No question, we are SPOILED

We are one spoiled bunch of Christmas turkeys

                       by Robert LaFrance 

            After a couple of months of watching TV commercials and listening to people tell the world how they will simply pass away if they don’t get the latest electronic gadget, and how walking to their car exhausts them, I have come to the conclusion that we are all incredibly spoiled. When you start getting the idea that ‘roughing it’ is only being able to afford an iPod Nano instead of a Touch, something is askew.

            Surely we’re out of the recession now; people seem to be buying everything that isn’t duct-taped down. The phenomenon known as Black Friday was a good example of this. Over in the U.S. shoppers pitched tents in store parking lots so they could be on hand when the store opened for business. They could get an eight-person tent for $1.29 or a 5000-watt generator for fifty cents—plus tax of course.

            The iPods, X-boxes, and the StarMax 3010Js (whatever that might be) were selling like Ex-lax at a constipation convention all through November and December, even while our political leaders were telling us that their next budgets were going to hit us hard.

            In the midst of all this, I was talking to a couple who had just come back from Caribou and Presque Isle, Maine, where they had spent many hundreds of dollars. Since both the husband and wife had, in 2011, undergone expensive medical procedures in New Brunswick, I was tempted to ask if part of Maine’s sales tax went to help our medicare system in any way, but I didn’t bother.

            I can sit in my living room, in my favourite chair that is moulded to my every indentation, and listen to radio or watch TV from every part of Canada and the U.S. ‘Podcasts’ allow me to listen to my favourite shows at my own convenience. Remember when we would say: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could record a TV show and play it later?” I believe something called a VCR came along about then but now that is ‘veille jeu’ as they say in Paris, Ontario. An old game, or old hat.

Spoiled. I can send an email letter to Shanghai, China and receive a reply in five minutes. Marco Polo, sailing in the 13th century, took months to go from Italy to China. In our cars today we have tire pressure sensors because we’re too lazy to check the inflation of the tires. We have remote controls for an array of things; otherwise we would have to actually cross the room to change a setting. Remote car starters, the GPS, satellite dishes, heated seats in cars, and digital cameras. How energetic we are!

NASA put people on the moon, but I am not sure their Apollo spacecrafts had bigger instrument panels than my Chrysler Intrepid—and it’s only a 2000. I can use something called Skype and telephone Aunt Rennie in Liverpool, England by using my computer and a ‘digicam’. I said I CAN do that, but since she informed me I am now officially out of her will in favour of a tennis instructor named Glenn, I don’t bother. Besides, the downside of calling on Skype is that I would be able to see HER and she’s had a hard life, if you know what I mean.

I can request library books via the Internet and have them delivered to my home library (as long as Stephen Harper continues to allow the post office to charge only book rate for this); I can ‘Google’ any subject and get information on it in seconds; I can watch a soccer game from Lille, France at the exact instant it’s taking place there; I can take a photo of my great niece and mail it using my cellphone to her great grandmother in Montreal where it’s printed out before the little girl has time to say “did you use the proper DPI settings?”.

Every few months my cousin who lives along the Darling River in Australia sends me the Tompkins Family newsletter and I see what various cousins are up to. Mail is rather fast these days, and I don’t mean the kind that arrives in my mailbox outside, the one that used to be at the end of my driveway and is now 2.5 kilmetres away in a group box.

I recall when I went to university in 1966-67 (my career in higher learning) and I would write to my father and ask for money. It took three weeks for him to reply and he usually said he had already sealed the envelope or he would have been glad to send money. Houses are kept at 25ºC, food is ready-made and all we have to do is chew, we have every modern convenience, and still we complain.
                                                     end

Where in the world is my GPS?

The days are getting longer now – good thing

                         by Robert LaFrance

            There is something in the human soul that makes that human look out the window and, the worse the weather is, the more he wants to get out there on the road.

            I say ‘he’ but that was only for the convenience of my rather tortured English, for the list of culprits is about evenly divided between X and Y chromosomes. One Medford woman was famous for driving in the worst possible weather, and practically refusing to get behind the wheel if the sun were shining. “Where’s the fun in that?” she would ask no one in particular. One day last week she said to me: “I hate it after December 21^st because the days start getting longer—more daylight and safer driving. As I said - where's the fun in that?”

            Indeed, back in the early 1960s, during the storm that included a tornado which struck Henry Baker’s place, also in Medford, she jumped in her 1957 Plymouth Belvedere (with the push-button transmission, remember those?) and headed immediately over there to see if she could drive through a tornado. Alas, there was only one, so she had to be satisfied with driving through a vicious wind and rainstorm during which trees were toppling left and right.

            But that’s going back quite a way. If you can see a road or a street from your living room window, look out there and count 25 cars. The drivers of at least three of those are crazy persons, willing to go out on icy roads on summer tires and daring the guardrail to mess with them.

            Probably it’s time to be specific. You know that I am talking about one person only and you know it is neither Flug nor I since both of us are wimps, woosses, and scaredy cats. No, it’s my neighbours on the other side and down the hill a ways, along Highway 105.

Both Elroy and Jeanatan Fitzgovus are crazy about driving in bad weather. Let there come a severe thunderstorm with embedded tornadoes and they’re away in their 2007 Nissan. Remember that wicked rain we had a year ago? The one that took out bridges and moved houses? They drove around in that. In Muniac where the road almost washed out they zoomed by there and almost went down the fifty feet into the raging stream. And they thought that was a lot of fun.

Flug and I were home playing crokinole and cribbage and sipping on some lemonade.

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Some people make life needlessly complicated, don’t you think?

Everybody knows by now that last Tuesday morning we had an earthquake in these parts. Its epicentre—and by that I mean its centre—was alleged to be somewhere in Tilley, near the late Hiram Kinney’s camp. Most of us thought it was indigestion, brought on by the Toronto Maple Leafs winning a game.

So there we all were at the club the next evening and watching the Channel 9 news which was telling us that the ‘quake had measured 4.8 on the Richter Scale, which at one time I thought was an instrument for measuring the weight of fish, so we were all discussing that and comparing it to the 5.9 ‘quake in 1982.

Bellison said he had heard about the ‘quake from an iTunes radio station, meaning he had to fire up his computer, open up iTunes, and so on; Handley said he had been listening to his satellite radio, and Myers found out from an Internet website and blog by a famous seismologist at UNB Fredericton.

“How did you find out?” I asked Gary Mawman Jr., who is about as high-tech as the average moosefly.

“Oh, I got up, looked at the wall, and saw that all my pictures were hanging crooked.” Gary is called a Luddite by some, he’s that low-tech, but I am starting to think the same way.

Who needs all this technological stuff (I hope that’s not too technical)? True, we all want to know what time it is, just so we’re not late for supper, but we really don’t need to know much more. Okay, it’s nice to be able to cook an omelet on an electric stove, that is, in a frying pan on an electric stove, but we don’t need anything more than a stove.

Maybe a fridge so stuff doesn’t spoil, but that’s it. Now and then I use the microwave to heat up some food, but really, let’s not get out of hand. Yes, I use a computer and word processor and email for this column and go to town in my 2011 car equiped with all kinds of bells and whistles, but that’s enough. No need to be high-tech.

Now where is my GPS? And by the way: Merry low-tech Christmas. Go X-Box!

                                            -end-

Reporters have to be truthful, sort of

Let’s get one thing straight – no Ford Edge

                         by Robert LaFrance

            Right off the bat in this column, I want to give my best wishes and salutations to our beloved editor—well, editor anyway—for many years, Mark Rickard, who is moving on to the Daily Gleaner. His contribution to the lottery pool will cause some financial repercussions, but we will just have to make do for the good of…well, us.

            Mark was officially done as editor of the Victoria Star as of December 6, and the obvious comment to make would be ‘now the mice can play’, but he is being replaced by an even harder rock. Enough said about that, before I get myself into even more trouble than usual. I’m hoping she has forgotten about that snide comment I made last March about her shoes.

            Although we all love and admire Mark, we Star slaves—er, workers—have to say ‘no’ to his request for a certain parting gift. I was thinking something along the lines of a new (or at least secondhand but in good shape) pair of slippers, but decided to ask him what he would like.

            “I think a Ford Edge would be appropriate,” he said, “considering how well I’ve treated you guys.”

            When I regained consciousness and had picked the phone up off the floor, I asked him if he meant one of those models you put up on your fireplace mantelpiece so you can gaze at it during long winter evenings. No, he said, you can go to the Ford dealer and get the Ford Edge I’m talking about. “I’m usually not much for hybrids (he wasn’t talking about roses) but the Ford Edge looks like something I wouldn’t mind having.”

            How much could it be? I asked myself this question the same way a carpenter shingling a roof in the rain says: “Am I gonna fall offa this thing?”

            ‘How much it could be’ was STARTING at $27,499, according to the Ford website. When, once more, Sydney Crosby-like, I came out of an unconscious state, I looked again, and Ford gave the realistic price range as somewhere between $35,000 and $50,000, depending on whether you want windshield and tires. After a quick consultation with other Star workers, I decided to break the news to him. “Sorry Mark, you know we all love you, but slippers it is.”

Best wishes to Mark in all his future urban endeavours, as they said under my school graduation photo. Only they said ‘Bob'. It would have been silly to say 'Mark' under my photo, since my name isn’t Mark. I hope he likes the slippers. We drove all the way to St. André - more than 5 kilometres - to pick them up from a retired gardener. He knew all about hybrids too, but after a while we realized he was talking about roses. Next time we buy a going-away present for a beloved editor, we shouldn’t stop at the club for lemonades.

                                                            *******************************

            You should know that I wrote the first part of this column directly after returning from the club where the lemonade was flowing freely. I will now remove that part about making the snide remark about the new editor’s shoes. If she is reminded that I said that, I will be reporting on garden parties and beauty contests until I dodder into retirement in 2021.

There, that’s done. Back to the subject of Mark’s going away present, I had arranged a conference call for later today with the Victoria Star staff. This arrangement was made while about ten of us were on the phone to discuss the slippers. It was then that Shelley (or was it Shirley? Gretchen?) from the advertising department said: “But, Bob, this is a conference call!”

            I never knew what a conference call was. Over the years I had assumed it meant that the boss would call all his or her workers in for a conference.

The bottom line is that the ‘conference call’ has already been made. Some thought that a pair of slippers wasn’t quite enough for a man who had worked so hard and accomplished so much over the years. I mean, he’s done a lot of work on his house and yard and has pretty much kept the Ford company afloat during the economic turndown, which I understand is like a recession.

            Printer’s devil Jock McAllenby, who hails from a country north of England, wanted to send him a card. “I dinna ken how we laddies and lassies can spend yon cash so free,” he said. “Or we cud get him ONE slipper and promise the other one once he gets settled in down there on the dirty city streets.”

            Here’s what we finally decided: We’re going to get him a pair of NEW slippers. It might not be a Ford Edge, but now he knows what we think of him. Truth is everything in journalism.

                                                            -END-

FREE HENK TEPPER!

Let’s get Henk Tepper out of that jail! 

                        by Robert LaFrance 

            What is wrong with this picture? Four or more answers will be accepted.

            As we all know by now, last spring a potato farmer from Drummond went to the Middle East to try and find more markets for his potatoes. While in Lebanon, he was “detained”. Isn’t that a wonderful word, detained? In fact he was not only detained, but imprisoned, jailed, locked up, incarcerated, put behind bars, held captive, caged, put away, confined, but, by gar, he wasn’t arrested. No he wasn’t arrested. Isn’t that interesting when police use every word in the language except the one that really fits? Henk Tepper was ARRESTED.

            Here’s the part where I ask what’s wrong with this picture. Number one, he has never been formally charged with anything, as far as I know, and yet he has been in a Lebanese jail since March. Good thing he wasn’t charged; they would have incarcerated (etc.) him and he would have spent those 245 or so days in a cell. Oh, wait a minute! He did.

            My second ‘what’s wrong’ question is this: Since it was Algeria that wanted Henk Tepper arrested, why is he in a jail in Lebanon? Oh, yes, I know all about that Interpol garbage, but Interpol didn’t ‘detain’ him; it was the Lebanese police. Interpol agents have no powers of arrest. They just ‘suggest’ to the local police that they arrest so-and-so. After that, it’s up to that country to do what’s right. Lebanon, that bastion of peace, tranquillity, and justice.

My third ‘what’s wrong’ question is: where is the Canadian government? Before this incident, I may have felt a bit safe going to a foreign country – although NEVER the Middle East – because the Canadian government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be there if I needed help. Now I am nervous about going to Fort Fairfield. Just think, the government of Algeria might call Interpol who would call the Fort Fairfield chief of police who would arrest – excuse me, detain – me for spitting on the sidewalk in Mars Hill in 1997. After I had spent half my financial assets (approx. $36) on legal fees, I would then settle down to a long winter’s night of detainment. I couldn’t count on the Government of Canada to give me a hand, that’s for sure.

Let’s go back and look once again at Interpol. If you go to their website you will be impressed by how fair and careful they are. “Action is taken within the limits of existing laws in different countries and in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…Interpol differs from most law-enforcement agencies—agents do not make arrests themselves, and there is no single Interpol jail where criminals are taken. The agency functions as an administrative liaison between the law-enforcement agencies of the member countries, providing communications and database assistance. This is vital when fighting international crime because language, cultural and bureaucratic differences can make it difficult for officers of different nations to work together.”

How impressive when it’s down there in black and white, but I looked further to see if I could find any indication that those Interpol agents followed up on the arrests – let’s quit using that foolish word ‘detain’ – and could find nothing. Apparently these paper pushers and computer nerds of Interpol just finger somebody, tell a country to arrest him, and then go on to the next major crisis involving potatoes, turnips, or the illegal border crossings by Dervishes in Kazakhstan. One can appreciate that countries need to cooperate in order to fight drug smuggling, money laundering, and suchlike, but when a guy spends 70% of a year (so far) in a dingy cell in Lebanon for allegedly selling underpar potatoes in Algeria, doesn’t anyone in authority notice?

This is rocket science I know, but it seems to me that if I were prime minister of Canada and one of my citizens were nabbed, jailed, etc. in Lebanon, the first thing I would do is phone Algiers, the capital of Algeria. I would say: “Look, Ab, (the Algerian president is Abdelaziz Bouteflika) let’s talk this over. We’ll do lunch on Thursday. Let’s both fly over to Valencia, Spain – it’s just a short hop for you and I need some warm weather – and deal with this. I need all the farmers – and their votes - I can get, and this one is a hard worker. Okay babe? I’ll see you then.”

Back to reality, now that there have been a couple of rallies for Henk and lots of headlines in the dailies, radio and TV, surely someone in Ottawa has noticed. Come on, guys, get your fingers out and get going. Get Henk Tepper back to Canada!

                          -end-