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Show Park Record Thursday, December 3, 1987 Page A1 1 AimdlScD Eit(EnxBS oeo BY TOM CLYDE Sonnets for schnauzers It may come as a surprise to you, but I am not able to support myself by writing this column. On an hourly basis, the pay is great, but there is a pretty tight limit on the number of hours involved, and no overtime. My situation is hardly unusual. Most people who would like to make a living writing end up with some kind of regular job, whether it is driving a taxi or teaching English, or in my case, foreclosing on widows and orphans. or-phans. People who write are always looking for a way to make it work without selling out to a real job, and it's no easy process. I came across an ad in the New Yorker last week that was a pretty good indication of how far people will go to live off their writing. The ad was this : UNIQUE GIFT FOR DOGCAT LOVERS Distinctive custom-written poem about pet. Approx. 15 lines. Beautifully prepared for presentation. Send breed, traits of pet, photo if possible (non-returnable). Allow 3-4 weeks for response. $85 prepaid. PETS IN POEMS, P.O Box 1413, New Rochelle, New York, 10801. Now this poet has an idea. $85 bucks for a poem about your pet. Admittedly, there is probably only a small segment seg-ment of the pet population that reads much poetry, but the pet owners would probably enjoy the poem, too. What better way to start off the day than for the sheepherder to recite a few stanzas about his blue heeler? The dog would go about his morning's tasks with a spring in his step, tail held high, knowing that he had a poem of his own, written by some poet in New York. If the poet got even one poem order a day, at $85 a whack, that's a little better than $31,000 a year. The only overhead would be a Post Office Box, the ad, some paper, a little postage. Not bad. And with a three- to four-week delivery time, there may even be some duplicate orders. One cocker spaniel is about like any other, when compressed to 15 lines. This looked like the ultimate business oppurtunity for me. I've never been much of a poet, but 15 lines of blank verse is no big deal. I bet I could whack one of those out over breakfast, and still be on the ski hill at a respectable respec-table time of day. I tried it out on my dog, Zeke. He wasn't sure. Zeke is not much of a patron of the arts, and when I offered him the choice of an $85 poem of his own for Christmas, or maybe a new rawhide chew toy, he was clearly leaning to the toy. I tried to explain that he would be the only dog in the neighborhoood with a poem of his own. He would lose the chew toy in a couple of days. The poem would be his always, and no other dog could take it away from him. He was still skeptical. The only solution was to try it out on him. In poetry, less is always more, so I figured that I could get a premium price for something a little more concentrated and compact than 15 lines. In English classes I was forced forc-ed to write haiku, a short Japanese poem with a very set structure. If 15 lines of black verse brought $85, 1 ought to be able to get $90 for a good haiku. Who knows, with the exchange rates falling, a Japanese poem may cost even more these days. I tried it out on Zeke: Zeke goes on point at Stumps, stones, and passing cars while Sage grouse steal his food. He was still unsure about getting just a poem of his own for Christmas, even a haiku, instead of a new rawhide chew. Zeke is pretty common stock. He thought a haiku of his own was a little pretentious for a Swede Alley lab. Maybe he's right. To really make the market work on this venture, there would have to be some lower-priced lower-priced items, too. Limericks about pets could be knocked knock-ed off for about $25 apiece. That better suited Zeke's sense of proportion, and left some cash for a rawhide chew toy. The limericks could be used as a kind of sale item. Order a sonnet for your schnauzer and the limerick is free: Father O'Mally's macaw Used language vulgar and raw. "He's possessed by the Beast," Declared the old priest, As he stuck a sunflower seed in its craw. I picture Poems for Pets as a starving writer of serious poetry in New Rochelle, having to write poems for pets to eat and pay the rent on a cold, damp basement base-ment apartment. This is a person who will do anything to stay close to his or her art. But at $85 a poem, Poems for Pets may be a pretty big operation. Maybe instead of the Emily Dickenson of New Rochelle, holed up in her little cottage, there is an old factory, packed to the rafters with sweating poets in little cubicles who are striving to make it into the greeting card business. One shift does the cat poems, one does the large dogs, and there are probably two shifts of poets working on the poems for lap dogs. They get paid by the line, with a little bonus if it rhymes. This is a good clean industry, something a city should be proud to have. Maybe I can get a grant from the RDA to help get it started locally. SuniMinmnit ts Sunmmmmiit COMPILED BY HEIDI WEST Car plunges 1 00' to river k kHM m -A JMU m-- ' THEASPENTIMES A nine-year-old girl struggled up a steep embankment from the Snake River to flag down help after her mother's car slid off the road and plunged 100 feet into the river below. The accident killed her six year-old brother, and left her mother seriously injured. The accident occurred at about 2 p m., Nov. 18 as Donetta Della-Penta was driving her two children and two dogs home through the Jackson area en route to their home in Evanston. The family's 1975 Volvo started to slide on ice toward an embankment on the north side of the road. The car hit the embankment, then slid back across the highway toward the Snake River. It rolled 100 feet to the river and landed on its wheels in the water. All three humans were thrown from the car apparently apparent-ly through the side windows. The two dogs remained in the car, and were both injured. "When we reached the bottom, I was out of the car, in the water," said Donetta. "I tried to get up, but toppled over into the water further. The current swept me away." Donetta's daughter, nine-year-old Bianca, said she "could see my mom floating down the water. I screamed out. My mom yelled at me to get help. I said 'O.K., mommy, mom-my, lam.'" Despite a severely strained ankle and facial lacerations, lacera-tions, Bianca crawled up the slope and finally found branches to pull herself up to the road. "I couldn't stand very well," she said. "I had blood in my eyes. I saw a white van. I waved. He stopped. I told them my mommy was down there and my brother's dead." The three men in the van were able to get Donetta on the shore, and by that time several people had showed up with warm clothes for the injured woman. When EMTs arrived, they found six-year-old Nicholas in a pool of still water. Although they attempted CPR, the boy had been in the water for 40-45 minutes, and was pronounced dead upon arrival at a nearby hospital. Donetta required 100 stitches on her face. She also suffered suf-fered a broken leg, broken right arm, broken right heel and dislocated right shoulder. She also had crushed the lumbar region of her back and required surgery at the University of Utah medical center. Lift maker settles - Two ski patrollers injured in a fall from a chairlift won out of court settlements with Poma of America, the lift manufacturer. The patrollers, Karen Chisholm and Erik Peltonen. fell from a chair 40 feet above the ground Nov. 1985 when its footrest caught a metal "halo" surrounding on of the towers. The chair tipped and ejected them from their seats. Peltonen suffered multiple fractures of the back and facial lacerations. Chishold sustained a compression fracture of the back. Although the Colorado Passenger Tramway Board determined the accident had been caused by excessive chair swing, it was revealed a month later that the lift manufacturer's design failed to account for the footrests. The chair design did not get transferred to the blueprints. The patrollers filed a suit against the chair manufacturer manufac-turer in March 1986. A trial date was eventually set for Nov. 30, 1987. But, both cases were settled out of court earlier in November. Dick Greengard, attorney for the patrollers, said the amount of the settlement was confidential under the agreement reached. But, he noted "it was an extremely fair settlement for Erik and Karen." TAHOE WOULD Little snow yet Two storms in the last few weeks have given Tahoe ski areas hope for the quality of the upcoming ski season, reports the Tahoe World. So far the storms have produced between 8 and 12 inches in-ches of snow on the upper runs at Alpine Meadows, Homewood, Northstar and Squaw Valley USA. Last year at this time, the resorts had no snow on the ground at all. Storms formed off the Pacific Coast, but consistently veered north of Tahoe until the end of December. "Oregon was getting bombarded," said Nor-thstar'sMikeWolterbeek. Nor-thstar'sMikeWolterbeek. - This year, the weather seems to be hitting the Sierra area every few days with a small storm. The snow has been wet, but even that is considered good news. "With the wet ground the snowpack holds better," said Dan Nourse of Alpine Meadows. "And we are beginning to build a base on the upper elevations." Alpine Meadows has also been making some of its own snow, as the weather permits. Nourse said the conditions condi-tions this year were "promising." "At least it's doing something," he noted. Time to buy a pass With a first dusting of snow on the ground, the Idaho Mountain Express has calculated which of the many pass options for Sun Valley Co.'s ski area are the best deals. Season passes are a hefty $975, and to break even with buying daily lift tickets would take 32 days of skiing. But, the company is also offering a season discount card for $125 which decreases the daily rate from $30 to $20. According Ac-cording to the Express, it would take 13 days of full-price skiing to work off the cost of a discount card. The resort also offers a weekend card for $35 which allows skiing on Saturdays or Sundays for $17. The card offers such a discount that it only takes three days of skiing ski-ing before the purchaser is paying less than the $30 daily lift rate. Idaho profs want plutonium banned Thirteen prominent Idaho citizens, most of them .university professors, have joined a national group calling call-ing for a halt to the production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. The group supports eliminating the need for a new special isotope separator (SIS) at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. The purpose of the SIS is to process fuel-grade plutonium into weapons grade plutonium. the extreme toxicity of plutonium considered to be the most dangerous substance on earth has led many local Idaho residents to oppose the plant as well. KING KONG VIDEO Announces a Pre-Christmas Sale! BOOM BOX Was 179.95 Now 134.95 Sharp double cassette high speed dubbingGraphic Equalizer auto program search NEC VCR Was 499.00 Now 329.00 4 Event 21 day programmability tuner 35 function remote screen function display 1 1 0 channel cable capable frequency NEC HOME THEATRE Was 4750.00 Now 3900.00 26" Monitor - surround amplifier w Dolby HQ VCR programmable CD player Dbl. cassette deck AM FM player NEC 20" RECEIVER MONITOR Was 799.00 Now 599.00 Quartz Tuner w skip memory Stereo TV and SAP Reception NEC 26" RECEIVER MONITOR Was 1049.00 Now 899.00 New wide band CRT Drive NEO wireless remote over 500 lines of resolution stereo amplifier w speakers NEC VCR Was 619.00 Now 479.00 8 Event 21 day programmable on screen function display 110 channel cable capable - high speed jet search KING KONG VIDEO 649-7222 1351 Kearns Blvd. at the Emporium i |