THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 16, 1995 TAG: 9504130502
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
TWO NORFOLK NATIVES have provided strong, clear volumes packed with news you can use.
WVEC-TV community affairs director Sherri Brennan has been a familiar and comforting presence on the Hampton Roads airwaves for many years. The Emmy Award-winning broadcaster, herself a wife and mother, specializes in home, family and community issues. Three years ago, she embarked on a five-part series examining clever strategies that Americans use to cope with increasingly cramped economic conditions in the '90s.
``Viewer response was so tremendous that we simply kept doing it,'' reports Brennan.
The mailing list grew to 20,000. WVEC installed a separate 800 number and answering service to accommodate audience interest. Now the station has made available a paperback compilation of Brennan's good sense for consumers, Better Living: Tips for Saving Time and Money (WVEC-TV, 311 pp., $14.95).
This is savvy stuff.
At the grocery store, check the top and bottom shelves. More expensive merchandise is often placed at eye level.
Be careful when companion foods are on display; the tuna may be discounted, but the mayonnaise could be premium-priced.
Don't assume the larger size is less expensive - check the unit pricing information to determine the best buy.
Red-wine stains can be neutralized with white wine or club soda. To make a jacket-sized garment bag, just cut a hole at the top of a pillowcase and slip it over a hanger. Too much garlic in a recipe can be subdued by filling a tea ball with dried parsley to help absorb the flavor.
(Of course, there are those of us who believe it is impossible to have too much garlic in a recipe.)
This cornucopia of solid counsel includes my personal favorite: Take children to the library. It's fun. It's cheap.
A bargain, like this book.
Karen Lound graduated from Old Dominion University with a bachelor's degree in English. Now she holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama and works for the St. Paul, Minn., public schools. She has co-authored, with Tom Flynn, a tough, direct, important book for young people: AIDS: Examining the Crisis (Lerner Publications, 72 pp., $17.50).
``It's a reference book on AIDS for kids between 8 and 19,'' said Lound, in town to do research for a collection of stories set in the Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. ``It tries to be very inclusive, but unbiased. It talks about discrimination against individuals with AIDS because of who got it first.
``Now the numbers are dropping off for gay men and rising among teenagers - boys and girls.''
She cited a recent AIDS conference in Berlin, during which it was announced that the average age of people infected with HIV is dropping worldwide. Young people are having sex earlier; the average age for the first sexual encounter is now 15 to 16 years old. The Global AIDS Policy Coalition projects that by 2000, 38 million to 110 million adults will be infected with AIDS.
Many of those are today's teens.
Initially, the publishers approached AIDS educator Flynn for his expertise on the subject. He served as director of the Minnesota AIDS Project and as coordinator of counseling with the Twin Cities IVDA/AIDS Research and Demonstration Project. Flynn happened to be Lound's landlord and knew she was a writer.
``My function was to take the facts from Tom and turn them into prose teenagers will want to read,'' said Lound.
She makes it clear that AIDS is about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll - and death.
``Quite simply,'' Lound writes, ``drugs impair your judgment. If you are drunk or high, you might make a bad decision, such as choosing to have unprotected sex or using a dirty hypodermic needle. Some times even the rush of falling in love can impair your judgment - it just needs access to a warm, living body.''
She's frank because she has to be.
``We weren't going to be euphemistic,'' Lound said, ``because if these kids don't have the exact facts, they could get AIDS and die.''
To order a copy of AIDS: Examining the Crisis, call 1-800-328-4929. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Sherri Brennen's good sense for consumers is compiled in ``Better
Living.''
Karen Lound has co-written a reference book on AIDS for children
between ages 8 and 19.
by CNB