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read the Letters to the Chronicle Ion a regular basis, and I often enjoy learning the opinions of others. However, the opinion of Scott J. Abrams printed last week stating that "sports have received enough funding" made me jump out of my shoes. Mr. Abrams, I don‘t know you perâ€" sonally, and I‘m sure you are a very nice person, but are you for real? Do you have any idea what a positive influence sports have on our kids in this community? Leave sports and music funding alone I won‘t launch into a flurry of staâ€" tistics, but think about the benefits that our sports programs offer the kids of Waterloo and beyond. Orgaâ€" nized sports keep our kids healthy, active, engaged and off the streets. How can you describe these peoâ€" ple as a "loud group of fun seekers"? Have you ever considered what this planet would be like without the arts and theatre? Are you familiar with music, and the impact it has on peoâ€" ple (especially our youth)? _ This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. There is an expresâ€" Questions, such as "Does that really go together that way?", or "DMid you read the instructions?" Of course 1 read the instructions I C Well, the first part anyway where it idenâ€" tifies all the parts. After that J just like to treat these things as a giant jigsaw puzzle There‘s nothing bigger in the way of manly fun than putting something together and then discoverâ€" ing, just near the end, that it can‘t possibly work that way Then you have the chance to work backwards and find out what the problem was. â€" B Â¥ The barbecue was tossed all the way across the deck,. and the gazebo was ripped to shreds as well CTiliobiinn 1 think they might have known they were going to be replaced in the next couple of years, and they decided to throw themselves into the wind. Regardless, it gave me the chance to do things 1 like â€" buy new stuff and put it together Reading the detailed instructions just takes the fun, the adventure, the sense of discovery out of building things. So I sit today, my hands cracked and worn, from days of manual labour. That, by the way, is something I avoid at all costs. I have great respect for those who work with their hands and day after day slug it out at the very toughest of jobs. Perhaps that‘s why I like putting things together so much. Thankfully Mother Nature helped us out in that regard last week by blasting through our backyard and destroying our little paradise. And to make things even more perâ€" fect, everything was on sale. Topping it all off everyone was gone from my house. So I gat to build all the units myself with no one asking goofy quesâ€" tions. I, on the other hand, am a soft, middleâ€"aged man, whose hardest work most days is to type. Men are happier when they have a project I don‘t think women understand the way men sion about looking through a key hole with both eyes and being narâ€" row minded, but I will refrain. The RIM Park "fiasco" (as you put it) has nothing to do with city counâ€" cil‘s funding of any sports or music It has nothing to do with any sports fields or music programs, nor does it have anything to do with funding our sports activities. I would encourage you to contact any parent who has a child in any sports program or music program, and ask them if their fees are being paid by the city. RIM Park is over, let it go. I can only imagine where you would rather allocate "your" money in this city, but I am hoping it‘s tagged to some kind of vision care, because you are obviously unable to see the forest for the trees. The RIM park lawsuit was linked to some bad legal advice and some gross misinterpretation of a financâ€" ing deal that went horribly wrong. This could just as easily hapâ€" pened with a new city library, or a new transit system, street mainteâ€" nance or any other large project. BRIAN BOURKE COMMENT AN I don‘t think she understands my RKE mind is so focused on the task at hand, I don‘t have time for trivialities such as exactly where the wrench I was using may have gone. When I‘m working outside, as | was this weekâ€" end, sometimes those things end up under the deck. Did you ever notice whatever you drop on a deck always seems to be the perfect size to slip between the boards? If | ever take it apart I‘ll have a full tool box. Wait a minute, that sounds like a decent week end project. With a beverage or two, flfcopfse. s Hear more of Brian‘s thoughts on life with the KOOL Morning Crew every weekday morning from 6â€"9 a. m. on Waterloo radio station 105.3 KOOLâ€"FM. I get so much more satisfaction from solving a problem â€" especially when I created it in the first place‘ That right there makes me a doer and a thinker. . Anyhow, it was a very successful couple of days of building especially helped by the tiny amounts of Sleeman beverages I managed to consume.(Really? The gazebo is supposed to have four walls?). And it raised me higher on the manly pedestal on which I like to pretend I live, where the various female occupants of the house will occasionally pop by to see if I‘ve managed to achieve anything (or just hurt myself}. like to work Waterloo This is another common complaint from the supervisor. 1 have a tendency to put tools down and then forget where they are. Then I go get another one and soon I have piles and piles of tools â€" none of which I can ever find â€" until my wife points them out in plain sight. I am happy to report that did not happen. It‘s one of the rare times when I have not been injured while in the throes of renovation or construction. It‘s one of the reasons I am not allowed to use a utility knife anymore, 1 am also pleased to tell you 1 did not lose any tools. Not even for a minute. War in Afghanistan rian Bourke‘s column entitled B“War has become unwinnable" in the May 9. 2007 Waterloo Chronicle is very insightful. The war in Afghanistan is also unwinnable. David Orchard‘s and Michael Mandel‘s article Afghanistan and Iraq are the Same War, available onâ€" line, state that "Canada must â€" immediately, and at the minimumâ€" open its doors to Iraqis and Afghanis attempting to flee the horror being inflicted on their homelands." We must stop pretending that we‘re not implicated in their sufferâ€" ing under the bombs, death squads and torture. This means refusing to lend our name, our strength and the blood of our youth in this war without end against the Third World. is as unwinnable as conflict in Iraq Waterioo | And through our daughter, I‘ve discovered the magic of early childhood is that children can not only imagine new and interâ€" esting situations to enhance their lives, but they can also learn from those imagined situations. Marshall Ward is a visual artist and independent filmmaker Email is welcome at mward@wlu.ca. Like the giant squid, many monsters of myth and legend have a factual basis, like the giant bird called the Roc in the story of Sinbad the Sailor. It‘s believed to be based on the discovery of the giant eggs of the flightless bird Aepyornis, a giant ostrich that lived on the island of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa, until it became extinct in the 1660s. Even now, I still often think of a time when extinct creatures like giant ostriches, giant sloths, mastodons, wooly mammoths. and saberâ€"toothed tigers lived, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth By pretending to be a paleontologist, our daughter not only feels happier and more independent, but also thinks about what it really means to be a paleontologist. As Simone Weil, a French philosopher and mystic once said, "Imagination and fiction make up for more than threeâ€"quarters of our real life." In our real life, the lower jawâ€"bone Mason found may in fact, be that of a pig (a leftâ€"over relic from my art studio), but in our imaginations, we‘ve concluded that it once belonged to a "preâ€" tendasaurus." And the "pretendasaurus." we decided, is a peaceful, slowâ€" moving vegetarian known for having one of the largest brains in the dinosaur kingdom. In the infamous photograph of the Loch Ness monster, taken in 1934 by Col. Robert Wilson, I always thought the creature looked much like a brontosaurus, with its long neck and small head. When asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, I would answer: a cryptozoologist. Cryptozoology is the study of animals rumoured to exist, but for which there is no hard eviâ€" dence, including Loch Ness monsters, yeti, Myakka skunk ape, and hundreds of other cryptids. In those amazingly illustrated books I collected, 1 would gaze at pictures of colossalâ€"sized giant squids attacking ships, pluckâ€" ing men with its circular suckers, and wrapping its slithery tenâ€" tacles around the masts before dragging the whole boat to the bottom of the sea. Some mariners believed that the idea of sea serpents arose from sightings of giant squid. It‘s been said that if a squid was underwater, and raised one of its tentacles above the surface, it could appear to be a snakeâ€"like head and neck. In my amateurâ€"paleontologist opinion, 1 determined the lower jawâ€"bone she discovered to be that of a brachiosaur, simiâ€" lar to the one seen striding through the trees at the beginning of Steven Spielberg‘s motionâ€"picture Jurassic Park. As a child, 1 was fascinated by all creatures â€"â€" not only prehisâ€" toric, but monsters of myth and legend. In my basement are boxes of books packed with titles like The World of Unknown Monsters, Creatures from Elsewhere, and Mysteries of the Unexplained. Like the Nessie photo (an admitted fake), 1 also spent hours studying reproductions of the wellâ€"known Bigâ€" foot film stills taken in 1967 by keen Bigfoot tracker Roger Patterson, while looking for signs of the monster in Bluff Creek Valley, California. I also loved looking at maps depictâ€" 8 ing Sasquatch sightings, most of which seemed to occur in the mountainous regions near the Pacific coast of North America And though most of the world today has been mapped and photographed, I was most intrigued by those few unexplored regions that still exist. I used to tell people that if 1 were a dinosaur, I would be a brontosaurus, said to be a peaceful, slowâ€"moving vegetarian. That is, until I learned it has one of the smallest brains of all dinosaurs. For me, nothing was more terrifying than the thought of sea monsters, lurking deep in the ocean depths. While digging in the garden this past weekend, my fourâ€" yearâ€"old daughter Mason discovered a dinosaur bone. _ , Coincidentally, her juniorâ€"kindergarten class just finished learning all about dinosaurs, and like so many children, they have totally caught her imagination. Mason thought the bone might be that of a brontosaurus, the gentle giant of the dinosaur world. _ o Visiting Jurassic Park WATERLOO CHRONICLE + Wednesday, May 23, 2007 * 11