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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-09-02, Page 2 Brussels Post Box 50, OWL Brussels, Ontario. Established 1872 519-887-6641 NOG 1H0 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited, ei. Andrew Y, McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of Circulation. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1981 Authorized as second class mail by Canada Past Office. Registration Number 0562. 1872 COSTUMED CHARACTERS — Jolene Weber got the prize for best costume and Amy Thomas got it for best clown when the Brussels playground held, a circus on Tuesday night. (Photo by Langlois) Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston I don't know about you but for me it was some bummer of a summer. Oh, the weather was great, and I hope you and yours had a super holiday. But nothing else was much good, nationally and personal- ly. Now, I'm not going to say one word about the postal strike. If I started to write about it, the paper I'm writing on would go up in flames. I'll just take a positive attitude and observe that because of the strike, I didn't have to write a column for six weeks. A nice holiday for me, and probably a welcome relief for those who feel forced to read my meanderings every week. Nor will I, fly into a rage because our members of parliament, just before sneaking off for a long holiday in the middle of about 18 crises, voted themselves a whacking great increase in salary, pensions and all the gravy that accompanies them. It's a tough job and they deserve every 40 or 50 thouiand dollars that go with it. Again, I don't feel incensed that the Prime Minister should go off to Africa for a holiday while the country is being engulfed in unemployment, inflation, separatism, and science-fiction interest rates. He probably enjoyed listening to some gentle Swahili after months of putting up witty the bellowing and ranting of the various opposition parties. I'm sure he came home rested, refreshed, and just as determined as ever to talk about North-South relationships rather than East- West ones. Perhaps I should be furious about the way in which Canadians completely ignore the energy crisis. I'm not. Must admit I was a bit perplexed when I was forced to take to the highways one day and saw literally thousands of cars belting along, just over the speed limit, rushing from one hot place to another. ' And when I trundle down to the dock, I look at all those big cruisers, nuzzled cheek to cheek, and can't help wondering that their owners are going to do wtih them about five years from now, when they can't even heat their own homes. Visiting friends at a cottage on a big lake up north, I saw doiens of teenagers whizzing around in motor boats, going absolutely nowhere, just joy-riding. However, all this hedonism doesn't bother me deeply. There's a certain feeling that permeates our society, even though it's seldom expressed by those indulging in it. It's quite a bit like the decline of the Roman Empire. People are saying, unconsciously, "To hell with it. Can't cope with inflation so might as well go deeper into debt. The buck is worth 40 cents. The vandals are coming. Let's Short Shots by Evelyn Kennedy Continued from page 1 crime: They have forsaken theit leather jackets for three piece -suits to maintain a lower profile, Big cars, boats, huge houses With winter hothes in Florida can be seen as their profits from their criminal activities.-" It is a she-me that such a bike gang the Ottawa "Otifiiitve tend to give all motor- cyclists a bad reptttation. There are many tespectable bike tidet clubs whose mem- bers simply enjoy tours on their motorcycles. live it up before it's too late." It was a feeling that a great many people had during World War II. No use worrying about tomorrow because there might not be one. It's a sort of Fatalism that is fatal to the human spirit, which demands constant striving, enduring and suffering in order to make things better. Those latter attributes are going out of style fairly rapidly. Historians tell us we study history so that we won't make the mistakes man made in the past. Well, the Roman Empire lasted about a thousand years. Things are quicker these days. Ou r society looks as though it would last about a hundred. However, "Wotthehell, Archy, Wotthe- hell," as Mehitabel the cat used to say to Archie the cockroach in the Don Marquis poems. I'm• no old Roman senator brooding over the decline of morality, law, order, justice, ready to quietly enter his bath and slit his wrists when he could stand it no longer. But I did come close to slitting my wrists a couple of .times this summer. Went to a Saturday wedding on a beautiful July day. It was outdoors. Me and the old lady dressed to kill, Bride's parents old friends. Bride a former student. Many of her guests other former students. Delighted to see and talk with them. Excellent reception after- wards. Dined like Roman senator and his consort. Music. Bride and friends afterwards discoed, the girls like Botticelli creations. Superb. Awoke Sunday morning to scream of horror. Wife had gone to basement to do one of her twice-daily laundries. Thought there must be a rattlesnake. Tottered down. Sewer had backed up. Cellar full of water and stuff. Sublime to ridiculous. Spent all day Sunday swabbing up, in dirty shorts, sweaty T-shirt. Mopped up 14 pails of grunge and threw them in jungle out back. (Should be some great growth there next spring.) Couldn't flush toilets. Plumbers didn't work Mondays. Had to use potty. No relief ,until Tuesday noon. T'was then I took a long look at wrists, but knew my razor blade was too dull. Had a bad foot, arthritis. Could play only nine holes of golf, in some pain, but game. Fourth time out, made such a bad golf swing, tore muscles in left elbow. End of golf for summer. This time looked at hatchet. Who needs a bum foot and an elbow that feels like a branding iron when I swing? They make artificial ones these days, don't they? Went to specialist for foot. He took 10 minutes, charge me $47 and didn't even take the foot off. Gave me a prescription for an arch support! Hadn't bothered telling me he had his own price scale. And so it went. Alms* Here I am back at work after a busy week Of vacation in Ottawa with family and • friends. It was enjoyable renewing Acquaint,' ance with old friends who came to call and visiting others farther afield. One such visit took us along the Queensway East to visit friends who had been residents in, Ottawa: Our route followed the Ottawa River and at time's offered some interesting views. On arriving we found lOvely home perched on a rise above the river's edge, with a spacious glassed living room, and a deck, looking over its wide expanse and the beautiful Gatineau Hills beyond. A swimming pool delighted the young fry. We spent a day or'twit at a - • Richard Joly, an author from Quebec, expounds a theory,chillingly believable in his new book Our Democ racy of the Educated Ignorant. It is Mr. Joly's belief even the most edu cated person is becoming more and more functionally ignor. ant in terms of what he must know to make the intelligent decisions needed to run a democracy. He feels the amount we human beings are able to learn increases by arithmetical pro_gression (addi- , tion ) while information increases by geomet- ric progression (multiplication). In other words, information increases far faster than we can absorb it. In o air everyday lives we may cope with, this information onslaught by specializing, learning our own small field whether it be medicine or agriculture or culinary arts, and only learning enough to survive the rest of the world. When it comes to running a democracy we must know more than we can possibly know to make the right decisions in the voting booth. Joly uses as an example the Olympic facilities scandal in Quebec. The commission studing the mess produced a 1000-page report backed up by 87 cases of documents. Who can possibly have the time to wade through all that material, and yet people are making their selection at the polls based on their opinions about who was wrong about. what. Given our inability to keep up with the tidal wave of information from• many fields as diverse as nuclear arms build-up, national energy policies, acid rain or son sititutional precedents, all we can do 'is put our faith in "experts". But when the experts disagree we ' can only hope to escape by watching Three's Company. Mr.Joly says the destiny of the ignorant is to be manipulated and says we are being manipulated by governments, industry and corporations of every kind. Given the complexity of our world we are likely to turn to those who offer simple solutions. We have gone through most of a decade where the "experts" on economics have not been able to agree on just what should be done to set the economy back on a healthy course. People are ripe then for a simple solution. That solution cottage in the Tweed area. Here the youtisters Who come along used up their energy boating. It was a happy holiday and my last until Christmas. it • **se** An Ottawa lady of my acquaintance is going to have an interesting, and I suspect an exciting, experience next year. She is going on a teacher exchange program to Australia, In Ottawa she has been teaching at a School for retarded children. In Australia, she holds the necessary credent- ials, and will teach in a women's prison. Her eighteen-year-old daughter will accompany her and continue her education at, college in Australia. has been 'proposed in the U.S. by President- Ronald Reagan who couples it with a return to simpler days', days people remember being able to cope better. So his package.of.tax cuts and government cutbacks has won wide praise down there, and to a certain extent up here in Canada as well. "At least he's doing something" is an oft-heard response, even from many who would not normally support a politician like Reagan, This kind of desperation is nothing new in Britain, of course, where the British have spent the last two decades being ping-ponged from the simplistic solutions of the socialists of .the Labour. Party on the left, 'to the Conservatives on the right. In feudal days the lords had complete power over their subjects, both through physical force and an educational standpoint. The lords weren't too smart or educated themselves, but still had advantages over their peasants. They could play with the lives of their people like puppets on a string because the world was too big for the peasants to understand. Complicated things were made easy first through superstition and later religion. There can be little disagreement the powerful of the times used religion to help them stay in power. Your reward is in heaven, the peasants were told by their priests. While the rewards for the lords, and often the clergy, were in this world earned on the backs of the peasants. So today we see greater and greater numbers of people seeking solace 'from our complicated world in simplistic religions, where everything is in black and white, where you follow a leader without question. No matter if he even tells you to kill yourself as in the Jonestown massacre. In olden days whenever things got touchy in his duchy the lord might find a convenient way to get his people united behind him. So today we have Mr. Reagan provoking an incident With some little country halfway around the world so he can show off the power of his country and ghre people, a taste of victory after a decade of defeat. Closer to home we have Nova Scotia Premier John Buchanan, in power only three years and with a large majority, saddling up to fight another election battle against those dastardly fed§ who would steal everything of value in his province if the opposition parties ever got into power. If it Wasn't war or religion keeping peasants' minds off their troubles it was bread and circuses. Be prepared then for another round of escapism in movies, television and books for the next few years. If we can't find solution to our problems we had best forget them. There will be plenty of people ready to help us All of Which, of course', doesn't help democracy: What happens when simple solutions won't work? Why we turn to someone else with more simple solutions of cout, se. We could go on like thiS forever.