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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1983-01-26, Page 4PAGE 4--CLINTON NEWS -RECORD, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY' iB,I tLLE RIBf3`0fi A. r i4 A R,D 11a9;8Q TM® CBOneen e;Ooem-fISe¢e B. enote40eloed a aceo mien. nAny my P.O. Pim 39, CHnev®n. Onterlo, coned.. N4` M IO.®. 1100. 0e02. 84.:53 Sube¢n0gro0e n Se0eb. Cene@e '10.r8 Sr CBTOLen '11.143 pot, veno Fmr®OEnrs '13.88 peen yeeer 0e to reo®Omvorod o0 trucsoveth enamel b the poen e0Po¢e under 0,3 peeevnOl meeancpmr 0811_ The 00cwo-Masoud Ince epeee®vod On 1,088 qt. e w.% kiienee-Eneo 9. Onnen m® 1oa 1091, end The COOnvon Mew Are, lesoeneled On BAAL loecs0 peen. run 4.na. F BUM STANDARD SHELLEY Mc"GAfflw - Editor TERRY MARR - i .pert®r GARY WAIST - Advertising Mereeger JANICE< AWN - Advertising PEGGY GIB® - Office Manager MARY ANliki HOLLl:lel®t'sCld - Subscriptions J. HOWARD AITKEN - Publisher MEMBER MEMBER Dioglev edworrisIng rove. vele®boo en rogeoeal Aet for Move Coe 0tle. la e00octhve Oct. 1. 1001 Huron health needs boost Fact - 12,000 people die in Ontario a year of heart attacks. Fact - 8,000 of these deaths occur outside the hospital. With effective Emergen- cy Cardiac Core, 3,000 out of the 8,000 dying outside of a hospital could be saved. Fact - 2,607,000 Canadians have some form on heart and blood vessel diseases. The facts are evident, and recent statistics presented by Dr. Harry Cieslar, Medical Officer of Health in Huron have confirmed that heart disease is a leading killer in the county and in the province. In Huron these figures are well above the provincial averages. The statistics came as a shock to many county residents. After all we're a healthy, hearty rural breed of people from good pioneer stock. We breathe in good clean air, endure a harsh winter climate, enjoy warm seasonal temperatures and eat well from the wealth of the land. But the facts don't he. In Huron County we smoke more than we should, we drink more than we should, and the motor vechicle accident figures show that drive more recklessly than we should. Self -education and a drastic change of lifestyle will be the only ways that we can turn the statistics in our favor. In the Clinton area we will have that oppor- tunity on February 9 and March 9 when the Clinton Public Hospital in conjunction with the Canadian Heart Foundation sponsor two, one evening courses, the Heart Saver Program. Clinton nurses, Linda Reid and Brenda MacDonald will be teaching the general public how to recognize and reduce the rusks of heart attacks, and how to save a life through Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR). The program will also focus on recognizing and managing a choking victim. The statistics could also be changed if we paid closer attention to Non -Smokers Week, and in fact gave up smoking completely. As Councillor Rosemary Armstrong commented to the smokers at the Clinton council table, 'it's not only the cough, it's the coffin they carry you off in." -by S. McPhee. behind the scenes Perfect parents Never in history has so much advice been available on how to be the perfect parent so how can I be such a dud? There is nothing like taking your holidays when the kids are on vacation from school, in the middle of winter, when the kids can't get outside and you can't take some inexpensive vacation like a camping trip to Point Farms, to make you realize what a total failure you are as a parent. I mean instead of the peace on ear- th, goodwill towards men during the holi- day season, our house was like a cross between a Middle East war zone and a psycho ward. I was once going to be a perfect parent. It all seemed so easy uack then. It was like the word was handed down from on high on stone tablets. The pyschology prof back in university days made it all so simple. Why hadn't my parents thought of all those things? Of course they didn't have the ex- perience of a higher education and they didn't seem to appreciate either when I went home on weekends and tried to tell them all they'd done wrong in my upbring- ing according to the latest fashionable psychological theories. Of course the only time I was really a perfect parent was before our first child was born, well maybe for the first few months ton before the unco-operative little monster started messing up all the perfect plans. By the time the child was two, I capitulated and went back to my parents plan: just try to get through the day without losing your sanity or doing grievous bodily harm to your little darling. Once you become an imperfect parent you wince when you get a visit from a perfect parent. These usually are old friends or relatives who don't have children yet. Often these are career - oriented friends who don't plan to have children at all but they know that if they did, they would certainly not have little monsters like yours. Worse still are the couples who glowing- ly have just announced they are expecting their first born. They have, of course. already read half the books on child- rearing available through the local public library. they've been to classes and they have the perfect path to perfect adulthood all mapped out for their precious child. Tliey look knowingly when they see your child upset a flower pot into the aquarium and say that this is the third rebellion phase as spoken of 1)r. Sylvia Vernspaaker in chapter seven of her hook "How to Raise the Perfect Citizen Why May Become Prime Minister After He's Earned his First Billion'. They then look aghast when you grab the kid by the scruff of the neck and lock him in a closet, Dr. Verspaaker would be appalled The one comforting thing about couples like this is you know they'll get theirs a couple of years down the road. Most sickening are those people who have children and still are the perfect parents. You know the kind: their kids were all toilet trained without a trauma that will stay with them the rest of their lives by the time they were fourteen mon- ths. The children were reading War and Peace by the time they started kindergarten and had mastered the theory of relatively by Grade 2. If things continue to go as planned they will enter university at 12 and be called to the bar by the time they're old enough to go into one. These parents, of course, have one daughter and one son, spaced exactly two years apart because they read in a book somewhere that this is the best spacing for proper bonding without creating too much competition. And they have never so much as slapped their childrens fingers. I guess that's the final one that proves what an unfit parent I am. I mean I've listened to those people who think you should be arrested if you ever, ever, EVER, physically punish a child. You're as bad as a child -beater if you do. Worse, you're showing your lack of intelligence. An adult should be able to outsmart a child, to use psychology and reverse psychology to get the child to do what is re- quired without resorting to violence. I think the people who say that are childless psychology professors who should be penalized by having a flock of kids to raise themselves. I'm not completely stupid. i have outsmarted one of my kids once or twice. If I had one child and had nothing else to do but putting all my concentration on trying to outsmart her I might even come a little closer to perfection. But I've got four kids and also have work to do and I'm sorry, but i can't juggle it all and be the perfect parent. i find it hard enough to keep track of what phase of development each is go- ing through, ( if you've got four kids at any given time at least two of them will be in a difficult or rebellious stage). And when you're expected to be the arbiter or con- tinuous squabbles between four children, you need the wisdom of Solomen to even try to he consistent in your judgements. My only hope is that modern technology noay come to the rescue. Perhaps those home computers they're telling us will change our lives can do something for us. At least it could help me keep track of which child is in "terrible twos" and which is having an early teenage hormone (change it might do more in designing a program on how to outsmart your seven- vea r -n 1(1 Say• sounds like there might be commer- cial potential there. Outsmarting your seven-year-old has to be far more challenging than beating off an alien at- tack. it could become the latest video game crate Bayfield of yesteryear SUgClCona spice 6Twere the flu Sorry if my eight or nine faithful readers missed a column. `Twere the fault off the 'flu. I can usually belt out a column regardless of weather, wife, or nuclear ex- plosions, the latter two being much alike, but this time I was laid lower than a grasshopper's anus, right from before Christmas through the New Year. Must be getting old and soft. It's hard to turn out a column of deathless, sometimes desperate prose when your brain is like putty, your fingers are like dough, and your Legs like clay sticks, while your stomach is making like a cement mixture and producing something much like cement. I can usually find a topic this time of year: a savage attack on the Canadian winter. But I can't even do that. Christmas was warmer than August, warmer than England, according to a colleague who was there, and superior to Puerto Rico, where it rained and rained and blew the palm trees horizontal, according to another colleague who went off for '`a week in the sun." And serves her right. Despite my decrepitude, I tried to strug- gle through. Have you ever played chess or Monopoly with a bright eight-year-old who can beat you at either, even when you're in top shape? Have you ever tried to repair broken toys on Christmas morning with a sharp six-year-old when your hands are shaking with the ague and your mind is fixed on your next spurt to the bathroom? Have you ever coped with a wife who moans, "But you always make the dress- ing and help me with the gravy! ", when all you want to do is crawl into a hole, cover od by George Chapman Y4burself with something, even e, •essing, and quietly expire? I compromised. In the shape of an oc- togenarian leper who has just had a massive stroke, I stuffed the ruddy beast, trussed it, and jammed it into the oven, before collapsing. But I got my revenge on those who had frittered around making cups of tea while I labored over the creature. Told them I'd spit on my hands before I mixed the stuff- ing. That almost, but not quite, threw them off their Christmas dinner. I nibbled a bit of 'flu -filled stuffing, proclaimed it ex- cellent, and they ate like pigs. It was only through the greatest for- titude that I was able to get a little brandy down, now and again, to keep Death at His distance. But it wasn't all bad. It never is, if you keep your pecker up. No small chore in these days of economic and political gloom. Because of my condition, I let the old girl make all the Christmas telephone calls to old friends and relatives. That probably cost me about $200, as she has a propensity to believing that long-distance calls are made to somebody just around the corner, even when they're six hundred miles away, and can chat amiable for half an hour about sweet fanny adams. And i managed to totter to the telephone on New Year's Eve and talk to a couple of old turkeys who joined the air force the clay I did. I could have saved my breath, what was left of it, on that one. They were in worse shape than I was. And they didn't have the 'flu. Got some cards from old friends: Don McCuaig, asking me to come and help him dig a hole in the ice for fishing, up in the Ot- tawa Valley; the Cadogans of New Brunswick, telling me to get that book published. E vastly the kinds of activities I felt like. snen'ss The subject is spelling Are you ready for another investigation of this confusing language we call English? Well, ready or not, that is the train of thought my mind is running on to- day. Yesterday I was typing merrily along. When I stopped to review the page, i found "relaps" smack dab in the middle. i was not writing about laps on a race track that are run again. I was referring to a recurring illness - a "relapse". For a moment, 1 was tempted to overlook it. R.elaps and relapse sound ex- actly the same, And surely everyone would know what i meant. Many people probably would not even notice. But, my conscience would not let me leave It, and for the sake of an ''e" i retyped the whole page. "Why can't we But don't worry, chaps. We'll get some of those trout yet, McCuaig, even if we have to use dynamite. And we'll get that book written yet, Cadogans. Even if we have to use a computer, a ghost writer and a team of doctors. Missed my usual card from Major McEwen, who teaches playing the bagpipes in California, if you can imagine anything more incongruous. He was a mere I •i last Christmas, so he may be slow- ing down. But my old pal in Westport didn't fail me. He signs his cards only, "Your TV Repairman", but they always come through. Here's this year's: "Merry Christmas Smiley and lots more. Thank you for another year of your cheerful wit. I can't imagine anyone enjoying your column more than I do. on't you dare to retire. The world needs you and you do a lot of good. Some day when I get over being silly and the swelling goes down in my head, I'll let the air out of my ego and write you a bragging letter that will make B.S. smell like roses. In the meantime, stay just like you are and I'll keep buying any paper that carries your column." Earthy but uplifting. It almost ended my 'flu. One of these days I'm going to hire a private eye and track the ould divel down. My Christmas tree, erected in 15 minutes by a friend who arrived suddenly and cheerfully, while celebrating an an- niversary, didn't fall down. My grand- children still love me ... I haven't been fired, despite due cause. My wife hasn't left me, despite due cause. All in all, despite the 'flu, not too bad. I even got a refund from National Revenue. It took only from April to late December to find their error. I'm almost healthy again. The only thing I'm dreading at the mo- ment, is the arrival of my Chargex account for December. letters. For example. why spell sick. Why spell words the way they sound? I asked myself. Pneumonia, for example. Why not spell it. nunxonia? it would be faster and simple. Or. why not spell it, newmonia? We could quickly spell it the way Ip sounds - new- mnia. Spoaelling words the way they sound, or rather, pronouncing words the way they are spelled. would not work, of ('(urge. Tomorrow morning we c-ould ask so- meone, "1)o you want cereal for breakfast" Would they think we want them to watch a fast breaking serial on TV, while they drink their morning coffee' if we pronounced tongue the way it is spelled - ton gun - we would not make Sense if we spelled tongue the way it is pronounced - tong - we would be talking about a Chinese guild, associated or secret society. We might also be referring to one of the tongs that pick ice cubes from con- tainers. We seem to have a passion for adding not sic or sik'.' Would we not be just as ill with only one "In" A word I always have trouble spelling is manoeuvre. Thank goodness maneuver is accepted. in fairness to the language, there is a reason for everything, although it may not be quickly identified. Take the word igloo, for instance. iglu might make us think of some kind of glue, and iglu might make us think of something that glows. if we insist on having three different meanings for the word "to", it makes sense to have three different spellings - to, too, and two. Without the second "e", the bee that stings would be just another "be". And, a little thing like an "e" makes all the dif- ference between two laps around the track and a lapse of memory Using the correct spelling should make the English language less confusing, even though we may not understand the reasons for the spelling. (the readers F __' d raisin '- success for Homemakers Dear E. tor: We would like to express our apprecia- tion to your newspaper and to your readers, for supporting our fund-raising campaign in 1'+.'2. It may be of interest to you to know that, as of to -day, December 31, 1982, donations received total $28,1,41.45. Even though the campaign itself is drawing to a close, donations are grateful- ly received at any time, and are always recognized with a tax-deductible, charitable receipt. Thank you again for your support. Sincerely, Beverley A. Brown Board Chairman, Town and Country Homemakers Doggy owners need shovels I see a neighbor who walks his dog Each morning, along the lane. He carries a shovel whene'er he goes, So the path is free from stain. But some owners of dogs take the greatest care That their dogs produce just anywhere Except at home—and their lawn stays clean. I am sure you know just what I mean. In England, a sign—though the dogs can't read— 'Don't foul, the foot -path.' There's equal need In any Ontario city or town To prohibit the dogs from sitting down. Some dogs are tied, and some just race To the neighbor's lawn, where their path you trace. A lawn for children to play and roll, Or a `bordered' path from the ev'ning strong There's a kitty -litter where cats keep clean, But doggy litter is plainly seen. We need more Charities along the way For a cleaner town, from day to day. ...Nora E. Craven - New Liskeard The great epres cion dilemma The following modern day parable is neither original nor new. It was lapped from a community newspaper in Saskat- chewan, which in turh probably clipped it from some other publication. Never- theless, its message rings as true to as it did when it was first penned by some unknown editor perhaps in another time and another place: +++ There was a man who lived by the side of the highway and sold hotdogs. He was hard of hearing so he had no radio. He also had trouble with his eyes so he read no newspapers. But he sold damned good hotdogs. Knowing just how good they were, he put up signs along the highway telling how great they were. And he stood on the side of the road and cried, "Buy a good hotdog, Mister?" And the people bought. He increased his orders for meat and buns. He purchased a bigger stove to take care of his burgeoning trade. He finally got his son home from college to give him a hand with the growing sale volume. But then something happened. His son said, "Father, haven't you been listening to the radio? Haven't you been reading the newspapers? There's a big depression going on. The European situa- tion is terrible. The domestic situation is even worse." Whereupon the father thought, "Well, my son's been to college; he reads the papers and he listens to the radio. And he ought to know." So the father cut down on his meat and bun orders; he took down his advertising signs; he no longer bothered to stand out on the side of the highway selling his hot- dogs. And his hotdog sales fell almost over- night. "You're right, son", the father said to the boy. 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