Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/29614
THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET News Fever by MARGARET DICKSON There is just no way around today’s reality that modern life is complicated and often diffi cult to comprehend. We all deal with personal issues involving our work, our families, our fi nances. Throw in the complexities of the larger world — our nation’s economic crunch, Japan’s disasters, the wars — as served to us by a myriad of news outlets, and it can seem overwhelming, impossible to process and understand. Some stories, though, are so simple to understand — and to react to at a visceral level with anger, sadness or a good laugh. Here are three that have registered with me lately. Bristol Palin has been hired by an apparel manufacturer to be its spokeswoman in a public-service campaign aimed at preventing teen pregnancies. I am not naming the manufacturer because I fi nd both its products — high heels and skimpy clothing targeting girls as young as 7 to young adults and its so-called public-service campaign — hypocritical, self-serving and completely distasteful. Think little girls tripping around in what are sometimes called “hooker boots.” Then factor in the fact that the company is paying Palin more than $262,000 for her spokesperson services and putting a mere $35,000 into actual social programs that deal with teen pregnancy and you may well have the same reaction I do to this simple story: Revulsion and anger. Then there is Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who, like only a handful of people in the world, is now famous enough to be known by a single name. Giffords was shot in the head not even four months ago in her home state of Arizona, and by some miracle she survived the rampage of a lone gunman though others, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, did not. Much has been made in the news media of Gabby’s will to live and we have been told the details of her progress by no less a personage than President Barack Obama who let us know she had opened her eyes. Other details have come from friends and from her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, who is scheduled to captain a shuttle fl ight this month, and public expectations have soared about her seemingly remarkable recovery. News outlets, including Newsweek, are speaking more realistically about traumatic brain injuries, the long road ahead for Giffords and speculating about her “new normal.” Those close to the Congresswoman and news outlets caught up in the story and their own hopes have tried to make this a happy and triumphant story, but it just is not. We all wish her all the best as she moves forward at her own pace and to whatever place she is going. Now on to happier news obsessions. We are moving into what I think of as high- wedding season. Already, the Dicksons have received several nuptial invitations, and I am thinking of updating my spring/summer wedding outfi t. One of my cousins, North Carolina born and bred, insists that no one is offi cially married until she has eaten 10 chicken salad fi nger sandwiches, white bread with crusts cut off, at the reception. She is thinking of gatherings in church fellowship halls with menus that tend toward unspiked fruit punch, salted nuts and the aforementioned sandwiches, but not everyone does it that way, of course. We are learning more than some of us want to know about the upcoming marriage of Britain’s Prince William and his long-time sweetie, the lovely Kate Middleton, a common sense commoner who seems to have stolen the heart of the world. Even I, who have not paid much attention, know about William’s stag weekend and Kate’s “hen” plans and that there will be many wedding cakes but that the main one is likely to be 6-feet tall. I also read an article about the children who will be part of the ceremony, all cute as buttons. The wedding dress remains top secret, of course, but I read online that it may involve 10,000 hand-sewn pearls. The Middleton family is rumored to be paying for that dress, but the royals will certainly bear most of that cost, even though we do not know how much it will total at this point. Other royal weddings have come with big prices tags, though. William’s parents, Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, tied their doomed knot at a cost in the $5-6 million range in 1981. American born Grace Kelly married Monaco’s Prince Rainier in the early ‘50s in festivities costing more than $10 million, a number that leaves me wondering what that might be in today’s dollars. The most eye-popping royal wedding number I have seen thus far, though, is the almost $29 million spent to unite Crown Prince Felipe of Spain with former newscaster Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano in 2004. I wonder if any of those folks served chicken salad on crustless white bread? MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? editor@upandcomingweekly.com Talking Trash: City Council Debates Automatic Garbage Trucks by DAVID G. WILSON It may be just a mild little dust up or it could be the start of a signifi cant issue. Earlier this month the reported on the city council’s work session. Included in the report was the announcement that four new garbage trucks had been ordered. That really was not news. But these are not simply replacements for four old trucks scheduled for retirement. These trucks will do the same job with one worker that existing trucks do with two. How so, one might ask. The new trucks, Bill Dietzen, director of the city’s Environmental Services, proudly proclaimed, eliminate the need for a worker to position the garbage can beside the truck so the truck’s loading mechanism can lift it and dump its contents into the truck. The new trucks will reach over the curb (if a curb exists) and pick up the garbage can, empty it and return it to the position beside the curb from whence it came. Great. Indeed a labor- saving device of which the city should avail itself. But questions have arisen about how well the theory of operation will comply with actual garbage-can pickup situations. Among these is the positioning question that Dietzen alluded to during his presentation. Citizens, a.k.a. garbage disposers, must be trained to position their cans just so behind the curb. Most will, Dietzen opined, but some will not. An astute judge of human nature is he. So what then one might well ask? And what if some unbagged trash spills while being loaded? Will the driver be instructed to park his truck, set the hazard lights, exit the vehicle and position the garbage can so that the truck can load it or simply drive on? Will he pick up spilled trash or leave it to clutter our city? Fortunately Fayetteville City Councilpersons Crisp, Mohn, Appelwhite and Arp want some answers and they are disinclined to accept a terse response City Manager Dale Iman issued to Bill Crisp about questions related to this matter. It is reasonable for the council to want to see the return on investment calculations WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM which justifi ed the additional cost for the one-operator trucks versus the two- operator trucks now in use. It is also reasonable for council people to cast a jaundiced eye toward Dietzen’s claim that the extraneous four workers will, in fact produce a net reduction of four in his department’s total staff. So the city manager intends for this matter to be taken up in the scheduled May work session. Maybe not, asserts Councilman Bill Crisp, never one to duck a contentious issue. He and his council allies want to know if the purchase is a fait accompli or can still be subject to council consideration. One would hope that the citizen’s representatives could voice questions, even at this late juncture, about this planned change in how one of the city’s most fundamental responsibilities is effected. There is more to this garbage matter that has simmered just below the surface and may now come to the front burner. As we all understand, Waste Management collects our recyclables. They are contracted with the city to empty the blue containers on a weekly basis and dispose of the contents. Waste Management does this for $2.5 million annually plus they turn a profi t on the sale of the recovered material. Why then, could Waste Management not collect, on a contractual basis, the city’s garbage? They could of course if given a chance to bid against the city and competitors. City management has not shown any interest in this idea so it may never get a careful look. Councilperson Val Applewhite favors privatizing garbage collection if the sums work out as does Ted Mohn. I wish them well. DAVID G. WILSON, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? editor@upandcomingweekly.com APRIL 20-26, 2011 UCW 5 The wedding of Princess Grace and Prince Ranier cost more than $10 million.