* IT AIN'T EASY BEING GREENE: As I write this, questions continue to percolate around Enid Greene Waldholtz. Why did she seemingly defer to her husband for so long? Why did she file for divorce so quickly, and in such acid, cutting language?
And what is she going to tell all us folks back home?Well, listen up. I have possible answers.
But you need to hang with me for a moment here.
Most of us, I believe, give meaning to our lives by being loyal to a mixture of principles and people. When under pressure, however, we tend to slide one way or the other.
Those who work from principle often look naive and heartless when it comes to people.
Those who see the world in terms of people may look compassionate, but they seem weak and fuzzy when it comes to their personal code.
Plug Ronald Reagan into category "A," if you want, and plug John Kennedy into category "B."
Enid Waldholtz may be an "A." In a crisis, she goes with principle.
When the bad checks began bouncing like ping-pong balls in a lottery hopper, when she was under fire from the media, she chose to stand by her husband - perhaps out of love and loyalty to the principle of marriage. She'd vowed to honor him and be his helpmate. So she did. Maybe it was eaiser to ignore the signs - like the woman who can't see the lipstick on her husband's collar because that would force her to chose between her integrity and her marriage.
And what does the congresswoman hear? Instead of admiration she gets: Enid, couldn't you see the person? Couldn't you see it coming? Wake up!
When her husband went on the lam, she dropped him like a hot check - on principle.
And she hears: What about the person, Enid? How can you flip from being so caring about him to being so cold in the blink of an eye?
Leaders who view life through principle get whacked around a lot by "people-based" ridicule.
And, finally, what will Enid tell her fellow Utahns?
She'll tell them, "I hung with Joe and ignored the signs because he was my husband."
Instead of praise, however, she'll be rebuked for being naive and shifty.
As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes. Hi ho."
Still, if there's any consolation for the congresswoman, she might remember that people who hold to an ideal over all else constantly mess up personal relationships. The wife of Sir Thomas More - the "Man for All Seasons" - thought he was heartless because he sabotaged his own marriage to quibble with the king over his.
The Reagan kids felt their father was a chilly wash-out as a dad.
Gandhi's family found him distant, uninterested and unloving.
Will Enid weather the firestorm that's now coming at her?
Probably not. Because of her marriage vows, she didn't move quickly enough to put out the forest fire. In years to come, however, she may become something of a martyr to loyalty. She'll be the woman who stood by her man. She just couldn't allow herself to see that her man was standing on the deck of the Titanic at the time.
* SHELLING IT OUT: In Spanish "cesta" means "small basket," and "cesto" means "enormous basket." Well, after my column last week - an open letter to Shelley Thomas, vice president of public affairs for Smith's - I got a "cesto" from Shelley. I'd complained about the way the Cheese Curls I bought at Smith's discolored my fingers, so Shelley sent two cans of Cheese Curls, along with a dozen sanitary gloves to eat them with.
I'd mentioned how much trouble I had peeling apart the plastic bags in the produce section. Shelley sent a roll of plastic bags with detailed instructions for opening them. She also sent apples, oranges, grapefruit, grapes, bananas and pineapples to practice on.
And she sent a note:
"All snack food engineers have been pulled off other research to immediately address the cheese curls project," she wrote.
Say what you will, the woman is a true candidate for the public relations hall of fame.