This issue is a departure for the Shore Journal, one we hope will provide a service both to our city of Salisbury, Maryland, and to our region, the Delmarva Peninsula.

There must be some problem regarding the rental of homes in many communities, otherwise the topic would have not preoccupied so many governments for the past few years. Presumably, some of what causes a problem in one town causes it in another. Our hope is that a general look at the problem here will shed light on it both here and elsewhere.

The battle lines, drawn some years ago and hardly changed, are simple enough to explain:

Some say renters pay too much for too little, and that while there are housing inspectors and building codes, there is nothing to protect a renter whose complaint angers a landlord. Something is needed, they say, to ensure the safety of properties without involving tenants.

Others say that current laws adequately protect renters, and that additional regulation and enforcement would only cost the city, renters and property owners money.

Salisbury came close to a resolution of this matter recently, when the City Council approved an ordinance requiring the licensing of landlords. Over strong objections from a well-organized and outspoken group of property owners, the council approved legislation introduced by Council President Bob Caldwell.

Those who had supported this effort over the years were shocked when Mayor Paul Martin, who only hours earlier had been rushed to the emergency room with a heart problem, vetoed the measure from his hospital bed.

That's drama, folks, and it even got our attention, which is normally focused on more visual and perhaps more visceral matters.

It was then we realized we might be of some assistance. There were accounts in the papers, letters to the editor, there were accounts on tv. But nowhere did we find, in all of this, one place where everything was in plain view. So we asked for it.

And we got it. The original legislation and accompanying documents can be obtained through the city's home pages here on ICNet.

The arguments, for and against, are as follows:

The Mayor's Veto

Proponent's Response

The Landlord's View

But that is not all, dear friends. If that were all we did, we might as well be a fax machine, or a xerox, or some other thing that ends with an x. We try to be more than that, since no one tells us that we can't be, and it's much more fun.

Kelley Rouse talked to those involved, and gives us the perspective of a journalist who has covered this city for a long time. It's not policy with Kelley, it's people.

She shares these thoughts in City Dwellers.

Not far away, in Snow Hill, voters this week turned down a proposal to build 32 housing units for low-income families. While the legislation is different, the problem is the same: housing. Frequent contributor Al Cohen, of Snow Hill Citizens for Decent Housing, takes off the gloves and says what is what in: All The People, Some of the Time.

We see something in all of this that is different in news. A newspaper rarely opens its pages to all sides of an issue, allowing each adequate time, in their own view of what that is, to present their case. News-space in newspapers is newsprint, and newsprint gets more expensive every day. They come pretty close, however, in publishing letters to the editor which are usually allowed to run in full. But, they are letters, not complete arguments.

The constraints in televison are even greater. A typical half-hour local tv news broadcast has well under fifteen minutes of actual news, and quite often, under ten. The rest is taken by commercials, sports and weather.

Consequently, inteview subjects are generally not allowed to complete their sentences, much less their arguments. The typical television news soundbite, once thirty seconds (during the Eisenhower administration) is now down to eight seconds. Try it, see how much you can say in eight seconds.

That is what virtual space is all about, we believe. The only limit to a writer's effort is the readers interest. That is as it should be.

Our civic responsibilites attended to thusly, (we may never vote again), we have files that we hope will amuse and enlighten the reader in other ways.

We say: So Long, Mike Allen, and in so doing thank him for a view of our generation which we learned from him.

Idiocy is wonderful, and blind idiocy is best. If you think much of what is being predicted about the web and the internet is nonsense, get a historical view of nonsense with respect to the future of computing in: Famous Last Words

Media mogul and radio impressario Van Williamson writes with the latest on what's up with Delmarva's favorite band of merry pranksters. See: Radio From Downtown Update

Richard Mitchell recently observed that Patti Weeg is doing more to promote peace on earth than the United Nations, and to see proof of this, take a look at: The Song of Peace

Jo Campbell takes a look at the amazing machinations of major chemical companies, and how one of the benefits of diversification is a lizard-like way of dividing to avoid prosecution. See: Doing GREAT THINGS With Dow.

Jon Murphy is an ICNet user who is into making music with computers. We asked him to tell us how that is done, and he did. See: An Introduction to MIDI.

Finally, we share some observations on some of the difficulties people have in getting and staying online, specifically in avoiding interminable delays, in: Trunks Full of Memory