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Page 5; News, Tuesday, July 24, 1990 Fed up with born again athletes I'm so steamed at Born-Again athletes that I'm tempted to take the Lord's name in vain. The other day Dave Stewart of the Oakland Athletics threw a no- hitter against the Toronto Blue Jays and when asked how he did it, he replied: "I said a prayer to God before the game, and it worked." All manner of modern athletes from Michael Chang to Diego Maradona credit God with grant- ing them the victory. I'm not against Christianity. Christianity is a good thing because at any given time there are approximately 25 or 30 little wars going on in the world and almost all of them are fought on the basis of religious differences. Without these wars there would be no demand for guns, green William J. Thomas jeeps or hand-held grenade launchers and military manufac- turers would have to retool and produce really low-ticket items like work boots, farm implements and all-terrain ambulances. Christianity, as it's tied to the Dow Jones Average, is a very important part of our ever- expanding global village, the town that greed and Adnan Kashoggi built. In fact I've even read the bible, the one edited for "Students of Literature And Art" in which all the "thees" were changed to "yous" and all the "ewes" were changed quite dramatically by those nifty ritual sacrifices. It's a pretty powerful novel and much more believable than the movie in which Charlton Heston parts the Red Sea and-there's not one beer can or old boot or even a fishing lure on the bottom. But I firmly believe this is where God and Christianity belong - in books and movies, churches and temples, in hearts and homes and theme parks. They most definitely do not belong in the locker room. Stinking, sweat-smeared clothes, tobacco juice stains, tubs of iced beer, soggy towels, bare buttocks and steams clouds smelling of liniment - these things belong in a locker room. For Dave Stewart and the other mem- bers of Athletes for Christ to put God in amongst all this sport rub- bish is sheer blasphemy. In addition, it's rather pre- sumptuous of Dave Stewart to claim God gave him a no-hitter. I mean if he had been pitching against the Philadelphia Atheists or the Indianapolis Infidels, I'd say go for it, smile those batters three-up-three-down and let he who casts the first bunt single, take a fast ball in the ear. But the Jays have eight or nine Born-Agains themselves, enough to join the ALL BAPTISMAL BASEBALL LEAGUE as a team called the Bible Belts, or the Toronto Thumpers. So while Dave and God are mowing them down like five-pins with a ten-pin bowling ball, you're telling me Tony Fernandez and Kelly Gruber weren't praying to God that they could take Dave deep to left field where Ricky Henderson was admiring his photograph on continued on page 6 The new improved price of beauty Seems like beauty is not only skin-deep these days, but it's also wallet-deep. That is, if you've got some hang-up about the old face and bod and want to do some major repairs on the whole blamed structure. Start roof-top level with the old thatch. Maybe there ain't much of it left these days and you don't much fancy being a Yul Brynner or Telly Savalas, so how's about a nice hair transplant. Only set you back a couple of thousand bucks, give or take a dollar. That's for the old (or young) ganders. For the old gooses, there's always a hot, slip- py, slidey wig which won't set you back an arm and a leg. Now in the attic region of the old face, we've got more serious problems with wrinkles, lines and bags that just won't go away or let themselves be covered up with a ton of make-up. What to do, Olga Landiak what to do? Why, bring in the face-rebuilder called a cosmetic surgeon and let him go to work. "Tote that wrinkle, Lift that sag, Go through pain, and you're no longer an old bag!" Face lifts, they call them. Only set you back another couple of thousand bucks and you'll end up weeks later looking like Phyllis Diller. If that's what you want. Now we come to the third floor, chest level. Not much there of interest to the ganders (apart from staring and comparing, that is), but of vital interest to the gooses who figure either they ain't got enough or what they've got is sagging down to the knees. No problem. The magic men with the silicone implants will have you rivalling Dolly Parton in a twink. More thousands of bucks. Down to the second floor where the good old stomach is now a bay window instead of the nice, flat 'pane' it used to be in your salad green days. Not to fret. One tummy-tuck coming up for another mere thousand buckeroos. First floor now and, omigood- ness, what are those awful thighs doing? Bulging out all over the place until we've got a verandah of fat running around the body- building and ruining the view. Off with it's head via the liposuc- tion machine, for another pile of looneys. I don't know what the latest is about the 'basements' of our legs and feet, but I'm sure somebody somewhere is doing something about them too. Or maybe by the time one gets down that far, one. has run out of the necessary bucks. Why? What's it all about? This 'Fountain-of-Youthing' on the part of both men and women? According to two cosmetic sur- geons and one pyschologist inter- viewed on the radio, it's about people being so brain-washed by this glorification of Youth, Beauty and Handsomeness Forever, that they're willing to spend any amount of dollars to keep in the swim and run the good race. To mix up the metaphors. Oh phoo! What a waste of time, energy and mostly bucks. I can think of a hundred and more other things on which to spend all those vanity dollars than prop- ping up the body-and-face aging 'house'. Shucks, who pays any atten- tion or even notices the run- down, paint-peeling exterior any- way, when there's a light _ of life 'beaming out from behind it. These ' renovating' folks have got their priorities all mixed up, in my book. It's still what's going on in the old headbone that counts no matter how young or old, beautiful or decrepit you are. That's worth all the bucks in the world, but it can't be bought. It has to be worked at. Sad, but oh so true. 'English only' dividing heartland I live in Thunder Bay - the place that calls itself the "heart" of Canada. We're still standing with one tenuous foot in the west, taking grain (albeit in smaller and smaller quantities every year) from prairie farmers. But we're also forced to look south and east, with Toronto calling our econom- ic shots, and the Toronto-Ottawa axis setting our political agenda. As a Heartlander, I'm still car- rying the same scars everyone else is from the trauma of the "English-Only" debate at City Hall last February. A majority of councillors, despite the objections of Mayor Jack Masters and a few Council allies, voted in favour of the same resolution as Sault Ste. Marie, and declared this city's official language English. At the time, my francophone friends asked me whether it was still safe to live here, or it they were being told to "go home", wherever "home" is. My two kids, both in a French Immersion school, had to answer tough questions from "English-Only" kids about whether it was now a waste of time becoming bilingual. Through all that, the council majority insisted they loved fran- cophones, and that some of their NORTHERN INSIGHTS best friends spoke French. They also insisted that they were just sending an economic message to Toronto and Ottawa - trying to tell senior levels of government to stop passing legislation that make municipalities pay, pay, pay - for services like policing the courts, pay equity, and translating docu- ments into some language other than English. Nearly half a year has passed since then. Thunder Bay City Council shows no indication of even wanting to reconsider. The Mayor of Sault Ste, Marie, Joe Fratesi, an "English-Only" sup- porter, has taken steps to reach out to the francophone commu- nity, but shows no other signs of remorse. In both cities, the scars of division are still there. Two new opinion polls have now been released here which by Larry Sanders give us an indication of how deep those scars are on the Heartland. One poll was done in May by Confederation College, before the death of the Meech Lake Accord. The second one was done by pro- » fessors at Lakehead University at the end of June, just as Meech Lake was going through its final agonizing death throes. The sec- ond poll as done for COLT, the Coalition on Language Tolerance. COLT was set up in March to try to convince City Council to : change its stand. Both polls present a pictuure of a very divided city. Both polls found about 50% of my fellow Heartlanders favouring City Council's stand, and about 35% opposed. The College poll asked only one question about "English- only", as one of a long list of other questions - from the GST (which the majority does not want) to Blue Box recycling (which the majority does want). But the COLT poll was focused exclusively on "English-Only", and asked a number of other related questions. Its in those other questions that the scars, along with a heavy does of inde- cisiveness, reveal themselves. Despite the near 50/50 split on the resolution itself, a clear majority, 52%, say they would support a reversal by City Council. Only 38% said they thought City Council was trying to send some kind of economic message. In reply to the question "Do you think that the English- Only resolvtion has hurt the repu- tation of Thunder Bay", 47% said "no", and 43% said "yes". In both polls, more males than females support the "English- Only" stand. Support is also stronger among those over 45, and those with less education. 'The Confederation College poll also found that support for the resolution was highest (an aston- ishing 77%) among the middle class (households earning $25,000 to $40,000 a year). I asked Ernie Epp, one of the Lakehead University professors who conducted the COLT poll, whether he thought the results would be different if the polls were done now, after the death of Meech. He didn't think they would be. "I don't know whether Meech Lake changed any minds. I have a suspicion, a sort of a gut feeling, that people are pretty convinced as a rule on this." If Epp's "gut feeling" is accu- rate, it's going to take a very long time for the scars of division to heal - perhaps more than one gen- eration. According to the poll results, support for "English- Only" increases with age. 46% of those under 30 oppose the res- olution, with only 39% in favour. At the other end of the age spec- trum, 65 and over, 58% support the resolution, while only 21% are opposed. : continued on page 6