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The Goderich Signal-Star, 1978-11-02, Page 25der r 4 On November 13 across. the province of Ontario, citizens will be vying for posts on municipal, township and boards of education in local elections. The electron, our democratic -right guaranteed under the constitution, is a public responsibility. And through the election campaign and the ensuing two-year term of of- fice, the press, in its usual display of political acumen, must also maintain a high profile and responsibility to the reading public. And it is not a responsibility that is taken lightly by the local press. But for those who may be seeking political office in Goderich for the first time there are certain guidelines they should follow in dealing with members of the fourth estate. Those already holding an office of distinction in the municipal political game have also t e offered some interesting hints for green politicians in dealing with the friendly press. Du,jng the campaign period disavow "any knowledge of.election issues or that they even remotely exist. The press will exuberantly play down any suggested issues and more commonly is content to make up their own anyway. Issues make for bad politics during an election campaign anyway. It seems adequate that first of all there are enough candidates to hold an election and the screaming and hollering comes later when elected officials begin spending the tax dollars. But elected officials ' have more promising adventures lurking in the chambers once they've captured their council chair. 131 YEAR -44 For all intents and purposes, it's wise to advise candidates, not to speak during council meetings. A simple nodding of the head in approval, thumping a shoe on the council -table or occasional loud groans would suffice. For poliiticianswho speak their mind on issues are invariably maligned by the press. Politicians who take stands on an issue will undoubtedly find themselves on the wrong side of the debate in the press, quotes will be misquoted, they always are, and statements will be taken out of context, Those just appear to be tools of the trade future politicians. For inex- plicable reasons we have an uncanny penchant for writing down the wrong words as they are spoken, we misin- terpret your ideals and should we happen to be sleeping when you make SIGNAL THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1978 your big speech on council night, we can just make it up. Arid then again if we refuse to admit to a misquote, or taking a statement -out—of context there is always the old tenable. One of the typesetters screwed yup the copy and the proofreader failed to catch the Mistake. We always have a way you see. Yes, for reasons beyond our control, your intentions in serving the com--' munity, as good as they may be, will forever be misconstrued, ignored and distorted in the press. It's just a long-standing tradition of the press in dealing with political matters. And we are doing our dam- ndest -to uphold those noble traditions as guaranteed and honored by the constitution. STAR SECOND SECTION a1.oa;e•'. _'�.M _. a N,t v -r, .vw=.•r r ,r.;...,,:`;eanva..as--s.tiw.,c,�r.;,��,.a,r : .x:,:s:�c''..-:,cww.:.:: F;rL.:t"tia.rrr,,:,�o-•�w�.:-",,,,,t.0,,..§w,:r .._ .+s;:c".-+m' ..a. ,g.47,....:,04.4),.,,;u. ..oewn,-4 ,,,,,,,,„,..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,„..6.,„,• W.� Mrs. Arlene Whiteman of Goderich says, "I've always liked dolls. I guess I never grew up." Her hobby since February has been styling old-fashioned dolls mit of porcelain. She does `everything from making the molds for the dolls tol'designing their clothes. She' used to make rag dolls and says . she must love about 500 patterns for them. She also weaves, does decoupage and makes dried flower arrangements. (Photo by Joanne Buchanan) ' Corpses • in every corner �amics is lvormas BY JOANNE BUCHANAN Norma Crawford has come a long way in a short time. What she started as a hobby five years ago has developed into a small business with a prosperous future. Mrs. Crawford began taking lessons in ceramics while living in Hanover where she and her husband, Gerald, ran a motel. Another woman, a friend who was- also in - the motel business, was teaching it in her. basement and so Mrs. Crawford, thought she might give it a try. She says she might have tried it even sooner except that every time someone mentioned ceramics to her, she thought it would compare to making pottery which she knew she wouldn't enjoy. However, once she started taking lessons in, ceramics, she found that. it was more ."fascinating" than what she had realized. It's 'just like Christmas morning when you open up the kiln and see the color of the item you have• made, she says. It's so%surprising because you put an object in that is greyand it comes out green or whatever color you have painted it, she continues. Mrs. Crawford, because( ((she • enjoyed ceramics right from the From rags to porcelain BY JOANNE BUCHANAN "There are corpses all over my house," Mrs. Arlene Whiteman of Goderich can tell you when she greets you at her door. If you weren't aware that < Mrs. Whiteman's latest: hobby was hand- craf iiig old-fashioned s dollLand that the corpses she was referring to were the porcelain bodies of these dolls, you might be a little wary of entering her house after such a statement! Mrs. Whiteman has only been making por- celain dolls since February but already this hobby has developed into a small business which is paying for itslef., She's not sure how the shop owners first found out about her latest craft but the first one to pur- chase her dolls came from Birmingham, Michigan. "I didn't even have to ship them (the dolls)," says Mrs. Whiteman. "She (the shop owner) used to drive up and get them and you know I used to hate to see her come. She'd buy up every doll in the place and I'd have to start all over again!" The only advertising that Mrs. Whiteman does is in the form of a small card attatched to the dolls she sells. But this advertisement- seems to be sufficient. Her latest batch of dolls was just purchased by a shop owner from Elora. NO SIMPLE TASK Making dolls the way -Mrs. Whiteman makes them, is no simple task. It can take up' to a month and a half to complete one doll but this includes everything from making the mould for the doll to designing the clothes for it. Mrs. Whiteman took a course in London on making moulds. She says she couldn't afford to continue her hobby if she had to buy the moulds. Some. of them can run as high as $300. She makes her own moulds out of a plaster of paris type of material. Each mould is three dimensional and takes about a week to complete. Approximately 100 dolls can be poured from each one. When a mould is completed, Mrs. Whiteman next pours a material of creamy consistency called slip, into it to harden. This hardening takes about three days. The hardened slip or porcelain is then cleaned and fired in a kiln. It takes about seven hours to fire porcelain which Mrs. Whitman calls "the Cadillac - of ceramics". Next, Mrs. Whiteman china paints the por- celain. It takes another three days for the paint to dry and then the por- celain is fired again. "You then have a doll in pieces and you have to start assembling it," says Mrs. Whiteman. Some of the dolls she makes have porcelain bodies and others have cloth bodies. The parts of the body and the head are strung together from inside with a heavy cord. Sometimes Mrs. Whiteman just paints on the dolls' facial features but she may also give them glass eyes and teeth. Sometimes she buys wigs for the dolls (which are very' ex- pensive) and sometimes she makes her own hair from wig material. She designs and sews all the clothes for the dolls. If she does buy a pattern for doll clothes, she usually has to cut down or adjust it to fit, so she prefers to do her own designing. Mrs. Whiteman's dolls sell anywhere from $30 up to $340 for a 16 piece ball jointed one. Eventually, she says, she would like to teach others her craft because she feels there are a lot of people in- terested in dolls who don't want to spend the amount of money it requires to buy them. Mrs. Whiteman's dolls are all the old-fashioned or antique type. She has those modelled after the Gibson girls of the 1890s as well as French and German dolls of the 1800s. She herself grew up in the era of the Shirley Temple Turn to page 8A • start, was interested in learning all she could, She paid careful attention to her instructor and feels she was able to pick up a bit extra - from her because she was also a friend. Mrs.. Crawford has trained herself to be a good watcher and listener because she finds she learns better this way than she does by reading. Her husband, on the other hand, does more reading and. comes. up with ideas from what he reads. He passes these ideas onto her and she tries to put them to work. She didn't make a lot of mistakes when she first started her lessons because she practised caution and patience. She was very meticulous about cleaning her pieces before she put them in the kiln so that they would come out just right. After Mrs. Crawford moved to Goderich two years ago, she took several seminars in London. She and her husband still travel to seminars to keep on top of the newest developments in ceramics. Mrs. Crawford has taken factory paint, brush and lustre seminars and has several certificates to qualify her as a teacher. .Mrs. Crawford enjoys showing others how to do things and it wasn't long after ship took up ceramics that she began. teaching. She presently teaches three nights and two afternoons a week. She has a waiting list of people wanting to sign up for her courses now. People have been really enthused when they take up ceramics. Mrs. Crawford thinks it's because they can say, "Look, I made this". They then pass on their enthusiasm by word of mouth and more people ascinauon Want, to give ceramics a try. STARTS BUSINESS After deciding that motel work was not for them, the Crawfords.. moved back to Goderich which they had been away from for 13 years. Mrs. Crawford began to look around for a job. She had already started doing ceramics in a backroom of their house on Stanley Street and eventually she moved into the garage at the back of the house as things expanded. She bought a kiln, a little bit Turn to page 2A • Mrs. Norma Crawford of Goderich just started taking lessons in ceramics five years ago. She learned by watching and listening carefully to her in- structor. She had never even fired a kiln until she blsiight her own. She now has three kilns of varying sizes and has opened a business called Norma's misi. Ceramics. Besides teaching the craft to others, she sells supplies and does some custom work from her shop as well. (Photo by Joanne'Walters) The Great Pumpkin is alive and well and living on a shelf in my dining room. Well actually he's not all that great, in size I mean, but in looks he's not just your average pumpkin. Monday night my daughter and I took a pumpkin she had handpicked from a pumpkin patch and turned it into a jack•o-lantern that as far as she's concerned is the envy of the neighborhood. I probably should have had the pumpkin carved and on display much earlier than the night before trick or treating but there were several ex- cellent reasons why that didn't take place, all of which were patiently._ex- plained, to my daughter after she told me everyone else had their pumpkin carved before the weekend. One big reason the pumpkin wasn't done was because dear old dad passed dozens of pumpkin stands in the past week and each time said to himself I've got to remember to get one for the (weekend. Late Saturday afternoon an emergency purnpkin shopping ex- cursion Was organized but . was un- successful. My daughter seemed satisfied that Monday there would be a pumpkin in the house if I had to steal one off someone's front porch. After work my wife went pumpkin shopping and after two stops at stands completely sold out was given direc- tions to the pumpkin patch. The patch was at the end of a long lane posted with warnings that there was only room to drive in. Once past the point of no return any visitor§ to -the patch had to be prepared to back the several hundred yards to the road. Undaunted She locked 'the doors of the' truck, pumpkin patches on Hallowe'en could be full of just about anything, and drove in. She spotted a decent size pumpkin, checked, the area out for ghosts and goblins, darted out of the truck and scooped it up. Safely at home my daughter wasn't wilting to wait until after supper, bath oi°supper dishes were done to carve the jack -o -lantern. After several times having the pti!mpkin dumped in my lap and a knife held In front of my face I relented and began to carve him out. I carefullybegan cutting the top off the pumpkin. "What are you doing that for you'll hurt his head," said my daughter. I explained that the stuffing had to be removed to make room for the candle that made the whole thing work. The stuffing was no problem for my oldest daughter but her little sister loved the stuff. She was rnushing it all over the table, feeding seeds to the dog and having the odd one herself, and then sloppily carrying the mush to the garbage before she could be corralled and put in a chair to watch the carving.. After explaing the process of carving a face on a pumpkin I started with the eyes. My eyes were triangles but triangles weren't my daughter's ideas of eyes. She wanted diamonds. I just couldn't tell her that an artist can't be confined by such petty things as what shape the eyes are. She had her idea and as far as she was concerned it was her pumpkin. The same problem spilled over to the nose and mouth but the mouth created some problems. Before I started I asked her if she wanted a happy pumpkin, sad pumpkin or mad pum- pkin. She chose mad. -' ``carved a grimace any jack -o -lantern expert could be proud of. But my daughter didn't like it. Put some teeth here and here and change the mouth 'around to look mad," she said. "That pumpkin looks sad." Six molars later I held the pumpkin - up for inspection. She thought' it kinked all right but needed a couple more teeth. I protested explaining to her that I was running out of room for more teeth. I lost the battle and carefully carved out more teeth. 'dThat's great," she said. "You're a good pumpkin carver daddy." I've got to agree with her but Can't help•but feel I've been bad. Five years , old and she already has ,her old man in herr palm. jeff ddon 1