HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1998-01-21, Page 5A Final Thought
The future belongs to those who believe
in their dreams.
International Scene
By Raymond Canon
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1998. PAGE 5.
All out of broccoli
— loccoli
Roy Blount Jr. is a droll, laconic
gentleman of the south Georgia, persuasion.
He is also one of my favourite funnymen. Or
he used to be. Right up until he wrote the
following poem:
ODE TO BROCCOLI
The corner store
is all out of broccoli.
Loccoli
It's not that I think the poem is unfunny.
It's just that I feel compelled to defend the
commodity in question. In fact, I might as
well own up: I consider myself the white
knight of the maligned vegetable. A Crusader
for the Crucified Cruciferae.
That's right — call me a pervert, but I
actually like broccoli.
Popeye pimps for spinach. Bugs Bunny
stands up for carrots. The Jolly Green Giant
is a pea and niblets front man.
But of all the vegetables in a can of
alphabet soup, from asparagus to zucchini,
it's broccoli that lights my fire.
I know it's not a popular choice. Near as I
can figure, people have always had a knee-
jerk hatred for broccoli. A classic cartoon in
The New Yorker magazine shows a sulky kid
at the dinner table, arms crossed, scowling at
his dinner plate and saying, "I say it's
broccoli and I say the hell with it!"
My own kids wrinkle their noses in distaste
Struggling
with Czech
How, you may well ask at this stage of my
stay in the Czech Republic, am I coming
along with my attempt to learn the Czech
language, at least adequately enough to make
myself understood and to get around the city
without feeling that I'm lost in some
impenetratable jungle?
I thought you would never ask.
Before I left Canada, I talked with a
Czech-Canadian working at the university
and went over a few key phrases that might
be of help to me at the beginning. However,
as anybody who has ever done this knows,
when it comes time to use any of these
phrases it doesn't always work out the way it
is supposed to.
I arrived at the main station in Prague
where I had to change trains. But where was
the train to Ostrava? After three attempts to
extract this information from Czechs
standing nearby, I gave it up as a lost cause.
I may have phrased the question correctly,
but, I never did figure out their answer. At
least they were polite enough not to break
down laughing at my accent.
I finally located the large announcement
board which gave the arrivals and departures
of all trains and the correct platform and
away I went. I am pleased to report that I got
at the mere mention of the B-word. Even
George Bush, back when he was president of
the Excited States, felt compelled to go on
record as a dedicated broccoli-loather.
What is this? Broccoli is better looking
than your average Idaho spud or gnarly old
yam. It certainly smells better than steamed
turnip or boiled cabbage. And as for taste, I'd
put it up against sauerkraut or parsnips any
dinner time.
Broccoli belongs to the mustard family, as
do a lot of greenery that we don't mind
chowing down on. Kohlrabi, kale, collards,
Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower —
they're all kissing cousins of broccoli — but
they don't get the bad press the way poor old
broccoli does.
Hard to figure why. Maybe it's the
unnaturally dark green colour that broccoli
boasts. Or maybe it's the fact that one of
Hollywood's more reptilian producers
answered to the name of Albert "Cubby"
Broccoli.
Whatever the reason, it's an unfair rap.
That 'unnaturally green colour' is mute
testament to the fact that broccoli is chock
full of chlorophyll — and that's not all that's
good about it. It's loaded with beta carotene,
a known cancer combatter. Broccoli is also
rich in something called isothiocyanates,
which experts say stimulate detoxifiers in the
human immune system.
As a matter of fact, researchers at Johns
Hopkins University in the U.S. are touting a
kind of super broccoli that they claim can
reduce the size of cancerous tumours.
There's nothing magical about the Johns
on the right train and in due course arrived at
Ostrava, where I was met by someone who
took me the remaining 20 kms to Frydek-
Mistek.
On the negative side I must report that my
efforts to use my limited vocabulary on the
train met with something less than
resounding success. I was able to pick out a
few words but only because they sounded
like Russian words.
If you wonder what Russian has to do with
all this, now is as good a time as any to
inform you that Czech and Russian are
members of the Slavonic group of languages
and many of the words are similar. On the
other hand, many are not and the Czechs
seem to take delight in using as many words
as possible from this second group. I was
little farther ahead. It was, I realized, going
to be a long and hard haul.
It was that, but any language is. Just as
those who have immigrated to Canada and
have had to struggle with the English
language and its oddities. Like English,
Czech has a few sounds that were created to
torment anybody trying to learn the
language. The worst is an 'r' which has an
accent mark over it and is pronounced more
or less as zsh. Music lovers will find it in the
name of the composer Dvorak. This is
actually pronounced Dvorzshak.
It would be fine if this 'r' were followed
without fail by a vowel but, sadly to say, it is
not. Seldom has my tongue been twisted in
such an impossible knot. However, I am
Hopkins' discovery — they've simply turned
their attention on broccoli sprouts rather than
the finished plant that most of us buy in the
supermarket. The scientists discovered that
broccoli sprouts are 30 to 50 times richer in
anti-cancer compounds than mature broccoli
heads.
Let me put it another way: if you wanted to
reduce your risk of contracting colon cancer
by eating broccoli heads you'd have to chew
your way through two pounds of the stuff
each week.
Even I don't like it that much.
On the other hand, you could obtain the
same benefits by eating just one ounce of
broccoli sprouts.
How do broccoli sprouts taste? Not bad,
apparently. Folks who've tried them say they
taste pretty much like your regular bean or
alfalfa sprouts with perhaps a bit of a
broccoli tang.
That's the good news. The bad news is that
it takes a long time for any new food to get
through the battery of government tests and
trials designed to ensure that it is suitable and
safe for human consumption. That means
you can't buy government-approved broccoli
sprouts for love or money anywhere in North
America right now — and the Johns Hopkins
scientists doubt that we'll see them in
supermarkets and corner stores until late
1998 at the earliest.
So until that happens, I guess that all of us
— you, me and Roy Blount Junior — will just
have to content ourselves by eating bales and
bales of regular, dark green broccoli.
Unloccoli.
gradually getting the hang of it: at least
people have stopped laughing ... almost!
Fortunately for me, Czech grammar is
frequently like Russian, and it is easy to
understand how they form their sentences,
not to mention the endings that they put on
adjectives and nouns. Any German-speaking
readers know all about that.
At any rate the other day I was able to send
off a fax to Canada, ask directions to the
nearest drug store, buy what I wanted there
and ask the secretary at the office to arrange
something for me.
All this was done entirely in Czech so I am
making progress. Even the Czechs I work
with think so!
In my struggles I can offer a bit of advice
to those who are currently trying to learn a
language, be they students or not. Don't get
frustrated. It is a long process. Keep away
from trying to memorize long lists of words
of any kind. That is self-defeating. Start with
short sentence patterns and work off them.
Laugh at your mistakes and confine your
study to a few minutes each day.
Spending hours at it is also self-defeating.
After all, your goal should be to achieve a
working knowledge of the language, not
become a literary giant.
The
short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
A fact of life
Personally, I have nothing against
alcohol. It has been a part of life for as long
as I can recall. My parents were weekend
drinkers, my siblings and I have always
included liquor as part of any social
function.
However, I also learned early that
moderation is the key and if it isn't you best
lock the door on this little pastime.
This is not to say that I haven't had my
moments. Few who imbibe from time to
time have not had occasions that they
wouldn't rather forget, or perhaps wish they
could remember. For this reason, I also have
to acknowledge that while I obviously have
nothing against drinking, society would be a
lot better off without it.
Just read the news or spend a day in court
if you have any doubts. In last week's
Kitchener-Waterloo Record was the story of
former Ontario energy minister Will
Ferguson's recent trail. He was sentenced to
a week in jail and two years probation after
beating up his estranged wife following a
night of drinking. The judge's remark? "If
you didn't drink, you wouldn't be here."
This past week in our district court, three
out of five there to enter guilty pleas had
been drinking at the time of their arrest.
(One of the other two was growing
marijuana so I wouldn't exactly say he is
exempt from this discussion.)
Court is a depressing beat to cover and it's
even worse when you consider that many of
the people standing before that judge are just
normal folk, people who would not be in
such a degrading position, if alcohol was not
a part of their life. They are people who
would never embarrass themselves while
sober, yet will make a public nuisance of
themselves when drunk. They would never
harm another individual when thinking
clearly, but maddened by alcohol find a
temper raging out of control. They would
never pick up a loaded gun, but will climb
behind the wheel of a car, point it and drive.
Whether or not you drink heavily,
moderately or seldom, you would be
ignorant to suggest that alcohol doesn't cause
problems. The Alcohol Policy Network
Priorities said that alcohol has already cost
Ontario taxpayers approximately $2.9 billion
a year. Alcohol use can be attributed to a
wide range of health and social issues, from
family violence and suicide to traffic
fatalities and injury.
For most Ontarians alcohol is the drug of
choice. A 1993 survey showed that 74.4 per
cent of us, 15 and older, had consumed
alcohol that year. A recent study indicated
that those who begin drinking before the age
of 15, and there are unfortunately many, are
more likely to have a problem as adults.
And according to representatives of the
Huron County Health Unit, the best way to
control consumption is to limit the
availability. I wonder. While I'm not saying I
agree with liquor stores being open on
Sundays, neither do I consider the alternative
a deterrant, because if someone wants a
drink, there are no shortages of places to get
one.
It's really an issue of responsibility isn't it?
The onus is not on the supplier, but on the
consumer. For better or worse, alcohol is a
part of life and unfortunately it will continue
to do its damage to some lives. The best the
rest of us can do is try to set a good example
by teaching our children to treat liquor with
respect and handle it responsibly.
Arthur Black