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The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 6

Publication:
The Pantagraphi
Location:
Bloomington, Illinois
Issue Date:
Page:
6
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

fpD Friday, May 16, 1986 The Pantograph AS EDITORIALS LETTERS City 'trogs' emerge to fight handicapped This letter is to comment on the recent decision of the aldermen to deny handicapped people of our community an opportunity for residential living in proposed new facilities. The aldermen, along with other selfish interests, attempt to establish a "line of discrimination" for handicapped citizens. It is offensive to all those who share our nation's long-held tenet of equal rights for all. Are the aldermen willing to reverse the progress that has been accomplished through blood, sweat and tears so easily as, "My people don't want Only recently has society become enlightened enough to remove these handicapped citizens from institutions belonging to an era of the past. Apparently the aldermen and some of our citizens have not been able to adjust to the changing environment that has given our handicapped citizens a better life, however limited it may be.

Obviously, the aldermen lack compassion, or maybe just a basic understanding of the value of human life. However, when it came to Diamond-Star or Jumer's, or most any other commercial venture, there was no stopping the aldermen even to the extent of encouraging and providing creative financing for tax districts with bonds to be backed by the taxpayers. Incidentally, I wonder if they applied the new fire alarm test to these applicants? Maybe, just maybe, there are taxpayers that don't want to be obligated to back these bonds. But business Ryan's withdrawal best for campaign The allegations that James T. Ryan physically abused his present and former wives threatened to cloud his candidacy for attorney general and overshadow other issues in the campaign against incumbent Neil Hartigan.

Ryan did the right thing in stepping down promptly, instead of letting the matter drag on for weeks of mudslinging that was likely to result in his quitting the race anyway. Attacks on a candidate's background are a standard campaign tactic. A candidate should not quit at the first sign of trouble. However, in Ryan's case, the accusations were based on police reports and divorce papers. That does not mean he was guilty or that the allegations were true.

It does mean Ryan would have had a difficult time "proving" himself innocent. "Innocent until proven guilty" may be the law of the land in criminal courts, but it seldom applies in politics. Some may say Ryan's marital problems were a private matter that should have remained private. However, as a candidate for the state's top law enforcer, Ryan must be open to close scrutiny of his past involvement with the crimi-, nal justice system. The inquiry was appropriate, although it is a shame that Ryan found himself in such a position.

His swift withdrawal from the race was best for him, his family, the Republican party and hopes of a good campaign. The attorney general campaign had not yet begun in earnest. If the Republicans quickly fill the vacancy on the ticket, the race can resume with little time lost and little damage. There are many important issues in the campaign: the role of the attorney general, effective representation of and service to the public, fiscal responsibility, duplication of effort and "playing politics," to name a few. The Republicans should look for a strong candidate who can address these issues.

Support group forms for incest survivors I very much appreciated the article by Scott Richardson in the Sunday, May 11, Pantagraph about "Young victim of sexual abuse learns to start life anew." Increased public awareness of sexual abuse and incest is very important, for the personal effects of having to "keep the secret" are devastating to the victims of abuse. As a therapist for children and for families in difficulty, I know the healing which can occur when persons have the courage to seek help and to make changes in their lives. Unfortunately, many victims of sexual abuse and incest who were abused as children have "kept the secret" into adulthood and are to this day dealing with the emotional (and physical) fallout alone and without support or help in working through the difficult issues involved. For such persons, Illinois Pastoral Services Institute at The Health Center in Bloomington is about to begin a supporttherapy group for adult survivors of incest. I will co-lead this group.

CAROLYN TREADWAY Normal before compassion, before understanding, before the needs of our handicapped. Aldermen are supposed to represent all the people, not just those who reside within some artificial boundary called "wards." "All the people" include the handicapped. I compliment Martha Sullivan for her story in the May 11 Pantagraph. Unfortunately, the troglodytes of our community are still among us, and they are known as aldermen. RAYMOND J.

DeFILIPPO Bloomington GEORGE F. WILL think: "Gosh, at our house we go for days without mentioning it." But not long ago (absolutes are perishable these days), it was all conservatives talked about. In 1976 Reagan, campaigning against President Ford for the Republican nomination, mentioned the canal negotiations and got a throaty roar from a crowd. Soon, opposition to the canal treaties became a test of conservative purity. (Never mind that some conspicuous conservatives, such as Bill Buckley, supported the treaties.) Baker supported the treaties.

In the late 1970s, before conservatism came of age, many conservatives defined themselves by their animosities. In 1980 that petty habit, acquired in long years in the political wilderness, made Baker its victim. He, even more than George Bush, was the "moderate" that some conservatives loved to hate. In addition to the canal treaties, his sins were general (he as a Washington and particular (he supported establishment of the Education Department). Talk about perishable absolutes: Today the secretary of education, William Bennett, is the conservatives' pinup among Cabinet members.

BUT THE CANAL WAS THE sin that mattered most. Baker remembers Missouri Sen. Jack Danforth, a dry wit, telling him after a weekend back home: "Howard, Missouri is a state of nearly 6 million souls of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, united by a burning devotion to the Panama Canal." But now, says Baker, the "canal decade" is over, and in 1988 everyone seeking the Republican nomination will be a Reaganite. During a recent checkup, a doctor told Baker he was overweight. Baker cheerfully replied, "Yes, and you're ugly." He gets away with such badinage because he has a manner as soft as hominy.

Another senator once described Baker as "a political neutron He destroys an opponent without destroying that opponent's ego. But Baker's ego has absorbed some bruises. Before winning the position of Republican leader in the Senate, he twice lost contests for that job. In 1976 he was encouraged to hope that he would be Ford's running mate. When Bob Dole was chosen, Baker said, in a steely voice, that next time his fate would be in his own hands.

But in 1980 he withdrew after finishing a distant third in New Hampshire (Reagan 49.6 percent, Bush 22.7, Baker 9.8). Baker's placid informality today masks a determination to do it right this time around. The conventional wisdom is that he cannot: that he is a born legislator unable to make people think of him as president. A LEGISLATIVE CAREER, with its focus on this bill, then that one, then another unrelated one, pro-; duces (in the enchanting jargon of one Republican professional) "tree politicians rather than forest politicians." That is, legislators do not master the art of. speaking thematically and expressing a broad vision.

The Republican professional just cited assesses Baker's chances by quoting the baseball man in the novel "Bang the Drum Slowly" who says of weak pitchers that they could win a few games "if God" drops everything else." Baker is going to put lots of eggs in the conventional basket, New Hampshire, where his campaign is being sponsored by Sen. Warren Rudman, who is co-author of the Gramm-Rudman law but is otherwise a good citizen. Baker is unemployed (like the winner of the 1976 Democratic and 1980 Republican and 1984 Democratic nominations), so he will be able to do the "retail i politics" which New Hampshire expects. If he runs well there, and then runs off straight into a Southern regional primary, he could quickly become, in the argot of his vocation, "a player." Stranger things have happened. Stranger, but not more pleas- ing.

This time, Baker wants to do it right Different vocations have distinctive vocabularies. Dan Quisenberry, Kansas City Royals' relief pitcher and linguist, once said of a former teammate: "He didn't sound like a baseball player. He said things like 'nevertheless' and 'if, in Howard Baker, former senator and future presidential candidate, talks like a politician. For example? O.K., he says that because he carried so much water for President Reagan as majority leader throughout the first term, he, Baker, has got well after a political illness concerning the canal, and now he just has to "get out amongst the people and get it done." Antecedentless pronouns and other mysterious references are apt to be a part of a politician's patois. The "it" Baker intends to get done is the capture of the Republican nomination.

The canal well, you remember the unpleasantness concerning the "giveaway." Recently Baker spent several days among Southern Republicans and was gratified, to put it mildly, that no one not even some fellow in a flannel shirt and a CAT cap mentioned the Panama Canal. You may Two mayors leave on beneficial trip Mayors Jesse Smart of Bloomington and Paul Harmon of Normal leave today for a 13-day visit of Japan and Bloomington-Normal's Sister City of Asahikawa. We hope they have a pleasant trip that further strengthens the friendly ties between the Twin Cities and Asahikawa. We also hope the personal contacts with potential auto plant suppliers will pay off. The strong Sister Cities program has been given some of the credit for bringing the Diamond-Star Motors Corp.

plant to Blooming-ton-Normal. Participation in the program demonstrated the area's interest and openness in sharing Japanese culture. The Sister Cities program should not be thought of as an economic tool. Its benefits extend far beyond that. Cultural enrichment getting to know each other may be difficult to put a dollar value on, but that, does not diminish its importance.

The benefits of the program can be seen in the Japanese garden under construction at Ew-ing Cultural Center with the assistance of Asahikawa gardeners and landscapers. It can be seen in exchange students Hironobu Mori and Mari Nakagawa of Asahikawa who will participate in the Walk for Mankind Saturday in place of the two traveling mayors. While in Japan, the two mayors will meet with potential auto plant suppliers who might locate in Central Illinois. They will also meet with top Mitsubishi Motors officials and tour a Mitsubishi auto plant in Okasaka. The trip should be a beneficial one.

BILL FLICK tltL HAP AEART. after another it is one damn thing over and over." (Edna St. Vincent Millay) "Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." (Winston Churchill) "The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober." (W.B. Yeats) "Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once." (Unknown) "Sex drive is a physical craving that begins in adolescence and ends at marriage." (Robert Byrne) "We're all in this alone." (Lily Tomlin) "The truth is the safest lie." (Emerson) "Dr. Livingston I Presume." (Full name of Dr.

Presume) "The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get to the office." (Robert Frost) "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." (Cousins) "The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory." (Paul Fix) "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." (George Bernard Shaw) "When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself." (Louis Nizer) "When something good happens, you should wonder what God is saving up for you." (M. Brinkman) "Right in the middle of Congress, I saw this guy throwing up, and then another man came along, took a look at him, shook his head and said: 'I know just what you (Robert Kennedy) "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know." (Mark Twain) "Never keep up with the Joneses. Just drag them down to your level." (Quentin Crisp) "The future isn't what it used to be." (Dan But there is no course known as Everyday Life, which can be much more difficult than school.

Even chem lab. The "real" work world will never be confused with Miss Walleye's third-hour business class. Romeo and Juliet may have personified love, but they never faced marriage, a mortgage and maniacal kids who, on car trips, develop kidneys the size of lint. Life cannot be taught, only learned. As someone else said, experience is the best teacher, which doesn't explain why students pay tuition for 16 years.

What no one said is that experience isn't fun, either, because experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And on that note, I present my annual gift to graduates quotations that relate to "real" life. These aren't the Patrick Henrys. These are John Q. Publics.

I began this last year by offering 27 quotes. This year, I am adding 27 more. THESE WON'T HELP IN a little rain. But they might in the case of golfball-sized hail: "The two hardest things to handle in life are failure and success." (Will Rogers) "If you have a job without aggravation, you don't have a job." (Malcolm Forbes) "Everything has been figured out in life except how to live life." (Jean-Paul Sartre) "The school of hard knocks is an accelerated curriculum." (Menander) "Never accept a drink from a urologist." (Erma Bombeck) "It is only possible to live happily ever after day by day." (Margaret Bonnano) "While you're saving your face, you're losing your butt." (President Lyndon Johnson) "Until Eve, this was a man's world." (Richard Armour) "Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car." (Evan Davis) "IT IS NOT TRUE THAT life Is one damn thing Don't quote me, just quote everyone else Into each life, Longfellow once said, a little rain must fall. What he didn't add was this can be followed by golfball-sized hail, damaging winds and a State Farm claims agent showing up at your door.

Early to bed and early to rise, Benjamin Franklin added, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. That may have been fine for Ben. He had a day job. But what if you work nights? Does this mean you'll be sick, poor and dumb? Or, maybe humorist James Thurber defined it better when he said: "Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead." I am reminded of all of the above, as unlikely as it may seem, because this is graduation time. In the next two weeks, if it has not already occurred, more than 12,000 Central Illinois scholars will don robes and mortarboards and line up for handshakes from principals and university presidents as well as Mom, Dad and Grandma who flew in from Helena.

Then they will take with them all they have learned. And then they will learn something else namely, what they haven't learned. In school, we are taught the ABCs, how to add and subtract, and that the multiplication of man depends on the division of cells. We memorize "to be or not to be," and "give me liberty or give me death." Tho Pantograph Independent in everything, neutral in nothing. founded Jon.

14, 1(37, by Jtm W. JOHN R. QOLDRICK Publisher and Chief Operating Officer PETER E. THIERIOT Chairman of the Board BILL WILLS Managing Editor LENORE 8. SOBOTA Opinion Pagea Editor.

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Years Available:
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