PAGE 4, THE HERALD, Monday, October 24, 1977 {the herald) . Published by Sterling Publishers General Offlee - 635-6357 Circulation (Terrace) - 635-6357 (Kitinvat) - 632-6209 PUBLISHER... W.R. (BILL) LOISELLE MANAGING EDITOR... STU DUCKLOW Published every weekday at 3212 Kalum St. Terrace &.C. A member of Varified Circulation. Authorized 3 second class mall. Registration number 1201. Postage pale « cash, return postage guaranised. NOTE OF COPYRIGHT The Herald retains full, complete and sole copyright in any advertisement produced and-or any: editorial ar photographic content published In the Herald. Reproduction i het permitted withoul the written permissien of the r. \ ews! Illegal strikes. are bad tactics It’s a good thing Mr. and Mrs. in California don’t read B.C. newspapers. They’re the people Vancouver Island businessmen are banking on to drive up here in thei mobile liesure home, cross the watérs on B.C. Ferries and spend all their loot shopping in quaint Victoria before heading north to fish for salmon. But, after looking at the headlines lately, we wouldn’t be surprised if the Jones family stayed home this summer, where it's safer. It would be quite reasonable for them to assume B.C.’s political climate is a bit too hostile at the moment to permit the saf vacation trips the Joneses like to have each summer, like getting away from it all by bringing it all with them. B.C, Ferries workers took a job action for a perfectly legitimtae reason: who want's to work endless 11-hour days before aacumulating the hours necessary to get paid overtime. ' But by going on strike against the law, the union onl: aroused the anger of the present government, whic responded with force, drafting legislation which will limit the rights of all public sector employees to strike. Now labor leaders are advocating a tourist boycott of Victoria, a measure that may prove highly effective if the boycott is advocated in the newsletter of unions with American members. This action was taken in retaliation for the suit by Van- couver Island businessmen against ferry workers for shutting down the ferries for a week earlier this month. The labor action has horrified the Victoria Chamber of Commerce, which says the poor little businessmen are only exercising their legal rights. We would suggest the proper party to sue would be the tried to stick their em- ployees with a contract no union member in his right mind would accept. But the corporation can hardly be hald liable B.C. Ferries Corportation whic for lost business when its employees walk off the job illegally, so the B.C, Ferry and Marine Workers Union has - itself in a fine kettle of fish. Not only do they face legal acion, but their walkout has sparked repressive legislation which will weaken the position of many governments employees in future negotiations, Further by encouraging a boycott, the union is cutting its own throat. Though most employees directly involved in the tourist trade are not union members, tourist dollars indirectly benefit everyone in the province, And by their strike action, the union has helped build public resentment against all public employees. All together, it was bad tactics. Today in history . Oct. 24, 1977 that the crawly creatures are a Could be used in city dumps KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP) — Mary Appelhof is a rancher. Her animals are housed in a 50-foot pit and eat their weight in garbage every day. For five years, Ms. Appelhof and her partner, Ida Wissman, have been raising and selling worms. The worm ranch is just one part of Flowerfield' Enterprises, th business they run under the philosophy that “less is more.” The partners operate a small printing press, publish a directory of women-owned businesses across the United States and distribute their own design for free-standin bookshelves— with a littl photography, weaving, carpentry and free-lance writing thrown in for good measure. “It's the same strategy used by multinational corporations," said Ms. Appelhof. “Diversify— if one thing goes, you have the others to fall back on.” Still, she added: ‘‘We hope that the worms are going to support us.” Talk to her about worms, and before long she'll have you believing e potential answer to everything from urban garbage disposal to the world food shortage and crop fertilization. BEGAN EXPERIMENTING Trained as a biologist, she first became interested in alternative technologies after hearing ecologist Barry Commoner speak on the environment. Later, after reading an ad about worm-farming in an organic-growing magazine, She and her partner sent for their first batch of night ¢rawlers. After following standard worm- growing procedure—feeding th creatures a mix of grain and manure—the two began ex- perimenting. “In light of the impending food crisis, it just didn’t make sense to be eeding grain by the ton to raise « worms for bait,” she said. “What did make sense is to let the worms do what they are good at— turning garbage into a rich marketable substance.” She stooped over the 18-inchdeep wortn pit in her backyard, turning over a shovelful of its contents to reveal thousands of writhing worms and the remnants of the household's é th 3 a” : Lowly wormturns garbage to gold organic garbage—fruit anc vegetable peels, eggshells, paper. CASTINGS VALUABLE ; The worms eat the waste so fast there’s no time for it to decay. Taking up a handful of worms and earth, she added: “This isn’t dirt-~ it’s worm castings (droppings), very valuable.”’ The castings are high in soil nutrients. j “You ought to be able to get a ton of worms to eat a ton of garbage a day. If you can do that, there’s really no reason why you can't have worms handling municipal organic garbage on a massive scale.” The worm farm of the future, she said, is a multi-storeyed structure of stacked wooden boxes, each capable of housing about 15,000 worms. “We'll start with four boxes in the basement this fall,” she said. Since worms breed at an astonishing rate, she figures by next June to have 128 " boxes stacked in her basement and at “corporate headquarters,” a garage in Flowerfield, the town southwest of Kalamazoo which gave the business its name. oe tate = a: wed many a creek Heavy weekend rains overflo And they didn’t eat worms either of Halloween CHICAGO (AP) — If ever there was a holiday with a split personality, it’s Halloween. Though it was the Christians who designated the Oct, 31 date All Hallow’s Eve, or “eve of the holy ones’ day,’’ in prelude to their Nov. 1 All Saints’ Day, it was earlier pagan peoples who gave the annual holiday -the sinister meaning and traditions it still holds. The Celts first chose the date as their new year’s eve and originally intended it as a‘ celebration of everything wicked, evil and dead, says the World Book En- cyclopedia. They believed that paying homage to Samhain, their lord of death, allowed the souls of » the dead to return to their earthly homes for that one evening only. The Celts would gather around a community bonfire and offer as sacrifice their animals, their crops, and sometimes themselves. Wearing costumes made from the heads and skins of animals, they would tell one another’s fortunes for the , coming year. CAKE FORETOLD FUTURE Later, this Halloween " fortunetelling would involve baking a coin, a ring, and a’ thimble in a cake. The... person who found the coin would become rich. The one whe found the ring would soon marry. And the one who got the thimble would be destined to remain single. ' however, co The celebration remained much the same after the Ro- mans conquered the Celts around 45 AD. The Romans offered a ceremony honoring their goddess of fruit and trees and thus the association with apples and the custom of bobbing for them. Even after the Christians tried to change the meaning of Halloween, the Irish still paraded about in costumes, begging for food. The Scots still marched with their torches, in hopes of driving away witches and evil spirits. And the Welsh still threw a marked stone into a huge fire, believing that if their stone was missing the next day, they wouldn’t live to see the next Halloween. The Irish and English first carved vegetables into jack- olanterns, naming them after a legendary character who, the story goes, was refused entry into heaven because he had played tricks on the devil. Jack, it seems, was forced to carry his lantern and walk the earth until Judgment Day. Many of these traditions still exist. Youngsters still dress in costumes and go trick-or-treating—begging, in a sense, for food while promising to refrain from evil deeds. And, too, they still light their candles, al- though much smaller than a — torel‘dnd plate them inside“ their pumpkins; °-- .- . Although few people still believe that the ghosts of the dead roam the earth or that all witches meet on this one evening, most of the early symbols of Halloween siill exist. Early birds were six-foot reptiles with feathers SALISBURY (Reuter) — A chance find by a group of schoolboys started a chain of research and discovery that suggests.to one Rhodesian scientist that some dinosaurs of 200million years ago had feathers and may be the ancestors of today’s birds. Most experts believe the dinosaurs and their leathery- 18metres (six feet) from the tip of its tail to the end of its cone-shaped mouth. : FOUND NEAR STREAM Syntarsus evidently lived and hunted in desert areas towards the end of the Triassic age, which began 225million years ago and lasted 32million years. The first fossilized skeleton was found, immaculately The United Nations was created 32 years ago today— in 1945. The Moscow Declaration of Oct. 30, 1943, issued by the U.8., Great Britain, China and the U.S.S.R., declared the need of an international body to replace the League of Nations and at the Dum- barton Oaks Conference in 1944, the same countries drafted proposals for a UN charter. The charter was signed in June, 1945, and ratified by the required number of countries by Oct. 24. The General Assembly and Security Council held their first metings in ERMAN January, 1946. 1632—Anton Von Leeuwenhoek, Dutch pioneer in the use of microscopes, was born. 1788--Sarah J. B. Hale, author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, was born. 1926--Charles M. Russell, American painter of western scenes, died. 1926—The first successful beam system of wireless transmission to Englanc was inaugurated at Mon- treal. 1945—Viet Nam was established in French In- dochina. O97? Uinirersal Pree Syndicat | af wWf/ry “Whaddyer want for supper, fish or meat?’ winged cousins, the flying pterodactyls, disappeared 65million years ago without leaving descendants. Birds and crocodiles of today were judged to have evolved 250million years ago but to have followed their own evolutionary path. But 13 years of research by Mike Raath, executive national museums and monuments, has con- vinced him that the birds in fact evolved from the dinosaur director 0 line 50million years later. He bases this belief on a creature called syntarsus, a species of small dinosaur of the coelurosaurian family. Syntarsus has so far been found only in Rhodesia. It measures about 75 centimetres (20 inches) high and preserved apart from the head and neck, in soft sandstone in the bank of a stream near Bulawayo by a group of boys from a school archeological club. Raath, teaching biology at the school, excavated the fossil. “The creature was preserved in the position in which it had died 200 million years ago,” he said. ‘It even retained in its stomach the remains of its last meal, a small ver- tebrate of lizard size. So we knew it was a flesh-eater. Business spotlight “We cannot yet tell “By reconstructing the skeleton we found it was well-built for speed and had grasping hands with sharp claws. or sure, but studies lead to the con- clusion it was feathered, was very close to the line of an- Vacant hotels can’t raise rates VANCOUVER (CP) ~ Efforts by downtown city hotels to attract more business this year by not raising room rates has not increased profits, several hotel owners say. The hotel business suffered in 1976 from low occupancy percentages and part of the blame was put on Vancouver’s internatior reputation of being a high-price area for accommodation. Several major hotels decided to counter that particular image by holding 1977 room rates at the previous year’s level, but higher operating costs have resulted in little growth in revenues. “Last year was such a disastrous year that no one had the nerve to raise rates this year,"’ Morris Wosk, president of the Blue Horizon Hotel, said in a recent interview. ‘I guess everyone figured half a loaf is better than none,’ Arthur Oades, manager of the Bayshore Inn, said the profit picture for hotel operators is “as bad as ever” and there has been '‘no major improvement in revenue or sales.” - Oades said that this ummer’s occupancy rate of over 80 per cent was better than last summer's, although it was far from the normal summer levels of 95 or more per cent. PEAK MONTHS t 4 uly and August are supposed to be the best months for the business in British Columbia. Laventhol and Horwath, a management consulting firm, said the average July occupancy rate here was 71 per cent, about five per cent higher than the previous year in July. The occupancy rate was 61 per cent through September, about the same as the percentage for the same period last year, While profitability depend largely on mortgage arrangements, hotel character and staff con centration; hote] owners generally agree that profits cannot be obtained until room occupancy reaches 70 per cent. Peter Martin, manager of the Four Seasons, said his hotel’s oc- cupancy rate was slightly higher than the average—abaout 76 percent. He said his hotel experienced a good summer after a slow market earlier in the year. hotel , Four Seasons’ business also was temporarily helped by a five-week strike this summer at Hotel Van- couver, David Henton, manager of the Hyatt Regency, said ali hotels here have been hurt by a recent United States law restricting the number of conventions and amounts of money apent outside the U.S. The Hyatt Regency and the: Bayshore Inn each have had can- cellation of four major conventions. Eleven conventions have pulled out of the Harrison Hot Springs Hotel in the Fraser Valley east of here and numerous others have cancelled at other hotels. The effect of the cancellations won't be felt until next year, but some say the 1977 conventior business here will still top last year’s by 15 per cent. The void created by U.S. con- vention cancellations has hotels scrambling for new business. The ratio of U.S. and Canadian group bookings now is balanced in favor of domestic ones and the tour business has become “really cut-throat,” said one manager. who was then eestry of the birds and that the birds therefore are direct descendants of one particular group of dinosaurs. i “ve are saying it was not a bird but a dinosaur with leathers.”’ PROVIDED INSULATION He said he believes feathers evolved long before the ability to fly. “The principal role of feathers is not to allow a bird to fly but to give it a blanket to keep its body tem- perature up on cold days and to stop it rising too high on hot ys,"” Raath said it has been widely accepted that a creature called archaeopteryx, whose fossilized’ remains are preserved in European museums, was the first bird, Fossils show it had feathers. “We know that archaeopteryx was alive about 150million years ago, syntarsus about 200million years ago,” _Raath said syntarsus was too far back for a definite, direct link with the birds to be established, But he believed the discovery of the species was probably as close to the link as would be found. In July, 1972, at a remote spot in the Zambesi River valley of northern Rhodesia, Raath found “what locked like a syntarsus graveyard.” : Frozen into a rock face were hundreds of bones from which it has been possible to Piece together 26 individuals s far, all complete, down to the smallest bone. . BONES WELL PRESERVED “We've got skulls, we've got necks, we've got adults, we've got young, we've got males, we've got females— we've got a complete community.” He said he had been able to trace the channels of blood vessels and nerves and to have brain casts. 'The ‘bones were better preserved than those of a chicken dissected at a Sunday, lunch because there the roasting distorts the ape. The find, he said, confirmed that syntarsus moved on two rags, fad extremely powerful muscles and congregated, in But there is no visible evidencof feathers. The embracing rock was teo coarse to provide any clear imprint. “There is strong evidence that the animals were warm- bloaded,” Raath said. “We get this from sectioning the hone, looking at it under the microscope, judging the degree of blood supply within the bone tissue and comparing that with the degree of blood supply in bone tissues throughout the vertebrate kingdom. ~ You'll find that warmblooded animals—the birds and the mammals only—have an extremely rich blood supply in the bone tissue, . “'The conclusion is that here is a warm-blooded animal, with a high pattern of activity, which is insulated. The means of insulation, by deduction, must have been feathers.” In London, several paleontologists said Raath was making too many assumptions. Barry Cox of Kings College, London, said blood tem- perature could not be judged from bone sections, only the amount of blood. He also wondered why an active desert- dwelling animal would need warm blood, feathers or any insulation at all. ;