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Page 4, Terrace Bay-Schreiber News, Wednesday, February 19, 1986 The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by: Laurentian Publishing Co. Ltd., Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ontario, POT 2W0. Telephone: (807) 825-3747. Tage Single copies 35 cents © Subscription rates per year ; in-town -- $14.00 5 ; EBUOR. 2 go a eee Se eS Conrad Felber out-of-town -- $18.00 ADVERTISING (3s eee a Gigi Dequanne Member of Ontario Community GEIGER , See ag Gayle Fournier Newspapers Association and The & PRODUCTION MANAGER................................ WBE Bins, noon reonniy Hevesoanete : Nag Mere Dee Zig wa 4 Se Now or never As explained in a story which appeared in last week's issue of the Terrace Bay-Schreiber News, there is very little possibility that roller coasters will appear on the Slate Islands in the near or distant future. However, with the a Public Review stage of the Slate Islands Management Plan : now on, just about anything is possible if enough people ask for it. This is, of course, not to suggest that a full scale amuse- ment park would be a good thing for the Provincial Park, located in Lake Superior just a few miles south of Ter- race Bay. But a number of notions that have cropped up, like hiking trails on the islands, possess some merit and should be supported. There is still time to submit comments or complete briefs to the local office of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and all area residents who have the slightest interest in the future of the park are encouraged to consider handing in their opinions in whatever form by the deadline, March da There will be another opportunity for public input later this year, but by then the Ministry will have prepared a Preliminary Management Plan. Now is the time to speak your mind, even if it's merely to support one of the three different Option Plans the Ministry has available today. So head down to the MNR office in Terrace Bay and pick up a Comment Sheet. It's the least you can do. To quote a line from that old song, "It's now or never." Do a EZ) ry, Z < £4 SAYA eA WILLS LAL. "AND How LONG HAVE YOU HAD THE . | FEELING THE MEDIA ARE OUT JO GET you?" it today. Unemployment. Good _ ol" Employmentus Interruptus. It's something most of us don't even think about until it hits home in some per- sonal way. Of course, even if the worst does happen, one can always fall back on Unemployment In- surance. However, there's a problem. . The government has finally realiz- .ed that there are just too many peo- ple on unemployment benefits and are Starting to augment eligibility re- quirements. I agree that far too much money is being handed out, but the government's response to the situa- tion is incorrect. I have found, from extensive ex- perience, that it is far too easy to stay on UI (Unemployment Insurance) once you 're.on it, That's probably the main cause of the problem right there. Why go out and look for a job when you are already receiving a:che- que every two weeks? Arthur Black The system may have changed slightly since I was last on unemploy- ment, but it is, no doubt, still set up ' the'same way. While I was on UI, all T had to do was fill out a very simple questionnaire and mail it in every week or two, and in return those nice cheques would just keep on comin' - in. The first things that should be done is to make those questions a little tougher. Instead of just asking '"'Did you look for week this week."' they should ask for a little more informa- tion, like *'Where did you look for a job this week?"' This may force the unemployed person to actually, like, go out and look for employment (horrors!) There should also be more one-to- one personal talks with those on benefits to find out what is going on in their job search. When I was on UI, I wasn't called in for months, and then when I was finally asked to give them an update, my benefits were almost used up. Is this anyway to run a railroad? Of course, this would all require more work by those now with Employment and Immigration, but I have an obvious solution. Hire a few unemployed people to take up the slack! I can't understand why this hasn't been suggested before. Isn't it a perfect idea! Speaking of perfect, that is something this newspaper is obvious- ly not..1 realize that a number of er- rors have sneaked their way into re- cent issues of this publication, and on behalf of the entire Terrace Bay-' Schreiber News staff,,I would like to extend my most sincere apologies with a promise that we'll try and do better. Now I guess you believe all I can do in this column is whine and com- plain. Not true, not true at all. In fact, I can sling a compliment with the best of °em, when I'm in the mood. Good thing, then, that I'm not in the mood this week. Of course, if I was in the mood, I'd praise the efforts of the Terrace Bay Post Office, especially the front counter clerks who do such a magnificent job in the face of troublemakers and big mouths like me. On top of that, they have to deal with the general incompetence that exists at other Post: Offices. It makes me glad I work here at'the News instead! Next on my Homage List would be Terrace Bay clerk-coordinator Larry Simons, who just happens to be one of the finest town clerks I have ever run across. Although I don't know him as well, } would also have to mention. the excellent. work and dedication. of the clerk in Schreiber, Aurel Gauthier. But, hey. A column of commen- dations would just reek of kickbacks, So it is best, perhaps, that I avoid do- _ ing one. After all, I wouldn't want _you readers to think that there is anything but a gruff interior to this gruff exterior. Bye! (P.S. to Larry: You can send your cheque with the others directly to me, care of the paper. And make it snappy!) ; The Beat Generation 's ideas live on 'Bob Kaufman dies last! week and man, does that make me feel old. Not because I grew up with Kauf- man or anything. And not because | studied his work or admired his life. As a matter of fact, I'd never heard of Bob Kaufman until I came across the few brief-lines of his obituary in The Globe and Mail last Tuesday. It told me that he'd died in San Fran- cisco at the age of 60. From em- physema. It called him a minor American poet and: author. Ex- ceedingly minor, as near as I could make out. Kaufman wrote a book called Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness back in 1965; then another called~Golden Sardine two years later. Finally, he put out a book call- ed The Ancient Rain about five years ago. I'd never heard of any of them -- and neither had the local branch of the library. But there was one small aside in his death notice that caught my eye. It said that Bob Kautman was the per- son who inspired the word "'beatnik."". Holy smoke. Beatnik. I hadn't thought of that word in years. There was.a time when the word was as common as... well, punk or new wave is today. It was first coined back in the late fifties by a famous American newspaper..columnist,- Herb Caen. Caen was casting around for a word to describe a whole new social class that had sprung up in the Greenwich Village area of New York, and, almost simultaneously, in parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The new group was a loose coalition of poets and painters and actors and musicians who didn't much care for the Norman Rockwellian world of Dwight Eisenhower and-suburbia and grey flannel suitism... or in fact, for most manifestations of Western culture, ~ dress and behavior as they found it. These new rebels affected cryptic speech patterns, sunglasses, berets and black turtlenecks. They hung out _in obscure coffeehouses featuring poetry that didn't rhyme, bongo music that didn't go anywhere and in- direct lighting via candles jammed in Chianti bottles. They called themselves members of the "Beat"' generation -- beat as in 'beatific' which is to say, blessed. The society that they rejected-was less kind. It saw the Beats as kooks and weirdos and misfits and bums. My guess is that columnist Caen did too. He managed to connect them to another unsettling phenomenon of the late fifties -- the utterly unexpected ascendancy of the USSR in the Space Race. Out of nowhere the Russians had suddenly begun lofting satellites -- Sputniks they called them -- into or- bit around the earth. Caen took the term 'sputnik' and 'beat,' did a little journalistic spot welding and'came up . with. 'beatnik.' It caught on. By pure chance, Caen saw Bob Kaufman at a poetry reading the night he coined the word. Kaufman became the world's first beatnik. And that was about as famous as Kaufman was going to be. Although he had friends __who became THE famous beatniks -- * Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to name two -- Kaufman would never become a household word: Sull, Bob Kaufman could serve as a kindof metaphor for. the Beat Movement. Like Kaufman, it gradually dissolved into obscurity and meaninglessness. Kerouac became a cranky recluse wathcing daytime TV soaps in his» mother's house in Florida. Ginsberg became an increas- ingly shrill Protestor-Of-All-Trades. Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened a bookstore. William Burroughs became a junkie. '*Beat" disappeared up increasingly obscure tributaries of free form improvisational '*happen- ings" that meant less and less to fewer and fewer. But a lot of movements grew out, of that beatific compost -- Pop Art, Op Art and Camp to name a few. In the coffeehouses, folk and jazz musi- cians took over from the bongo drum- mers, and somewhere in that steamy mulch the protest movement -- Civil Rights and all that -- took root and flourished. We owe all sorts of taken for granted things to the obscure American poet who died last week. We can indirectly thank Bob Kauf- - man for Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan; for the march in Selma and the Kent State shootings. We owe him for songs like "The Masters of War" and "'Satisfaction,"' for Woodstock and Altamont; for Wavy: Gravy and Sherriff Bull Connors; for Timothy Leary and Sen. S. I. Hayakawa. The thing is, Beat begat Beatnik which begat Hip which led to Hippies and Yippies and Rockers and Punk and New Wave and whatever's just around the corner. : And Bob Kaufman, 1926-1986, was the very first beatnik of all. Like, as we used to say in Bob's day... Wow, man. Win aidetaaes lds ee ee ete eer ee