Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / April 29, 1993, edition 1 / Page 4
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Opinion Page THE BRUMSWICK#SEACON Edward M. Sweatt and Carolyn H. Sweatt Publishers Edward M. Sweatt Editor Lynn S. Carlson Managing Editor Susan Usher News Editor Doug Rutter Sports Editor Eric Carlson Staff Writer Peggy Earwood Office Manager Carolyn H. Sweatt Advertising Director Timberley Adams, Cecelia Gore and Linda Cheers Advertising Representatives Dorothy Brennan and Brenda Clemmons Moore..Graphic Artists William Manning Pressman Lonnle Sprinkle Assistant Pressman Tammie Henderson Photo Technician Phoebe Clemmons and Frances Sweatt Circulation PAGE 4-A, THURSDAY. APRIL 29, 1993 Solid Waste Reduction Plans 'Do-Able' With Commitment Brunswick County and its towns, along with governments statewide, are struggling with solid waste problems that just keep growing. Yard waste can no longer go to the county landfill, and the existing dump is expected to suffice for only about another five years. All the while, the year-round and seasonal popula tions?and the garbage they generate?continue to rise. Simply making more dump space without doing anything else would be to ignore the real problem. Individuals, businesses and governments must find ways to generate less waste and pro vide incentives to others for doing so. Sunset Beach Town Council is trying to find a safe, cost-ef fective means of recycling yard waste. Council is looking at buy ing or renting a chipper to let property owners can have tree cut tings reduced to mulch for reuse. Southport already has a similar program in place. The Ocean Isle Beach Board of Com missioners has agreed to provide a compartmentalized recycling container which will accept newspapers, aluminum cans and plastic drink bottles. It is expected to be in place by Memorial Day. These new services will augment recycling opportunities al ready provided by the county and other towns as well as schools and businesses. The N.C. Recycling Association recently recognized public - and private-sector efforts to reduce landfill waste. In the hope of sparking some new and creative recycling programs locally, here's a sampling of what others are doing: ?The Recycler of the Year, a Burlington screen printing com pany, started by switching to fluorescent lighting and buying re cycled products. TS Designs now buys bulk water-based adhe sives, composts coffee grounds, buys citrus-based cleaners and encourages employees to bring in recyclables from home. The company has a five-employee environmental solution team that pinpoints problem areas in the company and proposes ideas to solve them. ?Over five years, Pitt County increased its recycling four fold, to more than 16,000 tons a year. The county accepts all standard recyclables, but also takes farm chemicals and "white goods" (discarded appliances like washers and refrigerators), as well as distributing used eyeglasses. All 30 of the county's public schools have recycling programs in place. Winston-Salem recy cles white goods and motor oil and provides a brush-chipping fa cility. ?The owners of the Bayboro Dehydrating Plant make their living taking crab and fish waste and converting it into chicken feed, soil additives and natural fertilizer?and have been doing it since 1948. The company currently takes in 6,800 tons of waste, approximately 48 percent of Pamlico County's present waste stream. ?The News & Observer of Raleigh, realizing that the supply of old newspapers had far outgrown the demand, came up with the idea of shredding the paper into animal bedding and garden mulch. With more than 150 collection bins in Wake, Orange, Durham and Harnett counties, the company has diverted more than 4,000 tons of newspaper from areas landfills. ?New Hanover Regional Medical Center's "Trash to Treasure" program takes uncontaminated operating room materi als and uses them in a variety of much-needed ways. The hospital found that many types of hospital plastic that could not be recy cled by local handlers could be useful to day care centers, schools, churches and senior citizen facilities. The materials are used as drop cloths, aprons, planters and paint containers, to name a few. In the past year, almost 500 pounds of polypropy lene-based sterile wrap and more than 10,000 containers have been put to good use instead of being taken to an area landfill. These examples prove that while recycling programs in evitably present some logistical challenges, they are almost al ways "do-able" when the commitment is strong enough. It should be noted that the most successful public projects are not mandated and operated by governments alone, but with strong support from community volunteers. Likewise, the best corporate and business waste reduction plans are conceived and executed by workers, with the blessing of management. Maxi-Golf Was Never This Much Fun... Lighl the torches! Stand up against the oppressors! Prepare to storm the ramparts! The Town of Sunset Beach is threatening to establish a dangerous precedent by seriously restraining one of our most precious inalienable rights: the pursuit of silliness. The town council has scheduled a May 3 public hearing on a proposed zoning ordinance amendment that would place unthinkable restrictions on the final frontier of family fool ery: the miniature golf course. You're not going to believe this, but (I am not making it up) this new law would prohibit the following things on all miniature golf courses: ?Hashing, moving or animated lights! ?Structures taller than 16 feet above the original ground level! ?Course attractions that emit smoke or steam! ?And finally, (cover your chil dren's ears) animated characters or animals! Can you imagine what this means? Miniature golf courses with no smoke-belching volcanoes. No giant waterfalls. No turban-headed gcnics with blinking red eyes reach ing down to scoop up your ball. No pink flamingos or green dinosaurs. No spinning windmills or flashing lighthouses. In other words, no fun. Miniature golf, also known as Eric Carlson ?^T I carpel golf, wacky golf, mini-golf or (the trademark protected) P?t P?t, is one of the most delightfully mind less activities known to mankind. Even the athletically challenged can Icam to play in about three seconds and continue to enjoy the game until a ripe old age. In fact, nothing brings together the various genera tions of a vacationing family like a round of mini-golf. A lazy 18 holes after dinner pro vides just the right level of anaero bic exercise for parents with a third degree sunburn, a stomach full of fried seafood and a brain mildly im paired by intoxicating beverages. At the same time, nine out of ten doc tors rccommend mini-golf for burn ing off potentially lethal levels of sugar in children strung out on triple-dip chocolate sundaes. Our economic development offi cials have vastly underrated the po tential of miniature golf as a tourist attraction. Visitors centers arc pack ed with slick, colorful guidebooks about maxi-golf resorts, but you never see a single pamphlet on mini golf opportunities. Here in the South Brunswick Islands, we arc blessed with a verita ble plethora of mini-golf links. Yet we have barely scratched the surface in promoting this sport's potential. Think of it We could have signa ture courses designed by some of the world's great mini-golf designers (whose names arc so familiar, I don't even need to mention them). And big-money, televised tourna ments with the greatest players on the pro tour (all your favorites). We have several lovely maxi-golf developments with snazzy clubhous es and fancy houses built along the fairways. Why not create miniature golf communities with double-wide manufactured homes lining a Dis ncyesque landscape of astro-turf and animated statuary? It's coming, folks. And you peo ple in Sunset Beach could be regu lating yourself right out of the next big wave in vacation living. Just imagine some of the fanciful mini-golf holes your draconian regu lations will prohibit: You could have a hole with a little post office building between the tee and the cup. You putt into the front door and then (just like real mail) you wail to see which way the ball goes. And if you don't putt quickly, the door slams shut and a litde "Out to Lunch" sign pops up. Or how about one where you try to putt the ball across a miniature four-lane highway without being hit by a speeding log truck. Another hole might have a scale model of Calabash dwarfed by a gi ant statue of State Sen. R.C. Soles. The challenge would be to putt down Main Street before the senator splits the town in half. Or you could try to putt across a miniature drawbridge before the tide rises and lifts the roadway to block the ball from passing. Under the proposed Sunset Beach ordinance, mini-golf courses would only be allowed to have "replicas of birds and animals indigenous to the area." Which would seem to rule out your traditional jungle beasts like li ons, tigers, elephants, giraffes and zebras (although pink elephants might qualify as an introduced species). Instead we'll have to populate our miniature golf world with "local" creatures like seagulls and pelicans and king mackerel and black bears and alligators and beavers and pos sums and mosquitoes and fire ants and mole crickets and fecal coliform bacteria. Sure, we could throw in a few en dangered species like red cockadcd woodpeckers and green sea turtles and waterway bridgetenders. But it just won't be the same. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Veterans' Refund Rumor Is Nothing More To the editor: I need your help in correcting misinformation that has apparently been spread by various sources. It deals with the possibility that certain veterans are entitled to an insurance refund. Following is a message I have received from the Department of Veteran Affairs: "A false and misleading rumor sweeping the nation is plaguing us at the Department of Veterans Affairs and leading thousands of veter ans to write us requesting dividends on insurance in force while on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces. "Congress did not pass any new law giving veterans a dividend based on the amount of months their insurance was in force while on ac tive duly. The information veterans received re garding such a dividend is a hoax. "Also false is the rumor that individuals who served in the military after 1965 and were insured under the SGLI (Servicemen's Group Life Insurance) program are entitled to a refund. There have never been any dividends, rebates or refunds due to surplus funds in the SGLI program. "You can help us to eliminate these rumors by passing this information along to any of your friends or to any veterans' group to which you be long." With the increased workload due to Desert Storm, veterans and individuals who have been released from active duty because of recent mili tary cutbacks, the N.C. Regional Office in Winston-Salem, which is manned to handle 8,000 cases, currently is working approximately 21,000. Having to respond to rumors such as this one causes additional delays in the processing of le gitimate claims. Virgil F. Batten Brunswick County Veterans Services Officer Better Off Under GOP? To the editor: I wonder if the recent appointment of a promi nent Democrat to the N.C. Board of Trans portation has anything to do with the rumor I heard that Governor Jim Hunt has cancelled the funds for the proposed overpass on N.C. 130 at U.S. 17 Bypass? Or how about the very much needed overpass on N.C. 904 at U.S. 17? Is there anyone that can answer this question and explain why this money is needed on improv ing the highways around the beaches? If you want the tourists to keep coming, you had better make it safer for them to get here. Have you noticed that Brunswick County al ways had it better under the Republican adminis tration? Mary E. Grissctt Shalloue (More Letters, Following Page) F/ea, Shalom And The Fashion Arbiters Lynn Carlson y D ?*? Slaves to fashion, prepare to be had. Those demons who make a liv ing deciding what looks good want to see you in bellbottoms again? with your bellybutton showing. And hideous cheap-looking platform shoes. And white cotton eyelet blouses, knotted at the midriff in the manner of Ellie and Daisy May. This is called "vintage-inspired dressing." From what I could piece together through in-depth journalis tic research (thumbing through the April issue of Vogue magazine while eating a tuna sandwich at my desk) this means looking like you got your outfit at the thrift shop when you ac tually bought it at Saks for some where upwards of one thousand dol lars. I'm here to testify that the Tobacco Road look will be hot this summer! Here's the scene on pages 350 and 351 of Vogue: A front porch with paint peeling and arti cles of heretofore out-of-style ap parel hanging on a clothesline. Amidst the freshly hung laundry is a distracted-looking model wearing a purple floral cropped undershirt and a black print sarong skin. Her one perfect accessory: a rheumy eyed obnoxious-looking chihuahua. Need more evidence? Page 102. Check out the ad for the spring CK (Calvin Klein) line at Neiman Marcus. It features a model with fabulous cheekbones wearing a "hopsack rough linen jacket" (S280) that looks eight sizes too big and as if it has been machine washed and then left in the dryer for three days; matching linen sweater (S100) and long, full silk skirt (SI 50). Accessories being everything, she is also wearing (look for your self if you don't believe me) clod hoppcrs with no shoelaces, just like Maw in the Snuffy Smith comic strip. Page 142. It doesn't say who or what is being advertised, but there, in black and white, is a 100-pound woman wearing short slicked-back hair, dog tags, sunglasses, unzipped pants of waist size 46 or so, and one suspender. And absolutely nothing else. Even German supermodel Clau dia Schiffer is in on the fun, with a six-page kind of Daisy Duke layout in which her hair is tangled and she wears cotton pajamas with her top unbuttoned, then a tcrrycloth bath robe with crew socks. They missed a great chance to accessorize her with permanent wave rods if you ask me. There arc 16 pages featuring a dangerous-looking young man with a white crcwcut (and many tattoos) and his companion, a beautiful brunette. His name is Flea, and he's the bass player for a rock 'n' roll band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Her name is Shalom, and she's a model. "They share a similar style? summer clothes that have a T-shirt simple philosophy," like the S145 T-shirt she wears on page 360, the S7X T-shin she wears on Page 367 and the S245 T-shirt she wears on Page 370 (must cost more because it has long sleeves). They appear to be sharing more saliva than style. On page 376 there's what I at first assumed to be a tribute to Tennessee Williams' Maggie the Cat. There arc five women (well, one could be a guy; they're all bunched up, so it's a judgment call) lounging on a brocade-upholstered divan, looking very comeiy in their white chemise dresses which hang teasingly off shoulders and below where bras would normally be lo cated. My assumption fell apart when I realized that these models are accessorized by six or seven LIVE SNAKES. (Again, feel free to verify this.) Snakes and rat-dogs notwith standing, there are good points to this "vintage-inspired dressing." It's amusing as all get-out, for one thing. It's democratic, for another. If you want to shop at the thrift store and put the outfit together for S6, you can. But if the only way you can feel glamorous in ugly ill-fitting apparel is to have burned up the old Visa card by several hundred dol lars per change of clothes, you can do that, loo. Or, as Flea might whisper, as he hangs upside down on the monkey bars and kisses Shalom's knee, "The allure of the vintage-inspired little-print dress branches out, as small-scale florals arc also fash ioned into midriff-baring tops, floaty skirts, and fluid pants-?worn all mixed together in layers that are sometimes sheer, always full of movement, and never lacking in a pretty kind of sex appeal." Whatever you say, sugar. Just hold that pose.
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
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April 29, 1993, edition 1
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