April 1989

The Texas City of San Antonio has become one of the liveliest and most colorful in the southwestern United States. The newest attraction is the Rivercenter shop-

Riverside Plaza

ping complex. It contains 135 retail and eating establishments plus a hotel. The San Antonio River winds its way through the downtown facility, past an array of European-style sidewalk cafes, specialty boutiques, ni~htclubs and restaurants of international cuisine.

Within walking distance is the historic Alamo, where over 180 brave men fought and died in 1836 to gain independence for Texas. San Antonio gained another significant tourist attraction with the recent opening of Sea World, the world's largest aquatic theme park.

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SPAN GREETINGS FROM PRESIDENT BUSH

'0' .p'. .Y

Please return to: DOCUMENT ATION

UNI'I

AMERIC}'~N CENTER

Apg4!~~STURBA NEW DELHI.

2 Partners in Progress

6

C'

.~Il.

GANDHI MAliG

by Shantanu Ray

Preserving Heritage With Hi-Tech

by Alfred Meyer

10 Vignettes of India

14

Sick Companies-They

Don't Have to Die

by C. Charles Bahr

18 20 22 24

Harnessing the Healing Force by Kathleen McAuliffe Superman's Fiftieth Birthday by Vicki Moeser Focus On ...

They Who Have Health Have Hope

28 Richard Ford's Uncommon Characters

by Bruce Weber

THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON

32 Sweeth~arts A Short Story by Richard Ford 36 The Bush Cabinet 39 Apostle John and Gandhi A Review by Muriel Wasi

40 42

It is a pleasure to send my warml':st greetings to all the readers of SPAN. Through strong determination and effort, the people of India have built a proud, industrious Nation. Throughout this endeavor, the people of the United States actively supported your development effort.

The view of a strong, united India clearly shows the benefits of democracy, not only to your neighbors in South Asia, but also to countries throughout the world. We in America applaud your government's efforts to establish a more constructive relationship with Pakistan and to gain greater economic cooperation among the countries of South Asia. I pledge to you the continued support of the American people in your efforts to achieve these goals.

My Administration will continue to support India's goal of self-reliance, and we will work to impart still greater meaning to our bilateral ties. I share with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi a warm, cordial relationship. I look forward to meeting him again soon to map out an agenda that further strengthens relations between our two nations and builds on the democratic values we hold in common.

45

46

My Humphrey Year by TJ. George First Ladies of Science by Madeleine Jacobs On the Lighter Side Dreams of Summer by Marcia 1. Wade

Front cover: The I26-member U.S. Army Field Band entertained visitors to the American pavilion at the Eighth Indian Engineering Trade Fair held in New Delhi in February. More than 120 U.S. firms participated in the eight-day fair. See story on pages 2-5.

Back cover: Even though technology has greatly helped increase U.S. agricultural productivity, nature continues to playa dominant role in the life of any farmer. See also inside back cover.

Publisher, Leonard J. Baldyga; Editor, Warren W. McCurdy Managing Editor, Himadri Dhanda; Associate Managing Editor, Krishan Gabrani; Senior Editor, ArunaDasgupta; Copy Editors, A. Venkata Narayana, Snigdha Goswami; Editorial Assistants, Rocque Fernandes, Rashmi Goel; Photo Editor,A vinash Pasricha; Art Director, Nand Katyal; Associate Art Director, Kanti Roy; Artist, Hemant Bhatnagar; Production Assistant, Sanjay Pokhriyal; Circulation Manager, Y.P. Pandhi; Photographic Service, USIS Photographic Service Unit; Research Service, USIS Documentation Service; "American Center Library, New Delhi. .

Photographs: Front cover-Avinash Pasricha. 2-5..--Avinash Pasricha except 3 top left and 5

by R.K. Sharma. 6 right-Harris & Ewihg. 7--eourtesy National Archives. 1O..13-© Edward Paul Malcik. l8-19-illustration by Dale Glasgow. 2o---© 1987DC Comics Inc. 21 top-© 1938,1965 DC Comics Itk. 22 top left--eourtesy IBM Corporation; right--eourtesy Photo Division, Press Information Bureau, GOT. 23 top---R.K. Sharma. 24-27--eourtesy Avinashalingam Institute for Home Science,Coimbatore. 28-LeeCrum. 34---ilJustration by Nand Katyal. 40 top---T.D. Beri; bottom--eourtesy T.J. George. 42 left--eourtesy Schlesinger Library/Radcliffe College; right--eourtesy The Medical College of Pennsylvania. 43 top--eourtesy New York Infirmary/Beekman Downtown Hospital; bottom--eourtesy Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. 44---Smithsonian Institution Archives. All photos from Smithsonian News Service. 46 top left-private collection of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Altschul; bottom--eourtesy The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio. 47 top--eollection ofMr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.; bottom-Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966. 48-The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, N.Y. Inside back cover and back cover-Kevin Horan. by the United States Information

A-!TIcrican Center. 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi lIOOOI, on Printed atThomson Press(lndia) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. Theopinions expresscd in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. Use Q/SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor.

Published

behalf oftheAmerican

Embassy,

New Delhi.

Service,

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T

he Yanks have outdone themselves." That's how Lord Young, British secretary of state for trade and industry, 'described the American participation at the Eighth Indian Engineering Trade Fair (IETF), held in February in New Delhi.

It was, indeed, the biggest and the most dazzling commercial and high-tech show ever put ~mby the United States in India, and its successshowed that U.S. interest ill the Indian market is on the rise.

The American participation at the IETF, sponsored by the Confederation of Engineering Industry ofIndia, was made up of more than 120 American companies. In addition, the states of California and Oklahoma represented between them scores of other companies.

The U.S. Department of Commerce provided the official input to facilitate trade negotiations with Indian counterparts.

President George Bush called the U.S. participation in the fair "an unprecedented opportunity for American firms and Indian visitors to the fair to discover new ways to work together for a better tomorrow."

Among the participating companies were America's mighty AT&T, Boeing Corporation, Ingersoll-Rand, UNISYS, Texas Instruments, Eastman Kodak and Pepsi-Cola. There were also large numbers of medium-size U.S. firms, which though not household names are still at the cutting edge of high technology.

Why such an enthusiastic and overwhelming interest by the American firms in India? "The answer," says Miguel Pardo de Zela, commercial attache at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, "is that there is an industrial dynamic occurring in India that cannot be overlooked and which requires foreign suppliers and/or collaborators. Many American companies used the show to identify joint-venture partners and take a fresh look at a potentially new and exciting market.

"As the fair highlighted and the facts demonstrate, there is business to be done in India," Pardo de Zela said. "The IETF served as a most effectivevehicle to impress Indians and Americans alike of

the importance of the United States to India's economy."

The United States is India's largest trading partner. Bilateral trade between the two countries reached its highest level ever, recording nearly $5,700 million in 1988, an impressive increase of about 34 percent over 1987. Figures show that the balance of trade continues to be in India's favor-by about $800 million last year. Significantly, American exports are increasingly in high-tech items, which now account for more than a quarter of all U.S. exports to India.

In the past several years, the United States has also become India's leading source of new business collaborations and foreign investments. Last year 192 new collaborations between American and Indian companies were approved by the Indian government.

Total U.S. private business investment in India is currently on the order of $600 million.

The trade fair, inaugurated on February 18 by President R. Venkataraman, was a showcase ofIndia's industrial progress. Altogether 350 Indian companies made an all-out bid to put the country's high-technology capability up front for the world to see.The fair drew a like number of foreign companies, including numerous U.S. firms attracted by the Indian government's interest in encouraging new foreign investment and technological sophistication.

In his inaugural address President Venkataraman said, "I hope this large participation of American companies would pave the way for enhanced cooperation in the industrial and technological fields."

Ambassador John R. Hubbard said the trade fair offered "tremendous opportunities to discuss new products and technologies, and to bring Indians and Americans together in mutually beneficial commercial and cultural endeavors."

The United States was given the status of "partner country" for the exposition, and the theme of the U.S. pavilion was, appropriately, "U.S.A. and India: In Touch With Tomorrow Together."

President R. Venkataraman visits the American pavilion at the Indian Engineering Trade Fair. Behind him is U.S. Ambassador John R. Hubbard.

Spread over an area of 2,400 square meters, the U.S. show drew a tremendous response; more than 60,000 people, ranging from curious students to simple village folk to serious business people.

The American exhibits featured telecommunications equipment, electronics and computer systems, food processing machines and packaging materials, mining and extraction machinery, and oil- and gas-field equipment-all industries and technologies that are of particular relevance to India. The centerpiece of the U.S. pavilion was "Communications U.s.A." Presented by the United States Information Service, the exhibit displayed the latest in telephones, computers, electronic equipment for the handicapped, fiber optics, satellite communications, video conferencing systems and electronic toys for children.

One of the exhibit's most popular attractions was the direet-viasatellite telecasts of W orldnet programs beamed to the fairgrounds from Washington, D.C. Another popular attraction, especially with schoolchildren and villagers, was the stall where the visitors could have "digitized" photographs taken of themselves. A camera attached to a TV monitor recorded the subject's image that was then converted into d¡igital signals by the computer.

Two minutes later, a printer hooked to the computer printed the image. "We never had a minute's rest. There were long lines of people from morning to evening, all wanting to have their photographs taken," said Anupam Talia, a guide at the stall. "I have seen such crowds only at football matches."

Explaining the working of a telephone for the blind, which looks like a braille typewriter, guide Ashwini Kumar said, "It's just fascinating how it works. All that a caller has to do is type the number he or she wishes to call on the machine. The person at the other end responds and they begin a conversation by typing."

Kumar added, "With a slight modification, the telephone can be used by the deaf."

Another guide, Anjali Kewalramani, a computer science student, said, "What came as a surprise to me was the versatility of computers and other electronic gadgets. Until now I had thought that computers are used only by business companies and scientists.

But here we were given a rare opportunity to see how these modern wonders can make life easier for the handicapped, make learning interesting and shopping a pleasure." Pointing to a cellular cordless phone, she added, "This device, for example, can revolutionize telecommunications in India if we can have it here."

The trade fair generated a lot of enthusiasm and hope for increasing business and trade links between India and the United States. Several technical conferences, seminars and symposia complemented the U.S. exhibition. Addressed by both American and Indian businessmen and officials, the meetings aimed broadly at exposing potential Indian buyers to the emerging technologies in the United States that are of special relevance to India. These exchanges also brought to the attention of American businesses the opportunities that exist for joint ventures in India.

"The keen interest that Indian industry is showing in a variety of advanced communication gadgets, computerized systems and specialized industrial machinery will help India's economic growth, and open up further business opportunities between the two countries," said Richard S. Simpson, vice-president of

UNISYS Corporation, one of the world's biggest information processing companies. He added, "We already have a joint venture with Tata that is doing very well. Our business with Indian companies will be a landmark in Indo-U.S. trade."

Said George F. Salamy, marketing manager for American Telephone and Telegraph company, better known as AT&T, a world giant in communications, "This fair shows standards attained by Indian engineering firms and where the country plans to move. We are certainly keen on collaborating with India."

The New Jersey-based company, which already provides longdistance telephone services between India and the United States, has put forth another proposal to the Indian government on a direct dialing facility between the two countries. If implemented, the project, which has already received an enthusiastic response from the Videsh Sanchar Nigam-India's Overseas Communication Service-"will make telephoning easier and less expensive for Indians," Salamy added.

AT &T is also negotiating a number of other proposals-setting up a fiber-optic undersea transcontinental cable as an alternative to satellite links to be able to cope with the expected increase in Indo-U.S. communications in the 1990s, and to set up a joint venture to manufacture various kinds of communications equipment and gadgets in India. "Deals in India take time," says Krishna R. Tanku, AT&T's regional vice-president in India, "but we are optimistic about bagging a number of contracts."

It was not all business at the U.S. pavilion. The U.S. Army Field Band and Soldiers Chorus, one of the world's most popular and prestigious music groups, entertained fairgoers throughout the week. The "musical ambassadors" also gave concerts throughout New Delhi and went on tour to various other cities in India for the month of March. Then there were American Indian dancers from Oklahoma, singers from the New Cannan High School Madrigal Ensemble, a calypso trio from the Virgin Islands and special performances

by Puerto Rico's top choreographers, Sergio Chevres and Sofia Sanfiorenzo.

A number of hotels in the Indian capital also offered a bit of Americana by organizing U.S. food and entertainment nights to coincide with the American participation at the fair.

The trade fair amply demonstrated that the United States and India can enlarge substantially the scope of commercial and business cooperation. As Melvin W. Searls, counselor for commercial affairs at the American Embassy in New Delhi, said, "The accelerating forces of modernization-technological, economic, scientific, social-link the peoples of the world as never before.

These forces can provide us with unprecedented possibilities to advance our common aims. This means actively seeking and reaching out for new ideas, technologies and capital to become, in a word, competitive. If any country wants to achieve a prominent place in the emerging competitive environment, it must draw on its best talents and, at the same time, combine them with those of other countries. As we all live in an era of growing interdependence, both India and the United States have much to offer and much to gain from mutual cooperation."

D About the Author: Shantanu Ray is a correspondent with the Delhi bureau of the New York weekly India Abroad.

Preserving Heritage H~ h c5 ggG W-th I I-lee S~3~

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01,1--/3

P

romptly every night at the National Archives Building iJ} Washington, D.C., the American Charters of Freedom are put to bed. Hermetically sealed in individual helium-filled bronzeof and-glass containers, the Declaration Independence, pages of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are lowered by mechanical scissorjacks from their bulletproof display case into a vault 6.7 meters directly below. Built of steel and reinforced concrete, the 55-ton vault was thought to be atom-bomb proof when it was installed in the early 1950s, the heyday of bomb shelters and a time of more r110dest mega tonnage. Even so, the vault is largely impregnable.

Then, in the morning as visitors begin queuing up outside, a sort of rumbling sound occurs, the vault's interleaved ceiling swings open like the lid of an ironsided jack-in-the-box, and the documents are once again elevated into the muted light of the Exhibition Hall, to be gazed upon throughout the day.

While the vault and its well-oiled inner and outer workings suggest the stolidity and industrial brawn of a 19th-century locomotive (and rumble just about as

6)-256'b)

Above, left: Visitors at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., await their turn to have a look at the Charters of Freedom, comprising the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The mural, depiciting Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration, and other Founding Fathers of the American Republic MIS painted by Barry

Faulkner in 1936. Above: The Archives's collection includes several of American photographic pioneer Mathew Brady's negatives-like this one of Abraham Lincoln made by Brady in 1864 on a 43 ern x 50 ern sheet of glass. Facing page: The Charters of Freedom arrive at the National Archives on December 13, 1952for safekeeping.

much), the atmosphere in the hall above us is distinctly High Church-buffed marble, shuffling feet, the occasional cough or whisper. Except, that is, for the armed guard standing near the display altar. Or the hidden devices by which, at a moment's notice, the documents can be pulled down into the safety of the vault.

The National Archives is keenly terrorist conscIOus. Since October 1986, an ultrasophisticated piece of space technology is being used to help safeguard the documents in a different way. The technology has nothing to do with fortification or security in the ordinary sense. Rather it has to do~"With light and vision, particularly with photons, the electromagnetic units by which light energy is transmitted.

Developed initially to record the faint

wisps of starlight gathered by telescopes aboard orbiting satellites, the heart of this technology is a sensor in an electronic, computer-assisted camera. The sensor, known as a Charge-Coupled Device (CCD), is blindly incurious about the meaning of July 4, 1776, or the political significance of the words "We the people," or the nature of the articles that define America's cherished civil liberties.

Once a year it looks through the two permanent layers of containment glass and focuses on topography-strokes of ink and wrinkles of parchment. In doing so, it sees with powers of discrimination far in excess of either the human eye or ordinary film cameras. More importantly, the computer, working in conjunction with the camera, remembers what it sees with an exactitude that is not only beyond the

The U.S. National Archives is using ultrasophisticated space-age technology to help preserve America's most precious historic documents~the Charters of Freedom.

limits of human visual recall and conventional before-and-after photography, but is rare enough even in scientific laboratories where it is often difficult to faithfully reproduce the conditions of an original experiment, especially where light is critically involved.

The mission of the camera is deceptivel y simple: To establish a series of images taken over time and under precisely identical conditions so that sequential images can be compared with one another. The

point is to be able to detect any visible change in the character of either ink or parchment. In the event of change, remedial action by archivists and conservators might well be indicated.

The difficulty lies in reproducing, time after time, the same conditions of light and temperature. To achieve this, the camera is housed in what amounts to a closed system, providing its own light and cooling sources, both exquisitely measured and controlled by the system's own computer.

On each occasion, therefore, an identical stream of photons travels through the same temperatures at the same speed, strikes the ink and parchment at the same angle and finally reflects onto the camera's electronic sensor, actually a solid-state silicon chip with a line of 1,024 lightsensitive areas, or pixels, which scans precisely 1,024 consecutive rows, in all adding up to a picture just a little larger than six square centimeters in size.

From the sensor, the image made by these

photon impacts is simultaneously fed into the computer, which immediately digitizes it, making it ready for either storage or display. The computer can also-now begin the job of detecting change from the previous images stored in its prodigious and exacting memory.

Unfortunately, despite extraordinary care in recent years and the potential of this monitoring system to provide early warning, the Charters face a downhill battle.

History and time have not been particularly kind to them, especially not to the Declaration of Independence.

The documents themselves were known to be in different states of deterioration when, in 1952, they were first placed in the glass containers that still hold them today. Preservation technology at the time dictated that the atmosphere within the cases be filled with helium and water vapor-helium to replace oxygen and prevent oxidation, water vapor to keep the enclosed air adequately humidified. Too little moisture would dehydrate protein molecules and cause the parchment to crack.

Thus far the helium environment has proved effective, at least judging from visual inspection and regular checking of the cases with air-leak detectors. However, helium leaks out through glass whereas air does not, so at some point the helium may need to be replenished.

Since the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights came into existence 11 and 13 years, respectively, after the Declaration ofIndependence, and to a great ext.ent have played second and third fiddles to it ever since, they are in relatively good shape.

As it happens, the Constitution was rather less frequently handled than its companion documents.

Before 1952, on the other hand, the Declaration led what seems a life that involved a lot of wear and tear.

Although the Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration on July 4, 1776, it was not until August 2 that the engrossed version on parchment was formally ready for signature in Philadelphia.

The process of deterioration undoubtedly began almost as soon as the ink was dry, if not before. Since parchment is stretched

animal skin, it is vulnerable to mold even after its initial preparation in a lime solution. Nor was it immune to the bleaching of sunlight or to the nibbles of insects and rodents.

Furthermore, the material does not absorb ink like paper, and if the surface is not properly prepared, the wet ink instead sits on the skin. When dry, the ink is not welladhered and has a tendency to flake off, particularly in the event of handling, of which the Declaration received more than its fair share, not least from the way it was initially stored-rolled up from top to bottom. Such a procedure meant that the signature portion of the document lay just inside the outer ring and was therefore more exposed and abraded as all 56 signatures were affixed. Add the fact that some signers wrote more delicately than others, then it comes as no surprise that the signature portion was the first to begin to fade into illegibility.

Meanwhile, however, a serious revolution was at hand and the government of the self-declared new American Republic was frequently on the move, hauling its precious instrument with it as it sought to keep a step or two ahead of the British. By the time the Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, the Declaration had journeyed to Baltimore, back to Philadelphia, on to Lancaster and York, Pennsylvania, back to Philadelphia, up to Princeton, down to Annapolis, up to 'trenton, and then even farther up to New York City. There it remained at City Hall until 1790, when it came back to Philadelphia, now in the company of the recently signed Constitution.

Afterward, all three were at last sailed down to the new federal capital in the District of Columbia in 1800; sailed because they made the trip by boat-down the Delaware River and Bay, out into the Atlantic, into the Chesapeake Bay, and finally up the Potomac to Washington. By then, clearly, the Declaration had already been through the mill.

Except for two occasions, the documents stayed in Washington until the onset of World War II. In the summer of 1814 during the British attack on Washington,

A researcher uses a magnifying glass to decipher the handwriting on the faded, yellowing pages oia document.

D.C., they were removed to Leesburg, Virginia, and in 1876 the Declaration traveled to Philadelphia for America's Centennial celebration of its independence.

Nevertheless, the long tenure in the capital was far from sedentary. The Dec¡ laration, for example, was shunted to no fewer than 17 different locations before it was settled in at the Library of Congress in 1921. Then, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the three documen1s were once again packed up, this time bound for safekeeping in the Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Although the Declaration was briefly brought to Washington, D.C., in 1943 for the dedication of the Jefferson Memorial, the documents stayed at Fort Knox until 1944 when they were returned to the custody of the Library.

While it would be incorrect to infer that the documents were at times treated with gross neglect, it would be nearer the truth to claim that they suffered from benign neglect-and inadvertence and ignorance.

Beginning in the last decade of the 19th century, the U.S. Congress started taking the question of deterioration seriously and appointed a series of committees, usually organized by the Academy of Sciences, to evaluate the physical condition of the Declaration and recommend improved meth-

The process of deterioration of the parchment on which the U.S. Declaration of Independence was engrossed and signed began almost as soon as the ink of the 56 signatures was dry, if not before.

and its companions were shortly to return. ods of preservation and display.

Back at the Library of Congress after the Yet, as Alan Calmes, currently preservawar, and following lengthy deliberation by tion officer for the National Archives, has scientists from the U.S. National Bureau of pointed out, "Preservation and display are Standards, the Charters were sealed into potentially contradictory."

Indeed, beyond the jostling of transit, the two occathe helium-filled encasements in which they sions on which the Declaration was most have resided ever since. Then, in 1952, with great ceremony and under heavy guard, markedly damaged resulted, first, from an they were transferred to the National Areffort to disseminate its contents more chives Building where the vault and the widely through a printing process and, appropriately illuminated Exhibition Hall second, from a misguided display setting.

In 1823, William J. Stone, a Washington, awaited them.

D.C., engraver, completed a facsimile of Despite the obvious care lavished on the Charters in recent years, however, concern the Declaration by using a method of copover their well-being surfaced once more in perplate engraving. It is thought that this Congress and elsewhere in the United process may have required a "wet sheet transfer" from the original, resulting in States. Specific worries centered on. a scratch in the glass covering the third page some of the slightly soluble surface ink of the Constitution, the diffusion of helium being removed.

Then, in 1841, the Declaration was placed through the containment glass, the annual on exhibit for 35 years in the Patent Office handling of documents for display purposes on Constitution Day, and the daily Building-hung vertically between two movement from the vault to the display panes of glass. The trouble was that it was altar and back. Accordingly, the National put in a white-painted hall and hung directly Archives assembled a blue-ribbon commitopposite a window, leaving it virtually naked to the damaging ultraviolet content of tee of scientists and conservators in 1982 to sunlight. Indeed, by the time it was dis- / inspect the Charters.

They determined that the scratch was played at the Centennial in Philadelphia, the The Jet Propulsion LabDeclaration had become a mere shadow of inconsequential. oratory (JPL) of the U.S. National Aeroits former self, dim with age, many of the nautics and Space Administration (NASA) signatures now completely illegible. added that at some unpredictable time, Perhaps the most poignant description of its sorry state was written in 1942 by when the helium diffuses, the encasements George L. Stout, a Fogg Museum of Art would need to be opened, refilled with protective gas and resealed. The special official who examined it at Fort Knox. He committee determined as well that both found that the Declaration had become annual handling and the daily jacking partially detached from its mount, particushould be improved, the latter possibly by larly at its upper right-hand corner, which converting to ahydraulic lift system. Since someone had clumsily attempted to plaster down with vast amounts of glue. "At one the encasement glass touches the documents, the slight vibrations during movetime also (about January 12, 1940)," he wrote, "an attempt had been made to ment could exacerbate ink flaking. As far as they could tell, however, no serious reunite the detached upper right-hand cordeterioration had taken place since the ner to the main portion by means of a strip of 'Scotch' cellulose tape which was still in documents were encased. place, discolored to a molasses color."

But therein lay a problem. The committee could not be altogether certain, despite Not long after, the Scotch tape was being able to look at the documents and removed and the rent and other cracks comparing past and present photographs were carefully repaired. In a way, this work taken with ordinary light cameras. Insuffiwas a signal that the document was about cient data, they concluded, prevented their to undergo something of a resurrection, evaluation from being comprehensive. not only through preservation efforts but also in the display prominence to which it What was needed was a reliable scientifi-

cally advanced monitoring system.

At this stage the then archivist of the United States, Robert M. Warner, called upon NASA, which in turn contacted JPL. Part of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, JPL at the time was hard at work putting the finishing touches on an infrared astronomy satellite that was scheduled for launch in 1983. At an earlier design phase was an even more ambitious satellite, known as the Hubble Space Telescope. Once aloft, its 2.44-meter-diameter optical mirror riding high above the thick moist filter of the Earth's atmosphere will be able to see entities at least 12,000 million light-years distant.

That is approximately 85 percent of the way to the edges of the universe, a breathtaking prospect.

But key to the technology employed in many modern space observation systems is a kind of electronic camera-the ChargeCoupled Device camera. Couldn't it be used in some way to monitor the Charters?

JPL thought that it could and, under contract to the National Archives, proceeded to bring to Pasadena for tests both a sample containment case and a document with properties similar to those of the Charters.

The tests proved successful and beginning October 1986, the Charge-Coupled Device camera annually peers at the Charters and records their condition. Its tandem computer is not only able to detect ink fading and flaking, but also the most minute change in the documents themselves, whether brought about by illumination, temperature fluctuations, helium loss or the daily migration from the vault.

Surely there must be at the National Archives these days some deep sense of satisfaction with the almost cosmic link that has been established, if only generically, between an orbiting telescope and camera whose sights are directed toward the limits of the universe and a cousin camera at home set to keep careful watch over some extraordinary pages of 0 parchment.

About the Author: Alfred Meyer is a Washington-based novelist, editor andjournalist.

Vignettes of India Edward Paul Malcik, who served as the American vice-consul in Bombay for two years, has a deep interest in photography. He studied photojournalism at the University of Texas and for several years worked for a number of American newspapers before joining the U.S. Foreign Service.

During his tour of duty in Bombay, Malcik began exploring India and captured in striking photographs many vignettes of life and the monuments in the country. Last February Bombay's National Centre for the Performing Arts and the U.S. Information Service (USIS) cosponsored an exhibition of 47 of Malcik's works. A sampling on these pages reflects the photographer's reactions to his temporary home. The North India Branch of the USIS is planning an opening of the same exhibition at the American Center in New Delhi on June 9.

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They Don't Have tot"'3Die #8 by c. CHARLES BAHR

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In this addres.s to the Venture Capital Group of Houston, Texas, the chairman of Bahr International Incorporated says that no company has to die if it is alert to the seven deadly signs of business sins, which are often predictable and observable. "The best way to beat trouble is to watch for trouble signs, be sensitive to them and jump on them fast."

I

make my living restoring troubled companies to health. I take as my mission telling people that troubled companies can be made healthy, that is, they can become profitable and productive; the jobs they provide can be saved.

I'm taking a substantial portion of time away from my business this year to take this message on the road because people's attention seems to be focused on certain policy issues-whether American companies can compete against the different cultures of Japan and the Pacific Basin countries and against the combined governmentsubsidized strength of the Europeans. This fear that America can't compete, coupled with severe regional economic downturns, has brought us the current spate of protectionist legislation. The rationale is that it "protects jobs." Nonsense. What protects jobs is saving a productive company in the first place.

I'm on the road with this message because I think it's the right thing to do, and as Mark Twain said: "Always do right. It will amaze some people and astonish the rest."

So, I guess that makes my message one of amazement and astonishmen t.

Like comedian Johnny Carson as the all-seeing Karnak, I'll give you the answer and then we'll decide the question. The answer is: ... No. The question is, do troubled companies have to die? This is also the question and answer about American competitiveness, because saving companies-which were once healthy but are now troubled-is one of the critical keys to America's economic health and thus to the American way of life.

I believe companies don't have to get into trouble. I've written a book called How Not to Go Bankrupt in the First Place.

However, I want to focus my remarks on how to help companies get out of trouble and stay productive. Therefore, I ¡want to share with you the warning signs that inevitably signal trouble. Then I want to examine what sorts of steps-how and why-the outsider can take to assist.

First, since I have been called a turnaround specialist, and this is a highly specialized field, let me describe what turnaround is all about. We are frequently called consultants, but that's a misnomer.

Traditionally, a consultant provides advice. The true consultant remains an outsider, albeit sometimes an influential one. The difference between consultants and turnaround managers is that consultants write reports; turnaround managers put their fingers right into the pie and take direct responsibility for making the right things happen.

We are sometimes described as part of the takeover industry. I can understand why that is, because we are so frequently brought

in by outside investors to revamp a company. But truly, we are not takeover types because we are part of a company only temporarily.

Our goal is decidedly not to create a permanent job for ourselves.

It is not to strip out the value for selfish purposes. It's to restore a company and leave the right management team in place (along with many other things).

Who are we if we are not consultants or takeover artists? We are certainly business specialists with a broad range of skills. Our first step onthejob is to evaluate a company objectively. We have to do this fast, since our expertise seems to be ineluctably linked to crisis management, and we have to assume both an internal and ex~ernal perspective at the same time. We also have to be professionally flexible. On no notice at all, we must uncynically and skillfully change between mean cop and warm mentor, between salesman and controller, between creative visionary and tough eliminator, and so on.

Our early analysis includes everything: Market strategy, product positioning, customer service record plus the weaknesses and potential strengths of the management team and its practices. Of course, all the financial issues are crucial since cash is king for a troubled company. Cash flow, reporting, control, projections, debt structure are all scrutinized, and usually substantial changes are made. In addition, we look at many other issues ranging from the internal networks of communication within the company "to the industry environment.

In a sense, we are very similar to a flight instructor. We must train the crew-in this case, the permanent managers-so they are a competent team that can fly the plane safely when we leave. We analyze, instruct and assist the evolving management team. We know how far they can deviate before taking over the controls.

We work closely with the outside constituencies: Customers, suppliers, vendors and so on, and with the investors, commercial lenders and venture capitalists. Indeed, they are our most frequent point of entry because they want to protect their investment.

One of the things I am doing is to explain to other constituencies their role in watching for the warning signs of corporate trouble and their responsibility to intervene for the health of the company and safety of their investment.

While our specialty is quite small-the Turnaround Management Association recognizes only 97 individuals in the entire United States-we have a growing field of endeavor.

There are obvious reasons for this. The volatility of today's business world has been amply documented by many authors, including Robert Reich of Harvard in his latest book, The New American Frontier. There, he notes that businesses which are not

prepared to adapt constantly and quickly to changing conditions are doomed.

Beneath the macro environmental conditions of increasing competition on a global scale are the regional problems-and every region has its own story. Only the names and the timing of the cycle change. We know the story in Houston, Texas: The bottom falling out of oil prices after a soaring rise plus the unchecked building in the real estate field-that winning combination creates challenge for even the best managed company. Yet many survive, and some continue to prosper.

And, of course, there are the effects of ever-present federal and state regulation. f ask myself: Would America be in so much trouble in the thrift industry if the U.S. Congress had not granted increased powers to the thrift institutions in the early 1980s as part of deregulation?

But no one, or few, asked what would happen if increased powers were given to managers with no experience in those areas.

But the bottom line is that times are more challenging than ever. A popular saying asserts: "ffit ain't broke, don't fix it." Bad advice.

How broke must it get before it gets fixed? Do we wait for a wing or propeller to fall off before performing repairs? In fact, waiting for damage is dangerous because the best way to beat trouble is to watch for trouble signs, be sensitive to them and jump on them fast. That way lies salvation.

What are the warning signs of a troubled company? After two decades of working with companies in trouble and a decade at the helm of our company-a decade during which we have managed more than 100 turnaround situations-l don't know whether to laugh or kill something because the warning signs are so predictable. They are al"ways there. In some form, they are always there and observable. Here, T am going to categorize seven of them. You might call them the Seven Deadly Signs of Sin. Number One: Reality becomes unglued. This is when the company-by which I mean top management~starts to believe its own rhetoric. Now T am all for positive thinking. I know aphorisms about positive thought go back to Virgil who said, "They can do all because they think they can." But I also recall the admonition of Cardinal Spellman, "Pray as if everything depended on God but work as if everything depended on man."

Earlier, an unknown Indian philosopher stated this as, "Call on God, but row away from the rocks."

Recall. if you will, people bemoaning what happened to oil and real estate prices. They were doing a lot of calling on God but very little examining of their charts or their navigation to try to figure out where the rocks were and how to row the other way.

Positive rhetoric is part of salesmanship that emphasizes what's different about your company. That's good. And this isn't just the sales department. Company presidents use positive rhetoric too.

The purchasing agent uses it to negotiate price, delivery, quality, terms, service and such from a vendor. The production manager uses it in seeking new equipment, and in getting sign-off on a production run. Workers, chief financial officers and personnel managers all perceive and use the differences between their company and others to advance their work.

But we can gauge when that positive rhetoric steps over the line.

Top management wishes things were different-and spend their energies denying there is a problem. Not surprisingly, we call this "problem denial."

Inevitably when we come into a company, there are a host of problems which "everybody knew about" but that same everyone

agreed informally to ignore, hoping against the obvious that something would change it. People probably tried to tell them.

Reports were probably written. The marketplace even sent its signals. But the door of top management was shut tightly to anyone with a different story. The subordinate who dared raise his hand had it removed.

We see troubled or failing companies solve their communications problems by talking only to the converted, to those who can be counted upon to parrot the correct answer. Let me say here that this is not confined to troubled companies; in fact, it's a disease in all companies. But in troubled companies, this tendency intensifies and dissent or any other information which conflicts with the rhetoric or "wishing" is assaulted even more violently.

The next sure sign of trouble is that the management team breaks down. It decomposes. Individuals gravitate toward personal agendas. Good people leave. Others hide behind a lineup of projects. Some retreat to comfortable, familiar cocoons. Each finds a way of creating a Great China Wall between their work and the deterioration around him. Common purpose, functions, method and direction dissolve.

The third sign is priorities get out oj whack. Management makes totally inappropriate or just plain wrong choices of priorities, or they make none at all. The process is important because resources are scarce in all¡ companies, and competitive pressure forces companies to travel a thin line between profit and devastation.

Good management recognizes that it must make good choices and that it must make those choices about the important things worthy of influence.

An associate of mine tells of going into a manufacturing and distribution company. The president was nowhere to be found.

"He's changing a tire," came the answer. Sure enough the president was in the auto shop changing a tire on a truck.

Trying to do everything is a sure way to achieve nothing. Equal to priority setting is priority following. Executing priorities. And that means measuring performance. I smell trouble when I see any marked imbalance. A mismatch between short-term and longterm considerations-a focus on putting out short-term fires-

"[ know you have an M BA. but this situation calls for basic survival skills."

always means trouble for any company and its management.

In this category falls the familiar problem of focusing only on short-term issues, usually with the employee insisting that if the particular problem is not dealt with, there won't be a long term.

Sometimes, in deeply troubled companies, this manifests itself in reckless hipshoot decision-making or in slapdash execution.

The offender frequently tries to excuse this as the result of low level effort appropriately applied to a low priority issue. However, the cited low vigor is lack of discipline or laziness and deserves to be so named.

The fourth warning sign is when form prevails over content; when the company insists on following a certain way of doing things because they worked before. People "go through the motions" without achieving desired results. The image of success becomes more important than the reality of achievement. In Texas, for example, we have seen the leaders of our banking industry come to grief because of this devotion to form over content--eoupled with no small amount of problem denial. Banks ignored the consumer banking business-which takes longer to build and requires a true marketing orientation.

Also in this category, management wants to maintain the facade of success, maintaining the "perks" with the explanation that these are "part of the image"--even when reality should dictate a different course of action. This leftover "image" may have been inherited from a previous generation or from a previous era-when the company was privately held, or when a personalized fiefdom could survive before the harsh truths of global competition set in.

Most frequently, it's because it is (a) habit, and (b) part of something expected between peer groups. Always a disaster.

Six years ago in Houston, I had six clients-all with Mercedes, large planes, fancy watches and car phones. One even had a gym and sauna in the executive bathroom. These were not the luxuries of success because all the~e clients' companies were in serious trouble. None wanted to surrender /the comforts. None of them would scale back the expensive facade because they didn't want anyone to realize the depth of the problem. So, great genius, rather

"As a last ditch measure we'll go around the table and see what each of us is prepared to do to save the company."

than tell people they were in trouble-they proved it.

The fifth warning sign of trouble is when the numbers don't add up. You may be surprised that this is not the first warning sign, but the truth is that although the famous "bottom line" is our agreedupon measuring stick, financial difficulties are usually a result of other ignored warning signs rather than the cause of them.

But in troubled businesses, we observe that the top executive has marginal numbers skills and won't admit it. He lacks personal grasp of the numbers and their meaning in his own business. He may claim that his own understanding of the numbers is "good enough," when in fact it is not good enough. This leaves him at the mercy of the skills and diligence of others. It is our airplane pilot again, now with iced-up windows and disabled instruments. It is remotely possible to "talk down" a blinded pilot, but the expected outcome, shall we say, is likely to be suboptimal.

Numbers are just a means of communication, projection and planning. In troubled companies, we see a lot of numbers, but they are too complex, too simple, mismatched to the requirements or just ignored. And they are nearly always late. Indeed, I don't believe you do have to be a financial wizard to run a company today--even in this age of arbs, options, flips and flops. Even in this age of pricing strategy, models, fancy projections and synchronized debt. That's all nice fine-tuning. I just want the chief executive. officer to understand basic addition and subtraction and to do it.

Let me repeat, the chief executive must be skilled enough to manage his experts, and to manage personally the pursuit of his desired score-as kept by numbers.

I call the sixth warning sign the "lie and hedge" stage. Company officials begin to misrepresent things to their outside constituencies. Vendors are paid late-always with some excuse. Customer deliveries are also late. And lenders are put off. Especially lenders.

Despite the sharpie image of the "moneylender," the truth is that many commercial lenders are usually not terribly reliable at analyzing the numbers of the customers' portfolios. So the failing company management starts to slip some stuff by. Once started, this practice always gets worse.

I can't tell you how many examples I've seen where the banker allows the entrepreneurs to consistently misvalue inventory, or t~ overvalue the future value of a contract or revenue stream or otherwise warp the representations of the company condition. In short, bankers are dependent on their customers' description of those numbers, and when trouble sets in, companies try to'extend their lives and their credit lines by misrepresenting the situation to their money faucet.

I am not talking about outright fraud. We don't deal with those companies. Indeed, if you suggested to your investees that there was a purposeful decision to lie by "fudging the numbers," or by counting some problems and not others, those executives would be outraged. They would have an elaborate rationale as to why the choice made sense.

No, this is the "reality unbalance" manifested in the numbers.

And since numbers are our common measuring stick and a vital medium of communication, this is real trouble. Parenthetically, I have to mention that in virtually every company we have been involved in, this has been a problem and it has taken an outsider to come in and shake everyone up. Management usually has such a vested interest in the way they have presented their numbers that they cannot admit there was anything misleading about their past behavior. They are not crooked, just self-deceived.

"[ have traveled great distances, through many lands, across dark oceans, over craggy mountains, through deep forests and parched deserts in rain, sleet, snow and burning sun to bring you this message: Prune dead wood, trim fat, and watch the bottom line."

The last sign of corporate decay is when the customers' needs cease to dominate. These may be real needs or perceived needs, but they are the cust0mers' needs. It is perhaps untrue that "the customer is always right," but the troubled company has forgotten that "the customer is always the customer."

One of the better validations of this is Texas Instruments' own admission several years ago that they got in }rouble by making brilliant products and putting them on the shelves and then wondering why they didn't sell. As Mark Shepard, the legendary and longtime chairman, who has just retired, was quoted as saying, "We were lousy at marketing." An old example is the first Henry Ford's wonderfully foresighted dictum: "They can have any color car so long as it's black."

Today is more than an information age, it's the dominance of information age, and information from customers is a key component. Personally, I believe that the best information is obtained in person.Awareness of the customer's needs comes not only through face-to-face contact with the customer by the salespeople and market researchers, but also by the designers, drivers, division presidentsand hourly laborers. For one tooling company, I worked out a plan to get the lathe operators out of the shop and into the front officetalking to the customers. For another company, we did a rotation plan so a different employee joined the sales force each week.After 50 weeks, we had 50 employees who could preach the message internally about what customers wanted.

Let me add that this philosophy about customers is what you see-~wen feel-in successful businesses because they give their customer the most value per-unit-cost available in the marketplace. They are vigilant about balancing many ever-changing elements, and they tend to stay at the head of the pack.

Those are my seven deadly signs. I might also mention other trends that should at least cause raised eyebrows. It's dangerous when a company depends on one dominant presence-a single

large customer, one "star" executive or salesman or a single patent or manufacturing process. Dependence on one of anything can cause trouble.

Companies that make irrevocable commitments jeopardize their future. These seem innocuous and are expedient when made.

They come home to roost much later as horrendous structural costs. By then, little can be done to remove them. Examples include leases, pension plans, unworkable software, obsolete equipment and many more.

It is also of concern when a company ignores government regulations. This attitude leads to confrontations that have mortally wounded the careless.

These, then, are the warning signs of the troubled company.

None take a rocket scientist. In fact, I hope they all sound like common sense.

Thomas Paine, author of the famous pamphlet Common Sense / in 1776, was himself someone amazed at the reaction to his little booklet that galvanized the American colonies toward revolution.

"It contains nothing," he wrote to a friend, "which hath not be writ or said elsewhere at great length." So why did it cause the furor? Because the message was said so clearly, with confidence, with mission, and because he kept repeating it.

I said at the beginning that my mission is to save these companies. This is not just a line of work. It's my calling. A friend of mine who is an Episcopal minister observed to me that we were both in the turnaround business. I guess he's right.

One purpose of my address is to tell you that I am not in this alone. I want your help spreading the word because I believe no company has to die if these warning signs are recognized early enough and vigorously acted upon. Indeed, our own experience in our company-and we get some of the sickest of the sick, the Intensive Care companies-is that 85 percent have been restored to profitability.

But the traditional "outsider" must be more willing to work with management and point out these warning signs and-just as important-insist that outside help be obtained to solve the problem.

Let me reinforce that by repetition, as in Common Sense. The traditional "outsider" needs to be more alert, more critical and more demanding. Now, I realize that lenders in particular walk a fine line today. The increase in both volume and complexity in legal issues means that the commercial lender must be cautious not to exert "undue" influence. However, the lender is liable to be sued by the customer for a myriad of reasons related to not taking action.

Let me close on a personal note. Turnaround today is like those famous transplant surgeons. One doctor at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas had a quote which I liked a lot. He was asked how he could justify the intensive, expensive activity that transplantation requires. He paused for a moment, and replied: "We are talking about resurrection. These are people who would now be dead. We give them back life, and the ability to lead normal lives." And he told the interviewer a story about a man for whom he had done a heart transplant. The man's wife had a baby about two years later.

That's what successful turnaround offers. Resurrection. Life and normal times. Jobs saved. Investments protected. The continuity of relationships with suppliers and customers maintained.

All to be gained for only the cost of stepping beyond our preconceived boundaries and notions.

0

Some patients in America are being given "growth factors"-ehemicals the body produces and uses to heal itself-in experiments that may ultimately make it plausible to regrow whole organs that become diseased or damaged.

A

man suffered a chemical burn to his eye that was still not healed five weeks later. • A victim of radiation poisoning could not produce enough white blood cells to fight off bacterial infections that threatened his life. • A diabetic was advised to have the leg amputated when a festering sore on the sole of his foot became gangrenous.

In each of these cases, a new class of substances came to the rescue. The patients are among a thousand or so experimental subjects to receive growth factors, the very chemicals the body uses to heal itself.

"With these tools in hand," says Dr. Malcolm Moore, a blood specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, "we can literally order up new cells to replenish damaged ones."

Although growth factors were first detected in animal embryos more than 40 years ago, research was hampered 9Y the minute quantities of tnese small proteins that could be isolated and purified. But with the coming of biotechnological techniques to mass-produce human proteins in genetically altered microbes, scientists are now beginning to understand how growth

factors work and how they can be harnessed for healing. Today, some 30 growth factors have been identified; each has a specific ability to make certain cells in the body-such as skin, nerves and bonedivide more quickly. Some also encourage cells at the site of an injury to block hemorrhaging, fight infection and recruit new building materials. Ultimately, they might be used to treat degenerative diseases of the brain, gastric ulcers and male infertilityto name a few possibilities currently being explored in animal experiments.

Closest to routine clinical use are the blood growth factors, which have been shown to dramatically increase a patient's supply of red or white blood cells. Anemics or patients who have lost blood in surgery might be able to avoid the need for transfusions; surgical patients might even be given the red-cell growth factor, called erythropoietin, ahead of time to produce blood that could be drawn and stored for later use.

The growth factor called -GM-CSF (granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor) that boosts a patient's white-cell count may have even more dramatic clinical consequences-"as revolutionary as antibiotics," says Dr. David Golde, chief of the division of blood diseases and cancer at the University of California at Los Angeles. White cells, which are produced in the bone marrow and which the body needs to fight off infection, are often¡ severely reduced in patients who have undergone bone-marrow transplants or whose marrow has been damaged by radiation or by the toxic side effects of cancer chemotherapy.

Dr. Robert Gale, associate professor of medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, gave GM-CSF in 1987 to eight Brazilians who were accidentally exposed to radioactive cesium from a dismantled medical device. Four are still alive and have returned home, free of infection.

Gale believes more would have died had it not been for GM-CSF. "All their blood counts shot up promptly in response to the treatment," he reports, "and we know the fewer days your white-cell count is low, the greater your chance of survival."

Cancer patients given GM-CSF or sev-, eral closely related compounds may be able to tolerate higher doses of anticancer drugs, which could translate into a higher cure rate. And there is some hope that these growth factors may benefit AIDS patients, whose white blood cells are destroyed by the virus.

None of these factors is yet approved for general use in the United States. But "most of the largest biotechnology companies are avidly pursuing growth-factor products," says Stephen Buell, an analyst at Kidder, Peabody & Company in New York City.

The total market for growth factors is estimated at thousands of millions of dollars a year by the end of the century.

The growth factors involved in wound healing are of particular commercial interest. Some three million Americans-especially the elderly and diabetics-suffer from serious nonhealing wounds such as bedsores. Promising initial successes have been reported in using growth factors to heal not only these skin ulcers but also eye injuries and surgical incisions mad~ in corneal transplants.

Biological function

Harnessing IheHealing Force

Nerve growth factor

Grows nerve cells

Granulocytemacrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF)

Produces white blood cells

Produces red blood cells Epidermal growth factor

"Recruits" skin cells to site of a wound

Fibroblast growth factor

Stimulates growth of blood vessels

Plateletderived growth factor

Stimulates growth of connective tissue and muscle

Recent clinical trials by Ethicon, a division of Johnson & Johnson in Somerville, New Jersey, indicate that epidermal growth factor, which stimulates skin cells to multiply, heals deep ulcers of the skin in half the normal time. Epidermal growth factor was first discovered in the salivary glandsof animals-which may explain why animals instinctively lick their wounds.

Chiron, a biotech corporation in Emeryville,California, is also exploring the compound's use in repairing injuries to the surface of the cornea that refuse to mend.

In tests on 60 patients, one-third of the eye injuries healed completely, and one-third partially healed. The clinical trial was stopped when a few patients reported pain.

But according to Dr. Richard Eiferman,

Manufacturing Human Skin Growth factors can be used to treat patients directly. But they are also being used in the laboratory to produce artificially grown human skin. Sheets of laboratory-grown skin are then applied to skin ulcers or second-degree burns to speed healing.

Dr. Howard Green of the Harvard Medical School starts with cells from the foreskins of circumcised infants. The cells, which naturally contain a high concentration of growth factors to 1?egin with, are grown in a laboratory dish in the presence of epidermal growth factor.

When applied to the wound, the sheets protect the site of injury and provide a rich source of growth factors to accelerate the body's natural healing process.

Applications

Speculative-might eventually be used in regrowing damaged brain or nerve cells Helping bone-marrow-transplant patients and radiation victims fight off infection; counteracting damaging side effects of cancer chemotherapy Treating anemia; replenishing blood lost in surgery Treating corneal ulcers, nonhealing sores; speeding healing of skin grafts and corneal transplants Treating skin wounds and burns Treating skin wounds

HOW GROWTH FACTORS HELP HEAL A WOUND Epidermal cells migrate to site of wound

New blood vessels sprout

the ophthalmologist in charge of testing the compound at Kentucky's University of Louisville Medical School, the problem will be easily overcome by altering the dosage and method of application. "This was a tremendous result for a first trial," he says. "Some of these eyes were the worst we had ever seen and had defied all standard treatments."

Dozens of separate factors choreograph the intricate steps of clotting, the regenera)ion of blood vessels and the growth of new skin cells and a supporting framework of collagen. So the most effective results may be obtained by using a combination of growth factors and applying them in a sequence that closely mimics the natural process. In one experimental treatment, bandages are soaked in a "cocktail" made up of several different growth factors and applied directly to the wound. Dr. David Knighton, a surgeon at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinic, has - used the treatment with an 85 percent success rate on' 800 patients with open sores that had remained unhealed for an average of two years. Many of the patients were originally referred to him for amputation owing to a longstanding wound that had become infected.

Researchers believe that the major natural function of growth factors is to orchestrate the development of new tissue in the embryo. The first growth factor was discovered by Italian biologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, working under primitive conditions in her bedroom during World War II. In a series of elegant experi-

Fibroblasts produce new connective tissue

ments, she was able to prove that chick embryos produce a substance that makes nerves proliferate.

Growth factors play a more limited role after birth-mainly directing the regrowth of tissue following an injury.

The very specific action of growth factors is what makes them such potentially powerful medical tools. "Cells use growth factors to communicate with each other over microscopic distances," explains Dr. Robert A. Weinberg, a biologist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These chemical signals are then picked up by special receptors on neighboring cells, which transmit the information to genes in the interior. In this way, growth factors produced by one cell can alter the genetic program of another, causing it to divide more quickly, migrate toward the center of a wound or even mature into a different type of cell.

For all the progress, researchers have decades of work ahead. Scientists expect dozens of additional growth factors to be uncovered in the brain alone.

But the same researchers who caution against inflated medical expectations today anticipate extraordinary advances in the more distant future. "Once we figure out what all these growth factors do," says Weinberg, "it may be plausible to regrow whole organs that become diseased or damaged."

D About the Author: Kathleen McAuliffe is a senior editor with

U.S. News & World Report.

ci (l~~~t?vt If;/~,-t;M /M:&~' :t: r / 1?11 v/ 6~du e is unquestionably the first multimedia superstar of the 20th century. His appearance five decades ago in America caused a sensation. Yet, despite his age, he is not superannuated. He is still faster than a bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap .tall buildings in a bound.

The Man of Tomorrow, also known as Superman, made his debut on the cover of Action Comics Number I dated Jone 1938, ushering in the era of the superhero fantasy and establishing the comic book as a distinct, native form of American art and literature. The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., joined in the celebration of Superman's 50th birthday last year with a yearlong exhibition, titled "Superman: Many Lives, Many Worlds."

The idea of a hero endowed with powers and abilities far beyond those of a mortal human was not new in the early 1930s. But applying that concept to a comic-book character was. Superman was the brainchild of two teenagers from Cleveland, Ohio, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who did free-lance work for the company that later became DC Comics. the Superman character instantly gained wide popularity and, in 1939, he became the first costumed hero to have his own regular comic-book title. The stories revolved around three fantasy themeÂť: The visitor from another planet; the superhuman being; and the dual identity.

Superman easily moved from comic books into other media, especially radio and animated cartoons. His amazing feats seemed even more fantastic accompanied by sound effects or the sight of the Man of Steel actually outrunning bullets.

The radio drama, which began airing in 1940in the United States, helped define the character of Superman, according to Jenet-. te Kahn, president and publisher of DC Comics. "The kryptonite angle was introduced on the radio show, kryptonite being a potentially deadly fragment of Superman's home planet," Kahn explains. "Since Superman was invincible, the writers needed to come up with something that would allow the actor possessing the voice of Superman to go on vacation. They dreamed up a plot , where Superman would be exposed to kryptonite, causing him to fall ill. The result was anonymous offstage moaning , for two weeks as the sho\Ycontinued witho1:itits hero. The concept was then picked up and expanded in the comic books."

Cub reporter and sidekick Jimmy Olsen was a major character on the radio show before he appeared in the comics. But the idea of Clark Kent changing into Superman in a phone booth originated with the writers of the mid-1950s television shows.

The series was a pioneer in its own right.

During its last few seasons, it was one of the earliest color television shows ever produced. While the basic story line was altered slightly to fit a particular medium, graphically, Superman's appearance has undergone little variation over the years.

"Superman's costume has been refined, and his physique has become more streamlined," Kahn points out. "The'S' emblem on his chest has become more stylized. He's always had that blue-black hair and his cos.tume has always been drawn with bold, pure colors, giving him a very strong, patriotic look."

Dozens 'of artists have worked on the Superman comics, Kahn adds. "In the early days, the character was drawn with a blocky look. Now, the trend is to define every mustle."

Since soaring to stardom in 1938, Superman h~s become firmly entrenched in American folklore. "The Superman comics were a welcome diversion to America's Depression-era kids," says Carl Scheele, curator of the Division of Community Life at the National Museum of American History. "And he quickly became identified as the champion of the oppressed and downtrodden. At that time, there were two kinds of lawlessness for the all-American superhero to deal with-the homegrown variety in the form of gangsters and organized crime and the emergence of the Axis leaders on the international scene." These were formidable foes indeed for Super-

man, who offered the hope that truth and justice would always prevail.

In the comics, Superman spent the first half of the 1940s defending those values and battling America's war-time enemies. "Superman's character has consistently reflected the times," Smithsonian historian Ellen Roney Hughes observes, "and during World War II, his image was warriorlike." The postwar decade saw Superman dispatching bad guys with names like Atom Man. In the early I960s, Superman focused on an idealized America, meeting President Kennedy and visiting the United Nations. During the 1970s, he touched upon social issues, such as environmental pollution, women's liberation and drug abuse.

Scheele thinks that there was nothing out of the ordinary about organizing an exhibition around a comic-book character.

"The museum is interested in the history of everyday life in America. To understand American society, one must look at all representative aspects. And Superman is certainly a unique slice of Americana. Literary characters play an important role in American society. They take on a certain reality. Superman's images and adventures become 'real' in many people's minds-as real as their knowledge of the major battles of the (U.S.) Civil War, for instance."

The Smithsonian exhibition focused on the myth of Superman and his changing roles regarding such cultural and technological upheavals as crime, political corruption and war. It featured public service posters, buttons, comic and colorin~ books; radio, television and movie scripts; bubblegum cards, and from the Superman film series, a cape and a pair of mildmannered Clark Kent's glasses (used to disguise Superman's true identity).

Most of the exhibit's artifacts were donated by DC Comics, and some were on loan from private collections but, generally, Hughes said, Superman paraphernalia was hard to come by. "We acquired some valuable objects concerning the Superman character, but not all of themsay, scripts, for example-may be considered visually exciting. Few tangible objects from the old television serial could be found. There was an interesting photo of the television character in Superman regalia. However, many items were routinely discarded or altered and reused on other shows. The same fate often befalls costumes and props in films," Hughes la-

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4 % 1'. '1\ Li 1 l'nented. "Naturall~ne involved in ,,,;'laking a movie hopes that film will be,\ come a classic. But everything can't be ';saved for posterity."

Artifacts of the legendary do-gooder were never superabundant in the first place. Shortly after Superman was rocketed to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton, World War II erupted, producing shortages of materials for nonessential items, meaning few war-time Superman collectibles.

It is also rare to find early, prewar editions of those Superman comics. They, along with other books of the era, were printed on cheap, acidic paper that all but disintegrates with age. And, many simply did not make it through the war years. It VI CI ...-

"

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t--', ,!;,()'./

seems Superman and many of his comic peers of the 1930s and 1940s made their most heroic contributions to the war effort in paper drives ..

Actor Christopher Reeve, an expert of sorts on Superman, predicts the character will continue to appeal to future generations. "Superman represents basic values admired by society," the star of four Superman movies says. "And, despite his superhuman powers, he's not a show-off. He displays a real decency of character and a kind of romantic optimism toward others as he goes about his business of foiling criminals and their evil deeds."

D About the Author: Vicki Moeser is a writer with the Smithsonian News Service in Washington, D.C.

(lr~t!)

Scientists in America have achieved a milestone in the amou nt of power they can pack into a microprocessor half the size of a postage stamp.

According to a recent report in The Washington Post, Intel Corporation, America's third largest maker of semiconductors, "has crossed a threshold with a new commercial microprocessor containing one million transistors." Performing critical functions inside a computer, these microprocessors are part of "a microscopic

wo d where dimensions are so small that a human hair is like a boulder and speeds are so blazing that a thousandth of a second is a lifetime." Often no bigger than a child's fingernail, silicon chips are the heart of electronic equipment. .

Intel's achievement of packing one million transistors has been praised even by its competitors, such as Eric Kronstadt, a member of the technical planning staff at IBM Corporation's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where advar:lced semiconductor research is carried out. Scientists at IBM are also hopeful of repeating Intel's feat in the near future.

Here, an IBM scientist holds a glass mask that contains images of a memory chip which can store four million units of information. The glass mask is used in the manufacturing process that transfers circuit patterns to )ndividual chips.

As in 1988, this year too an Indian American student figures among the first ten winners of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, America's most prestigious high school science contest. She is 17-yearold Divya Chander of New Jersey, who placed tenth, winning a $7,500 scholarship for her biology project, which was a hypothesis for bacterial invasion of human tissue, using salmonella as a model. (Last year, three Indian American students figured among the first ten, including the topper-Chetan Nayak of New York-who received a $20,000 scholarship.)

Chander was one of 40 finalists selected from 300 semifinalists A total of 1,461 stu-

dents throughout the United States entered the contest.

Talking about her project, Chander said the actual means by which bacteria propel themselves throug~ the host tissue before -colonizing the ~ystem is yet unknown. To seek a possible answer, she built an invitro model that mimics the extracellular matrix, the materials surrounding the cells in human tissue. She then tracked the transmission of Salmonella Typhimurium bacteria within the model.

Chander, who plans to study biology at Harvard after finishing high school, conducted her research after school hours and on weekends at the New ,York Medical College.

On March 25, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi dedicated the country's first supercomputer to the nation at a ceremony in New Delhi. The Rs. 150 million Cray XMP-14 supercomputer will greatly help India in medium-range weather forecasting and agro-meteorology programs for optimization of agricultural operations and water resources management.

One of the world's most powerful, the supercomputer, bought from the United States, will be a key facility at the National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, which has been specially set up for this purpose. The center will provide medium-range weather forecasting three to ten days in advance and help in the preparation and dissemination of agro-meteorological information. It will also help in the promotion of studies on cro~/weather relationships, the impact of climate on pests and diseases, and development of suitable agro-meteorological models.

Speaking on the occasion, Prime Minister Gandhi said that with the installation of the supercomputer, it is now the task of the Indian Meteorological Department to provide accurate forecasts so that farmers can plan their agricultural operations with confidence and surety. In fact, he emphasized that the supercomputer was really dedicated to the country's farmers and farm laborers and would help improve crops, lives and living conditions.

The Prime Minister also thanked all those who helped India in acquiring the supercomputer, especially former U.S. Presiden1 Ronald Reagan, but for whose "personal intervention and interest" this would not have been possible.

DNA P gTOGRAPHED. This first direct image of a chemically unaltered strand of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the molecule of heredity, was made by a team of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore N9,.tional Laboratory in California. They g" - 'by used a scanning tunneling microscope which has a very sharp electrically charged needle that is brought very close to the surface of the object to be imaged.

A computer translates the motion of the needle into a picture.

Last month the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) approved a program that will provide a loan guarantee for $50 mUlion to India's National Housing Bank (NHB).

The new loan will make possible the construction of about 25,000 houses allover India for low-income households.

The US. government operates a housing guaranty program under which developing countries can borrow in the American capital market with a guarantee of the federal government for periods of up to 30 years.

The approval

marks the ex-

tension of a program tance to the Indian

of assishousing

finance

sector that USAID initi-

ated in 1981. It represents an immeDiate response by USAID to the establishment of the new NHB, which will be the key institution in the development housing sector in India.

of the

The program will assist the NHB to strengthen and expand India's housing finance system in accordance with the national

housing

policy.

It will

also provide critically needed lending capital to meet the needs of eligible finance companies, and will improve their ability to mobilize and manage their

resources portfolios,

thus increasing their lending ability to assist low-income households.

/

Last month the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a threeyear grant totaling Rs. 17.8 million to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, for the study of oral cancer among rural Indians.

The announcement made by Ambassador

of the grant was John R. Hubbard

during

~b

c31 ~ i/!/'-~!

Two Apostles of Peace

In January, the Gandhi States Information Service

Peace Foundation (USIS) cosponsored

and the United a series of pro-

grams at the American Center in New Delhi to commemorate the 41st death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30,1989, together with the 60th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 15, 1989-two of the world's greatest apostles of nonviolence. The programs were built around three themes-"Human Rights," "Conflict Resolution" and "New Technologies to Make the Human Environment Livable."

Inspiration forthe program was provided by a resolution passed by the U.S. Congress to declare the Mahatma's birthday on October 2, 1988, as "a national day of recognition for Mohandas K. Gandhi" in America. In a series of clauses, the resolution memorialized the Mahatma for his "unmovable faith in the power" of nonviolent struggle," his "powerful inspiration for Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the United States," his "efforts to win freedom for his people ...thereby [helping to] sow the

his visit to Bombay where he also met with the principal investigator, Dr. Fali S Mehta, who heads the Tata Institute's basic

seeds of freedom and liberation in Asia and Africa," his emphasis on changing the lives of the oppressed "through the moral

dental research

persuasion of the oppressor," his proclamation that "all humans are equal ...thus echoing Abraham Lincoln," his belief that "the arms race placed an unbearable burden on all of humanity" and

unit. "The grant," Ambassador

Hubbard

said, "is

part of the longest-running NIH-supported projecfin India. For over 22 years, the project's accomplishments have been outstanding in educating the Indian population on prevention of oral cancer and reduction of smoking."

The new grant,

which

will support

continued

collaborative

his staunch support for the claim that "no society can possibly be built on the denial of individual freedom."

cancer research by Indian and American scientists, will fund studies aimed at early detection and prevention of oral cancer

At a roundtable conference, speakers discussed various bilateral and global issues, especially the threads that have bound our two nations for about two centuries-for example, how Hindu

through the efforts of health workers in the existing basic health care system in rural areas. The study, it is hoped, will provide information vital for implementing a large-scale oral cancer prevention program.

writings influenced Henry David Thoreau; how his essay on civil disobedience in turn influenced Mahatma Gandhi in his concept of satyagraha, and again how Martin Luther King found his

The bilateral oral cancer project has already demonstrated that dentists and social scientists can play an important role in educating people about the hazards of tobacco use, which in turn leads to a substantial ous lesions.

decrease

in the incidence

of oral precancer-

inspiration and strength in the peaceful civil rights movement.

Mahatma

for

his nonviolent,

Also shown were two films: Martin Luther King: The Making of a Holiday, produced

by US IS's Worldnet Television Service, and Gandhi, produced by the Columbia Broadcasting System in the early 1960s and narrated by Walter Cronkite.

They Who Bave Health 0·--J~~

-

BaveBope

An Interview With RAJAMMAL DEV ADAS byWARRENW. McCURDY

Clockwise from far left: Happy, healthy children from the nutritious meal " project of the Avinashalingam Institute for Home Science in Coimbatore; a formal portrait of the original 50 boys and girls, who benefited from the project, with Vice-Chancellor Rajammal Devadas and Robert Jackson of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funded the program; Jackson holds a baby who has been a recipient of the project's nutritious meals since he was born; Devadas talks to mothers on the nutrition program.

or the past 13 years, Naickenpalayam, a village in Tamil Nadu, has been the setting for an experiment that spells hope for hundreds of women and children from poor families. In 1975, the Avinashalingam Institute for Home Science (AIHS) in Coimbatore, supported with funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), began providing a group of children, pregnant women, lactating mothers and their newborn infants in Naickenpalayam with a low-cost nutritious diet that had been specially developed during an earlier AIHS-USDA project. Although the program--eonceived as a demonstration project to prove the efficacy of the new nutritious menu-ended in 1981, AIHS has been carefully recording and monitoring the progress of the selected children ever since.

AIHS, founded in 1957, is the largest collegiate institution in India for undergraduate and postgraduate education and research in nutrition, home science, biochemistry, rural community/extension and child welfare studies. It has an enrollment of more than 4,000 students and, at the informal level, has extension programs in more than 100 villages in the district of Coimbatore.

The college conducts several programs promoting nutrition and health care in conjunction with the Government of India and many voluntary foreign organizations. The AIHS-USDA project was the brainchild of Vice-Chancellor Rajammal Devadas.

A world-renowned nutritionist, Devadas has been with AIHS since 1960, first as a professor and principal and, since 1980, as director and vice-chancellor. From 1948 to 1950, she attended Ohio State University on a Government ofIndia scholarship for advanced studies in nutrition and home science, earning a master f science degree (foods and nutrition), a master of arts degree (home science education) and a PhD (nutrition and biochemistry).

In 1976 the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) awarded her the Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Prize for original research in human nutrition.

In 1970,in cooperation with ICAR, Devadas conceived the idea of developing nutritionally sound diets from low-cost, locally available foods and submitted her proposal to USDA. Impressed, USDA gave AIHS a three-year grant to develop a diet with combinations of cereal grains and vegetable protein mixtures.

Devadas tried 176 combinations before arriving at ten superior mixtures, five from rice-based combinations and five that were ragi based. All the diets were evaluated on albino rats to determine their growth-promoting value, biological importance and hepatic nitrogen and fat contents in the rats' livers. The results revealed that all ten diets consisting of rice and rag{ as the sta~le cereals in combination with various vegetable proteins were found to be superior in their protein quality and carotene utilization.

USDA then gave another grant for the second phase of the project-a five-year (1975-81) program to provide the new nutritious meals to children, pregnant women and lactating mothers to determine the long-term effect of nutritional intervention on children from conception to adolescence. With the specific idea of monitoring the children's progress, the diet was regularly provided to a fixed group of children (25 boys and 25 girls) in Naickenpalayam during the five-year period. The results of the project clearly indicated that nutritional supplementation at the crucial second and third trimester of pregnancy was reflected in increased birth weight and gave the newborn children a good start in life. At four years of age, these children were found to be about

F

./

seven centimeters taller and two kilograms heavier than the average children in their village who were not receiving the supplementary feeding.

Last year USDA gave AIHS a grant of Rs. 1,073,702 to conduct a study entitled "Lortgterm outcomes of nutritional intervention with low cost locally available foods on children from birth to 12 years of age." The project provides support for two major objectives-to continue the follow-up of the three age groups of children and mothers given nurtition intervention during the earlier studies; and to determine the bio-availability and nutritional quality of weaning diets that have been developed based upon the diet combinations of the earlier studies.

In the following interview, Devadas talks about the project and the follow-up reports on the original group of25 boys and 25 girls, who are now between about eight and II years of age.

SPAN: Tell us about these children who have been in your nutritional group for the past decade or so. Are you satisfied with their progress?

RAJAMMAL DEV ADAS: The way these children have grown up and expressed themselves is marvelous. It is something one has to see to ¡believe. The little nutritional support we gave in early childhood has helped them to blossom into outgoing personalit~es.

Our records of their weights and heights show that they are far ahead of children from a similar background and age group, who were not ¡given this nutritional support because the project could select only 25 children in each group. Over the past ten years we have kept their records faithfully. Although the project conchrded seven years ago, we have kept track of them and also developed other programs for them because we felt we should not leave them high and dry. The human aspect has to be respected.

I believe that after your program was started, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu initiated a similar program. Was that based on data that you had generated originally?

Very much so. The Government of Tamil Nadu sought our help in designing the menu for a statewide nutritious midday meal program that now covers nearly nine million children from age two to 14. They also asked us to furnish recipes and train cooks and supervisors. We trained nearly 2,000 of them, who in turd trained thousands of others. The meal program is progressing really well. The classical deficiencies we used to see before have disappeared now.

What are some of the distinguishing characteristics of the children in the supplemental feeding group?

They are bright eyed and their hair is smooth and black, whereas other children their age have hair that is usually brown, their eyes are dull and their skin is dry. Our governments and planners must recognize the differences, because very often they say the supplementation program is a waste, that it takes away money from the development efforts. This is development in my opinion; if we produce healthy citizens for the country, their working capacity will be greater than the working capacity of other people. In addition, they are extremely conscious of their surroundings and their role. None of the 50 has dropped out of school, unlike so many of their contemporaries.

Do the 50 children stay together?

They are all from the same small village. They come from the same cohort and go to the same school. They are spread among

able to advise the government and the government accepted the advice. I believe this is the only program in South Asia to do this sort oflong-term nutritional study. And we are the only institution in India to do this and to keep records of the children after the program was over. Long-term studies of this nature are very difficult to do because they require an extraordinary amount of cooperation. Only because of the great rapport we have built were we able to succeed. The mothers and chIldren had to be convinced that we were there to help them, not to use them as guinea pigs.

Going back to the original 50 children, do they do significantly better than the other children at schoolwork?

Much better. They also take part in all the extracurricular activities and they go to the teachers with bright ideas-they are overall much more adventurous than the other children.

An AIHS staff me,pzberinterviews a participant in thefeeding program.

Although the program ended in 1981, the institute has been meticulously monitoring the progress of those who were on the project.

Does any of this rub off on the other children?

In a village society, there is so much give and take that there are generally harmonious relationships among all the children. In fact, our children tend to help a child who is, say, not able to do his arithmetic. That is the kind of attitude we have seen, not the competitive behavior as between a superior student and a slow one.

There must also have been situations where the other children were motivated to better themselves, inspired by those in the selected

several classes because they are not of the same age-we took all the babies born in the village into the program until there were 25 girls and 25 boys, which took about three years. Another remarkable fact about this cohort of 50 is that they have all survived, whereas the normal expectation would be that three or four would have died either at birth or before-the age of five. That is probably too small a group to be statistically ~ignificant, but we believe it is significant, nonetheless, because it points tl)e way in a positive direction. Another aspect of this is the health of the mothers. One woman had had two miscarriages and had not been able to carry any children to term, but once she was on the feeding program she had a child and then another one.

group, or where other parents sought information about how their children could improve their scholastic abilities.

Yes, in fact when we were about to conclude the experiment a number of the other parents came to us to say that we had been very partial in taking only some of the children. "You have not helped us," they said. We were wondering what we should do, when, to our great good fortune, the state government's program began in which their children could enroll. Since then school enrollment in the village schools, as in the state government's program, has been nearly I00 percent, because this gave the parents and the children the desire to develop their health and abilities.

Was this programfor pregnant women a part of the samefeeding program the 50 children were on?

Yes, the same foods but different quantities, based on the Indian Council of Medical Research requirements. We have found that children who were badly malnourished at the start of the experiment-including extreme cases of protein and calorie malnutrition-were able to overcome their deficiency and are now. in their normal stream. For our project with these pregnant women and new mothers, we studied 25 children in each age groupstarting with fetuses in the womb, nursing infants, one-year-old toddlers and up to four-year-olds. We took the birth weight and followed up with breastfeeding, noting how much milk the child was actually receiving. When the child was four to six months old, supplementary food was given. And when the child was one-yearold, quite a lot of normal family food could be eaten. We have data on 150 children in this second study.

Did the program teach them hygiene, the importance of boiling water, cleanliness and that kind of thing?

Yes, in our experiments we have stressed the importance of boiling the water, keeping the surroundings clean and using compost pits and soakage pits for used water. We have also provided nutrition education for parents and children together.

That has really paid off. The children are extraordinarily conscious of these measures and how they apply to their daily lives.

We organized an exhibition in their village to show some of these practices. For example, how to keep vegetables fresh for four to five days in locally made clay pots-applying the principle of evaporation to keep them four degrees cooler than the ambient temperature. We showed them how to conserve fuel and how to preserve the nutrients in rice when it is cooking. Nutrition education was an essential part of the program. In fact, it has helped change their eating habits, improved school performance and attendance, and has even led to a better nutritional status of the siblings born to a project mother after the program was withdrawn. In some ways this is the most satisfying part of the project-to know that it has made a real difference to the lives of the people it has touched.

0

Is this an ongoing program?

It is an ongoing program in the sense that it is now part of the state government's program to distribute food to pregnant women and their newborn children. This really paved the way for us to be

Richard Ford's

.,,'.l d r

Uncommon Characters 17"'''

~r171Y/~

tlf't

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by BRUCE

WEBER

\? ~r.-

-y c:; Of ..=>oZ (

"Sentence for sentence, Richard is the best writer at work in America today."

If

PI

ichard Ford and his wife, Kristina, have just rented another house, a double trailer they plan to use as a hunting cabin next fall. It's about 50 kilometers east of Great Falls, Montana, snug up against the Highwood Mountains, an isolated range of peaks that seems to have just sprouted out of the high plains from seeds dropped randomly.

Since I met Ford 15 years ago, in a classroom in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I've visited several of the houses he has lived in--=-in Dorset, Vermont, in Coahoma, Mississippi, in Princeton, New Jersey-and even lived in one of them myself, subletting an apartment from him in New York while he and Kristina were settling elsewhere. This is my first trip to Montana, though.

It's possible that Ford is America's most peripatetic fiction writer. It's what has always interested me about him, this restlessness coupled with the introspection and privacy that any serious writer needs to get on with his work. I've never forgotten the first words I heard from him, delivered in a quiet, halting Southern voice, to a class of undergraduate writers in 1974. His first book, A Piece of My Heart, had yet to appear: "I have just finished a novel, 674 pages in manuscript, that took me sixyears to write," he said. "I expect the same kind of dedicatiorrfrom you."

That sounds hyperbolic, a message meant specifically for impressionable students. But years later, standing in the cold in Highwood, Montana, Ford echoes it, unprompted. "A lot/ of people could be novelists," he says, "if they were willing to devote their lives to their own responses to things."

Bynow, Ford has written four books. Montana is the setting for most of the stories in his acclaimed recent collection, Rock Springs. Of the three novels that preceded it, A Piece of My Heart, finally published in 1976, was set primarily along the border of Arkansas and Mississippi, the two states he grew up in; The Ultimate Good Luck, a violent story of Americansmixed up in the drug trade, takes place in: Oaxaca, Mexico. Published in 1981, it was written mostly in Princeton, a town similar to the setting of his next book, The Sportswriter.

It's a body of work that in its variousness, its embrace of the continent, testifies to high ambition. But Ford's readership developed slowly. Together, his first two novels sold fewer than 12,000 copies. With The Sportswriter, published three years ago in paperback

by Vintage Contemporaries, his work took a marked turn, catalyzing his remarkable leap to prominence.

A musing, first-person account of a suburb dweller probing his own contentedness in

R

spite of his life's disarray, The Sportswriter surprised critics with its overarching lack of irony. In the narrator's commodious acceptance of the world's unexpected turns, it was a departure from the alienated, often nihilistic spirit that has pervaded much of America's fiction in this decade.

The stories in Rock Springs are marked by the same authorial generosity. They're populated by characters who are mostly down and out, natives of a remote region that sill1ply doesn't offer them enough. It's a class of people familiar to readers of current fiction.

But unlike those in, say, the early stories of Raymond Carver, whose work set the tone for many of America's new writers of the 1980s, Ford's characters rarely yield to despair or defeat. They actively seek the high-minded solace that's available-in self-knowledge, in the future, in love. Often, ennoblingly, they seize it.

The individual's struggle for transcendence is an old literary theme, of course. But in the narrow mainstream of contemporary American fiction, its absence has been well-notedand, by an increasing number of critics missed-particularly in the spreading influence of the so-called "minimalists." According to many literary observers, short-story writers like Carver, Mary Robison and Amy Hempel, by virtue of their many imitators, have spawned what has become a dominant fashion in American writing.

The perceived minimalist¡ formula is marked by a technical expertise resonating primarily in the service of characters so burdened by powerlessness, diffidence or anomie that their engagement with the world around them is superficial or oblique. Their often introspective revelations tend to reinforce this sense of isolation.

In publishing circles there is the sense that Ford is onto something new. The essayist and editor Ted Solotaroff sees Ford, along with a ha~dful of others, as "turning the page of literary history," providing American fiction again "with the theme that life is serious, rather than that life is trivial or that life is very grim. That there are issues in this life worth trying to clarify."

Carver, who was Ford's close friend until his death, was unequivocal. "Sentence for sentence," he said, "Richard is the best writer at work in America today."

Most of this has gone on since I last saw Ford, and it was the spur for my visit. In spite of his travels, he has arrived, as it were.

Frankly, though, as we drive north out of Highwood, I don't find him much changed.

There are graying streaks in his longish hair,

and his forehead has extended a bit north. But he is a youthful 45, taller than 183 centimeters with sloping shoulders, taut features and pale, severe blue eyes. He has a Southerner's instinctive solicitous manners, a mellifluous accent, and a good-old-boy's appreciation of whiskey, sports, country music and jocular insults. He can be querulous, particularly on behalf of his work.

We're heading, for no apparent good reason, toward the Montana Hi-line, the strip of wheatland near the Canadian border. For me, a city boy, the beauty is strange and startling, the bright yellow stubble of wheat showing. through vast snowfields, two blue mountain ranges-the Bear Paws and the Sweet Grass Hills-way off on different horizons. It's territory that the stories in Rock Springs glean for tension.

"I really think that human beings accommodating themselves to a landscape, to a place, is natively dramatic, that that in itself is potentially the stuff of literature," Ford says.

"The stories didn't exhaust all the things I care about, the things that move me to write," he explains. "The other books are novels, and in writing them I exhausted everything, which is, in a way, my own private definition of a novel. I try to exhaust my own interest in a place. Then I'll just move on, write about someplace else where I kind of notice again how people accommodate themselves to where they live. That accounts for the kinds of things I write."

It also accounts for the problems critics have had categorizing Ford's work-fixing his place, so to speak, in the literary world. He was widely praised, after A Piece of My Heart, as a new Southern voice, indebted to Faulkner •• and Flannery O'Connor.

The Ultimate Good Luck, a harsh, intricately plotted thriller about danger, bad luck and male courage, was compared to Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett and Robert Stone.

The Sportswriter, which finds a complex depth in the quietude of suburban New Jersey, has roots, it was duly noted, in John Cheever's Connecticut.

The stories in Rock Springs do yield the sense of a unique place that is identifiable as Montana and concern people who are generally characterizable as adrift. In "Children," for example, two teenage boys and a young girl, a runaway, have a desultory sexual adventure out on the desolate plains near the tiny Hi-line town of Sunburst. The narrator, one of the boys now grown, recalls the setting as "an empty lonely place if you are not a wheat farmer. I make this a point only because I have thought possibly it was the place itself,

as much as the time in our lives or our characters, that took part in small things that happened and made them memorable."

But unlike the precise-often preciouspoetics of the minimalist vogue, Ford's sentences are raggedly lyrical, an eclectic music equally capable of the elegant, vaulting language that seeks to encompass an ambiguity and the brisk simplicity of vernacular speech.

Perhaps the most salient characteristic of the stories in Rock Springs is a climatic explication. In his most trenchant passages, Ford launches an almost essayistic probe of human yearning, and the stories resonate finally with the conviction that his characters have a real place in the world, however strained.

In the title story, for example, a petty thief seeking to start his life anew has his hopes dashed once more; facing another gloomy future, he offers, in the story's last paragraph, a chillinglament: "And I wondered, because it seemed funny, what would you think a man was doing if you saw him in the middle of the night looking in the windows of cars in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn? Would you think he was trying to get his head cleared?

Would you think he was trying to get ready for a day when trouble would come down on him? Would you think his girlfriend was leaving him? Would you think he had a daughter? Would you think he was anybody like you?"

Ford rejects any categorization of his work, and says that ifhe has models, they are writeJ,:s like Sherwood Anderson and Frank O'Connor-not because he shares with them any particular theme or style, but because of "their efforts toward writing something important. I want to write something that can hold up to the end of the O'Connor story, 'Guests of the Nation,' " he says, and quotes: "'And anything that ever happened to me I never felt the same about again.' That's my measure of things to write about."

As Ford goes on his dander rises. "It requires a certain application of intelligence and imagination to take writers on their own, which maybe there isn't time for in the life of someone writing many, many book reviews."

Fiction writing, he says, "is as potentially useful a thing for a culture as there is. Not that I've been so useful, but it is as high a calling as you can have." And serious devotion to it, he says, purchases some rights: The right to presume, to make things up, to create.

"What I write is fiction," he says. "What I do is imagine a place and call it a name."

What, then, is the relationship between the place on the map and the place on the page?

"Me," he says. "It's just me. There is a

place, and there is an impulse to write, and I am the only important mediative there. Which is not to single out my own importance, just my responsibility.

"People have said, 'Ford hasn't even lived in Montana very long. How dare he write about it!' Well, the other side of being the prime mover in these things is this: I dare.

With responsibility comes a certain amount of privilege. If I make myself the. important mediative element in this, and therefore liable for the execration of all kinds of native Montanans-and book reviewers-I at least have the privilege of doing what I want."

T

he Fords are an impressive couple.

Fair-haired and energetic, Kristina has a PhD in urban and regional planning, and much of the traveling that has informed Richard's fiction has been in pursuit of her career in teaching and research. They moved to Missoula when she took ajob there.

They passed their 21st anniversary last month.

"I made the two decisions that changed my life at exactly the same time," he sayS. To this day, Ford considers himself a Mississippian. He was born in Jackson in 1944 and raised there, the son of a traveling starch salesman. When Richard was eight, his father suffered his first heart attack-a second would kill him eight years later. A petty troublemaker as a teenager, Ford says it was his mother who kept him from serious scrapes with the law. "When my father died," he says, "she told me: 'Don't call up here from jail.

Because there won't be anybody home.'"

In 1962, Ford entered Michigan State University in East Lansing, where he studied literature and wrote some tentative stories. It was there that he met Kristina Hensley.

After graduating, Ford taught school in nearby Flint, "so I could kind of ride herd on Kristina, make sure she didn't get away from me." But they separated, anyway. She went to New York to work as a model; he enrolled, for one unhappy semester, in law school, at Washington 'University in St. Louis. The pivotal moment in his life happened after that.

"I was sitting in my mother's house in Little Rock," Ford recalls. "This was just after Christmas 1967. I was thinking to myself, 'Jeez, this isn't any fun. This is horrible, in fact. I'm not with the girl I love. I'm embarked on a career I can see already is going to lead me to a life of dreariness.'

"I mean, that's just the spark of anyone's imagination. You think to yourself: 'Let's do something different.' And being a writer just seemed like a good idea. It was just casting off into the dark. But I think that's the way

people make themselves into whatever they finally make themselves, good or otherwise."

He moved in with Kristina in New York and worked briefly as assistant science editor-"a laughable designation"-for a magazine called the American Druggist. Then they began their travels as a couple in earnest: to the University of California at Irvine, where Ford studied literature and writing with the novelists Oakley Hall and E.L. Doctorow; to Chicago, Ann Arbor, Mexico and the rest.

Eventually, they would serve on different faculties, she at Rutgers and New York University, he at Michigan, Princeton, Goddard College and Williams.

"I couldn't be a writer if it weren't for Kristina," Ford says, and she agrees that perhaps, among other things, the marriage has served as a kind of safehouse for him, a hedge against his natural restlessness. She has recognized herself in his work just once, as the nurturing wife of an out-of-work salesman in the story "Fireworks." "It's not me," she says.

"But her nature is like mine." Still, she says, "Richard attributes more to me than he should." He reads his books aloud to her; for him, it's the last phase of writing anything.

"And we work on it," she says. "But really, all I did was that from the start I 'took the enterprise of his wanting to be a writer seriously."

By choice, they have no children. Mutual guardians, they tend to look for each other in a roomful of people; Ford has dedicated each of his books to her. For someone who knows both Ford and his work, seeing him and Kristina together recalls the end of "Sweethearts," a story in Rock Springs, which is ultimately about the fierce solace of <tl partnership (see pages 32-35).

In the story, the narrator and his girlfriend deliver the woman's ex-husband to prison.

The awkwardness of the experience gives them a sense of their own entrapment in the isolated environs of Montana, but after deciding to take a trip, just drive, they simply turn around and go home.

After a nationwide book tour for Rock Springs, and finishing a screen treatment based on two of the stories in it, Ford says he was anxious to get back to fiction. "I want to write a Christmas story next," he says.

I ask him about the difference between writing a story and a novel. "The practical effects are simply matters of how much time it takes," he says. "For me, form comes first.

And I know that when I'm writing a novel, I'm undertaking something of a larger scopethough not necessarily of a larger importance-than writing a short story. So I gear up

to It In very different ways. It'll take me months to accumulate the raw stuff from which I will try to imagine and write a novel."

The "raw stuff" is recorded in notebooks.

"Just practically everything," he says. "Nothing particular but everything that seems to me to be singular. Here's a sentence I wrote.

It's not meant to be interesting to anybody else: 'Christmas, comma, Jesus Christ.' That'll turn out to be a dialogue line.

"What's more interesting is what I do with it. A sentence in my notebook will come at a place where I never imagined it. And that's really what writing is for me, taking the raw stuff and recasting it into a logic that is its own. Taking lines which maybe occurred in life in one context, and then creating another context for 1hem."

In the largest sense, the context of Ford's fiction changed with The Sportswriter. In his first two novels, life's unforeseeable twists become life's tragedies; both are punctuated with violent, senseless deaths. And though there are deaths that haunt Frank Bascombe, the narrator of The Sportswriter-the fatal illness of his young son and the suicide of an acquaintance, a man his own age-the novel is really about Bascombe's patience, his intelligent self-inquiry and his acceptance of occasional grief. Philosophically speaking, he triumphs: For life to be worth anything, he says, "You must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret. Though you must also manage to avoid it or' your life will be ruined. / "I believe I have done these two things.

Faced down regret. A voided ruin. And I am still here to tell about it."

Frank Bascombe is a man who gave up a

promising career as a novelist to write sports, and Ford began The Sportswriter in a moment of his own writerly travail. A Piece of My Heart, he says, like the first books of many writers, used up everything he had learned in his life up to that point. And in writing The Ultimate Good Luck he was battling the worry: "Do I have anything besides this first book in me?" He wrote the book twice, the second time changing from first- to thirdperson narration, an experience he calls "the dark night of my little soul. I'll tell you that."

When he finished it, in 1980, exhausted and depressed, he took a job writing on commission for the first incarnation of Inside Sports magazille.

"That was a great job," he says. "And I was conniving a way to keep on writing for them because The Ultimate Good Luck had been such an unhappy experience. I'd just worked and worked and finally I'd written what I thought was a good book and nobody bought it. And I thought, 'Well, hell, if this is what all my effort is going to come to, I won't do it anymore. I'll write sports.'''

Unfortunately, he says, "the magazine had the audacity to go out of business."

It was Kristina who suggested that he write a book about a happy man. "Jesus, I hadn't done that up to then," he says. "And I thought, 'What would a man do if he were living a happy life? What job would he have?

Hell, he'd be a sportswriter! What else?'

"My writing life changed after I began The Sportswriter," Ford acknowledges.

"I felt much more encouraged."

That spirit of renewal is evident as well in Rock Springs, and it transfers powerfully from Frank Bascombe, a man with a literary intelli-

gence, to men and women with more pedestrian lives. Though we may think of these people as less articulate, the stories assert they have just as much to tell us.

One criticism the stories have been prey to is that Ford gives his uneducated, unambitious characters too much credit, that he endows them with his own prosaic thoughtfulness.

"It's a philosophical point very near the heart of everything I write," he responds. "If we are limited to just predictable responses, if we believe 'Here is a guy who can only think this or that,' that people live within their givens, then life's pretty well set for us. But human beings continue to surprise us. It is just a fact oflife that people are always doing things they shouldn't be able to do. And I'm not just talking about people picking up Volkswagens at moments of stress. People just say things that make you stare off, sometimes."

On my last morning in Missoula, I remark to Ford that a lot is different for hirri now. He disagt:ees. He is appreciative of the recent recognition, though it isn't something he feels grateful for or fortunate about. That's typical; whether or not he's deserving, he says, it's just something that happened along with everything else.

"People say all sorts of things to you about making it as a writer," he says. "But there's no it to make. There's no gradient, no step ladder. I've just given everything I've ever written my very best-my absolute, greatest best shot.

And that's all. Sometimes people like you and sometimes they don't. Now they like me. Next 0 year, who knows what they'll do?"

About the Author: Bruce Weber is an editor with The New York Times Magazine. ~

Triumph of Daedalus Literary Feminism Comes of Age

Daedalus, a diaphanous aircraft

built by a 40-member team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently broke the record for the longest humanpowered flight.

Literary feminism-has come to . stay in America. The increase in the number of women writers and critics has led to a growing awareness of the need to end bias against women--evident, for example, in the pa ucity of books by women writers on colJege reading lists and syllabi.

A Priceless Collection Through a chance remark at a party, the Smithsonian lnstitutionstumbled upon Parisian jeweler Henri Vever's remarkable "lost" collection of more than 500 Indian, Arabic and Persian paintings and manuscripts. This treasure trove was recently unveiled at the Sackler GalJery in Washington, D.C.

Making the Grade as Parents For every child the home is the first school and parents the first teachers. Keeping this in mind, two educational psychologists in America have designed a model program to help parents rear children in a manner that will make them more competent and well adjusted.

Svveethearts I

wasstanding in the kitchen while Arlene was in the living room saying goodbye to her exhusband, Danny. I had already been out to the store for groceries and come back and made coffee, and was standing drinking it and staring out the window while the two of them said whatever they had to say. It was a quarter to six in the morning.

This was not going to be a good day in Danny's life, that was clear, because he was headed t6 jail.

He had written several bad checks, and before he could be sentenced for that he had robbed a convenience store with a pistol--eompletely gone off his mind. And everything had gone to hell, as you might expect. Arlene had put up the money for his bail, and there was some expensive talk about an appeal. But there wasn't any use to that. He was guilty. It would cost money and then he would go to jail anyway.

Arlene had said she would drive him to the sheriff's department this morning if I would fix him breakfast, so he could surrender on a full stomach. And that had seemed all right. Early in the morning Danny had brought his motorcycle around to the backyard and tied up his dog to the handlebars. I had watched him from the window.

He hugged the dog and kissed it on the head and whispered something in its ear, then came inside.

The dog was a black Lab, and it sat beside the motorcycle now and stared with blank interest across the river at tOhebuildings of town, where the sky was beginning to turn pinkish, and the day was opening up. It was going to be our dog for a while now, I guessed.

Arlene and I had been together almost a year".

She had divorced Danny long before and had gone back to school and gotten real estate training and bought the house we lived in, then quit that and taught high school a year, and finally quit that and just went to work in a bar in town, which is where I came upon her. She and Danny had been childhood

PROGRAM

English

sweethearts and run crazy for 15 years. But when I came into the picture, things with Danny were settled, more or less. No one had hard feelings left, and when he came around I didn't have any trouble with him. We had things we talked about-our pasts, our past troubles. It was not the worst you could hope for.

From the living room I heard Danny say, "So how am I going to keep up my self-respect. Answer me that. That's my big problem."

"You have to get centered," Arlene said in an upbeat voice. "Be within yourself if you can."

"I feel like I'm catching a cold right now," Danny said. "On the day I enter prison I catch cold."

"Take Contac," Arlene said. "I've got some somewhere." I heard a chair scrape. She was going to get it for him.

"I already took that," Danny said. "I had some at home."

"You'll feel better then," Arlene said. "They'll have Contac in prison."

"I put all my faith in women," Danny said softly.

"I see now that was wrong."

"I couldn't say," Arlene said. And then no one spoke.

I looked out the window at Danny's dog. It was still staring across the river at town as if it knew about something there.

The door to the back bedroom opened then, and my daughter Cheryl came out wearing her little white nightgown with red valentines on it. BE MINE was on all the valentines. She was still asleep, though she was up. Danny's voice had waked her up.

"Did you feed my fish?" she said and stared at me. She was barefoot and holding a doll, and looked pretty as a doll herself.

"You were asleep already," I said.

She shook her head and looked at the open

(0630-0830) (1930-2330)

living-room door. "Who's that?" she said.

"Danny's here," I said. "He's talking to Arlene."

Cheryl came over to the window where I was and looked out at Danny's dog. She liked Danny,> but she liked his dog better. "There's Buck," she said.

Buck was the dog's name. A tube of sausage was lying on the sink top and I wanted to cook it, for Danny to eat, and then have him get out. I wanted Cheryl to go to school, and for the day to flatten out and hold fewer people in it. Just Arlene and me would be enough.

"You know, Danny, sweetheart," Arlene said now in the other room, "in our own lifetime we'll see the last of the people who were born in the 19th century. They'll all be gone soon. Everyone of them."

"We should've stayed together, I think," Danny whispered. I was not supposed to hear that. I knew.

"I wouldn't be going to prison if we'd loved each other. " "I wanted to get divorced, though," Arlene said.

"That was a stupid idea."

"Not for me it wasn't," Arlene said. I heard her stand up.

"It's water over the bridge now, I guess, isn't it?"

I heard Danny's hands hit his knees three time&in a row.

"Let's watch TV," Cheryl said to me and went and turned on the little set on the kitchen table.

There was a man talking on a news show¡.

"Not loud," I said. "Keep it soft."

"Let's let Buck in," she said. "Buck's lonely."

"Leave Buck outside," I said.

Cheryl looked at me without any interest. She left her doll on top of the TV. "Poor Buck," she said. "Buck's crying. Do you hear him?"

"No," I said. "I can't hear him."

Danny ate his eggs and stared out the window a~ ifhe was having a hard time concentrating on what

7115, 7205, 9740, 11710, 15215, 15250, 17735; (1930-2230) 9760, 15205; 6110, 7125, 9645, 15395; (2030-2330) 9700; (2100-2130) 1575.'

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he was doing. Danny is a handsome small man with thick black hair and pale eyes. He is likable, and it is easy to see why women would like him. This morning he was dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt and boots. He looked like somebody on his way to jail.

He stared out the back window for a long time and then he sniffed and nodded. "You have to face that empty moment, Russ." He cut his eyes at me.

"How often have you done that?"

"Russ's done that, Dan," Arlene said. "We've_all done that now. We're adults."

"Well that's where I am right now," Danny said.

'Tm at the empty moment here. I've lost everything. " "You're among friends, though, sweetheart."

Arlene smiled. She was smoking a cigarette. ''I'm calling you up. Guess who I am," Cheryl said to Danny. She had her eyes squeezed tight and her nose and mouth pinched up together. She was moving her head back and forth.

"Who are you?" Danny said and smiled.

"I'm the bumblebee."

"Can't you fly?" Arlene said.

"No. My wings are much too short and I'm too fat." Cheryl opened her eyes at us suddenly.

"Well you're in big trouble then," Arlene said.

"A turkey can go 45 miles an hour," Cheryl said and looked shocked.

"Go change your clothes," I said.

"Go ahead now, sweetheart," Arlene said and smiled at her. "I'll come help you."

Cheryl squinted at Danny, then went back to her room. When she opened her door I could see her aquarium in the dark against the wall, a pale green light with pink rocks and tiny dots of fish.

Danny ran his hands back through his hair then / and stared up at the ceiling. "Well here's the awful criminal now, ready for jail," he said. And he looked at us and he looked wild suddenly, as wild and desperate as I have ever seen a man look. And it was not for no reason, I knew that.

"That's off the wall," Arlene said. "That's just completely boring. I'd never be married to a man who was a criming!." She looked at me, but Danny looked at me too.

"Somebody ought to come take her away," Danny said. "You know that, Russell? Just put her in a truck and take her away. She always has such a_ wonderful outlook. You wonder how she got in this fix here." He looked around the little kitchen, which was shabby and white. At one time Arlene's house had been a jewelry store, and there was a black security camera above the kitchen door, though it wasn't connected now.

"Just try to be nice, Danny," Arlene said.

"I just oughta slap you," Danny said. I could see hisjaw muscles tighten, and I thought he might slap her then. In the bedroom I saw Cheryl standing naked in the dark, sprinkling food in her aquarium.

The light made her skin look the color of water.

"Try to calm down, Dan," I said and stayed put in my chair. "We're all your friends."

"I don't know why people came out here," Danny said. "The West is ...ruined. I wish some-

body would take me away from here."

"Some body's going to, I guess," Arlene said, and I knew she was mad at him and I didn't blame her, though I wished she hadn't said that.

Danny's blue eyes got small, and he smiled at her in a hateful way. I could see Cheryl looking in at us.

She had not heard this kind of talk yet. Jail talk.

Mean talk. The kind you don't forget. "Do you think I'mjealous of you two?" Danny said. "Is that it?"

"I don't know what you are," Arlene said.

"Well I'm not. I'm not jealous of you two. I don't want a kid. I don't want a house. I don't want anything you got. I'd rather go to Deer Lodge."

His eyes flashed out at us.

"That's lucky, then," Arlene said. She stubbed out her cigarette on her plate, blew smoke, then stood up to go help Chery!. "Here I am now, hon," she said and closed the bedroom door.

D

anny sat at the kitchen table for a while then and did not say anything. I knew he was mad but that he was not mad at me; probably, in fact, he couldn't even think why I was the man he hardly one here with him now-some knew, who slept with a woman he had loved all his life and at that moment thought he still loved, but who-among his other troubles-didn't love him anymore. I knew he wanted to say that and a hundred things more then. But words can seem weak. And I felt sorry for him, and wanted to be as sympathetic as I could be.

"I don't like to tell people I'm divorced, Russell," Danny said very clearly and blinked his eyes. "Does that make any sense to you?" He looked at me as if he thought I was going to lie to him, which I wasn't.

"That makes plenty of sense," I said.

"You've been married, haven't you? You have your daughter."

"That's right," I said.

"You're divorced, aren't you?"

"Yes," I said.

Danny looked up at the security camera above the kitchen door, and with his finger and thumb made a gun that he pointed at the camera, and made a soft popping with his lips, then he looked at me and smiled. It seemed to make him calmer. It was,a strange thing.

"Before my mother died, okay?," Danny said, "1 used to call her on the phone. And it took her a long time to get out of bed. And I used to wait and wait and wait while it rang. And sometimes I knew she just wouldn't answer it, because she couldn't get up. Right? And it would ring forever because it was me, and I was willing to wait. Sometimes I'djust let it ring, and so would she, and I wouldn't know what was going on. Maybe she was dead, right?"

He shook his head.

"I'll bet she knew it was you," I said. "I bet it made her feel better."

"You think?" Danny said.

"It's possible. It seems possible," I said.

"What would you do thoughT' Danny said. He bit his lower lip and thought about the subject.

"When would you let it stop ringing? Would you let it go 25 or 50? 1 wanted her to have time to decide.

But I didn't want to drive her crazy. Okay?"

"Twenty-five seems right," I said.

Danny nodded. "That's interesting. I guess we all do things different. I always did 50."

"That's fine."

"Fifty's way too many, I think."

"It's what you think now," I said. "But then was different. " "There's a familiar story," Danny said.

"It's everybody's story," I said. "The then-andnow story."

"We're just short of paradise, aren't we, Russell?"

"Yes we are," I said.

Danny smiled at me then in a sweet way, a way to let anyone know he wasn't a bad man, no matter what he'd robbed.

"What would you do if you were me," Danny said. "If you were on your way to Deer Lodge for a year?"

I said, "I'd think about when I was going to get out, and what kind of day that was going to be, and that it wasn't very far in the future." ''I'm just afraid it'll be too noisy to sleep in there," he said and looked concerned about that.

"It'll be all right," I said. "A year can go by quick."

"Not if you never sleep," he said. "That worries me."

"You'll sleep," I said. "You'll sleep fine."

And Danny looked at me then, across the kitchen table, like a man who knows half of something and who is supposed to know everything, who sees exactly what trouble he's in and is scared to dea th by it.

"I feel like a dead man, you know?" And tears suddenly came into his pale eyes. "I'm really sorry," he said. "I know you're mad at me. I'm sorry." He put his head in his hands then and cried.

And I thought: What else could he do? He couldn't, avoid this now. It was all right.

"It's okay, bud," I said.

"I'm happy for you and Arlene, Russ," Danny said, his face still in tears. "You have my word on that. Ijust wish she and I had stayed together, and I wasn't such an ass. You know what I meanT' "I know exactly," I said. I did not move to touch him, though maybe I should have. But Danny was not my brother, and for a moment I wished I wasn't tied to all this. I was sorry I had to see any of it, sorry that each of us would have to remember it.

On the drive to town Danny was in better spirits.

He and Cheryl sat in the back, and Arlene in the front. I drove. Cheryl held Danny's hand and giggled, and Danny let her put on his black silk Cam Ranh Bay jacket that he had won playing cards, and Cheryl said that she had been a sol.dier in some war.

The morning had started out sunny, but now it had begun to be foggy, though there was sun high up and you could see the blue Bitterroots to the south. The river was cool and in a mist, and from

Copyright Š 1986 by Richard Ford. First appeared in Esquire and included in a collection of shon stories entitled Rock Springs by Richard Ford. Published by Atlantic Monthly Press.

the bridge you could not see the pulp yard or the motels a half mile away.

"Let's just drive, Russ," Danny said from the back seat. "Head to Idaho. We'll all become Mormons and act right."

"That'd be good, wouldn't it?" Arlene turned and smiled at him. She was not mad now. It was her nicest trait not to stay mad at anybody long.

"Good day," Cheryl said.

"Who's that talking?" Danny asked.

"I'm Paul Harvey," Cheryl said.

"He always says that, doesn't he?" Arlene said.

"Good day," Cheryl said again.

"That's all Cheryl's going to say all day now, Daddy," Arlene said to me.

"You've got a honey bunch back here," Danny said and tickled Cheryl's ribs. "She's her daddy's girl all the way."

"Good day," Cheryl said again and giggled.

"Children pick up your life, don't they Russ," Danny said. "I can tell that."

"Yes, they do," I said. "They can." ''I'm not so sure about that one back there, though," Arlene said. She was dressed in a red cowboy shirt and jeans, and she looked tired to me.

But I knew she didn't want Danny to go to jail by himself.

"I am. I'm sure of it," Danny said and then didn't say anything else.

We were on a wide avenue where it was foggy, and there were shopping centers and drive-ins and car lots. A few catS had their headlights on, and Arlene stared out the window at the fog. "You know what I used to want to be?" she said.

"What?" I said, when no one else said anything.

Arlene stared a moment out the window and touched the corner of her mouth with her fingernai'l and smoothed something away. "A Tri-Delt," she said and smiled. "I didn't really know what they were, but I wanted to be one. I was already married to him, then, of course. And they wouldn't take married girls in."

"That's a joke," Danny said, and Cheryl laughed.

"No. It's not a joke," Arlene said. "It's just something you don't understand and that I missed out on in life." She took my hand on the seat, and kept looking out the window. And it was as if Danny weren't there then, as ifhe had already gooe to jail.

"What I miss is seafood," Danny said in an ironic way. "Maybe they'll have it in prison. You think they will?"

"I hope so, if you miss it," Arlene said.

"I bet they will," I said. "I bet they have fish of some kind in there."

"Fish and seafood aren't the same," Danny said.

We turned onto the street where the jail was. It was an older part of town, and there were some old white two-story residences that had been turned into lawyers' offices and bail bondsmen's rooms.

Some bars were farther on, and the bus station. At the end of the street was the courthouse. I slowed so we wouldn't get there too fast.

"You're going to jail right now," Cheryl said to Danny.

"Isn't that something?" Danny said. I watched him up in the rearview. He looked down at Cheryl and shook his head as if it amazed him. ''I'm going to school soon as that's over," Cheryl said.

"Why don't Ijust go to school with you?" Danny said. "I think I'd rather do that."

"No sir," Cheryl said.

"Oh Cheryl, please don't make me go to jail. I'm innocent," Danny said. "I don't want to go."

"Too bad," Cheryl said and crossed her arms.

"Be nice," Arlene said. Though I knew Cheryl thought she was being nice. She liked Danny.

"She's teasing, Mama. Aren't we, Cheryl baby?

We understand each other." ''I'm not her mama," Arlene said.

"That's right, I forgot," Danny said. And he widened his eyes at her. "What's your hurry, Russ?" Danny said, and I saw I had almost come to a stop in the street. The jail was a half block ahead of us. It was a tall modern building built on the back of the old stone courthouse. Two people were standing in the little front yard looking up at a window. A station wagon was parked on the street in front. The fog had begun to burn away now.

"I didn't want to rush you," I said. :'Cheryl's already dying for me to go in there, aren't you baby?"

"No, she's not. She doesn't know anything about that," Arlene said.

"You go to hell," Danny said. And he grabbed Arlene's shoulder with his hand and squeezed it back hard. "This is not your business, it's not your business at all. Look Russ," Danny said, and he reached in the black plastic bag he was taking with him and pulled a pistol out of it and threw it over onto the front seat between Arlene and me. "I thought I might kill Arlene, but I changed my mind." He grinned at me, and I could tell he was crazy and afraid and at the end of all he could do to help himself anymore.

"Jesus Christ," Arlene said. "Jesus, Jesus Christ."

"Take it, goddamn it. It's for you," Danny said, with a crazy look. "It's what you wanted. Boom," Danny said. "Boom-boom-boom."

"I'll take it," I said and pulled the gun under my leg. I wanted to get it out of sight.

"What is it?" Cheryl said. "Lemme see." She pushed up to see.

"It's nothing, honey," I said. "Just something of Danny's."

"Is it a gun?" Cheryl said.

"No, sweetheart," I said, "it's not." And I pushed the gun down on the floor under my foot. I did not know ifit was loaded, and I hoped it wasn't.

I wanted Danny out of the car then. I have had my troubles, but I am not a person who likes violence or guns. I pulled over to the curb in front of the jail, behind the gray station wagon. "You better make a move now," I said to Danny. I looked at Arlene but she was staring straight ahead. I know she wanted Danny gone now, too.

"I didn't plan this. This just happened," Danny said. "Okay? You understand that? Nothing''S planned."

"Get out," Arlene said and did not turn to look at him.

"Give Danny back his jacket," I said to Cheryl.

"Forget it, it's yours," Danny said. And he grabbed his plastic string bag.

"She doesn't want it," Arlene said.

"Yes I do," Cheryl said. "I want it."

"Okay," I said. "That's nice, sweetheart."

Danny sat in the seat and did not move then.

None of us moved in the car. I could see out the window into the little jail yard. Two [American] Indians were sitting in plastic chairs outside the double doors. A man in a gray uniform stepped out the door and said something to them, and one got up and went inside. There was a large, red-faced woman standing on the grass now, staring at our car. The fog was almost gone. r got out and walked around the car to Danny's door and opened it. It was cool out, and I could smell the sour pulp-mill smell being held in the fog, and I could hear a car laying rubber on another street.

"Bye-bye Danny," Cheryl said in the car. She reached over and kissed him. '~Bye-bye," Danny said. "Bye-bye."

The man in the gray uniform had come down off the steps and stopped halfway to the car, watching us. He was waiting for Danny, I was sure of that.

Danny got out and stood up on the curb. He looked around and shivered from the chill in the air. He looked cold, and I felt bad for him. But I would be glad when he was gone and I could live a normal life again.

"What do we do now?" Danny said. He saw the man in the gray uniform, but would not look at him. Cheryl was saying something to Arlene in the car, but Arlene didn't say anything. "Maybe I oughta run for it," Danny said, and I could see his pale eyes were jumping as if he was eager for something now, eager for things to happen to him.

Suddenlyhe grabbed both my arms and pushed me back against the door and pushed his face right up to my face. "Fight me," he whispered and smiled a wild smile. "Knock the shit out of me. See what they do." I pushed against him, and for a moment he held me there, and I held him, and it was as if we were dancing without moving. And I smelled his breath and felt his cold, thin ums and his body struggling against me, and I knew what he wanted wasfor me not to let him go, and for all this to be a dream he would forget about.

"What're you doing?" Arlene said, and she turned around and glared at us. She was mad, and she wanted Danny 10 be in jail now. "Are you kissingeach other?" she said. "Is that what you're doing? Kissing goodbye?"

"We're kissing each other, that's right," Danny said. "That's what we're doing. I always wanted to kiss Russell. We're queers." He looked at her then, / and I knew he wanted to say something more to her, to tell her that he hated her or that he loved her or wanted to kill her or that he was sorry. But he couldn't come to the words for that. And I felt him go rigid and shiver, and I didn't know what he would do. Though I knew that in the end he would give in to things and go along without a struggle.

He was not a man to struggle against odds. That was his character, and it is the character of many people.

"Isn't this the height of something, Russell?"

Danny said, and I knew he was going to be calm now. He let go my arms and shook his head. "You and me out here like trash fighting over a woman."

And there was nothing I could say then that would save him or make life better for him at that bad moment or change the way he saw things. And 1went and got back in the car while Danny turned himself in to the uniformed man who was waiting.

1drove Cheryl to school then, and when 1 came backoutside Arlene had risen to a better mood and suggested that we take a drive. She didn't start work until noon, and 1 had the whole day to wait until Cheryl came home. "We should open up some emotional distance," she said. And that seemed right to me.

We drove up onto the interstate and went toward

Spokane, where 1 had lived once and Arlene had, too, though we didn't know each other then-the old days, before marriage and children and divorce, before we met the lives we would eventually lead, and that we would be happy with or not.

We drove along the Clark Fork for a while, above the fog that stayed with the river, until the river turned north and there seemed less reason to be driving anywhere. For a time 1 thought we should just drive to Spokane and put up in a motel.

But that, even 1 knew, was not a good idea. And when we had driven on far enough for each of us to think about things besides Danny, Arlene said, "Let's throw that gun away, Russ." 1had forgotten all about it, and 1 moved it on the floor with my foot to where 1 could see it-the gun Danny had used, 1guessed, to commit crimes and steal people's money for some crazy reason. "Let's throw it in the river," Arlene said. And 1 turned the car around.

We drove back to where the river turned down even with the highway again, and went off on a dirtand-gravel road for a mile. 1 stopped under some pine trees and picked up the gun and looked at it to see if it was loaded and found it wasn't. Then Arlene took it by the barrel and flung it out the window without even leaving the car, SpURit not very far from the bank, but into deep water where it hit with no splash and was gone in an instant.

"Maybe that'll change his luck," 1 said. And 1 felt better about Danny for having the gun out of the car, as ifhe was safer now, in less danger of ruining his life and other people's, too.

W

hen we had sat there for a minute or two, Arlene said, "Did he ever cry?

When you two were sitting in the kitchen? 1 wondered about that."

"No," 1 said. "He was scared. But 1 don't blame him for that."

"What did he say?" And she looked as if the subject interested her now, whereas before it hadn't.

"He didn't say too much. He said he loved you, which 1 knew anyway."

Arlene looked out the side window at the river.

There were still traces of fog that had not burned off in the sun. Maybe it was 8:00 in the morning.

You could hear the interstate back behind us, trucks going east at high speed. ''I'm not real-unhappy that Danny's out of the picture now. 1 have to say that," Arlene said. "I should be more, 1 guess, sympathetic. It's hard to love pain if you're me, though."

"It's not really my business," 1 said. And 1 truly did not think it was or ever would be. It was not where my life was leading me, 1 hoped.

"Maybe if I'm drunk enough someday I'll tell you about how we got apart," Arlene said. She opened the glove box and got out a package of cigarettes and closed the latch with her foot.

"Nothing should surprise anyone, though, when the sun goes down. I'll just say that. It's all melodrama." She thumped the pack against the heel of her hand and put her feet up on the dash.

And 1 thought about poor Danny then, being

frisked and handcuffed out in the yard of the jail and being led away to become a prisoner, like a piece of useless machinery. 1 didn't think anyone could blame him for anything he ever thought or said or became after that. He could die in jail and we would still be outside and free. "Would you tell me something if! asked you?" Arlene said, opening her package of cigarettes. "Your word's worth something, isn't it?"

"To me it is," 1 said.

She looked over at me and smiled because that was a question she had asked me before and an answer I had said. She reached her hand across the car seat and squeezed my hand, then looked down the gravel road to where the Clark Fork went north' and the receding fog had changed the colors of the trees and made them greener and the moving water a darker shade of blue-black.

"What do you think when you get in bed with me every night? 1don't know why 1want to know that.

Ijust do," Arlene said. "It seems important to me."

And in truth 1did not have to think about that at all, because 1 knew the answer, and had thought about it already, had wondered, in fact, if it was in my mind because of the time in my life it was, or because a former husband was involved, or because 1 had a daughter to raise alone, and no one else 1 could be absolutely sure of.

"I just think," 1 said, "here's another day thal's gone. A day I've had with you. And now it's over."

"There's some loss in that, isn't there?" Arlene nodded at me and smiled.

"I guess so," 1 said.

"It's not so all-bad though, is it? There can be a next day."

"That's true," 1 said.

"We don't know where any of this is going, do we?" she said, and she squeezed my hand tight again.

"No," 1 said. And 1 knew that was not a bad thing at all, not for anyone, in any life.

"You're not going to leave me for some other woman, now, are you? You're still my sweetheart. â&#x20AC;˘ I'm not crazy am I?" "I never thought that," 1 said.

"It's your hole card, you know," Arlene said.

"You can't leave twice. Danny proved that." She smiled at me again.

And 1 knew she was right about that, though 1 did not want to hear about Danny anymore for a while. He and 1 were not alike. Arlene and 1 had nothing to do with him. Though 1 knew, then, how you became a criminal in the world and lost it all.

Somehow and for no apparent reason, your decisions got tipped over and you lost your hold. And one day you woke up and you found yourself in the very situation you said you would never ever be in, and you did not know what was most important to you anymore. And after that it was all over. And 1 did not want that to happen to me, did not, in fact, think it ever would. 1 knew what love was about. It was about not giving trouble or inviting it. It was about not leaving a woman for the thought of another one. It was about never being in that place you said you'd never be in. And it was not about being alone. Never that. Never that.

D

THE BUSH CABINET After Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1861, he almost gave up his office and went back home to Illinois when he realized he would have to handle all of his administration's personnel appointments, trying to get the right person in the right position at the right time. And that was a much simpler time with relatively few positions tofill. Today, there are more than 1,500 high-level appointments to name in the cabinet, subcabinet, the federal judiciary, diplomatic corps, and the military and regulatory agencies alone. The clearance procedures are ever more complicated as well. When Pre!!ident Lyndon Johnson was elected in 1964, it took seven weeks for a potential appointee to be cleared; President Reagan's

appointees had to wait three-and-a-ha!fmonths and now some of President Bush's nominees have had to wait up to four months for their clearances. Not only are they investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation but they must also submit a disclosure form listing all assets, liabilities and other financial data for review by the White House counsel; allow their tax records to be perused; file a conflict of interest form; and finally submit a confidential form for the White House dealing with personal questions, finances, past associations and other matters that might create future embarrassments to the President.

Following are profiles of President Bush's cabinet officers:

"Bush's appointments reflect a quest for political balance, an attempt to meet the expectations of different and sometimes competing interest groups and ideologies and a desire for geographical, racial, ethnic, and female representation."

Carl M. Brauer author of Presidential Transitions:

Eisenhower

Throu/(h Reo/?an.

James Baker

Nicholas Brady Secretary of the,Treasury

James Baker, 58, a close friend of and adviser to President Bush over the past 30 years, was a leading political strategist and economic policymaker for more than seven years in the Reagan Administration. Formerly Reagan's chief of staff and treasury secretary, Baker is known for his political acumen and superb management skills. He has been called the "ultimate pragmatist," more interested in results than ideology.

Nicholas Brady, 58, is also known as a pragmatist. He continues in the job he had in the Reagan Administration after lalJles Baker resigned to run Bush's campaign President. He also is a close friend of and adviser to the President. Before entering the cabinet, Brady served an appointed term in the U.S. Senate and was chosen by President Reagan to investigate the 1987 stock-market crash.

Richard Cheney

Manuel Lujan

Secretary of Defense

Secretary of the Interior

Richard Cheney, 48, has been a six-term Republican Congressman from the state of Wyoming. He is a conservative who gets along well with colleagues in both parties.

One of the most influential Democrats on defense matters has called him "a man of honor and integrity." During the Ford Administration, he was President Ford's chief of staff. He is also a longtime friend of President Bush. .---

Manuel Lujan, 60, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the second-ranking Republican on the House Interior and Insular Affairs committee and the ranking member of the committee's Energy and Environment subcommittee.

Following his appointment, he said in a press conference that he is committed to the national park system and would preserve that heritage.

Robert Mosbacher, 61, a businessman who served as finance chairman in Bush's election campaign, is one of the few Bush appointees with no previous government experience. As commerce secretary, he will playa major role in implementing tough new trade laws designed to open foreign markets to U.S. goods. He brings with him a reputation as a hard-charging, successful businessman.

S~

CIayton Y eu tter

Elizabeth Dole

"36'6

Richard Thornburgh Attorney General

;yg r-!1r-1-

g'1.~

Secretary of Agriculture

Richard Thornburgh, 56, has a reputation Clayton Yeutter, 58, the U.S. Trade Repreas a "tough-minded crime buster" and is sentative in the Reagan Administration ""~ely acknowledged as a "prosecutor's from 1985 through 1988, first joined the . .:secutor." He was appointed attorney Department of Agriculture in 1970 and general in the last months of the Reagan four years later became assistant secretary Administration and was one of Bush's first for international affairs. Yeutter (rhymes appointees after the election. He was for- with fighter) owns a lOO-hectare cattle and merly governor of Pennsylvania and a suc- maize ranch in his home state of Nebraska, cessful prosecutor of organized crime and and holds a doctorate degree in agricul. tural economics. drug traffickers.

Elizabeth Dole, 52, has served in five previous administrations dating back to 1966, most recently as transportation secretary under President Reagan. Earlier, after earning a degree at Harvard Law School, she held positions in two Presidents' offices of consumer affairs before being appointed to a seven-year term on the Federal Trade Commission. Her husband, Robert, is the Senate Republican leader.

Louis Sullivan, 55, has been the president of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also a physician and medical researcher who is known for his studies of nutritional anemias and sickle-cell disease. In announcing his appointment, Bush said, "I have known Lou Sullivan for many years; he has had a long and extremely distinguished career in medicine academia and public health."

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Samuel Skinner, 50, has served since 1984 as chairman of Chicago's Regional Transit Authority, which operates commuter rail and bus lines for 2.4 million passengers daily. A former U.S. attorney with <;t pilot's license, Skinner stressed that "safety must always be our number one priority," at a press briefing following his appointment.

He also committed himself to upgrading 067 the U.S. aviation system¡

81

_

Jack Kemp

Lauro Cavazos, 62, came to the education department from his post as president of Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, in the waning days of the Reagan Administration.

He has been continued by President Bush.

Cavazos is known for his work on behalf of Hispanics and other minorities, particularly his efforts to curb high school drop! outs among these groups. He is th.e first Hispanic to occupy a U.S. cabinet position.

Edward Derwinski

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Jack Kemp, 53, has been a dynamic and innovative Republican Congressman for the past 18 years. He has a long record of favoring free-enterprise solutions to problems without relying on government funds.

A pet proposal of Kemp's has been the establishment of "enterprise zones" in which business development is encouraged by tax abatement and other incentives, such as cheaper land.

James D. Watkins, 61, was selected to this post precisely because he is an expert on nuclear energy. As Bush said in announcing the appointment, "I am committed to solving the problems that exist within our atomic energy-defense complex. I am sure that with Jim Watkins by my side, we are going to do just that." Watkins was among those who developed' nuclear-powered submarines.

Edward Derwinski, 63, is the first secretary of this newly created cabinet office, which was only established last month. He served in the House of Representatives from 1959 to 1983. Most recently he had been under secretary of state for security assistance, science and technology. He served in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946 and is an active member of several war veterans groups.

'd~q,I',~~~>7CJ .'

A montage

by SPK Gupta, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1988, 341 pp, Rs 125.

A Review by MURIEL

W ASI

ewgreat men have been as well researched and written about as Mahatma Gandhi.

Yet Apostle John and Gandhi still manages to add to the many dimensions of a personality that seems to grow with time. The purpose of this book is not, however, to add to what already exists in abundance, but to throw light on a disciple of Gandhi rather than the master.

Then again, S.P.K. Gupta's aim is not just to reveal the influence that Gandhi had on John Haynes Holmes, a minister of the Community Church of New York, but to document how Holmes spread the Mahatma's message with missionary zeal in America.

Gupta's book-or "montage" as he chooses to call it on the cover-has been many years in the making as the author painstakingly collected from different sources the correspondence between the master and his "apostle." In fact, as Gupta relates in his introduction, Holmes himself had' been unable to collect all the correspondence during his lifetime.

Although the story of Apostle John and Gandhiis based largely on these letters (with Gandhi addressing the minister usually as "Dear Friend," while Holmes's form of address changed from the formal "Dear Mr. Gandhi" to "Dear Mahatma" and "Dear Gandhiji"), Gupta takes as his starting point Holmes's discourse to a New York audience on April 10, 1921. The preannounced subject of his talk"Who Is the Greatest Man in the World Today?"-had attracted a curious crowd as Holmes knew it would (which is why he had decided to hire a theater auditorium rather than speak in his church building which could only accommodate 800). Holmes's answer to the question he had posed surprised and mystified most in the crowd-Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Commenting about the reaction to Holmes's "audacious declaration," Gupta writes, "Few among [the congregation] had any previous knowledge of Gandhiji's life and career to appreciate and share Holmes's conviction. Nor did the press in the United Sfates pay much attention to the sermon ... [which], however, marked the beginning of the American discovery of Gandhi."

Holmes's own discovery of Gandhi had begun at a time when he was in a state of "perturbation."

Holmes's pacifist, antiwar views, Gupta informs us in a few brief pages that pack the minister's background, were shared by

F

his congregation at the Unitarian Church but not by the Unitarian establishment or the American press and public who dubbed him a traitor. Backed by his congregation, however, he changed the nature and the name of the church to "an authentic undenominational community church for all lovers and servants of mankind." On January 13, 1919, it was renamed the Community Church QfNew York.

Some months later, a fire destroyed the church.

It was around this time that he started reading about Gandhi. "Instantly," he was to say later, "I seemed to be alive-my vision clear, my mind at peace, my heart reassured .... Before I knew it, the supreme moment of my life had come.

[Gandhi] was everything I believed but hardly dared to hope. He was a dream come true."

Holmes started talking about Gandhi, writing about him-and writing to him.

His attachment to Gandhi began in 1921, long before he had the opportunity to meet the Mahatma. And his steadfast loyalty to Gandhi through the years is striking. Through it all, the connection is one based fundamentally on the pacifist ideal, and the.recognition that Gandhi was not a pragmatist' but stood for an unshakable principle.

The attachment is the more striking because Holmes was a committed Christian who was constantly aware that it wodd take time for the American public of the 1930s to attune itself to Gandhi's cultural background and his unorthodox views on life. Yet for Holmes, who was always identifiably American, there appears to have been no obstacle to the understanding of the Mahatma and his teachings.

One of the strongest impressions that this book makes and communicates is the parallel between Christ and his beloved disciple, John, who never doubted or denied his master; and Gandhi and John Haynes Holmes.

There is something deeply touching about -Holmes's unwavering faith in Gandhi, his long, full, reverential correspondence with the great leader between 1926 and 1948, the consistent hard work that Holmes did, preaching and writing, to make Gandhi known and accepted in America, and the ecstasy of his first meeting with the Mahatma in 1931.

When he heard that the Mahatma was coming to London for the Round Table Conference, he himself made a journey from the United States to London to meet Muriel Lester in whose East End slum settlement, Kinglsey Hall, the Mahatma was to stay. Writes Gupta, "He told her, 'I will be a busboy, a dishwasher, a garbage man, if only you will let me in to see and talk with Gandhi.'" However, what Holmes did not know was that Gandhi had already made

arrangements to meet him on this trip.

Gupta's description of the Holmes-Gandhi meetings in London is limited to less than four pages, but the author rightly has considered this an important enough part of the Holmes saga to make it a complete chapter, "The Conqueror of England." Holmes met Gandhi for the last time in New Delhi, a few weeks before the Mahatma's assassination on January 30, 1948.

In a chapter titled "Assassination and After," Gupta details Holmes's anguished reaction to the Mahatma's death: "I stood as though in a daze, unable even to think. I seemed paralyzed and did not move. Slowly, li'ke coming out of the ether on an operating table, I recovered consciousness." The minister then speaks to his secretary, runs in agony to his wife. "A strange thing happened. I began to cry, and found to my amazement and alarm that I could not stop."

And all that day he wept in his heart for the Mahatma.

The chapter, after detailing Holmes's sermons on Gandhi's death and his letter to Devadas Gandhi, moves on to his life after the assassination, ending with his own death on April 3, 1964.

Apostle John and Gandhi is addressed to the common reader in any part of the Englishspeaking world, and is simply and agreeably written. About a third is devoted to John Haynes Holmes's growing awareness of all that Gandhi was to mean to him and is especially interesting as biography. To the historian of this beperiod, however, it is the correspondence tween Holmes and Gandhi, about 80 pages, that provides an intriguing contrast in personality.

Gandhi was clearly the shrewder and more demanding of the two men; Holmes, the more impressionable and articulate. The appendixes and textual notes are substantial, but it is a pity that an index was not included to simplify reference. However, this is a small omission when weighed against the painstaking compilation of textual notes, that make the book a most valuable addition to Gandhian literature.

D Muriel Wasi, a former deputy educational adviser in the Ministry of Education, is a Delhibased educationist and writer.

The Hubert H. Humphrey North-South Fellowship, which offers mid-career professionals from developing countries a year of study in the United States, was started in 1978 to honor the memory of America's fonner Vice President, who was a lifelong advocate of promoting international understanding. In this article the author describes his experiences as a Humphrey Fellow.

Above: Hubert Humphrey is seen with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Ambassador Chester Bowles during his 1966 visit to New Delhi.

Left: T.J. George (extreme left) is seen with some of the other 1987-88 Humphrey Fellows from South Asia.

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My HumphreyYear Every year, the Hubert H. Humphrey North-South Fellowship, which is now in its 11th year, offers an exciting opportunity to some 150 mid-career professionals from developing countries-a year of "study and related practical professional experiences" in the United States. The fellowship provide's them with "a shared experience of American society and culture and current American approaches to the fields in which they work."

As a fellow of the program in 1987-88, I studied at Boston University, visited various government and nongovernment agencies to observe how they function, attended the joint annual conference of the American Economic Association and worked briefly for two American banks. But this one-sentence summing up of my Humphrey year cannot reveal the wealth of experience and knowledge I gained as I studied, worked and traveled around the United States.

When I was awarded the fellowship (funded by the U.S. Information Service and administered in this country by the U.S. Educational Foundation in India, 12 Hailey Road, New Delhi 110001) I was working in the job that I still hold today-deputy manager in the finance department of the National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd. (NTPe). I have an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and am an associate member of the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India.

With this background, my area of interest was naturally finance and I was delighted when the fellowship gave me the chance to attend Boston University to take courses in international finance, money and capital markets, investments, corporate finance, futures and options and organizational consulting. I also did a management development program. An exciting by-product of the fellow-

ship was the unique opportunity it provided to interact with fellows from other countries.

In fact, when I arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, in August 1987, about two weeks before the start of the fellowship, among the first friends I made were the other fellows who were going to study at Boston University.

There were 13 of us; the others were from Argentina, Benin, China, the Ivory Coast, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru (which had two representatives), Portugal, South Africa, Turkey and Uruguay.

Of course, we weren't the only Humphrey Fellows. There were 147 fellows that year from some 90 countries in 15 American universities. Each participating university has a Humphrey coordinator who supervises the program and provides assistance in matters ranging from the academic to the personal.

The program for us Boston fellows began with a two-day orientation at Sargent Camp

in New Hampshire, a 340-hectare recreational area and conference center owned by Boston University. This was our chanct: to get acquainted and learn how the fellowship functions. Each fellow was assigned a professor as an academic adviser who would help him or her decide which courses they should take, where to go for professional visits and also to provide contacts that would be useful during the program. My adviser was David McClain, chairman of the finance department in Boston University's School of Management.

The program was carefully structured to take in studies, professional experiences, traveling and regular interaction with other fellows. All the 147 of us met twice during the fellowship period-at special workshops in Washington, D.C., and Minnesota. But the fellows at Boston University met more regularly at the Humphrey seminar held every Wednesday at the university.

The Washington, D.C., Workshop: Held in November, soon after our fellowship began, the workshop helped us understand the working of U.S. government agencies, the American press and international agencies such as the World Bank and UNICEF. I was particularly interested in the visit to the World Bank since NTPC is the largest single recipient of World Bank" assistance (amounting to $4,000 million since 1976). I met several of the staff members dealing with India, particularly in the energy sector.

For our visits to government offices, we / were encouraged to select tho~~ that concerned our field of work. I went to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is the federal agency responsible for ensuring compliance with the legislation regulating issues and trading of securities.

But it was not all work. There were lunchtime tours of the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, and dinners with prominent Washingtonians.

Frances Humphrey Howard spoke to us about her_ brother-Vice President Hubert Humphrey-whose brainchild this program was and his commitment to public affairs. We spent a memorable evening chatting with Alex Haley, author of Roots, and his attorney brother, George.

The Humphrey Seminars: These luncheon meetings held every Wednesday, were presided over by Boston University professors who spoke to us about different aspects of the .

United States-social work, public health, education, law. The talk I found most interesting was by Peter Berger, director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, who reviewed the studies being conducted by the

institute on the influence of culture on economic activity in several countries. The institute has also analyzed whether the cultural factors that promote economic activity in a certain country are as effective when transplanted to a less-developed country. The Chinese, Berger pointed out, had been successful in their entrepreneurial activities in several parts of Southeast Asia, but their familymanagement style prevented Chinese businesses from growing beyond a certain size.

Referring to India, Berger talked about how Punjab has been equally successful with its Green Revolution and its industrial activities. He also spoke about the Marwaris and Gujaratis as two of India's important entrepreneurial communities.

Berger added that the institute soon planned to conduct a study on the Gujaratis.

Some Wednesdays, the fellows gave talks and answered questions about their countries.

I was asked about the caste system, the current problems in Punjab, the importance of religion in India and Rajiv Gandhi's prime ministership.

Professional Visits: I attended the joint annual conference of the American Economic Association/ American Finance Association in Chicago. I was delighted at the chance to hear former ambassador to India, Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, and Nobel Prize winners in economics, Robert Solow (1987); James Buchanon (1986); and Paul Samuelson (1970). I also visited the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, one of the world's largest options markets. Watching the hectic activity in the trading of financial and commodity futures and option contracts there was almost as exciting as another of my Chicago experiences-getting caught in a snowstorm.

My other professional visits were in Washington, D.C., New York and Boston. In New York I saw the working of such top banks as Citibank and Chase Manhattan. In Boston I worked briefly with a Massachusetts state agency responsible for state funding for construction and maintenance of public housing.

Professional Affiliation: In the course of the Humphrey year, each fellow is required to complete at least one affiliation of not less than four weeks with an organization in a field related' to his or her work. I managed two affiliations-with a bank in Boston and a money-center bank in New York. I went to the Boston bank one day a week during the entire second semester and familiarized myself with their trading and marketing activities for securities. I worked on a model for pricing certain securities; this gave me the opportunity to learn about some of the practical and

theoretical problems involved.

After the close of the term in May, I went to New York and worked for five weeks in the investment banking department of a moneycenter bank. This, like the Boston experience, gave me an invaluable insight into the fun,ctioning style of American financial organizations. At both places I was fascinated to see how computers were used to analyze data instantly and constantly. In fact, several fellows used the Humphrey year and the chance of being in the United States to increase their knowledge of computers.

The Minnesota Workshop: The Humphrey' year culminated in a gathering at Minnesota for a workshop during which we discussed how the fellowship had helped us and, more important, how we planned to utilize and adapt our new expertise and experience in our countries. We also discussed the need for regional groups of Humphrey Fellowship alumni, since the idea of an international alumni had proved impractical over the years.

The South Asian regional group, which met in Kathmandu last month to mark the completion of a decade ofth,e Humphrey Fellowship, comprises alumni from Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Alumni wanting details of our plans and activities can write to Ms. Sheila Sangwan, C-202 Curzon Road Apartments, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001.

At the end of the Minnesota workshop-inevitably including several dinners and lunches-we were given certificates signed by President Reagan.

Back home in India-after a brief holiday in America with my wife, who had spent most of the fellowship year with me-I am con- . stantly asked what the fellowship has meant to me. It is difficult to explain the depth of the professional and personal growth I have experienced in that one year. It gave me a chance to re-examine my own attitudes and ways of working and question what I may earlier have taken for granted.

Perhaps one of the best things about the Humphrey Fellowship is the flexibility it allows. The organizers are pleasantly open to ideas, even to the extent ofletting fellows take on quick courses that may not have anything to do with their profession. I registered for courses in sailing and music appreciation. On the other hand, there are fellows who take no courses at all and spend the whole year in professional affiliations.

It is this approach to knowledge-an approach that encourages learning through freedom-that makes the Humphrey Fellowship something very special.

D

torian ideal of woman as natural healer and guardian of the home into an accepted paying profession." Even the male~doctors applauded-at first. "What men have done for the development of science, [women] will do for suffering humanity," one 19thcentury male physician wrote.

Elizabeth Blackwell's admission to medical school had been a fluke-the male students at Geneva Medical College in New York had approved her application, thinking it was a joke. She graduated in 1849, becoming the first American woman to receive a medical degree.

The first women's medical college in America was established in 1850, and soon women opened hospitals and clinics to provide training unavailable in the all-male establishment.

Blackwell, along with her sister Emily, also a physician, and Dr. Marie Zakrezewska, founded the first hospital run entirely by women.

By 1900, nearly 7,000 women, including 115 black women, were practicing physicians in America. Although many of the black women were from prominent families, one notable exception was Eliza Anna Grier, a former slave from Tennessee, who took 14 years to work her way through college and medical school.

In contrast to their colleagues in medicine, the first women scientists in the United States did not have access t~ graduate degree programs until the 1870s. Yet their accomplishments were equally remarkable.

A prime example was Maria Mitchell, the first important woman scientist in 19thcentury America. Born in Massachusetts in 1818, Mitchell learned astronomy from her father. As a librarian in Nantucket, Mitchell had access to advanced astronomical texts and, in 1847, she discovered a comet.

The event made her a celebrity.

Fame, however, did not at first improve her job opportunities. Mitchell continued.

In 1886 Mary Jane Rathbun became the first woman scientist hired by the Smithsonian Institution. This photograph was taken sometime in the 1920s.

to work as a librarian, assist her father at his observatory and perform computational work for the U.S. Coast Guard and Geodetic Survey. A breakthrough came in 1865 when she was invited to join the faculty of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, thus becoming one of America's first women science professors.

In 1848 she became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In seeking access to education and employment, women scientists, like women physicians, stressed their special qualities.

"While we cannot maintain that in everything woman is man's equal, yet in many things her patience, perseverance and method make her his superior," wrote Williamina Fleming, an erstwhile housekeeper and one of the many female astronomical assistants who worked for Edward Pickering of the Harvard College Observatory. Fleming's own ascent to the stars came in 1881, when Pickering became so upset with a male assistant's incompetence that he declared, "My maid could do a better job." Fleming later became a leading astronomer.

Jobs that demanded a woman's "superior" qualities came to be known as "women's work." Says historian Margaret W. Rossiter, "Often they were tedious and low-paying. But women had so few other opportunities that they grabbed them."

Some women, like Mary Jane Rathbun, made the most of "women's work." Born in 1860 in Buffalo, New York, she was fascinated as a child by the fossils that she and her brother Richard discovered in the family stone quarries. In 1881, she began accompanying Richard to the marine laboratories at Woods Hole on Cape Cod, where she met and impressed Spencer F. Baird, the head of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Baird hired her in 1886 as the first woman scientist at the Smithsonian's natural history museum. There, Rathbun began cataloging in her precise Spencerian script the flood of marine life descending on the museum from international explorations.

For years, she ran the marine invertebrate department, although Richard was the official head. Rathbun became an expert on crabs, describing more than 1,000 new species and subspecies. The dedicated zoologist resigned in 1914 so her salary could be used to hire a male assistant. She continued to work without pay for 25. years.

By 1920, women were students in many of America's most prestigious universities and medical schools. Sometimes "creative philanthropy" opened doors.

Rossiter writes in Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940. The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, for example, allowed women into its medical school in 1893 only after Mary Garrett, heiress to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad fortune, raised $307,000 to build the school on the condition that women'be admitted.

But their struggles were far from over, the Smithsonian's Deborah Warner says.

Ironically, the very institutions that had educated women would not hire them for jobs on their faculties.

Many women's colleges closed in the 1920s, and enrollment of women in medicine and the sciences plummeted as the women's rights movement also began to wane. Enrollments did not substantially climb again for 50 years. Today, more than¡ 36 percent of those attending American medical schools are women, and women earn 25 percent of all doctoral degrees in science and engineering. Women scientists in America, however, have more than twice the unemployment rate of male scientists, and their salaries are only 71 percent of their male counterparts ..

A century ago, when progress for American women in the sciences seemed slow, Maria Mitchell did not despair over her colleagues' everitual role in history. Instead, she urged them on, saying: "In my younger days, I used to say, 'How much women need exact science,' but...I have now said, 'How much science needs women.'"

0 About the Author: Madeleine Jacobs is a writer

with the Smithsonian News Service in Washington, D.C.

ON

THE LIGHTER SIDE

Reprinted from National Review by permission of Malcolm Hancock.

"There's afiver in it for you beat the other elevator."

if you

Reprinted with permission from The Saturday Evening Post Society, a division of BFL and MS. Inc. Š 1987.

"You're a vet. Don't you know what it is?"

Clockwise from above: Swollen Stream at Shinnecock, circa 1895, oil on canvas; In the Studio,

1892, oil on canvas; Gathering Flowers, circa 1897, pastel on canvas; In the Studio (Interior: Young Woman Standing at a Table), 1892 or 1893, pastel on paperboard; Did You Speak To Me?, circa 1897, oil on canvas.

Dreams¡ ~ of Summer

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by MARCIA 1. WADE

William Merritt Chase's pa~ntings of Shinnecock captured forever' on canvas the pure essence of summer.

A

s a group they are the best paintings he ever made," Nicolai Cikovsky, curator of American art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., says of the oils and pastels William Merritt Chase painted at his summer home and studio in Shinnecock, Long Island, New York. "Never before and never after did Chase sustain the same consistent level of achievement of the Shinnecock years." Twenty-four of the artist's works were on display at the National Gallery recently in "William Merritt Chase: Summers at Shinnecock," sponsored by Bell Atlantic, as the first part of a three-exhibition series featuring three of America's greatest Impressionist painters. (The other two are Chi Ide Hassam and John Twachtman.) This was the first exhibition ever to focus exclusively on Chase's Shinnecock period.

The life captured in these paintings is an idyllic one: Chase's daughters gather flowers, pick berries and play games; his wife reads, suns, strolls. "He caught the spirit of the place and the season so perfectly," observes Cikovsky, who organized the exhibition with Terra Museum of American Art Curator D. Scott Atkinson, "that we seem to feel the warmth of the sun and the breezes that move the clouds and stir up the grass, hear the lapping of waves on the beach, smell the salt air and the aroma of flowers, and squint at the brightness of the light reflected from white dresses."

Along with the pastoral Long Island landscape, depicted in paintings such as Shinnecock Hill (1892) and Gathering Flowers (circa 1897), Chase found inspiration in his home and studio, designed by his friend Stanford White. These interiors, Cikovsky points out, "are every bit as beautiful as his landscapes, and in certain ways deeper and more complex as art, more layered in meaning, richer in reference and more revealing of Chase himself." Included in "Summers at Shinnecock" were such well-known works as In the Studio (1895), A Friendly Call (circa 1892) and Shinnecock Hall (circa 1893).

Born in 1849 in Williamsburg (later renamed Ninevah),

Morning at the Breakwater, Shinnecock, circa 1897, oil on canvas.

Indiana, Chase displayed an early creative promise that was carefully fostered by local artists in Indianapolis, where his family moved when he was 12. At the age of20, Chase went to New York, where he studied with portraitist Joseph O. Eaton and took classes at the National Academy of Design.

Two years later, in 1872, he departed for Munich to study at the Royal Academy. [n the six years he spent in Germany, the young painter came of age; he returned to the United States in 1878 determined to succeed as a serious artist.

Succeed he did. By the end of the 1880s Chase was acclaimed in critical circles for his versatility and wideranging subject matter. A dashing figure who dressed in spats, chamois gloves, and silk hats and scarves, sporting a carnation in his lapel, Chase became nearly as prominent for his colorful personality and his passionate espousal of artistic ideals as for his work itself.

Chase came to Long Island in 1891 to direct the Shinnecock Summer School of Art, the first important school of open-air painting in America. (Shinnecock is located at the eastern end of Long Island, 160 kilometers from New York City.) With Chase's reputation as one of America's foremost artists and teachers, the school was an immediate success, attr'acting more than 100 students each summer, including Rockwell Kent, Joseph Stella, Arthur B. Frost and Charles W. Hawthorne. While he devoted extraordinary time and energy to teaching, Chase's main work at Shinnecock was his own painting. "The Shinnecock years were the climax of Chase's artistic life," according to Cikovsky.

"During his summers there he painted with more freshness, feeling, and with greater power of observation, inspiration and conviction, than at any other time in his career."

Chase was "a self-made example of his generation's ideal of art," Cikovsky says. "Summers at Shinnecock" presented 0 an earlier America's glowing vision at its finest.

About the Author: Marcia J. Wade is on llie edilorial Horizon magazine, in Washinglon, D.C.

slalf of

Fecund Farming Although America's pre-eminent position in high technology is what commands attention all over the world, it is agriculture that still remains the backbone of the country.

The United States produces as much as half the world's soybean and maize, and from ten to 25 percent of its cotton, wheat, tobacco and vegetable oils.' One American farmer produces enough to feed himself and 74 others not only in his own country but around the world. Although several countries, such as India, have achieved self-sufficiency in f00d, thanks to the Green Revolution, almost onethird of U.S. cropland still grows foodgrains for export alone.

The success of U.S. agriculture is the result of the readiness of farmers to adopt new technology and other modern agricultural inputs such as fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides, which have helped improve productivity.

Since these chemicals are not only expensive but known to cause adverse effects on the soil and the environment, American scientists are turning to biotechnology to "engineer" plants that are hardier, less dependent on fertilizers, more productive, less prone to have disease, or be harmed by insects and the vagaries of nature.

Typical of American farmers is Lester Ewy (right center-in western hat; with him are his hired help). He works hard all year on his 810hectare farm (right, bottom) near Abbeyville in the state of Kansas, America's largest producer of winter wheat. During harvest time, Ewy works late into the day, often guiding his air-conditioned combine by the light of the setting sun (above).