Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 55

Tucson, Sunday, March 12, 1989 Qht Arizona ZJuiln Slar Section Page Seven PAYS OF YORE ART EX-whaler, 85, went to sea on Goodwill painting cost couple $12,5 is worth a fortune square-rigger ers took a grandson for a ride on the ferry and Miller happened to mention to the pilot he had a nice painting of the ferry with Millersburg in the background done by a man named Ned Smith. "The man on the ferry said: 'You do have it insured, don't you? I wouldn't tell so many people what you have until you get it insured. You don't know what you've got Mrs. Miller said. Within a few weeks, an appraiser and the Pennsylvania Historical Society for Fine Arts had told the Millers their $12 buy was worth between $35,000 and $50,000.

The Millers learned that Smith did only five non-wildlife works, all of the Millersburg Ferry. After word got out, the head-' aches came. The Millers have paid $5,000 for insurance so far, and when word about their find spread around their PennsylvaC nia summer strangers began turning up at" their door asking to see the painting. Nevertheless, Miller doesn't intend to sell it. "Why sell it and have to give half the money to Uncle Sam?" he asked.

Instead, they plan to lend the painting to the Pennsylvania Historical Society for Fine Arts on a long-term loan basis. The society will display the work and pay the insurance. PHOENIX (AP) When George and Ruth Miller went shopping last year at an antiques sale, they had in mind a painting that reminded them of home in western Pennsylvania. But they've been told their $12 purchase is worth more than $35,000. "At first I just laughed about it," Mrs.

Miller said Wednesday as she and her husband helped set up this year's sale at the Arizona State Fairgrounds. "I thought it was funny. It took a little while for it to set in." She said she and her husband bought the painting at Goodwill Industries' annual sale because it reminded them of home. The painting, signed by Ned Smith, a wildlife artist who died in 1985, depicts the Millersburg Ferry, a stern-wheel craft which has operated on the Susquehanna River so long that its landing is a historical landmark. "I recognized it right away.

It's about 20 miles from where we were born and raised" in Juniata County, said Miller, a retired police officer. Miller, a longtime Goodwill volunteer, said he saw the 21-by-30-inch canvas before the sale opened and was determined to buy if it was offered for less than $100. He snapped it up for $12 and rejected a $35 offer the same day. Last summer, during a trip home to Pennsylvania, the Mill ByJohn Diamond The Associated Press BEDFORD, Mass. Joe Ramos remembers days on the high seas chasing sperm whales, the harpoon line whipping red hot over the'gimwales, the massive quarry thrashing In the water? threatening the lives of its hunters.

-Ramos, 85, also remembers his mother crying as he left his native Cape Verde islands off West Africa, following his father to New Bedford from his drought-stricken homeland. "The country was in bad shape. No water, no rain, no nothing. That's when I decided to get out," said-Ramos, who was 18 when he boarded the Wanderer the last square-rigged American sailing ship on April 28, 1921. '''In order to get out of the country I had to make'a paper making me 21.

1 was the youngest boy on the ship," he said. When the whale boats came'to Cape Verde, "they never explained just said, 'You come with us and we're going to make you a Whaling ship captains were well aware of desperation like Ramos', and lured teen-agers with promises of earnings as they made their way to the new world. Whaling had long since peaked as an industry by that time, and "no American in their right mind went "whaling," said Joseph Thomas, who publishes a historical publication called Spinner. "It was virtual slave labor." Shipowners of Ramos' day "were just playing out their capital. The ships had paid for themselves many dimes over," said Richard Kugler of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

"The oil mar-, ket had been shrinking since the 1860s and the voyages out of New Bedford were almost entirely sperm whale voyages, which had an oil chemically different that still had uses and de-i mands." Ramos remembers earning $14 for a year's i labor, but "we didn't care how much they paid, we wanted to get out to come here." He also remembers being slapped by the cap-1 tain because he couldn't read a compass, having bug-infested beans to eat, and seeing whale calves left to the sharks after their slower-moving mothers were harpooned. "I tell you, working on a whaling ship there was nothing to enjoy there," said Ramos, who last put to sea in 1922, two years before the last whaling square-rigger left New Bedford. Ramos still has the massive hands, thick fingers and leathered skin developed from rowing a whaling dory, sometimes for a day at a time. He be marked with a flag for the mother ship to pick up while the men in the whale boat moved on. Ramos moved on, too, and by 1924, when the Wanderer left New Bedford on its last, brief, voyage, he had been ashore two years picking cranberries for substantially more money than he earned on the high seas.

Years later after working in cranberry bogs, cotton mills and construction sites, Ramos returned to New Bedford and visited the whaling museum where shipping records show his name listed on the crew of the Wanderer and, on a five-month voyage in 1922, aboard the schooner Margarett. At 85, suffering from bad eyesight and poor circulation, Ramos says he has forgotten much of his whaling days, but one image sticks in his mind: A whale, after a sometimes protracted struggle, would signal its demise by swimming in circles. "And when he was ready to die, he would face the sun." never threw the harpoon; he rowed and when a whale was harpooned, he poured water on the rope to keep it from burning as it raced out of the boat. In addition to seasickness and bad food, whalers knew fear. "When you leave the mother ship in that little boat to get behind the whale, you don't know what's going to happen," Ramos said.

A harpooned whale would pull a dory full of whalers through the water on what became known as the Nantucket sleigh ride. Often the whalers would lose sight of their ship. The hunt became particularly dangerous when a harpooned whale sounded, plunging deep into the sea in an effort to escape its tormentors. "When the whale goes down, he doesn't move. He stays down, sometimes 15 minutes.

When he comes up, he comes just like an atomic bomb," Ramos said. A dead whale floating on the surface would i vT: SCHOOL tt j. 5-1 Indian college wins land battle but still faces money foe jHHim ,,,,,1 i 2 -sir-T j. VK ..5.1 a show as many as 80 percent of American Indian high school students drop out. In addition to courses in technology, business, computer science, English, general science, agriculture and social sciences, the school keeps its 150 to 500 students per semester in touch with their heritage by weaving Indian art, music and history into the curriculum.

Will, for instance, directs the native seeds project in which students learn about and grow native North American plants that have been largely lost to modern culture. Science teacher Debra Taylor came to DQ after hearing about it while working on the Navajo reservation. She said she found a lot more than book learning. "The philosophy here is to empower people, to allow them to maintain their own identification but at the same time survive in the modern world," Taylor said. The issue of who owned DQ land dragged through the courts for seven years, until a settlement was reached in January allowing the school to keep half the 643 acres.

The remaining land is to be sold by the government. With that debt and the cost of badly needed repairs, "We are as fragile fiscally as we were 17 years ago," said DQ President Carlos Cor-dero. The school exists on federal grants and donations. Tuition is $2,900, but if students can't pay, the university will teach them anyway. The new path the school is taking is a five-year community outreach program to help Indian students get through high school and into four-year institutions.

DQ is an accredited two-year community college that also offers general equivalency degrees. Cordero said the school hopes to dent the statewide statistics that and Indian agriculture at the university for 22 years. The school is a cluster of surplus government buildings, the site of an old airfield. DQ has a colorful history. It was led at one time by American Indian Movement activist Dennis Banks, and FBI surveillance was not uncommon.

It also was used to temporarily house workers for the Peace Corps, who practiced calisthenics in the yard, convincing some of the neigbors it was a terrorist training camp. Although the site is barren and the halls are dark, the spirit of the school is alive and well after 17 years of occupation. DQ, named for Daganawidah, the founder of the Iroquois nation, and Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec god, was founded in 1971 when Indians were given the land by the government. When the government changed its mind, the Indians refused to leave. By Ken O'Toole San Francisco Examiner DAVIS, Calif.

The battle for a flat scrap of windblown land in the Sacramento Valley is over, but the struggle to survive for a tenacious grcfiip of American Indians has just begun. The federal government has given up a decade of efforts to evict from, federal surplus land DQ University the only institute for higher learning for Indians that is not located on a reservation. The school, on sacred grounds blessed by Indian leader Benjamin Blacjc Elk, is struggling with money problems but determined to teach young Indians and Chicanos how to "walk in two worlds" keeping their Indian heritage alive while learning to function in the modern world. "We have a long way to go in a lot of ways," said agronomist Gretchen Will, who has been teaching organic fir The Associated Press George and Ruth Miller of Phoenix hold the painting that cost them $12. It has been appraised at $35,000 to $50,000.

Stations wanted out. Knight-Ridder, which bought KOLD three years ago for a reported $30 million, recently agreed to sell the station for $18 million. Still, local television executives are predictably optimistic. No one is forecasting any major on-air changes, even among the less profitable stations. And most talk about futures with improved balance sheets.

Jaqufnt, KGUN's general manager, says television here will soon see an upswing because of population growth and an improved economy. "I think the future is bright in Tucson," he says. "I really do." Few things in television these days are guaranteed. But one is-Says KDTU's Jollie: "The next three to five years will be interesting." How much such alternatives collectively influence commercial television is uncertain. For example: Jollie says of videocassette recorders: "You could read 10 million studies.

Some say it's helping us, some say it's hurting Who knows?" What is certain is that station owners no longer receive hefty profit margins and the chance to buy properties and sell them three years later for large returns, like in the early 1980s. Television stations are not the ultralucrative investments they once were. For example. Clear Channel got KDTU by assuming the programming obligations and paying $2.24 million in cash. Yet a Clear Channel official says the station's building alone is worth $6 million-plus.

Obviously, the diocese just KPOL officials had yet to announce plans to open a station. Also, Allison points out, KMSB's signal could not be picked up easily by many viewers, who had to use rabbit-ear antennas or a similiar system; since then, the signal has been greatly improved. About the time KDTU and KPOL started, programming costs in Tucson skyrocketed as the crowded market created a bidding frenzy. Although syndicators no longer get Phoenix-like prices here for programming, the independents are likely still paying off those bills. Diocesan officials have said the high programming costs were a major reason for their troubles.

KPOL is last in the ratings, although unlike KDTU, its facility is modest and its employee pool has always been small. About his losses. grant licenses based on whether it is financially feasible to add them to a community. "That's a free-market situation," says Rosemary Kimball, an FCC spokeswoman in Washington, D.C. Kimball adds that Tucson does not have room on its airwaves for another VHF station Channels 2 through 13 but someone may be able to apply to the FCC for a UHF one.

Tucson's television war which all general managers say is competitive but friendly is not just a matter of the six commercial stations doing battle with one another. Viewers have alternatives, like KUAT-TV, the local PBS station, and cable and videocassettes. And a Tucson-based, Spanish-language UHF station is scheduled to go on the air beginning April 1. Polan only says that they are less than KDTU's. Polan says he wants to hold out until his station starts breaking even, but he does not predict when that will be or say how many years of red ink he can absorb.

"Our initial projections were that we'd be making money within a year and a half," Polan says. "I don't hold to projections much anymore." Besides a crowded market, local stations have had to confront a dip in the economy. Jon Ruby, the general manager of KVOA, Tucson's top-rated station, says advertising revenues were down 8 percent to 10 percent in 1988 compared with the previous year. Other general managers say their stations faced similiar situations. The FCC leaves economic survival up to the stations it does not Continued from Page IE Jan.

1, 1985, a day after KDTU. Polan says that he thought KDTU was going to focus on religious and educational programming, giving him little competition. The religious-education concept was promoted in the 1980 diocesan application to the Federal Communications Commission for a broadcasting license, according to documents kept at the station, but when KDTU began broadcasting there was a more commercial look, featuring reruns. KDTU apparently did not think it was entering a six-station race, either. Fred Allison, the diocesan spokesman, says that when the diocese began gearing up for its station, Punitive When using new discipline techniques the child's behavior may get worse before it improves, Nilsen warns.

"All of a sudden Mom and Dad are acting a little bit different They'll push a little harder to see if it'll stick." In the end, having a compliant child should not be the goal. "Rather you want to have a child who is emotionally flexible, who has a reasonable chance of getting involved in satisfactory relationships and someone who has a good self-concept," says Speltz. The objective is raising children who feel pretty good about themselves and feel life is satisfying. Spanking usually doesn't generate such feelings. "As they get older and older they know there's always a time they can get your attention get feedback and find out if it can be changed," she says.

Nilsen also is a strong advocate of classes for parents. "I try and go to some kind of seminar every six months. I need to get my tank refilled or I slip back into the groove." Appropriate discipline takes energy and thought But sometimes stress and fatigue interfere. "It just takes extra effort," she says. "You just have to say to yourself this is going to be better in two weeks.

So I'm going to put in the extra effort now and it's going to pay off." "The whole idea here is to eventually teach the child to be responsible for his own actions," she says. positive ways to react instead of misbehave. Sometimes kids, just like their parents, act a certain way out of habit say sassing an adult and don't even realize what they're doing. It could be because they don't have a more constructive repertoire of responses. Parent Nilsen and her husband.

Per, hold family meetings as a way to brainstorm with their kids about discipline. "You can bring up problems you're having," she says. The parent asks the child what kind of discipline he feels would be appropriate for the behavior. "The child agrees to it You agree to it You even write down minutes." Kids can bring up problems they're having with the parents, too. Continued from Page IE parents are obviously upset, it somehow reinforces the undesirable behavior.

If you need it, seek anger-management techniques for ydurself. Be realistic. All children are going to whine and cry and test the limits of their environment "All kids fight with each other and argue with their parents," says Webster-Stratton. "The idea is not to eliminate conflict but to help family members cope with conflict" Get the children involved in trying to figure out.