Word For The Day: shivaree

shivaree - shivv-ah-ree - verb or noun.  1) noun: a late night surprise mock serenade with kettles, pans, horns, and other noisemakers given for a newly married couple by neighbours and friends, as in "Let's plan a shivaree for Bob and Beulah for midnight on Saturday night."  2) verb: to serenade via a shivaree.  "Let's shivaree Bob and Beulah on Saturday night!"  Etymology: an Americanism probably from the Mississippi Valley, although originally from the French charivari.  ("Skimilton" is a similar term used in the Hudson Valley.)  Shivaree appears in Rodgers and Hammerstein's stage musical "Oklahoma!", and was also the title and main theme of an episode of "The Waltons" (Season 3, Episode 19) wherein the bride and groom in the episode are jovially 'harassed' on their wedding night and the groom is 'kidnapped' until a token ransom is paid. The (probably correct) explanation given is that it was a country tradition brought over to the colonies by the first settlers.

The Sasquatch and The Wedding Guest

Let me begin by stating unequivocally that I don't believe the Sasquatch - that mythical half-man half-ape Yeti-like creature of the forest (also known as Bigfoot) who has never been shot, captured, or discovered as skeletal remains - exists anywhere other than in Kokanee beer ads and the addled minds of a few dazed and confused publicity-seeking outdoorsmen.  (Those photos have to be faked.)  That said, what am I to make of the following?  A few weeks ago we attended a very nice wedding out here in a meadow at the base of a mountain perhaps twenty-five miles from our acreage.  We and about 250 other guests then adjourned to the reception and dance indoors.  Although my wife and I left about midnight for home, apparently about a dozen young revelers stayed until dawn around a bonfire nearby, including the parents of the bride.  Nobody saw or heard anything (senses perhaps blurred by libations), except for a thirty-something late arrival and his seven-year-old daughter who both swear they saw a Sasquatch cross the road as they drove to the party.  The man in question is a former patient of mine, from a respectable local family.  He was so sure of the encounter that he reported it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who didn't display the slightest hint of surprise at all when informed of the sighting!  The young man was shaken by the event by all accounts.  Furthermore, his seven-year-old stands by the story.  Hmmm ... better not leave that case of Kokanee out on the back deck overnight!

Snowed

It happened last night.  Life at altitude 4265 feet.  Sure, we were warned in advance by weather forecasters.  And it won't last long, this weekend is supposed to be downright hot (they say).  Out here we can get snow in any month of the year, which is still preferable to destructive weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, etc. other populations have to put up with.  We've been getting frosts at night for a couple of weeks now - so much so that my green-thumbed wife actually got tired of covering and uncovering her tomatoes and flowers night after night.  (She and I fully harvested any veggies that grow above ground last week.)  We also shipped out the heifers early for two reasons: first, they were eating as many leaves and apples off the trees as they were grass and, second, there's a bear in the vicinity competing for those same apples.  So autumn is officially here and - despite the inch of snow last night - I hope it is a long hot one.  This summer and last were both very wet; unusual for this neck of the woods where everything is usually parched by August (sometimes earlier).  We could use a nice long warm Indian Summer.  (Am I allowed to say that?)  There you go, off on a nice pastoral journey in your mind only to be jolted back to reality by political correctness.  Crap!  

If You Love It, Don't Change It, Part 2

Why do immigrants to Canada want to change Canada?  Turbans in the RCMP was our first mistake.  It turned a formerly secular national policeman into a policeman with a visible religious viewpoint.  Now there's a push for "Shariah law" in Ontario, despite the fact that we've had a perfectly good legal system in this country for hundreds of years.  This week we learned that people apparently don't have to show their faces when they go through airport security.  (They already don't at polling stations when they vote.)  Seems to me that Canadian society is being fundamentally altered in the name of religious freedom.  We need some common sense here.  We need to distinguish between the necessary progress of human rights, religious freedoms, etc., and those changes which fundamentally alter what made Canada so popular with immigrants in the first place.  If non-conforming immigrants overwhelm our political structure either through sheer numbers or via birth rate, you can bet that we risk allowing Canada to degenerate into just the sort of place these folks wanted to escape from.  All we're doing is setting the stage for future friction between different ethnic groups who bring their "old country" habits and hatreds with them.  Immigrants can honour their culture all they want but must be Canadians first.  This country is in the best financial and political shape in the modern world, and yet I fear for its future.  I fear that the ethnic strife which is occurring in European nations as we speak is on the horizon in Canada.  It's too late to adopt the "melting pot" strategy of the U.S. rather than the "cultural mosaic" crap of our past Liberal governments, but surely we can draw the line at changing our national institutions for the sake of everyone - especially newbies.