The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 26

2-C Monday, Dec. 17. 1984 The Philadelphia Inquirer It's time to dial a prayer for your poor 4 0 I met a man from the local telephone company who is about to go up and plead for higher 1985 phone rates. "Do you think you'll have any luck?" I asked him. "We'll get something but not everything we want," he said.

"The consumer groups always make a big deal of it when we ask for a fair profit. They dont understand our problem." "What is your problem?" "We're losing money." "I didnt know telephone companies lost money." "We're not exactly losing money, but we have to make a bigger return able to keep the costs of local calls down by charging more for longdistance ones. Now we no longer can count on the subsidy from long-distance since we're not in that business anymore." "Therefore you have to charge more for local service than you did before." "How did you know that?" "I just got my phone bill." "Then you can see what we're up against. We're charging you more, and yet we're not making what we did before." "I thought the whole idea of breaking up the telephone company was so it would be competitive and cost the consumer less." "It does cost less if you call Oslo, Norway." "I don't want to call anyone in Norway, and I doubt if there are 10 subscribers who do. Why don't you double the rate to call Norway and cut back on what it costs to make a call in this town?" "We have nothing to say about what the long-distance telephone companies charge for Oslo.

As the local telephone company, all we do is switch your call to one of them, for a measly $10 a month." "Do you make any money on that?" "We're not sure. You see, no one ever broke up the phone company before, and therefore we never knew what it really cost to serve our local subscribers. Now we're finding out it's much more expensive than we thought." "Maybe it's a problem of manage-' ment," I suggested. "Are you sure the people working for the local telephone company know what they're doing?" He took this as a hostile question and said angrily, "We know exactly what we're doing. You have been living for years off the poor souls who were overcharged for calling Norway, and now you're angry because you have to pay your own way." "I have a question.

If the government broke up the phone company to phon company create more competition, and wv. now can choose from a half-dozen long-distance companies, why can't we choose from three or four ldcaQ phone companies and take, the fjjgr with the lowest rates?" "Because if there was more than one local company in any given area you'd have anarchy." i- "Then why did the; governm2S claim the consumer would bengflt; from breaking up Ma Bell? It seema that we're paying 25 percent morp, than we paid before." "You are paying more for the privilege of owning a phone," he siijd. "But it all evens out, depehdingOB, how many times you want to i '--tgjsj Bv ART Bl'CHWALI) in order to attract investment for the future." "Everyone seems to be paying a lot more than they paid before," I said. "Why can't you people make ends meet?" "Well, when the phone company was one big happy family, we were -NEWSMAKERS- Action Line i Action Line solves problems, gets answers, cuts red tape, stands up for your rights. Write Action Line, The Inquirer, Box 8263, Philadelphia 19101.

Include your phone number. Do not send original documents. Associated Piess Newton-John and Lattanzi pose after their wedding rre heard so much about Black Friday. Could you please tell me how it got started and how it got its name? L.K., Philadelphia Black Friday is a term applied by popularizers mostly media chroniclers to any Friday when something goes drastically wrong and affects many people. Because of the timing of your inquiry between Thanksgiving and Christmas we suspect that you're wondering about one of the year's heaviest shopping days, the Friday after Thanksgiving that unofficially heralds the commercial coming of yuletide.

But history is rife with other Black Fridays. Despite its happier modern association with "Thank God it's Friday" celebrations, Friday is generally implanted in the human consciousness as a dismal day. It was the day when the Norse goddess Freya demanded homage from her disciples under threat of death. Although Freya was eventually neutralized by Christianity, her day became known as "the witches' sabbath." Friday is supposed to be the day Eve tempted Adam, the apple of her eye; the day of discombobulation down by the Tower of Babel; the day Noah launched his ark onto the Great Flood, and the day Christ was executed. The dark aura surrounding these beliefs laid the groundwork for later Black Fridays.

The first Black Friday of consequence in the United States was May 19, 1780, when almost all New England and parts of New York and New Jersey mysteriously fell into darkness about 11 a.m. and stayed black all day. The happening has never been satisfactorily explained, but it may have been caused by sun spots, an eclipse or debris collected in the atmosphere from remote forest fires, volcanic activity or sandstorms. The most infamous Black Fridays involve mass financial ruin. There was the London panic of Dec.

6, 1745, when stock prices tumbled after it appeared that young pretender Charles Edward was going to make a run for the crown. Another commercial panic occurred in London on Friday, May 11, 1866. A Black Friday in the U.S. financial world occurred Sept. 24, 1869, when an attempt by Jay Gould and James Fisk to corner the American gold market came to an abrupt halt and thousands of investors lost millions.

(It a Black Friday for Gould and Fisk, though. They came out of it with a rosy $11 million.) Four years later, on Sept. 19, the failure of several prestigious New York City financial institutions caused another money panic and another Black Friday. The term Black Friday has long been connected with the 1929 stock-market crash that heralded the Great Depression of the '30s. The first huge drop in stock prices actually occurred on Oct.

24, a Thursday. But a week's worth of sharp declines caused the closing of the New York Stock Exchange on Nov, 1, a Friday. Ever since, "Black Friday" has been used to describe a variety of Friday events, from the profound to the petty. In Australia it refers to a huge bush fire in 1939; in Italy, a June 1983 roundup of 425 Mafia members in Naples. Black Friday was the day 26 months ago when Lebanese Christian Phalan-gists murdered hundreds of Palestinian civilians in refugee camps.

The name was also given in print to June 30, 1983, when actor David Niven and director Luis Bunuel died. And at least one overwrought sports reporter gave the name to Oct. 7, 1977, when the Phillies were eliminated from postseason play by the Los Angeles Dodgers. As to the day after Thanksgiving, Action Line found the first local reference to it as Black Friday by veteran Inquirer reporter Edgar Williams in his 1977 day-after story about the opening day of Christmas shopping. In the next year's story, Black Friday found its way into the headline, and it has been used by the media here ever since.

Williams said he first heard the terra applied to that day while visiting Boston, several years before he used it. We checked with several Boston sources, which proved inconclusive. Some had never heard the reference. Some said it was "Big Friday," not Black Friday. Those who had heard of it were unsure of its origins.

One said it emerged there in the early 70s and might have been used by traffic policemen bracing themselves for the massive seasonal onslaught of traffic. The reference is unknown in New York City. In Philadelphia, the term was used for several years in newspapers without explanation. But as nature abhors a vacuum, words abhor a lack of definition. So in recent times several meanings have been attached to the day-after-Thanksgiving Black Friday.

Some say it's called so by customers who must shop under the year's most uncomfortable circumstances. Sales clerks say it's for them because they work harder that day than any other. More optimistically, store owners say it marks the beginning of the period when they do 30 to 40 percent of their annual sales, a period that often makes the difference between a red or black bottom line at year's end. If the latter is the case, we've come a long way from the days of Freya the goddess. Far enough, perhaps, to make a toast: May all your Fridays be black ones.

Action Line editors consider every request you send us. We publish the most interesting and helpful answers. We regret that we cannot answer, or even acknowledge, each request. Three weddings Celebrities Olivia Newton-John, Sally Field and Bette Midler were married over the weekend. Newton-John, 36, wed actor Matt Lattanzi, 25, in their Malibu home in a ceremony attended by some of her relatives from Australia.

Their three-tiered wedding cake was filled with chocolate chips. Lattanzi appeared with Newton-John in Xanadu. A short drive away in Tarzana, in the San Fernando Field, 38, married producer Alan Greisman, 37, at her home. It was his first marriage and her second. About 100 friends and relatives attended.

Midler, 39, and Martin von Ha-selberg, described as a performance artist and commodities trader, were married in a private civil ceremony in Las Vegas. 7 illllU'VV. Richardson or her husband would have been shocked to hear her say, "Once you've been married to one cabinet secretary, you've been married to them all." But in regard to Elliot Richardson, it's almost true. He has served as secretary of defense, of commerce and of health, education and welfare, and as attorney general, undersecretary of state, ambassador to England and special envoy to the Law of the Sea Conference. "One day, I would wake up married to Secretary Anne Richardson said.

"The next day, I would be married to Secretary She made the observation during a fund-raising event to help pay the debts of her husband's losing Republican primary campaign for the Senate. A class act For his next act, producer David Wolper, who gained acclaim for his opening and closing shows at the Summer Olympics, will put on the unveiling ceremony for the refurbished Statue of Liberty on July 4, 1986, Wolper, who also produced Roots, will meet soon with Peter Ueberroth, who headed the Olympics and now is baseball commissioner, to discuss a televised special for the statue. Over the rainbow At it again Ml United Press International For Heidi Abromowitz, the heroine of Joan Rivers' recently published novel, a Hollywood Travelodge motel beats the Walk of Fame any day, and that's where her star now lies. Rivers and her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, attended the unveiling ceremony Saturday. Sculptor Claes Oldenburg, who designed a giant clothespin for Philadelphia's Center City, a large baseball bat for Chicago, a mammoth flashlight for Las Vegas and an umbrella skeleton for Des Moines, Iowa, has been hired to create a major work for Miami.

A final model will be submitted by April, and if everything is accepted, Oldenburg will be paid $300,000. "But I really don't have the faintest idea what he's going to do," said Patricia Fuller, executive director of Miami's art-in-public-places program. "His thinking takes lots of controver-, sial turns, and you can't predict what he will do." Cabinet wife People who didn't know Anne Saturday at a $100-a-person fundraiser in Boston. Jackson said he hoped to raise $350,000 this month to qualify for federal matching funds that would allow him to pay off the debts from his campaign for the Democratic presidential Despite his failure to become president and the $700,000 campaign debt that remains, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said his Rainbow Coalition was victorious in more ways than one.

"We have more hope, more honored by the American Museum of Natural History in New York with the opening of the Hall of Pacific Peoples. The hall displays wood carvings, tools, religious objects and weapons from the areas where Mead, an anthropologist, did much of her work. The Associated Press, United Press International and staff writer John Hilferty contributed to this report. power, more possibility, more in- Ifntinrpd niit arA tVio icctiac lira AAJI tUm City have become facts of life every day," the former candidate said The late Margaret Mead, who came of age in Doylestown, was Peopletalk by Frank Swertlow On health by Dr. Neil Solomon How about all those statements by Stacy Reach's retainers saying that he was "set up" for the cocaine arrest in London? We were even told that someone slipped the snowy powder into his lug- Truth is certainly a negotiable as John Hillerman, just as he was about to leave his pad in Hawaii.

What's new, Higgy? Magnum is leaving Hawaii, he tells us. Where's the case? "We are going to London in April for a two-hour episode," he says. "It's the first time we will be shooting off the island." What's the story? "I don't know," says Higgy. "The script has yet to be written." What's the real story? We tell all. Magnum, P.J., has been having its troubles with NBC's The Cosby Show.

A trip to Britain might just whip up the ratings, or give Higgy a chance to buy another trench coat. The rumor that will never die: Roone Arledge, head of ABC News and Sports, will drop one of his shoes, probably sports. "It's logical," says one ABCer. "It's a lot more interesting going to lunch with the secretary of state than Georgia Frontiere" (she owns the Los Angeles Rams). Really.

Warner's TV is doing a remake of Mervyn LeRoy's The Bad Seed, the 1956 thriller about an 8-year-old girl who murders. This made-for-ABC movie stars Blair Brown, Lynn Redgrave, Richard Kiley, David Ogden Stiers and David Carradine. Arty Marty Scorsese, who brought you Taxi Driver and Mean Streets, still is trying to make The Last Temptation of Christ. We hear that some French money folks are thinking about backing the project. The flick originally was scheduled for Paramount, but the deal was dropped.

One reason was that the budget was too high, another was that the flick was not considered commercial enough and, finally, fundamentalist Christian groups weren't thrilled with the subject matter. We caught up with Magnum, P.I.'s old pal Higgins, also known for a patient who develops complications or who requires close monitoring because of an accompanying illness. To what age can people with multiple sclerosis expect to live? Your letter implies that multiple-sclerosis patients have a different life expectancy than do other people, but this is not the case. Most patients who have multiple sclerosis have a life expectancy similar to that of people who do not have the disease. In addition, three-fourths of all those who have had multiple sclerosis for at least five years are leading normal lives.

you htvt mwUcal roMtm, ut your doctor. vou tuvt mtotcol ojuottwn, wrttt H) Dr. NM Salomon, MM Roiittrjtown 4, Soltlmoro, Md. JIM. Or.

Solomon com) aivt ptrwnH rmto, but trawor 11 many ooMttont poiuwo in column. When I was a child, it seemed that the only time a person would go to the hospital was when he was so sick that he was expected to die. Today people are hospitalized much more often. I am now completely recovered from a case of pneumonia for which I was treated at home. Even though everything turned out well in my case, wouldn't it be better for someone who has pneumonia to be treated in a hospital rather than at home? Hospitalization is not indicated in all cases of pneumonia.

In fact, according to Dr. Edgar R. Black, of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in New York, many people who are hospitalized for pneumonia could be treated just as well at borne. Hospitalization may be required instrument in Hollyweird. A British customs official at Heathrow Airport became suspicious when he pressed Reach's can of shaving cream and only a little foam came out.

He then opened the can, revealing a packet of coke worth about $3,500. Is this another chapter in What Price Hollywood? Hey, there are no discounts here. You just can't tell the boys from the girls by name, anyway By ANN LANDERS named mine Margo. Dear Ann Landers: I would like to address this letter to "Appalled in Corning, N.Y." Dear Appalled: I had not heard of the Yellowknife incident and am ashamed that something like that could happen in my country. The gang rape of a very young teenager is hideous.

To think that the girl was made pregnant makes it even more tragic. The U.S. citizen asked, "What in the world is happening in Canada, anyway?" I would like to ask the same question of him. I was horrified when President Kennedy was murdered and later in that same decade his brother, the senator, was killed by an assassin. I was shocked by Watergate and the Charles Manson massacre, and within the past year the rape in New Bedford, has made headlines everywhere.

Innocent people were murdered in a McDonald's restaurant in California. A man ran his car onto the sidewalk in Los Angeles and killed several people. We in Canada are not very different from you in the United States. In fact, I believe humans are very much the same all over the world or they would be, if their governments would allow it. In every barrel of apples one will find a couple of rotten ones.

And that goes for people everywhere. Our only hope for world peace is to accentuate the brotherhood of manl our sameness and not our differences. Please help us work toward that goal. Your Neighbor to the North Dear Neighbor: I could not hare said it better myself. Thank you for" reminding us of the common thread that runs through all humankind.

Dear Ann Landers: Why do parents give their children unisex or opposite-sex names? It was confusing enough with LewLou, Francis-Frances, KrisChris and not knowing if Pat was a Patrick or a Patricia. Now we have Kim, Kelly, Shannon and Robbie that could be (and are) both boys and girls. My first day at high school I told my mom there was a boy named Alice in General Science. She said he was probably named Aloysius. The next day I discovered a fellow named Lorie in English class.

If Billy Jo's dad wanted a boy, did Lorie's mom want a girl? girl. With two I's, it's a boy. So how can a person tell when the name is pronounced? They sound the same. I thought our church was quite progressive to let a girl play the part of one of the wise men in the Christmas pageant, when Sam turned out to be Samantha. Then there are the names that defy pronunciation, such as Aja, Kissia, Niah, Trygve and Richelieu.

Life has got to be unnecessarily hard for a boy named Marion. Why do parents do this? Mary, Wife of John (Milwaukee) Dear Mary: Don't look at me. I A classmate at a recent reunion described her children as Jody (Jodie?) and Jessie I was embarrassed to ask if they were boys or girls. One must listen carefully these days because Brooke is a girl, but Brooks is a boy. Alison with one I is a.