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The Citizen, 1999-09-01, Page 5Arthur Black Who’s in there, anyway? I think I'm going to have to stop going into the city. Too depressing. Not the city itself - it’s what I see by the side of the road in front of a car wash on the outskirts of the city. It’s a giant squirrel. At least I think it’s supposed to be a squirrel. Could be a six-foot gerbil, I suppose. It stands there on the sidewalk right outside the car wash desperately waving at the passing cars, trying to entice them in. Like a giant rodent is going to persuade me to do anything besides drive the hell away from it. But it isn’t fear the car wash varmint fills me with - it’s bummerdom. To think that somebody is so desperate for a job they’re willing to dress up in a fake fur suit and cavort in public like a demented rodent. Seems to be going around, though. I’m seeing a lot more people dressing up as animals and I blame Walt Disney for it. Sure. He gave us Disneyland - the only destination in the world where huge misshapen effigies of Goofy, Pluto, Mickey and Minnie patrol the streets making small International Scene By Raymond Canon Productivity keeps cropping up One of the words that has cropped up time and again is productivity and we are periodically informed that our country has to operate at a higher level of productivity if we are to compete successfully in an increasingly competitive world. We are told that our rate of increase in this important aspect is the lowest of all the G-7 nations, that is those countries with the largest economies and with which we are usually compared either favourably or unfavourably. First of all, how do we calculate productivity? It is not difficult. You simply take a country’s gross domestic product, or the value of all the economic activity in that country, and divide it by the number of people in the work­ force. This is the calculation used to arrive at Canada’s productivity and any other country’s for that matter. What causes a bit of confusion talk with the clientele. In the past few years major league baseball franchises have all bought into the trend. The Toronto Blue Jays have a wretched blue and white creature they call BJ Birdie. The Montreal Expos pay homage to an outsized something called Youppi. Yippee. My question is why? What makes whoever runs the car wash think the'sight of a giant chipmunk is going to suddenly compel me to get my car washed? A giant seagull, maybe but not a chipmunk. And how does having a guy dressed as a songbird chirping and pecking along the foul line - how does that enhance the game of baseball? Or basketball9 Or anything? Surely no spectator over the age of seven finds them entertaining. And anyone with the IQ of a crowbar knows they sure aren't funny. Alas, somebody out there must find the sports mascots enormously popular. Almost every team in the National League or the American League has at least one mascot on staff. And they’re not all birds. Florida has Billy the Marlin. The Red Sox have the Green Monster. The Manners have a moose and the San Francisco Giants have a flippered behemoth that answers to Lou Seal. is the oft expressed belief that, in order to increase this, we have to work harder or longer. This is not the case at all! To increase our productivity we have to work smarter, not harder. In short, we have to find ways to produce a given amount of goods at a given level of quality in a shorter period of time. This may mean installing more modern capital equipment, arranging working conditions so that they are more efficient, having longer production runs or even a combination of all three. There are other ways to improve this productivity but by now I think you get the idea how to go about it. Don’t forget, too, that the productivity figures are a national average. In some industries we are already highly productive and are able to compete successfully on world markets. In such a mundane thing as growing potatoes, we are certainly ahead of the Americans; just ask the Maine potato farmers about that. In others a thorough overhaul is long overdue. In still others we may come to the realization that we just can’t compete with foreign producers and the only solution is to From where I sit, it's a dopey way to turn a buck, being a mascot. It's hot, humiliating and it doesn't even pay very well. Most team mascots peiform their pratfalls and somersaults for a cheesy 100 bucks a night. Although there are exceptions - such as the world famous chicken mascot of the San Diego Padres. Inside that chicken suit sweats the dean of team mascots - a man by the name of Ted Giannoulas. Mr. Giannoulas has been inside that feathered suit, performing his chicken routine for the Padres and their fans at every home game (and lots of away games) for the past 25 years. The San Diego Chicken gets paid for his efforts - he employs a staff of seven - including a personal masseuse. The San Diego Chicken clears about 150 grand a year - which is more than we pay our prime minister. And according to Mr. G„ the side perks of being the world’s one and only San Diego Chicken are considerable. He claims he has to fend off the groupies with a baseball bat. And the giant chipmunk in front of the car wash? I'm pretty sure he doesn’t make that kind of money. I can only hope he’s got a groupie. Come to think of it, the way he jumps around - there’s a good chance she’s in the suit with him. get out of the market. There is one thing to keep in mind when talking about our lack of productivity. It has not been noticed too much, since, as you are well aware, our exchange rate has been going down over the past few years from about 80 cents U.S. to something in the neighbourhood of 65 cents. The drop of the exchange rate has effectively hidden our relatively higher prices on international markets and thus made less obvious the need for improving this productivity. Sooner or later this is going to catch up with us and the sooner we get around to addressing the problem, the better. If we continue thinking that our falling exchange rate will do the job maintaining our favourable trade balance, we are going to find ourselves with a currency similar to the Mexican peso. A Final Thought Try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value. - Albert Einstein THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1999. PAGE 5. The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp Finding sunshine And summer's lease hath all too short a date. —Shakespeare 1 know there's much ahead of us that still speaks and smells of summer. There will be warmth and sunshine, bugs and bees, mowing and weeding, lassitude and socializing. Officially, there are actually^three weeks left. But there is something about the return to school, those dying days before equal day and night, that scream of autumn. It's not just the tangible, what we feel and see, the breaking down of chlorophyll, the cooler evening breezes, that makes it so real. It is something more subtle, more elusive, a sense of change rather than a reality. There were actually two weeks of summer vacation left for our children when I first noticed this alteration. Perhaps one might suggest last week’s dismal weather had something to do with what I felt, but whatever the reason there clearly seemed to be a shift in aura. Walking from where I park my car to the office, I turned a comer onto main street and felt a sudden and inexplicable melancholy. What had in bnlliant July sunshine seemed so alive was now inert, what was exciting, now dull. There was no rationale to explain my sensation; nothing had really changed, yet nothing was the same. Over the course of the next few days I began to take note of certain differences which might account for what I felt. My husband’s and my practice of sitting outdoors before supper, to unwind and visit, was becoming less frequent with outdoor working time at a premium due to diminishing daytime hours. My teenagers too, seemed to be trying to cram as much as possible into every carefree day, connecting with long distance friends, travelling here and there, while getting everything in readiness in preparation for a new school year. Though work and social life is important, they must now fit in time to tie up those loose ends and make sure supplies and clothes are ready. Perhaps it is summer’s haste. It only seems short weeks ago that opening the pool in Brussels was delayed because of vandals. Yet, now the season has ended. Soccer fields and ball parks, too, are silent. But when you think of it, it’s as if we are really only in transition, waiting for the new life that blows in with the leaves of fall. The schoolyards will be filled with the cacophony created by exuberant young voices. Steam engines and music will soon call thousands back to the Thresher Reunion while carnival sounds, voices and laughter will beckon to the fairgrounds in Brussels. Our arenas will be full again of boisterous athletes as hockey, ringette and figure skaters take to the ice. I do mourn the passing of summer. I will miss long summer evenings, the flowers and birds. But as I watch youngsters heading off for school, faces eager for new adventures, as I think about times ahead, I am reminded that each season has its sunshine.