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PAGE FOUR
EDITORIAL
THE DALLAS POST, FEB. 4, 1971
glacial remains
The huge rock pile is a geologist’s delight:
boulders from Labrador are strewn .about, pebbles
from the Hudson Bay abound—even bits of
petrified wood can be found scattered on top of the
mound.
Is this a museum in some distant land? Or a
scientific laboratory in another part of the country?
Hardly. The rock pile containing these geological
finds towers behind the Giant Food Market in
Luzerne, just a few feet from much-traveled Route
309.
The large boulders, stones and pebbles which
comprise the mountainous heap are the remains of
a glacier which .covered this valley some nine
thousand years ago. The ice formation started as
far north as Labrador and slowly, over many,
many years, crept down into our Valley.
Today, the glacial remains are slowly and
deliberately being chipped away by insistent
bulldozers. Before it’s too late, parents, give your
youngsters a memorable treat: Stop someday on
your way to Wilks-Barre and permit them to climb
this prehistoric ‘“mountain’’ and examine at first
hand the relics of an era long gone.
the Union?
If President Nixon’s State of the Union
Message was meant to be a harbinger of the ad-
ministration’s attitude in the coming year, we can
look forward to an attempt by the executive branch
of government to patch up some of the wounds that
have plagued our nation for too many years. Mr.
Nixon’s address contained many signs that the
administration intends to get down to the long
needed job of doctoring at least some of our ills.
One of the problems that has hampered this
nation is a top heavy governmental structure, a
structure beset by beaurocratic inefficiency and by
too much power invested in the hands of those who
do not have to answer for the use of that power. By
consolidating seven cabinet departments into four,
a major step can be taken towards junking some of
the invisible machinery that runs our government.
| By putting more money in the hands of state and
local officials, power can be used and accounted for
more directly by the people.
President Nixon has shown that he is willing to
take some major steps to clean up our environ-
ment, aid education, prevent crime, eradicate
poverty, and to assure some measure of health for
our society. All of this, however, is mere rhetoric
until action is taken by the President and by con-
gress. Words are a lot cheaper than action, and by
the end of the year we may find that they are a lot
more plentiful, too. The reason for this is because,
Nixon, who undoubtedly would like to be President
in 1973, will have to see his measures through a
congress dominated by the opposition party, a
party which also wants to be in power after next
year’s elections.
There will undoubtedly be accusations of
political haymaking from both sides of the fence,
and both sides, undoubtedly, will not be entirely
wrong. The Democrats will call Mr. Nixon's $16
billion revenue sharing plan mere pitance in com-
parison to a $70 billion defense budget. They will
also say that $16 billion will not go very far in a time
of inflation, an inflation they will blame on the
administration. Finally, they will ask why Mr.
Nixon didn’t come up with these reforms before
now, and they will accuse him of using reform for
political advantage. To retaliate, the administra-
tion will probably accuse its opponents of placing
politics above the well being of the nation and.
blame any failures that it meets on congressional
inaction and hostility. Both sides will, of course, be
right. Neither Mr. Nixon nor his opponents can
plead innocence, although they will most likely try. :
It is probably too much to ask that political
questions be ignored in a pre-election year. We only
hope that a year which can be used to bring some
peace to our nation isn’t wasted on political
motives—.
thissa ‘n thatta
by H. H. Null ITI
About 15 years ago, I was driving toward
Scranton on an errand now forgotten and was
approaching the old North Scranton traffic
circle when I was halted by a group of young
men who were making a traffic survey. They
wanted to know where I was going, and I an-
swered saying that I didn’t intend to tell them
asit was my own business. They then called a
state policeman who made me wait about 10
minutes before letting me proceeds.
I was not engaged on any nefarious or
clandestine affairs and, if I had any sense I
would have told them something or other and
gone about my business. After all, I wasn’t
under oath. It mattered not at all to me, and I
suppose it made little difference to the inqui-
sitors. Still, I considered it an invasion of my
privacy, and I felt like a heroic martyr for
“defying the bureaucrats, even if they were
only a few college students trying to earn a
little money on their vacation.
Yep, I thought to myself, I was quite a
hero—but only for a while until I started to
examine their side of it and was surprised to
find that there was something to be said for
them, as well as for bureaucracy in general.
This incident came back to mind recently
when I was reading a number of contras
about the action of the Pentagon in gathering
dossiers on a great many Americans, some in
government. The gathering had been going on
for some time without any public outcry until
somebody in congress found out about it and
started to scream.
There doesn’t seem to be any pros, so
perhaps I had better take up the minority
position and say a word or so in behalf of the
Pentagon and the unnamed person of high
rank responsible for the Pentagon’s imple-
mentation of an order.
As I remember, the purpose of initiating
the practice was to make it easier for authori-
ties to apprehend those who bomb public and
corporate property by collecting the names
and careers of campus and other malcon-
tents. This had been the practice of policeman
for many years, and I am sure has been an ef-
fective tool in crime prevention and detective
work.
According to the Fentagon version, re-
cords were kept on many liberals, some of
whom were members of congress, and the
suspicion arose that the dossiers might be
It is an animated scene, here on the old C
& O canal, with the skaters, the dogs and the
children. Skates ring on the ice and occasion-
ally there is a deep hollow thump from
beneath. Here an impromptu hockey game
goes on with branches instead of sticks, for in
a southern city everything has to be extem-
porized. Here a tall fellow from some north-
ern clime who knows how to skate goes up the
canal in firm, long strokes, wheet. . . wheet. . .
wheet; around the bend in a moment. Here
comes a laughing party from the other direc-
tion, walking along the ice and playing tricks
with a dog. They throw a stick that skitters
far in front. We all laugh as the frantic dog
gathers speed awkwardly in his slippery
takeoff and dashes for the stick—and then
slides past in confusion instead of grabbing it
(like Tom Dewey losing the election in 1948).
But the dog is luckier and gets a second
chance and this time he jams his brakes on in
time and grabs the stick and comes back
prancing and we all cheer.
Nothing like a frosty walk on the old tow-
path, but I have failed to make allowance for
the ice, too; it has all melted and frozen again
in lumps and projections, in corrugated spots
or in bare places or in simple glare ice that
tries to slide me over the bank on the canal or
on the other side, down the embankment to
the railroad. Yes, it is aggravating; as aggra-
vating as trying to write some obdurate ar-
ticle: you start with a passable first sentence
and trip over a participle; or slide on a mixed
changes
by Eric Mayer
A half century ago, back when airplanes
and radios were still struggling to become
more than curiosities, strange things were
happening between the garish covers of a
motley band of magazines led by Hugo Gerns-
back’s Wonder Stories. Men and spaceships
were careening wildly from one end of the
cosmos to the other, battling bug-eyed mon-
sters, blowing up planets, discovering atomic
energy and just generally raising havoc with
the natural order of the universe.
This hardy breed of star voyagers and
space brawlers, despite all their time-warp
machines and flying saucers,
locked safely away behind the blurred ink of
their pulpy prisons. Or so it seemed. But as
any science fiction devotee could tell you,
physical confinement means little when the
higher mental processes are at liberty. In-
deed, the wild and wooley space operas were
making an immense journey, from the mind
of the writer, to the pages of Wonder Stories,
remained
keeping files in the Pentagon
used for political purposes. That is, a con-
gressman favoring a cowardly foreign policy
might have become a little too friendly with
his neighbor’s wife and might have achieved
recognition on the Pentagon’s secret list for
doing so. This might have been used by the
administration as a club to compel support of
‘a different policy—as blackmail, to use the
proper word.
Something of the sort was practiced on
Martin Luther King when it became known
that he had a few extra-curricular girl.
friends; however, this was either disregarded
or disbelieved by his admirers, and his soul
goes marching on. His birthday is a public
holiday in some quarters.
Another horrendous picture conjured up
by those deprecating the Pentagon practice is
that of “Big Brother,” the Stalinesque heavy
1984,” who kept just above everyone under
continual surveillance by the use of television
and who managed a police state carried to the
utmost possible degree.
The secret files in the Pentagon are con-
demned as a start in the direction of bringing
“Big Brother’ practices to the United States,
which is a little far-fetched judging by our
history of free-speech, made ever freer by our
courts. Russia has gone about as far as she
can go in this direction, but still has been
unable to reach the unbelievably repressive
status of “1984.” :
I suppose that if one’s conscience is
completely clear, one would have nothing to
fear from government surveillance or even
from the credit bureaus, which are said to
keep notes on us; but I suspect there are few
whose lives are so saintly that we would like
every one of our doings exposed to public
gaze.
There is also the probability that some of
the information jotted down on the records is
/
erroneous and, not knowing that the records
exist, there is nothing that we can do to dis-
pute it.
On the other hand, national security must
take priority over the individual. The men
charged with national security threatened
from without our borders, cannot suffer it to
be damaged from within.
It would have been better if the existence
of these personal files had been kept truly
secret. What we don’t know generally doesn’t
hurt us, and the cause of security would have
been served by secrecy. Unfortunately, it
seems impossible to keep anything secret in
Washington. Spies from foreign countries as
well as Jack Anderson, seem to be able to find
out just about everything that goes on there.
There must be a middle ground to this
question. We must hang on to our rights, but
we don’t want to hang separately, as Ben
Franklin put it.
'"HOW DOES THAT GRAB YOU?
cel
presidential balancing act
metaphor, or can’t find your way round a
synonym, or bounce over some confounded
syntactical obstacle. How you envy that chap
on fast skates. (What a reporter really likes is
a simple, straight away narrative about a
fire, or a murder or a shipwreck. or some-
thing cheerful like that, where he can tell the
istory as fast as he can type, with the Night
Final waiting. Yes, and a winter walk should
be like that too; brisk and lively with the legs
taking care of themselves while you consider
the sky and the passing laughter, and the
sunset).
Well, at any rate, here I was at the last
. bend and suddenly I could see the Washington
Monument glimmering in front of me, far off,
pink and glowing. What a lovely sight, it was
almost diaphanous there in the city it domin-
ates, not very tall from a distance, but rosy
and cloudlike and giving the false impression
of being within reach.
So now, because this is Washington, let’s
make a quick shift and come into the auditor-
ium in the New Senate Office Building where
a crowd of reporters is gathered, including
even some columnists. There is a cluster of
maybe 20 microphones fastened like petals to
the lectern. And in a minute Senator Muskie
steps briskly on stage.
Yes, he is just come back from Europe,
Moscow, the Middle East and whereever;
yes, he is very obviously a presidential candi-
date; no, he is not going to admit any such
thing, let alone reveal the intimate details of
his talks with world leaders and least of all his
four-hour talk with Russian leader *"osygin.
Talk about treacherous walking! It is
worse than the ice and snow on the towpath.
This is an adversary proceeding as all Wash-
ington press conferences are, in which report-
ers toss him oh-so-innocent questions or try to
lure him out on glare ice and then wait with
the friendliest feelings to see if he falls on his
fanny.
Sen. Muskie knows the game perfectly
well; he plants his hands on the lectern; he
feels out the questions carefully. He steps
over a pitfall on the Arab-Jewish crisis, or
pauses a minute to decide the safest path bet-
ween withdrawing troops from Europe or
keeping up the strength of NATO; or he
makes a carefully neutral comment about not
interfering with State Department while at
the same time implying that he knows a thing
or two about balance of payments. Now and
then he gives a grin that illuminates his big
face. But he does not relish the game as
Franklin Roosevelt or Jack Kennedy did;
there is no elan, and while he walks sure-foot-
ed there is a feeling of caution, and even
perhaps, a trace of irritability. It is a long, di-
ficult, treacherous path ahead of him, no
doubt about it, and he has cause to tread
warily. Whether there is a rosy monument
waiting for him round the bend, who can say?
It is different with George McGovern next
}
day. He has announced his candidacy out in
South Dakota and has come back for a press
conference in a crowded room, the walls of -
which are jammed with long-haired college
types who applaud happily. McGovern has all
the advantages of being hopelessly behind;
Muskie has all the disadvantages of being
way out in front. The first has nothing ¢p lose,
the second everything, and must gua him-
self. McGovern is spontaneous and quiet and
likable; he has been against the Vietnam war
for many years and says so. He is efually
earnest, too, on the race issue and poverty. He
has natural goodness written all over him.
Several writers next day grope for an adjec-
tive to describe this little-known contender
who got to hating war as a bomber pilot in
World War II; it is amusing how they adopt a
protective air to the underdog; two of them
come up with the same word, ‘‘decent.”
It is Mr. Nixon’s big week, too, with his
State of the Union speech. Both NEWSWEEK
and LIFE give him a tough editorial going
over before he speaks and hint that he may be
a one-term president. Things have certainly
changed! A year ago he gave us ‘‘the life of a
driving dream” speech in tite hopeful
of the pre-election Southern Strategy” ‘‘We
must balance our Federal budget,” he told us,
‘so that American families will have a better
chance to balance their family budgets.”
That balance is far off, too—anothezg rosy
monument in the distant afterglow.
claiming the infinite universe
(at maybe % cent a word), thence-furtively to
a dim bedroom where they zoomed into the
mind of a young reader, filling his ears with
the roar of uninvented rocket engines, and his
eyes with the gleaming splendor of alien
heavens.
And all the practical people; the oh-so
mature people; the ones with both feet on the
ground who ‘‘had better things to do,” tut-tut-
ted condescendingly and dismissed the rebel
genre as ‘Buck Rodgers stuff,” ‘‘trash,” or
worse. In retrospect they proved what the
“silly”’ sci-fi fans knew all along—anyone who
keeps both feet on the bround is going to have
a hard time moving anywhere.
Men have always dreamed of throwing
off the shackles of gravity and claiming the
infinite universe as his home, rather than just
the finite pebble of the earth. The modern
science fiction story is just the most recent
manifestation of this dream. 200 years before
the birth of Christ an “aspiring sculptor,
Lucian of Samsota, wrote a True History
wherein a courageousband of adventurers
daring to sail to the Pillars of Hercules (the
Strait of Gibraltor) are sucked up into an
immense waterspout and carried to the moon.
Luna, being our closest celestial neigh-
bor, was as natural a target for early space
travellers as for today’s astronauts. Around
1400 a certain Bishop Godwin penned Man in
the Moone, probably to the unbounded con-
sternation of pious followers who figured that
the only way to escape from the rock pile of
the world was to die. According to Godwin’s
fanciful tale, there was a man by the name of
Domingo who had an overwhelming desire to
fly. There being no airplanes in those days, he
hit upon a scheme which involved training a
flock of geese to tow a chariot. This exceed-
ingly fine plan worked perfectly, until the
hero became airborne. Only then did he dis-
cover that his particular geese hibernated, of
all places, on the moon! Such are the vicissi-
tudes of life.
Other primitive astronauts employed
modes of travel as diverse as, balloons, witch
power and bottles of dew. (The morning sun
doth draw the dew to its shining bosom.
Therefore, if a man should be attached to his
body ample number of bottles. . .)
And how can we forget Jules Verne’s gi-
gantic canon, the Columbaid, which he built,
after painstaking calculation, just 100 miles
from Cape Kennedy? It’s equally difficult to
forget how his ill-fated space travellers, fail-
ing to reach their lunar destination, returned
to earth with an inglorious splash as ships
raced to their rescue.
So proto science-fiction merged into the
pulpy space operas, which, despi{§ the
mockery that buffeted their childhood, have
completed the longest journey of all—from
myth to reality. When the down-to-earth
crowd cheered the moon landing, science fic-
tion readers could only issue a collective, ‘we
told you so.” That “first step’’ had a deja vu
quality; they had already been there; they
had already experienced it. And as the
journalists crowd in, the science fiction
writers move out and onward. Because no
matter what the merits of practicality may
be, no matter how much technology a moon
shot requires, one thing is true: man can do
no more than he imagines.
Tie SALLASC[20ST
An independent newspaper published every Thursday morning by the Greenstreet
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Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks
Editor: Doris R. Mallin
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Michael Hutzler
Carolyn Gass
\
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| jottings
Did you notice—Ma Nature tucked us in
with another coverlet of purest white a week
ago Sunday night, and Monday morning, the
kids couldn’t wait to get out and begin em-
broidering it with a madcap pattern of cross-
stitch.
And how did you like that beautiful pink
sky that heralded the snowstorm of only a
couple hours duration one morning couple of
weeks ago? Our offspring straggled down to
the bus stop revelling in the “pink every-
thing,” calling back that even the arriving
by Jane Wildoner
bus was ‘pinkish!’ They could not have
travelled the little more than quarter mile
down to the intersection before the snow
began—in earnest! One minute, everything
was all rose-colored and the next, same
everything was all white. It sure helps to
break the monotony of winter, that way!
What followed the storm was sure a brief
January thaw, and the high wind that came
on suddenly was just like a vampire that
settled on our house and fastened its fangs in
the jugular vein running from the oil tank to
the furnace. There for awhile we thought the
poor beast that purrs in the cellar and blows
its hot breath through the house was done in
but the oil man finally came and gave it a
transfusion and it survived the onslaught of
the ghoulish wind.
Seriously, now, we’ve got a full moon
coming up on Feb. 10. Watch for it. Nothing's
prettier than a February Moon. And if you
haven’t already protected your young apple
trees from the rabbit, better hop to it—quick.
The pesky little varmints are more apt to
nibble the bark now than at any time during
all the rest of the year put together.
If you've got any greenery indoors, take
good care of it now and watch its re-newed
vim and vigor. We have a philodendron
growing in a pretty unique hanging pot that
our Big Time Operator devised from three
strands of binder twine and a coconut shell
salvaged from last year’s Easter candy-
making session. Our pretty bit of greenery
has woven its way up, down, around and
through that twine until it’s impossible to tell
where it began or where it leaves off, from
little more than a handful of soil! That sturdy
little philodendron reminds me of my grand-
yday
mother, from whom I inherited it—one of the
few tangible legacies the seemingly frail but
spunky little old lady left behind her.
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