| OCR Text |
Show The Public Forum Tribune Readers Opinions Save Little Cottonwood Dick Bass aims his sights on a new peak up Little Cottonwood Canyon for future de- velopment. He made comments to The Tribune that the canyon and the public would be better served by downhill-skiin- g development. The canyon, according to Mr. Bass, is unsafe for cross country skiers, due to its steepness and snow conditions. In the same article I read about the joy he got from his treks and climbs on many high peaks and climbs to far away regions of the world. By developing the Little Cottonwood Canyon for further downhill skiing, he will permanently close the potential for rewarding mountain experiences for those of us who cannot afford to jet to Nepal. To enjoy Little Cottonwood in the winter, under Mr. Bass' plan we will need to spend $20 to $30, far beyond what most of us in the community below can afford. I urge the community to speak up to stop Mr. Bass from limiting our canyon only to those who can afford to put money into his cash box. JOHN G. MCNEIL An No gold 4E the project that someone has to pay. A rate loan from the state means someone has to pay the difference in the in- st terest costs. The funds involved In the federal sharing, if it is constructed as a Corps project, have to come from somewhere, as well as the local funds. There is no magic; don't forget the funds must come from taxpayers one way or another. My concern is that this project, which we are all going to pay for whether we like it or not, should be designed and built with full safety and with the best overall benefits, not only for now but also for the future, and that should be the determining criteria. The decision to go ahead with the Corps project is sound. This is the only tenable option in the present situation. But if the machinations going on result in Congress not providing further funds, then we must have every assurance that the project built with just local funds fully meets the criteria for a project of this importance. The factor of safety of such a dam must not be determined by the way the costs are shared. ELLIS L. ARMSTRONG officials visits to the soup kitchen and shelters. The fact that they went is commendable, but the manner in which it was handled and just plain was unthinking, dumb. They could have dressed down a bit so the contrast with the homeless and hungry was not so great. They could have mingled instead of marching in like school kids on a field trip. They could have stood in line rather than being seated and served, while the hungry waited in the cold. It accomplished little, other than making many of us a little ashamed and wishing we were on Capitol Hill with a vote. BETTY HANSEN Dam Sound Decision Tribune Jan. 23 article concerning the Little Dell Dam Project stated: A costlier but better designed Little Dell Dam proA posed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers won backing from Salt Lake County on Wednesday. If that doesnt work out, then the article states the county will go for a locally designed $28 million dam in lieu of the $45 million corps dam, which presumably would meet the same needs. This raises some serious questions. A dam and reservoir located above our metropolitan area certainly warrants the better" design put together by experienced, objective, professional engineers. The Corps design costs to date, according to the article, of $2.5 million, are costs to Forum Rules Public Forum letters must be submitted exclusively to The Tribune and bear writers full name, signature and address. Names must be printed on political letters but may be withheld for good reason on others. Writers are limited to one letter every 10 days. Preference will be given to short, typewritten (double spaced) letters permitting use of the writers true name. All letters are subject to condensation. Mail to the Public Forum, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. Just Compensation With the Jan. 26 editorial, Internee Justice, The Tribune again has morally expressed its views in remedying the grave injustice committed against 120,000 American citizens and legal residents of Japanese ancestry who were forcibly evacuated from the West Coast in 1942. The Tribune has joined an increasing number of newspapers endorsing compensation for the survivors. They believe sation of sufficient magnitude will serve as symbolic restitution for the violation of constitutional rights. The bills, HR442 and S1053, which incorporate the findings and recommendations of the congressional bipartisan Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, will be reintroduced during the current session. One of the recommendations provides for a compensation of $20,000 to each of 60,000 survivors. letter to the Salt Lake League, Sen. Orrin Hatch indicated his support of CWRICs recommendations. Former Rep. Dan Marriott was one of the original 72 of HR442 when it was HR4110. for Presently, there are 120 HR442 and 27 for S1053. These members are expected to increase as more congressional delegates became knowledgeable of CWRICs findings. It is favorable that the administration now remains neutral. MITSUGI KASAI cost-effecti- for Effort? stars for the legislators and city In his Jan. 26, 1984 Chapter, Japanese American Citizen A Clarification The Leslie Percival who signed her name letter appearing in The Public Forum on Thursday, Feb. 6, is not the Leslie Percival who resides at 1621 Deauville Ave. to a Test Moratorium The Utah House can make it clear by passage of House Joint Resolution 14, introduced by Blaze D. Wharton, that Utahns want an end to underground nuclear testing. Utahs unfortunate experience with underground nuclear testing should place our state in the forefront of calling for our nation's leaders to join the Soviet Union in its moratorium. underground nuclear-testin- g Two months remain in which the moratorium can be extended indefinitely by our nation's participation. There has been an increase in the capacity of satellites and seismic sensors to detect underground nuclear tests, even to distinguishing them from earthquakes. A cessation of underground nuclear testing is easily verifiable. Utah would earn the plaudits of people around the world, for whom the future is clouded by a nuclear threat to all human existence, by favorable action on HJR14. Mormons, reaching out to all nations, should welcome the opportunity to identify themselves with fervent prayers in hundreds of languages and dialects for an end to the nuclear arms race. And Utahns, Mormons and alike, would share great pride in the courage and broad vision of their representatives at Utahs State Capitol. DAVID B. FREED A Perfect Void - mini-serie- professionals can instantly write and produce the entire show on a budget of less than $30 million. Thats right: You write only one line. But remember, it must suggest everything we miniseries need to know about the eight-hou- r you have in mind. Early entries reveal a surprising amount of undiscovered talent for writing at the miniseries level, but originality is sometimes lacking. Forty contestants, for example, have submitted virtually the same line, which goes as follows: Zo, Mister Winston Churchill, you leff ven I zay dot zumday vee Notzees vill bomb your beluffed London. Remember, Herr Churchill, dot you heard it right here in zis Munich rathskeller from a little mustachioed nobody by zee name of Adolf Hitler. The miniseries to be written around this line has already been done. It was called "The Winds of War. Originality, please, contestants! Above all, originality. Also, a word of caution. Do not write the accents for your foreign characters. Actors and directors like to fight about how the accent should sound. They do not like writers butting in. Also this entry is far too long. Two sentences, for heavens sake! How many actors can memorize two sentences? Even if they can, how many actors want to speak two sentences when the camera can be slowly caressing their facial bone structure? Are Nazis out then? Never. Nazis will never be out as long as the miniseries survives as an art form. If you do Nazis, though, try for the kind of originality found in this entry: The humor continues. Regarding bills approved by the House committee, requiring warning labels to protect us from insidious subliminal messages, Rep. Frances Merrill's statement says it all. I don't want anything going into my mind that I'm not aware of. . . Yes, such a perfect void should not be marred by mere reason or rationality. KEVIN and ELISSA POLLARD . So, mother, now you know the truth I am a SS colonel about me whose only pleasure is playing with dolls. One can carry originality too far, of course, as in the following example: Go ahead and say it, Eve. Its my scales that make you shudder when I offer you the apple, isnt it? No network is going to pump $30 million into a Garden of Eden show with a talking serpent. The audience for reptiles watches public television. Bible material always has big ratings possibilities, of course, and a lot of contestants realize this and know how to exploit the possibilities. Here are a few of the better entries: Perhaps, my good Daniel, you wont be so once you make the acof lions down there in their my quaintance little den. And: "I remember when you scorned me of all the as a harlot, Joshua, and now nerve! you ask me to help you conquer Jericho. And: I just havent felt the same joy in slaughtering the enemy, Lucullus, ever since that time we crucified that fellow in Jerusalem. Speaking of Lucullus, few things go down with a miniseries audience better than ac tors wearing sheets. Our contestants aware of this as this entry indicates: The Washington Post WASHINGTON The essential problem in Haiti, Secretary of State George Shultz said the other day, is that country's "tremendous poverty and illiteracy. Not a bad diagnosis. But Shultz's proposed treatment seems ludicrously wide of the mark. The cure, he said on ABC-TV- s "Good Morning America, is democratic elections. Few people would be happier than I to riot-tor- n see that poverty-strickecountry have free elections. But while democracy would no doubt rid Haiti of its chubby despot e Baby Doc Duvalier, it strikes me as ludicrous to suppose that it would solve Haitis stupendous poverty. It is a game America routinely plays when it comes to prescribing remedies for the Third World. We talk about poverty, landlessness and maldistributed wealth, but then we try to sell the notion that the remedies are political, not economic. Listen to Shultz, on Haiti: We believe, as is our view around the world, that the way to start out of these problems is to have people running the government who are put there by an electoral kind of process. We are callthere and ing for the type of government that is put there by a democratelsewhere ic process. He seems oblivious to the obvious: Haiti under President-for-Lif- e Duvalier is a n, Miniplots , Miniseries and Miniminds New York Times Service We are running NANTUCKET, Mass. a contest to find people with the talent to write TV miniseries. The rules are simple: Write a single line of dialogue so exactly s that TV right for an eight-hou- r U.S. Foreign Policy Muddles Economics With Politics are Then it was your sister Malaisia who secreted the poisoned quinces in Germani-cus'- s sardines so as to arrange the marriage with Sibeliuss niece, thus assuring Quintuss claim to the Emperors favor. Note that while this line with its stupefying sequence of hisses is not only unpronounceable but also incomprehensible, its hissing sound prepares the viewer for a highly effective camera shot of snakes squirming around in the imperial zoo. Though irrelevant to the story, this is always effective in a miniseries in which the actors wear sheets since few viewers can fail to be entertained by reflecting how easily a snake could crawl up a Romans leg. Jean-Claud- poverty-stricke- desperate n, country. Haiti under a freely elected would still be resource-poo- r. unpoverty-stricke- n and desperate less something was done to improve its economy. This confusion between politics and economics is routine in our dealings with the Third World. We talk about the poverty of Central America, for instance, but instead of proposing economic remedies for the regions economic problems, we gear up to fight communism. It is as though we have Miniseries with contemporary settings generally deal with the sluttishness of astonishingly rich women. Many contestants entries reflect a shrewd awareness of this vast entries market. Here are several single-lin- e submitted by a variety of contestants: Slut! You slut! You rich slut! "You fantastically rich slut! You international slut! This last is obviously a weak entry, but it does incorporate an essential element of the contemporary miniseries: the astonishingly rich sluttish womans tendency to cover a great amount of territory, usually by jet. One contestant submits an entry that cleverly omits dialogue entirely, and is merely a direction to the sound man. It says, (Noise of jet plane taking off). There is still plenty of time to get your entry in. The contest winner will receive two pounds of goat cheese. jet-bor- Jean-Clau- de Duvalier forgotten that it was poverty that paved thq way for communist advances, not the other way around. The source of the confusion is that our stated goals are different from our actual ones. We say we care about the plight of the peasants in South and Central America, when what we really care about is (1) American business and (2) our struggle against communism. We are staunch supporters of "authoritarian despots who are hospitable to U.S. business interests, and sworn enemies of totalitarian despots who arent. We prescribe free elections when they hold promise of installing governments, but William Raspberry we spare no effort at subverting communist governments, no matter how freely elected. When have you heard any U.S. official talk about the problems of Grenada? Grenada's leftist leader Maurice Bishop is dead, and the present government is So from the American point of view, there is no longer a Grenadian problem, no matter that the people still live in poverty. Haitis Duvalier is no communist, but he is a tyrant. But since he was a tyrant friendly to the United States, he was, until recently, still getting American aid. (The State Department has now moved to hold up some $26 million in aid to the Duvalier regime, but his control of if Baby Doc the country and makes some token human-right- s concessions, can anyone doubt that Uncle Sam will resume its The fascinating thing is that for all our ostensible concern for Third World peasants and our deep-dye- d opposition to leftist political systems, we make virtually no effort to export the American economic system. Not even in Grenada, where our rescue operation gave us a virtual blank check have we given any thought to competing with the communists by establishing an American-styl- e economy. It is as though we secretly doubt that our economic system will work in the Third World. But if our shoe wont fit, why do we object so fiercely to their trying on someone Jonas elses? Angolas South Africa-backe- d Savimbi, in town this week, says he has won promises of U.S. support in his guerrilla war against a popularly elected, but leftist, government. What does guide our policies? Whatever it is, it isnt pride in our economic system; it isnt our sympathy for poverty-stricke- n peasants and, as the Angolan case makes clear, it isnt free elections. We only know what we are against. Wouldnt it make sense to spend some time on the question of what we are for? n. check-writing- Dartmouth Contentions Set Stage for a Long Struggle Universal Press Syndicate The contentions at Dartmouth are once news, for the very good again front-pag- e reason that what is going on there is newsworthy. The reason for this is that the students there on the left are highly mobilized, but so also are they on the right, who have their own publication, The Dartmouth Review. Since we are engaged in describing an order of battle, one might add that the faculwhile ty of Dartmouth is ever so trendy-lef- t, the president, David McLaughlin, is a centrist. The stage is set for a very long war, the most recent episode of which was The Matter of the Shanties. A couple months ago, something calling itself the Dartmouth Community for Divestment suddenly marched into the center of the fabled College Green and erected a number of shanties designed in the minds eye to imitate living quarters of many blacks in South Africa. Now, demonstrations of that order are, in the judgment of reasonable stands. But pretty soon folk, OK as t transpired that ie students had in mind a one-nig- more or less permanent addition to the architecture of Dartmouth, an upsetting development to those with an aesthetic eye, and positively infuriating to those who believe that political demonstrations should be contained within a fairly short leash. The reaction of the deans was to command the students to remove their shanties. But President McLaughlin, seeking to be as permissive as possible, overruled the deans and said the shanties might stay so long as they served an educational purpose. One can think, of course, of any number of things that would serve an educational purpose that are inappropriate exhibits in a public park, but nothing was done for weeks until Tuesday, Jan. 21. At which point a group calling itself the Dartmouth Committee to Beautify the Green Before Winter Carnival (that is Dartmouths equivalent of Mardi Gras, the Super Bowl, and the Fourth of July) mobilized at 3 o'clock in the morning. The 12 students, most of them associated with The Dartmouth Review, arrived with sledgehammers and.ll kid you not, a rented flatbed truck, and before you knew it, whoosshh! Divestment City was no moe. The committee left word that it was "merely picking trash up off the Green and confrontation, and sure enough they got this sit-i- n in the office of the by staging a a of president couple days after the shanties came down. At that demonstration they were pleading the case against racism, sexism and the toleration of dissent, which is Newspeak for immunity for whatever students say or do. left-mind- Now, President McLaughlin has his own problems, having been denounced a few restoring pride and sparkle to the college we love so much. There are those who believe that a repristinated campus green is not necessarily a setback for black South Africans. Mr. McLaughlin had been warned by politically acute observers that he had been mistaken in taking so permissive a stand on the shanties because what the was wanted today as back in the '6t'i weeks ago by the faculty for not exercising sufficient governance," by which is meant docility to faculty edicts that, at Dartmouth, more often than not communicate faculty crotchets, as when the faculty expressed disgust a couple of years ago not with a black dean who physically bit a student editor of The Dartmouth Review, but with his victim. Perhaps responding to such pressure, McLaughlin ordered quick trial and executhis followed tion of the by their hiring an attorney, who has got an extension, etc., etc., etc. One more scene at w Dartmouth. shanty-destroyer- A good thing, in the opinion of some observers, inasmuch as Dartmouth is serving a useful purpose. When in 1968 the campus at Columbia exploded, the students destroyed scholars papers and defecated into presidential wastebaskets and before we knew it it was so in Berkeley, and Iowa State, Cornell and Yale and Harvard and, to be sure, Kent State. The germs of that universal upheaval are not dead and, interestingly enough, not by any means yet diagnosed. (That was the great failure of the American academy, the greatest failure of this century.) The left took effective control of campus life and declared themselves members of a revolutionary movement. Some of those folk are these days tenured professors at places like Dartmouth College. But this time the right is organizing, if you want to use that word for such as believe that if the left asserts the right to build shanties in the middle of the green, other students inherit the right to tear them down. As New Hampshire goes, so goes the nation. |
