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daily nebraskan
tuesday, november 25, 1980
j5)
CD
Progress cannot stop our environment
Happy Thanksgiving. During this much-awaited
and much-needed break from academic pressure,
we should abide by tradition and identify those
things for which each of us can be thankful.
While we enjoy our festive meals and family
activities, realizing our good fortune over others
in the world, an effort should be made to hope
that future Thanksgivings are as enjoyable.
Each of us likely will eat all too well on
Thursday. We have a right to be thankful for
that, and to be thankful for our lifestyles. Perhaps
it is appropriate to think of the world's starving
people, but this holiday is to enjoy what we
have not what somebody else doesn't have.
But there are some harsh realities about our
own neals that we should be aware of, if for no
other reason so we can have more of the same in
futui generations.
CI; micals and pesticides that slowly burn away
at tin earth's fertility will enable our food to be
so good, and so plentiful. Burning oil and other
natural resources will enable us to stay warm.
Various resources also were used in erecting our
shelter.
Parent is disturbed
by real-ideal conflict
BOSTONIt was dark outside and snowing. The first
flakes of the year, always silent and magical, had begun
carr tging the cars, the streets, even cans around their
ho i.
K. one night at least, it seemed that any griminessin
the world would be, could be, whitwashed.
But inside the house, the people in front of the tele
vision set were watching the newest version of an old
story, "The Diary of Anne Frank."
1 1
loocsman
The background of Anne's life in her family's hideaway
was not new to the brown-ups. They watched the per
formance with a different eye, a different hide. But the
girl beside them wasn't as tough.
She had not learned yet to take magazine covers of
starving children off the breakfast table. She had not
learned to discuss the inhumane intellectually. She had
not learned what grown-ups learn: To put pain in its
place.
She was still a child who closed her eyes at scary parts
in the movies. . .and was afraid of Anne's Nazi murderers.
When it was over, well past her bedtime, the girl turned
to her mother and said didn't ask, but said "That
couldn't happen here."
I lor mother paused for a moment and answered honest
ly. "I hope not."
The girl, unsatisfied, got under her guilt and said diect
ly. "I just want you to tell me that everything is going to
be ok until I grow up." The mother answered. "I know
you do. I'd like to tell you that, too."
They had been here before, talking about cancer and
war, accidents and evil. At some of these moments, the
girl wanted a gift of reassurance. The mother wanted to
give it to her. The child wanted protection. Hie parent
wanted to protect. It is in the nature of things, of parent
and Juld things.
nebraskan
UPSP 144-080
Editor m chief Randy Essex; Managing editor: 8ob Lannin;
News editor: Barb Richardson; Associate news editor Kathy
Chenault, Assistant news editors: Tom Prentiss and Shelley Smith;
Night news editors: Sue Brown, Nancy Ellis, Bill Graf; East Cam
pus Bureau Chief: Jim Garret. Assistant night news editor: Ifejika
Okonkwo. Entertainment editor: Casey McCabe; Sports editor:
Shelley Smith; Photography chief: Mark Billingsley; Art director
David Luebke; Magazine editor: Diane Andersen.
Copy editors- Sue Brown, Nancy Ellis, Maureen Hutfless. Lori
McGinnis, Tom McNeil, Jeanne Mohatt, Lisa Paulson, Kathy
Sjulin. Kent Warneke, Patricia Waters.
Business manager: Anne Shank; Production manager: Kitty
PoJicky; Advertising manager: Art Small; Assistant advertising
manager Jeff Pike.
Publications Board chairman Mark Bowen, 475-1081. Pro
fessional adviser Don Walton, 473-7301 .
The Daily Nebraskan is published by the UNL Publications
Board Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semes
ters, except during vacations.
Address Daily Nebraskan. 34 Nebraska Union, 14th and R
streets, Lincoln, Neb . 68588. Telephone: 472-2588.
Material may be reprinted without permission if attributed to
the Daily Nebraskan, except material covered by a copyright.
Second class postage paid at Lincoln, Neb.. 68510.
Perhaps more than anything else Thursday,
we should be thankful for what is left of the
earth. Untapped energy reserves, slowly disap
pearing forests, mountains too awesome to be
leveled by man's technology all offer hope for
future Thanksgivings.
Of course it would not be a traditional Thanks
giving if we didn't think about the Pilgrims and
the Indians. It was a beautiful, unconquered
continent on which they dined, reasonably free
of technological device and human prejudice.
Every mountain and every tree was something
man had to make use of, just for survival. The
undeveloped landscape was not a refreshing
natural beauty preserved only by government
protection; it was a challenge- an enemy of life.
Now, after conquering the elements on this
continent by finding ways to cope with its win
ters, by learning to live and grow things on its
vast prairie and even in its desert and mountains,
we find ourselves back at square one.
Our chemicals and technologies take from the
earth and put back pollutants. Our population
grows until people have to live on chemical
dump sites, their water has to be heavily treated
and the air is not always safe.
Now, like the first settlers, every mountain and
tree must be used to its fullest potential. But
unlike the first settlers, there is not plenty to go
around for much longer. Our technology has
taken from the earth; now it must continue to
provide for us while preserving what is left in
nature.
The signs are all around us, transmitted in so
what tones at the end of newscasts -Love Canal,
nuclear waste, diminishing tropical forests, radio
active clouds from Chinese thermonuclear tests,
the scarcity of oil. We must learn to see them.
That should be our hope; that we will see the
signs, and put together the pieces of the puzzle.
And hope is that for which we can be most thank
ful on Thursday.
We can be thankful and hopeful in our real
ization that man's progress was unable to stop
the power of Mount St. Helens. The elements
still rule, and like the Pilgrims, we must learn to
survive within the dynamics of our environment.
WgLFAR?
ft KAJ
Yet somehow as the girl grew older, her mother was
unable or unwilling to frost reality with an inch of fresh
snow. She was reluctant to give false assurances.
When the girl was a baby, safety was a matter of put
ting covers on electrical sockets and gates on stairways.
Now, tlus mother was far more conscious of her own in
ability to protect her child's safe world.
Halfway to adulthood, children have been armed with
their own awareness.
But it wasn't quite that simple. There are always the
contradictions. We don't want to frighten the kids and
don't want to lie to them. We want to be realistic but not
ghoulish. We want to make them feel secure but not
sanguine.
She knew a woman who parented by terror. The wom
an's mind was a file full of every known childhood disast
er from crib death th choking. She enlarged her list of
cautions until her sons were straightjackcted in her para
noia. Yet the children remained, like all of us. vulnerable
to accidents and events.
She knew a woman who tloated into a college dormi
tory untouched and out of touch. She was almost blessed
ly unaware of bad intentions, of the dark side of human
nature. But the very first blow a flawed man, not an evil
one left her crippled.
Parents are the careful people. We want to wrap the
children in gauze. We want to save them from war,
disease, evil. We have an investment in believing the world
will be good to them.
But we arc equally aware they may be caught between
the ideal and the real world. Between their good impuls
es and the dangers.
So we tell them to be trusting and not take candy
from strangers. We tell them to be generous and not let
anybody take advantage of them. We tell them to believe
that people are good and watch out for those who are evil.
We worry that some will be trapped, like Anne Frank
at the end of her diary and life, "trying to find a way of
becoming what I would so like to be and what I could be.
if there weren't any other people living in the world" -if
there weren't any evil in the world.
The mother watched the snow falling past the window
next to her daughter's bed. She wanted to paint and
promise a safe world. . .but she didn't. This is. she
thought, one of the things parents do. We supervise our
children's loss of innocence before the world does it for
us.
(c) 1980, The Boston Globe Newspaper CompanyWash
ington Post Writers Group
to the editor
In response to Kathy Chenault's Nov. 17 article, I
simply cannot believe that Kathy Chenault's idea of
space exploration is simply a quest for "galactic bragging
rights" and that it would be too expensive for our nation's
economy.
Teflon, garage door openers, heart pacemakers, satel
lite communications, computer technology, integrated
circuit chips and the library of new knowledge of the
human body and its physiological functions are only some
of the offsprings of the research carried out during space
exploration years.
Hundreds of new industries anJ countless obs. both
now and in the future, could be generated by the space
exploration industry. Wouldn't these jobs help bring
about the economic recovery we seek? Part of our econ
omy today is the space exploration industry. We wouldn't
be helping our ailing economy by cutting back on the
space program. Rather, we would be killing its potential
to help the economy.
John Shelso
Senior. life Sciences
Jaye Jarchow
Senior, Engineering
More letters on Page 5