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page 6, Saturday May 24 WHTBY FRE IPRESS editoriai Rites of Spring: Fireworks magic hasn't worked yet A half century ago, Victoria Day weekend meant two things to school children. First of all, it was: "The twenty-fourth of May The Queen's birthday If we don'tget a holiday Then we'll all run away." It was also known as Firecracker Day. Back then, the country's birthday on July 1 was known as Dominion Day. Canadians were not the type to sully the birthday of their nation with fireworks and other signs of celebration. No, we were a subdued nation then. Fireworks were for Victoria Day - an acknowledgment of our colonial past. Centennial year changed that. Suddenly we began to realize that we could have birthday candles on our cake, and eat it, too. Now each year, we trot out the fireworks. The traditional backyard display lingers, but one senses with diminishing enthusiasm. (Price a decent package and you'll see why.) What has changed is the introduction of commercial displays. A good example is that put on by Cullen Gardens this past weekend. The hour-long traffic jam it caused as cars tried to clear the premises proves the popularity of the event. The display itself wowed the crowd, with a few pyrotechnics, like the clothesline over the water, which seemed to have been invented for the venue. Much of the display hugged the ground. This was ideal for the paying crowd on the hillside overlooking the valley, but must have disappointed the freeloaders who jammed the highway and nearby roads for a peek. Nevertheless, it is the high-flying rockets that draw the ooos and aaahhs.The flowers of light have to travel just so high to create expectation, and then explode in a surprise burst of sound, to get the right reaction. Such displays today have little to do with a Queen who lives five time zones away. They have become rite of Spring. Maybe if we light enough rockets, send up a sound and light irus is not a bacteria Okay, we were in error. It isn't a virus, that's for sure. And it's dangerous all of the time but deadly only sometimes. The cheque is in mail...but where's it going? Durham Region officials are hoping that Ontario health ministry accountants know their geography better than their colleagues in the communications department. In a press release announcing $8.1 million in funding for local community-based, long-term health care agencies, the ministry states that $6.3 million will be used to expand home care services for seniors and physically disabled people in the "Halton Region." Some day my prints will come Let's get this right. Good ol' straight--talking, shoot from the lip Premier Mike Harris would cut down abuse of health and welfare by.. . are you listening, George Orwell? ... finger--printing every one of Ontario's 11 million residents. Let's ignore the cost of the operation. Let's forget that this is the government that threw in the trash--can the project of producing Health Cards with photo identity. Let's also forget that abuses of power can and do happen in every government. Sooner or later, as the plumber's soon learn, things run downhill or clog up. Who you gonna trust? This is the same Mike Harris who sided with the gun lobby against the pesky federal government that wants us to register guns, for goodness sake. Register and fingerprint people, and hide the guns in the closet. It's a good recipe for a revolution, but doesn't show a lot of common sense. It's VRE - Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus. In our front page news story last week, our headline called this a deadly virus. Well, it's not. It's really a bacteria, which is a different kind of bug. And it's the kind of thing we should have known. As any high school student could tell you, viruses are all not only resistant but immune to antibiotics.This is all for the same reason that antibiotics won't help you when you have a cold. A cold is a virus, and not a bacteria. Bacteria usually aren't immune. Antibiotics kill them. Bacteria that have become immune to antibiotics can become a dangerous germs indeed. It limits the weapons medicine has to fight back. This particular bacteria, VRE, is resistant to antibiotics likely in part because of our over-use of antibiotics. Healthy germs increase their resistance. Some experts fear more bacteria will become resistant in the same way. The news story told the story of what happened when VRE hit a rehab floor at Oshawa General. Hospital officiais take VRE seriously. They put in motion a special round of quarantine, testing of staff and patients, and an appropriate cleanup program.They handled a serious situation as though it were routine. We have nothing but praise for the manner in which hospital officiais handled this situation. Our hats off to them. For us, a bit of scouring and disinfectant would be in order. We will write out our lines: a bacteria is not a virus, a bacteria is not a virus, a.. 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