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Return To Basics Apparently quite a few people are subconscious- ly seeking refuge from the complications and sophistication of this new age. More and more of our acquaintances are turning to the old skills which reqlired manual dexterity. One fellow said recently, "I'm going to get myself a piece of raw wood and make something from it right from scratch." He didn't much care what the final product would be, so long as it was made with his own two hands. The firms which sell hand tools for carpentry or mechanics are doing a thriving business. City dwellers and country people alike are finding a fresh kind of pleaspre in making furniture, refinishing rooms, tending gardens, knitting, crocheting, doing needlepoint - and dozens of other tasks that require patience and skill. One column which is carried regularly in the Crossroads section of this paper and offers patterns for needlework, brings in an average of 20 or more replies a week from all over Western Ontario. It's a healthy trend, fostered no doubt by the increasing availability of automated equipment for so many of the commonplace chores. Automatic washers, dishwashers, clothes dryers, power saws, and drills, cars which all but drive themselves...... all these gadgets have served to rob many of us of a sense of our own ability to achieve and the pride which comes only with the ability to do things on our own. Lucky-is-the man or woman who can approach retirement age with a backlog of interesting hobbies and skills. Those supposedly golden years can turn out to be pretty drab and boring if one has no interests other than a job to occupy mind and hand. ) -- Mount Forest Confederate Everyone Pays Everyone pays for shoplifting - from business- men who suffer lower profits and the consumers who must ultimately pay higher prices to cover the costs of the stolen merchandise. It is more important to remember, however, that shoplifting is stealing and stealing is a criminal act. If a shoplifter takes a $2. item from a store operating on a 10 per cent profit margin, the store must make up $20 in merchandise to re:coup that loss. If a $3. item is taken from a supermarket store operating on low margins of one percent the store must sell $300 in merchandise just to cover the cost of that one item. There are professional shoplifters who are skilled thieves using specialized techniques, but many are just members of the general public, solid citizens, who may be bored or may need to stretch their budgets. . Greater awareness of these problems can reduce the incidence of shoplifting. Citizens should be concerned about shoplifting, since everyone is affec- ted by price increases caused through.shopliffing. If consumers would get involved in incidents they saw in a store, instead of shaking their heads, complaining about the rising prices and walking away, perhaps the amount of merchandise lost to shoplifters witl decrease. Citizens don't have to accuse the person of shoplifting, but can alert the manager that they may have seen a person slip an article in his/her pocket. The manager can then monitor the '"'suspect" and either confirm suspicions or disprove them. By being attentive to the suspected shoplifter, the shoplifter may get cold feet and rush off before stealing the article. If he is only an average consumer, he will be flattered by the attention. By all chipping in, perhaps shoppers can keep price hikes through shoplifting from coming their way. -- Fort Erie Times Review bill CHRISTMAS ALREADY! Do you find it harder and harder each year to get revved up for Christmas? You have company. . When the advertising begins right after Thanksgiving. and the Santa Clauses become ubiquitous by mid-November, and the carols are mere cliches by mid-Decem- ber, it's hard to reach that peak of emotion that combines Christian joy for the birth of Christ and pagan revelry to, celebrate the equinox, by the time Christmas itself rolls around. : One of the trite remarks of modern life is that Christmas has become commercial- ized. But don't blame the merchants. Blame ourselves. We can call this a plastic age, but it is we who use the plastic, whether it be in the form of goods, ideas or entertainment. It is we who scurry madly through the stores, going slightly paranoid over the business of buying gifts for people who don't need them. It is we who eat and drink too much at Christmas, which, if the truth were told, should be a time of fasting and purification, until our heads were as light as our hearts. Wouldn't it be much more appropriate ITH . temper and anything else that lies around. There are quite a few of them. around. Today I drank a pint of water brewed in beating each other on the head with a couple of drumsticks. Real ones, not the turkey kind. It's one of their favourite games. However, as the hired man said in Lying a i 1/0. 4 f 5 ® . rd if, on Christmas Eve, instead of having people in for eggnog and goodies, we threw out that pagan image, the Christmas tree, turned off the lights, except for a candle or two, turned the furnace right off, and sat around in the cold and dark, transferring ourselves to a stable in Bethlehem on a winter night? No? Youdon't think much of that idea? Neither do I. It's like saying that in the face of the coming energy shortage we'should all blow up our cars, stop using hot water and deodorants, grow our own food in the back yard, and chop down all the trees in the park for firewood. Whether we like it or not, we are caught up in the headlong race of the human species towards it goal, whether it be suicide or glory. and there's no turning back. So get that tree up, buy a fat turkey, spoil your children rotten with an over- whelm of gifts, and stuff yourself silly as a Roman senator at an orgy. This year, we have our resident, or non-resident, guru, son Hugh. I don't know whether he'll be here for the Great Occasion or not, but in the meanwhile, he is stuffing me with exotic health foods and drinks to cure my rheumatism, 'flu, senility, bad something called "Devil's Claw." It tasted horrible, but it's supposed to cure my arthritis in three weeks. Tomorrow I start drinking a brew of eucalyptus, which is supposed to do some- thing else to me. Probably make me impotent, or a ferocious lover. My old lady and I almost gave up on Christmas this year. We thought of all the work to get ready and flinched. I suggested going south for a week to play some golf, letting our daughter and her brood take over our house, and have their Christmas here. She was all for it. Then we had The Boys for a week, and hastily revised our plans. We realized that if a week, we might as well put the house up for sale when we got Home, or set fire to it, if there was enough left standing to make a blaze. If it weren't for that mob, going away would have been easy, both physically and emotionally. I could enjoy Christmas dinner in a hotel in Texas just as much as I do at home, where I have to stuff the bird, mash the turnips and wash 8,000 dishes far into the night. I think I might just possibly be able to forego having te find a Christmas tree, dragging it in covered in snow, and spending four hours trying to get the dam' thing to stand upright. It would be a wrench, but I might even be able to stand not watching my grandboys rip the paper off 48 gifts and go right back to WIA 6 CARTE SHC AEs fd a rf i Tks for _ those two were allowed to run-unchecked for Robert Frost's poem of that name, 'Home is where, when you go there, they have to let youstay." And it looks as though that's the way my daughter feels. So we're stuck with the kids, and I'll be happy if I see the New Year without being on my hands and knees. With that wrapped up, there's nothing left to do but send my best wishes for the holiday season to all sorts of people, through this column. To my old friends in the newspaper business: hope you all got that big Christ- mas issue out without being hospitalized with total exhaustion. To my teaching colleagues everywhere: "hang in there; it's only six months until June. To the prime minister: dear Pierre, hope that other turkey doesn't turn up and spoil your Christmas. To all the people to whom we used to send Christmas cards: it's the thought that counts, and we think of you every six or eight months. To all those people who want a baby so badly: hope you get twins twice in the next Awo years. . To all those people who don't want a baby at all: hope you don't get pregnant, not even a little bit. And to all the people who bother to read this column at all, whether you agree or not, a merry, merry Christmas, with a special thanks to those who write. God bless us, one and all.