Better mental health by talking it out
“People Talks” series a way for Elmira’s Clay Williams to go beyond raising funds
FEELINGS OF ISOLATION ARE A
recurring theme of the pandemic, intensified by the most recent lockdown, for instance. To help counter that, Canal Pursuit Productions is preparing to run a virtual discussion series under the name ‘People Talks,’ providing an avenue for people to discuss their lives, understanding they are not alone.
Elmira’s Clay Williams is one of the organizers bringing the virtual series to the region, using Instagram as its format.
An avid runner and mental health advocate, Williams has been taking part in runs as a fundraising effort, but says he wanted to expand beyond that. The idea for the talks stemmed from his participation in similar events elsewhere.
“I’ve been doing these runs for a few years. And, this past year, I thought there’s more that I can do than just running to raise a little bit of money – there must be something more that I can do to try and help raise a little more awareness. So, with that in mind, I’ve done a few talks with a friend in Guelph (Lisa Browning), who hosted monthly talks for small groups, and she would rotate topics throughout the year... with that experience kind of in my back pocket, I thought, ‘well, why can’t we do something like that locally in Elmira, Kitchener-Waterloo
area?’ And that was kind of the start – getting ordinary people to talk about their experiences,” he explained.
Helping Williams bring the series to life are two of his friends, Maria Michel and Deidre Large, who are associates through the world of running and mental health.
Each episode is expected to be between 20-40 minutes in length, and ‘People’s Talks’ are requesting those interested in tuning in to submit questions for each week’s host to create more conversation and dialogue.
The speakers are mainly geared around the subjects of mental health and sickness.
“There’s a bit of a variety. The main thoughts behind the talk are loosely related to mental health and to sickness, not necessarily both at the same time, although they could be. So, we have already had a few people who are interested in talking, who are struggling with and have struggled for a long time with depression and anxiety disorder, and have kind of developed their own tools or coping mechanisms,” said Williams.”They’re willing to share about their struggles, as well as some of the solutions, some of the tools that they’ve developed on their own, some of the help that they found, to be able to make it through. Also, we’ll have some professional people who are working in the healthcare field.”
We wanted a recipe for this diner staple that was easy to make in every home kitchen. In a large bowl we tossed together ½-inch cubes of cooked corned beef from the deli counter, unpeeled russet potatoes and carrots, which offered pretty pops of color. We also added shredded cabbage and sliced onion and combined the entire mixture with garlic, thyme, a few spices and vegetable oil.
We transferred the contents of the bowl to a nonstick skillet and cooked them, covered, until the potatoes were tender. We then removed the skillet from the heat and mashed the ingredients into a solid mass with a potato masher.
After adding little nubs of butter all around the sides, we returned the skillet to the heat to brown the hash. Flipping the hash in sections with a spatula gave us control over how much browning was achieved and allowed browning on both sides. The finished hash was bound by creamy potatoes and woven in a web of cabbage, with salty, tender corned beef and subtly sweet carrots in every bite.
SIBLINGS PEYTON AND QUINTIN LEADLEY
have made the most of their free time by creating elephants out of snow in their Bamberg front yard. The two homeschoolers were working on a project on African elephants, which inspired the front-yard beast they named ‘Elon Tusk.’
The elephantidae stands nearly 10-feet-tall and has a slide running down its trunk that the kids are making the most out of.
“We kind of started with just a little pile in the middle, and we expanded it every snow,” said Quintin,
with Peyton adding that “we kept on packing it down.”
The creature melted after the first rain, which prompted the kids to pat down the snow and build back better. To build up snow, they used shovels and snowplows with the help of their parents and neighbours.
The Leadley kids have plans of hollowing out the creature if the temperature remains cool, keeping the snow on the ground for a little longer. The goal is to create a TV room inside at the end of a tunnel.
The project is just one of many creative winter hobbies the brother and sister duo have taken on.
Another one was sleeping underneath their snow-covered trampoline fort, and in another fort that subsequently melted away.
The creation also received assistance from neighbours Marilyn Hartung and her husband Richard, who also enjoyed playing in the snow. The couple created a shuffleboard on their pond and a couple of snow sculptures around their property, including a man sitting on a real toilet attending to his business surrounded by stacks of toilet paper rolls.
“They’re not our own grandkids, but they are like grandkids to us,” said Hartung.