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Notes from a Garage

With John Gardiner

Worrying about the flu; false advertising; and Professor William Christian…..

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

You know, my grandson had the flu earlier this week. I talked to my daughter and she said little Isaac was down with the flu. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but some time later it suddenly flashed through my mind again, only this time it frightened me. Somehow when I thought about Isaac having the flu, it combined with the knowledge rattling around in my head about H1N1 and the fact that it has killed children…..and I honestly feared for my grandson’s life. I phoned to see how he was and when I didn’t get an answer, I suddenly saw a young family at the hospital and a young child fighting for his life. Well, it turned out okay – it was just the ordinary flu, afterall. But it was the first time in my life I felt the type of fear I felt that day. I raised two children and have plenty of experience with kids, but have never feared for their lives from something like the flu. Something I’ve never really worried about. And I remembered seeing images of the crowd scenes to get the H1N1 vaccine and some of the people even wearing masks to protect themselves – and I wondered if this was the type of world we were leaving our children and grandchildren. Where there will be constant and unpredictable health scares and no one will ever be safe. I don’t know, folks, but I feel strongly that these new viruses that keep popping up these days have something to do with the toxic soup we live in…and also something to do with lower nutrient levels in our foods…and a bunch of other stuff that we’ve somehow caused. And I am profoundly ashamed that I have been part of such a tragedy and that I haven’t done more to make this a better planet….we had our chance forty years ago, but we walked away….I hope it’s not too late.

Well, my wife and I finally had to break down and buy a car last week. We’ve driven both of our existing cars pretty well to death – got good service out of both of them – but it was time. Well, we’re not car people – we use them to get around and that’s about it. We realize that they are basically bottomless pits of money. So, we decided to buy something fairly inexpensive but reliable. So, a couple of weeks ago on a Friday, we grabbed the Autonet section out of the London Free Press and went looking for bargains. We thought we spotted a couple of likely candidates, so we headed out on Saturday morning to do a little car shopping. Well, to put it simply, cars that cost $14,000 in the newspaper appear to cost $20,000 in the showroom – it’s fairly bizarre. Finally, I confronted one salesman about the misleading advertising. “Your newspaper ads lie,” I told him bluntly. “You’re here, aren’t you?” was the answer I got. Apparently there is an awareness that the newspaper advertising is basically false, but it’s done deliberately to get people into the showroom. What the heck is with that? And doesn’t anybody check advertising to see if there’s any truth to it? Apparently not! Remember my rant about the cosmetics industry, an entire industry that sells and advertises stuff that basically doesn’t work. Strange, but true. Anyway, we ended up with a car, but were generally not impressed with the sales tactics. Interesting that jokes about used car salesmen were always making the rounds when I was a kid and it seems most of them are still true fifty years later….

Was flipping through the stations on the TV very early this morning and, suddenly, there was a flash from the past. Professor William Christian, retired from the University of Guelph politics department, was on TVO’s The Agenda, as part of a panel discussing why there are no great people on the Canadian political scene these days. And it was good to see Professor Christian, who helped me understand Sir Edmund Burke and George Grant and other conservative political thinkers, but the topic of the show is something I’ve written about before and spent some time considering. And it’s not just that there are no great people on the Canadian political stage, it’s that the world is generally devoid of great people these days period. There seem to be no Albert Einsteins or Winston Churchhills or Beatles or Andy Warhols or anything else in the world right now. We’ve got a whole world full of pipsqueaks and that’s why we’re not really getting anywhere. In past generations, we invented stuff like electricity, internal combustion engines, manned flight, the steam engine and on and on….In this generation we get pretty excited about a new “app” for our cell phones and technology is really just crawling along…and you read it here first…

What a weird world! There’s actually a website called “dirtypitsandchestie.com”. It promotes some type of body cologne….will anybody ever visit this website? Strange, but true…..out of time for another week…..take care and remember, “hew to the line; let the chips fall where they may.”



John Gardiner is a 25-year-veteran of the community newspaper business, but he is also a prolific writer of moralistic short fiction he refers to as "emotional thoughtscapes" or "adult fables". Samples of his fiction can be found at:

He has also produced a noteworthy piece of humanist philosophy which can be found at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~aboiten/ad502.htm He welcomes comments on his work.