The Citizen, 1993-09-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1993. PAGE 5.
We may have
reached the
art looniness apex
Art is making something out of nothing
and selling it.
— Frank Zappa
Maybe Crazy Frank is right. Perhaps that's
all there is to Art. Philosophers, poets and
sundry windbags have been trying to define
Art in essays, treatises, dissertations and
critiques for centuries. Along comes a 20th
century pop musician who sums it up in 10
words.
It's a perplexing question. If I had to
define Art as it exists today, I'd have to say
Art is what the experts say it is. Would
anyone have looked twice at a Mondrian
print or a Warhol painting if they hadn't
earned approving nods from big name
critics? Same thing with music. When I hear
"Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin it
makes my heart soar. When I hear "Die
Gluckliche Hande" by Schonberg, it makes
my head ache.
Yet the experts sing the praises of
Schonberg and dismiss Gershwin with a
patronizing pat on the head as an amusing
diversion.
I don't get it.
I also don't get why a divine phenomenon
A novel way
to finance debt
Whether we like it or not, the "something
for nothing" concept is part of our society.
We have governments running and
encouraging lotteries and the Ontario
government is now actively working to set
up a gambling casino in Windsor in order to
see if the idea works; if it is. even partially
successful, you can expect to see a number
of other similar operations throughout the
province.
The rationale for such a concept is one of
money. Queen's Park reasons that getting
people into casinos will pour hundreds of
millions of dollars into government coffers
and, with debt a very real concern in both
Toronto and Ottawa, any additional revenue
will be gratefully received.
With all this in mind, it is worth noting the
plan that one American has come up with to
assist the government in Washington in not
only reducing the national debt but in
funding part of the health care system that
the Americans are trying to put into place
under the aegis of the President's wife
Hillary Clinton.
The man in question is John Levingston, a
transplanted English army officer who came
to live in the United States in 1961. Since
that time he has been something of an
entrepreneur who, if he is known for
anything, it is his imaginative approach to
business ventures. His plan is basically one
of putting small machines in such places as
post offices and variety stores, in fact, any
place which sees a large flow of people.
Upon deposit of a minimum of $1, the
machine will issue a five year savings bond
which will pay one per cent simple interest a
year. In short, every bond will mature at 1.05
per cent.
like Ella Fitzgerald is written off as a mere
"jazz vocalist" while an Opera diva,
screeching in unintelligible Italian, is
revered as a musical genius.
Then of course there's painting. The Art
Gallery in Ottawa recently took it in the
shorts for lashing out over a million loonies
to buy an American painting entitled Rothko
No. 16. Also known as Two Whites, Two
Reds.
Which is all we got for our money: a
largely empty canvas daubed with white and
red. It looks like a close-up of two truck
fenders doing a courtship dance.
But that's okay — because it was a bargain.
Other paintings by Rothko have sold for
much more.
Who can forget White, Yellow, Red on
Yellow which fetched nearly $2 million U.S.
last year? Or the immortal Black and Dark
Red on Red ($2.3 million U.S.)?
And of course Rothko's best (ie. most
profitable) number — the justly famous Black
Area in Reds? An Art Gallery in California
laid out $3.6 million for that little number
two years ago.
You think I'tn making this all up don't
you? Sorry chum, it's all true.
Which gives you some idea of how far
gone the Art Biz is.
But things just may be turning around. We
may have reached the apex of Art
Looniness.
I note with approval that Harvard
was a similar venture here during World
War II when War Savings Stamps were sold
for 25 cents each. When you had $4 worth of
stamps which you glued on a card prepared
for such purchases, you sent it off to Ottawa.
Seven and a half years later, if I remember
correctly, you were sent $5 which worked
out to an interest rate of slightly over three
per cent, not bad in those days.
The low interest rate in Mr. Levingston's
plan is explained by the next part. At the
same time that you receive a savings bond
you will also get a ticket for a semi-weekly
lottery. Once the plan is up and running, the
inventor calculates that one per cent of the
revenue from tickets sales should produce
prizes of between $10-15 million. The
winning numbers would be displayed on a
TV show, produced by Levingston, of
course, and broadcast all over the world as
presumably there would be other people who
would want to take their chance on the
bonanza.
According to his calculations there would
be a surplus of about $230 billion U.S. after
15 years. Since the bonds are only paying
one per cent it would take only about 2.4 per
cent per annum to pay off the interest owed
to purchasers, the prize money and the cost
of running the project. The overhead is
pegged at six per cent or the same as that of
the California State Lottery. Mr. Levingston
would understandably like to receive a
royalty.
Perhaps the whole thing is too
imaginative, but at any rate the inventor
hasn't had much success in attracting the
attention of the American government. Only
three of the 50 state governments even
bothered to reply to his proposal. The closest
he has gotten so far is the support of the
deputy assistant secretary with the federal
Department of Health and Human Resources
who liked it so much he sent it on to Hillary
Clinton's task force on Health insurance
reform. There is no indication that it will get
University has announced its investment
plans for next year. They include a $10
million endowment for something called The
House of Blues.
The House of Blues is a blues club based
in Cambridge, Massachussets, but with plans
to expand across the continent, possibly with
clubs in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Think about it for a moment. Harvard
University — one of the straightest-laced,
upper-crustiest Ivy League institutions this
side of the Vatican, is buying into a blues
club.
Our own Marshall McLuhan once wrote:
"I think of Art.,, as a DEW line, a Distant
Early Warning System that can always be
relied on to tell the old culture what is
beginning to happen to it."
Another thinker, Robert Scull, wrote: "I
think of Art as a great big river that just
flows and it's been flowing for thousands of
years...Art doesn't win wars, but it's the only
thing that remains after the civilizations go.
Nobody knows much about the politics of
certain Egyptian dynasties, but people
remember the Art, the great things that were
created."
So I suppose thousands of years from now,
no one will remember Terry Fox or Wayne
Gretzky or Margaret Atwood or perhaps
even Canada.
They'll just remember Rothko No. 16,
Two Whites, Two Reds.
Frightening thought, eh wot?
imaginative for tradition-minded
bureaucrats.
Whatever you may think of the plan, it has
to be admitted that traditional ways of
reducing the debt in the United States (and
in Canada as well) have not worked very
well. As any Canadian living near the U.S.
border knows, gas is far cheaper there than it
is here and, as I have reminded my readers
on occasion, it is far cheaper here than it is
in Europe, but all President Clinton was able
to do was to get about five cents a gallon
tacked on to the price of American gas. Even
25 cents would have left it far under the
Canadian equivalent.
Mr. Levingston is certainly optimistic. "I
have no doubt at all that this will work," he
says. "I just haven't got there yet."
I, for one, am not holding my breath.
Letter to
the editor
Continued from page 4
broadening the education of children and
youth. The record of local involvement has
been outstanding.
We invite all in our community to take the
opportunity of dropping in to see the
children enjoying the new facilities.
Thank you again for allowing me space in
The Citizen.
David E. Kemp, Principal.
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Write a
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editor
The
Short
of ►c
By Bonnie Gropp
Justice not
happening in
the court room
One of the things I try not to do in this
column is pass judgement, but sometimes
something happens and it's difficult to keep
quiet.
Part of this job is the not always pleasant
task of covering court. Surprisingly, it's
often a boring beat as the wheels of justice
turn slowly and the same faces may keep
popping up month after month with little
result.
Last week I sat through the trial of a sex
offender. It's amazing how just being there
makes you want to go home and shower.
Anyway, despite his attorney's attempts to
make him seem some sort of emotional
invalid, the accused really got little
sympathy. Even on the faces of the most
jaded, the looks of outrage and disgust were
only thinly veiled. The judge said he
couldn't think of a more serious form of
sexual assault, yet the man's sentence (his
second by the way) was for five years.
Considering how long his victim will live
with the repercussions of his actions I'd say
he's short a few milleniums. Anyone who
has known a victim of sexual abuse is aware
of the emotional scars it leaves. Some may
be deeper, some may be better hidden, but
they are there.
It may not be right, but it's no wonder
people turn to vigilante justice. Take for
example the most recent incident, that of the
father who found out the school principal
has been molesting his son for three years.
There is no question what happened next;
the father readily admits his guilt. He took
his baseball bat and paid a visit to the
principal who ended up with two broken
legs.
The principal for his crime has been
sentenced to two years. The father, who
turned his anger and frustration into his own
brand of justice could face up to 14 years.
The principal may be a long time
recovering from the damage and so he
should be. There is no question the young
boy will.
The courts may not be on dad's side, but
there is no doubt that many are. As parents
outraged by these stories we talk about what
we would do if it were our child.
I guess you could say I'm a bit of a
bleeding heart, because I don't really
condone taking the law into your own hands,
which has caused some rather heated
discussions with a lot of my peers. But the
bottom line is there has to be some law and
order. We can't just go off running willy
nilly, handing out justice the way we think it
should be.
I believe that's called anarchy.
However, justice is what most would
agree isn't usually happening in the
courtroom. There have to be guidelines for
consistency certainly, but rigidity doesn't
work either. The rules that govern the
judicial system seem to bend too much in the
favour of the accused and allow very little
leeway for extenuating circumstances on the
other end.
The baseball bat father maybe deserves a
kick in the butt, but not when a child
molester gets away with a slap on the wrist.
It doesn't seem to make sense that a crime
against ar: innocent doesn't carry a stiffer
penalty. Though common sense logic tells us
the father was wrong, how do you blame
him for protecting his child when he knows
that sadly the courts don't?
Arthur Black
International Scene
Some of my older readers may recall there any further; it seems to be just too