Tallahassee Democrat from Tallahassee, Florida • Page 8

8ASaturday. March 2, 1996 Tallahassee Democrat Editorlms Letters EDITORIAL BOARD CARROL DAD1SMAN, PRESIDENTPUBLISHER ANDREA BRUNA1S. EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR BILL EDMONDS, OP ED EDITOR DAVE BRUNS, ASSOCIATE EDITOR MARY ANN LINDLEY, COLUMNIST KEITH THOMAS, ASSOCIATE EDITOR BILL MANSFIELD. EDITORIAL PACE EDITOR Tallahassee Democrat ESTABLISHED 1905 A KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPER A MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS OTHER OFFICERS, DIRECTORS DORIS DUNLAP, SR VPGENERAL MANAGER TOM PRIVETT. VPMARKETING SAMUEL NOTTAGE, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER BOB SHAW.

MANAGING EDITOR RAY GREEN, PRODUCTION DIRECTOR CHRIS NORMAN, DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY TOM BARTLETT. DIRECTOR OF CIRCULATION JEAN BL'FORD. DIRECTOR OF EMPLOYEE AND COMMUNITY RELA TIONS ANNE HAGER, A UGMENTA VON DIRECTOR JAN FLORENCE GODOWN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR EMERITUS I how wtufta four Parents could be the real problem with our children THE SATURDAY ESSAY A fascinating look at the untold tales in Florida history From Florida's conquest, diversity has been part of our heritage. MIAMI TVJOOFTHEUN- When I was in graduate school nearly 20 years ago studying mass communication, one of the hot research topics was the effects of television violence on aggressive behavior. Since that time countless studies by com uiuujifinouiiD fM IMKSN6 ft Roosevelt Wilson CAPITAL OUTLOOK "---flN THE ft INVADE CUBA! SOT6 CUBAN 7 -gbMst AS P0 THE ELL ONION -9A What do you know of Juan Gar-rido and Juan Gonzalez de Leon, and also a man known as Este-banico? On March 3, (TOTNUINQA BMC" DON WRIGHTPalm Beach Post Jan Godown CONTRIBUTING EDITOR 1513, for Garrido and de Leon, and in 1528 for Este-banico, Florida's shores loomed mysterious and troublesome.

The men arrived as members of early European expeditions to the peninsula. Unlike their wealthy leaders, they survived Florida. And also un least, to potential buyers. While I support the property rights of individuals, it would have been wiser to place a moratorium on construction projects along the proposed path of the Blair Stone extension until the matter was resolved. If that was not possible, the city could have purchased the land at fair market value.

This would have been much less expensive and, if the project was canceled or rerouted, the city could have resold the property and recouped most of its investment. It comforts me not that the city has, in its fiscal wisdom, decided to recoup its investment by renting these homes. Perhaps if they receive $10,000 a month in rental income, the city will have made its first successful real-estate venture. Michael Kresbach U.S. 90 East like their leaders these men were black, of African descent and free.

But our school lessons didn't emphasize or even show that. Putting names and faces to these men is a job overdue. Two new books tackle the task and also illuminate more. The books tell of early female Native American leaders in Florida, of women expedition mem YOUR LETTERS and dividing it by the number of people giving everyone equal responsibility. But that assumes a homeless person generates as much waste as someone who owns banks, apartment buildings and airplanes, or even someone who owns cars and a home.

Where is the fairness in that? William Cummings Lonnie Gray Road bcumminafreenet.fsu.edu Docs Constitution permit gun ownership by citizens? If, as National Rifle Association President Marion Hammer acknowledges in her Monday letter, the Constitution does not grant citizens the right to keep and bear arms of mass destruction, where does the Constitution draw the line? That's the question that Hamper and the NRA doesn't dare to answer. I challenge Hammer and the NRA to show the American people where the Constitution guarantees the right of any private citizen, not as a member of the armed forces or state militia, to keep and bear arms whatsoever. (As a gun owner, I know the Second Amendment by heart.) I don't believe that the NRA would openly debate the issue of gun control in any general public newspaper of fairly wide circulation like the Tallahassee Democrat If the Democrat would permit the NRA and me to temporarily use a little of its precious space for that purpose, I promise to work hard and try to hold up my side, and I feel sure that the NRA will present thought-provoking material for its side of the matter. Robert Rose Harbert Street Wasteful spending wins city homes meant for demolition The city of Tallahassee spent $319,800 tax dollars to purchase two houses a builder could not sell. These homes are located at 1905 and 1907 Mahan Drive and were recently completed.

Why did the city building department grant permits to build these houses directly in the path of the Blair Stone extension? What was the builder thinking? The prospect of the Blair Stone extension should have made the site extremely risky to the builder and undesirable, to say the Domestic violence merits more frequent coverage I was pleased to see Robin article about domestic violence in Sunday's Democrat While we tend only to focus on domestic violence when there is a major event like the recent murder-suicide, or the OJ. Simpson trial, it. is important that we all be aware of the tremendous toll that violence in the family takes on family life, children and marriages. As a practicing psychologist, it is clear to me that violence in the family has far-reaching effects, sometimes for generations. Please continue to cover this topic.

Carolyn Stimel Thomasville Road Garbage is not only what people find in trash cans In his Thursday letter attacking Ellie Whitney's figures on lifetime per-capita waste responsibility, Ronald S. Lawrence demonstrates that he is either ignorant of how the world really works or simply unwilling to take appropriate responsibility for his share. Does he believe that a car magically appears on the showroom floor? That there is no waste produced in manufacturing and transporting that machine? Does he believe that when he eats a steak, the only waste is the two-ounce styro-foam tray that he sees go into the trash? What about the diesel exhaust that blows into the air when the cow is being transported, both when alive and as meat? What about the process of raising that cow, including growing the grain and the cow's own waste? Has he ever seen the truckload after truckload of waste that goes into the landfill when a small house is built? Who gets responsibility for the waste involved in building a giant insurance building? What about the waste products associated with the service industries paper, office furniture and computers (and their history of manufacturing, back to chip level and beyond)? What about the waste associated with fuel and the generation of electricity? Maybe Lawrence should take a little deeper look behind the set of the magic kingdom he lives in. Whitney's figures were probably derived by taking the total amount of waste produced by our society Power, not money, fuels debate over medical costs The more I read, hear and think about the containment of health-care costs, the more I become convinced that the conflict is not about costs. It is about the power to control the distribution of money within the system.

Even with hospitalization insurance, until the 1950s there wasn't much money in the system. The 1970s brought Medicare and medical insurance that paid for prescription drugs and visits to the doctor's office. Costs for drugs and medical procedures skyrocketed in the 1980s. The amount of money in the system grew by leaps and bounds. People in the medical professions began to be noticeably more prosperous.

Nonmedical people saw a great opportunity here, and control of the system shifted away from From Mexico a previously captured Florida native woman known as Magdale-na was brought back as interpreter on a 1549 Dominican friar's peaceful expedition. Once here she took off her adopted Christian clothes and returned to her people. The friar was clubbed on the beach kneeling in prayer. English: It's still the newest tongue Spanish was the dominant language here for 300 years except for a 20-year British rule when Spanish was still spoken. This means la idioma de espana has been spoken longer than English has yet been spoken in Florida.

A woman, Catalina de Miranda, daughter of Florida explorer Pedro Menendez, was named Florida governor upon her father's death. Her husband took control, made a mess of things and fled the peninsula. By 1600 half of St. Augustine's women were Native Americans married mostly to Spanish settlers. The population also included many people, both free and slave, of African descent; Portuguese settlers, frequently of Jewish heritage; French residents, six Germans and two Flemish settlers.

In 1629 during a Native American uprising, a Spanish governor in St. Augustine hanged a woman, a Native American leader. By 1683, new Florida residents of African'descent who were free formed militias, electing commanders from their own ranks. By 1738 free people of color, under direction of the governor seeking a defense, set up an outpost north of St. Augustine proper, Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, or Fort Mose, the first free black community in what would become America.

By 1786 free people of African descent were successful as innkeepers, butchers, tanners, shoemakers, jewelers, and cartmakers in St. Augustine. One entrepreneur in this group, the free black man Juan Batista Collins, traded with Havana, New Orleans and the Seminole nation. Some free blacks also owned black slaves. Incoming Americans harassed people of color and that hostility toward the rich cultural mix here prompted an exodus of free blacks to leave for Cuba, Mexico and Haiti.

Other African descendants had joined with natives. Black Seminoles had a peculiar relationship with their native sponsors, living in separate villages and serving as vassals. American attempts to separate blacks from their Seminole owners became a contributing factor in the Second Seminole War. Park Trammell disregarded the lynching of 29 blacks when he served as Florida's attorney general and he ignored 21 lynch-ings while governor, 1913-1917. The 1923 massacre in Rose-, wood had chilling echoes in racially motivated attacks on entire black communities in Ocoee and Lake City.

The past dominant perspective on Eorida history, one that didn't fully include all people, left the state's story incompletely told. These two valuable volumes rewrite the Florida story with diversity and inclusion in mind. munication theorists, sociologists, psychologists and others have concluded that not only does television violence affect aggressive behavior but also that other programming on television affects other behavior. These findings led to rating systems for movies and ultimately the controversial v-chip legislation that's part of the telecommunications bill recently signed into law by President Clinton. Outside innuences can wreck a family The v-chip, or violence chip, is a component mandated to become part of all new televisions manufactured and the chip would enable parents to block out programs with unacceptable levels of violence and sex.

Parents would be able to make this determination beforehand because the telecommunications bill also requires TV producers to give their programs a v-rating. The v-chip portion of the bill is being contested and may never be implemented, but that's not the main point here. What is significant is that forces such as television, movies, peer pressure, puberty, hormones and others can have a tremendous influence on the behavior of children. Even in the best-case scenarios sometimes it is difficult for parents to offset so many adverse influences. Many do, of course.

But sometimes even some of the most successful family situations get broad-sided by outside forces, leaving parents looking heavenward and asking, "Where did we go wrong?" For anything less than the best family situation which, unfortunately, seems to be becoming the greater proportion of our society, the struggle to raise children with wholesome values and the strength to resist the influence of outside forces becomes even more difficult, sometimes a losing effort. But as a society we have virtually eliminated one of our historical allies in bringing up our children the right way our schools. When I was in school I respected my teachers almost as much as I did my parents because they were my parents when I was at school. If I got out of line, they disciplined me at school and told my parents, who disciplined me again at home. I can tell you I got out of line only once.

But today we have legislated the teacher out of the discipline process (and I'm not talking about corporal punishment). We have done it to the extent that many of our children no longer respect the authority their teacher or any other adult represents. Today our children can watch television, the movies and their experienced peers and learn of what appears to be the exciting world of sex, drugs and violence. But all we want our teachers to tell our children is, "Just say no." Will simplistic message really work on kids? Dr. Henry Foster, Clinton's choice for surgeon general, was blocked because he dared to believe that telling children to just say no wasn't working.

Foster's sin was telling the children the best way is to say no, but if they are going to have sex anyway, at least know how to protect themselves. That's not the way a Puritan would prescribe it, but that's about all any practical thinking person aware of the realities of our teen problems can do. It's about time we as parents took a long look in the mirror as we try to figure out why we have the epidemic of teen crime and pregnancy. Our children know only what they are taught deliberately or inadvertently, by us or someone or something else. Maybe the children aren't the problem.

Maybe we are. Roosevelt Wilson is an associate journalism professor at Florida University and publisher of Capital Outlook, a weekly newspaper. medical people. The final result is now visible, with MBA's running the insurance companies and healt.i-care institutions. Until the 1960s, the moral codes that society lived by were dictated and enforced by the respected religious and legal System.

The medical profession was the only respected institution left. It is now under attack and will soon lose its position of respect and prestige, being just another trade. Left in control will be the white-collar paper shufflers and their computers. Don Birch Dellview Drive bers, and they also focus on aspects of Florida both positive and negative, overlooked in other books. Tomorrow, historians involved in crafting these highly readable volumes will be at The Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee.

The books are "The New History of Florida," edited by dean of Florida historians Michael Gannon, and "The African-American Heritage of Florida" whose contributors include two Tallahassee scholars, Maxine Jones and Larry Rivers. Other authors from the area who contributed to each book are expected to attend the 2 p.m. event. Keen insights from a gifted teacher Gannon, a former radio broadcaster and priest, a lively lecturer whose classes I never skipped at the University of Florida, a distinguished scholar and skilled author, will offer a not-to-be-missed talk. Some lessons of this new literature span prehistory before the glacial melt (when the state's land-mass was twice as big as today) through 1996 (when overdevelopment has created a polluted paradise of the Florida Keys).

Others include: In 1513, the year life began to end for Florida's original residents with the first landfall of Juan Ponce de Leon, 350,000 natives lived in organized villages on the peninsula. In addition to the aforementioned explorers, women, Beatriz and Juana Jimenez, probably related, were among the first Europeans to arrive in Florida with Ponce de Leon, and also two Caribbean islands natives, expert native Taino tribe seamen and guides, shared in that historic attempted conquest. Florida's residents fought back. For example, they crafted cane arrows tipped with fishbones, stone points or crab claws, weapons launched so strongly they pierced two coats of the explorers steel chain mail and sliced through Spanish horses from tail nearly to chestbone. D00ESBIRY by Garry Tri deal ms IS LIKE 50 GREAT THAT YOU GUY5 KNOW BACHOJHER! WHERE PIP YOU UB U1ENT TO UALPEN TOGETHER.

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