Dshaseabieiseniie jn Coane aa ete ncanbe " " ¥ baat ” t “ ga i { f s Students Ei suppor tS council customs a By CasNews Staff The first ever Local Gov- ernment Awareness Week in B.C. is proposed for the week of May 11-17 and Castlegar's Municipal Awareness Week Committee is already plan- ning for the event. The committee is chaired by Ald. Terry Rogers and its first meeting is proposed for Tuesday. One of the ideas proposed for the event is having local students act as the council for a day. Former mayors and andermen would be invited to the event followed by a re- ception. Another idea is to hold a tree and flower planting cer- emony at the Pioneer Arena. A city hall open house has also been suggested. Includ- ed would be displays of city projects such as the library and waterfront development as well as having information on the Heritage Committee, a slide presentation or pictorial of all city facilities, fire department demonstrations and tours of city hall. Two more ideas are to have an open house of the Meadowlark Pumping Sta- tion and a “no-host” break- fast with council. The municipal affairs min- istry initiated Local Govern- ment Awareness Week to in- form the general public on the role local governments play in their day-to-day lives. Counter Attack prepared By CasNews Staff Castlegar's Traffic and Safety Committee is in the process of preparing for the 1987 Spring Counter Attack Campaign April 13-May 4 in conjunction with a province: wide program. The members of the local committee, are Ald. Carl Henne, Engineering and Ser vices Manager, Kevin Laa- gan, Deputy Fire Chief Ther- on Isfeld and RCMP Cpl. Andy Rowe. The committee has con tacted West Kootenay Power and light Co. about mailing Counter Attack literature with its April bills, but the utility company said the stuffing is done by machines and it would not be possible to isolate the mail going out to Castlegar customers. However, WKPL has agreed to display Counter Attack literature in its of- fices. The Insurance Corp. of B.C. intends to ask WKPL to do a blanket mailing of Counter Attack leaflets. The committee has also urged Castlegar council to approve a grant of $1,000 to assist with community prom otion for the Spring Counter Attack Campaign. Some of the promotional activities planned include putting Counter Attack dec als on all city vehicles and enclosing Counter Attack lit- erature with city payroll cheques. The RCMP will also be ap- proaching local hotels to con duct designated driver pro- grams. Road checks are scheduled to take place during the cam paign with the emphasis be ing on determing drinking and driving, rather than in creased apprehension of of fenders. FLYER CORRECTION March 25-28, 1987 Page 20: Girls’ 20 Princess Coaster Bike is not available We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers. matching shams & dust ruffle. Choose Blue, Available in Twin, Double or Queen. Decorative Fringed Rugs Fill empty floor space with a.collection of Octagonal, Hand-Cut Pinwheel Serving Pieces Choose from Vase, Footed Bowl, Salad Bowl, 4-pce. Cream & Sugar/Tray, Covered Candy Dish, Pedestal Candy Dish, Pair Candle Holders, Wine Decanter, Pitcher or Oval Jardiniere 88 Gift boxed Regular 33.97. Now, Your Choice: ea. Pinwheel Crystal Elegant serving pieces in Pinwheel design. Choose from Vase, Cake Plate, 3-Section Dish, Covered Candy Dish, Pedestal Bowl, Pitcher, Dinner Bell, Fruit Bowl or Butter Dish 88 Gift boxed. Regular 21.99. Now, Your Choice: ea. Hands-Free Telephone © Speaker phone for freedom of movement © Auto dialer-memory stores up 9 num WANETA PLAZA Highway 3, Trail Gold Rose Assortment Choose from Candy Dish, Jewel Box, Vase, Beer Stein and more! Gift boxed Regular 9.99. Now, Your Choice: Calculator © Solar-powered ° Large keys for quick calculations * Large, easy-to-read 8-digit display with punctuation ¢ Ideal for home or office 4s ran nic Prices Effective March 31, 1987 STORE HOURS: Monday-Saturday 9:30-5:30 Thursday-Friday 9:30-9:00 THE MORE YOU LOOK... THE MORE YOU SAVE pecial events at Twin Rivers “% SCHOOL ACTIVITIES . .. (from top right, clockwise) Mike Wennechuk entertains - students on bandura, artist Anton Skerbinc demonstrates zither, during recent multicultural week. Making maple sugar during the school’s French Carnival. TV NOW ONE BIG ‘IN’ JOKE By BILL ANDERSON Canadian Press About 25 years ago, an American bureaucrat described commercial television as “a vast wasteland.” The label stuck, and the analysis has pretty much remained current. But U.S. media critic Mark Crispin Miller, in a new book called Watching Television (Random House of Canada), argues TV has tr ded t a” tag But with close attention, the themes come through: television now is in its ironic age, constantly flattering the viewer's skepticism of the medium while leaving the importance of consumerism as the only lasting impression. “Our jeering hurts TV's commercial project not at all,” says Miller. “Everybody knows that TV is mostly false and stupid, that almost no one pays that much attention to it — and yet it’s on for seven hours a day in the average household, and it sells innumerable products.” ‘The idea that television has collapsed toward a soft, uniform, mutually flattering centre is also put forward in an essay by Daniel Hallin, a University of California professor who examined U.S. network news. “Television worries about pleasing and entertaining the ordinary citizen in a way that the New York Times does not,” Hallin writes. “As a medium oriented largely toward a huge and politically inactive mass public, ‘> and entered a new, more horrible stage of its existence. In his essay — one of seven in this sometimes shrill but ultimately important U.S. anthology — Miller argues television has become one big “in” joke, holding viewers through a manipulative tone of shared coolness. In what might be called “the Letterman effect,” virtually everything on television — in the manner of late ‘Everything on television ...now comes witha knowing wink and a wise chuckle’ night star David Letterman — now comes with a knowing wink and a wise chuckle that casts ironic aspersions on whatever the subject. WHAT'S LEFT “TV offers us TV and TV only,” writes Miller, a professor at Jhns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “TV today is increasingly self-referential and less recognizable as something ‘bad’ as it turned more and more exclusively televisual.” This intensely,analytical writing is common among the seven differeht authors in the book, and the preference for communications professors over journal ists makes for an fortable amount of highbl passages. The reader is also left on his own to pull the threads together from topics as divergent as soap operas, music videos, car commercials, children’s shows, news and wrestling. televisi tends to be GO PATRIOTIC To illustrate, Hallin cites coverage of the US. invasion of Grenada in 1983. He notes that during the first few days of the event, TV news adopted a skeptical and neutral tone. “But as positive public reaction mounted, television's emphasis quickly shifted away from political issues to the patriotic celebration.” Likewise, the hostage crisis in Iran in 1979 was reported not as a story of innocent vietims but an attack on America itself. This type of focus creates what Hallin calls “consensus enemies” — Cold War opponents, terrorists and the like — and defines events “in terms of violence against the symbolic American everyman.” Hallin’s conclusion: “Television, contrary to the mythology about its immense power, rarely takes the lead in antyhing; rather, as a shift occurs, television follows cautiously behind.” This fact has been all too evident in Canada during recent weeks, as the TV industry takes its first reluctant steps toward condom advertising. But as an essayist on children’s programming points out in Watching Television, TV has had few qualms about selling its prefabricated consumer value system to children through the Saturday morning cartoon-com mercial ghetto. Similarly with music videos and car advertisements. The book says music videos obliterate the distinction between program and commercial — creating a world best realized in person at a shopping mall — and the line between a commercial for a sports car and an episode of Miami Vice is just as fuzzy IN NEW BRUNSWICK No welfare winners By CHRIS MORRIS Canadian Press McADAM, N.B. — When you're on the dole, you don't eat great. Poor Canadians, with some extra medical and social benefits, may be able to set a slightly better table than their neighbors in the United States. But the distinction isn’t all that noticeable when dealing with real hardship. Along the border between northern Maine and southern New Brunswick, hard times and poverty are a grim, international reality. There are no winners. “There ain't hardly nobody here working,” says welfare recipient Lenwood Grasse, staring gloomily at the run-down homes in Lambert Lake, Me. “It’s like a forgotten part of America, a no-man’s land.” Not far away across the border in McAdam, N.B., Donna, a 38-year-old mother of five, sits in her crampe living room in the once-proud railway town. TOWN DYING She has been on social assistance for four years, and unless something miraculous rekindles McAdam’s dying economy, she will probably be on welfare for a long time to come. Donna is embarrassed by the situation and doesn’t want her surname published. She says she would like to work, but with no skills and an unemployment rate in McAdam exceeding 40 per cent, her chances aren't good. “When I was growing up in McAdam things were a lot better — there was no problem about money, people had jobs and you never heard them being on social assistance,” she says, raising her voice as plastic sheets on the windows snap noisily in the wind. “These are real bad times.” McAdam once was the railway heartland of New Brunswick, but only a copule of trains now stop at the handsome old station that dominates the village of 1,600. The Georgia-Pacific plywood mill closed its doors a few years ago and attempts to establish new mills haven't been very successful. SLUMP IN MAINE Jobs have also dried up in northern Maine because ofa slump in the lumber industry and declining rail traffic, while communities in southern parts of the state are thriving. Families on each side of the border feel those on the other side are better off. But when assistance programs are added up, the Canadians appear to be slightly ahead Donna and her unemployed husband get about $700 a month in social assistance from the province, plus a $126 (7 family. cheque for the four children still at home. Out of that she pays for electricity, telephone, clothing, school supplies, a small mortgage on their small house, and the big expense — food. “I spend about $100 a week on food, and that's just the basics, nothing fancy,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s hard trying to stretch a little bit of money . . . Id like to see some of our politicians try to live on i Donna thinks her American neighbors probably do better with the money they get because food, clothing and transportation are cheaper in the United States. ENVY CANADIANS But directly across the border in Vanceboro, Me., Margaret Howland, a mother of two, talks wistfully about Canada’s family allowance program and medical benefits. Howland, who is 35 but looks older, says the hardest part of being poor is having to say no to the children when they ask for the little extras that mean so much to them. “[ hate saying ‘no’ all the time,” says Howland, bouncing two-year-old Susan on her lap. “It's heartbreaking, and I don't see it ever getting better.” 7 The Howland family gets $489 a month from Maine's Aid for Dependent Children program, plus $130 a month in food stamps that stores accept in payment for basic supplies. Like Donna, Howland’s biggest problem is food. “The food stamps are supposed to Is ath, but we're lucky to stretch them over two weeks — it’s never enough.” MOSTLY SHACKS About 12 kilometres down the road from Vanceboro is Lambert Lake — a few houses, mostly tar-paper shacks, and one tiny general store set on the edge of the dense, dark forest of northern Maine. Lenwood Grasse lives in one of the shacks, a dilapidated place with car parts scattered around the property and clear plastic sheets tacked over broken windows. Grasse pushes back his cap advertising Jack Daniels whisky and talks about his life in this unforgiving and, as he puts it, forgotten part of America. “I figure things might get better — if I live long enough.” Most of the 230 people who live in Vanceboro work at the U.S. border-crossing station. Most of the 200 people in Lambert Lake don’t do anything. Grasse, the Howlands and Donna have never considered moving anywhere else, partly because they simply can't afford to move and also because they believe they would be worse off. One good thing about McAdam, Vanceboro and Lambert Lake is that housing — such as it is for the poor — is very cheap. *