Owner of
Tice's may
not reopen
after fire
The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, August 13, 1980-Page 7
By JOYCE FRIEDEN building - the loss was "superficial, just the building's con-
Bill Tice, owner of Tice's grocery store which was gutted tents," he said.
by a fire last Friday night, said yesterday he is not sure However, there was evidence of smoke damage to. the
whether he will rebuild the business. building's interior as Tice and other employees waited amid
"I just don't know at this point (whether I'll start over)," the shop's charred remains for liquor inspectors to destroy
he said. "It depends on many things." any liquor bottles which had survived the fire.
TIce estimated his monetary losses at $25,000-$30,000. He Tice explained that the owner of the building was insured
said he does not carry insurance because "the cost of in- and would be able to pay for restoring the walls and doors to
suring a liquor store is quite prohibitive." their original condition.
ACCORDING TO Ann Arbor Fire Department Inspector Tice, who was away on vacation when the blaze broke out,
Ben Zahn, the fire was caused by some "waste material" ina appeared calm about the fire and its effects. "It's just one of
wastebasket underneath the front counter of the store. "The those things that happens," he said. "No one was injured,
fire started in the wastebasket and just spread right on up to I'm thankful for that. The money is not important to me -
the counter," he explained. it's just a means of putting the kids through college. You have
Zahn added that there was no structural damage to the to set your priorities."
DISTANT MICROBES RICH, COMPLEX:
Ancient microscopic life found
LOS- ANGELES (AP) - An inter- med from a swirling cloud of dust and UCLA paleobiologist J. William Schopf,
national search into the distant past gas in space. who conceived the 15-month program
revealed a surprisingly rich and com- AND SCIENTISTS SAID those oldest based at UCLA, said Monday.
plex world of microscopic life that ruled known fossils - chains of cells that look "There have been some major
Earth billions of years ago, researchers like tiny strings of beads - were so discoveries that made a tremendous
say. unexpectedly complex that the first, impact in the field. We found that things
They said the project has proven the far-simpler living thing must have ap- were a lot more complex a lot earlier
existence of fossilized microbes that peared many millions of years earlier. than any of us had suspected," he said
lived 3.5 billion years ago - scarcely a "I think the project resulted in a good Monday as the program wound up with
billion years after the Earth was for- deal more than we had expected, " a two-day symposium. The $300,000
Vietnam vets lobby at convention
Veteran Jim O'Leary said the
(Continued from Page 1? mittees. veterans have received support from a
deformed. He was thinking of killing VETERAN/LOBBYIST Andrew number of delegates and politicians.
himself after that." Hooks said the veterans are at the con- The veteran's lobby group doss not
There is currently a bill in the U.S. vention this week because "we want plan to initiate any demonstrations.
House which would require the more precise language written into the "That's not a realistic way of doing it,"
Veterans Administration to list and platform in regard to Vietnam veteran said Kennedy. "We're going to go
treat disabilities from Agent Orange concerns." He said the platform's through the system. We want to en-
exposure as a "service-connected language is ambiguous and does not courage veterans and their families to
disease," entitling exposure victims to spell out exactly when and how the write their congressmen and push for
extensive medical benefits. The bill is government is going to help veterans write throgeshe andsus
b N i,,, h wt t r. changes through the legislature."
veing revieweu y seveahos cm-
aeai witn their proes.-
Percy'sfaulty novd
(Continued from Page 6)
this time she had made a mistake. She
had thought (and her mother had expec-
ted) that she must do something ex-
traordinary, be somebody extraor-
dinary. Whereas the trick lay in leading
the most ordinary life imaginable."
And so she embarks on the most prac-
tical of tasks: Repairing the
greenhouse, feeding the dog, hoisting
the. stove, nursing Barrett back to
health.
BARRETT CLEARLY comes out of a
different mold, given over as he is to
grandiose musings. The man of ideas
disillusioned with ordinary life meets
the strange talking young woman, to
whom questions of the meaning of life
take a back seat to more pressing
everyday concerns.
From the beginning, Will understan-
ds Allie's odd, rhyme-laden speech
when no one else can. They fall in love
rapidly, each one forsaking their
respective extreme ways of living.
Barrett, the widowed millionaire
lawyer, becomes a law clerk,
bequeathing much of his fortune to the
building of low-cost log cabins for the
elderly and the young. Allie sees life
has and should have its extraordinary
moments. God, Barrett comes to un-
derstand, may not need to manifest
Himself overtly: "His heart leapt with
a secret joy. Is Allie a gift and therefore
the sign of the giver? Could it possible
be that the Lord is here masquerading
behind this simple silly holy face? Am I
crazy to want both, her and Him? No,
not want, must have. And will have."
With this the book ends, happily, with a
sort of second coming.
This is an all too reductive synopsis of
the novel. But my omissions do not ex-
cuse Percy's faults. Will Barrett comes
across as a man clearly obsessed with
the "big questions," the. meaning of
life, the existence of God. A thin line
separates the chronicling of an ob-
session and dull, repetitive prose. Per-
cy's imagination appears limited; he
inexcusably repeats without variation.
HIS RELIANCE on cliche, too, is
disheartening: "Not once had he been
present for his life. So his life had
passed likea dream. How can it happen
that one day you are young, you marry,
and then another day you come to your-
self and your life has passed like a
dream? They passed in the halls like
ghosts."
Another danger that can beset a
writer of "ideas" is a disproportionate
emphasis on quasi-philosophical
discourse rather than recounting per-
sons' experiences as examples of
philosophical problems. Percy's failure
on this count is difficult to understand,
for his mastery of dialogue throughout
the novel proves he need not overin-
dulge his philosophical bent out of an
inability to write concrete detail.
As if Percy himself is conscious of
this, the thematic concerns of the
novel address this problem. Barrett,
perhaps like Percy, must accept the
virtues of workaday life, of everyday
realities. Barrett's exodus from the
cave because of a toothache brings
together apocalyptic vision and trivial
pain-and the toothache proves more
urgent than verifying God's existence.
Not so coincidentally, then, the last half
of the novel suffers less from imbalan-
ce, as Percy himself learns right along
with his protagonist.
PERCY'S OPTIMISM doesnot mean
that modern life escapes unscarred.
Satire permeates The Second Coming.
Popular religion, middle class leisure,
the 'new' self-indulgence, marriage,
and much else are found wanting under
the author's scrutiny. Unfortunately, so
is Percy. Satire has become all too easy
in recent literature and writers'
irreverent jabs have become un-
necessarily predictable. Using an am-
nesiac, obviously unfamiliar with the
hip jargon of the seventies, makes Allie
an interesting character,-much more
interesting than- Barrett-but the ploy
seems too frequently contrived only for
satiric purposes.
To Percy's credit, the satire, good or
bad, is not left to stand on its own. He
has faith in some people. And the
narrative hops with enough wit and
pace to dilute the ponderous discussions
of Life and Death. Walker Percy asks
all the questions; sadly, though, at the
expense of an invigorating
humanization of the issues they raise.
Percy keeps telling us something is
happening rather than simply letting it
happen.
project was funded by the National
Science Foundation and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration.
BESIDE EXPANDING on the
previously reported fossils, the team
revealed evidence Monday that
photosynthesis - the energy source of
modern plants - may have begun 2.8
billion years ago. That's an especially
crucial point in the history of life, since
photosynthesis changed Earth's
poisonous primordial atmosphere by
releasing the oxygen that lets animals
and humans exist.
"We've gone beyond just saying these
things existed," Schopf said. "Now
we're trying to say something about the
nature of these micro-organisms that
once had the Earth all. to themselves.
This is the first good, hard data that go
back that far."
The 15 top researchers, gathered
from the United States, Australia,
Canada, Germany and Puerto Rico to
represent a variety of scientific
disciplines, added at least 400 million
years to the confirmed history of life.
"A 2IASTERPIECE."
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