Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 39

Section 4 (ThicagO (Tribune Monday, September 7, 1987 Patinkin Chicago TV's little station that could' Giving credit where credit is due 1 tf w. first, after her husband died, she tried to be patient with all the companies 1 that keot sending mail in his name. i ane unaerstooa taxes ume ior corn-outers to update their lists. But a year later it was still happening. Almost By Clifford Terry TVradio critic "I undreds perhaps thousands of letters I 1 were sent to ABC and CBS executives I I this summer from all over the country I I I I in an orchestrated campaign by various parties to resurrect shows those networks canceled last spring notably "Our World," "Starman" and, yes, "Scarecrow and Mrs.

King." Unpublicized, however, was the fact that a similar outcry by the viewing public brought dramatic results on the local scene awhile back, as irate watchers of Chicago's "other" Public Broadcasting Service station took pen in hand and barraged WYCC-Ch. 20 with complaints about their favorite program being axed. The name of the show: "Lap Quilting with Georgia Bonesteel." "I didn't know there were so many lap-quilters out there," said David Milberg, executive director of media programs for Chicago City-Wide College, which operates WYCC are Your City and is one of the eight Chicago City Colleges that owns the station. Characterized by Milberg as "the biggest secret in Chicago Elynne Chaplik Boston QJot photo Manuel de Jesus Jauregui works on one of the hottest items In' the black-velvet medium, a unicorn. Black velvet: The 'art Care for an Elvis? Or maybe a unicorn? broadcasting," WYCC bills itself as "the Little Station that Could," even though general -manager Elynne Chaplik isn't all that enamored of that particular promotional thrust a bit cutesy.

She is more attuned to a series of print ads aimed at the discriminating audience. "Just think," read one of the ads, which ran awhile back. "You can keep watching the seventh rerun of 'Heave It at Beaver until your brain turns to cheese, or you can turn to 20 to enrich your mind, learn and grow." Chaplik; who triples in brass as program director and on-air spokeswoman, also doesn't like the station's official designation. "Our license is for an 'instructional but 'instructional' is a deadly term. In fact, it took us a long time to get into the local TV Guide listings because of that bias.

When they heard the instructional tag, they thought, 'Boring I prefer to call it an educational PBS station." Even so, Chaplik, a onetime English and speech teacher, is very conscious of trying to eradicate the perception of the hoary "educational television" of a couple of decades ago, in which a droning "talking head" professor swayed alongside a blackboard with pointer in hand. "In the beginning, we were living it down constantly, but I really think we've just about killed off that stigma, Chaplik said. "There are no blackboards on our series. The old 'TV College' is dead and gone." Chaplik added that Channel 20 holds the only purely, well, instructional license in the country. "A half-dozen other PBS stations offer college-credit courses part time but nowhere to the extent that we do.

We do it full time and in prime time." When WYCC initially went on the air in February, 1983, its hours were 6:30 to 10 a.m. and 5 to 10 p.m., six days a week. The time was gradually increased, and it is now on the air from 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days. The station has a staff of 20, half of which is full time, and receives $700,000 a year from City Colleges and $300,000 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

(Although there are brief mentions of corporate underwriting, Channel 20 reportedly is the only PBS station in the country that never has had on-air pledges surely reason enough to watch.) Signals are sent by microwave from the station at Daley College, 7500 S. Pulaski to the Hancock Center, where a transmitter sends a 90- Continued on page 7 every day, Eileen Nolan would receive one or two letters addressed to Richard. Almost all were solicitations. Come see our new condominiums; you've just won a discount vacation; American Express don't leave home without it. He even pot offers of life insurance.

Most, she recalled, included a phrase about him seeming to be such a good risk. She sent them all back unopened. When that didn't work, she started including notes saying the addressee was deceased. When the letters kept coming anyway, she settled on tossing them out. In time, she knew, it would stop.

It didn't. The letters were still coming five years later and eight years and 10 years. Even this year, 14 years after Richard died, he still was getting special one-time offers in the mail. A few months ago Eileen came home from her bank job in Rhode Island to find that Richard had received yet another application for an Where it asked for Social Security number, she wrote '000-00-0000 Where it asked for date of birth, she wrote 'date of death' and '3-13-73 Under employer, she wrote 'God American Express Gold Card. That was the third time in a year.

She decided it was time to teach them a lesson. "I'd just had it," she explained later. She sat down at her dining room table and began filling out the application. First, they asked for his Social Security number. Eileen filled in the number, Then she changed "date of birth" to "date of death" and put downr3-l Home telephone number: 000.

Under employer, she wrote, "God." Nature of business: "Gate Keeper." Position: "Polishing." Business Phone Number "Angel Ring." Business Address: "Heaven Lane." Annual Income: "Free Rent And Board." She left the signature line blank, folded the application into the envelope and sent it back to American Express' processing center in Ft Lauderdale. She figured the' application would turn a few faces red, and that would be the end of it A few weeks later a letter arrived from American Express. This one wasn't done by computer. It was typewrinen. An apology perhaps? She opened it up.

It wasn't an apology at all. It was a letter saying they needed more information to process the request. Specifically, they needed Richard's signature. They even included the original application with a checkmark on the signature line. The checkmark was inscribed by hand.

Eileen rolled the form into a typewriter and, there on the signature line, wrote these words: "No Pens in Heaven." Then she sent it back. "That'll certainly embarrass them," Eileen thought Over a month went by with no word. It seemed they'd finally gotten the message. Then the mailman delivered yet another letter from American Express. Eileen opened it And there it was, a brand new Gold Card made out to Richard E.

Nolan. Eileen now has a question. American Express bills the Gold Card as one of the most exclusive in the nation. "Only a select group of people will ever carry one," the ads all say. So how did a Gate Keeper with an 000-00-0000 Social Security number get approved? 1 called American Express to find out and got a spokeswoman named Audrey Joinckheer.

I began by asking how they decide which applicants make the cut She explained that it's a very selective process. Only people with a certain income level and established credit record are selected. Then I told her how they'd just selected someone who died in 1973. It took her a moment to -reply. "I would say 99 percent of the time we're right on," she said, "but of course, the system isn't perfect." Eileen Nolan has learned two things from the experience.

The first is about Gold Cards. "At the bank," she says, "people come in, flash the card and you're supposed to jump 10 feet. 1 want to say, 'Anyone can get The second thing is to never fight companies that solicit by mail. They will win. The day before we spoke, Richard Nolan got his latest piece of mail.

It was from Publisher's caring House, informing him that he may ready be a winner. Bob Greene is taking the day off. Mark Pa-tinkin is a columnist for the Providence (HI.) Journal. By Nathan Cobb Ciudad Juarez, Mexico-It is hot enough to refry beans on the sidewalk, but never mind. Inside a well-baked, second-story room in the northern sector of dusty Juarez, near the brown, slack Rio Grande, Manuel de Jesus Jauregui paints a pair of silver unicorns on black velvet, placing them in the center of a bright purple heart.

He works quickly with a 1-inch brush, oblivious to the heat and his visitors. When you average 10 paintings a day, you barely have time for a can of Tecate beer, let alone a casual chat "This is an idea we worked out together," explains Fernando Najcra, a partner in Juarez Export, as he watches Jauregui ply his trade. "Sometimes we write 'I Love You' on it, sometimes we don't When he first did these unicorns, they had steam coming out of them. But I told him, No. No So, this is where they come from where those garish roadside objetos de arte are born.

New Englanders, using stencils, painted on velvet during the first half of the 19th Century, and it is said that modern black velvet paintings originated S6S miles southeast of here, in Monterrey, during the 1950s. But the epicenter of the art form is now this seedy border town. "You could call Juarez the capital of the world, as far as velvet paintings are concerned," Najera proclaims proudly. More specifically, much of the market is controlled by Juarez Export, through which pour 3,000 or more pinturas al oleooH paintings per week on their way to about 30 distributors in the United States, who, in turn, sell mostly to itinerant peddlers. Those numbers, according to Najera, represent about three-quarters of the American market And lots of glitz.

Behold Juarez Export It is in an aged, thick-walled adobe house not far from the city's busy marketplace. Its warehouse contains pile after pile of velvet paintings framed in scrap softwood, giving the place the air of a peculiarly single-minded flea market. There are, among other things, Elvis Presleys, Oriental gardens, growling lions, Jesus Christs, prowling tigers, American Indians, tropical rain forests, tall ships, German shepherds, bullfighters, baskets of fruit, bare-breasted women, Virgin Marys, conquistadores and, of course, the ubiquitous unicorns. "Unicorns are real, real hot right now," explains the darkly bearded Najera, strolling among the slanted stacks. "And Elvis is still popular.

Jesus, too." But the market is fickle, Najera warns earnestly. Witness the recent demise of Michael Jackson, E.T., Mr. Don Johnson and Sylvester Stallone as subjects considered worthy of preservation on velvet Najera, who is 33 and has a degree in business from Juarez Continued on page 2 THE FAR SIDE Do you wanna race a duck? rv one cried "Fowl!" when Robert Duck i I took home $4,300 in winnings after his 1 Wt ftm bK in'Sil only S. I I I out on my wb a Iv bor i I each spring, and when they're about 2 months old, I start running them" Duck explained. "Ducks don't like to be held, and once you let them go, they run away from you.

You play on that They learn that at the end of the track, they're free. "The ducks have numbered leg bands, and I have a computer spreadsheet, Lotus 1-2-3, to keep track of their times. The slow ones don't race." This year's grand champ was a Duck duck named Oliver South. "I told him if he didn't win," Duck said, "he'd go through the shredder." Duck had 10 birds in the competition, including Tammy Faye "she's a great racer but she gets makeup all over you" and Oral Rodriguez "I told him if he didn't make finals, the Lord would call him home." Oral did and was spared. In attacting 45,000 visitors to Deming, a town of 12,000, the duck race has been good for business.

Said Tom Duck "We haven't had so much excitement around here since Pancho Villa came across the Mexican border in 1912." Clarence Petersen I 1 trained ducks waddled to victory in the 1 1 recent 8th annual Great American Duck Li Race in Deming, N.M. Duck is neither an employee of Ugly Duckling Rent-a-Car, which cosponsors the event with the Deming Chamber of Commerce, nor is he a relative of the company's president, Tom Duck who does have a brother named Donald. No one's feathers were ruffled because it was the sixth consecutive victory for Robert Duck, who runs the Bosco Jewelry Co. in Albuquerque when he's not training the fastest ducks in the West "I heard about the race in 1980," he said, "and I thought, since my name is Duck and I had two ducks as pets, it would be fun. In the first year, out of 1 86 ducks, we won third place." Determined to become the dominant Duck, he built a track much like the Deming track, which is 2 feet wide, 16 feet long and has 2-foot-high walls.

Duck's is a stamina-building 24 feet long. "What I do is buy about 50 day-old ducklings At the Old Spiders' Home. Generations 1 9 The Everest expedition Weather delays the climbers Dear Abby Readers reply about stray animals Studying is serious business.