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Page 7 News, Wednesday, November 16 , 1988 == Editorial Page: The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT-2W0 Tel.: 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit 0867. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Assn. and the Canadian Community Newspaper Assn. Guest Editorial: susan MacDonald Editor of the Gazette Woman's best friend If anyone had told me a few years ago that I would lose my heart to a dog, I would have said: "Impossible". "I'm a cat-lover," I would have said. "Cats are clean and independent. Dogs are foul-smelling, demanding and shed their hair all over the place." Then Fergus, a six-week-old Shetland Sheepdog, entered my life and made a liar out of me. Oh yes, he often smells bad (my fault for not bathing him more) and he certainly sheds his coat from one end of the house to the other (also my fault for not grooming him more). As for being demanding, it's like having a small child in the house again. (Just when I thought I was past all that!) His infant stage meant being woken at night by his whimpers, to see to his needs. Then came his toddlerhood and the dreaded teething stage. Nothing was safe - not chair legs, not comers of furniture nor door mouldings. (Wood was his particular passion.) That passed in time, leaving him at his present stage, which I liken to that of a child. Let someone come to visit and watch him show off, demanding all of the visitor's attention. Let him see another dog outside or some kids playing in the snow and hear him beg to go out. Feed him the wrong kind of food and see him turn up his nose. I worry when he's not feeling well and rush him to the doctor when he's ill. I buy him little presents and think nothing of dropping everything to play with him or take him for a walk. Scoff, if you will, but tell me this: Where else can a person find such devotion, such constancy? My dog is never angry with me. He never talks back. He thinks I'm wonderful! No matter what, as long as I am kind to him, he rewards me with his affection. He trusts me implicitly and would probably do anything I asked of him, even if he was afraid. Best of all, whenever I come home, he greets me at the door, tail wagging, making an odd, throaty sound, as if to say: "I missed you; I'm glad you're home." Say what you will, I wouldn't part with my dog for anything. Me, the cat-lover. S.M. General Manager......Paul Marcon Editor........... aeicceinn Admin. Asst..........Gayle Fournier Production Asst...Carmen Dinner Single copies 40 cents. Subscription rates: $15 per year / $25 two years (local) and $21 per year (out of town). YOR S EB LWWrs en \C We welcome and encourage you to voice your opinions by writing a Letter to the Editor. Our address is: The Terrace Bay/Schreiber News P.O. Box 579 . Terrace Bay, Ontario POT 2W0 Can you get AIDS from sharing a needle while doing drugs? YES! Get the facts. Let's Talk. Call the Ontario Ministry of Health AIDS Hotline 1-800-668-AIDS CORRECTION Let your neighbours hear from you. The Ryans', who had a birth announcement in the Nov. 9 issue, would also like to thank Dr. Fowler Think I'll be a chess player in the next life I think if I get to come around in another lifetime, I would like to try and learn to play chess. I won't be mastering it this time around. I took a stab at it one rainy afternoon many years ago. The chess set was beautiful -- all black and white marble. My teacher was patient and knowledgeable, my brain was still flexible and largely uncluttered. I memorized the various attributes of kings and queens and knights and pawns and then sat down to play my first game. I lasted just long enough to get an unnerving glimpse of how mind-wrenchingly complex and convoluted the game is. I wanted to scream, frisbee the chess board across the room and pound my knights and bishops and pawns into a rubble of undifferentiated marble dust. My mentor must have noticed the steam coming from my ears. He boxed the chess men and folded up the board. "You," he murmured gently, "do not have quite the proper temperament to play chess."Indeed. A little too much of Conan the Barbarian in my makeup I'm afraid. Not that the game of chess turns our noticeably noble champions. An American by the name of D. Keith Mano wrote: "men who play at the grandmaster level are, almost without exception, Strange and unpleasant." Most experts say the best chess player that ever lived was a 19th century lad from New Orleans named Paul Morphy. Morphy began his career as a gracious and soft spoken | member of the southern gentry. He ended it a few years later, refusing to play or discuss chess, puttering about in a gloomy cave of a house obsessed with the idea that people were trying to poison him. He died of hypothermia in his own bathtub. He was 47. There have been weirder chess champions than Paul Morphy. Bobby Fischer for instance. He was the American who electrified the planet by trouncing the Russian, Boris Spassky, for the world chess Lm Black championship back in 1972. Fischer was a boy genius. He won the U.S. Championship when he was just 14. He was only 29 when he thumped Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland. Fischer showed the world that he was inventive, daring, adventurous and above all an absolute genius on the board. But Bobby Fischer was not a nice man. As a matter of fact, Mr. Fischer was a creep. He took obvious and _ sadistic . pleasure in destroying his chess opponents, snickering, sneering and even applauding his own moves. "Chess is like war on a board," Fischer once said. "The object is to crush a man's mind." Something's certainly applying undue pressure to Bobby Fischer's mind these days. He's refused to defend his title for the past dozen years. These days, Fischer spends his time: riding a transit bus back and forth between Pasadena and Los Angeles all day long. He memorizes books promoting anti-semitism and white supremacy. You can buy a ticket on that transit bus, take a seat beside Mister Fischer and blurt out "Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion, mane. 35, paragraph four." And Bobby Fischer will recite the exact words, complete with punctuation. Then there's Viktor Korchnoi. He's a chess star too. Unlike Paul Morphy, Korchnoi's still alive. Unlike the deranged Bobby Fischer, Korchnoi is till playing championship chess. As a matter of fact, Korchnoi has just announced that he is winning a game against a Hungarian grandmaster by the name of Geza Maroczy. There's just one tiny catch. Maroczy expired in 1951. Korchnoi claims he's playing chess with a dead man. How do you do that? Through a spiritual medium, of course. "Our medium doesn't even play chess," says Korchnoi. Yeah, well. . . if you're as good at playing cards as you are at playing chess, Viktor, I wish you'd check your hand. I don't think you're playing with a full deck.