The Citizen, 1998-07-08, Page 5International Scene
By Raymond Canon
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1998. PAGE 5.
Good for what
ails you
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
wool of bat and tongue of dog
A lot of readers think that Shakespeare was
waxing a tad melodramatic on the ingredients
list he put in the mouths of those three old
hags in Macbeth.
Not a bit of it. If anything, Bill was a touch
conservative. For centuries, human beings
have been grinding up, melting down and
swallowing the most godawful potions,
hoping to cure whatever ailed them.
Back in the Middle Ages, Europeans had a
dandy cure for gout: take one very fat puppy
and skin it. Fill the carcass with the juice of
wild cucumber berries, beaver grease and
generous dollops of fat from vultures and
bears. Bring your stuffed puppy to a boil,
adding candle wax to the grease that floats to
the top. Apply as an ointment.
Similarly, ancient Babylonians looked to
baby lambs to relieve them of their unwanted
symptoms — although the results were a little
less catastrophic for the lamb.
The Babylonians merely performed mouth-
to-mouth on the beasts. They believed human
illnesses could be transferred to lambs by
Swiss update
The Swiss will be celebrating their 707th
anniversary this Aug. 1 and, while it will
probably not bring out a level of festivities
seen in 1991, it is still a notable achievement.
The country is considerably larger than it
was at its birth in 1291 when there were only
three cantons but it has managed to withstand
all the challenges to its nationhood over the
centuries.
This is not to say that there is nothing on
the horizon which can be taken as
threatening; on the contrary there are a few
but, all things being equal, Switzerland will
be around when the year 2000 arrives unless,
of course, the earth gets hit by another planet
or the Borg takes us over.
Just in case we think Canada is the only
place with problems, let's take a look at some
of the ones affecting Switzerland at the
present time. One of the most outstanding is
the failure of the economy to emerge from a
long recession.
Last year the number of unemployed
peaked at about six per cent, which may
seem low for us with our 8.5 per cent but it is
horribly high by Swiss standards.
At the present time it is about 4.5 per cent,
still much above the one to two per cent
which the country enjoyed for years.
However, when you have economic growth
mired in the 1.5-two per cent range, nobody
is looking for a quick turnaround.
Then there is the problem of what to do
about the European Union which surrounds
breathing into the lamb's nostrils.
We didn't get much smarter with the
passage of time. A hundred years ago,
medical practitioners were trying to get rid of
cysts by coating them with a goo made by
cooking a bullfrog in butter. Drowning
victims were hauled out of the water and
vigorously rubbed down with sea salt, in the
belief that the salt would "draw the water
out" of the corpse.
As a bald guy, I'm particularly delighted
that I didn't live back in the late 1800s.
In those days, hairless men were advised to
rub their domes with a raw onion until the
scalp turned red, then to rub it with honey.
Didn't 'grow much fuzz, but it made a lot
of flies happy, I imagine.
Even in my grandparents time, kids never
wanted to admit they had the croup.
That's because one popular cure of the
croup was a teaspoon of urine three times a
day.
Ah, but that was back in the bad old days
of superstition and widespread folkloric
weirdness. We're much more sophisticated
than that nowadays, right?
Well, you might have a hard time selling
that to the University of Alberta Golden
Bears football team. Right now, every
member of the team — and these are
university students, mind -- is popping six
pills a day that they believe will make them
bigger and stronger.
the country. If the Swiss make up their
minds, and they have not yet done this, the
farm community will be in for a very serious
jolt. Agriculture is a very protected industry
there, with about 80 per cent of the income
dependent on subsidies, farm support
programs and the like.
Because of the nature of the country, Swiss
farms tend to be small, all of which makes it
very difficult to produce efficiently. The fact
that agriculture in general is relatively
inefficient in Europe is no consolation for the
Swiss farmers who have known no other way
of life. The farms may look idyllic to the
passing tourist; economically they are
anything but.
There is also the problem of the banks and
the Jewish gold which flowed, much of it
unknowingly, into Switzerland during World
War H. I wrote about this in an article last
year since I was getting a little weary of
some of the claims made about the gold.
There is no doubt that there was some
unethical behaviour on the part of some
bankers but, to sum matters up, the banks
have recently made an offer of about $1.5
billion Canadian. What happens next remains
to be seen.
There are also some statements that were
better left unsaid. Some Jews claim to see
anti-Semitic remarks in just about everything
but they can be tactless as well. Recently
Edgar Bronfman, who is head of the World
Jewish Restitution Organization, and who
should know better, made a statement which
was quoted in The Globe and Mail. "My
experience with the Swiss," he intoned, "is
that, unless you hold their feet very close to
the fire, they don't take you seriously."
Pills consisting entirely of ground-up elk
antlers.
And it's not just linebackers, running backs
and defensive guards — 27 members of the
Edmonton Police Academy are gobbling elk
antler too.
The theory is elk antlers are a kind of
"legal steroid" — that something in the
antlers will bulk up athletes muscles as fast
as illegal anabolic steroids do — without the
dangerous side effects.
Dr. Brian Fisher, the man in charge of the
experiment, says elk antler is an anabolic
drive enhancer. In other words, it's "smart"
food for skeletal muscle.
He may be right. Chinese males have been
downing elk and deer antler in powdered
form for over 2,000 years in the belief that it
makes them more virile.
Of course they've also been swallowing
potions concocted of tiger penises and
rhinoceros horn for the same reason — which
should have transformed them into a nation
of Oriental Hugh Hefners by now.
That is, by the way, one side effect that the
Golden Bears are watching for — increased
randiness — which should improve their
performance in the boudoir if not on the
gridiron.
Of course, if they really want to intimidate
opposing teams they'll rub raw onions on
their football helmets.
I hear it's guaranteed to grow antlers.
Had I, or anybody else, used the same
sentence and substituted the word "Jews" for
the word "Swiss," I am quite certain that
there would have been any number of people
screaming about anti-Semitism.
Four years ago the Swiss made it to the
World Cup in soccer. I happened to be in the
country at the time and watched the games
on TV. This time around the Swiss did not
make it so, when I am there, I will watch
other teams play. No, I am not planning on
coming out of retirement. In all honesty,
when I played in St. Gall, my
accomplishments were not things of which
legends are made.
Mercifully, that is not all that we will talk
about when I pay a visit there on my way
back to the Czech Republic to finish the
work I started last year. In the meantime I
plan to celebrate the Swiss national holiday
as usual, in all probability at the Menzi farm
between Monkton and Brussels, north of
London.
If there are any Swiss readers who are not
aware of these festivities and wish to join in,
they are held by the Thames Valley Swiss
Club the last Sunday before Aug. 1. I really
enjoy the music, among other things, but
there is something for everybody. Perhaps I
will see you there.
A Final Thought
Yes, you can be a dreamer and a doer too,
if you will remove one word from your
vocabulary - impossible.
— H. Robert Schuller
The
short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Find the caramels
Mama always said, "Life is like a box of
chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get."
—From the movie Forrest Gump
While I hesitated to use this axiom, which
has been bandied about ad nauseum since
the Oscar winning movie premiered, I also
couldn't ignore its homespun wisdom. Life is
an assortment, some of which, like caramels
please almost everyone, some like sawdust-
flavoured nougat, disappoint.
But life is also about receiving that box of
chocolates, those little pick-me-ups that
sometimes appear out of nowhere. I spent
Canada Day visiting family at their trailer.
While exiting the door of a public restroom,
I nearly ran over a young mother of twins.
With one in arms, one in a double stroller,
she was attempting to wrestle them into the
building for their nightly bath.
My offer to bring the stroller into the
building for her was met with gratitude, but
refusal as it had to be folded in order to get
through the door. However, she wondered,
would I mind terribly holding the one child?
Oh, well, if I must!
The cherub came into my arms and
looking into her perfect June-day eyes and
petal pink smile was better therapy than a
month at a spa. And the eventual
unburdening I felt had nothing to do with
relinquishing my tiny charge back to her
mommy. Within that brief interlude, I was
surprised to find that I felt less world-weary,
less cynical. The lightening of my spirit was
tangible.
My fondness for babies, those beautiful
innocents who have yet developed a mouth,
is fairly well-known. From the tips of their
tiny toes, to their angelic countenance, the
smell of them, the look of them enchant me.
But it is also their helplessness. From the
time mine were born, the knowledge that
someone depended on me so much for
happiness and virtually existence, was a
heady experience. The irony was that while
it may have seemed I was the one in control,
it was actually me who was completely
under a spell.
It's a short-lived bewitching, however.
Babies don't stay babies long and while I
love my kids at every stage of their life,
increasingly, and in different ways for
different reasons, there's a craving that
doesn't go away.
However, I'm not so besotted that I have
any plans of starting over, so my
spontaneous visit with an infant the other
day was perfect for the soul.
So much so, that I even began paying
attention to some other things I've been too
busy to really give much notice to of late. A
hummingbird feeding. A bird soaring
through a clear blue sky. An oriole's ever-
changing tune. My son, shooting hoops. My
daughter's smile.
They're always there, yet often so
instantaneous they are not fully appreciated.
These are simple pleasures, brief moments
that are often wasted because we just don't
take enough notice. Simple pleasures, brief
moments that if we pay attention can be the
most inexpensive, yet most effective therapy
we can get.
Like finding the caramels in a box of
chocolates.
Arthur Black