Hildegard of Bingen and the wildfires in Alberta

Here's an incomplete post. I hope to add to it later.

I don't know a lot about Hildegard of Bingen, an abbess who lived in the Rhineland in the twelfth century except that the word "polymath" could have been invented for her. If a subject was important, she had something valuable and original to say about it. (note to self: did she have anything to say about chivalry? Or perhaps militia?)

This morning on the CBC Radio show The Current (which I recommend highly), Matt Galloway was interviewing the author of a book on the Alberta wildfires and what they mean for our future. I didn't catch his name or the book's title, but I hope to fill them in later. Anyway, this guy approached our relationship with fire from a number of different angles, all of them interesting, many alarming, but not from a hopeless point of view.

He concluded by citing at length how Hildegard's idea of viriditas (here, green power?) is relevant to reconstruction from the damage done by these wildfires.

I told you she had something to say on just about everything!

Go Hildegard!

Matt Galloway -- a national treasure & women with expertise and appropriate employment

Among the many excellent radio hosts at CBC Radio 1 is a guy call Elamin Abdulmahmoud who grew up in Sudan. He once dropped a fact about his own early life: the cinema closest to home NEVER showed any Hollywood products and usually showed movies in French.

I am sure a great many Canadians may think that this is one more indicator that the country is being flooded by immigrants and refugees. Me, I think that it is neat and useful for Canadians to be presented by fellow citizens who have such interesting backgrounds. Three points: I am an immigrant myself; Two when people like me (white) run across people who I think "look like immigrants," more often than not I find they were born in Canada.

So if you were worrying about that flood of immigrants, too late! It's happened -- and has been happening for decades and decades and decades. You can look it up.

Point Three: I may have got the identity of the radio host wrong.

. The story, however, is right.

These radio hosts at CBC who do the research etc. are a national treasure. Listen to Radio 1 during the morning hours and you will get such an education! To pick out just one host, Matt Galloway, currently host of The Current. He is so good at asking questions, asking follow-up questions, being witty without being aggressive, absrbing a great deal of background on any of the many subjects he covers --- he is just the BEST. The BEST.

Once upon a time men had all the heavy lifting in the sciences and technical subject going to hear an expert talk sbout something interesting and complicated, you could pretty safely bet that "some man" would be in the driver's seat.

Today I realized that more or less such authorities are women. And they are not in junior positions -- they are presidents, vice-presidents, deans of their universities, CEOs of tech companies... you name it.