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The Citizen, 1991-03-13, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1991. PAGE 5. Looking for heaven on earth ...a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, a flask of Wine, a Book of verse -- and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness -- And Wilderness is Paradise enow. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Well, that sounds rather comfy. Ye olde poetaster Eddie Fitzgerald pretty well covered the basic human necessities -- something for the belly, a bit of bubbly, a few printed stanzas of doggerel for mental stimulation and a warm squeezable partner of the opposite gender to share it all with. That’s not bad, as human Utopias go. Still, it has its limitations. 1 mean, how long can you sit under a tree chugging Baby Duck, reading Irving Layton and listening to your True Love warble “Feel­ ings”. What happens if it rains? Or some knuckle-dragger with a mega-decibel suit­ case radio on his shoulder comes along and lays claim to an adjacent hummock? How about ants? That’s the trouble with most man-made Heaven-On-Earths - folks forget to read the fine print. Take Plato’s Republic. Now, Plato owned one of the most brilliant minds ever The curse of spelling BY RAYMOND CANON One of the greatest curses of my early years was trying to get on top of English spelling. To be honest with you I must admit that it is still one of my problems and few, if any, are the people who ever conquer it. The trouble with English is that it has this infuriating knack of saying something one way and spelling it another. If there is a rule, it has 10 words which follow it and 200 exceptions. To make matters worse, it even has silent letters and it is without a doubt one of the greatest wonders of the universe that English has become accepted as the closest thing to an international language that we have. Some languages such as Italian, Spanish and German do not have the same problem at all since they are 99 per cent phonetic and, once you say a word, you know how to spell it. I’m not sure what caused English to be so mixed up; it may be that it is due to its French heritage. When William the Conquerer defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings and brought his court and his language with him, he gave the Britons a taste of a language that was just about as mixed up in its spelling as English is. You will probably not be surprised to learn that I went through the same agonies with French that I did with English. Just when 1 thought that 1 had everything under control, along comes the French govern­ ment and states that there are going to be a considerable number of spelling changes to bring the language “up to date” as it were. The trouble with the French is that they don’t know when to let well enough alone. English just rambles on and changes are both few and far between. Those that do come about seem to come naturally. We don’t have to listen to dictates from Ottawa, Washington or London as to the latest revisions in our language. The French, on the other hand, like to tinker with theirs. 1 should add that, along with this urge to tinker goes a passion that most English speaking people cannot understand. While English absorbs all sorts of foreign words with hardly a hiccup, the French resent any intrusion of such words. This is not to say that they manage to keep them out. On the contrary, they are fighting a losing battle since English is a persuasive and insidious language; it to inhabit a human cranium. One would think when such a thinker bent his philosophical skills to creating an imagin­ ary paradise it would be one swell place, no? No. When it came to citizenship in Plato’s Republic, only the elite need apply. “Inferior” children were to be killed at birth. All marriages were to be arranged according to genetic considerations. Sort of like the “Perfect Nation” dream of that other chap — what was his name? Adolph something? Thomas More’s idea of earthly paradise wasn’t a whole lot more appealing. In 1516, the British philosopher wrote a book called “Utopia”. It was all about a wonderful place - providing you were free, white and male. In More’s “Utopia”, slavery was to be practiced and women were to be kept firmly under the old patriarchal thumb. Even Shangri-La had warts. The mythi­ cal Tibetan lamasery where the living was easy and time stood still was alas, also less than perfect. Sure, folks got to live a couple of hundred years - but only if they never left town. One trip across the county line for a Saturday night dance and poof - biology plays catch-up. Inmates who enjoyed perpetual youth back in the compound suddenly resembled large, very old raisins. So what’s a person looking for Heaven on Earth to do? Well, there’s always the island of Nauru. creeps in at every occasion. Thus the French have to contend with la party, le week-end, le pullover, le speaker, to name only a few. To fight back, the government appointed Conseil Superieur de la Langue Francaise, has just announced a series of reforms that is going to mean for me and all the other dedicated French speakers hours of reach­ ing for dictionaries and the like. Some changes are not too bad. Foreign words, such as le blue-jean and le fair-play lose their hyphen and become bluejean and fairplay. Then it gets a bit sticky, in order to make some English words look more French, and word ending in -er now becomes -eur so le speaker will now be written le speakeur; le leader will change to le leadeur. From then on it gets more and more arbitrary. For those of you who are studying French either in school or elsewhere, you may be interested to learn that oignon (onion) is now to be written Use BBB for postal complaints THE EDITOR, Is your community still reeling from the proposed rate hike which threatened weekly newspapers across the country? Now the latest - how about that new brochure from Canada Post and the Better Business Bureau! Now the idea is, that it suggests, if you have complaints or inquiries about postal service, you can now contact your local Better Business Bureau (if all else fails). Nowhere in the flyer is any mention of how to get in touch with your ‘local’ BBB. On checking, we discovered there are six bureaus in Ontario, none of which has a toll free 1-800 number. And none, as you’ll see from the following list, will be of much help to people outside Ottawa, Metro Toronto, the heavily-populated areas of central or western Ontario. But, here they are anyway: BBB of western Ontario, P.O. Box 2153, Station A, London N6A 4E3 (519-673- 2222); BBB of midwestern Ontario, 220 Charles Street East, Kitchener N2G 2P7 (519-579-3080). One of fhe reasons you may find this list useful is that Canada Post is now stepping up its efforts to close Corporate post offices in rural Ontario and replace them with Nauru isn’t the figment of anyone’s imagination. It’s a coral atoll in the middle of the South Pacific. It only covers about eight square miles, but that’s okay because there are only about 5,000 people living there. And what a life. The average annual income of every inhabitant — man, woman and babe in arms - is $20,000 U.S. And here’s the kicker: They don’t have to do a lick of work to collect. Nauru is one big phosphate mine. (Bird poop, not to put too fine a point on it). Australia mines the phosphate and pays the citizens of Nauru big bucks for the privilege. The result: Nauruans are rich beyond their wildest dreams. So rich they don’t even have to bother shovelling the phospate on to ships. Three thousand labourers are imported from elsewhere to do the dirty work. Which means all Nauruans have to do the live long day is lie around and spend, spend, spend. And they do. Most have cars and TVs, even though there’s nowhere to drive and nothing much to watch. Naur­ uans are prone to alcoholism and suicide. They also have some of the highest incidences of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in the world. But there’s some good news. The phosphate is running out. Some day soon Nauruans are going to be able to escape from Heaven on Earth and join the real world. ognon since that is how it is really pronounced. My question is why that word and not some of the others in French which are still not written the way they are pronounced. Getting back to English, when will we get around to using nite instead of night, or getting rid of the silent k in knife or knight. Much as I deplore it, “he plays good” may some day be acceptable while the word “whom” seems to be going into perma­ nent decline. The French have also been saying “It’s me” for centuries while “It’s I” still is defeated in English. One of the biggest jobs the French have now is going through all the works of their marvellous literature and making the necessary changes. Perhaps the next time we have a recession, we should make a number of spelling changes and hire people to go through all the books in our libraries to make the necessary corrections. private outlets. These outlets seriously devalue work traditionally done by post­ masters; in fact, the contracts are so poor that many business people refuse to sign them. Over the past four years Canada Post has closed 246 federal post offices to date in Ontario. Canada Post is specifically tar­ getting 50 post offices now staffed by so-called ‘term’ employees, many of whom have provided years of committed service to their communities. “In this area, post offices in Belgrave and Ethel are staffed by ‘term’ postmasters. Both they and their post offices are threatened by these closures.” We urge you to take action now. Write or phone the Better Business Bureau. Call your Member of Parliament. You can make a difference, just as the recent, vocal campaign by weekly newspapers to stop Canada Post’s March 1 postal rate increas­ es made a difference (by winning a delay in the new rates). It does pay to speak up! Mary Anne Doyle, President Ontario Branch Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association Finch, Ontario. K0C 1K0 Tel. 613-984-2460 FAX: 613-984-2790 Letter from the editor A perfect time ■ <> n-». for baseball dreamers BY KEITH ROULSTON I must admit this is my favourite time of the baseball season. Oh I follow the sport in the heat of the summer and I keep tuning in the sports every morning in September if the Jays or Expos are in the thick of a pennant chase but somehow things are never as nice as they are in exhibition time in March. Part of it comes from the expectation of the future. I’ve always been one for whom the thought of eating some candy treat or delicious dessert was more enjoyable than the actual tasting. So it is in baseball. Knowing the players are down there in Florida or Arizona running around on nice green grass in the warm sunshine is somehow more enjoyable than when they play on the plastic turf of their debt-ridden playpens up north once the heat has arrived. There’s the sure knowledge that even if the snow keeps falling, even if the temperature still plunges every night, spring is on the way and baseball will be back in less than a month. Then too there’s the ability to dream at this time of the year before reality sets in. You can hear about the talented new rookie and dream of the impact he’ll make in the league before it’s discovered a month from now that he can’t hit a major league curve ball. You can go down the Jays or Expos lineups and mentally tote up the astound­ ing number of homeruns and stolen bases the hitters will get and the number of victories the pitching staff will rack up. This year has been the kind of year when Blue Jay fans have hardly been able to wait for. Ever since the blockbuster trades of December that totally changed the look of the team, fans have been waiting impa­ tiently to see what the new team would be like on the field (on paper fans have already conceded Jays the World Series). Unfortunately reality has already set in a little. The Jays have stumbled at the beginning of the exhibition schedule, losing three of their first four games. Still, that’s the beauty of the exhibition sche­ dule: if your team loses, you say it doesn’t matter until the season officially starts; if it wins you can be sure it augers well for the season ahead. What impatient fans have had to endure between December and March besides snow storms has been an avalanche of insanity and whining on the baseball salary front. We’ve seen anybody that can swing a bat or throw a ball who has hung around long enough to be eligible for salary arbitration or free agency, virtually guar­ anteed of becoming a millionaire. We’ve seen players get three times as much for playing this year as they got last year. But the most annoying part has been listening to the crybabies who are making millions grumbling because they aren’t getting even more. At a time when millions are without jobs, it’s hard to listen to the bleats of Rickey Henderson. Rickey signed a contract last year that made him one of the highest paid players in the game earning $3 million a year. But in the meantime the insanity has spread and lots of players have passed Rickey on the salary ladder. Now he’s sulking and stayed out of training camp demanding his contract be renegotiated. Then there’s Dwight Gooden who has been offered close to $5 million a year by the New York Mets but isn’t happy because the Boston Red Sox have been even crazier than the Mets and paid Roger Clements well over $5 million a year. These guys are enough to take the fun out of the game but now that the spring sun is shining, even these grouches can’t turn off the baseball fan. We can dream of future pennants and World Series wins without the pressure that those games later in the season will bring. We’re like kids again, imagining being stars ourselves. There’s no time like it.