HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-11-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2015. PAGE 5.
Who do you reckon was our greatest
explorer? We’ve got lots of
candidates – Magellan, Drake,
Marco Polo, Cook and Columbus to name a
handful. Canada throws up some solid
contenders – Champlain, Cabot, Mackenzie.
For endurance you’d have to give Polar
adventurer Roald Amundsen a shot. In terms
of distance, Neil Armstrong is tough to beat.
But my money’s on a chap named
Humboldt. Alexander von Humboldt – the
greatest scientific explorer you’ve never heard
of.
It’s not because his name’s not out there.
More than 100 animals have ‘Humboldt’
in their scientific classifications, as do
some 300 plants. We have a Humboldt
glacier, a Humboldt current, a Humboldt
squid and a Humboldt hog-nosed skunk.
There’s a rocky chunk of galactic debris
called the Humboldt asteroid winging
its way around our sun. On the moon there’s
an area known as Mare Humboldtianum.
So who was this guy anyway?
One observer called him “the greatest
scientific explorer whoever lived” – and that
observer was Charles Darwin.
Indeed without Humboldt, there might
never have been a Darwin – at least not
the one we associate with the groundbreaking,
mind-bending voyages that changed science
forever. Darwin credited Humboldt’s writing
as the inspiration that urged him “to
travel in distant countries, and led me to
volunteer as naturalist in her Majesty’s ship
Beagle.”
All of this from a sickly temperamental
Prussian who’s primary geographical
experience came from a journey to the New
World, most notably South America,
commenced in 1799.
But what a journey.
It began in Venezuela, where Humboldt took
to a canoe and plunged into the rain forest,
paddling up the Orinoco and mapping its
union with an Amazon tributary. Next, a nine-
month, 1,600-kilometre trek along the
northern Andes including a scramble up the
ice-capped Chimborazo volcano, more than
5,000 metres above sea level. Humboldt scaled
every peak he could see with a singular
obsession that bordered on mania. When his
hiking boots shredded and fell apart, he
continued barefoot.
He was a tad manic. He ate sporadically and
slept hardly at all. He wrote more than 50,000
letters (longhand, mind) trying vainly to keep
up with his leapfrogging brain. When he
ran out of paper he continued right off the
page, carving his thoughts into the wooden
desktop.
And he was fearless. He bathed in crocodile
infested waters, performed near-fatal
experiments with electric eels, survived a
hurricane at sea and an earthquake on land,
during which he assembled instruments to
document the event while everyone else
cowered in terror.
Darwin wasn’t his only notable fan. He
dined with U.S. President Thomas Jefferson
and convinced him that Texas was worth
fighting for, for which Jefferson thanked him
profusely. “We have little knowledge of the
Spanish colonies,” said Jefferson, “but through
you.”
He hob-knobbed with Goethe and
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Flaubert. Pillars as
various as Rachel Carson, Aldous Huxley and
Ezra Pound absorbed his writings and sang his
praises. Two hundred years ago he was one of
the most famous men on the planet; today if
you asked 10 people what the name Humboldt
means to them, you’d get ten “Huhs?”
What happened?
Francis Bacon wrote: “Fame is like a river,
that beareth up things light and swollen, and
drowns things weighty and solid.”
Perhaps that explains why we forgot
Alexander von Humboldt.
It certainly explains Donald Trump.
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
In case your Latin is a rusty as mine is (I
had to turn to Google to remember the
exact phrase I was looking for), caveat
venditor means “let the seller beware” (a flip
of the more common caveat emptor, or “let the
buyer beware.”
If everything goes as planned this weekend,
my wife and I will be looking to liquidate a lot
of items that we (okay, mostly I) have
accumulated over a lifetime of being a “pack
rat”, according to my mother.
Before anyone puts in a call to start an
intervention, I’m not a hoarder (and I’m also
not making light of that incredibly dangerous
activity). As a matter of fact, I’m the one who
is insisting on cleaning out the things we don’t
need.
Maybe it was stubbing my toe on a coffee
table I bought at IKEA before I graduated
(more than 10 years ago). Maybe it was a
friend of mine that I’ve always considered to
be a bit too much of a bachelor for my taste
telling me my office looked cluttered. Maybe
it’s just getting to the point that I realize that
you can’t keep everything because it came
from someone. Whatever the reason, last week
I called my wife into my office and said it’s
time to minimize.
I like the “space” part of living space and
having it is often a desire that is completely at
odds with the fact that I also have trouble
getting rid of things.
Normally, this kind of mass exodus of
furniture, kitsch and keepsakes would require
warm weather so a yard sale could be held,
but, thanks to technology, every day is a yard
sale.
You can, of course, use your local newspaper
to sell things through the classifieds. Have
something you don’t want or need? Place an
ad. Need something? Place an ad. You are
proving to yourself right now how effective the
newspaper is at getting information into homes
across the community.
If more modern technology is more your
bag, however, there are options there.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, there are
a plethora of ways to get rid of your things
online: You can use auction sites like eBay if
you think you have something special that
people are going to bid on, you can use
websites like Kijiji or Craigslist to place online
classifieds or you can take to social media to
sell things.
You could take to Twitter, but your reach
there is determined by how many people are
following you. This is one particular social
media situation where Facebook rules.
Entire Facebook groups, consisting of
thousands of people are ready to peruse, judge
and possibly offer you a quarter of what you’re
asking on “Buy, Swap and Sell” groups.
However, you never really know what
you’re getting in to when it comes to these
groups.
Anyone can have a Facebook account (or
two or three if they want) and pretty much
anyone can join these groups.
It’s a scary idea. My wife has sold things
before and people have pulled up to my home,
been inside and know the general layout of it
and I’ve got to say, it’s unsettling.
While nothing has gone awry for us selling
items, I do know people who have run into
some fairly serious situations, losing expensive
items to people they found online.
Just like every other potentially good thing
in the world, there are plenty of people ready
to take advantage of it.
Those looking to benefit at the expense of
others can do all sorts of nasty and
underhanded things to come out ahead and
they can be big or small.
They can run off with things without paying
or use the chance to buy something as a time to
case a home for a later robbery.
For the most part, these are illegal and can be
handled through the police and insurance
companies.
The smart scammers, however, do things
that can’t be complained about.
One of the most underhanded (and brightest)
in my opinion is the person who outbids
everyone else, but, when they come to buy
something, don’t show up with enough cash.
You, as a seller, have gone to the trouble of
posting and selling the item for an agreed-
upon price and, if it’s not a big difference (say
only having $20 instead of $30), you may be
inclined to let the scammer get away with it
because it’s not worth the effort to try and sell
it again.
There are also, of course, those people who
do things like buy something, find out they
didn’t do their research and demand their
money back when the item doesn’t do what
they wanted it to, even though the seller was
completely upfront and honest about what was
being sold. While not scammers, they certainly
make the act of selling those things around the
home you don’t need more of a hassle than it’s
sometimes worth.
So, seller beware, if you do try to use
technology to get rid of some goods, you may
find yourself giving up a lot more than you
intended.
My suggestions to sell things are to only
operate in public places to avoid any kind of
scam at home, always be ready with a second
buyer (if available) in case the first thinks they
can undercut you and always document
everything you sell as best you can.
Beyond that, you’re entering the world of
barter and you can never be too careful. If
something seems or feels hinky, well then it’s
probably not worth the cash you might get.
Caveat venditor.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
A senseless act
We’ve all been wrong before. I’ve
been wrong. You’ve been wrong.
We’ve all been wrong. The key to
being wrong, is to admit when you’re wrong,
rather than try and wiggle and spin out of it.
Unfortunately, it seems as though I was
wrong about the Goderich-to-Guelph (G2G)
Rail Trail “Departure Section” near Walton. I
said that its construction would be a good thing
for everyone.
In this very space two weeks ago, I was
pretty sure of myself. After seeing the work of
those involved with the G2G trail first hand, I
was sure that development would be a good
thing for all involved.
Not to bore you with what you may or may
not have read two weeks ago, but I thought the
benefit of the development was obvious for
those for the trail and it would also benefit
those against the trail – they could see an
example of the finished product and maybe, in
a perfect world, see that, provided their
concerns are addressed, there really is nothing
to be afraid of.
However, over the weekend, someone saw fit
to pull out a handful of posts that had been
meticulously placed by volunteers and heave
them into adjacent fields.
I don’t know if this is a random act, or if it’s
a bit of a thumbing of the nose to those behind
the trail, but what it really is, at its core, is
disheartening.
If this random act of vandalism was
committed by someone against the trail, then
it’s not only sad – it’s stupid. One of the very
complaints that G2G Inc. has had to address in
this process was the suggestion that the
probability of a number of things would
increase as a result of the trail. One of them
was vandalism and another was litter ending
up in the fields of adjacent landowners.
This is fighting vandalism with vandalism
and combating garbage with garbage. Which,
I’m sorry, just makes no sense.
(Unless, of course, you’re Donald Trump or
any of the others getting in on that whole
political conversation south of the border.
Their solution to gun violence is, obviously
more guns. If everyone had a gun, there would
be fewer incidents involving guns.)
So maybe whoever did this was a Trump
supporter and thought that in order to reduce
the threat of vandalism, he’d vandalize
something.
Whoever it was and whatever their reasons,
it’s just sad. Even if you’re against the trail –
and I’m sure that 99 per cent of those who are
have committed themselves to expressing that
opinion in a logical and adult way, as opposed
to the methodical destruction of property – I
can’t imagine you can support this kind of
behaviour.
As Chris Lee of G2G Inc. said in my story
this week, if you have a problem with the trail,
air your grievance at one of the two meetings
scheduled for next week. Don’t destroy
property that doesn’t belong to you and that
people have worked hard to install.
Just as those against the trail have said they
don’t want trespassers making trouble on their
land, those stewarding the trail for those in
favour of it don’t want those with cruel
intentions making trouble for their project
either.
Perhaps this is the age-old strategy of
fighting fire with fire, but let’s all be adults
about this. These are our neighbours putting in
this work and they are doing it for nothing. I
can’t imagine a much bigger slap in the face
than having volunteer work thrown back at you
in the form of senseless vandalism.
Other Views
Alexander who? Please explain
In the digital age, caveat venditor
“We often take for granted the very things
that most deserve our gratitude.”
– Cynthia Ozick
Final Thought