Wednesday. April 22. 1981
THE PILOT—Southern Pines, North Carolina
Page 1-B
“In taking over The Pilot no changes are contemplated. We will try to
keep this a good paper. We will try to make a little money for all concerned.
Wherever there seems to be an occasion to use our influence for the public
good'we will try to do it. And we will treat everybody alike. ” — James Boyd,
May 23. 1941.
‘Let’s Not Mess It Up’
state Senators are trying again to get
their terms extended from two years to
four years, but the State House should
refuse again to be a part of the scheme.
Two years ago the Senate voted to call for
a referendum to change the State
* constitution to provide for four year terms
^ for legislators, but the bill died in the
House. The Senate last week voted for the
same constitutional changes, and it’s now
up to the House.
Some large questions have been raised
about the effort by the Charlotte Observer,
which said in an editorial:
“The proposal is intended to reduce
turnover among legislators. But it could
bring about fundamental changes in state
government, and it has had almost no
serious study. There have been no public
hearings and no close examination of its
potential impact on elections and other
aspects of state and local government.”
There were arguments on the floor of the
Senate that four year legislative terms
would better serve the public by attracting
more people to seek the office, but
. opponents of the measure said it would
accelerate the trend toward professional
legislators and would, in fact, reduce the
number of people who might wish to serve
in the Legislature.
Support The Symphony
Friends of the North Carolina State
Symphony are greatly concerned over the
financial troubles of the organization which
has meant so much to this state.
To avoid a half million dollar deficit
symphony officials have cancelled the rest
of the concert season after April 26, and
this action has created shock waves across
the state.
The important thing, however, is the
Symphony must go on, and a redoubled
effort will be made to raise the necessary
funds to see that a new season will start in
the fall.
The Symphony gets good support from
the Legislature. The use of tax funds for the
Symphony dates back to 1943--North
Carolina being the first state to appropriate
money for a symphony orchestra.
Over the years the Symphony has proved
its value to North Carolina as countless
thousands of children have had the
opportunity of hearing great live music in
their schools. The Symphony will continue
traveling to all parts of the state to give
these concerts, and it is also seeking to
expand its performance for adult audiences
across North Carolina.
The tremendous increase in the cost of
travel was given as one reason for the
financial crisis, but there is no one who
seriously advocates forfeiting the primary
role of the orchestra in taking music to the
people.
This must continue, and the funds for this
mission must come from the people. Now is
the time for the friends of the symphony to
rally and give it the support it deserves.
Petitions For Communications
The volunteer firemen and rescue squad
members of Moore County are seeking
public 'support for their position on an
independent communications agency, and
they deserve that public support.
Petitions are being circulated to be
presented to the county commissioners
with a request that the commissioners
re-consider their recent action of
abolishing the independent agency.
The vote of the county commissioners to
take such action was three to two-three
Republicans and two Democrats-and the
Republican majority obviously was
politically motivated in bowing to the
demands of a Republican sheriff Uiat he be
given control of all communications.
The independent agency had worked
well, and the 600 volunteer firemen and
rescue squad members felt that their views
were being received and acted upon. They
are convinced that under the sheriff’s
control fire and rescue emergency calls
will take second place to law enforcement
calls.
A spokesman for the rescue squads
declared that human lives may be at stake
under such a situation.
The argument advanced in favor of
placing emergency communications under
the sheriff’s control is that it will save
money, perhaps as much as $3,000. But the
record of increased costs for operating the
sheriff’s office does not give a great deal of
support for that argument. Still even if
$3,000 could be saved does not the question
of saving lives come first?
The commissioners acted hastily in
making their decision, but a second vote
re-affirmed the stand they had taken.
Whether the petitions with several
thousand names will cause them to change
their minds is not known, but this is surely
an opportunity for the people of the county
to let the commissioners know how they
feel on this important issue.
Silly Actions
The Moore County sheriff’s office and the
Moore County Airport authorities took the
very silly position a few days ago that they
could not confirm that a plane had crashed
or identify the pilot until the Federal
Aviation Agency had completed its
investigation.
Of course, the crashed plane was there
for everyone to see, and so was the pilot
who climbed out unhurt.
Published Every Wednesday
By The Pilot, Incorporated
Southern Pines, North Carolina
Sam Ragan
Marjorie Ragan
Florence Gilkeson
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Southern Pines, N.C. 28387.
A photographer from this newspaper
made a picture of the crashed plane and the
pilot, and there was a sizeable crowd of
people standing around looking when he did
so.
Still the sheriff’s deputies and the airport
authorities were very secretive about what
had taken place, and the FAA, like most
federal agencies, was not available to
provide any answers. It may be months
before the FAA completes its investigation
of what turned out to be a minor incident.
But whether major or minor, the FAA is
usually unaccountable.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the
sheriff’s office and the airport authorities
are not accountable to the public. They are
accountable, and their actions in this
incident were just plain silly and uncalled
for.
Banking Bills
The bankers and the insurance
companies carry a big stick in the
legislative halls of Raleigh, and they are
rightly regarded as the most potent
lobbying force at the General Assembly.
That helps explain why the bankers have
just about had their way in the matter of
new interest rate legislation at this session
of the legislature.
An increase in interest rates was called
for, of course, but the indications are that
the complex legislation which didn’t raise
many questions amonjg legislators goes
much farther than simply raising the
ceiling. When the rates went up for the
banks they also went up for the small loan
outfits, and a lot of people are bound to be
hurt.
There was not much hue and cry about
the new banking bills, but there should
have been. The people who will be most
affected should have been heard.
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The chief spokesman in the Senate
against the measure was Senator William
Creech of Wake, who said:
“One of the reasons we’ve had good
government in North Carolina is that we’ve
had responsible government; we’ve been
close to the people. One reason we’ve been
close to the people is that we’ve had to go
back to the people every two years. We
have a time-honored system that has
worked well. Let’s not mess it un.”
We think Senator Creech spoke well and
his warning of “let’s not mess it up” should
be heeded.
The Charlotte Observer makes a good
point, too, in pointing out that not enough
study has been given to the change to call
for a vote at this time.
It is understandable that legislators
would rather not go to the trouble and
expense of running for reelection every two
years, but while it might be better for
them personally it would not be better for
the people.
If North Carolina wants to keep a citizen
legislature it should keep electing
legislators every two years.
Accountability is much to be desired in
public officials, and being held accountable
every two years is more in keeping with our
democratic system than doubling the
terms.
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CARTOONIST Mike Peters of the Dayton, Ohio, Daily News won the
Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons such as the above.
‘Illiad' And ^Odyssey'
BYTHADSTEMJR.
Many people assume that the
“Illiad” and the “Odyssey” are
virtually hypenated. Each is
ascribed to Homer (1200-850BC)
and each epic contains 24 books,
but the two narratives are
different in substance.
The “Illiad,” from the Greek
word “Illeon,” meaning Troy,
tells of the wrath of Achilles and
the consequences of this wrath
during the “Trojan Wars.
Achilles quarrels with
Aggamemmon over a girl,
Brisells, and Achilles returns
from the war to sulk in the
seclusion of his tent. While
Achilles is pouting, the Greek
armies weaken, and Portroculus,
Achilles’ bosom friend, goes into
battle wearing Achille’s armor.
Potroculus is killed by Hector. In
Book XVIII, Homer tells of the
visit of Thetis, Achilles’ mother,
to comfort her son, and this book
tells, also, how Hephaestos
makes new armor for Achilles.
In his new armor Achilles kills
Hector, and at the entreaty of
Priam, Achilles gives Hector’s
body to the dead warrior’s aged
mother.
Homer connects the 24 books of
the “Odyssey,” from Odysseus,
ingeniously. During Odysseus’
absence, his son, Telemachus,
visits several people to seek
advice relative to the problem of
his mother, Penelope. While it is
assumed that the absent
Odysseus is dead, Penelope will
not consent to take any of her
several suitors as a second
husband until she completes a
winding-sheet, or shroud, for
Laertes, Odysseus’ elderly
father.
Penelope sabotages her OAim
work: “Day-long she wove at the
web (the shroud for Laertes) but
by night she would unravel what
she had done.” By dint of this
ruse, Penelope kept her suitors
at bay for three years. Then in
the fourth year she is betrayed
by a close woman-friend.
When it looks as if Telemachus
will have a step-father, or
It Says Here
She shot her man ’cause he
done her wrong; now they’ll
shoot her story for television.
“The People vs. Jean Harris”
will be a three-hour NBC-TV
movie recreating part of the trial
involving the private school
headmistress convicted of
shooting and killing Scarsdale
diet author and cardiologist Dr.
Herman Tamover, says the UPI.
Ellen Burstyn, who won the
Oscar for best actress in “Alice
Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,”
will portray Miss Harris in the
drama. The trial lasted 64 days
and was the most extensively
covered trial in the history of
New York State, according to
Editor and Publisher.
There were 75 newspaper,
television, radio and wire service
reporters and freelance writers
who covered the trial. CBS, ABC,
NBC, cable and British television
editors also came, plus local
reporters from the area’s
weeklies and dailies. Reporters
from Australia and Canada also
showed up.
Spectators began lining up at 7
a.m. to get seats. The trial began
at 10 a.m. each day.
“Juicy testimony involving
overheard phone conversation,
racy love letters, alleged
coverups and sloppy police work
was sprinkled liberally
throughout the trial,” Editor and
Publisher commented.
The prestigious New York
Times found itself involved in the
story, if indirectly. In mentioning
a list of the women Dr. Tamover
admired, included were the
names of Audrey Topping, wife
of Seymour Topping, managing
editor and Iphigene Sultzberger,
the mother of publisher Arthur
Ochs (Punch) Sultzberger.
Photographers caused the
biggest headache for courthouse
officials, E&P quoted a court
official. Over 30 photographers
and cameramen were on the
scene and witnesses, defense and
prosecution teams were virtually
cornered as they tried to leave
and enter the building.
Harris was usually amenable,
but during jury deliberations her
patience grew thin.
“I know they have their job to
do, but sometimes they make me
feel like a trapped rat,” she
remarked.
The Washington Star’s man at
the Jean Harris trial, Duncan
Spencer, wrote a piece for his
paper, “Making Crime Pay.” He
said, “There are whispers, too, of
instant books, designed to ^at
the biggies to the press-proba-
bly the work of too many
journalists with too many
notebooks and too much time on
their ink-stained hands.”
Whose quickie will be the first
to hit the ^ands? Spencer’s. New
American Library will publish
his account of the trial in a book
“Love Gone Wrong,” probably
this month.
The Network promises to
televise “The People vs. Jean
Harris” in May. George Schaefer
will produce and direct it for
NBC-TV.
It’s too good a story. It’s too
colorful. We just can’t let it drop.
Next week. East Lynne?
MUR
The Public Speaking
'Two Instances'
To the Editor:
Leave it to The Pilot to com
pletely inform the readers of
Southern Pines on every intimate
detail, no matter how sensitive
its nature and no matter how
ethical its puUication. There
wo'e two such instances in last
week’s edition (April 15).
First, Sam Ragan found it
neccessary to publish a rape
victim’s name. The supposed
reason-4o keep America' from
becoming a police state. It is
ludicrous for him to assume this
and unprofessional for him to
publish the name.
Second, in the Stoneybrook
article “They Really Did Watch
The Races,” The Pilot informs us
that people were “P-ing down
the track.” Hopefully this was a
tj^grai^ical error. But by The
raot’s standards, it is their
undeniable “truth”-whatever
Ragan defines that to be.
Will you also be so bold as to
publish this letter.
Michelle G. Martin
Southern Pines.
(Editor’s note: The Pilot does
not knowingly use obscenities.
For this reason, one word in the
above letter has been edited).
Commissioners
time or make the effort to
respond and attempt to answer
Commissioner Parker’s
allegations in last week’s
newspapers. Primarily because
there really isn’t an answer to
Mr. Parker short of the next
election.
However, as a citizen of this
county I find it insulting to say
the least that my attendance at
county commissioners meetings
does not meet with the approval
of Mr. Parker. I wasn’t aware
that I needed his or anyone elses
blessing. As for taking notes,
there are a number of interested
(Continued on Page 3-B)
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certainly that Penelope will be
shacked-up with a new man,
Menelous, the poet, tells
Telemachus that his father,
Odysseus, is sporting with
Calypso, a nymph. Menelous
then tells how Odysseus leaves
Calypso and arrives at Phaeocia,
where Odysseus relates the
dramatic story of his years of
wanderings. The drama
intensified with the ultimate
return of Oddyseus and
Telemachus. The two come up
with a volantile addemdum to the
all the traveling salesman jokes
by planning vengeance on the
guys who tried to make-out with
Penelope during Odysseus’
wanderings. Finally, Odysseus
makes himself known to
Penelope, and, once again, he
rules the country.
If these classics don’t lend
themselves to superficial
summaries, Andrew Lang
caught the spirit: “They hear
like Ocean on a western beach.
The surge and thunder of the
Odyssey.”
It was called “Brown Lung: A Case of Deadly Neglect,”
and for the series of articles, photographs and editorials
published in February of 1980 The Charlotte Observer last
week was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
It was the sixth award the Observer has won for the series
but it was the biggest of them all,and the Observer’s
publisher, editors and reporters were receiving
congratulations from othpr papers in the state in the days
which followed the announcement.
The award was well deserved and among those offering
congratulations was Governor Jim Hunt, who declared:
“The series will have a lasting impact on public opinion and
public policy with regard to byssinosis. The Observer’s
coverage has significantly contributed to the shaping of my
administration’s policies in this area.”
However, the Observer realistically observed, “Our
celebration is tempered by the knowledge that some of the
problems the series described more than a year ago haven’t
been solved.”
The series documented the fact that thousands of cotton
mill workers in North and South Carolina were working in
cotton dust levels which could damage their lungs and that
many workers who had been disabled by brown lung had
difficulties in getting workers compensation.
Some improvements have been made in working
conditions, but the Observer pointed out that under the new
administration in Washington some of the standards are
being relaxed, and nrany of the workers are still without
compensation.
The Observer was the fifth North Carolina newspaper to
receive the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The I^^iteville
News Reporter and the Tabor City Tribune won it in 1953 for
reporting on Ku Klux Klan activities, and in 1971 the
Winston-Salem Journal and the Twin City Sentinel .won it for
a series on strip-mining in the mountains of North Carolina.
Most of the time top awards such as the Pulitzer Prize goes
to a newspaper for a “big story” or a major series. The real
measure of a good newspaper, of course, is its day-by-day
and week-by-week coverage of its community, and by and
large the newspapers of North Carolina perform well that
task and responsibility.
We read a lot of newspapers-seven dailies and from 40 to
50 weekly papers from all parts of the state, plus a couple
from out of state, and the overall quality of North Carolina’s
newspapers does stand out.
There is a full-bodied tobacco plant on the dust jacket cover
of James Applewhite’s new book of poetry, “Following
Gravity,” and it’s an apt illustration--not the tobacco plant
itself but from where it comes. Eastern Carolina, because
that is the homeland of the poet and that homeland is strong
in his poetry.
Applewhite, a professor of English at Duke University, was
born and brought up in Stantonsburg, and he writes with
strong feeling for the region and its people.
“Following Gravity” is the winner of the Virginia
Commonwealth University for Contemporary Poetry, and
more than 300 collections of poetry were read in the
competition, with the poet Donald Justice the final judge of
the eleven finalists. The book of 67 pages was published by
the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Press.
Justice has written the foreword for the book and in it he
says:
“I think I first began to feel something beyond
respect-something in my case like affection-on noticing the
care the poet had taken to name the very names of his
neighbors, whether, as in some cases, drinking or, more
soberly, attending funerals. I was not beyond thinking rather
grandly, of Homer naming the Archain chieftains or Milton
the fallen angels. For there is a drift or pull in Applewhite’s
poetry toward myth and legend, a mark of high ambition
which has tact and reserve normally keep from view.”
There is that quality in Applewhite’s poetry-it’s a quality
which marks much of Southern literature, and the poems in
“Following Gravity” are strong and distinctive.
Here is one of them, “Pamlico River”:
I breathed that odor of land-draining odor,
Leachings from ditches and saw-bladed marshes.
From springs, field-trickles, now channeled by creeks
Into a five-mile flood turned bronze in the sun:
Cypresses ever in the distances, living
And dead, fish hawks nesting their skeletons.
I breathed that odor of ending and beginning.
Land’s drift marrying with salt and the tides.
I lay on a spit of sand in the sun.
Savoring the taste of my body and water.
My cousin Ethel cooked steaks on a fire,
Ethel’s beau and I sipped beer. That spirit
From childhood, whose cloud-imagination
Trailed the rain in necklaces, felt winelike
Arteries and veins, intoxicating stems.
Like grandfather’s scuppernong: grapes in leaves
Grown yellow with October too sweet to resist.
« 9| « *
Fellow with some experience in such things says you know
your children are growing up when they stop asking where
they came from and start refusing to say where they are
going.
* * * *
A great deal has been written about the space shuttle
Columbia, the long time and the $10 billion it cost to get it into
the air, and it seemed like a lot of money to go from Florida to
California.
It was a significant achievement, of course, going out into
space and then coming back, putting us ahead of the
Russians in the space game, but is the achievement more
symbolic than real.
We heard a man say, “It was worth it as a symbol,” but we
wonder if it really was. In all that we have read we have not
yet seen any truly important benefits.
Supporters of space adventures claim, of course, that
Americans have realized a lot of side benefits from the
efforts-communications satellites so that television
programs can be more quickly spread around the world, for
one, and advancements in medical research for another.
Both are worthwhile, but we wonder if they could not have
been accomplished at far less cost to the American
taxpayers. And perhaps if that money had been spent
directly on medical research we would have had more
answers to curing more diseases, such as cancer.
We are glad the astronauts were able to get back to land in
their billion dollar machine, but we would like to see more
benefits than traveling from Florida to California before
more money is spent on such shuttles.