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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1952-07-31, Page 7ri! { 1• No Women Allowed For 1400 Years Though in a fast 'plane one can hop the Atlantic in a matter of hours, the Pacific in days, and sci- entists are now contemplating trips to the moon, there still remain cities that one cannot enter. The best known of these is Lh•assa, the capital of Tibet, a country which recently was closed to all foreigners. Perched some 16,000 feet above the sea; storm - raked Himalayan passes must be crossed to enter it, and the country is swept by freezing gales. Its great palace of Potala, tow- ering higher than the dome of St. Paul's, is one of the most impres- sive buildings in the world. Tibet has ever- been a country hostile to strangers and to new ideas, and when some years ago a body of young Tibetans, after studying en- gineering and science in Europe, returned home, they took back ma- chinery with the intention of set- ting it ttp for the common weal. But the lamas hurled the machinery over a precipice. In 1934, permission was actu- ally granted for the lighting of some government offices and streets by means of electricity. After por- ters had manhandled hundreds of tons of material over passes higher than Mt. Blanc, the cases were loaded on yaks and carted to Lhassa, where Mr. R. D. Ringang, a Tibetan win) studied in London, had topaint out all sacriligeous foreign lettering and substitute Tibetan characters. Mecca is another renowned holy city which is taboo to all but gen- uine believers. Richard Burton lift- ed the veil from Mecca, and after him a few intrepid Europeans. All went there in disguise, for they realized that if denounced a pain- ful death would follow rapidly. Hardwar, a town in Northern India, is not a safe place for the • European when the annual festival of the Hindus takes place. A special festival is held every twelve years, and at this period the city becomes exceedingly dangerous. Hardwar is the first town touched by the holy Ganges on its tortuous journey through the plains to the sea. Be- cause of this it has became sanc- tified. Holier far, and infinitely more inaccessible, is Kulu, high in the lofty, icy Himalayas, the goal of thousands of pilgrims. Once the mountains are reached there are no friendly caravanserial and food is scarce. Few, indeed, have the nerve to face the final, dreadful stretch—the terrible, sway- ing ropeway, stretching 2,500 feet from the edge of • one precipice to another. ' A hard wooden seat is suspended from the rope by a pulley. On this the pilgrim seats himself and is pushed off. The rude conveyance travels at such a speed that smoke issues from the rapidly beating rope. Sometimes a passenger loses Isis grip through sheer terror or dizziness and is dashed to pieces many thousands of feet below, in which case his sins are automati- cally washed away. If he survives the ordeal he is supposed to have acquired sufficient merit to prosper during the conning year! Then there is Ordain Padshah, second only in holiness to Mecca, which lies in the hinterland of Chinese Turkestan. It is a lost city in the desert, its nearest neigh- bours being the romantically sound- ing Kashgar and Yarkand. Kissing: Deadly Sin Ordain Padshah is another city in which the stranger would find it inconvenient to be discovered. It is as hot as a bakehouse, yet, during the month of Ramadan, when outsiders who are Believers are allowed in, no food must be eaten between dawn and sunset. To kiss a woman in such cir- cumstances is a deadly sin for which the most rigorous penances are enforced. Another very holy place, guarded most carefully against intruders, is Jebel Sinjar. It lies in a narrow, sunbaked defile near Ain Sefin, which once harboured a quarter of a trillion inhabitants—the last of the devil worshippers. Now, only 60,000, of Kurdish stock, remain. The holy place at Jebel Sinjar is the tomb of Sheik Adi, and those fortunate enough. to slip past the guardians may listen to the preach- ing of the `pins' (preachers who are also hermits), and shiver as the 'quchags' (musicians) clash their cymbals. They can watch fascinated the pantheistic rites and the fakirs who dance dizzily till blood oozes from their lips and noses. WHAT A BEAST "What a noble animal," said the nan as he gazed at the lion. "What strength 1 What magnificence 1 No ,'yonder every other animal quails tt the thought of him; no wonder tvery other animal admits him to to the king of beasts." "Confound that flea 1" said the ion, as he made one more attempt :o rid himself of his tormentor. • 'Hearse" to You—Nurse Viola Imobden, left, and Mrs. Rosemary Brown examine a unique safety reminder outside a big rubber plant. The 75 -year-old horse-drawn hearse serves as an un- usual billboard for the safety message. Prevention of accidents on the farm is a subject I have frequently written about in this column. Still, the warnings you heeded yesterday won't do you any good if you forget all about them today: so the fol- lowing taken from an article in "Canada's Health and Welfare" are well worth reading — and profit- ing by too! • * * Canada, with a population of roughly 14 million, has a farm population estimated at three and one - half million and this group represents a segment of the popu- lation which is extremely vulner- able to the effects of fire, accident or illness. On a farm, where illness or accident to one person may bring production to a standstill for many days, there is much truth in_ the slogan• "one out, everybody out." * *: If a store in a town or city burns there is generally some other place where the business can be carried on. When farm buildings burn, years of work and an irreplaceable • harvest often go up in the flicker of an eye. Illness, accident or death on the farm are often vastly more important in the production pic- ture than similar events in urban areas. * * And the farm, through the years, has been the site of a relatively high percentage of accidents. The accidents occur en• all parts of the farm—in the fields, the' barns and the home. Surveys of farm accidents indicate that falls, encounters with cutting or piercing instruments, and crush- ing account for 71% of the total of lost time through accidents. Al- most 27% of the time lost is due to accidents such as kicks from farm animals and misadventures with tractors and motors. Burns are responsible for the balance. • * * Unfortunately for farm produc- tion, statistics indicate that by far the majority of farm accidents hap- pen to people in the working years. In fact, 84% of all farm accidents happen to people between the ages of 14 and 64. Fifty-eight per cent of the accidents occur in the fields and 27% in the home or outbuild- ings, so naturally the provinces with the greatest acreage under cultivation in proportion to the farm population will have the high- er incidence. In other words, it seems that accidents are more apt to occur on large farms worked by a few people than on small, more heavily ataffecl farms. * * * Fire is the worst accident hazard, on most farms. Many farm homes are of highly inflammable construc- tion and employ heating methods that are relatively dangerous from the point of view of fire hazard, In addition, many farms still em- ploy methods of • illumination in home or barn that are potentially dangerous. A sizeable percentage of our farm homes have been con- structed by inexperienced, if will • Mg, labor, and often the chimneys and stovepipes could be considered a menace. * *+ * Another factor in farm fires i the type of wood burned in man.) stoves and ranges. Generally speaking, the wood is of whatever type happens tO be earsily deeeas- ible and It may often be of s. type That 'burns rapidly, eittlitiff Off large volumes of sparks 'rltktth nttty endanger wooden roofs or adjs cent buildings. * * * Considering the proportion of farm residents to the population as a whole, it is significant to note that during the years 1946 to' 1949 there were 321 rural hones destroy- ed by fire as compared to 370 urban dwellings. Thus an average of 80 farm homes per year are lost through fire. The death tolls during this four -yeas• period were 576 and 553 respectively. Fifty- five per cent of the victims in rural areas and 51% in urban areas were children. Farm homes are often particularly vulnerable to fire be- cause of their remoteness from ef- fective firefighting equipment and the lack of an adequate supply of water under pressure. Authorities are- agreed that edu- cation presents the only permanent solution to the dangers of farm accidents. To this end many volun- tary and government groups are directing a great deal of time and effort * * In the forefront of this campaign have been the large Canadian oil and farm ithplement companies. federal and provincial departments of agriculture and the Dominion Fire Commissioner's office. *: With an eye to the future, much of the accident prevention educa- tion in rural areas is now being directed at the children, the farm owners of tomorrow. Schools, ju- nior farmer clubs, boy scout and girl guide movements and many other groups have played a large part in the continuing plan for farm safety. It is to be hoped that the results will soon be reflected in a marked lowering of the acci- dent rates among Canada's rural population. Telephone Manners In spite of the nice educational program the Bell Telephone Com- pany conducts to train people in correct telephone procedure, far too many people, the nicest people to talk to under normal circumstances. act like complete louts when a tele- phone is placed in their hands. They scream into it or mumble into it, they slain the receiver down in your ear, they let it ring and ring before answering it, they get a wrong number and bang up on the poor unsuspecting guy who answer- ed the phone without so much as an apology. In short they do the very things they would find unbearable in others but never give their behaviour a second thought—just because it's a telephone they have in their hands. "Jazz will endure as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains." — (John Philip Sousa). IIN jfl1J LESS IT , By Rev. R. Barclay Warren, B.A.. B.D. The Beginning Of The Kingdom 1 Samuel 9:1-2; 10:24-27; 13:5-7; 19-22. Memory Selection: The Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake• because it hath pleased the Lord to make you his people. 1 Samuel 12:22 Unfortunately Samuel's sons were not as their father but "turn- ed aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment." This, together with the desires to be like the nations round about, prompted Israel to ask for a king. The desire to "follow the crowd" is strong in individuals and in nations. Samuel under God's direction made choice of Saul as king. He was very tall. The people were well -pleased. When he was pub- Iicly presented they shouted and t "God save the king." Other qualities being equal the man of greater stature will be the people's choice. Saul had some good quali- ties, too. He did not seek the of- fice; the office sought him. He felt unworthy of the honor for his family was the least of all the families of the small tribe of Ben- jamin. Moreover he got along with his father. He did not think it be- neath him to take orders, even to do the meaner chores, such as looking for the lost asses. 'When Saul and the servant were delayed in their search, Saul became con- cerned because he feared his fa- ther would now be worrying more about them than about the animals. When the servant suggested that since they were near Ramah they night visit the prophet Samuel, Saul was eager to avail himself of this privilege. It is always a com- mendable thing in the young that they wish to consult the wise and the good. Saul was thoughtful, too, in that he hesitated to visit the prophet without a person, a token of respect. But most impor- tant of all in his 'preparation for this office was the fact that after he was anointed by Samuel, "God gave him another heart—and the Spirit of God cane upon him." God's sanction was upon his leader- ship. With such a promising be- ginning it is sad to think that the subject of our next lesson is "The Tragedy of Saul." Chickens See Red It is believed that turkeys are blind to certain other colours. Experiments with chickens some years ago established that they scarcely noticed violet, indigo and blue. In a dark room with seven colours projected on the floor, a scientist found that the fowls at once picked up grains of rice lying in tine red, yellow, orange and green rays, but paid no attention to the food that was coloured blue. His theory was that chickens and all birds that fly by day see the world as it would appear to us if we wore glasses with yellow -red lenses 1 Tr : veiling By Train In Modern India Jest Like "Good Old Days" Of Jesse James By TOM A, COLLEN Train travel in India has all the thrills of riding an old mail train into Jesse James' territory with the guards deep in a poker game in the caboose. Not only are Indian trains the most crowded in the world. They also bold what is probably the world's record for crime commit- ted on railways, To get an idea of the over- crowding on Indian trains, double the number of passengers who ride the U. S. rails and reduce the number of U. S. passenger coaches by 40 per cent. The staggering total of 1,307,000,000 passengers, or the equivalent of more than half the world's population, rode Indian trains last year. The crines these passengers faced ranged from murder, with robbery as its motive, to the filch- ing of light bulbs from third class compartments, a seemingly uni- versal practice. Although the chances of a train being wrecked by sabotage are fairly remote (only 23 out of 229 attempts at train -wrecking were successful last year), the possibili- ty that it may hit a cow is a live one; it accounted for 5176 accid- ents, or 23 per cent of last year's total. Inasmuch as almost all robberies occur in first and second class coaches, these upper classes of travel h a v e become increasingly unpopular. No feudal baron ever secured the gates of his castle with more care than that exercised by the average first class passenger in bolting the doors and windows of his compartment before retiring at night. The windows, themselves, are protected by iron bars, giving the coach the appearance of a prison car used in hauling chain gangs. Despite these precautions, there were 849 train robberies and theftfs last April alone. Most• exponents of fair -play felt that things had gone a bit too fan" when an ex -cabinet minister was slugged and robbed on the Bom- bay -Madras Mail recently by pair of thugs, one of whom watt armed with "a rusty dagger," ac- cording to press reports, His assailants gained entry bar using a slim youth who slipped Ma head and shoulders into the nary row space between window bars, In the minor leagues, traveling without a ticket is a sport which has a sizeable portion of the popu- lation as enthusiastic adherents: Nearly eight million dead -beats were detected riding on trains last year, and the fares and penalties collected from then amounted to $4,000,0000. Recently the train in which l: was traveling to Calcutta sudden- ly stopped near the outskirts of that city as the result of some- one pulling the emergency alarrn. signal (penalty for misuse: 50'ru- pees, or $10). About a hundred villagers, or "upcountry" people, as they are called, each loaded, with a la+•ge bundle, got out of the third-class carriages. "What's up:" I asked a fellow passenger. "S muggier s," he explained. "They're snuggling rice from Burdwan to Calcutta." Food grains being "frozen" in most parts of India, it is unlaw- ful to transport then front one district to another. Another time; our train was stopped by police who searched the comportment in which I was sitting without success. When the police had left the .tilansnun ur pausaas s.a2uassed high spirits. "They are laughing," a passenger told me, "because the bags of rice are in the women's compartment, and the police dare not enter it." Everyone Has Fun When Gabriel Plays His Piano by JACK P. GABRIEL Pianist Bernard Gabriel is hav- ing the fun of discovering that while a first experiment can be a flop, the next try can succeed. He's finally made the grade with his novel "Piano Recital of Tomor- row." "Audiences have been getting the same routine treatment at concerts • for so long that they are apath- etic," the dark-haired composer - teacher says. "I thought I'd try something new." Gabriel's mysterious announce- ment of a "different" recital stir - ed up a lot of interest, but it didn't work out. "I was held up more than half an hour in starting," Gabriel ex- plains, "and that didn't put the audience in a mood to be recep- tive to anything." The stage was set, complete with comfortable chairs and sofas and embellished with lamp s, to look like a comfortable living room in a home, Some of the pianist's personal friends sat on the stage. Between numbers he joined then, leaving the piano but not the stage for a chat or a cigarette.. But the audience, accustomed to musicians deserting the stage for a few minutes which gave them time to chat, sat in silence, won- dering what he would do next. When he merely returned to the piano. they shared a sense of frus- tration. It was not enough of a novelty and critics denounced the attempt. "I gave up the idea of trying to change anything," Gabriel says now. "It seemed the public want- ed to do exactly what they have always done, but what the box office indicated they had wearied of." A few days later, at a+ session with a pupil, Gabriel had an inspi- ration. "I began to get other ideas about my attempted change in concert forin," he said, "It occur- red to me too late that 1 had miss- ed the boat about a lot of things that would have made my concert more interesting." Gabriel made a brave decision: if he tried it again, and the at- tempt flopped once more, it would seriously damage his reputation for further concerts. Once more announcements were sent out for a "Piano Recital of Tomorrow," and when an audi- ence had assembled they again found the stage decorated like a roots. But this time they were part of the act. Before the concert began, Gab - BERNARD GABRIEL: He's ready to break the ice 'or others, riel appeared in a comfortable smoking jacket he'd had made to add to the complete informality. Briefly he explained his purpose. "I told then what selections I had prepared for my first group and asked them which they would pre- fer to hear," he explained. The response was hearty and Gabriel obliged with the most popular re- quests. Between group., he again sat onstage with his visitors, but chat- ted also with those who bad paid to hear the music. The audience •participation did it. Everyone had a good time, sharing the feeling of being guests at a party where. the host was most at- tentive, and this time, the Denver - born pianist knew his gamble had won. He's not going to settle for hav- ing once been a pioneer. Bernard Gabriel intends to snake further progress, thus breaking the ice for other's. "It's extremely difficult for be- ginners to get engagements these days," he s a y s, "and I have to scheme to group several together, pianists, singers and other musi- cians, and give my Concert of To- morrow in that manner." • By Arthur Pointer