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Changing Family Roles A Bus Journey Across the United States Contemporary Indian Art

400 Years of Representative Democracy in America

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45 Food: The World of Chef Jorge 48 Health: Why Do Kids Get Sick?

* 400th Anniversary of Jamestown

By Lauren Monsen

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*South Asians in Colonial America

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his month America is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement on land that became part of the United States.

Our cover story explains that the legacy of the Jamestown settlement is complex and ambiguous, much like the history of any nation viewed from such a distance in time. The Jamestown colonists governed themselves in a form of frontier representative democracy that was eventually enshrined in the Constitution. At the same time, the colonists alternately traded with and fought against the Native Americans in the region known today as Virginia. The slavery by the early Virginia landowners was a shameful practice ended by a bloody Civil War and anathema to contemporary Americans.

There were always individuals who spoke and worked for freedom, however, and we are proud to present an article by a new SPAN writer, Francis C. Assisi, who tells us the intriguing story of how Indians from India were part of America's earliest legacy. Many of them were brought to the New World as servants, then indentured or enslaved.

Recently discovered historical records show that these individuals were determined to win their freedom, through the courts of law or by courageously escaping. Many succeeded and their descendants are part of the "American melting pot" of races, cultures and creeds.

Sebastian John, an Indian journalist and photographer who has recently become part of that melting pot, provides an entertaining and insightful look at this phenomenon of all kinds of people living together and often helping each other as he takes us on a bus journey across the United States in this month's travel section.

Our articles on families look at how they are changing in India and the United States, and explores how couples in both countries are balancing work and family life in ways that are good for society.

We also present a package of stories on higher education.

It includes tips and details on the range of choices for those interested in studying in the United States. Articles on public and private universities, two-year colleges, the accreditation system, a handy list of Web sites, and a calendar of events sponsored by the U.S. Educational Foundation in India (USEFI) over the next few months should answer many questions about the opportunities available.

And don't miss the exhibition of contemporary Indian and Indian American art displayed in the center of the magazine.

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Jamestown,

Cradle of U.S. Democracy, Celebrates 400th Anniversary

lthough Virginia's Jamestown settlement-the first per:nanent English settlement in the New World-was launched III 1607 as a commercial venture by London shareholders, it quickly evolved into the English New World's first laboratory for representative government.

Jamestown, which is celebrating its 400th anniversary in 2007 with 18 months of events and commemorations, is regarded as the cradle of U.S. democracy by many historians. However, scholar Warren Billings points out that this was not what the settlement's founders originally had in mind.

The colonists did not intend "to create a legislature as we know it," says Billings. In fact, Virginia's General Assembly was created in 1619 as a response to the rapid growth of population and economic activity throughout Virginia. That growth, he said, made it difficult for investors in England to administer the settlement's affairs, so the General Assembly emerged as "an adjunct management device for the Virginia Company of London" shareholders.

"It was never the intent for the Assembly to be modeled on a parliament. That came later," says Billings, who is distinguished professor emeritus in the University of New Orleans history department and the author of books on early 17th-century Virginia and Jamestown.

At first, the Assembly met as a unicameral body, comprised of Virginia's governor, members of his advisory council, and elected representatives known as burgesses. But in 1624, the English crown seized the Virginia Company of London's charter and declared Virginia a royal colony. The crown "left the settlers pretty much to themselves," Billings notes. "The Assembly continued to meet over the next decade or so, as a unicameral body."

Sir William Berkeley's appointment as royal governor of Virginia in 1642 proved to be the impetus that steered the General Assembly

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Above: The Godspeed, a replica of one of the three ships that brought English settlers to America in 1607, sails past the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor in June 2006, beginning commemorations of the founding of Jamestown.

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Left: This painting by Keith Rocco depicts the home of a tailor in Jamestown.

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Above left: One of the commemorative coins issued by the U.S. Mint to honor the Jamestown anniversary.

These paintings by Sidney Kingfor the National Park Service are part of a series telling the story of the founding of the Jamestown settlement, its hardships, successes and failures in the early 17th century. These paintings, and others by Keith Rocco, are displayed at the Colonial National Historical Park in Jamestown, Virginia, where self-guided walking and car tours explain how the settlers lived.

Colonists came ashore in 1607 on an island connected by a narrow isthmus to the mainland. They named their new home after King James I of England.

toward a more parliamentary configuration. Berkeley encouraged the burgesses to hold their sessions independently of his advisory council, and before long the separation became formal. In this manner, the Assembly evolved into a bicameral legislature, with the burgesses functioning much like the English Parliament's House of Commons, and the governor's advisory council, or upper chamber, patterning itself after the House of Lords.

While the election of burgesses continued the English tradition of electing members of Parliament, certain colonial innovations marked the beginnings of a uniquely American democratic framework. "The tying of representation to specific areas and numbers of voters" in Virginia was a departure from the English model, says Billings. Increasingly, Virginian burgesses were elected from their own home districts, "so direct representation began to take hold in Virginia in the 17th century," he says.

An incident known as Bacon's Rebellion (1675-76), named for Nathaniel Bacon Jr., was also significant. Bacon, aiming to settle disputes between some of the colonists and the Doeg Indian tribe, led a group of frontiersmen in raids against local Indian villages. Anxious to calm the situation and to preserve regulated trade with the Indians, Governor Berkeley ordered

Bacon's Rebellion in 1675-76 against a governor appointed by the far-away English king was a forerunner of the Revolutionary War 100 years later.

Bacon to stop the raids, but Bacon refused. Berkeley eventually defeated the rebel forces, but Bacon's uprising against a governor who served as the English king's proxy was a forerunner of the American Revolutionary War 100 years later.

Just as Virginia's General Assembly took on a parliamentary profile, so did the general assemblies of the other 12 colonies that would eventually join Virginia in forming the United States of America. "You can say that the [Virginia] General Assembly is one of the 13 models" for the Continental Congress that served as governing body for the colonies, "and even for the Congress we have today," says Billings.

The Founding Fathers of the United States-men such as George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson-served in their states' general assemblies and brought a wealth of legislative experience to their roles as progenitors of a new nation, Billings notes.

"But Virginia is the place where it starts. And much of what the United States has been about" revolves around the question of "who and what is an American; that conversation started in Jamestown, and continues to this day with our debate on immigration," he says. That debate "is messy, it's raucous, at times it's violent and ugly, but it never ceases."

Captain John Smith trading with the Powhatan Indians. The colonists had to earn money or lose their support from the British crown. At first most spent their time looking for gold, and when starvation loomed, Smith urged them to begin farming.

Jamestown in 1614. Besides the fort and houses, the settlers set up pottery, brick production, silk and wine making, ice harvesting and copper industries.

Jamestown can even be linked, "in a very general sense," to the emergence of new democracies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, says Billings. The impulse toward representative government that now prevails in much of the world "is part of that longterm tradition" that Jamestown symbolizes, he adds.

Kevin Kelly, a historian at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, says that when 17th-century legislators met in Jamestown, "they were beginning to tailor their laws to fit circumstances that were peculiar to colonial life."

Unfortunately, one of those circumstances was slavery, a particularly tragic and troublesome aspect of Virginia's patrimony, says Kelly. The General Assembly's attempts to grapple with racial matters were constrained by many landowners' dependence on a system of forced servitude.

By the 18th century, the lower chamber of the Assembly "became the dominant chamber," since the burgesses far outnumbered the governor's advisory council, says Kelly. Members of today's U.S. House of Representatives-the lower chamber of the U.S. Congress--outnumber the members of the U.S. Senate, or upper chamber, by 435 to 100. Power is now evenly shared between the two, however.

Dr. Lawrence Bohun arrived in June 1610 and experimented with using native plants, herbs, extracts and minerals, seeking remedies for Old World and New World diseases.

Second State house and outbuildings in the new town.

Jamestown remained an important community as the capital of Virginia for 92 years.

Asked whether the Jamestown venture can be viewed as a precursor to the growing global trend toward democratic governance, Kelly agrees that nascent democracies around the world do owe a debt to Jamestown, though indirectly. Jamestown was instrumental "in the development of our [American] kind of self-governance," he says. "And the spread of democracy is evident not only in the growing number of representative governments, but in the fact that most countries now want to be perceived as democratic, since there is a stigma attached to undemocratic regimes. This acts as a pressure in favor of reforms."

Historians will doubtless continue to examine the legacy of the Jamestown settlement, in all its complexity and ambiguity. But perhaps Jamestown's (and Virginia's) place in U.S. history can best be summed up in the words of a 1907 Virginia guidebook, which cites Jamestown as "the sire of Virginia, and Virginia the mother of this great Republic." http://www.jamestown2007.org/

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Lauren Monsen is a USINFO staff writer.

Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

Tobacco seeds from the West Indies grew well in the Virginia soil and this is still an important cash crop for the state.

ialJrnsB_ From the very beginning, they sought freedom. homes in South Asia. It's likely they hailed from ports in Bengal, Madras, Pondicherry, Malabar, Mumbai and Goa as well as Mauritius, Madagascar and South Africa, where the ships routinely sailed.

Much of the evidence of South Asians in early America is found in old newspaper advertisements seeking help to retrieve runaway slaves.

On July 13, 1776, the Virginia Gazette reported the escape of a "Servant Man named John Newton, about 20 Years of Age, 5 s America celebrates its 400th anniversary this year, feet 5 or 6 Inches high, slender made, is an Asiatic Indian by among the population are descendants of South Asians Birth, has been about twelve Months in Virginia, but lived ten whose history extends back 375 years to colonial Virginia: Years (as he says) in England, in the Service of Sir Charles people referred to in court documents of the time as "East Whitworth. He wears long black Hair, which inclines to curl, tied Indians" or "Asiatic Indians." They came to be identified behind, and pinned up at the Sides ... He left his Master on the variously as "Mullato" "Negro" and "colored" in the ethnic Road from Williamsburg, between King William Courthouse and cauldron that was evolving in America, losing much of their Todd's Bridge, where he was left behind to come on slowly with racial distinctiveness with each passing generation, merging a tired Horse ..." The advertisement goes on: "He is a good into the African American community, and largely unaware of Barber and Hair-Dresser, it is probable he may endeavour to foltheir links to the Indian subcontinent. low those Occupations as a free Man. Whoever takes up the said But two decades of meticulous research by members of this Servant, and secures him in Gaol, giving me information therepopulation group, historians and sociologists has produced of, so that I may get him again, shall have eight dollars Reward; exciting evidence of not only their presence in early America, and if delivered to me ...further reasonable Charges, paid by but their driving desire to emulate in their own lives what would William Brown." become the ethos of this "new" land-a striving for personal It appears that Newton made good his escape. Brown placed freedom. Research suggests that South Asians were transported another ad six days later, raising the reward to $10. as indentured servants or as slaves by Dutch, French, English More such snippets are compiled by Thomas Costa, a history and, later, American trading vessels. Yet the records of county professor at the University of Virginia's College at Wise, for the courts along the eastern coast show that many ofthese transportVirginia Center for Digital History and Electronic Text Center. ed "East Indians" were soon suing their "masters" to regain their http:// etext.lib. virginia.edu/ subj ects/runaways/allrecords .htrnl freedom or simply running away.

At the heart of the early migration to colonial America was There is considerable evidence that seamen were recruited the headright system designed to encourage immigration. Every from Indian ports by European trading Englishman who "imported" a laborer ships, and, on reaching Europe, sucor servant to the colony received a 20hectare land grant. Each "head" gave cumbed to the promises of agents who enlisted indentured workers for the the importer a "right" to land; thus, headright.

New World. Or they were taken as servants by East India Company offiA 2006 archaeological report from cials who returned home to England "C1WA~atF. w13icb..j',s路loD.g!;utdbJaek. and thence to the newly established8 .hA, .' ~'''Y$I:)''Qyilo()k.;r::B'~,a,~~- An advertisement from the Virginia colonies in America. We will never ~ 3b!e~I'.t9t路 ile~tee~ ~ f.eward:of Gazette in 1768 seeking an East Indian who had escaped from a slaveholder. know their true names or their original ~ t~\:>.路Vt~ 'lth~ ~

The first South Asians may have been brought to Virginia within a generation of the arrival of European settlers-as early as 1624.

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The 1935 reunion of the Pettiford-Weaver family. This annual reunion was started by Martha Weaver Pettiford and her husband, Joseph. She was the daughter of Henry Weaver, a freeman who started the Weaver settlement in Indiana. Their ancestor Richard Weaver, an East Indian born about 1675, lived in Lancaster County, Virginia.

the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation identifies George Menefie as a wealthy English merchant who was assigned 485 hectares in Williamsburg, near Jamestown. He arrived in Virginia in 1622, and obtained a right to the land by paying passage for 24 immigrants, including an East Indian, named Tony, identified as a headright. Menefie got land in Jamestown in the same fashion. This evidence suggests that the first South Asians may have been brought to Virginia within a generation of the arrival of European settlers-as early as 1624.

There is more evidence from Paul Heinegg, a retired engineer in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, a leading archival researcher and author. He has spent 20 years investigating primary sources to reconstruct the geneologies of people of color in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina and South Carolina.

"Many people from India lived in England and came to the colonies as servants. I found a number who sued for their freedom in Maryland and some in Virginia. They blended into the free African American population," says Heinegg.

His principal sources are the colonial-era county court order and minute books-nearly 1,000 manu-.~ script volumes now preserved on microfilm. Also ~ important are the national tax lists, deeds, wills and ~ estate accounts, late 18th- and 19th-century free Negro; Registers, marriage bonds, colonial parish registers, ~ census records, newspapers, and Revolutionary War j pension files. gal Heinegg chronicles the earliest Indian American fam- ~ ily trees in his book Free African Americans of North ~ Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina. In March 2007, Heinegg added to his Web site additional information on indentured servants and slaves from India: www.freeafricanamericans. comlEast Indians.htrn Here are some examples of his finds in colonial records: Lancaster County: William Weaver, born say 1686, and Jack Weaver, East Indy Indians, sued Thomas Pinkard for their freedom in Lancaster County court on 13 August 1707. The court allowed them five days time to produce evidence relating to their freedom but ordered them not to depart the county to some remote county without giving security to return to their master within the time allowed. Neither party appeared for the trial on 10 March 1707/8.

Richmond County: 6 February 1705/6, Petition of Sembo, an East India Indian Servant to Jno. Lloyd, Esq., for his freedom.

Petition of Moota, an East India Indian, servant to Capt. Thomas Beale, surviving executor of Mr. William Colston, deced., for his freedom ...ordered and judged that said Moota be free ...ordered and adjudged that said Sembo be free.

Westmoreland County: March 1708, Will an East India Indian late a supposed slave to Mr. Danll Neale by his Petition to

this Court setting forth that some tyme in yeare 1689 being fraudulently trappand out of his Native Country in the East Indies and thence transported to England and soon after brought into this Country and sold as a slave to Mr. Christopher Neale deceased father of his sd present Master And that hee had ever since faithfully served the sd Christopher and Daniel Notwithstanding which the sd Daniel though often demanded denied him his freedome And the sd Daniel being summoned to answer the sd complaint appeared and both parties Submitted the whole matter of the complaint to the Court All which being maturely & fully heard It is considered by the Court that the sd Will ought not to have been sold as a slave and that he is a freeman.

Stafford County: Martha Gamby, born say 1675, was an (East) Indian woman living in England on 5 January 1701/2 when Henry Conyers made an agreement with her that she

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Lance Weaver (second from left) with his nephews and niece at their 1939 family reunion in Marion, Indiana. He is the eighth generation descendant of East Indian Richard Weaver of Lancaster, Virginia.

would serve him in Virginia on condition that he would pay her passage back to England if she wished to return within the following four years. The agreement was recorded in Stafford County court about 1704.

Such documentation provides historians with indisputable evidence for the earliest historical link between people from the Indian subcontinent and America. This allows Asian Americans and African Americans, particularly those with South Asian ancestry, to re-vision their history and claim their full heritage. ~ Francis C. Assisi, based in Kochi, Kerala, received a South Asian Journalists Association award in 2006 for a series on South Asians in the U.S. Civil War published at indolink.com. He is working on a book documenting the early history of South Asians in America. Research assistant Elizabeth F. Pothen contributed to this article.

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In 1932, an American archaeologist identified distinctive spearheads associated with mammoth skeletons near Clovis, in the state of New Mexico. The discovery supported an emerging realization that humans lived with the now-extinct ice age creatures in areas that are now part of the United States.

You were probably taught that the Western Hemisphere's first people came from Siberia across a long-gone land bridge. Now a sea route looks increasingly likely, from South Asia or even Europe. outsix kilometers from the tiny cattle town of Florence, Texas, a narrow dirt road winds across parched limestone, through juniper, prickly pear nd stunted oaks, and drops down to a creek. A lush parkland of shade trees offers welcome relief from the 38-degree Celsius heat of summer. Running beside the creek for just over a kilometer is a swath of chipped, gray stone flakes and soil blackened by cooking fires-thousands of years of cooking fires. This blackened earth, covering 16 hectares, and almost 1.8 meters thick in places, marks a settlement dating back as far as the last ice age 13,000 years ago, when mammoths, giant sloths and saber-toothed cats roamed the North American wilderness.

Since archaeologists began working here systematically [10] years ago, they have amassed an astonishing collection of early prehistoric artifacts-nearly half a million so far. Among these are large, stone spearheads skillfully flaked on both sides to give an elegant, leaf-shaped appearance. These projectiles, found by archaeologists throughout North America and as far south as Costa Rica, are known as Clovis points, and their makers, who lived roughly 12,500 to 13,500 years ago, are known as Clovis people, after the town in the state of New Mexico near where the first such point was identified some seven decades ago.

A visit to the Gault site-named after the

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family who owned the land when the site was first investigated in 1929-along the cottonwood- and walnut-shaded creek in central Texas raises two monumental questions. The first, of course, is: Who were these people? The emerging answer is that they were not simple-minded big game hunters as they have often been depicted.

Rather, they led a less nomadic and more sophisticated life than previously believed.

The second question-Where did they

Canada, California and Chile; from Siberia; and even, most controversially, from France and Spain. The possibility that the fust people in the Americas came from Europe is the boldest proposal among a host of new ideas. According to University of Texas at Austin archaeologist Michael Collins, the chief excavator of the Gault site, "You couldn't have a more exciting time to be involved in the whole issue of the peopling of the

The question-Where did they come from?-lies at the center of one of archaeology's most contentious debates. come from?-lies at the center of one of archaeology's most contentious debates.

The standard view holds that Clovis people were the fust to enter the Americas, migrating from Siberia 13,500 years ago by a now-submerged land bridge across the Bering Strait. This view has been challenged recently by a wide range of discoveries, including an astonishingly well-preserved site in South America predating the supposed migration by at least 1,000 years.

Researchers delving into the origins question have sought to make sense of archaeological finds far and wide, from

Americas. You can't write a paper on it and get it published before it's out of date.

Surprising new finds keep rocking the boat and launching fresh waves of debate."

For prehistoric people, one of the chief attractions of the Gault site was a knobby outcrop of a creamy white rock called chert, which conceals a fine, gray, glasslike interior. If struck expertly with a stone or antler tool, the rock fractures in predictable ways, yielding a Clovis point.

In the end, each spearhead has distinctive grooves, or "flutes," at the base of each face and was fastened to a wooden shaft

with sinew and resin.

Ancient pollen and soil clues tell archaeologists that the climate in Clovisera Texas was cooler, drier and more tolerable than today's summertime cauldron.

Vast herds of mammoths, bison, horses and antelope ranged on the grasslands southeast of Gault, and deer and turkeys inhabited the plateau to the west. Along the creek, based on bones found at the site, Clovis hunters also preyed on frogs, birds, turtles and other small animals.

This abundance of food, coupled with the exceptional quality of the chert, drew people to Gault in large numbers. Unlike the majority of Clovis sites, which are mostly the remains of temporary camps, Gault appears to have been inhabited over long periods and thus contradicts the standard view that Clovis people were always highly mobile, nomadic hunters. Collins says that of the vast quantity of artifacts found at the site, many are tool fragments, left behind by people who'd stuck around

long enough to not only break their tools but also to salvage and rework them. The researchers also unearthed a two by two meter square of gravel-perhaps the floor of a house-and a possible well, both signs of more than a fleeting presence.

Another clue was concealed on a 13,000year-old Clovis blade about the size of a dinner knife. Under a magnifYing lens, the blade's edge is glossy, rounded and smooth.

Marilyn Shoberg, a stone tool analyst on the Gault team who has experimented with replicas, says the blade's polish probably came from cutting grass. This grass could have been used for basketry, bedding, or thatching to make roofs for huts.

Among the most unusual and tantalizing finds at the Gault site are 100 or so fragments of limestone covered with lightly scratched patterns. Some resemble nets or basketry, while a few could be simple outlines of plants or animals.

Although only a dozen can be securely dated to Clovis times, these enigmatic

Arc aeologist om Dillehay recov ed three human foo prints, two chunks uneaten mastodon meat and possibly even traces of herbal medicine.

Digging at the Gault site in central Texas has almost doubled the number of Clovis artifacts excavated in North America. Researchers there have also uncovered evidence of ice age art.

rocks are among the very few surviving artworks from ice age America.

"What this site tells us is that Clovis folks were not specialized mammoth hunters constantly wandering over the landscape," says Collins. "They exploited a variety of animals, they had tools for gathering plants and working wood, stone and hide, and they stayed through the useful life of those tools. All these things are contrary to what you'd expect if they were highly nomadic, dedicated big-game hunters." Yet this unexpected complexity sheds only a feeble glimmer on the more contentious issue of where the Clovis people came from and how they got here.

In the old scenario, still popular in classrooms and picture books, fur-clad hunters in the waning moments of the last ice age, when so much seawater was locked up in the polar ice caps that the sea level was as much as 90 meters lower than today, ventured across a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. Then, pursuing big game, the hunters trekked south through present-day Canada. They passed down a narrow, 1,600-kilometer-Iong treeless corridor bounded by the towering walls of retreating ice sheets until they

reached the Great Plains, which teemed with prey. The human population exploded, and the hunters soon drove into extinction some 35 genera of big animals.

All of these were supposedly dispatched by the Clovis point, a Stone Age weapon of mass destruction.

For more than half a century, this plausible, "big-game" theory carried with it an appealing, heroic image. As James Adovasio of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania puts it in his book The First Americans, it was as if the ice sheets had parted "like the Red Sea for some Clovis Moses to lead his intrepid band of speartoting, mammoth-slaying wayfarers to the south." But recent discoveries are indicating that almost everything about the theory could be wrong. For one thing, the latest studies show that the ice-free corridor didn't exist until around 12,000 years ago-too late to have served as the route for the very first people to come to America.

Perhaps the strongest ammunition against the old scenario comes from Monte Verde, an archaeological site on a remote terrace, which is today some 60 kilometers from the Pacific in southern Chile. Here, about 14,500 years ago, a hunting-and-gathering band lived yearround beside a creek in a long, oval hide tent, partitioned with logs. Archaeologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee began probing Monte Verde in 1977, unearthing the surface of the ancient encampment, complete with wood, plants and even remains of food, all preserved under a layer of waterlogged peat. Dillehay recovered three human footprints, two chunks of uneaten mastodon meat and possibly even traces of herbal medicine (indicated by nonfoodj plants still used by healers in the Andes).

The dating of these extraordinary finds, at least 1,000 years before the earliest Clovis sites in North America, aroused skepticism for two decades until, in 1997, a group of leading archaeologists inspected the site and vindicated Dillehay's meticulous work.

No such triumph has emerged for any of the dozen or so sites in North America claimed to predate Clovis. But among the most intriguing is a rock overhang in Pennsylvania called Meadowcroft, where a 30-year campaign of excavation suggests

that htmters may have reached the Northeast 3,000 or 4,000 years before the Clovis era.

Meanwhile, genetic studies are pointing even more strongly to an early entry into the continent. By analyzing the mitochondrial DNA of living Native Americans, Douglas Wallace, a geneticist at the University of California at Irvine, and his colleagues have identified five distinct lineages that stretch back like family trees.

Mitochondria are the cells' energy factories. Their DNA changes very little from one generation to the next, altered only by tiny variations that creep in at a steady and predictable rate. By counting the number of these variations in related lineages, Wallace's team can estimate their ages.

When the team applied this technique to the DNA of Native Americans, they reached the stunning conclusion that there were at least four separate waves of prehistoric migration into the Americas, the earliest well over 20,000 years ago.

If the first Americans did arrive well before the oldest known Clovis settlements, Clovis people buried caches of tools.

Some stashed points were crafted from exotic stone, others seem too big and thin to have functioned as weapons.

One cache (below) was found with a child's bones, suggesting that burying tools could be a ritual act.

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how did they get here? The most radical theory for the peopling of the New World argues that Stone Age mariners journeyed from Europe around the southern fringes of the great ice sheets in the North Atlantic.

Many archaeologists greet this idea with head-shaking scorn, but the proposition is getting harder to dismiss outright.

Dennis Stanford, a Clovis expert at the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Anthropology who delights in prodding his colleagues with unconventional thinking, was a longtime supporter of the land bridge scenario. Then, with the end of the Cold War came the chance to visit archaeological sites and museums in Siberiamuseums that should have been filled with tools that were predecessors of the Clovis point. "The result was a big disappointment," says Stanford. "What we found was nothing like we expected, and I was surprised that the technologies were so different." Instead of a single leafshaped Clovis spearhead, ice age Siberian hunters made projectiles that were bristling with rows of tiny razor-like blades embedded in wooden shafts. To Stanford, that meant no Siberian hunters armed with Clovis technology had walked to the Americas.

Meanwhile, Bruce Bradley, a prehistoric stone tool specialist at Britain's

University of Exeter, had noticed a strong Critics of the theory point to a yawning the burning question is: Did these ice age Virginians invent the Clovis point all by resemblance between Clovis points and gap between the two peoples: roughly themselves, or were they descendants of weapons from ice age Europe. But the 5,000 years divide the end of Solutrean culture and the emergence of Clovis. But Solutreans who brought the point with idea that the two cultures might be directly connected was heretical. "It certainly Stanford and Bradley say that recent them from Europe?

Many archaeologists ridicule the notion wasn't part of the scientific process at that claims of pre-Clovis sites in the southeastern United States may bridge the time that people made an arduous, 4,800-kilopoint," Bradley says. "There was no possibility, forget it, don't even think about gap. In the mid-1990s at Cactus Hill, the meter journey during the bleakest period it." Bradley eventually pursued it to the remains of an ancient sand dune overof the ice age, when the Atlantic would have been much colder and stormier than storerooms of the Musee National de looking the Nottoway River on Virginia's today. Stanford believes that traditional Prehistoire in Les Eyzies-de- Tayac in coastal plain, project director Joseph Inuit technology suggests otherwise; he southwest France, where he pored through McAvoy dug down a few inches beneath has witnessed traditional seagoboxes of local prehistoric stone ing skills among Inupiat commutools and waste flakes. "I was nities in Barrow, Alaska. Inupiat absolutely flabbergasted," he Dennis Stanford (left) and Bruce Bradley say that hunters still build large skin-covrecalls. "If somebody had brought similarities between Clovis and Solutrean finds (below) are overwhelming. ered canoes, or umiaks, which out a box of this stuff in the enable them to catch seals, walUnited States and set it down in front of me, I'd have said, 'Man, . ~ rus and other sea mammals that ~ abound along the frozen edges of where did you get all that great Clovis stufl'?'" But the material .~ the pack ice. When twilight was the work of a culture called ~ arrives or storms threaten, the ~ hunters pull their boats up on the the Solutrean that thrived in south.~ ice and camp beneath them. west France and northern Spain I ~ Ronald Brower of the Inupiat during the coldest spell of the ice age, from around 24,000 to 19,000 ~ Heritage Center in Barrow says, ~ "There's nothing that would have years ago. ~ prevented ... people from crossing Thousands of years before their ~ the Atlantic into the Americas successors created the masterworks of Lascaux and Altamira, l19,000 years ago. It would be a ii perfectly normal situation from Solutrean-age artists began painting vivid murals in the depths of ~ my perspective."

6 A different critique of the outcaves such as Cougnac and of-Europe theory dismisses the Cosquer. They made delicate, eyed resemblance between Solutrean sewing needles out of bone, and Clovis points. Many archaeenabling them to stitch tightfitting ologists suggest that similarities skin garments to repel the cold. between Clovis and Solutrean They devised the atlat!, or spear thrower, a hooked bone or wood artifacts are coincidental, the handle that extends the reach of result of what they call converthe hunter's arm to multiply gence. "These were people faced throwing power. But their most with similar problems," says distinctive creation was a stone Solutrean expert Lawrence spearhead shaped like a laurel leaf.

Straus of the University of New Apart from the absence of a fluted base, a Clovis layer and uncovered simple Mexico. "And the problems involved the Solutrean laurel leaf strongly resemhunting large- and medium-sized game stone blades and projectile points associbles the Clovis point and was made using ated with a hearth, radiocarbon dated to with a similar, limited range of raw matethe same, highly skillful flaking techrials-stone, bone, ivory, antler, wood some 17,000 to 19,000 years ago. This nique. Both Clovis and Solutrean stone startlingly early date has drawn skeptical and sinew. They're going to come up with crafters practiced controlled overshot fire, but the site's age was confirmed by similar solutions." flaking, which involved trimming one More tellingly, in Straus' view, is that an independent dating technique. edge by striking a flake off the opposite Stanford and Bradley suggest that the he can find little evidence of seafaring technology in the Solutrean sites he has side, a virtuoso feat of handiwork rarely early people at Cactus Hill were Clovis dug in northern Spain. Although rising seen in other prehistoric cultures. To forerunners who had not yet developed sea levels have drowned sites on the ice Bradley, "there had to be some sort of his- the full-blown Clovis style. They are contoric connection" between the Solutrean vinced that many more sites like Cactus age coastline, Straus has investigated surHill will turn up on the East Coast. But and Clovis peoples. viving inland cave sites no more than a

couple of hours' walk from the beach.

"There's no evidence of deep-sea fishing," says Straus, "no evidence of marine mammal hunting, and consequently no evidence, even indirect, for their possession of seaworthy boats."

And David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and a critic of the European-origins idea, is struck more by the differences between the Solutrean and Clovis cultures than their similarities-particularly the near-absence of art and personal ornaments from Clovis. Still, he says, the controversy is good for the field. "In the process of either killing or curing" the theory, "we will have learned a whole lot more about the archaeological record, and we'll all come out smarter than we went in."

Besides crossing the land bridge from Asia and traveling to ice age America from Europe by boat, a third possible entryway is a sea route down the west coast. Using maritime skills later perfected by the Inuit, prehistoric South Asians might have spread gradually around the northern rim of the Pacific in small skincovered boats. They skirt the southern edge of the Bering land bridge and paddle down the coast of Alaska, dodging calving glaciers and icebergs as they pursue seals and other marine mammals. They keep going all the way to the beaches of Central and South America. They arrive at Monte Verde, inland from the Chilean coast, some 14,500 years ago. Each new generation claims fresh hunting grounds a few kilometers beyond the last, and in a matter of centuries these first immigrants have populated the entire west coast of the Americas. Soon the hunters start moving inland and, in the north, their descendants become the Clovis people.

Many archaeologists now accept the west coast theory as a likely solution to the

Prehistoric outh Asians might have spread gradually around the northern rim of the Pacific' small skin-covered boats. origin of the earliest Americans. On Prince of Wales Island in southeastern Alaska, inside the aptly named On Your Knees Cave, University of South Dakota paleontologist Timothy Heaton and University of Colorado at Boulder archaeologist E. James Dixon recovered an accumulation of animal bones from the last ice age.

When mile-high ice sheets still straddled the interior of the continent 17,000 years ago, ringed seals, foxes and seabirds made their home on the island. "Humans could easily have survived there," Heaton says.

The ultimate evidence for the western sea route would be the discovery of preClovis human remains on the coast. No such luck. Dixon and Heaton have found human jaw fragments and other remains in the On Your Knees Cave, but those date to about 11,000 years ago-too recent to establish the theory. And what may be the oldest-known human remains in North America-leg bones found on Santa Rosa Island, off the California coast-are from 13,000 years ago, the heart of the Clovis era. Still, those remains hint that by then people were plying the waters along the Pacific Coast.

If the trail of the very earliest American remains elusive, so, too, does the origin of the Clovis point. "Although the technology needed to produce a Clovis point was found among other cultures during the ice age," says Ken Tankersley of

The Clovis spearhead could be the first great American invention, a trademark tool that would be widely imitated.

Northern Kentucky University, "the actual point itself is unique to the Americas, suggesting that it was invented here in the New World." If so, the spearhead would be the first great American inventionthe Stone Age equivalent of the Swiss Army Knife, a trademark tool that would be widely imitated. The demand for the weapon and the high-quality stone it required probably encouraged Clovis people to begin long distance trading and social exchanges. The spearhead may also have delivered a new level of hunting proficiency and this, in turn, would have fueled a population spurt, giving Clovis people their lasting presence in the archaeological record.

Sheltering from the broiling heat under the cottonwoods at Gault, Michael Collins told me of his conviction that the Clovis people who flocked to the shady creek were not pioneers but had profited from a long line of forebears. "Clovis represents the end product of centuries, if not millennia, of learning how to live in North American environments," he said.

"The Clovis culture is too widespread, is found in too many environments, and has too much evidence for diverse activities to be the leavings of people just corning into the country." Collins reminded me that his team has investigated less than LO percent of the enormous site. And archaeologists have barely scratched the surface of a handful of other Gault-size, Clovisera sites-Williamsburg, in Virginia, for instance, or Shoop, in Pennsylvania.

"One thing you can be sure," he said, beaming, "there'll be great new discoveri_e_s_ju_s_t_a_r_oun_d_th_e_c_o_rn_er_.'_' ---~ Evan Hadingham is the senior science editor of the PBS series NOVA and author of books on prehistory.

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Left: Shop selling Bollywood movies and CDs in Jackson Heights, New York.

Right: Commuters on a rainy evening on Lexington Avenue in New York.

Below: Passengers waiting for the bus at the Greyhound station in New York.

An Indian's Bus Journey

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he United States: it's on TV, on the radio, its flag is on everyone's T-shirts.

In my mind, it was cowboys, hamburgers, football, the Statue of Liberty and so many other things. But all I had was an image, not reality.

Just where does Hollywood's fantasy end and the reality of living, working and knowing the United States begin?

I grew up in India, Africa and the Middle East, but never knew when I would actually

see the United States. All that changed when I fell in love and got married to an American.

Suddenly, the United States became my home. After I arrived in San Francisco in late 2006, I knew I had to leam fast-the people, the culture, the mannerisms and everything that made the place "American."

So I suggested: Let's travel across the country on a Greyhound bus.

To my wife, a die-hard coastal dweller, the interior of the United

States was one great big question mark that held Texas, Chicago and lots of com.

"What does Kansas look like?" she wondered. I figured we should go and fmd out.

But family, friends, and even the staff at the Greyhound bus company counter rolled their eyes when they heard of our plan. Ask your average American about the Greyhound bus (or, unaffectionately, "The Dog") and you'll likely get a sneer, some-

times coupled with a groan.

As a recent immigrant from India, where economical transportation often equals wooden seats and break-neck honking, I had a different reaction. The Greyhound was a cheap, comfortable, convenient and lifechanging way to experience the United States for the first time. With 3,100 destinations in North America, I could go anywhere on the bus.

So, after long discussions at our . local ticket office in Eureka, in northern California, we devised an epic trip from New York to Los Angeles.

Charles at the ticket counter slogged over his computer, and got us a great deal-$165 for each ticket with almost a month's worth of stops along the way. The 29-day, over 5,600-kilometer trip cost us around $2,750 including hotel stays, food and entertainment.

Beat that, Internet.

The Beginning: New York CiIV We flew to New York City to start our trip on November 1.

It reminded me of Mumbai, the city where I was born. The ever moving mass of people, the hustle and shove at the train

stations, and the dream of making it big in The Big Apple.

I consider myself to be a city boy, but initially I was intimidated by New York. The city seemed to be living on 24hour-a-day pulsating energy.

The millions of lights on the countless billboards in Times Square, every man on the street in a stylish suit, every woman in top-of-the-line clothes and calf-length boots. And every New Yorker seemed to have perfected the haute attitude. I walked by a man in a pinstriped suit sitting and drinking coffee outside a cafe. He was barking on his cell phone, "Don't call me here; I'm busy."

Brooklvn Staying at our friends' house in Brooklyn, one of the five boroughs, or districts, of New York City, I read the book The Mole People by journalist Jennifer Toth. It is about the life of, she says, thousands of people who live underground in the old tunnels of the subway, or metropolitan train system. Though the. book has been criticized for its exaggerations and factual errors, it is true that a lot of people live in the tunnels, and I saw small signs of their presence, graffiti and blankets, as I whizzed past in the trains.

Budding musicians, newspa-

per and food stalls and commuters share the same trains in their daily pursuit of success.

Exploring the art and architecture at the stations of the 100year-old system is fun, too. I spent a substantial amount of my metro card just to see these stations, and would say that 77th Street, 36th Street, BroadwaylNassau Street and 14th StreetlUnion Square are worth exploring for their tile mosaics and art deco sensibility.

Beyond the glamor and glitter of midtown, each neighborhood of New York has its own identity. Wandering through Chinatown, the largest in the United States, reminded me of

Far left: People buy fruit in New York's Chinatown.

Left: Ice skating in Bryant Park, New York.

Bangkok. The streets narrowed down into alleys, English was no longer the official language, bargaining was acceptable, and the delectable smell of dimsum and Peking duck wafted through the air. Jackson Heights-with its incense, multi-color churidars, Bollywood songs and tandoori chicken-resembled Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi. Then there was the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop music and one of the centers, with Harlem, of African American culture in New York.

Brooklyn, with its red brick townhouses, is home to the Irish and Hassidic Jews. A trip

to New York is like going around the world, and if you're lucky, you will hear 170 languages.

First night on the Grevhound My wife had told me that Greyhound bus stations were mostly small, one-room affairs.

The buses were supposedly empty and slightly dirty. But the Greyhound station at the Port Authority in New York was bigger than an average mid-town airport, with multiple departure gates.

The bus itself was clean, and the well padded reclining seats were a luxury compared to many of the government-

run buses in India. So far, so good. But en route, the first misery unfolded. At every major stop, passengers had to leave the bus (ostensibly for cleaning) and board again even if it was 3 a.m. This is the worst thing about the bus; if you can deal with it, you can enjoy the ride.

Washington, D.C. I have lived most of my life in capital cities: Dar Es Salaam, New Delhi, Trivandrum.

I always thought the sheer amount of power politics made the city and its inhabitants stereotypically guarded.

Yet Washington came across

to me as a friendly city, more relaxed than New York. People knew that they had the power, but didn't flaunt it, another contrast to New Delhi.

Maybe the architecture of the city had something to do with the cool attitude. The mostly neo-classical style government buildings, absence of tall skyscrapers, and rows of colorful townhouses left an impression.

We had reached Washington on Veterans Day (November 11), the day America remembers its soldiers. Hiking up the solemn hills to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, just outside the capital, I felt I was reading the history of America etched in stone. As the sun set, we watched the changing of the guard, a starkly simple ceremony that held meaning in every click of the soldiers' boots.

Washington also has something that I think no city in the world can offer, the famous Below left: A family has lunch under the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Across the river is Manhattan.

Center: A sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D.C. Below: A view of Capitol Hill from Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Right: The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. Right below: Chuck Berry performs at the Blueberry Hill club in St. Louis.

Smithsonian Museums. A friend had told me that one needs to dedicate three weeks to see all the museums. When my wife had to push me out of the National Museum of Natural History after five hours, I believed. I had seen only one of the 15 museums!

Multicultural USA Waiting for the bus at the Washington, D.C. Greyhound station, I got my taste of the

true diversity of America. We chatted with a middle-aged white nurse, a Ghanaian from London, and a hunter from Alabama. Somehow, the conversation turned toward strange foods. The Ghanaian claimed to have eaten cat, a delicacy in his country, and the Alabama man compared its taste to possum and raccoon that his family shot in the forest. The nurse and I had both tried snake, and concluded that it did, in fact, taste just like chicken. My wife looked a bit

SI. louis, Missouri

in the United States. But I still found St. Louis, stretching along the banks of the impressive Mississippi River, to be one of the most relaxed cities I have been to. Everything seemed to move in slow motion and the streets were never crowded.

The most famous site is the 190-meter tall Gateway Arch.

Standing under it, the arch looked as if it was in perpetual motion, and the steel assumed a different personality with every change of weather.

A tour of St. Louis isn't complete, however, without seeing the beautiful Union Station, tasting beer at Budweiser's national headquarters and listening to rock and roll legend Chuck Berry at the historic Blueberry Hill club. Berry is one of the men credited with inventing rock and roll in the 1950s, with such hits as "Johnny B. Goode."

Getting to see the 80-year-old Berry sing and dance in his famous one-legged hop in the Duck Room in the basement of the club needs some luck or planning.

We were lucky: Berry happened to be playing the same week we were in town. Though the tickets were a pricey $25, we would not have missed it for the world.

And let me tell you, the man left the standing room-only crowd breathless.

A..

---~

We were advised by many people to be careful while traveling in St. Louis; the city has one of the highest crime rates

Sebastian John is an Indian writer/photographer who recently emigrated to the United States and lives in Washington, D.C.

sick during the entire conversation, but we all had a good laugh and I felt a little more connected to the American mosaic.

Continued in the July-August 2007 issue: Denver, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Los Angeles

With dual-earner couples making up more than half of married couples in the United States, men are playing a more active role in raising their children. Since the mid-1960s, there has been a tripling of time fathers devote to child care.

Family Roles are Changing As women's earnings boost household income, men pitch in more at home. ual-earner couples, in which both the wife and husband hold paying jobs, make up more than half of married couples in the United States, and their share of all couples is expected to increase in the next decade. Although dual-earner couples have bolstered family incomes, they also have had to find creative ways to nurture family life.

The U.S. Labor Department reports that, in 57 percent of married couples, husbands and wives work. Coping with two jobs and rearing children leaves many couples, such as Michael Goldstein and Joanne Pratt, hard-pressed to find time together; Goldstein and Pratt work full-time at adjacent schools in Massachusetts: Goldstein teaches finance at Babson College, and Pratt, biology at Olin College. The couple juggles class schedules to care for their 6-year-old daughter, but work affects their relationship, too, because Pratt has to spend many hours in the lab. "It's been a long-time frustration that I have no clue what she does," Goldstein says.

So in January, Pratt organized a weeklong biology course for faculty and included her husband. It was a way to spend time together, she said, and she learned that Goldstein has a "natural aptitude for sciences."

Experts say the share of dual-earner couples will increase. Wives' incomes help maintain living standards, says David Cross, director of Market Outlook, an economic adviser to manufacturers and retailers. Although surveys of college women point to their desire to stay home when they eventually have children, "the

I

economics won't work for the vast majority," he says.

In 1979, women who worked full-time earned 63 percent as much as their male counterparts. By 2006, they earned 81 percent of what men earned. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports that since the early 1980s, the largest narrowing in this "wage gap" among member countries occurred in the United States.

The 30-member OECD represents most of the world's industrialized nations.

Wives' earnings contribute 35 percent offamily income in the United States, and in one-third of dual-earning couples, the wife brings home the bigger paycheck.

Men are changing diapers As women's earnings have bolstered family income, men's behavior has changed.

According to the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, men do seven hours of housework per week, double what they did in 1968.

(Women still put in many more hours of housework than do men.)

Since the mid-1960s, there has been a tripling of time fathers devote to child care, says Suzanne Bianchi, a University of Maryland sociologist and co-author of Changing Rhythms of American Family Life. "Men married to employed wives really are doing basics~feeding, bathing, taking [children] to the doctor," she says.

When Sarah Crawford, a Washington attorney, had a baby, she took four months of unpaid leave before returning to work.

Then her husband, David Uy, took leave

if>

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.s~ ~

l to watch the baby. He found he could do some work at b home while caring for his son, so he quit his full-time Š

n the United States, Mother's Day has been celebrated on the second Sunday in Mayas an official holiday since 1915, though the idea of "Mothering Sunday" had been brought to America by immigrants from England, where it began in the 18th century as a day for household servants to visit their mothers, Its establishment as an American holiday is due largely to the perseverance and love of one daughter, Anna Jarvis. Her mother had provided strength and support as the family made their home in West Virginia and before that, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where her father served as a church minister. As a girl, Anna had helped her mother take, care of the garden, mostly filled with white carnations, her mother's favorite flower. When her mother died on May 5, 1905, Anna encouraged her church minister in West Virginia to give a sermon in her mother's memory, On the same Sunday, back home in Philadelphia, the minister at the family's church honored Mrs. Jarvis and all mothers with a special Mother's Day

I

he United States is one of the few countries in the world with an official day on which fathers are honored by their children. On the third Sunday in June, fathers all across the United States are given presents, treated to dinner or otherwise made to feel special.

The origin of Father's Day is not clear.

Some say that it began with a church service in West Virginia in 1908.

The president of the Chicago branch of the Lions' Club, Harry Meek, is said to have celebrated the first Father's Day with his organization in 1915; and the day that they chose was the third Sunday in June, the closest date to Meek's own birthday!

The strongest promoter of the holiday was Mrs. Bruce John Dodd of Spokane, Washington state, who felt she had an outstanding father. He was a veteran of the Civil War, His wife had died young, and he had raised six children.

In 1909, Mrs, Dodd approached her church minister and others in Spokane about having a church service dedicated to fathers on June 5, her father's

T

service, Mother's Day sermons and honoring of mothers during church services have since become part of the tradition for many Americans. Another tradition is that children often serve their mothers breakfast in bed. Gifts, elaborate greeting cards and flowers-often the official Mother's Day flower, carnationsare presented by both young and grown-up children. This is the busiest day of the year for American restaurants: on her special day, family members do not want Mom to cook dinnerl Anna Jarvis' campaign extended, however, beyond church and home, She wrote to members of the US Congress, asking them to set aside a day to honor mothers, In 1910, the governor of West Virginia proclaimed the second Sunday in Mayas Mother's Day and a year later every state in the union celebrated it.

birthday, That date was too soon for her minister to prepare the service, so he spoke two weeks later on June 19th, From then on, the state of Washington celebrated the third Sunday in June as Father's Day States and organizations began lobbying Congress to declare an annual Father's Day in 1916, but it was not until 1924 that President Calvin Coolidge made it a national event to "establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations,"

job and spent a year caring for the baby while starting a home-based advertising consultancy.

But as Uy gained clients, he needed help. He used the "DC Urban Moms" Internet site to find a babysitter. "I really enjoyed being home with the baby.

Handing him over to a nanny was not easy," Uy says.

Today, he takes his toddler two blocks to the nanny.

"My daily commute is a red-wagon ride," he says.

Familv leave programs The U.S. Labor Department reports that men are more likely to use flexible work schedules than women. Many men are "feeling a crunch," Bianchi says, and broadening the interest in family-friendly policies among workers.

A 2005 Fortune magazine survey shows that 84 percent of male executives at the largest U.S. companies want more time for things outside of work. "The first [men] with this interest are the dual-earners," says Bianchi.

Federal law allows up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for certain workers to take care of a sick family member or a new baby. It covers a little more than half the work force. When compared to other countries, "we have a reputation that we work a lot," says Bianchi.

Heather Boushey, an economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says the employerpaid leave which some groups advocate could result in job discrimination against women of child-bearing age. She prefers a program enacted in 2004 in California, under which all workers (not just parents) are eligible for six weeks' partial pay leave. The program is paid for by workers.

In the near term, state and local experiments are more likely than new federal legislation. But the market also reacts to workers' needs, says Jeanie Duck, senior vice president at Boston Consulting Group.

More companies are helping employees face "life situations." They give workers unpaid sabbaticals, temporary transfers to less-stressful jobs, and telecommuting options as well as assistance for spouses seeking jobs, she says.

Professionals juggle, Boushey says, but the real stress for dual-earner couples is among lower-income families, in which a husband might work a day shift and a wife, a night shift. "They might be with their children, but sleeping," she says, "which is not quality time."

Dual-earners just want a little time, Boushey believes. "We buy salad in a bag, we read magazine articles about getting more done in less time."

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views

on this

article.

Write

to

he rise in the number of dual-earner couples in India may have led to an increase in the standard of living but it has also given rise to issues like how to balance home and work and how to devote enough time to children.

An international online poll conducted in 2006

by New York-based market research firm ACNielsen found that 74 percent of Indian respondents want a better home-work balance. Half said they want to spend more time with their families.

Couples are increasingly recognizing that any ~ ~

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~ Above: Shankar Nath helps his daughter, Cia, read as his wife, Mridusmita Sharma, works at home.

Right: Nath helps out in the kitchen.

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sort of balance can be achieved only ifboth partners chip in. For each couple, it's a matter of finding out what works best for them.

flexi-time Bindu Menon, copy editor at The Indian Express in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, often finds her workdays stretching beyond midnight. That is when the benefits of her husband's flexible working hours really sink in. Narendra Raghunath, an artist, works out of his home studio and Menon says he played a large part in bringing up their daughter, 4Y2-year-old Anjali. "He takes her to the doctor, takes her out in the evenings, helps her during mealtimes," says Menon.

For most women, having a career means an opportunity to be self-reliant and help provide a more comfortable lifestyle for their family. And even though Menon often goes on a guilt trip for not being able to spend enough family time, she says that they have managed to deal with the pressure because of her husband's understanding nature. But it's not an easy ride.

"It's a little hard for Anjali, for when she returns from school at 2 p.m. it's time for me to go to office. Narendra tries to make up by taking her out to the park or anywhere when he can. On my off days I try to make up by spending time only with Anjali, playing with her, reading her stories or taking her out to the amusement

park," says Menon.

Things get difficult when projects and exhibitions take Raghunath away from home for two to three weeks out of every two months. "There are times when Anjali cries when I leave for office, especially when her father is out of town. On Saturdays and Sundays, I am there in the morning for her but there are times when I just don't want to play with her as I am too exhausted and that causes problems!" says Menon.

Although dual-earner couples are almost the norm now, "I still maintain it's hard on the child. All the talk of quality time with kids is fine but it really just isn't enough. Which is why I believe it's important to have a support system like [grand]parents at home," says Menon.

Support svstem Indian couples are finding different support systems: whether it is the traditional large family, just each other, or the neighborhood creche. Sameer Gupta and Sangeeta Saikia Gupta are a nuclear family, and with their 2Y2-year-old daughter, Pragnya, starting playschool this year, both have to do a fair bit of juggling.

In the moming, Gupta, who works as a brand manager with India Today, takes care of setting the house in order while his wife prepares Pragnya's breakfast. He then wakes up their daughter and gets her ready for school. Then while Saikia Gupta gets

ready to leave for the office, he drops Pragnya at the gate, where the playschool van picks her up. "It's all about lending a helping hand and ensuring that the household runs smoothly," he says. In the evening, Pragnya is picked up from the creche by her mother on the way home.

Saikia Gupta, who works as an administrative officer with New India Assurance Co. in New Delhi, says that, though a dual income can build a healthier relationship, it takes a lot of hard work and effort. "Though time spent together is little, it is more important that whatever time we spend together should be quality time. After reaching home, I try to give maximum time to Pragnya, asking her about her activities during the day," says the working mom.

Together time With all their energies directed toward work or their children, how much time do couples get to spend in each other's company?

Mridusmita Sharma, who teaches at Delhi Public School, says that though the initial stage is confusing, when the couple tries to balance work and a baby, people learn with time how to make things work.

"We now end up doing more activities together after having a child and spend more enjoyable times together. It's true that a child needs your attention most of the time, and you do end up missing the kind of quality time you used to spend in

Far left: Sangeeta Saikia Gupta and Sameer Gupta celebrate daughter Pragnya's first birthday.

Left: Narendra Raghunath and Bindu Menon at home with their daughter, Anjali.

Right: Amulya Sinha and Jayita Bandyopadhyay on a vacation with their daughter, Isheeka, at Lansdowne, Uttarakhand.

each other's company when you did not have a child," she says.

So, sometimes they would make plans just for the two of them. But then they would start missing their daughter.

While her husband, Shankar Nath, did get a week of paternity leave, not a common thing in the Indian work scenario, Sharma feels that "a mother of a newborn needs her husband to be around, moreso at that time" and not just for a few days.

This year their 4-year-old daughter, Gia, started at the same school where Sharma

works. Earlier, Nath worked from home in the mornings so that Gia did not have to spend too much time without parental supervision. "It gives me a sense of relief to know that Mridusmita is at home most of the time. As for me, my working hours are also flexible. So, we both end up spending enough time with our child," says Nath, who runs a semi-entrepreneurial venture, Mindfire Solutions.

Yet, as with other couples, their equation depends on mutual cooperation. "We have an understanding that in parts where

Supporting Families Oday's fast-changing world needs the anchor of values and virtues that families can provide. Strong families instill responsibility and character in our children and teach them the ideals that make us a great nation. Through their love and sacrifice, America's parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings and other family members help prepare our young people to realize the bright future America offers each child.

My Administration is committed to ensuring that our children grow up in loving, stable homes. Earlier this year, I signed legislation that creates new .â&#x20AC;˘ grants for faith-based and community organizations to support healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood. By reducing the marriage penalty and doubling the child tax credit, we have also provided important tax relief that helps parents to support and provide for their families.

T

-Excerpts from National Family Week Proclamation by President George W. Bush, November 16, 2006

I am better in childcare I take the lead, and the areas where he can manage he takes over to give me time to relax and chill out," says Sharma.

Ongoing process The key to resolving work-life balance challenges, in fact, is flexibility. The way people negotiate working and parenting is an ongoing process and evolves continually.

"It has taught us to coordinate with each other better. We have discovered many new traits about each other, like I never thought my husband could be such a patient father," says Jayita Bandyopadhyay, assistant editor at The Pioneer, who has a 3-year-old daughter, Isheeka.

Though the pressure can get a bit "unnerving" at times, she says that her husband, Amulya Sinha, who runs a media monitoring firm, TPS Media Services, is always ready to help at home.

In the morning, he drops Isheeka at school and when he returns, sees that her homework is done. IfBandyopadhyay is tied up at work, he also feeds the child dinner.

"He generally can't miss office but I have the option of working from home or changing my timings to suit personal needs. And at times I do so, especially when my husband goes on out-of-city official trips," she says. ~ Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

Family-Friendly believe there has never been a better time for young people to get into the job market from a work-life balance point of view. From Alexander the Great to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, the world of work has been constantly changing.

Now, however, there is a growing understanding of the benefits society gains from workers who have fulfilling lives outside of their jobs In our modern economy where, more often than not, two wage earners are needed to support a family, American women now make up 46 percent of the paid labor force. In fact, a study released in June 2005 found that in order to maintain income levels, parents have to work more hours. Two-parent families are spending 16 percent more time at work, or 500 more hours a year than in 1979, just to keep up. Women, and mothers, are in the workplace to stay. Yet public policy and workplace structures have yet to catch up But imagine working for a familyfriendly employer that provides you with paid holidays, ample vacation days, child care programs, and a voice in what hours you work and how often. Does the image of a large Fortune 500 corporation or a progressive IT company come to mind?

Think again.

The U.S. government, America's largest employer, is just such an innovator in workplace flexibility. And my employer, the U.S. Department of State, has placed sixth among the 30 large federal agencies, and first among women, in a ranking of the Best Places to Work survey conducted by Partnership for Public Service and Ameri-

I

can University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation. The State Department also ranks very high on the overall results that include the private sector Human resource practices like those of the State Department can build a more family-friendly society that helps parents caught in the squeeze between the demands of work and family. Our agency wants an engaged and effective workforce, so workplace flexibility is the rule, not the exception. Consequently, we can work in a job that contributes to our peace of mind and quality of life.

Indian citizens who work for the US Embassy or its consulates here also benefit from these work-life balance policies that provide leave for sickness, caring for ill relatives, bereavement, holidays, pregnancy, annual leave, leave-sharing and flexible hours.

Here are some examples Family-friendly leave policies: Americans are looking to spend more time with family and loved ones. The federal government wants its employees to do so. The 1993 federal Family and Medical Leave Act was a significant advance for working families, since it gave a large number of employees the right to take up to 12 weeks off to take care of a sick family member or care for a new child. Fathers and mothers can avail of up to six weeks of paid maternity/paternity leave.

Rest time: The federal government offers generous holiday, annual leave and sick leave policies.

American officers who serve in foreign countries are entitled to "home

Thanks to family-friendly U.S. State Department workplace policies, Bhaskar Rajah, the U.S. assistant public affairs officer in Kolkata, can have a balance between job and family time.

leave" in addition to annual and sick leave. We also get rest and recuperation (R&R) leave when we serve in hardship locations.

Flexible work schedules: The U.S. Government has been a pioneer in offering flexible work schedules.

Telecommuting: Allows employees to work at home or at another approved location away from the office. For federal workers, it's not only encouraged, it's mandated.

Regulations require that all federal employees must be covered by policies allowing telecommuting, subject to management approval The US Government is promising a steppedup effort to advocate telecommuting programs that help agencies and employees manage their work, and help employees balance their work and personal responsibilities. This also cuts down on time spent traveling to and from work while allowing more time for family, friends, education and other interests.

Child care programs: More than 200 federal agencies sponsor onsite child care centers for their employees.

My home state, Texas, is an excellent example of a state government that is a model employer Texas law provides for Texas businesses to be designated as mother-friendly, if they voluntarily have a written policy that

Above: Rajah celebrates with his daughters the first U.S. Consulate Kolkata cricket challenge victory over the British High Commission Kolkata in February 2007. Rajah was captain of the U.S. team and his daughters Meena, left, and Shebani, right, were players.

Vijaishri, center, was a cheerleader.

Left: Rajah and his wife, ]ayalakshmi, enjoy time together at a restaurant, celebrating her birthday in October 2006. supports employed mothers by: • having flexible work schedules to provide time for expression of milk; • providing an accessible location allowing privacy; • providing access to a nearby clean and safe water source and a sink for washing hands and rinsing out any breast-pump equipment; • providing access to hygienic storage alternatives for the mother to store her breast milk.

The Texas legislature recognizes a mother's responsibility to both her job and her child when she returns to work. It acknowledges that a woman's choice to breast-feed benefits the family, the employer, and society, and must be encouraged in the interests of maternal and child health and family values ~ Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

Nearlv Half of All Indian Children are Malnourished OW do governments, doctors and aid workers decide what is needed to improve public health if they do not have accurate, nationwide information? This was the scenario facing India's public health establishment 15 years ago. Information existed on various ~ health issues plaguing India, but it was not useful for tracking progress, for providing national level updates or for comparing health indices between states.

In 1992, the United

H

States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded a mechanism for collecting more accurate information on health indicators in India.

USAID teamed with the East-West Center, Macro International and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to launch the first National Family Health Survey (NFHS1). This household-level survey is now in its third round and is the largest in the world.

The beginning, however, wasn't easy. In 1992, such a large

The third National Family Health Survey revealed that 46 percent of all Indian children are malnourished. The infant mortality rate, though improving, is still high and much worse than other developing countries. This is complicated by the fact that less than half of all Indian women receive care after childbirth and only 40 percent give birth in hospitals or medical centers. USAID food programs reach more than 6.6 million women and children while other programs help increase the consumption of necessary nutrients such as vitamin A and zinc. The use of oral rehydration salts has increased in USAID focus states, helping to manage childhood diarrhea, a major killer of Indian children.

The Government of India played a more direct role and took full ownership of the survey.

Survey Tracks Violence Against Women The third National Family Health Survey found nearly 40 percent of Indian women who have been married have experienced spousal violence. Only 52 percent of married women participate in household decisions. Female feticide and infanticide have resulted in 35 million girls missing from the population. The under-five mortality rate is 50 percent higher for girls than boys Munni Kanwar, a victim of domestic violence, points to marks of abuse.

Mrs. Kanwar approached USAIDsupported counseling centers for advice and intervention.

health survey had never been conducted. There was much skepticism regarding the ability to ensure accuracy and control quality. In a large, diverse country like India, creating a survey system that addresses these concerns is difficult. It requires rigorous development, an army of interviewers and an extensive logistics network.

NFHS-l developed just such a system. It covered 24 states and Delhi, interviewing 88,562 households and 89,777 women who had been married. The result: a survey that provided India with accurate nationwide measures of nutritional status, maternal and child health, and reproductive health. The survey also allowed India to conduct stateto-state comparisons and provided a baseline for tracking each state's progress on health issues.

The success of the first

National Family Health Survey garnered additional support for the second survey, conducted between 1998 and 1999. It was coordinated by the Mumbaibased International Institute for Population Sciences, endorsed by the Government of India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, funded by USAID, and supported by UNICEF and Macro International. As in the earlier survey, the principal

objective was to provide state and national estimates offertility, the practice of family planning, infant and child mortality, maternal and child health, and the utilization of health services provided to mothers and children. It measured the nutritional status of Indian women, and in particular, measured levels of anemia through blood samples. The survey also enquired into domestic violence-allowing India to gauge the arnount of abuse taking place in households.

The two surveys furthered the public knowledge of India's health status and gave leaders information on which to base decisions. In India this is crucial, considering that 80 percent of health services are provided by the public sector.

By comparing the state-level results from the two surveys, health professionals could measure how well earlier pro-

Reproductive Health and Family Planning Improving but Still Poor By 2030, India will be the most populous country in the world. The third National Family Health Survey found that less than 30 percent of women in India use modern contraceptive methods. USAID's programs help women in Uttar Pradesh-India's most populous state, with 170 million people-gain greater access to a variety of modern contraception and have helped to nearly double the contraceptive use there. USAID also has helped the state double the use of birth spacing-a family planning method that improves maternal and child health and provides greater reproductive control.

A USAID-supported health worker discusses reproductive health with village women in Uttar Pradesh.

grams had impacted specific states. They also could make informed changes to those programs where necessary.

For the third survey, conducted in 2005-06, there was a marked difference. No longer was USAID footing the bill on its own (it acted as the coordinating body for donor organizations).

Other development organizations had recognized the survey's value and funded it. The Government of India played a more direct role and took full ownership ofthe survey.

The focus of the third survey grew to include testing for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. For the first time, India will be able to use householdlevel sampling to determine the country's HIV prevalence rate. The survey also measured attitudes about education and expanded to include men and never married women.

However, the real accomplishment of the survey has not been its findings but its impact. The recent dissemination of the NFHS-3 data has spurred debate in the media.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has cited it regularlyusing it as a tool for focusing India's public health response.

Decision-makers are already drawing conclusions and taking action based on the survey.

For example, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss referred

sessions and training of trainers on household listing, mapping and data processing were required to ensure quality control. Comprehensive manuals for field workers and supervisors also helped to maintain uniform procedures.

Interviewing teams traveled Health and Family Welfare, to dangerous areas, working in includes the Bill & Melinda severe weather and in some Gates Foundation, UNICEF, the cases walking long distances with heavy equipment.

Department for International NFHS-3 was the first large Development (United Kingdom), and the United Nations Popu- scale nationwide survey to collect dried blood samples for lation Fund.

The International Institute of HIV testing. Nearly 110,000 Population Sciences has imple- women and men were tested mented all three surveys, which for HIV and more than "raised the brand identity of the 200,000 adults and young chilinstitute," says the director, Dr. dren were tested for anemia.

P.N. Mari Bhat. "USAID gave For this, health coordinators us access to survey expertise and medical personnel had to from around the world. That be trained in blood collection raised the quality of our work to and testing methods.

SRL Ranbaxy, with its neta higher standard."

New partners such as the work of collection centers, the HIV tests.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foun- conducted dation were attracted to the Blood was first collected on filter paper cards and dried NFHS because of its credibility and impact on policy. "We overnight. Within five days know that the NFHS is the samples had to be sent to one only household survey on of 500 Ranbaxy collection health in India. When given centers and then transported the opportunity we wanted to overnight to the Ranbaxy labsupport it and take this chance oratory in Mumbai. All samples had to reach Mumbai to get rich data on HIV/AIDS," says Ashok Alexander, director within seven days of collection. In some cases, that of Avahan, the foundation's India AIDS Initiative. "As required traversing more than over dirt partners, our contributions to 3,230 kilometers the greater good increase when roads with limited infrastrucwe combine the resources of ture to reach Mumbai in time.

Thanks to careful planning two organizations." and logistics, the validity of the findings can withstand A gigantic undertaking ~ The third National Family scrutiny.

Health Survey was a gigantic Alex Gainer is a USAID project exercise in logistics. Research development officer in India. organizations had to interview Kristen Easter, USAID/lndia's 124,385 women and 74,369 communications officer, and a USAID men in 3,849 villages and Archana Mirajkar, specialist, conurban centers across India. communications tributed to this article.

Some 1,840 individuals and 230 interviewing teams were Please share your views on this in the field. article. Write to editorspan@ First, workshops, practical state.gov

A woman in Rajasthan offering a blood sample for testing during NFHS-3. Nearly 110,000 women and men were tested for HIVand more than 200,000 adults and young children were tested for anemia during the survey.

Percentage of people aged 15 to 49 who have been married and have heard of AIDS

to the National Family Health Survey fIDding that the percentage of women and children in India who are anemic had increased to 56 percent and 79 percent respectively since the late 1990s. "This really is a cause of concern for the government," Ramadoss told the Reuters news agency in April.

He said the government, among a package of new measures, would intensify deworming among children and provide them with iron tablets to prevent anemia, as well as increase the number of health workers in rural areas to detect and help malnourished infants.

Meanwhile, NFHS-2 fIDdings are the raison d'etre for the National Rural Health Mission, a massive initiative to improve the health of the rural population. The surveys were also used for determining the direction of India's 10th Five-Year

Plan and are being used in the drafting of the 11th Five-Year Plan. In fact, it is hard to find an Indian health or family welfare policy that does not mention NFHS 1, 2 or 3 fIDdings as the basis for its decision.

Partnerships add value Thirty-three partner organizations supported the third survey through funding, implementation, testing of samples, technical assistance and data collection.

Thanks to this more robust and diverse funding from private and public sources the third survey is significantly wider in scope and reach.

Engaging new partners brought an additional $8 million, and USAID funded the remainder for the $12.5 million project.

The expanding partnership, led by USAID and the Government of India's Ministry of

jJJ. the inauguration of a new India Studies Program at the University of Connecticut.

ver the past few years The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut has acquired for its permanent collection works by contemporary Indian artists and artists of Indian heritage, as well as works by western artists influenced by the art and culture of India. In the fall of 2006 these works were featured in an exhibition titled "India: Proximities of Distance." Some were first seen, however, in the 2004 "Masala: Diversity and Democracy in South Asian Art" exhibition at the Benton, which featured more than 200 works of contemporary, folk and popular art. It was a privilege as guest curator from the Department of Art and Art History to have had the opportunity to organize both exhibitions. The collection continues to grow as these exhibitions have served as a catalyst to subsequent acquisitions.

The "Proximities" exhibition further served to celebrate the inauguration of a new India Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. India Studies sponsors a lecture series that brings a range of scholars and artists from India

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Vijay Kumar Untitled #16, from The India Portfolio Intaglio print on newsprint

Indrapramit Roy Euripides' The Bacchae Offset lithographed illustration, 2004 lent by the Getty Institute in Los Angeles

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and the United States to our rural campus.

The Indian Studies "minor"-a new curricular option-consolidates course listings from a variety of disciplines, and sponsors the creation of new courses, including one that I have developed on the subject of contemporary Indian art.

The premise of the "Proximities" exhibition was to consider how India has served as a source of inquiry and investigation for contemporary artists with diverse histories and localities; art that raises questions about geographical and emotional boundaries. For the artists in this exhibition and many more around the world, these encounters and crossings between cultures and borders continue to result in gratifying investigations and remarkable works of art.

Artists represented in the Benton Museum collection who live and work in India include Hanuman Kambli, Madhvi Parekh, Indrapramit Roy and Anupum

Sud. Through diverse artistic methods and styles, they respond to varied global and local issues while mining a multiplicity of art historical sources, east and west.

Goa native Kambli finds his work to be a suitable vehicle for expressing the turmoil and contradictions that define human relationships.

In paintings such as "Dialogue III" he reflects on actions and words that pervade different facets of human behavior in intimate relationships and in the larger global arena. Through depicting the changing faces of people, their moods, conduct, and deeds, he grapples with duality and contradictions that are found in the collision of words and actions. Kambli is head of printmaking at the Goa College of Art and a recipient of a Fulbright fellowship to the United States in 1999.

Also layering the personal and political is printmaker and painter Anupum Sud. Her intaglio "Rear Window" is one of a

http://www.fulbright-india.org

series regarding the "human condition" that are deeply personal but also make subtle political commentary. She has an empathetic response to people who live physically and metaphorically "at the edge" of society, in the decay of the city, particularly New Delhi, where she lives and works. Although it is an Indian city, it could easily be any urban area in the world, based on her art. Her figures are often depicted with bald heads that create a further sense of anonymity and isolation, alienated from themselves as well as those around them. With the recent rapid expansion of the Indian economy the gaps between rich and poor grow wider daily.

Sud's concerns voice an enduring dilemma. She is a retired head of printmaking at the Delhi College of Art. Although Madhvi Parekh has lived in New Delhi for many years, the major inspiration and formal influences for her work are a result of her childhood in a rural area where her father was the principal of a local school. Her images, such as a large watercolor painting titled "Morning Light," are drawn from fantasy and invention as well specific stories from

her personal life, her friends, neighbors and travels. Much of her work employs formal motifs reminiscent of folk art, including patterns, borders and iconic figures and forms. Recently she has added sculpture to her repertoire, furthering the iconic presence of her mysterious pictographic language.

Indrapramit Roy is a painter and book illustrator and senior lecturer in painting at the M.S. University of Baroda in Gujarat.

Four of his illustrated books were acquired

by The University of Connecticut Thomas J. Dodd Research Center Special Collections Library. "Euripides' the Bacchae" published by the Getty Institute in Los Angeles, was loaned to the Benton Museum for the "Proximities" exhibition. Illustrating books allows Roy to discard his "painter's skin" and explore things that he is not able to in his paintings, particularly the challenges of the silk-screen process. The illustrated book on exhibit provided a vehicle for Roy to investigate Greek symbols and imagery, particularly pottery that he has always admired. Roy was a Fulbright scholar to

American life provides abundant opportunity for artists of the Indian diaspora to investigate and interrogate American as well as Indian culture and identity through myriad ways and means. Some artists discover parallel histories and fruitful meeting points, while others may experience painful clashes of culture.

As an immigrant in the United States, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew has been questioned about where she is really from, often having to clarify that she is an Indian from India. In prints from her "Indian from India" portfolio, she presents photographs of Native Americans from the 19th century that she feels perpetuate stereotypes and highlight attempts at forcible assimilation.

She pairs these images with self-portraits in clothes, poses and environments that mimic these historic images, effectively challenging the viewers' assumptions of exotic and local.

Also in the Benton collection is her monumental digital collage, "Bomb," from the "Bollywood Satirized" series.

Starting with actual film posters, she uses

commentary that questions traditional Indian gender roles and behavior.

Matthew is an associate professor of photography at Rhode Island College and was a co-curator for the Benton Museum "Masala" exhibition.

Siona Benjamin's multi-ethnic heritage-as a Sephardic Jew from Mumbai, educated at Christian schools, attending graduate school in the United States and now living in Montclair, New Jerseyprovides a dizzying array of often contradictory artistic influences. Benjamin utilizes miniature painting techniques along with symbolic imagery from Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu traditions.

Compassion as well as humor, satire and allegory serve as multiple avenues to investigate, interpret and interrogate the complex strands that make up her ever shifting sense of self. Her compelling gouache painting in the Benton collection titled "Hagar" depicts a personal interpretation of the traditional Hebrew story. In Benjamin's haunting image, however, Hagar, the Egyptian handmaiden who

the United States in 2004.

digital technology to add images of her-

flees her jealous mistress and is ready to

self as well as humorous

die in the desert, is surrounded by water

Immersion in the multicultural fabric of

and satirical

that does not offer spiritual renewal.

Instead, it is undrinkable, and in fact, contains fragmented bodies from a suicide bomber. Siona Benjamin was a cocurator for the Benton Museum "Mas ala" exhibition.

Communal violence between Muslims and Hindus, particularly the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, is the focus of Brooklyn, New York artist Vijay Kumar's powerful "India Portfolio."

Using newspaper clippings and roughly drawn figurative images reminiscent of graffiti, Kumar attempts to describe the pain of witnessing such continued conflict

in his beloved land of birth. He visits regularly but has been living away from India for more than 30 years. Kumar is a printmaker, an instructor of printmaking and one of the founding members of the Manhattan Graphics Center.

Sukanya Rahman is an accomplished dancer as well as artist, residing in Orr's Island, Maine with her playwright husband.

Her shadow-box collages layer diverse sources that reference both western and Indian iconography. Drawing from modem and vintage popular culture-including calendar art, Bollywood and Hollywood film magazines-her cut-outs of figures and

stage set-like scenes mix east and west as well as high and low. Her works dramatize the confusion and collision of contemporary society, particularly in urban areas in India and the United States, where the sacred and secular, ancient and contemporary exist side by side.

The much celebrated paintings of Andhra Pradesh native Bari Kumar layer sources from eastern and western with the vibrant street culture of the Asian and Latino communities in Los Angeles, California, where he lives. Trained as a designer at Parsons School of Design in New York and Los Angeles, Kumar discourages those who wish to read the symbolism in his work in a one-dimensional manner. For Kumar, signs are fluid, and bear the potential to function as metaphors for a multiplicity of meanings as boundaries become increasingly permeable. His paintings are filled with images of religious, social and cultural significance that invite multiple readings. Kumar states that what often begins for him as a personal expression sometimes ends as sociopolitical commentary. For instance, his painting in the Benton collection titled "Good Luck" is informed by witnessing the expectations brought to bear upon women in his family, but extends to the plight of women everywhere.

The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut is committed to presenting art from diverse cultures in a variety of media. As such, the museum responds to the significance of Indian art and the ever-growing importance of India on the global stage by acquiring new works of art with a focus on contemporary India. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to share my own research and love of India with my students, colleagues and community and thank the William Benton Museum of art directors, former director Salvatore Scalora and current Director Steven Kern for their continued support and continuing interest _in_th_i_s_e_n_d_ea_v_o_r_.

~

Kathryn Myers is a painter and professor of art at the University of Connecticut in Storrs and held a Fulbright fellowship to India in 2002. She had recent exhibitions of her work at the M.S. University of Baroda, Gujarat, and Fundaqiio Oriente, Goa.

Architectural Salvage Enters the Mainstream

Left: The front of a porch from an 1890 Victorian house in Baltimore, Maryland, with a photograph of the house before it was demolished. Right: A circa 1940 cast aluminum horse salvaged from a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania playground.

tanding tall amid piles of clutter, it instantly caught my eye, its cool bronze and steel and glass throwing off the dim afternoon light. Its lines were impossibly sleek, its details stylish and vaguely Oriental. I was smitten. But taking it home would have cost $15,000, far more than I could afford.

My crush that day was on an art deco ticket booth. I encountered it the way many Americans come upon similar objects: during a weekend browse through an architectural salvage warehouse. In Baltimore, Maryland, where I live, the biggest salvage operation by far is Second Chance, Inc., a nonprofit that has more than 9,300 square meters of warehouse space behind the city's professional foot-

ball stadium. Founded in 2002, Second Chance has grown into one of the leading salvage businesses on the East Coast and now employs more than 30 people.

The ticket booth, I later learned, had been plucked from the Convention Hall at the Philadelphia Civic Center, an imposing art deco landmark built in 1931. The hall-where Franklin D. Roosevelt received the nomination for his second term as President-was razed in 2005. But not before the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which owned the building and whose expansion led to the demolition, awarded Second Chance a contract to salvage the hall's rich interior.

In January 2006, shadowing local union workers who showed them how to handle certain architectural elements, Second

Chance trainees gleaned multicolored terra-cotta, oversized light fixtures, and leaded-glass windows from the hall, abandoned more than 15 years ago. By any standard, the yield was incredible. Yet it could have been more substantial, said Second Chance's executive director, a brawny, friendly man named Mark Foster.

As we chatted in his Baltimore office one morning, Foster explained why.

Although the Penn Health System had granted Second Chance permission to salvage, once the demolitionists showed up, ownership of the building immediately transferred to them. (This arrangement is typicaL) And time is money in the wrecking trade: The demo guys generally don't want to wait around while salvagers cherry-pick more decorations.

Salvagers, meanwhile, have to prioritize and be realistic about what they can and can't save.

Foster still talks wistfully about the carved limestone arches at the Civic Center that his crew simply didn't have time to take down.

Why do developers, homeowners and institutions like the Penn Health System seek out Second Chance? To limit the historical losses from a teardown, yes; but there are other, more obviously compelling reasons. "The economics are good for developers who work with Second Chance instead of the demolition man only," Foster told me, leaning back behind a desk overspread with yellow reports on upcoming jobs. When they bring in a nonprofit, tax exempt organization like Second Chance, property owners can claim a tax deduction on the entire appraised value of the materials to be salvaged. For developers, there's also a public relations benefit. Even if a demolition

is controversial, they can tout themselves as preservation minded.

In the end, Second Chance had 90 days to strip Convention Hall of its finery and bring it to the organization's south Baltimore premises. In Warehouse No.2, where hundreds of wood doors march in tight lines like dominoes, one small room is filled exclusively with stunning ironworkgrates, grilles and so on. A homemade poster on a nearby wall suggests that the objects could be turned into distinctive bedroom headboards. Some have already sold for $600 and more.

No one would argue that such exquisite pieces, transplanted to city lofts and suburban bungalows, would be better off in the landfill. But what happened in Philadelphia is a good illustration of the salvager's complicated role in saving doomed historic buildings-or at least fragments of them. Is

Left: Display designer Phoebe Harding inspecting items for sale.

Below: A circa 1900 terracotta piece.

Below left: The interior of a Second Chance warehouse.

Foster a preservationist?

He's adamant that he is: "We're not involved in the debate over demolishing buildings," he said. "Our role is played once the battle [to save a building] has been lost. We ensure that preservation of some of the fabric takes place-we mitigate the loss." Paradoxically, however, the success of his enterprise depends on old buildings being razed. His group's annual fundraiser is called the "Wrecker's Ball," a name that would make many a preservationist queasy.

Welcome to the hard-headed, somewhat obscure, often contradictory trade of architectural salvage. The more of her heritage America tears down, the more the industry thrives.

Even to call architectural salvage an "industry" is misleading: The word suggests a degree of cohesion that simply doesn't exist. Dealers in architectural artifacts or fragments are a disparate and fiercely independent bunch. The larger businesses-mainly for-profits-sometimes work together, agreeing, for example, to split a particularly good haul. But this occasional cooperation does little to dent the every-man-for-himself ethic.

"Everyone's a bit of a rebel," noted Stuart Grannen, who founded Chicago's Architectural Artifacts, Inc., in 1987.

"Very few people are interested in organizing anything."

There is no national trade association for

salvagers to join, no annual convention they can attend. And because of the trade's amorphous nature, statistics are hard to come by. But there are signs of surging growth. "It's on fire," said Rich Ellis of Roanoke, Virginia, who launched a newsletter called Architectural Salvage News in 2004. "People love salvage right now." Second Chance-which has never advertised, relying on word of mouth instead-is expanding into Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. New York City's aIde Good Things opened a store in Chicago, which joins its two others in Manhattan, a fourth in Los Angeles, and a warehouse in Scranton. "Demand is stronger than ever," according to manager Kevin Browne. Meanwhile, "architectural antiques" is one ofthe fastest-growing categories on eBay. As new-home construction increases across the United States (in February 2007, work began on more than 1.2 million single-family homes), owners of expensive custom-built houses scour local stores or the Internet for just the right personalizing touch, like Victorian stained glass for a transom window.

Popular television shows such as This Old House and Trading Spaces have made viewers more aware of salvage and how salvaged items can be used in renovations

Second Chance's Executive Director Mark Foster with an art deco piece salvaged from the Philadelphia Civic Center.

or additions.

With all this demand, salvage companies are finding it increasingly necessary to distinguish themselves in some way.

Baltimore's Second Chance does this by offering a training program for lowincome workers, teaching them about carpentry and architectural elements. And it practices what's known as deconstruction-the art of disassembling a structure so that as many elements as possible can be reused. Whereas a typical salvage operation strips away the outer layer of a

building-doors, moldings, mantelpieces and so on-deconstruction probes deeper, down to the bones: old brickwork, supporting wood beams, the whole plumbing system. Deconstruction is systematic and thorough, and it minimizes waste.

Because it can work in conjunction with "green" building techniques, reducing the need for new materials, deconstruction has taken off in the environmentally conscious Pacific Northwest. There, even salvagers who don't practice deconstruction are committed environmentalists.

"We divert a tremendous amount of tonnage each month from the landfills, which we're proud of," said Michael Armstrong, co-owner of Second Use in Seattle, Washington state, a business that deals mainly in used doors, windows, cabinets and flooring, rather than architectural details. "If something is usable, why throw it away?" Armstrong asked.

Conserving the environment "is our motivation, 110 percent," he emphasized.

To Grannen of Architectural Artifacts, Inc., setting himself apart from the mainstream of the salvage trade is allimportant. "They might have one good fireplace in their store," he said of the competition. "We'll have 400 that are killers. We really strive to be the best."

Grannen likes to think of what he sells as fine art and prides himself on an inventory that is deeper and aesthetically richer than any other in the United States. In 2006, Architectural Artifacts, Inc., opened a 1,670-square-meter museum in downtown Chicago to display its most important pieces, including original windows from Frank Lloyd Wright houses. "We deal in some pretty high-end things, not just a pile of old bathtubs," he said, a slight edge of derision in his voice.

Even on the phone, Grannen's cowboy swagger is unmistakable (he boasted to me that he'd just bought a historic mansion in Buenos Aires, Argentina, sight unseen).

But he has serious grievances about the lack of professionalism in the industry.

"Maybe I'll show up on Saturday; maybe I won't" is how he summed up the prevailing attitude. In one respect at least, the absence of industry-wide standards ought to trouble the preservation community: There are no settled rules on what dealers should and shouldn't accept if the origins of an item are murky or if the person trying to sell it seems shady.

'There is a black market because there's high demand and prices have gone up," said Patty Williams, a co-owner of Wooden Nickel Antiques in Cincinnati, Ohio, which specializes in stained glass and historic wood bars. "It's amazing how much stuff is stolen." In the late 1990s, for

example, New Orleans detectives cracked a major crime ring trafficking in statues, wrought-iron benches, marble urns, and other artifacts from the city's historic cemeteries. Those implicated ranged from heroin-addicted petty thieves to wealthy, respected antiques dealers-and even preservationists.

In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported on a spate of thefts from renovated historic properties around the city. Over an eightweek period in 2003, thieves took antique woodwork valued at more than $75,000-including mantels and fluted pillars-from a 1930s apartment building being converted into condos. Those pieces most likely ended up on the black market, sold on the Internet to unscrupulous dealers.

Across the Atlantic, a small Londonbased organization called Salvo provides an information and support network for dealers in architectural antiques throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. Since 1992, founder Thornton Kay has issued theft alerts to salvagers and the police when valuable pieces are reported missing.

The system works, said Kay: "In the 1980s, things were being stolen from heritage properties and sold abroad-statues, garden features. Theft alerts made it very much harder, and the criminals stopped bothering."

Kay also encourages dealers to adhere to the "Salvo Code," which stipulates such ethical working practices as not buying an item "if there is the slightest suspicion that it may be stolen," not knowingly buying items from protected historical properties, writing down the license-plate number of the seller and asking to see his or her ill, and so on. Some 130 dealers have signed on to this voluntary code and are now policed by their peers.

"It's not in their interest to deal in stolen stuff," Kay insisted. "Once you start down that road, every tea leaf [Cockney rhyming slang for 'thief'] in the area will be bringing stolen stuff to your yard. It' Il happen so quickly that you'll get arrested." He mentioned a man who bought and sold stolen Tiffany glass, briefly, before getting caught. "You can't sustain a trade in stolen anything for long."

Since 1995, Dwight Young has offered up his witty, sometimes tart observations on the presence of the past in Preservation's Back Page column. When

asked for his views on architectural salvage, Young-the National Trust for Historic Preservation's senior communications associate-wavered a little.

"Twenty years ago, I looked on [salvagers] sort of suspiciously," he recalled. "I thought they were like vultures, gathering these sad remnants of good buildings. Now, I don't know.

They're becoming a really valuable resource for people who are restoring old buildings."

Young's ambivalence reflects broader changes in the American preservation movement since its genesis in the 1960s.

Back then, historic landmarks-notably, New York's original Penn Station, an architectural masterpiece--could be razed even if there was a public outcry. Today,

thankfully, the battle to raise awareness of preservation's worth has largely been won.

On the whole, Americans value old buildings and want to protect them for future generations. Meanwhile, preservationists, backed by a strong public mandate, can afford to be pragmatic. Not every historic building can or should be saved, many readily admit.

In this spirit, some preservationists are now embracing salvage. One group in North Carolina, Preservation Greensboro, has operated a salvage arm-called Architectural Salvage of Greensborosince 1995. It keeps its two-story showroom, a former Packard dealership, stocked with a wide inventory of doors, flooring, lighting fixtures and mantels. A paid salesperson works the floor part-time, but the

Stuart Grannen founded Chicago's Architectural Artifacts, Inc. in 1987.

Left: An iron grille from his warehouse.

Doors and columns can be found aplenty at Baltimore's Second Chance.

Below: A stained glass window depicting an English royal, salvaged from a church.

S.W.A.T. (Saving Worn Architectural Treasures) teams that glean materials from houses prior to demolition are composed of volunteers who are trained and supervised in removal.

Architectural Salvage of Greensboro brings in $20,000 to $25,000 a year, money that is then plowed back into renovations, and other community projects. "It's a public face to our organization, a way to include more people," said Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro.

The approach, he explained, also "opens up a whole dynamic of craftsmanship into the discussion of historic preservation."

Preservation Greensboro's success inspired another North Carolina group, the Historic Wilmington Foundation, to venture into salvage six years ago. Its side business, Wilmington Architectural Salvage, is smaller than Greensboro's and entirely volunteer-staffed (and currently closed, after the foundation failed to fmd

a new space). Even so, it has not only kept high-quality architectural pieces out of the landfill but also placed them in historic houses within the same region.

In 2005, the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave a National Preservation Honor Award to the Bosco-Milligan Foundation of Portland, Oregon. Jerry Bosco and Ben Milligan were craftsmen and preservationists who salvaged thousands of items from demolition sites over a period of 25 years. Their collection is now displayed at the foundation's 3,700square-meter Architectural Heritage Center, where visitors can learn about building crafts and historic architecture.

The Trust award may signal that salvage is entering the mainstream of the preservation movement. Yet some people still worry that the practice, if allowed to flourish unchecked, could undermine preservationists' aims. Greensboro's Briggs complained that historic mills are being disassembled top to bottom-for salvage. "We lose about one a month in this region to salvage operations," he said. "They do it for the bricks and for the timbers, which are then resawn into flooring." Cathy Galbraith,

executive director of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, has heard of metal salvagers tearing up bridges in the Northwest.

"People have found that there's value in building materials," she said. "But I would hate to see incentives to tear down buildings coming from the fact that the parts are worth more than the sum."

Briggs and Galbraith can take heart from the dilemma that Williams, of Cincinnati, finds herself in. She remembers when she got into the business 30 years ago. Carved panels and stained glass were plentiful because so many old houses were coming down. Now, "public awareness is much higher," she observed. Buildings stay up-which means that although salvage is in great demand, her inventory remains low. She changed her business plan accordingly; Wooden Nickel Antiques now fabricates replica stained glass in addition to selling original pieces.

Williams doesn't mind. "Back when cities were building beltways and connecting highways, that's when they tore down block after block of old neighborhoods," she said. "A lot of that's done now. You've got to be glad for saving this stuff. I'm happy we're not tearing America apart." ~ Amanda at

Kolson

Preservation.

Hurley

is associate editor

.

.'

. . M'oving & storage 't -8 8 8 __ ??..~_-PODS

Pete Warhurst, founder and president of PODS (Portable On Demand Storage) near one of the storage holders.

CLOSET SPACE: WHAT WE

DO WITH

OUR

ecently, before it was bulldozed, I went to see the house where I had grown up, in Nashville, Tennessee. The fancy boys' prep school across the street had bought it, along with the five neighboring brick bungalows, and planned to flatten them all to make a parking lot. The house had once belonged to my distant cousins, though they had moved away 12 years ago. I had lived with them on and off from the time I was seven until I was out of college ....The empty bungalows stood wide open the day before demolition, and so we met there and walked from room to room, telling stories and feeling sentimental. As is always the case with childhood memory, the house was much smaller than I had remembered, a scant 110 square meters. After I made my third loop through the tiny rooms, I realized what was missing from this place I had loved. Closets. The house had virtually no closet space.

I went and stood in the closet in the master bedroom. I barely fit. I remembered that when I was a child, the closet door was never shut. It overflowed with shoeboxes and suits and crammed-in heavy overcoats. In every room I found the closets were no more than shallow cupboards.

"How did we manage?" I asked, genuinely stumped. I remembered how the lack of storage space had driven my cousins crazy when they lived there, but on the last day their old house would stand they were feeling generous.

"Oh," my cousin said, "you know, it wasn't so bad."

Closets were not originally part of the American tradition.

Because they were taxed as rooms in the 1800s, our forefathers

made do with armoires, blanket chests and pegs for putting up their knee breeches.

When closets did become part of the American floor plan, they were the sort of modest affairs my cousins had, a little slot in the wall meant to hold the four suits or five dresses one owned.

I know it's easy to romanticize the inconveniences of the past-no cell phones meant never having to listen to a teenage girl recount the plot of a bad movie in a restaurant, no Internet meant we still got to go to the library to look something up-but a smaller amount of space, like a smaller amount of money, really is a sort of externally imposed discipline that helps to keep us from buying up everything in sight.

I've spent most of my adult life in small apartments where what I bought had to be carefully weighed against where I might be able to put it. The woman who lived upstairs from me in my last apartment was a great beauty and a clotheshorse of the first order. She simply used her dining room as a closet and filled the entire space with rows of rolling metal racks ....! gave that apartment up when the building's owners put in central heat and air, killing the one decent closet I had by filling it with ductwork.

It was then that I bought my first house, back on the very street where I had lived with my cousins all those years before.

But unlike their house, which had been built in 1926, my house had been built in 1985, which was essentially the Age of Enlightenment for closet space. I now had five closets. Three of them were huge and outfitted with shelves and baskets and multi-tiered hanging racks. Two of the closets stayed empty for the four years I lived there while the other three remained under-

THINGS

Are our ossessions takin over our lives?

populated. "You'll fill them up," people would say to me, operating on the theory that nature abhors a vacuum.

The clothes in your closet should be on someone else's back, said Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, meaning the poor. Maybe I'm shortsighted or maybe I'm a product of the small closets I grew up with, but I never saw the wisdom in holding onto things I wasn't going to use, a skepticism that's about as un-American as communism was in the 1950s. How we store our possessions in our homes and where we board them when they overflow the confines of our basements and attics have become part of our inalienable rights and privileges. We are, after all, a consumer nation, and as we buy more and more, our possessions seem to be elbowing us out of the house. The more square footage that goes to closets, the less that goes to living.

I think about that set of pegs on the wall of a colonial home, holding up an extra dress, a hat. ...

things you own to a part of town you wouldn't normally be in and rent a room in a long barracks of tin or brick. The yearbooks, the outgrown toys, the unused NordicTrack [exercise equipment], the boxes of family memorabilia you never wanted to inherit and now have no idea how to dispose of: You lock them up and go. As long as you remember to send a check once a month, the things you own can continue to have a climatecontrolled life without you. The hearty growth of the storage industry (my favorite being the rather morbidly named "Self Storage") speaks volumes to our collective psychological dilemma: What are we going to do with all the stuff we've acquired?

Finding a place to put things doesn't mean they go away. And we don't want them to go away exactly. We dream that someday life will be spacious and simplified and we will welcome these prodigal items back into our homes. We'll want them again, or our children will want them. We'll use them and be glad we had ~ the foresight to hang on to them because they will have turned E ~ out to be quite valuable after all. ~ Does that ever happen?

I had a storage unit once, many years ago in Kentucky. I was ~ teaching at a college in the beating heart of nowhere when I got ~ a job in Montana. It all happened so quickly I couldn't take ~ everything I owned all the way across the country to a furnished ~ apartment I had never seen before. Wouldn't it make the most I G sense to leave some of it behind, just for a little while? But it ~ never is a little while, and it's rare that you find yourself driving through rural Kentucky if you don't live there anymore. It took me three years to get back to my storage unit. When I pulled up the metal door, I found that there wasn't one single thing that I had left behind that I actually wanted. In fact, I would have been thrilled to find that the entire place had burned to the ground and all the decisions had been made for me. I loaded my possessions back into my car and took them home.

Every kilometer I drove I felt like Atlas, doomed to carry the world forever upon my back.

Everyone has something they want us to buy. As long as we have the place for it, I guess we'll keep handing over the cash. The shape of our homes is changing to meet the needs of what we own. The shape of our landscape is changing as more storage facilities go up in fields at the edges of cities to take in what we might want later on. I wonder if I could make it in a bungalow now, assuming there are any left that haven't been torn down. I wonder if, instead of having a closet that was designed to fit my life, I could once again design my life to fit into the closet. I know the first thing I'd do is follow the path of my ancestors and hang a peg by the door. "Look," I would say to my guests, "it's a place for your coat." They would look at the peg and then at me. After some initial bafflement they would place their coats upon the peg, where they would hang quite efficiently all by themselves. Then there would be smiling and a great clapping of hands. "How rustic!" my guests would say. "How very charming!" ~

i

As people buy more and more stUff, their possessions seem to be elbowing them out of their houses. The more space that goes into closets, the less that goes to living.

My cousins built a big house in the country after they left their bungalow. They built it with those very closets that would simplify their lives, but the concept didn't take. They had come to think of closets as places that by their very nature were meant to overflow, and so they filled them and filled them until those spaces were as useless and frustrating as the tiny ones they'd left behind.

In the neighborhood where I live today, a great many of the deluxe closets must be overflowing. You can tell by the number of PODS (Portable On Demand Storage units) that spring up like mushrooms after a rain. They are in the streets or sometimes (more politely) sitting in driveways, huge white boxes the size of guest bedrooms where people can put their extra belongings.

Sometimes they are taken away and stored. Sometimes they have notes taped to them. ("I'm very sorry that my PODS is blocking part of your driveway. I will try to have it moved soon.") A PODS is really nothing more than a large closet without the shelves and the wire baskets, the extra room we need for a little while until we can get our possessions straightened out.

After that, there is nothing to do but to rent a storage unit.

Short of buying another house, this is the last stop. You take the

Ann Patchett Stories 2006.

is a novelist and editor of Best American Short

Chef Jorge Collazo (left) with Herman Linial, one of his regional chefs.

T

he kitchen at Long Island City High School is bustling. It's almost always lunchtime for some of the school's 3,800 students. Cooks in aprons and haimets ready pans of shepherd's pie, curried chicken wraps, rows of apples, bananas, yogurt and chocolate skim milk for the hungry hordes marching down the cafeteria line. Kitchen staffers refill the lettuce, beans and other selections at the salad bar. Popular snacks include "pineapple pushups"-individually wrapped pieces of fruitand oat bran pretzels.

Hamburgers and hot dogs are still available, but the buns are made from whole wheat flour. Lunch selections often include vegetarian chili, chicken teriyaki with stir-fried vegetables, com, black bean salad, or lasagna with whole wheat noodles. The beverages are water, milk and 100 percent fruit juice.

Welcome to Chef Jorge's world. Jorge Leon Collazo, the first executive chef of the New York City

The World 01

e or e It's a daunting task: Make New York City's school lunches healthful-and fun to eat.

schools, has been on the job since May 2004. In his first year, the nutritional quality, taste, presentation and popularity of the food served in New York's schoolsthe largest school district in the United States-improved dramatically.

Chef Jorge, as he is called by everyone, was hired to put into practice new regulations, adopted in February 2004, aimed at curbing childhood obesity and improving nutrition for the city's 1.1 million schoolchildren.

Since then, he has revamped the menus, lowering fat, sugar and salt in recipes; substituted whole grain breads, pastas and cereals for the white stuff; and eliminated some products containing artery-clogging trans fats. He has added more fresh fruit and salad bars, despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Promise Academy students line up for arroz con pollo [rice and chicken cooked in Spanish style] and steamed vegetables in the school's cafeteria. The school in Harlem, New York City, is trying to serve food that is nutritious and low fat.

Agriculture's National School Lunch Program will only reimburse schools for one vegetable and fruit choice per student.

'The salad bars are an extra," Collazo says. "But kids like salad bars, and one of our key focuses is to promote greater consumption of plant-based foods."

The innovations have raised demands, and not just on cooks in the city's Office of School Food, which hired Collazo and endorses the changes. They have also increased requirements for the food suppliers, whom Collazo is asking to reformulate products and rethink what they sell.

As a result, New York City's efforts could open doors for other school districts that are also demanding healthier food choices for their students. And here's the best part: The kids seem to love the switch from typical fare to cafeteria haute cuisine.

Currently, however, few schools offer healthier food to students. More than 76 percent of schools sell soft drinks and sweetened fruit drinks, but fewer than half offer bottled water. Fewer than 15 percent sell low-fat or nonfat yogurt, and fewer than one third order skim milk.

Only 25 percent of schools say they've reduced fats and oils in recipes.

Increasingly, however, parents, school officials and nutritionists want school food overhauled. "Young people do a lot of eating at school, and it's a very important time in their lives when they're deciding about lifestyle choices," says Martha Kubik, a University of Minnesota school food researcher. "We need to be providing a food environment where there is an opportunity to choose healthier alternatives."

A 2005 survey by Kubik of more than 800 parents and teachers of middle school students showed that 90 percent believed healthier snacks and beverages should be available. But only a third felt school lunches were healthful, and most said lunches should offer more fruits and vegetables. As a result, initiatives to limit junk food and add fruits and vegetables have been enacted or proposed in several states.

But few school districts I)ave come as far as fast as New York City. And much of that is due to the experience and motivation of Chef Jorge. He was born in Cuba in 1950; his family moved to the United

States in 1959, shortly after Fidel Castro came to power. He grew up in New Jersey, attended public schools, and worked in restaurants after high school until he registered as a journalism major at Temple University in Pennsylvania. Writing stories became tedious, he says, "and the cooking thing really appealed to me."

He enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, in 1979 and trained as a chef. After graduating in 1982, he worked for the "Queen of Mean"-Leona Helmsley, known for her critical supervision of menus in her hotels and ruthless firings of employees. "I found my way to corporate dining," he says, setting up the food services for a major law firm that expected their catered lunches to compete with the city's finest restaurants. Then he and his wife made an unlikely decision: "We decided to move to Vermont." He first became chef at a Vermont boarding school, then in 1998 began teaching at the New England Culinary Institute.

But after 10 years, he says, ''I'd done the woods." When New York University

School lunch or 60 years, the National School Lunch Program has contributed to the health and well-being of America's youth,. helping children develop good nutrition habits.

Eating healthy foods and maintaining an active lifestyle are vital for children's health and reduce their risk of serious long-term health problems.... The National School Lunch Program, part of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), provides more than 29 million children with healthy meals each day. The program raises awareness about the importance of good food choices and trains food service professionals to prepare nutritious breakfasts, lunches, and snacks that include foods rich in vitamins, minerals and fiber.

In addition, the USDA offers educational resources for school nutrition directors, managers and staff based on the requirements for healthy school meals....

-Excerpts from National School Lunch Week Proclamation by President George W. Bush, October 5, 2006

F

nutrition Professor Marion Nestle spoke at the University of Vermont about the globalization of the food industry and rising rates of obesity and diabetes, Collazo took his students to hear her. "Suddenly, I realized what direction I wanted to go in," he says. A headhunter contacted him about the job as executive chef for the schools.

"Everything came together. I've always had a social consciousness, and with this job, you can really make a difference."

Making a difference has meant not only improving the nutritional content of meals but also increasing the number of students who eat them. He has added new, ethnic dishes to the menus to encourage participation by the diverse student population-ehicken guisado (a type of stew), plantains, Cajun fish, Asian tofu wraps and com bread. He has switched the snacks to more healthful choices, like bagel chips and low-fat popcorn. For the breakfasts, which the city made free for all students in 2003, he introduced a lowfat breakfast bUlTito and low-fat cream cheese for bagels. Breakfast-eating has soared; 5 million more breakfasts were

served in 2005 than in 2003.

One key to Collazo's success is his belief that the students are his "customers" as surely as those he once served in restaurants and corporate dining rooms. "We're trying to bring concepts from private industry to market to our students," he says.

Collazo and his five regional chefs regularly test new menu items in student "focus groups" where several hundred kids sample dishes, write comments and vote on the item. Consider Garden Burgers. They were previewed in 15 schools, where cafeteria staff held "Build Your Own Burger" days. Kids loved them, and they were added to menus.

Collazo has also instituted two days of intensive culinary training for the army of school cooks, many of whom have worked in the system for years but have never been exposed to the finer points of nutrition, taste and presentation: "They're excited to learn, and it makes them feel good about what they're doing."

Cafeteria sales are up, but still fewer than 50 percent of high school students eat school lunches. The salad bars in high schools have been Collazo's single most ~ successful innovation, but there is still a ~ :;; stigma to school food, he says. To ยง teenagers, the idea that school lunches are C'l @ subsidized by the government means school food is somehow "welfare food."

"I'm convinced that's one reason we sell so much yOgUlt; it's branded." So he's now asking his suppliers to package some food as they would for retail sale, to reduce stigma.

The majority of school kitchens in New York and elsewhere don't cook from scratch; they reheat prepared foods.

"When I came, every piece of chicken and fish was breaded, or fried, or had some coating on it," he says. "I asked why not a plain chicken breast or a plain piece of fish that we could put a good, low-fat cacciatore or guisado sauce on, and then reheat?"

"We serve 860,000 school meals a day in New York. We're using our buying power to force change among food manufacturers, and we continue to set the pace."

If he succeeds, the rest of America will _m_o_s_t _Ii_k_el_y_n_o_t_b_e_f_ar_b_eh_i_n_d_. __ ~ Amanda Spake is a contributing editor with U.S. News & World Report.

ir. Water. Dust. Dirt.

Body fluids.

Genes.

Food. Television. To see how they all interact in ways that sicken or protect children, researchers began fanning out across the United States in 2006. They'll fill vials with tap water and capture samples of air. They'll scoop up soil, take note of lawns and outdoor plants. In rural Wisconsin and New York City, they will ask mothers for samples from umbilical cords and placentas. Babies and toddlers will contribute samples of urine, feces and saliva.

Mothers and fathers from the desert Southwest and small towns in Pennsylvania will sit down to answer detailed questions on their health, their illnesses, and their family histories of illness. Researchers will

A

ask about exercise, diet, and how much TV kids watch.

In all, 100,000 children and their parents will be enrolled in the largest ever study of youngsters. Called the National Children's Study, it will be a

for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

After four years in which the details of the study design were hammered out, it has garnered the support of groups

www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov 21-year odyssey of discovery, following children from the uterus to the threshold of adulthood. By carefully watching and waiting, researchers hope to gain a better understanding of major diseases that strike children, some of which are spreading alarmingly fast. The study will involve scientists from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Centers

ranging from the March of Dimes to the American Chemistry Council. The study has $12 million, enough to launch the first phase-selection of three to eight sites, which will each enroll 250 newboms a year for five years.

The initial centers will serve as models, and eventually 96 locations will be chosen, reflecting the diversity of America. The price tag could go as high as $2.7 billion over two decades. Researchers hope

that success at the initial sites will prompt the U.S. Congress to continue to fund it. In February 2007, the study received an appropriation of $69 million from the U.S. Congress which helped step up preparations to recruit eligible women and their families. The greatest hope is that medicine will find answers to questions about childhood diseases, including the growing childhood epidemics of diabetes, obesity, asthma and autism.

Other long-term observational studies have paid off in countless lives saved. The Framingham Heart Study, for example, followed an initial 5,209 residents of the Massachusetts town since 1948. It is now recruiting the third generation of volunteers, the grandchildren of the original participants, and is

~ help protect against asthma?  ., What causes a fetus-or the ~ tuc.9 mother-to break from the @ normal 40-week pregnancy timetable and come early? § Does excessive weight gain if. during pregnancy lead to obesity in children? What effect does exposure to lawn chemicals have on behavior and learning?

Brenda Zepf has her own questions. Her son Nicholas, 12, was diagnosed with autism when he was 2Y2. At 15 months, he had the language development of a 2-year-old.

Then he started losing it.

Coupled with his developmental reversal were severe gastrointestinal problems. Today, he survives on liquid only, unable to properly digest food.

"Is that connected to the autism?" asks Zepf, a nurse.

"You really can't tell. I think most of the physicians would agree that there's some neurological connection. Lots of neurochemicals are manufactured in the gut, so that's where I think some of it comes from." credited with discovering the But she doesn't know for sure.

Zepf thinks about the risk factors-such as hypertenKansas row house where, dursion, high levels of blood chowith lesterol, smoking and lack of ing her pregnancy exercise-that contribute to Nicholas, there was major flooding in the Midwest that heart disease.

Like heart disease, many of affected her neighborhood.

"The water was contaminated. the childhood disorders afflicting growing numbers of chilThe mother next door to me dren are likely to have more was also pregnant, and she also than one cause. They are the has a child with autism. We result of genetics interacting both believe there was a connection," she says. But it's an with environment, biology anecdote, not scientific proof. triggered by social circumstance. "You have to measure She wonders, too, about exposures early in life," says childhood vaccinations. Some Peter Scheidt, the director of people believe that thimerosal, the study, "and follow the which used to be part of many vaccines, contributes to autism. same individuals long enough for the condition to develop in Several studies have found no evidence of a connection. "My order to understand." other son had the exact same Answers to a host of questions will take lots of watching vaccinations. [He does not have autism.] Are there switches that and waiting: Does early exposure to pets cause asthma or get tripped only in some peo-

i

pIe?" Zepf asks. No one knows.

Epidemiology is the kind of work that won't necessarily finger one medical culprit but will seek interactions among dozens of suspects. "There are a number of families that are concerned that certain kinds of pesticides or mercury are a cause of developmental disability and hyperactivity," Scheidt says. "There's another whole group who are convinced that diet is a cause of these things. Then there are studies showing that sitting in front of the TV for many hours a day contributes. How can you sort all that out without collecting information on all those multiple exposures?"

Increases in childhood disorders continue to confound. An estimated 16 percent of children aged 6 to 19 were overweight, according to a U.S. govemment survey spanning 1999-2002, up from 11 percent in 1988-1994.

Some 2.6 million children aged 6 to 11 have been diagnosed with either attention deficit disorder or a learning disability. With a 10 to 17 percent annual increase in diagnosed cases, autism is the fastest-growing developmental disability. Asthma is the leading chronic illness causing school absences. From 1980 to 1993, asthma-caused deaths of children 19 and younger rose by 78 percent. "People will give you theories, but it's not clear," says Carol Berkowitz, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"Without doing a longitudinal study, we might never know."

So without answers, Laura Smith and her husband, Ronald, have pulled up the carpeting in their 50-year-old house in Dallastown, Pennsylvania. She and both her children, Emily, 12, and Collin, 8, have asthma.

They've gotten rid of the venetian blinds, and they air out the drapes twice a year to get rid of dust. When Smith drives to

Top to bottom: Air, plants, dirt, water, food and TV watching can affect children's health.

work, she's irked at the cloud of pollution visible over nearby York. She believes there's a genetic component to asthma.

But what triggers it, and what protects against it? Does living in an airtight home help or harm? Do her children wheeze because of pollutants to which they're exposed?

Or has decreased exposure to the natural world somehow altered their immune systems?

The Smiths don't know because no one knows. With patience, and funding, answers may begin to emerge as this massive study progresses.

4i

Susan for

Brink

u.s. News

wrote this article & World Report.

lor Higher Education in the U.S.

Private research universities enjoy greater financial flexibility than their public counterparts.

Thus, they are able to create distinctive programs.

Budding neuroscientist Dora Castaneda studies blood cells in a lab at Stanford University Medical Center, a research institution and hospital attached to the private university in California.

Public, or state, universities typically enroll tens of thousands of students and offer degrees in hundreds of subject areas. These universities are among the major research universities in the United States and frequently have major involvement in international programs around the world.

These engineering students from the University of Arizona, a state school, were honored for the innovative design of their robotic airplane.

Two-year colleges offer students an opportunity to begin their higher education in a small, community-based environment, often at lower cost than a four-year institution.

Stefanie Krueger, an education student, on the campus of her two-year college in Ohio.

~ Suhas Sridharan uses a wireless 2i Internet connection to study outside ~ on a warm November day on the ~ Emory University campus in Atlanta, ~ Georgia, which has extension . ~ programs in Asia for global health Q and business students.

ne of the strengths of the American system of higher education is its great variety. From small colleges with only several hundred students to large state-supported universities with tens of thousands of students, and from two-year community colleges with vocational programs to privately funded research universities, American higher education meets a wide variety of needs. For students, the right choice has much to do with possible career paths, financial constraints, and geography. In other words, it has to do with what they feel called to do and to study, how much they can afford, and whether or not they want to leave home. What matters most in the end is the appropriateness of the school to the aspirations of the student.

In the United States, 92 of the lOO largest universities are public or "state-supported" (i.e., supported by one of the 50 individual states, not the federal government), and 77 percent of the nation's college students receive their education at public institutions. Still, the major private universities occupy all but three or four of the top 25 slots in most rankings. Thus, the private research university appears to be held in especially high regard in the United States and around the world.

But what do we mean when we speak of a "private research university," and what makes this type of institution so attractive?

Private research universities offer professional training (for instance, in law, medicine, and engineering) as well as education leading to the Ph.D. degree. Besides teaching, the faculty members spend a great deal of their time in research. In fact, in these institutions, the quality of faculty, scholarship, and research is as important in determining compensation and promotion as is the quality of teaching. But public universities also offer professional training, Ph.D. education, and an emphasis on scholarship and research. So what makes private universities different?

I

For one thing, private universities generally enjoy greater fmancial flexibility. They do not depend on state legislatures for funding, but draw their resources from alumni, philanthropic foundations, and scientific and other professional organizations, all of which support the universities by funding programs, scholarships, buildings, and professorships. These sources of funding, although increasing at public universities as well, now provide private universities with the ability to be more nimble and more able to step off in bold new directions of inquiry, creating specialized centers of study and distinctive programs. For students, this flexibility often translates into the opportunity to stay in fields where they might otherwise expect to fmd little encouragement.

Similarly, private universities' independence from public coffers has made them more able to establish "points of presence" in other countries. The citizens of Georgia, for instance, are unlikely to approve the use of their tax dollars to establish a study center in London. But they probably would welcome the establishment of such a center by privately controlled Emory University. In general, private universities can more easily open international portals for research, service, and teaching. Emory University, for example, has programs in global health throughout Africa, in the Caucasus region, and in Asia. It has business programs throughout Europe and Asia. Such activities provide opportunities for American students and professors to engage, whether in the United States or abroad, with the best minds and talent from other countries.

Finally, most research universities are somewhat smaller than their public counterparts, offering a favorable mixture of rich resources and human scale. While the potential for learning and research is great at any of our nation's fme universities, public or private, the smaller scale of private campuses makes possible the easy interaction of scholars across disciplines, since the schools and departments generally are at most a short walk across campus. In a world where the most important discoveries are being made through collaboration across boundaries, the capacity of the private university to foster and intensify collaborations both within the confines of the campus and beyond, to the far reaches of the globe, may be the private university's greatest attraction.

4!

James w: Wagner is the president of Emory University Georgia.

in Atlanta,

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Foreign student advisors on college or university campuses serve as the liaison between foreign students and all those with whom these individuals come into contact, representing the students' best interests and advising them accordingly.

They provide information, programs, and services designed to make these students' U.S experiences as productive as possible.

The advisors also work with American students, faculty and staff; with citizens of the local community; with officials of U.S and foreign government agencies; and with a variety of agencies that spon- ~ ~ _ ._•.• _ sor foreign students in the ()~. o· .•.~(. <1 United States. They promote constructive relationships between foreign students and their American hosts.

For more information, see http://www.nafsa.org, the Web site of the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors.

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Political science student Joel Bradley picks zinnias from the student-run garden on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota, a taxpayer-supported university. The students, from one of America's farming states, developed ways to grow plants and produce without pesticides, chemical fertilizers or herbicides.

ublic universities in the United States, also referred to as state universities, are closely identified with and supported by the states in which they are located. They are exciting, dynamic, and highly regarded centers for higher education, with unique traditions and connections to their communities.

They are also major magnets for talent from all over the country and the world.

Typically, universities of this type enroll tens of thousands of students. They produce the majority of graduate and professional degrees in the country, as well as a significant number of undergraduate degrees. Also common to large public universities are a wide range of academic

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programs. To use my own institution as an example, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus has 50,000 students, offers hundreds of degrees, and is a leader in fields as varied as neurology and transplant surgery, economics and political science, material sciences and nanotechnology, and agriculture and natural resources.

Public universities playa critical role in regional economic, cultural, and civic development, and many, such as the University of Minnesota, are deeply involved in advancing knowledge and technology through research. These universities are among the major research universities in the United States and fre-

quently have major involvement in international programs around the world. A series of federal actions in the second half of the 19th century provided resources to states to help establish and build universities. Public universities that arose from this federal largesse have a mandate to provide outreach and community engagement to the state in which they are located (e.g., technology transfer, support to agriculture, interaction with primary and secondary schools, and interaction with state and local policy makers).

The level of research intensity varies greatly among state universities. Competitive research grants and contracts awarded to the most prestigious public universities

typically amount to hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

There is also great variation in the level of support from the states. State universities with large research budgets typically receive 10 to 30 percent of their budgets from the state in which they are located. The remaining portion of their budget comes from tuition and fees, grants, contracts and gifts.

As a result of the financing structure of large state universities, many graduate students receive fmancial aid through research assistantships associated with research grants and contracts received by the university.

Although many public universities are seeking increased funding to support international exchanges and study, access to fmancial aid for intemational students is very limited outside of the aforementioned research! grant funding. Since undergraduates do not generally hold research assistantships, scholarship support for international students seeking undergraduate degrees is quite limited at these public universities.

Large state universities are located in a variety of communities, from modest towns to

large metropolitan areas. Many universities also have multiple campuses at locations throughout their state, and many states also have more than one public university system.

Public universities are governed by boards of trustees or regents, with varying reporting responsibility to the state government. Unlike in many other countries, these U.S. universities don't report to a national education minister, and higher education policy is largely delegated to the states, with the important exceptions of federal student financial aid and research funding through federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other federal agencies.

Some traditions of public universities in the United States are quite different from those in other countries. Even at these state-supported institutions, students have traditionally paid for part of their education through tuition and fees, and these costs to students are increasing. Today the average student takes out loans in order to help pay for his or her education. Private

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fundraising plays an increasingly important role in funding projects, scholarships, and positions at public universities. Finally, intercollegiate sports attract intense interest from students, alumni, and members of the general public, and these events generate additional revenue.

Among all U.S. universities, large state universities often include the largest percentage of international students and scholars. At the University of Minnesota, our community includes more than 4,500 international students and scholars from about 130 countries. The University of Minnesota provides support services such as counseling and advising on personal and academic issues, onentation to U.S. and university

An Overview of U,S, Accreditation

A

ccreditation is a process of .external qu.aHty review used by higher education to scrutinize colleges, universities and higher education programs for quality assurance and quality improvement. Accreditation in the United States is more than 100 years old, emerging from concerns to protect public health and safety and to serve the public interest.

In the United States, accreditation is carried out by private, nonprofit organizations designed for this specific purpose. External quality review of higher education is a non-governmental enterprise. In other countries, accreditation and quality assurance activities are typically carried out by government.

Accreditors review colleges and universities in

50 states and a number of other countries. They review many thousands of programs in a range of professions and specialties including law, medicine, business, nursing, social work and pharmacy, arts and journalism There are three types of accreditors: regional, national, and those serving a specialized profession. Accreditation serves the following purposes: assuring quality, determining qualification for access to federal funds, easing transfer from one school to another, and engendering employer confidence in the degree or license granted by an institution. (htlp://www.chea.org/pdf/overview_US_accred_ 8-03.pdf)

Dr. John Wise holds a vial of arsenic in the lab at the University of Southern Maine, in Portland, the state's first toxicology center, which unites more than 30 researchers from the state's major research facilities, working to test water quality in wells, the source of water for most of the state's residents. culture, immigration and visa advising, and English as a second language courses, as well as programs and workshops on a variety of topics including intercultural understanding and communication.

Many state universities have similar programs in place to help students navigate what can sometimes be a confusing system of administration and academic regulation, although the scope of these services varies from institution to institution.

With growing competition from other countries, no major university in the United States can afford to take the interest of foreign students for granted.

As a result, public universities are increasingly focused on attracting top students from around the world. If you are a motivated and self-directed student looking for exposure to the cutting edge of knowledge and creative work, I encourage you to investigate the rich opportunities available among large public universities in the United States. ~ Robert H. Bruininks is president of the University of Minnesota.

Events in India: M ay~July

UdSEFI

Selected Web Sites on

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C_aeJi I ar _\~~!JCollege and University

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Northern Region

Southern Region

June 22: New Delhi US University Alumni Fair. Past and continuing students from a cross-seclion of US. institutions will discuss their firsthand experience with prospective students interested in pursuing higher education in the United States.

July 6: American Center, New Delhi Pre-departure Orientation Program for students admitted to U.S. universities for the fall 2007 session. Students ready to depart on F-1 visas wi II hear about cross-cultural issues and life in the United States from a panel of experts consisting of Indian and American citizens who have studied and lived in both countries.

Pre-registration is required.

May 23,30: USEFI, Chennai "Exploring New Worlds," a basic orientation video on higher education in the United States, will be shown.

It is a good starting point for prospective students.

June 6,13,20,27: USEFI, Chennai "Exploring New Worlds," a basic orientation video on higher education in the United States, will be shown.

June 19: Chennai A presentation on student visas by a consular officer from the American Consulate General, Chennai.

June 22: Vijayawada A presentation on student visas by a consular officer from the American Consulate General, Chennai.

July 11,18,25: USEFI, Chennai "Exploring New Worlds," a basic orientation video on higher education in the United States, will be shown.

July 12: Chennai Pre-departure orientation for fall 2007 students.

Resource persons will provide practical tips and discuss academic and cultural aspects of life in the United States with students on their way to the United States for higher studies.

Eastern Region

June 16-17: Hotel Capitol Hill, Ranchi, Jharkhand USEFI staff from Kolkata will participate in an Admissions Fair.

Information on higher education opportunities in the United States will be disseminated to prospective students.

June 30: American Center, Kolkata Western Region Pre-departure Orientation May 19: Mumbai Program for students who A presentation on "US. have been admitted to U.S. Higher Education" at Times universities/colleges for Avenues 2007, a program the fall session. The profocusing on careers and gram wi II be held at the educational opportunities for Lincoln Room auditorium students, organized by the of the American Center, Times of India group Kolkata. Departing students May 23 will receive important A basic orientation program information on academic for students interested in and social life in the pursuing graduate and I United States. The program undergraduate programs in will help them to build net- the United States. works. The panel will June 8 include students currently A basic orientation program studying or who have stud- for students interested in 'ed in the United States, pursuing graduate and and American citizens in undergraduate programs in India. the United States.

----~ http://www.fulbright-india.org/

Education in the United States

United States Educational Foundation in India http://www .fu Ibright-india. org/ Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs EducationUSA http://www. educationusa.state. gov/ EducationUSA provides a wealth of information and services for international students at all stages of the college search. Composed of a global network of more than 450 advising and information centers [http://www.educationusa.state.gov/centers.htm] in 170 countries, these centers actively promote U.S. higher education around the world by offering accurate, comprehensive, objective, and timely information about educational opportunities in the United States and guidance to qualified individuals on how best to access those opportunities. Portions of the Web site cover accreditation, finding a school, visa information, financial assistance, Fulbright scholarships, and programs of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State.

International Information Programs Study in the U.S. http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/life_and_culture/e ducation/studcin -,he _us.html Bureau of Consular Affairs: Visas http://travel.state.gov/visa/visa_1750.html Studying in the USA: Visas http://www .unitedstatesvisas.gov/studyi ng. ht ml USNEI. U.S. Network for Education Information http://www.ed.gov/abouVoffices/lisVous/inter national/usn eifedIite-i ndex.htm I A basic resource on the U.S. educational system created to inform international exchange students.

Federal Student Aid: International Students http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/st udents/english/intl. jsp Office of Postsecondary Education Database of Accredited Institutions http://ope .ed.gov/accreditation/ g; i? ยง

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America's Global College Forum http://www.voanews.com/eng Iish/ AmericanLif e/global_ college Jorum.cfm This weekly radio series profiles international students attending America's colleges or universities.

American Association of Community Colleges http://www .aacc. nche. edu/ American Council on Education http://www .acenet.edu/ / AM/Template. cfm?Se ction=Home The major coordinating body for all of the nation's higher education institutions, ACE also sponsors a number of international initiatives: http://www.acenet. edu/ AM/Template. cfm?Sec tion = International CHEA: Council for Accreditation http://www.chea.org/

Higher

Education

Database of accredited institutions and programs: http://www. chea.org/search/defau It.asp College Board http://www.collegeboard.com/splash Council of Independent Colleges http://www.cic.org/ Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) http://www.ciee.org/ eduPASSI http://www. edupass. org/ Higher Education Resource Hub http://www .higher-ed. org/ Institute of International Education http://www.iie.org/ National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges http://www.nasulgc.org/

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Mashael Majid looks at enrollment information on community colleges in the "College Office" at her high school in Los Angeles, California. Majid hoped to attend the two-year Moorpark Community College afew miles from her home, then transfer to the University of California-Los Angeles for the next two years.

~ o ~ English as a second language: Most community colleges ~ offer a wide range of English courses at multiple skill levels and an array of support services to ensure that students with different language proficiencies succeed.

A supportive learning environment: Community colleges offer small class sizes, averaging fewer than 30 students, allowing personal attention and ongoing support from professors. The focus is on individual student success within an environment designed to support students' learning patterns and needs. Support services for students include tutoring, advising, writing labs, international student clubs and international student service centers.

Diversity: U.S. community college students come from diverse cultural heritages and ethnicities. The colleges offer a ommunity colleges are the gateway to higher education in the wide spectrum of clubs and activities that celebrate and support United States for a growing number of students. These col- the diversity that describes society in the United States.

Access to U.S. culture: Because they are reflective of and leges provide students with an opportunity to earn credits for the first two years of a four-year bachelor's degree at high- responsive to their communities, community colleges tend to quality, accredited institutions. With their lower tuition costs, have strong local ties. This relationship provides international stucommunity colleges give students a way to save money while dents with extensive opportunities to interact with Americans and learning in a supportive environment. They also allow students to to experience American culture.

Variety of locations and campus sizes: Community colleges, access training for associate-degree or nondegree careers, and they offer continuing education and personal development classes for like other educational institutions in the United States, differ widely. Some are large, multicampus institutions located in big cities, the broad spectrum of adult learners. while others are much smaller schools located in rural settings and Community colleges are the largest and fastest-growing sector serving small student populations. There is a community college of higher education in the United States. There are now nearly conveniently located within commuting distance of 90 percent of 1,200 regionally accredited community colleges serving more the U.S. population. than 11 million students (approximately 46 percent of all U.S. Distinguished alumni: Alumni of U.S. community colleges undergraduates). include California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, NASA Community colleges offer international students benefits, including opportunities to improve English language skills and to space shuttle commander Eileen Collins, Star Wars movie series producer/director George Lucas, film actors Tom Hanks and Clint build an understanding of American culture in a U.S. community.

Eastwood, fashion designer Calvin Klein, human genome scienOther benefits are: Lower costs: Tuition costs are significantly lower than for tist Craig Venter and former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona.

A.. four-year colleges and universities (about $5,000 per year as com--------~ pared to $12,000 to more than $20,000 for a four-year institution).

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Easy transfer to a university: Most community colleges have agreements with four-year colleges and universities, ensuring that credits earned at a two-year community college will count toward a four-year degree program at a larger college or university.

Accredited institutions: American community colleges, fouryear colleges, and major universities are all accredited by the same agencies. That is why universities accept course credits obtained at community colleges.

Wide variety of programs: Community colleges have hundreds of majors from which to choose, including popular areas such as business management, computer science, engineering, and health sciences-related programs.

George R. Boggs is president of the American Community Colleges (http://www.aacc.nche.edu/)

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These students are among a growing number enrolling at community colleges in Nebraska, in America's rural heartland. These students are studying in the lounge at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha. It is one of six community colleges in the state.

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"I'd like to go somewhere with warm water, balmy breezes, and no extradition treaty. " Copyright © The New Yorker Collection 2006 Leo Cullum from cartoonbank.com. All rights reserved.

"You call it a marital crisis, I call it a long-overdue correction. "

"For your convenience, I also accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express. "

Copyright © The New Yorker Collection 2006 Bruce Eric Kaplan from cartoonbankcom.

All rights reserved.

K.R. Krishna Moorthy Mumbai, Maharashtra

M.T. Thiagarajan Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu What an astonishing transformation! The presentations on each and every topic have become very reader-friendly, "short and sweet." The well-edited short formats urge us to read "then and there," instead of postponing for a leisurely occasion, which never comes!

The updates and boxes are very enriching and make the assimilation a quick and pleasant experience, The design aspect "takes the cake," SPAN thus vies with famous private publishers such as McGrawHill, Wiley, Pearsons, Harper-Collins, etc" who have made their books not only a pleas-

More original content and packages on themes: This is a welcome change" It helps us to update our knowledge in areas with the latest trends, research, views as a whole subject. The shorter stories, updates and boxes are read selectively, but a periodical has to cover the needs and tastes of a heterogeneous group of readers, so it is welcome, The get-up, photos and design are marvelous and can compare with any other "glossy" magazine, However, these photographs are worth preserving as compared to those with other magazines, which deal with "glamour." The stars indicating reprinting is possible are a good idea; we need not refer to the editor to get permission, In fact, I circulate my copy to others and photocopy for my file, The point-counterpoint sections may appeal to a few readers, At my age, I only give views; not argue,

A.K. Jain

New De/hi

I, Ifve the shorter stories, updates author In ormation and boxes The d ' ' SPAN ,eslgn makes ..' be in more attractive and readable, without , fo" g, gaudy. The Internet links are useful r inqUiSitive reade " , , ' contents page' QUite ' rs on speCifiC ISsues, The should welcome the pOint-~o a profeSSIOnalJob Well done, Readers ~~~r~~shometh;ngand want space to give th~~t~;~~~ntt~e~~;etimes r~aders feel strongly ave a ways been a strongpoint of SPAN' ers page ISgood, Graphs and very colorful. For book reviews, please al ' ,even When Indian magazines were not ; hahvebeen reading SPAN for three deca;;s ,~c~udelndlan ,authors, Overall, just superb res ness n enJoYing It for its clarity, lightness and

Nawshir Mirza Mumbai, Maharashtra You have a great magazine, But your journalism's span seems unable to reach beyond New Delhi and its immediate environs, If you do a word count on "New Delhi" in the past few years' issues you will find statistical proof of this, True, you do sometimes venture outside the artificial atmosphere of that pampered city I just wish that you took courage in both hands and, Columbus-like, sailed much more often beyond the horizon that you see from K,G, Marg, New Delhi, You would, unlike that famous explorer, discover the real Indians,

I Jagdish Sharma Shimla, Himachal Pradesh

Shorter stories and boxes have valuable data, snippets, close-ups, which help In understanding the articles, Design and, use ot color an~ images are extraordinary, particularly ot the ani I and insect world, The pictures portraying luminaries a~e ma tascinating, The design scheme is intelligently use '

ure to read but also a pride to possessl The researcher-friendly feature of Internet links within articles enables vaster access to new knowledge, ..The regu~~~~~I~tlinks are sUPPle~:~~ir~gt~h~p~~~:m:~I~~e~~~h:~~ ~;~~ lated framework of the contents page has come not a day too expand the exchange ot information, soon, The subject page tabs are which is the dire need ot the present Dinesh Mohan/a/ Triv d' , a real great help, It's nice to The SUbject tabs are ne e , Mumbal, Maharashtra intormation world, On the contents page know that features on education all readers have differen~eshsaryto save time because I find the pictures mixed with the titles a and travel, which every reader, more photos about ~ o,lces, I would like to see usetul tool. Subject-wise page tabs are irrespective of age, will immedistant planets", Amenca s latest research about helptul for quick, as well as tocused readdiately turn to, will adorn every , The Letters to the Editor are usetul issue, Point-counterpoints ;~~dback which link the readers with the offer good intellectual stimulation and scope for selfpublisher and ultimately with a large reader correction, The letters keep us abreast of other's viewgroup, Graphs and illustrations make the pr~sentaotvioe~a;~c~~~d~ points .. , ,Overall, the quantum jump being attempted here d od tools for comparison, , would make SPAN an eagerly awaited intellectual tonic, a show trends, an arehgo It has added more information in a prized possession for all those who cherish Indo-U,S, coopergood and creative c ange, G dI k catchy, focused and comparative style, Good work, 00 uc, ation and friendship,

Roshan Dalvi Mumbai M

K.S.S. Seshan ~yderabad,

Anld:~t~~a~~~inger Fish~r is a worThe article on the IIle and ~ork °t and dedication with which sev~ral thy reminder 01 thecommltmen hed the lives 01 the underpnvIsuch sellless indivIduals have tOU\ instant name, lame and populeged. They must not have go, nbounded love lor humanlslanty but theIr u t social work, cutting ._ ••_ tic approa,ches 0, stand as everg-=:1::3~ We/lhll F' h across national barners, ers to emulate, lasting benchmark~ lor oth I l'k Welthy --,::::.:-=. rk 01 Indlvldua s I e =r:f:7:::f:£;;, It is the wo ent the relations and help ~'[:;.:.; g~S[§ Fisher that cem d hip and cooperation ~ ::t:=:-::: sustain the lnen s

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I refer to th' ' aharashtra e piece on Drew G'I ' F any level in any country d ,I Pin aust. It is wondrous how at unng story, It's' good that meritoc any period, it's been the same as in several others who d racy ultimately prevailed in her case any woman who lives her l~f~1 P~Ud. Truly, at the end of the day feminist. y er own standards is a true At the same time I rec II th Professor Lawrence Sum a e controversy that engulfed f of Harvard University, not~~~~ ormer president ago" [Summers said at an aca?emlc conference in 2005 that Innate differences between men

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between nations ...

K.E. Eapen Bangalore, Kamataka We/thy Honsinger Fisher and I wore the same university tie, of Syracuse, Only she

common friend in Dr. Frank Lauba~~rt~d 57 years ahead ,of ~e, We had a House in Lucknow, The last time we ~et ~ w;, ~et many a time In the Literacy was In 1970, as I was leavin the For or Ig ,tea at her New Deihl residence assignment at the University ~f Leices~e:O~~d~,~n consultancy for a research one kilogram packet of Darjeeling tea We" e had ~hen loaded me with a long decades, as we believed that the'l d' had stayed In correspondence for be enabled to read and write for genuine nd~~n ma~ses should Ing and enrichment of the ocratlc functlon-; ....•_poor."

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Mohammad Afza! Bhiwandi, Maharashtra \ liked the story of Nashala Hearn in the article on the First Freedom Project. The American Department of Justice is tolerant and against religious discrimination and hate toward Muslims, This type 01 article should be published regularly so that a Muslim mindset against Americans can be changed, because most Muslims think America is anti-Muslim. Ellorts made by the U.S, Department of Justice will help bring the American government and Muslims 01 the world closer to each other

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good ta~te that a learned mind could be sO,reJected and lambasted for speaking out-whether the oth ' reminded of the quote' "I d ers agree~ with him or not. I was uphold till deat~ your ~ight ~o with your view, but I will I hope Faust s era will brin f ' lectual uplifting of women ,g orlth meaningful social and intel-In co lege and thereafter.

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Jyoti Sharma New Delhi

Manuka Khanna's essay is another step in our perennial journey to reach the desired destination of gender equality, There are many critical dimensions that need to be measured, like self-respect, human dignity, mental and emotional security and, most important, the assurance of being valued by others, No doubt, the last lew years have projected dramatic developments in the availability of space lor women in the Indian society through governmental and non-governmental agencies and even civil society groups. But political empowerment through periodic electoral carnivals may put into prominence only a few conspicuous women leaders who seem to be no better or worse than men, Power to women is not merely a political initiative, It is a social responsibility, Women have to be involved at all levels of decision-making-social, economic and political. She must be allowed to speak her mind. It's time to break the social barriers and people must change the way they think and behave, Only then can we talk of gender rights, gender equality and gender justice,

.

R. Thiruvengadam Chennai TamilNadu

P~yliis Mc!ntosh's article on Rachel Carson, the silent w~man behind Silent Spong, caught my attention, As director of the American Center , Library in Madras (now Chennai) 35 f' attached to the Amencan Consulate, and retired in 1985 after years 0 service, I recall With much pleasure what had happened when the ~e~as~dd~nd c~ples were, avail~b/e for sale in India. We acquired multiple c~~~~s~~~ 00 IScusslon, the Library s highly popular program Several d' , cond,ucted at our various centers in South India, and also ai leading In~~~~~~~~i~~ti~~~e ~;a~Jngk enormous response from intellectuals in the field, Just as it did in the US' e 00 surely created an awareness of the long-term hazards of pesticides, '"

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Lt. Col. Manjit Singh

Values

Military Studies

and Insights into American Culture ieutenant Colonel Manjit Singh, an Indian Army officer of the Punjab Regiment, is one of 26 foreign students selected for advanced education this academic year at the Command and Staff College of the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia.

"I would rate it as an exceptional experience," says Singh, who is taking a graduate-degreelevel course and says that this, his first visit to the United States, has taught him a lot about its people and culture, and given him insight into the way America's and other countries' militaries think about war and conflict.

"What I appreciate about the Command and Staff College is that it includes international officers like myself," says Singh.

"This is important because we are imbibing the same democratic values and professional lessons as the American officers. We are not treated Iike outsiders but partners in the same mission of providing security and stability in our regions. " At the same time, Singh says, "As an Indian and Sikh, I am an individual from a different culture who has come here not only to

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60 SPAN I

MAY/JUNE

2007

study, but live with Americans. I have seen how they live and view the world, and this has also affected me." Americans have invited him into their homes and enabled him to see that "the values we hold dear in India, like family, are also embedded in American culture."

Singh was selected for the course through the International Military Education and Training Fund, a program of the U.S. Departments of State and Defense.

The Marine Corps University campus, tucked away in a corner of the Quantico Marine Base in northern Virginia, includes four professional schools offering courses in subjects such as war, policy and strategy; national security and joint warfare; regional studies; culture and interagency operations; and operational planning. The Quantico campus is home to 480 resident students, and almost half of them, 196, attend the Command and Staff College, with Singh.

In the classroom, case studies of military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other conflicts, are "approached in a very broad-base, holistic manner and not in the myopic, one-sided way the press usually presents them," Singh says.

This is important, he explains: "We see the American officers studying these campaigns, in which non-brute-force elements like civil/military relations and humanitarian operations are given top priorities and we see that the portrayal of U.S. forces, by the press and others, as aggressor or occupiers, is not accurate."

Singh says he is grateful for his year at the Marine Corps University because "this chance of being a part of the American educational system is an opportunity which I'll definitely take back to India. It will not only influence me, but others I come into contact with."

Marine Corps University President Donald Gardner agrees with Singh that an effective military needs skilis other than force and tactics. "We're not just interested in muscle," says Gardner, a retired Marine major general and combat veteran of the Vietnam War. "We have an old belief in the Corps that education is like camouflage; it should be continually updated and kept fresh to be effective. Teaching for the future is the focus of our day-to-day operations and strategic planning."

Training the minds of future leaders-officers and noncom-

missioned officers alike-is essential to a modern military.

Adding to that reality is the emerging strategy of coalition operations in which military personnel from many nations combine to carry out joint missions.

Gardner tells his students, "We will provide you opportunities to advance your leadership abilities, expand your war-fighting knowledge, [and] enhance your ability to solve problems while sharing your experiences with fellow students from across the world."

The Marine Corps University still follows the guiding principles established by Brigadier General J.C. Breckinridge, who was commandant of Marine Corps schools in 1934, Gardner says.

Breckinridge summed up his concept of a military education' saying, "It is my constant ambition to see the Marine officers filled with ambition, initiative and originality, and they can get these attributes only by liberality of thoughtbroad thought-thought that differs from precedent and the compulsory imprint of others." ~ Jim Fisher-Thompson

USINFO staff writer. http://usinfo. state. gov

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n May 1, the United States began to accept shipments of irradiated mangoes from India, the first U.S. imports of irradiated fruit. "We have followed through on President Bush's pledge to open U.S. markets to Indian mangoes, an important national symbol in India.

Bringing Indian mangoes to the United States is just one step in increasing agricultural trade between the U.S. and India," said Ambassador David C. Mulford, enjoying an Indian mango at his residence in New Delhi.

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o celebrate Earth Day in April, hundreds of schoolchildren in eastern and southern India created paintings on the theme, "What is important to you about our environment?" Many were displayed in the U.S. Consulates in Kolkata and Chennai and three were chosen to represent India in an international competition sponsored by the State Department. This one was painted by Lahari Kundu and submitted by the Kolkata Consulate for exhibition in Washington, D.C.

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onsul General Henry V. Jardine leads a nature walk for disadvantaged children in Kolkata's Botanical Gardens. The attention of the students was drawn to the beauty and bounty of nature, and the importance of protecting it. "No action is too small," Jardine told the children. r. John Tharakan of Howard University in Washington, D.C. has just completed a year as a senior Fulbright research scholar working to compile, evaluate and assess the diverse technologies being used in South India to mitigate pollution and other forms of environmental damage caused by new materials and industries. Tharakan made a survey of institutions focused on biological waste treatment and participated in a symposium on this in February. "There is increasing awareness in the less-developed world to not repeat the environmental disasters and problems that the rapidly industrializing western nations and Japan subjected themselves to in the early and mid-20th century," says Tharakan. "This project was aimed at providing the informational database that would be important to ensuring problems are not repeated" or are confronted with old techniques that did not work. http://www .fu Ibri ght-i ndia.org/

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