Glimpses of Heroism On a cold January afternoon in Washington a plane I \1 with 74 passengers aboard started falling soon after takeoff, crashed on a crowded bridge and plunged into the icy Potomac River. Even as the plane started sinking, the wail .of sirens signaled that help was on the way. It was, but the tragedy took its toll: 78 dead (including four motorists on the bridge). And there were five survivors (from among the passengers and the crew) and four .heroes. Two of the rescuers, Donald Usher and Eugene Windsor, risked their lives in the line of duty as part of a helicopter police team-in a fine act of courage. But it was a bystander, Lenny Skutnik, and a yet unidentified rescuer/ victim whose spontaneous action on that cold day seemed to epitomize the spirit of heroism. Skutnik, yesterday's average American and today's hero, is a 28-year-old employee of the Congressional Budget Office and a father of two. One of the many bystanders witnessing the disaster and the police helicopter team's rescue attempt, he saw a passenger losing her grip on a life preserver thrown to her. Without a second's hesitation, Lenny Skutnik jumped into the icy river and dragged her to land. "It's something I never thought I would do," he said later as flashbulbs proclaimed him a hero. "Somebody had to go into the water," was his "Nothing picked him out to be a simple explanation. As Roger hero, but without hesitation there Rosenblatt said in an essayhe was and he saved her life," said his ode to the heroes-in President Reagan shortly after Time: "In fact, nobody had to Denny Skutnik's successful go into the water. ... " lifesaving attempt (top). Two And what of the man in the water who surfaced only ~o save others and then went down a legend? What, one wonders, would his explanation have been for his heroism? Witnesses remember seeing him clinging with five 'il
I
weeks later in his State of the Union address to Congress, the President made a special mention of Skutnik who attended the function with his wife in the company of First Lady Nancy Reagan (above).
other survivors to the tail section of the airplane. Every time Usher and Windsor lowered a lifeline and floatation ring to him, he passed it on to another passenger. The next time the lifeline came down, he wasn't around .... In his Time essay Rosenblatt stated: "If the man in the water gave a lifeline to the people gasping for survival, he was likewise giving a lifeline to those who observed him .... We ¡do not really believe that the man in the water lost his fight. ... He could not make ice storms or freeze the water until it froze the blood. But he could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a' power of nature too .... He was the best we can do." Rosenblatt saw in the tragedy and the heroism the eternal man versus the elements battle: " ... the elements, indifferent as ever, brought down Flight 90. And ... human nature-groping and flailing in mysteries of its own-rose to the occasion."
SPAN 2 Law of the Sea Treaty: What Next? by Judy Aita
4 Lifeline for World Trade
5 Cold Currents by Steve Aaronson
9 A World of Books Ashok Chopra Talks With W. Bradford Wiley
12 Students at Work by James A. Noone
15 The Elusive Art of Teaching by Joseph Epstein
18 How to Get What You Want From Your Job An Interview With Henry P. Sims. Jr.
20 New Trends in U.S. Labor Relations by Robert Searby
22 Modern Medicis of America
28 A Composer Who Makes Cities Dance byParam Vir
32
Cutting Government to Size by Thomas D. Willett
34 Kurt Vonnegut by John Irving
36 The Lie A Short Story by Kurt Vonnegut
40' Back to Home Sewing
44
On the Lighter Side
46 Focus On ...
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Photographs: Front cover-courtesy of Chevron USA, Inc. 4-Avinash Pasricha. 5 bottom-courtesy IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. 6-7-Dan McCoy. 9 bottom-R.N. Khanna. 12-14-courtesy Warren Wilson College. 22-courtesy of Stone Associates. 23-courtesy of Martin Marietta. 24-courtesy Newsweek. 25-Lee Boltin with KenKay, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art. 26-Malcolm Varon, courtesy of Pepsi Co.; courtesy of Citibank, N.A.; courtesy of National Symphony Orchestra. 27-courtesy of Springs Mill. 28-31-courtesy Robert Moran except 30 bottom left by R.K. Sharma. 34-Jill Krementz. 4O-41-Edward Pieratt. 42-43-Ed Broughton, courtesy McCall's Patterns. 46 top-R.N. Khanna; 46 bottom right, 47-Avinash Pasricha. 48 top left-Associated Press; right-NASA. Inside back cover bottom and back cover bottom pictures by Charles MoorelBlack Star photographed for Americana magazine; remaining pictures by Avinash Pasricha. Published by the International Communication Agency, American Center. 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001, on behalf of the American Embassy; New Delhi. The opinions expressed 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. US;C-<ffSPAN articles in other publications is encouraged. except when copyrighted Forpermission. write to the Editor. Price of magazine. one year's subscription (12 issues) 21 rupees, single copy. 2 rupees 75 paise. For change of address send an old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to Circulation Manager. SPAN Magazine. 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg. New Delhi
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Front cover: At left is the . entire poster from which the cover was adapted. It announces a traveling exhibition titled "Creativity-the Human Resource." The show was sponsored by the oil company Chevron USA on its l00th anniversary. See also pages 22-27. Back cover: The old beauties of the road are in the running agl,linat annual vintage car rallies in San Jose, California (below), and Delhi (top panel). See also inside back cover.
The response to our letter of April soliciting readers' opinions of SPAN wa s glorious. We received a wide variety of letters and postcards, representing all regions of India. Among the most gratifying communications were those that informed us of how readers used what they learned from SPAN in their work, their schools or in enriching their lives genera lly • There seems to be a swell of affection toward the magazine among its readers. Let us assure you: the feeling is reciprocated by SPAN's staff. We invited criticism--and we received it in the most constructive sense of the word. Instead of simply expressing negative opinions--about the magazine in general, or specific features or articles--many readers offered detailed suggestions a s to how SPAN could better serve their interests. Rarely did a reader define his interests narrowly--most letters seemed to speak for a substantial segment of the family of SPAN readers. The letters inspired the magazine's editorial staff; what they are doing is being appreciated, and they are producing a magazine that is read", pored over, analyzed and often collected by readers of extraordinary acumen who express themselves clearly. We were pleased to discover the degree of telepathy between readers and the editorial staff. Readers often requested coverage of the very subjects on the SPAN drawing board. Our editors, . burrowing through manuscripts like moles--each of them reads about a dozen articles per month for each one published--have been planning issues three months in advance. Best of all, readers came up with fresh story ideas that rang the bell. "Why not?" asked the editors, and set to work fa shioning future articles along lines that readers had suggested. Some readers were particularly interested in projects and cultural activities shared by Indians and Americans; others wanted to know the impressions ofindividuals to the other country and culture. Another typical view was that SPAN "should be the window through which outsiders can get a glimpse of the various facets of your great country." One reader said, "When I visited" the U . S., I had the feeling I'd already been there through the pages of SPAN." Letters reflected the age-old conflict between readers who want more on the arts and those who lean toward science and politics. "I am not one of those culture-vultures ••. I would like to read more serious stuff like your coverage of current events," one reader said. Another decried the lack of poetry in recent issues. Commenting on the forestry story in April he wrote, "Keats never beheld an oak tree without seeing the dryad .... 'Where have all the forests gone' is indeed a sound question. But equally so, where have all the dryads gone and left us altogether prosaic?" And so, like patrons of a great restaurant, our readers, smacking their lips over some dishes--and sending a few back to the kitchen--have stirred the cooks who mix and spice the meals and have inspired them to try to satisfy a variety of tastes. In this issue we introduce readers to Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and its unusual work-and-study program. We heard recently from a different Wilson College, this one in Bombay, which is celebrating 150 years of educational work. Dr. M. B. Jaffar and Professor G.B. Pawar inform us that "an article on cooperative education published in your magazine of July 1977 has inspired us to undertake an entirely new educational venture in the field of university education for the first time in India." The SPAN article reported on the popularity in the United States of education programs "which call for the student to lead a kind of double life, alternating between study on campus and work away from it." The faculty and administration of,Wilson College explored the background of the SPAN article that lit the spark, and they worked hard to launch a similar program in 1980. "As a first step we approached a few industries ... we were delighted with their spontaneous support in terms bf taking our students in for short-term applied study in their factories." The experimental first program of eight weeks included the following training: orientation and lectures by business executives; a residential camp at a Bombay chemical firm; a week of on-the-job training with an industrial corporation; seminars on career planning, job counseling and personal development. Each student kept a diary and submitted a written report of experiences and benefits. The Wilson C-ollege program has been commended in newspaper reports and"on television. We at SPAN are pleased to have served as a catalyst for such a worthy venture. --M. P.
Law of the Sea Treaty
What Next? The Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea, which met at the United Nations in New York, adopted a treaty on April 30 on the uses of the world's oceans by a vote of 130 to 4 with 17 abstentions. Those who voted against the treaty were the United States, Turkey, Venezuela and Israel. Seventeen nations from the European Economic Community and the Soviet bloc abstained. The comprehensive treaty contains 320 articles and nine annexes. It deals with almost every human use of the oceansnavigation and overflight, oil and mineral resource exploration and exploitation, conservation and pollution of the seas, fishing and shipping. It defines maritime zones; lays down rules for drawing boundaries; assigns legal duties and responsibilities; and provides machinery for settlement of disputes. The treaty will come into force 12 months after it is ratified by 60 nations. The drafting committee of the Law of the Sea Conference will be meeting soon to perfect the treaty as a legal document. The conference will hold one more plenary session in September to adopt the committee's work before the ratification ceremony in Caracas, Venezuela, in December. Most important, between now and December all the countries, including the United States, will have to decide whether they will sign the treaty and eventually ratify it. Many delegates at the end of the April voting said that it was difficult at this stage to assess how effective the treaty would be without the United States and with the possible absence of the Soviet Union and major industrialized Western nations-the countries who would have borne the major costs involved in setting up "the Enterprise," the mining arm established by the treaty. "We recognize the importance of international agreements concerning the uses of the oceans," said Ambassador James L. Malone, head of the U.S. delegation, as he addressed the final session of the conference to explain why the United States had voted against the adoption of the treaty. "All countries represented
here have worked long and hard, for over don't see too much change for a good a decade, to come to such a comprehenmany years as far as the U.S. Senate is sive agreement," Ambassador Malone concerned. " continued. "The United States helped The provision allowing changes in the initiate that process and has been a major treaty text to be made upon acceptance participant in it. by only three-quarters of the participat"Thus it is with particular regret that ing nations, with no opportunity for we have had to vote against the adoption states to ratify the changes, is incompatiof this treaty. We have not done so ble with the American system of governlightly, but for reasons of deep conviction ment, he said. and principle, which will continue to Malone refused to say definitely guide our actions in the future." whether the United States will continue The United States, Malone said, "has to try for changes. made no final judgment on what our "We do not feel that our objectives position will be on the signing of the final were met and we must now assess the act. What we have said is that in none situation and decide what our next steps of the six areas President Reagan set out will be," he said. "It is possible that on January 29 are the concerns expressed changes could be made by the plenary by the President met in the present text." session. By the very fact that it is a Malone told the delegates that the plenary, there is the possibility" of treaty contains provisions that would change. However, the Conference President, deter development of seabed resources; creates a system of privileges for the Ambassador Tommy Koh of Singapore, proposed International Seabed Mining moved quickly to deny such a possibility. Enterprise; has an unacceptable decision- Koh and Canadian Ambassador J. Alan making process; allows amendments to Beesley, chairman of the drafting comcome into force for a state without its mittee, said that the purpose of the consent; and creates inappropriate prece- drafting session is merely to perfect the dents on mandatory transfer of technolo- wording of the treaty and it cannot be gy, production limitations, and distribu- used as a negotiating session. Koh stated tion of benefits to national liberation emphatically that "there can be no more negotiations, including at the General groups. Some delegations hope that as the Assembly session" in September. years go by and U.S. administrations The United States could not go along change, successors to the Reagan Admin- with the consensus and then state its istration will not feel so strongly about reservations afterward as was requested the deep seabed mining section and by Koh because, Ambassador Malone said, "we did not believe that the text that eventually will accept the treaty. However, Malone said, there are was adopted came near meeting our areas "grave problems" not only for the of concern. "There is a great deal of realism and Reagan Administration, but also for the U.S. Senate. A treaty cannot be ratified practicality in what we are dealing with in by the United States unless the Senate the treaty, and not just ideology," Malone noted. "We simply do not have a approves by a two-thirds vote. "Quite frankly, it does not make too pro-production deep seabed mining portion of the text. much difference what the Administration "It is the view of this Administration might or might not do," he noted. "I have very little hesitation in saying that that the world would be far better served the present text will not really be more by developing the resources of the seaacceptable to the Senate than the text bed, rather than limiting their developthat came out of the last session in ment, and going forward in a very active way," Malone said. Geneva." To meet the Western industrialized Future U.S. administrations could take countries' concerns, several changes were a different position, Malone said, "but I
The U.N. Law of the Sea Conference has adopted a treaty governing the uses of the oceans. Addressing the final session of the conference, Ambassador James Malone explained why the United States voted against the treaty even though it had helped initiate the conference leading to it.
agreed upon during the last days of the session. Among them were an assured seat on the Council of the Seabed Authority for the largest consumer of seabed minerals-expected to be the United States; a higher majority (three-fourths instead of two-thirds) for approving future amendments to the treaty; a clause defining "the development of the resources of the area" as the first objective of seabed policy; and a plan for protecting "pioneer" investments in deep seabed development including assurance that the "pioneers" will receive permission to mine minerals from the sea floor. Attempting to put the treaty into effect without the major countries would present funding problems for the International Seabed Authority and its mining arm, the Enterprise. The Authority will be financed by assessed contributions from its member states, the earnings of the Enterprise, receipts from a tax on seabed contractors, and possible loans and voluntary contributions. To finance the initial mine site of the Enterprise, funds-perhaps $1,000 million or more-will have to be borrowed. Half of the sum would be lent, interest-free, by the states that become members of the Authority. The rest would be obtained from financial markets. The scale of assessments for the U.N. regular budget would be used to determine
the countries that have companies interested in deepsea mining would have a system of licensing under their domestic laws that would be recognized by each other. A process to settle disputes could be set up, similar to that already outlined in the treaty's section on preparatory investment, Malone said. Koh said that if some countries do go ahead with a minitreaty and "create an alternative legal regime to the universal convention and if they proceed to mine the sea under that treaty, I will take it upon myself to persuade the U.N. General Assembly to adopt a decision asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion." Another possibility for U.S. companies that want to mine the deep seabed, Malone said, is to belong to a consortium incorporated in a participating country. how much each state would lend and "There is nothing that would prevent a guarantee. consortium that is now made up of U.S. The United States alone provides 25 companies from incorporating in a counpercent of the operating budget of the try that is a signatory to the treaty when United Nations, for example. "If the the convention enters into force,\' he United States were to stay out [of the pointed out. treaty and thus the Authority and EnterThe U.S. Government will also be prise] along with some of its principal exploring other options for American allies, the financing of the Enterprise and companies. the Authority would be quite thin,',' The bulk of the work during the final Malone noted. "I believe that the entire session of the Law of the Sea Conference 125 countries in the Group of 77 contribwas devoted to the deep seabed mining ute 8.5 percent of the total U.N. budget. section of the treaty because that was the So you get some idea of the financing most novel and most controversial. The aspect." sections on territorial zones, navigation, The United States and some of its overflight, fishing, shipping and even the allies-France, West Germany and the Continental Shelf are largely the codificaUnited Kingdom in particular-had been tion of accepted practices. discussing the possibility of a "miniMost countries, regardless of whether treaty" among major industrial nations they voted to accept or reject the treaty; dealing with deep seabed mining. Such will go through some sort of review ideas were dropped during the Law of the process before ratifying it, Koh acknowlSea Conference, but appear to be a viable edged in his closing remarks to the delealternative once again to Malone. Calling gates. Nations whose delegations voted it a "reciprocating states arrangement," against adopting the draft treaty may Malone said the idea will be explored "after sober reflection" decide to vote for "with our allies who are possible near- it, he said. On the other hand, President term deepsea miners. Indeed, it may Koh pointed out, some countries whose even be that the Soviet Union may have delegations voted for the treaty may some interest along these lines"decide not to ratify it. 0 although no talks with the Soviets have been held as yet. About the Author: Judy Aita is a SPAN In a reciprocating states agreement, correspondent at the United Nations.
lrtit::
LifeliDe for "orld Trade
United States policy aims to encourage peaceful development, to maintain good commercial and political relations and to preserve stability in the Indian Ocean region, says Philip Wilcox, acting U.S. Deputy AssistanLSecretary of State in the Bureau of International Organizations. Wilcox discussed regional interests and superpower rivalry in the Indian Ocean as a member of a panel at the Asia Society Center in Washington, D.C. He is a former negotiator with the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on the Indian Ocean. Characterizing the Indian Ocean as a "maritime lifeline for world trade," Wilcox said that freedom of navigation there is "absolutely essential to the world economy." He listed among U.S. interests in the area "large and growing commercial investments" and "a great stake in the economic development of the nations in the area," as a result of substantial U.S. contributions of economic and humanitarian aid. The great powers are not the primary source of conflict in the region, which, defined broadly, includes such confrontations as those between Iran and Iraq, Ethiopia and Somalia, Israel and the Arab nations, Wilcox said. Nevertheless, he emphasized that the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union shattered the traditional balance of power among the states in the region. "This new Soviet posture has stimulated a basic rethinking of American security policies in that part of the world, and as a result we have strengthened our naval presence in the region," he said. Wilcox cited agreements with "a few of the littoral states which have offered us airfield and naval facilities in times of need," the strengthening of Diego Garcia-the small island facility the United States leases from Great Britain-and the establishment of the rapid deployment force geared to transport U.S. troops to the area on short notice should a crisis arise. He stressed that the United States has "no base agreements with any of the littoraJ states" and "there are virtually no [U.S.] troops stationed in that part of the world." The Soviet Union has "an immense military force which could be made available at a moment's notice within the Indian Ocean region, vastly greater than what is at the disposal of the West," Wilcox said. He listed not only the 100,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan, but also 350,000 troops "employed in the southern military districts of the U.S.S.R." There within some 4,000 kilometers of the Strait of Hormuz-between Oman and Iran-are 40 tank, motorized rifle and airborne divisions; some 8,000 tanks; 1,400 armored vehicles; 100 long-range bombers; 700 air defense fighters; 200 transport aircraft and mediumrange and intercontinental-range nuclear missiles. The United States, on the other hand, has 29 vessels plying the waters of the Indian Ocean, and the troops at the disposal of the West are stationed in North America and Europe. Even Diego Garcia, which he emphasized is not a base, is "several days' sail away," Wilcox noted. He said that since a reduction of naval force in the area "would only increase the preponderance of land forces" the Soviets have in the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, they could well afford to champion the idea of an Indian Ocean zone of peace. "Obviously the elimination of great-power rivalry, greatpower military forces in the area, would have tremendous
appeal to the peoples of that region, most of whom lived for centuries under colonial domination," Wilcox said by way of explaining how the zone of peace concept has gained favor with the nonaligned movement. But; he added, "on the other hand, while they assert this publicly in international forums, many of those nations in diplomatic discourse recognize that their real security interests are very different and that elimination of U.S., French or British military forces from the region would endanger their security .... It's quite natural that they should be ambivalent about it." Wilcox characterized India as being "the most aggressive and skillful advocate" of the zone of peace over the years, because such a zone would greatly enhance its own influence. The United States became a full-fledged member of the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on the Indian Ocean in 1980, but disassociated itself shortly afterward as a protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Wilcox sumro.arized subsequent committee activity as a debate over whether there should be a conference to implement the 1971 Indian Ocean Zone of Peace declaration. He said the United States shares with other Western nations the goal of changing the focus from great-power military rivalry to "more realistic and contemporary" term's of reference. "We do not think at the moment, given the intransigence of the Soviet Union and their unwillingness to withdraw from Afghanistan, that the time is ripe for ... negotiations that would lead to arms reductions in the region," he stated. "To talk about arms control there [in the Indian Ocean] without embracing the regional forces is most unrealistic from our point of view." Wilcox noted there are some "three million men under arms in the littoral and hinterland states, 400 ships and an investment of something to the tune of $50,000 million a year in arms" on the part of these states. "We do no~ believe that a conference on an Indian Ocean zone of peace would be a fruitful enterprise," Wilcox said. Instead, it would probably be a repeat of the kind of sterile confrontation [the Western countries] had with the Soviet Union in the U.N. Ad Hoc Committee. "Moreover," he continued, "we think a conference without a change in the terms of reference and a basic definition of the Indian Ocean zone of peace would simply give new stature and prestige to. that doctrine, which ... we have very grave reserva- . tions about." 0
When metals are supercooled, they change in almo~!tmagical ways. Those changes, already used in a few specialized applications, will soon make most of technology obsolete. In the near future we may see: a supercomputer in a 2.5-centimeter cube; trains that ride like surfboards on waves of energy; magnetic bottles strong enough to hold a bit of starfire; wire that can carryall of New York City's electricity in a single cable; guns powerful enough to shoot a satellite into orbit; and instruments that can sense magnetic changes in your brain while you read one of your favorite books. All these breakthroughs require the ability to squirt electricity through a wire without resistance and without losing any of it, an elusive property called superconductivity. Nature has been dangling it in fronf . .." . . of us for more than 70 years since students A lO-turn square splral mput cmllS coupled wlth ..
.'
,a
of the Dut.ch SCIentist Helke Kamerhngh Onnes noticed that a thread of frozen mercury suddenly loses all resistance to electricity when it is cooled to about four degrees above absolute zero (- 273.1° C). . .
.
.
PhYSICIS~S .have bee~ trymg to explam superconductiVIty ever smce. Compared to the temperatures at which superconductivity appears, our room-' temperature world is a seething caldron. In physics, heat represents disorder: the random collision of atoms. It is this constant
superconducting magnetic device that is,so sensitive it can differentiate the tiny magnetic changes in the brain. Doctors may soon use the device to detect neurological and cardiac disorders before they become life-threatening. The structure below the coil contains the Josephson junction that is the basis for the device's operation. The superconducting junction is hundreds of times faster than ordinary solid-state circuits, consumes much less power and can be fitted more tightly to . tiny silicon chips.
Reprinted
from Omni. Copyright Š "Omni" Publications International, Ltd., 1981.
chaos that causes mercury in a thermometer to expand and rise in its tube. Without heat, however, the physical world has perfect harmonious order. It has been 24 years since three scientists ~'at the University of Illinois-John Bardeen, Leon N, Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer-managed to explain what Onnes and his students had observed. In 1972 they shared a Nobel Prize for their "BCS" theory of superconductivity. A few years later the Soviet physicist A.A .. Abrikosov discovered that there are two types of superconductors, one of which can be made into supermagnets far stronger than any that had ever been built. These gargantuan electromagnets are now becoming a standard feature of high-energy particle accelerators. Yet superconductivity still has not found its way into widespread use. The reason is simple: All superconductors must be chilled continuously in liquid helium, which is scarce and very ~xpensive. The b,est hope for a replacement source would be the development of fusion-power plants, which would produce pure helium as a byproduct. In the past few years we have begun to see possible solutions to this problem of temperature. We may soon discover materials that become superconductors at room temperature. "At that point," says the Russian physicist V.L. Ginsburg, "ordinary electromagnets with nonsuperconducting coils would almost go out of use." A possible breakthrough came in 1965 when Dr. William A. Little, of Stanford University in California, suggested that
organic molecules might sometimes behave as superconductors. "It occurred to me," he explains, "that if nature wanted to, protect the information contained in, say, the ,genetic code against the ravages of heat and other external influences, the very stable, low-energy state of superconductivity would be well suited for the purpose." His hunch now seems to offer our best hope of creating a practical superconductor. Room-temperature superconductivity would open "a whole new world of science and technology," Dr. Little predicts. "Many fantastic things would become possible." Large superconducting magnets could propel railroad cars in a worldwide subway system, called Planetran. Such a train could travel from New York City to Los Angeles in about 90 minutes. Each car coul,d carry supermagnets to float it on a magnetic field. A recent Rand Corporation report estimates that Planetran "will use only a few percent as much energy per passenger-mile as an airplane. Coast-to-coast energy costs are less than $1 per passenger." Japan National Railways has already tested a prototype magnetic-levitation train using supermagnets to lift the car off the track. Helium-bathed superconductors are finding their way into specialized uses. IBM, for example, has spent $100 million to develop computers based on a superconducting switch invented 20 years ago by a Cambridge graduate student named Brian Josephson. Because it uses superconducting materials, the Josephson junction is hl1ndreds of times faster than ordinary solidstate circuits, consumes much less power, and can be crammed more tightly onto tiny silicon chips. Computers based on the junctions would be enormously powerful. The Josephson junction is also used in an instrument that can detect' incredibly small magnetic fields: the SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device). Geologists are using SQUIDs to help discover whether the earth has a solid core, and physicists are using them to test Einstein's theory of general relativity. On one of its first regular flights, the space shuttle will carry a SQUID so sensitive that it will be able to detect a snail crawling on the moon. The SQUID will watch for change~ in the wayan almost perfect sphere ¡of quartz spins on its axis. On a tiny scale, the experiment will duplicate changes in the Left: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, has the world's largest system of superconducting magnets, which were made on the 1,400-ton press shown here.
rotation of Mercury predicted by Einstein's theory. So sensitive, a SQUID can easily differentiate the tiny magnetic-changes caused by electrical activity in the brain. Soon they may be used to control machines by thought. Researchers at New York University already claim they can tell whether someone's thumb or little finger has been pricked simply by monitoring the brain's magnetic field. Other medical researchers are using SQUIDs to keep watch on the heart's magnetic field. Such work offers a dramatic new chance to identify neurological and cardiac disorders before they become life-threatening. Doctors are also using powerful electromagnets with coils of superconducting niobium-alloy wire in a process known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging. NMR works by pumping energy into atomic nuclei in the body and measuring their magnetic fields as they return to normal. NMR can view cross sections of the body as X-rays do, and also permits threedimensional mapping. But what NMR produces is not a mere image but a detailed chemical analysis of the tissues. And doctors think NMR is much safer than X-rays. The first NMR scanners used superconducting magnets, though today's models usually do not. Still, "superconductivity will ultimately be indispensable in NMR," according to Dr. Raymond Damadian of the State University of New York's Downstate Medical Center, who did the first NMR scan of a human patient. NMR scanners with superconducting magnets might give doctors a quick, simple way to identify cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, and even brain disorders. Such machines might trace the effects of drugs on human tissues and help locate the chemical causes of disease. One of the first commercial applications for large superconducting magnets probably will be to purify water, mineral ores and foods. In 1962 Dr. Henry H. Kolm and his associates at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) devised "highgradient magnetic separation" (HGMS) to collect iron-meteorite fragments from the bottom of ocean trenches: A supermagnet sifted through tons of sediment and retained the iron particles. Since then the process has been adapted to remove pollution-causing impurities from coal and to refine kaolin, a white clay used to coat glossy paper. The process can also separate nonmagnetic materials that tend to stick to a magnetic "seed" compound. There are many of them. For instance, some polluted rivers and lakes could be purified by seeding the water with iron oxide, to which certain bacteria adhere, and then pumping the
water through a magnetic separator. But the most important use of' superconductors will be in generating and distributing power. Fusion generators will rely on them. Peter N. Haubenreich, of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee' says, "In the sun, gravity holds the reacting mass together. On earth, the chief hope for practical man-made solar energy depends on the use of strong magnetic fields to effect confinement." Enormous superconducting magnets are obvious choices for this duty. They might also help us extract more useful energy from burning coal and oil. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generators produce electric power directly from the burning fuel by passing the hot, conductive combustion gases through a strong magnetic field, much as an ordinary dynamo works by moving a conductive wire through a magnetic field. MHD generators capture about half the energy in the fuel-15 percent more than a dynamo. Supermagnets might help make this technology practical. And even conventional power plants could benefit from them. Westinghouse is now building the world's first commercial generator using supermagnets. Eugene J. Cattabiani, the corporation's executive vicepresident, says, "Annual fuel savings for a single large plant of one million kilowatts would be equal to the energy in more than one hundred thousand barrels of oil." Such energy-saving generators could begin to replace present models by the early 1990s. Superconducting cables might cut the cost of distributing that power. Even a small one can carry enormous amounts of electricity. A single cable about half a meter across could supply all of New York City's electrical needs. Because of this tremendous capacity, supercables may allow us to locate power plants far from the cities they serve. This would cut the cost of shipping fuel to the plant and might make it easier to find sites in rural areas for nuclear generators. Because of the bulky cooling equipment and rivers of liquid helium they need, supercables must be placed underground. Their tunnels will be expensive, but they may have several other uses: Light-wave communications links, freight systems, and pipelines for oil, water, gas, and waste disposal could all run through them, with several companies sharing the costs. Superconducting magnets might help with another long-standing power problem: Most generators are designed to supply power for a hot summer afternoon with factories and air conditioners running full blast. On a cool autumn evening there is no About the Author: Steve Aaronson writes on science for several American magazines, including Omni and Science Digest.
efficient way to store the extra electricity; most of it is wasted. But superconducting coils can hold current forever. To store power in off-peak periods, stadium-sized coils could simply draw electricity when it is available; the current would flow inside the wire without loss until it was needed. There are problems of course. Very large magnets pack nearly the power of a medium-sized earthquake. To prevent the magnet from tearing itself apart, it must be buried so deep that the bedrock can brace it. As things stand, such enormous magnets would require hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid helium for cooling, far more than the world's supply. Yet a prototype storage coil is now being built at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico, and another is being designed at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Before the year 2000 the descendants of these storage coils will probably enable electric utilities to cut costs, raise their efficiency and reduce the likelihood of blackouts. Physicists now are using the world's largest supermagnets to study the basic constituents of matter at higher energies than ever before. They are now designing two particle accelerators with magnetic rings 1.6 kilometers wide. One is to be built at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, the other will be part of the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire, near Geneva, Switzerland. Each will contain enough superconducting niobium-titanium wire to encircle the equator, and their cooling systems will triple the world's need for liquid helium. Superconducting guns, called mass drivers, would be quiet, smokeless, safeand astonishingly powerful. The U.S. Army is now funding the development of a mass driver capable of firing conventional shells, or any other magnetic object, to defend against enemy tanks, missiles and incoming artillery rounds. Because electromagnets accelerate the projectiles more gently than explosives do, mass drivers migh.t also be used to throw supplies across inaccessible terrain. Mass drivers may even launch the next gene):"ation of space vehicles. Even with the space shuttle, it now costs about $650 to put a kilogram of payload into orbit, though that may drop to $100 a kilogram late in this decade. Scientists at MIT believe that very large mass drivers with superconducting magnets might reduce launch costs to about $2 per kilogram. And launchers on the lunar surface may hurl buckets of ore into orbit for use in constructing space stations. As a first step, Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill is now building a superconducting mass driver at (Text continued on page 45)
ASHOK CHOPRA: Mr. Wiley, as the first chairman of the American Publishers Association and an active member of it, what trends do you foresee for the future of publishing during the
""""~lHE roD THAT UMPS
1980s? W. BRADFORD WILEY: In the United States, as elsewhere in the world, there's been a great deal of talk about the new technologies, the computer replacing printed books. I do not foresee that happening. The book is still, in computer terminology, the most ingenious storage and retrieval system that's been devised. I do expect, however, that much use will be made of the new technologies. It is already beginning in the case of our publishing house, John Wiley & Sons. For example, today we have more than 50 books in one of our publishing programs being written in effect on word-processing machines. This will, of course, provide us with tapes, which will provide video images that we can use to edit the manuscripts. The tapes can later be used to drive the composing devices. We expect that this will greatly reduce the lapse of time between the author's creation leaving his hands and its turning into a book.
And how do you think television has affected the growth of publishing? Well, there was a great deal of alarm, understandably, because television is a very attractive form of home entertainment. But studies made by independent researchers show that book readership has gone up more steeply than it did before television. So we think TV has had a positive impact, especially its cultural programs, many of which are drawn from books.
Has the audiovisual had any effect on print culture? In the United States, we have access to generous funds for research and development, and most of the funds come from private foundations. Perhaps more than any other country we have done experimental work with audiovisual systems. It began, in fact, soon after World War II when our military establishment found that audiovisual systems were of particular value for rapid teaching. Many of us were engaged with the subject to the extent of producing moving pictures, slides, and a great array of audiovisuals which were carefully integrated into
orld of Books
ASHOK CHOPRA TALKS WITH W. BRADFORD WILEY
a teaching system built around a book. 'But we found that it was not as essential as we had thought the academics.
to
Mr. Wiley, you have completed 50 years in publishing. Now, what do you think have been the other major changes in the publishing scene? Well, I'd like to go back even further than my 50 years of experience. To get to the answer you have to look at the rather short history of book publishing in the United States. After all, we are a young nation. There was only one book-publishing house in the United States at the very end of the 18th century. The second to arrive on the scene was that founded by my great-great-grandfather. And using the history of what he started and was carried on by his son and on into my generation, you can trace what was happening in the United States as books related to cultural development. First there was the advent of creative writers in the United States who for the first time, besides having writing skills, had publishers and became known outside of the United States. These were the greats of the 19th century; they were James Fenimore Cooper, a personal friend of my great-greatgrandfather, who persuaded him to begin his writing career
with The Spy. There was Edgar Allan Poe, whose books we published. There were Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving. And then the interest turned toward educational books as our educational system grew. In the United States it became, early on, a national policy that there should be free education for everyone. And then came the recognition that books had to be provided, and they were indeed provided. We pioneered the concept of giving students books at no cost. Although they were privately published and purchased by government bodies they were provided to the students free. How did you view this difference between educational books and general books? As we became more sophisticated in our educational systems and they were changed to bring us into the industrial revolution, which came to the United States at the end of the 19th century, books became tools-books on mathematics and all the sciences, especially the engineering sciences which were quite new-for bringing about the change. As the 20th century blossomed and the country became more affluent, you began to find large collections of general literature in university bookstores. In fact the so-called trade publishers-publishers of novels, nonfiction, poetry, art, whatever-have their largest sales in the community made up of college and university students in the United States. How many retail outlets are there today in America? Well, they're growing, contrary to the idea that bookselling is a dying art in the United States. At the annual meeting of the American Booksellers Association, upward of 18,000 booksellers will appear, and most of them are individual entrepreneurs. That's a great part of book sales today in the United States. Certainly the most popular contemporary books are being sold through chain bookstores, but that does not eliminate a very important place for the bookseller who has a broad selection of titles and tries to do a more customized job. Mr. Wiley, since the Sixties or so several American publishers have participated in the low-cost textbook program sponsored by the U.S. Government in India. Since you have been actively associated with this program, would you tell us in what way it has helped? Well, first it should be clearly understood that the program went into effect only with the wholehearted concurrence and participation of the Indian Government. It was not a propaganda effort by American book publishers under the auspices of our government; it was an attempt by mutual agreement to provide the kinds and numbers of textbooks required to take care of the needs of the growing number of university students. At that period in India's history, as you well know, there was a huge growth in university enrollments, and it was terribly important for them to have access to textbooks at the university level. Because of the prior growth in the United States, we had those instructional materials, tried, tested and up-to-date. The program had many positive effects. It provided funds to Indian publishers to produce books, and some of them had not had much experience with that kind of bookthat was a broadening influence. The funds also included a specific budget for marketing, and for many Indian publishers, having marketing funds was a new experience. I hope it was helpful to them in developing their marketing skills. The danger was, and many of us were aware of it,
that since. books became suddenly very cheap, many people developed the unhappy misconception that somehow or other, magically, books can always be cheap. But the reason they were cheap was that they were being subsidized by our joint governments. That is not the best way to publish books. I am a strong believer in independent private sector publishing. But that increases the cost of books and puts them beyond the reach of everyone. Yes, but if you run the risk of the government being your principal financier, you have to accept the corollary that the government sooner or later is going to demand a voice in what is published and what is not published. We do not think in an open society such as you have and we have that is a safe way to go about publishing. What sort of cooperation between Indian and American publishers can strengthen ties between the two countries? With the American textbook program under way with the help of PL 480 funds, many American and Indian publishers who had never had personal relationships got to know one another and discovered they 'had many interests in common. We found that these relationships could be continued. At the invitation of the Federation of Indian Publishers, some of us have spent many days in seminars, joint workshops with the Indian publishers. During your recent World Book Fair, many of us were invited to make a presentation on the United States' international marketing of books. As relative newcomers to international distribution of books you wanted to know how to go about it. We had a group of our experts describe the nature and the problems of entering the European market where there is an increasing number of English-language book readers and buyers, the market in the United Kingdom, in Australia, and in Japan, the largest market outside of the English-speaking nations. (I expect India will soon exceed Japan.) Indian publishers, even the biggest, have a lot of problems in selling their books in America. What suggestions would you like to make to them? For the United States our recommendation was, one, to put together an exhibit, probably made up of books from the members of the Indian Federation of Publishers, and display it at the annual meeting of the American Booksellers Association-it's the nearest thing we have in the Western hemisphere to a book fair. Second, to exhibit Indian books to another large and important group-which also has a large annual meeting and also requests book exhibits-the American Library Association. Third, having identified yourselves as publishers in that market area, you then have to find, either as individual publishers or together, arrangements under which your books will be maintained and stocked in the United States and can be readily available to the booksellers. It's hopeless to expect that a bookseller who receives an order for a book be able to purchase it from the publisher in Delhi, Bombay or wherever. You talk about the readers in America. What sort of changes do you see in the readers' tastes?
It's becoming more sophisticated. More and more adults in the United States have at least one university degree. Now, this wasn't true a quarter of a century ago. There is also a new worldwide development in education that it is a lifelong undertaking if you want to make it so-for two reasons. One, to improve your professional skills or to change careers; two, simply to broaden your cultural understanding of the society in which you live. Many older people these days take courses in nearby universities because they want to know more about a subject that happens to intrigue them. There is a great deal of very interesting publishing going on in the United States in certain regions, particularly in Los Angeles and San Francisco. California is a very large state, the one with the most complete system of education beyond secondary school. Innumerable small, specialized publishing houses in California are frequently run by literary-minded people who may have another career from which they earn a living. They publish half a dozen books a year, some of which get into national circulation and some of which (fiction) are so regional as to have a limited appeal. And yet they get distribution. But what would you say about the chances of an Indian author getting published there, besides the famous ones?
Well, I would hope that one or another of your highly capable Indian publishing houses would first publish the book and then arrange to have an agent in the United States stock and promote it. You send your copies to reviewers and, if the book is as good as you hope it's going to be, it will be reviewed. And then the booksellers would learn about it because your American agent would make certain they got publication announcements and all the information, and the booksellers know in advance what's coming out because they read the usual sources. Which is the bestselling
book
in the world?
Well, there are a great many opinions on this subject. I would cast my vote for Shakespeare. Among American authors, I would say Mark Twain, particularly Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi. I was visiting your World Book Fair in Delhi and I came upon a very interesting statement on the part of the Soviet Union. Their claim is that the bestselling worldwide author is V.1. Lenin. I think they may be considering the number of books printed and distributed rather than people who read V.1. Lenin, because if you've ever tackled him, his prose in English is pretty turgid. He is not a contemporary Marx. Marx was a great writer and a great thinker. Lenin was a politician. Do you think those sales can be due to the fact that it's very, very cheaply available?
I suppose so. The curious thing, since you bring up the pricing of books in the Soviet Union, is that the book-we'll say a textbook in physics which sells here in India for perhaps 10 rupees-has a different price in every other country. That book About the Participants: W. Bradford Wiley, chairman of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Publishers, is director of the American Book Publishers Council and president of the American Educational Publishers Institute. Ashok Chopra, formerly an editor with Vikas Publishing House, is currently editor of Film Magazine, a Hindustan Times publication. He has writtenfor several Indian magazines and has been a correspondent for The Tribune, Chandigarh, and the Indian Express.
would be 10 dollars in New York, which we would say is rather shrewd marketing-you sell at a price the traffic can bear. The government is the source of funds for Soviet publishers and they are not dependent upon their own skills and their ability to finance their own undertaking. This is quite a different kind of publishing. For their purposes, they think it serves them well. It's notable however that since they joined the copyright union we have sold almost 300 licences to them, books of ours which they found unequaled in their own literature, which they are busily translating. In converse, we have only found 10 or a dozen of their books that we wish to translate and we expect that that ratio will perhaps increase a little bit in their favor but not significantly. Mr. Wiley, at present you are very actively involved in the strengthening and enforcement of the international copyright laws for protecting intellectual property. Now, what are the major problems that you're finding in this, and how do you plan to tackle them?
Well, the major problem is to bring the idea into the minds of people-and their governments-who have come newly to publishing and have little concern with such things as copyright. Copyright is very important even to developing countries because surely their books, their writers, as has happened in black Africa, are writers who will quickly have world appeal and unless there is 'within the country of first publication a copyright protection to the author" his works will be pirated by his fellow countrymen. If his country does not belong to an international union, he has no protection outside his own country. And we feel strongly that India has a very great responsibility today, having found to its satisfaction that the copyright is important, that intellectual property deserves protection and that publishers should have an opportunity to distribute the author's work in primary edition or translation, all protected by copyright, national and international. But I think
in India
it's not the ...
And in India, because it is the leader in this part of the world and is surrounded by neighbors who are among the worst pirates because they are English-speaking countries, should take the lead in going to them and persuading them to accept the idea of copyright. It's a tragedy when, as happens in India and to a degree in the United States, a successful book is pirated and someone who has no investment in the preparation and development of that book-and has no obligation to pay anybody anything except the printer-can simply reproduce the book by offset and produce all the copies he wants and sell them almost at any price that's profitable to him. The author gets nothing. Mr. Wiley, you've been attending these book fairs all over the world, how would you compare the Delhi book fair with other book fairs, Frankfurt's for example, which is considered to be the best?
As you. know, that book fair in fact had its origins in Leipzig, which prior to becoming an East German city was the world center of the international book trade. And when the war was over, the center moved to Frankfurt, another old German trading city, and out of that grew the remarkable achievement of the Frankfurt international book fair. That is the most important meet in every sense, to booksellers, to publishers. (Text continued on page 45)
Students at Work
WARREN WILSON COLLEGE by JAMES A. NOONE
Nestled among the Appalachian Mountains in the southeastern United States is a college that is unusual in more ways than one: it has only about 550 students; all of them, rich and poor, have to pay for their board and lodging by doing tasks that range from tending cattle to administration; the college has traditionally kept its doors wide open to foreign students, particularly those from developing countries. Warren Wilson College, named after an American educator and missionary, is located near the rural community of Swannanoa in the western part of the state of North Carolina. Founded in 1894, Warren Wilson is a fully accredited four-year coeducational institution offering a Bachelor of Arts degree in such subjects as behavioral sciences, biological sciences, chemistry, economics, history, intercultural studies, mathematics, physics and sociology. The number of students at Warren Wilson is smaller than at many secondary schools in the United States. Five hundred students live on campus; another 50 or so commute from the surrounding area. Under the college's unique work-study program, each resident student works 15 hours per week in exchange for room and board. This applies even to those who can afford to pay the full cost of room and board. Foreign students can earn up to
The work-and-study-program of Warren Wilson College provides diverse experiences for students. Activities like gardening and farming (left) may lead to a career in the environmental sciences. Students who prepare lectures and movies for audiovisual programs are also responsible for maintaining the equipment (above).
Below: Social events give studentsmany of whom are from foreign countries-a chance to get to know each other. Bottom: Students and faculty play the traditional music of the AppalaChian Mountains area where the college is located.
Right: Engineering students get practical experience on work crews. Below: A student and a professor at the greenhouse, which is used by both the work program and the biology department.
;~
half of their tuition fees through additional work at the college, usually during summer months when classes are not in session. As part of the work program, the staff and students operate a 120-hectare farm on the college grounds, tend herds of cattle, clean and maintain the buildings, do administrative work, run the dining hall and operate a power substation on the campus. "We look at it as part of the total educational program," explains Jeana McKinney, director of international student services. "The college is a community run by the staff and students. " The schedule is structured so that students attend classes three hours each day and work for an equal number of hours. The school year has two semesters, subdivided into eight-week sessions. Students take only two courses per session, allowing for intensive concentration on subjects. The college has a "dean of work," on the same level as the academic dean. To the extent possible, work assignments are made compatible with areas of study. "We feel the work program gives our students insurance when they graduate," says McKinney. "In competing for jobs, they are able to offer actual work experience as well as academic training." In addition to the regular work schedule, each student must complete a 60-hour "service project" prior to graduation. These include work in the local community and at a nearby veterans hospital as well as special projects on campus. Many foreign students provide tutoring in their native languages as their projects. Currently students from outside the United States constitute about 10 percent of the student body. The college's involvement with foreign students goes back to World War II, when its dean took in a German youth fleeing the Nazi regime and two Japanese girls who were scheduled otherwise to be held in a detention center in the United States. Over the years, the foreign student population has been as high as 30 percent of the student body. The emphasis, particularly in recent years, has been on students from countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The college believes that understanding the values and customs of other cultures is an important part of a liberal education, says McKinney. Travel abroad, both for American and foreign students, is encouraged. The college has been active in arranging student exchanges and study trips to other countries. Students applying to enter from outside the United States must have completed secondary school work equivalent to a U.S. high school and must have passed an English proficiency examination such as the test of English as a foreign language. Students who are successful in entering Warren Wilson will find themselves sharing, as one of its brochures says, "work and its rewards, ideas and their consequences." 0 About the Author: James A. Noone is a former SPAN ~orrespondent in Washington, D.C.
"Teaching begins to grow boring when one has no sense of intellectual progress in one's own classes-at that moment when the teacher himself ceases to learn from it."
I have never heard anyone whom I consider a good teacher claim that he or she is a good teacher-in the way that one might claim to be a good writer or surgeon or athlete. Self-doubt seems very much a part of the job of teaching: One can never be sure how well it is going. One moment you are riding high; the next, plunging into the pit. In my own experience, I find that after teac.hing two or three exhilarating classes in a row, the third or fourth usually will be dull if not dreary. Of course, much depends on the kind of teaching one is doing-on the subject and the method. But in the end the feeling that often remains is one of doubt, and a strong sense that one has not been good enough. "Don't be so humble," said Golda Meir. "You're not that great." But in my case-and, I suspect, in that of anyone in earnest about teaching-the humility is real, based as it is on a true sense of inadequacy. I have taught for seven years; .the courses I have taught have dealt with literature and writing. And all of my teaching has been at the same institution, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, which has a standing-if such things are to be believed-as one of the top 10 or 20 schools in the United States. In those seven years I have rarely entered a classroom without feeling nervous nor emerged from one without feeling relieved. I began university teaching in my
mid-thirties, in the middle of a career in writing and editing. And so, by any chronological measure, I was a man of some maturity. But this didn't seem to help much, nor has it yet. I still find that, on walking into a classroom, I have to remind myself that I am 44 years old; that I have published books; that I have written for every magazine I admire; that I have lectured previously before hundreds of people; that before my typewriter I am absolutely fearless; that, given all this, I should not be edgy about having to spend 90 minutes talking to 15 or 20 kids between the ages of 18 and 22, and in comparison with whom I am a very worldly fellow indeed. But go tell that to my palms, which have become moister than I should like, or to my bladder, which invariably before entering a classroom bids me to make a final stop in the men's room. The cause of all this is the worry that I shall not be good enough. But what is "good enough"? As they used to say when I was a student, "Define your terms." Here we come to a large part of the problem. What constitutes good teaching? Getting the lesson across? Although this begins to sound rather like a zen koan, what is the lesson and what is meant by "across"? My lessons have mostly to do with literature-with novels and essays and autobiographies. Fealty must be paid to the content of these works, to the plots, thoughts, feelings and ideas that their pages put on exhibit. But these works are always, in ways often quite mysterious, more than the sum of their parts. Why do they stir us as they do? (They had better, I have discovered, stir me, or I unfailingly teach them poorly. One of the first things I learned about teaching is never to teach works for which I have contempt; though I try to hide it, the contempt seeps out.) No, it is the seriousness, the majesty of the works, that I want to get across to my students. And because I am never sure of my success-can never be sure-I am convinced that, so long as I teach, doubt will accompany me in and out of the classroom. Much of the quality of one's teaching depends on the quality of one's students. Three or four exceptionally bright minds in a class of 20 or 30 students can make a decisive difference in the day-to-day conduct of a class. But here I must insert that, unlike many teachers, I cannot claim to have learned a great deal from my students. I have acquired some information from my students' papers when
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I am clever enough to assign them topics about which my own ignorance is nearly complete-as, say, on Ezra Pound's economic theories-and some classroom comments have opened my eyes to an aspect or angle of a book or subject I hadn't considered before. But these, alas, have been too few and far between. Yet there remains a sense in which teaching provides the best education-to the teacher himself. A friend of mine, who has taught for roughly 40 years, tells me that teaching begins to grow boring when one has no sense of intellectual progress in one's own classes-at that moment when the teacher himself ceases to learn from it. Teaching, as Dr. Samuel Johnson said of hanging, concentrates the mind wonderfully. Under the constraint of teaching a book, one reads it with a special intensity. One must not only make sense of the book for oneself and plan how best to orchestrate a discussion that will elucidate it for others, but also anticipate all variety of questions, sharp and obtuse, about it. Teaching also helps clarify one's own point of view on many issues. One cannot teach effectively if one doesn't know where one stands on fundamental matters: the importance of literature, for instance. Yet another requirement of a teacher, in my view, is that he not be boring-or at least any more boring than is absolutely necessary. Here, though, we encounter tricky terrain. I suspect that part of my own nervousness about teaching has to do with the fact that I myself am so easily-often so exquisitely-bored, and I do not wish to place my students under the penalty of a similar affliction. After all, teaching is, in one of its aspects, a performing art. But while one is under an obligation not to be boring, neither wiIl it do to be too entertaining, nor merely interesting. A class is a captive audience, and the temptation sometimes exists to work it the way a nightclub performer might. But first loyalty is owed to the subject and to the art of pedagogy. One must be entertaining, and interesting, always in the light of the subject being taught. Some teachers do not have it in them to be entertaining, while others are perhaps excessively dramatic. What one wants is to demonstrate how interesting a book or subject is by talking interestingly about it. At the same time, a teacher ought perhaps to distrust his work if he becomes known as a "popular" teacher-or
rather, a "too popular" teacher. How interrogation, a steady hand on the inteldoes one know if one has become too lectual rudder-in a phrase, pedagogical popular? Large class enrollments for a poise. Such poise is not always easy to course may be one sign. Effusive praise come by. Often one wants to shout, on student evaluations may be another. "Look, this guy was homeless, homely, Although it may seem perverse to say so, and horny." But that won't do. Meanstudents oughtn't to like you too muchwhile, a teacher-this teacher-fears at any rate, not all of them. Un~versal that he is somehow not doing justic,e: to acceptance can signal that one is too his students, to the book, to himself. bland, not tough enough, or insufficiently Thus the never-ending doubt. rigorous in one's general standards. I suppose one's own ideas about Student evaluations of their teachers, teaching come directly from one's own which have become more prevalent at best teachers. As it happens, I went to American universities since the end of the University of Chicago in the midthe 1960s, are to be accepted warily. Too 1950s, a place whose roster of teachers often, students judge a teacher solely by ,was as glittering as any in the United his likableness-but being likable and States. In their world, these men were being an effective teacher are far from rather like great priests. I felt an awe in the same thing. Beyond being able to tell their presence. Perhaps this is the place to say that I if a teacher is a slacker, one doubts the was never a very good student. The entire ability of students truly to know whether time I was at the university I felt myself a teacher is good or bad. Which lessons remain with one through swimming in water well above my head. the years is something a student can know Not only did the professors seem godlike only much later-and a teacher perhaps in their authority, but many of the never. A teacher who seemed strident, even a bit dull, when one was taking his courses can years later seem decisive to "But while one is under one's development. Another teacher, who kept one laughing and led one to an obligation not to be believe one was mastering large realms of boring, neither will it do to knowledge, can years later seem neglibe too entertaining, nor gible. It is not always easy to know. The influence that passes from a teacher to a merely interesting." student is probably best recollected and understood only in tranquillity-that is to say, only in years to come. I came to teaching as a writ~r, and it students could be very impressive indeed. quickly became apparent to me that the I recall one morning sitting in Elder difference between writing and teaching Olson's course in modern poetry, when is vast. In writing, one wishes to grasp the Olson made mention of Baudelaire, then truth and persuade others of it; in fell to reciting-chanting, really-a teaching, one must lead others to the poem of Baudelaire's in French. This was truth and impress them with it. The interesting, but not nearly as interesting distinction here is crucial. Take Theodore as the fact that the girl who s~t beside me Dreiser, a novelist I regard as the most joined him in his recitation, which meant important American writer of the cen- that she knew Baudelaire well enough to tury. As a writer, I should say of Dreiser have memorized one of his poems, and that he was poor, ugly, and filled with had moreover memorized it in French. I every kind of longing, and while this may cannot recall a moment when I felt a not be all we need to know, it nonetheless keener personal sense of intellectual explains a great deal of the power behind hopelessness. his novels. But as a teacher I feel that But my larger point is that 25 years such a pronunciamento, however true I ago, when I was in school, teachers were feel it to be, is not sufficient; rather, I held in awe. One felt a certain shame in must come up with those questions that their presence: shame at one's own ignowill lead my students to discover why it rance. The better teachers were of course was that Theodore Dreiser seemed to intrinsically interesting, but even if they know more about, and to understand weren't, the possibility surely crossed better, the nature of desire than any one's mind that the dull fellow in class other American writer. In a flassroom was oneself. Besides, being interesting discussion this requires patience, careful was not the only pedagogic virtue; a
university was not, after all, Time magazine, whose every column was supposed to grab you. What did exist throughout, though, was an aura of seriousness. Because I came out of the educational atmosphere I did- I ought to add here that, never having gone to graduate school, my sole educational experience has been at the University of Chicago-I now run what must be thought a pretty sniffy classroom. I will not say that I never laugh or try to provoke laughter, but I do wear a necktie. (Norman Maclean, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, has written that the only advice he received when he began teaching was to change his necktie every sooften.) And in the classroom I never address my students by any but their last names: Miss Roth, Mr. Hamilton, and so forth. This strikes them as slightly comic, and never so much so as when one of them has to refer to a statement made by a classmate: "Well, I happen to disagree with what Corky, I mean Miss Henry, said about the Princess Casamassima." More than once I have been asked why I do not call students by their first names. "Because," I explain, "we are discussing serious things in this room, and an air of formality is appropriate to them. But even more than this, many people are not happy with their first names; some people wish to be called instead by their nicknames. Now often I have recourse to the thoughts of men like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and I find it difficult to get my tongue around, for example, the following sentence: 'Did Nietzsche think that the prospect of the abyss haunted modern man, Peaches?'" They generally take my point. My students have been very good. They are bright and they are industrious. They are questioning, and many of them have a strong antinonsense streak, which I have come to view as one of the promising signs of a good young mind. But they have received an awful lot of love. Which is another way of saying that many of them seem to me to have an unearned confidence-a confidence in themselves, in their own opinions, in their general grandeur-that is. incommensurate with their abilities or achievements. Sometimes I will grade a student paper upon which I should like nothing better than to write, C-minus: Too Much Love in the Home. They are often extremely good, these recent generations of students, but often not quite so good as they think they are.
And yet some of the ways in which tHey availab Iewithout effort. are not so good are scarcely their fault. On the other hand, students-my stuThey do not, it seems to me, know much dents-regularly surprise me by the history; they do not have a general fund range of their talents and interests. While of knowledge to draw on-or one that a some of my students are cripples as teacher, standing before them in a class- writers, others are extraordinarily comroom, can count on their knowing. To petent, even gifted. It is everywhere said cite an example: In teaching a course in that the young do not read, yet I am prose style recently, I discovered that, of always surprised by what, if properly a class of 20 students, only one had ever presented, will interest them. I taught the heard of Gertrude Stein, and his knowl- novel referred to above, Death Comes for edge of Miss Stein, to put it gently, was the Archbishop by Willa Cather, with less than encyclopedic-"Didn't she live some trepidation. It is a book I love, but I in Paris during World War I?" about thought perhaps it is a book that only exhausted it. There appear to be whole somewhat older men and women are epochs, great chunks of history, about likely to care about: It is a novel that which they know nothing. These are speaks to the power of tradition, the love students who have been guided almost of order, the importance of culture. It solely by their own interests, and sup- turned out that my students felt an ported in this by university administraadoration for Willa Cathe'r's novel similar tions that, having dropped all but a few in intensity to my own. Was this a matter requirements (and many have dropped of my own high regard for Death Comes even these remaining few), have in effect for the Archbishop having been transfertold the students, "Let your interests be red through my teaching to these stuyour guide." dents? Or was it something inherent in "Let your interests be your guide" does them that naturally responded to the not work very well in education. What it book? My guess is that the latter is the tends to turn out is an educational version case. But as with so much about teaching, of the philistine who used so proudly to one can never know for certain. declare, "I may not know much but I If teaching is strewn with so many know what I like." In education one does doubts and uncertainties, why does one better to know much before one decides get into it in the first place? One answer is what one likes. The other side of the coin that in the first place, one doesn't know is the notion that what one isn't in- what one is getting into. I went into it terested in is, ipso facto, boring-or, because I thought it would be an effective worse yet, irritating. I recently taught a way to supplement my income as a novel that had a few lines in French. One writer. I am not certain that by now I am of my students, in vexation, asked why not hooked on it. For when teaching is she, the novelist, had done this, since good, it is very good. Like few other after all the novel was written with an human activities I know, it can exhilaEnglish-speaking audience in mind. (My rate, leaving one feeling that one is doing own generation of students, I think, something extremely important, even would have been ashamed to admit our essential. And when one is teaching well, ignorance of French; we would simply one is in fact doing something absolutely have remained silent.) My answer to this essential-dealing with matters of history student was that the novel, which had at and culture and literature and, finally, its center two French clergymen who with the human spirit. One is engaged in were missionaries in the United States, a continuing conversation about the had every right to have them speak in greatest things. One is passing on the French. Moreover, I said, it was the tradition of learning that has contributed assumption of the author that French is to one's own character. When a teacher part of the knowledge of every educated feels he is doing this, then all the doubts person, or of every person who aspires to depart, the uncertainties evaporate, and become educated. Knowledge of French the teacher feels that he is living with is part of the dues one must pay to point and purpose to his life, which is participate in high culture. I am not sure another way of saying that through D that this went down at all well. But if it teaching he feels most alive. didn't that is, I am afraid, just too damn bad. One of the things a teacher does is About the Author: Joseph Epstein is editor try to convey that the acquisition of of The American Scholar. His most recent knowledge is a delight, but there are publication is Masters: Portraits of Great dues to pay, for the delight is never Teachers, which he edited.
Bo" To let What YOIl Q: Professor Sims, why do so many people come home from work convinced that they haven't accomplished much?
A: They go to work with the idea that they have something to contribute, that their input is important and useful. Frequently, when they get there, they discover that no one really cares what they think; all that's cared about is whether or not they can carry out a routine task. So people feel underutilized. Q: Is this the way most companies in the United States are run today?
A: It's obvious that we have a problem like that with many offices and factories. There has been a significant change, though: Twenty-five years ago, a much larger proportion of workers were willing to tolerate those conditions in return for economic security. Today, security is just not enough. Workers are much more demanding in what they want from their jobs. Q: And what they want is-
A: Without doubt, almost everybody wants more control over his or her job. Surveys show this. The surveys also bring forth another interesting point. If you ask supervisors how much autonomy their people have, they will say, "Quite a bit." But if you ask the subordinates, they reply that they have significantlyo less control over what they do. So there's quite a difference in perceptions. I think that is one of the reasons that satisfaction in jobs has been decreasing in the United States in recent years. Q: Do peopll! perform better if they exercise substantial control over their jobs?
A: If it is a routine task, the answer may be no. On the other hand, if we're interested in creativity or innovationand especially if we're interested in what we still think of as pride of craftsmanship or the quality of work-then the feeling of control over one's own work is very important. Lack of control and a feeling of lack of responsibility for one's work
lead to sloppy workmanship, which in turn leads to products of relatively low quality. Companies without strong foreign competition might be able to get away with that for a lengthy period of time; but, sooner or later, it catches up with them. That's what happened to the American automobile industry two or three years ago, and we are just now pulling out of that. Q: How are employers helping their workers become better selfmanagers?
A: That's an important question nowadays in American industry. There are many ways, but one I see most often is the "team" concept. In the traditional plant the foreman assigns jobs, tells workers how to do their work and enforces performance standards, frequently using reprimands. The employee is expected only to carry out a simple task, and it's up to the foreman to resolve problems or to seek technical help. But in some companies now, much of the problem solving and direction is coming from within self-managed work teams rather than from a representative of management. Typically, the members of a team have a group of closely related tasks. Q: What teams?
is unusual
about these
A: I'll use as an example the work teams that Dr. Charles Manz, my collaborator, and I have observed at a General Motors (GM) plant. A team negotiates within itself to determine who should do particular tasks. The assignments aren't done by a foreman. Sometimes they work out scheduling, tooperhaps come in four hours early on Friday in order to leave four hours early. They get substantial feedback from management: How much they're producing, how it compares with the past and with other plants. They talk out their problems. Perhaps someone in the team is not sharing information on how best to
do a particular job, and someone else therefore is having troubles. Q: As a result, is there more productivity? Are attitudes improved?
A: The products from this particular plant are being produced at a cost that is at least as good as, if not better than, anywhere else at GM. It's one of the outstanding performers in terms of cost efficiency and product quality. The people at this plant are given a rather extensive attitude survey e<!ch year. In the past, the level of job satisfaction of the ordinary worker in this plant has been higher than that of professional engineers and supervisors at GM. I've never seen a plant in which people were so deeply involved in what they were doing and aware of the economic consequences. I watched a production worker decide what grade of coal to use for melting scrap metal, based on changes in the' price of coal. I saw another hourly worker get up from the line and do his own chemical test in a laboratory when he suspected some materials were not up to specifications. His suspicions were correct, and he saved GM a lot of money. I saw other workers meet together to solve a severe quality problem. They suggested several important changes that management had not thought of. People who do things like this have remarkably good attitudes. They feel they have a lot of autonomy. Q: Isn't the concept of autonomy more easily applied to white-collar than to blue-collar jobs?
A: Generally, yes. White-collar work, in a sense, implies a certain amount of discretion and judgment that one brings to the job. But one should not equate white-collar work with being selfmanaged, or blue-collar work with not being self-managed, because I've seen many exceptions. An engineer might be hired to carry out technical details of a project, yet have virtually no decisionmaking responsibil-
Want From Your .Job ity. So you can find a tremendous lack of self-management even in white-collar jobs. Q: Don't many managers feel afraid or threatened when subordinates are given more responsibilities?
A: Managers, of course, think they're capable of making decisions. After all, that's part of being a manager. So a manager who wants to develop selfmanagement capabilities in subordinates must encourage them to make decisions. There is risk involved. Sooner or later, the subordinate will make a wrong decision. But if you're going to develop self-management capability, you'll have to expect a few bad decisions. You have to think ofit as an investment: People can learn from their mistakes, but the only way for them to learn is for them to stick their necks out. I think the major deterrent to the spread of self-management concepts is that managers feel they're losing control of the situation. I certainly detected some of that with the team approach at General Motors. Some people at higher levels sometimes feel uncomfortable when a work group is making decisions that managers once made. The manager has to have a great deal of self-confidence. Q: What can people do to sharpen their self-management abilities?
A: Charles Manz and I typically suggest several strategies: First is self-observation. This means observing your own behavior and fts consequences. I can give a personal example. Sometimes at meetings I feel that I'm talking too much. It's an effort to control my own behavior. One way for me to do that is to take a piece of paper and put a check mark every time I have something to say. I c'an then tell whether I'm saying too much. At the GM plant, each team is provided with substantial feedback about efficiency, output, quality, safety, etc. Second, specify your goals-where you want to be or what specific tasks you
want to' accomplish. Athletes are extraordinarily good at this. Runners typically challenge themselves by shooting for' timings that are challenging but still achievable. Research has shown that achievement-oriented people also are good at setting moderately difficult goals. One form of goal setting is to keep lists. I do this, and virtually every executive and every effective professional person I know does, too. Each team at the GM plant participates in goal setting, including an annual budget proposal. Can you imagine blue-collar workers proposing their own budget? A third strategy is to arrange your work environment in a way that helps you accomplish those goals. If you wish to write and need to concentrate as you write, find a place that's out of the way and won't let you be distracted. Getting away from the telephone may help, too. For a team at the GM plant, it means making sure they have enough material on hand to meet their goals. Q: Are there other techniques that people can use?
A: You can modify your incentives. Self-reinforcement is relatively effective, and most of us engage in this to some degree-sometimes without recognizing it. A salesman who closes a deal in the afternoon will go back to his motel in the evening and eat a special steak and order a special bottle of wine to celebrate. In essence, he is rewarding himself for the achievement of a goal. We also have internal rewards-a mental pat on the back where you say to yourself, "I feel good about doing that." For self-managed work teams, reinforcement from each of the members is important. Self-punishment is the opposite: a feeling of guilt when we fail to do something. Some people are motivated by self-punishment, and especially by fear of failure. But for most people it's just not very effective in the long run. Finally, you can rehearse-practice your desired performance. A new sales-
AN INTERVIEW WITH HENRY P. SIMS, JR.
man might practice a sales call with an experienced sales manager. But you also can rehearse mentally-think about what you are going to say and do in a given situation. Research has shown that mental rehearsal helps one perform better later on. Q: These suggestions seem to be aimed at white-collar or independent workers. Do they apply equally to employees involved in production?
A: They are quite consistent with the strategies involved in teaching a production team how to be self-managed. Successful people in almost any sort of job are always applying these strategies right now, whether they realize it or not. Q: What about the worker whose boss says, "I don't care what you think-I'll make all the decisions"? A: There's no question that the phi-
losophy in an organization has a lot to . do with how far you can carry selfmanagement concepts. Everybody undertakes self-management to some degree-until they run up against constraints imposed by others. But even when technology is relatively constraining-which was the case at the General Motors plant-a creative manager cart organize people into teams and give them some responsibility for solving the problems that revolve around their own particular jobs. Q: Can many workers ever expect the chance to manage their own jobs? A: We're starting to see some marvel-
ous successes of this idea in the United States. I think there's a wave of change occurring in factories right now. In different forms, this concept is under consideration at virtually every large manufacturing corporation, and it's beyond the talking stage. Corporations are now investing significant amounts of time and energy and money to undertake these changes. I'm optimistic! 0 About the Author: Henry P. Sims, Jr., is a consultant on organizational behavior.
lew Trends in U.S. Labor Belations In an informal talk with a group of journalists during his recent visit to New Delhi, U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Labor for International Affairs Robert Searby discussed a variety of subjects concerning American labor-the Reagan Administration's policy toward labor, collective bargaining, the system of
professional private arbitrators to solve labor-management problems. Searby also dealt at length with the recent agreement between the Ford Motor Company and its employees, and President Reagan's dismissing air traffic controllers who remained on strike. Following are excerpts of Searby's remarks.
resident Ronald Reagan gives very strong emphasis in administration-got involved in attempts to intercede and principle to labor's right to organize. He sees organized facilitate agreements between the labor unions and managelabor as part of private-sector development. He places his ment. But now, the President would like to see that the Federal primary emphasis on the private sector in the economy-and Government stays out of collective bargaining unless requested seeks to limit the Federal Government's role. by the parties, unless there is a crisis, because President Reagan In fact, he is the first labor leader to become President of the strongly feels that the workers and the managements know best United States. As a film actor, he was head of the actors' union their own interests, their own economic and industrial situain the United States. During the Fifties, as leader of that union, . tions and how best to cope with them. Of course, we have a he won many rights for young, struggling artists-not the rich governmental machinery for arbitration and negotiations, and successful actors-when it came to collective bargaining generally not compulsory; it is really more a service. rights, salary agreements and working conditions. Ronald Besides, in the United States, a system of professional private arbitrators normally helps solve labor-management Reagan was head of the Screen Actors Guild for eight years. To understand the Reagan Administration's policy toward problems. Probably, the best current example of their work organized labor, one must understand the American system, involves the Ford Motor Company. which emphasizes the Ford has been in the red for some time. Productivity has freedom of unions been down. Sales are down because of stiff competition from and companies, first Japanese automakers. Ford is one of the biggest companies in to organize, then to the United States, employing some 160,000 workers. To put bargain collectively. itself back on the track, the Ford management requested In the United concessions from its workers. Ford had entered into a major States, the role of the contract with the United Auto Workers union under which they government in the had agreed to cost-of-living wage increases, keyed to inflation, collective bargaining and the company now requested that the employees forgo that process has varied. wage increase to help the company retool and compete with its Compared to the competitors. Western European Ford and the United Auto Workers consequently have democracies, for ex- conclusIed a major agreement, the most important aspect of ample, it has always, which is: For the first time in the United States, a union has even at the height of agreed to alter an already negotiated contract. The United activity, been at a Auto Workers union has agreed to limit increases-in fact to rather minimal level. give back some of the money that the workers had gained, There have been subject to certain conditions. First, the money thus saved by the times since WorId Ford management would not go as profit to shareholders, but War II when the U.S. would be spent in modernization of machinery, in order to help Government-wheththe company compete better. Second, senior workers would be er it was a Republi- guaranteed job security, which is becoming a big issue in the can or Democratic United States now. (Normally, U.S. unions do not want job
P
security, and would prefer to gain short-term wages, health benefits, pensions and the like. This has been true since the Depression of the Thirties, because there haven't been any times when the workers have had to worry aboutllnemployment.) Third, Ford had to agree not to close down any plant for a one-year period. The new contract also stipulates the promise of future profit-sharing with the workers. To help management through a difficult financial situation, the agreement has a clause that permits part of the huge pension fund to be invested in the company. Because it was such a major and controversial contract, involving some 160,000 Ford workers spread across the country, the pact was put to a vote. Seventy-five percent of the workers voted for the pact, and 25 percent against it. So the pact was accepted. This is a landmark agreement, brought about by the profound changes that the American economy is going through right now. The question is: Can the private sector-labor and business-without the government dictating economic policies, be innovators together? Can they solve their own problems? The Ford case amply demonstrates that they can. Labor and management are facing the situation without the government imposing. The Ford pact might well set a pattern for others-both in the auto industry and other sectors of the American economy. Several persons have asked me about the recent air traffic
controllers' strike: In this case, the U.S. Government was the employer. It was' not a question of the government intervening on the side of management, because the government was the management. The air traffic controllers are employees of the Federal Aviation Agency, which runs the air traffic control system in the United States. So when the air controllers struck, management was an agency of the government. In the United States there is total freedom for collective bargaining among parties. However, there is a limitation on federal public employees' rights to strike. Now under the principle that all workers, including federal workers, have the right to organize and be represented, public employees in the United States have a civil service system for grievances, a collective bargaining system, set up specifically for public workers. However, we go farther than that-public employees do have unions; some workers join and some do not. What happened in this strike was that the union leadership threatened to strike and the government warned them not to, reminding them of the law-that they had taken an oath of . office not to strike and to accept collective bargaining. But they refused to continue working. There are some 27,000 air traffic controllers in the United States. Eighteen thousand walked off the job. Others stayed on the job. So the President had only two choices: to apply the law or to break his own oath of office by not applying the law. He applied the law. Even so, the President didn't dismiss the strikers immediately. He went on television to appeal to the striking workers to obey their oath, to comply with the law and to continue collective bargaining. He sent each one an individual letter , giv- . ing him seven days to make up his mind. Some came back, and others did not, and those were the ones who were not rehired. The case was then taken by the Western Federation of Trade Unions to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in Brussels. A complaint was filed against the United States Government at the International Labor Organization (ILO) for violating Convention 87 of the freedom of association. The ILO asked the United States for full information. The U.S. Government did so in record time. With the average complaint, a year passes before the government concerned responds. We did it in eigl1t-and-a-half weeks. : We abided by the convention, although the U.S. Government could have said that the international labor confederation had no right to question what the government did with its employees. It was painful for us. They put us in the dock. But we didn't protest because we firmly believe that pacts must be kept. And the ILO found that the United States had in fact guaranteed the rights of the workers with an alternative system and abided by the international convention. ILO did request that we reconsider and rehire the workers and forgive them. But there are laws, and what the U.S. Government did was in compliance with the international convention and the law of our country. What has to be borne in mind is that institutions in the United States-both private and federal-have changed dramatically over the years. For example, there are guaranteed unemployment benefits, health systems, welfare compensation plans. The union worker system has developed greatly since the 1930s. And the corporate structure is different. I think we in the United States are on the verge of taking another step forward in labor-management relations. 0
¡ Modern Medic is of America
Emerging as patron of the arts, American business is contributing time, talent and money to
A scene from the IV dramatization of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, made possible by grants from John Deere Company and Exxon Corporation. Many programs on the noncommercial IV network are supported by corporate funding, but product announcements and advertisements are not permitted.
help performing artists and art groups pursue their talents for the benefit of the public.
Prima ballerina Linda Kintz and dancer Sylvester Campbell (in a nutcracker mask) in Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" in Baltimore, Maryland. A fire had earlier destroyed the Maryland Ballet Company's scenery and costumes but a grant from Martin Marietta Corporation ensured that the show would go on.
T
he arts in America have never had it so bad: , Inflation and recession are playing havoc with their budgets. The arts in America have never had it so good: They've found, even in these troubled times, some Medicis. Centuries ago, Medicis and assorted royal families dispensed patronage that brought the arts alive in opera houses, theaters, public squares and museums. Even today in some countries government provides the major financial support for artists. But government sponsorship of the arts, which can so easily offer a temptation to try to control content, has never been widely accepted in the United States-and it is less so now with the Reagan Administration's emphasis on reducing the government's role in the lives of citizens. But the arts did need a helping hand, a generous hand. Enter American business. Corporations, large and small, are contributing time, talent and money to help performing artists and art organizations continue their work and expand their audiences. Business is sponsoring performances and exhibitions which otherwise would be so expensive that few people could afford¡ to attend them. Traditional craftsmen and performing troupes receive expert marketing advice and assistance with a range of management problems, business-sponsored advertising, skills banks. Scholarships are provided to develop young talent. This business-art partnership benefits businesses, too. For while a major inspiration is a "save the arts" zeal, patronage of the arts is also good image-building public 'relations-and sound economics: The U.S. Government, in an indirect boost to the arts, offers tax deductions for money contributed to the promotion of art. For all these good reasons, more and more cultural events and projects are today made possible by a grant from a business firm or corporation. The grants, big and small, cover a wide gamut in terms of places, fields of art . and culture, and the nature of sponsorship. When assembly-line workers in Illinois listen to a concert pianist perform during their lunch hour, when museumgoers in Arizona visit an eclectic art exhibition; when children in New York learn skills through their own theater production; when millions of television viewers across the United States watch a spectacular dance show-they are all beneficiaries of an alliance between American business and the arts. In 1980 American business contributed three times more money to the arts than did the federally funded National Endowment for the Arts. Between 1967 and 1979 corporate contributions to the arts rose from $22 million to $436 million. For some firms today's activities are only a continuation of what they have been doing for many years: Texaco Inc. has sponsored weekly live radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera for the last 40 years, attracting as many as six million listeners for each program. Noncommercial radio and television have benefited greatly from this bounty. Mobil Corporation is a multimil-
Beverly Sills, general director of the New York City Opera-seen above in her days as its star soprano-has reduced ticket prices by 20 percent to fill opera halls. The enthusiastic public response has triggered offers of help from business .
lion-dollar contributor to the Public Broadcasting System, un'derwriting many critically acclaimed t~levision programs. General Electric contributes to public television stations in communities where it has factories or offices. The ways of helping are many: from renovating museums and libraries to financing touring performances. While some companies support only programs that their employees can attend, others have more far-reaching projects. For example, a $10 million grant by American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) helps defray expenses of premier American orchestras touring the United States, especially concerts in smaller communities; almost 15 percent of AT&T's contribution budget benefits the arts. Mobil sponsored the first American tour of Australian aboriginal artists and performers. Exxon made possible the spectacular "Treasures of Tutankhamen," an exhibition of Egyptian art treasures from the tomb of the boy king. John Deere Company, a farm equipment firm, has an artist-in-residence program that underwrites per-
One of the most successful business-art collaborations was the Exxon-sponsored "Treasures of Tutankhamen" exhibition. People stood in line for hours to view such objects as this solid gold, jewel-encrusted mask from the Egyptian king's mummy.
formances by concert pianists, opera singers and other creative artists. at company plants and in communities with Deere factories. Westinghouse and Alcoa fund the annual Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh which features free exhibitions and performances covering sculpture, painting, crafts, dance and music. (Many other corporations support similar festivals all over the United States.) In Rochester, New York, Eastman Kodak aided in funding the $5.5 million renovation of the prestigious Eastman School of Music. International Paper has made grants to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Much of the art on roadsides and in public buildings in several American cities is a gift of business: The 10 large sculptures on a Nebraska interstate highway were funded in part by Banker's Life Nebraska and Northern Natural Gas. Some firms-American Express, Quaker Oats, Gulf and Western, and Chase Manhattan Bank, for examplehave matching-gift programs to encourage their em-
ployees to support cultural groups. They match-or sometimes double or triple-the employee's contribution. Individual help, though understandably not as substantial as corporate funding, also has an important role to play in keeping the arts alive. But more than that, the public's interest in a particular group can be a major catalyst for business support. Beverly Sills, general director-formerly star soprano-of the New York City Opera, evolved a strategy to save the group. As performance costs went up, ticket prices had to keep pace; and as ticket prices soared, sales tended to drop ... this was the vicious circle that the opera, like other troupes, found itself in last year. The half-filled houses were uneconomical and morale-shattering. Determined not to let opera become entertainment for the elite, Sills took a drastic step: She announced a 20 percent across-the-board cut in subscription price~, pledging to raise the money to make up for lost income personally. Her gamble paid off: Ticket sales increasedoffsetting any loss the reduced prices may have causedand the public response triggered offers of help. "We are following President Reagan's directive in lowering prices and hoping for industry to take up the slack," said Sills, a member of the Presidential Task Force on the Arts and Humanities. The Task Force's recommendations to the President included a statement reflecting the Sills strategy: "We have learned that public support generates private giving, helps set standards, and spurs innovation by the recipient. Public support has been important for the major cultural institutions but, equally important, it has encouraged smaller groups to help creative movements survive and to aid individual scholars and_ artists." Other companies are following the Sills strategy, realizing how important it is to get the audience in, to keep an interest in the arts alive. Public response has justified Sills' h0pes-and it has encouraged an equally positive response from potential contributors. Not all the help given by corporations comes in the form of dollars. Besides money, most cultural groups lack management expertise, which is increasingly essential in the professional world today. Under the aegis of the Skills/Services/Resources Bank of the Arts and Business Council, Inc., corporate volunteers donate their marketing, fund-raising, advertising, accounting and organizing skills to art groups. The skills bank started in New York City in 1975 and has extended to Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles and Houston. The benefits aren't one-sided: It brings goodwill for corporations, a change of scene from dreary offices for exe.cutives, and a windfall for the groups. Volunteers attend a lO-hour course before they enter the vastly different, nonprofit world of artistic enterprises. And there are no blind dates. The skills bank matches the needs of a particular organization with the skills of the volunteer. Skills, money, time ... every contribution, big or small, is helping to give a more positive shape to the contemporary cultural landscape of America. 0
Right: A director, an actor who plays Falstaff and a producer from the New York Shakespeare Festival with a Citibank executive at the Delacorte Theater in New York's Central Park. Citibank provides a grant for performances at the park, enabling thousands of people to see them free. Sixty-five corporations contribute to this Shakespeare Festival.
Above: "The Big Disk," Arnaldo Pomodoro's polished bronze work, 3.6 meters in diameter, is among the sculptures on display at Pepsico's headquarters at Purchase, New York. The Sculpture Gardens are open to the public.
Above: Music groups like the National Symphony Orchestra-conducted here by Mstislav Rostropovich at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Art\' in Washington, D. c.are major recipients of corporate generosity.
Facing page: In an unusual business-art collaboration, Spring Mills, a South Carolina textile firm, adapts designs':'-like this floral tapestry pattern-from the textile collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to
linen, screen-printing them on sheets, pillowcases, quilts, bedspreads and wall hangings. Since its inception in 1972, the program has brought the museum more than $2 million in royalties from Spring Mills.
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A Composer Who Makes Cities Dance alking to American composer Robert Moran is like talking to a human collage. You are confronted by a multilayered personality with roots in several major art forms. You are confronted by a unique assemblage of curious ideas that emanate from a man attempting to integrate his work with life. Strange tales, impos'sible !)appenings crowd the animated conversation that courses over vital musical and social issues, as this phenomenal man casually tosses out the kind of innovative solutions that have sometimes made cities dance to his tunes. Moran's recent six-week visit to India was the realization of a dream deferred. His interest in India was aroused when he saw a film of Uday Shankar dancing,
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28
SPAN JUNE 1982
which he recalls as an "incredible visual phenomenon of this multi sexual creature with this blue face doing Lord Krishna. It was an amazing first stimulant of India." The second came much later when he discovered sitar ~ecordings in his college library and listened to them very carefully because, as he put it, "India was like the planet Mars" from his cowboy-andmountains hometown of Denver, Colorado. His excitement grew when he heard Ravi Shankar live in his first concert in San Francisco, and multiplied when he saw Satyajit Ray's Apur Sansar in 1959; he was "so moved, I couldn't talk. I couldn't think of anything else for days." Moran's early contacts with Eastern thought and culture became a serious preoccupation when composer John Cage
gave him a copy of the I-Ching to study. "Since it is the oldest book in the history of mankind, I became fascinated with chance. " Cage also suggested he read material on Sri Ramakrishna. For¡ Moran, these were major metaphysical influences. From Ramakrishna he imbibed a spirit of universality, "being able to take the best elements from all cultures." During the time that Eastern influences were shaping his outlook, Moran was also pursuing serious compositional study, starting in Vienna with the last exponent of the now-extinct 12-tone system: Hans Erich Apostel. There he developed an uncompromising discipline of minute control over every aspect of an extended technique of "total serialization." But Moran felt straitjacketed in a style that
Four examples of graphic notation devised by Robert Moran to convey to musicians the musical ideas they are to interpret: He provides a key to the symbols in addition to occasional staff notation. Graphic notation defines parameters such as pitch, duration, texture and thickness of chord. Moran's notations have been called works of art.
In his search for a form that .,mixes music with theater and life, Robert Moran created, along with Donald Case, a shadow puppet epic, Examples of the puppetry appear on the facing page and pages 30 and 31.
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Convinced that art must communicate, composer Robert Moran has created a style of notation that performers can interpret, shadow puppets that tell enchanting tales and music that engages a whole city.
seemed to be obsessed with notation. "My works were so difficult that they could not be performed. So I said, 'Wait a minute! I'm writting music in order to communicate. And now no one can play it!'" This realization gradually led him to a new personal style involving a simpler "proportional notation" and then a graphic one which involved much more improvisation for the performer. The clue came from his teacher Luciano Berio. "When I was working with Berio on my master's degree he asked me to write a composition for three groups of students speaking and singing. But the performers had never done this before and couldn't read traditional notation. I also had a small chamber orchestra and a solo soprano. I had to create a tapestry of different vocal sounds. I started writing it down in traditional form, but it wasn't working out, so I went to Berio. He said, 'Why don't you try proportional notation?' " That spurred the creation of a style that made Moran famous for writing graphic scores that were also objects of art, worthy of display. "My style of writing musical scores required special training. I had my music ensembles geared to the point where they could take anythingthey could take a Paul Klee painting-
and transcribe it into sound." In 1963, composer Ramati saw Moran's graphic score Four Visions and was so impressed he had it published by Universal Edition. This was an exciting and formative period for many artists and musicians. "The 1960s threw up so many positive revolutions. New York City and San Francisco were endless fascinations-not only with experimental music, but also rock 'n' roll," Moran says. One of the recurring themes in Moran's work has been the need to take music to the man in the street: "I'd always been told, like all of us, that music is the international language; anyone can sing and anyone can make music. Well, that's all wonderful but I wasn't seeing that. I wasn't hearing that. It was just intellectual cleverness." This inspired his first large-scale extravaganza, using the entire city of San Francisco for the performance. "We decided that it was going to be done one time only, no tickets sold, no money made; there's no stage, there's no distance between performer and audience. It happens where you are. Where you are or where you want to be is where that composition takes place for you." Since Moran and his colleagues had no money, "everyone brought what he or she had." Much depended on how people were approached. "You do not threaten them with words like avant garde; you do not tell them this is a happening or a multimedia event. You just tell them that this is a composition for a city-like a celebration." As the project began to mushroom, more and more people offered to participate with new ideas. They used television, radio, electronic synthesizers, amplified auto horns, auto lights, spotlights, searchlights, airplanes, Param Vir, here interviewing Robert Moran (left), is codirector of the Music Theatre Workshop in New Delhi. A music critic for the Indian Express, he has composed ,the score for severaf musicals for young people, including Kidstuff and The Demons of Bara Tooti. He is also a professional photographer.
dancers, experimental theater groups and 30 skyscrapers. The piece, performed by 100,000 participants and titled "39 Minutes for 39 Autos," was telecast live at 9 o'clock one August evening in 1969. The number 39 was determined by the I-Ching. "It was fantasy, absolute fantasy," recalls Moran. "The famous American rock musical Hair had opened in San Francisco at 8 o'clock that same evening. At 9 o'clock the house lights went up in the theater. They stopped the performance and took everyone out into. Union Square and danced while all the computerized lighting went off and on from the skyscrapers. Everything was just shimmering. When the 39 minutes ended," he says, "they took everyone back into the theater and went on with Hair. It was that sort of thing. " Was there any control over the event, or did everyone do whatever he pleased during the 39 minutes? "It was minimally controlled: not enough control to tell people it was controlled. The interesting thing for me is that at the beginning of the piece, obviously the composer is the important person. Then the score is laid out in instructions and discussed over and over again. More people throw in more ideas and you form a team of interested and mostly very wonderful people. Then it grows until it is optimistically out of control. It's too big to imagine. At the point that the composition happens, at the premier moment, the least important element is the composer. Everyone is equally, individually responsible to everyone else in a functioning society." Following this success came Moran's composition Hallelujah for the steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which premiered in the spring of 1971 using 20 marching bands, 40 church choirs, organs, carillons, trombone fanfares, rock 'n' roll groups, a gospel group and the entire city of Bethlehem. "Everything was in motion. It was multilayers of sound," says Moran of the jubilation.
This kind of work challenges our notions of what is music, even of what constitutes good listening. "People's ears are becoming lazy in this visually oriented society," laments Moran. Himself a good listener, Moran talks of the necessity to explore creatively the "soundscapes" of the places we visit. To illustrate, he recounted "one of the most staggering sound-events" of his life. "I was in Ahmedabad with the Sarabhai family. They took me down to the Jain temples in Palitana .... There were worship services going on. People were bidding to decide who would do the puja and for how much; then you had devotional songs somewhere else; then there was restoration work going on with people banging away on the marble. You had birds, bells way off-multilayers again. Enchanting!" How often are we open to such experiences, even though the possibilities always surround us? In this age of pushbutton music, we seem to have lost our willingnessto hear. Technological benefits have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Moran pointed out that a hundred years ago if one could get to hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony live ~yen once in a lifetime, it was a special treat, and so one really listened. "Nowadays you can just turn it on and then go and wash dishes." We have too much choice, and so we limit our horizons by choosing carelessly. Are broadcasting stations (whether government-controlled as in India, or private ones) actually popularizing music? Or are they, in a strange way, taking music away from people? In reply Moran gave an example. "I found that in the mountains of the Andes in Peru there were still villages in whieh people made music just as in the times of the Incas-these were the very last surviving bits of the ancient aristocratic music.Then, some years ago, they were given transistor radios-something that's happened all over the world with these small groups of people. Now they don't
know how to sing that material any more. It's gone!" The story is not much different in India where repeated broadcasting of film music has contributed to wiping out authentic folk material. Robert Moran's most passionate involvement is with music that is theatrical. It moves him to eloquence, whether reacting or creating. Asked about his friend Philip Glass' new opera on Gandhi called Satyagraha (see SPAN, October 1981), he responded: "When was the last time you ever heard of a person going to a new opera and being moved to tears? Well, in the final scene of Phil's opera is Martin Luther King with his back to the audience, frozen, as if he's giving a lecture on nonviolence. He just stands there, and at the very end he's shot and he collapses. Below all this, most of Gandhi's followers have been arrested. Three or four followers are still asleep and it's night. Phil just picked this one simple tune, this one simple scale and the tenor sings it over and over again, with slight changes in the orchestra. I was in tears-it was so beautiful-and other people were in tears." What is the style of Glass' music? "It's minimal: patterns of phrases repeat themselves, like a wheel that keeps turning and you keep hearing shifts, delicate shifts. It has a very shimmering sound because all the instruments are like electronic keyboards." Was the opera political? "Yes, if you want to say that nonviolence is political. Other people felt it was religious." Moran's own theatrical ventures have been described as ranging from simply avant garde to "outrageous" and "shock:' ing." An experience of the milder variety consisted of spending eight days living with his dog in a department store window in Berlin. "I called it a multimedia opera." The only rule he imposed was that friends who visited him should not look out the window since they were "on stage." It was a form of "mixing theater and life." Somewhat more conventional, though by no
means pedestrian, is Moran's interest in puppetry. Together with Donald Case he has created a shadow-puppet epic, Through Cloud and Eclipse (pictures above) which he hopes to bring to India. His interest in this fascinating theatrical form dates back to childhood when his experiences with Javanese shadow puppets made him "totally addicted. Everything that I loved was in it." His writing for theater has included a bizarre gesamtkunstwerk entitled Hitler: Histories of the Future, a piece that so far has been considered too radical for performance. Moran describes it as "a grotesque experience, a nightmare." Why did he choose Hitler? "Even today neo-Nazism keeps popping up. Besides, a lot of new material has surfaced since World War II .... You have this unpleasant feeling that you have participated in it. The finger is pointed at everyone. It knocks the hell out of governments and religions." Of his theatrical projects for the future, the most fascinating is a commission to write a work for the 100th anniversary of Wagner's death. After Parsifal, Wagner had planned to write an opera on the life of the Buddha, an unrealized dream which Moran plans to fulfill for Wagner in his own fashion. "I'm going to attempt in a very strange way to try and see through a decadent late Romantic composer's eyes how he would approach the life of Buddha. All musical material will¡ be on tape-hundreds of tape loops from Wagner's operas. However, it will not sound like any Wagner anyone has heard before. It will say more about Wagner's looking at Buddha than about Buddha." And one might add that it will say a great deal about Moran himself-a composer who can pick up an idea, a personality, a fragment of history, and transform that into an exotic soundscape of dramatic proportions and insight. Exclaims Moran: "All music is theater. If you don't have a little magic in your music, forget it!" D
CUTTING
GOVERNMENT
TO SIZE
President Reagan's economic policies to reduce government spending make a lot of sense, says a noted economist, even if the expectations of supply-side enthusiasts turn out to be too optimistic.
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he American public has become increasingly concerned in recent years that its government was trying to do too much in the economy. President Ronald Reagan was elected with a mandate to reverse the trend of previous decades toward an ever-increasing role of government in the economy, both in terms of the share of national resources going to direct government spending and in terms of the regulation of private activities. A view that the government's role needs to be scaled down does not imply that the clock should be turned back to the 1920s, nor that all types of government activity should be cut back across the board. Decisions about the size and scope of government activities are inevitably subjective, and cannot be resolved by economic analysis alone. In a pluralistic society, the desirable scope for government activities will always be a subject of debate and controversy. Economic analysis can be quite helpful, however, in reaching informed judgments on such issues. It can help explain why government expanded excessively. Both the analysis of actual experience with various programs and changing trends in economic analysis itself suggest that more humility is needed about the ways in which government intervention can be expected to improve th~_operation of the economy. While this is most obviously clear with respect to our ability to fine-tune macroeconomic policies t~hieve high employment and low inflation, it is also true with respect to many microeconomic areas as well. Recent experience has indicated all too well that many problems cannot be solved quickly just by passing laws and spending money. Thus in recent years, while the magnitude of U.S. Government activity has been expanding, perceptions of the benefits secured from such policies have been declining. Consequently, there is widespread agreement that a general era of retrenchment is needed. This is not to say that government policies have not brought many benefits. For example, in many areas, the environment is ÂŤleaner now than it was several decades ago. Likewise, despite its many unfulfilled expectations, the war on poverty has made an important contribution to providing minimum income security for most Americans. The view that a widespread retrenchment of government activities is needed does not mean that we should give up striving for a cleaner and safer environment, or for providing a safety net of income security for those individuals unable to provide for themselves. It does mean, however, that we do need to look harder and more realistically at the costs of such programs and the efficiency with which they are implemented. A basic principle of economics is that resources are scarce
and that careful choices must be made in balancing the costs and benefits of the various ways in which resources can be allocated. Those who are calling for a scaling back of government activities believe that in many areas such a careful balancing of public costs and benefits has not taken place. Government decision making processes have shown a tendency to underweigh the full costs of expanding government activities relative to their benefits. It is not hard to see how this tends to occur. For example, economists are not surprised to find that people are usually more careful in spending their own money than in spending someone else's. The incentives to monitor spending programs carefully are surely less if the funds are not coming directly out of one's own pocketbook or profit statement. Likewise, the willingness to face the unpopularity of having to say no to prospective claimants is certainly less when we can spread the costs of meeting such claims onto others. Of these two factors the latter is probably by far the more important. There no doubt will be a sizable amount of waste as well as some amount of fraud and corruption in any budget the size of the U.S. Government's. Management procedures for cutting down on such waste should be strengthened. But far more important than anticipated waste and fraud are the boondoggle and pork-barrel expenditures. The problem is that one person's boondoggle is another's pet project. Given the current government structure, there have been strong incentives for elected officials (and bureaucrats as well) to be self-indulgent. While supporting cries for greater efficiency in government spending in general, in practical decision making the rule of behavior has been that "I'll support your pet project if you support mine," "I'll support the new veterans ho&pital in your district and the increased military spending in yours, if you both will favor increased agricultural price supports for mine." In some cases the resulting government spending and tax breaks or subsidies so blatantly benefit particular special interests at the expense of the general public that they justifiably may be labeled waste. More often, however, public spending is for objectives that would widely be considered worthy. But, because of biases in the political decisionmaking process, resources will be overallocated to these activities, relative to other worthy ways of spending money, and insufficient attention will be paid to whether the chosen policies are the most efficient, that is, the least costly ways of securing these objectives. What are the major causes of these biases, and do they really tend to lead to greater-than-desired public spending? These questions are clearly controversial. While economists
and political scientists have paid a good deal of attention to such issues over the past several decades, they are far from unanimous in their analysis. Indeed, some of the earliest analyses of these questions concluded that there was a bias toward too little pUblic spending. Full analysis of this question, however, suggests that the biases making for too much spending have probably been much greater than those which led to too little government spending. The major reason is that on many issues the desires of the average voter are not decisive. Voters, of course, do provide an important democratic check over government activities, but this check is far from perfect. Elections are held only periodically, and when they are held, candidates are voted for on the basis both of their personal characteristics and of their anticipated positions on a wide range of issues. Only in state and local elections are direct referenda on particular issues commonplace. As a result, candidates seeking election have incentives to be influenced disproportionately by well-organized groups who are likely to vote primarily on the basis of a candidate's position on a particularissue of interest to them, rather than by the general public for whom the deciding criterion is more likely to be the balance of positions on 20 or more issues. Even without considering the role of personal lobbying and campaign contributions, this explains why in the United States voting groups such as farm blocs have enjoyed political clout far out of proportion to their numbers. ith respect to government spending, the proponents of various types of public spending seemed better orga, nized and more effective in lobbying for their interests than were the taxpayers who paid for these programs. Furthermore, some of the ways in which increase_d government spending tax the economy were not always immediately obvious to the public. Often, they were partially hidden and indirect, as for example in the cases of import restrictions, loan guarantees, budget deficits and the automatic increases in revenues brought about by inflation-induce9 bracket creep. Thus a strong case can be made that the net bias in the operation of the U.S. political process has been toward overspending by government. The evidence suggests that the amount of overspending by government has built up gradually over time to the point where it can no longer be overlooked by the typical voter. Hence the current concern with cutting the size of government spending. There has also been increased attention to the case for constitutional amendments at both the state and federal levels so that, once public attention on this issue dies down, the biases toward overexpansion do not manifest themselves again. This analysis has been presented without reference to the supply-side economics aspects of cutting government spending and taxation. These present additional rationales for President Reagan's policies, but the "new" supply arguments are not necessarily crucial to the case for reducing government taxing and spending as a share of gross national product. The basic idea of supply-side economics is, of course, not new. Higher taxes will in general reduce the incentives to produce. An increase in government spending (which at full employm~nt implies an effective increase in the taxation of the economy either directly through tax revenues or indirectly through higher interest rates and inflation) not only will change the share of national income going to government, but also will reduce the size of the real national income as well. The dollar costs of government spending will understate the full costs to the economy by the amount of disincentive effects generated. Failure to recognize these additional costs would represent another source of bias toward¡ government overspending. This is standard analysis accepted by almost all
W
economists. What is controversial is the magnitude of such effects. Some supply-side enthusiasts have argued that these effects have been huge and the President's tax and spending cut program 'rill so stimulate production over a few years that the tax cuts will pay for themselves. Economic activity will be increased so much that lower tax rates will lead to higher revenue. Advocates of this view often point to the Kennedy tax cut in the early 1960s as an example. Many economists would argue, however, that this episode was dominated by demand rather than supply effects. The weight of the available empirical evidence suggests that only much more modest output gains will result from the across-the-board tax cuts. This mainstream view .tends to see greater scope for productivity gains and employment and real output increases from better policies in particular areas. There have been substantial disincentives toward saving and investment which were generated over the past decade by the combination of high inflation and the antiquated tax system. Likewise excessive and inefficient government regulation has occurred in many areas, such as import restrictions, minimum wage legislation and anticompetitive transportation regulation. All too often government regulation designed to protect the public has ended up instead primarily serving the interests of existing producers and stifling innovation and competition. The reasons leading to the development of such situations are largely the same as those generating government overspending. Similarly, in areas of health, safety and environmental regulation, government policies often have failed both to meet the tests of reasonable balancing of costs and benefits in the setting of standards and to search for the most cost-effective ways of meeting reasonable standards for public health, safety and environmental preservation. By conservative estimates, U.S. regulatory policies have placed thousands of millions of dollars of unnecessary costs on the economy. The move toward broad regulatory reform should certainly not be taken as a belief that anything that business wants to do should be acceptable and that any regulation that imposes costs on the economy should be repealed. But it does mean that the prospective benefits of. such policies need to be more closely examined. . Again, the magnitude of benefits we can expect from more sensible regulatory policies is the subject of considerable controversy. Many mainstream economists are concerned that supply-side enthusiasts may have overstated the size of productivity gains to be expected. The basic thrust of this article is that the general direction of President Reagan's economic policies to reduce the size of government spending makes a great deal of sense, even if the expectations of supply-side enthusiasts turn out to be over~y optimistic by a wide margin. From the standpoint of sensible policymaking, the case for the new U.S. economic policies does not in general depend on very precise estimates of quantitative effects. My own suspicion is that the scope of productivity gains from the President's policies will be less and the time required to restore noninflationary growth in the United States will be greater than the' Administration's official projections. But it is important to recognize that the basic case for these policies is sound, and should not quickly be abandoned if the benefits do not begin to show up as soon and as strongly as some have hoped. From the perspective I have put forth, very strong supply-side effects would be an added bonus, not a crucial ingredient. 0 About the Author: Thomas D. Willett is a professor of economics at the
Claremont Graduate School and Men's College} Claremont, California.
Kart 'oDDegat WHAT'S WRONG WITH READABILITY?
"Vonnegut's lucidity is hard and brave work in a literary world where pure messiness is frequently thought to be a sign of some essential wrestling with the 'hard questions.'"
More than 10 years ago, John Caseythe author of the novel An American Romance and the recent collection of stories Testimony and Demeanor-interviewed Kurt Vonnegut for a magazine then published in West Branch, Iowa, and now defunct. In that interview Vonnegut said: We must acknowledge that the reader is doing something quite difficult for him, and the reason you don't change point of view too often is so he won't get lost; and the reason you paragraph often is so that his eyes won't get tired, is so you get him without him knowing it by making his job easy for him. He has to restage your show in his head, costume and light it. His job is not easy.
Neither is Vonnegut's. Making a reader's job easy is difficult work, although there's always been a great misunderstanding of Vonnegut on this point. In The New York Review of Books, for example, Jack Richardson called Vonnegut an "easy writer," and-among other charges-accused Vonnegut of not being Voltaire. And in the interview with Casey, Vonnegut tells the story of meeting Jason Epstein, the Random House editor-whom Vonnegut calls "a terribly powerful cultural commissar" -at a cocktail party. When they were introduced, Epstein thought a minute, then said, "Science fiction," turned and walked off. "He just had to place me, that's all," Vonnegut said. Other "cultural commissars" have been trying to "place" Vonnegut for years; more often, like Richardson, they tell us what Vonnegut is not. If he's not Voltaire, for example, it's possible he's not Swift, either. At least in part, I think, it is the childlike availability of his prose, its fast and easy-toread surfaces, that seems to be so troublesome to Vonnegut's critics. The assumption that what is easy to read has been easy to write is a forgivable lapse among nonwriters, but it is selfincriminating how many critics, who also (in a fashion) write themselves, have called Vonnegut "easy." In one of the worst broadsides ever published on Vonnegut (in The New York Times Book Review, in the disguise of a review of Slapstick), Roger Sale seemed especially upset with Vonnegut's audience-the "minimally intelligent young," he called them. "I think I would be less bothered by Vonnegut. were it not that one of my major tasks is to try to pose hard questions for the semiliterate young," says Mr. Sale. There is something self-serving in this criticism; these are the remarks of a critic who wants a work to need him-to explain it to us, perhaps. "Nothing could be easier," Sale assures us about Vonnegut's writing. Abridged by permission of The New Republic. Copyright Irving.
Š
by John
Why is "readable" such a bad thing to be these days? Some "serious people" I know are gratified by the struggle to make sense of what they read; as Vonnegut says, "So it goes." Let them be gratified. As someone who, like Roger Sale, has struggled many hard hours with the "semiliterate young," I am more often gratified by a writer who has accepted the enormous effort necessary to make writing clear. Vonnegut's lucidity is hard and brave work in a literary world where pure messiness is frequently thought to be a sign of some essential wrestling with the "hard questions." Good writers have always shown that hard questions must also be posed and answered clearly and well. It is as if Roger Sale-and he's hardly alone; I use him as an example of many-is championing a literature for second-year graduate students, a literature dependent on interpretation; and, of course, in our shameful semiliteracy, perhaps we will need to call upon the "crazy intelligence" of someone like Mr. Sale to interpret it for us. Mr. Sale tells' us he'd be surprised if Robert Scholes, "who once expressed fondness for Vonnegut," likes Vonnegut now as much as he once did. I would be astonished if Mr. Scholes didn't feel all the more convinced of his earlier appraisal. Writing about Slaughterhouse-Five in The New York Times Mr. Scholes offered gentle chiding to those, like Roger Sale, who find Vonnegut difficult to accept as serious. Scholes pointed out that Vonnegut's critics too often confusemuddled earnestness with profundity-that is, if you sound serious, you must be. Indeed, Sale seems to be telling us that if the work is tortured and a ghastly effort to read, it must be serious. Roger Sale's logic leads to this: If the work is lucid and sharp and the narrative flows like water, we should suspect the work of being simplistic, and as light and as lacking in seriousness as fluff.This is simplistic criticism, of course; it is easy criticism, too. There is no shortage of this kind of criticism around. Vonnegut is a frequent victim of it. Vonnegut admits that he couldn't survive his own pessimism if he didn't have "some kind of sunny little dream." His work is full of those dreams-"harmless untruths," he has called them (in Cat's Cradle). Religions, charitable organizations, world planners, utopian schemers, absentminded inventors bent on change, dogooders atoning for terrible crimes (or accidents), lovable and not-so-Iovable men of power and men of money; they all fail, they all bungle the job of improving the species in usually funny and well-meaning ways. "The biggest laughs," Vonnegut has said, "are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears." It's nothing
that new; Freud, as Vonnegut likes to point out, has already written about gallows humor. "It's people laughing in the middle of political helplessness," Vonnegut says. "I have customarily written about powerless people who felt there wasn't much they could do about their situations." It goes against the American storytelling grain, Vonnegut says, to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. There are people, particularly dumb people, who are in terrible trouble and never get out of it, because they're not intelligent enough. And it strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that a man can always solve his problems. There is that implication that if you just have a little more energy, a little more fight, the problem can always be solved. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry-or laugh.
He points out that the science-fiction passages in Slaughterhouse-Five are just like the clowns in Shakespeare. When Shakespeare figured the audience had had enough of the heavy stuff, he'd let up a little, bring on a clown or a foolish innkeeper or something like that, before he'd become serious again. And trips to other planets, science fiction of an obviously kidding sort, is equivalent to bringing on the clowns every so often to lighten things up.
goes,' a desperate, perhaps overcensored attitude mindlessly echoed by the turned-off and cynical." And here Gardner falls into the old sin of accusing a writer for the audience he keeps. Even so, Gardner is wise to point out that "Vonnegut's cynical disciples read him wrong." He adds: "It is Vonnegut himself who points out the vast and systematic modern evils that he then appears to shrug off or, for some reason, blame on God. But the misreading is natural. Vormegut's moral energy," Gardner says, "is forever flagging, his fight forever turning slapstick." Yes, but slapstick is Vonnegut's response to despair; Gardner doesn't approve of despair. John Updike (who has been especially wise about Vonnegut) has said of Gardner: "Morality in fiction is accuracy and truth. The world has changed, and in a sense we are all heirs to despair. Better to face this and tell the truth, however dismal, than to do whatever life-enhancing thing [Gardner is] proposing." Gardner, speaking morally, says that Vonnegut "sighs, grins, and sidles away. He's most himself when ... he's most openly warm-hearted and comic." Gardner complains, "His lack of commitment-ultimately a lack of concern about his characters-makes his writing slight." But what Gardner calls "slight"-or worse, "a lack of concern"--':"'is really the haunted soul of Vonnegut's vision itself. Vonnegut sees little light at the end of the tunnel, though he keeps looking; Gardner wants him to come up with more light. It is Gardner's aesthetic, not necessarily Vonnegut's, that "art is essentially and primarily moral-that is, life-giving-moral in its process of creation and moral in what it says." Well, Vonnegut is a do-gooder, but none of us, according to Gardner, is dogooding enough. I intend (obviously) to praise Vonnegut; he is among living writers-together with John Hawkes and Gunter Grass-the most stubbornly imaginative. He is not anybody else, or even a version of anybody else, and he is a writer with a cause. He likes to refer to our potential to belong to "artificial extended' families," and he intends to keep trying to make us belong-in spite of ourselves. He is unique and wise, graceful and kind, and he can fool you by how "easy" he is to read-if you don't think carefully. Kurt Vonnegut certainly has enemies. Not only because of them, but because of the constancy of his light-dark work, he is our strongest writer. D
In fact, Vonnegut even speaks lucidly about his own work-a subject even lucid writers can be clumsy about. It's remarkable, considering how clear he's been, to consider how badly understood he is. But listen to this: "A good critic," according to Jacob Glatstein, "is armed for war. And criticism is a war, against a work of arteither the critic defeats the work or the work defeats the critic." Well, with that kind of demand put on the critic, I guess it's always possible to misunderstand anything. One of Vonnegut's critics has at least tried harder than some others, and this is John Gardner-although Vonnegut, and nearly everyone else, is mowed down by Gardner's religious crusade to make literature optimistic again. "He's making a shrill pitch to the literary right wing that wants to repudiate all of modernism and jump back in the arms of their 19th-century literary grandfathers," John Barth accuses Gardner; that's fair to say. But Gardner's "morality," his political motives for writing-for improving the world-are not unlike Vonnegut's own aims, and Gardner sees some of what Vonnegut is doing more clearly than most. Vonnegut's "problem," as Gardnersees it, is that "he's overcritical of himself, endlessly censoring, endlessly reconsidering his moral affirmations." That's a "problem" more writers should have, I think. Gardner goes on to say that this "would explain About the Author: John Irving, currently one of the seeming cold-heartedness and trivial- the most popular U.S. novelists, is author of The mindedness of his famous comment on the .World According to Garp, Setting Free the American fire-bombing of Dresden, 'So it Bears and The Hotel New Hampshire.
the Lie
A short story by Kurt Vonnegut
It was early springtime. Weak sunshine lay cold on old gray frost. Willow twigs against the sky showed the golden haze of fat catkins about to bloom. A black Rolls-Royce streaked up the Connecticut Turnpike from New York City. At the wheel was Ben Barkley, a chauffeur. "Keep it under the speed limit, Ben," said Doctor Remenzel. "I don't care how ridiculous any speed limit seems, stay under it. No reason to rush-we have plenty of time." Ben eased off on the throttle. "Seems like in the springtime she wants to get up and go," he said. "Do what you can to keep her downO.K.?" said the doctor. "Yes, sir!" said Ben. He spoke in a lower voice to the 13-year-old boy who was riding beside him, to Eli Remenzel, the doctor's son. "Ain't just people and animals feel good in the springtime," he said to Eli. "Motors feel good, too." "Urn," said Eli. "Everything feel good," said Ben. "Don't you feel good?" "Sure, sure I feel good," said Eli emptily. "Should feel good-going to that wonderful school," said Ben. The wonderful school was the Whitehill School for Boys, a private preparatory school in North Marston, Massachusetts. That was where the RollsRoyce was bound. The plan was that Eli would enroll for the fall semester, while his father, a member of the class of 1939, attended a m~eting of the Board of Overseers of the school.
"Don't believe this boy's feeling so good, doctor," said Ben. He wasn't particularly serious about it. It was more genial springtime blather. "What's the matter, Eli?" said the doctor absently. He was studying blueprints, plans for a 30-room addition to the Eli Remenzel Memorial Dormitory-a building named in honor of his greatgreat-grandfather. Doctor Remenzel had the plans draped over a walnut table that folded out of the front seat. He was a massive, dignified man, a physician, a healer for healing's sake, since he had been born as rich as the Shah of Iran. "Worried about something?" he asked Eli without looking up from th,e plans. "Nope," said Eli. Eli's lovely mother, Sylvia, sat next to the doctor, reading the catalog of the Whitehill School. "If I were you," she said to Eli, "I'd be so excited I could hardly stand it. The best four years of your whole life are just about to begin." "Sure," said Eli. He didn't show her his face. He gave her only the back of his head, a pinwheel of coarse brown hair above a stiff white collar, to talk to. "I wonder how many Remenzels have gone to Whitehill," said Sylvia. "That's like asking how many people are dead in a cemetery," said the doctor. He gave the answer to the old joke, and to Sylvia's question, too. "All' of 'em." "If all the Remenzels who went to Whitehill were numbered, what number would Eli be?" said Sylvia. "That's what I'm getting at." The question annoyed Doctor Remen-
zel a little. It didn't seem in very good taste. "It isn't the sort of thing you keep score on," he said. "Guess," said his wife. "Oh-" The doctor shrugged, rattled the plans. "Thirty maybe." "So Eli is number 31!" said Sylvia, delighted with the number. "You're number 31, dear," she said to the back of Eli's head. Doctor Remenzel rattled the plans again. "I don't want him going around saying something asinine, like he's number 31," he said. "Eli knows better than that," said Sylvia. She was a game, ambitious woman, with no money of her own at all. She had been married for 16 years, but was still openly curious and enthusiastic about the ways of families that had been rich for many generations. "Just for my own curiosity-not so Eli can go around saying what number he is," said Sylvia, "I'm going to go wherever they keep the records and find out what number he is. That's what I'll do while you're at the meeting and Eli's doing whatever he has to do at the Admissions Office." "All right," said Doctor Remenzel, "you go ahead and do that." "I will," said Sylvia. "I think things like that are interesting, even if you don't." She waited for a rise on that, but didn't get one. Sylvia enjoyed arguing with her husband about her lack of reserve and his excess of it, enjoyed saying, toward the end of arguments like that, "Well, I guess I'm just a simpleminded country girl at
heart, and that's all I'll ever be, and I'm afraid you're going to have to get used to it. " But Doctor Remenzel didn't want to play the game. He found the dormitory plans more interesting. "Will the new rooms have fireplaces?" said Sylvia. In the oldest part¡ of the dormitory, several of the rooms had handsome fireplaces. "That would practically double the cost of construction," said the doctor. "I want Eli to have a room with a fireplace, if that's possible," said Sylvia. "Those rooms are for seniors." "I thought maybe through some fluke-" said Sylvia. "What kind of fluke do you have in mind?" said the doctor. "You mean I should demand that Eli be given a room with a fireplace?" "Not demand-" said Sylvia. "Request firmly?" said the doctor. "Maybe I'm just a simpleminded country girl at heart," said Sylvia, "but I look through this catalog, and I see all the buildings named after Remenzels, look through the back and see all the hundreds of thousands of dollars given by Remenzelsfor scholarships, and I just can't help thinking people named Remenzel are entitled to ask for something extra." "Let me tell you in no uncertain terms," said Doctor Remenzel, "that you are nof to ask for anything special for Eli-not anything." "Of course I won't," said Sylvia. "Why do you always think I'm going to embarrass you?" "I don't," he said. "But I can still think what I think, can't I?" she said. "If you have to," he said. "I have to," she said cheerfully, utterly unrepentant. She leaned over the plans. The Rolls-Royce pulled abreast of an old Chevrolet, a car in such bad repair that its back door was lashed shut with clothesline. Doctor Remenzel glanced casually at the driver, and then, with sudden excitement and pleasure, he told Ben Barkley to stay abreast of the car. The doctor leaned across Sylvia, rolled down his window, yelled to the driver of the old Chevrolet, "Tom! Tom!" The man was a Whitehill classmate of the doctor. He wore a Whitehill necktie, which he waved at Doctor Remenzel in gay recognition. And then he pointed to the fine young son who sat beside him,
conveyed with proud smiles and nods tha't the boy was bound for Whitehill. Doctor Remenzel pointed to the chaos of the back of Eli's head, beamed that his news was the same. In the wind blustering between the two cars, they made a lunch date at the Holly House in North Marston, . at the inn whose principal business was serving visitors to Whitehill. "All right," said Doctor Remenzel to Ben Barkley, "drive on." "You know," said Sylvia, "somebody really ought to write an article-" And she turned to look through the back window at the old car now shuddering far behind. "Somebody really ought to." "What about?" said the doctor. He noticed that Eli had slumped way down in the front seat. "Eli!" he said sharply. "Sit up straight!" He returned his attention to Sylvia. "Most people think prep schools are such snobbish things, just for people with money," said Sylvia, "but that isn't true." She leafed through the catalog and found the quotation she was after. "The Whitehill School operates on the
assumption," she read, "that no boy should be deterred from applying for admission because his family is unable to pay the full cost of a Whitehill education. With this in mind, the Admissions Committee selects each year from approximately 3,000 candidates the 150 most promising and deserving boys, regardless of their parents' ability to pay the full $2,200 tuition. And those in need of financial aid are given it to the full extent of their need. In certain instances, the school will even pay for the clothing and transportation of a boy." Sylvia shook her head. "I think that's perfectly amazing. It's something most people don't realize at all. A truckdriver's son can come to Whitehill." "If he's smart enough," he said. "Thanks to the Remenzels," said Sylvia with pride. Sylvia read out loud again: "In 1799, Eli Remenzel laid the foundation for the present Scholarship Fund by donating to the school 40 acres in Boston. The school still owns 12 of those acres, their current evaluation being $3,000,000."
"Eli!" said the doctor. "Sit up! What's the matter with you?" Eli sat up again, but began to slump almost immediately, like a snowman in hell. Eli had good reason for slumping, for actually hoping to die or disappear. He could not bring himself to say what the reason was. He slumped because he knew he had been denied admission to Whitehill. He had failed the entrance examinations. Eli's parents did not know this, because Eli had found the awful notice in the mail and had torn it up. "What all will Eli have to do to enroll?" said Sylvia, as the black RollsRoyce crossed the Rhode Island border. "I don't know," said the doctor. "I suppose they've got it all complicated now with forms to be filled out in quadruplicate and punch-card machines and bureaucrats. This business of entrance examin:Hions is all new, too. In my day, a boy simply had an interview with the headmaster. The headmaster would look him over, ask him a few questions and then say, 'There's a Whitehill boy.'" "Was it a hard examination, dear?" Sylvia asked Eli. It was the first time she'd thought to ask. "H'm," said Eli. "What?" she said. "Yes," said Eli. "I'm glad they've got high standards," she said, and then she realized that this was a fairly silly statement to make. "Of course they've got high standards," she said. "That's why it's such a famous school. That's why people who go there do so well in later life." Sylvia resumed her reading of the catalog again, opened out a folding map of "The Sward," as the campus of Whitehill was traditionally called. She read off the names of features that memorialized Remenzels-the Sanford Remenzel Bird Sanctuary, the George MacLellan Remenzel Skating Rink, the Eli Remenzel Memorial Dormitory, and then she read out loud a quatrain printed on one corner of the campus map: "When night falleth gently "Upon the green Sward, "It's Whitehill, dear Whitehill, "Our thoughts all turn toward."
"You know," said Sylvia, "school songs are so corny when you just read them. But when I hear the Glee Club sing those words, they sound like the most beautiful words ever written, and I want to cry." "Urn," said Doctor Remenzel.
"Did a Remenzel write them?" "I don't think so," said Doctor Remenzel. And then he said, "No-Wait. That's the new song. A Remenzel didn't write it. Tom Hilyer wrote it." "The man in that old car we passed?" "Sure," said Doctor Remenzel. "Tom wrote it. I remember when he wrote it." "A scholarship boy wrote it?" said Sylvia. "I think that's awfully nice. He was a scholarship boy, wasn't he?" "His father was an ordinary automobile mechanic in North Marston." "You hear what a democratic school you're going to, Eli?" said Sylvia. Half an hour later Ben Barkley brought the limousine to a stop before the Holly House, a rambling country inn 20 years older than the Republic. The inn was on the edge of the Whitehill Sward, glimpsing the school's rooftops and spires over the innocent wilderness of the Sanford Remenzel Bird Sanctuary.
"No, sir," said Eli. "It would be a source of the greatest embarrassment to me," said Doctor Remenzel with considerable grandeur, "if I were ever to hear that you had used the name Remenzel as though you thought Remenzels were something special." "I know," said Eli wretchedly. Just then Sylvia came in. "How exciting," she said. She looked all about herself in a birdlike way. "I think everything's exciting here. I only wish Eli had a blazer on." Doctor Remenzel reddened. "He isn't entitled to one," he said. "I know that," said Sylvia. "I thought you were going to ask somebody for permission to put a blazer on Eli right away," said the doctor. "I wouldn't do that," said Sylvia, a little offended now. "Why are you always afraid I'll embarrass you?" "Never mind. Excuse me. Forget it," said Doctor Remenzel. Sylvia brightened again, put her hand on Eli's arm and looked radiantly at a "Eli had good reason for man in the dining-room doorway. slumping, for actually hoping "There's my favorite person in all the to die or disappear." world, next to my son and husband," she said. She meant Dr. Donald Warren, headmaster of the Whitehill School, a Ben Barkley was sent away with the car thin gentleman in his early 60s. for an hour and a half. Doctor Remenzel It was then that Eli got up abruptly, shepherded Sylvia and Eli into a familiar, fled the dining room, fled as much of the low-ceilinged world of pewter, clocks, nightmare as he could possibly leave lovely old woods, agreeable servants, behind. He rushed past Doctor Warren elegant food and drink. rudely, though he knew him well, though Eli, clumsy with horror of ",:hat was Doctor Warren spoke his name. surely to come, banged a grandmother "I'll be darned," said Doctor Remenclock with his elbow as he passed, made zel. "What brought that on?" the clock cry. "Maybe he really is sick," said Sylvia. Sylvia excused herself. Doctor RemenThe Remenzels had no time to react zel and Eli went to the threshold of the more elaborately, because Doctor Wardining room, where a hostess welcomed ren spotted them and crossed quickly to them both by name. They were given a their table. He greeted them, some of his table beneath an oil portrait of one of the perplexity about Eli showing in his greetthree Whitehill boys who had gone on to ing. He asked if he might sit down. become President of the United States. "Certainly, of course," said. Doctor The dining room was filling quickly Remenzel expansively. "We'd be honwith families. What every family had was ored if you did. Heavens." at least one boy about Eli's age. Most of "Not to eat," said Doctor Warren. "I'll the boys wore Whitehill blazers-black, be eating at the long table with the new with pale-blue piping, with Whitehill boys. I would like to talk, though." He seals on their breast pockets. A few, like saw that there were five places set at the Eli, were not yet entitled to wear blazers, table. "You're expecting someone?" were simply hoping to get in. "We passed Tom Hilyer and his boy on The doctor ordered a martini, then the way," said Doctor Remenzel. turned to his son and said, "Your mother "They'll be along in a minute." has the idea that you're entitled to special "Good, good," said Doctor Warren privileges around here. I hope you don't absently. He fidgeted, looked again in the have that idea, too." direction in which Eli had disappeared.
"Tom's boy will be going to Whitehill in the fall?" said Doctor Remenzel. "H'm?" said Doctor Warren. "Oh-yes, yes. Yes, he will." "Is he a scholarship boy, like his father?" said Sylvia. "That's not a polite question," said Doctor Remenzel severely. "I beg your pardon," said Sylvia. "No, no-that's a perfectly proper question these days," said Doctor Warren. "We don't keep that sort of information very secret anymore. We're proud of our scholarship boys, and they have reason to be proud of themselves. Tom's boy got the highest score anyone's ever got on the entrance examinations. We feel privileged to have him." "We never did find out Eli's score," said Doctor Remenzel. He said it with good-humored resignation, without expectation that Eli had done especially well. "A good strong medium, I imagine," said Sylvia. She said this on the basis of Eli's grades in primary school, which had ranged from medium to terrible. The headmaster looked surprised. "I didn't tell you his scores?" he said. "We haven't seen you since he took the examinations," said Doctor Remenzel. "The letter I wrote you-" said Doctor Warren. "What letter?" said Doctor Remenzel. "Did we get a letter?" "JA letter from me," said Doctor Warren, with growing incredulity. "The hardest letter I ever had to write." Sylviashook her head. "We never got any letter from you." Doctor Warren sat back, looking very ill. "I mailed it myself," he said. "It was definitelymailed-some two weeks ago." "I want t9 know what was in the letter," said Sylvia. Doctor Warren raised his head, folded his hands. "What the letter said was this, and no other words could be more difficultfor me to say: 'On the basis of his work in primary school and his scores on theentrance examinations, I must tell you that your son and my good friend Eli cannotpossibly do the work required of boys at Whitehill.'" Doctor Warren's voice steadied, and so did his gaze. "'To, admit Eli to Whitehill, to expect him to do Whitehill work,'" he said, "'would be both unrealistic and cruel.'" Tom Hilyer and his boy, having no idea that something had just gone awfully wrong for the Remenzels, came in and
"I can understand that," she said. said hello to the Remenzels and Doctor "Your father and I have always made you Warren gaily, as though life couldn't feel that you had to go to Whitehill, that possibly be better. "I'll talk to you more about this later, if nothing else would do." "What's father doing?" said Eli. you like," Doctor Warren said to Remenzel, rising. "I have to go now, but later Sylvia was so intent on comforting Eli that she'd put out of her mind what her on-" He left quickly. "My mind's a blank," said Sylvia. "My husband was up to. Now she realized that mind's a perfect blank." Doctor Remenzel was making a ghastly Tom Hilyer and his boy sat down. mistake. She didn't want Eli admitted to Hilyer looked at the menu before him" Whitehill, could see what a cruel thing clapped his hands and said, "What's that would be. She couldn't bring herself to tell the good? I'm hungry." And then he said, boy what his father was doing, so she "Say-where's your boy?" "He stepped out for a moment," said said, "He'll be along in a minute, dear. He understands." And then she said, Doctor Remenzel evenly. "That letter," said Sylvia, "Eli knew "You wait here, and I'll go get him." But she didn't have to go to Doctor about it. He found it and tore it up. Of course he did!" She started to cry, think- Remenzel. At that moment the big man ing of the hideous trap that Eli had came out of the inn and caught sight of his wife and son. He came to her and to caught himself in. "I'm not interested right now in what Eli. Eli's done," said Doctor Remenzel. "They-they all said no," said Doctor "Right now I'm a lot more interested in Remenzel, very subdued. what some other people are going to do." "That's for the best," said Sylvia. "I'm relieved." "What do you mean?" said Sylvia. Doctor Remenzel stood impressively, "Who said no?" said Eli. "Who said no angry and determined. "I mean," he said, to what?" "I'm going to see how quickly people can "The members of the board," said change their minds around here." Doctor Remenzel, not looking anyone in "Please," said Sylvia, trying to hold the eye. "I asked them to make an excephim, trying to calm him, "we've got to 4 tion in your case-to reverse their decifind Eli. That's the first thing." sion and let you in." "The first thing," said Doctor RemenEli stood, his face filled with increduzel, "is to get Eli admitted to Whitehill. lity and shame that were instant. "You There's a majority of the,Board of Over- what?" he said, and there was no childseers in this room at this very moment. ishness in the way he said it. Next came Everyone of them is a close friend Qf anger. "You shouldn't have done that!" mine or a close friend of my father. If Doctor Remenzel nodded. "So I've they tell Doctor Warren Eli's in, that's already been told." it-Eli's in. If there's room for all these "Now I am ashamed," said Eli. other people," he said, "there's room for Doctor Remenzel, in his wretchedness, Eli, too." could find no strong words to say, "I He strode quickly to a table nearby, sat apologize to you both," he said at last. "It down heavily and began to talk to a was a very bad thing to try." fierce-looking and splendid old gentle"Now a Remenzel has asked for someman who was eating there, The old gen- thing," said Eli. tleman was chairman of the board. "I don't suppose-" said Doctor ReSylvia apologized to the baffled menzel, and he left the sentence unHilyers, then went in search of Eli. finished, dangling in the air. Asking this person and that person, "You don't suppose what?" said his Sylvia found him. He was outside-all wife, her face puzzled. alone on a bench in a bower of lilacs that "I don't suppose," said Doctor Remen¡ had begun to bud. zel, "we'll be coming here anymore." 0 Eli heard his mother's coming on the About the Author: Kurt Vonnegut's prolific gravel path, stayed where he was, rewritings include Slaughterhouse-Five; God signed. "Did you find out," he said, "or Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; Player Piano; do I still have to tell you?" Sirens of Titan; Mother Night; Breakfast of "About you?" she said gently. "About Champions; Happy Birthday, Wanda June not getting in? Doctor Warren told us." (play),. Welcome to the Monkey House (collec"I tore his letter up," said Eli. tion of stories), and Palm Sunday (essays).
BACK TO HOME SEWING
witching to stitching, the modern American woman is discovering, is the best way to cut the family budget to a reasonable size. They say a stitch in time saves nine, in this case the nine could be dollars. Home sewing is no longer just a venerable pastime that the modern housewife or career woman has no time for. With the cost of readymade clothing skyrocketing, more and more American women are taking to needles, threads, sewing machines and a variety of accessory machines. Savings effected by sewing at home amount to some 60 percent. A $125 woolen suit with lining can be handmade for less than $55; an average working woman's wardrobe-consisting of suits, dresses, shirts, skirts and slacks-would cost approximately $1,258 off the rack or readymade but less than $480 if stitched at home. The sewing habit starts early even in today's America: More than 90 percent of American teenage girls sew. Though many of them later lose interest, almost 50 percent of women in the United States do make their own clothing. Nineteen percent of American women do so regularly, and even take on the role of seamstress for the family. Helping them along are gadgets like holemakers, sewing gauges, iron-on bind-
S
ing, and dressmaker marking pencils. But these and other conveniences came later. It was paper patterns that gave the first big boost-and an elegance -to home sewing. In fact it was the introduction of standardized paper patterns in 1863 by a Massachusetts tailor, Ebenezer Butterick, that got many American women interested in stitching. Unlike the earlier intricate diagrams that only experienced dressmakers could decipher, Butterick's patterns were simple and easy to understand. They were first peddled door-to-door and then offered through the mail in two magazines launched by Butterick. By 1871 he had sold six million clothing patterns. McCall's, Simplicity and Vogue, the leading patternmakers today, started by following his lead and began selling patterns by mail and advertising them through their magazines and catalogs. At The Greatest Sew on Earth-an annual show where manufacturers and retailers display their products to the public-the main attraction for the large crowds (more than 50,000) is the new patterns being offered. Patternmaking, of course, has changed greatly from Butterick's early days. Computers and experienced professionalism have given a new efficiency and exactitude to the craft, as is evident in the pictures here.
Some steps in patternmaking at McCall's-l. Seamstress begins by duplicating garment in easy-to-handle muslin. 2. Technical artist sketches construction sheets which will be used as guides in cutting fabric. 3. Designers use computers to determine the optimum placement of pattern pieces on various fabric widths. 4. Designer constructs a pattern on paper. 5. Design director and fabric librarian select fabrics to recommend for this
particular suit. 6. Technician determines proportional pattern measurements for average American sizes and enters the information in a computer. 7. A mother and daughter who have ordered the $3 pattern use it to tailor a suit. The prepared patterneasy enough for a beginner to follow-can be ordered by mail; the garment it makes is presented in McCall's magazines and catalogs with an identification number.
TEXTURED TRIMS Trim can transform an ordinary garment into an extraordinary creation. The most popular trim for suits this season is a chenille type which is formed by diagonally braiding yarns to give texture. There are other textured trims that offer you differing amounts of flexibility and surface interest. Here are some pointers to help you work with these textured trims. The tips below work for either hand or machine application. • To prevent ends from fraying or spreading while working with braid, stabilize' raw ends with fabric glue, transparent tape or nail polish. , • Begin and end braid application at least visible point (i.e., underarm seam of sleeve and one side seam of jacket), turn under ends 1 em.' to 1.3 em. and butt in seamline crease. Whipstitch together. • Shape all curved areas with a steam iron while applying braid to garment. • Miter all comers. It's easy to turn neat comers
with this technique: first mark the inside corner angle with hand basting or chalk. 1. Position trim onto garment, baste inside edge to just past the marked angle. 2. Fold trim back on itself. Stitch at right angles from the inner to outer point. You may wish to cut away the .triangle of braid beneath "the miter if it creates too much bulk. The braid will now pivot perfectly around the corner. 3. Finish with edge stitching or cat<;h-stitching.
'ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
"If it hadn't been for all that darn health food, I could have been up here years ago."
"Yeah? Well, I'll bet no one ever drowned while not taking a bath either!" Š
1981. Reprinted
courtesy of Bill Hoest and Parade magazine.
"I'm certainly glad we didn't waste our time on such tomfoolery when we were that age, Mr. Wiggins." Courtesy: Joseph Dawes
AWorld of Books Princeton University in New Jersey. An even more spectacular scheme, the Bussard ramjet, devised by California physicist Robert Bussard, would use supermagnets to propel a spaceship to the depths of space. According to Fred R. Fickett of the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, a magnetic "ion scoop," almost half a kilometer wide, would channel space dust and atomic particles from the solar wind into a fusion engine system. A Bussard ramjet might well be our best hope of reaching the stars. Space is so cold that the supermagnets would hardly need to be cooled. For this reason, supermagnets might also be used in space to shield crews from radiation-or from particle-beam weapons. Dr. Little's 15-year-old vision of "flying carpets" and magnetic skis is still only a fantasy, but its prospects for realization are improving. It begins to look as if his theory of room-temperature superconductivity is correct. Just last year Dr. Denis Jerome, head of a French and Danish scientific team, declared that "superconductivity in organic matter not only exists but has been found." Unfortunately the material these scientists tested is superconducting only at extremely low temperatures and under high pressures. But all over the world scientists are working to make practical superconductors a reality. Earlier this year another French team announced that it had probably created an organic superconductor that doesn't require high pressure to function. Soviet scientists are working on a theory of superconducting "exciton mechanisms"; the concept, which involves some kind of communication between electrons, is so new that no one b:ut the. physicists who developed it quite understands it yet. And Polish scientists are tracking down what they call "persuasive evidence of the existence of superconductivity at room temperature." Although a room-temperature superconductor is the ultimate goal, even a partial success would be important. If the critical temperature can be raised by just seven degrees, engineers will be able to cool superconducting cables and magnets with liquid hydrogen-much cheaper and more plentiful than liquid helium. Many potential uses for superconductors that are presently pie-in-the-~ky would instantly become practical. One way or the other, a technologic~l 0 revolution is on its way. .
I've been going there for years as much as anything else to meet my fellow publishers, to talk with booksellers, to have a feel for the world pulse, if you will, of books and to be reminded by the huge volume of books on display that no publisher is very important in the total book world, but each has an important individual contribution. The book fair in New Delhi from a late start has grown, and I look upon it as the second most important book fair because even though it can't be a world book fair, it does attract many publishers from around the world and will certainly be increasingly the important fair for your part of the world. Could you tell me how many titles are published in America today? Technical, nontechnical, fiction and so on ... ? It depends on our definition because some countries will make claims of huge numbers but they include in that publications that come out of various government agencies, nons ale books. Talking about books for commercial sale-oh, 40,000-45,000 titles are commercially sold in a year. At Wileys, we publish about a thousand titles a year but we do not include in that number books that are in fact adjuncts to textbooks, that is, student workbooks, experiments, laboratory manuals, and so on. . Mr. Wiley, last of all I would just like to find out what as a publisher you consider your most rewarding moments. Well, if I go back to the early days of my career the most rewarding thing was to learn about publishing, which I continue to do after 50 years. I began as a sales representative, who was also a field editor in those days. I lived through the time when most publishing houses grew from family enterprises to corporate giants. However, we are still an independent company. We employ a large number of people but have found it possible to continue the personal relationship of the earlier days. I suppose the greatest personal achievement I can think of was when I came across a distinguished mathematical statistician who visited the United States frequently. Now I was seriously interested in the subject. When he realized that, he proposed to me a series. That was almost 40 years ago. The series stopped only during World War II and is still running. It now includes almost 200 titles and we add 8 or 10 a year. Those books were so good that almost all of them are still in print. And I might add that among the first authors we had were distinguished mathematical statisticians from India, because this was the beginning of the development of a publishing program for statisticians regardless of their native place of teaching or research. Now, today that would be different. Although I think the authors would still like to be published in this series, we would urge them to let us first publish it in India. That was the reason for Wiley Eastern, to provide an opportunity for authors in the sciences, and the engineering sciences as well, who were capable of writing books for a world audience, in English of course; and this we have successfully accomplished. We expect to see more of this as other publishers in joint ventures in India have also reached that stage. 0
"The degree to which Tamil films have been used for political purposes is unparalleled in other Indian regional cinema," said scholar Robert L. Hardgrave in a recent interview in New Delhi. "This is because a number of actors, directors and scriptwriters have had strong associations with the social reform movement spearheaded by the Dravida Kazhagam [the predecessor of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-DMK] in the 1930s." Hardgrave, an American who speaks Tamil, has for many years found in South India, its films and its politics a special fascination. His book India: Government and Politics in a Developing Nation is a standard text all over the world, and earned him membership in a select group of Americans who combine great love for India with unusual scholarship. His interest in the subject goes back to undergraduate days in the late 1950s, when he took courses on India at the University of Texas, Austin, where he is now a professor of government and political science. "I had become increasingly interested in India and when I graduated I knew that I wanted to make Indian politics my specialty," Hardgrave recalled during the interview. "But before I committed my career to India I decided that I must come and see the country first-hand." A Rotary Club scholarship awarded in 1960 provided the opportunity to make the trip, and Hardgrave spent half a year in Madras, the other half in New Delhi. He returned to India in 1964 to do research for his Ph.D. dissertation on the social and political history of the Nadar caste. His findings were reported in a book, The Nadars of Tamil Nadu, published in 1969 and now translated into Tamil. "While in Madras in 1960 I had become fascinated by the DMK," Hardgrave reminisced. "I collected material on it and interviewed people in the party and used that information for my master's thesis." This was published as a book, The Dravidian Movement, in 1965, two years before the DMK came to power. The book was probably the first extensive study of the movement, according to the author. "It was my interest in the DMK that led me
to an awareness of the role of films in politics," Hardgrave commented. C.N. Annadurai, founder of the DMK, was a film writer and director before he became chief minister of Tamil Nadu in 1967. His successor, M. Karunanidhi, was also a film writer and director. Matinee idol Sivaji Ganesan,now a Rajya Sabha M.P., had also been active in the party during the 1950s. "The fact that the DMK party was so involved in the world of Tamil cinema led me inevitably to study the impact of Tamil cinema in the state's politics," Hardgrave said. "I have interviewed hundreds of film fans who have formed fan clubs for their favorite actors. When a film comes to town that has their hero in it, these clubs celebrate the opening by decorating the theater, hiring bands and distributing sweets. The costs on these occasions are borne by the clubs themselves. And they are an important base for the political aspirations of the actors. For example, when MGR (M.G. Ramachandran) entered politics, these fan clubs provided him with an organizational network." Tamil films and India continue to cast their spell on Robert Hardgrave: "I find that whenever I'm away from India, I miss it very much ... my friends here, Indian food, Indian music and especially my Tamil films."
hanks to the establishment in April 1977 of the National Childhood Immunization Initiative and the Measles Elimination Program ' which began in October 1978, U.S. Government health officials say that by October 1, red measles (rubeola) will have been totally eradicated from the United States. In other parts of the world, however, the disease is one of the leading causes of death in children under age five. About 1.5 million children Measles is one of the six each year die from measles or childhood diseases included in complications arising from the WHO's "expanded program disease such as pneumonia, of immunization. " The six brain tissue inflammation, or diseases are diphtheria, pertusbrain damage, according to sis (whooping cough), tetanus, World Health Organization measles, poliomyelitis. (polio) (WHO) officials. Measles is a and tuberculosis. The goal of highly contagious viral infec- the program is to immunize tion affecting the respiratory all children of the world tract. It is usually accompanied against these diseases by 1990. by fever, cough, light sensitivThe success of measles eraity and the characteristic skin dication in the United States eruption. points up how effective a com-
Three enterpnsmg young Americans arrived in Delhi recently after pedaling more than 7,000 kilometers through Europe (Spain, France, Italy and Greece), the Middle East (Israel, Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia) and central Asia (Pakistan). They are David Duncan, 23, a free-lance journalist and leader of the team; his photographer brother Donald, 21; and James Logan, 31, a former U.S. congressional aide. They are on an around-the-world "bike-a-thon," as David described it. Their mission: part adventure, part self-education and part raising funds for Project HOPE (Health Opportunity for People Everywhere) . Project HOPE is the principal activity of the People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc., an independent, nonprofit corporation based in Millwood,Virginia. HOPE, which operates health-care programs in 16 nations, provides assistance in equipment and trained manpower in every aspect of health care-from community sanita-
prehensive child immuniza- powered refrigeration units is tion program can be. The being considered for areas most successful strategy has where electric power may be been school immunization re- unreliable or not available at quirements. Most U.S. states all (see page 48, SPAN March have adopted school attend1982). WHO has also invested ance laws that require proof in a testing facility for a whole that a child has been immu- range of cold-chain equipas portable cold nized before he or she can ment-such enter any grade, kindergarten boxes that nurses can carry through grade 12. with a shoulder-strap and The major problem in which keep vaccines fresh for a week in areas where no powestablishing immunization programs in developing coun- er sources are available. Spetries, according to the health- cial tell-tale irreversible thercare officials, is transport and mometers have also been destorage of the vaccine, not the veloped to reassure field doctors and nurses that vaccines cost of the vaccine itself-depending on the source and have not been exposed to expurchase program, the vac- cessive temperatures. cine costs between Re. 1 and Meanwhile, the U.S. Agency for International DevelopRs. 2 per child. However, from manufacture to use, the ment is launching a new progmeasles vaccine must be kept ram called Combating Childat a constant temperature of hood Communicable Diseases. four to eight degrees centi- The $50 million project will provide technical assistance in grade. Higher temperature renders the vaccine useless. . disease control in African As one solution, use of solar- countries.
tion to midwifery to open-heart surgery-within the United States and overseas. All HOPE projects overseas are undertaken on the invitation of host countries. "The main aim of our tour," Donald noted, "is to raise consciousness, to tell people around the world about the importance of primary health care, about the existence of Project HOPE and how it can help. I think we have done fairly well on that through TV, through articles in the press and through our meetings with people in the countries we have already been to. We are also writing stories for American magazines and newspapers to make people back home aware of Project HOPE and the health-care problems in various countries. "When we go back to the United States, we will give lectures on our experiences, approach corporations and individuals, organize HOPE balls to raise funds for the project. We hope to raise about $500,000." David said: "The most difficult and
trying part of the trip so far has been the ride from Khartoum to Port Sudan, the crossing of the Nubian Desert. The temperature got up to 60 degrees centigrade. It was so hot that our shoes shrank, our tents shrank, tires fell apart in the intense heat .... Towns were 100 to 120 kilometers apart, and we sometimes had to carry a couple of days' food and water. Our bikes were fully loaded; we were carrying well over 60 kilograms per bike. Each of us drank as much as eight liters of water a day on that stretch." After pedaling through India and Nepal over the next six to seven weeks, the trio will begin the second leg of their 18,000-kilometer "World Bike for HOPE," which will take them to Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan. The third and the final leg-some 5,000 kilometers-of their odyssey will begin in California and end (sometime in December) in Washington, D.C., where they began on December 1, 1981.
SallY
a
K. Ride, 30-year-old astrophysicist, will be the first American woman member of a space flight crew. She will be aboard Challenger, a twin of the space shuttle Columbia, on its maiden launch scheduled for April 1983 as the seventh shuttle flight. The first black American space crew member will be U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Guion S. Bluford, Jr., assigned to Challenger's second flight in 1983. Ride, a civilian, is an expert on the mechanical arm that will be used by Challenger to deploy satellites in orbit. She began astronaut training in July 1978, and was named a mission specialist about three years ago. The commander of Challenger's six-day mission will be Navy Captain Robert Crippen, who was aboard Columbia's maiden flight in April 1981. Bluford, 39, entered the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio in 1972. He later served as chief of the Institute's aerodynamics and airframe branch. During their mission, Bluford and his colleague Navy Lt. Commander Dale A. Gardner will use the¡ shuttle's arm to place two communications satellites in space: one for the United States and the other for India (INSAT-1B). The flight commander will be Navy Captain Richard Truly, a veteran of Columbia's second test flight in November 1981. Navy Commander Daniel C. Bradenstein will be the pilot. Ride and Bluford were among 35 candidates selected from some 8,000 applicants for the eighth astronaut class at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, in 1978.
5
The mlmsterial conference of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in November will try to find ways to make the organization ¡more effective for developing countries, Ambassador Michael Smith, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, said at a recent news conference. It is "an absolute must," Smith declared, that ways be found "for the GATT to be made more effective for developing countries, and developing countries in turn can contribute more to the international trading process to make it stronger and more open." Answering a question as to whether the GATT system provides more advantages for industrial nations than for developing nations, Smith stated: "I would take exception to the notion that the GATT has worked more for the developed than the developing countries. If you look at what has happened in international trade in the last decade-and look at who has had
the higher rate of growth in international trade- you will find that developing countries have done very well. " Smith said that he considered the GATT "very relevant" to the needs of the developing nations and pointed out that the November ministerial meeting in Geneva is being arranged partly at the urging of the developing countries, whose representatives "have been pushing it, in some cases more than some developed countries." Although the GATT has not been able to do everything that either the developing or the industrial countries may want, it has provided a practical framework for settling disputes and getting things done, Smith said. "We want to do more for the developing world, believing-at least the United States does-that trade is extremely important for developing countries." Smith said that U.S. foreign trade is now 8 percent of the gross national product, a 100 percent increase since 1971. "Obviously, as we live in an interdependent world, these percentages are going to increase and trade is going to be ever more important to us," he predicted.
schooling and health care-of the refugees. The Reagan Administration has asked the U.S. Congress to appropriate $419 million during fiscal 1983 for refugee assistance, and a large part of the projected spending is expected to be used to assist Pakistan in caring for the Afghan refugees. Although most of the funds come through the U.N. High Commissioner At the beginning of 1980 there were for Refugees, large and small groups some 400,000 Afghan refugees in all over the world are helping in this Pakistan. By March 1982, the total had humanitarian effort. Among them are reached 2.7 million. According to the the International Committee of the Office of the United Nations High Red Cross, League of Red Cross Commissioner for Refugees, which is Societies, International Relief 'Comthe main world organization coordi- mittee, Catholic Relief, Church World nating efforts and aiding refugees Services and Doctors Without Fronthroughout the world, Afghan re- tiers. fugees in Pakistan comprise the largest The contribution by the League of refugee population in the world at Red Cross Societies alone in 1980-81 is an example of the kind and volume of present. The United States has contributed assistance supplied by the many orgaabout half of the assistance to the nizations, and indicates the logistical Afghan refugees in Pakistan adminis- support needed to distribute things of tered by the U.N. Refugee Commis- daily use to the refugees. The League sion, which spent more than $165 provided 16,574 family-sized tents, million in 1980-81. Pakistan as the 194,000 blankets, 15,080 quilts, 127 host country provides half of the total tons of clothing and footwear and $500 million required to meet the basic 18,000 sets of kitchen utensils-each needs-food, housing, clothing, set containing 20 pieces.
New Jersey: A State of Surprise Despite a reIiutation as a tough, bustling industrial state, New Jersey has many charms. It has stretches of near wilderness, pastoral vistas, seascapes and venerable educational institutions.
American Impressions of India, 1853
I
The mysteries of curry and the joys of the paan; bustling â&#x20AC;˘ Bombay and the Moghul splendors of Agra; strange modes of transport; wandering minstrels.... Bayard Taylor, the first American reporter in India, captured these images vividly ina book on his visit here in 1853.
Women in the Courtroom A hundred years ago, a U. S. Supreme Court ruling decided that a woman's "natural and proper timidity and delicacy" made her unfit to practice law. Today 70,000 women practice law in the United States, one as a Justice of the Supreme Court.
Urban Transportation Horrendous traffic jams, rising gasoline bills-we may soon remember them as bad dreams. Transportation systems are 'being developed to move large numbers of people in a city at lower costs-and in greater comfort.
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