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Page 4; News, Tuesday, May'15, 1990 Editorial The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT-2W0 Tel.: (807)-825-3747 Fax (807)-825-9233. Second class mailing permit 2264. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Assn. and the Canadian Community Newspaper Assn. They want more money? I've had a few people ask me, about the increased cost for their cable t.v service. They want to know why it is costing more, why they are taxed twice on the bill, and what on earth's name does 'discretionary' mean. One gentleman said he tried for an entire week to get through to Lakeshore Community Television Limited using the 1-800 toll-free number, but with no success. I guess this alone would be enough to frustrate most people. Lakeshore Community Television Limited purchased the local Terrace Bay cable company last August, when the business was for sale, so a few changes have been made. The head office is in St. Thomas, Ontario. There are two toll-free numbers, but only one is available to Terrace Bay residents. The company hopes to have another line available soon. One reason why the existing line has so been busy, is because the company has considered many customers to be in arrears, and has had numerous calls from customers disputing their bills. The cable company is in the middle of revamping the whole service in Terrace Bay by changing lines and upgrading equipment. You may have noticed a recent increase in the cost each month. A 3% increase or about $1.21 extra will appear on your bill. Letters were sent telling of the increase, but went out separately from the cable bills. There appears to be a-lot of tax applied to cable tv. The company informed me that an 11% federal tax, as well as an 8%, provincial tax, is charged. A spokesperson assured me that it is the government that sets the tax rate. It is the same for every cable service. The "discretionary" charge on your bill is the company's way of charging extra for Much Music, TSN, Nashville, Arts and Entertainment, Cable News and Headline News. This is of course as the name suggests, optional. 3 Cable does seem to be expensive, but most people are willing to spend a few extra dollars for the added entertainment. Angie Saunders Tel.: 825-3747 weiss a ; A ok at acpi Beer Publisher............. A. 'Sandy' Harbinson oe ; per . : year / seniors $10 (local): Office Managet.............Gayle Fournier = $27 per year (out of 40 mile News Editor................. Angie Saunders radius); $36 in U.S. Advertising Rep.......... Sheryl A. Knight x = =e : = = GST STAFF _. 7 ENTRANCE Wey/ How asour THAT? Am | THE GUY.WHO PROM- \SED JOBS, J0BS,V0BS, OR WHAT ? : Dear Editor, The production of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" was a rare treat for our area. I hope such performances will become an annual event. This was a very professionally executed event, showing that much work and effort must have been involved, and that there is a wealth of untapped talent in our area. Congratulations to everyone involved. Sincerely, Georgette Cebrario a UC PTE Dear Editor, Recently, while I was attend- ing an economic development ~ Letter to the Editor ~ course at the Universit Waterloo along with 66 ¢ individuals, a _ gentle approached me and proclai "Terrace Bay is the most fri and most hospitable comm I've ever been in." He went on to explain while moving from the east continued on page 10 If an individual collects anything long enough, it will eventually have some value. Dr. Alfred Kinsey Well, Doctor Kinsey would know, I guess, He's the guy who spent several years buttonholing perfect strangers and writing down details of their sex lives. Eventually, his jottings became the famous Kinsey Report, which loosened the bustles and wiggled the Long Johns of North America in the mid- Fifties. I'm glad to hear that the mere act of hoarding creates value in a'collection. That means the five cardboard boxes and two duffel bags mouldering quietly in the back of my closet may actually be worth something some day. What's in them? Nothing that anybody else cares about, near as I can tell. The boxes contain several dozen copies of a comic book series called Jonah Hex. (Long out of print and deservedly so.) I just dumped one of the duffel bags out on the floor and I'm up to my fibulas in the treasures therein. To wit: two old baseball mitts, various old high school yearbooks, some yellowing newspapers, two harmonicas, a couple of jack knives, three yo-yos, a bow tie that lights up, a chunk of coral, a pair of ear muffs, a Cisco Kid gun holster, a... well, you get the idea. I'm a hoarder -- card- carrying. Asa matter of fact, business cards are one of the things I hoard. I find many things difficult in this world - - metric conversion, F stops, women, conversational Urdu -- but the hardest thing of all is to throw things away. I just can't do it. I keep everything. It might not be so bad if I trimmed my _ inventory. Harley Yates of Tahoe, California restricts himself to door keys. He's got a little over 50,000 in his collection. New Yorker Walt Kaufman is only interested in cigarettes. He's got 8,017 different brands. Jarrod Booth of Salt Spring Island, B.C., sticks to Christmas cards. He's got more than 200,000 in his collection. Or, take Brother Giovanni Battista Orsenigo, of Rome. Brother Giovanni Arthur Black was a nineteenth century religious dentist who decided to keep every tooth he pulled. At the end of his career his closet contained precisely 2,000,744 yanked teeth. You see what those folks have that I don't have? They specialize. One line only. ~ They're collectors; I'm a packrat. Mind you, I'm not the most rabid of the species. You'll find those wretches down in Garden Grove, California. Every Tuesday night they get together around an industrial size urn of hot coffee and talk about "saving." It's the regular weekly | meeting of Pack Rats Anonymous. Sounds ludicrous, but the hoarding instinct among these folks is anything but funny. The members. collect everything from paper clips to fabric remnants. One of the members filled her house so full of newspapers and flyers that she's now putting them in kitchen cabinets -- even in the refrigerator. The affliction can even be deadly. A few years ago, two New York twin brothers hit the news when authorities broke into their home to investigate suspected foul Pack rat-ism a mysterious problen play. The authorities foun two corpses and newspapers Tons of them. The brother had stuffed the house unti only winding narrow tunnel connected the rooms. One c the tunnels had collapsed an killed them both. The most frustrating thin about "pack rat-ism" is ho. little is known about it. affects people of all ages, a backgrounds, all race: religions. Pack rats can b rich or poor, male or femal smart of dumb. They may t utterly normal in every oth aspect of their life an saddest of all, they may ni even give a damn about tt stuff they collect. They ju can't bear to throw it out. So why do they doi Somebody once asked Mist R.L. Chapman to explain h hobby. He replied, "I colle barbed wire because I colle barbed wire." And, unsatisfying as it i that's just about all you ci say about the pack r business.