PORTION DISTORTION, part 1

Here's a fun, surprising and quiz in pictures about the portion distortion that has given Americans the dubious distinction of being the fattest country in the world.

I have the goal of eating 5 to 8 servings of fruit and veggies every day. The hidden camera in the office microwave can attest to the fact that I'm the only one here nuking peas and broccoli and the like for lunch. Today I put a whole baby squash (from the Friday afternoon Farmers' Market in downtown Newark) in there for two or three minutes and ate it with salsa and hummus. It was lovely.

But whenever anyone wrinkles his or her nose and says, "What's that smell?" they always seem to ask me first. It's a small price to pay for a healthier me.

--Judith Allee
Parent Support Coordinator

Stay Positive

I set myself the challenge of writing about each of the 10 Tools on the LiveYourLifeWell.org site.  These are research-based strategies for maintaining and improving your mental health and they seemed like something we should be talking about.

The first one "Connect with Others" is pretty straightforward and something I have written about several times on this blog, but Number Two, "Stay Positive" is a real challenge.

Anyone who knows me would laugh at the idea of me taking on this topic.  In a world of glass-half-full and glass-half-empty people, I am left looking for the glass.

It's no use my pretending to be a positive person, but I can write about someone who was.

But first, a joke:

This Anglican minister was on vacation in Ireland.  It was a foggy day and he was driving one one of the twisty-turny country roads that inspire poetry and accidents when he felt a bump.  He stopped the car and got out to discover that he had struck a rabbit.  The minister was beside himself for killing one of God's creatures when this priest came walking by.

"Father," said the minister.  "What's to be done, I've killed this poor, defenseless animal."

"Oh have you know," said the priest.  "Let's have a look."

The priest bends down over the body and after a careful look, pulls a small vial from inside his coat and sprinkles a few drops over the bunny.  A few seconds later, the animal leaps to its feat and scampers away.

"Oh father," said the minister.  "I had always heard about the miraculous properties of the Holy Water, but I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself."

"It's not Holy Water," said the priest.  "It's hare restorer."

It's appropriate to open with a joke because that's what he would have done.  He lived to tell his stories and he told them with the practiced skill of a life-long performer.  It's many years since I last heard Bobby tell this story and I can still hear his delicate Scottish accent ("scotch is liquid") and the rhythm of his razor-sharp timing.

For five decades, Bobby worked in the retail food business.  When he started, selling provisions was a much different trade than it is today.  When he began as an apprentice, customers came to the counter with a list and the grocer would pull their order from the shelves.  In a set-up like that, the grocer really got to know his customers.  He would know what they liked and didn't like and could recommend new items.  This was knowledge gained not from a print-out based on barcode scanning, but from real conversations.

After emigrating to Canada following his WW I service, Bobby again took up the food business and was eventually able to open his own shop where he specialized in cheese and other gourmet items.  The Cheese Shoppe was the place to go for lemon squash concentrate, real orange marmelade and Toblerone chocolate. And for the more adventuresome there were tinned oysters, jars of capers and chocolate covered ants.

Over the years Bobby built a loyal customer base.  People came from all over to give him their business and he always seemed to know each of them by name.  And if you were a first time customer, Bobby had a way of making you feel, by the time you left, as if you had known him your whole life.

He was justifiably proud of the many packages he sent overseas during World War II.

There is a story, and I'm no longer certain I remember the details correctly, of Bobby sending a package to my Uncle George who was a POW in Germany.  The package was alleged to have contained some whiskey, although I am not certain how it would have escaped notice.  In any event, it was sent by a Mr. J.B. Corn, as in John Barleycorn.  Bobby always talked about getting a thank-you note from my Uncle addressed to Mr. Corn.

They did a thriving business in gift packages for many, many years.  One of my clearest memories is of the walls of the store being piled high with stacks of their rich burgundy colored boxes waiting patiently to be filled.  These stacks rose from the tops of every shelf right up to the ceiling.  (I was never clear how they could get even one down without setting off a Jenga-like chain reaction.)

Once filled with an assortment of cheeses and crackers, bacon and jams, those packages would end up in some pretty remarkable places.  Bobby was proud of serving people like President Nixon, the Kennedys of Massachusetts and even the great Broadway impresario Flo Ziegfeld.

And like Ziegfeld, Bobby knew a thing or two about putting on a good show.  He was the absolute master of his domain and six days a week he would put that show for anyone and everyone who walked through his doors.

With his white butcher's apron, he would buzz back and forth from the counter to the cheese cooler, from the cash to the front door.  He would welcome each of his customers, help them with their selections, offer them some samples of this, or that cheese, tally up their bill by hand on the edge of a sheet of butcher paper that he would then use to wrap their purchases.  And all the while, he was either telling one of his stories, or whistling, or humming, or trading remarks with other customers, or staff, or both.

To really appreciate what a positive force Bobby was, you have to understand that being an immigrant business owner in Montreal during the 20th century meant that you primarily did business with your own people.  The French with the French, the Greeks with the Greeks and the Scottish with the English.  Though founded by the French, Montreal's commercial pulse was controlled for more than a hundred years by the English.

Though never a comfortable relationship, beginning about WW II, the French speaking majority in Quebec began to agitate for greater self-determination and an increased importance was placed on French as the language of  the majority.  Against this backdrop of increasing cultural sovereignty, Bobby greeted everyone who came through his door the same way--as a friend he hadn't yet met.

He would often tell the story of a French-speaking couple who came into the store and asked him, "Parlez-vous francais? (Do you speak French?)"  To which he responded, "Non, parlez-vous ecossais?  (Do you speak Scottish?)"  Everyone had a laugh and then they transacted their business in English.

Having a laugh was important.  After he retired, which took a couple of attempts before it actually stuck, Bobby would love nothing more than to go to the neighborhood bank dressed as he always was in his shirt and tie and grey flannel slacks and pass his bank book to the teller.  She would open it and see it contained a larger than life plastic cockroach, or ant, or whatever he happened to have on him at the time.  The teller's expression of surprise meant everything to him.  It would start a conversation and before you knew it, other tellers who had also been "bugged" by Bobby would come over and they would all have a laugh.

As I think I have mentioned elsewhere, he would do the same sort of thing at restaurants where he would try and get a new waiter in trouble by "discovering" a fly in his soup.  (The old jokes never go out of style.)

I can remember him telling me about meeting other seniors in his apartment building and he commented on their sour expressions.  He said, "They must have been business men, because they looked so unhappy."

It was Confucius who said, "Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life."

It's true, Bobby was the most positive, happiest unemployed business man I ever knew.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Always Learning

Twice yesterday I toured the Licking County Family YMCA with parents who graduated over the last few years from our Getting Ahead classes (for parents in or near poverty). We had a little reunion and the tour was part of it.

I've been a Y member for a couple of years and didn't expect to learn anything. However, between all the new construction at the Y, the things I had forgotten, and the things I never knew to begin with, the tour was surprisingly informative even for me. For example, if you are a Y member, did you know you could borrow not only basketballs but also rackets for racquetball or wallyball while you are there?

I already knew that you could get free childcare for 90 minutes so you can work out or take a class--my grandson has a blast in the Rainbow Room. But I didn't know you could make reservations up to 2 weeks ahead of time. How about that?

To apply for a scholarship, you simply fill out a form and bring in proof of income--two most-recent pay stubs, tax return and verification of any other income. (Bring copies, not originals, because the Y can't make copies for you.)

So why would the MHA Parent Support Coordinator (me) take families on a tour of the YMCA? As part of a Community Impact grant from United Way, I encourage families to eat healthier and become more active, so the Y tour was one way to encourage families to consider applying for a scholarship.

We also had a short program about adding more fruit and veggies to your family's diet--and how to get your kids to eat them. Kayla Hughes, who teaches nutrition for the OSU Cooperative Extension Office, explained that it can take up to 15 times of trying a new food for the taste to become familiar to the child. Until it tastes familiar, kids don't really know if they like it or not. So Kayla says not to give up just because kids (or adults for that matter) don't find love at first taste. In the beginning, you might just get them to touch the food with their tongue, and then gradually work up to eating it over a period of time.

That's one thing I love about my job--always learning!

--Judith Allee

Parent Support Coordinator

Sunday Dinner

We used to have sit-down family dinners on Sunday evenings. There were tablecloths and napkin rings and those things that nobody knows what they're used for anymore: the wedding presents, the keepsakes, the souvenirs from our ancestors who would never see a drive-thru window.

Sunday dinner was a ritual wrapped in many layers of tradition.

A necessary precursor to the meal was the Telling of the Shopping. Almost like an appetizer, every meal began with a discussion how that evening's entree had been acquired. Meat, fish, or fowl, the adults would whet their appetites by discussing where the meat had been purchased, how much it had cost, and what, if any, negotiations had transpired with the butcher. This retelling was followed by general agreement that you just couldn't get good cuts of meat anymore.

The next step was to review how the meal had been prepared. What was the oven temperature and how long it had been cooked. This was a generation before "Top Chef" or the Food Network, but these technical details were considered with the same weight given to matters of state.

Interspersed in the conversation were maxims about cooking. I have never roasted anything in my entire adult life, but I know that everything cooks at 250 degrees.

Once the food had been fully considered (I hesitate to use the word "digested"), conversation moved on to the wine. Sunday dinners always had wine and, like the entrée, the variety, price and point of purchase were all studied. I never had the sense of my parents as wine connoisseurs. Like the glass rests for the carving knife and fork, wine seemed more like an embellishment, like mint sauce, or parsley. They never talked about "bouquet" or "flavor notes", but always about price. For many years, there was a standing challenge to see how many bottles could be purchased for a total of five dollars. (In those days it was often more than two.)

Those rituals dispensed with, the conversation among the adults--and there were frequents guests at these gatherings--was a time for stories. The subjects were pretty mundane, but the stories were very elaborate and often very funny.

The table was where we learned about the history of our family. Stories about meat shopping quickly became stories about other meals in other places with cousins removed both in geography and genealogy.

This is where we kids learned about a mysterious faraway place called Glencoe and the farm where my grandfather was born. It was where we learned about my father's work and the many characters of his acquaintance.  I use the word "character" on purpose because it seemed as though he never used given names. It was never Mr. This or Mrs. That, it was "Napoleon," "The Merganser" and "The Boys from Ottawa."

Normally, once the meal was complete, the adults would retire to the living room and we kids would go in search of the nearest television. On rare occasions, however, the slides would be called for.

Nobody takes slides anymore. They are a relic of the days before cable, a time when people documented the events of their lives--birthdays, trips, graduations, their gardens, their thumbs--with a picture and then set up the screen in the living room and showed these precious moments to friends and family.

I have always preferred the medium of the slide over traditional prints because they seem more magical. Quite apart from all of the equipment needed to appreciate them properly, the slides themselves are transformed by the act of projecting them.  Prints are collected in albums and scrapbooks or sent through the mail, but slides almost by definition are part of an oral tradition. They are intended to be shared in a group and while every picture tells a story, every slide requires an interpreter.

It was a very theatrical undertaking to lug the projector and screen out of the basement and get it all set up and adjusted. My dad really had no interest in that part of it and so I quickly became the family projectionist. (From there it was a short slippery slope to becoming a full-on AV nerd in school.) And when the curtain was drawn across the bay window and the lights were turned out, then you had a show.

Like many of the accessories on the dining room table, the equipment and indeed the content of the show were passed down from my grandfather's house. There were no avid photographers in our house and so the photographic record of my childhood starts off well, but over time, there is a gradual loss of interest. My grandfather, by comparison, was a documentarian. When he died there were more than 1500 slides in his collection and they all found their way to our house.

Many of the slides were in trays and had handwritten notes on stiff narrow paper that were sort of wedged between the borders of the slides. The overall effect was to make each tray look like a case for something like a conductor's baton with a very thin handle. Over time--days really--these labels would pop out and if you weren't paying attention they could easily become separated from their associated tray. And even if you could keep them together, it was not always easy to decipher my grandfather's handwriting.

The trays themselves were problematic, because they had no mechanism for securing their contents. As I was to learn more than once, it was never wise to rush when putting together one of these impromptu Sunday shows. One false move and there could be slides everywhere.

But on the screen these slides are rich in both color and history.

The vivid Kodachrome color accentuates the other-ness of these images. They are from a time when men wore a sports jacket to go hunting and a 3-piece suit to go on motoring tours.

The historical richness is like what happens when you visit an battlefield monument or an historic house: part comes from the tour guide and part comes from your own imagination. It was in these slides that I saw the only pictures of my grandmother standing.  She was bed-ridden from before I was born until the day she died, but in these larger than life images, she is standing and travelling and living a life I can only imagine.

Showing my grandfather's slides meant hearing the stories evoked by each series of images. These stories had the quality of legend because unlike what happened over lunch on Friday, these stories had been burnished in the retelling. Sometimes the stories were about the image on the screen, but often they would be about something else entirely.

Each year it gets harder to independently verify these stories. At the time of their telling, I did not pay close enough attention and now there are fewer and fewer people left to ask.

When my father died and his household was being dismantled, I was very clear about what I wanted. There are things I would have liked to have had, but I had to have these slides.

It sounds strange to be so attached to so many pictures of people I don't know and places I have never been, to the unflattering portraits of so many stern-looking Scots, but, like the stories they begat, my connection to them is about something else entirely.

Since they have come into my possession, I have not always been their most disciplined steward. Individual slides have been removed for a card here and a Christmas present there, always with the intention of putting them right back and not disturbing the order. Never seems to work out as neatly as that. I always mean to do a better and more comprehensive job of cataloging and organizing, but they never quite get finished. What does happen, I have noticed, is I become fascinated again with the images and the faces they contain and the stories that are happening to them at the moment the shutter clicked.

In the same way that the images serve as a kind of bookmark for their photographers, they connect me to my family and help me find my place at the table.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Truthiness

TV's Craig Ferguson talks about being an alcoholic and about managing his "thinking problem."