The Post-Star from Glens Falls, New York • 6

A6 The Post-Star, Glens Falls, N.Y. Thursday, Decornbor 7, 1905 tins iriwiM'ii(f PDK1DK OKJGRBSSMNli IT'S GONNA GET The Post-Star 792-3131 ATTIM'THm YiMl James G. Marshall PublisherEditor Stephen Bennett Nicholas Catmano Managing Editor Advertising Director Sam Gayle Jeff Reynolds Production Manager Business Office Manager Bill Sara Bonnie Roop Circulation Manager Classified Advertising Director Our Opinion Tenth decade won't slow Tbiuumioiid 7 -3 George Will Quality of life plays vital role in city's prosperity Trying to scare up a few thousand dollars from nonprofit organizations that do much to make Glens Falls a nice place to live is a misguided approach to improving the city's fiscal health. Many of these organizations, like the Chapman Historical Museum and the Youth Center, struggle to get by. They depend on donations and volunteer work.

Even people who do get paid to work there don't get much. Other places, like Glens Falls Hospital, bring in a lot of money but also spend a lot on providing the city with a critical service. Some people who work at the hospital are paid well, but surely not more than their life-saving jobs are worth. The museums, churches and human service groups that the city would target through snowplowing fees or other such schemes are exactly the groups that do the most to improve the city's quality of life. It is that hard-to-grasp quality a combination of the things that make a place safe and pleasant and satisfying that will play a vital role in Glens Falls' prosperity.

The professionalism of the city's hospital, the vitality of its churches, the variety and quality of its culture are all part of the community's general attractiveness. Making it more difficult for these groups to thrive will, in the long run, undermine the city's own attempt to do well. The city could save money in many ways. It could stop filling potholes and rebuilding shattered sidewalks. It could stop mowing park lawns and repairing play equipment.

It could shut down the Civic Center and tell the Red Wings to go somewhere else. It could stop doing many things that cost money, and its books would show a short-term profit. But who would want to live here? The city must be 'willing to support what is good about Glens Falls if it wants to be able to keep and to attract the people who will make the community prosper. The city actually gives money to many of these groups such as the Chapman Museum and the Youth Center. Will it hold out cash with one hand and srjatch it away with the other? The city and the community of residents should, rather, open both arms to these groups which already give far more than they take.

Letters Policy re-elected with majorities of 66 and 64 percent. Thurmond, probably America's only remaining politician who has received votes from Civil War veterans (all Confederates, we may assume), in 1971 became the first Southern senator to hire a black staffer, and in 1982 voted to make Martin Luther King's birthday a federal holiday. Thurmond earned his reputation for intransigence he holds the Senate filibuster record, 24 hours and 18 minutes, set in opposition to the mild civil rights bill of 1957 yet has changed as much as his state. And no state has changed more than South Carolina in the last half-century. In and around this city, for example, unemployment is about 2.6 percent, thanks to the new BMW assembly plant and associated industries.

Tax rates and unionization rates are low and business is booming. Not everywhere, of course. This city has not one but two Wal-Marts on its outskirts, so the downtown looks a bit down at the heels, especially on a day so cold and rainy that the annual Christmas parade cannot draw a crowd. But it drew Thurmond, who dearly loves parades. So as fire engines with sirens blaring lead some soggy marchers and floats through nearly deserted streets, Thurmond waves from a car on which the hand-lettered sign identifying him dangles at an odd angle.

Afterward, back at the Beacon, he is asked why he does such things in his tenth decade. He answers ingenuously that "I like bringing pleasure to people and people like parades." Then he begins working the room, table by table, before heading down the road to tomorrow and the "Chitlin' Strut" in the town of Sallcy. George Will is a syndicated columnist. SPARTANBURG, S.C. Let's put it this way: South Carolinians have a habit of going their own way, sometimes with cannon and cavalry, so the Heart Association should save its breath, because Carolinians are going to keep going to the Beacon restaurant, which subscribes to the famous doctrine that if it isn't fried, it isn't food.

Stand downwind of the place and your cholesterol count rises 40 points. Order any delicacy, such as the chili cheeseburger, and say "aplenty," and the delicacy will come buried beneath an Everest of french fries and fried onion rings. So what is America's most spectacular advertisement for healthy living doing here, for the second time today? Well, the first time was for breakfast, before the parade, when he tucked so heartily into the eggs and grits an unusual indulgence that he is now skipping lunch but pressing the flesh of lunchers. That's what Strom Thurmond is doing. That is what Thurmond, who turned 93 this week, has been doing almost nonstop since he first won elective office the year Herbert Hoover first won elective office.

Hoover won the presidency in 1928, Thurmond became a county superintendent. Thurmond, who has served with about one-fifth of the 1,826 people who have been members of the Senate since 1789, today is serving with one, Republican Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who was not born when Thurmond came to the Senate. This month Thurmond, whose age is 45 percent of that of the Constitution, completes his 41st year in the Senate. In February he will become the oldest person ever to serve in Congress. If next year he wins an eighth term, and serves all of it, he will be 100 years old.

An aide to Thurmond says his boss still sets a pace the aide can hardly keep. The aide is 72. One of Thurmond's foremost supporters in this city says Thurmond is fit as a fiddle. (If you are not careful, Thurmond will tell you what he eats fruits and vegetables and other healthy stuff and what he drinks nothing any fun and about his calisthenics and swimming and exercise bike and the weights he lifts.) The supporter says Thurmond is hard to keep up with. The supporter is 82 and has known Thurmond since 1938.

Only three other states (Mississippi with James Eastland and John Stennis, Louisiana with Allen Ellender and Russell Long, and Georgia with Walter George and Richard Russell) have had what South Carolina has two senators with a combined service of 70 years. Fritz Hollings, who will be 74 on New Year's Day, has been a senator 29 years and is still South Carolina's junior senator. A sizable majority of South Carolinians say Thurmond should not be running, but that does not mean a majority will vote against him. The last time he had a close race close by his standards: he got 56 percent was 1978. It was close enough that during the campaign he promised he would not run again.

He was just joshing. Since then he has been GMdeliffies for Clmstaias shopping Vs' Andy Rooney it was crusading. Every item was something the owners who stocked it felt was healthy for the person who bought it and good for the environment from which it was taken. While I admire the intention of the people who pursue these ends, they are often so consumed with saving civilization that it's hard to do business with them. "What are these T-shirts?" I asked a nice young woman hovering near a pile of underwear covered with a red bow.

"Are they something special?" They looked like T-shirts that BVD or Hanes might have made except they were not pure white. They had an oatmeal look about them. "They're made from all-natural, organically grown cotton," she said. "Most cotton is grown with 60 pounds of insecticide per acre. The factory in Bhopal that exploded in India killing all those people was making insecticides for cotton." I'm pleased that someone is concerned about the planet, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to buy an organically grown, oatmeal-colored cotton T-shirt as a Christmas present.

It's always surprising to see who's trying to get in on Christmas giving. There was a gas station near a large shopping center I passed and it had a sign out saying they were selling gift certificates for gas. I don't know how Christ would feel about our celebrating his birthday that way, but I certainly hope no one gives me a Christmas gift certificate for 15 gallons of gas. Andy Rooney is a syndicated columnist. here are a few guidelines I observe when I start out to buy Christmas presents: 1) I don't wait to have things gift-wrapped.

2) I try to buy what I can in the small, independently-owned stores. I'm ashamed of myself though because I like malls and if I haven't finished by a few days before Christmas, I go there. 3) I avoid those fly-by-night entrepreneurs who rent an empty space in a shopping center for the month of December and stock it with junk to get in on the Christmas trade and then fold up and leave town. 4) There are more than 10 people on my Christmas list and I make no effort to be evenhanded with the money I spend on each. If I see a cheap item I think someone will like, I buy it even though I may spend five times as much on a present for someone else for whom I feel comparable affection.

5) If it calls itself a "gift store," I don't buy gifts there. 6) I try to buy what a store specializes in. I don't buy Christmas cards in a drugstore or cough medicine in a grocery store. I do like to shop for Christmas presents in a hardware store. 7) When I go into a store that has a sign in the window that reads, "40 OFF SELECTED ITEMS" I always ask whether it is 40 percent off items I select or 40 percent off items the manager has already selected.

I know the answer, of course. 8) My least favorite mall store is Crabtree and Evelyn. Their stuff is good but every time I go in To be considered for publication, letters to the editor must be legible, brief and signed by the writer. There is a 500-word limit. To avoid a monopoly by one letter writer, only one letter per month per writer is accepted, with certain exceptions.

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Box 2157, Glens Falls, N.Y. 12801. one, I smell like the store for the rest of the day. As I wander through the aisles, trying to tune out the endless recorded Christmas music emanating from loudspeakers in any store, I'm. always impressed, not so much with what I want to buy to give, but with all the things I hope no one buys to give me.

Yesterday, I went in an interesting, non-mall store in an old section of my hometown that has been nicely restored. At first, it wasn't clear to me what they were selling. It had a modest variety of items, all of them with red Christmas bows and tinsel on them or near them, and I couldn't tell what the common theme was. If you go into a luggage store, you know what to expect. If it's a toy store, you see toys.

This was a mystery store but I was intrigued. They had a pile of huge, football-shaped cakes of a special soap for S5 and I took one of those. I looked ov er the down quilts, bottles of shampoo and skin conditioners on their shelves. I realized finally that this store was not so much selling as By Bruce Tinsley MALLARD FILLMORE Doonesbury BY GARRY TRUDEAU tiUtffTieCAS I GAH.VOLON6. I VE-We GOOPTOBe 'ThtPKJT' IP0N7KN0W I hW6X- OH.

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