Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / July 7, 1994, edition 1 / Page 4
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Opinion Page THE BRUNSWKK$fEACON Edward M. Sweatt and Carolyn H. Sweatt Publisher s Edward M. Sweatt .Editor Lynn S. Carlson Managing Editor Susan Usher j?eu>s Editor Doug Rutter Sports Editor Erie Carlson Staff Writer Mary Potts ft Pe?y Earwnod OffUx Managers Carolyn H. Sweatt. Advertising Director Ttmberley Adams. Cecelia Gore and Linda Cheers Advertising Representatives Dorothy Brennan and Brenda Clemmons Moore ..Graphic Artists William Manning Pressman Lonnle Sprinkle Assistant Pressman PAGE 4 -A, THURSDAY. JULY 7. 1 994 Curtailing Curbside Business In Shallotte: It's A Timely Proposal Imagine you were in business, paying a mortgage or rent, paying your taxes, paying your employees, paying your utility bills, paying for advertising and generally trying to be a good commercial neighbor in your town. Then suppose one day. right down the street from your place, someone pitched a tent and started selling the same kind of merchandise you carry ? some one who might leave in two days or two weeks, who has no par ticular interest in your town other than as a place to turn a quick buck, who doesn't employ a local soul, and whose oniy invest ment in your community is a couple hundred dollars, at most, for a temporary license to do business there. You wouldn't have to imagine it if you were a merchant in Shallotte. If you were Bed Land or Heilig-Meyers or Kimball's or Shallotte Furniture, it would have happened to you last week when a tractor-trailer load of furniture was set up under a tent in a Main Street parking lot. It stayed only a couple of days and was replaced by a short-lived curbside "art" sale of the Elvis-on-vel vet variety. Shallotte Alderman Carson Durham got the support of his board last week in asking the town attorney to draft an ordinance prohibiting or controlling businesses that set up for a day or two along the streets of Shallotte. It's about time. There's something about Shallotte that seems to bring out the impulse in folks to spread their wares on the street and do busi ness ? it's probably the fact that they can. There may be some truth to arguments put forth in the past against regulating curb side peddling ? some folks no doubt do rely on it as a means of making a living ? but there are bigger issues to consider. Not least among them is the desire of the Shallotte aldermen and many local residents and merchants to boost the town's busi ness economy and make Shallotte attractive to new commercial and industrial ventures. At the risk of appearing elitist, the alder men really have no choice but to crack down on streetside ped dling if they're going to succeed in drawing the types of proven, iong-term, successful businesses we all want to see populating Shallotte in the future. A secondary but increasingly significant concern is the traffic snarl that results as motorists enter and exit peddlers' sites and the risk of accident posed by drivers paying attention to what's being sold on the roadside rather than who's on the road ahead. Alderman Durham's proposal deserves the support of not on ly his fellow board members, but of shoppers and merchants, too. Worth Repeating... m Summer afternoon ? summer afternoon , to me those hax-e al ways been the two most beautiful words in the English lan guage. ? Henry James mTherels no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow. ? Edith Wharton ?? -r-r. m Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster. ? James Harvey Robinson 1 908 Was Banner Year For Education I^W was a banner year for edu cation-minded individuals in Bruns wick Counly. County residents wan led more and better schools and were willing to pay the cost. That became apparent while skimming microfilm of issues of the old weekly Southport Herald, look ing for something else. I started jot ting down notes on the schools. Whereas prohibition was a divi sive issue in I9()8, pitting neighbor against neighbor, education was an issue that appeared to draw commu nities together though there was some sectional jealousy evident. Given the current interest in edu cation. it seemed like a good time to share some of those gleanings. Early in l^W a community corre spondent wrote about Brunswick County needing a high school. Graded lower schools were available to children in many communities, but to attend the upper grades stu dents generally had to leave home and board somewhere. That was an expensive proposition beyond the means of most families. In some rural areas, parents often banded to gether to pay a teacher and provide a small building for classcs to be held. In the ensuing February 20 issue a proud and defensive H.F. Brinson writes to set the record straight: Susan Usher Brunswick County HAS a high school at Regan (a community above Longwood that in 1908 also has its own String Band and a new Baptist church, but in 1915 loses its post office). "The writer evidently overlooked the fact that our school at Regan has required the services of three or four teachers for the past two year*. that it has a good two-story building, which, without change except fin ishing two rooms, will scat two hun dred students; that its curriculum meets the entrance requirement of every college in the state; and in three years gives the entire high school worked as proscribed by state High School law." (There's no indication as to whether the school is public or pri vate; I tend to believe it was a pri vate initiative.) In that same issue correspondent Robert L. Phelps reports a May C. Ward had passed through Makatoka on her way lo Regan to cnler the school. Throughout ihe year Superin tendent of Schools Bellamy has been stumping from community to community, exhorting the value of education and pushing for support of district taxes to build new schools. In a personal column in the Feb. 20 issue, the editor assures readers that Southport will soon have a pub lic high school, small to begin with, but sure to grow larger and perhaps become a college someday. In the May 21. l^W. issue Adrian Willcts of Winnabow expresses that community's concern for education. He suggests "some extra good teachers" should be appointed in District No. 3 because it has such a good school committee (Apparently there were disparities back then too.) Willets encourages the building of a high school "out here where it is most needed." In July the Herald editor reports the county school board has spent more on education in Brunswick County than "ever before" ? $10,000. That's right, S10.000. I'm won dering, given all the talk these days about county "effort" versus "abili ty" to fund education, where we stood in !?*#<? Was SI 0.000 a little or a lot for a county like Brunswick after the turn of the century? This was a time during which even the best of counties and communities were just beginning to educate most of their children, though not all of them. Back then it's doubtful education was valued as highly in Brunswick County as it might have been else where It didn't take an education to fish, farm or build a boat. These days we're told you need a two-year degree to do any of those very well. In 1W2-93, by the way. the Public School Forum of North Carolina suggests. Brunswick's per pupil spending of $825 per child ranked it at 86th out of the state's 100 counties in terms of effort ? evi dencing low commitment and priori ty given to education in its budget in relation to its ability to support edu cation. That pushes it three spots lower than the year before. Arc we still playing catch-up? Is education getting its rightful share of the county budget, compared to other needs? Is it, or should it be. the most important thing we do as a county? Those are questions that taxpayers in any era must ask them selves. ? lif A ^ I L aw 60 EWdfANP TCU HftSMIS?r WE'RE STILL \?r mR ABWT ON MOST OF THE ISSUES! M.C- 5ENATEL N.C ^Wficr NEO0T1A1 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR What 'New World Order ' Really Means l o the editor: The show of patriotism on Independence Day is always a won derful and hopeful sign. Most Americans love our country and many who celebrate the 4th have been willing to die for it. With this in mind, consider the implications of an article appearing in the Wilmington Morning Star on June 26, "Mission of the Future. N.C. bases profit from the new world order." We all want prosperity for our home state of North Carolina, but think about what the article said. "The new world order means the U.S. military is focusing its re sources on troops that are ready to go to trouble spots on short notice." Wait a minute! Do we really want our military ready to go anywhere in the world? Or should their focus be on defending our own shores? It's what the definition doesn't say that's really scary! Our soldiers, sailors and marines will not be fight ing (or peacekeeping) under the Stars and Stripes, but under the command of the United Nations. This is what the "new world >r der" means. If you doubt this, please get in touch with your congressman now. Ask him about Presidential Decision-Directive-25 (PPD-25). In sist that he explain this subversive document that surrenders our nation al sovereignty and puts our troops under U.N. command. What may be great for the North Carolina econo my could be fatal to U.S. indepen dence. Catherine Moore Burgaw 'lover Boy' To the editor: Biliary "Lover Boy" Clinton has now lowered himself to begging the American people for donations to his legal defense fund. He and his assistant president have been excel lent money-makers for many years, yet they are threatened with bank ruptcy by legal bills. What would happen to those of us not as fortunate, financially, as them? Could this mean that we should have free universal legal care before taking apart our great health care system? John McAleer Calabash (More Letters, Following Page) Tune In, Log On, Blast Off Down The Information Highway Do you like to travel? Make new friends? Explore strange and fasci nating places? Do you enjoy spending a rainy afternoon in a good library, wander ing through the stacks and flipping through books, magazines and newspapers? How would you like join in a question-and-answer session with a former president or a famous rock star? Are you a shopper who wants to learn everything you can about a product before making a purchase? Or are you a "people person" who enjoys chatting on the phone, getting lots of mail, playing games, exchanging ideas or arguing with a person of opposite views? If so, then how would you like to do all that without leaving the com fort of your own home? Interested'' Then it's time for you to get "On Line." Time to log on, tune in and blast off. In other words, it's time to hit the highway. The information highway that is. Hold on. Don't go away. I realize that those words remind you of Vice Prr? i/trnf Al fmrc nutting peo ple to sleep with long, boring dis sertations about the possibilities of fiber-optics, computer networking and blah, blah, blah... zzzzzzzzzzz. Nice guy. And he's right on this. But he could make the Battle of Armageddon sound as exciting as a radish-growing contest. Fact is, the info highway is a way-cool place. It's easy to get on. It's fascinating and educational and useful and more fun than your imagination can imagine. And it's definitely a wave of the future that promises to alter the way we work, play, learn, communicate and enter tain ourselves To get on hoard, all you need is a computer and a modem ? the gad get that allows your machine to talk through the telephone lines to every other computer on the planet. You don't even need top-notch equipment Even a decent used computer ? the kind you find for dirt cheap in the want ad* ? will give you enough speed and memory to get started Then just subscribe to one of sev eral "on-line" networking services. These are giant computer systems packed with libraries full of books, r-ncyclopedias. maps and other re search information, video games, useful computer programs, enter tainmcnt and product reviews and a seemingly inexhaustible array of other neat stuff. Must networks let you call up the latest wire service news, up-to-the minute weather forecasts, magazine articles and newspapers from around the world. Many on-line ser vices give you access to ihe Library of Congress card catalog, the Smithsonian Institution, college li braries and other bottomless pools of knowledge. If all that sounds too much like work, the on-line communications options will provide a much more enjoyable reason to log on. The most popular feature offered by nearly all on-line services is electronic mail, otherwise known as "E-mail." Once you know some one's E-mail "address," you can in stantly send a message to them from across the street or half way around the world. After toiling away on news room computers for years. I recently broke down and bought a modem. At last, the concept of a "home computer" makes sense. Already, through E-mail, I have re -established contact with several old friends I never write, rarely call and otherwise see maybe twice every decade. Nowadays, it's great to sign on after the 11 o'clock news (when phone rates are cheaper) and check my mailbox for messages from peo ple who have suddenly become neighbors again. Another communications feature of most networking services are the "chat" areas or "billboards" where you can meet people from all around the world who share similar interests. You can cither send them messages to read later or engage in an on-screen conversation with one or several people. More and more famous personal ities ? like author Tom Clancy and talk-show host Rush Limbaugh ? have established E-mail boxes where anyone can send them a mes sage and maybe get a personal re ply. 1 hear there's even an E-mail bo* at the White House. Network services frequently schedule roundtable discussions in which interesting people answer questions posed by the computer audience. Former President Jimmy Carter and rock star Sting have hosted such on-line forums in the past month. Everyone in the business agrees that it's just a matter of time before television, home computers and telephones are merged into one gi ant inter-active 'mega-medium" through which audiences will par ticipate in ? not just watch ? what comes across the screen. On-line networks are a step in that direction. So why not climb on board? If you already have a home computer, you aren't even touching its poten tial until you get a modem and sign on. If you're thinking of buying a new machine, it will almost surely come equipped with a modem and the software needed to go on line. The most popular on-line net works arc CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online. Costs and fea tures vary, but all three will let you sample their services for free. And even if you aren't on the same ser vice as your friends, you can send E-mail back and forth through something called the "Internet." That's where you find the real hard-core computer folks. Originally developed to link American univer sities doing defense research, the Internet got taken over by its users and expanded into a vast, world wide communications network. More than 20 million people use the Internet to exchange E-mail, to acccss databases in 2 million host computers and to interact with 45 ,0(X) smaller networks. Once you're on-line, it won't be long be fore you start hearing about "The Net." So why wait? The future is now. If you're already aboard the bus, drop me a line. I've set up an America Online mailbox with the address "ThcBeacon" for on-line readers to send us comments, questions, ad vice. glowing praise or polite criti cism. From CompuServe, Prodigy or other services, just send your E mail through The Net to "thebea con(a aol.com" and I'll zap you back. See you on the highway.
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
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July 7, 1994, edition 1
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