Reporter's Diary

Press, 27 August 1979, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Enviable WHILE New Zealand suffers, with most other countries, from having too little money, the state of Alaska is in the enviable position of having too much. Only three months ago, analysts forecast that Alaska would go broke in the mid-1980s. But the huge jump in world oil prices, state royalty payments and Prudhoe Bay oil production have combined to change the picture dramaically. Alaska will reap enough surplus income this year to pay all its bills — and then have enough left over to write each of its 400,000 residents a cheque for $2700. It is, observers say, an economic miracle. Eat your heart out,' Mr Muldoon. Looking back PARLOUS though the state of modern teachers and teaching may be, writes a St Albans reader, conditions have certainly improved in the last century. In 1872, she writes, the following rules for teachers were posted by the American Board of Education in the MidWest: “Each day, teachers will fill lamps and clean the chimney. Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session. Male teachers may take _one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly. After 10 hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books. Women teachers who marry or engaae in unseemly conduct will be dismissed. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor

in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, honesty and integrity. The teacher who performs his labour faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of 25c. per week in his pay, provided the board approves.” Wet

PERRIER, the famous bottler of mineral water, has a new competitor — New York City tap water. The water drunk daily by millions of satisfied New Yorkers now comes in bottles, at a hefty $2.50 a bottle, more than a sixpack of beer or a bottle of cheap wine. Macy’s, which is. selling the water, say it expects the customers to pour in. But whether “celebrated New York water,” as the product is called, will put a damper on Perrier sales remains to be seen. After all, any New Yorker can now drink the city’s water simply by turning the tap on. But then again, it was not so long ago that one enterprising English businessman was doing a brisk business in canned London fog. Cooked his goose A GOLF-PLAYING doctor has paid a $5OO court fine for curing the persistent honking of a Canadian goose — permanently. Fellow golfers said the doctor attacked the goose with his club then strangled it to death on the seventeenth green of the exelusive Congressional Country Club near Washington last May. The golfers contended that the honkjng goose distracted

the doctor’s putting, but the doctor said his operation on the goose was a mercy killing as It was badly hurt by an approach shot. After killing the goose, the doctor admitted he had taken it home and cooked it. - Calling all ringers THE Christchurch Cathedral Society of Bellringers wants to hear from all its former members in the next few weeks who would like to attend the official opening of the new Cathedral bells at Labour Day week-end. The celebrations include a buffet dinner on the evening of October 20, and the official opening and dedication of the bells the next morning. Dr P. J. Perry, who is organising the event, says that there are several former members with whom the society has lost touch, and the official opening of the new bells would be an ideal opportunity for all members, past and present, to get together again. Some billets are available. Those interested should get in touch with Dr Perry at . 2 Everard Street, Christchurch 2, be-, fore the end of

Rhyme and reason ST LEONARD’S Church, Shoreditch, whose bells are immortalised in the “Oranges and Lemons” nursery rhyme, i§ trying to raise $500,000 to restore and adapt part of the building as a welfare and social centre. The church, last of several on the same site, was built between 1736 and 1740 by George Dance the Elder. As a matter of interest, he caused so much trouble during its construction by employing Irish labour at cut rates that soldiers from the Tower of London had to be called in to quell rioters. Out of place? A READER who has a penchant for browsing through the second-hand books at jumbo sales and goodwill stores got a surprise the other day. He was thumbing through some elderly volumes at a church bazaar when he came across a copy of the “Kama Sutra” — and bought it. He says he is building up a collection of Eastern literature.