On Prohibition The state and federal governments continue not to accept the recommendations of their own study groups, when those groups find in favor of the legalization of marijuana. But some local officials may be helping to bring legalization closer. Stories go around about judges who quickly release pot- users into the custody of their parents and of police who confiscate the stuff and then simply let the offender go. Recently thousands of marijuana smokers at- tended the second annual Ann Arbor Hash Festival. Held in front of the main library on the University of Michigan campus, it was a gigantic pot-party. No one was arrested. Michigan state legislative representative Perry Bullard, who joined in the pot-smoking at the af- fair, reported that ‘“‘the local police didn’t even feel it was necessary to show up in large numbers.” After the party, Mr. Bullard stated, “It’s absurd that there are actually people in jail for this kind of activity.” The police had been at the affair, knew that, and probably saw that a law was being broken; and yet they arrested no one. When a law gets relaxed from the bottom, like this, a change in that law can be close at hand. Governments get embarressed when they have laws on the books that a large proportion (one study estimates that well over 40 million have tried marijunaa) of the citizenry and even the enforcement officials ignore. The prohibition-marijuna comparison-cliches became cliches for obvious reasons. People couldn’t believe that “there were actually people in jail for drinking beer,” either. Real Culprit A funny thing happened on the way to the meat counter the other day. We tripped over an anchovy. Well, figuratively at'Teast: "Yi See, anchovies are more than ‘those salty little fish some people like on their pizzas. Those same little fish—or lack of them—have a direct bearing on the rising prices of meat and poultry today, the target of the nationwide meat boycott. That’s because ground-up anchovies are an essential item in fish meal, which serves as the main source of nourishment for the nation’s chi- ckens. Or at least it used to. You see, all’s not well with the anchovies any- more. In Peru, whose coastal waters are the main breeding ground for anchovies, there’s been a severe shortage of anchovies. For months at a time, anchovy boats have come back with empty nets. And there’s no explanation yet for the an- chovy gap. The great anchovy shortage has set off a compli- cated chain reaction of its own. The nation’s chi- cken farmers have had to turn to other kinds of feed as a substitute: soybean meal, to be exact. Apart from the fact that soybean feed is already more ex- poultry in the supermarket must automatically go up, as it has-the new competition for soybeans from the poultry farmers has also helped jack up the price of soybeans. But, soybeans are also the principal source of nourishment for the nation’s cattle, sheep and hogs. A higher soybean price means the price of meat will go up, and it has. Add to that the fact that Euro- pean farmers have increased their purchases of American soybeans just when the poultry farmers have had to do so; that major countries like Russia and China want to raise the nutrition level of their peoples and are buying more American grains to do it; and that the Nixon administration has been actively encouraging the export of grain to foreign countries to redress our ailing balance of pay- ments—and you have a situation in which feed pri- ces are likely to go up even more, regardless of a temporary ceiling on meat prices. So when you go to the supermarket next time and gaze longingly at all those high-priced chickens and roasts, don’t blame the farmer, or the Congress, or the President, or the Chinese. Just blame the missing anchovy. There’s your real culprit. Thisse 'n Thatta by H. H. Null, ITT (Editor’s Note: This column marks the end of a long and colorful career for Henry Null III, the author of this column and former editor and publisher of the Abington Journal, who died March 21.) It must have been the winter of 1903, because it happened before I was moved to the county seat along with the rest of the family and entered public school in 1905. It of the coal mine where my father was superintendent. I have many memories of this era of my life, but the one that has come back to me clearly, time and again I would like to tell you about. I was nestled under a warm buffalo robe beside my father, who was driving a single horse, pulling a sleigh under a clear starry sky and I must have been going over the day’s events in my inexperienced mind because that day I had learned about death. I had seen a mine mule lying on a flat truck, stiff and oblivious to the falling snow, which was covering the ground and piling up on the rails where the truck had been switched. It was on a track, not far from the stables, at the limit of my free world; because I was not allowed to go any closer to the tipple and mine hand and guard me from the ignorant exuberance of small children. Even this was a rare occasion as I was generally kept within the farmhouse where we temporily were making our home. I suppose that our hired girl had been commissioned by my mother to take me for a short walk when we came upon the dead animal, for someone was at hand to answer my questions and I think my mother would have been a little less candid, had I been under her tow. Anyhow, I received a full explanation about death, that it was final and irrevocable and [TRB from Washington Mr. Nixon must come to terms with three urgent problems very quickly we think, President Thieu, inflation, and the Watergate scandal. He can’t glide over successive crises any longer by simply bringing more GI's home; they're all home. Consider first Mr. Thieu. The mood has vastly changed. People forget so quickly. All of a sudden in Washington you can’t find anybody who wasn’t against the war all the time. It now turns out everybody agrees with what TRB . was. writing, the war was a mistake. Even Kissinger quietly refers to it as a ‘civil war.” You could have been thrown out of the card room of the National Press Club five years ago for such a remark. There are no true believers left. But the President is stuck with Thieu, who has a military establishment of 1,100,000, and gets at least half of his $450 million budget from us. He wants to be supported in the style to which he is accustomed. Our Spiro Agnew has just been over to see him and reports that he is ‘“a very moderate person; has con- fidence in the people; truly wants to see a representative government, with elections at the earliest possible moment.” The Vice- President adds, ‘I’ve admired President Thieu.” That certainly is a great comfort. To show how democratic he is Thieu released Truong Dinh Dzu last week, a peace candidate in the 1967 election, after nearly five years at hard labor. I'm sure if Mr. Nixon released Hubert Humphrey after defeating and jailing him in 1968 we should all be very much gratified. Thieu still holds Tran Ngoc Chau, 48, another prominent political prisoner and friend of the happened to every living thing sooner or later; giving me much material for thought during the rest of the day. Up until that time I somehow was of the opinion that everything just went on living forever. So, as the jingling sleighbells marked progress through the snowy darkness, I called upward to my father, who turned his attention ‘to my question, which was ‘When are you going to die, Daddy.” “Why’’, said my father, “I am going to live forever”, thereby bringing me to silence on the subject because at the age of four, it never came into my mind to disbelieve what I was told. I did a little more thinking with the result that I concluded my father must be a superior being of some sort, because I had also believed what had been told me that day; that none of us lived forever, except the gods, the Rem fairies, and the elves. We moved away into town and I learned many new things about life; how to catch tadpoles, put them into a jar of water and watch them lose their tails and develop tiny legs ; how to harness and drive horses; how to read from a primer, which started out with the assertion that “Willy has a slate” and followed it with a question, ‘Has Willy a slate?’’; how to catch and throw a baseball and many other things, some of which I remember and some of which I have forgotten. Still, I never forgot my father’s assertion that he was going to live forever and now and then it recurred fo me with the reaction that he couldn’t really have been born immortal, so must have been lying to himself or else making a very poor joke to an absolutely Rustlings by Russ Williams Black Power was followed rather quickly by Women’s Lib, and the success of these have led rapidly to many other equal rights groups. The old, the Indians, the “gay” and many more are now trying for and often achieving, equality in many areas. This, of course, is fine, but complications can arise if equality for more and more groups occurs in One can foresee the day when a program of “What’s My Line’ will be focused to fea- ture a plumber, and accountant and an assembler-tester, because the show has been discriminating against the more mundane and commonplace occupations. Likewise, “I've Got a Secret” that same week might have to include a man who found a four-leaf clover and a woman whose oven really heats up to 360 degrees when its set for 350. The American Civil Liberties Union for its preferential treatment of wedded people. While “The Dating Game” may be forced to accept married applicants. A unique and exciting episode might see a married man discover that his choice, the sexy-voiced and quick-witted ‘“Number 2’’, behind the screen, is none other than his own wife. “Let’s Make A Deal” may be exposed for picking only people who they have deter- mined in advance will wave their arms wild- ly, scream, jump up and down, sweat, and hopelessly vacillate when faced with triple approach-avoidance decisions. Future shows, thereafter, may see a contestant, who has not dressed like an idiot, not act like one, either. innocent small son; the latter of which was unlikely because my father’s joking was much more likely to be of the practical sort, being given to the presentation of explosive cigars, leaking water glasses and what not. I never knew him very well, although he was always very kind to me pie a preliminary outburst, quick to forget and forgive my departures from grace. His life was taken up with dogs, horses, circuses, county fairs, baseball and politics and his reading was all from newspapers, mostly the political parts. I guess, because I had a fondness for literature and my reading was more eclectic, [unconsciously began to think of myself as a but this was only a temporary phase and doubtless one that is undergone by many a callow son as he goes through it. So when I found myself in the position where he had been when he took me along in the sleigh on that cold, starry evening in 1903 and was faced with the need to provide for a wife and sons of my own, it came to me that he had really done pretty well and had managed to get some enjoyment out of life at the same time - that he really was no dummy and that I had no right to compare him to myself, with myself getting the best of it. So it suddenly came to me just what he had meant those many years ago when he said he was going to live forever. He must have meant that so far as he was concerned, he planned to live his life as though he was going about his death and in fact had decided to do as little worrying as possible about anything. pretty well and when he did answer to the grim reaper, it was done swiftly, while he was at work and with consistency, he left no will. My sister made one and had him sign it at the hospital on his death bed. * U.S., serving a 10-year term for having had “treasonable’’ contacts with his brother in North Vietnam. Thieu, according to schedule, was in Washington, April 4 to 7. The communists have an army in South Vietnam and will probably seek military victory shortly if we don’t pay them what amounts to reparations. Maybe we should. Where does Nixon’s ‘‘peace with honor” lead next? § The second emergency is the economy. Any day now the Administration may make one of its lightning switches of policy; things are in bad shape and Pierre Rinfret, top economic adviser of the President during the election said, simply, that the economy is ‘‘out of control.” It’s funny how business administrations always gum things up: Coolidge-Hoover brought the Great Depression: President Eisenhower produced three recessions in eight years; the Nixon Administration has devalued the dollar twice, racked up an in- credible balance of payments deficit, run a treasury deficit every year so far, and picked just the wrong time to relax controls in Phase III, started a stock market slide of 120 points in 70 days with up and downs since. It is a miserable record. And that isn’t the end of it. Yes, we have inflation. Yes, the Agriculture Department overstayed a policy of scarcity for at least two years. Yes, meat prices are so high lamb chops are practically leaping on the counter. Interest rates are rising, the first sign of turning a boom into a bust. A union leader would be crazy to settle on the basis of 5.5 percent wage increase with food prices tearing upward the way they are now. Wage This should bring a rapid end to a popular and successful quiz show. Sports would also feel the under-tow of the equality rip-tide. A big race horse owner might find pickets in front of his stables, if he refuses a jockey a job because of his weight (311 pounds, for instance). Midget wrestling would be taken over by the huge, and women’s wrestling would definately need vast revisions in its rules. American and National Baseball League players might someday find that they are eli- gible for the Little League, which presently, prejudicialiy favors the eight to 12 year old. Proctor and Gamble, Hughes Tool, and AT&T might jump at this opportunity, sponsoring, recruiting, spending a lot, and making a lot on Little League teams whose rosters would read like all-star lineups. Instead of Joe’s Bar and Grill sponsoring rosy-cheeked, eight year old Timmy Wilson, it may be Holiday Inns sponsoring stubble-faced, beer-bellied, 42 year old Harmen Killebrew. There might be nothing left for the kids to do but try to find the country’s last vacant lot, or perhaps there would be openings for them in the recently abandoned and turned-bush-league, Balti- more Orioles or New York Mets. The Boy Scouts, of course, would have to take girls, and I guess, any horse or worm that demanded his rights. The Coast Guard would be forced, by court injunction, to also protect the Rocky Mountains, as well as the Little Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania at Wellsboro; the Knights of Columbus would have to take in an occassional peasant or king year. The Administration got itself into this fix and we wait with awe for Mr. Nison’s next rabbit. His capacity for surprise maneuvers is almist endless but, we think, he had better be quick. Just telling Congress to cut back on welfare and gypping the poor isn’t enough. denly adopted an incomes policy ; he suddenly devalued the dollar (1971). saying it was probably the greatest monetary agreement in history; he suddenly became a Keynesian; he suddenly ended Phase II; he suddenly devalued the dollar a second time; and it has all ended up with steak at $2.50 a pound! Here’s an issue, finally, the public can un- derstand. The nastiest issue is, of course, Watergate. Mr. Nixon could disarm much of it quickly, Like a defendant who pleads the Fifth raises strange suspicions. I haven’t seen a single conservative newspaper that supports the White House on this one. But so what? There is a kind of isolation, of arrogance, in this Administration that makes warning difficult. The American people "are “children’’; Congress is a wastrel. In vetoing the vocational rehabilitation bill last week the President was almost unbelievably patronizing: he exhorted them to give up ‘‘spendthrift actions’ and ‘‘be more responsible...in the future.” Moral superiority in the Administration is 90 proof. You have to see eager young Howard Phillips, the dismantler of the Poverty even a few “Days of Columbus’, perhaps, and the Odd Fellows would have to accept a token normal person. The Jaycees, of course, would have to accept the rest of the letters of the alphabet as well. I don’t want to be around when they're looking for token honest people, when prisons have been charged with giving discrimina- tory preference to criminals. And I hope I don’t get sick after they've uncovered and done away with the preference that’s been given to people who happen to have studied medicine and biology when it comes to hand- ing out M.D.’s. Or what if it’s decided that it is about time undertakers stopped burying only dead people. - Of course some things have already met, or even surpassed, the equality test and won't have to be changed. People who don’t know the first thing about fixing cars and televi- sions will continue making a fortune as Program with his enameled American flag lapel pin, or Patrick J. Buchanan, Spiro’s speechwriter and Presidential consultant, to believe it. They are ideological zealots. To Buchanan it’s a plot - in a book, The New Majority, he charges that the nation is being bias and network power’; that ‘an in- cumbent elite, with an ideological slant un- absolute control of the most powerful medium of communication known to mgan.’’ If it say he was a crackpot. In redrafting the Federal criminal code and proposing severe new andeor riences Mr. Nixon grimly demands that they be The President could have established an independent, blue-ribbon panel to investigate Watergate; he wouldn’t. He turned it over to the FBI, which reported back secretly to the White House through John W. Dean III, the man who ‘‘probably lied” according to L. Patrick Gray III, acting FBI director. You can’t figure out where it will end - the President with his bellicose contempt of Congress; with his extraordinary stretch of impoundment; with his equally ex- traordinary stretch of executive privilege and old Marse Sam Ervin (D.NC) with his flut- tering eyebrows and wagging jowls, holding live television hearings day after day. It pleases some Democrats, ri some Republicans, but it really transcends par- tisanship. Mr. Nixon could do the country a service by cooperating with the inquiry in- stead of fighting it. mechanics and TV repairmen, there will be actors who can’t act and musicians who can’t make music, bees will continue to fly even though its been determined aeronautically made of ham. Still a lot of inequities do exist today, many more serious than the discrimination of “I've Got A Secret.” Perhaps there is, in the distant future, a possibility of ending that in total equality (with all the peace of mind that would come from not having to feel lesser than anyone else). But I hopefathat the shocking jolt, that the transform®%on, from inequality to total equality, would give our hopelessly prejudiced minds, will not make the switch not worth the effort or impossible. And then...total equality, with its total uniformity, might be a bore. But then again... per year. Call 675-5211 for subscriptions. The officers of Greenstreet News Co. are Edward M. Bush, president; and Doris Mallin, secretary-treasurer. Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks, editor Emeritus J. R. Freeman, managing editor , Doris R. Mallin, editor Dan Koze, advertising manager Sylvia Cutler, advertising sales an
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