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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1978-10-11, Page 27: egt°1TI:1:914.7N"" 13russels Post I MUSSELS ONTARIO. WEDNESDAY; OCTOBER 11, 1978 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community. Published. each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros. Publishers Evelyn Kennedy Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9.00 a Year. Others $17.00 a Year. Single Copies 20 cents each. Archie Moses of R R 3, Brussels with Duchess and Tony Perform a death-defying act. Stop smoking. Give Heart Fund Behind the Scenes The best way to spend Thanksgiving Do as we say In a number'of municipalities across Canada, police are switching to smaller cars. The reasoning is simple. Smaller cars are more economical. And police today rarely indulge in those wild high speed chases that require big powerful cars--dangerous drivers become more dangerous, when they're desperately evading pursuit. Blacks, women and members of some minorities are slowly beginning to appear among the ranks of professionals, and in executive positions. . In India, rats still destroy about as much grain as humans consume. What have these three examples to do with each other? Simply this--the first two are changes taking place in North America. Some people welcome them as common sense and just ice. Others regard them as dangerous deviations from tradition, and fight them with all the vehemence they can muster. Both these changes, now becoming more apparent, have been slow in developing although they have been advocated by thoughtful mind's for years. And this is in North America, where we have become accustomed to change, where change has taken place faster, and more often, than perhaps anywhere else on earth. In contrast life in much of India, south-east Asia, and. Africa continues with few differences from centuries ago. Today, many well-meaning people on this continent grow disillusioned with aid to underdeveloped nations, and argue that there's no point in helping them with food or technology until they make radical changes. If we who are familiar with cha9ge find it difficult to accept minor changes in our lives, how can we so glibly demand radical change from people who appear to us to have never learned how to change? (The United Church) By Keith. Roulston Thanksgiving day Monday was spent amund our house bringing in the final produce from the garden, and I can't think of a much better way to spend the day. Looking at the calendar it seems impossible that it was only those few short months back that we plowed up the garden and worked the soil fine and sowed the seeds, all the time thinking of the bumper crop we'd bring in. We never thought, of course, of the weeds or the long hours of work involved in helping those seeds do what comes naturally. Somewhere along thel line the prospect of that bumper crop got lost. Like true farmers we worried because there wasn't enough rain, celebrated when the rains came then cursed when the rains refused to stop when we'd had enough. The conditions of the summer seemed ideal for weeds. You'd just work your way through the garden and get it all clean when you'd look behind and see the weeds to your knees where you'd started out. Somewhere along the line in late August or early September we gave up and let the weeds have their way. Thus it was something of a surprise to us when we went out to dig the carrots which we could hardly see and found them large and plentiful: so plentiful we dOn't quite know what we'll do with them all. It's the same with the beets. We had cucumbers coming out our ears before the frost came too and without any effort to protect them from frost, our tomatoes kept producing until , Thanksgiving weekend. Now if we had been the kind of meticulous gardeners for whom a garden with more than three weeds two inches high is a catastrophe, this bounty wouldn't have been so surprising. But somehow, given the conditions, it reminded us again just how lucky we are to live in such a land of plenty. People in many parts of the world must strive long and hard just to get enough food to keep them alive. Here, even under less than perfect conditions, we have an over abundance. Yet for all our good luck, we Canadians don't seem to have much appreciation for our good fortune, Thanksgiving probably had less meaning than our other holidays. How many Canadians really stopped and took stock of all they had to be thankful for on the weekend? instead most were busy worrying about the falling dollar, the rising cost of living or the high unemployment: We're like the man who looked out on a sunny day arid saw one tiny cloud on the horizon and then spent so Much time worrying about the possibility that the one cloud could bring rain that he couldn't enjoy the sunshine. On the weekend I also watched the news and saw pictures from Vietnam where war is raging again, this time between the Communists of Vietnam . ,,and the Com- munists of Cambodia. The poor villagers of Vietnam who don't care about politics of any sort are caught in the middle of a war again as they and their ancestors have been for centuries. Compared to this, what does inflation matter? There were pictures too of the death and destruction in Labanon where the so called "Christians" and the so called "Moslems" are destroying their homeland in an attempt to destroy each other. Watching that, we should be so thankful just to live in peace, even without all the other great things we enjoy. The only people in Canada who seem really thankful are those who have had to do without what we have today. People who lived through the Depression and have a good memory realize how good our lilfe is today. People who lived through the horrors of the war and, remember it well feel the same way. Unfortunately our population is made up for the most part of people who have never suffered or who have convenient- ly forgotten the suffering and can see only the whole bunch of golden eggs that might be inside the goose and we're too impkient to let her give them to us one at a time. I'm biased, but I think a good deal of the problem with Canada is that people aren't close enough to the land anymore. In my garden I can see the miracle of life. I can remember that pumpkin we bought for Hallowe'en two years ago that we saved a handful of seeds from. We planted the seeds and last year got a few more pumpkins and planted their seeds and this fall we have several large pumpkins,each bigger than the original pumpkin we bought. That's the miracle of nature. I've also seen the time when beautiful young plants shrivelled up and died in the heat OD when seeds didn't come up at all. These things ,make us more appreciative of the success. Here in the country and small towns, we're kept in touch with the realitie s of life. The earth, the changing of the seasons, the hardships and the goodtinies all give us a kind of wisdom that can never be learned in the classrooms of the greatest Universities. We realize more than a city person can the place of man in nature. And hopefully, we at least are thankful for out blessings.