The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

All The World's A Circus Fleeting memories Page 5, News, Tuesday, February 26, 1991 Life, According To "Baba" Crime and criminals "Memories, like the corners of our minds...Misty water-color memories, of the way we were..." Yes, who can forget Barbara Streissand singing those_heart- wrenching lyrics to Robert Redford in that classic motion picture - GONE WITH THE WIND? An inescapable truism of aging, the memory is the second thing to go after a man turns 40. The first, of course, is his jackknife. Mine is around here someplace but I haven't been able to locate the damn thing for almost two years. Lately my_ recall faculties have been fading faster than Saddam : Hussein's chances of ever being named head of the Peace Corps. It's not my general memory bank that's being depleted by across-the- -board withdrawals of miscellany, but rather specific treasures of trivia that lately venture only to the tip of my tongue, leaving me in mid- conversation saying: "Ah, come on, you know who I mean!" or "You know if you read a newspaper once in a while, you'd be able to finish that sentence for me!" It's more like selective senility, a very precise brand of memory loss due to certain brain cells defecting under the cover of darkness. For instance I can still recall the name of Spin's horse in the Adventures of Spin and Marty series (Sky Rocket) and I can never forget the size of the capital M's on Annette Funicello's Mickey Mouse sweater, but I couldn't remember my personal chequing account number if Kreskin was standing behind me at the teller's window whispering lucky numbers in my ear. William J. There was a time when I never forgot a face, a practice my mother tells me developed from the sheer terror of once seeing Prime Minister John Diefenbaker up close and in- person. Diefenbaker, for those of you too young to remember, was the real- life model for Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger. You won't see much of Diefenbaker these days because in some provinces, newspaper editor's who __--sihave published photos of him have been charged with child abuse. Consequently, even today I can't get the image of Leave It To Beaver's Eddie Haskell out of my brain but I spend a lot of time at shopping malls talking to old acquaintances, shaking hands, slapping backs and generally playing a silent mind game called: "Who The Hell Is This Person Anyway?" After one drink I can recite every word to Glen Yarborough's Baby The Rain Must Fall but after two drinks I can't remember if Abby Hoffman was the outspoken radical of the 60's politics in the United States or the girl who won a gold medal in the 60-yard dash for Canada at the Pan-American Games. It's just flat out embarrassing when a friend describes a woman he thinks you should meet and it's not until after you've stared at the name and phone number for 10 minutes, it dawns on you that you've already been married to this person. My mother, the lovely Margaret McLean (who hates it when I mention her age in print), was born approximately at the turn of this century and her method of continued on page 9 Thomas Sometimes yer ole Baba thinks we have altogether the wrong ideas about crime and criminals which all the bleeding hearts out there would have us believe. For instance, take the usual mythology spouted that crime is the result of poverty, that criminals are made because of lack of money, possessions or education. Well, that's a lot of baloney because most offenses are committed because of avaricious GREED and not because of some grinding need; because there are people who. can't be bothered to work for a living but prefer to steal; because there are bodies who are too impatient to slowly build up a life but want it ALL like yesterday. Unfortunately, since World War ll, we now have a couple of spoiled generations who have this attitude they are owed everything their greedy little hearts desire just because they happen to be alive and taking up living space. There are many, many examples of people, who, DESPITE poverty and poor living conditions, have had enough guts, character and determination to rise above these conditions. So let's kick the poor excuse of 'Poverty being the root of all evil' right out the window. It's evil people who commit evil, no matter whether rich or poor. As for criminals being limited in intelligence, that's another piece of mythology. Many criminal types expend as much energy and mental power in planning and carrying out criminal schemes, to make them Einsteinian geniuses. It's the purely physical bully types who commit unintelligent petty crimes and get caught. It's the 'brains' who get away Olga Landiak with crimes of all kinds, high, low or in between. Then, there's the old, old cliche that 'murder, or crime will out'. More baloney. The vast majority of crimes go unsolved and unpunished, not because we have an incompetent policing system, but because they are greatly out-numbered. Many crimes, especially 'white-collar' ones, go unreported, and of the reported ones, only § about 20% get solved. Our 4 very lax and lenient courts with their lax and lenient laws allowing criminals of the worst types to be paroled back into society, doesn't help matters either. = It seems to be a revolving- door type of law that's being practiced these days. As for 'Crime Does Not Pay', that's the worst baloney of all. Of course it pays, and very well, otherwise why would so many people indulge in it? The only crime seems to be to get caught in the act. Otherwise, if you, or a high-rolling criminal gets away with it, then it's cause for cheers and smug self-satisfaction, not a moral condemnation. "Thou SHALT steal" seems to be one of the New Commandments of today's immoral society; but don't get caught , 'cause that's when you get branded a criminal. Not that even that seems to matter very much these days when you see ex-criminal types of the political stripe getting voted back into office time and time again. Figure that one out if you can. Then you have to ask yourself why crime and criminals seems to hold such a fascination for us. As Big and Little screen watchers, we seem to prefer the Mafia, Syndicate or Godfather type of movies to anything continued on page 15 It's convention time for municipal politicians all over northwestern Ontario. The Kenora District Municipal Association and the Rainy River District Municipal Union meet in February, and the Thunder Bay District Municipal League meets the first weekend in March. Along with all the usual seminars and symposiums, these municipal leaders have to adapt once again to some new realities that weren't on anyone's worry list a year ago - like an NDP government in Toronto, paying the GST, a war in the Middle East, and a very volatile, acrimonious electorate. If you have a chance, sit in on one of these conventions and look closely at these human beings. You'll be amazed to discover they have three eyes: two in front like the rest of us, and one on the back of the head. They've adapted this unique physical attribute from years of taking on responsibilities in Canada's level of government that boasts about being "the closest to the people". g <a Sat Pe | ae a ee es, convention, the resolutions that will eventually go to the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association then on to Queen's Park, the fellowship with other creatures like themselves, the mind-expanding seminars, and everyone's hope - some good election- year exposure through the news media. Municipal politician's three good eyes telephone calls. Some municipal politicians stay away from these conventions, so they can feel unconstrained later when they go after some opportunistic campaign popularity by chastising their fellow councillors for "wasting taxpayers money on conventions and travel". All of NORTHERN These types these politi- INSIGHTS are amazing cians have Be ------ to _--- watch. their second by Larry Sanders Once elected, eye on next they spend November's municipal elections. Some are deciding whether they want to bother testing the voters' confidence one more time. Others have already decided to seek a different level of responsibility - like councillors running for the job of Mayor or Reeve. Others have decided to retire from the hurly- burly of meetings, more and more complexities-and consultants, late night voter complaints on the telephone, and the frustration provoked by bureaucrats Oo FI ee ge Beene easlae suse. eateisTt just as. much money going to conventions and travelling to meetings as the people they've defeated. Everyone learns quickly in municipal politics that staying home, trying to make decisions in isolation from the "outside world", is a recipe for disaster. Too many forces, set in motion by players far away from the municipal council table, have to be dealt with, sometimes confronted, always used creatively. Ignorance of these outside farraec ie nat anly nn eycice - it can lav waste to the best laid-out local priority. But those who actually attend these conventions have a third eye - the one the rest of us haven't got - on the back of the head. From years of observing and talking to these unique creatures, I've learned that this third eye is put to different uses, depending on the individual. In all cases, this third eye has been developed to aid the politician's primary objective: survival. Those who have the third eye also have another characteristic in common - they've been in office. for more than one three year term.. Some have survived for fifteen or twenty years. From scientific observation, I've] - concluded that a significant sub-set of these three-eyed creatures us the rear- view positioning of their third eye to constantly gaze backwards. They recollect in great detail, frequently and out loud, how things "used to be" or "have always been done". How rontinued on paade 11