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Clinton News-Record, 1985-3-27, Page 4Page 4—CLINTON NEWS -RECORD, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 1985 The Clanton Nowa-Record Is published each Wednesday of P.O. 8oa 39, Clinton. Onlerle, Canada, NOM 10.0. Tel.: 482-3443. Subscription Rate: Cando - 919.73 Sr. Citlson - 916.75 par year U.S.A. foreign • 653.00 per veer IS is registered as second class moil by the post office under the permit number 0817. Tho Nows-Record incorporated On 1924 the Oilmen News -Record. Pounded in 1881, end Tho Clnlon Nowa Era, Pounded in 1865. Teta0 proms runs 3.700. Incorporating (TUF BLYTH STANDARD CCNA J. HOWARD AITKEN - Publisher SHELLEY McPHEE - Editor GARY HAIST - Advertising Mallow MARY ANN HOLLENSECK - Office Manager ei A MEMBER MEMBER Display advertising rates available on request. Ask for Rate Card No. 15 effective October 1, 1984. Anything for a buck As though the horrible massacre at a McDonald's restaurant in the United States last year was not enough, a film maker announced his plans to make a movie based on that terrible event the Listowel Banner says. Fortunately, the disgust of grieving relatives was so forcefully expressed that the movie maker changed his mind. Shortly after the insame mahcine gun -massacre the restaurant was totally demolished in order to remove any vestige of a reminder of the event, but leave it to the profit seekers to move in on any situation which could be exploited. In somewhat the same category are the few former employees of royalty who are prepared to "tell all" about the private lives of people who are respected and loved for their dignity and quiet leadership. A former employee at Buckingham Palace has been the source for several books andnewspaper articles about the British royal family, par- ticularly about the Prince of Wales and Princess Diana. The fact that he has not been employed at the palace for the past two or three years hardly makes him an expert on the royal couple today. Obviously there is a ready market for such trash or the authors would not be so anxious to talk. Surely there is enough bad news in the public realm to satisfy sordid appetites without delving into the sad and the private lives of others. Reader still keeping in touch Dear editor: The Blyth Festival, as most people in this area are aw-are, is a non-profit organization with a board of local volunteers who have for the past ten years, produced a summer season of new Canadian plays and cultural events" throughout the spring and fall months, using the facilities of Blyth Memorial Hall, a publicly owned building.. Throughout the years, we have encouraged the activities of other cultural groups, as we do not want to hold a cultural monopoly in the area. We are pleased that the Theatre .Circle, an independent, locally based company, has produced plays at • Blyth Memorial Hall for the past two winter seasons. We applaud the increase in activity at Blyth Memorial Hall, but request that patrons note that many activities at the Blyth Memorial Hall are not produced by or under the banner of the Blyth Festival. Blyth will continue to offer the same kind of quality shows we always have and we know local people will continue to find the shows produced by the Blyth Festival worthy of their support. Yours truly, Sheila Richards, President, Board of Directors Clarification of Blyth shows Dear Editor; - For quite a few years now .my mother (Mrs. Lucy Watkins of 77 Centre St., Thor- nhill), has been enjoying the regular delivery of the Clinton News -Record at her home.in Thornhill. As she grew up in Clinton and lived in the "Little England" district and worked at what was then the Doherty Organ factory, it has been wonderful for her to keep in touch with all the Clinton news through your ex- cellent paper. We also congratulate you on the very reliable delivery service which, despite weather, etc., brought the papers through - right to the door. Mother (formerly Lucy Cooper of Clinton) is now in a nursing home, and at 93, still. very alert and continuing to enjoy each issue of the paper. Although we take each issue up to her, we thought it would be even more like home if you would kindly mail her copies to her new address. Congratulations once again on your ex- cellent paper which we all enjoy reading and thank you very much foryour assistance in having the address change put through. Kalqidc;scuPQ• I prefer to leave well enough alone, thank you, I'm not interested in tempting fate, knowing my future or any of that hocus pocus stuff. I've had friends who have seen fortune tellers, had their tea leaves analysed, palms read and all that. And mind you it seems that some of the predictions have come true. Coincidence or not, I don't know, and I'm not going to spend too much time mulling it over. I guess it's just fear of the unknown, but I don't want to hear about some deep dark secret in the future and I'm not interested in building my life around some invisible hopes seen in the bottom of a tea cup. Still, I was lured to the tarot card table. A friend dragged me there. "Come on, it will be fun," she assured me. I was terrified. There it would be, the dreaded hangman card and that would be it, my life over and done with. Well I didn't get the hangman, but my reading turned up many other strange cards. The fellow that was giving this reading said it was one of the most incredi- ble readings he's ever given. Just my luck. It was gloomy in spots, but equally pro- mising in others. It started off on a high note with this priestess card, a good sign, I understand. The card of my past showed trouble and tur- bulence and the card of my future was as bad as the hangman - "The Devil." Still, my reading carried on toreveal all these other Just Another Winter's Morn Just Another Winter's Morn As the snow fell in front of my eyes, The howling wind in the chimney cries; The frost on taps, Made cute little caps; . For each one to wear. Very Sincerely, Jack Watkins. The trees were hanging with fluffy snow, And light only a tiny speck of glow; Everything frozen, Not exactly chosen, Just another winter's morn. —by Fayeanne Love, Gr. 6, Huron Centen- nial School. By Shelley McPhee "good" cards, representing celebration, strong character, temperance, stabili- ty It seems my reading was highly unusual. In the deck of 78 cards there are 22 higher level cards, kind of like face cards in a regular deck. A typical reading may turn up one or two of these priests, magicians, devils, knights and such. My reading turned up more than half a dozen. Fortunately, the reading was also op- timistic, so I can carry on life with nary a worry. And that's just what I'll do. That tarot reading was a little unnerving, but it was all in fun, an entertaining bit of fortune telling for three bucks, that will help a nice guy finance his college education. Even he admitted that while he does take stock in his art, for the most part, it's a form of entertainment. It's just like your horoscope, a bit of silly information that you read along with the comics in the morning paper. Heck if I won all the money and had all the romances that my horoscope's promised over the years, my reputation would easily equal Liz Taylor's. Perhaps there's a bit of truth to astrology. I know a Libra who lives up to the sign's characteristics of self-reliance, balance and peace. Another friend, a Taurus, is truly as gen- tle, strong of mind and emotional as the sign suggests. Still another friend, who is known for his enthusiastic and zealous nature can surely chalk up his attributes to Lep the`i, ion. And people who follow astrology give me a knowing look when I say I'm � Gedencyrainh It seems to adequately explaintento laugh one minute and cry the next and to -en- thusiastically flit from one project to another. Still, fortune telling,for me is all fun and games., I don't feel the need or desire to let ft rule my life.far as I'm concerned what's going to happen is going to happen. I don'. want to spend my life fretting or bopin about future predictions. It means nothing to me that my horoscope in 1985 promises love and romance, a special trip, energy and charm, expanded horizons and excitement. Nothing at all - almost. +++ bur Varna correspondent Mary Chessell writes that congratulations are in order for Gordon and Ruby Hill, who celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary with theirfamily at a party hosted by Bev and Shirley Hill at their home on Friday night. +++ Artists from a wide range of creative fields will be meeting in Clinton on April 12, 13, and 14 for a workshop being put on by the Four County Arts Committee. Clintonians are being asked to welcome the people taking part in this event by pro- viding bed and breakfast accommodation for the town's guests. If you can help please call Rec Director Kevin Duguay at 482-3398. +++ The huddle Behind The Scenes Sagar and Spice By Keith Roulston I don't think right I've just discovered why I'm not rich and famous. I don't think right. That's the message that's being played over and over again these days by a lot of successful people who are preaching the gospel of positive thinking as the way to suc- cess. It's the kind of "Horatio Alger" think- ing that would have been laughed at a decade ago in those days of liberal con- spiracies to turn us all into limp-wristed welfare bums but in the bottom-line eighties, it's gaining wide acceptance. A month or so ago they filled Thompson Hall in Toronto one night to hear Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and an other positive thinker tell them that all they needed was to look themselves in the mirror in the morning and say "I can do anything" and they would become rich. Oh I know I'm distorting things. ,They argue that hard work is needed too, just like good old Horatio Alger but since I think I've worked re-isonably hard over the years, it must be my thinking that's' deficient. 1,istening to these people is like reading the biographies of famous movie stars. You look at this person who started out as just an ordinary joe but who had talent and who was persistent and suddenly was successful beyond our wildest dreams, treated like royalty, their pictures in every magazine at the hairdressers. It all seems so inevitable, so easy. But then you might just stop to think about all the thousands, even millions, of others who didn't make it. Some of them weren't as talented to' be sure. Some of them didn't have the drive. But there must have been 41. many who had the talent and the drive but never got into the right circumstances to have good things happen to them. They never got cast for the big picture that would make them fainous because their hair col- our was wrong or they had a cold the day of the audition or they refused to go tubed with the producer. Successful people have the common human falicy of thinking after a -while that they are where they are completely through their own doings. They forget the lucky cir- cumstances, the once-in-a-lifetime happen- ings that, along with talent and hard work, allowed them to be successful. A. farmer who got into the business 15 years ago, before the land boom and the good prices of the 1970s can now look on himself as a good manager and feel little sympathy for the "poor farmers" who were a few years younger and had to try to get into farming just when commodity prices and land values plummeted. The guy who had his money in- vested with Standard Trust instead of Greymac can congratulate himself on his own astuteness., A little bit of this positive -thinking philosophy is a good thing. To be sure many people are not realizing their potential because of negative thinking. The wor- risome thing is when the successful people start to believe it too much, when they start to think that they are superior beings and that the unsuccessful deserve what they get. The irony is that so many of the positive- thinkingpreachers are also religious. Yet their very attitude goes against the fun- damental teaching of Christ to help and understand the poor. Avoiding tr(itibl SOME people, like me, believe in rolling with the punches, rather than sticking out our chins to show how many we can absorb. I have found that, in general, if I avoid trou- ble, trouble avoids me. If I know that some pain in the arm has been trying to get me on the phone, 1 also know immediately that he or she wants me to do something that 1 don't want to do. Therefore, I take the phone off the hook and leave it off until the pain has found some other sucker. Another invention of mine to stay out of trouble is patented as Nega-Prod. This is short for Negative Production. The theory is simple. The more you produce, the more problems you have, whether it is children, manufactured goods or farm products. The more children you have, the more emotional and economic problems you create for yourself. The more goods you pro- duce, the more you have to hustle to find customers and meet payrolls. The more farm stuff you raise, whether it's beef or beans, the greater your chance of being caught in a glut on the ma"rket. Our great national railways caught on to this years ago. When they had lots of passengers, they had lots of problems. Peo- ple wanted comfort, cleanliness, decent meals, and some assurance that they would get where they were going on time. There was much more money to be made, and fewer problems, by transporting wheat and lumber andcattle. So the railways began treating people like cattle. Passenger trains became uncomfor- table and dirty. Quality of food dropped like a stone. And they never arrived on time. Presto. End of problems. No more passengers. So the railways were able to cut by Shelley McPhee By Bill Smiley off non-payipg passenger lines, get rid of all those superfluous things like station agents and telegraphers and train conductors, and concentrate on taking from one point to another things that paid their way and didn't talk back: newsprint, coal, oil, wheat. Perhaps this is the answer for our provin- cial governments, which, are quickly and quietly building massive mountains of debt for future taxpayers. . Perhaps they should just stop building highways, and repairing those already in existence. We'd all be sore as hell for a while, but as the roads got worse and worse, most of us would stop driving our cars. The governments would save millions of dollars now spent on highways, and they could fire two-thirds of the highway cops. I don't quite see how the governments could use Nega-Prod to get out of the liquor business, which certainly produces plenty of problems. The booze trade is so profitable that asking government to abandon it would be like asking a millionaire to forsake his country estate for a run-down farm. Perhaps if they had a Free, Bboze Day, once a week, every week, say on a Saturday, it would solve a number of problems. It • would certainly reduce the surplus popula- tion. This, in turn, would cut down, drastically, the unemployment figures. Should the provincial governments find that Nega-Prod is all I've suggested, some of it might spill over into the federal govern- ment, usually the last to catch on to what the country really needs. Instead of the. manna and honey flowing from Ottawa in the form of baby bonuses and pensions, we might get some terse manifestoes: "People who have more than one and a half children will be sent to jail for four If' years. Note: separate jails." "Persons who plan to live past 65 and claim a pension will be subject to an open season each year, from October 1 to Thanksgiving Day. Shotguns and bicycle chains only. "All veterans of all wars may claim par- ticipation by reason of insanity, and may ap- ply to Ottawa for immediate euthenisation." These might seem slightly Draconian measures, but they sure would put an end to a lot of our problems and troubles. Think of what they would do for such sinful activities as sex, growing old, and hanging around the Legion Hall, playing checkers. But we must also think of the economic benefits. With a plug put into that river of� paper money flowing from Ottawa, taxes would drop, inflation would vanish and un- doubtedly, separatism would wither on the vine. People would be lined up six deep at the U.S. border, trying to get across, and that would solve, in one swell foop, our iinemployment difficulties. We could go back to being hewers of water and carriers of wood, which was our. manifest destiny before the politicians got into the act. Fishermen or lumberjacks, in short, which most of the rest of the world thinks we are anyway. Nega-Prod may seem a bit lofty and abstract at first glance, but it works. I know from personal experience. Every time I try to make something, or fix something, it costs me a lot of money, and I get into a lot of trouble. So, I have a policy of never trying to fix something or make something. It's a lot less trouble to put up Signs: "Beware of falling bricks; Not responsible for slivers from pic- nic table." And so on.