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The Citizen, 2008-08-28, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2008. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Where friends meet I f earning a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out. – George Brett Poor old George. He was a great baseball player and an occasionally funny guy, but he just didn’t get it. Life really isn’t just about winning or losing. Lots of other famous folks whose name begins with ‘B’ have figured that out – Bono, Warren Buffet, Brangelina and Bill (as in Gates). What do they have in common? They all had tons of dough and they all gave tons of it away. If you hope to croak with a smile on your face, it’s the second part of the last sentence that really matters. There is no real joy in Getting Stuff – and that grim truth applies equally to billionaires and bag ladies. Whether you’re piling up coffers of Krugerrands or shopping carts full of plastic bags, a simple truth applies: a human being can only use so much crap in a lifetime. The real happiness comes from giving it away – there’s even scientific proof of that. Researchers at the University of British Columbia targeted a group of youths and ‘gifted’ them with cash. Half the group got to keep the money; the other half was directed to pass it along to others. The second group reported significantly higher feelings of satisfaction and happiness than the first. A follow-up survey of 600 adults showed that rates of happiness increased proportionally with the amount of money people gave away, not the amount they had earned or spent on themselves. There is however, another ‘B’ word that effectively cuts a lot of us potential players out of the philanthropy game. That word is ‘broke’. Most of us can’t indulge in the Generosity Sweepstakes because we’re, ahem, lacking in financial fluidity. Skint. Busted. Well there’s good news for us, too. Turns out you don’t need to hand out cash to feel good. Paying compliments is just as rewarding as doling out dollars. Japanese researchers at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Okazaki employed a brain scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging to track a group of 19 healthy people through a series of experiments. It was a complicated setup, but basically it confirmed that the human brain does not discriminate between material and immaterial rewards. “We found that different kinds of rewards – a good reputation versus money – are biologically coded by the same neural structure, the striatum,” said Dr. Norihiro Sadato, chief researcher. Simply put, as far as your brain is concerned, praise is just as good as cash. So is simple kindness. And kindness comes from a well that never goes dry – providing you prime it. There was a baseball game at Western Oregon University recently that would have made George Brett smile, if not laugh out loud. The Western Women’s softball team was playing a crew from Central Washington and Sara Tucholsky was in the batter’s box. She took a couple of strikes, then caught a sweet pitch that came right over the plate, belt-high. She swung. She connected. The ball sailed up, up and over the centrefield fence. Sara was ecstatic. It was her first homerun ever. She started to run the bases, but in her excitement she failed to touch first. Her teammates shouted, she lurched to a stop on the baseline so harshly that her legs buckled and she fell to the ground. She tore a ligament. She couldn’t walk at all. Baseball rules are very straightforward. If Sara Tucholsky couldn’t make it around the bases then the homerun was cancelled. Under the rules her teammates were forbidden to help her. Tough. But rules are rules. Unless…. Mallory Holtman, the pitcher for Central Washington, approached the umpire. What if the injured batter was carried around the bases by members of the opposing team? Nothing in the rule book about that. The pitcher and the shortstop from the other side picked Sara up and carried her around all the bases. The action cost the Central Washington team the game. When they touched home plate Sara was crying, but not from a sore knee. “They didn’t even know it was my first homerun,” she said. “It just says a lot about them.” Indeed it does. George Brett, please copy. Arthur Black Other Views It’s how you play the game Ontarians have been given a timely reminder why they dislike Conrad Black, after the complex, difficult-to- understand court hearings that found he defrauded investors of non-competition payments and obstructed justice resulted in him being sent him to jail for 6 1/2 years in the United States. It left many heads spinning. The reminder was in the form of an announcement by the Quebec-based grocery chain Metro Inc. that it will rename the remaining Dominion stores and other stores it has bought, including the former A and P and Ultra stores, so all will be known as Metro stores. The new owner said this will help it market its chain better by having a consistent store name and selling the same products throughout all its stores through the same flyers, and provide huge savings. Marketing experts added the Dominion name had been a “great brand,” but was no longer as relevant. Dominion Stores, founded in 1919, was commonly considered before Black bought it as Ontario’s leading grocery chain. People felt when they shopped there, they might have to pay a bit more, but were getting about the top in quality and service. Black sold some of its stores, fired many employees and petulantly charged those who protested were stealing millions of dollars worth of its inventory a year anyway, which further hurt the stores’ image and turned off some potential shoppers. Black had no evidence to support this and the Liberal labour minister, Bill Wrye, pointed this out and demanded he apologize for besmirching all Dominion workers. A spokesperson for Black eventually and grudgingly conceded that, while some employees abused their positions, the majority carried out their duties honestly and responsibly. Black had an even nastier encounter with the New Democrat leader, later premier, Bob Rae, after he took money from a pension fund holding it for Dominion’s employees. Rae called Black “a symbol of bloated capitalism at its worst” and Black, who never was outdone in extravagant language, countered Rae was a coward, liar and “symbol of swinish, socialist demagoguery” and, if Rae wanted to sue him, he would come over and pick up the writ. Rae won this one, because after a protracted court battle, Black’s company agreed to return $44 million to the pension fund to settle the dispute. When Rae was on the verge of winning an election in 1990, Black warned that if Ontario elected him, the financier and his investment millions would be on a plane out of Ontario before he could be sworn in. After Rae won, Black warned Ontario would “pay dearly for its mindless submission” to him and he would not invest a dime in Ontario as long as it governed. But he found he made too much profit in Ontario to leave and stayed in the same office here until recently, when a security video caught him removing files and led to the charge of obstructing justice. Few have got in bitter confrontations with all three parties in the legislature, but Black even managed to get in a shouting match with the Progressive Conservative government of premier William Davis. Business entrepreneurs usually get along better with the Tories. Davis’s attorney general, Roy McMurtry, later respected as a non-partisan Ontario chief justice, recommended charges of breaches of securities law be laid against Black after a firm he controlled tried to take over a company in the U.S., but the sometimes independent Ontario Securities Commission refused. McMurtry continued to maintain there were grounds for prosecution and Black accused him of “scrambling around like an asphyxiated cockroach” trying to find grounds to prosecute him. Black was never wrong, of course, as he insisted he was not at fault even after the court sent him to prison. Ontario politicians who had battles with him and the store employees on whom he unleashed his tirades have been restrained in their celebrations of the court’s disposition of him – none has commented in the legislature – but they must be thinking I told you so. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Well, that was a nice surprise. It was the early evening hours. A relaxing supper had passed and now my guy and I were out for an evening on the town. Or perhaps village would be more accurate. We were spending some time at the theatre in Blyth. Not a rare adventure for us, for sure. But as we generally attend the opening nights we weren’t expecting to run into any familiar faces. Yet, there she was, just inside the doors. We had just entered. I was chuckling over something Mark had said and in turning my head to respond, spied a woman beside me. She was smiling at me, albeit with some evident amusement as she watched the lightbulb gradually come on. For me, it was a bit surreal. Features familiar, yet somehow not quite the same. A person out of place and time. Then slowly the dawning as I recognized my old school friend. We had chummed with a handful of others in a close- knit group through several years of elementary school. The ties loosened with the arrival of Grade 9, however, and by the time we were in the thick of secondary school, our association was happenstance. We would still talk, but with the widening of our social circle we had figuratively moved away from each other. It was nice, therefore, to bump into her this way. I’m not a reunion kind of girl. Anticipating conversations with long-gone acquaintances, being thrust into large gatherings of people with nothing binding them to me but the past, gets me edgy. But to suddenly, without forethought, see a memory, gave me no time to worry, simply to take advantage. With precious moments to chat we touched base and departed with smiles. Honesty requires us to accept that so many years have gone between that should we never meet again, life will go on. I’d also like to think, however, that if we do it will be a nice bonus. With long-gone friends there was obviously something missing or we would never have grown apart in the first place we might suppose. And then, we create a life so separate from the one in which they played such an important role that the thread which tied us together those many years ago is too weak and frayed to bond us now. I have often found it interesting that many of those closest to my heart today, the ones for whom I would move heaven and earth, had little or nothing to do with my formative years. They never knew the shy child, the misguided teen. They never knew my first puppy, or my first crush. They weren’t there to comfort me when my grandparents passed away, nor when my heart was broken for the first time. My grandson recently told me his one friend lets him know when he’s acting like a dork. What kind of friend, I asked him, is that. My little wise man said, a good one, because it’s important that there’s someone to let you know when you’re acting stupid. That ‘privilege’often belonged to those girls, who at various times in my youth I couldn’t have imagined a life without. They were confidantes and kindred spirits. They were giggles at slumber parties, whispered secrets and fashion advice. With them I came to know who I was, what I was looking for and what was right, and wrong, about me. Since then I have been blessed with the friendship of some incredible people. I cherish them and hope to have them forever. But I never forget my childhood buddies. And it was very nice to see one again. Timely reminder of Black Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise.