HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Citizens News, 1980-08-28, Page 4Page 4
Citizens News August 28, 1980
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A very familiar sight
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Viewpoint
By
TOM CREECH
ti..
Recovering
and acrobats
C
It's a Monday morning following alio er bean
festival and there are about 100 people from this area
who are finding it just a little bit more difficult to raise
themselves from the comfortable confines of a bed.
Meanwhile, things are returning to normal in the
community which once again has come away with
shining colours in the face of a friendly invasion by 15,-
000 people.
As most of you are only too well aware this annual
celebration of the white bean was blessed with
weather which could only be described as perfect.
Combine warm, dry weather with the atmosphere of
an old-fashioned carnival and you have the makings of
one heckava day. •
The pancake breakfast served up by the Zurich
Minor Athletic Association was apparently a great
success with the athletic people running out of
breakfast supplies.
Heading up the entertainment package once again
was Tom Destry and his band who provided some great
entertainment in the country vain. These guys are
great as evidenced by the response of the crowd
around the Mill and Victoria Street stage.
F. An event which keeps Doctor Charles Wallace hop-
Z.C.N.
op-
z.C.N. ping year after year is the frog jumping contest and
this year was no exception.
n11111111111W1W111111111111I11I11111111nH1I111111111111111I111111111111111111111111111111u1111111111111111111111111111111111111I11111II11111111II11I1111111111I111111111I1111111111I1111i1111111C For one day a year the ball diamond is transfered
into a huge horse-shoe pit as teams from across On-
tario compete in the Canadian horse-shoe pitching
championships. Adding credibility to the cham-
pionships was the appearance of several times past
tI'sa m a t t e r of world champion Elmer Hohl of Wellesley.
Without a doubt the fifteenth of the Zurich bean
festivals was another tremendous success.
The Iranians understand. So do the guerilla
fighters in Afghanistan. The West finds it incom-
prehensible, irrational, naive, uncivilized - .this is
all -persuasive nature of religious commitment
bafes. Long accustomed to the neat, orderly com-
partmentalization of life in a technologically
dominated industrial world, an all-encompassing
worldview is deemed by the West antique. Morality
and ethics vary according to the arena. God is in-
cidental to the process and living of life. Any other
approach is either primitive or fanatical or both.
The conflict in Iran - and especially in
Afghanistan - is fundamentally a religious one. The
prime questions concern the nature and purpose of
.God and the nature and destiny of persons. The
materialistic West is viewed as godless; the Soviets
are dismissed as atheists (both are really mis-
nomers since both the West and the Soviets merely
serve other more tangible gods.) All other questions
- economic, political, military - are secondary and
are an implication of that fundamental election.
Indeed, history, or an understanding of it, is subject
to that basic god -choice.
The vision of an abrupt, cataclysmic end to the
world is shared by many in both the East and the
West. But therein ends the similarity. Whereas
those in countries like Afghanistan may see such an
event as the will and work of Allah, their counter-
parts in the West are more inclined to attribute
such an event to Fate or to the miscalculation of a
computer operator.
Economic criteria, for so long dominate in the
West, must also pay homage to a differing world-
view. The post -Calvinist West, straining to com-
prehend the unsound economic decisions of Iran,
asks: If Iran is so eager to show that they are fulfill-
ing the will of Allah then why don't they get their
economy going? The question echoes a long -
cherished Western belief that prosperity signals
God's blessings. Incomprehensible are any notions
of sacrificial suffering, beliefs which are the
lifeblood of revolutionary and guerilla groups. Sanc-
tions, blockades and boycotts notwithstanding, the
basic issues are matters of faith.
We can always write
Increases approved by the Canadian Radio -
Television and Telecommunications Commission
last week will give Bell Canada an aMitional $141
million in revenues this year. That represents an in-
crease of 14.1 per cent. The approved settlement
will give Bell an extra $385 million in 1981, an in-
crease of 15.5 per cent.
Not bad in a country in which the GNP is es-
timated to be somewhere around one per cent this
year.
- The settlement ought to go a long way to bolster
Ma Bell's decreasing returns regarding common
shares. According to the Aug. 4 issue of Bell News,
Bell Canada's unaudited consolidated earnings per
common share for the second quarter of 1980 were
34 cents compared to 72 cents for the same period in
1979. For the first six months, earnings were 88
cents per share, compared to $1.38 per share a year
ago. Non -consolidated earnings, those of the
regulated telecommunications company, were 33
cents per common share for the second quarter of
1980 compared to 58 cents before extraordinary
item (whatever that means) in 1979.
As Bell News noted, revenues have continued to
increase at a slower rate than expenses. Compared
to the second quarter of 1979, non -consolidated
s
revenues from Bell's telecommunications
operations increased by only 6.9 per cent while
operating expenses increased by 19.3 per cent.
Sounds a little like the situation being faced by
most people, doesn't it?
The company was seeking increases of 23 per
cent. While the CRTC didn't come across with that
greedy -gut settlement, it did approve upping the
pay phone rate from the traditional dime to 20 cents
- something Bell Canada didn't ask for this time
around - not across the board anyway: That kind of
gratuitous settlement is difficult to understand at
any time, let alone during a period of recession.
However. the public can retaliate in a perfectly
acceptable way when it comes to increases in
telephone rates. We don't have much choice regar-
ding the business use of the telephone, but when it
comes to personal conversation, we can always
write a long letter and send it off to any remote cor-
ner of this land for only 17 cents.
So give your dialing finger, your vocal cords
and your ear a rest and pick up a pen and a piece of
paper. Taking pen in hand more often is also bound
to improve not only penmanship but spelling and
grammar as well.
The Listowel Banner
As this column is being written the writer is
recovering from both the bean festival and a Sunday
afternoon hosted by Mary Alderson of - the T -A's
Bluewater Country.
The gathering of about 40 T -A staffers and their
families was a great time with the writer discovering
that keeping up with kids can be a tiring but rewarding
experience.
The Alderson residence 'which is located on the
"Cut" at Port Franks is ideal for summer activities
such as swimming, boating and water skiing.
It was this first activity which seemed to take its
toll on the writer. On Monday morning there were a
few sore muscles in the abdominal region.
Whenever you have a gathering of this nature
there are bound to be a few humorous incidents regar-
ding some of the younger kids.
In particular, mention should be made of Derek,
son of advertising manager Jim Beckett.
The younger Beckett appears to have a good future
in acrobatics if a"death-defying" stynt which he pulled
at the gathering is any indication. •
The Alderson's lawn which drops sharply off to the
river's edge has a retaining wall which is higher than
the lower level of grass.
Our friend Derek mounted a tricycle -like device,
rolled down the hill, struck the retaining wall and per-
formed a complete flip.
Stay tuned for further developments in the career
of this young stuntman.
* * *
Last week in this column we gave a glowing
review of the Huron Country Playhouse's Young
Players. In the column we made a serious error; the
names mentioned were those people involved in the
behind -the -scenes activities of the Young Players and
not the actual performers.
The performers in the Young Company actually
Please turn to page 5
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Published Each Wednesday By J.W. Eedy Publications Ltd.
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Ontario Weekly Newspapers Association
News Editor - Tom Creech
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