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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1999-01-27, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 1999. PAGE 5. Arthur Black 1 ¥_____________ : \ i* I 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.