May 1991

Supercomputers-Transforming A supercomputer can simulate graphic displays of complicated mathematical models. Recent supercomputers have become so good with their visualization abilities that scientists can actually see and predict things they would not have been able to do from an experiment.

For example, by feeding seemingly endless data about airstreams, updrafts and downdrafts, wind directions, wind speeds, their heights, negatively and positively charged particles, wall clouds, and numerous other esoteric details into a supercomputer, meteorologists can obtain from the machine a three-dimensional picture of what a severe thunderstorm looks like in the various stages of its formation and in its final aspect. One such computer-generated storm is seen in the picture above.

Today, supercomputers are widely used

for weather forecasting and analyzing weather data. But their use is becoming increasingly common in other areas too.

They can efficiently manage industrial inventories, develop new pharmaceuticals, help airlines in ticketing and maximizing aircraft utility, discover new sources of oil without the digging of experimental wells, design safer, more streamlined automobiles, aid defense planners, and even

the World predict the value of stocks and shares.

This is because supercomputers are built for one thing-speed. They make the incalculable calculable. These machines, performing as many as a thousand million operations a second, have enabled scientists to re-create in exacting detail what happens, for example, on the surface of the sun--ealculations that would tie up normal computers for months or years.

Even so, what has yet to be done with supercomputers thrills their enthusiasts more than what already has been achieved. According to Larry Smarr (left, standing in front of a Cray X-MP supercomputer), director of America's National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, the electronic behemoths "are destined to transform the workaday world as profoundly as the steam locomotive."

SPAN Every time someone says that the world is getting smaller, I feel like asking: Then why does it take so much time to get from one place to another? Of course, we do go farther and get to places quicker than we did years ago.

But in devising our systems of mobility, we seem to have outsmarted ourselves twice over.

Sitting in traffic jams while inhaling the toxic exhaust fumes of the car in front has become a daily ritual for millions of urban commuters around the world. Sitting on the airport tarmac waiting for clearance to take off, or . circling endlessly waiting for permission to land, has become commonplace for airplane travelers at major international airports, particularly in the United States. interThe woes and frustrations of travel-whether national or intracity-are now a topic of conversation almost as common as the weather. And like the quip about the weather, it sometimes seems that everyone talks about transportation, but no one does anything about it.

That, as that inveterate traveler, Mark Twain, said in a different context, is an exaggeration. Government agencies and private planners around the world struggle everyday to come up with solutions to our transportation problems. Some are high tech-high-speed trains and supersonic aircraft-and some are decidedly low techexpress commuter lanes reserved for vehicles with more than two passengers (to encourage car pooling). Cities from Calcutta to Washington have done a little of bothreversing the traffic flow on designated streets at different times of the day and constructing impressive underground metro systems. But Calcutta and Washington still choke up on traffic and no one is predicting any major improvements soon.

In this issue two articles examine what transportation experts are planning for the future. In the first article, Wilfred Owen, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C., discusses the promise of such technological breakthroughs as electric automobiles, magnetic levitation, and a hypersonic aircraft that will be able to fly halfway around the world in two hours. He also says such electronic media as the computer, the TV set, and the telephone will reduce the need for transportation by often eliminating the need for people to travel to conclaves, or even to the office.

In our second article, Thomas H. Floyd, Jr., a specialist in the international transfer of technology, discusses in detail a "kind of public transportation that will help restore balance to urban transportation." He calls it personal rapid transit, a system of individual cars that run along an intricate network of guideways and that provide origin-to-destination service without stops or transfers.

One can travel alone or with a small group of companions, as in a private automobile, control the time and direction of travel, and avoid the frustrations of confronting traffic jams or looking for parking space.

This may sound a bit like science fiction, but is well within the capabilities of modern technology. If we are not prepared to bring such innovation to our transportation systems, we are doomed to ever more wasteful (and polluting) hours waiting to get from one place to another on this deceptively shrinking planet we call home.

-L.J.B.

2 8

May!99!

A Commitment to the Land by Jeanne McDermott Martha Graham-Death of a Legend

by Anna KisselgoJJ

An Indian Remembers

by Sunil Kothari

11 Tiny Enterprises Can Mean Big l,Jusiness

by Hernando de Soto

16 A School for the Deaf

20 22 26 28

f

by Malini Seshadri

A Magic Mix by Judes Ziemba, Kathleen Roop, and Sally Wittenberg Can Movies Teach History? by Richard Bernstein Focus On...

The Ovshinsky Effect An Interview by George S. George and C.R. Prakash

32 Transportation Tomorrow Personalizing Public Transport

by Wilfred Owen

by Thomas H. Floyd, Jr.

39 On the Lighter Side

40

The Roots of Panic by Betsy Carpenter 42 Sounds From Cajun Country byJimandCarlottaAnderson Front cover: Among the pioneers whose music helped popularize the Cajun and zydeco rhythms of Louisiana was Clifton Chenier (1925-87). Story begins on page 42.

Back cover: Louis Kahn's per~pectives in crayon for the Yale University Art Gallery (above: view from the northwest; below: entrance). See inside back cover.

Publisher, Leonard J. Baldyga; Editor, Guy E. Olson Managing Editor, Himadri Dhanda; Associate Managing Editor, Krishan Gabrani; Senior Editor, ,Aruna Dasgupta; Copy 'Editors, A. Venkata Narayana, Snigdha Goswami; Editorial Assistants, Rocque Fernandes, Rashmi Goel; Photo Editor, Avinash Pasricha; Art Director, Nand Katyal; Associate Art Director, Kanti Roy; Artist, Hemant Bhatnagar; Production Assistant, Sanjay Pokhriyal; Circulation Manager. Y.P. Pandhi; Photographic Services: USIS Photographic Services Unit; Research Services: USIS Documentation Services; American Center Library, New Delhi.

Photographs: Front cover-© Philip Gould/Matrix. Inside front cover-National Center for Supercomputing Applications. 2 top-Ed Bauer. 9 top-Martha Swope; bottomMartha Graham Dance Company. IO--Courtesy Sunil Kothari. II-Carlos Bendezu, courtesy of Harper & Row Publishers. 22-23--eourtesy Columbia Pictures. 24-David Appleby, courtesy Orion Pictures Corp. 25-Peter Sorel, courtesy Paramount Corp. 26 bottom-Avinash Pasricha. 26 top, 27Ieft-R.K. Sharma. 32-Bruce Dale, © National Geographic Society. 37--eourtesy Thomas H. Floyd Jr., Advanced Transit Association.

42-43-© 1987Danny Turner. 46-47-Philip Gould. Inside back cover and back coverLouis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission except IBC bottom right by Avinash Pasricha.

Errata: The correct copyright notices for Claude McKay's poems and text excerpt. published in SPAN, March 1991, are: For" America" and" A.Memory of June": Copyright © 1981. Reprinted with the permission ofTwayne Publishers, a division ofG.K. Hall and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Poems by Claude McKay now published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. With kind pennission of Hope McKay Vinue.)

For "Home To Harlem"; Northeastern University Press. By kind permission of Hope McKay Virtue.

Published by the United States Inrormation Service, American Center, 24 KaSlurba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 3316841), on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U,S. Government. Use oj SPAN articles in other publications is eD:couraged,except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor. Price oj magazine. one year's subscription (12 issues) Rs. 30; single copy, Rs. 5.

D

ressed in jeans and sweatshirt, a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, Fred Kirschenmann looks like any other successful American farmer as he drives a grain wagon out to feed his pastured cattle. But he belongs to a new breed. Fifteen years ago, when his father suffered a mild heart attack, Kirschenmann quit his job as dean of Curry College, in Massachusetts, to run the 1,255-hectare farm near Windsor, North Dakota, where he had grown up. But he said he would return only if he could farm organically. Theodore Kirschenmann told his son that he would lose his shirt. As the father watched the farm maintain and increase not only its crop yields but its income, skepticism gave way to pride. "We would never go back to chemicals," he says now, his son's staunchest supporter.

"They ruin your soil."

Increased yields are not always a result of cutting down on chemicals, and many studies show that organic farms have lower yields. But the Kirschenmanns Reprinted from Copyright

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SmillwlII;al1

magaLint:.

1990 Jeanne McDermott.

avow the lower costs of their methods lea ve the farmers, as well as the soil. better off.

Walking through Kirschenmann's fields confirms the difference. Unlike the cracked, hardened soil that is found on many hrge farms, his fields feel soft and spongy, crumbling into black clods well aerated by earthworms. The soil structure, or tilth, IS so loose that Kirschenmann uses less fuel to plow the fields than his father had to use when he farmed conventionally.

"Organic farming does not mean simply farming without chemicals or fertilizers," explains Janet Kirschenmann, Fred's wife. "It means a commitment to the land."

Only a decade ago, the Kirschenmanns would have been dismissed as back-tothe-land crackpots or misguided zealots.

But then, only a decade ago, nearly everyone celebrated the productivity of American agriculture without asking what toll it took on the environment and human health'. To drive through the Iowa and Illinois Corn Belt at harvest time is to glimpse the overwhelming abundance of what has been called the richest farmland on Earth. For, as far as the eye can see, crops ripen, covering the land, encircling farm buildings, pushing against roadsides, washing over hills and valleys. But the utter domestication of the landscape hints at what has been sacrificed for this harvest of plenty. Forests have been shaved into mere windbreaks; marshes, swamps, and wetlands filled; birds and wildflowers all but banished.

Most disturbing are the transformations that escape the eye. In Iowa, soil erosion is so bad that half the state's topsoil is found in the Mississippi delta. In at least 34 states Dick Thompson (left) reaps the benefits of "sustainable" agriculture in his cornfield \I'ithout damaging the environment. His model farm (lar leli) in 101m is visited hy hundreds ofpeopleFom around the world.

Realizing that long-term use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides hampers soil regeneration without preventing crop pestilence, American farmers are increasingly turning to organic farming methods; they are using natural manures and resorting to crop rotation.

the groundwater, once regarded as inviolable, shows signs of contamination by fertilizers and pesticides. And a recent study by the U.S. National Cancer Institute found that farmers who handle herbicides face a sixfold risk of getting cancer of the lymphatic system.

These problems have not gone unnoticed by the tillers of the soil. Today American agriculture is poised on the edge of a revolution whose momentum astounds even its most ardent proponents. The group of farmers who are turning their backs on chemically intensive agriculture is so big and diverse that it has as many wings as a political party. At one end of the "alternative agriculture" spectrum are organic growers, an estimated one to two percent of America's 2.2 million farmers. An eclectic but longstanding group, they are united by the belief that synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides aren't good for the health of anyone or anything. Naturally derived fertilizers and pesticides, however, are not only acceptable but are actually good.

Instead of using agrichemicals, for example, Kirschenmann fertilizes with cow manure, plants winter cover crops to plow into the soil in the spring as a "green" manure, and rotates his crops on three-year, four-year, and five-year schedules to prevent pests from multiplying into crop-devastating numbers.

At the other end of the spectrum are low-input advocates. Motivated by the need to save money, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of American farmers have taken simple steps to reduce their use of chemicals. One is Donn Klor, who grows corn and soybeans on his 243-hectare farm in Buffalo, Illinois. He now uses half the herbicides he used five years ago, a feat accomplished largely when he stopped spraying and switched to a method of cultivation known as ridge-tilling. Instead of planting his crops on a flatly tilled field, he plants them in small ridges, and applies fertilizer and pesticide only to the ridge~ rather than over the entire field.

About the Author: Jeanne McDermott, a writer speciali::ing in science and technology, is based in Cambridge, Massachuserrs.

Between the two extremes is a fastgrowing, harder-to-define group of U.S. farmers who care about saving the environment as well as money but are prepared to use agrichemicals in sparing amounts. Dick Thompson, who has a 120-hectare diversified farm in Boone, Iowa, practices what many would call "sustainable" agriculture. Like organic farmers, Thompson relies on manure, cover crops, and crop rotation, but unlike organic farmers, he spreads a little potassium fertilizer on his land and will resort to herbicide if all else fails.

I

t the heart of these new practices is the notion that farmers must work with nature as an ally. Since the end of World War II, U.S. farmers have been taught to conquer nature. In the 1940s agricultural researchers were becoming experts in using chemicals against pests and weeds. Farms became food factories-the bigger the better.

Within a generation, the United States was feeding the world.

The quick success of big agriculture overshadowed the fact that the conquest of nature is ultimately a losing battle. "I had a devastating experience with the indiscriminate use of pesticides," explains Bob Bergland, the farmer who served as President Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Agriculture. In the mid-1950s, insects destroyed the clover crop on Bergland's family farm in northern Minnesota. "I called an extension agent and he ordered an application of DOT by airplane, which I did," Bergland said. "The next day, nothing was living. No bees, no birds. I said, 'This is unnatural.' Then, the insects migrated back in. The extension agent said, 'Spray again.' The third time the insects came back, I didn't spray. When I started to question the authorities, they said, 'This is all we know.'''

That experience was one reason why, in 1977, Bergland established a division within the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study how organic farmers managed to survive without chemicals. "I came under heavy attack from the chemical companies. They never wanted those questions asked," says Bergland. When

John Block took over as President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Agriculture in 1981, he declared organic farming a "dead end." But by the end of the decade, the deterioration of the rural environment had become impossible for farmers to ignore. In 1945 American farmers lost 3.5 percent of their corn crop to insects. In 1988, with pesticide use increased a thousandfold, farmers lost 12 percent.

And unfortunately by that time, many serious agricultural pests had become resistant to one or more pesticides.

Consumers were also becoming concerned about the use of chemicals on the farm. Following a 1989 report critical of pesticide use, urban dwellers too began to wonder if modern agriculture was a hazard to their health, and the demand for organic produce skyrocketed.

It seems unlikely that more than a small minority of American farmers will go completely organic. It is too hard to do in the absence of livestock, nutrient-rich soil, or cool climates-and pesticide-free foods can be grown with other methods.

But those who do farm organically deserve recognition as pioneers. It would be hard to find a better example of today's organic farmer in America than Kirschenmann.

While catching up on machinery repair-he has got six tractors, two combines, a loader, manure spreader, plows, rotary hoe, rod weeder, and lots more-he laughs at the idea, often voiced by representatives of the agrichemical industry, that organic farming means turning the clock back. His grandfather, who once farmed several kilometers away, didn't have this fleet of modern technology, but, more important, he lacked his grandson's mindset. "My grandfather was a miner of the soil. He broke up a piece of sod, farmed it for six years, and then moved on to the next. He spread manure on the nearest field to get rid of it.

Nobody thought of soil as a resource."

Kirschenmann farms organically because he wants to be a good steward of the land. "If we manage the land accurately," he says, "we have what amounts to zero soil erosion." Indeed, a Washington State University comparison of an organic farm with a conventional farm found that

the erosion rate on the organic farm was slow enough for the topsoil to regenerate itself. But benefits to the soil go beyond simply keeping it in place. So rich is the soil in decayed organic matter that the tilth is less compact than soil on conventional farms. Consequently, Kirschenmann does not need the power of a four-wheel-drive tractor, and that in turn means he avoids further compaction. Soil that is rich in organic matter also holds moisture better, a necessity in the arid northern plains of the United States, and a natural shield against the drought of 1988-89.

However, Kirschenmann's success depends on more than just good dirt. It depends on crop diversity rather than endless monocultures.

His operation is the Image of a classic farmstead, with 100 yearling steers pastured on the ridge past a pond, and small fields that checkerboard the rolling prairie-no one field seems to be planted in the same crop as any other.

"Our insurance is built into our diversity," Kirschenmann says. "The real economic advantage comes in the way our risks are spread out." He gets a premium for selling his crops under the organic label. "If the premium disappeared, we would not change," he explains, echoing a sentiment repeated by many organic farmers. "The vast majority of farmers go to the bank in the spring and borrow $30,000 to $50,000 for herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers," he says.

Kirschenmann has two major expenses each year: Hybrid seeds and the energy to run his equipment. In the past ten years, he hasn't borrowed any money to run the farm. And that's the way he likes it.

It is a big leap for a conventional farmer to become organic. According to Dan Frieberg of the Iowa Fertilizer and Chemical Dealers' Association, most farmers look to fertilizer and agrichemical dealers for expertise. But farmers with severely compacted soil or polluted wells are finding that their local authorities do not have all the answers.

Donn Klor discovered the hard way that he had overused chemicals. In 1983 he and his wife Susan logged 80- to 90hour weeks, relying on herbicides that didn't seem to work, running the tractor

on soil so compacted that rain puddled on top of it. Reluctantly, they talked about taking jobs in the city nearby and farming in the evenings. Then the person they had hired to apply herbicide missed a field.

They came "to find that the field with no herbicides didn't have any weed problems," says Klor.

The Klors' farm lies in the prosperous flats of central Illinois, and, although smaller, looks pretty much like everyone else's. Klor points out the difference: His crops grow not on a flat field but on small ridges, allowing him to target fertilizers and pesticides where they count-the seed bed, not the rows in between. Thanks to ridge-tilling and to killing weed seedlings in spring with a rotary hoe, Klor's costs for weed control dropped from $75 a hectare to about $37. As a result of constant testing of his soil, his fertilizer costs have dropped too.

"It's so easy to eliminate 50 percent of the cost," says Klor, one of a small group of Illinois farmers to do so. He wants to cut still more. To his great surprise, he looks to the organic farmers for money-saving ideas.

T

he small changes made by the Klors look radical to the agrichemical industry. Last year it sold $10,000 million worth of fertilizers and $4,000 million worth of pesticides to American farmers; it does not welcome losing even a little of what has become big business. In California alone, the industry seeks to raise $16 million to combat a referendum that would ban many pesticides and fertilizers. "The way we practice agriculture is not going to be revolutionized," declares John McCarthy, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at the National Agricultural Chemical Association in Washington, D.C. While chemical lobbyists cast doubts on the revolution, it is clear that American farmers are looking increasingly to land-grant universities for more information on alternative methods. According to a poll by Iowa State University, 76 percent of the state's farmers believe that modern agriculture relies too heavily on chemicals, and 56 percent would adopt low-input

methods if more information were available. But farmers lack information because researchers at land-grant universities focus on projects that will get funded by agrichemical companies.

Says K10r, "Sustainable agriculture lacks an industry.

It doesn't have the money to back it."

A hotly contested symbol of the alternative agriculture movement's success is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Low Input Sustainable Agriculture program (LISA). Started in the 1980s, it is a product of a coalition of environmentalists and agriculturists.

It funds 78 research projects, ranging from an economic comparison of strawberry growers who use pesticides with those who kill pests by covering the soil with plastic, to the development ofa corn rootwQrm insecticide that uses only a small percentage of the toxin now required. But LISA's budget is small by Washington, D.C., standards. For example, it was just $4.5 million for 1989-90.

A more ambitious and no less controver~ial effort is under way in Iowa. In 1987 Iowa State legislators David Osterberg and Paul Johnson sponsored a bill that taxed the sale of agrichemicals to create and fund a center for sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames. Now, according to Tufts University agriculture specialist William. Lockeretz, "Iowa is the best example of cooperation and collaboration between experts at the university and grass-roots farmers." The bridge between the two is Dick Thompson.

Located 16 kilometers from Iowa State, Thompson's farm is meticulously organized and as carefully run as a scientific laboratory, which in some ways it is.

In 1989 it attracted more than 800 visitors from around the world. As he gives a tour, Thompson stops at two side-by-side plots, one marked "Ridge-Till With Herbicides" and the other, "Ridge-Till Without Herbicides."

Underneath the ripe plants it is not too dark to see the surprising results: Weeds bedevil the row with herbicides and have disappeared from the row without.

Herbicides encourage weed growth by wreaking havoc with the natural pecking order that different species establish. Rather than

destroy that order, Thompson takes advantage of it, planting crops densely to crowd weeds out and cultivating varieties that stunt the weeds with shade.

Thompson is like a scientist in the way he makes and coordinates thousands of small, interlocking decisions, such as when to plant, how deep to set the plow, and how many seeds to sow. He grew up on this farm, getting his bachelor's and master's degrees from Iowa State University in the 1950s. "I was taught specialization and expansion," he says with a wry smile. "That held for about ten years."

Thompson quit agrichemicals in 1968 because he "was in debt. The pigs were sick.

The cattle were sick. Things weren't working and we felt like we were in a corner." He happened to go to a meeting on "natural" farming, as organic is sometimes called, and the idea clicked. After that, he fertilized his fields with hog manure (he now uses sewage sludge too), resumed the five-year rotation--eorn, soybeans, corn, oats, hay-that his father had once used, and then switched to ridge-tilling his corn and soybeans.

A believer, Thompson began to spread Theodore Kirschenmann (seen at right in photo below) farmed with chemicals until his son Fred (seen at left) won him over to organicfarming. Now they get good yields from their farm (right) by planting soybeans in strips interspersed with sunflowers that act as a protective windbreak.

the word. "The first thing I used to say was that I don't use chemicals. Right away we lost 95 percent of our audience."

It slowly dawned on him that this aII-ornothing attitude was not only off-putting but impractical. In fact, he found that as

the years passed, he needed to add a little synthetic fertilizer to keep up with his neighbor's corn yields. And in a tight spot, he was grateful for herbicide. (Although Thompson is quick to add that it has been "once in 21 years. Not a bad

ratio.") In 1985 he organized the Practical Farmers of Iowa, a group of 26 farmers who carry out field trials that compare conventional, low-input, and chemicalfree techniques. No longer does Thompson offer testimonials. He gives proof.

"The 1990s are the beginning of the end of the chemical era," says Dave Dyer, executive director of American Farmland Trust. "Agrichemicals will shift from being the driving force to being the helping hand." The vision of such a future-one

in which farmers cease to be among America's leading polluters of streams and groundwater, consumers no longer worry about pesticide residue on the produce they buy, and the topsoil regenerates 0 itself-is too compelling to ignore.

Death of a Legend Martha Graham, who died on April I this year in her home in Manhattan, New York, at the age of 96, was a prime revolutionary in the arts of this century and the American dancer and choreographer whose name became synonymous with modern dance.

Graham dted of cardiac arrest after being treated for two months for pneumonia, said Ron Protas, general director of the Martha Graham Dance Company. She had become ill in December after a 55-day tour of the Far East with her troupe.

Frequently ranked with Pablo Picasso, Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, and James Joyce for developing a form of expression that broke the traditional mold, Graham was initially acclaimed as a great dancer.

Yet ultimately her genius-universally recognized as she became the most honored figure in American dancewas embodied in her choreographic masterworks and her invention of a new and codified dance language.

The Graham technique, which is now used by dance companies throughout the world, became the first enduring alternative to the idiom of classical ballet. Powerful, dynamic, jagged, and filled with tension, this vocabulary combined with Graham's distinctive system of training to set her above other dance innovators.

She choreographed more than 180 works. The most recent was her self-mocking "Maple Leaf Rag," which had its premiere last October with the Martha Graham Dance Company in New Yark.

Throughout her career, Graham's fundamental tenet was that dance should reach audiences through a visceral response rather than an objective image that registered upon the intellect. "Out of emotion comes form," she said, and then p~oved that out of form she could re-create the same emotion onstage.

She never wavered in her belief that movement could express inner feeling. Graham sought to give "visible substance to things felt" and to "chart the graph of the heart." These celebrated Graham phrases became the metaphors central to her art.

Her own life as a creative artist epitomized the independent spirit with which she so frequently imbued her dramatic heroines.

The figure conquering sexual fear in "Errand Into the Maze," the woman looking deep into herself while preparing for an unnamed fate in "Herodiade," and the About the Author: Anna Kisselgojf New York Times.

is a dance critic for The

American pioneer brimming with optimism in "Frontier" could also be Clytemnestra or Jocasta, antiquity's queens who-in the Graham canon-emerged from crisis through the sheer force of self-understanding.

Graham usually cast herself at the center of these works until 1969 , when she gave her last performance and retired reluctantly from the stage at the age of 75.

Like Picasso, she was concerned with an inner reality.

"For me, dance is theater," she wrote. But she never resorted to a realistic theater. More often than not, her choreography presented a dancer's body as distorted or dislocated, an assemblage of forms aligned into maximum expressiveness.

Audiences throughout the world were often disturbed by her frank acknowledgment of human sexuality, especially in her famous cycle inspired by Greek myths.

Graham's Medea, Jocasta, Phaedra, and Clytemnestra gave vent to their lust and hate, baring the passions that few humans liked to recognize in themselves but that Graham exposed with the unflinching scrutiny of a 20thcentury Jungian analyst.

For Graham, dance became a collective memory that could communicate the emotions universal to all civilizations: Mythology, she felt, was the psychology of the ancients.

Her encyclopedic approach to dance-a creative wellspring from sources as varied as American Indian rituals to the Bible-often carried several levels of meaning and startled a public that defined dance in linear or pictorial terms.

Graham, for her part, said she wanted her dances to be "felt" rather than comprehended in the usual manner. In general, Graham saw art as a reflection of its time inseparable from life. "My dancing," she said, "is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement."

Like other modernists, Graham rejected literal imagery in favor of abstraction. Form for form's sake, however, held no interest for her. Instead she focused on abstraction in its strict sense, that of extracting the essence of a quality of emotion.

A celebrated example was "Lamentation," the 1930 solo in which Graham, encased in a tube of stretch jersey, created sharply angular shapes on a bench. She did not dance about grief, but sought to be what she called "the thing itself" or the embodiment of grief.

Graham's work revealed an integrated vision. She began using contemporary scores foi the Martha Graham

Two dance critics, an American and an Indian, remember the undying glory of Martha Graham.

Dance Company, which she formed in 1926.

The eldest of three daughters, Martha Graham was born on May II, 1894, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, to George Graham, a physician who specialized in mental disorders, and the former Jane (Jenny) Beers.

In 1916, after the death of her father, Graham enrolled in the Denishawn School in Los Angeles and.thenjoined the Denishawn Company.

Denishawn, organized by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, was then the only major dance company that worked outside the classical ballet tradition, and it became the incubating ground for such pioneering talents as Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Graham herself.

John Murray Anderson saw Graham with Denishawn and hired her for his Greenwich Village Follies in 1923 and 1924. But in those two years Graham realized that neither Denishawn, with its exotic pretexts for dances, nor the commercial theater was right for her.

At the invitation ofRouben Mamoulian, she joined the dance division of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where she taught dance. On April 18, 1926, she made her concert debut at the 48th Street Theatre in New York with works that still showed the influence of Denishawn.

"The idiom," critic Robert Sabin recalled in 1953, "was still prevalently romantic and eclectic, but the spirit was new and as bracing as a salty sea wind."

Graham taught in the early years in her Manhattan studio and at the Neighborhood Playhouse. She assembled a company of women. From her group, augmented by men in 1938-39, came the next generation of modern dancers, choreographers, and teachers: Anna Sokolow, Sophie Maslow, Pearl Lang, May O'Donnell, Erick Hawkins, Merce Cunningham, and later Paul Taylor and John Butler.

Graham, who had a long-term relationship with her music director and mentor, Louis Horst, was married in 1948 to Hawkins. They separated in the early 1950s and were later divorced. Graham leaves no immediate survivors.

0 /n /930 Martha Graham created a sensation with her revolutionary new style 0/ dancing in "Lamentation ,. (above right). Half-a-century later, in 1984. her 90th birthday sparked a year-long celebration that included her company's debut at the Paris Opera House, where she was greeted by Rudolf Nureyey (right), who danced/or her troupe in /975.

AnIndian Remembers

M

artha Graham was a legend, a visionary, and a rebel. A dancer of exceptional gifts, she changed the course of American dance and has left a legacy for which the world of dance will ever remain grateful. And she has left indelible imagesmemories of her stunning performances.

January 8, 1930. Enveloped in the voluminous, tentlike folds of' a gray jersey, the hooded figure sits on a low bench, knees projecting widely to each side, hands clenched.

Only her face, hands, and feet are visible. That the was Martha Graham in "Lamentation," solo she chose for her first individual concert in the Dance Repertory Theatre series. More sculptural than kinetic, the dance created its movement through the dynamically changing forms of the costume. Manipulated by the simplest gcstures, the material stretched and swelled, flattened and curved. Just sitting on a bench, creating these angular shapes, Graham epitomized grief and bereavement in a telling manner.

I saw "Lamentation" in New York almost half-a-century later-in 1975-when Martha Graham featured it in a gala evening of her works. She was by then past 80 and the dancers in her company performed some of the numbers she had originally performed.

The program also included her choreography of "Lucifer" starring Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn. Graham came on stage to introduce each number, still walking straight, still majestic. She appeared in a different dress each time with great theatrical effect. She recalled how after she had danced "Lamentation" 45 years ago, a woman had come backstage to thank her. She told Graham that she had lost her son six months ago; the shock had left her too stunned to even cry.

But "Lamentation" made her cry. It was as if a heavy load had been taken off her chest, she said. Graham had a knack of holding her audiences and a rare gift of speaking directly through her dance.

Later Uttara Asha Coorlawala, the Indian dancer who had trained in modern dance at Martha Graham's school, took me to meet her. Meeting the legend in person, face-toface, even if only for a few minutes, is a

During her visit to Bombay in the I950s, Martha Graham watches Nayana Jhaveri demonstrate a Manipuri mudra. memory I will cherish forever. She inquired warmly about Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and Balasaraswati.

Graham also expressed a desire to visit India again.

In the mid-1950s, her company had performed in Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, and Madras. I have vague memories of having seen her backstage in Bombay with Nayana Jhaveri, one of the Jhaveri sisters, who specially performed for Graham.

Graham had had a tenuous connection with India. In her early career, she had taken lessons in yoga, which formed part of Ruth St. Denis's training for her dance pupils. Many years later Graham acknowledged the inspiration she had taken from yoga for her dance technique.

Some early photographs of Graham, during her tenure with the Denishawn Dance Company, show her dressed in Indian costumes performing "Three Poems of the East" and "Three Gopi Maidens." Later on, when Graham charted her own path, she created choreography of works like "Flute of Krishna."

I never saw Graham perform on stage but I did see her dance in a film, Dancer's World. I have also seen some of her choreographic works and during my stay in New York I visited Martha Graham's school. I still remember the profound impression I got

watching a class at the school. It was like seeing the Graham philosophy at work, of creativity.

I or seeing the process can still picture that scene: The dancers seated on the floor- with the soles of their feet together, curving and lengthening their spines with a deep exhalation of breath, the contraction and its release providing a new command over the shape of the torso and indicating the impetus behind all Graham's movements.

"They have all originated in the house of the pelvic truth," she once said of her movements.

The two words, "contraction" and "release," signified her discovery of a new dance language that "probed the psyche in all its complexities and dark deceits." To those used to the lyrical grace of classical ballet, Graham's movements come as a shock. The great creative artist that she was, she broke away from the traditional concepts of her time and found a new way of expressing, far ahead of her contemporaries.

A visionary driven by inner compulsions, Graham "dared to bare the soul." She evolved a technique capable of expressing man's innermost feelings. As she put it: "Nothing is more revealing than movement. What you are finds expression in what you do."

Martha Graham choreographed more than 180 works and some 40 of them have been preserved on film or video. Her choreographic creations are landmarks in the history of American dance: "Primitive Mysteries," "Frontier," "American Document," "Letter to the World," "Appalachian Spring," "Night Journey," "Clytemnestra." and, for her 90th birthday season, the most ambitious project of her career, her own version of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." These creations are testimony to the creative genius of one of the greatest dancers of the century. As one critic noted, "Her art remains difficult and avantgarde to many audiences, but her rethinking of the body has become the single most Important fountainhead of new dance in this century. " The century of Martha Graham may have ended but her impact on the world of dance will live on, kept alive not just by remembered images and cherished memories but by the hundreds of dancers touched by the magic of Martha Graham.

0 About the Author: Sunil Kothari, a noted dance critic and dance historian, is professor and head of the dance department of Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta. He has written books on some of India's major classical dance forms.

Tiny Enterprises Can Mean Big Business

Peruvian economist Hernando de 80to (above) calls for increasing the participation of the poor in economic development. De 80to, who has received worldwide recognition for his research on the unorganized sector in Peru, explains how developing countries can benefit by adopting deregulation, administrative simplification, and a dynamic macroeconomic policy.

Why are we poor? Why after a century of industrialization, massive capital transfers, the postwar development decade, revolutions of one sort or another, and the hard labors of people does much of the developing world remain in a state of economic backwardness if not abject poverty? Clearly, something is seriously amiss with the conventional wisdoms of both development specialists and their critics on the left or right.

In my country, Peru, we have set out to find some answers to these questions and to begin to formulate a strategy for development grounded in a realistic understanding of the ingredients of prosperity. Our method is one based on strict empirical observation. We have set out to understand how and why things really work, not to find and fit facts to predispositions of ideology or dogma. Our results have been

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by permission

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Vol. 12. No. I. Hernando de Soto. "The Informals Pose an

of the MIT Press. Cambridge.

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surprising. They have also been inspiring. The work of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), which I head, has drawn attention throughout Latin America and in many other parts of the world.

The very essence of our conclusion is that developing economies do not work for two reasons. First, the structure of governance and economic activity in most Third World countries effectively squeezes out the entrepreneurial element of economic activity, an element that is key to employment, capital formation, and growth. Second, we have failed to grasp fully the fundamental link between economic participation and political participation, and to understand that prosperity without democracy is impossible in a modern economy.

How developing economies work-or

don't

Even the most untrained of observers cannot but be impressed by how much economic activity in the developing world occurs outside the formal economy. Visit any Third World city

and see an abundance of purveyors of goods (street vendors and small markets) and services (transportation and housing construction) who fall outside the parameters of economic activity measured by the state and subject to its laws. This impression was the point of departure for our work in Peru.

We set out to study these economic actors outside the formal economy-which we deemed the "informals" [the unorganized sector as it is known in India]. Existing techniques of economic analysis did not make this study easy. The informal sector is hardly a new discovery in the development business, but the role it plays in development cannot be fully understood if it is equated to the microenterprise sector. To start off with, most measurements of the informal sector as the sum of the small enterprises are based on an arbitrary measure of the number of employees in an enterprise. Such a criterion defines informal as microenterprises employing fewer than a set number of persons.

This is a quite different task from counting those activities that fall outside the legal framework. In Peru, we discovered that at least 60 percent of the population works illegally all of the time. Based on subsequent inquiries, we have found that the 50 to 60 percent level is fairly consistent throughout Latin America. This is a staggering sum with profound implications for governance. For example, how can the government expect social and political. stability when its authority extends to less than 40 percent of the population? It is no wonder that the Third World has such an embarrassing history of coup d'etat.

It is inconceivable that 60 percent of the population could be in the informal sector without the consent of the government.

Obviously, it is not so simple a matter to think that a president sits down with a representative of the informal sector to allocate parcels of property and sectors of the economy. Our research also shows that it is not so simple a matter as corruption-that informals have bought their way into the legal domain.

We spent three years honing our empirical methods and identifying. seeking out. and learning from the informals in Peru. Here is what we found out.

• In housing. of every ten buildings under construction in Lima today. seven are built illegally. Overall. 37 percent of Lima's housing is informal and illegal. We know because we counted them one by one. That is $9.000 million. which is more than the whole of Peru's foreign public and private debt.

Regarding just housing for the very poor, the government has built one out of every 50 homes; the informals have built the other 49. The informals build at about two-thirds of the cost and about six square meters more per inhabitant.

• In transportation. we found that 87 percent of Lima's buses are operated illegally. lfwe add taxis. 9S percent of public transportation in Peru is informal. The value of the informal Lima bus fleet and infrastructure is about $1,000 million. It is run without deficits. The other five percent of public transport run by the government has a deficit of $12 million per year.

• In addition, we counted 90,000 street vendors in' Lima.

They are essential to the distribution of foodstuffs in the city. In

an effort to leave the streets for a place with electricity and running water, many have banded together to build producers' markets. Within Lima, 331 such markets have been built since the colonial days, of which 57 were built by the state and 274 by former street vendors. Today, of every 12 markets under construction in Peru, II are being built by former street vendors and one is being built by the government.

In sum, the informal sector is a very economically powerful sector. Though it consists of relatively poor entrepreneurs, it is significant. These poor entrepreneurs produce, according to our calculations, 38 percent of the gross national product. This means that Peru's gross national product is about 27 percent higher than official statistics report.

Why are informals informal?

Why is so much economic activity going on illegally? Many outsiders look at the economies of Latin America and assume that social or cultural attitudes unique to the region account for the fact that so many people do not participate in the formal economy. Empirical analysis challenges these conventional wisdoms and stereotypes.

Why have the millions of people who have flocked from the countryside to the city in recent years (Peruvian cities have quintupled in size in the past 30 years) found the path to prosperity in the informal sector instead of the formal economy? We set out to understand what·it actually takes to get into business-not for a large corporation but for an entrepreneur.

We began with a simulation. We set out to establish a small workshop in the outskirts of Lima. We engaged one lawyer and four assistants who, with a stopwatch, went to each office in the state bureaucracy in order to register a small clothing workshop with two machines. Working eight hours a day, it took a total of

289 days to be able to start operations legally. We did the same exercise in the U.S. city of Tampa, Florida, where most of the legalities could be handled by mail, and it took us three and onehalf hours to start the business. In New York City, it took us four hours. In short, it takes a Peruvian entrepreneur 700 times more time than his U.S. counterpart to start a small business.

We repeated the exercise in the housing industry. Anyone familiar with Latin American cities knows the surrounding belts of inferior housing that often house half or more of a city's population. Why do so many people end up in hovels when, in most Latin countries, there is a process of legal adjudication whereby a group of families can band together and lay claim to a certain sand dune or plot ofland for the construction of a new village? Our institute examined the "red tape" involved in this process. One individual representing 100families working eight hours a day requires six years and II months to get the necessary permit, requiring the completion of 207 different official statements and visits to 52 government offices. Is it surprising that in Peru in 1985 there were 282 invasions of land and only three legal adjudications?

This kind of bureaucratic bottleneck is not limited to the clothing and housing sectors. The small markets cited above built to serve the needs of street vendors provide another case in point. Those built within the framework of the law require about 12years of preliminary bureaucratic work before the first step can be taken.

Some observers try to explain away the existence and size of the informal sector as simple reflections of crafty tax avoidance.

Therefore, we studied the role of taxation in the economy and who pays what kind of taxes. Only 120,000 people in Peru pay income tax, generating less than one percent of government revenue. Tax on gasoline provides the largest increment of government revenue-45 percent. Clearly, the 95 percent of the transport industry that operates informally pays a very substantial gasoline tax. Of course, they also pay a consumption tax of 60 percent.

Informals are also subject to other kinds of taxes not usually borne by the formal economy. They must pay a very substantial inflation tax because informal enterprises require large cash balances in lieu of banking credit, balances that erode at the rate of inflation (quite substantial in most developing economies). Informals also pay a daily fee to the local police to ensure their presence and support. The annual total collected this way in the Lima streets is twice as much as the property tax collected legally in the whole country. This sectoral analysis produced the unexpected fact that the informal sector pays more tax than the formal sector.

Law and the economy It is too simple to conclude, as many do, that by sweeping away all of the bad legislation, everything will improve. In fact, the law serves useful purposes. Our focus should be on improving the law. In trying to move from analysis to prescription, we found it useful once again to study the informals for signs of

what works and what does not. Not unsurprisingly, the informal sector has generated its own body of laws.

The laws that govern the informal sector in Peru are not all that different from the kinds of law that we have seen at other times and in other places in the world. Their law looks very much like law in the Western world of the 19th century. Many rules parallel the rules that came to govern the "gold rush" in the State of California in the mid-1800s and the settlement of competing claims.

A case in point is property law. In Peru it is not uncommon to see side-by-side neighborhoods of sharply contrasting standards, even if they have been settled by people of similar socioeconomic backgrounds. We studied an area near San Travino for nine months: The fundamental difference seemed to be that one neighborhood secures the right of property, and the other does not. In the more prosperous community, property titles were maintained and defended in a court oflaw. After ten years, the value of property in the neighborhood that protected those titles was 41 times that of the property across the street.

Another example of the importance of effective law to the development of an economy is liability law. The absence of liability law renders nearly impossible the creating of contracts or the making of long-term arrangements. The formal sector takes liability law for granted. However, without such protection, the risks that fall on an entrepreneur are exorbitant. One wonders why so many entrepreneurs run this risk and how much more would be possible within the framework of effective law.

Informals do not hav'e access to this kind of law because it takes them 289 days to get it, making entrepreneurship nearly impossible. Many business ventures are not begun because the risks are too high. Businesses that do evolve are not the best that the economy and society might generate. Family connections become an important basis of business organization because they are the most durable kind of pressure to sustain business commitments in the absence of recourse to law. The Latin work ethic is shaped more by the absence of good institutions and tort law than by culture.

These factors suggest a novel explanation for the popularity of enterprise nationalization in the developing world. Private business creates numerous negative externalities that the courts cannot control-the normal subjects of legal wrangling over liability in a developed economy. State ownership creates at least the appearance of public control, absent a system that provides real control. This also suggests that the formal sector lacks adequate protections.

As a consequence, we examined the burden oflegal affairs on enterprise in Peru. Our analysis of the formal sector revealed that entrepreneurs spend about 40 percent of their time on politics. It also revealed that legal demands require that managers of firms located outside Lima spend a great deal of time in the capital. For example, 85 percent of the general managers of enterprises with fewer than 100 workers and outside Lima

actually live in Lima because they need to be close to where the rules are being made.

Toward more effective governance The key question is how did these things come to pass? How could there be so much law that is so stifling to Peru's wellbeing? Cynics argue that it is a cultural matter, that Latin Americans aspire to the atmospherics of legality and imbue the legal profession with high prestige. Others argue that it is a matter of bureaucratic inertia that can be changed by sweeping away the bureaucracy. In fact, research reveals that the bureaucracy is one of the least significant culprits. The answer is, of course, much simpler.

The generation oflaw is a matter that is easy to measure. The central government of Peru produces 27,400 rules per year, which is III rules per [working] day. Of these III rules, the executive branch of the central government produces 99 percent, while the legislative branch produces just one percent.

This arrangement does not provide for much public accountability in the generation of law.

The generation of law in a developed society and economy proceeds quite differently, and provides for a systematic check to creating 289-day obstacles to economic activity. An example is the system in the United States. In the judicial branch, thousands of courts are involved in producing jurisprudence based on the evolution of common law. In the legislative branch, representatives who are elected on the basis of their popularity with the voters, not with the political machine, generate public law. In the executive branch, the regulatory agencies are subject to public accountability and must defend their cost-benefit analyses publicly. There is freedom of access to public information. The system ensures effective feedback and the evolution of the legal framework of economic activity.

How does the system work in Lima? In the courts, winning a case against the state is nearly impossible. In the legislature, politicians are beholden to their political mentors, not to the public. In the executive branch, there is no public accountability. There is no access to public information; in fact, it is forbidden by law. The Peruvian government owns about 90 percent of the paper produced in the country. It controls 40 percent of advertising. The result, of course, is a system that forces entrepreneurship from the normal economy.

All of this suggests the central importance of effective democratic governance to the prosperous functioning of an economy. If our concept of democracy is limited simply to periodic electoral exercises, then our concept is too narrow to meet the demands of economic well-being.

Shifting the pendulum History provides a reassuring degree of perspective, however.

There is nothing fundamentally different from the way Latin Americans govern themselves today and the way Europeans governed themselves 200 years ago. In Britain 200 years ago, for example, an entrepreneur obtained a charter from the king in a

step-by-step negotiation for political permission. This kind of capitalism without competition isjust like the Peru of today. So Latin Americans can be reassured that we are not culturally inferior; we are simply legally backward.

The Lima of today is not the London of 1800-nor is it even the Lima of the mid-20th century. In 1940, Lima had 300,000 inhabitants; today it has seven million. A King George (George III was the British monarch from 1760 to 1820, during which time the United States won independence from Britain) could run a Lima of 300,000 and allocate economic prizes to politically preferred clients. However, when the population migrations began, the old system was doomed. The market economy began to work, and the need emerged for general rules and mechanisms.

The informal sector may yet emerge as the new middle class as its predecessors did in Europe and North America. At the moment, it is fair to say that the informals share common interests and objectives. The research of the ILD addresses these people in terms of their entrepreneurial interests: Their desires for private property and contracts. We have also learned to understand their frame of reference and their language, setting aside the largely useless conceptual references common to the developed economies and the Peruvian upper class. We have gained respect for the way the informals have confronted an environment rich in obstacles and made it work.

History shows that the structure of law and governance is something that can be reformed. In fact, a constituency exists to change that structure. They are the informals--economic actors who rebel against the system and build their own system.

These actors are unfamiliar to policymakers in the developed world. To return to an earlier analogy, the developed world is accustomed to dealing with the King Georges of the developing world, ignorant of the "Boston Tea Party" that is happening in any country with a large informal sector. (The Boston Tea Party occurred in 1773, when American colonists dumped tea from British ships into Boston Harbor to protest "excessive" taxation by British rulers.)

The ILD has begun to articulate a pragmatic policy agenda for Peru that builds on the insights enumerated above. We have drafted legislation on property titles. We organized an ombudsman system to oversee adjudication. We pushed through an initiative that greatly expands access to banking credit by broadening the definition of collateral. We make policy statements available to the general public and gather signatures to endorse new laws. Our goal is to start a process for more open rule-making and more reasonable application of the law. Through this more activist profile for the ILD, we have learned that pragmatism is politically viable. If politicians are shown that they can be popular by doing the right thing, they will.

Clearly, the problems of Peru or the developing world can have no long-term resolution if governments have to turn to organizations such as the ILD to tell them what to do. All organizations have limits. The only real solution is for govern-

ments to do what people best require. People are much wiser and smarter than they are generally given credit for. If all of the wisdom that exists in Peru about its economic and governmental structure could be incorporated into some kind of an institutionalized feedback mechanism, the economy would improve quickly.

Generally speaking, decisions in the developed world are smarter than ours because the collective wisdom of the society is brought to bear in an open process of learning and accountability. However, the developed world is very unskilled at explaining how the system evolved and how decisions are made, reflecting, I suspect, a certain enviable complacency.

This raises the important question of what external actors can do to assist this process. Two ways of providing assistance are by helping development and doing charity work. Charity work has many intrinsic virtues. Financial assistance to microenterprises, for example, may not generate much capital on a national scale, but it makes an important contribution by delegitimizing the myth that the poor are incompetent economic actors.

Our research suggests that assistance can actually be useful if it is directed toward changing the structures of economic activity-principally, the legal system. Registry systems, adjudication measures, customs regimes, and other regulations are critical components of the overall business environment.

Multilateral agencies could have an enormous impact in a country such as Peru if they would stop assisting projects that compete with what the informal sector does quite well (for example, providing housing) and focus instead on the much less expensive matter of improving the legal infrastructure.

are the only path to development grows out of a pragmatic test of what works and a historical perspective that offers substantial supportive evidence. The kind of analysis undertaken at the ILD can lead to only one conviction-a clear and definite commitment to broadened economic and political participation.

Advocates of stable long-term growth in the developing world based on the foregoing principles must confront two challenges. First, many of the conventional wisdoms about the way modern economies emerge are simply irrelevant to the circumstances in the developing world-and we have much homework to do to put our intellectual house in order. Nobody in the West has drawn a blueprint of how to traverse from the mercantilist system to one based on a market economy and an open political framework. The traverse happened from adjustments here and there. Or it did not happen at in, and such states as the Soviet Union came along. We must do the ideological work of putting together a body of ideas and policies that hang together convincingly and embody human aspirations and our moral preferences.

Second, the advent of Marxism-Leninism meant that we could not trust in the leisurely drift of history, as the West could, to stumble on a modern political economy. The simple answers posed by this philosophy have a certain powerful appeal, especially among politically active elites. It is ironic indeed that a system that produced such oppressively dismal economic results throughout the world nevertheless took over half of the world's governments. The importance of change in basic sociopolitical affairs is a subject that should not be left to the Marxists-historically, it has been their province, but we may lay claim to it.

The first of two clashes in Latin America between the informal sector and the old regime were in Cuba and Nicaragua, and we can see who won. There is no reason why the only people who have to be deliberate are Marxist-Leninists. We can also be deliberate by studying. t~e history of the developed world to understand how deregulation, administrative simplification, and good macroeconomic policy can be translated into the reality of the developing countries so as to produce a language that the majority:-a group that the developed world knows little about-will support. Economically prosperous and politically liberal systems are not beyond the reach of the developing world. People who want real answers instead of dogma must understand the forces at work and address their recommendations to those powerful and emerging actors in the developing world whose efforts are the cornerstone of a better future.

0 About the Author: Hernando de Soto, president of Peru's Institute for Liberty and Democracy, and director of several Peruvian companies, is a member of the United Nations Committee for Development Planning.

He has also worked as an economist for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and has written several books, including The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World.

A School for the Deaf Inspired by the Clarke School for the Deaf in Massachusetts, alumnus Leelavathy Patrick started a similar school in Madras. Today, it not only helps to "mainstream" the deaf, but it also looks after mentally retarded children.

The theater lights dim; the curtain goes up. Children in colorful costumes swirl onto the stage. They dance in rhythm with the lilting music, obviously enjoying themselves. When the music stops, the children bow low with folded hands. The applause is deafening. But not for the performers. For all of them are deaf. They are students of the Clarke School for the Deaf in Madras, and they have been patiently rehearsing for months under the skillful guidance of their teachers.

The troupe is called "Sadhana," which loosely translates as "endeavor." The children have performed with distinction in several parts of India, winning admiration for their talent and determination.

The story of the Madras Clarke School is inextricably intetwoven with the life of one woman, Leelavathy Patrick, who is currently its director.

Patrick comes from a family that has always valued social service. She was a teacher at a school for handicapped children in Madras, when she won a Fulbright scholarship to America in 1968 to pursue graduate studies in education at Smith College, Massachusetts. She went on to specialize in the education of the deaf, spending two years learning the very latest in the field at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Massachusetts.

Talking of her experiences there, Patrick says, "Though I had worked with handicapped children before, I knew nothing about specialized methods for teaching the deaf until I went to Clarke

School. Apart from taking my master's degree in education with special emphasis on the handicapped, I learnt all about audiology and speech coordination. I also had the privilege of working with Dr. David Manning for three months, setting up an 'integrated preschool program' in which normal and deaf children study together. Manning is even now continuing to concentrate on 'mainstreaming' deaf children at Clarke School."

Clarke School, Massachusetts, is now more than 100 years old. It recently celebrated the centenary of its first teachertraining program. It is named after a rich merchant who had a deaf child, and donated a generous sum toward setting up a specialist teaching and rehabilitation center for the deaf. The name of Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, figures in the list of past faculty members. Today this school is an internationally recognized resource center for teaching the deaf.

Returning to India, Patrick was fired with the idea of establishing a school for the deaf in Madras, named after her U.S. alma mater, and run along the same principles. Clarke School for the Deaf, Madras, was born in 1970, in a tiny rented house, with just three childrenone deaf and two multiply handicapped.

By the end of that year, the number had grown to 68. Clarke School was well on its.way.

In the beginning financial resources were very limited, and Patrick often had

to dig into her own purse to keep the school going. She received valuable help in those early years from a handful of others who shared her dream. Dr. S.K. Nagarajan, a medical practitioner, offered his services in the evenings free of charge. Today, retired from his medical practice, he continues to serve as secretary of the society that runs the school.

He is also the medical consultant for the school's antideafness programs and its teaching equipment. And all this in an honorary capacity.

Some of the teachers have been with the school virtually from the beginning. Says Seetha Mahalakshmi, "I can't imagine myself doing anything else or working anywhere else. This is my life, and it gives me enormous satisfaction."

Today, the school owns its own property, has expanded the old building, and put up a new block. Apart from its main activity of educating and rehabilitating deaf children, Clarke School has, over the years, added sections for the mentally handicapped and multiply handicapped children.

'Some people think that we are spreading our resources too thin by taking on these other categories of handicapped children," says Patrick, "but we have found that we are able to help these children in a special way because we Facing page: Young Deepak is thrilled at the sounds of the world coming to him for thefirst time. thanks to an audio aid.

concentrate on imparting communication skills. This is a common need for all children-to learn how to communicate and interact with the outside world.

"We concentrate on reaching the child early, saving and enhancing any residual hearing with the help of appropriate hearing aids, and training the child to communicate and learn through normal speech. Since we want to train these children to function effectively in normal society, we also concentrate on building their self-confidence and their personalities."

Clarke School's educational and training methods reflect the philosophy as well as the orientation of its founder-director.

For instance, sign language and "finger alphabets" are not part of the curriculum; the emphasis is on rescuing and enhancing any residual hearing that the child may possess, instead of allowing such hearing to atrophy through disuse. Good sound amplification is provided through hearing aids and the children are trained to comprehend normal speech. As a corollary, they are encouraged to communicate verbally rather than by signs. "Our purpose is to teach them how to communicate with hearing people," says Nagarajan, "and not merely to communicate with other deaf people."

As part of this philosophy, Clarke School's deaf children are given many opportunities to spend time with children from regular schools, participate in their school competitions and activities, and go for picnics and outings with normal children. "The result is," says Patrick, "that our children become self-confident, and don't develop complexes."

This is very important, for Clarke School sees itself not as a sanctuary for the deaf, but' as an interim training ground to help the hearing-impaired to fit into society and become productive citizens. Mainstreaming is the goal, and whenever a child is educationally and psychologically ready, he or she goes to a regular school. Over the years, many Clarke School alumni have joined the regular educational stream, coped successfully, and even gone on to university studies. But behind every such success

story lie years of persistent struggle, patience, and dedication.

"It can sometimes get to be profoundly depressing and frustrating for us," says Jayakumari, a teacher. "Some days, when I've been trying so hard and I just can't get through to the children, I wonder whether I can ever make a difference. But, over a period of time, when I find a child suddenly responding, grasping a lesson, or going fearlessly up on the stage to perform at a cultural program, I realize it is worth every minute of it. The shaping of these personalities is in our hands, and the satisfaction we get from working with these deaf children is infinitely more than we could ever feel as teachers of hearing children." And these efforts are amply rewarded.

Several alumni of the school are living examples of the power of persistence and endeavor. Apitha Saravanamuthu, one of the first children at the school, is now doing her master's degree in commerce at the University of Madras. She secured first place in a bank recruitment examination, and has been offered an attractive job in the bank. Satish Babu received a degree in fine arts, and is now a successful commercial artist.

Mapala, a Zambian youngster who left Clarke School about six years ago, now heads his own organization in his native country, and corresponds regularly with his alma mater.

Many other Clarke School alumni are employed in government offices as well as private organizations. The teacher trainees too have fanned out to various places, taking their skills to needy children elsewhere. One trainee, Narmada, has set up a school for deaf children in Coimbatore.

For the teachers of these deaf children

there are other types of rewards too. Says Vimala, one of the experienced teachers at the Clarke School, "Our work here helps us to look at life 'in a different perspective. We learn to see problems as challenges. I have tried to watch TV with the sound turned down just to put myself in the shoes of these children. What an enormous problem they face, and how trivial our own problems seem."

Clarke School has set itself ambitious goals. Apart from imparting communication and social skills, it runs a general education program to prepare children to take the regular grade examinations held by the state government. Also, from grade seven onward, typewriting is a compulsory subject. "This has multiple advantages," says Nagarajan. "Typewriting improves coordination and motor skills, and also language skills and vocabulary. Besides, it prepares them for a possible career."

The school runs regular training programs for its own teachers as well as for others. The Clarke School's two-year intensive training program is now recognized by the Indian National Institute for the Hearing Impaired. Emphasis is on the "maternal reflective" method, which seeks to continually reinforce learning experiences in a natural way, by stimulating verbal responses. Some teachers, including school principal Dipti Karnad, received specialized training at the Institute Voor Doven in the Netherlands.

Karnad says, "The teachers there always speak in normal tones and at normal speed to the deaf. Just because they are deaf, it doesn't mean they are

Clock wise from top left: School principal Dipti Karnad teaches the older children who have come a long way in their education; a mentally handicapped boy happily concentrates on the task at hand; teachers at the Clarke School, not merely colleagues but friends, are seen here in the director's office with their wards; Dr. S.K. Nagarajan, afull-time volunteer member of the faculty, gives speech training to a student; and a student gets help from a computer.

dull. We follow that method here, and we consciously try to avoid talking to the children in an extra loud or exaggerated way."

She leads the way on a quick tour of the school. Each class has just a handful of children, so that the teacher can reach everyone with the lesson. Students are divided into grades not by age alone but by their capacity to grasp and by their performance. As we enter each classroom, the children promptly stand up, smile, greet us with folded hands and even call out a welcome. One or two of the bolder ones ask, "What is your name?"

When I tell them, they rush to the blackboard to write it down. Have they got it right? They look at their teacher questioningly. Their voices sound strange to my ears. Many are shrill, others squeaky. But, considering that they cannot hear themselves speak, they do a rem.arkably good job.

In another wing are the mentally and multiply handicapped. Some have been classified as educable, and they are taught using special methods. Others are just looked after with diligence and love.

Since Clarke School received its first audiometer way back in 1976 from a voluntary service organization called Triple H'in the United States, a lot of other equipment and instruments have been added. There are now several audiometers, the latest in hearing aids (including frequency-modulated aids that minimize sound distortion), vibrators, and a visible speech unit, whereby a deaf child who is learning how to articulate can see the corresponding patterns on a screen.

Every new child is thoroughly screened, physically and psychologically, the degree of handicap is assessed, and an appropriate hearing aid is fitted before he or she is assigned to a class.

Weekend orientation and basic awareness classes are conducted for the parents of day scholars. They are taught how to talk to their children, how to help them with home assignments, and how to expose them to various kinds of experiences. "It is amazing how positively they complement our efforts," says Karnad.

"Whether they are rich or poor, whatever their social status or income level, the parents are one hundred percent with us."

Patrick adds her own observations: "During one of our deafness-detection camps, we identified several children in a slum in Nungambakkam, who needed hearing aids and special help. Later, some of them joined our school. One of these children comes from a Telugu-speaking family. Since we teach only in English and Tamil, the boy's mother selected English as the medium of education for her son.

Then, she came here regularly to take lessons in English so that she could help him. That is the level of cooperation we receive from the parents."

Patrick and her colleagues do not wish to be limited by the constraints of time and space. Since they cannot accommodate everybody who knocks on their door, they run counseling classes for families of deaf children in their own homes, so that the parents can do their best for their own children until vacancies arise in a specialized school. Clarke School teachers volunteer their time free of charge for this service, and also for the numerous field surveys and deafness-detection camps carried out in factories, schools, and slums.

Not content with merely an urban presence, Clarke School has launched a bold new experiment in a village on the outskirts of Madras city. A day-care center and an integrated school catering to both hearing and deaf children are staffed by teachers trained at Clarke School.

The school also has a program to educate the general public about avoidable deafness. "We have launched a war against otitis media, or middle ear infection," says Nagarajan. "Repeated infections often lead to ruptured eardrums and consequent deafness. In our field trips, we warn parents not to neglect their children's earaches." The campaign also stresses the dangers of maternal rubella [German measles] during pregnancy, loud music, fireworks, industrial noise, and other such deafness-inducing hazards. Posters, pamphlets, school visits, and radio and television programs are used to spread the message of safeguarding the gift of hearing.

And to those who never had that gift, or who have lost it, Clarke School holds out the hope of bringing some music into their world of silence.

0 About the Author: M alini Seshadri, a frequent contributor to SPAN, is a Madras-based freelance writer.

A Magic

Mix

by JUOES ZIEMBA, KATHLEEN Roar, and SALLY WITTENBERG

At three every afternoon, Monday through Friday, eight-year-old Darlene and nine of her classmates at Springfield Public School in Springfield, Massachusetts, ride a special bus that brings them to a nearby nursing home of the elderly where they participate in an unusual after-school program.

At 3: 15, the children enter the nursing home lobby where the residents have been eagerly waiting for them. There is an enthusiastic exchange of greetings, hugs, and laughter. An assortment of cookies, apples, milk, and juice is neatly spread out on a table. After the snacks, everyone becomes absorbed in the dress rehearsal for a musical production.

At 4:30 it is time for the students to do their homework, helped occasionally by some of the residents.

Those lucky enough not to have homework arrange themselves in a circle around nursing home resident Millie Ross, who reads aloud from Mark Twain.

Gradually, parents trickle in to take their children home. As each one leaves, there are hugs and good byes. The last to leave is Darlene, who says her goodbyes

From ChiltlfÂŁ'11 Today. published of Human

Development

Services.

by Ihe Office U.S. Department

of He<thh and Human Services.

to Ross and, halfway down the hallway, runs back to give her one more hug. But tomorrow is another day, with more secrets and conversations to share and new things to look forward to and do. As Darlene skips down the quiet hallway, she sings, "We are f-a-m-i-l-y."

*

*

*

Something magical is taking root at Genesis Health Ventures Retirement and Rehabilitation Centers, an American progressive long-term care company that operates 27 nursing home facilities in Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Delaware. That something special is an intergenerational after-school child care program. Nursing and retirement home residents are opening their hearts and homes to area children who need a safe, healthy environment where they can congregate until their parents come home from work. The project's formula for success is a blend of love, understanding, and sharing that provides residents and students a two-way mechanism for learning and teaching values and skills. The organizers call it the Magic Mix. (GHV) Genesis Health Ventures launched the Intergenerational Latchkey Program in Agawam and Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1987, to offer an alter-

A resident of Heritage Hall Nursing Home in Springfield. Massachusetts. reads to two young friends. participants in the lntergenerational Latchkey Program that brings together schoolchildren and elderly nursing home residents for afternoon sessions of fun, games. love. and learning.

native to day care centers and babysitting services for children in need of afterschool care. The program operates in partnership with the Springfield Public Schools, Springfield School Volunteers, and the Agawam Public Schools. Ten to 15 children-primarily from low-income, one-parent families-have been selected by the schools to participate in the two pilot projects that GHV has established at four of its nursing care facilities. The children's interests are matched as closely as possible to those of the nursing home residents. The schools designate high school and, in some instances, college students to assist in coordinating activities for the children and the elderly.

Recreational directors from the nursing facilities identify elderly residents who are able to interact with children.

Both the school and nursing home contribute to the cost of the program, which is free to participants. The school is responsible for transporting the students

to the nursing facility each day, and for providing a school coordinator and program evaluator. The nursing homes and retirement centers provide the facility and personnel to monitor the program and supply nutritious snacks.

Since many students have never visited a nursing home, it is important that the first meeting be made easy for them.

Recreation directors conduct sensitivity workshops to give each student a brief opportunity to encounter some of the physical and mental limitations commonly experienced by the elderly. For example, to create the illusion of diminished eyesight or blindness produced by such medical problems as cataracts or glaucoma, children wear safety glasses smeared with vaseline. Students are then paired with a sighted person and asked to describe how they feel with distorted vision. Such exercises give the children a much better perspective on the hardships faced by elders. Other exercises simulate hearing loss, physical impairments, and the loss of personal choices.

The program proves that contrary to popular perception, there is a lot the very young and very old can enjoy togetherpainting, sculpturing, cooking, drama, singing, poetry, horticulture, crafts, language, history exchanges, spelling bees, nature walks, games, picnics, and community service projects, such as baking for an organization that feeds the homeless. Sometimes a child will need a helping hand with homework ... or someone with the time to listen to a problem.

In addition to bringing young and old together in a creative, enriching environment, the latchkey program has genera ted many other dividends. Besides demonstrating an alternative method to teaching and learning, the interaction between students and nursing home residents has forged a bond between the two generations that is enhancing mutual respect and understanding.

Through collaboration and cooperation on various service projects and in other activities, the children are developing life skills and the elderly have come to value themselves more as productive, contributing members of society. The students have also

come to view the residents as living self-image, and enthusiasm for interhistorians. As a model that can be repgenerational activities. licated in other communities, the proFindings from the survey reveal that gram illustrates the efficient sharing of students participating in the latchkey program had fewer absences from school resources through a community network. than youngsters in the control group (10.6 The Intergenerational Latchkey Propercent compared to 14.4 percent, respecgram has received recognition at local, state, and national levels. In May 1988, tively). Parents, nursing home residents.

Genesis Health Ventures received an and school personnel all noted significant Outstanding Partnership Award with improvement in the children's behavior as Springfield School Volunteers from the a result of their participation.

One Commonwealth of Massachusetts Departmother, for example, observed that her ment of Education for Industry-Education child is "happier, more relaxed. and Partnership. Genesis Health Ventures has comes home talking about the older also received the U.S. Presidential Citation people. " Perhaps the best testimony to the sucFlag Award recognizing the private sector's cess of this expanding intergenerational contributions to community and volunteer partnership is the enthusiastic endorseservice programs.

In addition to the latchkey program, ment of the participants. Eleven-year-old GHV has developed three other programs Raquel Diaz observes, "It's nice to be focusing on intergenerational activities. around older people. You learn how to be The Educational Program offers nursing kinder and share feelings." Sixth-grader and retirement home residents an Maria Velez enjoys "hearing about the opportunity to take on-site classes in a residents' past," especially descriptions of variety of subjects with high school and old-fashioned Christmas celebrations. college students in the community. The Says II-year-old Max Marrero, "I used Intergenerational Learning Program en- to be restless and bored earlier. I hated courages students from local schools to coming home from school to an empty visit a nursing home once a week for four house. Now the residents make me weeks to learn history from the residents. happy. IfT'm down, I feel better when I go In the Intergenerational Computer to the nursing home." Springfield Central High School graduate Stephanie Harris Course, fifth- and sixth-graders-each with his or her own computer-lead nurssays that her work with the residents at ing and retirement home residents, on a Kendall Commons Hampden House has one-to-one basis, through the intricacies of given her a new perspective on older learning how to use a computer. people and spurred her to apply for a Such public-private partnerships "have nurse's aide position there. had a significant impact on the SpringFor nursing home residents, the experifield public school system," says school ence has added a new dimension to their superintendent Thomas J. Donahoe. existence. Says Millie Ross, "The children "The nursing and retirement home reshave become part of our lives-there was idents of Heritage Hall and Kendall a void here before. They literally light up Commons Hampden House and Chapin our days and we give them a feeling of Center represent a tremendous untapped security. It's all about being with someresource. They have brought a wealth of one, being loved by someone. They bring knowledge, historical perspective, and love and laughter into all our lives." 0 caring warmth to our students."

To measure the program's success and About the Authors: iudes Ziemba, .!(JUnder 0/ effectiveness, a control group of children the Intergenerational Latchkey Program, is was established and the Springfield director 0/ regional development, Genesis Schools Department of Research devel- Health Ventures (GHV). Kathleen Roop is oped a survey designed to assess the im- GH V's regional director and administrator. pact of the program on the students' Sally Willenberg is coordinalOr o/the Springschool attendance, behavior patterns, field School Volunteers Doves Program.

Oan.ovies Teach History' The recent spate of historical films has sparked a debate about their depiction of events that never happened and their overdramatization of those that did.

omething strange haunts the cultural landscape of America. Moviemakers and television producers have become our most powerful, though perhaps not our most careful, historians. It seems fair to say that more people are getting their history, or what they think is history. from the movies these days than from the standard history books. The phenomenon is probably unavoidable,

S

Richard Attenborough's 1982 epic film Gandhi, in which Ben Kingsley (right) played the lead role and Martin Sheen (left) acted as a reporter, marked the beginning of a number of big-budget historicals.

yet, if the history as presented by the movies turns out to be a muddy blur of fantasy and fact, the consequences cannot be good. In the 16th century, Francis Bacon said that history makes men wise.

It follows that bad history, trivialized history, history distorted and sensationalized, can make them foolish.

There have been history movies for decades, of course. But the latest exam-

pies have been particularly big-budget affairs, beginning with Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi in 1982, and continuing through such serious and less serious efforts as Roland Joffe's Killing Fields, Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Emperor, Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning, and Attenborough's Cry Freedom. In a world dominated by adventure films, the mere fact that some directors concentrate on critical episodes of our past is in its way heartening. At the same time, there is something disconcerting about the tento construct dency of movies-as-history Technicolored and sound tracked edifices of entertainment on the slender foundations of what appear to be actual events, or, at the very least, to mingle fact with fancy, history with imagination, in such a way that the average viewer has no way of sorting out one from the other.

Mississippi Burning, a commercial success in 1988, showed Ku Klux Klan violence with realistic detail, but it transformed one of the key events of the recent American experience, the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers, into a largely unhistorical police adventure that pretty much invented the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Bertolucci got the costumes splendidly right in The LaSl Emperor, which won nine Academy Awards in 1987, but he fashioned a biography designed originally in China's Propaganda Department to show the benefits of Maoist-style re-education.

Shortly after that, Attenborough in Cry Freedom transformed what was actually a tense and difficult relationship between the black and white antiapartheid activists Steve Biko and Donald Woods into a dreamy ideological alliance that never took place.

The 1989 television prod uction The Final Days, a highly imaginative reconstruction of the end of Richard Nixon's presidency, focused considerable attention on the issue of history versus dramatic fancy.

One obvious question about this is: Why shouldn't the filmmaker, like the nove"list, have license to use the material of history selectively and partially in the goal of entertaining, creating a good dramatic product, even forging what is sometimes called the poetic truth, a truth truer even than literal truth? The artist, one could argue, is an interpreter, not a reporter, a seeker after meaning, perhaps a prophet, but not a scribe; so the invention or rearrangement of details doesn't matter. Indeed, the question could be put this way: Does it matter if the details are wrong if the underlying meaning of events is accurate?

Or, conversely, does it matter if the details are correct if the underlying truths remain twisted and unsubstantiated?

These are not easy questions to answer, especially given the difficulty, even for historians, of knowing exactly what is the underlying truth in the first place. But any answer has to take into account two things. First, even poetic truth is a mere handy justification for historical fabrication if it derives from a willful disregard of the facts of history. We live, after all, in a time shadowed by the great falsifications of the dictators, reflected in literary form

by English novelist George Orwell's memory hole, or by Czech writer Milan Kundera's concept of forgetfulness. The recent past does suggest the sacredness of scrupulous, sober remembering, of the need to treat the past as a vessel that cannot be filled with whatever combination of truth and falsehood can compete with a box office success such as Top Gun. Second is the plain fact that the movies and television are our most powerful media. "The difference between movies and novels is the fundamental illusion of photography," says Richard Slotkin, a professor of history at Wesleyan University in Connecticut who has written about the movies-as-history genre. "Even when you know that something didn't happen, movie photography gives you the illusion that it did."

Armed with their special persuasive power, many of the latest history movies deal not with distant events but with the central episodes and actors of our era.

They deal with colonialism and war, free-

dom and civil rights, corruption and malfeasance in office-the events and issues, in short, on which public consciousness is forged. And so if you believe with German historian Wilhelm Dilthey that man can know himself only in his history, then the distortion of the past, particularly for motives of profit or politics, becomes a matter for serious contemplation.

One of the latest big-budget movies to deal with a major historical event is Roland Joffe's Fat Man and Little Boy, telling the tale of the creation of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico, between 1943 and 1945. Filmed in the Mexican desert, the movie-released outside the United States as Shadow Makers-focuses on what was probably the most brilliant team of scientists ever assembled anywhere. It depicts a tense and complicated relationship between the military commander of the operation, Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, played by actor Paul Newman, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who directed the scientific team, played by Dwight Schultz. The film shows Groves pressuring Oppenheimer into supporting the use of the bomb against Japan, overriding the demands of some scientists that it never leave the laboratory.

In fact, Fat Man and Litl/e Boy had done poorly among many critics and at the box office. But even a critically unimpressive and commercially disappointing film is seen by a lot of people, far more than are likely to read a book on the same subject (a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the story is Richard Rhodes's Making oj" the Atomic Bomh, published in 1987).

This particular film, because of its blend offact and fiction on a subject of pressing moral importance, provides an excellent case study of the issue at hand. [t is clearly a work where a strongly felt point of view has guided the filmmakers in deciding what historical facts to show and how to show them. Neither Joffe nor Newman has been shy in stating their purpose in making Fat Man. Both have expressed their hopes that viewers might draw lessons from the film-"in a comfortable and entertaining way," Newman has put it. In interviews, Joffe,

who is known for his antinuclear, prodisarmament views, has maintained that the film, though a work of fiction, arrives at an "internal truth" about the events of 1943 to 1945. He has said that his film "recreates in an impressionistic way, but with great warmth and heart, what really happened." It is, he has said, "more truthful to what actually happened than any documentary will ever be."

In this sense, Fat Man and Litl/e Boy reflects a standard method used in the movies and in television films that ostensibly recreate actual past events. Intense efforts are made to get certain things right. Then, intermingled with authentic detail are fictionalizations, events made up. Hans Bethe, a Cornell University physicist who played a leading role at Los Alamos, for example, says that Fat Man's reconstruction of the physical environment of the scientists is generally very true to life. Oppenheimer's tangled love life and the suicide of his mistress seem to be plausibly depicted.

The telegram to Groves containing the information that the Germans are not even close to developing the bomb is signed by Boris T. Plash, who did indeed lead an intelligence-gathering mission to Germany in 1944 at Groves's behest.

At the same time Joffe rather colorfully shows Groves's train being stopped in the

desert so a courier can deliver the crucial information. This is an invention. There were others, both matters of detail and matters of fundamental importance. For example, the film shows Groves asking Oppenheimer to head the Los Alamos project in the cockpit of an airplane in a hangar with the engines roaring to drown out their conversation.

In fact, this conversation took place less dramatically on a train between Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit, Michigan.

Raising a morally more central issue, Joffe includes a controversial scene in which one of the participants in the Los Alamos project, wrought up about the possible use of the U.S. government's bomb, proclaims to Oppenheimer that the Army is injecting plutonium, a highly poisonous substance, into unsuspecting human guinea pigs at the Oak Ridge plant in Tennessee, where plutonium was being manufactured for the bombs.

This is a key event in Fat Man intended apparently to highlight the scientists' awareness of the moral dilemma involved in the work they were doing. It also shows how a few true elements drawn from history can be pressed into cinematic duty to support a message that the real story did not itself convey. Documents provided by Joffe show that between 1945 and 1947, 18 people thought likely to die

Le/i. In Alan Parker's 1988 movie, Mississippi Burning, based on the 1964 murder o( three American civil rights workers. Gene Hackman and Willem Daj(Je play fearless, committed investigators.

Right: One o( the latest .films on a historical eventthe making o( the atomic bomb-is Roland Joffe's Fat

Man and Little Boy. In Ihis still, physicist 1. Robel'! Oppenheimer, acted by Dlright Schultz (second/i'om Ie/i). supervises preparations for a tesl explosion.

of disease were injected with plutonium in order to measure the substance's retention by the body. A U.S. Congressional report shows that one such person was injected at Oak Ridge; the others were injected elsewhere.

It is not clear from the documents whether any of the injections in 1945 took place within the timeframe of the movie.

There is no reason to believe that any of the scientists at Los Alamos knew about the injections. Bethe remembers no discussion about them. Rhodes, in researching his book, found no evidence that the Los Alamos scientists were aware of the medical experiments. Yet Joffe uses the incident to show that the scientists knew of the horrors of radiation, yet, in accordance with the Faustian bargain they made, pressed ahead with their work.

In another episode Joffe stages a radiation accident in which one of the scientists. a fictional character named Michael Merriman, dies horribly. There were two fatal radiation accidents at Los Alamos that almost all standard histories have placed after World War II, and these have ever since raised questions about governmental secrecy and scientific complicity in it. The one shown by Joffe, however, does not seem to have taken place. Nonetheless, it is presented in the movie---<:omplete with grieving girl-

friend, concerned doctor, and plenty of apparently authentic medical detail-as one of the major incidents that occurred during the making of the first atomic bomb, one that, Joffe seems to be saying, brings to light the scientists' failure to live up to their moral responsibilities.

It could be argued, of course, that the exact circumstances of Groves's meeting with Oppenheimer, and even whether a radiation accident took place before or after the bomb was dropped, can be treated with poetic license, and that, indeed, is what Joffe contends. The point is not whether a particular detail is correct. It is: Do the metaphors drawn by the movie give the viewer the feeling that this is the way things really felt to the participants of the moment? Does the film reflect, not the literal historical truth, but the truth as human meaning, the significance of events?

"The purpose of a movie," Joffe said, "is to try to find that interior truth that lies behind the often surface and superficial facts." The conversation shown between a young doctor and Oppenheimer about the plutonium injections is hypothetical at best. But the issue for Joffe was the implications of the secrecy that surrounded the entire bomb project, the fact, he maintains, that the scientists abandoned their moral responsibility by giving up not only control over their discoveries,

but also knowledge about the uses to which their discoveries would be put.

Similarly, he said, for critics to focus on whether or not there was a radiation accident before the explosion of the bomb at Los Alamos is to miss the cinematic intention-though he argues as well that one death might have occurred earlier than officially reported. Merriman, Joffe said, is a key metaphor. He represents the human propensity to "toy with things that may destroy us." Even such seemingly trivial details as the stopping of Groves's train, Joffe said, had its key symbolic meaning. The train scene shows the frenetic life that Groves lived when the bomb was being made, a life that left little time for serious moral reflection.

Despite the force of these arguments, and Joffe's obvious knowledge of the history of the period, the question is whether what he presents is the "internal truth" or his own truth. Metaphors cannot provide lessons in history if they are formed out of substantial alterations-or highly eccentric or politically wishful readings-of what happened in the past.

When Parker's Mississippi Burning, to take another example, appeared with its wholesale inventions of the FBI's role, some critics argued that the substitution of fictions for facts when real historical events are the ostensible subject is a trick (Texi

continued on page 48)

Can 110vies Teach HistOfY' playedon the audience, which has no way of distinguishing one from the other.

To be sure, a filmmaker faces the difficult problem of creating drama. And, as Joffe put it, to show in academic fashion everything happening in offices (which, unfortunately for moviemakers, is where many things do happen) would make it far more difficult to create certain moods-of Groves's pressured existence, for example. A contrary argument would be that even small details have value as history. To change them is the rough cinematic equivalent of a newspaper's inventing quotations on the grounds that, even if nobody actually made the quoted statement, it represents what people were thinking or feeling at the time.

And, on the larger events, those that directly affect the key moral questions, such as, in Fat Man, Groves's virtual blackmailing of Oppenheimer to get his support for the dropping of the bomb on Japan, these events are simply too consequential to be based on manipulations of the facts.

Joffe, in defending his film as a piece of what he calls revisionist history, argues that he has been true to the important facts. His research has uncovered, sometimes in rather obscure places, some justification for almost every incident he portrays. But that is just the point. Good history consists of a judicious weighing of facts and sources; it is an impartial sifting of the record in which truthfulness is the highest value. Many written histories founder precisely on the absence of this essential judiciousness with sources and interpretations, and here too, with their almost inevitable minglings of what did happen with what might have happened with what almost certainly did not happen, the movies can fail as history as well.

Finally, one could ask whether the kind of fictionalization practiced in the history movies is desirable even to satisfy the needs of cinematic dramatization.

There are, after all, times when the facts speak far more dramatically than any fictionalized account of them ever could, and many

of the subjects of the recent historical movies deal with just such events. At Los Alamos, for example, history was made by a group of very thoughtful and intelligent men grappling with a wondrous scientific problem whose epoch-making implications were clear to most of them.

In turning that story into a political lesson, Joffe seems to have robbed the real story of much of its potential for drama. The technical problems, like the key one of getting implosion to work, remain incomprehensible.

The work of science is not presented as it really happens, in slow, sober increments, and calm but interesting discussion, but as though the scientists themselves are always shouting histrionically, and presumably entertainingly, at one another.

Oppenheimer himself, one of the 20th century's most complicated, thoughtful, and eloquent men, is presented as an emotionally disturbed rag doll of mushy conviction terrorized by Groves into supporting the use of the bomb-a view at odds with most recollections ofOppenheimer that stress his intellectual firmness and his qualities of leadership. Indeed, in his presentation of Oppenheimer, Joffe may have lost sight of the true grandeur of the historic moment when the bomb was created. In his book, for example, Rhodes indicates that Oppenheimer, whose conviction, without Groves, was to go ahead with the use of the bomb against Japan, saw in the new weapon the arrival of a new epoch, one that could either lead to mankind's self-destruction, or possibly to the obsolescence of war itself.

His argument at the time shown in the film was not so much over whether the bomb should be used against Japan but whether the information gained in making it should be shared with the Russians so tha t a devasta ting arms race of the sort that actually happened could be avoided.

In missing these points, Joffe has not only made a questionable revisionist history, but he has also robbed his film of the kind of intellectual depth that might have made it better art. It is, in general, as though the filmmakers, like the editors of tabloid newspapers or the makers of television docudramas, do not have con-

fidence that the simple truth is interesting or pointed enough. It might be better sometimes to make more effort merely to capture reality than to improve it.

Can it be otherwise? Is it possible to have successful cinema and good history at the same time?

Certainly, the history can be good. The U.S. public television dramatization of the making of the bomb, shown in 1982, tells well, plausibly, and with a sober respect for both the details and the main events of history, the same story that Joffe tells with that unsettling mingling of truth and fancy.

The 1989 television special Day One was also praised by critics for respecting the facts of history, though criticized by some for what they saw as plodding, wooden cinematic quality.

Perhaps the rule of thumb is this: When artists, intentionally or not, distort the known facts to get an effect, either politicalor commercial, they are on the wrong side of the line between poetic truth and historical falsification.

Artists who present as fact things that never happened, who refuse to allow the truth to interfere with a good story, are betraying their art and history as well.

There is another issue-the transformation of moviemakers and actors into commentators and philosophers. Of course, moviemakers have the right to their opinions, just like anyone else. What is disturbing is the public's granting to them-and to the enormously powerful medium they control-a special role to comment on both our past and our present. Edward Telfer, another physicist who was at Los Alamos, had something to say about this. The context was the postwar attempt by scientists to seek an end to the building of bombs.

"Scientists naturally have a right and a duty to have opinions," Teller said in an interview in 1954. "But their science gives them no special insight into public affairs.

There is a time for scientists and movie stars and people who have flown the Atlantic to restrain their opinions, lest they be taken more seriously than they should be."

D About the Author: Richard Bernstein is a .film critic for The New Yark Times.

FOCUS The Institute for Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies, headed

by Dr. K.K. Panda, organized a function in New Delhi last month to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the American Bill of Rights.

The meeting, chaired by the Deputy Speaker of the ninth Lok Sabha, Shivraj Pati!, was attended by senior Indian government officials, staff and fellows of the institute, and scholars. Among those who addressed the gathering was U.S. Ambassador William Clark, Jr., who was accompanied by his wife, Judith. Following are excerpts from the Ambassador's speech. ... 1 can think of a no more appropriate forum to examine the meaning of the Bill of Rights than in this institution devoted to the ideals of constitutional law.

When Thomas Jefferson drafted the [U.S.] Declaration of Independence in 1776, he cited "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind" as the rationale for the new nation's written list of grievances, as well as its justification for breaking away from England. But rather than "a decent respect," it was a healthy skepticism that motivated the authors of the Bill of Rights: Skepticism about the powers of a central State; skepticism about the willingness of the majority to protect the minority; and skepticism about the language of the [U.S.] Constitution itself. The debate about the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights that followed, hinged mostly on the differences between the skeptics-who distrusted central authority, and wanted to maximize individual liberties-and the "idealists," who thought good ideas and good intentions were enough to insure the goals of the American Revolution.

In retrospect, we have reason to be grateful the skeptics won. By not relying on "gentlemen's agreements," or unwritten traditions-indeed, by violating those 18th-century norms of conduct which dictated a certain amount of trust in any transaction-the promoters of the Bill of Rights erected a monument that enshrines the basic precepts of individual rights now expected by all who live in or struggle toward constitutional democracies.

The fact of written guarantees is, for me, the prime significance of the Bill of Rights. But the substance of the amendments themselves is startling, as well. Of the ten adopted in 1791, five provide protections for accused criminals. Think about it: The weakest and the most vulnerable of men and women, accused felons, were the object of the most serious concern of the drafters. Our nation, more than 200 years later, still lives by that code.

This concern for the weak was accompanied by an equal concern about the awesome centralized power that the federal government, created by the Constitution, had the potential to amass. Here again, healthy skepticism produced amendments barring the government from making laws on religion, speech, assembly, and the rest.

It is often remarked that the genius of the Bill of Rights is its simplicity, which ensures its vitality as a living document. Despite the enormous changes in the United States over the last two centuries, the Bill of Rights is still invoked by petitioners before the courts; by debaters in Congress; by citizens groups; and by individuals in every kind of fora in America today. Indeed, citizens of many other countries use the same language codified in the U.S. Bill of Rights to announce their claims to justice, freedom, and dignity in the continuing evolution toward democratic societies taking place around the world.

Here in India, the founders of the nation, newly freed from a colonial past, used the American instrument as a model for its own code of democratic ideals. It is not a threadbare cliche to say we share the same ideals. It is more than just lip service to cite our common democratic heritage. In point of fact, our ideals have the full force of law. The legal institutions in India, independent and free of manipulation, have time and again served the cause of justice in protecting the rights of its citizens against the arbitrary and capricious. That is why I know you all share with me a sense of pride-even wonderment-in commemorating today the adoption of the American Bill of Rights ..

Bernadette Rana, whose exhibition, "Mother Earth," opened at the American Center in New Delhi on April 19 and is on view until the 10th of this month, brings to her paintings a commitment to nature that imbues her work with universal appeal.

A native of New Mexico, Rana traces her inspiration to her heritage. Part American Indian, she says the lifestyle and culture of her people is in tune with the

earth, and "pretty much anything that I'll paint will somehow be connected to the environment."

Rana studied architectural design at the Institute of Eco- Technics in France, and in the late 1970s went to Nepal as design consultant and general manager for the construction project of Hotel Vajra in Kathmandu, and lived there for seven years.

When she came to New Delhi in 1986, where she has been living

Described as "America's national pastime," baseball is gradually becoming popular in India.

The game received a boost in 1983 with the setting up of the Amateur Baseball Federation of India, which regularly organizes coaching camps, junior and senior national baseball championships, interzonal tournaments and the Federation Cup Baseball Tournament.

India participated in the 1987 and 1989 Asian baseball championships-held in Tokyo and Seoul respectively-and the 1990 World Baseball Series Championship in Tokyo.

Last year the Indian federation was made an affiliated member of Little League Baseball (LLB), Incorporated-with P.C. Bhardwaj as country director.

A private, voluntary organization, LLB was founded in 1939 and is based in Williamsport,

and working since then, Rana decided to paint, which she had always wished to do, but had been, as she says, "afraid to pick up the paintbrush." Painting, she adds, is much more satisfying and provides greater creative freedom than architecture.

Vivid colors abound in her work. Rana paints from memory the land of her birth, "a land of open desert space, plateaus of fantastical formations, snow-

Pennsylvania. It is the largest youth sports program in the world with more than 2.5 million youngsters, ages six to 18, participating in about 40 countries.

Last month, LLB donated baseball "starter kits"-uniforms, catcher's equipment, baseballs, aluminum bats, helmets, bases, a pitching rubber, gloves and mitts, and batting tees-to the Indian chapter. In the photo below, Richard Scorza (third from right), senior program officer of the U.S. Information Service, makes a symbolic presentation of a baseball bat to Bhardwaj at a function held at the American Club in New Delhi. To Scorza's left are Carl Cockrum, commissioner of the American Club's Little League, and Frank Juni, the League's vice president.

In an exhibition match played after the function, the Indian team (left) defeated the American Little Leaguers 9-3.

capped mountains, of double and triple rainbows after a summer rain, sunrises and sunsets which turn it all into a kaleidoscope of color." An exhibition of her images of New Mexico, was held in New Delhi in April 1990.

For the future, Rana wants to travel to Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh to explore and capture the color, the romance, and the vivacity of their people and the landscape on canvas.

At 29, Dif!esh D'Souza has become perhaps the most visible, influential, and talked about Indian American-at least in U.S. political and educational circles.

D'Souza first gained national prominence in 1987 when he was appointed a senior policy adviser in the White House during the Reagan Administration. But what has now catapulted him to centerstage is his controversial book, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, which, as India Abroad writes, "is sure to arouse a storm of controversy not seen since the publication of Allan Bloom's best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind, in 1987."

Manifesting the author's conservative perspective, the book argues that American college students today are getting "an education in closed-mindedness and intolerance" because of the current emphasis on gender and race in admissions policies as well as the assumption that Western values

are inherently oppressive.

"Illiberal Education," writes Charles Trueheart in The Washington Post, "has gotten a mighty send-off from its publisher, Free Press/MacMillan, with serialization in the Atlantic (a cover story), Forbes, The American Scholar; enthusiastic reviews, by and large, from disparate quarters; lavish pats on the head in jacket blurbs from right-wing gurus such as Robert Bork; a six-figure guarantee for paperback rights, for a book whose hardback advance was barely in five figures; and a likely place on the best-seller lists."

The book is beginning to raise the ire of libera!s. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, sociologist Todd Gitlin has called Illiberal Education "a book so overheated that it almost undoes its own horror stories." In The New York Times Book Review, an offended dean took a dim view of the book. Michael Kinsley of The New Republic has described D'Souza's writings as "agitprop," and his presentation of facts selective.

A native of Bombay, D'Souza went to the Uniied States in 1978 on a Rotary International scholarship when still in high school. He was initially intent, as he says, "like most Indian students to pursue an education in either business or computers and get a good job."

But he soon met Jeffrey Hart, a conservative columnist and former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, who persuaded him to do a bachelor's degree in English literature at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. After his graduation in 1983, D'Souza moved to Princeton University where he became editor of Prospect, the university's monthly alumni magazine. For about two years beginning 1985, he was editor of Policy Review, the flagship quarterly of the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. D'Souza, who left his White House job in late 1988, is now a senior research fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, another influential conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

In appearance like a cherubic Einstein without the mustache, Stanford R. Ovshinsky, 65, is a self-taught scientist and inventor with about 100 American patents-and a dictionary entry-to his name. This son of Lithuanian immigrants shook up the world of physics 20 years ago with his claim of having discovered a revolutionary new class of semiconductor materials that would be cheaper, smaller, faster, and more durable than transistors.

While the electronics revolution that started in the 1940s depended completely on crystalline materials like silicon with their regular atomic structure, Ovshinsky declared that noncrystalline amorphous materials like glass (with a disordered

atomic structure) would work just as well.

It took him years of experiments before he came up with a tiny device made of amorphous glass capable of switchin,g electricity on and off at the amazing speed of a trillionth of a second. At first scientists scoffed at his claims, but when the evidence was tested and the results published, a panel of scientists (including John Bardeen, who shared the Nobel Prize for inventing the transistor) proclaimed Ovshinsky's discovery a breakthrough. His invention became known as the "Ovshinsky effect."

Ovshinsky's Michigan-based company, Energy Conversion Devices (ECD), has spent more than $200 million since its

founding in 1968 in using his technology to produce solar cells, magnets, optical memory panels, and flat-panel displays.

An adjunct professor of engineering at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, Ovshinsky is also on the board of governors of the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Michigan. His wife, Iris, who holds a PhD in biochemistry, collaborates with him in his work.

In April 1986, Ovshinsky came to India to launch a multimillion dollar joint venture, Suryovonics, near Hyderabad.

In the following interview, Ovshinsky-with a little help from his wifetalks about his work and the possibilities and opportunities it offers to the world.

n pi bur usu sing in consrr [Stanford R. Ovshinsky bl923 Am. inventor + electronics] (t968): a branch of electronics that deals with applications of the change from an electrically nonconductin~ state to a semiconducting state shown by glasses of special comrositlon upon application of a certain minimum voltage - ovon.ic \-Ik\ adj

Ovon.ics \6-'van-iks\

The Ovshinsky Effect QUESTION: HOlI' did the Ovshinsky effect happen?

ST AN FORD OVSHINSKY: It began as an effort to understand the fundamentals of neurophysiology.

I was building automatic machines in the 1940s when there was no such thing as automation. I was interested in how much could be achieved with a machine-or artificial intelligence, as it is called today-and how it is related to the model of the human brain. I wasn't satisfied with the then existing models and theories. After working as a machinist for a few years, I started my company, Stanford Roberts, in 1946 to design and build machine tools with very high speeds and cutting efficiencies. In 1950 I sold my company and became a research director with the Hubb Corporation of Detroit, a maker of automobile parts.

Meanwhile, in my free time I continued my interest in neurophysiology, seeking clues about how the brain's mechanism might relate to the operation of automatic machinery. The switching mechanism of nerve cells, it was known at the time, had some kind of a connection with the cell membranes. So I started to experiment with such amorphous materials as tantalum oxide and created crude switches that mimicked neurons in the brain. This led to my using chalcogenide elements, and, then, to the ovonic threshold switch, which turns on when a controlling current exceeds a critical value. I

followed this up with a memory switch. While both types of switches are fundamental to digital computers, they had earlier been made from crystalline substances.

When Iris and I pooled our savings of$50,000 to start Energy Conversion Devices in 1968, everyone thought us a bit odd, because nobody was talking about energy conversion those days. There was so much of oil around.

Initially, scientists scoffed at your claims. How did the process of acceptance start?

IRIS OVSHINSKY: This was in 1963. It was-all very interesting. Stan decided that he had to be sure that the effect he was seeing was real before he got other people to invest in it. So he telephoned John Bardeen, since we felt he would understand our work. Bardeen got quite interested, but said that he could come and look at the work only after three months. Stan told him that he would be quite broke by then!

Since Bardeen couldn't come right away, he recommended a colleague of his, Hellmut Fritzsche, an experimental physicist who now heads the physics department at the University of Chicago. When Fritzsche arrived he immediately said, "I am an experimentalist and so I don't want to hear a lot of theory. Let's go to the lab." He spent the whole day in the lab doing the experiments for himself. At the end of the day he told Stan, "I

â&#x20AC;˘

Above: Stanford and Iris Ovshinsky in the Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) office in Michigan, with the periodic table of elements behind them.

Innovative manipulation of some of these elements created the ovonic switch. Left: ECD 'sflexible solar panels roll off the photo voltaic processor.

What exactly is the ovonic switch composed of?

OVSHINSKY: The original ovonic switch was made up of chalcogenide materials--elements like sulphur, selenium, and tellurium. Chalcogenide is group six in the column of the periodic table. These were mixed with elements such as germanium, silicon, and arsenic that adjoin them on the periodic table. What attracted me to chalcogenides was their resemblance to DNA [the principal constituent of chromosomes, which transmit hereditary characteristics], with chains and structures that could contain information.

Solid state physicists until then had transistors made of crystals

or crystalline material. I said that the periodic structure of the crystal was not so important. Rather, what was important was that order was established in a two-dimensional spatial structure.

As compared to the very few ways in which crystalline atoms can link up to form lattices, the number of possible combinations among atoms in amorphous materials was unlimited.

By choosing the right mixture of elements, one can make ovonic switches,which have many properties of transistors but are much easier to produce. This was a fundamental switch in thinking.

Do you feel that the leap into the 21st century will require not just the existence of specialized areas, but also the ability to synthesize and transcend disciplinary boundaries?

OVSHINSKY: Yes, I think so. Not only scientific boundaries, but geographical and political ones too. My principles are in many ways influenced by the arts and social philosophies.

We can't really jump into the 21st century living as we used to 8,000, 1,000, or 500 years ago, when tribalism or other narrow loyalties had been the source of survival worldwide. The dangers of atomic destruction mean that certain changes have to be made in the scientific community, so that we are not dragged into a war. There has to be an international committee that discusses beyond national boundaries, and that has an acceptable standard of methods and ethics. It is not just a scientific problem. It is a problem of freedoms, of having brains that have evolved not very much in thousands of years, while at the same time we have evolved technologies that can destroy us all.

There is a need in our times for leadership, as in the old days in the military, where the leader had to put his body in the front of the battle lines, directing and leading by example. You also need to set an example by ideas, creating an environment not just oriented to profits, but where scientists and people of different nationalities, religions, and racial groups can all work together in harmony. For instance, 35 of the staffers in our company, ECD, are fro..mother nationalities. We feel that a company is a social organization where everyone's individuality can be expressed.

IRIS OVSHINSKY: We produce things that don't harm people, but help people.

OVSHINSKY: Yes, we don't take defense contracts. We only have some government contracts in photovoltaics. We would like to be part of a solution to problems by helping build industries that make for a better society. There is need to address industry needs from a global perspective, because in

About the Interviewers:

George S. George (far left) and C.R. Prakash are doctoral candidates at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.

today's world everything is linked. Building smokestack industries is one thing, but there is no point in handing over the subsequent pollution to another country.

Do your innovative modes of thinking also extend to the way you run and organize activities at your company?

OVSHINSKY: Well, first of all, I have very good people working for me. We want nothing but the best. They know of our work, our reputation, our labs, and so people gravitate toward us. The company is run on the basis of fairness. At ECD, if you have a discovery in any section, within 24 hours it can be transferred to a developmental group, and a few weeks later you will actually see it being translated into production.

I give a lot of freedom, a lot of autonomy. Despite being the founder of the company, I sometimes have to fight to get my ideas tried. Everybody has a chance to carry out his own idea, but he also has to demonstrate its viability.

Tell us something about your flexible solar panels that can be mass manufactured on a "roll process," much in the same way that newspapers are printed.

OVSHINSKY: Unlike conventional solar cells, which are thick, heavy, and can break, the panels we manufacture are flexible and very light, almost paper-thin, but hardy. The machine on which they are produced is called the Continuous Web Roll-to-Roll Photovoltaic Processor. The wafers or solar panels are made in sheets about 18inches [46 cms] wide, and up to 2,000 feet [610 meters] long. They can, however, be of any length or size. The larger the sheets, the more the power. The current solar panels produce about 5.5 watts of electricity per square foot or 1,000 watts per pound of panel.

The new amorphous alloys that are currently in research at ECD can increase the electricity conversion rate of our panels up to 16 percent, and we feel we can achieve a 20 percent efficiencyin the next five to ten years. Our solar panels are very light and flexible. In fact, they are so hardy and efficient that in tests they have continued to function with little degradation even after they were struck with a .38 bullet. A crystalline panel subjected to the same test was reduced to a pile of junk.

Is the technology to manufacture your solar panels affordable for developing societies?

OVSHINSKY: It is very cost-effective,especially for poor and developing countries. Many poor nations cannot afford to buy oil.

Even countries that have oil find it expensive and problematic to build the infrastructure for its use. Besides,oil and nuclear energy have many hidden costs that are tremendously important for society. The waste products of nuclear energy are life threatening.

Oil has its polluting effects and has been the source of a lot of world tension. You have to take into account these social costs and translate them into monetary terms.

What would be the cost of purchasing and installing Continuous Web Roll-to-Roll Photo voltaic Processor?

the

Suryovonics Limited, Ovshinsky's Indian venture, manufactures solar modules at its phOlOvoltaic plant in Miyapur, near Hyderabad.

OVSHINSKY: That machine could be built and operated for $10 million or so.

HOlI' did your venture in India start?

OVSHINSKY: Let me begin by stressing that I am very keen to work with developing countries. Energy issues are a priority in many countries. Some developing countries have even started experimenting in the field of amorphous materials.

Iris and I first explored the possibility of working in India in the 1960s but it didn't work out then. We again began trying in the 1980s and finally signed a long-term phased agreement in April 1986 to build a photovoltaic plant in Miyapur, near Hyderabad.

The agreement resulted in the setting up of Suryovonics Limited. The company's $ I million photovoltaic plant is already producing photovoltaic cells, modules, and systems with materials imported from ECD. ECD has a 40 percent equity in the company. The rest of the investment holding comes from a consortium of private investors headed by M. Varadarajan (the chairman and managing director of Suryovonics Limited), the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the Export-Import Bank ofIndia, the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency, the State Bank of India, and the Industrial Development Bank of India. We also got support and guidance for the plant from the Andhra Pradesh Electronics Development Corporation Limited and the Department of Non-Conventional Energy Sources in New Delhi.

How far has the Indian venture progressed?

OVSHINSKY: The agreement envisages growth and development over three distinct phases. The first phase involves an investment of $1 million. During this phase, which commenced in April 1990, Suryovonics is importing amorphous silicon coated web stainless steel rolls from the ECD plant in Troy, Michigan, for manufacturing solar cells, modules, and systems. Suryovonics puts the rolls in frames or grid patterns to coqect electricity, adds junction boxes, and also puts an encapsulant on the rolls to protect them from the environment.

The second phase involves a $14 million investment for building a fully integrated production plant to manufacture the

amorphous silicon coated web stainless steel rolls. We have .already obtained the licences from the Government ofIndia for importing the equipment and for commencing production.

In phase three Suryovonics will develop a much larger plant with an investment of around $90 million in order to achieve economies of scale, so as to enable production of photovoltaic modules at prices competitive with diesel and grid electric power. This would be a 150 megawatt plant.

Let me add that I felt very much at home in India when I was there. I was very impressed with some of the people I met in government, science, and industry. I get tremendous pleasure out of building something new for India, because in many ways I am a builder. Every society is built upon science and technology. To build is not just to realize an empty dream.

The scientists listed on the advisory committee of your Institute Chakraverty for Amorphous Studies include two Indians-B.K. of the Centre National de la Recherche in Grenoble, France, and Subendhu Guha, senior research scientist at ECD. Also listed is Dr. Linus Pauling. What are their contributions to the institute?

OVSHINSKY: Subendhu, who is a very good scientist, is very active in our solar energy projects. He is presently vice president for photovoltaics and information in our company.

He was at one time with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay. I met him initially at some of the international conferences, and subsequently he came to work for us for a couple of years. He had to go back for some time, but then returned to work for us on a full-time basis. We have a number of people from India working for us. The head of our battery company (Ovonic Battery Company Inc.) is Subhash Dhar.

Chakraverty and Pauling have both been to the institute (which we formed in 1982) to give talks. Pauling, who motivates a lot of young people, is very interested in superconductivity research-that is just one of his many areas of interest. That is what keeps a person young ... to always be interested in new things. As a chemist there is no one like him. He shouldn't be judged just by vitamin C. IRIS OVSHINSKY: He wrote to Stan recently asking him to collaborate on some aspects of superconductivity research.

Finally, a question that must have been asked earlier by a lot of people-why did you not pursue any formal education beyond high school?

OVSHINSKY: For the same reason that I did not want to study only one discipline. I wanted to combine my concepts and intuition by integrating various scientific disciplines ...by studying biology, anthropology, astronomy, cosmology, etc. Also, I found high school very boring. I did not need to go to a university to know that the atmosphere was very stifling. I teach at a university now, so I can't be critical about it. But, seriously, times hilVe changed. Education isn't what it used to be in the I940s.

I found what was happening in the world stimulating. I wanted to participate in it, as well as pursue my own ideas.

School did not seem the proper place for all that.

0

Transportation TOMORROW The people of the United States are moving at the rate of 1.6 million kilometers a minute. The amount spent for passenger and freight transportation combined amounts to nearly $100 million an hour. Unprecedented levels of mobility have radically altered lifestyles, and multiplied the average family's choice of housing, jobs, schools, recreation, and shopping. But the rising tide of traffic has transportation agencies worried.

Can America be kept on the move as increasing population, incomes, and urbanization put still more pressure on already overcrowded highways and skyways? Will the world's most mobile nation wind up with the world's most awesome traffic jam?

These misgivings have led to a nationwide effort to look ahead to the year 2020, to determine what has to be done to assure that today's freedom of movement is sustained. The experts are finding hope for the future in science and technology.

An optimistic view of the future is suggested by what has happened in the recent American past. When the 20th century dawned there were no trucks or buses, no airplanes, only 165 kilometers of first-class roads, and fewer than 8,000 horseless cars. Gasoline was burned as a waste product. Three million horses were the dominant source of power for local transport. But almost overnight Americans discarded the horse and carriage, surfaced 3.2 million kilometers of roads, and began to fly. The average amount of travel per person increased from 800 kilometers annually in 1900 to 18,000 kilometers in 1989. With such extraordi-

nary accomplishments since the century began, can Americans count on comparable innovations as it comes to a close?

The answer is a guarded yes, provided they hasten development of the new technologies now emerging, establish transportation goals and priorities, and devote the necessary resources to a new transport revolution.

Before the year 2020, gasoline may once again become a waste product as riders skim over electronic guideways in energy-efficient, nonpolluting electric automobiles. The limited travel range of early storage batteries will be overcome by the greater power and storage capacity of new batteries made possible by breakthroughs in superconductors, or by the use of fuel cells perfected by their use in space. Electric cars will be manually controlled for routine local travel, but on major interstate highways and other main routes the driver will shift to automated operation as cables in the roadway take over the controls, spacing the flow of traffic to separate vehicles, providing lateral guidance, and applying the brakes in case of trouble. Traffic capacity of America's main roads will be doubled and safety assured as today's lane hoppers and speedsters become electronically obsolete.

For public transportation over short to medium distances, today's railway trains will be replaced by vehicles without wheels, moving on guideways and propelled by powerful magnetic forces. Transport by magnetic levitation (maglev) will provide a smooth ride at 500 kilometers an hour on routes that will often parallel America's

interstate highway system. * And, as in the case of the electric automobile, high-speed ground transport will be a welcome result of recent advances in the discovery of superconducting materials that will revolutionize the use of electrici ty.

Electric currents encounter a great deal of resistance when they pass through copper wires, and they suffer considerable losses in transit and cannot be stored until they are needed. But new ceramic materials being developed are turning out to be super as conductors; they can also store electric energy. And contrary to earlier discoveries, which revealed superconductors that performed only at very low temperatures (and very high costs), the new ceramics promise to function at ever higher temperatures that involve far less costly coolants; eventually, we may even have room-temperature superconductors.

That will herald the new revolution in transportation, and perhaps the beginning of the end for the wheel. Travelers will be "flying" a few centimeters off the ground on a comfortable magnetic cushion.

And what of airplanes? What has the future to offer the airline industry? U.S. airlines now carry 1.5 million passengers every day. But air travel will be taking a great leap forward soon. The National AeroSpace Plane, being developed jointly by the U.S. National Aeronautics and â&#x20AC;˘ For the current has

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Space Administration and the Department of Defense, and scheduled for first flight in 1997, will herald the age of hypersonic flight. The new hydrogen-fueled plane, capable of acceleration to 27,000 kilometers per hour within Earth's atmosphere for direct flight to orbital altitude, will make possible travel to destinations halfway around the world in two hours or less. The quick journey through the upper atmosphere will multiply international business contacts, make tourism the world's number one industry, and make flying much more enjoyable for the frequent traveler.

At the other end of the aviation spectrum, planes will also be capable of slowing down to zero as the tilt-wing airliner combines the vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of a helicopter with the cruising speed of a conventional aircraft.

The Osprey, already test-flown, will be the first of the tilt-wingers. It will position its wings to allow the propellers to provide vertical lift, but once in the air the wings will be returned to normal position for horizontal flight. This innovation will put air transport into the short-haul business and will put moderate-size communities onto the air travel map. It will also help to dissipate the present concentration of air traffic at a few hub airports in America, thus serving to ease congestion in partnership with maglev trains and automated highways.

Far-reaching changes will also be occurring in the transportation of information. For centuries moving information meant moving people who were carrying information, or hauling reports and other documents containing information. But in the age of computers and telecommunications, more information will be moving to people. For increasing numbers of American workers engaged in manipulating data, it is already possible to escape the rush hour by working at home (see SPAN February 1991) or in a workstation or branch office close to home. Thanks to optical fiber networks, facsimile machines, computers, telephones, and communication satellites, the message is transmitted instead of transported.

In a period of rising transportation costs and declining service, telecommunication offers declining costs and increasing service. These trends will hasten the shift in some industries from commuting to telecommunicating, and will persuade many U.S. businesses of the merits of teleconferences as a substitute for timeconsuming travel to business meetings.

Workers will be able to spend more time at home or on the golf course; they may be able to forego meetings in the snow belt during January in favor of two-way interactive television, but revert to travel for meetings in the sun.

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ommuni'ations will also be a boon to U.S. output. Work-at-home employees are already demonstrating increased performance as greater freedom and contentment boost their productivity. Employers are also reaping advantages by attracting skilled workers living beyond commuting range, as well as enlisting the talents of experts in other countries. And since the average American worker in the future is expected to change jobs at least six times during his or her career, telecommuting will make such changes possible without pulling up roots, and leaving a neighborhood and friends.

Substituting communications for transportation is one element in a whole new strategy being introduced in transport planning, namely alleviating congestion and conserving resources by reducing the need for routine trips. Technology has already accomplished much in this area. The need to transport water has been eliminated by moving it in pipes. Ice is no longer delivered to the door by the iceman thanks to the electricity that arrives by wire and operates the refrigerator. Solar energy being used for space heating and other power requirements is delivered to the home 148 million kilometers from the source-the sun-without any charge for transportation, promising someday to eliminate the need for hauling coal and other solid fuels.

Transport-conserving communities

that contain a mix of housing, jobs, services, and recreation are also in the offing.

Urban design can help reduce the trips now needed when jobs are concentrated in one place, shopping in another, and housing somewhere else. Many new suburbs and urban redevelopment projects in America are being designed along these lines.

The coming years will also see the redesign of freight transport systems through the use of containers and computers and the creation oftransportation companies that operate all forms of transport under a single management.

Several U.S. private delivery services are already demonstrating the efficient overnight delivery made possible by the combined opera tion of truck and air services, aided by computers and communications satellites. Railway, highway, and water transport are also being organized into intennodal systems for containerized freight destined for anywhere in the world.

With these innovations in transportation either under way or on the horizon, what effect will they have on life in the United States in the 21st century? It is probable that consumers will continue to budget about the same proportion of their disposable income for transportation as they have for the past three decades-about 13 to 14 percent. But with rising incomes and more leisure, and the much greater speed of travel, the average distance traveled per person per year could easily double by early in the next century to some 40,000 kilometers. The increase could occur in spite of telecommunications and better community design because of the greater speed and safety of automated highways, reduced congestion on main routes made possible by high-speed ground transport, and the conquest of global distances by the second generation of supersonic planes.

Mobility may also increase with the expanding radius of activity in dispersed urban regions of many separate communities interconnected by high-speed travel systems. And while unnecessary commuting will be avoided by many workers,

others will take advantage of the ability to commute long distances from remote locations where they prefer to live. Transportation and communications, rather than reducing overall traffic volumes, will be redistributing travel, offering more choices, and presenting new opportunities, free of the present congestion and frustrations.

In addition, activities and contacts created by the global economy will be integrating world production patterns and increasing international joint ventures, requiring millions of Americans to take off on frequent trips to destinations abroad. World tourism will also continue to rise, and international social and educational exchanges will involve major segments of the population. Travel in the global village will cover far greater distances than could be afforded in earlier times, and journeys from one side of the Earth to the other will take less time than today's trip across town.

Summarizing the transportation outlook, by the year 2020 America will be relatively free of traffic congestion, air pollution, and the accidents and frustrations of 20th-cen tury tra vel. Workers and other members of the household will be able to avoid many of today's routine trips. Transportation will prove to be the means of achieving new lifestyles and

patterns of living, a wider range of job opportunities, more choices in where to live and play, and unprecedented exposure to the world.

Translating the new mobility into the altered lifestyles of 2020, the typical American commuter will board the family electro-van, drive to the nearest guideway entrance, set the controls for his or her urban destination, then sit back and relax until the warning signal indicates the final approach to the exit.

The on-board computer will display the location of vacant underground parking spaces. An adjacent public transportation station may enable the commuter to take a short ride' to a final destination, or the trip might be made by electric shuttle bus providing free service on major streets for all who move about in the city. Downtown streets will be reserved for the exclusive use of public transit vehicles, taxis, and pedestrians.

On some days the commuting schedule will be different. Instead of heading for an intown office, the suburban American resident will drive to a nearby neighborhood work center, relying on the communication network to stay in touch with main office personnel, and to call up needed information.

There will also be those less frequent occasions when a personal appearance in some distant location is essential to the job, such as signing a new contract halfway around the world. That will mean leaving home early to catch the maglev train to the airport, where the morning overseas shuttle will be taking off. The giant hypersonic plane, operated by a consortium of 12 nations (Pan Global Airways), will be in the air just long enough for breakfast and a few telephone calls. The trip back a day later will land the commuter home in time for a quiet weekend in the countryside. Follow-up talks with overseas partners will be accomplished in teleconferences scheduled for the next week.

While it is true that these scenarios are simply considered possibilities, what is important is that efforts are being made in the United States to visualize alternative futures as a guide to establishing goals, setting priorities, and moving in the direction of needed change.

0 About the Author: Wilfred Oll'en, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., lI'as formerly director of the institution's transportation research program.

His most recent book is Transportation and World Development,

The Short Story The American short story, which has always lived in the shadow of its generic cousin, the novel, is enjoying remarkable popularity today. SPAN presents an assessment of the boom and an O'Henry Award-winning story by Tobias Wolff.

A Natural Empire In an effort to prevent thoughtless development, the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit American organization, buys property that supports endangered wildlife and plants. The "all action and no talk" group is today the world's largest private proprietor of natural areas. Its one-million-hectare empire includes forests, marshes, prairies, mountains, deserts, and islands.

America's Young Scientists FOrLune magazine asked some of America's senior scientists to nominate the country's "hottest" young scientists, persons who have achieved important breakthroughs-in fields ranging from medicine to roboticsand may well be among tomorrow's Nobel laureates.

Charting Historic Architecture For about 60 years, the Historic American Buildings Survey has been painstakingly collecting pictorial and written records of the country's architecture. Its collection includes 40.000drawings, 77,000 photos, and 42.000 pages of written data.

-zl-n P rsonall -Ie Pub I Transport ~~S~:~;i~~~:~;~::~:n~~ I

spend more time traveling to and from work than they spend with their children.

There is a way out of these problems: A new, "personal" kind of public trans-

I

A personal rapid transit system that combines the advantages of private and public means of transportation offers the best hope for solving America's urban transport problems, says the author.

personal rapid transit.(PRT) stations and track that would offer an appealing and economical service for nondrivers. As the PRT network expanded, a growing number of car users would opt to use it.

Why transit now fails

Urban areas are no longer compact, high-density areas, but have spread out into the countryside. Destinations are farther apart and trips take longer. People no longer go primarily to and from the center of the city. The majority of trips in the United States, for example, now are ransportation is vital to urban life, crosstown and between suburbs, flowing but the means now used to move into and around the growing number of around within communities cause activity clusters that chal1enge the center many serious problems. Fossil-fu- city for supremacy.

As a result, there has been a steady eled cars, trucks, and even buses produce poisonous air, harmful noise, increased decline in the use of mass-transit systems soil salinity, toxic wastes, overdependence that were developed to serve high-density on imported petroleum, and (for cars) high urban cores. "Mass" transit, ,asthe name injury and death rates. Their roadways, suggests, was based on the principle of tracks, stations, and parking consume too large vehicles picking up the masses of much paved land and disrupt commu- walkers who once thronged tightly nities and businesses excessively during packed cities, carrying them to and from construction. Moreover, the present work and businesses in the dense central means of urban transportation have ne- area. The idea was bril1iant when conglected the needs of nondrivers as wel1as ceived, but it can't compete with autothe poorer residents of cities and suburbs. mobiles in a "spread city." Today, only The overal1 quality of service, especial1y three percent of al1 trips made in U.S. that offered by public transportation, is urban areas are made on public or masstransit facilities. too often substandard.

Inventive minds in the 1950s began to Auto emissions also contribute to global warming. And cars create mam- conceive of a type of public transportamoth traffic jams, so that people now tion that might compete better with the

T

automobile. One of the pioneers was Donn Fichter, who published a seminal book in 1964, entitled Individualized Automatic Transit and the City. His and similar ideas coalesced around the name "personal rapid transit" in the 1970s, emphasizing the essential features of al1 true PRT systems. These are: • Ful1y automated vehicles (that is, without human drivers).

• Vehicles captive to the guideway, which is reserved for these vehicles.

• Smal1vehicles available for exclusive use by an individual or a small group traveling together by choice, and, if desired by the owner and operator, available for service 24 hours a day (that is, "personal" and not "mass" service).

• Smal1guideways that can be located above ground, at or near ground level, or underground.

• Vehiclesable to use al1guideways and stations on a fully connected network.

• Direct origin-to-destination service, without requiring transfer or stop at intervening stations.

• Service available on demand rather than on a fixed schedule.

PRT's appealing characteristics These features have some extremely important implications. First and perhaps most important, they imply a publictransportation service that would have many of the appealing characteristics of the automobile. You could, for example, ride alone or only with passengers of your own choice. You could board a vehicle as soon as you arrive, or after a brief wait, in a smal1, wel1-lighted station. You could travel nonstop from your boarding station to your selected debarking station without delays at intervening stations-a

Reprinted by permission from the November/December 1990 issue of The Futurist, published by the World Future Society. 4916 St. Elmo Avenue. Bethesda. Maryland 20814. Copyright © 1990 World Future Society.

~lPROGRAM [

VOICE

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SCHEDULE

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY Time: 1ST; Frequencies in kHz; Asterisk (.) indicates medium wave.

English (0630-0830) (1930-2330)

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

Hindi

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6145,7105,

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(0700-0800)

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Urdu

(0630-0700)

6015, 7105, 9635, 9705, 11780; (0700-0730)

7205, 11780; (0630-0700) (2130-2230)

15185, 15265, 17785; (2130-2230)

6150. 7290, 9680. 11835.

1575',9545,11965,15185.

1260';

(1900-2000)

9680, 11775, 15435, 17795.

service even better than the automobile usually provides.

The top speed of PRT vehicles would often be much lower than the top speed of either automobiles or traditional masstransit vehicles, but average operating speeds would be much higher since PRTs would not be deterred by traffic jams and frequent stops. PRT vehicles running nonstop on the main line from origin to destination could achieve average operating speeds of 50 kilometers per hour or better, compared with 30 kilometers per hour or less for automobiles and transit vehicles in urban rush-hour traffic.

An artist's impression of a personal rapid transit-P RT -station (left) and of the inside ofa PRTcar (below).

Fine network PRT would not always offer the frontdoor availability of an automobile, but its relatively inexpensive track and stations could be densely spaced in a fine network.

As a result, walks to stations should rarely exceed a few minutes. Stations in activity concentrations, such as shopping malls, hospitals, or other service centers, could have direct connections into buildings. Stations could also connect directly to large apartment buildings or complexes.

Mass transit on track, relying on large road vehicles, is too expensive JO build with such a tight network and many

stations. Its costs limit it to a few heavily traveled corridors with large stations spaced relatively far apart. This. is the fundamental reason that rail transit is unable to compete well with the automobile in the suburbs. except for specialized commuter service to the city center.

PRT. on the other hand, is based on small and light guideways and stations.

This allows many more stations to be

costs. for it shares the roadway with cars. but from its intensive labor costs. which represent a high proportion of total cost.

Each bus requires a driver. Buses running nearly empty. as they often do between the peak hours in America, are major money losers for operators and taxpayers. Even with large tax subsidies. no

when not in demand or being redistributed. Each additional rider attracted to the service during these times. moreover. generates a financial benefit.

Recognizing these potential advantages of personal rapid transit. the Regional Transportation Authority of Chicago announced on April 24. 1990.a bold program

deployed for the same or less capital; and,

transit operator

to evaluate PRT for the Chicago area. This

as more are needed, guideways and stations can be added into the growing network. Like roadway or telephone sys= tems, the PRT net could continually expand to serve new and greater needs.

Even closer station spacing might become justified economically as population dens sity increases in some areas, reducing maximum walk time to a few minutes.

frequent bus service during middays, eve¡ nings, nights, or weekends. In the United States. those riders who most suffer from this poorer quality of service are the low= income workers, the poor on welfare, and elderly and handicapped nondrivers who have no other choice. The community suffers. too. because few auto users desire to switch to buses.

is the first such PRT evaluation program in the United Stattls, which raises the interesting question of why it has taken so long for a good idea to reach this point.

One answer to this question is that some transportation professionals have resisted PRT from the beginning because it challenged existing notion!! of what mass transit is all about. Another answer

Mass transit based on large vehicles such as buses suffers not from high track

PRT costs little extra to operate during the off-peak hours. Cars rest in stations

is that satisfactory PRT designs took a long time to evolve. Early concepts con-

can long afford to offer

tained enough deficiencies to make them easy targets of critics, who nearly succeeded in killing all PRT development programs in the United States. Finally, though, rapid advances in the underlying technologies have created more-favorable prospects for PRT today than in earlier years. There have been major inventions and innovations, for example, in microprocessors, motors, and drives-all of great importance in developing PRT. PRT development was undertaken during the 1960s and 1970s in several countries, but a system was never brought to fruition. Overcoming the complex variety of technical, environmental, safety, economic, and political handicaps proved more difficult than at first recognized.

The largest financial investment in PRT was made by the West German government in the 1970s on the system called Cabinetaxi. The system completed its test-track checkouts successfully, but for budgetary and other reasons, Cabinetaxi never received the demonstration that was planned for it in Hamburg.

Advocating

PRT

In America, one of the leading designers and developers of PRT is J. Edward Anderson, whose company, Taxi 2000 Corporation, has been a vigorous advocate of PRT. The corporation, based in Revere, Massachusetts, was organized to develop PRT and assist communities and corporations in studying their transportation problems, with an aim toward installing Taxi 2000 systems.

The Advanced Transit Association (A TRA) has been the only public-interest organization in America dedicated since the mid-1970s to promoting research and into PRT. A report by development ATRA, published in 1989, concluded that what PRT most needs today is for transit operators, governmental authorities, and industry to begin to take it seriously.

Technical issues should no longer be regarded as the predominant concerns they were once felt to be.

The report reached several conclusions about PRT's potential: • Research and development on PRT during nearly four decades demonstrate

that PRT systems could now be built with state-of-the-art technology and off-theshelf components.

• Even though a market-ready PRT system does not yet exist, one could be built and tested thoroughly at a test facility within a relatively short time, and will likely perform as claimed.

• PRTs can probably be built for unusually low costs compared with traditional mass-transit tracked systems. Current cost estimates for PRT, based on serious design efforts to minimize costs, appear to rely on competent and thorough analysis as well as quotations for many important components by potential suppliers.

• If PRT costs--eapital and operating-prove to be as low as now predicted, a significant advance will have occurred in the potential cost-effectiveness oftransit. Assuming that PRT will attract riders better than present mass transit, its revenues and bottom-line profitability should be much higher.

• PRT systems, feeding to and collecting from the traditional mass-transit stations already in place, will enhance both the service and the economics of the traditional systems as well as help provide a total transit service of higher quality for lower cost.

PRT should help reduce air pollution and bring other environmental benefits to urban areas if it fulfills its promise in helping reduce auto use. Some people, however, may find its above-ground guideways and stations objectionable.

Much attention has been given to the design and artistic fea tures of PR T systems to make them as attractive-or at least as unobtrusive-as possible. The PRT systems envisioned are small compared with most above-ground structures, including mass-transit track and stations. The track of the Taxi 2000 PRT system, for example, is only 90 centimeters wide-not even as wide as the vehicle that runs on it.

Where PRT systems are designed and built into new developments, there should be no problems with visual intrusiveness. r f anything, PR T structures should represent assets to new developments. Only experience, including observations at the

first test and demonstration sites, will reveal the public's reaction to PRT structures that are retrofitted into existing commercial and residential areas.

Hope for better urban transportation Transit is an essential part of urban transportation.

Automobiles cannot do the job alone. We will need even more and better transit in the future to reduce automobile use, both for the protection of the environment and economic welfare, and to offer nondrivers and others an appealing alternative to the automobile.

Traditional mass transit cannot economically provide the kind of better transit that communities need, even though it offers valuable---even crucialservice in a few niche markets. The reasons are apparent: Some types of mass transit, such as rail, cost so much to build that their stations can rarely be closely spaced except in densely populated corlidors. Other types of mass transit, such as buses, have such high labor costs that they cannot be run at frequent intervals (or even at all) during the off-peak or evening and night hours. If service is provided, riders must usually wait for long times in unsafe or uncomfortable conditions. And both subways and buses stop frequently so other passengers can get on and off, thus causing delays for the majority of passengers. Riders are often crowded together.

Some newer forms of mass transit, such as the automated people movers, are helping transit give better service, sometimes more economically than traditional systems. These forms, however, serve only limited needs in special circumstances and will probably continue to be so constrained.

Unfortunately, better options are not being de,,:eloped rapidly for urban transportation--options with potential for widespread and economical deployment. Only personal rapid transit has this promise. 0 About the Author: Thomas H. Floyd Jr., chairman of the Advanced Transit Association in Arlington, Virginia, is a specialist in ground transportation and the international transfer of technology.

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

.-, ~<:ifs

"Mr. Zellner won't be in today. He's taking a sick day to nurse a wounded ego."

"Those are the laws, Moses. Now go forth and multiply the number of lawyers. "

"True, I live in the past ... and so would you, my dear, if you had ever been there."

The,Roots of Panic

People describe it as the worst experience of their lives. One moment they are crossing the street or shopping, and the next they are engulfed in a wave of absolute terror. Out of the blue, the heart starts racing, the ground tilts, and a tingling suffuses the hands and forearms as sufferers are gripped by the conviction that they are going mad or even dying.

Many people who experience panic attacks believe that their problem is shameful and rare, but in fact new research indicates that panic is one manifestation of a group of serious anxiety disorders that affect one in seven people at some point during their lifetime.

Only in the past five years have researchers in America made significant progress in unraveling how mind and body conspire in the panic-prone person to fan brief sparks of garden-variety worry into roaring, disabling onslaughts.

Using brain-imaging techniques, for instance, scientists have learned that people with panic attacks tend to have abnormalities in one of the brain's emotional centers. Investigators are also beginning to understand how ingrained patterns of thinking play a role in determining the course of panic disorder. And most encouraging, researchers are discovering that panic disorders are comparatively easy to treat with therapy and drugs.

Partly because panic sufferers tend to be secretive about their condition, anxiety attacks have long been misdiagnosed and misunderstood. Indeed, the prevalence of anxiety disorders wasn't recognized in America until the mid-1980s, when the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, surveyed 18,571 people and discovered that nearly twice as many Americans suffered from anxiety disorders as from depression and related disorders. The hunt for the causes of panic disorder intensified in 1989 when researchers reported that one of five people with the affliction had made a suicide attempt.

Physiologically, all terror is fundamentally the same, whether it is triggered by a knife-wielding assailant or explodes out of nowhere. Experts now believe that people who suffer frequent panic attacks probably enter adulthood with an unusual sensitivity in the brain systems governing arousal and alarm. "Their security system has About the Author: Betsy Carpenter is an associate editor with U.S. News & World Report in Washington, D.C.

the rheostat too high," explains Jerrold Rosenbaum, chief of the clinical psychopharmacology unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Psychiatrist Eric Reiman and researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, Montana, have discovered evidence that an abnormality in the brain's limbic system, a network of nerve centers that regulate emotion, may predispose people to the development of panic attacks.

Another line of research suggests that the brain chemistry of panic sufferers may be out of kilter: Thomas Mellman and Thomas Uhde at NIMH have studied people who have severe anxiety attacks during sleep-a condition that afflicts about one in three panic sufferers-and have found that the attacks tend to occur when people are slipping into a stage of deep, relaxing sleep not normally associated with dreaming. The fact that relaxation can trigger attacks suggests to Mellman that a panic sufferer's mechanisms for regulating alertness have a hair trigger.

Abnormalities in the brain chemistry of panic patients don't necessarily mean that they were born panicky.

Indeed, the stress of living constantly in the shadow of fear could easily perturb the brain's chemistry. But increasingly, researchers believe that some young children have a predisposition to excessive anxiety. Psychologist Jerome Kagan of Harvard University reported with his colleagues in 1988 that an extreme form of shyness can be identified in children as young as two years old. Researchers found that 15 percent of the toddlers they tested were unusually timid compared with their peers. Moreover, the shy kids showed more physical signs of stress, including tightened vocal cords and faster heart rates.

Rosenbaum and his colleagues recently followed up on the Kagan study by evaluating the children of panic patients. They found that these children were significantly more inhibited in novel situations than their peers. They also tended to be more fearful about normal stressful. events such as going to the doctor, speaking in class, or riding in elevators.

Researchers are not yet sure whether anxious kids inherit a predisposition to panic disorder or that their nervous parents simply teach them that the world is full of traps and pitfalls. But they concur that even if some kids are born panic-prone, something has to occur to trigger panic attacks. Recent research indicates that, for some people, recreational drugs may be one such trigger.

Scientists unraveling the psychology and neurochemistry of crippling anxiety attacks are discovering that panic disorders can be treated with cognitive therapy and drugs.

Alan Louie and his colleagues at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute of the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco found that one-fourth of their panic patients developed attacks after regular cocaine use, and often they were tormented by the disorder for years after they stopped using the drug. Louie speculates that repeated cocaine use may gradually deepen panic pathways in the brain, citing animal studies that suggest cocaine increases the excitability of certain parts of the brain. He compares small, repeated doses of cocaine to throwing twigs on a smoldering fire: While each dose is only a small disturbance, eventually they can provoke a panic attack.

Although only a fraction of panic attacks is triggered by drug use, researchers have discovered that many panic patients share behaviors that may instigate and feed panic disorder. David Barlow, director of the Phobia and Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the State University of New York in Albany, showed in a recent series of experiments that panic patients are hypervigilant about the functioning of their bodies. When they are asked to estimate their heart rate, for instance, they are much more aCCl!rate than normal subjects.

Another experiment conducted in Barlow's clinic supports therapists' observations that the panic-prone share a generalized sense of helplessness. Anxious patients were

asked to breathe air spiked with carbon dioxide, which accelerates respiration. They also were given a dial, marked "control," and told that if they became frightened, they could decrease the amount of carbon dioxide by turning down the dial when a light flashed on. In fact, the dial didn't work, but researchers found that when the light was on, giving people the illusion of control through much of the experiment, they rarely panicked. Those who felt out of control because the light was always off usually had an attack.

The general helplessness felt by panic sufferers and their heightened sensitivity to changes in bodily functions help transform everyday anxiety into a full-scale attack, Barlow says. Many people have an occasional anxiety attack but are able to dismiss it as an aberration that is unlikely to recur. By contrast, he says, panicky people find their first attack as a "horrible, unpredictable event" and become preoccupied with thoughts about another.

Advances in understanding the disorder's roots have been matched by gains in treatment. When an anxietydisorder patient is in severe distress, doctors have found that prescribing any of several drugs will quickly blunt panic's edge. And increasingly, researchers are finding that cognitive therapies--ehanging the ways people think about themselves and the world-may be more effective than drugs at squelching panic over the long term.

Cognitive therapists employ a range of antipanic strategies, including systematically exposing patients to the physiological symptoms that they fear most. For instance, at one clinic panickers are spun around in desk chairs until they are dizzy or are told to sit in the sauna until they feel flushed and faint. Preliminary data indicate that cognitive therapy is quite effective-some U.S. clinics report a success rate as high as 85 percent-but it remains. unclear whether it works by changing the brain's faulty chemistry or by helping people to redefine for themselves a frightening biological sensation. Either explanation is probably acceptable to those who walk away panic-free. 0 Copyright

I; 1990 U.S. News & World Report.

All rights reserved.

Inc.

Sounds FromCajun Country The rollicking rhythms of Cajun and zydeco, once sneered at as "chank-a-chank" music, are now popular all over the world.

Near the hamlet of Erath, Louisiana (population 2,I48), split down the middle by the railroad tracks and Highway 14, D.L. Menard-proprietor of the Menard Chair Factorysits in the kitchen of his small, weathered frame house. He is lean and ruggedly handsome at 55, despite jug ears and a couple of missing front teeth. Rocking on one of the platform chairs he makes out of local ash wood, he slaps the armrest with the Gallic animation seen hereabouts.

"We didn't pay no mind to what we had until others made us aware," he marvels. "Now we're known the world over. And the only place you

can find this sound is right here in Cajun country."

The "sound" Cajun guitarist Menard refers to is a homegrown folk music once found only in the remote byways of South Louisiana, not far from the Gulf of Mexico. What the people "had" and had clung to tenaciously for generations was a French language, a unique, rollicking music, and a spicy-hot cuisine, which have all escaped-so far-being melted in the great American pot.

Once gasping, this curious, exotic culture now seems ruddycheeked with health. A Cajun dictionary has been published.

Americans are savoring Cajun spicy dishes featured in restaurants nationwide. Throughout the world, people are dancing to the fiddles, accordions, guitars, and plaintive French lyrics of Cajun waltzes, jigs and two-steps, as well as to the music of its black, French counterpart, zydeco.

The current trendiness of all things Cajun is a source of amazement to D.L. Menard. Time was when there was no call for his music apart from Saturday night dances for the local Acadians (or Cajuns), descendants of settlers who found their way here from Nova Scotia (then called Acadia) in the middle of the 18th century. Even locally, the archaic and heartfelt tunes were seen as an embarrassing throwback to the country bumpkin ways of the past and sneered at as "chan~-a-chank" music.

Branded by local stigma, the old French culture seemed doomed.

What hand reached into this isolated pocket of old-France-inAmerica and laid out its delights for the world to enjoy? Partly it was those Americans who, in the mid-1960s, started searching for roots. They were looking for the unspoiled folkways that told the story of America's heritage and evoked images of earlier, lesstroubled times. Folk-music festivals began to flourish and their scouts sought out unknown musicians with new and exciting styles. A charismatic fiddler and singer named Doug Kershaw from Jennings, Louisiana, introduced pop Cajun music on national television. Later, fans of the radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, heard the Cajun band Beausoleil play at the mythical Lake Wobegon (see SPAN June 1987). As things developed, this once insular region climbed out of obscurity and, in the words of Washington, D.C., music promoter Marc Gretschel, "It became hip to be Cajun."

As you approach the neat suburban sprawl of Lafayette, the hub of Cajun country, your feet tap to the beat of local music sung in a twangy, rather tuneless shout on the car radio: "0 bebe, on va danser,jDanser, danser Ie jig jran(:aisjComme les temps, les temps passes." A two-lane blacktop takes you south to Erath and to Menard's house.

D.L. (he's never called anything else, perhaps because his given name is Doris) has performed throughout the United States and in 17 countries he never dreamed of seeing. Yet he family of remains reluctant to leave---even for short tours-his six sons and a daughter, his wife, his chair factory, his roots.

About the Authors: Jim and Carlotta Anderson, who live in Glen Echo, Maryland. traveled to the American South to learn more about zydeco music ajier hearing it at a local dance hall.

Despite the glamorous po~e in a glitzy cowboy outfit on his latest album cover, he remains unspoiled by international attention.

The music business is expanding, but otherwise times are tough now in Cajun country, Menard says. Chair making is how he has made his living for the past 20 years; like most Cajun musicians, he can't support himself from his music.

But tough times are nothing new in the swamps and prairies of South Louisiana. "Most of us was raised poor and worked hard," he says. "We had to amuse ourselves with things that didn't cost too much and music was one way of letting loose."

Many Cajun songs are about sorrow, loneliness, death, and lost love. "They pop into your head most when you're in a sad mood," says Menard, who has written some of the best-known modern Cajun songs. He was 16 and working in the sugarcane fields when he bought his first guitar. While pumping gas at a local filling station, he jotted down the words of a rousing tune called "La Porte en Arriere" (The Back Door). It became so popular that some refer to it as the Cajun national anthem.

Menard sings in the strident, nasal "holler" characteristic of the traditional Cajun style. He uses the local dialect-a mingling of French with American Indian, English, Spanish, German, and African elements-in his songs, which pleased his father, since "Daddy couldn't speak any English." But it appeared to limit his potential audience to the 900,000 or so Louisianians of Cajun ancestry living in the 22 southernmost parishes (counties) of the state.

In 1916, Louisiana's Anglo-dominated government began officially prohibiting Cajun children from speaking French at school, in an effort to Americanize them "for their own good."

But now the state's schools are focusing on teaching Frenchwhat the local people call "Parisian French," that is. And the state tourism bureau, recognizing the economic value of the culture, is displaying Cajun country like a long-buried treasure.

The transformation began slowly. In 1964, Dewey Balfa-a sharecropper's son from Louis, in Evangeline parish-was invited to perform at a folk festival in Rhode Island. The field-worker who found him and who became a key figure in the revival of Cajun music was folklorist Ralph Rinzler, later director of the Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Program. Playing songs learned from his father and grandmother, Balfa brought his unaccompanied ballads and soulful fiddle tunes to cheering, sophisticated crowds who spread the word. He went on to become one of the leaders of the renaissance of Cajun music and culture. In France, too, the music was "discovered." Since then, scores of Cajun musicians have performed at nightclubs and festivals and have gone on tours around the world.

To Cajuns, their music is much more than entertainment. It is a link with a treasured but tragic history. The forefathers of to day's Cajuns were people of rural stock who had migrated from northwest France to the French colony of Acadia in the early 1600s. There they had developed a thriving existence farming, fishing, hunting, and trapping.

In the mid-1600s the French and English began their long struggle for possession of the North American continent. The

British captured Port Royal, the seat of the Acadian government, in 1710. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) decided the fate of the Acadians by handing the territory over to Britain. Intent upon maintaining their French culture and identity, most Acadians refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. In 1755, the British began a mass deportation, packing thousands of Acadians into boats bound for dispersed locations.

One band of exiles went down the Mississippi toward Louisiana, the French outpost to the south. In this land of prairies, bayous, and swamps, the Acadians found an environment that would provide a livelihood for their wandering tribe and a natural barrier behind which they could create a new Acadia.

For these country people, Saturday night was the opportunity for a weekly get-together, and dancing was always part of the festivities. For more than 50 years now, accordionist acta Clark and fiddler Hector Duhon have been keeping dance floors hopping with exuberant two-steps and lilting waltzes. At M ulate's, a popular restaurant and dance hall in Breaux Bridge, they perform in shirtsleeves, sitting in front of a mural of a swamp cabin, looking like anyone's grandfathers.

Whole families sit at long tables covered with checkered tablecloths, savoring foods taken from the water. Conversations are an animated mix of Cajun French and English.

Everyone dances, even the small children. The place is jampacked and noisy. A bit raucous, the customers obey the classic Cajun admonition to "Laissez les bons temps rouler" (Let the good times roll). acta Clark, 86, has been playing his "squeeze-box" since 1928. This Cajun button-type accordion, which probably arrived here with German immigrants in the 1850s, is less assuming than the large, pearly, more familiar piano-key models. Like a harmonica, the instrument has a full tonal range in a single key. Each button produces two notes, according to whether the bellows is being pushed in or pulled out. Once the instruments were imported, but currently there are about 30 accordion builders in South Louisiana. Nowadays most bands also include guitar and drums; years ago, however, the accordion and fiddle were the main instruments, joined by a steel triangle (' tit fer, little iron) to accent the beat.

Over at Prejean's in Lafayette this particular week, Menard and two fellow musicians are performing honky-tonk tunes while dancers order gumbo or maybe fried fillet of alligator (tastes a bit like fowl). At Randol's, a greenhouse during the day and a dance hall at night, Sterling Richard, at 30 one of the style, is few young Cajuns playing in the old, traditional performing with his father, Felix. Leaning over a heaping serving of boiled, highly spiced crawfish, Richard explains why he sings in an unnaturally high, almost falsetto wail, reminiscent of flamenco music: "We have so much sorrow that wejust have to holler, and that's how it comes out."

"You add a little blues, a little soul, a little rock 'n' roll, a little jazz and mix it all in."

Richard's inspiration is a legendary, near-blind accordionist, Iry Lejeune, who is credited with reviving the almost-forgotten early style of Cajun music in the 1940s when Western Swing had replaced it in the dance halls. Lejeune's songs tell of a time that is troubled and lonely, when poverty and desertion delineate life, but when the occupants of the harsh landscape have consolation in each other and in their common heritage. His haunting lyrics, Cajun music historian Ann Savoy writes in Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People, "are the most complete voice of the Cajun people ever recorded." Lejeune died at the age of 26 in 1955, at the peak of his career.

In Louisiana, the Cajuns are not the only people with a tragic heritage. The black Creoles, another French-speaking group living in the same territory, are descendants of slaves torn from their homes in West Africa to clear land and otherwise enrich the Louisiana planters. Their music draws on their own history of slavery and economic hardship.

Some of the greatest players of Cajun music were (and are) black, and played together with white musicians. But the Creoles also developed a musical style all their own, called zydeco. Like Cajun, it is "roots" music, though a mixture of many elements. Explains Stanley (Buckwheat Zydeco) Dural, one of its most popular stylists: "You add a little blues, a little soul, a little rock 'n' roll, a little jazz and mix it all in. Sometimes you can hear five different types of music in one song."

With its strong, syncopated beat, zydeco music is hard to sit still to. Dural's band is called lis Sont Partis (They're Off and Running). The music is snappy: "That's why it's called zydeco-they're snapbeans which break and pop," Dural says.

"At least that's sort of how you pronounce les haricots (green beans) down here."

As in Cajun music, the accordion is a focal instrument in zydeco, but here it's an elaborate piano accordion and the fiddle has disappeared, its lively lilt replaced by the blast of a saxophone or trumpet. Gone, too, is the triangle. In its place is an instrument that reflects similar lean musical beginnings, when the rhythms might be tapped out with spoons or even dried animal bones. Called a rubboard or frottoir and evolved from the laundry washboard, it's a kind of corrugated-steel vest hung over the shoulders and scraped with thimbles, spoon handles or bottle cap openers to provide the insistent rhythm that drives the band.

One of the first black Creoles to play the piano accordion and the one who developed "la-la" music, as it was then caned, into what we now call zydeco was Clifton Chenier (see cover). accompanied by his brother Cleveland on rubboard. By the mid-1950s, Chenier received nationwide attention with recordings of "Ay Tee Fee" (Hey Little Girl) and "Bopping the Rock," and started touring the country and later the world. As the King of Zydeco, Chenier used to perform with a crown on his head. To play the intense blues of zydeco, he once said that one has to have experienced hard times, been "through the mill." Of today's music, he continued, "They ain't got no story for you 'cause they ain't been through nothin'; they ain't been

nowhere yet." His death in December 1987, says Smithsonian folklorist Nicholas Spitzer, "signaled the end of an era. The king is dead, but in his students and followers he has left many heirs to the zydeco throne." These include his son C.J. Chenier.

In an effort to make the music in Cajun country more appealing to the younger crowd, a "new wave" is sweeping over it, producing "progressive Cajun" and "progressive zydeco."

This disturbs some of the old-timers and purists, who feel it represents a corruption of the style's uniqueness and continuity.

"Now the music is so advanced you can't call it country anymore," says Menard.

But Buckwheat Zydeco sees it differently. "The older generation wants to stick to the roots, but you can't do that and capture the new generation," he maintains. "You have to modify. I'm willing to give 50 percent to the younger generation, if they give me 50 percent. Sometimes when they see the accordion, they run. They think an accordion is only for polkas.

So I give them a little of what they want to hear. After they check it out, they find out they love it."

The same spirit drives the Cajun band Beausoleil, and has made it so popular that it's sometimes difficult for the members to get back for their Thursday gig at Mulate's. Beausoleil can play l8th-centruy ballads, but it can also turn out a record entitled Bayou Boogie. It stirs up zydeco blues, jazz, rock, and Caribbean rhythms with Cajun to produce what bandleader Michael Doucet calls a "highly seasoned jumbo gumbo."

Doucet doesn't think this is disloyal to Cajun traditions.

"We play the gamut, the whole history of Louisiana music," he Spansays, which he points out has many influences-French, ish, American Indian, German, English, African, Caribbean, country-and-western, black, and white. In a Beausoleil performance, a conga drummer switches to a washboard; an accordion player to a saxophone.

A fiddler, Doucet, 39, is an example of the recent awakening of interest among the young and educated in a culture once dismissed as "hick." A graduate of Louisiana State University, son of an Air Force colonel, and a recognized authority on Cajun music, Doucet started fiddling in the Cajun style when he was 18, "because no one else was doing it." When he went to France in 1974 as part of a duo called the Bayou Drifters, he realized "there was a whole language and people out there who could understand our songs." The experience changed his life.

Recent fallout from the cultural explosion includes Rockin' Sidney's Grammy-award-winning "Don't Mess With My Tout-Tout"; Emmy Lou Harris's "Lacassine Special," composed by Iry Lejeune; and a performance by zydeco favorites Rockin' Dopsie and the Twisters on Paul Simon's Grace/and.

Mike Hebert, manager ofthe Cajun band File, has watched with wonderment the rise in Cajun and zydeco popularity. He Right above: Couples dance to Cajun music at the annual Festival Acadiens in Lafayette, Louisiana, the hub of Cajun country.

Right: D.L. Menard, who has written some of the best-known Cajun songs, strums his guitar while relaxing at his chair factory.

notes that the musicians cannot make a living from their music unless they travel most of the year, and when they travel, their music risks losing its fragile, native flavor. "It's the same with Cajun food," says Hebert. "The food and music can get watered down and then lose their appeal."

It's possible, of course, that the music and food will wind up asjust a bit of spice in the great American pot. But Hebert may underestimate the resilience of the folkways that have produced them. Given the renewed interest in its heritage and the surge of musical creativity, the culture may now be in a favorable

position to retain its own identity, as it has through centuries of adversity, isolation, and persecution.

Louisiana folklorist Barry Jean Ancelet has pointed to the "uncanny adaptability" of the South Louisiana culture: "Cajuns and Creoles have always been able to chew up change, swallow the palatable parts, and spit out the rest." Next to the exhortation to let the good times roll, the most popular adage in Cajun country is "Lache pas fa patate" (Don't drop the potato).

What that translates into in South Louisiana is "Hang in there, don't let it go."

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The Museum Architecture of Louis Kahn Three museums designed by Louis Kahn (190174)-the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven-have redefined museum architecture.

Kahn's feeling for natural light, space, and materials, combined with his sensitivity to art objects and the importance he gave to man's' relationship to art, established a standard of architectural excellence against which all similar projects today are measured. Kahn's museums are humane structures that enhance both the art on display and the visitor's own intellectual and spiritual life. analysis of In the first major comprehensive Kahn's path-breaking museum projects, the Duke University Museum of Art in-Durham, North Carolina, and curator Patricia Loud of the Kimbell Art Museum recently organized an exhibition of 121 items documenting the design evolution of the three Kahn museums. A series of sketches. ground plans, elevations, section drawings. and models give an insight into the architect's creative process and reveal the expressive power of his graphic style.

Kahn involved himself totally in every detail of his building-from the color of the concrete to the reflection of light on the concrete. His dedication to detail, craftsmanship, and quality was part of a quest, he said, "to discover what a building wants to be."

I. Yale University Art Gallery; perspective view from northwest; 1951; black, colored crayon.

2. Yale Center for British Art; schematic north elevation; 1970; charcoal, blue, and r~d pencil on yellow tracing paper. 3. Kimbell Art Museum; perspective view from southwest; 1967; charcoal on yellow tracing paper. 4. Kimbell Art Museum; model; 1968.

LOUIS KAHN'S dramatic use of bricks and subtle manipulations of light and shade are evident in the massive arches and circular openings of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad that he designed.