The Daily Herald from Chicago, Illinois • Page 89

Page 4 SUBURBAN LIVING Thursday, January 25 1996 D3JJyHei3l(l Pet reindeer is just a part of woman's Alaska lifestyle BY MAUREEN CLARK ASSOCIATED PRESS ANCHORAGE, Alaska The first clue that Oro Stewart is an uncommon woman is her pet reindeer. "I told my husband I wanted an Alaskan pet," says Stewart with a smile. "Of course, he thought I meant a husky." Stewart, 78, has kept a pet reindeer in the yard of her downtown Anchorage home for the past 35 years. Star, her fourth reindeer so-named, munches contentedly on alfalfa and lettuce in the fenced-in yard of Stewart's trim, ranch-style house. It's a whimsical element in an otherwise ordinary neighborhood.

But Stewart is no ordinary woman. She was a newly minted English teacher at Washington State University in Pullman 55 years ago when she met her husband, Ivan, an engineering student. He brought her to Alaska. Ivan Stewart, who died nine years ago, had traveled north to work as a gold miner. It was supposed to be a temporary job to earn money for school, but he quickly decided to stay.

He wrote to Oro, asking her to marry him and move to Alaska. "I decided I'd better if I wanted Ivan," said Stewart. She left on the last steamer bound for Alaska, four months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The war in the Pacific was in full swing. They had a two-day honeymoon, hiking Kodiak's Pillar mountain.

It ended abruptly when they took shelter from the rain in a shack on the beach. They awoke to find themselves surrounded by American soldiers with bayonets drawn. The soldiers had been hot on the trail of Japanese spies. "I said 'Don't shoot, don't shoot. We're said Stewart.

"So they apologized all over the place and fed us a nice steak." During their first year of marriage, Oro operated a photo shop in Kodiak while Ivan worked for the Army Corps of Engineers on military construction projects in the Aleutian Islands. "I was the janitor and the portrait taker, the salesman and the bookkeeper." She still recalls the sudden scramble when the military would respond to the threat of enemy aircraft. "The air raid would sound and I'd close the photo shop and run into the bushes across the street." After a year in Kodiak the Stewarts moved to Anchorage and opened the downtown photo shop that Oro runs to this day. Life in what was then small- town Anchorage was an adventure. "Everything was new and exciting," Stewart said.

After running the shop during the day she'd stop at Ship Creek and catch a salmon for dinner. She learned to hunt moose and caribou and began holding a yearly, midwinter wild game barbecue at the camera shop, "When it came time to cook the walrus and seal all my friends would vanish," said Stewart. She and her husband enjoyed traveling in rural Alaska and once made a trip down the Yukon River in their amphibious car. "We went down the Yukon River from Eagle to Circle City in 1966," she said. "We went 365 miles in three days." The amphibious car is used only for parades these days, but Stewart's traveling days are far from over.

At an age when she might be expected to slow down, Oro Stewart still rambles the world in pursuit of her passion rocks. A member of the Chugach Gem and Mineral society, Stewart has spent years collecting minerals. Her home and photo shop are overflowing with specimens she's collected rubies from Yugoslavia, emeralds from South America, tourmaline from Australia, golden agate from Sri Lanka. Most prominent in her collection is Alaskan jade, mined by her husband in northwest Alaska. It's the unique character of each rock that keeps Stewart on the hunt, "Every one is different.

Every one is original. You never get the same thing twice." Stewart says she's too busy planning her next mineral expedition and running the photo shop to think about writing her memoirs of her early years in Alaska. "I have 11 employees to take care of and one reindeer." Reivers rode roughshod over Scottish border BY GRAHAM HEATHCOTE Associated Press CARLISLE, England Ever suspected that your ancestors were robbers who terrorized the border between England and Scotland? Armstrong, Elliot, Graham, Irvine, Johnstone, Kerr, Maxwell, Nixon and Scott were among the families who rode, feuded, fought and plundered over the border country for 350 years. All the family names of the Border Reivers, whose first allegiance was to their family's surname, are on a list kept in Carlisle, on the English side of the border. From the 14th to the 17th centuries the border was a turbulent place.

Raiders stole cattle and women, burned homes and farms and killed rivals without mercy. From surviving documents such as court and property records and tenure agreements, researchers have identified 74 family names from that region in the 16th and 17th centuries. Some names have changed over the years: Johnstone becoming Johnson, for example. Reive, meaning to plunder or rob, comes from the Scots dialect of the Scottish Lowlands and borders. "The folk memory of the Reivers has passed away, but their stories survive in the border ballads," says David Clarke, senior curator of Tullie House Museum.

"We have music about them and (the novelist Sir Walter) Scott collected a lot about them and put them into his novels." The museum has made an audiovisual show about the Reivers the centerpiece of a S7.5 million restoration. The bell struck to warn Carlisle townspeople of raids is now in the museum. Images of galloping horsemen, lookouts, panic-stricken settlers and the fires of torched homes and forts are projected on a 30-foot curved screen. Voices intone the fear of women waiting for raids: "The Reivers are riding to take what we stole from them that had been ours before." The border with Scotland is nine miles north of Carlisle, but in Reiver times nothing was so definite. "North of Carlisle were the debatable lands, territory which was declared to belong to neither Scotland nor England," Clarke says, "The Reivers operated on both sides of the border.

"It was peat moss and bog country, a huge tract of wet and desolate moorland at the head of the Solway Firth. You had to know your way around it or you would have got lost and died. Nowadays it's mostly quarried for peat or drained for farming. "Carlisle is a border city and changed hands between the English and Scots several times in the Middle Ages so the museum took up the Reivers as a very interesting episode. It's become one of our main attractions." Clarke says the Reiver story is still little known despite George MacDonald Eraser's novel, "The Steel Bonnets." Eraser was astonished by the Reiver connections he saw in a photograph of U.S.

presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon and evangelist Billy Graham together at Nixon's inauguration. LBJ's visage and figure were straight from Dumfriesshire where everyone was familiar with such lined and leathery faces, large heads and rangy, rather loose-jointed frames, Fraser says. The Graham features were less common but still familiar, while Nixon was the perfect example of the Anglo-Scottish frontier: blunt, heavy features, dark complexion, burly body and an air of dour hardness. Fraser says all three heads would fit perfectly under a Reiver steel bonnet.

"The Reivers were thieves, but warriors as well, and without allegiance to anyone outside their clan. Any English or Scottish king going to war here needed the Reivers on his side," says Chris Dobson, a Carlisle city official. He says the Reivers were eventually repressed, deported, killed or compelled to emigrate under threat of imprisonment and that many ended up in Ireland. Haydn Charlsworth specializes in researching family histories around Carlisle and has traced Reiver connections for American clients. "Once you get back to the 16th century, it's pretty difficult to make strong links, but the Armstrongs are well documented, and the Johnstones," Charlsworth says.

"Men who carried arms were liable to be called up by the sheriff so there are records of them." Visitors can get a "Reivers Car Trail" leaflet in Carlisle to guide them through 80 miles of Reiver country. It describes one of the most unspoiled and splendid parts of Britain as it was in 1590, just af- Mounted horsemen known as the Blue Reiver are shown here in an image from the audiovisual show, "The Blue Reiver," shown at a museum in the English town of Carlisle. Associated Press Photo ter the defeat of the Spanish Ar- es, remnants of Roman forts built mada. more than 1,200 years before when Towers, churches and castles are nearby Hadrian's wall was the still there, though often only as northernmost frontier of the ruins, and so are banks and ditch- Roman Empire. Is there a Reiver on your family tree? Associated Press CARLISLE, England The 74 family names in surviving documents about the Border Reivers: Archbold, Armstrong.

Beattie, Bell, Burns. Carleton, Carlisle, Carnaby, Carrs, Carruthers, Chamberlain, Charlton, Charleton, Collingwood, Crisp, Croser, Crozier, Cuthbert. Dacre, Davison, Dixon, Dodd, Douglas, Dunne. Elliot. Fenwick, Forster.

Graham, Gray. Hall, Hedley, Henderson, Heron, Hetherington, Hume. Irvine, Irving. Johnstone. Kerr.

Laidlaw, Little, Lowther. Maxwell, Milburn, Musgrove. Nixon, Noble. Ogle, Oliver. Potts, Pringle.

Radcliffe, Reade, Ridley, Robson, Routledge, Rutherford. Salkeld, Scott, Selby, Shaftoe, Simpson, Storey. Tailor, Tait, Taylor, Trotter, Turnbull. Wake, Watson, Wilson. Woodrington.

Yarrow, Young. BELIEVERS: Don't write them off as just a bunch of right-wing fanatics Continued from Page 1 Unless they are part of the conspiracy. "There're many books and videocassettes out there on this," Per- adotti says, 'I feel like more of the mainstream media is starting to come out and tell the truth. We hope it's going to go further, but it's taken a long time." Started in the schools The three women's convictions started with questions about their children's schooling. The way reading, history, even math, are taught seems different, often contradictory, from how the women had learned.

Bowling, a diminutive, outgoing mother of four, was troubled by her daughter's history lesson on American colonists. The book, she said, had a sneering, dismissive tone about Christianity. It started her wondering. What followed was a growing friction with teachers and administrators. Bowling became a fixture at school meetings to challenge the implementation of Goals 2000, a federally endorsed plan to overhaul the nation's education system.

At the center of the controversy is the notion that the much-debated philosophy of outcome-based education stresses how children learn rather than what they learn. Grass-roots newsletters are full of criticism. There are allegations that whole-language learning, which replaces phonetic reading, is a trick to keep children illiterate. Others complain teachers care more about politically correct ideas, such as multiculturalism, than teaching math. One widely circulated story holds that a creative writing lesson, where youngsters are to imagine diving in an airplane, is actually an exercise in hypnosis.

"What we see on the horizon is a government-planned economy, where families will lose their liberty to pursue their choices of education and employment opportunities," states a recent newsletter of Parents Involved in Education, a group based in Temecula, Calif. A reading list provided by Bowling includes titles such as "Outcome-Based Education: Are Your Children in This Meat Grinder?" and "Soviets in the Classroom: America's latest Education Fad." "When I saw what was going on in the schools, I had to ask myself, says Bowling, who peppers her discussion with references to Skinner and Rogerian psychology. "We found out that behavioral psychologists are manipulating our school system with the stated goal of changing students' values and fixed beliefs to restructure our society." Bowling, a lifelong resident of Seneca, 111., with one year of college, eventually took her oldest daughter out of school and has taught all her children at home. The daughter is now a paralegal. 'Gee, am I the only But other questions arose.

Why the layoffs of so many workers? Why a growing internationalization of the economy? The questions led to a frustration with the political system; the frustration led to Ross Perot's United We Stand in 1992. Bowling didn't find what she was looking for, but she did find Pera- dotti and others with similar beliefs. The discovery of like-minded others, and their connections to yet more people, was a revelation. "Sometimes you'd feel like, 'Gee, am I the only Bowling says. "Then you run into others and it's, 'Oh my God! You too, and you And then you'd feel like, hey, this is real." Talking with the women in Pera- dotti's living room requires the rubbernecking of a tennis match.

Her mention of David Rockefeller and NAFTA is quickly taken up by Bowling who talks of the intrusion of GATT. The volley is completed by Patarozzi's complaint about the World Trade Organization. They are asked if they are concerned about their children's future. They answer in a chorus: "Of course." "What kind of jobs are out there?" asks Peradotti, "And now Clinton is encouraging people to go into the Work Corps." "The Hitler Youth Corps?" Bowling asks. All three laugh.

To Peradotti, a 50-year-old divorced mother of three who works jobs from sales to bookkeeping, her new contacts brought an understanding to issues that had troubled her for years and sent her to the community college for courses on economics, psychology and sociology. "What we found out, through talking and networking, is the big picture and the puzzle pieces are beginning to fit together," she says in a quiet but firm voice. Nothing new Many of those pieces are not new. Groups like the John Birch Society have warned of such dark plots for years. A map now making the fax rounds shows a plan for the United States to be occupied by troops from Russia, Belgium and Ireland while U.S.

troops police the Balkans. The map was published in the early '60s. What is new, say pollsters and political scientists, is society itself. Economic, political and demographic upheavals have brought unsettling changes. As more and more people are affected, at their offices, in their schools, reasons are sought.

Often conspiracy is an attractive explanation. "The Birchers were talking about this back when people were working 9-to-5, watching 'Ozzie and Harriet' with the family and thinking the kids would go to college and their company would be there for them from cradle to grave. That's all gone," says Mike McKeon, a political and corporate pollster who keeps watch on trends from his outpost in Joliet. "There are big changes taking place in society, and some people are more comfortable thinking there's something they can fight against rather than some kind of evolution that they can't fight." What also has changed is the ability of such people to find one another. Communities once formed around workplace, church and neighborhood.

Now people find community through their fax and modem. "It used to be you couldn't talk to anyone about this stuff," McKeon says. "Now you can talk to anybody. They get in these information loops and they can chat and chat about it forever. What you get are virtual communities or tribes congregating around these information bonfires." Frustrations are mounting These bonfires are fueled by authors and pamphleteers who have talked conspiracy for years.

Among them is Dennis Cuddy, whose doctorate in American history lends an air of scholarship to titles like "President Clinton Will Continue the New World Order," and "Secret Records Revealed: The Men, the Money and the Methods Behind the New World Order." At 49, Cuddy has spent much of his life warning about the United Nations in booklets and editorials. He sees the growing interest in his work as inevitable. "It's this movement away from local control of the economy, local control of the factory in town, local control of education," Cuddy says from his home in Raleigh, N.C. "When this happens, those who have less control are fearful. These people are frustrated because no one will listen to them." The frustration is evident in Per- adotti and her friends.

"Once you start finding out about all this, you do what you can just to get it out," she says. "That's why when we're referred to as the radical right, there are a lot of us who are frustrated because we've done what we can do and it's almost like, well, what can you do now?" Starting to have an effect But there are indications those who share Peradotti's beliefs are beginning to have an effect. Four states New Hampshire, Virginia, Montana and Alabama have shied from the Goals 2000 program after pressure from grassroots groups. A conference of state leaders on sharing power with federal officials was canceled in October, derailed by rumors it was a secret Constitutional Convention called to nullify the Bill of Rights. Even the Indiana Highway Department has fought rumors that color codes on the back of highway signs were there to direct U.N.

troops along invasion routes. The different color bars, used for maintenance record-keeping, are being changed to one color. "We kept getting calls about what the colors meant," said spokes- woman Chris Baynes. "Sometimes explanations fell on deaf ears. We got threats and some of the signs were spray-painted over by someone." Leonard Williams, a political scientist at Manchester College in northern Indiana, has watched what he calls "the radical center" in the 14 years he has studied how political ideologies grow and mutate.

"The actual numbers don't matter," he says. "What matters is that a significant portion feels this way, and we have to decide how we are going to address that." The worst response, says Williams, is to ignore the beliefs of peo- RUBES pie like Peradotti, Bowling and Patarozzi. "We need to try to understand these folks in an effort to see if there is something to their point of view," he says. "And we should state when their views don't work. We should let the rest of the world know that inaccurate points of view just aren't so." But it won't be easy convincing Bowling.

As the numbers of believers like her grow, her convictions are setting like concrete. "I used to get depressed a lot of the time thinking nobody knows," Bowling says. "Now I think a lot of people are waking up. We're not a silent majority anymore." By Leigh Rubin 7 When magicians retire.