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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-10-13, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2011. PAGE 5. Are the stars out tonight? I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright… – song lyric Want to go to the show with me tonight? Don’t worry about changing clothes. Or buying tickets. Or parking. Just pray for a cloudless sky because the show’s in our backyard. Above the backyard, actually. Rain or shine, the pageant goes on every night (although inclement weather means the curtain may not rise). The stage is the night sky and the cast is 200 billion strong (trust me – don’t try to count them) – and every one of them a star. Literally. In any case, you can only make out about 1,400 of the players with the naked eye, even on a good night. Buy a telescope and you can see a few million more – unless you live in a city. Ambient light from street lamps and headlights and McDonalds signs pretty much snuffs out the option of urban star gazing. See the North Star there, just hanging off the handle of the Little Dipper? Actually you don’t. The North Star is about 430 light years away, which means the light you’re seeing was emitted about the time Shakespeare was waiting for the ink to dry on a scroll of parchment he called Romeo and Juliet. Still, your grandfather gazed up at that same North Star at the same place in the sky that you’re looking right now. So did Galileo; so did countless generations of our nameless cave-dwelling and tree-roosting predecessors, all of them doubtless as bewitched as we are by the canopy of diamonds that unfurls each night. It humbles me to realize that I have less knowledge of our starry skies than a Druid priest or a Mayan shaman or a Haida elder or even a 19th century Saskatchewan dirt farmer. Farmers used the shifting positions of the constellations to tell them when to reap and sow crops. Mariners used the stars – our first true GPS system – to cross vast tracts of uncharted ocean. Even most of the school kids from my parents’ generation knew the names of the major constellations at a glance. I wouldn’t know Orion’s Belt from the CBC Exploding Pizza logo. They enchant us still, these stars. It’s an ongoing amazement that the heavens roll out this spectacular panorama virtually every night, for free. Stars are a bottomless well of inspiration for our poets and painters, our songwriters and our filmmakers. “Star” is the sweetest bouquet we can bestow on our terrestrial overachievers, be they ballerinas or banjo players; Hollywood Hunks or ‘Les Trois Etoiles” of an NHL game. Painters and poets – and sometimes both. Have you seen Van Gogh’s painting ‘de Sterrennacht’? Probably. You’ve certainly heard Don McLean’s musical tribute to it: “Starry, starry night. Flaming flowers that brightly blaze Swirling clouds in violet haze Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue.” Pain-wracked eyes of china blue. Van Gogh painted de Sterrennacht through the bars of his window in the St. Remy sanatorium for the insane. Star-crossed, you might say. Here’s one penniless artist’s take on stars: “Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take the train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means. ‘To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.” Vincent Van Gogh wrote that in a letter to his brother two years before he shot himself to death. But first, he gave us Starry Night. Arthur Black Other Views Starry, starry night through the ages Last week voters all over Huron-Bruce went to the polls and the result was the election of PC Lisa Thompson and it shows how far we’ve come in just a few short decades. Watching the brilliant new HBO prohibition- era drama Boardwalk Empire, it seems like not too long ago that women were seen as sub- human and therefore their opinions didn’t matter enough to allow them to vote for their leader. But here we are with a female representative after eight years of being represented by Carol Mitchell, who succeeded Helen Johns. It seems Huron-Bruce has been forward-thinking in electing its MPPs, as Publisher Keith Roulston highlighted in his editorial in last week’s issue of The Citizen. Despite the voice of the people being heard at the polls and the track record of solid representation and money being brought into Huron-Bruce, the riding’s decisions in recent years have flown in the face of what some still call traditional politics. One of my first freelance writing jobs was in Scarborough near the city’s border with Markham, an area with a very high Asian population. I worked with my friend Chris to create a guide for the area’s Chinese New Year celebration set for later that year. Our “boss” on the project was also heavily involved with the riding’s Progressive Conservative Party and one night after a hearty helping of noodles and my first stab at trying mooncake (not recommended) she proclaimed that I should get involved with politics because I “had what it takes” to be a good politician. Seeing as I had very little knowledge of the world of politics at the time and no experience whatsoever, I questioned her on what qualities those were. She said I would be a great face for the PC Party in the area because I was tall, white, well-spoken and a man. Not to sound racist, of course, those were her words, but she said her voting audience in that area would be more likely to trust a white candidate over an Asian one, which, of course, would be more representative of the community’s population. A young man barely into my 20s, I felt that while I might not know much about politics, there had to be more to doing the job than being 6’3” tall, having a decent grasp on the English language and happening to be white. Too often, however, politics can boil down to image and perception and not the actual issues and how each candidate attempts to tackle them. So it’s refreshing to see Huron-Bruce residents embrace a multitude of candidates over the years who haven’t necessarily fit into the pre-packaged, traditional mold of what a politician is supposed to be. As an MPP for eight years Mitchell brought in millions of dollars to the Huron-Bruce riding. She’s not a man and she’s definitely not over six feet tall, but she managed to do a decent job. And after last week’s election Thompson is another woman left to oversee the Huron-Bruce riding, as chosen by the voters. So while I may have passed on politics despite my apparent physical predisposition, those representing Huron-Bruce over the last few years have looked in the mirror and decided to try and defy the odds and fly in the face of people with those old-fashioned political views and they’ve done a pretty good job of it. Over the years Huron-Bruce voters haven’t held out for a tall, dark stranger to come and save them, they’ve taken a chance and stepped out of the political comfort zone and it seems to be working. A political tall tale Iheard, in my wild youth, a lot of people complaining that e-mail would destroy the art of letter writing and lead to rampant illiteracy. I didn’t believe them. I argued that e-mail would make letter writing more accessible. There would be no barriers. Anyone could go to a public library and send an e-mail from a free address to another free address. There would be no cost of stamps, no worrying about the legibility of ones handwriting and, best of all, a spell checker to make sure that the letter had no mistakes in it. Since then, I’ve become more and moore aware of the shortcomings of spell chequers. (See what I did their?) (And there? Okay, no more, I promise... well no more intentional ones). I wasn’t only mistaken about the use of spell checkers, however. I know this will be dangerously similar to a column I wrote about the laziness of modern technology, and about the Orwellian nightmare that the only-positive feedback systems of social websites, however it will be significantly different in the scope of the affected age groups. I’ve noticed that, when using e-mail to communicate (not converse, communicate, more on that later) with my friends from school and other professionals in roughly the same age bracket as me, we tend to open an e- mail as we would a letter. Regardless of whether I am using my cellular phone or sitting in front of a computer, my e-mails tend to follow the stereotypical personal letter style; Hello <recipient>, (Or Dear <recipient> if it’s particularly personal), <Body of the letter> Denny Scott <The Citizen, if it’s a business e-mail>. I use that form because it is how I learned to write letters. Regardless of the immediacy of a letter (be it mailed with a postage stamp or a mouse click), I think it’s important that people know that I care enough about their correspondence to take the time and write it... well properly, in my opinion. As I said, with people in my own age bracket, and with friends and family I always do that. What I’ve noticed is that the younger people are, the more likely they are to respond to a letter like that with a letter that is properly formatted. I find that, as people get older, they are more likely to turn their e-mails into a conversational tool instead of letters between people. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good conversation, and I am aware that, since I’m told my columns can be particularly conversational, this is an ironic forum to discuss it in. However I don’t believe that e-mail (or any mail really) is a good time to start forgetting the teneto of letter writing. You should lead with an acknowledgement of the recipient (just in case you accidentally hit “reply all”) and should end with the proper send-off. You should not answer a carefully-worded, properly-written letter with a one sentence remark void of preamble or conclusion. It shows that there is no time, and thus no respect being paid to the previous correspondence. Of course, as with any “rule” of society, there are situations where it is forgivable, like when you are heading into the hospital and need to let people know of an emergency, however, situations void of an emergency aren’t extended that caveat. Now, I’ve aired this grievance before and people have told me that it isn’t due to a lack of respect, or a lack of time, but due to unfamiliarity with input methods, be they keyboards in front of desktop computers or laptops or touchscreens on a cellular phone. I would call this the worst excuse in the book, but I don’t think that does the excuse book, of which I’m an avid contributor, justice. Excuses are, by definition, a means to lessen guilt and, as any police officer or lawyer will tell you, ignorance is no excuse. Ignorance of the proper use of a keyboard, in this age, is something I cannot abide. If you find yourself henpecking, do what I did to learn it; play a game. My prowess in typing doesn’t come from typing courses or learn-to programs, but from finding a game I like that required the use of the full keyboard and having to learn how to type fast and type well to win the game. Anyway, that is slightly off-topic, but only slightly. If someone is taking the time to be respectful and properly address you, regardless of whether or not they know you, do them the same respect. The worst you will ever be accused of is clinging to an old style of letter writing which, from my desk, is a compliment 365 days out of the year. Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Denny Scott Denny’s Den The lost art of the proper letter What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson Final Thought