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The year 2004... what's in a date? The modern relehratiort of Christmas. we know. is a remarkable mix of traditions. Just think of Jesus. Santa and Rudolph all rolled into one, The roots of our dating system are equally fascinating. 2004? This numbering system goes back 1.400 years, It's a Christian. European invention that has slowly spread across the globe. hut it's no! the only," such invention. Several other cultures have their own calendars. If you're Jewish, this year is 5764 and it began last Sept, 27, lfyou're Muslim. the year is 1424 and it began March 4. Bahiis are living in the year 160, the Chinese in the year 4701, and the list goes on. The numbers vary primarily because they have different starting points. Jews start counting from the origin of the world, or so they reck- on from the Bible. Christians desig- time Year I as the conception and birth of Jesus. Muslims begin with Muhammad's move from Mecca to Medina, thought to represent the emergence of Islam. Baha'is start with the Bab's dalmatian of prophetic ministry. and the Chinese with Emperor Huangdi‘s invention of the calendar. Again, the list goes Like McDonalds' hamburgers. which are now spread Ihroughuut the world, the Western system of dating has gained a dominance that sometimes makes us forget the presence of others. Dates also differ because of the way years are calculated. Over the centuries. the sun and the moon have been our two principal calen- drical guides. The 29-day lunar cycle. so visible and remarkable. has been primary. The 365.23-day rota- tion of the earth came later, as sci- entists learned to plot the intersery non of earth and sun, appreciating the links with the seasons. The Chi- nese and Jewish calendars. in fact, are a lunar-solar mix. They are grounded in the lunar cycles but are ith the near-unanimous I)/kr,fis:,r'i's,',fi,?,'t,ii'i" and anger of the community with the closed-minded and narrow vision of Ken Murray and his cohorts on the k-W Symphony board, a mock- erg has been made of due diligence on their part in not considering the downside of the firing of our music director. especially since the onlv reason given to the hoard was a "different , in vision". Symphony members should clean house Beginning Ian. 14. 2004, a new political columnist will ioin the Waterloo"; Chronicle's Comment paw. Sean Strickland will write a weekly (‘nlumn focussing on issues rr-Ievam to Waterloo, and Waterloo region ht large Humbug! If they had properly Strickland?; political ties to Waterloo an- lengtuhy "tcs servrd as a trtMitpe on the Waterloo Region District school board. a councillor an both Waterloo city and Waterloo regional munrils. and chair of the Region ofWaterloo's community ser- vices committee Strickland has also «at on various community boards, 7 New columnist irr:Triirs 'iT, THE CHROiNICLl periodically aligned. by adding extra months or days. to keep them synchronized with the solar year. Without the alignment, the lunar months begin to glide through the year. which is what happens with the Muslim calendar that is based exclusively on the lunar cycle. The Christian and Baha'i calendars. conversely. are solar, with Fute tun- ing dune (leap years and added days' to keep the seasons in line with the Earth's place vis-B-vis the sun. We owe the present form of our calendar to the Romans. who in turn received much of their knowl, edge from other cultures of the Middle liast, including “aha! is now Egypt. Iran and Iraq. Recomihenda- tions by Julius Caesar's advisers. about 50 years before the birth of lesus. established much of what we now take for granted. including a leap year every four years to keep the calendar in line with the solar cycle, and a new year beginning Ian. I {Roman senators typically took office that day]. This Julian calen- dar, with some changes. became the norm throughout the Roman Empire But it certainly did not sup- plant all other local calendars. Sixteen hundred years later. the Julian calendar was updated. Since the earth takes slightly less than 36525 days to rotate around the sun. over the centuries the seasons had begun to shift. This led to fine- tuning by Pope Gregory's advisors in 1582. and to a slightly-modified calendar. Over time, this revised calendar came to be accepted by most of Christendom. but the acceptance was not universal. Nor was it always immediate: it took the British almost 200 years to accept the new calendar. and some Euro- pean peasants continued to follow the Julian calendar well into mod- ern times. This Gregorian calendar is now the norm in Western and Western- ized countries. and it is known researched the offer of financial sponsorship for the tour so it prop- erly would not he a drain on the operating budget. the Berlin Uon- cert would have been a world recognition coup for our orchestra, the’IIvin Cities and Canada. The citizens of Waterloo, right- fully feeling betrayed by thes same lark of due diligence in their roun- ril nvrr the RIM Park financial fias, In contrast each has been insult ed and "mbarrassed. COMMENT There's more. It's one thing to devise a system that divides time in a particular way, as the Romans did. It's quite another to decide what numbers to put on these divisions. Which is to be Year 1 (there is no Year 0). and why is this year 2004? The ancient Romans counted from the year they thought Home had been founded. They also had a sec- ond system. designating the year of an Emperor's reign (imagine "the first year of the Prime Ministership of Paul Martin"). worldwide. Ot1e even finds it in Iran. which currently uses three cal- endars: the Persian (Zoroastriait) solar calendar. for everyday use: the Muslim calendar. fur religious mar ters; and the Gregorian calendar. in dealing with outsiders; In the seventh century a Christ- ian monk, commissioned to impose a more Christian frame on the cal- endar. designated Year I as the con- ception and birth of Jesus. Diorty- sius Exiguus calculated the concep- tion to fall on March 25 in the year 754 after the foundation of Rome. with the birth of Jesus occurring nine months later. It turned out that this calculation was wrong by at least five years (although Jesus' actual birth year is unknown. sources now require it to be some- time before 4 BL]. By the time the error was discovered it was too late to make a correction. It's all rather confusing . . . and also delightfully human. All our cul- tural expressions represent tradi- tions cobbled together from differ- ent places, at different times. We make things fit. glass over the con- tradictions. happily think that everyone else in the world believes the same thing but also delight in the regional differences. Truly Canadian in spirit. isn't it? CO. cleaned house on Nov. 10 with a new mayor and council, and we all felt good about the result. Slow is the time for all symphony members to clean our house and plan for a new board. 7 An enraged citizenry can and has moved mountains. and we haven't a moment to lose. Michel Desiardins Waterloo Bob Wagner Waterloo i, N. After IO years. the Waterloo Chronicle has decided to I10 anger feature my gnjumn. There was a time that such a decision would have provoked me to write a bitter rant against the evil corporate media moguls who were suppressing my right to free speech. Perhaps because I'm getting Iahem] older. or perhaps because I've learned IO distinguish between battles I can win and battles that are pointless. I'm not going to do that today. Besides the fact that such a rant would probably not have been published, the reality is that it would have been little more than self-f1agellatiort. Ultimately, the owners ofa paper (and. by my count, the current owners are the fifth owners of the Chronicle since 1993) have the absolute right to make a business decision about what they want in their paper. The readers of the paper will then decide whether they agree with those business deci, srons. In this case. I was asked back in November if l would "he willing to localize your writing. specifically focusing on issues within Waterloo or Waterloo Region. If youd like to tackle a federal or provincial issue. which you certainly can. we'd like for you to take a local approach to it." I replied that “I'm pretty resistant to agreeing to ANY controls over what I write. I write about whatever is hugging me at the moment. While that will often refer specifically to Waterloo, I can't promise that I will every week." As well, as my audience has now expanded well outside of the IIL%ll boundaries of Waterloo. I indicated l It that I needed to balance my local per- ' AN OTHLR spective with the need to avoid mysti- 1 VIEW lying those who live outside of the - _ h area. , _ While I certainly hoped that what I ' felt was a measured response would save my column from being pulled, I .e . _ wasn't really surprised when I learned 'utr this week that it had not. I'll sleep well "r,, 'y") f knowing that I didn't sacrifice my g, " 'if independence in order to protect my t ", ' - g spot on the editorial page tht least. I'll _ sleep well tomorrow night, I never get SCOTT enough sleep on nights when my col- PMTKOWSK] umn is duel. At the same time. I cant really blame those who made the deci- sion. They asked me to do something different with my column and I declined. Since this is my last opportunity to do so, I wanted to take the time to thank the three editors with whom I've had the pleasure of working. Melodee Martinuk. Deb Crandall and, most recently. Andrea Bailey have done an outstanding job of balancing the concept of editorial freedom with the need to answer to those who are more interested in maximizing ad rev- enue. It's no secret, for example, that many of the business owners who might want to advertise in a local newspaper dont have an appreciation for my political views. Frankly. under the circumstances, I'm a little surprised that I lasted as long as I did as a columnist. In addition, I want to thank all those who've read the col- umn. either regularly or casually, over the past decade. Without readers, I'd just be talking to myself (although I sometimes do that too). I've saved every letter to the editor, and prize each one as an indication that I've motivated someone to get involved in a debate on the issues. Believe it or not, I enjoy hearing from those who disagree with me just as much as I enioythose that praise my work. For those of you who have told me that they read the Chronicle only because of my column, I do hope that they will continue to read the paper. Even without my column. there's still plenty of interesting stuff to read in these pages. I'm sure that there are those who will celehrate the disap- pt-aranu- of my column from the Chronicle. In fact, rm pretty sure that those living within a two-kilometre radius of either Andrew Telegdi's or Elizabeth Witmer's office can probably hear shouts of joy even as they read this. No matter what happens, I'll keep writing. rm far too opin- ionatpd to keep my thoughts to myself. And, there doesn't svem to he any end to the number of politicians or business leaders who do things that tick me off. I'm already in discus, sions with another local publication and am quite hopeful that they will decide to pick up my column. Should those discus, sions not pan out, I've also told Andrea that I'd he quite open to making a comeback in these pages. should the publication experience' a change afheart. . You can still find my columns in The Woolwich Ulnar-wot. an cxcellent independrm paper, and online at www.rahhle.ca. Any Whterlunatics tcopyright Tricia Siemens) who wish to receive the electronic version of my column each wrrk can send me an p. mail mossagr‘ at scriiatkowski6a"'rogers.com _ A farewell to my readers . ANOTHER VIEW E rl L8 4 '