PBISIDIIT CIB!IR¡ IIIIDII President Jimmy Carter and Mrs. Rosalynn Carter arrived in New Delhi on New Year's day and received a rousing welcome from a million citizens. India's President Sanjiva Reddy said: "We welcome not only the President of the United States but also a great humanist, a man of ideals, and one who has brought to international politics the nobility of moral imperatives." And President Carter told India's Parliament: "When I speak of friendship between the United States and India, I speak from the heart as well as the head." In formal talks between U.S. and Indian leaders, many new vistas of cooperation opened up: on agricultural research, the development of solar energy, the harnessing of river waters, the use of earth resources satellites. In the months and years to come, India and the United States will work together in these and other areas, "moving along the path of democracy toward a common goal of human development," as President Carter put it. Left: President and Mrs. Carter pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat. Among those present are India's Minister for Industry George Fernandes (extreme right), U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (fourth from left), and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski (next to Secretary Vance). Top: American and Indian leaders
meet for talks. Among those in photo are (from left,facing camera) Director of Policy Planning Staff Anthony Lake, Ambassador Goheen, Secretary. Vance, President Carter, and Security Adviser Brzezinski. With their backs to camera, from right, are Prime Minister Desai, Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram, and Minister for Commerce Mohan Dharia.
PIISIDIIT GAIIII IIIIDII
Left: President Carter wiiiJ..'::. Prime Minister Desai at Palam Airport, Delhi. Below: President Carter addresses members of both Houses of India's I¡ Parliament: "I come to you
"as a national leader, but in a . more personal sense I come as a pilgrim." Bottom: President Carter and the FirstLady with President Sanjiva Reddy and his family at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Delhi's citizens accorded President and Mrs. Carter a hearty welcome at the historic Ramlila Maidan. Picture above shows a section of the mammoth crowd that turned up on the occasion. Right: President Carter greets Delhi's citizens. "I am moved and pleased by the size and warmth of your welcome. It is a stirring testimony to the common values which have always bound together the Indian people and the people of America."
SPAN C rteJ.:..inIndia . 1 Presiden ts .9-"",-d;..et.III'y-e.~IC!c:.M -1J,A.··ou" a Free Press 6 The Philosophical Basis of.,p17/....; :r~a1.t~ of Investigative Journalism 10 Glimpses :.r a. Probing Camera 14 The Phd&~' J;;~f<,.t-eM Should the Press Publish Official Secrets? 17 f rt' 1t4 PI-tIAA 'e.;f'"Ji
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The Prime Minister of India was affable. The occasion wasthe warm farewell to President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter and their high-level party at the end of their recent visit (reported in the Indian press and elsewhere in this issue). But what most readers could not know was that directly afterthis photo was taken at the New Delhi airport, Prime Minister Desai walked down the tarmac and boarded his plane for Ahmedabad, accompanied by U.S. Ambassador Robert F. Goheen. There, following his inauguration of the All-India Science Congress, the Prime Minister opened an exhibitcalled "Technology: the American Experience," held under the aegis of the Subcommission on Education and Culture, which is part of the larger Indo-U.S. Joint Commission. The Commission had met during Mr. Carter's visit,and had come to some notable decisions: e.g., to increase the number of educational and cultural fellowships and the exchangeof movies and TV films between the two countries; and to undertake cooperative research in such matters as solarenergy and small-scale industry. After opening the American technology exhibit in Ahmedabad, the Prime Minister spent some time going around the exhibit. He signed a piece of paper to see it reproduced immediately'by a Xerox machine, and had his picture taken bya polaroid camera, from which it emerged a few seconds later"in living color." He passed the eye-catching household gadgetry on display, but Mr. Desai seemed deeply impressed by the theme of the exhibit: "America's technological development progressed throughfive stages: importing, adapting, inventing, producing andexporting." He commented that India might do well to followthe same pattern of development. The exhibit has five thematic sections, dealing respectively withthe origins of U.S. technology; food and health; clothing and shelter; communications and transportation; and a· finalmodule depicting possible technological futures. The exhibit,which was on display at Ahmedabad from January 3-22, is now being shown in New Delhi (February 17-March 12).From there, it will move to other Indian cities-Bombay (ApriI2-May 7), where it will be housed in a geodesic dome; Bangalore (May 31-June 25); Madras (July 28-August 20); and Calcutta (tentatively, September IS-October 8). A future issue of SPAN will report on the exhibit in colorf,,1 r!pt<l;\
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26
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Front cover: The most colorful part of President Carter's visit to India was his tour of a Haryana village, Daulatpur-Nasirabad. The people warmly welcomed the President and the First Lady and were most enthusiastic over their visit. Back cover: President Carter waves to crowds along the road as his motorcade passes through Rajpath on its way from Palam airport to Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Photographs: Front cover, inside fronl cover~Rajesh Bedi. 1-2-3-Avinash Pasricha. 4-5-R.N. Khanna. 6Warner Brothers Inc. 7~8-R.N. Khanna. 14-15 top-Bill Beall, WashingwllDailyNelVs;ceni.er row-Raymond Stubblebine, the Associated Press; Sal Veder, the Associated Press; bottom row-Dmitri Kessel; Hector Rondon. 16 top-Lucien Clergue. phow from "Man in Sport" exhibit; bottom-Brian Lanker. 21-25-Chrislopher Springmann except 22 center, courtesy The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and 24 top by Tiber Hirsch, Photo Researchers. 26 bottom-Gary Aro Ruble. 45-R.N. Khanna. 46 top and bottom right-Avinash Pasricha; bottom left-Pcamod Bedi. Back coverPushkarna. 47-Rajesh Bedi. 48-R.N. Khanna. 49 top-Avinash Pasricha; bottom-Rajesh A vinash
Pasricha.
STATEMENT FORM IV The following is a statement of ownership and other particulars about SPAN magazine as required under Section 19 D(b) of the Press & Registration of Books Act 1867 and under Rule 8 of the Registration of Newspaper (Central) Rules, 1956. United Scates information 24 Kasturba
Gandhi
Service
Marg, New De/hi /10001
2. Periodicity of its Publication Monthly 3. Printer's Name Aroon Purie Nationality indian Address Thomson "Press (india) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana 4. Publisher's Name Jay W. Gildner Nationality American Address 5. Editor's Name Nationality Address 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New De/hi 110001 6. Names and addresses of individuals who The Government of the United States of America own the newspaper and partners or shareholders holding more than one percent of the total capital .. I, Ja)/ W. Gildner, hereby declare that the partic'ulars given above are true 10 [he best of my knowledge and belief.
In
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to protect citizens against the po-
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truth that permitted the proscribing of error. Such ideas seem commonplace to educ.ated men and women in the¡ United States today. At the time the Constitution was written, however, they were still comparatively new and
alone on the theory that they could take care of themselves, which, in point of fact, most of them could. At the same time, their reading of history told them that any amount of government could become dangerous to their desires to live as they
be unable to take over and bring the press under control. Actually, the concept that the press should promote "useful" goals would have been repugnant to most of the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution. They were wedded to the philosophy of John Locke which held that truth could be discovered only through the clash of freely expressed, adversary concepts. They were fond of the phrase "the market place of ideas," and thought it should be just as free as the market place of goods. They distrusted . the claims of individuals or Hollywoodsuperstars as investigativereporters: Dustin Hoffman(left) and Robert Redford in "All the President's groups to have a monopoly on ., Men," a movieabouthowtwocourageousnewsmenexposedgovernmentcorruption.
The philosophical reality of the free press in the United States rests upon its role as a part-rather than a cause-of our free society. Free men and women must be able to exchange ideas in order to manage their own affairs. Therefore, restrictions on what they say or how they say it are restrictions on their right to live as they wish to live. Freedom without free speech is inconceivable. This was so perfectly clear to the men who wrote our Constitution that many of them considered .the First Amendmentgenerally cited as the bulwark for free speech and free press -to be superfluous. Most of them voted for it as part of a "package" of amendments designed to ~afeguardindividual freedoms. But a large number were quite open in their belief that the vital part of that package consisted of the provisions
Freedom is inconceivable without free speech. Truth can only be discovered in the market place of ideas, through a clash of freely expressed adversary concepts, says the author, quoting the eminent English philosopher, John Locke.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF A FREE PRESS
lice powers of the state. previous history, it had always Whether they were correct is been assumed that there was a still a question for conjecture. reveClled and knowable truth. The Supreme Court of the Sometimes one "real" truth United States has consistently would battle and conquer or upheld the right of the general displace another, as when overthrew the press to print what it pleases. In Christianity collateral matters, however, such pantheism of the Greeks and the Latins or when Lutheranas the issue of whether journalists can maintain secrecy in respect ism drove much of Roman to their sources, judicial deci- Catholicism from Northern Eusions have been uncertain, and rope. But in every case, each participant was confident that a large part of the legal profession believes that obscenity is not his or her beliefs constituted "truth" in an ultimate sense aQd within the free speechguarantees. Furthermore, there have been that dissent was the equivalent judicial pronouncements in cases of heresy. This was the basis for involving military secrecy which, the strict censorship of whatever eyen though they are not binding press was in existence. People law, indicate that the judges I who know "the truth" are are holding open the possibility! <;>bviouslygoing to refuse perof putting limits on free speech , Imission to print "error." The existence of a knowable under highly special circumstances. American journalists truth was questioned rarely, if are generally convinced that'they have' freedom now but that they must maintain a constant alert lest they lose it. In terms of public sentiment, there is considerable justification for their fears. There are unquestionably many elements in American society that would prefer a "responsible" press or a "constructive" press-meaning newspapers, magazines and telecasts that would seek to promote "socially useful" goals. It is even possible that a majority of the people feel that way. What saves the free press under George E. Reedy, a former press such circumstances is the insecretary to President Lyndon B. ability of a majority to agree Johnson, is now dean of the College consistently on the goals that of Journalism at Marquette University should be pursued. It is unlikely in Wisconsin. He has published a that such a majority can ever number of books. Among them are be formed and as long as the Twilight of the Presidency and The nation is free, the minority will Presidency in Flux.
1
fortunately, qpite articulate) a stranglehold on the truth, wished to live. Therefore, they and people could conduct their and gather whatever clues are did not content themselves with affairs only through the process available on their hopes for the merely restricting the authority of government. They also diof consensus. It is not mere institutions they established. The Founding Fathers who vided governmental powers on coincidence that as their ideas gained acceptance, the desire met in Philadelphia to produce the theory that individual rights for a "free" press in which the Constitution were an unusuhad a reasonably good chance to publishers were accountable ally sophisticated group. They survive as long as there was li).0 monopoly of control. only to their own conscience were neither rude backwoodsbecame translated into active men from the mountains nor The classic division of pow9rs religious zealots battling repres- between the executive, legislative demands for a free press-first in England and France and then sion. Instead, they tended to and judicial branches of ohr in the American colonies where be wealthy, well-bred and well government is set forth in every text on American political ipsuch thoughts found fertile soil educated-successful plantation stitutions. What is not generally in which to grow. explained as thoroughly is t~at It would be childish to claim there were other divisions as that the American people at all The concept that the press well-city governments vers s times and at all places have held should promote "useful" state governments; state go firmly to the free press philos- goals was repugnant to ernments versus the Fede lal pphy. Unpopular ideas have most of the men who wrote establishment; the Senate reevoked reactions in the United the U.S. Constitution. presenting the states and the States fully as savage as in other House of Representatives recountries. Mindless mobs have wrecked radical newspaper of- owners, businessmen or lawyers. flecting concentrations of popufices; some crusading journalists They represented the stable elite lation. These political divisions have been killed; some efforts of American society, and there were bound to be mirrored have been made at high levels were very few, if any, among in social divisions, and' one of of the government (notably them who could be ranked with the earliest was the rise of political factions and parties. through the Alien and Sedition the firebrands who produced Acts of the early 19th century) the perfervid oratory of the This is what produced the press. It is worthwhile at this point to bring public communications revolution. Their objective was under control. However, it has freedom, but they wanted it to . to quote the First Amendment never been possible for those be accompanied by stability" to the American Constitution in its entirety rather than merely who sought summary powers and they had little sympathy over the press to marshal the with the Jeffersonian theory that citing the clause that covers the full force of government at every periodic revolutions were good press. The words of the Amendment are; level in their anti-free-press for a nation. "Congress shall make no crusades. Journalists who have Their concept of government , law respecting the establishof a fought for their freedoms have i was primarily that ment of religion, or prohibiteventually won. ' Ulechanism which protected its ing the free expression thereof; A full understanding of these .citizens from crime; issued or abridging the freedom of freedoms, however, requires a currency; performed such minispeech or of the press; or the full understanding of American mal social services as delivery right of the people peaceably social philosophy, as the two Of the mail; conducted wars, to assemble and to petition cannot be separated. This is when necessary; and handled the Government for a redress highly complex for America whatever relations were necesof grievances." today, and is the result of a sary with other countries. BeTwo points should be made long process of evolution which yond that, they wanted to be left
here about the Amendment. The first is that it protects all the important forms of human expression - r-eligion, speech, press, and petition-because in the Lockean philosophy these were inseparable. Second, no qualifying adjectives were placed in front of the words "speech" or "press." The Founding Fathers were not seeking to protect "responsible" speech (whatever that might be) or "truthful" press. Their goal was to protect all speech and all press on the theory that the audiences for both speech and press could decide for themselves what was "responsible" and what was "true." This determination of theirs is remarkable in view of the fact that no standard of judgment could assess as responsible the press that existed at the time this Amendment was written. The early American press consisted entirely of partisan journals which made no pretense -whatsoever of presenting facts 'On an objective basis. The Federalist press existed to praise its leaders and to denounce the anti -Federalists; the antiFederalist press for directly opposite goals. About the only "news" in any of them consisted of paid advertisements which at least informed the readers of the location of auctions and the arrival from England of luxury goods. It took a half century after the adoption of the Constitution for newspapers to emerge which at least tried to give their audiences a balanced picture of what was happening in th~ world. Even then they
location would merely bob up in another and start publishing again. Out of all this chaos, the free press as an institution became so well established that it was taken for granted. And somewhere in the middle of the 19th century, editors and publishers in America made an important economic discovery. They found that highly ideological newspapers are necessarily restricted in circulation to the small group of partisans who agree with the ideology, and that such small newspapers cannot be profitable. With that discovery came a desire for mass circulation which could not be achieved by superpartisanship. The answer was the production of newspapers that proclaimed the standard of "objectivity" and
A free press will not disappear in a free society. The American society remains free: so do its newspapers.
second thoughts on the subject of freedom. The competing governmental institutions really did compete, and the structure of American society was far too pluralistic to permit a crackdown on anyone sector. The Alien and Sedition Acts contained some real threats to press freedom, but in practice they were a dead letter. No police forces controlled from a central point were available, and editors who were threatened in one
through their appeal to political activists. Size and impact are not necessarily the same thing. The largest scandal in the history of Texas-the manipulation of public lands for the enrichment of the state's land commissioner -was actually exposed by small organs with audiences of a few thousand. Their stories resulted in the overthrow of entrenched powers in the state house and a complete reversal in the course of Texas politics. It should be realized that American social theory does not contemplate a press that is free of all influences. The sole guarantee in the First Amendment to the Constitution is protection against governmental interference. -It is obvious that newspapers are going to be owned either by private individuals or by public institutions. Here, the Founding Fathers expected the public interest to be protected by competition-by the existence of a multiplicity of voices. There was a period in which it appeared that all journalism would be in the hands of a few large chains. The trend toward press monopoly, however, seems to be coming to an end with the invention of more inexpensive forms of printing. Cold type and photooffset have had a greater impact than court decisions upon fostering the competition that is essential to press freedom. In the last analysis, the major strains upon the free press arise from the strains on a free society. There has never been a group of human beings who have tolerated dissenting opinions Indian journalists enjoyed meeting George Reedy, who was in India last December on a lecture tour. The erstwhile press secretary to President Johnson looked professorial, with his glasses and snowwhite hair; but there was nothing pedantic about his speech-irreverent, witty, littered with anecdotes and aphorisms. Reedy visited New Delhi, Madras, Trivandrum,Bombay, Calcutta and Patna. In each city he met leading journalists and representatives of press bodies. Typical subjects he addressed were "The American Presidency and the Press" and "Media and the U.S. Political System."
between the U.S. President and the press is inevitable. In all of American history, only two Presidents have escaped a big fight with the press. One is Gerald Ford, who escaped because he was appointed to the Presidency rather than elected; the other is William Harrison, who escaped for a simple reason-he died after a month in office. Before becoming President, Thomas Jefferson made the immortal statement: "If I had to choose between newspapers without government or government without newspapers, I would unhesitatingly select the former." After becoming President he wrote: "Nothing can be believed that is written in
GEORGE REEDY MEETS THE INDIAN PRESS
The typical investigative report in ar American paper is several thousand words long, yet tightly written. It is thor· oughly documeIlted-packed with facts, sprinkled withquotes~ spliced with statistICs. The sub-
He is glorified as a knight in shining armor and caricatured as a many-horned beast. Found in American newspapers big and small, he is probing and prying everything within sight, exposing government corruption, business scandals, bureaucratic bungling, tax frauds, military waste. He is the American investigative reporter. The investigative reporter has been around in America for more than a century. He was once an underdog, but Watergate made him a hero, and Robert Redford made him a glamor figure as well (by enacting a reporter in his film All the President's Men). The result is that everyone in the U.S. fears and courts the press1 and young men are flocking to journalism colleges in droves.
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ed by The New York Times. In 1976, it delved far deeper than any paper has ever done and went searching for the Loch Ness monster. Some considered it a monstrous idea. Others said it was quite natural: The New York Times is something of a monster itself, with a 600-page daily edition, a staff of several thousands and an annual editorial budget of over $30 million. Sponsoring scientific investigations has been an old New York Times tradition. Between 1923 and 1949, scarcely a year went by when the paper did not offer some firsthand account of man's thrilling air, sea and land conquests. More recently,{ ~
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An Indian journalist who met several investigative reporters in the United States recently describes the way they unearth facts, the techniques they employ, the hurdles they overcome.
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ject of the probe is always asked to give his side of the story and his reaction to the paper's findings: that's part of the report. Before publication, the report is carefully screened by the paper's lawyers. The reporter takes anything between one month and nine months for his story. Often, he undertakes extensive travel to collect data. From his office table he makes hundreds of phone calls to places all over the country. He has three invaluable electronic aids: a xerox copying machine, a camera, and a tape recorder. Sometimes he adopts unconventional methods to unearth facts. He stalks his subject like a policeman. He disguises himself as a mechanic or garbage cleaner or waiter. Never was the reporter as detective more bold, or the newspaper as watchdog more alert-or the writer as muckraker more ruthless. To know more about the practice of investigative reporting in America, and the way it has affected traditional relationships between the press on the one hand and society and government on the other, I interviewed journalists from many American newspapers during a recent visit to the United States. I asked them about the best investigative reports they had written or heard about, the problems overcome during the course of their investigation, and the reactions to the reports. What follows is based mainly on wh(\:tthey told me. The most bizarre investigation of recent times was conduct-
to quote the Times' Assistant Managing Editor Peter Millones, the paper had been looking for a chance to sponsor "an adventure done in good taste." The Loch Ness project was suggested in April 1976, and approved soon after. The Times decided to invest $75,000 in tbe search for the Loch Ness monster and to collaborate with the Bostonbased Academy of Applied Science-whose president, Dr. Robert H. Rines, had been pursuing the monster assiduously for many years. Between 1972 and 1975, Dr. Rines had taken photographs which showed or "could be computer-enhanced to show" a beastly head topped with two hornlike protuberances: apparently the Loch Ness monster. On May 28, 1976, the paper announced that the AcademyTimes Loch Ness expedition.' would soon depart for Drumnadrochit, Scotland, headquarters of what would be "the most thorough and technologically sophisticated hunt ever" for the monster. The paper published a map of the Loch Ness region, a -diagram on "How cameras will be set up at Loch Ness," four photographs, and a long text written by John Noble Wilford, the Times' director of science news. What was the reaction to the sudden Times announcement? A hippo plopping into a bathtub could not have made a bigger
ever optimistic." Wilford returned to the U.S. to cover Viking's landing on Mars. The New York Times hasn't officially abandoned the expedition yet. But on June 19, 1976, it mocked itself a wee bit. A Russell Baker column headed' "All the Ness that's fit to print" -a spoof of Wilford's reportsconcluded with a "sighting" of "Seymour Hersh, the Times' investigative reporter." Unconfirmed reports quote Wilford as saying that when the paper officially stops pursuing Loch Ness; he will headline his story "Loch Ness Monster Escapes."
Papers less unfathomable than The New York Times don't go IO fathoms deep for investigative stories. There's enough scope on Never was the reporter as terra firma. detective more bold, â&#x20AC;˘ In Atlanta, Georgia, excitthe newspaper as watchdog ing capital of America's "new south," I spoke to Bernard more alert, the writer as Smith (fictitious name) of the muckraker more ruthless. Atlanta' Constitution, who specializes in medical exposes. He be put in position. "Who knows, recently did a long story on a top it could happen tonight," said government doctor in Georgia who was a fake-he did not have Rines. It did not happen that night, proper degrees. or on the next, or later, and the One of Smith's contacts tipindefatigable Wilford had to ped him off about the doctor. write more and more about less Like any alert newshound, and less. He did six more stories Smith immediately got on to the in June. The last of it was on doctor's trail. Using telephone June 27-a 20-paragraph report and typewriter-and occasionthat concluded: " ... and so the ally rail and plane-he badgered search for the Loch Ness mon- hospitals and colleges around ster goes on, unflagging and- the country where the doctor
Predictably enough, one of the television networks (NBC) acquired exclusive television rights to whatever the expedition might come up with. On June 6, the Times announced in a 27-paragraph story that "The search for the Loch Ness monster has begun." Wilford wrote that 8,000 color photographs had been taken, and an all-night vigil mounted. "We have maximized our chances of success," said Dr. Rines. Wilford wrote a 19-paragraph story on another page headed "Loch Ness: the logic is there." The next day's story spoke of "hours in wind-tossed boats" before the complex lighting and camera equipment needed to photograph the monster could
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had worked or studied, in an effort to track down his past. The inquiries showed that the doctor did not have a valid medical degree though he had studied in quite a few colleges. Smith accosted the doctor. He emphatically denied that he was a "fake" and tried to intimidate the reporter through his lawyer. But Smith's cast-iron case impressed his paper, and the Atlanta Constitution splashed the story: the lead on page one, followed by three full pages inside. "A storm burst," said Smith. Within a week, the doctor was out of his job. Smith told me about another long story he had done some months ago-on a pathology laboratory that gave customers blood-test reports without even analyzing the blood samples. Told by a friend's friend about the laboratory, Smith interviewed nurses, doctors and chemists in the locality, and met one or . two of the lab's employees; they confirmed its unprofessional practices. The head of the laboratory saw red when Smith met him. "He almost booted me out and threatened to sue." Later, he became conciliatory: He wrote to the Atlanta Constitution inviting the paper to send an expert to investigate his lab. Smith went there unannounced with the expert, who was shocked at what he saw-shoddy equipment, untrained staff, irregular records. The expert pronounced 'the lab-
oratory a hazard to public health. The Atlanta Constitution published Smith's story, and the laboratory closed in two weeks . â&#x20AC;˘ At The Los Angeles Times, one of America's most respected dailies (circulation more than a million), National Editor Edwin Guthman says that investigative reporting is the one area in which a newspaper can score over radio or television. "Think of all the cars with people driving home for 20, 30 or 40 minutes, getting the day's news over their radios on the way home. You have got to have something next morning that they haven't already heard." Los Angeles Times reporters sometimes spend as many as eight or nine months to develop and write stories on official corruption and negligence. The paper's many full-time specialists-on travel, real estate, television, society, architecture and design, environment, education, human behavior, labor, medicine, music, rock music, jazz, science, urban affairs, automobiles, restaurants-also sometimes spend months surveying current trends or developments in their area of specialization. Late in 1975, a team of Los Angeles Times reporters did a graphic story on the crime wave that had engulfed America's Arctic state of Alaska. Early in 1976, the paper examined the question: Does pretrial publicity in a court case prejudice the minds of jurors? The paper's August 15, 1976, survey "Decline in American Education" generated animated debate. The paper's education experts said
Is the American press overdoing investigative journalism? Opinions vary. Many editors are emphatic that a docile, bland press would enable the strong to ride roughshod over the weak, might to prevail over right. The citizen would be crushed by the
by quacks. Visits to two or three of them confirmed the impression. He spent two months interviewing acupunctured patients, medical authorities, and acupuncturists, genuine and fake. The stories he did led to a chain of exposes in other papers. Within a few months, many of the acupuncture clinics just vanished.
Everyone in America fears and courts the press; journalism colleges have never had it so good.
bad for the public or for the company he is working for. He starts me off on a story. Then I build up my case through an accretion of facts, quotes, statistics. I double-check every fact." Satchell fondly recalls one of ¡his first investigative projects. President Richard Nixon's visit to China had triggered an interest in acupuncture. Many acupuncture clinics sprang up everywhere in Washington. Excited by the glamorized press accounts of this Chinese system of "painless cure," people flocked to these clinics. Satchell believed that at least a few of these clinics were run
to old-fashioned reporting. One with a request that they be asreader is quoted as saying: "I'd sessed for their fairness and support a newspaper that print accuracy. ed only the news if I could find Says Edwin Drummond, a one." long-time analyst of American Walter B. Criston, chairman media: "The era of 'reporter of Citicorporation, warns the .power' predicted so confidently press: "History teaches that a few years ago has not real~y when any sector of our society taken root, but something else, grows too powerful, it is only a perhaps more importaht, has matter of time before that power happened: 'audience power' has taken root." is curbed." But newspapers are already * * * becoming increasingly self-critiRight now, the "in" thing in cal. A wave of introspection and the American press is what self-regulation is sweeping the People magazine refers to as press. To illustrate, the Milwau"personality journalism." The kee Journal frequently engages spectacular success of People, in a rare form of self-criticism. with its short personality proA committee appointed by the files, chatty prose and' blackpaper organizes a series of after- and-white photography, has innoon seminars at which the spired a horde of imitators. Even Journal's staff members examine daily newspapers in the U.S. how well they have performed have started spicy personality as consumer affairs writers, mu- columns. The Washington Star sic reviewers and investigative runs a gossipy column called reporters. Then they listen while "Ear," and sends gold-plated a guest critic attempts to dissect ear-shaped pins to everyone the newspaper. mentioned in the column. The Jhe Journal is an exceptional Washington Post's society writpaper. It finds a place in any er Maxine Cheshire is so tartlisting of America's 10 best dailies (a periodic exercise with several journalism institutions). Many Americans feel they The controlling shares of the can do without exposes and Journal and other properties in-depth analyses. They of the company are owned by would prefer a return the employees themselves. They to old-fashioned reporting. therefore have a continuing interest in the kind of professional job the paper is doing. tongued that a baby shark has But the Journal is not alone been named after her. in its concern for systematic Some 22,000 magazines flourself-criticism and better com- ish in the U.S., of which over 50 munication with readers. Many enjoy circulations above a milnewspapers and news organizalion. There are specialized magations have developed mecha- zines on subjects ranging from nisms to ensure this, and the art to aeronautics, from yoga to ,
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The pre-eminent medium of information in America is not the press-despite the dailies of awesome size and the magazines of endless variety-but television. Some 96 per cent of American homes have television sets, and in each home TV is viewed on the average at least six hours a day. Some 110 million people are estimated to have watched a broadcast of Gone With the Wind by the NBC network in November 1976. A single minute's advertisement during the movie cost up to $260,000. The three big television networks, CBS, ABC and NBC, together earned an estimated $224 million in after-tax profits in 1976. Little wonder that the foremost American television personalities enjoy six-digit salaries and a celebrity status that movie stars and political leaders might well envy. Barbara Walters' debut as ABC's "anchorperson" (news compere) was the showbiz event of 1976. The avuncular Walter Cronkite ("the most trusted man in America") is an institution by himself. His latest
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adays quite a few stories, particularly those written by senior foreign correspondents, are printed with the minimum of change, Duncan adds. Every September, a few handpicked writers are quietly taken off their desks at Time, and assigned to a special project, the Man of the Year. It is the magazine's best kept secret: only a few top editors know who the Man of the Year is, apart from the writers and researchers working on the story.
that the reading, wntmg and arithmetical skills of American school and college students were declining. They attributed the decline to "the shift in social and educational values during the 1960s" when schools and colleges cut the number of basic academic classes, weakened graduation requirements and strengthened the emphasis on vocational education. Other factors cited were "the subversive influence" of television on youngsters' study habits, and the rise in the number of working mothers. The paper deplored the lack of government-sponsored research into the decline in education. eAt The Washington Star, I spoke to young, bearded, sharpeyed Michael Satchell. He operates on the belief that "In every office there is a disgruntled man. This is not likely to be the top boss but someone under him. He knows what's going on that is
weight of organized sectorsgovernment, business, labor, crime-all of which would heap abuses on him. But some editors caution restraint on the press. Martin Hayden, editor of the Detroit News, derides pressmen for two false premises-that investigative reporting is "the begin-all and the end-all of newspapering"; and that the press ought to cast itself grandly in an adversary role against government and the establishment on every issue. Recently Wal Gallagher of the Associated Press said: "Too many readers are beginning to look upon the press as a multivoiced shrew, nitpicking through the debris of government decisions for scandals but not solutions .... Readers and viewers are being turned off." Polls and surveys bear out this assessment. Many Americans feel they can do without exposes and far-reaching analyses: they would prefer a return
wine tasting, from baseball to' trend is referred to as "accountability." Some examples of this zoology, and hundreds of scientific and scholarly publications. trend: e The St. Louis Post Despatch People despair of coping with in midwest Missouri has a "read- this flood of information. Some er's advocate," William Bran- of them ignore daily newspapers and television, and rely exclusted. He receives complaints, comments and questions from sivelyon Time or Newsweek to the public, replies to them in the understand what's happening. paper, and also sends memo- These two magazines sort out randa to the staff suggesting all the news, jazz it up, and corrective action in the light of package it in a form attractive reader response. Similar public and assimilable. They are a advocates operate at the Min- weekly inoculation against inneapolis Star, the St. Petersburg formation overload. Time's offices in New York Times (Florida), and other are as sleek, gleaming and highly papers. organized as the magazine itself . â&#x20AC;˘ The Washington Post has Deputy Chief Correspondent an ombudsman, an in-house Richard L. Duncan, who took critic. The paper's present omme round the magazine, said budsman, Charles B. Seib, has proved to, be a tough critic of that Time's writers are mostly carelessness, incompetence and men, its researchers mostly editorial bias in tp.e press. His women. The writers and recomments on the Post's perfor- searchers have a close working mance are sometimes scathing, relationship. "Yesterday, one of but are printed-even if the our writers secretly married one paper's editors disagree vehe- of our researchers. We celebratmently with his views. Seib also ed the event today, one reason . monitors reader reaction on all why so few people are at their '" matters concerning the paper's desks. " fairness, accuracy and profesTime storie.s are assembly sional performance. The Louis- jobs: inputs from reporters and ville Times and the Courier Jour~ researchers are put together by nal are other papers with an writers, edited or rewritten by ombudsman; the Chicago Sun- senior editors. Isn't writing for Time a heart-breaking experiTimes has a Bureau of Fairness and Accuracy doing the same ence? With so much of rewriting, job. Many papers actively soli- how much of the original writcit articles from writers and er's stuff gets into print? "Well, thinkers whose views differ from we are constantly injuring egos," their own. These opinions are says Duncan. "But every writer realizes that the final product, published in the "op-ed" page. â&#x20AC;˘ The Decatur (Illinois) the cooperative effort of many Herald and Review picks up brains and talents, is superior some 20 items from an edition at to the work of a single person." random, and sends them to peo- He adds: "We never rewrite ple mentioned in the stories, for the sake of rewriting." Now"If there is an institution in our country with power that approaches unlimited power, that institution is the news media," said an official of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation recently. But American media men have acquired this power the hard way-by their boldness, their unflagging energy in pursuing stories, their craftsmanship, and their dedication to one commandment which they respect more than any other: "Thou shalt not be dull." D
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achievement is his role as electronic matchmaker in Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's history-making visit to Israel. How is the quality of American television programs? During my first week in the U.S. I was quite overwhelmed by the visual splendor of color television, the "Yit, panache, imagination and professionalism behind many TV programs, the insouciance and flair of TV's comperes. But there can be too much of a good thing. TV is on the air 18 to 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No medium of information or entertainment can sustain interest or quality when purveyed in such massive doses. But Americans expect television to do just that: consequently, TV people are under fire all the time-for purveying sex and crime, for poisoning the art of conversation, for debasing the English language. The solution seemed simple to me: cut TV time in half and exercise quality control. But that's perhaps easier said than done with a multibillion-dollar industry.
Top: Little boy talks to friendly policeman: a 1957 Pulitzer Prize winner for photojournalism. Center row, left: American Ambassador George Bush and aides ponder a problem at the United Nations: a 1972 Pictures-of-the- Year award winner. Center row, right: American prisoner-of-war returns from Vietnam: a 1974 Pulitzer Prize winner for news features. Left: Coolies in China pull a boat upstream. Picture by Dmitri Kessel, used in ,the "Family of Man" exhibition. Above: Priest aids wounded soldier during a two-day revolt in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela: a 1962 Pulitzer Prize winner for news photography.
Right: The moment of truth. This 1968 picture by Lucien Clergue was used in the exhibition" Man in Sport." Far right: A jammed hillside in Rio de Janeiro. Below: Birth of a new life.
It seems to be almost a daily experience these days for Americans to pick up the morning paper or turn on the evening television news and find another broken secret bannered as the lead story. In December 1975 readers and viewers suddenly learned that the U.S. Govern~ ment had secretly been giving aid to one faction in the Angolan civil war-and a country that many citizens had scarcely heard of was, overnight, the subject of many headlines, a cover story in Newsweek magazine and fierce Congressional debate. Similarly, one Sunday morning in January 1976, the readers of the Jfashington Post found, spread across all eight columns at the top of page one, the disclosure of confidential bank examiners' reports that said that two of America's top banks had been placed on a "problem" list because large percentages of their loans were considered to involve some risk. Each of these revelations brought strong reactions-from the Ford Administration about
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Angola and from the financial community about the banks. In both cases, the facts were not denied. But the implication that something was wrong was challenged -and the press was denounced for reckless, irresponsible coverage that undermined important national intereststhe conduct offoreign policy and the maintenance of a strong economy. These episodes, along with all the other arguments over secrecy that have enlivened U.S. news recently, have given new force to an image of the U.S. press that I find very troubling. It might be called the devil theory of press enterprise. It holds that the press is at once breathtakingly reckless and painstakingly deliberate in its conspiracy to expose everything, bring people and institutions down and destroy confidence in all that is valuable and¡ even sacred in American public life. Of course, there are a few who take an opposite view. They see the U.S. press as fearless, tireless and incorruptible, devot-
The publisher o~the '~ashin~ton Post' analyzes.a controversial subject: ~oes publicatio? of ?fficia~ secrets undermme natIOnal mterests, or does It promote healthy public debate on vital Issues.
OFFICIAL SECRETS?
Left: With this cover, "Newsweek" magazine hailed the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in l~J that "The New York Times" could not be prohibited from publishing the Pentagon Papers.
ed to uncovering evil and pursuing truth. That is the image that has drawn young people in record numbers to journalism schools. It is more flattering than the other view-but equally unreal. The real world in which editors work is neither evil nor heroic. It is the same environment of conflict, ambiguity and hard choices that mark most enterprises today. In that real world, press responsibilities are not often' as obvious as one might think. One question posed by critics of the press and also by many journalists, is: What are the responsibilities of t!:lepress for the consequences of what it prints?How much should the press be concerned about the accuracy and fairness of its treatment of sensitive material, and above all about the possibly disruptive and demoralizing results of disclosing secrets? A second question is whether the current way of dealing with these conflicts is so unreliable that a better system should be
SHOULD THE PRESS PUBLISH
devised to reconcile the interests and values that collide, and to discipline the press or push it to discipline itself. These are not new questions. They have been debated repeatedly during the last 10 years or so, ever since many peoplecitizens and journalists alikebegan to realize that they had been reposing too much blind confidence in those entrusted with great power. During that time, Americans have learned' much more about official misjudgments and misdeeds. They' have learned how secrecy could be exploited, how the mediaespecially the growing force of television-could be manipulated, and how untruths and halftruths could be employed to mislead public opinion. All this eroded public trust. As a result, standards have changed. Americans now demand much more of institutions and tolerate much less. The pressures for disclosure and accountability have grown intense. All this is healthy. Yet, some believe the pendulum has swung too far, so that secrecy and confidentiality have become suspect, and many have lost sight of the very real values that they serve. The major arguments for some degree of secrecy in government, especially national security affairs, are these: â&#x20AC;˘ It is argued that some information must be kept secret because its publication would expose individuals to danger or gravely weaken the nation's defenses. This category includes detailed military plans, codes, code breaking techniques, the
memos are published, officials will become intimidated and the memos will get very bland. â&#x20AC;˘ It is argued with increasing heat that the press handles sensitive matters irresponsibly by overplaying stories based on leaks and creating the false impression that everything secret is sensational or scandalous. eThe claim is made that these considerations of danger¡ and diplomacy and deliberation are so sensitive that only those in government can make rational decisions about what should be disclosed. According to this line of argument, the press and such situations? Should it take public do not know the real con- the material uncritically, withtext of secret information and out checking or amplifying it, would not understand or accept and present it to the reader as the subtleties if they were told. plain fact? Or should a reporter In other words, if people want try to get further classified mathe government to function ca- terial, corroborative or contrapably, and to serve their interests dictory as the case may be~to put as citizens, they will just have to the leak in context? Finally, should the press agree not to trust it in some respects. Most of these are substantial identify the source of the leak, arguments, and editors do con- as the price for getting the inforsider them seriously in deciding mation -or should it try to tell what to do with the secret ma- the reader who is leaking what? terials that come into their ' Various news organizations hands. Their judgments are not deal with these perplexities in made lightly or with excessive different ways. At the Washingconfidence. Moreover, editors ton Post, editors once went so are constantly aware of-and far as to try to live by the unique worry a great deal about-the $tandard of refusing to accept impact of what they publish material from government offiand how it's played. In other cials who would not permit their words, we do try to act responidentity to be revealed. The Post sibly. Yet, a key element in our did succeed in pushing officials concept of responsibility is that to put more things on the record we should not leave these judgthat should never have been ments wholly to the government. secret anyway. But the newsSecrecy is simply too indiscrimipaper also discovered that in the nate and too easily abused. curious interplay of institutions To start with, the penchant in.Washington, it was simply not for classifying documents has possible to publish an informaleading banks. We did so only after discussing the question for some time. We argued over the play the story should receive. We talked to our lawyers about the relevant laws. We decided to print. The results, I think, have been healthy debate and greater public understanding of some aspects of the world of finance. Those in the know have been pushed to explain 'their policies, and the public has learned much more about some important matters-such as some banks' heavy involvement with foreign investments. But this does not mean that henceforth we will print every detail we learn about any company. Here, too, the competing interests have to be weighed case by case, and so here, too, a heavy burden is put on human judgment.
Above, left: A ''Time'' cover story on the Pentagon Papers controversy. Right: Many official secrets wel'e exposed by Jack Anderson, the enterprising columnist. .
one way: in favor of greater official control over the content and even the topics of public debate. And it could make the press more like a bulletin board for official pronouncements, rather than an energetic, independent force. It is true that America's independence involves uncertainty and ambiguity and mistakes. This costs the United States something, both in terms of press freedom when editors voluntarily agree to restraints, and in terms of genuine security or confidentiality interests on occasion when what is printed does compromise a government plan. But those are costs-or risks-that a free society must sustain. And they are nothing compared with the price citizens would pay if laws or absolutes were imposed as a quick fix for the tensions of a complex, modern state. That price would be a lifeless and locked-in society, one that is captive of its own desire to put hard questions on "automatic" control and avoid accepting responsibility for the daily conflicts and . choices that a healthy democracy entails. Citizens cannot . afford that; they can't afford the risks of a risk-free society. So I come back to the need for responsibility and judgm~nt, and tolerance of tension in those areas where the genuinely tough problems cannot be resolved. , That is what the whole American experiment involves. The U.S. system depends on the free flow of information and ideas and on respect for certain basic rights; but it also relies on faith,
"If The New York Times knows everything, itfollows that The New York Times should be President."
names of agents and a great gone beyond all reasonable bounds. Secrecy stamps have more confidential information. e It is argued that many other been put on newspaper clipoperations, especially in the pings, not to mention material diplomatic realm, are acutely that has appeared in books and sensitive and benefit from se- in speeches by public officials. Thus, security stamps begin as crecy. Governments need room to maneuver and negotiate with- something less than sacred. Second, government officials out being forced at every step to habitually leak classified materijustify or even publicly acknowlals to serve a variety of purposes edge what they are doing. eIt is argued that within the -to send a signal overseas, to government, confidentiality in a test Congressional reaction to a policy, to shoot down an oppobroader sense serves the national interest by promoting candid , nent or undermine a competing internal debate and sound agency. policy making. If everyone's What should the press do in
tive paper without accepting This might suggest how risky the quite extraordinary faith some items without attribution. and haphazard and unreliable that ordinary people can act In short, the press often finds the present system is, since it responsibly and bear the. strains that its obligation to treat sen- depends so heavily on the wis- of freedom and complexity. That sitive information fairly and ac- dom of people, who, after all, system has no guarantees and curately requires it to try to are fallible. And that concern many elements of hazard. But it publish more, not less, and to ' has intensified the search for a . has proved to be extremely duprobe further in order to estab- . better system of checks and rable and has provided a greater lish the context and impor- controls-some kind of law or measure of freedom for more tance of what a reporter has been arbiter that might be more cer- people, over time, than any told. And given the propensity tain and consistent than human other yet devised .. of officials to misuse secrecy, the judgment in these affairs. So instead of seeking flat and press believes it would be the In Washington, there is grow- absolute answers to the kinds of height of irresponsibility to back ing pressure, from the intelli- problems discussed here, what off whenever the flag of secrecy gence community and elsewhere, people should be trying to foster is raised. for some kind of official secrets is respect for one another's good In short, we editors do have a act to prevent the press from faith, knowledge of one another's predilection to publish; that is, publishing secrets if the govern- conception of where duty lies after all, our business. But we ment objects-or for a law im- and understanding of the real do recognize other obligations, posing heavy penalties on those worlds in which people try to do too. We do not fancy ourselves who leak sensitive material to their best. And Americans should to be official spokesmen or the press. In my view, these be hoping for the energy and promotional tools of govern- approaches have many defects sense to keep on arguing and ment. But neither do we see our- and few benefits. For one thing, questioning, because there is no selves as reckless codebreakers no law would stop those who act better sign that U.S. society is and spoilers whose citizenship irresponsibly now; it could in- still healthy and strong. 0 stops at the newsroom door. stead turn mischief makers into One of the perils of excessive martyrs, at least in some people's secrecy is that it can lull the eyes. That is hardly desirable. public into optimism that is unSecond, the controls being warranted. The real erosion of discussed would hobble the reconfidence comes when a mtljor sponsible press by inhibiting its breakdown catches the public efforts to give context and perby surprise, and it turns out that spective to the news it prints. warning signals have been blilikThird, any such law is bound ing for some time but were to be applied selectively and suppressed by good manners, arbitrarily because of two unhabits of discretion and hopes avoidable areas of discretion: that the problem could be con- first, who decides what is secret, tained. Without sufficient infor- and second, who decides whethmation, the public cannot evalu- er to prosecute when something ate the workings of the system has been leaked. and the wisdom of the insiders To give the government sole who enjoy so much public trust. authority in these matters would Katharine Graham is the publisher of Such considerations lay be- be dangerous to democracy. It the Washington Post newspaper and hind the Post's decision to pub- would virtually insure that most Newsweek magazine. This article is !ish reports on the shaky finan- of the conflicts between secrecy adapted from a speech by Mrs. Gracial status of two of the country's and openness would be resolved ham to the Economic Club of Chicago.
~NDING ACÂĽIACE
INTHE~UN Once known as the poorhouse of the Caribbean, Puerto Rico has made great economic strides during the last three decades. The island has added a dynamic industrial sector to its traditional agricultural economy, and has also developed a tourist trade that rivals Hawaii's. Luis Munoz Marin, the former governor of Puerto Rico, once remarked: "There is an old saying here that a man must do three things in life-plant trees, write books and have sons. I wish they would plant more trees and write more books." Munoz, the dominant figure in recent Puerto Rican history, was echoing the feelings of many leaders of the developing world. Puerto Rico is a small, densely crowded island in the Caribbean Sea, virtually bereft of natural resources, short of arable land and dependent for its livelihood on trade with the outside world. It must import 50 per cent of its food and all of its oil, virtually the only source of energy on the island. Three million people are jammed into no more than 8,930 square kilometers, much of it ruggedly mountainous. The population density of 330 per square kilometer is one of the highest in the world. A typical-and possibly hopeless-case of underdevelopment? At first glance, it would seem so. And yet, the facts show otherwise. In the past three decades Puerto Rico has developed a thriving economy, with a dynamic industrial sector. Its per capita income has exceeded $2,000 a year, the highest in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its gross product has passed $7,000 million a year, with annual exports of $3,400 million. Since 1940, the island has made a remarkable transition from a traditional, rural, agricultural society to a modern, urban, industrial society heavily involved in commerce and financial transactions with the developed world. More than 2,700 manufacturing plants have been established on the island, ranging from small electronic companies engaged in light assembly work to giant refining and petrochemical complexes. Agriculture hasn't disappeared; the alluvial coastal plains and highland valleys still produce sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, pineapples, fruit and dairy cattle. The relative importance of farming has declined, however. In 1950, 36 per cent of the work force was engaged in agriculture. Today, only 7 per cent is. Along with industry, Puerto Rico has developed a tourist trade that compares favorably with Hawaii's and Mexico's. In 1974,nearly 1.5 million persons visited the island and spent $360 million in the beachfront hotels, casinos, restaurants and shops of the island's capital, San Juan, and other tourist centers. And small wonder-Puerto Rico offers broad white beaches, clear waters, verdant mountains, and a warm tropical climate
tempered by soft Caribbean trade winds. One long-ago visitor, the French poet Theophile Gautier, marveling at the island's charm, called it La Perla de los Mares, "the pearl of the seas." But Puerto Rico doesn't owe its prosperity to its exquisite landscape, much as that helps promote tourism. Rather, the economic miracle that is modern Puerto Rico is attributable to the vision of its leaders who, over the past quarter of a century, forged a unique political relationship with the United States. Since 1952, Puerto Rico has been a self-governing "Commonwealth," or-in the translation of its official Spanish title-a "Free Associated State," linked tightly to the United States. Under the Commonwealth, Puerto Ricans share with the United States a common citizenship, defense, currency, immigration and postal system, and have free acCess to' the U.S. market. Internally, the island is largely self-governing, with an elected governor and insular legislature and court system. Commonwealth is an unusual, and to some people nearly unfathomable, relationship between the world's mightiest economic and military power, and a tiny, vulnerable island at the eastern end of the chain of islands known as the Greater Antilles. Unlike some of its Caribbean neighbors, Puerto Rico is not an independent country. Unlike others, it is not a colony of a distant metropolitan country. It is, by the choice of its people-restated in numerous plebiscites and elections-something in between. Unlike other U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans do not vote in U.S. presidential elections. They do send a representative to the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress. He can vote in committees and may propose legislation, but cannot vote for legislation on the floor of the House. On the other hand, in keeping with the dictum of the American Revolution, "no taxation without representation," Puerto Ricans do not pay any U.S. income tax, and any excise taxes collected in the U.S. on Puerto Rican products are returned to the Puerto Rican treasury. Not all Puerto Ricans are happy with the present relationship. A sizable number would like Puerto Rico to become a fully federated state of the United States, like New York or California. Right: More than 88,000 students attend schools and colleges in Puerto Rico. One-third of the island's budget goes to education, and literacy has risen to over 90 per cent in receY(t years.
A much smaller number want total independence. In a 1967 plebiscite on status, 60 per cent of the electorate supported commonwealth, 39 per cent voted in favor of statehood and less than one per cent declared for independence. More recently, in the 1976 islandwide elections, Carlos Romero Barcelo, a prostatehood candidate, was elected governor.
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The Puerto Rican people themselves created the Puerto Rico of today-the urban industrial economy, with its high standard of living, as well as the Commonwealth status that some find ambiguous and self-contradictory. Some years ago, when Luis Munoz Marin was governor of Puerto Rico, he tried to explain to a visiting British correspondent the subtleties of Puerto Rico's being both self-governing and a part of the United States. The baffled Englishman asked: "But governor, when do you think Puerto Rico will become economically free of the United States?" Back came Munoz' unhesitating reply: "About the same time that England is." Puerto Ricans long ago became accustomed to ambiguity. It is a common thread running through Puerto Rico's rich history. Even the name Puerto Rico grew out of a mistake by early chart makers. Christopher Columbus discovered the island on his second voyage to the New World and called it La Isla de San Juan Bautista, the Island of Saint John the Baptist. The present capital, San Juan, founded a few decades later, originally was called Puerto Rico, or Rich Port. An ancient map reversed the two titles, and the island became, for all time, the Rich Port, while the city became San Juan. There were in those early days, two Puerto Ricos-San Juan was one and the interior was another. The Spanish were attracted to the island initially by outlandish tales of huge gold deposits. The stories proved to be exaggerated, but the Spaniards stayed on to fortify San Juan, which, with its magnificent harbor, commanded the sea lanes leading to Colombia and Panama. San Juan was governed, as were all important Spanish possessions, directly by the Crown and its representatives. Trade was permitted only with the mother country. Except for San Juan, the island was largely ignored. The rugged and mountainous interior developed a life of its own. Puerto Rico was a relatively docile colony of Spain through nearly four centuries of colonial rule. As one of the results of the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded the island to the United States in 1898, and in 1917 Puerto Ricans became American citizens. The next two decades were dark ones for Puerto Rico, as hurricanes swept the island, devastating its agriculture, and a worldwide depression caused economic havoc. During the 1930s, the island became known as the "Poorhouse of the Caribbean." Puerto Ricans seemed to have lost hope and ceased to believe In the early 1940s a small group of Puerto Rican leaders, in their own capacities. The mood of the times was set in the headed by Luis Munoz Marin, son of the great Puerto Rican popular ballad, Lamento Borincano, written by Puerto Rico's patriot Luis Munoz Rivera, began to map a way out of the beloved composer Rafael Hernandez: quagmire into which the island had fallen. In his youth, Munoz had been an earnest advocate of Puerto Rican independence, but Que sera de Borinquen, mi Dios querido? in the mid-1930s, disillusioned with the endless and nonproducQue sera de mis hijos y de mi hogar? tive debate over independence versus statehood, Munoz formed his own political organization, the Popular Democratic Party. What will become of Puerto Rico, dear God? Status, Munoz concluded, was a secondary issue that diverted What will become of my children and my home? attention from Puerto Rico's real problem: poverty. For Puerto Rico's poor masses, the real issue was "bread, land and liberty." Munoz brought hope, but he also brought a pragmatic Carrying this message to the people, Munoz and the Popular plan for the economic and social development of the stricken Democrats won the 1940legislative elections by a narrow margin. land. Puerto Rico has one overlooked resource, he argued: By any account, Munoz, now 80 and still politically active, its people. The people had to be put to work. He began by is a towering figure in Puerto Rican history, a greater leader, developing a system under which the government built factoriesperhaps than his famous father. He came onto the scene when a cement plant, a cardboard-box plant, a bottle-manufacturing
Above: New graduates of the University of Puerto Rico congratulate one another. Top: El Morro, a historic fortress that draws many tourists, dominates the western end of a peninsula that forms San Juan's harbor on the island's northern coast. Top right: In the last decade, San Juan's skyline has changed from a low profile to one of highrise hotel and office buildings. Right: Technicians assemble parts in a camera factory. Far right: Workers prepare a shipment of Bacardi rum, one of Puerto Rico's chief exports.
plant, a shoe factory. When these failed to provide enough jobs, Munoz sold them off and turned to a new strategy called Operation Bootstrap, a program by which Puerto Rico could pull itself up economically, by its own bootstraps. Puerto Rico offered tax exemptions and government-built plants to lure outside investors. The lure proved attractive, and by the end of the 1940s, new factories began production. Between 1940 and 1950, the island's per capita income more than doubledfrom $121 a year to $297. Between 1950 and 1960, income doubled again, to $587 a year. By 1970, it reached $1,400 and in 1975 it topped $2,000.
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Over the centuries, Puerto Ricans have developed a unique culture and a great love for their island. Partisans of each of the three major status alternatives insist that their solution can best preserve and defend what is unique and valuable in the culture of the island. It is almost axiomatic that a Puerto Rican, whatever his political persuasion, is a cultural nationalist, proud of his island's long history and rich art, music and literature. Outsiders frequently assume that three-quarters of a century of association with the United States has changed the Puerto Rican character, that the island and its people have become "Americanized." .A U.S. Congressman asked at hearings in 1952on the proposed Commonwealth status whether the majority of Puerto Ricans still spoke Spanish. The answer was and is that Puerto Ricans still speak Spanish, as they always have, although today nearly half the population can make itself understood in English. The Spanish language and a deep feeling for the Puerto Rican heritage persist even among second- and thirdgeneration Puerto Ricans who live in the mainland United States. The urban industrial transformation has made other inroads on traditional Puerto Rican culture, however. The sprawling middle-class urbanizaciones (housing developments) that surround San Juan resemble the suburbs of many large industrial cities around the world. There are neatly trimmed lawns, a surfeit of automobiles, television sets and electric appliances. There are also massive traffic jams, air pollution, crime and drug addiction, as in most of the world's major cities. Yet beneath the surface, an older Puerto Rico persists. Soul music and rock and roll share the airwaves with traditional plenas and bombas (rhythms). The Pablo Casals Festival has brought Bach and Beethoven to Puerto Rico, but the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra rarely fails to include a danza, indigenous work by Juan Morel Campos or Manuel Tavarez, in its programs. Puerto Ricans celebrate Christmas American-style, right down to the fir tree, but they also retain from their Spanish heritage the observation of Three Kings Day (The Magi) on January 6, when thousands of Puerto Rican children put out a bit of hay for the "kings' camels." Wherever Puerto Rican athletic teams compete around the world, La Borinquefia, the Puerto Rican national anthem, is played. In sum, Puerto Ricans are ardent patriots passionately cOl1cernedwith the future of their island. And, not surprisingly, as one writer has noted, "talk of political status is an obsession in Puerto Rico." It will continue to be, without doubt, for the foreseeable future. But whatever the island's ultimate status, the choice will be that of the Puerto Ricans themselves. D About the Author: Richard Schroeder has lived and worked in Puerto Rico, and specializes in Latin American and Caribbean affairs. He is the author of The Politics of Drugs and coauthor of Dateline Latin America.
Right: Steel band drums-the heart of Puerto Rico's distinctive music-enliven the islancfs many festivals. Below: Tourists relax in the outdoor cafe of a hotel in San Juan. Bottom: Young children take a stroll in Old San Juan, whose picturesque buildings (opposite pageJar right) are a major tourist attraction. Bottom right: Workers at an oil company plant pose for a photograph on their pay day.
IIII1rl.ICII The dream merchants of America-those fantastic men with their moviemaking machines-have made the '70s a decade of exciting celluloid fantasies. They have produced a new breed of nothing-is-impossible artists-special effects men who have taken photographic tricks and cinematic technology to mind-boggling heights. Science fiction was never more imaginative and futuristic, disasters so graphically catastrophic, or humans-and beasts, ants and robots too-such amazing superbeings, or filmmaking so ingenious a craft.
Mechanical miracles span the years between the 1930s' King Kong and the 1976 version (right). King Kong was played alternately by a masked actor and a 12-meter, 3-metric-ton aluminum skeleton covered with 455 kilograms of hair and composed of930 meters of hydraulic hose and 1,350 meters of electric wiring, operated by 20 men. For closeups of him fondling Dawn, the object of his affections (far right), hydraulically operated hands were constructed, measuring 1.8 meters across, each arm weighing 742 kilograms. Right: Though not a movie shot, this surrealistic scene-staged by just nine persons-illustrates the results of gimmicky lighting. Photographer Gary Aro Ruble created and exposed on the same piece of film each scene, using electronic flash equipment. Men with lights walked along paths marked by laser beams. Ruble calls the result a "power flick." Using macrophotography to enlarge ants into giant villains, Empire of the Ants (center) shows a man being attacked by an ant that has become larger and more vicious than a tiger after feeding on atomic waste. Far right: A set for The Towering Inferno shows people trapped in an elevator of aflaming 138-story building.
oday's "stars of the silver screen" often are things rather than people, the creatures and creations of Hollywood's special effects men. Movie houses are packing in audiences with promises of interstellar wars, flaming skyscrapers, and an endless parade of monsters. A space extravaganza called Star Wars is certain to become one of America's alltime top moneymakers. The film, set "long ago in a galaxy far away," abounds with interplanetary travel, walking and talking robots, laser gunfights, and every form of manmade monster and' mutation imaginable. Among the special effects achievements
Opposite page, top: An encounter with Box, the glittering half-machine, half-man attraction of Logan's Run. The robot was sent through his paces in the film by remote control.
is the spectacular lO-minute battle sequence CItIes appear to be destroyed by fire, that climaxes Star Wars. A camera that earthquake, or the trampling of a savage beast. could move in several planes at once-up and down, forward and diagonally-was An assortment of mechanical marvels linked to a computer that memorized every also is featured, courtesy of the wizards shot. As many as 12 pieces of film were who build and operate them. Many a superimposed to create breathtaking scenes .menace, from mythical monsters to sharks of spaceships swooping around each other to robots, is maneuvered by intricate hyand firing laser blasts, against a moving draulic or electrical systems or by radio background of stars. waves. Complicated photographic techniques are And thL audience loves every frightening just one of the tools of the special effects bit of it. Science fiction, disaster films, expert. Another is the miniature, a scale animal adv ltures-all gloriously exaggermodel filmed in "macrophotography" to ¡ated: these are the open-sesame to movie look like the real thing. Buildings and whole popularity. 0
Opposite page, bottom: Panic-stricken survivors flee the burning wreckage of The Hindenburg in the film version of the 1937 disaster in which the dirigible exploded while landing.
Above left: A sensational moneyspinner of 1977 was Star Wars, a science fiction film. Its two witty robots, Artoo Detoo (left) and See-Threepio, have been called "today's hottest movie stars."
Above: A scene of catastrophe from Earthquake, afilm which-in its content and success-was typical of the wave of disaster movies that swept across Hollywood in the 1970s.
RECONSI DERATIONS
ACK ON The man who invented himself The life and works of Jack London, one of the most widely read American writers all over the world, mark him as a rebel even today, a century after his birth. His writings were often autobiographical, reflecting his early struggles and his spirit of restless adventure. The ardor of his radical socialism was often at odds with his stress on man's animal nature. The myth of Jack London, a creation of these writings, was only slightly more colorful than the man himself.
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ack London carved himself a special niche in the annals of American literature. Born in poverty in 1876, he spent his boyhood suffering the rejection of an unloving mother and much of his young manhood as a careless delinquent, a waterfront roisterer, and a road bum, quite as mindless of his own self-destruction as any mod~rn youth who wastes himself with drugs and hitchhikes the interstate highways from nowhere to nowhere else. London pulled himself out of poverty and psychic and physical ruin by writing, and by the time of his death in 1916was the highest-paid writer of his time. He also was the best-known American writer of his time, for he was, by his own creation, a public figure, a man who put more of his genius into his life than into his work, even though his output as a writer was prodigious. He constructed a myth of himself as a hero battling against the elements, against drink and death, a frail superman always locked in a struggle for survival and success. He was the prototype of the writer who tries to live out his words to the full-but cannot, except in his writing. His politics were as radical as those of Upton Sinclair; his contempt for the
gaseous certitudes of middle-class life as scathing as that of Sinclair Lewis; his flouting of convention in his personal life as startling as that of F. Scott Fitzgerald; his dedication to the masculine ethos as profound as that of Ernest Hemingway; and his instinct for the public eye as shrewd as that of Norman Mailer. He preceded and presaged them all, for in the process of inventing himself, Jack London invented the idea of the American writer as personality quite as much as artist. The materials out of which Jack London constructed his life were rich-if largely tormenting. He was born out of wedlock in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. His dwarfish, spiritualist mother tried to kill herself when his vagrant, astrologer father deserted her. After Jack's birth, she married a Civil War veteran and widower, John London, so that her child could bear his name. The little boy was brought up with his two stepsisters like a . tumbleweed, moving across the Bay to a succession of frame houses in the poor parts of the new town of Oakland. His mother never touched him with love, and terrified him, yelping at her seances with the voice of an American Indian medium called Plume.
John London moved the family out to small farms off the Bay and then into the dry valleys of northern California, but his wife's schemes for getting rich quickly ruined his agricultural ventures. The boy began to have the nightmares that disturbed his short sleep all his life, as well as the dreams of escaping his pinchpenny world for one of glittering and lavish fantasy. Thrown back into the slums of Oakland, Jack became a delinquent, a rebel without a cause. He wanted to leave his loveless mother, and he bought a skiff to sail the Bay toward the Golden Gate, challenging the rollers made by the side-wheel steamers, beating against the wind to Goat Island, yearning after the clippers that tacked toward the west and the other side of the world. The moment he could leave school, he joined the waterfront gangs, becoming an oyster pirate, a young drunk and a road kid, riding the freights up to the Sierra mountains. He seemed reckless of his life, wasteful of his strong body, his small hands battered from fights. He might have died young like most of the other victims of the raw port of Oakland, if he had not been bookish and determined. He had always loved reading-his mother had slipped down the social scale from an educated family. To him, the shortest ways out of the slums were the pages of the novelist Washington Irving or the historian Prescott. He also had the gift of organizing himself-so much time for earning money, so much time for reading, so much time for play. He knew that there must be a better world for him than the dockside saloons or the scrounging gentility of his mother's pretensions. His occasional months of dulling toil in a cannery or a jute factory gave him the resolve never to become an industrial slave. So, in 1893, at the age of 17, Jack signed on as a sailor on a three-masted schooner, bound for the Bering Sea on a sealing expedition. He learned his new life quickly, even taking the wheel in a storm on one occasion. It was his first moment of mastery, of power and conquest. "In my grasp the wildly careering schooner and the lives of 22 men," he wrote many years later. "With my own hands I had done my trick at the wheel and guided a hundred tons of wood and iron through a few million tons of wind and waves.... When I have done some such thing, I am exalted." It revealed to him his pride in being a man who could pit his own small self against the W0rst that nature could do to him. The voyage also taught him about the bloody business of life. There was month after month of following the seal herd, killing and stripping the skins off the pretty beasts, then flinging their carcasses to the sharks that followed the boat for their share of the massacre. This daily slaughterhouse was the young sailor's first sight of nature red in tooth and claw. The men were more bestial than the animals they killed. It was a crude, commercial competition, dictated by the market in furs. Jack began to see that the struggle among humans to live was part of the battle among species to survive. The men got the wages, the captain took the profits, the women wore the furs, the sharks devoured the meat, the seals died. Yet the sea was only a place to escape to, not to work upon. He returned to factory jobs and heaving coal in Oakland in a time of national depression. When his free spirit could endure no more, he took to the road. Although he went with a detachment of "Coxey's army" of the unemployed, which set out for Washington, D.C., in 1894, he was no radical when he.started,just a young man on the loose. In fact, he rode a raft down the Mississippi like Huckleberry Finn, eating the food he was supposed to be begging for the mass of the marchers behind, and he deserted the army at Mark Twain's home town of Hannibal. As he wrote later in The Road, he went on the bum because he did not have
the price of the fare in his jeans; he was so made that he could not work always on the same shift; and, finally, "just because it was easier to than not to." So Jack turned into a thoughtless road kid, until a month in Pennsylvania's Erie County Penitentiary on a charge of vagrancy made a radical out of him. Jack saw in the jail the depths of human degradation, a society of degenerates and misfits tyrannized by a few trusties and hallmen, who shamefully exploited their fellow prisoners. To him, it seemed a parable of the whole of industrial America. He found himself living one of his childhood nightmares about falling into the stench and darkness of a bottomless pit. The alternative was the tooth-and-claw fight for social success, and upon his release he returned to his mother's home in Oakland, determined to educate himself.
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hen began a frantic pursuit of knowledge. Jack was brave to go to high school after dropping out of the educational system for six years. His schoolmates were so young that he felt he was in a kindergarten. To them, he was an object of fear, an unbelievably shabby and careless man who had been a tramp and who chewed tobacco. His determination was so great, however, that after only two years he qualified in 1896 as a special student to enter the University of California at Berkeley. Yet already a pattern in his career had begun to emerge. The rootlessness of his upbringing made him stick at no job or plan of study for too long. He had been brought up on the move, and he remained on the move in restless California. Whenever the pressures on his life seemed too great for him, he would pack up and go. Early in 1897 he dropped out to become a writer, because gossip about his birth was too much to bear; what was more, by then Jack had learned of and had contacted his real father-who had promptly denied his paternity. Jack was now determined to succeed on his own, without the help of the society that had made him poor, of the mother who did not love him, of the father who had deserted and denied him. Isolated, he determined to be utterly self-made-and how better to do it than by writing? He worked¡at this new trade as diligently as ever, but found only frustration. The one anchor in his drifting, driven young life was his socialism, to which he had been converted by hisjail, road, and sea experiences and by the books he read so voraciously. Radical socialism, he was now convinced, was the only thing that could keep men from being degraded and thrown out of work and crippled by the factory system. At the same time, the horror of the vicious struggle to survive in the gutters of America had hardened Jack's dreams into a fierce personal ambition. "I had been in the cellar of society," he later wrote, "and I did not like the place as a habitation .... If I c~uld not live on the parlor floor of society, I could, at any rate, have a try at the attic. It was true, the diet there was slim, but the air at least was pure." Although Jack's socialism was the passion of his life and made him many friends among the young radicals of San Francisco Bay, he did not put the good of the cause before his ambition for himself. He left California to look for instant fame and fortune in the Yukon gold rush of 1897. It was a stampede to illusion. He started off with enormous enthusiasm and energy, backpacking up Chilkoot Pass and getting to Dawson City before the ice froze the river. He staked a claim, but when he saw the actual grim drudgery of extracting a few ounces of gold from tons of frozen gravel, he did not stay to work it. The fact that he caught scurvy and hated to be ill also sent him back home to cure himself. The
'Personal achievement, with me,' Jack London wrote, 'must be concrete. I'd rather remain astride a horse that is trying to get out from under me, than write the great American novel.' trip back to the sea two thousand miles down the river inspired him to keep a detailed diary. There was a gold mine, perhaps, in writing about Alaska. Such was Jack's energy, such was his presence and power, that he convinced everyone he met that he would finally succeed in spite of his chopping and changing directions. The descriptions of him as a young man were lyrical. "He had a curly mop of hair which seemed spun of its gold"; one of his friends wrote, "his strong neck, with a loose, low, soft shirt, was bronzed with it; and his eyes were like a sunlit sea. His clothes were flappy and careless; the forecastle had left a suspicion of a roll in his broad shoulders; he was a strange combination of Scandinavian sailor and Greek god." uchwas the force of Jack's presence when he had achieved nothing. He could get what he wanted from people by awing them with his energy and conviction. He could persuade them of anything that he passionately believed about his future. Now he had to get what he wanted from his prose, for he had decided that writing short stories for the magazines offered the quickest rewards and the shortest route to fame. He modeled his style chiefly on Rudyard Kipling. Kipling had offered the world his myth of India and the mission of the British Empire. Jack would offer the world his myth of Alaska and the struggle of the fittest to survive in the northern wilderness. Jack imitated his master well, but his Alaskan short stories possessed a raw force, a sense of elemental struggle, that Kipling never achieved. By 1903 the young Californian writer was a national name; three years later, he was known throughout the world. By 1906, before he was 30 years old, he had already written eight books, among them his two classics, The Call of the Wild and The Sea- Wolf. Yet the incredible swiftness of his success led him to form a reverse myth about it-that he had been forced to fight every inch of the way against every possible obstacle to reach what all young writers dream of and few attain. His determination to show his own life and his writing as a struggle for survival he justified by his belief in a combination of social Darwinism and Marxist dialectics. To him, evolution was the first faith, revolution the second faith. Mankind evolved by the struggle against nature, society evolved by the war of the classes. He himself had developed by his determined revolt from the slums and manual labor of his background. His own efforts had made him an educated man and a famous writer. He would now impose his vision on his readers, and he would redeem a youth of failure by a manhood of success. His first goal was to reach the parlor floor of society. Already, in 1900,ohehadmarried a strong, practical, educated woman called Bess Maddern, so that she could look after his home and raise his children. It was a marriage of convenience for a young writer making his way, and he defended his cool choice with logic. Unfortunately, he soon felt confined by domesticity, and he began a passionate affair with Anna Strunsky, the beautiful radical heroine of the Bay Area socialists. He even collaborated with her in writing a book, The Kempton- Wace Letters, published in 1903; in it, as "Herbert Wace," he hopelessly defended his calculated marriage against the romantic criticisms of Anna, as "Dane Kempton." Much as he loved his two young daughters and
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his planned life, he could not suppress his feelings or his ferocity, and once again he translated frustration into movement. .He was offered ajob reporting on the aftermath of the Boer War, but when he reached Britain, the job was canceled. He stayed in London to watch the coronation of King Edward VII, then disappeared into the slums of the East End to research and write his passionate outcry against the degradation of the London poor, The People of the Abyss, also published in 1901 While he was away, Anna Strunsky came to her senses and ended their affair. She would not risk a scandal by carrying on with a married man. Jack was bitter; but he had to accept the blow, stating that in the future he would confine romance to the pages of his books. Yet he still chafed at domesticity, and his next two great books mirrored his mood -what he called his "long sickness." The Call of the Wild, his third published book in 1903, was about a dog that reverted to savagery in the wilderness; but it was also about Jack's own demand to be free. Thereafter, he called himself Wolf to his friends and he identified his nature with that lone animal's. The Sea- Wolf, published in 1904, told of the fight to the death between an educated sissy, Humphrey van Weyden, and a blond beast, Captain Wolf Larsen, on his sealing schooner. The characters may have represented Jack's own divided nature, with his willed concentration on self-education and the discipline of writing at war with his passion to be a physical superman. Actually, his body had already begun to crack up on him when he lamed himself permanently on a voyage to Korea, where he reported the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. There he began riding horses the way most sailors do, lurching in the saddle as if on the deck of his sloop. He never walked a long way again, although his Alaskan heroes like¡Smoke Bellew were capable of vast journeys on foot. In Korea, however, he displayed both his boldness and his new taste for authority, sending back the first photographs of the Japanese Army in action and engaging the first of his two Oriental body servants, who would travel with him and look after him all the rest of his life.
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aiting for his return from Korea was Charmian Kittredge, his new mistress. She was one of the rare liberated and independent women of California, a good sportswoman and stenographer, five years older than Jack, with a trim figure. She flung herself into the affair with Jack, and she 'joined him in the horseplay and practical jokes that he loved. There was a fight for Jack's possession between her and "The Crowd," the group of radical artists and writers led by Jack's great friend, the poet George Sterling. Charmian won and persuaded Jack to leave his wife and family for a little ranch up in the Sonoma hills near Glen Ellen. The only way to cure his "long sickness" of restlessness and divided loyalties and appetites, she argued, was to put down an anchor with her on a piece of land. He accepted the solution, divorced his wife, and married Charmian. Where his stepfather had failed on the land, Jack decided, he would succeed. Where his first marriage had foundered in domesticity, his second would work with Charmian as his true love and "Mate." So began the happiest period of Jack's life, the years 1905and 1906, when he indulged all his contradictory urges almost simul-
taneously. When the Russian Revolution broke out, he toured the and modern as today's dream of organic living. Jack took as his United States, giving a lecture on "Revolution" even at Yale and heroes a young worker and his wife, Billy and Saxon Roberts, who Harvard. He became the leading orator of the radical movement are broken in the labor battles of Oakland and take to the road. at the same time that he was setting himself up as a California They go on a pilgrimage through rural California with tent and rancher and writing imperialist articles for the Hearst press. He Hawaiian ukelele, seeking a patch of ground to farm and to set believed both in the superiority of the white man and in the themselves up in life. It is a romance of young love and nostalgia eventual victory of the proletariat-but it had to be the white for the soil, with a sweetness not to be found in the rest of Jack's proletariat that won. Yet when he came to write his chilling writing- his admission that, when he was not racked with pain, he prophesy of the "inevitable" world revolution, The Iron Heel, had found himself in his life with Charmian on the ranch. published five years later, in 1910, he foresaw the triumph of et even he knew that he could not keep up the fiction of fascism before the brotherhood of the workers could eventually himself as a superman. The two autobiographical books rule the earth. And then-typically-at the height of his commitment to the Red cause and the California earth, he suddenly of the last decade of his life demonstrated his increasing announced that he would set off in 1907 on a seven years' cruise awareness of himself as a tormented man rather than a legendary around the world in a sailing boat-which cost him $30,000 to pioneer. Although Martin Eden, published in 1909, overdramatizes his struggle to literary fame and fortune, it faithfully records build and was rightly called the Snark, being a splendid illusion. If that extraordinary energy, that superb body and willpower his turning away from middle-class values and bookish success. had remained as strong as they had been most of his life, Jack John Barleycorn is far more interesting, less as a hist'ory of Jack's might have achieved many more marvels, and he certainly would drinking habits than as a confession of the white logic of his have damned their contradictions. But his sea voyage began the despair. Already unable to sleep because of the pain of his diseases and his remedies for them, he was forced toward selfrapid deterioration of his body. After two years of wandering about Polynesia, he was suffering from five diseases. The worst analysis in the depths of the night. He had to examine the conof these were pellagra and yaws. Unfortunately, no cure was tradiction within himself, had to look at the tenuous links known for pellagra at the time, while yaws was treated like a form between his nature and the heroic myth that he tried to live. His process of self-awareness had begun. of syphilis with arsenic compounds. In the early morning of November 22, 1916, a few weeks short As a man who declared that he was self-made, he believed in self-help. Aboard the Snark, he was both doctor and dentist. He of his 41st birthday, Jack London died of an apparent overdose had a large wooden medicine chest stuffed with bottles of drugs. of morphine and atrophine, a derivative of belladonna. As for the question of whether the overdose was an act of suicide or not, the He believed in dosing himself and his wife and his companions. He did not believe in tolerating physical pain that could be eased. answer is that the act does not seem to have been intentional, Like many a Californian, he believed that the birthright of the given the plans Jack had for the immediate future. The question western child was a promise to live forever. It was intolerable that is academic, in any case. Only Jack London's powerful will and his dreams for the future of his ranch had kept him going at all. the body should go wrong. The deterioration in Jack's physique and stability has been His reputation as a man and as a writer eroded after his death. falsely attributed to many causes, chiefly psychiatric. In fact, the He had to be alive to speak fully through his words. His image was chief cause was bad medication. His kidneys and bladder were as mighty as his pen, if not mightier. What he left behind him was being steadily destroyed, until he could hardly sleep or con- the myth that a writer should live what he describes. Jack always centrate, although he still managed to keep up a heroic schedule of . complained that he had little imagination, so that he had to take work. He was a dying man, but he refused to admit it. Unfortuhis plots from his own experience or the newspapers. He could nately, as the pain grew more intolerable, so grew Jack's reliance also have said that he strove to realize his dreams, not to analyze on sedatives such as alcohol and morphine. He had to dull the them. As he seemed to be larger than life, he wanted to do more pain. His pride and his sense of his body's worth would not allow than other men did. Action to him was more satisfying than him to show weakness. In a way, he became the victim of his own fiction. "Personal achievement, with me," he wrote, "must be concrete. I'd rather win a water-fight in the swimming pool, or myth of himself as a man who could endure all. Ironically; his last years on his Beauty Ranch at Glen Ellen remain astride a horse that is trying to get out from under me, than began to resolve the contradictions in the man. He started to come write the great American novel." He did not write the great American novel, although he did to terms with the legend that he had created. Fiction and person approached each other. He learned to accept himself and to write some good ones and some great short stories. He did, postpone some of his desires. He remained loyal to Charmian, if however, create the myth of the great American novelist. It not always faithful to her. He devoted himself to the development was not an entirely self-conscious creation. He thought himself to of the ranch. Where the soil was looted, he enriched it. Where be exactly what he appeared to be. If his torments and tensions weeds grew, 1).eput in crops and vines and eucalyptus. He bred were hidden by his myth of himself, it was no bad thing; for a man prize pigs and cows and Shire horses. He wanted to redeem the who has a heroic myth of himself can achieve more than a man failure of his stepfather on his small ranch by making a success of who knows himself too well and is afraid to move. To deny large-scale farming. He countered the instability of his nerves weakness, to insist on excess and success, is to live at full stretch. with plans for the land that stretched over decades. Instead of a Jack London lived nine lives and wrote more than 50 books and Red revolution in the cities, he now preached a green one in the died young. A man like that is worth his own myth-and his contradictions. 0 countryside. He no longer echoed Marx. The novels of Jack's later period were less successful, because he was giving up the pretense of himself as an Alaskan superman About the Author: Andrew Sinclair is a novelist and former screenwriter. for a version of himself as the new California rancher . Yet one of He is the author of The Emancipation of the American Woman, and of them, The Valley of the Moon, published in 1913, was as poignant biographies of Dylan Thomas, Warren G. Harding and Jack London.
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Should I get married? Should I be good? Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood? Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries and she going just so far and I understanding why not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel! Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone and woo her the entire night the constellations in the skyWhen she introduces me to her parents back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie, should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa and not ask Where's the bathroom? How else to feel other than I am, often thinking Flash Gordon soapo how terrible it must be for a young man seated before a family and the family thinking We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou! After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living? Should I tell them? Would they like me then? ' Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter but we're gaining a sonAnd should I then ask Where's the bathroom?
o God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded just wait to get at the drinks and foodAnd the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue! I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha! And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going onThen all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates! All streaming into cozy hotels All going to do the same thing tonight The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen The lobby zombies they knowing what The whistling elevator man he knowing The winking bellboy knowing Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything! Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye! Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon! running rampant into those almost climactic suites yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel! o I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy a saint of divorceBut I should get married I should be good How nice it'd be to come home to her and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen aproned young and lovely wanting my baby and so happy about me she burns the roast beef and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
Gregory Corso (seen on the right of the photograph, with poet Ginsberg), 48, ranks among America's most distinguished poets. He first achieved fame more than 20 years ago when, in 1956, his name was linked with those of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and others in a group which became known as the "Beat Poets." He has won a number of awards for poetry, including the Longview Award for his poem, "Marriage" (above). He has published numerous books of verse: among them al'eThe Vestal Lady on Brattle; Gasoline; The Happy Birthday of Death and Long Live Man. Corso has also written a novel (The American Express).
sayingChristmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf! God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married! Somuch to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower likepasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence likewhen Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky! And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him Whenare you going to stop people killing whales! And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle Penguindust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dustYetif I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn, up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me, findingmyself in the most common of situations a trembling man knowledgedwith responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soupo what would that be like! SurelyI'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records Tack Della Francesca all over its crib Sewthe Greek alphabet on its bib And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father not rural not snow no quiet window but hot smelly tight New York City sevenflights up roaches and rats in the walls a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired like those hag masses of the 18th century all wanting to come in and watch TV The landlord wants his rent Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parkingNo! I should not get married I should never get married! But-imagine If! were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window from which we could see all of New York and ever farther on clearer days No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-
o but what about love? I forget love not that I am incapable of love it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoesI never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married And I don't like men andbut there's got to be somebody! Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married, all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me! Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible then marriage would be possibleLike SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover so I wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life. 0
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which isn't so sudden because the process that causes the heart attack has been building up for years.
Reprinted from U.S. News and World Report, October 14, 1977, published at Washington, D.C.
QUESTION: Dr. Dustan, is heart disease still America's NO.1 killer? DR. DUST AN: Yes. Cardiovascular diseases account for more deaths than all others put together. But there has been a dramatic decrease in the death rate-a 30 per cent decrease since 1950, with a third of the decline in just the last five years. The death toll dipped below one million a year for the first time in 1975, and it's still going down. We are seeing major changes-both in treatment and diagnosis - that will further reduce the cost of heart disease, not only in terms of money but in suffering and loss of life. QUESTION: What's behind the decline? DR. DUSTAN: I don't think we can say that anyone thing accounts for it. Modifications in lifestyle may play a rolekeeping your weight down, giving up smoking and getting exercise. Control of high blood pressure is very important. The death rate from stroke, for example, has fallen by a striking 50 per cent in the last 20 years, and we think this is primarily due to a greater awareness of the problem of hypertension, or high blood pressure, and the fact that this condition can be effectively treated with drugs. In addition, the greater sophistication of the coronary-care unit and advances in care of patients with heart attacks have helped reduce the toll. In the area of diagnosis, we are developing new techniques thatcan now determine the extent of heart damage, with little risk to the patient, and this helps in planning treatment. QUESTION: What types of heart disease are most common? Which are most likely to befatal? DR. DUSTAN: Coronary heart disease, involving arteries supplying heart muscle, is both the most common and most lethal. It can kill in one of two ways: In congestive heart failure, the heart muscle is so 'damaged that the heart's pumping power is reduced to well below normal. If too much damage has occurred in the heart, the person dies of pump failure. The other major killer that can develop after a heart attack is electrical instability of the heart so that the heart beats chaotically. This is called ventricular fibrillation, and it's the cause of people dropping dead-so-called sudden death,
QUESTION: What are the early symptoms of this kind of heart disease? DR. DUSTAN: Unfortunately, there aren't any really early symptoms. We know this disease process probably begins in childhood. Studies have shown that some high blood pressure begins early in life. Once coronary arterial disease is established, the symptom is pain. Weakness, fatigue, shortness of breath and swelling of the legs are signs of advanced heart disease, when heart muscle is seriously damaged.
THE lATEST IN THE WAH ON HEAHT DISEASE Though the heart attack is still the number one killer in the United States" new advances in medical science are helping control this dreaded disease and cut the death toll, says Dr. Harriet Dustan, president of the American Heart Association, in this interview.
QUESTION: Are some people more susceptible than others? DR. DUST AN: As a general rule in our culture, I think that people can wonder about the possibility of coronary heart disease if they're male and 40 years or older, or if they're female and 55 years or older. Then we can tell you what your chances are, based on age, sex, race, family history, blood pressure, history of cigarette smoking and measurement of cholesterol levels in the blood. QUESTION: Just what happens during a heart attack? DR. DUST AN: A heart attack occurs when there is a sudden blocking of one of the arteries to the heart. This happens when a clot forms. Suddenly the blood vessel occludes-shuts off. As a result, the heart muscle is not getting its blood supply through regular channels, and it begins to die. During the early hours following the occlusion of a blood vessel, there is a markedly increased risk of dying from cardiac arrest or pump failure. QUESTION: What does the pain of a heart attack feel like? DR. DUSTAN: It's described as a crushing, oppressive kind of pain. Usually it's in the middle of the chest or maybe in the neck or the inside of the arm. It can be associated with sweating, breathlessness and general weakness. Sometimes it's in the pit of the stomach. QUESTION: Where does angina fit into the picture? DR. DUSTAN: Angina is a symptom of coronary heart disease. It is the same kind of pain that occurs with heart attack but is short-lived. It results when you have a
substantial narrowing of the blood vessels so you don't get the kind of blood supply to the heart muscle that you need. When the heart's demand for oxygen is increased -as with exercise-the pain occurs. QUESTION: Just what is atherosclerosis? How is this condition related to heart disease? DR. DUST AN: Atherosclerosis is a slow, progressive disease of the blood vessels characterized by the localized build-up of fatty deposits-atherosclerotic plaques -on the arterial wall. These plaques get bigger and bigger, gradually narrowing the blood vessels. This is where blood clots can occur, setting the stage for heart attack and stroke. QUESTION:
What's the difference between a heart attack and a stroke? Are they linked?
DR. DUSTAN: They are part of the same process. When a stroke occurs, the blood supply to the brain is cut off. Starved of oxygen-rich blood, the cells in the brain can't function. In a hemorrhagic stroke or cerebral hemorrhage, a diseased artery in the brain breaks, flooding the surrounding tissue with blood and damaging brain tissue. This type of stroke occurs more frequently in people with high blood pressure. And if it's a big stroke, it can be very devastating. QUESTION: How effectively do coronarycare units handle heart attack patients?
DR. DUSTAN: Coronary-care units have been very effective, and that explains why it's important that victims get to a hospital as soon as possible. In the coronary-care unit, the patient is constantly monitored. If a problem arises, there are several techniques available to stabilize the patient: cardiopulmonary resuscitation to start the patient's heart beating again; administration of drugs to abolish abnormal heart rhythms, and, occasionally, use of a blood pump to help the failing heart. QUESTION: You mentioned new diagnostic techniques. Just what is involved?
DR. DUST AN: This is where we're seeing major advances~with the increased use of noninvasive techniques. These are techniques that can look inside the body to measure things like blood flow and heart damage. Echocardiography, for instance, is a highly sophisticated use of ultrasound. Sound waves are bounced off the patient's organs and can pick up vessel lesions and
5 RISKS... Here, from the American Heart Association, are five dangers that can lead to heart attack or stroke-and suggestions for easing the risks. High blood pressure. Have your blood pressure checked. If you have hypertension, be sure to have it treated by your physician. A wide variety of drugs is now available for control of high blood pressure-which is one of the major factors in heart attack and stroke. Cholesterol. Make sure that the level of cholesterol in the blood is within the normal range. Changes in diet are usually effective in lowering cholesterol levels. In some severe cases, prescription drugs help, too. Cigarette smoking. Research shows the risk of heart attack and stroke increases in direct relation to the number of cigarettes smoked. If you don't smoke, don't start. If you do smoke, quit. Overweight. Follow a balanced diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol that contains only the number of calories needed for your size. People who are overweight are more likely to have high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels and face greater risk of heart disease. Lack of exercise. People who lead sedentary lives have a higher risk of heart attack than those who get regular exercise. Be active. Consult a physician, however, before starting on a strenuous program of exercise. deformities of the heart itself. Other techniques use radioactive substances and opaque dyes to outline the cardiovascular system. Radioactive imaging can determine changes in blood flow and how much damage has occurred in the heart muscle after a heart attack. A new imaging device actually makes movies of the pumping heart. In contrast to more complicated diagnostic procedures, these techniques are simple, and most can be done safely on an out-patient basis. QUESTION: Are drugs coming into heart therapy?
DR. DUSTAN: Yes. The use of antihypertensive drug therapy has been very successful in controlling high blood pressure-a problem that affects 24 million
Americans, and increases the risk of heart attack as well as of stroke, congestive heart failure and kidney failure. One of the most interesting therapeutic developments is the use of antihypertensive drug therapy for the treatment of victims of cardiac failure. These people do not have high blood pressure but are suffering from heart failure. Antihypertensive drugs relax the blood vessels, and this diminishes the burden on the heart to pump blood. We also have new drugs which are effective in controlling arrhythmias-the medical term for dangerous irregularities in heart rhythm that can follow a heart attack. To reduce the possibility of repeat heart attacks or strokes, other drugs are being used. These drugs don't dissolve clots, but they tend to prevent new clots from forming or existing clots from enlarging. QUESTION: Is surgery effective in treating heart disease?
DR. DUST AN: The most common heart operation now is coronary-bypass surgery -and it's very controversial. The U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute estimates that roughly 70,000 such operations are performed every year, and the rate is going up. Basically the coronary bypass provides a detour. When one of the main vessels to the heart is so narrow and diseased that blood has difficulty reaching the heart, surgeons can "bypass" it with an artificial channel, usually a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body. At the moment, there is no evidence that this operation influences the natural progress of the disease and prolongs life. But we do know that in 80 per cent of the patients, the operation substantially relieves pain. Right now, there is a great deal of discussion about how much this operation should be done, because it's very costly-about $10,000 per operation. It's just too early to know what the long-term benefits are. QUESTION:
What other surgical procedures can help a victim of heart disease?
DR. DUST AN: Operations that bypass obstructions in arteries to the legs or to the kidneys are standard now. Surgery for the resection of aortic aneurysms-that's part of the aorta that pops out like a balloon-has been very effective. In this operation, you cut out the aneurysm in the area of the aorta that has ballooned and put in some kind of graft material about the same size.
People who smoke more than a pack of cigarettes a day run twice the risk of heart attack and five times the risk of a stroke as nonsmokers. QUESTION: What do you think is the future now for long-lasting heart transplants? DR. DUST AN: The number of heart transplants has decreased considerably since the original transplants in the' 60s. The transplant program at Stanford University, however, does about two dozen operations a year, and there are one or two other medical centers in the U.S. that do this operation. The chance of surviving one year has increased enormously and is now in the range of 80 per cent. QUESTION: Who might benefit from a transplant? DR. DUSTAN: Heart-transplant candidates are people with intractable heart disease-that is, they have severe disease of the heart muscle itself, called cardiomyopathy, or of the blood vessels. In the latter situation, the functioning of the heart muscle is gradually decreased to the point where a transplant is the only answer to intractable heart failure and death. One problem for the medical profession, however, is this: A heart-transplant operation is not very cost-effective. It ties up enormous resources, and the long-term benefits are uncertain. Havoc is raised by the patient's rejection of the foreign organ. And then there's the question: Where do all the donors come from? The supply aspect has not been well organized. QUESTION: Are changes in diet and living habits still considered an effective way 'to reduce the danger of heart disease? DR. DUST AN: Yes. And my own intuition is that the most important advances in reducing heart disease will come in the area of prevention. This requires people to take responsibility for maintaining their own health. Until recently, people weren't used to this concept. Neither were doctors. We still don't know specifically how to prevent heart disease, but we do know certain things about reducing the risks. For example, we can say quite confidently that if people did not become overweight, the rate at which hypertension develops as people grow older would be substantially reduced. Being overweight in
This first low-cost nuclear diagnostic system in the United States measures the flow of blood from the heart. In the past, expensive computers performed this function.
itself does not lead to the premature development of coronary heart disease. It's just that overweight people more often have high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol and high blood-fat levels, and are more often diabetic. These conditions are definite risk factors. A prudent diet is obviously important. The Senate Select Committee on Nutrition recommended an overall decrease in calories for Americans. This includes a decrease in saturated or animal fats, since the amount of fat in the diet and the intake of carbohydrates is believed to affect blood-cholesterol levels.
DR. DUST AN: People who smoke more than a pack of cigarettes a day have nearly twice the risk of heart attack and five times the risk of stroke as nonsmokers. If you stop smoking, your risk drops to that of the nonsmoker in 12 months. QUESTION: Can exercise, such as jogging, help prevent heart disease? DR. DUSTAN: We know that people who lead a sedentary life have a greater risk of developing heart disease than those who get regular exercise. About five years ago, the American Heart Association issued its recommendations on exercising, which included jogging. For middle-aged adults, though, it's important to consult a physician who can prescribe an appropriate exercise program after testing your heart. This usually involves running on a treadmill while a physician measures heartbeat and blood pressure.
QUESTION: What is the current assessment of cholesterol's role in heart disease? DR. DUST AN: Cholesterol is a fatty substance found in all normal tissue, and high blood levels are associated with the premature formation of atherosclerotic plaques. We can now measure the amount of cholesterol in the blood and prescribe drugs and changes in the diet to maintain QUESTION: Does heart disease run in cholesterol levels within a normal range. families? Recently, we have found that there are DR. DUSTAN: It's certainly true that two types of cholesterol: "high density" high blood-cholesterol levels and high and "low density" lipoproteins. The dis- blood pressure run in families, and they tinction is important because the high- are important determinants of heart density lipoproteins appear to interfere disease. I think the tendency toward heart with the buildup of atherosclerotic de- problems can be inherited, but we don't posits and may actually be beneficial in have any evidence that heart disease itself preventing heart disease. is hereditary. . QUESTION: How much does smoking increase the risk of heart disease?
QUESTION: How many children are born with congenital heart defects?
DR. DUSTAN: Each year, more than 25,000 babies in thee U.S. are born with somekind of heart defect. With advances in surgery, a number of these defects can be repaired very early in life. Many infants are born with a heart murmur-a sound produced by an abnormal flow of bloodto the heart. The murmur can be not serious at all, or it can indicate a substantial deformity in the heart. Some
murmurs, called innocent murmurs, disappear as time goes by. QUESTION: What advice can you give people on maintaining a healthy heart? DR. DUSTAN: It all starts in childhood. Children should learn good dietary habits. There's evidence that if you're overweight as a kid, you'll have difficulty with weight when you're middle-aged.
Don't start smoking. If you don't start as a teen-ager, you aren't likely to start. People with a family history of premature heart attack, stroke or high blood pressure should watch themselves carefully. If you have hypertension, get treatment for it. And don't be a lounge lizardlead an active life. D
HOW SERIOUS IS HEART DISEASE IN INDIA;Âť "Heart disease is not the number one killerin India that it is in many industrialized nations of the West," says Dr. S. Padmavati, an internationally renowned cardiologist and president of the All India Heart Foundation, a private, voluntary, nonprofit organization with headquarters in Delhi. But, she adds, Western countries have voluminous statistics. In India we have no data for mortality caused by heart disease for the whole country, as it has not been possible to conduct surveysin the villages where most of the population lives. In big cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi and Madras, however, statistics suggest that many more patients with coronary heart condition are admitted to hospitals and nursing homes now than everbefore. A study by the World Health Organization warns that the incidence of heart disease is on the increase in developingnations. "Of the many types of heart disease, there is one that is more prevalent in India than in the West," says Dr. Padmavati. "This is rheumatic heart disease, whichmostly afflicts children between the ages of 5-15, especially those living in slumareas." Rheumatic heart disease has its beginningsin rheumatic fever, whose symptoms arehigh temperature and pain and swelling in the joints. Another form of rheumatic fever is what is known as chorea or St. Vitus dance. In this the child develops jerky movements of the face, arms and legs.Repeated attacks often lead to rheumatic heart disease, which may damage one or more heart valves, very often permanently crippling the young patient. Can rheumatic heart disease be prevented? "Of course," Dr. Padmavati replies."This can be done by taking appropriate prophylactic measures and by improving sanitation and hygiene. That's whatthe Western countries have done; the incidence of this disease there has fallen dramatically in the last 40 years." Talking about other kinds of heart
disease, she says that the most fatal and dreadful is what the doctors call myocardial infarction -or heart attack, in lay language. The most distressing fact about this disease is that it is sudden and often comes without warning. When the attack sets in, the patient gets a squeezing, crushing pain in the chest-mostly behind the breast bone. The pain may spread to the left arm-rarely to the right arm-or toward the jaw. In a country like India, where medical facilities are not readily available in small towns and villages, what should a heart-attack victim do? Dr. Padmavati's advice is: "The best thing is to rest, to lie down quietly and call for a doctor. In the meantime, give the patient a drink of brandy. Then you remove him to a hospital -any hospital is preferable to staying at home. Hospitals in small towns may not have intensive care units, but any hospital with an ECG machine is gOQd enough. For then doctors can connect the patient with the machine and watch for abnormal heart rhythms. This is important," she notes, "because quite often what kills the person is not so much the attack as abnormal heart rhythms that occur soon after the attack. Today we can control these irregular rhythms very easily with drugs and by electrical means." Is there any way to prevent heart attacks? "Though the science of cardiology has made tremendous progress, we still do not know all the causes of heart attacks," Dr. Padmavati admits. "We have seen perfectly healthy people become victims of this dreadful disease. But," she hastens to add, "we now know of certain risk factors, each of which in itself or in combination with others can lead to an attack. So, we must eliminate these risks from our life. The risk factors are high blood pressure, raised serum cholesterol, cigarette smoking, overweight and lack of exercise." High blood pressure, she says, can be controlled easily these days with drugs.
And certain yogic postures, like Shavasan (the death posture), bring down blood pressure significantly, though temporarily. High serum cholesterol-fatty substance in the blood-is related to lifestyle as much as it is to diet, says Dr. Padmavati. If you eat a very rich diet, but also do exercise or physical labor, you burn up the extra fat. But eating a fatty diet without any regular exercise results over the years in extra weight. This can lead to high blood pressure and raise levels of serum cholesterol, which is deposited on the walls of arteries, making them narrower and narrower. Thus the blood supply to the heart is impaired. "In this sense," she adds, "what you eat is very important-of course not for a day or two but throughout your life. Our old Indian philosophy of fasting on certain days was a very good one. Fasting not only helps you keep a check on your weight, but it also gives rest to the heart, which has to work harder to digest the food." About cigarette smoking, Dr. Padmavati is very emphatic-"smoking is positively injurious to health." In fact, in a country like India where the food eaten is generally not very rich in fats, smoking may be the main cause of heart attacks. Dr. Padmavati concludes that the process of hardening and narrowing of arteries, which eventually leads to the formation of blood clots and in turn to heart attacks, begins in childhood. "So, prevention must also begin at that age." Parents must help their children form habits that will be conducive to good health in their old age: Let them not eat too much fatty food; inculcate in them the habit of daily exercise; and urge them never to take up smoking. As for parents themselves, Dr. Padmavati advises a thorough medical check up -first around the age of 25 to obtain base-line data on body weight and biochemical profile, and then from the age of 40 every year-so that precautionary measures could be taken "before it is D too late."
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"I'm about to say my prayers. Anything anyone wants to be forgiven for!"
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"/ understand my parents a 10l beller now that / have a kid of my own."
Above: A county judge performs a marriage. Top: A veteran staffer works, surrounded by cabinets stocked with paper that makes up the archives. Top right: Meetings of the Board of County Commissioners start with members pledging allegiance to the American flag. Right: A young voter awaits the posting of the 1976 presidential election results outside the local courthouse. Far right: The imposing Macoupin county courthouse wears a deserted look on a weekend.
C
ourthouses, the administrative buildings for more than 3,000 county governments across the United States, are, in a sense, physical expressions of the American heritage. The buildings themselves range from the austere to the ornate, but all command an innate respect from the citizenry that sees them as the embodiment of community values and authority. It is the courthouse that stockpiles statistics on births, marriages, deaths. It is where one goes to record a deed, where property taxes are assessed and paid, where licenses are issued for everything from owning a pet to operating a business. But the courthouse provides more than a repository for records and a chamber for deciding legal cases (although the latter, obviously, is where it got its name). Functions
are almost unlimited-depending on location, population and whether there is a large city within the county confines to assume some of the services. Departments may run the gamut from an agency for the aging to a zoning commission; in between come such things as child care and consumer affairs, economic development and environmental planning, health care and home economics, libraries and liquor control, social services and soil conservation. The typical county courthouse, at least as visualized by most Americans who live outside metropolitan areas, is like this one (left) in Carlinville, Illinois, the seat of Macoupin county. It was erected in 1867, the grandest building in the community, a stone edifice with l2-meter tall columns on the north and south-and the inevitable dome.
It is at county courthouses, symbols of American pride in seff-goverrtment, that the ordinary people converge to o})tain varied information and to seek help and justice. Situated on a square near the center of town, it still is today the tallest building, visible for miles across the midwestern plains. Here it is that ordinary people with everyday concerns converge to obtain information, assistance and justice. The list of services offered by the Macoupin county courthouse to residents of this rural community is not as long as that provided by its counterparts in densely populated areasfor their needs are not so many. The entire county (2,267 square kilometers) has only 45,000 residents, the town perhaps 6,000, and their way of life and social problems are a far cry from that of a metropolitan community. Like all courthouses, the one in Macoupin county has tended to take on the character of the people it serves, reflecting their morals and prejudices, happiness or grief, promising solutions for their frustrations and fulfillment of their aspirations. The 110-yearold building may not be an architectural marvel, but it is well made, solid-and fittingly symbolic of the American pride in 0 self-government. Above: County courthouses cater to people of all ages, starting with babies, whose birth certificates they issue. Left: With records documenting the eligibility of local residents easi~y on hand. a Social Security representative finds the courthouse the ideal place to interview an elderly man planning retirement.
PRESIDENT CAITBR IN INDIA
Rosalynn Carter is delighted with the silk shawl and the chunni presented 10 her by the panchayat of Daulatpur-Nasirabad, a Haryana village 29 kilometers from Delhi, as her husband admires the First Lady's Indian look. The Carters presented a slide projector and a book on the United States to the people of Daulatpur-Nasirabad (since renamed Carterpuri).
PIISIBIIT ClITII IIIIBII
Left: The President bids farewell to the residents of DaulatpurNasirabad after an hour-long tour of the Haryana village. Below, extreme left: Ambassador Goheen applauds as President Carter and Prime Minister Desai shake hands after signing the Delhi Declaration.
Below, center: President Carter speaks at the Rashtrapati Bhavan banquet hosted by President Sanjiva Reddy. Below: Just before departure. President Carter responds as an Indian military band strikes up the American national anthem.
PRISIDIIT CARTIR IN INDIA Above: The President and Mrs. Carter bid farewell to Indian leaders from the presidential jet Air Force One. "I had a sense of belonging," said the President earlier about his visit to India. "I didn't feel that I was in an alien lani" Facing page, top: A garland
of marigolds round her neck, Mrs. Carter meets with the womenfolk of DaulatpurNasirabad. Facing page, bottom: Five-year-old Vijay with Mrs. Carter at the Community Centre of the New Delhi Municipal Corporation, where children greeted the First Lady with flowers and songs.