From the editor…
There are some great events and festivals coming up around our communities… The Gathering of the Scots starts on May 29th and continues on throughout the weekend. As I was writing the article about this in this issue, I was fascinated and amused by the information I was discovering about the history of Highland Games throughout the years.
Especially the bit about how women regularly took part in the rough and tumble games at country fairs, and how this displayed their charms and robust constitutions to men.
These days, media portrays attractive women as scantily clad and skinny, made up and dripping with fancy accessories.
But, in another era, it would have been far more important for a woman to be healthy and strong.
Upper class women did not go out into fields and play roughhouse games, but apparently it was common throughout history and women are just recently taking part in Highland Games once again.
On May 22 at 1:15 Canadian author Paul Almond will visit the Perth-Andover Public Library to launch his latest book which is number 6 in the Alford Saga, titled “The Gunner.” Paul will be selling and autographing copies of his book, and 50 percent of the books he sells at the event will go to the United St. James and Anglican Churches.
On May 28th, author Philippa Dowding will visit Perth-Andover. She’ll be at the old gym in Andover Elementary at 10:30 am. Philippa wrote her first book when she was nine. She has a Master of Arts degree, and began a career in publishing. She is now a freelance copywriter who has won several magazine awards and had children’s books nominated for several awards. The reason she is on tour is because her third children’s book, The Gargoyle at the Gates, was nominated for the prestigious Hackmatack Award.
Two great authors coming to Perth-Andover in one month!
On to another topic: my head nearly exploded recently when I read an article explaining how oil spills are “good for the economy.”
Yes, gentle reader, you read right…. This petroleum executive went on to explain that the reason for this is that oil spills need to be cleaned up, see, and that provides employment for the locals!
You might not be able to live in your house any more, your rivers and watersheds are trashed, your farm is destroyed but, hey, you can get paid to help clean up the mess! And money is the most important thing in life, right???
Seriously, what is wrong with these people’s brains? It’s like their minds have been hijacked by some evil virus that takes over and commands them to commit these atrocities for money and power, instead of caring for our world.
It happens in nature all the time. For instance, check out the cordyceps fungus, which is a totally amazing mushroom. There are many species of cordyceps, each of which parasitizes its own particular species of insect, and one of the most spectacular is the species that parasitizes ants.
When an ant becomes infected with the spore of cordyceps, the fungus immediately takes over he ant’s brain, causing the ant to completely blow off its own personal functions as an ant and to take steps to grow the mushroom instead.
The infected ant climbs onto a twig or leaf, and latches on with its pinschers so it doesn’t move… and there it dies as the cordyceps proceeds to colonize the ant’s body and then erupt out of its head like something in a science fiction movie… click here to watch an incredible brief video of this process in action.
