Western Kentucky University - Talisman Yearbook (Bowling Green, KY)

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T 4 GODDBYE ing the myriad problems confronting the country. And what of the culture? Were the '70s a time of exuberance and vitality in the arts or of garishness and sensory overload? You could call it either way, but with numbers, -L ratings and sales always the immediate detenninant, a Jacqueline Suzanne usually won out over a Saul Bellow. It was a decade which saw such forgettable movies as The French Connection and Rocky earn Academy Awards as best pictures. Then, so did such innovative films as The God- father and Annie Hall. In theater what was startling was off-stage, not on: the move was away from New York and Broadway ,.-. 'Q 2 ' THE PICTURE of Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese national police chief, as he executed a Wet Cong officer with a single shot, is a grim reminder of Wetnam. American military involvement there came to an end during the Nixon administration. 4 +int, Press BODIES of Jonestown, Guyana, mass suicide victims, including that of leader Rev. Jim Jones, left, are stacked for loading aboard U.S. aircraft for shipment back to the United States. Religious cults like the Peoples Temple were evident in the last part of the 70s. 24 Decade In review theaters to a lively regional theater circuit ranging from the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles to the Kennedy Center in Washington. The quality of what played on these stages was, once again, a matter of conjecture. The fare ranged from spritely Neil Simon comedy to sure-fire hits in revivals of The King and I and My Fair Lady, to some original work like A Chorus Line and Equus The comparisons could go on and on. From Alex Haley and Roots to the Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever, entertain- ment and the arts hopscotched from the good to the not so good to the very bad. Perhaps the biggest mystery of the culture and the '70s was yet to be resolved by 1980. As television and computers and a society increasingly used to thinking in terms of technology became more intertwined, the possible results were interesting. Already by the end of the '70s a type of design known as high tech had gained attention. ln homes, games were played on television screens, and computer games like Space Invaders fascinated kids and adults alike. Sound quality became an obsession for some of those with FM radio receivers and record players. Television continued to boom, and offshoots like the Los Angeles Times' Home Box Office were in demand. If the '70s lacked dynamics in the arts in the traditional sense, this blending of technology with entertainment- for good or bad - may be the contribution that historians will trace to the decade of Star Wars and Monday Night Football. Probably the decade's biggest surprise, at least for many Americans, was energy. More than by politics or war or entertainment, Americans were changed by the energy crisis in the '70s. Suddenly OPEC -the Organiza- tion of Petroleum Exporting Countries - became as well known as the FBI or the VFW. Such basic elements of living as warm- ing a house or taking a trip involved much more money than most would have suspec- ted in 1970. Though Americans remained the most mobile people in the world, their style of living was being changed, bit-by-bit, in the decade of gasoline lines, Three-Mile Island and solar houses. Still, it would be misleading to say the country - whether it be Bowling Green, Ky. or San Jose, Calif. - was very different in 1980 than it was in 1970. When the nation celebrated its two hundredth birthday July 4, 1976, the red, white and blue was on display even in more variety and extremes than in 1876. Extremes. Sometimes it seemed that was how we acted in any part of living: at church, at work, outdoors. Some would counter that the '60s were the decade of extremes. But a closer look would find the '70s were in much the same manner. The difference was that the extremes did not clash as often or as visibly in the 1970s as before. The surprises, the tensions, the thrills were all evident in the '70s. Perhaps they had more of a selfish tinge - the disco dancer is probably a better symbol than a civil rights demonstrator - but they were evident nevertheless. Contrary to the early obituaries, the 19705 were an ex- citing period in which to live. Whether the excitement - selfish or collective - was justified, remained to be seen. II

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Double talk ge Todd Buchanan AT 'IHE National Mid-South Conference Show and Sale, Bill Warrick of Prairie City, Iowa, waits for the judges to inspect his boar. The hog show in January, was the first event in the new Agricultural Exposition Center on the university farm. Inflation and Iran. No two issues brought more bad news to the American people in 1979 and early 1980 than these. Inflation came in a variety of ways: Con- sumer prices rose at an annual rate of more than 18 percent. Gas at the pumps increased 60 to 70 percent. Interest rates topped 18 per- cent, the highest level since the Civil War. And then came the long-predicted recession. Also surging upward, on a wave of specula- tion, and perhaps panic, was the price of gold. A record of S800 an ounce was reached in January. And, while the average American struggled financially, a different drama was unfolding in Iran. There was talk of military intervention when militant Iranian students seized the U.S. Em- bassy and kept 53 Americans hostage. Relnstitution of draft registration became a reality after Russian troops moved into Afghanistan, threatening the security of the oil- rich Middle East. While the events in the Persian Gulf definitely had their drama, they were not all that unpredictable. Early in 1979, Moslem leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, overthrew an ally of the American government, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The situation in Iran was blamed by some for a gasoline panic in May 1979, especially in Califomia where an emergency gas allocation plan was used. But the Carter administration could not win congressional approval for a standby plan for gas rationing. In fact, polls showed a majority of Americans suspected that the big oil companies had engineered the oil shortage that led to out of gas signs in many areas, including Bowling Green. Iran, however, was for real. ln November President Carter allowed the shah into this country for cancer treatment. That permission became an opportunity for the Khomenini regime to try to get the former Iranian leader back so that he could be executed for alleged crimes during his 38-year reign. ln an act that caused international outrage, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Em- bassy in Tehran and took more than 60 rf-3 if Udlfr' r g- ' Thou A 1 tb F.A..D Lewis Gardner