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Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
February 18, 1999     Shelton Mason County Journal
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February 18, 1999
 
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9ournal of. Opinion: Democracy 101 To tell the truth Mr'y M. Knight School Superintendent Fred Yancey learned The citizen's voice dripped with incredulity in the man-on-  stuniing lesson in democracy in the February 2 election in- the-street radio report after Friday's vote in the U.S. Senate on vol)iing his district's proposed bond issue for a major schools the disorganized crime in the White House. "What am I going f'a,' liflt in Matlock. He found out that making it convenient for to tell my 12-year-old daughter?" the man asked. "I am going to p,q:lc to vote is apparently a sure way to kill a tax measure, have to tell her that the President lied and got away with it." MMK decided it would be cost-effective to hold an all- Where has thzs guy been for the last 200 years? He acts mail dection instead of opening up polling places. Bal- like he'.s been dealt a major parenting problem because lots were sent to all the registered voters in the district, something unbelievable has occurred - someone in the When the mail came back, only one-third of the people federal government has lied and gotten away with it. had voted "yes" on the $8.4-million bond for a new ele- mentary school, more high-school classrooms, an auxili- ary gym and expanded library. Yancey said there were more "no" votes February 2 than there were total votes in MMK's last election on a mainte- nance-and-operations levy. What the experience told him, emphatically, was that more people will vote if you make it con- venient for them, but you're going to get "no" for an answer when you've got mail, The superintendent is a brutally honest professional. He laid out the proposal for the voters and told them why they should vote for it. He and citizens' committees looked at building needs for years and reached for the sky with the bond measure. He made no apologies for wanting a first-class school, one with room for award- winning programs. He has since apologized for the voters going postal on the hool district, but we don't think an apology is necessary. "I'll t:ke the fhll for the mail ballot," he told The Journal. How was 1 to know that mail bonding was a bad idea? The scary thing for him, as a true believer in the dem- ocratic process, was that a concept that seems to involve more people in democracy may make it impossible for his district to pass a bond. Leaders and civic boosters for years have lamented the fact that the average citizen is dropping out of the voting process. Along comes a so- lution, and ironically it's no solution at all for making ci- vic improvements. la the Pioneer School District's election February 2, 69 per- c:,nt of those who trekked to the polls voted for the district's proposed bond issue, while 52 percent of those voting by absen- t, ca favored the measure, which failed to get the necessary 60 percent. People voting by mail historically have been fiscally md politically conservative with their absentee ballots. But the ,verwhelming MMK vote could never have been predicted. "I was stunned," Yancey admitted. He hadn't heard a lot of oppo- sitmn. MMK had held public meetings on the proposal, and they were poorly attended. There was "absolute silence" on the bond except in the election, he said. What's unknown, said the superintendent, are the ex- act reasons for the "no" votes by MMK patrons. Undoub- tedly some people didn't want to raise their taxes, while others thought the scope of the project was too big, he said. It offered something for every grade level. He hopes the district can reconfigure the project, scale it down, and make another proposal. "I would not be fool- ish enough to run this again," he said, "but I'm confident we're going to run a bond again." What disturbs him is the thought of slashing a third of the project to make it more palatable and finding that it costs more, simply because bond rates have gone up from their pres- ent rock-bottom level. When the next bond is proposed, MMK will face a real dilemma: Call for another mail vote and involve the most people in the democratic process, or reopen the polling places and give the poor thing half a chance. - CG Washington has been filled with liars, cheaters and frauds for as long as anyone can remember. If they aren't lying, they're telling half-truths, spouting hyperbole or practicing demagoguery, grandstanding or pandering. As a whole, the people we have sent to the nation's capital and the agencies they oversee have a record that is despicable. One more exam- ple of revolting behavior shouldn't be a surprise to the father of an impressionable 12-year-old. Surely he has seen federal officials parade to prison in his lifetime. He must have noticed that many of those who were supposed to judge the liar in the Lewdinsky scandal were liars of the same ilk. He ought to have heard about the way the truth has been twisted and hidden, the way the rules of decency have been broken. The litany of the military's actions in our name runs from marching to the sea in Georgia to herding Indians, from collecting Vietnamese ears to reducing student enrollment at Kent State, from killing civilians in Iraq by missing a target by two miles to killing civilians in Italy by not missing a ski gon- dola cable. The interviewee couldn't have missed the exploits of the CIA, FBI and IRS when they have careened out of control, whether it was propping up horrible regimes or supporting death squads in other countries, spying on our own citizens or abusing power against taxpayers. Nor should he have missed the scientific experiments in which U.S. citizens were used as guinea pigs. As a people we seem to run from the truth and criticize those who would tell us the truth. We think that killing the messen- ger somehow changes reality. We really don't want to think about the truth of the federal deficit; we just reelect people who make it larger. We wink at the special interests that buy elec- tions and regard those clamoring for campaign finance reform as freaks, radicals, unrealistic. The truth is that we despoil land, pollute air and contaminate water to drive our economy, but we vilify those who protest the environment's destruction. The brutal truth is too tough to take, so we don't re- quire it. We're scared of the truth and how people might react to it, so we work overtime to put our own spin on each situation. We don't believe our children can handle the truth, but sometimes in their black-and-white world they can deal with reality more easily than we can in our gray world. Mr. Clinton is a product of our system, as 'are Congress and federal agencies. They play by rules we set, meet the standards we establish. We have low standards, so they can get away with almost anything. They can afford to be cynical about a populace with a half-hour attention span that reelects them. So, what is the man to tell his 12-year-old daughter? He should tell her that the truth has been taking a beat- ing in this country for a long time, and if the situation is going to get any better, she and her generation are prob- ably going to have to be the ones to change it, because her elders, collectively, are botching it. But he might not want to tell her that. That would be the truth. - CG County doing its job in planning Editor, The ,Journal: I am writing in response to the I,tter to the editor from John Dieh] and the comments of Doug Sayan to the Mason County com- missioners as reported in last week's Jour'no/. It appears that the commissioners are being ac- ctlsed of holding up approval of the:, Mason County Comprehen- sive Plan by challenging rulings if the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings pretations of the law but just plain wrong. To disallow industri- al and commercial development outside of urban growth areas is not in conformity with the Growth Management Act (GMA) as amended by Engrossed Senate Bill 6094 in 1997. Mr. Diehl gives a nice summary of those provi- sions in his second paragraph. I suspect I am one of those "businessmen who focus narrowly on their self-interest" as de- [,ard. In fact I believe they are scribed by Mr. Diehl. I would like jst doing their job, which is to to present my side of the GMA r'present the interests of all the story. My family owns Stretch Is- itizens of Mason County: Some hand Fruit, a small business em- rt.cent rulings of' the GMHB ap- ploying 40 people in the Allyn pear to be not .just narrow inter- area. Most of our employees live liluiilllllllllluulu usPs492800 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Shelton-Mason County Journal, P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584, P)lJshed weekly by Shelton Publishing Inc. at 227 West Cota Street, Shelton, Wuhlngton Mailing address: P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584 Telephone (360) 426-4412 Second-class postage paid at Shelton. Washington Member of Washington Newspaper Publishers' Association SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $25,00 per year in-county address, $:-5.00 .)er year in state of Washington $45,00 per year out of state Chrles Gay editor and publisher. Newsrom: Carolyn Maddux, managing editor; Steve Patch, sports editor; Jeff Green. general assignment, city govemment, schools', Mary Duncan, ;ocey edttor, county government; Sean Hanlon, police, courts, Port of Shelton, Advertlaing: .%tep'en Gay, advert=stag manager; Janet Daugherty and Dave Piedk, ad sales, Front office: .hjlle Orme. bus=hess manager; Vickt Kamin, circulation; Donna Dooms, bookkeeper; Jane rvlahony, office assistant. Composing room: Diane Riordan, supervisor; Margot Brand and j;-m Kallinen. aste-up; Koleen Wood, typesetter and computer system manager; Karl Freer, com)uter ad layout and computer system manager; Cynthia Moyer, proofreader. Pressroom: Robert Rodriguez. production foreman; Roger Lawson, darkroom: Kelly Rlordan, pressman, luuuuuuuu Page 4- Shelton-Mason County Journal- Thursday, February 18, 1999 close to the plant. With my wife and son I have spent 22 years growing the business, most of that time on its present site. Now I am told that this site has been zoned rural under the GMA and tha the business will not be per- mitted to grow on site. Further- more, under development regula- tions passed in response to the GMA by the previous board of commissioners, it is so risky to leave this site that I can't move the business. I simply can't walk away from the substantial invest- ment I have here; after all, the bank still expects its mortgage payments. We can't grow and we can't go. So we're stuck. Let me draw an analogy to our situation which a homeowner should be able to understand. You own a home located in a rural area, because that's where you want to live. You know already (I hope) that under GMA you will not be able to subdivide your property or build your ailing mother a house unless you have a lot of property (size yet to be de- termined under GMA and MCCP). Say you can live with that. Now suppose that the coun- ty told you that, if you want to sell your house, you have to sell to a family that is no larger than your own, so as not to contribute to suburban sprawl. In addition, if you move out of your house, you have three years to sell or lease it. If you fail to have it occupied within three years, the property reverts to its "natural rural char- acter" and you might as well bull- doze your house. What would this do to the val- ue of your home? Would your banker be willing to lend you money to improve the home? Would you be able to sell it? If laws were passed which put you in this situation, you would not oply complain, you would scream bloody murder! And yet that is exactly the status of our noncon- forming business under GMA and the Mason County development regulations. Are these "reason- able regulations"? I think not. We have tried to address our concerns through proper local channels. The Allyn Subarea Planning Committee, the Mason County Planning Commission and our county commissioners all recommended inclusion of our business site in the Allyn Rural Activity Center. The petitioners challenged the plan and the re- sult is the latest round of rulings by the GMHB. It is the petition- ers, not the county commission- ers, who are holding up the pro- cess. Yes, it gets expensive. And folks, it's your money. To Jay Hupp and the members of the Mason County EDC, I say thank you for continuing to press for fairness and reason in the MCCP. To our county commis- sioners, I say shame on you (or your predecessors) for passing those punitive sections of the de- velopment regulations to which I refer. But congratulations to you for resisting the efforts of the pe- titioners and the GMHB to rain down our throats an interpreta- tion of the GMA which most citi- zens of Mason County do not sup- port. Ron Sagers0n Grapeview A brief treatise on men By DAVE BARRY From time to time I receive let- ters from a certain group of indi- viduals that I will describe, for want of a better term, as "wom- en." I have such a letter here, from a Susie Walker of North Au- gusta, South Carolina, who asks the following question: "Why do men open a drawer and say, 'where is the spatula?' Instead of, you know, looking for it?" This question expresses a com- monly held (by women) negative stereotype about guys of the male gender, which is that they cannot find things around the house, es- pecially things in the kitchen. Many women believe that if you want to hide something from a man, all you have to do is put it in plain sight in the refrigerator, and he will never, ever find it, as evidenced by the fact that a man can open a refrigerator containing 463 pounds of assorted meats, poultry, cold cuts, condiments, vegetables, frozen dinners, snack foods, desserts', etc.,' alid ask, with no irony whatsoever, =Do we have anything to eat?  Now I COULD respond to this stereotype in a snide manner by making generalizations about women. I could ask, for example, how come your average woman prepares for virtually every up- coming event in her life, including dental appointments, by buying new shoes, even if she already owns as many pairs as the entire Riverdance troupe. I could point out that, if there were no women, there would be no such thing as Leonardo DiCaprio. I could ask why a woman would walk up to a perfectly innocent man who is minding his own business watch- ing basketball and demand to know if a certain pair of pants makes her butt look too big, and then, no matter what he answers, get mad at him. I could ask why, according to the best scientific es- timates, 93 percent of the nation's severely limited bathroom-stor- age space is taken up by decades- old, mostly empty tubes labeled "moisturizer." I could point out that, to judge from the covers of countless women's magazines, the two topics most interesting to women are (1) Why men are all disgusting pigs, and (2) How to attract men. Yes, I could raise these issues in response to the question asked by Susie Walker of North Augus- ta, South Carolina, regarding the man who was asking where the spatula was. I could even ask WHY this particular man might be looking for the spatula. Could it be that he needs a spatula to kill a spider, because, while he was innocently watching basket- ball and minding his own busi- ness, a member of another major gender - a gender that refuses to personally kill spiders but wants them all dead - DEMANDED that he kill the spider, which nine times out of 10 turns out,to,be, a male spider that was minding its own business? Do you realize how many men arrive in hospital emergency rooms every year, sometimes still gripping their spatulas, suffering from painful spider-inflicted injuries? I don't have the exact statistics right here, but I bet they are chilling. As I say, I could raise these is- sues and resort to the kind of neg- ativity indulged in by Susie Walk- er of North Augusta, South Caro- lina. But I choose not to. I choose, instead, to address her question seriously, in hopes that, by im- proving the communication be- tween the genders, all human be- ings - both men and women, to- gether - will come to a better un- derstanding of how dense women can be sometimes. I say this because there is an excellent reason why a man would open the spatula drawer and, without looking for the spat- ula, ask where the spatula is: The man does not have TIME to look for the spatula. Why? Because HE IS BUSY THINKING. Men are ALMOST ALWAYS thinking. When you look at a man who ap- pears to be merely scratching himself, rest assured that inside his head, his brain is humming like a high-powered computer, processing millions of pieces of in- formation and producing import- ant insights such as, "This feels good!" We should be grateful that men think so much, because over the years they have thought up countless inventions that have made life better for all people, everywhere. The shot clock in basketball is one example. Anoth- er one is underwear-eating bacte- ria. I found out about this thanks to the many alert readers who sent me an article from New Sci- entist magazine stating that Rus- sian scientists - and you KNOW -, these ,are guy scientists - are try- ing to solve the problem 0f waste disposal aboard.,spacecraft,: by "designing a cocktail of bacteria to digest astronauts' cotton and paper underpants." Is that great, or what? I am picturing a utopian future wherein, when a man's briefs get dirty, they will simply dissolve from his body, thereby freeing him from the chore of dealing with his soiled underwear via the labor-intensive, time-con- suming method he now uses, namely, dropping them on the floor. I'm not saying that guys have solved all the world's problems. I'm just saying that there ARE so- lutions out there, and if, instead of harping endlessly about spatu- las, we allow guys to use their mental talents to look for these solutions, in time, they will find them. Unless they are in the re- frigerator. l00eaders ' 00lournal: Let's talk about education Editor, The Journal. I wanted to take a moment to respond to your editorial, =Drive Your Bus," in which you urge the citizens of the community to en- gage in a civil discussion about education. Speaking for the school district, we second your motion! While I am relatively new to the community, I absolutely agree that Shelten is a wonderful place to grow up and go to school. It is our desire to make it even better. We can not do that without the help of the community. We strongly believe we are stewards of our community's priceless re- source -our public schools. The community should expect nothing short of wise, effective and effi- cient stewardship from us. We join with you in asking for a dia- log in order to specify what that stewardship should look like. We have taken some specific actions to further this goal. In ad- dition to forming the Council for the Improvement of Student Learning, we have established a Citizen's Budget Advisory Com- mittee and are forming a commit- tee to advise us on activities and athletics. Each school has a Site Council which deals with gover- nance of the school and several are looking for parents and other community members. Finally, I am in the process of designing a series of interaction topics which we hope to use to en- gage the community through groups such as service clubs, church groups and other organ- ized groups. All of this is import- ant as we attempt to reflect com- munity values while building upon the tradition of excellence in the Shelton School District. We extend our thanks to The Journal for your advocacy of this civic ac- tivity. William W. Hundley Shelton Schools Superintendent Reflections about neighbor Editor, The Journal: Last week the last of the "old- timers" of Dayton was killed go- ins to get her mail. It's sort of ironic. Several years ago, if you drove through the Dayton cross- roads, you might see a little lady and her two dogs along the road. That was Vivian Buechel. Being the type of lady she was, she couldn't just walk for exercise, she had to be cleaning the road- side. Her neighbors would fear that she or one of the dogs would be hit by a chip truck. Her hear- ing was failing and she would be oblivious of traffic. She kept the crossroads area neat and clean for several years, with no mishaps. I am writing this out of guilt. I was always going to stop in and see her and tell her how nice the roadside looked. Or when her son Joe was killed, I was going to drop her a note to tell how bad :I felt for her. I saw  ambulance in her yard last  year and I was going to call her family so see ff she was all right. None of these things did I find time to do, and now it's too late. I'm sorry, Vivian, that I wasn't a better friend and neighbor. Good-bye, I will miss you. Vera Lorenz Matlock 9ournal of. Opinion: Democracy 101 To tell the truth Mr'y M. Knight School Superintendent Fred Yancey learned The citizen's voice dripped with incredulity in the man-on-  stuniing lesson in democracy in the February 2 election in- the-street radio report after Friday's vote in the U.S. Senate on vol)iing his district's proposed bond issue for a major schools the disorganized crime in the White House. "What am I going f'a,' liflt in Matlock. He found out that making it convenient for to tell my 12-year-old daughter?" the man asked. "I am going to p,q:lc to vote is apparently a sure way to kill a tax measure, have to tell her that the President lied and got away with it." MMK decided it would be cost-effective to hold an all- Where has thzs guy been for the last 200 years? He acts mail dection instead of opening up polling places. Bal- like he'.s been dealt a major parenting problem because lots were sent to all the registered voters in the district, something unbelievable has occurred - someone in the When the mail came back, only one-third of the people federal government has lied and gotten away with it. had voted "yes" on the $8.4-million bond for a new ele- mentary school, more high-school classrooms, an auxili- ary gym and expanded library. Yancey said there were more "no" votes February 2 than there were total votes in MMK's last election on a mainte- nance-and-operations levy. What the experience told him, emphatically, was that more people will vote if you make it con- venient for them, but you're going to get "no" for an answer when you've got mail, The superintendent is a brutally honest professional. He laid out the proposal for the voters and told them why they should vote for it. He and citizens' committees looked at building needs for years and reached for the sky with the bond measure. He made no apologies for wanting a first-class school, one with room for award- winning programs. He has since apologized for the voters going postal on the hool district, but we don't think an apology is necessary. "I'll t:ke the fhll for the mail ballot," he told The Journal. How was 1 to know that mail bonding was a bad idea? The scary thing for him, as a true believer in the dem- ocratic process, was that a concept that seems to involve more people in democracy may make it impossible for his district to pass a bond. Leaders and civic boosters for years have lamented the fact that the average citizen is dropping out of the voting process. Along comes a so- lution, and ironically it's no solution at all for making ci- vic improvements. la the Pioneer School District's election February 2, 69 per- c:,nt of those who trekked to the polls voted for the district's proposed bond issue, while 52 percent of those voting by absen- t, ca favored the measure, which failed to get the necessary 60 percent. People voting by mail historically have been fiscally md politically conservative with their absentee ballots. But the ,verwhelming MMK vote could never have been predicted. "I was stunned," Yancey admitted. He hadn't heard a lot of oppo- sitmn. MMK had held public meetings on the proposal, and they were poorly attended. There was "absolute silence" on the bond except in the election, he said. What's unknown, said the superintendent, are the ex- act reasons for the "no" votes by MMK patrons. Undoub- tedly some people didn't want to raise their taxes, while others thought the scope of the project was too big, he said. It offered something for every grade level. He hopes the district can reconfigure the project, scale it down, and make another proposal. "I would not be fool- ish enough to run this again," he said, "but I'm confident we're going to run a bond again." What disturbs him is the thought of slashing a third of the project to make it more palatable and finding that it costs more, simply because bond rates have gone up from their pres- ent rock-bottom level. When the next bond is proposed, MMK will face a real dilemma: Call for another mail vote and involve the most people in the democratic process, or reopen the polling places and give the poor thing half a chance. - CG Washington has been filled with liars, cheaters and frauds for as long as anyone can remember. If they aren't lying, they're telling half-truths, spouting hyperbole or practicing demagoguery, grandstanding or pandering. As a whole, the people we have sent to the nation's capital and the agencies they oversee have a record that is despicable. One more exam- ple of revolting behavior shouldn't be a surprise to the father of an impressionable 12-year-old. Surely he has seen federal officials parade to prison in his lifetime. He must have noticed that many of those who were supposed to judge the liar in the Lewdinsky scandal were liars of the same ilk. He ought to have heard about the way the truth has been twisted and hidden, the way the rules of decency have been broken. The litany of the military's actions in our name runs from marching to the sea in Georgia to herding Indians, from collecting Vietnamese ears to reducing student enrollment at Kent State, from killing civilians in Iraq by missing a target by two miles to killing civilians in Italy by not missing a ski gon- dola cable. The interviewee couldn't have missed the exploits of the CIA, FBI and IRS when they have careened out of control, whether it was propping up horrible regimes or supporting death squads in other countries, spying on our own citizens or abusing power against taxpayers. Nor should he have missed the scientific experiments in which U.S. citizens were used as guinea pigs. As a people we seem to run from the truth and criticize those who would tell us the truth. We think that killing the messen- ger somehow changes reality. We really don't want to think about the truth of the federal deficit; we just reelect people who make it larger. We wink at the special interests that buy elec- tions and regard those clamoring for campaign finance reform as freaks, radicals, unrealistic. The truth is that we despoil land, pollute air and contaminate water to drive our economy, but we vilify those who protest the environment's destruction. The brutal truth is too tough to take, so we don't re- quire it. We're scared of the truth and how people might react to it, so we work overtime to put our own spin on each situation. We don't believe our children can handle the truth, but sometimes in their black-and-white world they can deal with reality more easily than we can in our gray world. Mr. Clinton is a product of our system, as 'are Congress and federal agencies. They play by rules we set, meet the standards we establish. We have low standards, so they can get away with almost anything. They can afford to be cynical about a populace with a half-hour attention span that reelects them. So, what is the man to tell his 12-year-old daughter? He should tell her that the truth has been taking a beat- ing in this country for a long time, and if the situation is going to get any better, she and her generation are prob- ably going to have to be the ones to change it, because her elders, collectively, are botching it. But he might not want to tell her that. That would be the truth. - CG County doing its job in planning Editor, The ,Journal: I am writing in response to the I,tter to the editor from John Dieh] and the comments of Doug Sayan to the Mason County com- missioners as reported in last week's Jour'no/. It appears that the commissioners are being ac- ctlsed of holding up approval of the:, Mason County Comprehen- sive Plan by challenging rulings if the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings pretations of the law but just plain wrong. To disallow industri- al and commercial development outside of urban growth areas is not in conformity with the Growth Management Act (GMA) as amended by Engrossed Senate Bill 6094 in 1997. Mr. Diehl gives a nice summary of those provi- sions in his second paragraph. I suspect I am one of those "businessmen who focus narrowly on their self-interest" as de- [,ard. In fact I believe they are scribed by Mr. Diehl. I would like jst doing their job, which is to to present my side of the GMA r'present the interests of all the story. My family owns Stretch Is- itizens of Mason County: Some hand Fruit, a small business em- rt.cent rulings of' the GMHB ap- ploying 40 people in the Allyn pear to be not .just narrow inter- area. Most of our employees live liluiilllllllllluulu usPs492800 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Shelton-Mason County Journal, P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584, P)lJshed weekly by Shelton Publishing Inc. at 227 West Cota Street, Shelton, Wuhlngton Mailing address: P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584 Telephone (360) 426-4412 Second-class postage paid at Shelton. Washington Member of Washington Newspaper Publishers' Association SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $25,00 per year in-county address, $:-5.00 .)er year in state of Washington $45,00 per year out of state Chrles Gay editor and publisher. Newsrom: Carolyn Maddux, managing editor; Steve Patch, sports editor; Jeff Green. general assignment, city govemment, schools', Mary Duncan, ;ocey edttor, county government; Sean Hanlon, police, courts, Port of Shelton, Advertlaing: .%tep'en Gay, advert=stag manager; Janet Daugherty and Dave Piedk, ad sales, Front office: .hjlle Orme. bus=hess manager; Vickt Kamin, circulation; Donna Dooms, bookkeeper; Jane rvlahony, office assistant. Composing room: Diane Riordan, supervisor; Margot Brand and j;-m Kallinen. aste-up; Koleen Wood, typesetter and computer system manager; Karl Freer, com)uter ad layout and computer system manager; Cynthia Moyer, proofreader. Pressroom: Robert Rodriguez. production foreman; Roger Lawson, darkroom: Kelly Rlordan, pressman, luuuuuuuu Page 4- Shelton-Mason County Journal- Thursday, February 18, 1999 close to the plant. With my wife and son I have spent 22 years growing the business, most of that time on its present site. Now I am told that this site has been zoned rural under the GMA and tha the business will not be per- mitted to grow on site. Further- more, under development regula- tions passed in response to the GMA by the previous board of commissioners, it is so risky to leave this site that I can't move the business. I simply can't walk away from the substantial invest- ment I have here; after all, the bank still expects its mortgage payments. We can't grow and we can't go. So we're stuck. Let me draw an analogy to our situation which a homeowner should be able to understand. You own a home located in a rural area, because that's where you want to live. You know already (I hope) that under GMA you will not be able to subdivide your property or build your ailing mother a house unless you have a lot of property (size yet to be de- termined under GMA and MCCP). Say you can live with that. Now suppose that the coun- ty told you that, if you want to sell your house, you have to sell to a family that is no larger than your own, so as not to contribute to suburban sprawl. In addition, if you move out of your house, you have three years to sell or lease it. If you fail to have it occupied within three years, the property reverts to its "natural rural char- acter" and you might as well bull- doze your house. What would this do to the val- ue of your home? Would your banker be willing to lend you money to improve the home? Would you be able to sell it? If laws were passed which put you in this situation, you would not oply complain, you would scream bloody murder! And yet that is exactly the status of our noncon- forming business under GMA and the Mason County development regulations. Are these "reason- able regulations"? I think not. We have tried to address our concerns through proper local channels. The Allyn Subarea Planning Committee, the Mason County Planning Commission and our county commissioners all recommended inclusion of our business site in the Allyn Rural Activity Center. The petitioners challenged the plan and the re- sult is the latest round of rulings by the GMHB. It is the petition- ers, not the county commission- ers, who are holding up the pro- cess. Yes, it gets expensive. And folks, it's your money. To Jay Hupp and the members of the Mason County EDC, I say thank you for continuing to press for fairness and reason in the MCCP. To our county commis- sioners, I say shame on you (or your predecessors) for passing those punitive sections of the de- velopment regulations to which I refer. But congratulations to you for resisting the efforts of the pe- titioners and the GMHB to rain down our throats an interpreta- tion of the GMA which most citi- zens of Mason County do not sup- port. Ron Sagers0n Grapeview A brief treatise on men By DAVE BARRY From time to time I receive let- ters from a certain group of indi- viduals that I will describe, for want of a better term, as "wom- en." I have such a letter here, from a Susie Walker of North Au- gusta, South Carolina, who asks the following question: "Why do men open a drawer and say, 'where is the spatula?' Instead of, you know, looking for it?" This question expresses a com- monly held (by women) negative stereotype about guys of the male gender, which is that they cannot find things around the house, es- pecially things in the kitchen. Many women believe that if you want to hide something from a man, all you have to do is put it in plain sight in the refrigerator, and he will never, ever find it, as evidenced by the fact that a man can open a refrigerator containing 463 pounds of assorted meats, poultry, cold cuts, condiments, vegetables, frozen dinners, snack foods, desserts', etc.,' alid ask, with no irony whatsoever, =Do we have anything to eat?  Now I COULD respond to this stereotype in a snide manner by making generalizations about women. I could ask, for example, how come your average woman prepares for virtually every up- coming event in her life, including dental appointments, by buying new shoes, even if she already owns as many pairs as the entire Riverdance troupe. I could point out that, if there were no women, there would be no such thing as Leonardo DiCaprio. I could ask why a woman would walk up to a perfectly innocent man who is minding his own business watch- ing basketball and demand to know if a certain pair of pants makes her butt look too big, and then, no matter what he answers, get mad at him. I could ask why, according to the best scientific es- timates, 93 percent of the nation's severely limited bathroom-stor- age space is taken up by decades- old, mostly empty tubes labeled "moisturizer." I could point out that, to judge from the covers of countless women's magazines, the two topics most interesting to women are (1) Why men are all disgusting pigs, and (2) How to attract men. Yes, I could raise these issues in response to the question asked by Susie Walker of North Augus- ta, South Carolina, regarding the man who was asking where the spatula was. I could even ask WHY this particular man might be looking for the spatula. Could it be that he needs a spatula to kill a spider, because, while he was innocently watching basket- ball and minding his own busi- ness, a member of another major gender - a gender that refuses to personally kill spiders but wants them all dead - DEMANDED that he kill the spider, which nine times out of 10 turns out,to,be, a male spider that was minding its own business? Do you realize how many men arrive in hospital emergency rooms every year, sometimes still gripping their spatulas, suffering from painful spider-inflicted injuries? I don't have the exact statistics right here, but I bet they are chilling. As I say, I could raise these is- sues and resort to the kind of neg- ativity indulged in by Susie Walk- er of North Augusta, South Caro- lina. But I choose not to. I choose, instead, to address her question seriously, in hopes that, by im- proving the communication be- tween the genders, all human be- ings - both men and women, to- gether - will come to a better un- derstanding of how dense women can be sometimes. I say this because there is an excellent reason why a man would open the spatula drawer and, without looking for the spat- ula, ask where the spatula is: The man does not have TIME to look for the spatula. Why? Because HE IS BUSY THINKING. Men are ALMOST ALWAYS thinking. When you look at a man who ap- pears to be merely scratching himself, rest assured that inside his head, his brain is humming like a high-powered computer, processing millions of pieces of in- formation and producing import- ant insights such as, "This feels good!" We should be grateful that men think so much, because over the years they have thought up countless inventions that have made life better for all people, everywhere. The shot clock in basketball is one example. Anoth- er one is underwear-eating bacte- ria. I found out about this thanks to the many alert readers who sent me an article from New Sci- entist magazine stating that Rus- sian scientists - and you KNOW -, these ,are guy scientists - are try- ing to solve the problem 0f waste disposal aboard.,spacecraft,: by "designing a cocktail of bacteria to digest astronauts' cotton and paper underpants." Is that great, or what? I am picturing a utopian future wherein, when a man's briefs get dirty, they will simply dissolve from his body, thereby freeing him from the chore of dealing with his soiled underwear via the labor-intensive, time-con- suming method he now uses, namely, dropping them on the floor. I'm not saying that guys have solved all the world's problems. I'm just saying that there ARE so- lutions out there, and if, instead of harping endlessly about spatu- las, we allow guys to use their mental talents to look for these solutions, in time, they will find them. Unless they are in the re- frigerator. l00eaders ' 00lournal: Let's talk about education Editor, The Journal. I wanted to take a moment to respond to your editorial, =Drive Your Bus," in which you urge the citizens of the community to en- gage in a civil discussion about education. Speaking for the school district, we second your motion! While I am relatively new to the community, I absolutely agree that Shelten is a wonderful place to grow up and go to school. It is our desire to make it even better. We can not do that without the help of the community. We strongly believe we are stewards of our community's priceless re- source -our public schools. The community should expect nothing short of wise, effective and effi- cient stewardship from us. We join with you in asking for a dia- log in order to specify what that stewardship should look like. We have taken some specific actions to further this goal. In ad- dition to forming the Council for the Improvement of Student Learning, we have established a Citizen's Budget Advisory Com- mittee and are forming a commit- tee to advise us on activities and athletics. Each school has a Site Council which deals with gover- nance of the school and several are looking for parents and other community members. Finally, I am in the process of designing a series of interaction topics which we hope to use to en- gage the community through groups such as service clubs, church groups and other organ- ized groups. All of this is import- ant as we attempt to reflect com- munity values while building upon the tradition of excellence in the Shelton School District. We extend our thanks to The Journal for your advocacy of this civic ac- tivity. William W. Hundley Shelton Schools Superintendent Reflections about neighbor Editor, The Journal: Last week the last of the "old- timers" of Dayton was killed go- ins to get her mail. It's sort of ironic. Several years ago, if you drove through the Dayton cross- roads, you might see a little lady and her two dogs along the road. That was Vivian Buechel. Being the type of lady she was, she couldn't just walk for exercise, she had to be cleaning the road- side. Her neighbors would fear that she or one of the dogs would be hit by a chip truck. Her hear- ing was failing and she would be oblivious of traffic. She kept the crossroads area neat and clean for several years, with no mishaps. I am writing this out of guilt. I was always going to stop in and see her and tell her how nice the roadside looked. Or when her son Joe was killed, I was going to drop her a note to tell how bad :I felt for her. I saw  ambulance in her yard last  year and I was going to call her family so see ff she was all right. None of these things did I find time to do, and now it's too late. I'm sorry, Vivian, that I wasn't a better friend and neighbor. Good-bye, I will miss you. Vera Lorenz Matlock