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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1980-06-04, Page 2Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley To Hurrah for.. C'BC Access wno p— dUced an excellent documentary on the advantages of breastfccding to baby, -motlit, 'and family. Shown on Channel.8 at 2:30 p.m. on Monday, May 26th, this program documented the work of the La Leche League in encouraging and helping women who choose to feed their:children the natural way. The program dispelled many myths that have diseouraged women from breast- feeding. suggesting that the few difficulties may be overcome with physical and. (Comb-Hied from Page, 1) because "Ma" Bell is in the process of up-grading • telephone service in this community. More folks will be able to have a private line. Th at will be appreciated by those who have had to share a party line and have suspected "listeners-in" on what they hoped was a private conversation. It will also mean less phones on what remain party lines. This should mean quicker access to the line when one is in a hurry to use their phone. Of course it is not likely we will get these improvement for nothing. No doubt costs will go up. That we should be used to by now. * * * * * * Do all the seething trouble spots in this world give you an uneasy feeling that at almost any moment one could erupt into MU M° BLUE RIBBON Ao/vARD emotional support from other nursing moth- ers. The women of the La Lcche League, Belgrave, appreciate this excellent present- ation and hope that anyone who wishes help in brcastfeeding or in deciding how to feed- their infant will contact our group. Sincerely, Leader Barbara Kerr; Mothers of LLL Belgrave—Valerie Bolton, Joyce Case- more, Terri Korstanje, Wendy, Myra Stuart, Leslie Martin, Jeanette Harris another flaming war. With charges and counter charges hurled between nations, hostage-taking,. riots, strikes, racial troubles, and other constant trouble - brewing incidents, it seems almost inevitable that the idiotic. actions of some faction or other will blow the lid off an agitated cauldron of unrest. If ever the fierce' Eagle to our South and the growling Bear to our North unleash their talons and claws on one another, and Canada remains out of it, doubtful as that is, the skies above us would be clouded with the horrendous weapons of war. Then with, or without intent, some will surely be •released on us. What a thing to think about! May wise men, cool heads and humane impulses prevail and prevent such a holocaust. It's bewildering when you think of the number of things that can , break up a marriage that began in heaven and ends, up in the other place. • Sexual or emotional incompatibility, disparity of interests, rotten acids, desertion, booze, insanity, to name just a few of the serious ones. • Then you work your way down to the aspects that seem trivial on the surface, but can be just as rending over the grind as the big or. :s. Stuff like halitosis, dandruff, body odour, nosepicking, digging wax from ears or jam from toes and similar physical foibles. And then there are the basic differences in genes that shatter many a case of connubial • bliss. Some people are Yawning- until the tears spurt at 9:20 p.m., and are wedded ;to other people who just begin to hit on all cylinders about the' time' the late movies begin. That's bad enough. But the former are the type who leap out of bed at six a.m.,, carolling: "Here hath been dawning another new day; think, wilt thou let it slip' useless away?" And the Tatter -have to be dragged out of bed at the crack'of noon with a block and tackle. Not much chance for them. Then there are the poor devils who put •on. a pound just by reading a menu, and bitterly resent their mates, who can shovel in the chocolates, pastry, whipped cream and beer, and go around remarking blithely, and smugly, "I, have to eat like a horse to stay even." Grounds' for a 'hatchet murder. Some people, mostly men, look forty when they are married, and still look forty when they are sixty. Others, mostly women, look sixteen when they are married, and sixty 'when they are forty. This can lead to a certain amount of 'savagery. And there is plain old body temperature. Some like it hot; some like it cool. Thus we find running' battles as bedroom windows are thrown' wide or slammed down; as 'the thermostat is viciously wrenched up to 80, and the moment the back is turned, is triumphantly twisted back to 60. ' • Another of the fractious items in the constant domestic skirmishing 'is the question of who does the most work. A man, let's say a barber, bleats 'that he's been on his feet all day, and they're killing him. His erst-while soul-mate retorts that she's been on her knees all day, and she'll kill him if 11(• doesn't get out and mow the lawn. In the same vein, an executive will reel-in from work, collapse in a chair after mixing a triple martini, and go into a recitation about the overwhelming stress he's under: a fight with the boss; a client lost; inefficient underlings. And his "darling", "sugar", or "hon" of n't hard to do thirty years ago will come back like a tigress with heir stress: the phone rang thirteen times today; she had a fight with the plunibers; the new drapes don't match anything except puke; she had to' take. the new car to a' garage because some turkey, creased her, to the,tune of $300, in a parking lot. Heck, I could go on for an hdur, listing reasons that people first begin to get on each other's nerves, ptoceed to smoldering dislike, and end up in a glorious blaze of pure hatred. And I'm sure• every one of You gentle, readers could add to the list. ' • I'll clo'a thirty-thousand word thesis on it someday. But for now I'd like to add just one item to the list that is seldom mentioned by . either sociology professors or AnP Landers. „ This cause, of fractured marriage is too much togetherness. When a married couple spend too much• time together, they not only begin . looking alike, but talking alike, thinking alike and all the other alikes. As a result, they become two-headed calfs, Siamesetwins,.• freak vegetables with two carrots growing from one seed, Repeating the same old things, bickering about the same trivial things, chewing their cabbage twice, they lose their individuality, , and become both, boring and bored'. They are nearing the end, when they start calling each other "Mother" and "Dad," and can spend half an hour patiently . disagreeing over a third-rate TV show. This was no great vision on the •road to Damascus. It came to me when my, wife went off for a few days in the city and, I was alone, all, all, alone, on a sea of beautiful privacy. Nobody saying, "Lights, out, dear, you • have to work tomorrow," at midnight just when I'm getting` into the guts of a novel. I know I have to work tomorrow. Two nights she was away, I read until six a.m. Nobody telling me IA :tat a day she'd' had, when I'd had a worse one. And vice versa. • She thought I'd eaten the cooked ham she left me. Iled it to the squirrels and ate a • lasagna that almost killed me.' Dill pickles, ice cream, coffee a spoon would stand in. Unmade bed, unwashed dishes, cigaretts with no filters. Bloody 'Mary's' 'for breakfast. When she came home, of course, everything was spic 'n span. 'But she loved me so much she almost strangled me. It was mutual. Try it. It cost me about four hundred. Worth every cent. About once a year, I dO the same: take off to a convention or into the woods. She doesn't miss me, loves the solitude and I'm delighted to be home. Separate holidays might make that domestic cage of yours bearable. No pun intended. Brussels . Post WEDNESDAY, -JUNE 4, 1980 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community,; Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising. Member Canadian Community:Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper ASsociation, Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Year. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each. 41101111119tik. 4'.1.4atuk he editor: CBC deserves praise Short Shots by. Evelyn Kennedy Breaking up is Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston Who's going to censor TV's bad drivers? They're at it again. The anti and pro censorship sides are back battling to save us from the evils of the world and each other. This time the fight is over a rather obscure foreign movie that probably less than one per cent of the Ontario population would have gone to see. Without all this fuss, ninety per cent of the people would never even have heard of The Tin Drum. But the Ontario censor decided the movie couldn't be shown without a few feet of film snipped out. The maker of the film which had won numerous awards, around the world said that he wasn't going to have the integrity of his film ruined by some uptight little man with a pair of scissors and he'd rather not have the film shown in Ontario at all if it had to be cut. Some people who saw the film said they couldn't see what would• possibly be objectionable. The man who's responsible for the censor board, however, Minister of Consumer and Commercial' Mations Frank Drea, said he would quit rather than try to persuade the ,board to change its policies. deleted are objectionable and I probably never will because I probably will never see the film cut or uncut. For all the effect this particular movie would have had on the Ontario people it wouldn't have made a bit of difference whether it needed censoring or not. I am curious, however, as to why people in favour of censorship only come down on about two areas: sex and language. At the same time the controversy over this obscure German film was waging last week, a national television network in Canada was showing millions of people another film that I don't think a single objection was made against. Yet while the ill effects of a few seconds of a foreign film which would be seen by only a handful of people were enough to make a minister of the crown threaten to resign on a matter of principle, this movie in my mind was far more, dan gerous. DAREDEVILS The movie in question had no redeeming artistic qualities. It dealt with' a few daredevil people from all walks of life who sought to put some excitement into their lives by having a cross country race. On open roads with the public not aware of what was going on these people roared across the U.S. at speeds sometimes more than 150 miles per hour. Comedy in the movie was provided by our heroes making fools out of all the police who were trying to stop their highly illegal escapade (and, it was never mentioned, protect the lives of other people unlucky enough to meet up with these maniacs). There were innumerable spectacular car crashes in which no one of course was hurt. The movie wasn't particularly novel on television these days. Every week children across the continent tune in to four or five similar shows where grown-up boys in hot rod cars speed across the screen leaving a trail of battered police cars behind them. The "good ole boys" always outsmart the downright dumb cops who are silly enough to try to keep people driving at a safe speed. Yet while everybody gets up in arms about German movies and Margaret Laurence novels,. nobody seems to take offence at this trash on television. While there has yet to be proven a serious case of physical injury due to seeing sex on the screen, we see every weekend the names of dozens of young people who are killed or mutilated in car crashes. I don't know how much influence Margaret Laurence novels have on teen- agers but I do know of boys who are doing up their cars to look like the one owned by the hero in Dukes of Hazzard. Kids like to do daring things in cars anyway; they always have. They also like to think of polIcemen as guys just out to spoil their tun. They have enough natural tendencies in this direction without being encouraged by television and movies. SELF DISCIPLINE I'm, not advocating yet another censor- ship drive. I would rather see some self- discipline shown by the makers of tele- vision programs and movies. I'd like to see them think' about what effect they might have on millions of kids in their early teens who can hardly wait to get old enough to get into a little of that fun they see. I'd like the network executives to think of how they would like to see their 'own son or daughter meet one of these driving maniacs on the road some Friday night. I know that the majority of kids will take the show as what it's intended, a piece of escapist entertainment. But it only takes a few people to try ,to drive the way the boys on the television shows do to cause havoc. With two tons of steel powered by a 350-horsepower engine these guys aren't just endangering themselves, they're en- dangering everybody else who is unlucky enough to be on the road. To 'me, they're more dangerous than a little sex, anyday. TEMPEST Aside from the fact there is a matter of principle on both sides here, this is obviously a tempest in a teapot. I don't know if the portions the censor wants