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NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, May 3, 1994
158
Feeling guilty? Just dial 1-800-apology
Artist operates phone line for those seeking absolution
The Associated Press
NEWYORK — The nameplate for the apartment in midtown Manhattan's flower district reads simply "Anology."
Inside, a bank of answering machines in a back room beep and click regularly, recording sad, anonymous stories and dark, painful secrets.
Most callers apologize for crimes against humanity, large and small. But they also can listen to a taped recording of other people's transgressions and comment if they like.
One woman dialed in to confess that she didn't cry when a friend died of AIDS and apologized for not grieving properly. The next tape contained consoling words from a listener who said it was OK not to cry, that we all mourn differently.
This is the Apology Line, and Mr. Apology is at the controls of the electronic confessional.
So who is this man? Don't bother asking. Mr.
Apology won't give his name because he believes
his anonymity is important to the people across
the country who call and bare all to his machines.
This much is known about him: He is a midsized man, pudgy around the middle and in his early 40s, according to the gray in his beard and brown wavy hair.
Mr. Apology also is a rapt student of human nature, a thoughtful man with a gentle laugh who
scrupulously reserves judgment, even for what society deems its most heinous transgressors.
"What I try to get out of the Apology Line really is a broad picture of human nature, the kind of warts-and-all picture," he said during a recent interview over coffee in his kitchen.
"Whenever I feel that the Apology Line is going right into the heart of someone's psyche," he said, "that's when it's really good."
Mr. Apology started the line in 1980 as a way to collect apologies for an art exhibit. At the time, he had his own secret: He was a compulsive shoplifter. But he finally stopped, and thought a confessional might be a first step to help others solve their problems.
When he first started the anonymous confessional, Mr. Apology thought he would keep it going for about a year. But the calls kept coming and, 14 years later, the Apology Line is his avocation. He also publishes a quarterly magazine called Apology.
Experts say the Apology Line is similar to talk shows and computer bulletin boards that provide arenas for debate and that maybe there is something therapeutic in it.
"If people can talk about painful experiences or emotional issues and they have no other forum, this is probably a constructive service," said Brian Barry, a psychologist at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Many say an apology should be made face-toface.
"If you're apologizing to the air rather than
The numbers for the Apology Line are 212-255-
2748, 255-771-41 and 633-8323.
Numbersto call
KANSAN
Source; The Associated Press
directly to the person you have hurt, then it's just sterile and self-indulgent," said Janet Landman, a research psychologist at the University of Michigan and the author of "Regret: The Persistence of the Possible."
So the woman from Miami who called to apologize for selling her ex-boyfriend's car for $25 while he was in jail should call him.
The same goes for Brad, who called from Lawrence, Kan., to apologize to Miss Keach, his third-grade teacher, for tormenting her "the way a predator attacks the weakest member of a herd."
There are callers, of course, who owe a lot more than apologies, like the man who claimed to be a serial attacker or others who claimed to have killed.
Mr. Apology thinks some of these people use the line to spin ugly, fictional tales, but he said even these stories offer some clues to human nature.
If the tales are true, he said, he thinks criminals should pay for their crimes. But, he added, "It's just not my role. My job is just to face up to the fact that criminals are, in fact, human beings that may fall out of the social contract. I think it's worthwhile to find out who they are and what they have to say, how they got into the situation they're in."
Heart disease tied to tobacco in new research
The Associated Press
NEW YORK—Tobacco smoke may promote early stages of heart disease in children who chronically breathe it from other people's cigarettes, according to a study that found such an effect in young roosters.
Before the roosters were 6-monthsold, their arteries showed abnormalities, called plaques, of a size normally not seen until the second year of life, said researcher Arthur Penn.
The plaques are an early stage of atierosclerosis, a disease that can cause heart attacks.
Penn said it is not yet clear whether the results showed what happened in humans. But since atherosclerosis begins at early ages in people, the new
results suggest that secondhand smoke may speed up the process in children, he said.
In 1992, the American Heart Association declared secondhand smoke a major preventable cause of heart disease. The new study was exploring biological reasons for the link.
Prior animal studies have shown a similar effect in response to high concentrations of smoke, sometimes combined with high-cholesterol diets. But the roosters in the new study were fed low-cholesterol diets and breathed smoke levels resembling those found in bars. Penn said.
"We did everything to minimize the possible development of plaques except give the animals sidestream
(secondhand) smoke," he said.
He also said that it was not clear what component of tobacco smoke might be responsible.
Penn is a research professor of environmental medicine at the Nelson Institute of Environmental Medicine in Tuxedo, N.Y., part of the New York University Medical School. He did the work with Carroll Snyder and Lung Chi Chen, who are researchers at the institute.
Penn reported the work recently at the annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology.
Stanton Glantz, of the University of California, San Francisco, has done similar work with rabbits. Glantz said that the new work was important
because it showed an effect despite a low dose of smoke and a low-cholesterol diet.
In the study, 30 roosters were exposed to cigarette smoke for six hours a day, five days a week, between the ages of six weeks and 22 weeks. Those ages are considered young for the animals, which normally live about 12 years. And the exposure was relatively brief, less than 1 percent of their lifespans.
Ten other roosters breathed regular air. Later, laboratory examinations showed plaques from the smoke-exposed roosters were about 50 percent bigger, suggesting they developed faster in response to the smoke. Penn said.
Reporter's job spans 60 years of change, work
The Associated Press
CHEBOYGAN, Mich. — Gordon Turner arrived in July 1927 to work as a reporter for the Cheboygan Daily Tribune, salary $10 a week. His plan: Spend three months learning the basics of newspapering in this small northern Michigan town, then head for the big time.
Still working for the Tribune 60 years later, Turner wryly noted in a column: "This has been the longest three months of my life."
"I enjoy the work," he says in a soft, muffled baritone. "Td rather be working than doing nothing."
Now, it's even longer.
Turner recently celebrated his 88th birthday doing what he loves best, sitting behind his desk in the Tribute newsroom, banging out story after story on the Remington manual typewriter he bought for $12 decades ago.
Ask what keeps him going, and you'll get a straightforward answer.
The Michigan Press Association knows of no other reporter or editor who has held one job longer than Turner, according to director Warren Hovt.
Turner is a monument to a bygone era. Not just because he never caught on to the computers on which most reporters now compose their articles. A colleague punches his typewritten words into the Tribune's computer system.
Rather, it's the Turner brand of journalism that sets him apart. He called "Mr. Cheboygan," with good reason. In nearly 70 years of chronicling the life of this town, he has become its soul.
"He loves what he does and he loves this town," said Ellis Olson, a local historian and former mayor of the tourist and factory town of 5,000.
"I've never heard him say a bad word about anybody his entire life. He's always positive. He's a Chebogyan booster and lets you know it, but he doesn't editorialize — just gives the facts."
A city park was renamed for him.
The walls of his modest frame house are lined with honorary plaques. When he arrived for work on his birthday, two birthday cakes and a stack of gifts and cards awaited him.
Turner's title is news editor, but it's honorary. He is a reporter — and turns out more stories than reporters six decades his junior, editor Jillian Bozater savs.
His beat is, simply, the community.
Here's a Turner story on a local teenager resuscitating a heart-attack victim. There's a Turner report on a business expansion. On the sports page, Turner writes about football tryouts at Cheboygan High School.
He is best known, though, for his thrice-weekly, front-page columns.
Nothing in the Tribute is more popular, publisher Roy S. Trahan II says.
Turner wears horn-rimmed glasses and wide, plaid ties. An arthritic back bends him into a severe hunch. Local drivers keep watch for his dark-blue Chevy, which sometimes wanders across the center line.
"He writes in a style that should be taught in college now, but isn't," Trahan said. "It's upbeat; it makes you feel good about what you just read.
But he plays an occasional round of golf and still visits the archery range. During summer he's a familiar sight on the Chebogyan River, piloting his 15-foot motorboat.
"You'd think he'd be ailing and sickly at his age, but he just keeps right on," said Jerry Pond, who runs the Tribune's press room.
Townspeople and colleagues say they can't imagine the Tribune without Turner. But his long-postponed retirement might be drawing near.
"I'm 88 years old now," he said. "By the time I am 90, I think I'll be all through."
After a pause, he added, "Of course, when I was 60, I said I'd hold on until I was 65."
Told of Turner's musings on quitting, publisher Trahan chuckled and shook his head.
"I'll believe it when I see it."