The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 42

14. THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, Thursday, June 23, 1977 STATE NEWMAKERS 2 Dangerous Product? Here's What To Do kin, and Nobel prize-winning scientist Prof. Jannes Alfven of Sweden. Honey Makes Plowboy Go With a gulp of honey and a dash of bravado, Chuck "Plowboy" Ber- ger, a 255-pound good ole boy from Bearcross, used his hands and neck yesterday to pull a 200-ton Circle Line tour ship into dock on "the Hudson River. 35-year-old Plowboy swigged Your Money's Worth A The New Mexico Dental Association says the Albuquerque library's summer reading program may be good for kids' minds, but it's not good for their teeth.

The dentists are unhappy because school children who participate in a summer reading program at Albuquerque Public Library get a 10-cent discount on ice cream bought at a local ice cream chain. Dr. CA. Mayer, president of the state dental socieity, said dental groups have met little success in trying to encourage alternatives to sweets. "The programs at the libraries are good and we encourage them," he said.

"But we would prefer a substitute for ice cream or sweets as a reward." By Sylvia Porter i i- --t 'Plowboy' Berger Goes Into His Act 200-ton tour boat 100 feet into dock (AP) If you have a product you think is dangerous, what is the best way to get a company to recall, repair or replace it? Not by complaining to the store or dealer who sold the item to you. Most of you take this route, but you are wrong. Your best course of action is to call the Consumer Product Safety Commission's hotline (800-636-2666) and follow up your call with a letter. Send your letter to the CPSC, Bureau of Information and Education, Washington, D.C. 20207, with a copy to the maker of the product.

"COMPLAINTS ARE the lifeblood of this agency," says Edward Pasca-rella, an epidemiologist who is the sole person responsible for reviewing the 10,000 complaints of near misses, injuries and deaths involving consumer products that come to the CPSC's Office of Product Defect Identification each year. The complaints, which come from news accounts, coroners' reports, hospital emergency rooms and staff investigators, as well as individuals, trigger a key tool in the agency's legal arsenal: Section 15 of the Consumer Product Safety Act. Under Section 15, the agency may order the recall of hazardous products which not only fail to comply with safety standards, but also of any product which it determines creates a substantial risk of injury to the public. FURTHERMORE, the provision requires manufacturers to help the agency identify such products by voluntarily reporting information indicating a product could create a hazard. Here is the point at which your complaint plays an important role.

By sending it both to the CPSC and the manufacturer, you (1) alert the government investigators, (2) stimulate the company to run its own safety check and (3) spur the manufacturer to report itself, if it discovers a potential problem. The commission receives only 125 to 140 such reports a year, even though manufacturers can be slapped with penalties for knowing failure to report immediately a defect that could cause substantial hazard. Corning Glass recently paid a $325,000 fine for failing to notify a taste of organic honey from a one-yound jar and put the boat's line on his towel-covered neck. His muscles bulging from his and chest, the professional wrestler and martial-arts expert pulled for a few seconds, then threw the rope off his neck. The photographers were getting "to, him.

"No, I can't turn around," he told them, removing his sleeveless T-' shirt. "Leave me alone. Give me a few minutes. I gotta get pysched," said Plowboy, now attired merely in gym shorts, work boots and socks. It was time for more honey "nearly half the bottle this time, v- Moments later, a sweating, panting, groaning, grinding and wheezing Plowboy lived up to his nickname given to him when he subbed for his friend's sick mule, Betsy, on a farm back in Bearcross.

Plowboy pulled the empty vessel to within about 30 feet of the dock as a. crowd of about 100 at the Circle Pier 83 terminal at 43rd Street 'cheered wildly. He had pulled the ship about 100 feet. A publicity man acknowledged that the dock stunt was arranged to promote a martial-arts show here Sunday where Berger promises to hang himself and survive, have two concrete blocks broken over his head and then have a motorcycle "with six people aboard run across 10,000 products. Even so, in the Zyz years of its existence, it has managed to recall 33 million products.

WHERE IT HAS FAILED, contend many critics both within and outside of the commission itself, is in issuing mandatory product safety standards. So far only one, governing swimming pool slides, is in effect and an almost ludicrously small additional four are in various stages of active development. These standards are supposed to serve as safety nets covering various types of products, and Section 15 originally was designed as a mechanism simply for catching those products which fell through holes in the product standard safety nets. But in the absence of any such safety standard network, this minor provision in the law has become crucial to the public safety. YET THIS RELIANCE on Section 15 is in itself painfully inadequate.

Under it, the CPSC can deal with only one product at a time such as baby pacifiers with guards small enough to catch in a child's throat. And it's a tool that can be triggered only after damage is done to someone. To make the most of the safeguards if you've experienced a product-related injury or had a near miss, get a report in fast. Identify the product clearly. Give its age and repair history and tell how the item was used and maintained.

Explain how the product caused or almost caused the injury. Give facts, not hearsay. Keep the product if it's not dangerous or inconvenient for you to do so. C. Field Enterprises Inc.

How do you pick up a skunk? By the tail, says a wildlife expert. Richard Van Gelder, curator of mammals at the Museum of Natural History in New York, told a conference at Michigan State University Tuesday that he stumbled across the answer in 1961 when one of his research skunks escaped. Van Gelder grabbed it by the tail. "I expected to get sprayed and didn't," he said. Research, he said, led him to the legend, started in 1801 by a Spanish nobleman in Argentina, that the tail-grab was the way to snag a skunk.

But contrary examples over the years led scientists to discount the legend. Further research showed the skunk has two nipples through which he sprays. The nipples must be outside his body to spray and he can't put them out if his back feet are off the ground, Van Gelder said. If the skunk gets scared, he can get his sprayers out before you grab the tail, and you are out of luck. So don't scare the skunk.

drawing ever since. With encouragement from his family, an art tutor and work at a local rehabilitation center, he has improved his technique and turned out a number of pencil and charcoal sketches. "It takes an awful lot of concentration and patience to control the thing," Kurt said. "I get frustrated sometimes and feel like I want to cross out the whole thing." Kurt said his drawing is "really just a hobby" that gives him something to do. Renowned American concert pianist Rosalyn Tureck was described in lyrical Latin yesterday as a dedicated high priestess of music when she was made an honorary doctor of music by Oxford Unviversity.

One of the foremost interpreters and scholars of Bach, the 62-year-old Chicago native is only the fourth American woman to receive an honorary doctorate from the 900-year-old university, one of Britain's cradles of learning. Wearing the pink-an-d-beige gown signifying her new honor, Miss Tureck was visibly moved by the accolades spoken in Latin in her honor during the commemoration ceremony "Encaenia," a Greek word meaning thanksgiving. "By her teaching in seminars and master classes, as well as by her writings, she fires others with a burning passion for music," intoned John Griffiths, the public orator charged with reading the ceremony translated into an English language printed program for the audience. Others who received honorary doctorates were British actor Sir Alec Guinness; Law Lord Lord Diplock; IBM executive Thomas J. Watson; Cambridge scholar Sir Alan Hodg- Driscoll of Hamtramck, is a budding teen-aged artist with a distinctive style.

He draws with a pencil or charcoal taped to the end of a long stick he holds in his mouth. Driscoll, 17, who is paralyzed from the neck down, has two things gpittg for him patience and concentration. A 1974 automobile accident that broke Kurt's neck robbed the ninth-grader of the use of his limbs and, it seemed, his future. "Before, that, I never knew what it meant to be paralyzed," he said. "I was pretty mad when I realized that I'd" never be able to walk again." Kuit said it was essentially by accident that he began the art career, which has given him a new direction.

"I was sitting in a rocking chair one day; looking at some of my record albums, and I decided to try to draw something," he said. Kurt's mother taped a Magic Marker to the end of a mouthpiece he uses to turn pages while reading. He managed to make a rough copy of an airplane from one of the record jackets and has been Misdemeanor charges against George Willig, who dazzled New Yorkers with his climb up the outside of the 110-story World Trade Center on May 26, were dismissed yesterday by Criminal Court Judge Milton Williams. He acted after Asst. Dist.

Atty. Eric Kapner asked that charges against Willig and three friends be dropped "in the interest of justice" because there were no injuries and no property damage. "The public interest would not be served by prosecuting these defendants," -said Kapner, following the lead of Mayor Abraham Beame who settled the city's threatened $250,000 suit for $1.10. The feat you accomplished is a marvelous act in itself," said the judge. But Williams added: "Heaven help a person who is not as expert in this field as you if they attempted something like that Willig had been charged with criminal trespass, reckless endanger-ment, disorderly conduct and unlawfully climbing the face of a building.

Doctors Are Issued Pacemaker Warning WASHINGTON (UPI) Doctors treating more than 650 heart patients in the United States, Britain and Australia are being warned to watch for possible malfunction of surgically implanted pacemakers, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday. Involved are Wave Demand Mercury Powered Implanatable Cardiac Pacemaker" Models 382 IT, 3821ET, 3821HT, 3821TRC, 3821HTRC, 3821ETRC, manufactured by Stimulation Technology Inc. of Minneapolis, Minn. The FDA said "water vapor may penetrate along the output wire of the pacer" with a resulting short circuit which could cause a "cessation of pulse generation by the pacer." the commission quickly enough about a possible defect in one of its coffee percolators. ALTHOUGH the company voluntarily began recalling this model last summer after informing the CPSC, the agency felt the company's notification was not timely enough.

Corning disagreed but paid the fine. "There is no way this agency can police the whole marketplace," admits William Kitzes, legal adviser to the Office of Product Defect Identification. "Friends sometimes tell me that they presume all products are safe; otherwise, they know the government wouldn't permit them to be sold. "This just isn't the case." The agency's responsibilities are too broad for this kind of blanket protection. It has jurisdiction over more than Paralyzed Artist Shows Favorite Work and charcoal sketch of a tiger (UPI) Senator Stalls Threat To Electoral College Nation aviator and astronaut for any other experience," said the former U.S.

Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. Carr, 44, became an astronaut in April 1966 and has been a civilian employe at the Johnson Space Center since retiring from the Marine Corps in 1975. In recent months he has headed the astronaut office's design support group. With Bovay Engineers Carr will serve as manager of corporate development. Carr holds aero Principals In Alleged Triangle Ike and Kay (AP) WASHINGTON (UPI) A conservative-led filibuster yesterday blocked Senate Judiciary Committee action on a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and permit direct popular election of the president.

After a motion by Sen. William Scott, to send the measure back to subcommittee was killed on a 9-8 vote, Scott immediately launched a filibuster to prevent a vote to report it to the full Senate. There are no procedures in committee to restrict unlimited debate and Scott could virtually talk the bill to death. Sen. Birch Bayh, said if Scott continues his filibuster, he will seek to circumvent the committee by bringing the matter before the Senate through a parliamentary maneuver that would put the measure on the calendar.

"WE'RE GOING to get it on the calendar one way or the other," Bayh said. "I still think we have a shot at it." However, Bayh revealed that Democratic leader Robert Byrd has decided not to bring the matter up for consideration unless he is certain he has the 60 votes needed to cut off a filibuster and a "good chance" at getting the two-thirds vote needed to approve a constitutional amendment. During sometimes heated debate in a cramped, smoke-filled committee room, Bayh told Scott, "You sit there as one person imposing your views on the will of the Judiciary Committee. You don't trust the will of the committee and you don't trust the will of the Senate." But Scott refused to "agree to a time certain" to vote on the resolution, saying he had "a good many editorials" to read on the issue which he promised would require "considerable debate." Ike Wrote To Mamie Denying Kay Affair start of the 12:01 a.m. shift yesterday.

Bill Wooten, president of the striking local union, said the miners are protesting the benefits cutback. No strikes were reported in Ohio on Tuesday, when the wildcats began in Kentucky and West Virginia. In District 20 in Alabama, most of that state's UMW miners have been striking over a local issue for more than a week. But with the benefit cutbacks, "I think it's highly improbable we will get anybody back to work," said Lloyd Baker, district president The annual union miners' vacation is scheduled to begin on the 12:01 a.m. shift Saturday, and some company officials expressed hope the vacation will serve as a cooling-off period.

Postal Service Ups Several Mail Rates WASHINGTON (AP) The cost of mailing newspapers, books, magazines and other second, third and fourth class items is increasing July 6, the Postal Service announced yesterday. The hike is the sixth in a series of annual increases scheduled when the service became a semi-independent agency. First class letters are not affected. Second class rates for newspapers increase by varying amounts depending on whether they are entered weight or by copy and according to distance. The per-piece charge outside a newspaper's home county, for example, increases from 0.8 cents to 1.1 cents.

Within the county, the increase would be from 0.6 to 0.7 cents. Per-pound rates range from an increase to 6.7 cents from 6.0 cents in zones 1 and 2 to an increase to 13.5 cents from 12.5 cents in zone 8. Kelley Says Public Should Be Informed SAN DIEGO (AP) FBI Director Clarence M. Kelley said yesterday that all law enforcement offices in the United States ought to furnish public information promptly to reporters. "We've been clobbered often in the media," said Kelley, as a result of "a certain ineptitude in developing and implementing effective public relations programs.

"I suspect there are many police administrators who recognize neither the true potential of good public relations nor their relevance to law enforcement objectives." In a speech to the 37th annual meeting of the National Sheriffs' Association, he said "there are many good and valid reasons why law enforcement and the news media should work together" but he warned against trying to "project the image of the ideal, infallible FBI agent sheriffs deputy or police officer. Nobody expects us to be infallible." A former Kansas City police chief, Kelley said every law enforcement agency in a democracy "has the obligation of reducing crime with the least possible abrasiveness and with maximum regard for the rights and dignity of the individual. We simply cannot do that without the voluntary support and involvement of the public." nautical engineering degrees from Southern California and Princeton. Carr's departure will leave the space agency with 27 astronauts. Vance To Visit China In August, U.S.

Says WASHINGTON (AP) Secretary of State Cyrus Vance will visit China Aug. 22-26 in hopes of making progress towards normalized diplomatic relations between the two countries, the State Department said yesterday. In making the announcement spokesman Hodding Carter refused to speculate on whether Vance expects his trip to result in establishment of diplomatic relations. The only other stop Vance plans is a one-or two-day visit to Japan after his stay in China, Carter said. The purpose of the China trip is to "continue our conversations in light of the Shanghai communique toward normalizing relations," he said.

Since the communique was signed in 1972, achievement of that goal has eluded the past three administrations. Miners Staying Away Over Health Benefits By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS About 23,000 southern Appalachian coal miners stayed away from work in a wildcat strike yesterday, protesting reductions in union health benefits that were caused by financial problems in the United Mine Workers health and retirement funds. But the miners' strike is costing those same financially troubled funds at least $320,000 a day in royalties, according to Dan Fields, a spokesman for the West Virginia Coal Association. Fields said that at least 20,000 miners were on strike in eight southern West Virginia counties in UMW Districts 17 and 29. J.B.

Trout a union officials in District 30 in eastern Kentucky, said at least 2,000 miners were on strike there. But Trout added that the pickets which closed those mines were not from Kentucky. IN SOUTHERN OHIO, 520 miners at the Meigs No. 8 Mine near Pomeroy walked off their jobs at the TM GOING TO DO everything I can to keep this from being considered on the floor," Scott said. "I don't think the proposed amendment will ever become an amendment to the Constitution." The Virginia conservative argued that under the electoral reform bill "the smaller states would be swallowed up by the bigger states" because they would decide the outcome of most presidential elections.

Scott's motion to send the resolution back to a Constitutional Amendment subcommittee, which Bayh chairs, would have meant certain death for the measure because of a flat 3-3 conservative-liberal split over the proposal on the panel. LOS ANGELES (UPI) The late Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote his wife, Mamie, dozens of love letters during World War II assuring her of his devotion and ridiculing reports about an affair with Lt. Kay Summersby, the Los Angeles Times disclosed yesterday. The Times printed excerpts from 319 letters from the allied commander to his wife which are to be published next year in a book edited by their son, John S.

D. Eisenhower. The Eisenhower family was said to have decided to release the letters because they were deeply disturbed over a forthcoming two-part ABC television program based in large part on Miss Summersby's 1976 book, "Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower." She died shortly after its publication. THE LETTERS from Ike to Mamie cast doubt on a story attributed to former President Harry Truman that Eisenhower wanted to divorce her so that he could marry the British girl.

According to a Truman biographer, chief of staff Gen. George Marshall expressed his outrage to Eisenhower and the matter was not raised again. but the big reason she wanted to serve in this theater is that she is terribly in love with a young American colonel and is to be married to him come June assuming that both are alive. "I doubt that Life told that But I tell you only so that if anyone is banal and foolish enough to lift an eyebrow at an old duffer such as I am in connections with WAACS Red Cross workers nurses and drivers you will know that I've no emotional involvements and will have love you only." (A SHORT TIME after that letter was written, Lt. Summersby's fiance, Richard R.

Arnold, was killed by a mine. According to her book, she was often in Eisenhower's company after that). In May, 1943, he wrote: "Don't forget I love you only all the time and with all that's left in a 52-year-old, bald-headed soldier (sometimes I feel IN HER BOOK, Lt. Sumersby said she and Eisenhower fell into a romantic, almost domestic, living arrangement in London and on the wartime trips through Europe on which she accompanied him. But she said the affair was uncon-summated because Eisenhower was impotent, which she quoted Eisenhower as blaming on years of sexual estrange Carr, Space Record Holder, Quits NASA SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) Gerald P.

Carr, a co-holder of the world space flight duration record, is leaving the space agency Saturday to join a Houston engineering firm. Carr was commander of the 1975 Skylab 4 mission during which he and astronauts Edward G. Gibson and William R. Pogue spent a record 2,017 hours or 84 days in space. "I wouldn't trade the past 24 years as a Marine In a letter from Algiers aatea Marcn .2.

1943, Eisenhower wrote his wife: Life (Magazine) says my old Londoitfjjriver came down. So she did ment from Mamie. if STATE.