JACKSON STUDENT ON NOTRE DAME DEAN'S LIST

JACKSON -- Jennifer Kay Furey of Jackson has been named to the dean's list at the University of Notre Dame for the fall semester.

The dean's list is comprised of students who have maintained a grade-point average of 3.4 and above.

Furey is a junior in the university's College of Arts and Letters, majoring in liberal studies and government and international studies. She is a 1989 graduate of Jackson High School and is the daughter of James A. and Patricia Furey of Jackson.

KEEPING COOL AT WORLD EXPO: IT'S GOING TO TAKE SOME VISION

Headline NEWTON'S LAW: KEEPING COOL AT WORLD EXPO: IT'S GOING TO TAKE SOME VISION

The grand ideas of mankind are often those first articulated before people who are raising their eyebrows and shaking their heads.

"Here's my idea for a tomb," some pharaoh must have said thousands of years ago. In the sand, he traced a triangle. His kin probably gulped hard before telling him pyramids might be impractical.

No doubt Isabella was a bit amused with the round-planet theories of an Italian who sought an audience with her. But what's royalty for if not to underwrite the dreams of seafaring men? "Write Mr. Columbus a check," she said.

On a lesser scale, think of the smirks suppressed in a room where St. Louis civic leaders tried to determine a proper shrine for denoting the city as gateway to the west. What we'll do, someone had to say, is construct an arch hundreds of feet tall, maybe made of stainless steel.

Some in attendance probably couldn't restrain their skepticism. "Now, let me get this straight ...."

That is the destiny of dreamers, to be doubted, laughed at, ridiculed. If they're lucky, vindication is a possibility.

Thirty engineers in Chile need some luck.

Chile is feeling its oats these days, if you'll excuse the mixed food metaphor. After 17 years of military dictatorship, the nation again became a democracy in 1990. It hopes to use the world exposition in Seville, Spain, beginning in April, as something of a coming-out party.

You might say the Chileans are hoping to make a splash.

So here is the plan: As part of its pavilion, Chile will display a 90-ton iceberg hauled to Spain from the South Pole.

At least give these folks credit for originality.

In November, 30 engineers ventured from Chile to Paradise Bay, an ill-named locale where icebergs are plentiful. Careful to "recover" rather than "rip," soothing the souls of environmentalists, the Chileans packed up 100 or so chunks of blue-colored ice and sealed them in insulated containers.

Scooping up ice from a bay is no great stunt. The trick is to adapt the iceberg to the climate of Seville, which has temperatures that climb to 122 degrees in the summer months.

The engineers believe they can do this by surrounding the composite iceberg with frigid air and running Freon 22 through internal pipes.

An iceberg should not be viewed as an act of national whimsy. Chile wants to use this display of ultra-refrigeration to demonstrate the nation's capacity to ship perishable produce. Produce is among Chile's leading legal exports.

You can see how a mere brochure couldn't tell the story.

Expo '92 ends in October and Seville will inherit some of the national pavilion sites. Oddly, no one is quite certain what to do with the iceberg once the exhibition is over.

Some have suggested that it be slipped into the adjoining Guadalquiver River. The more popular recommendation is that it be chipped into ice cubes ... a place that has temperatures of 122 degrees can handle all the cold drinks within its grasp.

So a proud nation's hopes ride on a large chunk of frozen water lifted from another part of the globe. It's not really the stuff of dreams, but don't tell that to the Chileans.

When a pharaoh wanted a monument to eternal life, he could have ended up with a pre-fab crypt. When Columbus sailed, he could have as easily been confused in celestial navigation and discovered Liverpool. Were karma a bit different, the symbol that now marks the gateway to the west in St. Louis could have been a white picket job on hinges.

If the vision of the people of Chile doesn't come to pass, they're going to need a lot of towels.