——- das Page 4 EDITORIAL T.V. in EVERY Cell? Neighbors and guards have had many areas of agreement in their criticism of Leonard Mack, superintendent of the State Correctional Institution at Dallas (SCID). They have charged him with being too easy on the residents of the institution and they don’t agree, on the subject of television in the cells. When the guards hear visiting neighbors com- plain about televisions in the cells, they cringe. The televisions have made their job much simpler. Before inmates were allowed televisions, prisoners had little more to do than seek entertainment in day sitting quietly in front of their T.V. sets. And, as Major of the Guard Joseph Ryan put it, “It keeps them in touch with the outside world.” Isn’t that just what the prison experience is sup- posed to do for someone who has erred? Isn’t it supposed to correct him, and make him ready to enter society as an accepted member? Too often in the past a man went off to jail for a number of years and then was released to a world for which he was unprepared. Like Rip Van Winkle, he returned from his long ‘‘sleep’’ to find that the world hadn’t waited for him. He found changes that he wasn’t ready for. Feeling less a part of this new society than he had felt of the society he had lived in before breaking the law, the inmate very often rebelled. He was more apt to commit another crime. 2 With television, the prisoners of today can get the best picture of the changes the rest of us are making, and be ready for them. Upon release, the inmate won’t be dismayed by people who dress and look very different than people dressed and looked five years ago; by a new morality that takes a lot of getting used to, even by public concerns; by new words in our vocabulary; by inflation; and by all the other changes we've made without him; all the changes that have been revealed by all our television shows, from the news and informative specials to the situation comedies. It seems that too many on the outside are con- cerned that the inmate is not being punished enough, if he can watch T.V. They forget that the prisons in our state are under the jurisdiction of the Department of ‘‘Corrections’’, not under any Department of “Punishment”. : Even the President, whom most people still trust, has said, “The protection of society depends largely on the correction of the criminal. Television can help inform him as to what society presently deems ‘‘correct’. (Unfortunately, however, the President seems to be considering death as a means of correction.) Not enough people realize the severe mental punishment of lengthy incarceration. They see men playing baseball, watching a movie, or Kissing their wives and bouncing their children on their knees during a visitation, instead of meeting their families from behind chicken wire, and they think, “Boy, they've got it made.” But the prisoner can only go to the movies when it is allowed, he only has a certain time when he can exercise, he can’t just take a walk to wherever he feels like walking. A wall or a fence or someone will stop him. He has no freedom. It’s lack of that which makes a prison, not the presence or absence of televison. Capitol Notes by William Ecenbarger High school athletics are big-time in Pennsylvania, and in many areas of the state the goal of administrators is a student body the football team can be proud of. As many as 10,000 persons may attend a championship high school basketball game, but only 20 or 25 of them will play basketball. The remainder-student and adult alike-- exercise only their right of free speech. This disparity has been heightened in recent years by the trend toward con- solidating small districts into bigger ones. Student bodies are two and three times their former size--but there are still only 22 boys on a football field at one time. Only the bleachers have been enlarged. Even for the lucky ones who make the team. traditional school sports offer little op- portunity to be an athletic adult. By American standards. school athletic programs are virtually non-existant in Europe--yet more European adults engage in athletic activity. “lifetime sports’’--tennis, squash, golf, recently held a ‘‘Lifetime Sports Institute” teachers. attention to boys at the expense of girls. Day.” TRB from Washington Dear Mr. Ambassador: Forgive the impudence of this letter, your excellency, but I have just come from the White House and to save my sanity I have to think something cheerful. I dream of you way over there in New Delhi in the spacious embassy, nominated last December, and about the one man of the Nixon crew who escaped from it all in time, with honor. You were the token Irishman in 1969 and Henry Kissinger was the token Jew, and now even ' poor. Henry is’ smirched. Under. the telephones of his own subordinates to be tapped for security reasons, no doubt rationalizing that when you live with madmen you have to yield to their ways for the larger good. Could you, Pat, as a self-made sociolo- gist, from a coldwater flat in Harlem, work for a boss who tapped your telephone or those of your subordinates? Of course not. You were in this crowd of hardfaced, white, Protestant, predominantly rich, Anglo- Saxons and I still remember one press confer- ence, in July 1969. You wore a lemon cream- colored velvet sport coat with pearl buttons, and the rest of you in black pants and black suede shoes. You were terrific, and the ideas you brought with you to the nonplussed Nixon team were just as startling to that stuffy crew. Why, in those halcyon days you almost persuaded the president he was another Disraeli, throwing goodies to the grateful masses in the form of guaranteed incomes and family allowances. Rustlings by Russ Williams “You're as young as you feel, Madge.” The well-kept, grandmotherly-looking woman said to her neighbor, after turning her on to the best laxative in the world. She trotted off pulling a wagon and its cargo, her grand- daughter. It’s an advertisement, and it’s designed to make old people feel old...so they’ll buy the laxative to feel young...but they won’t. Old people are supposed to watch that woman trotting off and think, ‘I'd like to trot again.” Many realize that they never will be able to move like that again, and feel sad. Others will realize that one day they won’t be able to, and feel sad. Our present way of life, and advertising specifically, has promoted being young as the most important thing in the world. Nobody ever thinks of going to their grandparents or great-grandparents anymore for a bit of worldly wisdom, as the American Indians and members of many other societies have done. Advances in education may have helped this along. The eighth-grader probably “knows” more than his grandfather. He knows more facts, but he hasn’t had nearly the contact with The Big Teacher, with life. The most important facts are the facts of life. The fact that Columbus discovered America in 1492 (whatever that means) is one-dimensional; playing with your grand- child or burying your wife is three-dimension- al, and important. But advertising teaches the young that they must stay young, and hanging out with old people is no way to do that. They learn that creams must be used to remove, or hide wrinkles. What’s wrong with wrinkles? They make people more interesting; they tell that x 4: “Pennsylvania has a distinguishea record of producing grist for the college and pro- fessional football mills,” he said. “But I'd be much prouder of Pennsylvania if we had an equally distinguished record of involving 12 million citizens of all age in such an exciting variety of athletic activities that you couldn’t even draw a crowd for a Saturday afternoon football game.” Such sentiments are destined to make Mr. Pittenger’s name synonymous with athlete’s foot in many locker rooms, but he is raising important and interesting questions about the role of sports in the school. Is it to provide entertainment for the student body? To build the egos of coaches and booster clubs? Or is it, as Mr. Pittenger suggests, to develop in every student an appreciation for athletics that he or she can carry through adulthood--with all the proven benefits to mental and physical health? Mr. Pittenger told the group attending the institute that the responsibility for changing the emphasis was theirs. “If you don’t speak out, who will?” he asked. ‘As professional educatoif@ you are the people who ought to be leading the community opinion in these matters, not pandering to it.” . COMMIES . . . WHAT ELSE?’ I have read your book, Pat, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, in which you loyally defend the Administration even while the boss backed further and further away from the poor and the friendless. You were the Assis- tant to the President for Urban Affairs, and the showcase liberal but long before you escaped I guess you saw that you had lost out. The square-jawed foes of rotten liberalism had taken over. l : So where are they now? Wally Hickel left the cabinet, you recall, when he couldn’t get Well,, Haldeman-Ehrlichman are out, too. Your old colleague, the attorney general along with ex-Commerce secretary Stans are under indictment. Romney, of course, quit or was fired (he had an independent streak, you know), and Bill Rogers still lives in the pale half-light of being secretary of State without being secretary of State. I won't go through the list. Arthurs Burns did get out in time, like you, and is over at the Federal Reserve Board where he now has the awful job of putting on the anti-inflation, tight-money brakes to try .to rescue the economy from a third devaluation of the dollar under the doctrinaire mismanagement of free-market ideologues, George Shultz and Herb Stein. But why blame them? The presi- dent followed the old political route: don’t raise taxes and boast about it; accept three thumping deficits in a row, and end up in a boom-bust cycle with rousing inflation. This is the kind of thing that generally happens in a “business’’ administration. But I didn’t mean to get off on that, Pat. It’s about the country. I have written this column for 27 years (I think) but this is the saddest period I have ever known. When I came to Washington as a young reporter, I saw the stricken Hoover trying to outface the Depression. That was sad, but not as bad as this, I think. Hoover wasn’t ignoble. He was overcome by forces which he didn’t under- stand and he had some of the pathos of a figure in a Greek tragedy. But this is dif- ferent-stay over in New Delhi, Mr. Am- bassador; keep away from us! nol:spent. a'morning last week at the Ervin committee where the issue between two Watergate. witnesses was not over whether there had been an attempt at cover-up, but over whether it could be traced right up to Mr. Nixon. Senators sat appalled. I spent the afternoon at the White House press room where three staff members at a briefing tried to explain one of the sorriest presidential documents-maybe the sorriest presidential document of modern times. We didn’t see the president. Ron Ziegler keeps promising a press conference in ‘‘the near future’’ but if it comes it will be grim. How can a president be asked if he is going to resign? The Ziegler briefing, with acting White House counsel Leonard Garment was a scene of almost jungle savagery. The disingenuous statement cried for examina- tion. This was different from Mr. Nixon’s April 30 televised Watergate explanation with the bust of Lincoln. A black-tie group of guests at a new exhibit at the Smithsonian watched it. There was a stir when he called Bob Hal- deman and John Ehrlichman ‘two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know.” But there was an audible titter when he said it would be ‘‘cowardly’’ to blame subordinates. In a word, the speech didn’t wash. And now here is this much sadder affair, the president virtually admitting many of the dark charges just now surfacing in the Water- gate inquiry. Yes, there have been wiretaps: “I authorized this entire program...legal at the time...” (Legal, of course, because the Supreme Court hadn’t yet slapped down the monstrous contention of Attorney General Mitchell that he could wiretap atjgvill-without court order-in domestic cases.) T®%re was the Nixon admission that he had countenanced a program ‘for surreptitious entry—breaking and entering” which was neve§ut into ef- fect, however, apparently because J. Edgar Hoover wouldn’t agree. What a choice of marvels: Hoover vetoing a president, or a president prepared to compound a felony. There was the revelation, forced out by Watergate that the White House ran its own private secret surveillance team, the Special Investigation Unit from which two members graduated into Watergate. Above all, the president pleaded ignor- ance. That was his excuse; he didn’t know what was going on. Watergate forced this choice: complicity or incompetency and he picked the latter. Sad words, eh, Mr. Ambassador? You once said “You're not Irish if you don’t know your heart’s meant to be brokan.” Better keep away from us. New Delhi &#ks awfully good from here. person’s story. The young learn that grey hair should be “washed away...a little at a time”’. What is wrong with grey hair? They know that uncomfortable girdles and expensive operations are used to hide the effects of gra- vity and wear on the body that has been around for many years. They learn that grow- ing old is horrible, something to be avoided. But it can’t be avoided, and that’s where the heartaches start. What’s wrong with growing old? We're big on natural things these days. What’s more natural than getting old? But there is something to that “You're only as young as you feel, Madge.” The ideal situation would be not feeling any age, how- ever. You're only as young as you don’t feel. You can’t feel old if you don’t think about age, if you just live at whatever ‘time’ you hap- pen to be in. An infant is interested in everything around him. If you stay interested in life and everything around you, you are just as “young’’ as he is. , Imet a college friend of mine a while ago. Thadn’t seen him in a couple of years. He had gotten much, much older. I could tell by the way he sat there and by what he talked about, that he wasn’t interested in what was going on around him. He wasn’t interested in much at all. Just money. He wasn’t really interested in his job; just the pay. He wasn’t really interested in the places that job took him; just about how he could make out on the ‘‘old expense account’. I was sad, but he can come around yet. ‘Ah, but that was long ago; I'm younger than that now.”’ That, or something like that, is how Bob Dylan, folk-rock-singer-poet, puts it in one of his songs. We all start out interest- ed, but many of us lose interest along the way. us (greed, worry, fear) we can become in- terested, and young, again. Man found it useful to make up a thing called time, to schedule and record events. A run through the seasons made a year an ob- vious segment of time. Sun-up to sun-up sure made a good measurement, a day. Unfor- tunately, I think, man came up with the hour, minute, and second. Cutting ‘time’ into smaller and smaller segments, hoping per- haps that by dividing it up it would last long- er. But “time’’ isn’t real; it can’t be cut up. A lifetime shouldn’t be measured by something that doesn’t exist. It should be measured by the fullness of the living. And counting seconds, meeting deadlines and following schedules, because they make one concen- trate on too little at a time, detracts from the fullness-potential of life. Another ‘unfortunate thing that man has done with time is to attach a kind of unwritten schedule to his entire life. At age 21 years, or before, his is supposed to put away all childish things. (But even Jesus of Nazareth had a lot to say about the advantages of being like a little child.) When he’s 30 a man is pretty much ex- pected to have started a little pot belly and to have begun putting aside wild ideas, such as this is not the best of all possible worlds; that it can be improved upon. At age 65, or before, everyone is expected presently doing or not. And the 65-year-old would be a disappointment to his race if he should change a pre-conceived idea or put aside an old prejudice. Those older than 65 are supped to spend their time waiting to die. This was a summary of the whole sched- ule: the real one is much more inclusive. Throw the whole schedule away, become interested, and start singing “I'm younger than that now.” per year. Call 675-5211 for subscriptions. The officers of Greenstreet News Co. are Edward 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
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