The Citizen, 2004-11-04, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2004. PAGE 5.
Other Views
Dear Diary: you make me sick
I never travel without my diary.
One should always have something
sensational to read on the train.
— Oscar Wilde
Sbows you how much difference a little
talent can make. I've been keeping
diaries for decades and the only time I
re-read them is when I'm having trouble
falling asleep. My diaries are about as
sensational as the Yellow Pages for .Minot,
North Dakota.
The trouble with diaries (well, with my
diaries) is that they too quickly degenerate into
a whiney litany of poor-little-me complaints
and fatuous observations. Example? Here's an
entry from my diary for Friday, October 18,
1988:
"3:58 p.m. Cloudy. _mild. Waiting for the
train in Union Station. Lost a pair of pigskin
gloves this week, but found my favourite pair
of reading glasses. Good trade. Besides. I
found the gloves on a bus a year ago and they
weren't that warm anyway..."
Trees died for this????
I guess if I had to defend my diarizing I'd
argue that it gives me something to do in
doctor's waiting rooms. coffee shops and
airport lounges while other people are reading
Harlequins, playing solitaire, filling in
crosswords...or Having a Life.
Besides, it's supposed to be good for you,
keeping a diary. Creative writing courses
always stress the importance of carrying a
notebook and jotting down your impressions.
Motivational speakers recommend it as a daily
habit.
And a lot of famous people have followed
that advice. The Diary of Bridget Jones
became a movie.
Virginia Woolf's diaries made her famous
and Mae West's made her rich ("Keep a diary,"
said the legendary Hollywood golddigger,
The next big issue in Ontario politics will
he "nannygate" — a charge the Liberal
government is intent on running
residents' lives from the cradle to the grave.
Premier Dalton McGuinty's government is
the most interventionist of recent times,
although many will defend its intrusions as in
the public interest.
Government is telling children what to eat,
ordering elementary schools to remove junk
food from vending machines and replace it
with healthier snacks such as milk, fruit juices,
granola bars, cheese and yogurt.
Doctors prescribed this long ago and it is
unthinkable that most parents would object.
But a Progressive Conservative MF;13 grumbled
the province is taking over the role of official
parent for all children and saying parents
cannot be trusted.
Some will see it even as dictatorship and
have ammunition in a nine-year-old girl being
sent home for buying a bag of potato chips
from a machine not yet emptied of junk food.
The province has decreed elementary
students will have 20 minutes physical
exercises daily starting next fall, after many
years in which phys-ed has been downgraded
in schools, and announced it, expecting
criticism, by declaring anyone who quibbled
must- come from the last century.
The Liberals made a half-hearted attempt to
regulate what adults can eat by ordering
restaurants to freeze raw fish before serving it
as sushi to kill potential parasites, but put this
on hold to look for other solutions after
restaurants protested.
This gave a Tory an opening to scoff the
Liberals have become the Big Brothers of
culinary taste and have no place in the kitchens
"and some day your diary will keep you"). And
we would know a lot less of 17th century life
in London if an obscure secretary to the British
Admiralty named Samuel Pepys hadn't
scratched out daily observations in his diary.
Nevertheless, Doctor Elaine Duncan says
they were all wasting their time and probably
harming themselves to boOt. Dr. Duncan, who
is with Glasgow's Caledonian University,
conducted a study of 94 students who kept
diaries and compared their psychological
profiles with 41 students who didn't.
"We expected diary-keepers to have some
benefit, or be the same," she said, "but they
were the worst off."
Doctor Duncan speculated that by constantly
writing about the negative events of their lives,
diarists may never get over those events,
resulting in various health disorders.
The doctor's conclusion: "It's probably
better not to get caught in a ruminative.
repetitive cycle. You are probably much better
off if you don't write anything at all."
Not that the Glasgow study will dampen the
enthusiasm for diary keeping. In fact, thanks to
computers and the internee, I reckon we're well
into the Renaissance Era for diaries.
You know about Blogging? That's where
people type their thoughts, opinions,
observations and all-round blatherings into a
computer and send it out over the internee for
the delectation of the rest of us. Blogs are
basically cyber diaries.
of the nation.
The Liberals are telling residents what dogs
they can own. They have introduced legislation
to ban pitbulls, which have attacked many and
caused horrific injuries.
Most people will support the ban, but a
substantial minority point to problems — that it
is difficult to determine what is a pitbull
because of cross-breeding, that the ban will not
protect against other aggressive breeds and
that it is more effective to curb owners than
single out one breed.
Tories also felt any action should be left to
municipalities, who know their own needs and
whose needs vary.
The Liberals have designated a large area of
south-central Ontario as permanent greenbelt,
which benefits society, but many owners will
be livid they are not allowed to build on their
land.
The Liberals would have extended the eight
per cent provincial sales tax to meals costing
under $4 on the ground they are fast food and
unhealthy, but backed off when opponents
insisted this was merely a tax grab.
The Liberals have been barred from stepping
into some areas only because the law
prevented it.
They promised to roll back toll increases on
Are they popular?
Experts estimate that there are five million
blogs on the internet and the number is
mushrooming by the hour.
Blogs are so popular that Nokia, the world's
largest mobile phone supplier, is bringing out a
new cellphone to cater to the emerging market.
It's called the Nokia 7610. It's about the size of
a...well, diary, but it doesn't have pages. It has
a large screen that can display photographs and
even videos Which bloggers can instantly
'send' to all and sundry — via their cellphones.
It's got a name, this latest internet wrinkle —
it's called 'life caching'. A spokesman for
Nokia describes it as "a new communications
modality where people share their experiences
on the web and people who care about them
read about it."
I call it...kind of sad. Researchers are just
beginning to twig to the ironic catch 22 of our
love affair with the internet — the fact that even
as it facilitates communication, productivity
and information access, it withers face-to-face
connection with family, friends, neighbours
and the Korean guy who runs the corner store.
Sure, I can bank on-line now, but it means I
no longer get to hear about Alice the teller's
kids, or look at the local art work in the Credit
Union lobby.
Reminds me of something I saw the other
day walking past a Toronto cyber café full of
people, all hunched over their individual
keyboards, many of them tapping out their
hopes and dreams, their fears and wonderings
to...nobody, really. To a void.
I wish I'd had the presence of mind to offer
them an even more revolutionary
'communications modality'. I wish I'd
suggested they exit their programs, shut down
their computers, turn to the person next to
them and say "Hi."
privately-owned Hwy. 407 .north of Toronto,
which drivers naturally would have welcomed,
but an agreement signed when the fqrmer Tory
government sold the highway prevented it.
The Liberals said they would stop building
development on the picturesque Oak Ridges
Moraine even after the first bricks had been
laid, but the threat of legal penalties prevented
them.
Both attempted interventions were popular,
but gave the Liberals a reputation for panting
to intervene even when the law forbids it.
The Liberals are aiming to ban smoking
eventually in almost all indoor public places,
as two other provinces already have done, and
a large number of residents are huffing and
puffing about it.
Governments have been hurt when the
public thought they intervened on too many
issues, an example being Premier William
Davis's moderate Tory government in the
1970s.
It introduced so many changes, including
setting up regional governments few
clamoured for, it virtually shut down
innovations for several years.
The Tories so far have made onlyscattered
criticisms of some of McGuinty's
interventions, but it will not be long before
they gather them together and launch an attack
on the theme he is meddling too much in
residents' lives and there are some who will
agree with them.
Final Thought
All a man can betray is his conscience.
— Joseph Conrad
Bonnie
Gropp
The short of it
What's real
W hat if someone right ow asked you
what the most important thing is to
you? What in this life brings
you the greatest pleasure, satisfaction and/or
joy?
It's an easy answer for me. My family and
my home are everything. I enjoy my job, but I
have never been one to feel that anything else
was more important. I even knew early on that
whatever I did for a living, would have to work
in balance with my homelife,
_ That I have found interesting work that does
is just one more blessing.
One of the greatest personal challenges I've
had to face in recent years, though, is
recognizing that dreams often aren't meant to
be. Because of the importance and value I have
placed on family, it hasn't always been easy to
accept that life as I would like to know it
wasn't going to happen.
To say my early dream was for a white-
picket fence existence wottld be an
exaggeration. But I will admit to something
close. The world- I saw for myself at this age
was one of 9-5, Monday to Friday jobs for my
hubbie and myself. Our four children would be
happily and safely ensconced in cute little
houses, all, if not just around the corner, then
conveniently close by. Grandchildren, plenty
of them, would drop by daily.
As our children grew I could see that dream
altering. The kids began to talk about
education and careers that would take them
away. The idea of nesting near home was
fading as surely as youth, yet I applauded,
envied and surprisingly even encouraged their
independence and desires.
So today my reality is four children building
their lives in centres quite distant from home.
Regular phone calls and e-mails replace the
pop-in visits. It is not what I once expected,
but it is, Lam proud to say, finally accepted. I
am happy that they are happy.
Happier still, however, when for reasons
planned or not I find myself in the company of
one or all of them. I may have adapted to a life
separated from them, but I sure am thrilled
when reasons to spend time together present
themselves. The distance dividing us, makes
those occasions so much more important.
This past weekend, my family, that of
parents, siblings, nieces and nephews enjoyed
our annual get-together. While it's lovely to be
with everyone, for me the big excitement is
that my kids will be there, flesh and blood. The
only difficulty is trying to fit in enough quality
time with everybody to make it worthwhile. It
feels like a minute or two with one, then
you're on to the other. Plus in big family
gatherings there's the downfall of having to
share them with everybody else.
Still, though phone calls and e-mails are a
great way to stay in touch, it's nice to be able
to sit together and chat in a festive atmosphere,
to catch up on things, important and not so.
And to get that hug that sustains you,
somehow, until the next.
Obviously my brood remains one of 'the
most important things in my life. Yet, I now
take enjoyment from their independence and
accomplishments. With pleasure this weekend
I heard about adventures, with objectivity,
challenges.
That I miss their faces is absolute, but softer
than I once imagined. Distance may not have
been the dream, but it really can't change
what's real, what's important.
McGuinty government intrudes