Footnotes to a Conversation, October 18, 2021
Cheese, Yoga, and Farming
Chhurpi, possibly the hardest cheese in the world, can be eaten for up to 20 years. “A traditional product prepared by pastoralists in the highlands of the Eastern Himalayas, chhurpi is a protein-rich cheese with a smoky flavour and hard consistency that gradually becomes chewier the longer you gnaw at it. It is made from the milk produced by chauri – a cross between a male yak and a female cow – and it's a favourite snack in pockets of eastern India and much of Nepal and Bhutan. People often chew on small cubes of the stuff for hours on end, like a rock-hard bubble gum that slowly softens with time and saliva.” [BBC]
This article is for my farming friends: “Yoga and farming both share a deep connection with nature … Yogic farming combines organic farming methods with meditation and relies on the power of thought to improve seed quality and increase crop yields. Multiple small-scale experiments conducted over the years indicate that yogic farming, in addition to being highly sustainable, can be cheaper than conventional farming and result in a better-quality crop output.” It makes sense to me as we’re increasingly discovering that plants are sentient responsive beings. Talk to your plants and they’ll grow better. Humans have got themselves into a mess by thinking they were superior to all other living beings. It’s time to recognize our relationships and reliance on each other. [Modern Farmer]
Floral Art
I discovered the art gallery at Kew Gardens by chance a few years ago, but I definitely won’t miss it on future visits as they host some amazing exhibitions. The latest includes a collection of 17,000 miniature steel flowers painted, etched, and assembled by hand based on illustrations from 19th century Victorian encyclopedias. And this is just one of the pieces in the collection by Zadok Ben-David. Check out the illustrations for a feel for his work. [Kew]
Urban Friction
There has been a push for efficiency and instant gratification, supplemented by safety concerns during Covid, that has led to increased use of delivery services. In Australia, you can get coffee beans delivered by drones (and it’s not popular with ravens and other birds!). But is that really what we want out of city life or do we take pleasure in casual encounters with our neighbours or surprising sights and sounds? One expert says no: “A lot of these firms and a lot of this technological push over the last decade-plus has been all on engineering and optimization terms … What we like about cities are the frictions. It's the frictions that make cities economically robust. The frictions that make cities fun to be in. Any of us, when we go out, and something interesting happens to us out of the house, that becomes cocktail party fodder for years just because something interesting happened to us. We keep talking about it. Those are the types of things that people like to have. It's not about just having your oat milk delivered in ten minutes." [Vice]
“Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions – to define, classify, control and regulate people.” – Michel Foucault
Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
If you share my love of nature, I suggest you also read EcoFriendly Sask that I publish in collaboration with my brother, Andrew. Check out EcoFriendly Sask’s Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces (downloadable directly from the website).