.

°°°

Run the race

When I was at school, the month of May meant only one thing…..
Practicing for Sports day.
Today, children are encouraged to just take part, and they are all winners. Helping others along the way to finish together.

When I was at school, it was all about the winning!
Who could run fastest.
Who could throw furthest.
Who could jump highest.

Winners were winners, and losers were just that – losers.
Winners received prizes, losers were scorned.

There were cheers, and plenty of boos.

I hated Sports day. Whilst I enjoyed hockey and netball – team games, I hated the one against one competition of Athletics – mainly because I was rubbish, and not really built to run!

We are told in the Bible in Hebrews 12 that we need to ‘run the race’ , but we are also told that ‘bodily exercise profits little’ in 1 Timothy 4v8 – which is correct?
Of course we need to exercise.
For our hearts and minds exercise is good, but too much can become an obsession – and take us away from other activities that matter.
So, what race do we need to run?

Of course, this is the race to the Kingdom. This race is much better than the ones I failed miserably at school. This race, (perhaps more apt to call it an Obstacle Course) makes everyone a winner!
It’s about getting to the finish line – some may reach that before others, but everyone has a chance to finish and win… and have help from others along the way.
And the prize – eternal life!
No boos, but cheers from the Heavenly Hosts.
As we watch our children on Sports Day, or think about exercise for ourselves, let us remember the most important race of our lives.

 

 

 

Dear Lord,
Please be with us as we run the race to your Kingdom.
Some of us may be slower through lack of faith, anxiety, and fatigue.
Give us the encouragement and strength needed to make it to the finish.
Please help us to help others to the end,
giving them encouragement as you have to us.
Amen

 

Jane Edwards

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Preceding

Race and Grace

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong

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Additional reading

1. Life is like a ten-speed bike.
2. The high calling of God in Christ Jesus
3. We are redeemed; we are “bought with a price”
4. Followers with deepening
5. Troubles testing your faith and giving you patience and good prospects
6. Matthew 20 Are you willing to work for Jesus?
7. Today’s Thought “There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness” (May 27)
8. Every athlete exercises self control
9. Running the battle
10. A race not to swift, nor a battle to the strong
11. Run for the Everlasting Cure
12. Atonement and the race been bought
13. Being of good courage running the race

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Related

1. “Fit In!”
2. Just Keep Going by Bridget A. Thomas
3. A Crown Beyond the Sun
4. Running The Race
5. Running The Race by Tara Randel
6. Running This Race Called Life
7. His Closed Circuit!
8. Life’s race
9. How do you stay strong in the midst of change
10. ending well
11. Leaning On The Father
12. Running the Race of Holiness: DON’T give up
13. Catching up to the Win
14. Old and Heavy
15. The Race
16. It’s Friday…Run With An Eye For Nothing Less
17. Preparing to Fly!
18. First of All!
19. How To Run A Steady Race Right Into Glory
20. One Thing I Know
21. With “Blinders” of Grace!
22. The Surrendered Disciple!
23. The Funneling Effect!
24. With Reverence, Returning…
25. Reawaken the Redeemed!
26. Saved from Self’s Strainings!
27. The Second Hand’s Moment!
28. His “Stone Soup” Creations!
29. Sunday Morning 7/25: Unit 34, Session 4: Running the Race
30. Clear ye the Way!
31. Shaking the Comatose!
32. Eyes on the Goal
33. A Cloud of Witnesses
34. The Fool’s Boundary!
35. Discarding Camouflage!
36. The Piper’s Promised Peace!
37. Keep the Focus
38. Choice Intersections!
39. Faithful to the End
40. Wholeness…in Him!
41. Running the Race
42. Finishing well

Why Oldies Are Goldies

Music is something that always vibrates and keeps coming back in all sorts of forms. Regularly artists find again inspiration in older songs , give it some contemporary touch and soon those who hear the renewed cover go looking for the original music which can receive a new life again.

Anita's Perspectives on Life.

Are you a fan of old music…then this blog is for you.

The connection people have with old music is far from grey and old. Even teenagers and young adults do like old music. People have always had a close connection with music because its ability to evoke our emotions and feelings.

The stronger your feelings are while listening to a song, the stronger a connection you make with the music. Music represents who you were when you first made a connection with it.

This holds especially true when you are adolescents and very young. From the age of 13 to 26, people are going through the most physical and psychological changes. This is a transition time for them and they face their first heartbreaks and other emotional turning points, which turns them towards making a strong connection with music.

Music plays an important role in our lives. Sometimes we…

View original post 604 more words

Let South America come to you #2 For those with a good taste

When you can not go to South America, why do you not bring South America into your home?

For those with a good taste

From waterfalls to wines

South America is the continent that is home to a vast array of rich cultures, history, traditions, food, and once-in-a-lifetime places to visit.

Angel Falls, Venezuela | © David Kjelkerud / Flickr

When you would love to go exploring South America it would not be bad to prepare yourself and to get already some taste of it before you take the long voyage. A place you have to visit is the waterfall in the Guiana Highlands in Bolívar state, southeastern Venezuela, on the Churún River. Before you would like to fly over Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world, coming in at over 3000 feet it would not be bad to feel a bit like an angel tasting all sorts of well-tasting goods from that continent, which will bring you to the seventh heaven.

You also do not have to go straight away, deep in the Amazonian rainforest to find a melting pot of indigenous traditions and a perfect place to see centuries of Peruvian history and culture coming together.

Before you would go to the Belén Market, the largest traditional market in the Peruvian Amazon, and a place where visitors can taste and see the food, textiles, and wares of the region, on the web there is a place where you already can have a peep-show of some handicrafts from the South American continent

Mendoza, Argentina

Wines

As state and local governments order people to stay home to limit the spread of the virus, toilet paper and canned goods are not the only items people are snapping up. Wine sales at wine shops are soaring and large, highly-distributed wine brands are struggling to keep wines on the shelf.

Meanwhile, small wineries that depend on restaurants and on-site sales are trying to figure out how to survive. The question on the mind of everyone in the wine business is what will things look like on the other side when they get the virus under control.

Having poached the Malbec grape from Europe and turned it into a roaring superstar, Argentina is rightly celebrated for its wine producers.

The Mendoza region, in the western central part of the country in the Cuyo region, dominates Argentina’s wine scene. It enjoys prestige for the wine produced on its vineyards. It also can be refreshing to see genuine contenders from elsewhere, such as the Bodegas Callia from the San Juan province.

In the Mendoza region, you may find one of the original Bordeaux grape varieties from the Bordeaux region of France, namely Malbec. Because grown on a higher altitude then in France the wines tend to have a higher level of acid, which makes them ideal to go with the Argentinian meat.

The Cabernet Sauvignon which was introduced in Argentina in the 19th century by the French agricultural engineer Michel Amié Pouget. He further introduced Pinot Noir, Merlot, and Malbec vines to Argentina and founded the first vine nursery and agricultural school in his new country.

Located in the Tulum Valley, Bodegas Callia aims to produce the best Shiraz in Argentina.

Since we cannot go to South America, we will have to bring the heat and sun here. And what better way to do so than with a few good bottles of wine? Certainly when those wines earn it to keep on the palate.

The dry, hot climate of Argentina is really great for growing Cabernet Sauvignon. The grapes ripen very easily, so these Cabs are almost always filled with tons of blackberries, cherry, pepper and vanilla with a little bit of mint. If you like rich, full-bodied wines with dark fruit flavours, then you might want to try a Cabernet Sauvignon from Navarro Correas Private Collection which since a few moths you now easily can get over here in Europe by an excellent deliverer.

When you are looking for a nice rich tempting wine with a big, nutty, creamy nose or bitter cherry awash with orange peel and gravely splendour, you might find it at Pequeña SudAmerica.

As the second largest country in South America and the eighth largest in the world by land mass, Argentina could even offer much more in case the country would have been more organised and receiving more support from those in charge.

Beers

Stylistically Argentina is perhaps the most European of Latin American countries, especially when it comes to cuisine. You can find the traditional wineries (the world’s fifth biggest wine producer) and you also may find the principal beer types which were based on central European styles of lager and wheat beer. It is impossible to taste every beer produced in South America, Pequeña Sudamerica offers a very good selection of 6 or 7 selected beers in a trial pack.

The historical influences in South America which have created a cuisine that offers a variety of delicacies has also brought some very, very tempting sweets around the corner. For diabetics is it not always so easy, because a lot of sweets and drinks are very sweet.
But nimble fingers and kitchen princesses can already prepare a lot for those who want a taste of that delicious South America.

Craftworks

It might not always be easy to bring Argentinian wines over to Europe, but for traditional artisans, it is even more difficult to get their goods over to Europe. Those craftsmen in particular have serious difficulties to virtuously market their products.

Carla Scalia

With corona-restrictions the Argentinian Carla Scalia, now living in Belgium, could only go twice to her home country to bring some beautiful handicrafts from her family and friends with her. Therefore those craft works are very limited. And because they are not made in a factory they are all individual pieces of art, which makes them special. This makes that when you might see some sculptures or drawing on the website, next time you come onto the website they already might be gone.

Mate Alados by Noelia Álvarez

All the South American accessories Pequeã SudAmerica is offering are hand made by local artists, and by selecting it properly at the artist’s workshop this is how they ensure to always offer you the best quality. As such they present mate cups of the best quality in an exclusive and unique design, hand painted and varnished for complete protection.

You also shall be able to find a selection of original accessories for your kitchen and table.

From the southern United States to northern South America the Lignum vitae, with its evergreen leaves can be found. As a source of a very hard and heavy wood that is brownish green in colour, the wood being relatively waterproof because of its high fat content, makes it ideal for making kitchen utilities. It is used to make pulleys, shafts, axles, and bowling balls, and Pequeña SudAmerica is offering the tropical wood in magnificent small objects, like food and toothpicks.

Argentinian artist Noelia Álvarez, who has performed incredible exhibitions in San Rafael, Mendoza and Buenos Aires in Argentina and Catalonia, Spain, is not only responsible for a great variety of mate cups with a unique design. Although her work focuses on paintings with incredible designs and details, Noelia has taken her passion to the limit and from painting large murals and paintings in acrylic on canvas, she designed very beautiful and exclusive wooden mate cups.

For sure, the founders of the webshop Pequeã Sudamerica took great risks to start their business to bring Sud American articles to the European continent, whilst there was and still is a Coronacrisis, limiting them going back and forth to Argentina to contact local traders, to support them and offer them a fair price for their goods. At the moment Carla Scalia her parent’s wines are not yet available, but perhaps this would be made possible in the future (when some good shipping arrangements could be organised).

Pequeña Sudamérica, or “Little South America”, has the goal to make South Americans in Europe taste home again, and get Europeans to experience their great specialities.
In addition to the best known mate tea brands, you shall be able to find a wide variety of drinks, delicacies and accessories.

We would say:

Enjoy some chocolate and dulce de leche products at your afternoon tea.

And enjoy South America at your home in our wet regions, so that the sun (at least) may shine in your house.

*

Please find the shop:  https://pequena-sudamerica.eu/en/

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Preceding

Let South America come to you #1 Reasons to stay away from South America

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Related

1. Mining Camp Memories — Foreword, Prologue, Chapter #1, and first part of Chapter #2
2. Wonderful Place!
3. Aerial view of Churun Meru in Canaima National Park, Venezuela
4. Angel Falls, Venezuela by Gabriel Riva
5. Angel Falls, Venezuela by Austin Shaffer
6. Angel Falls, Venezuela – by Aegis Wanderlust
7. 10 Best Places to Visit in Argentina – Travel Video
8. Haurez
9. Lomas de Lachay
10. Buenos Aires Electronic Music Travel Guide by Forma
11. For The Love of Wine: A brief history of South American Wine.
12. Here’s what was #inmyglass
13. Argentinian Malbec
14. Following Malbec’s fingerprints to identify terroir
15. “I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday”
16. Dalwhinnie Shiraz 2006 Wine Review
17. Que Syrah Syrah…
18. Baked Chorizo Gnocchi With Fat bastard Shiraz
19. Salad Shirazi – Cucumber and tomato salad with dried mint dressing

Earth’s pandemic and T-shirts for young people

We at the Belgian Christadelphian office have passed a certain age, so that it would not be appropriate to walk on the street with a T-shirt. As elders, we tell the visitors in our churches about the task we as human beings have when living on this planet. We talk about our responsibility and the task God has given us. But we do know the majority of inhabitants of this planet are not believing in God and are mostly concerned about gaining as much money as possible, whatever the cost may be.

The last few months, lots of people were very worried about the Covid-pandemic, but for years there has been another big virus circling around us, which most people seem to ignore. Though for more than a decade, several of the Boom generation with the millennials and the Generation Z have been writing essays, articles and making posters for awareness about global warming and cried out into the world to save our planet. Because that planet is getting very ill. People have used and wasted earthly resources, if nothing. In our so-called ‘civilised’ countries most citizens were and are not concerned about the pollution they cause.

For us the time of publicly protesting and going on the streets, protesting for this and that, may be gone or not so appropriate.
But for young people, we would like to introduce some very interesting clothing and tote bags with a different angle. We are namely very concerned about the world where we and our children and grandchildren but also next generations have to live in. Therefore, we do find it five past twelve to call on all the responsible people to use their senses and to do something against the horrible state we have brought our planet. We cannot sit still and do if global warming does not exist.

Everybody can use his own voice to bring awareness to others. A T-shirt is a wearable message board that can pull the attention to our planet and to what we have to do about it. The world needs to change as we are currently hurtling towards climatic changes that will alter the way the planet is configured. This will certainly be to the detriment of humanity if not cause its extinction. Crazy you may say but 99.99% of all species that have ever lived have gone extinct so just because we can walk and talk and use a smart phone does not mean that we will not go the same way.

Scientists and philosophers don’t in general want to be celebrities but it is important that we listen to what they have to say because they offer the only way out of this current crisis. So enjoy our range and change the world at least in one tiny way, an environmentally friendly piece of clothing. {Scientist and Philosopher}

It is not bad to have a look at their products to make others aware of this dramatic situation.

> A collection to highlight the need for us all to stop and think. > Think

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