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The Citizen, 1992-04-01, Page 5Arthur Black Welcome to the 20th century, Lars In the future everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes. - Andy Warhol The hunter - let us call him Lars - must have known he'd made a bad decision. Hunting alone in the Italian Alps was a risky proposition at the best of times. But in the late fall, when the temperature can plummet and blizzards materialize as fast as a sorcerer's spell, it was as dangerous as dicing with death. The cold needled at his cheekbones and gnawed at his wrists and ankles. He could feel it seeping inexorably through his hooded leather park and the fur boots stuffed with straw. His aim had been true and his quarry - a fine, fat mountain goat - was wounded, no question about that. But the trail of blood flecks he'd been following was vanishing before his eyes in a welter of swirling snow. The sky was an ugly purple bruise and the wind was snarling down from the north. And it was getting colder. If he could just find some shelter he could hunker down and start a fire. But there was no shelter - only barren International Scene On the road to Mandalay Hands up how many of you can remember the words of the old song “On the road to Mandalay, where the flying fishes play ... where the dawn comes up like thunder etc. First prize goes to those readers who can remember the song as well as the country to which it refers. So that I do not keep you in suspense, the country is in Burma, but you won't find it on the map any longer; it currently goes by the name of Myanmar and therein lies a tale which will form the basis for this article. In case you are puzzled as to where Burma, oops Myanmar is, I will aim you in the right direction by telling you that it is in southeast Asia and shares a border with Thailand, Laos, China, India and Bengal. If you can remember the Bridge on the River Kwai, well, the bridge was not in Burma but Thailand. You are, however, very close. The song may have honoured Mandalay but the capital and largest city is in fact, Rangoon (today known as Yangon). Both cities are on the Irridwaddy River with the capital being at its mouth. The population is only slightly larger than that of Canada; there is no comparison between the size of rock and drifting snow. So tired, thought Lars as he limped along, leaning on his ice axe. I'll just rest awhile. Kneel down. Catch my breath... The two German mountain climbers had picked a wonderful day for a late September climb in the Italian Alps. The sun was so bright it hurt the eyes and from the broad back of the Similaun glacier, more than six thousand feet above see level, they could see the ragged peaks of the Austrian Tyrol many miles to the northeast. They stopped, ate lunch, took photographs, were about to move on when one of them saw something brown and frail and skinny sticking out of the ice. It was an arm. A human arm. And it was attached to the man we call Lars. The rest of Lars, still kneeling as he died, was encased in ice. As was his ice axe, his straw filled boots and parka, his weapons and his backpack. Well, what of it, you say. A rather grisly, but not all that uncommon Alpine tragedy — a mountaineer gets lost and freezes to death in a blizzard. Then some other mountaineers find his body. Is that so amazing? Only when you examine the interval between death and resurrection. The German mountain climbers found the corpse on September 19, 1991. Scientific analysis has determined that Lars took his last ragged breath some time around 2,000 B.C. In other words, give or take a century, the body of Lars the hunter is 4,000 years old. By Raymond Canon the two countries. The Burmese, or most of them, are descended from the Mongolians who wandered down from Tibet over 1,000 years ago; they have gone through the usual wars besetting the area and finally ended up as part of the British Empire. The country was occupied by the Japanese in 1942-45, with some heavy fighting going on there both to keep the Japanese out and, when that failed, to drive them out. If my memory serves me right, the Burmese were the first people to leave the British Empire totally, preferring to set up a sovereign republic in 1948. It does not take a person very long after arriving in Myanmar to realize that this is a very poor country in spite of a considerable quantity of natural resources, including teak and oil. For years the country was ruled by what might be described as a benevolent dictatorship with the stress shifting from one word to the other, depending on the current political situation. One of the leaders was U Nu (U is Burmese for Mr.) who preceded his stay in power by serving as Secretary General of the United Nations. Nu finally got eased out and things went downhill from then on. The army, never very far from the political scene, finally took over and seemed to be running the country into the ground and removing any semblance of democracy with about equal measures of efficiency. Stung by foreign criticism the army decided it might help a bit to hold “free” elections, never thinking for a moment that the opposition, or what there was of it, would be able to get enough votes to even come close. Were they ever surprised! The And remarkably preserved. His clothes arc mostly gone, but there is still hair on his head and teeth in his mouth - even visible tattoos on his back. His Bronze Age ice axe looks like it was made yesterday and the flintstone knife on his belt is still sharp enough to skin that goat, had he ever caught up to it. It's ironic. A nameless, pre-literate hunter lives in obscurity and dies alone in one of the remotest reaches of the planet; lies encased in glacial ice for four millennia, and then, by a fluke, before the sun or the ravens or wolves could finish the job that Mother Nature overlooked ... he becomes a celebrity. For Lars is famous. His sightless eyes have already gazed back at readers from the pages of newspapers and magazines. His mummified mug has startled viewers on CTV News and The National. But is that it for Lars? After 4,000 years offstage, just a flash of world fame, then back to the dustbin of history? Are you kidding? His fifteen minutes aren't up yet. Last month, a Geneva woman appealed to the Swiss Foreign Ministry to claim the corpse. She claims it's no Bronze Age hunter - she recognized the guy. It’s her father, she says, who disappeared back in the 1970's. What next? Teamsters swearing it's the body of Jimmy Hoffa? Fans protesting that they've found Elvis? Welcome to the twentieth century, Lars. leadership against the military was provided by a young lady, Aung San Suu Kyi, and she succeeded in winning hands down. Unlike Chile, where the incumbent military dictator, Gen. Pincochet, recognized a fait accompli when he saw one and stepped down, the military leaders reacted by ignoring the results of the election and put the winner under house arrest in Yangon. This only served to perk up foreign interest even more and Aung San Sui Kyi, for her efforts, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She is, unfortunately, under house arrest; the army still runs things and spends much of what little money it has on buying modem foreign weapons with which to hold down the dissidents. The latest move is to drive a Moslem minority (Burmese are generally Bhuddist) over the border into Bangladesh and follow this by attacking the Karen, another ethnic minority group, in the region bordering on Thailand. Manerplaw, the chief town held by the Karen, is by coincidence the seat of the “Parallel Government” set up by Aung San Sui Kui before she was put under house arrest. Capturing this town would be a feather in the cap of the military regime. However, Myanmar does not seem to be very high on anybody's list of priorities and it will probably be left to wallow in its own mess. As long as it does not offend any of its powerful neighbours, there will be a little push to rectify the situation. The United Nations has its hands full in the area with restoring order in Cambodia and thus Myanmar will continue to be the country whose Nobel Peace Prize winner is helpless to improve the situation. TheShort of it By Bonnie Gropp Living in a plastic world The other evening I was watching a movie with Steve Martin called LA. Story. Il was a satirical look at the "plastic" phony world of California residents. At one point, the hero is getting better acquainted with a young lady in a motel room. She puts his hand on her breast and he gets a puzzled look on his face. "Sandee," he says, "your breasts feels strange." "Oh, that's because they're real," she retorts. From the beginning of our lives, it is our hoped that we will grow to be comfortable with who we are and respect that person. A truly happy person is someone who accepts his or herself for who they are. But then again, why be a five, when a few snips, a little silicone or some interior vacuuming will transform you into a 10. It's no surprise that business is booming in the plastic surgery industry as men and women rush to the operating room for minor alterations. Breasts are enlarged, tummies tucked, faces lifted, stomachs suctioned and noses lopped in the hopes of gaining perfection. People magazine recently ran an article on the many in Hollywood who have voluntarily gone under the knife to fix what wasn't broken in the first place. Some of the names really surprised me - because it is, in these instances done purely for vanity's sake after all - and these people seemed secure enough in who they are. Katherine Hepburn, whom one would certainly presume devoid of pretention, admits to having had eye work done, to pick up the slack, so to speak. Actress and fitness guru Jane Fonda, had a body that many women the world over strove to emulate, suddenly, in her mid-years has developed a cleavage of some substance. Then there's the hypocrisy of Michael Jackson, proclaiming through music that "it doesn't matter if your black or white". Yet, it won't be much longer before this black male, is prettier than any white woman around. Certainly humanity has tried to improve on what we have been given for many years. As someone once said, "If you can look better, why not?" We colour our cheeks, paint our lips and dye our hair. We sweat and strain exercising away the excess poundage and tightening those saggy muscles. But, where does it end? It has already been established that reaching to attain this impossible dream has resulted in anorexia and other eating disorders. There was a question some years ago about hair dye causing cancer. Now, there have been all the problems associated with silicone breast implants. There's no question that our physical appearance plays a major part in how we feel about ourselves, but what kind of situation are we creating? It was bad enough trying to exist with the images presented on magazine covers and television or movie screens, those impossibly unattainable role models. For myself, I'm going to have to only fix what can be done easily, because there is absolutely no way I will have surgery unless it's an unavoidable situation. I can't imagine willingly subjecting myself to the discomfort of surgery for something that is, without question, the highest form of vanity. I rather like the attitude of a friend of mine. Not yet 40 her face is well-adorned with the markings that time creates. She has never used moisturizers to slow the aging process, nor makeup to camouflage it. She prefers instead to look at aging as her grandmother did; a woman she said, whose lined face she remembers as "the most beautiful I have ever known". "Every line on this face is a sign of having lived and I wear each with pride." I'd like to think I could have as much good sense.