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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2018-03-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2018. PAGE 5. Other Views Life's too complicated for theories The death of theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author Stephen Hawking last week saw much written about his brilliant mind. To me, what came to mind was the importance of human differences. Prof. Hawking would have been considered a weird duck by most of the population, even before he was stricken by ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) at the age of 21 while still a student. He spent most of his life in a wheelchair, only able to communicate through a complicated computerized system that allowed him to click out the letters of words which were then pronounced by an electronic voice. He was unusual also because he lived more than 50 years with ALS when most people only survive a couple of years. Between the fact that he was an egghead and that his marvellous mind functioned within a twisted, shrunken body in a wheelchair, only able to speak in a robot-like electronic voice, many people probably wouldn't be comfortable around Hawking. There's some instinct in humans, perhaps a remnant of tribal days, that wants everybody to be like us and sometimes makes us uncomfortable when they aren't. This particularly affects us when we're around people who speak a different language or look different from us, but it works in other ways, too. As illustrated by the big societal divide in the U.S. these days, people who do physical work often distrust those who do intellectual work, and vice -versa. But the irony is that we're only able to live the rich lives we do because of the differences, rather than the similarities, among people. Take Hawking's remarkable life, for instance. It starts right off with his first wife Jane, who Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk married him despite the fact doctors had told him he would only live two more years at the most. He has admitted her love gave him a reason to live. She nursed him, helped find ways to release the ideas that would have been trapped in that marvellous mind and even gave him three children. She was different in her own way. She studied for a PhD in obscure medieval Spanish poetry. She was religious. Her husband, in his theories about the creation of the universe, denied the existence of God. He dreamed of finding one mathematical equation that would explain the way the world worked — but it wouldn't begin to touch the complexities of human interaction. Besides Jane, that mind was able to continue to function because of so many health professionals and caregivers. Then there were the mechanical inventors who created the electric wheelchairs that allowed him mobility and the electronic inventors who developed the technology that allowed him to speak and to write seven books, including his most famous, A Brief History of Time. He spent his life around prestigious universities like Oxford and Cambridge. While the attention at such institutions goes to the lordly professors and the students, none of this could function without the work of people with a wide variety of skills who are generally overlooked. From teaching and research assistants, to administrative staff to cooks working in the university cafeterias to the janitors, none of the high-profile work could be done without the efforts of people who can seem invisible. Or take Hawking's famous book which sold 10 million copies. Before it got to the hands of his adoring readers, it took the efforts of people working in bookstores, printers in printing plants and editors in the offices of the book publisher. His message could not have reached his readers without the labours of people who worked in the mills that made the paper and the crews that harvested the trees from which the paper was made. And none of these people, in all walks of life, could do their work if not for the people who grow the food that keeps them alive. We tend to celebrate certain people — movie stars, musicians and singers even rock star -like business leaders — but none of them could achieve their success without many less -visible people. (just watch all the unseen people listed in the end credits of any movie.) Some of these celebrities also, no doubt, benefitted from mothers who thought there was no greater mission in life than preparing their children for success (to the horror of many "progressives" who think that only women with careers outside the home are truly contributing to the world). Stephen Hawking spending a lifetime was celebrated for seeking an elegant equation to explain the creation of the universe but for most of us, his impact on our lives wasn't as great as the person who serves us coffee at a restaurant or delivers our mail. Explaining the messiness of human existence on this one tiny planet, which seems insignificant in the universe, is too complicated for easy theories. Brain freeze and cat burglar-trainin My daughter is currently the biggest enigma in my life and, given the amount of time I dedicate in my career to puzzling my way through documents written in legalese, that's saying something. Last week, for example, she discovered brain freeze. Ice cream and other frozen treats are pretty regular desserts in our house. I'd be surprised if a week went by with every member of my household healthy when we didn't indulge in some homemade French vanilla ice cream, banana popsicles, freezies or homemade sorbet. So I guess it's kind of a miracle that it took Mary Jane several months to experience brain freeze for the first time. How do I know she suffered the unbearable pain of your brain mixing up cold and pain receptors? Well we all know the face and the gestures that accompany ice cream's arguably worst side effect: the squinting of her eyes, the placing of her palm against her forehead and the inevitable half -cry, half -shout that always accompanies the pain. The difference between her suffering from it and me suffering from it (aside from the inevitable comment of "Denny should know better") is that, when dealing with someone whose grasp on the English language is still very much developing, it's impossible to explain it. I couldn't tell her to stop eating the ice cream momentarily and the headache would go away. I couldn't explain to her that the pain was just her body's way of saying she's eating cold food way too fast. There was nothing I could do except try and take the ice cream away from her. Why? Well as she squinted and put one hand on her forehead, she continued to eat her serving of French vanilla, undoubtedly Denny Scott Denny's Den lengthening the agony of her case of brain freeze. Unfortunately for me, she wouldn't allow me to take the dessert. She didn't know the ice cream was causing the pain and me trying to take it away temporarily just made matters worse. So, on the one hand, my daughter is a little person who can't be reasoned with because she just doesn't have the linguistic faculties yet. On the other hand, she's apparently a cat burglar in training and will likely grow up to be Catwoman. My wife and I were a little frustrated with some of the child -lock systems in our house and wanted to replace them with something a little less obtrusive and that wouldn't leave screw holes in our furniture. We turned to the internet and found these fantastic locks that use heavy-duty adhesives that can be taken off later with some simple chemicals. They were similar to other locks we had in our house in that they are pretty flexible, so we could use them in multiple locations. We pressed "order" and, through the magic of the internet, they were at the post office on Friday, installed on Friday night and encountered by Mary Jane for the first time Saturday morning. By Saturday at lunch, she had figured out how to unlock the "child -proof' safety latches we had placed throughout the house proving that, while she can't grasp the idea of brain freeze and ice cream, she can certainly puzzle out how to open pretty much any child lock we put in front of her. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't frustrated at the development, and, bless her heart, she certainly didn't do anything to lessen that feeling of frustration. As proud of her as I was for being so crafty as to figure out this one kind of child lock (thankfully some of the other ones are still out of her reach only literally), the fact that she then turned it into a game really got under my skin. Then, she expected me to clap for her every time she figured out how to close the lock. That development may have caused me shed a tear or two when she wasn't looking. So within the space of seven days, my daughter was simultaneously scarfing down ice cream through a severe brain freeze attack and then figuring out locks that said they were suitable for children up to three years old. These are the stories that are sticking with me though, and that's probably my favourite — no wait, second -favourite — no, actually third - favourite thing about being a dad. First is definitely the fact that she yells "Daddy" when she's coming to find me. Whether it's the morning and Ashleigh has gotten Mary Jane ready for breakfast or whether it's when I'm coming in the door from work, her yelling my name as she runs towards me will never fail to put a smile on my face. My second favourite is a photo my wife sent to me last week. Apparently, when Mary Jane is at home with Ashleigh, some time after the former wakes up from her afternoon nap, she will pull a chair over to the back door and wait for me to come home. So yeah, the stories about her brain freeze, opening child locks, biting into stress balls and smiling most of the time are definitely my third favourite thing about being a dad. Outta here Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense Jack Armstrong is a basketball analyst here in Canada. He does most of his work calling Toronto Raptors games. Most of us, however, are just waiting and hoping that we'll hear a "get that garbage outta here" during one of the games he calls. Though Armstrong has found a sportscaster home in Canada, he's from Brooklyn, so his catch phrase has that lovely Brooklyn tinge to it when a player blocks a shot. This column, however, is not about basketball. It's not even about Armstrong. It's about garbage... and the need to get it, for lack of a better term, outta here. When I once took my mom to see the Blue Man Group in Toronto, one of the bits joked about the basic principle of waste management, in that we in the western world simply throw our garbage into a bin or a bag and never give it another thought. It's then taken to the mythical land known only as "away" and we never have to see it again. I've learned a little bit more about waste management since I began working as a reporter 12 years ago. When you cover municipal council meetings, you learn about how much it costs to employ waste management services and just how delicate of a balance it can be. Well, that balance is being disrupted locally with the looming closure of the Mid -Huron Landfill on June 30; a deadline that sounded very far away for a long time, until it wasn't. Local municipalities that have used the landfill for years are now having to scramble. Municipalities like Central Huron, for example, are having to take their waste to a facility in Watford, nearly a two-hour drive from Clinton. Huron East has it even worse. Not only do they have to tackle the same problems that Central Huron and Goderich do, having to find a new landfill for their residents' waste, but they had an established waste collector quit on them with very little notice. The municipality had to send around its own public works staff to collect bags of garbage, set out at curbs at a time when the municipality still had waste collection, so they didn't sit there for days. Where the bags would go once they were picked up was still a mystery at the time, but municipal staff knew they couldn't leave them sitting at residents' curbs. No matter what, Huron East municipal staff knew that the illusion couldn't be shattered. The process is that garbage is packaged up and then put out. It then goes away and that's the end of the process as far as a resident is concerned. (Except there was that one time that my garbage and recycling went uncollected here in Blyth because crews "didn't see it" at the end of my lawn. Bringing a bag of garbage back into the garage after a day out in the summer heat is NOT how this process is supposed to work.) Anyway, what I'm getting at here is that the closure of the Mid -Huron Landfill is disrupting the natural order of things for most of us residents. It's pretty rare that we think of our waste after it's taken away, but now we have to. There are all kinds of consequences to the waste we create and one of them is that a landfill can't just take what we have to throw at it for decades without end. Several of our local municipalities have their backs against the wall and, while they've come up with interim measures, we've now had a look behind the curtain and we realize that it might not always be as easy (or as cheap) as putting a bag of garbage on your curb and it being gone a few hours later.