Of course it’s too early to say so with any degree of certainty, but it really does look as though Harveys Lake Borough Council is on the road to achieving that long sought after—and for all too long, elusive—quality of cooperation. It could well be that it’s still honeymoon time at the Lake, of course. There are four new or semi- new council members—Donald Hanson and Robert Wintersteen are the newcomers, while Bernice Kocher and Fred Merrill have been returned to office after four years away from the fray. Each has expressed concern that the acrimonious bickering which has marked council meetings in the past prevents substantial progress and each, presumably, intends to do what he can to change that picture. The most significant change in the atmosphere at Harveys Lake meetings has been wrought, it seems to us, by the new council chairman, Tom Cad- walader. Borough taxpayers are still invited to air their grievances but are reminded to keep their comments brief, to the point, and impersonal. Cadwalader has initiated the practice of printing and posting agendas prior to each meeting, and each of his fellow councilmen seems prepared to ‘offer well thought out motions and resolutions— possibly the result of effective caucus meetings. There is no doubt that differences of opinion will crop up at subsequent borough council meetings. This is not only to be expected but to be en- couraged—who wants a council composed of rubber stamps? What is also to be desired is that these differences be worked out in a manner exemplifying the better qualities of the democratic process: Cooperation, tolerance and genuine concern for the welfare of one’s constituents. Biography There is no law that states big news stories have to be earth-shattering consequence and must carry an anxiety quotient of ulcerous proportions. It just seems that events work out that way. Because of this we would sincerely like to thank Howard Hughes, Clifford Irving, Edith Irving, Time Inc., McGraw-Hill, and others for supplying us with a guaranteed mystery story that unfolds each day like it was intentionally serialized. The beautiful aspect of the Howard Hughes biography mystery is that it couldn’t matter less what happens in the end insofar as the health and well-being of this planet is concerned (unless there ‘are, heaven forbid, complications we do not en- vision.) It is an intriguing story, but therein ends its socially redeeming value. We are ashamed to say that we have not kept up with every development in the drama, but it remains nevertheless intriguing. CBS television .newsman Mike Wallace, who has been in- vestigating the story, appeared recently on the Dick Cavett show to talk about it. Throughout the interview he had the elfish look of a kid who had just stumbled on a juicy, but puzzling, piece of gossip, and it was plain that he was having a good time. The whole episode is a little ridiculous in that it could be settled so simply if Mr. Hughes would deign to come out of hiding for a short time and if a few lie-detector tests were employed. But really now, where’s the fun in that. This story boasts an aged eccentric billionaire, a potential forger living in Switzerland, and a couple big companies who may find themselves the butt of an international prank. There are furthermore, side intrigues of gery, and thievery that can’t be beat. We hope the Hughes biography mystery con- tinues to unfold as it has in the past, slowly and with increasing intrigue. Why? Because, by God, it’s fun—and what, may we ask, is wrong with that? “8 ! 7 ; g By Eric Mayer When Calvin Trilobit was about to graduate from the school system that had attended him for 12 long years, there arose a question of whether or not he existed. The computer which enabled the authorities to keep such a close and impersonal eye on their young charges had burped one morning, flashed a red light and refused to accept any more information about Trilobit, Calvin G.— 00666, claiming its memory banks, infallible in the extreme, had never heard of him. So Calvin was sent to the vice principal’s office. The vice principal was the kind of man who almost never smiled at you, and if he did it meant you were in trouble. Most of his working day was spent sailing the halls like a stormeloud, raining regulations down on the heads of wanderers, now and then casting his fearful shadow on a boisterous study hall or a crooked lunch line. He was the spirit of the school, more or less personified. When Calvin crept into the vice prin- cipal’s office, directed by the raised eyebrows of a strange secretary who had known him the previous day, he found His Dreaded Eminence reared up in all His dark majesty, like some pagan monolith, behind a large, preter-naturally tidy desk. The vice principal glared down his bulbous nose at Calvin as if he were studying a piece of lint on his vest. “It has come to my attention that you, whoever you may be, are not listed in our computerized files.” The vice principal always started his speeches by noting that, “it has come to my attention.” Besides suiting his taste for the ominous while sounding official, the phrase possessed a certain power of ambiguity. The accused could never be quite sure by what means, natural or otherwise, their misdeeds had come to the vice principal’s attention. Calvin squirmed. His accuser’s long cultivated glare pinned him to his seat. ‘My name is Calvin Trilobit,” he ventured, trying to stave off the dissection that seemed so imminent | TRB _ The first White House press conference I ever went to ( the Old Timer said) was Warren G. Harding’s. That was before you were born. He was the handsomest President since George Washington and some people thought he was handsomer. There he was in plus fours behind his big desk in the Oval Room with about 30 reporters asking questions, and I was a young man and my heart just went out tohim: I could write home to my folks and tell them I. was within touching ‘distance of a President—a live President. They would tell that all over town. I was supposed to be a reporter but my sympathies were all against the mean corres- pondents, and finally he said, ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, do be good to me; I want to go out and play a little golf.” That was the way it used to be. There was a relationship between the President and the press. We used to think that press conferences were an important part of the business of government. Not any longer, though. It will be just about last regular press conference, Nov. 12. This is a kind of anniversary. In 1971 he held nine, in 1970 four, and in 1969 eight. There used to be a friendly intimacy in these things. It was an adversary relation- President needed the press (we thought) and the press needed the President. For example, I remember one with Franklin Roosevelt. There was a great trampling of feet going in and we were all crowded in front of the big table covered with mementos and totems, with Gus Gennerich his personal bodyguard, and a couple of Secret Service men, and THE DALLAS POST, FEB. 10, 1972 “We'll see: about that” rumbled His Eminence, and that was when Calvin caught a glimpse of him as a vast stomach, insatiable for the discomfiture of the transgressors who fell daily through the maw of his office door. A smile slipped up one side of his mouth and he was suspended for five days. While Calvin enjoyed his vacation his parents were summoned to the school. They went from official to official, showing them all of Calvin's old report cards, all the crayon drawings he’d done in grade school, all his school pictures, and even some newspaper clippings from the time he’d starred in the eighth grade’s play. “Surely,” they pleaded, ‘‘you can’t deny that our son exists. If you won't take our word for it, ask the teachers he’s had. Ask Mr. Grindstone, who just last week sent a stan- dard complaint form home with him, having checked the ‘‘eccentric haircut’ box. Ask Miss Figly who gave him an “A + ex- ceptional’” on his term paper last marking period. Really, there's no problem. Just look for a boy about 5 foot 9, on the thin side, with blonde hair longer than you’d like. That's Calvin.” But the officials shook their heads and said, ‘Certainly, but . . . ”’ and ‘Of course, but "” and ‘‘Yes, I agree, however . . . ”. At last they confronted the Principal Himself, who is seen in his fabled office even more rarley than he is seen out of it, and he nodded, went “hmmmm . . . ” and ‘‘ahhh” and “mmmmm . . .” and then stressed the importance of the Rules because they were what made the Principal Himself what he was. “If it were up to me,’’ he concluded with a Jf 2 O/T lex AEC Tie YONA THEPENER FOST — sigh, ‘‘I would allow the boy to graduate, real or not. Unfortunately it is not up to me. You'll have to see the Superintendent.” They did. The Superintendent sniffed at the idea of his dealing in any manner with students and referred Calvin’s parents to the vice principal who claimed that his jas to follow rules not alter them and referred them to the guidance counselor who explained that his duties lay in the area of test score filing and referred them to the Principal Himself who seemed annoyed at having his privacy interrupted twice in one day. He said, ‘Now see here, I understand your concern as parents but rules are rules and our computer simply does not have an identification card for this Calvin you seem to think is attending our school. Now how can we graduate a boy who does not, in any official sense of the word, exist? We must have computer cards to keep track of all our students otherwise we would be graduating, well, just anybody, just anything . . . dogs, carrots, ball point pens . . . ”’ The Principal Himself horrified by the imageswige had conjured waved his arms about in #dstress. “We would be graduating anything. You do understand my point?”’ They didn’t. The argument continued. The outcome was that the Principal Himself, by definition could not break the rules which proved, by definition, that Calvin did not exist. When the boy returned to school at his parents’ insistence, it was brought to the vice principal’s attention that Calvin should be punished; having had the temerity to attend classes for 12 years of non-existence, a waste- ful, disruptive and altogether eccenyfc mode of behavior. But the vice principal was disappointed when, smiling slightly, he produced a large paddle from his desk drawer. Because Calvin Trilobit, the boy without a computer card, started to disap- pear, like the Cheshire Cat—until nothing remained but his grin. Y smiling Marvin McIntyre and a male stenographer seated by his desk, and perhaps Missy LeHand, his personal secretary, and a couple of visitors to see the show squatted on the raised pedestal of the big French win- dows. The reporters stood and it took some time to get all’ 75 or 100 in. FDR chats with those in the first rank in the characteristic laugh. “All in,” says Pat-McKennax y ‘Well, what's the news today?’ asks FDR. Voice on left: “That’s what we came to find out. We'd like a nice hot news story.” Is that you, Fred Storm?’ the President asks. “Fred, you're getting too big. There are three people trying to see around you. Here, take this chair. It’s yours from now on. Chorus of voices: ‘Much better. Thank you, Mr. President. The United Press ought not to have such big men.” Voice on right: “If it is true, as stated, that the Administration intends to make its public works ultimately self-liquidating, how do you account for that statement of PMG Farley, etc?” FDR: ‘I can’t see who asked that question but it sounds like the Buffalo Evening Republican. A man came in the other day and said, ‘Is it honestly true that some of your plans will not liquidate themselves for 120 years?’ I'said, ‘Yes, that is really true.” You see, we are making loans for planting black walnut trees which do not mature for 120 years.” And so on; if you were in the next room you If college students woke up to the world around them in the Sixties, the Seventies may be when they organized systematically to get something done. The campus demonstrations of recent years have subsided. But in their place a new kind of commitment is emerging which draws on a greater sense of realism about what is required to advance justice and build democratic power. Two separate drives making headway around the country’s colleges and univer- sitites show this new realism. The first is the voter registration campaign directed at the newly enfranchised 18 to 20 year old. More will be known about the significance of this youth vote after the elections. But we know now that the stage has been set for a shift in political attitudes and responses towards the that shift will go depends in part, of course, on the number of youth votes and their reasons for voting. But if the choice between can- didates is to be broader than tweedledee or tweedledum, and if government between elections is to operate justly and efficiently, then the second drive centering around citizen action assumes signal importance. In.a dozen states from Washington to Vermont students are signing petitions for the creation of student public interest research groups. PIRGs, as they are called for short, are already underway in Oregon and Min- nesota. Composed of lawyers, scientists and citizen organizers, these two PIRGs were established last year after a majority of college students in those two states voted to Nothing anymore like that now, of course. President Nixon is the most aloof President of modern times, maybe in history. As the secret papers printed by Jack Anderson about the Pakistan war revealed, he communicates with his top strategists through Henry Kissinger. Former Interior Secretary Walter Hickel couldn’t even get in to see him. The statistics tell the story. FDR in a little over three terms had 1,000 press’ conferen- ces; twice a week before the war and once a week during the war. Mr. Truman, if my figures are right, had well over 300; Ike cut it down to 200. Kennedy in his bright Thousand Days averaged about one a fortnight. Lyndon Johnson had 158 press conferences and was always seeing individuals separately. The funny thing is that we thought it was important to have these conferences. Yet without them the country seems to be going on much as before. The decay of Congress has coincided with the decline of critical questioning by reporters. There is nothing in the Constitution about press conferences. But in the separation of powers they are a bridge between President and nation. Something has gone out of Washington without them. 1 think I am reasonably objective about it. I think more doors are open in Washington and more imformation available in spite of carping and criticism than in any other capital in the world. But of course in other democracies, most of them with parliaments, the opposition is able to ask the executive questions face to face. Nobody does that to Mr. Nixon now, save occasionally when he picks a TV personality. Mr. Nixon has always disliked the press, for they interfere with his privateness. There was nc chance to ask him about Mr. Carswell or Mr. Haynesworth or Lt. Calley. He perfers making these sudden, astonishing TV ap- pearances of his. He agrees with the deGaulle notion; that there should be something mysterious, aloof, awesome about Zhe man in power, like Royalty. It would di®inish the mystique if Mr. Nixon held a press con- ference, say, and somebody asked him face to face about Bangladesh. In Truman’s day we would have just gone in and asked about it. Not anymore. We can’t ask why hegardoned Jimmy Hoffa, or whether he reall eans to try to burden the poor with a national sales tax, or why he vetoed the mothers’ day care bill. Certainly the press shouldn’t be a snarling, snapping prosecutor, but in other days Presidents were supposed to be asked things like that. *‘I try to have a press confer- ence when I think there is a public interest,’ Mr. Nixon said. That was in December 1969. Like a man who wears a top hat, an aloof President always runs some risks from the irreverent. For example, that episode at the White House last week, where a singer pulled an antiwar banner from her plunging neckline and lectured the President and guests about Jesus and the war. What audacity! Martha Mitchell cried that she ought to be ‘‘torn limb from limb.” What made the thing so awful was that right in the reception for the prim Readers Digest were the Reverends Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale. They have their own sure pipelines to Heaven. When a whippersnapper from a singing troupe starts telling them about Jesus Christ and the war yg can un- derstand why the moral fourdai lh of the country are so shaky. raise their student fees by $3 per student a year. The money is used to hire full time researchers and advocates who. represent student social concerns in the community and projects which enlist the energy and talents of students throughout the states. A representative student board directs these PIRGs as independent institutions; with no connection to any of the schools. Nor do these student research groups get into par- tisan politics. They focus on community and state problems which need citizens’ attention. The Minnesota student public interest research group, for example, is operating during its first year on a budget of about $200,000. There are four attorneys, two scientists, and other young people working full time on environmental, consumer, property tax, housing, and municipal government problems. The group is developing problems for students to research and act upon, often ‘together with older citizens, throughout Minnesota. It is becoming a catalyst for many lively students who have found a way to comine their studies and extracurricular interest with training in recognized community problems. As the PIRG idea catches on in other states, more students will discover that there doesn’t have to'be an artificial distinction between students as students and students as citizens. Indeed, there is a mutually enriching relationship between the two roles. For too many years, millions of college students have dissipated their energies on courses and subjects which bored them because of their remoteness from the realities of the times or their lack of pertinence to the great public needs which knowledge should recognize. Boredom or lack of motivation continues to plague campuses across the country in a massive epidemic of wasted talents. What students are beginning to experience is that they get a more thorough education in their field of study if they can work on investigating and solving problems which challenge both their minds and their sense of values. This is the appeal of the PIRG idea. It provides a continuing opportunity for students to connect their growing knowledge to public problems and solutions in the society. Science and engineering students can work on pollution prevention projects which challenge their technical knowledge and their sense of what science and engineering should be doing for human betterment. Political science and economics students will be able to test textbook principles in the content of everyday consumer or governmental problems and develop a deeper un- derstanding of factual and theoretical research that relates to people. If there is one thing formal education should give all students, it is an opportunity to become proficient citizens. Citizenship can reflect many viewpoints by many people. But its common ground is time and energy spent by people to better their society with the skills and values they have. Compared with earlier generations, it takes an extraordinarily long today. Preparation for so-called adulthood is taking longer and longer and the impatience of many young people reflects this inordinate stretchout in training. It is time for students time they acquire the formal tools of Aarning. Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks Editor: Doris R. Mallin News editor: Shawn Murphy Advertising: Carolyn Gass
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers