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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-07-02, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2015. PAGE 5. “An inefficient attempt to put an elusive ball in an obscure hole using instruments ill- adapted for the purpose.” – Woodrow Wilson My first encounter with the game of golf came when I was just a tadpole, 12 or so, in Tommy Farmer’s backyard. Tommy had swiped his father’s six wood and a handful of golf balls. We were going to ‘hit a few’. Tommy went first. I stood back and watched. But not too far back. I stood right behind Tommy to study his technique. About where his backswing finished after he teed off. In the immortal words of Corporal Renfrew of the Royal Mounted, “When I regained consciousness....” Knocked me out cold, Tommy Farmer did. He also cooled my enthusiasm for a game Churchill dismissed as “a good walk, ruined.” Most of my chums took up the sport, but I demurred. Now it appears I might have been ahead of the game. It looks as if the rest of the world is growing disenchanted with golf too. Take China. There, golf is a pastime enjoyed primarily by the extremely rich. That’s bad optics for a government that likes to pretend it’s in touch with the common folk. In 2004, officials ordered a stop to all new construction of golf courses. This spring China closed 66 clubs – about 10 per cent of the country’s total. The picture for North American golfers isn’t a lot prettier. Not so long ago, Canada’s golf courses were aswarm with men in ridiculous pants and doofus hats swatting at balls while chatting up business clients. That’s on the wane. A study done for the National Allied Golf Associations found the game has reached a tipping point: for the first time as many players are leaving the game as entering it. The big reason is time. It takes too long to play 18 holes of golf – or even nine, for some hot-wired executive types. And that’s not counting the hours you need to put in to be a half decent player. Golf is hard to play well. Young people used to instant gratification don’t take to a sport in which long hours of practice are essential and the frustration level is off the dial. Which helps to explain all those golf course saplings wearing five-iron neckties. The industry is fighting back. Some courses are dropping the number of holes to 12 from 18. Others have revamped their courses to be played in six-hole segments. At the Muskoka Highlands Club in Bracebridge, customers are encouraged to leave their clubs at home and replace the standard golf ball with a regulation soccer ball. Participants then boot the ball around the course, trying to sink it in holes that have been widened to accommodate the larger ball. I’m not sure what you call that game, but it’s not ‘golf’. Is golf on the way out? Hard to say. We’re a fickle lot, we recreationalists. There was a time when this fair land was speckled with bowling alleys, dance halls and roller skating rinks. Hard to find any of those now. All I know is I’ll never give up. I’ll keep golfing even though it eats up my leisure time and the humiliation is unending. Years of trying and still my putting game sucks. I think it’s those bloody windmills.... Arthur Black Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Several months ago North Huron Publishing decided it was time to revamp our online image. To that end, we invested in a new website and a lot of the prep work for that was handled by yours truly. I’m not taking credit for the site – just saying there was a lot of copying from the old site to the new site that I handled, as well as some of the design choices as well. Why does any of this matter? Well after the effort that went into the site, I wanted to make sure that everyone who can is benefitting from the site. If you have visited both our new and our old site, you have probably noticed that there is a significant difference between the two. That said, a lot of the same great content that we did have on the old site is still available. For example, there is still plenty of information regarding the history of the local villages and towns in our area. Whether you’re looking for more recent history or whether you want to know who the Rutabaga King of Blyth was decades ago, you will find yourself right at home in the history section of the site. Our three major publications, plus some of our special editions, are still available on the site the same way they were before. Pretty much everything from Stops Along the Way, the tourism magazine produced by North Huron Publishing, is available on the site. Select articles and feature stories from both The Citizen and The Rural Voice are also available on the site every week and month, respectively, just like before. There are also entire sections of the website dedicated to tips for those taking on home and garden projects or looking to tie the knot. All of that transitioned from the old website and is still available on the new one. When looking at what is newer and more improved in the new design than there was in the old design, the first thing that jumps out at me is the fact that all of our publications are now available digitally. Whether you’re looking to catch up on what’s going on in The Citizen’s coverage area or looking to find out what the latest and greatest agricultural news is via The Rural Voice, you can buy a digital subscription for the same price as a regular subscription of either publication. Stops Along the Way is free to download from our site as well. You can either read it on the site or download a PDF copy of the magazine to take with you on your smart phone or tablet. This is an especially important development for those of our readers who enjoy their winters in a warmer climate. Now, you don’t have to worry about your subscription being put on hold, you can get a digital subscription and be able to read it anywhere. You can be on the beaches of Florida, enjoying the sites in Texas, or visiting any southern country in the winter and, as long as you have a computer or a tablet and access to the internet, you will be able to keep up on all the news that’s fit to print. Digital subscriptions are just the first trick in our bag here at North Huron Publishing. We’re also now able to take inquiries through the site. While there were some growing pains with this feature at first, now, at least once a day, inquiries will be addressed that come to us through the “Contact Us” page. Thus far, the inquiries have ranged from requests for every department in the company from advertisements to news tips and everything in between. We welcome all the feedback we can get, because it will make not only the website, but the company as a whole, more what the community needs and wants it to be which is our first goal; to provide the kind of news experience that is useful to you, our readers. We have also been able to implement some new features that were more difficult or impossible to do on our old website, such as cross-category posting (without having to post the story twice) and image galleries with each story. The latter is really exciting because there are many events where we take dozens, if not hundreds, of pictures, all of which we clearly can’t print. Now the pictures (and we can have as many as we so choose) are displayed right above the story and can be scrolled through at the visitor’s leisure. Speaking of pictures, one more exciting change is our Photo of the Day section. Located in the Stops Along the Way section of the site, which is also accessible through stopsalonglakehuron.com, the Photo of the Day is designed to let people see what life is like in Huron County that day, and over the course of a year or even longer. While a lot of the photos have come from our own staff, we welcome anyone to contribute to the site by e-mailing reporter@northhuron.on.ca. That’s my e-mail address and trust me, your contributions are definitely appreciated. The more varied and wide-reaching we can be with this endeavour, the better. The photos will be up as long as we can manage, which means you will be able to look back and remember how snowy the days of March were or how rainy the days of June have been. Lastly, the new site incorporates a change that we have had a lot of people ask about: the longevity of our articles. Instead of our articles being up until the next publication came out, we will now be able to leave our articles up longer. For some articles, that means they will be up indefinitely and changed when necessary. For others, they could be up a few months or maybe even a year, instead of a week. So check it out at northhuron.on.ca (I can’t believe I waited until the end of the story to actually put the address in). The site is modular, for lack of a better word, so there are a lot of things we can do with content, views and information to make it more accessible and get the word out about events, news and happenings in the area. Check the site often because, as part of the upgrade, we’re going to be able to post everything from weather warnings to local cancellations due to weather and beyond. All that you, as a reader and a member of your community, have to do, is let us know what to post. Denny Scott Denny’s Den The pendulum swing When one group needs assistance, it’s important that others aren’t sacrificed to make that happen. It’s a brave point that student Clarissa Gordon makes in this week’s issue of The Citizen. The funny thing is, you have to wonder if Clarissa knows that it’s a brave thing she’s saying. It could almost border on controversial. But Clarissa is a young girl. By no means is she so young that she doesn’t know what she’s saying, but she is young and idealistic and she’s telling us what’s on her mind. “I think that people who are succeeding aren’t getting the voice they need,” she says in this week’s story about the young girl being named to the Minister of Education’s Student Advisory Council. “The ones that are getting a voice are the ones not doing so well in school. The system is trying to make up for that by paying twice as much attention to the people having trouble. Those doing well are left because they think those students can manage on their own.” Not that I could claim to be on one side of this debate or the other when I was in school (I tended to float around a B average, which puts me maybe in the upper half of the class, but not exactly at the top either) but I can certainly remember that happening in my classes. In every class, whether we like to talk about it or not, there are students of varying levels of intelligence. In my school, very often, I can remember the smarter kids – the kids who had finished their work and would sit, books closed, waiting for the other students to – being employed to help catch up the students who needed catching up, almost taking on the role of an assistant teacher in the class. There are all of the old stereotypes from other activities in the world that can be applied to students – like leaving no man behind, that implore you to think that once the last student in the class has solved the math problem or figured out how to play his musical instrument, the lesson has been fully taught. But is that truly a system through which every student is being served and educated fairly and to their full potential? It’s hard to say. Clarissa makes an excellent point though. Achievers and “quiet leaders” as she calls them are students too and they have just as much right to realize their potential as any other students. And perhaps their bars are higher than those of other students, meaning that they’re capable of more, but unable to get there, because we’re setting goals at “good enough” rather than encouraging students to keep reaching for the sky, not low-hanging fruit (in relation to their intelligence levels). In addition to ensuring that advanced students have a voice at the provincial level, Clarissa aims to represent rural schools, another underserviced area. She, no doubt, has her hands full as she carries the burden of many at the provincial level, but Clarissa seems as if she has a good head on her shoulders and she’s driven to take on this task. So, kudos to Clarissa as she endeavours to ensure that all students are treated fairly and equally. She has realized what many adults and policy-makers have not, that when areas are underserviced or ignored, they need attention and need to be treated fairly. At the same time, however, those in charge must be careful that the pendulum doesn’t swing too far in the other direction. Being smart, liking school and approaching your studies enthusiastically should not be a detriment to your education and Huron County has someone ready to do something about it. Other Views Golf: ‘Flog’ spelled backwards Have you seen our new website?