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The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Monday
May 4, 1981
Aggie
* their w
Slouch
By Jim Earle
“Don’t talk to me, don’t ask me a question, and for goodness
sake, don’t slam the door! I’ve got my brain cells arranged
for my exams, and the slightest jolt might blow it all. ’’
Cookbook is from
out of this world
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — If what the world
needs now is yet another cookbook, that
void h^s just been filled by the National Air
and Space Museum.
The aeronautics wing of the Smithsonian
Institution has published a collection of the
favorite recipes of 50 of America’s most
famous fliers, from aviation pioneers like
the Wright Brothers all the way down to
today’s spacemen.
The Wright boys were partial to pear
salad, especially Orville, and, according to
their niece, Mrs. Ivonette Miller, also used
to pig out on fig ice cream
Amelia Earhart is represented in the
cookbook by sour cream wafiles, Charles A.
Lindbergh by Swedish butter cookies and
former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, now a
U.S. senator, by what apparently is some
kind of outer space chili.
Although the “Famous Personalities of
Flight Cookbook” may be a real grabber for
aviation buffs, for someone with only a
minimal interest in flying (me) it is curious
ly unsatisfying.
I was disappointed that only a brief men
tion was made of what I regard as the key
development in aerial cuisine — airline
meals.
The cookbook is unsparing in historical
vignettes about the personalities whose
favorite dishes are featured, but of airline
meals it notes only that they are usually
“prepackaged, reheated foods.”
Nothing at all is said of the brave and
hardy pioneers who first ate the stuff.
It is all very well to tell us that “Jackie”
Cochran contributed “ingenuity and per
sistence” to aviation. Surely, however,
those who gave their stomachs deserve
equal treatment.
I would be particularly keen on reading
something about the bold innovator who
developed the concept of serving little pap
er cups of nearly frozen dressing for airline
salads.
It never ceases to amaze me how the
airlines constistently get their salad dres
sing the consistency and temperature the
Arctic tundra is during that brief period in
summer when its surface thaws.
That courageous soul who first lofted a
forkload of airline salad to his lips and felt
his teeth twitch from gelid shock surely is as
deserving of a niche in aviation cookery as
Ed Link, the flight trainer inventor who
submitted his brother’s recipe for “conch
fritters” (heavy on the paprika).
Another curious omission is any recipe
commemorating Howard Hughes. It could
be he customarily dined alone and would
tell no one what he liked best.
the small society
by Brickman
/
/
-
©1981 King taturu Syndicate. Inc. World right! reeerved
Warped
Society can solve its problems
Armageddon — Has it arrived?
The wisdom of prevention is better than
the wisdom of remedy. Prevention is the
better cure. An ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure. Everyone is familiar
with these homilies and their moral mes
sages, accepting at face value the credibility
with which they are universally received
and espoused. So why does the United
States, in both its public and private institu
tions, corporation, and businesses, wait un
til “after the fact” to rectify pernicious social
maladies, when the major antecedents of
these baneful events are known and solv
able?
These are some of the question that
traversed my mind during the recent shoot
ing of President Reagan and others in his
presidential retinue. Exacerbating this
quandary was a Newsweek article entitled
“The Assassin Syndrome,” demarcating in
its wake a psychological profile of some nine
points that linked together the past and
present figures who have tried to kill a
U.S. President or other prominent nation
al public figure.
That profile ran the gamut from a child
hood that was plagued by the Scylla and
Charybdis of loneliness and self-loathing,
usually under the aegis of a one parent
household, into a young man or woman
possessed by bizarre and unusual fantasies.
Aiding and abetting this macabre scene is
the numerous and sundry extremist groups
who are seeking proselytes of this mental
ilk. What discerns these disturbed young
men and women, however, from others
who join cults, is a pathology, that is so
perverse and pervasive that even the
groups to which they swear allegiance to
treat them as pariahs and/or scapegoats, the
net result is a person whose logic and
reasoning is so scrambled and convoluted as
to preclude rational actions of any kinds.
Newsweek’s denouement is that hundreds
of thousands of citizens fit this basic mold
and the answer — if there is one — is
supervision of possibly dangerous people
by their friends and family.
What vexed me is'the fact that a viable
Reader’s Forum
cational system to assess the child’s t(
milieu (his environment at home as u
in school) and make a judgement thatis
infallable but more often than not, ce
around the bullseye of life. The accuract
this assessment is assured through
armamentarium of psychological
cational weapons at his disposal,
They ar
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from individual and group counseling:] h a
solution is within our midst, but the blin
ders of indifference, obdurateness and
omniscience, characteristic of our advanced
technological society, have reduced our vis
ta of possibilities to a slim few . Delimiting
our options still further is the current eco
nomic labyrinth within which we find
ourselves encased and overwhelmed by. It
would thus appear that only the great Mer
lin’s legerdemain could extricate us from
the followers of Hades, whose notion of
perdition is becoming more secular than
ethereal with each passing day.
Armageddon, however, can be post
poned, because inherent in the problem is
the phoenix of my solution. As Newsweek
so rightfully concluded, the psychological
profile that marks the assassin could just as
well be worn (and probably is) by hundreds
of thousands of citizens. Short of an Orwel
lian state then, what is needed to demarcate
the potentially dangerous from transient
disturbances is an event that is ubiquitious
in nature and a given for every U.S. citizes.
Such a concatenation is present in the form
of our educational system, one of whose
main tenets is compulsory attendance
through age 16. A captive audience, howev
er, is necessary but still not a sufficient
enough condition for distinguishing be
tween those demmed emotionally labile
form those judged mentally sound. It takes
the expertise of a man or woman versed in
the principles of human behavior and learn
ing to understand why schools and society
do what they do. Just such a seraph is avail
able in the persona of a school psychologist.
It is the school psychologist, through his
training in education, psychology, sociolo
gy and science who is best able in the edu-
formal testing and classroom observati
He is in the unique position of weighii
both pro and con, the contributions mi
to the child’s present disposition
teacher(s) at school, parents and siblingsii
home, and peers and friends in society!
large. His knowledge of education m
administration gives him the
understand, both cognitively and emob
ally, the onerous burdens under whiebtj
day’s teachers and principals operate, wlii
simultaneously empathisizing with pan
and the chasm between generations.
I contend, therefore, that we nowhave™
our disposal the means with which toattaii
the “after the fact” syndrome, even 1 ' '
its etiology is emotional rather than medio 0 p
that the
by mem
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In ad
buted to
in origin. As in the medical paradigi
doctor is still required, but this doctod
palliatives are for the psyche rather than Ik giving le
the somato. In addition, this doctordod ted the
not have to wait till his clients feelenoaj
discomfiture to request his services astlei
problems become so salient within ill
atmosphere of the school that they thea
selves seek mollification. This reined
could, can and should be implemented,
it can be achieved without dependingupn
the largess if philanthropic organizationso
the involvement and investment by theW
eral government of prodigious sums
money. It can be accomplished by givii!
the emotions the credence and validityth
we now allocate to the intellect. The pit
sence of a psychologist in the schools
enable society to nip in the bud its pressia
problems of loneliness, alienation, asocii
behavior, and functional illiteracy. Let®
Armageddon be an Apocalypse rather tin
an apocrypha. The choice is ours to mail
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Nor is there any listing for “Wrong Way”
Corrigan. My assumption is that he started
out to make Oysters Rockefeller and ended
up with Quiche Lorraine.
Anyway, I’m betting the book will be
popular enough to warrant a sequel. One
logical spinoff would be an aircraft mainte
nance manual edited and annotated by Julia
Child.
Fora
third de
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By Scott McCulIar
OOPS! 'ton STARTLED
ME . I WASN'T E-XPECT TNG
YOU SO SOON.
1
l'N\ RACING YOU TO
THE LAST PANEL.
AAG! YOU'RE ALREADY
UP TO THE 3RD PANEL!
("whe>n )
WHAT KEPT YOU?
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