HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2004-09-30, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2004. PAGE 5.
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In praise of doing nothing
Lazybones, sleepin' in the sun
How you 'spea to get your
day's work done?
Never get your day's work done
Sleepin' in the noon day sun
.W
ell, the Dog Days of summer are
behind us, and that's a pity. It's the
only time of year when
hyperextended humans get to behave like,
well, dogs. Just lying around, soaking up the
rays. copping snoozes and scratching where it
itches.
The hot summer sun makes it hard to rush
about the way we do the rest of the year, like
Type-A Chicken Littles.
I love the Dog Days. They legitimize
laziness and I am a certified lazy guy.
Which would make me an endangered
species if scientists at the U.S. National
Institute of Mental Health had anything to say
about it. They've been tinkering with
monkeys' brains, trying to make them more,
you know, productive. They've discovered
that, by suppressing a particular gene they can
turn an ordinary, happy-go-lucky chimpanzee
into an obsessive, goal-oriented worry wart
that doesn't know how to relax.
"The monkeys become extreme
workaholics," • a researcher burbles, "as
evidenced by a low rate of errors performing
tasks, irrespective of how distant the reward
might be."
In other words, they've managed to take a
perfectly happy. well-adjusted animal and
transform it into a neurotic working stiff.
Great moments in science.
I'd be worried about the Mental Health
Institute boffins if I didn't happen to know that
they are micturating into the wind. They
haven't got a prayer of winning this war. There
O
ntario's new Progressive Conservative
leader. John Tory, needs healing
powers not available under medicare
and he might be better off using a family
counselor anyway.
Tory, a moderate who defeated strong right-
wing opposition, has acknowledged he has
differences in his party to heal, although he
downplayed them, saying merely he has to
undertake the "usual soothing of feelings"
after a race for leader and is not worried it will
fail to pull together.
In fact healing wounds after Conservative
leadership races has often been difficult and
sometimes impossible. Winners have punished
the vanquished, losers continued fighting and
undermined their party and many who would
be useful to it have been pushed out or quit.
Tory's main task is to keep on side the 46 per
cent who voted for Jim Flaherty, who in two
leadership campaigns proved articulate,
passionate and briinming with ideas, although,
they do not represent the majority mood these
days.
Flaherty, as a sitting, working MPP, has to be
angry at losing first to Ernie Eves, who was
resurrected after retiring from politics, and
Tory, who had never been elected to any public
office.
Leaders have sometimes mollified close
runners-up by appointing them deputy leader,
but (as an example of the back-stabbing after
leadership races) Flaherty already has been
deputy premier, , when Mike Harris was
premier.
to
took the post from Flaherty and gave it
to Elizabeth Witmer for reasons that include
wanting to reward her for throwing her
leadership support to him, and. avoiding an
appearance the right wing was too influential
are just too many lazy folks like me out there.
And not just on this side of the pond.. .A
recent Associated Press survey of 10 European
countries declared the laziest people in Europe
to be....the Germans!
According to the survey, Germans spend an
average of just seven hours a day on paid work
and housework combined. Mind you.
Norwegians take more time off — about 170
days per annum, which, if you do the math,
works out to damn near half the calendar year.
Sweden sounds like a sweet gig for a
lazybones too. The Swedes have just
introduced a program that will pay workers 70
per cent of their salary for staying home for a
year, enabling the jobless to "gain experience
by taking their place". The only proviso: the
stay-at-home worker cannot take a salaried
position somewhere else.
Oh, heck.
Even as I write, there's a conference being
held in a small Swiss village near the Italian
border. It is called the National Convention of
the Idle. The organizers promise a full
afternoon will be devoted to a debate on The
Virtues of Laziness.
Well, correction — not a full afternoon. There
will be a break from I p.m. to 3 p.m. for a
mandatory siesta.
. Perhaps delegates will take something to
read in their hammocks. They can choose from
in his government.
Tory similarly may shy from making
Flaherty deputy leader to avoid suggesting the
right wing has clout and reward someone else
and Flaherty is entitled to feel well liked by his
party but without any title to show for it.
Eves not surprisingly was undermined in his
short time as leader. Some defeated rivals
leaked reports top Tories felt he could not win
an election and the moment he lost demanded
he leave "and the sooner the better."
Harris was a rarity in avoiding such back-
stabbing after he won for leader, but the
moderate candidate he defeated, Dianne
Cunningham, had been an MPP only two years
and still had to find her feet. By then Harris
and his Common Sense Revolution had
become so popular with voters none in his
party could quibble.
Larry Grossman, leader before Harris, was.
undermined constantly by some who opposed
him for leader. Some of his MPPs refused to
vote with him to expand French-language
rights and protection for homosexuals and the
two bright lights he defeated for leader, Dennis
Timbrell and Alan Pope, dropped out of
elected politics.
Grossman may have deserved all he got.
because he undermined former premier Frank
Miller after he fell into minority government
one of two books on the international
bestseller list that are veritable paeans to
,laziness. How To Be Idle is a passionate screed
written by an indolent Brit name of Tom
Hodgkinson. _
Mister Hodgkinson argues that far from
being a bad thing, idleness is our key to
salvation. The economy, he says, should be
geared to freeing us from labour, not
harnessing us into 60 and 70-hour work weeks.
He wants us to "throttle back the vast
overheated engine of our industry, curtail its
exploitation of our natural resources, reduce its
output of waste and pollution, and provide
everyone with lives of increasing leisure."
Corinne Maier is even more radical. She's
the French author of Bonjour Paresse which
translates as 'Hello, Laziness'.
Mme Maier contends that it is every good
citizen's duty to slack off at work. In a chapter
daintily titled Business Culture, My Arse she
says most corporations are cesspools of
nepotism where people get ahead by who, not
what they know, so why not "spread gangrene
through the system from the inside?"
Not surprisingly, Mme Maier's book was not
well-received by the State Electric Utility she
works for.
The company has threatened her with
disciplinary action and summoned her to a
hearing to discuss her 'bad working habits'.
Regrettably her moment of truth has been
postponed several times because the necessary
personnel haven't been on hand to conduct the
hearing.
It's all those staff vacations. The average
French worker works about 300 hours less
each year than the average North American.
Sounds like Mme Maier's compatriots don't
really need to read Bonjour Paresse.
and opposition when the New Democrat Party
installed the Liberals.
Miller called Grossman and Timbrell, who
had run unsuccessfully against him for leader,
to his office and asked them give him a year to
show he could unite the party and meanwhile
stop organizing campaigns to succeed him, but
it did not stop the organizing.
William Davis, pictured these days as a saint
who helped Tory win, won a leadership race
narrowly over Allan Lawrence and made him
secretary for justice, where he shaped policy.
But he had no hand in the daily running of a
ministry, vanished from public view, quit and
ran federally.
Another of Davis's rivals for leader, Bert
Lawrence, made an unauthorized trip by
government plane to Cuba, supposedly to
drum up trade, and Davis fired hitn, although
other ministers committed worse gaffes and
survived.
John Robarts's main rival for leader was
Kelso Roberts, who led on the first ballot. But
Robarts demoted him from attorney general to
lands and forests minister and he disappeared
as if lost in the middle of Algonquin Par* and
retired.
Political leaders often are thought to be
brutal to their opponents, but they are not
much different to their friends.
Final Thought
Most of the important things in the world
have been accomplished by people who
have kepr-40 trying when there seemed to
be no hope at all.
— Dale Carnegie
Bonnie
Gropp
The short of it
An autumn ritual
Another fall fair is behind the hard-
working Brussels Agricultural
Society. And by most reports the
143rd was one to remember.
From Tuesday night's Mayor's Challenge, to
the midway and exhibits, there was an
excellent variety of features to this year's event
that brought words of praise from every corner.
Wednesday's parade of marching students and
school floats, dignitaries, sand boys and their
toys (aka men with tractors) was as usual a
highlight.
As most people's, my memories of my
hometown fair are vivid. The biggest thing,
however, actually happened before the event,
the hours and hours of rehearsal put into
preparing for the school parade. Out to the
schoolgrounds we trod, ("single file, no talking
please!") then "left, left, left, right, left" ad
nauseum. "Keep an arm's length from the
person in front of you and follow their feet."
No small step when you consider heads-up and
eyes front were also important.
However, we took it very seriously because
we knew that out of step generally meant in big
trouble. Trust me, that fall fair parade was no
laughing matter, but we enjoyed it, all the
while taking the seriousness to heart.
Not so these days. The little ones marching
Wednesday were in a formation often best
described as willy-nilly. There was chatter,
laughing, and heaven forbid, even yelling and
waving at mom or dad. The excitement
displayed was in keeping with the occasion and
a delight to watch.
Though somewhat bittersweet. It has been
many an autumn day since anyone hollered
"Hi, Mom", in my direction on fair day. I recall
the smiles. And when they were very small, the
frantic search to find them following the
opening ceremonies.
I remember them taking my hand to ru4i to
the midway, while I tugged them first towards
the exhibits. Recalling my own humble fall fair
victories of the past, for writing, printing,
essays and chocolate chip cookies, I enjoyed
seeing the accomplishments of not just my
own, but others' children.
So I would drag them into the arena, while
the midway lines grew longer. As it was when.
I was young, my kids were seldom surprised
by the outcome of many categories. Everyone
always knows the artist, the scientist or author.
But every once in awhile, amidst the
familiar, their names would show up and the
excitement rivalled that of any ride on a ferris
wheel or Scrambler.
It is unfortunate, therefore, that over the
years, the number of schoolwork and
children's exhibits has decreased.
Symptomatic of the times is the reality that
many living in small villages and towns these
days are not as much a part of community as in
the past. As well, having been a working,
single mom I know parents don't always have
the energy and time to help kids create entries,
get them tagged and to the fair on time, then be
around to pick them up.
Schools too don't seem to participate as they
once did. The exhibits for this year's junior and
school section at the fair have been called
disappointing as they were down noticeably.
No one really knows why, though I suspect this
too comes down to time.
For whatever reason, it's too bad. Our fall
fairs represent a way of life in rural
communities. They. are reminders of simpler
days and simpler pleasures. They create
memories that last a lifetime. Every part of a
community should do what it can to keep them
strong.
Old political wounds can linger