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8 - Orono Weekly Times Wednesday, September 15, 2004 Basic Black by Arthur Black THE PHONE-Y WAR In the beginning, long distance conversations pretty pretty much depended on how loud you could shout. Leather-lunged chatters could comfortably make themselves heard from cave mouth to cave mouth. Then we developed smoke signals. signals. Conversations - necessarily necessarily brutish and short - could be carried out from mountaintop to mountain- top, providing you had enough fuel, a sturdy blanket, blanket, no wind and a reliable flint. Then on March 10, 1876 Alex Bell, bless his Edinburgian/Cape Bretonian/Bostonian heart, strung some electrified wire between two rooms and shouted "Mister Watson, come here, I need you" into one end of the wire. And Mister Watson, hearing Bell's voice through the wire, came on the run. That's the official story, anyway. My guess is, Bell yelled loud enough to be heard right through the wall, but no matter, the principle was sound. History says the world's first telephone call had been placed, and answered. It's been downhill ever since. The Bell contraption begat the cumbersome wall telephone which begat the clunky handheld dial telephone, telephone, which began the hernia-inducing hernia-inducing walkie-talkie, 6 Park St. Orono s. 10r2 the CB radio and eventually, the light-as-a-feather, cute- as-a-bug's-ear plastic gizmo that you see in just about every second person's hand these days - usually jammed up against their earhole as they drive or walk or shop or sit on a park bench or eat their lunch - the cellphone. And cellphone use is multiplying multiplying like a galloping rogue virus. Between 2000 and 2004, cellphone ownership ownership in Canada grew by 55 percent. Nearly 14 million Canadians are currently wireless subscribers. Experts say by this time next year, fully 50 percent of us will be 'wired for yakking'. Is that a bad thing? Not for the traveling salesman, the shut-in, the housewife whose car has broken down on the side of the Trans Canada, or the hiker who's fractured a femur on the Juan de Fuca hiking trail, but for, oh, say, 85 percent of the schnooks who buy, lug and natter into their cellphones cellphones every day....what's the point? I had a cellphone once! I used it primarily to tell my partner each workday evening that I was off the train and in my car and headed home for dinner. She knew that already. It was my regular pattern, with or without the call. Most of the calls I (am forced to) overhear each day are equally equally fatuous and a stone waste KIDS come see our Barbie, Spiderman and SpongeBob Square Pants Eyeware! of everybody's time. Which would rate as one of modern life's minor annoyances--along with traffic jams, email spam and the vocal stylings of Celine Dion - if that were the extent of the cellphone's depredations. It's not. The fact is, the popularity of the cell phone represents the death knell for a true communications communications breakthrough. The phone booth. The public phone booth has been around for more than a century. It has provided provided shelter from the storm, surcease from traffic noise, a cone of silence for personal conversations and a handy place for cross-dressing Clark Kent to assume his superhero alter ego. All that's changing now. Canada lost nearly 20,000 pay phones in the four years between 1999 and 2003. In Chicago, where the first one was installed in 1898, the public phone booth no longer exists at all. And in Britain, home of world-famous fire-engine red telephone booth, the news is even grimmer. Authorities are cold-bloodedly cold-bloodedly plotting the extinction of the British icon. There are still 15,000 of them scattered scattered across the flanks of Albion. BT Payphones plans to eliminate 10,000 public phone booths by this time next year. The reasoning is bottom- line, as usual. Four out of five Brits now carry cell phones. Phone booth revenue revenue is down. Ergo, axe the phone booths. Before they send the last phone booth to the knacker's yard, they might want to schedule a business lunch at the Brooklyn Café in Atlanta, Georgia. Or at the Main ** Street Bistro in Sarasota, Florida. Or at the trendy Spoke Club in Toronto. The management in all three institutions is planning to install vintage red British telephone booths in their lobbies so that restaurant patrons can carry on conversations conversations in private...on their cellphones. Oh, right...private phone calls. Didn't we have those once? 6 PARK ST. ORONO Our 1000 sq.ft, studio has classes for everyone! From beginner to advanced. Ages 3 years to adult. Local shows, recital, and competitions! BALLET, JAZZ, TAP, HIP HOP, MUSICAL THEATRE M0VERN ANV ACR0 We provide an encouraging, supportive, positive experience for students to develop self confidence! Come experience the Freedom of Dance and register for the 2004/2005 Dance Season. Come in early and save the $35 registration fee! 905-983-5002 Call us if interested in Karate classes! Min. fO students req./class Book Reviews by the Clarington Public Library Book picks for the month of September from the Clarington Public Library The Preservationist By David Maine For his debut novel David Maine has deftly set forth an unusual adaptation of the Biblical story of Noah (aka 'Noe') and the flood. At times irreverent but also humorous and spirited, the book takes us on a journey of faith and survival. In this imaginative imaginative rendering of a very familiar story, the reader is presented with a realistic look at the problems of gathering; animals, finding finding lumber in a desert and living in close-quarters on an ark - the sounds, the smells, the inevitable quarrels and the constant testing testing of faith. While struggling against events that cannot be controlled controlled or explained, each member of Noe's family tells a part of the story, an approach that adds richness to the narrative and decidedly different perspectives on the events that unfold. The Skating Pond by Deborah Joy Corey In a small New England fishing village Elizabeth spends many winter afternoons watching her mother practice figure skating. When a stray hockey puck hits her mother in the forehead Elizabeth becomes a silent witness to the process by which a disfiguring disfiguring facial injury not only destroys her parents' marriage, but also robs her mother of sanity & life itself. Years later Elizabeth enters into a passionate & increasingly hostile relationship with an older man who is not unlike her self-absorbed artist father. Her inability to free herself from Frederick's icy grip forms the central drama of this story and ultimately leads her to making an error in judgment with results almost as disastrous as the accident accident on the pond. Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm by Jeanne Marie Laskas Jeanne Marie Laskas is 37. She has a house, a garden, a dog, a cat, and a flourishing writing career. While she enjoys the creature creature comforts of city living, a childhood dream keeps resurfacing...a resurfacing...a strange farm dream that includes a deep personal longing to churn butter... After spending weekends on make-believe "farm shopping" excursions with her boyfriend and fellow city person, they find the perfect place and it's very real. Fifty acres, a pond, an Amish barn, and a magnificent view over the rolling hills of Pennsylvania's Washing County convince the couple to buy into their dream. But that is just the beginning of their adventure. Fifty Acres and a poodle quickly becomes more than just a book about learning to live in the countiy; it is a book about learning to live with dead groundhogs, emotional messes and a myriad of other experiences in a funny, warm and conversational conversational style. r Orono Figure Skating Club 5 *i WINTER REGISTRATION DATES NEW SYNCHRONIZE SKATING ADULT PROGRAM Canskate 2-1 hour sessions per week $265 00 for 24 weeks Intermediate and Senior Sessions For more information please call Joan at 905-983-9561 or Charlene at 905-983-1009 A