Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-10-01, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2015. PAGE 5. In regards the concept of indulging in regular, healthful physical exercise, let me be ruthlessly clear: I hate it. I speak not as some neophyte dilettante who never left his sweaty palm-prints on a gym StairMaster. I’ve been around the indoor track, pal. You’re looking at a guy who’s done 10BX, jogging, weight lifting, lap swimming, cycling, cross training and yoga. And hated every minute of it. Well, not the yoga. There’s one yogic pose that involves lying on your back and breathing rhythmically while consciously relaxing every muscle in your body. Yogis call the pose Shavasana. I call it sleeping. I could also call it ‘cheating’ because Shavasana feels good and exercise isn’t supposed to feel good. Workouts hurt. Exercising can put you in a physical state ranging from mild nausea through eye- watering pain to outright catatonia. But here’s the rub for me: I have to exercise. Because if I don’t I will end up with flabby muscles, flaccid lungs, a fragile heart and the body silhouette of a banana slug. That’s the bad news. The good news is I’ve finally found my regimen, exercise-wise. I indulge three mornings a week, an hour each time, at the local pool. It’s a program called Aquafit. At least that’s what the drill sergeant calls it. What it is, is a gaggle of old farts in bathing suits standing up to our necks in a swimming pool responding to a fitness instructor (drill sergeant) who barks out commands from the side of the pool. She puts you through arm thrusts, leg kicks, shoulder rolls, knee bends, hip rolls, belly clenches and butt shimmies that Little Richard would’ve balked at. It’s easy because you’re in the water. You don’t fall over; the water buoys you up. You don’t bust a rib; the water cushions you. It’s like bouncing around in a vat of nerf balls. Only wetter. “Ah yes,” I hear you say, “but you still look like a dork.” No! Wrong! What you and your fellow Aquafitters look like is a bunch of cabbages bobbing on the pool surface. All the serious dorkiness is unfolding underwater where no one can see it. You can moonwalk like Michael Jackson. Ballroom glide like Ginger Rogers. Pirouette like Karen Kain. Swagger like Jagger. All anybody’s gonna see is a bobbing cabbage. And you cannot hurt yourself. You will suffer no cramps, no blisters, no pulled hamstrings or wrenched knees because – all together now – you’re in the water. Ever tried to jog while up to your Adam’s Apple in a swimming pool? Every move you make is slow motion (and hence low impact) – no matter how hard you try. Plus, (for reasons I’ve yet to fathom) Aquafitting leaves you feeling energized, not exhausted. Does it work? Rick, the bobbing cabbage just in front of me, credits Aquafit for his losing 30 pounds in six months. You worried about ‘looking presentable’ in a bathing suit? Forget it. One of the perks of graduating from the sweaty past-times – jogging, dumbbells et al – is the realization that yearning for boobs like J Lo or pecs like Arnie is kid’s stuff – a mug’s game. In the end, Gravity Rules and nobody cares. And in the pool, nobody sees. Not below your Adam’s Apple anyway. Arthur Black Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Whether you prefer to attribute the idea of doing the best for the greatest amount of people to a philosopher like Jeremy Bentham or to a science officer from a well-known sci-fi franchise, putting the needs of the majority over those of the few is usually a pretty good rule of thumb. It seems to be a lesson that is often thoroughly forgotten now-a- days. Entire groups of individuals are denied things because others think they deserve more. A good example would be the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) whose members are currently taking a job action by “working to rule,” or working to the letter of their job description. The ETFO represents 76,000 teachers so when the union decides to strike, it is doing so on behalf of that many people. That’s a big number, however, compared to the number of students across the province, it’s plain to see that the job action isn’t helping the majority. There are a lot of local teachers. But that number doesn’t compare to the number of students in the areas surrounding Londesborough, Blyth, Auburn, Belgrave, Brussels and Wingham being affected by this decision. Some in the ETFO camp will claim these strikes are for the students, but that’s nonsense. That would be like me refusing to write and saying I’m doing it for the readers, or nurses refusing to practise and saying it’s for the patients. It hurts the students, sometimes more than anyone realizes. Locally, we have an illustration of what could and is happening across the province; a small number of people striking and a large number of people losing out because of it. Students in North Huron, Ashfield- Colborne-Wawanosh, Central Huron and Huron East missed a couple great educational opportunities at local events recently and the boards responsible for those events are hurting because students aren’t able to attend. One of those events, the Brussels Fall Fair, is in the middle of a tough situation because of the job action. The board for the fair decided to bring in a midway, including many different attractions, at a significant cost. It’s hard to see whether the midway was a worthwhile expense given that the Wednesday of the fair, when there would normally be many students at the fair, the grounds saw a fraction of its normal attendance. The fair, alongside the annual reunion of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association, which features an entire day dedicated to students that was for naught due to the low attendance, both focus on something often overlooked or not given its due in the Ontario curriculum: agriculture. These two events, as well as the Belgrave Elementary School Fair which moved to a weekend to try and offset the problem and saw a drop in attendance as a result, teach things that children don’t get a chance to learn in the classroom. How many antique sewing apparatus can students get hands-on with at school? How many calves or sheep are within touching distance? How many students would even know what threshing is if not for being at the reunion? Having not had these opportunities when I was younger, I’ll tell you: none. The answer to all three questions is none. Without the chance to attend these events, the students are losing out on experiences they otherwise likely won’t get. These opportunities aren’t exactly once-in- a-lifetime, but they could very well be once-in- a-year and that was taken away from students by this job action. Normally, when I’m writing about something like this, I will temper my opinion. Normally, I’ll say that I know that it isn’t the teachers I’m dealing with on a daily basis making these decisions, but today, I’m drawing a line in the sand. I’m a fan of absolutes. For or against is a good way to look at most issues. If you’re not for students getting to participate in these events, and acting as such, then you are against them. If, as teachers, you aren’t actively telling your union to make a deal and get back to providing the best educational opportunities you can, then you’re part of the problem because your silence lets the federation think it is doing what you want it to do. Take a stand. I know, that’s easy for me to say. After all, I’m a non-unionized, private-sector employee. Just as my teaching friends do, I work nights. I will write stories on nights and weekends because I just don’t have the time to dedicate to it during the week. I don’t get sick days. If I call in sick, I don’t get paid or I work from home. I work at least eight hours a day, often 10 or more. On top of all that, I work 12 months out of the year (though sometimes it feels like 14). Yes, The Citizen’s offices close for one week in the summer and one around Christmas but, as anyone who deals with the editorial department here knows, we still do our job during those vacation periods. We still go to cover council meetings, we take pictures, we review plays and we come in early from our vacation to get the paper ready for the week we get back. We do all that without a thought of striking, without a thought of demanding more or else we’re going to “work to rule.” We do it because we believe in the product and service we provide and we believe in the communities to which we provide them. Maybe some teachers don’t believe in what they do, or don’t believe enough to do it for what I consider to be a great deal of money and a great contract providing time off and sick days. Whatever the reason is, this isn’t about the kids. This is hurting the kids. This job action is hurting more people than it’s helping and, if you truly want me to believe that you teach for your students, tell your union you want to get back to work. Denny Scott Denny’s Den Sustainability In this week’s issue of The Citizen, I’ve written a story about Huron East’s quest for sustainability. Taxes would have to be raised, according to Treasurer Paula Michiels, so substantially, that it’s almost impossible to think of the municipality becoming sustainable within the next 15 years. Michiels presented councillors with potential scenarios that outlined large year- over-year tax increases that would need to be made, over and above annual inflation, for the municipality to reach sustainability. Both a 10- and 15-year timeline seem unreachable, at least to me. In terms of Huron East’s quest for sustainability and asset management, Michiels has graded the municipality with a C. This, of course, doesn’t mean that Huron East is a bad place to live. No doubt, if other area municipalities were to prepare a similar report card for themselves, we would see similar grades handed out. Perhaps even worse ones. What the report, based on Huron East’s asset management plan, shows, is just how much it costs to manage a municipality. I have written about this before, but I continue to be amazed when I see the costs that are poured into small municipalities like Huron East, North Huron or Central Huron on an annual basis. In Huron East’s case, there have been two heritage property projects in recent years, both topping $1 million each – the Brussels Library and Town Hall in Seaforth. When you think of the size of Huron East and all that the government is responsible for, it must be maddening to attempt to budget. Similarly, year after year I see bridge repairs and road repairs or repaving that often takes in two or three blocks of a road, but costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just by doing the simple math and thinking of what it costs to repair one bridge, or three blocks of a road, and looking at just how many bridges or how many blocks of road are in a municipality, one can begin to understand how much it costs to run a municipality. And that, of course, is just one aspect of running a municipality. Then you have to pay the employees, pay police and firefighters and paramedics, and remove snow and cut grass and fix sidewalks – to name just a fraction of what’s expected of a municipal government. Couple the expectations of services with the criticism that comes with reserve levels being too high (it is something that is often heard around budget time that if reserve levels are too high, it appears as though the municipality is over-taxing the public and stashing their money away, rather than only taxing for what is needed) and it’s hard to imagine that any Huron County municipality is even in the same universe as sustainability. Even when I spell-check this column, sustainability is an unrecognized word. Maybe my computer even knows it’s not realistic. Taxes are high all around. You can’t swing a cat without hitting someone who will tell you that. But even with some of the lowest taxes in Huron County (in Huron East’s case), there are still complaints. The quest for sustainability, especially at the local level, just seems to be an unwinnable war; a pipe dream that is simply unattainable. So when you hear that Huron East gives itself a C grade when it comes to sustainability, I have to think that’s pretty close to an A after applying some common sense, because sustainability isn’t something you can just stroll down to the corner store and buy. Other Views Aquafit: Bobbing Cabbage exercise The needs of the many outweigh...