Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / May 13, 1993, edition 1 / Page 4
Part of The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
Opinion Page THE BRUNSWICK&BEACON Edward M. Sweatt and Carolyn H. Sweatt Publishers Edward M. Sweatt Editor Lynn S. Carlson Managing Editor Susan Usher News Editor Doug Hutter Sports Etiitor Eric Carlson StaJ] Writer Peggy Earwood Office Manager Carolyn H. Sweatt Advertising Director Timberlev Adams. Cecelia Gore and Linda Cheers Advertising Representatives Dorothy Brennan and Brenda Clemmons Moore ..Graphic Artists William Manning Pressman Lonnle Sprinkle Assistant Pressman Tainmie Henderson Photo Technician Phoebe Clemmons and Frances Sweatt Circulation PAGE 4-A, THURSDAY, MAY 13, 1993 Public Effort Needed To Find Library A Temporary Home There is a way to keep library service in Shallotte from being curtailed for more than half of 1994 while the West Brunswick Library Branch is being renovated. Some residents of Calabash and Sunset Beach know what one step of that way is. They called and wrote letters to elected officials asking for official sanction to their plea to maintain at least limited library service during the extensive renovation pro ject. Neither town board hesitated in providing its unanimous support. The only realistic option for keeping the library open is to move it to temporary quarters during construction. These renova tions will do more than raise a litde dust and force patrons to walk on drop cloths. The place will be dirty, and it will be dan gerous. The library's enure interior will be reoriented, the main desk and office relocated and the the entrance moved to what is now the south side of the building?all to provide welcome and much-needed room to grow. For citizens who care deeply whether southern Brunswick County has library service between January and July of next year, it's time for Step 2?helping to find a solution. The library board seems open to the possibility of a temporary home for the facility, and the logistics are not especially complicated, except for the financial factor. It's not likely that the county commission ers will shell out lots of money to rent a temporary facility, and appropriately so. But there's lots of empty space out there, if the civic-minded ness and generosity of some landlord can be prevailed upon. Private citizens, acting out of nothing other than public spirit, can do that kind of prevailing much more effectively than elected or appointed officials can. And they should. GUEST COLUMN The Case For More Prison Construction BY FRANKLIN FREEMAN N.C. CORRECTION SECRETARY North Carolina's crime rate has doubled and violent crime has tripled over the past ten years. Prison construction has not kept pace with the stag gering number of lawbreakers entering prison. Inmates are released early only to make room for the next group of criminals sentenced to prison. That revolving door must stop. Part of the solution is to build more prisons. Construction is already under way on four major single-cell facilities. Those 2,000 cells are for violent offenders who arc actually serving longer sentences to day than they did ten years ago. Now there are more of them, requiring more cells. With assaultive criminals taking priority over prison space, the non-assaultive felons are the ones serving the quick, turn-around sentences. Felons who left prison in freeman 1992 served an average of eight months in prison, down from 14 months in 1986. Misdemeanants who left prison in 1992 served an average of one month in prison, down from four months in 1986. Gov. Jim Hunt and the Department of Correction's S87.5 million construction plan addresses this serious issue so that both needs are met. The plan?which includes work farms, boot camps, a felon processing center, a medium- and a minimum-custody prison and expansion of 13 pris ons across the state?is the best use of the remaining prison bond money. The recommended construction will add 4,220 prison beds within two years of prison construction bonds being sold. Our plan also requires more prisoners to work while they're in prison. Nearly half of the inmates are now scrubbing floors, cooking meals or cleaning up and repairing highways. Prison construction will put even more to work by using inmate labor to build prisons. Without the ability to punish lawbreakers through confinement, the threat of prison as a deterrent is greatly reduced. Last year, 30,800 people were admitted to North Carolina prisons with space for 18,000. As a result of the lack of space, 29,200 were released. In the next week or two, the General Assembly will begin considering our prison construction proposal which, if passed, will go a long way to ward casing the revolving door syndrome. Of course, prison construction is only part of the response to the crime crisis. North Carolina must continue to expand community supervision and alternatives and boost drug and alcohol rehabilitation in prison. Most im portantly, we must prevent crime by opening the doors of education and economic opportunity while paying special attention to at-risk children in early years. But we also must act now to met the urgent need for more prison beds and to keep faith with those who voted in November 1990 to put more law breakers in prison. Worth Repeating... mWe are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the fu ture, discontent with the prestru, unable to lake in the idea of dying, unable to sit still. ?Lewis Thomas mA crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in onxtety- ?Aesop *77^ young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves....Parents are the bones on which children sharp en their teeth. ?Peter Ustinov mMostpeople my age are dead. ?Casey Stengel No Gravy Not to be indelicate, but I'd like to have a buck for every hour I've spent writing about the disposal of "wastewater." (Thai's a form of ver bal Lysol spray, kind of like calling the trucks that pump sewage "honey wagons.") It's the best-kept secret in journal ism school that the overwhelming majority of reporters wind up work ing for small-town newspapers, cov ering officials who grapple with the tandem topics of water and sewage with mind-numbing regularity. When I discovered this ugly truth, I did my very best to adopt a Taoist philosophy?you know, that the path to enlightenment is revealed through simplicity and unassertive acts, that kind of thing. (Not that I'm any great student of Eastern mysticism. At the time, "The Karate Kid" had just come out. If Young Daniel could master the martial arts through the simple te dious act of "wax on, wax off' Mr. Myagi's cars, perhaps I could unlock the meaning of life writing endlessly about the stupifyingly dull details of "water in, waste out.") Now, I'll admit to having a fairly low threshold of boredom, but I've read enough stuff like this to last me a lifetime: Phosphorous in groundwater may not itself represent a threat to human health, or to saltwater estu arine environments. However, the presence of phosphorous in groundwater in concentrations greater than background levels Train On The Honey Wagon Beat Lynn Carlson tr > l may be an indicator of contamina tion from improperly treated wastewater, particularly if other indicators are also present. Thai's from the Report on an Investigative Program for Demon stration of Impact or Non-Impact of Residential Septic Tanks on Ground water and Surface Water Quality on or Around the Island of Sunset Beach, N.C., authored by Joseph A. Tombro and James R. Billups, engi neers. Eric and I affectionately call them "The Jim and Joe Show," bccausc we see them so much more frc quendy than we see "The Tonight Show." Jim and Joe arc at every meeting of the Sunset Beach Town Council, which I cover, and the Calabash Town Council, which Eric covers, and lots of other meetings in be tween. I like Jim and Joe. They're nice guys, and they must have ihc patience of Job to do the kind of work they do?writing sewage stud ies and arguing with armchair engi neers and conspiracy theorists who seem to think they're playing fast and loose with ihc fecal coliform count. (If you don't know what fecal col iform is, just count yourself among the truly blessed and I'll leave you in blissful ignorance.) Before any humorless scwcr-sys tcm-ovcr-my-dcad-body types start calling me on the phone and writing me nasty letters for poking fun and liking Jim and Joe, let me make a couple of what 1 hope to be salient points: ?I do not live at Sunset Beach or Calabash and consequently will not be on the receiving end of whatever financial burden might result from a ccntral sewer system; at least until the system makes great strides in a northerly direction. ?I realize that there arc legitimate differences of opinion from perfect ly credible sources regarding the ori gin and severity of coastal pollution and what should ideally occur after you flush your potty. I've had infi nite pleasure reading and writing about them over the years. ?1 lived here 15 years ago and re member that there used to be more plentiful shellfish and a healthier commercial fishing industry than there is now. I also remember that some once-productive beds were closed to shellfishing even back then, when the southern end of the county was about a tenth as devel oped as it is now. If it's difficult for me to go ballis tic about the prospect of ccntral sew er service coming to another area of Brunswick County, it's bccausc ihis is not my firsl, or even second, ex perience wilh the issue. I was cover ing Ocean Isle back in 1977 or thereabouts when the town was working hard toward getting a sewer system. They succeeded, and from what I can tell, folks there seem to be anything but sorry. On the other hand, I lived on the Outer Banks from 1978 until 1985 during an unprecedented economic burst which, naturally, prompted a sewer system debate. "This place is going to be one gi ant human litter box if we don't do it," the pros screamed, while the an li's wailed, "If you do it, develop ment will go hog wild; this placc'll be as tacky as Virginia Beach before you know it." The anti's won. Whether the Banks became a human litter box depends on which scientist you ask. The development, of course, hap pened anyway. While it would be hard to make anything as tacky as Virginia Beach, the Outer Banks did get lots of condos and hotels, scores of new restaurants and shopping malls, a K-Mart, a Wal-mart and every fast food oudct known to man. Plus a five-lane highway from Whalebone Junction to Kitty Hawk Bay. And the sewer system debate rages on, provoking spirited public discourse and enlightening a whole new generation of small-town jour nalists. Water in, waste out, Mr. Myagi. 'just rase sen aqoi nl )/ ' W J 7 , Oh wh, well we It sue / (ftoi The Roar Of The Fumes, The Smell Of The Crowd The other day, someone asked me what I was going to write about this week. "What would you like to read?" I asked. "I don't know. Something contro versial," she said. OK, how's this? I think NASCAR racing is boring. There. I've said it. And I'm not taking it back. Just what is the big deal with stock car racing, anyway? You drive to some God-forsaken place like Talladega, Alabama. In mid-August. When it's 105 degrees in the shade. Except there is no shade. Then you get all crowded together with 50,000 hot, sweaty people to watch a bunch of cars painted up like laundry detergent boxes driving around in circles and making enough noise to rattle earthquake meters in Alaska. Then you buy some S30 souvenir T-shirts and dri ve back home to treat your sunburn. Now don't get me wrong. I've been a racing fan for nearly 30 years and have seen just about every type motor sport run on four wheels, two wheels and even three wheels (side car motorcycles). But I've found only one type of engine powered competition more monotonous and less interesting than a NASCAR race, and that's a tractor pull. This is a "sport" devel oped by over-subsidized farmers who try to see whose taxpayer fund ed SI00,(XX) jct-cngincd "tractor" can pull a heavily weighted sled the farthest through a mud field. The highlight of a tractor pull is watching the clown on the only real tractor in sight riding around and around for a half hour smoothing the mud field between pulls. Eric Carlson TJT' I I grew up as an avid fan of the greatest motorized speed competi tion on the planet: Formula 1 Grand Prix racing, otherwise known as the World Championship of Drivers. They don't call it that for nothing. Grand Prix cars represent the pinna cle of auto racing technology. They arc awesome, no-frills machines stripped of everything except four open wheels, a high-revving engine and a driver laying on his back about two inches off the pavement. Those lumbering billboards on the NASCAR circuit couldn't keep a Formula 1 car in sight for a single lap of Grand Prix racing. Because (you NASCAR folks will be shocked to learn) those races require a driver to turn left AND right. They have to use the brakes AND the accelerator. They go up and down real hills. And they even drive in the rain! NASCAR drivers shift gears once to get moving. Then they drive around in counter-clockwise circles until the car runs out of gas or crash es. A Grand Prix driver often makes a thousand gear changes in a race. The only time he's not applying full acceleration or full braking is when the car is sliding through corners just below the speed at which it will fly off the road. Sterling Moss, the greatest driver never to win a world championship, captured the frightening intensity of a Formula 1 race in his explanation of how a Grand Prix driver must ne gotiate a typical 100 mile-per-hour turn. He said if the driver went into that turn at 101 mph, he would spin out. If he slowed down too early and went around at 99, the driver behind would pass him. And so it contin ues, turn after turn, left and right, lap after lap. Thai's my kind of racing. The kind I used to watch on television at the Grand Prix of Monaco, where (now deceased) drivers like Graham Hill, Jim Clark and Lorenzo Bandini would scream through the twisted city streets of Monte Carlo. Or the German Grand Prix, where drivers felt lucky to be alive after a day on the infamous Nurburgring. And many were not so lucky. It's the kind of racing I used see each fall at the United States Grand Prix in Watkins Glen, N.Y., where I watched Emerson Fittipaldi earn his first Formula 1 victory and saw Mario Andretti become only the sec ond American driver in history to win the World Championship. Nowadays, Hill's son Dai.ion and Mario's son MichacI arc contenders on the Formula 1 circuit. But unfor tunately, there is no longer a United States Grand Prix. Because Ameri cans prefer to see their race cars go around and around in circles. Now I must admit ihat I've only actually been to one NASCAR race. A newspaper friend hung a camera around my neck and got me into the pits at the World 600 one year. So I experienced all the racing action and saw the cars and drivers up close and personal. But it just didn't compare to the paddock at the Glen, where you'd see drivers sipping champagne with impeccably dressed European aristo crats at linen-covered tables set with fine crystal and surrounded by clas sic Ferraris, Lambourghinis and Aston-Martins. At Charlotte Motor Speedway, it was all frcnch fries, Skoal and Mountain Dew in a sea of ball caps, big-wheel pickups and Winncbagos. 1 probably would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't been the hottest temperature ever recorded on that date. Outside the speedway, it was over 94 degrees in the shade. Of which there wasn't any. In the pits, I learned about how those solar powered stoves work? the ones that look like a big mir rored bowl where you put the hot dog in the middle and the reflected sunlight cooks it in minutes. At Charlotte, 1 was the hot dog in the middle. The sunlight reflecting off the 100-foot high asphalt bank ing roasted my brain, which was marinated in carbon monoxide fumes and tenderized by the roar of several dozen un-mufflcd V-8 en gines swirling around my head. After about fivc-hundrcd-and somcthing miles of this, 1 staggered outside, drank a gallon of Gatorade and swore I'd never go back. But it's a long way from Holden Beach to the nearest sports car cir cuit (Road Atlanta). And once you've had a whiff of hypcr-octane racing fuel, it's hard to stay away. So if that guy comes through with that pit pass he promised, 1 might jast be tempted. After all, as a professional jour nalist, 1 need to remain (somewhat) objwfciivc. Who knows? 1 might take it back after all.
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
May 13, 1993, edition 1
4
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75