The Brussels Post, 1975-02-12, Page 2ESTABLISHED
11172
Brussels Post
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12,197_
Serving, Brussels and the surrounding community.
Published each . Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario
by McLean. Bros. Publishers, Limited.'
Evelyn Kennedy Editor • Dave Robb - Advertising
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and
Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association.
Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $6,00 a year, Others
CCNIA $8.00 a year, Single Copies 15 cents each.
+CNA
VERIFICO
CUILATION
BRUSSELS
ONTARIO
Sugar and Spice
By Bill Smiley
Snow sculptures
Sir:
Recently I was in your town trying to
locate Mr. Len Armstrong, only to learn
that he had passed away some years ago.
From hire, I had hoped to gather some
personal history about his brother Robert
Armstrong, the photographer, to
compleinent a collection of early cameras
which I am presently restoring.
If any of your readers knew Len or
Robed and could help me out with
information, pictures or equipment, I
would appreciate hearing from them.
Thank you.
Walter Shean
Box 301
Grand Valley, LON 1.G0
This, apparently, is Women's Liberation
Year, or something of the sort. So be it.
Aren't you getting a little sick of it all? I
mean you, and I don't care whether you're
a man or a woman or a hermaphrodite.
Don't worry chaps; I am not afraid. I
have a northern hideout, an old atom
bomb shelter, with three women laid on:
one to bathe me, one to dress me, and one
to cook for me. So I'm going to say exactly
what I want to, ' and let the chippies fall
where they may.
First, I take a look at my own family, to
see which women need liberating.
Answer? Zero.
My wife needs liberating like I need a
kick in the groin. Ever since I met her, she
has been, not removing her chains, but
applying mine. I clank when I walk.
She doesn't need to be liberated. She
needs to be tied. up. She has made it quite
clear that she is: smarter than I about
everything from making out the income tax
return to screwing in alight bulb; better
looking than I (and all we have to do is look
in a mirror); more asrtistic than I (she's
always frigging with the color thing on the
television while I bellow 'I don't care if it's
all purple, shut up and watch the
program'); and in better shape than I. I
always concede the last-named without a
right. I invariably say, "Boy, I could never
scrub the kitchen in half an hour, like you.
Dear. It would probably take me half the
afternoon." And I'm right. So there's no
conflict of interest there.
She also has a joint account, the house is
in her name, the car is in her name, and if I
dropped dead tomorrow, she'd have so
much insurance she could give Jackie
Onassis a run for her money. Liberation my
armpit!
My daughter is in the same boat, or
category.She alternately bullies and
wheedles her father and her husband. She
takes nothin' offa nobody, especially male
cops.She is in a career course, and she is
using, or kicking out of the way, every male
who stands in her path. With one
exception. She is being used and pushed
around by the only male who could do it,
her year-old, walking son, Pokey. And
there is the only hope I see for the future of
the male.
Looking further afield, I remember two
dames who were so liberated you
wondered who was wearing the pants in
the family, in both cases.
She was my mother. She called the shots
in our family from the time she put on her
wedding ring. She decided which of the
kids would be licked, and she did the
licking. She decided what speed my dad
should drive at. She pulled us through the
Depression. My dad was a sweet, gentle
chap like myself and always sat in the
rumble seat on each new family enterprise.
My mother-in-law was the same. With a
combination of tempers, tirades and tears,
she made my father-in-law walk on eggs
until he didn't feel comfortable unless he
had an egg underfoot.
Ditto with my sisters and sisters-in-law.
They bully and needle and haggle their
men unmercifully. They continually make
them feel that they (the women) had poor
luck in the draw, and make veiled and
usually imaginary references to the great
chances they had to marry someone
worthwhile, who turned out to be
somebody.
And this phenomenon is not something
new, something of the 20th century. Queen
Boadicea, if anyone remembers her, had a
great time smashing up Roman legions
until she„ died of an overdose of woad.
Lady Macbeth was no shrinking ,
unliberated 'violet. She was more of a
shrieking, liberated violent.
Queen Elizabeth I diddled her would-be
lovers for years and ran a growing empire
with a velvet glove in an iron fist.
Madame de Pompadour literally ran the
French empire in the days of the 15th
Louis, and she wasn't even married.
Nobody is weeping over Jackie
what-ever, who bounced from a
President to a Greek billionaire. Nor are
many tears shed over the way poor little,
helpeless Liz Taylor has been mistreated
by five or six or seven husbands.
Of course, all these women had charm,
and drive, or both, and werent too much
concerned about the cost of hamburg.
That's what the Women's Lib is going to
hit me 'with, among other things.
One last example. I know a lot of women
teachers. You think they need liber ation?
Like hell. They smoke and drink and swear
like sailors and swagger around in
comfortable pant suits while the men
strangle in shirts and ties. And the real
clincher is that they make as much money
as men, and frequently more. Top
administrative jobs are open to them. They
don't want them.
Why? Not because they can't handle'
them. M ost of them would do a better job
than the dim-witted males who no inhabit
these posts. No. It's because they don't
want to give up their feminine perks:
staying home for two days with a sniffle;
shooting off to the hair-dresser once a
week; breaking into tears when everything
becomes Too Much For Me.
I have always treated a woman as a
woman first and a person secifind. I have
used the same treatment with old men and
little kids.
If I have to start treating women as
people first and women second, I know who
is going to complain the loudest. The
women. And the second loudest complaint
will be from yours truly.. It will destroy all
the mystery and glamour and excitement
which are the only things that make life
worthwhile.
Men, rally around. For years, both sexes
have been equal, but women have been
more equaal than men. Now, all they want
to do is widen the gap .
Some of my best friends have been
women, but how would you like your son to
marry one?
I once started a national campaign for
PORK(Parents of Witten, Kids). It was
fairly successful:
Once more I appeal.Last tithe most of the
joiners were women. Th is time, I want the
men of Canada' to stand up and be counted
as members of my new organization: Don't
nobody be scared.
It will be called: Men! Attack Female
Independence, Anonymously. In short ;
MAFIA!,
The population puzzle
Nothing can be as discouraging as to give long
speeches on the need for population control to a
conference whose delegates know that, for the time
being at least, they are fighting a losing battle. Yet
that is what occurred at the August World Population
Congress held in Bucharest, Romania.
Some delegates implored. Others warned.Quite a
number didn't turn up because inflation had eaten
into travel budgets. And none who came had a
meaningful solution to what is probably the most
pressing problem in the world today.
Unless the people in poorer lands tend to follow
the example of more affluent nations, where young
people are beginning merely to replace themselves
by having no more than two children in many cases,
future generations face a grim prospect.
The recent floods in Bangladesh, for instance,
which co'iered almost half the. country and which
took thousands of lives, are a form of population
control that was accepted by humanity for centuries.
If the land had to support too many souls, vast
numbers starved to death, or died of thirst, or were
killed and drowned in storms and floods. Mankind,
with its new technology, today can overcome the
cruelties of nature on most occasions.
But will we conquer nature if we.grow from today's
figure of 4 billion to 8 billion by .early next century?
Will the massive international relief operations that
were mounted in drought-stricken Ethiopia or
flooded Bangladesh be enough? Will the hundreds of
millions of unemployed wandering the world by the
year 2,000 be content with degradation and
deprivation? Clearly, one must answer NO to these
questions. And therefore daily the need to search for
meaningful solutions to the population puzzle
becomes more urgent.
Contributed
To the editor
Reader wants
information on
early photographer
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