6 - Wednesday, November 15, 1989 - North Shore News Much better for lovers to just live next door! MARRIAGE, SAY THE CYNICS, has ruined many a good relationship. It’s a thought worth pondering after last weekend’s extraordinary events in Berlin. During eight postwar years | spent in West Germany with a po- litical arm of the Allied ad- ministration the beginnings of the renewed love affair were simple to follow. Ordinary citizens in East and West Germany alike dreamed of a distant day when some miracle might remove the tron Curtain and reunite them. After all, the two had previously been married for 74 years, but the union twice brought disaster due to their habit of expanding their real estate by grabbing that of their neighbors. At horrendous cost each time the neighbors fought back. In 1919 they rorced the marriage into bankruptcy — only to wind up with Hitler. In 1945, determined to finally stop the nonsense, they im- posed an arbitrary divorce. FRANK Mills ...melody visits. As a result, West Germans soon became the wealthiest residents on the block, while East Germans — forbidden by their Communist guardians to have any contact with their former partner — languished in poverty and repression. Until, by the strangest coin- cidence, Saturday, November Jf, 1989 — Remembrance Day for the two world wars unleashed by a united Germany. Now that the middle-aged lovers have been allowed to hold hands again — and provided the Potsdamer Platz doesn’t become another Tiananmen Square — what next for them and us? Even a renewed affair bristles with prob- lems. Forty years of mismanagement under Communism make it unlike- ly that even the most sincere “reform"’ measures will enable East Germany to match West Germany economically for years to come. Meanwhile, West Germans will have to dig deep into their pocketbooks to keep their liberated eastern lover happy. They’re stuck with providing welfare, housing and jobs for the hundreds of thousands who've al- ready fled west and those who’ll follow. Plus financial aid to help crank up East Germany’s stagnant economy. A tiny foretaste was the $200 million paid out Jast weekend under the now redundant West German law giving $50 to every East German ‘'escaper’’! Such tempting perks may per- suade East Germany’s Communist reformers to allow the lovers to continue huidiig hands. But remarriage remains an absolute no-no, as it does for the man who sparked the whole thing, Mikhail Games questioned HE CONTROVERSIAL Gay Games have been the recent target of somewhat komophobic fundamentalist groups. But one doesn’t have to get on one’s moral high horse to think the games are slightly ridiculous. The games make a mockery of special sports events. Gorbachev, A single Germany would be a political and economic giant of 77 million people — 60 million of them already Europe’s richest and most ambitious nation — with mil- itary potential to match. It’s not only Russians and Communists who have long memories of where THAT can lead. So by all means wish the West and East German lovers well in their latest romance. But in this case remember, too, Katherine Hepburn’s advice: **Lovers shouldn’t live together. They should just live next door and visit.” nuk WRAP-UP: Why must the | ° wednesday world Mulroneyites ‘‘claw back’”’ OAS benefits from veterans of the Se- cond World War to raise a paltry $300 million in taxes — ‘‘petty cash’’ for spendthrift Ottawa? asks West Van’s Brian Thomas who is now pretty mad about waiting almost three months with still no explanation from his MP, Associate Defence Minister Mary Collins ... For musical autograph hunters the place to get Frank Mills’ signature this weekend is the Lonsdale Quay Hotel, where Canada’s ‘‘King of Melodic Piano’* and his company are stay- mt ing for their North Van appear- ance next Monday, Nov. 20, at 8 p.m. in the Centennial Theatre — reserve through TicketMaster 280-4444 ... And happy anniver- sary to the latest members of the “‘Golden Club’? — Cyril and Miriam Lewis of West Van who celebrate their 50 years of togetherness tomorrow, Nov. 16. zat WRIGHT OR WRONG: Learn | from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself. NEWS photo Elke Schrotcr LAUGHING IT UP...storyteller Magpie Mason (right) and her laughing puppet make Preschool Storytime at Lynn Valley Library a fun event for four-year-old Anna Wood iieft) and the rest of the young audience. if iNBORRETIS NAW. OF Special games are held for people with special mental or physical cheracteristics that prevent them from entering into the fray of open competition. There are special games for seniors, the mentally handicapped and the physically handicapped. There are not separate games for blondes and brunettes, nor even for left-handed people, because these differences don’t warrant special treatment. So why make a point of having separate athletics for gays and lesbians? By their own admission, gay people are the same as heterosexuals, save their sexual prefer- ence, Some might say the event, known as Celebration 90, is just ““at, a celebration that gays are gays and proud of it — gay power as it were. But that runs counter to the original reason for athletic competition — namely to bridge differences. For example, the Olympics provide a chance for dif- ferent nations to meet on the same level. But the gay games promises no such bridge-building opportunity. Instead it builds a fence between gays and straight people. Therefore the games will not help gays in their quest to be treated like everyone else. But rather they will ef- fectively say to the public: we are different. NOW THEYRE | Seune ne | ace LINE! 980-0511 986-6222 985-2131 986-1337 986-1337 985-3227 Publisher ... ...._.. .Peter Speck Managing Editor... Barrett Fisher Associate Editor .. Noel Wright Advertising Director . Linda Stewart North Shore News, founded in 1959 as an independent suburban newspaper anc qualited under Schedule 111, Parag‘aph ill of the Excise Tax Act. is published each Wednesday. Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid. and distrituted to every door on the North Shore Second Class Maid Registration Number 3885 Subscriptions North and West Vancouver, $25 pet year 99,170 (average, Wednesday Mailing tales available on request. 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