It's Your Library
By DOTTY MARTIN
Associate Editor
Joann Freeman, chairman of the 1983 Back Mountain
Memorial Library Auction, says ‘the library is for the
public.”
It would probably be safe to say that most of us agree
with her. Logically speaking, it would also probably be
safe to say that the auction is for the public, too, since
the library is the sole benefactor of the four-day affair.
It seems, however, there are some people who do not
follow that line of thinking as the auction grounds have
come under some pretty heavy vandalism in recent
years.
One of the booths suffered serious damage when
someone broke into it and sprayed the fire extinguisher
over everything. And the refreshment booth took a
beating when someone gained unlawful entrance and
strewed paper products all over the floor.
The Book Booth now has flaps all around it,
disallowing any unauthorized persons access to it and,
as Mrs. Freeman explained, the antiques to be auc-
tioned are no longer stored in the barn as they have
been in previous years.
committee is too afraid of vandalism to store the
valuable antiques in the barn. Instead, the antiques are
kept at people’s homes until right before the auction.
And, when the auction opens, the grounds will be
patrolled around the clock so as to prevent damage to
the goods.
Moving the antiques at the last minute, however, only
makes more work for the committee members. But
risking damage to them is too high a price to pay for
such valuable items. ,
What people fail to realize is the amount of hard work
the committees put into making the auction the success
it has been for the past 36 years. And what they don’t
realize either is that the library is the one and only
thing that benefits from the auction’s proceeds.
What makes the whole situation so sad is that those
people causing the vandalism are probably users of the
much theirs as it is that of the committee members.
The committee members are involved - putting in
their time and effort - to make the library a better
, place for its patrons and for the entire community.
* Certainly, there are more people who benefit from the
library than just those who help to organize the auction.
But, as we all know, it takes only one bad apple to
spoil the barrel. The bad apples who are responsible for
the vandalism at the auction grounds are spoiling
things for everyone else. They are causing the commit-
tee more work by delaying their set-up time and are
causing hard feelings and frustration among those who
have been involved with the auction for so long.. Where
would the library be if these people were to become so
disgusted they were no longer interested in helping with
the auction?
Not one bit of good comes from this vandalism and,
other than a few laughs over what they have done, the
vandlas themselves accomplish nothing with their
antics.
If you are not interested in the library and its
auction, then why not just leave well enough along?
Those who are involved with it are certainly not
causing anyone else any grief so let’s simply allow
them to do their thing without inflicting any pain.
And, if you are interested in the library, make it a
point to attend the auction. Remember, it is your
auction as much as it is anyone else’s and you should
feel entitled to be a part of it. Your presence alone will
be gratification enough for the hard work that goes into
the auction. If you attend and let the committees know
how much you appreciate their efforts, it might be a
little easier for them to forget about the vandals. And
you might even have a good time, to boot!
Since its dedication in 1886, the Statue of Liberty has
been our inspirational ‘official greeter’ to ‘countless
millions of immigrants, visitors and returning tourists
to our shores. Now, Lady Liberty needs our help.
National Park Service engineers say Miss Liberty is
in ‘alarming shape. The intricate web of 2,000 iron
armature bars, hidden beneath the hand-hammered
copper skin, have deteriorated over the decades since
they were designed by French engineer Alexandre
Gustave Eiffel. And the 200,000 pound copper skin itself
has thinned due to pollutants and acid rain. Pieces of
the torch have fallen into New York Harbor; the torch
and portions of the right arm may even have to be
replaced.
Instead of going to Congress for funds to restore this
priceless treasure, President Reagan is asking the
American public to join in a national effort to rescue
her - and rededicate the nation to the values she
represents.
The 151-foot figure was not built with government
money. The people of France raised the two-million
francs (then $400,000) so sculptor Frederic August
Bartholdi could devote nine years to Lady Liberty’s
creation.
Meanwhile, in the United States, a similar private
effort raised the $101,091 for the pedestal; 80. percent of
this came in donations of less than a dollar.
At President Reagan’s request, Chrysler Corporation
Chairman Lee Iacocca has agreed to coordinate the
new grassroots fundraising campaign (Contributions to
‘The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.,
P.O. Box 1986, New York, New York 10018, are tax
deductible). The 20-member advisory commission also
includes Bob Hope and Douglas Fraser, former presi-
dent of the United Auto Workers.
This, ‘Save the Statue of Liberty Commission,”
according to an article in the July Reader’s Digest, has
expanded its effort to include nearby Ellis Island.
Almost two-thirds of those who emigrated to the United
States came through Ellis Island, which has fallen into
investigating the restoration of Ellis Island’s historic
sites along with the Statue of Liberty. The estimated
cost for the joint project is $230 million.
The official fundraising hadn’t even begun when the
U.S. public began to respond. Bridgeport, Connecticut,
had suffered a tragic pre-Christmas 1982 fire at its toy
center for poor children - Christmas Village. And
people from around the nation donated enough money
to rebuild the center. In lieu of thank you letters, the
city raised $3,600, all from nickels, dimes and quarters
contributed by schoolchildren. This was then donated to
help restore Lady Liberty.
An elementary school in Hightstown, New Jersey,
organized a festival, releasing hundreds of red, white
and ‘blue balloons containing notes asking finders to
write for information about the Statue. They also raised
$200 selling cookies and turned this over to the
A Tucson, Arizona, elementary school staged a three-
mile Liberty Run with students collecting pledges for
the run. They rised $2,400 for the project.
The Hicksville, New York, Veterans of Foreign Wars
(VFW) chapter raised more than $1,100 with a casino
night; and the Jersey City, New Jersey, Business and
Professional Women’s Club is collecting pennies using
the slogan: ‘‘Copper pennies for the restoration of the
copper gown of Lady Liberty.”
On October 28, 1986, the Statue of Liberty’s 100th
birthday will be observed with a rededication cere-
mony. During the 1986 Fourth of July week, the
commission plans a big affair - with the return of the
tall ships that helped us celebrate our nation’s Bicen-
tennial, with heads of states from dozens of countries,
Army and Marine units on parade, Navy ships booming
their salutes, and Air Force jets zooming over a
rejuvenated Lady Liberty.
With the generous help of the American people, we
will be assured that the Lady will still be lifting her
“lamp besides the golden door’’ as she did for the last
century’s ‘‘huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Commissioner of Correction
Ronald J. Marks has announced the
of justice in his colony, but as the
History points out, Pennsylvania
publication of a history of correc-
tions in Pennsylvania, entitled “30th
Anniversary Commemorative His-
tory: The Bureau of Correction and
its Institutions.” The History was
written by Judith R. Smith, infor-
mation specialist, to mark the occa-
sion of the Bureau of Correction’s 30
years of existence. Mrs. Smith holds
a Master of Arts Degree in English
from Duquesne University.
The History tells how the Bureau
of Correction came to be created:
how the impact of the 1953 riots at
Pittsburgh and Rockview played a
lishment of the Bureau of Correc-
tion which followed.
The early goals of the new Bureau
are described, and the accomplish-
ments of each of the five correction
commissioners from Arthur Prasse
to Commissioner Marks are sum-
marized, as the History follows the
growth of the agency and its institu-
tions from 1953 to the present.
Another section of the History
traces the early history of correc-
tions in Pennsylvania from the days
of William Penn.
soon had a rampant crime problem,
with many of its first citizens being
felons or ex-felons.
Yet the Quaker colony persevered
in its enlightened code of justice and
later evolved the penitentiary
system. The “Queen of Penitentia-
ries’, Eastern Penitentiary, was
opened in 1829 and soon became a
model for the young nation and the
world.
The History also treats the found-
ing of Western Penitentiary in Pitts
burgh which was not a success and
had to be rebuilt three times until
Tre
(USPS 147-720)
(in the Jean Shop building)
the state had the facility we know
today as the State Correctional
Institution at Pttsburgh (which inci-
dentally, is soon to undergo massive
renovation.)
The history also documents the
crises, misadventures and, ulti-
mately, the success of the State
Correctional Institution at Hunting-
don which opened in 1889 as the
Huntingdon Reformatory. Included
in the panorama of historical events
is the progression of ideas that
moved corrections forward in the
Classified Ad
25¢ on newsstand
$14 out of state
paid in advance
Rick:'Shonnon..... ge. ai
MikeDanowski... ...... 0... 0000.
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the post office in Dallas, Pa. under the act of March 3, 1889.
19th and 20th centuries. Both correc-
tional thinking and legislative action
changed over the years, resulting in
different types of institutions and
eve non-institutional programming.
For instance, the Bureau’s largest
institution, Graterford, opened in
1929, was designed in the telephone
pole style, a French innovation, and
originally conceived to hold 3200
inmates. But times changed, and
the institution was never completed
as first planned. Instead, a some-
lwhat smaller facility evolved, with
a design capacity of 2,000.
The third and final section of the
History is devoted to contemporary
correctional practice and the prob-
lems currently faced by the Bureau
of Correction. Chief among these is
[institutional overcrowding and the
|various options available as solu-
tions.
Publisher
from
| (Copies of the History are availa-
ble in limited supply from the
‘Bureau of Correction’s Public Infor-
‘mation office, Box 598, Camp Hill,
Pa., 17011.)
nh
Only Yesterday
party given by friends at Dallas.
their taxes on the roads.
50c; watermelons 49c¢ ea.;
glasses 39c doz.;
2-22 oz. bottles 15¢;
Palmolive soap 4 cakes 25¢.
Case was camp chairman.
ences in Africa and America.
Dodson to Charles Gensel.
Deaths - Dorothy Wentzel,
Lloyd, Trucksville.
33e.1b.;
cabbage 3c Ib;
tomatoes 15¢ pkg.
Moore, president; Thomas Earl,
George Dymond, secretary.
Married
Schimincke to Paul Winter;
69c Ib.;
2 1vs. 27c¢.
jelly
vinegar
Florence
Sr., 25 years.
55¢ 1b.;
oupes 3-$1. -
Thomas
Howard Johns."
tus;
Thomas 8S.
vice-president;
smoked hams 49c 1b.;
oranges 49c¢ doz.; cantal-
round roast $1.39
By HOWARD J. GROSSMAN
A new program is underway in the Wyoming
Valleywhich will impact how economic growth will take
place in the Greater Wilkes-Barre area including: the
Back Mountain, Mountaintop, Bear Creek and other
sections of the Wyoming Valley during the 1980s and
1990s.
Spearheaded by a group called the Committee for
Economic Growth, this project was launched recently
after months of careful planning. The Greater Wilkes-
Barre Chamber of Commerce is the organization
spearheading the effort in which a Planning Task Force
and a Special Action Task Force have been established
for the purpose of taking on these new responsibilities.
The Planning Task Force is taking a year with which
to collect information, evaluate it, and delineate assets
and liabilities which separate the Wyoming Valley from
its competitors in relation to economic growth.
The Special Action Task Force is directing its
increasing the opportunities for economic development.
Recently, a meeting was held at the Luzerne County
Community College, at which over 130 persons dis-
study groups have been established on a comprehensive
voluntary basis to sift through a wide range of data on
topics which impact economic growth. These study
groups will evaluate of the following activities: Educa-
tion, recreation, health and medical, culture, housing,
geography, location, climate, demography, and air and
environmental quality, spiritual resources, ethnic com-
position and history of the area, crime, social services,
utilities-enrgy, condition of infrastructure (on hold),
land, sites, facilities and costs, transportation, commu-
nications, waste disposal (including industrial- hazal)
ous), natural resources (on hold), financial resources,
commercial and industrial activity, state of local
economy, cost of living, insurance costs, constructi
costs, market linkages, business involvement in the
community, taxes-incentives and inducements, political
organizaion and structure, government spending, serv-
ices, and fiscal health, government regulation (particu-
larly environmental) productivity, cost of labor, rela:
tions with management-reliability of labor force,
composition and skills-number available and employed,
image, community ethos, and attitudes toward busi-
ness.
The Committee for Economic Growth in the Wyoming
Valley is one in a series of new economic activities
which are taking place throughout Northeastern Penn-
sylvania. For example, in the Greater Scranton area,
the Chamber of Commerce has launched an examina-
tion of the 1990s and where Greater Scranton will be in
that decade. In October, 1983, a major conference on
the. 90’s is planned by that organization.
In Greater Pittston, the Chamber of Commerce has
launched an Image Improvement Campaign to change
the perception which many people have of the Greater
Pittston Area.
In Greater Pottsville, the American City Corporation
is evaluating the future of the Greater Pottsville Area.
The Committee for Economic Growth and its 5
forces in the Wyoming Valley should be commendea™®®r
launching this important and focused evaluation on the
Valley’s economic future.
For those who wish to communicate with the
Committee and to participate in this function, the
address for the Committee for Economic Growth is: 92
South Franklin Street, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 18701.
The head of Pennsylvania’s larg-
est teacher uniontoday branded so-
called merit pay proposals ‘nothing
more than a scheme to hand a token
amount of extra money to a handful
of teachers in order to escape
paying a fair salary to all.”
Jacque D. Angle, president of the
Pennsylvania State Education Asso-
ciation (PSEA) said his organiza-
tion would be willing to consider -
‘consider, not necessarily support”
- merit pay only under the following
conditions.
- All teachers are brought up to
professional-level salaries that
reflect their educational prepara-
tion, their classroom responsibili-
ties, and their experience on the
job.
- That any merit pay plan under
study allows all teachers on a fac-
ulty to qualify for extra pay on the
basis of performance.
- That teachers themselves devise
the mechanism through which per-
formance would be evaluated.
“But I must emphasize that even
under those idea conditions, we are
extremely skeptical of merit pay
systems or their value in improving
education,” Angle said.
“On the contrary, where we have
seen differential pay or bonus sys-
tems implemented in local schools
they have had a devastating effect
on teacher morale, student confi-
dence, and the quality of education
itself.”
The call for merit pay for teach-
ers has been most frequently issued
“A Nation at Risk,” a report from
the National Commission on Excel-
lence in Education.
“Tht was a well thought-out
report that offered many sugges-
tions for the improvement of our
schools - suggestions which PSEA
has strongly supported for years,”
Angle said.
“But the President has chosen to
ignore those suggestions and instead
zero in on merit pay as a quick-fix
approach to quality education.
“In truth, Reagan isn’t talking
merit pay at all or he would use his
leadership to assure that all teach-
ers are paid at the level their work
merits.”
Angle said that the same features
that make merit pay unacceptable
to teachers have also shown up in
private industry merit pay plans.
“Then most recent and most nota-
ble example is Citicorp of New
York, which abandoned a 28-year-
old merit system because, in their
words, it was divisive and contrib-
uted nothing to the improvement of
the Citicorp operation,” Angle said.
“Thnk how much more difficult it
is to implement ‘a useful merit
system in educaion, where there are
so many intangibles involved in a
teacher’s performance.
“To some administrators, a
teacher is doing a good job if the
classroom is silent and neat.
“To others, the prime criterion of
excellence is cooperation with the
school administration - whatever
that means. %
“The point is that in the plans we
have seen, no one has devised an
accurate fair way of evaluating
teacher performance.
“And the bottom line is that with
few exceptions, the 125,000 class-
room teachers in Pennsylvania do
an exemplary job of educating our
young people - given the necessary
materials and equipment and. a
sensible teaching load.
“We suggest that school districts
strive to develop these positive
working conditions - rather than a
cosmetic merit-pay scheme - if they
are genuinely interested in provid-
ing the best possible Sues
children.”
Chamber Book
is Available
The Pennsylvania Chamber ‘of
Commerce now has its 1983-84
“State and Regional’ Directory for
sale.
This 150-page directory is com-
pletely updated annually and lists
the names, addresses, telephone
numbers and key officials of over
1,350 Pennsylvania organizations.
The 1983-84 ‘‘State and Regional
Directory” is priced at $11.39 per
copy ($8.50 plus $2.24 postage plus
65¢ sales tax) and may be ordered
by sending $11.39 per copy to the
merce, 222 N. Third St., Harrisburg,
Pa. 17101.
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