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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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Dear Editor:
When our family decided
to move to Chickasha in Janu-
ary of 1999, we admittedly
did little research. Growing up
in southwest Oklahoma City I
always perceived Chickasha
as a quaint little town with a
great BBQ restaurant and
spectacular Christmas lights.
If we had realized the crime
rate was so high perhaps we
would have never called this
place home.
My young children and I
have tried to become an active
part of the community. Long-
ing to give my kids security, I
chose to stay and continue to
make Chickasha our home.
(Besides purple and gold are
two of my favorite colors.)
But, oh how I long to see
improvements.
My children, ages 7 and 11,
are both involved in athletics.
After moving from another
small town, similar in size to
Chickasha, I was amazed at
how poorly funded and main-
tained the sports programs are
here.
I am drawing a direct corre-
lation between poorly main-
tained (therefore not attractive
to youth and their families)
sports facilities and the youth
crime rate in our community.
Our City and the business
men of Chickasha need to
74
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The election of Cathy Keating to represent Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District would
be a triumph for Tulsa, the state and the nation.
The first lady is intelligent, reasonable, articulate, finely educated, well informed and
tough-as-necessary. She would be a dynamite lawmaker.
With the decision by U.S. Rep Steve Largent to run for governor, the Tulsa district seat
opens with many Republicans eying the race. A Democrat would have a near-zero chance to
win....
While football star Largent has a lackluster record as a congressman, he is a shoo-in for
governor He's a former football star, which seems to be all-fired important to a lot of Okla-
homa voters.
Cathy Keating, while generally adhering to the GOP party line and right-wing dogma,
owns enough sensibility and independence that she would defy the worse of ideas foisted by
extremists.
She would be dynamite as a member of congress and, as her husband probably would
agree, would be a good governor if she held that office right now.
Berry s World
we
APOLOREGRET
IT’S THE
ECONOMY,
STUPID!
___________w.u.c.
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Tuesday.
April 17, 2001
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The Stillwater News Press
On roads:
A recent poll revealed most Oklahomans don’t like the state's turnpike system.
The poll showed 56 percent of respondents favored making the turnpike system a regular
tax-supported highway system Another 33 percent disliked that idea.
The state got into the turnpike business when the Turner Turnpike was opened, linking
Tulsa and Oklahoma City. It seemed like a good idea at the time and Oklahomans were told
once the bonds were paid off, the divided highway would become part of the state system.
That never happened The Turner Turnpike still exists. Others have been built and they
practically ring Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
Now. the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority builds and operates the states 585-mile turnpike
system. The system has about $1.3 billion in debt financed over decades and annual revenue
of about $166 million ...
Eliminating the states turnpike system and incorporating the 585 miles into the state trans-
portation system sounds like a good idea, except for the question of where the money will
come from to maintain those turnpikes and other state highways. ...
Oklahoma doesn’t generate enough money to adequately maintain its highway system
unless the Legislature changes the method of raising revenue for highway maintenance and
improvements.
The Tulsa World
On District Attorney salaries:
If the Oklahoma Legislature truly wants stability in its district attorney offices across the
state. it will take a long, hard look at a $ 1.8 million request by the District Attorneys Counci
to boost the salaries of prosecutors.
The increase would raise the salaries of most assistants by up to 10 percent.
. DAs can’t always keep experienced prosecutors. Many are lured away to higher-paying
and less stressful jobs in the private sector. Some even leave for better-paying posts in other
parts of government
The public deserves to have experienced attorneys handling criminal matters that affect
lives and liberty. ...
Every year the district attorneys must plead with legislators for funding increases. By the
same token, legislators do not have to spend much time each year urging prosecutors to do
their jobs. For better or worse, Oklahoma has one of the highest incarceration rates in the
nation. That is owed in large part to prosecutors obtaining convictions and convincing judges
and juries that prison time is justified.
Turnover in state DA offices is nothing new. To some degree a problem always has exist-
ed But the problem is more acute now than ever before. The Legislature should take a long
hard look at giving DA assistants a decent pay hike. This is one area where it does not pay to
cut comers.
ANVatg
The Claremore Progress
On a race of her own:
The Muskogee Daily Phoenix
On politics as usual:
You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch your back. That has long been the unwritten operat-
ing principle of Oklahoma politics.
When Brad Carson ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from Oklahoma’s 2nd Con-
gressional District last year, he promised that he would not conduct politics as usual, that he
would not follow the old rules that put loyalty to his supporters above equally serving the
interests of all his constituents.
Barely three months into his first term, we have reason to question how well he is keeping
that campaign pledge.
At Carson’s request, the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform conducted an
investigation into the Oklahoma nursing home industry and how well it is serving its clients.
Following the recent scandal in the Oklahoma Department of Health and the corruption of
its nursing home inspection program, such an investigation was appropriate. And it was prop-
er for the federal government to conduct it because federal Medicaid funding pays part of
some nursing home clients' expenses.
Any report of this nature is supposed to be released to the public for review and to the peo-
ple or industry investigated for response and remedial action, if needed.
Instead of releasing the report to the public through all media outlets in Oklahoma and to
the nursing home industry at the same time, the representative's staff first sent it to a Tulsa
newspaper.
That Tulsa newspaper had enthusiastically endorsed Carson in last year's Democratic pri-
mary and runoff elections and in the November general election. The family owning and pub-
lishing that Tulsa newspaper had given money to Carson's campaign.
You scratch my back, and I'll scratch your back.
This seems to be the principle Carson’s office followed in releasing the report to the Tulsa
newspaper a few days before releasing it to other media outlets ...
That is unacceptable. The nursing home investigation and report used taxpayers’ money.
The effort was not funded by the Tulsa newspaper or the family that owns and publishes it
All Oklahomans had the right to have access to that report at the same time. All media out-
lets had the right to receive the report at the same time.
In this instance, Carson and his staff played politics as usual. ...
But when Stephens laid diplomacy aside and
turned to the real purpose of his journey, he was
far more successful. He became the first writer to
systematically observe the remains of Central
realize that well funded and policy insuring that he or she
maintained sports facilities wouldn't be hooked on some-
and programs could be and are thing else a couple of years
a huge draw to the type of later
young families we want to Wouldn't you much rather
move to our town.             see our kids shooting hoops
Getting children hooked on instead of each other?
baseball at an early age is akin             Respectfully.
to purchasing an insurance Shawna Anderson
“After diligent search, no government found," Modem archeologists say Catherwood's draw-
he reported to President James Buchanan. The ings are so precise that they can read the hiero-
unhappy and fragmenting Republic of Central glyphs he reproduced
America was soon to be divided into the modem The monuments left Stephens in awe, “stand-
states of Guatemala. El Salvador. Nicaragua, i
Costa Rica and Honduras                         silent and solemn, stran
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ing as they do in the depths of a tropical forest,
ilent -deuln, atinge in design. rich in oma
ment, different from the works of any other peo-
ple. ..."
By the time Stephens' second book on the
remains of the Mayan civilization was published
America's ancient Mayan civilization Later gen- in 1843, the author could claim an astounding
erations honor him as the father of Mayan arcnae- number of discoveries - including 44 ancient
ology.                                              cities. Chichen Itza in the Mexico's Yucatan
The story is told again in a remarkable new among them, all previously “lost, buried and
volume in which Stephens is just one of the stars:  unknown."
“Return Passages, Great American Travel Writ- “In scope, wealth of incident and significance
ing, 1780-1910," by Larzer Ziffof Johns Hopkins of detail, Stephen's narratives remain unsurpassed
University.                                         by the books of travel of any other American," Ziff
Ziff tells Stephen’s story and those of four other writes.
Bill
WASHINGTON YESTERDAY:
American envoy uncovers lost civilization
By LAWRENCE L. KNLTSON          American travelers and writers: John Ledyard, a
Associated Press Writer             Connecticut Yankee who sailed with Capt. James
—cun. Cook around the world and crossed Russia and
WASHINGTON (AP) - In the fall of 1839, S iberia on foot; Bayard Taylor, a professional who
John Lloyd Stephens, author, celebrated traveler was the only writer on Commodore Matthew
and newly commissioned diplomat, set off for Perry's 1852’expedition to Japan, Mark Twain.
Central America in search of a government. He who'focused his ironic spint on tourism in such
found a lost civilization instead.                    books as “Innocents Abroad;'' and novelist Henry
Let Stephens start the story at the moment he James, who made travel writing a literary perfor-
boarded a ship in New York:                     mance.
“Being entrusted by the president with a spe- "The books they constructed from those travels
cial confidential mission to Central America, on beguiled Americana readers with their depictions
Wednesday, the third of October, 1839, I of the old and the exotic; everything that America
embarked onboard the British brig, Mary Ann, was not," Ziff writes. Ziff notes that Stephens was
Hampton, master, for the Bay of Honduras. ... already a successful travel writer He had wntten
"It was before seven in the morning; the streets two popular books about travels in Arabia. Egypt,
and wharves were still; the battery was desolate; the Holy Land and Eastern Europe He was
and at a moment of leaving it on a voyage of known to many as "the American traveler."
uncertain duration. (New York) seemed more And if in Central America his chase after a
beautiful than I had ever known it before." government got nowhere, his hunt for ancient
For all its idyllic beginnings, the voyage began Mayan cities was a stunning success.
a 10-month test of endurance, willpower and At the first of them, Copan in Honduras,
ingenuity - not to speak of diplomacy. It resulted Stephens and Catherwood first found a carved
in a wildly successful two-volume work, “Inci- slab. then an entire vine-covered and completely
dents of Travel in Central America. Chiapas and unknown city.
Yucatan." published in 1841. Edgar Allen Poe. a "It lay before us like a shattered bark in the
sometime literary critic, called it the best travel midst of an ocean, her masts gone, her name
book ever wntten.                                effaced; her crew perished and none to tell
Stephens, then 33. was accompanied by skilled whence she came. ... The only sounds that dis-
English illustrator Frederick Catherwood. They turbed the quiet ofthisbuned city were the sounds
were beset by mosquitos, civil war, biting flies, of monkeys moving among the tops of trees. ..."
rebel armies, food poisoning, torrential rain, mud. After negotiations with a local land owner,
heat, exhaustion, disease and frustration.            Stephens bought Copan for $50, or at least he pur-
“Everything susceptible of injury from damp chased the right to clear the ruins so Catherwood
was rusty or moldy and in ruinous condition; we could illustrate what was uncovered.
ourselves was not much better," Stephens wrote. He described his illustrator-partner "Standing
Central America was in such an uproar that with his feet in the mud, he was drawing with his
Stevens could find no one to accept his diplomat- gloves on to protect his hands from the mosqui-
ic credentials.                                           toes.
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