ustxtxb_obs_1992_03_13_50_00021-00000_000.pdf

`Mrs. Democrat’ remembered The late Minnie Fisher Cunningham, a pioneer suffragist and early supporter of what became the Texas Observer, will be honored on March 15 with the placement of an historical marker. Liz Carpenter, former press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson, will be featured speaker at the 2 p.m. event on U.S. 75, 2.6 miles north of New Waverly, with a reception to follow at St. Joseph’s Catholic Hall in New Waverly. Cunningham was the first woman to receive a pharmacy degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1901, only to discover her education was worth only one-half of what her male colleagues earned. She later said this disparity made her a suffragist. With husband Beverly Jean “Bill” Cunningham, a lawyer, she moved to Galveston in 1907. By 1912 she was leading the Galveston Equal Suffrage Association and in 1915 she began the first of four terms as president of the Texas suffragists’ statewide organization. Mrs. Cunningham was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1920, a founding member of the League of Women Voters and executive secretary of the Women’s National Democratic Club. In 1944, she finished second in the Democratic primary for governor but prevented Gov. Coke Stevenson from leading an anti-Roosevelt delegation to the Democratic national convention. In 1945, she retired, emerging to work in the campaigns of Ralph Yarborough and Adlai Stevenson and to organize women’s clubs. She mortgaged the farm to save the State Observer \(forerunner of the Texas school board in 1954 worked to implement desegregation. In 1964, “Mrs. Democrat of Texas” died and was buried in New Waverly with a donkey pinned to her dress. PEOPLE Make a world of difference ! Were proud of our employees and their contributions to your success and ours. Call us for quality printing, binding, mailing and data processing services. Get to know the people at Futura. FUTUM P.O. Box 17.427 Austin, TX 78760-7427 389-1500 COMMUNICATIONS, INC. Continued from pg. 19 plants occupy will be off the market for a few hundred thousand years, too. Sometimes, though, elected officials stumble onto the right thing for the right reasons. Gov . Ann Richards’ offer to buy all the state’s autos and trucks from General Motors if the company would stay in Arlington and convert to the production of vehicles that run on compressed natural gas may or may not have played a role in GM’s decision to remain in Texas; another more cynical and potentially environmentally harmful reason is that the Arlington plant is closer to parts suppliers in Mexico, where environmental regulation is notoriously lax. Gore also proposes that we tax pollution as it leaves the smokestack \(or seeps into the reduction in production of ozone-depleting Texas leads the nation in industrial CFC emitters. Fort Worth’s General Dynamics Air Force Plant 4 leads the state in CFC emissions. The threat against the three systems which keep the earth in its delicate, life-sustaining balance; the ozone shield, temperature constancy and atmospheric oxidation, get a lot of attention in Earth. Ozone shield protection got some additional attention recently with NASA’s announcement that depletion of the ozone is greater than had been expected over the Northern Hemisphere and that the densely populated areas of New England, Canada, and Europe might soon be threatened by an ozone hole similar to the one which opens each fall over Antarctica. Perhaps the thought of excess ultraviolet rays beaming down on Kennebunkport finally prompted President Bush. The United States will phase out CFC’s by 1995 instead of the year 2000 as had been previously agreed on. In’ the often-reluctant Senate, Gore was able to push through an amendment to the controversial Johnson-Wallop energy bill by a vote of directs the EPA to speed up the phaseout of CFC’s. There are important topics that Gore doesn’t adequetely consider, he doesn’t give half enough attention to the tons of radioactive waste produced in weapons and power plants. The nuclear accidents at Three-Mile-Island and Chernobyl, and their aftermaths, get little attention. Yet he does make the point that it would be a mistake to increase our reliance on nuclear power as a means of reducing pollution from the burning of fossil fuel. Despite these omissions, Al Gore has written an important book filled with valuable information; and it is often, finely and compassionately written. Gore’s accounts of his own personal and spiritual journey, his son’s nearfatal accident, his despair at his inability to make the environment’ the i central theme of his 1988 presidential campaign, and the chapters in which he pays tribute to the gentler earth-preserving cultures of the past and the courageous individuals of the present, are powerful. Gore’s commitment is that of an elected offi cial in a position to connect sound thinking on the environment to public policy. But Gore can only do that with a public commitment to make the environment a central organizing principle in our lives. “The choice is ours,” Gore writes. ” The earth is in the balance.” Supercollider Continued from pg. 16 bonds have been issued to help fund the project. But, there is a silver lining. According to the Texas National Research Laboratory Commission, the state arm on the SSC project, during the first two years the super collider project has generated $883 million in North Texas. In years ahead, this is expected to increase. As for jobs, there are now 1,700 lab employees, and during the peak construction years, employment is expected to exceed 9,000. In the meantime, the funding struggle will continue. A European scientist from the last century once said, “The science of life is superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.” The same could be said about the life of science these days. Newspapers Continued from pg. 17 Alternative papers aren’t immune from the dollar chase. Given the profits an alternative weekly can generate, mainstream chains are beginning to move into the “alternative” market. In Ft. Lauderdale, the giant Tribune chain publishes both the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel and XS, a new “alternative”, weekly, which is less political and more consumer-oriented t han traditional alternative weeklies. XS’s competition? The Miami New Times, an alternative weekly owned by New Times Inc., a Phoenix-based alternative chain with four newspapers \(including its most recent acquisition, $14 million. “Follow the money trail,”, old-time editors used to warn their young reporters. It looks like the publishers, not the journalists, have taken that advice. THE TEXAS OBSERVER 21