Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 8

DECATUR HERALD AND REVIEW Decatur, Illinois, Thursday, November 22, 1962. 8 Editorials Opinions Awed Faces Pilgrims View A New Land By RALPH MCGILL Atlanta IT HAS been a long time. And For a Wider Participation in Community Programs David Felts' Column DESPITE the endeavors of the poultry industry to market the turkey the year around, the big bird continues to be the feathered symbol of Thanksgiving Day. In order that this commentator may get to his Thanksgiving dinner in another community in plenty of time, a publicity release from Doubleday should fill a good chunk of today's column. It is an excerpt from a new book, "A Treasury of Birdlore," edited by Joseph Wood Krutch and Paul Eriksson." But this text on the turkey first appeared in "English Canaan," by Thomas Morton, one of the more colorful of the Puritans, and published in 1637.

Author Morton wrote: "Turkies there are, which divers times in great flocks have sal planning that would be beneficial to the region in many ways. The "workshop" concept can be useful for certain purposes. But, in the enthusiasm of public agencies and special interest groups to dominate the proposed meeting, the individual citizen may find himself more a spectator than a participant, if, indeed, he finds much reason to attend the deliberations at "workshop" sessions. Yet, basic to the January meeting, to which the people of Decatur and their neighbors in the surrounding territory are invited, is the participation of the private citizen. It should be primarily a forum for individual ideas, individually expressed.

It should be as close to a "town meeting" as possible. Then, when the hopes, aspirations, complaints and proposals of the people are heard, let those public agencies and officials who are responsible to the people for finally deciding policy and executing it, profit by what they have learned and act according to their interpretation of what the people want. Residents of Plymouth, Mass. re-en act the first Thanksgiving day Presidential Proclamation It Is Fitting to Give Thanks -vwwwwji) iter ftt rs'- i f. I time we are all the more grateful for the indestructible gifts of hope and love, which sustain us in adversity and inspire us to labor unceasingly for a more perfect community within this nation and around the earth.

"Now, therefore, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, in accord with the joint resolution of Congress, approved Dec. 26, 1941, which designates the fourth Thursday in November of each year as Thanksgiving Day, do hereby proclaim Thursday, the twenty-second day of November this year, as a day of national thanksgiving. "I urge that all observe this day with reverence and with humility. "Let us renew the spirit of the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving, lonely in an inscrutable wilderness, facing the dark unknown with a faith borne of their dedication to God and a fortitude drawn from their sense that all men were brothers.

"Let us renew that spirit by of fering our thanks for uncovenant- PRESIDENT KENNEDY 'Let us renew the spirit tudes ahead by being always reidy confront crisis with stead fastness and achievement with grace and modesty. "Let us renew that spirit by con certing our energy and our hope with men and women everywhere that the world may move more rapidly toward the time when Thanksgiving may be a day of universal celebration. "Let us renew that spirit by ex pressing our acceptance of the ma nonetheless, as Providence direct us, toward a better world tor all mankind. in witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused seal United States of America to be affixed. "Done at the city of Washing- iion inis vrn nav nf untromhor in ui ed mercies, beyond our desert of human buried mothers who weni merit, and by resolving to meetly affirming our duty to strive to feed UH vear of Dnr frrf occtu i-uih.

11 THERE has been an enthusiastic response by interested groups to Mayor Robert A. Groh-ne's announcement that the city plans to hold a large public meeting in January at which various community topics will be discussed. IThe program of the proposed meeting would necessarily be ambitious. The idea is to invite representatives of official agencies, civic groups and private individuals in Decatur and surrounding communities to submit ideas and discuss projects and programs of a public nature. The purpose of the meeting, the mayor said, is to obtain the broadest possible citizen participation at the critical point of initiating and outlining public policy.

Such a gathering suggests the old town meeting formula which, perhaps, is more romantic than practical in the present day. But, the conference proposed by mayor would be a modification of the town meeting approach. And it is this modification that requires some clarification if the sought-after public participation Inspection Still Issue in Cuba -IN A WAY, the abandonment of the Cuban quarantine can be seen as a mild concession by President Kennedy. For while most major goals of the operation have been attained, and with a completeness that does not make it out of order to speak about triumph, one crucial problem still remains that of on-site inspection. In his initial demand President Kennedy made the abandonment of the blockade contingent on ground inspection of Cuban territory.

This remains a prime aim for the United States, but the blockade has been abandoned just the same. It is probably a wise move. Premier Khrushchev has gone far in satisfying U. S. demands.

Indications are that in order to do so he has had to put extremely hard pressure on the a government, which despite face-saving technicalities is now so thoroughly humilitated that Fidel Castro will hardly again be able to rally much support among other Latin American nations. There can be no doubt that the developments of the last few days in the relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union will result in a major setback for pro-Communist movements throughout Latin America. To this end the Cuban blockade has done the United States an immediate service in the Hemisphere. It now remains to be seen if the United States has enough leverage left to get Castro and Khrushchev to come to an agreement about on-site inspection. President Kennedy still holds out on the question of offering a non-invasion pledge, and U.

S. troops remain in Florida as a demonstration that the eventuality has not been ruled out It is doubtful, however, if the withholding of the pledge can have much effect in Moscow for the Soviet capital is a place where promises are broken as easily as they are made. After all, what could be more logical than that the Transfer House, after a period of non-use, should again justify its name by being transferred? A new generation of Americans, familiar with tranquilizers, do not think the Rip Van Winkle story so exciting. These Days Aren't Bad AT THIS Thanksgiving time there is reason enough to be appreciative of the era in which we live, with all its faults. It's a time of the year that perhaps more than any other recalls what has been referred to as the "good old days." But the "good old days" weren't nearly as good as most Americans have it today.

Maybe the butcher did toss in the soup bones free of charge, but the price of Thanksgiving turkey 50 years ago in 1912 was quoted at 30 cents a pound that's when many workers didn't earn as much as 30 cents an hour. Thanksgiving turkey in this boun-tiufl year is priced about the same and who earns 30 cents an hour (or less) anymore? If Grandma greeted her guests in the formulation of public policy is to be had. The idea that the people should be heard on matters of public interest is sound. Perhaps the meeting planned by the Decatur city administration can be successful in serving as a forum for the views of citizens to an extent that is not realized in the normal functioning of modern municipal government. But the response to Mayor Grohne's announcement has come from special interest groups which already are organized into agencies of expression and action.

The proposed meeting might well provide a larger forum for these views, and could permit a confrontation of particular agencies and groups in constructive debate, promoting better understanding and laying the base for greater cooperation in future programming for community needs. The fact that the meeting would be a regional affair, rather than be restricted to Decatur, suggests a beginning step toward the sort of metropolitan area for Thanksgiving dinner with a happy smile she was a stout woman and women had to be stout in those times. The conveniences of living that are taken for granted today were not available then at any price. Americans should appreciate their country's past and the contributions which have been made by those earlier citizens who, while giving Thanks for what they had, had far less to be thankful for than the American living today. A fellow who flunked high school Latin retained enough of the course to translate Semper Fidelis as "There's always Fidel." Although we do not know many of the little girls in the early school grades, we almost never hear of any named Zsa Zsa.

The Sky Over Lincoln Square EDWIN Markham concluded one of his better-known poems with the line: "And leaves a lonesome place against the sky." Poet Markham was writing about the national feeling of loss at the death of Abraham Lincoln. A similar "lonesome place against the sky" is now strikingly apparent to the people of Decatur when they stand a block away in any direction on Main Street and look toward Lincoln Square. Agriculture Secretary Freeman when asked what he ate at dinner at the White House, said he didn't notice. Didn't he eat up any of farm surpluses? Sir Winston Churchill has a first great-grandchild. The great statesman will be, without a doubt, a great grandfather.

This Robot Wife Too Well Armed FOR ABOUT $2,000 one should be able to buy a mechanical housemaid some 10 or 15 years hence. So predicts a British professor of engineering, M. W. Thring of Sheffield University. Electronically controlled, the dutiful robot can be expected to make beds, vacuum the rugs, set the table and prepare vegetables, the professor says.

But he is opposed to teaching the machine maid how to cook, Mr. Thring asserts, because wives would rather do that work themselves. For those who may have $2,000 to spend on a gadget, it looks like a good buy. But the little woman need never fear she will be altogether replaced; the professor envisions a box-like affair with three legs and with arms enough to cope with the assigned tasks. One may say with considerable confidence that man will discover jew there is no substitute for the gentler sex.

The Communist regime in China probably encourages the use of chopsticks so that a little food will seem to last longer. yet the mocking centuries chide us, saying that it is but a heart beat in the great pulse of time since the awed faces of the Pilgrims looked on the face of the silent, winter-locked new land. It has been a long time and yet, truth to telL it is but yesterday in the endless tick-tock of the great clock of time. They saw Indians, when they came ashore five or six near naked men. who slipped aw3y.

They did not know that even then a beneficent God was holding them in the hollow of His hand the year before, a plague- probably smallpox brought by some venturing explorers who had touched there had all but wiped out the tribe. They found a basket of Indian corn One of their number, William Bradford, was caught by the leg in a snare set to catch deer Sixteen of them explored and came back to the anxious watchers on the little ship. Watching them from the rail someone commented that the returning men somehow looked "bigger." And so they did. The new country already was beginning to make them feel so. They were nearly five weeks along the coast before fixing on Plymouth.

Season of Cold Tormeni They starved and died that winter a season of cold torment they did not at all know, or in the slightest comprehend, how to deal with the vast dark forest. They were sick with scurvy and with influenza and pneumonia. Weak, undernourished, they could not do much against the infections of germs and virus. They dug graves in the frozen soil. They buried children, with the deep, never-ending ache hr uin came and the grip of winter was broken, half of them were dead.

But they who had endured were even bigger when the first spring's warm sun gave them hope and will. And when others arrived there 1 11 Kj nlnnfir rf m.J T. was the Indian maize which built America along with the ax and the stout heart. And corn was mentioned in the prayers of thanksgiving offered on that day. One of the major entries in their journal was of Nov.

8. 1620: "This day found heaps of sand newly padled with their 'Indian) hands, which they' the Pilgrims) digging up. found in them diverse Indian baskets filled with come, and some ears faire and eood. nf diverse collours, which seemed to them a very goodly sight, have- mg never seen any shuch before The great tick-tock of the always-ticking clock has brought us to this day of Thanksgiving. It has been 341 years since that first one.

And now a great, rich pow erful and comfortable nation, in a troubled world, still Dravs for humility and strength. Day by Day Ten Years Ago 1952 A 174-acre tract of land boueht by the federal government in 1946 for the site of a proposed veterans hospital in Decatur was up for sale. The tract at Lake Shore Drive and Lost Bridge iwaa was to be turned over to the General Services Administra tion for disposal A total of 8,594 motor vehicles passed through the intersection at Broadway and Prairie Avenue in six-hour period. Police made the count to determine the need for traffic lights at the intersection. Twenty Years Ago-1S42 Approximately 20.275 Decatur and Macon County motor cars had been registered for gasoline rations and nearly 60 per cent of the registrants asked for supple mental allowances.

Total registration was about 5.000 short of expectations but applications for extra gas were about 10 per cent higher. Fifty Years Ago 1912 The financial report of the First Methodist church for the conference year showed $20,258 handled in the year, and about $6,500 in benevolences. About 800 people were served supper at the Pugh School bazaar which was a big success and net lied by our doores; and then a gun (being commonly in a redi-nesse), -salutes them with such a courtesie, as makes them take a turne in the Cooke roome. They dance by the doore so well. "Of these there hath bin killed, that have weighed forty eight pound a peece.

"They are mainy degrees sweeter than the tame Turkies of England, feede them how you can. "I had a Savage who hath taken out his boy in a morning, and they have brought home their loades about noone. "I have asked them what number they found in the woods, who have answered Neent Metawna, which is a thosand that day; the plenty of them in such in those parts. They are easily killed at rooste, because the one being killed, the other sit fast neverthe lesse, and this is no bad commodity." DULUTH has been quite excited about the fate of a mongoose in the city zoo, the gift of a sailor who brought the creature from an Indian port. But the U.

S. Wildlife Survey bans the importation of mongooses, period. In another day we would have contrived some verse, managing to rhyme Duluth with "mon- gooth." It would have been another in a memorable series. One of them: The comment of a freshman girl on the campus of Smith College, at Northampton, Mass. The "lisping" treatment was irresistible.

So our verse concluded with the couplet: Tho thith Ith Thmith. Then there was a quatrain based on a New York Times headline reporting: Hiawatha No Myth. So we wrote: Hiawatha ith no myth I'll whip the guy who thayth he ith. Saturday Evening Post bought that bit, paying $5 for four lines and a caption. A LONG time ago, when the camera was brand new, we took two color slide pictures of the Transfer House and, after showing them no more than once, filed them away.

Now, we shall haul them out of obscurity and file them again as historical items. Two slides. One for each of our children, one of whom is a native. OF THIS Oh Yes AND THAT: When the Transfer House was moved from its ancient location in the center of Lincoln Square there was exposed an excavation of sorts, but it could not qualify as a basement. We have been embarrassed for years as the result of writing an editorial in which we referred to the basement of the Transfer House.

The city editor, now an industrialist, never let us up. We take it for granted that a proper search was made on the ancient site for coins, metal tokens and such artifacts as stone hunting knives, broken cooking utensils, nail files, pocket rombs and Willkie campaign buttons, all eloquent testaments to the life and cutoms of the natives hereabouts. With a red face we have written to the dry cleaners to report that the pair of slacks that failed to return never had been left at the cleaners. That's what comes from having more than one closet and more than one pair of pants. The cleaning people say it happens frequently.

So, over the river and through practically no woods to Peoria for Thanksgiving Dinner. The Lake Geneva branch will come down from Wisconsin and we will ride with the 45th President in his still-new chariot We look forward to seeing the Queen of Love Beauty in her new, perpendicular mode of travel from here to there. After all, we haven't seen her for almost a month and, surely, she will have a Christmas list for her adoring relatives. Washington Following is the text of the Thanksgiving proclamation issued by President Kennedy earlier this month: By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation "Over three centuries ago in Plymouth, on Massachusetts Bay, the Pilgrims established the custom of gathering together each year to express their gratitude to God for the preservation of their community and for the harvests their labors brought forth in the new land.

Joining with their neigh bors, they shared together and worshipped together in a common giving of thanks. Thanksgiving Day has ever since been part of the fabric which has united Ameri cans with their past, with each other and with the future of all mankind. "It is fitting that we observe this year our own day of Thanks giving. It is fitting that we give our thanks for the safety of our land, for the fertility of our har vests, for the strength of our liberties, for the health of our people. We do so in no spirit of self -right eousness.

We recognize that we are the beneficiaries of the toil and devotion of our fathers and! that we can pass their legacy on to our children only by equal toil! 11111 OTiiiHi 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 nfiifi I7P i i ti luu iiidL we live in a wu ui uerii 4Ui. 1 and change and in so uncertain By the Way TWO THANKSGIVING proclamations were issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The first of these is not usually mentioned in the list of Thanksgiving Day proclamations for observance of the day in November. On July 15, 1863, eleven days af- ter the northern victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Lincoln is sued a proclamation calling for "a day of thanksgiving, praise and prayer" on Thursday, Aug. 6, 1863.

The first sentence of the first paragraph of the proclamation had these opening words: "It has pleased Almighty God to hearken to supplications and prayers of an afflicted people, and to vouchsafe to the Army and Navy of the United States on the land and on the sea, victories so signal and so effective as to furn ish reasonable grounds for aug mented confidence, that the Union of these United States will be maintained The second paragraph had one sentence: "It is meet and right to recognize and confess the pres ence of the Almighty Father and the power of His hand equally in these triumphs and these sor rows." The third paragraph is a single sentence said to be the longest in either a private letter or state paper signed by President Lincoln. It set the date of Aug. 6 "to be observed as a day of National Thanksgiving, Praise and Pray er, and invited the people to meet in their customary places of worship "and in the forms approved by their own conscience, render the homage due the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things he has done in the nation's be half" The second proclamation that year was issued on Oct. 3. It was written by Secretary of State William H.

Seward and signed by President Lincoln. It differed from the first which had no mention of bountiful harvests or material prosperity. The second called attention to the year as being "filled with the! blessings of fruitful fields and, Exchange Table Deductions Are Taxing Business Business Week IT IS HARD to avoid the suspicion that the Internal Revenue Service was playing dirty pool when it drafted its proposed new rule on deduction of business expenses. IRS insists that it is only carrying out the provisions of the new tax law and that it has no intention of outlawing legitimate business expenses. But if you look at the amount of record-keeping the new rule will require to support even the most modest expense account, the bureau's air, of innocence somehow reminds you of the taxpayer who has just written off the family canary as a dependent.

What iRS really seems to be saying is: If big, you can deduct it: it it's not big, pay it yourself. This is an odd twist on the original Administration proposals that were buttressed by a collection of horror stories about shooting lodges and yachts. Congress, which decided that the original proposals were too tough, may be surprised to see how IRS interprets the law it did pass. IRS officials like to make speeches declaring that they trust the taxpayers. We must return the compliment by avowing that we trust IRS.

But if we didn't, we might think that it was trying to make the deduction of business expenses such a hopeless proposition that businessmen would be willing to give it up altogether. IN THE HERALD 25 YEARS AGO TODAY FOUR hundred residents of Central Illinois, who at the beginning of this year were unable to read or write, can no longer be termed illiterate as a result of work in the WPA's adult education classes. THE MACON County rural electrification program, including 130 miles of rural power lines, will be concluded Dec. 1. The completed network will include 29 miles near Maroa.

AKRON Settlement of the three-day sitdown strike which closed all three plants of the Goodyear Tire Rubber company reached, sending 12,000 men back to work. SEAMARK You are the seamark of my utmost desire. From you on out the tide will flow back again To dim tidal reservoirs and your onward pace And I shall give over in this endless race: You are the seamark of my eternal Aye, and the always inspiration above Time or space, or all other mutabilities. You are the soul's lodge in this wink of eternity, A seamark here. Where waves and spume and the.

riptides charge by. Above waves and time and storms, the sailors lost cry Till he glimpse over the smoky waves that seamark Eternally there, unmoved as all else rushes by. William Rickel In The New York Times the responsibilities placed upon us. "Let us renew that spirit by sharing the abundance of this day with those less fortunate, in our own land and abroad. Let us re new that spirit by seeking always to establish larger communities of! i i nm mprniHin i ijhl us reiifw uihl uuii iiv me paring our souls for the incerti by Otto R.

Kyle lation increase. The Thanksgiving date was set for the last Thursday in November. The first Thanksgiving procla mation, issued bv Gov. William Bradford in 1621 called for a day of feasting in December following a bountiful harvest. The gover- nor's second proclamation introduced the religious theme.

Governor Bradford probably wrote both of his proclamations Whether Secretary Seward wrote both of the Lincoln 1863 proclama tions is not stated definitely by Carl Sandburg, who wrote in such great detail about Lincoln ac tions, but it is known that Seward composed the second one. Sandburg says regarding the first proclamation: "there was issued from the White House a document" and a few words later points to Lincoln as the author in these words: "Lincoln set forth the Chief Magistrate of the Re public as a man of Faith." As to the second Lincoln procla mation, Gideon Welles, Lincoln's secretary of the Navy, in his diary wrote concerning Oct 3, 1863: "Mr. Seward called early this morning and read me a draft of a proclamation for Thanksgiving Day. I complimented the paper as very well done, and him for his talent in the preparation of such papers, which pleased him." During the Revolutionary War there were eight special days of thanks after signal victories and in 1789 President George Wash ington issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation. After that there was no general observance of Thanks giving Day until 1863.

There were regional and local observances but not on the same day. The last Thursday in November was Thanksgiving Day for many years. Frequently the last Thursday was the fourth Thursday but sometimes the fifth Thursday. In 1939 and 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date as the third Thursday, said to have been done at the request of business.

It caused a mixture of days beine observed i uuu l01 me independence ol the United oLaies oi America me loan. John F. Kennedy Words, Wit, Wisdom The Meaning Of 'Angst' By WILLIAM MORRIS QUESTION: What does "angst" mean? It isn't in any of my dictionaries. Brendan Behan uses it. so it must be Irish.

Time mag azine has also used it, in italics. Ken Krasner, Milwaukee. "Angst" is a word which recently nas enjoyed quite a vogue among avante-garde thinkers who, having exhausted the possibilities of the Freudian vo cabulary, are now seeking new phrases to add an accent of in tellectual sophistication to their chatter. As a matter of fact. "angst" is a superb, example of the basic vapidity of the thinking of most of their kind.

It savs ab solutely nothing that the simple word "anxiety" doesn't sav. The only possible excuse for its use is to add pretentiousness to one's speech or writing by the use of nuch an intellectually "in" status-word. Incidentally, I would surely ab solve Behan of all such snobbish ness. As an admirer of the raffish great one. I'm sure he deliberately uses "angst" to twit his self- anointed avant-garde admirers.

It's not an Irish word, by the way. Its Danish and can be traced back to the Old High German "engi," meaning mar row, so you might say that angst is an anxiety that you feel in the very marrow of your bones. A way to josh the stylists who use the word is to ask how one would express the idea of many anxieties with the word "angst." If they merely add an angsts they betray their ignor ance. The correct plural, since the word has not yet been anglicized, is "angste." The pronunciation may be either AHNGST or ANGST. NON-POLITICAL RED BRAZIL'S name comes from a reddish wood greatly prized by early colonists for dye.

National healthful skies" as well as men- Congress finally decreed the tioning the national conflict ofjfourth Thursday in November as war, material progress and popu-1 Thanksgiving Day. Geographic ted about $175..