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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-01-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2009. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Feel the pain Cheers, everyone! I am just embarking on my second year without the lubricating accompaniment of alcohol – and frankly it hasn’t been all that tough. Oh, booze and I were a hot item for years, but there comes a time in a lot of relationships when one of you looks across the pillow or the dance floor – or the rim of a wineglass – and realizes: ‘You know what? This ain’t fun anymore’. So far, not drinking has been strictly a losing proposition for me. I lost 25 pounds, the blear in my eye, the fog in my brain and my visceral hatred for alarm clocks. Pretty smooth sailing – but there is one time of year that’s a bit sticky for non-drinkers. It’s the one we just passed through – Christmas/New Years. Chanukah. Yuletide. Kwanzaa – whatever you call it, it slides through all of our lives tumultuously and inexorably, gliding on a veritable Niagara of hooch. Booze is everywhere and virtually everybody drinks at that time of year. Heck, my abstemious Aunt Beulah has her annual bumper of sherry every New Year’s Eve while we crowd around the TV to see if Times Square technicians can jump start Dick Clark one more time. There’s even a dedicated libation for the season. Does anyone drink rum and egg nog at the cottage? On a picnic? After the Grey Cup parade? Of course not. You drink rum and egg nog in the stretch around Christmas and then you never hear of it until the next Christmas rolls around. And people want you to drink the rum and egg nog. They expect it. Refusing rum and egg nog is kind of like repudiating Dickens or blaspheming Santa. It’s not done. “HOW DO YOU WANT YOUR EGG NOG, BUDDY – LITTLE NUTMEG? HOW ABOUT A CINNAMON STICK IN THERE? “Ah, no...just the egg nog please and ah…no rum.” “NO RUM??? WHADDYA MEAN, NO RUM!” This year though, resisting the rum and egg nog wasn’t much of a challenge because I was too busy during most of the holidays. Busy with the snow dump. Then busy with the snow dump on the snow dump. And the power outages. And the dead telephone. And the downed internet. And the non-delivery of newspapers and mail for five days. And the rain that followed the snow dumps. And the ice build-up in the eaves troughs that followed that. I’ve never actually seen rain come directly through the ceiling before. What with being snowed in, iced over and rained on, dodging rum-laced egg nogs at seasonal shindigs was the least of my problems. Ah, but it was all worth it on Christmas morn, which dawned bright and dry. I lay in my bed thinking peaceful thoughts, listening to the dogs on the floor snoring softly. As Christmases go, it wasn’t so bad, I thought. Only five, maybe six near- disasters. But that’s over now, and here I am, with the sun shining through the window, the birds twittering in the cedars… …and with just the vaguest, slightly unpleasant aftertaste of – what is that? Oh, yes – eggnog – in my mouth. Which is when I realized that I had mere seconds to get to the bathroom before I would become violently, spectacularly ill. In Technicolor. Let us draw the curtain of propriety on the rest of that particular Yuletide surprise. I will just say that not only was I sick, I was ricocheting-off-the-walls dizzy. Too dizzy even to rise from my place of worship at the porcelain altar for oh, 40 minutes or so. So I lay on the tiles and pulled the bathmat around my shoulders. I was actually feeling much better by the time the doctor arrived a few hours later. “Sounds like food poisoning,” she said. “What did you have last night?” “Well, egg nog,” I said. “Ah hah!” she pounced, making a six-gun with her thumb and forefinger and metaphorically popping me between the eyes. “Did you have it with rum?” No, I said. Just egg nog. “Too bad,” said the doctor. “Rum would have killed the bacteria.” Arthur Black Other Views Knocking back egg nog Ontarians are lamenting they have no orators as spellbinding as Barack Obama, but they had and are not making them any more. Listen to Elmer Sopha, a Liberal MPP in the 1960s, describing the often pointless debates and routines that take up too much of the legislature’s time then and now: “One thing that bothers me is the pretence we engage in that is not worthy of reasonable adults – the sham, artificiality, mythology, fiction, trappings and antiques we surround ourselves with.” “It separates us by a wide gulf from the people and creates a lack of relevance and I am desperately afraid the gulf will ever widen so advanced opinion or enlightened thought in the electorate will get too far ahead of its elected representatives.” Or Sopha’s strictures on the opening of legislature sessions, describing how the lieutenant governor and his spouse “risked pneumonia in an open horse-drawn carriage, covered only by a buffalo blanket, while cabinet ministers stayed in their warm offices and peeked from behind curtains.” “When they finally got here, accompanied by enough military to settle the problem in Vietnam, the lieutenant governor finally proceeded to read the speech from the throne with all the eloquence of a chloroform pad, while former premier Leslie Frost fell asleep – let us get rid of all this sham.” Lieutenant governors no longer ride in horse-drawn carriages, but still read the speech, which is misleading, because it is written by the premier and his political advisers. Hear Stephen Lewis, while New Democratic Party leader, contributing to a debate on national unity: “This country has majesty and vitality to compare with any and holds together on a bedrock of two founding cultures, supplemented by those who already were here and so many additional peoples of so many origins, weaving a lattice-work of artistry, science, language, music, stability and joe de vivre. As long as I have energy and voice I shall strive to keep our Canada together.” When Lewis retired, he took a more charitable view of the legislature that still was apt, saying it “has moments of disintegration, when the democratic process seems to have been forged at the anvil of anarchy and our mellifluous and lovely English language is reduced to guttural snapping, and I sometimes had to slide a nitroglycerin tablet over to a colleague to reduce his palpitations under the provocation.” “But this motley rabble sometimes has been followed by splendid debate and the strength of the parliamentary system reasserted. I am proud to have been a part of that and never doubted for a moment politics can be a profoundly noble profession.” Bob Rae, when NDP premier and urging the Constitution be changed to strengthen national unity, said “All of history teaches, and recent world events confirm, that states are fragile and have to be nurtured and renewed and sometimes changed significantly if they are to adapt and survive and prosper. We must never stop adapting to new ideas, new social forces and new economic conditions.” Rae has since shown his ability to adapt by becoming a Liberal MP and future cabinet minister, if his federal party gets elected. The legislature’s last great orator was Liberal Sean Conway, who suggested the circuitous speaking of Progressive Conservative premier William Davis was “like the route of the old Colonial Railway, which twisted and turned, chugged up hill and down dale and meandered through the remotest sidings before eventually reaching its destination.” Why does the legislature no longer have great orators? Reasons include most parents permit their children to watch TV, where language often is banal, rather than encourage them to read. Families are less prone to sit and talk together. Schools teach students the rudiments of language, but do not inspire them to relish it. Newspapers report the facts they think matter and oratory only in rare cases where it influences events, such as Obama’s, and above all, TV wants politicians to speak in 10-second clips. None of this nurtures great oratory. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Is it just me or has this winter been interminable? I entered it with such a sunny outlook, but the clouds moved in a long time ago, and I’m struggling to fight them off. No, this isn’t going to be my annual diatribe against all things cold and snowy. It’s about the fact that hating something as passionately as I hate winter, and complaining about it, was a lot more acceptable as a child. You remember, too, don’t you, when it was okay to express your feelings no matter what they were? As a child when it hurt, you let people know and there was usually someone there who would try to make it better. You could whine, cry and complain and though adults near you might explain that they expect something better, they certainly understood you might be capable of less than perfect behaviour from time to time. As a child, if you didn’t like it, you said so, and while adults might have thought it, their words of wisdom on how to handle it would never have been that you should just suck it up. If something bothered you or made you uneasy, while it would have been nice, you weren’t expected to get over it just because someone said so. If you felt terrible it was unlikely you were going to just let it go. And if another person cut you down, no one told you to rise above it. Something came up for me recently and to say that I’m less than happy about it is the epitome of understatement. The problem is that many folks my age would be able to cope with the situation, so empathy is at a premium It’s the down side of being an adult, hiding from discomfort rather than being permitted to feel it in an honest way. Instead, grownups should suck it up, get over it, not let it get them down or rise above it. Whatever. I know there are homeless people living in sub-freezing temperatures in Toronto. I know that wars are raging. I know that people at Wescast learned last week that they are suddenly out of work. And I know too, that I have a roof over my head, I live in what is still as far as I’m concerned the best country in the world and my husband and I are employed. But feelings of any kind are real and it’s unfortunate that when a person is all grown up it’s just not as acceptable to show any sign of weakness, to rale against a situation, to feel a little sad over something that’s a huge deal to you, because it’s fairly insignificant in the big scheme. Everyone has these times, when life as you like it, seems to have taken a bit of a detour. Mine isn’t a major re-routing and certainly isn’t taking me down any road I haven’t travelled many times before. But add to it that it’s happening in winter, the season of my discontent, and I cannot rid myself of a woebegone countenance. I am pathetically world weary and feeling sorry for myself. And I intend to keep it that way until the mood passes. I don’t want to be a grownup right now. Children don’t stop to think about whether they should feel the way they do, they just feel, then get over it and I suspect that’s healthier. There is nothing wrong in letting yourself acknowledge what you’re really feeling and accept it. It’s better to recognize what the emotions are and try to come to terms with their existence than it is to turn a cold shoulder on them. Shutting them away will only keep them hanging around. Maybe even for as long as this winter has been. And who could stand that? No Obamas here in Ontario 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. 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