Newspapers / The Pilot (Southern Pines, … / May 28, 1969, edition 1 / Page 7
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tc The Great Pumpkin ■LOT “In taking over The Pilot no changes are contemplated. We will try to keep this a good paper. We will try to make a little money for all concerned. Wherever there ^ms to be an occasion to use our influence for the public good we will try to do it. And we will treat everybody alike.” — James Boyd, May 23, 1941. Sex And John Birch The State Medical Society, meet ing in Pinehurst last week, wisely re.iected a resolution from a Nash- Edgecombe group to condemn sex education in the schools and demand that it be halted. Revelations in recent days that the campai^ against such education in the public schools is the current number one attack of the John Birch Society should make all professional organizations and other groups wary of such resolutions. The John Birch Society is notor ious for its use of underhanded and ugly methods in attacking ideas with which it does not agree. Recently the National Education Association in its publication, NEA Reporter, said: “Attacks by extre mist organizations on family life and sex education courses are disrupting the schools and educational climate . . . The usual extremist tactics of abusive phone calls to school boards and school personnel and of factually inaccurate and sensational material flooding the community are being employed to condemn sex education courses.” The John Birch Society beheyes that an end justifies any means, and in this campaign it is again wav ing the old tattered banner of com munism, as well as using half-truths and utterly false statements to create a climate of confusion and distrust. Of course there should be sex edu cation in the homes. But in too many homes there is none, and there is no reason that school education cannot supplement that given by parents. These courses have been well thought out and planned and are conducted by experienced teachers. It has long been recognized by thoughtful par ents and educators that sex educa tion, presented objectively and scien tifically, is needed. Educators have simply sought to meet an overwhelm ing demand from parents, and the sensational and scare tactics of the John Birchers are a disservice to schools and parents. The truth of the matter is that young people are going to get sex education in one way or another. The only question is whether they will get it in the classroom or in the back alleys. Fearing The Fire North Carolina legislators are not likely any time soon to repeat the mistake made in 1965 of passing another ill - considered speaker ban law. There wasn’t even much argument last week when it unanimously killed a new speaker ban bill proposed by Rep. J. F. Mohn of Onslow County. Higher education in North Caro lina was seriously threatened by the hastily passed ban bill in the closing days of the 1965 session. It stirred up furies that need not have been stirred up, and our colleges and uni versities faced the loss of accredita tion as well as highly qualified facul ty members. After much travail, the law was changed so that it could be made workable. The courts, of course, ruled the law unconstitutional. The Mohn bill was even more stringent than the ndtorous 1965 law, and the House Education Committee showed good sense in killing it out right. There are other bills still pending, however, that are equally unneces sary and whose enactment would do more harm than good. We are refer ring specifically to the Watkins bill which seriously threatens the rights of free speech and assembly on college campuses. Even though well intentioned, this bill would likely not stand a constitutional test, but could well stir a furore that would serve no good purpose. Adequate laws for covering campus disruptions are already in effect. All they need is enforcement. And the Governor of the State and college and university administrators have demonstrated that they intend to en force them. Burnt children fear the fire, and a legislature burned in 1965 is show ing signs of keeping arm’s distance from another speaker ban fire. Why Not Why Not On a recent Sunday the Why Not Memorial Associaition, made up of former students of the old Why Not Academy, met on the academy grounds for a reunion and work on the old cemetery. Maintenance of the cemetery is one of the chief functions of the association, but it also provided an opportunity for a get-together and reminiscing of former times. There’s not much left of the town of Why Not in Randolph County, but it is wonderful that the association is keeping the name alive. A name like that should not be allowed to die: 'There’s a good story about how the community near Seagrove came to be called Why Not. There are probably other versions, but accord ing to the story we have, it seems that when the community had grown to sufficient size to warrant giving it a name, a meeting was held for that purpose. But nobody could agree on a name. There were suggestions The Pilot Published Every Wednesday By The Pilot. Incorporated Southern Pines. North Carolina Wednesday, May 28, 1969 of Why Not name it this and Why Not name it that. After several hours of such whynots, one gentle man arose and said. Why not name it Why Not? By that time every body was tired and sleeply, so they agreed. And that, as the story goes, is how Why Not was born. And we are pleased that the memorial as sociation is still around to remind us of Why Not. ABadBiU Sam Ragan Katharine Boyd C. Benedict Julia Horner Editor and Publisher Contributing Editor Managing Editor Woman’s Editor Mary Evelyn de Nissoff PinehUrst Editor Charles Weatherspoon Advertising Mgr. Whitmell Coffey Advertising Asst. Mary Scott Newton Office Manager Frances M. Irby Business Asst. Michael Valen Production Manager Composing Room: Dixie B. Ray, James E. Pate, Thomas H. Mattocks, Alexander Noell, Glenn M. Sides. Member National Newspaper Association and N. C. Press Association. Subscription Rates Moore County: One Year . . $5.00. Six Months . . $3.00. Three Months . . $1.65. Outside Moore County: One Year .. $6.00. Six Months .. $3.50. Three Months .. $1.75. Send Change of Address to The Pilot, Bbx 58, Southern Pines, N. C. 28387. No person should go to his death or to long imprisonment on the word of an anonymous accuser. That is why a bill before the Leg islature to forbid the publication or broadcasting of the names of rape victims should not be passed. Moreover, it is a bad practice to deny public access to matters of legal record. There are grave dangers in such secrecy. A man’s life or liberty is at stake in such cases, and he should not go to the gas chamber or a. prison cell on the strength of state ments by a nameless person. This is a bad bill and should not be enacted into law in North Car olina. Briefly Speaking Soft drink bottlers and gasoline companies would be on sounder ground in opposing taxes on their products if they were not constantly putting in hefty price increases be fore taxes are even discussed and then adding an extra mark-up for profits after taxes are levied. All silver will soon be gone from all coins and a substitute metal will be used. In other words, we are re placing the jingle with a jangle. W’e’ve always heard that what you don’t know won’t hurt you. But, as the fellow says, it won’t help you very much either. Italians are serious about their wine, so when 2.76 million gallons being held as evidence in a conspiracy case was discovered to have turned into water, the police didn’t marvel at a miracle but exclaimed pointedly and simply, “Fantastico.” GLENN TUCKER'S BOOK By THAD STEM, JR. This writer has maintained, all of his professional life, that terms such as “good” or “bad” books are impertinent. Rather more, there are well-written and poorly-written books. A good writer can endow a brass doorknob with effervescence. One less gifted would botch the Grand Canyon if he were, the sole eye-witness to its cre ation. Glenn Tucker, of Fairview, N. C., and Major James Jac obs have just written a fascin ating book, “The, War of 1812.” (Hawthorn, $6.95, 201 pages). This book lies somewhere be tween the psychological por traiture of Gamaliel Bradford and the multifarious details of Douglas Southall Freeman. In ner men are exposed and re vealed, but no one is couched. Dramas are, revitalized in sharp colors, but the reader isn’t choked with walk-on ap pearances and bramble bush foot-notes. The sense of time, place, people, event and geography recalls the splendid coherence and vibrance of the historical novels of the late James Boyd. Of course, war is a horrible, subject, and the one in 1812- 1814 was almost as stupid as Vietnam. But if the subject is war, the characters are people, and the text is delightful. The text is “charming,” if charm and war may be wed, via shot-gun and without benefit of clergy. It was a naval war, basical ly, and anyone who has any interest in ships will be cap tivated. For, in an extraordin ary way. Tucker and Jacobs have taken a musty museum and put great, white sails on it. On land, as well as on sea, the authors have reactivated human and physical geogra phy. For instance, the material relative to our northwest, were it shorn of the triumphs of Oliver Perry and William Henry Harrison, adds immeas urably to any reader’s know ledge, his feel, and his under standing of a vast stretch of earth and water, In short, this is a hell of a good book. Glenn Tucker, one of Amer ica’s truly eminent historians, and his lovely swinging wife, Dorothy, moved to our moun tains twenty years ago. In the interim, Glenn has written ten books, and there is a triumph On every page. Dorothy Tuck er exudes so much of loving gooodness one thanks her merely for existing. We prattle incessantly about the industries that come to our state. We mouth big statistics, but we should be ringing bells for such marvelous additions as the Tuckers. Samuel John son anticipated the Tuckers when' he wrote: “The best part of every good author is in gen eral to be found in his book, I assure you.” Unfortunately, one, of our unending national hang-ups is that we have not yet come to understand Mo hammed’s maxim, in “Tribute To Reason:” “The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the, blood of the martyr.” It Says Here The Week's Best Quotes “Robert Frost used to say when people asked him to ex plain a poem, ‘You mean you want me to tell it to you again in worse English?”—Mary Jar rell in the, Greensboro Daily News. “Initially, nudity had a cer tain shock effect and has been rewarded with a great deal of publicity. However, repetition of nudity is bound to reduce both shock effects and public ity. Soon nudity may be greet ed with a yawn. “Let’s hope filmmakers get Gone Are The Days • • • From The PUot's Files FORTY YEARS AGO Neil S. Blue of Raeford has never given in to the automobile and still prefers to do his traveling behind the certain safety of a horse. For years he has bought his buggies from the Tyson and Jones Buggy Co., in Carthage and the last one that company will ever make has been delivered to him. That delivery should have been an event marked with ceremony for it brought an end to a one time lucrative and thrilling business. More than that, it was a gesture of defiance to the panting speed of the machine age. « Now showing at the Dixie T:heatre in Aberdeen — Tom Mix in King Cowboy, Tom Mix’s latest. Tom Mix in Africa. A wonderful story of America’s greatest cowboy and his horse, Tony, in some thrilling adventures with Arab tribes men halfway across the world. * « « « TWENTY YEARS AGO John A. Phillips, 63, mayor of Cameron, died suddenly of a heart attack at noon Saturday at his farm near Cameron. * * * Ht Commendation for improvements in school buildings of the County and a knock for incarcerating the insane and the ill in the County jail were included in the grand jury report submitted to Judge H. Bobbitt, Wednesday. One insane person and one tubercular person were found lodged in the jail and the grand jury requested their removal. * * • * TEN YEARS AGO A Washington, D. C., disc jockey has been playing a record extolling the virtues of Southern Pines for several days and reportedly is attracting wide attention with it. The disc jockey’s name is Jim Meyers and he is with radio station WTOP. He plays the piano on the record and his wife, known professionally as Ruby Lee, is vocalist. It is understood here that Meyers wrote the music and his wife the lyrics. Both were originally from North Carolina. * at * Now showing at the Starview Drive-In Theatre — From Here To Eternity starring Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift. off the nudity and ‘ultimate’ sex kicks. Apart from any con sideration of morality and public policy, they are self- defeating so far as screen en tertainment is concerned.”— Martin Quigley Jr., in Motion Picture Daily. “Grow up and shut up!” “I want to make, one point clear. This business of free speech has not been invented in the last five years. People have, been arguing and dying for freedom of speech for a great deal longer than that. “There are a lot of people who believe in it very strong ly. I know I do. “But freedom is not license. You can destroy freedom as successfully by making a mockery of it as you can by repression.”—Prince Philip to hissing students at Edinburgh University as quoted by UPI. “Once you realize that every time you say ‘is’ you tell a lie, you begin to think less of a thing’s identity and more of its function. I find it much harder to be, dishonest now.” —Dr. David Bourland in dis cussing his new “E-prime” language which abolishes all forms of the verb “to be,” as quoted by Time magazine. “We don’t quite know what to do about the brides. . . who have their sisters for honor attendance and wear dresses covered with sequences and proudly display rings that are Tiffy settings in solitaire. “Just between you and I, we might as well go along with the ‘un-rules’ don’t use no double negatives. . . when dangling watch your participles.”—Rose Holder in the Greensboro Daily News. “I’ve seen more real sorrow here than when I was in the undertakin’ business burying human beings. . . I’d like to have a quarter for every wife who ordered cheap funerals for their husbands.”—S. Al bert Nash, owner of a Mary land pet cemetery, quoted by Frank Tucci in The Fayette ville Observer. “If you can’t tell at a glance whether the character is a girl or a boy, the British have a word for it—shim. A shim is either a she or a him. We have plenty of shims. . . in George town”—Betty Beale in The News and Observer. —M.R. ’.I White Sails On Musty Museum ■ By SAM'RAGAN We were especially pleased with the North Carolina Awards this year. This is the highest honor the State can confer upon a citizen for creative achievement, and the recipients this year — Dr. Kenneth M. Brinkhous of Chapel Hill in science, Mrs. May Gordon Latham Kel- lenger of Greensboro in public service, Ovid W. Pierce of Halifax in literature and Charles W. Stanford Jr., in fine arts — are worthy of this honor. We were present for the awards dinner at the Sir Wal ter and the reception that followed at the Governor’s Mansion last Wednesday night. People from all over the State — some 450 of them — were present to pay honor to the recipients. Mr. Kellenger was the leader behind the restoration of Tryon’s Palace in New Bern, Dr. Brinkhous has won world-wide renown for his work as a pathologist, Charles Stanford was recognized for conceiving and establishing the first art gallery for the blind in the world at the State Museum in Raleigh, and Ovid Pierce for three fine novels set in North Carolina. Pierce, who teaches at East Carolina University in Greenville, spends his weekends and summers at his Plantation in Halifax County. Much of this summer will find him propped up against a pecan tree in his back yard, writing on a. new novel. The citation which was read last Wednesday night at the dinner called attention to “His series of nostalgic, beautifully written novels about Eastern North Carolina during the Civil War and Reconstruction.” His latest book \vas ‘The Devil’s Half,” of which one critic wrote, It strikes its roots firmly into Greek tragedy where hfe — or the Olympian Gods in another time and place — is the tyrant that destroys us all.” His first novel was “The Plantation,” which critics hailed as “a novel of— grace, style and quiet excellence” and a “novel about the South which avoids equally the old cliche of roman tic grandeur and the newer cliche of degeneracy and violence.” His second novel was “On a Lonesome Porch.” The citation says of his books, “They manifested a strong sense of the continuity in Southern life, a warm compassion for the problems of human beings, white and black, and a tender nostalgia for the past coupled with hope for the future . . . Ovid Pierce creates men and women who twist the hearts of his readers, but also inspire them to look forward.” Governor Scott placed around the neck of each re cipient a medal designed by the noted sculptor Paul Manship. Later each stood with the Governor and Mrs. Scott in a receiving line and received the congratula tions of several hundred fellow Tar Heels. It was a fine occasion, and as Bill Snider, the awards commission chairman, said, “it does honor to North Ca rolina” to make these awards. « He ^ Earlier in the week we were in Charlotte for “Harry Golden Day” at the University of North Carolina, and the 67-year-old author was in good spirits. Advance copies of his autobiography, “The Right Time,” were on display, and his publisher, William Targ, editor-in- chief of Putnam’s, was on hand. The book will be pub lished in mid-June. Several paid tribute to the writer and editor of The Carolina Israelite, and rec^led some of the things he advanced with wit and humor. The day was sponsored by the general faculty at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and attracted a good crowd from Mecklenburg and other parts of the State. Among those present was noted author LeGette Blythe, whose new novel, “Brothers of Vengeance,” will be com ing from Morrow in July, with all the looks of a best seller. H< H: H: H( “Picnic” is by Thad Stem Jr. of Oxford: I’ll be your guest And you’ll be my guest At a picnic in a glade, not bee-loud. Or quick with singing birds. We know a place that isn’t scarred With sound and scenic effects. Come along, and Let’s be bears finding honey. And squirrels nibbling erotic nuts. Let’s be birds and carry the whole sky Upon our backs. Come, hop to it, love: Let’s be lots of succulent knick-knacTcs, And some five-decker sandwiches, too. I tell you, now: We’ll nibble and devour Until hunger begets such ravenous glory The moon forgets to rise and shine. ■H * * * We get this observation about current women’s styles: They wear pants to make them look like boys and see- through blouses to prove they’re not. He H( H( » A few nights ago members of the General Assembly returned to its former home in the Capitol for a night of nostalgia and reminiscing. Among those who recalled other days was Secre tary of State Thad Eure, who told about the orators of the past. One sensational speaker was mentioned by Eure: “This fellow was going so strong one day that his uppers popped out of his mouth and landed in the aisle. He picked ’em up, wiped ’em off with his handkerchief and popped ’em back in and never missed a sentence.” * * * * When college students zipped to Zap for a beer bust on a recent weekend they put the little town in North Dakota on the map, but almost wiped it off with their hijinks while hoisting some 10,000 cases of beer. The town had liked the idea when a student newspaper editor suggested the descent on Zap. It’s not likely they will repeat the invitation and the experience of Zap will not encourage other towns to get into the act. We don’t know any towns in North Carolina that might want to entertain several thousand beer-drinking college students. But there are some good names to meet the specifications — such as Bandy or Banjo or Beer Rice. And we even have a Zack, a Zeke, a Zara and a Zoar in Tarheelia. H« H« ❖ H« An up-to-date philosopher says that some men don’t give women a second thought — the first one covers everything. H: H: H< He And a lady says that sympathy is what one woman offers another in exchange for the details. He H= H: sK This comment on “The Conservative” comes from Joseph S. Newman: At facing the past he’s intrepid . . . It lifts, reassures, and enlightens him. But anything new leaves him tepid . . . The twentieth century frightens him.
The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.)
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May 28, 1969, edition 1
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