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The Citizen, 1993-11-10, Page 5HAVE AN OPINION? The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. They must be signed and should be accompanied by a telephone number should we need to clarify any infor- mation. International Scene By Raymond Canon THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1993. PAGE 5. Arthur Black Bound like an ostrich, run like a deer, eh? Are you a sports fan? I'm a semi-fan, I guess. I don't much care who's in front in the National League West (Hell, I don't know which teams are even in the National League West) — but I kind of like the characters that professional sport throws up every once in a while. Canada's provided its share of sports characters: sprinter Harry Herome, swimmer Victor Davis, hockey clown Eddie Shack. Then there are the legendary characters who transcend borders. Tennis brats John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors...Golf loons like Chi Chi Rodriguez...Not to mention Vince Lombardi, Casey Stengel, Yogi Berra. Even the owners of sports franchises sometimes make it in the Great Characters Hall of Fame. Toronto Maple Leaf fans will not soon forget — or forgive — what a gross buffoon named Harold Ballard did to their team. And then there's George Steinbrenner — the New York Yankees' answer to Harold Ballard. But they're all going to have to shift over and make room for a newcomer. It won't be long before the sports world will be abuzz What's in a name? Most of us manage to make our name do a life-time but there are enough exceptions to this to make for some very interesting reading. I must confess that there have been times when I wished that I had any other name than the one I did. When I came to Canada as a boy, one of the things I had to put up with on the part of the dirty, rotten Canadian kids with whom I came in contact, was the incessant making fun of my name. Confusing it with the double n spelling, these kids thought up every permutation possible to torment me and frequently succeeded. In later years I had a bit of sympathy for a man by the name of Joseph Dzhugeshvili. He wanted very much to be leader of his country but one of the things that disturbed him was how difficult people would fmd it to pronounce his name. Somehow he could not imagine them standing in a square shouting out ''Long Live Dzhugeshvili." Before he even got to that stage, he decided to change his last name into something that would not only be easier to pronounce but would mean something in the eyes of his followers. Thus Dzhugeshvili became "Stalin - literally "man of steel" and, as anybody who has read their history knows, he was the person who took over the Soviet Union when the first leader, Vladimir Lenin, died. You may wonder just where a man would come from to have a long name like that. Now that you have asked, I can tell you that he came from that part of the Soviet Union that we know today as Georgia. Georgians have a penchant for long names, it seems, with the doings and sayings of Ma Junren. Ma Junren? You read right. It's an odd name, but you might as well get used to it, because come the 1996 Olympics, chances are Ma Junren's name will be on the front page, never mind the sports page. Ma is a sports coach in Liaoning Province which is way out in the boondocks of northeastern China. He coaches a team of female runners there and chances are exceedingly good that nobody would ever have heard of Ma Junren in Beijing much less in Canada, except for one small thing. Ma's girls keep winning races. And not just winning — blowing them wide open. Just last month one of Ma's runners by the name of Wang Junxia broke the world record for women in the 10,000 metre run. Mostly when records topple, they are shaved by only 10ths or even 100ths of a second. Wang Junxia sliced an incredible 42 seconds off the record. The same week, another Liaoning team member set a world record in the women's 1500 meter race, and a half second behind her was Wang Junxia. How come? China's never been a powerhouse in world sport outside of ping pong. Why the sudden surge? Suspicious outsiders are beginning to whisper the dreaded s-word that blindsided Ben Johnson's sprinting career. But they want to be very careful talking about steroids around coach Ma. He doesn't take kindly to such talk. since one of Stalin's best friends was someone by the name of Orzhonikidje. He never had to change his name but Stalin did name a large warship after him, a very large warship so that they could get the whole name on it. At any rate Stalin never had any trouble from then on with people remembering his name or pronouncing it either. You could say "Long Live Stalin" without choking on the name. But then Stalin was not the only man to go down in history who changed a long name into a short one. There was once an Austrian named Adolf Schildgruber whose name was a bit of a problem even for German speaking people who are used to long names with umlauts and plenty of consonants. You can imagine that the Austrians and the Germans would have a bad time getting "Heil Schicklgruber" out with any degree of consistency and so Adolf decided to follow Stalin's example and shorten it to Hitler. The rest, as they say, is history. There is another bit of irony in all this. Stalin and Hitler turned out to be two of the most feared men of our century but neither was a native of the country that they ended up leading. Georgians do not even speak a Russian dialect; they have a completely separate language. Austrians do speak German but with an accent that the Germans frequently make fun of as they do Swiss German. Can you imagine someone from, say, Louisiana or any other place in the deep south coming to Canada and leading the country? Hardly, but stranger things have happened. I can report that the Americans are in for a bit of trouble these days as they witness the name of the successor to Gen. Colin Powell, the Chief of Staff of the American military, who has just retired. Naturally there was a long search for a successor and they did find one but, whatever his military qualities, his Ma is kind of an oriental Don Cherry — small but very mouthy. And he dresses in a fashion that makes Cherry look like a wallflower. Ma favours neon-coloured jackets, heavy on the orange and black checks. And he gets very annoyed when anyone suggests "his girls' " performances are chemically enhanced a la muscle-bound amazons that used to represent East Germany. "We don't want any East German instruction" he shouts. "We don't want to walk using a foreign walking stick." So how do the members of Ma's team manage to run so fast? Ma swears the secret is a drink made from "dong qicmg sya cao". Before you rush out to buy some, you might want to know that it's basically a potion made out of crushed worm. A rare and costly worm to be sure, but a worm. That's not the whole secret of course. Ma says brutally hard work is the rest of the prescription. His runners run at least a marathon (26 miles) every single day. And they are expected to run Ma's way — by applying the running 'technology' of animals. "I studied the sika deer and the ostrich to understand the principles of running" says Ma, who is quite happy to tootle his own horn. "My...technique is the most advanced in the world." Bound like an ostrich, run like a deer, eh? Sounds familiar — sort of like: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." Which if memory serves, was the motto of another sports phenomenon not known for his modesty. A chap called Cassius Clay. name is going to give the Clinton regime a hard time. Even the president got tongue-tied when he introduced the new appointee to the public. His name is Gen. Shalikashvili and the name was too much for Clinton. He finally decided to cut his losses and introduced him as Gen. Shali. Shali is an American, of course, but he was born in Poland (Powell has Jamaica at his birth place.) He did not speak English as a child but when he got around to learning it, he went to a number of John Wayne movies. I have not been able to ascertain whether or not he walks like Wayne but when he talks you can see the resemblance. It goes without saying that the profession with the greatest number of name changes is to be found in Hollywood. I would not even hazard a guess as to how many of the actors and actresses with whose names I am familiar have names that are different from the one they acquired at birth. Perhaps the younger generation of performers are content with the name they have but the majority of the older ones all saw fit to acquire a name that would stick with the public. Joseph Dzhugeshvili, see what you started! The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp Listen well so we don't forget what we can't remember When you ask young people today the meaning of Remembrance Day the answers can be enlightening. Despite its important signifcance, what does the history mean to someone not yet born when it happened? How do they remember what they have no recollection of? The other day a friend was telling me a story about her five-year-old son. The youngster had asked his mother if he could wear the colourful red poppy on his jacket. Mom was quite pleased and while pinning it on his coat told him that this was a symbol to help him remember the people who died in the war. "But what are their names, Mom?" he asked? "Who are they?" Who are they? They are the brave, the daring, the forever young, who gave their lives for the nameless generations that followed. Their memory is sustained by the families and comrades who survive them. I was born almost 10 years after the second world war. None of my family had fought overseas and their experiences were limited to the war's effects on their life at home. But later, as a student, Remembrance Day services were very active ways of reminding or informing of what had gone before. I recall all the kids from both schools gathering in a local church for the service which included accounts from veterans, whose very real stories became pictures for our imaginations. Unfortunately, the passage of time has taken away many of the storytellers. Of those remaining, there is a sizable number for whom the sharing of these memories is unacceptable; they are too personal, too difficult. Some don't want to talk, others don't want to remember. Many are modest; they don't believe anyone would find what they have to say interesting. But last week, as I contacted various local people to see if they would talk to us about their war time experiences I was touched by their generosity in discussing with us such personal memories and deeply affected by their significance. I was reminded, too, of how special the conversations with older people can be and how too easily we take them for granted. Talking to and reading about the people involved brings home to those of us so far removed from that era, a much more vivid picture of what happened. It was a time of broken hearts and romance. It was a time of triumph and tragedy, of winners and losers. But most importantly it was a time that deserves recognition, that should be commemorated. Whether you are activist or pacifist you can not ignore, though you may regret, the sacrifice of one human life for another. Lest we forget. In 1993 these three words are perhaps a bit of an oxymoron because for an increasing number of us today the reality of war is something we can not literally remember; the faces and names are unfamiliar to us. Our memories of the war are those we learn from the people who were part of it and as time passes on their numbers are decreasing. Sadly, without their personal experiences it will be difficult to keep the reality of Remembrance Day alive. That is why it's important now that we listen well to those stories in the hope that if the rest of us can't really remember we won't really ever forget.