Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • Page 33

ANN LANDERS COMICS TV LOG April 19, 1983 TUESDAY Local bands get spot on revamped rock station problems in the studio, had ended the station's Rock 102 will feature well-known area disc Jockeys, including Dale Taylor, formerly of JDX; Elliot formerly of WTYX; and "Perex," who is known for a popular late night show on the now defunct WZZQ. Vandenbroek said be has plans for a variety of new programs once the station gets its feet on the ground. Syndicated rock programs like Rockline 800, an interview show that allows listeners to phone in questions to rock headliners, live concerts and Sunday night comedy shows, such as the well-known antics of Dr. Demento, are among the station's future plans. Vandenbroek also hopes to form a close alliance with MTV, the cable rock television station that is scheduled to be available in Jackson by August He said the exposure offered to progressive rock groups by MTV, which airs video presentations featuring a wide range of music, should stimulate an audience for Rock also will be on the air 24 hours a day, instead of the 18-hour format the station used before the fire.

Rock 102 will operate on a power level, generally confining its signal to the Jackson area, although some Yazoo City, Madison and other nearby city listeners will be able to receive the signal Vandenbroek said he thinks the station's signal will be much improved with relocation of the station's tower. Moving of the tower, which was in Canton, to Livingston Road in Jackson should improve the clarity of the station's signal, he said Fifty-five minutes of music every hour is what Vandenbroek has in mind for "the rock of Gluckstadt" He wants the station's disc Jockeys to keep their "rap" to a minimum, concentrating on musk. "Every other station I listen to, every other record is a Vandenbroek said By BILL NICHOLS CUrtaa-U4fW Staff Writer From the ashes of a Are that destroyed its studio six months ago, WZXQ-FM has risen to re-emerge as Rock 101, "the rock of Gluckstadt" The rock of Gluckstadt? That's the playful title WZXQ operations and program director Kevin Vandenbroek has given to the Gluckstadt-based Rock 102, which began its first full week on the air Monday. It returned to the airwaves last Thursday. Rock 102, which once was WDGM-FM, an easy-listening station with an emphasis on classical musk at night, came on the air under its new guise in August 1982.

Its automated format emphasized a progressive rock format But Jackson listeners' access to a different sort of FM station was short-lived Rock 102's staff arrived at the studio on the morning of Sept 9, 1982, to find that a fire, caused by wiring career. "By the time the morning Jock got there," Vandenbroek said, 'It was gone." Since then, Vandenbroek and Rock 102 music director David Elliot have taken advantage of their sabbatical to poll area listeners, asking what they want in an FM rock station. To their surprise, they found that most Jackson area rock fans aren't interested in the Top 40 formats most local rock stations have adopted, particularly since WZZQ-FM became country musk station MISS 103. Instead, listeners said they want more new, avant-garde music on the order of Brian Eno, Talking Heads, English Beat, XTC and The Clash. Vandenbroek said the Rock 102 format has been designed to feature newer artists, as well as album cuts from standard FM rock artists The Allman Brothers, Police, David Bowie, The Who, Neil Young, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell.

The station also will try to fill a void in the Jackson musical community by playing the records of local bands such as Bas Clas, The Windows, The Windbreakers and Radio London, hopef ully stimulating club owners to book more acts playing progressive rock. "We want to make sure we play rock," Vandenbroek said "There will be no Kenny Rogers or Sheena Easton. It won't be 'chainsaw" rock, but we want to be a skillful rock radio station." He said area advertisers generally have reacted favorably to Rock 102's format The station has no plans now to include local news reports, but Vandenbroek said national and international news will be provided by a hook-up with NBCs Source Network. Rock 102 0 Volunteers hold 'keys of freedom' for prison inmates r. 3.

i A i i '1 I IS HI i i "'ill 'tth RONALD PADGETT fy. Staff photo by Chh Todd SISTER La VERNE DOLPHIN April offers 'Arms' Anns and the Man, George Bernard Shaw's classic comedic tale of a "chocolate cream" soldier who sets into motion a farce that reveals the author's attitudes on love, war and romantic sensibilities, is the current offering at New Stage Theater. Shari Schneider, right, plays Raina, the daughter of a wealthy Bulgarian who falls in love with the unorthodox soldier-of-f ortune. The play continues through April 30. For ticket information, call 948-3531.

tmwiwlm jf I I 4m -mtmumvm'f If lufL, gs thm it. i ml -1 By DEBORAH SKIPPER Ctariea-Ledfer Staff Writer PARCHMAN The Rev. Marvin Lenhardt is trying to move the Mexican-American inmate from the prison camp where be was sexually assaulted five years ago. The young man, now 22, was 17 when be was sentenced to 10 years at the Mississippi State Penitentiary for armed robbery. He tried to escape after the assault by fellow prisoners, and three years were tacked onto his sentence.

"He thinks everybody has forgotten him," says Lenhardt, pastor of Shaw Church of God "But I haven't forgotten him and God hasn't forgotten him." Sister La Verne Dolphin of Immaculate Conception Convent in Clarksdale wants to give the "key to freedom" to the 137 female inmates at the penitentiary. The daily educational instruction she gives her class there and the special tutoring offered by her fellow Sisters of Charity can unlock the prison doors, she says. "We can't just lock up people and forget about them," she says. "You have to affirm and encourage." Of the 34 inmates the Rev. Marvin Flowers of Jackson and his group of 25 missionaries have helped to return to society since 1978, two have gone back to prison.

"Quite often we're successful in getting ex-offenders to dedicate their lives to Christ" Flowers says. "We've been very successful in helping them get jobs. In some cases, we've reunited them with their families." Each day people like Lenhardt, Sister Dolphin and Flowers among the nearly 200 "free-world" people who penetrate the prison's barbed-wire barriers carry what they believe to be keys of freedom to the more than 4,200 inmates at Parch-man. The keys come in the form of Bibles, books, classroom instruction, counseling and communion. And the volunteers who carry them offer the inmates a chance, not of rehabilitation, but of "regeneration," says Ronald Padgett, director of Chaplaincy Services at the penitentiary.

Padgett and other volunteers are being remembered this week during National Volunteer Week. Gov. William Winter also proclaimed this Volunteer Week in Mississippi. "The definition of 'rehabilitation' is a return to a former state of being," Padgett says. "These folks (inmates) don't need to do that" The volunteers mostly try to affect a "spiritual change" in the inmates, he says.

"We feel that's the only way these prisoners axe going to make it when they get out of here." Some volunteers also minister to the prisoners' material needs, bring relatives to visit and help inmates return to society when they are released Probably less than 10 percent of those aided by the volunteers return to prison once they've been released Padgett says. That compares to a 28 percent return rate overall, he says. "I believe that education is the key to freedom," says Sister Dolphin. "1 also think that without education these women will have no future except to come back to Parchman. They are not given anything to do when they get out except go back to the streets." The sisters at Immaculate Conception have been doing part-time volunteer work at Parchman for the past seven years.

Two years ago, Sister Dolphin requested and obtained a grant from her religious community to work at the penitentiary full time. Evsjry morning, she instructs 15 students in basic education and four Mass-produced sentiment Greeting cards come to nation's aid By EDWARD HUMES GaaaenNewi Service Squatting weightily on a certain bookstore shelf is a book containing afternoons a week teaches the one female prisoner on death rowrShe spends half her day as chaplain. Sister Dolphin's classroom instruction supplements that provided by the teacher assigned the female inmates by the state Department of Education. That instructor also has 15 students, and both women have waiting lists of inmates who want to obtain the equivalence of a high school diploma. (More teachers and facilities would be needed to teach a larger number, Sister Dolphin Says.

The other sisters at Immaculate Conception assist part-time with special tutoring. Sister Dolphin also helps the women earn a little income through a quoting project She sends their quilts to a fellow sister in Chicago, where they are sold Then she deposits the money in the women's A. recent fire destroyed the larger women's camp and the sewing facilities, and quilting is restricted to a room at the smaller women's camp. Only a few women now can benefit from the program, Sister Dolphin says. Last year, she says, more than 40 quilts were sold in Chicago.

This year, it's down to 16. 'i "It gives them something worthwhile to do," she says. "It allows them to use some creativity." Education of all kinds, she says, is "an absolute necessity to get back into society." And once they are out of prison, Flowers says "after-care is as important or more important" than meeting the offenders' needs while they are incarcerated Flowers heads a nondenomina-tional group of 25 missionaries that comes to the prison once a month to provide church services, Bible study and counseling. The group also assists those being released to re-enter society. "Their family ties are lost while they're in prison," he says.

"We're their family now." Adds Hollis Allied who beads another volunteer group from Natchez: "You can't Just drop them out on the See Volunteer, page 4D Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, the father and the wayward son of psychoanalysis. These letters are no "having a great time, wish you were here" messages. These are Real Letters, delving into matters of mind and spirit Just think: Freud and Jung wrote 9ULU IlUt KCIVU VVllI UIBV somebody turned them into a book so people could pay substantial portions of their paychecks to read them. a letter-writer always feels obliged to fill at least a page, perhaps more. But blank greeting cards, one clever person noted, require only a scrawled note and they're full Blank greeting cards are a sneaky way out of letter-writing.

There's also peer pressure. It's hard enough to deal with the ritual flood of Christmas cards every year, but how, for example, can even the most stalwart foe of greeting cards get away with accepting a Valentine from Sweetie without giving one in return? It's extortion, and it works. Alas, the tentacled grasp of pre-chewed, pre-digested correspondence doesn't stop with the social world of holiday and occasional greetings, either. Now the equivalent of the greeting card is available for official use by the executive-suite set A $49.95 volume of model "personal" letters designed for use by corporate chieftains for all occasions from hiring to firing to a death in a customer's family. As the sun sets forever on letter-writing, the future is clear.

Greeting cards soon will be produced with scrawled messages on otherwise blank card interiors, designed to appear as ifomeone had taken the time to write. land buy the same greeting card with the same corny joke or the same sappy sonnet, and act as if that card is an expression of their own. And thousands of people across the land receive identical cards, and behave as if someone had communicated some sort of sincere thought or feeling. It's amazing. Nobody would buy a paperback at the drugstore, then present it to a publisher and say, "Look what I've written." Yet how many times has some dear one said to you, "Thanks for your beautiful card, dear Blecchh.

Defenders of the mass-produced missives say that sometimes a greeting card says "it" just right, in a way that most people never could Tell it to Freud. How can greeting cards, churned out by the gross by some bozos locked inside little rooms at card company central, ever replace sincere words direct from one's friend, relative or loved one? But non-functional literacy is not just a function of laziness or lack of confidence in one's ability to outdo Hallmark. Greeting cards have other, seductive qualities. The newest is the insidious "blank" card, with a pretty picture on the front and cool rAiteness inside. Blank stationery looms large, and Many people normally articulate sorts say letter-writing is a chore, a seldom-undertaken duty to abhor and get through quickly.

As attested to by Freud and company, however, letter-writing once was an art, to be savored by both composer and recipient. Letters were lifted to lofty planes (I don't mean by airmail) through graceful literacy, whereby words became sentences, sentences became paragraphs and paragraphs communicated thoughts. It's not that Freud was a master of language or that, by comparison, we're all illiterate. Sure, America has 20 million or so functional illiterates wandering around with little or no reading and writing abilities. But most of us have a workable grasp of at least two of the three Rs.

That's the problem. We have become a nation of nonfunctional literates. And the starkest illustration of the demise of the skills needed for writing a letter is: Greeting cards. The mulU-million-dollar greeting card industry is not, after all, supported by people who can't read and write. It depends on non-functional literates, people who actually prefer mass-produced sentiments to their own personal expressions.

Thousands of people across the rr lull wtppciia uic iciicis i uu find in your mailbox? Five will get you iv mai noDooy laying uuwn sawbucks to read the latest word from your Aunt Rose. Times have changed, and the letter is in aecune. Letters i receive neaa straight to File 13 once I finish yawn-ine over the weather in Philadelphia or the latest developments in my old neighborhood, where I don't know anybody anymore. I try not to think about what hap- pens to the painfully written missives I infrequently produce. I am reason-' ably certain they are not becoming ionaer ior some anmpiugisi seller..