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Show modw AibaDMtt nit? -VncewiiDciDfinDtt The Park City Rotary Club is sponsoring the first annual Citizen of the Year award, which will be given to the person who exemplifies the club motto, "service above self." Who in the city do you think deserves the award, and why? Liz Heimos "Putt Putt," because where would we be without Santa Claus! Page A2 Thursday, December 17, 1981 EMfittoDiriisiH The simple gifts are the ones most treasured Main Street sure looked pretty in the quiet, early morning mor-ning hours Wednesday. Wind-swept snow swirled down the empty sidewalks and buffeted the strings of rainbow lights traversing the street. In a lull, the snow put an icing on the Christmas trees that are standing like soldiers in the lot across the street, waiting to be twirled, shaken and studied before being dragged off to waiting station wagons. In a few hours, the street will be busy again with shoppers trying to beat the clock to Christmas. Just seven more days to rack brains and think of something, anything, to wrap and put under the tree. To be sure, Park City is far removed from the commercialized, commer-cialized, Xmas-ized world of department store shopping in Salt Lake. We're not subjected to Santas on every corner, Salvation Army bell-ringers and displays filled with Rudolph pins whose noses light up when you pull a string. But we're not insulated from snowballing Christmas fever that syndrome that seems to get worse every year as science sends gift-giving into a mechanized, electrified, computerized frenzy. Kids no longer are happy with a good old Mr. Potato Head. Now it's got to be life-sized R2D2 robots and kits for making your very own Space Shuttle. A successful Christmas is judged by the quantity, expense and technology of the gifts given. Somehow in our eagerness to please, we've gotten away from the spirit of Christmas, the Gift of the Mapi spntiment of giving. In that O'Henry tale, a young, poor couple gives up its most prized possessions to give each other gifts. Unbeknownst Un-beknownst to him, she cuts her long, chestnut hair and sells it to buy him a fob for his watch; and he, wishing to buy her beautiful combs for her hair, pawns his gold timepiece. In that story, the gifts may have been given fruitlessly, but they were given from the heart. And it is that feeling that is the gift, not the package wrapped in pretty paper. Last weekend, I had the incredible privilege of watching two women give birth. Though they both were strangers to me, they invited me into a most private moment in their lives. They allowed me to watch as they painfully pushed their babies from their padded worlds, and let me share in the wonder of looking at their glistening, blue-red boys at the instant they gulped their first breath of air. It was exhilarating and humbling. I'll never again see those women, so I can't tell them the magnitude of the gift they gave. It's been nine weeks since my father died, and in those days, I've been searching for Something to take the bitterness away, a beam of warmth to penetrate the cold spot that's left. What the women gave me was of no monetary value, but it was of great worth. They gave me the Gift of the Magi: themselves. Merry Christmas. Bettina Moench .. .... . ,5?wnn i i " liiBpg;..- U r bjm i by Stanley Karnow U.S. is correct in keeping low profile in Southeast Asia Washington, D.C.-The Reagan administration, ad-ministration, which tries to appear dynamic in international affairs, deserves to be commended for passivity in Southeast Asia, the graveyard grave-yard of so many American dreams of glory. At the same time, however, it seems to me that the administration should not entirely neglect the area, which is vital to U.S. strategy in the Pacific. So the challenge confronting the president and his foreign-policy advisers ad-visers is to formulate an approach to the region that minimizes the risks of military involvement while increasing the chances of diplomatic success. Such an approach will not be easy, given the tangle of rival interests in that part of the world. But it is certainly worth an effort. The big problem at the moment is Indochina, which is dominated by the Vienamese Communists and their Soviet patrons. And the big problem in Indochina is Cambodia, where disparate dis-parate forces are striving to dislodge a puppet regime underwritten by Vietnam. Viet-nam. The leader of one of these factions, Son Sann, came to Washington the other day in quest of American weapons and money. The State Department spurned him with the usual pledge of "moral" support. The rebuff, in my opinion, was sound. The United States does not-and ought not-approve the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. For acceptance ac-ceptance of that situation has both local and broad implications. It worries the Thais, who fear an aggressive Vietnamese presence on their frontier, and it troubles the other states of Southeast Asia, which are nettled by instability in the area. The Chinese, who are seeking to promote their influence, also view Vietnamese expansion as nefarious. In a wider sense, too, endorsement of the Vietnamese takeover of Cambodia can be construed to mean tolerance of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But for the United States to become directly engaged in attempting to crack down on Vietnam is another matter. For one thing, the three main Cambodian groups that oppose the Vietnamese have been squabbling among themselves, and there is no reason to believe that they can create a cohesive coalition. Son Sann, who heads what he calls the Khmer People's National Liberation Libera-tion Front, is a gentle septuagenarian totally lacking the credentials to mobilize a guerrilla army. He is at odds with Prince Norodom Sihanouk, former Cambodian chief of state, who nominally commands another group. Neither of their factions can match the Pol Pot force, the Khmer Rouge, which was responsible for murdering millions of Cambodians before it was ousted by the Vietnamese. Thus the United States cannot decently contribute to a potential coalition whose strongest member is guilty of genocide. It is bad enough, in my estimation, that America backs Khmer Rouge representation in the United Nations, even for tactical motives. The situation is complicated, meanwhile, mean-while, by the fact that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, is split over how to deal, with the snarl. Thailand, which feels most threatened threaten-ed by the Vietnamese, favors cooperation coopera-tion with the Chinese in furnishing arms and funds to the Khmer Rouge. Indonesia and Malaysia, which would prefer to have Vietnam serve as a buffer between themselves and China, are more dovish. The United States, caught in the middle of the muddle, has certain objectives in the area, among them the reduction of Soviet pressure, the maintenance of good relations with China and the preservation of conditions condi-tions in which the Seventh Fleet can operate in the Pacific. Though its room for maneuver is limited at present, the Reagan administration might consider possible pos-sible moves that could eventually improve, or at least not weaken, the American position in the region in the future. Primary among these is the exploration explora-tion of ways to reach a reconciliation with Vietnam, whose long-term interest in-terest must be some kind of rapprochement rapproche-ment with its neighbors. The Vietnamese blundered badly during the Carter administration, when they muffed the opportunity to establish official ties with the United States. Since then, they have sunk into economic misery, aggravated by almost total dependence on the Russians, who are hardly generous friends. Judging from my own talks in Hanoi earlier this year, the Vietnamese are seeking to emerge from their costly isolation. They are more likely to be lured into respectability by carrots rather than by sticks. The United States has the carrots to offer them in the form of the economic assistance they need so desperately. But America should not take the initiative. That function, I think, ought to be fulfilled by the Southeast Asian nations. Rather than exacerbate the tensions in Cambodia, where a battlefield solution cannot be achieved, the Southeast Asian countries might make it known to the Vietnamese that they are open to compromise on condition, of course, that the Vietnamese display a willingness to bargain. Such overtures should be encouraged en-couraged by the United States, which could simultaneously remind both the Russians and Chinese that peace in the region is the best course for everyone. And until the diplomatic break comes, the Reagan administration ought to adopt a low posture toward the area which is what it is, quite sensibly, doing. Copyright 1981 The Register and Tribune Syndicate, Inc. ::;:.Siillipii: Linda Myers Bea bringing i Kummer. Since I've been in Park City, I've enjoyed her I t OwJ V I g people into the store and giving its history. She dresses UY 1 lfJ un and eives a uninue touch to the history of Park City. I f 7, 'm, 1 w' s,: Shane Myers My mom, because she's been pretty good this yeaH Glenn Steigmeyer Blair Feulner, because of his ability to put KPCW together. f, 4 ' I s . Gerri Meyers Tina Lewis, because she gives a lot of herself to the community. John Aspiras John Jenkins, because he has done more to enhance the image of Park City both summer and winter than anyone else I know. Hyf ; MHrllr 3iT! by Jack Anderson Reagan too tender-hearted to fire accused underlings Washington: Ronald Reagan has been, a tough,, jio-rjonsense president. t He cracked down on the striking air' traffic controllers; he stood up to Congress; he hasn't let the Russians push him around. But Reagan has a weakness: He's too tender-hearted in his relationships with associates. He can hardly bring himself to fire an underling. The president will take the subordinate's word and believe in him to the end. Take the David Stockman case. The budget director made statements to a journalist that undermined Reagan's economic program. Just about everyone every-one in the White House urged the president to fire Stockman. But Reagan wouldn't do it. He accepted Stockman's explanations and blamed the newsman for the embarrassing interviews. It was the same story with Richard Allen. The president stood by his national security adviser after Allen lost all other White House support. Finally, Allen announced his own voluntary withdrawal from the White House staff. It wasn't Reagan who suspended him. This unflinching faith that Reagan has in the people who serve him could be damaging. He might hang on too long to someone who could tarnish his presidency. First Lady Nancy Reagan, in contrast, is definitely not a soft touch. She believes David Stockman, is expendable. She believes Richard Allen is expendable. Indeed, she favors their dismissal. In fact, she believes that any aide who embarrasses the president is expendable. Only her husband is not expendable. It was Nancy Reagan who pressed for John Sears' dismissal as campaign chief during the presidential primaries. primar-ies. She argued with her husband until he finally fired Sears. , So DavjdjStpckinaij.wiJIJeaye .he, White House, and Richard Allen won't come back-if Nancy Reagan has her way. And she has been known to get her way with the president. Morbid Anniversary: On Dec. 2, 1980, the mutilated bodies of three American nuns and an American lay worker were found on a back road in El Salvador. Some of the women had been raped before they were killed. The murders of these American citizens sparked an explosion of outrage in the United States. President Carter cut off U.S. aid to El Salvador. The suspicion was that the women were killed by Salvadoran government troops. This was confirmed a few months later when the government announced that six Salvadoran National Na-tional Guradsmen had been arrested for the atrocity. The arrests were apparently intended intend-ed to pacify the U.S. government, and they succeeded in doing just that. The six men have never been brought to trial. In fact, the former American ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, says the six murder suspects have been released from custody. The Reagan administration should at least have issued a protest at this callous disregard of an atrocity involving United States citizens. But nothing was done. In fact, Secretary of State Alexander Haig and United Nations ambassador Jeane Kirk-patrick Kirk-patrick made statements suggesting that the four American women were somehow responsible for their own deaths. This lack of overt concern for the safety of U.S. citizens in Latin America sends the wrong message to other repressive regimes in the area. The message is that Americans are fair game. It doesn't have to be that way. ti RecpnJJy , ,f pr,,example, two American 1( nuns were blindfolded and kidnapped in Guatemala. But this time, the State Department learned about the incident in time and protested to the military dictators who run Guatemala. The nuns reappeared safe and sound, just as mysteriously as they had disappeared. disap-peared. Watch on Waste: For congressman, Christmas is not simply the season to be jolly. It's also the winter travel season. Dozens of the lawmakers will spend the ccld holiday in warmer climates-at the taxpayers' expense, of course. The bills for the summer recess are now in, and our sources say members of the House of Representatives Representa-tives spent more than $1 million on junkets. A favorite hot spot for five "fact-finding" members of the Foreign Affairs Committee was the Fiji Islands in the sunny South Pacific. A delegation from the Armed Services Committee visited Bermuda on their way to Panama. Other legislators traveled to Western Europe, China and the Middle East. This year, the Defense Department will spend $3 billion just moving military personnel around. Pentagon watchdogs say that by using cheaper airlines, keeping better records and not transferring servicemen who are close to retirement, the military services could save more than $50 million a year. The resettlement of refugees from last year's Cuban boatlift is almost complete. Only a few hundred Cubans are still left at Fort Chaffee, Ark. But it will cost more than $11 million, our sources say, to repair the destruction wreaked on the military post by unhappy refugees. Copyright, 1981, United Feature Syndicate, Inc. Newspaper, Subscription Rales, $6 a year in Summit County, H2 a year outside Summit County Published by Ink, Inc. USPS 371-730 Publisher Jan Wilking Editor Bettina Moench Advertising Sales Jan Wilking, Bill Dickson Business Manager Rick Lanman Graphics , Becky Widenhouse, Lit Heimos Reporters David Hampshire, Rick Brough Photo Editor Phyllis Rubenstein Typesetting Sabina Rosser, Sharon Pain, Kathy Deakin Subscription & Classifieds , Marion Cooney Distribution Bob Grieve Entered as second-class matter May 25, 1977, at (he post office in Park City, Utah 84060, under the Act of March 3, 1897. Published every Thursday at Perk City, Utah. Second-class postage paid at Park City, Utah. 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