Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 2

Passengers should demand end to poor conditions oh airliners A were almost home. The tiny red seat-belt; Tom Fitzpatrick Republic Columnist The closets provided for hanging bags are always filled before you get on the plane. If you weigh more than 125 pounds, the seats are too narrow. If you are more than 5 feet 4 inches tall, the leg room isj insufficient The rest rooms are invariably a disgrace. I truly believe there's something wrong with the air on the planes, too.

There never seems to be enough of it There was a time when the seats were actually large enough to accommodate full-size human beings. The airlines ended all that with their parsimonious effort to load the planes up beyond the comfort line and sell more tickets. Now, people are crammed together unconscionably. The modern jetliner is even more crammed than the steerage compartments of the ships that brought the early immigrants to this country. Everyone is squeezed so close together that it's impossible to talk.

All you can do is grunt Strange, now 'that I think of it. There was a time when strangers actually used to strike up conversations on airplanes. People were always returning from trips to recount tales of interesting people they'd met. That's a thing of the past. Passengers don't talk to one another anymore.

They're too busy worrying about They're too anxious about who win be able to squeeze his belongings into the tiny overhead rack. When the flight ends, no one speak. By then, the air in the plane is to stale that no one any longer possesses the energy to do more than stagger off the plane. The simple fact is that the airlines no longer treat us as human beings. There are no friendly skies.

The economics of the industry apparently make it impossible to operate an airline in. which passenger comfort is a legitimate consideration. But there are some things we could do to make the airline people recognize us. Why should we accept the ineptly prepared food? We should make them take it back at once. We should make as much noise about it as possible.

Very they'd begin serving something more palatable. When seating arrangements are too uncomfortable, we should ask for a better seat and announce our intention of getting off the plane to demand a refund. When the air becomes stale, we should demand to have the pilot summoned from the cockpit to explain to us whether he's trying to save fuel by cutting down on the air conditioning. We should stop acting like sheep. We must be willing to fight back.

Only when we do that will airlines people if If lights went on overhead. The stewardesses began bustling up and down the aisles, checking to see that seat backs were straightened. Down below, in the darkness, I could see the lights of the city. I'm always amazed at how vast Phoenix looks from the sky. All around, you could hear first-time visitors gasp in surprise as they saw how far the lights of the city actually stretched.

It was late Saturday night The plane was only half-filled. That's an incredible circumstance these days. And something else was incredible, too. The plane ride actually had been comfortable. There had been room to move around.

There had been time for the stewardesses to do more than throw food trays and serve drink orders. I was astonished. I had just experienced what has become a genuine rarity in modern air travel: a pleasant journey. When was it, I wondered, that we allowed ourselves to be turned into sheep? When did we begin to accept it as normal to be squeezed into those long, metal, cigar-shaped cylinders until there's not an extra inch of breathing room? When did we become so docile that we accept a cellophane-wrapped processed-meat sandwich as a genuine meal? Why do we behave with such docility? Somewhere along the way, the airlines people have broken us down. They have destroyed our will to resist.

They have forced us into lowering our standards. There was a time when the average traveler looked forward to taking a flight There was the trip to the airport, the excitement of the sights in the terminal. Then there was the pleasure of boarding the plane and sitting in a wide, comfortable seat. That's all changed. Today, the air terminals are jammed.

There are long lines to check baggage. There are lines to get seat assignments. Once on the plane, you find that they are invariably overbooked. The overhead racks are too small to between the seats." IPS Monday, December 10, 1984 i ABOONnborrm packages and overcoats. First lady Nancv Reaaan helps her husband with an answer to a reporter's question upon the Reagans return to Washington from Camp David.

Md The president apparently didn't hear the question on the White House lawn Sunday but replied with the answer supplied by his wife. The Reagans were accompanied to the presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains by their new puppy, Lucky. A8. wno gets to use ine eiDow space CLOSE-UPS Mathew Valencic, one of America's leading activists for legal reform, has helped found a group called HALT Help Abolish Legal Tyranny in 1978. B8.

A Phoenix woman explains how an attitude change made both her and her son happier. Ginger Hutton'e column, B8. LEISURE ARTS Big Bam Boom, the current album by Daryl Hall and John Oates, marks a culmination of sorts for their 15-year partnership. D8. Although the Jacksons' just-concluded Victory Tour established several firsts, haggling over the spoils tainted the most lucrative rock show ever mounted.

D8. Is Diane Chambers pregnant or isn't she? That is the touchy topic that the executives behind Cheers continue to ponder. Bud Wilkin son's column, 011. moved to Prescott. But busing him up there for an hour each way on icy highways is ridiculous." On Nov.

27, the school board voted to place Eller on administra- tive leave. It also voted to hire the mother of one of the Walnut Grove pupils to be a substitute teacher. "She doesn't have the creden- tials," Eller said. "So instead of. putting my kids through that, I pulled them out of school and 6tarted teaching them at home." School-board members won't say what happened between the start of the school year and Nov.

14 to cause them to make their busing decision, but Cody apparently was the root of the problem. On the first day of school, Eller said, Cody hit another boy. Later, she 6aid, her son threw a rock inside the schoolroom and she suspended i -m AP like human beings again. Carlo Rubbia "You go from a totally unknown character to a bright light. He said he accepted only one, a lecture at his daughter's high school in Lexington, Mass.

"under pressure from her." Francis Crick, the British scientist who shared the 1962 Nobel for discovering the structure of DNA, even came up with the following checklist for responses: "Dr. Crick thanks you for your letter but regrets that he is unable to accept your kind invitation to: send an autograph, provide a photograph, cure your disease, be interviewed, talk on the radio, appear on TV, speak after dinner, give a testimonial, help you in your project, read your manuscript, deliver a lecture, attend a conference, act as chairman, become an editor, write a book, accept an honorary degree." Other winners get pleas to put their names to causes that have nothing to do with science. "People still want me to sign various petitions for peace and good causes," said physicist Arthur Schawlow from his office at Stanford University in California. Schawlow won the 1981 physics prize for co-inventing the laser. "Just this week, I was asked to sponsor a Polish refugee," he said.

"I don't want to get involved in politics. I don't know anything about it." He said the prize has made students shy away from his laboratory. "There was a year when I didn't have any graduate students at all, in 1983. I was away so much that nobody thought there was any use itrying to work with me." i But Schawlow said he is grateful for the prize, and he believes the protestations of scientists such as Feynman are only modesty. Schawlow said he remembered seeing a photograph of Feynman accepting the prize in Stockholm, and "he had a grin as wide as his face.

"It was all part of her scheme to 'close the school," Eller said. "I don't know why because she doesn't have any kids in school here anyway. In fact, she moved to Prescott 60 her kids could go to school there." Whitehead admitted that she now lives in Prescott. But she won't answer the other Eller charges. Whitehead, Cooper and Hughes recently had a meeting with M.

Randolph Schurr, a deputy Yavapai County attorney, presumably to discuss Eller. The only public comment to come from the meeting was "no comment" Eller's lawyer is John Perry of Prescott, who said, "If they succeed in getting her out, they'll have a breach of contract on their hands." sian ireaung us NolbeD Continued from Al from attacks of indigestion and making grimaces of simulated satisfaction." "And to think I had chosen the most obscure, recondite and unpopular of the sciences," the Spanish scientist wrote. One laureate went so far as to consider backing out of the honor. Richard P. Feynman, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology who won the 1965 prize, said he told a reporter at the time, "I don't know how to get out of this thing.

Is there some way not to accept the prize?" Feynman accepted, but ever since, "the Nobel Prize has been something of a pain in the neck," according to his book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, due for publication in January. Feynman was less loquacious in a telephone interview. "I want to forget it, OK?" he said. A study of laureates by sociologist Harriet Zuckerman found their productivity fell by a third in the years just after the award, to an average of 4.2 papers per year from 6.2.

Some laureates attribute the slowdown to their age; the average for a Nobel recipient is the early 50s. But others concede they were forced to put off their research because of the clamor that followed the award. Rubbia said he could barely keep' pace with his schedule. "I have lots of other commitments, and it is quite clear I cannot cancel them now. It would be quite insulting," he said.

W. Bruce Merrifield learned from a cleaner in October that he had won this year's medicine prize for producing synthetic peptides. He said his work has suffered since the H6ws "I have slighted it," Merrifield said from his laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York. "I haven't had the time to work on detailed experiments since." Nevertheless, he is determined to answer hundreds of congratulatory' letters and telegrams when he returns from Stockholm. "You feel that if someone takes time to write, the least you can do is say thank you," he said.

Other Nobel winners have learned to say "no thanks." Samuel C.C. Ting, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, said he turned down nearly every request in the year after his lybpnysics award. him for three days. Another issue involved music, Eller said. It seems that the mother of one youngster at the school has forbidden her son to listen to rock music, which she referred to as "devil music." The youngster must have told his mother, according to Eller, that he'd listened to rock on Cody's portable radio, Eller isn't certain what the board's next move will be.

If the issue pends as long as next month, when the new board members take office, she believes she has a chance to retain her teaching job. "There is no way they can accuse me of not being a good teacher," said, In the meantime, she blames Whitehead Lt stirring the pot that led to Eller's suspension. accommodate the POLITICS Nicaraguan President-elect Daniel Ortega announces a new round of talks between his leftist Sandinista government and the Reagan administration to reach an accord of "mutual security" between the two governments. A4. Fred DuVal, a top political strategist for Gov.

Bruce Babbitt, is leaving his state job to enter private business. A6. THE NATION As the number of parish priests declines, laymen and women increasingly are replacing them in leadership roles in U.S. Catholic parishes, according to a study of Catholic parish life. A3.

Jurors who acquitted John DeLorean of drug-conspiracy charges say they did not intend for their verdict to be a message criticizing federaP'sting" operations. B10. A Justice Department unit reports that private security forces now command substantially more manpower and money than local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies combined and urges the study of ways to coordinate private and public operations. BIO. INTERNATIONAL A Solidarity official, released from a Polish prison and given a hero's welcome by thousands of supporters in a Gdansk church, pledges to fight for the revival of the banned trade union.

A10. Meat sales are banned in Bhopal, India, but water supplies and the air are declared safe in the wake of last week's leak of poison gas from a pesticide plant. All. ECON MONDAY Don't spill any eggnog on that big package under the Christmas tree. It might damage your new personal computer.

CI. To developers of high-technology software, computer pirates are slime, but they help one software writer distribute his program. C3. EDITORIAL OPINION Although NATO has met the immediate challenge by adopting a ing board, Eric Mischke, said keeping the school open was the reason he ran tor the office. On the other hand, there is Gail Whitehead, a school-board member who leaves office next month.

"I've been trying to get the school closed for years," Whitehead said. "We can't achieve quality education." Eller has a master's degree in education from Arizona State University. She also has a son, Cody, 12, and a daughter, Laura, 9. She was offered a job by the school board in August at a salary of $17,000. "I spent seven years teaching in Alaska," Eller said, "and you know what I'd have made this year if I'd stayed? $46,000.

"But I figured a rural area would be the best place to educate my December 10, 1984 Suggested i Metropolitan Single Copy, Delivery by Delivery by Outside Single Copy, Delivery by Delivery by Mall Rates Winning number: 6 1 1 20 23 34 36 Jackpot: $152,354 2nd-place pool: $35, 150 3rd-place pool: $46,878 Number of winners: Jackpot: none 2nd place: 36 3rd place: 1,282 Council agenda, B3. THE VALLEY 13 Gregory Scott Cummings, 17, the Muscular Dystrophy Association's poster child for five years in the 1970s, dies at Phoenix General Hospital. B1. Kent Durfee, who owns the Scottsdale Psychiatric Center, also owns the Durfee Gallery, the first art gallery in the Valley to open in a psychiatrist's office. Alan Thur-ber'6 column, B1.

THE STATE a Five youngsters, all between the ages of 7 and 11 and outpatients at the Arizona Cancer Center, design the artwork and write the messages for the center's "Holiday Hope" greeting cards, which are being sold to raise funds for the treatment of other young victims of the disease. B1. The Perryville state prison near Goodyear is in the process of adding 224 inmates to the prison population by double-celling inmates. Prison officials say the operation will increase the inmate population to 1,400 and cost the prison an additional $200,000 through June 1985. B1.

US The winner of the jackpot in the Dec. 1 Arizona lottery reportedly will wait until Jan. 2 to claim his $1.7 million, and the tax man apparently is the reason. B3. School Continued from Al Ruth Carter, who becomes part of the three-member school board next month, said generations of the Carter family were educated here.

"My children, my husband and his father and grandfather," she said. "And they got a good education and did well after they left" The school should survive, she said, "and will after the dust settles." Patty Hughes, a school-board member who will retain a seat next month, agreed. "There is no way we should send our small children to another school," she said. The third member of the incom-. six-year program to upgrade its arms stockpiles, it must also address long-term challenges with an eye toward new technologies.

Editorial, A14. Although there are no easy solutions to rising health-care costs, what does seem clear is the need to inject greater incentives for both consumers and providers to keep health-care bills down. Donald Lambro's column, A15. SPORTS Eric Dickerson shatters O.J. Simpson's single-season NFL rushing record and scores two touchdowns to lead the LA Rams to a 27-16 victory over the Houston Oilers.

D1. Washington running back John Riggins, hospitalized with a bad back six days ago, scores on a 1-yard plunge in the fourth quarter to give the Redskins a 30-28 victory over the Dallas Cowboys and the lead in the wild NFC Eastern Division. D1. kids, especially my son, who has a discipline problem. He is a very smart boy and probably would be better off in college.

Right now, he hates school. "So I told the board, Til take your $17,000 if you take my son, and they agreed." But on Nov. 14, the three members of the Walnut Grove school board Whitehead, Hughes and Bob Cooper voted to bus the school's seventh- and eighth-graders to Prescott. Only two pupils would be affected by the move, one of them Cody, an eighth-grader. Eller balked.

"I refused to send my son," she said. "There is no way anyone can tell me where to educate my children. If I'd have wanted my son educated in Prescott, I would have The Arizona Republic (USPS 030-020) Published every morning by Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. 1 20 E. Van Buren, Phoenix, A2 65004 P.O.

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