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HG 000 ROR Rn SAT Tl dL SN WI Out Of The Shadows A famous poet once wrote words to the effect that somewhere between the idea and the reality falls the shadow. A lot has been said and written in the last few months in Scugog Township about the efforts to improve the library facilities in this community. And it is fair to say that this project has seen more than its fair share of shadow since the idea was first put forward almost two years ago. Nevertheless, Scugog Township is going to have a new library building, despite the criticism and opposition, and it is time that this project came out from under the shadow so that the reality will be a little more easily attainable. The decisions on where this new building is to be located, how much it is going to cost, and how much will be paid by the taxpayers, have all been made. They were tough decisions. Some people in this community thought they were not the right ones at the time, and no doubt they haven't changed their minds that they're right. However, a tough road for the new library still lies ahead as canvassers begin this week to knock on doors throughout Scugog to ask the public for donations to help pay for the construction. We would ask the people of Scugog Township to give their support to this project, remembering that a new library is a facility that will provide know- ledge, information, and reading pleasure for our children in years to come. A modern library In a community like Scugog Township in 1979 is not a luxury. It is just as much a necessity as any cultural, recreational or sporting facility that contributes to a better quality of living for all of us. ' We should also keep in mind that in many, many parts of the world today, access to knowledge and information is denied. We are fortunate that this is not the case in this country and in this community. Whether we agree with all the decisions that have been made in the past concerning the new library project is pretty much academic at this time. But it is now time to bring it out of the shadow and get on with the reality of building it. Compassion Fatigue Our newspapers, radio and television broadcasts keep us well informed on the suffering, poverty and injustice at home and in all parts of the world. In recent years we have had so much of this that many of us now suffer from what has been called FUL SERVICE "So THATS FULL SERVICE ~~ oo PUMP JT JO EM AN' GIVE EM) THE GEARS | === 'compassion fatigue'. Our hearts are touched and our minds prodded so frequently that they become wearied preventing continued attention to the suffer- ing of others. Some of us go in for the detached academic or study-group kind of interest in the plight of others. This sometimes leads to constructive action, but generally it is subtle exercise in evasion. We use pious chatter and the drafting of impressive res- olutions as an excuse for not rolling up our sleeves and trying to do helpful things, even such a helpful this as reaching for a cheque book. Compassion fatigue can encourage us to cult- ivate convenient ignorance: if we do not let ourselves know too much about the suffering of others we will not feel called upon to do anything about it. Many comfortable Canadians do cultivate a convenient ignorance -- ignorance of the mal- nutrition from which the majority of the world's people suffer, ignorance of the injustices inflicted on so many people everywhere, and of the deprivation in our own nation. Even in our own neighborhoods. The complexity and confusion of life today, with the compassion fatigue it engenders and the con- venient ignorance it encourages, cause indifference to settle rather easily on our hearts. Per haps indifference is the great sin of our time. Unchurched Editorial bill REMEMBER AGAIN Two or three years ago, I swore I'd never write another column about Remembrance Day. I'd milked every emotion, flattened every cliche, and I thought perhaps it was time to let it fade away, as old soldiers never do. - However, I reckoned without vice- principal. Each year, for the past or four, as Remembrance Day approgches, he sidles up and wonders "if I could have a minute of your time?" That means he wants something. If he wanted to bawl me out, he'd probably say, "Mr. Smiley, I'd like to see you in my office at 3:45". When I reported at that time, he'd likely give me the blast, in front of witnesses, and I'd tell him to go to hell, or shove it where the sun never shines, or something equally vivacious and vulgar. Vice-principals do not easily upset older fighter pilots. But when Dave gives me the old soft soap and asks if I could do something about a-Remembrance Day programme. for the. . smiley school, I get all soft and gooey and limply agree. When I joined the high school staff, there were pleny of veterans of World War II. A bomber pilot or two, a navigator, a radar man, some air force ex-technicians, and a rabble of former navy and army types. Nowadays, I'm just about the oldest veteran on the staff, so I'm stuck with the Remembrance Day hokum. The oldest veteram is a German, who fought in the North Africa campaign, was wounded, and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp in the States. It would hardly do to have him talking to the students about "'our sacrifices in two great world wars." He might get carried away and say something like, "If it hadn't been for that maniac, Hitler, we would have kicked the stuffing out of you." So I'm stuck with it. For a few years, we had a full period programme, with the students making it up. They were awful. Full of folk songs, like 'Where have all the soldiers gone?", and the local Legion marching around on the stage of the cafe- torium getting all tangled up in their flags, and the reading of a List of the Fallen. For the kids, it was a period off school, and a sort of bewilderment about what these crazy adults had been up to, in a time of which they knew nothing. So we gradually cut it down. The Last Post was eliminated. I gave such an anti-war talk at one of these sessions that even the students were startled. For the last two years, I've been asked to write a two or three minute "message" about Remembrance Day, full of meaning, poignancy and sentiment. I'd never give an assignment like that to a student. It would be like asking them to give a summary of the Bible in 200 words. However, I'm going to do it again this year, because I am soft in the head, or something. Let us hope that next year, the thing will be reduced to an announcement "We will now honour our war dead with one minute's silence. On the sound of the bleep, shut up for one minute. Then go to your regular classes." Here is a sample of what I write. It is spoken into a mike by a student who doesn't know how to use a microphone and has a bad cold. This is last year's bit: "When you are young, life is forever. When you are old, Death sits grinning and nodding at your elbow. Hundreds of thousands of young Cana- dians sneered at that old witch, Death, and offered their most precious possession themselves, to the bullets and the shrapnel, the mortars, and the cannon. They didn't say to themselves, "I'm going to die so that the students of Blank Secondary School can havé'gyavy on their french fries." They didn't say much of anything. They just went off to fight against something they thought was evil. Most of them were just kids, two or three years older than you are. They had the same hang-ups you have: bad marks in math; frustrated love) uncertainty about the future. Maybe they weren't too bright. Maybe they should have said, "I ain't gonna get killed in some stupid war over in Europe." Maybe. But they went. And they were killed, in the thousands. So that you can have gravy on your french fries. And a lot of other things you take for granted. Most of us don't want to leave this world without making some little mark on it. Every human being is a precious thing. Whatever you do, you will leave something of yourself behind, even if it is only dust. Those young fellows who were killed in France and Holland and Italy didn't have much chance of leaving anything behind. But they left a memory. Once a year, on Remembrance Day, we take 'a silent moment to think about those laughing boys - and most of them were boys - who went across the ocean so that we could have freedom of speech, open elections, letters to the editor, and gravy on our french fries." What in the world am 1 going to write this vaar?