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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes Advocate, 1993-01-13, Page 4Page 4 4 • Times -Advocate, January 13, 1993 Publisher: Jim Beckett News Editor: Adrian Nene Susi CO IT1‘ nese Manager: Don Smith rnposl ton Manager Deb Lord Publbatlons Mall ,1 i83CII1t7Tt2N ATFL' A MMIMn 40 mulles (115 lml.) odi iswd opinion to non letter sinner aululwwss $30.00 plus $2.10 G.B.T. Outside 40 mulls (65 inn.) or -w totter carrier address $330.00 plus $27.50 (total 57.60) + 4.03 G.S.T. Outside Canards :118.00 I)ITORI,AI. A sad .sight t is truly disappointing for Peo- ple -in !this area to have oto °witness the destruction tof what was once -:It Vibsant and fg-aspect-of your communi- ty• 'The demolition of . St. Peter's Church, the abandoned Roman .Catholic church .on Highway 4 south 'of Centralia, is mo doubt a sad event for many •of 'those 'who felt they had contributed in some way to revitalize theproperty during !those brief years when it %was being ,tr nsforntedinto a friary. Others too -must =call when the build- ing housed an active congregation, the only- emnant-of-which will now be the :headstones in: the graveyard. .Congregations do fade .away and churches have to be :demolished. New mores are built up elsewhere. But:in this case, 'there was.a genuine, hope that the building could plot only be preserved, but.also be retained as a spiritual part.of • the local Catholic community. Itis very !unfortunate indeed that a bet- ter solution to ?the internal dispute be - %ween the -diocese .and the friars could not have been found. At :least a better solution than witnessing the friars leav- ing the entire project to head for the United States. Whatever one's personal feelings about thefiiiars and 'their .dispute, the inescapa- rble fact is that many -people in the com- munity .and 'organizations extended a great -deal of support to them in the hope that 'St. Peter's could become more than just fodder for the wrecker's ball. it is :also ironic ;that we -are seeing this demolition :of a former Catholic church building tit the sametime ,as a congrega- tion only a "few:kilometres r to the north in Exeter is wondering whether or nottheir hopes to :build a church of their own will ever become reality. A.D.H. Something light Thursday morning I spotted an unfamiliar shining disc hovering in the sky above Exeter. I hadn't seen the sun in so long I was almost ready to report a UFO sighting. People in coffee shops can usually be heard talking about the weather these days. Al- though that's usually considered something of a cliche, I believe ; such intense discussion and con- cern over meteorology can be warranted lately. Given the unusually wet spring, summer, fall, and even winter, and that fact that days of truly good weather could be counted on fingers and toes last year, I can't escape the conclu- sion that Mount Pinatubo's two cubic miles of volcanic ash blown into the upper atmos- phere had something to do with it all. I know I don't have as much to complain about as all our local farmers who have watched their crops get rained into the wet ground (perhaps it is worth not- ing that if this had occurred a century ago, we'd all be facing a famine), but I'm going to com- plain anyway. The weather got in the way of a lot of my plans last year. Con- tinual cold and rain kept me off my bicycle day after day. My Hold that thought ... By Adrian Harte brief vacation on Manitoulin Is- land resembled a tour of Ma- laya's monsoon season. Even my raincoat gave up under thc pressure. Like most of you out there I'm also wondering if I am suffering from that trendy new affliction. I think they call it SAD, seasonal adaptive disorder, or something like that. Apparently, this is a depression and listlessness caused by a lack of exposure to sunshine, such as when you can't sunbathe in winter time. Letter to Editor Those who suffer from this disorder are now trying weird ;f remedies, like wearing funny, hats with lights to help replace the missing sunlight. I don't think I'm quite ready to go that far, but so help me, if the weather doesn't improve soon I might as well just move back to England. After all, that was one of the big attractions which lured my family to these shores - better weather. What's the point of Jiving in Ontario if you can't tsnjoy the summer sunshine, ski in winter, and wander the woods in the au- tumn? Lord knows we don't live here for the breathtaking scenery and panoramic vistas. This volcanic ash problem can't last forever, can it? If the weather stays cold for a while and we get our usual storm fronts moving through this .area in the next few weeks (over an unfrozen, moist lake) we should probably end up with enough snow to call it a winter. The skis may get waxed yet. Of course, I wouldn't lay any heavy bets on that. Would you? Local currencies of interest to readers To the Editor: Recent articles on Christmas Credit and local shopping pro- grams indicate a growing interest in how we can strengthen our local communities and economies. The book The Living Economy ex- plores ways to develop a sustaina- ble economy. The chapter on"local currencies" is particularly relevant to local communities and may be of interest to your readers. It identifies . three functions of money: as a medium of exchange, as a unit of value and as a store of value. In other words we use mon- ey when we buy and sell stuff (in- cluding labour), we use money to put a value on stuff and we save money to buy things in the future. Money is an "enabler". Its pres- ence enables transactions to occur more easily than barter. But "lack of money exerts a severe restraint on exchange. Even when there is no shortage of goods and services to be exchanged in a community, if those with the goods and servic- es to offer have no money, the ex- change can be prevented and the economic activity of the commu- nity stifled." From the perspective of focal communities national currencies have several problems. The quan- tity and availability is determined outside the community. it is with- drawn from the local community and if it is returned it ms under out- side control. it is subject to specu- lation and devaluation on interna- tional currency markets. This can lead to "large scale unemploy- ment, with local skills and local assets lying idle, at the same time as many local needs are unmet, be- cause of a lack of a means of ex- change to bring these needs and resources together." Creating a "local curren- cy" does three things. It keeps the flow of money within the local economy reducing wealth export and retain- ing local control. it prevents specu- lation in the means of exchange. It ensures that all those with goods and labour have a currency which they can use to exchange them in the local market. The chapter then Goes on prtle- scribe vanous ex �0- cal cur piesinc�l�the Wow Exchange from 1832-1834, the Guernsy experiment from 1815-36, 1914 to the present, thc Worgl ex- periment from 1929 to 1934 and the Local Exchange Trading Sys- tem or LET System currently oper- ating in British Columbia. in the Guernesy and Worgl cases the local municipality issued local notes which were used to pay for public works and then circulated in the community. in Worgl "They were first used for the payment of wages for the building of streets, drainage and other public works by men who would otherwise have been unemployed. During the first month, the money had circulated twenty times. Taxes were paid, un- employment greatly reduced and local shop keepers prospered." The mayors of 200 other municipalities decided to follow the Worgl exam- ple but the Austrian national bank took legal action aad succeeded in stopping it. The Local Exchange Trading sys- tem invplves an agency which serves a4taccal area. Members Prem . the arravaatan account with the .ihio mow is .deposited or tiba tt a wy"t 101s only on .ort page 5 of "Men are never so likely to settle'a question rightly as when they discuss it freely." ... Thomas Macauley TIMIMI•d Pooh W.Orrosthyittler Exeter, Onarto, NOM iliac by LW. T•ittpbetto 1 -ti .2$i et 424 Main St., PubboatIons Ltd. 11111.16.T. Nl1e4210e36 Nft What the eye doesn't see... I needed glasses when I was six, but I didn't get them until I was 20. As a child, I often won- dered what all the fuss was about when people talked about the stars in the night sky. Maybe when I'm older, I thought. I didn't know I was as shod - sighted as Mr.loo. In school, too, no one both- ered to examine my eyes or to ask why I couldn't see what was written on the blackboard. In those days, boys didn't wear glasses. Not unless they were desperate. I think I was prob- ably desperate but wouldn't ad- mit it. I learned to bluff my way through elementary school, high school and agricultural college. I wonder how 1 ever managed to pass a grade? For a while I thought that maybe I was bril- liant. Almost blind, but brilliant. Now I'm convinced that my teachers felt sorry for me. i would still be stumbling around knocking over things, if it hadn't been for my kid sister. She is 11 years younger and a lot smarter than I am. So when I was 20 and she was 9, she com- plained that she couldn't see properly. i got the job to take her into town to an opthalmolig- ist. . I was• in the office with her when he examined her eyes, us- ing a letter chart. i couldn't even sec the chart, let alone the let- ters. Then he fiddled around with some complicated appara- tus, and finally he prescribed a pair of glasses for her. "Glasses?" 1 asked. "Is that really necessary?" "If she wants to see anything, yes." Peter's Point • Peter Helsel "1'm sometimes wondering a little about my own eyesight," I said. "For example, I couldn't Head any of those letters. Does that mean I should have glasses, too?" • "Let me take a look," he said. And he soon concluded: "You're completely hopeless without glasses. You must have known that for a long time." "Sure," I lied. A few days later I went to the optician and picked up two pairs of cheap, funny -looking glasses: one for my sister and one for me. That night, for the first time in my life, I saw a starry sky and the face of the moon. i also learned to drive, to enjoy mo- vies, and to look at gids, not necessarily in that order. To my great surprise, my glasses didn't frighten the girls away.Atleast not all of them . Everything ran smoothly for quite a few years. Until another opthalmologist in another town told me that I needed bifocals. "O.K.", I said, "if you think so." After a few bruises I soon leamed to walk downstairs safe- ly, and not to trip as I stepped off the sidewalk into the street. If I looked up, I could see as far as the horizon, and if 1 looked down, I could read the paper. But then people started chang- ing everything. The print got smaller and fuzzier. Looking up a phone number became a chore. The world seemed to be miniat- urizing. I discovered that things in the middle - in Middle Earth - were either too far away or too close. Back to the eye doctor. This time.I needed trifocals: up for distance, down for close-up, and straight ahead for everything else. But there are limitations. If , you've ever tried to beat your kids at table tennis while you're wearing trifocals, you'll know what I mean. I also notice that women are making passes less frequently. And I do knock things over. Nothing major, just a glass of orange juice here and a precious figurine there. They say: what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over, and that's probably true. Except for Middle Earth.