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2\ the\E\VS-J01'RNAL Raeford.N.C. March 15,2(MW. VI EWPOl NTS Of teeth that stay put and cats that don’t There is a riew adventure in my life everyday. My wife called me at the peach (jrchard and said, “A lady called from Hardee’sandsaid you had left your teeth there and your cell phone.” I replied, ‘'That was nice of her. 1 haven’t be^n to Hardee s and 1 have my teeth in my mouth and 1 am talking to you with my phone. I don t know w’hose teeth they are, but 1 am sure they are missing them. It is possible the teeth could have been Igft in one of those double burgers.” Regardless, those lost teeth are sorta like the man who hated his wife's cat and de cided to get rid of it. He drove 20 blocks frony home and dropped the cat there. The cat was already walking up the driveway when he approached his home. The next day he dropped the cat 40 block;s away but the same thing happen. He kept increasing the blocks but the cat beat him back home. At last he decided to drive a few iniles away, turn right, then lett, pa%t the bridge, then right again and ahother right and so on until he reached what he thought was a perfec;t spot and dropped the cat there. Hours l^ter the man called his A View from the Country Raz Aulrv wife at home and asked her, "Lynn, is the cat there'.’" "Yes, why do you ask?" Frustrated the man said, "Put that cat on the phone, I am lost and I need directions." If those teeth are lost, sooner or later they will show up. The political signs are begin ning to appear. Which means the election is only a few weeks away. Everyone running will have a program that is better than the folks in office. If you doubt that is true, just ask them. I have been well pleased withourcounty commissioners. Their decisions, in my opinion, have been posi tive and moving the county for ward. They have built a new health building and are in the process of building a new jail, which is not a popular decision. Popular or not, it has to be done. The present commissioners have stood tall in facing the issues. If those who are not now in office and think they have the solution to the jail overcrowding problem and it doesn’t include a new jail, good luck. My parting thought. “A preacher one night was travel ing alone. Darkness caught him and he found a vacant house and decided to spend the night. He built a fire, and sat in front of it with a newspaper. While read ing, he heard a noise and said, "'riiere ain't no such thing as a ghost." A little cat —just a kitten — passed by, followed by a big cat three or four feet tall. The cat looked at him and said, “Yes, sir, there is two of us tonight.” Preacher said, "Yeah, in a minute there will only be one,” and he streaked out and ran. He got to a log by the creek and sat down to rest. The big cat sidled up and said, "We sure had a good race, didn’t we?” The preacher looked at that monstrous big cat and said, “Yeah, and we damn sure are going to have another one — right now.” Enough said. We Get Letters Some characters showed up in our town To The Editor: It was a ^rand performance with a cast of characters involving a group of Very talented people of different ^ges and ethnic back grounds vvffio live in and around surroundiryg areas. Watch out, candidates, if Billy Bold should ever run for sheriff of Hoke County! If Silas Scavenger ever brought his Medicine Show to town NVith his sidekick, Run- nili| WaAj and Theodora and her Dance Troupe, I'm sure many would go and probably end up buying several bottles of snake oil. People vv ould clamor to §tay at beautiful t)akota Melody’s Hotel, famous for her hand-made towels, and people would line up to eat at the restaurant run by the Harvey Girls which is right across from the statue of Captain Muttonchop. There would be deputized farm ers, who keep peace in the town, always on the lookout for sassy Prairie Rose and her band of out laws. The drama, “Tied to the Tracks, ’ written by Tim Kelly, was presented by The Raeford- Hoke Museum and performed on stage at Turlington Schpol on»| March 3 and 4. This special project ^ received support from the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment of the Arts, which believes that a great state deserves great art. The Board Members and Com mittee of The Raeford-Hoke Mu seum want to thank Jane Sellars, director of the drama, all the vol unteers, all those who played an important part in the production of the drama, and last, but not least, the talented cast members. We thank all of you for your par ticipation, dedication (and the many long hours you spent away from your families) that made the drama a huge success. We would also like to thank the many pa eons wha came to see the drama, Tot'^our intqjsj ajt^ support for Raeford-llokc Museum. Jeni Smith, Vice Chairman Raeford-Hoke Museum It’s not easy being easy when it comes to oil In this gear’s Stateof the Union address. President Bush chal lenged the country to end its ad diction tQ oil, particularly foreign oil. Oil supplies 40 percent of the nation s energy needs, and for eign oil Accounts for 60 percent of all our oji Usage, up from 33 per cent 20 y ears ago. ^ significant part of foreign- supplied oil is from regions with political and security issues. Yet Remember the well-used phrase, ‘‘if it was so easy, it would already have happened.” Unfor tunately^ this comment applies directly to ouroil usage. There are no oth?r fuels readily available today that provide the versatility and cost advantages of oil. Simply put, oil und its derivatives have no immediate viable alternatives. But vvait, wait: What about fu els like ethanol, battery packs and solar pywer? It’s technically pos sible tO'power a significant part of our ecctnomy with these sources. So why can’t we begin to move away from oil and gasoline to ward these homegrown fuels? We probably will, in small steps, fjut don’t look for the alter native^ to supplant a major share of the petroleum market for one basic reason: Economics. Even with hefty public subsidies and today’s oil and gas prices, when we consider up-front as well as operating costs, the alternatives still aren’t cheaper for the large majority of consumers. One study estimated that ethanol only be come^ competitive when gas hits $3.50 a gal Ion and stays there. Advocates of energy alterna tives don’t take this analysis lying down^ They say alternatives do measure up, in “dollars and sense,” when w e consider oil's full costs. Spcci fically, they make the force- You Decide Dr. Mike Walden S.C. Cooperative Extension ful argument that oil and gasoline are under-priced on tw o counts. First is the cost associated with pollution. For example, although vehicle emission standards have improved, some air pollution is created every time a gas-powered car or truck is driven, and the cost of this pollution is not reflected in gasoline prices. Second is the claim that some of the country’s military and for eign aid expenditures are directly related to ensuring foreign oil sup plies from unstable regions, and these costs are also not included in the price of oil-based products. When these two costs are esti mated - and, I must quickly add, several important assumptions make the calculations open to de bate — they suggest gasoline may be under-priced by as much as $ 1 to $1.50 per gallon. In other words, the full cost of gasoline, including both pollution and na tional security issues, would to day be between $3.25 and $3.75 a gallon! Obviously, if gas were consis tently priced between $3.25 and $3.75 a gallon, energy alterna tives would look very appealing. Drivers wouldn’t have to be en couraged by public service an nouncements to use mass transit, purchase hybrids or consider al ternative fuels; they’d do these things naturally to save money. However, research shows these changes would result in only a 15 percent oil-use reduction. This leaves an unpleasant real- \ .3 ^FORO ization. Barring some technologi cal breakthrough, we will not achieve independence from for eign oil quickly and without cost. We can tax gasoline substantially more to motivate people to use non-oil alternatives, but in the in terim this would significantly in crease the cost of gas and create stress on family budgets. Or, we can heavily subsidize energy alternatives through gov ernment grants and programs so that the price consumers pay for the alternatives is in line with the price of oil-based fuels. However, the costs of these government ef forts are ultimately borne by ei ther today’s or tomorrow’s tax payers. There is a happier third option that I hintedat:Technology. Some where, someday in a remote labo ratory, a scientist may develop a .new engine or new fuel that is cheap and doesn’t use oil. To dream further, let’s say existing engines could be eas ily adapted to accommodate the new product. This would be the end of our energy worries. But until that happy day comes — if ever — wc have to face facts. Oil, including Supplies from for eign producers, will likely be with us for a long while. Reducing our dependence onoil will meancosts We'll just have to decide what kind. Dr. Mike IVaWtvi is u William Neal Reynolds Professor and e.x- tension economist in the Depart ment of April idtural and Resource Economics of S.C. State Llniversitv's Collepe of Apricul- lur eundl ifeScienivs. Heieachcs and 'vntex nn rerxt'fuil finance, economic outlook and public policy. Letter to Editor Deadline, Monday Noon What does ‘terrorism’ mean these days? Was it terrorism? This question became, for a moment, an important subject of debate last week in Chapel Hill as students, faculty, and townspeople struggled to find a proper response to a frightening event in the center of the campus. A recent Carolina graduate drove a rented Jeep Cherokee into the crowd of students that gathers at lunch time near the Lenoir Din ing Hall. The car struck nine stu dents and six were injured, none seriously. Shortly afterwards, the driver, Mohammed ‘Taheri-azar, called 911 and calmly advised the authorities what he had done and where they could find and arrest him. Reportedly, Taheri-azar as serted that he had intended to kill students in an effort to call atten tion to American treatment of Muslims. On his 911 call, he said: “It really is to punish the govern ment of the United States for their actions around the world.” Police found evidence that Taheri-azar had been planning his action for months, but they found no indication that any other per son was involved. Taheri-azar is now in jail. At a preliminary hearing he told the judge that he elected to represent himself. According to a report in the student newspaper. The Daily Tar Heel, District Attorney Jim Woodal I said that Taheri-azar was going to use the court proceedings to ‘explain the law of Allah.” In the days following the inci dent a group of students organized a rally to urge that the incident be labeled “terrorism” on the grounds that it was a violent act aimed at non-combatants. One of their signs read: “Terrorism: Violence directed at noncombatants for an ideology.” Other students objected to the rally and the use of the “terrorism” label because it would be divisive at a time when campus unity and calm should be a primary goal. Some of us jumped to conclu sions. Mine was different from most others. I thought Taheri-azar was mentally unstable and a vic tim of religious fanaticism. Of course, he had shown himself to be dangerous, but he was, in my mind, definitely not the kind of terrorist pulled of the events of September 11, 2001. Compared to9/l 1 the incident at UNC-Chapel Hill seems minor. An online poll conducted by The Daily Tar Heel showed that I was in a minority. The poll asked y One on One D. G. Martin if Taheri-azar should be consid ered a terrorist? Three quarters of the respondents said. Yes. 1 wonder if the term “terror ism” would have stuck so well if the driver of the Jeep Cherokee had been named John Smilh and he had claimed that he wanted U> secure a platform to speak against pornography. Or has terrorism in our minds come to mean only “Islamic ter rorism,” and underneath all our protestations to the contrary, do we equate the terms? 1 hope we don't. And I hope we won’t. But I worry. In a column recently reprinted in the Raleigh Newsand Observer, Los Angles Times columnist Max Boot urged us to learn about the wide varieties of Islam as it is practiced by different peoples and in different countries. Boot recently returned from travels in two predominantly Mus lim counties, Malaysia and Qutar. These countries, he writes, while not perfect democracies, have de veloped accommodations between Islamic values, religious freedom, and representative government that are the antithesis of terrorism. Malaysia, Boot writes, is “a bastion of religious liberty. Al though the majority Muslim popu lation is forced to follow the dic tates of religious Sharia courts in family law, Malaysia has substan tial minoritiesof Buddhists, Chris tians, 11 indus and Confucians who are free to worship as they please. Alcohol is av;iilable. and few w omen are veiled, at least in Kuala Lumpur. Some Muslim extrem ists who have formed vigilante squads to crack down on “sins, like teenagers necking in public have been arrested by police. Al though tensions exist among dif ferent ethnic and religious groups, Malavsia has for the most part been a showcase of ethnic and religious toleration. " When I visited Malaysia last year, 1 was amazed at this general tolerance and how it contributes to a healthy and competitive eco nomic climate. My experience is certainly one reason I hope we can resist any tendency to make terrorism a code word for all things Islamic. A free press “An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelli gence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in lime a people as base as itself.” — Joseph Pulitzer, 1904 The INeWS' Published every Wednesday by Dickson Press, Inc. Robert A. Dickson, President Anne Dickson Fogleman, Secretary/Treasurer 119 W. Elwood Avenue, Raeford, NC 28376 (910) 875-2121 PRINTIO WIIH SOY INK Not necessarily so! Opinions expressed by guest columnists on this page and else- w here in this newspaper are their liV.n jnJ Jo not ncciwsaiily re fleet the s'kmof The News-Jour nal. Readers are invited to write in with their own opinions. Be sure to include your name and a phone number so you can be contacted for verification. Home Page: wwvv.thinews-Journal.cum Ken MacDonald iken@thenews-ioumai.com} Publisher Pal A lien Wilson (pat@thenews-ioumal.com}... Editor Victoriana Summers (vicki@thenews-ioumai.com} Reporter Hal Nunn (hal@lhenews-joumal.com} Sporls Writer Hal Nunn (hai@thenews-ioumai.com} Sales Representative Teena Jones (ieena@thenews-ioumai.com} Office Manager Linda Watson (iinda@thenews-ioumai.com} Receptionist Sandra Wiggins (sandra@ihenews-ioumai.com} Composition Design Mantise .4 ndrews Press Foreman email ads to: ads@thenews-journal.com email classifieds to; cla8sifieds@thenews-journal.eom email legalsto: legals@thenews-journal.com Periodical Class Postage at Raeford, N.C.(USPS 388-260) Postmaster; Send address changes to: P.O. Box 550 Raeford. N.C. 28.376 Cit; their u 6 to pi sion 0 211 \^ To Busin to bu; with 1 acres, 84 lot Th from Wrig some
The News-Journal (Raeford, N.C.)
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