The Gettysburg Times from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania • Page 5

THE GETTYSBURG TIMES, SATURDAY-SUNDAY, MAY 7-8, 198.8 5A Commentary Long thoughts are prompted by readers' letters The writer of the letter was very firm. a short time ago, stopped my subscription to your paper." Then he went on to tell why he stopped. He objected to the liberal slanting of the local news and editorials." He said his view is shared by many other non-subscribers. Letters like this always launch no small amount of introspection, and very long thoughts about the word gathering business. Hard as they are on our psyche, these letters are much appreciated for their forthrightness and fortitude.

I respect the person who takes the time to sit down and put thoughts to paper. It is a special, and vanishing, discipline. If complacency ever does get a toehold, this business will be dead. Reader sentiment like this will assure that it never does. It's not only the letters, but remarks made casually at the next table in a restaurant, or on the street that push us again, and again, to consider what the reader wants.

A man from Biglerville sees Georgie Ann Geyer as a fist- swinging liberal, while a woman from Twin Oaks sees the same writer as going soft and drifting too far to the ideological right. Both think she has no place in this paper. George Will is seen by one to be Writer's Art James J. Kilpatrick Lessons from the Rev. Dr.

Gantry Those who would write must first read. That is an elementary proposition, of course, but it bears repeating. If we would develop our own style, we must begin by observing how masters of English prose have honed their style. Afew weeks ago I urged all of you to spend a few hours with Lord Macaulay. Today let us come closer home.

Let us spend an evening with Sinclair Lewis. Recently I went back to "Elmer Gantry." Published in 1927, the novel was a shocker at the time. Read today, in light of the travails of Brothers Bakker and Swaggart, it remains a wonderfully readable yarn. Lewis was full of the little dog tricks by which a skilled writer delights his readers. He excelled in the caboose, the simile, and the detail that goes with a camera's eye.

A sentence qualifies as a caboose when it packs its unexpected wallop at the very end. Elmer Gantry's gospel crew, said Lewis, "could never consider their converts as human beings, like waiters or manicurists or brakemen, but they had in them such a professional interest as surgeons take in patients, critics in an author, fishermen in trout." Lewis describes Gantry's handsome new Wellspring Church: "It had Gothic windows, a carillon in the square stone tower, dozens of Sunday school rooms, a gymnasium, a social room with a stage and a motion-picture booth, an electric range in the kitchen, and over it all a revolving electric cross and a debt." Elmer becomes a member of Rotary. The club "was an assemblage of accountants, tailors, osteopaths, university presidents, carpet manufacturers, advertising men, millinery dealers, ice dealers, piano salesmen, laundrymen, and like leaders of public thought." Lewis writes of a Young Married Set "who were nearly as cheerful as though they did not belong to a church." He speaks of converts "who could be healed constantly, and of the same disease." Awaiting a guest, Gantry "had been sitting with a Bible and an evening paper in his lap, reading one of them." As this pompous fraud rises in the church, "he learned that poverty is blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons." From time to time I lecture journalism students in the art of the simile: Keep similes short; make them accurate; and rely for comparisons on objects and events that are close to everyday observation and experience. It is a shame to string some of Lewis' similes close together, but look at a master at work: At one point Gantry is in deep trouble with his paramour, Sharon Falconer. He goes to her bedroom.

She speaks to him "in tones level as a steel rail." Members of the Falconer gospel show come to admire Gantry: "They followed him like family dogs." Gantry becomes skilled at gulling his congregation: could greet them as impressively and fraternally as a sewing machine agent." As he gains his experience, "Elmer's eloquence increased like an August pumpkin." Notice, if you will, the satisfying smack of those similes. They offered perfect images. In the 1920s, every reader of Sinclair Lewis had seen a steel rail, known a family dog, met a sewing machine agent and bought a late summer pumpkin. This is how similes should be formed, out of common clay and intense observation. That gift of photographic observation was another string to Lewis' bow.

Temporarily out of the ministry, Gantry becomes a traveling salesman of farm equipment. This was his life: "Harrows and rakes and corn planters; red plows and gilt-striped green wagons; Catalogues and order lists; offices glassed off from dim warehouses; shirt-sleeved dealers on high stools at high desks; the bar at the corner; stifling small hotels and lunch rooms; waiting for trains half the night in foul boxes of junction stations, where the brown slatted benches were an agony to his back A rural parlor in the Midwest "had the homeliness of a New England farm house, with the hectically striped rag carpet, an amazing patent rocker with Corinthian knobs and brass dragon's feet, crayon enlargements, a table piled with Tarm and Fireside' and an enormous volume of pictures of the Chicago World's Fair." "Elmer Gantry" was Lewis' fourth novel, coining after "Main Street," "Babbitt" and "Arrowsmith," and for my money it remain the best of his work. It is overwritten in part; it suffers from occasional stiffness in dialogue; today it seems as dated as a Model T. With all its flaws, it provides lessons for every writer who wants to learn the writing art. 1988 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE Mark Russell 'That Old Black Magic' I called Mrs.

Reagan's office to find out about this astrology business but she was having lunch with Mary Todd Lincoln. What is this the Reagan Era or the Age of Aquarius? Donald Regan's book tells of the Reagans' frequent consultations over the years with astrologers. That certainly explains the new tax law. Occult practices in the White the President wasn't napping during the Cabinet meetings, after all he was meditating. Speculation in Washingtonisrampant.

Reagan occasionally rubs a magic lantern and William Casey appears. They've gone from "Hail to the Chief" to "That Old Black Magic." Remember North and McFarlane and the Bible and the cake? Remember James Watt? David Stockman? Catsup as a vegetable? The Reagans should sue the astrologer for malpractice! 1988, Lot Angeles Times Syndicate Editor's notebook Jim Kalbaugh favoring the Left, by another the Right. Even Ann Landers inspires opinions of extreme. One reader tells us, "the only reason" she subscribes to this paper is to read Ann Landers. Another former reader has told us that Ann Landers is THE reason he doesn't take a paper that carries "trash deleted.) I don't think the newspaper industry will ever know, for sure, why some readers stop out.

Could it be that one element contributing to this failure to know is the tune-out factor There was a time when readers just got angry and wrote letters to the editor. Most of them, unlike the writer of the letter I just received, don't fire a warning shot. They just tune Tuning out is a costly capability, but we, today wjll pay anything for that. What does a modest, 20-iach television set cost About $600 What can you do with it that you can't do with a newspaper You can turn it on, or off. There's only one wa to turn off a newspaper, and that is to just not take it.

Leave it out of sight so it will be out of mind. We tune out other things in modem life as well. We tune out elections, church, poverty, and the homeless. We select only what we want to see, and hear. I've wondered about the reason for this.

Many of our readers are of a generation that has been been pretty well battered. Their young adulthood was dimmed by a depression and world war. That was followed by two other major wars and recessions. The peace of their retirement has been shaken by: a crazy economy, wars in far away places, new and mysterious diseases, poisoned water supplies, divorce among their children, and on and on. Do you think that generation wants to hear or read anything that mciild hint of the coldei UKI realities of life, right now No This survivor generation has had enough.

It will endure all of that stuff now by tuning out. Younger generations seem to be less inclined to read at all. They, too, don't want to be discomforted by anything, much less the written word. Let's hope the written word will persist as it has, even through some darker ages, as it has for centuries. Its intimacy with the reader cannot be matched by media reliant upon devices to convey.

The word is there and always will be until there are no minds compelled to impart and absorb it. Jim Kalbaugh is publisher of the Gettysburg Times. Eddie's a pretty bird in his own right It's a sorry world where everybody has to look the same in order to fit. Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, last-placed sM jumper and popular hero of the Winter Olympics, recently told London newspapers he's considering plastic surgery to improve his looks. Eddie is the English plasterer who warmed our hearts at Calgary with the crooked grin acquired when he fell during a practice jump earlier in his unconventional career.

He figured he'd broken his jaw, Eddie told television interviewers last winter from behind his steamed-up eye glasses. (When he first started jumping, he didn't own a proper helmet, ski suit, or jumping skis, much less a pair of goggles.) But he got up and kept on going, Eddie said with a funny laugh that matched his funny grin. According to a story by the Associated Press, Eddie has now been offered an operation free of charge by an American specialist. The plastic surgery would reportedly reduce Eddie's jutting chin and cheekbones. "Ihate the way I look," Eddie was quoted as saying.

People might not feel the same about him after surgery, he said, but he theorized that he might be able to get a job as Roberf, Bedford's stunt man. I thiftk it's a shame that Eddie feels he has to look like Robert Redford and I'm sorry he hates the way he looks. Sure, everyone dreams of a makeover by some famous makeup artist or hair stylist. Billions of dollars have been made on the assumption that we all dislike something about our looks: our thighs are too big, we have a bulging belly, or one eyelid droops. But a world in which all the women are formed in the image of a Playboy centerfold and all the men change from 90-pound weaklings into Arnold Schwarzenegger would be very boring, indeed.

Still, there's a lot of pressure for image improvement these days. Everybody's going for face lifts, nose jobs and tummy tucks. We now have liposuction to take bulges off and silicone implants to put curves in. I think we're making a mistake, holding up certain specimens as models of perfection, turning everyone into ticky tacky. I'm disturbed Eileen Graham by the awful increase in this country of young women starving themselves thin.

As the mother of two sons, I'm appalled at the trend among young men to build muscle bulk by consuming illegal steroids. All because somebody somewhere has deemed it fashion. We have plastic food, plastic furniture, plastic breasts, plastic muscles and plastic faces all molded over the same boring models in a giant look-alike factory run by a world-famous designer. No doubt the next religious revi- vial in this country will bring in billions by renaming god as "The Grand Designer." Some market- savy entrepenour will put His trademark on blue jeans, sunglasses, Bibles, and DNA, and build a procreation park where couples go for a three-day weekend to select their offspring from test tubes containing Grand Designer genes. In the natural world nothing is the same, no two snowflakes or leaves or birds or frogs or centipedes are exactly alike.

And, until now, each of man's cultures has had its own perception of beauty. Not any more. Even the Watusi wear western clothing and the dessert nomads have traded their camels in for status automobiles. Since the beginning it's been our rich array of differences that's made life on this planet so fascinating. Think of it: if we all looked the same, there would have been no goliath, no Hunchback of Nofere Dame, no Napoleon, no Streisand, no Phantom of the Opera and 'no Eddie The Eagle.

It was how he didn't look that made us love Eddie. In his sweat pants, motorcycle helmet and second-hand skis, he didn't look like a ski jumper. In his bottle- bottom spectacles, the experts he didn't look like he could see the end of the ski jump. They said he'd kill himself on the 90-meter run But Eddie grinned his crooked gi'in and went right on flying. I sincerely hope Eddie keeps his distinctive profile.

I worry that one of these days nobody is going to be bald or fat or wrinkled or old--or smile a little askew any more. That there won't be anyonfe interesting left to write, about, ahci no rare birds like Eddie The Eagle Edwards. 1988 by Eileen Graham Looking at language: 'Let's talk turkey' This is the noble fowl of Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts. It is the economical main dish that provides such a generous amount of nourishment for the dollar. This is the bird lauded by Benjamin Franklin and sought by generations of hunters.

And it is the bird of confusion and failure, the bird of unpleasant truth and ignominious insult. The turkey is native to North America, but its name isn't. Stuart Berg Flexner relates that European explorers confused our friend with the turkey cock, a type of guinea fowl found on their home continent. That bird got its name "because it was introduced into Europe from Guinea through Turkey." Although the bird was served as holiday fare much earlier, Flexner goes on to say that, "Our term Thanksgiving turkey didn't appear until 1829," and the holiday itself "wasn't referred to as Turkey Day until 1916." Turkey has become the traditional main course at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Because it costs so much less per pound than, say, beef, it is increasingly served at other times as well.

In a letter to Sarah Bache written in 1784, Benjamin Franklin wrote, "I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country: he is a Bird of bad moral he is gener- Truman and Beverley Eddy ally poor, and often very lousy. The Turkey is a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America." When Franklin spoke of the bald eagle as lousy, he used the word in its original, literal sense. Presumably our country's founders had what we would call an image problem in regard to the turkey; it wouldn't look as good on emblems of war as the ferocious eagle with its piercing talons, swooping down on some prey. Anyone who has driven through state game lands or parks recently is aware of spring turkey season. Hunters' pick-up trucks can be seen parked along rural roads at dawn, even though the turkey feasts in November and December are a long way off.

Turkey hunting is a favored sport hereabouts, and no wonder. A single fowl is big enough to make a solid meal for the sportsman, and itis respected as a worthy opponent. As early as the seventeenth century, however, the turkey fell on hard times, linguistically speaking. We started to call "the southern brown vulture a turkey buzzard by 1672," Flexner writes. The term turkey vulture was current by 1823.

New Englanders derided the bird by referring to salted cod as Cape Cod turkey. Because turkey gobbling was distinctly heard on farms, by 1830 we said we were talking turkey when we spoke plainly. That's not so bad, and neither is its successor term, to talk cold turkey. But then cold turkey "came to mean cold facts, unpleasant truths. By the 1940s cold turkey was a drug addict's term for a sudden and complete withdrawal" from addictive substances, according to Flexner.

The goose bumps seen on a withdrawing addict resembled turkey skin. Later, because turkey had also acquired the meaning of sucker, dupe, or victim, the word took on yet another negative connotation. It came to refer to an unsucccessful enterprise, at first (in the 1920s) in the theater. S. J.

Perelman, for example, having retired to a farm, wrote that he raised "turkeys which he occasionally displays Broadway." Dance has deserted the turkey, too. Flexner tells us that, "In 1908 everyone was talking about the new ragtime dance, the turkey trot, which resembled just that in the way the dancers moved, with a springing step on the balls of their feet while jerking their shoulders up and down." From the looks of 11, we're still dancing that way, but we don't call it by the same name. On the other hand, maybe turkeys are just as happy not to be mimicked so badly. The downward trend continued By the 1960s a turkey was a student who did nothing but work, in the same way the bird does little else than peck away at barnyard feed. At Truman's alma mater the term was applied chiefly to students enrolled in electrical engineering, the toughest curriculum in those years; turkeys had no time foi anything but study.

Just as much of our language has become vague (I mean, ya so has the maligned noun turkey. Nowadays it is used as a synonym for jerk. Even as an insult it has lost its negativity and its punch; Truman and his colleagues'at Har- nsburg Area Community College use the term good naturedly. What a shame! The turkey deserves better than to wind up in comic throwaway lines at the office. WSPAPfcRI.