INSIDE
COMMUNITY
EVENTS B2

JUST A THOUGHT.
KATHY FLORITTO

An ode to soup

LEWIS CARROLL'S ‘‘Mock Turtle Song’’
says it all...

‘*Beautiful soup, so rich and green
Wailing in a hot tureen!

Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!’’ -

Around the world, soup is hailed as an
antidote for colds and flu, depression, upset
stomachs, cramps, allergies, bronchitis, arthritis,
plus hangnails, bad report cards and political
unrest.

On cold, blustery days, it makes our world a
warmer place. In the ‘dog days’ of summer, a
chilled version rejuvenates us.

It is the best of foods and the simplest of
epicurean delight whether concocted from
freshly caught salmon and just picked herbs or a
hodgepodge of tidbits saved from last week’s
suppers.

It can be the entree to a seven-course designer
dinner, or a wonderfully complete meal on its
own and is always the answer for weary pro-
viders with tired vegetables and hungry chil-
dren.

Although it has long been a primary building

block of lunch-time menus, only recently have.

entreprencurs recognized a goad bowl of soup’s
value in crealing profit. To give credit where it
-may well -be due, the television program, Sein-
feld awakened capitalists; young and old, to the
potential profits bubbling inside the stock pot.
Hail the soup Nazi,

Now, from-downtown street comers to ‘‘grab
n runs” everywhere, soup is given top billing
and the customer lineups are astonishing.

I was unable to locate stats for Canada, but a
Gallup poll done in the US reveals that over 3
billion soup and sandwich combinations in 1996
alone.

Tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich
was the undisputed winner as America’s favor-
ite soup and sandwich combination of choice,
followed by chicken noodle soup with a turkey
sandwich,

New Yorkers break up the hustle and bustle of
Manhaltan life with chicken noodle soup and a
turkey sandwich, while over on the west coast,
Los Angelans take-five to enjoy vegetable soup
with a turkey sandwich and San Franciscans
cast their reels for clam chowder and a turkey
sandwich.

If you’re a patron of establishments serving
Chinese foods, soup is probably one of the of-
ferings yeu often select. When trying to decide
which to choose from a menu of interminable
choices, you might be interested in how they’re
rated by their creators.

“‘Tang’’ means soup.

“Shang” means best. “‘Shang-tang’’ is just
what you’d expect — “best soup,”’ a descrip-
tion, by the way, of the ingredients, not the
quality of the soup. ‘‘Er-tang”’ is second best
and ‘'Gao-tang”’ is best ranked soup stock.

A melange of stir-fried lobster and asparagus,
for instance, would be a ‘‘shang-tang,”’ whereas
a cabbage soup with bits of pork would be “‘er-
fang.”

There are few who have not been introduced
to ‘Jewish Penicillin,”’ a miracle-worker that
relics on that most estimable of creatures, the
chicken, accompanied, as a rule, by matzoh
balls/smail dumplings. If a steaming bowl of
that doesn’t soive life’s most difficult problems,
it comes close ~~ damed close.

From whatever it is prepared and wherever it
is served, whether a fast meal in a cup or a
reach back in time to being coddled by Mom,
—— no matter the reason or season, soup offers
nutrition, satisfaction and delight.

Best of all and forall age groups, soup spells
comfort

One of my favourite quotations about this
most favoured taste treat — probably because it
says more about the soup maker than the soup
itself, comes from a man whose music is age-
less:

‘Whoever tells a lie cannot be pure in
heart — and only the pure in heart can
make good soup.’?

- Ludwig van Beethoven

An artist, a connoisseur of fine foods and 4
realist..Whataguy!!

“TERRACE STANDARD.

Teens

By CRIS LEYKAUF

_ ENERGY. That’s what Zac

Nyce is. The 20-year-old is
sO-pumped about music that

he can barely talk fast

enough to get his feelings
out,

It’s that energy that comes
across during the shows he
deejays on CFNR, FM 92.1.
Shows which are attracting
a growing and — diverse
young audience.

During the one and a half
hours of dedications Nyce
gets between 85-100 phone
calls.

Some callers are a little
snooty — sending Meredith
Brooks’ song ‘“‘B_”” out
to a less than favourite step-
mother. Another girl sends
the song ‘‘Loser’’ out —
perhaps to an ex-boyfriend.

But Nyce keeps it light,
mostly concentrating on
playing modern music —
something that’s hard to
come by in Terrace.

“People want to hear what
just came out,’’ says Nyce.

- He thinks other local radio
stations aren’t playing the

“¥ never dreamed I'd
end up doing this. I
love my job so much. I
get paid to listen to
music.’

kind of rcusic young people
wanted to listen to.

“Tt’s cool,” says 13-year-
old Ryan Mitchelt. ““When
you make dedications you
can listen to what you like.”

Ahother fan, - Morgan
Manning, -listens to Nyce
regularly, as do most of her
friends, ‘‘l think it’s ex-
cellent and it has great
music,” she says of the
show.

Nyce started working at
CFNR in Juby.

About two months ago his

boss ‘‘just threw me in the
booth.” ,
Nyce hasn't had any

professional training — and
thal comes across in shows.
He makes mistakes and

apologizes a bit too much
— last Friday about an on-
air case of hiccups.

But he also sounds sin-
cere, and obviously loves
music and his job. And
that’s made him a hit wilh
his audience, which lhe
thinks ranges in age from
11-26,

“T: never dreamed I'd end

up doing this. I love my job.

so much. I get paid to listen
to music.’

. Since he started going on’

air Nyce has tried lo

squecze in at least an hour's”
worth of good music and.

pethaps some dedications
during week nights.

For. the Jast few weeks
he’s -taken over ihe show
‘Smoke Signals,”

and till 8 p.m. on Friday.
Nyce has the show unlil
Dec. 8. .

Listeners might not realize

that the man they’re tuning *

into looks as different as
some of the music he plays.

Nyce presses buttons on
his board with a silver claw
finger ring, fitted over a
black fingerless glove.

A dark blue old fashioned.

military-style jacket helps
hide the chain hanging off
his jeans belt loops. On the
other end of that chain is his
wallet.

*"T dress down for work,”
Nyce explains.

If you’ve seen Nyce —- his
shoulder length black hair
partially died an orangey-
blond — wandering around
town, you'd probably agree.

Nyce: isn’t sure whal’s
going to happen to the

show, which was formerly a

pre-recorded dedication
show. Management hasnt
decided yei, he says.

Nyce moved to Terrace
two years ago, originally
coming from Alberta,

Surprisingly, he credits his
parents’ good taste in music
for helping him to develop a
wide appreciation for dif-
ferent music styles,

It’s Nyce’s own huge col-
lection of CDs which help
him ruc the show.

As for his favousite band,

which
runs after school till 6 p.m. |

The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, December 3, 1997 - B1

SECTION B

OMMUNITY-

ZAC NYCE gets close to a hundred requests during the phone-in portion of a
show he hosts weekday nights on CFNR. Meving music that people want to > hear

is the secret, he says.

it's Bad Religion,
‘It?s an absolutely fantas-
tic band with something to

like Terrace.

phone-in

Since the show is about
requesis, Nyce

If listeners wonder how

. Nyce manages to keep up to .
date on the latest music’

say.’”

Some of Nyce’s listeners
are industrial fans, request-
ing songs by Prodigy, Daft
Punk and Chumba Wumba.
Rap still bas a few fans too,
and Puff Daddy’s “‘T’ll be
Missing You’’ often gets
calls,

Rap isn’t as popular as
hip-hop in the jarger cities
anymore, but Nyce figures
tastes run about five months
behind in more rural areas

also finds himself playing
music be hates ‘‘like that
Barbie Girl song,” by Aqua.
He once told listeners how
annoying he found the song,

and for the next week he -

was deluded with requests
for it, from people who
wanted to hear it just to bug
him.

A few local bands have

also caught his ear, such as
Tension, Bardia and All
Those Opposed.

while living in Terrace, the
computer is his answer.

He's regularly on the In-
ternet looking at the new
Top 20 lists, and surfing to
band sites,

Perhaps if Terrace is ex-
posed to enough new music,
Nyce won’t have anymore

‘ requests like he did Jast Fri-

day, for Vanilla Ice’s ‘‘Ice
Ice Baby.”’
Not all oldies are goodies,

Book celebrates discovery of artifacts

THIS CEREMONIAL MASK is ane of those picturad
in Bringing Our Ancestors Home; The Repatriation of
Nisga'a Artifacts. The book is published by the
Nisga’a Tribaf Council, with text by Alex Rose and
Photos by Gary Fiegehen. It sells for $24.95 at Misty:

River Books.

By JEFF NAGEL

' LATE IN the 19th century, as the white

man was beginning to arrive in this areca,
Nisga’a treasures were looted.

The great works of north coast aboriginal
art — fantastic ceremonial masks, totem
poles, bowls, rattles and head dresses —
were laken away.

Collectors, anthropologists and mis-
sionaries scoured the region snapping up
native artifacts,

They ended up in museums and private
collections around the world, where they
remained for decades.

Butin recent years, the Nisga’a have been
combing the world’s collections, catalogu-
ing the treasures that were taken from the
Nass Valley.

Bringing Our Ancestors Home, a new
book written by Alex Rose and published
by the Nisga'a Tribai Council, tells the tale
of stolen artifacts and the Nisga'a drive to

* bring them back.

The book is the Jatest project of the same
eam of people that produced Nisga’s:
People of the Nass Valley and a dazzling
Nisga’a calendar cach year.

Vivid photographs by Gary Fiegehen cap-
lure the mysterious energy and wonder of
these works of art.

The objects represent the trappings of
wealth and power of the top Nisga'a chicfs
of the day.

Some artifacts were for heraldic display,
others were for initiation riles or lo
represent spirits on which a halayt or
shaman would rely for magic and power.
Others were used during dances and songs
lo illustrate stories connected to the Nisga’a
culture.

Why did the Nisga’a parl with objects of
great spiritual and cultural significance?

The book paints a stark picture of natives
who were in the process of being converted
to Christianity and faced with a harsh new
order that allowed no room for com-
promise: accept the terms of a new religion
or face etermal damnation, -

Fearing just that, they turned over
artifacts in great numbers io the mis-

’ sionaries,

They sometimes bumed the artifacts, but
in many cases kept them or sold them to
traders, who in turn sald them to museums
around the world.

One of the compelling stories in the book
is that of Nisga’a Tribal Council president

Some artifacts were for heraldic
display, others were for initiation
rites or to represent spirits on
which a halayt or shaman would
rely for magic and power,

Joe Gosnell’s memory of playing as a boy
in the crawispace under his grandfather's

\ house in Gitwinksitlkw to find carved fig-

ures on the wooden beams.

‘It was only years later, after returning
from residential school, that Joseph realized
the foundations of his grandfather’s house
had once been the towering Nisga’a totem
poles that graced the main street of his vil-
lage.”’

‘As the price of a new religion, mis-
slonaries had coerced the Nisga’a people
into cutting down their own poles. Before
they were allowed to embrace Christianity,
they had to deny their own spiritual beliefs.
Other totem poles were chopped down and
floated down river where they were
boomed up and milled in Prince Rupert.’'

But this book is also about rebirth, telling
of Nisga’a artists like Norman Tait who
have taken the culture’s art to new, con-
temporary helghts.

Good explanations are given for the sys-
tem of clans and crests and how the art fits
into the culture’s ceremonies and traditions.

Atid most inspiring is the search for

‘artifacts and the Nisga’a dream to one day

have them retumed to the Nass,

rer eens