40
New VentUres for American Indians by James Cook
44
America Meets Dadi's Family by
Ar:r.;
Dasgupta
4
Life in an Ocean Pressure Cooker by David Abmhamso
On all counts Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's visit to the United States can be considered a success. Media in both countries have proclaimed it so--and although journalists are not infallible, their impressions and those of their audience are an important element in the art of sumnitry. Goodwill and understanding are fostered by the attitudes national leaders display in their. meetings. During her visit, Mrs. Gandhi showed exceptional chann, wit and dignity. President Reagan was a gracious host who clearly appeared to be enjoying the visit. Future relations between our countries will undoubtedly benefit from the substance of the meetings: an agreement that removes the sttnnbling block of the Tarapur fuel supply; and steps to strengthen bonds of scientific cooperation and cultural exchange. But just the general impressions left by the visit will unquestionably have a great effect, too. There was a distinct sense on both sides of having turned a comer. At a press conference Mrs. Gandhi said she hoped to "clear up a lot of misconceptions" about India including, "on a private level. .. ~ ima8e that Indira Gandhi is an aggressive iron lady." Asked if she had succeeded in dIspelling this image, she replied, "I don't mow. Actually, I'm having to take iron supplements." In a series of public appearances, part of a schedule that must have been harrowing, the Prime Minister was deft, succinct and open to all questions. Her straightforward replies to baiting questions from persistent reporters could not help but win the admiration of those wimessing the contest of wits and wills. No wonder she told the National Press Club she enjoys the game of meeting the press . .Andher unflagging enthusiasm at a series of receptions for Americans outside the government demonstrated her eagerness to meet the people as well. SPAN'scoverage of the Prime Minister's visit is the most thorough the magazine has undertaken for any state visit, including those of U.S. Presidents to India. Photo Editor Avinash Pasricha kept pace with her from NewDelhi to Honolulu. During the whirlwind of activities in Washington three other USlCAphotographers were on hand. To put together the eight-page color supplement in this issue, SPAN'sArt Director Nand Katyal chose from some 1,500 color.photos. He also had a selection of 200 black and white pictures, a few of which appear in the opening story on the visit. Material in that story was provided by stringers in Washington and drawn from U.S. newspaper, magazine and television coverage. Ordinarily SPANneeds some six-weeks' lead time to put together a color picture story. But this was indeed a special occasion and the team has risen to it. This issue also celebrates the art and artists of American advertising in the story that begins on page 5. By no coincidence 'this appears during the month of the Thirteenth Asian Advertising Congress, which opens in NewDelhi on September 27. Several American magazines have carried ads in which David Ogilvy, of the finn Ogilvy Benson and Mather, states that he hates to fly and seldom travels to conferences for that reason--but that the Asian meeting is of sucb significance that he will make an exception. Ogilvy is just one of several outstanding American advertising executives participating in the meeting. The United States your viewpoint) for graphics created by the things that are
has earned the credit (or reaped the ignominy, if that is bringing the art of advertising to its current prominence. The American advertising artists have changed the looks of many of used around the world from clothing to' containers.
Yesterday's corrnnercial artist may find his or her way into musetnnStomorrow. As Paritosh Sen notes in his article, some designers have created bodies of work in advertising graphics that any artist might envy. --M.P.
~~ Adventure in Search of Understanding and Friendship" "On arriving at the White House she described her visit as 'an adventure in search of understanding and friendship' and by the time she left Washington to carry her call for a better relationship to New York, Los Angeles and Honolulu ... the adventure was apparently on the way to becoming an achievement." This comment on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's recent visit to the United States, which appeared in The Baltimore Sun, reflects the reaction of many journalists, politicians and diplomats. Mrs. Gandhi followed a heroic schedule, conferring with members of Congress, cabinet officers, other officials of the Reagan Administration and a variety of American and Indian intellectuals and achievers in meeting after meeting. She told the National Press Club: "My life is one of challenge and meeting the press is a challenge, for the press likes to provoke and to trip up. It is also a pleasure, for I enjoy such sparring." Her relish for the game was manifest in her responses, ducking none of the difficult questions. Building on groundwork that had been carefully set in place by Indian and American diplomats, she and President Ronald Reagan reached a settlement of the Tarapur fuel supply problem and concluded a far-reaching agreement for scientific cooperation. They explored new avenues of cooperation in such areas as trade and cultural exchanges. Mrs. Gandhi commented that she had found Mr. Reagan easy to talk to when they met in Cancun, Mexico, a year ago and that she felt their talks in Washington also went well. "I think we had a good meeting," she said, "He is a good talker-but I think he is' also a good listener." Amid the pomp and ceremony of her greeting at the White House on July 29, Mrs. Gandhi set forward her perception
of the trip's purpose, a theme she would reiterate in the days to come: "Our hand of friendship is stretched out to all. One friendship does not come in the way of another. ... No two countries can have the same angle of vision, but each can try to appreciate the points of view of the other. Our effort should be to find a common area, howsoever small, on which to build and to enhance cooperation. I take this opportunity to say how much we in India value the help we have received from the United States in our stupendous tasks." President Reagan said: "Through our talks we can help to reach a renewed recognition of the mutual importance of strong; constructive ties between India and the United States .... A strengthen- ing of that relationship based on better understanding is particularly important at this time .... Prime Minister Gandhi, we recognize that there have been differences between our two countries, but these should not obscure all that we have in common, for we are both strong, proud and independent nations guided by threads of common interest into a new our own perceptions of our national and better understanding between our interests. We both desire the peace and two countries." stability of the Indian Ocean area and the Later that day Mrs. Gandhi met with early end of the occupation of the AfghaniSecretary of State George Shultz, and stan. We both seek an equitable peace in then went to Capitol Hill to meet leaders the Middle East and an honorable settle- of both houses of Congress and the ment of the Iran-Iraq conflict. We both members of the foreign affairs commitseek a constructive approach to interna- tees. Senator Charles Percy, characterized' tional economic cooperation, building on the meeting as the best the committee the strong links even today being forged ever had with a visiting national leader. between the economies of the United Speaker of the House Thomas (Tip) States and India. O'Neill said: "We are happy to have this "Beyond that, India and the United opportunity to strengthen the ties beStates are bound together by the tween India and the United States. We strongest, most sacred tie of all, the respect India's commitment to propractice of democratic freedoms denied mote democracy and world peace. We in to many peoples by their governments. the United States believe deeply in indi-' "My devout hope is that, during this vidual freedom and equality of opportuvisit, we can weave together all these nity. Consequently we want to develop
Left: Mrs. Gandhi talks with a group of prominent American women at a tea meeting in New York, given by Mrs. Usha Narayanan, wife of the Indian Ambassador to the United States. Opposite page: President Reagan welcomes Prime Minister Gandhi in front of the South Portico of the White House. Below: Mrs. Gandhi greets White House guests in a receiving line with President and Mrs. Reagan prior to a formal banquet. Bottom: In New York Mrs. Gandhi discussed international crises with United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar.
close relationships with our sister democracies- India in particular." According to The Wall Street Journal (which keeps tabs on such things), "The White House gave Mrs. Gandhi the most elaborate dinner since the President's inauguration .... Her speeches and the President's were full of warmth and cordiality." After the dinner, conductor Zubin Mehta led 60 members of the New York Philharmonic in a concert in the Rose Garden. He said the evening was special to him "not musically, but because of the friendship between our two countries. I am Indian and I cannot tell you how pleased I am that my Prime Minister has come to America again." The next day Mrs. Gandhi met with the editorial board of The Washington Post, then appeared at a luncheon of the
National Press Club, an almost obligatory event for visiting heads of state that was broadcast throughout the country by 260 public radio stations and 1,100 cable television stations. Her witty and spontaneous . answers to questions often evoked laughter and applause. Asked if India "tilts" toward the United States or the Soviet Union, she replied, "I think we stand upright. One doesn't spend one's life fighting for independence just to be able to give it away." In response to a question as to whether India is seeking military aid from the United States, she said, "We are not seeking military aid from any country. Whatever we have sought, we have bought." Concerning economic ties, she pointed out that India has liberalized conditions for foreign businesses and hopes that their representatives will come and examine the advantages-and disadvantages-of doing business in India, and be persuaded by the advantages. After the luncheon she met with A.W. Clausen, president of the World Bank, U.S. Treasury Secretary Donald Regan and Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige. From the world of finance she turned to that of science, addressing a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was the first foreign head of state to address the organization, a nongovernmental group with a membership of 140,000 mostly scientists and engineers. She reviewed some areas in which Indian scientists have been applying advanced knowledge to problems of development and called upon those involved in research to be more responsive to the needs of the developing world. Among the more rewarding areas in which American and Indian scientists can cooperate she listed improvement of food production and minimizing dependence on mineral fertilizers; biomass production, tissue culture and genetic engineering for fodder and fuelwood; biomedical research for disease and fertility control, and research to discover materials to reduce energy consumption and costs. "These are some areas which I hope the joint panel on science and technology which President Reagan and I have agreed to set up will look into," she said. The leaders agreed to establish a blueribbon panel of eminent American and Indian scientists to determine priority areas for collaboration. President Reagan named his science adviser, Dr. George A. Keyworth II, to oversee choosing the American representatives to the panel. Prime Minister Gandhi designated Professor M.G.K. Menon, chairman of the
Science Advisory Council, to form the Indian part of the panel. "I feel that the responsibility for the future lies with all citizens, no less than with those who are in positions of authority-and perhaps most of all on scientists, technologists and engineers as thinkers and seekers after truth," she declared. Capping a demanding but unquestionably gratifying day, Mrs. Gandhi attended a reception held by K.R. Narayanan, India's Ambassador to the United States, at the elegant Indian Embassy and was hostess at a dinner honoring Vice President George Bush at the Madison hotel, where she stayed in Washington (because Blair House, where visiting heads of state are usually entertained, was undergoing renovation). Among the guests at the social functions were many former U.S. ambassadors to India: Robert F. Goheen, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, John Kenneth Galbraith, John Sherman Cooper and Ellsworth Bunker. Current U.S. Ambassador Harry G. Barnes, Jr., accompanied Mrs. Gandhi throughout her visit, including the journeys to Los Angeles and Honolulu. The following day, July 31, Mrs. Gandhi met with the members of the Indian community in Washington and Baltimore in a splendid setting, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In each of the major cities she visited, the Prime Minister spoke to representatives of the sizal),le group of Indians living in the United States. Successful and sophisticated, these Indians have the potential for influencing U.S. policies and opinions. "We in India are proud of the contributions Indians have made, wherever they have been," she told the Kennedy Center audience of more than 2,500 persons. She admitted to "a mixed reaction" in that she would prefer that Indians remain in India and contribute to solutions of problems there, but in any case she expects Indians to retain an interest in their native country. "We expect the Indians who are here to get on with their jobs and do their jobs well, bringing credit to our country," she said, "and also to build bridges of friendship, of cooperation and understanding between these two great countries." After an enthusiastic show of hands indicated that there were many Hindi speakers in the audience, Mrs. Gandhi closed her address in Hindi. She also spoke at length in Hindi to audiences in New York
merce of America-as "an impressive gathering of experts in foreign affairs, leaders of commerce and industry and friends of Asia and India." Expressing satisfaction with her talks with President Reagan, the Prime Minister said: "There have been ups and downs in the curve of Indo-United States relations. Two large, vibrant and pluralistic societies cannot possibly agree on all matters and especially on details, but if we concentrate on a shared perception of Mrs. Gandhi at the Metropolitan Museum of global welfare and respect for the same Art in New York. The museum plans a human values, we have a base on which major exhibition on India in 1985. to build understanding and cooperation. City and Los Angeles .. "I believe such an affinity exists beShe spent August 1 in New York, tween our two countries and that in the where her sole appointment was a visit to coming decades we can cooperate a Sikh gurdwara in the Richmond Hills creatively in the great task of harnessing section of the city. the resources of our planet more rationalMrs. Gandhi had accomplished several ly and fruitfully for the benefit of all important missions in New York prior to humankind. " the official visit to Washington. At a Citing previous examples of cooperaluncheon at the Metropolitan Museum of tion, Mrs. Gandhi said, "I should like to Art on July 28, she announced that a acknowledge once again the assistance major exhibition of Indian art would be we got from the United States, particularfeatured there in late 1985. She said that ly from the many American scientists and "India," as the project is called; would be agricultural experts who did dedicated a comprehensive presentation of the rich work in India in the Fifties and Sixties." artistic heritage of the nation from the She stressed the theme of working 14th through 19th centuries. The Metro- together in commerce as well as agriculpolitan Museum is also planning to send ture: "In India, we look upon inflows of to India an exhibition of American art official and private foreign capital as comfrom colonial days to the present. plementary rather than competitive. Our At the United Nations, after meeting progress bears witness to the good use we for 20 minutes with Secretary-General have made of assistance from internationJavier Perez de Cuellar, Mrs. Gandhi al agencies like the World Bank and unveiled a gift from India, a 900-year-old InternationaJ Development Agency, as stone wall plaque of the Hindu sun god well as bilaterally from several countries, Surya, for display near the Delegates the largest donor being the U.S.A." Lounge. Mrs. Gandhi noted that modern She looked forward to greater cultural man has turned to the sun as a source of exchange: "To go back to the old cliche, energy. man does not live by bread alone. Human In a later ceremony, Mrs. Gandhi re- beings need the arts and entertainment ceived the prestigious U Thant Award for for individual and social expression and improving East -West relationships, par- for the unfolding and fulfilling of other ticularly in the field of culture. The award is aspects of their personalities. Thus culgiven in memory of the third Secretary- tural exchanges, by creating a base of General of the United Nations. understanding, foster other contacts." One of the highlights of the Prime While in New York, Mrs. Gandhi met Minister's American visit was her address with New York's Mayor Edward Koch to a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria and attended receptions for outstanding hotel in New York attended by more artists and achievers. She also found time than 1,600 persons (an additional 1,000 to attend two Broadway plays, Amadeus were turned away) who paid $40 each to and Agnes of God, with her son Rajiv hear her. She characterized the meet- and his wife, Sonia. ing-which was sponsored by the ForOn August 3, Mrs. Gandhi made the eign Policy Association and the Asia four-hour flight from New York to Los Society in cooperation with the Far East- Angeles, where she continued to pursue a America Council of Commerce and In- vigorous schedule. She was welcomed dustry and the India Chamber of Com(Text continued on page 56)
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'It's true thai George Lois has it, and he flaunts ilfollowing the advice of his own lamous headline lor Braniff what he has to say about advertising is worthwhile reading lor any busirleS$man with an adverlising budget." Business
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DIc:kSchaap 'There are'clever men in our business who can perform scintitlatinggraphicacrobalics on a page which become an end in themselves. George Is not oneol these. He isan honest man He uses his skilts to accomplish what he Is being paid for' toseU his clients' wares And In the process he is raisIng the public's level of taste by putting before it messages made even more penetrating and effective by his exceptional artistry."
Bill Bembac:h 'loisisanoriginal. He seems crazy enough and tooth enough to shake up an entire syslem."
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George Lois is one of the greal men in our rltlld. His works are alive with wit and ingenuity, wilh sophistication and directness. He isa gutsy man, a creative teacher, a firSI-rate prolessional. George Lois is the master communicator." ~r::.~~R~sY$CI<OOlOrD(SlGtl
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A new art fonn: the audacious works of George Lois. An electronic road map through advertising's Creative Revolution. The modem art director and his impact on comrnmit::ation. An American decade captured on Esquire covers. Taking an idea to the edge of a cliH without going over. Remember. n.e woman you insult in an ad might be your wH'e. How to use celebrities: ;I maverick's method. The new creative person kisses the cray flannel mouth coodbye. New products: one chance is all you get. Music: the great reservoir of visual Image •• How to make a product famous. An adman sticks his neck out for unpopular causes. Athletes can sell or Just look stupid. 86% of all advertising is ignored. (13% is hated.) Great Ideas come easy. GeUlng them done Is the hard put. tlow to talk straight on Madison Avenue. Is a politician a bar of soap? Most ad agency presidents don't belIeve In advertf.1nC. n.e only rule should be to have no rules.
\ "The Art Of Advertising" is the long¡awaited oeuvfe on modern communicatlon, thar singleessenllalworkwnich illuminates myttHiddlecl Adman
the fascinating WQfld of advertising and the
subject of mass persuasion and art director George lois,
theorlglnalenfiJnrtertibleof Madisoo
Avenl.lll, and now its incomgible, outspoken maverick, is first and
finally a crealive thinker with a rage rocomrnunlcateand a dazzling record of accomplishment. ThiS volume assembles twenty¡flVe years of his rcmarkable ad campaigns, hlstrailblazlnemagazinecove~. hisdistinclivepackages, his brave acts of social protestIndeed,everypOssibleexpression of communications wizardry Ihal has enriched hiscarcer. 1l1e 260 pIeces In lhls mllestone volume emerge as a witty, irreverent, andprolound Insight into Amcrlca's revolving obsessions: war,sex.violence,polit!cs, celebrilies,feminism,televlslon,athletlcs. eating,
travel,movieS,journalism, drinking, fa$hion, belting,
sellinll,f3Ceandlove. In short, all of AmerICa's grandeur endfolblesaresyntheslzed in this remarkable YOlume. The art of George Lois Is the work of a genuinely perceptive mind,aRabelaisianpersooality, and a crack storytellef. "The Art of Advert,s,"S" may not be the last word on the mystique 01 mass communication in modem America, but it is surely Ihernostoriglfl3l,the rnostdefinitive,lhemostcandid, and the most colorful trcalmenlollhisubiQuilolJS subje.:l. "Ttle Artof Advertising" is a nillurill lor general readers asweltasforsludents, ousll'l!!ssmen.scholars of poputarculture, political candidates, and anyone who wants to know what "they" are s.aying In America to Americans, and (more Important) Why. Thcmavcrick,avdaciouslois goes one giant step rurtl'lcr: herevealshowina rollk::killg,robust and ulterlylascina!ingway. "TheArl of Aclvertising" is sure to become a creative primer for artists, wntersandstuclenls of communicatioo
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American Graphic Design by PARITOSH
SEN
ood advertising design must attract attention, awaken interest and inspire curiosity. From this point of view, it fulfills the same function as fine art except that it has a different raison d'etre; it belongs entirely to the marketplace. I am enchanted by the poetic imagery used by Barrows Mussy, an American living in West Germany, that spells out the objectives of advertising. Bearing in mind the hard truth that people are not particularly interested in advertising, he says, "If you want to attract the birds, you shouldn't get your gun but should try birdseed. A handful will be quite enough. But by far the best plan is to strew the seeds yourself, so that the birds notice that somebody is standing them a meal; that always fetches them." A good advertising design is very similar to this gesture-the right way to strew birdseed. As a practicing painter I happened to live in Paris and London in the 1950s. It was, however, in New York City that I became aware, for the first time, of the enormous power, and pressure, of advertising. I was bombarded by the roundthe-clock radio and television services, the popular magazines, the gigantic hoardings and neon signs. Where else in the world do we see 60 or 70 full-page ads daily in newspapers, with Sunday editions running into 250 pages? It was difficult to decide which was the more bewildering experience-reading the newspapers or visiting Times Square. Many of us accuse advertising of being trivial, untruthful and unnecessary. The' guardians of aesthetics attack it for degrading public taste (which may be true, but isn't it equally true of much of "fine art"?), the sociologists for creating unhappiness, and the protectors of consumer rights for telling lies. We know that a soap, however good, never improves
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1 Push Pin Graphic-poster celebrating 20 years of the studio. 2 Dan Kirk-"Surprise Poster," from National Lampoon magazine. 3 Edward Penfield-cover for Harper's magazine. 4 Penfield-cover for Collier's magazine. S PaUl Rand-poster for Aspen Design Conference, 1982. 6 Gene Federico-ad for Hennessy cognac. 7 Edward Sorel-drawing from the "Images of Labor" exhibit showing boys picking slate.
one's complexion or the quality of one's skin. Nor does a hair lotion ever make new hairs grow on a bald head. But there is another legitimate doubt: Can the selling of a jar of bathroom liquid or a pair of pantyhose shake the foundation of a society-even if it is done with some artistic exaggeration? Every society that preceded the industrial/capitalist era emphasized certain human inclinations at the expense of others. Around them grew a whole world of rituals, customs-and art. From this point of view, it is easy to understand why a society of high technology and consumerism like that of the United States indulges in apparent extravagances of advertising. What kind of advertising or graphic art has this extravagance produced? Early American posters, like many other things of that epoch, were greatly influenced by British artists, notably Aubrey Beardsley. His brilliant innovations in the use of sweeping lines and flat areas of black and white cast a spell over the American poster designers. William Morris' equally innovative uses of the printed pages also fired their imaginations. Lithographed holiday, theater, vaudeville, and music-hall posters were in great vogue. Among the foremost designers of the day were Will Bradley, Louis Rhead and Ethel Reed. Soon they rid themselves of the European influence and evolved styles that were better suited to the new needs of mass communication. Harper's profitably utilized the services of Edward Penfield whose bold graphic statements on his pet subject, the members of "the genteel class in static poses," were a major attraction of the magazine. The whimsical humor of Penfield's designs in Harper's set new trends in the descriptive style of American posters. Then came booksellers like the Century Company, which launched the first poster contest in America-which the redoubtable Toulouse-Lautrec himself entered,' and was rejected. The period between the two world wars was rather unexciting, in that American graphic design hardly reflected anything of the past era nor, for that matter, anticipated what was to come. It is a curious phenomenon of human civilization that social upheavals like war
William Goldenlogotype for Columbia Broadcasting System.
or revolution often activate new cultural trends. The change in the course of American graphic expression that began at the end of World War II was no exception. The great lessons of the Bauhaus meant a shot in the arm of the design world in America as much as in Europe. Steeped in the new concepts and discoveries of this powerful school, a whole ne~ generation of artists and photographers maae their appearance on the American graphic scene. For the first time an attempt was made to push beyond form and color and come to grips with the practical world of communication and commerce. Gone were the days when copywriters used verbal themes to communicate images in the medium of broadcasting. Instead the new designers played with visual symbols, photography, type and designs to communicate through magazines-Holiday, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, McCalls, Esquire, The New Yorker, and later Eros, A vant Garde, Playboy-and newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Los Angeles Times. This led to a new freedom in graphic expression. The late Fifties heralded a definitive American school of design headed by Paul Rand and followed by Bradbury Thompson, William Golden, Herbert Bayer, Bob Gage, Allen Hurlburt, Gene Federico, Henry Wolf, Saul Bass, Herb Lubalin and Leo Lionni among others. Curiously enough, this was also the period when, for the first time, an all-American schootofpaintingParitosh Sen, a leading artistfrom Calcutta, is currently a visiting professor at The Maryland lnstitute College of Art, Baltimore. He has held one-man shows both in India and abroad and has participated in international art festivals.
led by Motherwell, Pollock, De Kooning, Tobey and Rothko-made its dramatic appearance. Paul Rand freed American design of European influence on the one hand and of the relatively traditionalist artists like Brodovitch, Cassandre and Agha on the other. He successfully fused the two, introduced a new concept of spatial breakup in graphic design and an unorthodox use of the whole range of Gothic typefaces. For his aggressive innovative genius he was held in the same kind of esteem by graphic designers as Picasso was by painters all over the world. The advent of television offered new challenges to the American graphic designer. It called for a new approach to graphic art. One of the pioneers in this field was George Lois whose work at CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) Television surged forward from the postWorld War II years of "design innocence" to set aside Marshall McLuhan's dictum, "The medium is the message." Instead they asserted that "the message is the message." Over the years Lois has created a body of work that will one day be regarded as the oeuvre of a great artist. Lois started from the premise that television is technology of the future but its graphics were obsolete. He did away with the borrowed styles of cinematography and put into practice his concept that "headlines must sound l1ke speech, like the words and cadences people actually use ... copy has to read like images, not abstractions. " . Haute couture became a giant industry in America in the Sixties. The largest exporter of jeans and other unisex clothing, the Un,ited States also became a potential challenger to Paris, the hitherto impregnable citadel of fashion. Gene Federico revitalized the graphics of this field with a rare design sensibility, which in chicness rivaled that of its European counterpart. He realized that visualsphotographic images-and verbal expressions-typography-were indivisible and therefore had to be blended perfectly. In the process he created some brilliant graphic designs that soon became trailblazers. Another designer whose mind was cast in the same mold was Bill Golden. His consummate professional taste and skill have produced an enormous number of
works that never cease to inspire students of graphic design. Also notable in this period was Bradbury Thompson, whose innovative contemporary designs in advertising and sensitivity in book work remain as exciting today as they were at the time. A master of the art of typography was Herb Lubalin, whose name has remained in the forefront of graphic communication through the years. To him advertising was essentially a conceptual medium that must give priority to its message. Design must be subservient to it and not predominate over it. He was largely responsible for introducing new typefaces and redesigning some of the successful old ones to meet the requirements of computerized phototypesetting. For the first time, type could be set the right way-the way people speak-in a steady flow, without interruptions between letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. Other significant names that arise in my mind at this moment-of people whose contributions to the "wordgame" are invaluable-are those of Lou Dorfsman and Arnold Varga. Dorfsman's original typographic solutions at CBS Television and Varga's imaginative handling of type with pictures in newspaper advertisements found many imitators in the United States and elsewhere. This short account of American graphics would be incomplete without mention of the invaluable contributions made by Leo Lionni, one of the most versatile designers of the post-World War II era. Nurtured in classical as well as contemporary aesthetic values, aided by a sharp intellect and highly refined sensibility, he has produced a variety of designsfrom illustrations, typographies, posters, business literature and exhibitions to an imaginary sculpture garden-that have earned him a permanent place in the history of modern graphic art. His designs for the Container Corporation and Olivetti remain to this day some of the most outstanding examples of American design. Herb Lubalin - logotype for A van! Garde magazine. The alphabet was developed as needed and finally released as transfer type; now recognized as a standard type face.
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It is true that graphic art when practiced by painters tends to have more freshness because they are less intimidated by the constraints of mass culture. Yet Ben Shahn, one of the most wellknown contemporary painters, always enjoyed working with people and communicating with them. He is one of the few artists who raised the art of illustration and poster to a high degree of aesthetic achievement by eliminating the line of distinction between fine art and advertising art. Another exciting developmc-nt opened up a whole new world in American graphic expression - the revolutionary change in the appearance of film titles. The creator of these new graphics was Saul Bass, whose contributions to printing design had already been acknowledged. He approached this field with the idea of making the design and animation of the titles so provocative and entertaining that they forced the viewer to watch the screen rather than talk and lick ice cream. The symbolic images he created and the way he presented them in his title designs prepared the audience for a rapport with the film rare in those days. His highly original creations in Around the World in 80 Days, The Man With the Golden Arm, Nine Hours to Rama, Anatomy of a Murder, The Big Country, to name only a few, 'changed forever the
Alexey Brodovitch-two-page fashion spread for Harper's Bazaar, using photo by Richard Avedon, is a noted example of their partnership.
nature of film titles and found numerous imitators all over the film-producing world. Another typical American graphic invention which has been widely adopted even by socialist countries is the eloquent DOT (Department of Transportation) symbols. They are bold, simple, definitive and succinct and do not need any accompanying copy. Not only have they become synonymous with the Olympic games, but they are found in all international airports, railway stations-in fact everywhere where concern for the public is a necessary part of administration. An interesting feature of the Sixties was the emergence of a few design groups whose brilliant efforts set the pace of the decade. The most vivacious of these is the Manhattan-based Push Pin Graphic studio. Led by Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast, the exceptional talents brought together under its roof combined personal and artistic qualities that have, overthe last two decades, produced some of the most seminal work in American graphic design. In ideation, concept, form and stylistic expression, the studio has been a trendsetter: No single team of think-alike designers has exercised such a wide influence over the graphic scene at home and abroad.
Their creativity extends to book and magazine illustrations, record jackets, film titles and advertising. The group was singularly honored in 1970by the redoubtable Musee Des Arts Decoratif du Louvre, which held an exhibition of works by the Push Pin studio in Paris that electrified the European graphic world. One of the determining features of American graphic art of the last 25 years has been the rise of the corporate style. The great patrons of graphic art in the United States today are not the art dealers or the museums but the ,modern Medicis who run huge conglomeratesthe giant car and aircraft manufacturers, the pharmaceutical, electronic, garment, canned food, film, television, record companies, the booksellers and the oil corporations. Of course the big companies realize that they can make and market a product without raising the aesthetic level of the consumer; they know the industrial world can function without the benefit of art. Yet the most notable aspect of these companies' publicity material is the apparent corporate philosophy that the appearance of a product is as important as its quality and that the world would be a poorer place without art. Some of these very corporations are among the great collectors of modern art in America today. Never before have Americans as a society been made so keenly aware of the vast presence of the corporation in their midst, a presence that is responsible for bringing packaged culture to millions. In the process the criteria for what makes artistic or good design have shifted. The language of advertising copY'utilizes social idioms, fictional styles, humor, and anything that entertains while seiling the product. There was a proliferation of millions of antiwar posters and other graphic expressions of the counterculture during the late Sixties and early Seventies. During this period, the quality and style of illustrations in some of the magazines created by the new social movements, like Ramparts, and the National Lampoon, as well as some magazines for the young called the Record and Sesame Street, attracted a whole band of new illustrators who were direct products of the counterculture. Their appeal was so instantaneous and universal that they caught the fancy of young illustrators and painters all over
Department of Transportation symbols developed by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
the world, including India. To cope with the speed of a fastdeveloping technological society, the ever-increasing demands of the mass media and their graphic expressions, some important Rlechanical inventions became inevitable. We may regard the seemingly minor invention of the Xerox machine as merely an office copier. But the sophistication and many-faceted functions of the new Xerox machines are really the ultimate; they should be hailed as technological marvels. Xerox has created a combined typesetting, photo-platemaking, printing and binding machine-in other words, an almost complete graphic arts plant. The Xerox 9700 sets copy, stores the data in digital form, formats and makes up 21.5 cm x 28cm pages, prints and collates. What an exciting toy in the hands of today's designers! What form are graphic expressions going to take in the immediate future as a result of these inventions? Let me quote Herb Lubalin, the designer par excellence closely associated with inventions concerning graphic art. He foresees a future where "art directors and designers, in the next few years, will discard their tracing pads in favor of television screens. Images will be created on that screen through the keys of a typewriter. Layouts will be stored on disks rather than on 35mm slides. Presentations will be made on TV screens rather than with Kodak Carouseb or on paper cemented to mounting boards." Much of this is already happening. American graphic art has traveled a long way since the days of the hand-lithographed posters. 0 Research for graphics for this article was conducted by Cindy La Covey of SPAN's Washington, D.C., office. SPAN also gratefully acknowledges the help of Nathan Gluck of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
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Cordiale It had all the hallmarks of a sad modern ritual. The couple moved into separate homes. He got the dogs and the classical records, while she kept the Iranian bronzes and the collection of arrowheads. No cause for gloom, though. This was a separation without rancor or lawyers' fees- just two happily married people pursuing their mutual profession in two different countries. His Excellency Carleton S. Coon Jr., 54, is the U.S. Ambassador to the mountain kingdom of Nepal. His wife, Her Excellency Jane Abell Coon, 52, is U.S. Ambassador to nearby Bangladesh. The two career diplomats have been separate-but-equal since they were promoted to ambassadorial rank in 1981. Only a thin slice of northeast India divides Nepal from Bangladesh, so Jane and Carl can fly between Dacca and Kathmandu in only 90 minutes door-todoor. "That's better than you can do between New York and Washington," Madame Ambassador observes. The couple spend one week a month together, and there is no yourplace-or-mine casualness about the arrangement. They alternate their visits so that neither is off-station for more than one week in eight, although for a rendezvous this March, they both got away from it all, meeting in New Delhi. The backand-forth visitation protocol was established in the 1970s by the only previous husband-andwife team of U.S. Ambassadors- Ellsworth Bunker, who was Ambassador-at-Large and envoy to South Vietnam, and Mrs. Bunker, Carol Laise, who was Ambassador to Nepal. Bunker was a political apReprinted by permission of Marcia Gauger from People Weekly, copyright Š 1982 Time Inc.
pointee, while the Coons are career diplomats who clambered up the pin-striped ladder the hard way. Before leaving for South Asia, both held jobs with the State Department in Washington. As Director of North African Affairs, Carl had the thankless task, among others, of looking after the United States' tempestuous relations with Libyan strong man Muammar Qaddafi. However, many of the dead-of-night crisis calls were for Jane. She was Deputy Assistant Secretary¡ of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs when Pakistani students burned the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad in November 1979, and when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. "It turned out to be quite a job," she says with wry understatement. Her husband, meanwhile, was sweating out his own diplomatic assault. Two weeks after the violence in Pakistan, he was awakened at midnight with word that the U.S. Embassy in the Libyan capital of Tripoli was aflame. In fact, the Coons were so busy handling one diplomatic brushfire after the next that their time together was limited. "The way we live these days is an abnormal way to run a marriage," says Carl, "but now at least when I see her, I see her." In terms of their careers, both partners believe they are enjoying the best of all possible worlds. "After all," says Carl, "it's nice to be an ambassador after 30 years of understudying the role." It is, perhaps, especially nice for Jane, whose dream-co me-true once seemed so improbable. After 17 years in the Foreign Service, she was forced by an archaic State Department regulation to quit her job when she married Carl in
1968. He was a widower with six children, and she disappeared into the kitchen and nursery for nine years, until a change in personnel rules at State allowed her to return to diplomacy. When Carl came under consideration last year for an ambassadorship, Jane's career seemed stymied again. "I tended to assume that when we went overseas, I would take a leave without pay," she recalls. Instead, she moved into her own spacious official residence, presides over an embassy staff of 190 and earns the same salary as her husband, close to $60,000 a year. Her assignment, incidentally, is considered the more difficult. An inveterate globe-trotter, Carl Coon was born on the move. His father, the noted anthropologist Carleton Coon Sr., was on an expedition to Morocco when Carl was conceived, and the baby was delivered in Paris. Later, while Coon Sr. bustled about the world, Coon Jr. was often left in the care of his grandmother. Graduating from Harvard in 1949, Carl passed the Foreign Service examination and went to Germany as a resident officer at the tail end of the U.S. occupation. Since then he has shuttled between home-duty assignments and overseas tours in Syria, India and Iran. A native New Englander, Jane Abell grew up in Durham, New Hampshire. A scholarship took her to the College of Wooster in Ohio, where she
studied history and political science in departments headed by women professors. "That was uncommon at the time," she recalls, "and while I didn't think in terms of role models then, they had an impact." By the time Jane joined the handful of women battling for places in the male-dominated, old-boy ranks of the State Department, she was obviously no shrinking violet. The stuffy element tuttutted at her appointment as a junior political officer in Pakistan. But she did well, later learned to speak Hindi and was promoted to the U.S. Embassy in India in 1960. Back in Washington, Carl was working on the Indian desk and was struck by the quality of Abell's reports. When they met as professional colleagues for the first time in 1966, he may have been equally impressed by her bluntness. Jane's opening remark, as she recalls, was: "Where are my six bulldozers and the dump trucks?" Two years later, a year after the death of his first wife from cancer, Carl used all the persuasiveness and charm at his command to woo Jane into marriage and out of her job. "I have never regretted it," says Jane. "The kids were aged 4 to 16 and I was plunged into instant motherhood. I learned to cook. It was very demanding." The marriage began with what Carl's youngest daughter called a "honeycomb" in Morocco, followed by Jane's basic training in the arts of the
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Posted as ambassadors in two countries with a 90-minute flight between them, Jane Abell and Carleton Coon have worked out a perfect arrangement-they meet for a week every month at her or his place. Far left, the couple stroll in front of the Ganesh temple near Carleton Coon's residence in Kathmandu. Left and below, the Coons during a Dacca rendezvous at Jane Abell Coon's residence.
housewife. In 1976 she was able to shuck the apron and dust off her dispatch case. The children were at an age where they needed her less, and the State Department was no longer committed to the idea that a woman's place was not in the embassy. Jane made up for lost time and won the post in Dacca one month after Carl was assigned to Kathmandu. Although the Coons hadn't planned on the separation, their same-time-next-month domestic arrangement couldn't be working better, says Jane. "The quality of our time together is much better now." Whoever is playing host-or hostess-cuts down on official functions that week and concentrates on entertaining the visitor. Over Christmas the Coons were joined in Kathmandu by three of their children and Carl's stepmother. The family hiked into the countryside, visited Lord Buddha's birthplace at Lumbini and thrilled to the sight of a Bengal tiger in a game preserve. Fortunately, the Coons take such obvious pleasure in each other's company that the complexities of monthly reunions melt away. "We're both tremendously engaged in what we're doing," says Jane. "This gives us an opportunity to do what we want without placing great strains on the marriage." D About the Author: Marcia Gauger is , the bureau chief of Time in New Delhi.
THE ROLE OF
CONGRESS IN U.S. Rasheed Talib: Welcome to India, Dr. Heginbotham. I understand this is not your first visit to this country and that since you left here you've taken a job with the U. S. Library of Congress. What exactly does this job mean? Stanley Oeginbotham: The Library of Congress consists of several components. The major one of course is that it is a national library, but it also serves as a source of information and research for members of Congress and their staffs. The Congressional Research Service provides material, information and analysis for any member of the congressional establishment. As director of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division I am responsible for assuring that Congress has information on foreign and defense policy issues when it needs it.
FOREIGN POLICY RASHEED T ALIB TALKS WITH STANLEY HEGINBOTHAM
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RT: But are you commissioned for these studies, or do you do them on your own? SO: We do both. Much of our time is spent trying to anticipate what Congress might need and to develop materials that are available on request from any member or any staff member. But we also get large numbers of requests every day for specific information that a member may need immediately or in the next day or two; and then we also get requests to undertake more comprehensive studies that may require several months to complete. RT: But how much of a role does the U. S. Congress have in the shaping and formulation of foreign policy? I thought that was the prerogative of the President? SO: Well, I think that's one of the most distinctive characteristics of the American governmental process. Many governments are designed in order to produce results quickly and coherently. The fundamental concern of the framers of our Constitution was to create a system that would prevent abuse by the government, and so it set up Congress as a check on the President, it set up the two Houses of Congress as checks on each other. And
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those checks operat! in foreign as well as in domestic issues. RT: Yes, but in foreign policy there's been a lot of controversy whether the dominant voice should be that of the President or of Congress, and I understand that especially in our century this balance between these two institutions has not always been as stable as it used to be. Am I right in thinking so? SO: It has never been very stable for long periods of time, and the relative power and the different kinds of roles have been subject to change. Certainly during the 1950s and the 1960s, Congress was relatively quiescent and left a major role to the President. But there has been a strong sense that Congress failed in the case of Vietnam to play its role in checking presidential initiatives that needed to be performed. So Vietnam is seen on Capitol Hill as a congressional failure, and there is, I think, a much greater sense of the need to playa more vigorous, more active role. Congress of course can't generate and develop in most cases a coherent foreign policy, but it can act as a restraint and a force to modify presidential initiative.
RT: Can this not compromise the government's position in the eyes of other nations with which it has to deal in secrecy? SO: There is a great deal of misunderstanding because it is such an unusual system and people are inclined to think that because the President says something that is American foreign policy. In many cases that is true, but while the President can proclaim his administration's foreign policy, he can't implement it without Congress. And so American foreign policy is a combination of the efforts of the President and Congress and often is the result of a compromise. RT: That's interesting because it brings me to something that is of much greater concern to us. As you know, a study team from the House Committee on Foreign Affairs visited India and Pakistan late last year. You must have of course seen its report in which it made some very interesting observations that seem to take into account Indian sensibilities in a way that we don't often see in the American media or American governmental institutions. For instance, one of the conclusions the study reached was that the proposed American military aid package to Pakistan "presents {he U.S. with narrow'margins of decision and difficult dilemmas. Amid these problems there is no clear and unencumbered foreign policy advantage to the United States." Now, I understand this was the recommendation of the study team, and it pleased us in India; but why did Congress subsequently reject the study and approve military aid to Pakistan? Could you throw some light? SO: What that study says is there are tradeoffs and there are costs to military aid to PakisJan, and that's a part of the policy and if people are sensitive to the policy they see this. I think it's useful to kind of go through the process as it takes place. First of all you have the discussion within the executive branch of a proposal to sell F-16s to Pakistan. That's discussed internally within the bureaucracy. People
whose responsibility it is to be concerned with India argue the concerns of India and try to make clear within the councils of the executive branch the problems, the constraints, the possible effect on India. RT: Don't they come to you for that? SH: No, no, this is within the executive branch. And some of them may argue that we should not sell arms to Pakistan. But a decision is reached and within the executive branch there is discipline and people say, "All right, that is the decision, we shall support that." And so they go to Congress and say, "Here's what we propose to do and here's why we think it's a good idea.", Congress in a much more open way then debates quite publicly these issues, and the staff report prepared for the information and insight of the members of the House, and particularly the Foreign Affairs Committee, brings out more publicly some of the advantages and costs of this proposal. And then, in the legislation, and in the material associated with the legislation that allowed that to go forward, Congress makes certain things quite clear. For example, it made clear its concern over human rights situations in Pakistan, it made clear its concern over the possibility that Pakistan might use such military assistance with respect to India rather than Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, and it made especially clear its concern about Pakistan's nuclear program. I think one very important other element of this is that when Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act that provided funding for the development assistance to Pakistan, it strengthened the provisions on nuclear proliferation in such a way that if Pakistan were to explode a nuclear device all aid w9uld be stopped immediately. The President could extend aid for 30 days, but at the end of those 30 days aid could be continued only if both Houses of Congress had passed pieces of legislation authorizing its continuation. RT: And you think that that kind of conditionality stemmed from this sensitive, as I like to call it, report of the study team? Did it have any influence? SH: Oh yes, certainly. That was one of the impacts. We wrote a couple of studies also that reflected India's concerns. We did not take a position one way or
"American foreign policy is a combination of the efforts of the President and the Congress and often is the result of a compromise." another but certainly we pointed out the consequences, the advantages as well as the costs for American-Indian relations in this pattern. RT: Your division must have quite an invidious task if it has to supply information to both sides of the House and give it information that helps it to come to an objective determination of American interest; you must often be skating on thin ice. How do you get around that, you and your team? SH: Well, objectivity does not mean there is one correct answer. I think a balanced approach suggests that there are various ways of emphasizing different values. For some people the concern about Soviet expansion is paramount, and must come first even at a sacrifice to U.S.-India relations. For other people that anti-Soviet concern is balanced by strong concern for India's continued development and for good' U.S.-India relations. What we try and do is reflect the perspectives, the line of argument and the kinds of factual basis that support these different kinds of perspectives and reflect various possible developments that the United States might want to work toward. RT: Do you find that you have to refer back often to your researchers and scholars because the reports' have been too one-sided in the weighing of evidence on any question? SH: That's the task of management. All of us have individual predispositions and values that creep into what we do, and so we do a lot of sharing of drafts. On the material we have prepared about South Asia, I have, taken a particular interest in reviewing and discussing things with our analysts. RT: What were you doing here 20 years ago when you were in Bangalore? SH: In Bangalore from 1962 to 1964 my wife and I were running an in-service
training program for social workers in a slum area, at a very fine institution. We worked with a group of about 25 workers in that institution to try and help develop their social work skills. RT: And then you went on to take your postgraduate degrees and there too your concern was India? SH: Political development, particularly political and economic development. I became interested in administrative problems and came back to India and did research, mainly in Tamil Nadu, on agricultural administration from the village level right up to the state level, and so I studied a particular program. RT: But then are you not accused of having some extent of bias toward India because of your antecedents in your work for the U.S. Congress? SH: Oh, there's always that danger; so recognizing that, I make sure that the things I review or write are reviewed by others who don't share that bias. It's a protection for us. RT: I suppose you're best qualified to say that because you work in an ivory tower, a library atmosphere, and you must be able to see the statements in documents in cold print without all the emotion of rhetoric and so on. SH: Well, I think what we see are the bureaucratic and congressional politics of foreign policy decisionmaking. We see that the rhetoric is often a tactic which the President uses to indicate where he wants to go. He knows that Congress won't agree fully, but he states his bargaining position and then Congress comes back with its own bargaining position, and a compromise is worked out. I think sometimes the very firm statements that come out of the President as a part of this process are taken as American policy without the recognition that this is the President's bargaining position that he recognizes will have to be modified. 0 About the Participants\ Stanley Heginbotham is the divisional chief and senior specialist, Foreign Affairs and National Defense Divis.ion, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. Rasheed Talib, until recently executive editor of India Today, is now a consultant to that magazine and to the National Council of Applied Economic Research.
When I was five, Ihad an experience that marked me for life. Pathe News sent a photographer from New York to Savannah to take a picture of a chicken of mine. This chicken, a buff Cochin Bantam, had the distinction of being able to walk either forward or backward. Her fame had spread through the press, and by the time she reached the attention of Pathe News, I suppose there was nowhere left for her to go-forward or backward. Shortly after that she died, as now seems fitting. If I put this information in the beginning of an article on peacocks, it is because I am always being asked why I raise them, and I have no short or reasonable answer. From that day with the Pathe man I began to collect
chickens. What had been only a mild interest became a passion, a quest. I had to have more and more chickens. I favored those with one green eye and one orange or with overlong necks and crooked combs. I wanted one with three legs or three wings but nothing in that line turned up. I pondered over the picture in Robert Ripley's book, Believe It or Not, of a rooster that had survived for thirty days without his head; but I did not have a scientific temperament. I could sew in a fashion and I began to make clothes for chickens. A gray bantam named Colonel Eggbert wore a white pique coat with a lace collar and two buttons in the back. Apparently Pathe News never heard of any of these other chickens of mine; it never sent another photographer.
The King of Birds
My quest, whatever it was actually for, ended with peacocks. Instinct, not knowledge, led me to them. I had never seen or heard one. Although I had a pen of pheasants and a pen of quail, a flock of turkeys, seventeen geese, a tribe of mallard ducks, three Japanese silky bantams, two Polish Crested ones, and several chickens of a cross between these last and the Rhode Island Red, I felt a lack. I knew that the peacock had been the bird of Hera, the wife of Zeus, but since that time it had probably come down in the world-the Florida Market Bulletin advertised three-year-old peafowl at sixty-five dollars a pair. I had been quietly reading these ads for some years when one day, seized, I circled an ad in the Bulletin and passed it to my mother. The ad was for a peacock and hen with four seven-week-old peabiddies. "I'm going to order me those," I said. My mother read the ad. "Dont't those things eat flowers?" she asked. "They'll eat Startena like the rest of them," I said. The peafowl arrived by Railway Express from Eustis, Florida, on a mild day in October. When my mother and I arrived at the station, the crate was on the platform and from one end of it protruded a long, royal-blue neck and crested head. A white line above and below each eye gave the investigating head an expression of alert composure. I wondered if this bird, accustomed to parade about in a Florida orange grove, would readily adjust hiII1self to a Georgia dairy farm. I jumped out of the car and bounded forward. The head withdrew. At home we uncrated the party in a pen with a top on it. The man who sold me the birds had written that I should keep them penned up for a week or ten days and then let them out at dusk at the spot where I wanted them to roost; thereafter, they would return every night to the same roosting place. He had also warned me that the cock would not have his full complement of tail feathers when he arrived; the peacock sheds his tail in late summer and does not regain it fully until after Christmas. As soon as the birds were out of the crate, I sat down on it and began to look at them. I have been looking at them ever since, from one station or another, and always with the same awe as on that first occasion; though I have always, I feel, been able to keep a balanced view and an impartial attitude. The peacock I had bought had nothing whatsoever in the way of a tail, but he carried himself as if he not only had a train behind him but a retinue to attend it. On that first occasion, my problem was so greatly what to look at first that my gaze moved constantly from the cock to the hen to the four young peachickens, while they, except that they gave me as wide a berth as possible, did nothing to indicate they knew I was in the pen. Over the years their attitude toward me has not grown more generous. If I appear with food, they condescend, when no other way can be found, to eat it from my hand; if I appear without food, I am just another object. If I refer to them as "my" peafowl, the pronoun is legal, nothing more. I am the menial, at the beck and squawk of any feathered worthy who wants service. When I first uncrated these birds, in my frenzy I said, "I want so many of them that every time I go out the door, I'll run into one." Now every time I go out the door, four or five run into me-and give me only the faintest recognition. Nine years have passed since my first peafowl arrived. I have forty beaks to feed. Necessity is the mother of several other things besides invention.
ora chicken that grows up to have such exceptional good looks, the peacock starts life with an inauspicious appearance. The peabiddy is the color of those large objectionable moths that flutter about light bulbs on summer nights. Its only distinguished features are its eyes, a luminous gray, and a brown crest which begins to sprout from the back of its head when it is ten days old. This looks at first like a bug's antennae and later like the head feathers of an [American] Indian. In six weeks green flecks appear in its neck, and in a few more weeks a cock can be distinguished from a hen by the speckles on his back. The hen's back gradually fades to an even gray and her appearance becomes shortly what it will always be. I have never thought the peahen unattractive, even though she lacks a long tail and any significant decoration. I have even once or twice thought her more attractive than the cock, more subtle and refined; but these moments of boldness pass. The cock's plumage requires two years to attain its pattern, and for the rest of his life this chicken will act as though he designed it himself. For his first two years he might have been put together out of a rag bag by an unimaginative hand. During his first year he has a buff breast, a speckled back, a green neck like his mother's, and a short gray tail. During his second year he has a black breast, his sire's blue neck, a back which is slowly turning the green and gold it will remain; but still no long tail. In his third year he reaches his majority and acquires his tail. For the rest of his life-and a peachicken may live to be thirty-five-he will have nothing better to do than manicure it, furl and unfurl it, dance forward and backward with it spread, scream when it is stepped upon, and arch it carefully when he steps through a puddle. Not every part of the peacock is striking to look at, even when he is full-grown. His upper wing feathers are a striated black and white and might have been borrowed from a Barred Rock fryer; his end wing feathers are the color of clay; his legs are long, thin., and iron-colored; his feet are big; and he appears to be wearing the short pants now so much in favor with playboys in the summer. These extend downward, buff-colored and sleek, from what might be a blue-black waistcoat. One would not be disturbed to find a watch chain hanging from this, but none does. Analyzing the appearance of the peacock as he stands with his tail folded, I find the parts incommensurate with the whole. The fact is that with his tail folded, nothing but his bearing saves this bird from being a laughingstock. With his tail spread, he inspires a range of emotions, but I have yet to hear laughter. The usual reaction is silence, at least for a time. The cock opens his tail by shaking himself violently until it is gradually lifted in an arch around him. Then, before anyone has had a chance to see it, he swings around so that his back faces the spectator. This has been taken by some to be insult and by others to be whimsey. I suggest it means only that the peacock is equally well satisfied with either view of himself. Since I have been keeping peafowl, I have been visite.d at least once a year by first-grade schoolchildren, who learn by living. I am used to hearing this group chorus as the peacock swings around, "Oh, look at his underwear!" This "underwear" is a stiff gray tail, raised to support the larger one, and beneath" it a puff of black feathers that would be suitable for some really regal woman-a Cleopatra or a Clytemnestra-to use to powder her nose. When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is
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possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing, haloed suns. This is the moment when most people are silent. "Amen! Amen!" an old Negro woman once cried when this happened, and I have heard many similar remarks at this moment that show the inadequacy of human speech. Some people whistle; a few, for once, are silent. A truck driver who was driving up with a load of hay and found a peacock turning before him in the middle of the road shouted, "Get a load of that bastard!" and braked his truck to a shattering halt. I have never known a strutting peacock to budge a fraction of an inch for truck or tractor or automobile. It is up to the vehicle to get out of the way. No peafowl of mine has ever been run over, though one year one of them lost a foot in the mowing machine.
M
any people, I have found, are congenitally unable to appreciate the sight of a peacock. Once or twice I have been asked what the peacock is "good for"-a question which gets no answer from me because it deserves none. The telephone company sent a lineman out one day to repair our telephone. After the job was finished, the man, a large fellow with a suspicious expression half hidden by a yellow helmet, continued to idle about, trying to coax a cock that had been watching him to strut. He wished to add this experience to a large number of others he had apparently had. "Come on now, bud," he said, "get the show on the road, upsy-daisy, come on now, snap it up, snap it up." The peacock, of course, paid no attention to this. "What ails him?" the man asked. "Nothing ails him," I said. "He'll put it up terreckly. All you have to do is wait." The man trailed about alter the cock for another fifteen minutes or so; then, in disgust, he got back in his truck and started off. The bird shook himself and his tail rose around him. "He's doing it!" I screamed. "Hey, wait! He's doing it!" The man swerved the truck back around again just as tht. cock turned and faced him with the spread tail. The display was perfect. The bird turned slightly to the right and the little planets above him hung in bronze, then he turned slightly to the left and they were hung in green. I went up to the truck to see how the man was affected by the sight. He was staring at the peacock with rigid concentration, as if he were trying to read fine print at a distance. In a second the cock lowered his tail and stalked off. "Well, what did you think of that?" I asked. "Never saw such long ugly legs," the man said. "I bet that rascal could outrun a bus." Some people are genuinely affected by the sight of a peacock, even with his tail lowered, but do not care to admit it; others appear to be incensed by it. Perhaps they have the suspicion that the bird has formed some unfavorable opinion of them. The peacock himself is a careful and dignified investigator. Visitors to our place, instead of being barked at by dogs rushing from under the porch, are squalled at by peacocks whose blue necks and crested heads pop up from behind tufts of grass, peer out of bushes, and crane downward from the roof of the house, where the bird has flown, perhaps for the view. One of mine stepped from under the shrubbery one day and came forward to inspect a carful of people who had driven up to buy a calf. An old man and five or six white-haired, barefooted children were piling out the back of the automobile as the bird approached. Catching sight of him they stopped in their tracks and stared, plainly hacked to find this superior figure blocking
their path. There was silence as the bird regarded them, his head drawn back at its most majestic angle, his folded train glittering behind him in the sunlight. "Whut is thet thang?" one of the small boys asked finally in a sullen voice. The old man had got out of the car and was gazing at the peacock with an astounded look of recognition. "I ain't seen one of them since my grandaddy's day," he said, respectfully removing his hat. "Folks used to have 'em, but they don't no more." "Whut is it?" the child asked again in the same tone he had used before. "Churren," the old man said, "that's the king of the birds!" The children received this information in silence. After a minute they climbed back into the car and continued from there to stare at the peacock, their expressions annoyed, as if they disliked catching the old man in the truth.
T
he peacock does most of his serious strutting in the spring and summer when he has a full tail to do it with. Usually he begins shortly after breakfast, struts for several hours, desists in the heat of the day, and begins again in the late afternoon. Each cock has a favorite station where he performs every day in the hope of attracting some passing hen; but if I have found anyone indifferent to the peacock's display, besides the telephone lineman, it is the peahen. She seldom casts an eye at it. The cock, his tail raised in a shimmering arch around him, will turn this way and that, and with his clay-colored wing feathers touching the ground, will dance forward and backward, his neck curved, his beak parted, his eyes glittering. Meanwhile the hen goes about her business, diligently searching the ground as if any bug in the grass were of more importance than the unfurled map of the universe which floats nearby. Some people have the notion that only the peacock spreads his tail and that he does it only when the hen is present. This is not so. A peafowl only a few hours hatched will raise what tail he has-it will be about the size of a thumbnail-and will strut and turn and back and bow exactly as if he were three years old and had some reason to be doing it. The hens will raise their tails when they see an object on the ground which alarms them, or sometimes when they have nothing better to do and the air is brisk. Brisk air goes at once to the peafowl's head and inclines him to be sportive. A group of birds will dance together, or four or five will chase one another around a bush or tree. Sometimes one will chase himself, end his frenzy with a spirited leap into the air, and then stalk off as if he had never been involved in the spectacle. Frequently the cock combines the lifting of his tail with the raising of his voice. He appears to receive through his feet some shock from the center of the earth, which travels upward through him and is released: Eee-ooo-ii! Eee-ooo-ii! To the melancholy this sound is melancholy and to the hysterical it is hysterical. To me it has always sounded like a cheer for an invisible parade. The hen is not given to these outbursts. She makes a noise like a mule's bray-heehaw, heehaw, aa-aawww-and makes it only when necessary. In the fall and winter, peafowl are usually silent unless some racket disturbs them; but in the spring and summer, at short intervals during the day and night, the cock, lowering his neck and throwing back his head, will give out with seven or eight screams in succession as if this message were the one on earth which needed most urgently to be heard. At night these calls take on a minor key and the air for miles around is charged with them. It has been a long time since I let
my first peafowl out at dusk to roost in the cedar trees behind the house. Now fifteen or twenty still roost there; but the original old cock from Eustis, Florida, stations himself on top of the barn, the bird who lost his foot in the mowing machine sits on a flat shed near the horse stall, there are others in the trees by the pond, several in the oaks at the side of the house, and one that cannot be dissuaded from roosting on the water tower. From all these stations calls and answers echo through the night. The peacock perhaps has violent dreams. Often he wakes and screams "Help! Help!" and then from the pond and the barn and the trees around the house a chorus of adjuration begins: Lee-yon lee-yon,¡ Mee-yon mee-yon! Eee-e-yoy eee-e-yoy! Eee-e-yoy eee-e-yoy! The restless sleeper may wonder if he wakes or dreams. ist hard to tell the truth about this bird. The habits of any peachicken left to himself would hardly be noticeable, but multiplied by forty, they become a situation. I was correct that my peachickens would all eat Startena; they also eat everything else. Particularly they eat flowers. My mother's fears were all borne out. Peacocks not only eat flowers, they eat them systematically, beginning at the head of a row and going down it. If they are not hungry, they will pick the flower anyway, if it is attractive, and let it drop. For general eating they prefer chrysanthemums and roses. When they are not eating flowers, they enjoy sitting on top of them, and where the peacock sits he will eventually fashion a dusting hole. Any chicken's dusting hole is out of place in a flower bed, but the peafowl's hole, being the size of a small crater, is more so. When he dusts he all but obliterates the sight of himself with sand. Usually when someone arrives at full gallop with the leveled broom, he can see nothing through the cloud of dirt and flying flowers but a few green feathers and a beady, pleasure-taking eye. From the beginning, relations between these birds and my mother were strained. She was forced, at first, to get up early in the morning and go out with her clippers to reach the Lady Bankshire and the Herbert Hoover roses before some peafowl had breakfasted upon them; now she has halfway solved her problem by erecting hundreds of feet of twenty-four-inch-high wire to fence the flower beds. She contends that peachickens do not have enough sense to jump over a low fence. "If it were a high wire," she says, "they would jump onto it and over, but they don't have sense enough to jump over a low wire." It is useless to argue with her on this matter. "It's not a challenge," I say to her; but she has made up her mind. In addition to eating flowers, peafowl also eat fruit, a habit which has created a lack of cordiality toward them on the part of my uncle, who had the fig trees planted about the place because he has an appetite for figs himself. "Get that scoundrel out of that fig bush!" he will roar, rising from his chair at the sound of a limb breaking, and someone will have to be dispatched with a broom to the fig trees. Peafowl also enjoy flying into barn lofts and eating peanuts off peanut hay; this has not endeared them to our dairyman. And as they have a taste for fresh garden vegetables, they have often run afoul of the dairyman's wife. The peacock likes to sit on gates or fence posts and allow his tail to hang down. A peacock on a fence post is a superb sight. SIXor seven peacocks on a gate are beyond description; but it is not very go'od for the gate. Our fence posts tend to lean in one direction or another and all our gates open diagonally.
I
In short, I am the only person on the place who is willing to underwrite, with something more than tolerance, the presence of peafowl. In return, I am blessed with ,their rapid multiplication. The population figure I give out is forty, but for some time now I have not felt it wise to take a census. I had been told before I bought my birds that peafowl are difficult to raise. It is not so, alas. In May the peahen finds a nest in some fence corner and lays five or six large buff-colored eggs. Once a day, thereafter, she gives an abrupt hee-haa-awww! and shoots like a rocket from her nest. Then for half ;10 hour, her neck ruffled and stretched forward, she parades around the premises, announcing wha't she is about. I listen with mixed emotions, In twenty-eight days the hen comes off with five or six mothlike, murmuring peachicks. The cock ignores these unless one gets under his feet (then he pecks it over the head until it gets elsewhere), but the hen is a watchful-mother and every year a good many of the young survive. Those that withstand illnesses and predators (the hawk, the fox, and the opossum) over the winter seem impossible to destroy, except by violence. A man selling fence posts tarried at our place one day and told me that he had once had eighty peafowl on his farm. He cast a nervous eye at two of mine standing nearby. "In the spring, we couldn't hear ourselves think," he said. "As soon as you lifted your voice, they lifted their'n, if not before. All our fence posts wobbled. In the summer they ate all the tomatoes off the vines. Scuppernongs went the same way. My wife said she raised her flowers for herself and she was not going to have them eat up by a chicken no matter how long his tail was. And in the fall they shed them feathers all over the place anyway and it was a job to clean up. Myoid grandmother was living with us then and she was eighty-five. She said, 'Either they go, or I go.'" "Who went?" I asked. "We still got twenty of them in the freezer," he said. "And how," I asked, looking significantly at the two standing nearby, "did they taste?" "No better than any other chicken," he said, "but I'd a heap rather eat them than hear them." havetried imagining that the single peacock I see before me is the only one I have, but then one comes to join him; another flies off the roof, four or five crash out of the crepe-myrtle hedge; from the pond one screams and from the barn I hear the dairyman denouncing another that has got into the cowfeed. My kin are given to such phrases as, "Let's face it." I do not like to let my thoughts linger in morbid channels, but there are times when such facts as the price of wire fencing and the price of Startena and the yearly gain in peafowl all run uncontrolled through my head. Lately I have had a recurrent dream: I am five years old and a peacock. A photographer has been sent from New York and a long table is laid in celebration. The meal is to be an exceptional one: myself. I scream, "Help! Help!" and awaken. Then from the pond and the barn and the trees around the house, I hear that choru~ of jubilation begin:
I
Lee-yon lee-yon, Mee-yon mee-yon! Eee-e-yoy eee-e-yoy! Eee-e-yoy eee-e-yoy! I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs. D
A critical appraisal of Flannery O'Connor on page 23.
by Jacquelin
Singh begins -Editor
Foster Grandparents Below: First Lady Nancy Reagan visits a foster grandparent center in a suburb of Washington. Bottom: Dianna Hanson and her foster grandmother, Virline Parker, share a close relationship. Parker spends two hours a day, five days a week, with Dianna, a victim of Down's Syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality. They do all the things that grandmothers and granddaughters normally enjoy together.
The American Foster Grandparent Program brings together the lonely aged and the handicapped young-giving both a chance to love and be loved, care and be cared for. Many older Americans who have spent most of their lives caring for children face the prospect of years of loneliness after their children have grown up and left
home. And many children, because of emotional. physical or financial handicaps, have special need for the attention of loving adults. The program combines the functions and responsibilities of family, school, and often of a hospital too. Volunteer parttime grandparents teach their foster grandchildren skills such
as woodworking, drawing, crocheting and fishing; help non-English-speaking children learn the language; show teenage mothers how to bathe their new babies; give retarded children the undivided attention they need to help them make sense of a confusing world; or they simply listen to, read to, or comfort the children.
The Foster Grandparent Program is administered by ACTION, the agency that runs the Federal Government's volunteer services in the United States and abroad. The proâ&#x20AC;˘ gram, begun in 1965, now has more than¡ 17,000 volunteers working with some 45,000 children in hundreds of individual projects. These projects are run
g.J -
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by local public or private nonprofit organizations and include day-care centers, hospitals, homes for the dependent and neglected, schools, and other institutions. To become a foster grandparent, a person must be 60 or older, in good health, in a low-income bracket, and no longer working in a regular job.
Left: Frank Ennis plays with a young friend at the Franklin _ Wright Day Care Center in Detroit. Below: In the chapel at the Kansas Neurological Institute, Wayne whispers a secret into the ear of his foster grandmother, Nellie Wagoner.
Each must agree to work 20 hours a week, spending 2 hours a day with each of two children. The foster grandparents get small, tax-free weekly stipends. transportation to and from their projects, lunch each workday, ii1surance policies, and annual physical examinations. These benefits help supplement a small income, but the attraction of the program for all the foster grandparents is the children more than money. "Each child is so different, so wonderful, and they need us so very much,' says one foster grandmother. "I was very lonesome sitting Betty Suckerman, who works at Denver's National Jewish Hospital for Respiratory Diseases, teaches a baby to clap hands.
around home," says a foster grandfather, "but now I look forward to being with the children every day. I enjoy being with them because they need me and I need them-we need each other." The Foster Grandparent Program is a special concern of First Lady Nancy Reagan. She became active in the program in California in 1967 when her husband was governor, and she has continued to support it since then. She has met with ACTION officials in Washington to discuss ways to expand the program and to seek additional fin2ncing from private sources, and she has filmed 60 television ahnouncements asking for donations for the program. She often visits these projects during her travels
around the United St3tes. What foster grandparents do is not always easy. Work with retarded children, in particular, involves superhuman patience and long-delayed rewards. One woman decided to teach a young brain-damaged girl how to use scissors. It was three years before the girl made her first cut in a piece of paper. Another woman faithfully spent two hours a day, five days a week, with a bed-ridden retarded girl who had never responded to anyone. After five years, the girl finally began to smile when her foster grandmother entered the room and soon she was feeding herself. Normal children in hospitals also have special needs. Louise Cowan, 88, a foster grandparent in a Denver, Colorado, hospi-
tal, says, "The poor little kids who come in here are sick or hurt. The doctor pokes at them. their parents leave them, and they are frightened and don'l understand. That's where we take over. I never take part in a medical procedure because 1 don'l want the kids to associate me with those things. 1 jusl spoil them." The adults can find their lives changed as well. After hearing aboul the Foster Grandparent Program, a woman in Shively, Arkansas, decided 10 join. "I Ihought it would be nice to do something for someone else," she says. "That way 1 wouldn't notice my arthritis so much. Today, it's a new world for me. I have something importanl to do, and 1 feel good. Arthritis':' I jusl haven't had time." 0
A Prophet, Not Without Honor Flannery 0' Connor wrote of an American South without crinolines or magnolias. Her unblinking vision of her fellow humans was tempered by a profound Christian faith. She accepted personal suffering as a path to self-knowledge. Like the peacock in one of her best known short stories, "The Displaced Person," Flannery O'Connor had her attention "fixed in the distance on something no one else could see." She once described her fictional perspective as "seeing near things with their extensions of meaning and thus ... seeing far things close up"; she went on to associate this way of looking at things with the idea of the prophet as a "realist of distances." That she saw herself as a prophet-not in the sense of telling the future, but of revealing the truth-there is no doubt. It was part of her stance as a writer "with Christian concerns" who had a vision to share. The impatient energy that powered the vision and the insistence on our partaking of it remind us of qualities of temperament E.M. Forster ascribes to the visionary writer, or "prophet," as he calls him. Such a novelist, he says, is one who trains his eyes on the distant horizon (where we are not even looking) while stubbing his toe on an obstacle underfoot, a breaker of rules, a thrower around of furniture in the halls of fiction, but above all, a bard possessed by a song of almost unbearable portent and beauty. It was a term Forster used sparingly. Three powerful influences shaped Flannery O'Connor's vision. She was born with the first two: Roman Catholic orthodoxy and a southern background. The third was to come along later when in 1950 she left Connecticut to spend Christmas with her mother in Georgia. She was not only on her way home then, after having lived away in the North for five years, but well on the road to recognition as a fiction writer. By the time the train reached her hometown of Milledgeville, she was desperately ill with what turned out to be disseminated lupus, a disabling, ,disfiguring, incurable disease her father had died of 10 years earlier. Never again was she to leave home for long. On the threshold of a promising career, she had to prepare for death. She was 25' years old.' Later she said that she had had the notion that the life of her writing depended on her staying away from the South, and that she would have persisted in that delusion had she not become ill. As it turned out, she transformed a personal catastrophe into a triumph and discovered in her own sense of physical limitation a symbol of that essential limitation which she considered the bottom line of all hU;luan experienc~ and hence the starting point for any serious
Flannery O'Connor with the "King of Birds" about which she wrote some fascinating observations (page /6).
fiction. She showed no desire to question her fate and no tendency to be angry. In fact, she once undertook a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France, seeking a cure in the waters there only to satisfy her relati~es. Later she confessed that she privately "dreaded the possibility of a miracle," as if she placed a high value on her confrontation with mortality-a means to self-knowledge, both as a Christian and a writer. During the last 14 years of her life she devoted herself to what she called "the habit of art," producing two volumes of short stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge, two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It A way, and various essays and letters. In none of these did she reach out to a popular audience. Instead she became the favorite of intellectual heavyweights, a winner of literary prizes, awards and grants. It takes some gymnastics of the imagination to picture the young O'Connor in this role. The only daughter of an old southern Irish-Catholic family, product of parochial schools and the Georgia State College for \yomen in Milledgeville, she once admitted she had never even' heard of (much less read) writers like Kafka and Faulkner before going "North" to the State University of Iowa for her M.A. in creative writing. One of her professors there recalls; with embarrassment, how during th'eir first interview he had to ask his new student'to write down what she was saying because he couldn't tinderstclnd
a word of her Georgia accent. At first, critics-without thinking very hard about it-hastened to lump her together with other young southern writers that were abundant in the late Forties and early Fifties. She was brilliant, but grotesque, using violence and distortion for their own sakes; in short, a Southern Gothic. This was a label she took vigorous pains to peel off, and eventually she succeeded. Only in the last six years of her life did her work come to be recognized as rich in spiritual heroism and beauty, originality and power. Overcome no doubt by grief, writers of tributes shortly after her death in 1964 compared her to Aeschylus and Sophocles. Now that nearly 20 years have gone by, critical opinion is less extreme, but it. still allows for the possibility of her being around for many more years as a literary presence to be reckoned with. Sometimes it seems that she deliberately chose to do everything the hard way. The influences that she regarded as strengths, indeed essential to her writing, are the very elements that readers have the greatest difficulty with and which critics have found to be real hurdles. Firstly, she felt good fiction ought to exploit to the full what she termed "manners." By this she meant the tacit rules of behavior and the fine nuances of speech that lend shape and texture to a particular setting-in her case, of course, the South of her time. The trouble is that her depiction of the region pulverizes all the romantic notions we've gathered from here and there. In her South there are no Scarlet O'Haras, no folks from Tobacco Road either, and no magnolias in the moonlight. We wander around on the scene, watching what is going on, looking for clues. Gradually we discover how delicate the balance is between white and white, between black and white, held together as it is by the exercise of manners and social habits that O'Connor reveals primarily through the use of dialogue, but also through physical gestures that delineate the intricacies of human interaction. Finally the truth is borne home: Southerners of whatever hue are closer to each other than they ever can be to outsiders. And small town Deep South is a place bristling with "no trespassing" signs. Once the locale is accepted on O'Connor's terms, the going is easier. O'Connor admitted that a southern writer was stuck with the South, but at the same time felt that it was a great thing to be stuck with. This is a conviction that her stories, once we get into them, amply confirm. And like other writers of the region, she felt that the loss ot the Civil War was the South's loss of innocence as well-its "fall"-and that it gave southern writers insights ioto human limitations denied to those from other parts of the United States. In fact, she felt southerners were doubly blessed, both in their fall and in having the means to interpret it. What lifts O'Connor's view of life out of her own immediate situation into the universal is the second basic component of her fiction which she referred to as "mystery." She was talking about a religious point of view, a moral awareness, and the acceptance (celebration, even) of God's grace, the divine gift that is at once love itself and God's bestowal upon man of this faculty that enables him to recognize divine love when it is offered. But some critics feel her point of view, involving as it does the supernatural, is inappropriate to contemporary
literature. Others wish she had plunged into the turbulent social issues of her time in a less m~taphysical way; about the civil rights movement or the aftermath of World War II, for example. But O'Connor insisted that good fiction dealt with human nature and that if it used matei-ial that was topical, it still did not use it for a topical purpose. Human nature is most interesting, she finally persuades us, when considered in conjunction with divine grace. This is, in fact, what all her stories are about: man's acceptance or (more often) rejection of grace at a time of crisis. The crisis may be moral or physical, but is usually a combination of the two. Bearing the invisible burden of this supernatural mystery of grace are her grotesque characters whose fanaticism, she said, "is a reproach, not merely an eccentricity." She also claimed that they came about from the prophetic vision peculiar to any novelist whose concerns were Christian. She took heart from the fact that in the South, at any rate, a freak could still be distinguished from a whole man. In that "Christ-haunted" land (dubbed less poetically by H.L. Mencken as the Bible Belt), the sense of the whole, theological man was still intact, she felt. But where the concept is absent, edges get blurred. Where perfectibility is a popular doctrine, freaks take on the semblance of normality. She warned that the only time the freak should be disturbing to us is when he is held up as a whole man. In this area of her fiction O'Connor can easily be misread. She plays the devil's advocate so skillfully that modern readers, accustomed to the antiheroes that are offered up as protagonists in much of contemporary literature, fail to recognize her freaks when they see them. She makes it doubly hard when these physically and spiritually maimed grotesques mouth our own prejudices or offer up our own facile solutions to problems put in southern terms. She explained that as a Christian novelist she found a great deal in modern life that was distorted and consequently repugnant, and that if all her readers shared her point of view, she would not need to include so much violence, so many extreme situations. However, for an audience that was used to seeing the distortions as natural, she needed to make an extra effort. "To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures," she said. Large and startling they are. They generate in the stories the kind of impact that sticks. They stretch an almost insanely controlled tension taut as a strung-out nerve. Besides, the queer construct of humor and violence against which these distortions rub produces a tough, unrelenting pathos that may leave the reader dry-eyed, but not unshaken. She makes a revealing statement about her employment of the grotesque, about her use of mystery and manners, in the article about the peacock (see pages 16-1<)) that can be read as a kind of rejoinder to her critics: "I intend¡ to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs." To give O'Connor the last word here, it's worth looking closely at one of her last stories- "Revelation"(Text continued on page 33)
A Great Visit In a resolute reassessment of Indo-U.S. relations, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi talked with a wide cross section of American political leaders, journalists and prominent intellectuals during her nine days in the United States. Her desire for informal meetings showed a concern with the people-to-people relationship she evidently feels must underlie lasting political understanding. It was a whirlwind tour with many memorable moments.
We are both strong, proud and independent nations ... -PRESIDENT
REAGAN
1 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi arrives in New York. 2 President Reagan and the FirSt Lady welcome Mrs. Gandhi as she arrives at the White House for a state banquet in her honor. 3 Crowds wait to greet Mrs. Gandhi in the gardens of the White House. 4 A revolutionary American drum and pipe corps, complete with 18th-century powdered wigs and cockade hats, marches past Prime Minister Gandhi at the glittering welcoming ceremonies on the White House lawns. 5 The Prime Minister with Secretary of State George Shultz (left) and Vice President George Bush.
Our hand of friendship is stretched out to all...
1Prime Minister Gandhi at the National Press Club in Washington. On the dais are, from left, Katharine Graham (chairman, The Washington Post Company), Sonia Gandhi, Ambassador Harry G. Barnes,Jr., Stanley Cohen (chairman, Press Club Speakers Committee), Vivian Vallberg (club president), Rajiv Gandhi, Selwa Roosevelt (chiefofprotocol), A.K. Sengupta (economic advL<a to the Prime Minister) and Senator Nancy Kassebaum. 2 With Mrs. Gandhi at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D. c., are K.R. Narayanan, India's Ambassador to the United States, and Harry G. Barnes, Jr., U.S. Ambassador to India.
3 Meeting Jonas Salk, inventor of the antipolio vaccine, in Los Angeles. 4 With New York Mayor Edward Koch. 5 Receiving a silver bowl and the key to the city of Los Angeles from Mayor Thomas Bradley.
6 At a tea meeting with members of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S.. Senate. With the Prime Minister are, from left, Senator Claiborne Pel!, ranking Democrat; Senator Charles Percy, chairman; Rajiv Gandhi; and John Sherman Cooper, former u.s. Ambassador to India. 7 With Thomas P. O'Neill (left), Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Clement 1. Zablocki (right), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. 29
1Mrs. Gandhi at the United Nations, presenting India's gift of an I I th-century sculpture of Surya, the Hindu sun god. 2 Throughout her tour, many people lined the streets to have a glimpse of the Indian Prime Minister. 3 Mrs. Gandhi answers questions from a panel of reporters at NBC's Meet the Press program, one of the most popular TV news shows in the United States. 4,8 Mrs. Gandhi visits a gurdwara in the Richmond Hills section of New York City.
5,6 Sharing a.light moment with Robert Goheen, former American Ambassador to India, who presided at a luncheon meeting in Prime Minister Gandhi's honor by the Foreign Policy Association and the Asia Society in cooperation with the Far East-America Council of Commerce and Industry and the India Chamber of Commerce of America. The luncheon at the huge Grand Ballroom (6) of New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel was attended by 1,600 persons.
9, 10, 11 Along with Sonia Gandhi, Mayor Eileen Anderson of Honolulu and Priyanka Gandhi, the Prime Minister claps as baby elephant Mari salutes the children of Honolulu, to whom she presented the elephant. Mrs. Gandhi was welcomed by the traditional hula dancers of Hawaii.
7 Norman Palmer, professor
emeritus, political science, at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading authority on Indian political processes, and Stella Kramrisch, curator of Indian art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, were among the hundreds of prominent Americans who met Mrs. Gandhi. 12 Prime Minister Gandhi talks with Martha Graham, an innovator of modern dance. 13 Mrs. Gandhi with Jerry Brown, Governor of California. 14 Civic reception for Prime Minister Gandhi at the City Hall in Los Angeles was attended by hundreds of Indians living in the area.
even while keeping in mind that trying to contain one of them in the space of a brief summary is like trying to stuff a storm cloud into a rain barrel. "Revelation" begins as we enter a doctor's waiting room in a small town in the Deep South. There is a farm owner, Claud Turpin and his wife, a "pleasant lady" accompanied by her sullen 18-year-old daughter, home on holiday from a college up North, a family of landless poor whites represented by a listless, mannerless child, his talkative mother, and an autistic old woman in tennis shoes. There is also an old man who pretends to be asleep so that he won't have to give his seat to a lady, and another woman, a gum chewer, who is "not white-trash, just common." The whole of southern white society is cooped up in this claustrophobic little room. Things happen slowly, at first. The conversation between the strangers is hesitant and cliche-ridden. We settle down to chuckle at the quaint country talk, chiefly between Mrs. Turpin and the pleasant lady about the Turpins' pig farm. Gradually, however, the tension rises as the white-trashy mother intrudes on the conversation, to the annoyance of Mrs. Turpin. We begin to listen more carefully. Intermittently we're given access to Mrs. Turpin's thoughts as she imagines what it would be like if Jesus were suddenly to say there were only two things she could be: "a nigger or white-trash." She desires to be nothing more, or less, than what she feels herself to be: a person whose philosophy of life was to help anybody out who needs it, a person with a little bit of everything. Playing her mental game to the finish, she chooses to be a "neat, clean respectable Negro woman herself, but black." She adds a third possible choice-that of being ugly-as she slowly becomes aware that the sullen college girl, her face ravaged by acne and buried in a book, is incredibly ugly. The girl looks up from time to time to cast Mrs. Turpin an inexplicable look of searing hatred. The brief appearance of a black delivery boy gives rise, after he goes out, to more talk, this time of Negroes. We notice uneasily that the mute hostility of the ugly girl rises with every predictable platitude about blacks the others make. Her northern education has, no doubt, alienated her from everyone else in the room. Yet her furious, silent response is out of proportion, and it is Mrs. Turpin on whom she fixes all her attention. At the same time we don't like what we hear Mrs. Turpin and the white-trashy woman saying. Even the pleasant lady seems infuriatingly patronizing. At this point there doesn't seem to be anybody in that doctor's office a nonsouthern reader can identify with. Without our realizing it, the battle line has been drawn, and we don't even know on which side we belong. All we know is that the girl and Mrs. Turpin will have to have it out-somehow. Then Mrs. Turpin suddenly exclaims: If it's one thing I am, it's grateful. When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, "Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is! Oh thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!"
The air is still vibrating with these words when the smoldering volcano of a girl takes this moment to erupt. She hurls the book she's been reading at Mrs. Turpin, hitting her in the eye. Then she flies at her and sinks her nails into the woman's throat. Even after the girl is subdued and pinned down on the floor, she thrashes about with insane energy. Finally she delivers the last thrust. In a whisper she says to a dazed Mrs. Turpin, "Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog." The physical violence wreaked on Mrs. Turpin is minor compared to the spiritual shock the maniacal girl's words give. Mrs. Turpin feels they "brook no repudiation." She wonders why she has been chosen for that devastating message when others in the room better qualify for it. The Turpins return home. A shattered Mrs. Turpin goes up to the "pig parlor" -a concrete enclosure that has to be hosed down every evening - to do the final chore for the day. Surrounded by restless, grunting hogs, standing at her full height, all her 180 pounds balanced tall on two firmly planted feet, she questions God: "What do you send me a message like that for? How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?" As her bewilderment and anger mount, she demands: "Who do you think you are?" O'Connor continues: "The question carried over the pasture and across the highway and the cotton field and returned to her clearly like an answer from beyond the wood." Mrs. Turpin stands transfixed, as if "absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge." The story ends with the extraordinary vision she has as she watches the sunset, its red glow suffusing the softly grunting pigs that appear "to pant with a secret life." She sees a single purple streak in the sky as a vast swinging bridge across which a horde of souls is going toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the -procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, hact always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right .... They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were heing burned away.
The moment of grace accepted, Mrs. Turpin turns back toward the farmhouse. In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting 0 hallelujah. About the Author: Jacquelin Singh, a frequent contributor to SPAN, is the author of Dee Kay and the Mystery of the Laughing Natraj (fiction) and several nonfiction educational books.
he human population of the earth probably passed the 4,300 million point in 1979, and has been increasing by some 74 million each year since then. At its current 1.7 percent rate of increase, every three years the world population grows by nearly as many people as the 220 million living in the United States in 1979. Every five days we add another million people. This population explosion seems all the more awesome when seen in the perspective of humanity's development as a species. During the hundreds of thousands of years of the Old Stone Age when Homo sapiens was a hunter and food gatherer, for example, the world population probably never exceeded 10 million. The world reached its first 1,000 million around 1800-some two to five million years after the appearance of the first humanlike creatures. Adding the second 1,000 million took about 130 years, to 1930. The third 1,000 million was reached after only 30 more years, in 1960, and the fourth after 15 years, in 1975. About 1965, the world's rate of population growth climbed to 2 percent-a rate at which numbers double in 35 years. The rapid expansion of world population is putting tremendous pressures on the earth's resources, environment and social fabric. The pressures are currently felt most acutely in less-developed countries (LDCs) where hundreds of millions
T
rate: 0.7 percent-reflecting an average birthrate of 16 per 1,000 and a death rate of nine. Although reliable data to verify trends are lacking for many less-developed countries, most demographers are convinced that fertility has now begun to decline in developing countries as a whole, and in some LDCs the decline is much more rapid than it was in Europe. At the same time, the precipitous decline in LDC death rates that marked the 1950s and early 1960s appears to have slowed. Parker Mauldin and the late Bernard Berelson, former Population Council researchers, estimated that in the decade from 1965 to 1975 the birthrate of 94 LDCs with 98 percent of the developing world's population declined on average about 13 percent, from about 41 to 35.5 births per 1,000 population. In 28 developing countries containing over twothirds of the world's population, the decline ranged from 10 to 40 percent. The decline was most marked in Asia and Latin America. The slowdown in declining death rates, which economist Davidson Gwatkin calls "the end of an era," seems related to the
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is Sh~~~t place among the some threequarters of the world's population living in the less-developed regionsLatin America, Africa and Asia (minus Japan). Here, previously high death rates fell rapidly after World War II, and by about 1977 were at the comparatively low level of 12 deaths per 1,000 population per year. Since birthrates average 33 per 1,000 annually, the population in these regions is growing at a rapid 2.1 percent each year. By contrast, the other quarter of the globe's population, in developed regions (the United States and Canada, Europe, the U.S.S.R., Japan, Australia and New Zealand), grows at a much lower annual
by JEAN VAN DER TAK, CARL HAUB and ELAINE MURPHY
WORLD POPULATION GROWTH (MILLIONS), I AD to 1978
rise of dysentery, diarrhea and pneumonia as leading causes of death, particularly among infants and children. These diseases, often precipitated by malnutrition, are harder to control with modern medicine and physician- and clinic-based health services. Eradicating them takes improved living conditions, especially more and better food and education. For most developing countries, rapid population growth has frustrated this possibility. The beginnings of fertility decline in many LDCs and the slowdown in mortality decline have combined to stop the steady rise in the world's rate of population growth. The peak was probably reached during the mid-1960s-a time that some experts have called a "demographic watershed." Around 1975 the world's birthrate felrbelow 30 for the first time on record, and by 1977 had declined to 28 per 1;000 population. Though encouraging, these lower birthrates still reflect huge num-
bers of newborn humans every year. The United Nations projects a total world population of 6,200 million by the year 2000, with the lowered growth rate of 1.5 percent translating into an annual net increase of about 93 million people. Some 90 percent of the 2,000 million increase in the next two decades will take place in the developing world. The consequences of rapid population growth are evident across the spectrum of human, animal and plant life. In the less-developed world, despite the recent slight slowdown, population is still growing in some countries at rates that could
double the numbers of people in just over 20 years. These countries are already hard pressed to provide decent living conditions for their current populations. In countries like the United States that have undergone the demographic transition, the problem seems to be of a different order of magnitude. A growth rate of under 1 percent, which would take a century or more to double a country's population, seems less threatening. Yet in the context of other global challenges, including continuation of economic progress, balancing world supplies of food, energy and natural resources, and preservation of the global environment, the growth of the industrialized countries appears ominous, too. Over the past 10 to 15 years there has been an encouraging increase in world awareness of population problems. Many developing countries have seen the need for urgent action to reduce rapid population growth if their development efforts
are not to be greatly impaired or totally frustrated. In 1960, of all countries in the world, only India and Pakistan supported organized family planning programs, both for the avowed purpose of reducing birthrates. By 1978, 35 less-developed countries-with 77 percent of the developing world's population-had adopted policies to reduce population growth. Another 30, with 15 percent of LDC population, supported family planning programs for other than demographic reasons. Only 7 percent of the developing world's people lived in the 66 nations that had no family planning activities. How much of the recent fertility decline in LDCs can be attributed to organized family planning programs? Would Abridged by permission from The Futurist, April 1980, published by the World Future Society, 4916 St. Elmo Avenue (Bethesda), Washington, D.C. 20014. Copyright Š 1980 World Future Society.
birthrates have come down anyway, as social and economic development increased couples' motivation to reduce family size, in line with the classical demographic transition theory? These questions have been hotly debated in recent years as the world seeks ways to speed fertility decline in an effort to ward off potentially disastrous overcrowding, deprivation and disorder. These same questions were addressed at the 1974 World Population Conference in Bucharest, and it was recognized that the broad economic and social development thought to be necessary before most couples will opt for small families would be a long time in coming for many less-developed countries. But research and experience seemed to show that particular elements of development are especially effective in bringing down birthrates. These include the following: • Reduction of infant and child mortality. When parents can be assured that more of their children will survive to adulthood, they generally have fewer "insurance" births. • Expansion of basic education, especially for girls. Studies in Latin America reveal that women who have completed primary school average fewer children than those who have not. For both men and women, education broadens views of life's opportunities and potentialities and reduces resistance to social change, including family planning. • Enhancement of the status of women. Most observers agree that enhancing the general status of women socially, economically and politically could contribute more than any other measure to reduced fertility. • More equitable distribution of the benefits of economic growth. Experience in Taiwan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and the state of Kerala in India indicates that
The earth can't handle many more birthday parties.
economic growth is likely to have the most beneficial effects on fertility where the people share equitably in that growth through increased income, employment and access to land and health and education facilities. • Postponement of marriage. Mauldin and Berelson estimated that 35 to 40 percent of the 1965-75 birthrate decline in the developing countries they studied was accounted for by rising average ages at marriage, especially of women. This appears to be influenced by more education and employment for women and the "drive to improve socioeconomic status," as in Sri Lanka where the average age at marriage is among the highest in the developing world - 28 for men and 24 for women. Despite specific successes, recent surveys show that family planning still has far to go in the developing world if massive population growth is to be avoided in the future. The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), in its 1976 Survey of Unmet Needs in Family Planning, found that contraceptive use in more than 200 countries taken together had increased only 1 percent a year in the five years since its first such survey in 1971, reaching 35 percent of eligible couples. Contraceptive use was at or below 20 percent in most of the developing world compared to 65 percent and over in developed regions. Moreover, in these five years, the number of fecund women worldwide not practicing contraception rose from 342 to 361 million, a result of the large numbers of young women entering the childbearing ages. Only half of the world's couples of reproductive age were estimated to have sufficient knowledge of contraception to plan their families. The IPPF report indicated that contraceptive knowledge and practice would have to increase at a much faster pace if the world is to reach even the average family size of just under four children that would be required by 2000 in order to achieve replacementlevel fertility about 2045 and a stabilized world population of 15,000 million by the year 2100. What lies ahead? All are agreed that the world's present growth rate of 1.7 percent, which would double human numbers in just 41 years, cannot continue indefinitely. It is also clear, however, . that-barring a nuclear holocaust or massive famine-a much larger population lies ahead for the developing coun-
tries and the world as a whole. With nearly half of the developing world's population now under age 15, the relentless arithmetic of population momentum will carry waves of population growth into the 21st century even if replacementlevel fertility-essentially, an average family of two children-were miraculously to be achieved everywhere tomorrow. Just when the earth's population will stop growing and how large it then will be depends crucially on when that world wide replacement-level fertility is reached. Current "medium" projections for world population in the year 2000, just around the corner, range from a low of 5,900 million to a high of 6,400 million. For further into the future, demographers' opinions vary much more widely. Demographers Donald J. Bogue and Amy Ong Tsui predict a rapid slowdown to zero growth and a peak global total population of about 8,100 million by 2050, provided that family planning programs are pursued vigorously in the developing world and steady gains in social and economic development continue. The most recently published long-range projections of the United Nations put the peak at about 11,000 million about a century and a half from now. World Bank estimates fall in between. Clearly, birthrate declines must be accelerated now in most LDCs if the world is to avoid an eventual population so massive that the future of humanity and its ecological support system would be jeopardized. The approaches currently being pursued or proposed to speed these declines include both efforts to improve family planning services and "beyond family planning" measures to enhance motivation for smaller families. They can be summed up as follows: More and improved family planning services. Surveys and experience in Asia
and Latin America show that readily available, well-advertised services can, in many cases, boost contraceptive practice
rates dramatically, even in illiterate, rural, poor populations. Information and education. Over the long run, population education can change family-size attitudes. In the short run, information about contraception, an integral part of most family planning programs, helps spur contraceptive acceptance. Restructured development. This is the "message of Bucharest," that is, to push those elements of development that appear to be most directly related to lowered fertility: reduction in infant mortality, enhancement of women's status, improvements in education and nutrition, and generally more equitable distribution of the benefits of development. Incentives/disincentives. Singapore, a pioneer in this approach, with housing, tax and maternity policies designed to discourage more than two children per family, has now reduced its fertility to replacement level. Pressures and sanctions. Some observers feel that voluntary family planning, even coupled with measurable gains in levels of living, cannot be expected to reduce LDC birthrates rapidly in the near future because most couples in developing countries, they claim, still want large families. People concerned about the apparent gap in developing countries between desired family size and replacement-level fertility argue that closing the gap may take politically organized 'Peer pressure, as in China. Although the emphasis may vary with individual country situations, all of these approaches are and doubtless will be necessary if fertility is to decline rapidly to replacement level in the coming two or three decades. The world is already overcrowded at 4,300 million, and is destined to become much more crowded. We can no longer avoid a rise to at least 6,000 million and then, probably, some decades later, 8,000 million. But the actions we take now could-must-avert the even greater stresses, poverty and hunger that would prevail in a world of 10,000 million or ~re. 0 About the Authors: The authors are on the staff of the Population Reference Bureau, a private, nonprofit educational organization in Washington, D. C. Jean van der Tak is director of publications; Carl Haub is staff demographer; and Elaine Murphy is director of population education.
India's Crusade lor Familv Planning M
idnight: 15th August 1947. As in 1930. As early as 1935, when birth lawaharlal Nehru redeemed a control was still a delicate subject in memorable "tryst with destiny," an polite society throughout the West, the ancient civilization was born to a new National Planning Committee of the Indian National Congress chaired by Nehru identity. Independent India's population urged: "In the interest of social economy, was estimated to be 344 million. Sunrise: 1st March 1981. The decennial family happiness and national planning, census count of the population tallied 684 family planning and limited number of million people. children are essential and state should In just over three decades a second establish a policy to encourage this." In India-the nightmare projection of ear- 1952 the fledgling Indian nation prolier demographers-had become a real- ceeded to translate precept into practice, becoming the first government in the ity. The revelation focused the attention of the nation's leadership on an issue that world to launch an official program. The had vexed it from the beginning, but had First Five Year Plan for overall developproved too complex and intractable to be ment stated unequivocally that the counresolved. try would undertake "to achieve a reducToday, India, with 2.4 percent of the tion in birthrate to the extent necessary to world's land area, comprises more than stabilize the population at a level consis15 percent of the world's population. The tent with the requirements of the national number of Indians exceeds the sum total economy." of the populations of the United States, Now, with a population already douthe Soviet Union and Indonesia-which bled and surging toward a billion by the are the world's third, fourth and fifth end of the century, questions nag: What most populous countries respectively. In went wrong despite the early foresight the last decade alone, India has added and earnestness? Can the situation yet be more to her numbers than the total retrieved? If so, how? population of Brazil, the world's sixth Are we making any progress? Most most populous nation, with a land area critiques of India's family planning protwo and a half times that of India. gram conclude that present failures are in India's population density has spiraled great part due to the fact that for far too to 221 people per square kilometer, as long it was a case of too little-till it was compared with the world average of 30. too late. Until the mid-Sixties, the modThis ever-expanding increase in the est allocations of funds for this program number of people to be fed, housed and remained consistently underutilized, and a meager 3 percent of those who should educated has to a considerable extent negated the benefits of 30 years of plan- have used family planning services had ned development. It exacerbates the de- been reached. Momentum developed privation that has been the lot of vast only after 1966, which can be called a segments of Indian society in the after- watershed year in India's population hismath of colonial rule. tory: the year it reached the half-billion mark. A separate Department for Family A great irony is that India-unlike most other developing nations-recogPlanning was started within the Ministry nized the malady early. And, unlike most of Health to pursue the work more other nations, she faced neither religious vigorously. But by. then there was a nor ideological organized opposition to formidable population base with an inexthe initial attempts to find a solution to orable built-in pressure for increase. That is one aspect. Another perspecthe problem. One of the earliest family tive was presented in an interview by Dr. planning clinics to be opened anywhere Karan Singh, one-time Cabinet Minister in the world was in Mysore (Karnataka)
and steward of the family planning program for the entire critical span of the mid-Seventies: "It is true that we have had a very long history of family planning. But the reason we have not been able to make a larger dent lies in the very nature of the problem. To have effective family planning you have to motivate many, many millions of people, most of them living in unsatisfactory conditions, not having the educational and economic standards that could make them understand. And further, we must not forget that for hundreds of thousands of years since the human race began, the entire thrust of human civilization has been to multiply. 'Go forth and multiply,' said all the great texts; all the religious teachings were in favor of proliferation of population. It is only in the last quarter of the 20th century that proliferation has come to be looked upon as a threat rather than a blessing. Now, to reverse a million years of assimilation of human consciousness is not easy, and therefore I am not surprised that we did not make a larger dent. But I will say that by the midSeventies we had begun to move very positively toward getting vast numbers involved in a motivation campaign." In the decade 1966-76-the decade of Mrs. Gandhi's first innings as Prime Minister-progress in family planning was indeed tremendous, measured in terms of increase in the use of contraceptives. In the last three years of the Sixties, allocations for family planning were nearly triple the amounts available through three plan periods. Acceptance of family planning also tripled, rising to nearly 9 percent of married couples in the reproductive age group. The Fourth Five Year Plan again tripled outlay and set ambitious targets- which, however, were not realized. By 1974 family planning had spread steadily, although more slowly than anticipated, and was practiced by 15 percent of all "eligible" couples. What followed was a controversial period during which the number of accepting couples increased dramatically within two years to include 23 percent of couples nationwide. During the last three years of the Seventies the program regressed. With the number of new recruits for family planning well below the number of young people reaching maturitythose born during the baby boom of the Sixties-the decade ended with a twopoint drop in the percentage of couples participating. As a result, the 1981 census revealed, the population growth rate of the Seven-
ties was an astounding 24.8 percent-no different from that of the Sixties. To the increase of 109 million people during the Sixties, the Seventies had added another 136 million! It was now clearly apparent that the reverses of the late Seventies had more than offset the vigorous progress of the greater part of the decade. The Ministry of Health declared: "But for the program, 29 million more heads would have been counted in the census, giving an unprecedented growth rate of 30 percent." The ministry estimated that since its inception, the program had averted 44 million births. With a total expenditure of only Rs. 13,000 million the program emerges as one of the nation's more cost-effective investments. State-by-state analysis of the census results brings some glimmers of hope. In three major states-Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Orissa-and the union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu, the absolute increase in numbers during the Seventies was lower than during the previous decade. The growth rate declined in 19 states and union territories, in contrast to eight during the Sixties. These facts suggest' that a "demographic transition" -a change from higher to lower fertility norms-may finally be beginning in parts of India which together account for exactly half the population. Certain other positive factors should be noted as India in the Eighties decides how to tackle her demographic destiny. One is the crystallization of a national consensus-in both political and intellectual circles-supporting the need for wholehearted efforts to accelerate family planning within as short a time as possible. An even more encouraging sign is the mounting spontaneous response of the people-predominantly womenseeking out family planning services. As a consequence, the program in 1981-82 topped in all respects its earlier peak achievement year 1975-76. An unforeseen dividend has spun off from the politicization of the program: widespread familiarity with the concept of family planning among illiterate people who have been difficult to reach through structured media efforts. Inhibitions and fears remain to be broken down, but the awareness that there exist ways to stop what for centuries was considered Bhagwan ki dain-the irrevocable gift of God-has rippled far. As concerted efforts are being made to offer more women services they will consider accessible and acceptable, the services now provided are being grasped in all
parts of the country. A substantial increment has resulted from the introduction of a new method of female sterilization in the national program-laparoscopic sterilization, popularly called doorbin ki doctori. The laparoscope is a fiber-optic instrument that can be pushed into the abdomen through an incision so slight that it requires only a single stitch afterward. Its light enables the doctor to pull the Fallopian tubes together (using a pincerlike attachment), encircle them in a tiny plastic ring, and swiftly pinch them shut. The operation takes only five to six minutes and is done as an outpatient department procedure. This method of female sterilization requires very skilled handling, a backup of sophisticated emergency measures and is infinitely more complicated than the vasectomy (male sterilization) technique, but it has given women unable to persuade their husbands to take the necessary step a quick, easy way to control their own bodies-as compared with the conventional tubectomy requiring long hospitalization. However, in the present context of population increase, the best of the past is not .good enough by half. From now on the program must not only be sustained,
it must rapidly rise to another level of activity, if the goals the country has set for itself for the end of this century are not to be jettisoned. What are these goals? The Sixth Plan has reiterated the resolve to reach replacement levels of fertility by the end of the century. A Net Reproduction Rate of One (NRR of 1) means that given certain fertility and mortality levels a woman will replace herself by a single daughter. Even so, it would take another 50 years for the population to stabilize. The goal of NRR of 1 implies a nationwide change in fertility behavior, from the present average family of 4.3 children to 2.3 children. The fertility-mortality statistical mix chosen in this context is a birthrate of 21 per 1,000 population and a death rate of 9-as against the current birthrate of 37 and death rate of 15 per 1,000. Reduction in the rate of mortality, particularly infant mortality, is now recognized to be a key component of any strategy to ensure limitation in childbearing. An overall improvement in health care and nutrition thus becomes an integral part of family planning. It has been calculated that the NRR of 1 goal can be attained only if at least 60 percent of couples in the reproductive age group have been persuaded to adopt
modern methods of family planning. Based on earlier population projections for the year 2001, this 60-percent level was considered to include about 84 million couples. That number is now obviously an underestimate. Given the present growth rate, the 60-percent target is more likely to involve some 100 million couples. If the goal is to be reached, the program will have to quadruple its success rate-in other words, for every couple accepting family planning in the last 15 years, three more couples will have to be convinced during the next 15 years. The challenge is made even more complex by certain other considerations that will have to be faced in the future. Ways must be found to reach not only many of the older couples left unwon by past canvassing, but also a majority of young couples who for years will have to be continuously motivated and maintained on some spacing method instead of the one-time persuasion for sterilization that has propelled the program so far. For the young, the strategy must change from family planning "drives" to establishing family planning as.an ongoing way of life. There is reason to believe that considerable rethinking is being done toward that end. Last year Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in an address before the National Conference of Parliamentarians talked of the need to "revamp and revitalize" the program. The New Delhi Declaration, the document that came out of the conference deliberations, termed family planning "a basic human right, a vital health tool, an essential aid to accelerate development and an important instrument of any movement of social change." At the time of 'writing the government had yet to announce a considered population policy, though reportedly a draft is ready. A Population Advisory Council was established recently under the chairmanship of the Minister of Health as an expert "think tank." The Prime Minister has also revived an arrangement that existed in the Sixties: a Cabinet Subcommittee on Family Planning which she will personally chair. This top interministerial group will regularly review the progress of the program, and the secretaries heading the relevant ministries have formed a committee to assist in carrying out the decisions of the Cabinet Subcommittee. The pattern set up by the Center is expected to be replicated at the state level. A range of incentives linking family planning acceptance to development and
other benefits is reportedly one of the first matters the Cabinet Subcommittee is to consider. The recording of all marriages in a bid to implement the minimum age law is another. It is obvious from the strategy outlined in the Sixth Plan and reiterated through these administrative measures that family planning is no longer to be viewed as the sole responsibility of the Health Ministry but will devolve on all ministries connected with human resources and development. This is an important breakthrough in thinking. The effort to widen the network of involvement is also being made in several other ways. At the local level, the responsibility to coordinate family planning with other development activities and to ensure the delivery of an effective service is being placed on the District Collector. Special emphasis is being given to seeking the cooperation of the voluntary sector and all non-governmentai organizations and groups-industrial, cooperative, -trade union or whatever. It is significant that the government's new 20-Point Program includes family planning, and its enunciation succinctly spells out the thrust of the new strategy: to make it a "people's movement." A major step in this direction is the creation of a cadre of grassroot workers called Village Health Guides-one for every population unit of 1,000 and preferably a woman-who will be trained and equipped to work as the field link of the health services, with the promotion of family planning as a primary responsibility. There are two major changes in the approach to delivery of family planning services: a greater concern with spacing methods and with ways to place family planning services on the doorsteps of the people. Altogether, an environment of concern for the family planning issue is being revived. To the extent this concern crystallizes into sensitive and pragmatic programs during the coming years, success can be predicted, and the Eighties can be the crucial period of change in India's demographic history. 0 Rami Chhabra, program director (communication and women's programs) with the Family Planning Foundation, New Delhi, is also a broadcaster and writer, concentrating on social and development issues especially on women and population. She has attended international conferences relating to these issues.
New Ventures for American Indians American Indians' lands, like the Paiute reservation at right, are a veritable treasure trove of minerals and petroleum. But while some Indians proceed to exploit these resources for the betterment of their tribes, traditionalists cling to their old ways of life, and refuse to disturb the land. The Osages are the United States' largest American Indian oil producers, and since 1973, when OPEC '(Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) started driving up energy prices, the Osages' oil and gas income has gone from $6 million to $70 .million, while that of the rest of the oil- and gasproducing tribes has gone from $18.3 million to over $99 million. And this is just the beginning. With the end of government price controls in the United States, Navaho oil and gas income has doubled in the past year, and between decontrol and new production, one official of the Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates, tribal income could triple over the next four years. It is one of history's more stunning ironies. The 21 million hectares in the United States reserved for the Indians were lands the white man could not see any conceivable reason to reserve for himself. They were too wet or too dry, too barren or too remote. Now, at a time when the United States seems to be running out of practically everything, the 272 federally recognized Indian reservations constitute one of the largest and least known mineral repositories on the continent-nearly 5 percent of the U.S. oil and gas, onethird of its strippable low-sulfur coal, one-half of its privately owned uranium. Accidents of history and cultural bias, elements of greed ,and fear and the workings of fate and inertia-all have conspired thus far to keep much of Indian land unexplored. But the same forces now are conspiring to force U.S. Indians to take a fresh look at where they are and where they-not the white man-wish to go. In almost every tribe, there are progressives who favor development and traditionalists who oppose it, and the balance shifts
from tribe to tribe. The Navahos in Arizona and New Mexico are aggressively pro-development. The neighboring Hopis are not. In Montana the pro-development Crows have nonetheless refused to permit uranium prospecting for fear it would desecrate their sacred mountains. "We are at heart in harmony with nature," says Crow tribal Secretary Dan Hogan. "We do respect the Almighty for giving us these things." But events are moving fast on U.S. reservations. Mineral royalties, already a larger source of tribal revenue than either farming or ranching, yielded the tribes nearly $180 million in 1980, not counting bonuses. Of that sum, $160 million came from oil and gas, much of it (37.5 percent) from the Osage reservation, the rest mainly from the Navaho, Jicarilla, Wind River and Uintah and Ouray reservations. Another $20 million was derived from hard minerals, mostly uranium and coal, mostly from the Navaho, Crow, Laguna and Spokane reservations. The tribes also control 18 million hectares of range land, 5.2 million hectares of forest (2 million of them commercially usable) and 480,000 hectares of crop lands, including most of the United States' remaining top-grade underdeveloped agricultural land. The 183-member Agua Caliente tribe nets a good $5 million a year from its 10,000 hectares of real estate in and around Palm Springs, including some of that famous resort's most exclusive hotels. Some tribes have cashed in on their special legal status, peddling tax-free cigarettes, as the Puyallup tribe does in Tacoma, or running big-time bingo games, as the Seminoles do in Hollywood, Florida. Others have capitalized on another resource every bit as intangible-treaty obligations entered into by the United States a century or more
ago and subsequently dishonored. Thus, Maine's Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes have picked up $81.5 million for lands illegally confiscated 200 years ago; the Sioux, $122 million for the expropriation of the Black Hills in 1877. Now, some tribes are contemplating projects so huge that a singie one-the Crows' coal gasification project, for example-would represent more of a capital investment than all other Indian-owned investments combined. Condemned by history and government policy to cultural and geographic isolation, the American Indian tribes were singularly illequipped to capitalize on the changes OPEC wrought. As the first European explorers quickly discovered, most of them had only the haziest notion of private property. All things were, by and large, held communally by the tribe. What sense of ownership there was came from use rather than from law. And profit? That was as alien a notion as selling the earth, sky or air. You shared the things you had with one another, you didn't husband them to yourself. Unlike the Europeans who conquered them, moreover, the American Indians possessed an extraordinary diversity of culture, language and tradition. There were democracies and theocracies, matriarchies and patriarchies. Some tribes were nomadic, others were village dwellers. Some were farmers, others were stockmen, herders or hunters. These differences persist, so that a Crow and a Zuni probably share less of a common heritage than do a Spaniard and a Swede. But they have paid a price for these differences. When Henry Hudson first parlayed with the Mohawks in 1609, there were probably over 10 million American Indians in all of North America. Today, there are only 1.4 million,
half of them on reservations. Few Indians identify themselves as "Indians," but rather as Navahos, Mohawks or Sioux. What little political influence they have derives less from collective clout than from good intentions in Washington. As a result, they have become the United States' most disadvantaged minority, with a disproportionate number ill-housed, illeducated, unhealthy and ill-paid. Like other underdeveloped but resource-rich peoples around the world, the tribes for years left it to outsiders to develop their resources. Indian oil and gas were the foundation of many of the' U.S. major oil companies-Phillips, Conoco and Getty, among others. Even today Indian uranium is basic 'to Kerr-McGee and Western Nuclear, Indian coal to Westmoreland Resources, Utah International and Gulf Minerals, and Indian phosphate to FMC and J.R. Simplot. The tribes never used to worry much about what was done to develop their resources or what happened to the proceeds. But no more. The tribes are coming to believe-amid some bitter dissent - that they had better acquire some of the white man's values and skills, and quickly, or they will squander the inheritance history has left them. In the past, the tribes have been no match for the giant corporations they have had to deal with in developing their resources. You hear stories of companies walking into council meetings and throwing a sack of cash down on the table to secure a lease, take it or leave it. "The oil company would present a Facing page (inset): A portrait of 19th-century American Indian chief, Ouray (left). Under the leadership of tribe chairman Peter MacDonald (right), today's Navahos have done more to develop their resources than many other tribes.
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big check to the tribal government," says Ross Swimmer, an Oklahoma banker who is alsp principal chief of the Cherokee nation, "and you thought it looked good until you found out it was maybe a tenth of what it ought to have been." That's why tribes like the Blackfeet and Jicarillas, the Chippewas and the Navahos in recent years declared partial moratoriums on mineral development-to gain time for planned development, or to avoid making decisions they felt totally incompetent to make. Five hundred years of that sort of treatment does not exactly encourage self-confidence. Says one tribal officer: "You get so a tribal chairman feels, if he walks into a room with the company president and all those high-powered attorneys and staff, he's going to walk out without his pants." But now fear and suspicion are giving way to activism. "It does no good to complain and be bitter about what they have taken away from us," says Navaho Chairman* Peter MacDonald. "We just want to keep what we have and make the best of it." A major, concrete step in a new direction was the formation, in 1977, of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT), founded by MacDonald in the wake of a 1975 meeting with Frank Zarb, then head of the Federal Energy Administration. At one time CERT was billed as the Indian OPEC, and even hired economist Ahmed Kooros, Iran's former deputy minister for finance and oil, to do for the American Indians what he had done for the Shah of Iran. The OPEC analogy was foolish, but the Third World ,analogy was pretty much on the mark, and CERT set about building the financial and technicalexpeltise to enable the tribes to think intelligently about their own development and, most important of all, to provide the technical support, sophistication and expertise they needed to redress the negotiating balance with the big corporations. As chairman of the Navahos as well as of CERT, MacDonald presides over the United States' largest and most powerful tribeindeed, with 160,000 members, its only large tribe-and conducts his affairs accordingly. He pays himself $55,000 a year, surrounds himself with bodyguards, goes about
the tribe's business in a Lincoln Continental or one of the three tribal airplanes, and runs a reservation roughly twice the size of Maryland that sprawls across three western states. The Navahos have more members and more resources than most of the other big tribes put together, and more political clout than any other tribe. MacDonald quite clearly thinks the Navahos offer the best model around. The discovery of oil on their land in 1921 sent the Navaho down the path of development, and since then the tribe has probably worked harder than any other to realize its resource potential. It has lured dozens of corporations to its lands. The reservation managed to produce 9 million barrels of oil in 1981, over 18 million tons of coal and 540,000 kilograms of uranium. It has more plans for the future than most of the other tribes put together-everything from in situ solution urilnium mining to coal gasification. All this wealth and power sometimes leads to a highhanded attitude. In negotiating for the American Indians, CERT has had to cope with the tribal democracy that often makes decisionmaking impossible for the Navahos. Tribal government is, to begin with, an alien institution, originally imposed by the U.S. Government. Tribal members often ignOre it or even oppose it as bitterly as they do the U.S. Government itself. On the Hopi reservation, there's an underclass that won't vote in elections, that won't even accept basic government services-water, electricity-lest their acceptance somehow compromise them. Tribal democracy involves decision making by consensus, just as it does in Japan, only the decisions the tribes are called on to make these days are in areas in which they have little or no knowledge, skill or experience. So the consensus doesn't always gel, or last when it does. In the midSeventies Navaho dissidents seized the new El Paso-Consolidation strip mine near Burnham, New Mexico, for a few days and tried to stop its development. Four years ago they took over a Texaco pumping station in the Navaho oil fields near Aneth, Utah, for several weeks and demanded concessions. Tribal politics are further complicated by outsiders who have taken up the American Indians as
their special cause. "You've got outside special interests constantly bombarding the reservation," Peter MacDonald says, "environmentalists who want to see Indians continue to sit in their hogans weaving rugs and chopping wood, the unscrupulous multinationals who want to dig up your land and leave great gaping holes, and you're supposed to go on and chart a sensible course for the future." But with CERT to give them ballast, the Navahos and many of the other tribes continue to do so, some in a big way. The Navahos, the Southern Utes and the Crows are each considering building 800to-1,000-megawatt mine-mouth power plants to generate power for both reservation and utility use. The Navahos have talked periodi-
"For most of the tribes, the preservation of the reservation itselfas a home, as a refuge -far outweighs any financial returns development could bring." cally about more ambitious plans to build coal gasification or liquefaction plants. The Crows actually have a feasibility study under way to develop a $4,000 million gasification plant in partnership with Pacific Lighting. If such ventures seem like pie in the sky, the development equivalent of Ciudad Trujillo or Brasilia, consider the Paraho-Northern Ute scheme to build an in situ oil shale project on the Uintah and Ouray reservation. The immediate financial benefits aside, the negotiating climate for the tribes has begun to change and change decisively. With CERT to guide and counsel them, the tribes are no longer at the mercy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the big corporations, and they have begun to act as if they have some negotiating strength on their side as well. The corporation~ have often been appalled. Three years ago, when Kennecott demanded that the Colville tribe renegotiate its royalty downward on the Mount Tolman copper-molybdenum project, the Colvilles flatly said no. Despite the fact that Kennecott had spent 13 years investigating the prospect and that the project was
finally about to go into development, the Colvilles put the project "up for competitive bidding, got nine offers and last year settled on Amax. Over the life of the mine, the tribe calculates, the Amax lease will yield them $550 million more than they would have got otherwise. What you can't get by renegotiating leases, as oil producers in the Middle East and elsewhere long ago demonstrated, you can sometimes get through taxation. In 1977 the Jicarilla Apaches asserted their powers as a quasi-sovereign state and imposed a severance tax on all oil and gas produced on the reservation: 5 percent of the market value per million B.T.U. (British thermal unit) of gas, 29 percent per barrel of oil-enough to yield them a modest $2 million a year in additional income. Around the same time, the Crows enacted a 25 percent severance tax of their own, this in response to a 30 percent tax the state of Montana imposed to disThe courage coal production. Navahos, characteristically, went 19rther ,-throwing the book at their resident corporations by enacting a leasehold tax, a possessory interest tax and a business tax that together would yield the tribe upward of $ 30 million a year. Seeing a powerful new weapon in the making, the companies have taken the Jicarillas, the Crows and the Navahos to court. The issue now rests before the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule on the matter soon. If the Court rules in favor of the tribes, or if Congress finally gets around to legislating the tribal power to tax, the tribes will have another promising new type of income. But obviously the taxing power has to be used carefully. . Used harshly it could bring development to an end. "If we had to pay both the state and tribal taxes," says Westmoreland Resources' vice president Ralph Moore of his company's coal operations on Crow land, "we would be out of business." For Phillips Petroleum, the prospect of Navaho taxes was so threatening it ':lbandoned a 20-well drilling program on the reservation as uneconomic. Though the Osages have an experienced 18-man mineral staff of their own, even their chief, Sylvester Tinker, couldn't persuade them to fund a modest $407,000 drilling program two and a half years ago.
It's one thing for tribal politicians to pad the payroll, payoff relatives, live off the fat of the pork barrel, and quite another to take financial risks with the tribal funds, when failure can cost them the next election. The solution lies in finding ways to finance tribal resource development without requiring the tribe to put up any of its own money. Oregon's Warm Springs tribes pioneered one such route. They built a sawmill a few years ago as the base of what has since become a fairly sizable forest products operation. But they didn't put up their own money. They borrowed it from the banks, using the output of the mill as collateral. On a much more sophisticated level, that's the procedure the tribes expect to use when and if they move ahead with their long-dreamed-of mine-mouth power plants, coal gasification or oil shale developments: collateralize their borrowing on the output of the projects. More generally useful as a means of avoiding the capital problem are joint ventures or service contracts of the sort New York's Damson Oil pioneered a few years ago with the Blackfeet. "What we did," says Damson vice president John Jacobs, "was to treat the Blackfeet the way we would a foreign concession and offer them a chance to develop their own resources. The Blackfeet put up the acreage. We put up the risk and development dollars-$6.8 million as it turned out-at no cost to them." The Blackfeet were to get onesixth royalty on all production, plus 50 percent of the profits after capital expenditures were recovered. The result so far has been 13 producing wells, royalty income to the tribe and an upsurge in interest in the reservation by other companies. The Damson pattern has begun to spread. Since then, the Navahos have worked out comparable arrangements with Exxon for uranium exploration and development. The Northern Cheyennes have done so with Arco in oil and gas. And basically so has the Colville tribe in their coppermolybdenum deal with Amax. The more sophisticated a tribe becomes, the wider its choices become. Under their banker-chief Ross Swimmer, the Cherokees are considering putting up joint venture tax shelters for outside inves¡
tors to exploit the oil and gas in the 145 kilometers of Arkansas River bottom they won title to a decade ago. The Cherokees would hire a drilling contractor to drill out their lands and share royalties and production equally with their partners. Most of the American Indian tribes of North America have a gut aversion to tampering with the earth, to developing their natural resources, and so it is something of a wonder that, however slow and painful it has been, any economic progress has been made at all. Sometimes their aversion surfaces as religion, sometimes as politics or environmentalism or aesthetics. But it is almost always there and continues to act as a damper on tribal development. "You get the sense that their whole being is tied
"It's just four or five years that the American Indian people have been doing business. But they are learning fast. They are really moving in quantum leaps." to the land," says Arizona Public Service vice president Russell Hulse, "and if you build a coal mine or something, you mess it up."
In some of the tribes, especially such older ones as the Hopis, who have lived more or less in the same location since the beginning of time, the old religious values are still strong. The Taos, San Felipe and Santo Domingo Pueblos have not only refused any mineral development on their lands, they have even refused to let any government agencies in to make surveys. So have the Forest County Potawatomis in Wisconsin. The Hopis would probably never have joined the Navahos in leasing the Black Mesa for Peabody Coal's big strip-mine development if the Navahos hadn't forced them into it. "The land is more precious than money," Hopi resource manager Richard Jeanne explains. "Not because of the resources, but because it's the land. Besides, they have been had by the white man so many times, anything to do with white involvement is something to avoid. This influences their approach to development. "
You don't need to wax mystical to fathom Indian wariness about development. Indians are no more eager to live with strip mines or power plants. than anyone else is. And in many parts of the West, such developments have a visibility they don't have in areas where hills obscure and vegetation flourishes. Scar the landscape in the Westwith a power plant or a draglineand likely as not you will be able to see it 50 or 60 kilometers away. Unlike the Indians, then, people elsewhere are likely to have their price. If they don't like the power plant or transmission line or superhighway, they can take their money and move away. The American Indians' choices are more limited. So, if they say they are turning down oil leases because they don't want the look of a mountaintop spoiled by pumps and pipeJines, they have more than a little credibility. Development can threaten a reservation in more ways than one. "There's a small tribe in the north," says BIA's David Baldwin, "a really small tribe, and they're sitting on a sizable amount of copper. They could easily be talking somewhere around $250 million net over the life of the mine. When we talked to the tribe, they told us their whole lifestyle for thousands of years had been tied to the wild rice that grew in their lake, and I couldn't tell them if we started mining we would never get any copper sulfide in the lake. I have seen too many accidents. They thought about it a long time, and then said, 'We want all information on our copper resources locked up.' But about three months ago, my geologists said, 'We got the alloy analysis back, and there's enough silver in the ore so that the economics have changed.' The tribe could net $1,000 million. So I have to go back and say, 'What do you want to do?' But God is not making any more land, and the government's not making any more reservations. " For the Crows and Cheyennes, the Chippewas and the Potawatomis, as for most of the tribes, the preservation of the reservation itself-as a home, as a refuge-far outweighs any financial returns development could bring. Indian people have not fared well in the outside world, in the urban centers in particular, and they know it. Not economically, not culturally, not
socially. "It's easier to stay on the reservation and be unemployed," says the Hopis' Richard Jeanne, "than it is to face the discrimination you have to face on the outside." Most of the tribes depend on government subsidies of various sorts for survival- at least $1,000 million a year altogether, but the Reagan Administration budget cuts are expected to roll that back by 30 percent to 40 percent. In the cities, with Indian unemployment mounting, tribesmen are beginning to flock back to the reservations. Says the Chippewas' Ray McGeshick: "There ain't nothing we can offer them either. On the reservation we got 87 percent unemployment, but at least they have their home base." Hence a paradox: Disturbing as it may be to traditional values, for the tribes the need for. resource income is, if anything, great~r than ever. Development offers the best hope of the tribes' ever breaking free of the hopeless poverty that besets so many of them, the unemployment and the alcoholism. Yet a people who borrowed the horse from the Spaniards and the rifle from the British and French has all the adaptability anyone needs to survive in a changing world. "You have to realize that it's just within the last four or five years that the Indian people have been doing business at all," says Ted Bryant, a Cherokee who heads up the Native American Program for accountants Deloitte, Haskins & Sells. "The profit motive has not been prevalent, and the BIA did not encourage them to develop the entrepreneurial frame of mind. But they are learning and learning fast. These days they are really moving in quantum leaps." "We can integrate change within our way of life, our culture, our traditions," Peter MacDonald says, "just as we have with pickup trucks and automobiles, Levis and Western shirts and Stetsons. The Navaho sense of culture is what you are inside your soul, not what you are wearing or driving or watching on TV: I have no fear our way of life is going to be destroyed or lost. It will just be an enrichment." That could be a happy ending to a dismal story that has, to date, been 0 of little credit to either side. James Cook is an executive editor with Forbes magazine.
About the Author:
by ARUNA
DASGUPTA
This was the family selected by WorldDadi's family was selected after a search view Productions, an American company, that lasted almost three months. While the as the model to show Americans the chang- main attraction was Dadi, there were other ing patterns of a woman's role in a rural factors that fitted in. The urban influence Indian family and the relevance of the joint was represented by youngest son Rajinder: family system in today's rural India. Not only did he work and live in a city, he Millions of viewers of the Public Broad- was the first in the family to choose his own casting System's (PBS) popular series of bride, Kanta. The wedding took place while ethnographic films, Odyssey, saw the one- the filming was under way. Kanta, a citybred working woman, was a newcomer to hour documentary late last year. A shorter version is part of the University of Wiscon- the family in more ways than one. The film breaks the stereotype image of sin's noted collection of films for its Asian rural Indian women, held not just by the studies program (Worldview Productions originally made the film for the university; film's American audience but also by many PBS developed an interest in a fuller version urban Indians. Dadi is a strong force within after seeing the original). the family; her relationship with her daughDadi's Family takes an intimate, but ters-in-law is close, despite" an occasional never inquisitive look at the family, particu- misunderstanding (she even gives the new larly, the interrelationships between Dadi bride permission to cut her hair and wear and her daughters-in-law. This isn't just pants). The head of the family, Dada, acanother look at an "exotic" or "poor" rural knowledges that women in the village work India but an eye-opener for those fed on much harder than the men ("She works all cliches. "Poverty, caste, overpopulation day in the fields and still comes home to do ... we wanted to stay away from those," says more work .... She has to heat water, make Rina Gill, the articulate young codirector. bread, and cook the food. And men get The village is in prosperous Haryana (the upset. 'Where's my bath water? What's taknarrator stresses this and points out that ing you so long with the food?' It's difficult "farmers like Dada can afford a tractorhere for women. "). they don't want one. Using a team of oxen The camera catches the women at their and occasionally renting a tractor makes tasks, at home and on the field; it observes Facing page, clockwise from top. right: The more economic sense"). Dadi's family is them at work and relaxing. There are scenes heroine ofDadi's Family, 56-year-old Munori, in obviously middle class; the children and of celebrations and arguments, of Dadi puta rare moment of relaxation; Dadi and daughter grandchildren-including the girls-are all ting on her finery for her son's weddingSaraswati; assistant director Sumitra educated. There is no moralizing or genersome rare and intimate moments. But the Mehta-whosefamily hails from the village-with alizations. The emphasis all through the camera never intrudes. In fact, the family's Dada; codirector Rina Gill and sound recordist candid conversations and interviews is on seeming unawareness of the crew is remarkCheryl Groff in the family house and at lunch on able. the fie-lds(throughout thefilming, the women of the the role of women in this family today and, "Except for the interviews, and a shot of in relation to that, the generation gap, the unit wore salwar-kurtasand covered their heads with chunnis-Sumitra as a "daughter" of the new pressures and the danger of splits in the Dada walking in the field and one of Dadi village went bare-headed). Below: Dadi cooks as nothing joint family unit, despite the family's firm walking up to the house, camera and crew watch. belief in it. -nothing-was staged for the camera," says producer and codirector Michael Camerini. A documentary, he points out, has to be a real presentation of the facts"and more so ours because we were making the film for an academic institution, the University of Wisconsin. It had to be authentic. In fact, we didn't even allow ourselves some of the usual editing tricks." Says Pramod Mathur, the film's cameraman, "We didn't even shift the furniture to get better frames. We had to become part of the furniture. If I couldn't move my elbow for a particular shot because something was coming in my way-too bad-I had to do without moving my elbow. "What we had to shoot was all fairly personal from the family's point of view and yet we had to do it without intruding on
wast a film for which there was no script, there was no plot. There was just an ordinary Indian village with Dadi and her ordinary Indian family-and the IndoAmerican film crew which, extraordinarily, became a part of that family for a few days. They ate with Dadi and spent the day with her: the women helping in the housework-fetching water, making cow-dung cakes, playing with the children; the men discussing politics and farming with Dada and his sons. Throughout, in one quiet corner, the camera silently recorded the myriad aspects of life in a rural Indian family: Dadi's Family. The film's earthy central character, Dadi -as a paternal grandmother is called in most northern states of India-is 56-yearold Munori of Assan village in Haryana. Together with Dada, 68-year-old Swaruplal, she heads a small joint family comprising eldest son Meherlal, his wife Darshini and their four children; second son Mohinder, his wife Sita and their three children; and Rajinder, the youngest son who lives in the city with his wife Kanta. Dadi's and Dada's daughters, Anguri, Saroj and Saraswati, are married and live in nearby villages.
I
their privacy. We had to keep a low profile-a difficult thing to do with a whole unit of almost a dozen people and such heavy equipment. We shot only in two rooms of the house. They gave us a room upstairs for the equipment. The production assistants, the electricians and the driver never came onto the shooting areas. Only 'the five of us- Michael, Rina, Sumitra [assistant director Sumitra Mehta, an AIR staffer who hails from Assan], Cheryl [sound recordist Cheryl Groff] and I were around. And we had become almost a part of the family. "And we too stayed as much out of the way as possible. We just let them go about their tasks. When Michael or Rina felt that an interesting situation was developing, they'd give a sign and we'd start shooting." "Sometimes," says Michael, "we wouldn't even need to give that signal. Our unit worked so beautifully together, everybody was so involved with the theme, there was such perfect tuning that often when Rina or I would look to Pramod or Cheryl we'd find that the camera was already rolling." But as far as the family was concerned, the camera was always rolling-that little bit of deception is the secret behind the naturalness that makes the film so effective and authentic. Explains Michael (who is also a cameraman and shared the shooting with Pramod): "The trick of the whole thing was that Pramod and I pretended to shoot all the time. There was always someone looking Below: Watched by a curious group of youngsters, 68-year-old Dada wears earphones to listen to a playback of his interview for the film.
through the camera .... So, in a few days strengths: I knew the audience, Rina knew the subject. And Rina and Pramod are both they just got used to the camera. "Another thing-in the beginning we good filmmakers in their own right." Rina "stumbled into" filmmaking in allowed every child and adult there to look through the camera, everyone played with 1976 through her friendship with the late the zoom, they all played back their voices. S. Sukhdev, the noted maker of some prize... They soon got tired of it and all the winning documentaries. After earning her equipment stopped being such a novelty." M.A. degree in child development from The equipment was, nevertheless, very Lady Irwin College, Delhi, in 1974, she special. "The latest ... it was just super," tried some half a dozen jobs in what she Pramod says enthusiastically. The Arriflex describes as "a very fast process of disilluSR model camera used is "extremely porta- sionment." She wanted a field job where she ble, absolutely noiseless, and operates very could make use of her academic training. fast-you can change magazines in just a Except for a reward{ng stint with Mobile Creches (an organization that cares for the few seconds. You don't lose a shot." After the initial editing was over, educational and other needs of children of Michael took a print of the film to the migrant labor in Delhi), she felt she was village. "We were very nervous," he confes- underutilized-and bored. Sukhdev asked ses. "There were some scenes that were her to assist him in researching for his film fairly personal. Besides, some of the more on bonded labor-and "after that I was positive parts came through in the English hooked on filmmaking." She worked with him as assistant and associate director for narration which they wouldn't understand. But they were very happy about it. There more than a dozen films before joining the Centre for Educational Technology to make was just no problem." "No problems," is a phrase Michael re- films for them (she has since left and works peats often whenever he talks of this project. free-lance now). Rina has so far directed "It was so much of a reward for every film five films independently. In the 10 years since he entered this that I've done where things went wrong. profession, Pramod has directed a dozen Here we had the perfect subject-Dadi really is the strength of this film-and I had documentaries and short .films and worked as cameraman for a few foreign units, inthe perfect crew." He is keen to stress that "this was an cluding the National Geographic Society, Indo-U.S. project as a combination of Indi- the Smithsonian Institution, Time-Life, and ans and Americans working together-not the University of Wisconsin. As much as their filmmaking expertise, it Indians assisting an American team of filmmakers. We were each contributing our was the personalities of his colleagues that Michael felt contributed so much to the total Below: Sound recordist Cheryl Groff and camera- film. "Human relationships are an imporman Pramod Mathur. Bottom: Producertant part of this type of filmmaking." director Michael Camerini with a village elder. Rina went through the initial backbreaking task of going to some 30 villages in Haryana and Punjab to choose the right location. Michael, Pramod, Sumitra and she then met 50 families in two villages before they met Dadi's family. In the week that the lights-which were in place 24 hours during the shooting period-and the "as big as a house" generator were set up, the unit developed a closeness to Dadi's affectionate family that proved to be the biggest asset. Thanks to that relationship, Pramod and Michael shot some scenes that a man would not normally even get to see in the village-of Dadi and other women dancing at a prewedding celebration. Dadi talked with disarming candor of the problems within the family. The nature of the film did mean that they had to shoot a lot more than was finally used. But, says Michael, the 9 to 1 ratio "is very modest by American TV standards, particularly for a film of this kind. Most (Text continued on page 56 )
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
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1982 by The National Review Inc., 150 East 35lh Street. New York, N.Y. 10016
. "Pardon me, sir. The last number was Schubert's unfinished symphony."
"No wine, Mr. Chappell; no women, and if you should feel like singing, you'd better just hum a little. "
by DAVID ABRAHAMSON
xtending man's ability to withstand increased underwater pressure-and therefore to venture deeper into the ocean-has been a difficult goal of hyperbaric (high-pressure) research for more than a century. The first breakthrough in understanding the threatening physiological effects of pressure-such as narcosis and nausea-came with the publication of Paul Bert's seminal La Pression Barometrique in 1878. Today, medical researchers in the United States and many other countries around the world are actively conducting experiments with human subjects in highpressure chambers. This wealth of research, however, is decidedly not science simply for the sake of science. The offshore oil-drilling industry, for instance, requires the constant service of commercial divers who can move freely about the ocean bottom, to assist during construction and to undertake inspection, maintenance and repair work during drilling operations. Today, offshore wells account for almost one-third of the world's oil production, and it is estimated that by the end of the decade the figure will approach 50 percent. The key to this increase will be drilling in deeper water, extending the range of underwater technicians from today's 300meter limit down to perhaps 600 to 750 meters-an increase that would expand by 4 percent the amount of accessible sea floor. But first, divers have to be able to reach those depths unaided by pressurized diving bells or deep-water submarines and perform useful work-something that cannot be accomplished without dealing with the dangerous physiological effects of the greatly increased pressure on the human body. Hence, the importance of the current experiments that are being conducted in underwater research at Duke University. Outside the laboratory building, the manicured flower beds were in full spring bloom, bathed in the balmy North Carolina afternoon sunshine. It was a weekend, and an unhurried sense of quiet had settled over the sprawling Duke University Medical Center. But for the doctors and technicians manning watch stations around a large, blue-metal sphere inside the lab-as for most of their colleagues on the 47-member staff of the F.G. Hall Laboratory for Environmental Research-this second Saturday in March was a time of rare professional intensity. Three men had been crowded inside a cramped steel compression chamber, 2.25 meters in diameter, since the previous Thursday morning. The cramped chamber had been pressurized to almost 48 kilograms
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Experiments simulating deepsea dives show that man can endure underwater pressures much greater than scientists had suspected. In March 1980, three divers from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, reached a "depth" of 650 meters in a compression chamber. Almost a year later, another Duke team created a new world record for simulated depth; they reached 686 meters. Although this experiment was an outstanding success in that the divers performed all the complex tasks and research operations assigned to them and they were in excellent health, there was one important snag; the divers suffered, to varying degrees, from narcosis of nitrogen. This, says Dr. Peter B. Bennett, director of the Duke dive project, resulted from inhalation of nitrogen-one of the three gases in the divers' breathing mixture. The other two were helium and oxygen. To eliminate-or at least to reduce-the narcotic effects of nitrogen, Dr. ~ennett plans to lower the nitrogen content in tHe breathing mixture from 10 to 5 percent for the next dive experiment scheduled for later this year. The divers, he says, will be first compressed to the equivalent of 650 meters underwater. And if all goes well, they may be compressed to 686 meters, the depth reached by the earlier team. "If divers could adapt to the narcosis, it would mean great savings to companies engaged in exploring and exploiting underwater resources," Dr. Bennett notes. "Compressed air could then be substituted for the expensive but nonnarcotic helium-oxygen mixture now used for dives of this depth." In the following article, David Abrahamson describes the excitement and suspense of the experimental dive in March 1980, and the implications of deepsea research for mankind.
per square centimeter. the equivalent of 47 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. In the argot of hyperbaric research, this was a simulated "dive" to a pressure equal to that exerted by a 460-meter-high column of seawater. Hence, it was a "460-meter chamber dive." Now, the "topside" scientists were giving serious consideration to going even deeper. Delmar (Bud) Shelton, a former U.S. Navy diver and physician's associate, was the senior man inside the chamber. Though 40 years old, and therefore at an advanced age for experiments involving physiological extremes, he was an avid jogger and in excellent physical condition. But Shelton was already having more difficulty than his companions in dealing with the density of the pressurized breathing medium, a finely calculated blend of helium mixed with 1 percent oxygen and 10 percent nitrogen. At 460 meters, the pressurized gas mixture was more than 11 times as dense as regular air at sea level, and simply too "thick" to move through the divers' nasal passages. All three had become compulsive mouth-breathers. William Bell, 25, was a fourth-year medical student. Gregarious, energetic and talkative, he had already found the tight quarters of the small chamber confining to both his lanky body and his natural enthusiasm. Because the extreme density of the helium atmosphere distorted the men's voices into unintelligible D.onald Duck babble, the chamber had been fitted with special "helium-unscrambler" microphones. The headsets, however, refused to work, reliably, permitting only intermittent voice contact with the lab outside. To communicate with one another, the divers were restricted to grunts, gestures and what they could write out on note pads. The third member of the team was Stephen Porter, 24. Self-described as "a crazy commercial kid," Porter had six years' experience as a professional diver. Of the three men, Porter was in perhaps the best physical shape for the experiment. Despite the irritations and discomforts, however, what Shelton, Bell and Porter were not experiencing that Saturday afternoon was far more exciting to the scientists observing them. For, unlike every other known human exposed to depths greater than 300 meters, the Duke "divers" did not Facing Page: In this pressure chamber (above), only 2.25 meters in diameter, three Duke University divers (below) reached a record simulated depth of 650 meters in March 1980. They are, from left: Steve Porter, Bud Shelton and William Bell.
seem to be afflicted by something called the high-pressure nervous syndrome (HPNS). And that was stunning news indeed. For the last century and a half, man has sought to extend the depths to which he can venture into the sea. But the deeper he has attempted to go, the more limiting the effects of increased pressure have proved to be. Between 30 and 90 meters, the nitrogen that makes up 78 percent of regular air becomes an intoxicant, inducing a deadly form of narcosis-a stupor that Jacques Cousteau poetically termed "the rapture of the deep." So divers below that depth have, since World War II, relied on special helium-oxygen mixtures as a breathing medium. This "heliox," devoid of any dangerous nitrogen, seems to be a reasonable answer for the 150- to 180-meter working depths of most commercial diving. Below 180 meters, however, the problem of the high-pressure nervous syndrome emerges, reaching disabling proportions somewhere between 360 and 450 meters. A direct effect of the increased pressure, the affliction produces a frightening collection of neurological disorders: uncontrollable tremors, nausea, vomiting and pronounced lethargy leading to unpredictable, on-againoff-again periods of unintentional sleep,
typically filled with violent dreams. The man who first discovered the syndrome more than a decade a'}.d a halJ ago was a young British resear,~er in diving physiol~gy named Peter Bennett. Employed by the 'Royal Naval Physiological Laboratory at Alverstoke, he supervised a series of simulated chamber dives to 180 ~nd 210 meters in 1965. Because the divers were breathing heliox during the tests, there was no way that their nausea, dizziness and tremors could be attributed to nitrogen narcosis. "People said, 'Look, they're shaking. They must be scared,'" Bennett recalled years later. "But these were big, beefy Royal Navy divers, so that didn't seem likely." Faced with this puzzling neurological effect of pressure, Bennett realized that he was onto something new and complex. Fifteen years later, as evening began to fall on that singular Saturday in March, Dr. Peter B. Bennett, 49, director of Duke's F.G. Hall Laboratory, was faced with an unusual and perplexing opportunity. Almost every aspect of the experiment had Bud Shelton takes a shower in a portable stall erected in the living space of the cramped chamber. In all, Shelton, Porter and Bell spent 28 days under pressure in the chamber,
gone according to plan. But more important, a novel hypothesis that he and his colleagues had been working on for more than five years was proving correct. The key, Bennett felt, to the absence of any symptoms of HPNS at 460 meters was the addition of a small amount of nitrogen to the divers' breathing mixture. Acting as a mild narcotic, the nitrogen served to "antagonize" the effects of the increased pressure. It was as though nitrogen narcosis and the high-pressure nervous syndrome could be viewed as opposite swings of the same neurological pendulum. In simplified terms, nitrogen or a similar anesthetic acts to expand the brain's nervecell membranes, while extreme pressure seems to have the opposite effect. According to Bennett's hypothesis, if the two deforming actions could be balanced, canceling each other out, something close to normal neurological function could be preFrom outside the chamber, dive director Dr. Peter Bennett (below) congratulates members of the second team (bottom) when they broke the March 1980 record by reaching a simulated depth of 686 meters in February 1981. They are, from left: Leonard Whitlock, Stephen Porter (resting on his bunk; his blood sample being taken for analysis) and Eric Kramer.
served. Additionally, the rate of compression appeared to be an important variable affecting the onset of HPNS. The faster the compression, the more nitrogen might be needed to offset the effects of the pressure. So the experimental objective was to find the correct amount of nitrogen for both a given rate of compression and a given pressure (or depth). Beginning at the traditional dive descent rate of 18 meters per minute, the compression rate had been gradually slowed to less than 30 centimeters per minute below 390 meters. Previous deep dives had suggested that, for a predetermined compression rate, 18 percent nitrogen in the breathing mixture was too narcotic, and an earlier 460-meter dive at Duke had shown that 5 percent nitrogen was not enough to prevent HPNS. As a result, Shelton, Bell and Porter had been breathing 10 percent nitrogen at 460 meters-and by all indications they seemed to¡ be doing fine. A full range of tests showed them to be in excellent condition. Numerous physiological tests were performed during the two experimental dives to study the effects of the increased pressure on the human body. Here, measurements are made of Kramer's brain's electrical activity.
Such excellent condition, in fact, that Bennett could not help speculating about how well the "trimix" (helium, nitrogen and oxygen) breathing medium would work at even greater depths. Less than 90 meters farther down was the American simulated depth record, set three months before by the United States Experimental Diving Unit, whose divers had been racked by HPNS. And just 60 meters farther than that was the world simulated record of 600 meters, set by two divers from a French firm, Comex, in 1972. Everything was working so well. Why not continue all the way to the frontier? And then beyond? Changing an experiment in midstream is always a complicated process. Changing a human-subject experiment, particularly when there is a clear element of increased risk, can be downright dangerous. Bennett's first step was to obtain the divers' consent. Bell thought that "there was no question that all of us wanted to go deeper. We had a written conversation among the three of us." It took another four days to complete the preparations for extending the depth of the experiment, including consultations with lawyers and a formal procedure to obtain
approval from the university's clinical investigations committee of the ethics of revising the experiment. The new goal would be 650 meters on the chamber's metric pressure gauge-equal to more than 65 atmospheres of pressure, or almost 70 kilograms per square centimeter. Because nitrogen is a much denser gas than helium, it was decided to perform¡the increased pressurization by adding only helium to the chamber atmosphere. Even though this would mean that the percentage of nitrogen would fall from 10 percent to just under 8 percent, the increase in the physical density of the breathing mixture would .be minimized. At 640 meters, the density would be 15 times that of air at sea level. "Departure" was scheduled for 8 a.m., Wednesday. Ever fearful of HPNS, Bennett made sure the compression rate would be glacially slow: initially less than 20 centimeters per minute, decreasing in¡ steps to half that as the dive progressed. Rest intervals were planned at 492, 550 and 600 meters. Also at these points, performance tests and respiratory experiments would closely monitor the divers' condition. If all went well, they would arrive at their new destination of 650 meters on Friday. The journey to the new world simulated
¡ diving record of 650 meters took more than two days, including two 14-hour holding periods when Shelton, Bell and Porter slept. Though all three experienced moments of lightheadedness and feelings of "inner trembling," the most pronounced effect was a distorted perception of time. "Everything feels like it's speeded up and that I'm moving slower," Bell wrote in his journal. "However, from tests and stuff that I do, I am obviously doing everything at about the same speed." But most important, the addition of nitrogen to the breathing' mixture continued to prevent overt symptoms of HPNS. Breathing became ever more difficult, however, as the density increased with pressure. A simple cough was a markedly unpleasant experience. And sneezing, said Porter, "was the most painful thing I've ever done. It felt like the top of your head was blown off, and I'd be dizzy for a couple of minutes afterward." As they neared their final destination, the recurrent comment from the lab staff monitoring their condition was, "Gosh, you guys look so good!" Indeed, the three men showed next to none of the classical symptoms of HPNS, and their scores on tests of mental and manual dexterity were 70 to 80 percent of what they had achieved on the surface before the experiment. To celebrate their success, Porter, Bell and Shelton eat a hearty dinner at the record depth.
Shelton, however, was experiencing severe problems with respiration. "I didn't want to talk or even chew gum," he recalled later, "because simply breathing was a full-time job. I was sitting like a patient with lung disease-leaning forward with my back straight, with my arms at my side to support me and help expand my lungs. Even sitting like that with my mouth full open, I had this terrible sensation that I was somehow falling behind in my breathing and wouldn't be able to catch up." So when, in midafternoon on Friday, March 14, after eight days in the chamber at ever-increasing pressure, the divers finally descended !he last 10-centimeters-perminute increment and reached their goal of 650 meters, the entire laboratory felt an overwhelming sense of elation mixed with relief. The elation lasted for the first few of the 24 hours the team would remain at the record depth. Porter recalled that "Dr. Bennett was beaming like a kid with a candy cane, saying that this was the first real step to the forefront of deep diving in 15 years." Ahead lay more tests, and then the precarious two-week "decompression" phase. All three divers experienced "the bends" -intense pain in their muscles and joints during the gradual release of the massive quantities of gases that, under pressure, had saturated their body tissues. The trip back to the surface 'was agonizingly slow and more than a little uncomfortable.
When they emerged into the welcome April sunshine, Shelton, Bell and Porter had been under pressure a total of 28 days. They were fatigued but otherwise in good condition. They had spent 17 days at a simulated depth below 300 meters, more than three and a half days below 540 and 2.6 days at 600 meters or deeper. Where the final barrier to man's capacity to withstand pressure lies remains an open question. Before Duke's success, the terrifying onset of the high-pressure nervous syndrome was believed to restrict the operational limit to around 300 meters. When pressed to speculate, the current head of diving for the United States Navy recently suggested that "somewhere around 900 meters I think we'll find a hard limit." But Peter Bennett is not so sure. "Here we go again," he says, shaking his head. "People drawing lines. I went through the sathe thing 10 years ago with the 450-meter 'limit.'" Carefully choosing his words, he continues: "As in the past, the keenness of some to draw depth limitations to diving man continues to be confounded by the solutions provided by careful and ingenious research. "There is an awful lot of ocean on this planet that's still unexplored, and many of us think that's where the future lie'S." 0 About the Author: David Abrahamson is a freelance writer who contributed frequently to The New York Times Magazine.
Mrs. Gandhi's Visit: Quotes From the U.S. Press India and Indira Gandhi took center stage in the American press during the Indian Prime Minister's visit to the United States. The Christian Science Monitor ran a 16-page editorial supplement on India; The N~w York Times heralded her visit with a special article on Indians in Washington; several leading newspapers and magazines took the opportunity to have a look at Indo-U.S. relations and at India's stage of development, and some carried special interviews with Mrs. Gandhi. The following comments reflect the breadth of coverage. Mrs. Gandhi is plainly intent to make the best of her 9-day visit. If India gets weapons from the East, its political ideas derive from the West, and its proud and ancient culture owes nothing to Moscow. Its political maturity f which Americans take for granted, is critical to the stability of all South Asia. Mrs. Gandhi is entitled to an attentive ear. -The New York Times As between India and the United States, there is the greatest degree of compatibility of principles of government and general traditions of law, of personal individual freedom and tolerance; tolerance most particularly, it being a distinguishing quality of India today. And so Mrs. Gandhi is here to re-establish a relationship broken off a decade ago. We wish the negotiators well. We welcome the Prime Minister. If I may express a hope, it is that in the aftermath of this journey the Indian Government takes some effort to look at the restrictions they place upon the resident activities of American nationals in the subcontinent. Just as we welcome Indians here as immigrants or visitors or sojournists, so ought India to welcome Americans. ... One would hope that our relations, now that they have so much improved, will not deteriorate. For that, it is necessary that exchanges be of benefit and appropriate to countries of our size and disposition. -Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator and former u.s. Ambassador to India India's passion for independence makes it a mistake to count it a servant of Soviet interests. It is a further mistake to ignore the considerable political capacity of both the Indian democracy and
the Indian state to check Soviet expansionism in South Asia, whether ideological or military. India has strong reasons for not moving closer to the Soviet Union and for wanting American friendship now. The Soviet presence at the Northwest gateway to the subcontinent is unquestionably a matter of deep concern that has intensified as that presence has taken on aspects of permanence. In these circumstances an India on good terms with the United States is an India less isolated, less vulnerable to Soviet pressures. Sharing in these benefits of American science and technology, trade and aid are other important Indian interests, but they are not new or changed enough to explain Mrs. Gandhi's markedly increased recent effort to cultivate good relations with this country. The new incentive clearly is the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. There is, then, an opportunity now for the United States to extend a supportive and. non deman ding hand to India and build a broader, steadier relationship at a time when strengthened ties are in our mutual interest. -Robert F. Goheen, former u.s. Ambassador to India and now senior fellow, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs The fact of Mrs. Gandhi's presence in the United States now is one example of the decline of Soviet influence among the selfstyled "nonaligned" countries of the Third World. India is moving away from a condition of semi-intimacy with the Soviets for many reasons. One of them is that the Soviets are less able than the West to help in the industrial modernization of India. Access to the higher technology of
the West is probably afirst priority to India in its present stage of development. -Joseph c. Harsch, The Christian Science Monitor India is already highly respected among Third World nations; I hope it will use that leadership role by helping to halt the global spread of nuclear weapons. I welcome the improvement in relations between our countries. I hope we can also look forward to the day when India, Pakistan and other nations join the 114 nonweapon states that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. That one act would do more than anything else to build a true, worldwide nonproliferation ethic-one that our country, India and, indeed, all mankind share a common interest in maintaining. -Senator John Glenn President Reagan's warm reception of Mrs. Gandhi shows that he sees the opportunities which a strengthened U.S. tie with nonaligned India afford. Not only does it bolster India's commitment to democracy. It wHl enable India to play its rightful role in fostering stability in the regionperhaps even persuading its Soviet friends to remove themselves from Afghanistan. This is intelligent diplomacy which the U.S. could use more of. - The Christian Science Monitor Philosophically, the Reagan brand of free-enterprise development clashes with the Gandhi commitment to a mixed economy heavy on the socialist side. Practically, however, Mr. Reagan, while remaining cool to India's reliance on U.S. -backed concessional loans, has relaxed American objections to India's pursuit of large loans at the International Monetary Fund. Where there's will, there may be half a way. -The Washington Post It would serve U.S. interest if India would join the worldwide chorus of condemnation of Soviet aggression in Afghanistan. But this, perhaps, is expecting too much. from an Indian leader
obsessed by Pakistan and China. Quite obviously these regional preoccupations take precedence even over India's unhappiness with the presence of Soviet troops in the mountainous gateway to the subcontinent. What the Prime Minister could offer Americans was a hope for comparative stability in India, a country which she noted is no longer a "beggar" and is selfsufficient in grain. Knowing that Mr. Reagan is all for free enterprise but resistant to multilateral assistance programs, she made the point that more aid would create better investment opportunities for U.S. businessmen. "Our stability," she told the National Press Club, "will be a factor in the stability of the whole region." Does this mean that the era of needless bickering between the United States and India is over? We hope so. - The Baltimore Sun Most people look at the wrong things when they view India. They see the low standard of living, but overlook the vast pool of intellectual and business talent, the massive economic, social and technological progress that has taken place in a framework of relative political stability and democracy. For all its problems, India's is th~ world's untold success story. -James W. Michael, Editor, Forbes India ... is an illustration of how a huge country with enormous poverty can use democratic procedures to build a nation that is self-reliant-or nearly so-in everything from nuclear fuel to computer parts to foodgrains. It is an example of a former colonialized country that produces some of the world's best diplomats, scholars, architects, entrepreneurs, space scientists, surgeons and biologists. A remarkably disparate country with 15 major different languages and a panoply of religious practices, India has shown an extraordinary sense of proud nationhood by remaining a united country. -John Schidlovsky, The Baltimore Sun
MUSIC OF THEWINDS ANEW GURU TOBACCO PERILS
) jake a group of American classical musicians with an excellem ability to blend tones, exceptional rhythmic feel, years of experience and a welldeserved reputation as one of the best wind ensembles in the world-and you have the Dorian Winds. Their performances range from the classical elegance of Mozart to the piquant, contemporary wit of Berio, and are marked by that magical communication between artists that comes from long and constant association. The Dorian Winds have performed all over the world, and this month are visiting India for the second time. They last toured India in 1970. During their tour, they will give concerts in a number of Indian cities. They will also participate in lecturedemonstrations and master classes. The group Dorian Winds first came
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together on an informal basis at the Tang~ Iewood music center -in Massachusetts. They were invited there in 1961 as individuals to participate in a summer music festival. They met, played music together and decided to form an ensemble. One of the original members of the group, bassoonist Jane Taylor, is still with the Dorian Winds. Rounding out the ensemble, which plays collectively or in subgroupings, are French horn player David Jolley, oboe player Gerard Reuter, flutist Karl Kraber and clarinetist Jerry Kirkbride. Kirkbride attributes a large part of the Dorian Winds' success to the relationship they form with their audience. The group pioneered the technique of discussing musical and historical facts onstage during a performance. "I joined the ensemble in 1970," says
small contribution to reducing inflation, but the resident Ronald Reagan pursuit of a purely supply-side approach to inflahas named Martin tion would be irresponsible. It would not only fail S. Feldstein, a Harvard economics professor to cure inflation but would also discredit the use of and currently president of the desirable supply-side initiatives to aid capital National Bureau of Economic formation and real growth." Born in New York City on Noyember 25,1939, Research, as chairman of the Feldstein earned bachelor's and master's degrees President's Council of Economic Advisers. He succeeds from Harvard University and a doctorate from Murray Weidenbaum, who is returning to the Oxford University, where he served as a research fellow and lecturer at Nuffield College from 1964 academic world. Feldstein, 42, belongs to a prominent group of until 1967, when he joined Harvard as a professor young American economists who believe that the of economics. His wife, Kathleen, is also an ideas and prescriptions set forth by British econo- economist and they have two children. In 1977, Feldstein was awarded the John Bates mist John Maynard Keynes during the Great Clark medal by the American Economic AssociaDepression of the Thirties no longer are approprition-an honor bestowed every two years on the ate for the U.S. economy of the 1980s. Just before the presidential election in 1980, economist under age 40 who is deemed to have Feldstein wrote in The Wall Street Journal: "The made the most significant contribution to U.S. growing support for supply-side policies is one of economic science. Commenting on the President's choice, Walter the few encouraging signs on the economic scene today. Washington's new concern with economic W. Heller, economics professor at the University incentives, capacity expansion, and tax distortions of Minnesota and chairman of the Council of is a welcome shift from the more limited and often Economic Advisers during the Kennedy and Johninappropriate Keynesian economics that domi- . son administrations, Said: "He is a first-rate economist and outstanding research man. He'll bring nated the 1960s and 1970s." Feldstein cautioned that there is a danger that something that's been missing [in the Reagan supply-side policies would be called on to perform Administration] and a very balanced conservative an impossible task. He wrote: "Although I support point of view. So I think it's a big plus, an excellent a supply-side approach to unemployment and appointment, and I believe the President was lucky productivity, I am convinced that inflation will be that Mr. Feldstein was willing to serve." Feldstein is presently a member of the National tamed only by appropriate limits to demand. The widespread view that supply policies can eliminate Productivity Advisory Committee and the Presiinflation by increasing productivity is just wishful dent's Private Sector Survey on Cost Controls in thinking. Productivity increases might make a the Federal Government.
Karl Kraber being garlanded at Madras airport during thegroup's 1970 visit (top, right). The current quintet includes only two of the 1970 performers-Kraber and Jane Taylor (above).
a simple ceremony in Bombay recently, U.S. Consul General J. Bruce Amstutz presc:nted a check for Rs. 3,144,200.00 to Dr. Bomi Sethna, member of the Council of Management of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). The check was part of a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the continuation of a project to study oral cancer and precancerous conditions in relation to tobacco habits among rural Indians. The study is being conducted by Dr. Fali S. Mehta, head of TIFR's Basic Dental Research Unit, and it covers rural centers in the districts of Ernakulam, Kerala; Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh; Pune, Maharashtra; and Bhavnagar, Gujarat. Started in 1966 with the aid of NIH, the project has generated valuable information. The most important
Kirkbride. "At that time, the Dorian Winds had already built a reputation through their exchanges and explanations about their music. A large part of our enjoyment and the enjoyment of the audience comes from those exchanges. That's why on the Indian tour we will bring our instruments to workshops and hope those who attend them will bring theirs." The Dorian Winds "sell" wind music by playing it beautifully. This is their aim. And to play well, perseverance is necessary. "From the very beginning," Kirkbride adds, "the group had a real mission: to build a wind ensemble that could
compete with a string ensemble in terms of artistry. Up to that point, and even now, wind music takes second place to the strings. But the Dorian Winds decided at Tanglewood that they wanted to work very, very hard to create a musical unit with a philosophy." During the Indian tour, Kirkbride says, "We are making a point of doing American pieces. We will include Irving Fine's lyrical Partita and a series of American Jazz rhythms in a classical setting by Elliot Carter." Another contemporary piece chosen by the Dorian Winds for performance in India is a children's play composed especially for them by the famous.. Italian composer Luciano Berio. The work, which also contains a text by Rhonda Levine, is appropriately named Opus Number Zoo. "We take turns narrating the text," Kirkbride says. "It is humorous but also has a deeper meaning that appeals to adults." Opus Number Zoo, contains sections titled, Tom Cats, The Horse, The Gray Mouse and Barn Dance (in which a hungry fox dances with a chicken). The short poems are set to music in the tradition of Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev. Everybody narrates the text -one at a time, in pairs, in unison-as the music keeps going around and around.
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U.S. Consul General J. BruceAmstutzhandsoveracheckforRs. 3,144,200toDr. Homi N. Sethna, amemberofTlFR's Council of Management. Others in thephoto are TlFR director B. V. Sreekantan (left) and Dr. Fali S. Mehta, head of TlFR's Basic Dental Research Unit.
findings to emerge so far are: • Mouth cancer and precancerous lesion develop only among individuals who use tobacco either for chewing, smoking or cleaning teeth; • Mouth cancer is almost always preceded by recognizable precancer-
ous changes; and • Just like cigarette smokers, bidi smokers show a higher mortality rate than nonsmokers. The findings are already being used to plan and implement a prevention program for mouth cancer in India.
AN ADVENTURE ... continued from page 4
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A hula dancer bids a distinctive aloha to the Prime Minister at the end of her nine-day U. S. visit. At Mrs. Gandhi's left is George R. Ariyoshi, Hawaii's Governor.
with a ceremony at City Hall at which Mayor Thomas Bradley presented her the key to the city. The Prime Minister noted that this was not her first visit to Los Angeles: She had come on a lecture tour in 1961, which she pointed out had been nonpolitical. In addition to a reception for prominent west coast women and an address to representatives of the large California Indian community (estimated at 58,000), Mrs. Gandhi held a series of private meetings: with Dr. Jonas Salk, discoverer of the first successful polio vaccine; John R. Hubbard, former president of the University of Southern California and cochairman of the Indo-U.S. Subcommission for Education and Culture, and Jerry Brown, Governor of California. Wherever she went in the United States, Mrs. Gandhi was soughtfor interviews on radio and television. She appeared on two of the most widely viewed national network news programs, NBC's Meet the Press and ABC's Nightline. Through a cooperative effort of
the U.S. International Communication Agency and Doordarshan, six programs were sent by satellite to India from Washington and New York from July 29 through August 2. In addition, they coproduced a one-hour summary of the visit's highlights, including tHe Los Angeles and Honolulu ceremonies, which was broadcast throughout India after the Prime Minister's return. President Reagan telephoned Mrs. Gandhi on August 4, near the end of her American visit, to say how happy he was to have had the opportunity to talk with her again. She thanked him for his hospitality and said she "enâ&#x20AC;˘ joyed every minute" of her stay in the United States. Mrs. Gandhi was greeted in Honolulu by the traditional grass skirted hula dancers. She presented a baby elephant to the city zoo-a gift of the people of India to the children of Hawaii, which the Prime Minister said she hoped would delight the young at heart of all ages. In her presentation speech, Mrs. Gandhi stressed the need for all nations to cooperate in protecting the environment, a thread of concern that ran through her remarks during the visit. Mrs. Gandhi made it plain that although she is making the most of the present, her eyes are on the future of relationships between the two great¡ democracies: "We have to decide what we want for the future for our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren because that future is being shaped today by our actions and the direction which we give to the world. We owe something to the future generations, just as we are today enjoying the fruits of the pioneers in your country and the ancient sages and others in my country who gave us certain values and certain ideals by which to live. We have to see we don't lose that direction when we try to take the country forward. Perhaps there will be fewer wars and conflicts if, instead of trying to determine who is right, we try to determine what is right-and then follow the 0 direction of that road."
America Meets Dadi's Familv others in the Odyssey series were 20 to 1 or 30 to 1. "We did have a tentative list of scenes we wanted but these got modified as the events evolved-and as our own understanding of the family evolved. We were, after all, trying to get into the intricacies of a culture that wasn't ours-it's not Rina's and Pramod's culture any more than it is mine. "And I knew we were on the right track when during the editing, people with me in the United States stopped saying: 'Oh, interesting India' and started talking of family relationships and saying things like: 'You know, my mother-in-law is just like that.' " Dadi's Family wasn't Michael's first film' in India-nor his first for the University of Wisconsin. His production company, Worldview Productions (he and James MacDonald are partners), has made a couple of films on India for the university. "Professor Joseph Elder of the university's South Asian studies program gets these films madewith funding from the Smithsonian Institution and the National Endowment of Humanities-for his courses and he also distributes them to other universities. The ones I've made for them so far have been very academic. Dadi's Family is, by far, the most interesting project. It is part of a series of three films on India-on law, Islam and women." Michael plans no Dadi's Family II despite curiosity among a lot of viewers about the family. He does, however, plan to come back soon-and not just for some more filmmaking. He recently got married "and I had promised Dada and Dadi that I'd bring my bride across to meet them and to get their blessings." 0