The Citizen, 2007-11-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2007. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Hate it!
Ihave always been short on cool. As a child
I tripped over the sandbox, coloured
outside the lines and did enough faceplants
of my CCM trike to qualify as a kamikaze in
training.
As a teen I was a miserable student, a
gormless pursuer of the opposite sex and
inevitably the very last pick for the baseball
team.
Pathetic in the primary grades, hapless in
high school, a casualty in college – but I never
despaired because I read.
I read and read and read.
Not the heavy hitters. No Schopenhauer or
Heidelberg. I read the little stuff. Cereal boxes.
Labels on mattresses, billboards, Classics
Comic books.
Eventually I inched my way up to Life
magazine and Reader’s Digest and the
Farmers’Almanac.
Sure, it wasn’t terribly elevated material, but
at least it made my brain turn over... And it
gave me a lot of facts, a lot of newsy nuggets
that could help me hopscotch down the
crooked, corkscrewed, snakes-and-ladders
path of life.
Here are some of the eternal verities I picked
up on early:
The human appendix is a useless organ.
Everybody should learn mouth to mouth
respiration.
You should always bundle up before you go
outside in winter.
Wrong, wrong and wrong. Everything I
learned was wrong,
When I was a kid, everyone, the school
nurse and my doctor included, assured me that
the appendix – that slimy little sac in my belly
– was a treacherous bag of pus that performed
no useful function whatsoever.
“It was different for cavemen,” my doctor
told me. “They drank out of swamps and ate
rancid meat. Their appendixes filtered out and
stored the toxins so they couldn’t kill them.
But in modern man, the little beggar just fills
up with poison and sometimes bursts. Better to
have it out.”
Wrong. Scientists at Duke University
Medical School have concluded that the
appendix actually acts as a ‘safe house’storing
and even cultivating good bacteria essential to
human health.
Ironically, one of the reasons we have so
many cases of appendicitis these days
(321,000 in the U.S. each year) is that the
appendix has very little useful to do any more.
Our guts are too clean. It’s like having a
Formula One racer revving in the garage.
Sooner or later it’s going to blow a gasket.
Mouth to mouth respiration. Since Grade 9
I’ve been taught that if someone keels over
clutching their chest and turning purple, first
thing to do is CPR – lock lips and blow some
air into them, followed by quick chest
compressions.
That’s still true if the cause of distress is
near-drowning, choking or a drug overdose,
but if the victim is undergoing a heart attack,
mouth to mouth might kill before it cures.
Researchers at Tokyo’s Surugadai Nihon
University Hospital studied 4,068 patients
who had suffered cardiac arrests in front of
witnesses. The ones who got their chests hand-
pumped (100 pumps per minute
approximately) without intervening mouth-to-
mouth were twice as likely to recover as the
ones who got straight CPR.
The doctors reckon that because oxygen
levels in the blood don’t deteriorate for about
six minutes after a heart attack, it’s more
important to get the heart pumping than the
lungs wheezing.
Turns out it’s a no-brainer anyway. Studies
show that 75 per cent of people witnessing a
heart attack won’t risk mouth to mouth with a
stranger no matter what.
Which brings me to my third and final
shibboleth – the one about catching cold. I can
still hear dear old Mom hollering at me as I
disappeared down the street: “Artie! Come
back here and get your scarf! You’ll catch
your death of cold!”
Sorry, mom. Not true.
Getting ‘cold’ doesn’t cause colds –
catching a virus does.
Doctor Paul Donahue, a physician and
national newspaper correspondent says flatly
“There is no doubt that viruses cause colds and
without them, colds don’t happen, regardless
of weather conditions.”
Ironically, writes Dr. Donahue, we might
catch more colds in winter precisely because
we stay indoors cooped up with other, possibly
infected people.
That’s what Dr. Donahue says and he ought
to know. He’s a respected, practising
physician.
On the other hand, he never met Ruby
Black, card-carrying mother.
If the good Doctor ever tried any of that
‘cold weather doesn’t cause colds’ on Mom,
she’d have slapped a toque and string
mittens on him so fast it’d make his
stethoscope spin.
Arthur
Black
Best for McGuinty to be humble
Stepping to the window I felt the
apprehension begin. My breathing
quickened and a slight tension knotted my
stomach.
It was out there, beyond the window, its
encroachment stealthy, arriving in the dead of
night, silently obliterating my sense of peace
and comfort.
The S-word arrived to tease last week as we
awoke to a gentle settling of dewy white on
Friday morning. Having enjoyed a long and
blissfully snow-free fall it was to be expected.
And its relatively undramatic entrance was
certainly appreciated.
Unfortunately, as far as I’m concerned
anyway, still not welcomed though. That first
snowfall of the season holds no pleasure for me.
I think of it only as a bad news harbinger and
can honestly say there’s nothing it foreshadows
that I look forward to. I dread the biting cold
that chases life indoors. I hate the blank palette,
an austere cover over areas which months
before were alive and blooming with colour and
sounds.
Not even a vibrant blue sky, sun dancing off
sparkling snow will make me forgive winter’s
relentless brutality, its black nights, the damp
frigidity that seeps into every pore, muscle and
bone. Its nasty sense of humour, its aggressive
and capricious nature terrify me.
It wasn’t always like this, though. After the
initial gloom settled Friday, some retrospective
introspection moved in. I remembered the
enthusiasm which greeted winter’s arrival when
I was a child. Cold and snow meant new games
to play. Ice was nice for skating, and slippery
slopes made for excellent sledding.
In my teens living in town didn’t mean I got a
lot of snow days, but there was always hope.
And often out of town friends would get stuck in
town, making for unscheduled pj parties.
While mini-skirts and knee socks meant
young girls were often numb to the bum in those
days, for some strange reason my friends and I
didn’t seem to notice or care.
The first snowfall meant change. There were
different things to do, different places to be than
in the warm season. And with boredom an
almost perpetual state for young folks, the
downside of winter was far outweighed by its
newness.
Later, I saw the same things with my own
children and theirs. With the first snow’s arrival
they could hardly wait to bust out. Their
excitement was uncontainable as we struggled
with zippers, scarves and boots. It had been,
after all, months since they’d thrown a snowball
or made an angel and they were eager to begin
again.
As pleasant memories streamed through my
mind, I began to wonder when it changed for
me. And why. Besides the detrimental effect on
my well-being of the lack of sun, and the
seeping chill that raises aches and pains in every
joint, the answer is simple — transportation.
The more of my loved ones driving, the more
roads we’ve been forced to travel, the more I
have come to hate winter.
As a kid, I lived in town. My family and
friends were there. There was nowhere I had to
go. Now, the story has changed as everyone I
care about lives miles away and activities I
enjoy don’t often happen in sleepy rural towns.
Thus my apprehension for winter driving keeps
me isolated, and wishing my husband and
children would stay put too.
So when I looked out the window Friday
morning, it was with such dread, knowing there
is so much more to come and everyone I love
has to drive in it. For that reason alone I find
absolutely no pleasure in winter. Without
apology, I hate it from beginning to end.
Other Views Everything I learned was wrong
Premier Dalton McGuinty will be
tempted to govern as if he is some sort
of conquering hero.
But he would be smarter to throw in a dash
of humility.
On Nov. 29 the Liberal premier will open
the first session of the legislature since he won
re-election with a bigger majority and left the
battered opposition parties even unsure who
will lead them.
McGuinty may fancy himself as Julius
Caesar returning triumphantly from the wars
towing his captives and it is difficult to
begrudge him some vision of glory. Until he
became leader, the Liberals had won only two
elections in 60 years.
This generously includes one in 1985, when
a Progressive Conservative government lost its
majority. The Liberals had the second highest
number of seats and the New Democrats
helped install them in power.
McGuinty has enough MPPs he can win
every vote in the legislature, so he will be able
to ensure it approves his policies.
But he is nowhere near as popular with the
public as his two election victories would
suggest.
McGuinty was less admired than most
premiers in his first term, particularly because
he quickly broke a promise not to increase
taxes.
In his second winning election, McGuinty
would not have increased his majority
and may have even be struggling to lead a
minority government if Conservative leader
John Tory had not upset voters by promising to
fund private faith-based schools.
The Liberals until then were only a few
percentage points ahead of the Conservatives
in the polls.
And those polls continued to say throughout
the campaign that more voters preferred Tory
personally as leader.
Many supported McGuinty only because he
was not the leader who favoured funding faith-
based schools, and have no deeper attachment.
As well, now that the Conservatives have
renounced this policy some of this support for
McGuinty could erode rapidly.
McGuinty could start off by sounding
arrogant. He tried to appear humble in the
election, conceding his party is not perfect and
pleading with voters ‘folks, here we are, warts
and all - you make the choice.’
But since winning again, McGuinty has
done some bragging, including claiming his
party is formed of “idealists, optimists and
activists” and the others defend the status quo.
The Liberals do not always live up to this
flattery. As examples, they have spent much of
the last year defending their failure to close
polluting coal-burning power stations as
promised and in recent days still scrambling to
prevent lottery ticket retailers stealing winning
tickets, although news media exposed this
years ago.
McGuinty could show humility by adopting
some opposition parties’causes such as Tory’s
campaign to reduce bickering in the legislature
and the NDP’s plea to speed up increases in
the minimum wage.
McGuinty also could learn from the last
Liberal premier to win a huge majority, David
Peterson, who lost it and his own seat three
years later.
The first reason Peterson lost was because
he called an election too early. McGuinty will
be unable to do this, because he has fixed
election dates for early October every four
years to prevent governments timing them for
their own advantage.
Peterson lost also because he spent too much
time on an issue many voters had lost interest
in, national unity, and become more concerned
about jobs.
As well, Peterson lost partly because he was
seen living the ‘lifestyles of the rich and
famous,’ the title of a popular TV show, in
tuxedo and crimson cummerbund at an
unending round of celebrity events, boasting
everything about his province was “world
class” and appearing out of touch with
ordinary people.
McGuinty is unlikely to make this mistake,
because his idea of high fashion is to wear
black shoes with his trademark dark blue suit
and his idea of going out is visiting a school to
be pictured reading to students.
McGuinty is not in imminent danger of
being kicked out, but he does not have the
huge cushion of support his election victories
would suggest.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
“Empty pockets never held anyone back.
Only empty heads and empty hearts can do
that.”
— Norman Vincent Peale
Final Thought