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TERRACE BAY/SCHREIBER NEWS '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. erica ream wae Image can be too important Public image. Whether you're a politician, business owner, corporation or individual it's important. But when public image becomes too important a concern - so important that level after level of red tape must be hacked through before anything is made public - it starts getting a little ridiculous. It's probably caused by a feeling of paranoia. Being so worried about the public image that no one person is willing to take responsibility for what is said or done. It seems the larger the business, the greater this feeling of paranoia. A small business is just about always willing - almost eager to talk with the media about a product, service or the state of their business. But try to approach a large corporation and it's a different story altogether. Try to get some information released, or approved for release, and you slog through level after level of bureaucracy. Not to mention the fact it could take days, even weeks before final approval is received. Or try to talk to an employee for some information about - how things are going. In most cases the person is so paranoid - so afraid of saying the wrong thing and the possibility of losing a job - and chances are the person will be tight lipped. The result being you're passed on to the head office in Toronto or elsewhere. It's too bad the higher ups wield so much authority. I can understand that somebody has to approve what is released in some instances - but not every time some information is needed or asked for. PES General Managet.......Paul Marcon Editor....................... David Chmara Admin. Asst........... Gayle Fournier Production Asst....Carmen Dinner Editorial Asst......... Connie Sodaro Single copies 40 cents. Subscription rates: $15 per year / $25 two years (local) and $21 per year (out of town). PRICES / Sometimes, when events happen locally, you can't get any information from those directly involved. Instead, you have to wait for hours, days or weeks for official reports to be forwarded to the head office. And then you get to speak with somebody who wasn't directly involved in the event. It seems an incredible waste of time to me. If information can be gathered at the scene, why not disclose it? Why wait for it to be passed down the line, possible edited, changed in some way, or partially disclosed? Derailments, lay offs, pollution and other negative events may not make for good press, but the information should be released to the public in a timely manner. The News welcomes your Ict- ters to the editor. Feel free to express comments, opinions, appreciation, or debate anything of public interest. Write to: Editor Terrace Bay/Schreiber News Box 579 Terrace Bay, Ontario 13 Simcoe Plaza POT 2WO In order that we may verify authorship, please sign your Ict- ters. Stage 3: Time to show True Colours The three ages of man are infancy, adolescence and obsolescence. Art Linkletter Well, I don't wear Pampers and cool teenage pimples no longer make my mug look like a relief map of South Korea, so I guess I'm well into Phase Three of my meander through life. I'll tell you one consolation about being "obsolete" though -- you don't have to pretend any more. I've already wasted too many hours pretending to like things I either hated or didn't understand. Things like televised sports. For more years than I can remember, almost every male I know has gone into a trance two or three times a year, coinciding (surprise!) with the World Series, The Superbowl and the Stanley Cup playoffs. L always felt vaguely guilty that I couldn't remember the name of the second baseman, the tight end or the goalie for my virility. After all, what kind of a man would rather read a book than watch a bench-clearing brawl in the Calgary Saddledome? What kind of a limp-wristed pencil-neck geek prefers a walk in the bush to following the play-by-play of a Blue Jays double-header? This kind of geek, that's who -- and now that I'm no longer a spring chicken, I don't care who knows it. TV sports bore my shorts off and if I go to a party and Chuck and the boys want to cluster like barnacles around the boob tube, let'em. I'll be in the kitchen chatting with the F¥ 3 women -- they're more interesting to talk to anyway. There are at least two more logs I want to pitch on my bonfire of vanities: avante- garde music and moder art. How many times have I sat, nodding my head sagely while some vacant-eyed flake with a keyboard blew. clouds. of utterly unconnected notes into my earhole? a? | a aa shuffled through art galleries stroking my chin and murmuring "interesting, interesting" in front of canvasses that look like close- ups of the floor of a baboon's cage? No more! John Cage, get out of my stereo! Jackson Arthur | Black Pollock, all your paintings look like pizzas! And I guess since the fire's burning anyway I might as well toss in opera. I don't like opera. It's probably a failure of imagination on my part but PA ae ee ee Oe, watching a middle-aged 250- pound mezzo-soprano warbling about the trials of being a teen-age virgin. And anyway, I don't like my singing to be quite that...intense. In opera, everybody sounds like they just sat-on something cold or sharp. Getting older doesn't just mean learning things the hard way. Sometimes "obsolescence" comes sprinkled with tiny grains of wisdom that enable you to spot a fad or a trend on the horizon and reject it outright. Sushi, for example. I have never tried sushi and I never will. Somehow I just innately knew that eating raw fish was a bad idea (unless you happen to be a harp seal, a pelican or a raw fish yourself). But the Sushi Craze swept the fern bars and upscale eateries of North America and I was mocked as a fuddy duddy stick-in-the-mud. Last week, vindication. Doctors in a Boston hospital ee a Tae 2 P ak SS SS See supposedly suffering from acute appendicitis. His appendix was fine. As he was about to stitch the patient up, the surgeon, peering, murmured "Wait a minute." he said, "I'll be damned. It's a worm." Indeed it was -- and a live one. It came from a fish dish the patient had eaten the night before. Had the dish been cooked, the worm would have been there too, but it was sushi and the worm was alive and happy to move into roomier digs. Fortunately, the doctors got the worm before it had a chance to burrow into the guy's intestinal wall and set up house. It seems sushi lovers forgot why we cook things in the first place. It's not just to make them smell good -- it's to kill unwanted hitchhikers. Jose Simon has the best line about the food fad. "In Mexico" says Simon, "we have a word for sushi." try 76 1