OPINION ‘WEDNESDAY, ‘September 11,199 PUBLISHER JON JARRETY SHARLENE IMHOFF DONNA EDITOR JORY ADVERTISING REP. JOHN SNELGROVE CATH BRINE Ross PRODUCTION MANAGER: ADVERTISII DENISE GOLDSTONe ROBERT | PROCTOR JRCULATION MANAGE! . ADVERTISING REP. AIM ZEEBEN REPORTER NICOLE BEETSTRA PRODUCTION/OFFICE, BRENDAN HALPER REPORTER MARION ANDERSON PRODUCTION/REPORTER Direct Department Phones General Office ... pa Classified Ads Display Advertising ........ FAX ssessessessansasseen saseeneeneneosson 20040 65-7762, editorial comment Twah batou leltyrac? To some Kootenay residents, this jumbled head- line may look like any other. of Multiculturali On Sept. 6 Federal Mini: We all take a little pleasure Ron Jeffels Syndicated Columnist Let's be honest, just for once, and admit it. Most of us experience slavering delight and las- civious pleasure whenever the top-lofty expert is defeated or proven wrong by the plodding ama- teur. Those sentiments may be cruel and uncharita- ble, but we savour them. Tribal revenge is a rich, succulent wafer in the mouth, across the tongue, under the palate, at the back of the throat. We've come to hate the expert in this, the tenth decade of the 20th century. The reason is not far to seck. These days, no sentient creature — not even one with an upright carriage, an opposable thumb and the ability to make monosyllabic grunts — can perform the simplest of life's tasks without the aid of an expert, a mentor, a consul- tant, a high priest of technology. That includes breathing, ingesting and mating. ‘Try carrying out any repair to the modem, com- puterized, fuel-injected car. It’s no longer done with a bent coat hanger, pliers and prayer. The modem garage looks like control headquarters at NASA and the mechanics wear space suits. And nobody I know can fill out an income tax retum these days, You need a specialist with a BA, LLB, MBA, CA — ole who sivod first in his class, won the gold medal, and knows how to hate. He must be fluently bilingual English-Revenuese, of course, and his fee will be fort-knoxian. And so it goes. So, it's not difficult to under-" stand why homo simplisticus should take savage and brutal delight when the expert is wrong, wrong at the top of his voice. In 1923, Dr: Robert Mullikan, winner of a Nobel Prize, drew his professorial robes and essential dignity: around him and said this; “There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.” Thate to admit it in print. You'll put me down as an obscurantist, an iconoclast, one of Kipling’s lesser breeds without the law. But I'll tisk your opp ium with this ple. My 1 1 ecstasy whenever economists are wrong. But then, when were they ever right? Think of that ginormous national debt. Or the obscene — and unforeseen — revenue the feds got from the GST in the first: quarter. Little wonder that economics is called The Dismal Science, And tribal revenge is even sweeter, when the ‘untutored amateur — by brute instinct or divine tevelation — does what the top-lofty one cannot do with all his theories, forecasts, graphs, charts, plans and printouts. ‘The best jazz musician I ever heard had never taken a lesson in his life and couldn't read a note of music: not a quaver, not a semiquaver. The other members of the combo had degrees from Julliard or some other institution of equal dis- tinction’ They knew all the occult theory, of course. He played — and composed ~ by sense of feel. And he could ride a riff up to the outer reaches of sound where jazz becomes religious conversion. I went fishing once with three pals at a remote rcabin. One was a full professor of mechanical enginecring. The second ~ a retired air vice-mar. slial, also an engineer — had once been responsible for the procurement of all aircraft for the Canadi- an Armed Forces. The third was an ex-Mountie. ». We were about to leave, The car died of ter- minal asthma: I’m a technopeasant. I stood aside ~and silently conjugated the Latin verbs. The pro- fessor tried. The air vice-marshal tri¢d. Who started it? The:ex-Mountie, of course. Kicked the chassis or spoke harshly to the carburetor, as Irecall, We chortled, The engineers sulked. ‘We've all seen the master carpenter who needs no level, no set-square, certainly no geometry to “know when the horizontal beam is in perfect accord with its affiliates. Or the master chef who never measures anything. Or the writer who can’t tell a period from a participle but whose prose soars like an eagle riding the west wind. Heming- ways for example, but then he also won a Nobel. Experts! Who needs them! Well. . . uh. . « I do, You see, there's today’s letter from RevCan. .. Oh; let's not talk about itt R.R. Jeffels is a Richmond freelance writer and former principal of The Open Learning Institute. “Wednesday, September 11 , 1991 The Castlegar Sun yLetters to: the Editor, ‘Open letter asks why it had to come to this vAn‘ ‘open letter, to ‘Forest Products and all timber compa- anies\in BC, and.to Ken Amett, Arrow Forest District Manager, yiand all professional foresters: .y¢é. On Friday, the 6th of Septem- ‘acber,.84 people were arrested at Hasty Creek in the Slocan Valley, uate largest number of people ever i Dear Editor:: « TAS : A beautiful plant is thisaten. «ing wetlands in many areas of o¢astern Canada and the US has - .