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Page 4, Terrace Bay-Schreiber News, Wednesday, June 4, 1986 Terese The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by: Laurentian Publishing Co. Ltd., Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ontario, POT 2W0. Telephone: (807) 825-3747. Siigiéteptes AS tents Subscription rates per year ; in-town -- $14.00 ERROR <=. es ee Conrad Felber out-of-town -- $18.00 pC ISUNG eS ee. ome pee Gigi Dequanne Member of Ontario Community CRIES a ee eee Gayle Fournier Newspapers Association mad the Go PRODUCTION MANAGER......................---.0-055: mie oe ' aati Editorial Li Fax on tax Yes, taxes are going up...again. This time it's in Ter- race Bay, where town Council on May 26 approved its 1986 budget which called for a 5.6 per cent increase in the amount ratepayers in the community will pay this year. Next week, no doubt, Schreiber Council will follow suit with a tax increase of their own, though that remains to be seen. All of this s¢ems pretty unpleasant, yet those pay- ing taxes in Terrace Bay really have nothing to complain pL about. In fact, they should be jumping for joy. Z iY Only the members of Council know exactly how much "AUD fC i. Lip eee a work went into preparing this year's budget for Terrace oT AB : %, BPAY Y 8 Bay, but all evidence suggests that they did a magnificent oY Oe 87, job keeping the increase as low as they did. Town residents will, no doubt, read the "5.6 per cent increase' headline and not pay much attention to the details and the small print, but therein lies the heart of the matter. wi Phe _\ The township tax increase is really only two per cent, "You RE IN LUEK, give or take a tenth of a percentage point or two. The ma- HE DOESWVT BELONG jority of the approved increase, 3.6 per cent, will go direct- ly to the area school boards. Therefore, any ""boos" Coun- cil happens to receive because of its tax hike should, in fact, be cheers. Well, this can be considered one, at least. =~ 70 7He OMA !" By Conrad Felber I was watching TV the other night (it's much more fun to do that, now that I've gone and invested in a new colour TV set) and flipped to this news program (West 57th, I think it's called). Anyway, this particular seg- ment was all about faith healers and how many of them are...uh...crooks. I had always considered that poss- ibility, but this program really left no doubt about the issue.'I hope you all watched that show, because it is you, the gullible public, who support these deceitful people and allow them to continue raking in those thousands and even millions of dollars. One never wants to rule anything out of the realm of plausibility, of course. I do like to keep an open mind about all sorts of things, ranging from UFOs to the Abominable Snowman, Black N' Whit By Arthur Black I know that it's fashionable to rant about future shock and the Informa- tion Explosion and how everything's moving so fast that we all need home computers with terminals in every room just to keep abreast of what happened yesterday, but you know what? I'm beginning to suspect that that's all a crock. I don't have the feeling that the future is some great tidal wave about to engulf us all. On the contrary, I get the feeling that Civilization (I use the term loosely) is, more often than not, churning full speed astern. Consider just three items culled from the pages of the newspaper over the past few days. Item One: Our beloved Post Office is toying with the idea of slashing mail delivery to on- ly two or three times a week. Yessir. Mult-multi-million-dollar, high tech, streamlined-for-the-eighties Canada Post -- the folks who brought you the 34-cent postcard and postal codes that only an Egyptologist with a Black Belt in Cryptography could possibly understand -- now feels that to do its job better, it may have to do it only half as often. but this business about faith healing is just too much to accept, especially after I sat through that show and wit- nessed for myself the clever tricks" these folks use to make you believe in them and their power. Note, too, how these people never heal anything on the exterior of the body. They always '"'heal" those who are lame or blind, which is something you can fake. The day one of these faith healers restore an arm or leg to somebody who had theirs removed or was born without such a limb is the day I will change my mind and take _ back everything I said here. Until then, though, please don't support these charlatans. Give your donations instead to your local church or some other deserving charity (like the Send Felber To California Fund!). Moving right along now, we come to something I received in the mail last week. It was a letter to the editor. As you all know, I demand that the writers of such letters include their name with the letter if they wish it to be published. Well, this letter did have a name and phone number at the bottom, along with a request not to include that information if the letter is published. This leaves me in a bit of a pinch, because I don't want to break my own rules, yet this letter showed some ob- vious concern about a specific issue-- Kimberly-Clark's recent difficulties in meeting federal government pulp and paper regulations--and should be published to show that there are some people in Terrace Bay who are wor- ried about this problem. I guess the best I can do, then, is quote parts of the letter in this col- umn, as I've done in the past with previous anonymous letters (though I hasten to add that I am not starting a trend here...if you have something to say, well then, stand behind your words and include your name, ad- dress, and telephone number with all submissions). "Are the federal regulations real- ly too stringent?" the letter asked. "Is the Canadian government trying to discourage industry and cause a loss of jobs?" The letter added that '**K-C can afford to run a mill and follow regulations...(but) whatever K-C decides to do about the mill, we fervently hope they will consider the lasting effects on Lake Superior. This is no temporary situation...Listen to the MOE (Ministry of the Environ- ment) and think about what is being done. Let's not tarnish (the lake's) crystaline beauty." The company defended its position very well, and their side of the story, which is not presented in that letter I received, appeared in a front page story in the May 21 issue of the News. To those who were responsi- ble for that letter and for anyone else who continues to worry about this topic, I urge you to read that article. I'm not trying to say a problem does not exist, but let's not blow it all out of proportion, OK? That's progress, amigo. Why, I can remember when our Post Office was so antiquated and inefficient it delivered First Class mail for eight cents a pop, six days a week. Item Two: Seven-Eleven, the North American chain of conve- nience stores, has announced that it is considering introduction of a revolutionary marketing concept: home delivery. Ed Stover, a Seven-Eleven spokesman told a news conference that the service would be aimed primarily at elderly and shut-in customers. Elderly folks and shut-ins who have the wherewithal to place a minimum $10 order, that is. "It pleases us to be able to serve those kinds of folks'? Mister Stover intoned to a roomful of breathless newshounds. Well, that's touching, Ed, but the fact is your're at least twenty years late. When I was growing up, most stores -- corner, drug and grocery -- provided home delivery so routinely they didn't even bother to mention it -- and no ten dollar minimum either. At kid with access to a CCM with a basket on the front scrambled for the chance to deliver those goodies. Mind you, we weren't as altruistic about it as Ed Stover. We did it strict- ly for the nickel and dime payoffs from the customers. Item Three: Guess what the number one fashion item is going to be this fall. Jeans. But not just any old jeans. These jeans will have been smashed by rocks, pummelled by buffers and ground by sandpaper until actual holes appear. Then they will be sold to you and me at 544 U.S. a pair. They are called stone-washed denims. Dick Gilbert, the president of Zena Jeans, didn't believe it at first either. Mister Gilbert had sent a team of snoopers to Europe last year with orders to find out what was making the fashion news on the other side of the pond. The team came back with a pair of torn and mangled Levis for which they claimed to have paid the equivalent of 80 bucks. Dick Gilbert held the European jeans at arms length and frowned at them. They were barely wearable, shot full of holes, worn out at the knees and gossamer-thin in the behind. On top of that, they were ridiculously overpriced. Dick Gilbert is nobody's fool. He knew right away that he was holding the fashion hit of the year in his outstretched hands. Ironically, the price of the stone- washed denims is not as inflated as it looks -- it's harder to manufacture jeans that look terminally ill than it is to turn out brand spanking new ones. The jeans have to be worked over by car buffing machines and in- dustrail sanding belts until the covet- ted holes appear, then they're plop- ped into massive laundry tubs con- taining chunks of pumice. A few hours in the tubs produce that bleach- ed, worn look and hey, presto! -- you've got a pair of ready-to-market stone washed denims that ten years ago you'd have been ashamed to drop in the Goodwill Bin. I dunno...it looks to me like a case of one small step for jeanmakers; one giant backflip for humankind. Likewise with. the Seven-Eleven home delivery and the slimmed-down service from Canada Post. Just think...if twice a week mail delivery turns be the a Posts predicts, what will they do for an encore -- bring back messagers with cleft sticks? I hate to sound like a cranky old Luddite, but I find more and more modern conveniences less and less convenient. I've got a car that goes "'tickedy-bop, tickedy-bop" every time I shift into third, but do you think I'm going to try and explain that to the Compuscanner that's replaced my friendly grease-stained mechanic down at the corner garage? It doesn't matter. I couldn't pay my garage bill even if I did have the nerve to explain the problem. The bank has my money and it won't give it to me. Or as the no-nonsense computer programmer who's replaced all the lovely tellers I used to know and flirt with puts it: "Sorry sir, the computer is down."'