Nor will I fly into a rage because our members of parliament, just before sneaking off for a long holiday in the middle of about 18 crises, voted themâ€" selves a whacking great increase in salary, pensions and all the gravy that accompanies them. It‘s a tough job and they deserve every 40 or 50 thousands of dollars that go with it. engulfed in unemployment, inflation, seâ€" Again,‘ 1 don‘t feel incensed that the Prime Minister should go off to Africa for six weeks. A nice holiday for me, and probably a welcome relief for those who feel forced to read my meanderings every Oh, the weather was great, and I hope you and yours had a super holiday. But not!ning else was much good, nationally and personally. Now, I‘m not going to say one word about the postal strike. If I started to write about it, the paper I‘m writing on would go up in flames. I‘ll just take a positive attitude and observe that because of the strike, I didn‘t have to write a column for PAGE 6 â€" WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY , SEPTEMBER 2, 1981 I don‘t know about you but for me it was some bummer of a summer. The finer aspects of how that can be worked out is best left to a government that has among its resources qualified experts who can sort and sift their way through the complex maze of modernâ€"day economics. But the will to do something has to be there first. What the Canadian public is faced with today â€" with mortgage rates hovering around 22 per cent â€" should be considered an intolerable situation. Could it be â€" since there isn‘t a federal election around the corner â€" that the government isn‘t in too big a hurry to try and ease the burden of thousands of Canadians who are desperately trying to hang on to their homes? Isn‘t it better â€" some of the backroom boys might suggest â€" to wait for action that is closer to the next election and then appear to be the saviour of the wretched masses? â€" Who knows? All we do know is that compassion is incumbent upon the government, and secondary to conâ€" siderations of its own political fortunes. There‘s one thing that‘s certain about the phenomena of recordâ€"high mortgage rates. It‘s just not right. That‘s plain and simple enough â€" but what‘s the cure? Quite honestly, we‘re not sure, except that there are surely various ways of lowering the rates that would be reasonably fair to both those borrowing and lending money for the purposes of home buying. Something should be done now to come to terms with this social catastrophe. An intolerable situation BILL SMILEY published every Wednesday by Fairway Press. a division of Kitchenerâ€"Waterloo Record Ltd.. owner 225 Fairway Rd. S.. Kitchener. Ont. Warerioo Chromicie office is located onZnd oor ofâ€"the 0 W Sports buiiding opposte Waterioo Square m-qanumsvnlamw-um&a’- Open Monday to Fnday 9 00 a m to § 00 pm Publisher: Paul Winkler address correspondence to Waterioo office 92 King St South. Waterioo Ont . telephone 886â€"2830 subscriptuions $14 a year in Canada $16 a year in Urted States and Foreign Countries Visiting friends at a cottage on a big lake up north, I saw dozens of teenagers whizzing around in motor boats, going absolutely nowhere, just joyâ€"riding.© ~â€"_ pgératism, and scienceâ€"fiction interest rates. He probably enjoyed listening to some gentle Swahili after months of putting up with the bellowing andâ€"ranting of the various opposition parties. I‘m sure he came home rested, reâ€" freshed, and just as determined as ever to talk about Northâ€"South relationships rather than Eastâ€"West ones. Perhaps I should be furious about the way in which Canadians completely ignore the energy crisis. I‘m not. % though it‘s seldom expressed by those indulging in it. It‘s quite a bit like the decline of the Roman Empire. People are saying, unconâ€" sciously, To hell with it. Can‘t cepe with inflation so might as well go deeper into debt. The buck is worth 40 cents. The vandals are coming. Let‘s live it up before it‘s too late." feeling that permeates our society, even However, all this hedonism doesn‘t It was a feeling that a great many people Editor establisheqa 1854 However, ‘"Wotthehell, Archy, Wottheâ€" _ hell,"" as Mehitabel the cat used to say to ~Archie the cockroach in the Don Marquis poems. I‘m no old Roman senator broodâ€" ing over the decline of morality, law, order, justice, ready to quietly enter his bath and slit his wrists when he could stand it no longer. > But I did come close to slitting my wrists a couple of times this summer. and the old lady dressed to kill. Bride‘s parents old friends. Bride a former student. Many of her guests other former Historians tell us that we study history so that we won‘t make the mistakes man made in the past. Well, the Roman Empire lasted about a thousand years. Things are quicker these days. Our society looks as though it would last about a hundred. beautiful July day. It was outdoors. Me had during World War II. No use worrying about tomorrow because there might not be one. It‘s a sort of fatalism that is fatal to the humanr spirit, which demands constant striving, enduring, and suffering in order to make things better. Those latter attributes are going out of style fairly rapâ€" idly. AN EXPLORATORY EXAM â€" INATION REVGCALS A CONTUSION OF THE LGEFT THROMBOIDAL DUCT A bLHGATION OF THE FRBONTAL Sublime to ridiculous. Spent all day Sunday swabbing up, in dirty shorts, sweaty Tâ€"shirt. Mopped up 14 pails of grunge and threw them in jungle out back. Couldn‘t flush toilets. Plumbers didn‘t work Mondays. Had to use potty. No relief until Tuesday noon. Twas then I took a long look at wrists, but knew my razor blade was too dull. students. Delighted to see and talk with them. Excellent reception afterwards. Dined like Roman senator and his consort. Music. Bride and friends afterwards discoed, the girls like Botticelli creations. Superb. Awoke Sunday morning to scream of horror. Wife had gone to basement to do one of her twiceâ€"daily laundries. Thought there must be a rattlesnake. Tottered down. Sewer had backed up. Cellar full of water and stuff. Had a bad foot, arthritis. Could play only nine holes of gol{, in some pain, but game. Went to specialist for foot. He took 10 minutes, charged me $47 and didn‘t even take the foot off. Gave me a prescription for an arch support! Hadn‘t bothered telling me he had his own price scale. And so it went. §