The Citizen, 2010-04-01, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2010. PAGE 5.
I have the feeling that in a balanced life one
should die penniless. The trick is in
dismantling.
– Art Garfunkel
Ah, yes: money. Tricky commodity, that.
Money – more specifically the pursuit of it –
has besmirched and bedevilled humankind
since…forever, really. Since the first Cro
Magnon con artist turned to his cavemate and
grunted the equivalent of “Sweet loincloth. I’ll
give you 30 clamshells for it.”
Cash, bread, scratch, loot, dough, long
green, filthy lucre. Money has assumed many
names and many forms over the eons –
from cowrie shells in China to whale teeth in
Fiji. The ancient Aztecs used chocolate
(cacao seeds) as currency. Other cultures
have favoured everything from ivory to
livestock, arrowheads to spices, tobacco to
wampum.
It was always all about money, as, alas, it
still so often is. The writer James Baldwin,
who spent a lot of years without much of it,
concluded that money was exactly like sex.
“You thought of nothing else if you didn’t
have it,” wrote Baldwin, “and thought of other
things if you did.”
A newspaper reporter once asked famous
holdup artist Willie Sutton why he robbed so
many banks. Sutton regarded the reporter
as if he was perhaps a little slow and
replied gently, “Because that’s where the
money is.”
Well, duh.
Money. It shapes our lives; some would say
it warps them. Unless we refuse to play, like
Karl Rabeder did. Herr Rabeder, an Austrian
aged 47, used to swim in the deep end of the
money pool. He lived in a villa in the Alps and
vacationed in a 19th-century farmhouse in
Provence, all thanks to a thriving international
furniture business that left him with a fortune
of $5 million in the bank.
And then one day he decided he would give
it all away. Sold the villa, the chateau and the
business, set up charities in Central and South
America, and endowed them with his fortune –
every cent.
“Money is counterproductive,” he told a
reporter for The Daily Telegraph. “It prevents
happiness to come.” Rabeder says he plans to
retreat to a small wooden shack in the
mountains. His friends and family think he’s
nuts – they told him so. He’s not listening to
them. “I was just listening,” he says, “to the
voice of my heart and soul.”
Good luck to Mister Rabeder – but I bet if
James Baldwin was still around he’d be rolling
his eyes. It’s easy to be philosophical about
money when you have a garage full of it;
less so when you’re a bit short. Money
is like any highly addictive drug: the less
you have in your system, the more
you crave it.
And yet, what are we talking about? Not
ivory, not gold or silver – not even loincloths.
We’re talking about wrinkly bits of paper
festooned with numbers and symbols in
coloured ink. A hundred-dollar bill buys a
hundred dollars worth of goods and/or
services only because you and I and the bank
manager believe it can. Paper money is an act
of faith. Ask any German who lived through
the 1930s when it took a wheelbarrow full of
deutschmarks to buy a loaf of bread. Ask
anybody in Zimbabwe where, last time I
looked, the hyperinflation rate was running at
89.1 sextillion percent.
And no, I did not make that up.
Ask Dominik Podolsky what paper money is
good for. Mister Podolsky, a snowboarder
from Munich, was recently stranded overnight
on a mountainside in subzero temperatures.
He kept warm by crinkling up all the paper
money he had in his pockets and using it to
start a fire.
Reminds me of the story of the London gent
in one of the stalls in a public lavatory who
realizes – too late – that his stall sports only an
empty cardboard roll where the toilet paper
should be. Fortunately, he hears someone enter
the stall next to his.
“I say, old chap,” he calls out, “I seem to
have run out of toilet paper. Would you be kind
enough to pass some under the partition?”
“Sorry, mate,” says the voice next door.
“Doesn’t seem to be any in here either.”
“Oh,” says the gent. “Then by any chance
would you have two fives for a ten?”
Arthur
Black
Other Views Money can’t buy you love
One thing I never thought I would have to
worry about when I moved to Huron
County was the crime, but now, I’m not
so sure.
After all, I had been no stranger to crime as I
was growing up. As I’ve mentioned before, I
was well aware of what my dad (the cop) did
for a living and I was growing up in an area that
happened to have its fair share of crime.
That being said, I didn’t exactly grow up with
bullets whizzing by my head either, but there
were always things that you had to be aware of.
In just over a month on the job,The Citizen’s
new reporter Denny Scott has responded to
reports of a shootout between police and their
suspect and now, as he did last week, played
stakeout detective as search dogs and officers
with assault rifles vigorously searched a patch
of Blyth-area property.
He must be wondering where exactly it is that
he signed up to work.
In my years in Huron County, there are
certain concerns and precautions that I left at
the Greater Toronto Area’s door when I left
nearly four years ago.
I’ll admit that when I moved here, as far as
crime goes, I viewed Huron County as a bit of
a safe haven. I did the unthinkable here, by
Toronto standards. I left my car running and
unlocked, I would leave my apartment door
unlocked on short trips and I would (gasp)
leave my golf clubs unattended on the driving
range on one side of the road, while I grabbed a
fresh bucket of balls on the other side of the
road.
One of the events that led to the decision to
move from the city where I had lived all of my
life, was an incident at the Rogers store where
I had worked, where I was held-up at gunpoint.
Nothing was taken and no one was hurt, but
our store was robbed at gunpoint twice more in
the next six months.
For the next few months, I found myself
experiencing an anxiety that will still crop up in
certain situations from time to time. I found
myself constantly looking over my shoulder in
public places and anticipating a situation where
I could be taken advantage of and trying my
best to eliminate that open door.
It was a strange feeling of fear that I hadn’t
experienced before and moving to an area
where crime wasn’t a major concern for many
residents was definitely a comfort to me.
So while I don’t think it’s exactly time to
string the barbed wire, declare Huron County a
war zone and announce a full-scale crime wave,
it does seem that there are more concerns in the
area now, compared to when I started in 2006.
When I was asked recently about a court case
I had been covering for The Citizen,I rhymed
off four or five different cases before arriving at
the one I was being asked about. When I started
here, we weren’t following any cases.
After I was held up, they never found the
would-be thief and I was told all the things he
would have been charged with if they would
have caught him.
In covering court, I’ve been surprised to see
the justice that doesn’t get carried out in court.
Not with the police officers, but in court.
Cases are put off for months, charges are
dropped and absolute discharges are granted.
Recently in Wingham a young man was
sentenced to serve 15 days in jail, on weekends,
for punching a police officer in the face and
subsequently fleeing the scene. Several other
charges against him were dropped.
Maybe I’m just not familiar enough with the
justice system, but this wasn’t the level of
justice I was promised after a gun was pressed
into my back and I can’t imagine that I’m the
only one with a bad taste in my mouth.
McGuinty epitaph may be cuts
Another stakeout
Dalton McGuinty will spend much of
his future as premier cutting costs and
this may be what he will be
remembered for. He may even be given a
nickname that will stick.
The Liberal premier has said he will be
cutting or, as he prefers to call it more
palatably, restraining, freezing and
encouraging efficiencies, to balance his
Budget by 2017-18, which probably is as long
as he would want to stay as premier, if voters
let him – and they may not.
Commentators and opponents will be
racking their brains to pin names on him and
the most likely may be Mack the Knife, after
the sharp-edged character in The Threepenny
Opera made memorable in song by Louis
Armstrong and others.
Most of the many nicknames already pinned
on McGuinty have made some use of his
surname and those who conjure them up
try to relate them to something the public
knows.
McGuinty has had more nicknames than any
premier in memory, but none inspired the
imagination enough to catch on. One
newspaper called him Premier McSpendy,
because he continued high spending, despite
warnings he was piling up debt that would be
difficult to repay.
He was dubbed Premier McSlippery,
because he was caught several times allowing
officials appointed by his government to spend
taxpayers’ money lavishly on personal
comforts, but escaped rebukes in elections.
McGuinty was labelled Premier McDoom and
Premier McGloom, because he argued
predictions of economic recovery were over-
optimistic, and he has been proven cautious.
McGuinty also was called Premier
McDithers, because he hesitated before acting
on some major issues, but this lacked novelty,
because a similar label had been pinned on
others including former Liberal prime minister
Paul Martin.
Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak
called McGuinty Premier Blinky, on the
ground he made promises, but backed off.
Hudak said some Ontarians describe failing to
keep a promise as “pulling a McGuinty,” but
this is not a comparison heard much.
Hudak also called him Dalton the Debt
Doubler and Premier Dad, the latter because
he has brought in more laws to protect
residents than predecessors and some feel
he is over-protective, but neither has caught
fire.
Bob Runciman, when Conservative interim
leader, injected needed humour, when he
called McGuinty Premier McDonalds,
“because, like that restaurant, he doesn’t
deliver.”
Other nicknames such as Sir Liesalot and
Flip Flop McGuinty, after he promised to
avoid tax hikes, but failed, have not stuck,
because all premiers to differing degrees have
changed their minds.
A name a newspaper gave McGuinty’s
party, the Fiberals, has caught on, and was
used by MPPs so often a Speaker forbade its
use in the legislature. The paper also called
McGuinty’s party the hypoGrits, because they
opposed putting more children in religious
schools to win the 2007 election, but later
seemed supportive of a school that accepted
black students only.
McGuinty’s staff have tried to make
residents see him as The Education Premier,
because he has substantially changed
education, but this was too pretentious and
self-serving for them to accept.
The Conservatives claim also McGuinty’s
chief aide called a non-partisan group to which
the premier was to speak and demanded it
introduce him as Mr. Ontario, but it sensibly
refused.
All Ontario premiers have had nicknames.
They included Conservative John Robarts,
who was known as the chairman of the board,
because instead of dictating he allowed
ministers to make many decisions on their
own. William Davis was known as Bland or
Brampton Billy, because he liked to be seen as
a unexciting, small town lawyer, although he
made major changes and ran a wily political
machine.
Mike Harris gave himself the title The
Taxfighter, because he wanted to be seen as a
leader who would cut taxes and he did.
Nicknames usually have reflected
something of the person and times and
McGuinty has had several images in his
premiership, but if cutting spending dominates
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Shawn
Loughlin
SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee
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– Galileo Galilei
Final Thought