ustxtxb_obs_1976_08_20_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

EARTH SHOE STORE 474-1895 1610 Lavaca Austin, Texas 78701 14 The Texas Observer Interested in Democratic Socialism? If you feel that Americans should have a guaranteed right to medical care, and that more positive action must be taken to eliminate poverty in the U.S., the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee may be for you. DSOC is working within the liberal left wing of the Democratic Party to establish a democratic socialist presence in American life in the spirit of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas. For more information contact Steve Rossignol, 209 W. 20th, Austin \(512/478Good books in every field JENKINS PUBLISHING CO. The Pemberton Press John H. Jenkins, Publisher Box 2085 Austin 78768 HALF PRICE RECORDS MAGAZINE Auserta 1514 LA ACA WAtos .W 118 COLUASUg DALLAS: 64536 .bicialinimfr stbas tut 5219 vir.Latra$ LS. IG ax 205 S. TANG B s PRIM. which takes the variable voltage DC power from a windmill or waterwheel generator and turns it into 220v AC in phase with the cycle of the power company. If the windmill, say, does not generate all the power you need, the synchronous inverter enables you to take only that additional amount needed from the power grid. If you generate more than you need, it feeds the surplus into the grid and runs your meter backward! Practically all compzinies, though, refuse to “buy” back the power from the inverter at the rate they sell it and instead install a second meter for the reverse, paying only the wholesale rate for the current fed into the grid. Only a handful of states’ and Canadian provinces’ regulatory agencies require power companies to accept the system. But by eliminating the need for storage batteries or flywheels to store surplus power for calm days, the synchronous inverter may be the most important device for making wind power feasible for use today. On the other hand, there are some hopeful signs of growing awareness that the human-scaled systems of appropriate technology may be the public’s best guarantee of independence. Backyard gardens have more popularity now than any time since the Victory Garden era of World War Two. Even city park departments are being pressured into renting space for gardens to apartment dwellers. Universities are be A Welfare Mother, by Susan Sheehan. Houghton Mifflin, 109 pp. Austin When The New Yorker comes in the mail, I read every cartoon in an orgy of instant gratification, climaxing when I happen upon a contribution from Booth, the fellow who does the eccentric couple with the fleabitten pets. A single Booth animal sitting in a corner can make my week. Virtually every New Yorker brings some major article that I want to read, but I’m ashamed to admit how often the issues pile up next to my bed and are eventually trundled unread to the laundromat, where I’m doing a little cultural missionary work. Susan Sheehan’s profile of a welfare mother was in one of those issues that got deposited unread next to the empty Biz boxes at the Kwick-Wash. Therefore I am much indebted to Houghton Mifflin for issuing A Welfare Mother in book form, even though $6.95 is a steep price to pay for a 109-page article I should have read when it was next to my bed. Sheehan’s piece is a tribute to oldfashioned, un-embellished, straight reporting. No advocacy here, just a meticulously coming major centers of A.T. research \(and developed countries are developing appropriate technology so rapidly that they now export technology to the over-developed countries. No longer does the average person regard A.T. as something only for “hippies on communes.” The increasing coverage of A.T. by the popular press demonstrates this growing interest. Politically, A.T. is now about at the point the consumer movement was when Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed appeared. A.T. has been around a long time, but few knew it. Now that the possibilities of A.T. are emerging into public awareness, the pressures from the established systems are growing. The establishment won’t make the same mistakes twice. There is no one person or group leading the movement, so no one is going to try tricks such as those General Motors tried with Nader. Nuclear power forces assisted by the Texas Department of Public Safety have already tried blacklisting and failed. The attacks this time will be quiet, behind the scenes in the legislatures and regulatory agencies. However, fossil fuels are running out and the nuclear cloud still hangs over all of us. If A.T. is not permitted to be tried, the American political experiment started two centuries ago may collapse. A.T. offers greater freedom to the individual. Utopia? Hardly. Just a chance to do better. Habitat showed a glimpse of both of these possible futures. researched, intimate account of a woman whom Sheehan calls Mrs. Carmen Santana. Just, I say. It took her just two months .to find a likely subject and just a year and a half of visits to piece together this compassionate view of one Puerto Rican’s life in New York City. “If there was any trick in my bag, the trick was time,” she explains in an afterword concerning her reportorial technique. Mrs. Santana was a rare find, “a jolly, outgoing, notably stout woman of 42.” Her days, Sheehan writes, “are a round of small domestic melodramas, and she would not have it otherwise. She has no interest in national or international events; over the years, Vietnam, the Arab-Israeli wars, and the energy crisis have assuredly had an indirect effect on her, but she remains largely unaware of them. To an outsider, her world might seem very narrow; to her, it is ample. “She faces every day with equanimity, hoping that something pleasant will befall her in the course of it, shrugging off her disappointment when it does not. What will be will be, whether good or bad. When she can afford to buy pork chops for dinner she buys pork chops, and when she cannot afford them she buys rice and beans. She Mtn Welfare Mother