Carlsbad Current-Argus from Carlsbad, New Mexico • 4

Opinion Carlsbad Current-Argus 4A Sunday, March 17, 1996 Remembering the reason for the holiday if ill Hal Miller mythical pot of gold is hidden, But don't take your eyes off of him. He ill try to trick you into looking away, and if you do, there goes your fortune. I wonder how the leprechaun became a representative of all that is good in St. Patrick's Day. Through time, leprechauns were mischevious figures, mean-spirited, making a terrific racket as they hammered away making shoes in the forest.

That was how you found them, after all. In short, they werent very nice people to know. And no, they didn't pitch breakfast cereal on television. But they did know where the gold was hidden. But it isn't gold most people focus on to-day, it's green.

However you choose to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, remember to celebrate wisely and ignore the little men making all that noise in the forest. Hal Miller is the managing editor ol the Current-Argus. His e-mail address is arguscaverns.com. aphor for the paganism of the day.

That, indeed, is reason for celebration. Supposedly, to this day, you ill find nary a snake in Irelend. As for the remainder of his life well, that's up for speculation, as is the reason the color green is associated with the holiday. Some say because it is the color of spring, while others insist it's because shamrocks are green. But it has been recorded that the First celebration of St.

Patrick's Day in the U.S. was in (w here else) Boston in 1737. 1 feel fairly certain there was no green beer to be had, but there as much tipping of the elbow, nonetheless. Today, there are hundreds of parades and other celebrations in American cities marking the holiday. Should you see a leprechaun today, or any other day, you might want to have your sanity checked.

Or you might threaten the little man with bodily harm legend has it that if threatened, he will tell you where his of websites featuring information about the holiday, many featuring news of grand celebrations. That was all well and goinl, but what 1 was interested in is St. Patrick chasing the snakes into the sea. Well, it turns out that we have been fed a load of blarney all these years. From most accounts, St.

Patrick had little to do with snakes. In fact, he wasn't even Irish. According to several accounts, St. Patrick was born about 370 A D. in what is now Scotland near the town of Dunbarton.

He came into the world during the waning years of the Roman empire, when the Romans still controlled much of what is now England. His given name is thought to be Maewyn Succat. He took the name Patrick, or Patri-cus, after he became a Roman Catholic priest. He spent his late teen years and early adulthood as a slave, working as a shepherd. During this time, he began to have religious visions, one of hich reportedly 1 most everyone in the U.S.

claims to JL be at least a little lush. or many, the day v. ill be mai ked by a uearin' o' the green putting on green clothing to avoid being pinched, as is the tradition. Others will celebrate with the drinkin' o' the green quaffing green beer, which is distinctly an American tradition on the popular holiday. Other St.

Patrick's Day traditions include eating corned beef and cabbage or Irish stew, and hunting four-leaf clovers. According to superstition, four-leaf clovers offer tvMce as much good luck as their three-leaf counterparts. But atch out for the bees that pollenatc them, I wonder if they celebrate the holiday the same way in Ireland? Someday. I must find out for myself. But in the interim, as I wait for a ticket to the Emerald Isle to magically appear in the mail.

I went to the Internet to find some history on the holjiliy. There are a number told him the location of an escape ship. He was no fool, that Maewyn, and found the ship that took him to France. While there, he became a priest and as later ordained a bishop. He didn't get to Ireland until he was about 60.

He travelled there to spread the Christian word, and his charismatic personality quickly brought in numerous converts. He used the three-leafed shamrock, or clover, to explain the Trinity Father. Son and Holy Spirit. Then he supposedly drove all the snakes into the sea, although a number of sources believe the snakes are a met Our opinion maybe mr SHOULD CONSIDER WEARING UNIFORMS, TOO. Having fun by getting 'alienated' SANTA FE Roswcll's UFO Encounter '96 promises to be a blast this year.

Organizers Stan and Deon Crosby have put together an outstanding press packet detailing events, speakers, background on the 1947 incident, and South-cast New Mexico's tourist attractions. It should go a lung way toward getting advance publicity for the event. Activities blast off on Thursday, July 4, with a celebrity banquet followed by an out-of-this-world fireworks display. Don't miss the banquet. It is the Encounter's major fundraiser and will feature the spaciest keynote speaker yet identified on this planet.

Friday, July 5, will begin ongoing events for the rest of Encounter '96. There will be a trade show featuring extraterrestrial items, presentations by abductees on how to know when you are being contacted by strange beings other than your friends and family, two planetarium shows, and tours of the alleged crash site. Clark deserves death again Life is all about choices. Terry Clark made one in 1986 to rape and kill 9-year old Artesian Dena Gore. A court made a choice to sentence him to death.

But due to a technicality a judge who said his docket was too full to hear Clark's sentencing the murderer is now being resentenced for his crime, and could get a life sentence instead of the death by lethal injection. His defense team has lined up numerous witnesses, including his ex-wife and former governor Toney Anaya to help save the murderer's neck. A parade of witnesses is telling how Clark is a changed man and what a model prisoner he has been and what a good husband he was. None of that changes the fact he raped and killed a 9-year-old girl. Ask Dena Gore's family how much they care if he has found God.

Ask them if they care if he has been a good friend to his fellow inmates. Ask anyone with children if they care how good he was or has been. The jury assigned to resentence Clark should keep his crime ahead of all else they might hear. It was a senseless, brutal killing, one that warrants the death penalty. No, killing Clark won't bring Dena Gore back, but it will rid society of a person who made the ultimate wrong choice to take a child's life.

iiu ii hi. nun up '( i Miller Letters to the editor I 1 1 Berry's World ing them. Illegal abortions are performed and they are unsafe. My grandmother became pregnant during the Depression. Like most families in a financial crisis, my grandparents could not afford another child.

Unfortunately, they saw no other option but to terminate the pregnancy. My grandmother died at home in shame, leaving behind three small children who needed her. Having an abortion may be wrong. Dying young doesn't seem right. I support safe and legal abortions as a choice, but work to educate women about their pregnancy options so that abortion is a choice they might not make.

Jenni Lou Oakes, Anchorage, Alaska future Carlsbad resident How do the two connect? Editor: After reading Dennis O'Donnell's column in your March 10 Sunday edition, I couldn't get over his transition from defining humor to the issue of abortion. While "humor" has a dictionary definition, it is simply a matter of opinion. As a professional comedienne, I know that humor is a matter of opinion. Hundreds of people have substantiated this for me. In reference to abortion, Mr.

O'Donnell states "if you believe that it's wrong for you, then you must believe it is wrong for others as well." I don't see the logic in this statement. While I am capable of deciding what is right and wrong for me, I can't make those decisions for other people. I am personally pro-life and politically pro-choice. For me, abortion is never a viable option. However, I don't have the right to make this choice for anyone else.

Therefore, I believe that abortion should be a safe and legal option, and women should take responsibility for their choice without public funds to finance an abortion. Simply making abortion illegal doesn't prevent abortions from taking place. Nor does legalizing abortion force them to occur, it simply protects people by regulat HOW fAANY ARE THERE A WW AY? wm, 0m 1ttNA. Inc. Special events include a parade, a family concert, many other family events, a costume contest, a costume street dance, a nighttime golf scramble, an Alien Chase walkrun, and the annual Crash and Burn Expo, the only non-motorized alien-craft float race in this world.

It features $2,000 in cash prizes. As should be expected, some good residents of Roswell remain a little embarrassed about all the notoriety. They're afraid maybe the rest of the world will start thinking of them as Santa Fcans or something weird like that. But it's good for business and as one organizing committee member says, "If God gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Well, He gave us a UFO crash." Please don't argue about the gender of the Almighty.

That's the way it was written in the press release. Stan Crosby explains that unlike many other tourist attractions, such as Las Vegas, Disneyland, and Mount Rushmore, Roswell had no choice of its fate. "Whether il was a UFO or a weather balloon, it crashed here," he says. Everything involved in last year's inaugural Encounter '95 and this year's Encounter '96 has been prclimi-nary planning for the 50th anniversary of the Roswell Incident next July 3-6, 1997, says Crosby. "At this point, everything is just trial and error." i It was July 7, 1947, when Mac Brazel, who operated a ranch 30 miles southeast of Corona, walked into the office of Sheriff George Wilcox in Roswell to report having found something that might be one of the flying saucers that were first making the national news at the time, Wilcox contacted the Roswell Army Air Field, which sent intelligence officers to the ranch.

The next day the air base issued a press release announcing it had captured a saucer in the Roswell region. A dispatch from Fort Worth the following day announced that after further examination, the debris was determined to be from a harmless weather balloon; And thus began a 49-ycar debate between the military 1 and people who knew what weather balloons looked like. i Almost two years ago, new mayor Tom Jennings had the city's stationery redesigned to include a spaceship. Since last summer everything going out of the Roswell; Chamber of Commerce has had an alien or spaceship on it somewhere. And the UFO Encounter stationery not only locales Roswell in the USA, but also on I Planet Earth and in the Milky-Way Galaxy.

I Roswell is now on the map whether it be by car, bus. plane or spaceship, UFO buffs have been flocking to the city for years, and now tourists are beginning to find it just as compelling. So like il or not, Roswell will be identified with I UFOs just as surely as Dcming is identified with ducks; (and that was by choice, not fate). Not long from now tourists likely will have a choice of several UFO and I alien gift shops and there surely will be a restaurant named after some galactic space colony. Roswell is committed.

As the molto of Encounter '96 says: "It did. They arc." Why fight it? Jay Miller, a self-syndicated columnist in Santa Fe, writes "Around the Capitol" about New Mexico and its poli- tics. mi jfi CARLSBAD Current-Argus Concentrating on Eddy County (505) 887-5501 620 S. Main, Carlsbad, NM UDb wiwiM cambism Asm Carlsbad history Sammy Lopez Publisher Hal Miller Managing Editor Amy McKay Business Manager Shon Barenklau Operations Manager Will Parks Director of Sales Joe Warren Circulation Manager A politically Independent newspaper in Iti 116th year of tervice $57 per 6 months, $26.50 per 3 months. Carrier delivery in Carlsbad and other towns where available, $8.75 per month, carrier collected.

Pay by Mail (PBM), $105 per year, $52.50 per 6 months, $26.25 per 3 months, Second-class postage paid at Caritbad, NM 68220-9998. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Current-Argus, P.O. Box 1629, Carlsbad, NM gram called "Meals on Wheels." which would begin April 15 and deliver noontime meals to city shutins. Carlsbad's booming bats erupted for five sizzling hits in the bottom of the sixth inning yesterday and the Cavemen scored three times to rally past the Pecos, Eagles, 5-3, at Connie Mack Field. March 17, 1946 Nell Woolf, land essay winner from Eddy County, left Friday for an all-expense paid weekend at Santa Fe, where she was a guest at a luncheon given by John Miles, State Land Commissioner, at La Fonda Hotel, honoring county winners in a statewide essay contest.

Charles Kee, acting-chief of police, today announced the addition of two new members to the Carlsbad Police force Lewis Willard Jordon, brother of Coach Ralph Jordon, and Hubert Hutchins. Tommy Pope, city engineer foreman, warned parents yesterday to keep their children from playing around bulkheads of the city irrigation system and around ditches, as water is expected to be turned on in the system ground May 1. More than 35 different schools from points as far away as Bowling Green, expect to make trips to Carlsbad this spring to tour the Caverns and stop over In Carlsbad for two or three days. March 17, 1966 Pablo Madrid and Helen Currie were the big winners in the Loving Junior High School Honor Society fund-raising drawing, As first-prize winner, Madrid won a color television. Currie won the second prize, a portable radio.

If school Superintendent Dr. Roger Harrell has his way, vehicles transporting students on out-of-town activities will be equipped with two-way radios in the future. Harrell's proposal is prompted by the fact that it took about an hour for help to be summoned to an accident scene between Artesia and Carlsbad, although at least four vehicles drove by the accident but did not stop. Lack of familiarity shouldn't be a problem for the Carlsbad Cavemen and Cavegirl teams when they host the annual Carlsbad Invitational Golf Tournament on Tuesday at the Lake Carlsbad Golf Course. March 17, 1971 Carlsbad School Board approved a "middle school" for grades six, seven and eirht, approved renovating Pate school as an "open space" school, and approved transfer of children east of Bataan Bridge to Riverside School Executive Secretary Marie McCloskey of the South Eddy County Red Cross chapter has resigned her post, effective April 30.

Volunteer drivers are being sought for a proposed pro The editorial appearing under the head of "Our Opimont" it the poilion of the Currerri-Argui. Other column reflect the view of the author. The Current-Argui (USPS 090-660) it published daily except Mondayt, Thanksgiving and Chnatmat, by the Current-Argui Publishing 8. Mam, Carlsbad, NM 682204243. Subscription rales by mail, where available, in Eddy County: $114 per year, (57 per months, $28 50 per 3 months.

All other mail: $156 per year, $78 per 6 months, $39 per 3 months. Mail subscriptions art not accepted in areas served by carrier or motor routes. Motor Route: $114 per year. Audit Bantu ol Clrculittom Utmtmr Copyright 1995 Cu'ierit Argus PubliWiing Co.