WGBH Journal; Report On Sun Day Celebration, Environmental Poet, Citizencraft, Louis Lyons

When. Good afternoon I'm welcome to GBH Journal. I'm Bill Keller. Well today is the last week day of the first week of the month of May. And though the weather outside is not quite as Sunny and springlike as the rest of the week is. And. We do have a couple of spring like features on today's show. We'll start with a report on Sunday. That they set aside nationwide to celebrate solar energy. And an interview with a man who calls himself an environmental poet. After that we'll have a feature on citizen craft a series of workshops designed to aid community groups to develop effective

programs for themselves. And to close the show Lions will comment on this week's news. Two days ago Wednesday of this week people in all parts of the country joined in celebrations of the sun and the day was designated Sunday and its purpose was to inform interested citizens on the benefits of solar power. Here in Boston some 50 solar exhibits were on display on the Boston Common. They included solar collectors Soma greenhouses and models of solar homes. There were also some rather unusual uses to which solar energy could be put. Reporter Joan Morgan went down to the common on Wednesday and came back with this report. This informal group of singing playing friends was among the many and varied participants in

Sunday. The solar energy festival held on the Boston Common This past Wednesday May 3rd approximately 50 exhibits were set up on the common including lots of solar hardware a community solar greenhouse inexpensive do it yourself solar devices wind turbines architectural models of passive solar homes and solar cookers. There are also lots of local artists performing their jazz mime dance and drama in honor of the Sun and its energy. Slide shows and tours of solo homes are also available nearby. One of the most colorful and unusual exhibits was the solar chariot a mobile solar home used as an educational device as well as a comfortable and economical home the first motor home that relies on energy for heating its water heating in about 80 percent of its cooking. How would you describe this vehicle for the radio. 1046 to Tony but I dug out of a field. OK the motor home which is passion after gypsy wagon is completely

or completely built out of recycled materials. It will just show you what America Throws Away. I build a house out of it. And how long have you had it. Here it is five years old now it is the 16th hole I built and why did you use their energy to prove the point that it works. One thing the handwriting has been on the web for years about fuel prices and everything else and I've watched him go up. Sure the public out here is watching. Well in motorhomes you take it I won't mention any names but some of those cracker boxes running down the highway. I know people are spending up to $700 a month trying to heat the bloody darn things. This one here has all 8 inches of insulation and up your ass a six and a ceiling is totally solar heated. Because part of the year we had a United States and Canada is where it's been since May

1976 with a comfortable. Extremely. We got everything that you would have a normal floorspace in Ghana two way radio communications equipment running water we're going to shower toilet no match. It's completely self-contained. I mean solar does work. The crowd looking and listening to exhibits and performers had mixed reactions to solar energy and its impact on their lives. One Northeastern University student wants the federal government to give more financial support to solar energy experimentation. A businessman said people may be ready for minor conversions like a new shower head but the actual economics of solar energy still has a long way to go. One woman said solar energy was indeed a possibility and in fact she saw solar heat collectors being used in Israel over 10 years ago. And one high school student admitted she didn't know anything about solar energy. But she said Sunday has motivated her to learn more about

it. For GBH this is Joan Morgan. We turn now to a very different use of the environment. Mark Mendel is one of many poets who have experienced the feeling that their work was being read by almost no one. Even 20 points were published Mark Felt of the literary magazines read by very few.

So what he did to change that situation to turn to the environment. Is himself an environmental ploy. And he uses all sorts of outdoor scenery on which to write his points. Including such things as barns and balloons. And clouds. Reporter video guy seems to have a way of finding interesting people doing unusual things. She asked Mike might know just why he started writing environmental poetry. After several years of. Writing poetry and having it published one way or the other. I. Began to experiment with the painting my poems around on buildings barns gas stations things like that on a fairly large scale something like a 16 inch alphabet. One thing led to another and I'm most of my work no. I present in that form environmental. It grew out of that. The difficulties I think that writers have. And this country

anyway. Getting published. Having your work published at after so. Tremendous effort and a long wait and then finding that the magazines that publish poetry aren't read by very many people anyway. A poem on the side of a barn gets read by people going down the road. People in school buses. Truck drivers cows anybody. I find it satisfying I find that when I've written a poem and presented it that way I'm done with it. It's as if it were published I can go on to the next the next bit of work. Do you write subject matter that relates to the place where you're putting your power. Yes I do I do although I. I don't want to write the occasional poetry which is

you know for the particular environment specifically I guess I have it at times but it's more a case of the poem having a dialogue with the environment with the reader and with the environment. Rather than being about the environment I think. To be able to present the poems this way frees the writer liberates the writer from having to set the stage to to write about things. If you put a poem on a barn you don't have to say. Once upon a time there was this barn. It's there you know the barn. Does that part of the work for you the environment sets its own stage and so in a way it frees a writer to go on deeper into the core of the thing. When the sense of it when I say dialogue I mean that there is that nature. Has some input into the way the poem is perceived. In the same way that the

nature of the reader always has a lot to do with the way he or she reads a poem. Where else would you put your poetry beside the building. I've been working with mirrors and as a transmitters for poems and I had a project for last summer that we did in Germany which involved a poem a long poem on a series of seven mirrors which were suspended above a water prism. Now for most of the day when the reader read the poem. They face of the reader in the surrounding environment was brought into the poem because it was on the mirror. In other words the reader saw her own face as she read the poem. But at the at the time of day when the sun was perpendicular to the mirrors then they became stencils. And what you had was the sun actually writing or casting the

poem on the water which was about four feet below. So there you actually had. The poem was actually written on the water by the sun. I'm very interested in the possibilities for solar poetry. This is this project was it was a very low energy low technology was basically just shadows. Which allowed me to write write the words. I'm also working with a laser No. And maybe you know by this summer we'll be able to write poems and briefly you know one on steam clouds or artificial clouds. The laser again offers that the poet a challenge and that is syntactically the words I don't have to go from right to left or from left to right. They can now dissolve into one

another they can mutate It's like animation. The words can literally spin like gyroscopes each word can spin like a gyroscope So the possibilities this presents the point with are wonderful. As the final project message is Bicentennial Commission four state agencies have coordinated their efforts to create citizen craft a traveling learning lab which will visit 42 cities and towns across the state during the next few months. The purpose is to provide workshops for nonprofit and community groups on how to raise money

publicize their activities and develop effective programs all intended to help citizens effect change in their neighborhoods. STATE SENATOR TED Adkins is cochairman of the Massachusetts Bicentennial Commission. He spoke recently about this and craft with reporter Erica funking. I know from having studied pottery that Kraft is originally a German word meaning power or strength. I'm saying the citizen involvement training project is called Citizen craft. I wondered if the idea of power is somehow at the root of the conception of the project. And could you talk a little bit about the context in which the idea for the project developed the training programs served to enable people who are active with community groups or nonprofit groups everything from Laker Girl Scouts to a parent's organization. And in the Boise PD chapter and give them the tools to really do the

kinds of programs and serve the community needs which exist and have power over events and over their own lives and over the direction of things in their own communities. How did the idea for for the project come about. The project is something that arises out of the mass bicentennial. What happened during the minister's bicentennial was the state funded a number of community groups to do different kinds of things and a matching fund basis and one of the things we discovered in that process was that many of these groups did not know how to do proper budgeting. Many of them had some organizational weaknesses they didn't know how to do public relations they didn't know. How to do a grant writing and as a result they want doing the kinds of jobs that they want to do. So we felt that we could set up a series of workshops

around the state 42 of them in different locations in the state where we would give people that kind of nuts and bolts information and also a hands on experience with certain kinds of problem solving. How do you make your organization work. How do you do goal setting. How do you identify and use community resources. How do you identify community needs. How do you evaluate your programs and those are some of the things that that we go through. What do you think this is a particularly important effort. Well I think I think one of the things that's happened is that there was a trend in the 60s towards large government programs and what people realized was that. The most effective kind of unit for getting something done and for bringing about change was a group of citizens who work together voluntarily for certain common goals and that sometimes government could be helpful in assisting them by making grant

monies available for different things but that that was the key to Community Change neighborhood change and social change. And so we felt that it was important and that this was a kind of a leverage thing to give people the tools to have affective citizen groups. You know one of the things that's interesting about this country goes back way way back historically. You look at for instance the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville and his great series in America in the middle of the 19th century and he talks on recurring themes in those essays is the concept of the strength the vitality the variety and just plain the number of citizen associations citizen groups would be a neighborhood group or a political action group or a social group or whatever just numerous ones in this country more so really than any other society in the

world. Look at this week's series commentator. For the third time in a fortnight women have won a court decision against discrimination. The ruling for pregnancy benefits yesterday was the second time this week that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has taken a position against that of the United States Supreme Court and earlier in the week high state court ruled for the second time that absolute veteran's preference is constitutional discrimination. When they ruled that two years ago the Federal High Court sent back the decision questioning whether veterans preference was discrimination against women. How a state court ruled again

yesterday that it is it's clear intent to benefit veterans by subordinating employment opportunities of women in the court's words. The United States Supreme Court itself has a ruling that women may not be charged more than men in contributory pension plans regardless of the high average longevity of women. And yesterday's decision the Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld the state commission on discrimination to rule that pregnancy related disability must be covered in employer's disability programs. That offends often by the master's electric company for excluding pregnancy disability was reliance on the United States Supreme Court decision two years ago. The company argues that the Massachusetts court could not take a position different from the federal court but the state court ruled that Massachusetts has the right to interpret its own law. Three women employees had brought the case after being denied a disability payment for absence due to pregnancy too for a

miscarriage that required hospitalization. The Discrimination Commissioner Jane Edmonds calls the state ruling a major step forward for working women. You know upholding the subpoena of Senator James Kelly by legislative investigating committee the stuff except Barry a court rejected Kelly's claim that a subpoena cannot be issued against a legislator all while the legislature is sitting this dispels the notion many have long believed to be the case. The committee want to question Kelly on his connection with the MBM money and now a state Supreme Court has ruled that it's hearing of the charges against Judge Robert bone and will be public. President Carter's scolding of lawyers yesterday for failing to serve justice echoes the criticisms of the medical profession by recent Democratic presidents for opposition to government health programs. It suggests a populist adage that all professions are a conspiracy against the layman. Indeed the president spoke

of his own Georgia background where he saw as a boy he said that the system did not provide simple justice for a majority of citizens in my own region. Lawyers are great influence led the fight against civil rights and economic justice he told the Los Angeles bar association. They were paid lavish fees by the states. They knew all the men who was in for too long they kept the promises of the Constitution from coming true. He laid it on knowing too many of the struggles for human justice. Much of the organized bias sat on the sidelines or actually opposed these efforts. Of course one was his attorney general Mr. Bell. He said We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on earth. Excessive litigation and legal featherbedding are encouraged. Simple divorce has become major legal confrontations complete title searches on the same property are unnecessarily repeated on each sale. The delay is the law and its costs have put legal hell beyond the reach of most. The president said

prompt rebuttal came from the president the American Bar Association who said the basic complaint of the president with a system that can only be corrected through his leadership. Lawyers are still smarting under the complaint of Chief Justice Berger but not more than half of them are competent to handle a court case. Political skeptics say that the president needed a popular if not a populist cause that he was losing control of Middle East policy was getting nowhere with an energy policy finds no handle to inflation. The polls have turned negative and most strongly in the West. A political indictment signed by 33 of the 38 Senate Republicans charges him with incoherent inconsistency and ineptitude in foreign policy. Sound as a spiral Agnew speech writer was still on the job and with compromising America's ability to defend itself. The president three days in the West gave an opportunity to talk directly to the people of the West about the priorities of the administration. His press secretary said.

The times were not propitious for a triumphant tour. Israel's prime minister begun was touring the country calling on American Jews to unite in support of his policy which is not Carter's. The Congress was resisting Carter's plan to package planes for Israel with planes for Saudi Arabia. Inflation was rising in the face of his late moves against it. Wholesale prices rose more last month and for three and a half years the government reported up one point three percent in April. There's a 15 percent annual rate and this nods in foods and the bill to raise wheat and cotton prices price is weighing on the president's desk. A reduction from the one he threatened to veto but still the prospect of further rise the Aluminum Company of America announced yesterday a 3.4 percent rise in its prices which include beer cans. Robert Strauss the glib negotiator Carter made moderator of administration efforts against inflation said yesterday the score so far

is inflation 100 Straus nothing the administration economists have raised their sights to see 7 percent as the inflation prospects for this year instead of their earlier hope to keep down to 6 percent. Straus want against expecting a quick quick fix on inflation. He appealed for a 12 month trial before judging his effort. The president had a session with Japan's Prime Minister Fukuda before going west. The Japanese bringing promises of help and reducing the huge American deficit in trade by cutting down Japanese export of steel autos and television sets and encouraging imports from here. But like the German chancellor Fukuda expressed concern with American inflation. Does the administration do more about it. Our new chairman of the Federal Reserve William Miller has been tightening the money supply pushing up interest rates are reading banks to eight and a quarter percent for their best short term rate. But the government announced today unemployment

has dropped to an even 6 percent the lowest in three years. The president sent two emissaries to Asia Vice President Mondale made his first stop in the Philippines where he reportedly pressed President Marcos to pay more respect to human rights as the price of relations with the United States. Brzezinski has been dispatched to China but apparently only for the formality of a periodic touching of bases. No change in policy before November is suggested. Nothing is said by the administration of the arguments of Senator Kennedy and Ambassador Woodcock to shift the primary relationship from Taiwan to China. A visit of Brezhnev to West Germany got more press attention here today. The Soviet leader is there for four days of talks on disarmament which he said he favored. He particularly in the denounced deployment of a neutron weapons in Europe the week has brought reports of American acceptance of a Russian compromise proposal of limitations on long range missiles and bombers.

But the White House said yesterday that tough bargaining remained before any agreement. The administration is sensitive to Republican criticism in Congress of what the Republicans call unilateral concessions on the deployment of weapons systems. The administration now really want a favorable committee report in the house for a repeal of the ban on turkey that was applied by the Congress after Turkish aggression in Cyprus. This brings the issue to the House floor. The UPI reports the satiny own a communique of Italy's Red Brigades that they had killed moral seems accepted as authentic and Italy. Rhodesia is biracial executives patched up the so-called whole affair with announcement of an official inquiry into the firing of the black coal minister of justice for his affirmative action statement. The Rhodesian executive council diverted attention from this threat to the translation with an

offer of amnesty to end the guerrilla war. But the guerrilla leader in coma rejected it. In South Africa the government accepted the United Nations plan for elections in South West Africa now Namibia but the opposing South West Africa Peoples Organization swappable has stalled on it. Diplomacy was complicated when the South African a South African military force struck yesterday in the Angola to destroy what they called a base of Swat called guerrilla raids. And Golda described the attack as on a refugee camp. President Carter speaking to the press in Portland Oregon this morning said he has expressed a United States official consent to the South African government. And I asked for an explanation. The environmentalist who created Earth Day in 1070 staged a national observance of Sunday on Wednesday that promoted solar energy over nuclear power. The definition of solar energy included power of windmills and coal. But their claims for full reliance on

solar energy were some years away. Friday the 5th of May 1978 that's Journal original magazine heard Monday through Friday that very producer and editor for The Journal is not sure how it's today's engineer Bill because they can I guess have a find funny for this Friday.