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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2017-06-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2017. PAGE 5. Other Views We found out we were interesting As I sat watching The Clinton Special during the Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story, the magic of that time when The Farm Show put rural people we could recognize on the stage, came flooding back. Michael Ondaatje's documentary was filmed after The Farm Show took Toronto by storm in the fall of 1972, portraying stories Paul Thompson and his troupe of actors from Theatre Passe Muraille had collected when they spent the summer of 1972 west of Clinton. The show was remounted in the spring of 1973, then came back out to rural Ontario. The Clinton Special captures parts of the performances in the sales barns in Listowel and Orangeville (though not the show's stops in Brussels at the Crystal Palace or Blyth at Memorial Hall — in the basement because the theatre was unsafe). Not only were the "theatres" in the filmed performances out of the ordinary — actors performing in the rings where cattle were usually paraded — but the audience was a million miles from the fancy -dressed opening night audiences at the Stratford Festival, the closest professional theatre at the time. They were rural people, mostly farm people, dressed for comfort not show in those late -April performances in cold auction barns. Many probably didn't know quite what to expect, except that word had gotten around that this was something you should see. The scene that stands out for me, as it did for most of the men in those 1973 audiences, (and more than a few of the women probably, too), was Miles Potter's re-enactment of his experience helping bring in the hay on a Clinton -area farm. Most of us had served our time in a barn, stacking hay bales. Barely in my 20s, my memories were vivid of my teen - years' summers spent on various farms Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk bringing in hay, so I recognized all the torments and pleasures Miles acted out. We had all shared the heat and dust. We'd all enjoyed the gratitude when the last bale from one load came up the elevator and we could stand by the open door luxuriating in the cooling breeze before looking down to see the next wagon -load was pulling into place and the work was about to begin again. We had all discovered that Freshie (or Kool-Aid or lemonade) could be more precious than the finest wine if you'd just sweated for hours under a barn's metal roof, radiating oven -like heat. We all laughed at the incongruity of our own lives when, at the end, Miles turned to the audience and said: "Now I ask you, what would possess anyone, twice a year for their entire lives to put themselves through this hell!" The thing that was magic for the audience was that Miles took this task that we endured and discovered nobility in the hardships of our work, and as an outsider, turned it into one of the two most hilarious theatrical bits I've ever enjoyed. I laughed when I watched him perform his interpretation in the very first public performance in Ray Bird's barn in 1972, the next year when he played it again in the Memorial Hall basement and still, 45 years later, when I watched him in The Clinton Special. So did the people who were in the auction barns in the documentary. So did every audience I ever saw. I suspect this same feeling of recognition came to many farm women in the audience as they watched Janet Amos try to describe the busy life of a farm wife, eventually climbing into the tub of a wringer -washer and churning like the washer's agitator as her recounting becomes more and more frantic. We discovered our lives could inspire art as much as the lives of kings and queens of ancient England. In fact, that spring tour of The Farm Show that started out in auction barns and basements, held its final performance at the Stratford Festival Theatre, on a stage normally trod by actors playing English kings and queens. That discovery, that our stories were worthy of telling, was repeated two years later when the Blyth Festival opened with Mostly in Clover, translating local author Harry J. Boyle's stories of growing up in Huron County into a warm, funny hit show (which contained my other all-time favourite funny theatre scene — Jim Schaefer and Ron Barrie's portrayal of a buggy race). The magic of those moments of seeing our lives as stage -worthy, turned three generations of farmers, factory -workers and shop -keepers into theatregoers, creating the Blyth Festival's huge success and, in turn, inspiring summer theatres to spring up in towns and villages across the province to tell stories of local lives. But the older two of those three generations who discovered the magic of theatre in the 1970s are mostly gone. The two young generations that have come along since have not had their own magical discovery. Successive Festival artistic directors have tried for years to make that lightning strike again for people under 50, without success. Unless the younger people get that same jolt as we did in 1972 and 1975, the future of our theatre is not bright. Customers suffer in the digital age 0 ver the weekend my wife and I received not one, but two important reminders of how digitizing operations is not the panacea it seems to be for customer service. To start with, I'll apologize to the people who follow/stumbled upon my Facebook post over the weekend as some of this column will be rehashing what I had said there. On Saturday, Ashleigh, Mary Jane and I had a shopping trip in Goderich. We needed to pick up some odds and ends that we couldn't find locally and, unfortunately for me, I'm very much a hands-on kind of person. I don't like purchasing most things unless I can put my hands on it first. So, Saturday morning, we set our compass west and made our way down County Road 25, then detoured to avoid the significant construction on Highway 21. We managed to get our shopping done without Mary Jane getting upset and were getting ready to head back when Ashleigh decided she wanted a chilled vanilla chai tea latte. Okay, Ashleigh and I both wanted one. The drinks are tasty. Unfortunately for me, as I would find out, McDonald's is the only place that sells that particular brand of chilled bliss on a hot day. Faithful readers will likely remember that I have some pretty strict rules about where, when and how to use a drive-thru and one of the biggest rules for places that serve primarily food is that I believe drive-thru windows should be a cash -only business. Lacking the cash and having to use plastic, I decided to go into McDonald's, after all, rules, even self-imposed ones, are rules. Later, after my experience in the restaurant, I had to cast my mind back to remember the last time I had gone into a McDonald's and, I won't lie, I can't remember. I know it was after the whole McCafe branding experiment started but it was definitely prior to the inclusion of order kiosks. For those of you who aren't sure what I mean by kiosk, it's a flat touch -screen where you can place and pay for your order, and you then take the receipt, which includes your order number and wait for it to be called. First things first, the "take a number" system works great. Friday night, as a thank - you for helping a family member with some work, I ended up at Denny's Drive -In in Grand Bend, which uses the system and it works just fine. I'm pretty sure there are outdoor restaurants near Goderich, Clinton and Seaforth that do the same thing. Where the McDonald's system falls apart, however is that you have people ordering at the kiosks and people ordering at the counter, so, if you walk in to order, it can be confusing. So back to Saturday, shortly before noon. I walked up to the counter placed my order and then tried to find a place to wait nonchalantly while my order was completed. Waiting I don't mind, however, with at least a dozen people waiting for orders, it was difficult to find a place within earshot of the counter to wait and I ended up having to tell three more customers that I had already ordered and that they could go to the counter. Infuriated by the complication of what had been a simple system, I went to social media to voice my frustration. I found many people agreed with me while some praised the new system. I decided I may have just hit a rare bad moment in the new system so Sunday, while travelling for a Father's Day celebration, I went to a different McDonald's in hopes of finding my experience to be a one-off. Suffice to say, it wasn't. I want to say here, first and foremost, that it isn't the fault of the employees. I've worked at McDonald's both when I was a fresh -faced teen in high school and as a means to help pay my bills pursuing my post -secondary education. McDonald's employees, despite often being maligned, are usually pretty decent at their jobs. That could be because it's simple or because, and this was my experience, it's not a bad place to work. Sure, they didn't offer me dental coverage, but as a student, it was an easy job with easy -to -get - along -with people. So, back to the system, it's not the employees' fault everything seemed to be going wrong. During my second visit, I saw the concern in the employees' eyes every time someone walked up when a number hadn't been called. They know things are getting missed and they can't do anything to solve the problem except apologize and try and make it right. This is the problem with trying to replace a person with a digital interface. Aside from mechanical problems (like one kiosk printing blank receipts during second visits, leaving people to guess at their order numbers), the absence of the human touch from such contraptions is a significant problem. There is no way to ask simple questions (what ingredients does this item have, for example) and no personal touch. In conclusion, while digital storefronts or kiosks can work for some industries, for anything bricks and mortar, it falls short at best and, at worst, causes absolute chaos and breaks a working system. Stick with what works and stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense We're here to help n this business of ours, sometimes you get complaints and other times you get compliments. There is the old rule of thumb that generally you only hear the complaints (people don't go out of their way to tell you you're doing your job well), but in our small-town setting, we likely receive more than our fair share of compliments. We are often told by readers that we're doing a great job telling the community's stories back to its members. And really, every single one of those compliments that comes to me or reporter Denny Scott or publisher Keith Roulston is deeply appreciated. In addition to what we hear on the street, The Citizen has been honoured in a number of ways in recent years, including topping a national list of newspapers in its circulation class — which is no small feat. However, all of this pales in comparison to the role we played in the sermon of one of our newest fans on Sunday. Hillary MacDonald, the young new student minister working with the Blyth and Brussels United Churches, used The Citizen as an introduction to her message to the church's congregations on Sunday. According to Blyth correspondent Marilyn Craig, she said that we produce a "must -have" newspaper full of plenty of information from both the Blyth and Brussels communities. She also said it was important and vital to the community. But then, MacDonald — likely in an effort to bridge her conversation about The Citizen and its importance to the community to her greater message of spreading the good news — compared what The Citizen does to the spreading of the word of God. There's always that joke about professional athletes when they have a really good game or if they win a championship in their respective sport that they'll just hold a press conference and retire, because their career can't get much better than it is at that moment. Perhaps Denny and I should call our press conference, because I can't imagine being compared to the word of God will be topped anytime soon. Thanks to Hillary for that one. We will wear it as a feather in our cap always. Now, all joking aside, when Denny first spoke with Hillary, she told him that, to paraphrase, she hoped to use the newspaper as a way to learn more about the community into which she was parachuting. Whether it's becoming the new minister of an established faith institution or starting a new job in one of the Huron County communities we serve, The Citizen, we hope, gives people an accurate snapshot of life in this community on a week -by -week basis. And with people flooding into these communities, whether for a visit or a new job, if we can do that for some of our newer citizens, then that's some of the more important work that we do. Of course, we can't know everything. So, while we do our best, there's always room to improve and if it's our job to spread the news and you have some news we should be spreading, you know where to find us. So, you don't have to be the new minister in town and you don't have to compare what we do to the word of God, although — clearly — those comparisons are appreciated, but if you're looking to familiarize yourself with a new community, we are here to help. And, if we can help some people learn more about their new community, then it makes it all worth it. And doing something like that is much more of a feather in our cap — although it is hard to beat the whole word of God thing I might have mentioned earlier in this column.