Today, I woke up and much of the day I spent thinking about how I was going to get my drug-of-choice packed up for my upcoming trip. How much do I need? What could I leave behind in order to fit my drug-of-choice into the one little bag that would last me a month? What would happen if I ran out? My drug of choice happens to be a particularly fine earl grey tea and why I like to think I am not addicted, when I think about going without the warmth and ritual of my morning cup, my heart starts to race and I snap at my children. There are few people I know that aren’t dependant on some sort of drug as part of their daily routine: caffeine, tobacco, marijuana, alcohol or the harder-to-get and less acceptable ones that are prescribed, gotten on the streets, or otherwise come by illicitly. I’ve noticed in my life, it’s often the people who once struggled with illicit drug use themselves that have the most nuanced understanding drug literacy and the varying relationships people have with psychoactive drugs.
From Folk U: Reading Between the headlines – How to get more truth out of today’s media
By Manda Aufochs Gillespie
It’s hard to navigate the world today for while informationhas never been so accessible, misinformation has also never been so accessible. Although, I find it helpful to remember that half-truths and alternative facts and falsehoods are not new. I was taking a class once where we read an author many hundreds of years past who was bemoaning the difficulties of easy information and half-truths obscuring the actual truth.
As an immigrant to Canada, I was shocked to learn about the Canadian legacy of residential schools. I had no idea growing up in the U.S. that such things were happened and had happened just north of the border. The indigenous residential schools operated in Canada starting in the 1870s with the last one not closing until1996. Children as young as four were taken—often against the will of their families or with coercive techniques such as threatening jail time—and it is estimated that over 150,000 Indian, Inuit, and Métis children attended residential school. I was reminded that it is a legacy that continues to shade aspects of Canadian culture and identity for all Canadians this year when I became a citizen. At the ceremony, the judge encouraged all of us new Canadians to make the act of reconciliation personal and spoke about how she was doing that in her life.
This week’s guest at Folk University’s Folk U Friday series was Sue Hall author of Fish Don’t Climb Trees, head of the Whole Dyslexic Society, and Davis Dyslexia facilitator. Sue Hall is also dyslexic and the mother of a dyslexic child and has taught a positive-based approached to working with dyslexia for 20 years. She talked about how to fid the gift in so-called learning disabilities and work with dyslexia in a positive way. Please listen to the CKTZ podcast for a brief interview with Sue Hall or visit https://thegreenmama.com/learning-differences/ to read more about dyslexia and learning differences.
Recent research and long held traditions around health and food have challenged conventional practices of making available and promoting high carbohydrate, sugary, processed foods for convenience and economy. Some studies now conclude that animal fats have more to do with maintaining good health than eating the previously recommended low fat diet. Traditional Indigenous diets clearly show how eating from one’s own environment suits our overall well being and health. The experiences of our ancestors also has been shown to inform our own genetics, affecting our present day to day life. In this episode of Deep Roots Island Waves, Producer Manda Aufochs Gillespie links place, food, genetic history and health for insight into possibilities for understanding how we’re much more than we eat.”
