Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1974-08-28, Page 2Brussels Post ow04441.4 ONTARIO WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1974 ,Serving Brussels and the surroundin, community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros.Publishers, Limited. Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Tom Haley - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association. Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $6.00 a year, Others I 1,01A • $8.00 a year, Single Copies 15 cents each. Second class mail Registration No. 0562. Telephone 887-6641. LtglIFILO. The rumor - "Getting it in the paper" means a number of things. For an organization planning a fund raising activity, it can mean the difference between success and failure. For an advertiser it can mean the difference between profit and loss. For an individual who ,has been the victim of suffering it can mean consolation from readers who are informed of the suffering and take sympathy. But other groups sometimes think' "getting it in the paper" will mean disaster, embarrassment or failure. Sometimes they are correct. And sometimes — for the general welfare — it is better that the 'enterprise \ should end in failure and disaster. But sometimes these people do not want to "get it in the paper" because they fear a setback or controversy are wrong. They forget that their biggest enemy - and a newspaper's only enemy - is the rumor. The rumor can be a terrible thing. It can make civic minded intentions look like opportunism. It can cultivate small controversies into massive ones. Eventually it can even tear a community apart. But the worst thing about a rumor is that its victims never get to tell their side. The rumor is a trial without a defence. (Contributed) Mistakes I See a mistake on this page? Don't gloat. There are no fewer than 4,367,428 chances of making a typographical error on each newspaper page, according to an article in the Canadian Printer and Publisher. With those kind of odds it is a wonder there aren't more gremlins to disrupt the type each week. Certainly there,are enough around to upset the staff of this journal. There are few occupations with such formidable odds against achieving a perfect result. There are also few occupations where errors are exposed to public view with such regularity. The wonder is there aren't more errors and a few nervous breakdowns to accompany them. The article also points out there are over 5,000 men and women engaged in producing weekly newspapers in Canada which are read by well over half the nation's total population. During a recent year these same weeklies carried some $12,999,000 worth of advertising — presumably, most of it error-free. These figures point out the fact of the importance of the weekly press and despite the chances of error, the growing number of advertisers who realize it. (Contributed) Citizen knocks vandals [Editor's Note: Reeve Jack McCutcheon received the following letter recently and made it available to the Post for publication) Sir: I see by the B. Post the Council is asking people to tidy up their homes. Is there much use when a person works hard to beautify it? Then some brats come along and wreck rose trell', etc, etc. It would accomplish something if Brussels had a part time Policeman or else council get after these vandals also patch a few holes in the street. Thank You. Some Concerned People 1,1•••••••••••19,01..40,01.. Sugar and Spice By Bill Smiley 11111WILIVIIMIO I don't know about you, but we've had a real whizzer of a summer. Just a mad, gay, The Great Gatsby sort of thing. You know what I mean. You've been through it. Loitering by the pool with an extra-dry martini and the gold girls undulating past with so little on that your eyeballs pop out and splinter your sun glasses. Enchanting evenings on the beach, waves lapping, the fire glowing embers, and just the twenty-four of you. Night, and myster, and romance. (By the way, did you ever try to glow an ember?) It's quite a feat. And speaking of feat, the only lapping I've heard this summer is our abysmally stupid cat lapping the sweat off my feet. He seems to like it — probably he has a salt deficiency problem — and I must admit it gives me a str ange, perverse thrill. Perhaps by now you realize that in my own far from subtle way, I am suggesting that we've had a bummer of a summer. And you are absolutely, with qualification, one hundred and twenty-four per cent right. Oh, don't think its been a complete waste of time. We've aged two years in two months, which is quite a feat. There's that word again. Feet? We haven't just been lying around, watching the grass grow.This would, in any case, be difficult, since it does not grow after about the 20th of June.But the dandelions are pretty, though short-lived, and the wild clover has a certain charm. No, we've been quite active socially. It all started after Commencement, last June, One of the teachers had a party. Teachers, after Commencement, are somewhat . similar to Magellan's sailors, who, after battling six months to round Cape Horn, find themselves a Pacific Ocean and a tropical island. It was a good party, as parties go, and they go too long. However, as we say in the game when we don't quite know what else to say, we accepted a ride home with our resident artist, who came in for some hot chocolate and burned a hole in one of the end-tables as big as your eye, when no one was looking, in the process of plating out a cigarette. I think that started the summer on the wrong foot, I seem to have a fetish about foots and feet todaV and don't let it bother you. Well, to get back to our swinging summer social life, it's been something. We've been to a funeral and a wedding. I've never had so much kissing in my life. While the funeral was sad, in a sense, it was also a family reunion, in another. Nephews and nieces I haven't seen in years. And four of the five Smileys all together at once, for the first time in a couple of decades. The wee Colonel was in Germany. And the wake had a good touch of Irish in it, if you follow me. And the wedding was a pretty good shot, too, even though we discov ered the happy couple had been married several hours before, due to some stupid, ridiculous statute. I got to kiss not only the bride, but her four older sisters, all of them former students of mine. And their mother. Also, as it was a Ba-hai wedding, quite a few of the guests, ranging from suckling babes to grandmothers, were former students. I like to see them and talk to them. John H. is an artist who gave me, I think, a lucid explanation of how he is trying to combine the purely visual, the abstract, and his own consciousness. John M., on the other hand, was about to head for the west coast, but someone was trying to talk him into going to Germany instead. , Margaret sang some songs that make the ripples go up and down your spine. She has granny glasses and a great grin. Len is a grave-digger. Gets twenty-five bucks a day whether he has to dig a grave or not. He offered me a special deal, on some wasteland behind the cemetery, In September he's off to England to study how to teach in a special school whose theme is Awakeness.We should call our schools Assleepness. Ah 1 Great to be young: Nonetheless, somebody must carry the blasted torch. I've been swimming twice, I have driVen past the golf club once. I've been fishing once and caught three crappies. My wife just broke three ribl. We've been waiting for the roofer for three Week.s And tomorrow, we have our third big social occasion of the summer. MY daughter and her husband are arriving with twenty retarded adults whom rliey v,e. been retraining; for a picnic in the ba ck yaid.