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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2010-06-17, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 2010. PAGE 5. So I’m walking down the street and I run into this guy with his dog and I say, by way of a pleasantry “How are you doing?” “I’m awesome,” he replies. Awesome? No, dude. The Nahanni canyons are awesome. Kiri Te Kanawa singing Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim is awesome. Man-of-War equals awesome, as do Michelangelo’s David, the Aurora Borealis and the Edmonton Oilers in the early eighties. You, on the other hand, are a guy walking a dog. No one can claim awesomeness; it has to be bestowed. Plus, awesome is…well, awesome. Jaw- droppingly, gob smackingly eye-ball-bulging, heart-in-the-throat humongous. You don’t say “Awesome!” when somebody stands you to a beer or comps you a ticket to their nephew’s second cousin’s house party. There are plenty of regular words for that, like “Nice,” “Hey, great!” and “Thanks a lot, eh?” Awesome is a major word. Don’t let’s piss it away on mundanities. And yet there’s a bestseller out there called “The Book of Awesome”. It celebrates life’s little victories like: “When you push the elevator button and it’s already there.” “When you take your underwear from the dryer and it’s warm.” Please. Those are…nice little moments. Touching. Cute. They are several light years and forces of magnitude away from awesome. Poor old awesome. Quite possibly the most overworked and denatured word in current English usage. Such a shame to take a perfectly majestic concept and horsewhip it to the edge of extinction. Especially when there are other perfectly good, practically unused words packing oodles of mojo and gathering dust Take “bugger”. It’s a word we Canucks share with English speakers in Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and even Malaysia. Granted, it’s still a little incendiary to toss around at a church social but the word has shed much of its pejorative sting. (It never truly deserved its unsavoury sexual connotation by the way. The word comes from the Old French Boulgrerie meaning ‘of Bulgaria’. Back in the Middle Ages French authorities labelled religious heretics ‘Bulgarians’. They later expanded the epithet to cover pretty much any ‘unnatural’ act committed by anybody. Sort of the way U.S. right wingnuts refer to anything French these days. Plus ca change.) In any case ‘bugger’no longer makes people automatically think of the ‘squeal like a pig’ scene in Deliverance. As a word it’s still feisty, but less offensive than in the past. Indeed, in Australia and New Zealand it’s practically a term of endearment. Even here in Canada nobody bats an eye if you grumble about politicians buggering around with the words to O Canada. Dylan Thomas named his mythical Welsh town Llareggub – and what does that spell backwards? Bugger is a useful, no-nonsense nugget of language because it is versatile – and handier than duct tape and WD 40 combined. You can have a nasty bugger, a mean bugger, a silly bugger or an ugly bugger. A clumsy bugger can bugger up arrangements; a lazy bugger can bugger about doing sweet bugger all. And if there’s a nosey bugger in your life, no need to bugger around. Just tell him to bugger off. And those are just your garden variety buggers. Last week in a thrift shop I picked up a wee book penned by a droll Canuck name of G.J. Emerson which annotates all kinds of exotic buggers I’d never even thought of. It is called The Basic Bugger Book and it outlines the qualities of Pushy Buggers, Pious Buggers, Officious, Obnoxious and Competitive Buggers, while not neglecting Buggers of the Yappy, Stingy, Smooth and Vicious persuasions. Mister Emerson posits the notion that the world needs a system which classifies human beings according to the type of bugger they are. “All in all,” he writes, “the term ‘bugger’ offers ideal flexibility and variation.” Just so. As Mister Emerson points out, there are good buggers and bad buggers out there. For every pushy or sarcastic bugger in your life you probably know a friendly bugger, a helpful bugger – even, if you’re lucky, a lovely bugger. And would it not be lovely if we could rehabilitate ‘bugger’ and stick it back in our lexicogical quivers where it belongs? Lovely? Why, it would be awesome. Arthur Black Other Views Awesome and then some It has been a crazy time for news in the area. Elections are upcoming, handfuls of schools are being closed down and the fire coverage of a large chunk of Huron County has been in jeopardy. However, it’s times like these that remind me (and I’m sure the rest of The Citizen staff as well) why I wanted to do this in the first place. We have received numerous calls, e-mails and comments on the street, thanking us for our work on the fire coverage issue and we’ve repeatedly been told that if it hadn’t been for our coverage of the issues and comments on the potential implications, citizens may not have had enough time to react and affect the outcome of the decision. Over 100 concerned citizens flooded the streets of Clinton the day the existing fire agreement was set to expire. And with this action came the reaction of change. The meeting resulted in the calling of an emergency meeting of both Central Huron and North Huron councils where a deal was agreed upon and eventually ratified by both councils for the good of the community. “I would like to commend your paper on the excellent job it does covering local news,” reads another e-mail received at the office. “Were it not for the comprehensive coverage of the fire issue, we would not have been able to act in time to make a difference. Thank you.” In a business with such a commitment to the community, receiving comments like these can be thrilling, just as I reported in a previous column that receiving comments to the contrary can be similarly biting, knowing that a mistake had been made and the community had been let down. However, it’s not about hurting your wrist whilst patting yourself on the back; it’s about knowing you’re doing a good job, reaching the people you hope to reach and helping them to make their/our community better. Similarly, my column regarding my frustration with deficiencies in the Listowel/Wingham Healthcare Alliance’s phone system warranted a call from Brent Boshart of the Alliance. Upon coming into the office last week, a message from Boshart read that he would like to “discuss” my column with me. Preparing for a verbal lashing for detailing problems with the phone system or making such internal inadequacies public, I was surprised to receive an apology from him. He said he had read my column and forwarded it to members of the board in upper- tier positions. He apologized for the frustration I had experienced, said he liked the column and that after forwarding the column, the problems that the Alliance had been experiencing with its phone system had been addressed and promptly fixed. So it is the ability to affect change, better the world around you and honour those around us who make us proud to be Huron County residents, Ontarians, Canadians, or human beings, that drives such a business as this. Sure it isn’t always like this, but when someone needs help or tragedy strikes, it’s good to know that all of us can help to do something about it. In addition to the aforementioned issues, I have had the chance to honour heroes who have fallen, heroes who are still with us and members of the community who do heroic things every day. And while it’s nice to be recognized for doing our job well, it’s the results of what doing our job well can achieve that can result in real satisfaction. Doctors join healthcare row The ‘Citizen’ effect Professions that provide healthcare in Ontario have different diagnoses of who should do what and this is escalating into a full-blown war. Doctors who have been relatively silent are now saying they are fed up with others moving in on their territory and telling them how to do jobs they have trained long and hard for and are not going to take it any more. The Ontario Medical Association, which speaks for doctors, is using the angriest language heard from them since the 1980s, when they went on strike to win pay demands. The doctors are upset first because the province has permitted the introduction of clinics led by nurse practitioners. The OMA says it supports interprofessional collaborative care, but independent nurse practitioner clinics are “a deliberate attempt to reduce physician influence in the governance of primary care.” The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario nonetheless is still pressing the province to give more powers to nurse practitioners to admit, treat and discharge in in-patient settings. Doctors are annoyed also because powerful partners in healthcare and rivals for public funds, the Ontario Hospital Association, Association of Community Care Access Centres and Federation of Community Mental Health and Addiction Programs, have issued a policy paper urging the province to reduce spending on doctors. The group claims Ontario spends more on doctors per resident than other provinces and this offers a huge opportunity for cost-saving. The doctors say this clearly is an attempt to undermine them in negotiations they will have with the province over pay. The Hospital Association also wants to change the relationship between hospitals and doctors who are granted privileges to work in them and paid by the province for each procedure they perform at rates set in negotiations between the doctors and province. The OHA wants doctors to have contracts with the hospitals that spell out when they will be available, how many patients they will see, the estimated results of their work and their compensation. This would be in line, it says, with the new accountability the province is demanding generally from the public service that includes paying hospital chief executive officers salaries and bonuses according to how effectively they meet the needs of patients. The hospital CEOs are suggesting doctors should have to meet similar requirements, because the hospitals cannot function effectively without them. The hospitals also want rules that prohibit doctors working in them from any conduct that would adversely affect a hospital’s reputation or standing in the community and require them to raise any concerns they have through channels laid down by the hospital. They want power to suspend doctors who break this rule from using their hospital privileges, again under the topical call of accountability. Doctors see this, with some justification as an attempt to keep them from speaking up on important issues of hospital treatment and advocating for patients. OMA president Dr. Mark MacLeod has told members that doctors have seen rapid change in the healthcare system that will continue. They now are threatened, particularly by erosion of their legitimate influence in hospitals, primary care and pay, he said. The hospitals are creating unnecessary conflicts by wanting doctors to report to their CEOs on matters of healthcare quality that should be the responsibility of doctors, he said. He asked why other groups and institutions are targetting doctors, when all have common goals for patient care and clear roles that depend on each other. One reason, he said, is doctors are basically schooled in medicine and stick to providing it and do not get involved in the politics of healthcare. They often, therefore, are outgunned in complex decision- making and still respected by their patients, but not enough in the healthcare system. Doctors will co-operate with others in healthcare to save costs, he said, but anyone who tries to gain by attacking them should know they are ready to defend themselves – clear warning doctors will be dropping their bedside manner. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Shawn Loughlin SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise.