The star families are so far apart
that, on the average, light takes about two million
years to pass from any one to its nearest neighbor.
The most distant of them all is so far from us that
even the greatest telescope in the world, the huge
100-inch instrument at Mount Wilson, shows it as but
a faint speck of mist. We see it as it was
140,000,000 years ago.
That is as far as we have been able to
penetrate into the remotest depths of space, but a still bigger telescope, with
a 200-inch reflector, is now being built. Its range should be twice as great,
and astronomers expect that the number of known star families may be increased
by it to at least 10,000,000. Then, we must wait until the next, still bigger,
telescope is built to discover more and yet more.
Among the debts we owe, not
including those which we must repay painfully in the
prevailing currency, is a debt to our community or
home town. There are those who never consider this
debt, but it is a real debt, and some repayment is
due.
The key to this debt lies in the first word, the “home.” It is a
wonderful word in the English language, which is never fully defined or
adequately translated in foreign tongues.
And when we say “home,” we are referring to a house, a husband
and wife, who became a father and mother usually, with all the happiness, love,
hope and faith that surrounds a home. The home is protected, sheltered and made
efficient by modern day wonders.
Let us look a minute at our culture and civilization and see
what we have received in our home town, at birth. There was a time when we had
to roam the woods like beasts, without family or home, without a church to allay
primitive superstition, without a government to keep order, without organized
society to broaden our social contacts, and without profitable trade--which
makes warfare unprofitable.
This is the debt we owe. It is the obligation of each of us to
contribute what he can to the continuing progress of the human race, even if in
a small way, so that we repay this large debt we owe in our own individual way.
Due to vandalism and carelessness in the Arnoldsburg area, many
customers have been without telephone service from time to time.
Most recently, telephone lines on the Adam-Altizer Road were
torn down, placing 200 customers out-of-service for more than 11 hours. Company
repairmen worked for several days replacing the cable, at a cost of to the
company in excess of $4,000. According to a spokesman, the incident is under
investigation by State Police.
Also, several contractors have dug into telephone company
underground cables, again placing many families out-of-service for many days.
An even stranger act of vandalism involved the removing of 1,000 feet of working
aerial cable from telephone poles. This left 60 families without service for 30
hours.