I chose this fractal wave (Getty images) to signify a happy and prosperous 2021. It has elegant, rich hues. It could even be called gaudy — but let’s face it, ’tis the season of cheerful excess.
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COLD FIRES
My last Christmas Eve in Warsaw —
the gray, uncertain day
dying into the early dark.
We wait for the first star, then light
the twelve skinny candles on the tree
and break the wishing wafer.
Holding a jagged shard of a wish,
mother intones: “Health and success,
fulfillment of all dreams.”
Kissing on both cheeks,
we break the wafer each with each.
So begins Wigilia,
the supper of Christmas Eve.
The number of the dishes
has to be odd: spicy red borscht
with uszka, “little ears” —
pierogi with cabbage and wild mushrooms
soaked back to dark flesh
from the pungent wreaths;
fish — the humble carp;
potatoes, a compote from dried fruit,
and poppy-seed cake.
Father counts: “If it doesn’t
come out right, we can always
include tea.”
He drops a pierog
on the starched tablecloth.
I stifle laughter as he picks it up
solemnly like a communion host.
On the fragrant, flammable tree,
angel-hair trembles in silver drafts.
Then we turn off the electric lights.
Now only the candles glow
in a heavenly hush,
though I no longer believe in heaven.
Father sets a match
to the “cold fires.” Icy starbursts hiss
over the staggered pyramid of gifts:
slippers and scarves, a warm skirt,
socks and more socks,
a book I will not finish.
We no longer sing carols,
mother playing the piano —
the piano sold by then,
a TV set in its place.
Later, unusual for a Christmas Eve,
we go for a walk. The streets
are empty; a few passers-by
like grainy figures in an old movie.
It begins to snow.
I never saw such tenderness —
snowflakes like moths of light
soothing the bare branches,
glimmering across
hazy halos of street lamps.
Each weightless as a wish,
snowflakes kiss our cheeks.
They settle on the benches and railings,
on the square roofs of kiosks —
on the peaceful,
finally forgiven city.
~ Oriana
**
I loved those rituals. They did not require any religious beliefs, only a general belief in kindness. True, waiting for the first star before beginning Wigilia was probably an echo of the Star of Bethlehem — but strangely enough, even in my most Catholic years, I never thought of it that way. Rather, it was a cosmic first light, a signal from the Universe to begin our festival of earthly lights. My father happened to be far-sighted, so it was his sacred duty to spot the first star.
Beet soup and uszka; prepared and photographed by Piotr Kalwas
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CHRISTMAS IN TRANSLATION
The U.S history of immigration is a history of mistranslation. For the first generation, the native language adapts to the new culture. My dad, a first-generation Pole, was fluent in Polish. He said that when he met a recent Polish immigrant, they spoke a similar language. He often told me that having a Polish heritage didn’t make me Polish.
He meant that my country was outside his extended family. I needed to live outside the Polish church and mass in Polish. My heritage was the past, my country was the future, and I had to form my life on the frontier. Raised in a community of Polish-speaking immigrants, my older cousins spoke fluent Polish.
The first generation forbade their children, my younger cousins and me, from learning the language. Of course, one cousin learned Polish and Russian in college. Then he lived for two years in Warsaw. Upon his return, he spoke Polish to my grandmother. She said, “Mark speaks like ‘Foxy Grandpa,’ her father. He speaks better than his cousin.”
My cousins dissed him for not speaking American-Polish, and this illustrates one of the many difficulties that the immigrants overcome. Their language, customs, and traditions change, and this is important when I think about Christmas. Then, I think about my grandmother’s one Christmas tradition.
I don’t know how close this tradition is to a tradition practiced in Poland. It may be a national, or village, or family tradition. I liked this tradition because it was not a consumer tradition. On Christmas, Grandma would buy sheets of unleavened bread and cut them into rectangles. Before supper, family members would take a piece of the bread.
It was the same consistency as the host served for communion I church. You would offer the bread to another family member. Breaking off a piece, you would say, “I’m sorry.” Then, the men shook hands and kissed each other on the cheek. The women kissed each other on the cheek, and the men kissed the women on the cheek.
The married couples kissed each other on the cheek before kissing. This annual act of forgiveness set the atmosphere for saying grace, a toast to the Child, and the Christmas meal. When we exchanged gifts, there was still a solemn tinge to the celebration. One Christmas, I took my wife, Patsy, to Michigan for a family Christmas.
By then, the ritual changed from an apology to “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.” My cousins replaced the ritual kiss with a kiss fest among my cousins. After my grandmother’s death, the holiday tradition passed away. When I think of my childhood Christmases, I don’t have a favorite Christmas, but I fondly remember this ritual. ~ Joseph Milosch
Oriana:
That’s a fascinating variation on the wishing wafer (an echo of Christ’s habit of breaking bread with others). I love the idea of using the wafer in a forgiveness and reconciliation ritual. This is deeper than the simple goodwill of wishing each other health, happiness, prosperity, and fulfillment of dreams. Thank you for sharing these beautiful memories. 
Opłatek, the traditional Polish wishing wafer. These days it’s typically embossed, but the wafer I remember was as plain as the communion wafer.
*
HAARETZ: JEWISH SOCIETY IS A LOT MORE CHRISTIAN THAN WE THINK
~ Some gay kids are attracted to pop stars from an early age. That’s their way of differentiating themselves from their banal, unglamorous life in school and of soaring into the tumultuous realms of the imagination. I was a different boy: I was drawn to Christian clerics. The robes of cardinals and bishops enchanted me far more than the glitzy costumes of Madonna or David Bowie. The Catholic sacraments with their incense and aspergillum were no different in my eyes from the wizards I read about in the “Dragonlance” books.
For a Purim party when I was in my teens I dressed up as a Christian saint, carrying a huge Perspex cross on my back. Around that time I also got interested in the theological debates in the church councils of early Christianity. It reached a stage where one relative of mine called to ask, cautiously, whether I was thinking of converting.
I calmed her fears, explaining that I was an atheist and that my interest in Christianity was purely cultural. To reinforce the point, I declaimed the theory of evolution – and she relaxed. Actually, there was a different reason I didn’t convert: Even when I made an effort, I couldn’t love Jesus. I didn’t like his sad face or his gaunt, tortured body. Still less did I like his name. If he’d been named Edward or Arthur, I might have worshipped him, but “Yeshua,” as Jesus is called in Hebrew, had no appeal.
So I remained a Jew. I didn’t betray my people. At the same time, what I realized over the years is that the act of conversion itself isn’t necessary. It soon became apparent that the social class that surrounded me, which was considered secular, was already Christian to a large degree.
In quite obvious ways, Israeli society is becoming more Jewish; religious content is expanding in the education system and in the army. This is the famous hadata, or “religionizing,” process that has been discussed at length on this newspaper’s op-ed pages. That development also involves the showing of contempt for other religions, notably Islam but also Christianity.
In a recent book, the social scientists Orit Ramon, Ines Gabel and Varda Wasserman showed that even today the Israeli education system continues to debate Christianity and attempt to demonstrate its inferiority to Judaism. For example, they note, in school trips to local Christian sites the guides and teachers stress to the pupils that Jesus was a Jew who never intended to found a new religion. The New Testament is described as a foolish collection of made-up tales and Christianity is termed a nonbinding faith that makes life easy for believers. Some of the guides and teachers claim that the restrictions and regulations followed by clergy in Christian monasteries are not comparable in strictness to the Yom Kippur fast or to observance of Jewish dietary laws. The education system, then, continues to settle historical accounts with Christianity.
But it’s far from certain that secular children and adolescents actually internalize the Jewish content that is foisted on them. There’s no reason to think that preaching about the Jewish festivals or going on so-called heritage tours interest them more than civics or literature classes, or leave a more lasting imprint. The fact is that after being inundated by lectures from the keepers of Jewish identity, the students in question head home and in the most natural way binge on Christmas and Halloween TV specials. As a counterreaction to government-sponsored religious indoctrination, the liberal bourgeoisie gathers around the Christian world of images.
Even in the multicultural era, the popular culture we consume is largely Christian. From the celebrations of the new year, to the costumes of All Saints’ Day (aka Halloween), to the eggs at Easter – we are flooded with Christian images and rituals. In Tel Aviv and its secular suburbs those festivals are being celebrated even more widely in recent years, whether under the influence of series on Netflix or trendy clips on TikTok. It’s not unusual to see Santa Claus hats on the street, and some folks even find the time to take in a Christmas mass.
One school of thought has it that these holidays have undergone secularization and now belong to the global culture. But that’s an illusion. In countries where a conflict exists between Christianity and other religions, those seemingly innocent symbols take on highly charged meaning. It’s not so much that Christian culture has been secularized as that it simply isn’t threatening to us any longer.
In this context I remember my grandmother, who from her childhood in Ukraine was appalled by crosses and church bells. She was even revolted by an embroidered skirt my mother wore, because it was adorned with small blue and red Xs. Christianity stirred instinctive recoil in my grandmother, a reaction that we native-born Israelis will never succeed in understanding. In this way it’s precisely life in Israel, where the Christians are a small minority, that contributes to secular Israelis viewing Christian culture as neutral and secular.
Spiritual challenge
The Jews’ attraction-revulsion relations with Christianity are not new. Since the advent of the modern era, Jews in Western Europe have been drawn to the beguilements of Christianity they encountered around them. The Christmas lights, the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, and Christian art have all prompted many Jews to view Christianity as a more progressive and attractive religion than Judaism. Some converted, others became cultural Christians. Not even the Zionist revolution resolved this conflict. Writings of Zionist leaders from the Second and Third Aliyahs (waves of immigration, in 1904-1914, 1919-1923) show the magnetic effect that the figure of Jesus and Christian symbols had on them.
“The idea is in the form of the redemption, the way is through suffering and the cross,” wrote Meir Ya’ari, leader of Hashomer Hatzair, describing the way of life of the pioneers in that left-wing youth movement’s Bitania community in 1921. In response, a journalist writing under the penname “Rabbi Binyamin” termed the young people of the radical movement kowtowing Jews “who crawl on their belly before every ramshackle cross.”
But in recent decades, too, Christianity has exercised its allurements on almost every Israeli writer or artist whose attention goes beyond the immediate questions of Israeli society and the conflict with the Palestinians – Pinchas Sadeh, Yona Wallach or Yehoshua Kenaz, to name just three. Kenaz, who died recently, is considered a local Hebrew writer, even a member of the Canaanite school. But the presence of the Christian story of deliverance is especially dominant in his novels and novellas.
It transpires that we are more Christian than we would like to believe – and truth be told, that’s not so bad. Christianity is not so dumb; it is neither a foolish fairy tale nor a system of pure evil, as it is sometimes presented in Israeli schools. It’s a spiritual challenge that every person who’s receptive to the world must cope with, sooner or later. ~ Ofri Ilany
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-jewish-society-is-a-lot-more-christian-than-we-think-1.9414074?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=weekend&utm_content=8a577bd2de
Santa on a camel outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City
Oriana:
I think the interaction between Judaism and Christianity is a complex, fascinating topic that can be explored without animosity — with due acknowledgment of the history of that animosity.
Note that the author identifies as an atheist, so he looks on from the outside, so to speak. And Santa on a camel (makes so much more sense than the reindeer) is not exactly a Catholic procession with the cross and icons of Virgin Mary and the saints.
Note also that it’s not the Jewishness of Jesus (Yeshua) that appeals to Ofri Ilany; he’d prefer a name like Edward or Arthur.
Alas, the article is skimpy just when it gets most interesting, in the section on the spiritual challenge of Christianity. True Christianity is very difficult (some say impossible) to practice; you’d have to become a selfless saint who forgives his enemies and turns the other cheek. Furthermore, you’d distribute any excess personal income and possessions to the poor. Eating or not eating pork is irrelevant but kindness in speech is; Jesus said that it’s not what comes into your mouth that can defile out, but what comes out of it. To an idealist, the more demanding a religion is, the more attractive it is.
Fortunately it’s possible to be a cultural Christian, someone who enjoys Christmas, say, even including the Nativity story—“There was no room for them at the inn”; the manger, the animals looking on with their big eyes, the guiding Star of Bethlehem, the Three Magi bearing their somewhat incomprehensible gifts. It’s a tender, touching story whose appeal is easy to understand — though we must acknowledge that at least in America, Christmas has been totally usurped by Santa.
Yet who is Santa if not the kind of benevolent deity that Christians long for: not the god of punishment, ready to toss sinners into the jaws of hell, but kindly and jolly, and of course generous and wish-granting? In a previous blog, I had an article on Santa as “God with training wheels” — I still find it completely convincing.
In a more serious and eloquent way, Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar, now an atheist, explains why he continues to love Christmas: “Christmas embodies for me most of the things in life that I think of as inherently good … The God of Christmas is not a God of wrath, judgment, sin, punishment, or vengeance. He is a God of love, who wants the best for people and gives of himself to bring peace, joy, and redemption.That’s a great image of a divine being. This is not a God who is waiting for you to die so he can send you into eternal torment. It is a God who is concerned for you and your world, who wants to solve your problems, heal your wounds, remove your pain, bring you joy, peace, happiness, healing, and wholeness. Can’t we keep that image with us all the time?” . . . Give me the God of Christmas, the God of love, the God of an innocent child in a manger, who comes to bring salvation and wholeness to the world, the way it was always meant to be.” ~
https://ehrmanblog.org/christmas-reflection-2017/
Nativity by Taddeo Gaddi, 1325
*
LE CARRÉ AND RUSSIA
~ Speaking in 2017, John le Carré admitted he was “scared of being a bore” about his life. But the intelligence officer-turned-literary defector, who died recently aged 89, was also forced to concede what some fans might call an understatement. “I've had, really, a very interesting life,” le Carré told NPR. “The strangest thing, in some ways, has been the cross-border relationship I’ve had with the former Soviet Union.”
The “most unforgettable event” in that peculiar relationship happened in October 1997: le Carré being summoned to dinner with the Russian Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, who was also the former head of the KGB and Prime Minister of Russia.
It began with a call from le Carré’s agent, requesting that he send a signed book to British Foreign Secretary Malcom Rifkind (and quickly) so that Rifkind could present the book to Primakov. It transpired that le Carré – writer of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and creator of spymaster George Smiley – was the Russian official’s favorite author.
That night, le Carré and his wife dined with Primakov at the Russian Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens. Primakov told le Carré about his futile efforts to prevent the Gulf War, which he’d done at the request of his “friend” Saddam Hussein. But neither George Bush Sr nor Margaret Thatcher could be talked into a peaceful resolution.
News reports about the le Carré-Primakov meeting referred to Primakov as the “real-life version of Smiley’s arch-enemy, Karla”. But when asked later which character in le Carré’s books he most identified with, Primakov answered: “Why, George Smiley, of course!”
Primakov’s admiration for le Carré and kinship with Smiley speaks to the ambiguity at the greyed heart of le Carré’s espionage novels: British and Russian intelligence stand apart, staring back like murky reflections of each other. As le Carré said himself, he did have a strange relationship with the Russians: they both denounced him and revered him; his novels were offered as essential reading to KGB trainees.
The British Secret Service was less impressed with the books. His real name was David Cornwell and he worked for MI5 before transferring to MI6 in 1960. He adopted the pen name “John le Carré” to protect his identity while still working for MI6. His books were also vetted by the intelligence agencies.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold – his third novel and breakout bestseller – was passed for publication because, according to le Carré in 2013, “they seem to have concluded, rightly if reluctantly, that the book was sheer fiction from start to finish, uninformed by personal experience, and that accordingly it constituted no breach of security.” But the world’s press convinced itself the book was absolutely authentic: a true-life account from inside the Secret Intelligence Service. The author said that British intelligence later “kicked themselves” for approving the book.
Some in those agencies accused him of disloyalty. As recalled in Adam Sisman’s biography of le Carré, the head of MI6 Dick White reportedly complained to a US intelligence pal. “John le Carré hasn’t done us any good,” said White. “He makes all intelligence officers look like philanderers and drunks. He’s presenting a service without trust or loyalty, where agents are sacrificed and deceived without compunction.” Le Carré’s former mentor John Bingham said: “I deplore and hate everything he has done and said against the intelligence services.”
In 1964, le Carré resigned from MI6 to become a full-time writer. He dubbed himself a “literary defector” – along with the likes Graham Greene – but preferred to not be branded a “spy-turned-writer”. Rather, he was a writer who “had done a stint in the secret world”. He often claimed that he had to leave because his identity had been betrayed by Kim Philby, the notorious double-agent who defected to the Soviets. Philby, so le Carré said, passed his name to the Russians.
In October 1965, Moscow’s Literary Gazette demonised le Carré for being a Cold War apologist. The following year, le Carré replied with an open letter in Encounter magazine, titled ‘From Russia, with Greetings’ (this was just three years after Bond’s second cinematic adventure From Russia with Love).
As le Carré wrote in his memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel:
‘Ever since The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, I had been the target of Soviet literary invective, one moment – as my critics put it – for elevating the spy to heroic status, as if they themselves had not made an art form of doing exactly that, and the next for making the right perceptions about the Cold War but drawing erroneous conclusions, a charge to which there is no logical response. But then we were not talking logic, we were talking propaganda. From the trenches of the Soviet Literary Gazette, controlled by the KGB, and Encounter magazine, controlled by the CIA, we dutifully lobbed our bombs at each other, aware that in the sterile ideological war of words, neither side was going to win.’
Indeed, he described his relations with the Soviets as being “less than friendly” for the best part of 25 years. Only two of novels were permitted for publication there – A Murder of Quality and A Small Town in Germany. But le Carré planned to visit the country in 1987 (for the first time), to research his upcoming novel The Russia House.
As detailed in Sisman’s biography, le Carré sought the help of John Roberts, director of the Great Britain-USSR Association. Roberts wrote in his diary that “selling the Soviets the idea of a le Carré visit is not proving easy”. According to le Carré’s own account, the deal to approve his visit was apparently brokered by the British Ambassador and Raisa Gorbacheva – wife of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev – “over the heads of the KGB”.
He visited as “the guest of the Union of Soviet Writers”, but his reception was characteristically cold. His suitcase was held for 48 hours but suddenly reappeared in his hotel room. The Soviets had insisted he stay at the Hotel Minsk “where ageing microphones were permanently in place and a redoubtable female concierge kept guard over the corridor.” His room was searched whenever he ventured out, and two men followed him everywhere. One night, le Carré boozed with the dissident journalist Arkadi Vaksberg and (after Vaksberg had passed out on his own floor) emerged so drunk that he found himself lost on the outskirts of Moscow. His followers had to show him the way back to the hotel.
But le Carré found the Russians to be intelligent, cultured, and sympathetic. “Nobody who visits the Soviet Union in these extraordinary years, and is privileged to conduct the conversations that were granted to me, can come away without an enduring love for its people, and a sense of awe at the scale of the problems that face them,” he wrote in his foreword to The Russia House.
During the visit, le Carré and John Roberts attended a drinks reception, where he met Genrikh Borovik, a journalist with KGB connections. Borovik invited le Carré to meet “an old friend and admirer” over a glass of wine – the long-since defected Kim Philby. But le Carré refused to meet him. “It was a horrific suggestion,” le Carré said in 2010. “I told [Borovik] I was meeting the British ambassador next. I couldn’t see the Queen’s ambassador and then see the Queen’s traitor.”
As he wrote in The Pigeon Tunnel:
‘The scale of Philby’s betrayal is barely imaginable to anyone who has not been in the business. In Eastern Europe alone, dozens and perhaps hundreds of British agents were imprisoned, tortured and shot. Those who had not been betrayed by Philby were betrayed by George Blake, another MI6 double agent.’
He continued: “Has my animosity towards Philby mellowed over the years? Not that I’m aware of.”
While in Moscow le Carré discovered a secret fan base while attending an assembly of university students. After a formal Q&A – “What do you think of Marx and Lenin, please?” asked one student. “I love them both,” he quipped, earning a riotous round of applause – the students smuggled him into a common room. They asked questions about a novel of his that he knew for certain was banned. The students revealed they’d read the novel in their “private book club”.
“Our team has typed out text of your book from illicit copy given us by one of your countrymen,” a student told him in stilted English. “We have read this book together at night-time many times. We have read many forbidden books in this manner.”
They also showed him a television set, on which they secretly watched a video of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He described the encounter as “one of the most moving moments of my life”.
The contrasting reactions to him in Moscow summed up the overall relationship. “It appeared entirely logical to me, in the looking-glass world I had entered, that while I was being watched, followed and regarded with the heaviest suspicion, I should also be treated as an honoured guest of the Soviet government,” he wrote.
At some stage, le Carré discovered that his books were required reading at KGB training schools. “It was not my intention at all,” le Carré told NPR. “But they saw some kind of equivalence. You know, in the end – and it applies to doctors, scientists, and it applies to spies – people who are using the same techniques, developing the same techniques, who have the same attitude towards human beings, who put expediency and outcome over method, they are a brotherhood or sisterhood… the moment I get together with some retired general from the Mossad, I find we understand each other very quickly.”
In 2008, Rod Liddle interviewed le Carré for The Sunday Times, while le Carré was publicizing A Most Wanted Man. Liddle reported that le Carré had once considered defecting to the Soviets – a story that was picked up and circulated worldwide.
“Well, I wasn’t tempted ideologically,” le Carré was reported to have said. “But when you spy intensively and you get closer and closer to the border… it seems such a small step to jump… and, you know, find out the rest.”
But le Carré then wrote a lengthy letter to the newspaper, saying he had been misrepresented. “I painted for Mr Liddle the plight of professional eavesdroppers who identify so closely with the people they are listening to that they start to share their lives,” he wrote. “It was in this context that I made the point that, in common with other intelligence officers who lived at close quarters with their adversaries, I had from time to time placed myself intellectually.”
He blamed the misrepresentation, rather generously, on Liddle taking handwritten notes instead of using a tape recorder, and booze. “He must be forgiven therefore if, while he too was sipping post-prandial Calvados in the evening darkness he describes, he failed to encompass or indeed record the general point I was making about the temptations of defection,” said le Carré.
The success of John le Carré’s novels has often been attributed to his humanizing of intelligence operatives. Unlike the more fantastical James Bond, le Carré’s George Smiley was a frumpy bureaucrat; similarly, le Carré saw a more human side to the Soviets – an explanation perhaps, for the affinity that some Russians felt with him.
“Certainly, in communist times, there were bits of the KGB that were very, very decent, very humanitarian,” le Carré told NPR. “They took in persecuted people and protected them. They were a cult for themselves. They prided themselves on cultivating intellectuals.
“That was the rare decent part of the KGB. But it was such a big and powerful institution… There were a lot of rooms in it – [a] lot of different people.”
Peteris Cedrinš:
I remember having dinner with a chekist I didn't know as a chekist (dinner w/chekists here is as inevitable as dinner w/generals in Syria, you may have noticed) and telling a friend I had met a very intelligent and witty man. 'All chekists are intelligent and witty' was the response.
Oriana:
A “chekist” is a rather antiquated term for an employee of a security agency. And yes, I can believe in the intelligence and wit part. Well-educated Russians can be strikingly intelligent and witty.
Let's face it, the Russian culture is quite attractive. Of course I don't mean the authoritarian government; I mean literature, music, customs, architecture, museums, cuisine, etc.
The most unexpected statement here was this paragraph:
~ “Certainly, in communist times, there were bits of the KGB that were very, very decent, very humanitarian,” le Carré told NPR. “They took in persecuted people and protected them. They were a cult for themselves. They prided themselves on cultivating intellectuals. ~
*
GLOBAL CLIMATE MIGRATION: RUSSIA MAY EMERGE AS AN AGRICULTURAL SUPERPOWER
~ For two years The New York Times and ProPublica have been reporting on the great global climate migration that is already underway. By 2070, more than three billion people may find themselves living outside the optimum climate for human life, causing tens of millions of migrants to press northward into the United States and Europe. (Most migrants do move north, where there is the greatest land mass and economic opportunity.) The U.S. itself, the reporting showed, is likely to undergo its own vast demographic transformation as heat, drought and rising sea levels displace millions of Americans. The optimal niche for human life will eventually move beyond the U.S. and Europe, toward the pole, and people will move with it.
This could present an extraordinary opportunity for the world’s northernmost nations — but only if they figure out how to stem their own population decline while accommodating at least some of a monumental population push at their borders. Take, for example, Canada: It is flush with land as well as timber, oil, gas and hydropower, and it has access to 20% of the world’s fresh water. It has a stable, incorrupt democracy. And as the climate warms, Canada will move into the ecological sweet spot for civilization, benefiting from new Arctic transportation routes as well as an expanded capacity for farming. But there are only 38 million people in Canada, and Canadians are dying at a faster rate than they are being born. Burke’s research suggests climate change will, by 2100, make Canadians 2½ times richer in terms of per capita G.D.P. than they would be if the planet were not warming. Canada may be able to seize that opportunity only if it welcomes a lot more people.
This is why a group of Canadian business executives and academics have called on their government to turn the country’s immigration system into a magnet for the planet’s most talented people, hoping to nearly triple Canada’s population by 2100. The government has signaled some receptivity, increasing its immigration targets this year by 14%, in part reflecting a public sentiment that recognizes the importance of immigration to Canada’s economy. Whether today’s Canadians are truly ready to see migrants outnumber them 2-to-1, though, remains to be seen.
The story is similar in the northern nations of Europe, where low birthrates and aging populations are out of step with the projected needs of agriculture and other industries. The countries of Western and Central Europe are among the world’s largest growers of food, but native population declines force a heavy reliance at harvest time on migrant workers from places like Belarus and Romania. Norway and Sweden, too, could soon see a longer growing season and an increased harvest for their vegetable, fruit and berry crops as temperatures warm, but even now they can’t harvest them without bringing in 15,000 to 30,000 migrant workers apiece, says Arne Bardalen of the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, an expert on agriculture, food security and climate change.
Wrapped up in all of this — the farming, the migration, the warming — is a larger game of global influence. The issue of national security, for any of these countries as well as the United States, is inextricably interlinked not only with immigration and border policies but also with food security. The race for prosperity in a climate-changed world is about achieving domestic self-reliance and also expanding geopolitical influence. But, as John Kerry, who is President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming climate czar and a former U.S. secretary of state, put it to me recently, both are dependent on how the accessibility or usability of territory — whether Arctic passages or thawing land — changes over time.
The scarcer food and other resources become on a global level, the more the ability to produce food domestically becomes a tool of power. And the more nations can keep themselves afloat in this changing world, the more they stand to benefit just by watching others sink. “It could be very tense,” Kerry said, “a really, really messy process.” All of that makes the flow of people — whether you call them climate refugees or human capital — an inseverable part of the geopolitical power struggle driven by climate.
Russia has been explicit about its intention to come out ahead as the climate changes; in its national action plan on climate released in January, it called on the country to “use the advantages” of warming and listed Arctic shipping and extended growing seasons among things that would shower “additional benefits” on the nation. Russia may be no better positioned, politically speaking, to welcome large numbers of migrants than the U.S. or Canada; in fact, xenophobia is probably even more prevalent there. But how it tackles migration and its own demographic challenges will have tremendous consequences for the U.S. and the rest of the world. Russia has always wanted to populate its vast eastern lands, and the steady thawing there puts that long-sought goal within reach. Achieving it could significantly increase Russia’s prosperity and power in the process, through the opening of tens of millions of acres of land and a flourishing new agricultural economy.
Agricultural dominance is just a small part of what Russia’s climate optimists say the country has to look forward to. The steady melting of the Arctic sea ice will open a new shipping lane that would cut transit times from Southeast Asia to Europe by up to 40% and also shorten travel time to the United States, positioning Russia to profit by controlling this route between China and the West. With a few exceptions, St. Petersburg among them, Russia’s largest cities and most important military bases are also far less vulnerable to inundation from sea-level rise than those of, say, the United States, which has its largest cities on the water and will inevitably divert trillions of dollars in coming decades to fortify or relocate strategic assets. Even the savings in energy that will come from warming temperatures amounts to a mild economic stimulus.
When Putin addressed his Federal Assembly the following December, he boldly proclaimed Russia would soon be “the largest world supplier” of healthful foods, referring to his goal of keeping Russian foods mostly GMO-free. By 2018, Putin’s sanctions had paid enormous dividends: Since 2015, Russia’s wheat exports jumped 100%, to about 44 million tons, surpassing those of the United States and Europe. Russia is now the largest wheat exporter in the world, responsible for nearly a quarter of the global market. Russia’s agricultural exports have jumped sixteenfold since 2000 and by 2018 were worth nearly $30 billion, all by relying largely on Russia’s legacy growing regions in its south and west. In Africa, Putin told attendees of the Russia-Africa Economic Forum held in Sochi last fall, “We are now exporting more agricultural products than weapons.”
America’s strategic challenges from climate change don’t just revolve around food. Sea-level rise, for one, could displace 14 million Americans by 2050, even with modest warming, while in Russia fewer than two million people are at risk. American military installations around the world are also particularly vulnerable. According to a 2018 Defense Department analysis, about 1,700 of them might need to be moved out of the way of flooding rivers and coastlines and of hurricanes. And the enduring reluctance in right-wing political circles to talk about sea-level rise and warming has hamstrung U.S. strategy and made it difficult for the country’s leaders to see around the curve. If you take any factor out of your calculus, you create blind spots. One telling example: Russia has 34 icebreakers, and China, which is nowhere near the Arctic, has four; the United States has just two, one of which is nearly a half-century old. When it comes to climate, the defense establishment “has been more of a reactive than a proactive entity,” said John Conger, a former deputy under secretary of defense and now the director of the Center for Climate and Security. “So emergencies and crises get more attention than opportunities and possibilities.”
But in the long term, agriculture presents perhaps the most significant illustration of how a warming world might erode America’s position. Right now the U.S. agricultural industry serves as a significant, if low-key, instrument of leverage in America’s own foreign affairs. The U.S. provides roughly a third of soy traded globally, nearly 40% of corn and 13% of wheat. By recent count, American staple crops are shipped to 174 countries, and democratic influence and power comes with them, all by design. And yet climate data analyzed for this project suggest that the U.S. farming industry is in danger. Crop yields from Texas north to Nebraska could fall by up to 90% by as soon as 2040 as the ideal growing region slips toward the Dakotas and the Canadian border. And unlike in Russia or Canada, that border hinders the U.S.’s ability to shift north along with the optimal conditions.
Marshall Burke projects that over the next 80 years, per capita GDP in the United States will drop by 36% compared to what it would be in a nonwarming world, even as per capita GDP in Russia will quadruple. A recent study led by researchers at Columbia University found that a disruption in U.S. agriculture would quickly propagate throughout the world. After just four years of a Dust Bowl-like event — a time when some crop yields dropped by 60% — global wheat reserves would be cut by nearly a third, and U.S. reserves would be almost entirely gone. And as the livability and capacity of American land wanes, U.S. influence in the world may fade along with it.
IN THE NEAR term, while Russia may prefer its migrants to come from Central Asia and other countries farther south, it’s the Chinese who seem most likely to come. They’ve already settled throughout Siberia and the Far East, sometimes through intermarriage with Russian citizens — which makes them eligible for land-disbursement benefits — or by leasing lands from Russians who received it under government giveaways.
At one point, Russian news articles described more than 1.5 million Chinese living in southern Russian territories, though precise numbers don’t exist; some experts say the number is probably much lower. This year, many returned to China amid fears of the closure of the border because of the coronavirus. But most people, including Karaganov, expect they’ll be back, tantalizing Russians with prospects for growth while at the same time triggering the age-old racist tendencies that have clouded Russia’s efforts to assimilate outsiders of non-Russian descent.
ULTIMATELY, IT IS the clumsy maneuvering of the United States that might prove most responsible for making Putin’s eastern development agenda a success. American tariffs, imposed as part of the Trump administration’s trade war with China, led to China’s own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. soybeans, creating the largest catalyst for Chinese buyers to look north for new markets. According to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, China’s total food and agricultural imports from Russia increased 61% in 2017 and 2018, yet another example of the U.S. failure to see the chessboard when it comes to the intricate geopolitical implications of climate change.
“The U.S. has made a few historic mistakes, and I don’t think they are able to repair them,” Karaganov told me. The first was what he characterized as the rejection of Russia’s bid some two decades earlier to strengthen ties with the West. “The second was helping to bring Russia and China together.” With China’s wealth paired to Russia’s resources, and the political trajectories and climate-related interests of the two countries more or less aligned, there is nothing short of a new world order at stake — an order, Brookings Institution analysts say, based not only on economic alignment but also on the two countries’ common commitment to supplanting Western hegemony.
The fact is that the people of Asia have long ventured north — into Siberia, the Far East and beyond — as the climate has undergone cyclical change through the course of history. Around 3,000 years ago a drought in central China drove Mongol herders a thousand miles north into the steppes of Khakassia, in Siberia, where they remained raising horses and sheep for centuries. The likelihood of that process repeating as the climate warms is now inevitable, said Amber Soja, a scientist who has examined the migration of ancient civilizations in north Asia as a research fellow at the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia. One way or another, she says, “people are going to move. Because people need to eat.” ~
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-big-thaw-how-russia-could-dominate-a-warming-world?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Taiga, the Siberian conifer forest
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SOME IMPORTANT LESSONS OF 2020
YOU ONLY KNOW WHO YOU REALLY ARE WHEN EVERYTHING IS TAKEN FROM YOU
“A year ago, if you told me that my favorite restaurants, half my friends and my CrossFit gym would be taken away from me, I would have freaked out. But not only do I not miss them, I think I might be actually happier without them.” ~ Andrew
In my book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, I wrote that it’s only by losing something that you can determine how much you value it. Therefore, the best strategy for determining what truly matters to you is by cutting things out of your life, then seeing what you miss and what you don’t.
Early in the year, I wrote that the pandemic was about to offer an excellent opportunity for all of us to experiment with this. Whether we wanted it or not, we were about to lose access to a lot of activities, events, hobbies, and friendships that we were accustomed to having whenever we wanted. At the time, I predicted that many people would be surprised by both who/what they missed, and who/what they did not miss.
This experience was, by far, the single most common experience reported. Hundreds of people said that they didn’t miss their work, hobbies, or favorite events. Some even discovered they didn’t miss many of their friends and family. Many reported that much of what they spent their lives doing pre-pandemic was not who they actually wanted to be. Some made the startling discovery that they hadn’t really known who they were!
As one young reader said, “I finally learned what my hobbies are. I spent so much time focusing on school before that I never really thought about who I am outside of the school setting.”
A woman from the Netherlands had a similar discovery: “The thing I learned this year is how much I have been going against my nature all my life. I have always suspected it, but now I fully understand how much of an introvert I am. When everything got cancelled, I realized I had been burning up socially for years. In lockdown my friends were suffering. They just wanted to go out, but couldn’t. And I… was fine?”
This discovery was common. People who thought they were extroverted realized they were introverted. People who believed they were introverts discovered they were actually quite extroverted. In both cases, people realized that much of what they thought was their personality was merely molded by social pressures.
One young man said, “I always thought I was okay being alone, but this pandemic showed me how much I need people around me. It’s actually bugging me how lonely I feel, even when I’m able to talk to people every day. I had never realized how needy I could be.”
But perhaps the biggest effect of no longer having a full schedule of activities to distract people from themselves was how many came to the realization that for many years they had been avoiding some ugly shit in their own lives.
As one reader put it, “I have spent years running from addressing depressive and anxious symptoms. When there were no social distractions or trips to plan, there was nowhere to hide from myself.”
Another said he discovered that he had probably been a highly-functioning alcoholic for many years, but it was only in isolation in the spring that he was forced to accept that his drinking wasn’t just a social activity, it was a real problem.
And a number of readers were forced to confront the fact that they were not happy in their marriages for the first time.
This theme of self-discovery will continue to surface throughout this article and play a part in many of the other lessons. Some of these realizations will be positive and joyous. Others will be dark and upsetting. But, in each case, by stripping away what we took for granted, the challenges of 2020 clarified for people who they actually are.
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A CRISIS DOESN’T CHANGE PEOPLE; IT CLARIFIES WHO THEY ALREADY ARE
“Adversity brings out not necessarily the worst in people, but the essence of people. In my months of working in retail through the pandemic, I noticed my cranky customers get even meaner. The pleasant customers got even more friendly, understanding and compassionate towards our challenges. The generous ones have been leaving even bigger tips. The creative, optimistic business owners on my block have gotten even more creative in how to survive, while the business that were already failing chose to blame everyone else.” ~ Jim
If you’re a bad friend and not generous with your time or energy, there’s no more hiding behind working long hours or endless business trips. One reader commented that the pandemic brought out “the factory default settings” of everyone. The paranoid became more paranoid. The needy became more needy. The anxious became more anxious and the optimistic became more optimistic.
I found this true in my own life. I have a tendency to be a workaholic and a bit depressive. Throughout the pandemic, I have battled through weeks of depressive symptoms, usually by inspiring and distracting myself with work.
Well, it was about mid-November when I realized that I hadn’t taken a full weekend off in over eight months. I was exhausted, burnt out, and miserable. I’ve since had to force myself to slow down a bit.
That amplification of our neuroses has created a “it got worse before it got better” dynamic for a lot of people. Early on, they discovered a lot of stuff they had been covering up for years. But as the months wore on, they were forced to confront and deal with their issues.
“The pandemic brought me to my recovery,” one reader said. I started therapy twice a week, twelve-step meetings, acupuncture, physical therapy for my back injury (no known cause, I believe it to be a trauma response) — after all that, I finally, after 37 years, was able to identify as a trauma survivor, and then the healing began. It wasn’t pretty.”
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THE LITTLE THNGS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT
“Myself and my patients, my friends and family also, have learned and re-learned that when all you have is little things, little things take on a huge significance.” ~ Lynette
One way I like to think about pandemic life is that it’s kind of like a science experiment. You don’t really know how things affect you until you can isolate them enough to see their full effects.
For example, I never realized how awful I felt for days after drinking alcohol, even if I only drank a little. The reason I never realized it before is probably because there were six other things in my life that were making me feel awful and tired too, so I was never able to isolate the effect alcohol has on me. But sitting at home all week, doing nothing, sleeping as much as I wanted, it soon became apparent that just a couple glasses of whiskey go a long way to wrecking my energy.
I had similar realizations around staying up late, excessive amounts of video games, having regular check-ins with family members, and going outside for walks and getting sunlight. All affected my mood and energy much more than I suspected… which makes me wonder exactly how exhausted I must have been for pretty much all of my adult life.
Many readers had similar experiences this year. An Egyptian reader put it very well when he said his biggest lesson from 2020 was that, “mundane decisions are underrated.” Something as simple as going to bed late one night can impact everything you do for the next two or three days, potentially causing a ripple effect through your life. You are tired and cranky so you skip the Zoom meeting you were scheduled for. But that Zoom meeting could have led to another business deal which you now did not get. And the lack of that business deal causes budget problems for your company three months from now.
That may sound dramatic, but I have developed a much greater respect for the downstream effects of small, simple choices. There’s a famous study that found that judges give harsher sentences to criminals if they hadn’t eaten and were hungry. Having my day basically be the same every day for nine months straight, it’s much easier to notice how these slight shifts affect me, my mood, and my energy.
That is partly why, at the beginning of the year, I preached routine and ritual. With less going on in our lives, the more the small things mattered. As one reader put it, “This year has taught me that ritual is the antidote to chaos. Small rituals, when practiced daily, give a sense of order to the mind.”
When all of this is over, I hope to continue some of my basic routines that I’ve adopted this year, simply because they make me a healthier, more sane, individual. I imagine many people feel the same.
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THE GREAT SOCIAL FILTER
“Ironically, this social distancing thing is great for weeding out useless relationships.” ~ Erica
But perhaps the most troubled readers were not those who lost friendships, but rather those who lost romantic relationships or marriages. One reader’s email is representative of many who had similar stories:
“Without all the distractions of normal days, my husband and I learned we no longer knew one another and actually no longer liked one another. It was a perfect time for zoom counseling sessions, which pointed out that it wasn’t necessarily that we didn’t like each other, but we no longer knew ourselves and no longer liked our own selves.”
Perhaps the greatest side effect of The Great Social Filter though is a renewed appreciation for friends and loved ones who managed to get through. Literally hundreds of readers expressed gratitude for renewed closeness with family members and old friendships. Many also shared the joyous realization that they loved their partners even more after spending all-day, every day with them for nine months. It reaffirmed to many that they chose who to be with well.
This dual realization about the significance (or insignificance) of people in one’s life actually leads us into the next lesson…
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MOST THINGS ARE BOTH GOOD AND BAD AT THE SAME TIME
Long-time readers know that one of the dead horses that I’ve beaten for years is that it’s often impossible to know if an experience is actually good/bad for us. Our judgments on things that are bad tend to be very short-term and emotionally driven. This is especially true in the age of social media, where the slightest amount of hurt, offense, or setback is perceived as some great oppression.
Dozens of readers emailed me with stories about losing their jobs, their houses, their relationships, and even losing family members to COVID-19. In most of these emails, the people, while extremely upset and hurt, also noted silver linings to their suffering. It brought their families closer. It gave them a chance to reconnect with their kids. It gave them a way out of a destructive marriage. It gave them an opportunity to rethink what they wanted to do with their lives. It showed them who really loved them for who they were and who didn’t.
Interestingly, a lot of people reported that this realization of the double-sidedness of events changed how they see the world and its problems, as well.
One reader said, “I learned things are never black and white no matter how hard someone tries to convince you they are.” Another reported how she used to believe in conspiracy theories, but after seeing government after government botch fundamental and basic actions against the pandemic, it became impossible for her to ignore the rampant incompetence in human organizations.
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BY SLOWING DOWN, EVERYTHING SOMEHOW SPEEDS UP
This “slowing down” of life has been endlessly fascinating for me this year, especially in how it relates to perceived time. Everyone I speak to about 2020 says that it feels as though the year flew by. Remember the Australian bushfires? Remember Kobe Bryant dying? That feels like eons ago.
There’s something about a lack of activity that makes time feel compressed and shortened, which is completely counterintuitive. A month goes by in what feels like a week. Yet, we look back and what happened a month ago feels like a year ago.
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WE CONSISTENTLY UNDERESTIMATE OUR RESILIENCE AND ADAPTABILITY
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FEAR IS DANGEROUS
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ALWAYS BE FINANCIALLY PREPARED
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YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE NOT TO BE WHO YOU WANT TO BE
(in paraphrase: It’s not the lack of time, but of the way you set your priorities)
https://markmanson.net/life-lessons-from-2020?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Oriana:
To me, the most important of these lessons is the recognition that most things are both good and bad at the same time. This goes for political beliefs as much as romantic relationships and our judgment of people in general. Almost no one is all good or all bad. Once we fully grasp that insight, we are much less likely to become uncritically devoted to an ideology or religion, and also become less judgmental of others.
And it was interesting to see that Christmas excess was no less this year. Maybe even more . . .
And some didn't hesitate to express the opinion that old people should die for the sake of the economy, while others came to see how precious those last years of life can be.
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“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone,
and if he does not love solitude,
he will not love freedom,
for it is only when he is alone
that he is really free.”
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Oriana:
I agree, and I love his punk hairdo.
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MONEY CAN BUY AT LEAST ONE KIND OF HAPPINESS
~ New research forthcoming in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science suggests that money can buy at least one type of happiness—something psychologists refer to as “happiness frequency.”
“We draw on prior research that distinguishes between the frequency and intensity of happiness to suggest that higher income is more consistently linked to how frequently individuals experience happiness than how intensely happy each episode is,” say the authors, led by Jon Jachimowicz of Harvard Business School. “Notably, we demonstrate that only happiness frequency underlies the relationship between income and life satisfaction.”
To arrive at this conclusion, the psychologists recruited 1,290 U.S. adults to participate in a short online study. Participants were asked to report, on average, how frequently they experienced the emotion of happiness (“about once each month,” “about once each week,” “about once each day,” “about 2-3 times each day,” or “more than 3 times each day”) as well as how intense each feeling of happiness was (“very low,” “low,” “moderate,” “high,” or “very high”). Participants were then asked to report their annual household income and answer a series of demographic questions.
The scientists found that income was associated with happiness frequency but not happiness intensity. Specifically, individuals who reported higher incomes experienced happiness more frequently than those with lower incomes.
The authors next attempted to find out why this association might exist. They theorized that it might have to do with the type of happiness-promoting leisure pursuits people were engaging in. For instance, past research has found that wealthy individuals engage in more active leisure pursuits such as playing, socializing, and exercising while non-wealthy individuals engage in more passive leisure pursuits such as watching TV, napping, and resting. This may be one of the reasons why money is associated with elevated levels of well-being. (Another reason may have to do with the degree to which wealthy individuals engage in work pursuits that offer a high degree of personal autonomy.)
They also found that lower-income individuals engaged in more passive leisure pursuits, which partly explained why these individuals experienced happiness less frequently.
The scientists conclude, “Taken together, income may bring about happiness not through more intensely happy experiences, but through a greater number of them.”
Whether or not money can buy other forms of happiness is still an open question.
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HEALTH BENEFITS OF BEETS
Beets are rich in nutrients, low in calories.
Among other minerals, beets provide manganese, important for bone health and normal metabolism. Manganese is a part of the antioxidant enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD), one of the most important antioxidant enzymes in your body. It’s also involved in the production of insulin and thyroxine. It aids wound healing by promoting the production of collagen.
Beets help keep blood pressure in check.
Studies have shown that beets can significantly lower blood pressure by up to 4–10 mmHg over a period of only a few hours. The effect appears to be greater for systolic blood pressure, or pressure when your heart contracts, rather than diastolic blood pressure, or pressure when your heart is relaxed. The effect may also be stronger for raw beets than cooked beets (grated raw beets with horseradish were part of my childhood diet, especially in winter).
These blood pressure-lowering effects are likely due to the high concentration of nitrates in beets. In your body, dietary nitrates are converted into nitric oxide, a molecule that dilates blood vessels, causing blood pressure to drop.
Blood nitrate levels remain elevated for about six hours after eating dietary nitrate. Therefore, beets only have a temporary effect on blood pressure, and regular consumption is required to experience long-term reductions in blood pressure.
Lower blood pressure translates into a reduced risk of heart attack and stroke.
Can improve athletic performance.
It’s important to note that blood nitrate levels peak within 2–3 hours. Therefore, to maximize their potential, it’s best to consume beets 2–3 hours before training or competing.
May help fight inflammation.
Beets contain pigments called betalains, which may potentially possess a number of anti-inflammatory properties. Betaine (trimethylglycine), with three methyl groups, is an important methyl donor, capable of reducing the levels of inflammatory homocysteine and increasing the levels of SAM-e.
Betaine also improves the level of cell hydration.
May improve digestive health.
Dietary fiber is an important component of a healthy diet.
It has been linked to many health benefits, including improved digestion.
One cup of beetroot contains 3.4 grams of fiber, making beets a good fiber source.
Fiber bypasses digestion and heads down to the colon, where it either feeds the friendly gut bacteria or adds bulk to stool.
This can promote digestive health, keep you regular and prevent digestive conditions like constipation, inflammatory bowel disease and diverticulitis.
Moreover, fiber has been linked to a reduced risk of chronic diseases including colon cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
May help support brain health.
The nitrates in beets may improve mental and cognitive function by promoting the dilation of blood vessels and thus increasing blood flow to the brain.
Beets have been shown to particularly improve blood flow to the frontal lobe of the brain, an area associated with higher-level thinking, such as decision making and working memory.
May have some anti-cancer properties.
Beetroot extract has been shown to reduce the division and growth of tumor cells in animals.
One test-tube study using human cells found that beetroot extract, which is high in betalain pigments, reduced the growth of prostate and breast cancer cells.
May help with weight loss.
First, beets are low in calories and high in water.
The fiber in beets may also help promote weight loss by reducing appetite and promoting feelings of fullness, thereby reducing overall calorie intake.
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In summary: beets are low in calories and a great source of nutrients, including fiber, folate and vitamin C.
Beets also contain nitrates and pigments that may help lower blood pressure and improve athletic performance.
Choose beets that are heavy for their size with fresh, unwilted green leafy tops still attached.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/benefits-of-beets
Oriana:
I can't believe that I used to discard the delicious beet leaves. Only recently I discovered that an easy way to prepare them is to cut them with kitchen scissors into colorful thin ribbons and then saute them. They taste much better than spinach.
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Since I like to put horseradish on my steamed beets, I decided to look up the benefits of horseradish.
BENEFITS OF HORSERADISH
~ Horseradish is a spicy root vegetable in the mustard family. When the root is damaged, it releases mustard oils, which are made of natural compounds called glucosinolates. Glucosinolates are known to have a variety of biological functions, and that's where the medicinal value of horseradish comes in.
Probably the best-researched aspect of horseradish is a component of the plant called sinigrin.
Sinigrin may
Slow the spread of cancer, especially in the liver, through multiple mechanisms at the cellular level
Lessen inflammation and improve atherosclerosis (chronic inflammatory disease) by blocking or altering pro-inflammatory components of the immune system, including TNF-α, interleukine-6, nitric oxide, COX-2, and prostaglandin E2
Act as an antibiotic agent, especially against E. coli bacteria
Act as an anti-fungal agent
Act as an antioxidant, preventing the formation of potentially disease-inducing free radicals
Speed wound healing, when used topically [note that we are talking about sinigrin, not commercial horseradish in a jar)
https://www.verywellhealth.com/horseradish-benefits-4585217
Oriana:
Of course you’d need to consume a lot of horseradish to obtain significant benefits. But even a bit of inflammatory benefits seems worth it to me — not to mention that horseradish beautifully spices up beets, shrimp, and beef.
ending on beauty:
I’ve heard the dead
So have you
We look around
And listen
Pretend the wind
Is their voice
But the wind
Only says one thing
Hush
~ John Guzlowski (also John's photo)
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