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f Orono Weekly Times* Wednesday, May 3, 2000 - 7 Natural Resources Minister John Snobelen presented a cheque for $22,000 to the Samuel Wilmot Nature Area on Friday afternoon. The cheque is part of Ontario 's $10 million Fish and Wildlife Protection and Enhancement Fund. e Accepting the cheque on behalf of the Municipality are: Councillor Jim Schell, Councillor Charlie Trim, M.P.P. John O'Toole, Minister Snobelen, Terry Hutchinson Chair of the Samuel Wilmot Nature Area, Councillor Mary Novak and Councillor Troy Young. BLACK ARTHUR BLACK EARTH TO PRUDES: LIGHTEN UP Marshall McLuhan once said 'something to the effect that no goldfish ever was aware that it lived in a goldfish goldfish bowl - point being that none of us can know what or who we are until we manage to step outside our environment environment and look back at it. That's why that famous space photo of Planet Earth - all, blue and green and white and swirling - was so electrifying. • We'd never seen ourselves from outside our global fishbowl. fishbowl. It makes me wonder if people of the Victorian Age ever realized that they were, well, Victorian. Prudish. Uptight. Laughably hypersensitive hypersensitive about sex and mores. Makes me wonder if anybody anybody realizes we're doing it again. We're getting pretty silly, folks. Cynthia Stewart, a Cleveland housewife, may well be on her way to the slammer. Her crime? Well, she'd taken a roll of film into her local drug store for development. development. A photo clerk there took one look at some of the shots on the roll, and called the cops. The cops moved in and charged Mrs. Stewart with "pandering sexually oriented oriented material involving a minor". Sure enough, on the film are. shots of an eight- year-old female rinsing off after a bath using a detachable shower spray. One 'minor' thing about the minor - she is Cynthia Stewart's daughter. "Throughout her life I have taken pictures of her to record the growth of her body and moments of silliness and play" Ms. Stewart testified. She has been suspended without without pay from her job as a school bus driver and faces up to 16 years in prison if convicted. convicted. I am reminded of that Coppertône ad - you know the one, where a mutt on the beach is pulling down a little waifs bathing suit bottom of a waif and the (gasp!) cleft of her bum is showing? Sure hope they nail the Madison Avenue pervert responsible for that one. The folks railroading Ms Stewart would feel right at home in the town of Fall River, , Nova Scotia. Authorities there recently suspended suspended three grade schoolers for the heinous crime of' 'snowing'. Snowing is when kids...run around in the snow and push each other into snowbanks. It is also known as 'fun'. Except at George P. Vanier Junior High School in Fall River. That's where a teacher last winter noted 'suspicious' signs of snow on a young girl's jacket and reported her to the principal. Yes, the kid admitted, they (three girls and. a boy - all close friends) had been frolicking in the snow. At George P., that qualifies as 'aggressive behaviour'. No one had been hurt. None of the kids had complained. They were all suspended. Does it get stupider than this? Actually, yes. A Nebraska seventh-grader was kicked out of school for showing up with a pair of blunt-edged safety scissors. In Kansas, a 13-year-old was suspended for 'racial harassment' harassment' after he sketched a Confederate flag on a piece of paper. At an elementary school in Gimli, Manitoba, kids can be turfed out for hugging. hugging. The numbnuts faculty of the school calls that "inappropriate "inappropriate touching". Score one for our side though,- after long and thorough soul searching the City Council of Birmingham - England's second second largest city - has decided that the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep....is not racist. Perhaps it was the black mother who stpod up at a city council debate and pointed out "the rhyme is about black sheep, not black people." I wonder how you say'Duhl'in Birminghamese? One is tempted to laugh at all this Pecksniffian stupidity. One would be wrong. £ach Jones thought it would be a good laugh to write a column in his student newspaper on a subject that affects every human being and about which many people - children and adults - spend an inordinate amount of time chuckling over: flatulence. Maybe Zach's column wasn't Pulitzer Prize material, but it was a long way from Mein Kamf -- although you wouldn't know it from the way authorities reacted. The Fligh School principal took all 1,20.0 hundred copies of the student newspaper containing the column and locked them in a safe. Zach was relieved of his column. The teacher who helped Zach was fired. The District School Superintendent thundered on to the battlefield, declaring the column to be 'obscene'. "If that column's obscene, then I deserve the death penalty for some of the things I've written about," commented commented an observer. An observer by the name of Dave Barry, who just happens to have won th'e Pulitzer Prize for humour. He shakes his head about the silliness, but he's not surprised. surprised. "There are always going to be people in positions positions of power who don't have a sense of humour" he says. Okay, no sense of humour. But how about two.brain cells to rub together? mmm i BOWMA N VILLE MUSEUM Spring Spree Friday, May 5th • 6:30 to 8:30 p.m Refreshment & Entertainment ' ~ FREE ADMISSION ~ Please call 62^-2734for more information ANNUAL/REGULAR MEETING of the Orono Amateur Athletic Association will be held at the Orono Arena and Community-Centre Sunday, May 14th, 2000 at 7pm Everyone Welcome Ji> Let us help finance your dreams! DUC A Mortgages* 6 month closed 7.25/o 6 month convertible .......... 7.25% 1 year closed .7,25% 3 years closed . • ... .7.90% 5 years closed .8.00% * Rates subject to change without notice ^ DUCA CREDIT UNION Oshawa & Bowmanville Branches, Manager Paul Muller 15 Charles Street 136 King Street East Phone: (905) 728-4658 Phone: (905) 623-6343 E-mail: duca.info@duca.com Internet: www.duca.com