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Rt tl A oi ed EA Fe par. ea =~ PA PREY 3 =H ho SPs ro i Ee ip WAS yw Tn BNE a See SPOS Pd lh i Ah po a gt AL BT LINE RAE ART The Community Hospital Can you imagine what it would be like if women were forced to go elsewhere to have their babies because the hospital in Port Perry did not have an obstetrical unit? . Can you .imagine what it would be like, if there was no active treatment hospital at all in Port Perry and citizens of Scugog Township were forced to go to Uxbridge or Oshawa for even routine medical or surgical care? Unthinkable. Yet the phasing out of the obstetrical unit and the conversion of the hospital to a chronic care facility are two "options' suggested in a "discussion paper" prepared by consultants for the Durham Region District Health Council on program and role alterna- tives for all hospitals in Durham Region. ; The consultants discussion paper was released to the public and hospital boards in Durham earlier this spring, and the Port Perry Hospital Board has quite rightly issued a strongly worded rejection of the two "options" noted above. Although the consultants report is described as '"for discussion purposes only' and lists options, not recommendations, we find it incredible that the writers of the report would even consider such things as phasing out the obstetrical unit or turning the entire hospital into a chronic care facility. Our hospital board points out numerous times in its response paper, changes such as these would be "irresponsible and a complete disservice' to.our community. - Just why the consultants paper even suggested these changes is a bit of a mystery, for they can offer no sound arguments in support of these 'options' other than to say that beds for chronic care patients are needed in Durham Region. ] That may be so. But to suggest that the number of chronic care beds be increased at the expense of the active treatment beds serving some 13,000 people is folly. ~The consultants are due to present their final report later this month, incorporating the response from the hospital boards in Durham Region. While we are confident that any suggestion to phase out the obstetrical unit or convert the hospital to a chronic care facility will be put to rest,-we would hope that the consultants report does away with these ""options" completely as they do not even merit discussion. Take Care Against Rabies At this time of year, campers, hikers, and cottagers should take extra precautions to ensure that they do not come in contact with rabid animals. Children, especially, should be warned by their parents to avoid any wild animals, even stray cats, and dogs... Skunks, foxes and racévons are the most common carriers of the disease, according to information from the Ministry "of Natural Resources. However, any warm-blooded animal, including the family pet, can contract the disease. Rabies is a serious disease, which can be fatal for humans without treatment. And that treatment is a painful series of injections. Aside from avoiding all wild and stray animals, especially those which may venture close to homes and farms, anyone who keeps a pet dog or cat should take steps to have the animals innoculated against rabies. The old saying about an ounce of prevention is readily applicable when it comes to rabies. ' editoriol poge JHE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK " wert bi | - smiley NO SENTIMENTALITY In theory, women are the sentimental sex, men the hard, unfeeling sex. In reality, this is pure horse...wait for it.....feathers. Underneath all the cooing and crooning and weeping, hidden behind the ah's and oh's and other symbols of maudlinity, women are about as sentimental as turtles: This is said in no disparaging sense. I detest sentimentality, though I have nothing against sentiment. Thus, I despise myself for being sentimental about things: old shoes, old hats, old hip waders, old houses, old cars, and even old ladies. There is nothing of this in my wife. Oh, she can get sentimental about the way I used to baby her, or the joy the children were before they grew up, or her school days in the one-room country school-house. In other words, figments of the imagination. But when it comes down to things I love and cherish, she's as sentimental as a meat-grinder. Just the other day, she threw out my golf shoes. I'd had them only twenty-one years. They were a size too big when I bought them, and my feet skidded around a bit inside them; the spikes were worn down to pimples, many missing. But they were old friends. I felt low for two days. She didn't turn a hair. This week, she made me buy a pair of dress shoes, black. I had a perfectly good pair of black shoes. As usual, I had worn them only to weddings and funerals for the first four years, then to work for the last three. They were good shoes. Cost me $22. But they weren't good enough, in her opinion, for some dam' fancy party we were going to. It didn't matter to her that they were comfortable (it takes about three years to break in a pair of shoes), still quite black when sufficient polish was applied, and only a few scuffs here and there, about the size of a thumbnail each. Out they went. Have you any idea what a pair of decent shoes cost these days? By George, they must be using humans for skins. Blacks for black shoes, brown people for brown shoes, and Scandinavians for white shoes. No animal hide, alive or dead, is worth what they're asking for a bit of leather. My old lady recently bought a collection of strings of leather that wouldn't make a animals. Have you bought a new car lately? Neither have we, but it's fairly new. Our last one cost $2,000 and was only five years old. It lasted over three years and was still valiantly breasting the waves of traffic on the highway. When I asked for prices on a new one, I turned red, then white, and had to be helped to a seat. Had the sales office not been so magnificent, rather like the lobby of a bank, I think I should have, perhaps, vomited. There are more ways than one in which a car agency resembles a bank. Their interest rates are similar, though, to be fair, slightly lower than the eighteen-odd per cent our banks, those holiest of holies in our economy, gouge. Their salesmen are somewhat like those well-groomed young men at the bank, not exactly accountants, not managers, who guide you smoothly through a maze of figures and papers to the stony reality that there is no easy way out, no way to really save money, no way to beat inflation. There was one pleasant difference this time. The car salesman was a former student, Ernest Moreau, a craggy young man with a sense of humour, a sweetness of spirit, and a sense of the ridiculousness of things that was a charming change from the dull, humorless, unknowledgeable young men I've met in the bank lately. Yep, we've bought a car, new shoes, the works. And my wife showed no more sentiment over the old ones than she would have over last week's laundry. I wonder if she could discard an old, well-used man with the same equanimity. I fear so. medium-sized jock-strap. It was called a pair of shoes. It cost $85. They were made in Italy. Pm going to write the Pope. But I mustn't digress. Latest victim of my wife's complete lack of sentimentality about old and cherished things was our car. The Big Car, as my grandboys called it when they climbed, cramped, out of the pokey little Datsun their mother drove, and in which she carried a%ail of water to fill the leaking radiator every thirty-five miles. Those little fellows loved it. They didn't even notice the rust. It was a veritable playhouse, the Yellowbird, another pet name. They were at their happiest when we were steaming down the highway, crawling around my feet, pushing buttons, twisting dials. It was sheer bliss for them when they got everything going at once. A cold winter day. The air-conditioning turned to full cold with the fan on. Windshield wipers flying at top speed, and one kid pushing the window- wash button, the other punching buttons of the radio, turned to full volume, or trying to put on, simultaneously, the headlights and the emergency brake. Dp you think any of those good times, those tranquil moments, meant anything to my old lady. Not on your life. This week I bid a fond farewell to the Yellowbird, wiped away a surreptitous tear, and climbed into a new car she'd made me buy. No fun there for the kids. No air-condi- tioning to switch on suddenly, making Grandad's hair stand on end. It's a two- door, so no more playing with the locks and leaning against the door and watching Gran Bo out of her mind. Caged in, like little