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Clinton News-Record, 1971-08-12, Page 4A sunny grove by the brook Too many smiles Your correspondent, succumbing to a downright irresistible program idea and, of course, the money, has consented to make a brief appearance on television in the near future. Naturally, your correspondent is just a bunch of palpitating nerve ends in anticipation. This will be my eighth appearance on television, Yet am just as terrified as I ever was in contemplating a staring contest with a camera, a contest which the camera invariably wins, six-love. I could not blame you, if, at this point, you were to ask, coarsely, "So what?" But since the reason for my anxieties may demonstrate one of the fundamental weaknesses of TV hope you'll find it more significant than merely a dissertation on cowardice. Television is for actors. That is the weakness. It hair become increasingly the shrine of make-believe where the great god is the performer and the congregation is presumed to be made up almost entirely of image-worshippers. It is the most powerful of all the methods of communication, yet it. persistently prizes superficiality above substance. It is a medium of almost ceaseless histrionics in which the player, rather than the person, walks the stage, a magic lantern theatre in which a strong, inflexible smile of 86 capped teeth is, to paraphrase the Chinese proverb, worth more than 10,000 words. I'm not babbling here about simply the drama content or the commercial advertising content which account for at least 65 percent of its programming though, parenthetically, this is, in itself, a fearful thing. (How many of us ever pause to reflect that a new generation of compulsive screen-watchers are having their most. basic social values grotesquely formed by the false precepts of melodrama writers and the half-truths, the fear-and-status techniques of the advertising copywriters?) But even in that segment supposed to be dealing with reality and truth, in the presentation of people from other allied fields—pundits, politicians, professors, journalists, scientists and the rest—we find that the actor emerges triumphant. No one from outside the immediate TV family survives in this strange shadow world unless he creates a character or projects a personality, At least a dozen such people regularly employed by Canadian TV are either friends or colleagues of mine. I am alternately dumbfounded and embarrassed to find them acting in just the same way that the thespians in the dramas or commercials are acting. 'There is a kind of instant schizophrenia, from the moment the red light appears on the camera, that causes the real and natural people I knc.: to vanish and to be replaced by caricatures of their own true selves. They flash winning or winsome smiles. They charm, They dimple and grimace. They adjust their features into penetrating, shafting grimaces. They become so terribly engaging or debonalre that Constant Viewer is sorely tempted to frow up. Whether this is ell the great faceless statistical television audience demands—something larger than life and twice as cute—I do not know. I do know, from my own timorous forays into the medium, that it is sure enough what most of the TV entrepeneurs are after and the reason why we have so many elegant profiles and perfect dentures at the expense of any deeper, natural talents or credibility. This, then, is the dilemma of the non-pro, the non-twinkler who cannot or will not emote, who is incapable of being something he ain't, He may be assured by his producer that television is the most intimate of media—"You are just a man in your living room talking to a friend," as one soothingly puts it—but let him accept this advice and he is apt to appear a mud-hen among peacocks. If he is not "on", as actors say, he is off. Desperately, he may fling himself into a facsimile of the extroverted master-of- ceremonies at the company picnic or become so aggressively ingratiating that he'll hate himself in the morning, I suppose this is part of the challenge that causes me to court disaster once more. Surely there must be room in television for a low-key, quiet man whose teeth never show unless he is biting an apple. Surely them must be room for a real person, if only as a reminder of how-unreal that shadow world really is, THE CLINTON NEW ERA Amalgamated THE HURON NEWS-RECORD Established 18E5 1924 Established laal ews Record Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and the Audit Bureau of Circulation f ABC) A member of the Canadian Weekly Newspaper Association, Published every Thursday at the heart of Huron County second 'class mail Clinton, Ontario registration number 0817 Population 3,475 THE ROME SUE5CfkipTION RATES; fin advance) OR RADAR Canada, 86.00 per year; U.S.A., $7.50 IN CANADA KEiTH W. RO1JLSTON Editor J, 1-10wARO AITKEN — General Manager Clinton 4 Clinton News-Record, Thursday, August 12, 1971 Getting rid of garbage Clinton town council Monday night endorsed a resolution being circulated by London city council which called on the Ontario government to provide loans for capital ,expenses for incinerators and "other modern methods" of disposing of garbage by municipalities, With the modern methods part we agree, but who ever said incineration was a modern method. It is easy to. understand London's problem when it comes to garbage disposal. Present land-fill sites are being used up quickly around the city and would be around any city of that size. It is obvious that on such a large scale, land-fill is not the long range answer to refuse disposal. But to call incineration a modern method of disposal is a little ridiculous. lncineraton was used by the pioneers, to their everlasting shame, when they stripped the land of trees and just burned them to get them out of the way, Until a few years ago, every town in the country Some Huron citizens had a glimpse of a member of parliament quite like no other Thursday night. Ross Whicher, the maverick M.P. for Bruce riding in the federal house attended the' Huron Federation of Agriculture meeting held in Hensall when he accompanied Murray Gaunt, M.P.P. for Huron-Bruce in the provincial house, who was guest speaker. Many didn't know much about Whicher until he was asked to say a few words. But he made quite an impression with his machine-gun speaking style, his wry sense of humour, and his honesty. He broke up his audience when he told them about his aim when he first became a member of the provincial legislature. At that time, he said, he was determined to do something to improve the lot of farmers if he accomplished nothing more during his time in office. "You know," he admitted to his The United States and President Nixon should be praised for their stand on the admisslop., of China to the United Nations. H "P'hoping they can pull off their plans. The U.S. plans to vote for the admission of Mainland China for the United Nations this fall but also to vote against the expulsion of the Formosa Chinese. Canada's policy of inviting in the Communist Chinese and booting out the Nationalist Chinese is as much a mistake as our past stance when we diplomatically ignored 700,000,000 Chinese on the mainland and said the small pocket on Formosa was the real' government of all China. To make the United Nations work, all nations must be admitted. There definitely are two different nations peopled by Chinese. We may not totally agree with the dictatorship of `the burned its garbage whenever the pile got too high at the town dump. The only thing modern about incineration is that they've found new ways of doing it so there isn't so much air pollution, Using natural gas furnaces heated to 1000 degrees, they can completely burn the garbage without producing heavy clouds of smoke. But the furnaces are very expensive. Biologists know that there is a closed energy cycle on earth. By burying garbage it will eventually break down and again form part of that cycle. By burning it all you will get is heat which is just disbursed into the air, helping no one, The other modern methods include reprocessing garbage for other uses and these, especially on a large scale such as London would employ, may be of great benefit in years to come, But we must realize that we cannot just keep wasting our resources as if they were endless. And the way we're going, garbage could be an importa"nt resource. audience, "I look at the lot of the farmers ' in Bruce today and they're worse off than before." Whicher joined the provincial legislature in 1955 as the Liberal member for Bruce. From then until his riding was eliminated by redistribution he was a thorn in the side of successive Conservative governments. In 1968 he ran in the federal riding of Bruce and won again. In Ottawa he immediately took up the 'same role as he had had in Toronto, even though the party in power there was his own Liberal party, Because of this tendency to criticize his own party, he may never become more than a backbencher. But how much better off we are because there are some men like Ross Whicher who don't follow party lines blindly and aren't afraid to say something when they believe their government is wrong and aren't afraid to admit their own mistakes. government on Formosa, but then we don't think Mao is any saint either. Both sides have .been wrong and both right at times. Both have a right to live their own lives as they wish and both have a right to sit in the United Nations. When it comes to who should hold the seat on the all-important security council, the problem becomes more complex, There is little doubt that it is the Communist Chinese, not the Formosans, who should hold the veto powers on that body. But who can convince the Formosans of that. Many warn that the U.S. can not pull off their attempt, that the two Chinas will not sit together in the U.N. Hopefully the Americans can convince both to be members but the final choice is up to each country. Both should be invited. Ifs up to them if they don't think they like the company. An M.P. like no other From one wrong to another Now the walls. Just a collection of notes this week. Don't try to fitt1 any coherence in them. I noticed in one of my favourite weeklies that an old friend of mine had been arrested for being drunk. When he turned up- in court the tollowing Tuesday., he was so drunk he had to be taker' away tor another week. 'This takes some ingenuity, But I'm tot surprised. Same chap some years ago, when his house was burning, threw his six children out the upstairs window into the snow. Saved them all. Why don't people ever listen to me? At least 10 years ago, in this space, I said firmly that Red China should be recognized, admitted to the U.N., and that silly old dictator, Chiang ICai Shek, turfed into the Indian Ocean or somewhere. The column was received with real anger in some places. Now, everybody and his brother is buttering up the real Chinese and pouring cold water on the phoney Chinese on Pot-Masa. Oh well, even my wife won't listen to me, so why should the politicians? And speaking of that woman, who has made my life a Willer-coaster of ups and downs, she pelted another one recently. I'd been muttering for months about a colour TV set. Each time, she stated unequivoCally, which is the only way she ever states, that we couldn't afford it with two children at university, the mortgage the insurance eornieg due, and the yak, yak, Bach time I subsided, as is my wont and also because I didn't really care. Hardly ever watch the stupid thing anyway. So I came home late one afternoon, a couple of weeks ago, and there she was, playing with the buttons on a huge, expensive colour TV. It's been here since, "on trials ' and I've been subjected to endless hours of discussion about colours. It's been worse than those unspeakable boring sessions we ye had over the years on decorating. bei I like the mushroom with the lime green? Do I not think that the teal in the drapes will clash with the off-blue in the rug'? That sort of thing. At no time could I have cared less if she had painted everything midnight black, but I had to pretend I cared, or there'd have been an outburst of tears and recriminations. "You just don't care, do you? Other Men are interested in their 'homes. I'm doing my best to make our home beautiful and you just sit there with that look on you face!" And so on. It was like that with the 'TV set, Didrist I think there was too much orange? why wasn't the green totting up more vividly? I finally called the dealer and Said we'd keep it, Thet's the way buy a tat I don't shop around, trying all the models. I just walk Around the beast, kink the 'tires, and make A deal, The other woman in my life is about as Much trouble. She is inure convinced than ever that capitalism is beastly, and that she is an exploited slave of the system, As I was driving her home from work the other day, she exploded bitterly, "I only made eight lousy dollars in tips today!" I had to bite my lips so hard it drew blood. Those tips, -plus her wages, made it, 820 for an eight-hour day. My first job paid one dollar a day., for a 12-hour day, seven days a week. (tter's opinion of the capitalist system is seasonal. it bothers her not in the least to milk the old man for a cool $2,000 when she's not working, but going to sehool.) Finally, another woman has entered my life, out of the shadows before I Was born. Back in thle, when I had a birthday, I challenged readers to guess my age. Some charming people suggested 48, 49. One miserable old editor, Jim Nesbitt of Brooke, Alta„ had the indecency to suggest 54, But Mable Ivr"7.,oberts of Hew tiskeard, Ont., was dead on. She named my parents, my older brother and sister, the street on Which we lived, and described the house we lived in. She knew the exact year iti which I was born. She had been a high-school girl boarding in town. The people with whom wile was boarding mime down with the terrible 'flu -of the era, My Mother 'took her in for a 'month. Women., Nothing is sacred, even age. 75 YEARS AG-0 Wednesday, August 12,1896 Avoid all sweetened drinks when riding a bicycle, as they only serve to heighten your thirst. If you want a stimulating, and at the same time beneficial drink, take a bottle of ginger ale, the imported if possible, empty the contents into a large glass, have a fresh egg broken in it and the whole well shaken until thoroughly mixed. The result Will be entirely satisfactory. The Brussels Post, a paper that says it is not Grit, does not approve of the News-Recotd taking the Seaforth Sun. to task for lying about the Conservative Party and its leaders. The utterances of the Post simply prove that they do tend towards the Grits, despite earlier denials. 55 YEARS AGO Thursday, August 10,.1916 The management of Western Fair wants the Clinton leiltie Band to submit terms for Thursday, August 14th, to play at the fair. The band will submit their prices right away. The ice question is getting very serious here now, owing to the continued hot weather. The supply was small owing to the breaking up of the ice season so that most dealers have only enough tot their own use and are taking on no new customers, The small boy and the green apples are to be seen everywhere these days, The usual siege of apple colic is about due. 'Canadian 'paper makers ere asking kohl '20 to 25 percent advance on new 'contracts for neWsprint. Newspaper publishers are against a condition, not a theory, in these strenuous war times. 40 YEARS AGO Thursday, August 13, 1931 On Monday evening Grand Bend plays the local softball club in Clinton, so everyone should be there. Grand Bend is in second place and Clinton in first and should they win, they will put Clinton out of top spot. So, everyone come out and cheer for the home team. D. H. McInnes, Chiropractor and Masseur of Clinton, will in future be at the Lakeview Hotel, Bayfield, for appointments, on Monday and Friday forenoons from 9 to 12 o'clock. The School of Commerce is preparing to offer courses commencing September 5th for the Fall term. Courses offered are Secretarial training, General Office Practice, and some special courses to be announced later. 26 YEARS AGO 'Thursday, August 15,1946 A motion was passed in Clinton Town Council approving the purchase of a second pair of trousers for Chief of Police James Thompson. Dr. G. H. Thompson will he on vacation from Sunday,. August 11, to Sunday, August 25, but will be in his office on the afternoon and evening of Monday, August 19, for any who -wish to see him or consult A naval officer and 20 ratings are now on an extensive course of training in radio at Clinton and C. S. Their jaunty naval uniforms are now becoming quite familiar on 'the streets of the 'town and at the ball games in the Conununity Park. 15 YEARS AGO Thursday, August 9, 1956 William Hyde, 92 years, won first prize in his class at the Old Time Fiddlers Contest in Kincardine, Monday evening. This makes 60 firsts so far for Mr. Hyde. This is the week for strange happenings. Ernie Vanderburg brought 'us a flock of small green tomatoes growing quite well on the branch of a potato plant and he says he has many more in his garden. Passing experts dairy them to be' the actual fruit of the potato. Ariyone wishing to prove the point might get ripened seeds froth Mn Vanderburg and see if they'll grow into potatoes. Fudge Frank Fingland, Q. C. and Mrs. Fingland returned last week from a month-long tour of England, Scotland and France-. Plight across the Atlantic both ways was by Trans-Canada Airlines. must match colour TV