6
www.thevillagenews.co.za
13 May 2020
FROM THE EDITOR
Preparing for the new normal The next edition of The Village NEWS will be available on 20 May 2020. The NEWS can be found at over 300 distribution points in the Overberg.
028 312 2234
6 Royal Street, Hermanus
De Waal Steyn
PUBLISHING EDITOR dewaal@thevillagenews.co.za
Hedda Mittner
Being able to see the future and already start taking steps to fully embrace it is a huge advantage. Luckily for us, we have exactly this opportunity.
blue skies, numerous hiking trails, champagne air and kilometre after kilometre of beaches provide ample room for residents and tourists to safely stay out of each other’s way.
As countries around the world begin to lower their restrictions, we are offered a window seat to what they are doing to protect and reignite their economies.
Some towns and cities are using it to their advantage. Seattle, an American city surrounded by water, mountains and forests, has permanently closed over 30 km of streets to through-traffic to create corridors for people to safely exercise and cycle. Is there an opportunity like this for our towns to become even more inviting to visitors?
Already three themes are shaping this “new normal” – and we should take note. The first is space. Thankfully, this is something that the Overberg is abundantly blessed with. The big
CONTENT EDITOR
Raphael da Silva
raphael@thevillagenews.co.za
Elaine Davie SUB-EDITOR & JOURNALIST elaine@thevillagenews.co.za
Taylum Meyer PHOTOGRAPHER & PRODUCTION MANAGER taylum@thevillagenews.co.za
Alta Pretorius MARKETING MANAGER alta@thevillagenews.co.za
Charé van der Walt MARKETING REPRESENTATIVE chare@thevillagenews.co.za
Tania Hamman
ADMIN & FINANCE admin@thevillagenews.co.za
Traceability will become even more important, not just for the actual product, but more importantly, to know who has been in contact with the product. While we have always known that Local is Lekker, the future is going to expect us not only to be shopping in smaller locally-owned shops or online, but also expect these same retailers to be sourcing their prod-
ucts from within the geographic area, particularly food products. As the “breadbasket” of the Cape, the Overberg is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this trend. A third is cleanliness. While we have now all gotten used to sanitising our hands frequently, the word “clean” is going to take on even greater significance. People will not only want to know that their environment is hygienic, but they are going to want to see cleanliness in action. Here, too, we can build on the Cleanest Town of the Year awards we have won in the past. This is the good NEWS - Ed
Tomfoolery, Famous Phrases and the Beer War
hedda@thevillagenews.co.za
ONLINE EDITOR
A second is localism – the preference for one’s own area or region.
More and more, consumers and visitors will want to know exactly where a product has come from, with a guarantee that the supplier has put in place all the necessary health and hygiene protocols.
By Murray Stewart murray.stewart49@gmail.com
S
ome facts that we have accepted as real, are not entirely trustworthy. Other facts that are inconveniently true are usually smothered under a shroud of national security/hearsay/conspiracy. The following though, is the whole truth, and nothing but. Scout’s Honour. Naughty Tommy Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father of the USA, helped write the Constitution, was the 3rd President around 1800, and seemed a pretty decent sort of bloke all round. Or was he? Many are unaware that he decided to edit the Bible. It was completed – though unpublished – in1820. Using a razor and glue he literally cut and pasted passages of the standard King James version to make the life and teachings of Jesus more accessible – mainly to enlighten the native Indians and those less educated, he claimed. His mission was to separate Jesus’ actual teachings and moral lessons, like the Sermon on the Mount, from
the ‘supernatural’ occurrences like the virgin birth, water to wine, healing the sick and other miracles. So, to avoid confusion, he casually removed all mention of passages at variance with the laws of physical nature.
mistress. Nothing quite like keeping it in the family. Today hundreds of multi-coloured Americans in various walks of life, have a direct bloodline to President Tom, whether they like it or not.
“If a moral lesson was embedded in a miracle,” he wrote, “the moral survived but not the miracle.” So he sliced out verses from the Apostles and arranged them in chronological order to create a single narrative of Jesus’ moral teachings – in His own words.
Phrases from Fables 1. The Catherine wheel is often a centrepiece at fireworks displays. It is named after St Catherine, whose symbol was a spiked wheel. Legend has it that she was martyred by being tied (hopefully dead already) to a large wheel and rolled down a hill to rapturous applause. Exactly who thought of it is uncertain, but as a marketing ploy it survived the test of time.
His aim was to portray Jesus as a great moral teacher, not as a shaman or wizard, so some passages were oddly truncated, even in mid-verse. It didn’t really catch on though. It’s a bit like staging an extravagant Broadway production of The Phantom of the Opera and cutting out all the songs. Now, apart from his misguided flirtations with the spiritual, his physical flirtations resulted in an affair and illegitimate offspring with Sally Hemmings, one of his ‘slaves’. She, in turn, was the illegitimate daughter of his father-in-law’s own ‘slave’
2. White elephants were extremely rare, so the King of Siam decreed that the owners of these albinos take extra special, extra expensive care of them, or else! If a courtier crossed his path, the King would announce that he was planning to gift him a white elephant. The bloke now had to choose: accept the gift and face financial ruin pampering the beast, or quietly disappear into the sunset. Most preferred not to accept the burden of an expensive, useless gift.
3. Touch-and-go is one of many common expressions that came from the seafaring tradition. Often a ship would touch the bottom in shallow passages and get stuck. So with clenched teeth and buns, the crew would have to wait and only go again when the tide floated them off – a narrow escape from a possible disaster. Beer today – gone tomorrow Beer has been making people drunk since the Flintstones era. In Central America, ancient tribes used corn, until the Europeans arrived and introduced the barley/ hops method, created and perfected mainly around today’s Germany, and quaffed throughout Northern Europe. Over the centuries, the industry flourished and established an identity of its own. Mexican beer is vastly different in colour and taste, and as a fashion statement is quaffed directly from the bottle, with a wedge of lemon/ lime shoved down its neck. One highly successful, extensively marketed brand went viral, but through no fault of their own, sales have plummeted and it’s avoided these days like the plague. It’s called Corona.
WEEKLY WEATHER & DE BOS DAM LEVELS Wed | 13 May Thu | 14 May
Proudly Sponsored By
Talisman Tool Hire
Fri | 15 May
Sat | 16 May
12°/17° Some Rain
10°/18° Partly Cloudy
Sun | 17 May Mon | 18 May Tue | 19 May
Nickey Jackson
DTP DESIGNER nickey@thevillagenews.co.za
Ilana van der Merwe
GRAPHIC DESIGNER ilana@thevillagenews.co.za
14°/17° Mostly Cloudy
12°/18° Clear
11°/18° Mostly Clear
12°/20° Partly Cloudy
13°/21° Cloudy
De Bos Dam 37.48%
Weekly Rainfall 0 mm
Last week 38.01%
Last week 15mm
WEEKLY TIDE TABLES HIGH LOW HIGH LOW
07:34 01:32 20:22 13:50
High Low High Low
08:54 02:53 21:49 15:16
High Low High Low
Tides sourced by www.sanho.co.za
10:28 04:21 23:05 16:47
High Low High Low
11:40 05:32 17:51
High Low High Low
00:00 06:22 12:30 18:35
High Low High Low
00:42 07:00 13:10 19:11
High Low High Low
01:18 07:34 13:45 19:42
