Page 8
THE BATTALION
MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 1979
world
Larger-than-life bear now an international star
United Press International
LONDON — Paddington Bear,
that furry figure in a duffle coat and
surplus had who arrived in England
from “darkest Peru” and took his
name from a railroad station, just
turned 21.
But in books he remains 9, the age
he’s been since his Aunt Lucy — now
spending her twilight years in a
home for retired bears in Lima —
packed him aboard the train in South
America with a handwritten brown
tag around his neck saying “Please
look after this bear.”
Paddington, the most famous
member of his species since Presi
dent Theodore Roosevelt inspired
the Teddy Bear (1902) and A. A.
Milne created Winnie-the-Pooh
(1926), is part of virtually every Brit
ish child’s life. His adventures are
chronicled in more than a dozen
books and a cartoon television series,
and his stuffed, chubby persona
peers out from toy counters every
where — along with countless Pad
dington “spinoffs.”
Princess Anne, when she left the
hospital with her baby son, Peter,
carried a stuffed Paddington under
one arm.
He also is becoming a celebrity in
the United States. Romper Room
has just bought the Paddington tele
vision series and sales of stuffed Pad-
dingtons are booming, along with
library and school requests for his
books.
What makes him so popular?
“He’s reliable,” says creator Michael
Bond. “He has his paws firmly on the
ground. He has a strong sense of
right and wrong, in a way that a lot of
people would like to have. You can
talk to him and know he's not going
to pass on your secrets.”
The line between Paddington and
Bond is, the author acknowledges,
loosely drawn.
Bond, 53, a genial, silver-haired
bear of a man, describes Paddington
as, “More what I would like to be
than I am. The Browns — with
whom Paddington lives — are very
much my mother and father. His en
vironment is a pre-war, safe one, as I
knew it from childhood. He wears
those clothes because I was earing a
duffle coat and army surplus hat
when I started to write about him.”
The way Paddington and Bond, a
former TV cameraman, first met is
another story. “It was Christmas Eve
and raining,” Bond said. “I missed
the bus and went into a department
store for shelter. There was one bear
left on the shelf and I felt sorry for it,
so I bought it as a stocking stuffer.
And because we lived near Padding
ton Station, I called it Paddington.
And one day I decided to write a
story about him.”
In little more than two decades,
Paddington has grown into an inter
national enterprise that brings in $4
million in gross sales annually.
Since Paddington has been trans
lated into 20 languages. Bond’s cor
respondence comes from children —
and adults — around the world.
Each gets a personal reply, often
including a pawprint and line from
Paddington who signs himself
“Padingtun,” since, being only 9 and
a bear, he hasn’t yet mastered
spelling.
“I write to please myself,” says
Bond, who has completed a book ab
out a guinea pig named Olga the Pol-
ga and will publish one about an
armadillo named J. D. Poison who
becomes president of the United
States.
“I don’t write for children and|
don’t think about children when fa
writing, because I don’t think pi
can come up with a composite child
to write for anyway.”
To a child, Paddington often oven
shadows the real world outside his
books.
Bond said one youngster toldhii
he thought it was very funny to name
a railway station after a bear.
Pollution-plagued Athens plans clean-up
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United Press International ,
ATHENS, Greece — Athens goes
into the 1980s with a brave new plan
designed to save the city from dis
astrous overcrowding and pollution.
About 3.7 million Greeks, close to
40 percent of the country’s popula
tion, live in the capital. Every day
some 50 families arrive from the pro
vinces or islands, usually to join rela
tives already established in the met
ropolis.
“Our goal is to stem the growth of
Athens and stabilize its population at
4.5 million by the end of the cen
tury,” said Undersecretary of Public
Works Stephanos Manos, who com
missioned the scheme.
“We have to decentralize by mak
ing other cities attractive and by
creating sub-centers within the grea
ter Athens area. At the moment all
services are in the middle of the city
and the traffic problem is horren
dous.”
Three-quarters of Greece’s indus
try is concentrated around Athens
along with all government offices, 70
percent of doctors and half of the
country’s privately-owned cars.
Trees, parks and playgrounds
make up only 3 percent of the Athens
area. Tall apartment blocks tower
above narrow streets choked with
traffic. A recent survey showed the
city is one of the world’s noisiest,
threatening the physchological
health of Athenians.
Under the new plan, vehicles are
barred from certain districts, notably
the Plaka, the old quarter beneath
the Acropolis, and hundreds of new
ly-planted trees line the sidewalks.
In the spring, giant neon signs will
come off buildings along a central
boulevard so that passers-by can en
joy the splendor of neo-classical
architecture.
“These are good things, but the
plan has to provide more than
cosmetic changes, and parts of it are
just Utopian,” said Costas Gartzos,
an architect and one of 30 Greek city
planners who have joined forces to
work on the new scheme.
“We have to consider people’s
basic social needs in housing, recrea
tion and waste disposal, and we have
to make sure the government under
stands.”
Pollution control may play a deci
sive role in the future of Athens,
Gartzos said. There now is so much
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sulphur dioxide from central heating
systems and vehicle exhausts in the
air that the marble surface of the
Acropolis temples has begun to
crumble. Last fall that Caryatids,
2,400-years-old stone maidens from
the Erectheum temple, had to be
moved into a museum for protection
from the atmosphere.
In winter a low lying brown smog
covers the city, provoking compari
sons with Los Angeles.
“The smog contains a nasty mix of
nitrogen dioxide, hydrocarbons and
organic particles, a distinct health
hazard, especially for people with
bronchial troubles,” said Panayotis
Christodoulakis, an environmental
scientists.
About two-thirds of the city’s sew
age flows untreated into the sea,
along with its industrial waste, some
of it containing cadmium, lead and
carcinogenic oils, he said.
“The fish have moved out of the
Saronic Gulf because there is no ox
ygen left to breathe. And swimming
in polluted water gives fair-skinned
northern tourists skin diseases.”
The new plan calls for a British-
designed sewage treatment ]_
and strict zoning laws to curb m
industry around Athens. A new sub
way, costing nearly $1 billion,
roads costing $2 billion will handle
the traffic problem, the government
hopes, although transportation im
provements in Athens usually nm
into trouble from archaeologists.
Athenians themselves will hi
defray the cost of rescuing the cits
through new taxes on real estate, ser
vices and licenses for shops and
businesses, now under study.
But cynics recall that theonlycily
plans ever carried out were Perides’
rebuilding after the 480 B.C. Persian
invasion, the Roman Emperor Had
rian’s enlargement of the city he
admired, and King .Otto of Bavaria!
scheme for the capital of newly-
independent Greece in the 1830s.
“It’s up to the Athenians in the
end,” Gartzos said. “They have to
react and demand specific improve
ments in the quality of their lives if
the city is to remain inhabitable.’’
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United Press International
ROTHERHAM, England — Mrs.
Cynthia Harrison apparently could
not live without her shaggy English
sheepdog, Digby, a television star.
She also became a celebrity when
Digby captured the hearts of mil
lions of Britons in paint commercials
on television.
She was invited with Digby to
open shopping centers and super
markets, to receptions and parties.
She even took Digby to meet Queen
Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
But Digby died unexpectedly at
the age of 7 and Mrs. Harrison, her
life of glamor over, was shattered.
Just before Christmas, 14 months
after Digby's death, the 46-year-old
woman was found dead in her autmo-
bile after taking a massive dose of
sleeping pills.
“It was a very sudden blow, and
she took it very badly,” her husband,
Norman Harrison, told an inquest
Friday. “The dog’s death was a shock
and her life changed considerably af
terwards.”
February eclipse to be
studied for effects on Earth
United Press International
WASHINGTON — A total eclipse
of the sun will be visible in parts of
Africa and the Indian Ocean Feb. 16,
and the federal space agency says it
plans to launch seven sounding rock
ets to study it.
The rockets, to be fired from the
San Marco launch platform in the
Indian Ocean off Kenya, will study
the solar corona while the sun’s disc
is blacked out and also will examine
changes in Earth’s upper atmos
phere during the eclipse.
Five of the rockets will carry scien
tific instruments provided by Penn
sylvania State University and two
will carry payloads from the Los Ala
mos, N.M., scientific laboratories.
The San Marco station will be in-
the path of the total eclipse for about
10 minutes. The rockets will be fired
before, during and after the clipse.
The eclipse’s path will begin off
the west coast of Africa during the
early morning of Feb. 16 and move
in an easterly direction, crossing
Zaire, Tanzania and southern Kenya.
According to the Yearbook of
Astronomy, the path of totality will
go across the Arabian Sea and south
ern India and end in southern China.
This will be the only total eclipset
of the sun this year.
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