Saturday, November 14, 1992 @ PAGE | ' a = = = ?P Dave McCullough Publisher Scott David Harrison Editor Bob Proctor Marketing Manager Mickey Read Composing Room Foreman Warren Chernoff OurViEWS Funding crunch he mountain air must be getting to the folks at Nelson University Centre. In the age of government cutbacks and chronic under-funding for our post-secondary institutions, NUC is asking the provincial government to do the impossible — give it degree- granting privileges. The request is as airy-fairy as the programs NUC wants to offer. OK, maybe that’s too harsh, but how NUC can expect the provincial government to believe that a degree- granting program can be erected at no cost to the taxpayer is ridiculous. Education costs, and all the fundraising, donations and letters of support in the world won’t keep NUC from rapping on the government’s door asking for hand-outs. Those hand-outs would have a disastrous effect on Selkirk College. Despite being a shining example of community colleges should be run, Selkirk would be forced to compete against upstart NUC for funding. That competition simply belittles the professional manner in which Selkirk operates in every corner of the West Kootenay. If a degree-granting program is to be established in the West Kootenay, it must go to Selkirk College. After 25 years of serving the West Kootenay, Selkirk has managed to survive the funding-crunch to provide first-class instruction. If an expansion of post-secondary services is to happen in the West Kootenay, the government should turn to a proven product — Selkirk College. AdrianRAESIDE i i WAM W ieee ee WN - rd est nt FR LEST WE Fee, —-". My dad used to say if Would-be poets taken to cleaners Poetry books aren’t there’s a buck to be made, someone somewhere will find out how (and if he didn’t say it, he should have). Well, someone in Maryland is making a darned good dollar out of something most of us would never consider. Poetry. That’s right. Poetry. You know, the stuff we were forced to wade exactly hot items. So how can anyone make money off pub- lishing poetry? The National Library of Poetry seems to have found a way. If you haven’t heard of it, the National Library of Poetry has its office in Owings Mills, Maryland and operates the North American Open Poetry Competition. Comments from the Crossroads through in school. Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost. Maybe a little Canadian content like Margaret Atwood or Bill Bissett (who was at Selkirk College last Thursday). I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time I read a poem, let alone the last time I bought a book of poetry. And judging by the bestseller lists, I’m not alone. That’s the seemingly- innocuous competition we read about with uncommon regularity in our local newspapers. Our local papers aren’t alone in providing coverage to this poetry competition; it’s common for this competition, and others like it, to issue press releases to small papers across Canada and the U:S. in the hopes of attracting submissions. please see NORMAN page 7 Mary Ann Fullerton Circulation Manager Burt C. Street TALK Publisher Emeritus L.V. Campbell Aug. 7, 1947- Feb. 15, 1973 Saturday at 197 Columbia Ave., Castlegar, British Columbia by Caste News Ltd. for Canwest Publishers Ld. Question: Do you think there is a housing sh ortage in Castlegar? Peter Mengede Castlegar “Yeah, but things will improve with the Celgar expansion.” Lynda Parkes Castlegar “No. We’ve had our house for sale for six months.” = Marie Weir Castlegar “Yes. Definitely whenever we’ve looked.” William Gorkoff Castlegar Stacy Donald Castlegar “Yes. A lot of people are living in poor accommodations.” “Yes and it’s very expensive for students.” m Saturday, November 14, 1982 Other VIEWS Please address all letters to: Letters to the or deliver them to 197 Columbia Ave. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not longer than 300 words. Letters MUST be signed and include the writer's first and last names, address and a telephone number at which the writer can be reached between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The writer's name and city or town of residence only will be published. Only in exceptional cases will letters be published anonymously. Even in those cases, the name, address and phone number of the writer MUST be disclosed to the editor. The News reserves the right to edit letters for brevity, clarity, legality, grammar and taste. Letters coWHE EDITOR Personal ads describe personal preference Re: “Slim Chicks”column, Barbara Murdoch’s diatribe against men placing personal ads is off the mark. “Slim Chicks” is her own terminology, which sounds much worse than fit, attractive, slim, non-smoking, etc. Most men and women placing these ads don’t do so flippantly. I imagine a lot of thought and consideration has gone into the wording before they commit themselves to publication. Ms. Murdoch is correct in saying the bottom line is greater than matters of body shape, but there’s nothing wrong with an interest in physical fitness in women or men. We read more often of the benefits of exercise and proper diet for all ages of people, kids to senior citizens. People who are interested in fitness are not necessarily “preoccupied with being visually suitable” and having “low self- esteem”, quite the opposite actually. Men and women come in all shapes. and sizes and what appeals to some may not to another, which is why these ads are personal and a request for slimness is not a slight against all women. A lot of ads. placed by women for men include the prerequisite of “financially secure”. If we were to think, as Ms. Murdoch does, we must assume that all women don’t care about how fat the man is, just as long as his pockets are. R.P. Sweeney Pass Creek’ On the morning of Nov. 9, 54 years ago, Germany awoke to a terrifying spectacle. In the early hours of that day, members of the SA, the Sturm Abteilung, forced their way into the synagogues and homes of Jewish citizens and began an orgy of destruction. What was billed as “a spontaneous action by the people” was in fact, the beginning of a carefully or- chestrated campaign the world would come to know as the Final Solution. The infamous Kristallnacht, which took place simultaneously in every city, town and hamlet, rang in a reign of terror, degradation, persecution and, in the end, genocide of unprecedented proportions. On that Night of Broken Glass, the faceless storm troopers in their brown uniforms set in motion the most ruthless killing machine the world has ever known. When that machine was finally stopped, six million Jews had been murdered. The campaign against the Jews had already begun a few years earlier. Jews were Report from Victoria Hubert BEYER prohibited from holding jobs in the public service and the military. Jews were frequently beaten up by marauding brownshirts. Jewish shops were plastered with signs “Kauft nicht bei Juden” — Don’t buy from Jews. Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David on their sleeves. But the looting, the burning and the smashing of syna- gogues and private homes during the Kristallnacht was the first item on the meticulously-planned and brutally-executed Holocaust agenda. To the eyes of a four-year-old We must never forget the horrors of the Holocaust boy, who was hurriedly and, I assume today, with some degree of fear, taken to kindergarten by his mother that morning, the manifesta- tion of wanton destruction of property and vicious degradation of its owners was merely strange. Ever since my eyes were opened to the horrors of what began with the Kristallnacht, I recoil at my recollections. Street upon. street in Dusseldorf was strewn, waist- high in places, with the belongings of Jews. Everything from furniture to clothing to valuable paintings to china had been thrown out of windows into the streets below. When something was too large to fit through a window such as a grand piano, the walls between the two windows were knocked out with sledge hammers. Friends of ours disappeared that morning, never to be seen again. They had lived in our apartment building. Until they were forced to display the yellow star on their sleeves, we didn’t even know they were Jews. As far as we were concerned, they were Germans. How dare anyone 54 years later deny the Holocaust didn’t happen? How dare someone like David Irving say that Auschwitz was built by Poles as a tourist attraction? And how dare Doug Christie, self-appointed Nazi defender of the neo and not-so-neo type, say that kicking Irving out of Canada is.an assault on democratic rights? I have no inclination to share my country with Irving or anyone like him. Sadly, Canada has its own element which would re-write history, we don’t need imports from Europe. As someone born in Germany whose memory will forever be haunted by the unimaginable horror my country inflicted on Jews, I was gratified to see that many Germans feel as I do. Hundreds of thousands of Germans came out to take part in a peaceful demonstration in commemoration of the horror of the Kristallnacht on its 54th anniversary. I hope it will become an annual event, for the moment the world forgets the Holocaust, it paves the way for its repetition. Norman continued from page 7 The appeal for local poets is the $1,000 grand prize and an assortment of other, smaller prizes. And besides, entry is absolutely free. But the competition isn’t all the National Library of Poetry sponsors, as a Castlegar friend who entered found out. The NLP also publishes a book of all the entries it receives each year. Now, why in heavens would the NLP think that it can sell a book of would-be poets when books by well-known poets gather. dust on bookstore shelves? Simple. The NLP isn’t selling the book to the general public. It’s selling it to the would-be poets. It’s got a market. And how many would-be poets are out there? Well, the 1992 edition, called A Question of Balance, features over 3,000 poems from more than 3,000 poets (only one poem allowed per poet and the entries must be 20 lines or less. The NLP apparently doesn’t want any Paradise Lost-type poems that go on for pages and pages. It adds to publishing costs and cuts down on the number of poems that can be published — and thus on the number of potential buyers). The end product is an eight- and-a-half- by 11-inch, 400- page hardbound edition touted as “an heirloom quality publication using the finest ready-made quality materials and craftsmanship”. And just how much is this “heirloom-quality” anthology? Just $69.95 — U.S. funds, of course. But the publishers are generous, they provide a “pre- publication price” of $49.95 U.S. for the first copy and $35 for each additional copy — in case you want some for your family and friends. All U.S. funds, of course. It doesn’t take a degree in mathematics to figure out that 3,000 -poets buying a copy would total $150,000. Not bad for a competition that offers as its grand prize $1,000. But that’s not all. If you don’t want the book, you can always buy the cassette tape. But not every poem is selected for the tape. Only “a few that (the editors) believe would have a wonderfully expressive quality if read by a professional reader”. And just exactly what constitutes “a. few”. Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Well, 400 to be exact. And the price? $29.95 — U.S. funds, of course. So, 400 times $30 is $12,000. If you don’t go for either the book or the tapes, then you may be interested in the wall plaque (mounted on walnut finish) for $35 — U.S. funds again. And all this from a simple poetry competition. Almost makes me want to go into the poetry competition business.