`This Right of Privacy'

4.1.41..4.444.y •■•■,44., s4.61:144.: , RVER SE 250 OBA Journal of Free Voices A Window to the South Feb. 16, 1973 `This right of privacy'

Austin them, but because irrational emotionalism The decision came down the day infects them. And during the last 20, 30, Lyndon Johnson died and the impending 40, 50 years of public discussion of peace in Vietnam topped even that story. abortion, both sides have always seen the It was not what you call your slow news question, finally, as one of Right Against day, so the impact was muted. But it was Wrong. This has been true of the abortion not just the timing — even those who have debate to a far greater extent than it is of fought for, worked for and believed most public debates on such simple topics as deeply in the reform of our abortion laws defense posture, welfare reform, campaign did not feel like celebrating. There was one spending and the like. For example, who report of a party in the San Francisco could ever forget the Solid Rock League? office of the National Organization of For those of you who have never had a Women, but for many feminists it just chance to forget them, it should be noted didn't seem like a champagne occasion. It that the Solid Rock League of Women of was a little like the end of the war — more Houston is against genocide or child relief than joy. Sarah Weddington said slaughter. The Solid Rockers also oppose calmly that she was "pleased, very common-law marriages for teenagers, pleased." She is the Texas lawyer who won pornography and "the taking away of the case. religious freedom while atheism is being One way to look at the struggle over allowed in the schools." (One of the chief abortion is the journalist's way, sifting Solid Rockers once went to Pacifica radio slowly through the clips, most of them station in Houston to tape a discussion yellow and brittle with age. Story after program. She appeared accompanied by story is added to the big heap — the legal two hired male bodyguards, one of whom maneuverings year after year; the legislative sported a Canadian Mounties-type outfit reform efforts year after year; the with both a gun and a hunting knife in his obligatory "balanced" series from the belt. While the Rocker was doing the women's sections, some good, some poor; program the Mounty confided to a Pacifica the case histories, all that terror and misery staffer, "This isn't the strangest assignment reduced to 10 inches of type; the brief I've ever had: I was once asked to guard a death notices; the statistics stories, the barrel of pickles for 24 hours.") opinion polls; the gory ads from the Right What between all those aborted feti to Life groups; the Catholic papers, arguing dumped into buckets whilst still alive and again and again that that their position is all those 14-year-old girls with rusty not based on religious doctrine; doctors hangers stuck up 'em, anyone who kept his under indictment; the Florida woman head clearly did not understand the convicted of manslaughter because she got situation. an abortion; the slow changes, the medical association votes in favor of reform, the Fortunately, perhaps, for all of us, mental health organization votes in favor abortion eventually came down to a of reform, a legislator speaks out, a good question not of Right or Wrong but merely government group; more deaths, more whether it was constitutional. The decision statistics, more polls. was seven to two out of the Nixon Court, which reassures everyone except those who ABORTION HAS been one of the now want to excommunicate Justice messiest issues. Issues get to be messy not Brennan and hang the other six. Right to because reasonable folk disagree about Life! The Court's decision was based on Sarah Weddington FEBRUARY 18 TECH DRAMATISTS — Maxim Gorky's, "The MADRIGALS — Madrigal Singers from North Lower Depths," performed by Texas Tech drama The Texas State University, directed by Robert W. students; through Feb. 26, 8:15 p.m., University Ottoman, perform 16th and 20th century music, Theatre, Texas Tech University, Lubbock. with costuming of 16th century; North Auditorium, University of Texas, Dallas. HOOEE, RODEO! — The rodeo that gets more uptown every year, Houston Livestock Show and coming FEBRUARY 19 Rodeo, with schedule of superstars: Charley SHAKESPEARE — "A Midsummer Night's Pride, Feb. 23; Sonny & Cher, Feb. 24-5; Merle Dream," performed by National Shakespeare Haggard, Feb. 26; Rick Nelson, Feb. 27; Sonny Company; McFarlin Auditorium, Dallas. James and Donna Fargo, Feb. 28; 5th Dimension, March 1; Englebert Humperdinck, March 2-3; fortnight FEBRUARY 20 Jackson Five, March 4; Astrodome, Houston. PIANIST — Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel performs in Solo Artist Series; Hogg Auditorium, FEBRUARY 24 University of Texas, Austin. GLEE FEST — Glee clubs from all over, By Suzanne Shelton hundreds of fellas blending their voices in song in RADOST! — They call themselves Radost!, a Second Annual Glee Club Festival, with concert 70-member UNICEF folk ensemble, currently on featuring Austin highschoolers and Phi Mu Alpha FEBRUARY GRAB BAG its first US tour; Municipal Auditorium, Austin. Men's Chorus from East Texas State University; 8 MAX ERNST — "Inside the Sight," exhibition p.m., East Campus Library Auditorium, of drawings, paintings, collages and sculptures by MAN OR MOUSE? — Original Seattle University of Texas, Austin. Max Ernst, exponent of Dada and Surrealism; performance cast of Carlisle Floyd's opera based through May 20, Institute for the Arts, Rice on the Steinbeck novel, "Of Mice and Men," with FEBRUARY 25 University, Houston. Julian Patrick, Robert ' Moulson and Carol CLIBURN — It's always a treat to hear pianist Bayard; through Feb. 25 with Feb. 24 Van Cliburn; 8 p.m., Theatre for the Performing PUBLIC TV — You don't know what you're English-language performance; Jones Hall, Arts, San Antonio; also Feb. 27, Jones Hall, Houston. missing if you're missing public TV; samples from Houston. this fortnight: Eisenstein's epic film, "Ivan the POP HARP — De Wayne Fulton, pop harpist, Terrible"; Roberta Flack with the Boston Pops; UBU ROI — Aired Jarry, French playwright of in concert; Hamman Hall, Rice University, our own Ronnie Dugger, plus Frances Farenthold the avant-garde, wrote "Ubu Roi," performed by Houston. and Beryl Milburn, tangling wits with William Buckley of pot-smoking fame; Zubin Mehta and FEBRUARY 26 the LA Philharmonic with "Bolero"; and much TECH MUSICIANS — Texas Tech University more; check local newspaper for listings. Symphony Orchestra, with Paul Tobias, cellist; 8:15 p.m., Municipal Auditorium, Lubbock. ART OF JAPAN — "Japan III," international exchange exhibit of 100 contemporary prints by FEBRUARY 27 70 Japanese artists; through Feb. 26, Moody JOINT RECITAL — Violinist Josef Suk teams Hall, St. Edward's University, Austin. with pianist Joerg Demus in joint recital; Caruth Auditorium, Southern Methodist University, ARP ART — Sculpture, wood reliefs and Dallas. drawings by another Dada-Surrealist artist, Jean Arp; also collection of prints by California artists; FREE CONCERT — A pleasant freebie, UT Art Museum, University of Texas, Austin. Harp Ensemble, directed by Gayle Barrington, in concert; 8 p.m., Recital Hall, University of Texas, FEBRUARY 16 Austin. ROCKIN' EARL — Cultural Entertainment Committee presents Earl Scruggs Review; 8 p.m., Municipal Auditorium, Austin. Bound Volumes of BAWDY TALES — Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," musical performed by First the Observer Reportory Company, with sets designed by San Antonio architect O'Neil Ford; through Feb. 17, 23-24, March 2-3, 9-10, First Repertory Theatre, Bound volumes of the 1972 issues of HemisFair Plaza, San Antonio. the Texas Observer are now ready. In 6- maroon washable binding — the same FOR KIDDIES — Spring theatre for the small as in recent years — the price is $12. fry, "The Cowardly Knight," performed by St. Also available at $12 each year are Mary's Children's Theatre; through Feb. 25, Shoestring Cellar, St. Mary's University, San Theatre SMU; through Feb. 25, Margo Jones volumes for the years 1963 through Antonio. Experimental Theater, Dallas. 1971. CELLO CONCERT — Lev Aronson, cellist, in A very limited supply of bound COWARD COMEDY — "Blithe Spirit," Noel volumes of the Observer for the years Coward's comic variation on the eternal triangle, faculty recital; 8:15 p.m., Roxy Grove Hall, Baylor University, Waco. 1958 through 1962 — formerly out of- with Eddie Thomas as the novelist, Sharon stock — have been compiled and are L'Helgoual'ch as the living wife and Lynne Roots as the dead wife; through March 4, North Park offered at $50 per year. These are the Hall, Dallas. FEBRUARY 22 years when the Observer was weekly PIANIST — Piano concert by Joy and in a tabloid format. FEBRUARY 17 Pottle-Smith, Leventritt and Van Cliburn Piano Competition finalist and' newcomer to Austin Texas residents please add the 5% sales FOR LONGHAIRS — "The Barber of Seville," with her husband, Lawrence Smith, conductor of tax to your remittance. Volumes will with operatic baritone Alan Titus, 'who recently Austin Symphony Orchestra; Municipal sang the leading role in Bernstein's "Mass," with be sent postpaid. Auditorium, Austin. Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra; Del Mar Auditorium, Corpus Christi. THE TEXAS OBSERVER SYMPHONY — Dallas Symphony Orchestra, 600 W 7 AUSTIN 78701 Anshel Brusilow conducting, with cellist Leonard The Texas Observer Rose; also Feb. 24, State Fair Music Hall, Dallas. about as dangerous as a tonsillectomy. who is to write the Court's opinion if the Even more recent technological advances, chief justice is on the majority side. If he is This right ... particularly the suction method, which is not, the senior justice on the majority side about two years old, have made abortion, decides who will write the opinion. Chief (God bless us) Texas law. The case is styled in the early stages of pregnancy, somewhat Justice Burger was not, reportedly, on the Roe v. Wade, more serious than getting your ears majority side originally, but he nevertheless Jane Roe is the pseudonym of a young pierced. This is not to minimize the some- insisted that Blackmun, his longtime friend Dallas woman, unmarried, who got times grave psyhological consequences of from Minnesota, write the opinion. Justice pregnant but who could not afford to leave what is now a minor medical operation. William Douglas, who would have been the the state to get an abortion. She has since On June 17, 1970, Circuit Judge Irving senior justice on the majority side, had the child. Wade is Henry Wade, the Goldberg, Fifth Circiut Court of Appeals, objected vehemently. It was apparently at Dallas district attorney. The heart of the and U.S. Dist. Judges Sarah T. Hughes and Burger's instigation that the court waited Supreme Court's decision was based on William Taylor, Jr., issued a declaratory and then re-heard the case. Roe v. Wade; the Court also decided some judgment as a result of Roe, Doe and Despite the brevity of the arguments, peripheral matters concerning abortion in Hallford. They declared the Texas abortion the court had a good deal of material to go the Georgia case heard along with Roe v. statute unconstitutional; however, they through: seven women's organizations and Wade, styled Roe v. Bolton. Roe v. Wade refused to grant an injunction against the 47 women filed friend-of-the-court briefs. was first argued in May, 1970, before a prosecution of Hallford and other doctors Among the organizations were N.O.W., the three-judge federal panel in Dallas. It was similarly indicted. As a result, the status Y.W.C.A. and the American Assn. of heard in conjunction with Doe v. Wade. quo prior to their ruling remained in effect. University Women. Among the individuals John and Mary Doe are a Dallas couple: Wade promptly announced his intention to were Margaret Mead, anthropologist, she suffers from a neural-chemical disorder continue prosecuting under the state law Marian Javits, wife of the New York and had been told by doctors that she and Texas doctors didn't appear to be any senator, Maureen Neuberger, senator from could not (A) take birth control pills or (B) more willing to perform abortions than Oregon, Mary Lindsay, wife of the New get pregnant. Roe and the Does filed suit in they had been before the ruling. The York mayor, Harriet Van Home, March of 1970 and were later joined in plaintiffs appealed directly to the Supreme columnist, and Bess Myerson, consumer their suit by James H. Hallford, a Dallas Court both for injunctive relief and for a affairs commissioner of New York City. doctor who had two criminal abortion suits decision on the constitutionality of the On Jan. 22, the Court declared both the pending against him. Roe and the Does Texas statute. Texas statute and the more liberal Georgia were represented by Linda Coffey and statute unconstitutional. Blackmun, who Weddington while Hanford was represented wrote the decision, said, "We need not by Fred Bruner. resolve the difficult question of when life Coffee told the judges that abortion is ON DEC. 13, 1971, Roe v. Wade begins. When those trained in the "a fundamental human freedom." was argued for the first time before the respective disciplines of medicine, Weddington argued that the state should Supreme Court, before Justices Rehnquist philosophy and theology are unable to not regulate when an abortion should be and Powell had been appointed by Nixon. arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at done, but only that it be done by Despite the fact that the attorneys had this point in the development of man's competent, licensed personnel. Bruner said asked for more time than is usually granted knowledge, is not in a position to speculate the law was unconstitutionally vague. To by the Court, on the grounds of the as to the answer." the layman, nothing could have been importance of the issue, the hearing was Blackmun did find, however, that clearer than Texas' late abortion statute: it limited to one hour: 30 minutes for each although the Constitution does not permitted abortions only in order to save side. Weddington argued the case on the explicitly mention any right of privacy, the the life of the mother: unless it would grounds of the Ninth and Fourteenth Court, in a line of decisions, has recognized literally, physically, immediately kill a Amendments. Jay Floyd, assistant Texas that a right of personal privacy does exist under the Constitution. "This right of woman to have a child, she was statutorily district attorney, argued that the case was bound to have it — whether or not the moot since by that time Roe had already privacy . . . is broad enough to encompass a child was deformed, idiotic, the product of had her child. Justice Potter Stewart noted woman's decision whether or not to incest or of rape; whether or not it would that "This is a class action suit and I think terminate her pregnancy." cripple the woman physically or we can take judicial notice that at any in a development entirely emotionally to have the child; whether or given time there are unmarried, pregnant BUT, unlooked for by the lawyers in the case, not she could afford to care for and rear women in Texas." the Court saw fit, in a refinement worthy the child; whether or not it would wreck Floyd then argued that the courts could of Solomon, to find different her marriage; whether or not the child not give a woman judicial relief from the constitutional implications depending on law. "I think a woman makes her choice meant an impossible additional financial the duration of a pregnancy. During the prior to the time she becomes pregnant and burden to a family . . . and on and on. first three months, said the court, the The Right to Life argument was singularly she can't make a later choice not to have mother's right to privacy supersedes all the baby." ill-founded, legally, not because it failed to else. But during the second three months, address itself to the question of whether a Stewart noted that "The Texas law the state's important interest in doesn't permit abortions in the case of rape child has a right to a minimally decent life safeguarding health, in maintaining medical (pro abortion-reform advocates have and I don't believe the woman makes her standards and in protecting potential life choice before pregnancy there. Maybe she sometimes effectively used the horrifying may be properly asserted "to the extent statistics on battered children) but because makes her choice when she decides to live that the regulation reasonably relates to the reason for abortion statutes in the first in Texas." the preservation and protection of place was to protect the right to life of the The case was argued a second time maternal health." The state's "important mother, not of the child. As Justice Harry before the full nine-man court in October, and legitimate interest in protecting Bolton v. Blackmun noted in his decision, abortion 1972, again in conjunction with potential life," said the court, becomes Wade. statutes are of relatively recent vintage — "compelling" at the point of viability, i.e., late 19th century — and they were passed According to stories published in the during the last three months of pregnancy, Eastern press at the time, there was some to protect women, not unborn children. . . . the state may go so far as to Abortion was then an appallingly hazar- infighting on the Court between the first dous operation. But for years it has been, and second hearings of the case. By when done in "a clean, well-lighted place," tradition, the chief justice selects the man February 16, 1973 proscribe abortion during that period Weddington's campaign braintrust. "It's 19. She was certified to teach high school except when it is necessary to preserve the just that you gotta prep her a little. You English and speech, but her practice life or health of the mother." say, 'Now, Sarah, I'm about to tell you a teaching sessions convinced her that she This tripartite approach to pregnancy is funny story,' and then she'll just laugh and wasn't cut out to be a teacher. She looked a judicial originality. There has been some enjoy it as much as anyone. But you gotta around, and because higher education was mention of "cut-off" points in previous warn her first, because it just doesn't occur an accepted thing in her family, had no decisions — for example, the state of New to her that someone might throw in a joke hesitation about entering law school, which York fixed on the 24th week because in the middle of serious business." she finished at about the age most students many fetal deformities cannot be detected complete their undergraduate work. She until that point. But the three-stage became interested in the Women's decision, like Nixon's economic program, WEDDINGTON was recently Movement during her senior year in law seems as much a response to pragmatic mousetrapped in this regard by that school. She practiced briefly in Fort Worth considerations as one of adherence to nefarious jokester Cactus Pryor, who was and came back to Austin to open a practice principle. preparing his annual spoof for the with her husband Ron. Ron Weddington, Weddington, who had thought she Headliners Club. Weddington, along with who is also from Abilene, had spent several would either win or lose the case by a several dames of importance, was invited to years in the service and so graduated from one-vote margin, is now convinced that the pass preview judgment on a proposed new law school a few years after Sarah. best course for • the states is to do addition to a well-known Austin restaurant. According to law school friends, Ron nothing at all. She will presumably have The women were told that the was the outgoing, social Weddington, while some influence in this area since she is a restaurateur planned to open a Women's Sarah's natural reserve and relative member of the Texas House of Only section featuring topless waiters, two unsophistication made her a quieter, less Representatives. At last check, no legislator of whom then appeared and showed their party-going type. "I had never even been to had introduced any abortion legislation, impressive torsos to the group. Most of the a party where liquor was served until after although there were rumors that there other political wives in the group got off I graduated from college," said the might be some. But in fact, most with a noncommittal, "Oh, my, my" minister's, daughter. On one famous politicians dislike nothing more than reaction. But ol' Sarah gravely launched occasion, she got annoyed with Ron and having to vote on such things — there is no into a lecture to the restaurateur, assuring decided to "show him." She forthwith got way they can come out without losing him that while she meant no insult to these extremely drunk and subsequently quite support. Many of them not only dread the very nice-looking young men, nevertheless, sick. "I don't think you even noticed," she prospect, they have a positive phobia about she had never approved of Men Only said to her husband with some asperity. it. sections and . . . The episode was being "Not notice?!" protested Ron. "Hell, Weddington herself is something rather filmed for use at the Headliners. honey, I had to pour you into the car." special. Although she feels she was not able Weddington has a unique family Weddington (Sarah) has not since been to relate well to the Solid Rock League, if background for a small-town Texas girl. known to over-indulge. one can feature any abortion reformer ever Her daddy has a Ph.D. and her mother a getting along with that group, it would be master's. Her father, for many years a WEDDINGTON and her law Weddington. She is, to use an old-fashioned Methodist preacher in a series of small school classmate Linda Coffee started term frowned on by Women's Lib, a lady, a Texas towns, is now head of the Methodist doing spadework on Texas' abortion law as perfect lady. She is grave, graceful and youth program for this state. Weddington a result of their interest in feminism. When composed. "It's not that Sarah doesn't skipped a couple of grades of public school Jane Roe came to Coffee, Weddington have a sense of humor," said Ann Richards, and so graduated from McMurray College volunteered to serve as co-counsel. The an Austin housewife who was part of in Abilene, magna cum laude, at the age of James Madison Constitutional Law

EDITOR Kaye Northcott CO-EDITOR Molly Ivins BUSINESS STAFF THE ASSOCIATE EDITOR John Ferguson Sarah Boardman EDITOR AT LARGE Ronnie Dugger Joe Espinosa Jr. REVIEW EDITOR Steve Barthelme C. R. Olofson David Sharpe TEXAS Contributing Editors: Winston Bode, Bill Brammer, Gary Cartwright, Sue Horn Estes, Joe Frantz, Larry Goodwyn, Harris Green, Bill Hamilton, Bill Helmer, Dave Hickey, The Observer is published by Texas OBSERVER Franklin Jones, Lyman 'Jones, Larry L. King, Georgia Earnest Observer Publishing Co., biweekly from Klipple, Larry Lee, Al Melinger, Robert L. Montgomery, Austin, Texas. Entered as second-class © The Texas Observer Publishing Co. 1973 Willie Morris, Bill Porterfield, James Presley, Charles matter April 26, 1937, at the Post Ronnie Dugger, Publisher Ramsdell, Buck Ramsey, John Rogers, Mary Beth Rogers, Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act Roger Shattuck, Edwin Shrake, Dan Strawn, John P. of March 3, 1879. Second class postage A window to the South Sullivan, Tom Sutherland. paid at Austin, Texas. Single copy, 25c. A journal of free voices We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the One year, $7.00; two years, $13.00; truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are three years. $18.00; plus, for Texas dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all addresses, 5% sales tax. Foreign, except Vol. LXV, No. 3 Feb. 16, 1973 interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of APO/FPO, 50c additional per year. democracy; we will take orders from none but our own Airmail, bulk orders, and group rates Incorporating the State Observer and conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the on request. Microfilmed by the East Texas Democrat, which in turn truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the Microfilming Corporation of America, incorporated the Austin Forum- ignoble in the human spirit. 21 Harristown Road, Glen Rock, N.J. Advocate. The editor has exclusive control over the editorial 07452. policies and contents of the Observer. None of the other Change of Address: Please give old people who are associated with the enterprise shares this Editorial and -Business Offices: The and new address, including zip codes, responsibility with her. Writers are responsible for their and allow two weeks. Texas Observer, 600 W. 7th St., Austin, own work, but not for anything they have not themselves Texas 78701. Telephone 477-0746. written, and in publishing them the editor does not Postmaster: Send form 3579 to necessarily imply that she agrees with them, because this is Texas Observer, 600 W. 7th St., Austin, 7-143$0.71 a journal of free voices. Texas 78701. Institute of New York helped with some of they'll need something to carry it in." So the expenses. Weddington wound up doing for 13 bucks they acquired a couple the oral arguments before the Supreme hundred shopping bags and stuck Court mostly, she says, because Coffee had Weddington stickers on them so everyone THE joined a Dallas law firm and didn't have else's expensive favors went into much time to devote to the case. Weddington's tote bags. Weddington had worked on it all summer. TEXAS Ron Weddington observed, "Sarah feels Richards, who has never been short on uncomfortable if she doesn't know brass, decided that the best thing to do absolutely everything about every single with Sarah was to trot her around and OBSERVER angle of any case she's working on. Hell, introduce her to everyone who would I've tried to tell her, a lot of lawyers really logically oppose her. "We did this Laurel don't know what they're doing when they and Hardy routine," said Richards. "I'd go IN THE go into court. But you can't make Sarah in to jolly 'em up and break the ice and relax about it." then Sarah would come on all soft and Weddington had attended some sessions reserved and ladylike. She'd ask for advice CLASS of the Women's Political Caucus and finally and listen to it. She's a great listener. Then decided that the only way women were people felt they had a, stake in her. During ever going to get any experience in politics the run-off, the Alarmed Citizens of Austin ROOM above the stamp-licking level was to try it had her on their bad list. We called them themselves. So she pinned up her long, the Alarmed Dingalings." red-blonde hair in an effort to look more respectable and went down and filed for Cactus Pryor observes that the Alarmed the Legislature. "At the beginning, I never Citizens consisted mostly of Sam Wood, thought I would win," she said. editor of the Austin American-Statesman, "Hell," said Ann Richards, "I never charging up and down Congress Avenue on thought she would lose." a horse screaming, "The students are Sarah had first a dedicated hard-corps, coming! The students are coming!" then a whole troop and finally almost an army of women out working for her. Many Richards, nothing daunted, marched of the women had worked in politics for Weddington off to meet Sam Wood. Wood years, making coffee, addressing envelopes, told her he had read, as he was sure and being carefully excluded from all everyone had, that blacks regarded decision-making. But they had picked up abortion as a racist plot to lower or wipe ideas and expertise they were anxious :to out the black population. Didn't she think try out. Richards, who had worked in the her advocacy of abortion might hurt her in For orders of ten or more copies of each North Dallas Women's Club, Linda the black precincts? Anderson, whose husband Jamie worked in issue sent to a single address the cost for the semester is just $1.00 per person Sissy Farenthold's campaign, Caryl Yontz, "Why, I've heard that too, Mr. Wood," (including sales tax). who had been with Yarborough's p.r. said Weddington sweetly. "But, you know, people, and a legion more of very bright the funny thing is that I've only heard it women who had wanted to get involved in from black men." politics but who had been turned off by the low-level jobs available in men's And so they persevered, that group of Classroom subscriptions will begin with campaigns. Weddington's campaign was a women who turned out to know so much this issue (February 16th) and extend slightly chaotic attempt at participatory about politics. And they won. Weddington through April. Seven fortnightly issues democracy: it took more time and more gives all the credit to her crew of women in all. effort, but even the lowly stamp-lickers and the women give all the credit to were in on the decisions. The only male in Weddington and it's a downright rose the braintiust was Ron, who eventually left festival, it is But Weddington, who is not Farenthold's campaign to sit in on this what you could call a real politician, is at To place your order, please indicate the interesting thing his wife, of all people, had least too smart to turn loose of her ladies. number of students who will be going. He handled the media work. She's got them volunteering right and left, subscribing, your needs regarding a free- at her citizens' information center, sitting desk-copy, and the mailing address we in on committee meetings she can't make, should use. THEY RAISED money by giving and here and there and everywhere. She's parties. They had beer and chili 'til it ran got three big plummy, juicy committee out of their ears. Ron couldn't believe the assignments and, in typical Weddington fashion, instead of rejoicing over her power girls were mad because they had raised If the number of subscribers is "only" $300 or $400 at the first party. she's worrying about whether she can "For a local campaign, with no big press handle it. The women who work for her uncertain, feel free to make a generous job!" he gasped. But they thought they have no doubts at all. M.I. estimate. After the necessary revisions could do better. to your order have been made, we will bill you only for the number of persons At the big 'Travis County Democratic February 16, 1973 5 Fair fund-raiser in the spring of '72, who finally decide to subscribe. Weddington knew her opponent would be Bookkeeping & Tax Service handing out expensive favors, flashy gizmos dreamed up by professional cu 503 WEST 15TH, AUSTIN 78701 THE TEXAS OBSERVER political p.r. types. Ann Richards gnawed ca. (512) 472-6886 600 WEST 7 AUSTIN, TEXAS 78701 her nails for a few days over that and O (512) 477-0746 finally thought, "Well, when they pick up a) OFFICE HOURS: 9 A.M. TO 5 P.M. all this junk from the other candidates, a_ AND BY APPOINTMENT ANYTIME The burial of Lyndon Johnson

Eric Severeid said, on CBS, that Lyndon Johnson was the most famous victim of the Vietnam war. This struck me odd. Those very days the war was appearing, again, to end, and figures were being released on the dead. The estimates of civilians killed from 1965 through 1972 are 415,000, and 935,000 wounded. The South Vietnamese command says that 921,350 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops and 180,676 South Vietnamese troops were killed from 1961 through the end of 1972. The Pentagon says that during the same period, 45,928 Americans were killed in action and more than 300,000 were wounded. Sen. Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Refugees, says the war has left more than 5,000,000 refugees in South Vietnam; millions have been driven from their homes that are, or were, in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. In what way was Lyndon Johnson a victim of the war? It did not kill him, or wound him, or drive him from his home, except politically, except psychologically, except metaphorically. Ah, so. We are the species who are theater goers,. and many are the theaters of our engrossments and togetherness. And now he is dead.

Austin "President's Ranch Trail." President Johnson is gone, with "his big, For his burial I put on my blue historical "Help Prevent Grass Fires." brave, and bountiful heart. All of us who suit, the old, warm, blue suit and field "Slower Traffic Keep Right." love him are sad. We will miss him. We will boots, for I take it we'll be slogging to his Torn trunks, limbs and stumps of meet him in eternity. . ." grave. bulldozed mesquite trees, lying in the open Freely rendering, from Antony's closing The funeral has been delayed an hour, to fields and sinking through their twisted speech on Brutus, in Julius Caesar, the 5, in hopes the weather will clear some by deaths into the unhearing and absorbent Reverend Father Schneider is saying, of then. It is grey, cold and drizzling, a messy soil. Lyndon Johnson, that as "the great English Texas winter day. playwright, Shakespeare," said, "And the The bushes on the hillsides, lone on the elements were so mixed in him that God sere but amber grass up from the gravel, are could stand and say to all the world, 'There green. The hillsides spread across the THE FIRST theater, the Trinity was a good man!' " horizon, a dampened dark, dark green Lutheran Church, in the valley of the The young pastor of this church, under the hazy light, bisected by the damp Pedernales across the river from the Rodney Maeker, tells of Johnson's brown ascending yellowsplit highway, graveyard. 1:30. Only the local people and accomplishments, and says, "Sometimes he patches of waterfilm pearl grey in the six local preachers are here. attended three churches on a given Sunday, greywashed daylight splashing to the tires What do we see in the theater? The and he must have attended every church in like a code of time. ironies of our hearts. And what do we the hill country. He visited with us. He The road a way is chewed. The gravel hear? The echoes in our minds. asked us over to the ranch. He wanted to spits up underneath the car. In Johnson's In the church, taking my place in the be one of us." years of power they never would have let back pew alongside four sweet-faced Cub To a school band, we sing one verse of the road be chewed. Scouts standing in a row . . . the backs of "God Bless America," ending with the Johnson City. All shut down, except the the people are suited, sportscoated, school children's rolling drums and cafeteria out on the highway. Rain on my furcollarcoated, raincoated, clothcoated, trumpets, loud in this church. The four glasses. I brought no handkerchief. sportshirted, and the six preachers are in sweet-faced Cub Scouts listen somberly as "Boyhood Home of Lyndon Baines the front, within the domed transept, and the Catholic Monsignor from Johnson." "LBJ Boyhood Home. Old on the left wall, posters "LIFE," and Fredericksburg says the benediction, that Ranch." "Boyhood Home." "Old Ranch." "PEACE," and a Cross of Stars, and on the Johnson saw the system of morals and "Boyhood Home of Lyndon Baines right wall, "JOY," and "LOVE," and ideals which is the inner light of our Johnson." "PROMISE." culture, that more harm is done by the Reverend Father Wunibald Schneider is inactive good men than by the active evil 6 The Texas Observer saying, in his heavy German accent, that men in the world. May God Help Us to wedged in between the low wall and the leg help others enjoy the privileges of the of the TV platform directly facing, American Way of Life: between two of the giant oak tree trunks, "And now," the Monsignor says, across hay colored carpet grass slipping on a red and blue cap, "as national green-stranded from the rain, the open chaplain of the American GI Forum, I turn grave, draped in green velvet, the podium to the flag and pay last tribute to those and umbrella personless at the head of it, veterans he appreciated and salute that flag the white-flowered cross beyond across the that he loved." And he salutes the flag graveyard, leaned against the third big oak, sharply. dark old wood, light new wood, elbowing and beseeching into the sky it obscures. Wally Pryor, inside the graveyard, comes S IX CANNON, 105 mm. by handing out the advance texts. "Press howitzers, a soldier tells me, are lined up only." He runs out of the Graham. "Only across the river on the riverbank, their Connally left," he says. "They were at Oak barrels aimed back toward us across the Hill, 42 miles from here. They were river, so their shells would fly above the traveling at 55 miles an hour, so you figure steeply pitched roof and the spire of the it'll be about 4:05." church, hurtling into distant peach 3:15. The sun comes out, directly into orchards, if they were fired. An our eyes, through the grey clouds between electronvoice ranges the grassy rivervalley, the high limbs of the tree at the foot of the "Testing, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, grave, sharply outlining on the grass the Testing." Two soldiers pause by the road as trunk and the crossing-over branches. one of them talks into a microphone, the We persist, from some quaint deceit, military-brown walkie-talkie firm upon his acting as if we were not a part of this play. back. Across the river there is a grey The photographers speak to each other. uniform look beyond the row of cannons. "Will you duck after a while, so I can People are foregathering around the low take some pictures?" stone fence of the graveyard, under the "Yes, soon as I get some shots." great copse of oak trees. It is still cold on "That's what I mean." the bare hands, but the rain has stopped, "Now, if he'll just lower his lens—" and the light is clearing. There is a steady "There goes my vantage point." audio system whine, waving in the air like a We are tightly packed as once we were in flag, penetrating. are draped over the commercials on the mobs amarch by bayonets held back from sides of the grotesquely large TV trucks, an intersection in Chicago, bullhorns and We must walk a mile or so, downriver, to but one of them, not yet covered, still says, screams, rifle blows at backs, teargas, the bridge, and then back up to the "Mobile Color, Inc." arrests and volunteer heroes without graveyard, and this is a cold long walk, names. flowing with these good people, who have HE SECOND theater. 2:50. A The sky has become beautiful, the hill come in this cold long afternoon to pay T friendly flack takes me to get a front-row country's special winter sky, clearing blue their respects to him. badge from George Christian, who, with spots, grey and sunwhitened pearlescent This long, gentle, sweetflowing river and Jake Jacobsen, is officiating in the crossplay, all softly moving in the winds, graveyard, within the enclosure of the valley, untouched, ever, by a bomb of the sun vagrantly, slightly, briefly warming war. I am taken by a flush of tears, I am three-foot-low stone wall no one steps our hands in the latening afternoon. across and the gates the soldiers guard. I not sure for whom. The family begin arriving: decrepit take a position at the wall, but they are brother Sam, walking slowly, with help, Under the middle of the bridge, the river rolling out green carpet across the grass and kissing a kin in his chosen of the five rows greygreen flows strongly now riffling over mud to the gate, and the man in charge of of the folding chairs on the green carpet the boulders through the brushbars and that, who is the Johnsons' friend Frank laid out on the ground to one side of the waving weeds, parting down below around Erwin, of the University of Texas regents, open grave. Not officials, not the great the islands curving as it sounds the says that I will have to move; so I go names, but the family, the local customs, riverflowsounding loud with the force of around the overhead platform-on-wheels of here control. This is real through depths of patient time. one of the TV cameras, also drawn up to time. Junction school where, the sign says, he the low stone wall, and find on the other We have been standing here an hour, but started school, when he was 4, in 1912. A side Bill Porterfield, of Dallas TV, and it has been eventful, in a strange, reporter stands there making notes from Wayne Jackson, of the Austin newspaper, timepassing way. "Six minutes away," the sign and says a man across the road and they kindly make room for me at the Pryor says, "unofficially." It is bitterly says he was in school with him, and it was wall. cold again, the blue has gone, the sky is 5. Still, even still, we are making our small "I see Charles Keralt's here," Wayne goneover grey. The church bells toll from points against the flow of history. says. Keralt is in the graveyard now, talking across the river as the hearse draws up Everything is military-managed. Jeeps, to a mike. beyond our view and the sisters are led in. the buses "US Army OIL," the Army "I see Claudia Lee Watson, of the Connally and Nellie follow and the chorus medical tent and Army and Air Force Johnson City Record Courier," Bill says. sings with frantic clicking of the cameras ambulances, the medical jeep "1 Cav 15 The four great oak trees have not like snappings from the grass. Med Hq 18," the young soldiers rowalong changed, are growing still, here where Ms. Johnson comes in with smiling face, both sides of the road awaiting, down by Johnson many times took many people to but still. The family with her pass by the the riverbank, down by the riverbank, six tell them here his parents lie, and others of grave each one avoiding with averted eyes cannon, six cannon, down by the his kin, and here when he dies he will be its open mechanisms. The chosen riverbank. There is an unseemliness about buried beside his mother. The neighbor dignitaries follow, sotto voce among us we it, a seemliness, and a seemlessness. "Sam E. who dug his grave has said he wanted only name them, but there among them also are Johnson Farmhouse, Birthplace of Lyndon a simple tombstone. Now the grave is open the members of the clan, kin and the not Johnson, 36th President of the underneath the rollers for the coffin. I Baines February 16, 1973 7 United States." Military camouflage nets stand among the audience of players

8 The Texas Observer formal kin, the kin of heart: the Johnson "THE MEDITATION. . . . people. "Few events touch the heart of every "AGENDA FOR THURSDAY, American as profoundly as the death of a JANUARY 25, 1973. . . . President. . . . "Ceremony opens. Band plays Ruffles "Here amidst these familiar hills and ' z and Flourishes and Star Spangled Banner. under these expansive skies his earthly life Since 1866 As Star Spangled Banner is concluded, has come full circle. . . . party moves to grave site." The Place in Austin "During his years of public service, As the funeral procession, led by Lyndon Johnson was on center stage in our representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, generation. To him the Great Society was GOOD FOOD begins to enter the graveyard, the Fifth not a wild dream but a realistic hope. The GOOD BEER Army Band plays the hymn, "The Church's thing nearest to his heart was to harness One Foundation." the wealth and knowledge of a mighty They are bearing the flag-draped coffin nation to assist the plight of the poor." 1607 San Jacinto now to the grave. 477-4171 Varying from his text, speaking more It is upon the rollers. The military freely than Connally, Graham too, pallbearers unfix the flag and hold it taut a however, is starting and stopping, surging few inches above the coffin in the air. and receding in the force of his eulogy, as "Remarks of John B. Connally if his mind is working between his words "Services for Lyndon B. Johnson and somewhere else, absent-minded, "January 25, 1973 performances for cameras and masses you "FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY can't tell. MARTIN ELFA NT "We lay to rest here a man whose whole "He could have had more excuses than life embodied the spirit and hope of most for not attending church on Sunday. Sun Life of Canada America. But he will go down in history as the most "How can a few words eulogize a man church-going President in history. He such as he?. . ." sometimes went to church two and three 1001 Century Building Connally is reading, at the podium, times in a Sunday. . . . facing the head of the burnished grey "PRAYER FOR THE FAMILY. . ." Houston, Texas coffin under the flag on the rollers, and the The 21 concussions begin, each a slight CA 4-0686 cameras run. shudder against the heart, cannon after ". . I feel today it is these plain people cannon fired by the 4th Battalion, 133rd he loved — the silent people — who mourn Infantry, 36th Infantry Brigade, clouds of him the most. white smoke billowing forth out of the "He gave them all he had for forty cannonmouths across the river toward the years." church of the six posters on the walls. He tells of Johnson's origins, his child's Graham's face framed above the flag over dreams, his dedication and effort. the coffin between the servicemen, the BIG THICKET MUSEUM "Thus he rose from these limited cameras click faster like crickets in the beginnings to the zenith of power, and as wings. The cannonade continues, and there Saratoga, Texas he so often said with a mixture of awe and is a flashbulb, a flash of white flame, across pride, 'I guess I've come a long way for a the graveyard. boy from Johnson City, Texas.' The Rev. Dr. Graham continues: Open Saturday through "But with all his strengths, Lyndon "BENEDICTION Johnson cannot be viewed as a man above "—`Unto Him that loved us, and washed Thursday, morning and men, a mythical hero conquering all before us from our sins in His own blood, afternoon. him. " 'And hath made us kings and priests "In a sense, his life was one of unto God and His Father; to Him be glory opposites. . . . and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.' Support Your Big Thicket "Some criticized him for being "(Revelation 1:56)" Association unlettered and unsophisticated when in A seven-man musket team, standing truth he was incredibly wise and incredibly beyond the trees, fire, in startling quick sophisticated in ways his critics never and total unison, three sharperack rifle 1 understood, perhaps because he always volleys, as if over the grave and our heads. dealt not with things as they should have Master Sgt. Patrick B. Mastroleo, who IN NM la NM MN WI IN111111111 11M MI MI been, but as they were. . . ." played Taps for President Truman, plays Done, Connally returns to his chair and Taps now, with one wavered note, for %FUTURA flips his text, in a black folder, down President Johnson. Connally rises beside PRESS beside his chair, the folder takes a bounce 7 AUSTIN Anita Bryant and bends down to the TEXAS on the grass, and he sits on down. ground in his dark topcoat and picks up a The Reverend Billy Graham wears a long low wooden box and puts it down behind Ask for the Union Label on your flowing black robe with a bright red band the podium for her, and she steps up onto 1 at the neck of it. printing. It doesn't cost you more, I it and sings, very slowly and as in pain, "FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY but it shows that you care more! 1 "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".. . "Funeral of President Lyndon B. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the 1 Johnson 1 coming of the Lord, FUTURA PRESS "Order of Graveside Service He is trampling out the vintage where 1 "Officiated by the Rev. Dr. Billy the grapes of wrath are stored, Phone 512/442-7836 1 Graham 1714 SOUTH CONGRESS He has loosed the fateful lighning of His 1 "LBJ Ranch, Stonewall, Texas terrible swift sword, P.O. BOX 3485 AUSTIN, TEXAS 1 "Thursday, January 25, 1973 His truth is marching on. . . . "LET US WORSHIP GOD. . . . She sings so slow and strongly as they slowly fold the flag. Connally and his 6:5 5. That's kind of what it comes down "An Army spokesman said none of the Nellie are daubing at their eyes. The flag is to, powerless people, taking their comfort men suffered major injuries. given to Ms. Johnson. And now they all in their beer, their sex and their business. "The soldiers, all enlisted men stationed will go. "The casket of the former President was at Fort Hood, had just completed duties at Shaking hands, leaving, some of the lowered slowly into the ground as the light the burial of former President Lyndon family putting red flowers on the casket as gray sky revealed patches of red and gray Johnson, and were being driven from the they pass, the Fifth Army Band playing to the west. . . . ranch in a two-and-one-half ton Army "God of Our Fathers," the Rev. Dr. truck when the truck went off a low-water "The last sod was laid over the former crossing at the western boundary of the Graham's flowing colored robe among President's vault shortly before 7 p.m." them and the gothic old trees and the low ranch. . . . fence, it seems for a moment that we are "Six members of an Army military "The incident was the only traffic not here watching and this is a scene in an police battalion were injured about 7 p.m. mishap reported near the LBJ Ranch English churchyard some hundreds of years Thursday when the truck carrying them Thursday as . . . " ago. from the LBJ Ranch ran off a road and "LBJ Buried on Ranch overturned in the Pedernales River. "As Thousands Mourn." R.D.

THE • THIRD theater. 5:45. Cotton Richey's beer joint on the highway between the graveyard and Johnson City. The television is going in the corner above the bar, Cotton and his wife are behind the bar, two men are at a table before the bar, A happy ending? there is no one else here as I come in. They are watching the part of Walter Cronkite on the funeral. It is just ending. The courthouse crowd in Dallas has • Cotton is a lonely or a talkative man or known about Commissioner Roy both; his wife, some younger than his 70 Orr's father for a long time. Word is that Political years, keeps quiet, and seems a little wary Willis Orr hasn't had a steady job since what he says. She is his second wife, he 1946, that he used to panhandle in front of Intelligence says in passing. He booms out, Lyndon the old Federal Building. has never been in this place, but when he, It's been no secret that the elder Orr has Cotton, first got to this country from South been a guest of the Dallas jail from time to someone would come in here and make Texas many years ago, Lyndon was the time, but when Orr's last retreat to the this kind of cheap personal attack, only man he knew, he'd been friends with tank lasted 116 days, the Dallas Iconoclast exploiting the personal problems of a sick George Parr, who owns Duval County, and decided it was time to ask the county old man. I've known Roy On since he was Parr knew Lyndon real well . . . Yes, he'd commissioners some questions. a boy and his family are some of the finest first met George Parr, Cotton had, shortly A letter recently published in The people in Dallas." Sterrett called Zabel after Parr'd got out of the federal pen, you Community Voice, over Willis Orr's "the scum of the earth." know, (he lowers his voice at this), in signature, alleged that Orr was residing in a Commissioner On produced a letter, 1937. The spotlight has shifted from the 15-bunk tank with 50 men. It said that signed by his father, stating his desire to TV to the man behind the bar. Cotton had although he had been in jail more than two terminate his client-attorney relationship come down the elevator in the Austin months, he had received medication for with Polk and demanding that Polk make Hotel, and Parr'd come up from another heart trouble and chronic bronchitis only no public disclosure concerning the case. group and introduced himself and said within the past two weeks. "I personally Polk has followed Orr's instructions, but something, and finding out they were from feel I am only being held for some political the Iconoclast did a front-page story on the the same parts, took him over to introduce reason known only to my son and Judge situation 'eb. 9. him to the group he had been with. . . . Lew Sterett (sic)," the letter said. Baker and Zabel went to visit Willis Orr On the walls of this little place there After reading the letter, Iconoclast at the Waco veterans hospital after the were two masses of photographs of John publisher Doug Baker, Jr., and Ed Polk, article appeared. The old man was having a Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and others in left wing attorney who has a hostile picnic on the grounds with Roy Orr, their dimension, many of the pictures relationship with County Judge Sterrett, former State Rep. Fred Orr and their evidently signed, and Cotton pointed with called the jail and discovered that the elder families. Baker said Willis seemed very special pride to one he said he bet we had Orr had been in jail 116 days on a happy to be reunited with his sons. not seen, a photograph of Johnson in a "five-day sober-up." They obtained Orr's cowboy hat, which Cotton that very release the same day. Baker told the morning had cut out of an advertisement in Observer that Orr said he had to sleep the Austin paper taken by Scarbrough's under the game table during his first 60 Jury found guilty Department Store in honor of Johnson. days of incarceration. People sitting at the After a Laredo jury acquitted a One of the men at the table left then, so table put their feet on him and checkers • drunk they feared for him on his way kept falling all night long, he complained. defendant charged with possession of home. The other, a rancher from 400 yards He finally got a cot. Baker said Orr talked 134 pounds of marijuana, U.S. District Judge Ben Connally told them they would up the road, joined us at the bar and spoke with Polk about the possibility of suing the of things I did not know about, ranching, commissioners court for damages, but the never serve in his court again. The jury and electric plugs for outside the house, attorney never heard from Orr again. deliberated for three hours on the first with hatches on them to keep out the rain. Doug Zabel, a reporter for the evening without reaching a verdict; when they returned the next morning, they The 6 o'clock local news came on then Iconoclast, appeared before the county returned with the "not guilty" after only about the funeral, and we stopped to commissioners to ask how someone could watch again. The announcer spoke of the be held for 116 days without being 30 minutes, whereupon Judge Connally solitary oak tree at the graveyard, and we charged. Judge Sterrett explained that Orr informed them that in 20 years he has not hooted at that. "Why, there's more than has an alcohol problem and that he asked seen "a more stupid, illogical and one," the rancher said, "I first went to be put in jail to "dry out.' Then the swimming along there 22 years ago." judge added, "It's unbelievable that February 16, 1973 9 ill-advised verdict." He also said that a more portentous change in the renewal question are already present and are in verdict like theirs "is responsible in my process, removing the FCC's authority to judgment for the increasing crime rate disagreement between the houses. There is consider other applications for the license a provision for exceptions if they are everywhere. It is responsible for having for which renewal is sought. At present, hard narcotics and marijuana in your approved by majorities of both houses and alternative application hearings provide a limited to matters and contemplated schools and streets. I can imagine every potential forum for reviewing the actions specified by concurrent resolution. ' peddler in Laredo and everywhere else performance of license holders. saying to himself, 'Why should I worry The lone dissenter, Rep. Joe Wyatt of about getting caught? If I'm tried, we have Bloomington, explained that he objected juries in Laredo who will turn a man loose to "rules being written into statute.", who admits his own guilt.' " • It was business as usual when the Senate Nominations Committee • The AP reports that two executives of Ross Perot's Electronic Data interviewed Preston Smith's last nominees Systems contributed something more than to the UT Board of Regents. Former Gov. $100,000 to Richard Nixon's reelection Allan Shivers was asked no questions at all. campaign. Milledge A. Hart III, president And there were only a few perfunctory of EDS, scattered $69,048 among two questions asked Ed Clark, the former dozen state- and national-leyel Nixon "Johnson Democrat" who headed GOP committees and Thomas J. Marquez, a vice Sen. John Tower's reelection campaign, president of EDS, contributed $40,082. and Dr. James Bauerle, a San Antonio No contributions have been traced to dentist active in Smith's last campaign. Perot himself, but he has strong financial Under the new Senate rules, the senators reasons for supporting the President. Last discussed the nominees in executive session year the Intergovernmental Relations and then voted on them in public. There Subcommittee of the House Committee on was speculation that Shivers and Clark Government Operations investigated EDS' would receive some negative votes because highly profitable governmental contracts. of their wavering allegiance to the Democratic Party. A few "nays" were cast, It found that Perot used federal money to Rep. Cad Parker (before) develop his data processing system and ever but none were attributed to partisan considerations. Oscar Mauzy Of Dallas since then he's been charging very high — • The greening of Carl Parker is one of possibly exorbitant — rates for Medicare to this session's more interesting voted against all three men, complaining that the nominations were rushed to the use the system the government paid to phenomena. The Port Arthur Senate floor before he had time to probe develop in the first place (Obs., April 14, representative is no longer the last of the 1972). living flattops: he has shed what he called their views on education. (One certainly his East Texas Afro in favor of a couldn't learn those views by attending the nominations committee hearing.) • It's official: the Texas Advisory moderately mod hair arrangement cum Commission on Intergovernmental sideburns. He is sponsoring a number of Shivers' appointment also was opposed by Sens. Chet Brooks of Pasadena and Bob Relations has recognized there is "public good government and environment Gammage of Houston. Brooks said it was concern for a statewide land management clean-up bills. He has also hired that "absolutely ridiculous" to put Shviers on a program." In a report released last week, Distinguished Former Member Arthur college board since his wife Marialice is TACIR noted some of the problems: Vance as his administrative assistant, thus irregular layouts, unpaved streets, already on the board of Pan American taking care of the perennial, "What ever University and his son, John, is on the wholesale development of readily-flooded happened to Arthur Vance?" board of Texas Woman's University. land, substandard housing and areas Vance was the House's first longhair, a without provisions for water supply or Brooks also went along with Mauzy in liberal rep from Pasadena who got turned opposing Bauerle. sewage disposal. It points out that 37 states off by the corruption and futility of the use some form of controls on subdivisions sessions in '67 and '69 and dropped out. outside city limits, and 40 allow countywide zoning. Recommendations for • Another D.F.M. who is back this Sen, Ma Bell Texas include authorization for session as an administrative assistant municipalities to extend intra-city is Sonny Jones of Houston, the Dirty 30 The Austin phone book lists 32 development standards to their Republican who was the best spoons player • extraterritorial jurisdiction and for senators, the mystery man being•one in the House. Jones is working for Rep. G. G. Garcia. The number listed for Garcia counties to establish zoning and other Tom Uher of Bay City, a conservative standards in other unincorporated areas. rings in the office of Sen. Raul Longoria of Democrat. Edinburg. "The senator was a little insulted The House passed, 144-1, a bill by by that," an aide said. After all, Longoria Fred Head to limit the functioning of ran against Garcia and defeated him down Fine tuning conference committees appointed to in South Texas for the right to answer that resolve differences between Senate and particular Senate telephone. U.S. Rep. Jim Collins of Dallas has House taxation or appropriations measures. • • While the Texas Legislature is trying introduced a resolution incorporating With that, the chances that Rep. Neil to open governmental meetings to a couple . of amendments to the 1934 Caldwell will become a Heatly II diminish the public,_ U.S. Sen. John Tower is trying Communications Act, including the even further: it was not uncommon for the to keep the Senate Banking Committee "carrot" portion of Clay Whitehead's former House Appropriations Chairman to closed, at least when it's working on controversial plan to rectify lodal television introduce entirely new items into the banking benefits. According to a transcript news broadcasting. That particular conference committee versions of spending acquired by Jack Anderson, Senators alteration would allow license renewal for bills, but that prerogative will be severely Proxmire and Packwood argued to open five years instead of three, as is the case curtailed if the Senate passes Head's bill. the meeting, but Tower threatened to now. But Collins also proposes an even Future bills on raising or spending money filibuster rather than allow the committee may not be changed, altered, added to or 10 to open up the closed session by a majority The Texas Observer subtracted from except where items in vote. February 16, 1973 11 Ray Cowan, former partner of Jake • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •s • Jacobsen (see Political Intelligence, • • Feb. 2), has filed for bankruptcy. Cowan • THE TEXAS OBSERVER lists liabilities totaling $11.4 million — • • including a $2.4 million worth of disputed • promissory notes and guarantees in the • "A tradition of honesty, accuracy, fairness, and tireless: Sharpstown State Bank — and $2.3 million a: in assets. investigation has enabled the Texas Observer to occupy An Amarillo jury found John Osorio The Adversaries:: • : unique place in Texas journalism." — guilty of conspiracy and (Beacon Press,• embezzlement. After the verdict came in, : Politics and The Press, Bill Rivers, ed. Osorio told reporters he was indicted • 1970) • because he refused to say he'd "bought off" former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes in "The always impious Texas Observer We connection with the Sharpstown Banking : recommend it." — I. F. Stone's Bi-Weekly, May 31, 1971: bills. "If I'd bought off Ben Barnes, I'd have told them so, but I didn't. They said "One of the best publications in the country remains: they thought I was lying," Osorio said. • the Texas Observer." Pete Hamill, The New York Post • The new president of the Dallas Dec. 1E3, 1969 • • Chamber of Commerce is expected • • to be David Cooley, formerly the chief of "Probably as close as any publication in America to the the Memphis Chamber and the genius behind the Believe in Memphis! program, : high European standard of informed reportage and •. of which you probably have not heard. • commentary." — The South and the Nation by Pat. Cooley, who was reportedly making • Watters (Pantheon Press, 1970) • $40,000 in Tennessee, left a Believe in • • Memphis! luncheon late last month to fly : "The Observer keeps coming out with serious and •• to Dallas to look over the $60,000 a year • thorough news of this critically important state which •. job there. . Nicholas. In late November, on the occasion of a • people inside and out can't get elsewhere." — Believe in Memphis! breakfast, Cooley said, •von Hoffman, The Washington Post, Sep. 10, 1971 "If the people who live in Dallas or • • Houston could suck as hard as they blow, "The Observer is the conscience of the political: they'd have the Mississippi River running :community in Texas." — Andrew Kopkind, The New: down their main streets and Memphis • would be up against hard times." Believe in : Republic, Nov. 20, 1965 • Cooley! "I think the Observer ranks with The Progressive as one: That 17-county Trinity River canal • • of the two most useful papers in the United States." bond election has been set for March • 13, a Tuesday. The day before the date was John Kenneth Galbraith, Sep. 16, 1970 • announced, the Trinity River Authority's • • • general manager, David Brune, told the • officials of municipalities in Dallas County One Year $ 7.35 • that the project would bring — well, just • [ • • about every advantage you could ask, from • [ ] Two Years $13.65 • fishing to "freedom from fear of floods." • [ Three Years $18.90 • Ah, but it could be better, suggests • Dallas County Democratic chairman Earl (Non-Texas addresses exempt from 5% sales tax in- • • Luna. Why not channelize the Trinity's • cluded in rates listed above) • east fork, too? And build a turning basin in • • • • Lake Ray Hubbard? In addition to • • extending all those benefits to the folks in • • • • eastern Dallas County (Luna is the lawyer • Name • for several governmental bodies there), it • • would make it a lot easier to carry that • • • area in the bond election. Luna said Brune Street • had told him the idea was "not • • unfeasible." • • • City & State , • • • It was nothing but the best when Anne • Armstrong entertained for Republican National • Committee chairman George Bush and his wife • Zip • last week at a cocktail party which cost • a • • minimum of $5,000 for the .400 guests. There • • • were 75 pounds of crab claws and legs, pate de Check encl.; 1 Bill me • foie gran, seven shells of sliced New York sirloin, • • four country hams, empanandas, quiches, • • Roquefort mousse, five Nova Scotia hams, a • • driftwood tree hung with raw vegetables and • decorated with real birds' nests filled with pheasants' eggs. 600 WEST 7 AUSTIN, TEXAS 78701 :• —Maxine Cheshire, • The Washington Post ••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ••• • • • • • • • • • Half-loaves from

we the House - TEXAS STATE CAPITOL.

Austin and purchase price of real property to be Ben Grant and Bill Blythe: the troops just There are any number of ways to look at acquired and of emplacement of security weren't mobilized, weren't unified. the version of HB 3, the open meetings bill, devices or personnel. The provision for that finally passed the House. It's a The Hutchison vote was even closer. attorney-client confidentiality follows the Parker failed to get the amendment tabled stronger measure than the current statute', wording of then-Attorney General Martin's a weakened version of the original bill by three votes and failed to defeat it by ruling last fall, to wit: "Private one. On the tabling motion, Speaker Daniel (drafted by Common Cause), unlikely to • consultations . are not permitted except pass the Senate or a humiliating (to upright did not vote; Reps. Head, Luther Jones and in those instances in which the body seeks Peveto voted against Parker. All four voted public officials everywhere), the attorney's advice with respect to unconstitutional monstrosity. It just against the amendment, but other changes pending or • contemplated litigation, in the opposite direction enabled the depends on whom you talk to, where you settlement offers, and similar matters want to start. amendment to pass. Six members, where the duty of a public body's counsel including 30ian Carlos Truan, voted against Rep. Carl Parker, the bill's sponsor, to his client, pursuant to the Rules and started with an all-inclusive definition of Parker only on the two Hutchison votes. Canons of the State Bar of Texas, clearly The defections were so selective that "meeting" and elimination of the conflicts with this Act." most-abused loopholes in the 1967 law, the rumor had it there was a "kamikaze cabal" Two more amendments, offered from to put Parker in his' place without crippling exceptions for consultation with attorneys the floor, further diluted the bill. Rep. and personnel decisions. There were more the bill. Parker, after all, was not always Tom Uher, whose brain trust is Sonny synonymous with reform: his personalized serious penalties, strict notice provisions, Jones, sent up an exemption (from notice requirements that closed meetings be ringside-choirboy style aside, he has been requirements as well as from prohibitions the epitome of "go along to get along," preceded by open sessions to announce the of secrecy) for deliberations on holding of and justification for executive quite comfortable under speakers as appointment, discipline or dismissal of disparate 'as Mutscher, Price, and Daniel. sessions. As Common Cause and Parker saw employees. And Rep. Ray Hutchison, a it, the major thrust of the bill should be to But conversations with individual defectors Republican lawyer from Dallas who looks tended to put that theory to rest. There crack down on abuses of the 1967 act: not as if he were drawn by Milton Caniff, only the elaborate fandangoes around were differences of opinion: Weddington offered a dandy addition providing that said she voted for the Uher amendment "attorney-client" relationship and such, persons "intentionally and falsely alleging" but also de rigeur members-only breakfasts, because she thought job applicants were violations "for the purpose of harassing or entitled to some protection, though she lunches and "briefings" at which injuring" their public officials be subject to supposedly public meetings are preferred the "open unless requested the same penalties as secret meeters. closed" substitute. Another lib said his pre-arranged to conceal everything of real You just couldn't call the Uher and import. vote on the Uher amendment was "a But consideration was delayed by a Hutchison amendments anything but mistake," a result of the confusion of deluge of opposition from local officials moves to weaken the bill. In the heat of voting on a complex piece of verbiage (who contended that the bill would debate, Parker called them, respectively, "a without a copy in hand. loophole big enough to drive a truck prohibit even casual conversation about Confusion wAs widespread enough so policy) and by Lyndon Johnson's death. through" and "a big red signboard that will scare the average citizen to death." that neither Parker nor Uher knew how And, as Parker put 'it, "everybody gets to completely personnel meetings were dream up idiotic amendments" when a bill The votes on these two issues were studies in the composition and workings of exempted until after recess. As a result, lies around for a week. the two of them — in a fairly incongruous the "reform House." Of about 145 , members present, 49 voted with Parker spectacle — concurred in a corrective S IX CHANGES were proposed (on this day, Parker was synonymous with amendment, introduced the following and accepted by Parker in the hopes that "reform," though members' reasons for morning, to re-impose the restrictions opposition would be undercut. "Meeting" their votes were probably more complex) pertaining to public notice for such was redefined as deliberation among a down the line and another 28 were meetings. After Rep. Bill Hollowell's quorum of members, and "quorum" as "probables." There were 14 "probables" jeremiad and Parker's reply, the bill passed majority. But that out was restricted who flaked on the Uher amendment, 132-13. The nays were Representatives somewhat by a new section providing for including 11 who voted with Parker on Atwell, Calhoun, Canales, Cates, Cavness, misdemeanor charges of conspiracy against every other occasion. The Uher Cobb, Doran, Dramberger, Hollowell, officials who meet in numbers of less than amendment was adopted, and a substitute Newton, Short, Uher and Williamson. a quorum for the purpose of deliberating which would have kept hiring sessions open secretly to circumvent the law. Parker also unless the applicant requested a closed accepted limited private sessions with meeting failed, by 11 votes. The flakers attorneys, closed discussions of location THE HOUSE also passed, with a included reform stalwarts like Lane single dissenting vote, Senate Concurrent 12 The Texas Observer Denton, Dave Allred, Sarah Weddington, Resolution 1, creating the Texas Constitutional Revision commission. (The commission shall study the need for committee, the question is still — barely -- changes were ones Senate sponsor Nelson constitutional change and shall report its open. And will be settled by the appointees Wolff thought he could live with. He recommendations." In the process, it will of Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby and Speaker Price moved for Senate concurrence in the be required to hold publicized open Daniel, Jr., to that committee. amendments the next day. But the Senate, hearings in six different regions, issue Daniel, according to spokesman Carlton by a vote of 20-10, chose to send the publications from time to time and make Carl, will not instruct House members of resolution to a conference committee to its working papers available for public the committee to hold out for open have the differences ironed out.) perusal. It is forbidden to receive financial meetings, though he "encourages as much support from any source other than openness as possible. — Hobby told the Observer he supports secret sessions. "For House members, in contrast, had seemed appropriated state funds. (Under the the same reasons you have closed meetings content to let most of the amendments be provisions of a bill which passed the Senate on any personnel questions," he said. ho-hummed into the resolution. They did and is being studied by the House get exercised over a floor amendment by Appropriations Committee, $900,000 "Assume everybody [on the appointment Rep. Craig Washington, a black lawyer would be provided. The bill divides the committee] goes in there with a list of the from Houston, requiring that the members money into three categories: $240,000 for 10 people they think are best. Even with of the commission be "fairly and equitably the inevitable overlapping, there are still representative .of the sexes, ethnic groups, going to be a lot of people rejected, some social groups, economic groups and geo- pretty able people, and that could be graphical regions of the state." The original embarrassing." version said only that the members should Practicing politicians, it should be be "broadly representative of the people of pointed out, might also be embarrassed by Texas." The most pointed opposition came open sessions. Four of The Six (assuming from Republicans who wanted "political that Chief Justice Greenhill and Presiding parties" inserted as another specified consi- Judge Onion hold fairly safe seats) have deration. Then again, only 14 of the 50 future races to think about, and might well members who voted to table the Washing- prefer that no one know whom they push ton amendment were Republicans. and whom they do not push. Not constituents. Not prospective contributors. There was another wrangle over the Not any of the very powerful groups who amount to be paid to commissioners per have vested interests in the Constitution, diem. The Senate version called for $50; the ones like, say, the Texas Good Roads the Rules Committee amendment raised it Association (read "highway contractors") to $100. The House listened to arguments whose dedicated highway trust fund about enabling working folks to serve, cannot be tapped for mass transit without heard periodic bulletins from Rep. Fred a constitutional amendment. Agnich's pocket calculator on the The candidates are legion, and projected total costs, and finally voted to special-interest pressure on the keep the $50 purdime, as they insisted on appointment committee obviously does calling it. salaries, $300,000 for travel and per diem not depend on being allowed into public expenses and $360,000 for miscellaneous meetings. For opponents of a A limited legislative confirmation and operating expenses.) The commission's lobby-oriented, business-oriented procedure was approved. The scheme, final report will be "widely available" — commission, the question is: Will public devised by Rep. Ray Hutchison, provides meaning at least a copy at every public meetings of The Six make any difference? for the non-approval of the entire library — by Dec. 31, but the commission Some good libs have already said there is 37-member commission by collection of 91 will continue in office until March of next no way to prevent the committee from legislators' signatures on a petition to be year in order to advise and support the discussing, or fixing (depending on how posted in the Secretary of State's office. It constitutional convention. sinister a coloring you want to put on it) was pointed out that it is extremely There was, as usual, another half to the the appointments in advance. Supporters unlikely that 91 members would want to loaf. There were folks who wanted the of open meetings say public sessions are at throw out the entire slate and start over. commissioners to be confirmed by both least a chance, maybe the only chance, to But Hutchison maintained that his plan houses, meeting in open session. And there at least be able to see that the fix is in. was a compromise, giving some power to was a fleeting chance that the meetings of Bob Bullock held a press conference on, legislators without jeopardizing the the appointment committee would have to as he put it, one of those days when he felt timetable for drafting a new Constitution, be open to the public. noble, to say exactly that. He lit into and without subjecting commissioners to That provision wasn't in the original Daniel and (especially) Hobby for allowing the embarrassment of being individually Senate version, which allowed executive the closed meeting provision to be considered in public hearings (heaven sessions at the discretion of The Six. It was included. He said lobbyists "would like forfend). added by the Rules Committee, those nothing better than for the six-member wild-eyed radical reformers who rejected appointment committee to consider What emerged, then, was the designation individual confirmation and Washington's prospective appointments in private, of an appointment committee (composed "quota system." The Rules Committee, behind closed doors, with a lock on it of the governor, lieutenant governor, whose members did not even snicker when about the size of a number two washtub." speaker of the House, attorney general, Rep. Luther Jones of El Paso told them Buck Wood of Common Cause is lining chief justice of the Supreme Court and legislative confirmation was a bad idea up participants for another blast. He says it presiding judge of the Court of Criminal since "the people will feel more protected will include Roy Evans of the AFL-CIO, Appeals) empowered to appoint a if it's left to the appointment committee. environmentalists, Catholics, Baptists and 37-member commission. Elected state The appointment committee is answerable others. And he reports that all of them are officials are not eligible for appointment. A to the people — they're elected officials." getting heavy pressure to pull out of the chairman and vice-chairman will be It was subtracted again by an press conference. Maybe if they agreed to designated by the appointment committee, amendment offered by Rep. Tim Von hold it in executive session. . . J.F. which will also approve the commission Dohlen of Goliad. Since the entire budget. Before Nov. 1 of this year "the resolution will be sent to a conference February 16, 1973 13 The dance of deterrence

Austin "It really isn't too important how many people we kill with the death penalty," defense attorney Warren Burnett told the Senate Jurisprudence Committee. "Our tolerance for inflicting death is pretty well established. I say, with no particular pride, we're a country that's reasonably good at it.

"We're probably going to kill somewhere between 18, 15 maybe, to 25 people a year in the best years. We'll kill far more this would a five-dollar fine? This is the type of legislative session through legislative VARIOUS CRIMES were deterrent I would like you to address neglect," Burnett continued. "The horror described in gory detail during the yourself to." of this thing is that the people back home, three-hour hearing. Creighton was first, Glasglow gamely avoided a direct answer the people you represent, •will in some citing • two - of the more horrendous to Mengden's query. vague way feel that something has been incidents in his memory — the recent rape The constitutionality of Ogg's and done to strengthen law enforcement, and and murder , of a five-year-old girl in Fort Creighton's bills were attacked and nothing could be further from the truth." Worth and the robbery of a Stephens defended from every direction. The County service station during which an opinions of the nine Supreme Court Be that as it may, the people want the attendant was taken into a field and "filled justices were batted around as lightly as a death penalty, maintain Sens. Tom full of lead" because the robbers didn't birdie in a badminton game. Creighton of Mineral Wells and Jack Ogg of want any witnesses. One of the most prestigious witnesses, Houston, sponsors of similar bills to bring Creighton argued, "The truth of the Frank Maloney, representing the Texas capital punishment back to Texas. matter is there's no deterrent to a person Criminal Defense Lawyer's • Association, that's bent this way not to kill when called the bills "abominations." He Last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled committing a robbery or another serious the Texas death penalty unconstitutional maintained that legislators can't write a crime. That's why we need the death capital punishment bill within the because, among other reasons, it gave the penalty." jury too much discretion on punishment constitutional guidelines set down by the Sen. Bob Gammage of Houston asked Supreme Court. (two years to death). The bills by Ogg and Creighton to repeat the date of the service Creighton stipulate capital punishment for station execution. only certain premeditated murders — CONCERNING POSSIBLE "Several years ago, three or four or five discretionary application of the penalty, When the victim is a peace officer or a years ago," he answered. attorney Burnett said that when he was a fireman, "That was prior to the abolishing of the district attorney many years ago he had When the murder is intentionally death penalty and it didn't deter that won a verdict of death against a man who committed during a kidnapping, rape, crime," Gammage pointed out. had a court appointed attorney and the burglary, robbery or arson, "That may be so, Senator, but it's still man was executed. But, he said, "I cannot When the murder is done for pay, my view that we need this as the supreme conceive of a circumstance underwhich a When the murder is committed by penalty as the deterrent to that type of client of mine could get the death penalty. someone attempting to escape from a penal crime. That's just my view," Creighton The reason for that is obvious. If he didn't institution, answered coolly. have the money to finance the kind of Or when the murder is done "with Sen. Walter Mengden of Houston backed defense that avoids the death penalty, I extreme atrocity or cruelty or under him up. "In respect, uh, to the people in would spend it for ,him. These people we circumstances that show exceptional favor of the death penalty because of these are going to kill will fit the same pattern depravity." The proposals are similar to killers who are roaming the street, they that you have already seen emerging." those included in the new draft of the want them removed from society . . . for Poor folks, black folks, brown folks, penal code. the protection of the people from that is. Tom Hanna, the Beaumont D.A., A third bill by Sen. D. Roy Harrington marauders," Mengden said. and Jim Vollers from the office of the of Port Arthur mentions the death penalty, District attorneys from Houston, Dallas, attorney general offered a solution to but Harrington told the committee that his Beaumont and Stephenville all concurred possible unequal application of the capital intent is to "attack the other end of the that the death penalty deters crime. "With penalty — eliminate the section of the law law, the minimum sentence." "I'm not an capital punishment that five-year-old girl allowing the alternative of life attorney, he said, "but I have a bunch of might have gotten raped, but she might not imprisonment. Gas them ' all without constituents who want justice. They see a have gotten killed," said Robert Joe discrimination. Mengden concurred. man getting a five-year probated sentence Glasglow, the young Stephenville D.A. Ted Bush of the Harris County D.A. for murder and then somebody else gets a During Glasglow's testimony, Mengden office and some other representatives of 10-year sentence for smoking a marijuana (his friends call him Mad Dog) came up the law enforcement establishment cigarette and they wonder. . . . " with the most specious argument of the suggested that the last category of murder, Harrington's bill would provide a 20-year day. "Let us assume the penalty for that "committed with extreme atrocity or minimum sentence for certain crimes of murder was a five-dollar fine," he said. cruelty or under circumstances that show violence. "Now then, comparing a five-dollar fine exceptional depravity," was too vague to with murder, do you think the death be constitutional. 14 The Texas Observer penalty would be a greater deterrent than Throughout the hearing, Senator February 16, 1973 Gammage hammered away at the notion, held by all the D.A.s who testified, that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime. And Harold M. Hyman, a professor of legal and constitutional history at Rice University Glad to pay and the author of ten books on criminal law history, was contemptuous of the deterrence theory. "Each decade almost has altered its views on appropriateness — INDEPENDENT PEST CONTROL from the eye for the eye, to boiling and OPERATORS OF TEXAS quartering, to burying the entrails and 4517 Yale - P. 0. Box 94071 other parts of bodies in the mouths of Houston, Texas 77018 victims in the sight of their families, to Phone 692 7175 hanging, to the electric chair, to the gas chamber, to the current discussion involving the equality of remedies," Hyman said. ."My review of the most cautious, wideranging and penetrating research is that the deterrent effect of The Honorable Senator Oscar Mauzy capital punishment, over the centuries and 1338 Acapulco Dr. including our own time, here and abroad, Dallas, Texas 75232 leads me to conclude that it fails to deter." Alan Sager, a professor of political Dear Senator Mauzy: statistics at UT Austin, said he had reviewed the statistical studies of the On June 8, 1971, Senate Bill 910 was passed. Our organization of 160 non-deterrent effect of capital punishment. statewide members feel the bill should be amended to include the "They seem to prove conclusivOy to me following points: 1. Release state funds to publish a book on knowledge that the death penalty has no deterrent needed to pass the examination that will be given effect," he said. later under the Federal Bill. Since the state will Some witnesses even strayed onto the be responsible for implementing the federal exam subject of right and wrong. "Murder is and educational program, we feel the state should outrageous," said Wayne Oakes of the furnish a book so the exam can be passed. 2. Enlarge the board to 6 or more members instead of Texas Civil Liberties Union. "Public 4 and include members from areas being regulated-- murder is intolerable. The taking of human such as pest control operators, nurserymen, tree- life is a prerogative the state does not men and farmers because the bill affects all of them. have." The bills were sent to the subcommittee on criminal matters, the same committee that is looking at the penal code. Chairman Tati Santiesteban says the committee will In order for you to more fully understand what we are trying to accomplish, see how the penal code fares in the full I would like the opportunity to talk with you. Please call or write --but let Senate before it resorts to the "one shot us hear from you. bills." "I believe that there is no way, using Sincerely, the Supreme Court guidelines, to pass a constitutional death penalty bill," Santiesteban told the Observer. He says, ,'(/...e;ZZ(4..i . Pa-a./ the way he reads the court's decision, the Walter T. Williams, President Independent Pest Control bill would have to eliminate discretion by Operators of Texas the district attorney in writing the indictment and by the jury as well. He explained, "The only bill that would pass On Dec. 15, Mauzy responded to this letter, saying in part, "I am always would have to go something like this: If a available to meet with any of my constituents or any citizens of Texas to try to man kills a police officer or a fireman while seek a legitimate legislative goal. However, I am not prepared to oppose or the officer is in the line of duty and the support legislation on the basis of anyone paying me any money or other thing defendant knows he is a police officer or a of value. As a matter of fact, to do so would violate our Constitutional oath." fireman, then the man must be indicted for Williams apparently received some other letters from legislators who were capital punishment and, upon finding the irked by his phraseology. Some of them recall having received a second letter man guilty, the jury must assess the death from Williams explaining the first letter, but the Observer was unable to locate a penalty." copy of the second letter. Rep. Joe Allen of Baytown recalls that the letter was The members of the subcommittee are apologetic or explanatory in tone and that it stated that the reference to "paying Gammage, Max Sherman of Amarillo, Ike any reasonable amount" had reference to any legitimate expense a legislator Harris of Dallas and Bill Meier of Fort might incur. A member of Rep. Mickey Leland's staff recalls that what was Worth. K.N. apparently the second letter referred to paying for any legal expense a legislator might incur or for legal work he might find necessary in the course of work on the bill. Sen. Chet Brooks' office, which is noted for its files, has no record of a second letter nor could some other members recall having received a second letter. But Williams did apparently try to straighten out the misunderstanding, at The American tax burden — city, state and least with some legislators. federal — is below that of most other highly developed nations, including England, France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Canada and the Scandinavian countries. —U.S. News and World Report A Public Service Message from the American Income Life Insurance Company—Executive offices, Waco, Texas—Bernard Rapoport, Pres.

NOTES ON RUSSIA

by Congressman Jim Wright There are no more than five hours of real daylight in the 12th District, Texas winter season. The sun is rarely visible. A constant cold drizzle These notes were taken after five days in the Soviet Union. It chills the spirit, and at night a tidal wind from the Baltic churns, is much too short a time to form profound conclusions or even the Neva River and howls around the corners of the city's an authoritative summation. What I have written is, rather, a stately buildings in a sad serenade like a continuous siren from a series of impressions based upon observations and conversations cruising ambulance. in Leningrad, Moscow, and on the train which connects the two cities. Leningrad was to me the more interesting of the two, in many respects a remarkable city, once described by Dostoevski as "the most abstract and premeditated city in the world." It is beautiful in a sort of bleak, detached sense. Style of Life In spite of broad, clean avenues uncluttered by traffic jams, Even so; life here is rich by Soviet standards. There is no an heroic heritage from a succession of wars and Eastern evidence of real poverty. Officials boast that unemployment is Europe's most ostentatious collection of ornate museums, non-existent. It depends, I suppose, on their definition. Leningrad life might seem drab to the average American. But it Everywhere I saw middle-aged women with long brooms is enormously attractive to the average Russian. sweeping the city streets. Our Intourist guide insists that they Rooted deep in the bloody and opulent era of the czars, its are paid as well as the average doctor. Asked why anyone would proud architecture breathing from the past an aura of planned undergo the years of study to become a doctor if paid no more spaciousness, Leningrad today is buffeted by waves of tourists than a street sweeper, she replies: "The challenge of the work, from Eastern Europe and its gold-gilted seams are beginning to of course." And, she admits, there are certain "fringe benefits." split from the pressures of four million inhabitants. There is no shortage of doctors. There are 147 hospitals and neighborhood clinics scattered throughout the city. People on the streets seem well dressed. A man's suit costs the equivalent of a month's pay. To buy an automobile would swallow up the average breadwinner's total salary for almost Zero-Growth Goal two years. Hence, there are few private cars. The city government wants no more permanent residents. Leningrad's administrative official (perhaps the equivalent' of Intent on preserving a local quality of life unique in the Soviet a city manager) estimates that only 2% of Leningrad's citizenry Union, officials here have adopted severe restrictions against drives private vehicles into the downtown area and implies that accepting new citizens from the surrounding countryside. Now officialdom likes it this way. It does have one advantage. There the elaborate regulations amount to a tough anti-immigration are no traffic snarls. policy. There is, however, an excellent system of public If a Russian from some other town desires to take up transportation. The typical Leningrader may walk for six or residence here in the Soviets' second largest metropolis, he first seven minutes in the biting cold to catch the tram or bus 'or must obtain a local work permit and spend three years subway. But the fare is only five kopecs (about seven cents) and performing manual labor on housing or other civic construction he is deposited close to his place of work. The city's manager's projects. Only then can he qualify to make applicatiop for face brightens into a smile of pride as he tells us that 1.4 million Leningrad citizenship. citizens ride the metro daily. Since all housing is controlled by the government and apartment units are individually assigned by the central authority, this rule against unwanted newcomers can be effectively enforced. Some few outlanders get around it by importuning family or The Subway friends to take them in surreptitiously. But this can inflict real In company with the Chief. Engineer of the subway system, a hardship, as the typical family of five will have two bedrooms at hearty and effusive man who speaks no English, I took a best, more likely one, and — unless it is lucky enough to be in 40-minute ride on the underground metroliners at yesterday's one of the new collective apartment buildings — will share bath afternoon 'rush hour, making three transfers and returning to and kitchen facilities with two or three other families; our point of origin. The metro system here is one of the things a

• • • I . • • • at. N.'

A Public Service Message from the American Income Life Insurance Company—Executive offices, Waco, Texas—Bernard Rapoport, Pres.

group of Congressmen representing U.S. city districts came to Relations with Foreigners see. One of the world's most extensive subterranean rail I wish it were possible to take a month and visit small towns networks, it is the more remarkable when one considers the and the countryside. I'd like to know these people better, to massive engineering barriers its builders confronted, with 65 learn what makes them tick. There is a strange anomaly here. rivers and canals to be tunneled under to link up the city's 101 The official thaw in relations with our country has penetrated land islands. the upper levels of officialdom, but it almost seems there never It is in the metro at rush hour that you can sense a flavor of really was a freeze so far as the general public is concerned. Russian city life. The tunnels are boiling cauldrons of humanity. Only at the median levels of the bureaucracy does one get the The escalator plunges like a waterfall to a level 180 feet below feeling of a meditated chill. After the long flight from London, the city's streets. Subway cars are jammed to capacity. It is Customs was a minor ordeal. Nobody hurried. They almost incongruous to recall that the wide streets above are not seemed deliberately slow. Passports and other documents were crowded with autos. meticulously scrutinized. It took longer for Les Edelman than Everyone is in a great hurry now that work is over. It almost for the rest of us, perhaps because of his Jewish surname, or reminds you of an American crowd pouring into a football maybe because his passport reveals Russia as the birthplace of stadium, rushing to make the kick-off. There is one immediately his father. He was asked if he had any living relatives in the recognizable difference. The people are not laughing. They are Soviet union. "None that I know of," he replied. -not -talking to one another: They neither smile nor scowl. - Packed into such intimate proximity, each person seems to Once through Customs, I asked if it were permissible to take withdraw into an imaginary cubicle of privacy and pull the a picture of the women who examined our luggage. The women curtains about him. He stares straight ahead, his face immobile smiled, seemed wholly agreeable. I was stopped by their and expressionless. I wonder what they're thinking. Maybe it's supervisor, a uniformed man whose brow knitted into a scowl. none of my business. "Take pictures of the ceiling," he suggested. The ceiling contained mural paintings depicting scenes from the October Revolution and one, I think, from the Seige of Leningrad. But the people in general, at least those I met, seem friendly The Farmers' Market enough to Americans. I detected .no resentment. There were no The next morning I saw a different facet of the Soviet formal restrictions on our movement, but we got the clear character. At a large, indoor farmers' market an hour before impression that the official desire is for more daylight, I rubbed elbows with a more relaxed and expressive government-to-government exchanges, not for people-to-people crowd. Accompanied by U.S. Deputy Consul Franz Misch, who contacts. The discouragement is more subtle than overt. During speaks Russian, I slipped out early to visit a farmers' market our several days in the Soviet Union, there was no mention in where vendors sell fresh produce from the surrounding farm the newspapers of a visiting American congressional delegation. lands. It is the nearest thing I saw to a "free enterprise" Our Embassy people say it is the consistent policy to await our operation. Almost everything is sold by weight. People bring departure and then publish a. story of our visit. their own shopping bags or fish net containers. Although it is still dark, the stalls already are doing a brisk business. Both buyers and sellers were intensely curious whenever I was introduced as an American congressman. I sensed no hostility but quite the reverse. Freedom of Information One grinning fellow refused to let me pay for some cabbage Some top Soviet officials are extremely well informed on the salad I wanted to sample. I bought some cheese, a few apples, United States. In Moscow we talked for two hours on Saturday and for one ruble ($1.20 on the local exchange) a large white morning with Anatolev Maksimov, the approximate equivalent chrysanthemum. The flowers had been flown up on the day of our Secretary of Interior. He was accompanied by six aides, before by swarthy tradesmen from Georgia, a distance of several apparently for technical or statistical back-up in answering our thousand miles. I wondered at the economic feasibility of such questions. The aides might as well have stayed home. Maksimov an operation, but apparently it pays. Misch says the average answered each question personally, in considerable detail and — Russian worker makes about $150 a month but will buy a few so far as I was able to determine — with both candor and flowers at this price to relieve the winter's drabness. accuracy. He knew a great deal , about our domestic energy The Georgians are much different in appearance from the problems, our current environmental initiatives, even our recent northern Russians, bearing a physical resemblance to Turks or highways vs. transit skirmishes. perhaps Lebanese. One is reminded that the Soviet Union, like The latter seemed to puzzle him. Needing and putting a high the United States, is a highly pluralistic society, perhaps priority on the development of both highways and rail transit, culturally more so because it is less mobile. Here in the Soviet this Russian official sees no basis for conflict. He was mildly north, the citizenry, to my eye, is indistinguishable in basic critical of the way in which he feels we in the U.S. waste heat physical appearance from Americans. Perhaps there is a certain needlessly in the development of thermal energy. He is urbane, roundness of face which Misch attributes to the high starch diet. knowledgeable, competent. He describes the thaw in official Bread is cheap, highly subsidized by the State. Meat is high, relations as "a very good and warm situation." Watching his face even by American standards. as we talk with him, I am certain that he understands English.

• • • •-•••i:* tt•••• or no ••• v.,. • ,• Irt, • A Public Service Message from the American Income Life Insurance Company—Executive offices, Waco, Texas—Bernard Rapoport, Pres.

But he invariably replies, through an interpreter, in Russian. I member of both the Communist Party and a religious began to wonder if the reason for the presence of the "aides" organization. Considering the small percentage of Soviet citizens was to provide witness to his comments. formally affiliated with the Party, this might seem The Soviet citizen, however, cannot be very well informed inconsequential. Yet the official frown has obviously diminished about the outside world given the limits upon his access to the ranks of public worshipers. information. Russians were told in their newspapers last summer, for example, about the devastating drought which Our Committee Counsel Richard Sullivan, his wife Julie, and parched the plains of their wheat belt. But not one word has Mrs. James Howard attended Mass one morning in one of the been printed here in any journal of public circulation about the relatively few operating churches (to be distinguished from the huge purchase of wheat from the United States, probably the magnificent ostentatious cathedrals with the onion domes which biggest grain transaction since the days of the pharoahs. have been retired from worship and taken over by the State as On Sunday I picked up a copy of the Moscow News, the only museums). It was to Dick a disheartening experience. He was English language publication printed in the Soviet capital. It the only male present except for the priest who read the service contains no commercial ads — and no news. Its sixteen pages but offered no sermon. Aside from the three Americans, consist entirely of editorial commentary. The lead story on page attendance consisted of approximately 70 women. Dick two deals with the grain harvest. It assures the readership that estimates that all were older than he. Dick Sullivan is 52. there will no no bread shortage, "thanks to the measures taken by the Party and to the selfless efforts of Soviet people." One Franz Misch says that police often stand outside these paragraph of the commentary reads as follows: operating churches and, if any young people are seen entering or The advantage of the Soviet planned system of economic leaving, the police will ask for their identification and question management lies precisely in the fact that it can weather them as to why they were there. Apparently it is a form of the greatest disasters and cut to the minimum even serious studied harrassment from which older citizens are exempt. It is losses. The force of long-term planning was confirmed also apparently successful. Nobody likes to be questioned by once again this year. the police. Still no mention of U.S. wheat. By contrast, the papers have been filled with reports of Yet the old cathedrals are prime points of tourist attraction. negotiations with an American consortium to build in Siberia an Intourist guides show you through those within the Kremlin enormous natural gas compression plant for shipment of this walls, pointing to the ancient paintings depicting in their words Soviet fuel by tanker to U.S. markets. "the myth of Daniel and the lions" or the "folk belief" of the Angel Gabriel. They also show you the Czarist tombs in these Billboards and placards everywhere contain pictures of Lenin cathedrals. One wonders at the seeming incongruity of in various poses, along with state-sponsored slogans. One sees no preserving cathedrals and other relics of czarist times in all their billboards advertising commercial products. gilded and ornate finery. The Russians seem somehow proud of U.S. officials assure us that our very handsome and them while ideologically despising all they stood for. comfortably appointed quarters in the official Intourist hotels are electronically bugged. One of our party was certain that his During my five days in Russia, an inchoate thought kept room had bgen entered and his effects examined during his nagging at the subconscious level. Something was missing from absence. I, however, had no reason to suspect any such the whole scene, and I couldn't figure out just what it was. occurrence. Suddenly I realized. It was December, and there was no sign of Nina Petrova, our Intourist guide, is a remarkable woman. Christmas. She could command a good job at an attractive salary in our A few impressions: country. Her English is good, her manner charming, her facts . This is indeed a closed society, but I think I can see a slight were rehearsed. Only there are some questions she can't, or crack in the door. won't, answer. She will try briefly, obviously anxious to hurry The government is coming slowly and hesitantly out of its through the digression and back to her travelogue. cocoon of international paranoia. There seems among the Intourist people an incapacity to Things are a little more relaxed. extemporize. Anything outside the established program flusters The average citizen is better off materially than he was under them. Any d&tour on the route, a request to look inside a store, the Czars. But no American I know would be happy living there. even a desire to walk around the block is upsetting to them. The people are proud of Soviet achievements but would like more of the national effort to be directed from war materiel to the production of consumer goods. Religion There is no descernible public hostility toward Americans. The people are no more mad at us than we are at them. The official Soviet position is that there no longer exists any At heart, they probably are not much different from prohibition against the exercise of religious worship. They ourselves. Of course I can't be sure of this, but that is what I acknowledge, however, that no person is permitted to be a think. The Preston papers Austin Council wants to see estuarine sanctuaries, Outgoing Gov. Preston Smith's planning using state-owned submerged lands; reports, eight in all, are of some value, created. And, while never salting how, they despite the fact that some of them treat us Observations want to "prohibit commercial and like either babies or morons. industrial development on publicly-owned The one on land management, prepared wetlands or other critical environments" by the Council of State Planning Agencies development include environmental impact and "discourage new industrial or and Smith's office, waffles the most, but statements in project proposals commercial development on the barrier also hints at the most. The question is how significantly affecting the environment. On islands" fronting around the Texas part of to stop developers from spoiling the land what is to be done on the basis of these the Gulf of Mexico. for short-term profit. reports, the Council has marbles in its The Smith reports on regional planning, mouth, but its specification of the contents pollution by power plants and "Texas' A conference on land resource and concerns that the reports are to cover Urban Challenge" are informative, but management in San Antonio last August is thorough and tough. mush-mouthed on what to do. The report concluded that "a land resource In the coastal resources report presented on the lack of a uniform state policy for management program should be adopted by Smith, one finds proposals to regulate the people who work for it is a good one, which places state government in a position the dumping of industrial crud into the sea showing, for instance, that there is no to exercise the necessary degree of if the crud or the vessels dumping it single health insurance program for them guidance over growth and development in originate in or pass through the state; to so that some of them pay higher premiums the state." You have to take a reading protect fresh water inflows vital to the than others and some get fewer benefits microscope to the Smith report on this natural life and ecology of the estuaries; to than others. subject to make out what they're talking reduce water pumping that is causing A few years back, Commissioner Albert about, but if you persist and draw the subsidence of parts of the coast; and to Pei% of Bexar County proposed, in an indicated deductions you can figure it out. pass "a comprehensive coastal public lands Observer feature, "a Marshall Plan for Their thought is that a balance must be management act," a need obviously South Texas." This is now getting going as struck • between growth and economic converging with the proposal for a state development on the one hand and land management act. The Interagency February 1 6, 1973 19 environmental protection on the other. It's something to have conservative sources upset, too, about the rape of the land. Somehow, this language survived in DALLAS, TEXAS the Smith report: Stop at these "Any state land resource management Hotel Courts ALAMO PLAZA HOTEL COURT - 75 ROOMS program must be designed to meet the best with confidence U.S. Hwy 80 (Business Route) 712 Ft. Worth Ave. interests of all citizens of the state. . . . The 1/2 mile from downtown, convenient to Dallas-Ft. philosophy • of land exploitation must be at Worth Turnpike, 6 Flags Over Texas, Bronco Bowl. replaced by a recognition of land as a finite reasonable Free airport transportation. 24 hour restaurant. resource to be efficiently and effectively Swimming pool. managed to satisfy long-term needs as well rates P.O. Box 6076 • Tele: 214/148-7444 as short-term gains." ENJOY: ABILENE, TEXAS And, "land resources must be treated at 100% AIR CONDITIONED a statewide or regional scale . . ." The FINE RESTAURANTS THUNDERBIRD LODGE - 125 ROOMS Legislature should establish "a broadly TILE BATHS 1 mile east on U.S. 80, Business representative entity for guiding the SWIMMING POOLS Playground, wading pool (in addition to swim- development of a state land resource FREE ADVANCED ming pool). Pets limited. Restaurant. Meeting management program." RESERVATIONS rooms. Free airport bus. Club. TELEVISION What about the powers of condemnation P.O. Box 205 • Tele: 915 /6774211 to override local districts (including, say, TELEPHONE rip-off navigation districts) that are LOOK FOR supervising the despoiliation of the land? THESE SIGNS The report is skittish, but it recommends that the program should "build upon the OF basic features" of a proposed model land HOSPITALITY development code, and in an appendix we learn that this model code entails the power to reserve lands for public use, "concerns use of powers to acquire and dispose of lands by eminent domain, purchase, sale, etc.," requires "local governments to deny development permits unless state or regional standards are met" and "specifies controls for large-scale developments." The name of this game is "development regulation." The Interagency Council, in another report, advocates that all the state agencies concerned with natural resources and "the Greater South Texas Cultural Basin carry on this work. spend in jail and that the five's admissions project." Smith created a commission for We need not take leave of our senses "staved off" testimony that the Watergate this project last August by executive order. when the conservative establishment fund had been approved by higher-ups such The commission's report shows that in the suddenly has a brief seizure of as John Mitchell, Nixon's sidekick. Time 40-county South Texas area, 40 per cent of responsibility. In the case of the Smith quoted Hunt: "Money is the cheapest the people live below the poverty line, and reports, much of the apparent social commodity you've got in an operation like per capita income is 65 per cent of the conscience is disguised horror that the this." national average. Eighteen of the state's Congress is going to take over control of Jan. 23. James Reston of the New York "high unemployment counties" are in this many of these matters in the states that do Times writes, "we are seeing the 40-county area. The commission proposes not act. The humanitarian rhetoric also development of a kind of political warfare to prepare a development plan for South masks the businesslike willingness to use that can destroy the democratic election Texas and start some demonstration public programs for private rip-offs. The process." projects in 1973. Reports from the quantity of good faith underlying the Jan. 23. Sissy Farenthold, who ran for commission's committees advocate start-up rhetoric, whatever that quantity is, will not governor of Texas in 1972, is routinely job training programs in industry, "funding necessarily avail when the developers, oil stopped and searched before boarding an a public works program for the lobbyists and bankers move in on the airplane in San Antonio. The armed officer underemployed and unemployed," training Legislature, greenbacks falling to the floor scans her person, front and back, with a South Texans in grantsmanship to_ get from them every time they reach for a metal detector. He also requires her to available public funds, some kind of calling card. But a start is a start. open her carry-on luggage and purse and non-profit single-family housing program physically prods into both of these, also and "an integrated information and health opening her small coin purse and poking delivery system." At the least the his finger into it. Legislature should fund the commission to Watch on the Rhine Jan. 27. The Watergate jury hears Jan. 10. The U.S. Supreme Court rules 20 The Texas Observer testimony by the treasurer of the 1972 that the Fifth Amendment "adheres Nixon campaign that former Attorney basically to the person, not to information General Mitchell and former Commerce which may incriminate him," and that, Secretary Maurice Stans authorized the IDA PRESS therefore, once a taxpayer gives his records treasurer to turn over a sum that turned 901 W 24th St Austin to an accountant, the Internal Revenue Multi copy service. Service can compel the accountant to out to be $199,000 in cask to Gordon Liddy, one of the remaining Watergate Call 477-3641 surrender them to the government. Jan. 11. The government says in its defendants, who used it for political espionage. opening statement to the jury in the Watergate trial that the intelligence Jan. 27. The federal department of CLASSIFIED operation that bugged the Democratic transportation announces that two airlines National Committee was spawned and will be fined for not searching Sen. Vance Classified advertising is 20d per word. Discounts funded as a result of a meeting with Jeb Hartke, D-Ind., before he boarded a plane. for multiple insertions within a 12-month period: Magruder, deputy chairman of the Nixon Jan. 31. Nixon says his authority to 26 times, 50%; 12 times, 25%; 6 times, 10%. re-election committee. impound (not spend) money Congress orders spent is "absolutely clear" and BOOKPLATES. Free catalog. Many beautiful Jan. 15. Four defendants pleading guilty designs. Special designing too. Address: to the break-in at the Watergate say states further, "I will not spend money if BOOKPLATES, P.O. Box 28-1, Yellow Springs, repeatedly that the government's opening the Congress overspends . . . " Ohio 45387. statement to the jury was correct. Jan. 31. The FBI arrests and handcuffs Jan. 17. The presidentially-appointed columnist Jack Anderson's associate MARJORIE A. DELAFIELD TYPING board of the Corporation for Public journalist, Les Whitten, confiscates SERVICE: Theses, dissertations, manuscripts, Broadcasting officially, by resolution, Whitten's pen and notebooks, and charges reports, etc. I.B.M. Selectric H typewriters, seizes from the educational TV stations' him with receiving papers stolen from the mu ltili th ing, mimeographing, addressing Public Broadcasting Service the power to government by Indians during their envelopes. Public Notary. 25 years experience. occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Call 442-7008, Austin. control which programs are supplied to the nation's public service stations. The WE SELL THE BEST SOUND. Yamaha pianos, chairman of CPB says again he is opposed The smell of spring guitars; Moeck-Kung-Aulus recorders; har- to "topical" programs. Nixon has monicas, kalimbas and other exotic instruments. appointed a majority of the CPB board, This is from Archer Fullingim's column Amster Music, 1624 Lavaca, Austin. 478-7331. and all the other members were appointed in the Kountze News of late January: CENTRAL TEXAS ACLU luncheon meeting. by his predecessor in the presidency. "One day last week I was driving across Spanish Village, 802 Red River, second Monday Jan. 18, 19. A former FBI agent testifies the Village creek bottom on 418, half of each month. From noon. All welcome. in the Watergate case that he was hired by listening to the radio, when all of a sudden the security chief for the Republican I smelled the water in the creek, and it CABLE REPORT. Cable television could be a spy in your bedroom. It may also allow you to shop National Committee to help wiretap the shattered me. Just a whiff and I sniffed and from your living room. We are the only people Democratic National Committee and that sniffed to get more, and when I didn't get reporting on the development of this industry he delivered information from the wiretap it I pulled over to the side across the bridge from the citizen's perspective. $7 per year. 192 to Nixon's political organization. and went down to the water and sniffed North Clark Street, Room 607, Chicago, Illinois Jan. 20. Norman Cousins reports that and smelled, and then stuck my hand and 60601. the Christmas season mass-bombing of arm up to the elbow in the cold water of GROK BOOKS. Political and general books from Vietnam was designed in part to test the Village creek, and got my coat sleeve wet China Publications, Feminist Press, Vendata, B-52's against new Soviet missiles recently and all the way to Silsbee I smelled the Lollypop-Power, many other publishers. Open 10 installed in North Vietnam. water of Village creek, that sort of to 8. 503-B West 17th St., Austin. Jan. 21. Time Magazine reports that E. swampy, spring gushing smell, and I called Howard Hunt, the first to plead guilty in up Alf who lives on Village creek and said CANOE RENTAL FOR RIVER TRIP. $5 per the Watergate trial, offered each of the go down to the creek and smell and sniff day, weekdays; $7 per day, Saturday & Sunday; four other defendants who have pled guilty Village creek. Spring is about six weeks Armadillo Canoe Rental, 454-0834, Austin. $1,000 a month for each month they away." R.D. Labor Union. We've learned something I Make American Flags about the history of the labor movement in the United States and we know that we're in for a struggle. For Thirty-five Cents a Day Our demands are the same ones that all unions have already fought for and won: To bargain collectively for wages, hours and working conditions. But as prisoners we're not free to do a lot of the work building support that outside labor can. Already the executive committee of District 65, The Distributive Workers of America has agreed to accept our union as an affili- ate. The Prisoners' Labor Union is currently considering their offer. The Prisoner's Rights Project of The Legal Aid Society is acting in our behalf by taking our cause through the courts and state agencies. And we're not alone in this. There are unions being formed within the walls in California, Illinois, Michigan, I work an eight hour shift, five days Army, mailbags, hospital sheets, robes, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Rhode a week—sometimes more. goWns, baby clothes—all the things they Island has recognized the Prisoner's My wife and kids are on welfare. call' the "state's goods." Inside the joint Union officially. Massachusetts has Just like all of you, I want to he able we're the clerks, orderlies, tailors, port- given the Prisoner's Union the right to to support my family. I'd like to make ers, barbers, gardeners, librarians and openly organize the inmates. enough to pay taxes, maybe even save maintenance men. Whatever it takes to The prisoners' union movement had a little. Hell, I'd even pay rent on the run a prison,. we do it. its origin two and a half years ago, four by eight room where I live, but Still, we've always thought of our- when the Prisoners' Union was formed thirty-five cents a day doesn't stretch selves as just prisoners, and it's not a by ex-prisoners in California. From a much. good feeling, not good at all. Then I basement office at 1345 7th Ave. in San I'm a convict and I'll be one for a heard about something new called the Francisco information regarding unions few years—I don't know how many Prison Labor Union and it made me is available to prisoners throughout the exactly. I know it's not supposed to be realize that althought I'm still a' pris- country. fun and I'm not asking for charity or oner, I'm also 'a laborer—and that's In Scandinavia the governments of pity. Just give me a job to do, one that worth something, inside or out. Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Fin- will train me to get and hold employ- There are .between 1800 and 2000 land have all recognized the Prisoner's ment when I'm released. And then pay inmates here with me at Green Haven Union as being the sole bargaining me a fair wage to do it. Prison in New York. Even though it's agent for all the convicts. Men and women like me make other a maximum security facility more than We've made some progress but I still things besides flags and license plates; half of us have risked reprisals and earn thirty-five cents a day. We've got a like your school desks, shoes for the signed up as members of the Prison long way to go and we need your help.

THE PRISON MEDIA PROJECT THE PRISON MEDIA PROJECT 857 Montgomery 857 Montgomery San Francisco, California 94133 San Francisco, California 94133 I am a prisoner. I am not a prisoner. I wish to learn more about the prison-labor movement, However I wish to support the legitimate and tradi- with a view toward joining the local in my area. Please tional goals of the Prison Labor Union. send me information and membership applications. [1] I am sending a check for $ to aid you in Here is some information about myself: continuing this informational campaign both within I work in the and without the walls. I can aid the effort in the following ways: doing ❑ days a week for $ a day. ❑ Please send me information. NAME NUMBER NAME

PRISON ADDRESS

CITY STATE ZIP CITY STATE ZIP ..:a•aa.

Six Books not so thoroughly documented as to leave the past, and a much longer history of man By Michael Anderson the text unreadable. There are no thin has heretofore been credited." Houston footnotes, their places being taken by Secrets of the Great Pyramid is not to be Being, in fine, a list. An annotated set of extensive picture captions (these have the' confused into the genre of wild-eyed written objects of interest, recent and virtue of being more or less complete and oddities such as Von Daniken's Gods From unrecent. The source of the grouping is readable as entities). At the back of the Outer Space? which is 'advertised to personal. Things I like. Things I do not book is Stecchini's long Appendix, and a contain "dramatic new evidence of like. Also, being a search for the good, the 134-entry Glossary of Names and Terms extraterrestrial visitors to earth!" (Von worth in each instance, while not holding which is helpful and informative (Who was Daniken is perhaps valuable in our world back the sword where it is called for. From Leonardo da Pisa? What is Ka? Clinkstone? for bringing us via Rod Serling's these comments an attitude might be What is the precession of the equinoxes?). hyped-but-interesting television special pieced together, and from the attitude, a The history of investigations is such wonders as the Plain of Nazca in fine chronologicated, so it is a "story" for the first two hundred and fifty odd pages, complete with characters (the everpresent Arab guide Ali Gabri, William Flinders Petrie), plot, and mysterious puzzling questions (Who built the Pyramid? When? How? How was the apparently advanced scientific knowledge of the Egyptians lost?). Ideas are recorded concerning the "strange powers" of the Pyramid (Bovis's studies of the dehydration and mummification of freshly dead cats suspended in models of the Pyramid of Cheops, Czechoslovakian radio engineer Karel Drbal's assertion of "a relation between the shape of the space inside the method. A view and a drill — surely such a pyramid, and the physical, chemical and living color, and additionally for providing coupling, any such coupling, has redeeming biological processes going on inside that the information — in his book — that a social value. A place. So, we proceed in space," sparks flying from a newspaper Maria Reiche published an extensive study good faith, you and I. wrapped wine bottle held high atop the of the Nazca Plain in 1968. Her book is Pyramid, the similarity of the coffer in the Secret of the Desert, and with the author King's Chamber to the Biblical Arc of the and the title we can all find it and get some Secrets of the Great Pyramid Covenant, and the similarity of the Arc of (thoughtful?) information about those Peter Tompkins with an Appendix by Livio the Covenant to Wilhelm Reich's orgone giant drawings and the "landing strip" Catullo Ste cchini box). The book is like that. A skillful blend configurations which Von Daniken New York: Harper & Row, 1971 of hard fact, speculation, and ornate rabbit conceives as a "space center for the Put the best in front. This book is goo. Gods.") Until we get Maria Reiche's book thrilling; this book is very good; this is a The 95-page Appendix is a trifle thick we will read Tompkins' book. And we will fine book. It is a history of investigations with ancient measures and proofs of be happy, for his book is informative, of the Pyramid of Cheops dating from the Egyptian superiorities, and with apologies reasonable, convincing. Believable. It visit of Thales, the father of Greek to Stecchini, I confess I read neither engenders in the reader, this reader, a geometry, sometime in the sixth century carefully nor completely. lurking lovely shadow of childhood awe, B.C., and extending through the present Both men conclude their work similarly. and that, my friends, is healthy. day. All important theories concerning the Stecchini "with the mere hint that there is construction, use, and meaning of the yet another lesson about the level of Pyramid are included. Additionally, Egyptian science to be drawn from the Real Time 1 information concerning the other pyramids stark nakedness of the Great Pyramid." John Brockman & Edward Rosenfeld, eds. is given where that information bears on And Tompkins with some "facts" New York: Anchor Press, Doubleday, 1973 some aspect or mystery of the Great (Eratosthenes did not first measure the This oversized paperback, if you never Pyramid. The book is well documented earth, Hipparchus did not invent open it and your taste in coffee table (the bibliography runs to ten pages), but trigonometry, Pythagoras didn't originate books runs to black and white computer his famous theorem), and then with the enhanced skull x-rays, will fit nicely in 22 The Texas Observer possibility of "a whole new civilization of your living room. They say this book is "a sensing and monitoring device, presenting Shape of Time, books by Dubos, Laing and finger. She says, "That's our plant!" I nod. an interdisciplinary view of new models Colin Turnbull (not the recent one), We look through the book and find all our and metaphors of reality . . . " I say no. I Castaneda (#2), Norbert Wiener, McLuhan, other plants. Clear and concise instructions say it is a $3.95 list. (It is interesting to Thomas S. Kuhn, Karl Jaspers and other for watering, sunlight, foods. How to remember that the list as form has not heady folk. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy propagate. A steal. always been so credible as it is in these makes it while Madame Blavatsky goes days. Didn't people used to try to put unmentioned. Alvin Toffler (dear God in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary On things together?) heaven above!) is in. And, among the Historical Principles Real Time 1 is a list of some 110 books, highlights so far found, there is: Prepared by William Little, H. W. Fowler, agencies, labs, societies, magazines and 1) Wittgenstein being called a "poet." J. Coulson; revised and edited by C. T. other information sources. Mailing There are at least four things wrong with Onions. addresses are included. For each entry this book. First, parading these other London: Oxford University Press, 1933, either Brockman or Rosenfeld has written heavies around as content does not make and 1970. about ten lines (a review? essay? them content, and it is pretentious as The worth of the Shorter OED cannot comment?), purporting, I suppose, to Christ himself. Second, we've heard of a lot be measured in terms of numbers of pinpoint in general the importance of that of the books already, back in the night of entries. It can be measured in the following entry in the context of the others and in the sixties when having heard of such was way: the Shorter OED has plenty of words the context of something I think they fashionable and at court. Third, it has been and histories of words, contains much fine would like to loosely define as "modern my (typical, half-educated, writing ("The letter R, as resembling in thought." partially-cultivated) experience that such sound the snarl of a dog,"), is fat as a tuba John Brockman has published two are Works as those listed in Real Time 1 and clothed in as pale a skyblue as you'd books, is young and fat with scientific largely inaccessible in the sense of being ever want to see, is supported by haughty interfaces, and is clearly educated up to his extremely difficult to read, and impossible scholarship, is easily readable in the sense cowlick. Rosenfeld is about to publish The to grasp without having already input an of easy-on-the-eyes (in contrast to the Book of Highs: 250 Ways to Alter incredible amount of background material newer complete OED in two volumes plus Consciousness Without Drugs. Here and I which we have not, generally, input. Put in. microscope), and allows one, for a little thought what we were trying to do was Fourth, and finally, there is the problem over $36, to have an object about the regain consciousness! that we desperately need a book sort of house the quality of which is sublime and like this, only better. We need a book Most of the space in Real Time 1 is beyond discussion. occupied by contextless excerpts from the which is comprehensive and knowing and entries. Anecdotes. compassionate on the subject of the Smokescreen A point of information. An abbreviated "leading edges" of sciences, systems and ideas, and we need a book which somehow Dick Francis list of examples of the entries: Cage's A New York: Harper & Row, 1973 Year From Monday which was, if you ask brings these frontrunnings together in some me, a terrible drag after Silence; Noam way more illuminating than simple spacial I haven't read it. But, Dick Francis has Chomsky's "real" work, Aspects of the togetherness on consecutive pages. We need never given up a bad book. His suspense Theory of Syntax which I ran around LA an "interface" between us, and them. And novels are all horse-related, and he is looking for in 1969 because I was such gimcracky as Real Time 1 doesn't snookered out of my brain with conceit, help our self-images on the one hand, and and which finally satisfied me only because on the other, more important hand, does it had plain blue covers with beautiful dead nothing for our understanding. blackass letters spelling out that powerfully The World Book of Houseplants intellectual name on there — when I went Elvin McDonald to read it I found it full of taxonomic New York: Popular Library, 1963 models and syntactically functioning units I have a few plants. A month ago I got (formatives), so I put it on the corner of this plant that looked like six sharpened himself horse-related (once a . champion my desk and fled back to the television, broomsticks of olive green jutting out of a steeplechase jockey), and since he is where, I don't mind telling you, I remained pot. It still looks like that. Now, I figure to this day (proud and feeling good for knowledgeable, literate, probably short, this is a terrific out-of-sight plant and I funny looking (his picture is in the having that wiry slim marvel in there on want to know what it is. I go to the the desk); Intelligent Life in the Universe February 5 issue of Newsweek), and very • bookstore. I look at maybe twenty, capable of handling the language — by Shklovskii and Carl Sagan which is a twenty-five books. No plant. So I figure difficult hook, but one that looks like the remember the language? — I submit my plant is rare (the nursery had said it Smokescreen will be terrific. Every real thing; John McHale's The Future of was rare, if I had listened). So I use as a the Future, again, a book I tried to get out "serious" writer I know (both of them), criterion for determining the quality and reads Dick Francis. Old people read Dick of George Braziller prior to publication in comprehensiveness of a plant book the Francis too, but that is not his fault. A new 1969 with the fabrication that I was going inclusion of this here rare plant of mine. I Dick Francis novel is better than anything to review it for some made-up magazine — look at more books. Books handsomely on television because: 1) It lasts longer; didn't work, but I got the book, read it, bound, books with poetry in them, books 2) It doesn't make as much noise; 3) It put it under (it's larger) the Chomsky; New for twenty dollars, books of shrubs, makes one feel good (no threat is involved, Scientist, a strange little British science flowering houseplants, ground cover. you can put it down); 4) Ordinarily there is journal which seems to keep up, albeit in McCall's Garden Book does not include my something in a Dick Francis book you did the offhand manner characteristic of such plant. Plants Are Like People never heard other British "future oriented" magazines of such a plant. Other books too numerous not know. Before Smokescreen, Francis has written as AD (which does not, incidently, make to mention. . . . Finally I find Elvin Bonecrack, Rat Race, the grade here). Other books included McDonald's book in a new dollar and a and I have read Enquiry, Three to Show (three of the include Edward T. Hall's The Hidden quarter paperback edition. I look on page others, collected), Forfeit, The Sport of Dimension, Ben Lee Whorf's Language, 241. There it says "S. cylindrica, to 5 ft., Queens Blood Sport, Flying Thought and Reality, Watson's The Double from South Africa, has round, tapered, (non-fiction), Helix: Being a Personal Account of The dark-green leaves; pink flowers." I buy the Finish, Odds Against. For Kicks, Nerve. Discovery of The Structure of DNA, book. I take it home. I show it to my wife, George Kubler's (seminal?) work, The point at the place on the page with my February 16, 1973 23 He writes well. Lean, quick as a cricket, tip touching, soliciting, my stomach, my On the surface of things, the writing is bright as lightning. Friendly like. There are stein of beer at the prow, my elbows richly candied, superb, 'woven with few diversions (that they are diversions can riding the other corners when I hunched, flip-flops, pocketed with the miasma of be argued), which can come anywhere near and I hunched often, pursuing unfamiliar dead accuracy. A page does not go by a new Dick Francis book for sheer, shoes across the floor, and the tracks of without some sting, some metaphor of angrily shoved stools. I came to hear frightening, abandoned joy. skinny Susu sing in her low, throaty elegance, some idea, some thematic sprachstimme, which was nevertheless statement suitable for saxophone — or French, a song about the carrion crow. it violin. had innumerable verses and she never sang But: a boy gets lost. That's no problem Fiction and the Figures of Life them all. (from the story "We Have Not in fiction, one expects that. . . . But essays? William H. Gass Lived the Right Life" in New American In essays one expects — with some justice New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971 Review #6, April 1969). — directness. Communication of the point (Random House Vintage Books edition, He engages language, you see, like the or points, at any cost. May, 1972). philosophical piano, all aged and grand I am the boy, of course, and I am Put it bluntly: this is an important book dark-grained woods, and capable, by virtue completely beat down and worked over by by one of the few good writers alive. It is a of grandness, age, and those sweet resonant this here book which is wicked and book of essays and reviews. That Gass is a hardwoods, of producing on command the grueling and perhaps the most cultivated, writer of fiction only makes this book greatest and the loveliest of tones. Gass's cogent and comprehensive a view of fiction more important, for from it we can hope words hang on his lines like work shirts and as has come down the pike since — since to learn something about writing, and tuxedos and tarps, all hot off the bodies of James perhaps, or someone. something about reading. his people. He proceeds to throttle, stretch, Gass, in his preface, apologizes for the Gass has published Omensetter's Luck, a poke, punch, and polish — quite visibly — "strange spectacle" of his essays: "I see novel; In the Heart of the Heart of the and arrange with surgical precision a them as the work of a novelist Country, collected shorter fiction; and language and a world which is clearly ours insufficiently off-duty." Ho! He has Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, an but somehow manages to suggest the himself hit upon the problem. My problem. "extended" short story. The fiction is nineteenth century. The abiding attitude Too much, too fast. Metaphors, images, wizened and exploded, true and false at is: I have the time. We all do. slithering things frontally faced . . . what is turns, full of complexities and shades and Fiction and the Figures of Life is a revealed? acres of prose. He is a master. He sits, collection of his essays and reviews from I've read Fiction and the Figures of Life perhaps pinching his sideburn — maybe he 1958 to 1971. Each was originally twice. Through and through. I have not got has a hat on: published in an important place (to name a it yet. But he is, after all, William Gass. His My study smokes like a singsong cellar. All few: The New York Times, The fiction is music. And if his essays are such places are alike. It must be the books Philosophical Review, Frontiers of obscure, difficult, complex, more terrible which make it seem crowded. Where is the American Culture, The New York Review than I have come to expect essays to be, band? I used to sit alone in a fold of the of Books). The reviews are almost then it is my problem and the room, at a small square table, dunced, one peripheral. Praise for the praiseworthy. responsibility is mine. The book is Nabokov, for example. What is of interest excellent — it's bound to be. 24 The Texas Observer here, in this book, are the essays. There are So. I will be patient. I will live. I will eat essays dealing directly with fiction — up my days with the Smithsonian Center "Philosophy and the Form of Fiction"; for Short-Lived Phenomena. There I can essays dealing with fiction sidewise — "The find 150 Black Pilot Whales who have High Brutality of Good Intentions"; essays beached along a two-mile stretch on Fort in which "civilization" is more central than Pierce North Beach. I will bide my time fiction — "The Stylization of Desire"; and appear to be content. I will say that essays from which fiction as subject is matter-of-factness, in the swamp of entirely absent — "The Case of the mystery, is a blessing. But I do not think I Obliging Stranger." will believe it.

More on no-fault In the opening sentence of "Flinching on no-fault" you refer to "the insurance industry's triumph over the public interest on No-Fault auto insurance." Prior to the Dialogue Senate vote on the Hart-Magnuson reform, all eight partners in our insurance agency wrote letters to Senators Bentsen and 1for mass circulation supporting the no-fault Tower urging them to vote for the concept. measure. Before reading the article, I was not aware of Representative Eckhardt's One of the insurance companies which opposition to no-fault. Eckhardt has we represent had suggested that we do so. perhaps the best liberal voting record of Our agency represents nine major national any Congressman in the Texas delegation. insurance companies (AEtna Life & His position on no-fault illustrates a Casualty, Continental Insurance, Crum and disturbing fact about many Texas liberals: Forster, Fireman's Fund, Great American, they are trial lawyers first and servants of Hanover, I. N. A., St. Paul, and Travelers), the public interest second. and all nine support the concept of Louis Bloodworth, Jr., Suite 500, no-fault. At least two have produced films Hamilton Bldg., Wichita Falls, Tex. 76307.