Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, October 5, 1981
All's fair in fowl control
Pigeons seem to be dropping into the news around here almost daily.
The big issue, of course, is how best to control Lawrence's population of these peeky creatures.
State and local humane societies say that Avitrol, a chemical bird repellent used by the city and at least one local business, has been fatally poisoning pigeons and causing them to suffer before they die.
City Commissioners agreed to stop the city's use of Avitrol and to ask the Lawrence Humane Society to write a model ordinance for controlling the birds.
Fortunately, the humane society has a variety of alternatives from which to choose.
It can recommend allowing the continued use of Avitrol to discourage pigeons from roosting in places where they cause the greatest harm. Of course, this would enrage the pro-pigeon faction, and responsible parties likely would wake up with dead pigeons, frozen or otherwise, on their pillows.
Or the society could copy KU's pigeon-control program, which now includes the use of the sterility drug Ornitrol. Pigeons no longer seem to be a major problem at
the university, so the drug must be working reasonably well.
But there is a third, and as yet undebated, method for dealing with the pigeon problem.
One Lawrence man has suggested that the birds be trapped and eaten. He grew up on a farm in Iowa and used to do it all the time.
According to this resourceful individual, pigeons make a good and inexpensive meal, and they taste little different than quail or chicken. His technique for capture is to blind the birds with a flashlight and then throw a net over them. Presumably, the birds can be killed quickly after that and not be forced to suffer.
Instead of using chemicals to poison the birds, or sterilizing them and waiting for them to die out on their own, why don't we just start catching them ourselves and dining in style? Surely there is a budding entrepreneur among us who could come up with a good pigeon cookbook to help us all out.
It just might work. Community programs are all the rage right now. And as far as the humane society is concerned, it might be worth a try.
Federal money not needed for nation's arts to flourish
I'm not certain when the idea began.
I venture to guess, however, that the notion that money can make masterpieces is a very modern conceit indeed. If I'm right, it goes a long way toward explaining the weeping and gnashing of teeth from many people in the arts today.
You see, there's a good chance that federal money for the arts is going to be curtailed. President Reagan, now responsible in the eyes of many liberals for everything from public health to museums, has had the audacity to recomment cutting the government's art patronage in half.
Congress ignored Reagan and voted to give the arts in fiscal year 1982, approximately $4 billion.
DAVID
HENRY
million. But the warning flags have been raised. The future of federal money for the arts is in big danger.
This money generally comes in the form of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, founded in 1965 to support dance, music and visual arts. In its 16-year existence, the NEA had wonderful things, and in the past, many grants have gone for deserving projects.
But increasingly, the NEA's usefulness is being questioned. Its critics feel the NEA's main policy is to spread money around rather than to create serious art. Money goes to as many congressional districts as possible and, of course, is divided evenly among different groups and the like. It seems the NEA's primary aim is to satisfy as many customers as possible.
The endowment has lost sight of the idea that the end of any policy ought to be to accomplish something, rather than to distribute money.
"The NEA spends millions of dollars yearly," a Heritage Foundation report stated, to fund programs and policies that are unpopular with enduring artistic accomplishments.
Reagan's proposed cuts in the NEA were a call for rational federal funding. At the same time, he appointed a 26-member task force to look into private and corporate funding of the arts, two constantly overlooked areas of support. He also asked for revitalization of state and local arts programs—where bureaucratic control of artists is less stringent.
Strikingly, many in the arts fail to see the dancer of federal funding.
For one thing, such funding is always at the mercy of changing political moods. And W.A. Neilson, author of "The Big Foundation," warns of "the creeping advent of an official culture" . . . as a consequence of supporting the arts with government money."
Controversial art, suffice to say, has little chance of funding; after all, it may upset voters in the Third District back home.
Despite the advantages of non-government patronage, some artists are already mourning the death of American art, which will be just around the corner, they say, if the NEA is
E. L. Doctorow, a best-selling novelist, laments, "We shall become an immense army (if we put guns before butter). But we are not going to be no ball, will not be, no people but an emptiness."
Never has a bigger fiction been written. A Russian dissident like Aleksandr Solzenhytn wrote short stories and even enormous novels in a Siberian labor camp. Surely then, American art can survive, and even flourish, without federal patronage.
Worried artists would have us believe that art is as fragile as a greenhouse orchid. Turn down the heat and it dies.
Trimming the NEA will force new and old arts organizations to make greater demands on their creativity and marketability. Artists and arts groups with real talent and dedication should be able to prove themselves in the marketplace. If they can't survive the competition, they may well not be worth saving in the first place.
This is nonsense
The American arts are truly a national treasure. Life without music, dance and the visual arts would be bleak indeed. However, we need to take the arts out of their sealed glass case. I'm convinced the fresh air will do them good.
The new game in Iran
Ambition makes sinners into winners
What could lead a young Catholic to this?
My theory is that a tiny fairy named Ambition crawls into certain humans' ears when they are young and whispers. "You're gonna be big some day, child."
The implications are vague, but the effects devastating.
As for me, Ambition stole my aural virginity when I was five. One night while I slept, he crawled into my ear and projected previews of A's Man onto my dream screen.
What a future! The fairy removed all details from my head before departing, but I awoke knowing happily that I was destined. . .
After that night I never worried about my future. While other boys dreamed of combat and fire trucks, I amused myself in mud puddles, with ever an eye out for my destiny.
Yet, as with any bout of prolonged antipathy, he wrestled moment arrived when I saw that an alibi had been
One day during my second year of college I received a thesis-sized letter from a childhood friend at the University of Southern California. This fellow, who had already earned two degrees at 19, condemned my tendencies to take drink, eat and have hobbies I took up while I waited upon my future.
My world view merically broadened. Rather than the Chosen One, I suddenly felt like the promising young runner whose sheostrings had tangled in the starting blocks.
And I began to hear the roar of a distant crowd. Irecoverable miles ahead of me, turtish thighs lugged my rivals ever nearer the glory and the dream.
Though I covered my ears to drown out the screaming, it was too late. Ambition had flown in for me.
"You're gonna be big," the fairy said.
That dreadful word. "I'm no hero of the human will I said." How should I begin to root out all evil in this world?
"But how can I catch up with them?" I asked.
"Work," Ambition said. "You have to work."
Ambition laughed. "Untangle yourself from the limbs of your beer-drinking buddies, from the plots of your afternoon soaps. Meanwhile, I'll teach you to achieve."
And so while I freed myself from the slavery of sloth. Ambition whisited this advice:
"You need to develop a little self-hatred. If you happen to like yourself, there are cures for that. You might, in your nightly kneel beside bed, ask, 'What good am I?'
"Then reflect a while upon your more hideous aspects. As a Catholic, you should be well trained. Flood to floss your teeth, run 20 miles on a bike and carry--any of these is ground for self-confidence."
"But reflectiveness grows old, and soon you will unhinkingly remit 'I'm no good at all'."
"Then ask, 'What will I do about it?' Answer, 'I
KEVIN HELLIKER
shall get better ' 'How much better?' 'The best.'
"Upon this last point: if you experience some ambiguity as to what you shall be best at, cultivate your imagination. If you like baseball, for instance, pitch yourself to sleep at night."
"Make it the first game of the World Series—keep the games close, and you can play a full series every week. The bases are loaded, none of them are out, and you are brought in to protect a one-run leader."
"This notion of saving games is crucial," Ambition said, "for it can lead to greater success."
And with a flutter against my ear lobe, the tiny fairy was gone.
Although less far-fetched stories admit men into mental institutions, I relate these happenings because I suspect that many must have been on a shopping list for the fashion, this advice from the fairy proved good.
Within a year I became an achiever, a good boy, a fellow whose back is often pitted. I need say whether the experience was rewarding, for lately I've come to distrust my judgment. But if the reader wishes, he may draw conclusions for himself.
The reader may imagine himself a young student en route to an interview with an
established author who is on campus for a week and who has had the chance to read one of the books.
As the young writer walks across campus in a cloud of anxiety, he doles the eyes of passing students as if they were peering at him through a telescope while he lay pinned between two waders.
"I'm a terrible writer," he tells himself.
"Whatever made me think I could write?"
He taps on the door of the author's temporary office and does not enter when a deep voice says, "Come in." The author is probably referring to someone else. But the door swings open, and our student whispers his name four times before he's understood.
When he is seated before the writer's desk, he is asked, "How serious are you about writing?" Intensity. This is right up his alley. "I've written a book."
What are leading to?
'A great deal of pain is in here. Is the story
"This story is truly good," the author says.
What's he leading to?
"I've drank a lot of beer," the student said. "I mean I used to."
"I've drank a lot of beer," the student savors. "I"
"have deed of pain or is in here, is the story
true."
"I'd like to another story before I leave," she said. "This isnt a fluke, you certainly have the goods."
The young writer leaves the office with "the goods" ringing in his ears.
Campus, meanwhile, has shrunk. The other students seem like ants and then like nothing at all as the elated young man loses himself in his highly-cultivated imagination. Suddenly, he must write the best novel of the century, of all time.
His imagination leads him deep down the road to glory. He's already written the great novel, spent four years in the Oval Office, become the first man to walk on Pluto. And in his old imaginary age, he's grown religious; satisfaction is the gravest sin!
But what now? Ah, he wondered when he'd get that. He'd like to be crucified so he could rise from it.
from the data.
But dammit! Even that's been done before!
But dammit! Even that's been done before!
In my younger and more vulnerable years my ear was invaded by a fairy named Ambition who said, "Someday, ..."
What else could lead a Catholic to this?