
<#FROWN:F01\>
Unearthing Dracula
Tall, dark, and campy, vampires have long held sway over our most sinister impulses. Here Herb Ritts photographs the stars on the set of Francis Ford Coppola's new baroque Dracula, and Mary Gaitskill dissects the power of this age-old gooey nightmare
He approaches slowly, with the grace and cold authority of an expert seducer. His body is shrouded in black, and his eyes have the paralyzing fascination of death. His victim, a frail beauty reduced to incoherent high-pitched gasps of fright, waits in a state of alertness and horror, yet she is swooning - her head thrown back, her throat exposed in electrifying receptivity. There is a pregnant moment, as if an unarticulated longing is about to come to fruition. Then, sinking his fangs into her neck, he penetrates and devours her.
Really, it's too corny, not to mention too sexist, for sophisticated people like you and me. But sexist corn notwithstanding, there it is: the vampire myth persists with the tenacity of a spider, continually reemerging in varying guises that range from the dire to the erotic to the goofy and back again. Be it Bela Lugosi standing mute and icy in the graveyard or Elvira camping it up between ads for the greatest hits of the seventies, the vampire lurks at a complex intersection of human dilemma; his myth is a great dark jewel that reveals another facet with each turn. And he is about to walk again in Francis Ford Coppola's version of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, a sumptuous retelling of the old, old story.
This story is a bloody Kabuki comic about our fear of and ambivalence toward our own nature, and the fragmentation that results. It is a metaphor for maddeningly common human behavior; we have all known (and been) psychic 'vampires,' people who, because of their inability to internally 'get a life,' do all kinds of things to feel more complete - like social climbing, marrying for money, or augmenting hollow self-esteem by attacking someone else's, to name a few. Today's pervasive celebrity worship is a kind of mutual vampirism, in which the adoring masses and the celebrity get their identity and power from each other, and thus never fully become themselves. Almost all vampire movies, even the silliest, deal with this stuff, playfully or intensely. Judging from the screenplay for Bram Stoker's Dracula, written by James V. Hart (author of Hook), Coppola is going for the intense.
One of literature's first vampires appears in Coleridge's weird, unfinished narrative poem, Christabel, published in 1816. Camille Paglia, in an astute, erudite, and totally horny essay, describes Coleridge's lesbian vampire Geraldine as nature's own psycho slut from hell, "the chthonian mother who eats her children." She's not the only one. In the old movies, vampires hang out with swarms of insects, spiders, maggots, rats, and bats - the deep-down ugly part of nature, lower-order group-minded creatures that remind us of our connection with the part of life that scares us: the brainless, monstrously gooey primeval, the death-dealing predator, the heartless cycle of aging, illness, death. In a word, the irrational, which is mirrored in our emotions, and which typically overrides our brains.
Cannily, Jim Hart included a scene from Stoker's original novel that most other screen Draculas have omitted. In it, the virtuous hero (Keanu Reeves! The ideal swooning beauty!) is swarmed and bitten by Dracula's three 'brides' in a lush haunted bedchamber, a realm of the undifferentiated primordial at which religion and society shake their pale fingers in vain. These 'mothers' literally do eat the young -Dracula feeds the brides by tossing them a live baby. Winona Ryder, who stars as the film's heroine, Mina, says she was grossed out by the scene: "These women are played by beautiful models and it should be sexy... but they're horrible, like insects or spiders." Exactly. At one point the film reveals Dracula lying in his coffin as if it's a womb, covered with placentalike slime, a perfect image of the conflation of life and death and all that...stuff they entail.
We may fear the deep-down ugly, but it is part of who we are; in trying to deny it, we divide ourselves and the world into opposing factions. That on which we shut the door will come knocking in some truly skanky forms, and we will always let it in, because 'it' is us. Harold Bloom has referred to Coleridge's heroine Christabel as "a half-willing victim." No kidding. As Coleridge describes her, she is Virtue on two legs. This type of purity is compelling but unlivable. Since the lady Christabel, the feminine ideal of her day, is not allowed to even imagine the ugly, cruel, predatory slut within, she will secretly long for it and be sensually transfixed when it appears in the form of another person - especially another woman. The passivity of this kind of 'victim' is deceptive, for it is not mere inertia or failure of will. It is a convoluted attempt to imbibe the power of the aggressor; it is unacknowledged power, fierce and resolute in its own way. It would be better if such 'victims' felt free to experience their own power more directly, in an ambience of mutual respect and honor - but unfortunately, a lot of people don't know how to do that.
The female victims in the old vampire movies definitely don't. Idealized expressions of ultrarefined femininity, they are weak, flighty, Blanche du Boisesque. The dark, powerful vampire may be nasty, but he represents an earthy solidity and strength that have the potential to make them complete. And vice versa. In F.W. Murnau's beautiful, silent 1922 Nosferatu, the vampire can be destroyed only if a pure woman keeps him by her side until daylight. The film ends with the heroine sacrificing herself to the vampire to save the populace. It's as if the vampire, despite his toothy might, is stuck in a purgatory; only when purity is made freely available to him can he finally cut out.
This Sturm und Drang is sexy, but it's not just about sex. Whenever the full potential is thwarted, rage, possession, and devouring rear their ugly heads. One of the most pathetic victims in vampire lore is Stoker's hapless solicitor, Renfield, as portrayed by Dwight Frye in the famous 1931 Tod Browning Dracula. (In the Coppola film, he's played by Tom Waits, in a less central but equally intense role.) Frye's Renfield is a friendly, dapper, optimistic businessman who arrives at the vampire's castle with a natty walking stick and a natty smile. "Oh, the fire," he exclaims, seizing on the only homey aspect of the vampire's gruesome castle; "it's so cheerful!" It is both comic and painful to watch this upbeat fellow become Dracula's morbidly degraded slave, on his hands and knees eating insects. Comic because there is a grim appropriateness in this silly, effete person being forced to eat the earthiness that his ultracivilized persona implicitly denies. Dracula's sadistic power is brutal but so, in a sense, is Renfield's idiotic optimism and refinement. Consciously or not, Renfield has coldly excised the guts from his insipid world, a world in which the power and veracity of the extreme are not allowed to exist. The extreme has returned in the form of Dracula, and boy, is he pissed.
These days, in movies and in the culture at large, it seems as if everybody's eager to sling extremities and guts all over the place, as if Dracula could be just another crank on the subway. But the guts so garishly and routinely displayed are artificial; while we seem to have acknowledged our extreme aspects, our discomfort is actually as acute as ever.
Modern vampires no longer represent biological dread; instead, they seem a defiance of biology, reversing the symbolic meaning of the grotty old monster. Agelessly beautiful, sexy, and glamorous, they are far more dynamic than the dumpy mortals upon whom they prey. Anne Rice's novels are filled with empathy for them. They do bad stuff but they can't help it; they're lonely and full of angst. In the old vampire story, the underlying frisson is the victim's unspoken ambivalence and longing. In the current version it's the anguish and longing of the vampire, who is, after all, a parasite totally dependent on his/her weak prey. Today's vampires symbolize the tyranny of the imagination and the mind as estranged from the heart and the body. In the 1983 film The Hunger, a chic lesbian (Catherine Deneuve) imprisons her victims not in an earthy crypt but in an airy town house; instead of swarming rats and bugs she is surrounded by flocks of white birds. In The Lost Boys (1987), a gang of beautiful boy vampires terrorizes a fantastical amusement park while, on the sound track, a seraphic boys choir sings "thou shalt not grow," and the camera pans up to a sky of preternaturally brilliant blue. High style, soaring movement, ethereal height, unadulterated beauty, perpetual adolescence, limitless power, and pleasure: these vampires inhabit a realm utterly removed from the icky, crawly, ugly forces of nature, free of relentless evolutionary flux.
But this realm is arid, sterile, and, ahem, bloodless. The vampires must feed, compulsively, endlessly. They can only borrow life, they can never truly have it. As Dracula laments in Coppola's film: "I am nothing." Although the vampire bites and bites, he remains 'the undead' who cannot live.
In the trashy but perceptive Vampire's Kiss (1989), Nicolas Cage is a cruel, internally dessicated womanizer cut off from his own emotionality - the kind of guy who, despite his compulsive sex life, would fear a deep sexual experience. After a hallucinatory one-night stand, he becomes convinced he is turning into a vampire and before long is eating bugs, tearing at the flesh of birds, and pursuing people while wearing plastic fangs. He becomes increasingly sadistic to a female employee and finally rapes her. The joke of the movie is that while Cage is not physically a vampire, psychically he is and always has been. In a pivotal scene he claws at a mirror, moaning, "Oh, Christ, where am I?" having become invisible to himself. Geraldine, Dracula, Nosferatu, and the rest may have great power, but there is a terrible emptiness at its center, and Vampire's Kiss - the product of a modern sensibility in an age pervaded by expressions of disconnected, empty power - recognizes that dead-on. It is appropriate that Cage becomes a rapist, for rape is another vampiric act. A rapist longs to have whatever the female and the feminine represent to him, and is driven to attack. Yet since he violates and damages what he craves, he puts it even further out of reach, creating an endless cycle of mutual torment not unlike the vampire's.
Among the many vampires walking among us today, perhaps the most horrifying is not psychic but physical. AIDS divides the body and causes it to attack itself with a method we still have no understanding of and little defense against. In a sense, it is like a horrible and horribly unfair mirror of our divided and warring psychic selves - only in this case the horror is impossible to ignore (although as a society, we have been trying hard to do just that).
Screenwriter Hart was very aware of this metaphoric connection; his brother, who died of AIDS, had remarked to him that it is "a vampire's disease," a comment that seems to have haunted Hart. Indeed, Winona Ryder, who brought the script to Coppola's attention, responded to it initially because she had just lost a close friend to AIDS and thus found the script eerily resonant.
The script is juicy and operatic (possibly campy, depending on how it's played), a combination of the old and modern vampire modes. (The 1979 version starring super-sexy Frank Langella only hinted at this.) Dracula (Gary Oldman) is both a snarling beastie with hairy palms and the 'most handsome man on the street.' And his victims are scarcely the 'pure' creatures of the past; they too are conflicted and angsty.
<#FROWN:F02>
DOES JAPAN PLAY FAIR?
While official protectionism is largely gone, Americans still battle cartels, old-boy networks, and outright corruption. The U.S. must keep the pressure on.
by Edmund Faltermayer
DOES JAPAN tilt its economic playing field against the rest of the world? The question is crucial, for despite years of pressure to open the world's No. 2 economy to foreign goods and investment, Japan has amassed an unheard-of trade surplus now soaring above $100 billion a year. If Japan's policies and business culture really do deny foreign companies a fighting chance, what can be done to set the balance right? Unless it is corrected, governments around the world, including the U.S. President elected in November, are sure to feel rising protectionist demands.
This article examines specific markets and business practices that shed light on Japan's openness. Sizing up a country's business terrain is relative. Difficult or easy compared with what? In making the assessment, FORTUNE judged access to markets in Japan in relation to hardships Japanese companies face in the U.S.
Overall, is the playing field level? In a word, no. "The Japanese market is not as closed as Americans think," says Akio Morita, chairman of Sony, "but not as open as the Japanese think." The long answer is more complicated, however - and more encouraging. Japan has changed greatly since the mid-Eighties. In many markets today's tilt is less steep than it was, and an official, orchestrated policy of thwarting the gaijin (foreigner) is mostly gone. Americans with high-quality goods and services can make a dent in Japan. Because of remaining governmental roadblocks and a business culture that can be extraordinarily inhospitable to outsiders, however, U.S. companies still have to work harder than Japanese companies in the U.S. And sometimes the Americans need diplomatic pressure to help laissez faire along, particularly when they are trying to penetrate industries dominated by entrenched oligopolies.
For those willing to take lots of bruises and stay in the game, Japan has compensations. The customers the Yank wins are often more loyal than those back home. Makoto Kuroda, managing director of Mitsubishi Corp., tells an American visitor: "Your market is easy to enter, but it's also easy to be kicked out. In Japan, once in, your people may stay much longer." Depending on the industry, the Americans may also reap outsize profits. Says William Wheeler, who heads Asia-Pacific operations for FMC Corp.: "The margins here are some of the highest in the world."
Many Japanese insist that their country's barriers have fallen and that Americans have little to grouse about. "In terms of formal government policies," asserts Noboru Hatakeyama, vice minister for international affairs at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), "Japan is much more open" than the U.S. Japan has cut average tariffs on manufactured goods below America's (2.1% vs. 5%). The country may also be one of the few in history to subsidize imports. For the past three years, Japanese companies that substantially boost imports of a wide array of manufactured goods can get a 5% tax credit on the increase.
Japan has some gripes about the U.S. too. In semiconductors, for instance, Washington has resorted to managed trade with quotas, demanding that Japan buy 20% of the chips it uses from foreign companies. The U.S. has also leaned on Japan to curb exports of such items as cars and machine tools, forcing a shift of production to American transplants. Light pickup trucks from Japan face an unusually high tariff of 25%. And let's not ignore recent protectionist outbursts, as when opportunistic politicians in Los Angeles canceled a subway car contract with Sumitomo in favor of Morrison Knudsen.
For Japanese executives running businesses in the U.S., life is no Zen garden. They must often contend with a poorly educated, ill-trained labor force. The U.S. used to be ranked among the lowest-risk countries in which to do business, says Tachi Kiuchi, CEO of Mitsubishi Electronics America, a sales subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric. But because of "all the lawsuits," he says, "the U.S. is no longer in the top five."
Still, for all America's blemishes, one giant fact stands out: Gaining entry is like falling out of bed compared with what a foreign company confronts in Japan. Though formal barriers there are mostly gone, a forest of others remains. Many impede any newcomer to a particular market, Japanese or foreign, and in that sense foreigners are getting what trade negotiators call national treatment. But because Americans find conditions harder in Japan than vice versa, they are handicapped in redressing the trade imbalance.
Topping the list of adverse conditions, according to U.S. companies surveyed in 1991 by the A.T. Kearney consulting firm, is "the high cost of doing business." The rise in the yen against the dollar since the mid-Eighties has made a bad situation worse. Kearney itself pays $160 a square foot for its Tokyo office, nearly five times what equivalent space would command in New York City. Assuming that an American company lands orders, survival in the early years can resemble life in a piranha tank. Unless the product is unique and can't be readily duplicated, says Kearney vice president William Best, "you'll have competition faster than you can believe."
Americans who bend your ear about the perils aren't all crybabies, for the Japanese themselves acknowledge that their country is a rough go. Listen to Seiichi Takikawa, the jovial president of Canon Sales, a marketing and importing offshoot of the Japanese camera and copier company. He says that in the Seventies, when he built up Canon's operation in the U.S. - "where it's a much simpler task" - it took only six years to lift sales tenfold. Returning to Japan, Takikawa needed 15 years to achieve similar growth. Reason: a smaller market, fiercer competition, and a government that, he says, "has a habit of sticking its nose into everything it sees." And Takikawa was born into the culture. For an American, he says, success in Japan requires "two to three times as much as energy."
Daunting as this sounds, it was worse when Japan practiced flagrant protectionism. Edmund Reilly, president of Digital Equipment's Japanese subsidiary, recalls that when he first went to Japan for his company in 1970, the government was nurturing a home-grown computer industry and "the odds really were stacked against us." Overt discrimination against foreign products is now limited, though Japan still keeps out rice. The ban flies in the face of the free-market principles: The home-grown variety costs seven times as much as imported rice would.
These days, when the Japanese government makes life difficult for foreigners, it's mainly through regulatory moves that rarely get headlines. Etak, a California company now part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., was the first to begin electronic mapping of Japanese cities in 1987, hoping to enable ambulance services and others to find addresses on computer screens. But a year later the government decided that Etak needed a license. By the time it came through, the company's head start was gone and a Japanese competitor had moved in.
This is but one example. Says Clyde Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Instate, a Washington research group: "The procedures that you go through are typically not transparent." He means they are neither open nor based on criteria known to all who are affected. In that atmosphere, American executives say, Japanese who have good entree with bureaucrats can delay the entry of competitors. The effects are sufficiently serious that Japan, in the latest round of talks with the U.S. under the so-called Structural Impediments Initiative, has agreed to reform its regulatory practices.
What really leaves many foreign companies out in the cold is the business culture. The word keiretsu suggests giant industrial groups linked by cross-ownership, such as Mitsubishi or Sumitomo. But the term can apply to longstanding business relationships without financial ties. When Sony developed its videocassette recorder in the early Seventies, Chairman Morita relates, it needed a new, high-quality recording tape. At the time, a major U.S. chemical company passed up Sony's invitation to supply the tape because it was reluctant to invest new production equipment. Sony enlisted two Japanese companies that, Morita says, "invested money at their own risk." To this day Sony holds no equity stake in these suppliers, he adds, "but once they invest money and make a good product, that situation is a keiretsu, and we feel some kind of obligation."
Outsiders sometimes fail to understand why they can't instantly displace such suppliers by underselling them. As Morita explains: "An American company says, 'Our product is good, our price is good, why don't you buy?' But with an industrial product that needs continuous improvement, you need a long-term relationship." The U.S. company that originally declined Morita's invitation now has some of the business, but less than it might have had.
Productive relationships are the good side of keiretsu, which America has begun to emulate. But all too often, keiretsu exclude new players or give preferential treatment to members. Says Reilly of Digital Equipment, who is also president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan: "Keiretsu links, bidding cartels, and the old-boy network still present us with formidable obstacles that Japanese corporations do not face in the U.S. market."
Obstacles or no, more and more companies find they must be in Japan. Applied Materials, a Silicon Valley company with sales of $644 million a year, is one of the few flourishing American manufacturers of chipmaking equipment. One reason: It gets valuable customer feedback from Japan, which accounts for 35% of its revenues. Tetsuo Iwasaki, CEO of Applied Materials Japan, explains how the company benefits from working closely with Japan's semi-conductor industry, the world's largest. Japan excels in manufacturing DRAM memory chips, he notes, which require finer circuitry than the microprocessors in which the U.S. has the leading position. Says Iwasaki: "In production, DRAMs are the technology driver."
The examination that follows concentrates on markets where Americans have a strong competitive edge or a chance to improve the trade numbers dramatically - if only the playing fields were level. One notable theme that emerges: It's relatively easy to sell to Japanese consumers as opposed to the purchasing agents of big companies. We also assess Japanese fairness in two important areas that cut across many businesses - direct investment and patent production.
CONSUMER ITEMS. The Apple computers jumping off Tokyo store shelves and BMWs tooling down the elevated express-ways dispel the notion that Japanese citizens shun all foreign products. When it comes to marketing, says Tokyo consultant George Fields, "American companies have an advantage in anything related to youth and lifestyle." Fields, the son of an Australian father and a Japanese mother, spent time in each country in his youth. He notes that Japan's No. 1 soft drink is Coca-Cola, the No. 1 fast-food chain is McDonald's, the No. 1 theme park Disneyland, and the list goes on.
Many of the successful products are made in Japan rather than exported from the U.S., but the earnings help America's balance of payments. The main difficulty in marketing consumer goods is penetrating the convoluted distribution system. Kodak's entry in the mid-Eighties shows the unexpected routes a company might have to take: It used a mail-order company to sell film and a dry-cleaning chain as a collection point for developing.
Distribution is an impediment for the supreme consumer item: the automobile. When Japanese carmakers entered the U.S., they were able to sell through existing American dealers, who have long been allowed to offer more than one make. Japanese automakers own much of the sales network in Japan, and dual dealerships are rare. Bowing to pressure from Washington, Japanese carmakers are starting to offer a few American models. But the only real answer may be a direct stake in a distribution network. BMW carved out a respectable niche in Japan's market after it bought an ailing chain of showrooms in 1981 and expanded it. Ford, the most aggressive of Detroit's Big Three in Japan, has just raised its ownership in the Autorama sales chain from 34% to 36,5%, making it an equal partner with Mazda.
<#FROWN:F03\>
AN INTRODUCTION TO ASTROLOGY
Part 2: What the Chart Means.
A popular astrologer shares knowledge of her science in a way that is easy to understand. In the first part of this article (FATE, February 1992) she wrote about the history of astrology. Now learn about astrology from a practical point of view.
By Linda Chamlee Black

COMPILING A CHART
If you were out in a boat at sea and wanted to find your location, you'd look through a device called a sextant until you found a star you could identify. Through another part of the instrument you'd locate the horizon.
A sextant is made so that you can determine the angle between the horizon, a star and the point where you're located. By doing this with two different stars, you get two different angles. Then, by looking up the positions of the stars for that time in books called ephemerides (ephemeris in the singular) and performing a few mathematical computations, you can determine where you are at that exact moment.
An astrologer does the same thing - only backwards. We first find the exact time and place of birth. Then we look in books that give us the planets' positions, perform a little math and figure out where things were in the sky at that birth time. Initially astrologers had to physically see where the planets were located in order to draw up a chart, although they've used mathematically compiled tables of locations for quite some time. Now computers can do the same work with less error in a matter of minutes or even seconds.
The circle of the zodiac, or astrological chart, represents the heavens with the Earth being the spot in the middle. The point due west (at the left of the chart) is actually the sign on the eastern horizon. To understand this better, imagine that you're standing on the Earth - the dot where all the lines intersect.
The Ascendant (the sign on the eastern horizon at birth) is at least as important as the positions of the Sun and Moon in reading a chart. It also determines where to place the other lines which cut the circle into 12 pie pieces. These are the houses, each with a sign on the cusp (dividing line between two houses). Thus, the signs overlap the houses on a chart.
Each house represents a certain area of life. Although each is actually much more complex, they basically break down as follows:
1) Ego, self-analysis
2) Money and land
3) Education and siblings
4) Home and family
5) Love affairs and adolescents
6) Service to others
7) Partnerships and beauty
8) Life, death, secrets and other people's money
9) Travel, philosophy and publications
10) Career, area of greatest success
11) Friends and creative solutions
12) Spirituality, faith and institutions
Each house (pie piece) is ruled (dominated) by the sign on its left edge. That means, for example, if you have Scorpio on the cusp of the second house you'll probably gain through inheritance or have some other secret and plentiful source of income.
Sometimes the same sign rules two houses and another sign doesn't get an edge at all (if it is completely within one house and not crossing a cusp). This happens more often when the birth takes place farther north or south on the globe.
SIGNS, PLANETS AND HOUSES
The sign ruling each house also influences the planets that are in that house. Each planet has its own characteristics which are modified by the sign it's in, the house it's in and its mathematical relationship (angle or aspect) to the other planets. (Editor's note: the word planet means 'traveler.' Even though it has long been recognized that the Sun and Moon are not planets in the modern, scientific sense, from our earthly point of view they still appear to travel through the sky. Hence, astrologers may refer to them as planets.)
<O_>diagram<O/>
This diagram shows the houses, Medium Coeli and Ascendant. The Ascendant is marked by the heart-shaped wedge pointing to the left. This is the sign that is on the eastern horizon for the moment that the chart is drawn. It is determined by the time and location being charted.
The top of the chart, the Medium Coeli or Midheaven, is the point directly overhead at the time for which the chart is cast. This defines the separation between the ninth and tenth houses, both indicators of success. The ninth implies that success will come through good fortune while the tenth usually means that it's going to take some hard work.
In this illustration the pie pieces, called the houses, are numbered. The sequence goes from the left in a counter-clockwise direction.
The cusps are the divisions between houses. These are established by the latitude and longitude as well as the exact time being charted. Signs are given to each cusp just as they are to the first cusp, the Ascendant.
The Earth is located in the center, where all of the lines intersect.
Here is an example: Assume that Mars is in Scorpio and in your second house. Scorpio is on the cusp of the second house. In this example Mars is squared (at about a 90<*_>degree<*/> angle to Mars) to the planet Jupiter which is in the sign of Leo. According to Western astrology, Mars represents aggression, Jupiter luck, Leo fair play and Scorpio other people's money and secrets. The squared relationship means that there is a block (or lesson to be learned) represented by the planets, signs and houses at each end of the angle.
Interpreting an entire chart - as opposed to just one small, isolated part of a chart - is called synthesis. In the example described above we would say that a person born with the above example in his or her chart would have a strong urge to grab other people's money, but it will be blocked by their own sense of decency and fair play. Or the person will find a game to play that allows you to win other people's money in an honorable, although private, manner.
THE ASPECTS
The aspects, or the angles between the different planets, are very important. A difference of 30<*_>degree<*/>, called a semi-sextile, is supposed to be mildly beneficial. A sextile or 60<*_>degree<*/> angle is very beneficial. A semi-square, found when planets are at 45<*_>degree<*/> is upsetting while a square at 90<*_>degree<*/> is a difficulty or barrier. Planets at 180<*_>degree<*/> are opposed, but can actually be attractive (their effects enhance one another).
THE MOST IMPORTANT PARTS OF A CHART
The three equally dominant parts of any chart are the positions of the Sun, the Moon, and the Ascendant and the signs that are on their cusps. People who were born when the Sun was within five degrees of the next sign should consider both, with the coming sign slightly stronger. When the Sun is divided this way the influence of the Moon and Ascendant signs are considered to be even more important.
The sign at the top of the chart, the Midheaven (also known as the Medium Coeli or MC), is considered by some to be very important too. That area of the chart is supposed to indicate the individual's career and greatest success.
The ascending sign changes completely every two hours. The Moon takes two to three days to get through a sign and the Sun stays in one sign for almost a month. You can see, then, why it's so important to know the exact time of birth - the Ascendant changes one degree for every four minutes of time and its position also determines the positions of the Houses all the way around the chart. Charts figures for 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM on the same day and in the same location are completely different.
ASTRAL TWINS
Since all the planets are continually moving (at different rates), the same configuration won't repeat for at least 26,000 years (the length of time needed for the precession of the equinoxes to complete one cycle. See the previous article in last month's issue of FATE for details). You can have an astral twin - somebody who has the same chart as you. This can result from differences in birth locations. However, having an astral twin is even more uncommon than having a fraternal twin. Incidentally, fraternal twins aren't always astral twins.
As you can see, the time is very important when setting up a chart. Things can change considerably in only a few minutes. Dramatic changes will usually occur in an hour or two. If you have your chart done and find that it doesn't sound like you, don't assume that astrology is wrong. Check the time of birth. Then check the exact latitude and longitude. The reading of your accurate natal chart will leave you feeling that you have been described with uncomfortable precision.
PREDICTIONS
To make predictions with astrology, the astrologer compares where the planets are now to the natal chart (birth chart of the subject). A progression of the natal chart (where each day in the ephemeris equals a year in the person's life, starting at birth) is also used. For example, if you're 30 years old your progressed chart is for 30 days from your actual birth. This implies that the person goes through phases in life. If the Sun has progressed from Aries into Taurus, for example, the person will be much less spontaneous and more interested in financial security than when he or she was younger.
The position of each of the planets and the Moon is also progressed. For example, the Moon changes signs through this method approximately every two to three years. Since the Moon sign is an indicator of love and romance, this would suggest that people have a tendency to change their romantic preferences every couple of years. Consequently, a stable relationship has to be based on something more than whether a couple agrees on everything, or even whether they like each other at all. Both of those conditions would be in a constant state of flux, even if the two people were born with the Moon in the same sign.
Finally, the astrologer making the predictions compares the natal chart of the person involved, the progressed chart and a chart of where everything in the sky is today, or for the date in question for the prediction.
As you can see, this can get very complicated! For example, if you want to know the best time to make an investment you should compare your natal chart, your progressed chart and the chart of the time of incorporation of the business in which you want to invest and its progressed chart. Then you'd look for a day in the future when strong growth was indicated, such as one with the Moon in Scorpio. You'd have to compare everything else on that day to all of the other charts, though, in order to make sure you weren't going to have favorable indications in one area and unfavorable ones in another. You don't want to pick a date when the business does fine - by growing strongly with your money - but leaves you behind in the dust.
COMPLICATIONS, COMPLICATIONS...
As you see, this is a complicated game. When Jupiter, as it is in the sky, now transits (crosses) the position of Jupiter in your natal chart, things will be very favorable for you. Money will come your way. This would be a good time to buy a lottery ticket.
When Saturn transits your natal Saturn (called a Saturn return) you get a test. That's when you find out how well you've learned the lessons life has dished out to you up to that point. If you've been an open-minded and diligent scholar and have learned from your mistakes, your Saturn return marks the beginning of your period of greatest success. If you've continually avoided facing up to your problems, however, you're in for a very rough time. You may have the feeling you're repeating the same painful thing that happened before.
<#FROWN:F04\>That's not done with antiemetic drugs, they explain, because only 30 percent of postoperative patients become nauseous, and they worry about side effects, such as excessive sleepiness from a drug. With ginger, they found no side effects.
Then there's garlic. In January of this year, we told you about exciting research from Europe, where doctors found that doses of garlic powder appear to have a marked beneficial effect on cholesterol and blood pressure. Garlic research is proceeding in the United States, as well.
One area of interest is cancer prevention. At the UCLA School of Medicine, researchers added aged garlic extract to test tubes containing cancer cells from humans and mice. A week later, they saw that the cells' growth had been inhibited. The growth of healthy cells was not affected (Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research, March 1991).
At Pennsylvania State University, rats were fed garlic and also subjected to a chemical known to turn normal mammary cells cancerous. "In some studies," says the head of the nutrition department, John Milner, Ph.D., "we observed a 70 percent reduction in the number of tumors." Dr. Milner's best theory is that garlic inhibits cancer-causing chemicals from binding to DNA, the part of a cell that carries hereditary information.
In any event, Dr. Milner says, "this marked reduction places new emphasis on the importance of this condiment in our diet."
Speaking of diet, there's always the question of how to eat garlic. Some researchers advise eating your garlic raw, but now evidence suggests this isn't the only way.
Mahendra K. Jain, Ph.D., professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Delaware, says his work with Rafael Apitz, M.D., suggesting an antithrombosis role for garlic, leads him to prefer cooked garlic. Cooking promotes the formation of compounds that, in the lab, thin blood.
Robert I-San Lin, Ph.D., who served as chairman of the 1990 First World Congress of Garlic, says his two favorite forms are cooked and aged. He told us "aging garlic in vinegar or wine can drastically reduce the pungency and odor problem of raw garlic, while boiling makes garlic sweet." Sauting garlic does not always eliminate the pungency, and frying it can stink up your house.
The experts we talked to say that no one should treat a serious illness with garlic, but most are big believers in adding some to your diet as a possible helper in warding off problems a lot worse than garlic breath.
REVERSE DIABETES
A 12-step, recommended-daily-action plan that can help you drive the disease into retreat
DON'T BE SO DEFENSIVE. RECENT RESEARCH suggests that most people with diabetes would do well to assume an offensive position. That is, to commit to an aggressive daily-action plan designed not just to manage the disease and keep it from getting worse but to actually shift the disease process into reverse. Imagine requiring less medication to control your blood-sugar swings - or perhaps weaning yourself off medication altogether - while preventing the often crippling and deadly complications of diabetes. In fact, not only is this possible but, for people with non-insulin-dependent diabetes (also known as type-II diabetes), the results can be phenomenal. In a recent study, 701 people with type-II diabetes - all enrollees at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica, California - were asked to follow a challenging diet-and-exercise regimen. They ate a diet high in complex carbohydrates and fiber and very low in protein and fat. (The therapeutic diet consisted of about 10 percent of calories from fat compared with the typical American diet of 40 percent fat.) They also walked about 45 minutes each day and participated in a 40-to-50-minute exercise class five times a week.
At the outset, 207 of them were taking oral drugs to control their blood-sugar levels. Another 214, who had more advanced cases of diabetes, were on insulin injections. The rest were not on medication of any kind.
After three weeks on the aggressive program, however, 70 percent of the group on oral agents were able to discontinue their medication. Even those whose disease had progressed to the point where they required insulin benefited; 36 percent of them were able to go completely medication-free. Many in the study were also able to at least reduce their medication requirements.
In people with type-I diabetes, the pancreas produces no insulin at all. Type-I diabetics are dependent on insulin, usually from self-administered injections (although some are turning to new insulin pumps that are surgically implanted under their skin) to keep blood-sugar levels normal.
EARLY CATCH, BETTER RESULTS
The implications are clear. An aggressive diet-and-exercise program can have a major impact on the course of diabetes. And the earlier in the disease process you start making these lifestyle changes, the greater the potential benefits. "We know that genetic factors predispose certain people to diabetes. But all of the data suggest that lifestyle factors, particularly diet and exercise, can determine whether those genetic factors actually manifest in the disease," says James Barnard, Ph.D., professor of physiological science at the University of California at Los Angeles, one author of the study.
"By committing yourself to certain lifestyle changes, you may be able to reduce your need for medication - and possibly get off and stay off diabetes drugs for the rest of your life," he continues. "Plus, you may be able to avoid any complications."
The Pritikin-program participants saw all three of their heart-disease risk factors - total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides - drop dramatically. This is significant because diabetes can double, triple, even quadruple your risk for heart disease. In fact, it's the number-one cause of death among diabetics.
"Even type-I diabetics, who must rely on insulin injections, may benefit from a lifestyle approach such as the one described above," Dr. Barnard says. There's a chance that they can reduce the amount of insulin they need to keep their blood-sugar levels stable - and that may mean fewer daily injections. And they may also reduce their risk of heart disease and other complications.
TAKING CONTROL
The trouble is, some people with diabetes believe they can simply adjust their medications to compensate for dietary indiscretions. That's their idea of being in control. In fact, says Marie Gelato, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of endocrinology at SUNY Health Science Center at Stony Brook, "medications are an adjunct to - not a replacement for - a good diet and exercise program." Real control of diabetes comes from the ability to redirect the course of the disease through a proactive diet-and-exercise plan coupled with intelligent self-care.
But before you do anything, talk with your doctor. With his or her guidance, you can decide which of our 12 recommended daily actions might best help you achieve your health goals.
OUR RECOMMENDED DAILY ACTIONS
1. Monitor your blood-sugar levels throughout the day. "It's absolutely imprudent to adjust your diet, exercise schedule or medication simply on the basis of the way you feel," says James Pichert, Ph.D., associate professor of education in medicine at the diabetes research and training center at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
You can eliminate the guesswork about your diet by using do-it-yourself, at-home blood-glucose meters that analyze a sample of your blood (from a pricked finger).
A once-a-day blood-sugar test, scheduled at the same time every day, is the absolute minimum. Your doctor may also advise you to check your blood sugar after meals, and before and after exercise, too.
Be sure to log the results of each test in a special book (available from your doctor or at most drugstores). That allows you and your doctor to analyze the highs and lows and adjust your diet, exercise and medication accordingly, if necessary.
2. Keep a careful eye on the fat grams you consume. The American Diabetes Association recommends that you limit fat intake to under 30 percent of calories to redirect the course of the disease and prevent complications.
For one thing, fat calories contribute more to excess body weight than calories from any other source. And excess weight contributes to the development of type-II diabetes. Overweight is no small contributor, either. In early stages of type-II diabetes (characterized by a malfunction of the body's insulin-receptor cells), the loss of excess body weight is sometimes sufficient to reverse the degenerative diabetic process and restore function to the receptor cells.
A number of studies also have suggested that overweight diabetics are more likely to have associated risk factors, including high blood pressure, high triglycerides and high cholesterol. These factors, in turn, can lead to complications like heart disease and kidney damage.
In addition, dietary fat (especially saturated fat) with its artery-clogging, heart-sabotaging abilities, puts an extra burden on people with diabetes, who are already at higher risk for heart disease.
3. Aim for 40 grams of fiber from complex-carbohydrate foods. Fiber-rich complex carbohydrates break down into glucose more gradually and are slowly absorbed into the bloodstream. So they don't hit your bloodstream all at once, like simple sugars, preventing a postmeal blood-sugar surge. Combined with exercise, they're also a great way to slim down, which is a definite goal for many type-II diabetics.
Among the best sources of complex carbohydrates are starchy foods, like whole-grain breads, pasta and rice, or foods high in water-soluble fiber, like legumes, oats and barley. Studies indicate that these foods are especially slow-digesting. Water-soluble fiber turns into a gel when it hits your digestive system, increasing the time it takes for the sugar in food to be absorbed by your body.
4. Take a 45-minute exercise break every day, dividing your time between aerobic conditioning and resistance training. "Make exercise just as important and routine as brushing your teeth. Do it every day," Dr. Barnard says. Combined with a low-fat diet, there's no more powerful way to strengthen your resistance to diabetes. Prevention recently reported on a study of 5,990 men showing that, for every 500 calories burned per week (the equivalent of walking just 5 miles), the risk of developing type-II diabetes dropped 6 percent.
But the big returns were for the men who had at least one risk factor for the disease, like a family history of diabetes or excess body weight. Men in that high-risk group who burned 2,000 calories or more a week had 41 percent less risk compared with men who burned only 500 calories a week. That's about 45 minutes of brisk walking or stationary cycling.
What's more, recent research suggests that resistance training may help control blood-sugar levels even in type-I diabetics. Muscles apparently take up glucose greedily. And there's some evidence that when you build muscle, the muscle's insulin receptors on the cells, which store glucose, may grow in number, and this may enhance glucose utilization by the cells. That means you now have more room to store glucose. With less glucose in circulation, it's possible that insulin requirements may be reduced.
One note of caution: Check with your doctor before beginning any exercise program. And, if your program includes weight training, have your eyes checked regularly. Resistance training may cause surges in blood pressure, which could affect pressure in the eyes.
5. Consider supplementing your diet. A number of studies suggest that diabetics tend to run low on certain vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamins C and E. That's significant because there's increasing evidence that these antioxidant vitamins may protect diabetics from common complications, such as heart disease and kidney, eye and nerve damage.
"Because diabetics are prone to vascular disease, they may need to increase their intake of vitamin C," says Ishwarial Jialal, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Based on findings including his own, he believes diabetics should be sure to get 120 milligrams of vitamin C a day - twice the Recommended Dietary Allowance. "That won't cause any side effects, and it could be beneficial," he says.
Vitamin E may also prevent a process called protein glycosylation (gleye-caw-sil-A-shun). In a diabetic, this process may be involved in damaging proteins circulating in the blood.
<#FROWN:F05\>
Is There A Conspiracy To Keep Blacks Off Juries?
Recent cases have led many to believe that the American justice system is still far from its color-blind ideal
By Charles Whitaker
FOR the vast majority of Black Americans - and many sympathetic White Americans - the acquittal of the four White police officers charged with the brutal beating of motorist Rodney King cast in sharp relief the racist leanings of the nation's judicial system, particularly the process by which jurors are selected.
While most of us were taught in grammar school civics classes that the selection of a fair and impartial jury is the backbone of American jurisprudence, the King case - and other splashy court-room dramas that have recently held the nation's rapt attention - confirmed for many the feeling that the law is applied quite differently when either the defendant or the plaintiff/victim is Black.
Though the Supreme Court has attempted to address the issue of race-based jury selection, most recently in a June ruling that extended the ban on such practices to defense attorneys, some continue to find ways around the law.
Legal maneuverings in the King case, for example, helped the odds of seating an all-White jury. The trial was moved from ethnically diverse Los Angeles County (10.5 percent Black), where the beating occurred, to overwhelming White Simi Valley in Ventura County (only 2 percent Black).
In the court of public opinion, the change of venue and other high profile examples of under-representation or complete lack of representation of Blacks on juries have the distinct smell of pure racism.
"In the King case, in particular, the racial overtones are just shameful," says Miami attorney H.P. Smith, who has conducted seminars and workshops in the art and philosophy of jury selection for the National Bar Association. "In terms of jury selection, Blacks are clearly losing ground when it comes to being allowed to sit as the factual judges of innocence or guilt. We are at a point when justice is still peeping from under the blindfold that she is supposed to be wearing, and unfortunately what she is seeing is a system that still shuts the door of opportunity for Blacks to be involved in this great experiment called a trial by jury."
In barbershops and at lunch counters, the indignation is expressed in more blunt terms. Many speculate about the existence of a national conspiracy to keep Blacks out of the jury box, particularly in racially tinged cases.
Specifically, many courtroom watchers have expressed alarm at the scant number of Blacks selected for such highly visible cases as the Mike Tyson rape trial (in which there were only two Black jurors) and the trial of mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer (one Black juror).
While most attorneys and legal scholars are loath to subscribe to conspiracy theories, they uniformly maintain that a degree of racism continues to taint the jury selection process even in light of recent Supreme Court rulings that prohibit the dismissal of prospective jurors based on race.
"Prejudice is so pervasive in our society, you really don't need to look for a conspiracy," says Sharon McPhail, immediate past president of the National Bar Association, in explaining the persistence of race-based jury selection. "Any system that depends upon the behavior of human beings is going to be somewhat affected by the prejudices and biases of those human beings. Frankly, I don't know that you could design a process that would pull out the prejudices of the people selecting the jury."
Currently, the process works like this: A random and, in theory, ethnically representative pool of prospective jurors - culled in most jurisdictions from voter registration rolls - is impaneled and interviewed by opposing counselors. During the interview process, known as voir dire, the opposing attorneys attempt to root out persons with biases, fears or hostilities that would prevent a prospective juror from reaching a fair and impartial decision based on the facts presented at trial. Each side is allowed a specified number (depending upon the jurisdiction) of peremptory challenges.
What has traditionally happened in many criminal and personal injury cases, however, is that prosecutors and attorneys for deep-pocket defendants have sought, as a matter of course, to eliminate prospective Black jurors under the racist assumption that Blacks are, by nature, soft on criminals and quick to 'punish' large firms.
"For whatever reason, there is this perception that Black jurors will give away the farm or somewhat are more sympathetic to criminals," says McPhail. "And so you have these challenges based on unacceptable reasons such as race and gender."
Yet in a 1986 ruling (Batson v. Kentucky), the U.S. Supreme Court declared the use of race stereotypes in jury selection for criminal cases unconstitutional and held that prosecutors may be required to explain their objection to prospective jurors.
In 1991, the Court's ruling in Edmonton v. Leeville Concrete Co. extended its condemnation of race-based challenges to include civil suits as well. Then in June, the Court ruled in Georgia v. McCollum that defense attorneys also could not use race as a basis for peremptory challenges.
Since the advent of Batson and its legal progeny, many attorneys say they have, in the main, detected something of a change in the air. "Before Batson, I could walk into any courtroom in South Georgia and have a panel of 42 prospective jurors and maybe half a dozen Black males and females, and I'd know that the prosecutor, without thinking, would strike most of them from the pool," says Atlanta attorney Tony Axam, a member of the faculties of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy and the National College of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "That was both the philosophy and the practice of some sitting prosecutors and their young assistants who were trying cases. Batson has changed that."
Not everyone agrees that the changes have been all that significant, however.
"We still have the problem of prosecutors using peremptory challenges to strike Black jurors without a legitimate explanation," says Julius Chambers, executive counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "I don't know how widespread this is, but we've seen enough instances of this occurring to say that we should all be concerned about improprieties in the way juries are constituted."
Among the most common reasons used by prosecutors to exclude prospective Black jurors is the reasoning that a would-be juror and the defendant live in close proximity, making the juror less-than-impartial, prosecutors say. It is a line of reasoning that attorneys say defies all logic. "Who is going to be more concerned about crime in a given area that someone who's from the same neighborhood," says H.P. Smith. "If the person is guilty, I would want him prosecuted and off the streets where I live. If he's innocent, I'd want to see the right person found, so the reasoning just doesn't make sense."
That reasoning, particularly in light of the spate of high-profile trials, has also raised the ire of some Black Americans and heightened sensitivity to the jury selection process. But observers of the fury say Black Americans must do more than get angry; they must seize this opportunity to apply more pressure to keep the system honest.
"Batson is the vehicle the Supreme Court devised for ensuring fairness, but you have to give it bite," says Jackson, Miss., attorney Dennis Sweet, a lecturer at the Introductory Trial Advocacy Program at Harvard University and a member of the Jackson Board of Bar Commissioners. "Judges have to take a closer look at these challenges and make prosecutors and other attorneys give real reasons for excluding Blacks. Once you start getting the same explanations over and over and you start seeing a pattern of exclusion, then judges have to invoke Batson and deny these strikes."
Clearly, the racial tensions that continue to smolder in the wake of the Los Angeles riots have, for the moment, had some affect on judicial behavior. A Florida judge, for example, recently shifted the highly publicized trial of a Hispanic Miami police officer charged with the shooting death of a Black motorcyclist from Orlando to Tallahassee which has a Black population closer in number to that of Miami's.
Still, attorney'sattorneys say, the real key to courtroom fairness, however, is the seating of more Black judges. "You've got to believe that Black judges would be less likely to accept the legal mumbo jumbo that lawyers are likely to give," says H.P. Smith.
Similarly, many attorneys advocate changing the way jury pools are selected. Rather than selecting potential jurors from voter registration rolls or property tax rolls, some suggest impaneling jurors from driver's license rolls, a register that more accurately reflects the makeup of a community.
And Black Americans must understand the significance of jury selection and must be willing to serve. "We have to impress upon the Black community how very important jury service is," says Dennis Sweet. "You have to have people registering to vote and getting involved. The issue here is participation and fairness. Having Black people on juries brings cultural sensitivity into the jury room that can be very useful. When you have a jury that is representative, a decision can be reached that's fair to everybody involved."
Why HYPERTENSION Strikes Twice As Many Blacks As Whites
Racism and urban pressures may cause hypertension disparity between Blacks and Whites
By Karima A. Haynes
LIKE a predator silently stalking its prey, hypertension, or high blood pressure, strikes African-Americans at alarmingly higher rates than it does Whites, prompting medical researchers to look at environmental factors like racism, stress and diet as causes for the disparity.
For reasons that are hotly debated in medical circles, hypertension, according to the American Heart Assn., strikes twice as many Blacks as Whites. African-Americans also suffer from chronic hypertension nearly five to seven times more often than Whites. And interestingly, Black Americans have much higher rates of high blood pressure than Blacks in Africa, leading researchers to believe that the stress of living in America's inner cities plays a major role in triggering high blood pressure in Blacks with a genetic predisposition to the condition.
The number of Blacks between the ages of 45 and 64 years with chronic hypertension is 366.9 per 1,000 compared to 204.2 per 1,000 among Whites in the same age group, according to a 1990 study by the National Center for Health Statistics. Some medical experts blame the hypertension disparity on the condition being passed on from generation to generation. Others say African-Americans are disproportionately exposed to urban pressures and racism. And still others surmise that it is a combination of both factors.
A strong case has been made that racism itself is a major cause of hypertension among Black Americans. "There are many environmental factors associated with high blood pressure," says Dr. Robert F. Murray Jr., director of the division of medical genetics at the Howard University College of Medicine. "Because of the racism that exists in our society, people of darker pigment are discriminated against more than those who are fairer. Darker-skinned people undergo more streets because they feel powerless over their condition, particularly people in the inner city."
Dr. Clarence E. Grim of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine in Los Angeles theorizes that Black Americans are more susceptible to high blood pressure because of a sensitivity to salt inherited from some African slaves. The theory is that many slaves died on the passage from West Africa to the Americas and the Caribbean due to diarrhea and salt loss. Those slaves who carried genes that helped them to retain water and salt survived the journey and subsequently passed the genes on to their descendants.
If the theory holds true, Grim asserts, some 75 percent of the cases of hyper-tension among Blacks could be eliminated by reducing salt intake. "The exciting thing is that we could start wiping out this disease in the Black community by changing dietary salt intake and by prescribing diuretics (drugs that reduce salt and fluid retention)," Grim points out.
Still, there is a third school of thought that says both environment and heredity cause hypertension in Blacks.
<#FROWN:F06\>
HALF A MOUNTAIN...
The Matterhorn challenges our travel editor
By Charles N. Barnard.
I met Perrig in Switzerland more than two years ago. It was he who tempted me to think I might climb a certain mountain. (Which led to this adventure.) Perrig is not a climber himself; he is a former ski instructor, now a government official. But anyone living in Zermatt thinks inevitably of mountains. And of climbing them.
"We are surrounded here by the greatest concentration of 4,000-meter mountains in Europe," he said. "Twenty-nine." One had only to look out any window in town to see a great array of snow-frosted peaks - including the Matterhorn - standing guard above and around the valley of Zermatt. All had been conquered by climbers long ago, of course; mountaineers have been coming to this picturesque Alpine village for much more than a century. "All the same," said my enthusiastic friend, "to climb a 4,000-meter mountain - any one of them, even today - is a kind of achievement...."
My mind was doing funny, irresponsible things as Perrig talked. I could hear what he was saying, but I was communing with myself at the same time. Let's see. Four thousand meters? That's 13,200 feet. That isn't impossible. You were higher than that in Peru. You're in pretty good shape. You've even started lying about your age because you discovered you can get away with it. So why not think about a climb, you old coot? It might boost your morale.
"... Some of the fourthousanders are more difficult than others, of course," Perrig was saying and I heard myself answering, Of course, in an unfazed, age-39 tone. "You could try, for example, the Breithorn. It is 4,160 meters, but if you are quite fit, it should be no problem. I can introduce you to a guide who has taken clients up the Matterhorn more than 200 times. You couldn't be in better hands."
My imagination was racing. An aphorism came flashing back You don't stop playing because you get old. But you could get old if you stop playing. (Admittedly this bit of wisdom was meant to apply to romance, but why not mountain-climbing too?)
"Well, think about it," Perrig said, shaking hands as we parted. "If you ever want to give Breithorn a try, let me know." Give Breithorn a try, give Breithorn a try.... Hmmm. Time passed, as they say in stories, but this visit to Switzerland - this idea - refused to fade. Not because I believe Perrig really cares if I climb Breithorn or not - or even remembers our conversation. Not (forfend) because I think I have something to prove at this age - but there it is, the shimmering, inextinguishable thought: I must climb a 4,000-meter mountain and have done with it. What's the big fear? What would it take? A little extra conditioning. Then a day or so and it will be over. For life.
August, 1991
Dear Amand Perrig:
Great news! I will be coming back to Zermatt next month to do a magazine story. Will be arriving via Glacier Express from St. Moritz about the 15th. Do you remember the talk we had about doing a bit of mountaineering? I think you said September would be an ideal month. Can you set something up for me with that veteran guide you said you knew?
Oh, yes. In case you don't remember. The mountain we were talking about is Breithorn ...
I pack thermal underwear, sun goggles, sturdy gloves, a wool hat, lip balm, sweaters, hiking boots. And my clipping file - all the stories I have been saving about climbing in the Swiss Alps: "FOUR DIE ON MATTERHORN" ... "OLDEST MOUNTAIN GUIDE IS 88" ... THE CHALLENGE OF THE PEAKS." Also a great calendar photo of climbers near the summit of Breithorn, and a copy of Edward Whymper's classic Ascent of the Matterhorn, the story of the first successful climb to the summit of the famed mountain in 1865. Good reading for tonight on the plane.
I am early at the Swissair lounge. I find a cup of coffee, some sweet Swiss biscuits and a guide book I have not seen before - all about 'Alpinismo ... Bergsteigen ... Mountaineering.' It says most Zermatt climbs take two days. ("First day, ascent to the hut. Second day, climb in view.") It warns that good physical condition and equipment are indispensable. It cautions that fourthousanders should not be climbed without a guide. In a list of "classical high-Alpine climbs" I find my mountain: "Breithorn, ice-climbing, 4,164 meters, 45-degree pitch."
Well, I think, if I'm not ready now, it's too late to back out. The plane leaves in 15 minutes.
One cannot fly into Zermatt; there is no airport. Nor can one arrive by tour bus or drive into the town itself in any motor vehicle. Only the narrow-gauge trains of a private railroad arrive here after a spectacular journey through vertiginous gorges and mountain passes.
A gathering of small battery-powered carts and horse-drawn coaches meet each arriving train to pick up guests. The chauffeurs have the names of the leading hotels embroidered in gold on their caps: Mont Cervin, Schweizerhof, Monte Rosa, Alphubel. I signal my man, he rushes to relieve me of my luggage and off we drive, swiftly and electric-motor-silent, up half-mile Bahnhofstrasse, the main street.
If every weathered timber and stone of Zermatt - every Alpine meadow and herd of black-and-white cows - had been assembled by a theatrical set designer to represent the most idyllic of Swiss mountain villages, the result would be - well, Zermatt. The Sound of Music! Heidi-town! Geraniums tumbling from chalet balconies! Small, quaint hotels! Sidewalk cafs! The sweet scents of bratwurst steaming and pastries baking! The sound of cowbells echoing down from the hills. Skiers in brilliant colors striding back into town after a day on the slopes. Climbers in knickerbockers, ropes coiled unaffectedly over one shoulder, ice axes in hand. I take in the whole scene once again with affection.
To be a guest in a small Swiss hotel is to be a member of the family. Inn-keeping is as much a proprietary Swiss occupation as watch-, chocolate- or cheesemaking. Swiss hoteliers founded a profession in the remote valleys of this mountainous country more than a century ago. Now the Swiss manage great hotels in every corner of the world. In Zermatt, a guest is still greeted as one who has just survived an arduous and perhaps risky journey and deserves the best of care: a bed smothered in down comforters; a small, cozy lounge for a schnapps before dinner; a roaring log fire; a dining room where you will have your own table for as long as you stay. And a waitress who addresses you by name (but has the good manners not to announce her own). And, yes, your very own napkin ring.
Zermatt is a small town in both population (about 3,500) and style. I do not have to go looking for Perrig. A few minutes after dropping my bags at the hotel, I meet him by chance on the main street. "So! You have come for the Breithorn!" he exclaims, as if not more than two weeks, rather than two years, had passed. In this environment, under the shadow of the Matterhorn, I suddenly feel a little like an imposter. Well, yes, I say, perhaps. "No perhaps!" Perrig shouts. "We are waiting for you! Breithorn is waiting for you! We meet with Biener at five!"
Emil Biener is the guide who has climbed the Matterhorn more than 200 times. The three of us gather in a small restaurant. Three glasses of sherry, a toast to success, and then it all becomes very businesslike - the essential first discussion of "ze program." A few days will be allowed, to become accustomed to the altitude and to recover from jet lag. Perrig and Biener agree on some moderate mountain hiking for me.
I am conscious of Veteran Guide giving Greenhorn Client a preliminary checkout: "How old is this American, how fit, what temperament? He says he is here to climb Breithorn, but does he seem like someone I would take up a mountain, any mountain? We shall see."
First meeting is a time for the client to make a preliminary appraisal of the guide, too. Frankly, I am in awe of anyone who has climbed the Matterhorn once, to say nothing of 200 times. (I later learn even that figure is not extraordinary within the fraternity of approximately 50 Zermatt mountain guides.) Biener is a small, intense man with sharp blue eyes, thin gray hair and a leathery face. He is about my age and very explicit. "Tomorrow we walk," he says. "And I must see your boots."
From this moment and for the next few days, Emil Biener runs my life and manipulates my emotions.
It is raining this first morning and the day does not look promising for mountain hikes, but Guide Emil shows up at my hotel precisely on time. He examines my boots with displeasure. Too soft, he says, but they will do for now. I am wearing a favorite jacket that kept me warm even in Antarctica. Anxious to please, I point out to my new father-figure that my jacket is waterproof. "Nozzing iss vaterprooof!" Emil declares with a snort. I am put off balance already; I am doing everything wrong.
The floor of the valley at Zermatt is at about 1,620 meters. (One meter is three-feet-plus.) We give ourselves a 700-meter jump on today's itinerary by taking a fast ride on a funicular railroad tunneled through the mountains to a station named Sunnegga at 2,300 meters. When we emerge into daylight, the weather has improved slightly.
When we begin to walk, Emil leads the way along a stony trail through a treeless landscape. We are headed for a crossing of the Findelgletscher; we follow the moraine left behind by the retreating glacier over the past few centuries. It is like scrambling along the rim of a crater.
The sky remains overcast and there are occasional spits of rain. Emil stops now and then to survey the weather in all directions with binoculars. Once he points in the direction of the partially obscured Matterhorn and announces, "It is snowing at H<*_>o-umlaut<*/>rnlih<*_>u-umlaut<*/>tte." I take this to be a remark full of portent, if only I understood what.
Soon the glacial icefield begins to be visible several hundred feet below on our right. We begin a diagonal traverse down the inner slope of the moraine, stumbling through a boulder field. There is no trail here, only gravelly spaces between big rocks, rocks that move underfoot, and rocks that rumble.
(This is no piece of cake, I am thinking. I really must stop lying about my age - especially to myself.)
When we reach the edge of the ice, the cold breath of the glacier feels like the entrance to a frigid cave. Up close, Findelgletscher is a little frightening - a huge, craggy mass that makes groaning, growling sounds. Emil probes ahead with his ice axe: There is a crevasse. He dislodges some big rocks and they tumble into the void. After a pause, the stuff makes a big, muffled splash below; it's like having dropped several cement blocks into a deep well. Once we know where the crevasse is, we proceed.
Now the rain begins in earnest and Emil says we must wait. We find shelter under the overhang of a boulder about the size of a small house. A gurgling river of glacial melt rushes by. We pull up some flat stones and sit. A foggy vapor rolls off the glacier.
"What is H<*_>o-umlaut<*/>rnlih<*_>u-umlaut<*/>tte?" I ask while we wait. Emil says it is the first climbers' hut on the way up the Matterhorn; it's also the last. "At three-two," he says. That means 3,200 meters - more than 10,000 feet.
The rain lets up after 20 minutes and Emil says it is time to put on crampons, the steel-toothed footgear that make it possible to walk or climb on ice.
<#FROWN:F07\>
Waste vs. waste
David Scott
Three new products made from waste materials promise low-cost, speedy cleanups for oil spills.
At the University of Texas in Austin, two chemical engineering professors have invented tiny glass beads, manufactured from fly ash, that float on oil and stick to it. The hollow microbeads, about the thickness of a human hair, are partially coated with titanium dioxide - a nontoxic white pigment used in paint.
The coating acts as a semiconductor: struck by sunlight, it provides the energy needed to oxidize oil. The oxidized oil then dissolves in the ocean, where it can be quickly consumed by naturally occurring bacteria. Adam Heller, one of the inventors, estimates that a ton of beads could dissolve about 35 tons of oil per week.
The oil-soaked beads, unlike thin layers of oil, can be ignited for even faster cleanups. The end product resembles white sand and is harmless, says Heller.
A British farmer has devised another simple and inexpensive means of countering oil spills. Ten years ago, Kenneth Frogbrook discovered he could use straw to clean seabirds soaked with oil. From this chance discovery, he invented Frogmat. "It's a ribbon of compacted straw that is stapled between two skins of nylon mesh," he explains.
To hasten cleanup after an oil spill, mobile Frogmat factories could be rushed to the scene of the accident. With funding from the British government's Marine Pollution Control Unit, Frogbrook has already designed and built several trailer-mounted machines that chop baled straw, use a belt conveyor to feed the straw between mesh coverings, and shape the straw into mats that are three inches thick and four feet wide.
"This ribbon is churned out continuously at the rate of 11 yards per minute, or nine miles a day. It can be coiled in 330-foot lengths weighing 560 pounds," says Frogbrook, "then unrolled along the beach or on the water, where the straw floats even when fully saturated." Used mats can be rolled up to squeeze out the oil, and then they can be incinerated.
A comparable American system uses a sawdust to soak up oil - an idea borrowed form saloon owners who sprinkle sawdust on floors to absorb spilled beer. Heat-treatment of ordinary sawdust alters its porous structure so it absorbs oil but repels water. The concept was developed by Thomas B. Reed, a research professor at the Colorado School of Mines.
Called Sea Sweep, the treated sawdust is spread on the water from a boat or aircraft. It can float indefinitely, storing 80 percent of its own volume in oil while congealing into clumps. The oily dust is recovered by a scoop or boom, or swept to a collection point for removal by suction or mechanical means. Sea Sweep can be processed to extract most of the crude, then burned as an industrial fuel.
Laser watchdog
P.J. Skerrett
Barry Commoner's fourth law of ecology - there's no such thing as a free lunch - definitely applies to burning solid waste instead of burying it in overburdened landfills. Incineration may solve disposal problems and generate electricity to boot, but it can also create toxic emissions. Currently, emissions monitoring is a time-consuming process that at best "gives you a good snapshot of what happened a couple of weeks ago when you took the samples," explains Terill Cool, a physics professor at Cornell University who is developing a laser system that can spit out results in less than two hours.
The Cornell monitor uses a laser to excite incinerator gases, but only after a sample of smokestack gases has been flash-cooled to less than - 380<*_>degree<*/>F in a vacuum flask. The detector searches for approximately two dozen chemicals that always form along with dioxins and other suspected carcinogens, but in higher concentrations.
An even faster sensor designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) detects and tracks compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PACs) from the instant they form deep in an incinerator's flame. The technique, called laser-induced fluorescence, targets PACs because "they are the real villains in emissions," says J<*_>a-acute<*/>nos Ber, a professor of chemical engineering. Not only are PACs carcinogenic, but their presence indicates that hard-to-detect dioxins are being produced as the stack gases cool.
Through a tiny pie-shaped slit in MIT's huge test incinerator, sparkling blue light from an argon-ion laser slices into the roaring orange flame. Any PACs hit by the laser absorb some of its energy, then release it at characteristic wavelengths. A detector outside the incinerator filters out background radiation from the 2,200<*_>degree<*/>F flame and picks up the distinctive PAC 'signatures'.
Under real operating conditions, a surge of these hardy compounds could be destroyed by releasing a blast of oxygen or hydrogen peroxide, says Ber. Or the incinerator gases could be diverted through special scrubbers.
An industrial-scale prototype is now under construction at a municipal power plant in D<*_>u-umlaut<*/>sseldorf, Germany. Ber expects the laser detector system to cost around $100,000.
The Great (imported) Lakes
Mark D. Uehling
Beloved though they are, the Great Lakes have become great aquariums: holding ponds for species introduced by humans. In a report prepared for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a team led by Edward L. Mills of the Cornell University Biological Field Station has identified 136 species from Europe, the Pacific, and elsewhere that thrive in the world's largest expanse of fresh water.
Some species were released accidentally by ships dumping ballast water; others were introduced deliberately to provide good fishing. "Probably most of the biomass in the Great Lake is exotic," says Mills. "It's a very artificial system now."
Alewives, for example, decimated native yellow perch and reproduced so well that they washed ashore by the millions in the 1960s. Today the same fish are struggling to survive - and fed at public expense because they are the prey of choice for salmon, another immigrant. New-comers themselves, the finicky salmon may not have had enough time to evolve a taste for indigenous species, Mills speculates.
For the moment, the most despised import is the amazingly fecund zebra mussel, each of which generates 30,000 eggs a year. The small, clamlike pests are clogging intake valves at power plants throughout the region. Their removal could cost $2 billion annually. Unable to keep up by scraping off clumps of the mollusks, some utilities treat nearby water with chlorine to kill the creatures. But a company specializing in naval research seems to have found a more environmentally sound approach. Sonalysts, Inc. in Waterford, Conn., discovered that ultra-sound waves shatter the mussels at a larval stage.
Less notorious exotic species will have severe biological ramifications in the Great Lakes too. A tall aquatic weed, purple loosestrife, is edging out native cattails and marsh grasses. Inedible to migrating birds, loosestrife is already impervious to herbicides and expanding its range. And the ruffe, a fish that flourishes at a variety of temperatures, is well established in Lake Superior, where it is disrupting what is left of the natural ecological balance. The ruffe is too spiny to be a tempting meal for predators.
Biosphere J
Dennis Normile
First there was Biosphere - Earth. Then there was Biosphere II - a small replica of Earth ['Inside Biosphere II,' Nov. '90]. And soon there will be Biosphere J - the unofficial name of a research project being planned by Japan's Science and Technology Agency.
The project's purpose is to determine how radioactive elements move through an ecosystem. Agency official Toshinori Kanno emphasizes that there are no current plans to use radioactive material at Biosphere J. The aim is to understand the food chain more clearly and how elements move through it by studying closed systems. Researchers may then infer how radioactive material could move through a larger ecosystem. That understanding eventually could lead to better safety measures at nuclear power plants.
Kanno says the agency is not ruling out the possibility of using trace amounts of radioactive elements in the future. Japan is still committed to nuclear power, although the public is increasingly uneasy about it.
Unlike Biosphere II, which is a one-of-a-kind environment, Biosphere J will probably contain two nearly identical closed systems. One will serve as the experimental system while the other will be a control system. The agency would like to be able to manipulate the concentrations of atmospheric gases and other environmental conditions to observe the response.
Enclosed within Biosphere J will be a variety of small animals, microorganisms, and plants. It is likely that humans will also be enclosed for extended periods. Preliminary designs call for sealed areas of up to 1,200 square yards. Biosphere J is expected to cost approximately $30 million and is targeted for completion in 1995.
Third World wonder tree
Robert Langreth
This tree sounds too good to be true: Its twigs prevent tooth decay, its oil is a strong contraceptive, its seeds produce a safe pesticide, and it is so hardy that it grows even in drought-stricken parts of the Third World.
But the tree really exists, and it's called the neem. Indians have recognized the neem's value for centuries, but only recently have scientists begun to confirm the folklore about the tropical evergreen, a relative of mahagony. Now "even the most cautious of researchers are saying that the neem deserves to be called a wonder tree," reports Noel Vietmeyer, the director of a National Research Council study on the neem.
In India, where the tree originated, it is used for so many curative purposes that some call it "the village pharmacy," the report says. Investigations show that chemicals from the tree may kill athlete's foot-type fungi, block ringworms, and prevent the spread of a crippling tropical parasite. Brushing one's teeth with neem twigs seems to deter gum disease, although scientists aren't sure why. And natural pesticides can be extracted from the neem's seeds (see 'HNF,' this issue).
Research on animals and humans indicates that neem oil is a potent spermicide, according to the National Research Council. Such a contraceptive offers several advantages for developing nations: Neem oil is cheap, nontoxic and easy to extract.
Yet another use for the neem tree is in reforestation. "Planting neem on a large scale might ... improve the declining ecosystems of many areas considered fairly hopeless," the report says. The neem provides firewood and shade and prevents erosion.
Strategic offense initiative
M.D.U.
Scientists have adapted high-energy weapons, originally designed for Strategic Defense Initiative research, to zap hazardous stews bubbling up at hundreds of industrial and military installations where water is contaminated by solvents and organic chemicals. The scientists are fighting waste with million-volt electron beams and high-intensity X-rays.
"We call this an equal opportunity destroyer - it attacks a broad spectrum of wastes," says Louis Rosocha, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. His electron beam annihilates trichloroethylene, carbon tetrachloride, phenols, and vinyl chlorides.
In California, physicist Stephan Matthews has achieved similar results with X-rays at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His machines can deliver radiation several hundred times more intense than that used by doctors and dentists. Unlike electron beams, the X-rays can penetrate steel drums used to store toxic chemicals.
Both beams shatter the chemical bonds in water. The resulting molecular shrapnel then reacts with contaminants to form more benign chemical debris. "We're hardening the water, basically," Matthews says, because the main byproducts are harmless salts.
Though others physicists laid the groundwork for such research with experiments using radioactive cobalt, today's beam machines are safe when turned off. And neither produces any sludge that must be treated or stored.
In Miami one electron beam is already operating on a large scale. It targets contaminated water cascading over a short ledge at a rate of 120 gallons per minute. Bombarding the waterfall, the beam can obliterate 99 percent of the most common solvents found at Superfund sites.
The only residues are minute levels of formaldehyde and formic acid. "We found the concentrations are a hundred times lower than those in a common cola and a recent Beaujolais," explains Bill Cooper of Florida International University. "I wouldn't drink this water, but I would have no hesitation about using it for irrigation or releasing it into the environment.
<#FROWN:F08\>
The Children
I am five. The July sun shines on my shoulders. I am wearing a dress I have never seen before, one I don't remember putting on. The door opens and a little girl runs to me, her face delighted. I have never seen her before. I am completely terrified and try to hide behind my astonished and irritated mother.
"But she's your best friend!" my mother says, and tells me that I played at the girl's house just yesterday. I don't remember. When my mother tells me her name, I've never heard it before.
Other children arrive. I remember some of them, but from long ago. They're older now. They've grown. Some have lost their teeth.
I pretend that everything is all right.
At night I lie awake as I have for years, listening. I hear footsteps coming down the hall. I hold my breath. I watch the edge of the door to my bedroom. I watch for the hand that will push it open. If it is my mother's hand or my father's, I am all right. For now. If it is the hand of the woman who lives with us and sticks things into me, I move out of my body. I disappear into a painting on the wall, into my alarm clock with its rocking Gene Autry figure, into imaginary landscapes. Usually I come back when the woman leaves. But not always.
I am eight. I have spoken French from the time I was three. I attended a French kindergarten, and now the Lyce Fran<*_>c-cedille<*/>ais. I have just spent the summer in France. My French is fluent when we leave Nice. Four days later, after my return to the woman who hurts me, I can no longer understand or speak a single word of French. Sitting at my gouged wooden desk, my classmates sniggering around me, I feel terrified and ashamed, certain that whatever is wrong is my fault.
She told me she would cut out my tongue. She told me I would forget. I remember how tall she was, how she wore her hair pulled back with wisps breaking loose at the temples. I knew then that I would never forget.
I am 40. There are things I have always remembered, things I have forgotten, things that exist in shadows only, that slip away when I try to think about them. I can't remember all that she did that sent me 'away.' Nor do I know what I was doing while I was 'away.' I only know that these episodes began with periods of abuse so frightening, painful, and humiliating that I left my body and parts of my mind.
I rarely talk about what happened to me. I have never discussed the details with my parents, my husband, or anyone else. Whenever I think of telling, she returns in my dreams.
I dream that I am a child and she chases me with a sharp knife, catches me, and gouges out my eyes. I dream that I have to protect little children at night, even though I am alone and a child myself. I tuck in the other children and get into my bed. Her arm reaches for me and pulls me down. I dream that I run for help, enter a phone booth, hear a dial tone. When I reach up I see the phone has been torn from the wall. I dream of animals skinned alive while I scream.
Sometimes when I sleep I stop breathing and can't make myself start until I wake gasping, my fingers blue.
Incest can happen to anyone: to rich and to poor; to whites, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists. It happens to girls and to boys, to the gifted and to the disabled. It happens to children whose parents neglect them, and those - like me - whose parents love and care for them.
What exactly is incest? The definition that I use in this article is: any sexual abuse of a child by a relative or other person in a position of trust and authority over the child. It is the violation of the child where he or she lives - literally and metaphorically. A child molested by a stranger can run home for help and comfort. A victim of incest cannot.
Versions of this definition are widely used outside the courtroom by therapists and researchers. In court, incest definitions vary from state to state. In many states, the law requires that for incest to have taken place, vaginal penetration must be proved. So if a father rapes his child anally or orally he may be guilty of child sexual abuse but may not, legally, be guilty of incest.
I believe that if incest is to be understood and fought effectively, it is imperative that the definition commonly held among therapists and researchers - the definition I have given here - be generally accepted by the courts and public. I am not alone in this belief. As therapist E. Sue Bloom, for one, writes in Secret Survivors: Uncovering Incest and Its Aftereffects in Women: "If we are to understand incest, we must look not at the blood bond, but at the emotional bond between the victim and the perpetrator. ... The important criterion is whether there is a real relationship in the experience of the child."
"The crucial psychosocial dynamic is the familial relationship between the incest participants," adds Suzanne M. Sgroi, M.D., director of the Saint Joseph College's Institute for Child Sexual Abuse Intervention in West Hartford, Connecticut, writing in the Handbook of Clinical Intervention in Child Sexual Abuse. "The presence or absence of a blood relationship between incest participants is of far less significance than the kinship roles they occupy."
Incest happens between father and daughter, father and son, mother and daughter, mother and son. It also happens between stepparents and stepchildren, between grandparents and grandchildren, between aunts and uncles and their nieces and nephews. It can also happen by proxy, when live-in help abuses or a parent's lover is the abuser; though there is no blood or legal relationship, the child is betrayed and violated within the context of family.
No one knows how many incest victims there are. No definite random studies on incest involving a cross section of respondents have been undertaken. No accurate collection systems for gathering information exist. The statistics change depending on a number of variables: the population surveyed, the bias of the researcher, the sensitivity of the questions, and the definition of incest used. This is an area "where each question becomes a dispute and every answer an insult," writes Roland Summit, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California, in his introduction to Sexual Abuse of Young Children. "The expert in child sexual abuse today may be an ignoramus tomorrow."
As recently as the early '70s, experts in the psychiatric community stated that there were only 1 to 5 cases of incest per one million people. When I began work on this article, I thought that maybe one person in a hundred was an incest victim. How wrong I was. Sometimes called 'rape by extortion,' incest is about betrayal of trust, and it accounts for most child sexual abuse by far. To be specific: In 1977, Diana E.H. Russell, Ph.D., professor emeritus at Mills College in Oakland, California, and author of The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women and Sexual Exploitation: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse and Workplace Harassment, questioned 930 San Francisco women and found that 38 percent had been sexually abused by the time they had reached the age of 18. She further found that of those women who were victims, 89 percent were abused by relatives or family acquaintances. Using Russell's figures as my guide - they are widely cited by other authorities in the field and have been duplicated in other studies - the estimate of the incidence of incest that I came up with is one in three; which is to say that incest happens to about one person in three before the age of 18.
Incestuous acts range from voyeurism and exhibitionism to masturbation, to rape and sodomy, to bestiality, to ritualized torture in cults. Incest may or may not include penetration, may or may not be violent. It may happen only once or continue for decades. It usually exists in secret, but not always.
Kim Shaffir was four and a half years old when her divorced mother remarried. Her stepfather, John Hairsine, showed Kim pornographic photographs and read aloud to her from pornographic novels. He took Polaroids of himself and Kim's mother having sex and showed Kim the pictures. He arranged for her to watch him and her mother having intercourse; he told her when they would be doing it and left the door open. Hairsine kept Kim quiet with the threat that if she told anyone, her mother would send her away.
From exhibitionism and voyeurism, Hairsine moved on to fondling. He made Kim perform oral sex on him. Then he forced her to have anal sex. As he had photographed himself with her mother, he now photographed himself with Kim.
When Kim was 13 her mother discovered the blurred backings of the Polaroid pictures of her husband and Kim. She broke the camera as a symbolic statement. "We're going to put it all behind us," she announced. But she was wrong.
Hairsine made peepholes throughout their Maryland house so he could spy on Kim. He drilled through the bathroom door. Kim repeatedly stuffed the hole with soap and toilet paper, which he would remove and she would replace. For three years she tried to avoid showering when her mother was out of the house.
Every morning, under the guise of waking her for school, Hairsine entered her room and masturbated in her presence. Kim, now 30 and living in Washington, D.C., says, "That's how I'd wake up, to him coming into a dish towel as he stood by my bed."
One reason for the imprecise nature of the incest statistics is that when children try to tell, they aren't believed. Another is that many victims don't recognize certain behaviors as abusive. My parents would never have let anyone abuse me - if they had known. They didn't know because I didn't know to tell them.
Small children understand very little about sex. Even kids who use 'dirty' words often don't understand what those words mean. And as little as they know about normal sex, they know less about deviant sex. They simply trust that whatever happens to them at the hands of those who take care of them is supposed to happen. Children know that adults have absolute power over them, and even in the face of the most awful abuse, they will obey.
The victim who does tell is almost always asked: Why didn't you tell sooner? The answers are:
I didn't know anything was wrong.
I didn't know it was illegal.
I didn't know who to tell.
I did tell and no one believed me.
I was ashamed.
I was scared.
The abuser keeps the incest secret through threats:
If you tell, I will kill you.
If you tell, you'll be sent away.
If you tell, I'll kill your little sister.
If you tell, I'll molest your little brother.
If you tell, I'll kill your dog.
If you tell, it will kill your mother.
If you tell, no one will believe you.
If you tell, then you will go to the insane asylum.
If you tell, I'll go to jail and you'll starve.
If you tell, they'll give you to someone who will really hurt you.
If you tell, you'll go to hell.
If you tell, I won't love you anymore.
Many abusers make good on their threats, but most don't need to. "Small creatures deal with overwhelming threat by freezing, pretending to be asleep, and playing possum," says Dr. Roland Summit, the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center psychiatrist who, in a paper titled 'The Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome,' sets forth a widely accepted explanation of how children behave when molested.
<#FROWN:F09\>
NO WOMAN'S LAND
80 PERCENT OF THE WORLD'S REFUGEES ARE WOMEN AND CHILDREN. HOW DO WE MAKE THEM VISIBLE? AND HOW DO WE CHANGE BAND-AID RESPONSES INTO REAL SOLUTIONS?
by Marcia Ann Gillespie
IMAGINE THAT YOU ARE STANDING ON a mountaintop, looking out on a vast plain where as many as 20 million people stand, bodies touching. As far as your eye can see, there are people, their numbers more than the combined populations of Los Angeles and New York City. An estimated 20 million who have one thing in common: they are all known as refugees. Now add the 23 million displaced within their homelands. Homeless: Liberians fleeing civil war and tribal persecutions, Cambodians who fled the killing fields. Haitian and Vietnamese boat people running from hunger, running for freedom. Muslims (and some Christians) forced out of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Serbs calling for 'ethnic cleansing.' Palestinians in limbo for more than 40 years. Somalis, Ethiopians, and Sudanese driven out by war and drought. Afghans, from a country that became a political pawn now warring against itself. Among this vast sprawl of humanity are people belonging to ethnic and tribal groups few in the industrialized world have ever heard of: the Hmong, the Karen, the Mon, the Saharawi, the Afar, the Tutsi. People from countries many of us might be hard-pressed to locate on a map: Rwanda, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Guatemala, Eritrea.
According to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a "person who owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion, or belonging to a particular social group, is outside the country of his [sic] nationality." Developed in response to the upheavals of World War II, that definition fails to define all the circumstances that conspire to create refugees: political gamesmanship, civil wars, tribal conflicts, patriarchal 'customs,' homophobic persecution, repression, oppression, drought, famine, acts of genocide, economics, a knock at midnight ...
Bad enough that the definition fails to account for many of the key reasons people must flee their homes; worse that the Western nations that drafted the convention refused to incorporate the universal right to asylum. As a result, politics plays a key role in the decision-making process. For example, people fleeing Communist regimes during the Cold War were almost automatically welcomed by the West, particularly the United States - which remains disinclined to grant asylum to those fleeing repressive regimes it supports.
While the West has reserved the right to pick and choose what individuals and groups would legally be allowed to cross or remain within its borders, the Organization of African Unity, an organization representing some of the world's poorest nations, adopted a convention in 1969 expanding the definition of refugees and the reasons why they flee. Yet the United Kingdom and the United States during the last 25 years have blatantly pursued policies directed at keeping refugees out. Now Germany, once noted for its open-door policy, has adopted a similar drawbridge approach. Facing the task of rebuilding the East, its economy no longer booming, Germany has moved to bar refugees and deport those deemed illegal immigrants. Violence and hate campaigns directed toward immigrants and refugees continue to rise in France, Germany, and the U.K., and in the U.S., 'America firsters' cry for walls, electrified fences, and shoot-to-kill polices to close off the southern border.
Yet the number of refugees continues to soar. And more than 80 percent of them are women and children. Now you see them, now you don't. Here, a Somalian woman, eyes numbed by grief and fear and hunger. There, a Cambodian woman, walking cautiously down a Los Angeles street with a white cane. She has witnessed loved ones murdered before her eyes; in a form of self-protection, her mind no longer allows her eyes to see. Rarely do these women ever seem to speak for themselves, especially the vast majority who live in the world's refugee camps. Those who do, tell terrifying stories about the situations that forced them to flee, about the journey of flight itself.
"I first saw the Nicaraguan woman coming across the lawn from the south security post. She walked quickly, at a shopkeeper's purposeful pace. Her skirt, which was still wet at the hem from crossing the river, was too long and her low-heeled pumps were stretched out of shape by the journey, gapped at the instep ....
"In the security of white uniforms and the smell of antiseptics, [she] told of her experience on the other side of the border, of the men who had violated her, of how she had wept and bled and wandered for a month, alone at first, then working here and there while the physical wounds healed and the shame receded and she made herself ready to try again to cross the river ....
"The nurse's aide ... said that there are places in Mexico on the way to the border where every woman who passes through is raped." (Excerpted from 'Latinos: Biography of a People,' by Earl Shorris; W.W. Norton, 1992.)
When individuals, families, or groups are targeted, women's bodies become the battleground. Women are routinely tortured and maimed, and rape is often used as a primary terror tactic. At one Bosnian refugee center, 40 Muslim women told a New York Newsday reporter that they had been attacked by Serb forces who were under orders to rape them. Females of all ages are preyed upon by guards at borders and at refugee camps, armed men in and out of uniform, officials, pirates, male refugees.
All too often the volatile conditions that create refugees occur in some of the world's poorest places. Neighboring countries are often ill-equipped to provide for the large numbers of people pouring across their borders. Some are unable or unwilling to absorb them, or remain hostile to their presence. But the world's wealthy nations are even less hospitable these days. In Geneva in 1989, 60 countries gathered to design the Comprehensive Plan of Action. Taking their lead from British policy, the assembled nations decided that some people were 'economic' rather than genuine refugees - and as such could, in effect, be forcibly returned if voluntary repatriation failed. Adapted specifically to aid Singapore, Thailand, and Hong Kong (which wanted to reverse the tide of Vietnamese refugees), this very calculated closed-door policy has since been used by other nations. But the United States took it one step further, when it moved to intercept and return boatloads of Haitian refugees, unilaterally deciding - without benefit of hearings - that all fleeing Haitians were automatically 'economic refugees.'
If the door to asylum is closing in the industrialized world to those classified as 'economic refugees,' it has never truly opened to women fleeing gender persecution or those who break social taboos, or refuse to honor certain 'cultural traditions.' Women's well-founded fears of sexual abuse, of rape, and their knowledge that these are frequent methods of gender-directed 'repression' are not normally considered just grounds for asylum. Take the case of Catalina Mejia. Accused of being a guerrilla in El Salvador, she was raped by a soldier; twice more during an 18-month period she was stopped at military checkpoints and accused of being a guerrilla. But her application for political asylum in the United States was denied by a judge who concluded that her being raped was not an act of persecution. Last year, France's Commission for Appeals of Refugees became the first in modern history to acknowledge 'female circumcision' as a form of persecution under the Geneva Conventions (which offer protection from 'torture' only if it is administered by the state). But no asylum was given to Aminata Diop (see Ms., January/February 1992), the woman who filed the appeal. Diop, a Malian, was denied because she'd failed to seek help form the very same authorities in her own country who, by not outlawing it, effectively sanction female mutilation.
Refugee camps are usually situated by the host country in bleak, sparsely populated areas close to the border. The prison-like settings of many camps serve as a constant reminder that the people being housed are unwanted. Some camps are enclosed compounds surrounded by barbed wire fencing, with armed guards at the perimeters. Unrelated families, traditional enemies, unprotected women and children, are forced to share sleeping areas. The newer the camp, the harsher the conditions. Sanitation facilities are often minimal; the stench from latrines and open refuse trenches pollutes the air. The circumstances that forced people to flee and the rigors of the journey itself often result in refugees arriving at these camps severely debilitated. Many arrive in advanced stages of starvation, as was the case this summer when Somalian and Sudanese refugee children were literally dying while waiting in food lines in camps in northern Kenya.
More than half of the world's refugees are totally dependent on relief agencies for the basic necessities. The remoteness of campsites, the numbers of refugees and their rate of flight, turmoil in the surrounding region, money, internal and external politics - are all factors in the relief efforts. If refugees are lucky, what they receive provides enough for bare subsistence. And in today's world the largess of major donor countries has diminished. Private funding of relief work relies heavily on the compassion of the general public in the wealthy nations. Donor fatigue is increasing in part because of economic fears at home, as well as in reaction to the waves of appeals. Adding to the problem is the spotlight effect that happens when media attention is diverted from one refugee crisis to another. As funding shrinks, agencies are hard-pressed to provide even minimal supplies. One study this year indicated that the nutritional value of refugee rations is less than what dogs are fed in the industrialized world. Is it any wonder that the principal cause of death in refugee camps is malnutrition?
Even when food is available, women and children are often malnourished. Given that food in these situations is a source of power and control, it should come as no surprise to learn that usually men are the ones consulted on food distribution. Women, who traditionally do the cooking and are most aware of their families' nutritional needs, are rarely consulted, much less put in charge. If by tradition women and children are expected to eat after the men do, and the supply is inadequate, they go without. It is not uncommon to find women being forced to submit to sexual demands in exchange for food.
The health problems women and children routinely experience in the 'developing world' are magnified here. Children are affected by outbreaks of scurvy and pellagra. Anemic pregnant women are at high risk of hemorrhaging during childbirth, and their infants often have low birth weights and suffer from a host of deficiencies. Sometimes babies just fail to thrive. And because women and children are usually the water carriers, they are particularly vulnerable to waterborne diseases, such as cholera and dysentery.
But because women's health needs are addressed mainly in the context of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering, other problems often go undetected or ignored. It is not uncommon for sexually transmitted diseases, precancerous and cancerous conditions, infections, genital mutilations, and other traumas to go undetected. AIDS education and testing, as well as rape counseling, are virtually nonexistent in many refugee settings. Family planning services and birth control are often unavailable, as are female health providers.
The most effective health programs focus on preventive medicine and build a strong base of community programs. For example, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East has created programs that specifically address maternal and child health care, provide immunization and supplementary feeding, and family planning programs, as well as health education and improved sanitation. Key to UNRWA's success has been the emphasis on the needs of women and children, and its involvement in empowering communities, and women specifically, to speak, plan, and act in their own behalf.
According to 'World Refugee Survey,' a study of 111 Central American refugee women conducted by the International Catholic Child Bureau in Washington, D.C., found "85 percent to have been the victims of at least one traumatic event in their home country, and the average woman to have experienced 3.3 events.
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CHEATING FATE
At death's door, some people mysteriously take a turn for the better. What does the body know that medicine can't explain?
BY STEPHEN S. HALL
STANLEY GERBACICH staggered into the Veterans Administration Medical Center in West Haven, Connecticut, one day in January 1967, desperately ill with a raging fever of about 104 degrees. He was a quiet, balding man of 52 years, a jewelry repairman, married with one child, and, as he would soon learn, dying of a terrible disease.
His West Haven doctors poked him and prodded him and ran all the usual tests. They quickly discovered that his blood count was perilously low, and when they slipped a needle into his pelvic bone, they found that the body's blood-making apparatus, the marrow, was overrun with rogue cancer cells known as blasts. The attending physician on the case was Rose Papac, and as she reviewed all the test results, everything added up to a diagnosis of a quick and deadly cancer of the blood known as acute myelomonocytic leukemia. Papac, trained as a hematologist and oncologist, knew only too well that Stanley Gerbacich's chances of survival were nil.
"Without response to treatment, three months was the median survival rate," Papac recalled recently, sitting in her office at the Yale University School of Medicine, where she is a professor of oncology. "With a complete response to treatment, the prognosis would be about one year."
Papac decided to try to buy Gerbacich a little time with chemotherapy. So the following day, the West Haven doctors started him on two drugs considered the treatment of choice in those days, 6-mercaptopurine and prednisone - now known to be, at best, minimally effective in slowing the disease.
The orders were for 50 milligrams 'q.i.d.' (meaning quarter in die, or four times a day), and no one was terribly surprised when Gerbacich's condition failed to improve the following week. Indeed, his disease was progressing exactly as predicted - rapidly and lethally. But then there occurred a serendipitous (and perhaps even irrelevant) turn of events.
"When a new intern took over the case ten days later, he read the treatment orders as 'q.d.,' or once a day, instead of four times a day," says Papac, recalling how, his doctors unaware, Gerbacich ended up with one-fourth the recommended dose. "But then his blood counts came up to normal, and he was less anemic, and we became aware that he was getting better." Over the next two weeks, his fever broke and color returned to his face. The most startling transformation, however, could be glimpsed only with a microscope: All those abnormal cells choking Stanley Gerbacich's bone marrow had simply vanished. "A once-in-a-lifetime experience," Papac says, remembering the sight.
Two months later, having received a quarter of the normal dose of an almost useless medication for an incurable disease, Stanley Gerbacich walked out of the VA hospital and embarked on the second part of his life. "He has never relapsed," Papac says. Twenty-five years later, Stanley Gerbacich is alive and well and still exchanging Christmas cards with Rose Papac every year.
Such rare and improbable medical reversals go by the name of spontaneous regression or spontaneous remission. They are medical flukes, unpredictable and inexplicable, bright isolated shafts of sunlight cutting across the grim, gray statistical tables of survival rates. To many doctors, they are distracting and bothersome aberrations; says one prominent oncologist, "I think you'd have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than of having a spontaneous remission of cancer." To others, they are "whispers of nature," infrequent but tantalizing clues about the ways the human body can rally itself to fend off mortal disease. If only we had the ears to discern these whispers, goes the argument, we might discover revolutionary new approaches to medical treatment and healing.
But at this juncture in the popular re-telling of cases, the plot typically takes one of two turns, both of them dead ends. Many physicians simply dismiss the original diagnosis as flawed; it wasn't a case of spontaneous remission, they conclude, the doctors just blew the diagnosis. In the other direction lie the "cancer quacks," as Rose Papac calls them, those who precipitately attribute these miraculous cures to herbal remedies or vitamin therapy or, all too often, a superhumanly 'positive' mental attitude displayed by the patient. To talk seriously about spontaneous regression, Papac says, is to walk "a thin line between doubt and quackery." Which is precisely what Papac did when she gave a Grand Rounds talk on the subject at the Yale School of Medicine a couple of years ago.
Asked to prepare the talk in 1989, in part to refute some of the more preposterous claims, Papac sorted through three decades of her clinical practice and realized she had encountered at least eight, and possibly ten, cases of spontaneous remission. The most remarkable, in her opinion, was the story of Stanley Gerbacich. His case not only embodied all the medical mystery that bedevils spontaneous remission, it gives little comfort to either the medical profession's reflexive skepticism or the charlatans' facile explanations.
"Lots of people doubted it and said, 'You must have misdiagnosed the case in the first place,'" Papac recalls with a smile. "But when they saw our evidence, they agreed that the diagnosis of leukemia was correct."
And how would Papac characterize Gerbacich's attitude? Was he upbeat? Was he combative and feisty? Did he, in the words of best-selling mind-body guru Bernie Siegel, see his disease not "as a sentence but a new beginning?"
"I wouldn't rank his attitude as the most positive of any we've seen," she says after a pause, choosing her words carefully. "He was a very frightened person, very fearful. He was paralyzed by the thought that death was imminent."
MISS X, as she was called in the literature, suffered no less dire a prognosis than Stanley Gerbacich. A woman of 31, she lived in Baltimore, and her medical problems began, she believed, following a tumble off a bicycle. She visited her physician, complaining of a lump and pain in her right breast. Several weeks later, the cancer-ridden breast as well as the nearby lymph nodes were removed by surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Miss X remained healthy for approximately one year. Then her condition began to deteriorate.
She started to lose vision in her right eye, a problem caused by a second tumor apparently spread by the original. She lost more and more weight. A lump developed in the other breast, and then a new tumor poked up like a bony outgrowth from her sternum. Bedridden with pain, barely able to breathe, Miss X had little to look forward to beyond her six daily grains of morphine.
"I saw her twice, and in May her condition seemed really desperate," her physician later recalled. "I left for England shortly afterwards, and, of course, did not expect to find her alive on my return." But during the summer and fall of 1899, Miss X steadily improved. The pains subsided, the awkward tumor rising out of her breastbone just as mysteriously melted away, and by October of 1900, Miss X had recovered enough to drive the one and a half miles to the train station to meet her very surprised physician. "She had improved," Sir William Osler observed, "in every way."
Just as Osler has been credited with ushering in the modern era of American medicine, his account of Miss X is among the first 20th century descriptions of what in fact is a very ancient phenomenon. As he noted in a 1901 article, these cases are "among the most remarkable which we witness in the practice of medicine, and illustrate the uncertainty of prognosis, and the truth of the statement that no condition, however desperate, is quite hopeless." Spontaneous remissions have occurred - "without any obvious reason," in Osler's perplexed, faintly protestant phrase - for centuries.
One of the earliest recorded anecdotes dates back 700 years, to a time when a reformed politician and anti-papist in central Italy named Peregrine Laziosi became a Servite monk and priest, traveled far and wide doing good works, and ultimately developed a debilitating and unsightly cancer on his foot. Facing amputation of his foot, the monk prayed during the night before the operation and dreamed that the tumor disappeared. He awoke to find it gone and lived to the age of 80, dying in 1345. His miraculous recovery earned him canonization as St. Peregrine, and he became known as the patron saint of those with cancer and malignant diseases. William Boyd, a prominent Canadian pathologist, later suggested that cancerous masses that similarly regress without adequate explanation be called 'St. Peregrine's Tumors.'
But by what mysterious mechanism does spontaneous remission occur? As Boyd would write in the 1950s, "A moment's thought is sufficient to convince us that in biology, as in other fields of science, nothing is really spontaneous, for every event must have a cause." But the cause, the biology of spontaneous regression, eludes researchers. Without it, spontaneous remission might just as well be called St. Peregrine's Curse.
AMONG THOSE who have tried to solve the puzzle were two surgeons at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago, Tilden Everson and Warren Cole. In the mid-1950s, Everson and Cole began a landmark analysis of reports of spontaneous remission of cancer, which they defined as "a partial or complete disappearance of a malignant tumor in the absence of treatment that ordinarily is considered capable of producing regression." The two surgeons excluded lymphomas and leukemias (cancers of the immune system and blood), as well as the skin cancers known as squamous cell carcinomas, because all three forms of cancer vary greatly in growth rates. Even so, Everson and Cole compiled a total of 176 instances of spontaneous remission of cancer and published the results in a famous 1966 monograph.
One of the most remarkable cases was that of a 30-year-old woman diagnosed with malignant melanoma, a particularly aggressive form of skin cancer that nonetheless seems associated with instances of spontaneous remission. When doctors attempted to remove a grape-sized nodule from the woman's shoulder, it ruptured and had to be taken out in pieces, with the likelihood that some malignant material escaped removal. Even so, not only did the wound heal, but all metastatic spread of her cancer disappeared. Four years later, a 28-year-old male melanoma patient was purposely given a transfusion of this woman's blood. Although the man suffered from widely disseminated cancer in his head, thigh, buttocks, and armpit lymph nodes, within six weeks all the metastatic tumors disappeared.
Like Osler and everyone since him, Everson and Cole were at a loss to explain how these mysterious events occurred. They did note that such cases have always been marked by intriguing, ambiguous, and often contradictory factors that hint at biological mechanisms, not miracles. Cole, a former president of both the American Cancer Society and the American College of Surgeons whose every phrase and sentence betrayed a reluctance to speculate, believed that regression most likely occurs because the patient somehow marshals a heightened immunologic response to malignancy.
For instance, the disappearance of tumors has often been accompanied by a concurrent bacterial or viral infection and fever, a link that prompted William Coley, a surgeon at Memorial Hospital in New York around the turn of the century, to experimentally induce bacterial infections in cancer patients; those experiments continue to this day, with mixed results. In the early experiments, vaccines that were made up of killed bacteria, which became known as 'Coley's toxins,' caused some tumors to shrink or disappear. Suspecting that the vaccines triggered some natural anticancer agent, researchers sought and ultimately discovered tumor necrosis factor. Isolated in the early 1970s, the powerful tumor-killing molecule is produced as part of the body's immune and inflammatory response, and is now being tested against cancer.
In many other cases, tumors seem to melt away following biopsy procedures or similar surgical insult, possibly by prompting a local immune response.
<#FROWN:F11\>
SPECIAL HEALTH REPORT By Carl Sherman
Is It Just a Mood or Real Depression?
Barbara L., age 30, remembers the suffocating feeling that descended on her as she struggled through her second year of college. Plagued by a sense of utter worthlessness, she was convinced that if she were gone, no one would miss her - no one at all. "Someone might be standing right in front of me, saying, 'I do care about you. I do love you,' but the words couldn't reach me." Desperate and in unbearable emotional pain, she attempted suicide with a handful of pills.
For Millie G., 34, the downward spiral began with the end of a relationship. Then her plans to buy a co-op fell through. She started waking up at 4 A.M. with a terrible sense of doom. She became 'abrasive' with everyone, lost friends and began to fear for her job. "I was constantly crying in front of my staff. I couldn't concentrate. Every memo I wrote was filled with mistakes."
Diana T. was 50 years old when her world caved in on her. Her two sons were in college, and after an absence of 20 years she had returned to teaching, a job she loved. Yet she felt constantly oppressed by "a physical feeling, a sinking sensation in my body that I couldn't stand. I stopped eating," she recalls. "I couldn't sleep. I cried all the time." Nothing - reading, watching TV - could distract her or give her the least bit of pleasure. She thought about suicide. "I didn't have the guts to do it. I hoped I would just die a natural death."
What these women have in common is depression. Not just a blue mood, but an illness potentially more disabling than arthritis or heart disease - an illness that in its severest form drives 15 percent of its victims to commit suicide. (For a list of symptoms, see 'Are You Depressed?' at right.) Five percent of Americans suffer the mental and physical torments of depression - and almost two out of three of them are women.
Unfortunately, an estimated two-thirds of depressed people never seek treatment, according to Robert Hirschfeld, M.D., chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Because of the fear and stigma that still surround mental illness, and the hopeless, helpless feeling that "nothing can be done," a lot of people end up suffering alone.
What's worse, just half of those who do see doctors are accurately diagnosed and adequately treated. People may seek help for the fatigue and other physical symptoms - backaches, headaches, stomach problems - that accompany depression, but they stop short of talking about their feelings. The hurried doctor never hears about the sleeplessness, the sadness, the oppressive thoughts. The family physician or internist - the doctor most likely to see depression - all too frequently misses the diagnosis, according to Kenneth B. Wells, M.D., of Rand, a nonprofit research group in Santa Monica, California; in prepaid health plans (like HMO's), depression was spotted only 42 percent of the time. "Patients have to take an active role," urges Dr. Hirschfeld. "If you say, 'I think I may be depressed,' you're more likely to get the attention you need."
When should you suspect that you might be suffering from depression? Blue moods come and go. It's natural to feel down if you lose your job or to grieve when a loved one dies. But clinical depression is another story. It's a mental and physical illness that can disrupt sleep and appetite, inflict physical pain and distort thoughts into a continuous night of helpless despair. 'Business as usual' becomes impossible: Work, friendships and family life suffer.
"I was devastated when my mother died," Diana T. remembers. "But that was different. I had the same 'I can't stand it' feeling, but it wasn't constant, and it gradually went away."
Diagnosing Depression
Doctors have come to recognize several basic types of depression. According to Darrel Regier, M.D., director of the division of clinical research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Washington, D.C., nearly 6 percent of the population has suffered episodes of major depressive illness. The primary symptoms are sadness, anxiety or emptiness; hopelessness or pessimism; feelings of worthlessness, helplessness or guilt; restlessness or irritability; a loss of interest in activities; trouble sleeping; changes in appetite or weight; fatigue and thoughts of death or suicide. Bouts of depression often recur.
About 1 out of 100 Americans has had episodes of bipolar, or manic-depressive, illness, characterized by periods of high energy and excitement - manic states - that may alternate with depression.
But depression isn't always disabling. "In its mildest form, people say: 'I'm well fed, I'm well clothed ... and yet why do I feel so awful?'" says Jay Amsterdam, M.D., the director of the depression research unit at the University of Pennsylvania. The same symptoms are there - and these often include sleeplessness and a change in appetite - but in weaker form.
A chronic kind of depression, dysthymia, is less daunting than a major episode but persists for years. Its victims may spend decades or a lifetime under a cloud, struggling constantly with low energy and poor self-esteem. They get through life, but with little joy. People affected by dysthymia can hold a job - they're typically overconscientious employees - but a lack of drive causes them to be permanent underachievers, says James Kocsis, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Many don't date and never marry, or end up trapped in bad marriages, without the energy to fix the relationship or get out.
No one knows for sure what causes depression, but it is now recognized as both biochemical and psychological in nature. On the biochemical level, suggests Karl Rickels, M.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, it reflects an imbalance among the neurotransmitters - chemicals that regulate and harmonize activity throughout the brain. In particular, the chemical serotonin appears to be in short supply. The biochemical predisposition to depression can be inherited; if a parent has suffered from it, your chances rise fourfold.
Depression can attack without apparent reason, but some episodes appear to be triggered by emotional turmoil or high-stress periods at home or work. In both men and women, "It may be that there's an interaction," says Ellen McGrath, Ph.D., chair of the American Psychological Association's National Task Force on Women and Depression. "For someone who is biologically vulnerable, enough accumulated stress may throw brain biochemistry out of balance."
Increasingly, experts believe that women may unintentionally accelerate depression by focusing on their emotions, and may also deepen it by sharing it with a sympathetic friend. According to Bonnie Strickland, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, it's good to unburden your feelings, but sitting around and rehashing the sense of inadequacy and self-blame that come with depression won't make you feel any better. What can help, though, is taking action. If 'talking it out' spurs you to make positive moves to develop new job skills or start an exercise program, for example, it can be worth it, Dr. McGrath says.
Of course, depression is nothing you can snap yourself out of; it requires treatment. Fortunately, says Dr. Hirschfeld, "we now have a whole range of medications and psychotherapies that have made a huge difference." With today's arsenal, an estimated 85 to 90 percent of people with depression - no matter how severe - can be treated successfully.
Treatment Alternatives
How can depression be most effectively treated - with therapy or drugs or a combination of both? Interestingly, a recent National Institute of Mental Health study showed that for relatively mild depression, two short-term forms of therapy work as well as medication. Cognitive behavior therapy teaches patients how negative thinking habits promote and maintain depression, and helps people replace them with other patterns that generate positive feelings. Interpersonal psychotherapy helps to explore relationships, resolve conflicts and teach the skills that will strengthen bonds.
For more severe depression, drug treatment has been found to be more effective than psychotherapy, according to Dr. Amsterdam. Many psychiatrists believe that antidepressants should be used whenever a patient's symptoms (such as eating and sleeping problems, fatigue and physical pain) suggest a true biochemical depression.
Drugs also work well for chronic depression, which was once considered too deeply rooted in the personality to change. In a recent study of people who had remained chronically depressed despite years of psychotherapy, nearly two-thirds got better with an antidepressant. Some stayed well even after the drugs were discontinued, Dr. Kocsis says.
Nowadays doctors have a bagful of antidepressants to choose from. The oldest ones, the tricyclics, include Tofranil, Elavil and Sinequan, and generally are the most effective. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI's), such as Parnate and Nardil, are frequently prescribed when tricyclics don't help. Lithium works against both the manic and depressive episodes of bipolar disorder.
All drugs have their drawbacks, however. The side effects of tricyclics - which may include dry mouth, sleepiness, dizziness, constipation and weight gain - are difficult for some to tolerate. MAOI's require strict diet control: Patients must avoid long lists of foods, including cheese, wine, bananas and chocolate, that can cause a dangerous interaction. "These older antidepressants act on a number of brain chemicals at once, and may cause sweeping physical effects - many unpleasant - throughout the body," Dr. Rickels says.
One new drug, fluoxetine (trade name: Prozac), appears to represent a real advance because it only boosts serotonin. Scientists believe that low levels of this neurotransmitter are primarily responsible for depression. Prozac has fewer side effects than previous therapies, although a few have been reported. Recently, after investigating sporadic reports of Prozac-related violence and suicide attempts, an advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration concluded that there is no evidence that the drug is riskier than other antidepressants. But like all powerful drugs, the committee stressed, it must be used with care.
Solid improvement usually takes two to four weeks, and is often not dramatic. "I don't do somersaults all day, but I can handle things better," says Millie G., who has been taking Prozac for several months. "I'm not always fighting back tears." Before, every day seemed like "climbing a mountain without a foothold." With the antidepressant, "I feel safer," she says.
With thorough treatment - which usually means continuing on medication for several months after symptoms are alleviated - depression often disappears completely. But it may recur - two, five or ten years later. If you're prone to recurrent attacks, you may need to stay on a low 'maintenance' dose of antidepressants for protection.
Even the newest drugs don't work for all patients. If symptoms remain dangerously severe despite treatment - the risk of suicide is high, for example - doctors may consider electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), inducing brain seizures with electricity, which (for reasons that no one truly understands) is often effective against depression where medication fails, according to Dr. Rickels. Despite its frightening image, today's ECT is far safer than in the past: Smaller doses of electricity are used, anesthetics and muscle relaxants eliminate discomfort, and the only serious side effect - memory loss - is almost always temporary.
If you suspect you suffer from depression, start by talking to your doctor. Now that easy-to-use medications are available, the condition can often be treated by a family doctor or internist. Before embarking on a treatment program, though, a physician will probably want to rule out medical problems (certain thyroid conditions, for example) that can cause similar symptoms.
If you get no response from your doctor or see little improvement after you've been treated for a month or so, it may be time to call in a specialist. When consulting a mental-health professional, bear in mind that psychiatrists, who are medical doctors, are licensed to prescribe drugs, whereas psychologists, social workers and other psychotherapists are not. A particularly difficult case of depression may require the advanced skills of a psycho-pharmacologist, a super-specialist trained to use drug combinations that may succeed where standard treatments fail.
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ETHICS
A Matter of Survival
By Rushworth M. Kidder
Our ethical responsibilities are increasing as we wield ever more powerful technologies. But ethical standards have suffered in an age of tolerance.
Several years ago, I was - as far as I can tell - the first Western journalist to visit the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. I was taken there on a tour in the company of several engineers called in after the April 1986 explosion to clean it up. I learned that, on the night of the accident, two electrical engineers were "playing around" with reactor #4 in what the Soviets later described as an unauthorized experiment. The two engineers wanted to see how long a turbine would freewheel if they took the power off it. That meant shutting down reactor #4.
To do so, they had to override six separate computer-driven alarm systems. The first system came on and said, "Stop, go no further, terribly dangerous." And they shut off the alarm rather than the experiment, and went on to the next level. They even padlocked valves in the open position so that they would not shut automatically and stop the experiment. Think for a minute about who these people were. In the context of the Soviet Union, jobs like those at Chernobyl were plum jobs. They went to the 4.0 averages, the 800 SATs, the Phi Beta Kappas of the Soviet Union. These men were not dumb. Then what was missing? What they lacked, apparently, was the sense of responsibility, the moral understanding, the sense of conscience, the understanding of ethics - however you want to put it - that somehow would have prevented them from going forward.
Before you can override a computer-alarm system, you have first got to engage some kind of an ethical override in your own consciousness. You've first got to block out that little voice that says, "Don't do this, it's dangerous!" Somehow, the two engineers at Chernobyl were capable of turning aside and shutting down that voice. And that shutdown is not a question of technology. It's a matter of ethics.
Technology and Ethics
Think back to the nineteenth century. What do you suppose we could have put two people in front of, saying "Do whatever you want, in as unethical a way as you wish," that could have produced the damage caused by Chernobyl? Suppose we loaded up the biggest ship of the nineteenth century and put a drunken captain in charge, so he could run it aground in Prince William Sound; could it possibly do the kind of damage the Exxon Valdez did? Where do you find in the nineteenth century a financial structure as big and as complicated and as powerful as today's savings-and-loan business in the United States that would have allowed a group of unethical bankers to produce the damage the current S&L crisis has produced?
And we're still only in the twentieth century. Shift your thinking forward into the early years of the twenty-first century and ask yourself about the kinds of ethical questions that will arise there. Perhaps the biggest and most complex arise from the Human Genome Project - not because it will be a big medical issue, but because it will be a big employment issue.
Suppose your genetic 'book' can be read. It tells me, your potential employer, that at such-and-such an age you are liable to develop this-or-that problem, and I am going to have to foot the bill for the problem. So what is my interest in hiring you as compared with somebody whose book is a bit cleaner? How does society cope with such an issue? We have no record at all as a society of willingly choosing not to know what is knowable. So it is inconceivable that we will choose not to know our employees' genomes. This will be one of the largest privacy questions that we will face in the twenty-first century, and it's essentially a question of ethics.
The point here is simply that our technology has leveraged our ethics in ways that we never saw in the past. Why is that? Isn't it largely because we spend tremendous amounts of effort in our educational system teaching about the nature of technology - and virtually no time at all talking about the moral, ethical consequences of that technology?
Yet, for all of our advanced systems and for all of our artificial intelligence, the decision-making stream continues to focus ever more pointedly, as it always has, on the thinking of one or two or half a dozen individuals sitting at the apex of that technology. That hasn't changed. What has changed is only the capacity to do terrific damage because of that decision making.
Fortunately, those structures can change - because the values system underlying the social systems can change. Futurist Earl Joseph suggests that, "as we gain new knowledge, values can be improved. Therefore, on the average, the deeper we penetrate the future, the better our values and ethics should become."
Recapturing a Sense Of Standards
In the nineteenth century, one of the highest goals of Western nations was a sense of standards. We took our standards out into the rest of the world, colonized other regions, and imposed those standards. Were we tolerant of what we found there? Not at all. If the people whom we were trying to 'civilize' didn't want to get 'civilized,' we went out and 'civilized' them anyway! At the end of a gun, or however we had to do it, but we civilized them. Why? To bring them up to our standards.
By the 1960s, this attitude had shifted 180 degrees. Tolerance was what mattered most. As long as somebody said, "Yes, this is what I stand for, this is what I want to do," one was expected to be wholly tolerant of any conceivable value structure.
The job of the twenty-first century is not to forget the terrific progress we've made toward tolerance, because it has been invaluable in creating and incorporating a pluralistic society. At the same time, however, we must begin within that context to recapture a sense of the standards that in many cases appears to have been lost.
One of the places this lack of standards shows up is in the U.S. education system. Let me cite a few statistics. These are not statistics that tell you how awful it is that the United States somehow can't compete with the Japanese and the Germans on math and literature. These speak to the ethical sense of American students. Sixty-five percent of high-school students admit that they would cheat to pass an important exam. A similar percentage are ready to inflate their expense accounts when they enter the corporate world, or lie to achieve a business objective.
Remember, these are not merely students we're talking about. They are, in fact, Western culture's middle managers in 2015 and its CEOs in 2030. These are the people who are going to administer your pension plans.
A recent Louis Harris poll for the Girl Scouts asked 5,000 American students where they would look to find the greatest authority in matters of truth. Where would they turn for that sense of authority? The answers that came back are very interesting. At the bottom are the media and the sciences. A few percentage points higher come parents and religion. Can you guess what the bulk of those students say is the greatest authority in matters of truth? "Me." The student himself or herself. These students tell us that there is no source of authority beyond their own experience. "I have not seen anyone out there that I can trust," they're saying. "I've got to go by my gut instinct. I've got to do whatever feels right, whatever turns me on, whatever is situational, relative, negotiable." That reply speaks volumes about the ethical standards that we are now seeing.
Tracking Value Shifts
Fortunately, as the century closes, this entire subject of ethics is becoming a very serious concern for an awful lot of people. That's why the Institute for Global Ethics was recently founded. It aims to track value shifts as we move into the next century.
The first issue of Insights on Global Ethics, our monthly newsletter, leads with a story from Mexico, looking at the Mexican public's changing attitude toward corruption. Mexico is no longer the business-as-usual, corruption-as-usual place we've all assumed it to be. There seems to be a groundswell of public opinion saying, "We can't live this way. We must change." Future issues will look at things like the question of marriage versus cohabitation in Sweden, the work ethic in Japan, and values education in Ukraine.
Of course, we could wait until the twenty-first century, and then we could read the results of these ethical changes in the economic and social data. Or we can get at them now and begin to track the values shifts that are already occurring. Why is that important? Because any meaningful social and political and economic change is preceded by a change in values. If we want to devote our energies to looking into the changes that are most going to dictate the future, we must look at the questions of ethics in the twenty-first century.
One thing seems clear: We will not survive the twenty-first century with the twentieth century's ethics. The dangers are simply too great - and the ethical barometer is simply too low.
Business in the 21st Century
By Edith Weiner
Businesses must master the 'forgetting curve' to cope with new challenges such as environmentalism and an emerging 'cyberpunk' society.
Some years ago, I saw a marvelous cartoon depicting an alien spaceship that had been observing life on Earth. The alien scouts reported the following conclusions: Earth is inhabited by metallic creatures called cars, and each car owns at least one two-legged slave who cares for it. Each morning, the slave goes outside its home and wakes up the car. The car is taken for its nourishment to what is called a gas station, and then it goes to its social club to be with other cars. The club is called a parking lot. Meanwhile, the slave goes to work to earn money to take care of the car. At the end of the slave's work day, the car bids farewell to its friends at the parking lot and the slave takes it back to its home. On days when the slave is not making money for the car, it washes the car, or takes it for a drive and shows it a lot of different places.
This cartoon cleverly points out that, viewed by new eyes, alien eyes, the world can be interpreted in very different ways. Businesses that hope to thrive in the next decade and beyond must seek out new perspectives. Too many enterprises are currently based on outdated interpretations of the world, its inhabitants, its social structures, and the ways that markets behave.
Pretend for a moment that we are aliens - that we are not loaded down with the baggage of memory, of experience, of preconceived ideas about what is and what should be.
Suppose we were to invent the financial-services sector today, from scratch. This sector includes life insurance, disability insurance, pensions, and savings and investment vehicles. What do we see with our new eyes? We observe the huge numbers of working women, and particularly single or divorced working mothers, and we see the enormous numbers of women who outlive men in their very old years. We also see many more women taking care of disabled men than men taking care of disabled women. Thus, we conclude that the primary market for all forms of financial services should be women, and we start from there. The reality is, however, that the modern financial-services business grew up over the course of 200 years and evolved with a male-oriented market; only in the past 20 years has it begun to recognize women as a serious market.
Mastering the Forgetting Curve
Let's look at retailing.
<#FROWN:F13\>
Vaccination programs, procedures for producing top quality pullets
The purposes and methods of vaccination programs for pullets are explained along with blood test results for evaluations.
By George D. Boggan, V.M.D.
Vaccinations of poultry flocks are carried out with the intention to prevent serious disease outbreaks. Properly administered, vaccinations help the chicken's immune system to produce antibodies that greatly reduce or eliminate the chances of disease. A proper vaccination is a relatively harmless and inexpensive method of disease control and prevention. Vaccinations also go a long way toward eliminating the spread of more virulent forms of disease.
How vaccinations work
The mechanisms of action for most viral vaccines depends on the normal immune system of the chicken. The goal of vaccination is to fool the bird's immune system into believing that there has been an actual viral exposure to a disease-causing virus. This process is achieved by vaccinating with extremely mild 'avirulent' strains of the virus or by using a virus which has been inactivated (killed). In both situations, the bird's body recognizes the virus, or antigen, and starts producing the appropriate antibodies to fight off the infection.
Antibody continues to be produced until the vaccine virus has been completely inactivated or overwhelmed. The result of this stimulation is the production of a reserve pool of anti-bodies that is capable of immediate response in the event of re-exposure to the same virus or the disease-causing agent in this case.
With time, however, antibody levels will naturally decline so it is necessary to restimulate or boost the immune system with subsequent vaccinations. The goal of maintaining the high antibody levels (titers) is to allow a very quick immune response in the event of a field exposure and subsequently resist infection.
Inactivated or killed vaccines stimulate immunity even though the killed virus cannot multiply. Since the killed virus is unable to reproduce itself, a large amount of it must be present along with an adjuvant (usually an oil emulsion). After administration of the killed vaccine, some of the rival antigen causes an initial immune response. The adjuvant then releases the remainder of the antigen over a long period of time to allow the immune response to continue.
It should be noted that killed vaccines normally require a 'priming' or prior administration of a live vaccine for the disease you are vaccinating against.
Vaccination factors
It is important to remember that vaccination is only one aspect of disease prevention and should be used in conjunction with optimal biosecurity, sanitation and good management and husbandry practices. Care should also be exercised to avoid introducing live vaccine viruses to areas where a particular disease problem is not known to occur. Likewise, indiscriminate use of antibiotics and drugs should be avoided. Vaccination schedules and disease control programs should always be designed under the direction of a qualified poultry veterinarian familiar with the disease problems in your area.
Your vaccination program must protect your flocks from diseases that are common to your area. In many cases, these diseases would include Marek's, IBD, Newcastle, bronchitis, and AE. However, this situation varies between localities. For this reason, blanket recommendations for vaccination programs are ill advised and impractical.
There are several basics on which to build your vaccination programs. You must know the immune status or serology of the parent stock from which your birds were hatched. This is an especially important point in regards to IBD as we shall see later in this discussion.
Timing of vaccinations is also very important. We must view vaccination as a stress on the flock. Thus, the stress of vaccination should not be combined with other stresses such as beak trimming or moving. We should also realize that in some cases parental immunity may not dissipate until two to four weeks after hatching. If vaccines (especially attenuated ones) are given while strong parental immunity is still present the effectiveness of the vaccination will be significantly reduced. In fact, it may not even give the desired effect.
Also, the age at which a flock is exposed to a certain disease can be a determining factor. For example, chicks could be exposed to fowl pox as soon as they arrive at the brooder house, making a pox vaccination at the hatchery necessary.
As with many products, it is important to always follow label directions when using vaccines. Never try to 'stretch' or dilute the vaccine. You should always strive to use one dose of vaccine per bird. Anything less can be considered as 'penny wise and pound foolish.' Finally, always vaccinate an entire house on the same day.
Once vaccination has been completed, destroy and discard all empty vaccine bottles, caps, and unused vaccine. These materials should never be left where there is a danger of chickens or people coming in contact with them.
Vaccination records
Detailed record keeping plays an important part in a sound vaccination program.
Vaccination records should include:
1. The disease the flock was vaccinated for.
2. Method of administration (i.e., water, spray, wing web, intraocular, injection, etc.).
3. Quantity of doses used and the number of birds vaccinated.
4. Serial number and expiration date of the lot of vaccine used. (Never use any vaccine beyond its expiration date as its potency will be impaired and it may not produce the desired effect.)
5. Where the vaccine was purchased.
6. Date and time of vaccination.
7. The age of the flock.
8. The flock's strain and/or breed.
9. Farm and house numbers.
10. Names of the people who performed the vaccination.
11. Any reactions to the vaccination that have been observed.
All of this information will be especially useful in troubleshooting any health problems that may arise.
Emphasis on IBD
A key to the effectiveness of your vaccination program is the successful control of IBD or Gumboro disease. An outbreak of IBD will severely damage the immune system of susceptible chicks. As a consequence, IBD infected chicks won't respond properly to vaccinations for other diseases. Egg producers should be especially mindful of controlling IBD as this disease is generally more serious in layers than it is in broilers. The point to keep in mind above all is that prevention of IBD is a must, because attempting to treat it will prove futile.
There are several steps to producing immunity to IBD. The process of achieving immunity in the offspring actually begins with the parent flock. To protect their offspring, the breeders should be vaccinated at approximately 18 weeks of age with a killed oil emulsion vaccine. When such a vaccination is properly administered to the breeder flock, it will produce a high level of antibodies. This then provides for the passive transfer of maternal antibodies to the chick. These maternal antibodies are essential to the prevention of early IBD infections. Chicks from well immunized breeders may resist these early infections for two to four weeks.
Even with the presence of maternal antibodies, this is just one step in establishing an IBD resistant flock. It is also important to provide good sanitation in the brooder house as a means of reducing the level of IBD infection.
As the chick's maternal antibodies begin to decline, we must address the question of IBD vaccination for our young flock. The vaccine to be used must be strong enough to overcome any residual maternal antibodies, so a more attenuated vaccine may not be effective. Therefore, it is important to wait until the point is reached where the vaccine can overcome the maternal antibodies. In most cases, this will occur at about three weeks of age. After the dissipation of the maternal antibodies, vaccination with a live virus IBD vaccine by way of drinking water or the intraocular route is the best method of developing immunity in young chicks.
Marek's disease
For purposes of this discussion, let's assume that the Marek's disease vaccination has been executed properly at the hatchery. However, even when chicks have been vaccinated properly for Marek's, the possibility of an out-break still exists.
The trick to preventing Marek's out-breaks is to avoid early exposure of the chicks to the Marek's virus. The first step is to clean and disinfect the brooder house before the chicks arrive. It is especially important to ensure that all dust and dander be removed as the Marek's virus can survive for years in this material. Single age brooding and strict biosecurity at the brooder farm or complex will aid greatly in preventing Marek's problems. Generally, careful sanitation and management in the early stages of the flock's life will reduce the chances of a Marek's infection.
Water vaccination
Water vaccination involves live virus vaccines, is fast and cost effective, but may be the least reliable form. The major points to successful water vaccination are proper distribution of the vaccine and preventing the inactivation of the virus in the vaccine.
To avoid inactivation of the virus, store the vaccine containers in a refrigerator at 45 degrees F (7 degrees C) until ready to use. Vaccine containers shouldn't be exposed to heat or left in the direct rays of the sun. Knowing the status of your water quality in respect to hardness, pH, organic matter, heavy metals, and chlorine content is also important. Powdered milk added to the vaccine solution will act as a buffer against the materials that may reduce the potency of the vaccine. Once the vaccine has been prepared, it should be given to the flock within one hour. All drinking vessels should be clean before the vaccine solution is added.
Spray vaccination
Application by spray has replaced water vaccination in some instances. Spray vaccination can be more effective than water application provided it is executed correctly.
The spray vaccine should be placed in a clean container that is used only for vaccine application. The container should not be used for other applications such as spraying pesticides. In addition, the vaccine container should never thebe cleaned with a sanitizer or possible damage to the vaccine may result. Be sure to use a spray that produces the particle or droplet size recommended for the particular vaccine.
Close up the house for 20 to 30 minutes during and after a spray vaccination to prevent the mist from escaping before it can be inhaled by the birds. Of course, in very hot weather, the duration of this closing will have to be lessened.
Before mixing the vaccine, plan one dose per bird and use approximately 120-130 cc's of distilled water per 1,000 doses of vaccine. It is important that distilled water be used to avoid impairing the potency of the vaccine. Spray the mist just above the birds' heads and be sure to cover the entire house. For best results, precede a spray vaccination by about three weeks with a water vaccination for the same disease.
Intraocular and intranasal
These two vaccination applications can be very effective. However, these are very time and labor intensive and experienced crews are required for best results. The same precautions that apply to other vaccination methods should be followed. Some intraocular vaccines are supplied with their own diluent and this is what should be used when preparing these vaccines.
Each bird must be handled and no bird should be released until it is certain that it has received its dose of vaccine. This can be confirmed when the drop of vaccine disappears into the bird's eye or into the nostril, as the case may be.
Wing web vaccination
Wing web vaccination is used mainly for fowl pox but can be used for avian encephalomyelitis (AE) (in combination with fowl or pigeon pox), reovirus or live fowl cholera vaccines.
Always use the applicator needles that come with the vaccine package. These applicators will have been sized properly by the vaccine manufacturer for the job intended. Ensure that the applicator needles remain clean. Avoid letting the applicators contact dirty surfaces or contamination may result. To prevent contamination of mixture, don't dip the applicator handle or other foreign objects into the vaccine.
Never allow pox vaccines to touch the eyes, mouth or feathers of the birds as this may result in a case of wet pox.
<#FROWN:F14\>
The Burial Society
By Daniel E. Troy
IT IS a truism that we moderns are uncomfortable dealing with death - and especially uncomfortable dealing with dead bodies. Troubled by the very idea of our own mortality, we try to avoid its reminders, among which an actual dead person is certainly the most powerful. So it is no wonder that among modern Jews, knowledge of, and interest in, the hevra kedisha (literally, holy society) - the group of lay volunteers who prepare a Jewish body for burial - has declined over time, or that membership in such a society, although considered by Jewish religious law to be among the most laudable of activities, is now often thought to be exclusively the province of the black-garbed ultra-Orthodox.
This is unfortunate, because Jewish law relating to the newly dead has much to teach us, as I myself have learned from experience. Ever since my best and oldest childhood friend died suddenly eight years ago, my interest had been piqued by the hevra kedisha. Until I married, however, my inclination to join such a group was dampened by my general squeamishness concerning medical matters, as well as by my uncertainty about the level of religious observance required for membership. (Although I attend an Orthodox synagogue, keep kosher, and observe the Sabbath, I do not adhere to every jot and tittle of Jewish law.)
My wife's family, however, holds membership in the hevra in high regard. Her maternal grandfather participated in one in Germany, and her maternal grandmother was a member in Kansas City. (Men are allowed to attend only to dead men. Women technically are permitted to prepare both men and women for burial but, as a practical matter, women attend to women exclusively.) This heritage provided the impetus I needed, and thus one day I found myself volunteering on what I told myself was purely a trial basis. The rabbi assured me that one need not be a tzaddik - an especially righteous person - to join, only a committed Jew willing to do his best.
This tolerant approach may reflect the relatively late development of the shevra kedisha as an organized institution. The earliest mention is in the Talmud, which reports that Rav Hamnuna (ca. 290-320 C.E), arriving in a city where someone had recently died, observed the inhabitants going about their business. Irate, he threatened to excommunicate them for violating the injection that burial of the dead takes precedence over all else. But then, upon hearing that burial societies existed in the town, Rav Hamnuna concluded that ordinary citizens were indeed permitted to continue work. Rav Hamnuna's ruling made the establishment of a hevra kedisha a top priority in most European communities. When Jews came to the United States, this was among the first institutions they established.
In Washington, where I live, many synagogues have their own hevra, contacted when a member of the community dies. Thus, a few weeks after my conversation with the rabbi, I was called upon to assist in my first tahara, or purification. When I arrived at the funeral parlor, I was told that the sixtyish man we were to prepare for burial weighed over 350 pounds, and had died of 'chronic obesity.' I guiltily squelched an adolescent urge to grin, and was doubly chastened as I watched Ben, our team leader, a physician in his early thirties, call around asking for a few more volunteers to help us deal with the difficulties created by the weight of the met (dead person). His tone in discussing the met was intensely respectful, and this set the stage for what I was to learn was the paramount directive in this experience: to show reverence for the person who has departed.
Judaism has always considered burying deceased loved ones to be a mitzvah, a religious duty and good deed, of supreme importance. Traditionally this view is based on Abraham's actions upon the death of his wife Sarah, when he turned to the neighboring sons of Heth and said, "A stranger and a sojourner am I with you; give me the possession of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead from before me." This verse, the rabbis held, placed the responsibility for internment first on the family, and from there on the community as a whole. By the period of the Second Temple (ca. 465 BCE.-70 C.E.), according to the testimony of Josephus, to "let anyone lie unburied" was considered inhumane under Jewish law.
Jews try to bury their dead immediately, as befits a people whose origins were in the desert, where bodies decompose rapidly. The rabbinic teaching is that, unless necessary for the honor of the dead, "no corpse is to remain unburied overnight." Today, in most cases, a Jew is buried within a day after having died. This custom allows the family to begin coming to terms with the loss as soon as possible. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one knows that the time before burial is essentially a period of 'limbo' (in Jewish tradition this condition is called aninut), and that only after the funeral can a family proceed with the difficult task of mourning.
AS WE walked to the room in the basement of the funeral parlor where we were to perform the tahara, we passed the shomer, or watcher, a man who stays with the recently deceased at all times. There are both practical and religious explanations for the constant presence of a shomer - as there are, incidentally, for most of the hevra's ancient procedures. Practically, the shomer was originally needed to ward off mice and other animals that might inflict indignities on the corpse. He also may have helped guard against thieves who trafficked in dead bodies.
Today, when such considerations are less pressing, the shomer continues to serve a vital function. In the interval right after death and before burial, the deceased is especially vulnerable, having not yet reached a permanent 'resting place' either in body or, so far as we know, in soul. (I well recall that when my friend died, his mother begged me to ensure that he was "not alone"; she did not want any further harm to befall his mortal remains.) The hevra has thus traditionally served to reassure the family that their loved one is being protected and cared for, a function reinforced by the custom of having the shomer be a respected and, presumably, well-known member of the community.
But this concern about the 'address' of the newly dead is not solely for the sake of the surviving family. (Nor is it exclusively Jewish, as we can see in the proliferation of lawsuits against funeral parlors which confuse or switch bodies.) Judaism's regard for the body itself lies behind the determination to ensure that it, in its wholeness, be accorded a place after death. This is but one of the many reasons why Jewish law prohibits cremation. Aside from manifesting a disregard for God's handiwork, incinerating a body leaves it without any definable, knowable location in the world.
Although I was aware of some of these Jewish laws and customs concerning the body, I had never seen a dead person before. I was therefore quite fearful as I followed Ben and the four other members of our team down to the purification room in the funeral room. The room in which the tahara took place was in the basement, immediately adjacent to the embalming room. It was stark and relatively small, with two sinks, a cabinet, a drain in the middle of the floor, and a steel table that tilted for drainage purposes. Ben noticed my trepidation and reassured me: nothing was expected of a beginner other than to watch. I was free to do only what I felt comfortable doing and to leave any time I wanted. Ben warned us that smoking, eating, drinking, unnecessary talking and praying near the body were all forbidden. Nothing was to distract us from the primary task at hand - preparing the met for eternal rest.
We entered the room, and there was the met, covered in a sheet, lying on a table. Ben explained the fundamental rules. As much of the body as possible is to be kept covered at all times, even while being washed. It is particularly important that the face and the genitals be shielded. At no time is it permitted to place the body face down. It is absolutely forbidden to pass anything over the body - a sign of profound disrespect, and a violation of the 'personal space' of the met; if we had to give an item to someone on the other side of the table, we were to walk around and hand it to him.
The prohibition against passing objects over the met affirms the humanity of the person whose body is lying before us; it seeks to ensure that the members of the hevra continue to accord a dead person the respect normally given to those still alive. This consideration is by no means peculiar to Jews: for essentially the same reasons, people visiting a cemetery are reluctant to step directly on the spot where someone is buried. But in Jewish tradition the space above a met is reserved for him not only in the immediate vicinity but all the way "up to the heavens," so that his path to the divine will not be impeded. This suggests that we should respect a dead person even more than we do a living one, precisely because, in death, the met is thought to come face to face with his Maker and Judge.
After Ben's explanation of the procedures, we began by reciting the hamol ('forgiveness') prayer, which asks God to take mercy on the met, pardon his transgressions, and allow him to rest with our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as the other righteous of Israel. Jewish prayers often characterize God as the reviver of the dead (in the time of the messiah); unusually, the hamol prayer adds that it is God Who causes the living to die.
Stealing glances during the prayer, I was surprised to observe that the met had a large tatoo. Since Jews are expressly forbidden by the Torah to tatoo their bodies, it seemed that this man had been far removed from Judaism in his life. And the distance became even more palpable when I heard his name - Yehudah ben (son of) Herman. In other words, Yehudah's family did not even know his father's Hebrew name. Yet here he was, tatoo and all, being prepared for burial just as his ancestors had been for millennia. The stark contrast between Yehudah's apparently irreligious life and his choice to be buried in the ancient Jewish manner, in a shroud and in a closed, plain pine box, moved and confused me.
BEN assigned me the simple task of filling buckets with lukewarm water. The requirement that the water be set at the temperature at which most people feel comfortable taking a bath seemed yet another reminder that the met should be treated as sensitively as possible. Ben explained that the goal in a tahara is to replicate the immersion of the body in a mikvah (ritual bath). There are, again, at least two reasons for this ceremony. The first is ritual: to remove symbolically any impurity which the met might have brought upon himself during his lifetime. Humans can assist in eliminating this type of pollution, because it has arisen at the hand of man - i.e., the deceased. (The inherent impurity that comes from being a dead body, however, can be removed only by God.) The other reason is related to the vulnerability of the newly dead and the role of the shomer. Death completes the cycle of life. Practically the first experience of a baby is being washed and wrapped in swaddling clothes. It is fitting that this experience be mirrored in death.
Performing the tahara is uncomplicated. First, the entire body is fully washed, from head to toe, with water poured from a ladle back-handed, to indicate the sadness of the situation and that things are not 'normal.'
<#FROWN:F15\>
IN THE WORLD OF OLD-BOY POLITICS, THIS WOMAN CALLS THE SHOTS
THE MATALIN FACTOR
BUSH'S SECRET WEAPON
In college, the girls would have called her a 'smart chick'; in politics, the boys would say she's 'a guy's kind of girl'; in a tough election year, she's exactly the person George Bush needs on his side.
"There's a little to-do about all this woman stuff," concedes Mary Matalin, aware that her role as national political director for the Bush campaign makes her not only the top woman on the president's re-election team but also a 'peg' for the media. She is, in fact, a rare species in politics: a woman who knows how a familiar story will get played out; a behind-the-scenes force who comes quickly to the point. "It doesn't matter if you're a Martian," she says of her position, "as long as you perform."
Matalin is sitting in her Washington office, in a swivel chair, wearing a dark-green wool dress; the phone rings constantly; her assistant Lisa Greenspan, reports on developments in the South; her return-call list gets longer; and George Bush, Jr., is arriving in an hour. Matalin calls, "Hey, Lisa? Does Junior have a phone in his office?" Junior is one of Matalin's closest allies - and his father's familiar troubleshooter. "I only talk to Junior 17 times a day," she says wryly, "but this is his first foray into town. We're so bunked-in over here, there's not even a cubbyhole for him."
To listen to Matalin is to hear the voice of someone who came out of the Midwest, who is happier in jeans than a dress, and who, by some instinctive apprehension of the rudiments of old-boy politics, figured out how to move within the system, rather than oppose it solely on the assumption that power might be a white male thing, and so, beyond her reach. That she might hit the glass ceiling does not seem to have occurred to her.
"For as long as I've worked, which is since age 11, I've never liked the notion of anything coming to someone because of gender. It's degrading to the recipient," says Matalin, who is 38. "I don't come to the table with 'the woman's point of view.' I come from a blue-collar family on the south side of Chicago. And nobody at the table comes from what I thought Republicans were."
Indeed, in Matalin, the men in the Bush campaign may have found their secret weapon: a woman whose candor deflects stereotypes of nerdy Republicans; whose gut instincts for politics are so close to the surface that she reacts decisively; and whose opinions, style, and wit amount to a breath of fresh air in a hot-winded horse race. "She has," says Tony Snow, a White House speech writer, "a great b.s. meter."
In early March, it's on full alert. Greenspan sticks her head in the door, bringing primary news from one of the southern states. Matalin frowns. "I need somebody in headquarters who has two brain cells to rub together." She reaches for a Marlboro Light.
Since New Hampshire, the media has dogged the Bush camp with criticism that its organization and ads have produced lackluster primary results. "Today, for instance, I'm trying to explain that 13,000 out of 199,000 Republicans voted for an uncommitted slate of delegates," says Matalin on the morning after the South Dakota primary. "This isn't a lackluster performance. We have more than 200 delegates; Buchanan has nine. Next week it's winner-take-all in four of the eight states," she says, referring to Super Tuesday. "What are we doing here? We're counting delegates."
It the media sees it differently, Matalin understands, having weathered the 1988 campaign, when she organized the GOP's state-by state 'ground war' of voter turnout - and having been the subject herself of stories about her romance with James Carville, a consultant to Governor Bill Clinton. Political reporters, she says, "always pick out their Bruce Babbitt. They've already picked out Clinton. They can always fall back on blind sources, as in 'sources close to the president said.' They could be talking to Millie the dog. So we know what kind of environment we're in. But it's frustrating because I know the mechanics, and I know we're winning."
It's the mechanics - the nuts and bolts of campaigning - that define her interest in politics. "What I have is the ability to keep a lot of plates spinning," she explains. That's a neat way of saying that when a campaign director in Michigan has a problem or when Junior needs a solid opinion, they call Matalin. "Politics always operates on the squeaky hinge theory," she admits. "Whoever gets to me first gets the job done."
But if there's one thing she learned from her mentor, the late Lee Atwater - campaign manager for Bush '88 - it is to spread the power around to her staff. "I don't want to hear about a problem unless there's blood on the floor," she says. "And we've all worked together long enough to know the difference between blood and a hang nail."
Maybe what Matalin brings to the Bush camp is levity. She grew up first near Chicago's 93rd and Commercial, later in suburban Burnham; her mother was a Democrat in the Kennedy-Roosevelt tradition and her father, the son of Yugoslavian immigrants, was a "sort of anarchist-libertarian" who worked his way up to superintendent at U.S. Steel - Matalin herself worked there during school breaks. " I understand the language of real people," she says. "If you read The New York Times or The Washington Post every day, you get sucked into the rhetoric of economics. But real people don't talk about capital gains. They want to know what it means if they sell their houses."
Distrustful of big government, Matalin says it was her family's work ethic that attracted her to the GOP. "Not to be corny, but I believe in the notion of individual responsibility," she says. And so, in 1980, while in graduate school, she took her first crack at politics in the Illinois Senate race, working for Republican David E. O'Neal. O'Neal lost but Matalin met the first of several mentors, Maxene Fernstrom, then O'Neal's campaign manager. "She is a great woman and a killer at politics," says Matalin. It was Fernstrom, now a small business consultant, who got Matalin a job in Washington at the Republican National Committee (RNC). Two years later Matalin was made executive assistant to Rich Bond, then deputy chairman of the RNC. "I liked the cut of her jib," observes Bond, now RNC chairman. "Mary can be charming. Mary can be tough." Or, as Tony Snow says, "She is at her best when things are going fast and you need quick decisions."
Perhaps no event defines Matalin's career better than the 1988 Michigan caucuses, when Bush nearly lost to Pat Robertson. "She stayed in Lansing for months," says Governor John Engler. "She was the link between Michigan and Washington." Michigan was also the unlikely beginning of her deep friendship with Atwater - unlikely because Bond and Atwater did not see eye-to-eye, and Matalin was Bond's deputy. "But Michigan turned into such a Beirut, Lee had to talk to me," she recalls. "We just clicked."
In listening to Matalin, one develops a sense of how politics works; that it isn't strictly about numbers and delegates but loyalty, raillery - and something close to passion. In Atwater, Matalin found her opposite and her mirror image. "He was this wacky, iconoclastic guy," she says. "He loved music and books... " She pauses. "I have never met, and never will, a person who can crystalize human nature in a phrase like he could."
In Carville, another flamboyant Southerner, Matalin found someone who spoke her language. Unfortunately, their bipartisan romance - now on hold - provoked intense curiosity in the press. Several articles suggested Matalin's involvement with Carville posed a liability to the Bush campaign. "It's demeaning that the authors of these stories professed to be writing them because they thought I was getting pressured [into cooling the relationship], which was untrue," says Matalin hotly. "Yet they all cast me as a victimized female. And on a personal level, it's nobody's damn business."
In any event, she now has other things to worry about, not the least of which is getting Bush re-elected. But if Matalins' days extend into nights, if her pulse quickens on caffeine and conflict, she has also begun to ponder what to do after the campaign. "I've only thought this: that it's time to think about it," she says. "About things I might have considered sooner, like having kids and finding a real man." She dismisses the notion that her job is preparing her for a new role in government. "I know a lot of people and I've got a gut. What does that prepare me for?" she asks. "To have to wear panty-hose every day, put on a dress, and set my hair..." She laughs. "That kind of structure is too unproductive for me. My all-time favorite position was my first field job, when I could sit at home in jeans, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and just work the phone." Somehow, she is not entirely believable. "Mary," says Fernstrom, "is prepared for anything."
PICASSO'S STILL CENTER
DOMESTIC PLEASURES FROM THE GREAT MASTER. A MAJOR EXHIBITION REVEALS THE PAINTER'S MANY MOODS.
The cabbie driving me into Cleveland on a dank February afternoon asked what I was in town for, and I said a show at the Cleveland Museum of Art of Pablo Picasso's still lifes ('Picasso & Things,' now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through August and to open at the Grand Palais in Paris in September). "I gotta see them!" the cabbie said. "Those are what he did before he went crazy, right?"
Everybody in the world knows Picasso, though some might get his myth cross-wired with Vincent Van Gogh's and construe 'still life' as a type of art that is precariously levelheaded. I relayed the remark to Jean Sutherland Boggs, the exhibition's main curator and the author of its majestic catalog. "I hope you told him Picasso was always crazy," she said, smiling. Yet another cabbie during my three freezing days in Cleveland, which I spent attending an international symposium convened for the occasion, declared that he, too, would make a point of seeing the show. Why? "Picasso is part of history," he explained solemnly as we drove through falling snow.
Picasso! Right up there with the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower as a monument and must-see. Picasso, the 20th century's other mascot genius, with Albert Einstein. Picasso, "that great and proprietary Spaniard" - as art historian Robert Rosenblum termed him in his lecture - who could seem to consume most of modern art's oxygen, leaving other artists gasping. Picasso, the Zeus-like lady-killer whose love life retrospectively remains as exciting to gossip about as that of any current Hollywood rou. Picasso, the academic industry summoning busy scholars to freezing Ohio.
John Richardson was on hand. Friend of the artist and singular scholar-raconteur, fresh from the triumph of the first volume of his projected four-volume biography, A Life of Picasso (Random House). Richardson begged off giving a lecture, but his presence lent some stardust to the proceedings. Eager professors queried him about volume two. It is roughly half done, Richardson said wearily, plainly daunted by the life sentence this mammoth work has become for him.
In the symposium, one professor related Picasso's Surrealist period to academic theorists' latest fashion, the apocalyptic sex and death thematics of Georges Bataille, the late French author of Literature and Evil. It was heavy sledding, as was another scholar's strenuous attempt to impute radical political content to the self-absorbed anarchism of Picasso in the years leading to cubism. Academe is academe, equal to muffling the liveliest material. In context, flamboyant philosopher Lydia Gasman's ecstatic speculations were refreshing.
Curator Boggs told a suddenly captivated audience that Picasso loved to watch professional wrestling on television.
The legacy of Picasso is so intimidatingly grand that many of us enjoy making light of him when not subjecting him to high-handed analysis - but then we are back looking at his work and the game is up.
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Coming Back To Religion:
What It Can Add to Your Life
BY DAN WAKEFIELD
I joined church the week I turned 50, after studiously avoiding any connection with organized religion since my sophomore year at Columbia University. I had been one of those intense collegiate atheists, a proud 'convert' to existential angst, Freudian salvation through psychoanalysis, and Hemingway's brand of macho courage (aided by booze) in the face of despair. But all those systems that saw me through youth and early middle age seemed to collapse in a midlife crisis of physical, professional and emotional strain.
In the course of one year, both my parents died, my relationship with a woman I had loved for seven years came to an end, I left the television work I had been doing in Los Angeles, moved out of my home and found myself broke for the first time in my life. Faced with a top-10 list of life's greatest stresses, I found myself muttering the 23rd Psalm: "He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul..." Those words spoke more to my condition as I neared my own half-century mark than anything by Hemingway, Freud or Sartre.
When I look back at the past decade, one of the most fulfilling times of my life thus far, I cannot imagine it without the richness that has flowed from my return to church. Many of us who, in youth, drifted away from our spiritual roots - whether Christian, Jewish or any other faith of our forebears - have found the homecoming especially rewarding. Most people are comforted by the framework of the faith in which they were raised; hymns, prayers or chants return with reassuring familiarity. Those who plug into some new and different system of shared spiritual values also may find that they can add a powerful new dimension to their mature years.
My first intimations of mortality arose in my doctor's office, where I was advised to lose weight and cut down on drinking to slow a racing pulse. This light brush with reality brought me face to face with the big questions I hadn't thought about since college philosophy classes and late-night bull sessions: What does it all mean? What am I here for?
Although serious adult religious questing doesn't provide any pat answers, it offers a context, a lens through which to look at the mystery of the universe and our own infinitesimal part in it. I began to view the stories and poetry of the Bible - like the psalm I instinctively turned to in time of crisis - as a legacy that has been passed down through thousands of years, speaking in language that still addresses the deepest issues of the heart and soul.
Looking anew at the oldest questions of existence can be an invigorating and surprising experience. Religious concepts that once seemed naive or irrelevant to the latest fashion in social behavior may, with the hard-won wisdom of a half-century of experience, suddenly strike one as remarkably helpful.
As I started to study familiar and unfamiliar psalms, I found that these ancient cries of anguish, triumph, love and loss echoed my own experience, helping to heal my unresolved pain. Lines from the 139th Psalm made me feel that even in direst despair, a guiding force was with me; that God is as much in the pain as in the joy of life and is with us in the dark as well as the bright times: "Wither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? ... The darkness and the light are both alike to thee." As I reflected on the most turbulent years of my life, that psalm calmed my memory, bringing peace and closure.
My search grew deeper on a weekend retreat, when other parishioners and I contemplated those dark nights of the soul. A man my age who had also returned to church after a midlife crisis wrote in one of our exercises: "I celebrate the darkness in which I grope." He wondered if perhaps it is only in the darkness that "we discover our true selves, because we are too distracted in the light." His insight broadened my own perspective, and I felt a camaraderie greater than "man to man," of humans in a common quest for spiritual meaning.
Prayer and contemplation in maturity can bring a sense of harmony and connection with the natural world. After a class in 'spiritual direction,' I followed what seemed a simple, child-like exercise: sitting down to look at a tree for 20 minutes, considering why God created such a thing. I felt I actually saw the tree for the first time, not as mere background to my own personal soap opera but as an intricate, miraculous creation. Returning to the same spot, I mediated on grass, trees, flowers, insects, birds - the whole amazing web of life around me - and experienced a deep and satisfying sense of belonging to nature.
Prayer often leads to action, in community service that is not just perfunctory volunteerism but a vibrant opportunity to live one's faith. When a friend in church remembered that I used to make chili for small neighborhood gatherings, she asked me to prepare it for 40 people at a congregation supper. ("All you have to do is quadruple the recipe," she assured me.) The day I shed onion tears and chopped tomatoes in the kitchen of the parish house, a special sense of community permeated my flesh and bones as well as my heart and mind.
When I went with other church members to serve dinner at a local homeless shelter, I was humbled by the realization that the people who held out their plates were the same as me - it was only a trick of fate that put me that night on the other side of the table. Performing this small service, I viewed the dispensing and sharing of food with those who needed it as a true expression of communion.
My belated spiritual journey has not consisted of lightning flashes and thunderous voices from above but of the gradual, quiet 'turning' that comes with small steps. Accustomed to looking at success in terms of bigness and high book sales, I was disappointed when I turned up one rainy night for Bible study and found only our seminarian and one other parishioner present. Then the words came to mind, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." I smiled and relaxed, enjoying an aura of warmth and light, made more precious by the wind and rain outside. I was learning a serenity far removed from the racing-pulse days of my late midlife crisis.
I've found that the real fruits of the spirit tend to multiply as the receiver passes them on. After taking a class in religious autobiography, I designed a similar workshop that I now lead at adult-education centers and churches across the country. In so doing, I am learning the stories of other people revitalized by their own spiritual quests.
In a Seattle workshop, for example, Helen Stout wrote on the eve of her 79th birthday, "My paintings grow smaller, my dance steps slower, my words more and faster, my thoughts and dreams richer."
Dennis Dahill, who worked for a bank in Boston, described feeling impatient at first when he went on a spiritual retreat and was asked to recollect how God had worked in and through his life. He eventually began to see patterns, and "by the second night, as I lay on my bed, a great comfort and peace came over me. I hadn't gone to sleep that easily in months." Reflection and spiritual guidance had led him to affirmation and appreciation.
When I went back to church I was delighted to see people I knew, neighbors and friendly acquaintances who I hadn't realized followed any religious belief or practice. They weren't proselytizers and so hadn't mentioned their involvement to me (someone who had expressed no interest or even had showed hostility toward religion). Now, whether I was among old or new friends, I felt an unspoken bond with men and women I joined in prayer. We gathered to worship (or simply to seek) God, to tune in to some force greater than our own egos. The word 'amen' not only signified the end of a prayer but also sealed a mutual understanding among those who uttered it, a common acknowledgment of our own frailty and our desire to look beyond ourselves for guidance and sustenance.
Tolstoy turned to religious in his later years: After becoming the greatest novelist in Russia, he was left with the feeling "So what?" The rewards of a lifetime's work did not fill his spiritual yearning, the human hunger for that elusive something more, other, beyond. That interior gap, often covered over in the rush and clamor of the middle years, becomes achingly apparent when the bustle of career and family raising is over. Reflection suddenly becomes unavoidable.
Thirst is what I felt when I finally sought the religious experience I'd avoided for so many years. This was slaked by Sunday worship services, classes, discussions and Bible study offered at the parish house during the week. "I'm as eager to come to these programs as I would have been twenty years ago if you were throwing a series of free martini parties!" I wrote in a note of thanks to the minister. (People like myself who once drank to excess find that engaging in a spiritual search helps satisfy a need we may have once blotted out with booze.)
An editor friend who heard I'd gone back to church once told me, with the unconscious condescension that men in their 30s sometimes display for people past 50, "I can see why someone of your age would get interested in religion." But he didn't see at all. He thought I was preparing for death and hoping to get in good with God.
What I really sought and found through religion was not a comfortable accommodation with death but a larger vision of life, a fuller participation in it. Rather than lulling us with some misty notion of the hereafter, religion can give us a greater engagement with the challenges of living.
In the ripeness of age, the spirit can bloom.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Gray is beautiful ...
BY LINDA BURNHAM
What is gray hair, anyway? As drab a prospect as the paint job on a battleship? Not at all. The mix of white with your original color is as individual and provocative as ever, so long as you avoid those gray clichs and style it with expression.
MODERNIZING YOUR HAIRCUT
Women and their hairstylists used to equate gray hair with short hair. They also opted for permanents to control 'frizziness' or to 'fluff up' baby-fine hair. The sad result was that too many women looked too much alike, and most looked older than their years.
But as more women choose to show their graying hair, new attitudes toward style and cut have emerged. For example, not everyone's hair texture changes, and even when it does, the newfound body or silkiness can allow for new hairstyles.
For frizziness, stylist Carmine Minardi advises "the least layering possible." He adds, "A lot of women past sixty believe that their hair should be brushed upward, but exposing the hairline, ears and nape of the neck is not always the best thing to do." Minardi likes to see gray hair chin length or longer, depending on your height: Women taller than 5 feet 5 inches look good with hair an inch past the shoulder, cut bluntly and set into waves for special occasions, he believes.
Another nontraditional suggestion is bangs. "They bring focus to the eyes, which only get more interesting with age," says Minardi. "Just be sure the bangs are soft and wispy, and long enough to be brushed to one side. The mistake with bangs is cutting them too short, <*_>a-grave<*/> la Mamie Eisenhower, or too straight, like Prince Valiant."
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TRAVELER'S JOURNAL
Carpe Your Diem In Harvard Square
Here's a visitor's guide to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where seldom is heard a politically incorrect word, and the zeitgeist is not cloudy all day.
by Patricia Harris and David Lyon
LIKE PUBLIC Television, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a cross-roads of high culture and counterculture. Situated in the upper lefthand corner of the American imagination near Greenwich Village and the Land of Oz, it's easy to find. Just make a left at every fork in the road. Or take the Red Line to Harvard Square.
When most people speak of Cambridge, Harvard Square is what they mean. The 40-acre tract adjacent to the brick-and-ivy halls of Harvard College is the urban counterpart of a tropical rainforest - an ecosystem of unparalleled diversity. Every esoteric life-form - and life-style - flourishes here. The sidewalks bustle with a peculiar mix of patrician and plebeian, professor and panhandler. The scene is American Fellini played out on a human-scale stage.
But the Square is more than mere milieu. It's a habit of mind that out-siders, frankly, find a little askew. This is where cult movies begin, where restaurants refer to serving staff as 'waitrons,' where volunteers seek petition signatures for fifth-party candidates, where light poles are papered with lecture announcements such as 'Deconstruction: Has It Fallen Apart?' Street singers out-number boomboxes and people don't fight - they challenge each other to chess duels. Eccentric as the city may seem, it's open to converts - or even to day-trippers sampling the local zeitgeist. The guiding ethic is that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Here's how to experience the quintessential Cambridge:
HOOF IT
A DIORAMA OF THE Square in 1936 at Harvard's Widener Library depicts a traffic jam; some of those cars still haven't budged. Pedestrians own the streets, but first-time visitors should cross against the walk light or dance through the traffic at midblock only in the company of an experienced local.
The Square was built for walkers, and if the crusading conservationists of the Harvard Square Defense Fund prevail, it will always be so. Says president Gladys 'Pebble' Gifford, "Pedestrian life makes Harvard Square tick." The fund fights for small-scale buildings, open patches of greenery, and "sidewalk treatments" that encourage people to "gather and interact." The architectural canyons of down-town Boston are Gifford's worst nightmare: "If you don't have sunlight, people stay away."
The information booth at the mouth of the subway supplies maps and tickets for walking tours.
IGNORE HISTORY
IN CAMBIDGE WHAT'S past is prologue. Sure, George Washington slept here - when he took command of the Continental Army and forced the British to evacuate Boston. He worshiped at Christ Church, the modest Episcopal structure across from the Cambridge Common. His headquarters was a confiscated Tory house, later owned by the Good Gray Poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Longfellow House (105 Brattle St.; $2 per person; 617-876-4491) offers an out-standing interpretive tour.
Harvard, too, has its Byzantine history (free guided tours depart from Holyoke Center). Cambridge was the birthplace of the player piano, and the first phone call over a distance was made between Cambridge and Boston. But that was then, and this is now. Carpe diem.
HIT THE BOOKS
THE 100,000 Discounted titles at WordsWorth Books (30 Brattle St.) constitute a bibliophile's paradise with a checkout line - and WordsWorth is only one of six large, full-service book-stores in the Square. Given that dedication to the life of the mind is de rigueur, as many as 17 other specialty book dealers also thrive - often tucked away on side streets or upper levels.
At the Grolier Poetry Book Shop (6 Plympton St.), Louisa Solano wedges 15,000 titles into a store the size of a front parlor. Around the corner, Herb Hillman of Pangloss (65 Mount Auburn St.) has supplied Cambridge academics with used and out-of-print books since 1957. "Sooner or later every scholar in the world worth his salt" comes to the Square, Hillman says. Science fiction, horror, and fantasy are specialties at Pandemonium (8 JFK St.), where Tyler Stewart subdivides the shelves because "You know, some people are into werewolves and others like vampires." Schoenhof's Foreign Books (76-A Mount Auburn St.) services more worldly aliens with reading materials in 160 languages.
CONNECT WITH THE WORLD
THE NEWS OF THE planet spills into the Out of Town News kiosk in the center of Harvard Square: newspapers from 150 foreign countries, nearly 200 from around North America. Out of Town is the spot for Pravda and Mexican Vogue. The diminished Iron Curtain has meant a flood of Eastern European journals too.
LINGER OVER A CAFFE
THE UNASSUMING Coffee Connection in the Garage mall between JFK and Dunster streets may serve the best cup of coffee, but the true Cambridge caffeine scene is Eurostyle: Caf Pamplona (12 Bow St.), Caffe Paradiso (1 Eliot Sq.), Patisserie Fran<*_>c-cedile<*/>aise (54 JFK St.), Caf Fiorella (50 Church St.), and the Algiers Coffee House and Blacksmith House Bakery and Caf (40 and 56 Brattle St., respectively). At press time, those in the know were choosing caffe latte and espresso over cappuccino.
The Blacksmith House takes its name from Longfellow's 'under-the-spreading-chestnut-tree' poem, but the pastry is pure Viennese. Au Bon Pain (Holyoke Plaza) is the closest thing to golden arches permitted by the Square's restrictive zoning. The out-door scene varies from a bustle of local 'types' to a sometimes-abrasive tableau of hustlers and punk pretenders. For $2, chessmaster Murray Turnbull will play anyone who can muster enough concentration amid the commotion.
CHOW DOWN OR DINE FINE
Harvard Square eateries outnumber bookstores four to one and exhibit the multinational range of Out of Town News. Some, like the Wursthaus (4 JFK St.; 617-491-7110), are Cambridge institutions. For a moderate meal, try the specialty pizzas at Bertucci's (21 Brattle St.; 617-864-4748) or the excellent burgers from the Casablanca and Harvest Bar menus.
Tablecloth dining is a better choice. College parents treat their offspring to continental cuisine at Peacock (5 Craigie Circle; 617-661-4073), while hungry poets favor the hearty Iberian fare of Iru<*_>n-tilde<*/>a (56 JFK, rear; 617-868-5633).
The top dining rooms - Upstairs at the Pudding (10 Holyoke St.; 617-864-1933) and Rarities (at the Charles Hotel; 617-864-1200, x1214) - are worth a splurge. Both are inventive proponents of New American cuisine. Rarities is elegant and modern, Upstairs at the Pudding often has a homey fire. The Pudding permits early diners to assemble a light meal of appetizer, dessert, and glass of wine.
CHOOSE SIDES IN THE ICE CREAM WAR
HE OPENED HIS FIRST store in neighboring blue-collar Somerville almost 20 years ago, but Steve Herrell remains the guru of homemade-style ice cream. His name is separated in the Square because he sold his company (Steve's, 31 Church St.) and got out of the business for a few years, only to rejoin the industry under his surname (Herrell's, 15 Dunster St.). Try both. Cantabrigians debate ice cream the way Burgundians discuss wine.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
PROGRESSIVE POLITICS is central to Cambridge's identity, although Republican governor William Weld does reside near Brattle Street. The city has one of the toughest smoking regulations anywhere (if in doubt, don't light up) and requires bars and restaurants to furnish condom machines in all rest rooms to slow the spread of AIDS.
The city has a paid Peace Officer and offers sanctuary to political refugees. Although visitors can't vote on the numerous local referenda, they can sign petitions to support political, social, environmental, or animal rights. Just look for the earnest people with clipboards.
PUT A BUCK IN THE HAT
CAMBRIDGE IS "ONE OF the five best cities in the world for street performers," says Stephen Baird, political puppeteer, musician, and founder/director of the international Street Artist Guild - a task he calls "organizing anarchists." The street scene really catches fire on warm summer nights, but some stalwart entertainers ply their trade in colder seasons as well. Singing in the Square is such a venerable tradition that in 1990, the city council passed a resolution honoring street performers - and an ordinance limiting their volume to 80 decibels.
The best spots are staked out early by performers from around the globe, ranging from a Haitian tenor performing Piaf to an Ecuadoran troupe with panpipes and armadillo-shell mandolins. Tracy Chapman, Joan Baez, and Bonnie Raitt are all alleged to have started their careers here. Among the more colorful characters is Brother Blue, an erstwhile doctor of education who is the Official Storyteller of Cambridge and Boston.
HAVE A SERIOUS NIGHT OUT
STREET SINGERS Sometimes come in from the cold to play Passim (47 Palmer St.; 617-492-7679), a relic of the 1960s folk revival and a top stop on the current acoustic music circuit. Old-timers may recollect hearing an unknown Bob Dylan here, but take it with a grain of sea salt.
Other evening entertainment leans toward the highbrow. The American Repertory Theater (64 Brattle St.; 617-547-8300) is an avant-garde theater of international repute. Love it or hate it - but argue passionately. Regattabar in the Charles Hotel (1 Bennett St.; 617-661-5000/846-1200) is one of the top jazz rooms in the Northeast, booking both classic club acts and up-and-coming artists. The music, like ART's plays, requires focused attention. Film buffs can analyze the stylistic flourishes of bygone directors at the Brattle Theater (40 Brattle St.; 617-876-6837). Once a performing stage for Hollywood and Broadway blacklistees, the Brattle is a fine repertory film house and serves real butter on the popcorn. The Bogart revival began here.
SEE AND BE SEEN
THE BAR AT Casablanca (below the Brattle Theater; 617-876-0999) features murals of the movie scenes and is the place to spot local celebs. Play the Cambridge version of naming the faces on the Sgt. Pepper album jacket - the best-selling lawyer, the detective novelist, the not-quite-famous actor, the Nobel laureate. Look for the literati a few doors down at the Harvest Bar (44 Brattle St.; 617-492-1119).
SAMPLE THE TREASURES
HARVARD'S MUSEUMS are as varied as the university's scholarship, and not even Cantabrigians try to see them all at once. The glass flowers at the Museum of Comparative Biology (26 Oxford St.; 617-495-2248) are perennial favorites of visiting great-aunts. These botanical teaching models represent the zenith of the glassblower's art. Recent makeovers have thrust two other museums into the spotlight. The Hall of the American Indian in the Peabody Museum (down-stairs from the flowers) has been renovated along politically correct, post-Dances with Wolves lines.
The Busch-Reisinger Museum's striking German Expressionist artworks have a new home in Werner Otto Hall, which is grafted onto Harvard's main art museum, the Fogg (32 Quincy St.; 617-495-9400). Enter from above the Fogg's ever-impressive Italian Renaissance courtyard. The Sackler Museum (485 Broadway; 617-495-9400) houses Harvard's Classical and Asian art. It's isolated across Broadway from the Fogg because Cambridge neighborhood groups blocked construction of a connecting bridge. One ticket gains entry to all the natural history museums, another to the art museums. All are free on Saturday mornings; the natural history museums from 9:00 to 11:00; art from 10:00 to noon.
BED DOWN IN STYLE
GENERATIONS OF Parents visiting their Harvard and Radcliffe progeny have favored the Sheraton Commander (16 Garden St.; 617-547-4800). But the overstuffed New England comforts of the Commander gained a sleek and modern competitor in 1985 - the Charles Hotel (1 Bennett St.; 617-864-1200). Last October saw the debut of the Inn at Harvard (1201 Massachusetts Ave.; 617-491-2222), a small inn with rooms ringing an airy central atrium. Windows in 25 of the rooms look down Mass. Ave. to the Square. With the room key comes a venerable Harvard privilege: Masquerade in rumpled tweeds and dine across the street at the Harvard Faculty Club.
THE LONGEST-RUNNING STORY IN BOSTON
This month, at the age of 84, Johnny Kelley will run in the Boston Marathon for the 61st time.
by Todd Balf
I WAS AFRAID OF THIS. I LOOK at Johnny Kelley, in pink togs and candy-cane tights, and he beams the charged look of a boy. It isn't at all hard to imagine the Irish youngster from Watertown whose mother always said he'd rather run than eat.
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FILM, RECEPTION, AND CULTURAL STUDIES
By Janet Staiger
ON THE AGENDA for understanding film or television as culture is addressing the question of how spectators and social audiences comprehend, respond to, and interpret cultural texts and events. As has been pointed out in reception aesthetics or reader-response theorizing (prevalent in literary studies), textual analysis is all fine and good but people are not always versed in the subtleties of unraveling ironies, finding latent pre-oedipal narrative structures, or deconstructing fallacious binary oppositions which structure propositions. People do not always read cultural texts the way scholars do; audiences are not ideal readers. But for understanding society and the effects of popular culture, knowing how people read culture can be extremely important.
One approach to considering how people actually read texts has been the work of the British Cultural Studies scholars. As I shall suggest, I find the ideas of these individuals extremely valuable. However, I also will argue that certain of their assumptions have inhibited the breadth of observations they might make. Instead, I think that a revised historical materialist approach to reception research can provide richer information, and perhaps some answers, to understanding how people think and feel when they confront cultural productions. Such an approach has at least the following features: (1) Immanent meaning in a text is denied. (2) 'Free readers' do not exist. (3) Contexts of social formations and constructed identities of the self in relation to historical conditions explain the interpretive strategies and affective responses of readers. In this model, interpretations need to be related to specific historical conditions rather than essentialized (e.g., labeled conservative or progressive). (4) The means for analyzing these interpretative strategies exist in post-structuralist, feminist, and ideological analysis.
Although much variance exists among the people associated with British cultural studies research, in general these writers emphasize that interpretations and uses of texts connect to ideologies and cultural, social, and political power. Theories of communication and cultural discourses are numerous. Some scholars assume communication is neutral - the transmittal of messages which may or may not hold ideological content (often called the 'transportation' model). Such a position is expressed in one strand of communication theory deriving from the work of Paul Lazersfeld, Kurt Lewin, Harold Lasswell, Carl Hovland, and Wilbur Schramm. This model also occurs when formalist aesthetics separates form and content.
Other scholars of communication and culture such as James Carey take the position that communication is a social or cultural ritual, "a sharing, participation, association, fellowship." Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch extend and revise that notion by conceptualizing commercial broadcast television as a "cultural forum" which provides individuals not merely information but also a process for "understanding who and what we are."
Yet other theorists such as Lev Vygotsky and V. N. Volosinov assume that communication is a tool. Like other means of production, communication is produced by and for its users: communication transforms reality for the benefit of human beings. But as with other means of production, not everyone has equal access to technology; thus, communication can function as a tool of domination. Signs and their signifieds are not neutral but sites of power. Representations are developed in social circumstances and bear the ideological marks of the class or group that controls meanings. This obviously has tremendous leverage in organizing social existence for people. Thus, as Volosinov writes: the sign "becomes an arena of the class struggle." Controlling representations and meanings is as much a part of the fight for equity as any political battle.
This notion of communication as a tool does not imply a functionalist theory of society, assuming a drift toward equilibrium within a social formation. Instead it posits a Marxist thesis that social orders are structured in contradictions and overdetermination. Nor, however, does this model assume conspiratorial repression by the dominant class; indeed, communication systems may function so well for the dominant class that hegemony often exists. Yet as advocates of this understanding of language caution: the very 'common sense' or 'naturalness' of discourses of meanings is a strong indicator of power at work. It is this theory of communication and cultural discourses which I shall consider to be held by those individuals working in British cultural studies. In this essay, then, I shall be arguing against the positivism of some of their cultural studies research and for a contextual approach to understanding reception. While I believe that the British cultural studies scholars offer important gains in considering how audiences interpret cultural products, we need to recognize that history creates the audiences as well as the texts and both texts and readers need to be investigated in context.
British cultural studies is a particular version of Marxism developed through debates, mainly in Britain, from the mid-1950s. Several histories exist, detailing a sequence of theoretical problematics from orthodox Marxism through culturalist Marxism (including the work of Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson) and structuralist Marxism (particularly Louis Althusser) to what Richard Johnson calls "ideological-cultural" Marxism - a label that never stuck. This problematic is, though, a combination of aspects of cultural and structural Marxism as proposed by scholars at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. People associated with the Centre's work include Johnson, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and John Hartley. I shall also discuss the work of Charlotte Brundson, David Morley, and John Fiske as having connections to these views. As is common among scholars, much disagreement exists within the propositions forwarded by the various people. However, several general tenets have gained considerable following, and while many members of the original group now work apart, the standard phrase British cultural studies continues to describe the common aspects of the work. I would underline that other Marxist theories of cultures and their study also exist as well as non-Marxist cultural studies.
Generally, British cultural studies accept the advances of structuralist Marxism as most notably proposed in Louis Althusser's essay, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses' (and in other similar ways by other Marxists). Base and superstructure are theorized as distinct concepts, with elements of the superstructure having potential effect but also "relative autonomy" from other determinants. In capitalism (and perhaps other modes of production), the economic aspects of a social formation "in the last instance" are causal, but economic structures are not sufficient to explain many specific features of a social formation. For one thing, development is uneven. Because the economic base (the mode of production) is contradictory, superstructural features display that history moves through class struggle. Althusser splits the superstructural features into two groups. Repressive state apparatuses (RSAs) include the government, armies, police, courts, prisons. RSAs function primarily on behalf of the dominant class and often through violence or repression; they are public and generally overdetermined in an effort to repress change disadvantageous to the dominant class. Ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) are all sorts of other institutions and groups such as religions, educational systems, families, political parties, and communication and cultural media. ISAs are plural and function primarily by ideology. Consequently, contradictions and overdeterminations proliferate among the competing discourses, with all classes struggling through the ISAs. Ideology is defined relationally and materially: it "represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence" (162). Ideology exists in the RSAs and ISAs; it exists in practices. The structured relations invite or "interpellate" an individual to take up a position as a "subject" in that imaginary relationship: positions of occupation, social status, gender - whatever constructed but imaginary sense of the self that is useful for the reproduction of the mode of production and the maintenance of the dominant class. This imaginary subject position has, however, very real consequences for individuals.
Interpellation is a tricky notion, often defined as "hailing" the individual, calling out for the individual to recognize him or herself as being the subject who belongs in a role. For example, reverently singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' is taking up the ideological position of the nationality of being a United States citizen. The song has interpellated, hailed its subject to position him or herself into that constructed and, hence, imaginary identity. Such an interpellation, however, may produce an extremely contradictory condition for an individual who is, of course, the site at which multiple subject positions may concurrently exist. While one might accept the position of being a citizen of the United States, one might also resist the policies of the government in power. Interpellation as it is more closely examined becomes a theoretical description of an activity or process which is complicated by the difference between thinking of a coherent theoretical notion such as a subject position but recognizing that in reality people are not so neatly 'taken up' by ideological discourse.
This much of structuralist Marxism is relatively uncontested by British cultural studies. Where disagreement develops is whether the human individual has volition or a consciousness that is other than 'false.' This is significant for Marxists' calls for political action and change; the idea of struggle implies a need for conscious actions on the part of people, and the issues of force and consent are significant. Part of the dispute with structuralist Marxism over this point derives from Althusser's use of Lacanian psychoanalysis to describe interpellation. British cultural studies scholars argue that Lacan presents a trans-historical and universal theory of the development of the subject; furthermore, that in Althusser's model, the psychoanalytical unconscious (rather than economics) becomes the primary determinant developing individuals. Such a model is unacceptable to these writers because to them the model becomes ahistorical and change impossible to explain.
I believe, however, that at least some Freudian-based psychologies can offer social and historical models of psychic development. I also do not think Althusser's model conflicts with a historical reading of Freudian theories. For one thing, in Althusser, ISAs such as family relations are as ISAs structured in contradiction; their ideologies have some (uneven) relationship to the in-the-last-instance determinant of the mode production. Family structures are social, historical, and contradictory ideological sites, and some writers such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman have made strong arguments connecting family structures such as patriarchy to economic situations such as capitalism. Thus, I do not agree that Althusser's use of Freudian psychology necessarily produces a trans-historical, universal, or totally determined subject. I would also emphasize that Freudian psychology never suggested that the unconscious constituted all of the subject; in fact, in Freud's theoretical framework the ego is often in conflict with the id (or the superego) because of social and public contradictions. A somewhat more sympathetic reading of Freud is not at odds with concerns in Marxism that historical events indicate the need to represent an individual as also having conscious intentions, understandings, and volition. Freudian psychologies just remind readers that the consciousness is not all of what people as human organisms are and that heterogeneity and conflict are part of people's psychological dynamics. Freudianism is a historical theory of the individual as individual and social being. In this matter, the issue of Lacan is less clear, but while Althusser's original proposition employs Lacanian language, I am not at all sure that Althusser's model requires that language for it to work.
In summary, the rejection of psychoanalytic theory by British cultural studies may also reject a viable contribution to the understanding of the subject and an explanation of some types of affect and pleasure. In fact, some members of the group are now considering the possibilities of Freudian psychologies, particularly in relation to narration and subjectivity.
At any rate, while temporarily eliminating psychoanalytical theory, British cultural studies theorists paid particular attention to Althusser's use of Gramsci's concept of hegemony to account for the reproduction of ideologies without repeating the universally automatic response they perceive existing in the interpellation thesis. Thus, British cultural studies attempts to synthesize Althusser and Gramsci. People are not tabula rasa but exist in contradictory experiences so that while ideological hegemony often exist, opposition or at least deviation from the dominant does too. This can happen, they argue, because the base is contradictory and class continues to be the most significant determinant of human action.
<#FROWN:F19\>
The Politics of Performance: From Theater Licensing to Movie Censorship in Turn-of-the-Century New York
DANIEL CZITROM
Mount Holyoke College
THE MOVIES WERE BORN IN THE CITY. WHILE HISTORIANS OF EARLY film have begun to pay more attention to special issues such as technology, patent wars, industrial practice, and the movie's aesthetic debt to earlier forms of cultural expression, there has been little analysis of the specifically urban world that made motion pictures the most popular form of commercial entertainment by World War I. The political, legal, and economic wrangles surrounding the nascent movie business in New York City established the template for the ownership and control of the mature industry, as well as the basic pattern for film censorship. In the first center of movie production and exhibition during the early part of the century, the especially knotty issues involving the licensing and censoring of movies -who could show them and what could they show -were fiercely contested. These battles over the regulation of representation need to be understood against the historical backdrop of urban cultural politics.
Movies reinforced and reconfigured a set of controversies that, since the mid-nineteenth century, had been fought out largely over the licensing and regulation of theatrical space. These issues included the alleged dangers commercial entertainments posed to children, disputes over Sunday blue laws, the licensing authority of the police department, and the connections between plebeian culture and the underworld. The process that determined which entertainments were licensed and which were licentious had always been fundamentally political and volatile. The continual controversies over commercial enterprises loosely described as 'theatrical' involved complicated relations among entrepreneurs, the licensing authority of the state, the police power, and neighbourhood audiences.
By 1908, the movie business faced a crisis of exhibition: the older traditions of theater licensing proved inadequate for regulating the emergent new medium. Progressive reformers, movie exhibitors, and movie producers sought to split movies off from such live urban entertainments as vaudeville, burlesque, and concert saloons. Progressive social service agencies and activists embraced movies as an alternative to older entertainment traditions closely allied with machine politics and the urban vice economy. Movie entrepreneurs cultivated the new alliance with reformers as a way to shed the stigma of the street, attract a middle class patronage, and increase their profits. For their part, reformers saw that alliance as a way to achieve what John Collier, general secretary of the National Board of Censorship, called "the redemption of leisure." New York's movie wars -fought over theaters and screens, in the courts and the streets -illuminate a crucial transformation: the supplanting of locally based, municipally licensed cheap theater by the nationally organized, industrial oligopoly that came to dominate our popular culture.
The whole question of what, precisely, constituted a theatrical performance had remained ambiguous ever since the New York State Legislature passed the first comprehensive licensing act in 1839. That act, a response to intense lobbying by the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents (SRJD), had rested on the strongly held belief in a direct, causal relationship between the theater and delinquent or criminal behavior. It required any "theater, circus, or building, garden or grounds, for exhibiting theatrical or equestrian performances" in New York City to obtain a license from the mayor, with all collected fees to be forwarded to the SRJD. The law also set a penalty of $500 for every violation, and it authorized the society, as an agent of the state, to sue and collect on those penalties. During the Civil War the city experienced a boom in 'concert saloons,' and the explosive issue of separating prostitution and alcohol from entertainment spaces led the state legislature in 1862 to pass a new act to "Regulate Places of Public Amusement." Its key features banned alcoholic beverages on the premises of a performance and made illegal the employment of females to wait on spectators.
Over the next four decades, two kinds of regulation coexisted in the highly profitable yet unstable world of New York popular amusements. One was an internal supervision within the entertainment business itself, led by the trade press and certain entrepreneurs who sought to expand their audience by distancing their attractions from associations with alcohol and prostitution. The most influential figure in this process was Tony Pastor, often called the father of American vaudeville. Although Pastor gained his first notoriety during the concert saloon boom of the early 1860s, he soon moved to create a 'high class variety' by freeing the entertainment from its earlier associations. By 1881 he had become the leading variety theater manager in the city, as he moved into his Fourteenth Street Theater located on the ground floor of the new Tammany Hall. Pastor embodied the urge toward respectability and wider commercial success, and his theater is rightly viewed as the prototype for the mainstream vaudeville that dominated the American popular stage from the 1880s until the rise of radio. He regulated his theater with an eye toward increasing profit, making special efforts to attract a female clientele.
Yet there were hundreds of other entertainment entrepreneurs who did not follow this path, retaining their ties to the concert saloon traditions and struggling to survive within the competitive world of New York amusements. An uneasy alliance of the police department, the mayor's office, private moral reform societies, and neighbourhood groups performed a continuous cultural surveillance on entertainment spaces that included dime museums, concert saloons, and vaudeville and burlesque houses. Success or failure in obtaining and keeping a license from the mayor's office proved a key not only to staying in business, but also for moving into a more profitable realm in the continuum of amusement respectability. To thrive, an entrepreneur had to negotiate a treacherous terrain that included autocratic police captains, ever-vigilant moral reformers, outraged clerics, and organized neighborhood citizens. No one, finally, could say with any certainty what constituted a theater, or what the difference was between a theater and a concert hall. Indeed many entrepreneurs sought both theater and concert licenses since the city charter authorized the police department to permit the sale of liquor in concert halls.
An 1875 'List of Theaters, Halls, Concert Rooms' counted fifty-seven licensed places for that year, a figure that remained basically constant for the next two decades. These were about evenly divided between places presenting straight drama, opera, music concerts, and circuses and the newer concert saloons and variety theaters. They were clustered mainly in three entertainment districts: the Bowery and the Lower East Side; Fourteenth Street and Union Square; and 'the Tenderloin,' roughly from Twenty-third to Fourty-second Streets, between Sixth and Eighth Avenues. By this time several newer private groups, such as the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and the Society for the Prevention of Crime, had joined the SRJD in making active interventions in the licensing process.
Consider, for example, the Belvidere Variety Theater at 23 Bowery, licensed by the city since at least 1875. Its owner, John Schroeder, probably opened it first as a saloon room, adding a small stage with rough scenery facing tables and chairs. Upon orders of the local police captain in early 1879, Schroeder erected a seven-foot high wooden partition to separate the bar room from the stage area, thus technically complying with the law requiring separation of theatrical performance from the serving of alcohol. In April 1879, two agents from the recently formed Society for the Suppression of Vice (SSV), founded by Anthony Comstock, visited the Belvidere and filed depositions with the mayor's office, protesting against a renewal of license. One described the scene at the Belvidere as follows:
At the tables were seated about twelve girls and women with a number of men, engaged in drinking and conversation .... On entering the saloon deponent seated himself near the door and was soon approached by one of the women and asked what [he] would have to drink and if she could drink with him. Seating herself at the table the drinks, lager beer and lemonade, were brought by a waiter. While drinking the woman asked deponent to go with her to one of the rooms on the side of the stage. Deponent consented and going to the room was again asked to treat which he did. In the course of the conversation which followed the woman urged deponent to take her into one of the rooms up stairs, which was more private and had better accommodations, and where they could have a bottle of wine together and would only cost three dollars. Upon deponent's remarking that it cost pretty high and whether anything else was given for the money, the woman replied that they would have a good time, that she would give him a nice diddle, pulled up her dress, showed her leg above the knee, made use of every persuasion and said she would get one dollar of the money and the other two dollars would go to the proprietor -the whole of which offers the deponent declined.
In response, Schroeder vigorously denied the "false, malicious, and untrue" statements in the SSV depositions, claiming that "such practices are not permitted on the premises." He defended the arrangements in his place, stressing the makeshift wall separating bar room from theater as "similar to the front partitions used at Miner's theater, Volks Garden, and theaters of like character on the Bowery." He admitted that "the greater portion of the upper part of the building is let out weekly to male lodgers and the balance thereof to transient lodgers of the same sex." Schroeder also submitted a supporting petition from eight neighboring businessmen. These clothing merchants, hatters, and picture framers all affirmed that the Belvidere was not disorderly, "nor is it a source of disturbance or annoyance to us during the day or night or in our Judgment the cause of annoyance or grievance to the travelling public." Like so many other places on the Bowery, in Union Square, and in the Tenderloin, the Belvidere continued to operate for years, a protean urban space defined and redefined by various elements of the metropolis. It qualified as a legitimate entertainment enterprise as long as owner John Schroeder coughed up regular tribute to the local police captain. He maintained the Belvidere as a legal and moderately successful business, catering to local working people and tourists, and providing employment for musicians and other variety performers. At least some of the women found there earned money by hustling drinks from customers and splitting the money with Schroeder. Whether or not they received a wage is unclear. Some of them may have also engaged in casual prostitution with customers looking for that. But as both police and private investigators found, one had to agree to move through a series of coded encounters first: letting a woman sit with you, treating her, moving to a side room, treating again, allowing her onto your lap, moving upstairs to a private room. Even there, the real profit resulted from using sex to sell liquor rather than the reverse. For the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the Belvidere was a low "dive," frequented only by thieves and prostitutes. It was "disorderly" precisely because it blurred the boundaries between respectable and unrespectable social behavior.
During its infancy, roughly from 1896 to 1906, the motion picture established itself largely within venues more respectable than the Belvidere. Movies became the single most popular act in American vaudeville, the latest in a long line of visual novelty acts -'living picture' tableaux, lantern slides, shadowography -that could be fit neatly into an established format organized around discrete, unrelated 'turns'. Vaudeville managers aggressively promoted brief travelogues, 'local actualities', news films, and the occasional comedy or drama to gain an edge over their competitors. Hundreds of vaudeville theaters across the country provided the most important market for the fledgling, mostly undercapitalised movie makers.
Beginning around 1905 the rapid growth of nickelodeon theaters, devoted exclusively to exhibiting motion pictures, created the industry's first great boom.
<#FROWN:F20\>Others, most of them, embraced the new trends and tried to make the best of it in white-collar jobs, with more education, in newer homes with larger yards out in the suburbs. But both groups had a passion for the polka and wanted to hold on to that. It could not be done individually. There were ample signs that a fresh approach had to be found. Take the case of the missing young people as an example. Those actively involved in keeping the polka alive are always measuring their success not only by how many people come out to a dance but also by whether the youth participate. The falling off of polka interest among the young is always pointed out as a sign that the polka is in trouble. "We noticed that the youngsters did not go for polka music," said Schafer. "Rock-and-roll was their thing. When we were young, polka dancing was the big thing. We just had a ball going to the dances and picnics. There was nothing better. So, we've got to do something; we've got to get these kids interested."
It was a matter of realism. The IPA would promote the polka in a constantly developing ethnic situation. Using a form that exists throughout Polonia, the ever present not-for-profit organization and club, the founders of the IPA moved to institutionalize fan and industry cooperation because the polka and what kept it alive had begun to decline, and individual promoters could not turn this situation around.
The seriousness and intensity with which the IPA pushed both the convention and the polka business over the next decade are reflected in the dense 84-page 1976 Souvenir Program of the IPA Convention and Festival. Roughly the first third of the booklet is devoted to the program of the festival, the schedule of events, biographies and pictures of Hall of Fame and annual Polka Music Award winners, and pictures of bands appearing in the festival, followed by lists of their sponsors, both commercial and fraternal. The rest comprises advertisements from businesses that support the polka and in turn are supported by the fans. The souvenir program is obviously another fund raiser. It advertises polka bands, the famous ballrooms of the northern Midwest, the equally legendary bars of the industrial heartland, the record companies unknown to anyone but polka lovers, and a list of 247 contributing 'Well Wishers.' But it also boosts commitment to the polka field as a whole. An introduction to this field for budding enthusiasts, it exudes solidarity and is full of information about the small-scale economics (promotions, advertising, sponsorship), status competition, and polka commitments on which the entire polka world depends. It is a Who's Who of the polka world, referred to by fans throughout the year.
The program is especially informative in presenting the organization. All the officers and directors of the IPA are represented by individual photographs and their places of residence given. Brief histories of the IPA and of the Polka Music Hall of Fame are presented by Leon Kozicki, first president of the IPA, acting chairman of the board of trustees of the Hall of Fame, and generally acknowledged leading light of the IPA from its very beginning. Listed also are all inductees since the Hall of Fame's inception in 1968, and deceased members of the association (under the title 'Lest We Forget'). This concern to explain to the public what the IPA is and how it came about, and to celebrate its own members and the work they do, suggests a self-reflective and highly motivated organization. It is the first Polonian volunteer organization focusing on the polka to make a serious bid for a central place in the life of the ethnic community.
Here is a summary of purposes as it appears in the language of the charter and is reproduced in the souvenir program: The IPA is "an educational and social organization for the preservation, promulgation, and advancement of polka music"; its goals are "to promote, maintain, and advance public interest in polka entertainment; to advance the mutual interests and encourage greater cooperation among its members who are engaged in polka entertainment; and to encourage and pursue the study of polka music, dancing and traditional folklore." Through popular vote of its delegates, the IPA also accepted "the challenge of responsibility" to establish a professional academy and selection procedure and to raise funds for the Polka Music Hall of Fame in order "to bestow proper honor and recognition to performers, Djs, and others who have rendered years of faithful service to the polka entertainment industry."
Without quite saying it, the program defines the IPA as a professional association, a badge of pride and legitimacy. The role of the polka musician in the Polish-American community is governed largely by community rather than by professional standards, and this relationship of tension and balance between the specialized network of musicians, promoters, disc jockeys, bar owners, and the ethnic community is reflected in the variety of terms used to describe the polka complex: polka industry, polka field, polka world, polka lover, polka people, polka entertainment, polka power. Each term emphasizes a different aspect of the complex, and each one remains unsatisfactory if taken alone. Some terms echo populism; others point to professionalism and specialization - it is the mix that is essential to the IPA. The fans are included right next to the musicians: "engaged in polka entertainment" is an identification broad enough to include the entire polka-loving community and reflects the balance between 'professionalism' and 'community' that keeps the polka alive.
Although musicians may be called 'artists' from time to time and composers of popular new polkas are recognized as such, the IPA does not generally glorify polka music as 'art' and polka musicians as 'artists' or 'composers.' There is no fetishizing of 'music' and 'art,' only a pragmatic concern for the health of polka music. The recognition that the polka needs serious study, however, responds to the realities of the situation and is a message of self-affirmation to bruised polka identities. The IPA seems to be saying, "Chopin is fine, but our polkas are worthy of serious study and honored preservation too." This affirmation is aimed not only at the non-polka, non-ethnic community but also at that image-conscious and 'gatekeeping' section of the Polish-American community which, until quite recently, has not wanted to acknowledge the polka people's existence at all.
The Polka Music Hall of Fame is part of the IPA's struggle against the belittlement of polka music from both outside and inside the ethnic community. The Hall of Fame is an appropriate mark of seriousness and success, not only to those who make unconscious or conscious comparisons with the acceptance, popularity, and unassailability of baseball and country music but also to the vast majority of Polonians who tend to recognize virtue in an organization only when they see it materialize in a building, a landmark of substance. In this desire to put the polka on the map, the two themes of ethnic pride and class pride are interwoven.
A long-standing member of the IPA emphasizes this point:
<O_>interview<O/>
Museums and halls of fame, like other visible institutions, are respected in Polonia, U.S.A. But respect never comes unadulterated. By the time an organization is doing something clearly enough to command respect, it has also crystallized an opposition that is eloquent on the subject of its demerits. The Polish-American's deep sense that nothing gets done without many people pulling together, without organization, cooperation, communal work, and appropriate institutions, is threatened by enduring rifts in the community. On the one hand Am-Poles claim to love freedom and democracy so much that they cannot compromise on such important issues; on the other, they say they 'cannot agree on anything.' What Helena Znaniecki Lopata calls 'status competition' is taken for granted. 'Jealousy' is the word for it, and it is the most prevalent explanation for unresolved disputes between people who are not divided by substantial conflicts of interest. 'Jealousy,' assumed to motivate any criticism, is deprecated when it seems to be the main motivating force in a person's behavior. In fact, however, in a community where status competition and having a pleasant time in a companionable group are such prevalent motivations for social activity, both jealousy and good common sense unite behind the following crucial questions: What's the leadership in it for? What's happening to the money? Is this a democratic, open (noncliquish) organization with legitimate procedures? Are the leaders active? Are they doing something for the community?
These are perennial questions through which every old and new organization is scrutinized in Polonia. The standards of selflessness, scrupulous handling of money, and legitimate procedures are extremely high. While leniency in these matters may be possible toward an individual member, strict skepticism fuels the examination of anyone who presumes to act in an official capacity.
Since polka activity is expected to pay for itself, those who assume organizational positions are usually adept at handling the economy that sustains the polka. Such talented individuals are admired yet scrutinized. The fans are practical and accept as a matter of course that in helping the music survive, polka professionals are also working for their own futures; they point to this interdependence as an intelligent compromise between private and public welfare. Greed, however, is an ever present threat. Concern for monetary profit only is completely out of place within a polka ideal that demands cheerful service to the public. Sharp gossip is constantly used to limit excessive profit seeking.
While the IPA cannot avoid the skepticism that readily accompanies financial success, it has managed to put its best foot forward. Most of its functions are benefits for the Polka Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The IPA makes contributions to charitable organizations such as the March of Dimes. Through a calendar of such affairs the IPA ensures adequately paid work and good publicity for the polka businesses of its members (bands, halls, bars, caterers, and so on). Such moderate compensation, however, falls within the limits of what the practical polka public consider reasonable. And there is nothing like donating money to the community to allay suspicions of personal gain. Furthermore, the IPA is run completely by volunteer labor, and the IPA Bulletin maintains a high standard of open information about finances and meetings. Nonetheless, there are jokes. Elections are greeted by a jovial response: "Fixed - do it again!" Most of the time, these jokes are good-humored - people poking fun at themselves and exorcizing the ever present suspicion and danger of crookedness - but may include a pointed challenge to the legitimacy, the fairness of selection: "How come your cousin won, Stan?" This is why the broad membership in the academy of electors for the Annual Polka Music Awards and the professionalism of the consulting firm that tabulates the votes represent a solid base from which the legitimacy of the IPA decisions can be defended.
Although the association's purpose and activities are remarkably coherent, there is one gnawing inconsistency in its stated goal. The IPA proclaims itself international, yet in many important ways it has always been a Polish-American organization. Some fans see this contradiction as an indication of bad faith in the very nature of the organization, but most ignore it or interpret it as a pious wish that for practical reasons has not yet been fulfilled. The feeling in polkaland is always 'the more, the merrier,' and everyone within the polka world is aware that the polka is a true international phenomenon.
Like other active members of the IPA, Chet Schafer accepts this dual nature of the association as a pragmatic reality, the way things have actually worked out. The IPA came to life out of the experience of the polka people in Chicago's Polonia; hence, it is not only a Polish organization in its membership, its leadership, and the cultural ideals it embodies but, more specifically, a Chicago Polonian organization. Nevertheless, as Schafer puts it, irrespective of the original and present membership, "the idea is to unite all the ethnic groups interested in preserving the polka."
<#FROWN:F21\>When the many greenhouse gases are introduced into the free atmosphere, they begin to combine with one another, thereby producing another set of complicated interactions with the radiation balance of the system. Scientists recognize that a full representation of each gas is needed to properly account for the radiative effects of the many trace gases. But in an attempt to simplify this complex situation, the equivalent CO2 values remain in wide use by climatologists working with the greenhouse effect.
Equivalent CO2 levels were approximately 290 ppm at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution; by 1900, the equivalent CO2 had risen to about 310 ppm. Although the estimates in the scientific literature vary (e.g., Tricot and Berger, 1987; Sch<*_>o-umlaut<*/>nwiese and Runge, 1991), the best estimate of equivalent CO2 for 1990 is over 430 ppm - since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we have increased the equivalent CO2 by approximately 50 percent (Houghton et al., 1990). And over the past 100 years, we have seen the equivalent CO2 levels increase by 40 percent. Given the pattern of the past 100 years, we can expect to reach the 600 ppm equivalent CO2 value (often used as the value for a doubling of CO2) between 2035 and 2040.
The concept of equivalent CO2 is a critical component to much of this book. Most of the predictions associated with the 'popular vision' are for a time when we have doubled CO2 (or equivalent CO2). Yet, as can be seen in Figure 10, we have already gone halfway to an equivalent CO2 doubling, and in the past 100 years, we have witnessed a 40 percent increase in this value. We are lucky that over the same 100-year period, relatively good records have been kept regarding the climate of the earth. If large, catastrophic changes in climate are going to occur for a doubling of equivalent CO2, we should expect to see some of these changes being revealed for a 40-50 percent increase in the equivalent CO2. Understanding how our climate responded to the observed increase in equivalent CO2 will certainly provide insight into how the climate will ultimately respond to a doubling of CO2.
3
THE NUMERICAL MODELS OF GLOBAL CLIMATE
It is widely recognized that the atmospheric concentrations of the various anthropogenic greenhouse gases are increasing and that they will continue to increase into the next century. As we saw earlier, the doubling of equivalent CO2 (actually, when we reach 600 ppm) will likely occur near the year 2040; obviously, any number of social, technological, political, and economic unknowns can alter the exact time. However, most scientists agree that some time in the middle of the next century, the earth's atmosphere will reach the 600 ppm level for equivalent carbon dioxide.
For a long time, climatologists have attempted to determine what the climate of the earth would be like in a world of doubled CO2. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many scientists were conducting research on the radiative and absorptive properties of gases in the atmosphere. Following in this trend, Svante Arrhenius presented a paper to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1895 that showed a doubling of CO2 would lead to a rise in global temperature of about 6.0<*_>degree<*/>C (10.8<*_>degree<*/>F); the paper was later published by the Philosophical Magazine (Arrhenius, 1896). By the 1930s, G. S. Callendar, of London's Imperial College of Science, had calculated the amount of CO2 humans had emitted into the atmosphere. Callendar (1938) concluded that the observed rate of CO2 increase could lead to a 1.1<*_>degree<*/>C (2.0<*_>degree<*/>F) warming per century. Several decades later, Johns Hopkins University scientist Gilbert Plass (1956) determined that a doubling of CO2 would force the planetary temperature to rise by 3.6<*_>degree<*/>C (6.5<*_>degree<*/>F). By the early 1960s, M<*_>o-umlaut<*/>ller (1963) was developing very simplistic models of the atmosphere; his research led to an estimate of a 1.5<*_>degree<*/>C (2.7<*_>degree<*/>F) rise in temperature for a 300 ppm rise in atmospheric CO2. The calculations were becoming increasingly intricate and complex by the end of the 1960s; the modern numerical models of global climate were becoming an important part of the CO2 research. Nonetheless, the early 'pioneering' work by Arrhenius, Callendar, Plass, and M<*_>o-umlaut<*/>ller led them to conclusions that are remarkably consistent with the predictions of some of the most complex climate models.
WHAT ARE NUMERICAL CLIMATE MODELS?
Models are idealized representations of reality, and in the context of numerical global climate models, they are mathematical, theoretical, deductive, and deterministic representations of the climate. The goal of the numerical modelers is to generate models that are based on the physics governing the mass, momentum, and energy flows and exchanges in the atmospheric system. For example, in Chapter 1 an equation was given for calculating the effective temperature of the earth. In a very simplistic form, that equation could be considered a numerical model of climate. The equation was obviously mathematical, it can be derived from relatively simple theory, and its derivation was deductive. We started with the theory, then built the equation, as opposed to measuring the solar constants and various effective temperatures of the planets and moons and then finding an equation that matched our observations. The effective temperature equation is also deterministic - the most basic forcing functions of global temperature are explicitly represented in the model. If we were to calculate the effective temperature for the various planets and moons of the solar system, and then compare the estimated effective temperature with the actual mean temperatures of these bodies, we would be close in many cases and quite in error in other cases. Nonetheless, we would still have a numerical model capable of simulating, with some limited degree of accuracy, the mean global temperature of bodies in the solar system.
The effective temperature 'model,' which is clearly at the lower end of the spectrum of model complexity, is an example of a zero-dimensional model (Schneider and Dickinson, 1974; Fraedrick, 1978). It is called zero-dimensional because it does not resolve any of the latitudinal, longitudinal, or vertical patterns in the climate system. Given the extreme limitations in using such a zero-dimensional model, one may conclude that the only useful climate models must be three-dimensional. However, a number of one-dimensional models have proved useful in CO2-climate research.
Imagine a vertical line running from the surface of the earth straight out to the very top of the atmosphere. At many points along the line, we could specify various physically based equations that could simulate the transfer of solar energy, the transfer of infrared energy from the earth and atmosphere, the vertical movement of air via convective processes, and even some basic cloud physics (e.g., Manabe and Wetherald, 1967; Manabe, 1983). The influence of various gases could be carefully specified in such a radiative-convective model, and as the concentrations of these gases are altered, the effects on energy transfers, temperatures, convection, and clouds could be determined. Such a one-dimensional model is surprisingly well suited to the greenhouse problem, and although its one-dimensional character would seem very limiting, these models have been used successfully in green-house research (e.g., Manabe and Wetherald, 1967; Schneider, 1975; Watts, 1980).
Another type of popular one-dimensional model resolves latitudinal differences in climate as opposed to the vertical structure of the atmosphere. Sellers (1969) and Budyko (1969) independently developed two of the most widely used one-dimensional energy balance models that have been applied to the greenhouse question. However, these models are largely used in classroom exercises, and have not continued to be utilized in many recent greenhouse experiments. Two-dimensional models (e.g., Sellers, 1973) combining a vertical coordinate with latitude or including only longitude and latitude are uncommon, and have not played a significant role in the greenhouse research.
Within the hierarchy of models (Schneider and Dickinson, 1974; Gal-Chen and Schneider, 1976), the three-dimensional models are clearly at the top, and these three-dimensional models are central to the greenhouse debate. These models attempt to resolve the latitudinal, longitudinal, and vertical components of the earth-atmosphere system. To visualize how many of these models operate, think about a grid of points over the earth's surface. Although the models vary in terms of spatial resolution, a grid of approximately 500 km by 500 km (300 by 300 miles) is common. Even at the rather sparse spatial resolution of the 500-km squares, one should realize that several thousand of these squares are needed to cover the globe. Because the three-dimensional models contain a vertical component, these several thousand squares defined at the surface have layers of boxes above. Most of the modern three-dimensional models have approximately ten vertical layers, and therefore, the earth-atmosphere system is represented by over 20,000 boxes.
An intricate and complex set of equations is solved for each grid point or box to determine time and space changes in mass, energy, and momentum. The equations are written to carefully simulate changes in atmospheric pressure, fluxes of incoming solar energy, outgoing infrared radiant energy, thermal patterns, wind vectors, moisture levels, precipitation, clouds, ice and snow, and on and on. If there is not enough complexity already, the models should simulate oceanic circulations and allow a coupling between the oceans and the atmosphere. Because many of the three-dimensional models are based fundamentally upon the equations governing the wind patterns of the planet, these three-dimensional models are often referred to as general circulation models or GCMs.
All modelers are confronted with finding a balance between the physical representation of the climate elements and speed of computation (in fact, to maximize computational efficiency, some 'spectral' models do not have grids and boxes, but rather produce all calculations for a series of harmonic waves). Ideally, modelers seek to represent all of the processes with theoretically based equations generated from the underlying physics. However, this goal is compromised at times to allow the computer program making up the model to run more quickly.
Many processes operating within the earth-atmosphere system can be represented with more simplified equations that are based on observed statistical relations. These simplified equations may have great accuracy in representing some process in the atmosphere, but they are not equations that reflect the physics of the process. These 'fast physics' relations are referred to as parameterizations. They keep the computation time down, but the parameterizations reduce the scientific purity of the model. Many parameterizations used in the earlier models are fortunately being replaced by more explicit and physically based equations in the latest generation of climate models. Convective processes, heat flow in the soil, sea ice processes, and the structure of the cloud deck are examples of recent improvements in the models. However, sub-grid-scale phenomena, such as thunderstorms operating at a scale less than the 500 km grid spacing, continue to be parameterized in the models.
Imagine that the computer program is written and ready for a climate simulation. The surface conditions, including basic geography and topography, are specified along with starting conditions in the atmosphere; obviously, detailed information about the sun and the orbit of the earth can be specified in the model. The equations that make up the model are written in a form that allows the change in surface and atmospheric conditions to be calculated for a given change in time (time steps near 30 minutes are common). The models are started or initialized with the surface and atmospheric conditions, and all equations are solved for the change in the atmospheric and surface components over one time-step interval. This produces a new set of conditions, and the model equations are once again solved for another time step. After several years of simulated time in the model, the calculations stabilize, and outputs can be generated for a large number of simulated surface and atmospheric conditions (Meehl, 1984).
These models represent enormously complex computer programs that are tremendous achievements in computing, applied mathematics, and atmospheric physics. Many of the best minds in climatology have been used to construct these models, which require the power of the world's biggest and fastest computers. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the climate models were typically constructed by just one or two investigators (e.g., Sellers, 1969; Budyko, 1969; Manabe and Wetherald, 1975).
<#FROWN: F22\>
Writing 'True' Crime: Getting Forensic Facts F23 1 <FROWN:F23\>
Our Disappearing Common CultureRight F23 2
THE FORBIDDEN TOPIC
by Steven Scarborough
F23 3
Some conservatives don't want to know about the link between
THE STORY READS LIKE THIS: Mitch Sharp, the skillful detective, F23 4 multiculturalism and immigrationsolves the 'Casino Slasher Case' by tracing cloth fibers and a drop F23 5
Lawrence Auster
of saliva found at the murder scene to the stealthy criminal. F23 6
ACROSS the country, America's mainstream identity is being
What's wrong with the facts in this scenario? This simply can't F23 7 dismantled in the name of 'inclusion.' Half of last summer's New be done. The evidence is scien-tifically dubious. When is a F23 8 York City Shakespeare Festival was given over to Spanish and case plausible, and when does it stretch reality? A writer can know F23 9 Portuguese translations of Shakespeare. Christmas has been replaced only by examining the type of forensic evidence necessary for the F23 10 in many schools by a non-denominational Winterfest or by the new events of the story and then by doing the appropriate research. F23 11 African-American holiday Kwanza, while schools in areas with large
Fingerprints F23 12 Hispanic populations celebrate Cinco de Mayo. The exemplary figures
Fingerprints are the most conclusive form of forensic evidence; F23 13 of American history have been excised from school textbooks, they are the only type of evidence that does not require F23 14 replaced by obscure minorities and women. Despite massive additions corroborative proof. Though the probability of finding that elusive F23 15 of material on non-Western societies, school texts are still being fingerprint or that single strand of hair is low, it can be woven F23 16 stridently attacked as 'Eurocentric,' and much more radical changes into your story if you include the proper background. Fingerprint F23 17 are in the works.pro-cessing of a toenail and an eyeball of a murder victim F23 18
Yet even as the multiculturalist revolution rolls through the in The Red Dragon is not only technically correct, but it F23 19 land, there is still profound disagreement about its meaning, its also lends a gritty credence to Thomas Harris' novel. F23 20 aims, and most of all its origins. Mainstream media and
Fingerprints command the most attention in court, and they F23 21 educationalists describe the diversity movement as, in part, an should get equal billing in our crime story. In a city of about F23 22 effort to be more inclusive of America's historic minorities; in 300,000, finger-prints lead to the identification, arrest, F23 23 its larger dimensions, however, they see it as a response to the or con-viction of nearly one person every day. F23 24 prodigious changes that are occurring in America's ethnic
While fingerprints are readily retrieved from glass, shiny F23 25 composition. America is rapidly becoming multi-racial and metal, and paper, they are difficult to recover from fabric, F23 26 white-minority, and, these observers say, our national identity is textured objects, or fin-ished furniture. Surface to F23 27 changing in response. If that is true - and it is stated or implied surface, the methods to recovery differ, so the writer should know F23 28 in almost every news story on the subject - then it is also true the proper processes for recovering incriminating fingerprints. It F23 29 that the massive Third World immigration is itself the ultimate will make a story both interesting and accurate. F23 30 driving force behind multiculturalism.
In <tf>Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow gives us an F23 31
Virtually alone in resisting these assumptions is the impressive account of the questioning of a fingerprint witness in F23 32 conservative establishment, particularly the neoconservatives. court. His only lapse is in describing blue fingerprints developed F23 33 Liberals, who support both unrestricted immigration and on glass with ninhydrin powder. Ninhydrin, a liquid chemical F23 34 multiculturalism, do not hesitate to point out a causal link brushed on paper, produces a purplish fingerprint. The common F23 35 between the two; indeed, they appeal to the inevitability of graphite powder method is used on slick surfaces such as glass. F23 36 continued Third World immigration as an unanswerable argument for
A dramatic punch to your story might be to recover prints from F23 37 multiculturalism. Traditional conservatives like Pat Buchanan, who one of your victims, and it can be done. Iodine fumes are blown F23 38 with equal consistency oppose both multiculturalism and Third over the body with a small glass tube and a silver plate is pressed F23 39 World immigration, also have no difficulty in seeing the causal against the skin to lift the print. However, at this time prints F23 40 connection. Neoconservatives, by contrast, have dissociated these can be recovered only within two hours from a live person and F23 41 two issues, leading the fight against multiculturalism while within about twelve hours from a deceased one. F23 42 passionately clinging to the ideal of unrestricted immigration.
Is your antagonist trying to incriminate some-one else? F23 43 Their pro-immigration stand, based on a conviction of both its Maybe he has considered forging a fingerprint? Forget it, his F23 44 economic necessity and its political morality, compels them to attempts are sure to be futile. It is nearly impossible to recreate F23 45 ignore - or ritually dismiss - the mounting evidence that the an ac-curate die of someone's fingerprint. A cast can be F23 46 sea-change in America's ethnic identity is fueling the made, provided he has a willing or dead hand to cast. Yet, even the F23 47 cultural-diversity movement. To keep immigration from coming under resulting print will be reversed or backward if transferred to an F23 48 attack, they are forced to hunt for alternative explanations for object. F23 49 multiculturalism.
A fingerprint expert cannot testify to how long a fingerprint F23 50
This approach was brought into focus last summer in articles by will last on an object. General rules suggest that a fingerprint F23 51 Irving Kristol in the Wall Street Journal, by Nathan will last days, not weeks, outside in the weather; weeks but not F23 52 Glazer in The New Republic, and by Midge Decter in months in a residence; and a month would not be long for a F23 53 Commentary. Despite wide differences on the effects of fingerprint left on a mirror, especially if en-cased in a F23 54 multiculturalism (Kristol thinks it's a threat to the West equal to drawer or a safe. Fingerprints have been chemically recovered years F23 55 Nazism and Stalinism; Glazer thinks it's no big deal), they reached later on the pages of a book. F23 56 startlingly similar conclusions about its causes.
When tracing someone from latent fingerprints, the investigator F23 57
Multiculturalism, they argued, has essentially nothing to do must have the suspect's name and fingerprint record on a file to F23 58 with America's increasing ethnic diversity; at bottom, it is a make a positive match. Lawrence Block captures the essence of F23 59 desperate, misguided attempt to overcome black educational fingerprints in The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian:F23 60 deficiencies - an effort that radicals have opportunistically
<quote>... you can't really run a check on a single print F23 61 seized upon to advance their separatist and anti-West agenda. unless you've already got a suspect. You need a whole set of F23 62 "Did these black students and their problems not exist, we prints, which we wouldn't have, even if whoever it was left prints, F23 63 would hear little of multiculturalism," Irving Kristol which they probably didn't. And they'd have to have been F23 64 declared. Assimilation, he believes, is proceeding apace: fingerprinted anyway for a check to reveal them .... F23 65 "Most Hispanics are behaving very much like the Italians of
Historically, fingerprints have been filed using a ten-print F23 66 yesteryear; most Orientals, like the Jews of yesteryear." classification system; without recover-ing latent F23 67 Nathan Glazer agreed: "[I]t is not the new immigration that fingerprints of all ten fingers, a per-son could not be F23 68 is driving the multicultural demands."identified. In the 1980s, the AFIS (Automated Fingerprint F23 69
Down with Eurocentrism
Identification System) computer was introduced, enabling F23 70
IRONICALLY, on the same day Irving Kristol was denying that jurisdictions with access to the computer to link a single latent F23 71 Hispanics are pushing for multiculturalism, the New York fingerprint to a suspect previously fingerprinted. Writers should F23 72 Times ran this typical item: "Buoyed by a growing remember the AFIS computers cost over a million dollars, and your F23 73 population and by a greater presence on local school boards, quaint Ver-mont village will not have one. The F23 74 Hispanic Americans have begun pressing text-book publishers well-connected fictional investigator should know someone F23 75 and state education officials to include more about Hispanic at a large agency or the FBI for a record check. F23 76 contributions in the curriculums of public schools," as
Body fluids
F23 77 well as to correct 'stereotypes' - a familiar code for the
Fingerprints may be the most positive form of identification, F23 78 elimination of Eurocentrism.but what if your perpetrator does not leave any? In the absence of F23 79
A spate of letters to the Wall Street Journal fingerprints, body fluids are a common type of evidence found at a F23 80 protesting Kristol's view offered a revealing glimpse into crime scene. If an intact sample of adequate size is recovered, F23 81 mainstream opinion on the subject. The chief factor in body fluids can be analyzed to ob-tain a DNA genetic F23 82 multiculturalism, wrote Martha Farnsworth Riche of the Population profile that can be compared with the suspect's or examined for F23 83 Reference Bureau, is that "racially and ethnically, blood type. F23 84 America's school-age population is increasingly unlike its
Blood, semen, and saliva are all excellent media for F23 85 past generations. ... This ensures that the school-age population determining a DNA match. DNA (deox-yribonucleic acid) is F23 86 will become even less a product of what we call 'Western the blueprint of a person's genetic makeup and is absolutely unique F23 87 civilization' in the future." Multiculturalism, said for each individual. Contrary to common belief, hair will not F23 88 another correspondent, "is not an attempt to address the reveal a person's DNA pattern. Have your victim yank out a clump of F23 89 social problems of African-Americans. Latin Americans and hair with the skin cells to make a DNA match. F23 90 Asian-Americans have been equally involved." From the
The equipment necessary to analyze DNA is highly specialized F23 91 cultural Left, Gregory K. Tanaka said that as a result of the and costly. Again, if your story is set in a quaint village, it may F23 92 increasing proportion of non-whites in America, "it is not be feasible to run a DNA check. It also may take months to get F23 93 becoming clear that our Western 'common' culture no longer works. results from one of the few laboratories that do DNA analysis. This F23 94 What Mr. Kristol overlooks is that this decline of Westernism need not be a negative; think of the desperation, the agony, of F23 95 leaves us no surviving basis for social order."waiting for results while your killer still stalks. F23 96
While it might be tempting to dismiss these views as
Body fluids can be analyzed by the local crime lab to help your F23 97 multiculturalist propaganda, the clincher is that Nathan Glazer detective. An important factor associated with body fluids, F23 98 himself, after at first denying that the increase of non-European including blood types, is secretor status. A secretor puts out, F23 99 groups is propelling multiculturalism, turned around and admitted i.e., secretes, his AB0 blood types into peripheral body fluids F23 100 it: "I do not see how school systems with a majority of such as semen, perspiration, etc. It is possible for your fictional F23 101 black and Latino students, with black or Latino serial rapist to avoid any link to his body fluids by being one of F23 102 leadership at the top ... can stand firmly against the the 15 per cent that are non-secretors. F23 103 multiculturalist thrust ... demographic and political
What does blood type tell the investigator? Normally a blood F23 104 pressures change the history that is to be taught." type places a person in a broad por-tion of the general F23 105 (Italics added.) It was in this same article that Glazer, to the population. A community might have 45 per cent of its members with F23 106 great consternation of his neoconservative allies, announced his 0 blood, 20 per cent with A blood, and so on. Therefore, if F23 107 reluctant support for Thomas Sobol's radical curriculum reforms in standard AB0 typing is done, the results are of little value F23 108 New York state. That Glazer subscribed to the because of the large population with that blood type. F23 109 demographics-multiculturalism link in the very act of surrendering
Additional blood grouping techniques, specifically enzyme and F23 110 to the new curriculum supports my point that once multiculturalism protein analyses, enable the forensic chemist to assign a suspect F23 111 is accepted, the key role of immigration and ethnic diversity in to a nar-rower population. Your fictional crime lab should F23 112 driving multiculturalism loses its stigma and can be freely not give your detective a match on blood from the crime scene. They F23 113 acknowledged.can limit only the number of people in your town that have that F23 114
To this, conservatives reply that Glazer is not admitting a type of enzyme blood groups. F23 115 forbidden truth but is simply adopting the multiculturalists'
The special equipment needed for thorough blood group analysis F23 116 fallacious 'demographic inevitability' argument. In The New is costly, and it is probable that numerous crimes go unsolved F23 117 Criterion, Heather McDonald agrees that demographic changes because suf-ficient testing is either too expensive or F23 118 are "fueling" multiculturalism, but criticizes Glazer for neglected. F23 119 "[mistaking] the actual for the inevitable." In
Other evidence
F23 120 other words, neoconservatives will concede that multiculturalism
Hair can be of forensic value. Strands found at the scene of F23 121 has been adopted because of our society's increasing diversity; the crime can be compared to a suspect's for similarities in color, F23 122 but, they insist, this was not 'logical.' Since immigration is only shape, and tex-ture, but it is difficult to determine race F23 123 the 'actual' cause and not the 'logical' cause, we should leave or even sex. An author can write that some of the suspects were F23 124 immigration alone.eliminated because analysis concluded that their hair was not F23 125
One can't help being reminded of the people who say that the similar or consistent with the hair found at the crime scene. F23 126 failures of Marxism do not prove its theoretical unsoundness.
Footwear prints, recovered photographically, fall into the F23 127 Just as one cannot persuade a devoted Marxist that Marxism must class category. Except for the excep-tional case, F23 128 lead to tyranny and poverty, one cannot logically demonstrate to an shoeprints can only be said to be made by the same type of shoe. F23 129 open-borders conservative that precipitately changing an Footwear, or any class type evidence (hair, fiber, AB0 blood type) F23 130 historically European-majority country into a multi-racial, by itself would normally not be enough to convict your suspect in a F23 131 white minority country must result in a breakdown of the common court of law. F23 132 culture. Nevertheless, whether logical or not, that is what is
Handwriting cases rarely get into court. A handwriting expert F23 133 happening.renders an opinion after ex-amining several varying F23 134
Here neoconservatives fall back on the familiar argument that factors, such as letter height ratio and slant. If the writing is F23 135 it is only the ethnic activists, not the great bulk of the similar, then degrees of match probability are reported. F23 136 immigrant groups, who are pushing for multiculturalism, a case
Criminals usually disguise their writing. It is unlikely that a F23 137 advanced most recently by Linda Chavez in Out of the kidnappers's ransom note, written in block letters, will lead to F23 138 Barrio. But as Tamar Jacoby has pointed out, Miss Chavez's own the identity of your brutish villain. Words in blood dribbled on a F23 139 evidence suggests quite the opposite conclusion: that Hispanics of wall may provide a strong clue and add color to your story but they F23 140 all classes are eagerly embracing the call to cultural separatism. will not enable a handwriting ex-aminer to point to your F23 141 According to one study cited by Miss Chavez, a large and rising murderer. F23 142 percentage of Hispanics describe themselves as 'Hispanic
Striations on a bullet are unique, much like the ridges of a F23 143 first/American second' - a preference made clear by the Hispanic fingerprint. Therefore, a bullet can be traced to a gun using the F23 144 majority in San Jos, California, who angrily scratches or lands and grooves imprinted on it by the barrel of a F23 145 protested, as a 'symbol of conquest,' a statue commemorating the gun. Unfortunately, if the barrel is damaged or changed, or if the F23 146 raising of the American flag in California during the Mexican bullet is mangled, the examina-tion will be inconclusive. F23 147 War.Careful scrutiny is necessary before including a firearms match in F23 148
But even if it were true that most of the new ethnics didn't your murder mystery. F23 149 'want' multiculturalism, it is undeniable that their swelling
Thomas Harris was very skillful in weaving his forensic F23 150 numbers empower the group-rights movement by adding to its research throughout his novel. FBI Agent Will Graham explores the F23 151 clientele. Scott McConnell has pointed out in the New York gamut of forensic evidence from fingerprints to blood typing to F23 152 Post that as soon as minority immigrants arrive in this bite marks. The Red Dragon could be used as a F23 153 country, they become grist for the affirmative-action mill, foren-sic model for crime writers. F23 154 eligible for an elaborate web of preferences. To imagine that we
The increasing sophistication of today's readers is a two-edged F23 155 can turn back the multiculturalist and group-rights ideology by sword: Readers are no longer satisfied with, 'He was the only one F23 156 persuasion alone, while continuing the large-scale immigration that tall enough who had a motive.' A Writer trying to add more realism F23 157 feeds that ideology, is like pouring liquor down a man's throat to a story need not shy away from scien-tific evidence, but F23 158 while 'advising' him to stay sober.he must check his forensic facts for accuracy. Credibility is the F23 159
Apart from ideology, it is important to understand that massive key to a successful crime novel. Just as a character's action may F23 160 deculturation is occurring as a direct result of the demographic lead the reader to say, 'He wouldn't do that,' an F23 161 changes themselves. Commenting on the impact of the huge Hispanic er-roneous forensic fact can turn off the reader. Do your F23 162 presence in California, an Hispanic academic tells the New research well, and readers will be clamoring for your next F23 163 York Times: "What is threatened here is intellectual authentic crime story. F23 164 life, the arts, museums, symphonies. How can you talk about
Writing A Publishable Health Article F23 165 preserving open space and establishing museums with a large
by JOAN LIPPERT F23 166 undereducated underclass?" The program director of the
"Your very lack of expertise in the health field makes F23 167 Brooklyn Academy of Music speaks matter-of-factly about the you ideal as a health writer."
F23 168 inevitable displacement of Western music as the Academy gears its
IF ONLY YOU WERE A doctor, researcher, dietitian, or other F23 169 programs to the cultural interests and traditions of Brooklyn's health professional - you would be truly qualified to write about F23 170 intensely heterogeneous, Third World population.health, right? F23 171
Another consequence of this profound population shift is an
If you're none of these, you have a delightful surprise coming: F23 172 intensification of white guilt. Since in our emerging multi-racial Your very lack of expertise in the health field makes you ideal as F23 173 society any all-white grouping is increasingly seen as a health writer. You wonder about the same things your readers F23 174 non-representative (and presumptively 'racist'), the same wonder about, and you express the answers in simple words the F23 175 assumption gets insensibly projected onto the past. The resulting reader can understand. Consider well-known health writer Jane F23 176 loss of sympathetic interest in Western historical figures, lore, Brody. She is not a doctor, nor does she have a doctorate in any F23 177 and achievements creates a ready audience for the multiculturalist medical subject: she's just a journalist like you and me, a very F23 178 rewriting of history. When we can no longer employ traditional thorough reporter who knows how to translate the esoterica of F23 179 reference points such as 'our Western heritage' because a critical medicine into language that Aunt Enid in Hicksville can understand. F23 180 number of us are no longer from the West; when we cannot speak of She is a professional writer who thinks of her audience first. It's F23 181 'our Founding Fathers' because the expression is considered qualities like these that can endear you to editors. F23 182 racially exclusive; when more and more minorities complain that
What besides a sense of your audience will you need to write F23 183 they can't identify with American history because they about health? With an objective and intense interest in the way the F23 184 "don't see people who look like themselves" in that body works, a good medical dictionary, and the pointers that F23 185 history, then the only practical way to preserve a simulacrum of follow, you can probably find an opening in the F23 186 common identity is to redefine America as a centerless, health-writing field. F23 187 multicultural society.
Start small. If you have not written about health F23 188
Multiculturalism, in sum, is far more than a radical ideology before, consider a short news item as your first project. F23 189 or misconceived educational reform; it is a mainstream Fortunately, proposing one health news item or even a group of them F23 190 phenomenon, a systematic dismantling of America's unitary national does not have to mean a big investment of your item or the time of F23 191 identity in response to unprecedented ethnic and racial a busy doctor. You can write a few sentences about a medical F23 192 transformation. Admittedly, immigration reform aimed at stabilizing advance - enough to get a go-ahead from an editor - simply F23 193 the country's ethnic composition is no panacea; the debunking of from reading a health journal, an abstract (article F23 194 multiculturalism must also continue. But if immigration is not cut sum-mary or preview), press release or speech. Once you F23 195 back, the multiculturalist thrust will be simply unstoppable.have a go-ahead from an editor for the sub-ject you F23 196
What explains the conservatives' refusal to face the propose, you can go after the interview. (Many doctors will not F23 197 demographic dimensions of multiculturalism? Martha Farnsworth Riche take the time to speak with you until you have an actual F23 198 believes the reason is psychological: "The older white assignment, and many editors prefer a short query to an unsolicited F23 199 academics are facing a shift in power. They're denying that reality submission.) Magazines typically pay little for news items, and F23 200 by saying, in effect, that minorities 'should' assimilate; they newspapers even less, but it is a good place for a novice to F23 201 don't want to face the fact that their world is start. F23 202 disappearing." More to the point, they are evading the
Another way to break into the health-writing field is with a F23 203 uncomfortable necessity of dealing with the racially charged personal experience piece: how you lost the weight, climbed the F23 204 immigration issue.mountain, figured out what was ailing you, for example. A number of F23 205
Indeed, the conservatives' greatest reason for not allowing a magazines publish first-person articles. On the down side, you will F23 206 fundamental debate on immigration is their understandable fear of probably need good photog-raphy to illustrate your story, F23 207 opening up a forum for racist attitudes. But as last year's and most of us do not have a leica loaded with slide film as a F23 208 election in Louisiana suggests, the establishment's refusal to take constant companion. F23 209 seriously Middle America's legitimate concerns about cultural F23 210 displacement only makes it more likely that those concerns will be F23 211 taken up by extremists. If opposition to racism is not to become a F23 212 destructive ideological crusade, then racism must be defined in this world. Understood in a non-utopian sense, racial justice means that the majority in a country treats minorities fairly and equally; it does not mean that the majority is required to turn itself into a minority. If it does mean the latter, then nation-states, in effect, have no right to preserve their own existence, let alone to control their borders.
The immigration restrictions of the early 1920s, discriminatory though they plainly were (and against the group to which this writer belongs), reduced ethnic hatreds, greatly eased the assimilation of white ethnics, and kept America a culturally unified nation through the mid twentieth century. The falloff in cheap immigrant labor also encouraged capital-intensive investment and spurred the great middle-class economic expansion of the 1920s. It is ironic, therefore, that our open-borders advocates constantly appeal to the turn-of-the-century immigration as a model for us to follow today, since one of the key reasons the earlier immigration turned out, in retrospect, to be such a remarkable success was that it was halted. The same caveat applies even more strongly to our present, uncontrolled influx from the Third World.<FROWN:F24\>
IN BIKINI LAGOON LIFE THRIVES IN A NUCLEAR GRAVEYARD
Text by JOHN L. ELIOT
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SENIOR WRITER
Photographs by BILL CURTSINGER
Blasted to the bottom like a steel guinea pig, the U.S. submarine Pilotfish was among 21 vessels sunk during two atomic tests at the end of World War II. This nuclear ghost fleet belongs to the people of Bikini, still marooned far from their radioactive Pacific island. Could these longtime symbols of destruction become a marine park to attract sport divers and aid the Bikinians?
As if worshiping a higher power, sailors drill on the flight deck of the U.S. carrier Saidor (opposite) for a momentous test: code name, Able. Later that day, July 1, 1946, a B-29 would drop an experimental weapon over a fleet of ships moored amid the tranquil waters of Bikini Lagoon. These support personnel practice protecting their eyes from the ungodly incandescence to be created by an explosion equal to 20,000 tons of TNT.
Less than a year earlier, the first wartime atom bombs had laid waste Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, military analysts wanted to know, what would happen to a navy attacked by this seemingly irresistible force? So a massive exercise called Operation Crossroads brought some 42,000 men, 242 ships, and 10,000 instruments to Bikini. There two nuclear blasts were unleashed, the first of 23 such tests performed at Bikini through 1953. The first, Able, was detonated in midair. Three weeks later a second test, Baker, was touched off underwater.
To permit the dawn of the nuclear age there, a painful sacrifice had been made earlier by the 167 Bikinians who lived on that tropical atoll. A devout and trusting people, they agreed to give up their home for a project that they were told was for the good of mankind. Thus began their woeful saga as nuclear nomads repeatedly relocated to other Pacific islands, where they have found only unhappiness.
With the Bikinians removed, the military assembled more than 90 vessels, including landing craft, as targets. Many of the ships, among them a few Japanese and German war prizes, had fought crucial battles in the just ended war, and a few had served in the previous one.
The five battleships included Arkansas, a World War I veteran. In 1944 she supported the Allied invasion of Normandy, as did Nevada, heavily damaged at Pearl Harbour but raised and repaired to fight again. Nagato, the Japanese battleship that coordinated the Pearl Harbour attack, was berthed at Bikini out of vengeance. A dozen destroyers and eight submarines with Pacific battle scars from Midway to Guadalcanal were added.
Of four cruisers, Germany's <tf|_>Prinz Eugen had sortied with the famed battleships Bismarck and Scharnhorst - both sunk in the Atlantic theater - before being surrendered to the U.S. But the sentimental star was Saratoga, completed in 1927, one of the first U.S. carriers. She survived Able but was doomed by Baker. Its bomb hangs suspended 90 feet under a landing ship (below) between Saratoga, background, and Arkansas, both nearly in final position.
BIKINI LAGOON
In the path of a staggering force that would blow her 800 yards away atop a 43-foot wave, Saratoga sits at the edge of the Baker blast a half second after detonation.
Seven and a half hours later "she died like a queen - proudly," eulogized a New York Times correspondent. Six other large ships were also lost, including the battleships Arkansas and Nagato and submarines Pilotfish and Apogon. Some were sunk by the two million tons of water and sediment that was hurled more than a mile upward, then fell to batter the ships.
Yet the bombs' most insidious danger was revealed in the ships that remained afloat or were salvaged: They seethed with radiation. Bewildered men improvised decontamination efforts against an invisible enemy. Permitted aboard some ships for only minutes, sailors washed, scrubbed, foamed, and painted 'hot' steel, with little effect. "In the end the Navy ... is going to feel a lot like Br'er Rabbit when he got mixed up with the Tar Baby," physician David Bradley, a Crossroads veteran, observed at the time.
Of 12 large vessels sunk by Able and Baker, most lie within a thousand yards of the blasts (above). Just as radiation exiled the Bikinians, it also caused a confused exodus of the surviving ships. After initial decontamination efforts failed, most were towed 200 miles to Kwajalein Atoll - where the Prinz Eugen foundered - for further countermeasures. When those didn't work, many of the derelicts were sunk in target practice off Kwajalein, Hawaii, and the U.S. West Coast.
SARATOGA
She had survived two torpedoes and five kamikazes and had served in bloody Pacific campaigns at Wake Island, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima, but Saratoga could not survive nuclear fission. In 1945, before the Bikini tests, the beloved carrier took part in Operation Magic Carpet (left), ferrying 29,204 veterans home from the Pacific.
Nearly 50 years later Saratoga's massive bow dwarfs the U.S. National Park Service divers who invited me along. Their team, the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (SCRU), spent several weeks drawing the ships in great detail and evaluating their park potential. Saratoga would be the centerpiece.
The world's only aircraft carrier accessible to divers, the ship's depth ranges from 50 feet at the top of its island - the tallest structure, which includes the bridge - to 180 feet on the lagoon's bottom. In between lie fascinating relics such as a Navy Helldriver aircraft (left) and 500-pound bombs (below) 130 feet deep on the hangar deck.
Although much ammunition is live, both Navy experts and SCRU team leader Dan Lenihan feel that the risk to divers is minimal - "unless they attack the ordnance with a hammer," says Lenihan. And there is essentially no danger from radiation in the water, according to William L. Robinson, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
Some of the atomic violence is shocking. Saratoga's starboard side, which faced the Baker blast, is dented six feet deep in places. The gargantuan funnel, as tall as a four-story building, collapsed and spewed sections writhing with internal pipes. Even more amazing is the aft half of the flight deck. It is no longer flat. Through it runs a canyon 200 feet long, 70 feet wide, and 12 to 20 feet deep, probably created by seawater and sediment hurtling back down from the sky. Said my diving partner, naval historian Jim Delgado, "It's like Godzilla stomped on the flight deck."
NAGATO
Dreaded warlord of the Pacific, Nagato (left) was the only Japanese battleship still afloat when the war ended - nine others had been sunk. "In less than four years, this great war machine fell from glory to oblivion," wrote naval historian Masanori Ito. After Japan bowed in 1945, U.S. forces symbolically captured Nagato in Tokyo Bay to mark the final surrender of the Imperial Japanese Navy. She was taken to Bikini - her death sentence.
In 1941 Nagato served as flagship for Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned and directed the attack on Pearl Harbour aboard the battleship from distant Japanese waters. Pacing her bridge on December 7, Yamamoto heard one pilot's electrifying radio transmission - to ra, to ra, to ra! - surprise achieved.
Nagato, the first battleship armed with 16-inch guns (below), may have played an additional role at Pearl Harbor. Some of Yamamoto's carrier-launched aircraft were equipped with Nagato's 16-inch shells, specially modified to be dropped as bombs- and some historians believe that one of them sank the battleship Arizona.
If so, then the Baker bomb repayed Nagato. Upside down on the bottom, she raises one of her four screws as if in capitulation.
A frenzy of gray reef and other sharks feed near photographer Bill Curtsinger's boat. Such dizzying numbers of predators suggest that, despite man's worst efforts at annihilation, marine life has returned to normal.
It was not so after the tests. "Our first netful of sand ... proved to be so radioactive that in a panic I had the whole catch thrown overboard," wrote Crossroads physician David Bradley in his best-seller, No Place to Hide. "Small reef fish feed on coral ... predatory fish eat more and more of the smaller fish who are sick with the disease of radioactivity."
Within weeks most radiation had dissipated from the lagoon. But in the topsoil of Bikini Island, the fallout remains, especially a dangerous substance called cesium 137. Little of it actually came from the Cross-roads bombs. They were nuclear popguns compared with Bravo, a 1954 hydrogen explosion 750 times stronger, set off on the lagoon's northwest side. A wind shift rained fallout on Bikini, including cesium. Its levels remain too high for the Bikinians to return permanently, because it is absorbed by the coconuts and pandanus they grow for food. However, a test using potassium compounds to block cesium uptake by plants on the island has been successful.
Could a marine park of warships draw recreational divers to Bikini? Not all the diving would be deep - shallow reefs laden with giant clams and coral (left) beckon even snorkelers. In recommending the concept, Dan Lenihan of SCRU says, "We hope that the Bikinians someday can take the source of their problems - the ships - and make them a source of income."
The Bikinians have expressed some interest, but their main concern is to escape Kili, the island 500 miles to the southeast where they were relocated in 1948. Many, like Joji Laijo (right), visit Bikini to work at its field station, operated by the Department of Energy. But there has long been a cloud over these people, and they have heard many conflicting stories from many different experts. Last November they declared their intent to have all 1.3 million cubic yards of radioactive topsoil scraped from Bikini, somehow disposed of, and somehow replaced.
Liabilities and logistics may well dim that plan, but not their desire to return. Visiting his father's grave on Bikini, Kilon Bauno, an aged iroij lablab, or paramount chief, said "I don't want anyone to stay on Kili. If we hear this island is safe to live on, we will swim from Kili to the big boats to take us back."
RUSSIA'S LAKE BAIKAL
The World's Great Lake
Crown jewel of Russia's natural inheritance, Baikal is the world's oldest and deepest lake - an environmental battleground and a godsend in hard times.
By DON BELT
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SENIOR STAFF
SERGEI VASILIEV, captain of the Albatross, still wonders if he would have found the courage to speak his mind that fateful July in 1954. But not once during their mysterious two-week cruise around Lake Baikal did the government official ask his opinion of their plan - and to volunteer one would have been unthinkable. Barely a year had passed since Stalin's death, and the dictator's lifeless hand still lay heavy on the land.
All this came up one afternoon as Vasiliev, a slight and gentle-spoken man widely known as the greatest of the Lake Baikal ship captains, was reminiscing about his career on Albatross, a scientific-research ship. In the middle of a long, hair-raising story about a great storm south of the Ushkani Islands, his memory turned a corner, taking his narrative into deeper and more troubling waters than he had intended.
"I remember too clearly for my own good," he said sadly, shaking his head.
And he began to explain. He knew little about those officials at first - only that they were "very serious, very powerful men," who had arranged to use his vessel for their first look at Lake Baikal. They were, of course, well informed about the great lake in south-central Siberia. All Soviet schoolchildren were taught that Baikal is special: It is the most ancient lake on earth and the deepest, measuring 1,637 meters from top to bottom, more than a mile. It holds one-fifth of the planet's fresh water and 80 percent of the former Soviet Union's - more water than all of North America's Great Lakes combined. In school these men traced the lake's elegant shape, like a sliver of moon, and learned to call it the Pearl of Siberia or the Sacred Sea, as Russians have for generations.<FROWN:F25\>
Women and Literacy: Promises and Constraints
By Nelly P. Stromquist
ABSTRACT: In almost every country, illiteracy rates are higher among women than among men. This gender disparity can be explained in terms of (1) the sexual division of labor that assigns women many domestic tasks, especially, among poor and rural families, time-consuming chores, and (2) men's control of women's sexuality, which creates both physical and psychological constraints in women's lives. Research has identified various benefits of literacy for women, such as better maternal behaviors regarding child health and child rearing, and effective family planning. Although women could use literacy to increase their access to new knowledge, most literacy programs do not encourage this because their curricula are still designed along sexually stereotyped lines that emphasize women's roles as mothers and household managers. This article argues that these messages do not convey emancipatory knowledge and may solidify values and attitudes that cause women to accept current gender relations rather than to question them.
ILLITERACY is generally considered to be a major impediment to the understanding of one's world and to the securing of a good place in it. The role of literacy as a prerequisite for the acquisition of other skills and the development of more rational attitudes is universally accepted. In today's rapidly advancing technological society, the written word has become the dominant mode of complex communication; those without the ability to read and write will be condemned to the lowest roles in society.
And yet illiteracy is far from being eliminated throughout the world. It is estimated that in less than 10 years from now, the world will have 1 billion illiterates, 98 percent of whom will be in developing regions.
Illiteracy is far from being a mere technical problem, that is, the inability to decode and encode the written word. It is linked to contextual factors in which social-class distinctions, linguistic affiliations, general levels of socioeconomic development, and marginalization of certain groups play important and mutually supportive roles.
While there is diversity in the causes operating in any given country, a persistent phenomenon observed in most societies is that women constitute the majority of illiterates. Moreover, the numbers of illiterate women have been increasing not only in absolute but also in relative terms: according to data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), they represented 63 percent of the illiterates in 1983, up from 58 percent in 1960. Two of every three adult women in Africa and one of every two in Asia are illiterate. In the African and Asian areas there is a literacy gap of 21 percentage points in favor of men (Table 1), a gap that clearly spells out economic and social inequality for many women.
UNDERSTANDING THE SUBORDINATION OF WOMEN
Observers of literacy programs note that neither adult literacy studies nor 'women in development' studies have focused on women's literacy. From a theoretical perspective, the conditions of women's illiteracy can be easily explained in the context of women's overall inferior status in society. For a variety of historical and technological reasons, industrialization brought with it a division of social life into public and private spheres. Soon, a patriarchal ideology that defined women as inferiors and subordinate to men developed in most countries. This ideology was promptly codified in the laws of the emerging nation-states through regulations affecting institutions such as the family, work, landownership, and voting rights. Although these institutions have undergone modification over time, the two essential mechanisms for the persistence of patriarchal ideologies - the sexual division of labor and the control of women's sexuality by men - continue in effect. Although these forces are substantially modified by class position, the country's level of technological development, and cultural beliefs, the influence of gender is strong and remarkably stable across societies.
The sexual division of labor
According to statistics of the International Labor Organization, women account for two-thirds of the working hours in the world. Poor women in rural areas perform heavy and arduous tasks daily to ensure family subsistence. In Africa, women provide 60 to 80 percent of the labor in food production and a considerable contribution to cash agricultural production. In Asia and Latin America, men contribute a greater share than in Africa to agricultural work, but the domestic burden of women remains considerable. Given the demands of rural domestic life in many developing countries - which includes walking long distances to obtain water and wood for fuel, growing subsistence crops and processing foods that require a considerable investment of physical energy and time, and facing pregnancy and related illnesses with a minimum of medical technologies - women and girls in rural areas face a daily existence that is indisputably more demanding than that experienced by men. Social beliefs that women should take care of children and home lead poor social groups to consider education - even literacy - an element less crucial than others to the everyday survival of the family.
Control of women's sexuality
In addition to the sexual division of labor that places poor women in inescapable domestic servitude, men's control of women's sexuality places additional constraints on women's lives. This sexuality control, which operates mainly in Asian and Latin American countries, is manifested in strict supervision of women's movement outside the home and of the friendships they develop with members of the opposite sex. In many societies, it is also manifested by the withdrawal of daughters from school as soon as they reach puberty for fear that the young girls may lose their virginity.
A more serious manifestation of the control of women's sexuality is wife beating, which creates among women an attitude of conflict avoidance, which in turn produces a reluctance to engage in any action that might trigger the husband's attack. That this may have a bearing on decisions such as attendance in literacy classes has been documented through life-history methods. The existence of intensive domestic work coupled with conflictual family dynamics renders literacy an unattainable dream for a large number of women and merely a dream for some of their children - particularly their daughters, who early in life tend to be assigned the same domestic and subsistence roles that their mothers perform.
Control of women's sexuality affects their participation in literacy programs because often the places available for classes are considered unsuitable in terms of safety and accessibility for women. Reports from India indicate that obstacles imposed by family members, particularly husbands and in-laws, prevent women from participating in literacy programs. The experience of a recent national literacy campaign in Ecuador detected similar effects.
These two fundamental causes, the sexual division of labor and the control by men of women's sexuality, are socially constructed realities. They exist by virtue of social understandings rather than because they are the only ways in which societies can exist. In traditional societies and, to a surprising degree, even in modern nations, women are defined primarily as mothers and wives rather than as autonomous citizens or workers. Women attain legitimacy when they marry and form families. Subsequent legitimacy is gained when they produce children, especially sons.
Patriachal ideologies are generally supported by religiocultural norms, even though within a given religion variations may be found as a result of historical differences that have led to different interpretations of sacred texts. Islam and Hinduism tend to be more gender restrictive than either Christianity or Buddhism regarding social norms. In India, for instance, the traditional laws of Manu make women noneligible for all scholastic activities. The three countries in West Asia with the lowest rates of female literacy and the highest gender gap in literacy are Muslim: Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan. Confucianism, a cohesive set of moral precepts, is also highly oppressive of women, and its legacy is still evident in rural areas of today's socialist China.
WOMEN AND LITERACY
Not only is illiteracy higher among women than men, but it is higher in less industrialized and in agrarian societies than in urban societies. One explanation for the low levels of literacy among women in nonindustrial societies is that in these societies the maternal roles do not require high levels of education. Literacy indeed may not be necessary if the main reproductive and productive tasks that women carry out - having babies, raising children, managing a low-budget household, growing subsistence crops - can be learned through informal, oral-tradition methods. In all countries, illiteracy rates are higher in rural than in urban areas. UNESCO data for 15 Latin American countries show that rural areas have greater levels of illiteracy than urban areas regardless of sex, although women have a slightly greater disadvantage compared to men - a 27.5 percent illiteracy gap exists between urban and rural women compared to a 25.4 percent gap between urban and rural men. It is striking, however, to observe that the gender gap in rural areas is almost double that in urban areas - 12.0 versus 6.3 percentage points. The disadvantage of rural women is most likely due to the sexual division of labor that places upon them major burdens for domestic work, subsistence production, and various family responsibilities.
With the expansion of schooling, poor families today are more inclined than former generations to allow their daughters to be educated. Girls' enrollment rates in primary school are gradually reaching parity with those of boys in many developing countries. Yet the early withdrawal of girls from school, as happens in many African and Asian countries, does not allow the retention of literacy skills. Three or four years of schooling characterized by numerous absences do not amount to much education for the girls; thus a significant loss of literacy skills follows. As adults, their limited physical mobility, their contacts mostly with women of their own community - who tend to be illiterates like them - and their own socialization into accepting the norm that women do not need as much education as do men create a strong mind-set among women that further prevents them from seeking basic literacy skills.
BENEFITS OF LITERACY FOR WOMEN
Do women benefit from access to literacy? There have been relatively few studies measuring the impact of literacy per se - as opposed to levels of schooling - and even fewer studies focusing on literacy while controlling for other, confounding variables.
We have substantial evidence about the positive effect of education on a number of individual and maternal outcomes, but such studies are based mainly on examinations of the impact of years of schooling. Nonetheless, it could be inferred that literacy - a critical component of formal education - also offers the same benefits. Several findings support this inference. First, mother's schooling has been found to have a monotonically negative relationship with infant and child mortality rates and fertility rates. This suggests that every amount of additional schooling - of which literacy represents the first step - makes a difference. Second, because education makes a difference even in places where the quality of education is low, the effects of schooling are probably less due to the curriculum or the instructional program than to "something very general about schooling." This general factor could be literacy since most schooling experiences at least provide literacy skills. Third, if we conceptualize adult literacy as the precursor to the establishment of literate practices - that is, regular access to the printed word - then the effects of literacy should be akin to those of the number of years of schooling.
In numerous countries, education is so strongly associated with reduced fertility and decreased infant and child mortality that it is accepted now as a causal factor. Some of the critical mechanisms that account for the literacy-fertility relationship have been found to be knowledge of and access to birth control and increased husband-wife communication. Not surprisingly, the level of education of women has an effect on fertility that is three times stronger than that of men. Regardless of social class, the more educated a woman is, the fewer children she will have; this effect seems to be stronger in urban than in rural areas. Education seems to have more positive effects when the society in which people live is also literate; Cochrane's review of data for 23 countries found that the inverse relation between education and fertility was strongest in societies where the aggregate literacy was at least 40 percent.
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'The Jell-O Syndrome': Investigating Popular Culture/Foodways
SARAH E. NEWTON
Research in American foodways can lead one into sometimes strange and exotic byways, and the subject of this paper - the folklore and cultural meanings of the popular gelatin food product Jell-O - is one of them. Questions of cultural dynamics as well as many kinds of lore - from children's folklore to personal narratives to food contamination stories to jokes and folk performance - are evoked by the amazingly versatile Jell-O. Thus study of the folklore of Jell-O as it intersects popular culture can give insight into this food's cultural presence and meaning for the American folk. Further, the case of Jell-O suggests a possible model for the investigation of that intersection of folklore and culture via the vector of popular commercial American foods.
Certainly little work, aside from nutritional studies, has been done on popular foods. In the case of Jell-O, this "national" food, this "princess in the fairy tale ... as good as it is beautiful" (Today ... What salad n.p.) has attracted virtually no serious notice from folklorists, social historians, anthropologists, cultural commentators, or even home economists. Although Jones, Giuliano & Krell (1981) give a brief nod to the ordinary Oreo cookie in their ground-breaking Foodways and Eating Habits, the much more dynamic and interesting Jell-O is ignored. Other important foodways studies continue this oversight. For instance, Jell-O plays no role in Brown and Mussel's (1984) study of ethnic and regional foodways; nor have Humphrey and Humphrey (1989) yet studied the significance of Jell-O as an important symbolic and social factor in small group festive gatherings (such as potlucks and birthdays). And reference to Jell-O does not appear, as far as this writer can determine, in Charles Camp's American Foodways: What, When, Why and How We Eat in America (1989). Indeed, if Jell-O is not the what, when, why and how of America, what is?
Jell-O is in many ways the ideal subject for seeing some of the rich connections between folklore and popular culture. For one reason, Jell-O is perhaps the one commercial food in America that has not only crossed all regional and ethnic lines but continues to ignore them. Certainly enough documentation exists to argue convincingly that Jell-O holds place as perhaps America's one 'national' commercial food. A survey of compiled cookbooks (fund-raising cookbooks) from across the nation and both north and south supplies proof of Jell-O's national citizenship. Across America Jell-O is a major ingredient in innumerable salads and desserts (so much so that to most American cooks the folk/vernacular term and spelling 'Jello' or 'jello' has come to be synonymous with the generic term 'gelatin'). Thus the sheer number of recipes is unequivocal evidence of immense popularity nationwide. For example, in Recipes for Making Your Honeymoon Last (1987), a compiled cookbook published by the National Bridal Service, 33% of the salad recipes use Jell-O; in The Stan Hywet Cook Book (n.d. Akron, Ohio) 20 of 37 salads, or 54%, cite Jell-O as an ingredient. Other evidence abounds. In 1989, Grand Rapids, Michigan, was declared America's Jell-O Capital for consuming 82% more Jell-O than the average American marketing area (that was 25.5 servings per household per year versus the average of 13.5 servings) (Viets 1989:50). And over the years, the test kitchens of General Foods have "developed no fewer than 1,733 ways to prepare Jell-O" (Kleiman 1989:C 1). It would seem that America has pretty much an insatiable appetite for the salad/dessert that jiggles.
Thus a second reason for using Jell-O to study the connections between folklore and popular culture is that virtually every American has had some experience with the "ubiquitous Jello" (Ireland 1981:108). Some Jell-O recipe is very often an essential ingredient in our national festive life, both public and private. Jell-O dishes, from a simple sheet of lime Jell-O with bananas to towering, layered, whipped-creamed creations, have signaled to countless Americans times of gathering or celebration - funerals, potlucks, family re-unions, church suppers, baby and wedding showers, Christmas and Thanksgiving. It is no accident that Garrison Keillor stars a Jell-O dessert (cherry Jell-O with mandarin oranges and tiny marshmallows) in the Lake Wobegon story of Mrs. Lena Johnson and 'Bruno the Fishing Dog,' at the baptism of Bob and Marlette Johnson's little girl Lindsey (of which more later). To many of us, Jell-O is America - or certainly at least the Mid-West, which to food marketing executives may amount to the same thing.
That people have a strong emotional bond with this otherwise commercial and corporate product has not escaped the notice of Jell-O's manufacturer, Kraft General Foods. In the 1970s, General Foods' advertising agency, Young & Rubicam, interviewed consumers and discovered, not surprisingly, that "Jell-O's appeal lay in its emotional connotations rather than its cost or versatility." As the president of Young & Rubicam U.S.A. stated, "There's a lot of affection for Jell-O. It's the name. It's Jack Benny (a longtime Jell-O advertiser). It's your mother serving it." And of course it is also fun, as the subsequent Young & Rubicam campaign emphasized: ads showed "large, middle-class families gathered together for either a reunion or an anniversary. To the beat of spunky background music, the whole clan - from toddlers to grandparents - downs endless, multi-hued mounds of Jell-O. 'We're not going to have dessert,' exclaims one jovial character. 'We're going to have fun!'" (Wallach 1981:206)
The original 'target consumer' for Jell-O was the American housewife who was assured that this product would please her family (be both tasty and 'fun'), make her somehow a better wife and mother, and allow her to exercise kitchen creativity. Certainly Jell-O's invention is tied with wholesomeness, purity, and domesticity. Although gelatin had been used by housewives for years, Jell-O's origin is usually put at 1897 in the LeRoy, New York, kitchen of Pearl B. Wait and his wife May. May, so the story goes, complained that the old-fashioned sheets of gelatin were difficult to use. Couldn't they be powdered? Pearl B., a cough syrup inventor, took the problem in hand: May named it Jell-O; they sold out to a neighboring entrepreneur for $450.00 and the rest is history (Whitman and Schmidt 1966:13; Kato 1989:B 6). By the turn of the century, Jell-O was on its way to being a million-dollar business and a way for women to show creativity in the kitchen, nurturance of the family, and a clever if innocent sophistication. A 1933 Jell-O cookbook titled "What Mrs. Dewey did with the NEW JELL-O!" begins with Mrs. Dewey simply amazed at the rapid setting up of the pretty Jell-O dessert she, good mother that she is, made for little Nancy (this was because the 'new' Jell-O could be dissolved in warm rather than boiling water). The little book ends with the recipes for "Mrs. Dewey's smartest salads!" and a color illustration of well dressed and coiffed ladies - Mrs. Dewey and her friends - sitting at a luncheon table and facing shiny molded lime green salads. Obviously Mrs. Dewey, in addition to being the ideal mother, is quite the "smart" up-to-date lady, and Jell-O is the culmination of sophisticated elegance. All of these points were important messages to American women.
Informants today confirm the importance of Jell-O as the one-time culinary centerpiece of woman's creativity. Says one, "When I was a young woman, it [molded Jell-O] really was the most sophisticated thing you could do. There wasn't anything as elegant. It was the center of the table." And over the years dozens of the well-known Jell-O cookbooks, most often titled the Joys of Jell-O, have helped women create such dishes as 'Under-the-Sea Salad,' 'Ring-Around-the-Tuna,' and 'Broken Window Glass Cake' - just three of those 1,733 recipes - to the awe and perhaps astonishment of their families. Housewives can play, too.
In contrast to this past, Young & Rubicam's 1990 advertising campaign for Jell-O targeted children directly. Young & Rubicam developed a new animated character, a cartoon hero named Agent LL-O (that's double L-O) who, with his canine sidekick Wobbly, champions the rights of kids to eat Jell-O, particularly when their dessert has been made off with by bullies or jealous sisters (Dale 1990:7). This advertising raises the eating of Jell-O to drama. Jell-O, the food of Democracy, is added to the Bill of Rights, at least of children. Enemies of Jell-O and Jell-O-eating kids are to be frustrated by a hero modeled on James Bond's 007. American television carries the message that eating Jell-O is not only fun but patriotic, and advertisers are well aware of the power of television to affect our tastes as well as beliefs. As one informant says in a parody of commercial rhetoric, "Wiggily, jiggily, cool and fruity, television tells us everything about Jello. Just ask Bill [Cosby]" (Stevenson 1990).
Since Jell-O, then, connects folklore and popular culture, any number of these interstices could lead to insights about the food behavior of Americans vis <*_>a-grave<*/> vis this undeniably national food. What follows here is a brief survey of some of those connections and some hints of the cultural and folkloric implications. Although I have segregated my data into categories, the alert reader will see that, like Jell-O itself, the categorical boundaries are sometimes shifting and permeable.
Children's Folklore
As Mechling, Sutton-Smith and others have convincingly shown, children form a significant folk group within which important cultural data is communicated face to face. Children share jokes, techniques of forbidden play, and other traditional rules or beliefs that allow them to come together as group. Playing with food - by learning the 'rules' for eating Oreo cookies or spaghetti or Jell-O - quickly becomes part of a child's repertoire of play behavior. Although this food play is not approved of in most households, often adults and children have a tacit understanding about Jell-O: Jell-O for dessert is license to play. How children both learn and practice play techniques with food is most generally from one another. Comments from a survey of college students emphasize the shared joy of Jell-O play. As one informant says, "Jell-O is neat because it's like looking through colored glasses. You can see the bottom of the bowl but it's a different color. It's also fun to see how much you can shake a plate of it without it losing its shape." Many informants described shared techniques for eating it. One informant recollected, it was "fun to squish Jell-O between your teeth," and another says, "I used to swish it around in my mouth to liquify it and then swallow it. It drove my mother crazy." Children also learn what does not work as play, as in this case: "My friend Laurie once tried to stick it [Jell-O] up her nose but found it was impossible (in jellied form)" (Stevenson 1990). Every child or adult interviewed shared similar traditional 'forbidden' techniques for playing with and eating Jell-O and indicated that often they had learned the practices from brothers or sisters or other children.
Personal memories and recollections have also had an important role in persuading people to see Jell-O as a traditional food. Virtually every child and grown-up to whom one mentions Jell-O has some nostalgic if sometimes sheepish childhood memories of the food product. This by a female college junior is typical:
Jello is one of my fondest childhood memories .... When I see or think of jello, I remember back to my pre-school days. I saw on TV the other day a commercial with Bill Cosby and some kids, eating Jello that were [sic] in different shapes, like stars and fish. I said, 'Wow, I want to get some.' I love jello (Stevenson 1990).
These recollections often trigger descriptions of traditional family customs, such as these: "My grandma used to make it for me when I was sick, with Cool Whip on top," or "When I would get sick when I was little, my mother would mix up some red jello and put it in the freezer. She didn't let it congeal - she gave it to me in a glass with one of those funky loopy straws to drink it with.
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Imagery, Reality, and Policy Principles
At the end of the 1980s, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City reported that over half (56 percent) of government farm program payments went to farmers with net profits in excess of $100,000 (Duncan 1989). Even more striking, a report issued by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture stated that in 1988, some 18 percent of the farms of the nation (the larger farms producing program crops) received approximately 90 percent of direct government payments; another 18 percent of the farms (smaller farms producing program crops) received only 10 percent of direct government payments; and some 64 percent of the farms of the nation received no government payments at all (USDA 1990). This highly skewed system of commodity and income price support is one of the least understood mechanisms of public policy in the U.S.government. It has existed for years, continuing to reward those farmers (and nonfarm landowners) the most who bought or inherited large tracts of farmland, and who agree to produce those crops for which the government pays large subsidies through the commodity price and income support programs
Sadly, the American public is largely unaware of how different farming is from the imagery of the past. A great gap exists between these images and the reality of farm activity today. In this chapter, we discuss five images that mask the reality of how the commodity programs really operate.
Imagery
The New Yorker magazine several years ago depicted an East Coast perspective on the continental United States. The great middle of the country was essentially a blank. It began somewhere after the Hudson River, with Iowa vaguely centered between the foreground of Manhattan and the distant point of Los Angeles. The myopia depicted was at once accurate and self-congratulatory. A similar cartoon soon appeared on the West Coast, showing the same view, but with Los Angeles in the fore-ground.
The concentration of population, media influence, and popular culture on the East and West Coasts creates a sort of informational dumbbell, in which what goes on in between appears in narrower and less accurate terms in many journalistic and media accounts. Scholarly studies have confirmed the existence of this bias. John Borchert, the distinguished geographer, reports that the upper Midwest "is a blank on the mental maps of most Americans" (Borchert 1987). The major metropolitan area of Minneapolis-St. Paul becomes "a vague, inexplicable anomaly amid the wastelands, glaciers, and boondocks." This lack of awareness about America between the coasts has a stifling effect on treatments of farming and farm policy, giving rise to a variety of false images about how it really operates.
The first image is that there exists an undifferentiated land mass of red barns and tall corn or golden wheat growing in flat, featureless landscapes collectively described as 'farm states.' While some areas conform to type (making them favorite visuals for the occasional nightly news story on farm policy), the reality is strikingly different. Obviously, the great middle is a highly diverse landscape. In addition to the flat, fertile soils of Iowa and Illinois, which are the prototypical agricultural landscapes, there is also great diversity, from the rolling hills and woodlands of southwest Wisconsin or the Ohio Valley to the wet, humid semi-tropics of the Mississippi delta; from the arid High Plains of Kansas and Nebraska to the uncropped grazing lands of the mountainous West. In this vast land area a wide range of crops and livestock are grown and raised, although it is less diverse, as we shall see, than in the past.
Each state's agriculture is sufficiently different that very broad generalizations are needed to sustain any picture of a 'typical' farm state. Perhaps more importantly, the economies of the great middle of America, while heavily dependent on agriculture, are less so today than ever before. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City reported in 1987, for example, that fewer than 12 percent of rural families received the majority of their income from farming (Drabenstott, Henry, and Gibson 1987). In the upper Midwest, a pattern of regional service centers has emerged, focused on medium-sized cities such as Rochester, Minnesota; Iowa City, Iowa; or Billings, Montana. Although farming itself serves as a diminishing source of employment, agricultural processing, finance and services are substantial employers, including international companies headquartered in 'farm states' like Hormel, International Multifoods, Pillsbury, and General Mills.
The first image, then, is that commodity programs are the product of general farm state interests, with benefits that are widely distributed to the residents of this undifferentiated land mass. In reality, the interests (and politics) of farm programs break down along lines of specific commodities and regions, each with its own features and peculiarities. Farmers are a distinct minority in every 'farm state,' and in every congressional district in these states. The most 'agricultural' congressional district in the country, Minnesota's second, has only 25 percent of its population engaged in full-time farming. Reliance on agriculture has increasingly come to mean part-time reliance, with other employment in processing or service sectors. It is a particular irony of the midwestern 'farm state' illusion that California is the biggest farm state of all, with net farm income of $6.0 billion in 1989, compared with $2.4 billion for Iowa, $2.1 billion for Nebraska, and $1.1 billion for Kansas (USDA/ERS 1991a).
To understand agricultural policy, therefore, it is not enough to understand 'typical' farm state interests. The student of policy must grasp an intricate web of specific commodity and geographic interests, and a complex historical evolution of farm programs. Faced with this complexity, it is easy to see why the urbane President Kennedy is reported to have said to his newly designated secretary of agriculture, Orville Freeman, "I don't want to hear about agriculture from anyone but you .... Come to think of it, I don't want to hear very much about it from you either."
A second image characteristic of many treatments is what might be called the picture of a 'Little House on the Prairie.' This soft-focus view of rural life, while conceivably part of a romantic past, is not of the present. Laura Ingalls Wilder's own life history, on which the recent television series was based, suggests that her rootless frontier experiences in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the territories was anything but bucolic. The image of a 'family farm' associated with the little house is reinforced by a democratic conception of a majority of farmers providing a stable basis for an agrarian republic. This Jeffersonian idealism, despite its powerful hold on the political traditions of our nation, began a long decline in its actual relevance to American political life as early as Jefferson's own time, when the Hamiltonian conception of a manufacturing-based economy began to take hold.
Today, the majority of families who farm are incorporated as businesses and file farm income form F-1040 with the IRS. A large share of the profits in this business, including government commodity payments, go to a small percentage of those categorized as 'farmers.' As we shall see, the commodity programs tend to aggravate this skewed distribution of benefits. Those farmers who do live on relatively smaller farms, because of the way these government programs are structured, receive the least in payments. Earl Butz, President Nixon's secretary of agriculture, was famous for his proclamation that to survive, farmers had to 'get big or get out.' Yet it is the commodity programs, as well as market forces, that have rewarded the bigger land owners. Their reward is not just for efficiency, but because they own more acres. This contributes, as we shall document, to the cannibalization of the small by the big. This reality is a far cry from the Jeffersonian ideal, or the symbolism of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
The third image, related to the first two, is that farmers in general are 'stewards of the land,' and that agriculture is an environmentally benign and naturally healthy activity. In reality, agriculture is increasingly dependent on chemical and mechanical inputs that, when left uncontrolled, have contributed in major ways to environmental pollution of lakes, streams, and groundwater. As more and more farmers have left the land, the fewer, bigger farmers that remain increasingly rely on larger and larger machinery to till their soil and chemicals to maintain its fertility and protect it from weeds and pests. Commodity programs have rewarded the specialized cultivation of crops that are particularly prone to erosion, and encouraged heavy use of fertilizer and chemicals to keep yields high so that larger government payments can be garnered. Heavy equipment, long hours, and steady exposure to hazardous materials also make modern agriculture one of the riskiest businesses in America, with accidents and occupational mortality and morbidity rates among the highest of any major occupational category. Some of the most dangerous features of modern agriculture, we shall argue, are aggravated and encouraged by commodity programs that reward behavior which is inconsistent not only with the health and safety of farmers, but with the health of the larger consuming population that eats what these farmers produce.
The fourth image is that American agriculture remains a domestic industry, for which domestic policies, such as the five-year farm bill, are most important. In reality, American agriculture in the postwar period has emerged as the quintessential export industry, highly dependent on foreign markets and international market forces over which domestic commodity and economic policies have comparatively little influence. Far from being isolated between two coasts, the great middle of America depends upon, and looks to, global markets for its survival and livelihood. Part of what New Yorkers and Los Angeleno's miss when they look west or east is that vast quantities of American agricultural exports are moving south to New Orleans on Mississippi barges, or north through the Port of Duluth and Great Lakes, to destinations all over the world. Nearly half of many fields of corn, wheat, and soybeans in the Midwest are destined for these markets. Farm incomes and assets of Iowa and Nebraska farmers depend, daily, on the quoted prices in Rotterdam. The modern farmer is thus increasingly a global trader, with an increasingly sophisticated grasp of international commerce, logistics, and transport. A major trading firm located in Minneapolis and serving this market is estimated to be the largest privately held company in the world.
The fifth and final image is that the number of farmers leaving the land is so great, and the remaining survivors so beleaguered by debt, crop failure, and hardship that farmers amount to an endangered species. In this view, no expense is too great to preserve and protect them from the hostile march of corporate takeovers. They must be preserved by farm programs so that the other images cited above can also be maintained. The reality is that farm programs have actually hurried the exodus of farmers from the land, by encouraging large farmers to buy up their smaller neighbors. In records kept of farmland purchases in Minnesota going back to 1910, the distinguished economist Philip M. Raup has observed a consistent and steady pattern of farm enlargement, not of corporate takeovers from outside, but of neighbors buying out neighbors. During the period 1981-88, 89 percent of all farmland purchases in Minnesota were made by buyers living within 50 miles and 74 percent within 10 miles of the land they purchased. In the same period, 75 percent of all purchases were to expand existing farms, and only 12 percent were bought by investors (Schwab and Raup 1989).
It is true that millions of farmers have left the land, and those remaining constitute only about 1.5 percent of the American electorate. But those that remain are hardly poor. And farm programs, as currently structured, do almost nothing to help those who are the poorest and most disadvantaged.
Related to this endangered species image of American farmers, is the fear on the part of many urban consumers that their food supply may in some way be impaired. The idea is often expressed: 'If farmers keep going out-of-business who will produce our food?'<FROWN:F28\>
Sleeping with Ghosts: Myth and Public Policy in Connecticut, 1634-1991
By Christopher Collier

Statement of the Case
Central to the image of New England - in the eyes not only of New Englanders themselves but of Americans generally, perhaps of all the world - is the independent town. The "township," proclaimed Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, "seems to come directly from the hand of God" and "forms the common center of interests and affections of the [New England] citizens." After describing the constitutionally limited sphere of town activity, the French observer then went on to express the central myth: "I believe that not a man is to be found who would acknowledge that the state has any right to interfere in their town affairs." But in Massachusetts and Connecticut the colony/state government constantly regulated town affairs and had since the 1630s. The constitutional and legal history of the relations between periphery and center, village and commonwealth, was always one of agent and principal. Thus in 1864 the Connecticut Supreme Court declared that town powers "instead of being inherent or reversed, have been delegated and controlled by the supreme legislative power of the state from its earliest organization."
This split between constitutional reality and popular perception is as alive today as it was when Tocqueville wrote in 1835. But today myth and reality collide with increasing regularity and greater public confusion, as modern life permits no islands and all social problems cross town boundaries. Matters of waste disposal land use and zoning, mass transportation, segregated housing and schools, and environmental protection, to name a few, routinely create inter-town conflicts that call for state intervention. And every time a town discovers anew the limits of its range of independent activity, some one is sure to protest state intrusion.
In our generation the myth frequently extends beyond popular impression to breathe life into the actions of municipal officials and their deputies at the bar who prepare briefs asserting the inherent authority of towns to perform - or refuse to perform - this or that public function. That lawyers on the state's side are still required to demonstrate that towns in Connecticut not only have no inherent powers today but never have had them reveals a good deal about the power of ideological tradition.
Over and over again state and national courts have driven what they hoped was the final stake through the specter of the myth of New England town autonomy. But specters do not die, especially when riven with stakes. So popular perception and legal determination travel often parallel but frequently colliding paths into the twenty-first century.
Even those individuals who recognize the juridical 'truth' often have hearts committed to the idea of town autonomy. This prevailing dichotomy - it is more than mere ambivalence - was nicely summed up by a delegate to the abortive Connecticut Constitutional Convention of 1902. "Connecticut towns are not independent units," he admitted. "The modern historian has proved that to his satisfaction, and the Supreme Court has announced such to be the law. But, sir, 'As a man thinketh, in his heart so is he.'... I suppose we must admit we are not little states in ourselves. But the towns believed that they were... and to this day we ourselves feel that the towns are miniature commonwealths."
From their interception in 1634, the Connecticut towns were continuously subject to superior government, but before the twentieth century most citizens were so remote from the seat of colony and state government that few had any concrete relations with it. And for a couple of generations in the ante-bellum era, the General Assembly was so apt to let towns go their own ways that intrusion from the legislature came as a surprise to the insular farmer. When the state supreme court spoke on the issue over the course of the nineteenth century, Connecticut citizens heard and understood but did not absorb its judgments. Thus conflicting views of towns' rights continue to endure side by side, one serving the constitutional needs of a modern state, the other serving the emotional needs of a conservative and provincial society, and both serving the needs of politicians who, like necrophiliacs, lie down with the ghost to give body to public policy.
The Historical Evidence
There is today a universal consensus among academic historians that Massachusetts towns were the creation of the General Court in the first years of settlement after 1630. The initial settlement of Connecticut between 1634 and 1636 was carried out under the umbrella of the Massachusetts government and under the same institutional assumptions. The three River Towns were treated as a collectivity; Connecticut was a settlement of people, not towns.
Before 1639, when the Fundamental Orders codified the governmental structure of the colony, Connecticut passed through three organizational stages: six months under the administration of William Westwood, a constable appointed by the Massachusetts government; a year under the Massachusetts Bay Commission; and nearly two years under the Connecticut General Court, nominally under Massachusetts jurisdiction but de facto unregulated. During this entire period, the settlements on the river were treated as a single unit; the towns at no time exercised any authority independent of the colony government.
The adoption of the Fundamental Orders in 1639 did not alter but only made explicit the towns' relationship to the General Court. The towns were to serve as administrative units for the election and jurisdiction of constables and the election of deputies to the General Court. The orders proclaimed that the General Courts shall be "the supreme power of the Commonwealth, and only they shall have power to make lawes or repeal them, to graunt levyes, to admitt of Freemen, to dispose of lands undisposed of, to severall Townes or prsonspersons... and also may deale in any other matter that concerns the good of this common welth."
In 1662 a royal charter legitimated the government established by the Fundamental Orders. The charter mentions towns only as electoral districts for the General Court and vests all governmental authority in the "Governour and Company of the English Collony of Connecticut in New England" to "Make, Ordaine and Establish All manner of wholesome and reasonable Lawes Statutes, Ordinances, Directions and Instructions."
During the colonial period the General Court delegated most local administration to the towns and concerned itself largely with regulating relations among the towns as well as with other colonies and the imperial government. It interfered in local affairs only when town activities had wider ramifications. Though it intruded into town affairs quite often in the Revolutionary and federal eras, the state relaxed that practice in the early nineteenth century, when there was no longer a need for the statewide coordination required to free and establish the nation. Towns settled into rustic isolation and the General Assembly adopted a laissez-faire attitude. Only when towns took actions that had no legal basis or when their activities impinged on state policy or administration did the General Assembly intrude to maintain order or administrative coherence.
The constitution of 1818 did not in any way alter the functions of towns or their relationship to the state. Towns figure in that document, as they did in the Fundamental Orders and Charter of 1662, only as electoral districts and the demographic basis for representation in the General Assembly. The first revision of the statutes under the Constitution of 1818, that of 1821 by Zephaniah Swift, the state's leading jurist acting at the behest of the General Assembly, included the great body of law allowing and obligating the towns to perform numerous acts of local administration. But, as always, these acts were privileges and duties, not rights.
Though the General Assembly, the lower house of which was made up of representatives from the towns, was lax in its oversight of town responsibilities and often legitimated deviations from the law, the courts acted otherwise. In the federal era and the early nineteenth century, courts compelled the assembly to enact legislation authorizing activities in which the towns had been engaged for generations. For instance, in 1796, the state supreme court insisted that the General Assembly authorize the towns to establish ordinances regulating wandering livestock, though such local by-laws had been in effect for a century and a half by then. Judges' opinions laid down the policy that only the state had rights of eminent domain; it could order selectmen to lay out local highways and require towns to tax themselves to indemnify owners for land seized even over the protests of the selectmen and the town. Selectmen, declared the court, were agents of the state, not of the towns. Furthermore, town and city charters were no different from private incorporations and must be strictly interpreted.
The Myth Rises and Is (Temporarily) Defeated
As the courts began to restrict the authority of town meetings and town officials, the proponents of town autonomy - the folk version - rose to defend what they thought was the legitimate tradition. Out of the experience of two or three generations of parents and grandparents, who pursued the simple life in Connecticut's isolated antebellum towns, grew the defenders' perception that their towns were at least semi-autonomous. From among these defenders would soon arise Connecticut's new mythmakers.
The popular offensive against the historical bulwark of state supremacy, buttressed after 1818 by an awakening judiciary, began in 1855. In that year Gideon Hollister, himself a lawyer and politician, sent to press the first solid history of Connecticut to be published since the 1790s. Hollister described towns as "recognized and independent municipalities. They are the primary centres of power, older than the Constitution [i.e., the Fundamental Orders] - the makers and builders of the state." Hollister continued: the towns "have given up to the State a part of their corporate powers, as they received them from the free planters, that they may have a safer guarantee for the keeping of the rest. Whatever they have not given up, they hold in absolute right."
Hollister's confederation theory of Connecticut's origins was developed in an era dominated nationally by the debate over states' rights. Though Hollister's assertions had no basis in historical fact, they provided what looked like grist for the brief of a young lawyer, Charles B. Andrews, hired by the town of Harwinton to defend it against charges of illegal activity. Webster v. Harwinton grew out of the town practice, common throughout the North during the Civil War, of offering bonuses to local sons who enlisted or were drafted into the Union army. Taxpayers in several towns challenged the right of their town meetings to tax for this purpose. Andrews's fundamental theory was "That as in a democratic government ultimate sovereignty resides with the people, the simplest municipal organization, viz., the towns, being the most purely democratic and voluntary, possess all power with which they have not expressly parted."
The judicial mill ground Andrews's hulks and spit them out. The court, dominated by Republicans in the midst of a war fought at least in part against confederation theories, could not accept Andrews's logic. The provision relating to towns in the Fundamental Orders, wrote Chief Justice Thomas Butler for the court,
was both a grant and a limitation of vital power, and was intended to embrace towns thereafter created (as they were in fact) by law, and is utterly inconsistent with the idea of a reserved sovereignty, or of any absolute right in the towns, and constituted the towns corporations, and the continuance of it has continued them so; ...and thus their powers, instead of being inherent or reserved, have been delegated and controlled by the supreme legislative power of the state from its earliest organization.
This, then, is the defining statement of town powers in the constitutional system of Connecticut. No court majority has contested it since its articulation in 1864.
In the decades after Webster, voters at town meetings must have been surprised to learn that they had no inherent power to tax but must receive state permission for each kind of tax they chose to levy. And they must tax whether they chose to or not in order to fulfill local obligations imposed by the state.
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Lexical Lasagna and Semantic Stew
BY RON GLOWEN
Like the person who was surprised to learn that he had been speaking prose all his life, I've discovered that I'm a technologist with the appropriate skills to perform my particular craft. No, it has nothing to do with changing spark plugs or fathoming the cosmic implications of differential gears; nor do I require the intervention of any Neo-Luddites to rid me of my afflictions. Rather, the nature of my talent was revealed to me in the course of my - ahem - professional activities of research and writing. Technology derives from the Greek techne (an art or pertaining to art) and logos (word or discourse); therefore technology means to write or talk about art, or perhaps to write or talk artfully. Skill means "discernment, knowledge, reason." Craft means "device, artifice or expedient." Art in its original Latin means "to fit" or "to join"; in Greek it means "to arrange." (All definitions in this case come from the Oxford Universal Dictionary.)
Needless to say, that's not how we define or use these terms today, particularly in a colloquial sense. My idle pursuit of word origins, which resulted in the discovery of the true meaning of technology (Eureka!), was not without some purpose, because I now have a new word to lay on you, if you haven't heard it already.
Craftart. If ever there was a word that defines itself, this is it. Two root words expediently joined, or as we say in Greek, 'arranged.' I cannot, nor do I want to, claim authorship of this neologism, however. It was extracted from the title of a conference I attended recently, the First National Symposium on Criticism in the Craftarts held at New York University. Certainly there have been other conferences on criticism and the crafts (I recall the 1985 Oakland gathering Art/Culture/Future sponsored by the American Craft Council). But maybe with a new term for the designation of the former crafts (or medium-based art, which incidentally means "an intervening substance"), a whole new light might be shed on this musty subject.
It was not to be. In fact, the panel of critics and editors who convened for the purpose of Getting Our Terms Straight: The Language of Criticism completely missed the mark. The only solid proposal was put forth on another panel by sculptor Winifred Lutz, who urged the replacement of 'craft' with 'work' (taking her cue from a book by Russell Pye, with the word "Workmanship" in the title). Etymologically speaking, this put us on firmer ground - work means "something that is done" - but the desire here for substitution in hopes of erasing the old 'art and craft' dichotomy is just as prone to the language problems of existing colloquial usage. In fact, Harold Rosenberg published an essay entitled 'Art and Work' in 1965, an expanded version of a talk he gave at the First World Congress of Craftsmen in 1964 (so much for staking a claim to being first!), which addressed the very same issue.
In his essay, Rosenberg made the prescient remark that "art criticism seems to be much slower than art itself in casting off the spell that identifies the artist with making and the maker." To most makers, and the audience at NYU was filled with those who regard 'making' as a high calling [make: a matched fit; to do or act], this statement amounts to heresy. From all indications, what is desired is the reversal of the present state of affairs; quoting again from Rosenberg, "... art goes against its past as a making of things and takes on the characteristics of action," by which he meant "... the primitive motive of art as magic and celebration." Action, in Rosenberg's lexicon, meant self-development; and he concluded his essay by declaring that "... self-development shall [ideally] be the motive of all work," and when that prevails "... the distinction between the arts and other human enterprises will become meaningless."
While there are 'art workers' who oppose the identity of 'artist' on the basis of ideological, social or cultural difference, virtually all of the 'crafters,' 'craft workers' or 'craftartists' that I've encountered seek the meaningful distinction of being called an 'artist.' Perhaps in the future, the crafters will become the artists, and artists will become ... something else. How strange that this hierarchical separation, still enforced in some quarters, was cooked up from the semantic stew that has given us an inverted lexical lasagna in which one thing originally meant its opposite. Unfortunately, I have not offered much clarity to the matter. But I am going to start calling myself a 'technologist' rather than an 'art writer' so that I can apply for grants from 'industry' (industria: diligence, skill, a crafty expedient).
The Last Romantic: Part II
BY FRED MARTIN
Scheherazade said, "come back tonight ..." and disappeared in the middle of a sentence during my early morning reverie at the National Council of Art Administrators last November in Minneapolis, disappeared with "You [Romantics like me] are all as far from a worthwhile work ... as you were a hundred and fifty years before. ..." I knew that Scheherazade never finished anything and always reappeared when night came. So, when night did fall in that gloomy Minneapolis hotel room, I was not surprised when Scheherazade reappeared and went right on as if nothing had happened:
As it had been for the post-Impressionists, the Czannes, Gauguins and van Goghs, certain of the first generation Abstract Expressionist artists were taken up by perceptive dealers and sold to a 1950s version of the same audience that had bought Czanne during the early twentieth century. And, as Czanne et al. were followed by the Picassos and Matisses, so the Abstract Expressionists were followed by the Warhols, the Stellas, the Olitzkis and the Rauschenbergs. And also, as it had been ever since the early nineteenth century, these mid-to later-twentieth century artists worked for the 'cultural elite,' the art world of a couple thousand influential 'tastemakers,' while all of the other image-makers in society worked for everyone else, the 250 million people who constituted society as a whole.
The fine artist worked for the art world; the popular artist worked for the people. The fine artists' work reached its audience through the art dealer and museum curator; the work of the popular artist reached its audience through the recording company and the radio station, the film studio and the movie theater or television set. And as time passed, the work of visual fine art, largely static and more cult object of social status than guiding vision of human life, gave way in power and influence to popular art, which was vital, engaged all the senses, moved in time and, like television and the movies, brighter than life, or like recordings, louder and with no wrong notes.
That is why [Scheherazade said] you fine artists have come at the end of the twentieth century to the question of your place and the place of your work in a world that is evolving today and tomorrow. As the art world has continued to evolve in its own isolation from the major needs of the society in which you exist, you speak more and more only to one another, in a dialogue ever more distant from the great issues of human life, ever more representative of those issues only as they may exist in the individual experience of you artists yourselves, for yourselves, to yourselves.
When the Romantics began in the early nineteenth century, they were leisured aristocrats who had lost their role in society. You are the same. You are only Romantics, two hundred years too late. "And, dear boy," Scheherazade concluded, "that is the end of your story. You are worthless. The world has no use for you nor any place for your works. Get lost."
Months passed after those last words from the woman who had after all finished my story, and she had gone off to amuse a sultan before I could strangle her with her veil, stab at her heart. Then one day recently I saw a headline in a local tabloid: THE PROSECUTION OF THE LYRIC POET. I think Scheherazade was the Prosecutor: "Brought before the bar of justice, accused by a society in chaos of the crime of self-indulgence when the services of every person are needed to promote the general welfare and pursue the common good, the Lyric Poet was questioned by the Prosecution:
Q. What is your service?
A. My service is speaking.
Q. Why were you chosen?
A. Because I have the talent.
Q. For whom do you speak?
A. I speak for the mute.
Q. What do you say?
A. Because I am a child, I speak for the vulnerable, the frightened, the abused. I speak for the children who dream and those who played the fairy stories of long ago, who play Barbie and Ken and GI Joe and Transformer today ...
Because I am an outcast, I speak for the rejected, the sinners, the publicans, the whores; I speak for the poor and the homeless because I am that ...
Because I am male, I speak for men the words they cannot say: the caring their machismo hides, the raging phallicism their fear of homosexuality hides, the fear of age their youth disguises, the fear of failure each knows but never admits ...
Because I am female, I speak for women the rage at their impotence and servitude, their repression for three hundred centuries; I speak for their care for children and a love so deep that it can nurture or smother, sustain or kill ...
Because I am man/woman-woman/man, I speak all hungers of the flesh for the other that is itself, I speak all lusts that are the statements of despair ...
Because I am of color, I speak all rage against the whites where I project the power over my weakness; because I am white, I speak all fear of the energy and sensuality which I project upon the dark ...
Because I am all, multivalent, every-faced, all age and all life ... desert and mountain, breaking surf and clouds of every kind, you hear me in the surging of the shore, and in hands cupped hollow to your ears ...
And because the child, the out-cast, the man, the woman, the gay and lesbian, the dark and light, the desert even and the mountain, sea and sky, because they are all in you, Mr. Prosecutor, I speak for you ...
Today and yesterday, tomorrow and in all days to come, I speak what you cannot say; I say the world you live but cannot make - until beyond the dust of now, when other times other worlds, other languages other lives, your need forever remains and my service forever is called.
The Prosecution rested; the Lyric Poet had given a defense; the Judge passed sentence:
"To the Lyric Poet: Yes, show your work, speak your poem, make your gift however, whenever you can. But also, return to your origin to help those who begin as you once did, help children learn to sing in the free chorus of the world. Show at the local art festival and be proud when your work hangs on the walls of lovers' bedrooms; teach at the local school and be proud when second graders paint their first world. The Romantic Artist is dead, long live the Lyric Poet."
Blame It on Columbus
Beyond 1992 at the Berkeley Art Center
BY BRUNO FAZZOLARI
During the course of this year just about every sector of the art and media worlds will perform a ritual homage and analysis of the Columbus Quincentennial. That such institutions as Newsweek have raised doubts about the heroic stature of Columbus indicates more about the current cultural climate than about Columbus himself, however. To take an example from Beyond 1992, currently at the Berkeley Art Center, the image of Columbus readily calls forth the man and his entire colonial legacy, but it is unlikely that the man himself would recognize his own likeness, for the portrait we know was produced long after his death.
<#FROWN:F30\>
Delegation of educational authority, then, is a product of specialization, but it is equally a function of the extrinsicality of an important purpose of the major. The success of a department that regards itself as preparing students for practice or further study is measured by the relevant success of its students, a fact that has an effect on its decisions. One such external influence on the major is informal and often subjective, consisting as it does of the sum total of departmental beliefs about how success is achieved out there in the world, with the evidence fragmentary and anecdotal. The upshot tends to be the principle, when in doubt, include, since the failure of even a small number of students to reach their goal is vastly more obvious than the harm of a one-sided education for a much larger number.
The aim of a second influence is more precise and steady. Often, graduate departments, professional schools, employers, and - especially for professional majors - accrediting and licensing agencies are quite explicit in their demands, to the point of specifying courses. Entrance requirements or preferences, personnel officers' guidelines to school placement officers, or conditions for accreditation all leave their mark on the curricula of majors. The prerogatives of expertise and the demands of external agencies thus tend to crowd out the determination of majors by faculties of particular institutions. And because these forces also suppress attention to potentially intrinsic pedagogic values of the major, a closer look at the relationship between the stage that prepares and those it prepares for is important.
For many students, of course, the undergraduate major is followed by related advanced study or by employment that calls for the knowledge and skills acquired. Undoubtedly, this orderly sequence occurs more consistently in job-related undergraduate professional programs, such as engineering, nursing, or education, than for arts and sciences majors, though there will be differences among the latter. That the major prepares is not fiction. Insofar as undergraduate education in America can be regarded as a bridge from variability of talent and schooling to postbaccalaureate education and professional employment (where relatively uniform professionwide standards prevail), majors are the main girders of that bridge.
Accordingly, it is quite appropriate for undergraduate institutions to look outside for guidance in the design of certain of their programs. But for educational institutions with pedagogic goals of their own, some modes of looking are more fitting than others. Even the few broad principles to be suggested here, however, will call for different policies in different professions and fields.
One must distinguish, to begin with, between students making their entrance into that next stage and functioning within it once inside. To the ears of a faculty, the keepers of portals have by far the most audible voices: campus recruiters, personnel officers, deans of admission, licensing agencies. And while these representatives speak for their institutions, they nevertheless bring to their tasks special perspectives of their own. The success of company recruiters and personnel officers, for example, is measured primarily by the degree of satisfaction of the first supervisors of the new employees, whether or not this forecasts a longer-run flourishing of the employee. Admissions officers, given their task of dealing with large numbers of applicants, tend toward the use of indicators that permit decisions to be made efficiently - that is, relatively rapidly, and without too much 'subjective' discretion by the decision makers.
Since the accomplishments of students who do not get through the door will not then be further tested, the preparing faculty must, of course, pay heed to such entrance requirements. But, as educators, they must also look beyond that portal to the functioning of their students over a longer career. Just as we expect a law school to prepare students for a career in the law (and not just for the bar exam), so the faculty in charge of an undergraduate program must base its curricular decisions on an understanding of a longer and deeper trajectory. Bluntly put, faculties must make the educational decisions, not recruiters and admission officers.
A bureaucratic point that has considerable pedagogic consequences corroborates this fundamental principle. For the sake of convenience, requirements are often stated in the language of courses. Required: one semester of calculus; one year of accounting; one course in design; a year of organic chemistry; and so on. But what is actually needed on the job or in advanced study is never a course but certain substantive knowledge and certain broad or specific skills, expected to be acquired in those courses.
No doubt they usually are, and no doubt much more is, as well. Courses are packages, with the selection of contents a function of the structure of the field, of habit, history, and convenience. It remains open as to whether, when a course is specified, what is substantively needed includes all that is required. Where a discipline's internal organization does not dictate the package's components, it can easily happen that a broader educational decision is made for the sake of a narrower admissions need. When a conventional course is required for the sake of a certain ability or quality of mind, an educational decision might suggest a quite different road toward that goal.
This theme - that the faculty responsible for a major must translate external demands into decisions of its own - becomes central when the issue of the major as preparation is placed in the broadest perspective. We are moving in realms in which much more is to be learned in preparation for the next stage than there is time for. As a result, on-the-job training and continuing education within the workplace have become very big business, indeed. Such activities range from informal (but time-consuming) on-the-job training, to instruction in company-specific practices, to technical courses and workshops that closely resemble those of the academy, to instruction that is indistinguishable from that provided in colleges and universities, right up to degree-granting corporate institutions. In short, everywhere the growth of knowledge has been such that students must embark on that next stage before being fully prepared for it.
At best, the undergraduate major can only do part of the job of preparing, even if it had no other goals; the faculty cannot avoid selecting what is to be included and what will be left to be learned later. Three broad principles should govern such choices; the fact that they are virtually self-evident most certainly does not assure that they are observed. First, where learning one thing builds on the prior knowledge of something else, that dependency dictates an order of learning. Because this simple logic has immediate pedagogic consequences, it is in general, though by no means always, adhered to. But since the adverse consequences of violating either of the other two principles do not become manifest until long after the undergraduate years, an equivalent simpleminded logic does not have analogous coercive force.
Institutional setting may make a big difference as to how adequately some material is taught or whether it can be taught at all. Some teaching should take place in colleges and universities, asserts this second principle, because it can only be taught there or can be taught much better there than elsewhere. Other knowledge or skills are more readily acquired in the environment of the postbaccalaureate stage. Where needed as part of preparation, the first of such subjects should be included in the major, in place of subjects that might be acquired elsewhere, while one ought to omit those in the second category, even in the face of pressures from students who want to get there faster.
A recent study of professional education analyzes the notion of professional competence into six components, to take a single example. One, called "contextual competence," "signifies an understanding of the broad social, economic, and cultural setting in which the profession is practiced." Since it is unlikely that all six components can be adequately acquired in the course of an undergraduate professional program, it makes sense to include material that takes advantage of the availability, at an institution of higher education, of such departments as economics, sociology, anthropology, say, not to mention broad library holdings. On the other hand, and for a number of reasons, if the intention is indeed to focus history and the social sciences on the profession being studied, such "contextual competence" is much more difficult to acquire 'on the job.' Suitability of place, absolutely or comparatively, suggests that "contextual competence" be given some priority in the design of a major.
On the other side, the point has been made with some force that schools will never succeed in educating teachers in such a way that they are good teachers when they start teaching. Programs that aim at preparing teachers should therefore teach how to learn to teach and leave the job of actually becoming good teachers to the years of beginning practice. Wherever such an observation is taken seriously, important curricular decisions follow.
Finally, there is the power of time. Some things not learned early are later learned with much greater difficulty at best. The "interpersonal communication competence" called for in that study on professional education is surely best acquired when young. For reasons rooted in psychological, if not biological truths about human development, the cost of postponement can be high. Other studies are best engaged in earlier rather than later for economic or sociological reasons. For what one is free to explore at an earlier stage may later be precluded by increasing pressure to specialize and by economic constraints. Options open in youth that might, in principle, be recaptured later tend, in practice, to remain out of reach.
That these truths have long been known is no assurance that they are incorporated in educational programs. They are, however, of particular relevance to the design of majors, insofar as they are intended to provide an adequate preparation for stages beyond the undergraduate years.
THE PEDAGOGICAL PURPOSES OF THE MAJOR
We have been concerned up to now with the educational effectiveness of the major as preparation for specific future stages, without attending to the educational function of the undergraduate major for those who do not take that road. While there is a paucity of statistical evidence on the careers of students after college, it is widely known that for many of them, the major is not at all followed by related advanced study or employment.
First, quite a few undergraduate majors simply do not prepare for some designated next step. Often this is obvious to students and faculty alike, but at times both groups, especially students, suffer from misapprehensions. Many interdisciplinary majors have no graduate counterparts, nor are there specific jobs for someone who has completed a program in ancient civilizations, say. But, more insidiously, some professional-sounding majors are wrongly believed to qualify the graduate for a position in that profession. Many bachelors in journalism, for example, will be disappointed not to be hired as reporters; the fact that some undergraduate economics majors like to call themselves economists does not make it so when they are on the lookout for jobs. This perspective on the major not only raises questions about effective communication with students but about the very ethos of the major as preparation.
Second, for at least two reasons, numerous students who intend to use the major as a road to relevant advanced study or employment never get there. Even where a program prepares, many individual students simply do not do well enough to make it. In some areas, the standards for success are so high that the number who fail to reach the next stage is large. Think of the biology majors who are not admitted into a medical school or a Ph.D. program! On the other hand, a program can be well designed to prepare students for a career, and they might complete it admirably but may find that the number of openings in the world of work is so small that there is no room for them. At different times, this disproportion has held for every profession for which undergraduates prepare: education, engineering, music, library science, pharmacy, and social work, to give a few prominent examples.
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There can be no natural explanation for the origin of this cancer-fighting wonder other than past heavy losses of juveniles to cancer.
Because it was activated only after healthy cells were converted into the deadly cancer state, the increasingly efficient immune system enabled many species to weaken, or even abandon, first line defenses. The animals were still, from the gene's view, disposable vehicles, and every act of somatic cell creation in a developing animal was still a threat to the germ line. But the 'fail safe' nature of immune systems liberated the gene pools. Released from the restrictions imposed by risk-aversive cancer defenses, many of these emboldened invaders of the sun-drenched land surfaces could do what would be unthinkable with only a single line of defenses:
Increase the length of prereproductive life.
Lengthen total life spans. The aging process was attenuated.
Invest more cells in each organism. Giant animals - dinosaurs at an earlier time, humans now - came to dominate life on earth.
Externalize soft tissue as the need for noncellular external hard coverings were reduced or eliminated.
Because of that externalization of tissue, develop greater flexibility and mobility.
Eliminate, in some species, body hair, a noncellular covering with proven cancer-defense properties. (I say more about hair later in the chapter.)
Reduce skin pigmentation in many humans and in a few species of domestic animals - some pigs and some rabbits have white-pink skin.
In many species, spend entire days in direct sunlight.
In most immunologically-equipped lineages the animals increased in size. That is because immune systems not only permitted larger animals, they encouraged them. With an effective immune defense in place additional cells actually protect against cancer.
But if fewer cells were cancer defensive in insects, how could more cells be cancer defensive in vertebrates? To understand this apparent paradox, consider two vertebrates with cells of similar size. One is a mouse whose liver is no larger than the eraser at the end of a pencil. The other is a whale, and it's liver is the size of a small automobile. If cancer were to start in one liver cell in each animal and proliferate at the same rate of speed, which animal would be the first to die? Obviously, the mouse would go first. Because of its smaller size, the mouse's liver would stop functioning before the whale's. And the whale's immune system, with more time to organize a counterattack against the killer cells, would have a better chance of winning its fight against the killer cells and might save the animal.
(In his 'Phylogeny and Oncogeny' Clyde J. Dawe pointed out that although whales have many more cells at risk than mice and might be expected to have higher lethal cancer rates they in fact have far lower rates. He speculated that certain physical characteristics of whales [he mentions higher levels of fatty tissue] might explain the whale's lower death rate. He seems not to have considered time-to-kill versus time-to-react as a factor.)
The terrestrial vertebrates include among their number the only large animals that regularly expose themselves to intense sunlight. Vertebrates are also the only animals known to have cancer specific immune systems. And they have yet another unique characteristic: they are the only animals that sleep.
Sleep is a major evolutionary mystery. Land vertebrates spend one-third of their lives in an unconscious state, utterly defenseless against attack by predators. Natural selection would have worked against the selection of this defenseless state unless it offered other life-or-death benefits. My theory looks at all the facts and asserts that sleep's primary function is to defend against cancer.
To begin my case, consider that the greatest risk of cancer initiation occurs during mitosis. That delicate process of passing genetic material from one mother cell to two daughter cells is, in organisms with oncogenes, nothing less than death-defying. It is also an incredibly frequent occurrence in large animals. Cells divide ten quadrillion times during a human lifetime. That's 350 thousand million cell divisions every twenty-four hours! If just one of those divisions went awry, the mishap could kill the organism. And any cell divisions that misfired in juveniles would imperil the lineage.
Significantly, these highly dangerous acts occur in vertebrates during sleep. Human skin cells, for example, divide mostly between the hours of midnight and 4 AM. The connection with sunlight is obvious. Cells divide at night in animals that are active during daylight and during the day in most nocturnal animals. Bats and mice sleep during the day, but they sleep, and their cells divide (itsit's been observed and measured in mice) in places sheltered from sunlight; bats sleep in caves and mice in burrows.
Using the 'cause of death' rule, the universality of sleep in land vertebrates (all mammals, birds and reptiles sleep) leads to the question, what killed animals that did not sleep? The facts - mitosis during sleep, sunlight avoidance while sleeping - point to cancer.
Another set of facts that supports this idea is the age-related sleep pattern in our own species. Humans sleep most during infancy - newborns sleep 18 or more hours a day - when new cell production, and the risk of cancer initiation, is at its highest level. After infancy sleep decreases steadily with age, but with one significant exception. Adolescents sleep more than pre-adolescents. Again, there is a correlation with growth and increased cell division: rates of increase in height and weight during adolescence are second only to infancy. Cancer experience also correlates. Adolescents are especially vulnerable to cancer related to growth. Leg bones grow rapidly during adolescence and cancer in those bones almost exclusively occurs in teenagers.
Another medical fact pointing toward sleep's function as a cancer defense: the increase in sleep following severe trauma. Persons recovering from major surgery or other trauma - when cells division increases to repair damaged tissue - sleep more than normal.
There is still more evidence. The pituitary gland secretes growth hormone when we sleep. According to Yasuro Takahashi, "...the highest peak of [growth hormone] concentrations in a 24-hour period always occurs during ...sleep."
How does sleep enhance cancer-free cell division? I don't know. This is a black box proposal. I suspect, however, that the state of unconsciousness was selected to enforce physical inactivity and that inactivity provides an internal somatic environment conducive to the successful division of cells.
I have said that insects shield their larvae from solar radiation as a cancer defense. The terrestrial vertebrates also protect their embryos from radiation, but they didn't put them under rocks.
Most vertebrate fish embryos were not protected by their parents. They reproduced with external fertilization and external gestation; many fertilized eggs develop in open water. But when some of the fishes' descendants migrated to land they moved toward greater embryo protection. This is evident in the earliest land animals, the amphibians. Although some amphibians use the fish system of external fertilization and external gestation, other use internal fertilization followed by external gestation. And a few species use both internal fertilization and internal gestation.
In the next big evolutionary step, the emergency of true terrestrials, the reptiles and birds, fertilization became internal and all embryos were protected in hard-shelled eggs, some of which were buried by the parents.
Embryo protection was further intensified in mammals. Both fertilization and gestation are internal.
That progression from exposed fertilization and exposed gestation to shielded fertilization and shielded gestation implies unrelenting selection pressure. Such long term trends in many lineages are best explained, again applying Occam's Razor, by a single selection mechanism working throughout the long transformation period, rather than by a melange of assumptions.
Increased protection of embryos occurred in lineages that underwent great transformation and my theory says transformation itself could not occur without lots of juvenile cancer, including embryo cancer. The intensification of cancer selection pressure as the animals moved away from the protection of the sea would also explain the change to internal fertilization and internal gestation.
As my theory would predict, no comparable intensification of protection of very young offspring occurred when plants moved from marine to terrestrial habitats.
Despite the fact that many mammals have discarded heavy external protection against sunlight, all land vertebrates continue to shield mitotic cells from natural radiation.
Blood cells in humans and other vertebrates, which divide more rapidly than other cells, divide inside large bones. As X-ray images demonstrate, bone tissue protects against radiation.
In four-legged animals, the soft organs, which are made up mainly of dividing cells, are protected from exposure to sunlight by layers of cells that do not divide; muscles and, to a lesser extent, nerve cells.
The observation that pre-mitotic cells are routinely shielded by cells that do not divide suggests that cancer selection explains one of the great mysteries of recent evolution, the origin of the human brain.
Paleontologists have established, with the 1974 discovery in Ethiopia of the hominid fossil 'Lucy,' that our ancestors first became bipedal about 3.5 million years ago. They stood up before they acquired their large brains. The big brains - they more than doubled in size from Lucy's - did not appear until about 2 million years ago. That sudden appearance - and in evolution 1.5 million years is a short time - is a puzzle. So quickly did the new brain appear that biologist Anthony Smith estimates that it grew at an average rate of 90,000 cells in each generation!
All previous ideas about that sudden origin revolve around the supposed survival value of human intelligence. They ignore several powerful signs pointing to cancer selection.
The locale where our ancestors were living when the big brains first appeared is highly significant. It was in the Rift Valley, which runs from North to South, dividing central Africa in half. West of the valley the land is covered with heavy foliage; it's mostly deep, dark jungle. To the east it's savanna; open land bombarded by fierce tropical sunlight. The valley itself, where Lucy lived, is now one of the hottest places on earth. It is risky to assume that current climatic conditions obtained millions of years in the past, but I make no such assumption. According to a 1984 article in The New York Times, specialists are convinced that humans appeared when the area changed from shady forest to sun-drenched savanna.
Suddenly spending entire days with the blazing African sun beating down on the top of their heads (thanks to their recent adaptation of bipedalism), early humans suffered losses from brain cancer. But - and this is essential - most brain tumors do not start in functioning brain cells, not in neurons. They start in glial cells, dividing non-nerve cells that circulate inside the cranial vault. Neurons are postmitotic; they never divide, not once the brain has been constructed. And brain construction is completed in early childhood.
If glial-cell cancer killed many human children, selection would have favoured the placement of additional neurons on the top of the mammalian brain we inherited from Lucy and our other protohuman ancestors. Those additional nondividing cells, placed between the dividing cells and that harsh African sun, would have blocked the carcinogenic solar radiation.
Certain observations support this idea:
Cancer is the second leading cause of death among American children. And the second leading site of lethal cancer in children is brain cancer; it accounted for 14% of childhood cancer deaths in a recent year. (The leading cause of death is accidents and leukemia is the most common cancer.)
Children have thick hair only on the top of their heads. Humans lost their thick body hair, and biologists are convinced that they shed it to survive in the heat of the African plain. But most of our body heat escapes through our heads. (It's why most people wear hats in cold weather.) If we got rid of body hair to keep cool in the African heat, its retention by juveniles (remember, their welfare was essential to lineage survival) in the one place where it would most interfere with body-cooling suggests that something else was also involved. I think childrens' hair protected them against sunlight-caused brain cancer.
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The argument could legitimately be made that virtually all coverage of national government is primarily the drama surrounding the president - from the story of the initial policy proposal through the Congress's handling of the issue to the president's subsequent reaction to Congress. It may even extend to the role of interest groups, the states and localities, the federal bureaucracy, and the Supreme Court. Energy programs, budget cuts, anti-inflation plans all receive elongated coverage if they emanate from the White House and are considered top priorities of the president.
Not only does the president get a lot of press coverage, but most of it is favorable, or at worst neutral. Although the number of unfavorable stories has increased since the late 1960s and early 1970s (Vietnam and Watergate) the president still receives more favorable than unfavorable press.
MANAGING THE NEWS
The president's media coverage is generally positive primarily because of White House efforts to manage the news. The White House usually does not need to solicit the press's attention (although it cannot take such attention for granted), but the president's staff does try to affect the content that is transmitted. A vital and time-consuming job of the president and his senior advisors is the shaping of news coverage to the president's advantage.
Former White House Communications Director David Gergen aptly describes this preoccupation:
We had a rule in the Nixon [presidency] that before any public event was put on his schedule, you had to know what the headline out of that event was going to be, what the picture was going to be, and what the lead paragraph would be.
Image-Making
The White House works to create an image of the president which supports the president's policy objectives and creates a reservoir of political capital (that is, popular support), for the president in his battles with Congress and others. This imagemaking is especially crucial in the first year of a new administration when the new president seeks to translate an electoral mandate into congressional and public support for the administration's proposals. The president not only can be more successful in accomplishing policy objectives, but he also can draw an image of himself which will form the first strong impression in the public mind. Fortuitously, the press also concentrates on the personality of the new president in this first year. (See Table 8.1.) Since such information is new, it is considered newsworthy. The White House, aware of this emphasis, seeks to take advantage of it through imagemaking. According to Grossman and Kumar, the image created generally encompasses the president's personal characteristics, leadership ability, and policy.
The President Is Human. The White House attempts to 'humanize' the president, particularly in the first year of a new administration. Reporters are quick to pick up on such stories, since they appeal to a natural human interest in an important personality and his family.
Typically, the White House portrays the president as one who is close to the concerns of the citizenry, whether that be through an emphasis on Jimmy Carter's small-town roots, his experiences as a farmer and small businessman, and his preference for staying in voters' homes during campaign trips, or on George Bush's predilection for pork rinds, backyard barbecues, and playing horseshoes. The public flap over Nancy Reagan's designer dresses was the other side of this coin. The press is vital in communicating this image to the public: the president as common man.
The First Family. The president's family is used to demonstrate his compassion as well as a model home life. The First Lady's involvement in noncontroversial causes such as Barbara Bush's work on adult illiteracy aid the president's image as a concerned individual. In the case of Barbara Bush, her matronly figure and grey hair has reinforced an image as a typical woman, particularly by comparison with Nancy Reagan, who was petite and dressed in fashionable designer clothes. Children, particularly younger children, can soften the public image of the president. Even animals, when presidential offspring are adults, can serve a similar role, as evidenced by the attention to Millie, the Bush's pregnant spaniel who was featured on the cover of Life magazine.
Emphasis on family can backfire, however, given inappropriate context or behavior. Jimmy Carter's mention during the 1980 presidential debate that he had discussed nuclear arms policy with his 13-year-old daughter Amy was met with derision, since it implied he received policy advice from his teenage daughter, and Carter's brother Billy became involved in an embarrassing scandal over his role as a lobbyist for Libya. Ronald Reagan's children undercut both his 'family man' image and his positions on moral issues; son Ron appeared on Saturday Night Live in his underwear, and daughter Patti wrote a derogatory novel based on her relationship with her father.
Leadership. Our expectations for the presidency today demand presidential leadership, or at least the appearance of such. In fact, the president is severely hampered by the Constitution, by statute, and by the resistance of the Congress in his decision-making role. Hence, the White House concentrates on projecting an image of leadership in order to gain public and congressional support. Grossman and Kumar identify several components of the image as a leader.
Military Decisiveness. The president must appear militarily decisive. Early in his presidency, George Bush's use of the military in Panama and the Middle East successfully reinforced this image. However, Jimmy Carter's failed attempt to rescue the Iran hostages and the Reagan administration's inability to oust Panamanian leader Noriega in 1988 contributed to a perception of military impotence.
Control of Subordinates. The president also is expected to demonstrate leadership by firing disruptive subordinates. The continued presence of a subordinate who challenges the president or politically damages him is viewed as a sign of weakness. President Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981 projected a strong, decisive image, but his later refusal to remove his embattled chief of staff Donald Regan in 1986-1987 conveyed the opposite impression.
Intellectual Ability. The president is expected to show leadership through his command of the issues and his overall intellectual ability. Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Carter projected images of highly knowledgeable experts on complex matters, although their expertise usually was demonstrated in controlled settings. Ronald Reagan lacked this intellectual or technical ability, but successfully lowered expectations of presidential expertise by drawing the analogy of a corporate chairman of the board rather than a hands-on manager. George Bush, however, has restored the practice of showing leadership through intellectual command of the issues.
World Leader. Finally, Grossman and Kumar argue that the president must show leadership through his role as a world figure. Presidents have often turned to foreign policy - and particularly to foreign travels - to boost sagging popularity at home. Richard Nixon's visit to the Soviet Union and later to the Middle East in the midst of Watergate and the Camp David Summit arranged by Jimmy Carter to bring together the leaders of Israel and Egypt in 1978 are two examples.
Foreign travel can also backfire. Gerald Ford's tumble down an airplane stairway on a trip to Austria reinforced an already-established image of incompetence, and Ronald Reagan's failure to achieve an arms agreement with the Soviet Union at the Iceland Summit in 1986 initially attracted critical stories from the press, which the White House sought to manage by sending a phalanx of top officials to the major news organizations. Even that trip finally confirmed the image-building value of foreign travel as Reagan's public approval rating jumped eleven points.
Foreign travel generally reaps benefits for presidential image. A study of fifteen presidential trips abroad between 1953 and 1978 found overwhelmingly favorable news coverage.
Activity. Another component of image-making is the illusion of activity. As the president moves about with speeches, ceremonies, travel, he leaves in his wake a plethora of news stories. Such reporting sustains the image of an active president, even when such activity may be more symbolic than real.
Moreover, all of these stories serve to direct the attention of the press toward favorable presidential news and away from investigative reporting.
Policy. The tactics to improve the president's image with the press and the public are designed primarily to lay the groundwork for congressional and public support of the president's policy objectives.
The president himself specifically presses his policy agenda through the news media. Presidents use speeches to various audiences to push policy initiatives. These include the State of the Union addresses, televised 'fireside chats,' and speeches to the numerous groups offering him invitations to speak. The selection of the audience is done with the press coverage in mind. The setting for the speeches is fitted with the particular policy objective in order to provide the backdrop and visual reinforcement of the verbal message. For example, in 1988, Ronald Reagan used a visit to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy to press for formation of a bipartisan executive-legislative commission on drug interdiction.
Press Access
As Reagan's presidency emphasized, one recurring point of contention between the press and the White House has been access to the president. While nearly all members of Congress, including the leadership, are readily available for questioning, the president has sometimes maintained an aloofness from the press.
Historically, the White House has gone to great lengths to encourage reporters and offer access. Presidents have provided office space within the walls of the White House for the press's operations, and those facilities have gradually improved. Ironically, Richard Nixon moved the press even closer to the Oval Office by covering over the swimming pool and moving the press into the West Wing. In addition to office space, the White House arranges for press access to the president as he travels.
But press access nevertheless is controlled by the administration. The press is kept in a confined environment at the White House, and reporters are prohibited from wandering at will. Formal access to senior officials is granted at the administration's descretion, and presidents have discouraged, although usually unsuccessfully, unauthorized contacts between staff and the press.
Access is extended when it serves the administration's purposes and denied when it does not. Favored reporters and columnists are granted private interviews with the president and exclusive stories, for example, while others who are viewed as unfriendly are denied such access.
According to Reagan press secretary Larry Speakes, favorites during the Reagan years, for example, included columnists James J. Kilpatrick and George Will, Hugh Sidey of Time, Bill Plante and Gary Schuster of CBS. But other reporters were accorded different treatment. For example, during the Reagan presidency, reporters for the Washington Times were shunned by the White House Press Office for printing stories about Nancy Reagan's dislike for Larry Speakes.
Speaking for the President
Managing the news about the presidency means controlling the statements emanating from the White House. Such control eludes presidents since not all who speak about the president, or even those who speak for him, are saying what he would want said. Presidential spokespersons include the president himself, and also a wide array of persons ranging from the press secretary to a lowly White House staff member.
According to Colin Seymour-Ure, there are six types of spokespersons who are differentiated on the basis of their regularity in meeting with the press, their authorization to speak to the press, and their specialization as public relations professionals.
Presidential press secretaries, authorized specialists, meet with the press routinely. The press secretary speaks formally for the president in daily (and sometimes more often) briefings with the press. Some of the most effective press secretaries have been individuals who have had close personal relationships with the president, such as Jody Powell to Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers to Lyndon Johnson. However, other secretaries have included government public relations professionals such as Larry Speakes (Reagan presidency) and Marlin Fitzwater (Reagan and Bush), and former White House reporters such as Jerry Terhorst and Ron Nessen in the Ford presidency.
Although the press secretary is the spokesperson usually most visible to the press and the public, presidential assistants such as the White House Chief of Staff, the National Security Advisor, assistants, deputy assistants, and special assistants to the president also meet with the press routinely, though usually for background purposes.
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The populists also had attacked big business. But they had concentrated on providing more economic leverage for small farmers and other members of the 'toiling masses' in the marketplace. The progressive Republicans emphasized the threat to democratic institutions posed by unchecked business power. In 1897 the Wisconsin Progressive Republicans, led by LaFollette, issued a platform of eleven planks, eight of which were primarily political or governmental, including promises to "nominate candidates by Australian ballot at a primary election"; to "enact and enforce laws to punish bribery in every form by the lobby"; to "prohibit the acceptance by public officials of railroad passes" (a standard means through which the railroads won favor with state legislators); and to "enact and enforce laws making character and competency the requisite for service in our penal and charitable institutions." Of the three planks that were primarily economic, two dealt with foreign trade, calling, ambiguously, for both "reciprocity" and "protection for the products of the factory and the farm"; the third forthrightly endorsed conservative Republican monetary policy: "Sound money, a dollar's worth of dollar."
Progressives at the state level fought against patronage-based state machines, whose coffers were filled by unreported contributions from corporations. Like the municipal reformers, many of the state progressives came to feel that organized parties were impediments to democratic government.
The anti-party measures instituted by Hiram Johnson in California to help break the power of the Southern Pacific Railroad epitomized the remedies to which many state progressives were drawn. In the early years of the twentieth century the Southern Pacific controlled both California party organizations and "secretly fostered new factions to keep the old ones in check." The railroad's money, according to Abe Rueff, Republican boss of San Francisco, "was the power behind almost every political throne and behind almost every insurgent revolt." The Southern Pacific's Political Bureau maintained "a railroad political manager in every county in the state. This manager might be a Republican boss in a Republican county, or a Democratic boss in a Democratic county; in important or doubtful counties he was merely the railroad boss, with whom both Republican and Democratic bosses had to deal." The state was usually competitive in national elections, but in Sacramento, the state capital, the Southern Pacific was king.
In 1910, Hiram Johnson (whose father was a Republican state legislator and a stalwart defender of the railroad) entered the Republican primary for governor. Running on the slogan Kick the Southern Pacific out of politics, he won a sweeping victory. Johnson received some support in the primary from urban liberals in the San Francisco Bay area, but his strongest backing came from socially conservative middle-class Protestants in southern California, particularly Los Angeles and Orange counties, apparently attracted in part by his identification with puritanical moral reform. In the general election, Johnson again swept the south but was closely contested by his Democratic opponent in the north.
As governor, Johnson persuaded the legislature to establish a public utility commission which subjected the Southern Pacific and other railroads to fairly strict regulation. Johnson's main legislative effort, however, was devoted to enacting a far-reaching program of electoral and party reform, including the introduction of the referendum, initiative, and recall, which he claimed would assure popular control of government. The parties were reduced to little more than shells. Johnson also secured passage of a cross-filing law, which permitted candidates for state and congressional offices to enter primaries of both parties without naming their own party on the ballot. The cross-filing law not only helped wreck California parties but contributed to the development of an almost totally candidate-oriented brand of state electoral politics.
The 'New Nationalism.' America's quick victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898 produced a wave of enthusiastic support for an expanded role for the United States in world affairs. Theodore Roosevelt, who had been assistant secretary of the navy when the war began, and others drew on the expansionist doctrines of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, who called for an enlarged navy and the acquisition of bases and colonies all over the globe, particularly in Latin America and on the Pacific rim. "God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration," Republican Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana declaimed in 1900. "No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns .... And of all our race He has marked the American people as his chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man ...."
Aggressive pursuit of America's national interest abroad was to be accompanied by rededication to 'national purpose' at home. "The promise of American life," Herbert Croly wrote in 1909, "is to be fulfilled not merely by a maximum amount of economic freedom but by a certain measure of discipline; not merely by the abundant satisfaction of individual desires but by a large measure of individual subordination and self-denial." American capitalism was to be brought more into the service of national destiny. "The true friend of property, the true conservative," Roosevelt said in a widely acclaimed speech he called 'The New Nationalism' in 1910, "is he who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they themselves have called into being."
Many businessmen were alarmed by the degree of government regulation of the economy that Roosevelt's program seemed to envision. But some leaders of the business community, as Gabriel Kolko and other historians have shown, welcomed the new nationalism, in both its international and domestic aspects, with open arms. The Republican ideology had never required complete nonintervention by government in the economy. The protective tariff, which most Republicans supported, was after all a massive intrusion by government into the 'natural' operation of the market. And Republicans carried on the Hamiltonian and Whig traditions, calling for federally financed internal improvements to promote economic growth.
By the first decade of the twentieth century some American businessmen with broad horizons, particularly among Wall Street financiers, had concluded that unrestrained competition was undercutting maximization of profits. Private efforts to control competition were coming unstuck, and in any case such efforts might now be subject to prosecution under the Sherman Anti-trust Act, which had been enacted in 1890. The financial panics of 1903 and 1907 persuaded growing numbers of businessmen that the federal government should take a hand in stabilizing and rationalizing markets. Observing the effects of cutthroat price competition in the steel industry, Andrew Carnegie commented in 1908: "It always comes back to me that Government control, and that alone, will properly solve the problem." Carnegie was in many ways an exceptional businessman, and his view cannot be taken as representative. But his opinion was echoed by so hardbitten an entrepreneur as Judge Elbert Gary, chief executive of U.S. Steel, who in 1911 told a congressional committee: "I believe we must come to enforced publicity and governmental control ... even as to prices."
Gabriel Kolko has identified George Perkins, partner in the Morgan bank and close adviser to Roosevelt, as the principal pointman in bringing a portion of the business elite into the progressive movement. "Federal regulation is feasible," Perkins told an audience of businessmen in 1909, "and if we unite and work for it now we may be able to secure it; whereas, if we continue our fight against it much longer, the incoming tide may sweep the question along to either government ownership or socialism."
The sources feeding progressivism pursued differing, in some cases incompatible, social goals. But they had in common certain assumptions and themes: government should play an active role in promoting the public good; political life is best seen as a moral struggle between good and evil; public confidence requires honest elections and effective government; the existing party system is a major barrier to political reform; and government should serve the public interest rather than advancing particular interests to the exclusion of others or acting chiefly as broker between competing special interests. All these themes came together in the pronouncements and personality of the charismatic leader who became the progressive movement's virtual embodiment: Theodore Roosevelt.
THE ROOSEVELT FACTOR
Through most of his career, except during his third-party campaign for the presidency in 1912, Roosevelt described himself as a "conservative." Looking back in 1916 on his leadership of the progressive movement, he claimed that his approach had represented "not wild radicalism ... [but] the highest and wisest form of conservatism."
Roosevelt was drawn to politics as a young man in the early 1880s by ambition and an itch for public service - and perhaps by a desire to settle scores with machine bosses like Tom Platt whom he held responsible for his father's humiliation in the fight over the New York collectorship in 1877. He began attending meetings of his local Republican organization in midtown Manhattan, which he found manned by "cheap lawyers, saloon keepers, and horsecar conductors ...." Asked by friends in the social elite why he was associating with such dreadful people, he replied "that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class, and that the other people did - and that I intended to be one oftheof the governing class; and if they proved too hard-bit for me I supposed I would have to quit, but that I certainly would not quit until I had made the effort and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my own in the rough and tumble."
Though a reformer from the start, Roosevelt resolved to operate within the structure of the Republican party. His fellow delegates to his first Republican national convention, in 1884, he observed, included "some scoundrels, but for the most part good, ordinary men, who do not do very much thinking, who are pretty honest themselves, but who are callous to any but very flagrant wrongdoing in others, unless it is brought home to them forcibly." Under pressure to join the mugwumps who were deserting Blaine to vote for Cleveland in 1884, he denounced the bolters as suffering "from a species of moral myopia, complicated by intellectual strabismus." He took over leadership of the municipal reform movement in New York but had nothing but scorn for 'ultra independents' who refused to work within the limits set by political reality. "The Goo-Goo and Mugwump idiots," he said, "are quite as potent forces for evil as the most corrupt politicians." In his dislike for economic and social radicals he at times exhibited an almost Tory sensibility: he once declined to be introduced to the radical Governor John Altgeld of Illinois because he thought he might some day have to "meet him at the head of troops."
Returning from the Spanish-American War in the fall of 1898 a highly publicized hero, Roosevelt, obeying his sense of what was practical, went to Tom Platt's 'Sunday School' - the sessions the boss held in New York's Fifth Avenue Hotel to confer party endorsements and other political favors. Following his own sense of what was practical, Platt backed Roosevelt for the governorship. This alliance of convenience proved unhappy. Before becoming governor, Roosevelt had viewed reform as a matter of throwing out corrupt politicians and installing leaders motivated by dedication to public service. "We were still accustomed," he later recalled, "to talking of the 'machine' as if it were something merely political, with which business had nothing to do." But experience in Albany convinced him that support from big business was "the most important element" in Platt's "strength." Roosevelt concluded that the political system was permeated by the influence of irresponsible corporate wealth. He set out to break the power that the alliance of big business and machine politicians exercised over the state legislature. Unlike LaFollette and Hiram Johnson, however, he sought not to dismantle the parties but to make the Republican party the instrument of reform.
<#FROWN:F34\>
After premium hikes, owners become 'insurance literate' and more safety-conscious
Company execs learn the hard way the importance of safety programs and insurance claims management.
Safety is on everybody's mind as 1992 gets into full swing. With the economy the way it is, it's especially important to reduce insurance costs.
David Frank says that between 1986 and 1988 his company's insurance premiums doubled each year after a series of uncharacteristic workmen's compensation, auto, property and liability claims.
He says it was then that he realized the close relationship between insurance premiums and accident history.
Frank, president of David J. Frank Landscape Contracting, Germantown, Wisc., says the company's first concern was safety.
"We began an active safety and loss program," recalls Frank. Apparently, Frank's efforts are paying off, as the company recently had 120 days of no lost-time accidents, and good records in property as well.
He estimates the company saved $100,000 in claims and premium charges in 1991.
Like Frank, David Minor, president of Minor's of Ft. Worth, Texas, says it only took one incident to convince him of the need for better claims management and accident reduction at his 150-person company.
"We were hit with a $17,000 surcharge in workmen's comp," remembers Minor. "The comp rate had not been promulgated: we had gotten a base rate, but we had not received a 'modifier.'"
Minor became a self-admittted 'student of insurance,' and learned all he could about reducing workmen's comp premiums.
Both men enacted extensive safety programs to be followed by all employees. Frank's program is divided into workmen's comp, workplace safety, property safety and auto safety.
Safety is also influenced by proper selection and training of employees, and safety procedures are reviewed weekly.
Other plan elements at Minor's:
<*_>checkmark<*/>a 'get-back-to-work-soon' program;
<*_>checkmark<*/>self-insurance on closed-end or first-aid-type claims;
<*_>checkmark<*/>safety contests;
<*_>checkmark<*/>better claims management; and
<*_>checkmark<*/>adoption of safety standards established by the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA).
Minor's company became "obsessed with safety," and as a result saved "tons of money."
Under Minor's safety program, foremen receive a $35 per month safety bonus based on accident-free periods. Safety-related meetings are held every two weeks. Every new employee has to read and sign-off on the safety program.
A safety manual for claims management geared for safety 'officers' describes how to respond to a wide variety of accidents.
And instead of raises for returning assistants, recent incentive safety bonuses were based on good safety records.
Frank awards 10 cents per hour for crew leaders who have accident-free periods between April 1 and November 30.
Brian Janek, an agent with the Van Gelder Co. of Denver, Colo., knows what saves companies money:
Find an agent and company with proven landscape industry experience. Otherwise, uncovered claims, pollution liability or worker comp problems will be overlooked.
Initiate a loss control program.
Initiate a safety program; use financial statements and driving records to prove insurability.
If your state allows you to use deductibles for workmen's comp or general liability, do it. The less the prior record inhibits renewal, the better.
"It's gotten to the point where you're at the mercy of the insurance company," says Minor, and a company must 'sell itself' to an insurer.
According to Minor, his company's stellar safety program earned a workmen's comp policy, when, as he says, no landscapers in Texas were getting them.
"Involve yourself in the insurance process," advises Minor. "If you let somebody else do it, you're doing yourself a disservice."
Don Brown, a loss-control specialist with the CNA Insurance Co., thinks company owners are doing very little to address medical cost containment, reduce litigation or manage claims.
"Those are the two areas that make availability of coverage at affordable prices the critical problem today," says Brown. "Once the claim is filed, business owners tend to leave it up to a third party to manage the claim. The bottom line is, these folks are managing your business. Take charge as the owner. Work out a relationship with insurance professionals and physicians.
"Basically, you've got to provide the finest medical attention to an injured worker as you can. If not, they will go to an attorney and you lose control of that claim and costs will multiply."
He suggests:
Developing 'modified work' to bring injured workers back as soon as possible, doing alternative part-time work until they are back in top form, and
Filing accident reports within 24 hours, to keep costs down.
Minor's concern for the injured worker includes having a mid-level manager drive him to the hospital, the pharmacy and home if necessary.
"If they are standing, and can walk, we want them in the office the next day," insists Minor. "We don't want them home watching TV commercials from personal injury attorneys."
Brown thinks that concern must include genuine concern for the family.
Mulch: perfect for beauty in landscapes
Beware how mulch you use! Experts says it's not hard to actually over-mulch around trees and shrubs.
<*_>Black-square<*/>Mulch is an integral part of most award-winning landscapes - not merely for its practicality, but also for its appearance. In combination with the trees and shrubs around which it's used, mulch provides another way for designers to break up large areas in the landscape.
"Mulching started out as being purely practical," notes Al Rickert, owner of Wholesale Landscape Supply in Bradenton, Fla.. "It's now become a part of the aesthetics."
The term 'mulch' is defined by Dr. Donald Rakow of Cornell University as "any ground treatment that differs from the substrate (soil beneath), either physically or biologically." Many different types are available (see Table 1).
Rakow says wood chips are the most-often-used mulch. "They can serve a valuable role in the landscape if used properly," he notes.
The phrase "if used properly" is key.
"Piling too much organic mulch can rot the base of the tree and kill it," says Bonnie Lee Appleton of the Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension Service. "Back off! In most cases, we see no reason to exceed two to three inches. If you need more, put a well around the tree base, keeping the mulch away from the tree.
"The finer the particles of organic material you use, the less you should use," she continues. "Weeds have a field day if you're using mulch over fabrics or polypropylene because it acts as a substrate."
Rickert says the types of mulch available to landscapers and golf course superintendents vary according to region.
"Cypress mulch is very popular from Kansas east because of favorable shipping rates. It dominates the market in the Midwest," he notes. "Pine bark is the old standby in the South, Southeast and Central Atlantic. Pine straw is more regionalized in the Southeast, but that's changing."
Though mulches have numerous benefits (see Table 2), there are disadvantages.
"Most mulches also make a wonderful winter home for mice," says Dr. Bill Fountain of the University of Kentucky. "And when warm spring weather arrives, they awaken with the hunger of a 16-year-old male. The closest food source is often the trunks of young trees."
Fountain says that raking the mulch away from the trunk for six to eight inches will discourage feeding by mice without reducing the mulch's benefits. "Hardware cloth around the trunk is also a very effective barrier to mice and rabbits," he notes.
Barefoot's stature as 'national' company grows with acquisitions
Management team headed by Pat Norton sees continued expansion of Worthington, Ohio-based company through development of franchises, 'branchises' and buy-outs.
Convinced the lawn care business no longer offers any entrepreneurial excitement? Shhh ... don't let Patrick Norton know it.
He still thinks - silly him - that there's opportunity to grow a lawn care company. A really big company. A national company.
"I think that good operators - and we don't think we're the only good operators - will continue to prosper and grow," says Norton.
"There are a lot of markets still out there in the development stages. I think that portends well for the industry."
Say what?
What does Norton know? After all, Barefoot Grass Lawn Service, which he's helping to grow, has, since 1979, only spread from central Ohio into and across the Mideast and Midwest. Barefoot is now also represented on both coasts as well as in Florida, Colorado and Texas. Company revenues increased from about $2 million in 1979 to about $52 million in fiscal year 1991.
Reasons why the public is, seemingly, so eager to accept Barefoot services include: its clean yellow and green vans (Barefoot's main competition uses larger, tanker-type trucks), its well-trained technicians, it's customized, predominantly dry application program.
Just as significantly, Barefoot is adept in targeting its considerable direct mail and in-house telemarketing efforts to homes in neighborhoods that are able and willing to pay a premium price for the delivery of granular fertilizer and control products.
It's this attention to detail that's characterized the Barefoot management team which has been headed by Norton since the mid-1980s.
Briefly: Pat Norton joined Barefoot in 1979 as its director of finance and administration. In 1981 he, and other top company managers, bought Barefoot from Toro. Norton became company president in 1986. In 1989 the Chicago-based investment firm Golder, Thoma & Cressey bought a majority share of the privately-held company. This past October Barefoot went public.
Barefoot Grass is now the third largest lawn care company in the United States, and still growing at an annual double-digit rate.
Norton says it's attracting new customers for each location. "We are still growing in Columbus, Ohio," says Norton. "If that's not the most competitive lawn care market in the United States, it's certainly one of the most competitive."
But mostly it's growing because of the proliferation of its market-targeted franchise and 'branchise' operations - and, most recently, its acquisition efforts. (A 'branchise' is a Barefoot franchise which is owned by a separate corporation but nonetheless managed by Barefoot through a management agreement.)
Barefoot is definitely in a buying mood. Says Norton, "we would have growth without acquisition, but to maintain the level of growth we want, we have to look at acquisitions."
On January 3, Barefoot bought lawn care operations in Cleveland, Wooster, Akron and Canton - former properties of Lawnmark which generated 1991.
To make that deal work, Barefoot Grass also bought its Canton franchise. Otherwise the company would have found itself competing against one of its own franchise operations.
"The ideal acquisition for us is going to be in a market where we already have a presence so that when we add revenues, we can do it profitably," says Norton, "where we already have existing facilities, where we're making money, where we can add revenues without adding too much overhead."
In separate transactions in 1991, Barefoot purchased its 'branchise' in Newark, N.J., (for about $1 million), and will likely purchase 'branchises' in Fort Lauderdale, Long Island, Harrisburg, Pa., and Boston by the end of 1992. This past year also saw the opening of 'branchise' operations in Portland and Norfolk, Va., and the opening of franchises in Topeka, Kans., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
For the past several years about 88 percent of the company's net service revenues have come from standard lawn care services, and 12 percent from add-on services such as tree & shrub care, lawn aeration, liming and seeding.
10 easy steps in gaining a friend and supporter in the legislature
These suggestions from two experienced lobbyists can guide you to a successful meeting with your lawmaker.
Here's a recipe for meeting with and seeking the cooperation of your elected representative.
It's a step-by-step recipe built from the comments of Ed Graves and Norm Goldenberg. The two men advised lawn professionals who had gathered in Washington D.C. prior to meetings with their U.S. Senators and Representatives. More than 100 lawn professionals participated in these 'Day on the Hill' events Feb. 23-24.
Graves is a senior consultant with Capitoline International Group, an issues management firm headquartered in Washington D.C. He's been lobbying on Capitol Hill the past eight years. Capitoline is employed the green industry to present its case in the Capital.
<#FROWN:F35\>When mounds were built or hillsides terraced, people were following the directives of spirits familiar with the best uses of those terrains.
Members of these bands and tribes tended wild foods such as plants, trees, vines, and berries. Every year, they burned over large sections of land to encourage fresh growth and unobstructed passage. Some tended seafoods and shores, building huge traps to impound live fish during low tides. Others gave their attention to herds of animals like mammoths and bison. In the North, people cared for a variety of animals who lived apart, such as moose. Humans and animals kept track of each other and lived off their kills. Both died, but with mutual respect.
In time, the specialized tending of plants developed into a more intensive tilling of the soil. New species were fostered, encouraged by the human hand. The spirits of particular species appeared in visions and in stories to explain what people needed to do. Sunflowers, amaranth, sunroot, and various local seeds began the process of specialization, while corn, beans, squash, manioc, and potatoes brought it to fruition.
All of these interactions were recorded in stories, each of them making clear that underneath the outer forms of these species there was an essential human form with arms, legs, and hands. This common, underlying humanity provided the basis for a system of beliefs shared across the diverse regions of the Americas.
Starting with the hunting and harvesting pattern of the migrants from Asia, a variety of adaptations were developed by Native Americans as they made the continent their own.
These 'cultural areas' have come to be defined in terms of their staple foods, housing styles, family arrangements, and, particularly, organizing rituals.
For Tenders, these regions, from north to south, are the Arctic, Subarctic, Northwest Coast, California, and Intermontane.
Initially the last haven of the big game hunting tradition, interacting with enormous herds of bison, the Plains added farming as people settled in sheltered river valleys. With the reintroduction of the horse into the Americas by Spanish explorers, the Plains again emphasized hunting as it became populated by tribes from many other regions who came to live with the bison herds.
For the Tillers, the Southwest and East relied on farming, located at the frontiers of Mexican empires and religious movements. The economies of the valley of Mexico were fueled by trade goods and foodstuffs from the far-flung reaches of the Americas.
As an introduction to North America, each of these culture areas will be considered in turn to provide a context for appreciating the variety of stories throughout the continent.
ARCTIC
While much of the Arctic year consists of cold, white winters, there are a few months of long days and wet terrain. Almost unique on the earth, its Inuit (Eskimo) inhabitants stretch along a coastal zone and share a similar appearance, language, culture, and environment. This is not often the case because looks, language, and locale do not often coincide.
Tundra is the predominant landform, covered with ice fields all winter long. With little vegetation, hunting was the basis for life. Living on the land are musk-ox, caribou, fox, bear, and wolf, along with hare, marmots, and lemmings. Birds include ptarmigan, owl, plover, and seagull. Coastal rivers abound with fish, while the ocean has seals, whales, walrus, and sea lions.
Among the strongest Inuit taboos is the prohibition on mixing food from the sea with that from the land. Seal meat must be served separately from caribou. Winter houses were made of sod, stone, and timbers, while camping used tents and igloos.
Men and women had separate but equal responsibilities. Only married couples could survive. Men did the hunting, while women processed and cooked the food that fed the family. Men used kayaks, while the umiaks that moved families and household gear were associated with women. In Alaska, villages also had a separate men's house.
Usually, a house was occupied by a married couple and their children, together with a grandparent or other stray relative. A superb hunter or shaman might have more than one wife, but this was rare. Every house had a men's and a women's domain. Usually, the hard floor, used as a work surface, and the cold outer storage compartment belonged to men, while the fur-covered sleeping platform where the family spent the day and slept at night belonged to the women. The wife was especially equated with the soapstone lamp that lit and warmed the house, using oil rendered from animals killed by her husband.
During seasons of plenty, families might gather together to form kindreds or 'bands,' but these lasted only a few days until provision ran low. Leaders emerged only long enough to coordinate a particular task, such as net fishing or caribou hunting, and then submerged back into the crowd. While respected at all times, these men only led during situations when everyone needed to work together.
Community sentiments were expressed through a series of formal arrangements confirmed by the brief exchange of wives, good-natured insults, trade goods, names, and hunting partnerships. People conformed to public expectations through the application of subtle pressures expressed by means of ridicule, songs, and snide remarks. If there was no improvement, slugging contests might be tried, to be followed by ostracism, which was tantamount to death, or, in the worst of antisocial behavior, sanctioned murder.
Shamans were individuals, often men but sometimes women, who had special relationships with the supernatural. Often, certain families produced effective shamans generation after generation. Shamans cured both the illness of a person and the social ills of the community.
In the most dramatic of all cures, a shaman mystically journeyed to the ocean bottom to comb tangles out of the hair of Sedna, the woman in charge of all the animals. Taboo violations, abuse of animals, and ill-will by humans caused these tangles, and the shaman undertook to soothe Sedna so she would send the animals back to the hunters. He could only apply the comb to Sedna after someone had confessed to the breaches that caused these problems. With this personal confession came absolution for the entire community.
The major public ritual came at midwinter when people gathered to feast on stored and frozen foods, engage in games, and learn from their stories. In Alaskan men's houses, elaborate mask enactments were held.
SUBARCTIC
Evergreens such as pine, spruce, hemlock, and fir dominate the forests that cover this huge area. Along broad streams where moose thrive are willow, tamarack, birch, alder, and poplar. Other inhabitants are wolf, lynx, wolverine, bear, and caribou, along with the snowshoe rabbit, martin, and great horned owl. In high alpine meadows lives the pika, a rabbit relative who sun dries and stores grass twigs for winter feeding.
Regional staples include caribou, along with salmon in the west, wild rice in the Great Lakes, and moose and deer in the east.
Married couples formed the basic unit of every community. Men engaged in hunting, trapping, and tool making. Women did the cleaning and storing of fish and game, tended the household, and raised the children. Fishing provided an opportunity for men and women to work together, otherwise the genders worked apart. Families generally lived together under the influence of a parent or older sibling. Leadership depended on the task at hand, but the pool of respected elders who might serve as leader consisted of those individuals known for their hunting success, good character, sensible decisions, spirit allies, and generosity. Individuals communicated with their spirit partners via dreams, which provided help or warnings about upcoming activities. In all situations, elders led by example, never by command.
When trading posts and the fur trade came to the north, larger groupings into bands and tribes were encouraged. People along the same drainage often cooperated so that some could hunt for food while others trapped furs. It was difficult to do both and survive.
Only shamans had a recognized position in the community. He or she healed the sick, prayed for successful hunts, and directed puberty ceremonies for girls on the verge of womanhood. The health, number, and stability of their own families served as testimony for their abilities.
Tribes often traced the origin of the world to an Earth Diver. Among the Beaver or Dunne-za tribe, Muskrat retrieved the dirt that became the earth, while Swan had the more prophetic role of establishing the cultural rules and social conventions. Among his greatest contributions was stealing fire for humans. Throughout the western section, the Give Away was the communal ceremony, much like the Potlatch of the Northwest Coast. Families celebrated their own prestige and gained honor by being generous to others.
Among Great Lake tribes, the Midewiwin or Grand Medicine Lodge had the most distinctive rituals in the region. Emphasizing a belief in rebirth, initiates were symbolically killed and revived in order to achieve membership. After physical death, members were inducted into a ghost lodge.
In the west, the Shaking Tent provided a means for special shamans to hold a seance in which members of the audience outside the conical tent could ask questions and receive a reply from visiting spirits, particularly Turtle and Owl. As each spirit entered the tent, it shook violently, even though no one could make it budge before the start of the ritual.
NORTHWEST COAST
Rain and mountains characterize this region, thickly covered by evergreen forests and drained by many waterways. Red cedar was a particular gift of the Creator, providing the straight-grained planks that became the sides of houses, and the logs that were used to form molded canoes, bentwood boxes, and tools of local tribes. Travel was by water because the dense undergrowth of thickets and brambles made land routes few and far between, except along riverbanks.
Salmon was the staple, gathered by men and women during huge runs during the spring and summer months. Candlefish in the north and acorns in the south augmented the diet. Food grew in abundance and variety, taken by means of an elaborate technology. Men were concerned with animals and fish, while women devoted considerable time to plant foods, from the fresh greens of spring to the berries and nuts of autumn.
Winter towns included a row of big plank houses facing the beach, each house inhabited by related families. In the north, kinship was traced through women of various clans; in the central zone, it was traced through both parents, while in the south, the father's side was given more emphasis. Northern towns were also divided into halves, variously Orca and Raven or Eagle and Raven, which included different clans.
A 'house' was the dwelling place of three ranks of people. At the rear of the house, beside its sacred treasures of masks, costumes, and carvings, lived the nobles who owned the house. The eldest man was the leader of the household, but his wife (in the middle) or sister (in the north) provided links among the members. Along the sides were families of commoners who attached themselves to the house as kin or workers. Beside the door were slaves, taken in war or the children of such captives, whose lives belonged to their owner, along with all their labor.
Families kept their own fires along the sides of the house where they lived. In the middle, however, was a large hearth used to cook meals for the noble owners or for guests attending a celebration.
Houses owned stories, sacred histories, naming the people, places, and resources claimed by ancestors. Some of these house histories can be related to regional patterns in existence for over two thousand years. These involved the location of fishing, berrying, seaweeding, and hunting sites claimed by a specific house. Most stories in the Northwest, therefore, are owned and copyrighted by households. Only a few are phrased in such general terms that they were widely known and used to teach a moral.
The major event throughout this region was the Potlatch, an elaborate feast when a noble family dramatized their clan crests and treasures (via songs, dances, masks, effigies, and natural rarities) inside of a house filled with invited guests.
<#FROWN:F36\>
Ginsberg also claims jazz as an important model for his work and that of his contemporaries: "The whole point of modern poetry, dance, improvisation, performance, prose even, music, was the element of improvisation and spontaneity and open form, or even a fixed form improvisation on that form, like say you have a blues chorus and you have spontaneous improvisations, so in 'Howl' or 'Kaddish' or any of the poems that have a listeny style, 'who did this, who did that, who did this,' you start out striking a note, 'who,' and then you improvise, and that's the basic form of the list poem or, in anaphora, when you return to the margins in the same phrase, 'Or ever the golden bowl be broken or the silver cord be loosed or the pitcher be broken at the fountain,' as in the Bible or as in some of Walt Whitman's catalogues or in Christopher Smart's 'Rejoice in the Lamb' poem or the surrealist example of Andr Breton's free union, 'my wife with the platypus's egg, my wife with the eyes of this, my wife with that and that ...'
"It [jazz] was a model for the dadaists and it was a model for the surrealists and it was a model for Kerouac and a model for me and a model for almost everybody, in the sense that it was partly a model and partly a parallel experiment in free form. The development of poetics, as well as jazz and painting, seems to be chronologically parallel, which is to say you have fixed form, which then evolves toward more free form where you get loose from this specific repeated rhythm and improvise the rhythms even, where you don't have a fixed rhythm, as in bebop the drum became more of a soloist in it too. So you find that in painting, the early de Koonings have a motif or a theme, the woman or something like that, but it gets more and more open, less dependent on the theme, and in poetry, where you have less and less dependence on the original motifs and more and more John Ashberyesque improvisational free form flowing without even a subject matter, though I always kept a subject matter like the old funky blues myself. It was partly a parallel development within each discipline: painting, poetry, music. There were innovators who opened up the thing after Einstein, so to speak - you know, relative measure, as Williams said - which is in a sense something that happened with bebop: not the fixed measure but a relative measure. It was both inter-influential and parallel, also integrating."
If jazz opened up Ginsberg to "the awakening of Afric slave sensibility, of black sensibility, black funk as distinct from white, clean Doris Day ethic, and mind funk instead of well-combed, academic, button-down poetry," some jazz musicians, as Cruz comments, were also "interested in learning about all of it." Many, however, were not. After all, there were still plenty of clubs in black neighborhoods until the mid-sixties, and for lots of jazzmen, a job downtown - at Caf Bohemia, the Village Vanguard, the Five Spot, or wherever - was just another gig. When I asked Walter Bishop, Jr., about his take on the lower Manhattan avant-garde twenty-five years ago, he replied that at the time he'd "had blinkers on," that for him it had been "bebop or bust" - in other words, that he'd had no artistic interests outside jazz.
Others, however, like Jackie McLean, were intensely curious about the worlds around them. McLean found his way into painting and (to a lesser degree) literature through his "friendship with guys who were doing this, for instance Harvey Cropper, who was the first painter that I knew. He was the one that introduced me to Bart<*_>o-acute<*/>k, to a lot of painters, the style of Czanne. He introduced me to Hieronymus Bosch and that opened another world. That was the painter that had the greatest influence on me, Bosch, because my world was so horrible at that time that I could understand his paintings. I could look at the horror in some of his paintings and feel it when I was sick [from lack of narcotics], and then when I met Bob Thompson in 'sixty-one and we became very close, I learned a great deal about painting from Bob, being around him and talking about music and painting and what not. And of course Leroi Jones was around in those days, and we were all hanging in the Village together during that time."
McLean's period (1959-1963) with the Living Theatre also widened his interests. During these years he evolved from a promising journeyman bebopper, described by Steve Lacy in The Jazz Review in 1959 as having "the most rhythmic vitality and, so far, the least discipline" of major saxophonists, into the brilliant experimentalists we hear on records from the early sixties like Let Freedom Ring and Evolution. The intensity of McLean's experience in the Living Theatre comes through in his reminiscences about the troupe: "I thought they were great people. I thought they were people who were looking far into the future, for a better way. You had to love them to be with them, because the Living Theatre was like a big commune. Mostly everybody lived together, ate together, and were together working out each person's problems. I didn't live with them because I had my wife and kids, but I was part of it because certainly I lived with them when we left New York, when we went to Europe.
"It was weird because the day that we left, there was a big snowstorm in Manhattan and all the transportation was stopped. It was the biggest snowstorm I ever saw. The night before there was no snow. I wake up the next day, we're supposed to leave for Europe, and the phone rings. The guy says 'Jackie, this is Hacker.' So I said 'Yeah, I know. We're not going. We can't get there,' so he says 'No. An ambulance is coming to get you. We had to hire ambulances to pick everybody up.' I said 'Jesus Christ, man,' and I was so strung out, so sick, so my wife walked me to the hallway and we stood there with my bags and my horn and my children and this ambulance came and I went downstairs and put my bags in the ambulance and two arms came out and helped me in. We went and picked up the next guy and went to where the ship was, the Queen Elizabeth, and the whole cast was coming in in ambulances, a sick group coming in ambulances, but when I say 'sick,' I mean sick in terms of having a better understanding of what life is supposed to be about. They were very hip people, Judith and Julian and the whole crowd. They were humanists. They were all into every aspect of art and their idea of theater was brand-new in terms of how they wanted to present it."
Bohemianism, of course, is not all purity and innocence. Ever since the concept was invented, it has also meant pleasure, doing what feels good, and rebellion, surreptitious or open, against constraints of all sorts. Another aspect of jazz's attraction for Village types was its renegade connotations. Again in Emilio Cruz's words: "Jazz became the heretic art form. What we call 'gutbucket' has not to do so much with the guts or the bucket but it has to do with heresy. So what is unique in modern culture is the heretic form. Everything that is created, in truth, outside of the sciences which deal directly with a mechanistic culture, comes out of heresy, so that Allen Ginsberg was involved in a kind of heresy. Charlie Parker was also involved in a kind of heresy. There is the idea of violation, and that violation would attract those people that were searching for that heretic tradition."
At on extreme, such heresy and will to violation leads artists to flirt with or embrace the most perilous vices. While jazz was the banner of a kind of fresh and Edenic newness in the arts, it was also a path into the lower depths, as implied by Sukenick's comment on underground rebels of the 1950s: "Where are you in the mid-fifties? Are you fighting your way up the heart-burning ladder of career, or have you finally decided there's no place to go but down? Burned out into a dead-end underground. Into the shadow world emblemized above all by Bebop. Digging Bop is one of the main ways subterraneans can express their cultural radicalism."
Jazz's "shadow world" was the kingdom of the hipster, a stereotype partly mythical and partly based on reality, but far more cynical than the flower-child, love-and-peace 'hippies' of the late 1960s. A furtive, jive-talking sociopath, the hipster was supposedly alert only to his own whims and his craving for intense experiences. In 'The White Negro' (1957), which remains an intriguing and annoying essay, Norman Mailer wrote that "the source of Hip is the Negro for he has been living on the margin between totalitarianism and democracy for two centuries. But the presence of Hip as a working philosophy in the sub-worlds of American life is probably due to jazz, and its knifelike entrance into culture, its subtle but so penetrating influence on an avant-garde generation - that postwar generation of adventurers who (some consciously, some by osmosis) had absorbed the lessons of disillusionment and disgust of the twenties, the depression, and the war."
Mailer's piece drew heavy criticism from those in the jazz world who read it. They faulted it for presenting a series of caricatures. So it does - not necessarily much of a defect in an essay whose tone is so exaggerated and polemical anyway - but many of them fit, at least partly, the jazz scene at that time.
What Mailer perhaps did not emphasize enough was the centrality of drugs and particularly heroin among hipsters. As Leonard Feather noted in 'Jazz in American Society' (published as a foreword to his Encyclopedia of Jazz, 1960): "A serious effect of the use of drugs, quite apart from the medical, is its creation of a sub-society in which all the users are 'hip' and the rest of the world is 'square.'" "Hip talk" itself was partly a necessary camouflage for discussions of drugs, what Mailer called "the cunning of their language, the abstract ambiguous alternatives in which from the danger of their oppression they learned to speak ('Well now, man, like I'm looking for a cat to turn me on ....')."
The mysterious, hedonistic yet cooled-out universe of junkies in pursuit of what Balzac called "quiet, inner enjoyment," and their profound alienation from society as a whole - an alienation often compounded by race - were perceived as deeply attractive by some bohemians. Even as fire-breathing a revolutionary as Amiri Baraka, who has often railed against drugs, surrenders to their sinister glamour when describing (in The Autobiography of Leroi Jones) his use of heroin with painter Bob Thompson in the early sixties - this despite the fact that Thompson's very promising career was cut short by an overdose: "I walked all the way back to Avenue C, not to see Lucia, but to find a friend of mine, Bob Thompson, a black painter. Bob lived in a huge loft on Clinton Street. He was there with a couple of bohemians, getting high, shooting heroin. I didn't know he used it, but he was sending one of the bohemians out to cop. I dropped some money in the mitt and meanwhile used some of Bob's 'smack' and we took off together, down, down, and right here! Bob and I were a number after that."
There can be no doubt that heroin use was widespread among jazz musicians. As Leonard Feather pointed out in 'Jazz in American Society': "Of the 23 individuals listed as winners in a recent Down Beat poll, at least nine were known narcotics users, five of them with a record of arrest and conviction.
<#FROWN:F37\>Thus, while citizens are busy pursuing their private desires, the sovereign is doubly a natural person. He acts as himself, as well as for others, and he acts without a framework of constraints.
The legal tradition of artificial persons is guided by a certain gestalt, the linked figures of master and slave or servant, respectively models of power and powerlessness. But how can such a model apply to modern relations between fully competent and equal humans, professionals and their clients, government and the citizens? How does it harmonize with our moral tradition? The moral difficulties of the slave-and-master relation are plain enough, but the interpretation of these difficulties in modern descendents of that relation is not similarly clear. They need to be ferreted out and addressed.
TWO
Who Is Responsible?
In virtue of my membership in some larger whole or wholes, how can I reasonably be expected to take responsibility for what these bodies do in circumstances where I could have no conceivable influence on their actions?
W. H. Walsh, 'Pride, Shame, and Responsibility'
IN THEIR VARIOUS forms, artificial persons make decisions that commit other people. At the same time, the power to speak and act for another makes responsiblity problematic, for common sense wants to ask who really did what was done, who is responsible. The answer is difficult to find.
I
Lawyers provide a clear case of the difficulty, and from both within and without the legal profession is the focus of much moral criticism. The reason is this: a lawyer's position requires him to act, but to act not as himself or for his own purposes and sometimes not on his own judgement. The cause he pleads - even eloquently and passionately - and may appear to endorse is not his, and his expressions of indignation and sympathy, his praise of his client and expressions of scorn for the opposing client are also not personally his. Thus, to the problems that apply to other artificial persons is added a large component of dissembling.
It is clear why responsibility for actions that a lawyer undertakes for a client should be ambiguous. It is not the client who does what is done, but the lawyer. However, since the lawyer acts on behalf of and in the name of his client, the action isn't strictly his either. The responsibility must then be the client's; he is the one who brings suit, who wins or loses, and who may pay the judgment or even go to jail. We go back and forth - the lawyer acts for the client, not himself; the client is detached but stands to benefit or suffer.
A lawyer's immunity from criticism is defended in this way by one writer:
We must distinguish between what lawyers do and what clients do through their lawyers .... The content of a lawyer's action, focused by intentions solely on the legal lever-pulling, may be entirely unproblematic, morally speaking, although what the client seeks to do through the actions of the lawyer may well be morally problematic. And ... since all that one must take responsibility for are one's own actions and their (intended) consequences, there is no bad faith in refusing to face aspects of professional activity that are not properly attributable to one's own agency.
On this account the lawyer simply performs suitable legal moves; she isn't responsible for the ends that guide them. She serves as an instrument of someone else, and her standards are those of competent lawyers - of knowing how to use legal rules and practices for a client's advantage. She files papers, prepares forms, sends letters to appropriate officers; she gives persuasive argument in or out of court and in general displays the knowledge and skills she is trained in. At the conclusion she is paid.
But then the question arises: what difference is there between a lawyer and a county clerk whose job is to fill out forms, say, or a bookkeeper who balances books, or a pharmacist who fills a prescription? The clerk may assist in a dispossession, the books may contain evidence of mismanagement, the prescription may cause harm. Like lawyers, they do as they are trained and fill their positions; but unlike lawyers, they don't suffer moral criticism. If they aren't responsible for the consequences they bring about in their work, why should lawyers be?
Indeed, according to the American Bar Association code, a lawyer is not culpable in her pursuit of a client's interests so long as no law is violated. She is no more responsible for her client's purposes than a pharmacist is for a physician's diagnosis. One hesitates to accept this argument, because lawyers generally know quite well what is behind the actions they are involved in; they are unlike most clerks and pharmacists, who may not be privy to the whole purpose and plan, who see only their detached contributions. Thus the lawyer's defense would be strenghtened if it had the additional stipulation that she doesn't know what the likely effects of her actions will be. Then her excuse would fairly resemble that of clerks, accountants, and pharmacists: we only do what we are told. A lawyer would say, "I had no idea why I was bringing this suit or what would happen as a result." Or if she were incompetent or deceived by her client, we would sympathize with her: "Poor person, she was used" - without her understanding or consent.
However, the lawyer's nonaccountability can't depend on ignorance or incompetence; lawyers take pride in knowing how they can be most helpful, claim to know better than clients how to achieve their ends, and are pleased to lend their talents and skills to be maximally helpful. Single-mindedness in helping the client is a professional virtue, the English jurist Lord Brougham writes: "an advocate, in the discharge of his duty, knows but one person in all the world and expedients, and at all hazards and costs to other persons, and, among them, to himself, is his first and only duty."
II
Moral questions about the legal profession - and their answers - are often cast in terms of roles. Thus Richard Wasserstrom, himself a lawyer, is concerned with how an action done in a professional role can be "morally different from what it would have been if the role were not in the picture." "Appeal to the ... role becomes a central part of the reasoning about the right thing to do"; this is shown by the way certain roles justify partiality. Thus a parent should be partial to the interests of her child, simply because she is a parent; the general should be more concerned about his own troops than the enemy's; and "it is thought to be ... permissible and probably obligatory, once the lawyer has entered into the role of ... lawyer for some client, ... to do any number of things that otherwise might very well be morally criticizable." But this power of roles makes Wasserstrom uneasy: "the problem ... is that behavior that is potentially criticizable on moral grounds is blocked from such criticism by an appeal to the existence to the actor's role .... Appeal to the ... role seems to distort, limit, or make irrelevant what might otherwise be morally relevant."
Appealing to roles is attractive, Wasserstrom thinks, "because roles provide a degree of moral simplification that makes it much easier to determine what one ought to do .... Psychologically, roles give a great power and security because they make moral life much simpler, less complex, and less vexing than it would be without them." The demands of a role answer questions - which might otherwise be difficult - about what to do in given circumstances.
If one views the moral hazards of a professional in a framework of roles, it is understandable why those hazards are often addressed in terms of professional codes of ethics. The assumption is that if the code is tightened and the professional community made more aware, ethical problems can be corrected without altering the overall shape of the profession. Of course, by suggesting that any moral problem can be answered by adjustments in role requirements, this approach works against radical change, against a deeper examination of what morality means. The shape of the profession is allowed to remain intact. Col. Anthony Hartle says of the military, for example, that "examining professional ethics in terms of role differentiation seems to be a reasonable way to reveal the moral structure within which military professionals work." He finds nothing problematic about the idea of a code that "consists of a set of rules and standards governing the conduct of members of a professional group." The military code determines what they should do as members of the military.
Concerned with the gravity of many military decisions, Gen. Maxwell Taylor noted the absence of an explicit ethical code for the military and proposed that each officer should work one out on his own. He might begin with the idea that "an ideal officer is one who can be relied upon to carry out all assigned tasks and missions and, in doing so, get the most from his available resources with minimum loss and waste." Such an ideal person "would be deeply convinced of the importance of the military profession and its role, ... [and] view himself as a descendant of the warrior, who, in company with the king, the priest, and the judge," has helped civilization survive. In the end Taylor believes that professional requirements must condition the moral ones and not the reverse.
This is, of course, the central issue. Richard de George argues the other side, promoting the preeminence of moral understanding. The point of an ethical code is to raise the profession's standard above what is normally demanded: "Any profession ... is appropriately given respect and autonomy only if it lives up to a higher moral code than is applicable to all." In particular this applies to the military, because "society places in [its hands] a monopoly on the use of the major instruments of force." Society's trust is consequently "enormous, and the corresponding burden on those who assume the trust and have custody of the monopoly of force is likewise enormous," he argues. But in view of that trust, there should be a commitment to peacefulness and a cultivation of restraint in the use of that force. This brings out the potential for conflict between a code and the basic military duties to obey and respect authority, duties of one piece in a large organizational machine.
A professional code, then, is a way of capturing the sum of duties of someone in that profession. But the question of where morality fits in remains. Gerald Postema wonders "whether, given the need for ... a [professional] code, it is possible to preserve one's sense of responsibility" when professional responsibilities are detached from ordinary moral ones. His answer is no: "I contend that a sense of responsibility and sound practical judgment depend not only on the quality of one's professional training, but also on one's ability to draw on the resources of a broader moral experience ... [which] in turn, requires that one seek to achieve a fully integrated moral personality." Unless a person integrates his professional and nonprofessional life, he cannot fully satisfy his professional role, cannot be a good lawyer, Postema argues. This means that a code's claim to morally simplify a person's life is spurious.
Using the code as a guide or formula for making moral decisions may be simplifying, when as Wasserstrom says, roles and their obligations are substituted for decisions that demand the balancing of competing moral claims, a balancing that may be complex and difficult. Role obligations and role moralities may thus contribute to simplicity in decision making if they exclude ordinary moral considerations - but in that case they add to the moral obscurity and complexity of whatever is done. The question is whether we should grant them this power to exclude.
III
Emile Durkheim argues, in support of role-defined moralities, that they are inevitable and morally beneficial. He uses the term 'role' broadly.
<#FROWN:F38\>This, in itself, is a radical departure for winegrowing - more so even than for wheat, corn, or cattle.
The difference with winegrowing is that it is a long-term venture. Expensive to establish, vineyards traditionally are not easily tinkered with. Given the expense, grape growers traditionally have been unsympathetic to change. This is especially so with fine wine vineyards, as their tradition is more than simply monetary. With fine wine, the challenge is to push grapevines to their limits: How cool or warm before it's too cool or warm? How dry before it's too dry? How extreme a soil type? All this is characterized as 'stress.'
Until California's fine wine ambition, stress was achieved largely from naturally occurring conditions. In Europe, grapevines were planted in a nonmethodical fashion along a wave-length of locations, as if tuning a radio until you lock onto the strongest signal. The 'signal' is not just flavor. It also includes grape yields, disease resistance, winter hardiness, summer heat, drought resistance, and soil suitability. Hindsight makes the process seem deliberate, but much of it was haphazard. Over the centuries, the tradition congealed into articles of hard faith.
This approach was challenged when California bulk wine-growing began anew immediately upon Repeal in 1933. What became the transforming vision of California winegrowing - agriculture shaped by the machine - arrived through the agency of California's preeminent agricultural college, the University of California at Davis. Located in a small farming town about twenty miles east of Sacramento, the state capital, UC Davis expanded on the efforts of the state's first college of agriculture, established in 1868 at UC Berkeley. There, a viticulture and enology department was created in 1880. Only in the late 1930s did the program gradually drift from the Berkeley campus to Davis, where the wine and grape-growing program is known as the School of Viticulture and Enology.
This new vision of winegrowing was itself an outgrowth of a larger social and academic movement. Agricultural colleges everywhere were locked in a battle with farmers. Professors at agricultural colleges were dedicated to applying to agriculture the same principles of 'systemization' that were the ide fixe of America from the 1870s to the 1920s. The idea of systemization was applied to virtually all business and social endeavors. Farming was no exception. "These systematic agriculturists ... assumed that farming was composed of numerous discrete operations and that success was the consequence of rationally conceived and pursued methods."
The shock troops of this systemization movement were agricultural colleges. They, in turn, were subsidized by those businesses with an interest in the benefits to be reaped by large-scale farming performed with mechanical reliability and predictability. As Marcus and Segal point out, "The bestowal of collegial sanction often led others to adopt the practices, which tended to standardize farm operations. Application of systematic farming techniques only sometimes increased farm profits and reduced drudgery, but its partisans always identified themselves as progressive." When bulk winegrowing returned to California's vast, flat, irrigated Central Valley, the systemization of American agriculture and the dominance of agricultural colleges were already in place. Of all the major crops in America, wine grapes were one of the last to be addressed.
For their part, agricultural college professors had a point, nowhere more so than with winegrowing. Precisely because of its ancient heritage, winegrowing practice in Europe changed grudgingly, if at all. Although it was exclusively Europeans who first established that yeasts caused fermentation (Louis Pasteur in 1859); that bacteria in the presence of oxygen caused wine to turn to vinegar (Louis Pasteur in 1866); and that enzymes were the agency by which the fermentation was achieved (Eduard and Hans Buchner in 1897), European wine-growing practices were mostly unmoved by the revelations.
In this, America had its one advantage. Because of Prohibition, no ingrained tradition presented resistance. The UC Davis enology and viticulture professors could fashion a new 'scientific' vision of how and where grapes should be grown and, even more importantly, how wine should be made. Their influence was assured not only because of the ignorance caused by the wholesale collapse of winegrowing during the thirteen years of Prohibition, but also because by then the authority of agricultural colleges was unchallenged.
The absence of a fine wine ambition was a benefit to UC Davis. Otherwise, the pull of European tradition would have weakened the sway of the college professors. (Which is precisely what occurred in the 1980s). Where such as Leland Stanford looked automatically - and longingly - to Europe, those concerned with bulk wines felt no such pull. Their interest was proper farm management in order to extract the highest yields and the healthiest vines. Stress, so called, was not the issue, as the finer gradations of quality that emerge from it are of no concern to bulk wine production.
Just how basic winegrowing in California was after Prohibition is revealed by the enormous influence of the notion of 'heat summations' or 'degree-days,' a vision of the land propounded by UC Davis. The idea of degree-days for crops is not new. But its application to grapevines, although discussed in Europe as far back as 1872, was largely academic. By then Europe was covered in vines and mired tradition.
The degree-day concept is straightforward. With grapevines, growth proceeds only when the temperature achieves 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Every degree above that is counted as one degree-day. When these degree days are totaled over the several-monthseveral-months span between the beginning of vine growth and the harvest of ripe grapes, the total is called temperature summation. At a glance, one can establish the coolness or warmth of a site or district.
Building on the work of Frederic T. Bioletti, the influential director of the UC Berkeley wine science program, viticulturist A. J. Winkler embarked upon a statewide investigation of temperature summations in the 1920s. Subsequently, his student and later distinguished colleague Maynard A. Amerine, in collaboration with Winkler, categorized these heat summations in brackets labeled Regions I (the coolest) through V (the hottest). To this day, California winegrowers still talk about their vinyards as being "high Region I" or "low Region II." This simple but useful scale was made more graphic, literally, by a map of the entire state showing various pools of temperature, each categorized as Region I through V. It was first published in 1944.
For the first time, vineyards could be established not by unthinking tradition or gut instinct, but by scientific methodology. It was rational; it was systematic. And it provided a basis upon which to proceed to revitalize an industry. Above all, it became the basis of an American vision of winegrowing: qualitative; methodical; verifiable. For bulk winegrowing, this vision was sufficient. That the university never subsequently offered a methodology of greater nuance speaks volumes: The bulk winegrowers who funded its research had no need for one.
For the fine wine ambition, degree-days are crude. They measure only heat and that only in the aggregate. What if a site is hot in the morning but cooled rapidly by fogs or winds in the afternoon? Numerically, the site may be considered warm or cool, depending upon the degree-day total for the growing season. But it tells us little about how the grapevine reacts to the swings in temperature. Or about sunlight intensity. Or about the effects of wind, rain, humidity, or night temperatures on the grapevine. The insight extends only to how well and regularly a grape variety is likely to ripen its grapes properly. What the ripe grape delivers in terms of the flavor shadings that distinguish fine wine from ordinary is another matter entirely.
It should be noted that vineyard plantings in California, to this day, are not entirely rational, despite the veracity of the degree-day vision, however limited. Rationality has to compete with the marketplace. With Chardonnay, the most lucrative grape variety, the competition is almost one-sided. As late as 1988, there still were 2,164 acres of Chardonnay planted in grossly too warm Regions IV and V, according to the California Agricultural Statistics Service. More telling yet is that 10,380 acres are planted in Region III sites, which is warm for Chardonnay. The lure of Chardonnay in the market-place clearly is too enticing to be resisted. Nevertheless, the influence of degree-day vision is strongly felt. Three quarters of California's Chardonnay vineyards are planted in areas classed as Region I (3,077 acres) or Region II (26,249 acres).
The surprisingly small acreage of Region I sites is revealing: What California considers as cool is relative - and limited. Region I is 2,500 degree-days or fewer. Burgundy's C<*_>o-circ<*/>te d'Or registers 2,120 degree-days, which would put it just barely above a hypothetical Region 0. (Each climate region is delineated by five hundred degree-days.)
That the UC Davis scale effectively begins at 2,500 degree-days tells us not only how warm are many of California's traditional vineyard areas, but also the limitation of the vision that places so much emphasis on climatic zones. Precisely because grapes do not ripen regularly or easily in cool sites, to identify such sites was to legitimize them. This was not possible, as those sites can never achieve the machine regularity fundamental to scientific winegrowing.
This commitment to machine regularity is further evidenced by the vast labor of Harold P. Olmo, a UC Davis professor with a Ph.D. in genetics who for decades specialized in creating new wine-grape hybrids. Nearly all of his twenty-five hybrid varieties were invented to deliver decent acidity and flavors while baking in hot Region V climates. By 1989 only two Olmo-created high-yielding hybrid varieties occupied significant acreage in the San Joaquin Valley: Ruby Cabernet (7,037 acres) and Rubired (7,030 acres). Nearly all of the others have fallen into disuse, partly because of a decline in bulk wine consumption and partly because of an embrace of traditional 'classic' varieties such as Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon.
For the machine in the mind, it is a far better thing to add acidity to a 'flabby' wine grown in a too-warm location - or to laboriously 'design' a new grape variety - than to plant a grape variety in place where it might not ripen fully every vintage. More than economics is at work here. Equally powerful is a determined interventionism. The offense of European winegrowing was its passivity. The machine in the mind offers a more muscular approach.
A special contempt is reserved by the machine in the mind for the influence of soil on wine. The importance of soil for fine wine has been so abundantly demonstrated by the wines themselves in Europe, most convincingly in France, that it would seem evident that soil plays a significant role. One need only taste a great Meursault or Chablis to be convinced. But soil, more than even climate itself, cannot easily be altered. The only practical intervention is of the most superficial sort, such as fertilizer or topsoil. (Even here, the machine in the mind is tempting. Randall Graham of Bonny Doon Vineyard in Santa Cruz decided that Burgundy's limestone-rich soil was indispensable for growing Pinot Noir. So he 'planted' the soil of his vineyard with ten tons of limestone per acre.)
Reproducible 'scientific' verification of the role of soil is unavailable: Soil is far more ambiguous than neatly quantified temperature summations. That its role cannot be pinpointed, let alone measured, wrenches the machine in the mind. The degree of discomfort, even scorn, is displayed by Maynard A. Amerine and Philip M. Wagner in their chapter 'The Vine and Its Environments,' in The University of California/Sotheby Book of California Wine (1984):
Many popular commentators and almost all vineyard owners attribute some magical property to vineyard soils. As indicated in the preceding sections, there are differences between regions and localized areas (exposures, valley floor versus hillsides, and so forth). Some of these differences are due to variations in temperature, some perhaps also to moisture (and thus related to soil temperature), soil microorganisms, and vineyard and ecological practices. How many of the differences are due purely to soil factors has not, to our satisfaction, been scientifically determined.
<#FROWN:F39\>
<p>Private Life and Public Scandal: The 'New Moralism' Then and Now
To their credit, most Americans have not been willing to cut the public world entirely loose from moral or ethical surveillance or to evaluative public figures on their feelings or motivations instead of on their behavior. But when people abandon hope of judging public figures by stringent political ethics, periodic personal exposs become the main weapon for controlling their ambitions and actions. In the 188Os and 189Os, the removal of moral intensity from public relations and its concentration on private ones made family relations a tempting target for public disclosure. As public standards and political vocabulary faded, debate by scandal and expos became the rule.
The preacher Henry Ward Beecher was one of the first to discover the threat that hangs over those who encourage a concentration of public debate on private values. To demonstrate Beecher's hypocrisy in denouncing her 'free love' movement, social reformer Victoria Woodhull leaked to the newspapers his alleged affair with one of his parishioners; the resultant scandal was at least as widely debated as the Jim Bakker affair in the 1980s and the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991. American politics has been wracked by periodic scandals and moral crusades for 200 years, but they were especially virulent in the late nineteenth century, when private morals were first elevated above public virtues in mainstream ideology. Their reemergence in the last decade has similar origins, following the decline of 1960s and early 1970s social and political debate.
lt is in this context that we must place America's 'New Moralism.' Recently, we have seen a series of celebrated scandals over issues that were once considered part of private life. Public figures have been dethroned by revelations about their personal relationships; private nonentities have become public figures by making such revelations. Politicians who courted our votes by touting their home lives rather than their ides now complain that their families are being invaded by the press, even though their campaign managers regularly leak information to the press about their opponents' personal lives. The confusion has reached the point that some enterprising 'sinners' have been offered to reform their private lives in return for public office: The late Senator John Tower promised to quit drinking if confirmed as Secretary of Defense; William Bennett declared he would stop smoking if given a chance to run the nation's health agency. Perhaps Gary Hart's campaign staff should have hinted that if he was put in the Oval Office, he could be kept out of a lot of bedrooms.
There has been much debate over how to evaluate the new scrutiny of public figures' personal lives. Does it represent a break-down of the double standard that once allowed the wealthy in general and men in particular to run roughshod over the lives of others, exploiting and discarding women with impunity? Does it signal a growing concern about the public consequences of private acts, a more stringent insistence on ethical behavior? Or have we become, as political analyst Harrison Rainie charges, a "culture of hackers," breaking into people's personal lives and reprogramming their reputations? Is this a new McCarthyism, resting on pillory by innuendo? Are the women who recount their sexual misuse in the popular press exposing male hypocrisy, or are they a new kind of gold digger? Are we forging new definitions of public accountability or destroying important distinctions between people's private peccadilloes and their public contributions?
Speaking as a historian, l would have to answer "all of the above." On the one hand, we should beware of romaticizing older divisions between public and private life. Too often, Enlightenment thinkers established 'civilized' limits to public debates by defining social inequities as subordinate private matters. Early republican politics, for example, rested on the neat assumption that extermination of Native Americans and enslavement of blacks were prepolitical issues, almost domestic matters. Southerners declared that it was as "impertinent" to criticize slavery as to tell a white man how to treat his wife and children. Native Americans were often referred to as children protected by the 'Great White Father' in Washington. Women's claims for justice were dismissed as family spats.
Some of the 'private' scandals we see today represent a challenge to such inequities. Power, money, and sex are bound up in our society in very unsavory ways. To leave these connections unexamined is to ignore the hidden mechanisms reproducing injustice in a nominally democratic society. Isn't it important to know how a public figure uses power at home, how likely his or her judgment is to be warped by personal appetites? Should the compulsive, cold-blooded womanizing of President Kennedy really have gone unreported, especially since some of it apparently linked him to prominent figures in organized crime? Is it totally irrelevant that the Reagans apparently did not find it as easy to "just say no" as their public policies assumed it would be for the poor?
Clearly, many private issues have a political component, while public issues spill over into private life. That is what makes it so problematic, as l will show in chapter 6, to make hard-and-fast generalizations about privacy and state intervention. Private family relations take place against a background of rules set by public authorities; public inequities of gender, race, or class get transferred into private relations; and family norms affect the ability of individuals to exercise public rights. There is, for example, much more public tolerance of violence within the family than there is of violence among strangers - and this toleration can deprave women or children of their civil rights, or even of life itself.
Too often, however, the scrutiny of private life threatens to swamp all other issues. Precisely because sex and power are bound so tightly in American society, which is a<tf>social problem, almost all public figures are vulnerable to at least the appearance of sexual impropriety, so that the personal attacks become frighteningly arbitrary. Distinctions fade between appearance and reality, between single transgressions and patterns of deceit. The lines between victim and perpetrator also blur. When Jessica Hahn and Donna Rice pose for men's magazines or for skintight jeans ads and women institute million-dollar paternity suits over one-night stands, it obscures the legitimate reasons for exposing cases of male sexual coercion or irresponsibility: Most sexually abused women have such low self-esteem that they cannot promote themselves so assiduously; most unwed mothers get no support payments from the fathers of their children.
Preoccupation with personal morality and sex reveals above all that, like our predecessors in the first Gilded Age, we lack a clear set of public ethics and political standards of behavior. We focus on private vices because we cannot agree on the definition of a public vice. The confirmation hearings for John Tower generated far more discussion about his drinking and womanizing than about his attitudes toward peace and war or his apparent conflicts of interest in the military-industrial complex. In the Oliver North case, his evasion of constitutional checks and balances was totally overshadowed by the suspicion that one of his improper expenditures was for silk stockings for his secretary, Fawn Hall. When committee members discovered he had only bought tights for his daughter, they were almost completely routed. In the Clarence Thomas hearings, the real debate came over Anita Hill's testimony, not over his qualifications, his oath that he had never discussedRoe v. Wade, or his misrepresentation of his sister's welfare experience.
ln one sense, then, the new moralism about sex and family represents the bankruptcy of our political life. Public policy failures take second place to family irregularities; a political issue such as the status of women is reduced to courtroom brawls over palimony; rampant social ills such as childhood poverty receive far less attention than tales about prominent men who videotape young girls in sex acts.
The answer to the new moralism, however, is not the old hypocrisy. In the 186Os and again in the 196Os, people suggested alternative definitions of the public good that included the personal issues facing women, minorities, working people, and the poor. Toward the end of each period, though, the old narrow definition of the public splintered, but no new political institutions, values, or processes were developed to reconnect its fragments. Instead, dominant opinion ceased to claim that any overarching standards for public life could be agreed on. Questions of morality were displaced onto the private sphere.
The conflation of public morality with private values leads to inevitable oscillations between a repressive, divisive moralism and, in reaction, an extreme, even perverse, 'tolerance' of all private behavior, whatever its social consequences. Most of us, unhappy with either extreme, grasp our family values even more tightly, as the one anchor that can protect us from being swept away by the tides of repression and permissiveness. But an anchor does not work in the open ocean. The same factors that erode public life and political standards tend, in the long run, to set personal life and family values adrift. While the antisocial tendencies of Gilded Age privatism were not immediately apparent within the family circle, the collapse of public life in that period paved the way for many recurrent strains in twentieth-century families.
The Fragility of the Private Family
Without the ballast provided by the public sphere, the family began its long slide toward subjectivism, feeding the very individualism that family morality was supposed to counter. It is not that the spread of individualism threatens to destroy the traditional privacy and intensity of family life, as is sometimes claimed; as we have seen, familial privacy and intensity were in many wayscreated by the spread of individualism. But it is certainly true that individualism constantly undermines the very family life that it originally fostered.
When obligation and reciprocity were banished from public life and confined to the nuclear family, their continued existence became very problematic, especially once the same-sex networks and community associations that formerly diffused the tensions of family life began to disintegrate. The effective adult, at work and in public, is independent, individualistic, rational, and calculative. The effective family member, by contrast, shares, cooperates, sacrifices, and acts nonrationally. The character traits that keep families together are associated in all other arenas of life with immaturity and nonrationality; family interdependence is now the only thing that stands in the way of 'self-actualization.' At the same time, the family becomes over-burdened with social expectations as well as psychological and moral ones. Ifthe family would just do its job, we wouldn't need welfare, school reform, or prisons. And if my family would just do its job, l would be perfectly happy. The obvious next step, of course, is that if l amnot perfectly happy, it's my family's fault.
Figuring out whether a family is doing its job, however, becomes progressively more difficult when external moral and political reference points for judging the quality of love or parenting disappear. "The world of intimate feeling," remarks Richard Sennett, "loses any boundaries" - and therefore loses any core. Where is the center of infinity? As education professor Joseph Featherstone argues:"A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely."
The triumph of private family values discourages us from meeting our emotional needs through mutual aid associations, political and social action groups, or other forms of public life that used to be as important in people's identity as love or family. So we must rely on love. If we fail to attain love, or even if we do attain it and still feel incomplete, we blame our parents for not having helped us outgrow such neediness - as though it is only 'the child within' who could be needy. We may postpone confronting the shallowness of our inner life by finding one special person to love us or for us to love, yet when the love disappears, and our needs, inevitably, do not, we feel betrayed. We seek revenge, or at least contractual relief, demanding public compensation for the failure of private life to meet our social needs.
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INTRODUCTION
The Black Knights of Baseball
Before Jackie Robinson hit his first crisp line-drive single into the closely cut green grass in the outfield of Brooklyn's Ebbets Field in April of 1947, the game of baseball was black and white. No black ballplayer had ever played in the American or National Leagues in the game that had become the national pastime. Baseball was a game as segregated as movie theaters in the north, bus depots in the midwest, restaurants in the west, and rest rooms in the south.
Blacks couldn't play baseball in the major leagues before 1947, but they played the game nonetheless. They played it on sandlots, in city parks, at fairgrounds, and in mill yards. They played on factory teams and in summer leagues. They played in South Carolina and they played in New York. They played in Santo Domingo and Mexico City. The very best of them played in the Negro National League, the Negro American League, and the Eastern Colored League, the 'major leagues' of black America.
The teams of the Negro National, Negro American, and Eastern Colored Leagues played the same dazzling baseball as the teams of the white major leagues, with enormously talented stars who were just as good - giants of the game, now in the Baseball Hall of Fame, like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Ray Dandridge, Monte Irvin, Cool Papa Bell, Judy Johnson, Pop Lloyd, Martin Dihigo, and Oscar Charleston. Their teams had wonderful names like the Monarchs, Grays, Eagles, Royal Giants, Crawfords, Barons, and Buckeyes. They played their games against each other in major-league ballparks and with major-league hustle. Then they piled into beat-up old buses with peeling paint, poor ventilation, uncomfortable seats, and bad engines, and barnstormed all over America to play some more. The Negro League stars took on both lower-level black professional teams and white semipro teams, playing clubs in the United States, South America, Central America, and Canada. Some even went to Japan and played all comers there. They also challenged and played white major-league teams like the Philadelphia Phillies, the Detroit Tigers, and all-star teams led by the likes of Dizzy Dean, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig. And often they beat them.
The Negro League stars never gained the fame and glory of the white ballplayers in those years from the late nineteenth century until 1947, when the color line and Jim Crow laws kept them out of the white major leagues. None of them made the cover of Life, did ads for Wheaties, or rode in parades with governors. They didn't for one reason and one reason only: they were black.
During the glory days of the Negro Leagues, from 1920 to 1946, America was two countries - one white and one black - and they didn't mesh. The two nations had been stumbling, politically, socially, and culturally, toward a single America since the Civil War had freed the slaves more than fifty years before. But they weren't there yet.
Nothing symbolized the inability of the white and black countries to merge more than major-league baseball. American baseball was never just a game, it was the passion of the nation, and as long as it was segregated the entire nation would be. Generations of black ballplayers tried to end that segregation, but after knocking at the major-league doors and being ignored, they played baseball where they could.
They were the forgotten men, at least by white culture. Mainstream white newspapers ignored them, refusing to cover their games and often referring to them as 'coloreds' to denigrate them, so black newspapers covered them with glory. White sports magazines ignored them, too, so black sports magazines were started and the Negro League stars graced their covers. Black teams couldn't play in the white World Series, so in 1924 they started the black World Series. Likewise, since they weren't invited to the white All-Star Game, in 1933 they started their own.
It never mattered what was written about the Negro League stars, because everybody knew who they were and how very good they were. More than 46,000 fans, black and white, filled Yankee Stadium in 1946 to see Satchel Paige duel Bob Feller in a black-versus-white all-star game. One of the Negro League East-West All-Star Games in Chicago's Comiskey Park drew 51,000 fans. White factory workers and store merchants all over the United States could chip in a dollar or two so that the local white semipro team in some little hamlet could bring in the legendary Pittsburgh Crawfords for a Sunday afternoon game to see how the locals would fare against these heralded black stars. Home-run-bashing catcher Josh Gibson, 'the Black Babe Ruth,' was mobbed by autograph-seeking kids, black and white, wherever he went.
The white major-league stars themselves played against them over the years more than four hundred times in the off-season and respected their skills. Back in 1910, the Detroit Tigers toured Cuba, playing against a Cuban team that included Home Run Johnson, imported with others from a black team in Brooklyn. Johnson out-hit the Tigers' Ty Cobb on the tour, .500 to .371. In 1915, three weeks after the Philadelphia Phillies won the National League pennant, the black Lincoln Giants beat them, 1-0. In 1934 Satchel Paige's All-Stars beat the Dizzy Dean All-Stars four times in a six-game series. Dean himself told everyone that Satchel Paige was the greatest pitcher in the country.
Some of the players who began their careers in the Negro Leagues moved into the majors when the color line was broken in 1947 and became instant all-stars. In addition to Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson, they included Hank Aaron (who broke Ruth's career home-run record) Monte Irvin, Don Newcombe, Larry Doby, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Joe Black, and a skinny kid from Birmingham, Alabama, named Willie Mays. They and the Negro Leaguers before them paved the way for all the other blacks and Latinos who played the game in the 1960s and 1970s and who play the game today. All those men who put up with sixty years of segregation and bigotry opened the door for Doc Gooden, Cecil Fielder, Rickey Henderson, Frank Thomas, Reggie Jackson, Kirby Puckett, Kevin Mitchell, Barry Bonds, Terry Pendleton, Tony Gwynn, and Daryll Strawberry.
They were folk heroes who for a century were forbidden to play what was a white man's game. But most were never bitter about it, then or now. "That's just the way it was," shrugged the Philadelphia Stars' Gene Benson. He and his colleagues never filed a lawsuit, demonstrated, called a press conference, or wrote letters to their congressmen: America during those years wouldn't have heard. Instead they played baseball, and on the most extraordinary level.
Paige, Gibson, Bell, Robinson, and hundreds of others traveled from city to city, town to town, county fair to county fair, to play the game they loved for millions of people who loved it too. They played in front of white people and black people, brown people, Japanese, Chinese, rich, poor, educated, and illiterate. They were the black knights of baseball, heroes who kept jousting against racism, and, after all those generations, finally won, making baseball at long last the national pastime for a whole nation.
CHAPTER ONE
Diamonds in the Rough
Long straight lines of large square tents were stretched out as far as the eye could see, thousands of them, a city of white tents. It was a between-battles camp of the Union Army in Virginia during the hot summer of 1864, and soldiers were walking slowly to the end of the tents toward a large grassy field. There, hundreds of black and white soldiers and three generals on horseback were watching two of the camp's baseball teams battle each other. The diamond consisted of a hastily hewn square with large boards for bases and a batter's box roughed out with rifle butts. The day was bright and peaceful - no rumbling of deadly cannon in the distance, no fatal clatter of rifle shots, no terrifiying yells of Confederate troops. Nothing but the sound of a bat hitting a ball and the roar of a weary and battle-hardened crowd cheering at a baseball game under the gentle Virginia sun.
Despite the racism and segregation that came to be associated with baseball in America, ironically it was during the Civil War, fought in part to free blacks from slavery, that blacks were first introduced to baseball. Over 180,000 freed slaves fought for the north in the war, and the two chief forms of recreation in army camps during these years were boxing and baseball. Those who held their health in high esteem played baseball, so like everyone else in Union Army camps, black soldiers watched and played endless baseball games. It was a long and bitter war, and it was also a boring war. For every day of death and destruction on the battlefield there were ten days of boredom in camp. To pass the time, everybody played baseball.
The game grew to such popularity that large army camps had their own baseball leagues. On Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, a permanent Union Army camp was home to a total of 50,000 soldiers, camp followers, and freed slaves living on the ten-mile-long island. By 1862 the camp had become as large as a major American city and had its own theater, two daily newspapers, and a baseball league that was so popular its championship game drew 40,000 people.
The sport of baseball boomed all over the country after the Civil War as soldiers who had played or watched it during the conflict brought the game home to their cities and small towns. Since most of the troops came from larger cities, the sport flourished there. Most of the black Americans who fled slave plantations wound up in large cities, too, where there were jobs for unskilled laborers. Blacks formed teams in different cities and by 1867 New York teams were traveling to Philadelphia to play black teams there.
The number of black teams grew in the 1870s and 1880s, usually in large cities where northern blacks lived. Freed slaves, looking for economic and cultural support from other blacks, moved to those cities, just as many black soliders who served in the war together moved to black neighborhoods in northern cities. These growing black population centers soon had their own cultural networks, with black churches, black theaters, and black newspapers. Black baseball was a natural extension. The players came from the community, which also provided the fan base, particularly in big cities.
Numerous all-black teams banded together in informal inter- and intracity all-black leagues and carved out a rich niche in American sports history. Players came from all walks of life, neighborhoods, and jobs. Many competed on all-black factory teams, a handful played on integrated teams, and some teams played schedules against all-black, all-white, and integrated teams. The teams were so successful that by 1887 a professional minor league, the League of Colored Base Ball Clubs, was founded with teams in Cincinnati (the Browns), Washington, D.C. (the Capital Citys), Louisville (the Fall Citys), Pittsburgh (the Keystones), Baltimore (the Lord Baltimores), Boston (the Resolutes), Philadelphia (the Pythians), and New York (the Gorhams).
Smaller semipro black teams consisting of freedmen had been playing throughout northern cities since 1858, but in the 1870s they became extremely active and organized. A top team from one city would often travel to play a top team from another, and the game was usually preceded by a parade in the black community, with children racing along the streets to get a look at their very own athletic heroes.
The identification of blacks with their baseball teams was strong, so strong that by 1906 cartoonists in black weekly newspapers were putting caricatured black politicians in baseball uniforms and on the diamond to poke fun at them.
Games were well-attended by snappily dressed black men and women who saw baseball as a weekend entertainment like theater and music. Black ballplayers were revered and many were given the better jobs at factories where owners were looking for a mill hand who could hit .300.
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INTRODUCTION
A collection of forty-five bicycle trips in Northwestern Oregon, principally in the Willamette Valley from the Portland area south to Eugene, this book includes routes from 12 to 178 miles in length. Mostly loops, the routes are designed to bicycle in a few hours. Also included are a few tours in the Columbia Gorge area, one along the Oregon Coast, and some linear trips. Four rides in the book are for multiday journeys. These are the Oregon Coaster, Mount Hood Loop, Three-Ferry Figure Eight, and Scaponia.
Strike out along the county and rural roads, bicycle lanes, or secondary highways of Oregon. Pedal into rolling hills, flatlands, or deep gorges. The people and life-styles are as varied as the terrain and weather patterns. The history stems from hardy pioneers who sought a better life in the West. Visit parks, old soda fountains, festivals, country stores, historic buildings, lakes, and covered bridges decorating foothills, farmland, forests, side valleys, small towns, and ethnic settlements. Your miles of pedaling will enhance physical fitness and your appreciation of Oregon. We wish you all the enjoyment we have found pedaling the beautiful, bountiful backroads of Northwest Oregon.
The Trip Descriptions
Each ride in the book includes a capsule summary. Use the summary to match rides to your abilities and interests, paying particular attention to both visual and narrative information provided.
Elevation and distance graphs illustrate the route's altitude profile, but don't be put off by a route that first appears too long or hilly. Almost every route has shortcuts or shorter options. Tailor the ride's length and difficulty to your needs by reviewing the accompanying text, mileage logs, and map sketches. Some options are described in the text and logs, and others may be readily apparent in the sketch maps.
Starting and en route times are estimated and should not be considered rigid. Based on averages for the novice cyclist, these assume a fairly slow pace with frequent stops at points of interest. Strong riders or seasoned racers may complete the routes in half the estimated times.
Starting times are recommended to permit riders to complete the routes by mid- to late afternoon. Consider, however, the advantages of starting very early in the morning. Traffic is almost nonexistant, permitting the cool morning air to be enjoyed in solitude, and leaving the hot afternoon riding to the late risers. Cyclists who can stand the initial agony of crawling out of the bed at dawn will find their efforts rewarded. In winter, the opposite advice may be better: Wait for the day to warm up a bit, then choose a short ride that will end well before the chilly late afternoon.
Each route also includes a map and a mileage log. In theory, either one should be sufficient for a selected route. In practice, both the map and the mileage log should be followed, particularly in unfamiliar territory or on routes with frequent turns or numerous intersections.
Mileage logs in this book describe the routes in tenths of a mile. Used in tandem, maps and logs provide adequate information for following the exact route. These can be followed with a cyclometer (bicycle computer), but don't expect an exact match to distances printed in the book. Bicycle computers vary, partly because of differences in wheel and tire sizes.
A watch and a compass are two other pieces of optional equipment that can assist in following a mileage log. With experience, most riders develop a feel for how fast they are riding and, using a watch, can estimate distances traveled with a surprising degree of accuracy. In this book, maps have a scale of miles and a north arrow, while mileage logs frequently mention compass directions. When in doubt about intersections where road signs are missing, twisted, or otherwise confusing, check both the log and the map. Then consult a compass, if necessary.
The mileage logs describe each of the loop trips in a particular direction, i.e., clockwise or counterclockwise. Any route may be ridden in the opposite direction, but some that pass through cities and towns may require slight modification when one-way streets are encountered.
The mileage logs usually mention bike lanes or paths, when available along the routes. These are recommended in the interest of safety. Throughout the book, a bike route on the shoulder of a road, whether designated by a painted line or protected by small cement dividers, is referred to as a bike lane. A paved path separate from the roadway is referred to as a bike path.
Accurate road and street names often are difficult to determine. Especially in rural areas, many roads are unmarked, or are signed with names different from those on local maps. Although Oregon Department of Transportation maps purport to show the correct official name for every road in the state, those may not appear on street signs. In this book, the road and street names usually are the ones on local signs. Be cautious, however. Signs can be missing, altered, or, through the efforts of local pranksters, twisted ninety degrees. Where signs conflict with available maps, or where more than one name appears on different signs, the mileage log shows alternate names in parentheses. Maps show the most commonly used names. To avoid losing the route, consult both the map and the mileage log.
A turn onto a gravel road is a signal that you are probably off-route. Few of these rides involve gravel roads, and the ones that do are marked clearly on both the map and the mileage log.
To take shortcuts or side trips away from the itineraries described here, consult the map. It shows whether nearby roads are paved or gravel. On recommended variations, the roads have been inspected. In other cases, the pavement status is based in part on information derived from Oregon Department of Transportation maps, which are generally accurate.
Also keep in mind that roads and intersections are changing constantly as highway departments fiddle with the landscape. Don't be surprised to find roads realigned, intersections rearranged, or new highways built. A close eye on the map and the mileage log should make most changes readily apparent and wrong turns avoidable. The others will make for interesting stories.
Facilities available along the routes are described for rider enjoyment. Stores, and sometimes restaurants, are mentioned when they appear in rural locations, but no attempt is made to list their hours. Carrying food is always a good idea when cycling.
Public parks are mentioned whenever they appear along the routes or within striking distance. Nearly all have rest rooms, if only outhouses, but many of those facilities are open solely during summer months. Drinking water and camping facilities are mentioned in the mileage logs, but again, water often is disconnected and campgrounds closed in the off-season. Carry a water bottle and refill it at every opportunity.
Choosing a Bicycle
Almost any bike can be used to ride the routes described here. It doesn't have to be fancy or expensive. A forty-pound balloon-tired bike will get you to your destination just as surely as a twenty-pound racing bicycle, but it may take a bit longer. If you've got an old bike gathering dust in the garage, get it out, dust it off, make sure it is safe to ride, and start pedaling. You eventually may want to graduate to a better bike, but don't stay home for want of it now.
When it's time for a new or upgraded bicycle, here is a tip: Concentrate on lightness and the frame. A good, light bike really isn't as fragile as it may appear. Extra weight is mostly located in nonfunctional places. Once you have a good frame, you can vary components to suit your riding style and needs.
When considering bike lightness, the frame is a good example. Most stress is at the joints where frame tubes come together. On expensive 'double-butted' frames, the tube wall's thickness is greatest at each end, where strength is needed, and narrower in the midsection, where the stress is much less. Significant weight is thus saved without loss of strength.
Bicycle choices are abundant in today's marketplace. Before selecting a bike, consider your riding style, the length and type of trips, and the need to carry gear. Road frames are designed for touring, racing, or a combination of the two. Hybrid bicycles primarily meet the demands of commuters and mountain cycles are designed for off-pavement use.
Touring frames are more stretched out and flexible than their racing counterparts, and thus produce a smoother ride. Extremely responsive, a stiff racing frame would be less comfortable on long rides and unable to carry much gear. Sport-touring frames absorb some of the road shock of a racing frame without sacrificing the benefits of responsiveness, and can be equipped with panniers (saddlebags). Mountain bikes can be ridden on pavement, but their weight and bigger tires require more effort than touring and racing frames.
Bicycle frames are graduated to fit different-size bodies. Measured in inches or centimeters from the spindle (the axle on which the pedals rotate) to the point where the seat post enters the frame, most frames are sized between 18 and 25 inches.
To determine if a particular frame fits, straddle the bike, standing between the handlebars and the seat. If the bike fits, you should be able to lift the front wheel an inch or two off the floor. Frames may also be measured by standing in a wide, equidistant stance over the top tube. Clearance between you and the top tube should be 1 to 2 inches on a road bike, but as much as 4 inches on a mountain bike. (Some say 3 inches is ideal.) This extra mountain-bike clearance allows for more responsiveness and for sitting behind the saddle to hold down the back wheel on steep descents.
Frame and wheel sizes should not be confused. While frame sizes vary, nearly all road or hybrid bicycles with gearing use 27-inch-diameter wheels, or their slightly smaller metric equivalent, 700-millimeter wheels. Mountain bikes and some youth or inexpensive adult bikes use 26-inch wheels.
Bicycle fitting is not complete with selection of the correct frame size. Competent advice from someone who can examine the bike and the rider at the same time is advised.
Saddle height on all bikes is generally adjusted by balancing on the bike. With the ball of the foot on a pedal, the leg should bend slightly when the pedal is at its lowest position.
Handlebars can also be adjusted, and should generally be slightly lower than the saddle. Long- or short-armed riders might also consider changing the length of horizontal extension of the handlebar stem. This change requires a new stem, but helps avoid undue strain on the neck or hands.
After properly fitting the frame to the rider, examine the bike. Rims, handlebars, pedals, cranks, and front sprockets on a heavy, inexpensive bike will all be steel. A light bike uses aluminum (actually aluminum alloy) for these parts. Frames also can be constructed from either steel or aluminum alloy. On a light bike, parts commonly made of steel, with the exception of the frame, are the axles, spokes, parts of the saddle, and a few others. If you can't tell the difference between aluminum and steel, carry a small magnet when shopping for a bike.
Remember, the finest, lightest components can't make up for a heavy frame and vice versa. Nevertheless, don't focus so much on weight that you lose track of components and how they work together. Components on most bikes can be exchanged for lighter or higher-quality parts. If your budget limits your choice of bikes, buy the best frame - the bicycle's heart and soul. Components can be added or switched as your finances and technology advancements in the industry allow, watching for compatibility with existing equipment.
A key component is the crankset. This consists of front chainrings (sprockets), cranks (the arms on which the pedals are mounted), and bearings that attach to the bottom bracket of the frame.
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Maxine Waters, on the other hand, has a style that grew out of being the fifth of 12 children. "We were not taught diplomacy as much as how to fend for ourselves," Waters recalls, before modifying slightly: "To defend ourselves is really what it was. You had to make sure you shared in the opportunity, be it dinner or something going on in the family or the neighborhood." Undaunted by the unflattering adjectives she has attracted, Waters recognizes that the woman she is evolved naturally from the girl she was in St. Louis: "I didn't know [what I was doing] was 'assertive' behavior. I didn't know that was 'aggressive' behavior. I didn't know women weren't supposed to act like that."
Bill Boyarsky, a columnist on the Los Angeles Times, called Maxine Waters "the conscience" of the current Speaker of the California Assembly and, accordingly, rued the day that Waters was elected to Congress. "She'll just chew you out if she thinks you're wrong," Boyarsky says: "I know, because she's done it to me." To be the conscience of any Speaker is a hefty job, but when the Speaker is Willie Brown - a man so brilliant and irreverent that he dominates every conversation, and so quick on the draw that virtually every politician in California is wary of him - the job becomes very nearly herculean.
Waters laughs at the notion that she kept Willie Brown in line, but she doesn't take exception to Boyarsky's description of her style. "I have not attempted to be liked by my male colleagues or to pamper them," she says, "I have not tried to be male enough for them to like me. I simply am what I am; I care about what I care about. I'm me! So I've had fights and I've had good moments." People work best together when they respect each other, Waters insists, and since she tries to be fair, she expects fairness in return. When she doesn't get it "I let 'em know. I'm not going to practice disguising my feelings. I'm not socialized in being subtle: I just say it!"
Unlike Willie Brown, Thomas S. Foley, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a decorous, understated man. The Congress's rituals derive from the 18th century, and its rhetorical traditions run to the baroque. Foley's legislative assistant, Melinda Lucke, was therefore startled, but not surprised, when the new member from Los Angeles, whose reputation had preceded her, walked saucily into his office and said, "I need one hot minute with the Speaker!"
"This place is so steeped in custom and tradition that [the members] don't really do the work people expect them to do," Waters says with exasperation. As a freshman member on a Veterans' Affairs subcommittee, Waters was told that the chairman, G.V. 'Sonny' Montgomery from the Mississippi Delta, did not look kindly on amendments to his legislation. Congresswoman Waters was not impressed. "They said 'That's the way he operates.' I said, 'These people are elected to serve, and if they've got something to offer, they should be allowed to offer it.'" She had something to offer - an amendment that would allow veterans to hire private legal counsel and have their attorneys' fees paid by the government - and when the pro forma call for amendments came, she offered hers. "This is not a good time for people who purport to support their government to oppose helping veterans return to their jobs," Waters observes cannily, and after some modest finagling, she got a unanimous vote in support of her amendment. "I respect custom and tradition that gets the job done," Waters insists, but "if it thwarts the process or throws up obstacles to your being able to represent your district, I'm not going to go along with it."
Younger political women are more likely to have had female models and teachers in the ways of politics - many of them the women of that key transitional generation. Among those whom Ann Richards has mentored, Lena Guerrero has already become something of a star in her own right. She was Richards's political director in her campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, and Richards's initial act as governor-elect was to appoint Guerrero to the Texas Railroad Commission.
Since Guerrero is a full generation younger than the other women we interviewed, she could be expected to have had a somewhat different experience, and indeed, like so many Texan women her age, she was inspired by Barbara Jordan. Guerrero was 13 when Jordan struck her imagination, along with the nation's, during the televised Watergate impeachment hearings. "I thought 'that is exactly what I want to do.'" Guerrero remembers: "I read everything that anybody wrote about that woman. I cut out newspaper articles. I wanted to be a member of Congress, and I never thought what that meant for an Hispanic woman. After all, she [Jordan] was black!"
In 1976, while Jordan gave her keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, Guerrero "watched her like I was delivering it. Most people don't remember that she co-keynoted it with John Glenn. He was so boring - she was the keynote. 'What's new? What's different?' [Jordan intoned:] 'Barbara Jordan is keynoting this Convention!' It was so great!"
Guerrero credits the Sisters of Mercy who ran the school she attended with her strong belief in conscience, which is at the root of her pro-choice position on abortion - an irony the nuns might not appreciate. "I was educated by nuns," Guerrero recalls, who "were extremely independent, bright, conscientious, demanding women. They taught me to think. They taught me that someday I was going to be judged for my actions - not somebody else's." And she learned her basic leadership skills in the Catholic Church: in the late 1960s, when boys still monopolized virtually all the helping roles in the Church, she was actually an altar girl. "My church was two blocks from my house," Guerrero remembers, "and I did a lot of helping around the back and during the service. But I also led in the choir. Mexican boys don't sing in the choir! They grow up to be famous singers, but they don't sing in the choir!"
Nonetheless, Guerrero's first explicitly political mentoring came from a man, Gus Garcia, the first Hispanic to be president of the Austin school board and a principal plaintiff in the suit that finally broke down Texas school segregation for Mexican American children. When Guerrero was a student at the University of Texas at Austin, Garcia took her aside and told her "something extremely visionary." His generation of Hispanic leaders in Austin, he told her, had "spent the better part of the last 15 years in a movement that has taught us basically where the hinges on the door are. We've popped the damn thing open. Now they invite us to the table. Your generation of leadership - men and women - is going to be required to know parliamentary procedure, to know how to read budgets, and to eat your lunch at the negotiating table." When you find a door that's closed, he insisted, "you call me, because we'll knock that sucker right down! We know how to do that. But that's not your job. Your job is to be substantively good!" Garcia made her focus on what she might do, according to Guerrero, and it was at his prompting that she mastered Robert's Rules of Order.
Will women in politics do things differently from men? The question is tantalizing - even haunting - but for the moment we have no sure answer. In a world in which almost all the rules have changed, and the information is as yet sparse, we can make only tentative generalizations.
We do know that women will not all take the same stands, even on war. Although the first woman elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin, is the only member ever to vote twice against taking America to war - she voted against our entering both the First and the Second World Wars, and lost her seat in Congress each time as a result - women have always swelled the numbers of wartime patriots. When asked to name her toughest decision, Nancy Kassebaum first inclined to name her vote to give President Bush the authority to take the United States into war in the Persian Gulf. But then she corrected herself: that decision, ultimately, was not hard because she thought it the only possible, since the country "had to do it." Although Kassebaum speculates that her office got 75 calls opposing the use of force in the Gulf for every one that supported it, she believed the president's policy was the only way to stop Saddam Hussein. "You have to weigh the calls you get with the larger constituency out there that you don't hear from," Kassebaum says, "and then you have to use your own judgment."
Maxine Waters agrees with Kassebaum on the process: neither takes polls or lets them influence her vote. On the issue, however, she disagrees fundamentally with the senator. A woman who considers war "an obsolete means of resolving conflict," Waters was one of the Persian Gulf War's most unrelenting opponents. Although she was only a neophyte member of Congress and emotions were volatile, no one tried to influence her to mute or modify her stand: "People know I have strongly held positions." When asked whether she thought her vote expressed the will of her district, she replies, "I don't legislate that way. I try to let people know who I am all the time, so they will understand where I'm coming from on issues. I don't pull very many surprises. I think the people voted for me because they kinda liked where I was coming from."
Waters will keep on opposing policies like those that led to the Persian Gulf War - even though they gave President Bush the highest poll ratings of any president in history. In the aftermath of the war, as the Kurds were fleeing toward the Turkish and Iranian borders, she insisted that "we should not only provide humanitarian aid, we should be absolutely honest with the American people about what we're doing there. They need to know that this administration is supporting Saddam Hussein's staying in office."
If women disagree on fundamental issues, there is nonetheless some evidence that they do approach public office differently from the way men do. Mayor Kathryn Whitmire of Houston, Texas has suggested, for starters, that women are usually ready to try new things: since each was once the new kid on the block, innovation does not set them to trembling. Whitmire herself demonstrated a positive relish for breaking precedent when she appointed Lee Brown to be Houston's chief of police - the first white mayor to appoint a black to that office. Long after Brown had left Houston to head New York City's police department, Whitmire remembered one letter to the editor at the time he first came that said, Well, it could have been worse: she could have appointed a woman. And indeed, in 1990, Houston's chief of police was the first in the country to need maternity uniforms for herself.
Although Senator Nancy Kassebaum does not expect women's burgeoning political presence to change policy significantly because she suspects they are not "that different" from men, she agrees with the common perception that women bring "a certain perspective and sensitivity" to bear. Kassebaum herself, for instance, will not play "political hardball" - a game at which "some of my colleagues are masters." She recognizes that refusing to play that game can put her at a disadvantage, but feels that it is simply "against my nature." Convinced that women can be firm in their resolve without resorting to trickery, Kassebaum associates political hardball with "innuendo, vindictiveness ... threats," and a willingness "to use everything that's out there in order to get your own way."
In Texas, on the other hand, political hardball is a synonym for politics. In his Pulitzer-prizewinning The Making of the President 1960, Theodore White described that state's political tradition as among the most "squalid, corrupt, and despicable" in the nation.
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Costume drama
Adventures served to satiate the public lust for violence, but historical dramas appealed to different desires. Again we see the divergence between elite and mass opinion. Critics heartily despised the costume dramas and attacked them vigorously, but audiences made their views known at the box-office - and films like The Palace and the Fortress (Aleksandr Ivanovskii, 1924), Stepan Khalturin (Ivanovskii, 1925), and The Wings of a Serf (Iurii Tarich, 1926) were demonstrable commercial successes. For the purpose of this chapter, however, I have selected the two historical films which were the 'most' of everything - most popular, most expensive, and most controversial: The Decembrists (Ivanovskii, 1927) and The Poet and the Tsar (Vladimir Gardin and Evgenii Cherviakov, 1927).
Complaints about the "bourgeoisification" of revolutionary history had been levelled against the historical films since The Palace and the Fortress, a film which set the tone for the costume drama by using the revolutionary epoch as a vehicle for exploring the lives and loves of the gentry. It enjoyed the distinction of attracting Politburo member Grigorii Zinovev's ire for its excessive emotionality. The critical controversy over the bourgeois cooption of the past reached a crescendo with the appearance of The Wings of a Serf, quite an atypical Soviet historical picture set during the reign of Ivan IV. This film, which was reported to do well abroad although its audience reception at home is uncertain, was charged with being "counterrevolutionary" in a scandal manufactured by opponents of its producer, Sovkino.
Perhaps unaware of the gathering storm, Aleksandr Ivanovskii and historian Pavel Shchegolev had spent nearly two years preparing their blockbuster, <tf>The Decembrists. (Shchegolev, a well-known specialist on the populist movement, served as scenarist on all three of Ivanovskii's historical films - as well as others, like The Ninth of January.) The Decembrists was probably the costliest picture produced in the USSR in the silent period. Two sources confirm that it came in at 340,000 rubles, while another claimed that its colossal expense had led to the bankruptcy of the Sevzapkino studio, which then became the Leningrad Sovkino studio. To a certain extent The Decembrists does support the old saying that there are virtues in economy. Costing nearly twice as much as its predecessor, Stepan Khalturin (an overlong dramatization of one of the unsuccessful plots to assassinate Alexander II led by the People's Will), it was twice as flawed.
Ivanovskii and Shchegolev made little pretense at recreating the Decembrist uprising of 1825, focusing almost exclusively on the love affair between the Decembrist Ivan Annenkov (Boris Tamarin) and Pauline Geueble (V. Annenkova). Social commentary was minimal (though the Decembrists did not seem particularly admirable - and Grand Duke Konstantin and his Polish wife certainly were not). Ivanovskii paid loving attention instead to details of costume and set, emphasizing glamour, heavy-handed irony, and coy brutality. Despite the participation of a bona fide historian as scenarist, the uprising appears to be no more than a badly staged afterthought.
There was no chance that the Soviet critics, with their stiletto pens and critical acumen, would miss this oppotuntiy. The most scathing review appeared in Cinema unsigned, a practice which became more common as cultural politics become more uncivilized. In it The Decembrists was charged with being a film designed to appeal to the superficiality of the:
continental public ... but for people raised on contemporary cinema, this cine-opera with its agonizingly long and theatrical montage elicits only unpleasant memories of the 'psychological' fairy-tales of the time of Ermolev and Drankov.
In other words, The Decembrists was an 'export' film constructed on the principles of the pre-revloutionary cinema, an accurate assessment. Vladimir Nedobrovo was equally harsh, accusing Ivanovskii of using his material "expoitatively, extravagantly, stupidly"; Vladimir Korolevich called for an end to pictures about "St. Petersburg"; Arsen charged it with historical inaccuracy. Pravda's Boris Gusman concurred that it was "literary-theatrical" but predicted it would be a big hit for that very reason. Gusman's prediction was borne out in the Troianovskii-Egiazarov survey where it was listed as fourth among the ten most popular pictures. And yet it was asserted in 1929 in Soviet Screen that the film had recouped only 64 percent of its production costs. Given The Decembrists' apparent popularity, which would have translated into paid attendance of well over 1 million at ticket prices ranging from 0.60 to 1.50 rubles, this seems unlikely.
The Poet and the Tsar had the misfortune to appear the same year as The Decembrists ,but after it, at precisely the moment when the backlash against "bourgeois" cinema was gathering force. It also did not help that the picture's cavalier tratment of Pushkin attracted the ire of the poet Vladimir Maiakovskii, a formidable force in Soviet cultural circles and an outspoken critic of Sovkino and its politics. Indeed, The Poet and the Tsar became his personal cause in 1927, and he used it as an example of everything that he perceived to be wrong with Soviet cinema. At the ODSK-Komsomol-Komsomolskaia Pravda conference in October 1927 which laid the polemical groundwork for the Party Conference on Cinema Affairs the following spring, Maiakovskii said with a flourish: "Take the film The Poet and the Tsar. You may like the picture ... but if you think about it, what rubbish, what an outrage this picture is."
Perhaps The Poet and the Tsar is not worth "thinking about" (certainly its appeal was not intellectual), but it is not an "outrage." Vladimir Gardin and actor Evgenii Cherviakov collaborated on the screenplay and co-directed, and Cherviakov starred as Pushkin. Cherviakov looked a fine Pushkin, but unfortunately the screenplay, which centers on the last year of Pushkin's life, is as uncinematic as it is melodramatic. The narrative focuses on Pushkin's unhappy marriage to his unworhty wife (I. Volodko), and Gardin and Cherviakov gave full credence to the old story that Nicholas I (K. Karenin) engineered Pushkin's duel with the nefarious d'Anth<*_>e-grave<*/>s (Boris Tamarin). When Cherviakov's Pushkin is not glowering disapprovingly at various social gatherings, he is wandering about "reading" poems, letters, and so on (and on). Gardin lived up to his reputation as one of the leading directors in both the pre-revolutionary and Soviet cinemas in the well-staged duel scene, but then ruined the dramatic tension by having poor Pushkin linger on forever.
Maiakovskii was not alone in his scathing denunciation of the film, although a fairly judicious review appeared in Cinema in which P. Neznamov concentrated on formal attributes, criticizing the static tempo and other technical weaknesses. More typical of the tenor of the reviews was the solemn setpiece in Soviet Screen, where Pushkin scholars were assembled to rail against The Poet and the Tsar's "completely false" protrayal of Pushkin. Adrian Piotrovskii labelled The Poet and the Tsar a film which epitomizes the "petty-bourgeois belief" that history translates into "poeticalness" and "beauty."
This beauty had a high price - at 200,000 rubles not only was the movie four times more expensive than the typical Soviet film, but it had overrun its budget by nearly 25 percent. The Poet and the Tsar was therefore not just part of a "front" of reactionary pictures, but also touted as proof of the existence of a "commercial deviation" in cinema which involved Sovkino as well as Mezhrapbom. The public, however, did not share these jaundiced opinions of the picture, and it was apparently a commercial success.
The Poet and the Tsar marked the turning-point in the development of the Soviet costume drama. The final major historical dramas of the silent period appeared in 1928 - Iurii Tarich's The Captain's Daughter (about the Pugachev Rebellion) and Konstantin Eggert's The Ice House (concerning the scandalous reign of Anna Ivanovna) - but their swift demise was a foregone conclusion. After the Party Conference on Cinema Affairs, the film press focused on promoting "economical," "contemporary," and "ideological" works. Historical pictures certainly could not be contemporary, and their ideological content was superficial at best. Because of the costumes and sets needed to recreate the past "accurately," it was highly unlikely that a "good" historical picture could ever be made as economically as a film about Soviet life. Consequently, only sixteen costume dramas were made in the five-year period from 1929 to 1934 (and none in 1935), accounting for a mere 3 percent of total production.
What the historical film could do better than any other popular genre (because of the constraints of the censorship) was give Soviet audiences a way to enjoy "high life" vicariously - beautiful clothes, lavish homes, plentiful food, leisure time. Despite the romanticization of the Soviet twenties, life during the NEP was not particularly easy; while a few lived well (notable NEPmen and apparatchiki), most did not. The costume drama, therefore, served much the same function in Soviet society in the twenties as did those movies about millionaires that were so popular in the US during the Great Depression of the thirties.
Melodrama
The costume dramas had many melodramatic elements, but the melodrama without any historical window-dressing had a distinctive set of problems and imperatives. Adrian Piotrovskii wrote that while melodrama in and of itself was not intrinsically anti-Soviet, most Soviet makers of melodramas had revealed themselves "slaves to bourgeois art" in their focus on the inner workings of private life. If Piotrovskii were correct, then the best-known "slave to bourgeois art" had to be the Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatolii Lunacharskii, for the melodrama in early Soviet cinema is inextricably linked to his name.
Lunacharskii co-authored the screenplays for The Bear's Wedding and two other infamous variations on melodrama - Poison and The Salamander. Until 1928, Lunacharskii managed to rationalize his involvement with these films and avoid undue criticism, but his role was not a passive one. According to Georgii Grebner's contract with Lunacharskii for The Salamander, Lunacharskii wrote a librettto which Grebner then translated into a shooting script. Lunacharskii also stipulated in this contract that his wife, Natalia Rozenel, be given the female lead - at a time when directors were being fired for nepotism.
The Bear's Wedding (co-directed by veteran filmmaker Vladimir Gardin and by its star, Konstantin Eggert, 1926) was easily the most sensational Soviet film of the twenties. Critics found very little good in it, but it enjoyed an enormous following and was the number two title in Troianovskii and Egiazarov's 'top ten' chart. Its popularity with mass audiences was confirmed in numerous other sources, one viewer writing to Cinema that it was a "colossal victory on the cinema front." It was apparently successful abroad as well, and from 1926 on, "bears' wedding" becomes a synonym for the so-called 'export' films.
Why did Soviet audiences find this screen adaptation of Prosper Mrime's variation of the vampire story so appealing? It is not up to the standards of filmmaking which earned Soviet silent cinema its international reputation. But it is certainly one of the most defiantly apolitical productions of the period, and its emphasis on perversion places it squarely in the pre-revolutionary tradition. Co-director Eggert played the deranged Count Shemet, cursed to have seizures which transform him into a bear on the prowl. The count falls in love with an innocent, awkward young girl (the very popular Vera Malinovskaia, in a part which provides a little comic relief, at least at first). The wedding of the doomed pair is followed by an uncontrolled, sexually charged celebration which becomes more sinister as the night progresses. Tension mounts. The film climaxes in a frightening and gruesome scene in which Count Shemet, besotted by passion and madness, savagely mutilates his bride in their wedding-bed. When he comes to his senses, the count is overcome with anguish, but he attempts to flee the vengeful mob of villagers all the same. Eventually he is murdered by his sister-in-law, and his castle is torched.
The Bear's Wedding had the usual ingredients of popular entertainment - love, sex, violence, action, horror - but in baroque excess. The film is so extreme that this synopsis makes it sound like a parody of melodrama, but it was not. Eggert managed to make the improbable believable in his protrayal of Count Shemet, and he and Gardin pulled this cinematic pastiche off with style.
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Five
Cultural Illiteracy
At first glance, E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy seemed as unlikely a bestseller as The Closing of the American Mind. Originally a lecture given before the Modern Language Association, it was published as an essay in the American Scholar in 1983. "I received a letter from Robert Payton, president of the Exxon Education Foundation," Hirsch wrote in the introduction to his book, "encouraging me to start acting on my perceptions rather than just writing them down."
Spurred on by an Exxon grant, Hirsch began to compile his now-famous list of the 'items' that, if known and mastered, would enable this and future generations of students to attain cultural literacy. In 1987 he published his book, which instantly made the bestseller list; for forty weeks it was second only to Bloom's. The paperback has sold 600,000 copies. Hirsch, a professor of English at the University of Virginia and a scholar of eighteenth-century literature, has become the latest representative of that new American type, the academic celebrity.
What is cultural literacy? The answer is simply put in the subtitle of Hirsch's book: What Every American Needs to Know. By 'culture' Hirsch doesn't mean 'high culture,' but 'basic information,' the names and events that enable us to decipher the world. In order to function in society, to work and to communicate, he argues, people need to possess a certain number of facts about their own history. The key events in our past, the key phrases in our literature, are in themselves a kind of language, a code that educated people decipher in their daily lives without even knowing it. Hirsch reminisces about his father, an old-fashioned businessman who used to quote Shakespeare in his correspondence and often used the phrase "There is a tide" - shorthand for "There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune" from Julius Caesar - to illustrate how one knows intuitively when to buy or sell. "To persuade somebody that your recommendation is wise and well founded, you have to give lots of reasons and cite known examples and authorities," wrote Hirsch. "My father accomplished that and more in four words, which made quoting Shakespeare as effective as any efficiency consultant could wish."
For Allan Bloom, the decline of educational standards can be traced to the decline of philosophy (a word he uses to mean the humanities in general); to ignore the classics is ultimately to weaken the very foundations of our society. Hirsch is more pragmatic. For him, the purpose of education isn't to produce a handful of Greek scholars who can preserve the great intellectual traditions of the West, as Bloom would have it, but to prepare us for the complex social transactions of everyday life. It's not a nation of English professors that Hirsch aspires to create, but a nation in which ordinary people are literate enough to negotiate effectively in the world. "High stakes," he writes, are involved in the curriculum debate:
... breaking the cycle of illiteracy for deprived children; raising the living standard of families who have been illiterate; making our country more competitive in international markets; achieving greater social justice; enabling all citizens to participate in the political process; bringing us closer to the Ciceronian ideal of universal public discourse - in short, achieving fundamental goals of the founders at the birth of the republic.
There's nothing abstract about this imperative. Behind Hirsch's high-minded rhetoric is a pretty straightforward message: You can't expect people to grasp the basic principles of democracy unless they know what those principles are. And you can't expect them to function effectively in the world unless they're literate.
Hirsch's book was notably even-tempered and unpolemical; he sounded like a guy who was trying to help. And he had actually done something. He had gone around speaking before state boards of education; he had founded a Cultural Literacy Foundation, publishing a newsletter and circulating to schools around the country a provisional list of what students at every grade level ought to know; he had produced a Dictionary of Cultural Literacy and a six-volume textbook (still in the works) designed to teach the rudiments of American history, the major works of English and American literature, and the natural sciences. But in academic circles, Cultural Literacy kindled almost as much fury as The Closing of the American Mind. At a conference on 'Liberal Arts Education in the Late Twentieth Century' held at Duke University in 1988, Barbara Herrnstein Smith rose and delivered a vitriolic diatribe, 'Cult-Lit: Hirsch, Literacy, and the 'National Culture,'' that enumerated in harsh language the magnitude of Hirsch's sins. What did he mean by shared culture? Smith wanted to know. There was no such thing, and any efforts to define one represented, in Smith's words, "context-specific, pragmatically adjusted negotiations of (and through) difference." Hirsch was trying to homogenize and oppress minorities by making them conform to his idea of culture. Nor did Smith have a whole lot of sympathy for Hirsch's idealized vision of what our nation is all about. "Wild applause; fireworks; music," she noted with heavy sarcasm after quoting his invocation to the "fundamental goals" of the Founding Fathers: "America the Beautiful; all together, now: Calvin Coolidge, Gunga Din, Peter Pan, spontaneous combustion. Hurrah for America and the national culture! Hurrah!"
Okay, so there are flaws in Hirsch's argument: his definition of a 'literate national culture' is vague; his list of 'What Every American Needs to Know' is biased. But his basic indictment - that we're in the midst of a crisis with long-range social consequences - seems to me beyond dispute. Americans know less than ever. In a 1988 survey of high school students' scientific achievement level prepared by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, the United States ranked third-to-last out of fifteen developed nations; in a 1970 survey, the U.S. had ranked seventh. It's not that other nations have improved in terms of education; we have deteriorated. U.S. Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores have declined precipitously over the last decade: from 1972 to 1984, 56 percent fewer students scored over 600 and 73 percent fewer scored over 650. A 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education stated, "For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach those of their parents."
Hirsch's book is full of frightening statistics: Two-thirds of seventeen-year-olds weren't aware that the Civil War occurred between 1850 and 1900. Nearly half couldn't identify Stalin; nearly one-fourth couldn't identify Churchill. When Hirsch's son, a high school Latin teacher, asked his class to name an epic poem by Homer, one student volunteered "The Alamo?" Another, informed that Latin was no longer spoken, asked, "What do they speak in Latin America?" At a conference of college deans, Hirsch reported in the New York Review of Books, he was regaled with "a chorus of anecdotes" about the decline in literacy among entering freshmen: "To these administrators, the debate over Stanford University's required courses seemed interesting but less than momentous when compared with the problem of preparing students to particiapte intelligently in any university-level curriculum."
It's just as much a problem in the Ivy League as anywhere else. Jerry Doolittle, an English instructor at Harvard, designed a quiz for his freshmen students to determine their level of literacy. They were given twenty statements and asked to fill in the blanks. Among the sample questions were the following:
I think that I shall never see a poem <*_>blank<*/> (four words)
Quoth the raven, <*_>blank<*/> (one word)
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and <*_>blank<*/> (one word)
The average score was seven out of twenty - a figure somewhat inflated, Doolittle confessed, by two statements that everyone in the class completed correctly:
"Winston tastes good, like a <*_>blank<*/>" (two words) and "This Bud's for <*_>blank<*/>" (one word). And this was Harvard!
According to Richard Marius, director of Harvard's Expository Writing Program, arriving freshmen are so woefully deficient in the basic skills of reading and writing that a remedial course is required just to get them to the point where their peers would have been a generation ago. "This generation does not read," Marius laments in Teaching Literature: What Is Needed Now. They're unfamiliar with the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton; they don't even know the Gettysburg Address: "They are strangers not only to those points of reference that might help them navigate the literary sea, but also to the underlying cadences that have governed the development of written English. They cannot write because they have not read and they cannot hear."
The poet and essayist Katha Pollitt offers telling corroborative evidence. In her modern poetry seminar at Barnard, Pollitt reports, none of her students had even a bare familiarity with any poems published more than a decade ago. "Robert Lowell was as far outside their frame of reference as Alexander Pope." They didn't see how a knowledge of earlier poetry was necessary to their work; in fact, they found the work of earlier poets discouraging, for it showed up their own deficiencies. A new way to deal with the potentially smothering effects of one's precursors: Don't have any.
One could argue that our indifference to literature - and to literacy - is a function of our distracted culture, but a contributing factor, I suspect, is the virtual abolition of requirements that so many colleges embraced in the late sixties and seventies (a development that quickly replicated itself in public secondary schools). It's all very well to talk of the character-building sustenance that books provide, but most people don't read unless they're compelled to; and higher education was designed to serve that purpose. School once was, "and might frankly be," Pollitt reminds us, "the place where one read the books that are a little off-putting, that have gone a little cold, that you might overlook because they do not address, in reader-friendly contemporary fashion, the issues most immediately at stake in modern life but that, with a little study, turn out to have a great deal to say."
In the 1980s, a reaction set in to the laissez-faire education that characterized my college days, and a number of colleges moved to reinstate some semblance of a core. (Some had never abandoned it: the Great Books course instituted at Columbia after World War I survives in recognizable form to this day.) At Harvard, where the general education program - created to provide students with "the common knowledge and the common values on which a free society depends" - had fallen into disrepair, a core curriculum was once again proposed, and a task force was convened to consider the matter. It found in favor of establishing such a curriculum, but weaseled out of actually trying to impose one. What it came up with was a set of courses divided into ten categories - Social Analysis, Moral Reasoning, Foreign Cultures, Literature and Arts, and so on. But the Core's architects, eager to avoid the charge of ethno- or Eurocentricism, threw in a potpourri of courses from other disciplines and fields: 'Building the Shogun's Realm: The Unification of Japan (1560-1650)'; 'Caribbean Societies: Socioeconomic Change and Cultural Adaptations'; 'Individual, Community, and Nation in Japan.' Since you only have to choose one course from each area, it's possible to graduate, notes Caleb Nelson in a strongly argued condemnation of 'Harvard's Hollow 'Core,'' without ever having read any nineteenth-century British novels; without having read Virgil, Milton, or Dostoyevsky; without having taken a course on the Enlightenment or the Renaissance or the American Civil War. One section leader editorialized in the Crimson: "Most Harvard students taking Core courses are no more likely to have read and seriously understood the philosophical, political, or cultural foundations of their own United States than if they selected thirty-two random courses from the catalogue."
But that was never the Core's intent. "There are simply too many facts, too many theories, too many subjects, too many specializations to permit arranging all knowledge into an acceptable hierarchy," reasoned its founders.
<#FROWN:F45\>When coupled with computers, synthesizers make the exploration, composition, and performance of electronic music an inexpensive art medium.
A technology called the musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) interconnects electronic music instruments and computers. When coupled with a sequencer - software that can capture, edit, and play back music - complex electronic arrangements are made possible through a wide variety of editing options. Just as a word processor can replace a writer's typewriter or pencil and paper, sequencer software can replace a composer's pencil and paper score.
In live performances, such as rock concerts, live and recorded sound are often indistinguishable, thanks to the use of computerized backing tracks. Promoters defend the use of preprogrammed music, arguing that fans want to see a perfect reenactment of an MTV video or a recording. However, some legislators believe the practice is deceptive and propose legislation that would require promoters to inform ticket buyers in advance whether preprogrammed music will be used in a live performance.
DESIGN AUTOMATION
Designers in professions such as clothing, publications, architecture, and industrial products use electronic drawing boards extensively to help automate the mechanics of creativity. Borrowing from the techniques of computer-aided design that were pioneered in the manufacturing disciplines, a variety of designers are using computer software to increase productivity and help speed up the design process.
Architects, for example, used to design buildings manually. The design process began when an architect drew a rough sketch, which is the high-level design of what the building is supposed to look like, and how it interfaces with the surrounding environment. Then, a scale model was hand built, critiqued, and modified. After client approval, blueprints and specifications were created for the contractor.
Today's architects use computer-aided design methods extensively. In much the same way that power tools increase the productivity of the carpenter, CAD increases the productivity of the architect. In addition to automating the drawing process, CAD enables the architect to build computer models of the building, rotate the design to view the building from various angles, allow the client to take a simulated walkthrough of the building, simulate its heating and cooling sub-system performance under various climatic conditions, and create blueprints and specifications for the building.
Clothes designers in large corporations such as Esprit, Levi Strauss, and Benetton use CAD to design patterns, colors, and clothing shapes. In addition, designs, patterns, and colors can be archived in databases. The designer can call up a previously designed pattern, for example, modify it slightly, and feed the design to automated machinery that cuts patterns out of fabric.
COMPUTERS IN GOVERNMENT, MILITARY, AND LAW
Professionals in government, military, and law have become some of the most sophisticated users of information systems. They quickly learn the importance of intelligent information gathering and manipulation and, as a result, information systems are the lifeblood of these professions.
GOVERNMENT
Federal, state, and local government professionals, as well as their adversaries (e.g., lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association and the Sierra Club), are concerned with developing public policy, enforcing laws, and protecting the well being of citizens.
Politicians rely heavily on their constituent databases and lobbying groups on their membership databases to track peoples' profiles, contribution histories, topics of concern, and levels of experience with specific issues. In their effort to sway public policy, for example, special interest groups can extract specific members' names and addresses and send out letters to inform them of pending legislation.
In recent years, the public has become more aware of the damage being done to the environment as a result of society's actions. This is, of course, a broad and complex set of problems that defies simple solutions. But one technology called geographical information system (GIS) is lending a helping hand.
Geographical information system data include digitized maps and images of distributions of statistical data such as populations of humans, plants, and animals. Geographical databases can help planners set up displays of watershed areas, soil and water districts, property lines, school and tax districts, and zoning boundaries. For example, if planners need to know how new development will affect a watershed area, they can view the watershed area and zoning boundaries simultaneously, in order to make more informed decisions about the impact of the development on the environment.
Other GIS applications include viewing population and school district boundaries simultaneously to redraw district lines and plan school bus routes. Fire departments can study patterns of streets and traffic flows along them at various hours of the day and plan the fastest route to a fire.
Government agencies, such as police departments, sheriff's offices, emergency medical services, and fire departments, leverage technology with computer-aided dispatch, communications, record keeping, and jail-management functions.
And technology is beginning to find its way into the legislative branch. Recently, the Michigan State Senate installed a legislative information system that puts a personal computer at every senator's desk. Using computers, the lawmakers can review and vote on bills and, during slack periods, write letters and communicate with their offices via electronic mail.
MILITARY
Ever since the late 1950s, the U.S. military has used computers for defense. The nation's first air-defense system, a network of computers linked to radar stations, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, or SAGE, pioneered the use of real-time interactive graphics. (See Appendix A under 1950, 'Whirlwind.') Today, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) performs a similar defense function by guarding the United States against missile attack.
On the drawing boards is the Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI, a computer-controlled system that will use satellites to detect and lasers to destroy enemy missiles. SDI is very controversial, because it will be so complex and will rely so heavily on unproven, untested hardware and software. Critics, for example, point out the possibility of a false alarm, thus triggering a U.S. attack or even a nuclear war.
On a smaller scale, weapon systems, such as those found in submarines, tanks, and aircraft, use sophisticated technology for navigation, tracking, and control. The person using such systems has at his or her disposal graphic representations of landscapes with grids marking optimal paths to targets. Eye-tracking devices help aim the weapons at the target at which the person is looking.
One of the most impressive military computer applications involves training pilots with flight simulators. A simulation is a computerized representation of a real-world event or series of actions. Although flight simulators also help train civilian pilots, the most sophisticated versions can be found in the military.
A pilot, seated in a replica of a cockpit, views realistic simulated images displayed on the cockpit windows. As the pilot flies the simulator, the view changes immediately in response to altitude, speed, and position. Realistic special effects such as fog, airplane malfunctions, or enemy attack can be added to the simulation. Such realism is made possible by drawing on an immense visual database that contains data digitized from scale models, photographs, and topological maps. Special-purpose computers generate and display images in real time, in order to create the illusion of motion.
Although the cost of military flight simulators is enormous, a simulation costs less than its real-world counterpart. By having pilots practice with simulators rather than real airplanes, the military avoids the risk of losing an expensive plane and worse, losing an irreplaceable life - that of the pilot. And, of course, without simulators, training astronauts for a space shuttle mission would probably be out of the question.
What does the military do to prevent the details of its newest Stealth bomber from being leaked to the KGB? Preventing compromises in national security and defense depends on limiting access by unauthorized people. Photographs, signatures, and fingerprints have been used for identification purposes long before the advent of computers. But the problem of verifying a person's identity has led to an interesting high-technology solution.
Biometric devices are instruments that perform mathematical analysis of biological characteristics. An individual's speech, handwriting, fingerprints, or even eye retina features can serve as a unique patterns for identification purposes. Biometric identification systems that can digitize, store, and compare these patterns can be used to verify a person's identity.
Biometric identification systems are still in the experimental stage, but when they become reliable enough, they are expected to provide a more accurate means of verifying peoples' identity at classified and secret locations throughout the military and government.
LAW
Today's law firms are characterized by the need to manage, process, and interpret large and complex amounts of information. Legal documents, such as briefs, transcripts, notes, laws, codes, and rules are increasingly available in electronic versions. Court reporters, for example, routinely make their transcripts available as text files than can be directly input to a word processor.
A wealth of historical legal data are available in the form of on-line databases. Law firms can subscribe to Westlaw and Lexis, firms that specialize in publishing precedents, decisions, administrative rulings, trade regulations, and laws governing securities and taxes. In addition, some information providers are starting to offer similar information on CD ROM databases.
Another type of database software that is particularly useful for attorneys and paralegal professionals is called full-text retrieval software. It allows text to be indexed, edited, annotated, linked, and searched for in an electronic document. In a trial, for example, attorneys may need to review, track, and cross-reference the testimony of witnesses. Through use of full-text retrieval software, the transcripts for the trial can be indexed, annotated, and searched to verify the consistency of a witness's testimony right in the courtroom.
During the courtroom portions of trials, attorneys use desktop presentations to illustrate complex ideas to the jury in cases such as patent infringement or medical injury.
COMPUTERS IN EDUCATION
The potential of new computers and new software developments in education is highly intriguing and compelling. Computers are one of the newest and most versatile tools of the teaching trade. Computer and communication technology are making possible imaginative approaches to teaching traditional subjects and are motivating teachers and students to try new ways of information gathering and learning.
LEARNING
The oldest instructional application of computers is computer-assisted instruction (CAI), which provides instruction and drill-and-practice in basic computation and language skills. The basic philosophy of CAI involves a direct link between student and software and the transfer of basic instructional decisions from teacher to curriculum developer.
By using CAI, information is presented on the computer's display, students are asked to respond, and their responses are evaluated. If the student is correct, he or she moves on; if incorrect, similar problems are given until the correct response is elicited.
Advocates of CAI argue that students who have not mastered basic skills can benefit from drill and practice and that the computer helps to motivate students and frees the teacher to provide individual instruction. Critics of CAI argue that drill-and-practice tasks can be done just as easily without computers, using, for example, flash cards or some other form of drill. Hundreds of studies have been conducted to determine the effectiveness of CAI, and while the results concerning the effects of CAI are generally favorable, the research conducted provides little insight into how, what, and why students learn when they use CAI.
In response to such criticism, educators have developed intelligent CAI programs in which students interact with the computer rather than respond to it in a predefined manner. Intelligent CAI can generate and solve problems, store and retrieve data, diagnose students' misconceptions, select appropriate teaching strategies, and carry on dialogs with students. Most of these programs incorporate simulations and games that allows students to try out their evolving models of knowledge in a particular area.
ELECTRONIC BOOKS
New software tools and new ideas for user interfaces make possible the presentation of materials that are manipulable in several different ways. One such example is the electronic book, in which the reader manipulates computer technology instead of printed pages.
For example, Sony Corporation of Japan uses a palm-sized CD player for reading books recorded on 3-inch compact disks. Each disk can store approximately 100,000 pages of text, the equivalent of 300 paperback books.
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What that required was for the United States and its allies to "maintain sufficient flexible military capabilities, and firmness of policy, to convince the Communist rulers that the U.S. and its allies have the means to ensure that aggression will not pay and the will to use military force if the situation requires." The West should, however, forgo "actions which would generally be regarded as provocative," and "be prepared, if hostilities occur, to meet them, where feasible, in a manner and on a scale which will not inevitably broaden them into total nuclear war." These cautions were necessary "to assure the support of our allies against aggression and to avoid risks which do not promise commensurate strategic or political gains." The distance separating the architect of 'massive retaliation' from what would later come to be known as the doctrine of 'flexible response' was, it seems, less than one might have thought.
The basic policy the United States had followed through the end of 1954, Dulles admitted, had been "pretty good," even if "it hasn't got us into war." Not getting into a war, after all, was no bad thing. The positions the United States had taken with regard to the German question, Indochina, and the Chinese offshore islands could hardly be described as 'craven': "it would be difficult to argue that our policies are not strong, firm, and indicative of a willingness to run risks. But our policy was none the less one which fell short of actually provoking war."
That policy had assumed, though, continued American nuclear superiority. The great difficulty Dulles saw on the horizon was "the forthcoming achievement of atomic plenty and a nuclear balance of power between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R." It was not at all clear how the United States could prevent the Russians from achieving that 'nuclear balance' without going to war with them. More active policies in such areas as Indochina or China, of the kind the Joint Chiefs of Staff had advocated, would not solve that problem.
Dulles expanded on this argument at a National Security Council meeting later in December, 1954. He could not help but have some sympathy for the Joint Chiefs' call for "greater dynamism" in American policies toward the Russians and the Chinese Communists; he himself had campaigned on just this point in 1952. "However, experience indicated that it was not easy to go very much beyond the point that this Administration had reached in translating a dynamic policy into courses of action, and in any case we had been more dynamic than our predecessors." Preventive war was "of course" ruled out. Strong and forceful efforts to change the character of the Soviet system, or to overthrow communist regimes in Eastern Europe and China, or to detach those countries from the Soviet bloc "would involve the United States in general war." Even if the United States could somehow break up Soviet control over Eastern Europe and China, "this in itself would not actually touch the heart of the problem: Soviet atomic plenty." And although these more aggressive policies, if successful, "might result in the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, they would almost certainly cause the disintegration of the free world bloc, ... for our allies would never go along with such courses of action as these."
In the end, Dulles concluded, the only real solution for the problem of expanding Soviet nuclear capabilities might be nuclear abolition. It was true, he admitted, that if the United States should agree to eliminate nuclear weapons alone, "we would be depriving ourselves of those weapons in which the U. S. was ahead and would not be taking action in the area of Soviet superiority, the conventional armaments field." It was unlikely that the means would ever be developed to monitor conventional force disarmament. But "it could be argued that atomic weapons are the only ones by which the U. S. can be virtually destroyed through a sudden attack, and if this danger of destruction should be removed by eliminating nuclear weapons this would help the U. S. by enabling retention intact of our industrial power which has acted both as a deterrent against total war and as a principal means of winning a war."
A year later, almost on the eve of the famous Life magazine interview with James Shepley in which he had extolled the virtues of going to the brink of war as a means of preserving peace, Dulles discussed the future of nuclear deterrence with a recuperating Eisenhower - the President had suffered his heart attack three months earlier - in the White House. As Dulles himself recorded the conversation: "I said that I had come to the conclusion that our whole international security structure was in jeopardy. The basic thesis was local defensive strength with the backing up of United States atomic striking power. However, that striking power was apt to be immobilized by moral repugnance. If this happened, the whole structure could readily collapse."
Dulles went on to say that he had come to believe "that atomic power was too vast a power to be left for the military use of any one country." Its use, he thought, should be "internationalized for security purposes." The United States might well consider calling together the forty-two nations with which it had security treaties, placing before them a proposal for an international group that would decide "when and how to use atomic weapons for defense - always reserving of course the right of the United States, in the event that it was directly attacked, to use whatever means it had." If and when the Soviet Union was prepared to forego the right of veto, the group might then transfer this responsibility to the United Nations Security Council, "so as to universalize the capacity of atomic thermonuclear weapons to deter aggression." Eisenhower's response, somewhat neutrally, was that the idea was "an interesting one."
Encouraged by the President to develop his ideas, the Secretary of State prepared a long memorandum early in 1956, in which he noted that Soviet nuclear capabilities might well grow, within a few years, to the point at which they could "at a single stroke, virtually obliterate our industrial power and ... simultaneously gravely impair our capacity to retaliate." That retaliatory capacity would then lose its deterrent effect, and "the United States might become endangered as never before." Indeed, the psychological loss of superiority might well precede its actual loss, because "it would be generally assumed that the use of our nuclear power is so restricted by constitutional and democratic processes and moral restraints that we would never be able to use it first; and conditions could be such that only the first use would have great significance. ... Repugnance to the use of nuclear weapons could grow to a point which would depreciate our value as an ally, undermine confidence in our 'collective defense' concepts, and make questionable the reliability of our allies and the availability to SAC of our foreign bases."
All of this only reflected the fact that "there is throughout the world a growing, and not unreasonable, fear that nuclear weapons are expanding at such a pace as to endanger human life on this planet. ... The peoples of the world cry out for statesmanship that will find a way to assure that this new force shall serve humanity, not destroy it." This responsibility very largely fell to the United States, but meeting it would require more than the "Atoms for Peace' or 'Open Skies' proposals that had already been put forward. If the nation failed to meet that responsibility, "our moral leadership in the world could be stolen from us by those whose creed denies moral principles."
The ultimate solution, Dulles suggested, would be to vest a veto-less United Nations Security Council with control "of sufficient atomic weapons, and means of delivery, as to overbalance any atomic or other weapons as might be surreptitiously retained by any nation." Prior to this, the United States might seek commitments from nations possessing nuclear capabilities to use them only in accordance with recommendations from the General Assembly. Regional groups, too - NATO would be the model - could be set up "to study and plan the means whereby nuclear weapons could most effectively be used to deter armed attack and to preserve peace in each region." The critical task would be to get the United States away from its "present vulnerable position [of having] virtually the sole responsibility in the free world with respect to the use of nuclear weapons, ... a responsibility which is not governed by any clearly enunciated principles reflecting 'decent respect for the opinions of mankind'."
Although nothing came of Dulles's sweeping proposals, he continued throughout the rest of his term as Secretary of State to reiterate with Eisenhower the concerns he had articulated. For example, in December, 1956, in the immediate wake of the Suez and Hungarian crises, Dulles warned that in his view "a 'showdown' with Russia would not have more than one chance in three of working, and two chances out of three of making global war inevitable." But the Russians too would have difficulty translating nuclear strength into political advantage. In November, 1957, in connection with a discussion of Strategic Air Command vulnerabilities, Dulles dismissed the possibility of a Soviet surprise attack as "remote" on the grounds that "such an attack without provocation involving casualties of perhaps one hundred million would be so abhorrent to all who survived in any part of the world that [he] did not think that even the Soviet rulers would dare to accept the consequences."
In April, 1958, Dulles again raised with Eisenhower "the question of our national strategic concept." The difficulty was that "this too much invoked massive nuclear attack in the event of any clash anywhere of U.S. with Soviet forces." There were, Dulles argued, "increasing possibilities of effective defense through tactical nuclear weapons and other means short of wholesale obliteration of the Soviet Union, and ... these should be developed more rapidly." It was a vicious circle: "so long as the strategic concept contemplated this, our arsenal of weapons had to be adapted primarily to that purpose and so long as our arsenal of weapons was adequate only for that kind of a response, we were compelled to rely on that kind of a response." It was, of course, the case that "our deterrent power might be somewhat weakened if it were known that we contemplated anything less than 'massive retaliation' and therefore the matter had to be handled with the greatest care."
What this new evidence suggests, then, is that the traditional view of Dulles as an uncritical enthusiast for strategies based solely on nuclear deterrence is profoundly wrong; that, indeed, the Secretary of State himself anticipated many of the criticisms advocates of 'flexible response' would later make of such strategies; and that he even contemplated, as a long-range goal and on both geopolitical and moral grounds, the abolition of nuclear weapons altogether.
International Communism
A second area where the documents suggest we need to revise our thinking about John Foster Dulles has to do with his understanding of international communism. In his first televised address as Secretary of State only a week after the Eisenhower administration took office, Dulles had dramatically unveiled a map showing the "vast area" stretching from Central Europe to Kamchatka and including China, "which the Russian Communists completely dominate." In the few years since the end of World War II, the number of people under their rule had expanded from 200 to 800 million, "and they're hard at work to get control of other parts of the world." The strategy was one of "encirclement": "Soviet communists" would seek to avoid all-out war but would work "to get control of the different areas around them and around us, so they will keep growing in strength and we will be more and more cut off and isolated. And they have been making very great progress."
At first glance, the tone and content of this speech appear to fit the widely held view of Dulles as an ideological literalist, convinced - as were many other people at the time - that adherence to the doctrines of Marx and Lenin automatically meant subservience to Moscow.
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There were further adverse effects of the mergers and acquisitions mania. These included the socially sterile rewards received by those who traded with inside information on the offers to be made for a specific stock. And there were the losses, in some instances perhaps salutary, of those who were attracted by the prospect of high return and who bought the securities, principally the high-risk, high-interest junk bonds, that financed the operations and that went eventually to discount or default as the full consequences of the aberration became evident. From these losses there was further effect on productive investment and, at least marginally, on consumer spending and the functioning of the economy as a whole. With all else, in the oldest tradition of economic life, the mentally vulnerable, those at one time more obtrusively denoted as fools, were separated, as so often before, from their money.
Yet all was wholly plausible, given the corporate structure and the approved profit-maximizing motivation of the system. All, to repeat, was under the benign cloak of laissez faire and the market.
Legislative or executive action to limit or minimize the destruction - for example, holding hearings to require the approval on economic grounds of the regulatory agency for any large-scale substitution of debt for equity - went all but unmentioned. And such mention would have been met, in any case, with rejection verging on indignation and ridicule. The free enterprise system fully embraces the right to inflict limitless damage on itself.
The mergers and acquisitions mania was, without doubt, the most striking exercise in self-destruction of the culture of contentment. There have, however, been two other highly visible manifestations of this deeply inborn tendency.
The first of these was the real estate speculation of the 1980s, centering on commercial office space in the cities, but extending out to expensive dwellings, in particular condominiums, in the suburbs and resort areas and going on to architecturally questionable skyscrapers in New York City and admittedly hideous gambling casinos in Atlantic City.
As ever, the admiration for the imagination, initiative and entrepreneurship here displayed was extreme. Of those receiving the most self- and public adulation, the premier figure was Donald Trump, briefly and by his own effort and admission the most prestigious economic figure of the time.
The admiration extended to, and into, the nation's biggest banks. Here the loans were large and potentially dangerous, and so, in the nature and logic of modern banking, they were handled with the least care and discretion. The security of the small borrower is traditionally examined with relentless attention; the claims of the large borrower go to the top, where, because of the enormous amounts involved, there is an assumption of especially acute intelligence. The man or woman who borrows $10,000 or $50,000 is seen as a person of average intelligence to be dealt with accordingly. The one who borrows a million or a hundred million is endowed with a presumption of financial genius that provides considerable protection from any unduly vigorous scrutiny. This individual deals with the very senior officers of the bank or financial institution; the prestige of high bureaucratic position means that any lesser officer will be reluctant, perhaps fearing personal career damage, to challenge the ultimate decision. In plausible consequence, the worst errors in banking are regularly made in the largest amount by the highest officials. So it was in the great real estate boom of the age of contentment.
Here the self-destructive nature of the system, if more diffused than in the case of the mergers, acquisitions and leveraged buyouts mania, was greater in eventual economic impact. Excessive acreages of unused buildings, commercial and residential, were created. The need for such construction, given the space demands of the modern business bureaucracy, was believed to be without limit. In later consequence, the solvency of numerous banks, including that of some of the nation's largest and most prestigious institutions, was either fatally impaired or placed in doubt. The lending of both those that failed or were endangered and others was subject, by fear and example, to curtailment. The construction industry was severely constrained and its workers left unemployed. A general recession ensued. Any early warning as to what was happening would have been exceptionally ill received, seen as yet another invasion of the benign rule of laissez faire and a specific interference with the market.
However, in keeping with the exceptions to this rule, there could be eventual salvation in a government bailout of the banks. Insurance of bank deposits - a far from slight contribution to contentment - was permissible, as well as the assurance that were a bank large enough, it would not be allowed to fail. A preventive role by government was not allowed; eventual government rescue was highly acceptable.
Ranking with the real estate and banking aberration was the best publicized of the exercises in financial devastation: the collapse of the savings and loan associations, or, in common parlance, the S&L scandal. This, which was allowed to develop in the 1980s, had emerged by the end of that decade as the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time.
Again the basic principle was impressively evident and pursued: laissez faire combined with faith in the benignity of market enterprise. The short-run view took precedence over the more distant consequences. And there was an infinitely vast and obligatory public intervention as those consequences became known.
Starting well back in the last century, the savings and loan associations, under various names, played a small, worthy and largely anonymous role in the American economy. Attracting for deposit the savings of the local community, they then made these available in the form of home loans to the immediately adjacent citizenry. There was strict regulation by federal and state governments as to the interest they could pay and charge and the purpose for which they could make loans. Home ownership being a well-established social good, the S&Ls were eventually given public encouragement and support in the form of a modest government guarantee of their depositors' funds.
Then, with the age and culture of contentment, there came the new overriding commitment to laissez faire and the market and the resulting movement toward general deregulation. The commercial banks, once released from regulation, greatly increased the interest rates there available to depositors, which meant that if the similarly deregulated S&Ls were to compete, they would need to pay higher rates to their depositors. Sadly, however, these payments would have to be met by the low rates then in place on a large and passive inventory of earlier mortgage loans. The highly improvident solution was to accord the S&Ls freedom to set rates of interest on the insured deposits and then to go beyond home loans to the widest range of other investments, or what were imaginatively so designated. Also, faithful to principle, government action in the interest of contentment was not curtailed. Instead, the once modest insurance of deposits by the federal government was raised to $100,000 on each S&L account. The selective view of the role of the state was never more evident.
The foregoing changes were variously enacted or instituted mainly in the early 1980s. They set the stage for what was by far the most feckless and felonious disposition of what, essentially, were public funds in the nation's history, perhaps in any modern nation's history. Deposits guaranteed by the federal government and thus having behind them the full faith and credit of the government were brokered across the country to find the highest rate of return. Such interest was, normally, offered by the institutions most given to irresponsible or larcenous employment of the funds involved. Efforts at correction or restraint, palpably small, were deliberately restricted as being inconsistent with the broad commitment to deregulation. Those still subject to the skeletal and ineffective regulation took their case, not without success, to the Congress. Funds from the publicly guaranteed deposits were thus recycled back to support congressional races in an innovative, if perverse, step toward the public financing of electoral campaigns.
In the latter years of the 1980s, the whole S&L experience came explosively to an end in the first and, in many respects, most dramatic exposure of the public principles implicit in the age of contentment. The prospective cost, perhaps $2,000 for each American citizen were it equally assessed, was regarded as impressive. Less impressive, perhaps, was the understanding of what underlay the debacle. Here, first of all, was the general commitment to laissez faire, the specific commitment to the market, which had led to the deregulation. But here too was the highly selective character of that commitment. As far as the culture of contentment was concerned, responsibility to find a solution for the shortfall remained firmly with the state. The depositors, large and small - the comfortable rentier community - were at risk; thus the necessity for the continuing role of the government. The whole S&L scandal was, to repeat, one of the clearest displays of the controlling principles of contentment, and certainly it was the most immediately costly.
The Bureaucratic Syndrome
Thought for many is hard work, which is why it often commands high pay. It also, alas, is compulsively delegated.
NO ONE should be in doubt: one of the inescapable features of life in the late twentieth century is the great, complicated and multilayered organization. With all else, it is the source of much present-day innovation. The latter is no longer the distinctive product of one acutely inspired brain, although this source of invention is still celebrated; normally it is the result of the cooperative effort of diversely competent specialists, each making his or her uniquely qualified contribution to the common goal. As economic and public operations become more complex, it is necessary to unite varying skills, different experience, different education, resulting specialization and different degrees of intelligence, or, at a minimum, its confident outward expression.Out of this need for both number and diversity of talents comes the need for supervision, coordination and command. This, in turn, and depending on the size and complexity of the job at hand, can involve numerous levels of authority, or what is so described. Further, since the requisite knowledge and intelligence derive in large measure from those whose contributions are brought together and coordinated, so in no slight measure does the power in the organization. The modern corporation or public agency has an internal intelligence and authority of its own; these are to some extent independent of, or superior to, those of the persons who are seen, and who see themselves, as in command. The latter point should not go unremarked. The power attributed to the cabinet secretary recently arrived in office with no previous experience in his or her now-assigned task or to the corporate chief executive officer now rewarded for an orderly and disciplined performance in the ranks is subject to an exaggeration to which those so celebrated happily and even diligently contribute.
Not surprisingly, the culture of the great organization is enormously influenced by the pursuit of contentment. This is evident in two important ways, both proceeding from the discomforts associated with original or dissenting thought. Also involved is a deeply ingrained, much invoked distinction between private organization and public organization - between the great private bureaucracy and its large public counterpart. In the culture of contentment the former is perceived as efficient and dynamic, while the latter is thought to be mentally moribund, seriously incompetent and, on frequent occasion, offensively arrogant.
In any large organization there must, first of all, be a well-developed sense of common purpose. This is informally, and sometimes formally, articulated in the large modern firm as company policy; in the public organization it is called official or departmental policy. "We are committed this year to big, if somewhat less fuel-efficient cars; that is what the American customer wants." "The Communist threat may no longer exist, but our policy still calls for a strong defense."
Individual contentment, all are aware, is powerfully served by acceptance of this formally stated or commonly assumed purpose.
<#FROWN:F48\>To now permit the patenting of animals subjected to genetic alteration, principally by means of genetic engineering, could have several adverse consequences. From a scientific perspective, these include the following concerns.
1. No regulation. The floodgates will be opened wide once genetic engineering research on animals is patent protected, because biotech companies will have the protection they need to secure a monopoly over new 'intellectual property' (i.e., genetically engineered animals). This will mean a dramatic increase in animal experimentation for agricultural, biomedical, and other industrial purposes, which cannot be effectively regulated. The outcome of many genetic experiments cannot be predicted in relation to the animals' health and welfare or in relation to the long-term social, economic, and environmental impact. In many instances animals will be abnormal at birth, and generations will suffer until techniques are perfected and accidents prevented.
2. Monopoly. Patenting could result in monopoly of genetic stock and predominance of certain genetic lines of animals over others, with an ultimate loss of genetic diversity within species. This could have a significant impact on agriculture as well as adverse social, economic, and ecological consequences. And if farm animals are patented, will farmers have to pay a user fee for offspring and crossbreeds, and how would this be enforced?
Lynn McAnelly, a technology analyst with the Texas Department of Agriculture, Austin, sent out over 1,700 letters to livestock producers in Texas, asking them whether patenting animals would increase or decrease their costs. Of about 500 responses, 96 percent predicted that costs would go up. The consensus was that only patent holders and large agribusinesses would benefit. It was also felt that animal patenting would provide increased opportunity for large corporations and syndicates to gain control of the industry and that any cost advantages of patented animals would wind up in the pockets of big agribusiness. As a result of the survey, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower asked the Texas congressional delegation in Washington to support a patent-moratorium bill.
3. Effect on wildlife. Patenting would also cloud the ownership of wild animals. In the United States, wildlife is held by governments, both state and federal, as a common public trust. If a deer is altered genetically, can it be patented? Will people be disenfranchised of ownership of their wild animals? America's wildlife is far too precious to get caught or lost in a discussion about patenting and ownership. The American people own wildlife, to the extent that anyone does, and patenting would mean a very real threat to such ownership.
The biomedical industry will play upon public fear to block all attempts to prohibit the patenting of animals. It will tell us that the march of modern medicine will stop dead in its tracks without patent protection. The fact remains that medical advances have been made in the past without the patenting of genetic engineering techniques and of animal models. And we should recognize that patenting in this area could actually inhibit medical progress since, for proprietary reasons, research findings of privately funded laboratories and university research institutions would not be shared. There would also be considerable unnecessary and costly duplication of research, because the patenting of animal models would encourage a competitive, rather than a collaborative, research atmosphere, to the ultimate detriment of the public's best interests.
Patent Ethics
From an ethical perspective, the patenting of animals reflects a cultural attitude toward other living creatures that is contrary to the concept of the sanctity of being and the recognition of the interconnectedness of all life. The patenting of life reveals a dominionistic and materialistic attitude toward living beings that denies any recognition of their inherent nature.
Left unopposed, the patenting of animals will mean the public endorsement of the wholesale exploitation of the animal kingdom for purely human ends. Since humans are also animals, then logically there should be no legal constraints on the patenting of techniques to genetically alter human beings for the benefit of society. But there are ethical constraints (as well as the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the ownership of one person by another) that protect the sanctity and dignity of human life. To permit the patenting of animals will effectively eliminate ethical constraints on genetically altering other animals, and eventually humans, for the purported benefit of society. Such a utilitarian attitude toward life is a reflection of the ethical blindness of the times.
Supporters of animal patenting have argued that if the patenting of animals is prohibited, companies engaged in the genetic engineering of animals will fall back on trade secrecy to protect their investments in research and development. The Trade Secrecy Act, they reason, would make it difficult for those concerned about animal welfare to know what had been done to genetically engineered animals. If patenting were approved, all details would be available to the public in the patent application. In reality, however, public access to such information would be of little help in protecting animals' rights and welfare. With or without the patenting of animals, the genetic engineering of animals is being done. And by the time a patent application is filed, all the research on the animals has already been completed. Thus rigorous ethical guidelines concerning the welfare of animals subjected to genetic engineering are needed before the onset of new research projects. Knowing what has happened to them after a patent has been granted is of little avail.
It should also be remembered that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does not, as a rule, consider the ethical, moral, and social consequences of patent applications. The essentially amoral and objective role of this governmental agency is dramatically illustrated by the granting of patent number 4,666,425 to attorney and engineer Chet Fleming for his 'discorporation' life-support system. This system, which Mr. Fleming has never actually used, is designed to keep the isolated head of an animal alive. This patent application was apparently filed to provoke greater concern for the future of new technologies and for their moral, ethical, and social consequences, which Mr. Fleming requested the Patent Office to consider in his application. But apparently, it did not. The office granted him a patent without further question.
The primary reason for the patenting of genetically engineered animals is to protect private interests, and opposition to animal patenting is clearly a threat to the biotechnology industry. Animal patenting is an issue quite distinct from genetic engineering per se. It is an issue that is linked with private interests and monopoly on the one hand, and the public endorsement of animals as patentable commodities and inventions on the other. As such, the patenting of animals is an ethical issue, supported primarily by economic concerns and an attitude toward nonhuman creatures that is contrary to the mainstream cultural traditions of reverence for life and respect for animals and the natural world. Patent protection will do nothing to protect the rights and welfare of animals and will serve to further undermine those cultural traditions that opponents of animal patenting value so highly.
Chronology of Animal Patenting
On 7 April, 1987, the U.S. Patent Office interpreted patent law to allow for future patents on animals changed or altered through genetic engineering or similar techniques. Relying on the Supreme Court decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980), which held that microorganisms could be patented, the Patent Office determined that such genetically altered animals were nonnaturally occurring 'manufactures' and 'compositions of matter' and thus could be included under section 101 of the Patent Act as patentable subject matter.
The Supreme Court decision made no mention of animals, and Congress has never approved the patenting of living things except for certain specified plants in legislation passed in 1930 and in 1970.
On 17 April, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the Foundation on Economic Trends, and a coalition of animal-welfare organizations representing five million people petitioned the Patent Office to rescind its controversial decision. The coalition included 11 national farm groups, 24 religious leaders, 21 animal-welfare organizations, and 8 environmental and public interest groups. It was concerned about long-term ethical, animal-suffering, environmental, economic, and governmental consequences of the patenting of animals.
In 1987, the Senate passed a Hatfield (R-Ore.) amendment to the continuing resolution, which would have temporarily blocked patenting. But the amendment was dropped in conference when Commissioner Donald Quigg stated that the Patent Office would not be able to act on animal patent applications before the end of the fiscal year on 30 September 1987. Patent Office officials later stated that they might be able to issue patents as soon as 1 April 1988.
Chairman Robert Kastenmeier (D-Wis.) of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice held a series of four hearings on the issue. No further action was taken. John Hoyt, president of the HSUS, testified on 11 June, 1987, stating that patenting is "inappropriate, violates the basic ethical precepts of civilized society and unleashes the potential for uncontrollable and unjustified animal suffering."
On 5 August 1987, Rep. Charlie Rose (D-N.C.) introduced H.R. 3119 to impose a moratorium on the patenting of animals so that the potential adverse implications of such patenting could be carefully studied. The HSUS and others wrote to Rose pledging to conduct studies during the moratorium period. On 29 February, 1988, Sen. Mark Hatfield introduced a moratorium bill, S. 2111, in the Senate.
On 13 April 1988, the U.S. Patent Office issued the first patent on a genetically engineered animal. Harvard University researchers had developed the 'oncomouse,' a genetically engineered, cancer-prone mouse. Funding for this research came from DuPont Chemical Co., one of the world's major producers of carcinogenic chemicals.
Rep. Kastenmeier drafted legislation to make patent-user exemptions for family farmers and scientists in order to quell some of the increasing public opposition. Meanwhile, steps were taken in Europe by the European Economic Community to change existing laws that prohibited the patenting of selectively bred plant and animal varieties so that all genetically engineered life forms might be patented.
On 13 July 1988, under pressure from the State Department of Commerce, which insisted that a moratorium on animal patenting would harm U.S. industrial competitiveness, Rep. Kastenmeier's subcommittee voted 8 to 6 against Rep. Rose's moratorium. This established the United States as the first nation to officially endorse the patenting of all life forms subjected to genetic engineering.
On 2 August 1988, the House Judiciary Committee approved Rep. Kastenmeier's legislation on animal patenting, which would have exempted farmers from paying royalties on the offspring of patented transgenic animals. According to opponents in the biotech industry this would have removed many economic incentives for developing genetically engineered animals. Supporters of the exemption saw it as vital to the survival of family farms. (It never became law, most likely as a result of pressure from the inner circle that is now the Council on Competitiveness.)
Since the patenting of the oncomouse in the United States there have been no further animal patents awarded.
Some 145 animal patent applications are now awaiting approval at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Approximately 80 percent of these have medical utility, and the remainder involve agricultural animals.
A new bill was introduced in the Senate (S. 1291) by Sen. Hatfield on 13 June, 1991 to impose a five-year moratorium on the granting of patents on invertebrate and vertebrate animals, including those that have been genetically engineered. I supported this bill with the following statement published in the Congressional Record on that day (pp. 7818-7819).
In order for society to reap the full benefits of advances in genetic engineering biotechnology, the social, economic, environmental, and ethical ramifications and consequences of such advances need to be fully assessed. Considering the rapid pace of developments in this field, which will be spurred on by the granting of patents on genetically altered animals, a 5-year moratorium on the granting of such patents is a wise and necessary decision. A moratorium will enable Congress to fully assess, consider, and respond to the economic, environmental, and ethical issues raised by the patenting of such animals and in the process, establish the United States as the world leader in the safe, appropriate, and ethical applications of genetic engineering biotechnology for the benefit of society and for generations to come.