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The Citizen, 1996-11-27, Page 5International Scene By Raymond Canon A Final Thought Love thine enemies — it will drive them nuts. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1996 PAGE S. Pondering life's great mysteries Don't you just love to ponder The Great Mysteries? Like, is there life on other planets? Is there life after death? What does Stonehenge really mean? What are the lyrics to those songs the Great Whales sing? And women's washrooms. What the hell are women doing in those washrooms? Here's a scenario, chum: you and your lady are out for dinner at a restaurant with another couple - let's say they're good friends of yours. The food is fine, the service is dandy, the conversation around the table sparkles and shines. After dessert, the coffee is served and inevitably one of the two women at the table excuses herself to 'visit the powder room'. And immediately - immediately - the other woman rises, saying, "I'll come with you." And off they go! Together! To the washroom! To the male mind, it is an utter bafflement. The very last thing a man wants to do is to share the bathroom experience with anyone, much less another male. We guys are all business in there. In and out. No lollygagging. The chat, if any, is kept to an absolute minimum and is confined to the shallow end of the conversational pool. "You see that football game last night?" "Brutal." That's an articulate conversation for a male washroom. Actually, guys get uncomfortable and vaguely suspicious anytime discourse-at-the-urinals gets beyond primal grunts or manly chuckles. Women, as has been noted in other contexts, are different. And thanks to a Canadian filmmaker named Ann Kennard, we menfolk are beginning to realize just how different. The National Film Board recently released a documentary by Ms Kennard entitled The Powder Room. To make that documentary, she spent two years in women's washrooms around the world with her microphones open and her cameras running. Now if you tried that in a men's washroom, the clientele would have kept everything zipped up - including their lips. But in The Powder Room, the women waiting to use the cubicles dribble like leaky faucets. They talk about everything - the pain of childbirth, the hell of dieting, the knuckleheadedness of their men - and they do it spontaneously, without a shred of self- consciousness. Kennard hits a real cross-section. There are aging Jewish yentas discussing bygone loves and goofy gangs of teenage girls taking a bieak from a high school prom. Kennard takes us through the hallowed portals marked "Women" on several continents and through various cultures. We visit a honky-tonk toilet in West Texas; a trendy loo in a Manhattan night club; a graffiti-pocked washrooms in a Toronto high school and a swanky sauna in suburban Copenhagen. And we learn that women, God bless 'em, have turned a humdrum, slightly uncomfort- able biological ritual into a meaningful opportunity to connect with other women. But the irony is, men are to thank for it. Male architects to be precise. The guys who design multi-million dollar buildings, neglect to provide adequate facilities for half the human race that uses those buildings. "They're the ones responsible for putting in too few stalls" says Kennard, "thus making for long lineups and much talk." It's tough to admit, but I have to say that as a man I feel jealous. I realize after seeing Ann Kennard's film that women have managed to turn their Power Room into a forum. Thanks to macho stupidity male washrooms will never follow suit. You'll never see men's restrooms become a meeting ground of peers. Or should that be pee-ers? The short of ►t By Bonnie ropp Legal gaffes for laughs Last Wednesday was my day in court. Don't get too excited; I attend monthly, and I hope this never to be otherwise, strictly as an observer. It's an interesting place to be, but unlike movies or TV shows seldom exciting. The law is pretty serious stuff. Or at least I thought so, until someone showed me a "Dear Abby" which noted faux pas made by lawyers (from U.S. official court records). You just have to laugh, so I just had to share it. Question: Now, doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep in most cases he just passes quietly away and doesn't know anything about it until the next morning? Q: Was that the same nose you broke as a child? Q: What happened then? A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify me." Q: Did he kill you? Q: Was it you or your brother that was killed in the war? Arthur Black How do you pronounce Jones? I have a problem. Much of my education and maturing process, was spent in an environment where I was speaking either French, German or sometimes both. I have, therefore, never totally learned how to pronounce family names or place names in English. It doesn't help that English chooses to pronounce many words one way and spell it another; if you do not know the word in the first place and have to rely on its spelling to help you pronounce it, you are in for a spot of trouble. I knew I was in for a hard time when I got off the ferry in Dover, Eng., and proceeded to ask directions. I had not been in an English-speaking country for a considerable time and hearing everybody speak a version of the language (not the one I spoke) threw me off. I proceeded to find out the best way to get to my destination, but the first person I asked had never heard of the place. Realizing that I was getting nowhere, I showed him the name on a piece of paper. "Oh," he said, "You mean ..." and he proceeded to give me a totally different pronunciation of the location. I asked him •to repeat it for me so the next time that I had to ask, I would at least get it right. But I was in trouble even before that. When I think of the city in Germany, it is Muenchen, not Munich. Cologne to me is Koeln. When I am referring to a French- speaking area, I invariably think in French so that Geneva becomes Geneve, Freiburg becomes Fribourg. In Italy I think of Venezia instead of Venice while Florence become Firenza and Naples, Napoli. Fortunately I learned English before I learned Russian so that Moscow feels proper to me even though the Russian word is Moskva. The Haag in Holland is fine; Den Haag, the real word is not. People listening to me for any length of time must think that I am constantly referring to places on other planets. But my problem has now been compounded. Immigrants to Canada from various European countries are, sooner or later, changing the way that they pronounce their names so that they conform more or less to the way English-speaking people think they should be pronounced. I recently ran into a Canadian whose family originally came from French- speaking Europe. His name, he said, was Beaulieu. I pronounced it in French fashion, only to be corrected. "Oh, no," he said, "It is pronounced Belue." I thought he was putting me on, but he assured me that this was the way his name was now pronounced. I met a French Canadian in Ottawa. He introduced himself as Pierre Aubriand. I went to write it down and started to spell it. Again I got corrected. To my surprise he told me that it was O'Brian. It turned out that his family were descendents of Irish immigrants who had settled in Quebec and had been over the years totally assimilated into French Canada. About the only thing remaining of his Irish origins was the spelling of his name. I was once introduced to an Italian girl whose family had also immigrated to Canada. I looked at her first name on the calling card she gave me. It was spelled Cecilia so I pronounced it as they do in Italy, which is Chechilia. Again I was corrected. She had anglicized it so that it now sounded like Sesilia. I wondered to myself what her parents called her but decided not to press the point. It she wanted it Sesilia, Sesilia it was. It still sounded strange. As far as our country's name is concerned, there is not too much trouble, although German-speaking people tend to spell it with the initial K instead of a C. When you get to the adjective, it is a different story. Depending on the language you are speaking, it may look like one of the following: canadien, kanadisch, canadese, canadiense, canadiano, kanadski. Fortunately for me, my name fits equally well in either French or English. When someone is speaking French to me, they tend to emphasize the last syllable in both my given and family name. In English it is exactly the opposite. I'm not so sure that it was planned that way, but it could have been worse. As you can see I have enough trouble with other words and names. In case you don't appreciate the problem, let me suggest that you try explaining how to pronounce the combination "ough" to someone whose English is not too fluent. Have fun! Q: Were you alone or by yourself'? Q: How long have you been French- Canadian? Q: I show you Exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture? A: That's me. Q: Were you present when that picture was taken? Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage teminated? A: By death. Q: And by whose death was it terminated? Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are now? A: I'll be three months on Nov. 8 Q: Apparently then the date of conception was Aug. 8? What were you doing at that time? Q: Mrs. Jones, do you believe you are emotionally stable? A: I used to be. Q: How many times have you committeed suicide? Q: So you were gone unil you returned? Q: You had three children, right? A: Yes Q: How many were boys? A: None. Q: Were there girls? Q: You don't know what it was, and you didn't know what it looked like, but can you describe it? Q: You say that the stairs went down to the basement? A: Yes. Q: And these stairs, did they go up also? Q: Do you recall approximately the time that you examined the body of Mr. Edington at the Rose Chapel? A: It was in the evening. The autopsy started about 8:30 p.m. Q: And Mr. Edington was dead at the time, is that correct? Q: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he now? Q: Do you have children or anything of that kind?