PAGE 8, THE TOWNSMAN, Thursday, November 10. 1977

Bill Smiley

Perplexing questions

By BILL SMILEY -

This week, 1 am perplexed by several questions, and ‘I turn for possible answers to the only people in the world [ can trust for honest answers: my faithful readers, all four of them.

For example. By what ed- itorial inanity does the Globe and Mail, which grandly calls . itself. Canada’s National Newspaper, run an its front page a five-column by eight inches photo of Pierre Trudeau getting his hair cut? What is the symbolism, the hidden meaning, the secret code, the deep, interpretive analysis, behind this picture? Can anyone help?

Is Mr. Trudeau symbal- ically trimming his sails for a

> no, bul it sure has me baffl- ed ,

fall election? Is it to show that the P.M. is mortal, after all, and that his hair grows, like that of us lesser beings? Perhaps it’s a secret warning to Margaret that, despite talk of a reconciliation, he's not going to let his hair grow and become a flower child, [ dun-

Next question, Where do things get lost to? It seems to me that my wife and I have ‘spent more time this past summer looking for ‘things - than we have sleeping. Look: . ing for things that were

“Right there, right on that counter yesterday.”

Locking for things is one of the most frustrating, ir- ritating pastimes in this materialistic society of ours. It has brought many a mar- riage to the teetering point, and if the union was already teetering, pushed it over the brink,

A couple of.wecks ago, she

» lost the keys to the car. After

a 12-hour non-stop search, na keys, Oh, we had keys for the other car, the battered old Dodge. Only one catch. It was in the garage, and the keyless car was sitting right behind it, immovable.

* Twenty-four hours later, 1. called a lock-picking spec-

: falist. He was out of town,

but would call me when he got back. Just before he did, and I- had to fork out eleventy-seven dollars, the old fady found the keys, without looking. They were in the vegetable bin, with a turnip, a butternut squash,

and a bag of cooking onions, It was certainly the logical place for them.

Then my new black $10 belt went missing. It was the first belt I'd bought for 12 years, and I was rather proud

. Of it. E knew it wasn't really

lost, because | always hang it up with my ties. [t was ob- vious that my wife, in her eternal tidying, had stuck it away somewhere, as she so Often does with things that I | then cannot find. But she swore, as she always does, that ‘she hadn't touched it, mentioning in passing that she was sick and tired of | looking for things that [ had lost, Naturally, words fol-

lowed, in which the phrase

“car keys" inadvertently

popped out several times.

But the mystery of the mis- sing belt was readily solved when I decided to wear my new, blue, fit-like-a-glove summer trousers. I couldn't find’ them. High or low. Then

‘Strange happenings in London church

LONDON’ (AP) - Bankers, businessmen, _ brokers and secretaries are Wying on the floor of an Ang can church once a week in the City of London financial district, learning _ how to cope with stress.

Leaving their coats in the pews and with pillows under their heads, they sprawl for half an hour on their backs in St. Mary Woolnoth, responding to orders from physiotherapist Laure Mitchell to pull back their shoulders, spread their el- bows, move their hands, turn their knees, point their feet and drop their jaws.

Prostrate bodies cover the green carpet in the central

aisle and the red-carpeted foot of the high altar. ©

Above the altar, inscribed with the Ten Com- mandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, seven carved, gilded cherubs gaze impassively down on the strange noonday scene.

“Nobody thinks — it strange—all life is challenge and response,” said - vicar, v. Geoffrey C. Harding, 67, who introduced the sessions as an addition to his weekly lectures series, Relax and Meditate.

GET ALL KINDS

“We get all kinds coming in, from assistant general managers to tea ladies,” Harding said. ‘“‘We don't charge anything. There is an offering plate, at the oor."

After one half-hour session, Jerry Palmer, 42, who works in the cleari department of a bank, sai he took part “because I'm just at the beginning of the stress age.”

: u , to feel red at the end of every day a rushing about, My wife ‘seemed to be in charge of me. After coming here I find T have no fear of anybody and I’m in complete control at work and at home.”

As one of the recumbent 15 men and eight women on the church floor, Palmer heard Miss Mitchell intone: “Only three of you have open eyes. Thave not told you to close them—your bodies are receiving 4) much relaxation that they have gone ahead of me.”

The Turner connection

LONDON (CP) — Nearly 5,000 . etchings and engravings by Joseph Turner, the great English landscape painter who died in 1851, have been traced in public and private collec-

_ tions ail over the world.

The Turner Society, which. is campaigning for a per- manent Turner gallery at Somerset House in the Strand, hopes to put mest of

them on exhibition there before the end of the year.

“These works add a new dimension to the Turner collection,’ said Alfrec Well, the society’s cam- paign co-ordinator. ‘‘After Tumer died in 1851 the et- chings and engravings were

_sold off by the Turner Trust.

“There is a court order of 1872 that this material should be auctioned and the

proceeds given to the Turner family. All of them came from Turner’s sessions, but someone Festroyed the plates in order to lend rarity value to the collection.”

_ About 1,000 went on show recently when the world’s first Turner gallery opened at Denver, Colo. Since then the society has been trying

_to trace the others.

‘TREATMENTS : FAILED Miss Mitchell, a grey- haired Scotswoman, said she worked out her method of light physical exercises, most of which can be done at any time, after standard treatments failed for her when she collapsed in ,1957 with neck and limb pains. “T started by doing the opposite movement in each* joint to counteract muscle tension and the relief was enormous,” she said. “I taught my technique first to antenatal mothers, who said it greatly helped them in labor pains.” + ; The vicar, whose 250-year- old church is on Lombard Street in the heart of Lon- don’s banking and financial district, said his father was a doctor and his mother a nurse, ; .

*T have always been in- terested in the sick and in healing,” he explained. “We lose 330 million working days every year: in Britain through ill health, and two million adults - need tranquilizers or other pills to keep going.

“The knowledge our visitors take away from this church they pass on to others and, because they found itin a chureh, perhaps

they will also pass on something of Christian

goodwill.

*

Milk in danger

TORONTO (CP) — A University of Guelph food scientist said today Stores are still subjecting mil packaged in plastic jugs or tran-

nt plastic pouches to intense flourescent lighting although the light causes the milk to lose much of its nutritive value.

Dr. J.M. deMan, head of the university's food science depart: ment, told a news conference tha’ more than two years after the release of a report on the harmfu effects of flourescent light upon mill and other dairy products, “man: retail food outlets continue to expos the contents of their dairy counter:

to light intensity approaching thato ~~

the noon-day sun.

DeMan, whose most recent stud) involved a survey of dairy displaj cases in food atores in Guelph. anc

' Metropolitan Toronto said “we were shocked by the light intensity ir some outlets.”’

“One location was subjecting milk in transparent plastic bags and Jugs to more than seven times the a solute maximum light intensity recommended In our study.”

He added that “just as important as the nutritional’ loss by light ex- posure is the fact that an oxidized off-flavor developed in the tran- sparent pouches and plastic jugs within six hours, and highl significant flayor changes occurre in 12 hours." ; ,

DeMan said that milk in opaque cardboard cartons showed 1 significant flavor change in 48 hours.

‘Canada's milk supply is one of the best in the world,” he said, “but

_ itis out in the stores that the quality .

declines,’

DeMan said that consumers in general “have noidea how and when the off-flavor develops ir milk because the chemical deteriuration is induced by light.’’

However, he said that milk has a yellowish thinge when it has been damaged by flourescent light.

He suggested that milk packaging be changed-to the opaque containers tthe golden of tunity is when |

e gol por when we switch to mettie ckaging to eliminate the plastic jugs anc pouches, he said. “If that doesn't

m we'll be stuck with the

problem forever.”’ .

- DeMan said that in his studies the logs of vitamin C was significant.

with a flash of intuition, | knew where my belt was. It was wilh the pants, because I hever unbelt, just hang the whole works ona hook.

It was quite a relief to know where my belt was. [1 was equally reassuring to know that the pants. were

_ with the belt, But it was.

slightly dampening 10 admit

that-both were lost, They stil}. ”

haven't turned up,

There are only two possi- bilities. One is that a pantless burglar crept into our bed- room, snatched my trews and crept off into the night, once more modestly attired, The second I don't even like te dwell on, .

The last time I had worn those pants, that belt, was te a party, It wasn’t a strip poker party, but it was a falt- ly lively one,

Did I do a strip tease and

forget to redress my little pecadillo? me

Did 1 tear them off on the way home from the party and throw them out the car window? Sounds silly, but the other morning I went out to get the morning paper, and there on my back walk was a pair of brand-new blue shoes, with thick white rub- ber soles, in a shoe-box, with

only the lid missing, Only the ©

Lord knows who, for what mad reason, in what tem- porary mental’ abberation, flang them there, But they are just my size and finders keepers; . ,

And this whole probe .

brings up the Case of the Missing Socks. What in the name of all that is unholy becomes of socks when they are put through the washer and dryer? They never go missing in pairs, always singles. P'Il bet [ have nine single socks in my drawer, all different colors or knits,

I've gone down with a

flashlight and peered, a bit ° shaken, into the interiors of °

those machines. Nosocks. They can’t go down the

drain, or it would be plugg- °

ed. Do they do a reverse San- ta Claus and go up the spout of the dryer with the hot air?

It's.a little frightening, as —

though someone were trying to tell me something. About my feet? Someone with a feet fetish:

Just one more question. Where were all the editorial writers who are now scream- ing about the stupidity: of changing highway signs to kilometers instead of miles, when I was lambasting the whole metric-Celsius mnon- sense almost a yearago?

: Can you, gentle reader, do a fast bit of arithmetic in your head when you encoun- ter a road sign announcing the speed limit is 45 kilo- meters per hour? When your

‘speedometer is marked in

miles per hour? And will be for years to come?

Will you happily pay your fine when the cop puts the

big blue arm on you and ' claims you were’ exceeding -.

the speed limit by seven k.p.h.? Must we all start driving with a calculator- computer inonghand? . Now these questions may not be as important as some: How old is God? How hot is

it in hell? How long is a

straight line? How far does a rolling stone?’ Whittier the Flat Earth Society? Why does everyone pick on me? But they are, poor things,

mine own, and I'd like some i.

answers, . rs © The Argyle Syndicate Ltd,