HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2000-12-20, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2000. PAGE 5.
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When eye am a camera
There were some pretty ugly photos in
the National Post this week. Not
photos, actually - stills from a videotape
shot by a kid in a B.C. schoolyard. They
showed another kid getting stomped by a
schoolmate.
It was fairly disturbing fare to take in with
your morning coffee and bagel. Even more
disturbing was the reaction of the school board.
“This was a fight, probably not any different
from any other fight that takes place in a
secondary schoolyard” said a spokesman. “The
component that makes this so outrageous is the
fact that someone would stand and videotape a
fight and not help the person being
victimized.”
Really? There were dozens of kids standing
around. Is the fact that one of them had a
camera and used it really more heinous than
the fact that a kid got stomped while the other
classmates oohed and aahed? Does this make a
TV news cameraman more culpable than the
violence he films?
A few weeks back the news was full of
images of teenagers sniffing bags of gasoline
and giggling woozily on the outskirts of a
remote town in Labrador. It was easy to forget
that obviously some adults - the TV crew at
least - were in a position to step in and do
something to help those kids.
Ideas on agriculture and globalization
Like many another industry, agriculture
finds itself once again at something of a
crossroads and none of the choices are
easy. A farmer can opt to continue his current
production or make marginal adjustments or
join the movement toward globalization. All of
them entail risks while benefits can be small or
non-existent.
On the other hand there is always the
possibility of increased profits and profits are
just as important in agriculture as in any other
industry.
But for many farmers, profits are becoming
increasingly harder to come by. While input
costs seem to be constantly on the rise, average
income in the industry has remained noticeably
fiat. The fact that two main competitors, the
European Common Market and the United
States, subsidize their farm community, in
spite of what they may claim, to a higher
degree than does Canada, only serves to make
a bad situation worse. A recent report showed
that subsidies in the grains and oilseed sectors
are about twice as high per acre in the U.S. as
they are here.
Even in Canada they vary with farmers in
Quebec getting about twice as much as they do
in Ontario.
A few years ago I had a long chat with a
tobacco farmer who had opted for change and
had decided to devote part of his production to
ginseng. There would be nothing but expenses
for three years but the chances after that were
good that he could make a considerable profit.
In the meantime he would stili grow some
, tobacco and hope that hail or frost did not wipe
out his crop nor would the price fall below his
break-even point.
He succeeded. By getting in at the start of the
international ginseng market, he was able to
make considerable profit while stili holding his
own on tobacco. He has, however, encountered
a problem that besets many industries. News of
initial profits attract other growers and the law
of supply and demand forces the price down
just as still others, faced with the high start-up
costs, are entering the market.
Arthur
Black
Should they intervene? I dunno - shouldn’t
someone? Wouldn’t helping a brain-fogged
child be serving a higher purpose than feeding
a 30-second video clip to the Six O’clock
News?
I remember another fight scene I saw long
ago in a film called Mondo Cane.
It was a tabloid-ish documentary of footage
from around the world guaranteed' to bum
and/or gross out the audience. One of the
segments showed a random street fight in, I
think Berlin — just an average Joe getting
punched out by another, slightly abler average
Joe on an average drunken downtown Saturday
night. What made the segment memorable was
how it captured the way a street fight really
goes down - the rock-in-your-throat fear “the
uncertainty” the almost comic awkwardness.
None of the stylized, choreographed
violence of a Bruce Willis movie or a WWF
bout. These guys wheezed and blinked and
skidded and pawed. Just the way real guys in
Raymond
Canon
The
International
Scene
All is no longer wine and roses!
Since a single article about the agriculture
industry cannot come close to examining all
the options, I would like to take a look at the
globalization that has affected just about every
industry including agriculture. While any such
trend has both supporters and detractors, it
remains a hard fact of economic life. For
openers it means that it becomes increasingly
difficult to protect domestic agriculture
producers or such organizations as the long
standing marketing boards.
With the economies of scale that have
accompanied globalization, many individual
farmers are becoming an endangered species,
with pressure to sell out or engage only in
marginal farming with a major income source
being a job in the nearest urban area.
Some small farmers are able to survive only
by contracting out’their entire crop to a foreign
buyer and becoming part, albeit a small one, of
these economies of scale.
This is, to a considerable degree, what the
ginseng farmers have done but, not guided by
the marketing boards that have dominated
other agricultural sectors, these same farmers
are subject to the whims of the market which is
essentially foreign i.e. mainly Chinese.
For some farmers a new threat is on the
Final Thought
Instill the love of you into all the world,
for a good character is what is remembered.
- The Teaching for Merikare
real fights do.
I remember another, more memorable scene
from Mondo Cane. It showed tortoises
slithering through the sand dunes of
some tropical atoll in the South Pacific.
The documentary claimed the tortoises
were being poisoned - mutated — by atomic
bomb tests that were then taking place on the
atoll.
The camera followed one tortoise as it
staggered across the sand, slewed down a
dune, lost its balance and fell on its back, legs
clawing helplessly under the tropical sun. The
camera recorded the tortoise’s death throes, the
scrabbling legs moving slower and slower,
then stopping.
I thought it was a powerful piece of film.
My girlfriend at the time thought it was a
crock.
“Why didn’t the &*%#*+% just put down
his camera, go up and turn the tortoise over?”
she asked.
“C’mon!” I said. “They’re trying to get the
attention of the world here.”
“Besides, there are thousands — maybe tens
of thousands of creatures affected by the
nuclear tests. You think flipping over one
tortoise is going to make any difference?^___
And my girlfriend said, “It would to the
tortoise.”
horizon. A frequent complaint of many Third
World countries is that the industrial nations
such as Canada are so busy protecting their
farmers that it is next to impossible for these
poorer nations to sell their crops on world
markets and in so doifig alleviate their
horrendous poverty problem. With poverty
now a more frequent topic in such
organizations as the WTO, the Wofid Bank and
the IMF, the richer nations will undoubtedly be
forced to lower their barriers somewhat.
Finally agriculture will probably be
paramount at the next round of negotiations of
the World Trade Organization. Watch the
Canadian marketing boards, for openers,
become a prime target for other nations
especially the United States, which has already
been quite vocal for some time in its criticism
of such boards.
The fact that some American farmers would
like to have such boards for the sale of their
crops is irrelevant as far as the U.S.
government is concerned.
Farmers are by nature resilient; in such an
industry they have to be. They are going to
need all their resilience in the first decade of
the new millennium. Soon I will discuss
farmers in Poland who wish they were in such
good shape as their Canadian counterparts.
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Bonnie
Gropp
The short of it
It’s all good
I have done my best, but something
happened in our life a year ago that I just
really need to gush about. And the
timing is perfect. After all, Christmas is the
most sentimental time of the year, isn’t it?
This past weekend our grandson celebrated
his first birthday. It has for our family been a
year made much different by- his presence
admittedly, but also much better.
For anyone who is already a grandparent,
you can probably stop reading because
nothing I say from this point on will come as
any surprise to you. For those of you who have
not yet had the pleasure, let me tell you a little
bit about what it’s meant.
For several years, the status quo was being
fairly well maintained at the Gropp home.
Though certainly with four kids one could
never say life had become predictable, we
seemed to be in a holding pattern. Always
eventful around our place, the events seldom
seemed to be of celebration, however. Instead
they were occasionally too much, often the
same, but usually just too much the same.
Entering middle age, or at least dangerously
close, the word stagnation popped into my
head with increasing frequency.
And then, we learned that our son was about
to become a father. Mitchell arrived just over a
week before Christmas 1999, four days after
his daddy’s birthday and one day before his
aunt’s. He was, of course, loved on sight for
his softness, his scent, his dependency.
In the 12 months since, however, the light he
has brought to our lives just keeps getting
brighter. Certainly his disposition has a small
bit to do with his appeal. A more placid angel
I have never known. Undemanding, he goes
with the flow.
And cuie? Thu child has a smile that
enlivens, and cheeks to die for.
But, the big thing I’ve noticed about being a
grandparent is Low much simpler it is than
parenting. It’s like someone else doing the
work and you getting fhe paycheque. The
nighttime feedings, the crankiness aren’t my
concern, while cuddling and kisses are
definitely Grandma’s domain.
Cliche, it may be, but so, so true - if I had
known grandchildren were so much fun I
would have had them first. The mom who
always had other tasks to finish when her own
kids were little, suddenly as Grandma wants
nothing better than to sit and play. Oh, wait,
there is nothing better.
Yet, even more importantly, Mitchell has
turned around our routine household. He is a
much-welcomed freshness in lives, become
just a tad stale. He reminds that life never
stagnates, but is ever-changing. His
innocence, his charisma have charmed the
cynical. His playfulness makes us young, his
ingenuousness awakens the child in us. What a
treat it is to once again look at things with an
infant’s wonder. Santa Claus, a new toy, even
our dog are marvels to behold.
Babies also have a way of making
everything better and for these jaded
grandparents such assistance is appreciated. It
doesn’t matter how tough the week has been,
how many challenges came our way, how
many times we wanted to pack it in and move
to Bora Bora, when that beautiful little boy
comes through the door all is very definitely
alright.
And when that smile beams just for me, and
those arms reach out for a hug, there is no life
I’d rather be living, no place I’d rather be. It’s