Developing a Culture of Peace in Calgary and Alberta-an article presented at the Third Annual Alberta Peace Education Conference October 2005. It can be used for consideration in initiating other Provincial and Community Culture of Peace Programs.
Wanted: A Straw to Stir the Drink. âThe straw that stirs the drinkâ is an old newspaper colloquialism, derived from politics, applied to very successful columnists. It means a commentator with a large following, one whom even the opposition reads. (Itâs heard in baseball circles, too.
The first known straws were made by the Sumerians, and were used for drinking beer, probably to avoid the solid byproducts of fermentation that sink to the bottom. The oldest drinking straw in existence, found in a Sumerian tomb dated 3,000 B.C.E., was a gold tube inlaid with the precious blue stone lapis lazuli. Argentines and their neighbors used a similar metallic device called a bombilla, that acts as both a straw and sieve for drinking mate tea for hundreds of years.