News-Journal from Mansfield, Ohio • 5

Monday, March 28, 1 988 Newi Journal, Mansfield, O. Opinionanalysis 5-a Do we really need more revolving restaurants? keep turning around in circles as you eat? You'll get the physical sensation you are seeking, and spare the rest of us some very bad mealtime experiences. (c) 19M Ttw Chicago Tribune wrote the letter-to-the-editor asking for more revolving restaurants. Nice letter, Pat but if this is really important to you, why don't you just hold your plate in your hand while standing in your own living room and ers' table is not where it was a few minutes before. Waiters and waitresses who work in revolving restaurants deserve double tips.

How did we get onto this? Oh. Right. Pat Narike, the person who Greene fffi TWIN TOfAfF FILM DEVELOPING! 12 EXP. BOLL SO QQ 24 PRINTS 15 EXP. DISC A qq 30 PRINTS 24 EXP.

ROLL QQ PRINTS VU.S 36 EXP. ROLL QQ 72 PRINTS 1 COLO fOCtWOMLYLIFT roKOCVfiora emu" Colon One of the things I always make a point of doing when I'm traveling is to read the local letters-to-the-editor in the towns I pass through. It gives you a pretty good idea of what's on people's minds. So I was in a prosperous Midwestern city with a population somewhere between medium and large and I noticed a letter-to-the-editor from a person who apparently had grown up in that city and had moved to a smaller town. The letter-writer's name was Pat Narike, who recently had visited the bigger city.

This is what Narike had to say: "With the changing skyline, I have mixed emotions about the downtown area from what I remember from over 23 years ago. One thing I have noticed is that not one of the tall buildings downtown have revolving restaurants at the top! When I lived in Los Angeles, I dined at every one they have, and what a treat it was to dine while looking at the lovely views during the dark evening hours. C'mon how about a revolving restaurant on top of one of the skyscrapers coming up?" This Narike did not seem to be kidding. I couldn't believe the letter. As I say, reading letters-to-the-editor is a good way to keep up with national trends but I refuse to believe that there is a groundswell of support around America for rooftop revolving restaurants.

Pat Narike must be a freak case. Have you ever dined in a revolving restaurant? Granted, with world hunger, rampant crime and the possibility of nuclear warfare, the presence of revolving restaurants is hardly the most pressing issue to face our country. But the introduction of the revolving restaurant is one of the bothered. But I know for a fact that there are many of us who don't want to be whirled around while we're eating no matter what the rate of speed of the whirling. I have this memory of being on the road covering a story.

The hotel, as I recall, had a restaurant on the top floor, and I went there for dinner. Midway through my meal I noticed Carl Stern the legal affairs correspondent for NBC News, who must have been there to cover the same story making his way out of the restaurant, his face pale and beads of perspiration on his forehead. I knew what had happened: The revolving restaurant had got to him, too. (In case I'm wrong about this, Mr. Stern is welcome to reply.

Maybe he just ate a bad piece of perch.) The interesting thing is that revolving restaurants are almost invariably constructed in places where there is absolutely no need for a revolving restaurant. I am on record as being fond of Detroit but there is a revolving restaurant atop the Renaissance Center, and I have to say that I could get through a meal or a round of drinks just fine without taking in the view of Detroit at night. The highlight is when your table passes a certain point, and you can say, "Look, there's Windsor!" as you gaze across the water at Canada. Such a thrill is not worth the motion sickness. And if you think diners hate revolving restaurants, you should talk to the waiters and waitresses.

In many revolving restaurants, the core of the structure does not move just the outer ring where most of the tables are. So the waiter goes to the kitchen in the core to pick up the customers' order only to find that the custom C.filfiATF most annoying things all right, one of the most annoying minor things that has happened to American life during this century. I'm no expert on architecture, but it seems to me that construction of revolving restaurants peaked between the mid-'60s and the mid-' 70s. The first time I ate in one, I did not know in advance that the restaurant revolved. So I thought that I had a mild headache and was undergoing a dizzy spell, until my dinner companion pointed out to me how interesting it was that the restaurant revolved.

Like a fool, I tried to finish the meal. I became more and more disoriented. By the time I staggered out of the restaurant, I knew I had to speak with the manager about it. "No one gets dizzy up here," he insisted. "The restaurant revolves so slowly that you hardly notice it.

And during the course of your meal, you get to have a panoramic view of the entire city." In the years since, I have learned to expect that response from managers of revolving restaurants. They can't be expected to say, "Yeah, you're right eating in our restaurant is a nauseating experience." So they give you the company line: The restaurant turns at such a gradual speed that it can't possibly affect you. I'm sure there are, indeed, some people who can sit through a meal in a revolving restaurant and not be mnrupjicTF (Q I rm i mm REGULAR-9 02. TUBE; GEL-12 02. TUBE OH TARTAR CONTROL 02.

TUBE crux! GILLETTE mM ATRA, mTM ATRA PI IK Un ItlAL II CARTRIDGES VM PACKAGE OF 5 Guest spot. Why teach women's literature? ADVIL IBUPROFEN By Barbara McGovern OSU-Mansfield TABLETS OR CAPLETS PACKAGE OF 24 Why teach a course in women's literature? That's a question I was asked recently when I suggested to the seven other members of the English department at OSU-Mansfield (who, with the exception of a part-time lecturer, are all men), that I would like to offer such a course. Fortunately, because my colleagues are an enlightened and congenial bunch, the question was asked good-naturedly, accompanied by outrageous questions and humorously absurd side remarks: "Why not a course in men's literature?" "Are there any women writers?" "I didn't know women could write." 1 rwrrrim i MANUT iUTTf ICGI isrM Jim i i wivu SUDAFED TABLETS Sir no OF 24 OR That we could all have a good laugh about the matter, shows, I think, how far we have come in recent years to accept the place of women's literature courses in the curriculum. Those of us associated with The Ohio State University have particular PACKAGE 12 HOUn CAPSULES PACKAGE OF 10 B. VI cause for pride in such advance raw wm ments.

OSU's Center for Women's Studies in Columbus was one of the earliest (and remains one of the best) such RITE AID DISPOSABLE DIAPERS IVORY SHAMPOO OR CONDITIONER 11 to? lurt sonal behavior attacked as "loose." Moreover, for centuries the literary canon, that body of works recognized or "canonized" as the essential part of our literary tradition, has been chosen by male literary historians and editors, analyzed by male critics, and taught by male professors. The literary history of the Western world has, in fact, almost completely excluded one half of the human race. To understand how deeply this exclusion of women writers affects us all, consider, for a moment, what your favorite books were when you were growing up. Try making a list, as I did, of the half dozen novels you were most fond of as an adolescent or young teenager, and it is highly unlikely that you will have more than one, if even that, that was written by a woman or had females as central characters. My own list contains Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," which I think I read at the age of 10 or 11.

1 read a lot of poetry, but my favorite female poet, Emily Dickinson, was always introduced by teachers and textbook editors as "poor Emily, the spinster recluse," and her inclination to be a poet, I was given to understand, was but another symptom of her "odd-ness." Given such few female authors and, as a result, such few heroines and female experiences to identify with in literature, wasn't the message clear? Weren't we subtly taught, whether male or female, that all the really exciting, important, and worthwhile things in the world were said and done by men? Literature, after all, has always been an essential means of helping us define our own identities, both as individuals and as members of a group, whether it be a racial, cultural or gender group. Feminist concerns now, however, go beyond simply mainstreaming women's writings into the traditional literary canon. Acknowledging the political reality that women's lives historically have been lived quite differently from men's lives, many feminist critics are focusing on literary interpretation. Women's literature is being analyzed for such things as recurrent themes and subject matter, patterns of imagery and symbolism, stylistic techniques, and use and subversion of traditional literary forms, all as reflective of female experience and female perspective. In addition to introducing us to a rich body of literature by women, feminist theory is also helping us to be better readers.

The purpose of a women's literature course, then, is not to teach us to read and analyze literature exclusively as women, any more than we should be reading and analyzing exclusively as men. Instead, it should help us learn to read as sensitive human beings whose perspectives incorporate both masculine and feminine views. I take comfort in the fact that my two daughters are growing up with a familiarity with women's literature that I did not have, and that my two sons are as well. And I hope that when I walk into my classroom in a few days to teach that women's literature course, I will see both male and female faces. Women's literature is, after all, for everyone.

Dr. Barbara McGovern is an assistant professor of English at OSU-Mansfield. This column is one in a series written by OSU-Mansfield faculty in celebration of National Women's History Month. WITH ELASTIC LEG SMALL-PACKAGE OF St, MEDIUM-PACKAGE OF 48 OR LARGE-PACKAGE OF 32 15 OZ. SIZE YOUR CHOICE HP SAVINGS EVERYDAY ON COCA-COLA PRODUCTS AT RITE AID Wi'iWlUM mi a I VI 12 PACK 12 OZ.

CANS academic centers in this coun- MCGOVERN try, its English department is staffed with several first-rate feminist scholars, and for years it has published two good feminist journals. And, I should add, one of those teasing males on the Mansfield faculty was for several years a sponsor of the campus Women's Organization and regularly includes a good representation of women writers in his courses. Yet I am not certain that even a decade ago my colleagues would have been quite so free with their joking, nor I with my laughter. When feminist scholars began introducing women's literature courses into the curricula of colleges and universities across the country, the question "Why teach a women's literature course?" was often asked in earnest. Feminist criticism, which was an outgrowth of the feminist movement of the 1960s, began with recognition of the simple fact that women have been excluded from literature.

Historically women have been denied the education, economic independence, and social status necessary for developing their minds. The words of the English poet Anne Finch, Countless of Winchil-sea, commenting 300 years ago on the problems facing women who dared to write, still have for many a sadly contemporary ring: They tell us we mistake our sex and way; Good breeding, fashion, dancing, dressing, play Are the accomplishments we should desire; To write, or read, or think, or to inquire Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time, And interrupt the Conquests of our prime; Whilst the dull manage of a servile house Is held by some, our outmost art, and use. Those few women who were able to overcome these obstacles and develop their talent, frequently found themselves denied the possibility of publication and had their writings belittled or satirized and their per it mmm Si $299 May Not 6 Avoiloble At AM 5tor mm HERR'S CHEESE BALLS 7-oz. Bog 99 MANAGEMENT OPPORTUNITIES Openings available for Managers, Asst. Managers and Trainees.

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