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The Citizen, 2000-05-17, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2000. PAGE 5. Other Views Down, but not necessarily out Curious thing about panhandlers: the more there are, the more invisible they become. A few years ago the sight of a man, a woman or a kid and his dog squatting on the sidewalks of our big cities would have been a reason to call the cops. Take a walk through downtown Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal these days and you can count on seeing at least a dozen panhandlers. Except chances are you won’t really see them at all. As the homeless among us proliferated, we non-panhandlers quickly became quite adept at looking right through these indigents on our sidewalks. We’ve learned to ignore them. Our eyes slide right by them as if they aren’t there. That’s a dangerous condition. Why, a man like Gordon Elwood could die without even being noticed. Which is pretty much what happened. I mean, you didn’t hear about his passing, right? Not surprising. Mister Elwood was never on Letterman. He wasn’t a rock star or a pro hockey player. Gordon Elwood lived his 79 years in relative obscurity, in a ramshackle bungalow on the outskirts of Medford, Oregon. He wasn’t an unfriendly man, but he was just a mite reclusive. And Lord, was he cheap. He ate at soup kitchens as often as he could and made a point of buying milk that was past its ‘fresh’ date. He got it at a discount that way. His clothes came from the Sally Ann and North Korea - the albania of Asia In my early days as a journalist in Europe, I hoped to do articles about any country that would grant me a visa. In this respect I ended up being rather successful, and visited such places a Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Soviet Union at the height of the cold war. Admittedly, it sometimes took a bit of time to get across the border; one memorable example was when we crossed the Iron Curtain into Czechoslovakia and were a good two hours waiting for them to check our car, verify with Prague that our visas had been actually issued and all the bureaucratic red tape that countries, including communist ones, love to employ. The one country that defied me was Albania. They said “No, no, no” with a resoluteness that was impressive. One would have thought that my sole purpose was to organize a coup d’etat once I got in, and it could well be that, paranoid as they were, that is precisely what they thought. The closest I ever got was when I was on a boat sailing between Albania and the Greek island of Korfu. Even with binoculars and at a distance the country looked foreboding. They were undoubtedly watching me watching them. The country that comes to mind these days when I think of the old Albania is North Korea. For those whose history may be a bit elementary, Korea was occupied by Japan at the beginning of World War II. After the war it was divided up into two parts, the north under communist control and the south with a basic form of what we understand as democracy. It was North Korea which decided to unite the entire country once again by attacking South Korea and which necessitated the United Nations’ first major military undertaking (which included Canadian armed forces) before peace was finally declared with the two parts still intact. Since then North Korea has gradually retreated into a political shell, the first phase Art/iur Black local thrift shops and he resented even that financial outlay. He kept his pants up with a bungee cord so he wouldn’t have to waste money on a belt or suspenders. For spending money he collected bottles and cans and turned them in for the deposit. Each night he curled up in a greasy sleeping bag on a bunged-out sofa in his almost furniture-free house. The odd thing was, Gordon JElwood didn’t have to live that way. He was no hopeless hobo. He owned his own house, such as it was, and paid his bills, such as they were, from the proceeds of his sideline: TV repair. Forty-six years ago Mister Elwood took a correspondence course and taught himself to be a television repairman. For nearly half a century he fixed other people’s TVs. Didn’t own one himself of course. You kidding? All that electricity? Gordon Elwood never spent a dime on anything he considered frivolous. He even kept his house unheated. As a matter of fact, that’s probably what took him out. After one particularly cold snap last winter, they found him huddled in his sleeping bag, stiff as a board. Pneumonia. The town of Medford put him in a pauper’s Raymond Cannon The International Scene which ended by the Russians being turfed out (just as they were in Yugoslavia in the late 1940s). At the same time as the North Koreans were becoming more isolated, they were continuing to maintain a huge army which they could ill afford and developing a “Stalinist” regime that would make the former Russian dictator look like a Sunday School teacher. The one word I’ve heard used to describe their actions is “obnoxious”. They didn’t seem to care (and apparently still don’t) what the world thinks of them. Getting in to the country is well-nigh impossible and, if you are successful, you find yourself almost totally isolated from the common people. Famine has become something of a way of life there, due to the large expense of the military machine and, just to demonstrate that they could engage in a bit of sabre-rattling themselves, the North Koreans found money enough to develop and fire off a missile in the general direction of Japan. Since the missile in question had atomic 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. grave and you would think that would be the end of Gordon Elwood brief and miserable passage through life. But it wasn’t, quite. Suddenly, an organization called the Gordon Elwood Foundation surfaced. It consisted of a board of directors - a couple of lawyers, an accountant, and other assorted business types. Their job? To dispose of Gordon Elwood’s estate. All $10 million worth of it. It turned out that Gordon Elwood was not only not poor - he was a closet stock market dabbler. Pretty good one too - made himself a multimillionaire. And contrary to his public persona he was an astoundingly generous man. His whole estate is being liquidated in the form of grants, donations and pledges to various Oregon agencies that Elwood used while he was making his fortune - the YMCA, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and a couple of non-profit organizations that helped out people in need. Interesting, though. You or I could have walked down a street in Medford, Oregon last summer, say, and passed an old geezer in secondhand clothes wearing a bungee cord for a belt and pulling on a carton of stale milk. Chances are he wouldn’t even have registered on our consciousness. Which would have been a pity. It’s not every day you get a chance to meet a multi­ millionaire. warhead properties, you can imagine what this did for peace and quiet in the Far East. About the only “friend” the North Koreans still have is China but even the Chinese are embarrassed at times by some of the actions of Kim Jong II the current leader (dictator?). His father ruled for many years before him and engaged in a cult of adoration greater than even the excesses of Stalin and Mao tse Tung in China. Any thaw in relations between North Korea and the rest of the world is minuscule at best and might well be described as two steps forward and 1.999998 steps backward. As long as the army and the upper echelons of the hierarchy get looked after, the fact that most of the people are close to or actually starving seems to matter little. I didn’t go into Albania and it seems that I am going to suffer the same fate with North Korea. Perhaps looking at it from a distance will have to do me. Final Thought If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man. - Mark Twain Bonnie Gropp The short of it Of women and men I discovered a quote of Ray Bradbury’s which has found a place on my wall of wisdom: “There are two races of people — men and women — no matter what women’s libbers would have you pretend. The male is motivated by toys and science because men are bom with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that. Women, however, are bom with a centre. They can create the universe, mother it, teach it, nurture it. Men read science fiction to build the future. Women don’t need to read it. They are the future.” It’s odd that some women would be upset by such an observation, one which to my mind is quite flattering. I think, the idea that we are the nurturers is a great compliment, that backs up my belief that whether feminists like it or not, men and women are created differently. This is not to say that women are to spend their days in the kitchen or at home. On the contrary it means the differences of men and women should be embraced and used to the best advantage. Studies have shown that women’s skills for articulation make them good litigators and teachers. Their innate compassion is a valuable element in the ministry or health care field. Thus, I’m always puzzled to hear a woman affronted by the idea that they are not the same as men. Firstly, the signs, the contradictions are so obvious. This struck me last week, as I watched the reaction of some of my son’s peers when he brought my grandson to see them. Generally, the males were casual in their reaction, clearly interested, though reserved. A token bit of notice paid and they returned to previous activities. Their feminine counterparts on the other hand, oohed and aahed at great lengths, touching the baby, clearly thrilled at his presence. Though all young women, their fascination with an infant is as much a part of their make-up as is the reproductive system that will one day help them create, carry and deliver their own child. Which brings me to my second point for those who want to be compared not as a societal equal of men, but as their equal on every level. Why? As a young girl, I admit to being a bit of a tomboy. When friends and I would play make-believe, it was me who took the boys’ roles. Son, brother, cowboy, I felt comfortable in the less girly guise. Even today, I’m not a frills and lace kind of gal, preferring loose, comfortable clothing, nothing fancy. Dry my hair, put on mascara and earrings and I’m out that door. That said, I now enjoy what femininity I do have. I like to be taken care of (shame, shame) by someone built for heavy work. I like that same someone’s strong hand on the small of my back as I walk through a crowded room. Mostly, though it has been since becoming a mother that I realized my greatest satisfaction in being female. The secrets of pregnancy, of labour and childbirth are a wonder men will never know. The desire to love and care for this new being in the most basic sense gave me a grounding heretofore unfamiliar. That it is me, as Mom, expected to be the nurturer, the support, the gentle one is a pleasure, not a task to share. I proudly accept it as being all woman’s.