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Show Comment lU-virw Wcriii.-.riuy, May 2, ItWl - I'age 2 Editorial Pact is good move to better library service Several of Utah ( 'ounties libraries have gotten together and done what many said couldn't Im done conic up with an agreement which will allow library patrons from one city to check out hooks from n library in another city The agreement calls for a $2 per item fee. But for the first time, a cardholder in Lehi can go to Pleasant drove and check out a book, instead of settling for the lengthy wait that usually accompanies an inter-library loan. The agreement is the result of hard work by many area librarians, and represents an act of trust by the participating libraries. It is a tough decision for many ofour small libraries librar-ies to open themselves up and allow outside patrons. Infact, no everyone was willing to participate in the experience of expanding ex-panding library service through the county. OremandSantaquin.asyet, have decided not to participate. What's in a name? More than we think Well, folks, another expert has been heard from. He is Leslie Alan Dunkling, a former teacher and now one of the great experts on names. He makes this statement: "Our first names are not merely names, frequently they act as our ambassadors, representing us to the outside world. They are a part of our personality as others see us often as we see ourselves." I have always believed with Shakespeare who wrote, "What's in a name," but now I nust change my thinking. For example, my father was a religious man. His oldest son he named after an Old Testament prophet. The next two henamed after leading lights in the New Testament. I wonder what he was thinking of when he gave me a New Testament and an Old Testament name. My second name is Joseph, Jo-seph, after he of the many colored coat. Then he gave me my first name, Thomas. What was my dear old dad thinking of when he gave me this name? For the Thomas Tho-mas of the New Testament was Known for one thing, a characteristic to doubt. I realize that first names in some instances in-stances can affect our lives. I have written about my boyhood friend whose parents named him Chumley. All of his life he was called Scrummy, and the name fitted his personality and physical appearance. I can't help but think that if his parents had given him some sexy or glamorous name it would not have changed old Scrummy. I once had an acquaintance with the name of Algernon. With a name like that you would expect to see a little gentleman, but Algernon was the meanest, toughest kid you ever saw. Now, was it the name his parents gave him that shaped his personality or was it because his father was a boxer and loved to visit the village pub and quaff the ale? There is a possibility that a first name can give you confidence. To illustrate. A young boy was applying for a job. "What's your name?" asked the store manager. "Ford," replied the lad. "And your first name?" inquired the manager. "Henry." "Henry Ford, eh" said the manager with a smile. "That's a pretty well-known name." The boy looked pleased. "Yes sir, it should be," he replied proudly. "I've been delivering deliver-ing groceries around town for two years The biggest Saddam Hussein appears human. He is sub-human. When he withdrew from Kuwait City he ordered kerosene dumped into the city's water supply - for no earthly military mili-tary reason. When he torched the oil field he did it with malice, systematically. A scorched-earth retreat can be militarily mili-tarily useful. Setting the biggest fire that ever was was not a "military act"; it was the pure-meanness pure-meanness mischief of a pathological psychopath. psy-chopath. Dr. Henry W. Kendall, Nobel laureate in physics at MIT, and Dr. R. L. Garwin, a physics colleague, have been mobilizing our best scientific brains to see if there ia not some better way to fight such fires. They found the challenge to be monumentally monu-mentally complex. For example, when I asked about the potential for extinguishing the fires with explosives, Kendall explained that these wells are infinitely more complex than a pipe in a hole. Each may involve six to eight concentric pipes reaching different depths under varying pressures. Also, Saddam Hussein surrounded each well with an assortment of mines - different dif-ferent makes, different depths. Some explode under pressure. Some you must Likewise, HYU's Harold H Lee Library is still considering whether it will participate in this coalition of community libraries. The agreement with allows inter-library inter-library card privileges is a step for ward for library service in I'tah County. And thos' responsible -chiefly the Utah County Library Association - are to be commended for continuing to find new ways to meet the needs of area residents. But the agreement still leaves out the people who live where library service is notavailable county residents resi-dents and the residents of Highland, Alpine and similar communities. These individuals still must pay non-resident fees to use town libraries librar-ies that are largely supported by property taxes. So while the new agreement is commendable, Utah County's library needs still face the challenge of making library service available to all county residents. browsing L ttl By TOM GRIFFITHS 6 now. So, what's in a name? The experts might say that a name can influence our lives, but I say many more things can affect our destinies than a name. As I write this bit of nonsense there is a thunderstorm going on outside. Priceless, God-given rain is falling. Thunder is echoing echo-ing through our valley. One cannot escape having a feeling of gratitude. I must walk outside and feel the rain in my face. As to the thunder, when I was a young boy I was afraid of it. One time when there was a particularly bad thunder storm going on I went to my mother for comfort. "Mam," I said, "What is thunder, and why does it frighten me?" Her answer was not the least bit scientific, scien-tific, but I have thought about it many times. "My son," she said, "thunder is the method by which God talks to the wicked people. First comes the lightening from the heavens heav-ens to show his power, then he speaks with a loud voice." She went to a cupboard and brought out the family bible. She turned to Psalms 18, and read: "The Lord thundered in the heavens, and the highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire. Yea, he sent out his arrows and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings, light-nings, and discomforted them." "So, you see," she said, "if you are not wicked there is nothing to be afraid of when it thunders." The hills and trees are washed clean. The rain drops dripping from my trees look like tears of joy. Indeed the world is good even if you do have an odd name. fire the world Paul Harvey News 1991 Lot Angeles Times Syndicate pass over a certain number of times before be-fore they explode. The on-site scientists came away with enhanced respect for such fire fighters as Houston's legendary Red Adair but a mine field is a unique problem not usually usu-ally met in that profession. Access to each well must somehow be cleared. Presently, the most promising technique tech-nique involves an enormous "leafblower," a powerful machine capable of blasting a clean strip .f desert 30 feet wide and a foot deep, detonating or tossing aside any and all explosives. And there is yet a more sinister problem. prob-lem. A burning well is a lesser ecological 1. & How can we Cody Culhmore may have kxn right when he told me a while buck that everyone who hud been praying for ruin better to start praying for it to atop Of course, Frank Mills might diangre with that because he wants to be sure the city has enough water to last all summer, but 1 still would have to agree with Cody. I read a while back that Pleasant Grove was already 150 percent of normal and that is good. But when it good too good? We have been in a steady trend of -nr p whole lot, thine a little, rain a whole lot and shine a little. The moisture is good but when will spring come? It it generally cool, cloudy and drippy around here and if the flowers and trees had not come out in leaf and blossom we would not know ifit was spring or not. June begins in a few days. June means school is out and everything is fun in the sun, right? I talked to my cousin in Missouri the other day and he said, "Alright already. Stop sending us your left over rain storms. We have enough for a while, we can't weed our gardens, and the rain storms are spawning spawn-ing tornadoes all around us." I told him we would like to stop them but we didn't know how. Now that they were started the weathermen on TV and the writers in the newspapers were still saying we didn't have enough yet. Did you notice that back in January tl j state was only 60 per cent of normal? Then it went up to 70 per cent in March. Since March it is rained or snowed continually, Timpanogos has been covered with clouds at least 90 per cent of the time, and every week after every series of storms, the weathermen still said it was only 70 per cent of normal. The other day, after we were so waterlogged water-logged that things had to have improved, I Fat-free foods are also fun - It seems like the most innocent subjects will make some people angry, and the subjects sub-jects you think are powder kegs simply can't stir anyone to action. I mean, a few weeks ago I wrote a column col-umn about the four food groups. It was all tongue in cheek, if youll pardon the expression, expres-sion, and written strictly for fun. But I got a call from a close relative of our publisher (his mother) who read me the riot act for failing the appreciate the unhealthy un-healthy state of the American diet - and for not recognizing that I was ridiculing the very people who would like to see things changed. I joked around the office that eating too many vegetables mushave a detrimental effect on the sense of humor - but not very loudly. It came home to roost, as all things do, when I threw my weekly tempest in a teapot as deadlines neared. The entire office of-fice threatened to confiscate my sunflower seeds until my sense of humor returned. Then last week I wrote what I thought was the kind of column that would get some reaction -- poking fun at our local city governments. It, too, was written in fun, but I expected a lot of reaction. And I heard nary a word. Go figure. Anyway, back at the salad bar, I have been trying to take to heart some of the advice I received in the wake of my anti-health anti-health food column. The experiment goes poorly. I love food. I enjoy cooking it. I love to eat Ten rules to get through adolescence By JOSEPH WALKER Well, it's finally happened. We have a teenager in the house. It's not like we didn't expect it or anything. any-thing. I mean we've known for 13 years that it was coming and we've tried to prepare ourselves. But it wasn't until I saw Amy talking to that 15-year-old boy at church the other day and I noticed that he was a little intimidated by her that I began to fully appreciate what was happeningin our lives. And frankly, I'm a little scared. Don't get me wrong -r Amy is a terrific girl with a strong sense of values. But she's also imperfect, which means she's going to has seen menace than a gushing well, which may create a lake of oil, dozens of square miles of oil up to four feet deep. When that lake of oil congeals under a skim of tar, explosive gases are trapped underneath with the potential to convert a disaster into a catastrophe. And nobody has ever before had to deal with minesweeping underneath a lake of oil. Several nations are competing with an assortment of techniques for dealing with these problems, each hoping to win some lucrative contracts. There are 15 teams now working in the burning fields, and The Union of Concerned Scientists as well as our federal fed-eral government are presently most confident con-fident of the orthodox techniques employed em-ployed by traditional oil-field fire fighters, fight-ers, with some additions, will get the fires out. The subject of war reparations is on the back burner for now, but somewhere up the road ahead the responsibility for these fires and the astronomical costs of putting them out and their grave costs to the world environment Saddam Hussein; should have to pay. It's a sorry audit of the "wages of sin" if this post-war reconstruction ends up costing us more than it costs him. be dry with all p.g. blab By MARC ELLA WAITER heard them say that the water outlook is still bad, places may have to ration, and the water situation is still 70 per cent of normal. nor-mal. What I am asking anyont who knows, is why, after all this moisture and all these storms, are we still at 70 per cent of normal? nor-mal? Things just don't add up. They expect the Weber River to go over its banks. Frank said that there is some water building up in the debris basin above Grovecreek for the first time in several years. They don't expect trouble but it is certainly a sign that the water situation is improved. The dire prognosticators at the National Weather Bureau are still giving out doleful reports and I think that some people may begin to question the credibility of those reports. The Editor's Column By MARC HADDOCK it. If it's chocolate and nearby, it is endangered. endan-gered. " And I Hke meat and potatoes and vegetables vege-tables and Mexican and Italian and oriental orien-tal food. Steaks, hamburgers, ham, spicy, bland, it doesn't matter, I love it. Being married to a food editor helps. We are trying out new dishes constantly. I like to help in the kitchen and at the kitchen table. ,..'.' We travel to events where food is an important element of the festivities. (This weekend it was the Scandinavian Festival in Ephraim where I managed one too many meatballs in the all-you-can eat smorgasbord. smorgas-bord. Before that, we cleaned up the Dutch ovens in a cooking demonstration. Next week-end, who knows?) But I recognize that age requires a change in eating habits unless one is interested in spending a lot of time with his or her doctor. So I'm willing to try most things. But frankly, most of the non-fattening make mistakes from time to time. And today more than ever before, a simple mistake or error in judgment can be devastating to young people - emotionally, physically and , spiritually. And so I've been thinking. At age 13, Amy hasn't quite arrived at the point where she totally tunes Mom and Dad out the minute they start to talk. Maybe now - just as she's beginning her teenage journey - is the time to debunk some of those myths that plagued us all through adolescence to one degree or another. If I could imprint anything on Amy's mind to help see her through the next seven or eight years, it would be that she remember these 10 simple truths: 1. Everybody isn't doing it. Whatever "it" is, from drugs to drinking to cheating on tests, there's always someone you admire ad-mire who isn't doing it because they choose not to. Emulate that someone. Or better yet, be that someone for others. 2. Bad things don't only happen to "bad" kids. You don't have to be looking for trouble to find it. Lots of "good" girls get pregnant. "Good" boys can get in accidents while showing off in Dad's new sports car just as easily as "bad" boys. All it takes is one bad decision and you'll be just as dead -- or pregnant or addicted or imprisoned --as --as the kid who is always "asking for it." 3. The world doesn't owe you a thing. That teacher doesn't have to give you a good grade unless you earn it. Your boss doesn't have to give you a raise unless she feels you deserve itxouH find that most people make theirgwn breaks. Happiness doesn't justhappenTYou have to takeresponsiblity for your life, and make it happen. 4. The answers to life's most important impor-tant questions can't be artificially induced. Although many have tried, nobody no-body that I know of has ever found lasting peace and happiness in a bottle, or in a syringe or in the back seat of a car. The headlong pursuit of momentary . thrills usually proves to be destructive over the - long haul, making it all the more difficult to probe the real source of answers, which is within yourself. ' .5. You aren't as invincible as you this rain? I know, people will tay, that although tilings are good in Utah County and moat places along the Wasatch Front, the desert ureas of the state are not faring to well. Desert areas are not supposed to, if I remember re-member my geography right. Quail Creek Dam in southern Utah has itlready filled up almost to capacity tine it was rebuilt. That water had to come from somewhere. All I am say.ng is that enough it enough. Hut then I hesitate to tay that for fear the rain will stop completely and we will tee no precipitation until next December. We could use a few warm days to get the m crystals out of our blood from last winter w hen we had one solid month of below 0 temperatures. No one has any tans yet, unless they have been to the tanning salons. But have you noticed that if the sun comet out for a few minutes, everyone suddenly appears in shorts? That is amazing. It is okay as long aa they keep their warmups close by to put on as soon as the sun disappears to make room for rain as it surely will any minute. On the few nights when it has been clear and we could see the moon and stars, I stood and marveled. It seemed like they were brighter and clearer than ever and I know it was just because we hadn't seen them for so long. Summer doesn't officially begin until June 21 but it would be nice to get a little taste of spring before then. Maybe a few da ,ftemperaturesinthehigh 70't would be a good tonic for us all. But what will undoubtedly happen ia that we will all of a sudden have a change in the rain cycle and it will go from cool to 95 degrees in one day and stay that way all summer. : Anyone willing to take the bet? free foods foods available are no fun. Take the fat-free hamburger a popular f ' st food res taurant is marketing. I ate one. And it . ns okay. I guess. But it's not really a hamburger. ThQmeatha tuffaddtd to taste like a hambi:rb r inu f f remo , ed to be more healthy. Frankly, there's more to food than taste. When you get done, you ought feel like you've eaten something. With the fat-free hamburger, the stomach stom-ach was full but the palate was unsatisfied. My stomach wanted real food -- and now. A few days later we were in the grocery store and were offered a sample of a new "lite", salad dressing. I took a bite and experience! that same sensation - food with the right taste but none of the in teg-. teg-. rity of real food. . "It tastes like a McLean, I told the salesperson, who laughed politely but without with-out humor. I didn't buy any. Since then I've tried lite this and fat-free that:, Low sugar ice cream bars that feel insubstantial when you bite into them, diet soda pop that leaves you thirsty andbloated without any of the sugar kick you wanted when you got the drink, sugar-free gum that doesn't let your teeth tingle, but just makes your jaws tired. I'm willing to try anything. But this new food is no fun. I've decided the only answer is to start eating less, and liking it less, as well. But if they keep takL.g the fun out of food, I just may stop eating at all. And then where will I be? think you are. Is there a junkie alive - or dead, for that matter - who didn't think he would be immune from the strangle-hold of addiction? Is there a teenager with a sexually sexu-ally transmitted disease who didn't figure these things always happen to someone else? And is there a paralyzed teenage driver who, moments before the crash, didn't think they had everything completely under un-der control. 6. Popularity isn't all if s cracked up to be. When it comes right down to it, popularity tends to be about conformity and living your life according to the standards stan-dards of whatever group happens to be "in at the moment It takes a lot of energy to keep up with the group, and there's constant con-stant pressure to conform. Why not just live your own life, and let people accept you for who you are.YouH be happier and less stressed. 7. Experience isn't necessarily the best teacher - unless you're going to throw the experiences of others into the equation. You don't have to stick your hand in the fire to know that it's hot And you dont have to experiment with drugs or premarital sex or anything else to know they're dangerous. Others have already proven that Trust "them. , , 8. There's no such thing aa "toe far gone." No matter how many mistakes you've made, if you sincerely want to change and are willing to pay the price, you can do & 9. The sun really will come mp tomorrow. No matter how bleak things may seem from time to time, they'll get better . Th ings change. Problems fade away. And those that don't-, well, youll figure out a way to deal with them. Honest 10. Somebody does care about you It may not always be the people you want to . have caring about you. But there's always someone who is there - and who cares, la fact, you probably already know who they are, because they're the ones youVs always been able to count on. That wont change. No matter what Not even for a teenager. |