HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1999-01-27, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 1999. PAGE 5.
Arthur Black
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Eh ... what’s up, doc?
Been down so long it looks like up to me.
Old blues lyric
I've got a question for you: which way is "up"?
The question is not nearly as frivolous as it
sounds. Why is it we refer to Tuktoyaktuk as
being "up north" but when we talk about
Windsof. Ontario we say it's "down south"?
For that matter, where do Calgarians get oft
referring to Torontonians as "Easterners"?
Not to a Haligonian they're not.
I remember the first time I became aware of
the relativity of "up north". I was living in
Toronto at the time and I mentioned to an
acquaintance that I was going "up north" for
the weekend.
"Oh?" he said. "Whereabouts?"
"Barrie" I answered.
He laughed 'til he cried.
He was from Sudbury.
Later I moved to Thunder Bay, Ontario and
discovered that people from British Columbia
still considered me an Easterner.
Easterner? In Thunder Bay I was living in
practically the dead centre of the whole
danged country! If a Thunder Bay resident
was an Easterner, what the hell was Joey
Smallwood?
International Scene
Loudspeakers
Is it just me or have you ever noticed how
bad the loudspeakers are in some airports, train
or bus stations?
Am I the only one afflicted with the inability
to make out what is being announced? You
would think that, with all my languages, I
would be able to understand all public
announcements without any difficulty.
Not so!
In German-speaking countries I am usually
able to get the first word "Achtung!"
Everybody should know that word by now
even if you do not speak German all that well.
After that, I swear that the announcer
dropped the page from which he was reading
and was left with a paper in Old High German
that sounds as if it were right out of a code of
behaviour of ancient German knights or
William Tell talking to his dog.
He might also be declaring World War HI for
all I know or else has slipped back into his
native Swabian dialect. The end result is to
leave me bewildered.
But German is not the only culprit.
I was once in Beirut, Lebanon, waiting to
catch a plane to Baghdad. Announcements at
the airport were given in Arabic and French
but frankly I wasn't sure at any one time which
"Up" and "down”; "east" and "west"; "left"
and "right" - they all mean different things to
different people.
I remember as a little kid squatting in my
backyard and digging like a maniac with my
tiny sand shovel. My dad came along when I
was down about a foot and a half, smiled and
asked, "What do you think you're trying to do
- dig a hole to China?"
I didn't know what he meant. So he
explained to me that we all lived on this big
ball called Earth, and if I dug deep and long
enough I would eventually tunnel right
through to the other side of the ball - possibly
in the middle of a street in downtown Beijing.
Cosmic stuff for a little kid to digest. What I
couldn't get my mind around was the image of
all these Chinese people walking around
upside down on this giant ball we all shared.
Now, I live on Canada's West Coast. That
means that just about every day I wake up to
radio newscasts and read newspaper stories
about various happenings in "The Far East".
Which is to the ... left, or west ... of where
I live ... if I think about it while I'm facing ...
up, or north.
My Far East is St. John's, Newfoundland.
Hong Kong is more like the Near West to me.
My grasp on reality is shaky enough with
out this complication. I find it ali very
confusing, and I personally hold Ptolemy
By Raymond Canon
language they were using. I kept hearing "Abu
Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, Doha etc. and was
hoping that I did not miss the word Baghdad.
I must have missed it since I got it only on
the final call and just made my plane with
seconds to spare.
Sometimes, when I do understand,
something goes wrong with the equipment and
it comes out something like this: "Albanian
Airlines announces the departure of Flight No.
snap, crackle, pop, destined for grumble, roar,
belch leaving at Gate crash, hrack, umlaut,
plissssssssss. Will all passengers kindly snort,
puff, wheezel, kreassssst, dikkle. Thank you."
Everybody looks at everybody else
wondering what or whose plane they were
talking about. No wonder some planes take off
half empty.
So it was that I was expecting the worst
when I was at the train station in Frydek-
Mistek and the loudspeaker came on. I caught
the word "osobni" but then all the trains
leaving or arriving at the station are in that
category.
For those who don't speak Czech, it is what
the Germans call a Personenzug or a
Bummelzug or the Italians, with their
perverted sense of humour, call an accelerato.
In short, a train that goes nowhere fast.
But I really become concerned when
everybody else, whose Czech was presumably
fluent, promptly got up and left and went back
into the station. Perhaps the announcer had
responsible.
Ptolemy was an astronomer in Ancient
Egypt, living about a century after the birth of
Christ. It was Ptolemy who started the whole
tradition of putting the North Pole at the top of
maps and globes - probably because the
northern hemisphere was explored earlier than
the rest of the globe and those early
cartographers just filled in the rest by adding it
to the bottom of their charts.
Besides, it greatly simplified things when
our notions of terrestrial geography were
pictured on flat pieces of paper.
As the centuries passed, it became an
unquestioned convention to place the North
Pole at the top of the chart.
It became our geographical "up".
And that's just looking at it from the
"earthly" point of view. Now that we're
sending rockets to Mars, the moon and Venus;
now that we fully acknowledge that planet
Earth is but one whirling ball of dirt in a near
endless galaxy of whirling balls of dirt, the
idea of "up" and "down" or even "left" and
"right" becomes well-nigh ludicrous.
Everybody's "down" is somebody else's
"up". Take the residents of Canada's
southernmost city - Windsor, Ontario. You
know what's immediately north of them?
The U.S. city of Detroit.
You could look it up.
said that a bomb had been planted on the
platform or the track had been blown up by
partisans who had not yet been told that World
War II was over.
I thought that an answer might be found if I
followed the crowd. I discovered that
everybody was standing in front of the station
waiting for buses that were to take us to
Ostrava. The track was temporarily out of
service, a phenomenon known to the locals but
not by me.
But nothing can beat an experience I had one
time with Air Canada. We were told in New
York that we were boarding a plane bound for
Toronto. Hardly had we got into the air when a
stewardess got on the loudspeaker and stated.
"Good Evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to Flight No. 678 bound for
Montreal."
Consternation in the ranks! After a hurried
discussion among the crew, it turned out we
were actually flying to Toronto after all.
Even when you understand everything,
things are not always what they seem to be.
A Final Thought
To write well and speak well is mere
vanity if one does not live well.
Bridget of Sweden
The
Short
of it
_____By Bonnie Gropp_____
Look out for each other
Look out for each other. z
Last week, a woman in Kitchener was
sexually assaulted, after a man entered her
home by cutting a window screen. The victim
has bravely stated she is going to get on with
her life. However, she wondered if people
need to know their neighbours better,
recognize when a stranger is hanging around
and not assume that they have a right to be
there.
In this big, old, often scary world, it's time
to start taking care of each other.
Blyth and Brussels have taken the first step
in that direction with the organization of
Mobile Watch Units. Unquestionably, rural
communities have a more neighbourly
attitude. But, while we don't have quite the
same concerns as our urban cousins, there is
no question, having experienced an unsettling
rash of robberies and break-ins over the
summer, that sleepy towns may need to start
waking up. How long did we think big
business bandits would ignore our
complacence?
And so, in the wee hours when we are at our
most vulnerable, the mobile watch will be
keeping an eye. They may not see it all, but
history has shown they do work, whether by
helping to nab or deterring.
With the program almost up and running it
has been getting a lot of attention. But what
many may not realize is that the idea came up
during discussion at the North Huron
Community Policing Committee meeting.
The CPC re-organized about a year ago as a
iiason between communities in rural Huron
and the OPP. It is there essentially to address
concerns and issues about policing and
protection.
Someone threw my name out as a possiblity
for representation and I accepted in part
because I felt it would be an asset in my job
for me to know what the committee is up to.
To be honest, as a rebellious teen in the
1960s I never dreamt that some day in the
future, I would try to work with police
officers. However, with several family
members eventually joining the force, I
became more familiar with, and sympathetic
to, the challenges facing cops. Also, with
maturity came respect for law and order, and
an understanding that sometimes though
establishment's strict protocol can be a pain in
the patoot, it's also essential.
In this decade, cutbacks have made the job
of police officers, as many others, much more
difficult to do well. Less officers, more area to
cover and rules to follow, limit exposure and
at times contravene power and authority. Cops
can't be everywhere so perhaps public input
can help put them where they need to be.
For this reason when they called me, I
thought why not. But while I admit some
skeptisicm in the beginning about what they
could achieve, it was unfounded. (And I say
this humbly, because my role has been
relatively passive compared to others.) In
addition to addressing several minor problems
they have, though a fledgling group still
testing the waters, achieved some worthy
feats. Along with the Mobile Watch Units they
were also instrumental in getting bike rodeos
organized in areas where none existed.
And they are there for you. Attend a
meeting. Contact your clerk to find out where
and when or who your municipal
representatives are.
CPC is just one more step in looking out for
each other.