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University Daily Kansan, April 7, 1981
Opinion
The return of baseball
The snow (what little came this year) may have long ago disappeared, and that exciting astronomical event, the vernal equinox, may have occurred two weeks ago, but it still isn't spring yet—at least, not in the eyes of a baseball fanatic. It's not spring until the end of this week, when baseball returns to the hearts and minds of America.
The long wait makes the return all the more sweet. Six months of nothing but football and basketball are enough to drive a baseball fan nuts. All those days when the sun didn't bother to peek out of the clouds, the ball fan waited, more or less patiently.
And about the time the tulips start exploding in manicured front yards, the
crack of a well-hit baseball comes ringing across a stadium to the ball fan's eager ears.
spring and baseball—which are practically synonymous—have finally officially arrived.
Any baseball will do—major league, farm club, college—it makes no difference. Baseball watched in a spacious, teeming stadium and baseball imagined with the help of nasal radio announcers is baseball just the same.
Suddénelly, all those world events that seemed so important in December occupy a low spot in the batting order. The first spot is occupied by baseball mania, and that's enough to last at least until October.
Year's fashions unbearable vet women still bear them
It's spring, and the moguls of Paris, Rome and Seventh Avenue once again have shown a fashion-hungry public what they thing should be, or not covering, the bodies of Americans.
God help us, for once again we women have to readjust, realign and redesign our wardrobes to the whims and fancies of the designers to be accepted into the social world.
And the sad part about the compliance is that it is useless to fight.
We've tried to fight. In 1946, the Parisian.
CYNTHIA
CURRIE
Christian Dior, decided that American women were tired of government restrictions that had eliminated coat cuffs, attached hooks and skirts with hems of more than two inches. So Dior created everything for the woman that the war years' attire had not been designed for, length skirts, gaudy handbags, hats and wore Paris' decree to the fashion world.
Magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Glamour oozed and coogled over the yards of fluff, heralding the drapery as a chance to be free and feminine. The simple, straight, hump and short skirts and uniforms were rumored in the Atlantic as Paris reached the States.
Nobody, especially the men, who were unwilling to lose the length of leg they had gained, was happy with Dior. "Little Below the Knee" clubs protested the demise of the short skirt and the tyranny of French design, but the protests dwindled and Dior's mastectomy literally head to foot, by the women who once depleted and picketed against them.
And the designer's hold on to the fashion corner and the whims of women have not changed. Each new season, which is most likely a repeat of an old season with enough of the same clothes, will give new clothes to update a wardrobe, appears more bizarre than the last. No matter the physical pain or torture, if the designers say it's chic, women wear it.
A perfect example of tortuous design is the heels of shoes. In the past 10 years, women's feet have been subject to wedges (multicolored sandals with flat tree stumps for heels) and six-inch spike-heeled espadrilles that eithernumed the ball of the foot or strangled the calf with their cross-partner heel. The woman can be managed to adequately reposition the angle tears protube from the foot. And, of course, it's all for the sake of fashion.
And that fashion will slither down to the department stores and sit, waiting, for its first victim. The first to buy the hot pants, the maxi or the jumpsuits.
When it happens, and the fashion-conscious are on the street, the willpower of the masses collapses. The animosity toward color, design or lack of comfort vanishes, and whatever was thought of as totally unwearable last year is hanging in the closet this year.
It's already happened. Irate women have staged individual protests as a result of the designers' latest. The subject of these protests? Why, the miniskirt. The miniskirt that the women of the '40s lived with, the women of the '60s admired and the women of the late '70s loathed, has made a comeback on the fashion runways.
Without a pause, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue are recommending the looks for the times when "a woman wants to look extraordinary." According to Anne Hollander, a fashion commentator and author of "Seeing through Clothes," the new short skirts are called *Fashion Skirts* because they make the youthful, rebellious spirit that miniskirts once symbolized.
Well, they've evoked it and the rebellious spirit has prompted one woman, who identifies herself in letters as "Knobby Knees," to pied against the oh-so-revealing short skirt of the '60s. Many women agree with poor Knobby, but unfortunately for the protesters, history most likely will repeat itself and the fashion world undoubtedly will win.
Next fall no one but Dior, Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt will know what will be in store for the fashion-conscious woman. But, no matter. Whatever the tripping and trappings, the beads and baubles, and however they are draped across the female form, sooner or later, for better or for worse, the women of the fashion-consistent set succumb.
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should be written on the home town or faculty or staff position.
The Kansan reserves the right to edit letters for publication.
Letters to the Editor
Reactions to shooting were shocking
To the editor:
I am writing this letter in reference to some "profound" comments made in the University Daily Kansan after the attempted assassination of our president. Generally I am not one to react too drastically to what I read in papers, but what I saw me so angry I had to say something.
To the person who said, "I was not a bit disturbed," let me make a correction. You are disturbed. It's sad that four years of people's lives may have been wasteed the educations of you.
The remark that Reagan got what he deserved was brilliant. I'm sure Jim Gravely will go a long way.
Chuck Torrence
Topeka sophomore
As far as the comment that others didn't seem to care, let me say that I damn sure do. The attempted murder of anyone is a tragic event. The fact that no president just brings it inside the closest to him.
In light of what was said, we would like to conclude by saying that if we are going to place restrictions on the type of people who can own a car, we would ought to restrict the type of people we educate.
Letters Policy
I am disgusted and angered by the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. I believe that John H. Winstock is a very disturbed man, and he should be shocked by it, but I am beginning to accept it.
What I will never accept or understand are the reactions of some of the people in this country. For months I have been verbally attacked by individuals who do not approve of my deep love for Iran and the Reagan. For months I have listened to people express their hopes that the president would die.
To the editor:
Don't plan parties yet
I read and heard some reactions to Monday's events, and I am horrified that some individuals were pleased with the attempted assassination. I have been told that at some Lawrence schools, children cheered when the announcement was made about the shooting. I think it is frightening that people are bringing up their children to believe an attempt murder is cause for celebration.
There are no words capable of describing the August I don't feel for those people, and I use the word "wonder."
At the same time I am feeling all these emotions, I feel great pride in President Reagan, James Brady, Timothy McCarthy, Thomas Delahanty and their families. They have shown great courage and leadership in dealing with the crisis.
Lynne A. Pringle Wichita senior
For all of you who were delighted with the news of the attempted assassination, don't begin planning the parties yet. As Maureen Reagan told God, it's not going to happen to this president."
Students' comments not representative
To the editor:
Bob Moen's column, "Reactions mixed over shooting," was the most depressing thing I have read since last semester's Kanan editorial that suggested that if we are lucky, Reagan may die. Anyone who is concerned about the quality of the news media surely does not hold out much hope for improvement if last semester's editorialist is any way representative of what is to come.
But speaking of hope, there surely cannot be much of it if university students harbor attitudes about presidential assassination attempts such as those displayed in Moen's column. Reading the column, one is led to believe that a sizable percentage of this student body was indifferent to, or favorably disposed to, the attempts on the president. It does not, true then, that we certainly have a case of irroration that highlighted negative attitudes entirely out of proportion to those held by the student body. I am inclined to believe that, by questionable reporting, our student body has been maligned.
I suspect that many of these students who said such things as, “I was not a bit disturbed,” “I was surprised and happened soon,” “That is why I am surprised because of what he is doing to minorities” and, “Did you hear the good news? Our president got shot,” would be the first to decry the “sickness” of our society when the majority does not agree with their beliefs on how problems should be addressed.
I agree, there is a sickness and, in my opinion, among the sickest are the students who expressed these views. Ironically, it seemed the students were not as sick as the teachers are immeasurably more mature and responsible.
Many citizens of Kansas will wonder how students come to react in this way. Was it the influence of home, the public and parochial schools, the University, television or what? Unfortunately, the University is likely to get most of the "credit."
I hope this article misrepresents the attitudes of our student body. If it does not, then our future as a democratic society is certainly in jeopardy.
E.L. Hazel
Director, Institute for Economic Affairs
Fine arts necessary
To the editor:
This is a response to your recent editorial title "A disconcerting affair," which referred to the decision of Andre Previn to have the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra play in its street clothes because of the inadequate facilities of Hoch Auditorium.
The general thesis of your editorial was that the University has need of many other facilities more than a performing arts center. The unwritten thesis of your editorial was, in my opinion, that art is a frill, a decoration, to be only after essential things are provided for first.
Acting Chancellor Shankel had some very wise things to say for all of us the other day when he talked of the tendency of us academics to begin to cannibalize each other during times of stress. Thus, I do not want to take your bait and attempt to defend our need for facilities for the perplexed against the needs of the biological sciences or any other academic component of the University.
Our programs should stand or hold on their own merit. Your editorial seems to imply that we shouldn't build any new facilities for the likes of Previn and various other traveling-arts groups. 1
would submit to you that what we have proposed is not for Previn or the Pittsburgh Symphony but it is for the several hundred students on this campus seriously engaged in the study of one of the arts, students as seriously engaged in learning their art as they are in your craft of journeying from the state of music and their state from the state adequate facilities to rehearse and perform.
Don't take my work for it, editor. I would be
dont to give you the same guided tour of cramped
Murphy Hall that I gave your reporter. Come
toward the door and get in line with Band
Band rehearsal in the Orchestra Rehearsal Hall.
Finally, what we have proposed is not only for the few hundred students majoring in the arts: it is for the many thousands who need to experience the arts as part of their education in the liberal arts. You may believe that exposure to a major symphony orchestra is peripheral to your own education. To the extent that you have failed to be aware of part of the reason we have failed is because of the very fact that we have facilities inadequate for a major orchestra to perform.
Your editorial suggested that we might be attempting to build the Lincoln Center of the Midwest here at KU. It implied that such a facility was out of keeping with the central mission of the University. Is our mission less culturally oriented than Kansas State? (Take a look at McCain Auditorium the next time you're in Manhattan and make a quick comparison between the White Concert Hall and the Helen Spencer Theatre.) Or even washHannah? (See your White Recital Hall.)
At least I can thank you for keeping the issue alive. Continue to mention a new performing arts center, even if you see no value in it. Others will.
James Moeser Dean. School of Fine Arts
Pot Shots wasting Kansan's space
To the editor:
I am unable to figure out how Dan Torchia calls himself a journalist on the Kansan. I mean, this is college, Dan. We readers do not care to read about your inability to open doors (Pot Shots, March 27.) This particular piece is a waste of valuable space in a college paper.
In addition to that, Dan, why must you tell us of the hazards of spring weather (March 23)? Can you not find a more interesting subject than depicting the seasonal happenings of polen? And it really isn't difficult to revolve through revolving doors, Dan, if you really try!
Dreux DeMack
Olathe senior
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