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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1983-02-02, Page 2PAGE 2 - CLINTON NEWS -RECORD, WEDNESDAY, f•'EBRUARY 2, 19833 Elaine Townshend He stands alone, looking forlorn. He knows has tune in his snowy domain as run- ning oat Just 24 hours earlier he cut a handsome figure on the front lawn of 2'2'2 Maple Street. It seemed as though all the kids in the neighbourhood had worked on hurl When they fuushed, they stood back and admired hon. He could tell by their guru they were pleased brief ingfora winter e Has figure was well rounded, his coat was sparkling white, and chunks of shiny black coal made four buttons ui the front. Coal was hard to come by these days, but some enterprising youngster found enough. Someone raided their another's sewing basket and came up with two huge blue buttons for his eyes. A wizened carrot made a perfectly good nose, and a piece of 1 STIMET TALK BL:SL :ESS! Visit us in Go i erich, on FE R °'ARY Sth when one of our representatives will 4te in the area. ere the Federal Business Develop ment Bank, and we can be one of your most important resource centres We can lend you money, provide loan guarantees or finance an increase in your business equity. Presently, you may qualify for a Small Business Investment Grant and thus be entitled to up to a 4% rebate on specified loan interest We offer a brain bank of experienced people, loo Come talk business with us. We'II tell you about financing, counselling, management training and government assistance programs. One phone call can bring it all to you. For an appointment call FBDD Stratford and ask for Pa ut Me :usker or at Bob Bogd 271-5650 (confect) d-� Flooded seal A lap of skin that can be blown up into a balloon - shaped hood forms the nose of a hooded seal. When in- flat,gd an adult male's hood be larger than a foot- ball red plastic - probably from some broken toy - made his mouth. He didn't have any ears, but it didn't matter A little girl put a pair of bright green muffs where hes ears should have been. A brown fedora was cocked jauntily on his head, and a red woollen scarf was wound round his neck Someone stuck a corn cob pipe m his mouth and a broonn handle in the ground beside hun. The broom handle looked like a fine walking cane. He stood straight and proud in the shadow of the house all afternoon. One by one the kids wandered off, but he could still feel the admiring glances of people as they drove by. During the night, the street light il- Nutiitia s n is ourlirrsirneo Federal i:,usiness :;anque federa0e ev&opment Bank de developpement Your success is our only business C nal°a 3O°High protein 18 cat food protein vitamins. & minerals 4 Kg. Bog o e ® e L10 Kg. Bag... Hu 99 M e e e es J Nu!, o Teus �� Maas e e e e $14e Tia ?NAMABLE AT': niers Feed ill 35 Mary Street Clinton 482-9792 eter Nominated tnirsa_ He thought :r it ;;.s his sa,� night. The frosty night froze hist solid, and for a while, d hopes of lasting a to time. The morning sky was cloudy, but he could feel the ternper-ature slowly rising. Icicles began dripping from the eaves of the house. Snow began sh.•T�ang, away. He could see muddy patches on the'Iawn, and he could feel himself slipping, too. The kids seemed to sense the inevitabi as they walked past him on their way back to school after lunch_ The afternoon went quickly by. Hes wa ing stick fell over, and there was no one to pick it up for him. One his buttons drop- ped off, and his. pi..'. r hung at a dangerous angle. His coat began to kook gray. His fedora s .gged to the back of his head. On her way home from school, a lit- tle girl tried to replace the hat, but it wouldn't stay. He felt half his original size, and he sensed that he was leaning dangerously to the right. A cold night would give him a reprieve, but he knew it would only be tem- porary. His brief fling would soon be over, and he would become just another casualty of the mild winter. • The Hobbit Theatrical fantasy is coming to Blyth The visually stunning Theatre Sans Fils stage adaptation of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien will fill the stage at Blyth Memorial Hall with colour and fantasy on Thursday, March 3. Theatre Sans Fits means theatre without strings and the famous Montreal puppet company for adults uses the black light principle and huge puppets manipulated by black -garbed handlers to create visual effects one thinks of more as part of television and movies than the stage. The effects allow Tolkien's fantasy world to come to life. Bilbo the hobbit was created by Tolkien in 1937 and in the production takes the audience along on a fabulous adventure in which he becomes a hero, very much in spite of himself. Like any self-respecting hob- bit, he would prefer to stay at home in his comfortable hobbit hole, daydreaming and smoking his pipe. He never in his life dreamed he would get involved in such an amazing adventure. The production features puppets, ranging in size from four to 12 feet high and in style from the most realistic of characters to the most imaginary of beings who haunt the land of the hobbits. The Press of Atlantic City said: "To describe the dramatic spectacle of The Hobbit in words is nearly im- possible. Only someone who has seen the intensity of the puppets' battles and the glowing ferociousness of the monsters can truly ap- preciate the effect it has on the audience — especially an audience attuned to the screen effects of Star Wars." Tickets for The Hobbit, part of the :;lyth Centre for the Arts theatre series, are now available from the in ox office by mail or telephone (on Tuesdays and ednesdays) at 523-9 114 or from the Blyth Saga at 523- 4331. All seats are Truth is thew Y If there is a disease that infests our society in the 1Os as much as the economic rot that has attacked our economy, it is the cynicism that left a large portion of the population not believ- ing a word its political leaders say. In times of crisis, great leadership can pull a country together, can make people think of more than their own ,,!:ght and sacrifice their- own petty needs for the common good. F.D. Roosevelt was able to do that in the U.S. during the Depression and Winston Churchill in Britain in the dark days of the Second World War. That kind of leadership is sorely needed today, not just in Canada, but in all Western coun- tries but people are in no mood to put their trust in political leaders. They've been burned too often. While it is easy to point to causes of cynicism in Canada such as a party in power in Ottawa and another in Ontario that seems willing to make any kind of philosophical back -flip in order to stay in power, this mood of cynicism has been im- ported, for the most part, as have nearly all our cultural impulses, from the United States. Cynicism about politicians reached a peak with the Watergate scandal and has refused to go away, but the causes of that cynicism go back many years before Watergate. Watergate and the Vietnam War simply gave the American public irrefutable pro- of that they had been lied to by their political and military leaders for some years. Even after the Americans had been in Vietnam many years, the bulk of the American citizenry were quite willing to believe what they were told by their leaders. It was the disclosures of the manipulation of the media and of public opinion by the military and governmental leaders that helped build a climate in which the American people could finally accept the fact a president could be a scoundrel. On reading All The President's Men, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's ac- count of how they broke the Watergate story, one is struck by the fact that in the early going not only did the public and other newspapers refuse to believe what they were gging up, but many times the reporters could not believe it themselves. Their faith in the integrity of the American system was such t : t they could not believe the illegal activities even when they had the proof before their eyes. But once the Watergate dam broke we have found more and more evidence of ly- ing and man i . ulation by American government leaders since World War IIII. While Nazi war criminals were tried after the war, for instance, the U.S. government made a special deal with Japan's odious e. t• rumentrs nn germ warfare not to pro- secute in return for the results of the ex - ailments carried out on human guinea pigs, some of them American prisoners of war. More than 3000 ;N ea* may have died in these . ;ae;.< riments lei Manchuria. More and more credence has been lent as years go on to charges that the U.S. us- ed this germ warfare knowledge on the Chinese during the Korean War. Dr. Jaynes Endicott, a Canadian missionary was branded a communist sympathizer and attacked by his own church for his reports t he had seen evidence in China that proved the case. Today his testimony that he saw voles infested with fleas carry- ing bubonic plague and feathers and in- sects carrying anthrax have more and more supporters and his church has apologized. Dr. Endicott claims the whole Korean War was a fraud perpetrated by the Americans as an excuse to take on some Communists somewhere following the Communist takeover of China. He claims there are papers at the United Nations that prove that point but the U.S. vetoes in the Security Council keep the papers from be- ing seen by the public. Is he right? Well what really matters is that there is so much distrust these days that people are suspicious that he may be. We've seen the American stage such "provocations" before such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam which was staged to outrage American public opinion and build support for the bombing of Cam- bodia. The sad fact is that in trying to fool the American public, often with the best of in- tentions because of some presumed out- side threat, the manipulators are only weakening the system they are trying to preserve. Lying about what happened in Korea or Vietnam or about what goes on in right-wing dictatorships in Latin America today doesn't fool the other side, the enemy the U.S. leadership is trying to defeat. It only confirms to China or the Soviet Union or Cuba or Nicaragua that they are battling an enemy that will resort to anything to win and therefore cannot be trusted. Clandestine maneuvers by the CIA to either build up or tear down govern- ments in third world countries around the world, only loses respect for the U.S. and tends to make people draw closer to the strong alternative: the Soviet block. And when the truth of these lies and il- legal activities eventually leaks out, as it always does, it only weakens the resolve of the American people. They don't know what to believe anymore. Ronald Reagan wants to convince us of the danger of the Soviet arms build-up, for instance, but most people don't know if they can trust his word. The truth may i:r,,rt in the short run but in the Ito >> run, only the truth can make us strong. Drop in n pick L t e full Vi emberships $40 if y. u join Iron • r II existing vld • ICES Choose yo l =r favorite mvie and screen it on yon r ®'rn clor TV. If yu don't have a VCR, rent an easy -t -carry, easy -t -hook-up vid-'o cassette player. It's showtime anytime and a great -ay to save on the family's ntertainment. See movies like Chariots of Fire, Star 'tars, Superman I ,nd 11, 'n Golden Pond, Stripes, Sharkey's Machine, Six Pack, Firefox, Star Trek 11 rath of Khan, Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams and Tron. And the latest releases such as Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rocky 111, Missing, Victor/Victoria, Annie, Poltergeist and many, many more. Even exercise to Jane Fonda's `Workout' or with Olivia Newton -John in `Physical'. Quasar VCR equipment for sale. Also Texas Instruments home computer and games. Intellivision games for rent (club members only). Monday 8:00 am to 6:00 pm Tuesday—Friday 12:00 pm to 9:00 pm Saturday 9:00 am to 6:00 pm MasterCard and VISA accepted eo. movie hhStifl o of re April 1, 19t3 club memberships!) CLUB MEMBE S N N=MEMBERS MOVIES Monday Tuesday ednesday Thursday Friday Saturday/Monday Friday/Monday $4.00 each Two for $4 Two for $4 Two for $4 $6.00 each $6.00 each $8.00 each $ 6.00 each $ 8.00 ech $ 6.00 each $ 6.00 each $12.00 each $12.00 each $16.00 each VIDE* CASSETTE PLAYERS Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday/Monday Friday/Monday $10.50 $10.50 $10.50 $10.50 $12.50 $12.50 $20.00 $12.00 $12.00 $12.00 $12.00 $15.00 $15.00 $25.00 Prices are subject to 7% PST. The Suncoast Shopping Mall South of Goderich on Highway 21 (519) 524-6673