SPAN: June 1979

A LEITER FROM THE PUBliSHER The recent accident at the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has caused considerable concern to the American people and their government. It is also of deep interest to many other countries, that are dependent to a greater extent than is the United States on nuclear energy- or that (like India) have ambitious plans for nuclear development.

President Jimmy Carter has appointed a special commission headed by an eminent scientist to investigate the circumstances leading to the accident, technical questions concerning plant safety systems and the adequacy ofemergency procedures followed by the Federal and state government agencies.

U.S. Administration officials have said that President Carter's policy toward nuclear energy has changed very little as a result of the accident-that it is a significant supplier (12-13 per cent) ofU.S. electricity at present, and is expected to remain so in the future. The judgment on what lessons are to be learned from the Three Mile Island accident will be made by the Presidential commission. In the meantime, a number of governments, including those of France, Great Britain, West Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, have already asked for copies of the commission's report, which will be made available to interested countries.

Even before the complete official report, American public opinion and elected government representatives have stressed the need for closer supervision of nuclear facilities and a fuller communication of the known facts about nuclear energy: both its advantages and its disadvantages. (It is noteworthy that one of the persons named by President Carter to the special commission is a housewife who lives in the neighborhood of the Three Mile Island plant. Clearly the voice of ordinary people must be heard in any serious deliberations in a democracy.)

Shortly after the accident President Carter noted that it had "demonstrated dramatically that we have other energy problems." He called for a number of measures. One was a phased decontrol of oil prices to increase production of oil and gas in the United States, to compensate in part for the diminution ofimported oil from the Middle East. Another was more conservation-including a lower speed limit for automobiles. And, overall, he called on the American people to "join together in a great national effort to use American technology to give us energy security in the years ahead....

The future of the country ... is at stake."

But how can a country gather its fo rces for a national effort in times of stress when there are so many diverse and often contradictory groups in it, each actively promoting its own point of view? "Don't these opposing groups cancel one another out? How do you get decision-making in such a situation?" Rashid Talib, an assistant editor of the Hindus tan Times, asks Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick in an interview in this issue dealing with the place of citizen groups in American political life. Dr. Kirkpatrick, a professor of government who visited India recently, replies that decision-making "gets worked out by the process of jockeying, compromising, aggregating.... " Why, Mr. Talib inquires, has there been such a large increase in the number of lobbies. pressure groups representing different political. economic, and social interests in the United States that try to influence legislation? They have grown in the past 30 years from 2,000 to 15,000 in Washington, D.C. Dr. Kirkpatrick's reply is direct and to the point: "The scope of the U.S. Government activities has been enormously broadened, and it touches the lives of many more people in many more ways. T he citizen response to what we sometimes call 'government by remote control' is to mobilize, organize, and try to get at those people who are making rules affecting our lives in so many more ways every year."

Mr. Talib summarizes aptly: "That's an act of participation by the people in the process."

That, of course, is what democracy is all about. -J.W.G.

SPAN

June 1979

VO L UM E XX NUMBER 6

2 The Story of Three Mile Island

4 Indo-U.S. Joint Commission Meets 5 How Effective Are Citizen Groups in America?

An Interview of Jeane Kirkpatrick by Rashid Tafib

9 Allan Hovbaness: East Meets West in Music 10 Hovhaness in India 1 3 The Greening of Arid Lands 1 8 A New, Low-Cost Fuel

by Richard Kostelanetz

by Narayana Menon as told to Carmen Kagaf

by s.R. Madhu

by Thomas Stimmel

20 Tribal Poetry, Art and Ritual The Three Mysteries: Sacred Songs of the World

by P. Lat

Two Thousand Years of American Indian Art Oral Poetry of Indian Tribal Communities by Sitakant

Mahapatra

28 New Respect for Old Neighborhoods

32 A Walk Across America

by Pew Gorto11 Jenkins

38 Invent Something 40 Technologies for Mass Employment 44 On the Lighter Side America Examines Own Compliance 45 With Helsinki Accords 46 The SALT II Agreement 49 Lighter-Than-Air Experiments

by Colin Norman

Front cover : Old Chinese buttons forn1 a bear pattern on a felt blanket. This is one of 1he 850 anifacts, representing men. myths and natural phenomena, in a Kansas City exhibition of2,000 years of American Indian a rt. See pages 20-27.

Back cover : Scientists from all over the world come 10 !he National Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine. Texas. They send up instrument-laden balloons that carry out experiments in meleorology. atmospheric chemistry, cosmic ray physics, optical astronomy and other areas of science. See page 49.

JACOB SLOAN, Editor ; J AY W. GILDNER, Publisher.

Managing Editor : Chidananda Das Gupta. Assistant Managing Editor: S.R. Madhu.

FAitorial Staff: Krishan Gabrani, Aruna Dasgupta, Nirmal Sharma, Murari Saha, Rocque Fernandes. Art Director: Nand Katyal. Art Staff: Gopl Gajwani, B. Roy Choudhury, Kanti Roy. ChiefofProductioa: Awtar S. Marwaha. Photo Editor: Avinash Pasricha_ Photographic Services: ICA Photo Lab. Published by the lnternational Communication Agency, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 , on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions eltpressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Government. Printed

by H. K. Mehta at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana.

Photographs: lrunde front cover- DaVJd Gooley, courtesy Friends magazine. 5-Avinasb Pasricba. 9-Jerry Gay. tl -courtc:sy Dr. Narayana Menon. 13-16- Avina.sh Pasncba. 18-19- Charles Mendez. 23- U.S. News & World Report. 30-l.ra Berger. 3:1-36-Peter Gorton Jenkan.s 38·39 courtesy U.S. Patent Office. 40-41 - 1.0. Ben. 42 lefl-Lensman/ Paul Conklin. 49. back cover-National Center for Atmospbcnc Research.

U$e of SPAN nrt•cles in other publications as encournged. e•ccpt when c.opyrigbtcd. For pcrm.1ssion. write to th< Editor. Price ofmag.uine : one year's subscnpuon (12 ISsues). t8 rupees : single copy. 2 rupccs SO p;ti.~e For c:bange or addr=, S<:Ddan old addressfromarecent SPAN envelope along wJih new addresstoA.K. Mnra. Circulauon Manag<r, SPAN Magazine, 24 Kasturba G1lndbJ Marg. New Delh• t 10001 (Seechange o faddressform on page48.)

The Story of Three Mile Island

A NUCLEAR ACCIDENT THAT SHOOK AMERICA

T

he China Syndrome, a Columbia Pictures' movie released in the United States some weeks ago, showed a nuclear plant almost overcome by a catastrophe. Most moviegoers and critics thought the film was gripping entertainment, but its plot a bit too scary.

Fact has proved to be scarier than fiction. Twelve days after the release of the film , a reactor breakdown at Three Mile Island, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, posed dangers more serious than those dramatized in the film. The crisis . is now over, and nightmare visions of an out-of-control nuclear reactor spewing lethal radioactive gas into the atmosphere no longer haunt Americans. But it has shaken public confidence in the nuclear industry and clouded its future at a time when America and the world are striving to develop energy alternatives to ever costlier petroleum.

At Three Mile Island, four massive cooling towers and two high-domed containers loom over a placid sprawl of hamlets, farms and towns- almost like the 20th century casting a shadow on the 19th. The $1 billion plant is owned

by General Public Utilities, an energy consortium; half the shares are owned

by Metropolitan Edison Company, Reading, Pennsylvania. The plant is built around a pressurized light-water reactor.

Heat produced by the fission or splitting of uranium atoms boils water to generate steam; this spins a turbine that drives a generator that produces 880 megawatts of electricity.

At 4 a.m. on March 28, a valve in the feedwater system of the plant (a system that receives beat from the reactor and converts it into steam) malfunctioned ; this triggered a chain of mechanical and human failures to produce America's worst nuclear accident. Within seconds, radioactive steam and gas seeped into the atmosphere. Three hours later, the company declared an emergency and notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and state authorities.

2

SPAN JUNE 1979

Company spokesmen assured newsmen and the public that the mishap wasn't serious. But on March 30, there was a new and severe burst of radiation, and Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh advised preschool children . and pregnant women within five miles of the plant to evacuate their homes.

The people of Harrisburg learned that a hydrogen bubble at the top of the reactor core hampered the cooling process, that a "meltdown" (discussed for years by critics of . nuclear power in apocalyptic terms) was a possibility. When a meltdown occurs, the overheated reactor core melts its way through the thick steel walls of the reactor vessel, penetrates the floor of the containment building and contaminates the soil- or possibly hits a water table and sends back a deadly radioactive geyser.

America's nuclear experts converged on Harrisburg and brainstormed ideas to avert disaster. They managed to degas and dissolve the bubble. On April 3, the plant was said to be past immediate danger, and on April 10, the NRC announced that the temperature of the reactor core had been brought down to a safe level. At the time of writing (May 1), officials say, "a controlled, slow, full cooldown" of the reactor is under way, and is expected to continue for some weeks.

It may take a few years to restore the plant-if restoration is considered possible or practicable. The container building that houses the reactor can be inspected only after several months. A robot will be used for the initial inspection. The reactor and the container will have to be cleaned up, the primary system decontaminated, fuel removed, damaged instruments replaced; extensive and prolonged testing will then be necessary.

Experts have traced the following sequence in the disaster: • The initial response of the plant to the malfunctioning valve in the feedwater system was right. Alarm lights in the

control room turned red, a siren hooted a warning, mechanics in the control room pushed some 50 buttons in 15 seconds and the fission reaction stopped.

• At this point, an auxiliary feedwater system should have cooled the plant's steam generators. The system failed-the flow of pump water was blocked by valves that had been closed several days before for repairs. (Regulations require that a plant should be shut down if auxiliary feedwater pumps are out of service for 72 hours. These regulations had been violated by the plant authorities.)

• Soon after, the plant's "emergency core cooling system" was activated, and it began to inject cold water into the reactor. For reasons yet to be determined, plant operators shut off the emergency system-which contains four large pumps that circulate reactor coolant through the reactor.

This action, taken about an hour after the accident, was the biggest human error in the mishap, and caused severe damage to the nuclear fuel. Subsequently, the cooling system was turned on again, but serious problems had cropped up, particularly the formation of the hydrogen bubble on top of the reactor core.

The ingenuity of the scientists assembled at Harrisburg succeeded in dissolving the bubble, but Dr. Harold Denton, NRC physicist, said they were aided by "serendipity" (happenstance).

*

•

*

For an accident that rocked the United States, the measurable damage to public health or property- other than the reactor- has been surprisingly ~mall.

Some radioactivity-the rare gases xenon and krypton - was vented into the atmosphere, radioactive liquid was dumped into Susquehanna River, and radioactive iodine was detected in milk. But the concentrations were low: people in the vicinity of the plant were said to have received about 80 millirems of radiation in five days- an amount roughly equivalent to that produced by two chest X-

available to all interested foreign governments.

Eight power plants designed by Babcock and Wilcox, the company that built the Three Mile Island reactors, have shut down temporarily to incorporate new safety features. Before the March 28 accident, the NRC had ordered five plants shut because of inadequate protection against earthquakes. Thus only 58 of America's 72 nuclear plants are now functioning. (The 72 plants used to provide one-eighth of America's electricity.)

However, President Carter believes that America cannot abandon nuclear power.

He feels that legislation is still needed to speed up the licensing of nuclear plants.

"A bureaucratic nightmare or a maze of red tape" will not make plant reactors safe, be said recently.

. .. .

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.___ _ _.........__ _.......,._ _ <D•ct79

~~R~

rNuclear-Age Cloud.'

C

1979 by Herbloclt in T1t• WIUA..,ton Post.

rays. (Exposure to 100,000 millirems of radiation a year can cause radiation sickness, a dose of 500,000 millirems can be fa tal.)

But the psychological fallout from Three Mile lsland has been far greater.

"This is the beginning of the end of nuclear power," said consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Jane Fonda, star of The China Syndrome, said: "Like the hydrogen bubble in the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, public opinion is capable of exploding if the Carter. Administration doesn't change its energy direction quickly and decisively." Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy wrote to Energy Secretary James Schlesinger: "It is more important to build these plants safely than to build them quickly."

Antinuclear demonstrations were held

in many parts of the United States.

Japan, Germany and France, which together account for a third of the 150 nuclear reactors outside the United States, all sent investigators to Harrisburg. The Prime Minister of Sweden announced a national referendum to be held the next year (1980) on his country's nuclear energy program. And President Carter, who visited Harrisburg himself, appointed an 11-member commission to thoroughly investigate the accident. Headed by Dr. John G. Kemeny, a pioneer in mathematical models and computer programing, the commission will report to the President and the U.S. Co.ngress within six months on what caused the accident, how reactor standards can be strengthened, how nuclear plants can be better designed. The report will be made

What are the lessons America has learned from Harrisburg? Experts say that : • Safety in any nuclear energy plant cannot be taken for granted; the chance of human error is quite high. Backup safety systems need major overhauHng to simplify their response to emergencies.

Even the most elaborate system cannot head off every emergency that might occur in the bewildering array of pipes, valves, cables, chambers and sophisticated machinery that make up a modern nuclear plant.

• Research is essential on the biggest surprise emerging from the Three Mile Island mishap-the appearance of a hydrogen bubble on top of the reactor core.

• Clear lines of authority should be established when an accident occurs. At Harrisburg, neither government nor company officials seemed to be in charge of the disabled plant. Bickering developed between them, and they issued contradictory statements. Company officials were accused of playing down the magnitude of the mishap-just as the fictional characters of The China Syndrome did.

• There were snarls in coordination between Federal, state and local officials on evacuation planning.

Pennsylvania Republican Senator Richard Schweiker perhaps best summed up the implications of the Three Mile Island mishap: "The nuclear industry is on trial as never before." The New York Times put it differently : "The accident has not yet flashed a red stop light, but the yellow caution light is clearly on."

-s.R.M. SPAN JUNB 1979

J

Foreign Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (left) and Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance at the recent IndoU.S. Joint Commission meeting held in Washing/On.

Indo-U.S. .Joint Commission Meets The fourth annual meeting of the Indo-U.S. Joint Commission, cochaired by India's Minister of External Affairs Atal Bihari Vajpayee and U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, took place in Washington on April 24, 1979. Set up in 1974, the Commission aims at promoting bilateral relations between India and the United States in various fields through its three subcommissions-Economic and Commercial, Education and Culture, and Science and Technology.

The most important outcome of the meeting was the Commission's decision to establish a fourth subcommission-the Agriculture Subcommission. Although India and the United States have a number of ongoing agricultural projects under the aegis of the Joint Commission, the creation of an independent subcommission underscores the importance the two countries attach to agriculture for alleviating hunger and malnutrition in the world. As Secretary of State Vance noted: "Since food and nutrition remain among the most pressing global concerns, I can thmk of no area in which the experience and knowledge of our two societies can be employed with more important results."

Minister Vajpayee expressed the same hope when he said: "Today, we can say with confidence that Indian agriculture has turned the corner and we are determined to work ceaselessly toward improvements in agricultural productivity, as that alone provides an answer to the massive problems of unemployment and poverty that we face." He added: "It is our hope that the new Agriculture Subcommission will further expand Indo-U.S. cooperation in this area."

Besides deciding to set up the Agriculture Subcommission, the two delegations reviewed the work done by its existing three subcommissions over the year 1978-79. The Joint Commission also approved the subcommissions' plans for the coming year aimed at further consolidating relations between the two countries. Among the plans are: • To initiate joint Indo-U.S. commercial projects in third countries. These, noted Vajpayee, would "unite the separate advantages possessed by our respective economic systems for the 4

SPAN JUNE 1979

benefit of peoples other than our own."

• To explore newer areas of collaboration in the fields of agricultural sciences, energy, material sciences and electronics. natural resources, and medical and health sciences.

• To establish an industrial technology working group to intensify ongoing cooperation in this vital field.

• To expand the Education and Culture Subcommission's fellowship program. which is an important link between the academic communities of India and the United States.

• To organize seminars.

• To exchange exhibitions, including an exhibition oflndian classical art in the United States, between the two countries.

• To hold an Indian film festival in various American cities; five Indian films are being shown at present on American public television.

The Joint Commission also commended the grant agreement signed last August between the Indian and American Governments under which the U.S. Agency for International Development would provide $2 million to the Science and Technology Subcommission and other agencies for projects aimed at benefiting the Indian rural population.

At the concluding ceremonies of the meeting, Secretary of State Vance said: "The success of the Indo-American Joint Commission is grounded in the essential principles which guide our relations: Neither country sees this as a one-way street; each expects to learn from the other." "Above aU,'' he concluded, "the Commission reflects the values we hold in common-to preserve peace, to serve human rights, and to improve the human condition. In this spirit, we look forward to continued cooperation with the government and the people of India."

In his remarks, Minister Vajpayee noted: "The sympathy and friendship between our two peoples and governments is based not only on common values and ideals, but also on mutual understanding." He reiterated the importance that the Government of India attached to the work of the Joint Commission, adding: "It has proved to be a valuable instrument for promoting Indo-U.S. relations."

0

RASHIO L\LIB TALKS \\ ITH JLA , I KIRKPATRICK

In this exchange of views with an assistant editor of The Hindustan Times, Dr. Kirkpatrick (above) traces the dedication, diversity and effectiveness of various pressure groups in the United States, their impact at the local and national legislative level. Dr. Kirkpatrick, who was recently in India, is a professor at Georgetown University, and is the author of Political Woman.

TALIS: Dr. Kirkpatrick. 11'ould you <'Xplain this strange phenomenon in American politics mlled pressure groups or interest lobbies? I have heard it said that the lobbyist is a l'eltide for representation <~!' interest groups: on the other hand. it's sometimes said, he is a man with a suitcase jit!l ofnumey. Though there are similarittes bet11¡een tlte U.S. and fndian constiuaions.

1re find tltat .\1/clt an institutionalr::ed setup is not a1¡ailahle here in India. So. II'Ould you tell us ll'hlll these ~roups are, and hriefly ho11' it all started?

KIRKPATRI CK : ln fact, lobbies may be both - a vehicle for the representation of interests, and people with suitcases full of money. There isn't anything necessarily incompatible between the two things. provided the money is legally collected and legally disbursed.

Lobbying as an in~titution has certainly been with us in the United States s1ncc its founding. It is quite simply the represen-

tation of interests in various arenas in which political decisions are made. It's just that. Nothing more nor less than that.

Lobbies are interest groups that make demands on government. These demands are of very difTerent kinds. Incidentally, I don't thin k that the United States is at a ll unique in this.

I think that most democratic governments have institutionalized mechanisms for representation of interests in the community. I think the American style i~ different. First of all, there's probably a greater diversity of interest groups in the United States today than in most countries, or than there was in the United States itself in the past.

Through most of our history, most of our lobbies have been economic in character. There have been labor pressure groups that sought to represent the point of view of organized labor. in elections and in the U .S. Congress. On the other hand,

there've been business pressure groups that sought to represent the interests of industry. There have been chamber of commerce groups and trade association groups and farmers' unions.

What's new is the proliferation of kind~ of interest groups. We have a very wide range of interest groups that focus on social activities, such as the churches they constitute very powerful lobbies. The National Council of Churches, the National Council of Christians and Jews, and the United Methodists. for example.

Every major denomination has its own lobby, and also participates in a wide range of other lobbies.

We also have new ideological pressure group~, like Common Cause. and the National Committee to Secure a free Congres~. Some of them are right-wing; some arc left-wing. We have a lot of special interest groups designed for very particular causes, like Save the Whale. A very power-

:ITIZEN GROUPS cmuiuued

Often referred to as 'government by remote control,' citizen lobbies in the United State~ ful pro-whale lobby, they print bumper stickers saying things like, Save the W hale.

Then there are many conservationist lobbies. We also have anticonservationist lobbies. We have wilderness societies, and antiwilderness societies ....

with o.fjices in Washington and with large budgets. Now. how exactly do they orgcmi::e themselves? Is this a correct view of them"!

KIRKPATRICK: I think it's incorrect insofar as they are conceived as groups

whose focus is activity in Washington.

Not that the activity vis-a-vis the legis-

TALID: Don't these opposing groups lature in Washington is not important. cancel one another out? How do you get But you really miss the role and the impact decision-making in such a situation'! and influence of pressure groups in KIRKPATRICK: We call it a system of American life, if you don't bear in mind

TALIB : We in this country don't have the same thing, as I was saying, in any institutionalized form. We don't have pressure groups or interest lobbies in that form. But we do have our trade associations that are primarily concerned with protecting the interests of the chambers of commerce, or their particular groups and industries. And we have, ofcourse. ad hoc groups coming up from time to time. For instance, the pricerise resistance movement, which is sometimes comparable to your consumer movement. But we don' t have them in tlze ongqing sense, and we don't have them in a very organizedform. Would you/ike to comment why this might be so from early American history?

KIRKPATRICK: Well, Americans do

countervailing power. We believe that it's that they are active at all levels of politicsan intrinsic and very important part of the local level, the county level, the state as pluralism. We believe that government well as the national level. Then again, they under conditions of democratic plural- are active in elections and in public opinion ism not only really permits, but actually as well as in legislatures. requires the representation of countervailing power- groups organized not only TALID : I have a statistic here which says to represent their own interests but also to that 30 years ago there were 2,000 lobbies, have more pressure gmup activity than oppose other groups. How does it get and 110111 there are 15,000 of them registered most societies, at more levels, particularly worked out? Well, it gets worked out by in Washington, D.C., spending something at the grass roots level. I think the reason the process of jockeying, compromising, like two billion dollars, pushing their pet for it is found back in that phenomenon aggregating-that's typical of decision- projects. There is some registration require- that Alexis de Tocqueville commented making in our society. [tis true that some ment. Why did this come in? This is a about two centuries ago when he visited of these groups constitute certain vetoes recent innovation, isn't it?

America. He said then that if you put on other groups.

KIRKPATRICK: It's not very recent. It's three Americans in a room together they been in existence for quite some time now. would form an organization. The fact TALIB: Let's go back a bit. You were Let me note that the growth in pressure is that Americans are joiners; they are saying that these groups impact on the group activity, and in the numbers, range now and always have been joiners. They're process at the legislative stage, l1'hich may and diversity in our pressure groups, has organizers, they're highly oriented to not be true of other countries. where there paralleled precisely the growth in the seeking solutions to their problems are pressure groups. but probably not in the activities of the Federal Government and through organized cooperative activity. form you have in the United States. the state governments. I'll quote you a TALlB: Is there a danger in this, of the KIRKPATRICK: May I go back a bit statistic now. further than that and say that pressure President John F. K ennedy during his system being abused by those who huy the groups in America impact on our decision- brief years as President was very concerned legislators' influence? I hear that there is making process at every stage, not just the lest he be the first President to submit a controversy from time to time in the United legislative. T hey impact on public opinion, budget of over $100 billion. He didn't States about this. first of a ll. They have large campaigns-I want to break the $1 00-billion mark. KIRKPATRICK: There are all sorts of mentioned bumper stickers. The aim of President Jimmy Carter last year broke dangers. I think that the gross economic the bumper sticker that says Save the the $500-biUion mark for the budget kinds of abuse have been mainly corrected by legislation. There was a time when Whale or Friends of the Green Earth is, in without batting an eye. fact, to impact on public opinion. AdverNow to be sure, there has been inflation state legislatures were called the happy tisements get placed in newspapers, infor- d uring the same period. But the truth is hunting grounds of the interests. And it mation campaigns are undertaken. So, that, even if we hold dollars constant, the was said that the people representing one level they attempt to operate on is that Federal budget has more than doubled in various interest groups, like the trucking of public opinion. Another level is on the the last 15 years, and the number of lobby. or the railroads, could come in with electoral during an organized election Federal regulations has increased sixfold fat wallets and buy legislators and laws. campaign. The pressure groups are very d uring the same period. The scope of the T hat age in its gross fash ion is past, active not only in the general elections, but U.S. Government activities has been enor- because there's been a lot of corrective also in the primary elections, through mously broadened, and it touches the lives legislation designed. which we choose our candidates.

Above all, legislation has put the of many more people in many more ways.

T hey are active within the political The citizen response to what we sometimes spotlight of publicity on lobby activities. parties, attempting not only to influence call "government by remote control' ' is to including election campaign contrinom inat ions, but also to persuade the mobi lize, organ ize. and try to get at those butions- a very important area of lobbyparty to represent their point of view. people who are making rules affecting our ing in the United States. Our disclosure laws fo:r campaign contributions are very Finally, they're active at the Congress lives io so many more ways every year. level and the legislative level, trying to tight. But, of course, there are possibilities influence legislative outcomes.

TALIB: That's an act of participation by fo r abuse. Every fo rm of participation has its own potential fo r abuse. You know, the people in the process.

TALIB: But the aspect thGJ most prevails KfRKPATRICK: Of course, a very im- there are people who would argue that in the public mind is of people operating portant aspect of participation. democracy is too da11gerous to be borne

mobilize public opinion to influence decision-making in different arenas affecting their lives. because of the possibilities of the abuse of demagoguery. Every interest group activity is subject to two main kinds of abuse, really. One you've already referred to is the possibility of there being so many vetoes that it becomes difficult to make coherent policy; the other is the buying and selling oflegislators. The second kind, of course, exists in other systems as well as in the American. I' m sure. you know the British institution of the interested M.P., in which British M.P.s are actually on the payroll of interest groups in Britain. They register as on the payroll, and they are then called interested M.P.s. That's not considered an abuse in the British system, but it would be considered an abuse in the American system.

TALIB: Let's have a look a! some of!hese pressure groups !hal are wholly good, if I may say so, because !here are some thar are tied up with movements. Ralph Nader's is one, Common Cause is another. These come ro mind easily, and are best known.

And, of course, there are the women's lib groups with which, I think, your book Political Woman concerns itse(( to some extent - or does it not?

KIRKPATRICK: Yes ... but I'd like to be a bit contentious. I don't think there's such a thing as a wholly good pressure

group. I think that there are many pressure groups whose whole purpose is to promote a particular conception of the public good.

They have a vision of the public good. And their desire is to persuade the U.S. Government to put the force of law behind their vision of the public good. That's what all the public interest lobbies are for, in fact.

And now we have public interest lobbies on the left and public interest lobbies on the right. each of them promoting its own conception of the public good. True, they are disinterested in the sense that they seek no economic gain. Sometimes we think that is good.

Let me give you an example. Let's take the Nader group. This was the first of the effective consumer lobbies. Certainly by putting the spotlight of publicity on some of the abuses of automobile manufactures, and then by putting the spotlight of publi: city on the way Congress was voting on issues of concern to automobile consumers- and that's all Americans, since we all have cars- Ralph Nader was able to have an enormous impact on safety legislation affecting automobiles. I have no doubt that automobiles today are somewhat safer, certainly they're cleaner.

We have strict emission controls that help us fight pollution in a highly industrialized society. That's a good thing.

·'One pressure group wants us to withdraw sponsorship ofour TV shol1', another pressure group wants us to cominue sponsorship of our TV show. and still another pressure group wants us to add more noodles."

Rep• inh::tl by pc•·m i ~!-!i on

© Cnr100n Features Syndicate.

At the same time, the Nader group also made mistakes. They were also responsible for the installation of some antipollution devices which, it was later discovered, while they free the air of one kind of pollution, in fact introduce a still more dangerous carcinogen into the environment. So, the very good pressure groups make mistakes. It's a good thing to have business pressure groups representing, for example, the automobile manufacturers, keeping the spotlight of publicity on the activities of the consumer lobbies, too.

TALIB: Yes, because you achieve some kind of a balance having both a pressure group and a counterpressure group.

KIRKPATRICK: We think you achieve a situation in which everybody is watching everybody. We Americans, you know, believe in dividing and separating power.

And we feel most comfortable when everybody is watching everybody.

TALIB: Now tell us a li!tle abour the women's lib groups, because we haven't touched on them at all. How do they work?

They haven't been very succes.sful, for inswnce, wirh the Equal Rig/us Amendment. Have they?

KIRKPATRICK : They were very successful vis-a-vis the Congress- and that's a good example of why one should keep one's eye on the states as well as on the Congress. For the organized women's groups are really the tip of an iceberg.

There are very profound cultural and social changes going on in the United States, affecting women and the role of women in the family and in the society.

T he organized women's groups about which one hears, like NOW (National Organization of Women) and the National League ofWomen Voters, are more visible because they are highly organized, and they represent the cutting edge of the women ·s movement.

They perform the main functions for the women's movement that the lobbies do generally. They have representat ives in Washi ngton who keep the Congressmen informed of the desires of their constituents, and keep thei r constituents informed about the Congress. They keep their eye on what's going on in Washington, of interest to women. And they turn the spot light of publicity on it. T hey mobilize support back in the communities for their goals, and then they organize to lobby very effectively, in every single Congressman· s office.

TIZEN GROUPS W111in11ed

Now, in the case of the Equal Rights Amendment, the Congress. as you know, passed the Equal Rights Amendment by a large majority. But since it is a constitutional amendment, it must also be ratified by the states. I t has been ratified, in fact, by all but three of the necessary number of $tates. What the organized portion of the women's movement is doing now is operating at the state legislative level.

Let me give you an example of the way the women's movement operates. I'm a member of the American Political Science Association (APSA). Every learned profession in the United States has its own professiona I association. They have annual conventions. These conventions bring a lot of business into a town and to hotels; hotels survive on the business of these conventions.

The American Political Science Association had a contract to hold its next convention in Chicago. But the organized women's groups inside the American Political Science Association mobilized a very effect ive political action campaign within the APSA and secured a vote that the meeting should not be held in Chicago, Illinois.

TALIB: Why? KIRKPATRICK: Because Illinois has not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.

The organized women's groups have passed resolutions asserting that no organization should meet in any state that has not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.

Representatives of these groups move into all the organizations in which they operate. And collectively, you know, they

constitute quite a fom1idable resource for their cause.

TALIB : And the APSA convention ~rasn't hf?ld there"!

KIRKPATRICK: APSA has cancelled its contract unilaterally to meet in Chicago next year-it is being sued by the H ilton chain of hotels for cancelling its contract.

APSA is lookjng for another place to meet.

But this wouldn't be interesting if it were just APSA. Rough ly the same thing has happened with the American Historians Association. and others as well.

TALIB: That's a good illustration of the effectiveness of these pressure groups, and we ge1 an idea of lww 1hey work. fuM 1hey organize. But there is a broader aspect to it.

IWmely, the pressure lobbies and interest groups develop heyond just asserting their influence on legislatures. Now that I think is a peculiarly American phenomenon.

KIRKPATRICK: T he women's movement is in fact much broader than the organized groups that are engaged in lobbying.

TALIB: Do you !tave movements in the United States reacting to issues we are very worked up about in India, like pricerise resistance movements?

KIRKPATRICK: We have what we call a tax revolt . That's what we've been worked up about recently-Proposition 13 and Propositions 6 and 8 and 9. Proposition 13 is a very interesting example of a spontaneous grass roots pressure group activity. There were organizations formed in Ca lifornia, really ad hoc initially. of citizens to try to get on to the ballot in

Repnnled by P'""'""on oflhc Salurda) l!'cnong Po;l ComJXtny. ©

TALIB: Yes, because there didn't seem to he anything like a lobby ll'ork ing toward that end. and yet it came into existence because there II'C/S a needfor it.

KIRKPATRICK: A lobby was created where there had been none, and certainly there a re lobbies trying to hold the line on prices in various fields.

T ALIB: If I can sum up in a few words: There is a diverse number of these groups operating, m ostly fi'om Washington. They spend money, sometim es this leads to abuse.

Blll. I suppose, generally, they are a manifestation of what might be called citizen power. What we have to guard against is the influence ofmoney power in these situations.

Would you agree ?

KIRKPATRICK: Yes, almost all of our citizens groups have money. In the 1978 elections, there was a very careful study done of campaign contributions for those elections, and it was discovered that the business political action groups' contributions comprised about 20 per cent oft he total expenditures in that election. Trade associatiOn disbursements constituted something close to another 20-24 per cent.

Labor union disbursements were even greater than either of those. The rest of the disbursements came from a very wide range of groups.

I don't think we need to be very concerned about the corruption of money so long as the money is coming into the electoral process from many different competing sources, so long as we know who is giving what to whom, so long as the process is open. and there's full disclosure, a nd lots of publicity. We rely heavily on publicity to keep people honest. Now, in addition to that, of course, we have campaign laws that Jimjt the amount that any given group can contribute to a particular campaign.

TAUB: So as not to give advantage to the bener endowed, to get a head start.

KIRKPATRICK: Yes, not to give anyone [] an overwheJrnjng advantage.

·• What the h ---does it look like Fm up to? rm joining the taxpayers revolt."

SPAN JUNE 1979

California. through the process we call initiative, a proposition that would limit the amount of property tax to which any citizen could be liable in California. As you know, that was Proposition 13, and it was passed. That was done entirely by grass root citizen ad hoc organizations. As a consequence of that success, similar groups sprang up in many states. In 13 states they were able to get similar propositions onto the ballot in the last elections. Some of them were successful. some were not.

That's a very good example of a spontaneous. grass roots kind of citizen activity.

1 97~

AL

HO EAST MEETS WEST IN MUSIC

by RICHARD KOSTELANETZ

FOR 30 YEARS, IT HAS BEEN MY WISH TO CREATE MUSIC FROM PURE SCALES AND RAGAS AND TONAL SYSTEMS UNIMPEDED BY KEYBOARD SCALES. ALJ\N liOVHANESS

Composer Alan Hovhaness decided four decades ago to pursue an idiosyncratic path. apart from changing fashions, that he has since followed prolifically, producing musical compositions that rank among the best of the past half-century. Essentially, he is a consummate melodist, who uses the modal scales and textures of Eastern music within a framework of Western counterpoint and structure.

No other modern composer has written for as many kinds of ensembles and instruments -one of his most popular compositions included the recorded sound of large whales.

Within the framework of the tonal music tradition, he has created a style that is instantly recognizable. largely because of its idiosyncratic synthesis of Oriental and Occidental characteristics. Among American tonal composers, only Aaron Copland has created as much uniquely identifiable music. Now a resident of Seattle, Washington, Hovhaness is completing his 3 Lst symphony, which is, by itself, an unparalleled achievement for a modern composer.

To understand Hovhaness' position in the universe of 20thcentury music, we must remember that serious composition in the United States splits into three rather distinct streams or " languages" - chaotic, serial and tonal. The first extends the assumptions of musical a1onality to the complete rejection of everything music once was. Chaotic music has no linear forms, no climaxes, no definite conclusions, no predictable pitches, no harmonies, no melodies- just masses of apparently tll1related sounds. The American composer Charles Ives inaugurated this tradition; Edgar Varese, among others, extended it; John Cage, among contemporary composers, epitomizes it. The serial tradition, by contrast, stems from Austrian-American composer A mold Schonberg's discovery that the 12 tones of the piano's chromatic scale could be organized in a radically different way.

The Austrian Anton von Wcbern developed the serial idea, and the American Milton Babbitt has extended it to other dimensions of musical expression.

Composers of the mainstream tradition, the tonal language, have observed traditional tonalities, familiar structures and the ideal of melody. In the context of contemporary composition, it seems conservative, perhaps retrograde. Nonetheless, several other noted composers have done inventive, first-rate work within the tonal tradition: Aaron Copland, until his work changed around I 955 ; both Dmitri Shostakovitch and Samuel Barber in certain pieces done more than I 5 years ago ; and the young Americans, Philip Glass and Terry Riley, in more recent work. Hovhaness is perhaps¡ the foremost active tonal composer in the world today.

Hovhaness always has been a tonal composer. His principal early influences were Mozart and Handel, and then, among the moderns, Bartok and Sibelius. In fact, he refers to Sibelius as his "favorite orchestral composer since Mozart- particularly his Fourth Symphony, Swan of Tuonela, Luonnotor for Soprano and Orchestra." Another modern influence is the Armenian priest Komilas Vartibed (1869-1 936), whom Hovhaness calls "the Armenian Bartok.. , Hovhaness usually is generous in his remarks about other composers. but he is outspoken in his opposition to atonality in music. ' To me, it is against nature," he says. "There is a center in everything that exists. The planets have the sun, the moon , the earth. The reason I like Oriental music is that everything has a firm center. All music with a center is tonal.

Music without a center is fine for a minute or two, but it soon sounds all the same."

Hovhaness claims for his own music a simplicity that puts off some sophisticated listeners, but that he thinks will contribute to its survival. ''Things that are very complicated tend to disappear and get lost. Simplicity is difficult, not easy. Beauty is simple. All unnecessary elements are removed-only essence remains." Hovhaness is a conservative, who acknowledges definable traditions, rather than a reactionary or neoclassicist, who favors return to anachronistic forms. He characterizes

SPAN JUNE 1979

9

OVHANESS continued

)

his own music as " giant melodies in simple and complex modes around movable and stationary tonal centers."

He was born Alan Vaness Chakmakjian in Somerville, Massachusetts, March 8, 1911, the son of a chemistry professor at Tufts University medical school. Haroutiun Chakmakjian, his father, was an Armenian who came to the United States from Adana, Turkey. His mother, Madeleine Scott, was Scottish in ancestry. The Chakmakjians moved to another Boston suburb, Arlington, when Alan, their only child, was five. He attended public schools there, finishing high school in 1929.

He learned to read music when he was seven, and immediately began to write his own pieces. An instinctive musician , he taught himself to improvise at the piano before he ever had a lesson on the instrument. When he was nine, his parents sent him to a local piano teacher, Adelaide Proctor, who gave him free lessons and encouraged his composing. By the age of 13, young Chakmakjian had written two operas, Bluebeard and Daniel, as well as many smaller pieces.

Unlike other Armenian-Americans of his generation, he did not attend the church-sponsored, after-school classes in which youngsters learned Armenian language and culture. " My mother didn't want me to be too Armenian," the composer says, "but my father did. He taught me secretly." Soon after his mother's death, in 1931 , he changed his middle name to "Hovaness," which is Armenian for John or Johannes, in honor of his grandfather, whose first name it was. Then he decided to add an "h" to his middle name and drop his last name, thus producing the name he now uses, Alan Hovhaness.

After high school, Hovhaness attended Tufts University for two years, then transferred to the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1936, he closely observed the North Indian musician Vishnudas Shirali, who had come to Boston with the dancer Uday Shankar. In the summer of 1942, the young composer went to the Berkshire (Massachusetts) Music Center to study with the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu; there Hovhaness quarreled with the representatives of the neoclassical establishment gathered around Aaron Copland. Unlike other American tonal composers of his generation, he never studied in Europe.

"I was more interested in Oriental music," he recalls. "Things like that were very far from Paris." Hovhaness has no academic degrees other than honorary doctorates.

In the 1930s, Hovhaness made his living playing piano, mostly around Boston, for choruses, chamber orchestras, violinists and solo singers, as well as for social gatherings of Greeks, Arabs and Armenians. He also worked as a jazz arranger in the Works Progress Administration, a U.S. Federal Government program, and as an organist at an Armenian church, where he acquired a reputation for spectacular improvisations on ancient modes. " I was composing a lot," he says, "but wasn't getting paid for it. " His first success as a composer came in 1939 when Leslie Heward, director of music for the British Broadcasting Corporation in Birmingham, England, aired several Hovhaness pieces and, in a public interview, identified the young American as an important new composer. Unfortunately for Hovhaness.

Heward died soon afterward. In 1940, Hovhaness destroyed nearly all the music he had written up to that time, including a prize-winning 1933 symphony ; be wanted to start the new decade afresh. In the early 1940s, he met the Boston painter Hyman Bloom, who influenced Hovhaness' growing interest in ethnic motifs and introduced him to Yenouk Der Hagopian, an Armenian troubador whose music Hovbaness patiently

SPAN JUNE 1979

transcribed into conventional (i.e., Western) notation.

Hovhaness' interest in Armenian music led to his organizing a concert of his own compositions in Boston in 1944, for the benefit of an Armenian charitable organization. The concert was a success and led in turn to a series of new compositions, Armenian in style, such as Lousadzak ( 1944), the opera Etchmiadzin and Armenian Rhapsody No. I. With these works, he initiated his first technical innovation, which he calls senza misura, or "free rhythm." Essentially, this means that, in certain parts of a piece, he writes a series of notes without measure bars. The musicians are instructed to repeat these notes, at their own individual speeds, over a fixed period of time. The result is a temporary chaotic sound or "sound cloud," as Hovhaness calls it ; but his music differs from that of the chaotic composers in that any aural disorganization is nearly always tonally resolved. This characteristic device continues to reappear in his music. At times, senza misura becomes a background drone over which melody moves-a form comparable to the music of India or the Eastern Orthodox church. " Without drones," Hovhaness writes, "melodies lose their center and cannot soar to heaven, but fall dead to earth. Drones give life and meaning to melody." In general, Hovhaness prefers to set his melodic lines against repeated background sounds, such as single notes on the piano or other percussion instruments, instead ofchords.

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HOVHANESS IN INDIA

BY NARAYANA MENON AS TOLD TO CARMEN KAGAL

I first met Alan Hovhaness in 1957 at Peggy GranvilleHicks' flat in New York. I could see that Alan already knew a great deal about Indian music. He had known Vishnudas Shirali, Uday Shankar's music director. And already he was using in his work subtle rhythms reminiscent of some Indian talas.

What impressed me most at the time was that be seemed to have grasped the essence of the raga. You know, it's a funny thing. You can analyze a raga, define it, describe it, explain it theoretically, break it down structurally. Yet, after all this, there's still something indefinable about it. It has to be felt.

This is what Alan has been able to do.

So when he came to India in 1959, it was with this background in Indian music. We spent a great deal of time together in Delhi, listening to music, live and on records. And talking. dissecting, even arguing endlessly about music.

Later on, 1 was with him in Madras where he stayed for several weeks. There he wrote a piece which he called the " Madras Sonataâ&#x20AC;˘Âˇ for two pianos, using one effectively as a percussive instrument. He wrote another work for a small ensemble of Indian instruments attached to the Madras station of All India Radio Orchestra, which he himself conducted. His Symphony No. 8, titled Arjuna, had its world premiere in February 1960 (though the work, I believe, had been composed some years earlier) when it was played by the Madras Symphony Orchestra. Some of these programs were given during the annual festival oft he Music Academy, Madras, probably the most important meeting of its kind in India. Of course, it's primarily devoted to South Indian music, but it attracts people from all over the country and some from other

1--------------------------

Hovhaness joined an Armenian student group in cosponsoring annual New York concerts of his music, beginning at Town Hall in June 1945. The composer Lou Harrison, then a music critic for The New York Herald Tribune, reviewed it.

Having an extra ticket, Harrison invited his friend John Cage, another young composer, who went backstage after the performance to congratulate H ovhaness. Harrison's review was laudatory, identifying Hovhaness as "a composer of considerable interest and originality." Cage introduced Hovhaness around artistic New York, and later wrote about his work in Modern Music Magazine (Spring 1946). Two years later, the composer Virgil Thomson, then the senior critic for the Herald Tribune, was even more enthusiastic: "T he high quality of this music, the purity of its inspiration, is evidenced in the extreme beauty of the melodic material, which is original material, not collected folklore, and in the perfect sweetness of taste that it leaves in the mouth .... For all its auditory complexity-for ornateness is of the essence-it is utterly simple in feeling, pure in spirit and high-minded. And for Western ears, it is thoroughly refreshing."

In 1946, Hovhaness moved to New York, where he lived for a year, mostly composing music for dancers. But he could not earn a livelihood there, and so he returned to Boston. In 1948, he began three years of teaching at the Boston Con-

parts of the world. I remember that Alan addressed the delegates at that year's conference.

Unfortunately my recollections of Alan's music are confined to his earlier works, because it's difficult tp get scores of his music or his records here. With a composer like Aaron Copland, for instance, or Eliot Carter, it's easier to keep track of his work and development. Alan has a genius for staying out of the headlines.

The Hovhaness work I am most familiar with is The Flowering Peach, based on a play by Clifford Odets. I also know The Silver Pilgrimage (Symphony No. 15), named after the novel by the South Indian writer M. Anantanarayanan, in which there's a passage for unaccompanied flute that could well be an alap played by an Indian musician. And I know his Khaldis, Tower Music for Wind and Brass, Saint Vartan Symphony, Arevakal, Anahid, the Magnificat and the well-known Mysterious Mountain.

Alan Hovhaness is, as you know, a prolific composer-and like many other prolific composers his work is uneven. But when it is good it is lovely and deeply moving. The dominant feature of his music, I would say, is his total immersion in the tonic.

It is as if an invisible, finely tuned tanpura, often several tanpuras, hovered over the music. Drone is a poor word to convey the meaning, the beauty, the mysterious haunting power of four strings to envelop a musical situation. It's difficult to say exactly how Indian music has influenced Alan. Our talas. our rhythms, fascinate him. The tanpura is almost a part of his being. There is a drone floating constantly aU around his music.

As a person, Alan was somewhat shy he didn't want to meet celebrities or big industrialists or politicians. He was happiest in the company of musicians. Looking back on our days together, little things come to mind. I remember when my daughter, then around 10, gave him her autograph book, Alan didn't just sign his name-he wrote a brief melody in staff

servatory of Music. In 1951, he again moved to New York, where he worked for the Voice of America, producing musical programs for broadcast to the Middle East and India.

Soon after he arrived in New York, he joined the American Composers Alliance, a precursor of Broadcast Music, Incorporated, an organization that licenses musical performing rights of composers, authors and publishers.

Around 1953, he began to collect on his artistic investments.

The Guggenheim Foundation gave him the first of two successive fellowships. T he choreographer Martha Graham commissioned a score for her dance company, and the Louisville (Kentucky) Orchestra commissioned a piece for its premiere concerts. Hovhaness met the conductor Leopold Stokowski, who had been programing Hovhaness' compositions since 1942. Stokowski commissioned a composition for his inaugural concert with the Houston Symphony- it was Mysterious Mountain ( 1955), Hovhaness' single most famous work.

In 1959, when he was in his late 40s, Hovhaness began the second phase of his musical education. He received a Fulbright research fellowship to study Karnatic music in South India.

Traveling all over the country for a year, he tran scribed more than 300 ragas into a book he would like to publish, and, on commission, wrote a piece for Indian musicians. He visited Japan for the first time, giving well-received concerts of his own work. He

notation (left). This was to set something of a precedent, because later on when she presented her book to Benjamin Britten, he felt obliged perhaps to do the same.

Alan always carried a little notebook with him wherever he went, and he was constantly jotting down things in it. He was always on the alert for new musical ideas.

Alan is Armenian-born and Armenia always brings to my mind that other great Armenian composer, Aram Khachaturian. Both are steeped in Armenian and other Eastern musical traditions and concepts. One gets the impression that Alan discovered himself and his heritage a little late, looked inward, and got to a central point which became the focus of his musical thinking. Khachaturian, on the other hand, went from the center outward giving his heritage orchestral utterance and bringing it into the outer world, the mainstream of the European tradition . In the process, Alan eschewed all "extraneous" clements, from his earlier work (most of which, I believe, he burned) to purge himself of previous musical memories. He has said somewhere that beauty is simple, and simplicity is the hallmark of his best work. It is not the simplicity of those who have no other choice. It is a conscious exercise in restraint. And so his simplicity has strength-like that of some of Bach's "simpler" works, which have the nobility and profundity associated with greatness.

0 About the Author: Executive director of the National Centre for rhe

Performing Arts in Bombay, Dr. Narayana Menon was earlier direcror general of All India Radio and presidem of UNESCO's International Music Council. Veena player and awhor offour books, he has performed an important role in East-West exchanges in classical music.

SPAN JUNE 1979

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HOVHANESS continued

returned to Japan in 1962-63 to study gagaku music- "the earliest orchestral music we know," he says. " It came from China and Korea in the 700s." He also learned to play Japanese instruments, such as the oboe-like hichiriki and the complex mouth organ Sho, and played in a gagaku group, in addition to transcribing 13 pieces in Western notation. By 1965, Hovhaness could write that his principal musical preferences were "seventhcentury Armenian religious music, classical music of South India, Chinese orchestra music of the Tang Dynasty, Ah-ak music of Korea, gagaku of Japan and the opera-oratorios of Handel."

In 1972, Hovhaness moved permanently to Seattle, where he had been composer-in-residence with the Seattle Symphony in 1966-67. He lives with his wife, coloratura soprano Hinako Fujihara, in the southern section of the city, near the airport.

Their apartment is small. There is no name on the front door, that opens onto a concrete courtyard. He works in the living room, mostly on two folding tables. Against one wall is a modest spinet piano; against another, a small television set that he has borrowed so that he can watch a performance of his music.

On the floor is a reel-to-reel tape player that does not work. Books fill some shelves. piles of his scores occupy others. and an absiract painting rests on the floor, leaning against a bookcase. He has no record player, and no records other than hls own. Hovhaness lives frugally.

Hovhaness is tall and slender, with stooped posture; his black eyes are deep-set and a broad, dark mustache accents his easy smile. Hovhaness' face is well-formed, in a long and slender way, and handsome, his mottled skin notwithstanding. His dark, wavy hair has begun to turn gray, especially near his ears, and he wears it long enough to fluff out from the back of his head. The gray beard he bas worn for the past few years is scraggly. Around his right wrist is a copper bracelet for the arthritis that plagues his remarkably long and large fingers and handicaps his piano playing. He seems physically frail , but when he discusses the pushups he does every day, that impression passes. Even at home, he wears a wide tie and a suit with pens in the handkerchief pocket.

Though he is a shy public speaker, he is a fluent conversationalist, never at a loss for answers. "Why Seattle?" he is asked. " I like the mountains very much," he replies. "I don't have to go to Switzerland. I expect to stay here."

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The principal .mystery of Hovhaness' career is how he manages to compose so much. One of his several music publishers, C. F. Peters, lists more than 240 of his pieces in its catalogue; other publishers have other compositions, and yet more work remains unpublished. " I write every day," he explains over a cup of coffee, rocking back and forth in his dining chair as he speaks. "I have so many beautiful ideas. I must write them down. I can't stop composing. I have more ideas than I can ever use.'' He writes all the time, wherever he is- on a plane, in a bus or car, walking on the street, even when he sleeps. A pencil and a five-by-eight-inch notebook with music staves are always ncar him. " I don't know how to compose slowly. I correct and revise later, but composing goes in a sweep. Sometimes l just get the beginning idea, but more often the entire score, complete with orchestration, comes into my head at once." (fhe record jacket of Duet for Violin and Harpsichord says that the three-minute piece ''was commissioned on May 16, 1954, composed on May J 7, and given its first performance two weeks later in Frankfurt, Germany.") On being told by a conductor that the conclusion of a certain piece is weak or inappropriate, Hovhaness has been

U

SPAN JUNE 1979

known to deliver a new one the following day.

His standard procedure, however, is to work at night. " After feeling drowsy in the early evening, I get more and more creative as the night goes on. By dawn, I'm wildly creative; it gets stronger all the time." When inspiration is slow, he scans earlier notebooks and old manuscripts to get ideas for new pieces. ln Mysterious Mountain, for instance, there is a fugue that Hovhaness found in a 1936 notebook. "Do you meditate?"

I ask. "No, I'm too active. I take walks." When these stimulants fail , he passes the night doing mechanical chores, such as copying out previous scores for offset reproduction or publication.

Obsessed with his work, he never fails to identify the date and place of any composition he is asked about. About other things, his memory is less sure. Hovhaness is a music-making machine who lives for his work.

He does not intend his music to be programmatic, unless there is a text with a subject. Just as most of his program notes are technically descriptive, most titles for his pieces define the instrumentation; the titles that are most evocative, for example Mysterious Mountain, usually are coined as an afterthought.

His descriptive titles usually refer to something religious or naturaL " Nature is my great inspiration," he once said, "and I've always regarded Nature as the clothing of God." One could characterize Hovhaness as a transcendental composer whose principal subject is spiritual experience- or. more precisely, musical experience as it approaches spiritual experience. He once wrote, " I have always experienced from earliest childhood the sensation of traveling great distances out into the universe on what seemed like bridges of gossamer threads." That is the kind of experience he wants to simulate in his music.

Like nearly all highly prolific composers, Hovhaness is uneven. Characteristically, be is more interested in creating new works than in publicizing one or another of his previous pieces as a favorite. Nonetheless, his listeners make discriminations. His denigrators exploit weaker works to dismiss him completely. His advocates claim that only the good ones count ; the others are quickly forgotten. The best Hovhaness pieces are Khaldis. Op. 91; Mysterious Mountain ; the Magnificat; and the Saint Vartan Symphony. All but the first are large, encompassing orchestral pieces with dramatic linear forms and rich arrangements. They are among the finest mainstream pieces composed anywhere in the past three decades; in the spectrum of contemporary composition. they are, quite simply, the best of their kind .

Does Hovhaness consider himself religious? " I feel closest to the reality of Shinto," he replies, "but my ancestral gods or kami are painters, writers and musicians. I believe that composers can at times join heaven and earth- can join opposites. At certain times, I have been seized by clairvoyance, but that is not a religious talent. I have also been given music suddenly, as in a very vivid dream."

Hovhaness suspect!' that his past incarnations were Greek and Oriental. Has he any premonition of future reincarnations?

"No," he replies. "I have too much music to finish to worry about such things."

D About the Author: Richard Kostelanetz, a prolific writer and cultural critic, often writes for many joumals i11cfuding Commonweal, New York and The New York Times Book Review. Among his books are The End of Intelligent Writing: Literary Politics in America ; Master Minds: Portraits of Contemporary Artists and Intellectuals and Rain Rains Rain.

The Greening of Arid Lands T EXT BY S.R. MA DH U

PHOTOG RAPHS BY AVIN ASH PAS RI CHA

At ICRISAT near Hyderabad, some of the world's top farm scientists are trying to extend the scopt of the green revolution to five principal crops of the semiarid tropics. They are developing better see( varieties and farming practices, training researchers, conducting socioeconomic surveys.

implement is an example of appropriate technology introdu('ed to India by ICRISA T. Leji: Seeds of the jive crops researched at ICRISAT- sorghum (jowar), pearl millet ( bajra}, pigeonpea (arhar), chickpea (chanoa) and growulnut ( moongphalli).

SPAN JUNe 1979

I

ARID LANDS continued

here is good news for chickpea (channa) lovers- and there Below: A researcher measures the grain headlength of a sorghum variety are miJlions of them in India, which grows 75 percent of the grown on ICRISAT's farm . Right: An example of insect damage world's chickpea. A Hyderabad scientist has unraveled the on chickpea. Right, below: Pesticides can avert much damage . But mos1 mystery that has baffled researchers for years. His finding: The varieties developed al ICRISAT are pest-resistant and do not require disease that caused chickpea plants to droop or dry up, that such treatment. Far right : Emasculation ofa sorghum flower to facilitate ' turned leaves yellow or roots black, isn't what it was supposed cross-pollination. Hundreds of varieties are cross-bred every day. to be- the "wilt complex. " It is actually a number of distinct diseases: wilt, collar rot, root rot, dry root rot, foot rot, stem rot, stunt, mosaic, root knot, chlorosis.

Now that the villains have been named and identified, taming them is the next step. It won' t be done overnight, but a beginning has been made. Whether you Jove chickpea for its protein or its saliva-churning taste, there' s more chickpea in your future.

The scientist who bared the chickpea mystery is Dr. Y. L. Nene. He is the principal pulse pathologist of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, better known by its acronym ICRISAT. Set up in J972, it is one of nine farm research centers in developing countries. Their parent organization is the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which has turned out to be an excellent example of how internationally pooled talent can help the Third World. CGIAR is funded by 20 governments and 35 international organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the Ford and Rockefeller foundations.

At ICRISAT, agronomists, plant breeders, geneticists, physiologists, entomologists, biochemists, microbiologists and plant pathologists try to understand the problems of five cropssorghum (jowar), pearl millet (bajra), pigeonpea (arhar), chickpea (channa) and groundnut (moongphalll). They breed and crossbreed thousands of strains of these crops, collected from many comers of the world, in an effort to evolve superseeds that produce more, ward off pest and disease, taste good, provide nutrition, and grow in varied climates and conditions.

Why focus on these five crops?

First, because they are the principal cereals and legumes of the semiarid tropics (SAT), the rainfed region ICRISAT serves.

This covers a wide belt of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Australia-some 50 countries and 600 million people. Some 300 million of them live in India.

Second, because "these crops are little known and little studied, crops the green revolution never touched," as Dr. Leslie Swindale, the New Zealand soil scientist who heads ICRISAT, puts it.

Third, because these crops are cultivated in a stem environment- depleted soils, erratic rainfall, sparse or no irrigation- by 1971 - a day when the skies opened up in Hyderabad with unsmall hand-to-mouth farmers. One of ICRISAT's missions is wonted fury. Twenty-five centimeters of rain fell on a single day, to devise a technology- better cropping patterns and farming and team members, a trifle wet and more than a trifle cold, systems- appropriate to these conditions. The institute has two asked: "Is this the place for dry land farming?" Dr. J. S. Kanwar, other goals: to identify social and economic constraints to then deputy director general ofiCAR, today associate director agricultural production; and to assist research at all levels in the ofiCRISAT, replied: " Yes, indeed. If one-third of the region' s SAT areas and outside. annual rainfall falls on a single day, you have so many problemsWhen a CGIAR team set out eight years ago to select the flooding now, scarcity for the rest of the year." He won his point. site for ICRISAT, there were some 11 candidates in India and The Ford Foundation acted as CGIAR's executing agent to Africa. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) bring ICRISAT into being. During the institute's critical first prepared a paper on why ICRISAT should be located in India. year, the foundation made its staff available to ICRISAT and It pointed out that India is the major producer and consumer of provided logistic and financial support.

ICRISAT crops; it has an excellent technical base and vast manICRISAT's Research Centre sprawls over 1,400 hectares at power resources. Land would be available at a concession. Hy- Patancheru, a village 25 kilometers northwest of Hyderabad on derabad was in favor because of the presence of red and black soils the Hyderabad-Bombay highway. It is a complex of farm s, labor(two main types found in the SAT) at a single site, also because atories, workshops, greenhouses, offices. The institute conducts some Indian research programs had their base in Hyderabad. research also at Hissar, Gwalior, Bangalore and Bhavanisagar, The team happened to visit Hyderabad on September 25, in cooperation with agricultural colleges there. At Hyderabad

14

there are 48 senior scientists, drawn from many nations. Support staff- ranging from 750 to 1,500, depending on the seasons- is mairrly Indian.

A good part of ICRISAT's $8 million annual budget goes toward crop improvement. This is an interdisciplinary project.

"Germplasm botanists," like Dr. L.J.G. van der Maesen of Holland, scour jungle and vale in a hunt for unidentified species of crops. (Some wild species fend off pest or disease: This trait can sometimes be incorporated into a high-yielding cultivated type.) Dr. van der Maesen says that every plant species should be preserved for its own sake. Seeds from every species he collects are multiplied at ICRISAT, evaluated, then put in airtight tin containers or aluminum foil packets. They will be stored in deepfreezer rooms, now being built, at a temperature of - 18 degrees centigrade. The seeds may then be viable for 25 to 100 years.

ICRISAT's "germplasms bank" of the five crops has some 50,000 samples. The institute is the world's repository of these samples, also a supplier to researchers from Kansas to Kenya.

"It is our biggest resource," says Dr. Kanwar. "It enables us to energize and catalyze national programs. " • Entomologists identify pests that decimate ICRISAT crops. They trap the pests, rear them, observe their habits. They help build pest-resistance into plants.

• Pathologists -like Dr. Nene research and record crop diseases. ICRISAT has published pocket-size field guides for identifying diseases that afflict sorghum, pearl millet and chickpea.

• Physiologists evaluate the qualities of the hundreds of plant varieties researched at ICRISAT. • Geneticists and plant breeders grow and cross-breed thousands of strains every season, manipulating the genes to create stronger, more versatile varieties. For example, they are trying to evolve a short, high-yielding sorghum variety that will resist the witch weed striga, that will scare off pests like stemborers and midges, and that will resist the downy mildew disease.

New varieties developed at ICRISAT are not released directly

1~

ARID LANDS continued

to fa.rmers, but to national programs. In India, they are tested by the coordinated crop improvement programs of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). If results are positive, ICAR will approve the varieties, name them, multiply the seeds and supply them to farmers.

What are lCRLSAT's main achievements so far? The first ICRISAT product to be incorporated into commercial use is likely to be a high-yielding millet variety that resists downy mildew. This is presently at the "prerelease'' stage. The institute has produced many experimental varieties and hybrids of sorghum, pigeonpea, chickpea and groundnut that give high yields, or resist pests like stemborers, shootfties and midges, and diseases such as grain mould and charcoal rot. These varieties are being tried and tested both at ICRISAT and at research farms in India and abroad.

Dr. Swindale says that the immediate clients of ICRISAT's work on crops are scientists, to whom it supplies thousands of improved varieties, germplasms and research reports every month. "We have succeeded in advancing international research on the five crops." The ultimate clients, though, are the small farmers of the semiarid tropics.

ICRISAT's outstanding project so far has been its technology package for small farmers, which will enable them to crop certain black soils both during the rainy season, when (in India) 20 per cent of the land is at present fallow, and the post-rainy season.

The main element of this package is a different approach to land and water management. A system of cultivation , called the broadbed-and-furrow system, that reduces water run-off and soil erosion and moves the run-off water into storage tanks for subsequent life-saving irrigation, is the backbone of this new

IRRJ did it; using little that was new, it merely reassembled old elements." lCRISAT's chief agricultural engineer, G.E. Thierstein, says the bullock-drawn implement (see page 13) can be a boon to farmers; it performs most farm operations as efficiently as tractor-drawn machinery. Known as Tropicultor, the device was designed by ICRISAT consultant Jean Nolle, a French engineer who has devoted his life to devising low-cost farm implements. It was brought to India by the institute in 1975. At Rs. 6,500 it is expensive for the small farmer, but bank finance should put it within his reach. A Hyderabad firm is now building a cheaper version of the implement.

The ICRISAT project that is of most interest to laymen is its socioeconomic experiments in six selected villages- four in Maharashtra, two in Andhra Pradesh. The institute hopes to learn a great deal about the attitudes, practices and constraints of farmers through these experiments. For three years, ICRISAT investigators lived in the six villages and regularly monitored 40 families- laborers, small-, medium- and large-sized farmers.

They collected data on matters ranging from farm practices to food habits to social customs. Simultaneously, the institute's scientists experimented on village farms.

Says one investigator : "Initially, people in the village were reluctant to confide in us. After we had established a certain rapP.Ort-one of us even started a sports club to speed up the process- they became quite friendly. We identified ourselves with them, living the way they did, eating the same kind of food , drinking from the same source. For some villagers we organized bus excursions to ICRISAT and tours of the center. They enjoyed the experience."

technology. Other components of the package include inter-

Training and cooperative programs are an important part

cropping (growing two crops instead of one on the same plot); use of improved ICRJSAT varieties; and ingenious bullockdrawn implements researched at ICRISAT. The package has been put together by a veteran American agronomist, Dr. B.A. Krantz, and his staff. They have been testing different soil-crop-water combinations on "watersheds" or experimental plots, to discover viable systems that can be offered to small farmers for both rainy season and post-rainy-season cropping. A cautious estimate is that the package can, under certain conditions, boost yields fivefold, besides greatly reducing soil erosion.

The package was tested in farmers' fields near Hyderabad.

A farmer who loaned his land to ICRISAT for the experiment showed little interest in what was happening on his land. But he was quite astonished when he saw the crops that shot up some weeks later: He said he had never seen such crops in 50 years.

"This is success in microcosm," says Dr. Swindale. "We need to multiply it a million times." To do that ICRISAT is presently refining the package, in cooperation with ICAR, for wider use throughout India.

Dr. Swindale describes the package as " the application of high-technology principles to a small farm." He adds: "We use known elements, but adapt them to the need. . . . Intercropping is not new. Bullocks are not new; we did not invent them. But we give them a new meaning and value by the way we use them ....

"Take IR-8, the miracle rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute in Manila. Imagine- a small research institute operating on a budget of a few million dollars revolutionizes a worldwide crop that has been produced for centuries. The sheer audacity of the idea is breathtaking. Yet

of ICRISAT's mandate. Farm universities from India and several Asian and African countries depute their scientists to ICRISAT for short-term courses. The institute's scientists are engaged in cooperative projects in Upper Volta, Sudan, Nigeria, Senegal, Niger, Mali, Tanzania and Syria. ICRISAT eventually expects to establish cooperative programs to serve all major semiarid areas in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Left: Ar farms like this, ICRISAT researchers grow many new varieties of crops, and record yield, grain quality, strength, and other traits.

* * *

ICRISAT scientists are inveterate experimenters. A stream of ideas and technical papers flows steadily to SAT researchers from Patancheru.

• Dr. R. Jambunathan, who took his Ph.D. from Purdue University many years ago for his studies on egg yolk, is the institute's principal biochemist. His laboratory analyzes the njtrogen and phosphate content of soil samples, the lycine content of sorghum strains, the quality of chappatis prepared from sorghum. "No single factor is likely to determine chappati quality,·· says Dr. Jambunathan. His lab lists many criteria-diameter, weight. appearance, color, aroma, texture, baking time, moisture.

• Germplasm botanist L.J.G . van der Maesen says people should be as concerned with the extinction of plant species as they are with the disappearance of wildlife. He recently collected a rare species of wild pigeon pea in Bailadila, Madhya Pradesh, and some pest-resistant species of wild chickpea in the sanctuaries of Tekkadi-Bandipur in South India. "I have an equal love for good and bad species," says van der Maesen. " What's considered useless today may have an important use tomorrow."

In bis search for new species, Dr. van der Maesen frequently runs into wild snakes. ''They don't like me-they run away from me.''

Nene, Jambunathan and van der Maesen are typical of the caliber of ICR ISAT staff. With minds such as theirs mobilized to help him, the farmer in the semiarid tropics is assured of powerful support.

0

R

udolph Gunnerman is a man who has in 10 plants in t he western United States. marched to the rhythms of his own Gunnerman has also issued "master lidrummer. The route he has followed censes" to firms in Canada, Sweden and has brought him fortune and perhaps a the Philippines which may authorize other role as benefactor. Working in a one-man plants to make and sell his product. The laboratory, G unnerman has developed a fuel is being produced at a rate of 300 tons completely new fuel which he claims is a day. clean, inexpensive, adaptable and availLooking at Gunnerman 's product - mi 1. able in unlimited quantities anywhere in lions of dark brown pellets stockpi led under a warehouse roof like so many the world.

Gunnermao came to the United States mountains of oversized matchsticksin 1949. having earned degrees in mathe- one is amazed that it holds such promise. matics and physics in Munich, Germany. But the potential seems limitless, and the At the age of22. he was offered a job as a world is finding its way to the door of the teaching assistant at Yale Universit:r. one man who developed the process and holds of Amcrica·s most prestigtous institutions. its patents.

Concentrating on experiments in highbut he left after only four months. ''I wa:, a rebel at the time," he recalls. and he had temperature insulation, Gunnerman decided that the most profitable way to started to formu late a basic process to make a living was to become his own em- develop a fuel alternative. His new idea, ployer. He traveled across the country. as he explains it, is based on the chemical settling on the west coast where he sold fact that all organic compounds- all living real estate in the fashionable suburbs of things-contain carbon in various comLos Angeles. He also set up a small phys- binations with other elements. Carbon is energy from the sun. and in concentraICS laboratory to study high-temperature tnsulation. for which he was ~marded tions it burns at high efficiency to release its energy as heat. Gunnerman ·s objective was several patents.

In 1967, Gunnerman began to concen- the carbon.

The process he perfected involves three trate on fuel supplies. anticipating a worldwide energy shortage, and. since steps: (1) extracting moisture from the raw 1975. he has been selling the new fuel he material, in this case wood: (2) transformdeveloped to industrial and institutional ing wood fiber into cellulose; and (3) customers in the U.S. northwest. The new transforming the cellulose into carbon. fuel, called Woodex. is small wood pellets. This is a normal combustion pattern. but each approximately 20 millimeters long his process, through the application of heat and pressure, produces the ultimate, and 6 millimeters in diameter.

Gunnem1an's wood pellets have t11e highJy combustible product, carbon . in energy-producing equivalent of coal; one minutes. In effect. he reverses nature's kilogram of pellets generates exactly the process but in a fraction of the time.

With an associate, Gunnerman formed energy produced by .a kilo of coal. In the Bio-Solar Research and Development addition: ' • they may be produced from any Corporation-bio meaning "life" or living plant; • they may be produced from organic fibrous wastes, which amass to an estimated 150 thousand million tons a year throughout the world: • they are pollution-free when burned.

The pellets are no longer experimental; they work. ln 1977, they were produced

18

Cheap fibrous wastes converted into small pellets produce as much energy as coal with far less pollution.

hy THOMAS STIMMEL

"growing" and solar meaning the ''sun" -therefore, growing from the sun.

The new company needed a convenient source of raw materials, a r.nanufacturing plant and a market. He solved the resource and plant problems with a move to Eugene, Oregon, 1,600 kilometers no11h of Los Angeles.

Gunnerrnan chose Oregon because it has an abundant supply of wood - and wood wastes. Oregon is the leading timber producer in the United States. and Eugene, a city of 96,000, lies in the center of a timber area surrounded by lumber mills.

Wastes from these mills would become his raw material.

He acquired an abandoned sawmill for conversion to the plant he needed, assured himself of a wood-waste supply and concentrated on the one problem that remained - a market for his product.

"You have to have a crisis to be successful at something," Gunnerman says. His anticipation of the energy crisis prompted development of his new fuel. But even an energy crisis that had become recognized and felt around the world did not assure acceptance of his new fuel. ''The actual invention was the easiest part." he says. "lt is harder to persuade people that you have a new fuel."

His opportunity came with another crisis, seemingly unrelated. A mental hospital in the state of Washington, farther up the coast, was under court order to install expensive pollution-control equipment on its coal-fired boilers to meet local airquality standards. Tne equipment would cost $200,000.

Gunnerman persuaded officials at the institution to try Woodex. They did, and found that it was "totally pollution-free,

totally clean." Since then, the hospital has switched completely from burning coal to Woodex pellets. Officials estimate they have cut hospital fuel costs about $60,000 a year, and have also avoided the expense of the pollution-control equipment. ln addition to being a new source of energy, Woodex offered enormous advantages because of its pollution-free qualities. The U.S. Environmental P rotection Agency and several state clean-air agencies have ruled that the pellets are environmentally acceptable.

The reason is simple. ·'They contain no sulfur, so they emit no sulfur,'' Gunnerman says. Other particulate emissions also are minimal because the manufacturing process removes all noncombustible materials, so pellets burn thoroughly. Ash content runs from I to 2 per cent, or about 90 per cent less than coal.

The place where Gunnerman's process converts waste into energy looks unpretentious. It is a once-abandoned sawmill in a field outside the small town of Brownsville, 40 kilometers north of Eugene.

Gunoerman 's associate, Elmer Durfee, a large, genial man who looks as if he might have been a logger, explains how the plant manufactures Woodex.

The raw material is trucked in from nearby sawmills and stacked in huge pi les.

Called "hog fuel" in the lumber business, the material consists of residue from the sawmill machine that pries the bark from Jogs under tremendous water pressure.

Hog fuel is soft, moist and almost pulverized.

Inside the plant, a metal conveyor carries a constant supply of hog fuel to the dryer, a huge steel cylinder that rotates slowly but constantly. At one end , an open gas jet blasts beat into the dryer; at the other end, the demoisturized hog fuel piles onto another conveyor.

The gas used to fire the dryer was also developed by Gunnerman. Called ''G" Gas, it, too, is made from the pelletsGunnerman uses his own fuel to manu-

facture more fuel. Since its cost, like that of the pellets, is about half the cost of natural fuels. the gas has tremendous industrial potential as a substitute for natural gas or oil.

The raw material, now dry,,goes into the pelletizer, another of Gunnerman 's simple devices. In a thick steel cylinder the material is forced under pressure and heat through perforations in steel dies, which give the pellets their size and shape. They are still moist, but will harden to brittleness as they dry naturally.

A final conveyor carrie::. the pellets to · a stockpile in a covered shed just across the road from the incoming stocks or hog fuel, where the process began. The cycle is now complete.

Gunnennan believes his fue l would be especially valuable for developing nations.

At the invitation of the World Bank. he addressed representatives of some of these countries at a conference in Washington, D.C., in 1977, and stressed that his process can literally make fuel from anything. '"There is nothing that can't be used,'' he said, suggesting that developing n-ations could use coconut husks, trees, leaves, grass, even straw. He also noted that the relatively uncomplicated and inexpensive nature of the process is an added attraction for nations looking to cut fuel costs. "lt is low capital-intensive; it is a process developing nations can afford.'" Gunnennan claims. ··we can indeed assist developing nations by having them implement from their own natural resources- which are renewable and environmentally cleanan energy resource that will bring them to the road of self-sufficiency .... " If such nations can produce their own energyrather than import it at unaffordable cost - he continued. "'they can create jobs, more opportunities and help their balances of payments."

Rudolph Gunnerman believes he has answered an enormous challenge, concluding: ··we have provided partial solutions to a big problem. That's better than can be claimed by most 'solutions.'" 0 About the Author: Thomas Stimmel is a reporter for The Oregon Journal in Portland.

Tribal poetry and art are often instruments of communal ritual. But they also celebrate the processes oflife, and speculate upon the beginnings ofit- sometimes with wonder, at other times with humor and a fine sense of the absurd. Whether it is a philosophic song of creation, or Santa/ poetry of love and sorrow, the expression is always spontaneous and forceful, springing directly from life.

This is brought out succinctly by two writers in the articles thatfollow- P. La/ in his appreciation of Jerome Rothenberg's anthology of primeval poetry from many countries, and Sitakant Mahapatra's discussion of Indian tribal poetry, rich in his personal knowledge of many tribes. Examples from a large Kansas City exhibition of two thousand years of American Indian art show in their burst of color and form a splendid visual imagination that bears many affinities to tribal poetry ofmany lands.

Tribal Poetry, Art and Ritual

Two thousand years of American Indian art-the most comprehensive collection of it ever assembledwas on show recently in Kansas City's Nelson Gallery of Art. Stone. ivory and wood carvings, pottery, totems, robes, masks and more made up the exhibit. All the older works and most of the new ones were made for a clear purpose, either ceremonial or utilitarian. In preColumbian America, there was no art for art's sake; most of the early tongues did not have a word for art as an independent concept. Photo at right shows a screen representing the grizzly bear. an Alaskan clan crest. ( Picture story continued on page 24) ( Continued on page 22)

20

SPAN JUNE 1919

THREE MYSTERIES cominued.from page 20

Water went they say. Land was not they say. Water only then, mountains were not they say. Stones were not they say. Fish were not they say. Deer were not they say.

Grizzlies were not they say. Panthers were not they say. Wolves were not they say.

Peoplewerell'ashed away they say. Panthers were 1rashed mmy they say. Griz=lies were washed away they say. Panthers were washed away they say . ... Then wind was not they say. Then snow was not they say.

Then rain was not they say. Then it didn't thunder they say. Then trees were not when it didn't thunder they say. It didn' t lighten they say. Then clouds were not they say. Fog was not they say. It didn't appear they say.

Stars were not they say. It was very dark.

At first there was neither Being nor non-Being, no kingdom of air, no sky beyond it.

Who straddled what, and where? Who gave shelter? was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

There was no death, then, no, nor non-death, no sign ofstirring, no curtain ofdt1y or night.

Only one thing, Breath, breathed, breathing without breath, nothing else. nothing whatsoever.

And there was Darkness, darkness within darkness, the darkness of undiscriminated chaos.

Whatever existed then was void and " It was very dark." The darkness is part formless; of the mystery, and the darkness is not conthen came Tapas, moulding warmth, spicuously dispelled by Rothenberg's comgiving shape . ... mentary: " What's of interest here isn 't the Then rose Kama , desireless desire, matter of the myth but the power of repetithe primal seed, the germ of spirit. tion and naming (monotony too) to establish the presence of a situation in-its-entirety."

And the searching sages looked in their Repetition, yes; monotony, no. The interest hearts, and knew: is not the myth, true. because whatever myth Being was a manner of non-Being. there is in that chant is thin ; the interest is in And a line cut Being from non-Being, the neti-neti, not-this, not-this technique of transversely: excluding the irrelevant, trivial and epheWhat was above it, what below it? meral until the essential cool core of dark wondrous mystery is left, a black hole of Only mighty makers, mighty forces, inexplicable cosmic totality. action .flowing freely and a fund of energy.

And this gives cause for a small complaint.

Who knows and who has the courage to lf the Kato tribe of North America can be say he knows excellently represented by such a burst of how the world was created. who created rich "philosophical" poetry, surely the other the world? (and earlier) honest Injuns of Bharat deserve better than two songs from the Rig-Veda Even the gods are later than this world's (which Rothenberg chronologizes as between creation1500 and 1200 B.C.) addressed to the fire who can say how the world was created? deity Agni : The religious wonder of the The Primal Creator, whose eye Vedic rishis bowled even the Germans over; controls this world from highest heaven, as a result, in the late nineteenth century, a large number of assiduous German scholWhether he made this world or did not ars, ensconced in well-equipped libraries in make it, Berlin, embarked on a discovery of Hindu he surely knows . ... Perhaps he too does spirituality from the impact of which the not kn01r. world has not yet recovered. Nor, I suspect, (from 1he Sand:nt lrlllnscreaaion b) the author) has India.

Surely the appropriate choice in the Birth section should have been the song in Mandala ~ va tttt ~ X of the Rig-Veda. 1t is simply Song 129, and it has no title; Max Muller called it ''He surely knows, perhaps he too does not "The Song of Creation" and that name has know." That punch line in the last sloka stuck. Its last four lines will puzzle readers underlines the mystery that all sacred songs, who know that it is an essential part of sruti in all parts of the world, celebrate. (revealed scripture). Here certainly is one of • • * the darkest of revelations, that taketh away There is another intriguing line in Song with its left hand what it giveth with its 129 of the Rig-Veda, not one calculated to right. tease an intelligent person out of thought,

''So a:y-tt

yJc·

trek

but certainly startling in its implications.

What can the anonymous rishi mean by saying that ''Even the gods are later than this world's creation" except that human beings cannot worship the Divinity that creates them- they can worship only the gods they create. " Forgive, 0 Lord, my little jokes on Thee,/And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me."

And the gods we create are expressions and manifestations of the second great mystery: Sex and Love and Marriage. Rothenberg creates a portmanteau heading " The Book of Events" in which come feasting and loving and kinship with nature. Two good examples of the tenderness. sweetness, and subtlety that accompany any genuine poetic expression of the second mystery of life can be had in the Tamil Kuruntokai poems included in this anthology:

The great city fell asleep but we did not sleep.

Clearly we heard, all night from the hillock next to our house the tender branches of !he flower-clustered tree with leaves like peacock-feet let fall its blue-sapphire.flowers. (by Kollan Ahc.

. cr by A K Ramanujan)

As a little white snake 11•ith lovely stripes on its young body troubles the jungle elephant, this slip of a girl, her teeth like sprouts of new rice, her wrists stacked with bangles, troubles me. (by Cam Natam1r . . tr. by A K Ramanujan)

A word of caution is necessary here.

Rothenberg's anthology was first published in its hardcover edition in 1968, and anyone familiar with the swift-changing mores of urban American taste will know that the late sixties were the years of offbeat idealism.

Nostalgia and quietude and inwardness were suspect; protest and toughness and intricacy were in. "I haven't gone for ' pretty' or ' innocent' or ·noble' poems so much as strong ones," writes Rothenberg in his "PreFace" (sic: note the conscious cleverness, another ·'in" characteristic of those days).

"Since I feel that the complexity and toughmindedness of primitive poetry have never really been shown (and since I happen to

like such qualities in poems), I've decided to stress them." There is nothing wrong in seeking complexity and tough-mindedness, but when the majority of the selections dealing with the mystery of sex and love reveal a curious lack of erotic compassion, the in1balance is not something that can be commended. There is a great deal of crudity in primitive poetry, and this should not be confused with ''tough-mindedness, ., whatever that is. There is a great deal of the fake and the occult that hovers around the pure religious experience, and this should not be confused with mystic insight. There is a great deal of mumbo-jumbofication in any primitive community ceremony, and this should not be confused with the beauty of significant ritual. I have a feeling that 520 pages were perhaps a couple of hundred too many for this anthology, but chacun G SOli gout. As Rothenberg says, "Sometimes I did include poems for no other reason than that they sounded good to me or moved me."

Such a purely private and restrictedly aesthetic criterion of selection in the realm of the sacred has many pitfalls. The chief of these is that a large number of poems in Technicians of the Sacred seem to be concerned with "tough-mindedly" describing the sex act. There is a limit to the number of metaphors that can be invented to describe the erect penis; the same applies to actual coitus. In the long run, it's not sacred at all; it's a bore.

What is sacred, and never a bore, is love's tenderness. When primitive man achieves tbat, his poetry shines. When he doesn't which is often- his poetry remains, well, primitive. An example of love's tenderness (apart from the Kuruntokai poems) is the " Bean Flower" song from the Quechua tribe of South America:

PICTURE POEM AN EXC!lR fY( FRO M "TECHNICIANS OF TilE SACRED"

I swing the spirit like a child

l

The sky is what I was telling you about

•

0

c

~

We have lost the sky

I am helping you

Have I m ade an error ?

(Silence)

Q

Bean flower, Black and white Like the heart of that dark man Who /ol•es two women.

Long live the apple.

Its tears are sweet.

This world has reason To be biller.

Little star of heaven Lend me your brightness, For the life of this world Is a dark night.

I am using my heart

What are you saying to me & a m I in-my-senses?

The spirit wolf

ltr byWS Me!"'m)

*

•

•

''For the life of this world is a dark night."

At least it ends in a dark night, good for some and otherwise for others, an undis-

I didn't know where I was going

covered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, into which some go gently and others otherwise. The third mystery recorded and celebrated by the technicians of the sacred is D eath, and it is splendidly represented in this anthology. Here is a typical chant called " D eath Rites II" from the Gabon pygmy tribe of Africa:

The animal runs, it passes, it dies. And it is the great cold.

It is the great cold of the night, it is the dark.

The bird.flies, it passes, it dies. And it is the great cold.

It is the great cold of the night, it is the dark.

The fish .flees, it passes, it dies. And it is the great cold.

It is the great cold of the night, it is the dark .

Man eats and sleeps. He dies. And it is the great cold.

It is the great cold of the night, it is the dark.

There is light in the sky, the eyes are extinguished, the star shines.

The cold is be!OIV, the light is 011 high.

The man has passed, the shade has l'anished, the prisoner is free!

Khl'um. Khl'tml. come in ansll'er to our call.'

This chant possesses the innocent sophistication and a rtless lyricism that are the unmistakable q ua lities of true "folk" poetry. It's a translation of a translation , done by C.M. Bowra (whose Primitive Song is one of the best books on the subject) from the French of R .P. Trillis in Les Pygmees de Ia forf!t equatoriale (1931). It's a sign of the strength- maybe its "tough-mindedness"of the chant that it not only survives a double translation but remains vivid and memorable and evocative. Songs and chants like these shou ld be accompa nied by LPs of the o riginals; if the twice-removed version is so marvelously pristine, what must be the purity of the real thing?

Here is a brief " Death Song" by J uana Manwell (owl woman) from the Papago Indian:

In the greCif night my heart will go out Toward me the darkness comes rail ling In the great night my heart will go out Rothenberg explains: "The song was used for curing and was given to the poet (Owl Woman, called J uana Manwell) by a dead man named J ose Gomez. This was her ordinary way of receiving songs- from the ' disturbing spirits' of the dead Papagos 'who follow the old customs and go at night

THREE MYSTERltS cominued

to the spirit-land.'" ln the following song, filled with the awe and wonder that go with deatb's mystery.

"The Dead Hunter Speaks Through the Voice of a Shaman"; it is one of the songs of the Copper Eskimo tribe:

To be beyond you now, 10 feel joy burning inside m e when the sun hums thru the terrible sky To feel joy in the new sun, aie! in the sky's curved belly But restless more likely, restless These .flies swarm around me, dropping eggs in 1he rotting collarbone, into my eyes, and their cold mouths moving I choke on such horrors.

~'itti'W'i:ir'i'Jt~~ ORAL POETRY OF INDIAN TRIBAL COMMUNITIES

by SITAKANT MAHAPATRA

For more than a decade now I have had the opportunity of working among the tribal And remembering the last fear, 1 remember communities like the Mundas, the Oraons a dark rim of ocean, remembering and the Santals; first, in my official capacity lite last fear, the broken boat drifting, and later on a two-year sabbatical as a Homi drawing me into that darkness, aiel Bhabha Fellow. I have roamed the hills and Noll' the other side holds me forests where they live, stayed in their villages ~nd participated in the rhythm of the village And I remember men's fear in the boats ltfe. I have been moved by the intense and I see the snow forced into my door, fear's passionate character of their community shadow over the hut, while my body life and the songs and dances that punctuate hung in the air, the door hidden, aie! it. So far I have translated and edited four When I cried in fear of the snow anthologies of the oral poetry ofthe Mundas, Horror s1uck in my throat, the lnll Oraons and the Santals, who live in northern 1ralled me in, slowly 1he ice-floe broke Orissa and the adjoining areas of Bihar and Horror choked me, the thin sky West Bengal and of the Kondhs and Parajas, quivered with sound, 1he voice who inhabit Koraput and Phulbani in south of the dark ice cracking, cold mornings Orissa. Modern technology, new economics and politics have entered these areas and This is Rothenberg's own translation, it is fascinating to study the patterns of working from Knud Rasmussen's Intellec- response of these tribes' ritual-based social tual Culture of the Copper Eskimos (1932). structures and their cultural values to these Everywhere under man is ''the dark ice instruments of change. cracking." But his precarious foothold In a pluralistic society the autonomy of endures. The final impression of primitive the cultura l groups constituting it needs to poetry- indeed, of all poetry-is not of be preserved and strengthened. This strengthdarkness. but of what prevails in darkness ening cannot, however, be achieved by and in spite of darkness. Apparently the looking upon the primitive communities principle of joyous affirmation pierces as museum specimens to be retained, tucked through all the three mysteries, making them, away in valleys and hills, and to be studied if not comprehensible, at least acceptable by the civilized scholars from the cities. and livable-with. Rothenberg dedicates his Neither can it be done by seeking to assimianthology to Diane and Matthew with the late them into the melting pot of the larger wisdom of the following inscription life-in- community encysting them. The healthy death, seed-through-cement, ananda and attitude should be to see them, as Jerome hallelujah: Rothenberg docs, as a series of communally structured and ecologically sound models from which to learn something about the A man child is born reorganization of society and the revitaliMay he live and be bea111ijul zation of life and thought.

A man child is born In these societies there is poverty but May he become old, very old there is no public squalor. A Santa! house Joy, joy, praise, praise.

0 is the last word in cleanliness and order.

Tragedies abound but there is no disgust for life, no turning back on it. There is no About the Author: P. La/, professor of English fashionable pessimism. At a time when it w Calmtta University and recipient ofJawtlfiCirlal to require courage to say that man seems Nehru Fellowship ( 1969-70), is besl known .for can be happy, the life view of these primitive his Writers' Workshop. Author of many books. he is presemly working on a sloka-by-sloka. in communities has a special bearing for us. verse and prose. English version of Mahabharata.

In his Introduction to The Wooden Sword,

o ne of the anthologies of Munda songs edited by me, Professor Edmund Leach referred to this. "'They do not seek consolation for the inevitability of decay by looking forward to a blissful rebirth, in an imaginary 'other world.' Renewal is here and now in this world, in the quickly fading blossom of the jungles and the adolescence of our own children."

Dances and songs punctuate the life of these communities. But life is not all dance and song. Tears lurk not very far behind those joyful faces. Different forms of anxiety invade, and these are not merely economic or social. There are personal tragedies: love is not returned ; a girl friend or a wife deserts. The naked and brutal reality threatens:

Speak no cruel words to me My dear How my heart pines for you.

Great is 011r misery My parents have no money To offer as Kanyasuna. * The pumpkin plant's 1ragedy is from the day Two leaves shoot forth from the seed: Men pluck them out.

Man's tragedy is alike: From childhood Useless iron is thrown into corners The poor man enters 1he forest Crowbar on the shoulders Basket on the head.

And life, only a tragic song.

(Kondb songs SlttfiiiK Is Nowhere)

But tragedy is often endured with a smile.

It is even scoffed at. The primitive is very sensitive to the incongruous and the absurd.

He can laugh a t practically everything including himself. Here is an example:

The co~fathers-in-law come Like a pair o.f bullocks They have drunk at the market And come back 10ge1her Like a pair a_{ bullocks.

(Muuda song n,. WoQ<ien Swol'd) The two drunken old men (father of the bride and father o(the bridegroom) walking like a pair of bullocks are certainly a hilarious subject. Or this stubborn , outspoken refusal to marry:

Oil and turmeric I will have none Never on my body

participates in the joys and sorrows, the the face of today's dehumanization of the triumphs and tragedies. The individual is arts and the preponderance in them of the not the rootless self suffering the angst of libido and the death instinct. There is a cryalienation. The expressions of art, songs and ing need to re-emphasize the life instinct dances are governed by the age-old customs in modern art if it is not going to become of the tribe. By the employment of these totally irrelevant to modern civilization. lt (Munda song Tht' E.mpt) Dis tance Cornt's) forms, songs and rituals, the tribes keep is in this sense that I feel primitive poetry alive their value systems, their creation- has relevance today: not merely as ··poetry•· But at the end of all pain and misery there myths and the time-honored customs of but as adding a significant dimension of is thankfulness for the very fact of being their ancestors. They produce art because meaning and purpose to the business of alive. As in this Kondh song of an old man they must. Their art is motivated by a living and dying. on the day ofPous Pumima festival: There is a worldwide awareness today passionate desire to express their sense of that the deeper intuitive exuberance and zest form. for living that characterized the imagination A greater awareness of the cultural tradiThe old hearts still beat many earlier centuries must be brought in tions of the primitive tribes can enable us to And we are alive back to human life.

In his Age of Aquarius, for step outside the prevailing climate of the Here in this ancient village Braden poses this same example, William overemphasis on cultural relativity that has Of dead ancestors about the America of the question, speaking encouraged cultural myopia and ethnocenAnd so today we could partake future: Will it be blacker, more feminine, trism. It can broaden the very conception of Of this great jubilation. ... more exuberant and just art. It is necessary to remember that the more intuitive (K<lndh ..ong Suwing I~ 1\'oMht!rt!) forms called an today were not perceived as possibly better than the America of the past? such in earlier times or by other cultures. As " It depends," Braden answers, " on the outH ere is such charming and innocent we know, even in the Western tradition one come of the struggle between the humanist creative delight in experience! Such courage era sometimes did not understand another. and the teclmologist, both bent on reshaping in accepting reality without any dramatiFor example, in the 12th century no one society in their own ways." There is an inherzation or rationalization! There is no despair really looked at Greek art. The 17th century ent conflict here. It is no longer possible to of life. There is gratjtude for the continuity almost totally disregarded medieval art. keep in separate compartments the sacred of life and love. Suffering is put in the larger Andre Malraux rightly observes: " Before rituals and profane technologies, our moral perspective of human existence set in the the coming of modern art no one saw a fervor and scientific rationalism. But it is midst of the indifference of the natural Khmer head. still less a Polynesian culture. possible and extremely desirable today to find world. This is where, J believe, it differs for the good reason that no one looked at a solution to the tension between what Braden from modern existentialism. These tribal them." This failure to look at really meant describes as '"those who wish to make the poems reveal an attitude of mind which is an inability to perceive qualities expressive world a comfortable dwelling place and aware of pain, but refuse to cu rse or run of aesthetic form which modern concepts those who conceive of it as a machine for away into despair. All great art celebrates progress." emphasize. and rejects the world simultaneously. PrimiTechnology must no doubt find an answer Another aspect in these primitive songs tive communities do the same. that needs mention is the competent and to the problems of poverty afflicting the In modern technological society, art has sophisticated use of sex imagery without primitive communities. But their zest for tended to oscillate between two extremes. any overtones of clinical sex. A munda living, the inherent sense of communal It has either been treated as a packaged poem makes an interesting use of sexual solidarity and harmony with the natural form of mass entertainment or as the concern world are values which modern societies, symbolism: of a dwindling elite minority that should suffering from growing cynicism and loss of more appropriately be termed a priesthood. nerve, insipid individualism and the breakMaybe avant-garde art seeks to protect Red alta on your feet down of the ecological balance, arc desperatethe mysteries of art from the profanation Yellow turmeric on the palms ly in need of fostering and developing. In the of an all-conquering teclmology. But it Which alta field did you enter heart of modern technology as a lso of primiseems hardly possible to forge a healthy Whose turmeric field did you go to? tive rituals is an emptiness ; in one case, the relationship between art and society on the Tell me truly. dear, emptiness of being tired of life, in the other basis of such a narrow concern.

Did you enter a house of turmeric ? the emptiness of poverty and drudgery. Both Secondly, the production and consump(n"' Empty Duto!W' Ca"it>l have need of each other. The city must be tion of various art forms in modern society married to the jungle and the new technology In Munda and Oraon society red is often are being regulated and controlled more to the life-giving rituals and mythologies. and more by the economic gatekeepers, a symbol for life, energy and sex. The sindur That way perhaps lies the key to a new the producers of films, the reviewers and o r vermillion mark on the forehead and in D resurgent life-affirming culture. critics, the stage managers, the art-gallery the parting of the hair is a symbol of married owners. In primitive societies these economic life. Red also stands for blood. Similarly gatekeepers arc conspicuous by their absence. turmeric has associations of marriage and About the Author: Sitakant Mahapatra is a Sahirya Akademi award winner. He has pub/is/zed four anArt is wedded to life; it springs from love loss of virginity. Entering an alta field or a thologies ofpoems in Oriya, which are available in and is an integral part of the daily ritual of house of turmeric, therefore, suggests the English trans/arion. He is a member of the Indian living. There is a continuous link between loss of virginity or sexual intercourse.

Administrative Service and is considered one of the action and dream, benveen labor using Prirmtive poet ry and art have thus a foremost interpreters of Indian primitil·e poetry. one's own hands and art creation using relevance not merely to literature but also He has translared four anthologies of tribal poetry. one's imagination. The entire community to the quest for meaning and authenticity in The rrrmslations included in this article are by !tim.

And don't tie up flags Of waving mango leaves I will not marry the black girl Of this wretched village Do you hear friends Never shall/ marry that blackie!

Repnnted from l-' ,\ 1\'ttn$ & u ·or/J RipOrt.

published'" Wa•lungton. 0 .('.

IIW

liSPIC!

POIOLD IIIIBBOIIOODS After years of emphasis on massive programs of urban renewal, city planners and bureaucrats in the United States are discovering anew the merits of community ties and self-reliance.

B

ig cities across America are taking a fresh look at their old-fashioned neighborhoods to see whether their close-knit. self-reliant wa ys o ffer a solution to urban decay.

Today, none are rich, many are working-class and some are racially mixed.

Their independence often irritates city halls and reformers, and their stress on personal bonds often strikes outsiders as clannishness, if not bigotry.

Yet their strong reliance on self-help is generating citywide revival in places such as Baltimore. which prides itself on being a city of neighborhoods- so much

so that nearly 80 communities maintain booths at its annual city fair.

In these communities, planners are learning, human relationships are reinforced day by day at church suppers. corner taverns, Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) meetings and street encounters.

Even the hardiest o f these neighborhoods have endured losses and threats to their survival - crime, dilapidation and joblessness- caused by the social disorders of recent years. But few have given up their fight to survive.

What follows is a closer look at a few such communities.

Recrelllion figures prominemly in Bait imore's l'arious neighborhood~. Left: Workers enjoy a drink at a local bar in the city's largely Polish community o,( Canton. Leji. above: In Upton neighborhood, youngsters play outside the wltural arts center, built as an elementary school for the comnumity more than 100 years ago.

Last year, crime increased I 3 per cent in Borough Park, a South Brooklyn community of I00,000 people. In response, the neighborhood - like some others in New York City- put citizen crime patrols on its streets.

At night, 50 men now cmise the I .5square-mile area and report suspicious

happenings by radio to a base station that calls police. H alf of the patrolmen get small salaries through a Federal public-employment program. The ot hers are volunteers.

At a time when the nation's largest city can no longer afford to throw more money a t urban problems, Ra bbi Morris A. Shmidman says: ··' Borough Pa rk is prepared to take care of itself. It's a model for the rest of the nation , because it shows what people can really do when they work together...

In Borough Park, the initial basis for cooperation is religious and cultural.

Synagogues and Hebrew schools bind together the 70 per cent of the area's residents who are Orthodox Jews in a community of cherished values. Roman Catholic c hurches and schools do the same for the Italians, who make up most of the remaining population.

What brought .cultures together is this: T hey are fighting to keep their aging

SPAN JUNE 1979

29

NEIGHBORHOODS continued

neighborhood livable, even though about one-third of its people are poor.

Late in 1977, a rusty gas range that city trashmen had left on the curb Jed to the formation of the 44th Street Block Association . Repeated phone calls had brought no results.

Then, Mary M. Solomon says, "we decided to organize. Within an hour of our conversations, the range was finally picked up. " Now similar groups are forming among people of all backgrounds.

A mostly Italian block association meets in a synagogue. I talian volunteers are organizing to fill in for their Jewish neighbors on the Friday-night crime patrols, when Sabbath laws prohibit the Orthodox from working or driving cars.

Aharon Fried, head of a private school for handicapped children , says: " I've been in debt and sent the word out at 6 p.m. that the school needs $4,000. By 8.

I have the money. Were it not for the free loans, I could not keep the school open.. , Frank Crifasi, a Borough Park chiropractor, heads a citizens· advisory board that was started to improve ambulance service at the local hospital. Now the board is so influential that it interviews the hospital's prospective employees, including doctors.

This is j ust the start, residents say.

Those chased from other areas by blight and crime are vowing to make a stand here.

Evelyn Aquila, a Borough Park resident for 23 years, says, " My daughter was talking to her doctor about whether New York would survive. She thought it would. But she said, 'Even if New York doesn't survive, Borough Park will."' ride is the bond that unites the black community in the former hamlet of Green Acres, Los Angeles population about 18,000.

In 1965. when notmg in the Watts section across Central Avenue killed 34 persons and destroyed property worth $40 million. Green Acres· fresh ly painted houses and neatly edged lawns were spared. Why ?

Says Marvin Jackson, a retired pharmacist who held two jobs at once for 30 ye_ars: ''When you own a home, you

P

30

SPAN JUNE 1979

Concern for rhe commw1ity is an imporrant aspect of rhe neighhorhoods. Here, a couple warche!> intently as a neighbor's blood pressure is examined ar the free clinic in Brooklyn's Borough PtJrk.

take a different attitude toward life."

On his side of Central Avenue, the community's stability has been forged against heavy odds since the 1940s, when Louis M . Blodgett, a black developer and banker. gave blacks a rare chance to buy the homes he built in what was then still a rural community.

From the start. block clubs have kept Green Acres· cooperative spirit going.

Men were persuaded to remove old and unsighlly trees. Dues were used to buy flowers for sick or bereaved neighbors and to put up lavish Christmas displays. Especially during the riots, "it would have been awful without block clubs," says resident Ferdia Harris.

When property values fell after the riots, the Council of Community Clubs papered the area with pamphlets telling residents: "Don't move- improve."

Citizens reduced crime by agreeing to watch each other's homes and to report suspicious activities to policean idea that cities across America have taken up with good results.

Some government programs originating outside the community have been less fortunate, residents say.

First came the bulldozing of homes for a freeway whose construction has since been halted by legal and financial problems.

Then came a brief, disillusioning fling with Federal model-cities funds.

Morris Gearring, president of the Council of Community Clubs, reports: ''Some feel that the Federal funds did damage.

Lots of hopes weren't realized because there weren't enough funds. Now we're

The success of neighborhoods is a testimony to the citizens' sense of community and voluntary effort. trying to rebuild our organization, going back to the people we had before the funding."

Cabbagetown, Atlanta, settled nearly a century ago by mountaineers who came here lo work in its cotton mill, was almost destroyed when the mill was sold in the 1950s.

Jobs were lost, company-owned houses for the workers were sold, and the mill stopped its paternalistic system of community maintenance and health care.

Stranded in a six-block area a mile from downtown were 2,300 persons- poor laborers with large families and an average of seven years' education.

Recently, however, Cabbagetown has recovered its sense of purpose.

The clearest change began I 1 years ago when a young community organizer, Esther Lefever, went into Cabbagetown to meet with elderly citizens.

To break through their suspicion of outsiders, she brought some country instruments and sang songs from the old people's ancestral homes in Georgia , Kentucky and Tennessee. Lefever recalls: "I was playing the auto harp, and this old woman got up and began to clog [a dance]. Another woman picked up a guitar and began to play. When it ended, they were dancing and crying, remembering old times."

What resulted was a communitydevelopment drive called the Patch, Inc. Set up in an empty schoolhouse, it focused first on children, who drifted in after school to enjoy crafts and music played on homemade instruments and to receive badly needed tutoring.

Now adults, too, get help in hunting jobs and solving welfare mix-ups. Their work in country crafts is shown at the neighborhood's annual arts festival.

Like many aging commun ities, the old mill town has been accepted in the Interior Department's National Register of Historic Places. Now the Patch wants to create a museum where the neighborhood's cotton products, pottery and other crafts can be sold.

Condescending efforts by outsiders won 't do any good in many troubled urban neighborhoods, veterans of the Cabbagetown experience say. When

Cop~ ngh1

Š 1978. U.S. News & World Repon, Inc.

eekends Atlanta churchwomen came in to asbring streams of people- mostly Mexican Amerisess the needs of this poverty pocket, cans-back to Prospect Hill, San Cabbagetown women stood outside their tiny frame houses and beat on metal pots Antonio, where some families have owned in an attempt to make them leave. "small, wooden homes for half a century. " On any Saturday or Sunday, every Joyce Brookshire, who was born here, says, "Cabbagetown was racist, not just back yard is full of people," says Henry against blacks, but against every race Cisneros, a resident and city councilman. " It really is a small-town-America but us. " Since then, residents have changed kind of thing."

Crime. congestion and poverty have in attitudes, but only at their own pace.

Few blacks live in Cabbagetown, but mostly skirted Prospect H ill. In such a some who live nearby join its festival. close community, people say, they grow up Even so, Patch Director Lefever says, realizing that others are watching them this clannishness has been a major strength and expect them to do their share.

Juan Patlan , executive director of the of Cabbagetown. She adds, "It's like one big family. It's that neighborliness, an Mexican American Unity Council, says intensity of feeling running throughout that 75 families have taken home-improvement loans from banks lined up by his the community." group, and that none has defaulted in the For a while, Little Warsaw, a blue-collar last three years. " The majority have a lot Slavic neighborhood of 2,000 people in of pride," be says.

Most residents explain their closeness southeast Cleveland, looked as if it was becoming a slum. by saying that people limit their horizons Several buildings had been condemned to the family, church, school and a few or vandalized. Loans and insurance were other key institutions that give structure to their lives. hard to get.

According to Associate Pastor Ja mes Then, six months ago, local merchants got together and started to rebuild their Kotara of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic shops with intricate wood carvings in a Church. "These are working people. good " Polish highlander" style. Working from and generous people. T hey are not tied up plans a local architect drew up free of in trying to jump from the middle class to charge, each proprietor tried to outdo his the upper middle class or higher. " Neighborhoods like these, urban scholneighbor.

Money was donated. Tools and advice ars say, point u p this lesson : Federal were passed up and down the streets. A and state dollars can help- and in poorer sign company painted a wall m ural at no areas are needed- in preserving or restorcharge, and a local dealer gave a discount ing community strength. But for programs to be effective, a working partnership on lmnber.

So far, nearly a dozen commercial must be established that gives neigh borbuildings have been rebuilt. Four new hoods a major role in decision-making.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter apbusinesses have moved in, and restoration fever is spreading along the residential pointed a veteran neighborhood organizer, Catholic Monsignor Geno Baroni, to the streets.

In April 1978, the renovation project new post of assistan t secretary for neighwas dedicated and the neighborhood borhoods in the Department of Housing was rechristened Slavic Village. Only and Urban Development (HUD). l n the after merchants had succeeded on their $4.4 billion increase proposed for H UD 's own did their group apply for $55.000 in budget, Baroni's forces have $78 million U.S. funds to hire a director and launch for neighborhood-oriented projects.

President Carter made a promise to a drive against crime.

Thomas Miller, a leather-shop owner, create a new partnersh ip "above a ll , says he has decided to stay in the area drawing on the sense of community and despite a $10,000 robbery three years ago voluntary effon that T believe is alive in because, "My heart's in the neighbor- America, and on the loyalty that Amerihood- } know everybody." cans feel for their neighborhoods.. , 0

SPAN JUNE 1979

3

A WALK ACROSS

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPH!

Fresh from college, a young American, accompanied by his dog, sets out on a voyage of discovery t was another seven-and-a-half-liter day. We had been come to realize what a bad press America's been giving itself. heading down an Alabama country road at our customary There's a lot of good in it that also needs teUing. The land, speed: about five kilometers an hour. We means my dog, the geography- they're unbelievable. And the people! I haven't Cooper Half Malamute, and myself. Some eight hours back a gone a day that someone I met hasn't been kind , or thoughtful, farm lady had said we'd come on a country store in 15 kilometers or helpful. Plain , simple, ordinary folks they may be, but they're or so. But we'd gone 30. It was so hot, I felt I would melt into the heroes to me."

H e nodded and smiled. " Welcome to Alabama, boy! You just pavement.

Then I saw the store, a quivering shape in the heat haze. It throw your pack and that wolf in my green pickup truck over looked like a piece of driftwood tossed up at the side of the road. there, and you can put down at my place for the night."

Dumping my backpack against a tree, I rushed up on the porch, "Sorry," I said, ''but 1 promised myself when [ began that I past a blue-overalled farmer drinking soda pop, and burst would walk, really walk, every step of the way while I'm traveling. through the door.

But I sure thank you for the offer."

From the start 1 decided I would not become distance-crazy. I While the lady behind the counter looked on astounded, 1 grabbed everything cold and wet in sight and started drinking- wanted to be there. I wanted to share every environment 1 passed orange juice, Coca-Cola, grapefruit juice, milk, and, topping it through with the people who were rooted in it. At times I would have no choice, because I would have to stop walking and take a off, several liters of water. Right at seven-and-a-half liters.

Dropping some money on the counter, l plunged back into job to get money enough to go on. I had $600 when I set outthat Alabama heal. Grabbing a hose, I soaked Cooper with icy enough, at about$5 a day, to last me four months. water. While he shook off a cloud of spray, 1 hunted up a big My original plan was to take about nine months or so to make aluminum pan, filled it and let bim lap to his heart's content. a rough V across the United States-from Alfred to the Gulf As I started back into the store to buy some solid food, the Coast. then over to the Pacific- maybe 8,000 kilometers in all. farmer finally spoke. " Where y'all started to?" he asked, measurEverything flowed seasonally for fifteen 16-hour days until ing me with narrowed eyes. we hit Washington, D .C. , and commuter traffic. I gagged on " Well, sir"- it wasn't the first time I'd answered such a ques- exhaust fumes getting past the beltway that loops the city, then tion - '' my dog, Cooper, here and I, we happen to be walking wandered among the great marble buildings-outward symbols across America- from New York State down to the Gulf Coast, of the inward America 1 was seeking. then on over to the Pacific somewhere."

But already there was a cold breath of winter in the air. and I ''Well, son," he said, ¡'this.is a mighty big country to be walkin' felt that same southward pull that impels the geese and hawks. We across. Now where did you start from, and when did you start , and angled by the first country road we could find toward the wilds of where were you born and raised up at?" the Appalachian Mountains.

And so I answered all those down-home questions that a Our first snow flurry hit us near Sperryville, Virginia, making hundred newfound friends had asked me in the previous nine the footing slick as we hiked through the late-autumn forest up months. How I'd started in upper New York State from the toward Skyline Drive and the tree-canopied Appalachian Trail [a college town of Alfred, where I'd gotten my degree in sculpture- footpath which runs from Maine to Georgia] . ceramics the June before. How Cooper and I had set off on this Then, near Bluefield, West Virginia, came the first real blizwalk across America on October 15, 1973. How I was born and zard. We would be spending our first night out in deep snow. I was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, 65 kilometers from New York scared. But for Cooper, the snow-drifted countryside became a City. white paradise. He plunged in.and out of the drifts, romping and " Now, son, don't get me wrong, I don't aim to be nosy. but .. . hurtling his body straight up into the air in sheer joyousness. well ... now, why would a young college fellow like y'self go out We pitched camp that night between two thickets of trees and walk across the country, anyhow?" be asked. beside a hypnotic stream. When 1 opened my eyes next morning, And, as many times as 1 had tried to answer that question, a my tent was sagging under 30 centimeters of pure white snow. straight answer always eluded me. l knew in my own mind what Somehow, moving along an old country road, we left West had started my journey. I had grown up in the late 1960s and Virginia and found ourselves back in Virginia. It didn't make early 1970s, when my country seemed to be pulling loose from its sense that Virginia was this far south and west, but here it was. All moorings: the student protests, peace marches, racial violence, mountains; winding, curving roads; very few people; and a lot of conservation battles, Watergate. Like many of my friends, I was white wind and cold. We were out of breath and out of food. confused. I felt isolated from whatever truth lay behind the head- Finally, I could see one mountain peak higher than all the rest. lines. I had to find the certainty I once knew. And so I decided on My map told me that if I could struggle to the top, I would be able to coast down from there to Chatham Hill, Virginia- population this walk of mine.

That is what I was thinking, but l found myself saying: " Well, 58. About 15 meters from the top I all but collapsed against a tree. l decided that after I got my degree, and before I started to work, Unexpectedly, 1 heard a car struggling up the other side of I'd just go out and take a look at America firsthand, go walk right this killer mountain. It was a si lver-and-white VW bus. The driver through it to see if what I'd read and heard about it all was true." pulled to a stop. 1 asked bow far it was to a store and food. " Oh, five or six kilometers," he said. lt was nice to hear a "And," he asked, eyebrows raised, " what have you found?" " Well, sir, for nine months now I've been walking, and I've human voice.- He reached back into his VW and, one by one, brought out five giant red apples. Sitting on a rock after the good Samaritan drove off, I shared the fruit of Eden with Cooper.

Repnnted wuh permission from Nawmal Gt>ographk. Š h~ NationaJ Geographic Socie1y.

I

ERICA

BY PETER GORTON JENK I NS

across the United States-to learn firsthand about bis country and people.

This priceless gift from that unknown man totally renewed my body, mind and spirit.

Now meet Homer Davenport. He lives all alone on a mountaintop 19 kilomt:ters north of Saltville, Virginia. Anyone in these parts will tell you Homer is the greatest living American mountain man. People took one look at me and said I had to meet him.

"Careful, though," I was told. " He don't like most folks. He might even take a shot in your direction if you go wanderin' up there. " But I went. Rural Ro ute 2 goes half those 20 kilometers, then ends. The last 10 kilometers were torture. Homer's front

sidewalk is a rocky mountain stream with a trail fading in and out and mud, mud, mud!

After several kilometers of head-down trudging, we came to a sharp bend in the stream. In those pure woods I felt another presence. Cooper barked once- a rarity-and then stood still as stone- also a rarity.

I looked up. And there he was- looking for all the world like a prophet on his way down from the holy mountain. Fifteen meters away stood an ageless old man with white shoulder-length hair.

Just below the peak of this I ,340-meter mountain is Homer's

3

WALK ACROSS A MERICA continued

"mansion" -a cabin of logs and scrap, about ten by five meters, with its back end built right into the mountainside. His fireplace is a pit dug into the living earth.

Homer whipped up some hot corn bread, canned applesaul:e and homegrown yellow beets the size of cantaloupes. With a swift slice of his knife he cut a chop from a quarter oflamb hanging from a beam, then handed me a straightened coat hanger and pointed to the fire. "Cook up a chop, son," he said. "Freshest meat you'll ever have."

I never ate a more satisfying meal. We talked until3 a.m. , exchanging details of our lives like two collectors trading rare coins.

From Homer's mountaintop, it took us seven days- mostly in heavy snow-to reach Penland, North Carolina. There I enjoyed some indoor warmth, conversation, hot tea and Christmas cookies with my old college friend Jack Neff and his family.

I decided to spend New Year's Day atop the highest peak east of the Mississippi River: 2,005-meter Mount Mitchell, in North Carolina's Black Mountains.

From Mount Mitchell we descended back into the clouds and

the world below. We passed briefly through Asheville, North Carolina. It was the first sizable city we'd bit since Washington, D.C. We went right through the middle of town, for a time walking side by side with scurrying, dark-suited businessmen.

I decided we'd get back onto the Appalachian Trail. After I bought provisions in Fontana Village, North Carolina, my pack weight shot up to 31.5 kilos and my money supply sank to $45.

In the blue-cold sunlight we crossed Fontana Dam and launched ourselves up a moderately steep trail. Several kilometers on we were wrapped in a cold, smoky fog, and after a while I began feeling chills and throbbing aches in my muscles. I knew there was a trail shelter a few kilometers ahead and decided not to turn back.

Somehow I found the shelter-a tin-roofed rock lean-to with a chain-link fence to keep bears away-and managed to gather enough wood to build a fire. For four nights and three days I lay there in my sleeping bag, occasionally stumbling out to get water from a spring or to relieve myself.

At dawn of the fourth day the sun reappeared, and so did my

presence of mind. With no food left, I generated enough energy to leave that rock-and-metal cage and let the mountain carry me down to Fontana Village. A doctor told me I'd had influenza.

Still weak and shaky-kneed, I began backtracking up and down country roads, finally reaching Robbinsville, North Carolina (population 587), the next morning. Since there were no jobs in Robbinsville, [ headed toward the bigger town of Murphy (population 2,035), where I'd heard there were some construction jobs to be had.

I had $15 left when Cooper and I walked into Murphy on a Friday evening. I passed some lighted basketball courts where a bunch of black teen-agers were playing. They came over when they saw me and Cooper, asked the usual questions, then invited Peter Jenkins chats with a police guard outside a country store on a lonely road in Alabama. Stores like this were to him like a port of call to a sailor. They offered him food and drink ,friendly talk, and directions Peter could count on for the unfamiliar way ahead.

me to play. I couldn' t resist.

Later, exhausted, we camped out for the night in their neighborhood across the railroad tracks. Two of the teen-agers, Eric and Bruce, invited me to their home for a southern meal next day. And so I met my second mother, Mary Elizabeth Lloyd.

She was standing there in the door of the house trailer where the Lloyd family makes its home in the leafy depths of Smokey Hollow. She told me later that when she first saw my scraggly red beard, she thought, " Uh-oh, what have the boys brought home to dinner this time?" But when she saw how Cooper liked me, she figured I must be worth her trust. Dogs don't lie. Soon we were immersed in a dinner of cake-rich com bread, foreversimmered turnip greens, ham chunks, freshly caught fish and rivers of cool drinks.

In the middle of the meal, Mary Elizabeth rose and announced that she believed God had sent me to test their faith and henceforth I was one of the family. For the next several months I lived with my family in Smokey Hollow and worked sawing logs at a veneer mill.

Above: Peter pauses to reflect on the past at the Pettus Bridge - the site where police confronted Martin Luther King and his followers during their 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery, Alabama, march to demand black voting rights. The South has since made big strides toward integration- Peter saw these kids ( left, above) playing with their teacher in Mobile. Left: In Smokey Hollow, North Carolina, Peter worked sawing logs at a veneer mill. Below: Peter's family came down from Connecticut for his 23rd birthday, which he celebrated in Murphy, North Carolina, with the Lloyd family , with whom he spent several months.

WALK ACROSS AMERJCA cominued

Weekends I would usualJy go wandering with Cooper through last movement he would ever make. When I reached him, he was the mountain wilds, coming back Sunday morning to attend totally still. The rear wheel of the truck had gone right over his Mount Zion Baptist Church, where Mary Elizabeth's 73-year-old chest. Thankfully, it happened on the Farm, among friends who father, Pau Pau, was a deacon. He would put me in the front pew, had known and loved Cooper as I had. and there I would sit, the only grain of salt in a shaker of black Moving south out of Tennessee, I saw a big billboard on a pepper. hill with a smiling picture of Governor George Wallace saying The time came to leave. My good-byes with Mary Elizabeth "Take a fun break in friendly Alabama!"

I did. and the family were more gut-wrenching than any of the trip And so I began my months-long immersion in Alabama, the so far.

I had enough money to get down to the GulfCoast-1 hoped " Heart of Dixie." I walked long days through tiny, tenacious - and so I headed into Georgia. towns like Wren and Arley and Sipsey and Graysville. I walked Somehow I had envisioned Georgia as all flatness and dust and through William Bankhead National Forest, which encloses the red clay, but here were the sweet green mountains of Chattahoo- fading southern extremities of the sheltering Appalachians.

Then I headed on to Montgomery and walked right into the chee National Forest. [ was rock-climbing at a survival school called Wolf Creek Wilderness when a couple of fellow climbers Alabama Capitol. I said 1 wanted to talk to the Governor. told me about something that would turn my plans upside down.

After being looked over carefully by some guards, I was told, It was the Farm- a spiritually oriented agricultural commune in "Two minutes and hurry," and was led down long, cool hallways Tennessee. J felt a kind of call, and even though it was some 480 to the Governor's office. I drew a deep double breath and walked in. The big billboard picture I'd seen on entering Alabama came kilometers out of the way, Cooper and I headed north and west. to three-dimensional life before me. Sitting in his wheelchair, a What is the Farm?

Back in 1967, in San Francisco, California, a college teacher smiling George Wallace held out a firm band-a hand they say named Stephen Gaskin had begun teaching free classes dedicated has shaken the hand of nearly every citizen of Alabama.

Southwest of Montgomery I passed the site of "Tent City," to the expansion of the human potential - mental, physical and where just I 0 years earlier Martin Luther King, Jr., and hundreds spiritual. By 1970 his Monday-night classes were magnetizing some 2,000 students. Stephen then recessed the classes in order of resolute followers, including some whites, had camped during to make an extended trip around the United States in a bus. their celebrated Selma-to-Montgomery march. The point of the Some 250 of his students decided to go along, and for four months march was to win and guarantee the black right to vote, a right their spiritual caravan roamed from coast to coast, visiting col- freely exercised today. I pitched my tent nearby for the night, leges, churches, small towns- always looking for a piece of the then continued on toward Selma, once a synonym for racial ugliAmerican landscape that might become their own promised land. ness. The town looked pleasant enough. It seemed shockingly and They found it in south-central Tennessee. Pooling resources, they un-self-consciously integrated.

Then it was on down to Mobile and the Gulf Coast. Walking made a down payment on 400 hectares ofTennessee red dirt, and soon some 400 young people- artists, students, college gradu- into Mobile was like walking into a giant park. What really struck ates, secondary-school dropouts, businessmen and women, rock my eye and absorbed my mind were the trees and the azaleas.

The whole city seemed like a pink, white and red fantasy. Equally musicians- landed en masse on Lewis County, Tennessee.

They became farmers, real farmers - even if their lifestyle, by exciting were the live oaks standing like moss-bearded prophets Tennessee country standards, was a bit ollbeat. Tomatoes, cab- above the petty affairs of men.

I fell in love with Mobile, the most beautiful city I had ever bages, sweet potatoes, bot peppers, beans, watermelons poured from the soil of the Farm and helped buoy the local economy. seen, and the one that seemed to me to have struck the best balance between nature and urban man.

Upon my arrival I was allowed to partake of the Farm's lifeAnd so I reached the Gulf Coast. Now I had come as far south working and eating and meditating with Stephen and his disciples.

I seemed to have found what I wanted in that communal as I could go. I particularly loved the sea air, all salt and vaguely settlement of hard work and living faith and overflowing love. But fishy and fi1led with magical, soul-stirring vapors that no mountain wind can surpass for perfection. I swung westward along still, I felt a certain gnawing inside. Was this really my life?

Six weeks passed. I started staring down country roads. unending beaches that lead across the misty, marvelous coastOctober came- marking a full year since the walk from AJfrcd, lands of Alabama and Mississippi.

Ahead was New Orleans, where I hoped to get a job for a New York, had begun. Once again I heard the soul-moving honks of migrating geese high above. I felt the time had come to leave. while on one of the oil rigs out in the blue Gulf of Mexico. After I set Wednesday, the 16th of October 1974, as my departure that, it would be two, maybe three years more of walking and date. Until then I would continue with my chores on the Farm. On working to reach the Pacific and the other end of the rough V that Tuesday morning I rode the Farm's water truck to the fields for I'd begun back in Alfred, New York.

Part one of my walk, my own personal pilgrimage into my last day's work. Cooper, as usual, trotted along behind, America, was over. I'd started out with a sense of bitterness, chasing twigs that I would throw to him off the truck.

And then, coming to a pothole in the road, the truck slowed turned off by the whole idea of what my country seemed to me to down, Cooper, trotting close behind, just didn't notice. He kept have become. But with every step of my walk I'd learned otherwise. I'd been turned on by America in a thousand fantastic on running even as the truck slowed.

We lurched over the bump one of ten thousand potholes ways.

I glanced behind myself down the long Mississippi shoreline. we'd traveled over in the past year. Only when I looked back a few seconds later did I realize that Cooper wasn't running behind us I could see my two footprint s trailing behind me into the misty, milk-blue infinity. Those footprints in the sand, in a way, were any more. He was lying on the ground back by the pothole.

I let out a shriek. Leaping ofT the truck, J ran back. Even as I my own signature. I liked the fact that the waves would soon ran toward him, I saw Cooper make a tremendous writhing mo- wash them away.

Facing back toward New Orleans, I quickened my steps. 0 tion with his entire body, his huge paws flailing the air. It was the SPAN JUNE 1979

3/

DON'T JUST STAND THERE J . C. BOYLE. ULUTIIlO DEVICE.

No. 556,248 .

~~~~P~a~tented Mar. 10, 1896.

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SOMETHING Man's inventiveness knows no bounds, but it does pose dilemmas : How can an inventor make sure that he is properly credited and that his idea is not copied? Necessity, the mother of invention, created the patent system. The world's first comprehensive, formal patent system was set up by the United States in 1790. The first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins of Philadelphia for an improved method of making potash, a chemical used to produce soap.

Although the laws governing the patent system have been revised from time to time, the basic tenets have continued to remain the same. Once satisfied that the inventor has created something new, the U.S. Government grants that person the sole right to manufacture it for 17 years in exchange for his sharing the knowledge by filing a detailed description and drawing of the invention . Every year over 100,000 inventors apply to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; some 75,000 are issued patents. About a third of the patents go to foreign applicants. Among the millions of inventions are, inevitably, some crazy ones. But here are also the beginnings of inventions that have changea the world - Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patented in 1876 (considered the most lucrative patent of all), Thomas Alva Edison's electric bulb (1880), C.E. Dureya's automobile (1895), Orville and Wilbur Wright's airplane (1906) ....

Today only a fifth of U.S. patents go to individuals, the rest to corporations. Does this signify the end of the individual inventor, tinkering away in his basement? No, said Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera and holder of 500 patents. "There are a thousand new fields ready to be opened. Only a handful will be explored by large corporations.... Without the protection of the patent 0 system, young scientists cannot develop the rest."

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The inventions registered at the U.S. patent office range from the trivial, even the comic, to the revolutionary. There is an automatic hat-tipping device ( I) and a hat that blows bubbles (2), a rocking chair churn (3) that lets the milk churn as you rock relaxed, and a rhythmic cradle ( 4) which is a novel way to rock the baby to sleep.

Man'sjlights offancy, duly patented, include the Wright brothers' historic airplane (5) and a vertical take-o_ffflying platform (6) that was patented in 1960. In 1976 the four millionth U.S. patent was issued to Robert L. Medenha/1 of Las Vegas for a process to recycle road asphalt (7). Among the famous 5 names in the patent records is that of Abraham Lincoln in a new role: In 1849, a dozen years before he became the American President, he received a patent for "a device for buoying vessels over shoals" (8), whose inspiratU>n must have gone back to his boyhood days when he poled boats down the Mississippi River. Lincoln figured out a way of attaching bellows to a ship's hull jrJSt below the water line; on reaching a shallow spot, a boat's hull could be filled with air,' causing it to rise in the water and float easily over the shallow area and back to deep water. His invention,lzowel·er, wasn't much ofa success.

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8

TICBIOL0811S FOB.ASS I.PLOY.IIT

by COLIN NORMAN

Millions of new jobs must be created by the year 2000 to end world unemployment. The answer may lie in labor-intensive technologies. nemployment on an unprecedented scale has emerged as one of the most pressing political and social problems of the seventies. While governments in industrial countries have been grappling with a pernicious combination of inflation and unemployment, rates of joblessness throughout the Third World have reached extraordinary levels. Two ominous features of the global employment picture stand out: The job shortage will probably worsen before it improves, and it is unlikely that conventional economic remedies will olfer sufficient relief.

Economic development theories that held sway during the fifties and sixties are beginning to lose their credibility in the Light of mounting unemployment and underemployment throughout the Third World. And as this occurs. it is becoming evident that a massive transfer of modern technology from rich to poor countries will not provide the key to prosperity in the developing world. ln part a result of population growth during the past few decades, massive unemployment in the T hird World has been a long time in the making. It will take even longer to abate. About 200 million people have flooded the labor markets of developing countries during the seventies, and an additional 700 million are expected to require employment by the turn of the century.

Already, the number of prospective workers has greatly outstripped the supply of new jobs. By the mid-seventies nearly 300 million people were believed to be unemployed or severely underemployed, eking out a precarious existence as casual laborers, street peddlers, shoe-shine boys, and other fringe workers.

More than 30 million jobs must be created each year over the next 20 years merely to keep pace with expansion in the T hird World"s labor force. Anything less is likely

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40

SPAN JUNE 1979

to aggravate ineqUitieS and lead to rising levels of poverty. If at the same time productive employment is provided for those who are now grossly underemployed -a critical dimension of any effort to lift the incomes of the poorest people- about one thousand million new jobs must be created by the year 2000.

These figures provide a central reason why modem technologies cannot be a panacea for development: the capital needed to create enough jobs in modern industries and in Western-style agriculture would be staggering. It now costs an average of $20,000 to establish a single workplace in the United States, and modern industrial jobs in the Third World are no cheaper to create.

Ind iscriminate transfer of modern technology from industrial countries to the Third World can cause more problems than it solves. Technological development since the industrial revolution has led to the substitution of capital and energy for human ent technologies- or at least different mixes labor in the production of goods and services, of technology- to make the best use of substitutions that generally reOected the their resources. There can therefore be no relative availability and cost of capital, universal blueprint for an appropriate techenergy, and labor in the industrial world. nology for any particular task.

But these capital-intensive, energy-consumNevertheless, for the developing world ing, labor-saving technologies make lavish in general, technologies that use locally use of the very resources that are scarce and available raw materials, serve local needs, expensive in the Third World, while failing and can be maintained without sophisticated to utilize much of the Third World's most repair and maintenance services will usually abundant asset people. be cheaper to develop and operate than In general. technologies are economically imported technologies. Moreover, by stimuefficient if the factors of production - labor, lating local innovation and reinforcing other capital, energy, and raw materials- are development efforts, simple technologies can blended together roughly in proportion to lead to self-sustaining development. their cost and availability. The guiding Governments do not deliberately plan economic principle shou ld be to maximize to have a large portion of their labor force the output of the scarcest factor. Since the unemployed or U11deremployed, but often availability and cost of these four factors that is precisely the outcome when a poor vary between rich and poor countries, it country invests most of its national savings follows that different countries require differ- in imported capital-intensive technology.

Abndg•d from Wor1dwaccb Paper No. 2 1. ·•soft Technologies. Hard Choices·· Copyright © Wor1dwatch 1nslhutc. 1978.

Such investments do raise the productivity of a few workers, and the gross national product consequently increases. But this approach leaves little capital to aid producers, who now constitute the majority of the labor force in most developing countries.

Many developing countries have sought to implant U.S.-style agriculture in their fields by subsidizing imports of heavy machinery and labor-saving techniques, often with assistance from international lending institutions. Pakistan, for example, received a loan from the World Bank in the late sixties to buy some 18,000 large tractors. A subsequent Bank study, which has generated considerable controversy, provides a sobering warning of the danger in assuming that technologies appropriate in one country will confer the same benefits in another setting. Farmers who bought tractors found it easier to work larger farms, so they in-

Mass employment projects like the now complete Shara vat hi dam in Mysore, shown a1m id-construe/ion stage above, employ technology that increases efficiency while remaining highly labor-intensive.

creased their holdings by displacing tenants and by buying extra land. On the average, farm sizes doubled after the introduction of tractors, while labor use per acre dropped by about 40 per cent. Yet yields per acre showed little change.

Such an experience should not lead to the blanket conclusion that all capitalintensive modern technologies are inappropriate in the developing world. Far from it.

Often, there may be no feasible alternative to sophisticated technologies developed in the industrial world. Imported modern technalogies may offer significant advantages in the production of certain goods, such as chemical fertilizers, that are essential for

development. Nevertheless, faced with chronic shortages of capital and rapidly swelling labor forces, most poor countries need to find productive employment for Large numbers of people with small expenditures per worker.

As most of the population in developing countries now lives in the countryside, most of the increase in the labor force will also come from the rural areas. If the crushing urban migration that has taken place during the past few decades is to be halted, productive employment must be created in the fields, villages, and small towns. All the above considerations point to the need for technologies that wiii create employment for landless laborers, lead to more productive use of labor in public works programs, and establish labor-intensive industries.

Demand for rural labor in developing countries fluctuates according to the season.

SPAN JUNE 1979

4)

TECHNOLOGIES FOR MASS EMPLOYMENT continued

During planting, weeding. and harvest, every available person is usually busy in the fields from dawn to dusk, but at other times of the year jobs are scarce. A shift to more intensive cultivation can greatly increase agricultural employment. but in regions where the growing season is short. new technologies may be required to allow more than one crop to be grown each year. Selective mechanization, for example, may be needed to speed up planting and harvesting to squeeze additional crops into the growing season. A variety of inexpensive pedal-operated machines, designed to ease and shorten some operations. have been developed in recent years. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines has developed a range of relatively inexpensive power tillers, threshers, and weeders for rice cultivation.

Irrigation alone can increase labor demand per acre by up to 80 per cent by extending the growing season to permit multiple cropping. But the construction and operation of irrigation systems is often a costly business and wealthy farmers with large holdings are usually the first to benefit from irrigation.

There are, however. cheaper alternatives.

The use of locally available bamboo or baked clay as filters, instead of metal screens. can cut the cost of a single well to about $15, and a reliable and easily maintained hand pump has been developed for about $100. The World Bank is also experimenting with a scheme in India that involves renting portable diesel pumps to farmers for short periods, a strategy that spreads the capital cost and brings them within the reach of small fanners.

High-yielding varieties of rice can also greatly increase labor requirements, largely because they need additional applications of fertilizers and pesticides. A study in Bangladesh found that labor requirements on unmechanized farms (farms that used oxen rather than tractors for draft power) were increased by between 30 and 50 per cent when high-yielding varieties were used.

When mechanization is introduced along with materials. ox-drawn plows to break up the ground, and block-and-tackle systems to help move heavy loads can all reduce back-breaking toil and raise productivity to the point where labor-intensive construction is cheaper than capital-intensive methods.

Public works programs, such as the construction of dams, irrigation cana ls, roads, and buildings, consume a large portion of the budgets of developing countries.

Such projects are of two types. Some employ the same technologies that are used in the industrial countries bulldozers, mechanical diggers, tar spreaders, and so on and they are consequently highly capital-intensive.

42

SPAN JUNE 1979

Others employ armies of people to move earth with head baskets and shovels. These projects create jobs, but they involve heavy toil and take a long time.

However, by using more efficient laborintensive methods, like improved wheelbarrows, ox carts, and hand~drivcn rail carts, some of the drudgery can be mitigated.

Manufacturing technologies developed in industrial countries, like agricultural and construction technologies, are often ill-suited to the needs of the Third World. Not only do they require large amounts of capital and provide few jobs, but they often usc materials that arc not available locally,

The concept ofappropriate technology has thrown up devices linked to the needs of each countryfor example, easy-to-maintain machinery ( above). simple farm tools like the bamboo drag (right), cmd in a Colombia land reform project, a small hand tractor thac can do the work oj!ll'o oxen ( right, top) .

produce large volumes of goods for remote markets. and need sophisticated repair and maintenance services. lt has been assumed that large-scale modern industries would be efficient in developing countries because they take advantage of economies of sca le.

But such hopes have often proven false.

Factories are frequently operated at less than full capacity, which means that capital invested in the plants is used inefficiently and employment is kept well below its potential.

Mounting evidence of such problems has begun to focus attention on the role of labor-intensive, small-scale industries in providing employment and promoting development.

Deliberate attempts to foster small-scale industries, instead of replacing them with large-scale production technologies, have produced encouraging results in a few countries. China's rural industries arc perhaps the best known. According to one estimate, there may be as many as 500,000 rural indus-

trial units in the People's Republic of China, p¡roducing items such as cement, fertilizer, iron and steel, agricultural machinery, textiles, and processed food. They rely for the most part on local materials and supply local needs.

Although there has been considerable debate about the efficiency of China's smallscale industries, a team of U.S. experts who visited China in 1975 under the auspices of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences generally found them to be effective in stimulating rural development. The failure of many "backyard" iron and steel plants established during China's "Great Leap Forward" in the late fifties and early sixties, however, shows there are limits to the extent that some plants can be scaled down and remain economically viable.

Labor-intensive, smaU-scale industries play a key role in the development policies of South Korea and Taiwan as well. They form links between agriculture and manufacturing and provide some inputs into the

modern, large-scale industries that have been established in those countries.

India has also experimented extensively with small-scale, labor-intensive manufacturing. When Mahatma Gandhi led the Indian people to independence from Britain, his vision - summed up by the c hoice of the spinning wheel as the symbol of the independence movement- was of decentralized "production by the masses." During the fifties and sixties, however, the Indian Government invested heavily in large urbanbased industries, and Gandhi's concept of village and cottage industries took a back seat. But rising unemployment and W1deremployment in India, coupled with widespread flight from the land, has refocused attention on the potential for decentralized industrit-s to provide productive, low-cost jobs in the countryside. The ruling Janata Party is taking a number of steps toward this end.

D omestic research and development can sometimes produce a more appropriate alter-

native to imported manufacturing technologies. A good example is the development of small-scale sugar plants in India. In the fifties and sixties, several modern factories were established in India to produce white sugar from locally grown cane, but farmers in remote areas were not able to sell their sugar to the plants, and the processing capacity proved insufficient to use all the cane that was available. The Planning Research and Action institute in Uttar Pradesh developed an alternative technology suitable for small plants serving local markets. The comparison between the two technologies is striking: an investment of 28 million rupees can establish one large plant capable of producing about 12,000 tons of sugar a year with 900 employees; the same investment can build 47 small plants with an output of about 30,000 tons and a total employment of nearly 10,000.

As these examples indicate, low-cost technologies designed to increase employment are finding growing use in some countries.

But the difficulties in taking an alternative to the high-technology route to development should not be underestimated.

All technologies require extensive development and testing before they can be widely used. Low-cost technologies are no exception.

Indeed, considerable ingenuity is often required to scale down production processes and to develop equipment that can be easily maintained by local people. Small producers who lack financial resources are in no position to experiment with unproven technologies.

Most important, without social and political changes that redistribute income, overhaul inequitable land ownership patterns, reform credit systems, and provide support for small farmers and manufacturers, appropriate technologies will be difficult to introduce. Powerful vested interests support large-scale manufacturing, mechanized farming, and other sy.mbols of modernity.

While developing countries are facing the certainty of rising unemployment in the coming decades unless present trends arc reversed, the outlook for the industrial world is more difficult to gauge. Whatever the future holds. present unemployment levels in the industrial world allow no basis for complacency. Seventeen million workers were idle in Northern Europe, North America, and Japan in 1975. U nemployment reached 8.5 per cent in Canada in December 1977; in November, the number of unemployed in the nine countries of the European Economic Community reached six million for the first tin1e in history. In the United States, though total unemployment dropped in 1978, it still stood at a level that would

have been considered unacceptable just a few years ago. Energy problems loom large in the unemployment picture in these countries, and they will continue to be a dominant factor. Shortages of natural gas during the 1976-77 winter were directly responsible for idling some 1.8 million U.S. workers, and the economic malaise that has led to current high unemployment rates throughout the Western world can be traced in part to rising energy prices. The choice of energy technologies has both direct and indirect impacts on employment.

An energy strategy featuring Ia rge-scale coal and nuclear generating plants \;Viii require vast amounts of capital expenditure, but will provide few jobs directly. The energy policy along these lines oullined by the Ford Administration in the United States in 1975. for example, was expected to require about a million million dollars in capital expenditure by 1985. an amount that would soak up about 75 per cent of all net private domestic investment, compared with about 25 per cent in recent years. Such a program would divert spending from other, more labor-intensive sectors of the economy.

Conservation programs, on the other hand, generally provide large numbers of jobs for relatively small monetary outlays, and several studies have shown that solar energy technologies are particularly labor-intensive.

A projection of the employment impact of an aggressive solar energy program in the State of California indicated that some 377,000 jobs a year could be created in the eighties. That level of job creation would be sufficient to halve California's present unemployment total. Another study found that while construction and operation of California's controversial Sundesert nuclear plant would provide about 36.300 jobs directly and indirectly, a solar program producing an equivalent amount of energy could create about 241,000 jobs. Solar technologies, moreover, create jobs in the areas where people live, while construction of giant power plants requires work crews to be gathered in one location, disrupting the life of local communities.

With world unemployment rates at their present levels and prospects for a return to the surging economic growth rates of the fifties and sixties remote, governments in industrial countries-like their counterparts in the developing world-must pay increased attention to the link between employment and the choice of technologies.

0 About the Author: A specialist in technological issues, Colin Normtm is a senior researcher with Worldwarch lnsritllfe, an organi:arion concerned ll'ith global affairs. He ll'as Washing ron correspondem of rhe British science mLlgazine Nature from 1971-77.

SPAN JUNE 1979

43

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

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AMERICA EXAMINES OWN COMPLIANCE WITH HELSINKI ACCORDS The United States had a candid look at its record in human rights early this April. During a three-day session of public hearings in Washington, representatives of government and private organizations gave their assessments of how the country is meeting its obligations under the 1975 Helsinki Accords, especially as regards human rights.

This step was part of a review to prepare a comprehensive report on the U.S. compliance with the Helsinki Accords. It was conducted by the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Created by the U.S. Congress in 1976, the Commission is a legislative and executive panel with a mandate to study and encourage progress in implementing the proVISions of the Helsinki Accords. The report will be presented at the 1980 follow-up meeting of the signatories in Madrid. A similar review conference was held in Belgrade in 1978.

The three-day hearings gave ample opportu· nity to representatives of the Helsinki Watch Committee of the United States a loose coalition of nine major American civil liberty and antipoverty organizations- to report on discrimination against women and minorities, prison conditions, unemployment and economic conditions, and immigration policy.

As Commission member Senator Claiborne Pelt pointed out, this was probably the first time that any of the 35 CSCE member states had undertaken a comprehensive look at its own compliance record. The American self-assessment took into account criticism by other CSCE signatones-the charges have come mainly from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union-and private domestic monitoring groups.

Watch Committee chairman Morton Sklar, a Ia\\ professor, set the tone for the hard-bitting assessments at the hearings. "lfs hard to see how we can do much to effectively address other nations' problems, without first establishing a solid record with respect to our own human rights obligations," he noted.

In its prepared report the Watch Committee described the most serious violations as: • denial of the rights of property and selfgovernance to American Indians; • maintenance of laws that foster bias against women; • disproportionate unemployment for minorities, women and minority youth; • police misconduct and abuse of the criminal JUstice system directed against Hispanics and blacks; • mass1ve noncompliance with established

standards relating to conditions in prisons and jails; and • failure to eliminate conditions of poverty, unemployment and substandard housing for ·•targe segments of the population."

Interestingly, even the U.S. Administration's representative, Presidential Assistant Sarah Weddington, presented documentation to show that America still falls short in the field of women's rights and equality. She said that while 90 per cent of American women could expect to hold employment during their lives, the median wage for them was only 60 per cent that of men.

The last day's hearings were largely devoted to visa restrictions. Former U.S. Supreme Court

THE HELSINKI

DECLARATION On August I, 1975, leaders of the United States, Soviet Union, Canada and 32 European nations signed the historic Helsinki declaration. It climaxed the final phase of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Time magazine said the declaration ''formalizes the boundaries and power balances created by recent history, thereby marking a theoretical end to World War H." President Gerald Ford, one of the 35 heads of state present, hailed the Helsinki declaration for its support of "liberty of thought, conscience and faith; the exercise of civil and political rights; the rights of minorities."

The declaration's preamble stated the conference's general goals as ''peace, security, justice and cooperation." It has four major sections, known as baskets.

• Basket One deals with relations among states, and stipulates 10 principles of conduct including inviolability of frontiers, peaceful settlement of international disputes, nonintervention in internal affairs, the right of self-determination of peoples. It also calls for prior notification of military maneuvers.

• Basket Two covers agreements on eco-nomic, scientific and environmental cooperation.

• Basket Three deals with increased human contacts between East and West. It covers the flow of information, the right of travel, improved working conditions for journalists and cooperation in education and culture.

• Basket Four provides for follow up conferences.

Justice Arthur Goldberg, who was the chief of the U.S. delegation to the 1978 Belgrade Conference, felt that there was room for improvement in U.S. visa policies. He added that it was detrimental to America to maintain overly restrictive practices regarding entry into the eountry.

Barbara Watson. Secretary of State for the bureau of consular affairs, in her testimony pointed out that under the Carter Administration 135 people had been admitted to America who would have been denied entry under previous policies because of their political affiliations.

On the final day, Arthur Goldberg asserted the need "to keep our own house in order and to set an example to others.'' He expressed the hope that America would ··ratify basic covenants on genocide and other covenants on economic and social rights and racial discrimination" before the Madrid review conference next year.

Describing the three days' hearings as "a major contribution to the CSCE process.·· be said that "responses already rece1ved from private Helsinki watch groups in communist countries show that their members are encouraged by the fact that we too are monitoring rights at home and will be prepared to talk on their behalf.'.

Watch Committee chairman Morton Sklar said that it is "fallacious and counterproductive" to compare the status of U.S. human rights compliance with that of other nations. The fact that America might be doing better than others, he said, was irrelevant to the question of whether or not it remained in violation of basic international commitments and legal obligations. He added that the obligation would not be fulfilled merely by "allowing these problems to bo aired publicly. Our legal and moral duty go much further than that."

Another Watch CommiHee member John Carey said that human rights in the United States had been advanced by criticism abroad.

"We're going to take every charge they've thrown at us and examine it honestly and openly.'' sa1d chairman Dante B. Fasccll. ·The report will point out where improvements can be made in the U.S. compliance. But it will also show that we have made tremendous strides in our lifetime to meet the requirements and criteria of the Helsmki Accords- as much or more than any other people.

"We'll let the record speak for itself. What we're saying in the final analysis is 'here is our record; now let's see yours. •" 0 SPAN JUNE 1979

45

TBI SALT IIAGIIIMIIT agreement will " lessen the danger of nuclear destruction." It will impose "the The United States and the first important restraints on the race to Soviet Union have agreed on a build new systems and improve existing ones- the so-called qualitative nuclear significant step to limit arms race." and reduce existing nuclear Commenting on the significance of the agreement, Secretary Vance said: arsenals and to curb "Our overriding purpose in these the building of new systems. negotiations has been to strengthen our nation's security and that of our aJJies through practical and verifiable restraints "We will take an essential step toward a on the nuclear arms race. Today, we are on safer America ... and a safer world," said the threshold of signing a strategic arms U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance at the agreement that achieves our purpose.

White House in Washington on May 9, "The treaty [which is part of the agreeannouncing that the United States and the ment] will enhance the security of the Soviet Union were "on the threshold" of United States and our allies. It will signing an agreement on strategic arms restrain the nuclear arms race. It will lessen the likelihood of nuclear war. limitation.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks "-It will establish equal ceilings on the (SALT) between the two superpowers strategic forces of the Soviet Union and the began in November 1969. Their aim is to United States; " - It will begin the process of actually limit, then reduce, the strategic nuclear weapons of the United States and the reducing the level of nuclear weapons; Soviet Union. The SALT I Agreement was and signed on May 26, 1972. The proposed " - It will limit not only the quantiSALT II Agreement, to be signed by tative, but also the qualitative race in President Jimmy Carter and Soviet nuclear arms.

President Leonid Brezhnev at Vienna on "This treaty will not only mark the end June 15. is described as "extensive and of one negotiation; it will open the way complex" by American officials. It is a 70- for another. When it is ratified by the page document, in contrast to the dozen Senate, it will become the cornerstone for still further limits in SALT Ill. pages that sufficed for SALT I. "The national debate which we now President Carter said later that the 46

SPAN JUNE 1979

commence is not only about this treaty.

We are still considering as well the inescapable realities of a nuclear worldthe necessity to our security of a strong defense and the grave danger to our security of an unlimited race in nuclear arms. For our security today lies in maintaining a stable strategic balance between two nations with awesome power.

The SALT II Treaty will make a substantial contribution to that stability.

"We have demonstrated through the SALT.process that even as we compete in some areas, the United States and the Soviet Union can and must cooperate to lessen the dangers of war. In this way, the treaty can serve to open the path to a more constructive and peaceful relationship between us.

"This treaty is a message of hope for us, and for all the people of the world. "

The Agreement The SALT II Agreement is composed of three parts: • A treaty, which will be in force until December 31, 1985; • A protocol to the treaty, which will be in force until December 31, 1981 , covering certain issues not yet ready for long-term agreement; • A joint statement of principles for future negotiations, which constitutes a set of guidelines for the SALT III negotiations.

A Soviet missile silo ( above), and a U.S. Air Force cruise missile mounted under a B 52 bomber ( left) -both dramatize 1he weapon power which the continuing SALT ralks in Geneva are meant ro limir and restrain. The SALT I Agreement was signed in Mosco~~. on May 26, 1972. The SALT II accord will be signed in Vienna on June 15, 1979.

ballistic missile]-launchers, Following is a brief description, pre- launched bombers, and air-to-surface ballistic heavy pared by the U.S. State Department, of with ranges over 600 missiles (ASBMs) those three components and of two related kilometers.

Initially, this ceiling is 2,400, issues-verification and production of the but it will be lowered to 2,250 by the end of Soviet "Backfire" bomber.

The SALT II Treaty itself provides for: 1981.

An equal aggregate limit of 1,320 on the An equal aggregate limit on the number total number of MIRVed ballistic missile of strategic nuclear delivery vehiclesand heavy bombers equipped for launchers ICBM launchers. SLBM [submarine-

launching crllise missiles with ranges over 600 kilometers. [MIRV stands for multiple independently targeted re-entry. vehicles.]

An equal limit of 1,200 on the total number of MIRVed ballistic missile launchers and a limit of820 on the number of launchers of M IRVed ICBMs. Ceilings on the throw-weight and launch-weight (i.e., total missile weight) of

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47

SILl D .I.IBIIUIT continued

light and heavy ICBMs. A ban on the testing and deployment of new types of ICBMs with one exemption for each side (including a definition of a new type of ICBM based on missile parameters).

A freeze on the number of RVs on current types of ICBMs, a limit of I 0 RVs on the one exempted ICBM for each side, a limit of 14 RVs on SLBMs, and a limit of 10 RVs on ASBMs. A limit of 28 on the average number of ALCMs [air-launched cruise missiles] with · ranges over 600 kilometers deploye~ on heavy bombers.

A ban on the testing and deployment of ALCMs with ranges over 600 kilometers on aircraft other than those counted as heavy bombers.

A ban on construction of additional fixed ICBM launchers and on any increase in the number of fixed heavy ICBM launchers.

A ban on heavy mobile ICBMs, heavy SLBMs, and heavy ASBMs. A ban on certain types of strategic offensive systems not yet employed by either side, such as ballistic missiles with ranges over 600 kilometers on surface ships.

An agreement to exchange data on a regular basis on the numbers deployed for weapons systems constrained in the

agreement Advance notification of certain ICBM test launches.

Verification: In addition, the treaty includes a number of provisions related to verification. The sides have agreed that verification of the provisions of the agreement will be by national technical means (NTM), and that they will not interfere with each other's NTM. Agreement has also been reached not to use deliberate concealment measures which impede verification by NTM ofthe provisions of the agreement. A clarification to this agreement notes that any telemetry encryption which impedes verification is banned.

There are also a number of provisions specifically designed to make verification easier. These include, for example, counting rules which require that any missile which has been tested with MIRVs be counted as MIRVed. even if it contains a single warhead missile.

Protocol to the SALT II Treaty: The protocol to the treaty, which will remain in force through 1981, provides for the following temporary limitations: A ban on the flight-testing of ICBMs from mobile launchers and the deployment of mobile ICBM launchers.

A ban on testing and deployment of ASBMs; and

A ban on deployment of groundlaunched and sea-launched cruise missiles having ranges greater than 600 kilometers.

Joint statement of principles: The third element of the SALT Agreement is a joint statement of principles for the SALT ill negotiations. In this joint statement, the sides have agreed to pursue further reductions and further qualitative limitations on strategic systems, as well as resolution of the issues covered by the protocol. In addition, each side is explicitly permitted to bring up any other pertinent topic it wished to discuss.

Backfire bomber: The Soviet Union has undertaken commitments not to increase the rate of production of the Backfire bomber above its current rate and to limit upgrading of the capabilities of this aircraft. The freeze on the Backfire production rate at its current level means that the Soviets are committed not to produce more than 30 Backfires per year. The United States considers the obligations set forth on Backfire as essential to the integrity of the obligations of the treaty as a whole. The commitments by the Soviet Union regarding Backfire have the same legal force as the rest of the SALT II Agreement. Thus, if the Soviet Union were to violate these commitments, the United States could withdraw from the treaty. 0

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LIGHTER-THAN-AIR EXPERIMENTS In this age of aircraft and satellites, balloons continue to have a special and expanding place in near-space research. Carrying heavy loads of scientific equipment, these lighter-than-air craft can fly higher than airplanes-well into the once-inaccessible stratosphere- and at a lower cost than satellites. Balloon-borne instruments, flying as high as 45 kilometers, can make their observations while hovering above 99.8 per cent of the earth's atmosphere.

Major research is now focused on developing long-duration balloons capable of flying for days, not hours as now. The latest in balloon technology, the superpressure balloon (right, taking off with an array of sensors) can stay aloft for months, but is currently incapable of carrying heavy loads.

Ballooning has today developed into a complex exercise, requiring " precisely coordinated interface among technicians, machines and electronics." The acknowledged world leader in this sphere is the U.S. National Scientific Ballooning Facility at Palestine, Texas, 15 years and overt ,000 flights old. Scientists from all over the world come here to loft their instrument packages into the stratosphere, hoping to unravel the mystery of what lies beyond.

Below : Before inflation, the plastic envelope stretches over 152 meters. Above: The balloon leaves its launch vehicle. Seconds later, the payload is released- $} million worth of electronic equipment to detect and measure cosmic ray particles in the stratosphere.