THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 14, 1996 TAG: 9610120033
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: 97 lines
Poor Christopher Columbus.
Not only is the explorer the victim of revisionist history which has his men spreading European diseases to the natives of the New World, but Columbus' holiday is being ignored by large segments of society.
Once the hero of every schoolchild in America, Columbus is now honored mostly by federal workers who get the day off.
Sure, stores still stage Columbus Day sales, but Columbus Day parades and re-enactments are long gone from the landscape.
And for most children, Columbus Day is school as usual. Retirement living
If Virginia Beach doesn't want what developer Dickie Foster has to offer, it looks like the Eastern Shore does.
Foster faces a tough fight later this year when the Virginia Beach City Council considers his plans for ``Coastal Greens'' - a retirement village with a championship golf course that he'd like to build in the rural southern part of the city.
Almost everyone agrees that the community is just what Virginia Beach needs - but some oppose the development because of where it will go - below the Beach's so-called ``Green Line.''
A first-class retirement village is just what Cape Charles needs, too, and citizens there have waited years while a Texas developer toyed with the idea of building one on 2,000 acres. Now Foster's Baymark Construction Corp. has an agreement to buy the land.
Growing cities in the Sun Belt long ago began to covet senior citizens. They are ``givers'' not ``takers'' who infuse the local economy with money while requiring very few city services.
Virginia Beach needs more retirement housing and wants more golf courses. It will be interesting to see which community - Cape Charles or Virginia Beach - allows Foster to break ground first. No more counting
In another sign of the times, the U.S. Park Police in Washington are getting out of the crowd-counting business to avoid being sued.
The police were threatened with a lawsuit last year over the crowd estimate for the Million Man March. The police estimate of 400,000 was low because of a ``white supremacist'' mind-set, said Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The police shouldn't let a lawsuit or two get them down. They should continue counting crowds and announce after every demonstration, ``Attendance was 50 billion.''
That way everyone would be happy and no one would get sued. 2,010 miles of trees
Under pressure from political rivals and neighboring governors, Gov. George F. Allen agreed last week to a goal of planting 2,010 miles of shoreline trees by the year 2010 to buffer the Chesapeake Bay from pollution.
Initially reluctant to back a specific goal, Allen was persuaded by leaders from Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia and the federal Environmental Protection Agency that the goal can be met by voluntary means, partly through tax credits.
Critics of Allen's environmental policies, especially Democrats, would have had a field day if Allen had opposed a voluntary goal that would be good for the Bay. Bad habit
In a British study of the health effects of smoking, physicians who were also smokers were followed for four decades. The habit had lethal consequences for 50 percent of them. Reverse the charges
According to FCC chairman Reed Hundt, 5 percent of the U.S. trade deficit or about $5 billion is due to Americans phoning other countries at a greater rate than foreigners call the United States. Each time an American calls overseas, the phone company of Ghana or Sri Lanka or Luxembourg collects about half the cost of the call. Call it the high cost of being well-wired. Right quote, wrong author
A lesson editorial writers learn early, but regularly forget, is never quote from Scripture. There are too many alert readers who will catch any error.
A recent editorial on supply-side economics contained a quote attributed to Ecclesiastes, ``Be not made a beggar by banqueting on borrowing.''
When a perplexed reader wrote to ask where in Ecclesiastes that quote could be discovered, an error was discovered. Turns out the quote doesn't come from Ecclesiastes XVIII:33. Rather the quote is attributed to Ecclesiasticus XVIII:33.
Who's that? From The New Columbia Encyclopedia, here's the answer. Ecclesiasticus is ``a biblical book included in the Old Testament of the Western canon and the Septuagint, but not included in the Hebrew Bible and placed in the Apocrypha in the Authorized Version. It is called also the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach. A prologue states that the book was composed in Hebrew by one Jesus, son of Sirach, and translated into Greek by his grandson. The date of the translation may be 132-131 B.C.. . . .The excellence of wisdom is the theme of Ecclesiasticus. The bulk of the book is given over to instructive apothegms. . . ''
It's still a pretty good apothegm, just not by the apothegmist to whom we attributed it. by CNB