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The Citizen, 1997-04-09, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9,1997 PAGE 5. Lament the' passing and tap out a tribute Do you have any idea what I mean when I write DOT-DOT-DOT, DASH-DASH- DASH, DOT-DOT-DOT? If you do, chances are you're a little longer in the tooth than your average Generation X- er. Those dots and dashes spell out Help! Mayday! Aidez-moi! Au secours! Hey, buddy - gimme a hand! Specifically, they spell out the letters S, O and S - the internationally recognized distress signal. The telegrapher on the Titanic frantically typed out that message just before his ship went to its watery doom. Same thing happened on the Lusitania, the Andrea Doria and the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. SOS...SOS...My pop told me it stands for Save Our Ship, Save Our Souls. If that’s not true, it ought to be. There's no telling how many thousands of lives Morse Code has saved - at sea and on land - since it was invented by one Samuel Finley Breese Morse, 159 years ago. Morse, a Massachusetts artist and sometime inventor was fooling around with an electromagnet when it occurred to him International Scene 'By Raymond Canon Life in a small town Since my column does not go into any large cities, or even medium-sized ones for that matter, one of the questions that I get asked most frequently is what is it like living in a small town in Europe. I am sure that some of my readers could answer the question better than I, for until the moment when they set off to live in Canada, their whole life had been spent in such a small place I would imagine that what I am about to say would come close to life as they knew it. The town I know best in Europe is Teufen, in the Swiss canton of AusserRhoden. No longer having any place to live in nearby St. Gall, when I go to Switzerland, I stay in Teufen simply because one of the hotel owners there is a personal friend of mine and I am completely at home. When I think of Teufen, I often think of such Ontario places as Exeter or Crediton where the main street is a long one; the one in Teufen stretches for three kms. Needless to say, most commercial activity takes place along this street. There are no big stores; you do your shopping at a number of specialty stores. Even the largest grocery store, Migros, while it has a small parking lot, would be hard put to rival most of the grocery stores in our small towns. What you don't find there, you can find elsewhere along the main street. If you can't find it in Teufen, you can that he could use short-duration electric current to print a pretty well infinite series of marks on a moving strip of paper. By pressing a key, he could make those marks long (a dash) or with a light touch, short (a dot). It further occurred to him that, with a lot of work, he could come up with a code for the alphabet made up of various groupings of dots and dashes. Morse poked around for several years, refining his idea. Finally he was ready to go public with it. His first message travelled by overhead wire from Baltimore to Washington in 1844. Decoded, it read WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT. Sam Morse didn’t know it, but he, (not God) had wrought a system of codified conversation that was destined to dominate long distance communication around the world for the next century and a half. The beauty of Morse Code is its universal adaptability. You don't need a telegraph key to use it. Morse Code can be sent by whistles, buzzers, flags, even by alternating clenched and open fists. At night, you can "speak Morse" with anything from a lighthouse beacon to a Bic lighter. Prisoners have used Morse Code to communicate between cells, rapping on then- bars or water pipes. In the hands of the expert, Morse Code approached an art form. Operators with always go into St. Gallen, which is about 10 kms. away. To get there, you can drive if you want, or take the narrow-gauge railway which winds along the main street and leaves you right downtown in St. Gallen. Most small towns in Switzerland, as well as elsewhere, have a railway linking them with the nearest city. Service, to say the least, is frequent. Teufen has a small hospital, similar to the one in Newbury, but I found that service on the weekend is minimal. I ended up driving to the Emerg in St. Gallen. There is, to be sure, a doctor on call and ambulance service, if needed. I should point out that stores in Teufen, like everywhere else, close down early on Saturdays and stay closed on Sundays. I have written about the same situation in Germany. In either place it pays to get your shopping done early. The other town that I stay in, Douanne (Twann in German) is, like Teufen, long and narrow, not as long, but much narrower. The reason for this is that a lake is on one side and a steep hill is on the other. Standing on one side of the town it is just about possible to throw a ball to the other side. While Teufen is totally German speaking, Douanne is right on the linguistic border between the French and German-speaking parts of the country. Most of the inhabitants are, therefore, bilingual, including the postal clerk, who is never quite sure what language I am going to use until I tell her what I want. Douanne does not even have a Migros, which means that a lot of shopping gets done in nearby Biel or Neuchatel, since sensitive fingertips could tap out messages with blistering speed. They called it 'making the wires sing'. "It's a little like music," says one Morse operator. It's been an altogether wonderful and life­ enhancing invention, old Sam Morse's brainwave. Too bad it’s about to die. French maritime radio authorities have already officially given up sending messages in Morse. The rest of the world is expected to follow suit. Two years from now, use of Morse by maritime authorities is scheduled to be a thing of the past, worldwide. What did Morse Code in? Advancing technology, for the most part. The experts say it's too horse-and-buggy to survive in an age of ultra-slick, hyper-quick radio and satellite communication. Well, perhaps. But I like to think that there will always be room for a system of non­ vocal communication that doesn't have to rely on interstellar satellites and fancy display monitors in order to work. But hey - what do I know? I'm a hopeless romantic and an unregenerate Luddite from way back. All I can do is lament the passing - and maybe tap out a tribute on my keyboard. DOT-DOT-DOT-DASH-DOT-DASH I'm pretty sure that's Morse Code for 'over and out'. both are large cities nearby. A tunnel in the vicinity has recently been completed so that the town no longer has to put up with through traffic. It is, however, on one of the main lines of the Swiss railway system, which means that just about every lime you look out, there is a train, freight or passenger, going by. Like most people who live near tracks, you get used to the noise. Because it is on a large lake, Douanne even has boat service, more so in the summer. With trains, boats and cars providing transportation, nobody should feel isolated. The percentage of Swiss who go to church on Sunday may be lower than that in Canada but that does not mean you never hear church bells. Ringing the bells seems to be a popular pastime on Sundays; it is hard not to hear them. You can frequently set your clocks by them, as if Swiss clocks were really very far out at any time. Speaking of time, don't try to do much shopping between the hours of 12 noon and 2 p.m. Swiss storekeepers like to lake a couple of hours off for lunch and this means closing the store. If you are from North America it will lake some getting used to but you might as well. That is one custom that never seems to change. A Final Thought Nowadays an optimist is a person who thinks that tomorrow's bad news may be just a little bit better. Smoke screen won’t work There is a scene confronting me too regularly of late that quite frankly breaks my heart. Living in a small town and working for a community newspaper, I have become familiar with the faces and ages of many young children. So it is with no small degree of frustration that I recognize 12 and 13-year-olds, lighting up and huffing and puffing, bold as you please in broad daylight within a block of the school. This lack of subterfuge has me puzzling. Is it possible their parents know about their habits? The fact that most parents would protect their child with their own life if necessary, makes this idea inconceivable. If a parent were to discover that someone was slowly poisoning their child, retribution would be a swift certainty. So how could it possibly be considered that these same parents would turn a blind eye to their child filling himself with toxins? No, it is more likely youthful insouciance I am witnessing on the street comer, the desire to be cool, the "I don't give a dam, nothing can hurt me and I'll never get caught" cockiness that frustratingly epitomizes to the more jaded of us, hopeless ingenuousness. And while Mom and Dad may be the ones who can provide the education, they are often amazingly the last to know there's a problem. Unfortunately in this case, by the time they find out, it may be too late? You can't put up a smoke screen to hide the behaviour and hope it goes away. I know. Lighting up for fun at 12, became a tough, hard-to-break, two-pack-a-day habit, just four years later for me. No, the best way to protect your child from becoming a victim of this life- threatening addiction is to stop it before it starts. The Huron County Health Unit offers pointers for parents to keep their children "smoke-free". •Emphasize the short-term effects of using tobacco — Children have difficulty understanding that tobacco now can cause serious health problems many years later. Some short-term ones they can relate to are: breathing problems, more coughs and colds, the expense and the smell. •Know the facts — Tell your children that smokers are the minority and that most people who do smoke would like to quit. • Use concrete, practical terms and examples to make the information relevant — Instead of saying that smoking can hurt them, tell them how. When they are panting for breath after running, remind them that smoking often makes people struggle for breath in the same way every day. Brainstorm and role-play with your children — Your children may want help in finding creative ways to say no to smoking. Act out a situation that illustrates how to refuse a cigarette. Ask your children to talk about how they felt. Practise different situations and responses. Provide a positive role model — If you smoke you face some special issues in talking with children about tobacco. The most effective way is to be honest. Tell them how and why you got started. And if you're trying to quit let them now how tough it is.