EXPRESS SOUTHEAST TRADER
May 2, 2014
erspective
Page 4
Adding laughter to our priorities Member Canadian Community Newspapers Assoc. Member Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Assoc. Audited by Audit Bureau of Circulations.
EXPRESS SOUTHEAST TRADER
Publisher: Brant Kersey Editorial Staff: Norm Park Chad Saxon Jordan Baker Josh Lewis Advertising Sales Manager: Cindy Beaulieu Advertising Sales Representatives: Deanna Tarnes Kristen O'Handley Teresa Hrywkiw Candace Wheeler Production Department: Melanie Tribiger Trinda Jocelyn Riley Dyck Peggy Volmer Accounting: Kim Schoff Reception: Gayle Worsnop Contributors: Calvin Daniels
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We could all do with a little more laughter. If it is as great for us as meditation, we may start devoting portions of our day to hearty guffaws. Laughing is primal and animalistic, something that we all do, but as a physical reaction it isn’t necessarily clear what purpose it serves, like yawning. We laugh when we’re in a good mood or experience something funny, and we do it when we’re uncomfortable. Laughing is a sign of our good mood and is infectious and maybe it’s good for us. Results of a study released at a biology conference in San Diego point out that laughter effects the brain in a way similar to meditation. It’s not exactly news that laughing feels good. We’re generally in excellent moods when we chuckle along with everyone else. But what if laughter actually makes us healthier mentally and physically. Our minds have some astonishing control over our physical well-being after all, so perhaps daily laughter will become the next great thing peddled by all the experts out there who want you to have a better life. In place of exercise or a good night’s sleep, we’ll be advised by doctors to laugh
Jordan Baker Thoughts From My Fingers more. I’m not much for meditation, so I’ll take side splitting if I’m looking to remove a day of stress from my shoulders. We set aside time for all sorts of things in our lives. We sleep at certain times, we make sure we get some amount of exercise each day and we make sure we do something to relax or unwind. At least, those are things we should be making time for, even as they are the first things we sacrifice in favour of work or dealing with family. My grandfather sets an example I’d like to follow. He’s a retired teacher who now has an entire bookshelf devoted to joke books, all of which seem to have wildly original titles like 1,001 Jokes or 1,001 More Jokes. He has carefully scrutinized each book on the shelf and added checkmarks to the majority of jokes, one check signifying the joke is a dud and three checks if it’s great. The ones so hilarious
he can’t get through them without crying get four checkmarks. He reviews them and adds a few to his memory bank before he speaks at an engagement or just invites people over for a drink. It seems a bit much sometimes but he sets aside time to laugh and that’s a noble enough pursuit for me. At the same time as the study suggesting laughter and meditation could be equally important facets of our lives, another study linked laughter to protecting against memory loss in seniors. Doctors say it reduces stress hormones in the brain that damage neurons, aiding in memory. We tend to remember jokes or funny anecdotes, so that isn’t too far-fetched either. Take time to laugh with co-workers because it will help keep you refreshed and may help in problem solving. Laughter is a miracle drug and it’s free, even if sometimes it can be hard to find. Whether laughing will stave off memory loss in your golden years or relieve stress as much as meditation, I urge everyone to laugh more. Find a funny friend to spend more time with, watch a terrible sitcom that inspires giggles or go to a comedy show that comes through town. Whatever it is, keep the laughs coming.
Agriculture to continue move into world of sci-fi
It is always a sure sign of spring when the Spring 4-H Steer and Heifer Show takes place in Yorkton. To start with. I must throw some kudos to the Yorkton Exhibition Association for continuing to sponsor the event. To the credit of the YEA they have never lost sight of the fact agriculture was what brought them into existence decades ago, and while today they sponsor a range of entertainment events, they stay true to their roots through events such as the Spring 4-H Show. In that regard they are not unique, as fair boards across the province and Prairies continue to support agriculture in a variety of ways. The 4-H Show is also a time where an old farm boy like myself can find himself waxing nostalgic about his youth spent taking in livestock shows. Fairs were my summer camps. A trip to the Toronto Royal was a highlight of my formative years. The Canadian Western Agribition, an annual November pilgrimage. But I won’t go that route today. Though the past is something we need to remember, it is the future we should always be aspiring to. The world of agriculture today involves so much science fiction if one
Calvin Daniels Trader Agriculture Columnist were to look at it from the perspective of my youth. The thoughts of genetically modified crops, high clearance sprayers, global positioning technology and robotic machinery controls would not have been believed by any save a few futurists from the perspective of the 1970s. When you analyze the developments we see as commonplace in farming today, the education required by a farmer is as diverse as any other field of endeavour. A farmer, even as we have moved away from mixed operations to more specialized farms, must today have skills that include marketing, computers, robotics, and a number of other skill sets my parents never had to imagine on the farm. So as I walked around the 4-H event I found myself pondering what the young members involved in the show will see happen in farming in the decades ahead. I am coming up on the 40th anniver-
sary of my graduation from high school. Four decades in our age is a massive amount of time in terms of change. We have all heard the statistics about more scientists alive today than in the combined centuries of our past. That means change and massive amounts of it in increasingly shorter spans of time. As mentioned, the last 40 years have seen huge change in farming. We only need to think of a landscape once spotted with wooden elevators, now basically gone, to see a very obvious example of that. Now push the fast forward button on developments for another 40 years, and even someone who loves science fiction cannot imagine what will come in terms of agriculture. Sure, we know there will be more mouths to feed as the world population grows, but what crops and tech farmers will use to meet that reality is unknown, although it will be decidedly different than what is in place today. That will mean those 4-H members who carry their interest forward as either farmers or in the broader field of agriculture will need to be broadly educated and highly adaptive to the changes, which will be a matter of course in the years ahead.
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