American Scholar articles from March 2006

American Scholar archives from March 2006

Truth or consequences.(Editorial)
March 22, 2006... AN ADMINISTRATION THAT THINKS the terms photo op and follow-up have more or less the same meaning was never going to be of much use to the people of New Orleans in their time of need. But the alacrity with which the feds began to abandon the...

The war next door.(Letter From Amman)
March 22, 2006... Last November, after Iraqi suicide bombers killed 60 people in three Western hotels in Amman, Jordan, a survivor--the groom in a wedding being held in the Radisson ballroom--told a television reporter, "This is not Islam." Indeed, until that...

Good cheer.(Commonplace Book)
March 22, 2006... Franklin succumbed immediately, first to the Brillon household, where he spent several hours every Wednesday and Saturday, soon enough to his golden-haired hostess herself. Of the intoxicating combination of three Brillon women and their...

Enabled.(Works in Progress)(works of AXIS Dance Company)(Brief article)
March 22, 2006... Since its founding in 1987 in Oakland, California, the AXIS Dance Company has brought together dancers with and without disabilities in what has been called "physically integrated dance." AXIS choreography incorporates the fluid motion of...

Hands-on reading.(Works in Progress)(Fujitsu Ltd. provides PalmSecure to public library )(Brief article)
March 22, 2006... Some day soon, book borrowers in Naka City, Japan, will always carry their library cards fight in the palms of their hands. Fujitsu Limited of Tokyo has signed a contract, the first of its kind, to implement biometric authentication in the...

Faith in numbers.(Works in Progress)(Brief article)
March 22, 2006... Keeping track of where Americans worship and what they believe is the task of the Association of Religion Data Archives at Penn State. The archive consolidates and preserves quantitative data based on surveys of religious groups, clergy, and...

It's only just begun.(As SLow aS Possible, music arrangement)(Brief article)
March 22, 2006... May 5, 2006, is a milestone in the 639-year performance of a composition by experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992). That's the day a chord change will take place in "ASLSP," short for "As SLow aS Possible." Cage composed "ASLSP" in...

Paris, whew it drizzles.(Quote Unquote)(Brief article)
March 22, 2006... "Anywhere is better than Paris. Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris the damnable. More than a hundred years ago somebody asked Quin, 'Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?' 'Yes,' said he, 'Last summer.'...

Railway to heaven.(world's highest railroad, Lhasa, Tibet)(Brief article)
March 22, 2006... Rising more than 5,000 meters above sea level, China's newest rail line will be the highest ever built, so high that some luxury cars will be outfitted with oxygen masks for the uppermost elevations. The line, which will cost $3.2 billion, will...

Leaving race behind: our growing Hispanic population creates a golden opportunity.
March 22, 2006... Some years ago the United States government asked me what my race was. I was reluctant to respond because my 50 years of practicing sociology--and some powerful personal experiences--have underscored for me what we all know to one degree or...

On the outside looking in: Paris and its banlieues, November 2005.
March 22, 2006... The future of France is apparent in the working-class neighborhoods of Seine-Saint-Denis. --Patrick Braouezec, Member of the French National Assembly, former mayor of the town of Saint-Denis Few expressions in the French language today...

What Philosopher.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... What Philosopher What philosopher denies The moods of the wind and stones? What philosopher has learned To fear the silent oak trees? What philosopher can with The fullest joy shiver when The terrier...

Onward, Christian liberals: faith is not about piety or personal salvation, but about helping those in need.
March 22, 2006... You shall be holy for I the LORD your God am holy.--Leviticus 19.2 I realize that in attempting to write on the subject of personal holiness, I encounter interference in my mind between my own sense of the life of the soul and...

Second Draft.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Second Draft As an older man, Graying, not stooped, I saw the future: Extremities Cold, tongue Sluggish, Foam at the lips. Excessive hope Seemed more Indulgent Than despair. I...

Sparrow.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Sparrow I wanted never to sing again For I was not understood, I was scorned. Anyone can be miserable in a public place. He who has lost his way, Let him turn back. He who has no dwelling, Let him...

Morning.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Morning Paxil, Xanax, Valium: as generics, these are all available to you at reduced cost, says the night's e-mail. My father hated Spam. My son asks why. That was the war, I say. Which war? he...

Reading Akhmatova.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Reading Akhmatova I put the silver key into her palate: she's supposed to read aloud to us each day, my eight-year-old. Poems of Akhmatova is lying on the bed. She opens it and starts at random, "Tell me how...

Two strangers, three stories: all the lonely people, and where they come from.
March 22, 2006... Overlooking the sea in Key West are the crumbling remains of a large fortification, the West Martello Tower, a small segment of which has been restored. On the seaward side, most of the foundation, including the cannon openings, has been...

Shouldn't there be a word ...? The holes in our language and the never-ending search for words to fill them.
March 22, 2006... Imagine being the first person in the world ever to say anything. What fun it would be to fill a language with words: tree, dog, wolf, fire, husband, wife, kiddies. But putting names to things quickly gets complicated. For instance, if I call...

The idea of Bombay: Bollywood epitomized modernity for a boy in a distant province. As an adult, he sees a troubled city.
March 22, 2006... Nothing is left now except to talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs," says Mr. Kapur in Rohinton Mistry's novel Family Matters. "Let us sit upon these chairs and tell sad stories of the death of cities," he continues, ripping off Richard II to...

Henry James vs. the Robber Barons: the novelist thought Italian art should stay in England, where it belongs, and not fall into the hands of his countrymen.
March 22, 2006... An hour or so from my house hangs a Rembrandt, an engaging portrait of a slightly smug young man with a grand plume in his cap. It is my favorite painting in the Toledo Art Museum--Toledo, Ohio, that is-the painting I would go to if I could see...

How to write a memoir: be yourself, speak freely, and think small.
March 22, 2006... One of the saddest sentences I know is "I wish I had asked my mother about that." Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are. Only when they...

Snake-oil music: on medicine shows and other forms of homemade entertainment.(The Blues)
March 22, 2006... Lately I feel like I've been running into Chris Bouchillon every time I turn the corner. A year ago I didn't even know his name, although he had been a shadowy presence in my life for more than 40 years. During that time, all I knew was his...

Thinking about work: Peter Drucker taught us why we need to know what the boss is up to.(MANAGEMENT)
March 22, 2006... When Peter Drucker died last November, just days short of his 96th birthday, he was mourned from Silicon Valley to Shanghai. The author of more than 30 books, in as many languages, with sales totaling in the tens of millions, he was widely...

Why read George Eliot? Her novels are just modern enough--and just old-fashioned enough, too.
March 22, 2006... In 1873, when George Eliot was at the height of her fame, she accepted an invitation to visit the critic F. W. H. Myers at Cambridge. He describes the most dramatic moment during their meeting as follows: "Taking as her text the three words...

Trouble and glory: in the last years before Memphis, Martin Luther King triumphed and stumbled, but he was the defining figure of his era.(At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68)(Book review)
March 22, 2006... AT CANAAN'S EDGE: America in the King Years 1965-68 By Taylor Branch Simon & Schuster $35 The third and final volume of Taylor Branch s absorbing narrative history of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement begins with a black...

Strong enough for solitude: a religious order that spent a millennium on the mortification of passions.(An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order)(Book review)
March 22, 2006... AN INFINITY OF LITTLE HOURS: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order By Nancy Klein Maguire Public Affairs $26 Nancy Klein Maguire became acquainted with the Carthusian monastic order...

Sight unseen: when we look and when we avert our eyes.(On Seeing: Things Seen, Unseen, and Obscene)(Book review)
March 22, 2006... ON SEEING: Things Seen, Unseen, and Obscene By F. Gonzalez-Crussi The Overlook Press $23.95 On Seeing is an erudite, prolix apercu on the sense of sight. Reading it is like drinking late into the night with a brilliant gossipy old...

Foreign aid failures: do small-scale experiments work better than grand schemes?(The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good)(Book review)
March 22, 2006... THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much III and So Little Good By William Easterly Penguin Press | $27.95 The White Man's Burden is a book with an attitude--it is both critical and cheeky. Most of...

The new anti-Semitism.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... Bernard Lewis (Winter 2006) would have ns believe that anti-Semitism has progressed in stages: first antipathy to Jews because of religion, then because of race, and now because of politics and ideology. One is supposed to glean from this that...

The dispossessed.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... As a writer who grew up in the working class in Queens, I enjoyed William Deresiewicz's essay (Winter 2006) about the seeming disappearance of the working class. For a Yale professor who writes about Jane Austen, he has got it mostly right:...

Brand-new cities.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... The Scholar's Winter 2006 cover line "Wayne Curtis tells why Frank Gehry must be stopped" is a reckless misinterpretation of Curtis's rather tepid article inside. But Curtis is wrong in calling the current planting of iconic buildings...

Fadeaway jumper.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... I very much enjoyed Mark Edmundson's essay "FadeawayJmnper" (Winter 2006) and have begun recommending it to fellow pre-geezers. If you prepare a correction for whatever is missing between the bottom of page 65 and the top of page 66, I'd be...

Birdman of America.(Robert Ridgway )
March 22, 2006... One of the longest and most distinguished careers in American ornithology began with a letter from a 14-year-old boy in rural southern Illinois. During the winter of 1864, the boy and two friends had noticed "considerable numbers of a bird...