Monday, April 10,1989
The Battalion
Page 13
wd
' x f son gs are dra,,
sources. “I t 's di
n e,” Reed said.
’ n gf are pie ced
»e, he said,
ideas that I record 0B
-order. Once a weed;
sas, and kind of build
er hand, some of®
udden inspirations;
such songs included
>e Capsules,” ins- : -
s, it makes this
>lody. It’s really
^ trying to get
ng to hold on
my roots, and
ing to raid all
)ld capsule commer
e Bay,” which Reed
uely after his fra
perience.
ed-time rhythmsand
Cane Bay,” acci-
e sensations of scuba
ig to a diving enthu-
ed the show with me,
ions included “The
my idea of an early
” Reed said), "White
latonia” (a two-[
e about Texas, witha
sound driving pan
Boo-Boo,” and “The
veled,” which
y through with the
Tm sorry, 1 forgot
rest.”
irgave this little mis
led and cheered and
i to bring Reed out
tended the intimate
Landing should con-
i lucky — Reed onlv
60 shows year,
y soon come when
s the level of fello*
anley Jordan, and
bigger halls and ap
'onight Show,
be on national T\
- I’d be scared,” he
lich he started pur-
it the age of 18, is
off; while his first
ne out on the small
1, his latest, fnstru-
on MCA Records,
nove away one das
ruing.
rrchestrate and ar-
i band,” he said,
of a fusion band,
er to sing stuff-I
iuitar.”
am,
ewers
iust erf
lie was its
Eight Men
well, pl av
)ses
m
e plays
kworker. L*
Broadway f"
ed with estab-
ich as Joh'
light’* p er 5 r ;
at Rud^r
Forget the Times; weekly papers
keep the finger on America’s pulse
associated press
a Texas teen-ager getting ready
for the Junior Livestock Show had
some thoughts about petulant pork-
e rs.
“Raising a pig is good fun, but
how much fun depends on the mood
of the pig,” J enn y Haley told the An
vil Herald o( Hondo, Texas.
A great-grandmother in West Vir
ginia, egged on by a granddaughter-
fn-law, Finally got around to earning
a high school diploma.
“I dreaded math the most,” Doro
thy Johns, 71, of Gay, W.Va., told
the Ravenswood (W. Va.) News.
When the 91-year-old founder of
an egg and poultry company in Elec-
tra, Texas, died, his obituary in the
San Saba (Texas) News matter-of-
factly noted that he was born in In
dian Territory and as a child was
brought across the Red River in a
covered wagon.
In the Bonners Ferry Herald,
which has served Boundary County,
Idaho, since 1891, columnist Grace
Bauman offered this observation:
"If you think you’re getting too
much government, just be thankful
you’re not getting as much as you’re
paying for.”
So it goes in the American coun
tryside. While Washington con
cerned itself with the insolvency of
the S&Ls and the sobriety of John
Tower, the topic of the Tri-State
Cow-Calf Symposium at Haigler,
Neb. was closer to home — “Produc
ing the Cow of the Future Today.”
There are things to learn about
the state of the nation from Ameri
ca’s 7,498 weeklies that you won’t
find in the Congressional Record.
Sure, there’s some bad news:
The taxpayers of Clinton County,
Mo., may be stuck with the $20,000
medical bill resulting from the am
putation of both legs of a suspect
who escaped from the county jail
and suffered severe frostbite while
at large, says the Lawson (Mo.) Re
view.
The Osawatomie (Kan.) Graphic
worries that Osawatomie’s reputa
tion as a railroad town may be slip
ping; the Union Pacific is thinking
about routing even fewer trains
through town. '
Drugs worry the countryside, as
they do the big cities. Schools get
consolidated.
young people leave,
*mo^ Str ' eS c ^ ose - Th e big drought of
1988 still takes its toll: still not
enough rain in many places, not
enough snow cover for the winter
wheat.
But for all that, the weeklies re
port the news that tells you the heart
ol America is still ticking. Important
Phillips called the largest beat in the
United States — 3,000 square miles.
Almost triple the size of Rhode Is
land, it has a population of 500 to
600 people. Booth told the Millard
County Chronicle Progress: “Ba
sically I’m pretty well qualified. I can
ride a horse dang near anywhere. I
rodeo a lot. I still ride bulls occasion
ally and I’ve team-roped. I know
cattle.”
The Area Chamber of Commerce
I here are things to learn about the state of the nation
from America’s 7,498 weeklies that you won’t find in
the Congressional Record... the weeklies report the
news that tells you the heart of America is still ticking.
Important news, because, after all, doesn’t everyone
come from a small town, or think he did, or wish he
had?
news, because, after all, doesn’t ev
eryone come from a small town, or
think he did, or wish he had?
In that case, here’s some of the
news from back home:
Wallace Wyatt Jr. promised that if
he were elected probate judge of St.
Clair County, Ala., he would eat a
super-hot barbecue sandwich at
Smitty’s Barb-B-Que in Odenville,
La. He was, so he did. “He said he
wouldn’t do it again for $500, and it
wasn’t something he’d wish on any
one, even a Republican,” said the St.
Clair News-Aegis.
The Garden Club of Stamford,
Texas, celebrated the 100th anniver
sary of Texas Arbor Day by planting
two pecan trees on the west side of
Post Office Square as a memorial to
A.C. Denson, longtime member of
the dub “who, had she lived another
month, would also have been 100
years old,” the Stamford American
said.
Sheriffs Deputy Ernie Booth was
assigned as the law enforcement of
ficer for Millard, Juab and Beaver
Counties of Utah’s West Desert. He
has what Millard County Sheriff Ed
of Yale, Mich., decided to hold a fes
tival in July honoring Yale’s most fa
mous product, bologna. Among the
activities will be a pet parade, a dog
show and the selection of a King and
Queen of Bologna, the Yale Exposi
tor reported.
From the Bowdon (Ga.) Bulletin:
“At Bowdon Elementary School, tea
cher Sylvia Caldwell asked her sev
enth-graders why Friday was such
an important day to all Americans.
Though it was also Inauguration
Day, and that was the answer she was
looking for, student Andy Boatright
quickly responded: “It’s Carl Rooks
Day.” He was right. Carl Rooks re
tired as police chief. In an interview
with the Bulletin, Rooks said that in
24 years in law enforcement, he had
never had to shoot anyone.
The Eagle Bulletin of Fayetteville,
N.Y., characterized a recent Friday
this way: “That was the kind of day
you could separate the feeble defros
ters from the strong.”
The news in the resort town of
Whitefish, Mont., was made by Po
lice Chief Dave Dolson, who told the
city council Whitefish was becoming
Naval Academy’s private dairy farm
provides 4500 middies with milk daily
phoid epidemics in trendy Annapo
lis lately, so why is the academy still
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Al
most 80 years after a typhoid out
break made officials wary of the lo
cal milk supply, the U.S. Naval
Academy is still running its own da
iry to put milk on the midshipmen’s
tables.
The cows don’t graze on this pic
ture-book campus by the Severn
River, but down the road a few miles
is the 865-acre U.S. Naval Academy
Farm, which they share with Bill the
Goat, the middies’ long-horned mas
cot.
The fresh, rich milk they produce
is much in evidence in King Hall, the
cavernous wardroom, or dining hall,
where the entire 4,500-member bri
gade takes its meals. They empty
nearly 2,500 of the blue and gold
half-gallon cartons daily.
But there haven’t been any ty-
Iraqi artists’ creations
reflect horrors of war
seen from front lines
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Mur-
thada Haddad, one of Iraq’s emerg
ing sculptors, spent six years fight-
>ng the Iranians in the gulf war.
The horrors he and other artists
experienced at the front have had a
dramatic impact on Iraqi art.
“I saw too many people die in the
war and they come out in my work,”
Haddad said.
He lost his studio and foundry in
the southern port of Basra when it
took a direct hit from Iranian shel
lfire during fierce assaults on the
city.
Tt was a very, very painful experi
ence,” he said.
Six months after the August
cease-fire, few signs of the conflict
remain evident on the streets of
Baghdad.
But the battle scars are visible in
the capital’s museums, galleries and
studios.
Gone are the idyllic landscapes,
the bedouins on horseback, the
scenes from the marshes and the
tttountains — all traditional subjects
artists favored before the war began
‘tt September 1980.
In their place are searing sculp
tures and paintings that reflect the
carnage the artists witnessed.
Three sculptures by Haddad, dis
played at a recent one-man exhibi-
t ! 0n > show small, bronze figures sit-
|‘ n g twisted and bound, covering
heir faces. The group is called “Pris
oner of War.”
A statue commemmorating a mis-
? 1 e attack was designed by Mu-
ttammed Ghani, whose whimsical
statues inspired by the legend ol
fiOOl Nights” are Baghdad land
marks. A girl in the statue has two
s altered stumps for legs.
A painting titled “War and
Peace,” which won plastic surgeon
Ala Hussein Bashiir the gold medal
at the Baghdad International Festi
val, shows a man leaving the cold,
metallic bonds of his military uni
form to float among the clouds.
“The war turned the work of most
Iraqi artists into art that has some
thing to say, not art for decoration,
the 50-year-old Bashiir said.
“They may use the same style, but
the subject has changed.”
Painter Shakir Hassan, 64, re
members his first visit to the front
after a fierce battle.
“WTten I saw Basra and the front
lines I understood the dramatic re
sults of war,” he said.
“When the town itself is burned
by bombardment, it means the exis
tence of things is destroyed — not
just humans, but walls, paintings as
well.” _ ,
Haddad used a group of people
inspired by ancient Mespotamian
wall reliefs to show the shock in
duced by the fall of Faw in 1986.
The bearded figures stare off in
the distance, mouths agape, hands
crossed over their stomachs.
Iraqi artists point to the generous
checks the government continued
handing out during the war as an
other important wellsprmg of their
work.
President Saddam Hussein is
known for ruthlessly eliminating his
enemies, and the state-run press is
heavily censored. , , , „
Still, artists stress that they have a
free hand in their work.
But with a limited private market,
official tastes tend to dominate and
artists generally laud the govern
ment’s tough standards in selecting
the works they commission.
the drug capital of northwest Mon
tana. Out-of-town newspapers
picked up the story and local busi
ness people were irked, the Whitef
ish Pilot said. Bar owners were espe
cially angry because of Dolson’s
reference to “people inhaling lines
of cocaine off the bars and card ta
bles in our town.”
The Friend (Neb.) Sentinel, re
ported the night visit of an opossum
to the porch of Marie French of
Chestnut Street. She took some pho
tographs to prove it and the Sentinel
published two of them.
In his column in the Waupun
(Wis.) Leaders News, public librar
ian Tom Green noted that 6,316
borrowers checked out 108,549
items in 1988. Fines totaling
$3,108.80 were turned over to the
city.
The Manchester-Coffee County
Beautification Association of Ten
nessee established a Litter Hotline
for citizens to report the license
numbers of people who toss trash
from their vehicles. People who are
turned in get a warning letter and a
litter bag in the mail, the TullaJfbma
(Tenn.) News reported.
In a letter to the editor of the
Horton (Kan.) Headlight, Donna
Hoffman protested a proposal dis
cussed by the commissioners to kill
stray cats. She wrote that cats help
control the mice and rat population.
“Imagine what it would be like with
no cats to catch and kill these ro
dents! Whafs next? A rat ordi
nance?”
The conditions of the restrooms
at Duran Junior High came up at a
meeting of the Pell City Board of
Education in Alabama. The prob
lems — overcrowding, a lack of pri
vacy and the urinals in the boys’
room were so high the boys couldn’t
use them.
One angry father said he under
stood that if a boy was tardy because
he had to wait to use the restroom he
might get a paddling when he finally
reached class.
The St. Clair News-Aegis quoted
the father: “I’ll tell you this, if my
child comes home and says he got a
paddling because he was held up in
the bathroom, I’m going to come
here and see some folks.”
Impressionist art incongruous
in isolated Egyptian museum
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Less
than six months ago, a picture of
a dark vase holding blooms of
orange, yellow and red .cat
apulted a small museum on an is
land in the Nile from obscurity to
fame.
It was an authentic Van Gogh
called “Flowers,” its legitimacy
certified by two Paris-based art
experts imported to disprove gos
sip that a fake had been substi
tuted in the 1970s by thieves who
held the canvas for months.
They also verified the authen
ticity of most of the 207 other
paintings hanging in the Moham
med Mahmoud Khalil Museum, a
collection so obscure it was con
sidered unworthy of listing in
most guidebooks.
Local journalists gleefully fixed
the worth of the collection, which
was willed to the Egyptian gov
ernment in 1960 by the widow of
the Francophile millionaire par
liamentarian who had amassed it.
Based mainly on the 1 foot-by-
2 foot canvas bearing the heavy
touch of Dutch-born Vincent Van
Gogh — the art world’s hottest
painter — bloated estimates
ranged as high as $20 billion.
Relieved, Culture Minister Fa~
rouk Hosni predicted that Egypt
would become known for its “rich
collection of impressionist art
works as well as for its pharaonic
past.”
Not so. Fame was fleeting, and
the Khalil, a forgotten and by
passed beauty spot on Zamalek, a
residential island opposite down
town Cairo, remains forgotten.
“In winter months we have 40
visitors each day, sometimes
more, sometimes less,” said
Ahmed Sarny, the museum’s ded
icated curator.
“In the summer we get as few
as two visitors a day.”
Sarny is caretaker to a “who’s
who” of the art world, inter
spersed with anonymous lacy car
ved wooden screens, Islamic tiles,
hanging brass lamps, walls etched
with slender calligraphy and a
gurgling center fountain in the
foyer.
“Flowers” hangs slightly off-
center in the far right corner of
an end gallery.
To its right is a spring scene in
green by Auguste Renoir, to its
left a soothing blue river impres
sion by Claude Monet.
A small version of Auguste Ro
din’s “The Thinker,” sculpted by
the master himself and thought
to be a model for the statue in the
Louvre in Paris, sits oh a pedestal
in front of the Van Gogh.
In a room through a door to
the Van Gogh’s left, hangs an
eye-catching Gaugin among 12
masterpieces sharing simple
white walls.
Sarny said there’s been debate
whether impressionist art belongs
in such a setting. To the Western
eye, the sedate landscapes and
parasoled ladies clash with the Is
lamic touches that weave in and
out of the museum’s five main
galleries and second-story cat-
walk.
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Use the Battalion Classifieds. Call 845-2611
milking its own cows?
“I guess tradition,” says Todd
Dander, 21, a second classman from
Dallas. “That’s what everything is
around here — tradition.”
Several others speculated that it
was cheaper for the academy to get
its milk from the source, bypassing
the middleman.
But the civilians who run the
$950,000-a-year farm, where they
milk 175 to 250 Holsteins and raise
250 calves, don’t claim to be under-
pricing the competition. They ac
knowledge the staff of 16 is larger
than typically found on a dairy farm
of similar size, but they insist that
they are only milking cows, not tax
payers.
The dairy is self-sufficient, relying
on sales to the Midshipmen’s Mess,
not federal appropriations, says
R.H. “Pete” Peterson, who has run
the farm since 1982, first as a Navy
lieutenant commander and, since re
tiring in 1984, as the civilian farm
manager.
He bristles at any suggestion the
naval dairy is a white elephant or, as
a recent newspaper headline sug
gested, a prime candidate “for the
budget ax.”
And, like many great events in na
val warfare, academy officials point
out that this battle has been fought
before — and the middies’ dairy won
a decisive engagement.
The battle erupted in 1966 when
the Department of Defense, faced
with complaints from Maryland and
Virginia milk producers, suggested
shutting the dairy and selling the
farm.
But the House Armed Services
Committee rose to the defense of the
middies’ milk supply, and deter
mined that if the farm were sold, the
money would revert not to the U.S.
Treasury, but to the Midshipmen’s
store fund, which lent $25,000 to
start the dairy in Annapolis in 1911.
Two years later, Congress lent
$155,000 to buy the property in
Gambrills, Md., 13 miles from the
academy.
None of the 16 people who staff
the farm is a civil servant. All except
a secretary live on the farm, where
the workday for the milkers and
herders begins before dawn.
West Point Cadet Capt. Adam
Such, 22, of El Paso, Texas, who
spent a semester at the Naval Aca
demy last year and returned recently
for a leadership conference, spoke
with envy of the midshipmen’s co
pious milk supplies.
“The stuff we get doesn’t taste as
good,” he says. “Honestly, we don’t
get enough dairy products.”
The Opera & Performing Arts Society
brings the Theatre Season to a close
with a powerful Broadway production...
April 10 Rudder Auditorium 8 p.m.
Tickets on sale in the MSC Box Office
Phone orders 845-1234 VISA/MasterCard Welcome
This season we bring you the world.
MSC Opera and Pcrformieuj Arts Society • Memorial Student Center ol Texas AftrM Uimcisity