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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2007-08-23, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 23, 2007. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Trite and true M an has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. – Jean Arp Ever had an MRI? Stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It’s basically a machine that scans your innards to see what’s out of whack (in my case, a wonky hip). Think of it as an X-ray on steroids. It’s a little freaky, getting an MRI. First, they ask you to remove all rings, necklaces, bracelets, anklets and metallic piercings, if any. Then they ask you if you have any bullets, arrowheads or other metal objects lodged in your carcass. After that, they dress you in a pair of those papery hospital PJs, lay you on a slab and feed you, like an uncooked pizza, into the maw of a huge machine. “Don’t move for the next 15 minutes” they tell you. And, oh yes, “It will be noisy.” Noisy doesn’t cover it. For the next quarter of an hour you will feel like you’ve been encased in a corrugated drainpipe and rolled into the middle of a heavy construction site. You’ll hear banging and clanging and buzzing and tweeting. It’s so loud they actually fit you out with earmuffs to dampen the sound. Odd. I’d have thought that being encased in a giant machine that takes snapshots of your body would have been one of the few quiet places left on the planet. They’re getting harder to find, those quiet places. You would think the tiny village of New Denver, B.C., deep in the Slocan Valley of the West Kootenays, would be well supplied with oases of tranquility, and in fact it is. And some New Denverites are fighting to keep it that way. Last year the BC Telephone Company Telus trumpeted the news that it was going to extend cell phone coverage to the town. Yippee. Now everybody in New Denver could be wired into the outside world by cell phone! A Telus spokesman bragged that the impending service was “an economic driver to bring them into the 21st century.” New Denver said no thanks. Bill Roberts, of the Slocan Valley Economic Development Commission told a Vancouver Sun reporter, “When you’re portaging between two lakes and all you’re hearing is the call of the loons and the rustles of the forest, the last thing you want to hear is a BEEP BEEP or the opening bars of Colonel Bogey’s March.” Bill Roberts and friends think not being electronically joined at the ear to the rest of the modern world will be New Denver’s touristic ace in the hole. Their community will be one of the few places left in North America – on the planet, in fact – where the cell phone will be useless. “It’ll be a big competitive advantage,” says Roberts. “We won’t have people answering the darned thing everywhere and yelling on it.” Funny how some people can’t handle simple peace and quiet. Recently the City of Victoria in B.C. announced plans to install “Aeolian wind harps” in one of the city’s parks. Hans Schmid fired off a letter to the editor with a basic question – why? What the park needs, he wrote, is not more but fewer human-made sounds. “Our public parks should be quiet sanctuaries. If anything, we need more truly tranquil havens.” The odd thing is, the city of Victoria has no problem banning natural sounds. Within the city limits it’s perfectly fine for drunks to yodel, airbrakes to screech, horns to honk, car stereos to throb and Aeolian harps to twang – but don’t try to keep a rooster. Bill Murphy made that mistake. As a treat for his kids, he brought home eight day-old chicks – one of which proved to be a rooster. Last month he got a knock on the door from an animal control officer. The hens could stay but the rooster had to go. “We had a complaint,” she said. Strange, because Murphy had gone to some lengths to muffle the henhouse and the rooster’s early morning calls. Most of the neighbours didn’t mind. They loved hearing the cock crow in the morning. Except for one. The newspaper story prompted another letter to the editor: “It is sad to hear that this rural sound is not welcome in (Victoria). I am a senior myself and I have heard that the next life is very quiet. I am not in such a rush to get there myself.” Me? I’m lucky enough to live in a rooster- friendly, non-Aeolian harped neighbourhood. But should I ever have to move, and my choices come down to New Denver or Victoria? No contest. Arthur Black A genius for throwing elections ‘There are big ships and little ships but the best ships are friend- ships.’ I don’t know the original author of this somewhat silly quote, but it came to me from my grandmother, one of the first, by hook or by crook, to sign my brand new autograph book. I was a young child at the time and the import of the words didn’t have as much meaning then as seeing that all my pages were filled. It is only with the passing of years that I have come to recognize not just the significance of friendship but its many alterations. I didn’t know then that the friendships I had would not endure my lifetime. I didn’t realize that people and relationships would come and go. Nor did I know that even those friendships that had gone would continue to be thought of with affection. I’ve often been surprised when circumstance will see a formerly close relationship revisited and it is as if there had never been a break. Yet, we go on our way at the end again, back to our new acquaintances, our new lives, promising of course to keep in touch, knowing we never will. A few years ago one of my friends from high school was killed in a car crash. The last time I had seen her was years before that at a reunion of our ‘gang’of six pals. The plan had been to make this gathering an annual one. Instead we now found ourselves regretting our cavalier attitude toward the future, our too busy lives that we used to excuse a failure to make the time. Maintaining friendships through a lifetime is not as easy as it seems. Our interests change, our lives move in different directions, literally and figuratively, and new aquaintances are found along the way. Making room in the present for the past can be challenging. The result can see the number of close friends diminishing over time. I recall my days of childhood, a playmate on every corner. But expectations for friendship in those carefree days were low; basically all that was required was that they play along and get along. In school we start to become more selective, so that by the secondary level we have a core group of friends, surrounded by many casual acquaintances, usually segregated from others by various levels of coolness. Then the circle widens as we venture from our comfort zone to university and careers. Our path may lead us to new loves who bring new friends. We have lost some of the clique mentality and collect acquaintances zealously. We often consider them best pals, but the circle can be a venomous place where personalities clash behind backs. I’ve never understood folks who party together one night, then talk about each other the next. Yet, I’ve seen it time and again. Now, me? I guess I’ve opted for quality over quantity. I’m happy to call friend some of the kindest, funniest, best people I know. There are those who support me on every level and others whose role is more specific — the decorator, the hugger, the mother hen. I feel blessed to have their presence in my world. But I also value every person that I have called a friend. I don’t know if the opportunity was there today whether we would still be friends. What I do know is that each and every one of them had an impact on me, and has left me with wonderful memories. I still think of them all often and fondly. So as usual Grandma knew best. It’s trite, but true. The best ships are friendships. Other Views The seductive sound of silence The Ontario Liberals have a genius for throwing away elections at the last minute and are in danger of doing it again. Premier Dalton McGuinty and his party had held leads in polls big enough to win a majority for most of the last four years. Now however, they are stumbling in the Oct. 10 election and running only neck and neck with the Progressive Conservatives. The Liberals’ decline is almost entirely of their own making. Conservative leader John Tory has established himself as steady with a few new policies and persistent in pointing to Liberal failings. But the Liberals have lost ground particularly because they failed to protect buyers of lottery tickets from fraud by sellers and steered funds for immigrants disproportionately to those who are Liberals. These are medium-sized issues and McGuinty could have taken some of the heat out of them, but as an example yielded to opponents and had the auditor general investigate the immigrants’issue, although the watchdog has a record of not shirking from criticizing government and promptly found the Liberals at fault. Earlier Conservative premiers usually asked judges sympathetic to their party to investigate allegations of wrongdoing – William Davis even called on one who had nominated a candidate for Conservative leader at a convention. They usually found their party as clean as sheets washed in Tide. But Liberals have been throwing away elections for decades. Lyn McLeod had led in polls for years and was at a safe-looking 51 per cent when an election was called in 1995. She was quickly overtaken by the Conservatives under Mike Harris, who promised a simply explained program of smaller government, tax cuts and balanced budgets very much in tune with voters’ thoughts. McLeod delayed announcing a less aggressive version until after the election was called to avoid giving opponents a chance to criticize it, but voters already had chosen Harris. Liberal premier David Peterson also was well ahead in polls in 1990, but misjudged how voters would react when he called an election after only three years instead of the normal four. There had been other early elections, including one Peterson called in1987 after only two years leading a minority government with the New Democrats’ support, but voters felt he coped well in that delicate situation and was entitled to seek a majority. The second time Peterson claimed he needed a new mandate to negotiate on national unity, but voters wondering why he was in such a rush discovered an economic downturn was on the way and Peterson eager to get the election over in case he was blamed, and helped him pack. Stuart Smith was a Liberal leader in the 1970s, after Davis had been reduced to minority government. A psychiatrist and intellectual from Montreal, the Liberals liked to boast he was another Pierre Trudeau. There was some thought Smith might finish Davis off, but when Davis called an election, Smith was caught so unprepared his press aide was out sailing for the day and news media could not even find his itinerary. Smith, next day, was ignominiously thrown out of a store where he was campaigning without the manager’s permission and never received the welcome anywhere Liberals had hoped for. Another Liberal leader, Robert Nixon, had a better chance to push out Davis in 1975 because of indications the Conservative party sought donations by offering favours from government and ministers profited from advance knowledge of land developments. But voters felt Nixon went too far in calling their government corrupt and the Conservatives held on with a minority government. The Liberals have lost many elections they appeared on the verge of winning for varied reasons and a prime one is they have lacked a constant supply of advisers experienced in government who knew what a party could get away with and what it should avoid. This is not surprising, because the Liberals have been in power only nine of the last 64 years. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk 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.