Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / Oct. 14, 1993, edition 1 / Page 4
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mwiNSwafe**CON 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 rnjtson Staff Writer Peggy Earwood Office Manager Carolyn H. Sweatt Advertising Director Tlmberley Adams. Cecelia Gore and Linda Cheers Advertising Representatives Dorothy Brennan and Brenda Clemmons Moore ..Graphic Artists William Manning ". Pressman Lonnle Sprinkle Assistant Pressman David White Photo Technician PAGE 4-A, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1993 Salaries Not The Only Issue In Nursing Plan Up-front money is only one consideration in the Brunswick County Board of Health's proposal to restructure the health de partment's nursing program. While most of the board's discussion last week centered around paying for a plan to add a few nurses, hire a director of nursing and give raises to those already on hoard, little was said about what the community as a whole has to lose when nursing programs aren't given a chance to fulfill their mandates. The local health department is experiencing difficulty recruit ing and retaining nurses, a situation far from unique. All over the state and country, rural areas are experiencing a shortage of all types of public health professionals, including nurses. Rural com munities suffered dreadfully as urban hospitals and wealthy pri vate health care systems lipped the ante to shore up their own nursing programs. In a trend that is just now starting lo level off, large hospitals have been forced to provide high wages and cre ative benefits to attract and keep qualified nurses. Rural public health departments have simply not been in a position to com pete. Meanwhile, numerous state and federal programs have been created in an effort to curb social ills such as North Carolina's de plorable infant mortality rate. The backbone of many of those programs is the same as that of hospitals and other health care systems ? nurses. The setting for them is the local level. The most disturbing result of that coincidence is what gets left undone or given short shrift. One example Health Director Michael Rhodes used was ma ternity care coordination, a term familiar to public health person nel but, unfortunately, not to the public as a whole. While mater nity care coordination costs money up front, it saves over the long haul. It is based on putting public health nurses out in the field to follow high-risk patients such as unwed teenagers, and to work with other agencies to see that maternity patients of the health department get the kind of health care they need to deliver healthy, fvU-term babies without costly developmental problems. Its premise is that several hundred dollars wortn ot intensive, we 11 -coordinated prenatal services in the short run makes more sense than waiting for a sickly "million-dollar-baby" is bom ? a baby who is likely to remain at the public trough indefinitely. But nurses can't be in the field and in the clinic at the same time. When one nurse is doing the work of two, effective mater nity care coordination and other types of outreach and communi ty-based prevention remain nothing more than good intentions. Paying nurses more and using them more efficiently might be a thorny problem in the short run, but you don't have to look far down the road to see a much bigger and costlier ill. Good Ethics Policies Can Keep Temptation At Arm's Length Other Brunswick County towns would do well to follow the Holden Beach Board of Commissioners' lead and adopt ethics policies for elected and appointed town officials and employees. Though, as one commissioner said, the move isn't likely to shape the town, it gives citizens at least a modicum of protection against being kept in the dark when someone representing them stands to gain personally from actions taken on the town's behalf. In small communities such as ours, with less-than -diverse economies, it is nearly impossible for elected officials and their agents to avoid having to take stands that involve or affect their livelihoods. That in itself is not an unhealthy situation. In com munities where tourism or fishing or retailing are the primarily means of making a living, those interests deserve strong repre sentation, and voters traditionally are willing to provide it. Inherent in that struggle to balance representation is the op portunity for abuse of power and the temptation to serve self above citizens. The people of all our towns deserve some tangi ble means of keeping that temptation at arm's length. Ethics poli cies, thoughtfully constructed and fairly applied, can help do that. Let's Build On Libraries' Possibilities Sunday afternoon I watched the cornerstones being laid for two new Brunswick County Libraries. Looking at the orderly layers of block rising from those two concrete slabs, it made me glad to think of all the children who will soon have wonderful new places to explore the world of books. Looking at the small crowds of people who gathered at each site, it made me sad to think of all the adults who grew up here without such an opportunity. It would be difficult to find a sin gle action by a board of commis sioners that will have a more lasting positive impact on the future of this area than the allocation of $1.5 mil lion to begin building a county li brary system. While I cherish the tiny branch li braries we have now and salute the staff members who do their best with what they've got. the fact is, Brunswick County's neglect of these most valuable resources is appalling. How can we possibly expect our educational system to improve if we don't provide the means for children to improve themselves? They need places to explore learning on their own. Places where they can ask themselves questions, find the an swers. and then explore the new questions that each new answer rais es. That's what libraries are for. To educate. Not in the garbage-in. garbage-out routine of teaching and Eric Carlson f testing. But in the classical sense of the word, as the ancient Romans de fined it: "educare" (to lead out). The best teacher isn't the one who fills a child's head with facts. It's the one who nurtures a questioning mind. Good schools teach children what they need to get by. Libraries challenge them to find out more. Like the man said, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll be fed for a lifetime. When this initial library construc tion project is completed next spring, Brunswick County will see new branches at Leland and Oak Island. Then the Shallotte and Southport branches will be expand ed and renovated. Edith Tillman of Leland and Anne Hines of Yaupon Beach will be remembered as the local heroes who rallied support for new branch libraries in their communities. Through their grassroots fundraising efforts, these two women and their allies were prepared to build new libraries with or without county sup port. Former Commissioner Gene Pinkerton deserves special recogni tion for proposing the idea of a four-branch county library system that built upon those private efforts. Then, as the first chairman of the Brunswick County Library Board. Pinkerton set a unifying tone for its deliberations and insisted that "all four children" be treated as equals. The present board of commission ers should be commended for quick ly rejecting an incomprehensibly misguided attempt to disband the li brary board and to delay the pro ject's funding. But their work is just beginning. Next spring at budget time, as the new libraries open and the old ones get their facelift, it will be up to this board to seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Because this project should never be considered finished. First we need to equip the li braries (dress our four children) in a way that prepares them for the 21st century. We need to forget how li braries used be and imagine what they are destined to become. This means spending the money for a state-of-the-art computer sys tem and a transportation program to make the four small branches into one large library. A reader in South port should be able to find a book on a computer terminal and find out which branch has it. The library system should be able to move books from one branch to another for next-day pickup. That may sound expensive, bui consider the savings on books. Except for basic reference collec tions and extremely popular vol umes. there would be no need to du plicate book purchases. Most library users would happily sacrifice imme diate access if they had four times as many books from which to choose. We should also explore the possi bilities of keeping our entire refer ence collection on computer data base. Why purchase multiple sets of bulky, expensive encyclopedias that will outdated in a few years when we can create a computer reference system that takes up a fraction of the space and which can easily be up dated? Such a system would give each li brary simultaneous access to a much broader selection of reference mate rials . Eventual connections with the state library would make even more information available. Teachers across Brunswick County could have access to all those materials without leaving the classroom. It would even be possible for anyone in the county to use li brary references at home or work through a telephone modem and per sonal computer. The potential is there. The corner stones have been laid for Brunswick County to enter the information age. It's up to us to build on the possibili ties. YOU CAN ALMOST mxTu Jordan Could Help Fight Teenage Violence I lost interest in organized sports 26 years ago, the day I learned the moms in the neighborhood coffee klatsch had decided I was too old at 13 to play backyard football with the boys. Oh. 1 went to all the high school sporting events, even was chosen by my classmates to be a junior varsity cheerleader one year, a task I ap proached with the obligatory zeal. But my enthusiasm was really only for the attention and the cute uni form. I didn't have a clue what was happening on the field. My high-school boyfriend was a three-sport letterman, co-captain of the football team and star of the hoops squad. I think I pretended rather convincingly to pay attention at his games. But, in my heart of hearts, 1 remained hopelessly indif ferent. Then came college in the early '70s, days when politics command ed more of students' attention than athletics, at least at my school, re moving peer pressure as a threat to the spirit-impaired. 1 didn't attend a single sporting event in my four years there, save one evening when a blind date took me to watch a randy bunch of British sailors beat, quite literally, the University of South Carolina rugby team. All this is to serve a something of a disclaimer as I try to back my way into writing about Michael Jordan. I Lynn Carlson admit I have never seen him play basketball except for those slam dunks on his cereal commercials. The truth be known, I'm better ac quainted with him as a Hanes under wear model than as basketball mega-star. However, one would have to have been vacationing oft the planet for the past couple of months not to have learned something about, and felt something for, this extraordinar ily handsome, talented and much loved athlete. I don't have anything to say about Jordan's retirement, being qualified to speculate about neither the machi nations of professional sporting or ganizations nor the motivations of men and women whose life's work is playing for millions. Except this: I'd like to see him demote himself to convincing some of those adoles cents who adore and envy him to change their violent ways. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR New Senior Legislator Just Kidding ' About Living Too Long To the editor: I submit this as a measure of self defense from the verbal assaults al ready received consequential to your typically excellently written article (Oct. 7 issue) concerning my ap pointment as Brunswick County del egate to the newly created Senior Tar-Heel Legislature. Those assaults, typified by such as: "Speak for yourself!"; "Whose side are you on!"; and even, "You must be nuts!" stem from the accu rately reported quote, "We're all liv ing too long...," a comment inspired by an incorrigible inclination to in ject feeble attempts at humor into earnest encounters. Shucks, folks, I was only kidding! I surely do not wish to alienate you or my brother in his 90th year, my sister in her mid-80s; or even my "kid-brother," just turned 75. I as pire to 100, together with my beloved spouse. I do seriously regard the extensive growth of our mostly non-produc tive population relative to the work ing population as a condition with potentially disastrous social conse quences, and one which must be ad dressed with greater emphasis than seems apparent now; but I would not want to anticipate any "final so lution" under the aegis of (another) federal cabinet-level department headed by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. (On the other hand, do you realize the immensity of deficit-eliminating, debt-reducing savings that would re sult from the elimination of any 80 plus population?) Oops! There I go again! One clarification: I did not work "40 years with the State of New York as a bureau director." While I was a carcer employee for the State of New York for 40 years, only the last nine were as a bureau director. Joe Ferlauto Ocean Isle Beach Questions Quarry Plan To the editor: As a retired heavy truck sales en gineer. I am writing to express some concerns relative to the Martin Marietta mining operation. Having lived in an area of Maryland near a stone pit mine, I would question the impact of this operation in the fol lowing areas: ? Has an independent survey been made to insure the area to be mined contains no asbestos or other substances detrimental to the envi ronment? ? Has an independent survey been made regarding the water table? ? Has a survey been made con cerning the damage to the highways regarding 6t) to 120 trips per day by trucks weighing 65,000 to 75,000 pounds? The surface of N.C. 211 is already rolled-up by normal traffic east of Midway Road. This stretch of highway, over a swamp area, is not handling current normal traffic without some road damage. ? Has thought been given to windshield and front end damage to be incurred by private motor vehi cles, this caused by loose material falling from dump trucks? ? Has thought been given to the increase in the accident ratio, which will be caused by private auto opera tors passing trucks on two-lane roads? ? Has thought been given to moving the product by rail? I trust the above points will be carefully considered during deci sions in this matter. W.E. Baumann Bolivia Write Us We welcome your letters to the editor. Letters must include your address and telephone number. (This information is for verifica tion purposes only; we will not publish your street/mailing ad dress or phone number.) Letters must be typed or written legibly. Address letters to: The Brunswick Beacon P.O. Box 2558 Shallotte NC 28459 Anonymous letters will not be published. Though 1 certainly don't know what part the murder of James Jordan played in the retirement of Michael Jordan, some things are ob vious even to those of us who pay no attention to what happens on the court. A young boy from Wilmington achieved the dream of a lifetime, drawing fame and riches far beyond what he must have ever imagined as a child. When that kind of thing hap pens to you, you must come to feel truly blessed, like one of the chosen ones. That must make it hurt doubly bad when you lose someone you love in an act of senseless violence, knowing there's not much else in your life that you couldn't replace. That must make the lesson extra bit ter that no one is really safe any more ? that simply being in public can be deadly these days, even here in the boonies of southeastern North Carolina. As I saw the children being inter viewed for network television news about Michael Jordan's retirement, I was touched at his impact on them ? girls and boys, tots to teens, all races. And I thought about how too many kids live these days, carrying guns, running in packs like stray dogs, thinking little if anything about shooting their peers, their el ders and whoever happens to be in the way ? all for leather jackets, sneakers, cellular phones, money, crack cocaine or the heck of it. Kids like that gave up listening to Mama a long time ago, assuming she ever had anything to say in the first place. And the only time they're going to hear what a police officer is saying is after they've al ready been busted, when it's way too late. Some of them might listen to Michael Jordan, though. He's lived the dream and he's living the night mare, with as much to gain as he has to give.
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
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Oct. 14, 1993, edition 1
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