LITTLE ROCK — "Well, read 'em a clippin', News."
-Butch Cassidy (played by Paul Newman) to News Carver when Harvey tried to take over the Hole In The Wall Gang.
GOOD IDEA: Mary Birnbach Ballard, a graduate of Mount St. Mary Academy, and her husband Claude have donated a million dollars to the Little Rock school.
The gift was one of the largest in the school's history, and will be used to pay for upgrades to what had been known as the 1953 building. It'll now be known as the Mary Birnbach Ballard '45 Liberal and Practical Arts building.
The '45 part comes from the year Mrs. Ballard graduated.
The part about the liberal arts especially warms our hearts. It distinguishes eduation from job training. We remember an argument between two friends in which one said his daughter was going to major in Latin in college. The other guy asked what you could do with a degree in Latin. Response: What can't you do with a degree in Latin? Law. Medicine. Politics. Business. Anything that requires thinking clearly, making distinctions, understanding cause and effect, and that not everything that's post hoc is propter hoc.
On behalf of everybody who appreciates education in this small but wonderfully giving state, and everybody should, thank you. Mr. and Mrs. Ballard.
Bad idea: Oh, dear. The paper's Business section had a story last Friday about the practice of burning off natural gas in North Dakota because there's not a pipeline handy to transport it.
North Dakota is producing record amounts of oil for that state, but a lot of the natural gas in those oil wells is just burned on site. Excuse us, flared, to use the industry term.
How much gas?
Oh, enough to heat every home in North Dakota-for two North Dakota winters.
Has anybody up there thought about laying some pipes, for goshsakes? That's what they did in East Texas after folks got tired of seeing all that perfectly good energy go up in flames for years. And ifTexans can figure out how to save energy, surely Dakotans can.
And that's natural gas the world will never get back. There outta be a law . . . .
Good idea: Ron Angel, the director of this state's Youth Service Division, offered to resign when one of his charges who was released from custody when he shouldn't have been-and was soon enough arrested and charged with murder.
Mr. Angel's offer to resign was turned down by his boss, John Selig, the director of the Department of Human Services. Mr. Selig thinks the outfit is moving in the right direction since Ron Angel was hired about two years ago. Nor was Mr. Angel the one who signed off on the suspect's release. But it's assuring to see somebody take responsibility for what happens in an organization he's supposed to be directing.
Offering to resign is what a responsible official does when things go terribly wrong. Oftentimes that offer is accepted. And should be.
This was not one of those times. For a good reason. Ron Angel may be the best person available for the job.
But it's still refreshing to hear about somebody's offering to resign for mistakes that others down the pay scale made. It's called leadership.
Good idea: Word around the campfire is that Blanche Lincoln, this state's senior U.S. senator, may be in line for the chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
A lot of things have to happen first. Among them, several senators have to pass up the job for other plum chairmanships. But if things fall into place just so, Senator Lincoln might could be Madam Chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee
A perfect spot for the daughter of a sixth-generation rice farmer from easternArkansas.
Bad idea: Rooting for the Chicago Cubs any longer.
It's football season, folks. Let's cry no more for the Cubbies. (Not till next summer.)
Editorial, Pages 18 on 08/29/2009