HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2012-07-26, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2012. PAGE 5.
Got milk? You bet we have. More than
six billion men, women and children
drink that familiar white liquid
produced from the glands of mammals every
day on this planet. We downed 720 million
tonnes of the stuff last year and there’s no sign
that our thirst is slaked.
And – aside from for those who are lactose
intolerant – that’s a good thing. Human breast
milk is tailor-made for tiny humans but milk
products of all kinds are healthy and plentiful
and we don’t just rely on two-legged mammals
for our supply. We’ve guzzled our fill on milk
from cattle, sheep, goats, yaks, water buffalo –
even horses, reindeer and camels.
As for how we get the milk from the gland
to the customer, well, that’s changed a lot over
the years too. I can remember when milk came
to our doors in milk wagons hauled by patient,
shuffling teams of horses. The one-quart
bottles clinked and clanked as the wagon
rolled along. Each bottle had a cardboard
stopper and a tulip-shaped flare at the top,
which is where an enterprising brat, if he tip-
toed out on the porch early in the morning,
could find the cream. Mmmmmm.
The horses were eventually retired and the
milk wagons morphed into milk trucks which
performed the same function. Then some bean
counter worked it out that it would be more
profitable to have the customers schlep to a
store and pick up their own supply of milk.
Adios, milk truck.
The containers changed as well. The quart
glass bottles were retired in favour of clunky,
rigid polyethylene jugs which in turn were
replaced by soft plastic bags. After that came
plasticized cartons in various sizes from
quarter-pint (sorry, I’m a geezer) – all the way
up to a two-litre version. I think that’s how
milk is sold in Canada these days, although I
haven’t been down to the corner store for a
while so there may be yet another incarnation.
I also haven’t been to downtown Pittsburgh,
and that’s a pity, because there’s a milk
delivery revolution going on down there. It’s a
big old ice-cream van that’s been renovated.
Each working day it winds through the streets
of Pittsburgh with a giant pink fibreglass
breast on top – complete with a rosy nipple
that blinks.
It’s called The Milk Truck, natch. Its
purpose: to make life a little easier for breast-
feeding moms. Inside, there’s a cozy lounge
where mothers can find nursing supplies,
breast pumps and a welcoming, non-hostile
atmosphere. The crew, decked out in saucy
milkmaid costumes, also respond to distress
calls from nursing mothers in need of some
privacy to pump breast milk during the
workday.
The Milk Truck was the inspiration of Jill
Miller, a Pittsburgh conceptual artist who
created the idea as a commentary on attitudes
to breast feeding in public, then discovered
that the Milk Truck was filling a real need.
But not for everyone. Ms. Miller was
astounded to find that a substantial portion of
the public is actually offended by the sight of
women nursing their babies.
“We think nobody cares,” she told a reporter
from (really) Bust magazine, “but some people
– predominantly women – are for some reason
fully enraged by the thought of a woman
feeding her baby in public.”
Call me a slavering pervert but I think the
sight of a nursing mother and child is about as
beautiful as life gets. Tim Hortons customers
lining up for their double-doubles wearing
pyjamas and hair curlers – that’s offensive. But
I digress.
I’d love to see Pittsburgh’s Milk Truck
rumbling down my street sporting a fibreglass
breast with its nipple winking away. And for
any passerby who took offense? It would just
prove that the real boob wasn’t on the truck.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Caution: boobs on display
I’ve written before about my annual
pilgrimage to Fenway Park to watch the
Boston Red Sox play. As always, no trip
would be complete without... someone from
Whitby?
It’s true. Of all the gin joints, in all the towns,
in all the world... alright, that’s a quote from
Casablanca, but seriously, the heads of Las
Vegas oddsmakers would explode trying to
figure out the probability.
So as everyone who reads this column
regularly knows, I am not a Huron County
native, I’m originally from Pickering, a
Toronto suburb in the Durham region. Well
about 10 minutes east on the 401 from
Pickering lies Whitby. Their baseball team the
Whitby Iroquois was the dreaded rival of the
Pickering Pirates.
So my friends and I take our seats to watch
the Red Sox play the Toronto Blue Jays and
before the game starts, a father and son saunter
into the seats directly in front of us wearing
Whitby Iroquois jackets. They had driven to
Beantown, the father said it took them 10
hours.
We definitely put down our crosstown-rival
swords for the time being. We were just there
as fellow Canadians, so for the rest of the night
I would forget that he came from hated
Whitby. I’m sure he extended me the same
courtesy.
The same thing happened two years ago
when I used my annual vacation time very
wisely and went to Halifax, Nova Scotia with
my friends. We went and golfed and absorbed
the east coast culture and all that came with it
(including their fantastic beers and stunning
seafood).
I had a truly unbelievable encounter at
Stanfield International Airport in Halifax,
running into someone I hadn’t seen for well
over 10 years.
While walking through the terminal to find
the gate for our flight back to Toronto, I saw
someone who looked like my Grade 9 English
teacher, Mr. MacLean.
As he came closer, I realized it wasn’t him
and I scolded myself for being so silly.
MacLean is literally the only person I had
known from the east coast when I was young.
Could I have fulfilled the Canadian
stereotype any more? I think not. I figured if I
was going to Nova Scotia, I would keep an eye
out for MacLean. There are, afterall, only
about 930,000 there. He should jump right out.
But I looked up and a completely different
man is walking past me, and sure enough, it
was Mr. MacLean. The once-young bachelor
of a teacher was there with his children on a
family trip and he remembered who I was.
We spent a lot of time talking and
reminiscing about our days together at St.
Mary’s Catholic Secondary School in
Pickering and neither of us could believe our
luck to run into one another in such a random
location (he didn’t live there, he still lived in
Pickering, but was visiting some family).
MacLean was my saviour on one of my first
days of high school. The girl I liked wanted to
go to the school dance, where I was hoping to
tell her how I felt. In those days when you’re
too old for allowance, but too young for a job,
pockets were light, so I gave my last $5 to the
girl so she could go, but I couldn’t.
I told MacLean my predicament and sure
enough he peeled me off a $5 bill out of his
wallet, so I could go too. Obviously the girl
turned me down at the dance, despite my
generosity, but I never forgot what he did for
me. I was sure to thank him once again for that
in Halifax.
Fancy seeing you here
Those of us in the editorial office spent a
lot of time chortling, guffawing,
cackling, sniggering and just plain
laughing when we put together the Brussels
Homecoming special in this week’s paper.
Most of that was generated by laughing
about the write-up by Paul Nichol regarding
his grandfather Jack Thynne, also known as
The Kansas Farmer.
In Paul’s own words, Thynne became known
for writing about “community happenings,
trumped-up scandals and outright lies,” and
did so in good humour.
Well, I’m going to take some of Thynne’s
enthusiasm for a juicy scandal and pair it with
my own love of the truth and put some
maliciousness behind my humour and talk
about someone that is becoming a very scary
figure in my life: Mayor of the City of Toronto
Rob Ford.
(Brace yourselves: as I’ve been inspired by
Thynne I’ve decided to loosen some of the
chains I typically hold my opinion with.)
Why does Ford scare me? Well my better
half is currently living far closer to Rob Ford
than I think anyone should have to. I’m afraid
that his ham-handed and haphazard leadership
style is going to turn Toronto, a hotbed of
culture and creativity in my opinion, into a
homogenized bastion of anglo-conservatism
that hopes to restore the societal structures of
the 1950s.
Most recently, Ford has decided to crack
down on gun violence in Toronto as a result of
a shooting in Scarborough that claimed the life
of two and injured 19 more.
Let’s set the ground rules here; I will never
criticize someone for saying that gun violence
needs to be cracked down on.
I will, however, criticize someone to be as
stupid as to say, and I’m paraphrasing here, the
following: Once an offender who uses a
firearm is charged, goes to jail and pays their
debt to society, it is of paramount importance
that they are not allowed to live in Toronto
despite having legally been punished and
released.
The following part I won’t paraphrase,
because, to be honest, I don’t have to. The
stupidity of it and the complete embodiment of
Not-In-My-BackYardism (NIMBY) of it all
sells my point for me.
“I don’t want them living in this city,” he
said. “They can go anywhere else, but I don’t
want them in the city.”
Now we already have a problem with
NIMBYism in that people in larger city centres
want to benefit from green energy provided by
turbines and huge solar arrays that are, as
stated, not in their city or, at the closest, in
some fringe, lightly populated area.
We also have the same problem when it
comes to more localized issues like municipal
landfills.
Rob Ford’s idea, however, really takes the
cake by forcefully emigrating criminals.
Before I criticize, we could consider his
idea, but where would we send these people
who have, according to Canadian law, served
their time for the crimes they committed?
They could be sent from Toronto to a rural
area and spread crime across the province.
They could be put on some kind of outer
space prison colony at immense cost to all.
They could be put on a ship and sent to the
middle of the ocean as long as they can’t swim.
We could ship them to another continent
designated specifically for conv... oh wait,
never mind, that’s been done.
Nope, I don’t think that a single one of those
ideas will really work.
Of course, far be it for logistics or truth to
get in the way of what Rob Ford wants.
After his first statement, he said that he
wants to use immigration laws to get rid of
those who perpetrate gun violence.
When asked how to keep convicts out of the
area, Ford said, “I don’t know,” he said
(surprise, surprise), “and thats what I’m going
to sit down with the Prime Minister and find
out; how our immigration laws work.”
The police have not said that the shooting
was committed by immigrants and Rob Ford
has not come forward with any knowledge of
who was responsible for the shooting in
Scarborough (and, let’s be honest, unless some
kind of wanted poster was hanging in his local
Kentucky Fried Chicken, Ford probably has no
idea what initial reports have the suspects from
the shooting looking like), so I really want to
know why he thinks those laws would even
apply.
Ford did state that his comment had more to
do with citizenship than immigration, but,
again, refused to explain how.
While we’re talking about the law, I’m
fairly sure that discriminating against someone
by locking them out of an area due to past
criminal convictions is against a plethora of
documents that are gathering dust on a shelf in
Ottawa.
I guess we can excuse Ford for not knowing
what is written in a law book. I don’t believe
Ford reads all that much unless it’s printed on
a Big Mac box.
Now before I’m accused of living in a glass
house and throwing stones, heed the following.
• Like Rob Ford I’m not a GQ or Calvin
Klein model, however, unlike Rob Ford, I’ve
never tried to encourage other people to diet
and then turned around and gorged on fast
food and subsequently gained any weight I
may have lost and then passed it off as a waste
of time.
• I definitely enjoy a Big Mac now and
again and I have definitely been spotted dining
on The Colonel’s best from time to time.
Again, I did not do so while telling other
people to eat healthily and diet.
• I am not a lawyer and I’m not trying to fix
the problems of a populace. I am, however, a
man who knows when to look up answers
instead of going off-the-cuff and saying
things that have no bearing on the issue at
hand. I also don’t make decisions for people
based on what appears to be little to no factual
knowledge.
To put it bluntly, I’m not perfect and I try to
better myself, but at least I’m not letting my
flaws drag down a nation’s flagship city with
me.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Inspired by The Kansas Farmer