Chairman Mao's 'barefoot doctors'

We rural folk have had it easy far too long   

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            After recently listening to some of the pronouncements coming out of Fredericton and Ottawa, I am wondering if the late Chairman Mao (the old murderer) of China didn’t have a good idea when he ordered civil servants and others to leave the big cities for a certain period of time every year and go live in the country.

That way, he reasoned, there wouldn’t be this steady stream of idiotic laws passed and suggestions offered up like the product of a retching badger.

            Anyone who doesn’t think there’s an anti-rural bias in just about everything that governments do must be dreaming. How could it be otherwise? An MLA or MP who grew up in the country is a rare bird indeed, and the rest have no idea of living outside the Urban Dream.

            A good example of this was the ill-fated and extremely expensive federal gun registry, now history. I sat on my porch one evening and tried to imagine the gaggles and flocks of drug dealers, strong-arm criminals, motorcycle gangs and others outside the law as they trooped to federal offices to register their firearms. I was unsuccessful in imagining this, but I didn’t have any trouble seeing myself registering my .22 single-shot rifle, paying the fees year after year, and being oh so law-abiding. I knew one guy, whose worst crime ever was probably failing to stop at a stop sign in 1985 in Minto, who had a wonderful collection of historical firearms and who gave them away rather than go through all that rigmarole.

            As we know, the provincial government has wanted to get rid of Hotel Dieu Hospital in Perth-Andover for many years. They’re in Fredericton and living in the shadow of Everett Chalmers Hospital, home of c. difficile bacteria and home of the annual budget deficit, so why should they care? And look what governments have done to Tobique Valley Hospital in Plaster Rock. Whenever the bureaucrats and the city newspapers start talking about the health care system being ‘unsustainable’, that’s a code word for ‘close the rural hospitals’; they did that before they changed the Plaster Rock hospital into a ‘health centre’.

            Back to Chairman Mao and one of the few good ideas he ever had, other than overthrowing that gang of thugs that ran the country prior to 1948, I wonder if we are going to have to have some ‘barefoot doctors’ as Mao called them? If you live in Riley Brook or Nictau and you half cut off half your foot with a chainsaw, will you make it by ambulance to Grand Falls? Or Waterville?

            The Chinese ‘barefoot doctors’ were people brought in to the cities from rural areas to receive medical training. Within a few years 150,000 doctors and 350,000 paramedics had been trained after which they went back to the country and saved lives. Here in New Brunswick, that process seems to be reversed. The idea is to make sure the city folks are covered and as far as the rural people are concerned, the government is not that concerned. Just saying.

            When we moved to our present rural estate in 1984, we got Saturday mail delivery and our daily newspaper was also delivered six days a week by a carrier. Now our mail is delivered five days a week and the daily newspaper comes in the mail. Saturday’s news is a little old by the time we get it.

            Over those 28 years we have seen services reduced everywhere, businesses close and move elsewhere because people shop over in Maine or somewhere other than here, we have seen the cost of everything rise 400% even while the government insists that the rate of inflation is only one or two percent. Know why that government-calculated rate is only one or two percent? It’s because while the cost of food, gas, houses, fuel to heat them, vehicle repairs, carpenter work and such necessities is going through the roof, the price of technology is going down amazingly. So while a cord of stovewood cost $90 in 1990 and costs $190 today, that computer that cost $4000 in 1990 costs $350 today. Take my word on this.

            We rural folk are lucky though, because while the government doesn’t think we deserve a hospital and city people do, we have ready access to wind energy and solar energy. For a mere $30,000 I can put up a windmill to supply all my electrical needs that now cost me over a hundred dollars a month. With the cost of maintenance on that windmill factored in, it could be all paid for (at $250 a month) by the year 2036, just in time to buy a new one.

            Oh, well. We’ve had it easy too long anyway.           

                                      -end-

Imitation is the sincerest form of flatulence

D-day was 68 years ago today      (June 6/12 column)    

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            First things first, I want to say thank you to the guys who hit the beaches in Normandy on June 6, 1944 and finally got Allied troops onto the European mainland. We owe them a lot.

            Although it was sixty-eight years ago, some of them are still around, but don’t bother trying to get them to talk about it. I don’t think I would want to either if I looked back to remember seeing those Nazi guns on the hills. It was rather noisy too, if I understand it right.

            Many of us who weren’t there might be under the impression that the Allies hit the beaches with such an overwhelming force that the Nazis just couldn’t do anything but retreat, but those who study history know that it was what one Canadian general called ‘a damned close-run thing’.

            While it didn’t take long to get a foothold in Normandy, the main reason the Allies could keep it was because Hitler, against the advice of his generals including Erwin Rommel, kept back several Panzer divisions because he was sure the main attack was going to take place at Calais, not at the five Normandy beaches it did.

            It was not the first (nor the last) time Hitler had overruled his generals. Most of the time he screwed up and blamed the soldiers, but sometimes not, and then it was his own brilliance that had been responsible. On D-Day – and his aides were so scared of him they didn’t dare wake him up until 10:00 am, five hours after the Allies landed – he could be excused for thinking the Normandy attack was a diversion. After all, only 5000 ships had crossed the channel, 800 Allied planes were dropping bombs and strafing, and 100,000 soldiers had arrived on the ground in France. Quite a diversion!

            I won’t go on with this; suffice to say that the good guys finally won, and, by the way, in spite of what you might guess from American movies and shows on the Military Channel, it was more than Americans on the beaches. The Canadian soldiers, as usual, were punching well above their weight, but John Wayne, well-known draft dodger, made loud movies – and lots of them -  from the safety of Hollywood, and that’s what some people remember.

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

            According to Red Green, imitation is the sincerest form of flatulence, and I’m sure it’s true. (He may, possibly, have meant flattery.)

            My neighbour Silas is always going on about how wonderful Prince Charles is, and does everything he can to imitate or emulate the Heir to the Throne. Not so much lately though, since Silas got tossed into Oromocto jail for trying to get the prince’s autograph during the latter’s recent Canadian visit to Gagetown. Probably he shouldn’t have lunged. Those security guys have no sense of humour.

            I suppose the bottom line is that Silas is back home now and mad as a hatter – not at Prince Charles, but at Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. “She thought I was trying to kiss her and screamed,” moaned Silas, “and I can assure you, I was not. She reminds me of my third grade teacher, Mrs. Hagglefort.

            “So you were trying to kiss the prince?” I queried.

            “No, you moron,” Silas said. “I just wanted his autograph.” I asked him if he would be continuing to imitate the prince in dress and deportment. “Of course,” he said. “I certainly wouldn’t try to imitate her, not with that hat.”

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

            Speaking of Royalty, one of the forest creatures just down the road from us has been getting his share of crowds whenever he dines in his favourite restaurant. A yearling black bear whom I would guess to weigh about a hundred pounds or, in the metric system, the equivalent of 100 pounds, only in kilograms, has taken to coming out in a nearby field to have a snack.

            Unlike most bears, he’s not the least bit shy or self-conscious, and just continues to munch grass even though people are standing there along the road or sitting in their cars and taking photos of him. He’s become what Kincardine needs one more of – a celebrity. I’ve been getting quite weary of carrying the load by myself.

            I have named him Edward IX. Although he, minus a name, seemed quite content to dine out there in the field just about every day, I felt he should have a handle and Edward the Ninth seemed as good a one as any. I’ve taken a few pictures of him myself and I always see nobility in the way he pauses and looks at me as if I were standing along Kensington Street and watching him go by in a Royal coach.

                                                                -end-  

NB fiddlehead season is over now (May 30/12)

NB Fiddlehead season is over      

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Be warned: I’ve been thinking again.

Why is it that when I was growing up, the ‘old fellers’ knew everything about everything, and now here I am, an old feller, and I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’?

Grampy even had his own way of defining specific words. The word ‘foresight’ meant: “When you go to the outhouse and check before you sit down whether there’s an Eaton’s catalogue there.” He was the foreman of forensic definitions.

            I did warn you.

            As I write these immortal lines, it is one of those wonderful late spring days that defy description by either poetry or prose and I should be out in the garden planting carrots. I’ve had peas, lettuce, radish, potatoes and tomatoes planted in my garden for weeks now, but I always dread planting carrots because I have to actually work and make raised beds, and later on I have to thin them. I looked all over for those seed tapes everybody else seems to be able to find, but no furniture store had them.

            Fiddlehead season – at least down along Bubie Brook near here – is over for 2012, as is maple syrup season of course, but the rhubarb (spring tonic) is ‘just a-jumpin’ outta the ground’ as Uncle Harry says. My wife made a rhubarb crisp the first thing and I ate all of it in the first sitting. They say rhubarb is good for the joints and if so, I should be ready to play soccer at a high level, like on Real Madrid.

            Apparently this is also a good time of year for shingling roofs. Last week a crew descended on our house and shingled everything in sight – the porch, the shed, the back side of the kitchen part of the house. I had to tie the dog Kezman out in the orchard so they wouldn’t start on him. They were a fast bunch; the area they shingled was about 10,000 square metres and I think they were finished in 26 minutes. Back in the 1970s I and a bunch of other Tilley gangsters helped the late Byron Paris shingle his garage roof and it took us just a bit less than two weeks. Our wages were nil, but our beer bill was…large. As they say on the Red Green Show: “In the long run, volunteers can be the most expensive construction workers you can hire”. I believe Red was referring to the ones who helped him shingle HIS garage.

            Still on the subject of volunteers – good ones this time – I can’t help but be amazed at the thousands of hours people have donated their time to helping get the village of Perth-Andover back to rights. And it WILL be back. Meanwhile, I have information that al-Qaeda (of 9-11 fame) has been hired to do something useful for a change – blow Beechwood Dam into the middle of next century. No, that’s not far enough; how about into the year 2039?

            Just kidding of course, but Beechwood Dam is indeed the baby that needs to be thrown out with the bathwater, or in this case floodwater. It’s almost amusing to see and hear the reaction of NB Power and government officials when someone suggests that Beechwood Dam caused the 2012 flood, not to mention the floods of 1976, 1987, and 1993. Or should I use the word ‘event’ as the bureaucrats are so fond of saying?

            I see the point though; if I had been a Perth-Andover homeowner two months ago and saw the water reach up to the doorknobs of my living room, it would indeed be a comfort to know that I wasn’t being flooded, I was being ‘evented’. They say that water from an event is much less destructive than water from a flood.

            Back to the reactions I mentioned: NB Power and government say they are absolutely certain that Beechwood Dam didn’t have any impact on the flood. As Grampy would have said: “Yeah, but on the other hand, she wore a glove.”

            I do not have even a vague idea what that meant, but I am guessing that a healthy dose of scepticism was involved there somewhere. For a person who purports to be an intelligent human being to stand or sit in front of a microphone and say that Beechwood Dam wasn’t a factor in the floods would be the same as saying that a certain iceberg had no effect on the fate of the Titanic.   

                                                           -end-        

So-o-o-o-o-o-o close (May 23 column)

So close and yet so far away  

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            I have visited the State of Maine three times in the past month, after not crossing the border for at least two years, and found it unchanged. They still have churches, but more people go to their ‘redemption centres’ which I would have guessed were  the same things, but aren’t.

            (Looking back at that first paragraph, I’m thinking I need some lessons in English word construction and grammar, but perhaps you know what I mean anyway.)

            It seems that, over there, a redemption centre is a place to take back empty beer and ‘soda’ bottles; over here we would call them returnables, and we certainly wouldn’t return soda bottles, because over here soda comes in a small cardboard box.

            It’s quite amazing how two locales so close to one another can be so strikingly different in thinking. Over there, across the border, I see helmet-less motorcyclists zooming around and helmet-clad kids on bicycles riding around. On this side of the border, it’s the other way around. About five years ago the police made a determined effort – at least in this area – to persuade kids to wear helmets, but I guess they’ve found other interests - perhaps the heinous crime of smuggling cigarettes from Nova Scotia.

            Over in the U.S.A. the worst insult one person can sneer at another is to call him a Communist. Over here, it’s accusing him of voting for Brian Mulroney back in the 1980s. Nobody forgets that particular rub of the Blarney Stone.

            The Americans (with mostly Canadian players) have taken over NHL hockey, but Canada is gaining ground (so to speak) in Major League Soccer. Who knew? Rocket Richard is spinning like a top.

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

            Every once in a while, just to pass the time, I turn on the TV and watch some news, or porn, or something, and the other evening when I was half-dozing and watching the CTV news from Ottawa I was quite surprised to learn that terrorist Omar Khadr might be released by the Americans from Guantanamo Bay prison and brought to a Canadian prison to finish his term. Although a Canadian citizen and only fifteen when he was arrested, he’s there because in 2002 he killed an American doctor in Afghanistan.

            Three years ago the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms made it obligatory for the government to immediately demand Khadr's return. In 2010 Khadr pleaded guilty to the murder but showed no signs of remorse.  He was sentenced to eight more years in custody but might be able to come to a Canadian prison any time all the paperwork gets arranged.

            I realize that the Canadian government has tried to avoid bringing him back to Canada, but it looks as if they will have to. I’m just wondering where The Federal Court of Canada was when Henk Tepper was being held in Lebanon although he hadn’t even been charged with a crime. One of the many mysteries of life.

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

            The May 14 municipal elections and those for District Education Councils and Horizon Health board went like clockwork – if the clock’s hands were duct-taped to the face of the cloth. During the week preceding the election I heard many times that we should all know by 8:15 pm – a quarter hour after the polls closed – that so-and-so had been elected the mayor of such-and-such and ‘here is the list of elected councillors’, etc.

            Well…

            The truth that emerged on election night was that I, as a hard-working newspaper reporter, didn’t know until 10:30 pm what the results were in Perth-Andover, which was the one I was covering.

I sat here staring at my computer monitor and watching the Elections NB website for any sign of a result, even if the town of Canterbury’s full-time janitor had been re-elected to his broom. On that glacial website was a continuing notice that it was being ‘refreshed’ ever minute, which was fine, except that the same numbers sat there for an hour and a half. Finally, at 10:30 pm, both I and the website had been ‘refreshed’ so much we almost fell off our chairs (that was humour) it emerged

            Congratulations to the village’s new mayor, Terry Ritchie, and to the five councillors who were elected, but jeepers creepers, it took so long for us to find out that half their terms are up by now.

            Being an investigative journalist, I asked someone who should know why it took Elections NB so long to produce the results. I found that the people working in the polling stations had to HAND-DELIVER the tapes of results to the local returning offices located, sometimes, twenty or more kilometres away.

            Remember the old days when people on the spot counted the votes and phoned them in to the returning office? It was faster. Welcome to high-tech 2012.

                                       -end-