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The Rural Voice, 1999-12, Page 10�Ox CHRYSLER DODGE JEEP GREAT USED MINI VANS 1996 CHRYSLER TOWN & COUNTRY LXI The ultimate mini van, sold & serviced by us since new. Only 93,000 km. 1/2 Price of New 1998 FORD WINDSTAR V6, auto, fully equipped. Only 58.000 km. Local one owner. SAVE SS Both Outstanding Condition "We only sell the best for less and wholesale the rest" CHRYSLER DODGE JEEP DODGE TRUCKS If you don't see what you want, ask us, we'!! find it for you. Sunset Strip, Owen Sound Ontario, N4K 5W9 (519) 371 -JEEP (5337) 1-800-263-9579 Fax: (519) 371-5559 6 THE RURAL VOICE Keith Roulston A faster world can have good and bad There's a book I'd like to read if I could find the time. It's called Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything and in it author James Gleick writes about how we're bent on moving faster and faster but we're not always sure why. In a TV interview Gleick said there was nothing wrong with saving time. if it was for the right reason. As an example of the wrong reason he told of a book called One Minute Bedtime Stories, suppos- edly designed to make parents feel good that they were reading stories to their children, but let them sage time. But save time for what, he wondered? What could be more important than saving time from other duties so you could spend time with your family? The biggest problem with this time of great change is that we're being swept along like a cork in a stormy sea, without seemingly being able to even question whether we're heading in the right direction,or not. Often too, we adopt new tech- nology without realizing all the changes we're buying with it. In farming, it's a reality as old as the tractor. Your grandfather bought a tractor to ease his work load but because he could do more in less time he felt he needed more land. He also needed to spread the tractor's expense of over more acres. But when he got more land, he soon needed a bigger tractor. Farmers are famous for loving new toys — it's why the farm shows are packed year after year, in good years with buyers, in bad, with dreamers. Farmers love the idea of a new machine that will reduce the back -breaking work or the monoton- ous aspects of their job and save time. Yet for all the time -saving machines they've acquired, most are working as hard today as their grandfathers or great-grandfathers. It's just the nature of the work that's changed. Today's farmer does less strenuous physical labour than ever before but he still works long hours and the stress is greater because higher financial obligations make the cycles of the marketplace more dangerous than a century ago. Making things worse, today a farmer or his wife, or both are likely to work off the farm. That can be good if the wife, say has interests better served in the workplace than in the traditional life of a farm wife. But many times the job is necessary, either to pay bills or to fund the trappings of the modern lifestyle. But like those one -minute fairytales, do we really know that we're losing for what we're gaining? The greatest gift the traditional farming way of life has to offer is what it means to families. Compare the situation of a full-time farming family that of two parents working in "glamourous", high -paying jobs in the city. Kids on a farm get to see their parents at work every day. They understand how the family makes its money and understand why things are tough sometimes. Kids whose parents go out to work generally have no idea what is involved. Work is a myster- ious thing that deprives kids of their parents. The more parents work, the more kids are apt to think parents prefer work to their kids. Kids of farming parents don't come home to an empty house after school. They come home instead to join their parents in the family enterprise. While city kids are bored and look for a place to hang out, farm kids usually have responsibilities that escalate as they get older. Many of those responsibilities involve looking after animals. Psychologists often point out the therapeutic value of contact between animals and people of all ages. Sometimes we are forced to change. Sometimes we change because we think we should. Let's just look at what we'll lose before we throw it out.0 Keith Roulston is editor and publisher of The Rural Voice. He lives near Blyth, ON.