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The Citizen, 2010-10-07, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2010. PAGE 5. I’m a senior citizen, which means I have achieved Official Old Fart status. And now that I’ve reached the age of certified decrepitude I need to make a confession: This was not the life I intended to lead. I had expected, by now, to be unspeakably rich, bedevilled by paparazzi and pursued by ecstatic, clamouring groupies wherever I went. My plan was to become an International guitar legend. My musical North Star was the great and tragic Lenny Breau, the most talented guitarist Canada (perhaps the world) ever had. But I also worshipped at the altars of Robert Johnson, Chet Atkins, Jimi Hendrix, Les Paul, Ellen Mcilwaine, Santana and Gordy Farmer, the kid across the street who showed me how to nail down a three-finger G chord. I immersed myself in guitar legend territory whenever and wherever I could. I hung around dank and draughty coffee houses drinking chipped mugs of vile, over-priced java and listening to the local (I use the word loosely) talent. I bought tickets for Cockburn and Lightfoot and Joni Mitchell when they passed through. I haunted the guitar section of the local music store and spent my school lunch money on glossy instruction manuals for jazz guitar, folk guitar, blues guitar, bluegrass guitar and of course, basic guitar. I grew warty-looking calluses on my fingertips and wilfully deformed the muscles in my left forearm until I was strong enough to form barre chords. I was in love with the guitar. Not just the sounds it could make, but the hippy, sinuous, sensuous look and feel and scent of it. I got as close to guitars as I could and dreamed of getting closer. If B.B. King had stopped for gas in my town, I’d have washed his limo for free. With my tongue. I fantasized of hitchhiking to Graceland humping a backpack full of jars of Ma Weston’s Crunchy Peanut Butter and a side of Canada Packers Back Bacon, the better to endear myself to Elvis. Even today I live within a Rolling Stone’s throw of three of Canada’s greatest Guitar Legends – Valdy, Bill Henderson and Randy Bachman. Coincidence? I think not. More like Kismet. Yep, me and guitars, we go back a ways. Got my first six-string in the pre-Woodstock era, when Neil Young was a pup and little Bobby Zimmerman was down at the Hibbing, Minnesota Greyhound depot trying to decipher the bus departures for New York City. Since then I’ve owned a succession of six strings, twelve-strings – even a little Martin Backpack guitar. It’s about the size of a ukulele – just right for taking on road trips and camping weekends. So it follows, does it not, that like Johnny B. Goode, I can “play that guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell”? Got my Django Reinhardt chops down cold? Able to reel off Classical Gas and Stairway to Heaven in my sleep? It does not. I shudder to think how many hours I have spent over the past (God!) 40 years hunched over a guitar trying to coax something musical out of its sullen little sound hole. I wince when I think of the money I’ve lashed out – not just for my guitars but for guitar lessons, guitar strings, capos, and flat, finger, and thumb picks. Because here’s the thing: Do you know what I can play on a guitar after thousands of dollars and 40 years and God knows how many hours of plucking and strumming and fretting and bleeding – do you know what I can play? Freight Train. “Freight train, freight train goin’ so fast Freight train, freight train goin’ so fast Please don’t tell what train I’m on So they won’t know where I’ve gone.” That’s it! Four brain-dead simple chords – C, G7, E7, F – a simple blues ditty that a chimpanzee wearing boxing gloves could figure out and play in 15 minutes. And when I play it, it still sounds like Dr. Bundolo’s Amateur Hour. The simple truth that I could never grasp was that I was in love with the idea of being a guitar player – despite abundant evidence that I had 10 left thumbs and no talent for the instrument whatsoever. Ah well, I wasn’t alone. Just think of all the unplayed guitars mouldering away in cup- boards and attics and storerooms across the land. I finally packed mine up and gave them away so that I wouldn’t have to feel guilty looking at them anymore. It took a few decades and a touch of arthritis in my finger-picking hand, but I think I’ve finally accepted it: I get an F in Guitar Theory and Practice, but an A Plus in Pig- headedness. Arthur Black Other Views While my guitar gently sleeps As October comes back around, temperatures begin to drop and I scrape frost off of my window in the morning, I am reminded that the official annual anniversary of my start at The Citizen has rolled around once again. So has it been four years already? I guess so. Thanksgiving weekend was my first weekend of reporting, one of the first pictures I ever took (professionally) was at the annual Belgrave Fowl Supper and I was (supposedly) dealing with that silly thing called culture shock that everyone talks so much about. I even wrote a column about it at the time. I looked up the definition of culture shock and I compared my “symptoms” with a textbook case of culture shock. They didn’t really match up, so I guess I wasn’t really “suffering” from this condition. I wasn’t depressed or lost or confused. Well, I was a little confused. At work that is. I remember back to my early days of working at The Citizen and how much help I needed from the other employees here, people on the street and people whom I interviewed. Before interviews for some of my first stories, I would tell those people I was interviewing to assume that I knew nothing and start from the beginning of whatever it was I was interviewing them about. Perhaps I wasn’t as sly as I thought I was, but the truth of the matter is that they weren’t assuming, whether I asked them to or not. I remember my early coverage of the annual Thresher Reunion and how it started with searching the word “thresher” on the internet. I remember wearing brand new shoes to Chris Lee’s motocross track, thinking that I would simply stand in the “spectator area” and I remember the realization that a Clydesdale is in fact a type of horse, and not a type of car, and the laughter that ensued in the office. It’s true, despite my father coming from an agricultural background, many of the realities I faced when I moved to Huron County were extremely new to me. I remember nearly hitting the deck on Blyth’s main street one day when the village fire alarm went off, not knowing what the sound was, or what it meant. My first instinct, of course, was some sort of nuclear attack. It was only when I went into the office that I realized how absurd an idea that was. The great thing about it all was that everyone here took it in stride. The people of the area didn’t treat me like an idiot, they treated me like someone who could use that little helping hand. People popped by the office and told me about good places to eat. They told me about things to do at night and places I might find fun. Being the die-hard baseball fan that I am, October was a hard month to move into a place that didn’t have cable, so I spent nearly every night out at a bar watching playoffs baseball games and receiving help of a different kind. And since that first year, when I watch baseball playoffs, I’m reminded of my first few months here. I remember not knowing anyone, but chatting with everyone. I remember hearing similar stories from people who knew what it was like to move from one place to another. So as I’ve watched baseball playoffs every year since, I’ve been reminded of sharing meals, buying drinks and having drinks bought for me and new friends in a place I didn’t know and at a time when I needed them. There was no culture shock here, it was more like a big culture bear hug. As time goes by How much is the premier of Canada’s most populous province, Dalton McGuinty, worth to taxpayers? Not much would be the prevailing view among residents after the Liberal premier bungled a succession of major programs and fell dramatically in polls. Some angry voters with eyes on the 2011 provincial election are demanding his annual salary of $209,000 be reduced to bus fare. But an astute opponent has put a different light on the issue by saying compared to the overpaid heads of many public institutions in the province, agencies, crown corporations, utilities, universities and hospitals, the premier is an absolute bargain. This unexpected compliment, which has its merits, was paid when the legislature was discussing a proposal by New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath the pay of such officials be capped at twice that of the premier. Horwath has brought in private member’s legislation to provide this twice, but the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives rejected it both times. The NDP action followed McGuinty’s attempt to impose a pay freeze on rank and file workers in the provincial public sector. Horwath said McGuinty’s salary is accepted as adequate for being chief executive officer of a huge province with its many responsibilities and twice that should be enough for the CEO of any institution receiving public funds. In supporting this, New Democrat Michael Prue, noted as “a good House man,” always in the legislature and contributing worthwhile questions and comments that rarely are reported because he is not a leader, added at least a new dimension to the debate. Prue said “every day I watch the premier in the legislature answer the toughest questions opponents can think up and I marvel at what he is able to accomplish in talking to the press, the bureaucrats, the other members of this House, his own caucus and his cabinet. “Is the premier worth only a quarter of some of these bureaucrats raking in huge salaries? Is this premier only one third as able as some of the bureaucrats managing hospitals? “Is this premier lesser in some way than someone who manages a very small university in Ontario?” Prue pointed to “a nice, small university, lovely place" in Guelph, where he said the president, Alastair Summerlee, makes $459,000 a year, more than twice the premier. If the legislature capped salaries of public CEOs at twice McGuinty’s salary, he said, “all that would happen to poor Alastair is his salary would go down from $459,000 to $418,000 and we could take that money and invest it in students." Prue added “I think the premier is worth $209,000. I think nobody in this province is worth more than twice that." The government has threatened to allow public sector executives pay increases only where their performances justify it, but examples keep mounting of such executives being paid too much. Horwath pointed to a CEO of a hospital in Ottawa “making well over $700,000 a year,” while it lays off nursing staff. She asked why the CEO of Ontario Hydro is paid more than $1 million a year, while the successful Quebec Hydro pays its CEO a mere $420,000. She called on the Liberal government to “have the guts to put on a hard cap.” A spokesman for the government said it has to pay salaries that compete with other employers to attract people capable of managing public institutions. A Conservative acknowledged the NDP aim of limiting excessive public sector salaries is worthwhile. But he said the real problem with public sector salaries is the bloated number of rank and file public servants and their high wages, which do not reflect the public’s ability to pay and McGuinty has encouraged to obtain a cozy relationship with their unions. In the end, the proposal to cap salaries of heads of provincial institutions at twice McGuinty’s got nowhere, but it produced a revealing view of McGuinty and his worth. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Shawn Loughlin SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee McGuinty’s pay questioned Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. 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