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Show Mapw ABDapunit Hit? The Park City Recreation Board has proposed that each team that uses city playing fields be charged an annual $50 maintenance fee. Are you in favor of this approach?7Editor's Note: This question was asked before the Tuesday night decision to assess the fee beginning next year.) Dennis White T fppl f hprp arp pnnn ah f AYPs ppnerated bv new building in Park Page 2 Thursday, May 8, 1980 City to help cover recreational necessities. They ought to look to this source rather than to the small businessmen wno sponsor IEdllitdDirSsiIl tone teams. SvneWrpaDnnQii ! Ik1 kiln Community Theatre: Two-Way Communication This week the Park City Players are presenting "Fiddler On The Roof." The play marks the conclusion of the local acting company's first year of existence. With a cast and support personnel of over 50 people and last weekend audience figures totalling over 400, "Fiddler" also is a mark of the extensive support and involvement Parkites now give their community theatre. Judging from audience reactions over the year of local productions, the entertainment value of Park City community com-munity theatre has ranged from O.K. to great, with "Fiddler" "Fid-dler" definitely falling in the latter category.. But sheer entertainment en-tertainment does not describe the real value of community theatre-; if it did it would be comparable to cinema or TV. Community theatre, unlike recorded dramatic arts, is a two-way education in art between the audience and the actor ac-tor sweating it out on stage. It is of empathetic intensity: those are our neighbors, our relatives or ourselves acting on stage or reacting in the audience. All this translates into something very important: the creation and support of an art form by and for a com munity. In a very real sense, the Park City Players and the recently formed Intermountain Actors Ensemble are community projects, and the benefits, in one form or another, extend to the whole of Park City. How else, save by community theatre, could so many Parkites get the opportunity oppor-tunity to try their hand at acting, or stage decorating, or learning ar.y of the skills associated with theatre arts and on a professional level at that. Similarily, more Parkites have probably attended plays this year as a direct result of tne work of the Players and IAE than would have otherwise. other-wise. Park City's theatre is a self-fueling process. As more people are exposed to local productions, there is a corresponding increase in the number of those who wish to discover if they have theatrical talent. And as more people become involved, more talent cultivated, the quality and variety of local productions can only increase. Th at makes Park City community theatre's next season an e'cciting prospect. -CE by Stanley Karnow IlniittcBirpn eitfi vb II JPBlt This Is an In-Between Era Washington It was just fivf yea.rs ago this week that the Conmuni:sts conquered South Vietnam, th.us hand-ing hand-ing the United States its first defea't in history. And, in a mixture of ways, that disaster probably is fres'ner in the minds of Americans than they would like to admit. On the one hand, survey?, show tha t the country has entered what I have termed the "post-post-Vietnam period" which is to say tha'c Americans no longer are withdrawn into a shell of insularity, as they we re during the ; final dismal days of the war. At the same time, I.iowever, the ination plainly has not ret'urned to the spunky sort of self-confid.ence it displayed in past decades, w'nen President Eisenhower Eisen-hower was ringi ng the globe with U.S. bases and Jo'hn F. Kenned) was asserting that Americans would fight anywhere for f .reedom. So, I think, t'nis is an in-between era of transition in which Americans are searching for a new set of priorities. They are e.'iger to reaffirm the strength of the United States. But, remembering Vietnam., they are anxious to avoid a repetitio ,n of that tragedy. Daniel , Yankelovich, the public opinion expert , aptly noted not long ago that American sentiment today bears little resernblance to the "crusading spirit" of th ,e 1950s and early 1960s. Instead, he sai'J, the current mood is one of "cautious internationalism." degree of idealism has been rekindled, and some of the old jingoism has come back. But overall, as Yankelovich put it, Americans have been prudent as they emerge from the Vietnam experience. Even before the seizure of the hostages in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the attitudes of Americans were being stiffened by the general feeling that U.S. power has been waning. The events in South Asia merely have accelerated a trend that already was in motion. Back in 1974, for example, only 34 percent of Americans favored U.S. military involvement to stop a Soviet attack against Western Europe. Now, 67 percent would back such a commitment. Lately, too, a majority of Americans have come to support bigger defense budgets and a revival of the draft. As the election campaign rhetoric demonstrates, moreover, foreign policy has become a major subject, with the candidates striving to outdo each other in advocating toughness toward the Russians. Not a dovish peep has been heard on the hustings. If the hawks are in vogue, it is because they have a receptive audience. With all this, though, it appears to me that the memory of Vietnam has shaped profoundly the thinking of Americans in that it has tempered their reveries of invincibility The Vietnam experience dramatized, among other things, that the deployment deploy-ment of force is not the answer to every challenge. As a consequence, the public realizes that the capapcity of the United States to flex its muscles in the Iranian and Afghanistan crises is limited. This is mirrored in the polls, which indicate that while a majority of Americans are impatient with Jimmy Carter's approach to ihe Iranian dilemma, only a small proportion are prepared to underwrite a military response. The same contradicition blurs American views on the Middle East. Following President Carter's recent State of the Union etddress on the Persian Gulf, a ma jori ty of Americans switched to favoring force to protect the oil supply. But a majority still is cool to the idea of sending U.S. troops into a conflict in that region. Again, the Vietnam nightmane has not disappeared. disap-peared. Americans are avare as well that Vietnam contributed to their present economic difficulties. They know that the current inflation stems not only from soaring oil prices but from Lyndon Johnson's expenditure of billions bil-lions of dollars in Southeast Asia without putting the country on a wartime footing. A key question amid the cries for a more belligerent American posture, therefore, is whether the United States has the resources to embark on another expensive venture overseas. Another hangover from Vietnam is pervasive American suspicion of government. gov-ernment. The "credibility gap" still is alive, generating skepticism throughout through-out the nation despite Carter's evangelical evangel-ical pleas for a restoration of faith. This is reflected indirectly in one of the more troubling aspects of the U.S. political scene the growing importance impor-tance of single, specific issues among the electorate. Voters whose main concern is their own particular problem, such as abortion or gun controls or real estate taxes, are not preoccupied with the larger national challenges, and their parochialism is a form of disunity. But above all, as Harvard Professor Daniel Bell pointed out a few years ago, Vietnam spelled the "end of American exceptionalism." The great dream that the United States was unique, as Bell put it, vanished with the collapse of its belief in its manifest destiny and that was a casualty of Vietnam. This pehnomenon is visible in the decline of the dollar and in the fact that U.S. industry, once preeminent, is being overtaken by that of Western Europe and Japan. The American economy, formerly self-sufficient, is dependent today on theworld economy. It may be that America's hubris its notion that it could do anything anywhere was unrealistic from the start. And perhaps the fall of Saigon was symptomatic of a society's inability to fulfill ambitions beyond its reach. Even so, that day five years ago when Americans and their luckier Vietnamese Vietnam-ese clients clambered aboard helicopters helicop-ters taking off from the roof of the U.S. Embassy was a milestone on the road to a new kind of U.S. link with the world. It still is unclear where that road is leading. (Released by The Register and Tribune Syndicate 1980) . . i j I " ..' "" ... ' f :fA KathyKilgallonlfJ No. I don't think it's reasonable. Not at all. 6 Partpr Kid There are a lot of other costs involved to get a team together. It seems to me the city should provide the facilities if a guy wants to play rugby or slow pitch. We pay taxes. The park ought to be part of the community. Ken Lindquist Yes. The Softball and rugby teams use the fields more than anyone else. The city could use the money to fix up the whole complex : the playing fields, the bathrooms, the tennis courts... If they hired somebody to fix the place up, it would make it more attractive to tourists and visitors. Tourists expect to have nice facilities. AH . Dave Taber No. I feel that the city, should be responsible for taking care of it. It's in the interest of the community. Beverlv Mandrell It really doesn't matter to me if they do or not. If they used some of the money for programs for younger kids, I'd be in favor of it. f " ' ' ' i ( ; 4 ), " Anderson Somoza's Lonely Exile in Paraguay Washington Up until about a year ago, we used to expose two tyrants with regularity. One was the shah of Iran; the other was Nicaragua's dictator, Anastasio Somoza. Both were overthrown over-thrown in 1979. AU the world knows what has happened to the shah. But Somoza has faded from sight. The State Department Depart-ment has stopped keeping up with him. Indeed, he hasn't been mentioned in the secret cables for months. Somoza is hiding out in Paraguay, a police state run by a sympathetic dictator, General Alfredo Stroessner. Eye witnesses say that the former Nicaraguan strongman has become bloated; he is often drunk and chronically morose. He is described by our sources as a lonely, bitter man. His wife has left him; she prefers Miami. Even his once-faithful mistress, who accompanied him to Paraguay, has abandoned him. She became fed up with Paraguay when she was shunned by the social set. So she took off in a huff. Most of Somoza's relatives have also broken with him. He left many of them financially strapped when he left Nicaragua. He made off with millions, but he has refused to share the loot with his family. His sister, for example, was stuck with huge debts when Somoza fell. But he refused to bail her out. The former dictator has no one but himself for company. He keeps in touch with the world by mail, which is routed through the home of a former Nicaraguan colonel in the Paraguayan capital. Meanwhile, Somoza spends his days drinking and brooding. Worried Workers Jimmy Carter's name has become a dirty word at the AFL-CIO. The union's leaders blame Carter's erratic econo- Riewsp sip !?: mic policies for the sharp rise in unemployment. The president has been juggling the economic levers to push up prices. He hoped this would discourage spending and slow down the economy. He thought a mild recession would then pull prices back down. But contrary to Carter's expectations, the big corporations have not reduced prices. They have cut back production instead. They have closed plants and laid off workers. Meanwhile, the president got the recession he wanted. The unemployment unemploy-ment rate is over 6 percent, as the nation slides into a recession. In fact, some recessions have never surpassed 6 percent unemployment at their worst. The AFL-CIO economists expect Carter's policies to cost half a million jobs before the end of the year. Other experts predict unemployment will hit 9 percent. Statistics always sound impersonal. im-personal. But those numbers have faces. They are living, breathing people. They are also voters. Who will they vote for? Our union sources say it won't be Jimmy Carter: Kremlin Hogwash America's allies join in an economic boycott of Iran, the Soviets say they are prepared to make up for the loss of Western commerce. But U.S. anlysts say the Russian claim is hogwash. The Russians and their Eastern bloc satellites could not supply Iran, simply because the logistical problems are virutally insurmountable. There are limited rail lines between the two countries, and they are already congested. Road capacity is also limited, and many of the Kremlin's trucks are busy convoying equipment to Afghanistan. Even with a massive airlift, say our sources, the Iranians would be sure to feel the pinch of a boycott. Driving and Dope For years, members of the whiskey generation have been urged not to drink and drive. Soon, members of the pot and Pepsi generation will be offered similar advice: Don't smoke marijuana and drive. Studies conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse indicate that persons who have smoked pot within two to three hours prior to driving have a greater chance of becoming involved in an accident than those who do not. Law enforcement officials will soon be able to determine whether a person involved in an accident is under the influence of pot. This can soon be done through a simple, roadside saliva test. Insiders say the test will be administered admin-istered nationwide within the year. Giveaway Battle The great battle of the giveaways between the branches of the armed forces continues without a ceasefire. Those who request recruitment propaganda prop-aganda will receive pens, pencils and bumper stickers from either the Army, the Navy, the Air Force or the Marine Corps. In addition, the Navy offers free key chains and the Marines hand out iron-on patches embossed with a likeness of their mascot a bulldog. Watch on Waste Fifteen years ago, Congress appropriated appro-priated $75 million for the construction of an additional building for the expanding Library of Congress. The library's new James Madison building still isn't completed, and the cost has nearly doubled to $135 million. Here's what some of that money from the taxpayers has gone for: A $24,000 sculptural fountain, two $4,000 bronze medallions and a $100,000 statue of the building's namesake, James Madison. Subscription Rates, $6 a year in Summit County, $12 a year outside Summit County Published by Ink, Inc. USPS 378-730 Publisher Jan Wilking Editor Bettina Moench Advertising Sales. Jan Wilking, Bill Dickson General Manager Terry Hogan Business Manager Rick Lanman Graphics Bobbye Jean Mueller, Donna Pouquette Reporters... Conrad Elliott, David Hampshire Photo Editor Phyllis Rubenstein Typesetting ,.. Kathy Deakin, Dixie Bishop Subscription & Classifieds Ann Kono Entered a second-class matter May 25, 1977, at the post office in Park City, Utah 84060, under the Act of March 3, 1897. Published every Thursday at Park City, Utah. Second-class postage paid at Park City, Utah. Unsolicited manuscripts and photographs are welcome and will be considered for publication, however The Newspaper will assume no responsibility for the return of such material. All news, advertising and photos must be received prior to the Tuesday noon deadline at our office 419 Main Street in Park City, by mail P.O. Box 738, Park City, Ut. 84060, or by calling our office (801)649-9014. Publication material must be received by Tuesday noon for Thursday publication. |