June 1995

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THE CARGO

Th~ Ashok Leyland Cargo. Why remain in the past when you can head for tomorrow?

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THE NEW GENE liON TRUCK

In this age of mind-boggling social, political, and technological change, it is reassuring to note that some things do remain the same. One of them is America's love for a 200-year-old publication that forecasts the weather and provides advice on when to plant and harvest crops. The Old Farmer's Almanac was born at a time when American society was overwhelmingly rural, and the information it provided was critical to people's livelihoods. But what compels 4.5 million mostly urban dwellers in the age of computers, satellites, and television to buy it?

Robert Taylor, who fled big city life for the tranquillity of aNew England village several years ago, tries to answer that question in our opening article. "So what if petting the cat and putting out seeds for the birds are as close as they get to wildlife," he says of the publication's readers.

"No matter. The Almanac connects them to the world around them, to their past, and therefore to themselves."

Anita Ratnam, the subject of our cover story, wanted to reconnect with her past, so she came back to India after several years of being a high-profile media personality in New York. But this dynamic, creative woman has not gone into seclusion. As Vinod Chhabra-himself a returnee from America-notes in his profile of Ratnam, she is more active than ever with a wide variety of television, dance, and theater productions that keep her shuttling between India and the United States. Change and innovation could be her middle names.

Change and innovation are very much on the minds of the people who run America's business schools, and the trend they've launched ought to be of interest to many of our younger readers. Recognizing the globalization of trade and commerce, MBA school administrators are actively pursuing foreign students to gain an international perspective. "With applications from Americans running well ahead of last year as the economy revives," writes reporter Lawrence Malkin this month, "the schools do not really need foreign students, but they definitely want them."

Meanwhile, inventor Dean Kamen wants American secondary-school students to get as excited about science and technology as they are about rock stars and sports heroes. He is disturbed by the degree of techno-illiteracy among the country's youth. To counter it, he has established a hands-on science museum for children and persuaded major corporations to fund an annual gameplaying science competition.

A whirlwind of innovation among engineers and scientists, much as Ratnam is among entertainers and producers, Kamen is unchanging in one regard-his dress. He habitually wears jeans and a blue work shirt-even if he's meeting the President of the United States-and questions thededication to work of anyone who sports a suit and necktieprobably even the President of the United States. "No one ever describes Kamen as diplomatic," notes writer Steve Kemper. But manydocall him a genius.

- T.A.H.

2

The Old Farmer's Almanac by Robert L. Taylor After the NPT Conference: The Way Ahead

8

by Mitchell Reiss

10

BombsAway! byRichardJerome Focus On ...

On the Lighter Side MBA Programs Go Global by Lawrence Malkin Training the "Managerial Woman" by Laurel Anita Ratnam-Doing It All by Vinod Chhabra Deborah Dunthorn-U nder Her Direction

12 13

14 16 18

20

by Meenakshi

24

ShapeI' Walters

Shedde

California Cruisin' by Sandra Maxwell Pied Piper of Technology by Steve Kemper

28 34

New Age of Consumerism by James H. Snider First Lady of Consumerism-Esther Peterson

38

by Sakuntala

Narasimhan

The Better Business Bureau by M.S. Returns, Refunds, and Rain Checks

42

In Defense of Huck Finn Mark Twain in Hartford

46

Rajan

by D. B. N. Murthy

by Lance Morrow bySushilaSingh

Front cover: A scene from Under Her Breath, a dance-drama directed by American actress Deborah Dunthorn. Theplay was produced by Anita Ratnam (inset) who also acted in it.

Publisher, ThomasA. Homan; Editor, Guy E. Olson Managing Editor, Krishan Gabrani; Associate Editors, Arun Bhanot, Prakash Chandra; Copy Editors, A. Venkata Narayana, Snigdha Goswami; Editorial Assistants, Rashmi Goel, Ashok Kumar; Photo Editor, Avinash Pasricha; Art Director, Nand Katyal; Contributing Designers, Gopi Gajwani, SUhas Nimbalkar; Staff Designer, Hemant Bhatnagar; Production Assistant, Sanjay Pokhriyal; Circulation Manager, D.P. Sharma; Photographic Services: USIS Photographic Services Unit; Research Services: USIS

Documentation Services, American Center Library, New Delhi.

Photographs: Front cover-Mukesh Munim; bottom right-Avinash Pasricha. 2-6-© Susan Lapides. 10-1I-illustration by Mick Wiggins. 12 top-Avinash Pasricha. 16-17illustration by Nand Katyal. 18-19-courtesy Anita Ratnam; 19 bottom right-Avinash Pasricha. 21-Mukesh Munim except bottom left by Rajan Chaughule. 22-23-courtesy Anita Ratnam. 24-2S-John HarringtonlThe World & I 26 top--NASA. 27 topAvinash Pasricha; bottom-courtesy Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. 28-33© Susan Lapides. 34-3S-Avinash Pasricha. 38-Marilu Pittman, Caring People Magazine ®. 40-Avinash Pasricha. 42-Mark Twain Museum. 46-47-Mark Twain Memorial, Hartford, Connecticut. Back cover-Avinash Pasricha.

Erratum: In last month's'lssue, the copyright line for story "Norma"by Sonia Sanchez was inadvertently omitted. The copyright should read: "Reprinted with permission from Thunder's Mouth Press." by the United Stales Information

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Question: How can an old-fashioned publication that specializes in weather and crop information sought bY a rural population 200 years ago continue to flourish in an urban America awash in personal computers and satellite television? Answer: By finding more than four million readers who still want to read it.

Above: Editor Judson Hale poses with the talismans of the 203-year-old publicationa stuffed chicken and a wasps' nest.

Right: Founding editor Robert Bailey Thomas's notebooks, hygrometer, and the lockbox where he kept his secret weather formulas. Center: Today, visitors to Almanac headquarters can stock up on seeds and gardening supplies.

Far right: Executive editor Timothy Clark andfriends Daniel and Dexter read up on a home remedy that claims "kissing a donkey cures a toothache. "

Text by ROBERT Photographs

European immigrants who settled in the northern part of the American colonies called their home New England. It was a beautiful place, where the ocean crashed onto granite shores, wide rivers flowed through pristine countryside, and thick forests stretched away for miles.

These settlers soon found, however, that the area's remarkable beauty masked an underlying harshness. The growing season was disappointingly short, and, after the trees had been cleared, the soil was often thin and rocky. Coaxing the foods they were familiar with to grow was a formidable challenge. If a farmer succeeded, his family would have enough to eat through the long, cold winters.

If not, they might starve. Farming-and farming well-was not just something to do.

It was a matter of life or death.

These early New Englanders were intelligent, educated people, for the most part, and

they sought out all the information they could find that might help them. A large number of almanacs, published in New England for New England farmers, gave them important facts: Sunrise, sunset, phases of the moon, tides, predictions of the weather, advice on when to plant what.

The Farmer's Almanac, created in 1792 by Robert Bailey Thomas, started out to be that kind of book-but soon became something a great deal more. It wasn't just that Thomas's astronomical calculations were painstakingly exact or that his predictions of the weather were correct more often than not.

Some instinct caused Thomas to go beyond the factual and the entertaining and to enter into a dialogue with his readers, acting as a kind of long-distance mentor and guide. This turned out to be a recipe for startling success.

What Thomas created 203 years ago has become a publishing phenomenon. The Old

L. TAYLOR

by SUSAN

LAPIDES

Farmer's Almanac (the Old was added in 1832 to distinguish it from its competitors) has been published, without interruption, longer than any other periodical in the United States and now sells 4.5 million copies each year, enough to land it on some of the country's lists of best-selling books.

How can this be? people ask year after year. How can an old-fashioned publication rooted in a rural past be so popular in the fast-paced, urbanized, fax- and cellularphone-ridden modern era?

The Almanac's history provides some clues.

Robert Bailey Thomas was born in 1766 and grew up in the little town of West Boylston, Massachusetts. His father had a large library, and young Robert became an avid reader, both at home and at the boarding schools he attended during the winter months. His father encouraged him to pursue

a liberal education, but Robert preferred to concentrate on science. He read Ferguson's Astronomy when he was 16, and he later wrote, "It was from the pleasing study of this work, I first imbibed the idea of calculating an almanac."

At the age of 19, Robert Thomas started teaching school, as his father had done. He discovered, however, that teaching was not a satisfying career for him and decided to become a bookseller instead. Still hoping to publish an almanac someday, he built a bookstore and bindery near his family's farm and studied astronomy in his spare time. In the summer of 1792, he went to Boston, Massachusetts, to study mathematics with an almanac-maker named Osgood Carleton, "so far as related to the practical part of calculating an almanac."

He learned enough to complete astronomical calculations for the following year, and in the fall of 1792 he delivered to a local printer his new almanac for 1793.

In the preface to this edition, which Thomas addressed to "Friendly Reader," the somewhat quirky voice that would soon become a part of thousands of people's lives was heard for the first time. "Had it not been the prevailing custom to usher these periodical pieces into the world by a preface,'~ he wrote, "I would have excused myself the trouble of writing, and you of reading one to this: for if it be well executed, a preface will add nothing to its merit, if otherwise, it will be far from supplying its defects .... As to my judgment of the weather, I need say but little; for you will in one year's time, without any assistance of mine, very easily discover how near I have come to the truth."

Using a secret formula of his own devising, Thomas must have come very near indeed, because he quickly gained a reputation for amazing accuracy in predicting the weather, a reputation the Almanac continues to enjoy today. (Some studies have put the rate of accuracy as high as 80 percent.)

In that inaugural year of 1793-just four years after the U.S. Constitution had gone into effect-more than 100 almanacs were being published in the United States, 19 in Boston alone. Thomas's contribution soon outran all the others in sales, tripling from 3,000 copies in its first year to 9,000 in the second, and became the almanac everyone else tried to imitate. By 1803, sales of The Farmer's Almanac were, in Thomas's words, "unprecedented by any other almanac published in the New England States."

From the beginning, Thomas had included, along with his weather forecasts and

Using a secret formula of his own devising, founder Robert Bailey Thomas quickly gained a reputation for amazing accuracy in predicting the weather, a reputation the Almanac continues to enjoy today. Some studies have put the rate of accuracy as high as 80 percent. planting tables, a variety of recipes, puzzles, anecdotes, and homilies, all of which were entertaining and informative. But it was undoubtedly his personality that made his almanac such an immediate success. An important part of that personality apparently took root during Thomas's days in the classroom. His style of writing made it clear that he saw the readers of his almanac as eager but sometimes forgetful students and himself as the kindly, often strict, but wise teacher-reminder.

"Are your accounts all balanced up?" he would ask. "Are you insured against fire? Do you take a well-conducted newspaper?

Have you made your will?" The public loved it.

Readers responded by writing to Thomas and sending him all kinds of poems, anecdotes, puzzles, jokes, riddles, and mathematical problems.

In that slow-moving time, however, they had to wait for the next year's edition to receive an answer-or to find out if their contribution had been included in the Almanac or left out. In his annual "acknowledgements to correspondents," Thomas gave his opinions with characteristic bluntness. In 180 I, for example, he said, "Several favours received are deferred, for want of room; some, it is necessary to say, for want of merit."

Thomas was particularly glad to have suggestions from readers on th\; subject of farming. In the 1794 edition, he said it was his "sincere wish that men of experience and observation in agriculture, would be kind enough to forward me such hints towards improvement, as are capable of being rendered serviceable and of general utility to the public."

Other almanacs, lacking this good-humored and witty exchange of ideas, seemed to be just books of facts. The Farmer's Almanac was a friend. And, like the most trustworthy of friends, it was available whenever a person needed it. A hole drilled into the upper left-hand corner made it easy for a purchaser to put a string through and hang the little book in a handy place-near the kitchen stove in some cases, just inside the

outhouse door in others. Wherever it ended up, it was referred to often.

"If it is true, as it seems to be," wrote George Lyman Kittredge in his 1904 book, The Old Farmer and His Almanack, "that the progress of our country has been largely determined by the spirit and energy of New England men and women, one may claim, without fear of gainsaying, a position of some dignity for this unpretentious annual, which has, in its successive issues, been their secular manual of faith and practice for so many years."

In the beginning, the written part of each month's Farmer's Calendar was basically a recitation of what to do when: "Attend to your fences; see that cattle and sheep feed not on your winter grain." "Sow turnips, and plant white beans." "Move your bees under shelter, if not already done." Thomas realized that these lists would become terribly monotonous before long, since each year's recommended activities would be very much like those for the year before. He began to run little essays on those calendar pages instead and to expand the short articles that filled in spaces throughout the Almanac. The range of subjects covered through the years has been extraordinary: Spring, maple syrup, politics, dogs, flowers, fishing, storms, woodchucks, chickens, apples, forest fires, grouse hunting, snow, sledding, lambs, the first robin of the year.

Tucked in among the essays were little proverbs that readers particularly enjoyed.

Here are some samples: 1& "Reading and conversation are, to winter, what flowers are to the spring, and fruits are to autumn. They are the boast of the season. Superior to vernal joys, these permanent pleasures of the intellect are in vigor, when those are faded and no more."[1795] 1& "The restoration of health is difficult and expensive-the art of preserving it, cheap and easy. A celebrated physician has comprehended it in three concise maxims: 'Keep your feet warm, your back straight, and your head cool.'" [1800] 1& "It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles-the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out."[1803] 1& "Do nothing in great haste, except catching fleas and running from a mad dog."

[1811] 1& "If you know anything that will make a brother's heart glad, run quick and tell it, and if it is something that will only cause a sigh, bottle it up, bottle it up. "[1854]

1& "Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you."[1857] 1& "Mules make a great fuss about their ancestors having been horses." [1881] 1& "In youth the absence of pleasure is pain; in old age the absence of pain is pleasure." [I 892] Some of the Almanac's essays continued to be lectures by the old schoolmaster: "Pay more attention to sledding than to sleighing, until you get a sufficient woodpile. I have said much about woodhouses, and shall continue to harass you with my clamor, until you are wise enough to get one." [1807] Some were humorous: " 'I am afraid of the lightning: murmured a pretty woman during a thunderstorm.

'Well you may be: sighed a despairing adorer, 'when your heart is steel."'[1834] Some offered practical advice: "To get comfortably fitting shoes, buy them in the afternoon when the exercise of the day has stretched the muscles to their largest extent." [1803] Some came close to being poetic: "Now will you hear the cry of hawks and see the bluebirds in the orchards. The woodchuck will busy himself with his earth, the deer browse on the new meadow grass, the mink hunt along the little forest streams. Once again over the moonlit hill will echo the bark of the fox. Along the swamps where the fresh green ferns have begun to uncurl, red-winged blackbirds will sway and chatter and bob on the cat-o' -nine-tails." [1948] Although the Almanac has never run news stories as such, the book itself has made news in surprising ways. In 1858, so the story goes, a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln was defending a man accused of murder. The most damning evidence was the testimony of an eyewitness who maintained that around 11 o'clock on the night in question he had been standing about 150 feet away and had seen what had happened by the light of the moon. Lincoln pulled out a copy of the Almanac, which showed that the first-quarter moon had set before midnight that night, making it too dark to see anything clearly at that distance.

The accused man was set free.

In 1942, a Nazi spy was caught in New York after he

had come ashore from a U-boat. He had a copy of that year's Old Farmer's Almanac in his pocket, possibly to give him information about the tides and the weather. The resulting news stories didn't hurt the Almanac's circulation, but they did alarm the U.S. Office of Censorship. The government decided that, in order not to give aid to the enemy, the

Almanac's weather predictions would have to be called "Indications" instead of "Forecasts" for as long as the war lasted.

By the time of World War II, the Almanac had been through a number of editors and several changes of ownership. Robert Bailey Thomas had edited the Almanac for 54 years, until his death in 1846. The editors who fol-

JUNE hath 30 days.

11/<

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tunc.

And over it softly her warm ear lays.

-James Russell Lowell

Farmcr's Calcndar If we are to be invaded by alien monsters out of a 19505 creature feature, it will happen on a warm, soft summer night. Remember Them!

Dates, Feasts, Fasts, Weather (1954)? In that classic screamer the .j.

Aspects, Tide Heights invaders wcre giant ants. They were frightening enough, too, but we have 1 Th. OrthodoxAlrension· 2(. at 0'. ~~\~on,oe.

Hot with us in real life a far scarier being Grover Cleveland married Frances {to.! that stalks the dark nights. The dobFolsum in a While House ceremony, 1886 • 9.1 stuff.

2 F f. President sonfly (Corydalus comUlus) is a nightdump alld warm . { 9.9 Dues the farmer no harm. • TIdes 9.1 • A mare union of dragonfly, crocodile, 3 Saa June 4 A _it il..~eltteco~t• Shavuot· torrent, and helicopter. It's brown, has four narrow, transparent wings that may 5 M. SL BOnnall:" ~ in inr. d· d" <r ° Tides {~:~. we'll span four inches, a round head, and 6 Tu. warrant. the vacant. incurious,protruding eyes Ember Daniel Boone began { 9.3 7 W • Day • Kentucky exploration, J769· 9.8· Great of the movies' most threatening deUnited Mine W.orkcrs ended T d {9.4 d stroyers. The male dobsonfly has as sLrike, 1981 • es 10.3 • ays well a huge pair of jaws that stick far 8 Th • 72-day 9 Fr. <Cat Q. 5~yber. g~s~r{.~~il~t~r~"w~tsli~~?;J;ol1t, for out in front of its mouth like twin When people are free to do as they { 9.9 10 SEmber a. Day • please, they usually imitate each other. 11.4 new butcher's knives. It comes to night lights like a moth, flying with an un11 A ~initp • SL BarnahA-I • Or1JlodoxPenltrost· B.A.s. gainly whirligig action. By day it's "'IT ITa' FuU 0 {10.5 I' t S sluggish,but if you poke it, it rears up 12M • d L+ U. • ~ perigo • Strawberry • 12.2· n runs Thurgood Marshall became firsl black .

13 TU. u. low· U.S. Supreme Courtjusticc, 1967 sopplng, its head like a cobra and shows you 14 W. SL Basil. flog Doy • :;~:lt8~feehe, Slowe. and those prodigious choppers.

In fact, like many but maybe not 15 Th. Corpus Christi • d tV<r • d ~ <r • Tides the all movie monsters, the dobsonfly is Experience it what you get when {12.t , 16 Ff. you expected .wmething else. • 10.8· mercury s entirely harmless, It's one of the lacewings, more like a mayfly than a 42"F.Chicago', T·d {11.6 d .

19l!O • J es 10.6· roppmg. dragon. It takes its name from its 17 S a. K'"Slat. • III., 18 A 2lJllil. at. ~. Or1JlodoxAIl Sainll· Even larval form, carnivorous creatures 19 M. <r~.• d~9· d~<r· Eden called dobsons, which live in fresh G,eat Seal of the Uniled Slates T·d {9.8 d d water. That larva is a considerably • J es 1O.n· nee e 20 T U. adopted,1782 more formidable animal than the fly Summer 0rus McConnick patented { 9.3 d" 21 W • Solstice· it becomes. The encyclopedia calls it reaper, 1834 • 9.9 wee in.

22 Th. SLAlban • <r at ~ • Tides Thunder a "ferocious predator" of small 23 F f. rain; • barrage _ aquatic life. It's a long, jointed crawler that looks like a caterpillar. · .

Midsumme, { 8.8 I 24 Sa. Nativ.JohntheBaptisto Fishermen know the dobson as the Day • 10.0· C ean 25 A 3~ il. at..ill· Oc<ult. ~ hy <r • Tides (Ig:~ out hellgrammite; it's said to catch bass. al d 9 IT Ahner Douhleday {8.9 h Its adult form, the dobsonfly, is 26 M · <r apo.· "'·00,".1819 • 10.2· t e death on nothing, despite its mcn27 Tu. <r ~\~~S • New •• f~~~~~~~J~UL~~~5· garage. acing aspect. The main mystery a Mopped clock MeiBrooks {9,1 H 28 W • isEven right twice a day .• bom,1926· 10.3· ave about it for me is, who was the Dobson who gave his name to the larva 29 Th. Sfj. Peter & Paul • ~ ~~)g • Tides ( 9.2 a B B Q and hence the fly? I'd like to think Cong,ess passed Pu,e Food and Drugs Ael {10.3 PDQ • 9.3 • he was in the cast of Them! but the 30 F f. and Meat Inspection Act, 1<.X>6 name apparently goes back to 1889.

The trouble with the rat race is that even

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lowed him had so much respect for Thomas's achievement that they continued (to this day) to sign the preface to each edition with his name. And loyal readers by the thousands continued to buy the little book. In the 1853 edition, editor John Henry Jenks said, "Except the Bible, we believe no work has been oftener consulted or is more read in our New England than this."

In 1936, in the middle of the Great Depression, a Boston publishing company, Little, Brown & Co., had taken the Almanac over. The new editor, Roger Scaife, tried to make the publication more artistic and literary, with contributions by such renowned figures as poet Robert Frost and painter N.C. Wyeth. This was startling enough to longtime readers, but in 1938, Scaife went even further. He committed the unpardonable sin of leaving out the weather forecasts. The readership rose up in righteous anger, and the forecasts went back into the 1939 edition.

But by then the publishers were thinking about selling. Robb Sagendorph, who had just started Yankee magazine in the little New Hampshire town of Dublin, decided to buy the Almanac. He edited it until his death in 1970, when his nephew Judson Hale became editor, the position he still holds today.

The dialogue with readers that helped make the Almanac so successful in its early years continues. In fact, the preface to the 1995 edition says that during the previous year the Almanac "received more mail than ever in our history." All of the hundreds of letters that come in are answered individually, according to current managing editor Susan Peery. "A lot of people ask about the best times for planting certain things," Peery says. "This carries over into questions about the best timing for many other thingssurgery, having a tooth pulled, weaning a baby. We usually just say we don't know.

Others send gardening tips, household hints, and funny stories, some of which we have used in the Almanac. One man wrote to say he knew three ways to hypnotize a chicken.

We asked him to write an article about that, which we published."

A good many letters have to do with the weather. "The weather is...considered negotiable,"wrote Martha White, a part-time editor for the Almanac, in an article for the New York Times Magazine. "Letter writers tell us what weather they want (or, more often, don't want), ~s if our printing the prediction of their choice will make it so."

One significant change in The Old Farmer's Almanac in recent years has been

The cycles of the seasons, the risings and settings of the sun and moon, the ebbs and flows of the tides, are a balm that today's readers can't help but find. irresistible. So what if their crops are tomato plants in pots out on the back patio. the way the weather is forecast. Thomas's secret formula has been retired, and predictions are now made by computer. Since 1970, the calculations have been made by Richard Head, who has degrees in aeronautical engineering and solar sciences and keeps careful track of such matters as solar activity and its relationship to cyclical changes and atmospheric phenomena.

The Almanac tries to be realistic about its predictions. The bicentennial edition in 1992 said: "Neither we nor anyone else has as yet gained sufficient insight into the mysteries of the universe to predict weather with anything resembling total accuracy." Readers of the Almanac are not convinced. Executive editor Timothy Clark told Smithsonian magazine writer Edwards Park that he believes the Almanac has been endowed by its readers with a mantle of authority, what Clark calls "mythic importance." He says that, in their "spiritual resistance to technology, and to all the unease that comes with it," these readers desperately want the Almanac to be right about everything. "They say 'How come your weather predictions are always right, and the Weather Bureau is always wrong?' "Clark told Park. "We deny it, but they think we're being admirably modest." Says Peery, "People believe we are accurate, whether we are or not."

Readers of the Almanac may accept more modern methods of predicting the weather, but they have continued to resist most other changes. One year, someone decided there was no longer any need for the little hole drilled in the upper corner. Wrong. A flood of letters demanded that the hole be put back in. It was.

Later, when the publishers thought they would add a little color to the mostly-yellow cover, they got immediate, and outraged, responses. "We like it the way it is," readers told them. "Who do you think you are?"

One way the current staff gets around this resistance is by putting out a wide range of related publications, connected enough with The Old Farmer's Almanac to share in readers' affection for it, but new enough to be able to look-and be-different without arousing hostility. These publications include The

Hearth and Home Companion, The Gardener's Companion, The Homeowner's Companion, and seven different calendars.

The Almanac itself has been expanded to four editions-the national editior. with weather and astronomical data calculated for Boston, Massachusetts; a Southern edition, calculated for Atlanta, Georgia; a Western edition, calculated for San Francisco, California; and a Canadian edition, calculated for Ottawa, Ontario. Some articles appear in all editions, some only in one. For 1995, for example, articles on the life cycle of cicadas and catching smart fish are in all the editions. Articles on Einstein's theory of relativity and prizewinning recipes from food festivals appear only in the national edition. Articles on a Civil War battle near Memphis and how to cook turnip greens appear only in the Southern edition.

And articles on a Mohawk princess and a group of Canadian painters appear only in the Canadian edition. The strategy has worked.

The Almanac now sells almost as well in the other regions of the United States as it does in New England, and the 310,000 copies distributed in Canada make it one of that country's best-selling publications.

Still, the puzzle remains: How can it be that an old-fashioned magazine rooted in a rural past should continue to be so popular in the era of computers and satellite television?

Maybe the question answers itself. Maybe the rootedness the magazine takes for grantedthe cycles of the seasons, the risings and settings of the sun and moon, the ebbs and flows of the tides, the progress from seed to sprout to bud to flower-is a balm that today's readers can't help but find irresistible. So what if their crops are tomato plants in pots out on the back patio. So what if petting the cat and putting out seeds for the birds are as close as they get to wildlife. No matter. The Almanac connects them to the world around them, to their past, and therefore to themselves.

Nostalgia, at least in part, is a wish to be in the past. The Almanac invokes a more complicated feeling: A desire to remain in the more comfortable present but still not lose those valuable things the past seemed to have plenty of-like order, continuity, and a sense of oneness with the rhythms of life. A tall order for a small magazine printed on rough paper and selling for a penny less than three dollars, but never mind. The Old Farmer's Almanac keeps on proving it is more than up to the task.

0 About the Author: Robert L. Taylor, aformer magazine editor, is afreelance writer based in Maine.

The Ah ad Last month delegations from around the world meeting in New York City decided to extend the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) indefinitely. The outcome, coming after months of criticism over the behavior of the nuclear weapon states and after the inability of the nuclear weapon states themselves to fully coordinate a common strategy for the conference, surprised many observers. But almost everyone could agree that the result was a victory for global security.

What compromises and concessions enabled the parties to arrive at a final consensus? What were the divisive issues at the conference and were they resolved or merely postponed?

What does the result of the NPT conference mean for future efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons', especially in the Middle East and South Asia?

Issues at the Conference Many of the disagreements and disputes heading into the NPT conference stemmed from the discriminatory nature of the treaty itself: The NPT permits only five countries-the United States, Russia, China, France, and Britain-to have nuclear weapons while prohibiting all others from doing so.

But the treaty also calls on the nuclear weapon states to halt all nuclear tests and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons (see page 10). Many of the nonnuclear weapon states, particularly those from the developing world, argued that it was only the threat to limit the duration of the NPT that gave them some leverage over the behavior of thenuclear weapon states, who would ignore their concerns if the NPT was renewed for an indefinite period of time. They were understandably leery of trading away all their influence at what could have been the world's "last nuclear summit."

The arms control and disarmament measures that attracted the most attention in New York were: One, a comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT), which has received international attention since Prime Minister lawaharlal Nehru's cal1s in the mid1950s for a complete ban on nuclear tests; two, so-called negative security assurances, whereby the nuclear weapon states promise never to threaten or use nuclear arms against nonnuclear weapon states; three, further arms reductions below the levels the United States and Russia agreed to in the START II Treaty; and four, an international convention cutting

ofT the production of fissile material for nuclear explosives.

In addition, many states wanted fewer curbs on the transfer of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, which they saw as important for their economic development. And many countries at the NPT conference showed a growing appreciation for the "back-end" costs of the nuclear fuel cycle, namely, the expense and difficulty of safely disposing of hazardous nuclear fuel, and requested international assistance in this area.

Particular states also had particular grievances. Egypt publicly expressed its opposition to indefinite and unconditional extension unless Israel constrained its nuclear activities and joined the NPT. And Iran accused the United States of violating the NPT's clause on peaceful nuclear transfers by trying to stop its deal with Russia for two nuclear power reactors. Iran highlighted the inequity of an NPT miscreant-North Korea-receiving, gratis, two light-water reactors (LWRs), while Teheran faced a multilateral nuclear embargo led by the United States.

Reasons for Success There were many reasons for the successful outcome at the NPT conference. Chief among them was the crucial role played by South Africa. Pretoria threw its diplomatic weight behind indefinite extension, but significantly called for the adoption of a "set of principles for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament" that would codify the promises of the nuc)Jear weapon states. South Africa's "program of action" included a commitment to an "ultimate goal" of complete nuclear disarmament, a goal desired by many of the conference participants. To epsure that the leverage of the nonnuclear weapon states would not be lost, South Africa proposed strengthening the treaty's periodic review process to evaluate how wel1 the nuclear weapon states fulfilled the set of nonproliferation principles. South Africa was thus able to bridge the divide between the interests of the nuclear weapon states and the demands of many of the nonnuclear weapon states.

Still, this compromise would not have happened by itself.

The conference president, Ambassador layantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka, played an important role. From the beginning, he preferred the painstaking work of building a broad consensus to forcing the parties to a vote that he feared might reveal

deep fissures, weaken the NPT, and harm the international nonproliferation regime.

Disarray in the Ill-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) also contributed to the outcome. Influential members, such as Indonesia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Egypt, Venezuela, and Mexico, never coordinated their positions to propose a single, viable alternative to indefinite extension that could win widespread support. The variety of proposals worked to defeat a unified opposition to indefinite extension.

The United States skillfully combined leadership, hardball diplomacy, and a consistent game plan to achieve its goal of indefinite extension. The Clinton Administration kept its eye on the ball-the NPT's indefinite extension-and surprised many countries by its apparent unwillingness to entertain any alternatives, such as a 25-year extension period with the possibility of renewal. It also made clear to potential opponents that a vote against indefinite extension would harm relations with Washington.

Future Nonproliferation Problems Unfortunately, it is possible that none of the arms control and disarmament concerns voiced at the conference will be resolved soon or easily. Obtaining a CTBT will be plagued by differences among the five nuclear weapon states over where to place the threshold for "low-yield" tests, while the nonnuclear states can be expected to object strongly should the treaty permit any such threshold at all. China has also indicated that it wants to conclude a series of nuclear tests that will last well into 1996 before it will sign a CTBT; Beijing underscored its determination on this point by.conducting a nuclear test immediately after the NPT conference.

It is probable that the Clinton Administration will continue to oppose an international agreement that codifies negative security assurances. (In practice, however, the United States has adopted a "no first use" policy that applies to almost every nonnuclear country in the world. The demise of the Warsaw Pact removed the qualifications from an earlier U.S. negative security assurance for a large number of states in Central and Eastern Europe. This qualified assurance now only applies to North Korea, which retains formal security ties to Russia and China.)

It is unclear whether the Russian Duma will ever ratify the START II Treaty, never mind the possibility of negotiating and implementing a START III agreement. And the momentum for a fissile material production cutoff appears to be stalling.

A handful of states around the world also pose proliferation anxieties. The United States suspects Iran of harboring a secret nuclear weapons program and has tried to enforce a global nuclear embargo against the regime in Teheran. But Washington is unlikely to prevent other countries, notably Russia and China, from selling nuclear technology that can both increase Iran's overall nuclear competence and mask a dedicated military nuclear program.

There are other proliferation concerns. In October 1994, North Korea and the United States signed the "Agreed Framework" that promises to put an end to Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions over a IO-12-year period. However, the agreement has repeatedly run into snags and it is uncertain whether it will ever be fully implemented.

As long as Saddam Hussein is in power in Iraq (and perhaps afterward as well), Baghdad's nuclear ambitions must be watched carefully and held firmly in check.

It is unlikely that Israel will sign the NPT anytime soon.

Although Tel Aviv is committed in principle to a Middle East free of all weapons of mass destruction, translating this sentiment into reality will prove vexing and likely take many, many years. In practice, arms control in the Middle East will be closely tied to the pace and fate of the peace process.

From Washington's perspective, nuclear weapons programs in South Asia are a continuing worry. On short notice, India is thought capable of assembling 15 to 25 nuclear weapons and Pakistan six to eight nuclear weapons. Further, chances for an expensive and dangerous competition in ballistic missiles will grow with the deployment of either the Prithvi by New Delhi or the M-ll by Islamabad. As relations between India and Pakistan continue to remain tense over Kashmir and other contentious issues, there is an everpresent risk that miscalculation or misunderstanding might trigger a fourth round of hostilities, which this time could escalate to the nuclear level.

The indefinite extension of the NPT, combined with the document outlining "principles and objectives for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament," clearly indicate that the currency of nuclear weapons has been devalued with the end of the Cold War. Along with other developments in recent years, including South Africa eliminating its nuclear arsenal, Brazil and Argentina jointly renouncing their nuclear ambitions, and Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus returning nuclear weapons to Russia and joining the NPT, nuclear arms are no longer widely viewed as the "winning weapon."

Conclusion For the past half century, leading scientists, politicians, and thinkers from around the globe have warned of the dangers should nuclear weapons spread to many countries. The world has been fortunate that such apocalyptic scenarios have not come to pass. One reason for this success has been the NPT and its associated system of international safeguards.

The indefinite extension of the NPT is justifiable cause for celebration. But the NPT's extension should be seen as a starting point, not as an end point. The hard work is not over. The next challenge will be to build upon this success and fulfill the nonproliferation pledges made in New York.

D Mitchell Reiss, a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D. c., is the author of Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their About the Author:

Nuclear Capabilities.

BOMBS AWAY! Building the nuclear arsenal was easy.

Now comes the hard part-taking it apart.

F

ive years ago, the United States possessed roughly 21 ,000 nuclear weapons. By the year 2003, thanks to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties with the former Soviet Union, that figure will be cut to 3,500. Historic and symbolic import aside. the drastic pruning presents some weighty practical problems-like what to do with all that hardware.

Nuclear weapons are not to be confused with children's building blocks: Each one is a thicket of some 6,000 tightly packed components-microchips, detonators, electronic timers, thermal batteries-purposely designed no/ to be taken apart.

It is apt. then, that the bulk of this labor is being performed at Pantex, a sprawling Department of Energy plant near Amarillo, Texas. where many of the bombs were built in the first place. But dismantlement is only part of the task. There is also the exacting bu~iness of dispensing with the parts, each of which has its own prescribed destiny. Classified components must be disfigured; hazardous materials, including cadmium, silver, mercury, asbestos, PCBs, and a sizable chunk of radioactive plutonium, require disposal; valuable metals must be dispatched to the recycling bin. A Pantex technician is thus something of an archaeologist, deciphering four decades of constantly evolving technology.

All told, about 30 percent, by weight, of the typical nuclear weapon is recyclable. The enterprise won't be profitable anytime soon, though. From the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bombs disassembled in fiscal 1992-93, Pantex earned back only $1.4 million from the sale of the extracted metals.

About half that figure came from gold plating; $118.000 from other precious metals; $15,000 from aluminum, and $5,000 more from lead. That's barely lunch money in the militaryindustrial scheme of things.

The diagram at right otTers a step-by-step tour through the dismantlement process. Concerned readers may be wondering: What if some wayward or disgruntled technician were to drop the explosive portion of the bomb and .... No need to worry-it has already happened, and as of press time, Amarillo remains intact. A nuclear weapon can be triggered only by an arcane series of computer cues. The likelihood of apocalypse during bom b disassembly, says an Energy Department spokesman, is as remote "as if you took the spark plugs and battery out of your car and then watched the car start itself."

About the Author: Richard Jerome is a senior editor at the Sciences magazine.

1. Weapon is transported to Pantex in a convoy of heavily armored trailer trucks impervious to fire, collision, and pothole.

2. On arrival at Pantex, the bomb is X-ray inspectedfor loose wires, cracked housings, and other unwelcome consequences of Murphy's Law. 3. The weapon is unscrewed into its four segments: Radar Nose Subassembly, which guides the weapon to its appointed destination; Center Bomb Subassembly, which includes the "physics package, " the weapon's fissionable core; Preflight Selection Bomb Subassembly, \I'hich tells the bomb when to explode; and Tail Bomb Subassembly, which holds¡ the parachute.

The four sections are dismantled in separate locations, by gloved hand and lrith everyday tools. No fewer than two technicians \I'ork on each sef!tion, one of whom reads aloud from the instruction manual.

4. The outer casing of each section, made ofhigh-grade aluminum, is removed and "demilitari=ed" in a powerful press, then sold to a local smelter.

5. Meanwhile, technicians elsewhere dismantle the physics package. Essentially it consists of the "plutonium pit, " a metal orb containing the radioactive material. Surrounding the pit is a spherical shell of chemical high explosives. This is the bomb's trigger: Detonated by computer during warfare, the explosives

cause the plutonium to implode and nuclear fission to begin.

The physics package is dismantled inside a circular, heavily reinforced concrete building overlaid lrithfive meters of sand and gravel. In the unlikely event that the chemical explosives detonate, the structure is designed to collapse on itself, trapping the plutonium-and several hapless Pan/ex employees-inside.

6. Nonradioactive trimmings, including more than 30 exploding wire detonators, are removed Chemical explosives

are burned (and sometimes accidentally detonated) elseu'here on site.

7. The plutonium pit is placed in a container and sent to "the igloo," an earth-covered bunker able to \\'ithstand explosions, fires, earthquakes, and other cataclysms.

8. The igloo is merely an interim storage site. The ultimate fate of the hazardous plutonium is the subject of heated debate.

9. Once the \\'eapon is sectioned and skinned and the physics package dismantled, what's left is a tangle of gadgetry. Wires and cables, made of copper, gold, or aluminum, are crushed and sent to the recycling bin. Plastic and

foam parts-partitions, fixtures, padding-are reduced to confetti.

10. The thousands of parts and shards are carefully separated and categorized, then sent to a government-approved disposal site or, if possible, recycled.

11. Disassembling potted partsclassified components sealed in hard, epoxylike shells-is a task unto itself (One potted part is the printed circuit board, similar to a computer chip and rich in recyclable metals like gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, and nickel.)

The outer shells are impervious to saws, screwdrivers, or other prying implements; when incinerated u'ith a laser or blowtorch, the material emits carcinogenic fumes. Pantex has had limited success cutting open the shells with one-and-a-quartermeter-long hydraulic shears.

Newer strategies include: 12. The Water Jet. A highpressure \rater gun run by a technician at a compUier terminal.

Cuts through metals and plastic potting safely, then carves up densely packed components with intricate precision.

13. Cryofracture. Simply entails soaking a potted part in liquid

nitrogen and cooling it down, rendering it brittle and easily shattered. Sets the stagefor: 14. The Forge Hammer. A technical paper by an Energy Department engineer, W. T Wheelis, neatly summarizes this approach: "A forge hammer is basically a large blacksmithing tool" that "operates on the principle of repeatedly dropping a heavy weight on the material being worked. " Thus are our swords "rubblized" into declassified dust.

0

HillaryClinton, accompanied

by SEWA founder Eta Bhatt, visits the Women's Bank.

Banking on Women In an article written recently for the Washington Post outlining her vision for the development of women, American First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton recalled her visit to India (see SPAN, April 1995) and described how the Ahmedabadbased Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) founded

by Ela Bhatt is helping women to take control of their lives and overcome poverty, illiteracy, and inadequate health care.

Clinton cited the example of the Women's Bank run by SEWA: "The bank has more than 40,000 members and assets exceeding $2 million. Women run the bank, and only women are allowed to make deposits and borrow money. The result is impressive: Against enormous odds, Indian women are transforming their lives."

In each country she visited on her two-week South Asian tour March 24-April6, Clinton said she met with women determined to

fight age-old ills of poverty, illiteracy, poor health services, and cultural biases to increase their earning power. "SEWA is but one example of how women have organized around their capacity as borrowers, lenders, and savers to achieve greater economic autonomy for themselves and greater prosperity for theirfamilies," she wrote.

The First Lady also praised the Prayas School in New Delhi run by wives of professors at the city's Indian Institute ofTechnology (liT).

"The school," she wrote, "serves the poorยงlst women and girls ...offering classes for young girls and training women to make ceramics, jewelry, and other artifacts that they can sell for profit."

Hillary Clinton said the tour provided ample proof that empowering women strengthens families and communities. "The South Asian experience offers a simple solution: That investing in people, especially women and girls, is as essential to the prosperity of the global family as investing in the development of open markets and trade," she wrote.

TE~TIbE TIES Jennifer Hillman, chief textile negotiator from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in Washington, D.C., exchanged views via satellite May 16 with audiences in New Delhi and Bombay comprising Indian government officials, textile industrialists, and economic journalists. The USIS-sponsored program focused on the current status of Indo-U.S. trade, with particular emphasis on textiles.

Vinod Malhotra, joint secretary in the Ministry ofTextiles, referred to the Uruguay Round agreement on textiles and clothing and said the United States should reciprocate India's gesture of opening its textile sector, by providing greater access to Indian textiles in the American market. He also said that the two countries should use the next ten years, during which time the quotas would be dis-

mantled, to work out the future bilateral trade relationship. "We should be talking in terms of moving away from the restraints, opening up our economies ...and not introducing any elements which distract from the original fundamental objectives," Malhotra said.

Hillman sought to dispel misperceptions arising from the textile accords between the two countries. She said that India has become the seventh largest supplier of textiles and clothing to the United States, exporting $1,540 million worth of merchandise to the American market in 1994.

She said that India, as one of the most significant beneficiaries of the Uruguay Round agreement, is "very well positioned" to gain greater share of the U.S. market.

"You have got fairly signifi-

cant quotas today .... But more importantly, your quotas [have one on the highest growth rates of any country in the world.

Because the Uruguay Round is based on accelerating those growth rates, most of the Indian quotas are going to grow faster ...faster than [those on many of our other trading partners," she said. She also stated that opening of the Indian market after years of government control would pave the way for more U.S. textile exports to India.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, business editor of The Pioneer, said the ten-year period for phasing out the multi-fiber arrangement gives the impression that the United States is less generous and more competitive than it used to be.

In response, Hillman pointed out that tariffs such as the 11

percent levy on cotton imports, a harbor fee, and changes in the rules of origin of textiles entering the United States are not protectionist measures. The levy on cotton, she said, applies both to imports and domestic production and is a nominal amount. "All such measures are GAD-consistent and do not affect Indiaat all," she said.

She added that America will continue to keep its market open, whether or not other markets are open to American goods around the world. "The textile and clothing sector is the single largest manufacturing (Continued on page 26)

Indian Chief at

NI/\SI\

An Indian American scientist, Kamlesh Lulla, has been appointed to a top post in the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He is the new chief of the Earth Science Branch in the Space and Life Sciences Directorate at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. As head, Lulla

University in Baroda, Gujarat, and received a PhD in environmental applications. He was the director of the Remote Sensing Research Center at Indiana State University before joining NASA in 1988.

He has received several awards from NASA. the U.S.

will direct the earth observations and other scientific activities of space shuttle flights, and he will oversee the efforts of the International Space Station and NASA-MIR (U.S.-Russian) joint earth-science projects. He will also be responsible for training NASA astronauts in earth observations and imaging sciences.

"This will entail earth imaging and spotting ecological hot spots around the globe," Lulla said. "It is a unique branch of operation and we will do some detailed earth observations."

versities, cultural organizations, and associations.

Currently Lulla is a vice president of Houston section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIM).

A motivational speaker, he often addresses youth groups and general public audiences. Lulla has published widely, and has to his credit more than 200 papers in international scientific journals and four books which he has coauthored. He said his new appointment was indicative of an increasing trend in the United States to accept Indian Americans in decisionmaking positions.

Lulla studied biology, ecology, physiology, and environmental sciences at M.S.

sector in the United Stateslarger than steel, larger than autos, larger than semiconductors, larger than many of our products. It remains the single largest force of our manufacturing process .... But we have allowed a very significant amount of imports to come into our market'" shesaid.

The chief textile negotiator said that the United States imports very heavy volumes of textiles from more than 50 countries. "We have agreed under the terms of the Uruguay

government,

and various uni-

Round agreement to begin ...dismantling the quota system, which will allow as [much] imports as people are able to send," she said.

Welcoming the growing economic cooperation between the United States and India, Hillman said, "Our industry is looking to expand beyond the Caribbean and beyond the Mexico-Canada trading bloc (NAFTA). Some of America's most prominent apparel and textile companies are very much looking forward to a partnership with Indian industry."

India's economic liberalization program has produced a spurt of job opportunities for young professionals in the corporate sector. With this in view, the U.S. Educational Foundation in India (USEFI) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have created a program to attract young Indians in the United States to industry in India.

Last month, USEFI and CII signed a memorandum of understanding to initiate a project called INSPIRE (Indian Students Professional Integration and Re-Entry) aimed at providing information to Indian students and young professionals in the age group 25-30 in America about the growing career opportunities in India.

While neither USEFI nor CII will undertake direct recruitment efforts or perform any other functions of an employment clearinghouse, the two organizations will provide information on a wide range of topics-job openings, salaries and perks, experience needed, etc.

This will be done through a joint publication/E-mail Bulletin Board Service, which will be provided to students as well as professionals working in the United States.

The project has a two-fold aim. One, the information will help students and young professionals in their early twenties, most of whom are still undecided whether to stay on in America or return home, to make up their minds. Two, INSPIRE will provide Indian industry with highly qualified professionals possessing international perspectives and skills.

From left: USEFI Director P.J. Lavakare, Commissioner of the U. S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Charles H. Dolan, Chairman ofCII's northern region Inderdeep Singh, and CII Director Parvati Ratnam.

The Moghul Room The dining hall at Roosevelt House-the American ambassador's residence in New Delhi-has a new look.

Ambassador and Mrs. Frank Wisner invited Indian government and business officials, members of the diplomatic corps, and artists to a reception May 1 at which the hall was christened as the Moghul Room. Rekha Surya recited Urdu poetry-set-to-music, lending an ambience befitting the occasion.

Karen Lukas amidst her handiwork.

General Electric (GE) paid for the redecoration work, which was completed in midApril by New York artist Karen Lukas. The Moghul Room is a study in shades of blue on a white background.

Lukas drew her inspiration for the stenciled patternspointed "mehrab" archways and intertwined flowers-from the Moghul architecture she saw during her travels in India.

The motifs on the walls are complemented by stenciled

A Leaf From the Mahabharata The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond has recently acquired a page from a 1670 manuscript described as "one of the oldest surviving South Indian paintings." The museum's curator of Asiatic art and a leading authority on the art of South Asia, Joseph

lotus blossoms on the ceiling and block-print window panels. Lukas says she wanted to convey the warmth and friendship between the Indian and American people and that "this thought, apart from the beauty of Moghul art, inspired me to work on the Moghul theme."

Lukas first met the Wisners in the summer of 1994, and at the time Christine Wisner was eager to redo the decor of the dining room. She asked

Lukas whether she could create an atmosphere of beauty and enchantment in the room, and by all accounts she has succeeded.

The decor varies slightly from Moghul traditions in that its floral patterns are of a different hue: In place of indigo, popular in Persian art, Lukas says, "I chose a more subdued shade, one more in keeping with the Western sensibility."

She used water-based latex paint, which can be washed.

M. Dye III, said the illustrated page is of "crucial importance to the museum's Indian painting collection." Such early South Indian works, Dye said, rarely appear on the market.

The page depicts, in opaque watercolor, a scene from a story in the Mahabharata. It was purchased with funds provided by the Friends of Indian Art Society in memory of Meena Hazra, an Indian American of Richmond.

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department in America's universities is changing more quickly than its famed graduate schools of business. They are adapting to globalization of commerce in the real world by seeking out teachers and, above all, students from other countries to internationalize their courses.

Of the 450,000 foreign students at American universities in the last academic year, 87,000 were specializing in business, more than any (}ther field. Of those, 16,719 were enrolled in programs leading to a master of business administration (MBA), according to the Institute of International Education in New York. They represented 14 percent of all foreign graduate students, second only to the 22 percent in engineering.

The typical MBA candidate is 28 years old and has several years of work experience. Admissions officers say foreign as well as domestic applicants closely monitor Business Week magazine's annual ranking of the top 20 schools before deciding whether to shell out $70,000 in tuition and living expenses for the two-year MBA course.

Most seek an advanced degree to enhance promotion prospects in their late thirties, when companies seek more breadth

and strategic ability. Admissions officers look beyond an applicant's academic record to find young highfliers who know what they want to do in business.

At the country's top five business schoolsPennsylvania's Wharton, Northwestern's Kellogg, Chicago, Stanford, and Harvard, in that order-the percentage of international students ranges from 20 to 30 and in general has doubled in the past decade. With applications from Americans running well ahead of last year as the economy revives, the schools do not really need foreign students, but they definitely want them.

Widely criticized during the 1980sfor producing managers who watched only the bottom line no matter what the human cost,

their stress on management skills and transnationaJ business problems because the students themselves demand it.

"We teach business, and business now is definitely global," said Steve Christakos, director of admissions for Kellogg, who formerly held the same post at Wharton. "How can we discuss it without having people right in the class who can remind us of the different ways of the wofld?"

Christakos views himself as recruiting an international "symphony orchestra" of students. At New York University's Stern School, which exploits its ties with Wall Street to specialize in finance, there was a high mark several years back of 40 percent foreign students, and half of them were Japanese,

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relieved when the recession forced Japanese companies to cut back on sponsoring students and enabled the school to redress the balance.

Some 60 percent of Wharton's graduates say their jobs now involve significant international responsibilities, ranging from actually managing a foreign subsidiary to dealing with foreign suppliers and finance.

That proportion was 30 percent only five years ago.

Stephen Kobrin, director of a special Wharton program offering a joint degree in business and international studies, said the presence of foreign students puts pressure on the fac).lltyto think through problems from an international perspective: "Not just in the obvious areas such as marketing; we all know that what sells in America doesn't necessarily sell abroad. But different countries also have different capital markets, different relationships between business and government, and different organizations within the firm, where people are less mobile and more

hierarchical than in America."

Then why seek an American MBA? To begin with, said Robin Hogarth, an Englishman who is deputy dean at Chicago and formerly taught at the London Business School and France's INSEAD, the business school curriculum was first developed in America and now is adapted in European and Asian schools, "so why not go for the real thing?"

Another reason is building up contacts for future business relationships; Japanese businesses especially assist their employees so the company can profit from a returning student's personal network.

Noted Wall Street economist Henry Kaufman, chairman of the trustees of the Stern School and of the Institute of International Education, points out that "American schools have developed minds like W. Edwards Deming, who taught Japan productivity, and the

management scholar Peter Drucker. Our financial institutions are in the vanguard of innovation from corporate finance to derivatives."

Among the top 20 business schools, Chicago, the font and origin of market economics, stresses theoretical rigor and practical application. Duke University's Fuqua School stresses working in small teams to duplicate a work environment but so far has attracted only a l7-percent foreign enrollment and is actively seeking to raise it.

The Simon School at the University of Rochester, New York, which was dropped from the top 20 because its location makes it less accessible to corporate recruiters, has the highest ratio among leading schools at 42 percent and, thus, can guarantee an international input in its study groups stressing entrepreneurial skills.

Harvard is tops in

international prestige, but, according to Business Week, its administration is the most unresponsive to its students.

Admissions Director Jill Sadule said Harvard is trying to do better and is offering an eight-week summer course in English for MBAs as well as an orientation course on things like how to open a bank account in the United States and shop wholesale.

"All countries have their own ways of developing their elites, and there used to be only one way, through a nation's elite universities," said Richard Edelstein, director of international affairs for the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business.

"What is developing now is a different multinational route through the firm."

0 About the Author: Lawrence Malkin is New York correspondent/or the International Herald Tribune.

Training the "Managerial Woman" immons Graduate School of Management-the only U.S. business school exclusively for womenis located on the premises of a former finishing school in Boston, Massachusetts.

Instead of learning how to be executives' wives, however. today's students are training for executive positions of their own.

The Simmons master of business administration (MBA) program was founded in 1974 by Margaret Hennig and Anne Jardim, former faculty members of Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and coauthors of The Managerial Woman, a 1976 bestseller. They serve as joint deans of the school.

Hennig recalls the frustrations that drove them to leave t male-dominated culture of Harvard. None of the schoo s teaching cases showed a woman performing successfully in a senior position. "There were cases in which the woman was always the problem," Hennig says. "What do you do when Agatha Sue has had her desk at this window for 19 years, and you have to move her? She refuses to move. Problem."

And there were less subtle inequities. "The classroom building, which is almost a block long and four stories high, had one ladies' restroom and seven men's restrooms," Hennig remembers.

When their pleas for change at Harvard went unheard, Hennig and Jardim decided to start a new graduate business program designed specifically for women. They took the idea to Simmons College, a private women's college in Boston. ::J

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In the feminist heyday of the early 1970s, the Simmons MBA program was greeted enthusiastically.

Donations came from the radical new Ms. magazine and the conservative old-line Business and Professional Women's Foundation. "The spread [of support] was unbelievable," recalls Jardim.

During the past two decades, the Simmons program has developed a strong reputation in New England. But it is relatively unknown elsewhere.

Reprinted

by permission

Š 1993 The Christian All rights reserved

from The Christian

Science Publishing

Science

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"Within the business-school world they ask: Don't people who are interested in gender studies belong in sociology or psychology and not in business schools?" says James Schmotter, dean of Lehigh University's College of Business and Economics in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. "That has probably led to an undervaluing of Simmons."

While fewer women are enrolling in business schools

nationwide, enrollment at Simmons is at an all-time high.

Currently, 47 women are attending the full-time, oneyear program, and 200 are on the part-time, two- to three-year program.

Simmons offers all the quantitative courses of a typical MBA program. Like Harvard, the Simmons program relies heavily on the "case method" of instruction. But at Simmons, nearly every case includes women. "We use

case after case after case on women, showing the implicit difference in what women are bringing to a male organization," Jardim says.

As women have made progress in the workplace, the Simmons program has adopted new goals. "Back then, we were trying to get women into middle management," Jardim says. "Now we're trying to get women out of middle management and into senior jobs. Middle management is the new ghetto for women."

Although Simmons MBA students are all female, they may be the most diverse group of business students anywhere in the United States. They range in age from 24 to 55, with an average age of 35, and have an average of ten years on the job. "We are focusing on women who really want to change where they are going, who want to take control of their careers," Jardim says.

Simmons has always been willing to admit more nontraditional students than other M BA programs do.

About 20 percent do not have a bachelor's degree. Work experience, strong references, and a "pattern of growth" are more important at Simmons than undergraduate degrees, the deans say.

The approach to teaching is also different at Simmons.

"When we were at Harvard, it was teaching by humiliation," Hennig says. At Simmons, "you're competing in a positive way because you're trying to develop yourself," says student Laureen McVay. "You're not trying to sq uash the other person."

Marketing Professor Deborah Marlino taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge for five years before coming to Simmons four years ago. Although the material she teaches is the same, Marlino says the Simmons curriculum has a different emphasis. "It has more of a behavioral bent, with heavy emphasis on group work and understanding corporate culture."

The Simmons MBA program has come of age with the womer1's movement. If women continue to achieve equality with men in the workplace, will there come a time when the Simmons program will no longer be necessary?

"As long as the traditional business schools stay masculine in their orientation, this school will be needed," Jardim responds. "Until there are places where women can walk in absolutely equal and learn what they have a right to learn and know about themselves ... we are not obsolete. We are cutting-edge."

D

About the Author: Laurel Shaper Walters is a staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor.

ita Ratnam Doing It All This wonder woman from Madras dances, produces, directs, choreographs, announces, writes, and instructs. How? By being "ruthlessly organized and disciplined."

Just the other day Anita Ratnam was At 40, Ratnam-TV producer, dancer, waiting for her suitcase at Bombay airport choreographer, corporate dynamo, and, when a passenger cornered her and simply put, the sort of passenger you demanded to know why she had abwould like as a seatmate on a long tlightsconded with the trust of her followers. is a prominent star on the Indo-American Anita Ratnam has not gone into hidcultural scene. Like a mythical Hindu goding, although at times like this, which dess, in a blur of arms and heads, she is are frequent, she wishes she had. No, hard at work on several innovative proshe has merely moved on to the next jects on two continents. chapter in her life.

On August 25, she will launch and narFifteen years ago this captivating beauty rate the world premiere of "Purush: Expressions of Man" at the Lincoln who possesses the stately poise of a diva Center Out-of-Doors festival in New was the star of a hugely successful weekly York. This all-male dance ensemble of TV program of her own creation.

"Cinema-Cinema." for the IndianIndians and Americans, showcasing classical and contemporary Indian dance American community in the United States.

Meanwhile, she captivated TV viewers in styles. will then tour 25 American cities in India with her refreshingly lively and per- . eight weeks and end just in time for dance-theater event Past sonal style of reporting on the "Festival of Ratnam's Forward in Madras.

India" as it traveled across America in Meanwhile, a trip to Chicago to help 1985-86. Which is why today her fans in produce a documentary on Indian dance India and the United States aren't about to let go of the past. The very private Anita and another on Indian women, plus TV pilots on business, arts, and current Ratnam is considered public property.

From upper leji: Anita Ratnam lI'ith erell' in Madras: in the middle 0/ things waiting/or India's Independence Day Parade to hegin in Nell' York City; introducing a televised "Festival 0/ India" report inFont 0/ Nell' York's Brooklyn Bridge; on the Madras set o/a coffee commercial with ad director Rajiv Menon; and discussing business in her Madras studio,

events, will somehow be worked in. And so will her newest venture, Yantra, her TV studio in Madras, which will produce a spectrum of programs on South India.

How does she juggle so many activities and projects? ''I'm ruthlessly_ organized and disciplined," says Ratnam, one of whose talents is an ability to speak in brief, quotable sentences. There are no wasted words, no ambiguity.

TV in America taught her that time, patience, and attention spans are short.

"Even God doesn't get more than seven minutes," she says, breaking into a gurgling, contagious chuckle. She kicks off her sandals, props up her feet, and gnaws at a leathery ear of corn bought from a sidewalk vendor in Bangalore, where we have met for an interview.

Bangalore isn't totally awake yet, but Ratnam is barreling along at full throttle.

Her day began hours ago in Bombay and will end many hours from now in (Continued

on page 22)

Deborah Dunthorn U1Lder Her Directiol,/;

Deborah Dunthorn developed an interest . in Asian culture years ago while a student of theater and music in New York. Two inf1uences on her were her brother, who was specializing in East Asian studies at the time, and the music of Ravi Shankar, several of whose concerts she attended. Years later she was able to pursue her interests a bit more formally when her businessman husband was posted to Singapore. There Dunthorn spent six years taking sitar lessons from Sharafat Khan, a disciple of Amjad Ali Khan, at the Indian Fine Arts Society. She also met Gitanjali Kolanad, a dancer-choreographer, at the society. In 1993 she moved to Madras, where her husband, Glen Bieber, is involved in an aquaculture business, and she resumed sitar lessons with B.K. Misra.

Later that same year Kolanad came to Madras to stage a poetry-reading choreography, What She Said, in tribute to A.K. Ramanujan, professor of South Asian languages and civilizations and of linguistics at the University of Chicago, who recently had died. The production, based on Ramanujan's English translations of ancient Tamil love poems, was well received. Anita Ratnam then persuaded Kolanad to explore further the women's voices in the poems and seek a wider audience for the dance. This led to a new version, Under Her Breath, that incorporated folk theater elements, including an informal sutradhar (storyteller/commentator) and humor, and reduced the elaborate gestures of classical Bharatanatyam into minimalist forms.

It also led to an ofTer from Gitanjali Kolanad to Dunthorn to direct the production. " 'Sure,' " Dunthorn says she told Kolanad. "I knew I'd like to take care of it," she ref1ects, speaking as one would of a fondling. Several factors persuaded her to accept Kolanad's offer. For one thing, she was immediately drawn by the power of the poetry. Ramanujan's translation of poems written in the Sangham period (100 B.C.-A.D. 250) vividly brings alive the secret delights,

the satiated languor, and the simmering, unbearable torments of love, which have not changed a whit in all these centuries: Like moss on water in the town's water tank, the body's pallor clears as my lover touches and touches, and spreads again, as he lets go, as he lets go.

Another reason was "the tremendous resources in these three dynamic women" involved with the production: Kolanad, Ratnam, and dancer-actress Rajika Puri, who was the sutradhar. "I was unafraid to direct it even though I don't know about Bharatanatyam per se, because there's such tremendous richness in its tradition that you're bound to get something out of it," Dunthorn says. For one who by now had spent a decade in Asia-Sri Lanka and Malaysia, as well as Singapore and Indiait was another opportunity to explore her long-standing interest in what she calls "East-West expression."

Ratnam, whose Arangham Trust fosters interdisciplinary cooperation between artists, produced Under Her Breath and was partnered with Krithika Rajagopalan, a resident of Chicago spending a year in India, in the dance seq uences. "Originally we had thought of having an Indian director," . J .

Ratnam says, "but an Indian director would have wanted to research it for one-and-ahalf years. Deborah's lack of knowledge of Bharatanatyam is a plus point because we were neither burdened with questions like 'Is this correct?' nor limited to abhinayas.

"She loosened me a lot, and allowed me to have fun-dancers often take themselves too seriously. She also blocked the spaces, helped take the dancers ofT center, and gave us personalities."

"We let Bharatanatyam breathe a bit," Dunthorn says. "I was confident because my formal theater training included dance and

movements of various kinds-folk dancing, tai chi, and even fencing-so I can appreciate what movements express."

Dunthorn has a master's degree in fine arts and acting from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and she did further studies in theater and communications at Columbia University in New York. She has performed professionally in the United States and Europe. She toured for three years with Vienna's International Theater.

Under Her Breath received considerable acclaim when it was staged in Madras last November, but had a mixed response in Bombay this past March. "The Madras production had a haunting quality that was missing when we performed in Bombay," Dunthorn says. "In fact, they aren't the same production."

Ratnam sees it as a "piece in progress" and made significant alterations in the choreography for the Bombay performance. Kolanad, back in Singapore, was not involved this time.

Dunthorn sees more possibilities for the production.

"I would like it rechoreographed," she says. "We hope to take it to Singapore in September." Puri adds, "We also have invitations from Rhoda Grauer, director of performing arts of the Asia Society in New York; Simon Dove, who wants us to perform at the South Bank Festival in London; from the International Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Among Youth for a performance in Chicago, and from an association of institutes of South Asian studies, also in Chicago."

The experience has also inspired Dunthorn to consider other projects. "My training is very classical: Shakespeare is my first love," she says. "But I'd like to direct Beckett's Happy Days in Madras." For the part-artist, part-adventurer, the bottom line is: "In any production you have to know why you're doing it. Otherwise, don't even bother."

0 Meenakshi Shedde is features editor with Bombay Times, part of The Times of India.

About the Author:

Scenes from Under Her Breath. In photo above, Rajika Puri is left, Anita Ratnam in the middle, and Krithika Rajagopalan below.

We let Bharatanatyam breathe a bit.

-Deborah

Dunthorn

Trivandrum. The few hours in Bangalore are a rare down time, and Ratnam, an engaging raconteur, breaks into salivating anecdotes about the forbidden joys of American and Indian street food.

Even when relaxed, Ratnam exudes an air of urgency and purpose. And so it has been for years. When in her teens, her Bharatanatyam performances in India were sellouts. By the time she was 21, she stepped out of the national spotlight. "I had made it to the top, but the most I could hope to reach was an audience of just 500 people at a time," she says, her big, dark eyes squinting in theatrical despair.

Ratnam wanted a bigger stage. She dashed off applications to several American universities to pursue a master's degree in communications and drama.

The University of New Orleans was about the only one that replied with a personal letter instead of a form letter, so she enrolled there in 1976.

Her father, R. Ratnam, is the eldest grandson of T.V.S. Iyengar, founder in 1912 of the TVS Group which today is a huge conglomerate.

Surrounded by an orthodox Brahmin family with men and women of immense pioneering spirit, Anita grew up inspired, feisty, and precocIous.

In America she basked in anonymity and in "the campy, crazy warmth" of New Orleans, where she gorged on blackened redfish, II-course brunches at Brennan's while listening to trumpeter AI Hirt, and knocked back bread pudding liberally laced with whiskey sauce at Commander's Place.

"Nobody cared who my father was or about my family's bank balance," Ratnam recalls. In America she would have to make it purely on her own steam, which is exactly what she wanted to do.

"Yet, I had pride in who I was. I didn't dilute my Indian links. I didn't cut my hair and wear a blue business suit. People thought I was some sort of an Indian princess with a hole in my forehead."

American TV journalism enthralled her. "There was that dynamism, fearlessness, solid reporting, intelligent humor," she says. "I realized it was a medium which people watched between their toes, and no

matter what you had to say, if you weren't interesting-clickl-the viewer switched to another channel. You had to be very good to survive!"

Ratnam excelled at New Orleans and did postgraduat~ work in communications at New York University. In 1980, armed with impressive credentials, she stepped into the real world-a shabby basement somewhere in the New York City borough of Queens which served as a makeshift TV studio. Here she produced a weekly Indian show, thoroughly underfinanced by a small group of Indian physicians. To make ends meet, she worked as information officer at the Government of India Tourist Office in Manhattan.

The Watergate scandal had propelled journalism to heady heights and the profession was saturated with eager, young talent. Ratnam entered the fray. "It is better to fail than to be mediocre," she says. "I was determined to succeed." America had bolstered her with a spirit of independence, adventure, immense self-confidence, and courage. "What I appreciated most was the American trait of informality and directness," she recalls. "It makes life and doing business a lot easier."

In 1984, Ratnam married Giri Raj, a New York-based Indian businessman whose interests included Bombay Cinema, a Manhattan movie theater that screened only Indian films. Under its umbrella, she created "Cinema-Cinema," whose format included interviews, arts, news, cultural, and current events.

Ratnam did it all, from selling TV time to producing to hosting what becameand continues to be-the most popular weekly Indian TV prog~am broadcast from Manhattan and syndicated in many other cities around the United States. She says she succeeded by employing the TVS The producer working on a script in her Madras studio.

philosophy: "Invest in good people and work with a collective spirit."

By the mid-1980s, Anita Ratnam Raj was in demand at the India Day Parade and the Miss India USA pageant, and she was consulting for major American TV networks and interviewing such personalities as Zubin Mehta, Indira Gandhi, Ben Kingsley, Ravi Shankar, Rajiv Gandhi, J.R.D. Tata, Peter Jennings, Ismail Merchant, Princess Savrath of Jordan, and a raft of Indian matinee idols.

A new opportunity came in 1985 when Doordarshan found itself ill-equipped to cover the year-long, multimillion-dollar Festival of India's 25-city tour of the United States. Ratnam was called in, and viewers in India lapped up her informed, polished, entertaining reports, which she delivered with an enthusiastic spontaneity unknown on Indian TV. Other opportunities came her way. She coordinated David Hartman's ABC;TV visit to India, and produced 26 shows of "Indigo"-a unique series about culture and travel designed to enhance American awareness of India-for TWA's travel channel. By now a celebrity in her own right, Ratnam was on New York's inside social track.

Yet, through it all, she says she wasn't awed. Perhaps that is to be expected when one considers the pioneers and entrepreneurs in her family who made it to the top in industry and public service. They include her great-great-grandfather, Sir V. Bhashyam Iyengar, who was the first Indian High Court judge to be knighted; her grandfather, Chari Iyengar, India's first postmaster general; and grandaunt Souduram Ramachandran, who was Minister of Education in the Nehru Cabinet and founder of Gandhigram, a model for rural development near Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Her mother, Leela, accomplished in many fields, is the president of the Canine Club of India and the only woman juror on the international dog show circuit.

Forty years ago, the women in her family pooled their money, and the result today is Sundaram Finance Ltd., a major hire-purchase and leasing company.

"Every day I am humbled to realize I am part of such an illustrious family," says Ratnam, whose star status hasn't eclipsed her humility.

Of her own success, the woman who had become the voice of the Indian community in the United States and a star at home says, "It all happened so fast that the enormity of what I was doing didn't hit me. I'd wake up in the morning, look out the window, and feel I owned Manhattan!"

But in 1989 the demands on her time and talents, and of being a wife and mother, overtook the superwoman from Madras. Ratnam was being consumed by the very whirlwind she created. "It was a blur," she says wistfully about the deterioration in her marriage. "I sensed the end .vas coming, yet I hadn't learned to step oack and take a deep breath." She quit working to try to save her marriage, but it didn't work. When she divorced, she was gleefully wrung through the gossip mill.

"However, America is a 'me' society," she adds. "It gave me courage and taught me to pick myself up and go on."

Despite the rough times, she switched tracks and began working with American choreographer Jacques d' Amboise, the National Dance Institute, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Peter Brook's Mahabharata.

With her expertise in media and skills in organization she filled Madison Square Garden, the Nassau Coliseum, and the 50,000-seat Giants Stadium for concerts by visiting Indian film stars, and organized an enormously successful Diwali bash at New York's trendy South Street Seaport.

But in her heart, Ratnam yearned to feel the earth of India under her feet once more-"the thud and thump" and soothing rhythms of Bharatanatyam dance, and the support of family. "I had to come home within myself." She needed to set aside time to bring up her two children, daughter Aryambika, nine, and son Shriman Narayan, seven.

Anita Ratnam had come full circle.

Not one to idle for long, back in Madras in 1990 she put her skills to good use as a marketing and advertising

The dancer helping American choreographer Jonathan Hollander inaugurate a theater for self-expression in Madras in 1994.

executive with the TVS Group. She authored the book Natya BrahmanThe Theatric Universe, exploring the similarities between the ancient and theatrical traditions of India and Greece.

She made a video, "Bharatanatyam: The Sacred Dance of South India," which introduces the 5,000-year-old performing art to the West.

She founded the Arangham Trust, a cultural and performing arts organization to promote experimental work in drama and music, incorporating electronic media, while preserving the finer points of the traditional. Arangham helped host the New York-based Battery Dance Company's tour of India in 1994, and the two will join hands again with "Purush" in August.

Last year, she collaborated with Chicago-based dancer Krithika Rajagopalan, New York-based dancer and stage actress Rajika Puri, Singaporebased choreographer-wrjter Gitanjali Kolanad, and American director Deborah Dunthorn in the production of Under Her Breath. Ratnam produced, helped choreograph, and danced in this dance-theater interpretation of 2,000year-old Tamil love poems translated

by A.K. Ramanujan, the well-known professor in the department of South Asian languages and civilizations and of linguistics at the University of Chicago until his death in 1993. The Madras presentation was so well received that the group regrouped for an encore in Bombay earlier this year (see page 20).

Projects continue to pour in. Ratnam produced the India segment of writer George Plimpton's "Fireworks Around The World" series for Time Inc., TV.A 13episode serial on Indian women achievers in development has just been released.

With younger sister Preetha and friend Radha Narayanan, Ratnam launched Yantra, a studio in Madras, in the autumn of 1994, to produce a variety of TV programs and reports on South India for networks in several countries.

Yantra is also giving Ratnam the chance to train Indian TV journalists on the finer points of American TV journalism that she admires, including "the ability to recognize something that's newsworthy and turn it into a solid story within 24 hours." Yantra, as do all her projects, functions with team spirit and the absence of hierarchy. Ratnam is "Anita" to all.

With characteristic modesty, she credits her newfound success to the "media hurricane" that was poised to hit India. "It just happens that I arrived here before the hurricane hit."

America will be seeing a lot more of Anita Ratnam. Though her fans urge her to return to "Cinema-Cinema," which continues to reel in audiences and has inspired about 40 clones across America, Ratnam says that is in her past. This time around she sees her role is on a more substantial, cross-cultural plane as she contemplates a number of media and theater projects. Just as she takes strength from her own rich cultural heritage, the dynamism and excitement of America inspire her. "America molded mâ&#x201A;Ź into who I am today. I'm as much at home in Manhattan as I am in Madras," says Ratnam, who remains an Indian citizen.

"I consider myself blessed to be able to straddle two cultures with equal pleasure," she adds. "People keep asking me if I consider myself more Indian or more American." She sighs and pauses. "I tell them I'm the hyphen in Indo-American."

D About the Author: Vinod Chhabra,for 22 years features editor and columnist with Hearst Newspapers in New York, is now president of Asia America Marketing in Bangalore.

Scene: A sunny afternoon in a Southern California suburb in the mid-l 960s. In the garage attached to his family's home, a blond, blue-eyed teenager-let's call him Chad-steps back to scrutinize the wax job he has just given his cherry-red Ford Thunderbird convertible. The car is polished to a sheen, the chrome dazzles the eye, and the whitewall tires are immaculate.

Quite a machine! He smiles as he envisions himself behind the wheel later on that evening, cruising along the Santa Monica Freeway, radio loud with the music of the Beach Boys, on his way to the drive-in hamburger place where he will meet up with friends. He is a prince among princes, his car the envy of all who see it. He isno doubt about it-"cool."

Scene: Thirty years later, Ventura Beach, California. A dark, curly-haired young man in his twenties-let's call him Juanclimbs into his shiny black "low-rider," switches on the stereo and ups the volume of a Spanish-language radio station. He slides as far down in the seat as he can go, and with only one hand on the wheel, slowly pulls out into traffic. He heads toward a designated meeting point his car club has chosen, the car cruising with what appears to be no effort on his part.

Both car and driver attract looks from passersby, and in case anyone has missed the point, his personalized license plate says it all: "2 KOOL." merica has had a love affair with the automobile ever since the beginning of the 20th century, when luxury cars were playthings of the rich and famous. When Henry Ford massproduced the Model T in 1913, the automobile became an affordable, utilitarian means of getting from one place to another. By the late 1930s every American could dream of owning a car. Indeed, the mobility, independence, and opportunity it represented became part and parcel of the American Dream. By the 1960s, the car had become associated with romance and courtship, often executed in rolling pas de deuxs around the parking lot of a drive-in restaurant to the accompaniment of waitresses on roller skates and tunes by the Beach Boys. "I Get Around," they sang, describing their "little deuce coupes," their "409s," and their "woodies" with an adoration never before used to describe a machine.

Such automobile adulation is nowhere better expressed than in Los Angeles (LA). One-third of the city is paved road; there is no underground system of mass transit. Freeways connect people and communities to one another in Southern California, and it is possible to eat, bank, shop for groceries, rent a video, pick up your dry-cleaning, and even attend church without leaving your vehicle.

Car clubs-hot rod clubs, low-rider clubs, van clubs, and, more recently, mini-truck clubs-are rallying points for the car-crazed. But they also appeal to those who simply want to proclaim their identity with others who own like cars. Folklorist and anthropologist Deirdre Evans-Pritchard, who studied the street culture of Los Angeles, recently wrote an article, "Color and Chrome: Car Culture in Southern California," in The World & I, a publication of the Washington Times Corporation. She writes that the amount of time and money required to customize a van, car, or truck can foster strong bonds among car clubbers. "The exclusivity of a car club," she says, "can

A

incorporate almost ganglike loyalties and rivalries."

Paradoxically, along with the conformity implicit in joining a car club comes the desire to customize, to make one's car "special," unique, different from all others. This can be explained in part, says Evans-Pritchard, by the increased anonymity and loss of community in the vast urban landscape of Los Angeles and its environs. "We deal with many strangers in our everyday interactions," she says. "Decorating our cars, in many cases our second skins, provides another forum for increasing personal interaction.

It is a way of broadcasting information about ourselves that con-

forms in principle with the unending barrage of signs and pictures that line every large street in LA." Whatever the reasons, it appears that the fascination with cars is here to stay. Car customizing has become big business in LA, and the automotive industry giants sometimes take their cues for new models from custom-shop entrepreneurs.

One has only to drive the freeway for a little while to glimpse California's car culture at its best. A purple van sports an elaborately painted mountain scene on its rear panel, deer in the foreground, and the sun setting behind the peaks; a bumper sticker below reads,

"I Brake for Animals." In the lane next to it a gleaming white Lincoln Towncar keeps pace; there is no hint of who sits behind the tinted windows except for the license plate: "TEETIME." A pale yellow Corvette convertible passes both of them, the driver's hair blowing wildly in the wind; appropriately enough, her tag reads "L8FORAD8," and at the pace she's moving, it's easy to believe.

And coming from behind, about to pass everyone, is a roaring, lowslung "macho mobile," shiny black with red and orange flames painted on its hood, blasting its music for all to hear. California cruisin'.

-Sandra Maxwell

PIED PIPER

Text by

STEVE KEMPER Photographs by SUSAN LAPIDES

â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘

Millionaire inventor Dean Kamen, who never liked school, has made a game out of science and technologywith the very serious purpose of eliminating techno-illiteracy among American youth.

Above: Kamen sits on the lap of his hero, Albert Einsteinactua/~v. a gimmick chair in his office. Right: The inventor "relaxes" in his machine shop at home, making new bolts for one of his old engines.

eanKamen, the keynote speaker at a national convention of engineers in Boston, Massachusetts, last year, looked decidedly out of place as he sauntered up to the microphone. In contrast with the sea of expensive suits before him, Kamen wore jeans, a denim work shirt, and squaretoed leather boots. Though a millionaire several times over, he wears the identical outfit every day, in all circumstances, whether milling a machine part for a new invention, striking a deal with a fellow CEO (chief executive officer), or meeting with the President of the United States.

Just before his speech, when asked to explain his habit of dress, he said, "My question is, why do people wear clothes made from thin, delicate material, and a thing that hangs from their neck, and shoes with no soles? A tie gets caught in things, and there aren't enough pockets"-he pulled a small adjustable wrench from one of his-"and if you do anything, by the end of the day those delicate clothes get dirty and ruined. So I wear these clothes because I work. And frankly, the message sent by suits and ties-which is, 'I don't really work'-is offensive to me."

Kamen looked over the podium at 700 engineers relaxing after a big meal. "The bad news is," he began, "we're a technophobic society. The worse news is, you guys are to blame for it." He paused as eyebrows began to rise. "And by the way," he continued, "if you don't like what I say today, well, you're not paying me anything, so I don't give a damn."

No one ever describes Kamen as diplomatic. They do call him brilliant, relentless, visionary. The word "genius" also comes up a lot, and not from people prone to hyperbole. Roland Schmitt, who was in research and development at General Electric for 37 years and then served as president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, says, "Dean is the best technologist I've ever encountered, and I've known some great ones. He has the ability to synthesize knowledge about so many areas-sensors, materials, mechanics, electronics."

Although Kamen prefers to think of himself as a physicist, he is also an inventor and an entrepreneur. A 43-year-old autodidact who flunked a lot of courses at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, before dropping out, he holds more than 30 U.S. patents relating to medical devices, climate control systems, and helicopter design. Last year, Design News magazine gave him its prestigious "Engineer of the Year" award.

Kamen calls himself"just a boring average guy." What's really exciting, he tells anyone he can collar, is his crusade to recruit America's youth for science and technology. It began in 1986 when he opened a hands-on science museum for children in Manchester, New Hampshire, where his company, DEKA Research & Development Corporation, is based. He soon craved a higher pulpit and a bigger arena, so he started a nonprofit group called U.S. First. Its goal is to persuade kids that engineering and technology are far more exciting than slam dunks, Nintendo, and MTY. And its method of persuasion is a high-tech sporting event, created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Woodie Flowers, which pits gladiator robots designed by teams of high school students and corporate engineers. It appalls Kamen that stu-

D

dents in the United States consistently rank near the bottom in math and science among industrial nations.

"Tell me the name of one living scientist or engineer that a kid wants to grow up and be like," he said to the engineers in Boston.

"They use video games, laser disks, Walkmans, but have no clue who invented them. As technologists we haven't been looking for recognition because we like what we do-and we don't care if the public understands it. That is irresponsible and inappropriate. We need to demonstrate to kids that technology is productive and fun, and that you can make lots of money doing it. The media have created megaheroes of rock stars and sports players. I'm asking all of you to help us make the next hero a scientist or a technologistreal heroes." They could help, he suggested, by convincing their companies and alma maters to sponsor teams in the annual U.S. First competition.

This national event is Kamen's main weapon in the battle against techno-illiteracy. It combines the action of Monday night football with the brainpower of today's bright engineers and high school students. As someone who never cared much for school, Kamen is adamant that the purpose of U.S. First is not education but inspiration. (U.S. First stands for United States For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.) "I don't want it to be a festival that no one but the nerds knows about," he says. "The goal is to get it on TV so that thousands of kids can see it."

Kamen has persuaded, pressured, or shamed some big companies-Procter & Gamble, Motorola, Boeing, Ford, Honeywell, Ingersoll-Rand, Xerox-into donating money and engineers to work with the young people. "If we reach even one percent of the students in this country," he harangues their executives, "we will have a bigger impact than all the science fairs combined." He is also planning a science center in Manchester where visitors can build their own machines, walk through the inside of a clock, or play virtual-reality basketball.

The inaugural U.S. First competition, in 1992, attracted 28 teams and President George Bush, who happened to be in New Hampshire campaigning for reelection. As Bush watched the action, Kamen zeroed in. "Mr. President, you're always inviting the winners of football games and basketball games to the White House. Why not encourage young scientists by inviting the winners of this?" Bush responded with a vague "Good idea," and began walking away.

Kamen pursued him, tugged on the sleeve of his suitcoat, and said, "Mr. President, why not go to the podium and announce it right now?" Bush did. That summer, the winners were honored at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. Kamen has finagled the same invitation for the winners from President Bill Clinton, who remarked at the 1993 ceremony that Kamen's "energy is still the single most inexhaustible thing I think I've seen in the United States of America. If you do not want to hear about what he does, do not ask--or stand within a four-mile radius."

When Kamen was growing up on Long Island, New York, he sometimes worried that he was dumb. He didn't like school, and his grades showed it. His mind kept veering off on speculative tan-

Ahove: A young visitOl; helped by a technician, takes a ride on the "moon walk" exhihit at Kamen~' science museum in Manche.stel; Nelv Hampshire. Leji: At a rink in the New Hampshire gym, remotecontrolled robots playa ball game, while referees (in striped shirts) look. The robot that puts most balls in the goal (centel) wins.

gents. Once, in the fourth grade, his tcacher explained that every number dividcd by itsclf is one. "I started thinking about that," he remembers, "and I raised my hand and said, 'Then what is zero divided by zero?' She got really angry and accused me of not paying attention. Which was usually true, but not this time. She called my mother, but I said I wasn't wrong, and I wouldn't apologize because there was no logic in what she said."

In high school, still frustrated by his teachers' inability to answer questions, he began reading the original works of great sci-

entific thinkers such as Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein who, along with Walt Disney, remain his principal heroes. Given the slightest encouragement he will re-create, with great enthusiasm and illustrative detail, such arcana as Archimedes' formula for calculating the volume of a sphere.

Kamen's gifts as an inventor and entrepreneur also popped up during those years. The summer after his high school graduation, he took a job with a company that did audiovisual shows. The control system was big and awkward, with lots of wired relays. Kamen imagined a better way. He bought $400 worth of solid-state electronics and studied technical manuals. By the end of the summer he had designed a small control box that the delighted company bought for $2,000. During his first year at Worcester Polytechnic, he came home every Friday to build more boxes in his parents' basement. Within a year, he sold nearly $60,000 worth of them.

At college he took courses in physics and electronics and hung around his professors' offices to ask questions. He also ignored the required courses, stopped taking tests, and started failing. He was still driving home every Friday to work in his parents' basement, which by now resembled an electronics shop. He got the idea for his next invention from his older brother, Bart, who was then studying medicine. Bart had noticed that nurses spent a lot of time checking IVs to make sure that patients were getting the right dosages. Bart asked his brother to invent a device that would accurately administer small amounts of drugs throughout the day. Ifhe could make it portable, so that patients wouldn't be tied to the hospital, even better.

Kamen, then 20, responded by inventing the first portable druginfusion pump. An alticle about it in the New England Journal of Medicine attracted interest from around the world, including an order for 100 from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Meanwhile, Kamen had persuaded his parents to let him expand the basement and move in large machine tools. The basement became a factory for Kamen's new company, Auto-Syringe.

His younger brother, Mitch, and Mitch's high school friends assembled the pumps; his mother, Evelyn, tested the circuit boards.

Soon, with help from a group of investors, Kamen expanded into an industrial building and assembled an engineering staff. It was 1975 and he was 24.

Lifestyle of the Rich and Industrious A few years later, he invented the first portable insulin pump.

Worn on a belt around the waist, the pump weighed less than 500 grams and dispensed precise amounts of insulin throughout the day, eliminating the wild swings of blood sugar that bedeviled diabetics. In 1979, tired of crowds and high state taxes, Kamen moved Auto-Syringe to New Hampshire. Three years later, he and his investors agreed to sell the company.

At 31, Kamen was a multimillionaire. He could afford a house, which he built on about seven hectares in Bedford, New Hampshire. He bought one for his parents, too, just through the woods from his. He put a complete machine shop just off his kitchen. It is the biggest room in the house, except for the room with the indoor pool. Kamen often spends the wee hours in his home shop-

milling, grinding, and molding new ideas into reality. "I just like running those machines," he says. "It's relaxing."

As a boy Kamen had dreamed about flying on a magic carpet.

When he got older he discovered helicopters. Once he was rich, he bought one, and a plane as well. He began commuting to work by helicopter, and soon had ideas about how to improve the aircraft.

So he bought the company that made it, Enstrom. (He sold his controlling interest in 1990 but still commutes to work in an Enstrom and still plays with helicopter design.)

Now that Kamen had a magic carpet, he needed an enchanted kingdom, so he bought a hectare-plus island named North Dumpling off the coast of Connecticut. In his office, a picture of the island bears the caption, "The only 100 percent science-literate society ...America could learn a lot from its neighbor." As "Lord Dumpling," Kamen has decreed a territorial limit of 500 centimeters. The island has a constitution, a postal service (with stamps featuring turtles and snails), and even a national anthem sung to the tune of "America the Beautiful": "North Dumpling, North Dumpling,lKeep lawyers far from thee.lAnd MBA's and bureaucrats,lThat we may all be free ...."

Kamen's main purchase, however, was a row of 19th-century textile mills along the Merrimack River in Manchester. That is where he started his new research-and-development company, called DEKA after the first two letters of his names. While renovating the old mills, he determined that the industrial heating-andcooling systems then on the market were deplorable. He invented a new one that controls everything with personal computers. That led to a second company, Teletrol, which has installed systems for AT&T, the Texas State Capitol in Austin, NASA's Mission Control in Houston, Texas, and the 38 buildings of McMaster University in Canada.

Only the Brightest A bachelor, Kamen often grumbles that his main project in life is to find a mate; but those close to him say he is a workaholic, irrevocably married to DEKA. The company has grown in the past decade from 15 employees to 80, most of them engineers or toolmakers. He hires only the very brightest. Few applicants survive the first interview, which requires the candidate to stand for hours beiore Kamen and some of his staff answering questions about the principles of physics and engineering. Taking their cue from Kamen, almost everyone at DEKA wears jeans, even in meetings with big corporate clients. There is no bureaucracy; everyone reports directly to the boss.

Like an old-time factory owner, Kamen wants to stay close to the "floor"-his office is across the hall from the machine shop so he can constantly check on projects and be handy for questions.

The walls of his office are filled with pictures of helicopters.

Machine parts litter the coffee table. A 2.5-meter slide rule dominates one wall; a huge teddy bear claims one corner of the room.

There are two pictures of Einstein, and a large wooden chair painted to look like Einstein sitting down; Kamen sometimes perches in the great physicist's lap.

DEKA's halls are lined with photographs of infusion pumps,

helicopters, and the tall gear-and-pendulum clocks that Kamen machines and assembles as a hobby. "They're a nice combination of physics, electronics, mechanical engineering, and machining," he says. There are also outsize comics, the original artwork done

by Dean's father, Jack, for pulp magazines such as Creepshow, Weird Science, and Shock. Jack Kamen was also one of the first artists hired at Mad magazine and still does all ofDEKA's illustrations; Evelyn Kamen, Dean's mother, is an accountant and keeps the books. Kamen claims never to have looked at his father's work while growing up, nor has he ever been interested in science fiction: "The real stuff is too good." His idea of a good read is a physics textbook.

In fact, most popular culture seems to have escaped Kamen's attention. He can rattle off Nobel Prize winners in physics, but draws a blank at the name "Robert De Niro." At a dinner not long ago he was seated next to Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty; he had no idea who they were.

Recently Kamen and his associates reinvented the kidney dialysis machine. The old one was noisy, gravity-driven, and bulky (1.65 meters high, 81.5 kilograms). The new one uses computer-controlled pneumatics. It's quiet enough to use during sleep, easy to operate, weighs ten kilograms, and fits under an airline seat. Now dialysis patients can undergo treatment away from the hospital.

Kamen generates so many ideas that his 80 employees can barely keep up with him. Mike Ambrogi doesn't have a real title at DEKA but calls himself the "engineering manager, the one person here who worries." A mechanical engineer who graduated first in his class from MIT in 1985, Ambrogi has stationed his office between Kamen's and the engineers' in an effort to shield them from Kamen's fusillades of rapid-fire suggestions. "When he's brainstorming," says Doug Vincent, another outstanding engineer recruited from MIT, "you just hold on and try to stay with him. I've never seen anything like it. But it's frustrating, too, because you can be working on something for months, and Dean comes in with a thousand new ideas and just blows you away." The trick, says Ambrogi, "is knowing when to take his suggestions and when to say, 'Dean, that's still a few generations away. We really have to do this now.' " The DEKA staff is fiercely devoted to Kamen. His generosity accounts for part of it. He has taken everyone, including spouses and children, on trips to Disneyland and Disney World. "He's loaned money to half the people in here," says Ambrogi.

Kamen gives the staff a lot of freedom, but if he doesn't get results, woe unto the wretch heaped with his scorn. "He lets everybody learn by doing and making big mistakes that cost him a lot of money," says Vincent, "but then you have to live with that and hear about it."

Onto Something Big For some time now, a team of DEKA engineers has been working on a secret project in which Kamen has invested millions. He says it makes everything else he has done look like child's play, and it will change the way millions of people live.

He won't say much about it, except that it uses some of the principles from the Stirling cycle, the operating basis of a hot-air engine invented in 1816 and nearly forgotten today. Most of the engineers working on the project had never heard of the St.irling cycle. Kamen not only knew about it, he has restored a number of old Stirling engines to working condition.

Kamen's home is filled with beautifully restored old machines, splendid in their muscular, functional sculpture. All of them work. One side of a sunny atrium holds the diesel engine that powered Henry Ford's yacht around Lake Michigan.

There is something Kamen calls "a one-lung fire-breather," an early engine that predates the spark plug, an old drill press, a Civil War-vintage scroll saw, and three Stirlings. He oils up a steam engine, points out its fly-ball governor, and cranks it up.

Chunk-a-chunk-a, chunk-a-chunk-a.

"She's talking to you," Kamen says.

Old machines give him great pleasure. "They're elegant, and they were made by artists," he explains. "Look at the spokes on this scroll saw-they're tapered, they're sensual.

Old machines are simple and clear in their use of cause and effect. I like the physics they represent, the craftsmanship, the sensuality. I like the sounds they make. And they are moving, breathing pieces of history."

Rebuilding old machines and reading old scientific texts often leads Kamen to new inventions. "A lot of my approaches to new problems come from studying how the Greeks or Newton solved . problems in their day. Our new dialysis machine uses Boyle's Law and Gay-Lussac's Law---discoveries from the 17th and 18th centuries that explain the properties of gases."

His latest find is a late 19th-century reconstruction of an internal combustion engine that he traces back to a Yankee inventor named Samuel Morcy (1762-1843). Most people credit the first commercially successful internal combustion engine to Nikolaus Otto in 1876. But Kamen has investigated this engine's history and can hold forth on its drama: How Morey had to invent a carburetion system that vaporized turpentine because gasoline was still unknown; how Morey's patents for the engine were lost or ignored in the early years of the American Republic before the Patent Office got fully organized; how hisJtechnology was passed on and ended up in the rusty hulk that Kamen bought at auction. He has been rebuilding it for a couple of years. "I think we'll soon demonstrate that this engine works and that this guy invented it 50 years before Otto," he says. "Now that's what you should be writing about. That's interesting."

He intends to build a new house around another giant engine.

"It's huge," Kamen says. "The flywheel alone weighs 15,000 pounds and is 20 feet high. I want to put this thing in the middle of my next house, with the pistons going." He stands there pumping his arms up and down like pistons, looking very happy to be an engine generating energy.

D About the Author: Steve Kemper is aji-eelance writer who lives in Connecticut. He writes frequently for Smithsonian.

There is a downside to having an abundance of consumer products-finding the time and resources to make informed choices. The solution, says the author, is harnessing information technology to help resolve consumer dilemmas.

As we approach the 21 st century. advanced industrial nations face a growing epidemic of consumer confusion. In 1800, a typical American had access to fewer than 300 prod ucts on sale in his or her hometown, one retail establishment (a country store), and approximately 150 meters of retail space.

In contrast, a typical American in a metropolitan city of a million people now has access to more than a million consumer products, thousands of merchants, and about one-and-a-half Reprinted

by permission

from the January/February

World Future Society. 7910 Woodmont Copyright

(0 1993 World Future Society.

199J issue of The Flouris!. published

Avenue. Suite 450. Bethesda.

by the

Maryhtnd 20814. USA.

million square meters of selling space. Moreover, our product choices are much more complex-computers vs. cotton, life insurance vs. pickles, surgeons vs. blacksmiths.

The result is that consumer confusion now pervades almost every decision that consumers make-both the life-shaping de<,;jsions such as choosing a home, doctor, spouse, job, preschool, college. or financial plan, as well as the small decisions such as choosing a VCR, light bulb, credit card, or evening's entertainment.

Anyone who has recently tried to select a life insurance policy or differentiate among 30 stereo systems will immediately grasp how many purchasing decisions are based on hunches, sales pitches, brand reputation, or sheer fatigue rather than on genuine awareness of value.

These poorly informed decisions, made by millions of people every day of the year, profoundly influence the moral, social, and economic world around us. Indeed, the inefficiency resulting from consumer confusion today may be costing the u.s. economy as much as $1 trillion per year. That is close to $10,000 per family per year-a hidden tax that adds on average 20 percent to the cost of every product we buy. Imagine: The last prod-

uct you bought might have cost 20 percent less or lasted 20 percent longer if you were perfectly informed about your options.

It is possible that many good products don't even get produced because consumers have no feasible way of distinguishing the superior from the average. As venture capitalists frequently comment, the landscape is strewn with the wreckage of fine companies that built great products-about which no one had ever heard.

Consumption Is Time Consuming The typical American now spends nine percent of his or her nonworking, nonsleeping time gathering information about products, according to studies by sociologists and media specialists. That comes to approximately 950 hours per year per family, or about four hours of information gathering for every $100 spent. The single most visible component of this figure is the approximately 18 percent of network and cable TV time devoted to advertising. Americans spend more than 30,600 million hours watching TV ads every year. Studies show that most consumers find a majority of these ads a nuisance-if only because the ads

they see are often the same ads they have already seen dozens of times before or are for products they will never want.

Not included in these figures are the frustration, lost time, and maybe even poor health resulting from making an ill-informed purchase. One problem with such figures is that they are inherently nonquantifiable because they relate to the quality of life.

For example, how do you quantify the consequences of: • Failing to videotape an important TV show because you bought a VCR too difficult to program?

• Living in a less-than-perfect house because you couldn't spare the time to look at every possible house that might have suited your needs?

• Developing a chronic disease and dying an early death because food labels provide such poor nutrition information?

• Suffering from an unnecessary pain the rest of your life because you couldn't find good information for choosing a doctor?

In short, the problem of consumer confusion isn't the problem of buying the wrong toaster, annoying as that might be. It's a problem costing the economy billions of dollars in waste and

billions of hours in lost time, not to mention the immeasurable suffering and loss of useful products resulting from people's inability to cost-effectively judge the quality of the vast variety of products and services.

Toward an Information Age Consumerism Resolving the advanced industrial world's consumer-confusion problem will require a paradigm shift in thinking. First and most importantly, it will require recognizing the existence and extent of the problem; that is, the loss of money, time, energy-even health and happiness-that results from making uninformed buying decisions. Second, it will require substituting an Information Age consumerism for the present, outdated Industrial Age consumerism.

Advanced countries need a new consumerism.

This new form of consumerism should not be based on direct government regulation of business, as the United States does through the Federal Trade Commission or through state consumer-protection offices. Rather, it should be based on a high-quality information infrastructure that will revolutionize the privatesector economics of selling information to consumers.

The problem with the old consumerism is that government is an inherently inefficient and inept arbiter of the marketplace.

Under the old consumerism, regulations multiply, become very expensive and impractical to enforce, and, unless curtailed, frequently do more harm than good. This old consumerism wouldn't be necessary if the mass media were completely effective in their avowed role as watchdog and informant. The problem is that the mass media, based on outmoded technology and riddled with inherent inefficiencies and conflicts of interest, have been only modestly effective in this role.

The significance of the new information infrastructure is that it makes it profitable for independent information sources to provide high quality, convenient, and affordable information to consumers, thus becoming the critical arbiters in the consumer's day-to-day decision making. Ultimately, what this infrastructure means is that, wherever consumers are and whatever they are shopping for, they will be able to painlessly and affordably ask what amounts to a trusted, expert "friend" what to do.

In a sense, these independent information sources will empower the average COnSumer to access knowledgeable opinion about purchases in the same way that senior executives routinely do today. That is, consumers will be able to designate agents to make their decisions just as executives can designate subordinates or outside consultants, As a result, consumers will be able to make decisions as efficiently and knowledgeably as corporate America can, This information infrastructure (that is, the New Consumerism) has three tiers-technology, agents, and clearinghouses.

Information Technology If we expect to have informed consumers, a new telecommunications policy must be developed, which wil1 require: (I) a

fiber-optic network reaching into every home; (2) the reallocation of terrestrial electromagnetic spectrum ("the airwaves") to support digital, interactive, and cellular broadband services; and (3) a high-definition TV (HDTV) standard that has sufficient flexibility to achieve magazine-quality images.

The United States is decades away from achieving any of these goals, however. For example, under current policies, the United States won't have a complete fiber-optic network until the year 2035. By contrast, Japan expects to have such a network in place by 20 IS. U.S. spectrum-allocation policies are even more outdated, with most of the spectrum allocated for one-way broadcasting of mass media and based on the technologies and needs of early 20th-century America. Finally, the United States has built its HDTV policy around the spectrum limitations and competitive weaknesses of today's terrestrial broadcasters. It needs to develop an HDTV policy that exploits technologies of the future, such as direct-broadcast satellite and optical fiber. And it needs to do so with a vision about how HDTV will be used other than "more of the same."

Information Agents Futurists who talk about the emerging Information Age invariably talk about the growing importance of information agents. The role of the information agent-the 21 st-century analog to today's mass media-is to help the user wade through the overwhelming amount of information now available. But for these agents to be efficient, new public policies will be needed that will help them overcome the mistrust and legal liabilities that hobble today's independent information providers.

One such policy might involve a simple agent-certification process to guard against conflicts of interest. The rationale for such a policy is much like that for legally sanctioned trademarks designating place of origin. These traditional trademarks (popularly known as brands) serve two functions. They prevent one company from appropriating another company's name, thus giving companies an incentive to build superior products and cultivate reputation. They also make it much more efficient for consumers to comparison shop. Instead of having to thoroughly examine each product before purchase, cunsumers are able to rely on the reputation associated with the product's trademark, Similarly, a special "no conflict of interest" certification or trademark for future information providers would allow these companies to reap financial rewards for providing impartial information.

It would also vastly reduce the current effort needed by consumers to find trustworthy information sources.

The government sector already has such conflict-of-interest certification, such as financial-disclosure rules for the election or appointment of politicians, judges, and high-level government employees. These rules were instituted because financial conflicts of interest are otherwise hard to detect. They serve to enhance the efficiency and trustworthiness of government. The voluntary certification of information agents would merely (Continued

on page 40)

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1'1

Firs' lady

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Esther Peterson has been an indefatigable champion of consumer interests for more than half a century. Even now, at 90, she is active in several projects to promote consumerism, help the aged, and strengthen family values.

Esther Peterson is an extraordinary activist who has put in more than half a century of phenomenally productive work for the American labor and women's movements and for global consumer protection. She has been adviser to three American Presidents and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, in 1980. Fifteen years later she hasn't relaxed her pace one bit.

The 90-year-old activist is involved with the United Seniors Health Cooperative in Washington, D.C., a group that helps the elderly acquire medical services, and with Families USA, which promotes legislation to strengthen family values. She also works with the National Committee for the Aging, which formulates guidelines to help the aged. In September 1993.

Peterson was a public delegate at the United Nations General Assembly session where she worked on consumerrights matters.

I first met this remarkable lady in March 1990 when I was visiting the United States. However, when I phoned her for an appointment, I learned she was nursing a foot she had hurt in a fall. But neither age nor injury deterred this gutsy woman. Leaning heavily on a cane, she came to our rendezvous at the Dupont Plaza in the heart of Washington, D.C., and reminisced about her life and work and the projects that she was involved in "to make life better for others." Meeting her face to face, one cannot help but absorb some of her abundant and vibrant enthusiasm.

"It was back in the 1930s that I got interested in sweat shop conditions of work," she recalled, adding that her husband, Oliver, was the inspiration for this. "He would often tell me 'Esther, you have to do something with your life,' and would take me along to labor meetings, and clip items for me to read.

That's how I became conscious of the distressing conditions under which the poor wage earners toiled-especially the women, in the garment and allied industries, and decided to find ways of helping them."

There was no turning back. From the labor movement to the women's movement, and then on to the consumer movement, first in the United States and subsequently on an international scale, Peterson became an indomitable presence working to help those who were disadvantaged, weak, and exploited.

Esther Peterson was born in Provo, Utah, on December 9, 1906, the fifth of six children in a familYJof Danish immigrants.

She had always wanted to study medicine, but was told that "girls don't do that." After a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University in Provo, she went on to get a master's from Columbia Teachers College in New York, picking fruit to finance her way through the course.

Her meeting with fellow student Oliver Peterson, whom she married, proved to be a turning point in her life, for he encouraged her to get involved in progressive politics. While she was teaching a summer course for women industrial

workers, she became aware of their difficult working conditions, with poor pay and no privileges. Thus began a lifelong preoccupation with the problems of working women.

Peterson became the first woman lobbyist for labor on Capitol Hill, and was assigned to the office of Senator John F. Kennedy to campaign for minimumwage legislation.

After his election as President, she was appointed director of the women's bureau in the Labor Department and executive vice-chairman of the President's Commission on the Status of Women. Eleanor Roosevelt, whom Peterson admired greatly and saw as a "role model," was the chairperson, and the report on women that they together prepared remains, to this day, one of the important documents of the postwar years.

President Kennedy created a new post of assistant secretary of labor in August 1961 and nominated Peterson to occupy it, making her the highest-ranking woman in his administration.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded to the presidency on Kennedy's assassination, he called her and told her, "Esther, Jack had wanted you in the

Top: Esther Peterson (with back to camera) President Lyndon B. Johnson's principal adviser on consumer a.flairs. Above: On a visit to India in August 1969, Peterson met students. here assembling a wireless set, at the Government Pol,vtechnic .IiiI' Women in Advar, near Madras. \I'GS

White House as his adviser on consumer affairs, so you take a flight and come down here." She accepted the offer, and in the three decades since then has worked relentlessly on domestic as well as international consumer issues.

She fought for unit pricing in supermarket gQods (so that buyers could compare prices of different brands easily), nutrition labeling on processed foods (which is now taken for granted), and laundry-care labeling (which is now mandatory). Once, discovering that her housekeeper was buying a TV set on an installment plan without realizing that the "three percent" per month interest she was paying amounted to 36 percent per annum, Peterson fought for truth in lending laws and for buyers' rights to information.

The business community became so wary of her crusading zeal in exposing unethical practices and misleading

claims that it called her "the most dangerous thing since Genghis Khan." The president of Giant Foods, a major supermarket chain, issued a challenge: "All right, Esther, if you're so smart, show us what to do." She worked with Giant Foods for seven years, and proved to them that pleasing the consumers was "good for business."

When Jimmy Carter became President in 1977, he appointed Peterson as his special assistant for consumer affairs, and she was now ready to play a more active role-as a spokesperson for issues affecting consumers worldwide. She urged the President to ban the export to developing countries of hazardous items whose use was banned in the United States. This principled stand espousing the cause of consumer safety in Third World countries brought her into the International Organization of Consumers Union (IOCU), with whom she worked in 1993 for passage of U.N. Code of Conduct for Transnational Companies. Work on the code has been postponed for the time being, but Peterson maintains an unofficial association with the IOCU. Her activities on behalf of consumers have inspired a whole generation of activists.

She has received more honors than she can remember. Smith College, the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, Williams College, Georgetown University, Northwestern University, Oxford University of England, Utah State University, and the University of U lah (to name just a few) have bestowed honorary degrees on her.

Harvard University honored her in 1990 for her achievements, and her native Utah inducted her into its Hall of Fame as Democratic Woman of the Year in 1979. Utah also marked her 85th birthday by instituting a scholarship fund in her name for a university student in consumer studies. An anonymous donor set the ball rolling with an immediate contribution of $10,000. It was a most appropriate way of honoring this feisty "queen of consumerism" who jocularly conceded that at 85 she had "outgrown the youthful rebellion of

her sixties and seventies."

But her work is still her best reward.

For example, she celebrated her 78th birthday by traveling to Bangkok to deliver the keynote address at the IOCU conference; for her 80th birthday, when 200 admirers including the diplomatic corps gathered for a celebration, she wondered what the "fuss was about," and suggested 85 would be "a rounder number!" At age 81, she took on the powerful insurance industry, to press for honest coverage at reasonable prices, and began a crusade to help elderly Americans plan long-term health care.

President Carter described her as "a force to reckon with despite her disarming, grandmotherly smile" while former Congressman Wayne Owens called her "a national treasure," and former Senator Frank E. Moss described her as "the finest human being on the face of Earth."

Mike Pertschuk, director of the Advocacy Institute and former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said, "To be within 50 feet of Esther is to be blanketed in a cloud of joyful energy." Even her detractors admire her stupendous energy and dedication .

Accolades have not affected the tall and statuesque Peterson. She remains warm, friendly, and approachable, ever ready to listen to others. She enjoys cooking, hiking, music, and theater, but believes that work is "one of life's necessary pleasures." "I like tough challenges," Peterson says matter-of-factly, adding that one has to be a "participant in life, not merely an observer."

Though Peterson believes in the importance of strong family ties-¡¡¡she travels all over the country to visit her three sons and a daughter and 11 grandchildren-she prefers to live on her own, getting on with the work at hand, looking for fresh battles to take up on behalf of women, laborers, consumersall those who are disadvantaged in one way or another.

0 About the Author: Sakuntala Narasimhan, a columnist on women's issues and consumer protection for the Deccan Herald, has recently l\.,.itten a book titled Sati.

extend this principle to a select part of the private sector.

Even more effective information agents could be assured if certified agents could be protected from libel suits. This change would allow agents to express frank but verifiable product evaluations with relative impunity.

As the primary vehicle of product information, such information agents would ultimately render obsolete various institutions that heretofore have served this function more imperfectly: Brands, advertising, occupational licensing, institutional certification, consumer-protection agencies, and much of the legal profession. The new information agents are the defining institution of the emerging Information Age. Information agents also become the key intermediaries between consumers and information clearinghouses.

Their

ability to access basic data about products and purchases would be vastly improved by a system of government-sanctioned information clearinghouses composed of certified information agents and organized and financed similarly to the Federal Reserve with its member banks.

There is much information of great value to society that the private sector cannot generate or collect efficiently by itself. Examples include census data (collected by the U.S. Bureau of the Census), the airline industry's on-time records (Department of Transportation), the moving industry's complaint records (Interstate Commerce Commission), mortality figures for individual hospitals and physicians (Department of Health and Human Services), campus rape statistics (Department of Education), and public companies' financial performance (Securities and Exchange Commission).

Currently, however, the U.S. government does not have an information clearingwho said he had been overwhelmed by the number of orders he had received house and standards policy. Moreover, it and had been unable to cope with them is making no formal attempt to modify quickly. He assured me that he would its policies in light of possibilities that the new information technologies are openpersonally deliver the blades the next morning, which he did, giving me an ing up. For example, a government sanctioned clearinghouse could compile the additional 100 blades to make up for the delay! actual selling price of every car and car Then he explained what had hapaccessory at every car dealer in America. pened. His father had received, as a sort It could compile the fees charged for every of bonus, several million blades from the procedure by every physician in the counfactory where he worked. The family, try. And it could compile college students' which decided to sell off the large quanratings of their professors. All this infortity, had not bargained for the tremenmation is already gathered electronically. dous response to the ad. They were not Assuming the cost of transferring this businessmen or retailers in the conveninformation from one computerized tional sense and were. therefore, surdatabase to another approaches zero, why prised when the BBB called on them in not make it available to consumers so they response to my complaint. can more easily comparison shop?

I was greatly impressed with the fact To be sure, all this information could be misused. After all, information is a that, thanks to the Better Business Buform of power, and every form of power reau, my complaint was so promptly and has a negative as well as a positive side. effectively attended to without recourse The task always is to accentuate the posito any legal action, which invariably means wastage of time, money, or energy.

But more than that, I was struck by the larger significance of this small experience-the efficiency with which free enterprise could function, given some form of self-regulation.

0

The Better Business Bureau Like many people in India, I welcome the present wave of economic liberalization in our country. I also fear, at the same time, that it might be short-lived. The reason for my anxiety is that liberalization in India, unlike the United States and certain other countries, is not being accompanied by any form of self-regulation by the business community. Those familiar with liberalized economies would recognize the dangers of unbridled free enterprise and acknowledge that self-regulation is an important balancing factor.

A remarkable institution established by the American business community is the Better Business Bureau'-----Commonly known as the BBB. It is mainly concerned with monitoring the operations of the business community (especially retailers) so as to curb abuses and protect the consumer. It has no legal powers as such; it only reminds the businessman or the retailer of his moral obligation to customers. This is the flip side of chambers of commerce, concerned with promoting the interests of the business community.

A personal experience in my student days at Columbia University in New York in the early 1950s illustrates the importance of an organization such as the BBB. I had responded to an advertisement offering 500 razor blades for a dollar. I sent in the money, but several weeks went by without any response. I decided to contact the BBB. A few days later, I received a call from the advertiser

About the Author: M. S. Rajan, professor emeritus at the lawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, was among the very first batch of Indian students to go to the United States in 1950 under the Fulbright program.

tive side and make sure that the power is used for good purposes. In this case, it's important to keep in mind that sellers already have most of this type of product information. They keep it secret mostly because they know it could be very useful-not only to competitors, but also to consumers. From the seller's standpoint this makes sense, but from society's standpoint it doesn't. It leads to a less-efficient and less-honest market. By forcing individuals to make suboptimal decisions, it leads to a lower quality of life.

The goal here has merely been to set the agenda to solve these problems-not to provide a detailed blueprint.

What's holding the New Consumerism back now is not a lack of technology, but a lack of vision. Archaic Industrial Age policies toward consumption and information must be replaced with policies in tune with the Information Age in which we live. The new technology means nothing if telecommunications policy and new information institutions such as agents and clearinghouses are not developed at the same pace as the technology.

0

New Vision of Consumerism As a society, we need a new vision of consumerism. The primitive way that most people now go about making their basic lifestyle decisions leads to needless waste and suffering.

About the Author: James H. Snider, a consumer-education expert, has served as a researcher at Consumers Union, the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, and the Harvard Business Schoo!' He is coauthor o/the book Future Shop.

Returns, Refunds, and Rain ChecksbYD.B.N.MURTHY The number and variety of consumer goods available in the stores and supermarkets of the United States can astound the foreign visitor. A simple item like milk, for instance, will have several different types based on fat content. I literally lost count of the number of cereals and breads stacked on the overflowing shelves. But what comes as a pleasant surprise is that each processed food item carries useful information about ingredients and nutrition.

The trend, of course, is for low fat, low salt, and low cholesterol foods.

Easy availability, wide choice, and competitive prices of consumer items make up only one part of the story. I was astonished to find how easy it is to exchange or return for refund purchased items. Used to outright rejection of any such claim in India ("Goods once sold cannot be replaced or exchanged or refunded" proclaim many Indian merchants), I was in for quite a pleasant surprise. I had bought a dress shirt that was somewhat tight. I hesitatingly told the customer service counter of my quandary. "Oh, sure you may buy the next big size. You have to pay only the difference. Have a good day!" replied the counter girl pleasantly.

When I told the story to my son and daughter-in-law, who are living in a campus town in Texas, they didn't find anything unusual about it, accustomed as they are to American ways. In fact while I was visiting them, my son and

daughter-in-law bought a teddy bear for my granddaughter.

We noticed after three days that the doll's fibers were bothering the child. Immediately, my daughter-in-law took it back to the store and received a new toy without any hesitation.

My son told me about an unbelievable experience. He had purchased a readymade garment on sale for $8.95 that did not fit him well when he put it on the next week. He asked the shop to replace it with a new one. Since there was no other suitable size or design, the shop decided to give him a refund instead and handed him a check for $15.95. There must be some mistake, my son thought. When he told the salesgirl that he had paid only $8.95, she replied: "Sir the sale is over today and we have to give you the original marked price and not the reduced sale price. If you had come yesterday, you would have got $8.95. But today you get $15.95!" A strange story, but true.

What also impressed me is the concept of a "rain check," a note given to a customer for an out-of-stock item whose price has been temporarily discounted. As soon as the product is back in stock, the store informs the customer, who then may purchase it at the reduced price. I thought it was a smart practice that we in India should also implement.

Even in the service sector in America, one is struck by the quick, efficient redressal of grievances. On a Trans World Airlines (TWA) flight from

London to New York, I did not get the vegetarian meal that I had ordered in advance. When I made a written complaint, the TWA's customer service division, after investigation, apologized for the inconvenience caused to me, and enclosed a transport voucher for $50. A similar thing happened when I traveled from Houston, Texas, to Monterrey, Mexico, by Continental Airlines. Again, I could not get a vegetarian meal. When I complained about this lapse, the airline expressed regret and sent me a voucher for $100, the cost of the ticket.

Meanwhile, the hotel chain, Quality Inn, sent me a $49.65 refund when they couldn't give me a room in Orlando, Flori'da, that I had reserved. The point to be noted in all these examples is that in the face of mistakes and errors, a customer's word is accepted as true.

A quick reply, often accompanied with a gift or coupon, not only makes the customer happy, it also makes him or her loyal.

India has made a good beginning toward redressal of consumer-oriented complaints with the Consumer Protection Act. Let's hope that it ensures a better deal for the Indian consumer, and that satisfying the customer becomes as fine an art as it is in the United States, where the customer is king.

0 About the Author: D.B.N. Murthy is a quality management consultant and afreelance writer based in Bangalore.

In Defense of

â&#x20AC;˘

Inn Reading these lists of the proscribed is American parents, who are also trying to a little like walking into a police station draw some lines. With Huck, the argument and seeing an unexpected lineup of susfocuses not upon sex or profanity but rather pects under glaring lights: The authors, upon race, and the deepest, most painful who had seemed to be familiar, even American memory, slavery. The instituadmirable citizens, now look shifty and tion of slavery ended, of course, during the disheveled, their respectability torn aside Civil War. The institution of racism still to disclose their secret lives-corrupters flourishes. And it is in the context of endurof the young. ing racism that black parents naturally Isn't that John Steinbeck, guiltily clutchenough may wish to protect their children ing a copy of Of Mice and Men? J.D. from Huck Finn.

Salinger-who would have thought it?I hope, however, that it is possible to honor cringing there with The Catcher in the the wishes of some black parents while at Rye? Roald Dahl, the filthy beast, holding the same time keeping Huck on s'helves and The Witches? Shifty-eyed Maya Angelou reading lists. To do so, it may be necessary to trying to conceal I KnolV Why the Caged stipulate that children of 12 or so are a little Bird Sings? too young to absorb the book's complexiInstead of suppressing Mark These authors and books are at the top of Twain's 19th-century classic, ties. Better to wait until they are 14 or IS. the list of those most frequently challenged If Huck Finn were merely a 19th-century American schools should or removed from course lists and shelves, or minstrel show-the n-word slurring around teach youngsters how to otherwise anathematized in public schools in an atmosphere of casual hatred above a and libraries across America. When I see appreciate it, says the author. subtext of white supremacy-then no one the lists I am amazed and half-amused. could object to African-American parents Of Mice and Men? Really!? (Ah: The notorious glove.) removing the book as a precaution to keep gratuitous germs When I find Mark Twain in the lineup (and he is always away from their children. Taking books out of the hands of there, around No.5 in the rank of suspects), holding a copy of children, after all, does not raise the same absolute censorship issues posed when an adult audience is involved.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I am appalled and sadBut American life, hardly a sanitary environment, harbors dened. To sweep Salinger or Angelou from the shelves is bushleague intellectual folly, mere vigilante provincialism. But it is millions of germs that may be dangerous to the young. Black an act of real moral stupidity, and a desecration, to try to dechildren should be judged quite capable, I think, of making prive the young of the voice of Huck Finn. certain moral and artistic distinctions. To focus upon Huck Most of the challenges to the books in the lineup come Finn as some kind of racist tract, and to suppress the book from religious conservatives.

It is easy to sympathize with with all its countervailing glories, seems to me, in the end, them, up to a point. The first rule of life is to protect the both unimaginative and wrong.

The Merchant of Venice, an old staple of sophomore high young-to do so even fanatically. In a culture saturated with school English, presents an analogous moral dilemma. sex, violence, drugs, and other secular recreations, all pouring out of televisions or otherwise vividly displayed in technology Should it not be taught because Shylock is such an evilly that goes dazzling up toward virtual reality, it seems quaint cartoonish Jew? Surely Native Americans are entitled to take all the works of James Fenimore Cooper to the dumpfor parents to get exercised about Holden Caulfield's bad exster? To carry dilemma mongering further, I can see a clear ample. I would be thrilled to learn that a kid was reading books at all, not stir-frying his neurons in MTY. Still, if feminist argument against teaching any of the novels of schools and libraries stand in loco parentis, one understands Ernest Hemingway, on the perfectly accurate grounds that his women are offensively two-dimensional.

Would a Spanishbeleaguered parents trying to draw some lines inside the small remaining sanctuaries. speaking constituency be justified in removing For Whom the Bell Tolls, with all of its preposterous what-passesThe objections to Huck Finn arise mostly from African-

with-you-Little-Rabbit diction?

In any case, permit me to argue that Huck Finn-intelligently taught, and understood-belongs on an infinitely higher artistic and moral plane. A teacher should be able to show the young of any race the book's graces and virtues.

In the story of Huck and Jim and the river, Twain confronts the American problems. Huck Finn is one of the earliest and deepest texts on race and slavery, on violence, on child abuse, alcoholism, class distinctions in America, hatred, hypocrisy, fraud, gaudily manifold stupidity, backwoods brainlessness, and lying in all its forms-creative, vicious, and otherwise. Huck Finn is about American civilization and about what it means to be civilized in a vast, experimental, provisional, and morally unsettled territory. Huck, who spells it "sivilized," is one of the most truly civilized characters in American letters. For a work often paired with Tom Sawyer as the Iliad and Odyssey of idealized American boyhood, Huck Finn carries an almost magic cargo of deeper grownup meanings. How racially condescending to assume that such meanings of American civilization-even as they are relayed by Huck through his white genius/ventriloquist, Mark Twain-cannot concern blacks. A number of black writers in the past, uncontaminated by the ideologies of correctness, have agreed.

Huck Finn is also, as Hemingway understood, the source from which modern American literature has flowed. Twain turned the American vernacular into literature, and an enormous number of later American writers, black and white, have been in his debt. Huck's voice echoes in Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison and Alice Walker, as well as in William Faulkner.

In an interview with Shelley Fisher Fishkin, professor of American studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Ellison said that Twain's use of comedy and vernacular "allow us to deal with the unspeakable," meaning "the moral situation of the United States and the contrast between our ideals and our activities."

Is Huck Finn about kids' adventures on the Mississippi? In the same sense that Moby-Dick is about commercial fishing.

Everyone should understand what is lost in shelving Huck Finn. On one level, it operates as a children's book, but if it were merely a children's book, then we would not miss it when we put it aside. No: Twain (to make the sort of grand claim that he would have had fun with) created in Huck an origin myth of the nation's moral struggles.

Huck Finn is also one of the funniest books to be written in America. Sometimes the humor is gentle enough, and spoofy at the Tom Sawyer level of prankery. Much of the wit is deliciously literate, as in the duke's magnificent compression of the Shakespeare soliloquy: To he, or not to he; that is the hare hodkin That makes calamity olso long lile; For who would/ardel.\' hear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dum'inane, But that the/ear olsomething alier death

Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Thanjly to others that we know not of

But more often the humor has a philosophical savagery about it-as in this exchange toward the end of the book, when Huck shows up at Aunt Sally's, impersonating Tom and lying about a mythical steamboat trip downriver: Huck: "We blowed out a cylinder head."

Aunt Sally: "Good gracious! anybody hurt?"

Huck: "No'm. Killed a nigger."

Aunt Sally: "Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt."

Twain comes down to the moral core of Huck Finn in a chapter called "You Can't Playa Lie," wherein Huck wrestles with his conscience about whether to turn Jim in as a runaway slave. Huck's most attractive quality-one worth calling to the attention of schoolchildren-is that for an inveterate and accomplished liar, he has a powerful need to find the truth, and to act on it.

Huck's two-page struggle over whether to betray Jim is a masterpiece of metaphysically comic inversion, a sardonic, hilarious examination of conscience. Huck accuses himself of low-down, ornery wickedness "in stealing a poor old woman's nigger." The law-righteousness, the society's definition of good-says Huck is doing an awful thing in harboring Jim. Huck tries to pray, but "my heart warn't right." At last, Huck decides he cannot turn in his friend Jim. In one of the great moments of American literature, a cousin to Melville's "No! In thunder!", Huck says, "All right, then, I'll go to hell." He tears up the note to Miss Watson in which he meant to betray his friend. He has done the loneliest, bravest work there is-making a life-or-death decision against the law and custom of his own tribe.

For all its deep indignation, Huck Finn is the tenderest and most decent of stories. When the king and the duke are finally caught, tarred and feathered, and run out of town, Huck, who has every reason to cheer the spectacle, instead reacts this way: "Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any hardness agai~st them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another."

The book is an inventory of essential values: Kindness, courage, loyalty to friends, abhorrence of cruelty, independence of conscience, the need to think through moral choices, and, of course, the inexhaustible power of creative lyingwhich is to say (putting a more edifying light on it) the inexhaustible power of imagination.

Let me propose a way of teaching Huck.

The key to appreciating Huck Finn's moral dimensions (and, for a black pupil, the key to tolerating the disturbing universe of white supremacy in which the story is told) is to understand that here, nothing is what it seems. At the

beginning of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain placed his famous "Notice": "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

Meaning: Watch out for all three of those items, for they will surely turn up-motive and moral unfolding just as plot unfolds. The "Notice" was the trickster declaring himself.

Twain was saying one thing and meaning the opposite, lying and yarning his way along, spinning the moral landscape into a sort of trompe l'oeil tapestry wherein lies and the real thing play hide-and-seek with one another.

Twain's pseudo-stern, eyebrow-wagging opener (I'm just

here to tell some colorful provincial stories, so don't you dare go deep and moralistic on me) goes to the secret of his game: The narrative sleight of hand, with the reversal that sets up one expectation in the reader's mind and then (pooj!) replaces it with another. A theater of dancing contraries.

The minstrelsy is the surface stuff, just as the boys' adventure story is the shallowest dimension of the book. The first lesson to teach is that here, in some immense metaphysics of democracy's beatitudes, virtually everything and everyone swaps places and meanings: The first shall be last; the civilized shall be uncivilized; the king and the duke shall be white trash (these two white con men are, in fact, the Amos 'n' Andy of the plot-another racial switcheroo); the slave shall be free, betimes, on the river, and the free whites shall be enchained in various ways (by hereditary blood feud, by their own casually institutionalized hate, by alcoholism, by sheer bucolic idiocy); the child shall be wise and the grownup irre-

funny Pictures The early success of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-it first appeared in 1885--can be attributed partly to its pictorial appeal. Aware of tjle impact of graphics on readers, Mark Twain selected E.W Kemble, a 23-year-old artist with no formal training, to illustrate his novel. Kemble, who had never ventured beyond New York, worked without the benefit of having the complete manuscript available to him.

Twain would check and approve every sketch. When referring to a delicate or disturbing subject, Kemble toned down the ugly aspects by making them appear pleasantly humorous.

Despite factual errors and inconsistencies in composition, the drawings served the author well by seeking to amuse the easily otTended, "gen teel" late 19th-century audience.

In all, 174 illustrations appeared in the original American edition of Huck Finn. Shown here are four of them.

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sponsible; the boy shall be a philosopher and the father, Pap, a monster of the American id; the sub-adolescents' lark shall be profound in its consequence (Jim's life is at stake), and the allegedly profound (the Shakespeare soliloquy, for example) shall be a travesty.

In other words, Huckleberry Finn is, among other things, a complex, serious book. And it should be taught as such-to children old enough to think and read with imagination. The supposedly racially insensitive tale, with its repeated use of the word "nigger," is the most devastating portrait of American white trash and white-trash racism that has ever been written. Huck Finn savages racism as thoroughly as any document in American history.

But all of this is a lot for students to take in. I would suggest that in order to stabilize The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in students' minds, and to neutralize the surface hurts of apparent minstrelsy and race epithets, Huck should be taught with two accompanying texts that will serve, so to speak, as moral outriggers: (I) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and (2) Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and AfricanAmerican Voices, by Shelley Fisher Fishkin.

Twain and Douglass were friends. I would use Douglass's autobiography, a noble document by a noble man, as a kind of stringent reality enforcer. The narrative is, after all, a loftily pitiless record of what it was like to be a slave on Maryland's Eastern Shore in the first half of the 19th century. Huck Finn is slavery and the rest of the rural America of that time seen fictionally through the eyes of a kind of wild child.

Frederick Douglass's narrative is an adult former slave's recollection of what it was like to

be a slave child in that world.

At one point an eerie intersection occurs between Twain's novel and the ex-slave's story. Douglass records that on the plantation where he lived, property of a Colonel Lloyd, there was an overseer named Austin Gore. One day, Gore was whipping a slave named Demby, who "to get rid of the scourging ...ran and plunged himself into the creek, and stood there at the depth of his shoulders, refusing to come out.

Mr. Gore told him that he would give him three calls, and that, if he did not come out at the third call, he would shoot him." Gore gave the three calls, then "raised his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at his standing victim, and in an instant, poor Demby was no more. His mangled body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he had stood."

This incident is strangely similar to the Colonel Sherburn story in Huck Finn: In the street of a river town, a drunk named Boggs starts railing and hurling boozy abuse against a local merchant named Colonel Sherburn. Sherburn finally comes out of his store and warns Boggs that he has until one o'clock to shut up. One o'clock comes. Boggs rants on. Sherburn coolly shoots him dead in the street and walks away.

In both stories, there is a note of absolute authenticity, a kind of savage Americana that is perfectly recognizable today.

Frederick Douglass's eyesight is clear and merciless on the subject of slavery. His story of painstakingly and surreptitiously learning how to read and write-activities that were forbidden to slaves-<:asts a complicated light on efforts in the late 20th century to keep other children from reading a book,

Huck Finn, on grounds that it might offend them. Any kind of censorship, of course, implies a condescension toward the audience being "protected," but the ironies here are especially poignant.

The second book, Fishkin's Was Huck Black?, explores a fascinating thesis. The author's tabloid-headline title does not mean that Fishkin thinks Huck had African blood but rather that Huck's speech, the splendid, never-beforeheard American voice that was Twain's great contribution to the stream of American letters, was based, in very large part, upon the vernacular and speech rhythms of blacks. Le style, c'est l'homme. Fishkin argues that l'homme in this case, meaning Mark Twain/Huck Finn, owed a huge debt, in vocabulary, syntax, verbal strategy, and style, to the blacks who were young Samuel Clemens's (Mark Twain's real name) preferred playmates in Hannibal, Missouri, and to other blacks whom Mark Twain knew and listened to attentively in later life. The result, argues Fishkin, is that Huck, in his speech and his point of view, was black to a significant degree. And if that is true-Fishkin makes a scholarly and fascinatingly plausible case-then the most original voice in American literature, the source from which so much else has flowed, is black, or half-black, or anyway immensely tinted by precisely the African consciousness so long excluded from the official cultural life of the country.

All of that is worth teaching to schoolchildren, once they are old enough to absorb it. Fishkin's thesis is not another dreary exercise in political correctness. When you have read her book, you say: Of course. The black component of Huck-and of the immense literature that derives from itbecomes as self-evident as the influence of African voices in American music.

After Huckleberry Finn was published in 1885, the Public Library in Concord, Massachusetts, banned the book. As the Boston Transcript reported: "One member of the committee says that, while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash. The librarian and the other members of the committee entertain similar views, characterizing it as rough, coarse and inelegant."

The ambient light in Concord at the time was the Transcendental Emersonian moonbeam. The prevailing light in American education at the moment, unfortunately, is that pitiless, accusatory glare-flat and harsh as a zealot's mind-that pours down upon the lineup of suspect authors at the police station. That light is blinding. It is time to turn it off, at least where Huck Finn is concerned, in order to appreciate the novel's amazing play of intelligence and morality and shadow.

About the Author: Lance Morrow, an essayist for Time magazine and a contributing editor of Civilization, is the author of a memoir to be published in the fall.

Mark Twain

in Hartford

To us, our house was not unsentient matter-it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome-and we could not enter it unmoved.

-MARK

TWAIN,

1894

Practically every Indian student of American literature, including this writer, has discovered a childhood affinity with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and taken delight in the playful escapades of these icons of American boyhood created by Mark Twain. I was therefore keen to visit Twain's fabled home while a senior Fulbright fellow at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1992.

On a cold, late-October morning, my American friend Susan Frew and I drove to Hartford, about an hour away from Yale, where Twain's stately Victorianstyle house stands amidst sprawling lawns and tall trees at Nook Farm, on the corner of Farming- The library provided poetry-filled evenings. ton Avenue and Forest Street.

A young guide, Tammy, provided vivid commentary about felLin love with its verdant New England setting. He wrote: the stages in the construction of the house, the family's daily "You do not know what beauty is if you have not been life, and many biographical details about Twain. I could here." In those days Hartford had a population of 40,000, and visualize the writer and his family, and the 17 wonderful it featured numerous massive dwellings. Each house was years they spent in this home before tragedy caused them to located in the midst of about an acre of green grass, nower leave the house forever. beds or ornamental shrubbery, and guarded on all sides by To his family and friends, Twain was Samuel Langhorne trimmed hedges of arborvitae and rows of huge trees. The Clemens. As a young man, Clemens pursued many jobs, among landscape has not changed much since then. Everywhere them river piloting. While working on the Mississippi River, he there is an expanse of refreshing green. Apart from the scenic often heard sailors shout "mark one, mark twain" to announce beauty and nature's abundance, Hartford impressed Mark the river's depth. When the Civil War put a temporary halt to Twain with its rich moral and religious life. When he expressed river traffic, he had to give up piloting. He took to writing and his desire to settle down there, his fiancee, Olivia Langdon, adopted "Mark Twain" as his pseudonym. readily concurred.

Twain first visited Hartford in 1868 in connection with the After their marriage in 1870, the Clemenses lived initially in publication of his book, The Innocents Abroad. He instantly Buffalo, New York, where Twain worked as an editor of The

Express, and where his first child, Langdon, was born. In 1871, the Clemenses moved to a rented house in Hartford. The next year Susy, the eldest of their three daughters, was born. That same year Langdon died of diphtheria.

Twain bought land at the western edge of the city in an area known as Nook Farm. He engaged New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design a house, based primarily on ideas and sketches provided by Mrs. Clemens. Although the family moved in during fall of 1874, several rooms were left unfinished-without wallpaper and other decorations-because the cost of construction had exceeded the family's budget. A second daughter, Clara, was also born in 1874 and a third daughter, Jean, was born in 1880.

In 1881, following the success of Tom Sawyer and severallecture tours, Twain hired Associated Artists, a distinguished firm

of interior designers, to enlarge the kitchen wing and redecorate the major rooms.

The elaborate treatment of the wooden beams and railings is characteristic of the construction style prevalent in the 1870s. Potter's interest in natural forms is evident in the waterleaf brackets of the "Ombra," or porch, and in the butterfly and lily pattern of the porte cochere. Potter also provided space for plants inside and outside the house.

The house consists of 12 major rooms. Its entrance hall was originally neo-Tudor in style with carved ornamental details.

Associated Artists changed it totally, applying silver stencil designs on the wood paneling and dark blue patterns on redpainted walls and ceiling. These patterns, designed by Tiffany, resemble American Indian textiles. The awesome wooden staircase commands attention. The exquisite fireplace, enriched by carved Indian wood panels brought from Ahmedabad, features red-painted marble covered by pierced brass panels, also brought from India.

The drawing room, redecorated by Associated Artists, features panels of silver stenciling over salmon pink in East Indian design.

The great mirror, a wedding gift originally finished in rosewood and gold, was repainted to harmonize with the rest of the room.

The dining room walls are covered with embossed red-

and-gold paper in a pattern of lilies. their daughters feared to enter the room. It held a sense of mystery for The walnut paneling and doors are covered with stenciling based on them, reminding them of the room where Bertha, mad Mrs. Rochester of Chinese motifs.

The library occupied a central Jane Eyre, was imprisoned. place. In the evenings, the family gathSome of Twain's personal correThese are the bricks of various hue ered around the fireplace there, and spondence is on display. It was interAnd shape and pqsition, straight and askew, esting to note particularly letters that Twain would read aloud. He liked to With the nooks and angles and gables too, recite stirring poetry, rousing his little Mrs. Clemens wrote to her husband Which make up the house presented to view, in which she addressed him as "Youth audience to excitement and cheers.

The curious house that Mark built.

Darling." The house also reveals Shakespeare was a perennial favorite.

This is the sunny and snug retreat, A brass plate atop the fireplace carries Twain's great interest in technological At once both city and country seat, this motto: "The ornament of a house inventions. He owned one of the first Where he grinds out many a comical grist, is the friends that frequent it." telephones in the region. Among all The author, architect, humorist, Twain was famous for his hospitalihis possessions, the quaint antique The auctioneer and dramatist, telephone fascinated me the most. ty. The best minds, the brightest wits, Who lives in the house {hat Mark built.. .. \ gathered around his table. His biograTwain's printing machine is also disSamuel L. Clemens his¡maiden name; pher, Albert Bigelow Paine, says: played in one section of the house.

As a humorist not unknown to fame, "Booth, Barrett, Irving, Sheridan, Around 1888, Twain was investing As author or architect all the same, Sherman, Howells, Aldrich; they all heavily in the Paige typesetting At auction or drama always game, assembled, and many more. There was machine and in the Charles Webster An extravagant wag whom none can tame: always someone on the way to Boston Publishing Company. He lost most of He lives in the house that Mark built. or New York who addressed himself his earnings in the venture, whereupon Here is the Innocent Abroad, for the day or the night, or for a brief the family decided to move to Europe.

The patron too of the lightning rod; call, to the Mark Twain fireside."

Twain undertook an extensive lecture And here disports the Jumping Frog, At one end of the library is a little tour which proved to be a great sucRoughing it on his native log; semicircular conservatory with plants cess. He also visited India, giving sevTom Sawyer, with his graceless tricks, set in the ground and flowering vines erallectures as part of his fund-raising Amuses the horse-car lunatics; climbing up. The Clemens children effort to payoff creditors.

And here is the grim historic sage, used the conservatory space to stage Who hurled in the facts of the Gilded Age, While the family was planning to In this curious house that Mark built. family shows in which their father settle down in London, their daughoften participated. ter Susy died in this Hartford house And below is the alias autograph The master bedroom is dominated at the age of 25. Shattered by the Over which he has given you many a laugh, by an exquisitely carved bed that the news, Twain wrote from London: This author, architect, humorist, Clemenses bought in Venice in 1878.

"Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had This auctioneer and dramatist, Twain called this "the most comfortthat privilege ... .If she had died in Who still keeps grinding his comical grist In his cozy, sunny and snug retreat, able bedstead that ever was, with another house-well, I think I could At once both city and country seat, not have borne that." space enough in it for a family, and Made up of bricks of various hue carved angels enough ...to bring peace The tragedy impelled the family And shape and position, straight and askew, to the sleepers, and pleasant dreams." to leave the house forever. Twain With its nooks and angles and gables too, Twain's concern for his children is later wrote: "The spirits of the dead The curious house that Mark built. apparent in the nursery. The wallhallow a house for me-Susy died in paper, designed by an English artist the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. -MARK TWAIN and illustrator, Walter Crane, shows Clemens would never enter it again.

Travelers Record, January 1877 the adventures of "Ye Frog He Would But it made the house dearer to A-wooing Go." A room originally me, I visited it once since; when it planned as the author's study was turned over to the children for was tenantless and forlorn, but to me it was a holy place and beautiful." studies with their governess when Twain found the third-floor billiard room more congenial for his writing.

The house was sold in 1903, and is today maintained by the Isolated from the daily activities of a busy household, the bilMark Twain Memorial Society.

0 liard room appears to have been Twain's favorite, and visitors can still see there his pipes, cigars, and billiard cues.Tammy said Twain About the Author: Sushila Singh is a reader in English at Women's spent most of his time in this room, in which only his male friends College. Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. She has written two books were allowed. Mrs. Clemens never disturbed her husband here and and several research papers in the area of feminism and fiction.

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