Opinion
Race relations
change for better
When “Bull” Conner was turning police dogs on civil
rights demonstrators and black children were being
bombed to death in church, who could have thought that
Birmingham, Ala., would ever elect a black major?
Yet that’s what the city did recently. The new mayor will
be Richard Arrington Jr., a sharecropper’s son who became
dean of a college. That isn’t to say that Birmingham has put
racial tension behind it.
But the election shows that Birmingham has come a long
way in race relations and opportunity for blacks since the
early 1960s when it was targeted for civil rights demonstra
tions by Martin Luther King Jr., because of its reputation as
the most segregated big city in America.
Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel
Interest ceilings
detrimental for all
The nation’s small savers are losing billions of dollars in
interest earnings each year because of a federal regulation
dating from the 1930s. Banks and savings-and-loan associa
tions, limited by law in the interest rates they can pay on
passbook accounts, have also begun to suffer as money that
they would normally attract from depositors seeks higher
interest rates in other areas. That is not a healthy situation
for depositors, lenders or borrowers.
The obvious remedy is to allow lending institutions to
begin promptly to pay more competitive interest on smaller
deposits. The Senate has acted to phase out the present low
ceiling rates on passbook accounts — banks may pay SVi
percent interest a year and S&Ls SVz percent — but under a
wholly unrealistic timetable with regulation of rates not
ending entirely until 1990.
Passbook-account interest rates ought to be deregulated
— not in a decade’s time, but immediately.
Los Angeles Times
Weather s all wrong
Indian summers are all right as weather goes, but heat waves, or more
appropriately steam waves, in the middle of November are ridiculous.
Just when we have packed away all of our cool cotton clothes and aired
out all our mothball-smelling wool sweaters, the weather pulls a fast one
on us Texans and sends a wave of warm, sticky, disgusting air to plague
us. Just when we think we have paid the last of those high electricity
bills, the air conditioning has to be turned back on.
The holiday season should be filled with crisp, cool, dry weather, so
you can build a fire and maintain the proper holiday atmosphere.
There’s nothing more inappropriate in these energy-conscious days
than having to turn the air-conditioning down to 55 degrees so we can
take those Thanksgiving pictures in front of a roaring fireplace.
the small society
by Brickman
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Editor Liz Newlin
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Opinions expressed in The Battalion are
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Viewpoint
can
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Wednesday
November 21, 1979
Dick West
Instead of colors like ‘Desert Mist
paint your garage with ‘Smog Grt
By RICI
Ba
Ithe Brya
Jict may h
iabse
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — I credit the latest
catalog issued by Wretched Mess with
being the first to recognize that what this
country needs is a more relevant color
chart.
Color charts prepared by paint com
panies are — God knows — poetic enough.
They run heavily to tints like Desert Mist,
White Fawn, Tawny Buff, Fantasy Yellow
and — so help me — Kitten’s Ear.
But for earthy types like myself, these
colors seem a mite too ethereal. I simply
have never felt comfortable going into a
paint store and facing a choice of magentas,
sepias, puces, mauves, cerises and the like.
If I am going to paint something, chances
are it will be something pretty prosaic. A
garage door, perhaps, or a wrought iron
railing.
Put a coat of Tawny Buff on a wrought
iron railing and you surely will find yourself
with an overwrought railing on your hands.
Wretched Mess, a publishing firm of
sorts, apparently is aware that conventional
color charts put many people’s teeth on
edge.
It has started advertising products in col
ors that relate to ordinary circumstances in
our lives. In short, colors you can identify
with, feel at home with and live with.
Two color names I admired in the recent
catalog were Power Failure Black and
Seedless Tomato Red.
Both are as contemporary as modern
utility service and hybrid vegetable experi
ments. Yet they somehow impart a sense of
familiarity that puts you at ease while you
are painting a garage door.
I would like to see an entire color chart
drawn up with workaday, unassuming hues
of that stripe.
If, for example, you didn’t want your
garage door quite as dark as Power Failure
Black would leave it, you could go to a paint
store and pick up a can of Oil Spill Umber.
Oil Spill Umber, as the name implies,
would be the color derived from mixing
petroleum and sea water. And thus it
would have the virtue of reflecting the
world we live in.
Moving up the spectrum, we would next
encounter Smog Gray, surely a more
meaningful color than, say. Cobblestone
Gray, Mistletoe Gray or Sea Mist.
Blues, in particular, tend to have a pom
pous ring — Royal Blue, Olympi*
Imperial Blue, PrincessBlueand
am thinking in terms of updating
ment of the color chart with Pons
Blue.
I mean, the blue material
X-rated films has become socoi
we might as well formalize the
Nuclear waste, I am told, isvaijj
so it wouldn’t be true-to-lile
In|a media 1
Holiday
nt of Sch
etails ol
bat stu<
Radioactive Russett or Three Mil
Amber on the new chart. I woulif
er, welcome a dash of Uraniumlij
Asbestos Fiber Drab.
Finally, I would like to see I
chart offer Crahgrass Green. Byr
my outdoor chairs and tables'
could for the first time have lawn-
that matched my lawn.
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Reader’s Forum
Creative Christmas gift-givm
weakens holiday commerciam
>11
By SUSAN CLAYTON
Take 30 seconds to think about what will
probably happen to the majority of Christ
mas gifts you’ll be spending money on and
giving this year. Will their final resting
place be in the oblivion of a closet shelf or in
the back of a drawer or in a trashcan?
Every year you hear about how Christ
mas has lost its meaning. You see more
people getting less excited about the event,
maybe even treating it as an unavoidable
pain, like finals.
cited and bothered? By making a few ex
changes you can help to weaken the com
mercialism that’s largely responsible for
the strangulation of Christmas (and at the
same time do yourself some favors by not
spending as much of that hard-to-come-by
money, and by not having to fight crowds at
shopping malls).
But who says you can’t do anything about
the slow loss of this beautiful holiday but be
swept along, until you’re one of the unex-
Time and creativity are precious: time
because it’s so scarce (there never seems to
be enough of it, right?) and creativity be
cause it’s a spark of the human spirit. When
either one or both are involved in a gift, the
gift gains in value of a very different kind.
Though bread or cookies that you’ve baked
and given to someone may be gone by the
next day, what you’ve done and actually
given has more meaning then an electric
knife or a tie that sits on a shelf for a few
years until it finally goes to Goodwill. Sim
ple Christmas cards you’ve made, and
more important, in which you’ve written
more than just your signature, carry so
much more feeling than those expensive
cards with the silly verses inside.
And if you’re sincerely empty of time and
creativity, you can buy gifts thoughtfully.
You can pretend to be that person you’re
giving a gift to for five minutes and come up
with something they would really gain
from. Books, for example: from cookbooks
to how-to books to philosophy, they
Or make it possible for them
thing they wouldn't otherwise—gwl
tickets to a concert or a movie they v(|
wanting to see.
By exchanging what’s involved i
— thoughtfulness, time, and
creativity instead of Money, by
more of yourself and less of Money.'
preserving what Christmas is really!
And possibly you’re starting a
events. Maybe two out of all the]
give gifts to will like your style so mti
next year they’ll leave the Easy
route behind, helping to bringeveml
more of the human in us intothe4
jlidnight
I game w
Fort Woi
Greave
lat Whis
and
hiskey I
t&A
Letters
Traffic citations, bike lanes
make bike safety at OU more sane
is fuel 1
i people
iserving i
Texas A
tation Ce
saving t
ie first
licle’s gas
it end al
jce. This i
Editor:
I would like to make several comments
in response to your recent news article on
bicycles on our campus.
Here at A&M I travel by car and by foot.
Thus I encounter the problems of mixing
with the bicycle as a motorist and as a
pedestrian. However, at the University of
Oklahoma I rode a bicycle regularly for
over three years. I put over a thousand
miles a year on the bicycle and rode up to
four and one-half miles in one way trips.
As a cyclist there I encountered all of the
problems involved in trying to mix with
auto and pedestrian traffic. Bicycle riding
was much more widespread there than it is
here. Yet, it was much more disciplined
and, in my opinion, safer.
The cause of this difference in safety and
discipline at the two schools might come
from two sources.
First, instructions have been given to
bicycle riders that they may mix freely with
the auto traffic. Because of these instruc
tions, we find bicyclists in the middle of left
turn lanes, for example. This causes a prob
lem because bicycles and autos accelerate
at him when the light turns green. Motor
ists obviously become irritated at the bicyc
list in this situation. In my view, bicyclists
must be confined to lanes where the traffic
flow is more uniform. This brings up
another situation; there were more bicycle
lanes in Norman, Okla., than there are
here.
Another significant difference in the
situations at U. of Oklahoma and Texas
A&M is that the traffic officers at OU did, in
fact, stop bicyclists and issue citations for
running stop signs and riding on sidewalks,
among other things. When one is on a
bicyle, he hates to lose his momentum and
stop at a stop sign. However, that is prefer
able to either receiving a ticket or running
into the side of a car that turns in front of
you after it has stopped at the stop sign.
Thus the solution appears to reduce itself
to one which demands clearly defined, cor
rect, and enforced rules. Without rules and
enforcement, the battle of bicyclists vs.
motorists and pedestrians will continue to
draw casualties.
I personnally feel that the situation here
is completely out of hand and extremely
dangerous.
— Don E. Bray
Associate Professor Department of
Mechanical Engineering
Common courtesy
Editor:
As a bike rider I have observed the de
bate over whether to ban bicycles with
some interest. I agree there is a problem. I
further agree the problem is largely due to
the ill-considerate haste of some bike
riders.
I suggest, however, that banning bikes
from campus is a response engendered
more by anger and a bureaucratic mental
ity than by rational thought. Bikes are
clean, quiet, efficent and easily parked.
They are cheap to purchase and to main
tain; for many students they represent the
(se more
|ve front I
;, since tl
, along
only feasible means of transportaW
An alternative approach, whicl)I“»i'[ K , ot j UT
thought will show to be tenable, is suc j i
students of A&M to advocate thecr
and maintenance of bike trails,
should be built not only on carap^j
throughout College Station. Syste!
bike trails have been successfully^
number of university towns.
In the short run, we must ap]
greater courtesy on the part ofbikeri
That is, of course, unless we choosi
adopt the suggestions of one oftny**:^'
bike riders and relieve the congest*)'*#’
banning the Corps from campus t®:'
daylight hours. I:
-FP' 1 [
Graduates 1 *®' v -
Thotz
By Doug Gram
Loan, thanks
FOf^ LOOKING
aftetr us..
AMD FOR the Sun, turkey
BREAD, CRANBERRIES, PEAS
POTATOES, AND
^specially.
6ood BREW AND <SOOJ>
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