The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

jg 2 -f "Scugog"s Community Newspaper of Choice" PORT PERRY STAR - Tuesday, June 27, 2000 - 7 of the cell phone and drive? Question Week... What is your opinion on the proposed new law which would make it illegal to use your Rob Ashton It's a great idea. There's clowns driving with a phone to their ear not watching where they're going. Carole Noble Tyler Pope From a safety It works well in aspect, they should England. It is have to pull over to something they the shoulder of the really should con- road. sider for here. Wendy Reville Bill Helman It's a good idea. it's a good idea; They should have people are distract- to pull over ed when they're because talking on them is a distrac- tion. talking and not focusing on driving. : Editor a meeting. is tonight To the Editor: Protect The Ridges is hosting a public information session on Paper Sludge in Clarington, Oshawa, and adjacent Scugog on the Oak Ridges Moraine on June 27 at 7:30 p.m. at Enfield Church. . Upon request of the Minister of Environment, Dan Newman, we are pass- ing on the questions and answers attachment addressing residents letters. Durham MPP John O'Toole is confirmed to be in attendance. Representatives of Ministry of Environment, City and Town Councils, Ontario Disposal and Atlantic Packaging will be invited to attend. We will set aside five min- utes per interested persons who wish to speak. If you wish to make a pre- sentation, confirm at this number (905) 655-4038 between the hours of 9 a.m. to4 p.m Walter Vice, Co-chair From previous page ing to read. The most effective time to identify students with learning dif- ficulties is when they are in kindergarten and Grade I. Schools need the resources to do that, not province-wide testing. Teachers evaluate stu- dents' progress every day. Setting the record straight Standardized tests are a small part of the assess- ment process. Putting children first means putting money into programs that work, not into more advertising. Phyllis Benedict, President Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario A fine how-do-you-do, that's what this is. The fact that | opened this page to print it on a Monday, only and wisdom- laden column | had entered in this space sometime during the past week had vanished, 'that is. : Gone. ~ Without a trace. ~ Funny things, these computers. Sometimes it's almost as if they have a mind of their own. And a miserable, conniving little mind it is, too. "cable computer glitches - crashes, lost files, freezes, that sort of thing - but the computers in the their episodes on, say, a Tuesday, when you've got time to spare and such. Nope. It's Mondays they do it. eral days is brought together to formulate the product you hold. A frenetic, intense day. On Monday, the computers conspire against us. It's true. Ask anyone here. : Eerie thought, eh? We all have, at some time or another, cursed an inanimate - and uncooperative - object, such as a computer, or a car, for being obstinate and failing to hiriction as we would prefer them to. to find the finely-crafted, humour For instance, we are often hampered by inexpli- building all seem to conspire not to experience. Monday, the busiest day of the week for us, when everything we've worked on for the past sev- Page Seven THE COMPUTER CONSPIRACY by Jeff Mitchell Your car never breaks down on Saturday, when your main objectives will be getting a can of gas for the lawnmower and taking the empties back to the beer store. No, your car konks out on the day you have to drive to Toronto for an appointment, or that you've promised to give someone a lift to Oshawa, or you have to be in court by 9:30, or something like that. The teevee never breaks down until Super Bowl Sunday, and the stereo is bound to go on the blink only after you've found the CD you've searched out for months. The dishwasher? Christmas dinner with the rela- tives. = The stove? The same, only prior to those rela- tives' arrival, leaving you to stand in your barren kitchen, regarding the cold, dead flesh of a recently dispatched turkey. You get the picture. "Call it the Convenience Conspiracy, | guess, or just simply-Murphy's Law. And you know what's funny about all this? Sometime, maybe two orthree months from now, I'll sit down before this machine, open the file that has the template for this page on it, and poof! ...There will be the column | wrote last week. Of course it will no longer be timely, and the wit and wisdom | thought | had imparted will be ~ curiously absent. And the machine will have won. "Again. Random Jottings by J. Peter Hvidsten time of the year. RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY, WE'VE HAD ENOUGH! Here we are with the month of June winding down, and the hot, dry summer weather normally experi- enced this time of the year has yet to arrive. -June will undoubtedly go down as the wettest in many years. More than double the amount of rain expected at this time of the year has already fallen, and saturated the ground so thoroughly, it can no longer be absorbed. Lake Scugog, which receives most of the excess runoff, has risen to its highest June level in many years, and many longtime residents are saying they can't remember the water being so plentiful in the lake at this Last week the level had risen so high, the lake was lapping at the top of the newly constructed pier at the lakefront. A phenomenon which normally only occurs in the spring, right after the ice melts off the lake. So much for weather talk. | suspect if we weren't com- plaining about the rain... we'd find fault with something else. We just never seem to be satisfied! With that said, rain couldn't dampen the enthusiasm of more than 125 people who attended the Starlight Gala fund raiser held at Scugog Shores Museum last Saturday night. Despite torrents of rain pouring down on the canvas tent, almost drowning out the speakers, the patrons man- aged to stay dry and enjoy a delicious meal and enter- tainment. This was the first event of this type undertaken by the supporters of the museum, and its financial success should prove to be very beneficial to the welfare of the museum. THE SEQUEL Over the past year, I've been working on finalizing information for my second book, documenting the history of this community. Although the research on the new book actually began a few years ago, it's only been since the launch of "Out Of The Ashes" last September that I've had time to fine tune the book, and collect the neces- sary maps, photos and information, which will document the settling of Reach, Scugog and Port Perry from their earliest days. For me, one of the most enjoyable and gratifying sec- tions of the book is a chapter which unravels some of the mystery and rumours regarding the lands south of the Port Perry causeway known to many as the Syndicate lands, or the Scugog marsh. In this chapter we quash some of the old myths and speculations about the property that have been part of its mystery for almost a century. All this would not have been possible without exten- sive research at the Ontario Archives, and the co-opera- tion and help of the current land owners. We also enjoyed the help of both former and present property caretakers, who with permission from the owners allowed me access to the property to document this important part of Scugog Township's early history. Speaking of History: If you haven't picked up a copy of "Steamboats On Scugog", the latest local history book by Paul Arculus, do so today. You'll enjoy learning about the romantic period of the steamship on Lake Scugog more than a century ago.