HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2008-10-09, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2008. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
I could use a rainbow
You ever leave anything behind in a
taxi? I swear the cab companies must
install ‘stuff magnets’ under the back
seat to suck your personal effects right out of
your pockets.
I don’t take cabs any more than I have to, but
I’ve still left behind enough loot to outfit a
Salvation Army thrift outlet. You name it –
books, magazines, ball point pens, groceries, a
harmonica or two and once, a bag of dirty
laundry.
Naturally, I never saw any of it again (and
I’m not holding my breath on the dirty laundry
– although possibly the cab driver is).
I’m unusually gifted when it comes to
leaving my property behind in taxis, but I’m
not as good as Philippe Quint. Mister Quint is
a New York musician, and a very talented one,
to boot. Talented enough to give a one-man
concert in Dallas, Texas last spring.
On his return to Manhattan he flagged a cab
at the airport, took it to his apartment, paid the
cabbie and retrieved his overnight bag from
the trunk.
As the taxi pulled away and Mister Quint
fumbled with his front door keys, something
was gnawing at him. He felt…lacking.
Unfulfilled. As if he’d forgotten something.
Indeed he had. In his haste, Mister
Quint had left his violin in the backseat of the
taxi.
Actually it wasn’t his violin. It belonged to
two benefactors who had loaned it to Mister
Quint for his concert.
And the violin he’d left in the taxi wasn’t a
Japanese knock-off. It was one of only 700 or
so hand-crafted by an Italian gentleman some
three centuries ago.
The violin Mister Quinte had left in the taxi
was a Stradivarius.
The violin Mister Quinte had left in the taxi
was worth
Four
Million
Dollars.
Mister Quinte did the only thing a person
can do when they have inadvertently left an
object worth $4,000,000 in the back of a taxi
which has disappeared and they can’t even
remember which bloody taxi company it was.
He sat down on the sidewalk and cried.
And then he sprang into action. Yellow Cab!
He remembered that it was a Yellow Cab from
Newark that he’d been in.
He phoned the head office. Naw, no fiddle’s
been turned in here, pal.
Hours went by. Philippe Quinte considered
changing his name, moving to Tanganyika,
jumping out the window…
Then his phone rang. It was the Newark
police. The driver of the taxi Mister Quinte
was in – one Mohammed Khalil – had turned
in the violin at the end of his shift. It was at
the taxi stand right now. Did he want to come
down and pick it up?
After he got the violin back, Mister Quinte
tracked down Mister Khalil. He thanked him,
he embraced him, he pressed a $100 tip on
him.
Mister Khalil waved it all off. “Anyone
would have done the same thing,” he told a
New York Times reporter.
Well, maybe for a cellphone or
something…but a $4 million violin???
“Everything we find is valuable to
someone,” said Mister Khalil. “If you lost your
pen, you would think it was valuable.”
Philippe Quinte was feeling unfulfilled
again. How could he show his gratitude?
Then it came to him – he would give a
concert. Not at Carnegie Hall or the Lincoln
Center, where Philippe Quinte usually gave his
concerts – at the Newark International Airport
under a vinyl canopy covering in the parking
lot by the taxicab holding area.
And he did. Quinte played the theme from
the movie The Red Violin. He played
Gershwin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So. He played
a Paganini Variation and the Meditation from
Massenet’s opera Thais.
The audience – some 50 cab drivers
including Mohammed Khalil – loved it. They
clapped and they danced.
One of the drivers, a recent immigrant from
Ghana, shimmied and moonwalked across the
gravel to the music.
“I like that he came here,” the Ghanaian
said, “And, yeah, the music, I like it.”
So did the man responsible for reuniting
Philippe Quinte with Signor Stradivarius’s
creation. Mohammed Khalil sat front row,
centre, resplendent in his best black suit, with
pink shirt and matching tie.
The day was a double celebration for
Mohammed Khalil. Not only was he being
honoured for his honesty, he was retiring. It
was his last day of work.
Talk about going out on a high note.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Hey, buddy … forget something?
Ontario’s New Democrats are in a race
to choose a new leader that is almost a
secret, but a couple of bolts of
lightning have emerged from the obscurity.
The NDPs search for a successor to Howard
Hampton has been almost unnoticed because
of the difficulty of whipping up excitement in
summer over a third-biggest party that shows
no sign of becoming a contender and a federal
election that seems to have dragged on forever.
Gilles Bisson, an MPP from Timmins, has
entered the fray with a battle cry unusual for
New Democrats. Bisson said the NDP has
much to be proud of in having championed
social policies that became law – and many
would agree with him. But its success in
elections has been modest.
One reason, he said, is voters want to be
assured the NDP will place as much emphasis
on economic and fiscal policy as it does on
social policy. Government and society cannot
provide social programs, such as improved
health care and education, new infrastructure
and public transportation that meets the needs
of commuters, he said, without a strong
economy that provides the money.
Bisson said he will focus in his campaign on
how to build a strong economy that will create
more wealth and jobs and generate money to
strengthen public services.
This is something of an innovation for the
NDP, which tends to talk more of improving
services, protecting workers and increasing
welfare benefits and the minimum wage, than
how to pay for them.
One time this was painfully evident was
when the New Democrats were elected to
govern for the only time in 1990 and had
endless promises to fulfill, but had to abandon
some, the most famous being public auto
insurance, because they lacked money.
Such failings, coupled with their willingness
to run up huge deficits to finance other
promises, set them back and they have never
recovered. They still get a much smaller share
of the vote than they were able to count on
regularly in the 1960s and 1970s.
Other parties are having to rein in ambitions.
Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty has warned
he will have to move slower than he hoped in
tackling some social concerns, particularly
poverty, because the economy has slowed and
less money is available.
Bisson’s candidacy is interesting also for
reasons including he is an electrician, largely
self-educated, who says he learned a lot by
reading, particularly history and economics.
Previous leaders have been predominantly
from what traditionally has been called the
intellectual wing of the party. Hampton is a
lawyer, as is former premier Bob Rae, Michael
Cassidy a financial journalist, Stephen Lewis
almost an intellectual by profession and
Donald C. MacDonald another journalist.
Bisson notwithstanding holds his own in
debates on issues including sub-prime
mortgages as well as problems in forestry and
mining. He says he does not think being from
the north will hurt him, because “it is
important what you have done, not where you
come from”. As an MPP he has lived part-time
in Toronto for 18 years and been immersed in
many southern issues.
Few leaders of parties have come from the
north, but Hampton is from Fort Frances and
former Progressive Conservative premier
Mike Harris from North Bay.
Michael Prue, who announced earlier for
NDP leader, also transcended the monotony of
most Ontario politics when he called for a
debate on which religious schools the province
should fund.
The Conservatives under John Tory
proposed funding schools of other religious
groups in addition to Roman Catholics in the
2007 election, but were rejected
overwhelmingly by voters concerned this
would further divide children by faith and will
not raise this issue again.
Prue stressed he is not advocating ending
funding for Catholic schools and his record
suggests he is having difficulty accepting an
inequity that in many ways works and this will
harm his chances of becoming leader. Bisson,
a Roman Catholic, said he strongly supports
funds for Catholic schools, which is safer.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Red and yellow and pink and green, purple
and orange and blue. I can sing a
rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow
too.
— Arthur Hamilton
It was my blessing and pleasure this week to
have my route highlighted on two morning
drives by one of Earth’s most spectacular
shows.
It doesn’t matter your spiritual perspective on
this natural phenomenon, there’s something
hopeful in the rainbow’s spectrum of colour.
The feeling that in moving towards it I might
pass through its majestic arch to a less stressful
place and time almost defeated reason.
Sadly, more than ever right now, we could use
a little hope. The flip-flop of the stock
exchange, the loss of major industry, the
slumping economy have brought caution to
North Americans, an uneasy concern weighing
mind and heart.
And neither election on either side of the
border is doing anything to ease the weariness.
Last Thursday night, Canadian television aired
a round-table debate among the candidates for
prime minister. The American counterparts
were showing the vice-presidential hopefuls’
first head to head.
What it meant at our home was a good deal of
channel surfing, as we are obviously interested
in making an informed choice for our own
country’s leader, but also because what impacts
our neighbour to the south impacts us.
I won’t say much about my views on the
former here, because as a journalist my politics
should at least appear to be unbiased. I will say
though I had more difficulty watching the
Canadian debate because the policies of one
party fill me with such concern for this country
that I can barely stomach hearing its leader
repeat the rhetoric.
So I will use observations from the U.S.
debate to offer an opinion. First it was certainly
reassuring to see Sarah Palin come off better
than anticipated. She was more articulate,
informed and polished then she has appeared in
other televised interviews. That said, one might
assume she had undergone an extensive tutorial
following those debacles.
However, in listening to the next morning’s
news shows where candidates were graded on
their performances I was appalled. While they
admitted Palin didn’t always answer the
questions, she did it smoothly. I knew
politicians were slick; I didn’t realize it’s a
commendable attribute. Also, one journalist
said that Palin wisely played up her folksiness,
winning people over with a wink and a smile.
Seriously? Have the Americans not learned
anything from the past eight years? It was well-
touted that George Bush appealed to people as
someone they could see themselves with at a
barbecue. Now, I don’t think I have to tell
anyone where that has gotten the United States.
Sarah Palin appears to be a nice person, one
who is well-educated and accomplished. She’s
attractive and spunky. But, she also comes
across as inexperienced. One must keep in mind
that there is the potential for this woman to
become president. Picture that. A person still on
the learning curve, who doesn’t always have the
answers. But what the heck. As long as she
smoothly sidesteps them that’s all that matters,
right? As for her folksiness? I wonder how that
translates with other world leaders. Maybe that
wink can charm Bin Laden out of hiding.
No matter what side of the border, for voters
the job is clear. It’s not about looks or how
candidates talk. It’s what they say. Listen to
their answers, think what they mean and choose
the one most likely to bring back the rainbows.
Please.
Leadership race lighting up
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Final Thought