The Gettysburg Times from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania • Page 5

THE GETTYSBURG TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 11,1986 Editorial Kudos to Kay Lobaugh of Aspers, who received the Walter Loy Examination Achievement Award in competition with 36 other high school students. They were attending the Pennsylvania Association of Farmer Cooperative's 26th annual business education youth institute. Melsene E. Soubricas, formerly of Carroll Valley, who was named "Sailor of the Quarter" at the naval facility Centerville Beach in Ferndale, California. Tad Kuntz of Gardners, who was named a state Leadership Award winner in the 1986 4-H National Awards program.

The senior at Bermudian Springs.High School was picked from among more than 145,000 Pennsylvania youths involved in the 4-H program. Amy Rodgers of Abbottstown, a junior at New Oxford High School, who received the state Citizenship Award as part of the 1986 4-H National Awards program. Robin C. Baker and Jeffrey Lee Morton, two recent Biglerville High School graduates who have received Abbott Scholarships from the Scottish Rite Masons in the Valley of Harrisburg. Each was recognized for scholastic and citizenship achievements.

Cynthia Edenfield of Bendersville and Toni Wright of McSherrystown, who were recently named to reign as queens over the Bendersville and McSherrystown fire companies, respectively. Chris Hawn of Gettysburg, Priscilla Roberts of Biglerville, Karen Millar of Gettysburg, and Kim Funt of Arendtsville, all who raised prize animals shown and then sold at a recent 4-H show. Jacki King of York Springs and Korinne Livelsberger of Gettysburg, who received outstanding honors at the Capital Region 4-H Fashion Revue. James A. Kalbaugh The Times Out of the past ISO YEARS AGO It appears that Congress has authorised a lottery for the benefit of the District of Columbia, and that on the 21st inst.

a large scheme is to be drawn at Washington City--capital $100,000. We should probably have remained ignorant of its existence, had we not been solicited by Messrs. D. S. Gregory Co.

(successors to Yates Mclntyre) the managers, to publish the scheme; but as its publication might be considered in contravention of the laws of this state, we think proper to decline it. We understand that Lieutenant Wilkes, of the Navy, for several years a resident of Washington, has been appointed by the Secretary of the Navy as agent to proceed to England, for the purpose of procuring instruments, philosophical apparatus, for the South Sea Expedition, and in general to collect all information to be derived from the extensive and varied experience of the English in enterprises of this nature. There would not have been a happier selection for this delicate and important duty. A gentleman arrived at New Orleans direct from Galveston Island, informs the editor of the Louisiana Advertiser that the Texan army, under Gen. Rusk, was encamped at Cox's Point, 2,500 strong, and the Mexicans, to the number of 10,000, were making rapid strides toward them, being within a day's march when he left.

Attention Mountpleasant Riflemen! You will parade at McAllister's Mill, in Cumbeland on Saturday the 20th of August inst. precisely at 12 o'clock, M. with arms and accoutrements in complete order. Punctual attendance is very desirable. By Order John W.

McAllister, O.S. Died: On Wednesday last, in Franklin Jacob, infant son of Mr. Jacob Ziegler, formerly of this borough. On Monday the 1st inst. Tobias Kepner, of Berwick in the 80th year of his age.

He was so much injured by the upsetting of his gig, on that day, that he survived but a short time. Today in history By The Associated Press Today is Monday, Aug. 11, the 223rd day of 1986. There are 142 days left in the year. Today's highlight in history: On Aug.

11, 1965, rioting and looting broke out in the predominantly black Watts section of Los Angeles after white police officers arrested a black man supected of drunken driving. In the week that followed, 34 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured as mobs set fire to buildings and battled police and National Guardsmen. On this date: In 1860, the nation's first successful silver mill began operation near Virginia City, Nev. In 1909, the S-O-S distress signal was first used by an American ship. In 1934, the first federal prisoners arrived at the island prison Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

In 1977, New York City postal employee David Berkowitz was arrested in connection with the gun killings committed by "Son of Sam." In 1984, during a voice test for a paid political radio address from his California ranch, President Ronald Reagan joked that he had "signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." One year ago: A small cloud of toxic chemicals escaped from a Union Carbide plant in Institute, W.V., causing at least 135 people to seek medical treatment. Today's birthdays: Author Alex Haley is 65. TV talk show host Mike Douglas is 61. Newspaper columnist Carl Rowan is 61.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell is 53. Actress Anna Massey is 49. R3PPEP A FATAL Yell of a good time ByMikeRoyko- I feel silly admitting it, but "The Screamer" is the funniest person I've ever seen on television. You say you've never heard of him? I'm not surprised.

He's not on network TV and has made only one brief appearance on cable. That's where I saw him a few days ago, in an HBO special called "Uncensored Channels." It's a sampling of televison from foreign countries, including commercials, videos and comedy. The Screamer, which is the only name he uses, is one of the most popular comedy stars on Japanese TV. I can understand why. After five minutes of watching him, he had me laughing harder than anybody I've seen on the tube since Richard Nixon.

And he's managed to become a Japanese comedy star without telling one joke, doing one pratfall, using one four-letter word, or even uttering one word of understandable Japanese. All he does is scream. Of course, there's more to his performance than that. It's when and where he screams. The Screamer is a regular on a monthly show patterned after the old "Candid Camera" show, which consisted of pranks being played on unsuspecting people.

He's always shown walking briskly on a busy street, wearing a straw fedora, horn-rimmed glasses, bow tie and suit looking, I assume, like an ordinary Japanese businessman. But with a slight touch of nerd to him. While a hid.den camera looks on, he does his thing--which is to veer close to another pedestrian and suddenly scream in that person's face or ear. It's a short, explosive, horrifying AH that manpower a id high technology being used to record screaming into the shocked faces of strangers crowded streets. scream that could rattle windows.

And when he is in full voice, The Screamer's mouth gapes wide enough to swallow a basketball. The people at whom he screams leap or stagger or fling themselves to the pavement, looking stunned, terrified or outraged. The encounter takes only a second or two, and without breaking stride The Screamer strolls on his way as if nothing unusual had happened. So, you ask, what makes that funny? It's just childish and ridiculous to scream at strangers and scare them. It's like jumping out of a doorway and shouting "boo." Or even worse, sneaking up behind people and, to use that crude expression, goosing them.

It lacks wit, sophistication, subtlety, cleverness. It's just crude and simpleminded. Well, I suppose that's part of what makes it so funny--because it's such a ridiculous, childish thing to do. It's the most basic form of humor there is. And no sensible, dignified adult would do anything like that.

And what makes it even funnier is the realization that it's being done on television. All that manpower and high technology being used to record a man screaming into the shocked faces of strangers on crowded streets. It's ridiculous, I concede. But every day, hundreds of writers sit down in Hollywood and New York to write funny scripts for situation comedies and gags for famous comics. And 98 percent of what they create falls on its face.

Except for the sound man's laughtrack, nobody is even snickering. But along comes someone like The Screamer, and he has a entire country a country known for its formality and ceremonial dignity choking on its sushi. After seeing The Screamer, I called Al Schwartz, a former Chicagoan who is co-executive producer of the show, and asked him why we don't have somebody regularly screaming at strangers on American television. His answer: "Very simple. The laws covering such intrusion are more tolerant in Japan.

"In this country, if you had someone running around screaming at strangers on television, they would say they had; gone into shock or. suffered a trauma and they would sue you." Maybe that's why, we've become so grim. Too many lawyers. But don't take my word about the talents of The Screamer. The show will be repeated by HBO about three or four times this month.

If you get that channel, check your TV directory and look for yourself. And if The Screamer isn't as funny a guy as I said he is, then you can I guess you can scream in my face. (c) 1986 by The Chicago Tribune Red Smith lives on By George F. Will WASHINGTON--Newspapers drop by our homes every day, generally at breakfast, when anything other than a velvety voice is jarring. Newspapers are, however, by their natures, brusque and businesslike and, given the nature of the world they report, bruising to our spirits.

But newspapers should not be severely free of ornaments that improve the scenery of life. One such was Red Smith, the subject of a new biography by Ira Berkow. What are we missing, we who miss that sports columnist whenever we open a newspaper? This, for example: "Society Kid Hogan was hurrying through the Illinois Central pedestrian tunnel under Michigan Avenue on June 9,1930, when a man in the crowd put a gun to the head of Jake Lingle, a grafting crime reporter, and it went blooie. "The Kid kept right on walking. the Law asked him later.

"The last train was leaving for the he said reasonably. 'Did you see the they asked. 'Could you identify "The Kid drew a hand across the knot in his flashy necktie. 'Only up to he said." That could have been written by Damon Runyon, or Mark Twain. It could only have been written by an American, marinated in this nation's distinctive broad-brush drollery.

Smith heard Americanisms spoken on the adult playgrounds where he worked, as when he asked Pepper Martin how he learned to run so well: "Well, cr, I grew up in Oklahoma and once you start runnin' out there, there ain't nothing to stop you." When Smith asked Early Wynn, a roughneck pitcher, if he ever deliberately threw at a batter's head, Wynn mentioned a .230 hitter who cut open Wynn's chin with a line 'The pitcher's mound is my office and I don't like my office messed To live on, as Smith does, in transmitted laughter is a tolerable approximation of immortality. up with a lot of blood." Listen to such talk long enough and the dry tang will seep into your style as it did into Smith's. He explained that Paul Waner's eyesight was so bad when he was hitting about .350 for the Pirates, he could not read from the bench the advertisements on the outfield fences. Smith said Waner gave the matter no thought, "for in his philosophy fences were targets, not literature." On a throne at the center of a sense of humor sits a capacity for irony. All wit rests on a cheerful awareness of life's incongruities.

It is a gentling awareness, and no politician without it should be allowed near power. Smith had it but was interested in laughter, not power. He was an American P.G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse, like Smith, was a souffle chef of light literature.

His prose was flawless and he had an almost pristine absence of solemnity in the employment of it. Smith, unlike Wodehouse, was capable of seriousness, even anger. But not for long. Berkow's book is a study of craftsmanship, always a commodity in short supply. A biography of a writer succeeds if it sends readers scurrying off to the writer's books.

Even people utterly uninterested in sports should sample Smith. Do you care about rodeos? Neither do I. But I believe that any good use of the English language is good for the soul, and that this opening sentence of a Smith column should be put in front of all fledgling writers: E. Feeke Tooke, born in Redfield, South Dakota, fifty-nine years ago but dragged up on a homestead outside Ekalaka, Montana, was having the very hell of a time with the showy palomino between his knees, but he wore a grin that lit up the corners of Oklahoma City's Fairgrounds Arena." Smith, says Berkow, suited America's mood in the late 1940s, when the nation wanted to catch up on missed fun. Smith's syndicated column prospered then.

Smith, says Berkow, wrote the way Smith said Pete Rose plays baseball, with "an almost lascivious enthusiasm." The columns about Society Kid Hogan and C. E. Feeke Tooke were obituaries and were included in a book Absent composed entirely of farewells. Melancholy reading? Hardly. "Bill Alexander (coach at Georgia Tech) was a gallant gentleman and an intractable fighter for the football player's inalienable right to sign checks with an X.

If a good defensive tackle wished to carry a book under his arm when he strolled the campus, Bill did not offer serious objections, although he disliked ostentation. He was, however, unalterably opposed to eyestrain." Journalism is generally perishable stuff, but your local library will have some of Smith's books, in which you will constantly bump into sentences that begin like this: "Three winters ago when purity, like a worm in the bud, was making inroads into college football I never met Smith, who died in 1982, but I imagine he laughed in 1962 when he wrote that sentence about purity, just as I laughed when I read it 24 years later. To live on, as Smith does, in transmitted laughter is a tolerable approximation of immortality. (c) 1986 Washington Post Writers Group Readers' Forum Thanks to those who made it a success Editor, The Gettysburg Times: On behalf of the board of Downtown Gettysburg I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the many individuals that helped to make Country Times Downtown such a great success: The Gettysburg Times, the employees and their families of tbeTimes, Radio Station WGTY, (Medic 28) Gettysburg Hospital, Adams County Chapter of the American Red Cross, The Gettysburg Borough Police Department, Terry Coddington, Adams County Fruit Growers Association, Adams County Dairy Association, Penn Gate Farm, Adams County Women's Softball League, the County Extension office, Kennie's Market, Agway, Adams County Rescue Mission, Grannie's Attic, Sheaffer Bros, La Bet, Riggeal's Barn, Martin's Rolls, Apple A Day, Lawver's Bicycle Shop, Mason-Dixon Dairy, and those who participated in the many events. Robert L.

Wright Downtown Project Director On our knees By John Lear The word "discovery," it seems to me, has been given misleading prominence in the history of science. It carries connotations of instant recognition. And, as someone far wiser than I has said, bearers of new knowledge seldom come to us in leaps and bounds; much more often they are traveling on their knees. I have just finished reading a sharply etched illustration of that reality in one of the more sedate publications available in the public libraries of this of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America." The story begins in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with an engineer named Robert Mann. A quarter century ago, he became fascinated by the normal ease of the human skeleton's articulation of the bones that dangle on it.

The explanation, he reasoned, must lie in the elaborate set of unobtrusive bearings that lubricate the often very complicated movements. The bearings are made of cartilage, which constitutes our tendons. What is the seemingly magical grace in cartilage that reduces the friction of motion close to zero? All that Mann had to work with at first in seeking an answer to that question were small discs of cartilage cut from the tendons of cadavers. An enormous disadvantage attended use of these "plugs," as they are called in dissecting rooms. The lifeless tissue could not replicate the ebb and flow of water through the cartilage when it was under pressure.

That flow, acting as oil does in facilitating the motion of motorcar pistons, revealed itself as the secret of the effectiveness of the bearings of the human machine. To get deeper into the mystery of the absence of friction, Mann teamed up with two research physicians on the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital, William Harris and W. L. Hodges. The team focussed attention on one of the heaviest loads any bearing in the body has to carry repeatedly day after day.

The bearing carrying that load is the cartilage that forms the lining of a large natural socket in the base of the pelvic bone, which is known to physicians as the acetabulum. Within the acetabulum the ball-shaped head of the thigh bone the femor normally swivels freely. To measure the shifting physical pressures that occur in the acetabulum, the researchers installed miniature electronic circuits inside metal prostheses they substituted for femor heads in cadavers. Here another complication in the research arose. The cadaver muscles no longer possessed the power to contract and relax, as living muscles do.

By the year 1984, osteoarthritis an excruciatingly painful and debilitating affliction caused by deterioration of the cartilage lining the acetabulum was attacking increasing numbers of people in an aging population. Metal prostheses were replacing fractured femor heads by the thousands. One of the victims was a 73-year-old woman, identified by the editors of "Proceedings" only as Mrs When the neck of Mrs. right thigh bone fractured without warning, fortune placed her within reach of Mass General. She consented not only to replacement of the head of the broken femor with a metal prosthesis but to use of the prosthesis as an experimental laboratory.

Fitted precisely inside the metal ball was a set of ten tiny sensors designed to register changing pressures exerted at ten different points inside the socket where the metal ball swiveled. The changes were recorded 235 times every second while Mrs F. was under observation by her doctors during the immediate post-operative and subsequent phases of her recovery from the operation. The recording went on as she rose from a sitting position to stand erect, walked, jogged, climbed stairs and jumped on cue. A radio, antenna that had been nestled in the bottom of the prosthesis broadcast the recorded messages to receivers in the Mass General and M.I.T.

laboratories permanently tuned to Mrs 's hip. No living human acetabulum had ever before auditioned in this manner. And the recorded rhythms were startlingly different from those the medical research recording crew expected. Most surprising of all was the extraordinary burst of pressure exerted when Mrs. F.

stood up from a sitting position. The energy engaged in that one motion shot three times higher than the peak registered in Mrs. hip while she was walking on a level surface. The direction the pressure was traveling when Mrs. F.

reached an erect position, a multitude of sufferers from low back pain will be interested to learn, was not upward toward the top of her hip, where the recording crew expected it but backward to the base of her spine. Mrs. exquisitely patient performance deserves and will surely get in the annals of surgery anonymous recognition as the leading lady in an epochal advance in medicine. The significance of seemingly unimportant details becomes clear in Mass General physician Harris' statement that as much as 90 percent of the osteoarthritic condition can be attributed to structural abnormalities in the hip joint. These can be subtle exaggerations of normal pressures reflecting an uneven fit that irritates and progressively erodes the cartilage.

Close to 50 million Americans and hosts more abroad are afflicted by osteoarthritis. Conquest of the disease will almost certainly take years to complete. However, we may quite soon see, as a result of the experiment Mrs. F. participated in, improvement in post-operative rehabilitation The pressures inside Mrs.

reconstructed hip turned out to be only 4 percent greater when she used a cane than when she took her early steps out of bed with the help of a single crutch. This has suggested to the doctors that it may be possible to free patients from the crutch phase of recovery to the more convenient cane than is now the rule just as patients recuperating from other types of operations have proved able to get out of bed and return home faster than in times past..