WHAT FOOS WE SPORTS FANS BE

I’ve said it all before and I am not taking any of it back. I am, shamefully, a rootin' tootin' fan of the great mercenary lottery called professional sports. I cheer when “our” team wins. I mope when the bull pen throws it away, or when Vernon pops up with the bases loaded. But how can I, or the rest of us, possibly cope with our unlimited gullibility in Toronto’s latest paean to profits.

More than thirty three thousand of us showed up at the Rogers Centre to bid a fond farewell to Cito Gaston. He obliged us with the inevitable tear coursing down his cheek. He bestowed on all of us the laurel wreath of being “the greatest fans.” He praised the city where he no longer lives. He said all the right things. I am not faulting Cito for his sentimentality, or even for his questionable success as a manager. So many of the players praise his stoic mien in the dugout, appearing to say little and to express no great emotional displays. Some say “He lets us be ourselves.” While others, quietly ask for a more loquacious, heart-on-the-sleeve manager. Cito responds by asking how many World Series Tony LaRussa has won. It’s all very passionate,

(A sidebar: the late Tom Cheek is being boosted for some kind of big award for his career. Cheek was the Blue Jays play-by-play guy since the Jays began. He owes his career to Toronto. He died too young so he is revered. But Cheek remained an American citizen and he never did move to Toronto, but maintained his home in Florida. Cito at least did make his home here for many years.)

But what is the passion all about? The fact is that the Blue Jays management saw an opportunity to sell tickets, in fact to brazenly market Cito’s departure. The fans lined up for it. I’m no different. When I see those promotional commercials advertising “Hustle and Heart” with the close-ups of sometimes unshaven but ready to fight-to-win players, I am swept along.

Yet I hear the likes of departed fallen heroes like Alex Rios dissing Toronto – complaining that the fans don’t really care; that we are a bad baseball city. Rios is glad to be gone. But he’s just another body-for-hire. Pro sports is full of this stuff. Lebron James was not just a great basketball player, but whose heart and soul and devotion belonged to Cleveland, picked up and went to Miami along with another of Toronto’s “heroes” Chris Bosh.

I don’t blame the athletes. They play for money and the more they can get the happier they are. We kid ourselves about “home town loyalty.” There are players who spout their devotion to the team that hired them to throw strikes or hit homers.

And we buy it all.

But again, nothing so reminded me of my own gullibility as when the Jays, now led by a South Asian (no racism implied) whose cultural background simply does not include baseball. He owes the Rogers shareholders the best. Not the best team – just the biggest bottom line. If coincidentally, having a better team improves profits, so be it.

Look at all of our devoted citizens of Maple Leaf country. Most of the fans were not born the last time the team with Lord Stanley’s trophy. But we cheer. Kids who manage to get on camera throw up the “we’re number one” fingers and twitch at their Maple Leaf jerseys to express their undying loyalty.

What fools we .. or are we?

TRYING SOMETHING NEW

Under the heading “never too late” I continue to be obsessed with “jatropha.”
Jatropha is a plant that grows in almost arid Land. My first encounter with it was in a story several years ago about how Mali, a struggling equatorial African country, discovered that it could grow this remarkable plant. Since that revelation, there has been little more news. The idea seems either to have atrophied because of indifference, or has been (this is for the conspiracy theorists) silenced by the reigning biofuel growers: corn, soybean, and sugar. I have written before, without any results, about this miracle plant

Is there any way that I could gather about me a group of like-minded people who want to examine actually buying some marginal farmland and turning it into an oil-producing giant?

I am not exaggerating. “giant” would be the word for the amount of biofuel harvested from this remarkable plant. It literally grows on its own. It produces four times as much oil as soy and ten times as much as corn. Daimler, and perhaps other companies, has been looking at using this biofuel to replace diesel.

There’s more: after the oil has been pressed from the seeds the residue can be made into cakes to fuel electric generation or, with its potassium and nitrate, into high grade fertilizer.

What I fear most is that far too many people have a vested interested in the growing of corn, or the refining of sugar for fuel.. Both require good well watered agricultural land, which could be better used to feed people. I repeat: Jatropha does not need prime land.

I am also reminded of one of my idols: the late Richard Thomas who died tragically a couple of years ago after a highway accident. Richard was always confounding the experts. It was he who discovered that he could grow an inedible tuber on his farm near Burk’s Falls. This product grew in much less than friendly, fertile conditions, He used it to make alcohol. He converted an old Volvo to use the fuel. And was driving all over Muskoka happily avoiding gas pumps. What happened to Richard’s dream? Apparently he was told by the RCMP that he was operating an illegal still and that the quality of the alcohol was not fit for human consumption. But he only wanted to feed his Volvo!

I wonder, if he were alive today, this man who came within a few votes of winning the provincial Liberal leadership but was beaten by David Peterson and The Establishment, would be looking at Jatropha. He was a visionary. I am not.

Anyone want to buy a run down farm and try to set the biofuel world on its ears?
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LIVING FOREVER?? YES!

Not really impossible! In my constant quest to be forward looking, I seem to have slipped a cog. I can see into the future, and whether or not that future includes me, doesn’t really matter. What will matter will matter only to my descendants? They will, I hope, say: “He was right. It turned out exactly as he predicted.” My father predicted that the properties he optioned, which was farmland at the time, in the north of Forest Hill Village, would become prime land. He was right. He didn’t live to see it, but along the way he made millionaires out of semi-literate Italian bricklayers whose descendants now people the Toronto haute-monde and are seen photographed at charity balls and high-toned fund raisers. Is that vindication enough? Perhaps.

I will continue to predict that unless the capitalist system undergoes a complete cleansing of conscience, it will continue to lose ground against the economies of less-than-democratic countries like China, where they dictate from above and make decisions which appear to benefit their people not their capital interests. O.K. Enough pie-in-the-sky.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the madness of Potash been taken over by the huge Australian mining company BHP. That company has a lot to gain by taking over Potash Corporation. They will dominate the fertilizer business. The government of Saskatchewan is having second thoughts. Meanwhile BHP promises to locate the head offi9ce in that province. Sure, just like U.S. Steel promised to continue business as usual at Stelco in Hamilton. The point I made in that earlier piece is that BHP was actually buying Potash Corporation with that company’s own money! The new company would have an enormous debt, but they could pledge the virtually unlimited resources of Potash against that debt. All I want to know is: in whose interest is all this takeover stuff? Does it benefit the public, who after all, finally, are the real owners of what lies beneath the ground in Saskatchewan? This is where the Chinese bid makes more sense, if you can make any sense of takeovers in the first place. China needs potash. Not only for profits, but to develop a more prosperous agriculture to feed its own people. I don’t see even a hint of this altruism in the BHP bid.

All this investment-world turmoil came bubbling up when I read a story about future takeovers. There is a wonderful tactic used by entrepreneurs. They start up a company and their first objective is to make that company attractive to its competition. So we have three new wireless pretenders in the market: Wind Mobile, Mobilicity, and PublicMobile. According to the orthodoxy of the market economy, competition is good for everyone. They like to call it "win-win." Prices go lower because there are more players competing in the market. What can possibly be wrong with that? Let me tell you what is wrong. First: because the competitive prices become predatory the big guys try to force the newcomers out of business. The result is that those new companies default on their debt, shareholders get burned, and the economy takes another hit. But in fact, the big guys don’t believe competition is good. Neither do the start-ups. What happen, and it almost always does, is that through “convergence” or other euphemisms for monopoly-building, the start-up gets exactly what it wanted: to be taken over at a price that puts profits in their pockets. No one is hurt. The big guys get bigger. The only downside there is that the takeover company now probably has an even bigger debt load and who pays for the cost of that debt load? Need I ask??

Instead of being the beneficiaries of the market system, we are the patsies. Far too much of the world of business cares nothing for its real stakeholders, the people it sells products and services to. You have all heard know, that “We have to grow the company for the benefit of the shareholders.”

Try not, as so many critics, to call me names. Labelling me “Socialist” does not answer my questions. What I am politically has nothing to do with pragmatic reality.

Today, America is being swept off its feet by jargon-flaunting nitwits using name-calling instead of educated opinion. (Hey – it’s happening in Toronto!) And it is that jargon that is going to determine who runs America (and Toronto) after November.

This prediction is my legacy. It is a twisted kind of immortality.

REACHING OUT IS A TWO-WAY STREET

Nicholas Christof’s thoughtful Op-Ed piece in the NY Times reflects the uneasiness of American liberals about the current epidemic of anti-Islam anger. The fact that everyone should have known about the Muslim Community Centre (please – not a “mosque”) near ground zero, because it had been written about many months ago in the Times, seems not to matter. The “issue” became a flashpoint for anger only after the “journalists” at Fox decided to make it an issue. On board came all the Fox-followers; the believers in Glen Beck; the Tea-Party “intellectuals,” and a host of other rabble waiting to be roused.

I agree that the nutbar Florida clergyman, who suddenly became headline news, should not have threatened to burn the Quran. But we made him into a national figure when he was at best, a neighbourhood freak. We reacted, not to his idiocy, but to the rising tide of Muslim anger against America, complete with street riots in Afghanistan.

Christoff wants to reach out. Obama has already reached out, starting with the futile and fruitless olive branch held out to the Iranians. That was early in his presidency and it made the same impression on the Iranians as his overture to the Republicans for bi-partisanship.

Like many other people of sane mind (I hope) I have a problem with the apparent silence of many Muslims on the whole issue of Jihad. Chrstoff, selecting from a group of moderates, sees it otherwise.

I don’t want to quibble. I do believe fervently that entente is a two-way street. While we must continue to hold out a hand of friendship (which so far has been rejected) I believe it is high time that the Muslim world came forward with their offers of mediation and entente. It is time the Imams and Ayatollahs and Emirs came forward and offered to meet and discuss. Why must we continue to be the petitioners? They get to be the victims while we get to be the villains. And our bigotry does reinforce that attitude.

Having said that I insist that negotiation has to include a positive move, a mediating move from the Muslim world; a gesture that they are willing to talk and that perhaps they might be willing, as we seem to be, to assume just a little bit of the guilt that should be associated with the actions of some of their people.

ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES?

I can't fault Obama for his patriotism and his continuing declaration that American technology leads the world. It’s the kind of jingoistic proclamation that is right up there with “Streets paved with gold,” and “Most people would immigrate to America if they could,” and all the other American Dream declarations. Nothing wrong with a little bit of boosterism. Ironically it is often coupled with the sobering reality that technological scholarship in America (and in Canada) is diminishing while emerging countries take over: India, Brazil, and China. It is not without a kind of wistful self-examination that we wander through the campus of almost any university and are startled by the number of Asian faces.

This is not about the emergence of a new standard of excellence in our two countries. It is about the resiliency and the inventiveness of China. (I know, there are figures that show India is growing faster. Maybe.) I recommend to anyone interested in a truthful examination of the future of China in the world to read “When China Rules the World” subtitled The End of the Western World and the Birth of a new Global Order, by Martin Jacques. –

Recent statistics show that China has pulled ahead of America is the creation of renewable power, a sobering thought in the light of our belief that China is the world’s number one (or getting to be) polluter using enormous quantities of coal and with cities where it is deadly just to inhale.

Today I note that China has entered the high speed rail race. We know that they have already built high speed rail (some with people like Bombardier) but now they are, extolling their booming technology, actually bidding on the high speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Imagine, a country so many people still define as having millions living marginally and in poverty and with primitive resources. It may be that the contrast between the endemic poverty of rural China and the burgeoning technological sector is a contradiction. But it is certain that China says it can not only build the high speed link, but that it can offer a complete package which includes financing. China is also competing for a contract to use its technology in Brazil.

So much for the self-deluding fiction that China succeeds with millions of low-cost workers doing low tech production. Yes, they do, but this new step is one not to be taken lightly.

Read the book. Let me know.

P.S. Under the heading "too much self pity," I find myself on the one hand cheering for progress, and on the other, lamenting that I will not be around to "see how it all comes out."

I DON'T WANT TO BE A POSTER BOY

I am about to ask you to make a pledge or contribution in my name in the fight against bladder cancer, the 4th most prevalent cancer among men, and the most costly to treat.

As a sufferer myself, a “suffering” that I have always preferred to keep private, I understand the almost pathological fear people have of the “C-word.” I am also weary of the parade of celebrities who leap into the public eye with an announcement of some kind of cancer. Which is why I feel embarrassed to ask for a donation. (The website explains the need better than I can.)

Bladder cancer is sinister because there is no pain associated with its arrival. There is blood in the urine. Cystoscopy will reveal tumours in the bladder. For many years I had suffered from a kind of chronic cystitis for which my doctor advised copious quantities of cranberry juice. But in 1990 came the blood.

Twelve years of treatment, sometimes painful, always uncomfortable, and the cancer could not be stopped. It was almost too late. Eleven hours on the operating table and everything south of my kidneys was removed. Enough medical revelation.

I have never wanted to be a poster boy for the disease. I preferred to “suffer” silently. It was mine. Perhaps my inherent narcissism (which I detested) kept me from “going public.”

Now I have. On October 2nd I will join fellow bladder cancer people on a 5 k walk. As with all these things, I ask you to make a contribution in my name, to “sponsor” me on this walk. (Even with my relatively new hip, I will make the trudge.)

To contribute go to cbcan.org. Follow the instructions.

I only hope I am not violating my own principle that the baring of one’s soul can sometimes be a form of the old “look at me” problem. I’ll survive.

REVISITING H.L. MENCKEN

Although he was a virulent anti-Semite, I have to forgive him because of one unforgettable phrase. The seer of Baltimore wrote that” “No one ever got poor underestimating the intelligence of the American People.” I always hated that quote because it demeaned the very people Mencken wrote for. It was, to me, always a kind of elitist snobbery characteristic of many journalists. Anyone who has ever spent time in a city room has heard remarks like: “Here we go. Another day with the great unwashed.” Contempt for the very people you wanted to reach was an insult, an insult to the journalist himself.

But I dither. Mencken came to mind as I watched a new non-political “public service” commercial. You may have seen it. It showed a man with a shovel starting to dig in the ground. He was soon standing in a deep hole. The admonition was: “There is an old saying – if you find yourself in a hole, don’t dig deeper.”

It is playing to the average citizen’s failure to properly understand fiscal policy. We are just as guilty as the Americans. The difference is that their present economic ignorance is leading them to embrace the very people who got them in the financial mess they’re in.

Don’t be so smug though. Didn’t Paul Martin, when he was Minister of Finance make a crusade over reducing the deficit? It made political sense because it painted him and the Chrétien Liberals, as people who wanted to save our country from itself?
The deficit came down but unemployment was high and as usual the pain was felt by the people least able to handle it. It was, and it still is, a very bad idea. In the U.S. especially, the priority is to bring back something closer to full employment; to restore public confidence; to make America great again – and all that stuff.

The other day, in his press conference, Obama did a tap dance around the word “stimulus.” It seems now that that word has become an anathema, a pejorative word, a political flash point. He was asked if his proposed new 50 billion dollar infusion into roads, railways and runways was a “stimulus.” He smiled. He knew that the reporter asking the question was mirroring the American disappointment in the stimulus program and has somehow been convinced that it will ruin the country. Obama said, sidestepping daintily, that his job was to “stimulate” the economy, somehow re-inventing the word stimulus. Give me a break!

He still professes to believe that the public sector is supposed to spring forward and start hiring people, knowing full well that they will be hiring people to make product that the suddenly cost-conscious consumer will not buy. So why produce? So why hire?

Yes, deficits do dig a hole. But unemployment digs a far deeper one. What bothers me most, and this harks back to the Mencken quote, is that Americans fail to see the irony of their distaste for deficits. The irony being that the greatest deficit responsibility lies, not with out of control public spending, but with out-of-control tax refunds, especially to the wealthiest 5%. George Bush’s policy of tax cuts made the biggest hole of all. The renewal of those tax cuts will dig that hole even deeper. I am not even mentioning the tens of billions into the “hole” of the Iraq war.

In the face of the anti-deficit lobbying from The Right and the timid Left, there is no hope. Americans will go to the polls on the first Tuesday in November, and just two years after utterly rejecting them for their stupidity with the economy, will reward the same guys with a return to power.

What Mencken failed to mention was that the ordinary person, in the U.S, or in Canada, simply can't stand up to the huge pressure of political campaigns and untruths from power-based lobbyists that have only one goal in mind: re-election. We are dupes because we seem to want to be.

It is also too easy to blame governments for pandering simply to get elected. You have to have the gullible suckers within range to succeed with pandering. Here in Toronto, we are about to elect (unless some sense arrives spontaneously in the voters’ minds) a man who has sloganeered his way into the hearts of people who seem to want to be duped. Just use language like “waste and corruption” and enough people believe. Sad. Sad. Sad.

Go dig a hole.

GETTING OLDER - NOT BETTER?

“Older and wiser” may just be an empty aphorism. It may also be a last stab at some kind of justification for carrying on; some kind of vindication. I hope it is the latter – o0therwise “looking Ahead” is just an empty boast, a kind of nearly senile hubris. You be the judge.

We found ourselves with a few days to spare while visitors from Mexico inhabited our apartment. I muse that every visit to old friends could be the last, not meaning to be morbid, but I am acutely aware of my mortality, future travel plans notwithstanding.

First visit to my oldest friend and his wife who have lived in Cleveland for longer than they lived in Toronto. They travel widely so I’m not sure why he commented as he did: “You people are crazy. You’re both suffering from different things,” (Shirley walking in pain with a cane waiting for a possible hip replacement. I with an assortment of ailments which could send me to a hospital in the blink of an eye.) He went on: “You travel all over the place with no thought to your physical condition.” He may be right. For whatever reason he is pretty fit and has no aches and pains or dire symptoms. Shirley and I do have them. She walks painfully with a cane, awaiting a possible hip replacement. I carry on with synptoms that seem ready to fell me at any time. But so what. Back to the title of this piece, I intend to be better AND inevitably older. Why not? I have no illusions about the future. I am a committed atheist so for me, this life is what I make it, When it ends – it ends. I have no trouble with that.

But our next visit came with ominous consequences. Shirley has two elderly cousins, both therapists, who live in Detroit. I wanted to visit them, We don’t know how much longer they’ll be around. He’s nearly 90 and enfeebled by an untreatable circulatory problem. But his mind is sharp. His view of life is impressive. His sense of everything from human behaviour to political realities is as sharp as ever.

We visited. We went out for dinner. Later than night we got a call at our hotel. He’s in hospital. The doctor thinks it may have been a stroke. There is nothing to be done. He is awake, alert and functioning. Earlier in the day he complained of a pain in his left arm. (Most people understand the significance of that symptom.) He told us the pain was diminishing so we were fit to go out. We went. He ate. He did not complain but you could tell all was not well.

Earlier in our visit I said: “Don’t go dying on us while we’ve come to visit.” He’s the kind of man you can say that too. Was I prescient? Who knows?

Today we will, we hope, visit him at home. It may be our last chance to sit with this brilliant, thinking, caring (and successful) man. His passing would make our world less of a place.

The two of us will trudge forward, seeing things for the first time. Later this week we will go to Ottawa where we will visit old friends whom we haven’t seen in more than 40 years. They “discovered” me after my Globe and Mail piece about turning 80. That was two years ago! Where has the time gone??

Just a footnote: we went to Blossom in Cleveland for a concert by the Joffrey Ballet company accompanied by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. It was my first visit to the ballet!! More in a later communique.