SPAN 2 A Paradise Called Kanha by Kamal Sahai
8 Corporate Classrooms by Ezra Bowen
11 The Right to Know byA.G.
Noorani
14 Maynard Ferguson: Jazz Philosopher by Shakuntala Balu
16 A Bold Initiative in Strategic Defense by G.A. Keyworth II
20 The View From the Embassy An Interview with Ambassador Harry G. Barnes, Jr.
22 My Filmmaking Adventure by Bonnie Tinsley
26 The Artist as Architect by Calvin Tomkins
30 Twins A short story by Philip Graham
34 Focus On ...
37
On the Lighter Side
38 Looting the Library of Congress by T.K. Mahadevan
40 Solving Medical Mysteries Clues From Old Fossils by Jack McClintock
Set a Bug to Catch a Bug
42 Golden Olden Recipes by Maria Lenhart
46 Spoony Singh's Superstars byJ. Radhakruhnan
Publisher Editor
James A. McGinley Mal Oettinger
Managing Editor
Himadri Dhanda
Assistant Managing Editor
Krishan Gabrani
Senior Editor
Aruna Dasgupta
Copy Editor
Nirmal Sharma
Editorial Assistant Photo Editor
Rocque Fernandes Avinash Pasricha
Photographs: Front cover, 2-7-Kamal Sahai. 8---© Bart Bartholomew/Black Star. 9---© Dennis Brack/Black Star. lO-Steve Liss/Time magazine. 14-15-courtesy Shakuntala Balu. 20-Avinash Pasricha. 22, 23 left-Srinidhi Ramu; 23 right-Cliff Richeson. 26-27 top--© 1982 Kenneth Garrett, Woodfin Camp; bottom row: © 1983 David Barnes; courtesy Jackie Ferrara; courtesy Max Protetch Gallery, New York. 34 bottom-illustration by Thomas Benton, copyright 1939 by The Limited Editions Club from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 35-0tto E. Nelson, The Asia Society, New York; Mr. & Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 38 left-Avinash Pasricha; right-Michael Freeman and Jonathan Wallen, from Treasures of the Library of Congress. 42-43-John Riley. 46-back cover-courtesy Spoony Singh.
Published by the United States Information Service, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this maga· zine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. Printed by Raj Kumar Wadhwa at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor. Price of magazine, one year's subscription (12 issues) Rs.25; single copy, Rs. 4. For change of address send an old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to Circulation Manager, SPAN Magazine, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001. See change of address form on page 48b.
Front cover: Project Tiger has made the Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh a paradise for tigers; their population there has more than doubled in the last decade. Kanha has other attractions too. See story on pages 2-7. Back cover: Jean Harlow glows in wax at the Los Angeles Hollywood Wax Museum run by Spoony Singh, who hails from Jalandhar. See page 46.
Many times during recent years the United States has been host to magnificent exhibitions of art from other countries: the treasures of King Tut from ancient Egypt, the ceramics of China, the Mona Lisa from France and Michelangelo's Pieta. But never before has the heritage of one country been presented so spectacularly and on such a grand scale as the Festival of India. The Festival's scope is indeed impressive. Not only art treasures of the past and the works of contemporary artists will be presented but also Americans will get to learn more about India from individuals--master musicians and dancers, performers in many disciplines and Indian intellectuals and opinion leaders. Reports from America indicate that interest in India is at an all-time high. It should reach a climax of excitement when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi officially inaugurates the Festival this month at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In honor of this done before: devote Minister's trip to Mr. Gandhi's visit, month. You will be but we hope it will
cultural landmark, SPAN wil~ do something it has never an entire issue to one theme--the Festival and the Prime the United States. Because of the special coverage of the July issue will be published in the middle of the receiving your copy two or three weeks later than usual, be an issue worth waiting for.
At first glance, one might think ~he Festival would restrict the usual variety of subjects that SPAN presents. Not so. The Festival has cast its net far, including music, movies, colorful costumes, photographs, drama, a wide range of the great Indian arts as well as village crafts. A typical Indian mela will be held on the Mall between the Capitol and the White House in Washington. Important seminars on democracy in India qnd India's future have been held at Princeton University and the University of Texas. Mrs. Pupul Jayakar, cochairperson of the Festival of India, has said that when Indira Gandhi first chose her to head the activities, the Prime Minister told her that the Festival would be a true success only if it reached people across the breadth of the United States, not just those in the major cities. How well this advice has been followed is indicated by the geographical range of some of the sites where Festival activities are taking place: Hartford, Connecticut, where an Indian play has been staged by Balwant Gargi~ Salem, Massachusetts, which will feature an exhibition on "Yankee Traders and Indian Merchants"~ Pueblo, Colorado, will host a textile display~ Kansas City, Missouri, where exquisite Indian paintings will be shown~ San Diego, California, which will present contemporary Indian prints (you can see some of them in the July SPAN). Some Festival events are being sponsored by Americans of Indian descent. Recently the Indo-American Forum, a group of some 200 India-born residents of the southern city of Memphis, Tennessee, sponsored an exhibition of Indian miniature paintings there. The exhibition is traveling as part of the Festival to Durham, North Carolina, and Louisville, Kentucky, too. The members of the Memphis Forum are also arranging a Festival of India banquet featuring traditional Indian foods, a Kuchipudi dance recital and a series of Indian movies. This month the art museum of the University of California at Berkeley presented an exhibition of photography by Raghubir Singh. Some of his work appeared in SPAN when he was just a student. Photographs by SPAN's Photo Editor Avinash Pasricha and other outstanding Indian photographers will be seen at various Festival sites: India's National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, has collected their works for display in the foyers of auditoriums and museums where Festival events are scheduled. Mr. Pasricha him¡self will be seen at various Festi valsi tes as he covers the Prime Minister's visit and the color of the events. You'll get view through his camera eye in SPAN's July Festival issue.
a
A Paradise Called Kanha
Kanha and tigers, now they are synonymous. If it weren't for game preserves like the one in Kanha, Madhya Pradesh, the tiger might well have become a myth, or a reality only within the covers of a book, like the sager-toothed tiger. It was the massacre of some 30 tigers by a trigger-happy hunter (with a special license) and the subsequent public furor that led to the formation of the Kanha National Park, 170 kilometers from Jabalpur, in 1955. Today, 30 years later, it is considered not just the finest of Indian national parks but also one of the best in Asia. The park lies in Central India, sprawling over some 940 square kilometers in the Mandla and Balaghat districts of Madhya Pradesh, in the Maikal hills. It is known for its thick forests of the majestic saal and bamboo, grassy plateaus, meadows, valleys and streams. And, of course, for Project Tiger. The park forms the core of the Kanha Tiger Reserve, which was created in 1974 under Project Tiger. Project Tiger, launched in 1973 as a cooperative venture of the Government of India, state governments and agencies like the World Wildlife Fund, is a comprehensive ecosystem conservation and development project. It aims at a progressively healthier overall habitat for the tiger and its prey ~pecies without resorting to any drastic artificial manipulation. From an.
all-time low of 1,800 in 1972, India's tiger population is at around 3,000 today. In Kanha it has increased from 43 in 1973 to 94 in 1984. The entire park in Kanha has benefited from the conservation measures started under Project Tiger. These include fire protection, antipoaching measures, ending cattlegrazing in the core area by the villagers, and restoration and protection of meadows. It is a combination of the natural and nurtured environment that makes the park so conducive to the continued existence of the multitude of wildlife there. One of the most heartening success stories of the region is that of the branderi barasingha found only in Kanha. This swamp deer with anything from 6 to 14 horns has crossed the 400 mark. There were just 66 in 1970. And now Kanha is set for more trail-blazing. The Kanha National Park and the Zoological Park in Delhi have been selected as the sites of an Indo-U.S. project aimed at developing visitor-education facilities and programs on the lines The tiger is the superstar of the Kanha National Park-and by now quite used to the public attention that brings him. Once a tiger is located, mahouts take visitors on elephant backs to see him at close range.
of some of the more popular American national parks. This joint project of the U.S. National Park Service and the Indian Department of Environment envisages the development of the Delhi and Kanha parks as models of "educational and interpretative programs" and focal training points for others. As part of the program, Indian staff at both sites will be trained in park administration, environmental ecology and other related fields. The first U.S. National Park Service team visited India in late 1983. The Government of India accepted its draft report of a plan for the Kanha and Delhi parks to be implemented by 1987. Early last year another team of American consultants went to Kanha led by repeat visitor Wayne Cone. "Kanha," said Cone at the end of his visit to the park, "is one of the primary parks of the world. It's well known too. You see pictures of Kanha and its wildlife in several parts of the world. "
cluster of thorned bamboos, perhaps for a siesta. We too called it a day.
The day starts early at the Kanha National Park. At about 4 a.m. the mahouts' assistants move into the jungle to fetch the elephants left to graze there at night. Then howdahs are fixed on each elephant. We set out around 5 a.m. in groups of three to five elephants to track tigers in the Kanha and Kisli ranges. Each mahout takes his elephant along a different route but keeps in touch with the others, often meeting at preset places. When one of them fails to turn up, chances are he has spotted a tiger. Once a mahout spots a tiger, he signals the others by whistling. They respond by cordoning off the area with elephants. The groups slowly move toward the tiger who generally opts for the ground deliberately left unguarded by the mahouts. The tiger is thus manipulated to a place suitable for a tiger show for visitors. Wireless and messenger elephants are A visit to the Kanha National Park will convert even the then used to spread the word, giving the exact location of the most casual wildlife lover into an ardent fan, forever looking for star of the show. Tourists are brought here in twos and threes an opportunity to return to the home of the tiger and to the and parked atop elephants to see Kanha's main attraction. Two special feeling in the air, that elusive charm that is Kanha. elephants are always on the spot so that at no point is the tiger The nearest airport for the Kanha park is at Jabalpur. From left alone. The last visitor's curiosity satisfied, the cordon is there it takes about three hours, via Mandla, to reach the park withdrawn and the tiger saunters off. So far there hasn't been a single report of tiger attacks on by road. As I lean back in my seat in the plane, nostalgia sweeps over me. I'm back in Kanha on a sultry morning in mid-1982. It people in Kanha. But I was witness to a show of temper by the was the tail end of my week-long stay at the park. We had king of Kanha. That was at another tiger show. Yhe mahouts started out in the early hours of a warm day for some animal had just started encircling the tiger when he suddenly charged, sighting. The first one we saw was a male bison. The sturdy bull, covering a distance of some SO meters in a fraction of a second, who could, if he wanted, have overturned our jeep and whom snapping and thrashing at everything that came in the way. He even the mighty tiger dare not tackle alone, took to his heels the halted at arm's length from the elephant I was on ... it was a moment he spotted the jeep. In a drive of about 30 kilometers, breathtaking demonstration of a mock charge. Another day I saw another show-a demonstration chase by the other herbivores we saw were a barasingha, a chausingha (four-horned antelope), a barking deer, a cheetal (spotted an animal that even the tiger avoids: the wild dog. A pack of deer), wild boars and blue bulls. Now all that was needed was a them can outmaneuver any animal by their relay chase tactics. As the gap between the hunter and the hunted closes, the dogs tiger to make my day complete. On our return journey, we came upon a jeep belonging to start tearing at the flesh of the hunted animal's abdomen and the state's forest department. It's occupants were excited. They hind parts. Gorier still, they even eat other dogs killed in had spotted a tiger. But by the time I arrived there it had gone. action. The alarm call of the cheetals and the langurs had faded away. But let's get back to the gentler side of Kanha. Kanha is a There was silence. And no tiger. paradise for bird-watchers too. The bamboo groves and the As I trudged back to our jeep disappointed, I saw a rara verdant saal forests are a haven for peafowl, junglefowl, avis, a paradise fly catcher. Wanting to capture the beautiful partridges, quail, black ibis, teal, pintails, scarlet minivet, the bird on film, I followed it for about SO meters. And there it was. Indian pitta, golden- and black-headed orioles, songsters like Not the fly catcher, but the tiger, standing a mere eight or nine the papiha and the cuckoo. Feathery predators like kites, meters away from me. Puny me and the magnificent beast. Face hawks, eagles abound too. Kanha has some 200 species ofthe most to face! He was an aristocrat, yellow and black of stripe and magnificent birds of tropical Asia. fiery of eye. Then the fire seemed to die out. Looking The park is closed during monsoon weather (July- Septembored-and seemingly barely conscious of my presence-he ber). But a lot happens there then. This is the time that the crossed the kuchcha road and stalked off to the nearest cheetal population, for instance, increases. The newborns are mangrove. My companions and I followed him on elephant sheltered by the tall grass cover which lasts for five months. The back. game of survival however is played cleverly, changing from For the next half hour the tiger entertained us as he yawned season to season. Springtime is the season for mahua, a and stretched, rolled over on his back, sharpened his claws on somewhat intoxicating fruit. While eating it on the trees the the bark of a tree, snapped at twigs and flies, all the while langurs drop a considerable amount of it on the ground which is making a contented purring sound. I had just managed to shoot lapped up by the cheetals. Intoxicated, they become easy prey a few photographs when he decided that enough was enough for the predators. and that it was time to end the show. The big cat picked himself But there is also the law of the jungle. You see it in evidence up, threw a disdainful look in our direction and vanished into a at the water holes of Kanha. The first to drink water are the
cheetals and monkeys. After them come the bison and sam bar. One never finds them all drinking water at the same time. And some are always on guard-for this is a favorite place for the predators to catch a quick meal. The last to make their appearance at the water holes are the predators themselves-the tigers and the elusive, elegant panthers. Tidbits of information like the above and a who's who, who's where and who's what at Kanha are what the lay visitor needs to know to really enjoy his stay. And that is what the Indo-U.S. project aims at making available. Bruce Geyman, exhibit designer of the American National Park Service team, explained that the idea was to give visitors the kind of facilities American parks have-exhibits, film presentations, audio-visual shows, restaurants, picnic spots. The visitor will immediately get an idea of the park's layout, the attractions, the possible places for sighting animals, the timings-Everything You Always Wanted to Know but Did Not Know Whom to Ask. And people staying in the accommodations available within the park will have special programs to look forward to in the evenings. Cone stressed that, despite the American team's presence and plans, the mood of the project would be Indian. "We are a small part of it all. There is no attempt to impose any American system. Our experience in architecture, planning of exhibits and related materials will blend with the Indian requirements and the ideas of the Indian experts we are working with. And all our work too depends heavily on the feedback given to us about the kinds of visitors Kanha gets, their requirements, their expectations, their interests." The chief coordinator of the project is Hemendra Panwar,
director of Project Tiger. As someone who has long served in Kanha, he is excited about the changes that the program will bring to Kanha and the far-reaching effect of this project on Indian national parks. "The development of the program, the training our own people get ... the entire experience will be of great help in developing other parks." The program stresses the importance of creating a consciousness about conservation too. The message will be driven home in a variety of ways. According to exhibit planner Richard Hoffman, "There will be arrangements for people to write in and get accurate information fast about lodging, transportation and how to get there. Audio-visual material will be available for dissemination to schools and other interested institutions. Then there are the park research projects. Some tigers have already been collared-transmitters have been attached to them-so that their movements can be monitored and studied. We figure that having seen the park once, people are ready for more in-depth communication, and we should be prepared to give it to them. It will be exciting for them to be exposed to what parks are actually doing in terms of wildlife research." However, Cone stressed the need for caution: "One should move slowly in promoting parks. Excess visitors certainly put pressure on resources. In America we are now wrestling with the problem of controlling the number of visitors." The work done by Cone and his men is currently being followed up by Viksat, a design team from Ahmedabad that has been assigned the task of developing the plans. In the cards are more log huts and youth hostels. Guides are being trained to answer people's queries, inform them about the importance of
conservation, make visitors understand the lives and ways of the wild. And, of course, no visit would be complete without the jungle lore. The mahouts tell the story of an old tiger who, unable to hunt, decided to change his style. Seeing a group of langurs, he moved toward them and played possum beneath the tree where they had taken refuge. Seeing the tiger lie flat and motionless, one langur managed to hurl a branch at the tiger. The beast did not move a muscle, so another langur, emboldened, climbed down and picked up its tail-still not a flicker. The entire langur mob descended upon the tiger and their leader, largest of them all, pulled the tiger's ear. The big cat blinked and simply used his forepaws to relish a hearty meal. And then there was a tiger who ... but why not find out for yourself? This is about the end of the visiting season. Plan for a trip between October and June. Discover first-hand that Kanha is a paradise for more than just the lord of the jungle. 0 About the Author: Kamal Sahai is a Delhi-based free-lance writer and
photographer.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
A herd of blue bulls (nilgai). Small kingfisher. Crested hawk eagle. White-breasted kingfisher. Black buck. Spotted deer (cheetal). Jungle cat. Shikra-a small predator. Wild boar.
Corporate Classrooms The institute's main building is a white mansion perched on a hillside in Charlottesville, Virginia. The two-year workstudy program is as demanding as any other in the United States. New students go through a kind of Outward Bound rock-climbing ritual. "You get a sense of who you can depend on," says Don Alexander, a second-year student. Building that sort of group working relationship is precisely what the institute has in mind-that and the graduate education of the future leade rs of the textile industry. Every year Charlottesville's Institute of Textile Technology (lIT) turns out a new crop of masters of science imbued with' the latest high-tech manufacturing and management skills. "It's a lot different from other graduate programs," Alexander says of lIT's curriculum. "It's more industry related." Not affiliated with a university, the institute is completely supported by some 35 textile companies that it serves as a supplier of the kinds of cutting-edge team players Copyright
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permission
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1985 Time lne, All rights reserved, Reprinted Time.
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regular schools of higher education have not been turning out. As such, according to a recent report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, lIT stands as a prime example of the growing commitment by U.S. corporations to education for the workplace. At a time when galloping technology can render an engineer's training obsolete within five years, the study notes that "America's business has become its own educational provider." Says Del Lippert, vicepresident for educational services at Digital Equipment Corporation: "It's a matter of survival." The 224-page study, called Corporate Classrooms: The Learning Business, represents more than two years of research by Carnegie Trustee Nell Eurich on what has been a disconnected and poorly observed educational behemoth. U.S. companies, Eurich reports, are training and educating nearly 8 million people, close to the total enrollment in America's four-year colleges and universities. According to Carnegie President Ernest
Boyer, the corporate classroom has quietly become "a kind of third leg of the education system in the U.S." And it is one of the strongest forces for continuing adult education. Courses range from remedial English to nuclear engineering. Some subjects, such as language and accounting, overlap those in the nation's traditional schools. Others compensate for gaps in the conventional curriculum. General Electric's manager of management education, James Baughman, for one, says, "There is vast illiteracy on business-school faculties" in both the mechanics of advanced technology and its management implications. Says a Texas Instruments executive: "As technology changes, universities tend to lag one to three years behind what's happening in the workplace." In their scramble to educate employees, corporations spend upward of $40,000 million a year (vs. $60,000 million-plus for colleges and universities). That kind of money has bought some magnificent facilities, of which the most awesome is Xerox's 917-hectare
Far left: Students attend a helicoptermaintenance class at Northrop University, an offshoot of a Los Angeles aeronautical corporation. Left: Xerox Corporation's sprawling complex in Virginia, where 1,200 students train every year.
complex outside Leesburg, Virginia. Here an average of 1,200 students a year take company training programs one to seven weeks long. When not in class, they luxuriate in the outdoor pool; racquetball, squash, tennis and basketball courts; beauty parlor, bar and dance .floor. Almost as impressive is AT&T's center near Princeton, New Jersey, with 23 classrooms, 7 laboratories, 4 conference rooms, library, auditorium and 300-bed residence hall. This fall IBM, whose reported $ 700 million annual education expenditures probably lead those of all other corporations, plans to consolidate its four corporate technical institutes at a 101-hectare supercampus in Thornwood, New York. At such facilities, and humbler ones, corporations educate in ways that "surpass many universities" in the judgment of the Carnegie study. Courses have clear goals centered on getting results. "I'm going to take what I learn here Monday and Tuesday," says a Digital Equipment student, "and apply it Wednesday or Thursday." Faculties work on contract,
have earned that status since 1977, and they are growing stronger. Three years ago, when General Motors made independent its 66-year-old General Motors Institute (GMI) in Flint, Michigan, GMI began its first master's program. GMI already was educating 2,500 students for bachelor's degrees in engineering and industrial administration. "Academically it's just as tough as, or better than, other institutions," says GMI sophomore Kris Lang, 19. Northrop University, an offshoot of a Los Angeles aeronautical corporation, gets much the same rating from many of its students. By 1988, eight more companies plan to develop 19 degree programs. In so doing, corporations aim to provide students with what a Xerox executive calls "the competitive edge." Four examples of corporate schools where that edge is already being honed are: • The Wang Institute of Graduate Studies in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, opened in 1979 to offer the first full-time master of software engineering degree. Started by An Wang of Wang Laboratories, Inc., the hugely successful computer company in nearby Lowell, the institute aims to educate a new breed of executive scientists who can create models of with performance monitored, rather than order in the individualistic and chaotic enjoy the sometimes soporific security ot" computer-software field. Wang believes lifetime tenure. Study hours and program that its integrated regimen of planning, lengths are set for efficiency and accessi- design and testing of new systems, guided bility, instead of lockstep 50-minute day- by written instructions, can be an answer. time classes in four-month semesters. Set up in a former Marist Brothers Corporate programs have acquired "an seminary, the institute is an independent academic legitimacy of their own," says nonprofit school. Only 10 of its 50 masthe study. The same regional accrediting ter's candidates come from Wang Labs; associations that endorse course work at the others come from the likes of AT&T, conventional colleges have approved Digital Equipment and GTE. Says one corporate classes taught by company student: "I'm finding just the right mix of instructors or by university professors on technological and management courses." • The American Graduate School of corporate teach-ins. In-house education and training in company practices and International Management in Glendale, products make up the majority of the 12 Arizona, is known worldwide for its preparation of global business managers, million courses paid for by businesses. But whether class is down the hall from and about 25 percent of almost 1,000 the office or on a campus, employee- full-time master's candidates are from students usually get much or all of their foreign countries. The school provides schooling free, and some get a full salary instruction in eight languages, among while learning. Some high-tech com- them Mandarin Chinese and English as a panies may soon budget 15 percent to 20 second language; the courses emphasize percent of a worker's paid time for business terms used in macroeconomics and crosscultural management. The training and education. Of the 18 business-launched colleges school also tailors short programs for the and universities that grant degrees, half special needs of multinational companies
Browsing in the bookstore at Digital Equipment Corporation's training center in Bedford, Massachusetts.
like Mitsubishi Electric, which recently logue. So far 270 are enrolled all over the sent nine managers and engineers for a United States. The goal is 5,000. Much of the technology NTU plans for 14-week j)Jogram on English language and American management. national transmission has been operating • The DeVry Institutes, a Bell & Howell regionally in other programs for several subsidiary, are at the trade-school end of years. Texas Instruments and a number the spectrum. A profit-making enter- of other companies participate in interacprise, De Vry sells "education for the real tive videophone lectures with several world." It is a tough-minded, no-frills colleges under the auspices of the Unioutfit with about 30,000 students, en- versity of Texas, Dallas. Stanford pipes rolled in 11 institutes across the continent, lectures to as many as 160 nearby corpostudying for bachelor's, associate's and rate classes. And recently Hewletttechnician's diplomas in various elec- Packard, which owns the United States' tronics fields. The school operates 12 largest industrial satellite, completed a months a year in three shifts, morning, nationwide two-way, two-week TV class afternoon and night. Along with their in computer programs designed by the technical courses, degree students must Massachusetts Institute of Technology satisfy some requirements in psychology, and broadcast to eight locations around the country from a San Jose, California, studio. Carnegie Foundation's Ernest Boyer is openly dazzled by satellite learning, saying that it may represent "the spaceage model for the future." In fact, the report has a tendency to stand in awe of the whole phenomenon of corporate learning. While it acknowledges the difference between education for profit by a corporation and for life preparation by a university, there is a strong implication throughout that higher education should embark on a careful self-reappraisal based on the corporate classroom. Many in academe, however, have a more guarded reaction. Emory Business English, history and literature. But De- School Dean George Parks worries about Vry makes no bones about the fact that it letting "technology drive the educational is preparing people for work, not contemprocess instead of the other way round." plation. That is just fine with the stu- As for the corporate tendency to teach a dents. "We know we'll get jobs," says specific set of facts and practices, Parks computer student Pamela Ramey, 23. It says, "Sound practices need to be based also works out fine for DeVry. Profits for on sound theory. Otherwise you're not the first nine months of 1984: $ 7.1 million going to be able to adapt to a world that's on revenues of $105.5 million. constantly changing." Director Erich Bloch of the National Science Founda• The National Technological University (NTU) is the newest and most exotic tion notes that very often "companies of the degree-granting wrporate class- want universities to train people. This is rooms. Started about a year ago in Fort not their mission." Collins, Colorado, NTU organizes the For all the cautionary concerns of videotaping of advanced engineering traditional academies, both camps ineviclasses at 16 cooperating universities. The tably will be drawn together in many tapes are sent to business sites owned by areas and will have much to learn from seven sponsoring corporations. Working each other. In fact they are already busy engineers "attend" the lectures on VCRs, doing so, at places like NTU, whose and mail their course work to the school entire concept is to carry university learnwhere the lecture originated. NTU then ing over jointly developed technological systems into corporate classrooms, where assembles the credits toward a master's degree. This fall NTU plans to start using it will be put to practical use. D satellite transmission. Teleconferencing may occasionally be added so that stu- About the Author: Ezra Bowen is a senior writer dents can participate in classroom dia- for Time magazine.
The Right to Know experience of its working, one must not for a moment ignore Thelma Martin seemed no different from any of the other members of Jehovah's Witnesses who went about zealously the constitutional underpinning-the right to know as an aspect distributing the sect's literature in the city of Struthers, Ohio. of the First Amendment's guarantee of the right to speak. In But she proved to be much tougher. She made legal history. 1965 the Supreme Court went a step further. It struck down as The city authorities promulgated an ordinance which made it void a federal law which required a person wishing to receive unlawful for anyone distributing literature to ring a doorbell or "Communist political propaganda" from abroad to sign a reply otherwise summon the inmates of a residence to receive such card for the Post Office. Justice Brennan noted, "It is true that literature. Undeterred, Thelma Martin knocked at the door of a the First Amendment contains no specific guarantee of access to home in order to deliver a leaflet advertising a meeting. She was publications. However, the protection of the Bill of Rights goes duly prosecuted and convicted in the Mayor's court, which beyond the specific guarantees to protect from congressional sentenced her to pay a fine of $10. She challenged the abridgment those equally fundamental personal rights necesconviction and took the fight right up to the sary to make the express guarantees fully Supreme Court. meaningful. ... 1 think the right to receive publications is such a fundamental right." By 1943, when the Court heard her case, . When a man was arrested for possessing it had built up an impressive body of America's Freedom of films that the police regarded as obscene, precedents on the First Amendment's Information Act guarantee of freedom of speech (see SPAN, the Court ruled that mere possession of such is the hallmark of May 1982). In this case it upheld not only material cannot be made an offense without violating the First Amendment. Significantthat right-Thelma Martin's right to ima truly open society. It Iy, the Court added, "It is now well estabpart-but emphasized the right of others entitles Americans to receive her literature-the right to know: lished that the Constitution protects the to "all the information "The right to freedom of speech and press right to receive information and ideas. that the security has broad scope .... This freedom embraces ... This right to receive information and of the Nation permits." 'ideas, regardless of their social worth, is the right to distribute literature and necessarily protects the right to receive it. " (Italics fundamental to our free society." are mine, throughout this article.) About the same time, in 1969, the The right to know was thus acknowlSupreme Court in the historic case on edged by the highest court in the land to be an integral part of broadcasting, Red Lion Broadcasting Co. vs. Federal Comthe right to speak. As in all cases of judicial creativity, it was munications Commission (FCC), emphasized that "it is the elaborated upon and refined in successive rulings. Finally, the right of the publis: to receive suitable access to social, political, U.S. Congress sat up and legislated to provide statutory aesthetiC, moral and" other ideas and experiences which is crucial remedies for its enforcement-the Freedom of Information here. That right may not be constitutionally abridged either by Act of 1966 (FOI). The act was amended in 1974 to make it the Congress or by the FCC." more effective in the light of experience. The amendment went The Supreme Court was split evenly on the issue of the into force on February 1, 1975. In the same spirit, two other journalist's right to protect his sources in Branzburg vs. Hayes statutes were also enacted. One was the Privacy Act of 1974, (1972). But there was absolutely no disagreement on the which protects individual privacy against the misuse of federal principle that news gathering does "qualify for First Amendrecords while granting persons access to recorcls concerning ment protection; without some protection for seeking out the them which are maintained by federal agencies. The other was news, freedom of the press could be eviscerated." the Government in the Sunshine Act of 1976, which provides Gradually, the Supreme Court accepted the role of the that meetings of Government agencies shall be open to the media as a surrogate of the public in the exercise of its right to public. be informed of current events-of its right to know. When people speak of the FOI Act, it is the amended law Public TV station, KQED, which had exposed abuses in that they have in mind. A decade's experience has proved its prisons in the San Francisco Bay area, demanded unfettered worth. But in evaluating the terms of the statute and the access to the Santa Rita jail but secured only a limited right of
u.s.
access. Three justices, led by Chief Justice Burger, flatly rejected KQED's claim, while an equal number upheld it. A fine balance was struck in the governing judgment of Justice Potter Stewart. He went along with the Chief Justice on the general proposition that the press has no right "superior to that of the public generally." But what he proceeded to say is particularly apt and relevant: "We part company, however, in applying these abstractions to the facts of this case. Whereas he [the Chief Justice] appears to view 'equal access' as meaning access that is identical in all respects, I believe that the concept of equal access must be accorded more flexibility in order to accommodate the practical distinctions between the press and the general public. When on assignment, a journalist does not tour a jail simply for his own edification. He is there to gather information to be passed on to others, and his mission is protected by the Constitution for very specific reasons." Thus, "a person touring Santa Rita jail can grasp its reality with his own eyes and ears. But if a television reporter is to convey the "The press' right to jail's ,sights and sounds to those access to news who cannot personally visit the follows implicitly from place, he must use camera and its right to freedom sound equipment. In short, terms
of speech and expression."
of access that are reasonably imposed on individual members of the public may, if they impede effective reporting without sufficient justification, be unreasonable as applied to journalists who are there to convey to the general public what the visitors see."
In 1980 in the famous Richmond Newspapers case a near-unanimous Supreme Court upheld the Stewart logic. Chief Justice Burger said: "Instead of acquiring information about trials by firsthand observation or by word of mouth from those who attended, people now acquire it chiefly through the print and electronic media. In a sense, this validates the media claim of functioning as surrogates for the public. While media representatives enjoy the same right of access as the public, they often are provided special seating and priority of entry so that they may report what people in attendance have seen and heard." He went further and said that "certain unarticulated rights are implicit in enumerated guarantees"; the press' right to access to news follows implicitly from its right to freedom of speech and expression. By then the FOI Act was well set on its course. It lays down both the procedure for enforcing the right to know and the limits within which the right can be exercised. The act was conceived in a libertarian climate which was created by the Supreme Court's educative rulings but even more so by the press. The excesses in the name of the Official Secrets Acts in other countries were tellingly cited in support of an FQI Act. In 1955 the House of Representatives had established a Subcommittee on Government Information. Its chairman, Representative John E. Moss (Democrat of California), has been acclaimed as "the main motivating influence behind the passage of the Freedom of Information Act of 1966." His efforts in hammering out the legislation received powerful support from the press.
In signing his assent to the act on July 4, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson exclaimed, with pardonable exaggeration, that it entitled Americans to "all the information that the security of the Nation permits." The Attorney-General, Ramsey Clark, summarized the policies behind the act in a few propositions-"that disclosure be the general rule, not the exception; that all individuals have equal rights of access; that the burden be on the Government to justify the withholding of a document, not the person who requests it; that individuals improperly denied access to documents have a right to seek injunctive relief in the courts; that there be a change in Government policy and attitude." Initially, the draft contained an omnibus exception-"to the extent that there is involved a function of the United States requiring secrecy in the public interest." The expression, "the public interest," is a notorious source of arbitrary power. It was replaced in the final draft by a list of nine specific exceptions such as national defense, foreign policy, et cetera. Even so the list proved to be somewhat widely worded. In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Environmental Protection Agency vs. Mink that the courts may not question the denial of FOI Act requests for reasons of national security. The ruling reinforced the demands which were building up, as the details of the Watergate burglary were being revealed gradually, that the law should be further tightened up against official secrecy. In 1973 Representative William Moorhead (Democrat of Pennsylvania), chairman of the House Government Information and Foreign Operations Committee, proposed certain amendments to the seven-year-old statute. They required the federal bureaucracy to respond to reasonable requests for information and proceeded to lay down time limits for responses (10 days) and for decisions on appeals against refusal (20 days). On November 20 and 21,1974, the House and the Senate, respectively, adopted the amendments for the second time by a two-thirds vote and thus overrode President Gerald Ford's veto of the amended act on October 17, 1974. Certain aspects of public administration in the United States must be borne in mind while analyzing the provisions of the FOI Act. Many federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency have a high degree of autonomy. They are vested with considerable powers affecting the rights of citizens. But they are all subject to judicial surveillance and are bound to observe the basic rules of natural justice while deciding any matter which would affect a citizen's rights. The Administrative Procedures Act of 1946 was designed to provide detailed safeguards for ensuring fair play. The FOI Act builds on this foundation and is, indeed, itself an amendment to the Administrative Procedures Act. It begins by providing three types of access to agency records depending on their nature and importance. One is by publishing them in the Federal Register for public guidance. Rules of procedure, descriptions of the agency's organizations and the like fall in this category. Another method of disclosure is to place the records properly indexed in an agency reading room for public inspection and copying. This would cover records of agency adjudications, statements of policy and staff manuals. The last form of access is the most important: making available records on request. The specific document need not be mentioned. It is enough for the request to "reasonably describe such records." It is also
sufficient to request all the documents on a specified matter. The after the amendment either. Initially, corporations. were the major users. They sought to documents can be had for inspection. A search fee of $7.50 is payable although this is waived by some agencies if the request gather information to evaluate new products and potential is for disclosure in the public interest rather than for personal markets; to get information about their rivals; to frustrate reasons. Photo copies can be had for a fee, usually at the rate of official investigations by discovering information held by the agencies, and to enjoy the fruits of research studies carried out 10 cents per page. There are nine categories of matters which are exempted at public expense. from the duty to disclose. They are, first, matters which are James T. O'Reilly, author of the textbook Federal Informaspecified by the President, in an Order, "to be kept secret in the tion Disclosure, noted in June 1983 that the majority of the interest of. national defense or foreign policy." The court can 70,000 requests each year are commercially motivated. Under however examine the records for itself, in camera if need be, to the act, the Government is under no "legal obligation to inform ensure that the refusal does not exceed the terms of the the owner that the Government's copy of its industrial process Presidential Order. On this point the court can also require flow sheets have been requested by its competitor." To prevent considerable preliminary disclosure to the lawyer for the disclosure a company must establish in court that "substantial applicant. harm to its competitive position" would be caused. The eight other exempted categories relate to matters Foreign interests also take advantage of the act. Suzuki concerning internal personnel rules, interagency memoranda, Motors of Japan filed requests for information about a personal and medical files, trade secrets, certain records competitor, Toyota, and routinely obtained test results from compiled for law enforcement purposes, records of agencies the Environmental Protection Agency on new Toyota cars responsible for supervision of financial institutions, geological imported into the United States. and geophysical data concerning wells, and matters specifically But writers have begun in earexempted from disclosure by other statutes. nest to take advantage of the FOI The act confers jurisdiction on the Federal District Court to Act. Diverse books on sensitive " ... the burden [is] on hear complaints against refusals of disclosure. "In such a case themes came to be written only the Government to justify the court shall determine the matter de novo, and may examine because of information thus the withholding of a obtained: Perjury: The Hissthe contents of such agency records in camera to determine document, not the whether such records or any part thereof shall be withheld Chambers Case by Allen Weinunder any of the exemptions set forth in" the act. However, stein; The Fourth Man by Andrew person who requests it." "the burden is on the agency to sustain its action." Boyle (which led to the identificaThe court is empowered to award costs against the Federal tion of Anthony Blunt as a former Government if the complainant succeeds "substantially." Soviet spy), and Sideshow by WilShould the court find, however, that a federal official has "acted liam Shawcross, a searing criticism of Richard Nixon and Henry arbitrarily or capriciously" with respect to the withholding of a Kissinger's policy toward Cambodia. Shawcross called the FOI requested record, the Office of Personnel Management is Act "a tribute to the self-confidence of American society." enjoined by the act to initiate proceedings to determine if There is every reason to believe that with the passage of disciplinary action against him is called for. The Attorneytime the potentialities of the act will be further explored. General is required to submit an annual report on how the act is Students, for instance, are beginning to take interest. The society of professional journalists, Sigma Delta Chi, has student working. Several states have enacted their own FOI statutes. The chapters as well. For the last six years the student chapter at federal act has won international notice and has been cited as a Ohio State University has been writing, editing and distributing model for emulation in official studies elsewhere. It has given the FOIIOhio Newsletter. rise to litigation, predictably, and created (also predictably) The Sigma Delta Chi itself has done a lot to promote much elation at disclosures and some frustration at reversals. awareness of FOI rights. Its 1984-85 Report on "Freedom of On balance, the law has proved a blow for freedom. Information" shows how the awareness is spreading all over the United States. It has published a sample for a request letter Consider an early case: In 1955 the Veterans Administration (VA) initiated a testing program to evaluate hearing aids for under th,e act that. any lay citizen can follow. The act was amended last year specifically to exempt the procurement and distribution to veterans. But, as a matter of policy, it would disclose the test results to no one outside the "operational" files of the CIA from disclosure. The amendment Government. Consumers Union sought the results and when will, however, give the courts more latitude in reviewing the VA refused to reveal them, it brought a court action under decisions not to disclose and was supported by the American the FOI Act. The court ruled in favor of the Union and Civil Liberties Union as well as by Sigma Delta Chi. A decade after the Freedom of Information Act was observed that the whole purpose of the act "was to reverse the self-protective attitude of the agencies." endowed with teeth, the statute's bite has been felt by This was in 1969, before the law was amended and made administrative agencies. Its potential is enormous. Its impact more effective. The architect of the 1974 amendment, Repre- has already been considerable. It reflected a certain climate and sentative William Moorhead, was surprised to discover that "the has, in turn, created an impetus for openness in government. It reporters, editors and broadcasters whose job it is to inform the is a standing acknowledgment of the citizen's right to know. 0 American people have made little use of the Freedom of Information Act of 1966. They were the major supporters of those About the Author: A.G. Noorani, a Bombay-based lawyer and in Congress who created the law." They did not do much better constitutional expert, is a regular contributor to SPAN.
Maynard .Ferguson
Jazz Philosopher
by SHAKUNTALA
SAW
His spectacular virtuoso trumpet sparked Stan Kenton's big band of the Sixties, and Maynard Ferguson for years after led a number of bands himself. He has discovered an affinity for India and its music, which he has made a part of his own musical artistry.
hen Mayn,ard Ferguson, the jazz wizard, was in Bangalore we watched the telecast of the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics. Our conversation naturally drifted to the Montreal Olympics of 1978, which opened to Ferguson's resounding, reverberating trumpet. Watched by 76,000 people in the audience and nearly 2,000 million people on television around the world, that was one of the most glorious moments of his 45 years of jazz. How did Ferguson achieve such a high degree of success? "It was practice, practice, all the way. I worked very hard, because God gave me this talent to bring pleasure to the people, to myself and to the musicians in my band. I had to be sincere and perfect in my technique and in the music I created. "Ever since I was 12, I have been playing six hours every night at different places, much to the chagrin of my parents. My father was a principal and my mother a teacher. Today, when I am on my innumerable lecture tours, I tell schoolchildren about this-that my parents who were very strict disciplinarians at school were helpless about my late nights and uncertain hours, in the light of my zooming success and unbelievable income!" Despite this early success, Ferguson says, "I never had any goals or ambitions. It was all automatic ... this talent, or God's gift, was there and everything else happened. That is better than having goals!" Ferguson referred to a recent incident to explain his point: Just the previous week, when he was holidaying at Sri Sathya Sai Baba's Ashram in Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, a fan informed him that his name was on the list of the jazz cruise of the Carribean. That was the first time that he had heard about it and he exclaimed, with his characteristic smile, "See what I told you! Things just happen .... " Ferguson's band normally consists of 11 persons with two
W
trumpets, two saxophones, one trombone, and drums or percussion, guitar, piano and bass. On some occasions, flutes replace saxophones, and other instruments are either added or removed. For example, in the percussionist's section, it could be tamborine, Congo drums, bongos or even the Indian mridangam or tabla. Ferguson believes in change. That, in fact, is one of the charms of his band and the reason for its immense popularity. "Change gives real joy. I innovate on the spot. Everytime before I go on stage, I meditate deeply for a couple of minutes. This gives me a lot of inspiration. A creative artist has to rely on his own inner guidance, his own inner inspiration. "That is why audiences find something fresh and new in my programs each time. Even where I am forced to print a program, I always state that this is the suggested program and it is subject to change. I want to have the freedom to play what I like on stage, depending on my mood, my inspiration and the rapport I establish with my audience. The word jazz means 'an adventure'-for the listener as well as the performer. While the audience that goes to a symphony orchestra performance knows that" it will listen to Beethoven, Brahms or whoever is on the program, in the case of Maynard Ferguson, they, say, 'What will he play now? Let's go and find out.'" Some time back, Ferguson reorganized his band and added more rhythm to his music by adding another guitar and percussion and dropping one tmmpet. This was in response to the new wave of ideas from young, creative writers of music. "They are more rhythmic .... I want to introduce new ideas and new thinking within the framework of my classic jazz. I enjoy the challenge of doing something new as an artist, as a person, but only if it is honest and not just to impress others. Also, many of the musicians in my band are younger than I. I always believe that a wise old man learns from the young.
That is why I am willing to take their young creative ideas." Ferguson has more than 60 records to his credit and has maintained his position at the top in the world of jazz for many years now. Ferguson is happy that Americans love music. Music, he says, is more diversified in the United States than in any other country. Everyone wants his own favorite music. Music education, too, he says, is at a very high level. Instrumental music is taught as a course with full credits in most schools. The numerous well-paid job opportunities with music-in film studios, recording studios, T.V. or videotape jobs-make many people take to music as a career. Music appreciation has also evolved to a high standard. Professional music has to be organized as a business for ensuring success, he says. Ferguson performs 011 an average for 24-28 days in a month. He tries to get a short holiday every year-but often, as happened with his holiday trip to Japan last year, these too turn professional, and he ends up performing always to standing ovations. Ferguson usually tours by road, in his own bus, "since there are so many of us and we have to carry so many instruments." There have been occasions when Ferguson has had to turn down contracts for records, since the sponsors stipulated what he should play. "It is not always possible for a creative artist to fully comply with such stipulations, though I try to accommodate as much as I can." India has always fascinated Ferguson and he has even lived in south India for a few years, where he learned to play the wind instrument nadaswaram. He also studied pranayama or breath-control, which has helped him a great deal in trumpet playing. He draws in his full breath, holds it and slowly releases it-that, he says, is the right technique for a successful trumpet player. He 0 should know. About the Author: Shakuntala
is a Bangalore-based writer.
BaLu
15
'ABold
Initiative in Strategic Defense President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative-which has been popularly misnamed "Star Wars"-williessen the chance of nuclear war, says G.A. Keyworth, the President's principal science adviser.
One of the most frustrating problems of modern times has been the difficulty that the two superpowers have faced in finding a workable approach to arms control. We've made distressingly little progress, given what are generally assumed to be universal desires to reduce nuclear tension. If we assume both sides want to reduce tension, why do we find it so difficult to do so? The fact is that there are fundamental and practical impediments to arms reductions-impediments that we have to face up to. Like it or not, there are profound differences in the two countries' approaches to national defense. We and the Soviets do not share the same logic, cultural values, and historical perspectives. We lack a mutually acceptable means to reduce arms. While the United States and the Soviet Union have largely common national security objectives, we have fundamentally different ways of enforcing them. We've based our national security on deterrence-the threat of massive nuclear retaliation if the Soviet Union attacks us with nuclear forces. But the Soviet Union seeks its national security goals not through deterrence but largely through the coercive threat of first strike. A look at their strategic forces
shows their emphasis on the ability to deliver a rapid first strike, a means of destroying our ability to retaliate. Consider just some of the evidence: Their forces are composed predominantly of heavy,' MIRV (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle) ballistic missiles, missiles which, if they're to be of any military use, must be used in the earliest stages of a nuclear war. They're not retaliatory weapons. Moreover, the Soviets have been adamant in arms negobations that they will not weaken their ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) force, one which already outnumbers and can outperform ours many times over. That threat of a Soviet first strike puts tremendous pressure on our being able to respond quickly with surviving forces. We must maintain thousands of nuclear weapons not to, as some people say, "destroy the world 10 times over," but in order that some far smaller number of weapons will survive an enemy's first strike and be able to retaliate effectively. After all, we know that if struck without warning, we may find that 90 percent of our ICBMs are destroyed, that most of our bombers are gone, and that perhaps half of our strategic submarine fleet is sunk in port.
So our plans for strategic forces are heavily weighted to maintaining a survivable, retaliatory capability in the face of changing Soviet strategic forces. And it's this problem of assuring the survivability of our deterrent that gives such high priority to the modernization of our strategic forces. But at the same time we have to recognize that the march of technology makes that task harder and harder each year. Our present deterrent triad-the three-legged stool of land-based missiles, airplanes and submarines-has become wobbly in recent years. Even the strongest leg, our submarines, while as survivable today as ever, could well be threatened in coming years by the incredibly rapid advances we're seeing these days in data processing technologies. We simply cannot. be complacent about the permanence of the deterrents upon which we've based our national security for decades. On the other side, the Soviets must perceive that their strategic force, which consists primarily of those silo-based ICBMs, will always be vulnerable to modernized U.S. ICBMs. In times of crisis the Soviet Union might then conclude that it must strike first. It seems crazy to have a system that becomes so unstable under duress, but their strategic
forces have that built-in vulnerability. So the two approaches, ours and the Soviets', are not only fundamentally different, but their combination is fundamentally unstable. One additional worry: the Soviets have not accepted the inevitability of mutual destruction in case of nuclear war. They remember their history and have an abiding belief that Russia, as it has time and time again, will survive to recover. If necessary, they're prepared to fight a protracted nuclear war-and they've taken concrete steps to do so. And a nation that expects to survive a nuclear war has great incentive to try to limit possible damage by knocking out the enemy's strategic weapons first. On the other hand, two generations of Americans have been taught exactly the opposite-that there is no meaningful recovery from a nuclear war. We view a first strike by either side as suicide, and we array our strategic forces to intimidate against that. So the United States has built a deterrent to maintain peace. We developed what we thought would be enough retaliatory forces to maintain a credible deterrent. On the other side, the Soviet Union built, in effect, a war-fighting machine. They tailored their force-with massive numbers of land-based ICBMsto inflict crippling damage in pre-emptive first strikes. You might characterize our strategy as "to prevent a war" and theirs as "in the event of war." That means that to make deterrence believable, the United States must have enough weapons to ensure survival of a sufficient number of them to retaliate. For pre-emption, the Soviets must have enough weapons to cripple our deterrent force. We're caught in a spiral of conflicting philosophies. That's why, in arms negotiations, each side places high priority on protecting particular weapons-in their case the weapons for first strike, in ours the weapons for retaliation. We often hear simplistic proposals that each side could reduce its arms by simply limiting the number of warheads with no regard to how they're delivered, But that makes little sense, because instability comes not primarily from the numbers of weapons but from how they might be used. That mismatch is also the reason we can't, as The Washington Post advocates, "... simply sit down and rationally negotiate instead of contemplating war in
space.'" We need new options to break the stalemate, because the present approaches to deterrence are oil and water. They lack that common denominator that negotiators need. President Reagan's immediate chal-lenge has therefore been to find and introduce a new and stabilizing -factor, something to permit both the United States and the Soviet Union to reduce their reliance on huge arsenals of nuclear weapons. Strategic defense cap be that stabilizing factor. President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (unveiled on March 23, 1983) is a thoughtful and comprehensive-and revolutionary-strategy for changing the course of the world to one that promises increased stability against the threat of nuclear weapons. Strategic defense is not, as it is portrayed, a short-sighted program to use modern technology simply to move war into space. Nor is it a prelude to a new arms race. It is, in fact, a step toward making the world safer from nuclear weapons. I admit that the introduction of this new factor into what is already a hotly contested arena has certainly not yet brought stability to public debate on arms control. That is not surprising. After all, the President proposed a profound change-a sharp departure from a twogeneration-old rationale that our safety is assured if each side has the ability to annihilate the other. But the President is far from alone in recognizing the danger in being lulled into a false sense of security. In fact, he's very much in tune with the motivations driving people throughout the Western world. The freeze movement, as well as the outspoken pacifism in Europe, both reflect a strong sense that we can't be assured of the indefinite stability of today's standoff between the nuclear superpowers. That's why he raised the fundamental issue of taking a fresh look at our long-term security. Not surprisingly, the American public and the Congress are asking, "Where are we going with this?" President Reagan's initial goal is to defuse the most immediately destabiliz" ing threat by making it clear to the Soviets that they can have no realistic expectations of launching a successful pre-emptive strike. But the President's
ultimate goal is even more ambitious. It's to reduce the military effectiveness of nuclear weapons so drastically that they become unreliable for modern warfare. At the same time he continues to offer to reduce offensive arms, a prospect that will, partly as a result of strategic defense, become more mutually feasible over time. One point I should make here is that when we talk today about defense against ballistic missiles-and that's the heart of the current planning for strategic defense-we're not talking about the kind of antiballistic missile defenses that were discussed in the 1960s. The enormous difference between the opportunities avail~ble to us today, compared to those of the 1960s, derives from monumental advances in science and technology. And there are technologies emerging today that we simply couldn't have anticipated even a few years ago. The latest example of how far we've come since then was demonstrated in June 1983 when the Army tested the first of a new generation of defenses against ballistic missiles. In effect, what they did was hit a bullet with a bullet at a relative speed of more than 32,000 kilometers per hour. Moreover, the ICBM warhead was stopped at an altitude of about 160 kilometers, before it could re-enter the atmosphere. This event proved that it is possible to stop an ICBM with something both realistic and thinkable-that is, without using a nuclear weapon. It also previews the arrival of the first generation of ultra-high precision weapons necessary for a comprehensive defense systemand it gives the lie to critics' assertions that such technologies are "unworkable," "impossible," or "pie-in-the-sky." These and many other budding technologies that could be relevant to strategic defense were the subject of an intensive study conducted in the half year following the President's March 23, 1983, speech. Much of that effort was centered on several high-level panels, particularly the panel headed by Jim Fletcher, former chief of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Fletcher Panel's overriding conclusion was that we can now project the technology to develop a defense system that could drastically reduce the effectiveness of attack by ballistic missiles. The key to their conclusion was the feasibility today of something that was
not feasible in th~ earlier ABM (antiballistic missile) debates-and that's destruction of an ICBM in its vulnerable boost phase, before its payload has separated into independently targeted warheads. They studied not only defense against today's missiles, but also against those that could reasonably be expected to be developed in response to such a defense system. They looked at such possible actions as hardening of ICBMs, of spinning them, of shortening the boost phase with fast-burning rockets, of electronic countermeasures and decoys, of numerical proliferation of ICBMs, and many more possibilities. All I can say is that dozens of the brightest minds in America concluded that any realistic countermeasures the Soviets might attempt would still leave their ICBMs vulnerable to our defenses. The panel envisioned a system that would very likely consist of layers of defenses, designed to respond first to ballistic missiles during their highly vulnerable and visible boost phases when they still carry up to 10 warheads in a single package, second to warheads during their relatively long midcourse phases when they're coasting high above the atmosphere, and third to warheads during their re-entries into the atmosphere.
Let me emphasize the importance of being able to destroy ICBMs during their boost phase, because this is what holds out so much promise for a revolutionary defensive system. It turns out that even a primitive capability to intercept ICBMs during boost phase would give the defender some important options. The introduction of just a limited U.S. strategic defense capability-such as might occur during a period of transition to strategic defense-would force the Soviets to consider that a pre-emptive first strike would have uncertain results. This point is critically important: Certainty of success is the only basis on which the Soviets would plan to initiate' a nuclear attack against the United States. . _Some people argue that the Soviets might be so threatened if we began to introduce strategic defense that they might rush to a pre-emptive attack before our defenses became effective. But this suggestion ignores' two facts. First, the Soviets strongly believe in strategic defense and already have a massive ballistic missile defense program underway. I would add that their program benefits from the dedication of some of the Soviets' finest minds. Second, during any transition period both sides would retain their strong ability to retali-
ate if attacked. Certainly in the intermediate phases the offense would still overcome the defense to convincing degrees in the event of all-out war. My point is that neither development nor initial introduction of strategic defense causes abrupt destabilization, and U.S. and Soviet national security objectives would be preserved. But-and this is the all-important consequence-we will have started to remove the pre-emptive first strike as a realistic option. So at that point we've accomplished something that has eluded us for 20 years. We've effectively eliminated both sides' perceptions that the other could launch a successful first strike. And that finally gives us that common denominator, that long-sought rationale for reducing the size of arsenals. After all, with the first-strike option removed, nuclear arsenals would then be maintained only for retaliatory purposes-something to keep the other guy honest. But retaliatory arsenals don't have to be nearly so large as arsenals to survive pre-emptive strikes in our case or to launch pre-emptive strikes in the Soviets' case. Therefore, we would have an opportunity to negotiate down to greatly reduced arsenals that would still leave both the United States and the
I
What Is the Strategic Defense Initiative? In his March 23, 1983, address to Americans, President Reagan asked, "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?" He went on to announce the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Its purpose is to explore the potential of newly emerging technologies to support an effective defense against ballistic missiles-one that would strengthen deterrence and thereby increase the United States' security and that of its allies. The program is designed to answer a number of basic scientific and engineering questions that must be addressed before the promise of these new technologies can be fully assessed. 'The SDI research program will provide a future American President and the U.S. Congress with the technical knowledge necessary for a decision in the early 1990s on whether to develop and deploy such advanced defensive systems. The focus of research is on nonnuclear defensive technologies. Technologies being investigated in the SDI program may offer the possibility of providing a layered defense-that is, a
defense that would use various techniques to destroy attacking missiles during each phase of their flight. • Some missiles might be destroyed in their boost phasethat is, shortly after their launch as they burn their engines, and carry their payloads into space. Successful engagement in this phase also would destroy all the warheads carried by the missile. • Those nuclear warheads surviving the boost phase could be attacked during the postboost phase. During this phase the United States would target the postboost vehicle, the device that sits on top of the missile and disp~nses its warheads. If America were able to destroy this device, it could destroy all the warheads not yet released. • Those warheads that were released and survived would travel for tens of minutes in space on their ballistic trajectories toward their targets. Although the United States would have to identify and destroy the individual warheads themselves, the relatively long midcourse phase of flight could provide enough time for defenses incorporating advanced technologies to do that. • Finally, those warheads surviving the outer layer of defense could be attacked during the terminal phase as they
Soviet Union with a strong retaliatory deterrence. We would then enter a second transition period during which our defense posture would move toward increased reliance upon conventional, nonnuclear forces. This strengthened role would need to be supported by restoration of technological leverage-the traditional force-multiplier that has declined in recent years. At the same time, second- and third-generation defensive technologies and systems would be becoming available. This would further reduce the effectiveness of strategic nuclear weapons. It's also likely that sometime during this transition period the strategic nuclear forces we're building today will be reaching the limits of their operational lifetimes. We would then have new options for truly great reductions in nuclear arms. We could retire those obsolete large forces and let each side then maintain well-protected token nuclear arsenals, but purely as a retaliatory deterrent. I don't offer this scenario lightly. Altering our defense posture under any circumstances is serious. This will force us to rely much more heavily on conventional weapons. Neither our military structure and organization, nor our technology, is ready for it now, either strategically
or tactically. Strategic defense is not the to 2000, would be a time of continued end-all answer, but it is the catalyst. development and initial deployment. Finally, let me recap what I think There we begin to realize the major would be the broad outcomes of a suc- military capabilities. At that point we cessful strategic defense. I've broken can: One-negate the ICBM, SLBM these up into two periods of time. One (submarine-launched ballistic missile) might- run from 1985 to 1990. I would and IRBM (intermediate range ballistic characterize that as the period before we missile) as realistic first-strike options make any formal decisions about building against strategic military objectives. defend a limited set a system but during which we conduct Two-preferentially research ,and development (R&D). Dur- of either conventional military systems or the capaing this R&D phase we could expect to populations. Three-introduce see some new technical and policy op- bility, if implemented, to defend more tions which, if implemented, would have effectively against the air-breathing the following effects. threat of airplanes and cruise missiles. One-they 'would cause both sides to Four-enforce retaliation as the sole think seriously about rejecting the ICBM rationale for nuclear delivery systems. as a centerpiece of future strategic deliv- And five-in light of this balanced deery systems. Two-they would force terrence posture, provide a means to Soviet planners to rule out an effective achieve drastic reductions in the number first strike as a realistic option. And of offensive strategic arms. three-they would provide U.S. and All in all, I see each of those as achievements. Let me Soviet arms control negotiators with a monumental common limited strategic objective, re- emphasize that strategic defense is not taliation, by which to discuss possible some technical hotshots' ideas of becombuild-down of arsenals. What's important ing space warriors. What it is, is our to realize is that all of these effects could attempt to use the tools we haverewrite the be stimulated by nothing more than the modern technology-to mutual understanding that both sides strategic equations so that we can look so that our children and were seriously pursuing strategic defense . forward-and systems. grandchildren can look forward-to a The second phase, perhaps from 1990 reasonably stable world. 0
approached the end of their ballistic flight. In order for advanced defenses to strengthen both deterrence and stability, they must, at a minimum, be able to destroy a sufficient portion of an aggressor's attacking forces to deny him confidence in the outcome. The combined effectiveness of the defense provided by the multiple layers would not have to provide total protection in order to enhance deterrence significantly. An aggressor would be much less likely to initiate a nuclear conflict, even in a crisis, if he lacked confidence in his ability to succeed. The defensive system also must be survivable. To achieve the required level of survivability, the system would not need to be invulnerable, but would have to be sufficiently effective to fulfill its mission, even in the face Of determined attacks against it. Without this characteristic, a defensive system could be rendered ineffective and thus invite a pre-emptive attack. To discourage the proliferation of ballistic missile forces, the defensive system mus~ be able to maintain effectiveness against the offense at less than the cost of developing offensive countermeasures necessary to overcome it. ABM systems in the past have l~cked this essential capability, but
the newly emerging technologies being pursued under SDI have great potential in this regard. SDI is a prudent response to the very active Soviet research and development program in strategic defenses; it provides insurance against a possible unilateral Soviet effort to develop and deploy an advanced defensive system. A unilateral Soviet deployment, along with the Soviet Union's massive offensive forces and its already impressive air and passive defense capabilities, would destroy the foundation on which deterrence has rested for 20 years. The SDI research program is fully consistent with all U.S. treaty. obligations, including the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The ABM Treaty prohibits the development, testing and deployment of ABM systems and components that are space based, air based, sea based, or mobile land based. However, that agreement permits research short of field testing on a prototype ABM system or component. This is the type of research that will be conducted under the SDI program. At the U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in Geneva, the two countries are discussing defensive and space arms as well as strategic and intermediate-range offensive systems. 0
The View From the Embassy SPAN: Since the Indian elections last December diplomatic sources have been quoted as saying that there is a "window of opportunity" for improved relations between the United States and India. Do you agree with this assessment? What forms does this opportunity take? AMBASSADOR BARNES: I agree that there are important opportunities, but I am not sure I would go along with the "window" image. Windows are something that open and close and have narrow limits. I'd prefer to say that there are times that are propitious, that offer greater opportunities, when a coincidence of events prepares the way for progress. I like the word "opening"-something that tends to remain open, instead of opening and closing. In November President Reagan won re-election with a great mandate; Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in December also earned an impressive mandate. These two events taken together do constitute what I'm calling an opening because their meeting in Washington this month provides an occasion for both of them to look at these next several years and chart out the directions that can be taken in making the relations between the two countries that much more mutually beneficial.
I realize that you have been closely involved with the preparations for Prime Minister Gandhi's visit to the United States this month. What do you expect might develop from this meeting? Although they met during the late Prime Minister's visit to Washington in 1982, this will be their first real opportunity to spend some time together. This is near the start of their terms in office-four years in President Reagan's case, five years in the Prime Minister's case-where they can identify the key areas in which the two countries can most effectively cooperate to strengthen relationships, and they also have an opportunity to explore those areas which both countries view differently, and see how they can clarify and, hopefully, reduce some of those differences. I think it is significant that very soon after the Prime Minister assumed office the President said he would welcome him in Washington whenever he could come. It is clear that President Reagan is looking forward to becoming better acquainted with the Prime Minister and to work toward strengthening the relationship. They will build on the discussions that have been held by senior officials who have been visiting between one country and the other and see which of those areas are the ones to which particular emphasis might be given.
Prime Minister Gandhi has shown particular interest in improving India's technology. The United States is a leader in the field of high technology and has been negotiating with the Government of India about sharing technology. Do you see this activity as having an influence on Indo-U.S. relations in the near future? I think there are both short-and long-range aspects to this cooperation. I happened to share a platform with the Prime Minister several months ago at a conference organized by the All-India Management Association, where he remarked that India had missed the bus in the Industrial Revolution and was going to have to rush to catch the bus in the Electronics
Revolution. Given the experience and versatility of American firms in the wide field that is lumped under the name of high technology, I think they can be of assistance in India's ambitious development plans in the near future. Equally important, I think, are the sort of relationships that can be built up between American companies and their Indian counterparts through technology-transfer agreements and through joint ventures. They will play an important part in the longer-range development of India.
One goal that you have pursued tirelessly as Ambassador has been improved trade relations between India and the United States. Are you encouraged by the progress that has been made? I am encouraged but I am not satisfied. The total trade turnover in the several years that I have been in India has more than doubled. It is now slightly over $ 4,000 million per year, and in the past two years the trade balance has been significantly in India's favor. So I suppose I should be dissatisfied that we are not selling as much to India as I would like to have us sell. But, going back to your previous question, it is interesting that the sectors where American exports have more than kept pace (and in fact increased by about 25 percent) have been in the high-technology areas. Unfortunately, India does not bulk very large in America's overall trade patterns. The potential for collaboration in a number of areas has not yet been reached. There is still room for improvement, even though we are India's largest trading partner. For the long term, it is important that American and Indian firms collaborate in joint ventures; these can produce benefits that will flow both ways over many years to the partners. It's also important to note that the United States is currently running a huge trade deficit-we're importing more than we are selling to the rest of the world. We are anxious to resist the pressures for protectionism, which naturally can arise from such a situation. Consequently, we are seeking help from a number of countries, including India, to move on to a new round of trade negotiations in order to preserve and expand the opportunities for freer trade.
As he nears the end of four years as U.S. Ambassador to India, Harry G. Barnes, Jr., reflects on the state of Indo-U.S. relations and examines the prospects for strengthened bonds between the two countries, in this interview with SPAN Editor Mal Oettinger.
The Festival of India in the United States, which Prime Minister Gandhi will inaugurate this month, promises to be one of the most extensive and spectacular events of its kind. What do you feel the lasting results of this cultural exchange will be? Do you feel the Festival of America in India which has been going on for more than a year has increased Indian awareness of American cultural achievements?
abridging the freedom of speech." People in India will understand us better if they realize how fundamental this right of free speech is to evety American. Because of this, Americans express themselves in a variety of ways, but unless those ideas are expressed officially by the Executive Branch, they are not the policies of the U.S. Government.
The US cultural activities that have taken place in India do seem to have drawn attention to America, and I hope the events we have planned will enhance this effect even more. In the field of high technology that we discussed earlier, we have planned what we call a Video Fair for later this year. It is designed to show people in this country how video can be used for education, medicine, art and of course entertainment. I expect the Festival of India to reinforce the impact of a growing interest in the United States in both India's past and future. India has commanded greater attention there in this past year than in any other period I can remember. This is true in part because Festival events will take place in many parts of the country, not just in the capital-Washington-and New York. We certainly hope the two Festivals will generate greater comprehension of what people in the other country are like and what they are doing. To give an example of what can be accomplished: thanks to the support of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and its dynamic conductor, Zubin Mehta, and to Citibank, which sponsored the orchestra's worldwide tour, it's g()ing to be possible for members of the orchestra to come to India, starting this year, to give classes to promising Indian students of Western music. It will also provide for one or two Indian students to go to the United States to study in our conservatories. This shows what can come from an event that itself was very impressive. . I hope that programs would grow out of the two Festivals that will permit Indian and American young people to have a better understanding of each other's country. After all, we're talking about a heritage-and a heritage has to be for the benefit of younger generations. I hope a follow-on to the Festival events will encourage this spirit.
In which aspects of Indo-U.S. relations do you feel the most progress has been made during your four years as Ambassador?
Although relationships between the United States and India have improved, some areas of misunderstanding seem to persist. For example, some Indians expressed anger that individuals in America were being critical of India publicly, even though these people were in no way connected with the U. S. Government. Would you comment on some of the misunderstandings that have arisen? I've always felt that countries that are democracies should be used to great diversity of opinions and therefore should not be surprised that different people have different ideas, some of which you may not like. We're used to that in our own soci~ty; we shouldn't be surprised when it happens in another democratic society. Some misunderstandings arise because even though we are both democracies, we naturally have different ways of doing things. Many Indians may not be aware, for example, of the text of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It says plainly that "Congress shall make no law
That is hard for me to answer because my approach has. been to advance relationships in a variety of areas without saying that one was more important than the other. I think the whole fabric of the relationship has needed strengthening and one part reinforces another. I would rather illustrate than prioritize: We've already mentioned trade and technology, which are important. In science what has been significant in the past few years is the discovery of a number of fields in which very talented people from both countries can work in an atmosphere that promotes results that are beneficial not just to the people of our two countries, but that can have worldwide applications. Some of these activities are literally on the frontiers of science, where we've been working together under the Gandhi-Reagan science initiative. Scientists have been studying new ways by which blindness and infectious diseases can be prevented and treated; how plants can retain a greater percentage of nitrogen, which will reduce the need for expensive artificial fertilizers. Efforts to understand the monsoon phenomenon will be of importance to the whole world. I think it's particularly noteworthy that scientists who work halfway around the world from each other have together identified important projects and settled down to work on them. It shows how well our two countries can cooperate.
What are your personal feelings as you prepare to leave India? You noted in a previous interview that there is a difference in being here as Ambassador as opposed to your first tour as a junior consular officer in Bombay in 1951. What are some of the impressions and experiences that will stay with you? I leave India with some sense of satisfaction that, on the whole, for all our differences on some questions (which is only normal), the texture of the relationship is significantly stronger. The areas of common interests and values have expanded. I have some feelings of regret-possibly it is only an illusionthat if I had been able to stay another six months, I might have been able to accomplish something else that would have been important as well. In a personal vein, a very memorable experience was going to Bombay in 1983 just before the monsoon with our daughter Adrienne, who was born in Bombay. My wife and I took her to the hospital where she had been born and to the flat where she first lived. She met the pediatrician who had looked after her those first few months in Bombay. For all of us this was an experience that symbolized in a very concrete way the affection and the very deep links' that we as a family feel with regard to this country and our friends here. And perhaps in a small way, it symbolized what I think of as a very meaningful and rich association between our two countries. 0
¡ My Filmmaking Adventure Text by BONNIE TINSLEY Photographs by SRINIDHI RAMU
I am not often asked if I "wanna' be in the movies," and certainly not Indian movies, so' when the invitation came I was a little baffled. It was a slow afternoon in Bangalore, good for dusting the typewriter, when my friend Marcia Jamal popped in. An American settled in Bangalore with her Indian husband and two children, Marcia tells me she has been offered a speaking part in a Kannada film, Bettada Hoovu (Hill Flower), and that they need extras-more Americans! I am intrigued with the prospect, as I conjure images of exotic dancers heavily bejeweled and costumed, grand staging,
grand gestures and the music a festive blare. But no, this is to be a quite different sort of film, a realistic film with a serious intent. The story-line is derived from a nove,l -What Then Raman?-by an awardwinning American author, Shirley Arora, who lived in India for many years and wrote from her firsthand experiences. The story revolves around Ramu, a poor village boy who is forced to discontinue his studies so that he can work to support the family. An American teacher who comes to the hill station to write a book on Indian wild flowers tells
Ramu that she will pay him for any wild flowers and 'Orchids that he can get for her. Ramu's mother, knowing how keen he is to own a copy of the Ramayana, gives him a small percentage of the money he earns. As his friendship with the American lady develops, Ramu learns about life and about responsibility. And when he finally has enough money to buy the epic, he quietly buries his dream to buy a much-needed blanket for the family. I am delighted at the opportunity to discover how a Kannada filmmaker will handle the subject, and to know more
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a Bonnie Tinsley, who currently lives in Bangalore, is a poet, translator and art critic. She is the author of Singapore Green, a history and guide to the republic's oldest national park.
Left, above: In this scene from Bettada Hoovu, Marcia Jamal, in the role of an American teacher researching a book on Indian wild flowers, listens to her young friend, Ramu, played by Puneet. Above: Ramu, forced into becoming the breadwinner of his family, talks to his mother, enacted by Padma Vasanthi. Left, below: Director N. Lakfihminarayan explains a scene to Marcia Jamal and Puneet.
about India's most popular form of entertainment, from behind the scenes yet. So to garner a little adventure and help out a friend, we are off to locationMarcia Jamal and her two children, Adela and Mushtaq, and Maria Huliyappa, a long-time resident from Spain, with her son Kavi, all of us primed for "stardom." Our destination is Kemmangundi, a hill station about five hours drive northwest from Bangalore and no more than a footnote in even the best travel guides to India. Into these peaceful hills that boast some of India's best coffee plantations, we climb and climb a narrow
bullock-cart road that winds through the shrubs heavy with dark red berries. Here and there, cattle graze and the coffee workers toting baskets peer at us through the bushes. Lodging has been arranged for us in a hilltop guest house, at about 1,450 meters where people come to escape the heat of the plains and enjoy the spectacular sunset-or to make movies, I surmise from the bustle of film crew activity. The guest house offers a haven of solitude and cool tranquillity; on one side, the green . valley slopes down by terraces to a gleaming lake, and on the other the hills craggy from iron ore mining add a stark kind of beauty. I can see why the old Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnarajendra Wadiyar, still beloved in the memory of Kannadigas, chose this spot more than 50 years ago for his summer residence in the Baba Budan hill range. Next morning, to lose no light, we are rousted out by sunrise and chauffered down to a ferny dell nestling a bungalow on the edge of the forest. Tall mirror reflectors stand glinting in the sunlight to capture every available ray; this is our shining moment. Here we extras play summer visitors taking their leave of the hill station-a short but important sequence in the script, we are told. Curious crowds are gathering around the crew and our commotion; the fans have come out to see us! No, the main attraction is Puneet (popularly known as "Lohit"), south India filmdom's latest prodigy and the star of our show. Already, at age nine, he has won the Karnataka State award for the best child actor twice. By afternoon we have moved nine kilometers down the hillside to another location-a rambling coffee estate bungalow surrounded by a formal garden glowing with larkspur, purple sage, lilies,
enormous hibiscus, lime and lichee trees, all in impeccable order. On the terrace below, coffee beans spread out in various stages of maturity roast in the sun. Somehow you get the impression that everything grows healthier and more abundantly in these cool hills. The choreographer is there on the lawn putting the child star through his paces. Appu (Puneet's family nickname-we are all on familiar terms now, after sharing meals and so many moments between takes), a small package of inexhaustible energy, picks up his cues like a pro. Under the expert eye of Gowri Shankar's camera, he has the studied discipline of a much older performer; off camera, he makes cartwheels on the lawn like any other kid. Stardom doesn't seem to have spoiled him. And he is a most accomplished f1ashdancer. Meanwhile, the rest of us explore the estate and when we run out of curiosities and conversation, we discover how dreary this movie business can be, waiting for your turn with the camera. One scene, a musical interlude in which the butler teaches Ramu his butler-brand of English, seems to be taking an infinite number of repetitions to mesh the soundtape with film. Over and over, "bettada hoovu-the mountain f1owah-bettada hoovu-the mountain f1owah-the mountain f1owah-the mountain f1owah!" It comes again and again; all of us have it thoroughly memorized and drumming in our heads by the time the sun sets behind the bungalow. When I meet the director, N. Lakshminarayan, I am immediately impressed with his sincerity and graciousness and accessibility-unusual for a film director in today's fast-paced business. He strikes me as being one of those "compleat artists" who goes beyond matters of direction to encompass every aspect of the filming process-right down to the quality of our meals and our accommodations. He seems genuinely concerned that we "extras" are made comfortable at Kemmangundi. I imagine he takes the same care with every centimeter of film. As I speak with Lakshminarayan, my attention is drawn past his spectacles to his forehead. His intensity of purpose is such that I feel him focusing on me and on his thoughts at once, as if he were using the resources of a third eye lodged in that strongly curved forehead. Under his white hair, I see a revered schoolmaster, rather than one of Karnataka's prominent film directors. Only later do I discover that this gentle man is something of a rebel among his
colleagues, in that his instincts are not ance), both of which he treated with toward the popular medium, often de- sympathy and not sensationalism. His films of the 1970s included scribed as garish. He assiduously avoids the common fare of love stories and Abachurina Post-office, described as a concentrates his energies on the film with "Chaplinesque comedy" by Firoz Rantheme and substance, wherever possible goonwala, the highly-regarded film critic shunning the trappings of cinematic and historian. Muyyi (The Return), a artifice. Because he is so highly selective study in revenge based on an awardwinof the contents and not bent on achieving ning Kannada story, took an ordinary bus a name in the marketplace, there are long ride to the edge of disaster. To these full-length features, he has added a long time gaps between each Lakshminarayan film. And yet they manage to win the string of documentary credits. Again, in the current film, Bettada support of sophisticated audiences at home and abroad. Hoovu, Lakshminarayan opts for verisi"I don't want to say, but I have been militude and the power implicit in the forced to say, that I am very choosy," he characters' real-to-life struggles to fill carefully explains. "I want subjects that simple needs and yet capture their have not been tackled earlier. Not all dreams. The film utilizes the natural hill-station landscape called for in the producers will go for something different; they are afraid. But I still believe that book, rather than studio gloss; the domiwith a powerful medium like cinema, nant American role is played by an something which people have not seen American; and scenes are simple, unin an adorned, even understated-all will be more appealing." Lakshminarayan came naturally to effort to create on film the greatest filmmakiryg through an artistic family of semblance of truth. A child enamored of reading and painters, dramatists, musicians and photographers. From an early age he learning, the first in his family to attend worked with his maternal uncle, the late school, Ramu must interrupt his studies film director and producer B.R. Krishna- to help support his family. His passion for murthy. He later joined the staff of his knowledge and the superior role of scholuncle's guru, the late R. Nagendra Rao, ar feeds his imagination and his pride, the doyen of Kannada cinema, from until the American teacher asks him, whom Lakshminarayan learned his craft. "What next? How will you use this And in the asking, With his first short film in 1961, he book-learning?" established the pattern of realism and Ramu gradually finds a more meaningful life goal-to teach others that they might simplicity that has been his trademark over the course of a 25-year career. Bliss, in turn teach others. eight-and-a-half minutes of wordless "You are very important to this place," like the hill script which he conceived and wrote the teacher tells Ramu-just himself, captures the life of an aging flowers he is collecting and she is painting journalist whose world contains a post- for her book. man, a child, a cat, a rat and a parrot. "Why the special attraction to this From these small wonders does the writer simple, tender story?" I ask the director. "I found a lot of personal resemfind his inspiration and his bliss. Critics have called the film "charming, sensitive, blance,'~ he reminisces, "going back to very touching and intelligent." The first when I was a schoolboy in the Methodist Indian film to receive sponsorship from Mission School in Kolar in Karnataka." There he grew attached to several famithe British Film Institute's experimental film production fund, it went on to win an lies of American missionaries living in the same compound, in particular Mr. Rice, honorable mention at San Francisco's International Film Festival under the the principal of the Bible School. Rice category, "film as a medium of artistic encouraged the future film director's expression." It was also featured in a exploration of all sorts of new things: retrospective of Indian cinema in Paris. typing letters to improve his English, stamp collecting, bee keeping, and his In his first full-length feature, Lakshminarayan continued exploring the power nascent passion for filmmaking-but of wordless communication. Naandi (The only toward "good" purposes, Rice counBeginning) focused on a subject new to seled him. Indian cinema, the rehabilitation of a "He helped me to develop my view for deaf-mute child-another first for him. a bigger thinking," says the director. "I Lakshminarayan's other film challenges of always think of a big canvas. In the the 1960s probed the controversial issues prelude to my first script of Bliss, I wrote, of extramarital affairs ( Uyyale, The 'Cinema is my language; I want to speak to the world through my movies.' Swing) and prostitution (Mukti, Deliver-
"Somehow I found Ramu in myself. That appealed to me very much. The theme doesn't stick to any place. Although the main character is an Indian child and there is the American teacher, the concept of the story is universal. I always like a subject of human values and of bigger understanding. Every man, woman and child has some unrealized ambition; they will identify with Ramu's struggle to own a book, in his case the Ramayana, India's great epic poem. It looks simple for us, but for that boy, that age and that social order, it was a problem." Since 1979 Lakshminarayan had been in search of material for a film with a child as a pivotal character, but not a "children's film." The term is too often used in a pejorative sense in India to mean a contrived and superficial product. When he read What Then, Raman? in its Kannada translation, something told him it had to be the one. Eventually all the other pieces fell into place. Lakshminarayan traced author Shirley Arora to the faculty of the Spanish Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, and wrote to her for permission to adapt her book for the film script. Since its publication by Follett in 1960, What Then, Raman? has won three awards for children's literature and has been translated into many foreign languages. For some time the director was unable to find a suitable producer, until word of the project reached Dr. Rajkumar, the Kannada superstar, hero of two early Lakshminarayan films, and one who could appreciate the potential of the .subject. Financial backing then came willingly from Rajkumar's wife, Parvathamma Rajkumar who became the film's producer, along with her son-in-law, Govindraj, and brother Varadaraj. The role of Ramu suited the personality and talent of Rajkumar's son, the new child star, Puneet. And casting the role of the " ,Merrkin Lady" teacher wasn't difficult either. In search of a foreigner with the right qualifications for the prominent role, Lakshminarayan approached Nell Gibson, a long-time member and officer of the American and Overseas Women's Club in Bangalore. Much to his amazement, Gibson introduced him to the very character herself in Marcia Jamal. An American who has made Bangalore her home since 1970, Marcia teaches music part-time while running Shibui, the family florist business, as well as a household kept lively by two small children. A
dedicated educator, Marcia has taught in Bangalore for seven years and is a founding trustee of Aditi, a new accredited elementary and secondary school. Marcia is unflappable, moving from her florist shops to her classes, to a variety of charitable volunteer activities. Her home is always "open house" to a vast network of friends, fellow musicians, a spontaneous party of neighborhood children, or visiting Rotary Club members (she and her businessman husband Sulaiman Jamal were instrumental in establishing the local chapter). Playing the role of a busy bridge between two cultures, Marcia is an accomplished musician on the viola, the South Indian violin and the veena, having studied under Ali Akbar Khan, L. Shankar and L. Subramaniam, now close family friends. She also holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in World Music from the California Institute of the Arts. She is fluent in several Indian languages. What is more, to Lakshminarayan's delight, Marcia is lovely to look at and has a wonderful presence on the screen. With the experience of playing in the Stockton Symphony, Hollywood orchestras and local groups, as well as solo, performing is nothing new to her. Lakshminarayan was determined to cast her in the part, especially in the light of so many uncanny connections between ¡Marcia's life of loving flowers and teaching in India and the life of the film character. To him, finding "this great lady," as he is fond of calling her, seemed the work of destiny. Although she was moved by the story and by the director's hope to realize a personal dream on film, there were obstacles and some reservations on her part. Illness in the Jamal family, demanding more work than her usual overtaxed schedule, seemed to mitigate against her leaving Bangalore. After trying desperately to find a suitable substitute, she was fortunately able to spare a week. Marcia arrived on the set several days late, bags bulging with the required gear-her rarely worn Western clothes, her typewriter, sleeping bag, guitar and a Walkman to record her lines for playback during sleep, a technique she has used successfully with her music students. At this point, she was introduced to the script, and just as abruptly the halogen lights turned on full blare. "It was a performance of a different type-very unlike the musical encores I knew," she says. "My modest Urdu and Tamil were absolutely useless; it was either all Kannada or nothing at all. And
just as soon as I thought I knew something, I found I actually knew nothing." Now, after that sleepless week on the set trying to speak and perform in a new tongue, followed by the long stretches of sound-dubbing in the Bangalore studio, she reflects on the total experience of Bettada Hoovu and her purpose in becoming involved in the film project: "First, I am thoroughly dedicated to promoting the cause of education in India and since I am a teacher, the plot could not have been more apt. Secondly, it was a welcome change to attempt the characterization of a modern 'Shirley Madam' versus the usual 'memsahib' image so repetitiously portrayed in current British Raj nostalgia films. It was a compliment and a privilege to be able to witness the sincere efforts on the part of the whole filming unit, working with the director to make their 'universal film' come alive." As a "cross-cultural" film experience, Bettada Hoovu's appearance seems especially timely in this year of the Festival of India in America when India takes the rich fabric of her 5,000-year-old culture to people across the United States. Those involved with the film project are planning to make an English-subtitled copy in the hope of introducing Americans to this unique example of Indian life on film. Kannadigas are quick to point out that Kannada cinema boasts a tradition going back some five decades. They cite a formidable stack of golden awards, and never fail to mention the recognition gained abroad as well. Of the feature films produced in India's 24 major languages, 1 in 15 is made in Kannada. And the Karnataka capital, Bangalore, is said to have more cinema seats per capita than any other city in India-all testifying to a very lively, fast-growing entertainment industry. Kannada, an ancient Dravidian language, is said to be eloquent and especially suitable for the stage, the sounds lilting and musical with liquid l's and soft a's. And Kaonada's literary heritage, which has nurtured the cinema, is remarkable in its long line of poets-religious, philosophical, lyrical. Inspired by the best of these' regional traditions and his own individual approach to filmmaking, Lakshminarayan believes he has translated a wonderful story into a family film that speaks a global message, timely and timeless. Bettada Hoovu opened to public viewing on March 22, 1985, Kannada's New Year Day -an appropriate start for a year dedicated to fostering Indo-American friendship. 0
11Ie
Artist as Architect The world as their canvas, the ordinary citizen as their audience ... that's what several American artists are opting for as they turn increasingly to architecture. They are interested in creating struct.ures that are part of the everyday world, rather than objects for private owners and art galleries. The proliferation of large-scale works of art in public settings in America is a result of this trend. Left: Eero Saarinen's stainless-steel Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, is often cited a~proof that public art can be successful only when the architect and the artist are combined in one person. Below, far left: Robert Irwin, a California artist,
sits in the pocket park designed by him for Seattle, Washington. Below, center: "Castle Clinton," a wood sculpture by Jackie Ferrara. Below: A model of the bridge that Siah Armajani is designing for a park in Seattle.
T
he marriage of art and architecture admits many impediments. At the moment, though, this ancient, intermittent alliance appears to be entering an active new phase in the United States. Stimulated in part by the public art projects of the last decade, a number of leading American artists have been moving toward architecture in their work. At the same time, for different reasons, a number of architects have been moving in the direction of art. Robert Irwin, a California artist who is deeply engaged in public art projects, had some provocative things to say on this score in a recent lecture. According to Irwin, public art provides the context for the necessary redefinition of art in our time. In this increasingly computerized society, he said, the artist's essential job is to maintain the human scale, to assert individual values in the midst of high-tech decisionmaking. Irwin's own current projects cover an extremely wide range, from the modestly functional to the highly aesthetic, but all of them have something to do with architecture. He has designed a pocket park for the city of Seattle, Washington, with trees and seating. A project for the San Francisco airport, by contrast, is monumentally sculptural-a pair of 10meter-high steel-and-aluminum gates, each with a large block of onyx at its base. In a eucalyptus grove on the campus of the University of California at San Diego, he is putting up two overlapping V-shaped configurations of nine-meter poles; crossmembers starting at five meters will support a violet-colored netting, creating an immaterial haze of color at the level of the tree tops, and this will be echoed by a ground cover of violet-flowering ice plant. Irwin's project for O'Hare Airport in Chicago sounds equally immaterial and somewhat more startling. Invited by the Chicago Council of Fine Arts and the city architect to make an airport piece, Irwin went there and noticed that when a traveler takes the train out to the airport, he then has to traverse several long, tunnel-like
ramps that do little to enhance the spirit of travel. His proposal involves those bluewhite strobe lights that are mounted on the wings of 747 airliners. Irwin's strobes, mounted overhead at three-meter intervals, will go off in series at unpredictable times, causing an intense blue light to zip past the voyager, up an escalator, around a bend and down the last ramp. They will do this approximately three times during the time it takes to walk the distance, and they will be accompanied by electronic sound from strategically placed speakers. For everyone of Irwin's projects that gets accepted and built, there are at least two that do not. His real problems are not with the art establishment but with safety engineers, politicians and urban planners. (Most urban art projects are not really urban, he says, because they tend to go in parks or vacant lots.) In spite of the problems, though, there is an increasing demand for his work and for that of a handful of other artists who are rethinking the question of art in public places: Siah Armajani, Scott Burton, Richard Fleischner, Mary Miss, Jackie Ferrara, George Trakas, Nancy Holt, James Turrell, Athena Tac:.ha and maybe half a dozen more. What these artists do borders on and is at times indistinguishable from architecture. They are interested in creating structures that exist in the world, often with a functional purpose, rather than in creating sculpture for galleries or private owners. This tends to make architects a trifle nervous. "Many architects feel that we are in competition with what they are doing," Armajani told me recently. "But our work is not meant that way. Our work is not meant to enhance architecture, or to alter it, but to be one in the other, like water in a glass. The public place engulfs us both." Armajani is greatly respected by the other artists in this group. Born in Teheran, Iran, he came to the United States in 1960, at the age of 20, to attend Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and he has lived in the area ever since. The populist tradition is strong there, and Armajani's thinking reflects it. Art for him is primarily a
social discipline, a way to understand America. His studies of early American architecture-log cabins, bridges, barnsled to his own early pieces: metaphorical bridges that led nowhere, made of pine lumber in the rough-and-ready style of the pioneers. He went on to design larger, functional structures-offices, reading rooms, newsstands-using ordinary materials and practical carpentry. His intention, he has said, is "to build open, available, useful, common, public gathering places," and his current commissions include a shopping mall in Sacramento, California; a "poetry garden" in Annapolis, Maryland; a library for the Maryland College of Art and Design in Silver Spring; a bridge for a park in Seattle; and a "room for Henry David Thoreau," one of his heroes, on a site not far from Walden Pond in Massach usetts. Armajani believes that artist and architect could and should work together now, as they have done at certain periods in the past, but we will probably have to wait for a new generation of architects before that happens. "There is still a great deal of hostility" on the part of architects, he says-"too much to make a free collaboration possible." The sort of collaboration that Armajani and his colleagues have in mind goes far beyond the American art-in-public-places programs of the last decade, in which artists were commissioned to make works for architectural spaces that already existed, either in plan or in fact. A lot of art works have been installed this way, under federal grants or locally mandated programs, and quite a few of them have been deplorable. In too many cases, the artist has simply taken one of his existing ideas or designs, blown it up in scale and plopped it down in the lobby or the plaza assigned to him. The artist has usually had no say in the design of the site, and very often the architectural surroundings-government office buildings and the like-have been insurmountably dreary. As a result of the public art programs, though, some artists, and any number
"Our work is not meant to enhance architecture, or to alter it, but to be one in the other, like water in a glass."
of ordinary citizens, have come to look at the whole question of public art in new ways. Architects have always tended to think of themselves as artists, of course. It is not at all uncommon for a contemporary architect to feel that public art can be successful only when the architect and the artist are combined in one person-a Bernini, for example. There is some justification for this point of view. The most impressive piece of public sculpture yet made in America is Eero Saarinen's stainless-steel Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. Modern and postmodern architects, having largely rejected the austerities of the International Style, have grown increasingly free in their design thinking. Some of them use color to achieve painterly effects, and the return of ornament and sheer aesthetic playfulness is one of the hallmarks of architectural postmodernism. If anything can be art, as 20th-century artists have been at pains to demonstrate, it now appears that anything can also be architecture. One of the built-in obstacles to any architect-artist collaboration is the vast difference in the way the two go about their work. Architecture is, above all, a social discipline, involving dealings with a variety of interests that have little or nothing to do with aesthetics. Everything an architect builds must be meticulously planned and designed, on paper, down to the smallest detail. Most artists work on a far looser, trial-and-error basis, and in very few cases nowadays does their finished work proceed directly from preliminary drawings. The problem was stated succinctly by architect Hugh Hardy in an interview with Barbaralee Diamonstein for her book American Architecture Now. "Collaboration with artists muddies up the process that the architect envisions," Hardy said. "The last thing he wants is to have something all neatly organized and then have it all come apart, because artists are questioning it." Although most established architects would tend to agree with Hardy, one of the most firmly established of them all, I.M. Pei [see SPAN April 1980] is currently working
with three artist "consultants" on the design of the new Arts and Media Technology Facility at the Massachusetts Institute' of Technology (MIT). The idea of bringing artists into the design process there at the earliest stage was suggested by Kathy Halbreich, the director of exhibitions for MIT's Committee on the Visual Arts. Pei, who was "interested but cautious," according to Halbreich, ended by accepting the proposal, and all hands agree that so far the collaboration has gone surprisingly well. Of the six artists who were invited to work on the project, three dropped out early, for a variety of personal and professional reasons. The three who stayed with it-Richard Fleischner, Scott Burton and Kenneth Noland-feel that they have had a significant effect on the overall plan. Fleischner, who likes to work with large open spaces, has taken the building's outdoor plaza as his primary responsibility, and in this context he has worked closely not only with Pei but with Romaldo Giurgola, the architect of the new building adjacent to Pei's. Burton, whose field is sculpture-asfurniture (his rough-hewn rock chairs and his smoothly elegant onyx dining table with interior lighting have been shown at the Whitney Museum and elsewhere), is doing the public seating in the lobby, whose main staircase was redesigned by Pei as a result of Burton's suggestions. Noland, the wellknown color-field abstract painter, has worked out a color scheme for the building's main atrium wall, which is 30 meters long and 18 meters high; it required Pei to alter certain aspects of the wall's material design. Pei himself seems to have been doing some thinking about the collaborative process. In his interview with Diamonstein, he said of the MIT building, "The artist's work will not be an individual work of art standing in space or hung on a wall. It will be part of the building, a permanent part of the environment." Pei also said that he thought the day was past when one man could be both artist and architect. "The technological complexity of modern life alone would inhibit Renaissance man. I
don't think that we will ever see that again. Therefore, artist and architect must begin to understand each other. We have not perfected¡ that. We are far, far away from it. Today, I think artists feel very much left out. They also feel that they have gone way beyond the architects, and they are right." If a man of Pei's stature can express such heresies, it may not be necessary to wait for the next generation of architects. The climate for collaboration seems to be improving, at any rate. Art in public places is generally thought of now as an established social good-something that governments feel obliged to support and many citizens feel they ought to have. Although a large proportion of the public art in recent years has been unsuccessful-pleasing on neither aesthetic nor civic grounds-a process of thinking has been set in motion, and in this process certain artists, as Pei says, are well in advance of everyone else. "We do not know what constitutes American public art yet, but we are looking," says Armajani. "It is an open situation." One thing Armajani, Irwin, Fleischner, Burton and their colleagues seem to agree on is that working in the public sector means getting rid of several common myths about being an artist. To a large extent, it means getting rid of the artist's ego. "As a public artist, you have to work within the decorum of public taste," Burton told me. "This requires temperamental changes. You're working with developers and architects and politicians, and you have to be able not to identify totally with one idea." Self-expression, which Irwin defines as the lowest form of artistic incentiv'e, clearly has no place here. It is interesting that at this particular moment, when the galleries are awash in expressionist art of the noisiest kind, artists as influential as Irwin and Armajani are thinking in such antiexpressionist terms. To make significant public art today, they believe, it is necessary to take the public into consideration. 0 About the Author: Calvin Tomkins is an art criticfor The New Yorker.
Soon after I was born my parents bitterly divorced, and they divided up their possessions with a relentless energy, hoping to impel themselves from each other with such force that they would never be drawn back again. I have always imagined that they made two great, equal piles in each room as they sorted in a rage through everything in the house, from the curtains and large sets of furniture to the knickknacks in the kitchen drawers. When they were done, all that was left were their two small sons and, for reasons that even now they cannot adequately express, they divided us up as well. Father took
Paul, my twin brother, and Mother kept me. We were just a year old at the time, a single child conveniently doubled for that terrible, wrenching split. As I grew up all that I knew of Paul was his name, though I could faintly remember once chasing, as if after myself, a toddler who wore the same clothes as I. If this wasn't a memory, I had surely made it up from longing, for I was always bumping into the empty space of my absent brother with my small, chubby body. When I sat on the couch watching TV and eating an entire bag of potato chips, I pretended Paul was
slttmg beside me, asking for some chips or to change the casualness, and I ciung to her longer than was necessary. Then I channel. I refused, of course, and we would then argue in the walked down the narrow hallway to the plane. I had never nagging manner of other brothers that I had observed. Or I flown before, yet I was barely amazed at the swift climb of the went out5ide and threw a tennis ball against the garage wall and plane that dwarfed the houses and towns below, or at the imagined we were playing catch. I became my brother and other-worldly landscape of the clouds as we flew above them. aimed the ball at the edges of the shingles, making it bounce All of my attention was on my approaching destination, and I back at an odd angle, and as myself I caught it skillfully. Yet felt the plane was speeding forward by the pull of the when my mother called me in to dinner there were only two mysterious other half of my family. place settings, not three. I sat lonely at the table and watched When the plane landed, I walked down the ramp with the Mother shift the pots and pans on the stove. When she turned rest of the passengers, not quite sure where I was to meet my around to fill the plates with food she squinted, for she never father and brother. I entered the large, domed airport building wore her glasses when we ate, claiming that the steam from the and there seemed to be people everywhere. Then I felt a touch hbt food clouded them up. But I often wondered if, with her on my shoulder and I turned to see myself, in different clothes. "Mark? I'm Paul," my brother said. glasses off, Mother saw double and I became both twins eating before her. Perhaps that's why she fed me so much and so He was just as overweight as I, the shirt above his belt often-to sustain that vision. bulging with baby rolls of flesh. Though I'd always known I had I had learned not to ask Mother about my father, for her . a twin, I had never fully imagined someone who looked exactly silence on this matter was worse than any shouted, angry like me. He stood there, stiff and quiet, and somehow I knew refusal, and I was forced to invent him as well. I saw him as tall, he was thinking the same thing. I wanted to extend a hand, but with a cruel, pointed hairline, and he'wore the kind of suit with the thought that his hand reaching to receive it would be the painfully sharp creases that manikins modeled in shop windows. same in every detail stopped me. It would be like touching the If I tripped on the basement steps or bumped my head against cold surface of a mirror,' and I was afraid. "Dad's waiting," Paul finally said, with my voice. the ice box in the refrigerator, I would hear his disembodied We walked together through the crowds and tried not to laughter, his pleasure at my misfortune. And at night, with the gray, frightening forms of furniture around me, I tried to look at each other, embarrassed by the frightening attraction of understand why my parents had left each other. I conjured up our complete resemblance. A man in a shapeless gray jacket approached us cautiously, his roundish face somehow familiar. outlandish quarrels, full of desperate acts and hurled objects, "Dad," I ventured, and I stood there. Could this ordinarybetween the mother I knew and the father I imagined. Left with my own insufficient memory and my mother's looking man be the horrible creature who had left my mother? pervasive silence, occasionally during the day I examined the "Son,""he replied, but he looked back and forth nervously at furniture in each room and tried to decipher the house's secret Paul and me. I thought he might have forgotten what Paul had scars. What had been taken away to Father's distant home and worn that morning and he wasn't sure which of us was his new then replaced, and what had stayed? While gnawing on some son. "Thanks for inviting me," I said, and he smiled and strode snack, I circled the dining room table and its surrounding forward. He crouched down and I let him embrace me. Paul chairs, I fingered the plates and the silverware that framed stared at us and I stared back at him, my chin on my father's them, I spread my hands across the recliner and accompanying shoulder. Then Paul began to cough violently and Father released me to pat my brother's back. Yes, I then realized, this ottoman as if objects had a language that could be translated. But instead I found, behind the shadowy corner of the couch, a was a mirror that knew my own tricks. small spider that hovered over an intricate, nearly transparent We walked together to the baggage wheel and waited stiffly web. Using a half-chewed pencil I discovered the addictive for my two small suitcases to appear. I looked at my father: he pleasure of destroying that web, and while I rubbed to nothing could have been anyone at the airport, though I didn't quite the thin, vaguely sticky threads that clung to my fingers, I trust his harmless exterior. Then I noticed with fear that his watched the spider slowly, carefully rebuild. hands were twitching in his pockets, but how could I have When I was 8 years old I heard the phone ringing late at understood then the subtle movements of guilt and remorse? night, the hushed voices of Mother's relatives and her vacillat- When the suitcases arrived we walked to the car and Father ing, tearful refusals during conversations behind closed doors. I talked about all the plans he had for the coming weeks. I soon learned it had been decided-without consulting me nodded my head, pretending interest, but I kept glancing at -that at the beginning of the summer I would visit my father Paul. He was more than a mirror, I decided, unsettled, for and Paul for two weeks, and at the summer's end Paul would mirrors have no voices, no independent movements; mirrors visit us. Though there were complications and delays, letters you can leave and your image disappears, but Paul walked were exchanged and finally, during dinner one night, Mother along beside me, rubbing the edge of his nose with a fist-my spoke directly to Father over the phone to make the final own habitual gesture. arrangements. She began to talk with a twisted frown which Father could sense my distraction, and when he put my bags then, defying gravity, slowly lifted into. what might be called a away in the car trunk he almost closed the lid on his finger. smile. I realized that she was speaking to Paul. I didn't like the "Damn!" he shouted, and he smacked the trunk with his other warm tones of her voice, or how her hands seemed to caress the hand. Here my real father connected with my imagined one: he receiver, so I began to choke on a piece of my pot pie and she was the sort of man who beat objects if they didn't do what he had to cut short the conversation, her glasses on as she slapped wanted, and he might mistake me for a broken chair or a stuck the back of her single son. window. My mother said goodbye to me at the airport with a studied As we drove along and I tried to answer Father's questions
about my school and my grades-subjects about which I cared absolutely nothing-I thought that his ordinary hands around the steering wheel might secretly be waiting to strike me, or perhaps he would suddenly play chicken with an oncoming truck, not turning away until both of us begged him to stop in our identical voices. I (astened my seat belt and looked out at the midwest ern landscape we traveled through: I had never seen anything so flat, and the enormous sky seemed to press down upon us. Soon we drove into a town and stopped before a large, white shingled house. "We're home," Father said. When we entered I stared avidly, for I knew that half of everything inside had been transplanted from my own house, and I hoped to finally see the invisible connections between what had been removed and what remained. Yet Father's own replacements were as cleanly matched as Mother's, and no discordant styles could serve as fault lines exposing the initial upheaval. Father saw my carefully directed curiosity and his hands twisted anxiously again in his pockets. He finally led us to Paul's room, where the walls were lined with shelves of expensive toy soldiers, and there was a second bed-the fold-up kind-in a corner. "You'll be staying here, Mark," 'Father said. "Best way for two boys to get to know each other is to share a room." Paul and I looked at each other warily, uncertain that we wanted to be left alone. "Well," Father continued, confused by our silence, "it's a bit late. I'll go fix us some dinner. You two play, or something." Father left, and I sat on the edge of my temporary bed, fiddling with the handle of one of my suitcases. "Would you like to look at my soldiers?" Paul asked. "Yeah," I answered, and as he led me through the room I discovered that he had toy figures for every imaginable conflict, some I'd barely heard of: the French and Indian Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, even something. called the Russo-Japanese War. I stared at his soldiers greedily: many had movable arms and heads, even detachable weapons, while others were metal, their details intricately painted. My own were generic plastic things, and I had only two kinds: the good guys and the bad guys. Paul talked me into playing with his knights for the War of the Roses, but I agreed only reluctantly, because I didn't know who had won and I was afraid he was giving me the knights for the losing side. And so we played, but soon with little enjoyment, for we discovered we were evenly matched. My flank attack of cavalry from behind the night table was warned off by his archers, and his frontal offensive across the rug was checked by a pincer movement of my best troops. We even anticipated each other's anticipations, we plotted so much alike, and all our machinations proved as futile as trying to hide a secret from oneself. "Move, Val; attack, Roland," Paul whispered to his soldiers, foiling my sneak attack. As I hadn't been formally introduced to my knights, I silently led a retreat that was actually a trap, but Paul didn't allow his troops to follow. It was with relief that we heard Father caB us to dinner. "Have a good time, you two fellas?" he asked, serving us. "Yeah," I replied without much energy. Paul remained silent, his mouth full, and when I looked at him I could see myself eating. While I chewed my way through combined mouthfuls of pork, potatoes and succotash, I watched Paul's
own bloated cheeks; as I licked the last traces of sauce off each forkful, I looked to see Paul's lips pucker around the tines. He caught my gaze and, as if a mirror could have opinions and make a face at what it saw, scowled at me, his lips moist with salad dressing. I was suddenly ashamed of my appetite and my small, overweight body. I wanted to lose pound after pound, collapse into another self and then leave the strong pull of Paul's image behind. I began to eat slowly, and from each portion I pushed aside a bit that I wouldn't let myself touch. But to my despair, I saw that Paul also ate sparingly, and I understood his intentions were the same as my own. We continued to pick at our food until Father said, "You're both not very hungry, are you?" "Not really," Paul managed to answer, and I nodded. "Well, then how about dessert?" Father asked nervously as he took our plates to the sink. He walked to the refrigerator and returned with the desserts. "Yumi-Creems," he announced, "Paul's favorite. I hope you like it, Mark." The huge, delicious eclairlike thing was my favorite too, but as I looked at the spacious mirror of my brother I knew I couldn't eat it. Instead, I tried to think of every disgusting,
I slowly, carefully parted my hair on the other side so I would look different from Paul. But ... he had moved his part .... There was no escape, we were still identical.
unsanitary process that might have gone into its making: the dirty hands that had probably rolled the pastry; the caked fingernails that must have slipped into the dough, leaving dark smudges that would later be covered by the chocolate frosting. But I was hungry, and the Yumi-Creem was warming on my plate. What if it was streaked with secret dirt? I thought. Yet as I lifted it to my lips I made myself see huge, crusted, fly-ridden vats of chocolate that hadn't been cleaned for days, and that's when I let my dessert slip to the kitchen floor. "You dropped it," Paul said. "It fell," I replied. I looked down at the pastry on the floor. It was still salvageable. So when I shifted my chair to reach down and pick it up, I let one of the legs land right on it, smearing the dessert across the clean linoleum tiles. Father grabbed some paper towels, and we cleaned up the mess together. "I'm sorry," I said, stiB not sure of him and afraid he might suddenly hit me. "It's allright, it's all right," he kept repeating. When we returned to the table I saw half a Yumi-Creem lying on my plate, the other half on Paul's. "You can share mine," Paul said, smiling. "That's okay, I'm not hungry." I pushed away from the table. "Funny, I'm not either," Paul said, and he rose too. Father watched us, perplexed. After washing the dishes we all walked to the living room and watched the television silently, as though we'd known each
other for years and we hadn't a thing to say. When the closing credits rose on the screen for yet another situation comedy, Father said with exaggerated enthusiasm, "Hey, tomorrow's going to be a big day. You boys should be getting to bed." "Okay," Paul said, and he kissed Father on the cheek. I realized that I should do the same. My father's hands rose to embrace me when I kissed him, but I pulled away slightly from the strange sensation of beard stubble against my lips, and his arms then returned to the sides of his chair. I looked away and said good night. While Paul made toothbrush noises in the bathroom, I stood in my pajamas before his small dresser mirror, comb in hand. I made threatening gestures at my image, pretending it was my brother, but it simply made threatening gestures back at me. Then I slowly, carefully parted my hair on the other side so I would look different from Paul. But when he returned from the bathroom I saw that he had moved his part. Paul stared at me glumly. There was no escape, we were still identical. Resigned, but also secretly impressed, we got into bed without a word and Paul turned out the light. We lay in the dark, listening to each other's breathing for a long time. Finally, Paul asked, "What's she like?" I didn't know how to answer. I could have said of Mother, "She cooks, she washes things," but that was all wrong. I could have mentioned her job, but I'd never really listened whenever she discussed it. I was too young to be able to detail her nervous laughter or the cautious gestures of her hands through he~ hair, and so, frustrated, I simply said, "She's great." Paul remained quiet, and I was sure he was measuring his imagined mother against my inadequate description. Had he invented someone as forbidding as the father I'd visualized? "What's Dad really like?" I asked, hoping to interrupt Paul's thoughts. Silence. He was having the same difficulties I'd had. Then he replied, "You saw. He's great, just great." Surprising myself, I said, with terrible calmness, "That's not what I heard." "Oh? Who says so?" "Mom," llied, and then, frightened, I found myself voicing my most secret suspicions about Father. "He used to put acid in her nail polish." "Yeah?" Paul responded after some hesitation, his words clipped with contained anger, "She put Drano in his shaving cup." I couldn't see my quiet, distracted mother plotting so destructively. Furious, I replied, "He put broken glass in her purse." I thought that soon we might be grappling blindly in the middle of the room. "She threw a radio right at his head," Paul returned. My mother, however, was devoted to easy listening stations, and I could only imagine a sentimental melody hurtling toward Father's ear. "He cut all of her dresses in half with a scissors." "She set fire to Dad's newspaper while he was reading it," Paul spit back. But I was suddenly silent, for I knew Mother was afraid.of any sort of flame. Even when she cooked she had me light the gas burners, dangling a potholder before my face for protection. Paul was lying, just as I was, and then I understood that in our separate isolations we had shared the
same private fears. I said, halfheartedly, "He slammed the silverware drawer ... on her fingers." I waited a long time for Paul's reply, not sure if my twin had heard the doubt in my voice and was experiencing his own. Finally he offered, without passion, "She glued his briefcase shut." At that moment our vicious, invented parents began to dissolve in the darkness. "He put flies in her mashed potatoes," I said cautiously. "She put a frog in his pillow," Paul replied, a silly accusation. "He put her address book in the toaster ," I said, and then added, "poof!" We both giggled. Relieved, we continued to confess our childish images of what could make a marriage go wrong. "He put her parakeet in the dryer!" I said loudly, imagining a squawking, circling thing. "She put toilet water in his Tang!" Paul whooped. In my innocence I offered, with a shout, "He peeked at her when she was undressing!" "She hid his underpants!" Paul howled, thumping his bed. "He barfed on her shoes!" I hooted, gagging for dramatic emphasis, and we shared great snorts of laughter. We heard heavy footsteps. "Hey, who's making all that noise in there?" Father shouted, though with an edge of satisfaction in his voice. We lay as quietly as we could, suppressing our giggles as he growled, with obvious pleasure, "Some boys may not know that it's way past the time for fooling around!" We were silent, and somewhere down the block a door shut and a car started up. Then we heard Father's confident footsteps return down the hallway. He didn't yet know that he was now outnumbered. We were exhilarated by our conspiracy of silence during Father's chastisement, but we remained quiet. We were still unaware of our power, though the next day we would find ourselves saying and doing everything in unison around Father, successfully pretending to be as surprised by this as he was. So we lay still in our beds until our stomachs began slowly to rumble and gurgle. We shifted under the covers, hungry and anxious for the morning's breakfast, and our movements echoed each other's: when we turned our pillows over, when we rubbed itchy ankles against the mattresses. These small correspondences, I believe, began what eventually grew into our conviction that we could not only share experiences, but that we were interchangeable. For when it was time for me to leave it was Paul who returned, having been secretly coached in all my small quirks, and I who stayed. At the end of the summer I visited, pretending to be Paul, pretending that I was seeing Mother for the first time. . But those tricks were still far away as we rustled quietly in our beds. Somewhere outside an unfamiliar, dull metal noise repeated itself, and I had the unaccustomed pleasure of knowing that my twin was sharing the same frightening dark. Paul yawned, I yawned, and we slowly adjusted our breathing to each other-inhale, silence, exhale, silence-as we drifted together into sleep. 0 About the Author: Philip Graham's short stories have appeared in The
New Yorker and the Paris Review. This story isfrom his collection, The Art of the Knock, published earlier this year.
TWAIN'S TWIN FESTIVAL TIME FRIENDLY FELLOWS
Last month two young Indian journalists left for the United States for a five-month stint with some of America's leading newspapers, news bureaus and magazines. They are Anita Katyal (above), a senior staff reporter of The Times of India, and Vithal Nadkarni, an assistant editor of Science Today, Bombay. They were among 10 journalists selected from around the world for the second annual Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships in the United States. Katyal will work with The Tennessean in Nashville and USA Today in Washington, D.C., while Nadkarni has been assigned to the Oregonian in Portland and Science '85 magazine in Washington. Funded by the Alfred Friendly Foundation and administered by the Institute for International Education, both based in Washington, the fellowship program was established in 1983 by the late Alfred Friendly, Sr., from his early investments in The Washington Post, of which he was managing editor for' 11 years. Friendly, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, said he regarded the creation of funds for fellowships as a way of paying his debt of gratitude for his 35-year career in American journalism, in a way that he hoped would contribute to and benefit press freedom around the world. The fellowship program has three basic goals: to enable young journalists to hone their skills in reporting, writing and editing; to provide them with firsthand knowledge and understanding of the role of the press in American society; and to foster professional and working ties among free press institutions and journalists around the world.
Mark Twain! We all know him-two fathoms deep. He now lives in Hal Holbrook. The New Yorker calls his impersonation "Astonishing ... a work of art that will grow richer with the passing of time." Dominique Paul North of the Milwaukee Journal said, Holbrook is "a breathing American treasure." For over 30 years now, Holbrook has impressed audiences and critics around the world with his one-man show, "Mark Twain Tonight." Transforming himself through makeup and costume into the 19th-century American humorist (the reports of whose death "were grossly exaggerated"), Holbrook delivers Mark Twain's witty dialogue in a manner that the author of Tom Sawyer himself might have envied. This month Holbrook, 66, takes his innocents abroad and brings his act to India. He will perform in New Delhi on June 15. Always interested in acting, Holbrook got his first paid professional engagement in 1942 when he played the son in The Man Who Came to Dinner at $15 a week. That same year he attended Denison Universit'J( in Ohio and majored in theater. After World War II, in which he served in the U.S. Army Engineers Corps, he returned to Denison. It was then that his trek to celebrity status began. His now successful characterization of Mark Twain grew out of an honors project. After graduation in 1948, he tried his luck in Hollywood and Broadway, but without success. Stuck for the means of a livelihood, Holbrook, like his original, took to the road to entertain the world and keep body and soul together with his Mark Twain show. In 1959 he opened his show in a tiny theater Off Broadway in New York, which was a stunning successand he has never looked back since. In 1966, Holbrook played Twain in a Broadway theater. He has also acted in a number of television serials and movies. In 1974 he won an Emmy (the Oscar of American television) as best actor, playing Commander Boucher in "Pueblo." His films include Wild in the Streets and The People Next Door. But Holbrook has never been able to quit his Mark Twain-and there's no reason for him to do so.
IM
ithou9h the Festival of India, slat-
il ed to be one of the biggest cul-
tural offerings of its kind in the United States, will be officially inaugurated by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on the 13th of this month in Washington, D.C., a number of Festival events opened last month-and some even before-all over the country. "The Sculpture of India 2500 B.C.1300 AD.," one of the major attractions of the 18-month-long Festival, opened on May 5 in Washington, D.C. Inaugurating the exhibition, which has been sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, Mrs. Pupul Jayakar, cochairperson of the Festival, said she hoped that this and other Festival events "will bring you a whisper of that which is hidden and revealed in that great subcontinent." For her, she added, the exhibit represents "the essence of India." In her review for the Baltimore Sun, art critic Elisabeth Stevens wrote, "The Sculpture of India vibrantly brings Indian
DancingTen-armed Ganesha; Central India; c. 8th century; Brown Sandstone; H. 125 em. thought, religion and everyday experience to life in an overwhelmingly powerful display of more than 100 objects made of stone, ivory and bronze." Complementing the sculpture show is an exhibition of Indian art from the collection of the Freer Gallery in Washington. The exhibition, which opened on May 14, includes some rare Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist sculptures, paintings and illustrated manuscripts. "The two shows
ndians are among the newest-and the smallest-ethnic groups in the United States; they number about 400,000, or about 0.15 percent of the population. Yet in a relatively short time, Indians have carved for themselves a niche as one of America's most enterprising and prosperous communities. One evidence of their rising status and importance in American society was the Presidential Young Investigator awards for 1985, which were announced recently: Of the 200 scientists and engineers who won the prestigious award, nine are of Indian origin. The awards grant up to a total of $100,000 over a period of five years for each recipient through a combination of federal and matching private funds. They were instituted in 1983 by the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy to help American colleges and universities attract-and retain-the country's brightest young scientists, who might otherwise be lured by private industry. "The awards," says Erich Bloch, director of the U.S. National Science Foundation, which administers the selection process, "will help provide for the continual production of top-flight scientists and engineers necessary to maintain American industrial vitality and technological leadership." On receiving the news of his selection, Dr. Sb.ankaLSastry, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, exclaimed, "I'm excited at this honor. Also at the same time I'm feeling humble. The award places a tremendous obligation on you to dedicate yourself ever more to your work." Born in Pune, Maharashtra, Sastry graduated in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Later, he earned two graduate degrees at Berkeley, where he is exploring the pragmatic aspects of machine intelligence. He is in the process of adapting robotics to firefighting systems, deep-sea prospecting,
together offer a good, broad sweep of Indian history," said Milo C. Beach, curator of the Freer exhibition. "While the sculpture exhibition covers a period between 2500 B.C. and 1300 AD., the Freer exhibition is more contemporary; it shows Indian art from 1500 AD. on." Another exhibition of miniature paintings of the 15th-19th centuries opened last month in Memphis, Tennessee. The Asia Society in New York is organizing an introductory lecture series on 4,000 years of Indian civilization. On May 9, it held an illustrated lecture, "The Indus Valley: New Light on the Origins of Indian Civilization" by Gregory L. Possehl. A professor at the. University of Pennsylvania, Possehl is an authority on the Indus Valley civilization. Among the works that he has edited are Harappan Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective and The Ancient Cities of the Indus. The Festival of India will be sampled by thousands of Americans in about 100 cities and towns.
and disposal and monitoring of hazardous industrial and nuclear wastes. "Until now robots have been essentially what you see in films-objects that merely wheel around," says Sastry. "An intelligent robot is one which autonomously looks around and identifies its environment. In a firefighting application, for example, an intelligent robot should be able to enter a room it doesn't know beforehand, detect the source of the fire, navigate through the house, building up a map of the house as it goes through, douse the fire, and then find its way out." Another winner is Dr. Nitish V. Thakor, who also graduated from the Indian Institute of techn~mbay before he went to the United States for higher studies. A professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Thakor is working on a portable microcomputer system that would monitor cardiac patients and provide an interpretative electrocardiogram (ECG). It will sound an alarm if there are any abnormalities in the ECG. "If a patient was having a heart attack or likely to have one, the system would warn the patient," says Thakor, who has also received a five-year cardio-research development award from the U.S. Government's National Institutes of Health. Other India-born winners of the Presidential Young Investigator award are ~a and CJ;. Raghavendra, both of the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; 'Lijay Vittal, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University; Aamod R. 'Sbar~r, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Minnesota; James P. S.ethna, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; ~ubra Suresh, Department of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; and Ciriyam Jawrakas, Department of Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus. "--.
- If the new cars now hitting the American roads are any indication of what lies ahead, the U.S. automobile industry is in for a renaissance. The new cars are so designed that the power-stealing effect of the air drag over, under and around the body is reduced to a bare minimum. Aerodynamic designing, which has
had far more impact on fuel efficiency than engineers suspected even a few years ago, will be the single most important consideration in the exterior shape of future cars.' Above 30 kilometers an hour, air resistance begins to act as a drag on the car to overcome which greater horsepower is needed, and conse-
Space shuttle Challenger's seven-day odyssey last month proved a scientific bonanza. The mission's focus was Spacelab-the European-built seven-meter-Iong laboratory mounted in Challenger's cargo bay. In the comfortable shirtsleeves environment of the Spacelab, the seven-man crew co~ducted a vast array of experiments, and collected over 250,000 million bits of scientific data-enough material to fill 8.8 million standardsized pages. ¡In addition, the astronauts gathered some 3 million frames of video pictures. "The mission has been an outstanding success," said Burt Edelson, associate administrator of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The real heroes of the mission's success were of course the astronauts, he added. "A number of experiments, like India's Anuradha [also called IONS, an acronym for ionization of solar and galactic cosmic ray heavy nuclei], developed serious snags, and we were afraid that they might have to be aborted. But the astronauts carried out some very complex repairs in the weightlessness of space, eventually reviving all but two of fifteen scheduled experiments. "
quently more fuel is consumed. If the speed is doubled, aerodynamic drag rises fourfold, and it takes an eightfold rise in horsepower to handle it. However, the American automobile industry is coming up with designs that are both aesthetically pleasing and aerodynamically efficient. So much so that, as Bernard N. Smith of the General Motors Corporation (G M) says, "When you reach the extremely low drag levels, even the drag of the tire becomes important. What we'd like to do is streamline the wheel and the tire. " GM's Chevrolet Citation IV shown here is typical of the futuristic American car designs. They have a smooth, sleek appearance and offer greater fuel economy for the customer.
Anuradha had a faulty connector, and ground control at Houston told the astronauts to abandon the experiment. But they replaced it with a connector from another experiment. "We really feel good about IONS and I think spirits are very high up here right now," an excited Bob Overmyer, commander, of the shuttle, told ground control after the repairs. "It was all very remarkable indeed," exclaimed Dr. Sukumar Biswas, chief investigator for the cosmic ray detection project, who was in Houston with six Indian colleagues to guide the experiment from the ground. Explaining the project's significance, Biswas said that once the data collected by Anuradha is fully analyzed, it may help unravel the secrets of the universe and gain new insights of the processes that affect man's environment. Other experiments aboard¡the Spacelab included growing three types of crystals. "The astronauts grew largesized triglycerine sulfate crystals, much larger than ever grown in the fluid experiment system on earth," said Edelson. "They also had excellent results in growing mercuric iodide crystals. With its zero gravity, space provides an ideal environment to manufacture high-purity crystals. These crystal experiments were the prime purpose of the Space lab mission." An experiment called ATMOS to detect and me.asure the chemistry of the earth's atmosphere traced molecular species like hydrochloric acid, water vapor and other species at altitudes of up to 100 kilometers. "We're gaining a much better knowledge of the extent and types of molecular distribution of our upper atmosphere," Edelson said. The astronauts also conducted two experiments in fluid mechanics to gain new insights into the processes that govern the earth's atmosphere. In addition, Challenger observed and recorded auroras-dazzling displays of light that dance across the northern and southern night skies. The mission also carried two monkeys and twenty-four rats to study if weightlessness causes any long-term physiological changes.
ONTHE LIGHTER SIDE
"The lemonade should be ready. I've been feeding her lemons and sugar for a week. " Reprinted
"That noise! You'd think that guy upstairs was trying to teach an elephant to roe-dance."
from The Saturday Evening Post Society, a division of BFL and MS; Š 1983.
with permission
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~~r WillardJ. Westfield, Chairman of the Board, Moving Right Along During a Power Failure on the Hottest Day of the Year.
"This is one of those days when I just don't feel like flying as the crow flies. " Š
by
National Review, Inc., 150 East 35 Street with permissi~n.
New York, New York 10016. Reprinted
looting the Librarv of Congress "yTK
I confess to being a hardened criminal if plundering libraries is an offense under the law. I suppose not. Were that the case, I should be writing this in a prison cell and not in the quiet and comfort of my study. What I have filched are ideas, impalpable little gems tucked away in the secrecy of my cerebrum and lying well beyond the pale of X-rays, toposcanners and lie detectors. In the course of time, often years, they would polymerize and burst forth in a flurry of midnight excitement. And the syncretism that would ensue, duly manicured and tailored, would be my very own, copyrighted against piracy and plagiarism. "Anything to declare, sir?" Heathrow, summer of 1979. I had just arrived by a direct flight from Washington, D.C., after a relatively long and grueling stint of research at the Library of Congress (Le). I shook my head with a look of injured innocence. The customs officer's eyes were glued on a neatly taped packet lying atop my suitcase. "Those are my research xerographs," I said, cut to the quick. Nevertheless he picked it up, turned it around, and weighed it in his hands. "How about getting a hound to sniff it, officer?" He returned my genial grin and let me pass. The United States may have different attractions for the varied assortment of people who go there in a state of wide-eyed wonder. To me it is essentially the Mecca for widespectrum research of the kind I revel in. Whether it be Shakespeare or James Joyce or chess-to list at random three of my numerous obsessions-if you wish to have more than your fill, there is no alternative to crossing the North Atlantic westward. "Seek and you shall find; ask and it shall be given." Although by no m~ans the oldest of the great libraries of the ~or!d-in age the Library of Congress, which is in fact, if not in name, the national library of the United States, comes well after the Bibliotheque Nationale of France (1364), the St. Petersburg Imperial Library of Russia (1714) and the British Museum Library (1753)-it is by any reckoning the largest and fastest growing. When it was founded in 1800, its natural home was the Capitol, providing in-house access to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives whom it was primatily intended to serve. In 1897 it was moved into an ornate building close behind
MAHADEVAN
TK. Mahadevan, a writer, editor, publisher, reviewer and broadcaster for 35 years, garners a "mindboggling" harvest from the Library of Congress, which he considers "the largest and fastest growing" in the world. He finds in it an attitude that encourages research and learning, aided now by the computerized information systems. the Capitol and reflecting some of the latter's awesome majesty. Within less than 50 years it was bursting at the seams, and a few months before World War II broke out a five-story annexe, more functional in architecture, was added-the two linked to each other by a convenient underpass. History is replete with examples to show that wars are not wholly destructive, that they sometimes set spurs to progress. Hitler's mad war was no exception. It helped us to pitchfork ourselves into the postindustrial technological revolution and, within the purpose of this essay, the information explosion, the knowledge industry, and (hopefully) the wisdom society that diehard optimists avow "lies just over yonder horizon. Maybe, maybe not; but their composite burgeoning effect on the Library of Congress soon threatened to break all bounds. I bear personal testimony to this. In 1967 when I first sampled the library's holdings for a brief 10-day spell, my pass to visit the stacks of books freely was a great timesaver. There was enough room to set up a table and chair and work undisturbed on the piles of books I would take off the well spaced rows of shelves. A dozen years later, when I last worked there, the scene among the stacks left me breathless. A camel might well pass through the eye of a needle, but not me amidst that bedlam. The information
explosion and the knowledge industry in full cry! I returned the stack pass at the issue counter, wiping the sweat off my brow. "Look," I said, forcing a smile, "it's impossible up there. I'd much rather have the books delivered to my desk down here." "But, sir," said the handsome young black American, "we found you were calling for an average of around 60 items a day. And some of what you want appear not to hav,e been removed from the shelves for years. We had a hard time locating all that arcane stuff, you see." "I do appreciate your difficulty. But I am here only for a few weeks. Then I go to London. The new Madison building across the street, I see, is standing in lonely magnificence. All the space in the world. Why aren't we moving house?" "You come from India. Why not ask Senator Moynihan [former American Ambassador to India]? Congress hasn't yet voted funds with which to furnish the building, you see." "Yes, I do see." I have often defined writers as men (or women) intensely in love with themselves. Narcissists all. The first thing we do entering such a gargantuan structure as the LC is to repair to the pond-to wit, the particular card index cabinet wherein we would see
our names and the titles of books we had bequeathed to posterity in return for, well, spondylosis! For it is the wry neck that remains, the royalities having vanished long ago in whiskey. Fingering the cards one by one, I thought a few titles were missing. So I went and sat in front of one of the computer display terminals, tapped out my name in full (with the T and the K spelt out) and my specific requirement. I didn't have to wait long. There they all were on the black screen, in livid green pixels. The ritual over, I looked for a quiet one-man desk by the wall and well away from the horseshoe. I can't concentrate with young people around-blondes being particularly distracting. And then began the long haul. Eight hours a day, for a little over six weeks. I had pitched my tent within five minutes' walking distance, in an old brownstone hotel. Looting the LC in, say, 400 nonstop hours is an idle dream. But the harvest I did garner is mindboggling. It's the many facilities at one's beck and call, as it were, that make researching at the LC so much less time-consuming and so much more productive than at other comparable institutions I have worked in. The absence of red tape is a blessing. One fills no forms, except at the rare books and manuscripts section. One's bona fides are taken for granted. This openness (a characteristic American trait) of course invites a certain price. In my daily meal of 60 books, at least one would be found with some pages missing, brutally wrenched away by some vandal who was as likely as not short of dimes to get those pages copied on the row of plainpaper copiers ever ready to serve him. If he had only dollar bills, there was the automatic moneychanger to help him. Positively no alibi for destroying a book which, however humble, always deserves to be handled tenderly. I wouln, livid with rage, bring the mauling and maiming at once to the attention of the men at the counter, lest the sin should be visited upon me. Nonstop cerebration would lay you low if there were no easy access to food and drink. Despite the brunch in my hotel room with which I started the day, I needed to eat about thrice-short eats-while at work in the library. The gorgeous cafeteria with a repast fit for a king (open for lunch only) and the coin machine snack bar (open at all hours) served my animal needs well enough, keeping my intellectmil agility in full gear throughout the eight hours. To be sure, there were times when every research road I took. led to a blind alley. Then 1.would go
down to the music room, put on the i)eadphones, and listen to Handel or Vivaldi for about an hour; thus refreshed, I would be back at my research desk with a new strategy to chase away the blues. The pursuit of knowledge, according to the Indian tradition that suffuses my way of life, is an end in itself rather than a means to some other end. I find it hard to draw a distinction between useful and useless knowledge. Hence am I at odds with the Information Society, which is orientated toward the former kind and insists that some new lollipop must issue from my labors or I am wasting my time. But the quality of one's life is not enhanced by the number of timesaving gadgets with which one surrounds oneself. Saving time for what? I have asked this question time and again and have yet to get a convincing answer. On the contrary, it is the enrichment of my mind that leads to a qualitative improvement in my life. A Sanskrit saying sums it all up neatly: briihmalJiilJ. piilJ4ityain nirvidya biilyena ti~~hanti. That is to say: Men of true learning live a life of childlike simplicity. Einstein was one such. This is the secret of my infatuation for great libraries. Each morning as I enter the portals of the LC, fold my umbrella, wait for the water to drip off, stove it into the safe keeping of the coin-operated locker (the coin being graciously returned to me when I leave in the evening), and then walk briskly to the old-world elevator, my heart is beating with the excitement of an explorer in an unfamiliar environment. The excitement comes from not knowing what new things are in store for me during the eight hours that lie ahead as I move from one discovery to another, riffling through a motley pile of books or skidding over miles of microfilm, all the while quarantined from the outside world except when I go to the men's room and see the sparkle of sunshine pouring through the windows. But there is a method in what may seem my unmethodical madness. I never start any research chore with my mind already made up, or with an axe to grind. But this is what most scholars do most of the time. This is what Marx did sitting in the British Museum. Selective research which will stoop to anything-bend facts, twist meanings out of shape, wrench averments from their context-to glorify the bee in one's bonnet. Rather like theology which sets out to justify the ways of God to man! I can think of nothing more dishonest. Research must be a voyage of discovery-or it is no research at all. Of course you cannot, must not, go into a great library with a mind which is as empty as the Fallopian tubes. That way lies disaster: you will come out
more confused and ignorant than when you went in. Only a mind richly endowed can make richer discoveries. If it is, at the same time, polychromatic (as mine is) then months on end at the LC would truly be heaven enow. Let me bring this somewhat meandering essay to a close by addressing a very pertinent question: Why have the other great l;braries of the world (three of which I have already referred to) failed to keep pace with the phenomenal growth of the Library of Congress? Or, turning the question round, what is the secret behind the LC's unstoppable burgeoning? I am inclined to brush aside such obvious (and jealous) hints as the wealth of the United States. No, the answer lies rather in the courage, wisdom and forthrightness of the American Library Association, whose founding in 1876 marks the beginning of modern librarianship. In 1939 the Nazis clamped severe restrictions on what they would permit the German people to read and there were widespread apprehensions that this invasion of the superstate into the lives and minds of free citizens might well penetrate and pollute the free air of America. Indeed certain pressure groups did make noises about what the vast network of American libraries may or may not provide to its users. This was clearly an infringement of the right of free inquiry, and the American Library Association promptly swung into action to nip the evil in the bud. It published what came to be known as the Library Bill of Rights, the main features of which are worth quoting: • As a responsibility of library service, books and other reading matter selected should be chosen for values of interest, information and enlightenment of all the people of the community. In no case should any book be excluded because of the race or nationality, or the political or religious views of the writer. • There should be the fullest practicable provision of material presenting all points of view concerning' the problems and issues of our timesinternational, national and local; and books or other reading matter of sound factual authority should not be proscribed or removed frQm library shelves because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval. • Censorship of books, urged or practiced by volunteer arbiters of morals or political opinion or by organizations that would establish a coercive concept of Americanism, must be challenged by libraries in maintenance of their responsibility to provide public information and enlightenment through the printed word.
The slide to medievalism is an everpresent threat, and I have no doubt in my mind that the United States Library of Congress will stand sentinel at the top of the slippery slope, come rain come shine. 0
SOLVING MEDICAL MYSTERIES Clues From Old Fossils Dr. Eugene Man is a geochemist. His usual beat is the ocean floor, where he studies the chemistry of fossils-the remains of creatures that once lived in the sea. Working with chemicals from the deep ocean can often show where to look for oil. Recently, Man's work at the University of Miami led him to a chemical discovery about a place that, if less remote, is also less well-understood: the inside of the human brain. What he learned "could have important implications for age-related dysfunctions associated with the inner brain," he says. The answer to why the brain sometimes stops working when we grow old may lie in chemistry. Such disabling diseases of old age as Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's affect millions. For instance, Alzheimer's-a disease in which brain function deteriorates until the victim dies-affects at least two million Americans, and there is no known cure. To understand how the focus of Man's research shifted from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the human brain you have to know a little about protein, because that is what Man ordinarily studies on the sea floor. All living things contain proteins. And all proteins are made up of 20 or so amino acids-they are the building blocks of protein. The way these amino acids are put together determines the size and shape of the living thing. Man was studying the amino acids in fossil material from the ocean. These amino acids exist in two forms, mirror-images of each other like human hands held palm-to-palm: a left-hand form called "L"and a right-hand form called "0" (for the Greek words laevo and dextro for "left" and "right"). The amino acids in almost all living things are in the left-hand form. But when the living thing dies, the amino acids begin to change. They shift over into the other form, the right-hand or 0 form, until an equal balance is achieved-about half L and half D. Each of the 20 amino acids do this at a different rate, some taking hundreds of years, others millions, to reach equilibrium. The process is called racemization, or rotation, and it is what Man was studying. "A chemist looks at this and says, 'Aha! I have a time-clock,'" Man says. "If I know the rate of racemization and the temperature, I can tell how long it's been there." And that may tell whether it contains oil. Meanwhile, Dr. Jeffrey Bada, a geochemist at Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego, was measuring the racemization rates of various amino acids. He was using one of the slowest-changing of themcalled isoleucine-to check out this "time-clock" theory in ocean sediments. Man and Bada got together and examined the amino acids in a long core of sediment taken from the ocean bottom. They found that the theory was correct: The racemization of amino acids could indeed give an idea of the age of sediments where they are found. And this is where something new entered their minds. "Jeff Bada had been using the racemization of a faster amino acid called aspartic acid to date archeological bones, and I had been working on ways to use racemization to determine temperature histories in ocean sediments," Man says. "We thought: What if there were a protein in a living organism that, like a fossil, remained unchanged? And if there
was, wo~ld we be able fo find D-aspartic acid there? And if so, did it racemize fast enough to show up during, say, the lifetime of a human being?" At this point, it was a hunch, a question of intellectual curiosity. But it was a hunch based on knowledge. They knew the human body temperature stays constant. And they knew that, since the body is significantly warmer than the ocean bottom, any changes would take place faster. From Bada's work, they knew the racemization rates of different amino acids at various temperatures. From their calculations, it seemed that some of the faster ones, including aspartic acid, would racemize at body temperature, and fast enough to be measl'red during a lifetime. The question was where to look. In the medical and scientific literature, Bada found references to the fossil-like nature of the human eye lens, and the dentine and enamel of teeth. He got extracted teeth from dentists, and subjected them to the same procedure he had used on bones and Man had used on ocean sediment. And he found what he was looking for: D-aspartic acid accumulated in the tooth (and eye lens) just as the theory predicted. It was part of the aging process of long-lived mammals, and Bada was able to estimate people's age from their teeth. Man wondered about finding the same racemization in other kinds of tissue. "I had begun to do some looking at the facts about myelin, a protein that sheaths the nerves like insulation on an electric wire and is found abundantly in the brain," Man recalls. "The exact life span of myelin had never been determined, but it was apparently a very inactive tissue. From what we could learn, myeIln had a slow metabolic turnover." But was it slow enough to act like tooth and lens-like fossil? The way to find out was to get some myelin and subject it to the same procedure. Deep inside the brain is a portion called the corpus callosum-a part of what is called the "white matter"-which is rich in myelin. Man obtained 10 human brains with no known defects, removed the white matter, and isolated the racemized aspartic acid. "And to my delight, I found what I was looking for," he says. The amount of racemization in the 10 brains was just what the theory predicted it would be. Although one could tell the age of an individual from the amount of racemization in the myelin, that was not the exciting part of the discovery. The exciting part is what it could mean. In an article for Science, Man wrote: "Such a finding could have important implications for age-related dysfunctions associated with the inner brain. Analysis of brains with abnormal pathologies associated with senile brain dysfunctions such as Alzheimer's disease, as well as brains from victims of drug or alcohol abuse and heavy-metal poisoning, may show a relationship between the presence of these pathologies and D-aspartate levels." He explained further in an interview: "If there is a change in the shape of a protein in the brain due to its racemized aspartate, then this altered protein might not be able to properly carry out its function. If that is so, then this 'damaged' protein might be the starting point for some of the brain's dysfunctions, all the more so since the older one gets the more D-aspartate there is in the brain. "Since many of the brain dysfunctions we know seem to occur mostly in older brains, there might be a connection between racemization and the dysfunctions of such terribly disabling diseases as Alzheimer's."
They don't know yet, but they have a three-year, $350,000 grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to find out. As Man says, "It was a classic example of how things can happen in science-an observation in one area leading to a hunch about another area, and a search producing evidence that the hunch was valid." It isn't over yet, by far. The exciting part, to Man, is the continually unfolding process of scientific investigation. And that goes on unchanged. 0 About the Author: Jack McClintock is the news features editor of the
University of Miami Office of Public Affairs.
Set a Bug to Catch a Bug Since their introduction-of first the sulpha drugs in the 1930s, then penicillin during World War II-antibiotics have been medicine's major weapon against disease-causing bacteria. But they have their pitfalls. So efficient are they at annihilating susceptible organisms that bugs insensitive to thein-which are often more virulent-can proliferate and gain the upper hand. This is why a different idea is beginning to take hold: biological control of the culprits by confronting them with competing and harmless species of bacteria. The concept is not new. About the turn of the century, many scientists argued that bug-fighting bugs would buy time for the patient and permit the body's own healing powers to prevail. The strategy is back in the news again because of the variety of new ways in which it might be applied. At Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, for instance, microbiologist Dr. Christine Sanders and her colleagues have been studying children and adults to determine what kind of bacteria normally live in their throats and the impact such "flora" have on their susceptibility to common sorts of sore throat (those caused by streptococcal infection). What has emerged is that the presence of such flora seems to be a hedge against the streptococcal infection that can set the stage for rheumatic heart disease. Such flora are also apparently more prevalent in adults than in children. It is a lucky youngster who happens to live with an adult whose throat is home to these "ideal" germs which can spread from parent to child, exerting a protective effect. It also turns out that treating strep throats with penicillin (standard on such occasions) may not be as wise as has been assumed. Penicillin is bac~ericidal-i .e., it kilis all sensitive bacteria in its wake, whether disease-causing or beneficial. As yet, Sanders has no alternative to recommend to physicians. But her test-tube results suggest that antibiotics such as erythromycin may be a wise choice. Instead of killing sensitive organisms outright, "bacteriostatic" drugs such as erythromycin slow their multiplication. This may be preferable to total wipe-out not only because it would tend to conserve beneficial bacteria, but also because it should give the body's immune system ample opportunity to deal with the baddies that cause disease. This idea has already been implemented by Dr. Katherine Sprunt, a pediatrician at New York Babies Hospital. Sprunt's interest is in the deadly epidemics that can sweep through an intensive care nursery where tiny premature infants struggle for life. Normal babies become resistant to these epidemics because they acquire bacteria from their mothers during the first day or two of life that prime their ability to fight infections. But premature infants housed in intensive care units do not get
this chance. Consequently they are often slttmg ducks for hostile germs that may gain entry through a wound created by an intravenous needle. Furthermore, treating these infants with antibiotics can make a bad situation worse-again, because the drugs tend to eliminate the susceptible organisms, leaving those that are dangerous behind. What to do? Sprunt has brought the situation under control by implanting a benign strain of streptococcus (obtained from a normal newborn in a standard hospital nursery) in premature infants at risk. The implant~ have taken hold in an impressive 89 percent of instances, replacing dangerous germs harbored by the infants with harmless bugs within 72 hours. What about species of bacteria other than those belonging to the streptococcus family? Are there good guys and bad guys among them, too? The evidence to date is that there are. For example, take the ubiquitous gut-bug, Escherichia coli. These bacteria are normal inhabitants of the intestines, but have an unfortunate way of wandering into the urinary tract, especially in women. There, if they attach themselves to the tract's moist lining and start to spew out their poisons, they can cause painful infections of the bladder and, should they ascend into the kidneys, life-threatening disease. Using Escherichia coli bugs genetically-engineered so as not to stick to the urinary lining, Dr. Catharina Svanborg Eden of Sweden's University of Gothenburg has found that when antibiotics fail to beat the invaders into submission, gene-juggled organisms will. Finally, a similar strategy could be in the offing to combat that the two most common bacterial infections of all-one causes cavities in teeth and another that is responsible for gum disease. Dental decay is due mainly to a strain of bacterium called Streptococcus mutans, which sticks to tooth surfaces, doing its dirty work by making corrosive acids from the sugar people consume. Thus far, a genetic variant of streptococcus (which lacks an enzyme possessed by the naturally-occurring germs) has shown decay-preventing properties in rats fed on a sugary diet, but has not been as successful when tested on monkeys, man's closer relatives. There are other possibilities, however, including another variant of the bacterium which flourishes in the human mouth and produces a protein that kills its competitors. Here, the thinking is that, if this marvelous germ can be modified further (using genetic engineering to make the crucial enzyme that prevents the conversion of sugar to acid), toothbrush and dental floss could be joined by bacteria in the fight against dental decay. A variant of a quite different type of streptococcus-a harmless fellow traveler of saliva, known as Streptococcus salivarius-is a potential candidate for the job. As for gum disease, research at the Forsythe Dental Center in Boston has found that people with healthy gums generally have large numbers of two other types of beneficial streptococci on their teeth that those with troubled gums lack. These bugs produce the disinfectant hydrogen peroxide, which kills the germs attacking the bony supports of the teeth. In this case, a two-step battle plan is envisioned: antibiotics to reduce the population of bacteria in the mouth that are harmful to the gums, followed by deliberately introducing organisms that generate hydrogen peroxide to serve as a self-perpetuating hit squad keeping the surviving pathogens under control. Again, the strategy is not to exterminate the enemy, but to take a Ie.af from the environmentalists' book and show that, in the long run, it is usually better to depend on nature's own 0 predators.
goldell Oldell CJtcipes Early on a midsummer morning at the City of Peace, hands are already at work. In the old kitchen in the Brick Dwelling House, a small boy named Ethan scurries back and forth between the bake oven and the cast-iron arch kettles as he .leeds the fireboxes sticks of wood. His older¡ sister and another blonde girl in a blue-striped pinafore are rosy-cheeked with exertion as they grind coffee and beat cream, eggs and flour in a spongeware bowl. Although it may look that way, the year
is not 1830. The scene is the start of a typical day during the annual Shaker Kitchen Festival at Hancock Shaker Village, a 400hectare museum tucked into a tranquil pocket of the Berkshire hills along the western edge of Massachusetts. During that week early in August, museum staff and volunteers give Hancock's 19th-century kitchen. the kind of workout it had when some hundred brothers and sisters of the Shaker faith occupied the floors above. [The Shakers formed a celibate communal society
by MARIA LENHART
that originated in France in the late 17th century, developed in England, and reached its full flower in the late 18th and early 19th cen.turies. ] The Shakers lived at Hancock-or the City of Peace, as they sometimes called it-from 1790 until 1960, forming a community that peaked in both population and prosperity about 1830. In that year they built the handsome Brick Dwelling House, a testament to Shaker craftsmanship and efficiency with its graceful staircases, commo-
Wooden ice-cream freezers, brick wall ovens, cast-iron kettles and, of course, the recipes-these ancient marvels still make delicious meals at the annual Shaker Kitchen Festival in Hancock, Massaclwsetts. dious built-in cabinets and drawers, and gleaming floors. Always mindful of the up-to-date, the Shakers reserved the ground floor for a spacious light-filled kitchen equipped with the most modern cooking devices. During the Shaker Kitchen Festival, museum interpreters cook and bake in the Dwelling House kitchen all day, giving visitors a chance to see every step, from building fires in the morning to scrubbing work tables with vinegar in the late after-
noon. In the evening, visitors may attend the World's People's Dinners, which continue the 19th-century Shaker tradition of inviting neighboring non-Shakers to share their tables for a modest fee. "We get calls for reservation starting in February," says Amy Bess Miller, the elegant president of Hancock's board of trustees. She planned the first menus for the dinners and helped start the Shaker Kitchen Festival. During festival week, early morning visitors to the 19th-century kitchen see
Above left: A tempting spread of wholesome foods, all made from traditional recipes, is laid out at the Shaker Kitchen Festival. Above: Kitchen interpreter (one who explains the old methods being used to visitors) Debbie Munro places loaves of rice-bread dough in loaf pans; all are baked together in the kitchen's original 19th-century brick oven which can hold30 loaves.
several Hancock interpreters and three young helpers beginning the day's tasks. On a long work table are earthenware bowls and handwritten recipe cards and "receipt books" calling for "a gill of rose water" and "one tea cup full of cream." "Following the instructions as written has become second nature," says interpreter Debbie Munro as she scoops cornmeal from a tall blue-andwhite crock. "We're just as used to thinking in terms of a gill as half a cup." While Debbie combines ingredients for an American Indian pudding, Lindy Myers beats batter for a composition cake, a plain but rich yellow cake flavored with rose water. Lindy and her younger brother, Ethan, along with 10-year-old Heather Senseney, are child volunteers assisting the kitchen interpreters during festival week. "Besides being indispensable, their presence here is entirely authentic," says Marcia Hartwell, chief kitchen interpreter and the prime force behind the festival in its current form. "There were nearly always children in a Shaker kitchen. Young girls helped with the cooking, and a boy about Ethan's age would tend the fires." Although there has been a Shaker Kitchen Festival at Hancock every summer since 1964, only in the past four years have cooking demonstrations been putting almost every circa-1830 appliance in the kitchen to the test. Lindy's composition cake, along with assorted pies and breads, will go into a brick wall oven built to hold 30 loaves. The ovens arouse the most curiosity. As an elderly couple stare in fascination at the cast-iron doors of the main oven, Marcia tells them that it works on the same principle as the built-in ovens found alongside many early 19th-century fireplaces. "First we build a roaring fire right in the oven," she says. "After about three hours, when the bricks are white-hot, we let the fire reduce to hot coals and sweep them out. Then we can bake for hours with the residual heat." Built in on each side of the wall oven are deep cast-iron arch kettles, each with its own firebox beneath it. "In some kettles we can make soup for a hundred people, which the Shakers often did," says Marcia. "If you fill them with oil, they are great deep-fat fryers, and if you put water in the bottom, they can be used for steaming vegetables and puddings." Every day during festival week, Marcia gives an informal half-hour talk about Shaker food. This morning at eleven she leaves the kitchen bustle temporarily and heads
upstairs to the Meeting Room, where some 30 visitors have assembled on long wooden benches. During her talk she quotes Shaker journals and recipe manuscripts found in the Hancock archives. "Their writings reveal lives dependent on the seasons to a degree that seems strange to us today," she tells the group. "Because they couldn't go to the supermarket and get fresh vegetables at any time of the year, their journal entries treat the advent of peas in the garden or ripe strawberries as major events." Their recipe manuscripts reveal that there is really no such thing as exclusively Shaker food or cooking. "The Shakers ate what other rural Americans ate," says Marcia. "Like many of their neighbors, they were influenced by their mostly English heritage and by the American Indians. A Shaker recipe is really just a traditional American recipe." Because they are two frequently asked questions, Marcia discusses whether the Shakers were vegetarians and whether they drank wine or spirits. The answer to both, it turns out, is yes and no. "Vegetarianism never really took hold in the Shaker communities, although it was the established rule for a decade during the last century," she says. "At Hancock, meat eaters and vegetarians were evenly divided, and the cooks would prepare separate dinners for each group. Finally, they just served the same food to all, and people took what they wanted." As for alcoholic beverages, the Shakers, like most rural Americans, drank har9 cider with their meals until the temperance movement in the 1820s. "After that, it was not usual for them to drink wine or other spirits with meals, although they were not averse to cooking with them," says Marcia. Then, alluding to the multitude of Shaker recipes for wine made with everything from rhubarb to tomatoes, she adds, "Of course, they used wine for medicinal purposes-that was a key phrase in those days." By early afternoon, activity in the kitchen is in full swing. Onlookers gather to watch interpreter Marsha Frick mix batter for loaf cake. Vying for the visitors' attention at the other end of the kitchen is a wooden and tin ice-cream churn manned by Ethan and Lindy. Today the flavor is chocolate, great fluffy mounds of it spooned like soft butter into little white cups for visitors and staff to sample. "We make ice cream often during the kitchen festival," says Marcia, "partly
because the Shakers liked ice cream and had many different recipes for it-but mostly," she confesses with a smile, "because I like ice cream." lee-cream making is just one.of Marcia's additions to the festival. She also started the full-time cooking demonstrations in the 19th-century kitchen. When asked about her background in either Shaker history or early American cookery, Marcia explains that she first went to Hancock "as part of a package deal" with her husband, Charles Hartwell, who is the village tinsmith and makes, the bread pans and other utensils used during the demonstrations. "1 fell into this totally by accident," she says. "I'd always had a real interest in both history and food, and here they came together." Two years ago one of her innovations was to have the three young volunteers, all children of village staff, help in the kitchen. "The children have proven especially successful-with all generations of visitors," she says. "Visiting children are fascinated to see others their own age doing grown-up tasks. Their parents like to see it, and grandparents seem to enjoy it the most. Perhaps it harkens back to when they were young and children were expected to help." The cooking demonstrations give visitors a chance to compare the circa-1830 methods with their own. "Everyone seems interested in how the old methods differ from the new," says Marcia. She believes that the universality of food and cooking is the most important aspect of the kitchen festival. .' "Most people who come here know a little...:' about the Shakers," she explains, "and visitors have a hard time identifying with their communal living, their celibacy and their religion; but the food aspect of their lives isn't so hard to identify with. The festival tries to show that the Shakers were people who enjoyed cooking and eating just as visitors do."
Working in various Shaker archives, Marcia Hartwell researched and updated the authentic recipes below.
Credited to Shirley Shaker Village, this recipe was first published in The Best of Shaker Cooking, coauthored by Amy Bess Miller, with this notation: "Taken with brethren when farming at a distance. We send good sharp, cold cider with
this and whole tomatoes and a pound cake or two." Pastry for one 9-inch pie crust 112 pound bacon 5 eggs, unbeaten 2 eggs, beaten 1 cup light cream or milk 1 tsp. nutmeg 1 tbsp. flour 112 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. pepper Line a 9-inch pie pan with pastry. Fry the bacon until crisp, drain it, and crumble it over the bottom of the unbaked pie shell. One at a time, drop the 5 unbeaten eggs on top of the bacon, spacing them evenly around the pie. Beat the remaining 2 eggs withthe cream and add the nutmeg, flour, salt and pepper. Pour the mixture into the shell. Bake at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake 30 minutes longer or until a knife inserted carefully in the center comes out clean. Cool. Cut into wedges. Makes one pie, which serves 5.
Puddings were a popular part of 19th-century New England cuisine. This chicken dish puffs up golden brown. as it bakes, resembling a giant popover. It is topped with a light sauce and can be served as a main dish for supper or a side dish at dinner. 2 3-lb. chickens 2 tbsp. butter (optional) 4 cups flour 4 cups milk 6 eggs, beaten 1 egg, unbeaten Place the chickens in a large stew pot, cover them with water, and add the butter and seasonings (onion, celery, herbs) if desired. Boil the chickens until fully cooked. Cool. Reserve 2 cups chicken stock. Remove the meat from the bones and set it aside. Beat together the flour and the milk, gradually adding the beaten eggs. The mixture will be very thin and resemble popover batter. Grease a rectangular 13-by-9-by-21/4-inch pan or one of similar capacity. Arrange the ingredients in layers, starting with half the chicken, then half the batter, the remainder of the chicken, and top with remaining batter. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 35 minutes, or until a tester comes out of the pudding clean. Serve hot with this sauce: Heat 2 cups of the reserved (and strained) chicken 'stock or canned chicken broth. When it is hot, quickly beat in an egg. Serve immediately.
Found in a handwritten .1860s Shaker cooking manuscript, this custardy pudding originally called for pippin apples, which were stuffed with brown sugar and baked whole. It was a popular dessert for the Hancock community because its
members apples.
raised and sold many varieties
of
9 large apples, pared and cored 11f2 cups brown sugar 1 tsp. cinnamon 1 tsp. nutmeg 1 tsp. cloves 1 tsp. ginger 3 tbsp. flour 4 cups milk 7 eggs, beaten 1 lemon, sliced Put the apples in a large, deep pan and pour in just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. Place them in a 350-degree F oven for 30 minutes. Mix together V2 cup brown sugar, the spices and the flour, and gradually add it to the milk. Beat the eggs, adding them by thirds to the milk mixture. Remove the apples from the oven and fill each core with the remaining brown sugar and a slice of lemon. Pour the batter around the apples and return them to the oven for another 30 minutes. Serve them warm; a delicious addition is hot maple syrup.
This rich, densely textured cake, similar to a modern pound- cake, is flavored with rose water made,at Hancock (it can also be purchased). The recipe comes from the Clifford/Woods receipt book, which dates from the late-19th century. 4 cups sugar 2 cups butter 1 cup heavy cream 1/2 cup rose water 7 eggs 4 cups flour Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then stir in the cream. Add the rose water. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Ads} the flour gradually, one cup at a time, continuing to beat the mixture vigorously. Pour the batter into a lightly greased tube pan at least 10 inches in diameter and 41/2 inches deep. Bake at 325 degrees F for approximately 75 minutes or until a tester inserted into the cake comes out clean. Cool before removing it from the pan. Makes one lO-inch cake.
Marcia Hartwell reports that this vegetable side dish, which she found in a 1796 cookbook, is a big hit whenever she makes it. "I wouldn't mind having it for dessert, either," she says, "because it tastes like cheesecake." 3 medium-sizepotatoes or about 2 cups potatoes, mashed 1 cup sugar 1112 cups butter 11/2 cups milk or cream 3 tbsp. lemon juice, freshly squeezed 1 tbsp. grated lemon peel 2 tbsp. rose water 1112 tsp. nutmeg, freshly grated if possible
4 whole eggs, room temperature 3 egg whites, room temperature Peel, slice and cook the raw potatoes, mash them, and set them aside. Cream the butter and sugar, add the milk or cream, lemon juice, lemon peel, rose water and nutmeg. Add the mashed potatoes and mix well. Add 4 whole eggs, one at a time, beating vigorously with each addition. Add the egg whites last and continue to beat. When thoroughly combined, pour the mixture into a deep lO-inch pie pan or a baking dish with a similar capacity. Bake at 400 degrees F for approximately 45 minutes or until lightly browned and firmly set. Serve immediately.
When fresh oysters were unavailable, many 18thand 19th-century cooks concocted mock oyster dishes. These crispy, delicate corn fritters, which look like small fried oysters, are delicious served with warm maple syrup. 2 cups uncooked corn off the cob or the equivalent in canned corn, drained and patted dry 1 cup flour 1/4 tsp. salt (optional) 1 tsp. pepper (optional) 3-5 eggs Mix the corn, flour, salt and pepper in a bowl. Add the eggs one at a time until the mixture is loose but will drop slowly from a spoon. (This consistency is important to prevent splattering as the fritters are dropped into hot fat.) Heat fat in a deep pan to 375 degrees F; drop the batter in by teaspoonsful. Fry until golden brown and crisp, turning once. Serve immediately. Makes about two dozen.
This rich, moist raisin cake is baked in loaf pans instead of the usual tube pans. According to Marcia Hartwell, the brandy and wine helped preserve food in the days before refrigeration. 1112 cups butter 2 cups sugar 4 eggs 1 cup heavy cream 1/2 cup brandy V2 cup white wine 3 cups raisins¡ 4 cups flour Cream the butter and sugar together, adding the eggs one at a time. Beat hard. Add the cream, then the wine and brandy. Gradually add the flour, one cup at a time, continuing to beat the mixture hard. Add the raisins last. Pour the batter into buttered loaf pans. Fill to within half an inch of the pan top. Extra batter can be used for cupcakes. Bake the cake approximately 90 minutes in a 325-degree F oven or until a tester is free of uncooked batter. Cool before removing from pan. Makes two 8-by-4D inch loaf cakes.
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here I was halfway around the globe-from New Delhi to Los Angeles, the Hollywood city and the home of movie idols! I looked forward to visiting studios, seeing ~ movies in the making, watching stars in action (in flesh and blood) and, perhaps, shaking hands with a couple of them. But there were no stars anywhere around, no sight of movies in the maklllg. Disappointed and dejected, I trudged along Hollywood Boulevard. I was stopped in my tracks by a sign: Hollywood Wax Museum. "See the Superstars-Great Men ... Great Moments-All in LIVING Wax!" screamed a handbill. I walked in, and there was Marilyn Monroe welcoming me with a beguiling smile. "Well, this is living wax indeed," I warmed up. What more can an Indian film buff desire than "greetings" from darling Marilyn? And there was more. Stepping inside, I felt I was in superstar land. It wasn't the real thing-but close enough to raise my flagging spirits. There were more than 50 life-size figures of movie stars poised in action: John Wayne, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Rudolph Valentino, Yul Brynner, Charlie Chaplin, Hedy Lamarr, Raquel Welch, Superman Christopher Reeve, young Shirley Temple, Robert Redford. Most looked convincingly real. To hightight, perhaps, the latest twist in American politics of a movie star in the White House, amid a special panel displaying popular Presidents-Washington, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennedy-Ronald Reagan stood at the center. But the wax figure that surprised me most was one showing a Sikh-with a flowing beard, a turban and clad in homespun flowing shirt and pyjamas-holding the hand of a pretty Hollywood heroine. "Michelle Phillips and Spoony Singh-in The Man With Bogart's Face,." said the caption. A film star named Spoony Singh in Hollywood? A museum official in the hall revealed that Spoony Singh is the creator of this Wax Museum. My curiosity was further aroused. Just one telephone call later Spoony Singh in the flesh hurried down from his second-floor office to greet me. The real Spoony stood before his wax model and told me about the 59-year saga of a poor farm family from Punjab making the Westward Odyssey, working diligently and crowning it all with grand success. It all began way back in 1926 when Sardar Kartar Singh of Kiti,lThan Singh village in the Jalandhar district decided to migrate to Canada, to strike it ricb.,. Spoony, his son, was barely four then. The farmer switched to lumber business, and the family found life in British Columbia "good going." By the time Spoony finished his schooling, setbacks in business had eaten away the family fortune. Spoony realized that his duty was to start earning to help the family. He decided to forget about his college education. Spoony begaa with a one-man sawmill which slowly expanded as the venture proved a success. Then came a windfall as he got a road-building contract in the woodlands of British Columbia. Even though friends warned him he might ruin himself, he found that his luck held. His employers did not realize that the proposed road lay along the route of an abandoned rail track. After having struggled with the difficult task of clearing a no-man's land, he was now able to clear the thorny bushes and cotton-pine trees and strengthen the earth foundation. He was well rewarded for completing the project in record time. Next he embarked on a mining venture in Mexico, but that proved less prudent and he withdrew before he lost all his capital. During a visit to Hollywood in 1963 he wag "sorely disappointed" in that Mecca of movie idols. "There was nothing
here for tpe average tourist. He comes expecting to see the screen stars of his dream, finds they do not sit out in the sun for the visitor to gaze at, and feels greatly frustrated." Spoony's business instinct came to the fore. "I thought then that any kind of exhibition that would make visitors feel that they had seen a bit of Hollywood would prove an attraction." He toyed with various plans but finally hit upon the idea of a wax museum displaying movie idols as "the most appropriate for the Hollywood gazer." It has one special advantage he realized. "I could continue adding new stars and the latest styles so that the museum would always be considered current. That way my star show would not be a one-shot deal, you see." Scouting for a suitable place, he was lucky to spot an abandoned and closed-down factory front just a block from the celebrated Grauman's Chinese Theater, famous for the cement impressions of stars' footprints. Spoony's Hollywood Wax Museum has been an instant success from the start in January 1965. At ~ ' $5 for adults and half •••••••••••.••. that entrance fee for children and elderly citizens, the venture has proved profitable. While the movie stars mesmerize the grown ups, most teenagers head for the horror chamber full of demons, monsters, villains, torture machines, sound effects and mind-blowing psychedelic lights. Spoony, of course, has not forgotten his motherland. Though he. looks the odd-man-out in a movie stars' show, Mahatma Gandhi gazes serenely at the visitors. "But when did you turn a movie actor to get a place in the star section?" I asked. Spoony smiled and explained, "When the film The Man With Bogart's Face was being made, a few scenes were shot in the museum beginning with Bogart on display here. The character of Spoony occurred in the script, and the director hit upon the idea that I act that character-just a minor interlude. And so you see me in wax." Does Spoony himself make the wax figures? "I don't know a thing about sculpting," he readily confessed. "I decide which movie star or which scene would interest the public. The second consideration is to choose a personality who will give favorable publicity to the museum. Thirdly, by judicious timing, the movie star is persuaded to appear at the museum at the time of installation of the lifelike figure, to glamorize the occasion on radio and TV and interest thousands across the United States to visit my wax museum during a Hollywood visit." At first he used to let an artist make the wax likeness of the movie star selected. This created problems. "Artists usually highlight some prominent features of the star, exaggerating here and there. The end product is all right from the artistic point of view, but what people want to see is a photographic reproduction of their movie idols so they recognize the wax pieces from a distance." To meet this special requirement, Spoony developed a new system. "We take a dozen snapshots of the movie star from
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in America America welcomes the youngest Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy. With color photographs SPAN will capture the many moods and moments of the visit and report on the outcome of the historic event.
One of the most spectacu-o lar events of its kind, the Festival of India in America will offer many colorful windows on India over the next 18 months. Exhibitions, live shows and seminars will present the rich diversity of India. From the art of pottery to contemporary Indian film; from the glories of its past to its hopes of tomorrow; from the agility of its craftsmen to the great minds of its scientists; from internationally renowned musicians and dancers to unknown street performers . . . . India will come alive in far-flung corners of America.
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Short Wave: 13.9,16.9,19.7, 25.6. 30.8, 41.7,42.1 Short Wave: 19.5,19.7.30.7, 30.9. 31.1, 42.1, 42.2, 49.1 Medium Wave: 190 Short Wave: 25.4,31.1,42.2, 49.8 Short Wave: 13.9; ,16.9. 19.8 Short Wave: 25.4. 31.0, 41.2, 48.9 Short Wave: 25.4, 31.0. 31.1, 49.6 . Short Wave: 19.4,25.3.31.0, 41.6 Short Wave: 13.9. 16.9, 19.8 Short Wave: 19.8, 25.1, 31.4, 41.5 Medium Wave: 190
different angles. Then we use calipers to take width measurements of the cheekbones, the space between the eyes, from the chin to the back of the head, et cetera. By so doing, we try to keep as close a photographic reproduction of the star as is possible." A father of four sons and two daughters, Spoony at 64 is contemplating "retirement" from the management of his museum. "1 have allowed my children full freedom to chalk out their careers. But the youngest has shown keen interest in managing the museum and so 1 am training him to take over."
Clockwise from facing page: Even the presence of Spoony Singh and TV twins Candi and Randi Brough won't melt the stern Yul Brynner; Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock of Star Trek); Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford; LaurelandHardy, Sammy Davis,Jr.
Meanwhile, he has found "pleasure and profit" in orchard farming in an agricultural region not far from Los Angeles City. A full cycle, it appears. The farming family of Punjab returning to farming. It was time to leave. But before leaving 1 asked him about something that had been puzzling me-the origin of his name. Spoony burst into loud laughter before answering. "When I was born, my parents named me Sampuran Singh. When we came to Canada, everybody called me Spoony, obviously short for Sampuran. I was Spoony f~om then on at home and at school. It was only when I was 18 that my father told me that my real name was Sampuran. By then, 1 thought, it was too late to change from Spoony back to Sampuran!" 0