The Citizen, 1998-06-17, Page 5A Final Thought
Seeing ourselves as others see -us
probably wouldn't do much good. We
wouldn't believe it anyway.
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 1998. PAGE 5.
Buddy, can you
spare a hernie?
Stick your hand in your pocket and pull out
a loonie. Take a close look at that brassy old
bird. That loonie is 11 years old.
Can you believe it?
If somebody had asked me, I'd have
guessed that I'd been hauling loonies around
for four - at the outside, five - years.
But, no. The Ottawa mint started spitting
out loonies in 1987. It was such a big hit that
a few years later they retooled their machines
again and followed up with the even bigger -
and weightier - "toonie".
And both coins have been a hit - with
Ottawa at least. For governments, the upside
of coins is long-time durability. (The Spanish
figured this out eons ago - they even call
their five-peseta piece the "duro".)
Indeed,. it is fairly difficult to shred, rip or
burn a toonie or a loonie, unlike the fragile
$1 and $2 bills they replaced. The boffins in
the Federal Treasury reckon that over the
next 20 years, the toonie alone will save
them a quarter of a million bucks.
Funny, how things change without you
The riddle
that is Israel
Israel comes in for its share of space and
time in the media but reports about the
country and its activities tend to be rather
simplistic.
To a degree it is like Canada in that there is
no such thing as a typical Canadian; both we
and the Israelis have such variety in our
respective countries that it is really hard to
get a handle on what is taking place. For this
reason a few explanations are in order.
Judaism may be a well-known religion, yet
the Israelis are anything but united on how it
should be practiced. On the one hand there
are the ultra-orthodox Israelis who insist that
all activity cease at sundown on Friday and
that all wives be home at midnight. You can
recognize them in the newscasts by their
black hat and clothes as well as their beards
(the men, that is.) They are the ones that you
are likely to see if you go to Jerusalem since
that is where they are concentrated.
On the other hand there are the secular
Jews who would be difficult to tell apart
from people in most western countries. For
them religion is not that important, at least to
the point of governing all their daily
activities. These are the ones you will find in,
great numbers in Tel Aviv on the coast and
many of them do, in fact, commute from jobs
in Jerusalem to homes in Tel Aviv just to get
away from the oppressive influence of the
ultra-orthodox.
The second thing to remember is that only
a small percentage in modern Israel are
even noticing. I cant remember when I last
held a Canadian $1 bill. And those rusty old
twos with that pair of robins cavorting on the
backside - they're already as rare as a Stanley
Cup in Toronto.
If you have a $5 bill in your pocket you
might want to paste it in the family scrap
album while you can. Word has it that
Ottawa has plans to introduce a new $5 coin
quite soon.
Canada is not exactly a world leader when
it comes to coin conversion.
There are at least a dozen countries that
have coins worth five bucks or more. And
just this year, Europeans began cashing in
their pounds, pesetas, francs and Deutch-
marks in favour of a toonie-sized coin called
the Euro.
The Americans continue to be the major
league holdouts when it comes to coins
bigger than two bits. For some reason, Yanks
just don't trust spare change when it comes in
larger denominations. About 15 years ago,
the U.S. Mint tried introducing a coin called
the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
It went over like, well, a lead toonie.
Canadians show no such reluctance. That's
natives of Palestine. The majority have
immigrated there from various parts of the
world.
You will hear two words mentioned. The
first are the Askkenazim who are made up of
Jews who immigrated from either Europe or
the Americas. The second word is Sephardim
or the Jews who have come from Africa or
various nearby Asian countries.
To that we must now add the 700,000 or so
Israelis who originated in the former Soviet
Union and who are now so large in number
that they have their own stores, newspapers
and the like. They even have a political party
of which there are many in the country.
The third aspect of the country that is
important is how the people perceive the
whole question of making peace with the
Palestinian Arabs. This one is relatively easy
since they can be divided into hawks and
doves. The current prime minister, Benyamin
Netanyahu, is generally considered to be one
of the hawks, more so if you compare him
with the previous government.
Some Israelis are more radical than others
but the hawk-dive comparison generally
holds water.
This division of hawks and doves might be
more manageable if there were a solid
majority of one or the other but a look at the
current make-up of the Israeli parliament
shows that the two are just about even. Given
that there are about a dozen political parties
of various sizes, it does not take much of a
shift before you are teetering on the brink of
instability.
There has been, in fact, quite a bit of
teetering over the years.
of our blue five-spots is about to earn a niche
on the endangered species list.
I'll miss him. Just as I miss those crumply,
wrinkled inefficient ones and twos that used
to pad out my pockets. I always liked the fact
that Canadian money was colourful and
artfully designed, unlike most monetary
fodder that you find around the world - and
especially unlike the drab Yankee green-
backs and the dead presidents they portrayed.
Canadian bills may not have been worth all
that much, but they sure were fun to look at.
I know that we've still got smart-looking
$10-, $20-, $50- and $100 bills - but it's not
the same. I don't get to gaze at them nearly as
often as I did those obsolete ones and twos.
I guess it's only a matter of time until the
change in my pocket gets even heavier, with
the addition of the soon-to-be-issued $Scoin.
We'll need a nickname for it, of course, to
go with "loonie" and "toonie".
What do you think: the "fiveski"?
The "foonie"?
Considering the hernias we'll all be
developing from the accumulated tonnage of
all that change in our pockets, I think the
nickname "hernie" ought to get some serious
Finally, part of the equanon is made up of
another factor that goeS almost unnoticed by
the majority of non-Israelis. This is the Arab
minority. No less than 20 per cent of the
population of the country is made up, not of
Jews but of Arabs, those that were left
behind when the state of Israel was formed in
1948.
Interestingly enough, they form one of the
more stable segments of the country. They
are not closely connected with the
Palestinians in Gaza or outside the country.
They tend to be well educated, have their
own political party in the Israeli parliament
and, although most Israelis claim that these
Arabs have full equality, this is certainly not
the case. There are any number of slights,
one of which is their inability to serve in the
Israeli army and thereby qualify for the
welfare benefits linked with military service.
This will illustrate the point I made at the
beginning of the article. Israelis speak with
many voices and what you hear or read in the
news is as often as not only a partial
reflection of the country.
One thing is certain. Israel has had and
continues to have the only really
parliamentary democracy in the Middle East.
To have been able to maintain this in spite of
all the pressures has to be considered a giant
plus.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
What comes naturally
And you thought it just came naturally.
The other day, while perusing the health
section in a book store a friend and I were
rather amused that one particular subject
seemed to predominate. "I didn't realize that
instructions were necessary," my sardonic
companion commented.
The topic was sex, and certainly while
some folks are better at it than others, I find
it hard to imagine that literally dozens of
how-to books are needed. One or two would,
I'm sure, cover the bases nicely.
Made curious by this observation, we were
inspired to investigate what type of coverage
was given to a related, though definitely less
hyped, subject — the art of romance. The
answer — one. And amazingly, though
perhaps not surprisingly, at a closer look
even this seemed more about foreplay than
about that wholesome, often without ulterior
motive or motivation, display of affection I
call romance.
Maybe the rationale is that romance is
simple, no one should need to be told how to
be romantic.
But to me being a true romantic is a talent.
Just as a gifted artist creates a masterpiece
the first time he puts paint to paper, romance
comes as easily only to the romantic. I
wouldn't go so far as to say it is born into a
person, but it is a gift.
Perhaps it is the essence of the art, which
makes it so difficult to perfect. The best
examples are often not intricate, but pure,
spontaneous and simplistic. Contrary to what
people think, if they think of it at all, it's not
always necessary to devise a complex,
extravagant plan to woo. Simply stopping to
pick a bouquet of wildflowers on the way
home, or placing a love note in a briefcase
can be the most endearing reminders to
someone that they take precedence in your
mind and heart.
One of life's ironies since the first
Neanderthal clubbed his Mrs., is that men
are often the least likely to understand
romance, while women, who love to be
recipients, are unfortunately more often the
instigator.
So, looking back do you suppose older
generations gave romance much thought?
Probably in each generation, we can find the
genius, the creator of divine romance. But,
earlier times have been different worlds,
where the roles of men and women were
clearly defined. While romance may have
been part of courting, marriage was a
partnership, and I tend to think that day-to-
day was business as usual.
Music, poetry and movies, however, are
testimony that romance has been alive and
well for centuries. Byron, Berlin, Sondheim,
Shakespeare, the list is endless, proving that
even guys have the potential.
And looking around today, I see not just
a more sensitive male than in previous
decades, but one not afraid to show it.
Young men will arrange the candlelight
dinner, hire the babysitter, serve breakfast in
bed or even get up for baby's feeding, all of
which are the type of sweet gesture that win
gals over.
It may be the changing role of men and
women which is causing the trend to shift.
Females are certainly prepared to let men
know what they expect.
Then, again, perhaps men are finally
cluing in that it comes naturally for women
to find romance sexy.
Arthur Black
why the now-familiar kingfisher on the back consideration.
International Scene