KANSAN COMMENT FYI-the campers
This editorial comes under the heading of for-your-information. It's about those high school students who will be here on the campus for the next five weeks, and it's especially for those of you who will be saying to yourselves, as we faculty members tend to say each fall, "Boy, they're getting younger every year."
The "they're' are the 1,300 students who are going to be here for courses in the Midwestern Music and Art Camp. You oldtimers know what the camp is—though we must confess that sometimes we wonder if University officials really understand, or appreciate, the value and significance of the camp.
These boys and girls are here blowing their horns, playing their violins, singing, painting, sculpturing, making pottery, studying languages, working in labs, sweating over math problems, acting, orating and writing news stories. They come from all over the country. They're the best their high schools have to offer.
Most of them will look fresher to you than the more jaded University students, though you will notice that their hair will get a little longer and their attire a bit more draggled as the summer progresses, and as wet, sticky June yields to dry, sticky July. There's a bit more ingenuiness among those kids than among college types. They haven't become blase yet, and some of them still believe in things like cheer leading and football teams and debating. Some of them, too, probably are Junior League SDS, and some may have big ideas about the
Reformation of Our Society. Most of them will be too busy to be doing much agitating.
This editorial writer, who admits to what might be prejudice (no, that's not the word—call it leaning) toward these kids, is mainly sold on the camp, and what it offers. He has sat in the outdoor stands and in the University Theatre hearing them sing and play. He has seen some of their acting. He has taught them in journalism classes since journalism joined the camp program in 1963.
Many of these young people come back to KU. Certainly they go back home and serve as boosters for the University. A number of them, who were in last summer's camp, wrote in April, expressing their dismay at seeing, on nationwide television, what happened to the Union, where they had spent a bit of their time (though not much; they're too busy at the other end of the campus).
Some of these high school students will be meeting you, talking with you, performing for you. They're putting not only five weeks of their time into the camp; they're also putting a sizable amount of money. They think of themselves, while they're here, as University of Kansas people. If it isn't too boosterish, this friend of theirs (even though he doesn't know them yet) hopes that the faculty and students of KU will treat these young people so that the summer of 1970 will be one of the happy memories, and so that the five weeks here will help erase the memory of Walter Cronkite describing how part of the Kansas Union went up in flames.—CMP
Big stars out of work
By VERNON SCOTT UPI Hollywood Correspondent HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — It's a bad time for actors.
Many are selling their homes, limousines and other status symbols to keep solvent. The unemployment insurance lines are liberally sprinkled with famous faces and names.
National economics aside there are simply too many actors and too few movies and television shows to keep them busy.
Some have opted for other kinds of work. Others are hanging on awaiting a miracle.
One major star announced grandly that he was prepared to offer his services to television
after a long and heady career in movies. All three networks wished him well and declined with thanks.
Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Shirley MacLaine, Tony Curtis and other film stars who disdained television are hugging the medium with the abandon of a new found love.
'Sir, the 3rd platoon has chipped in and would like to buy 40 Thai soldiers to take our place out here.'
The Lighter Side The little rich
By Dick West — UPI Columnist
WASHINGTON (UPI) At last count, the number of national associations headquartered in Washington stood at almost 800, give or take the National Association of Official Inspections Stations.
Some of these organizations may be altruistically motivated, but by and large they serve as spokesmen for "special interests" and "pressure groups." For that reason I ordinarily would be loath to see the republic burdened with yet another association.
Recently, however, I learned that an important socio-economic group in this country is being battered about, apparently for lack of organizational strength.
I am therefore recommending that all of the low grade millionaires in America band together and form the National Association of Little Rich.
The plight of this group came to my attention in a published comment by Mayor Mat Feldman of Englewood, N.J., regarding the economic impact of the recent stock market slump.
"This market has been particularly hard on the little rich," Feldman was quoted as saying. People worth $1 million to $4 million-somewhere in there-have started to pull in their horns."
I am sure you will agree that in a democratic society such as ours, a strong little rich class is
needed for political stability.
The little rich have long played a valuable sociological role by serving as a buffer between the non rich and the middle rich, just as the middle rich serve as a buffer between the little rich and the big rich.
Since preservation of the little rich as an economic class obviously is in the national interest, I would like to see them organize an association to lobby for protective legislation.
It is easy to say that the little rich got themselves into their present predicament and that government assistance would only encourage shiftlessness and irresponsibility on their part. But that is a shortsighted as well as a callous view.
Should the present little rich class cease to exist, it would be exceedingly difficult to build another one. Because the only way you can make a small fortune in the stock market nowadays is to start out with a large fortune.
This might be linked with a subsidy program under which the little rich would be paid not to play the market.
One goal might be a federal subsistence program. Anytime the net worth of a little rich man dropped below $1 million the government automatically would reimburse him for his stock market losses.
BOOKS
SUNDAY THE RABBIS STAYED HOME, by Harry Kemelman (Crest, 75 cents)—Third in the enjoyable series of mystery novels dealing with Rabbi David Small, who fights his congregation and solves murders. In this one the rabbi becomes involved, at Passover time, in murder, marujana, and militants. Kemelman is literate and his rabbi hero is a joy.
***
THE LOST QUEEN, by Norah Lofts (Crest, 95 cents)—Romanic historical novel stuff, this one about Princess Caroline Matilda, sister of King George III of England (yeah, he's the one), and her marriage to Christian, crown prince of Denmark, and her affair with the king's physician. History goes Gothic in this one.
SEVEN SEATS TO THE MOON, by Charlotte Armstrong (Crest, 95 cents)—Suspense from the late Charlotte Armstrong, whose novels were usually slight but almost always intriguing. This is one about a man who listens in on a conversation between his hospital roommate and a visitor, and gets himself involved in a terrorist plot.
EARTH IS ROOM ENOUGH, by Isaac Asimov (Crest, 75 cents) —Science fiction tales by one of the best writers in the genre.
There are funny ones here, and imaginative ones, and also the kind Asimov specializes in philosophical and thoughtful ones.
THE SECRET OF MIRROR HOUSE, by Patricia Maxwell (Gold Medal, 60 cents) —About a young girl who is invited to come live at Mirror House and doesn't realize, until too late, that it is a place of evil. If you haven't heard this plot you just haven't read any that is labeled "Gothic."
A SWELL LOOKING GIRL,
by Erskine Caldwell (Gold Medal,
75 cents)—Short stories by
Caldwell that go back to the 1930s.
Caldwell is one of the most earthy of all American writers,
and his early novels, especially,
were honest and now seem quite old-fashioned. There is good humor,
and there is sometimes violence,
and there is always a lot of sex in these stories.
LOVE IS THE THEME, edited by Douglas and Sylvia Angus (Premier, 95 cents)—A collection of short stories that reveal the new frankness and openness of writings about love and sex. The stories are fictional, and only a few of them are by truly well-known writers (J. P. Donleavy, Leslie Fielder, Herbert Gold, Jeremy Larner, and Vladimir Nabokov among them).
THE SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
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