🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦

Yes. At work, for example, I make a cup in the morning about 10AM and then keep refilling and drinking until about an hour before quitting time.

I get it straight from a collective representing the farmers in Liubao. There are some Internet vendors who sell it, though, so you don’t have to move to China. I can’t vouch for any of them though since, well, I don’t use their services.

You don’t. You finish your cup, you put the leaves back in, you pour hot water over top.

I cycle among these four randomly:

I don’t know. This one looks a bit sticky!

Park Alpine Dry Gin

Converting $20 to local currency, I’d probably go with this:

This is so-called “Liubao Tea”, a kissing cousin to pu’er tea. I did a review of my first batch(es) and it has rapidly (literally with one round of brews) reached the top of my circulation in teas.

The depicted tea is one aged from 1991 (the one I reviewed was tea stems from 2003) and is of one of the higher grades. A 100g package will set you back about $15 or so at today’s exchange rate. 100g is about 15-20 servings, and each serving can be brewed multiple times (even my tea stems can be brewed four times without loss of flavour), so it’s quite the bargain.

Save it for a time when you really need something warm, rich, and comforting. It will last forever as long as you store it in a cool, dry, dark space. And personally I think it’s a bargain at 15 bucks.

Now imagine this:

I lived in Inuvik for three years (Dad was stationed there). For three consecutive winters I lived 30 days of night. You think you get SAD “down south”? You ain’t seen nothin’ 'til you’ve faced a whole month of nothing but twilight conditions or darker.

Which brings us to my first Sunrise Festival.

This is the most memorable sun-related event in my life, displacing even the total solar eclipse I experienced in Wuhan a few years back. For 30 days there was no sun. Further, for 15 days the “twilight” portions of the day got darker and darker until it was basically nothing but night. Then, for 15 days, in the depths of SAD you’ve never felt the like of, it got brighter and brighter at the high parts of the day.

Until the day of the Sunrise Festival.

This is the day that basically all work stops as close to noon we gathered out in the streets and playgrounds (in my case) and such to watch the sky. Watch the twilight get brighter and brighter and brighter. Until suddenly the sun peeks for a few minutes above the horizon, blood red, staining the sky, only to dip quickly back down.

Sure we’ve got another month of really, incredibly short days before we face something similar to normalcy, but it’s all good. It only gets lighter from here.

The sun is back in town.

I narrate what I’m doing in a voiceover.

My grandfather taught me the sublime joy of fresh bread smeared with fresh butter, wild honey, and garlic powder.

Most people I told about that would start singing that old Sesame Street song: 🎶 three of these things belong together… 🎵 after giving me side-eye and realizing I wasn’t joking.

My dumbest joke is actually a family joke that has built up over the years. Unfortunately it works only in German.

Basically when I was very young I mispronounced a key word in a Christmas carol and hilarity ensued that dogged me to my father’s dying day. It developed over the years into this:

Es ist ein Ross entsprungen
Aus einem Stall so alt,
Wie uns die Bauern sungen,
Das Ross entfloh mit G'walt.
Es ist ein kluges Pferdchen
Aus altem Stamm gezeugt,
Das mitten in der Nacht dann
Sich aus dem Staub gezeugt.

Das Ross, das ich nun meine,
War flink und voller Mut,
Es sprang mit einem Male
Hinaus in die kalte Flut.
Mit Hufen, stark und kräftig,
Fand es den Weg hinaus,
Entkam dem Stall ganz leise,
Und rannte schnell nach Haus.

(I apologize to any German speakers for the terrible lyric verse.)

My favourite symphonic power folk metal band’s latest album is gracing my ears right now.

“Well-known” is not the same as “competent”. Just thought you should know.

I helped a friend’s child going to school in Canada to write a presentation on Canada’s 2008 apology for the residential schools scandal. Said child observed that all of the available topics were positive things only and she was utterly frustrated by this.

So I showed her how to turn the residential schools thing into something that shoves Canadians’ faces in their history. The introduction mentions the apology and the important step forward that it represents, but also says it’s pointless to talk about the apology without knowing what Canada is apologizing for.

She then (with some guidance) wrote a harsh and merciless summary of the residential schools, highlighting in the history section the terrible motivations for them, the cruelty of them, and, above all, how LONG they lasted. Then she turned her words to the complicity of the Canadian government in them. Finally she painted a dreadful picture of the aftermath of the residential schools and how they continued to cause harm for decades after the last one was finally closed with other impacts that last to this very day.

Then, in her conclusion, she stated factually that the PM apologized on behalf of Canada in 2008. She closed off then with, “with Canada apologizing, everything’s good now” delivered in the degree of sarcasm that only a 17-year old girl with a grievance of her own about Canadian racism could provide.

Her teacher was furious, and about half the class shared the teacher’s reaction. The other half cheered her. (I’ll let your imagination figure out where the dividing line was between anger and cheering…)

I’ve never been so proud of a child that I know in my entire life.

Don’t follow people. Follow hashtags. It’s a much better experience.

This right here. There’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more to theatre than acting and a lot of fulfillment can be drawn from being the base upon which the performance rests: set design and building, costuming, etc. Hell, my absolute first community theatre experience had me just turning pages for a piano player and that was itself actually kind of fun!

I worked behind the scenes in community theatre before finally stage managing a production of Twelfth Night.

It was fun—lots of fun—but it’s also a major time sink if you’re really into it.

On my Mastodon I follow … maybe a dozen people? Total?

I follow, like you said, topics in the form of hashtags. This gives me a much better feed than Xhitter or Farcebook ever did.

What kind of beans? There are thousands of varieties.

I’m 58. I’m pretty sure that if I haven’t had one by now I won’t have one.