Israel’s cabinet is meeting behind closed doors to discuss a crackdown on terrorists. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said he’ll ask for special powers to crack on Hamas, the Islamic Fundamentalist group linked to the three deadly attacks in Israel in the last two weeks. The most recent attack was yesterday when a suicide bomber blew up a rush hour bus in Tel-Aviv, killing 20 people.
Commercial gasoline is expected back on the market in Haiti today, selling at a government-set price of three dollars-seventy-five cents a gallon, ending the prices of the black market. The gas arrived on a tanker yesterday and was the first commercial shipment to arrive in Haiti since the United Nations embargo was lifted last week.
A Food and Drug Administration panel is studying the use of lasers to perform operations that improve vision. The procedure is already used in 40 other countries and supporters say it is safer and more precise than the vision-improvement operations currently used in the United States.
Some areas of southeast Morra County are still threatened by rising floodwaters this morning. Governor Ansel Harding says it’s too early to estimate the damage caused by four days of rain. The floods are blamed for 10 deaths and 5 people are missing.
A high of 83 with scattered thunderstorms today; tonight humid with more showers and lows in the mid-60s. Currently it’s 75 degrees.
On Monday mornings, immediately following my 7 o’clock newscast, I scurried over to the University Health & Fitness Center for my first class of the day (or week, as it often was) at 8 o’clock. It was a brisk, five-or-six minute walk from the area between the Communication Building and Bowman Hall to the building at the northeast edge of campus. Its real name was the University Public Health Building and it appeared to be another of the university’s creative construction projects. Instead of razing an old National Guard armory that remained on campus, the school gutted it and left the exterior shell for the framework for gymnasiums and an elevated indoor track. A contemporary classroom structure was built around the armory that seamlessly fused the two together. All this had gone on around the same time the Communication Building was built (early-to-mid 1980s, I assume); when completed, the new building housed the School of Public Health and Department of Kinesiology, as well as weight rooms, gymnasiums, locker rooms, and other areas for physical activity.
There was also a swimming pool behind the PHB that students could use for class, though it was often referred to as the Schlera Hall pool, named for a nearby residence hall. The Schlera Hall pool was one of three pools on campus that collectively ranked slightly higher than “cess.” Students could use the pools, as they often did in summery months, but the cement-lined holes had received little maintenance over the years and it didn’t take much to see the cracks and chemical damage.
Monday and Wednesday mornings my first class was Fitness for Living, a Kinesiology course that most students tried to get over with during their freshman year. While I had to be there by 8 o’clock, most days my roommate, Morty, had already been to the PHB and back before I was out of bed. Morty had taken the Fitness course the previous semester but still visited the PHB daily around 5 o’clock to use the weight rooms or jog the indoor track. It was during this workout that he said he listened to campus radio station. I believed him at first until it dawned on me we didn’t sign-on until 6 A.M. So one morning in October I went over with him. I really wanted to hear how the station sounded but I spent my time jogging the track and doing a light circuit of weights. Yes, around 6 o’clock the student attendant on duty tuned the radio dial to the classic rock sounds of our morning shows. I figured everyone welcomed the change from the twangy country music that had been blaring since we arrived (on a station that called itself the Ol’ Boot, of all things...).
I anticipated the Kinesiology course to be no different from what I remembered my high school health class to be like. Sure – this was college and there would be more expected of us and so on. However, while I was more or less right on the money with how the course turned out, my only real memory of Fitness for Living stems from what happened the first three times the class met.
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When Something Stands for Nothing
(Trent Carr/Hugh Dillon/Gibson, Mark)
The Headstones
From the album Picture of Health
1993