Reno Gazette-Journal from Reno, Nevada • Page 27

I i Monday AUGUST 1, 1983 GAZETTE-JOURNAL Section 3D DEAR ABBY 3D HEALTH 4D TV LOG FoeysEmtet smmenK orug to IUM the EDITOR'S NOTE She grew up in Jersey City and watched many of its teen-agers choose gangs and crime over family, work or school. Finally, she decided do something about it. Sister Antonelle Chunka has taken to the streets in an effort to persuade the youngsters that they "belong somewhere." By DRUSIE MENAKER The AP JERSEY CITY, N.J. They are teen-agers drifting through the shabby neighborhoods of this aging industrial city, measuring their stature by the price of their sneakers and the colors on their jackets. They are the Zodiacs and The Insane Ones; the street gangs found in many American cities, with one major distinguishing twist they often can be seen strutting along with a Felician nun in their midst.

She is Sister Antonelle Chunka, who left her job as a parochial school principal last fall with hopes of tempering strict notions of turf with trust and giving the aimless youths a sense of what she calls "stick-to-it-tivity." Before she took to the streets, Sister Antonelle spent days looking out from behind the steel doors and barred windows that protected her school. "I realized there were so many kids outside the building on school time," she recalls. "I had three kids who came in with knives and chains and they wanted to kill a kid in my school. They thought the law wasn't doing justice. "They were 15, 16, or so, with nothing to do.

They had no sense of meaning to what their life was about. They were not plugged into any church group, school group. There were no adult networks that were influencing their lives. They were just influenced by a handful of friends they hung out with on the street," she says. Jose Ramon Rivera, 18, is one of her tough-talking friends.

Surrounded by fellow Zodiacs, he sees his future as an effort just "to make it through" each day. He offers her a frank but not apologetic assessment of his badge of distinction carefully tended locks of hair that curl down to the collar of his leather jacket. 'This is "Everybody has to have something," he says, my pride. I'm never going to cut them." Sister Antonelle winces. AP PHOTO i N.J.

The kids come to her with their problems, and she hopes to give them a sense of "stick-to-it-tivity." which are more common in the state's second largest city. "There is a real struggle in the city," she says of attempts at revitalization, sometimes at the expense of the poor. "Some deny the existence of gangs. Some give them more sensation than they're due. In between someplace, there are just a whole lot of kids hanging out on the streets, banding together for a sense of identity, sometimes getting into serious trouble." Some groups call themselves gangs, but others are known as "crews, or organizations, or they use no name because others who want to fight would challenge them to see if they were a tough group," she says.

See STREET NUN, page 1D Sister Antonelle Chunka, a Felician nun, stands with local gang members in front of the at St. Michael's church in Jersey City. Sister Antonelle acknowledges that most of the gang members aren't going to be persuaded to study or to search for the handful of minimum-wage jobs available. So she takes them on their terms. "They come with their chains, their knuckles and they come with their belts and their spikes, and they wear their leather jackets, and their earrings are hanging and they talk real cool.

"I want to see them grow, so they can enjoy life to the fullest. That is God's plan," she says. She calls the peacemaking "The Promise" and offers sanctuary in a rectory next to a park where a young gang member was stabbed to death. But mostly she walks past the occasional gentrified townhouses and the abandoned warehouses and fire-gutted tenements "When you don't see kids as gangs, you see them as people. Talk to them and you see the beauty and the potential.

You hear the crying. They really want someone to care," she says. Since last September, Sister Antonelle has filled a card file with names and gang affiliations, folders with newspaper reports of youth violence and a cupboard with soda and candy. She is trying to organize a peace council, and has led a few gang members back to night school or to job training programs. But mostly she just listens to the high school dropouts, the sons of prison inmates, the 19-year-old fathers of 2-year-olds.

ROLLAN MELTON A homey book of mother's slogans Friends gave me a homey little book as a gift. No fancy typed pages or slick cover. It is simply thatched together with a spiral binding. The title is scrawled as a child might scribble in crayon. This is a powerful little (5 inches wide, 4V4 inches deep) document.

It is titled "Things Your Mother Always Told You But You Didn't Want to Hear." Orlando, photographer Carolyn Coats remembered slogans, mottos and words to live by passed on to her by her mother and grandmother. She and her daughters have plugged the remembered lines into a best seller. Some of these you no doubt have heard. But I'll bet there are some new ones here. Spell the contents w-i-s-d-o-m.

Samplings: Real friends are those who, when you've made a fool of yourself, don't think you've done a permanent job. A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. Love is like the five loaves and two fishes. It doesn't start to multiply until you give it away. It is not the man of great native talent that wins, but he who pushes his talent, however small, to its upmost capacity.

Success in marriage is much more than finding the right person; it is being the right person. Always wear clean underwear; Heaven forbid you should you have an accident. If God had wanted us to be permissive, He would have given us the Ten Suggestions. Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Money is a good servant, but a poor master.

There is no right way to do a wrong thing. 0 If at first you don't succeed, you're running about average. The problem is not the problem. The problem is my attitude about the problem. The opera's not over till the fat lady sings.

Always speak the truth and you'll never be concerned about your "memory. Tact is the ability to close your mouth before someone else wants to. Someday there will be a banquet of consquences and we're all going to sit down to it. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiam. It overcomes dicouragement and gets things done.

It is the magic quality. And the remarkable thing is it's contagious! Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of uncompleted tasks. I have noticed that folks are generally about as happy as they make up their minds to be. My formula for youth: keep your enthusiasms and forget your birthdays. I know not what the future holds, but I know who holds the future.

Life is not a matter of holding gpod cards, but of playing a poor hand well. If you first don't succeed, try reading the directions. The smallest good deed is better than the grandest intention. There is a natural law that says you never get something without giving up something. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Actions, not words, are the true criterion of friendship. Look for a mate who will calm the turbulence in your soul, rather than challenge it to a battle. The great calamity is not to have failed but to have failed to try. When you pray, claim what isn't as if it were till it becomes. Coincidence is when God works a miracle and chooses to remain anonymous.

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else. A good memory is fine, but the ability to forgive and forget is the true test of greatness. Rollan Melton is a Gazette-Journal columnist. Single-parent children can suffer or benefit full-time parent; yet, neither is he "really" single because of his parental responsibilities. At times, especially for the newly single parent without custody, it can be almost as painful to see the children as not to see them.

On the other hand, the parent with custody frequently feels as if he or she is walking a tightrope between work, children, managing on a limited income, and struggling for a personal life without feeling guilty about time spent away from the children. A full-time parent without a partner is on call 24 hours a day and runs the very real risk of feeling overwhelmed by the continual pressures. In this situation, the parent hears all the problems of the children and wants to solve them, often feeling helpless and frustrated. At times like this, it is easy to think of the non-custodial parent as the one who has the freedom and joy of seeing the children without the responsibility. It's often hard to be understanding and help the children if the non-custodial parent becomes less involved.

Each parent can become so caught up in his or her own life that it becomes difficult or impossible to understand the other parent's point of view. If you're a single parent with custody, take a minute and imagine how you might feel if your children lived with the other parent. If you don't have custody, think about the daily hassles you might experience if they lived with you. If each parent makes an effort to understand the other's perspective and support the children's relationship with that parent, the children will benefit. This also could reduce the time, energy, and expense of court battles.

See SINGLE, page 2D EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second in a week-long series spotlighting single-parent families. By STEVEN ATLAS GNS If you are separated or divorced, your children will either benefit from maintaining a close relationship with both parents or suffer immeasurable harm from being deprived of a close relationship with one of them. The parent without custody frequently feels guilty that he does not see the children enough. Because he does not see the children every day, he is not aware of feelings that the kids are experiencing and is apt to feel that the parent-child relationship is "on the line" every time the children visit. A non-custodial parent frequently feels like a traveler in two worlds.

He is not a III I Beating Fords into plowshares of self-sufficiency EYE ON RENO By CORY FARLEY It's on terrible soil, a hard-baked former path, neither dug nor loosened before planting. The first step is to pick up the rocks and cut tall weeds, leaving them where they fall. Then the area is sprinkled with an inch or two of leaves, grass clippings, food wastes, anything you'd put into a compost pile. Over that goes a layer of cardboard or a few thicknesses of newspaper, old clothing, carpet, gypsum board or similar material. On top of that, in the Jameses' garden, Mollison put several inches of weeds he cut nearby.

You could use leaves or other material, or a mix. The next layer, three inches thick, can be pine needles, salt hay or straw. Finally, a cosmetic layer of wood chips, bark, or something else can be added. It sounds complicated, but it takes less time than "shovel" gardening and is far easier. Plants are set in double handfuls of soil on the cardboard, surrounded by the weeds, and watered in.

"The first year we get good production of greens, but not much root penetration," Mollison said. "The second year the roots go to work and get down into the soil." The system is ideal for perennials, and works well for trees and shrubs as well as annual flowers and vegetables. Mulch is added as lower layers decompose, but Mollison said watering may be necessary only a few times a year. Mollison has written two books, Permaculture One and Permaculture Two, that discuss the subject in enough detail to put you in business. They're available for $11 each from Tree Crops Institute, Box 888, Winters, CA 95964.

And the Jameses' home will be an evolving exhibit of how Permaculture can work in Nevada. "A modest exhibit," Mollison said, "because we want a whole bunch of modest changes. We don't want a big change." There's not much to see yet the project is only a few weeks old but Mollison said it will get better. It's a couple of miles from Wadsworth, 30 miles from Reno. For information call the Jameses, 557-4212.

Bill Mollison is going to change the way Americans live, starting at Gus and LaNada James' place in Wadsworth. He would disagree: "I wown't chynge anything. The U.S. will chynge of its own, fry will." When we make up our minds, though, he'll be ready to show us how. Mollison is from Tasmania, an island south of Australia, and he talks like that all the time.

But I can only write like that for one sentence. You'll have to imagine the rest. He's the inventor, or at least the namer, of Permaculture, a contraction of permanent agriculture. There's nothing new about it it's organic gardening extended to cover most of life but Mollison says we have to take it seriously now. "In the next few years, we will hit various environmental walls.

Actually we're against them now, but nobody is saying so." Mollison's not just another environmental alarmist urging us to beat our Fords into plowshares. He's a former university lecturer and researcher who quit that in 1978 to establish a community that's entirely self-sufficient on 70 acres of "marginal" land. Now he's taken his act on the road, explaining how he did it and, just as important, why. "I didn't see that there was any future in what what I was doing, or in anything else. If you're not doing this," he waved at a small garden he's planted around the Jameses' isolated home, "you're killing the earth, and you might as well admit it." This is an idea not calculated to go down easily in rural Nevada, where a man's right to do what he wants to the earth is sacrosanct.

But Mollison says the change is inevitable, here and elsewhere. "Look at what you've done: 50 percent of the ground water in California is unusable (because of pollution). Water costs more per gallon than crude oil. In a few years it will cost more than gasoline." This means, he says, that our present huge-scale, centralized farms are doomed (it also suggests something about the "unclaimed" ground water in the Truckee Meadows, but that's another story). And water is only one problem.

"How are you going to energize your country? Oil and gas are running out. There's acid rain what's happened here is nothing short of tragedy." But Mollison says there's hope. He believes every home in the country can be made self-sufficient, not just for food but for energy as well, and that once the system is in place, it will take little more work than our present one. And he says he can prove it. "I'll tackle the state of Nevada for you if you like I'll do it on concrete in Alaska." Mollison's idea of Permaculture goes a lot further than a compost pile in every back yard.

He says our problems start with multinational companies and banks. It's not in their interest to encourage small-scale food production or to support businesses that promote self-reliance say, thousands of small solar installations instead of one nuclear powerplant at the same cost. So money and information is hard to come by. Mollison urges people to start their own credit unions to fund such activities. He says it's already been done elsewhere.

"In Australia it's a booming business. Urban people pay in to join a 'farm then put in an excellent manager." Under that system, he said, you can know what you're eating even if you don't have a garden. Permaculture, as the name suggests, is not a summer's project. It means reshaping the land and the way we use it. The details can be complicated, but the principles are simple.

The Jameses' small garden is an example anyone can copy, differing only in scale from Mollison's 70 acres..