HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-02-14, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2013. PAGE 5.
Acouple of hundred years ago a poet by
the name of Percy Bysshe Shelley
scribbled down 14 lines that would
eventually become his most famous poem.
It told of a traveller in desert lands coming
across the ruins of what was once a
colossal statue honouring a long-forgotten
ruler. The inscription on what was left of the
pedestal read: My name is Ozymandias, King
of kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and
despair!
Except there were no mighty works to look
at. The Ozymandian empire, however vast and
magnificent it might once have been, had
crumbled to a few chunks of marble half-
buried in desert sand. No one even
remembered who Ozymandias was.
Some ruins fare better. We do our best to
understand and preserve what’s left of the
pyramids of Egypt, the monoliths of
Stonehenge, the Athenian acropolis and the
Roman coliseum. Here in North America
we’re a little short of architectural antiquities
but we have some pretty impressive ruins all
the same. As a matter of fact we have a
stunning collection right in the centre of the
continent, just a hop, skip and a tunnel ride
from Windsor, Ontario.
It’s called Detroit.
It used to be known as Motor City but that
was in better days when gas was cheap and
everybody lusted for a new car every year.
Today, it’s more like Mouldering City. More
than half the population – about one million
citizens – have left the city since its heyday
back in the 1960s. Seventy thousand buildings
have been abandoned and trashed – some of
them heartbreakingly magnificent even in
their downfall. Michigan Central Station is –
was – 18 storeys of fabulous Beaux-Arts
design with vaulting arches and marble pillars.
Today, it is home to junkies, rats and
cockroaches. The Vanity Ballroom, which
once rocked to the rhythms of the Duke
Ellington and Tommy Dorsey orchestras, has
been disembowelled by vandals. It now lies
gutted of its brass, velvet and mahogany,
carpeted in broken glass, its Art Deco
chandelier incongruously intact.
The presence of a visibly decaying
metropolis in our midst has given rise to a new
and somewhat perverted form of tourism. It’s
called Ruin Porn. YouTube is awash with
photo displays of some of Detroit’s more
spectacular failures. Tourist buses full of out-
of-town rubberneckers crawl through the
decimated neighbourhoods that are now
disappearing into jungles of chickweed and
scrub brush, the passengers tut-tutting while
click-clicking their smart phones. An
entrepreneur has arranged to cater gourmet
meals served by high-brow chefs in abandoned
buildings such as the formerly opulent 3.5
million square foot Packard Plant which used
to churn out automobiles.
Is there an upside to the fall of Detroit?
Well, some claim the city is on the brink
of re-inventing itself. Citizens who haven’t
fled to more salubrious climes are planting
crops and raising chickens in what used to
be parking lots and schoolyards. One born-
again Detroit pioneer says “Look on the bright
side. We don’t have hurricanes like the
East Coast. We don’t have droughts like
the West...Plus, I bought a Mies van der
Rohe townhouse downtown for just
$100,000.”
On the other hand, it is still Detroit, AKA
Murder City. A recent crime report told of an
early-morning multiple shooting following
which the perpetrator turned himself in at a
Detroit fire station. The firemen called the
police several times to come and arrest the
guy. The police, for reasons best known to
themselves, declined to respond.
So the firefighters took up a collection, put
the man in a taxi and sent him to the police
station.
I wonder if Percy Shelley could find a poem
in that.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Ruins: the new pornography
So, this week it happened. That annual,
unofficial sign that there is hope has
already taken place in the southern part
of the United States. Pitchers and catchers have
reported to baseball’s spring training, soon to
be followed by the rest of the teams’ rosters.
With how wacky the weather has been all
over the province in recent weeks, it’s hard to
imagine how close we are to the unofficial start
of spring: baseball season.
On Friday a storm dubbed Snowpocalypse
hit the greater Toronto area and it wasn’t
exactly great in Huron County either.
However, in places like Florida and Arizona,
under a blanket of sunshine, groundskeepers
were busy manicuring baseball fields.
Despite being a die-hard fan of baseball
since I was old enough to walk, I still find it
difficult to accept how close we are to baseball
when I look out the window during this time of
year. You’d think that by now I would know the
drill.
However, for the next month and a half, just
over 1,300 miles away, they’ll be playing
baseball while we dig ourselves out of
snowstorm after snowstorm. (When you think
of Florida, you don’t think it’s too far away, but
when you type out 1,300, you realize that
maybe it’s a little farther away than you think
it is.)
Locally, there is optimism with the Toronto
Blue Jays and the ambitious roster moves
General Manager Alex Anthopoulos made over
the course of the off-season, but with baseball
itself comes a different sense of optimism.
Until domes like the Rogers Centre and
numerous other stadiums came along, baseball
needed to be played under the shining canopy
of late spring, summer and early fall. So if “the
boys of summer” are out on the field, the
weather can’t be that bad.
So as I look outside the window this morning
and there’s a lovely combination of rain and
snow falling from the sky, I can find peace in
the fact that not that far away (in the grand
scheme of things) some of my heroes are
lacing up their cleats, re-breaking in their
gloves and playing some catch in preparation
for a season that begins on March 31.
Last spring I wrote a column about going to
an opening weekend game between the Boston
Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers at Comerica
Park in Detroit. It was about how there is no
better way to usher in the spring than with a
baseball game. The sights, the smells, the
sounds of an open air ballpark on a beautiful
spring day is an ideal way to spend an
afternoon for many, including me, and I can’t
wait to be able to write a variation of that
column once again.
What I remember most from that April day
was the smell of fresh-made beer nuts in the
air. Maybe it means I was a little too hungry
that day, but I think it’s just a case of a smell
that’s synonymous with an experience.
I know I’ve heard countless people talk
about that ice cold nip licking the inside of
your nose when you first set foot in an arena
and its connection to hockey, so for me, it’s
beer nuts and baseball.
One day I’ll make it down to Florida for the
Grapefruit League or Arizona for the Cactus
League to take in some spring training, but for
the time being, I’m content to follow the
teams’ progress in the news. I’m looking
forward to hearing about who looks good, who
looks not so good and who’s going to come out
of the gates flying as the season starts in April.
Because opening day, March 31, really isn’t
that far off, and neither are warmth, sunshine
and spring.
End of the tunnel
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
My idea of a workout is either lacing
up the cleats to ref a soccer game,
lacing up my skates for a hockey
game or lacing up my boots for an Airsoft
game.
The latter may not be as well known as the
two former, but it involves a lot of running,
carrying heavy equipment and, after about six
hours, a lot of sore muscles.
I’ve often wondered about doing things to
improve my flexibility and improve my
balance and centre myself after having once
tried yoga in Grade 7 but, it’s not really my
thing.
So, this week, when I was scanning the top
news stories and saw that, in Edmonton, an
expose had been done on naked yoga in the
past two weeks, I was surprised.
Before you start questioning my internet
surfing habits, this was a men’s nude yoga
class, and it was a writeup, no pictures or
videos involved.
Yoga, to a layman like myself, is exercise,
well working out in a way I guess, that
involves holding interesting poses as a way to
strengthen one’s self.
So, when I picture myself bent over
backwards, looking ridiculous (as I was back
in Grade 7 when I was in better shape, to say
nothing of right now), I can’t honestly say that
the thought “Hmmm... this would be better if
I was naked and completely on display to the
world,” ever crossed my mind.
After a bit of research (and, again, there
were no pictures or video included, this was
purely text-based, I assure you), I found out
that the nude yoga movement was born out of
the desire to separate yoga from the fashion
opportunities that seemed to have dominated
it.
Now I admit that, 10 years ago, I had no idea
what yoga pants were. There has definitely
been an influx of expensive yoga equipment
and clothing, but it doesn’t seem to me like it
would damage the activity.
We’re not talking about steroids or corked
bats in baseball, we’re not talking about fish
finders taking the skill out of locating that
perfect fishing hole, we’re talking about
clothes. To me, the clothes someone wears to
yoga matters as little as those snot-nosed
punks who thought they were better hockey
players because they had a Nike logo on their
skates or their stick when I was a kid.
To the person who needs those kinds
of pick-me-ups to make themselves feel
good, I’d imagine the clothes are very
important.
To the person who is working out or doing
yoga for the sole purpose of being seen
working out or doing yoga, I would imagine
having the newest Lululemon yoga pants
would be important.
However, I can’t see those people being the
driving force behind the perpetuation of yoga.
For me, hockey is best played in a set of
comfortable equipment and a pair of Tacks.
See, when I was young, Tacks were the
pinnacle of hockey footwear because they
molded to your foot and supported your ankle
well.
I didn’t want them because the other kids
had them, and I didn’t want them because they
had a fancy name, I wanted them because I
genuinely thought they would make me play
better.
If the people participating in yoga are
eight years old like I was, then yes, I could
see them believing that a brand name pair
of yoga pants would make them stretch better
and better centre themselves, but they aren’t.
Most of the people doing yoga are adults
in body, if not in mind, and should know
better.
So stripping down before a yoga is
unnecessary from that point of view.
Another tidbit my research turned up was
that it ‘freed’ the person from the confines of
their clothing.
Well, I can honestly say that, having not
worn any yoga clothes, they look to be about
as confining as a pair of long johns, which is to
say not at all as far as general movement goes.
Any other theories I could find seemed just
as silly.
There are nude men’s classes and there are
nude women’s classes but, according to
Toronto-area yoga instructor Dee Dussault,
who was interviewed about the practice in
2011, there aren’t many co-ed classes.
Jeez, I wonder why.
She goes on to say that women are shy of
baring their body in front of men and men are
afraid of being labelled perverts.
I’ll give your eyes a second to adjust to that
blinding flash of the obvious. Can you see
again? Good.
It’s times like these that I’m fairly sure the
‘urban’ parts of Canada have left all of their
senses behind.
The traffic, the congestion, the pollution, the
crime and the anti-social nature of living in a
big city are things I could deal with if I had to
move there, but I just don’t think I could put up
with people disguising their ridiculous ideas as
trendy.
It’s times like this that I know what George
Carlin was talking about when he professed to
liking chaos.
Waiting to see what the next ridiculous
fad is kind of like watching a train bearing
down on a vehicle without enough space to
stop. You know something’s going to
happen, you know it’s going to be
spectacular, you know no matter how
many times you witness something like it,
you’ll never be prepared for it, but you really
have no idea exactly what form it’s going to
take.
Will the car split in half? Will it burst
into flames? Will parts of the vehicle be
strewn along a quarter-mile of railroad
track?
Who knows? All I know is that when it
happens, all eyes are glued to it, just like
ridiculous fads like naked yoga.
Yoga? No thanks. Nude Yoga? Say what?
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den