January 1995

We traditionally tend to think of national security in terms of such things as armaments and military forces. As important as guns and soldiers may be to a country's sense of security, they are powerless against what may well be humankind's greatest long-term threat--eontamination of the water we drink, poisoning of the air we breathe, and elimination of the precious natural resources on which we depend.

The U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, Timothy E. Wirth, is an eloquent spokesman for making the concept of sustainable development a nationalsecurity pillar of U.S. foreign policy. In a speech some months back to the National Press Club in Washington, he said: "Sustainable development fundamentally means that the economies of the world, including our own, should attempt to meet the needs of today's generation without compromising or stealing from future generations....Over the long term, livingoff our ecologicalcapital is a bankrupt economic strategy." Wirth calls for unleashing "the genius of the marketplace to help detennine the most efficient means of achieving our environmental goals."

Robert Stavins and Thomas Grumbly deal with that approach this month in their article, "Making the Polluter Pay." They advocate market solutions to environmental threats, contending that "the best way to protect the environment is to give firms and individuals a direct and daily self-interest in doing so." The burning of fossil fuels is the major culprit causing air pollution. Laura Lorenz Hess reports on India's efforts to find alternative sources of energy and focuses on a program, based in part on a study funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, to burn sugarcane fiber cheaply and efficiently for power generation in rural areas.

Solar power has long been considered one of the cleanest ways of generating electricity and has been used at the household level in India and the United States for many years. Elizabeth Levitan Spaid reports that the declining costs of photovoltaic systems makes it possible for more and more Americans to install solar systems in their homes. Some 100,000 homeowners across the United States rely solely on solar power for their energy needs. Many thousands of others have sharing arrangements with their local power companies, buying power when their solar system is unable to produce what they need and selling back power when the solar system is supplying excess power.

Two other features this month deal with preservation of our cultural heritage. One is a report on the 18galleries that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has opened to display the arts of South and Southeast Asia.

They contain some 1,300 works in all, most on display for the first time. The other is an essay by David Denby discussing the value of Western Civilization studies in American universities. In a rereading of Homer's Iliad, he concludes that this classic "contests most of our current ideas about what is right and wrong, what is true, what is heroic, and, finally, what is human."

2 6

A Tribute to Asian Art The Great Books in the Age of Political Correctness

by David Denby

15

Teen Medics Save Lives

by Sherry Von Ohlsen

18 Focus On ...

20

On the Lighter Side

21

Island in the Sun

by Kathleen Cox

28 Raja of Florida Real Estate

31

Hail to the Jeep!

38 39 41 42 48

The Republican Congress

by Doug Stewart

Sugarcane Power

by Laura Lorenz Hess

Homeowners See the Light Making the Polluter Pay Wingfoot Lake

by Vinod Chhabra

by Elizabeth Levitan Spaid

by Robert Stavins and Thomas Grumbly

A Poem by Rita Dove

Front cover: Nand Katyal designed the cover and rendered the paintings from photos of ancient Greek statues believed to represent Achilles and Homer. Avinash Pasricha photographed the American students.

Publisher, Thomas A. Homan; Editor, Guy E. Olson Managing Editor, Krishan Gabrani; Senior Editor, Amrita Kumar; Copy Editors, A. Venkata Narayana, Snigdha Goswami; Editorial Assistants, Rashmi Goel, Ashok Kumar; Photo Editor, Avinash Pasricha; Art Director, Nand Katyal; Associate Art Director, Kanti Roy; Artist, Hemant Bhatnagar; Production Assistant, Sanjay Pokhriyal; Circulation Manager, D.P.JSharma; Photographic Services: USIS Photographic Services Unit; Research Services: USIS Documentation Services, American Center Library, New Delhi.

Photographs: Inside front cover~ourtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Purchase, Lita Annenberg Hazen Charitable Trust Gift, in honor of Cynthia Hazen and Leon Bernard Polsky, 1982.2 bottom-Bequest of Cora Timken Burnett, 1957. 3 left center-Gift of Kronos Collection, 1981; left bottom-Purchase, Florence and Herbert Irving Gift, 1992; right top-Gift of Robert W. and Lockwood de Forest, 1916; right bottom-Purchase, Florence and Herbert Irving Gift, 1991. All pictures courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 15-17~ourtesy Darien Emergency Medical Services. 18 top-Cynthia Rankin (2). 21-27-Kenneth E. White. 28 top-Ocala Today Magazine; bottom left-Greg Leary; right-Photo Kinsella Š 1989. 31-Bettmann Archives. 32-33-Brown Brothers. 34, 36-Bettmann Archives. 35, 37-National Archives. 39, 4Q-Laura Lorenz Hess. 41-Robert Harbison, Š 1993 The Christian Science Monitor. 42-43-Ted Spiegel/Black Star. 4~ourtesy Wisconsin Natural Resources. 47 top-U.S. Department of Commerce. 48-Fred Viebahn. Inside back cover-V. Balu.

Back cover-School of Visual Arts, New York.

Published by the United States Information Service. American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 3316841), on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. Use of SPAN articles in oth~r publications is encouraged. except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor.

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A Tribute to AsianArt A brilliant cultural legacy from South and Southeast Asia has joined the pageant of world art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York

Khmer Courtyard Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam; Angkor period; ninth-13th century.

Standing Parvati Tamil Nadu; Chota period; first quarter of tenth century; bronze.

Interior Ceiling of a Jain Meeting Hall Patan, Gujarat; second half of 16th century; teakwood.

Pair of Royal Earrings perhaps Andhra Pradesh; circa first century B.C.; g9ld.

Medieval Sculpture Gallery eighth-13th century Mughal-style facade housing Interior Ceiling of a Jain Meeting Hall; in front, Seated Jain Tirthankara; Gujarat or Rajasthan; Solanki period; 11 th century; white marble.

The Buddha Amoghasiddhi Attended by Bodhisattvas Tibet; first half of 13th century; ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on cloth.

itsn't such a long way from the land of bodhisattvas and yakshis to Manhattan, after all. With the opening of the Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for South and Southeast Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, much of the mystique surrounding the East stands to be dispelled. "For the public, we are opening what will seem like a new world," remarked curator Martin Lerner at the recent debut of the galleries.

Though "new world" would appear incongruous for some of the oldest civilizations in the world, the art of these regions, with its heavy freight of esotericism and its teeming pantheon of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain hydra-headed, multi-armed gods and goddesses, has profoundly baffled the Westerner. As far back as 1910, art critic Roger Fry, after a brief period of curatorship at the Met, drew attention to the prevailing Western attitudes toward Indian¡art. "We can no longer. ..refuse to look," he wrote. "We have no longer any system of aesthetics which can rule out, a priori, even the most fantastic and unreal artistic forms." In the opening of the Irving galleries, the Met's greatest challenge was not so much in augmenting its encyclopedic holdings as in lifting the veil from alien cultures and ideologies for the museum-going public.

To provide the visitor with context to a plethora of unfamiliar images and unknowable iconographies, the Met has incorporated architectural motifs that serve as a subtle background and reflect the variety of cultures represented. Beige and red sandstone was imported from India for the flooring. Hindu temple interiors are evoked by pillars fashioned on models provided by Hindu sanctuary architecture found in the caves at Elephanta and at Ajanta and Ellora. A ceiling in one of the galleries is geometrically patterned, reminiscent of khatamband, a very special Kashmiri craft. Angkor-period sculpture has been placed in a large room that has the effect of an open court which, together with post and lintel motifs, suggests buildings of a type found at Angkor, the Khmer capital in Cambodia.

According to Lerner, "The general look of these newly created 18 rooms is decidedly different from any in the Metropolitan Museum and, to my knowledge, is unmatched anywhere else. The nature of the stone flooring, architectural detailing, controlled lighting situations, and placement of sculpture combine to suggest temple interiors and exterior courtyards joined with contemporary museum spaces, so that the experience of wandering through these rooms is both visually stimulating and aesthetically provocative."

Within the broad brush strokes of this giant canvas lie 1,300 objects of art that bring myriad cultures to life-monumental sculptures, vibrant ritual bronzes, prehistoric rock paintings, paintings enriched by the interaction of the indigenous and the alien, Persian-inspired Indian miniatures, exquisitely crafted jewelry, and decorative art. "The material is staggering," exclaimed Pratapaditya Pal, renowned art scholar and senior

I

curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. .

Spanning 5,000 years, from the third millennium B.C. to the early 19th century, these works constitute a rich mosaic, shaped and formed by great traditions, both religious and secular. Seen together they define the art heritage that underscores complex civilizations and in particular, reveal the relationship between the arts of India and Southeast Asia. The collection captures not only the rich diversity of the art traditions of these regions but also the extraordinary strength of the continuum that links the past with the present, providing an unprecedented opportunity for the art historian.

The suite of galleries has been arranged in a geographical and chronological sequence. The first series of galleries are devoted to the arts of South Asia, including those of the modern states of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka.

The mezzanine houses later Indian, Nepali, and Tibetan art.

The last sequence of galleries displays the arts of Southeast Asia, including what are now Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Burma.

The idea of creating a repository for South and Southeast Asian art at the Met was mooted 23 years ago in response to a query posed by Lerner to then director Thomas Hoving. The idea languished in academicism until a decade later when funds were raised to create a preliminary design and model for the galleries. There were basic architectural challenges inherent in a project of such scope and magnitude (such as the juxtaposing of parallel cultures in a logical order), but more daunting was the fact that Asia's complex art history-stylistic evolutions and cultural interrelationships et ai-did not offer a viable display system.

All things considered, the preliminary drawings for 18 galleries were completed by 1988 and the plan was brought to fruition through the following five years. Today the suite of galleries extends about two city blocks from the Great Hall of the Met to the northern end of the building, comprising some 1,400 square meters. Among the various supporters of the 'Jproject through the years were a husband-and-wife art-collecting team, Florence and Herbert Irving, who provided the major funding for construction, besides donating to the Met a substantial part of their own treasures of Asian art, acquired over 27 years of passionate collecting. Appropriately, the galleries have been named after them.

A decade before the complex realization of this project, the present director of the Met, Philippe de Montebello, said in reference specifically to Indian art: "If it was longing for India that, nearly five centuries ago, led an Italian voyager to discover America for Europe, then surely we in the West have been slow requiters of this historic debt." Today, in what must be one of the finest tributes, not only to Indian art but the • art of the neighboring regions as well, that "debt" has surely -A.K. been repaid tenfold.

Linga with One Face (Ekamukhalinga) Afghanistan; Shahi period; ninth century; white marble.

Vishnu as Vaikuntha Chaturmurti Kashmir; ca. second half of eighth century; stone.

The Great Books in the Age of Political Correctness The author returns to his alma mater, Columbia University, three decades after first enrolling, to find his own answers to the raging "dead white males" debate over the great books. He gets them as he joins the professor and students in an exploration of Homer's Iliad.

I had forgotten. I had forgotten the extremity of its cruelty .and tenderness, and, reading it now, turning the Iliad open anywhere in its 15,693 lines, I was shocked. A dying word, "shocked." Few people have been able to use it seriously since Claude Rains said ''I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here" as he pocketed his winnings in Casablanca. But it's the only word for excitement and alarm of this intensity.

The brutal vitality of the air, the magnificence of ships, wind, and fires; the raging battles, the plains charged with terrified horses, the beasts unstrung and falling; the warriors flung face down in the dust; the ravaged longing for home and family and meadows and the rituals of peace, leading at last to an instant of reconciliation, when even two men who are bitter enemies fall into rapt admiration of each other's nobility and beauty-it is a war poem, and in the Richmond Lattimore translation it has an excruciating vividness, an obsessive observation of horror that causes near-disbelief.

Idomeneus stabbed at the middle of his chest with the spear, and broke the bronze armour about him which in time before had guarded his body from destruction.

He cried out then, a great cry, broken, the spear in him, and fell, thunderously, and the spear in his heart was stuck fast but the heart was panting still and beating to shake the butt end of the spear.

'J (XIII, 438-44)

If I had seen that quaking spear in a shopping-mall scare movie, I would have abandoned the sticky floors and headed angrily for the door. Exploitation and dehumanization!

Teenagers never read anything-that's why they love this grisly movie trash! Yet here is the image at the beginning of Western literature, and in its most famous book.

The quivering spear was hair-raising, though there were even more frightening images: Eyeballs spitted on the ends of spears and held aloft in triumph, a blade entering at the mouth "so that the brazen

spearhead smashed its way clean through below the brain in an upward stroke, and the white bones splintered."

Homer records these mutilations with an apparent physical relish that can suddenly give way to bitter sorrow (this is one way the images differ from those in horror movies) and a yearning for ordinary life, a yearning expressed with just a phrase, a caress of nostalgia that he slips into the description of the mesmerizing catastrophe before us ....

T

he teacher, a small, compact man, about 60, walked into the room and wrote some initials on the board: WASP

DWM WC

DGSI While most of us tried to figure them out (I had no trouble with the first two, made a lame joke to myself about the third, and was stumped by the fourth), he turned, • looked around the class, and said ardently, almost imploringly, "We've only

got a year together." His tone was pleading and mournful, that of a lover who feared he might be thwarted. There was an alarming pause. A few students, embarrassed, looked down, and then he said, "This course has been under attack for 30 years. People have said"-he pointed to the top set of initials-"the writers were all white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. It's not true, but it doesn't matter.

They've said they were all dead white males. It's not true, but it doesn't matter.

That it's all Western Civilization. That's not quite true, either-there are many Western civilizations-but it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is this."

He looked at us, then turned back to the board, considering the initials DGSI carefully, respectfully, rubbing his chin.

"Don't Get Sucked In," he said at last.

"Don't get sucked in by false ideas.

You're not here for political reasons.

You're here for very selfish reasons.

You're here to build a self. You create a self; you don't inherit it. One way you create it is out of the past. Look, if you find the Iliad dull or invidious or a glorification of war, you're right. It's a poem in your mind; let it take shape in your mind."

Another pause, and I noticed the girl sitting next to me, who had wild frizzed hair and a mass of acne, opening her mouth in panic. Others were smiling.

They were freshmen-sorry, .first-year students-and were not literature majors, necessarily, but a cross-section of students, and therefore future lawyers, accountants, teachers, corporate executives, TV producers, doctors, computer programmers, poets, layabouts.

They were taking Humanities: Masterpieces of European Literature and Philosophy-or Lit Hum, as everyone calls it-which is one of the two famous required corecurriculum courses at Columbia College.

Lit Hum, which has been around since the late 1930s, is a standard "great books" course: It begins with Homer (both the Iliad and the Odyssey) and includes works by Sappho, the Greek dramatists, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, the Biblical writers, Augustine, Dante, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Shakespeare,

Cervantes, Descartes, Goethe, Austen, and Woolf. The other required corecurriculum course is Contemporary Civilization, or c.c., which was devised in 1919. c.c. is an introduction to political and social theory, and follows a similar trajectory, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, and including Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, and ending with whomever the individual instructor wants to use to bring things up to the present.

Lit Hum and c.c. are, in brief, precisely the kind of core courses in the literature, philosophy, and political thought of the West that have come under increasing attack in recent decades as "Eurocentric," "hegemonic," and, in general, inappropriate for a country whose population is made up of people from many places besides Europedescendants of enslaved Africans and of American Indians, for instance. Such political attacks have had the effect of strengthening the drift of the 1960s, when many universities, under pressure from student demands for more choice, retained the courses only as electiveswhich has meant, in practice, that Americans could graduate from a good college without having ever read the Bible, a play

by Shakespeare, or a word of philosophy.

In recent years, several universities that still required a course in the Western classics (most notoriously, Stanford) have modified the reading lists to include works from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, a move that threatens to turn the course into a pleasantly antinomian mishmash of traditions.

'J Columbia, though, despite some criticism from within the university, has preserved its core curriculum largely intact.

A few women and minority authors were added to the reading lists in the early 1980s, but both Lit Hum and c.c., and also two half-year courses in the art and music of the West, are still required of all undergraduates.

And the college retains the form of the courses-as intensive seminars for young students. There are no lectures; Lit Hum and c.c. are taught entirely in sections, which might be led by anyone from a full professor, tenured for decades, to a fourth-year graduate student trying to make some money while writing her dissertation.

Standing at the beginning of the student's college career, Lit Hum and c.c. were intended to provide an introduction to literary and intellectual study and a first glimpse of some of the leading values and debates of the West.

Certain works have been so influential in the culture of the West that no one should graduate from college without reading them-that is the official rationale for the courses. The unofficial and unspoken rationale is "now or never"-that is, grab the students and make them read Sophocles, Kant, and Mill before those students disappear into their major subjects and specialized reading.

As a freshman at the college in 1961, I had taken Lit Hum and c.c. myself and had enjoyed them a good deal. I then largely forgot about them, as one forgets most college courses one takes; exactly how the books had remained in my mind, as a residue of impressions and a framework of taste and sensibility, and even action, I could not say. Having forgotten them as courses, I was amazed to discover, in the middle and late 1980s, that such seemingly innocent selections of Western classics, and the Western "canon" in general, were coming under increasing fire from "the cultural left" in the universities, especially from a variety of feminist, Marxist, and African-American scholars .... A typical radical critique of "the canon" denounced the list of books, and the standards by which such books were made classics, as "intellectual property" that had been first frozen as "timeless values" and then passed on from the ruling class of one era to that of

the next. The books, in other words, were in some way tainted by their association with power.

A furious counterattack, of course, had also been mou¡nted in the 1980s, and the intellectual right, including such public officials as William Bennett and Lynne Cheney, had responded by maintaining that the classic works of the West possessed an almost redemptive political value-that studying the great works would preserve us from communism or anarchy or authoritarianism, or whatever barbarians were at the gates.

Reading here and there in this debate, I had been overtaken by an increasing sense of unreality. Almost no one, I noticed, appeared to be discussing the books themselves. Instead, the books had become a largely featureless abstraction, a weapon in an ideological war. What, I wondered, did one get out of actually reading a representative list of classics such as those in Columbia's core curriculum? What actually went on in the classroom? Could the books, grouped this way, really be as wicked as the cultural left-or as boring as the cultural rightwas making them sound?

In the fall of 1991, 30 years after first entering Columbia, I went back to the university, sat in classes, and began to read the books of the two courses again.

But how would I read them? That is, under the aegis of what method? The university literature departments, in their recent devotion to "theory," had so professionalized the act of reading that by 1987 the deconstructionist J. Hillis Miller (formerly of Yale) could remark that in the academy "a resistance to theory is in fact a resistance to reading." J n response to this extraordinary statement, one should not make the mistake of under est imating the role played by earlier versions of today's literary theoreticians-medieval Schoolmen, say-in keeping the great works alive. But surely the books included in courses like Columbia's were originally composed not for academics but for the instruction or pleasure of ordinary educated readers. And so I wanted to see if! could read them again as J had read them once and as the 18- and

19-year-old students at Columbia were reading them now-unarmed, without benefit of the elaborate critical or historical framework that in so many American universities is now considered necessary mediation. "Contextualization," it's called.

"The women in the Iliad," the teacher was saying, "are honor gifts. They're war booty, like tripods. Less than tripods. If any male reading this poem treated women on campus as chattel, it would be very strange. I also trust you to read this and not go out and hack someone to pieces."

Ah, a hipster, J thought. He admitted the obvious charges against the course in order to minimize them. And he said nothing about transcendental values, supreme masterpieces of the West, and the rest of that. We're here for selfish reasons .... He had sepulchral wit, like one of Shakespeare's solemnly antic clowns.

J remembered him well enough: Edward Tayler, professor of English. I had taken a course with him 28 years earlier (he was a young instructor then)-not Lit Hum but a course in 17th-century metaphysical poetry-and I recalled having been baffled as much as intrigued by his manner, which definitely tended toward the cryptic. He liked to jump around, keep students off balance, hint and retreat; I learned a few things about Donne and Marvell, and left the class with a sigh of relief. In the interim, he had become famous as a teacher, and he was now the sonorously titled Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities-the moniker was J derived from Columbia's most renowned English professor and critic, a great figure when I was there 30 years ago.

"The hermeneutic circle," he was say-

ing. "That's what Dilthey called it. You don't know what to do with the details unless you have a grip on the structure; and, at the same time, you don't know what to do with the structure unless you know the details. It's true in life and in literature. The hermeneutic circle. It's a vicious circle. Look, we have only a year together. You have to read. There's nothing you'll do in your four years at Columbia that's more important for selfish reasons than reading the books of this course. You're making a self. Read the books and see what version of them appears in your mind."

Could they become selves? From my position at one side of the classroom, I sneaked a look. The men sat with legs stretched all the way out, eyes down on their notes ... .T n their T-shirts, jeans, and turned-around caps, they had a summercamp thickness, like counsellors just back from a hike with the ten-year-olds .... The women, also in T-shirts and jeans, many with their hair gathered at the back with a rubber band, were more directly attentive; they looked at Professor Tayler, but they looked blankly.

"Look, keep a finger on your psychic pulse as you go," he said, finishing up.

"This is a very selfish enterprise."

By the time the action of the Iliad begins, the deed that set off the whole chain of events-a man making off with another man's wife-is barely mentioned by the participants.

Paris, a prince of Troy, visiting the house of the Greek king Menelaus, took away, with her full consent, Helen, the king's beautiful wife.

Agamemnon, the brother of the cuckold, then put together a loose federation of kings and princes, whose forces voyaged to Troy and laid siege to the city, intending to punish the proud inhabitants and reclaim Helen. But after nine years the foolish act of sexual abandonment that set the whole cataclysm in motion has been virtually forgotten. By this time, Helen considers herself merely a slut, and Paris, more a lover than a fighter, barely comes out to the battlefield. When he does come out, and he and Menelaus fighta kind of duel, the gods muddy the outcome, and the war goes on. After nine

years, the war itself is causing the war.

It is almost too much, an extreme and bizarre work of literary art at the very beginning of Western literary art. One wants to rise to it, taking it full in the face, for the poem depicts life at its utmost, a nearly ceaseless activity of marshalling, deploying, advancing, and fleeing, spelled by peaceful periods so strenuous-the councils and feasts and games-that they hardly seem relief from battle. Reading the poem in its entirety is like fronting a

Almost no one, I noticed, appeared to be discussing the books themselves. Instead, the books had become a largely featureless abstraction, a weapon in an ideological war. storm that refuses to slacken or end. At first, I had to fight my way through it; I wasn't bored, but I was rebellious, my attention a bucking horse unwilling to submit to the harness. It was too long, I thought, too brutal and repetitive, and, for all its power as a portrait of war, strangely distant from us. Where was Homer in all this? He was everywhere, selecting and shaping the material; but he was nowhere a palpable presence, a consciousness, and for the modern reader his absence was appalling. No one tells us how to react to the brutalities or to anything else. We are on our own. Movie-fed, I wasn't used to working so hard, and as I sat on my couch at home, reading, my body, in daydreams, kept leaping away from the soft seat and into the bedroom to sink into bed, or to the kitchen, where I would open the fridge. Mentally, I would pull myself back, and eventually I settled down and read and read, though I remained out of balance and sore for a long time ....

Reading, after eating and sex one of the most natural, central, and satisfying of all acts, had, amazingly, become a vex~d experience. I read a great deal, sometimes I read all day long, but most of the stuff was journalism, essays, criticism, or novels that had been adapted into movies and

that I needed to check on before writing my weekly movie reviews for a New York magazine, or books by writers whom I never missed (Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, John Ie Carre) and whose work seemed less like something new than a reacquaintance with trusted friends. But what did I react? I mean read seriously?

Reading Swann's Way was a rapturous experience not likely to be succeeded by the rest of Remembrance of Things Past.

To read anything as densely, lusciously detailed as Proust, you have to set aside a special time, at least 90 minutes of quiet, and though there are people I know who get up early to read Proust, or even a decent new American novel, I couldn't get myself up early, and if I could I would make coffee and read the Times in peace before the boys hit the kitchen. My wife, whose life was certainly as disrupted and jangled as mine, still read a great deal, book after book, sometimes plowing straight through an author's entire work.

But I no longer had the concentration or the discipline for serious reading; I had lost the habit of just falling into something, the way real readers do, devouring it on the bus, in the tub, at a lunch counter. Movies more than satisfied my desire for trash, but when I picked up a serious book my concentration wandered after 20 pages. My rhythm had changed. I was a moviegoer, a magazine reader, a CNN watcher. Following a breaking story on CNN, I would watch updates at certain points during the day, then pick up the story again when a car alarm woke me in the middle of the night, then catch the denouement in the rflOrning. This business of being "informed" could be almost nightmarish: If you stayed with a story long enough, you began to feel as if you were a ball rolling over and over, or the hands of a clock coming back to the same point.

Going back to school would force me to read the whole shelf in the bookstore.

In going back, I would not be searching for my youth-a ghoulish thought.

Youth, I now saw, was the most overpraised time of life. Not only was it wasted on the young; it was a waste, period. When you're young, you can't

enjoy power or watch your own. kids playing, and the money you spend mostly belongs to your parents. I hated being young and relished being middle-aged (more than you were supposed to, more than most people would admit), but I longed for, well, another chance, another time spent reading seriously, another shot at school. I longed to submit myself to something greater than my career.. ..

I

would read, I wo~ld study, I would sit with teenagers.

How can a book make one feel injured and exhilarated at the same time? What's shocking about the Iliad is that the nobility and the cruelty of it seem inseparable, like the good and evil twins of some malign fantasy who together form a single unstable and dangerous personality.

Western literature begins with a quarrel over booty between two arrogant pirates. At the beginning of the poem, the various tribes of Greeks who have assembled before the walls of Troy are on the verge of disaster. Agamemnon, their leader and the most powerful of the kings, has kidnapped from a nearby city and taken as a mistress the daughter of one of Apollo's priests, and the god has retaliated by bringing down a plague on them.

A peevish, bullying king, unsteady in command, Agamemnon, under pressure from the other leaders, angrily gives the girl back to her father. But then, demanding compensation, he takes the concubine of Achilles, his greatest warrior. Achilles is so outraged by this bit of plundering within the ranks that he comes close to killing Agamemnon, a much older man.

Restraining himself, Achilles retires from combat, praying to his mother, the goddess Thetis, for the defeat of his own side; he then sits in his tent playing a lyre and "singing of men's fame" as his friends get cut up by the Trojans.

Can Achilles really be the first hero of our literature? He seems a fool, an infantile narcissist. The first word of the poem is menin-in old Greek, "rage" or "wrath." Homer means Achilles' rage, the kind of rage that has an element of divine fury in it and destroys armies and breaks cities. But to us Achilles' anger

seems less divine than egotistical. His war booty has been stolen by another man. Is not the immense size of his anger almost absurdly out of proportion to its cause? Yet Achilles dominates the poem even as he withdraws; his moody selfpreoccupation is part of what makes him fascinating ....

He is very young, perhaps in his early twenties, fearless, tall, fleet-footed, strong, a compound of muscle and beauty with so powerful a sense of his own precedence that he is willing to let the war go badly when his honor is sullied. The Trojans, led by their stalwart, Hector, kill many Greeks and come close to burning the Greek ships and cutting off their retreat. Hoping to stem the tide, Achilles' tentmate and beloved friend Patroclus enters the battle. He wears Achilles' armor, and in that armor-as a substitute for Achilles-he is slain by Hector.

Achilles' withdrawal now comes to an end. Enraged, inconsolable, he prepares at last to enter the battle. (We are deep into the poem, and we have not yet seen him fight.) The sky darkens, the underworld nearly cracks open. Huge forces, unstoppable, move into place. Achilles begins to fight, expelling his anguish in a rampage ....

The American reader comes from a society that is nominally ethical. Our legal and administrative system, our presidential utterances, our popular culture, in which TV policemen rarely fail to care for the victims of crime, are swathed in concern. Since many Americans believe that our society is actually indifferent to hardship, it is no surprise that irony and cynicism barnacle our attitudes toward public life. By contrast, the Greek view was savage, but it was offered without hypocrisy. Accepting death in battle as inevitable, the Greek and Trojan aristocrats of the Iliad experience the world not as pleasant or unpleasant, or as good and evil, but as glorious or shameful.

Homer offers a noble rather than an ethical conception of life. You are not good or bad. You are strong or weak, beautiful or ugly, conquering or vanquished, favored by the gods or cursed.

Academic opponents of courses in the

The class was utterly unlike the ones I had sat in 30 years earlier.

In this class of 22 first-year students, there were exactly four white males. The students were from Europe, India, Singapore.

Western classics are constantly urging readers to consider "the other": The other cultures, odd to Western tastes, that we have allegedly trampled or rendered marginal, and also the others who are excluded or trivialized within our own culture-women, people of color, anyone who is non-white, non-male, non-Western. But here, in the Iliad, written perhaps in the eighth century B.C., is something like "the other": A race of noble barbarians, stripping corpses of their armor, and reciting their genealogies at one another during huge feasts and even on the field of battle. Kill, plunder, bathe, eat, offer libations to Athena-what do we have to do with these ancient pirates of the Eastern Mediterranean?

They address each other with elaborate ceremony, boasts, and threats of violence. Here was "the other," and right at the beginning of our tradition.

P

rom where I sat, on the steps of Low Library, watching them walk around the Columbia campus on the second day of school, the students looked serious, a bit gloomy, and tense. The recession was still o~, the tuition was a fortune (about $23,000, including room and board), and even though many of them received aid, they probably needed more money. They had spent the summer working, I would bet.. ..

The students weren't all males anymore: Women had been admitted in 1982 and now made up half the college. And the size of the minority population had grown. Walking into another Lit Hum section the first week of the semester (I was sampling different approaches), I had nodded to a few students, and then a few more, and had suddenly realized that the class was utterly unlike the

ones I had sat in 30 years earlier. In this class of 22 first-year students, there were exactly four white males. The students were from Europe, India, Singapore. a America! They were from everywhere. But why was I so surprised? ..If you are a man over 40, you simply do not realize, until you walk into a classroom, how pluralistic American university education has become.

On the first day of the other required great-books course-Contemporary Civilization-I heard a youthful assistant professor of history, Anders Stephanson, ask a puzzled class if they would agree that the statement "John F. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963" could be called "objective." When most of them murmured "yes," he pointed out that the date was a convention and that "a whole series of hegemonic processes" accounted for telling time according to the Christian calendar and not, say, the Chinese or Jewish calendar; and that the books of the c.c. course-the Bible, Descartes, Kant, Mill, et al.-similarly followed the "material development" of Western Europe, the domination of Europe.

So there, I thought, I've heard it, and in my first C.c. class. Nothing could be called objective, nothing could be taken as natural or universal-not even a date.

Such was a principal conviction of the "cultural left," the academic insurgents eager to destroy the certainty of Westernersthat their ideas and institutions embodied a universal norm. The reading list, however traditional, was the result of an arbitrary process. That the books had survived for so long was proof not of their universality but of the opposite-that they were part of a tradition that had triumphed politically. Stephanson didn't even call them "books."

He used the standard new-academic word "texts," which has a de-romanticized, disillusioned sound.

The texts "represent a condensation of a certain way of putting, education before students and saying what is culture and what isn't," he said. "It isn't :;tn innocent list."

This notion that lists were not innocent • was central to attacks on "the canon."

Such lists reeked of exclusion. "The

teaching of literature is the teaching of values," Henry Louis Gates, Jr., wrote in 1990. "Not inherently, no, but contingently, yes; it is-it has become-the teaching of an aesthetic and political order, in which no women or people of color were ever able to discover the reflection or representation of their images, or hear the resonances of their cultural voices."

Gates was arguing not for the dissolution of the traditional canon but for its enlargement to include those missing voices. Many others went much further, however-into a kind of philosophical attack on the hierarchies of judgment which,produced lists of classics in the first place. Such lists (and not just Columbia's) amounted to a unitary, or almost unitary, sensibility and set of values, which elected itself as central, even universal, in an endless process of self-confirmation, rather like a club that insisted on the superiority of its own members while refusing to recognize the qualities of anyone else. What was presented in this tradition as "universal" (so the argument went) actually represented no more than the experience and the drive to power of a single group. Universality was not only a false claim, a mystique, arid an imposture; it was political in its intentions and effects. "The canon," far from being a mere anodyne collection of remarkable works, was a key element in the "hegemony" of white Euro-American males, a disguised ideological spearhead of such Western modes, good and bad, as individualism, market capitalism, imperialism, racism, and sexism.

Professor Stephanson, it turned out, agreed with the radical analysis but not with the radical solution. He saw no reason that a society should not inculcate in its elites the society's leading values.

If Tayler, in his Lit Hum section, was

saying, "These books will form you," Stephanson was saying, "These books have been selected to form you." Yet, as I sat there, I felt not dismay but something like a warming swell of pride. The idea was almost titillating. We were the objects of this immense historical process that had been going on since the flowering of Greek literature.

T

hink shape, how it's put together, rather than what the characters feel or don't feel," Professor Tayler was saying in the second meeting of the class. "The Iliad is not a simple glorification of war; something else is happening here. And the something else requires an epic reading."

Enough initials; this was the real thing, the nuts and bolts of literary analysis. He was working with the class on the structure of the huge poem, getting them to see large, overall movements and then smaller movements and patterns within limited blocks, giving them a handle on the sprawling text which suddenly began to seem not nearly so sprawling. Tayler could be called a historian of ideas, but when he dealt directly with a text he used a method derived from the New Criticism-the dominant approach in the teaching of literature in my days as an undergraduate.

New Criticism had actually become rather rare, and Tayler was attempting to do something that some would now regard as impossible or delusional-to let the text "speak for itself."

He didn't simply tell the students what he wanted, of course. Imploring and urging, he pulled it out of them, ~sking leading questions, dropping hints, making them read aloud passages that had no apparent connection, passages spaced far apart in the poem. At times, the class stalled, and he retreated from his point, literally stepping backward and letting his head drop for a moment before approaching from another angle, like a guerrilla force making tentative forays through the jungle.

Eventually, he would coax them out of hiding and surround them.

Trapped, a student spoke.

"Um, because Achilles calls this guy he's, y'know, about to kill, 'Friend'?"

The students stumbled a lot, speaking in broken fragments.

Some of them would start and then trail off or just stare blankly when Tayler called on them, and suddenly, even though I knew he wasn't going to call on me, my palms began to sweat and I looked down at my notebook, because I didn't always know the answer, either, and school, school, came flooding back-a time when I often didn't know the answer. Even worse, he was the kind of teacher who kept a student on the spot, trying to rattle the kid's brain until the answer, lost in the bottom drawers of sloth and forgetfulness, suddenly fell outsomething I always hated, because in that situation my brain would usually lock up.

Fortunately, he seemed to understand that there was no point in just waiting. When a student went into lockup, he would move away to someone else, or he would take what the student had said, however minimal, and play with it, enlarging it so it made some kind of sense, and then weave it together with the three or four intelligible words that someone else had said; and soon these two half-mute students, still flushed with embarrassment, were described as building something together, or even as having a full-fledged "disagreement." Which was funny, since neither of them was aware of having said much of anything. Sometimes, emboldened by Tayler's magic tricks, the students would begin talking and actually become the rabbits he had pulled out of the hat. He began as a con artist and ended up holding the class by its ears.

Why was structure so important? The class was a little ragged, but he kept working at it, jumping all over the poem.

Would he tie together all the loose ends?

Suspense gathered in the spaces between his summarizing remarks. He worked on, say, five books of the poem at a time, getting the students to see a recurring pattern of oaths, truces, duels, and feasts, and after an hour or so (the class met for two hours twice a week) they were beginning to do it without much prodding: They were finding the symmetries-"ring composition," he called it-in which chunks of structural elements returned in the poem but with the elements in reverse

order. Then, suddenly, he went to the board and drew something.

"What's this?"

"Cat," said a student named Hurewitz.

"Yeah. And"-Tayler made a new drawing-"Hurewitz, what's this?"

"Rat," said Hurewitz.

"Rat? Hurewitz, c'mon/" "Oh, um ...pig!"

"Yeah. Pig. See, your cultural baggage is novels, movies, and TV; you're used to reading for characters and psychological development. So you can recognize the cat. But if your cultural baggage doesn't let you see the squiggle on the tail, you're lost, you're still lapping milk instead of heading for the trough. This poem isn't a novel." He crossed out the cat. "It's a piggy epic. In all these instances, I've been asking you to look at the squiggle on the tail-asking you to look at a mind that works differently. It's an epic-it works by circles and symmetries. Look, it's a poem about wrath, about a special kind of wrath. Achilles drops out and sits sulking in his tent for days. So what's all this other stuff doing there-the battles and the other heroes? We study all these minor heroes and these patterns because they exemplify different aspects of the heroic code. Then we understand what

Achilles means, because he violates the code."

Smiles broke out, relief. The mystification was over-for the time being.

"Intellectual thumbscrews have been applied, and I'm sorry. I apologize for it.

What I've been trying to do is to teach you how to read the older works of art. You have to read something from another culture. There's no psychology in this poem, no conflict between free will and determinism, no subjective and objective.

It's an epic-all foreground. See, it's not a random collection of battles: Each part gets its emotional counterpart later. As soon as you get used to it, you can get rid of me, which will be a relief to you. You get rid of me, and you get you."

Suddenly, everyone looked up. How would that happen?

The formal approach, I could see, was Tayler's defense against banality. He mentioned the contemporary resistance to reading the Iliad. There had been a time in the late 1980s at Columbia when the yearly prospect of reading the poem in Lit Hum had been greeted by a chorus of dismay from some of the younger faculty.

It was a poem that oppressed women and glorified war, and it had an infantile hero, and so on. I smiled to myself, because I was thinking some of this myself, and without the benefit of critical theory.

Tayler didn't say so in so many words, but I gathered that his opinion was that any idiot could see those things, and you could see them and think you were saying something, while never seeing what the epic poem was about. By appropriating it to some modern perception of class, power, gender-none of which much applied to Homer-you made the poem meaningless. The older classics, he implied, would not live if the books were turned into a mere inadequate version of the present.

I got that part, but I still didn't see how studying the poem formally was going to reveal the students to themselves. Did he mean it, or was it just a conceit? ..

There was a logic at the heart of the argument against "the canon" which some outsiders found bizarre. Take the situation of women students, for instance.

For thousands of years, women generally had been denied higher education and also discouraged from heroic composition in literature, philosophy, painting, and so on. But if until, say, about the 17th century this infamous double prohibition had caused women in the West to produce little of superlative value-or little of superlative value which has survived-how could this disaster be used as an argument against women now studying the masterpieces of the past? For women had gained full access to the universities at last. Shouldn't they use it, in part, to study what earlier women had been forced to study on their own or not at all? In A Room of One's Own, written in 1929, Virginia Woolf had spoken again and again about how it would take not just financial independence but generations of education, and the work of many minor writers, to produce great literature by women. First, women needed to get into the libraries and universities; they needed a thorough grounding in the great work of the past. But wasn't the cultural left-by suggesting that women were in some way "oppressed" by reading works that didn't "represent" them-in effect discouraging women yet again, this time with the highest motives, from studying the works that Woolf thought they needed to read? And wasn't the same underlying logic at work in the insistence that minorities newly admitted into the university should read work that "represented" them, rather than the classic works that their parents had had no chance to read?

Columbia did not accept that logic. It rejected the notion that the reading list of either Lit Hum or c.c. should represent the ethnic and gender composition of the students taking the courses. Representation wasn't the issue. In an opening-day c.c. section taught by Professor Wim Smit-a Dutch-born history professor and then the head of the c.c. programthe question of black writers and black representation have been raised, with some heat, by a black woman student.

"Where were my people while all this was¡ going on?" she asked. "We were there."

And Smit, sighing slightly, had said,

"They were there, but they weren't part of the influence on America. Has Chinese political thinking influenced American political thought? Our free-market economy led to, and molded, our individualistic thinking. African community organization has led to a very different way of thinking-the ideology of communitybased organization."

Smit's argument for sticking to the classics, then, was historical influence.

America's principal institutions-its political and economic system, its language, its jurisprudence, its moral imperatives-were derived from England and Western Europe as filtered through the Founding Fathers and the early political, religious, and intellectual leaders. The c.c. reading list represented the evidence of history, a judgment offered without regard to the feel-

"What I've been trying to do is to teach you how to read the older works of art.... As soon as you get used to it, you can get rid of me... and you get you." ings of blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, or the many others who had played a large role in the actual building of the country, its railroads, cities, farms, and so on-without regard to anyone who had created its folk culture, its popular speech and humor and music, rather than its legal and market institutions.

In part, Smit was free to make his case for an unchanged c.c. because the university, recognizing the force of such complaints as the black student's, had taken action outside the course.

In 1988, Columbia agreed that the two great-books courses, as well as the required courses in Western art and music, might induce a limited and complacent perspective. The college therefore decided to add what it called at the time "the extended core"-the further requirement that all undergraduates take either two half-year courses in another culture (say, Modernist

Thought in the Arab World or LatinAmerican Literature in Translation) or one culture course and a course in contemporary issues (say, Introduction to Gender, Development, and Empowerment or Disease in Modern History) ....

W

hen the Greek and Trojan warriors in the Iliad fall, they go down heavily, slowly, like great oaks, with all their lineages, stories, lands, and animals crashing down with them. The slaughter is huge but never impersonal.

You feel each death freshly, as a blow; you never go numb. Everything in the poem has remarkable weight and consequence, even the warriors' boasts. The men address one another formally, recounting the family honors and triumphs: The spears taken from fallen enemies; the shields, helmets, and corselets, all taken "in the pride of their shining."

Genteel modern taste forbids boasting (a winner never boasts), but the Homeric vaunting has a far different flavor from, say, two Mafia dons comparing turf. The shining helmets would not be so valuable if the men who wore them had not been of heroic quality. Glory is possible everywhere: It is the helmets in the pride of their shining.

Nor is Homer ever indifferent to the ceremonies attendant on behavior or possessions. He insists on the fitness of things. Calling this a "heroic code" doesn't capture the prescriptive and celebratory force of it. Feasting and acts of warfare and of sacrifice to the gods can be performed properly in only one waysuperbly, with utmost effort and lavish skill and maximum exposure to failure.

Again: Nothing could be further from our world. The absence of pity was only the first shock. The second came slowly and was perhaps more a frightened realization than a shock: The splendor of the Iliad, the magnificence of earth, air, and weather and the clash of arms, would not be fully possible if the ethical component ruled the poem. Physical exultation blazes out, untrammelled. It is not a humanist work, and it can't be made into one (though many have tried). When I understood this-and Tayler helped a lot-I

stopped fighting the poem. I relaxed; I began to enjoy it, though my attention still wandered away ....

Surely my concentration was patchier than it once was. As a teenager, I had sat on my bed in my parents' apartment in New York, looking up from my book only to study the pattern of woollen threads in the thick afghan lying on the bed. Green, brown, green, brown ... and then back to Dickens or Tolstoy. I can no longer submit to fiction in that way; I read and stop, read and stop, a train halted by obstacles on the track, bad weather, power failures. Everyone complains that young people, growing up on TV, movies, and rap music, lack the patience for a long, complex narrative, and yet as a child I had not watched much television, and the same thing had happened to me in middle age. Had all the movies I'd seen in the last 30 years broken the circuits, sending the lines helter-skelter?

A gloomy idea, for, if it's true, my thoughts, such as they were, were doomed to incompleteness, haplessly shifting perspectives, manic intrusions.

Snurfling gremlins were moving the furniture around. My thoughts were mediated.

But could movies really be the culprit?

My moviegoing friends did not complain of poor concentration. Anyway, with two kids running around, a clever wife, and multiple jobs, I had more to think about than I had had at 18. A much larger experience was now casting up its echoes.

Perhaps daydreaming was not simply wasted time but an elaboration, a sort of disguised commentary from the deep.

Perhaps it was relief from the ferocity of the poem, too.

H

ow can a man who stays out of the action through many days (and many thousands of lines), angrily keeping to his tent as friends and enemies die, remain the hero of an epic? The answer to this question suggests why the Iliad, for all its frightening strangeness, its violence and barbarity, will not easily yield its place or its predominance at the beginning of our literary tradition.

The crux of the poem comes in Book IX, well before Achilles reenters the war.

As the Trojans wait at their night fires, ready to attack at dawn, the Greeks, now in serious trouble, send three ambassadors to Achilles with promises of gifts.

Tripods, cauldrons, horses, gold, slave women, one of Agamemnon's daughters as a future bride, and even the return of Achilles' slave mistress, whom Agamemnon swears he has never touched~what more can Achilles ask for? According to the warrior code that they all live by, he should take the gifts and return to battle.

His honor had been assaulted; now it has been satisfied.

Achilles' initial answer, a staggering Shakespearean speech of 122 lines, composed in shifting planes of thought and emotion, sounds unlike anything else in the poem, for it shows a man struggling to say what has never been said, or even imagined, before that instant. If the other warriors all hold forth with the awareness of family traditions, honors, trophies, and plunder supporting their words, he speaks only for himself: For as I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.

But I will speak to you the way it seems best to me: neither do I think the son of Atreus, Agamemnon, will persuade me, nor the rest of the Danaans, since there was no gratitude given for fighting incessantly forever against your enemies.

Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard.

We are all held in a single honour, the brave with the weaklings.

A man dies still if he has done nothing, as onc who has done much.

Nothing is won for me, now that my heart has gone through its afflictions in forcver setting my life on the hazard of battle.

For as to her unwinged young ones the mother bird brings back

morsels, wherever she can find them, but as for herself it is suffering, such was I, as I lay through all the many nights unsleeping, such as I wore through the bloody days of the fighting, striving with warriors for the sake of these men's women ....

Of possessions cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting, and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses, but a man's life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeth's barrier.

(IX, 312-27; 405-09)

The hero turns out to be a hero after all.

Achilles' rage, which had seemed almost infantile, a narcissistic wound at most~ he has lost his war booty, his slave mistress, to Daddy~has had the remarkable effect of stunning this haughty young man into a new conception of war. Suddenly, he is groping toward an idea of honor that doesn't depend on the bartering of women and goods or on the opinions that men have of one another's prowess. "We are all held in a single honour. ... A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much." For the greatest warrior in the world, that is a devastating admission. From our point of view, Achilles has jumped forward to a private, or even spiritual, sense of worth: Honor is a matter between a man and Zeus or between a man and himself, and, in the end, no one can be compensated for the death of another;, the worth of life is immeasurable. When you read this speech against the behavior and the speeches of the other heroes (as Tayler did with his class), you see that Achilles has come close to breaking with the honor/shame code of Homer's warrior society. He has made an attempt, not always successful, to reach consciousness itself, the consciousness that (for a modern reader) has been missing from the poem.

The first hero of consciousness can go only so far; his revolt is incomplete. After Patroclus is slain, Achilles' wrath turns into personal rage at Hector, Patroclus' slayer, and he goes on a rampage (as

we've seen), killing everyone in sight; he sacrifices the 12 young men taken in the river, pushes the Trojan army back into the city, and finally kills Hector, whose body he drags around for days. Sleepless and unappeasable, unreachable, he has gone mad with grief.

Now, in the complacent, "humanist" reading of the Iliad, Achilles achieves completeness as a hero at the end of the poem. He gives Hector's body back to the great warrior's father~Priam, the king of Troy. In the scene of Priam's supplication of Achilles, in Book XXIV ("I have gone through what no other mortal on earth has gone through; I put my lips to the hands of the man who has killed my children"), one of the most moving things in all literature, Achilles attains compassion (so the reading goes) and is ready to die. Homer ends the poem with the burial of Hector, but we know that Achilles has chosen glory and an early death rather than a comfortable middle age in the safety of his father's land. His character improved, Achilles gives up cruelty and rejoins the community, and will die as a hero fulfilled.

But this is too pat; it's Sunday-school stuff, or perhaps a Lit Hum reading from

By appropriating it to some modern perception of class, power, gender-none of which much applied to Homer-you made the poem meaningless. The older classics ... would not live if the books were turned into a mere inadequate version of the present.

50 years ago. If that were all the poem added up to~the maturing of an arrogant young man~one could more easily agree with those people ready to give the Iliad a rest. But it isn't so. Rage such as Achilles', once awakened, cannot be silenced, for it takes on a new cruelty, the cruelty of thought: The questions he asks about war and death remain unanswered in the poem, because they cannot beanswered. The Iliad, for all its vaunting glory, remains in tension with itself,

questioning, and even subverting, its own ethos, and it leaves one profoundly uneasy. I felt relief and also a kind of awe when it ended. Could this be the same work that some had castigated as a mere insensible celebration of war? Surely that reading was a mistake, even a malicious mistake. Achilles knows he will attain immortal renown as a hero, yet he's the only one who takes the measure of death.

One imagines him at the end of the poem as still inconsolable and unconsoling, still raging somewhere outside the walls. The written civilization of the West begins with a hero who both embodies and questions the nature of civilization as it was then constituted.

A

White male and a bourgeois, a Irian who was reared on the culture of the West, I am not an imperialist, exactly, but I write from within the walls of the imperium and enjoy its protections.

Seen from the outside, or by the cultural left, that is my identity. But only as seen from outside. For how could identity defined by race, gender, and class (the cultural left's inescapable trinity) account for the use that any of us make of the cards we've been dealt? Or for the way we feel about our own experience? And so, as I was finishing the Iliad, I remembered-I now remembered-that at 18, as a freshman reading both core-curriculum courses, I had been dismayed by Homer's war poem. A young man suffering the self-conscious torments of 18, I measured the difference between myself and Homer's heroes, and I was not happy about it. I was overawed by physical courage and by the poem's grandeur, which I experienced as a taunt.

In the interim, I had become a middleclass New York householder and father. I now enjoyed thick walls, fitted cotton sheets, and Pellegrino water on the dinner table; and when I read the Iliad again it troubled me in a different way. The poem's amoral magnificence, the unhoused splendor of air, feasts, and fire, resounded with the savage celebration of physical joy, whose excesses-once the shock wore off-became almost completely intoxicating. Which left one, at the

very least, with a considerably diminished satisfaction in sheets and Pellegrino water. Middle-class life was no more than a pleasant compromise compared with As when along the thundering beach the surf of the sea strikes beat upon beat as the west wind drives it onward; far out cresting first on the open water, it drives thereafter to smash roaring along the dry land, and against the rock jut bending breaks itself into crests spewing back the salt wash; so thronged beat upon beat the Danaans' close battalions steadily into battle, with each of the lords commanding his own men.

(IV, 422-29)

Teen Medics Save Lives

I don't mean to imply that the Iliads power can be measured by the distress it causes a single middle-class reader. A great work of art is likely to be subversive of almost anyone's peace. The Iliad contests most of our current ideas about what is right and wrong, what is true, what is heroic, and, finally, what is human.

As I walked out of Tayler's last class on the Iliad, watching the students race down the stairs ahead of me, I wondered how the students' future experience of the Western "canon" could possibly conform to the most dire descriptions of the cultural left. And how could the rest of the books, if they were anywhere near as disturbing as the Iliad, serve as William Bennett's bulwark against disorder? My experience left me dismayed by the use both left and right were Jmaking of "the canon." Was Columbia's-or anyone'sversion of the Western classics likely to be a monolith that either simply crushed or "empowered"? Or would the books appear to the students as a porous, unstable tradition, in which the works turned out to be at odds with one another, or even at odds with themselves-less a devouring beast than a snake that twists, writhes, folds back on itself, and occasionally bites its own tail?

0

The young volunteers of the Darien Emergency Medical Service enrich their own lives as they help to save other lives.

About the Author: David Denby is a movie critic for New York magazine.

Teenage voices linger in the hall at the Emergency Medical Service in Darien, Connecticut.

A recruitment poster, hand-drawn and colored with markers, calls for young people, ages 14 to 18, to do something important: Rescue lives.

Sixty of the 80 members of the Darien Emergency Medical Service, Post 53, are teenagers under 18. Most join during their first year of secondary school and continue through their fourth and final year. They call themselves Po sties. On this particular day, they relax on the couch while the TV blares.

Others cluster on the floor, This article appeared

in the December

issue and is reprinted

with permission

World & I, a publication Times Corporation.

1992 from The

of The Washington

Copyright

Š

1992.

discussing their teachers.

Some attempt homework before tossing in money for a take-out dinner, soon to be brought in for the crews that will answer tonight's calls.

Their shift begins at 5:30 p.m. The team that will take out the first ambulance when a call comes, weaves through the room donned in whites.

They check out the ambulance, the supplies, the machinery. In the background, code signals blare, a police radio squawks; the outside world is a welcome intruder. There is constant activity, phones ringing, kids talking, people moving around.

Pat Ryan is on call tonight.

He is a quiet, intense 18-yearold. Being part of Post 53 has offered him a way to heal himself by healing others. Two years ago, his brother, then 18, died unexpectedly. Now Ryan finds hope and strength in helping others. "You don't get strong unless things happen to you. I love this. It's a great experience. I'm actually helping someone and they don't think, 'Hey, you're a kid, you can't do this.' " The Post has taught Ryan how to manage time and himself.

While Ryan learns the mechanics of saving lives, he is gaining values and character. The Post has eight watchwords or, some might say, goals: Personal integrity, love, pride, dependability, trust, responsibility, confidence, and professionalism. "If people realized how much power they have, they'd understand the need for community," he says, defining power as the willingness, knowledge, and endurance to do something.

The bond between Posties rivals that of family, and their

commitment to the job resembles military duty.

Founder John Doble created the teen medics group in 1970 through a partnership with the Boy Scouts' Explorer Scouts program. The program was set up to train teens as medics and was open to boys and girls-although the Darien group was the first to actually admit girls.

The Posties work at least three days (most work five) each month. They tote electronic pagers on their belts that¡ protrude like clunky badges. When the pagers sound, they must answer the emergency call within four

"It's a great experience.

I'm actually helping someone and they don't think, 'Hey, you're a kid, you can't do this.'" minutes, even if they're III school.

On an average day, the ambulance teams respond to five calls, ranging from car accidents to cardiac arrest. To date, 28 former members of Post 53 have become doctors, while many others have become nurses, paramedics, and physical therapists. Post 53 has earned a National Award for Excellence of Service from the American Medical Association.

Candidates are selected by their peers on the basis of aptitude, attitude, and commitment during a 50-hour rigorous training program in which they earn basic first aid certification. Afterward, if selected, they have three months' on-the-job training, during which they must also

prove their competence.

When they are qualified members of the team and have turned 16, they become eligible to receive EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) certification. Eighteen-yearolds may receive the even higher EMT -1, which qualifies them to give intravenous (IV) injections, defibrillate a heart, and perform antishock and other advanced life-support procedures.

Tonight, as every night, the crews assembled each consist of a crew chief, an EMT-1, an EMT, a driver, a rider (ambulance gofer), and a radio roomie (communications monitor) who doesn't accompany the others on the call.

While one crew is ready to roll, another stands by.

After supper, the crews gather upstairs for their weekly meeting, which everyone involved in the program, and new teenage candidates, attends. Letters of praise are shared, and Doble awards gold stars for the week's exceptional work.

If these teens have succeeded, it is largely because of Doble. Raspy voiced, with a no-nonsense demeanor, this 67-year-old owns the Emergency Medical Services Company of Connecticut, a service specializing in the medical care and evacuation of business executives worldwide ..He is also an EMT-1.

"For some of these kids, it's the first time mommy's let them off the hook," he says.

"When a kid is riding in an ambulance, mommy isn't helping him. The kid is on his own." I tell Doble that several Posties have told me he knows everything that is going on in school and in their personal

Members of the Darien Emergency Medical Service monitor the condition of an accident victim being transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital.

lives. He is a father, they say, a forgiving father as long as you learn from your mistakes.

Over the past two decades Doble has "fathered" many kids. His parenting strategy: "Don't be afraid of your kids.

Listen to them. Out of the mouths of babes comes truth.

Parents should spend 90 percent of their time listening to their kids and admit that kids really do know something."

Doble refers to Darien as "a ghetto of a different kind"an affluent ghetto in which the majority of the teens' fathers are senior executives for major corporations.

"For these kids," he says, "Post 53 is their first eye-opening experience.

Here they learn they are special because of their knowledge and skill. They use their • personal strength."

For Doble, the best part has

been the effect of Post 53 on his own three children.

His daughter, Dr. Elizabeth Doble-Holby, an anesthesiologist, says: "It's the best thing that ever happened to us as kids. You had to act like an adult even though you were a kid. As teens, we belonged to something important and didn't need to belong by going wild at parties, or giving in to that kind of peer pressure.

Post was fun. We had a purpose. We earned respect from our peers. I plan on doing this for my children when they are older."

Her sister, Dr. Jennifer Doble, an internist, also developed a love of medicine through the teen medic program. "It laid the foundation for a high-responsibility career, something demanding and intense. I loved the whole learning process. Growing up in the 1970s, I saw what drugs and drinking did to kids' lives and I learned a sense of responsibility to myself, for my own well-

being. I grew up valuing hard work and volunteering, what the understanding moneyless rewards were."

Blaire Osgood, 17, says 80 percent of the Posties are honors students and 90 percent play sports. Being a teen medic has made her more aware of what is going on in the world beyond secondary school and sports. "I can't imagine life not doing Post.

When the pager goes off, everything else stops."

Sitting next to Osgood, Andrew Lodzieski adds: "You don't want to fail because you don't want to fail everyone else: A special bond develops among the team. You share with them something you don't share with anyone else.

And you always have each other. You're never out alone on a call."

Posties have a positive influence in their schools, Lodzieski says, because they've witnessed the consequences of drug overdose, and drinking and driving.

They touch death, and that helps them measure their own lives.

"I've changed so much here," Lodzieski says. "I know who 1 am now. This experience pointed me away from drugs, and there's a lot of money in this town for drugs and a lot of pressure to do them."

Teen medics like Osgood, Lodzieski, and Ryan have learned that by confronting their fears they can overcome them.

Michelle Beahrs, the EMT on duty this evening, is in her third year of secondary school. "I used to shy away from the elderly," she says.

"But 1 hear their stories, understand they are people.

I've learned sensitivity toward others, and that's carried through to my friendships."

These medics learn about the darker side of life. Not long ago, they were called to the home of a bedridden elderly woman who had been neglected for days. Despite the bugs, odors, and encrusted human waste, the medics did their job.

Other calls expose them to joy, as when a woman went into labor and called for an ambulance. The teens who respond'ed delivered her baby en route to the hospital.

Susan Leach has decided to pursue a nursing career after having worked as a medic since her first year of secondary school. "I feel good about myself because I've worked hard. Being a Postie has been great. There's a lot of natural respect from friends. Also, I value family more now, because I've seen people lose members of their own."

By midnight, the last of

those not on duty drift out the door. The rest change into pajamas, and curl up on the floor or the couch. 1 stay for the night, but nothing happens. When 1 return a few days later, two calls come back-to-back.

An elderly man has fallen down stone steps. Allison Himmel, this night's rider, fetches equipment from the¡ ambulance. It is a code-three call-the man's life is in danger because he has had a heart attack. A paramedic comes from a nearby hospital to assist. Doble hooks up the defibrillator, and EMT-I Kathleen Kenyon and EMT Danielle Douglas assist. The police on the scene take orders from Douglas; responding to emergencies has created camaraderie and mutual respect between the police and the teen medics. Since the victim has possible head and cervical injuries, he is moved carefully onto a backboard. The medics call him by name. They touch him compassionately, talk with him as if he were a member of their own family.

A few minutes later, another call comes. An elderly woman cannot move her legs.

Stricken with rheumatoid arthritis, she is in acute pain.

EMT -I Kenyon has responded to this call as she has to hundreds of others over the past eight years. The teens, she asserts, "are great at caring.

They can read blank faces and they know how to fill in those blanks. They are open to life in a way adults often aren't." 0 About the Author: Sherry Von Ohlsen writes for The Christian Science Monitor and other publications.

Left A Nakshi Kantha wall-hanging depicting life in rural Bengal. Far left Indian Ambassador Siddhartha Shankar Ray at the exhibition of Kantha embroidery brought to Bethesda, Maryland, by Shamlu Dudeja (far right).

The Gandhi Memorial Center in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., mounted an exhibit of kantha embroidery in October as part of the center's commemoration of the 125th birth anniversary of the Mahatma.

More than 200 examples of the exuberant, carefully stitched work of West Bengal villagers were on display-tablecloths, dupattas, bedspreads, shawls, saris, and wall-hangings-all depicting some aspect of Bengali life and culture. There were traditional kantha designs that go back 400 years, such as the classic mango leaf motif, the 100-petaled mandala, and rows of elephants. More contemporary pieces reflected modern village life--children running to catch a school bus, women attending a literacy class.

The exhibit, entitled "Kantha Embroidery: Webs of Intricacy," was part of the Malika Collection, brought to America by Shamlu Dudeja. She is responsible for reviving the centuries-old tradition of stitching that began when Bengali women layered well-worn textiles and quilted them together with thread from the hem of old saris to make "the poor man's blanket." Today, preservers 9f this craft blend primary colors in a rainbow effect, shaping peacocks, elephants, flowers, and other images-all so finely stitched it is difficult to tell the right side from the wrong.

Says Dudeja: "Kanthas of Bengal have transcended the realm of craft or needlework, and have entered the hallowed portals of folk art, thanks to the rich, roving imaginations of the women of Bengal.

They breathe life into their forms by clever groupings of folk symbols in myriad colors derived from nature, and their kanthas communicate in a language easily understood by all."

Dudeja, who lives in Calcutta, runs her enterprise as a cottage industry and is dedicated to maintaining the quality of the kantha art form. In rural hamlets throughout West Bengal, groups of women congregate after their household chores are finished to exchange the news of the day and to sew, stitching their stories of joy and woe onto fabric.

Through the efforts of Dudeja, the western world has now been exposed to the beauty of kantha. The Malika Collection has been exhibited in London and New York, as well as in the Washington, D.C. area. It was presented at the Gandhi Center in cooperation with the Indian Embassy Wives Association.

An Untapped Economic Frontier As America seeks to frame a new agenda for its foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, it is critical that it give more attention to South Asia. The region's economic, political, and social conditions and affairs will become increasingly important to the United States in the 21st century.

So says a recent report published by the New York-based Asia Society, entitled South Asia and the United States After the Cold War. A 14-member study mission, cochaired by Arthur A. Hartman of APCO Associates and Carla A. Hills, former U.S. Trade Representative, visited India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in the spring of 1994 to meet with government

and business leaders, journalists, and academics. Their findings advise Americans to take a fresh look at South Asia as the region becomes more important, even vital, to the welfare and security of the United States.

One of the most exciting as-

pects of future U.S.-South Asia relations, they write, is the increased opportunity for private sector collaboration; the region's huge emerging market is "one of the last untapped economic frontiers in the world." India, for example, has some 200 million people in its middle class, which increases by five percent every year. The report points out that the United States also has much to gain by opening its markets to South Asian exports, thus providing tangible support for ongoing economic reforms in the region.

In addition to providing commercial benefits, stronger economic ties will help to mitigate U.S.-South Asian discord on other issues. The report recommends that. the United States

avoid "tilts" in its dealings with India and Pakistan, while increasing financial and technical support to projects that focus on harnessing regional resources. It also suggests that the United States seriously consider India's membership in an expanded U.N. Security Council, and it supports India's and Pakistan's participation in emerging political and economic organizations.

The United States has humanitarian, ideological,. and pragmatic interests in the social change and development under way in South Asian countries. If such change is successful, it would underscore the effectiveness of democratic principles and leadership. But, the report warns, "the region

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AMystery Solved A mysterious 17th-century Mughal painting from India was the centerpiece of the recent exhibition, "A Mughal Hunt," at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Asian Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. To unlock the identity-of both the artist and the subject of the painting, which depicts a hunting scene during the reign of Emperor Shahjahan, the museum'.s art historians look clues from 17 other works of the same period featured in the exhibit.

Dara-Shikoh

Hunting

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shows young Prince Dara, eldest son of Shahjahan, shooting a nilgai in a natural habitat which is wild and unkempt. Because other Mughal painters portrayed nature in idyllic pastoral scenes, art scholars were able to attribute the painting to the artist Payag, who unlike his contemporaries, chose to give dramatic presence

has shown that democratic politics is not dependent on high per capita GNP levels, but rather rests on cultural :roots, traditions of tolerance and social equality, respect for law, and experience in operating democratic systems. The rapid economic growth that is projected for the region in the next few years may, paradoxically, pose a challenge to those already fragile democracies as new resources and forces enter the political arena."

The report will be widely distributed in the United States and South Asia and should stimulate public discourse among Americans and South Asians on the future of relations between them.

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to his landscapes. The identity of the young hunter was ascertained by comparing the painting with other inscribed works of art from the period, which show Dara with his grandfather, Emperor Jehangir.

The painting came from an album assembled in the 18th century after invaders attacked

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environmental products and services is being distributed in 34 countries in Asia and the Pacific. Entitled The Green Pages, the directory is published by the U.S.-Asia Environmental Partnership (US-AEP), an organization set up by the U.S. Agency for International Development in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Green Pages contains an exhaustive list of firms that offer state-of-the-art technology in water purification and wastewater management, air' pollution control, hazardous waste treatment, solid waste disposal and containment, recycling strategies and equipment, and energy conservation systYfls. Companies providing consultancy services, training, information, and environmentally safe products are listed as well.

The directory is designed to be a resource for those looking for expertise in one of these areas. US-AEP seeks to help countries in this part of the world meet the dual challenge of rapid economic growth and serious environmental degradation. It has established ten Offices of Technology Cooperation in the region to promote environmental protection and sustainable development.

For a copy of The Green Pages, or more information about US-AEP's activities, contact US-AEP, 1133 20th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036. Fax 001-202-835-0366.

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Delhi and took away many works of art. Calligraphy on the reverse side of Dara-Shikoh Hunting Nilgais identified it as having been included in the Russian imperial collection in Leningrad. The painting was recently purchased by the Sackler Gallery as part of its permanent collection.

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Dara-Shikoh Hunting Nilgais; attributed to Payag; Mughal dynasty; circa 1645; from the Leningrad album assembled in Iran; mid-18th century; opaque watercolor on paper.

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Island in the Sun The island of Key West in Florida, just six kilometers long and three kilometers wide, probably has more character and history per square kilometer than any other U.S. city.

Key Wesl's attractions range from the Parrot Man to the house Ernest Hemingway lived in. Waiting to welcome visitors to the Hemingway House are two tour guides holding Mark Twain-one of the direct descendants of the author's famous six-toed cats.

Hemingway typed many of his best novels in the study (left).

Another historic building is the Audubon House (right) built in the early 1800s and named after naturalist and artist John James Audubon who was often a guest here.

Catamarans do a brisk business taking snorkelers and other sports-minded tourists around the island's exotic reefs.

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quamarine water so clear you can see your feet as you wade through the waves; coral reefs that reveal exquisite marine life to snorkelers; sturdy mangroves poking up in extensive wetlands that tempt the angler and shelter the barracuda and rare manatee; tangerine-colored sunsets that are so expressive they're a nightly celebration; fragrant jasmine and palm trees rustling in tropical breezes; 18th- and 19th-century homes, with verandas and ornate trim, shrouded by lush vegetation.

This is Key West, a coral atoll on the southern tip of Florida, a popular destination for tourists. More than a million visitors come annually, either flying into the small airport, disembarking from a cruise liner, or taking the 180-kilometer drive south from Miami. Once motorists re1\ch the Florida Keys, a chain of atolls connected by long bridges and causeways, the drive turns so scenic that it's difficult to pay attention to the road.

Two centuries ago, Key West was popular with pirates who preyed on unsuspecting ships in its waters. In the mid-1800s an American commodore initiated patrols and marauders were captured or fled. The 1800s also witnessed the arrival of fishermen from Maine who headed south in winter and brought along'an architectural vision that still dominates much of the present-day island-scape. Cubans, with their skill for manufac-

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Above: In 1982, the Overseas Highway had 37 narrow bridges replaced with modern "wide-track" spans. Right: Although no longer the center of the American cigar-making industry, the island still produces the world-famous Key West Cigars.

turing cigars, sought refuge here during their island's War of Independence in 1895 and carried on with their craft. In World War I and II, Key West became an important Navy base, and its military presence remains intact today. Generations of Bahamians also came and introduced aspects of Caribbean culture, including the practice of voodoo, to the distinctive melange.

American writers settled here, finding inspiration in the atoll's beauty and a lifestyle that promotes individuality and freedom of expression. In 1982, Key West's independent spirit actually led to a half-serious mini-revolution. Local inhabitants renamed their atoll the "Conch Republic" and â&#x20AC;˘ threatened to secede from the union. They didn't succeed, of course, but they did demonstrate how Key West's unique

Left: The catch of the day-a 2.3-meter, 23-kilogram sailfish caught 32 kilometers offshore. Above: A young treasure hunter uses a water-proof metal detector for his catch-a wedding band and some new coins.

spirit sets it apart from the mainland.

Ernest Hemingway lived in Key West from 1931 until 1940, and during these years he wrote many of his best novels, including A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Today a stream of visitors tour his carefully preserved Spanishstyle house under the watchful eyes of about a hundred cats who still claim the former property as their home. President Harry S. Truman set up his Little White House at the Key West Naval Station and once wrote to his wife: "I've a notion to m6ve the capital to Key West and just stay." Tennessee Williams, the playwright, lived here; so did John James Audubon, who painted the marvelous birds, and John Hersey, who wrote A Bell for Adono and Hiroshima. So many wellknown authors spend time on the island that it may rank as America's most illustrious writers' colony. Key West even holds an annual literary week with guest speakers, seminars, and workshops.

As evening approaches, Mallory Square, on the western edge of the atoll, attracts crowds to cheer the waning sun and applaud the contortionists, strolling musicians, jugglers, and magicians. The onlookers also meet Key West's local eccentrics: Parrot Man with his trusty bird who jabbers on his shoulder; Mr. Twenty-Two, dressed as Uncle Sam, who eagerly promotes his $22 bill; the Cookie Lady who

Above: Police patrolman Kyles Murphy makes it a point to greet people he meets on his beat. Above right: Tourists rent bicycles to explore the island. Right: The Harbor House exemplifies the French influence on Key West architecture. Right: A tourist samples the Cuban Coffee Queen's tropical offerings.

sells her tempting brownies.

Other rituals thrive in Key West. On occasion, one hears the wailing horns of a Caribbean-style band as it leads mourners with a casket into the crowded Bahamian cemetery. The 8.5hectare haunt, where bodies are entombed above ground because of the impenetrable coral base, also features another example of the island's healthy sense of humor. Headstones are etched with defiant last words, such as "I Told You I Was Sick" and a suspicious wife's revealing declaration: "At Least I Know Where He's Sleeping Tonight."

The week-long Fantasy Fest in October culminates in a gigantic Twilight Fantasy Parade. Costumed revelers, often on mobile floats, head down Duval Street, the main thoroughfare, showing off a creative flair that usually extends beyond the outlandish.

Key West offers more than unusual culture and rituals, impeccably restored inns and resorts, special cuisine (that includes sumptuous key lime pie and crunchy conch fritters), and famous bars. Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean

Duval Street, "the longest street in America," stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

Tourists rent bikes and mopeds or take a leisurely stroll to enjoy the street's varied and exciting tourist fare: Brick and wood buildings dating back to the 1800s, pubs such as Rick's (top), bars, restaurants, and shops.

The Sloppy Joe's Bar (interior view above), reputedly Hemingway's favorite hangout, is an enduring landmark.

Above: This restaurant on the Atlantic Ocean end of Duval Street offers tropical food and drinks and a breathtaking view. Left: A couple sits for a caricature artist at Mallory Square, where a large crowd gathers every evening to eat and watch the sunset.

Below: Tourists have three hours to enjoy Key West's celebrated sights during a 17-meter catamaran champagne sunset sail.

and the Gulf of Mexico, the physical environs of Key West are an ecological marvel that the islanders are determined to protect.

Snorkelers enjoy North America's only living coral reef where they can search for sea turtles, lazy nurse sharks, or more than 360 other species of fish. However, they are not permitted to touch the reef, whch is the most fragile and precious aspect of Key West's environment. Inhabiting a limited range worldwide, corals are seldom further north or south of the equator than 22 degrees or in depths greater than 60 meters. Once destroyed, a coral reef cannot easily be replaced.

This is why local citizens, who long have shown concern for protecting the area's natural treasures, formed Reef Relief in 1986. The nonprofit organization has installed reef-mooring buoys to reduce anchor damage to the coral and put out information urging the public not to stop, touch, or anchor oIl"living coral.

Meanwhile, deep-sea divers can investigate underwater caves or look for bounty from shipwrecked Spanish galleons that sunk long ago. Fishing enthusiasts can cast for big game, such as blue marlin or sailfish; but to protect the stock, they are encouraged to release their catch. Anglers can test their skill in the shallow backwaters, sometimes less than 45 centimeters in depth, and try for bonefish or tarpon.

And it's guaranteed that if you're on the water at day's end, the sunset will capture your attention and your spirit willwM. 0 About the Author: Kathleen Cox, New Delhi-based editor of Fodor's India and a frequent contributor to SPAN, is aformer resident of Key West.

Raja of Florida Real Estate

by VINOD CHHABRA

India-born Kulbir Ghumman is one of Florida's ace developers and the man behind the Oak Run Country Club, rated among the "20 best residential communities in the United States."

The sound of a waterfall soothes the heavy midsummer air.

Somewhere, Liszt plays softly. An egret slowly labors above a grassy slope and makes for a pond tucked behind a stand of oaks.

It is mid-afternoon and all is at rest at the Oak Run Country Club. All except for Kulbir Ghumman.

There is no down time for Ghumman, developer of residential communities in Florida, and that's just fine with him. In less than six years he has transformed 550 hectares near Ocala, plumb in the heart of Florida's rolling horse country, into what a Reader's Digest guide has identified as one of the "20 best residential communities in the United States."

Oblivious to the oppressive heat when we met in August, Ghumman was busy attending to the construction of the $500,000 Island Club, the second of six such clubs to serve his resort-style community which will feature 4,625 single-family homes by 1996. The club includes three pools, a Roman spa, a gazebo, terraces for alfresco dining, and an air-conditioned clubhouse with a kitchen.

"I like to stay two steps ahead," says Ghumman in his clipped English-school accent with undertones of Bombay cadence. "I don't want to cater to existing needs. I want to anticipate and provide before the need arises. That's the only way we function here."

Indeed, Ghumman isn't just the president and chief executive officer of Decca (Development & Construction Corporation of America), the development company of Oak Run and the nearby 140-hectare Pine Run. Kulbir Ghumman is Decca. The man and his machine are one.

Born into a land-owning family near Delhi 48 years ago, Ghumman went to all the right schools and emerged as a yuppie in a Bombay advertising agency. His stint there ended when he was lured away by a major client. Keen to achieve his own independence, Ghumman went on to corner the lucrative manufacturing license in India for Jockey underwear. That didn't hold his attention for long, and he accepted a friend's offer of helping run a textile plant in Nigeria.

Ghumman knew precious little about the industry, but the "Maharaja" Kulbir Ghumman surveys his domain. The club's sports facilities, set amidst a landscaped garden, include a swimming pool. tennis courts, croquet lawns, and boccie ball alleys.

challenge of working in Africa appealed to the adventurer and entrepreneur in him. Within a couple of years he was helping manage a giant operation that turned out intricately woven jacquard fabrics and damask.

But Ghumman became restless again. Married to Nans Rao, once his colleague at the Bombay ad agency, and concerned about the education of their young daughters, he decided to move to America. To begin with, he bought a sick textile mill in New Jersey. Soon urban renewal activity in nearby Manhattan caught his attention and, seeing an opportunity for real-estate investment, he began buying, rehabilitating, and selling brownstone row houses there.

He also purchased and revamped some classic old hotels in Berlin and Amsterdam. A few hundred friends from several countries were flown in 011 chartered planes for the grand opening of Ghumman's hotels in Europe. The extravaganza included a concert by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and a champagne-and-caviar reception.

"Look, I'm the laziest chap you'll ever meet," laughs Ghumman, with characteristic self-deprecating humor. "I only do what I have fun at, and nothing more, nothing else."

Researching and doing it right are part of the "fun." While researching the real estate market, Ghumman homed in on a large apartment complex that had been foreclosed by the bank while under construction in Tarpon Springs, Florida. He converted the property into ritzy condominiums and sold them off in a snap.

Uncomfortable with the high-pressure sell that characterized the Florida condo market, he moved on. He syndicated the purchase of 650 hectares of orange groves in the Palm Beach area and soon realized there was a pressing need in Florida for high quality yet moderately priced homes for retirees.

The area around Ocala, an hour's drive north of Orlando, home to Disney World, emerged as the bull's-eye. Ghumman liked' the open space, the evergreen, undulating terrain, the ready availability of clean water, the ambience of the area's more than 800 horse farms, and the proximity to beaches and to the entertainment of nearby Orlando, Tampa, Daytona Beach, and St. Augustine. Besides, Ocala's land prices were affordable.

In 1983 Ghumman bought 140 hectares and developed it into the Pine Run community. The 829-home project was completed and sold out within two years.

Developers usually pull out their stakes and head to new pastures. "But I couldn't do that," says Ghumman. He had established a reputation as a high-quality builder. Besides, the community had grown fond of "Maharaja" Kulbir and he in turn had embraced the community, even though it involved commuting every day by his private plane from his palatial seaside

"[Developers] think that after you turn 60 or 65, the best years are behind you....

It should be the other way around. This is the stage you've worked for-a carefree time to socialize, play, create, travel!" mansion in Gulfstream, 800 kilometers south on the Atlantic.

Then, in 1985 Ghumman bought a large tract of land near Pine Run, with the intention of building central Florida's most impressive adult residential community. It would be called Oak Run and would have to feature every known comfort and convenience. Here, he says, he brought together the traditions of India-where the elders are treated with ardent respect and care-and the upbeat, fun-loving ways of comfortseeking America.

Conventionally, Ghumman says, developers paint the term "retirement" on a black canvas. "They think that after you turn 60 or 65, the best years are behind you and it's time to play cards and mah-jongg. Good heavens! It should be the other way around! This is the stage you've worked for-a carefree time to socialize, play, create, travel."

Ghumman didn't start Oak Run by building homes; he first built the $3 million, 2.5-hectare Orchid Club-the equal of almost any ritzy resort in the West. The club has an extra-wide Olympiclength pool (with racing lanes and starting blocks), four lighted allweather tennis courts (with canopied bleachers), courts (for paddleball and racquetball), boccie ball alleys, 16 shuffleboard courts, and a meticulously manicured croquet lawn, all set amidst a garden with gurgling streams and waterfalls flowing into what Oak Run residents fondly call "Lake Ghumman."

Glass doors from the pool area open into a futuristic health spa with every conceivable piece of exercise equipment and three therapy spas.

The clubhouse contains a multipurpose auditorium that can accommodate up to 1,000 people, a card room for 60, a library that also features a full wall of videos, a billiards parlor, crafts rooms, kitchens, and facilities that range from yoga to astronomy, golf to ceramics.

Ghumman's pursuit of aesthetics begins at the entrance to Oak Run, where he spent close to $350,000 to construct a 300,000-gallon waterfall. He also installed laser scanners at the guard house there that automatically read the bar codes affixed to the windows of residents' cars. Visitors must sign in and sign out at the guard house.

The boulevard from the entrance twists along Oak Run's spectacular golf course, jogging trail, and its own 16-hectare "forever wild" nature preserve. More than 80 kilometers of wide roads dip and curl, following the contours of the undulating terrain and weaving around stands of trees.

"I could have saved a fortune if I had flattened the land and constructed straight roads," muses Ghumman. "But this is a community, not a 'development.'"

Indeed, Oak Run is a self-sufficient kingdom unto itself with its own water, septic tank, electricity, cable TV, and security operations. It has a fleet of 55 vehicles, including buses that provide free service around the comn;lUnityand to the shopping centers, restaurants, and hospitals in town. Ghumman himself tools around in his black Range Rover, ever in contact with his staff on his two-way radio.

Three styles of homes-from $63,000 courtyard villas, singlefamily homes, and $149,000 mini-mansions-are all set comfortably apart. The interiors of the model homes have been designed by Decca's director of interior design, Nans Ghumman. A granddaughter of one of Goa's greatest artists, A.X. Trindade (popularly known as "the Rembrandt of the East"), Nans uses vibrant, cheery colors and fabrics and objets d'art that are very Indian, yet complement the ambience of Florida.

With a staff of 150 full-time employees and 500 subcontractors employed at any given time, Oak Run hums along with the efficiency of a Swiss township, under the watchful eye of "Maharaja" Kulbir Ghumman. His day begins at four in the morning. After paperwork from five to seven, he's at Oak Run-two-way radio in hand-at 7:30. The typical workday ends some 15 hours after it begins.

Days off are rare and are usually taken up by cooking kababs, Goan specialties, or Indonesian satay-or treating staff and friends to a meal in a first-class restaurant.

With wife Nans and eldest daughter Priya, who has signed on as an executive assistant at Decca, both ass!1ming various responsibilities, the Ghummans say the next phase in their lives is to slow down a bit and start "giving back" to the community.

While local charities and cultural events have always benefited from their support, the Ghummans recently designed and financed construction of a "butterfly garden"-a landscaped courtyard with flowers that attract butterflies-in the Gulfstream school their daughters attended.

Ghumman has also offered to donate several hectares adjoining Oak Run to the University of Florida in nearby Gainesville and to help build a geriatrics research center there.

Meanwhile, Nans has tracked down more than 30 masterpieces painted by her illustrious grandfather, and had them restored and framed for exhibition in galleries across America.

Later they will have the paintings permanently installed in a former Portuguese viceregal mansion in Old Goa that the Ghummans own-an Indian gift, from America to India.

Ghumman calls these projects "fun." "What else is there to life?" he asks. "Years ago an elder had advised me that the day I stopped whistling on my way to work was the day I should quit and do something else."

That day doesn't seem to be anywhere on the horizon. 0 About the Author: Vinod Chhabra was for 22 years features editor and columnist with Hearst Newspapers in New York. The recepient of several internationaljournalism awards and twice nominatedfor a Pulitzer, he is now president of Asia America Marketing in Bangalore.

In 1941 Senator James Mead showed off the new jeep's agility by driving it up the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

Hail tOby!h~Jeep!

"It does everything. It goes everywhere. It's as faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat.. ..It doesn't even ride so badly after you get used to it."

n the exigencies of wartime, the breakdown of an olive press in some out-of-the-way village behind the front lines can seem like a minor detail. But to the struggling farmers of a hill town in western Sicily in 1943, the failure¡ of a local villa's water-powered olive press was a catastrophe. Mountains of olives had been harvested. Now the whole crop, its oil the town's lifeblood, was doomed to spoil.

As luck would have it, U.S. troops had just invaded the island and had ajeep they didn't need. Why don't we put it to work crushing olives? the soldiers suggested.

But the press is on the villa's second floor, the villagers pointed out. Perfect, said the GI's; jeeps are great at climbing stairs.

When the staircase tUl:ned out to be too narrow even for jeep traffic, the ingenious Yanks hoisted the vehicle up the stairs on its side. In the days that followed, with its rear end up on blocks and a belt looped around a wheel, the jeep squeezed 44 tons of olive oil.

A year earlier, when the first standardized jeeps began rolling off assembly lines in Ohio and Michigan, it is unlikely that anyone imagined the Army's boxy new scout car would soon be coming to the aid of Italian cuisine. But from the beginning, the wartime jeerr-also known as a peep, beep, beetle bug, blitz buggy, Leaping Lena, and puddle jumper-proved itself an overachiever. One part packhorse, one part Swiss Army Knife, the jeep carried out with aplomb an improbable assortment of missions. It spearheaded raids and towed disabled tanks, rushed stretchers from the battlefield and hauled crates of ammunition across swinging bamboo bridges.

In the eyes of none other than General George Marshall, the Army's square-cornered midget car was "this country's most important contribution to the war." The jeep, newspaperman Ernie Pyle concluded, "is a divine instrument of wartime locomotion." "Good Lord," he wrote in a dispatch from North Africa in 1943, "I don't think we could continue the war

I

Reprinted from Smithsonian magazine.

Copyright Š 1992 Doug Stewart.

without the jeep. It does everything. It goes everywhere. It's as faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat. It constantly carries twice what it was designed for and still keeps on going. It doesn't even ride so badly after you get used to it."

High praise indeed for a machine that was specked by committee and intended as a lightweight reconnaissance car, one that could haul a few supplies and maybe tow a gun. As late as 1940, with America beginning to mobilize for war, the Army was still struggling to mechanize its system of transport.

To be sure, trucks were useful in rear areas, but they bogged down easily and offered a tempting target to enemy gunners if they rumbled too near the front lines. Motorcycles were agile and low, but they made a racket and were too fragile for bushwhacking.

Looking for a tougher, nimbler cross-country vehicle, the Army had considered and rejected a stripped-down Model T fitted with airplane tires, a variety of midget racing cars, and a low, motorized gun platform whose driver lay on his stomach and steered with his feet.

Finally, in the summer of 1940, with the war in Europe already raging, the Army drew up a list of specifications for a "Iowsilhouette scout car." Weighing no more than 950 kilograms and standing barely one meter above the road with its windshield folded down, the hypothetical vehicle sounded more like a toy than an implement of war. The Army invited 135 manufacturers to use'} its specifications and design a car. Only two bothered.

Throughout the 1930s, the American auto industry had been moving toward longer, heavier, and more stylishly streamlined cars; the idea of building little slab-sided, open-air buggies seemed like an unappealing step backward.

American Bantam of Butler, Pennsylvania, best known for a line of minicars that got 19 kilometers to the liter, was first to deliver a prototype. Virtually all the mechanical parts were standard off-the-shelf components, but the body was custom-made. Its fenders were hand-fitted; its hood was a reworked

Sometimes even the almighty jeep got stuck. But after mishaps such as this one in Italy, the jeeps came equipped with self-rescue winch kits.

trunk lid from a junked car. Bantam designer Karl Probst babied the assemblage during its 370-kilometer shakedown drive to Camp Holabird in Maryland by keeping to 40 kilometers an hour the whole way.

The Army's field testers were not so

tentative. In the ensuing weeks they sent the car racing through sand traps and over log roads, careening through a lovingly tended 90-meter mud pit known as the Hell-Hole, and flying off the end of a one-meter-high loading platform, at up to 48 kilometers an hour. After some 5,500

kilometers of this abuse, old No. I's frame began to crack, but the testers were impressed. The car's chief failing was that it was half again as heavy as the Army had specified, a problem that Bantam's sales manager had sidestepped earlier by slyly underreporting some

270 kilograms when typing out his company's bid to build a vehicle. The matter was resolved at the testing grounds one day when a six-foot-three cavalry general stepped forward and lifted the car's back end clear off the ground. Its weight ceased to be an issue.

What did remain an issue was Bantam's precarious financial health: It had recently closed down its assembly line, and only 15 employees remained. It was desperate for a big government contract.

The Army, understandably, was nervous about entrusting the national security to Bantam's fragile capabilities. It had taken the unusual step of inviting representatives of Willys-Overland and the Ford Motor Company to watch the field trials, which they were doing with keen interest, sketchbooks in hand. To make sure they didn't miss anything, an officer handed out copies of Bantam's blueprints. Willys and Ford soon delivered their own prototypes, both remarkably similar to Bantam's. The Army liked them all enough to place large orders with each of the companies. Fleets of jeeps soon began arriving at Army camps around the country for further abuse.

(The nickname "jeep" caught on quickly, though its derivation is obscure. Some attribute it to Ford's Model GP. Others cite a Popeye cartoon character named Eugene the Jeep who "was neither fowl nor beast, but knew all the answers and could do most anything." Most likely, it was a pejorative Army term for anything insignificant or not yet proven reliable, like a new recruit or a test vehicle.)

Spartan, cramped, and unstintingly functional, the first jeeps were something entirely new in the automotive world.

What other car had slots for an ax and a shovel on the driver's side? There were no doors. The windshield wipers had to be pushed back and forth by hand. The front fenders were metal slabs, the rear fenders nonexistent. The springs were stiff; rumor had it there were no springs at all. And the ride: One reporter said it was "something like falling down stairs." But it performed like nothing else on wheels.

The jeep's secret was four-wheel drive, unheard of in a vehicle barely three me-

ters long. Each version of the jeep was so equipped, as the Army specified, but the 60-horsepower Willys "Go-Devil" engine was half again more powerful than called for. The result was the peppiest, fastest, and hardest-climbing car of the three. To squeeze it under the new 980-kilogram weight limit, "we even spread the paint thin," Willys designer Delmar Roos later recalled. In mid-1941 the Army gave the nod to Willys. Ford later agreed to massproduce its rival's version. Bantam had to content itself with an order for truck trailers and torpedo motors.

The prewar press was enthralled by these peppy little machines that climbed out of holes that would trap a tank, yet were small enough to hide behind a bush. At the outbreak of war, eve~ Scientific American joined the excitement, calling the jeep a "clawing, climbing hellion" and anointing it as "the United States Army's answer to Schicklgruber's Panzer Divisions."

The suggestion that ajeep could somehow go toe-to-toe with one of Hitler's 20ton tanks was absurd, of course, as Paul Fussell points out in his recent reflection on World War II, Wartime. Fed a steady diet of photographs of jeeps flying jauntily through the air, all four wheels aloft, the public, and perhaps the military, believed at first that Nazi brute force could be foiled "with speed, agility, and delicacy-almost wit," Fussell writes. But

With a belt around its le/tfront tire, ajeep powers a buzz saw being used to cut wood/or afield hospital.

jeeps, though unprecedentedly capable, were still open, unarmored, vulnerable little cars. Their fundamental military value wasn't that they were "vicious jalopies" or "almost impossible targets," as the popular magazines boasted. It was that they were plentiful and cheap, and thus expendable. Ajeep cost $900; a tank, $35,000. "It's like David and Goliath," said an Army jeep driver at the war's outset, musing about fleets of gun-towing jeeps swarming around a confused German tank, "only there are ten Davids for every Goliath."

One of the first chances the jeep had to prove itself in wartime came during General Joseph Stilwell's legendary march out of Burma in 1942. Stilwell had been the unofficial commander of several Chinese divisions assisting the British defense of Burma after Japanese troops unexpectedly swept in from Thailand. Amid the chaos that followed, the bowlegged and irascible "Vinegar Joe" bullied a motley column of Allied soldiers and civilians into following his brisk pace through hundreds of kilometers of uncharted jungle until they reached India and safety.

Only part of the retreat, in fact, was on foot. For much of the journey the party

II

Soon after D-Day, ajeep with modified wheels rides the rails in France to maintain telephone lines for the Signal Corps.

drove, and the vehicles under Stilwell's command included several early jeeps.

"All of us soon began to develop a profound affection for these jeeps," wrote civilian Jack Belden in his 1943 memoir, Retreat With Stilwell. "Ugly, ineffectuallooking green boxes on wheels, they proved themselves the salvation of our column, ferreting out pathways through the woods, pulling sedans out of ruts, hauling trucks through streams and up slopes too steep for them to negotiate under their own power, and rushing back along the track, bringing aid and succor to other stricken cars." At one point, the company encountered a series of steep earthen ridges several feet high, a sure jeep-stopper.

After some experimentation, the drivers began looping back like fullbacks, to gather speed before attacking the ridges at an angle.

This sent their fully loaded jeeps airborne over the tops. "The spectacle of the jeeps roaring in circles and bucking high off the ground, throwing out boxes, and once a driver, looked like a Wild West rodeo," Belden wrote.

Later, two wire-service reporters fleeing Burma in a jeep took a different route to India and managed to drive all the way.

"Your geography is mixed," suggested the British officer who greeted the pair in Imphal. "There isn't a single road across these jungles and hills." "Not so loud," one of the reporters replied. "Our jeep hasn't found out about roads yet, and we don't want to spoil it."

The roads in Russia weren't much better in early 1942 when the Red Army welcomed its first shipments of lend-lease jeeps. Riding in a car at the Eastern Front one day, Chicago Daily News correspondent Leland Stowe was "backing, snorting, and crawling along a particularly abominable, mud-infested stretch of creation" when an American jeep came bounding down the road ahead at high speed. The four Russian sO'ldiers aboard it, Stowe reported, "looked contented with life." As he watched, the jeep "plunged down a half-meter embankment, hurdled several pine logs, and dashed nonchalantly on its way."

Jeeps managed to reach places even mules couldn't get to. A veteran mule driver observed, "Lots of times a mule will balk if he doesn't think his leader is using good judgment, but a jeep will always try." Soon American military maps began designating rough trails as "jeep roads." In Libya, a document found on a German prisoner revealed

that enemy reconnaissance teams had been ordered to switch to jeeps whenever the opportunity presented itself; German trucks, the memo explained, "stick in the sand too often."

That jeeps had superior traction was not startling news to the Army. They were designed, after all, to help supplies from the rear catch up to rapidly moving troops at the front. Where the jeep excelled unexpectedly was in the multitude of other chores that warfare throws a soldier's way. Mounted with a machine gun, it became not just a means of transport but a combat vehicle. In Egypt in 1942, commandos from the British Eighth Army swept across the western desert in a wide arc behind the German lines. Traveling by night, hiding by day, the raiders rode in sand-colored jeeps drastically modified for long-distance desert travel: Everything nonessential had been stripped away to make room for extra gas cans, armor plating, and heavy machine guns with incendiary shells. Late one night, a few kilometers behind the German lines, the British watched as a convoy of German trucks lumbered into view. The trucks were laden with fuel for the gas-hungry Mark IV tanks at the front. The commandos pounced on the convoy in a 95-kilometer-an-hour flying wedge. Within five minutes they were racing homeward, the sky behind them ablaze with f1:iming gasoline. The British later counted the loss of German fuel as a key factor in Rommel's defeat at the pivotal Battle of EI Alamein, shortly afterward.

"Where the jeep went, victory seemed inevitably to follow," wrote an impassioned A. Wade Wells in his 1946 paean, Hail to the Jeep. "From every corner of the globe, from every fighting ally-in-arms, the cry went up: 'Send us more Jeeps!'" Willys and Ford were only too happy to oblige, turning out more than 600,000 of them by 1945. (By contrast, in early 1940 the U.S. Army had owned a grand total of 12,000 motor vehicles of all kinds.) The new jeeps were immediately broken down and squeezed into wooden crates somewhat larger than upright pianos, then stacked in freighters

bound for Liverpool and Casablanca, Rangoon and New Guinea. Overseas, astonished natives came to believe all GI's had been issued jeeps with their dog tags.

In Tunisia one night, the story goes, a Free French sentry guarding a command post heard a group of soldiers approaching on foot. Challenged to identify themselves, the soldiers called out that they were Americans. Depending on whose account you believe, the sentry either arrested or machine-gunned the group on the spot. The intruders turned out to be Germans disguised in American uniforms. Asked how he knew, the sentry said, "That's easy-Americans, they come in jeeps!"

The olive-drab buggies were indeed farflung. They plowed snow and delivered mail to foxholes at the front. Their engines powered searchlights, and their wheels agitated washtubs. Their hoods served as altars or card tables, depending on the occasion. They were dropped by parachute and delivered by glider. With a special waterproofing kit, which included snorkels for both air intake and exhaust, and asbestos-laced goo to coat the engine, jeeps crawled through water up to their hoods. And the Army ordered new special-purpose designs, notably a fully

amphibious jeep (the seep) and a lightweight jeep just for air drops (the fleep).

A jeep fitted with railroad wheels in the Philippines once pulled a 52-ton supply train for 30 kilometers, averaging 35 kilometers an hour. In the spring of 1944,while waiting to land on Normandy on D-Day, jeeps helped plow fields in southern England.

The jeep became the four-wheeled personification of Yankee ingenuity and cocky, can-do determination. No longer merely the humblest of the U.S. Army's many trucks, it blossomed into a status symbol prized by Chinese generals and Middle Eastern diplomats. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt reviewed American troops in Casablanca and Tehran, he sat not in a limousine or a touring car but in a jeep-and looked all the more presidential for it. In 1945, Liberia even chose a picture of FDR in a jeep for a set of commemorative stamps. Generals took to using jeeps as their command cars, often doing the driving themse1vesunheard of with earlier vehicles. The Third Army's General George Patton, always a believer in high visibility, had his Marilyn Monroe uses ajeep to visit troops during the Korean War.

personal "peep" outfitted with a cushioned red-leather passenger seat and a pair of oversize air horns on the hood. On February 13, 1945, Patton made his triumphant crossing onto German soil under fire while riding in a jeep.

While the war was being waged, publicity about the jeep was unwaveringly positive. But all the boasts about the little war wagon's unstoppability and acrobatic talents created trouble when those driving it took the propaganda to heart.

The jeep wasn't infallible. It wasn't even particularly safe to ride in. Attempts to perform the flyingjeep trick led to many a wreck, and optimism-often fueled by alcohol-about the vehicle's off-road abilities led to many more.

Journalist-turned-infantryman Ralph Ingersoll wrote of a flood-bogged advance in Tunisia in 1943: "When the peeps, whose drivers don't believe any terrain can stop them, tried to ford the streams, as often as not they would be washed downstream, turned over, rolled, and wrecked." In the estimation of cartoonist and enlisted man Bill Mauldin, "Jeeps killed about as many people as any other weapon in World War II." Mauldin treasured his own jeep, and he once termed the vehicle the closest thing to a Rolls-Royce that America had ever produced, but cautioned that it "had to be driven with respect." And even then, a jeep's ride could be painful. "I survived a tour of 240 kilometers in a jeep," Ernie Pyle disclosed in a 1943column; after that distance, "it takes 24 hours to stop vibrating." Pyle reported that otherwise uninjured soldiers had been hospitalized after too much jeep riding. General Omar Bradley, a veteran jeep rider, downplayed the problem by insisting that riding jeeps was good for one's liver.

While everyone from comedian Bob Hope to writer Joseph Heller joked about its rough ride, the jeep unquestionably earned a special place in the fighting man's heart. Admittedly, so might have any alternative to marching through mud with a rifle and a 20-kilogram pack, but a fierce emotional bond often developed

between soldiers and their jeeps. As an Army sergeant explained in 1944, "It's something deeper and more lasting than the soldier's feeling for the picture of a pretty pinup girl. When he goes up to fight, the picture stays behind, but the jeep goes right along with him." One jeep, its windshield shattered after surviving two bloody landings in the Pacific, was officially awarded a Purple Heart and shipped home. And to the GI, deprived of so many of the other liberties of stateside life, the jeep offered a chance to enjoy that most fundamental of American rights, especially among young males: The right to have a car.

The possessiveness that soldiers felt toward their jeeps was reflected in the efforts they made to give these utterly look-alike vehicles a distinctive personality.

GI's carefully painted their girlfriends' names on the hood. Some added ornamental grilles to the front or welded extra seats to the rear. Members of the 644th Ordnance Depot in Europe enclosed a jeep with a dome made of salvaged Plexiglas. The jeep-GI bond sometimes defied rationality. A pair of newspapermen in North Africa once came across a corporal who was sitting dazed and teary-eyed in a wrecked jeep.

The battle-weary veteran had just crawled

The war over, the jeep came in handy for peacetime chores like pulling a reaper and binder for this Ohio farmer.

back from a foxhole to find his jeep destroyed by shellfire. One of the reporters tried to cheer him up by predicting he'd soon be issued an identical replacement. The corporal was inconsolable. "You don't understand. You see, I loved this one."

By war's end, the jeep was legendary.

"The jeep, the Dakota [airplane], and the landing craft were the three tools that won the war," said General Dwight Eisenhower, with a politic nod to each of the three services. Willys-Overland had to fight in court to get a trademark, transforming "jeeps" into "Jeeps," and it hoped to parlay their worldwide reputation into lucrative postwar sales. (Ford made its last jeep in 1945.) From the beginning, Willys had been priming the public's appetite with advertisements extolling this bloodstained warhorse before which the Axis cowered. One ad depicted the population of a liberated French town in 1944 welcoming "a modern deliverer who came, not on a prancing white horse, but in steeds of steel called 'Jeeps.'" As early as 1941, the company had commissioned a series of paintings

showing peacetime jeeps of the future serving as farm tractors, fire engines, log skidders, and ambulances.

But Willys underestimated the difference between the strictures of wartime and the tranquil comforts of peace. A grubby infantryman might be willing to drain greenish water from a jeep's radiator in order to have a hot shave, and a desperate medic might aspirate a bleeding soldier using a rubber hose ripped from the engine, but back home, people had other options available. The thousandand-one errands, large and small, that a jeep could perform suddenly seemed less useful. Though Willys marketed Jeep station wagons and even a short-lived sports car, the Jeepster, the postwar car-buying public preferred bigger, more stylishly molded cars. Only with the boom in sport-utility vehicles in the early 1970s did sales of the jeep's far cushier descendants (from American Motors and now Chrysler) and their competitors begin to surge.

Today, GI's ride in Humvees, which are bigger and faster and much more expensive than jeeps. But the legacy of the World War II jeep remains indelible. Vintage jeep restoration is now a cottage industry, and one collector has offered $50,000 to anyone who can find a jeep still packed in its original crate. Egyptians have reportedly dug wartime jeeps out of the desert sands and, after fixing them up, driven them away.

In one of the more unlikely tributes to the jeep's multitudinous achievements, New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1951 saluted it as one of the world's eight automotive masterpieces.

The other seven included a Bentley, a Mercedes, and a Cord. Although the jeep looks "like a tray, or perhaps a sturdy sardine can on wheels," and though "those who have used the jeep will recall certain limitations of comfort," the exhibition catalog concluded that the jeep had "the combined appeal of an intelligent dog and a perfect gadget." And more personality, most people would agree, than the other seven cars combined.

0 About the Author: Doug Stewart is a frequent contributor to Smithsonian magazine.

The Republican Congress The 104th Congress of the United States convened in Washington on January 4, marking the end of 40 years of Democratic Party domination in the House of Representatives.

President Bill Clinton, a Democratic, must now work with a Republican-controlled legislature for the remaining two years of his term.

Republicans, who now hold powerful leadership positions in both the House and the Senate, have vowed to enact their "Contract With America"-a package of legislation-within the first 100 days of the session.

Authored by the new Speaker of the House, Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the legislative proposals promise reform of the welfare system, $200,000 million in tax cuts over the next four years, increased defense spending, a balanced federal budget by the year 2002, and a significant downsizing of the federal government. The legislation would also limit Congressional terms of office and prohibit U.S. troops from serving under foreign command, as in United Nations peacekeeping operations.

Republicans believe they have a mandate for change. In the midterm elections held in November, Republicans picked up 52 seats in the House, nine seats in the and II new governorships, Senate, dramatically transforming the country's political landscape and leaving even Washington insiders stunned.

Republicans now control 231 of the 435 seats in the House and 53 of the 100 seats in the Senate.

Polls indicated that American voters were angry at what President Clinton was doing and the way he was doing it-with "big government" solutions epitomized by his health care reform program and his economic stimulus package. Twenty-five percent of those voting felt they were in a worse economic situation than they were two years ago. Many more said they were frustrated by city streets that are too dangerous, taxes that are too high, a welfare system that is too generous, and government that is too big.

Among the key Republican leaders

Clinton must now work with are: Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Republicans moved to the right under his leadership over me past several years as he lambasted Democrats for wasteful spending, while marketing the Republicans as.the low-tax party.

Although he has a sparse record of legislative accomplishments, he is adamantly committed to passing his "Contract."

He has risen to power by passionately articulating a case for change, and he promises to cooperate, but not compromise, with the administration in the months ahead.

Bob Dole, Senate Majority Leader. An elder statesman who has been on Capitol Hill since 1961, he is a staunch Republican partisan, a legislative pragmatist, and a likely contender for the presidency in 1996. Fiscally conservative, he orchestrated the defeat of Clinton's $16,300 million economic stimulus package through filibustering. It will be his job to deliver deals on a balanced budget, welfare reform, and tax cuts. If the economy turns sour, some say, voters may end up J blaming him.

Jesse Helms, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Elected to the Senate in 1972, his tirades against communism, liberalism, big government, and homosexuality have earned him the reputation of being an unyielding ideologue. He uses his parliamentary skills with mule-like

stubbornness to tie up legislative action.

Many say that under his leadership, foreign aid to developing countries and support for the United Nations will plummet, and that America could move toward an isolationist foreign policy.

Benjamin Gilman, Chairman of the House International Relations (formerly Foreign Affairs) Committee. During his two decades in Congress, he has come to be regarded as a low~profile but conscientious lawmaker. He has shown little inclination for global strategizing; rather, he has focused on such issues as U.S. aid to Israel, human rights, drug trafficking, and reform of the much-criticized foreign aid-bureaucracy.

Already there are signs that the change voters asked for is likely to happen, at least to some degree. In early December, President Clinton announced that he would seek a $25,000 million increase in defense spending.

He is proposing $60,000 million in tax cuts, and is considering a plan that would limit welfare benefits. In response to the call for downsizing the government, he plans to cut 273,000 federal jobs over the next five years and turn some government functions over to the private sector.

There have been signs of cooperation, too, on the part of the Republican leadership. Senator Dole's lobbying was crucial in getting the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade passed in November.

Other issues in which the White House and Congress are likely to cooperate include the line-item veto, which would give the President authority to delete specific Congressional spending proposals without rejecting the entire budget, an overhaul of the hazardous waste clean-up program, and limits on product-liability lawsuits and the amount of damages awarded.

As the new Congressional leaders try to implement the changes they say they want, they face the unenviable task of reforming the institution they helped discredit. "It's the Republicans' chance to prove they can make a difference," said one voter. "The -Sandra Maxwell ball is in their court."

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Crushed sug~rcane stalks-bagasse-which Indian sugar factories routinely burn to power their plants, could be harnessed to provide five to ten percent of India's electricity needs.

Sugarcane Power Although India is steadily increasing its generation of electrical power, the country is unable to meet its commercial and domestic power needs in both rural and urban areas.

At present, 70 percent of power in India is generated from coal. The rest comes from hydroelectric (29 percent) and nuclear (one percent) plants. The country has tremendous coal reserves and will be relying on them for at least a century or more. But there are disadvantages with coal. Fossil fuels, when burned to extract energy, spew carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, particulates, and sulfur dioxide into the air, affecting the environment; disposal of ash, the waste product of coal, pollutes valuable agricultural land; and building a new coal-fired power plant takes up to five years and requires a huge investment.

One solution to easing the power generation problem lies in tapping renewable energy sources-sun and wind, for examplethat do not get depleted and that do not pollute the environment.

India's efforts in this regard took a major leap forward last month when it signed 25 renewable energy development agreements with the United States worth $1,000 million. The signing was the culmination of a "Renewable Energy Mission" to America composed of

eight government officials and 19 business representatives under the leadership of S. Krishna Kumar, Minister of State for Non-Conventional Energy Sources. U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, who visited India in July 1994 and is planning a return visit, presided at the signing ceremony in Washington, D.C. Noting that both India and the United States view an unfettered market as the surest way for expansion in the renewable energy field, O'Leary said, "We [bureaucrats] need to stand out of the way and let things happen. We will go forward not because of what government does ... but [because of] what business can do."

The 25 agreements, called memoranda of understanding, cover deJ velopment across a broad range of

Above left: Sugarcane en route to one of the 220 Indian sugar mills that each crush more than 2,500 tons of cane per day during the sixmonth harvesting season. Right: Workers clean out the boilers used to burn bagasse. To produce marketable power, sugar factories need to use high-pressure boilers and turbogenerators. Below: Wood from dead cashew trees is an alternative fuel used in sugar factories.

technologies, including solar, wind, hydro, electric vehicle, and biomass.

Concerning the last, India, as the world's largest producer of sugar, has an attractively viable option in sugarcane. Crushed sugarcane, or bagasse, a waste product of the sugar industry, has the potential to provide five to ten percent of India's power needs. In 1992-93 India produced 10.6 million tons of sugar-and 66.79 million tons of bagasse.

Bagasse can be used In "cogeneration" wherein both steam

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and electricity are produced and utilized. Sugar factories throughout the world burn bagasse in inefficient, low-pressure boilers-both to get rid of it and to generate small amounts of power and steam to operate their plants. High-pressure boilers and turbogenerators could produce more power from the same quantity of bagasse and at a lower cost than the fossil fuel-fired plants operated by utilities.

Based in part on a study done by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1992-93, the Ministry for Non-Conventional Energy Sources (MNES) has announced a national program supporting bagasse-based cogeneration at some 220 Indian sugar mills that each crush more than 2,500 tons of cane per day and have the potential to generate between five and 20 megawatts of surplus power.

The surplus power sugar mills supply to the grid could be used in the rural areas where most mills are located.

Ram V. Tyagarajan, chairman and managing director of Thiru Arooran Sugars Limited in Tamil Nadu, looks at cogeneration as a very attractive business opportunity. "Our sugar production is down," he says. "We have to look at other earning sources. We could very well have a situation where sugar could become the by-product and power the main product."

Thiru Arooran's two sugar plants employ more than 500 people and buy cane from approximately 15,000 farmers. The company is investing about $12 million in locally manufactured boilers and imported turbogenerators to improve generating efficiency at one factory. The project is expected to be commissioned in March.

"Assuming that the first year we will be working at about 75 percent capacity," says Tyagarajan, "we expect a payback in about two-and-ahalf to three years at current tariffs."

Tyagarajan expects his factory to extend the six-month crushing season to seven or eight months to have more bagasse to burn. Cane harvested after six months normally does not have enough juice to justify crushing it for sugar, but the added potential of using fiber as fuel warrants a longer season.

Meanwhile, research is also under way in India on alternative

paid by industrial consumers (the highest TNEB rate) and would allow wheeling (sending power from the cogenerator to a third party on the grid lines) and banking (credit for future power use). The Karnataka State Electricity Board recently announced a similar policy, and other SEBs are considering these options.

Progressive policies for purchasing, wheeling, and banking the power generated by small, independent energy producers will also spur investment in two more likely renewable energy sources-wind power and solar power. Wind power in particular is taking off in several Indian states. The average wind-powered turbine produces two megawatts of electricity.

Currently, rural factories or businesses that want access to "captive" power, or power that they can produce th~mselves, are investing in windpowered turbines. As wind-power technology improves, these producers may generate enough electricity to sell their surplus to the grid.

"Wind technology is promising, but you have to have accurate wind mapping to know where the winds are blowing best and where you can get the most yield in terms of power," says David W. Hess, environment and energy officer for USAID in Delhi. "The wind in India is quite variable in velocity, so wind stations here have to be able to adapt to that variability."

The fact that more than 120 megawatts of wind power are now being produced in India shows that these challenges are being overcome.

Solar power is being used at the village or household level in India, but it is not yet practical for producing large quantities of power from anyone plant. Indian researchers, funded ih part by the MNES, are also investigating the renewable energy technologies of geothermal power and tides. Altogether, Indian renewable energy sources have the potential to provide at least 2,000 megawatts of energy by 1997 and 5,000 megawatts by 2004.

Such figures represent only a small but nonetheless important percentage of India's current overall installed power capacity of 75,000 megawatts. By contrast, the United States has an installed capacity of 750,000 megawatts. As India develops, it obviously will need to increase its generating capacity significantly, and such efforts will spark further interest in renewable sources. Minister Krishna Kumar says that eco-

biomass fuels such as cane trash, rice and coconut husks, and wood nomic liberalization, decentralization of government planning, $200 grown on fuelwood plantations. These alternative fuels would create million in World Bank loans, and joint venture agreements signed with less pollution than lignite, which Tyagarajan says he would use for the American and other foreign firms have combined to make India "one of operation of his mills in the absence of bagasse. the pioneering countries in the field of renewable energy sources."

To serve as a business opportunity, cogenerated power has to have a "Fossil fuel costs are increasing every day," says Ajit Gupta, market, which means that the state electricity boards (SEBs) have to director in charge of power in the MNES. "When I used to talk about purchase the power at a price that warrants a $12 million investment. the advantages of renewables ten years ago, people laughed at me.

"Previously, SEBs were not interested in buying small quantities of When I say the same things now, they stop to think. When I say the power from different sources," says N.V. Seshadri, an same things in 2004, the advantages will be obvious, energy specialist for USAID. "They viewed it as their because the costs of renewables will be considerably Worker at a wind power factory job to generate and sell power." in Madras assembles a turbine. lower than conventional fossil fuels."

A study that USAID commissioned from Winrock Taking into account the pollution to our environment International in 1992 alerted SEBs to the advantages caused by fossil fuels, renewables are cost-effective not of buying cogenerated power. The study identified only in financial terms but also in terms of health. opportunities for cogeneration investments at individ"After all, somebody will pay for all that pollution," ual sugar mills and outlined pricing and contractual says Gupta. "If not us, then our children."

0 terms that would enable utilities to purchase power from cogenerators.

In June 1993, the Tamil Nadu About the Author: Laura Lorenz Hess is a New Delhi-.

Electricity Board (TNEB) announced that it would based freelance writer who specializes in agricultural and other developmental subjects. purchase cogenerated power at a price equal to that

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_

Homeowners See the Light Eric Anderson's house is a dazzling structure with 09dles of windows that offer views of ocean and salt marshes in every direction.

Bougainvillea grow like Jack's beanstalk from the first-floor greenhouse to the second floor.

Spiral staircases snake upward to an outdoor widow's walk. There are four suites and a gourmet kitchen. Every appliance one might expect-dishwasher, TV, CD player, washer, and dryer-is present. But the unusual feature is that it's of this magnificent home powered by the sun, so Anderson doesn't get a utility bill.

The house is located on a sliver of peninsula in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that is accessible only by four-wheel drive over several kilometers of bumps and craters. Ever since the power lines that sent electricity were downed in a 1938 hurricane, most of the small homes here have used generators for energy needs.

Anderson's home, which was built onto its existing 1724 structure in 1986, is one of about 100,000 homes in the United States that operate completely detached from the utility grid. The number of "off-the-grid" homes has doubled over the past five years. These homes are powered by wind, sun, or water, and range from small cabins to earthen dwellings to elegant abodes. But they all share one common denominator.

"The people living this way are making a very hopeful statement," says Michael Potts, who visited more than 100 independent homesteaders across the United States for his book The Independent Horne. "They're saying .. Tm willing to give a certain amount of my time and energy to arranging my life so that I'm not too weighty on the world."

As the supply of fossil fuels dwindles, people will be forced to learn how to depend on renewable energy sources, says Steven Strong, an architect who started Solar Design Associates in Harvard, Massachusetts, one of the only firms in the United' States that designs solar-electric-powered buildings and engineers their energy-support systems.

"We have maybe three decades," Strong estimates. "In 30 years, there will be a doubling of population and a doubling of energy

Eric Anderson stands on the widow's walk of his solarpowered horne in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

demand. We don't have conventional fuels to support thaL. ..The changes we need to make are significant."

Strong, who designed Anderson's home, and other experts say solar is the most promising renewable for several reasons. The sun is available just about everywhere; the cost of producing the equipment has dropped dramatically as makers gain more experience; and better energy-efficient product design has made it possible to have a comfortable home with modern conveniences.

The roof of Anderson's 465-square-meter house in Plymouth is outfitted with 18 photovoltaic modules, rectangular panels that are made up of silicon cells treated with certain impurities that make them sensitive to light and capable of creating electrical currents. In the basement are 16 one-liter-sized batteries that store excess power from the sun for use at night or on cloudy days. Anderson's refrigerator and stove are powered by gas; he also has a backup generator, which he hasn't used since May. A wood stove in the living room supplements the sun's heat when winter temperatures dip to lower digits.

"It's trouble-free," Anderson says of the system. "You monitor how much electricity you're using [via a wall panel], and if the batteries are low, you might wait until the next day" to use the dishwasher'Jor other appliances. He says, however, that he has enough power to accommodate several nieces who take two or more showers a day and use hair dryers simultaneously.

But while Anderson and many other individuals have unplugged completely from the utility grid, Strong says the fastest-growing market will be for solar-powered homes that work with the utility companies.

In a town near Boston, Genevieve Wyner's solar-electric house is an example of this kind of partnership. Called tbe Impact 2000 house, the structure was commissioned

by Boston Edison Company and designed by Strong in 1983.

The 270-square-meter house is built into a

small hillside that faces a hectare or so of landscaped gardens. The south roof is covered with 24 photovoltaic modules, six thermal solar collectors that produce hot water, and three skylights. The house uses solar and electric heat. Because it is already connected to a power grid-Boston Edison-Wyner doesn't use batteries to store extra solar energy. Instead, a meter records a surplus or deficiency of electricity. "If we're collecting more energy, our meter turns backward, which means we become a supplier to Edison," Wyner says. That usually occurs during the summer when sunshine is more abundant. For the utility company, summer is the peak season, so getting extra energy reduces its demand. When Wyner and her husband need that electricity, it is given back to them. Wyner estimates 25 percent of their energy comes from the sun.

Utility companies are starting to see this benefit, Strong says. Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California recently started a voluntary program that enables the utility to install solar-electric systems on homes in exchange for a 15 percent one-time rate hike.

Hundreds of people subscribed to the program. "Utilities must be proactive partners," Strong says. "The transition can't happen without them."

The cost of photovoltaic systems is one reason more people haven't switched to solar power. The modules are expensive. Still, the cost has decreased significantly since 1975 when the cost was about $300 per peak watt; today it is $5. A peak watt is the amount of power a photovoltaic device produces at noon on a cold day under full sun. If a photovoltaic module generates 200 watts at $5, the module will cost $1,000.

Strong emphasizes that the price is a onetime expense. "You pay up front for equipment, but there's no maintenance, and your electricity is free for the life of your house." 0 About the Author: Elizabeth Levitan Spaid is a staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor.

Market solutions to controlling pollution can be smarter, cheaper, and better for economic growth than centralized regulations.

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he environmental movement [in America] is poised to enter a second generation. For two decades it has . prompted significant improvements in the quality of air, water, land, and natural resources, primarily through "command-and-control" regulations that essentially have told firms to use certain pollution-control technologies and how much pollution they could emit. The progressive challenge for environmentalists in the 1990s is to harness the power of markets, which can be more effective and far-reaching than centralized regulations.

Command-and-control regulations were powerful in the early battles against environmental degradation, but they have begun to reveal many of the sam~ limitations that led to the collapse of command-and-control economies around the globe.

They can be inefficient; they hamper innovation in pollution control methods; and they ignore important differences among individuals, firms, and regions. And these regulations tend to make the environmental debate a closed, technical discussion among bureaucrats and vested interest groups rather than an accessible public dialogue.

Market-based policies start with the notion that, the best way to protect the environment is to give firms and jndividuals a direct and daily self-interest in doing so. They aim to strengthen envrronmentalprofectiq,n not with lUoTecentralized rule mak-0 ing. but through decentralization-by changing the financial if

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. CQPyrigl1t~,}.~3 by ~gress~e Po!il>*ibstitUle, a pr9WloN!Ii Dem~lltic 1nc. TlUs edioo;t'published by arrangement with the Putnam-Barkley Inc. Al! rights reserved.

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incentives that millions of firms and individuals face in their private decisions about what to consume, how to produce, and where to dispose of their wastes.

A confluence of forces has heightened interest in marketbased approaches and raised the likelihood that America can move beyorid the polarized environmental debate of the past decade. Sluggish economic growth and high public sector deficits have focused new attention on the private and public costs of environmental regulation. Changes of attitude within the environmental movement and bureaucracy also seem to herald a new openness to using market forces. And the emergence of new threats to the environment has combined with the stubbornness of old threats to spur the search for better ways to control pollution.

The United States should capitalize on these changes and seek to apply market-based approaches to a variety of environmental challenges. If it does so, the nation can move beyond the old questions of whether simply to spend more or less on environmental protection or whether simply to raise or lower existing standards. It can focus, instead, on how to set and reach environmental goals in ways that are smarter, cheaper, and better for economic growth.

The days when the nation could afford to consider environmental protection without regard to its costs have ended. The U.S. Environmental Protej::tion Agency estimates that businesses, states, and cities now spend more than $100,000million annually to comply with federal environmental laws and regulations. There is heightened concern over the impact of these regulations on the strength of the national economy and its ability to compete in international markets. As a result, policymakers are eager to hold regulatory burdens to a minimum.

Feqeral"st<.\-te/iand l!?C3l9udg~tshortfalls ma~e it harder than.in previous decadeSto spend;noremoneyoitpublic erivironinentalprotection programs. There is new sensitivity to private costs as

well. While there is strong and increasing support among the public for environmental protection, citizens and policy makers are giving increased attention to making the most of scarce resources and maximizing returns on the resources Americans invest-business costs, the regulatory effort, political capital, taxes-to improve the quality of the environment.

Command-and-control regulations tend to force all firms to behave the same way when it comes to pollution, shouldering identical shares of the pollution-control burden regardless of their relative costs. However, the costs of controlling emissions' can vary greatly among and even within firms, and the right technology in one situation may be wrong in another. Indeed, the cost of controlling a given pollutant may vary by a factor of 100 or more among sources, depending upon the age and location of plants and the technologies available to them.

This regulatory approach also tends to freeze the development of technologies that could provide greater levels of control.

Command-and-control standards typically give firms little or no financial incentive to exceed their control targets, and they also create a bias against experimentation with new technologies. A firm that tries a new technology subsequently may be held to a higher standard of performance, without significant opportunity to benefit financially from its investment.

Command-and-control policies seek to regulate the individual polluter, whereas market-based policies train their sights on what is, in most cases, the real target of concern: The overall amount of pollution for a given area. What is important, after all, is not how many particulates the local factory emits, but the quality of the air downtown or in residential neighborhoods.

Thus, under a market-based approach, the government establishes financial incentives so that the costs imposed on firms drive an entire industry or region to reduce its output of

pollution to a desired level; then, as in any regulatory system, public agencies monitor and enforce compliance. Marketbased policies achieve the same aggregate level of control as might be set under a command-and-control approach, but they permit the burden of regulation to be shared more efficiently among firms.

Market-based incentive systems provide freedom of choice to businesses and consumers in determining the best way to reduce pollution. By ensuring that society's environmental costs are factored into each firm's (or individual's) decision making, incentive-based policies harness rather than impede market forces and channel them to achieve environmental goals at the lowest possible cost to society.

Despite these benefits, several sources of resistance have slowed the adoption of market instruments for environmental protection. The first is the adversarial attitude that characterized the beginning of the environmental movement. Throughout much of the 1960s and 1970s, that movement typically characterized pollution more as a moral failing of corporate (and political) leaders than as a by-product of modern civilization.

This stance resulted in widespread antagonism toward corporations and a suspicion that anything supported by business was bad for the environment. Thus, for many years, market-based incentives were characterized by environmentalists not only as impractical, but also as "licenses to pollute."

A second source of resistance to market-based approaches has been the self-interest of segments of the environmental bureaucracy whose work routines, organizational power, or even existence might be threatened by them. There has also been resistance to market-based approaches from legislators who, having learned to use their influence to fine-tune a command-and-control regulatory system, are understandably reluctant to allow any major changes in the rules of the game. In addition, many policy makers resist pollution charges because they can be characterized as new taxes. And there is resistance from those who simply oppose all attempts at environmental protection.

Over the past several years, however, there has been a rapidly growing recognition among policy makers and activists that market forces, once characterized solely as the problem, are also a potential part of the solution. President Bill Clinton can avail himself of a range of market-based tools for protecting the environment. Different ones will be better for tackling different problems. Yet for some problems, such as regulating pesticides that cannot pass basic thresholds of safety, traditional command-and-control approaches may remain the best remedy.

The first category of market-based policies consists of pollution charges, or green taxes. These charges compel firms to pay for the external costs of pollution and to incorporate the added costs into their daily decision making. Charge mechanisms could be used to address a range of environmental challenges, from air and water pollution to various forms of solid and hazardous waste, and they can work at various levels of government. They work best when the central question is not

whether but how much emission of a pollutant is acceptable, when emissions can be monitored reliably and at reasonable cost, and when the health hazards of moderate variations in emissions are not extreme.

There should be focus, in particular, on the use of charge mechanisms for reducing the volume of solid waste. The increasing volume of such waste has emerged as a pressing problem in many parts of the United States over the past decade. Many areas are running out of landfill space, and many communities have effectively blocked the construction of new facilities. Some have turned to incineration of these wastes, but concerns exist that garbage burning contributes to air pollution and that the ash it generates poses its own disposal problems.

What is needed to reduce the volume of solid wastes is not ,stricter regulation, but a better means of pricing waste disposal.

Most individuals and firms never directly "see" the costs of waste disposal. In many communities, these costs are simply imbedded in local property or income taxes. With such pricing

Government attention and action on environmental threats are seriously out of alignment with scientific, let alone economic, estimates of relative risks.

systems, the cost of throwing away an additional item of refuse is essentially zero; residents merely place their empty bottles, cans, lawn clippings, and other wastes in a trash chute or at the curbside, and they magically disappear when the municipality or a contractor picks them up. Effective waste-management strategies must communicate to consumers the true, total social cost of throwing things away.

In many communities, the best market solution for reducing the volume of residential solid waste will be to charge citizens for the specific quantity of waste they put out at the curb-an ,approach known as "unit charges." These volume-based fees motivate households to reduce the quantities of waste they generate, whether through changes in their purchasing patterns, reuse of products and containers, or the composting of yard wastes.

In Seattle, Washington, which has adopted a unit charge system, customers choose from four sizes of receptacles, ranging in price from about $11 per month for a 72-liter container to almost $32 per month for a 340-liter container. The program appears to be having its intended effect: In 1979, the average family was setting out about four lIS-liter containers per week; by 1989,87 percent of households subscribed to one 121-liter container or less.

While experience with unit pricing to date indicates that it â&#x20AC;˘ can significantly reduce waste generation, concern naturally arises about the policy's fairness to low-income households

that, some argue, would pay greater shares of their income for pickup services than would higher-income households. Surprisingly, unit pricing tends to be less regressive than conventional payment systems, although there is substantial variation among communities.

Revenues from pollution charges, which could be considerable, create the opportunity for a double dividend: At the same time the pollution charge is providing an incentive to reduce pollution, the revenues raised make it possible to lower other taxes. By replacing taxes on socially desirable activities, such as labor and investment, with taxes on socially undesirable activities, such as environmental pollutant emissions, the government could use pollution charges to make the overall tax code more supportive of economic growth.

There is another key example of this potential double dividend: Charges on greenhouse gases. Concern over greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, relates to global warming. Many scientists believe that if greenhouse-gas emissions continue to grow at current rates, global mean temperatures may rise by one to three degrees Celsius over the next century. Such an increase could cause widespread changes in precipitation patterns, storm frequencies and intensities, and ocean levels. International negotiations have focused on how much to limit emissions and how to allocate the control burden among nations.

There is currently a range of mechanisms in use or planned that could help the United States achieve many greenhouse-gas reduction goals. But for long-term goals, one of the best alternatives is a properly designed carbon dioxide charge system. Such a system would tax carbon-based fuels in order to make carbon dioxide emissions more expensive. The charge would vary by type of fossil fuel--eoal, oil, or natural gasdepending upon the carbon dioxide emissions associated with it. A tax based on the carbon content of fossil fuels could be imposed at the point of entry for imports and at the point of primary production for domestic sources. This would reduce direct demand for fossil fuels, encourage conserva tion, lead to a better mix of resources, and stimulate the development of new, less-carbon-intensive technologies.

The impact of a carbon charge on U.S. economic activity cannot be overlooked; if a phased-in charge were adopted unilaterally by the United States, it could lead to a two percent annual loss in gross national product (GNP). But the impact would be substantially less if other nations acted in concert.

And rebating the revenues from this carbon charge by reducing other taxes could offset any projected loss in GNP altogether.

In some pollution cases, the proQlem is the toxicity of the waste, not just its volume. But special charges on hazardous materials may encourage some firms to circumvent the process through illegal emissions ("midnight dumping"). There is a second category of market-based policies--deposit-refund systems-that potentially represents a cost-effective way to manage these and other categories of toxic wastes.

These systems combine a special front-end charge-the

deposit-with a refund payable when quantities of the substance in question are turned in for recycling or proper disposal.

Although deposit-refund systems have been applied primarily at the state level, a federal approach is advisable for some substances and problems.

A federal deposit-refund policy may be needed for one problem in particular: The disposal of lead-acid batteries. The amount of lead that enters landfills and incinerators is a major hazard. The link between lead exposures and childhood learning disabilities is one well-documented example. Under a deposit-refund system, a deposit would be collected as a tax when manufacturers sell batteries to distributors, retailers, or original equipment manufacturers; retailers would collect their deposits by returning their used batteries to redemption centers.

Another potential application of the deposit-refund approach is to lubricating oil. When used oil is dumped into storm sewers or placed in unsecured landfills, it can contaminate ground- and surface-water supplies; when burned as heating fuel, it produces air pollution. Enforcing proper disposal of lubricating oil through conventional regulations would be exceedingly costly, since hundreds of thousands of firms and millions of consumers would have to be monitored. A depositrefund system promises to be much more cost-effective.

A third market-based approach, tradable permits, allows the government to specify and efficiently achieve a given target of aggregate pollution control. The total quantity of allowable emissions, consistent with that target, is allotted in the form of permits distributed among polluters. Firms that keep their emission levels below the allotted level may sell or lease their surplus allotments to other firms, or use them to offset excess emissions in other parts of their own facilities. Such a system tends to minimize the total societal cost of achieving a given level of pollution control. It is important to note that both charges and permit systems can be used to improve environmental quality-that is, to achieve steadily lower pollution levels-not just to maintain the status quo.

The 1990 Clean Air Act (see SPAN, December 1990) used a tradable permit system to combat acid rain. This concept can be applied to promote corporate use of recycled materials. The result of a tradable permit program would be that the same amount of total recycling would occur as under a uniform standard, but the total costs of compliance would be less, since those firms in the best position to recycle (or use recycled materials) would essentially be paid by other firms to undertake the bulk of the recycling burden. Recycling credi t systems could be used for a variety of products, including newsprint and used lubricating oil.

Local air pollution problems can also be addressed through a system of marketable emissions permits, now being explored in the Los Angeles region. Since mobile sources, such as cars, play a major role in air pollution problems in most cities, programs ought to include motor vehicles wherever possible. A cash-forold-cars program, in which major stationary sources, such as factories and electric utilities, can offset their own emissions by

purchasing and retiring high-pol1uting pre-197l vehicles, is a promising route.

A related, international application of the tradable permit principle is the notion of preventing deforestation through "debt-for-nature" swaps. The world's less developed countries are the main repositories of the planet's tropical forest resources. Many of these countries have found that they can no longer meet their massive debt obligations and invest adequately in growth at home. This problem can be solved by extending the concept of offsets through debt-for-nature swaps, several of which have already been arranged.

The staggering costs of control1ing today's environmental threats make it abundantly clear that we must focus our attention on those problems that pose the greatest risk. At present, government attention and action on environmental threats are seriously out of alignment with scientific, let alone economic, estimates of relative risks. Scientific rankings of risk

are not the only relevant factors in establishing environmentalprotection priorities. Many others deserve consideration, including the disproportionate impact of some risks on certain populations, such as minorities and the poor; aesthetic and spiritual values; and political and historical questions about who is responsible for environmental damage. Stil1, assessments of relative health and ecological risks should be a major consideration.

Some environmental advocates and legislators, however, have long been hostile to the idea of weighing relative risks, insisting instead that al1 environmental threats are of the highest order. But this absolutism is scientifical1y wrong and may prove to be political1y shortsighted. Refusal to establish priorities among environmental problems has resulted in a misdirection of efforts.

No single policy mechanism can be an environmental panacea, but market-based instruments can provide cost-effective â&#x20AC;˘ solutions for some pressing environmental problems, while spurring important technological advances. Ultimately, the

Left: Recycled cans in Madison, Wisconsin. Below: A tax on carbon-basedfuels, the authors contend, would reduce the kind

of air pollution shown here in Denver, Colorado. Bottom: Trash collection in Seattle, Washington, where an adjustable

greatest service that market mechanisms for environmental protection may render is to bring environmental policy formulation out of the closet. Americans have always been shielded from many of the very real trade-offs involved in establishing their environmental goals, programs, and standards. Policy formulation has been shrouded in technical complexity. Conventional regulatory approaches impose costs on industry that are not readily visible, but are partially passed on to consumers.

Pollution charges and other market-based instruments can bring important questions into the open by making the in-

system of charges pegged to the volume of trash and incentives to recycle have produced significant reductions in waste.

cremental costs and advantages of environmental protection explicit. Policy discussions will then move away from a narrow focus on technical specifications to a broader consideration of goals and strategies. This should help to get the public involved in cbnstructive debates about environmental protection and to recapture the critical decisions of goal setting from bureaucrats, technicians, special interest groups, and politicians.

Promoting the selective use of market-based mechanisms will require political courage, but it is the right thing to do for a variety of environmental problems-for both environmental and economic reasons. Furthermore, market-based approaches offer potential political dividends: There will be widespread agreement with the common sense that underlies these approaches-"the polluter ought to pay."

0 About the Authors: Robert Stavins is a professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Thomas Grumbly is president of Clean Sites, a nonprofit organization set up to voluntarily clean up hazardous waste sites.

Wingfoot Lake

byRITADOVE

(Independence Day, 1964)

On her 36th birthday, Thomas had shown her her first swimming pool. It had been his favorite color, exactly-just so much of it, the swimmers' white arms jutting into the chevrons of high society.

She had rolled up her window and told him to drive on, fast.

Now this act of mercy: four daughters dragging her to their husbands' company picnic, white families on one side and them on the other, unpacking the same squeeze bottles of Heinz, the same waxy beef patties and Salem potato chip bags.

So he was dead for the first time on Fourth of July-ten years ago

Rita Dove, who was featured in the March 1994 issue of SPAN, recently began her second oneyear term as America's poet laureate at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Library head James H. Billington said Dove was invited to extend her term because she had come up with "more ideas for elevating poetry in the nation's consciousness than there is time to carry out in one year." "Wingfoot Lake" is included in Thomas and Beulah, Dove's third book-length collection of verse for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987.The 44 poems in the book loosely chronicle the lives of the poet's forebears. Last spring Dove published her first verse drama, The Darker Face of Earth.

had been harder, waiting for something to happen, and ten years before that, the girls like young horses eyeing the track.

Last August she stood alone for hours in front of the T.V. set as a crow's wing moved slowly through the white streets of government.

That brave swimming scared her, like Joanna saying Mother, we're Afro-Americans now!

What did she know about Africa?

Were; there lakes like this one with a rowboat pushed under the pier?

Or Thomas' Great Mississippi with its sullen silks? (There was the Nile but the Nile belonged to God.) Where she came from was the past, 12 miles into town where nobody had locked their back door, and Goodyear hadn't begun to dream of a park under the company symbol, a white foot sprouting two small wings.