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Show Page 34—THE HERALD. Provo, Utah, Wednesday, January 30, 1980 FUNNY BUSINESS by Roger Bolien ON SECOND Th : MAYBE YOU'D BETTER GNE ME THE "DELUXE * WHEEL ALIGNMENT / New York Police to Study Russian NEW YORK (UPI) — The Russian immigrants in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach cram the public school to learn English. The police who serve them file into the station house to learn Russian. Few things are more American than a police station - even in Brighton Beach, neighboring Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay, with their more than NO... TM DEFECTING TO THE RUSSIANS WITH THE TOP SECRET PLANS CF ALL OFOUR NUCLEAR INSTALLATIONS. 14,000 recently arrived Russians, mainly Jews, who make "p a third or more of the area's people. rsBe pea too. They get a car any way they can. i ia (p Y£°D NEVER BE ABLE To\ © 100 oy NEA, nc, TM, Rap. U.S. Pat OF I FOUND THESE OLD SIGNAL FLAGS---I. WISH 2 I KNEW HOW TO USE Most of the time they don’t have a license and some of them don’t even know how to drive.” Even the most common crimes and police matters are trouble for the police of Brighton Beach because ofthe language barrier. For this reason, some 25 police officers and detectives who work in Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Ba have chosen to spend two hours ea Wednesday, for ten weeks, learning basic Russian. The course, sponsored by the area’s Shorefront YM-YWHA and Project ARI — Action for Russian Immigrants, is offered withoutfee to the officers. The police sit in the second-floor’ room of the precinct, with its pale cinderblock walls, blackboards and American flag, and listen to Dina Ehrlich, a petite, grandmotherly: woman wholooks tinyin a class oftall and stocky officers. As the politsayski (policemen) and TLL BET ITS ANOTHER, NOTE FROM HISTEACHER. Cee sian in the stationhouse is an unmistakable sign of their presence These Russians,like their predecessors who arrived from Eastern Europe during the great migrationof the 1920s, stroll up and down Brighton Beach Avenue in their big fur hats and babushkasand sit on the boardwalk, enjoying the salt air, the gleam of the Atlantic and the warmthof the bright winter sun. The area is knownasLittle Odessa the sea. It is not hard to see why. en other store on Brighton Beach Avenue, a block from the boardwalk and the area’s main shopping street, seems to be run by Russians, who have been coming to the area in large numbersfor about seven years. Signs and communitynotices are aslikely to be in Russian as in English. Like their American neighbors, however, the Russians sometimes have disputes, drink too much vodka, break speed limits and commit othertraffic violations. Thelatter is one of the more widespread problems. “In Russia they weren't able to own or drive a car,” says Detective Barry Brisacone, a community relations specialist. ‘‘When they comehere they see how easyitis so they wantto drive, wo Wea 911 Saw 90 VEN Aaom SHORT RIBS THIS BALLOON WILL The sound of Rus- JOG Two MILES A DAY, IF IT WEREN‘T FOR THESE RESTAREA Stops. PRICILLA’S POP ISEE BOTTS IS HOME FROM HIS SKIING TRIP! ee HE - MANAGES TO ONE EVERY TIME HE GOES SKIING.’ ) watch Mrs. Ehrlich - bewildered, amused,intent - the teacher drills them in some common words such as cil, desk, head, neck, boy, girl. y are less than enthusiastic as they repeat them. Study Says Alaska Pipeline ‘BUGS BUNNY THERE ARENT ANY CARDS UP My SLEEVES, SEE? f I PARKED IT RIGHT Makes Eskimo ‘Alcoholics’ NEW YORK (UPI) — The developmentofthe Alaskan oilfields has made many Eskimos rich and alcoholic, a study says. University of Pennsylvania researchers, who disclosed the results of their study Monday,studied Barrow, Alaska, a town where mostof the residents are members of the Inupiat Eskimotribe. The Alaskan pipeline has broughtthe Inupiats an average of $20,000 a year apiece. Now,the study said, 72 percent ei the population of Barrow is classifiable as alcoholic. “The more you drink, the deeper into apathy you slide,’’ an Inupiat spokesmantold the researchers. “Nothing seemsto matter anymore. It’s cold out there. Hunting is hard and you probably won'tget much anyway. The government won't let you starve.” The average Barrow native drinks 5.9 gallons of pure alcohol a year, compared to the U.S. average of2.9 gallons a year, the study for the Center for Research on Acts of Man said. Money, the study claims, has destroyed the normalfabricof life for the Inupiats, who had lived as hunters before the onset of progress. “What we have here is a society of lics,”” said Samuel Klausner, a sociology professor who is one of the authors of the report. Soon, the report predicts, the Eskimos will begin dying from cirrhosis of the liver in large numbers, and Eskimo women, who drink nearly as heavily as do the men, will increasingly bear retarded children. Bythe timethe drilling hits its peak in about 2010, Klausner said, the Eskimos maybe facing social extinction. Klausner blamed the Inupiat’s problems on ‘‘sudden wealth ... without arealcultural context to contain that.’” The Inupiats have attempted to deal with the crisis through a preventive detention program,in which a drunk is held for seven hours and released. During the first two years of the program, almost half the adult Inupiats have been detained an average of three times, the study said. The Eskimos, whosetraditionsstress congeniality, now have a homicide rate four times higher than Alaskan nonnatives. A drunk offender, the study said, was involved in at least half — and probably two-thirds — of all the violent attacks that have occurred in Barrowin the last three years, THE BORN LOSER ON Sn te wi ov eS © 1980 United Feature Syndicate, inc SOMEBODY LEFT THE WATER RUNNING!) |