The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 23, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports from the Republican convention in San Francisco that the
delegates had given their unanimous approval the previous night to
the renominations of both the President and Vice-President, and
confidently predicted that they would again defeat the Democratic
ticket headed by Adlai Stevenson. Mr. Nixon had won renomination
after Harold Stassen had urged the delegates to vote for him, having
earlier made a campaign to dump Mr. Nixon from the ticket in favor of
Governor Christian Herter of Massachusetts, arguing that Mr. Nixon's
inclusion would cost the Republican ticket "millions of votes"
in the general election. Mr. Stassen, however, the previous night
acknowledged that Mr. Nixon was the "clear choice" of the
mass of the delegates. Earlier at a news conference, the President
had announced that Mr. Stassen had told him that he was dropping his
effort because it was evident that the delegates wanted the
Vice-President on the ticket again. The President said of Mr. Nixon,
"I think he is as good a man as you can get." Mr. Nixon,
who had flown to Whittier, Calif., early the previous day to be at
the bedside of his critically ill father, said that he was "very
gratified by the results of the nomination of President Eisenhower
and appreciative for the support of the delegates for the nomination
of vice president. I'll work harder than in previous campaigns to see
that that leadership is available to the United States and to the
world for four more years." The President would make his first
appearance before the convention late this date to accept
Saul Pett of the Associated Press reports from the convention that the previous day's session had begun with a difference of opinion, as the convention chairman, Representative Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, had recognized a delegate from Mississippi, who had wondered aloud why he had done so, Mr. Martin indicating that he understood that the gentleman wanted to tell the convention the time of the next meeting of the RNC, to which the delegate had said, "Oh, yes, it's 9 o'clock tomorrow morning." Mr. Martin then inquired as to whether it was not in fact at 11:00, as his book indicated, to which the delegate had responded that the chairman was correct. "End difference of opinion. All that remained was Joe-Smith-whoever-he-is, destined to lose, along with Harold Stassen." Then, former Governor Thomas Dewey had spoken, attacking the Democrats and saying that he was proud of the President and Vice-President. When Representative Charles Halleck of Indiana had placed the name of the President into nomination, "Ike" signs and pictures blossomed everywhere inside the Cow Palace. Young Chinese had led a colorful dragon and the band played, bells clanged, sirens moaned and collegiate cheerleaders led the chant, "We want Ike." Delegates whooped it up, state banners bounced, blue spotlights danced across the crowd and pigeons, released from paper bags, flew up to the roof. The roll call had begun at 6:38 and by 6:56, the President had received all 1,323 delegate votes and was declared the nominee. Next in order were the nominations for the vice-presidential spot. Alabama had yielded to Massachusetts, which offered Mr. Nixon into nomination. Other states were then passing until the chairman of the Nebraska delegation announced nervously, "One delegate, without concurrence of any other, desires to place a name in nomination." The chairman said that she did not know the name of the individual, and after checking, told Mr. Martin that his name was Joe Smith, to which Mr. Martin had said: "Nebraska reserves the right to nominate Joe Smith, whoever he is." At that point, the biggest mystery of the convention began, to try to find out who Joe Smith was. It turned out that he was a myth. A big crowd, including sheriff's deputies in ten-gallon hats, formed around the Nebraska delegation and Mr. Martin ordered the area cleared, saying, "Take your Joe Smith and get out of here." It then took only 20 minutes to nominate Mr. Nixon unanimously, with Nebraska having changed its vote from 17 for Mr. Nixon and one passing, to 18 for him.
In London, the conference regarding the Suez Canal crisis, following the July 26 seizure of the canal by Egypt, had officially ended late this date with the U.S. agreeing to join a five-power group to carry the majority decision for international operation of the canal to the Egyptian Government. The 22-nation conference had finally gotten around a procedural snafu which had slowed its last hours when the 18 powers supporting internationalization had decided to make their own arrangements for presenting the decision to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. It was understood that the 18-power decision would not be presented as a decision of the whole conference. The four remaining nations at the conference, Russia, India, Indonesia and Ceylon, had favored an Indian plan whereby there would be Egyptian operation with some international supervision and advice. The West planned to hand President Nasser a full report on the discussions of the eight-day conference, including the opposing minority plan presented by the four nations. The threat by Egypt to hold up British and French ships using the canal had stunned the delegates to the conference, after an official of the nationalized canal board was quoted as threatening to delay the ships if French and English pilots quit their jobs. The British and French cabinets had been called into special sessions to deal with what appeared to be the new crisis arising, with a British Foreign Office spokesman saying that it had taken a "grave" view of the reported threat, and other officials indicating that the report had borne out the previous British-French contention that President Nasser would operate the canal to advance his own political aims.
In Tokyo, it was reported that Communist China had said that one of its planes had damaged a "Chiang Kai-shek" aircraft early this date over islands southeast of Shanghai, the area where a U.S. Navy patrol plane and its 16 crewmen were believed to have been shot down. The Peiping broadcast, without identifying the plane specifically, said that it had intruded over Chinese islands and fled to the southeast toward Formosa after the encounter. U.S. ships and planes were searching for the Navy patrol plane, believed shot down by Communist Chinese aircraft 32 miles off Wenchow, China. Nightfall had come, more than 10 hours after the last radio message from the plane, without word of any results from the search. The last terse radio message from the downed plane had said that it was under attack by aircraft. A Navy spokesman insisted that the plane had been over neutral waters of the East China Sea, 160 miles north of Formosa, at the time the attack was reported. The plane carried four officers and 12 enlisted men and had been on a "routine training and patrol mission" from Japan to Okinawa. U.S. patrol planes operating in the waters around China had instructions to keep at least 12 nautical miles away from the Communist mainland. It had been the first attack on an American plane in the Formosa area since January 18, 1953, when a Navy Neptune had been shot down by Communist gunfire off Swatow, with a crew of 11 men having been lost. Another Navy plane had been shot at while searching for the survivors in the earlier incident, but had not been hit.
In New Brunswick, N.J., a loaded Trailways bus had rammed into a tractor-trailer rig during a pileup on the fogged New Jersey Turnpike this date, with one person, a passenger aboard the bus, having been killed and 30 injured, none of whom critically. Police said that a car had hit a pickup truck and that a bus had crashed into the combined resulting wreckage, within seconds after which four more cars, a tractor-trailer loaded with frozen chickens and another bus had been scattered across the three northbound lanes of the superhighway. Most of the injured had been passengers on the second bus.
Emery Wister of The News tells of Charlotte theater operators having greeted the end of blue laws against showing movies continuously on Sundays with approbation, permitting the showings continuously, starting at 1:30. The City Council had amended the blue laws the previous day, removing the restrictions on entertainment and sporting events for which admission was charged. Since its adoption in 1941, the blue law had permitted theaters to operate between 1:30 and 6:00 and between 9:00 and 11:00. The theaters, however, had only begun operations at 2:00 because the four-hour time interval permitted only two complete two-hour programs. The lifting of the restriction allowed theaters to present five complete programs on Sundays, the same number which some theaters presently were presenting on weekdays. One manager, representing three local theaters, said that the Sunday programs would begin with newsreels and short subjects, followed by the main feature, while another theater chain operator said that two local theaters would begin with the feature, followed by the shorts after the feature had concluded. The Charlotte Coliseum-Auditorium Authority also benefited from the change, and its chairman had called Mayor Philip Van Every to tell him that they appreciated the change, as it was of benefit to the entire community.
Jim Scotton of The News reports that Charlotte ministers felt they had been "betrayed by the City Council", according to the pastor of the First Baptist Church, who said that he was "very disappointed" at the ruling, saying that he did not believe that the Mayor had lived up to his agreement to provide proper notice should a proposal to lift the ban come before the Council, with several other local ministers who had been contacted by the newspaper expressing the same view. The Mayor said this date that he had promised to notify the pastor of the First Methodist Church if the issue arose, when the matter had come before the Council two years earlier, at a time when that minister had been president of the ministers association. The Mayor said that he had called the minister's home on Tuesday night and again Wednesday morning, before the Council meeting, but could not reach him, the minister's office saying that he had left on Monday morning by automobile for Colorado and could not have been reached. Council member and former Mayor Herbert Baxter, who had introduced the motion to lift the ban, said that he had been trying to do so for the previous 16 years, as he did not believe any governmental body had the right to dictate the personal life of anyone, and could not understand what the churches were upset about, as every year, church attendance rose and he did not believe that lifting the ban would hurt them. Several ministers had expressed opposition to lifting the ban and said the vote had been a complete surprise to them.
In Boston, the first juror had been selected in the case of eight co-defendants on trial for the Brink's robbery of 1.2 million dollars occurring January 17, 1950, the largest single cash haul from a robbery in the nation's history. It was the 14th day of the jury selection process and the Superior Court judge had examined 1,189 people since August 7. The defense had consumed all of its 262 peremptory challenges and henceforth, therefore, could only exercise challenges for cause, such as personal acquaintance with someone involved in the case or expressions of personal bias or preformed opinion toward one side or the other.
In Los Angeles, a Superior Court judge had ordered a soundproof isolation booth, similar to those used on television game shows, to keep a defendant from being heard shouting in open court during the remainder of his sanity trial. The court had initially ordered him bound and gagged the prior Tuesday when he had referred to the prosecutor by an obscene name and then had struck him in the face. He had also interrupted the proceeding several times with shouts and screams. His sanity was being considered by a jury as preliminary to his retrial for the 1954 murders of his former wife and her husband, a former policeman, after his earlier murder convictions and death sentence had been reversed in a 4 to 3 decision—an earlier Cat's Paw case. The soundproof booth would be the reverse of those used on television programs, in that the occupant would be able to hear courtroom proceedings via loudspeaker but those outside the box would not be able to hear the occupant. It appears that the $64,000 question was whether the defendant was sane enough to stand trial.
In Grand Bank, Newfoundland, the Mayor had leaped into the chilly water of the harbor when a nine-year old boy had fallen from a pier, and accomplished his rescue. He neither shoved him in nor used his tap shoes to hit him and try to shove him under to steal his penmanship award, little girl. Nor would lightning strike him later, as if in an electric chair. We think, incidentally, that they may have excised that portion from the tv version, presumably because it was deemed not healthy for other children to laugh at the end at the little girl's sudden sizzled vaporization, no matter how irretrievably insane she was.
On the editorial page, "All Together: Ike, Dick and the GOP" indicates that the President and the Vice-President were together again, as was the Republican Party, bitterly divided four years earlier.
Mr. Nixon would be a drag on the ticket, but so, too, would have been anyone chosen in his stead, as the Republicans could not offer a running mate with the possibilities of matching the President's popularity. (Sure they could: Elvis—but for the fact that he was not constitutionally eligible as he had not yet attained the age of 35. Neither had Marilyn Monroe, and so Mr. Nixon was, we suppose, the next best choice.)
It finds that defections because of Mr. Nixon's renomination would be minor by comparison to the party unity achieved by it, as the Vice-President meant much more to the party than he did to the nation, having repaired and kept open the lines of communication between opposing groups within the party, preaching unity and mutual understanding between the isolationists and internationalists, and having served the President while continuing his friendship with the Old Guard.
His renomination also kept him in the direct line of succession to the presidency, should anything happen to the President, and placed him in a commanding position to become the nominee in 1960, should the President be re-elected and serve out his second term. It thus served the interests of the party, the nation and Mr. Nixon, personally, to continue the face-lifting he had begun regarding his public image immediately following the President's heart attack of the prior September. Since that time, he had not overstepped the bounds of fair play and had made efforts to repair some of the festering wounds he had caused during the 1952 and 1954 campaigns. (It's the new Nixon...)
The Republicans, like the Democrats, had chosen the best possible ticket for the parties. But for the nation, both could have done better regarding leadership by choosing different vice-presidential nominees. It finds both Mr. Nixon and Senator Kefauver lacking the stamp of greatness, while both had great ability, energy and determination to succeed.
"Team Man" tells of Harold Stassen on July 23 having said that polls showed that an Eisenhower-Herter ticket would run at least six percent stronger than an Eisenhower-Nixon ticket. The previous day, Mr. Stassen, described as a team player by the President, said, however, that he was convinced that the masses wanted Mr. Nixon on the ticket.
It concludes that Mr. Stassen probably was the only American athlete who ever stayed on the varsity by changing polls in the middle of the stream.
"Bigness Is Fine—If It's Profitable" indicates that when Charlotte's Auditorium-Coliseum was in its planning stages, it had been fashionable in some circles to sneer at the "cult of bigness" which had apparently bewitched the project's leading boosters. It had been suggested that such a large dual structure would immediately become a white elephant, and that there was also something somewhat immoral about bigness within historically diminutive Mecklenburg County. The cult, however, prevailed, for better or worse. Thus far, everything had been better.
The manager of the Auditorium-Coliseum, Paul Buck, had announced during the week that the complex ranked second in the nation during the year in its net earnings. A recent survey of 55 major American cities which operated municipal entertainment centers showed that Charlotte was second to Milwaukee, even though Charlotte's report covered only the first nine months of operations, since the previous September. Gross earnings had totaled during that time over $150,000, of which a net income had been produced of $68,500.
It finds that public support of the entertainment center had been gratifying and would be even more enthusiastic into the future as new uses were found for the facilities. It suggests that enemies of bigness might still sneer, but finds no wrong with bigness per se, especially if it paid.
"His Tests Kept a Fellow Honest" finds the cheating scandal at UNC, involving the pilfering of exam papers from two political science instructors, to be disheartening but illustrative to old graduates of how swiftly and unsatisfactorily the old order changed.
It indicates that in earlier times, such shenanigans would have been impossible had the undergraduate learned political science from Dr. E. J. Woodhouse and caught him in an affable mood. The writer remembers Dr. Woodhouse to have disliked examinations in their usual form and so seldom gave them, thus providing no basis for cheating. Instead, he conducted conferences with students at his favorite Chapel Hill coffee house, where the subjects were unpredictable and varied. But if the student had performed the large amount of requisite reading for the course and knew political science, there was greater confidence than could ever be expressed on paper reflected in the give and take of the conference. The coffee had also been excellent.
More often than not, the student would be asked to express what grade he believed he deserved and it had been remarkable how honest a student was compelled to be by conscience under such circumstances.
It concludes that unlike the 1956 undergraduates who had succumbed to the temptation to purchase test papers, the students of Dr. Woodhouse usually graduated with unblemished moral fiber and a firm grasp of what political science was all about.
As we have related previously, the only case of such attempted cheating we ever encountered at UNC was during our first semester in a course on the political science of the South, taught by later renowned political scientist Merle Black. During the midterm, some idiot telephoned in a bomb scare at the start of the exam. As it was a sunny fall day, Dr. Black merely ordered us all into the alley behind the building wherein he had desks set up so that we could take the exam anyway, leaving the bomb hoaxster in the lurch. In any event, we still recall much of that which we learned in the course. Those who cheat, as is often said, ultimately cheat only themselves, as their lack of learned knowledge usually betrays them later in life.
Take, for instance, these
overstuffed Gomer turkeys
In sum, regardless of anything else, in 2017, Trump was in the White House, not then-former Vice-President Biden—that is, unless you subscribe to the theory that he was really directing Trump the whole time from the Deep State, causing the latter to mislead everyone about the early seriousness of the pandemic such that it became far worse than it likely ever would have in the U.S., resulting in part, at least, in the continuing adverse economic consequences, compounded by the war in Ukraine and the refusal of NATO to trade in Russian oil, impacting adversely world oil markets and consequently all transportation costs, a substantial portion of what each consumer pays for goods, especially food, the U.S. nevertheless actually having the lowest rate of inflation among the major industrial powers across the world at present. But that may be a plot, too, a bribe.
By the way, as to the other part of the Gomers' claims on the firing of the former Ukrainian prosecutor-general in 2015, which the Foxxies are wont constantly to refrain as being the result of some improper personal interest of then-Vice-President Biden, despite his acting at the time under the advice, direction and approval of President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, NATO and the U.N., and the prosecutor-general in question never having had a role, in any event, in investigating the energy company which employed Hunter Biden after the latter became associated with it, the Gomers do not even bother to listen to their own recent reports
A piece from the Goldsboro News-Argus, titled "Susie and Her Thumb" tells of a three-year old girl named Susan, a bright child who gave confidences easily, smiled with an appeal which attracted the most unnoticing, and romped with every pup which happened by. Her parents had talked to her about her habit of sucking her thumb, telling her that if she were to go a week without doing so, they would get her a dog. She agreed and for three days, she managed to do so, even while she slept.
But eventually, she came, sober-faced, to her parents, telling them that she did not want a dog, and when they asked her what she did want, she said that she wanted to suck her thumb. So they relented, knowing that the habit would eventually, in due course, end, and got the dog for her anyway.
The piece questions whether the parents had acted appropriately, and whether the girl would now believe that she could make her way around any deal or duty if she could make the right appeal.
Adhesive tape around the thumb will cure the thumb-sucking problem in no time. A little nip at the face by a mother dog while playing with her puppies under a porch will make the child wary of repeating that experience also. As they say, experience is the best teacher.
Drew Pearson, in San Francisco, tells of there having been a lot of changes in the President since August, 1952 when the Scripps-Howard newspapers had accused him of "running like a dry creek" after having delivered a speech in Abilene, Kans., which had been a stumbling, moderate speech during which the rain had hit his bald head, soaked his raincoat and blurred his manuscript. Roy Howard of Scripps-Howard had found it dry politics. Those had been times when it appeared as if Mr. Eisenhower was not going to be a very good campaigner. He did not like campaigning. His press relations experts when he had been head of NATO in Paris before entering the presidential race in 1952 had a terrible time with him. In filming political spots for television, he could not read the cue cards without glasses and he did not want to wear his glasses on television, trying to memorize the lines but forgetting, stumbling, leaving his press aides in despair. (Note that in his nomination acceptance speech of this date, he removed his glasses to extemporize only when talking briefly about Mr. Nixon on a couple of occasions, thanking the delegates for renominating him and extending his praise to him.)
In the Commodore Hotel in New York, during and after the campaign, he had confided to his new friend, eventual White House press secretary James Hagerty, that when he walked through the corridor where newsmen were sitting, he felt that every one of them had his foot out to trip him. He hated the press and everything connected with it, delayed holding press conferences until staunch Republican publishers began griping, wondering when the man they had put in the White House would begin meeting with the press.
After the spur from the editorial in the Scripps-Howard newspapers, "Communism, Korea and corruption" replaced the moderation of the first speech in Abilene. Considerably later, a more confident candidate replaced the timid one who had been suspicious of journalists. Mr. Pearson indicates that no previous President, not even the past master, FDR, had become so adroit at press conferences or had used them so skillfully to reflect his own personality and get his views across to the American public.
The President was now confident about everything except his health and making decisions where top political personalities were concerned. In Panama City the previous month, the President of Brazil, a physician, had asked: "Tell me as a doctor and your friend how you feel," to which President Eisenhower had replied, "I feel sick and tired all the time." He had made an equally frank statement to a Panamanian delegate, and at a recent press conference, had exhibited the mood of a person fully prepared to die in office. Mr. Pearson indicates that it was the fortitude which the American people admired in a soldier, but there had been a jolt to the stock market after the September 24 heart attack of the prior year, and given the delicate diplomatic balance regarding the Suez Canal, Formosa, and Moscow, they were concerned about a President who might die in office, and especially so about the prospects of his successor.
Walter Lippmann, in San Francisco, tells of the harmony which had reigned in San Francisco at the Republican convention being not something automatically given, as Republicans, unlike Democrats for the first time in their recent history, did not all think alike, the harmony having been produced by skilled political maneuvering and negotiation during the months preceding the convention. Among the professional politicians, the President's decision to run again, despite his two illnesses, had been welcomed unanimously even by the anti-Eisenhower wing of the party. But it had posed the problem as to who would lead the party after Mr. Eisenhower. He would be the first President, following amendment of the Constitution, not to be allowed to run for a third term—the 22nd Amendment ratified in 1951 not being applicable to the then-sitting President, Harry Truman. That limitation plus his illnesses and age would inevitably give rise to the need for a new successor within the ensuing four years.
RNC chairman Leonard Hall, Vice-President Nixon, Senate Minority Leader William Knowland and former Governor Thomas Dewey were all acutely aware of that fact. Early on, it had been evident that the old Taft wing of the party, including the fringe which was to the right of deceased Senator Robert Taft, had picked Mr. Nixon as their man, believing they would be dominant in the party if he succeeded the President during the latter's second term or at the end of it in the 1960 convention. They were much more supportive of Mr. Nixon than they were of the President.
The Eisenhower wing of the party, in which Mr. Dewey was the most powerful figure, had a choice, either to displace Mr. Nixon or to embrace them for the purpose of hanging on to him. Among the Eisenhower professionals and their major supporters, a lot more had gone on behind the scenes the previous spring than could ever be verified for publication in the newspapers. Mr. Lippmann asserts from what he had heard from those in a position to know that the movement to displace Mr. Nixon had gained considerable support and then collapsed because the President had refused to assist it. He indicates that it appeared reasonably clear that Harold Stassen had played no part in that episode, that it had occurred while he had been in London at the Disarmament Conference. He suggests that it could explain why Mr. Stassen, although stating what many Republicans thought as he led the effort into the convention, had been, in terms of practical politics, quite wide of the mark, trying to reopen an issue which had already been fought and settled among the Eisenhower leaders.
When the leading people in the Eisenhower wing had seen that Mr. Nixon's renomination was certain, they followed the rule that if you can't fight them, join them, which was what Mr. Dewey and the others had done, assuring themselves of a countervailing voice in a Nixon administration, which they regarded as being predestined.
He concludes that it was the structure of the harmony which had prevailed at the Republican convention, essentially a political truce between the two wings of the party, with the terms being Eisenhower and Nixon to win the 1956 election, with succession accessible then to Mr. Nixon, and, no doubt, assurance from Mr. Nixon that he would remain in the middle of the road.
Ah, so. He who wears the ring. This,
obviously, was the predestined reason why we saw Paul McCartney and
Wings in June, 1976 at the Cow Palace. No? You doubt predestination? We
could have won a trip on our local radio station on July 7, 1965 to
Atlanta on August 18 to see the Beatles, had we guessed the correct
song on which Ringo, it being his birthday that day, sang lead, a
very limited population of songs at that time, but for the fact that
we guessed the wrong song, with the song
A letter writer indicates his support for the ban on downtown parking during peak hours, indicating that his business had increased considerably since it had gone into effect, with this July having been the best July they had ever enjoyed and August shaping up likewise for that month. He indicates that other cities, such as Richmond, Va., had restricted parking for many months and the merchants were pleased with the results. He hopes that Charlotte would follow suit.
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that syndicated advice columnist Dr. George Crane, in his August 15 column in the newspaper, had asserted that opponents of fluoridation of city water supplies were "fanatical" on the subject and "potential mobsters" and that he had been deluged with letters urging him to fight city water fluoridation, but had rejected those pleas and taken the opposite stance, saying that "fluoridation of water is like the iodization of our table salt—it acts as good health insurance." The letter writer finds it an example of modern "'liberal'" thinking, that the column had made a comparison which was invalid, because iodized table salt was a choice of the consumer, while fluoridated city water was forced upon consumers. He finds that Dr. Crane had thrown logic out the window, disregarding the facts of the opponents, calling the opponents names.
Incidentally, Earl Wilson, in eschewing facts, has a basic fact wrong, or at least appears to have, if not the typesetter, regarding the "'48" convention at which he chased down a loose rumor that Henry Wallace was to be nominated again for the vice-presidency, when it was 1944.
And, while we are about it, we shall oblige the slow readers with an inside track on the "Better English
A letter from an inmate of the County Home, speaking also for others at the Home, indicates that it was their heartfelt duty to express indignation and resentment regarding an article about Malcolm Whitte appearing in the "People" column of Charles Kuralt on August 7—actually, August 9—, finding it not a complete surprise as they considered it another of Mr. Whitte's successful promotions. Their indignation arose from Mr. Whitte's published remarks, finding the article to reflect adversely on the Home and provide a false impression, especially when it quoted him as saying that he had been in the Home for awhile and found it "a crude and disagreeable place", thus had left. They invite coming out to the Home to see it. They did not wish their fellow citizens to believe that they, the aged and infirm who were wards of the County, were not appreciative and thankful for the beautiful, new, modern, comfortable quarters provided to them. They were proud of the Home. The signatory of the letter indicates that it had been prepared by one of the inmates and had not been instigated by the management or any member of the staff, had been read by or to every inmate at the Home mentally capable of understanding it and had met with their full consent and approval.
They appear to have become somewhat overwrought regarding a single statement, only calling attention to the incidental remark, not the principal subject of the piece, instead pertaining to Mr. Whitte's offering of poetry to passersby on the street.
A letter writer says that she had been reading about the ambulance service in Charlotte and believes the best way to solve the problem was for three or four hospitals to have their own ambulances—the problem being the cost effectiveness of funeral homes operating the ambulance service, which was a losing franchise for them.
Here, we have another poser: How does one properly pronounce "ambulance"? Growing up where we grew up, we heard some pronounce it "ambu-lance", with the stress on the last syllable, as if referring to the medieval instrument used in jousting. Is that correct, at least in Middle English? And why, when a person is non-ambulatory, they need an ambu-lance to perambulate? Why not a perambulator? Well, we'll place that in the incubator for awhile and, as with eggs, let it cogitate, to cudgel our cogitator.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.