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Another School Year — What For? John Ciardi

Let me tell you one of the earliest disasters in my career as a teacher. It was January of 1940 and I was fresh out of graduate school starting my first semester at the University of Kansas City. Part of the student body was a beanpole with hair on top who came into my class, sat down, folded his arms, and looked at me as if to say \"All right, teach me something.\" Two weeks later we started Hamlet. Three weeks later he came into my office with his hands on his hips. \"Look,\" he said, \"I came here to be a pharmacist. Why do I have to read this stuff?\" And not having a book of his own to point to, he pointed to mine which was lying on the desk.

New as I was to the faculty, I could have told this specimen a number of things. I could have pointed out that he had enrolled, not in a drugstore-mechanics school, but in a college and that at the end of his course meant to reach for a scroll that read Bachelor of Science. It would not read: Qualified Pill-Grinding Technician. It would certify that he had specialized in pharmacy, but it would further certify that he had been exposed to some of the ideas mankind has generated within its history. That is to say, he had not entered a technical training school but a university and in universities students enroll for both training and education.

I could have told him all this, but it was fairly obvious he wasn't going to be around long enough for it to matter.

Nevertheless, I was young and I had a high sense of duty and I tried to put it this way: \"For the rest of your life,\" I said, \"your days are going to average out to about twenty-four hours. They will be a little shorter when you are in love, and a little longer when you are out of love, but the average will tend to hold. For eight of these hours, more or less, you will be asleep.\"

\"Then for about eight hours of each working day you will, I hope, be usefully employed. Assume you have gone through pharmacy school — or engineering, or law school, or whatever — during those eight hours you will be using your professional skills. You will see to it that the cyanide stays out of the aspirin, that the bull doesn't jump the fence, or that your client doesn't go to the electric chair as a result of your incompetence. These are all useful pursuits. They involve skills every man must respect, and they can all bring you basic satisfactions. Along with everything else, they will probably be what puts food on your table, supports your wife, and rears your children. They will be your income, and may it always suffice.\"

\"But having finished the day's work, what do you do with those other eight hours? Let's say you go home to your family. What sort of family are you raising? Will the children ever be exposed to a reasonably penetrating idea at home? Will you be presiding over a family that maintains some contact with the great democratic intellect? Will there be a book in the house? Will there be a painting a reasonably sensitive man can look at without shuddering? Will the kids ever get to hear Bach?\"

That is about what I said, but this particular pest was not interested. \"Look,\" he said, \"you professors raise your kids your way; I'll take care of my own. Me, I'm out to make money.\"

\"I hope you make a lot of it,\" I told him, \"because you're going to be badly stuck for something to do when you're not signing checks.\"

Fourteen years later I am still teaching, and I am here to tell you that the business of the college is not only to train you, but to put you in touch with what the best human minds have thought. If you have no time for Shakespeare, for a basic look at philosophy, for the continuity of the fine arts, for that lesson of man's development we call history — then you have no business being in college. You are on your way to being that new species of mechanized savage, the push-button Neanderthal. Our colleges inevitably graduate a

number of such life forms, but it cannot be said that they went to college; rather the college went through them — without making contact.

No one gets to be a human being unaided. There is not time enough in a single lifetime to invent for oneself everything one needs to know in order to be a civilized human.

Assume, for example, that you want to be a physicist. You pass the great stone halls of, say, M. I. T., and there cut into the stone are the names of the scientists. The chances are that few, if any, of you will leave your names to be cut into those stones. Yet any of you who managed to stay awake through part of a high school course in physics, knows more about physics than did many of those great scholars of the past. You know more because they left you what they knew, because you can start from what the past learned for you. And as this is true of the techniques of mankind, so it is true of mankind's spiritual resources. Most of these resources, both technical and spiritual, are stored in books. Books are man's peculiar accomplishment. When you have read a book, you have added to your human experience. Read Homer and your mind includes a piece of Homer's mind. Through books you can acquire at least fragments of the mind and

experience of Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare — the list is endless. For a great book is necessarily a gift; it offers you a life you have not the time to live yourself, and it takes you into a world you have not the time to travel in literal time. A civilized mind is, in essence, one that contains many such lives and many such worlds. If you are too much in a hurry, or too arrogantly proud of your own limitations, to accept as a gift to your humanity some pieces of the minds of Aristotle, or Chaucer, or Einstein, you are neither a developed human nor a useful citizen of a democracy.

I think it was La Rochefoucauld who said that most people would never fall in love if they hadn't read about it. He might have said that no one would ever manage to become human if they hadn't read about it. I speak, I'm sure, for the faculty of the liberal arts college and for the faculties of the specialized schools as well, when I say that a university has no real existence and no real purpose except as it succeeds in putting you in touch, both as specialists and as humans, with those human minds your human mind needs to include. The faculty, by its very existence, says implicitly: \"We have been aided by many people, and by many books, in our attempt to make ourselves some sort of storehouse of human experience. We are here to make available to you, as best we can, that expertise.\"

2

Maheegun My Brother Eric Acland

The year I found Maheegun, spring was late in coming. That day, I was spearing fish with my grandfather when I heard the faint crying and found the shivering wolf cub.

As I bent down, he moved weakly toward me. I picked him up and put him inside my jacket. Little Maheegun gained strength after I got the first few drops of warm milk in him. He wiggled and soon he was full and warm. My grandfather finally agreed to let me keep him.

That year, which was my 14th, was the happiest of my life.

Not that we didn't have our troubles. Maheegun was the most mischievous wolf cub ever. He was curious too. Like looking into Grandma's sewing basket — which he upset, scattering thread and buttons all over the floor. At such times, she would chase him out with a broom and Maheegun would poke his head around the corner, waiting for things to quiet down.

That summer Maheegun and I became hunting partners. We hunted the grasshoppers that leaped about like little rockets. And in the fall, after the first snow our games took us to the nearest meadows in search of field mice. By then, Maheegun was half grown. Gone was the puppy-wool coat. In its place was a handsome black mantle.

The winter months that came soon after were the happiest I could remember. They belonged only to Maheegun and myself. Often we would make a fire in the bushes. Maheegun would lay his head between his front paws, with his eyes on me as I told him stories.

It all served to fog my mind with pleasure so that I forgot my Grandpa's repeated warnings, and one night left

Maheegun unchained. The following morning in sailed Mrs. Yesno, wild with anger, who demanded Maheegun be shot because he had killed her rooster. The next morning, my grandpa announced that we were going to take Maheegun to the north shack.

By the time we reached the lake where the trapper's shack stood, Maheegun seemed to have become restless. Often he would sit with his nose to the sky, turning his head this way and that as if to check the wind. The warmth of the stove soon brought sleep to me. But something caused me to wake up with a start. I sat up, and in the moon-flooded cabin was my grandfather standing beside me. \"Come and see, son,\" whispered my grandfather.

Outside the moon was full and the world looked all white with snow. He pointed to a rock that stood high at the edge of the lake. On the top was the clear outline of a great wolf sitting still, ears pointed, alert, listening. \"Maheegun,\" whispered my grandfather.

Slowly the wolf raised his muzzle. \"Oooo-oo-wow-wowoo-oooo!\"

The whole white world thrilled to that wild cry. Then after a while, from the distance came a softer call in reply. Maheegun stirred, with the deep rumble of pleasure in his throat. He slipped down the rock and headed out across the ice. \"He's gone,\" I said.

\"Yes, he's gone to that young she-wolf.\" My grandfather slowly filled his pipe. \"He will take her for life, hunt for her, protect her. This is the way the Creator planned life. No man can change it.\" I tried to tell myself it was all for the best, but it was hard to lose my brother.

For the next two years I was as busy as a squirrel storing nuts for the winter. But once or twice when I heard wolf cries from distant hills, I would still wonder if Maheegun, in his battle for life, found time to remember me. It was not long after that I found the answer.

Easter came early that year and during the holidays I went to visit my cousins.

My uncle was to bring me home in his truck. But he was detained by some urgent business. So I decided to come back home on my own.

A mile down the road I slipped into my snowshoes and turned into the bush. The strong sunshine had dimmed. I had not gone far before big flakes of snow began drifting down.

The snow thickened fast. I could not locate the tall pine that stood on the north slope of Little Mountain. I circled to my right and stumbled into a snow-filled creek bed. By then the snow had made a blanket of white darkness, but I knew only too well there should have been no creek there.

I tried to travel west but only to hit the creek again. I knew I had gone in a great circle and I was lost.

There was only one thing to do. Camp for the night and hope that by morning the storm would have blown itself out. I quickly made a bed of boughs and started a fire with the bark of an old dead birch. The first night I was comfortable enough. But when the first gray light came I realized that I was in deep trouble. The storm was even worse. Everything had been smothered by the fierce whiteness.

The light of another day still saw no end to the storm. I began to get confused. I couldn't recall whether it had been storming for three or four days.

Then came the clear dawn. A great white stillness had taken over and with it, biting cold. My supply of wood was almost gone. There must be more.

Slashing off green branches with my knife, I cut my hand and blood spurted freely from my wound. It was some time before the bleeding stopped. I wrapped my hand with a piece of cloth I tore off from my shirt. After some time, my fingers grew cold and numb, so I took the bandage off and threw it away.

How long I squatted over my dying fire I don't know. But then I saw the gray shadow between the trees. It was a timber wolf. He had followed the blood spots on the snow to the blood-soaked bandage. \"Yap... yap... yap... yoooo!\" The howl seemed to freeze the world with fear.

It was the food cry. He was calling, \"Come, brothers, I have found meat.\" And I was the meat!

Soon his hunting partner came to join him. Any time now, I thought, their teeth would pierce my bones.

Suddenly the world exploded in snarls. I was thrown against the branches of the shelter. But I felt no pain. And a great silence had come. Slowly I worked my way out of the snow and raised my head. There, about 50 feet away, crouched my two attackers with their tails between their legs. Then I heard a noise to my side and turned my head. There stood a giant black wolf. It was Maheegun, and he had driven off the others.

\"Maheegun... Maheegun...,\" I sobbed, as I moved through the snow toward him. \"My brother, my brother,\" I said, giving him my hand. He reached out and licked at the dried blood.

I got my little fire going again, and as I squatted by it, I started to cry. Maybe it was relief or weakness or both — I don't know. Maheegun whimpered too.

Maheegun stayed with me through the long night, watching me with those big eyes. The cold and loss of blood were taking their toll.

The sun was midway across the sky when I noticed how restless Maheegun had become. He would run away a few paces — head up, listening — then run back to me. Then I heard. It was dogs. It was the searching party! I put the last of my birch bark on the fire and fanned it into life.

The sound of the dogs grew louder. Then the voices of men. Suddenly, as if by magic, the police dog team came up out of the creek bed, and a man came running toward my fire. It was my grandfather.

The old hunter stopped suddenly when he saw the wolf. He raised his rifle. \"Don't shoot!\" I screamed and ran toward him, falling through the snow. \"It's Maheegun. Don't shoot!\" He lowered his rifle. Then I fell forward on my face, into the snow.

I woke up in my bedroom. It was quite some time before my eyes came into focus enough to see my grandfather sitting by my bed.

\"You have slept three days,\" he said softly. \"The doc says you will be all right in a week or two.\" \"And Maheegun?\" I asked weakly.

\"He should be fine. He is with his own kind.\"

3

More Crime and Less Punishment Richard Moran

If you are looking for an explanation of why we don't get tough with criminals, you need only look at the numbers. Each year almost a third of the households in America are victims of violence or theft. This amounts to more than 41 million crimes, many more than we are able to punish. There are also too many criminals. The best estimates suggest that 36 million to 40 million people (16 to 18 percent of the U. S.

population) have arrest records for nontraffic offenses. We already have 2. 4 million people under some form of correctional supervision, 412, 000 of them locked away in a prison cell. We don't have room for any more! The painful fact is that the more crime there is the less we are able to punish it. This is why the certainty and severity of punishment must go down when the crime rate goes up. Countries like Saudi Arabia can afford to give out harsh punishments precisely because they have so little crime. But can we afford to cut off the

hands of those who committed more than 35 million property crimes each year? Can we send them to prison? Can we execute more than 22,000 murderers?

We need to think about the relationship between punishment and crime in a new way. A decade of careful research has failed to provide clear and convincing evidence that the threat of punishment reduces crime. We think that punishment deters crime, but it just might be the other way around. It just might be that crime deters punishment: that there is so much crime that it simply cannot be punished.

This is the situation we find ourselves in today. Just as the decline in the number of high-school graduates has made it easier to gain admission to the college of one's choice, the gradual increase in the criminal population has made it more difficult to get into prison. While elite colleges and universities still have high standards of admissions, some of the most \"exclusive\" prisons now require about five prior serious crimes before an inmate is accepted into their correctional program. Our current crop of prisoners is an elite group, on the whole much more serious offenders than those who were once imprisoned in Alcatraz.

These features show that it makes little sense to blame the police, judges or correctional personnel for being soft on criminals. There is not much else they can do. The police can't find most criminals and those they do find are difficult and costly to convict. Those convicted can't all be sent to prison. The society demands that we do everything we can against crime. The practical reality is that there is very little the police, courts or prisons can do about the crime problem. The criminal justice system must then become as powerless as a parent who has charge of hundreds of teenage children and who is nonetheless expected to answer the TV message: \"It's 10 o'clock! Do you know where your children are?\"

A few statistics from the Justice Department's recent \"Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice\" illustrate my point. Of every 100 serious crimes committed in America, only 33 are actually reported to the police. Of the 33 reported, about six lead to arrest. Of the six arrested, only three are prosecuted and convicted. The others are rejected or dismissed due to evidence or witness problems or are sent elsewhere for medical treatment instead of punishment. Of the three convicted, only one is sent to prison. The other two are

allowed to live in their community under supervision. Of the select few sent to prison, more than half receive a maximum sentence of five years. The average inmate, however, leaves prison in about two years. Most prisoners gain early release not because parole boards are too easy on crime, but because it is much cheaper to supervise a criminal in the community. And, of course, prison officials must make room for the new prisoners sent almost daily from the courts.

We could, of course, get tough with the people we already have in prison and keep them locked up for longer periods of time. Yet when measured against the lower crime rates this would probably produce, longer prison

sentences are not worth the cost to state and local governments. Besides, those states that have tried to gain voters' approval for bonds to build new prisons often discover that the public is unwilling to pay for prison construction.

And if it were willing to pay, long prison sentences may not be effective in reducing crime. In 1981, 124,000 convicts were released from prison. If we had kept them in jail for an additional year, how many crimes would have been prevented? While it is not possible to know the true amount of crime committed by people

released from prison in any given year, we do know the extent to which those under parole are jailed again for major crime convictions. This number is a surprisingly low 6 percent (after three years it rises to only 11 percent). Even if released prisoners commit an average of two crimes each, this would amount to only

15,000 crimes prevented: a drop in the bucket when measured against the 41 million crimes committed each year.

More time spent in prison is also more expensive. The best estimates are that it costs an average of $13,000 to keep a person in prison for one year. If we had a place to keep the 124,000 released prisoners, it would have cost us $1.6 billion to prevent 15,000 crimes. This works out to more than $100,000 per crime

prevented. But there is more. With the average cost of prison construction running around $50,000 per bed, it would cost more than $6 billion to build the necessary cells. The first-year operating cost would be

$150,000 per crime prevented, worth it if the victim were you or me, but much too expensive to be feasible as a national policy.

Faced with the reality of the numbers, I will not be so foolish as to suggest a solution to the crime problem. My contribution to the public debate begins and ends with this simple observation: getting tough with criminals is not the answer

4

The Nightingale and the Rose Oscar Wilde

\"She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses,\" cried the young Student, \"but in all my garden there is no red rose.\"

From her nest in the oak tree the Nightingale heard him and she looked out through the leaves and wondered.

\"No red rose in all my garden!\" he cried, and his beautiful eyes filled with tears. \"Ah, I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose my life is made wretched.\"

\"Here at last is a true lover,\" said the Nightingale. \"Night after night have I sung of him, and now I see him. \"The Prince gives a ball tomorrow night,\" murmured the young Student, \"and my love will be there. If I bring her a red rose she will dance with me till dawn. I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder. But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely and my heart will break.\"

\"Here, indeed, is the true lover,\" said the Nightingale. Surely love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds and opals.

\"The musicians will play upon their stringed instruments,\" said the young Student, \"and my love will dance to the sound of the harp and the violin. She will dance so lightly that her feet will not touch the floor. But with me she will not dance, for I have no red rose to give her,\" and he flung himself down on the grass, and buried his face in his hands, and wept.

\"Why is he weeping?\" asked a green Lizard, as he ran past him with his tail in the air. \"Why, indeed?\" said a Butterfly, who was fluttering about after a sunbeam. \"Why, indeed?\" whispered a Daisy to his neighbor, in a soft, low voice. \"He is weeping for a red rose,\" said the Nightingale.

\"For a red rose?\" they cried, \"how very ridiculous!\" and the little Lizard, who was something of a cynic, laughed outright. But the Nightingale understood the Student's sorrow, and sat silent in the Oak-tree.

Suddenly she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She passed through the grove like a shadow and like a shadow she sailed across the garden.

In the centre of the grass-plot stood a beautiful Rose-tree, and when she saw it she flew over to it. \"Give me a red rose,\" she cried, \"and I will sing you my sweetest song.\" But the Tree shook its head.

\"My roses are white,\" it answered, \"as white as the foam of the sea, and whiter than the snow upon the mountain. But go to my brother who grows round the old sun-dial, and perhaps he will give you what you want.\"

So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing round the old sun-dial.

\"Give me a red rose,\" she cried, \"and I will sing you my sweetest song.\" But the Tree shook its head. \"My roses are yellow,\" it answered, \"as yellow as the hair of the mermaiden, and yellower than the daffodil that blooms In the meadow. But go to my brother who grows beneath the Student's window, and perhaps he will give you what you want.\"

So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing beneath the Student's window.

\"Give me a red rose,\" she cried, \"and I will sing you my sweetest song.\" But the Tree shook its head.

\"My roses are red,\" it answered, \"as red as the feet of the dove, and redder than the great fans of coral. But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year.\"

\"One red rose is all that I want,\" cried the Nightingale, \"only one red rose! Is there no way by which I can get it?\"

\"There is a way,\" answered the Tree, \"but it is so terrible that I dare not tell it to you.\" \"Tell it to me,\" said the Nightingale, \"I am not afraid.\"

\"If you want a red rose,\" said the Tree, \"you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart's blood.

You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine.\"

\"Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,\" cried the Nightingale, \"and life is very dear to all. Yet love is better than life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?\"

So she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She swept over the garden like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed through the grove.

The young Student was still lying on the grass, and the tears were not yet dry in his beautiful eyes. \"Be

happy,\" cried the Nightingale, \"be happy, you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover.\"

The Student looked up from the grass, and listened, but he could not understand what the Nightingale was saying to him. But the Oak-tree understood and felt sad, for he was very fond of the little Nightingale. \"Sing me one last song,\" he whispered. \"I shall feel lonely when you are gone.\"

So the Nightingale sang to the Oak-tree, and her voice was like water bubbling from a silver jar. When she had finished her song, the Student got up.

\"She has form,\" he said to himself, as he walked away. \"That cannot be denied. But has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, like most artists, she is all style without any sincerity.\" And he went to his room, and lay down on his bed, and after a time, he fell asleep.

And when the Moon shone in the heaven, the Nightingale flew to the Rose-tree, and set her breast against the thorn. All night long she sang with her breast against the thorn, and the cold crystal Moon leaned down and listened. All night long she sang, and the thorn went deeper into her breast, and her life-blood ebbed away from her.

She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the topmost spray of the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvelous rose, petal following petal, as song followed song.

But the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. \"Press closer, little Nightingale,\" cried the Tree, \"or the Day will come before the rose is finished.\"

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and louder and louder grew her song, for she sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a maid.

And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose, like the flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride. But the thorn had not yet reached her heart so the rose's heart remained white. And the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. \"Press closer, little Nightingale,\" cried the Tree, \"or the Day will come before the rose is finished.\"

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and the thorn touched her heart, and a fierce pang of pain shot through her. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.

And the marvelous rose became crimson. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as ruby was the heart.

But the Nightingale's voice grew fainter and a film came over her eyes. Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she felt something choking her in her throat.

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The Red Rose heard it, and trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals in the cold morning air.

\"Look, look!\" cried the Tree, \"the rose is finished now.\" But the Nightingale made no answer, for she was lying

dead in the long grass, with the thorn in her heart.

And at noon the Student opened his window and looked out.

\"Why, what a wonderful piece of luck!\" he cried, \"here is the reddest rose I have ever seen.\" And he leaned down and plucked it.

Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the Professor's daughter with the rose in his hand.

\"You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose,\" cried the Student. \"Here is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it tonight next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you.\"

But the girl frowned.

\"I am afraid it will not go with my dress,\" she answered, \"and besides, the Chamberlain's nephew has sent me some jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost more than flowers.\"

\"Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,\" said the Student angrily; and he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter.

\"What a silly thing Love is!\" said the Student as he walked away. \"In fact it is quite unpractical, and as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy.\"

So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.

5

Say Yes Tobias Wolff

They were doing the dishes, his wife washing while he dried. Unlike most men he knew, he really pitched in on the housework. A few months earlier he'd overheard a friend of his wife's congratulate her on having such a considerate husband.

They talked about different things and somehow got on the subject of whether white people should marry black people. He said that all things considered, he thought it was a bad idea. \"Why?\" she asked.

Sometimes his wife got this look where she pinched her brows together and bit her lower lip. When he saw her like this he knew he should keep his mouth shut, but he never did. Actually it made him talk more. She had that look now.

\"Why?\" she asked again, and stood there with her hand inside a bowl, just holding it above the water.

\"Listen,\" he said, \"I went to school with blacks, and I've worked with blacks and we've always gotten along just fine. I don't need you coming along now and implying that I'm a racist.\"

\"I didn't imply anything,\" she said, \"I just don't see what's wrong with a white person marrying a black person, that's all.\"

\"They don't come from the same culture. Why, they even have their own language. That's okay with me, I like hearing them talk.\" \"But it's different. A person from their culture and a person from our culture could never really know each other.\"

\"Like you know me?\" his wife asked. \"Yes. Like I know you.\"

\"But if they love each other,\" she said.

Oh boy, he thought. He said, \"Don't take my word for it. Look at the statistics. Most of those marriages break up.\"

\"Statistics.\" She was piling dishes on the draining-board at a terrific rate. Many of them were still greasy. \"All right,\" she said, \"what about foreigners? I suppose you think the same thing about two foreigners getting married.\"

\"Yes,\" he said, \"as a matter of fact I do. How can you understand someone who comes from a completely different background?\"

\"Different,\" said his wife. \"Not the same, like us.\"

\"Yes, different,\" he snapped, angry with her for resorting to this trick of repeating his words so that they sounded hypocritical. \"These are dirty,\" he said, and threw all the silverware back into the sink.

She stared down at it, her lips pressed tight together, then plunged her hands under the surface. \"Oh!\" she cried, and jumped back. She took her right hand by the wrist and held it up. Her thumb was bleeding.

\"Don't move,\" he said. \"Stay right there.\" He ran upstairs to the bathroom and rummaged in the medicine chest for alcohol, cotton, and a Band-Aid. When he came back down she was leaning against the refrigerator with her eyes closed, still holding her hand. He took the hand and dabbed at her thumb with the cotton. The bleeding had stopped. He squeezed it to see how deep the wound was. \"It's shallow,\" he said. \"Tomorrow you won't even know it's there.\" He hoped that she appreciated how quickly he had come to her aid. He'd acted out of concern for her, he thought that it would be a nice gesture on her part not to start up that

conversation again, as he was tired of it. \"I'll finish up here,\" he said. \"You go and relax.\" \"That's okay,\" she said. \"I'll dry.\"

He began to wash the silverware again.

\"So,\" she said, \"you wouldn't have married me if I'd been black.\" \"For Christ's sake, Ann!\"

\"Well, that's what you said, didn't you?\"

\"No, I did not. The whole question is ridiculous. If you had been black we probably wouldn't even have met. The only black girl I ever really knew was my partner in the debating club.\" \"But if we had met, and I'd been black?\"

\"Then you probably would have been going out with a black guy.\" He picked up the rinsing nozzle and sprayed the silverware.

\"Let's say I am black and unattached,\" she said, \"and we meet and fall in love.\"

He glanced over at her. She was watching him and her eyes were bright. \"Look,\" he said, taking a reasonable tone, \"this is stupid. If you were black you wouldn't be you.\" As he said this he realized it was absolutely true. There was no possible way of arguing with the fact that she would not be herself if she were black.

\"I know,\" she said, \"but let's just say.\"

He took a deep breath. He had won the argument but he still felt cornered. \"Say what?\" he asked. \"That I'm black, but still me, and we fall in love. Will you marry me?\" He though! about it. \"Well?\" she said. Her eyes were even brighter. \"Will you marry me?\" \"I'm thinking,\" he said. \"You won't, I can tell.\"

\"Let's not move too fast on this,\" he said. \"There are lots of things to consider. We don't want to do something we would regret for the rest of our lives.\" \"No more considering. Yes or no.\" \"Since you put it that way — \" \"Yes or no.\"

\"Jesus, Ann. All right. No.\"

She said, \"Thank you,\" and walked from the kitchen into the living room. A moment later he heard her turning the pages of a magazine. He knew that she was too angry to be actually reading it, but she didn't snap through the pages the way he would have done. She turned them slowly, as if she were studying every word. She was demonstrating her indifference to him, and it had the effect he knew she wanted it to have. It hurt him.

He had no choice but to demonstrate his indifference to her. Quietly, thoroughly, he washed the rest of the dishes. Then he dried them and put them away. He wiped the counters and the stove.

While he was at it, he decided, he might as well mop the floor. When he was done the kitchen looked new, the way it looked when they were first shown the house.

He picked up the garbage pail and went outside. The night was clear and he could see a few stars to the west, where the lights of the town didn't blur them out. On El Camino the traffic was steady and light, peaceful as a river. He felt ashamed that he had let his wife get him into a fight. In another thirty years or so they would both be dead. What would all that stuff matter then? He thought of the years they had spent together, and how close they were, and how well they knew each other, and his throat tightened so that he could hardly breathe.

The house was dark when he came back inside. She was in the bathroom. He stood outside the door and called her name. \"Ann, I'm really sorry,\" he said. \"I'll make it up to you. I promise.\" \"How?\" she said.

He knew that he had to come up with the right answer. He leaned against the door. \"I'll marry you,\" he whispered.

\"We'll see,\" she said. \"Go on to bed. I'll be out in a minute.\"

He undressed and got under the covers. Finally he heard the bathroom door open and close. \"Turn off the light,\" she said from the hallway. \"What?\"

\"Turn off the light.\"

He reached over and pulled the chain on the bedside lamp. The room went dark. \"All right,\" he said. He lay there, but nothing happened. \"All right,\" he said again. Then he heard a movement across the room. He sat up, but he couldn't see a thing. The room was silent. His heart pounded the way it had on their first night together, the way it still did when he woke at a noise in the darkness and waited to hear it again — the sound

of someone moving through the house, a stranger.

6

The Man in the Water Roger Rosenblatt

As disasters go, this one was terrible, but not unique, certainly not among the worst U. S. air crashes on record. There was the unusual element of the bridge, of course and the fact that the plane hit it at a moment of high traffic. Then, too, there was the location of the event. Washington, the city of form and rules, turned chaotic by a blast of real winter and a single slap of metal on metal. The jets from Washington National Airport that normally fly around the presidential monuments like hungry gulls are, for the moment, represented by the one that fell. And there was the aesthetic clash as well — blue-and-green Air Florida, the name of a flying garden, sunk down among gray chunks of ice in a black river. All that was worth noticing, to be sure. Still, there was nothing very special in any of it, except death, which, while always special, does not necessarily bring millions to tears or to attention. Why, then, the shock here?

Perhaps because the nation saw in this disaster something more than a mechanical failure. Perhaps because people saw in it no failure at all, but rather something successful about themselves. Here, after all, were two forms of nature in collision: the elements and human character. Last Wednesday, the elements, indifferent as ever, brought down Flight 90. And on that same afternoon, human nature — groping and struggling — rose to the occasion.

Of the four acknowledged heroes of the event, three are able to account for their behavior. Donald Usher and Eugene Windsor, a park police helicopter team, risked their lives every time they dipped into the water to pick up survivors. On television, side by side, they described their courage as all in the line of duty. Lenny Skutnik, a 28-year-old employee of the Congressional Budget Office, said: \"It's something I never thought I would do\" — referring to his jumping into the water to drag an injured woman to shore. Skutnik added that \"somebody had to go in the water\delivering every hero's line that is no less admirable for being repeated. In fact, nobody had to go into the water. That somebody actually did so is part of the reason this particular tragedy sticks in the mind.

But the person most responsible for the emotional impact of the disaster is the one known at first simply as \"the man in the water\". Balding, probably in his 50s, a huge mustache. He was seen clinging with five other survivors to the tail section of the airplane. This man was described by Usher and Windsor as appearing alert and in control. Every time they lowered a lifeline and flotation ring to him, he passed it on to another of the passengers. \"In a mass casualty, you'll find people like him,\" said Windsor. \"But I've never seen one with that commitment.\" When the helicopter came back for him the man had gone under. His selflessness was one reason the story held national attention; his anonymity another. The fact that he went unidentified gave him a universal character. For a while he was Everyman, and thus proof (as if one needed it) that no man is ordinary.

Still, he could never have imagined such a capacity in himself. Only minutes before his character was tested, he was sitting in the ordinary plane among the ordinary passengers, listening to the stewardess telling him to fasten his seat belt and saying something about the \"no smoking\" sign. So our man relaxed with the others, some of whom would owe their lives to him. Perhaps he started to read, or to doze, or to regret some harsh remark made in the office that morning. Then suddenly he knew that the trip would not be ordinary. Like every other person on that flight, he was desperate to live, which makes his final act so stunning.

For at some moment in the water he must have realized that he would not live if he continued to hand over the rope and ring to others. He had to know it, no matter how slow the effect of the cold. He felt he had no choice. When the helicopter took off with what was to be the last survivor, he watched everything in the world move away from him, and he let it happen.

Yet there was something else about our man that kept our thoughts on him, and which keeps our thoughts on him still. He was there, in the essential, classic circumstance. Man in nature. The man in the water. For its part, nature cared nothing about the five passengers. Our man, on the other hand, cared totally. So the age-old battle began again in the Potomac. For as long as that man could last, they went at each other, nature and man; the one making no distinctions of good and evil, acting on no principles, offering no lifelines; the other acting wholly on distinctions, principles and, perhaps, on faith.

Since it was he who lost the fight, we ought to come again to the conclusion that people are powerless in the world. In reality, we believe the opposite, and it takes the act of the man in the water to remind us of our true feelings in this matter. It is not to say that everyone would have acted as he did, or as Usher, Windsor and Skutnik. Yet whatever moved these men to challenge death on behalf of their fellows is not peculiar to them.

Everyone feels the possibility in himself. That is the enduring wonder of the story. That is why we would not let go of it. If the man in the water gave a lifeline to the people gasping for survival, he was likewise giving a lifeline to those who watched him.

The odd thing is that we do not even really believe that the man in the water lost his fight. \"Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature,\" said Emerson. Exactly. The man in the water had his own natural powers. He could not make ice storms, or freeze the water until it froze the blood. But he could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a power of nature too. The man in the water set himself against an immovable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with kindness; and he held it to a standoff. He was the best we can do.

7

The Greatest Invention Lord Dunsany

\"What do you think is going to happen, Jorkens?\" one of us asked one day at the club.

\"Happen?\" Jorkens said. \"That is hard to say: in the old days one had a rough idea of what other countries wanted to do and their ability to do it. But it is all different now.\" \"How is it different?\" asked the man.

\"There are so many inventions,\" Jorkens said, \"of which we know nothing. Now that a man can carry in a bag a bomb that is more powerful than several battleships, it is hard to find out what any country can do or will do next. I will give you an example.\"

I was on a ship in the tropics (Jorkens told us), and we put into a port. I was tired of looking at the tropical sea, so I went ashore and walked into a tavern to see if they had any decent wines in that country. As it turned out, they hadn't. But there was a man there with a black mustache and a certain look in his eyes that made me wonder if he might not have something interesting to tell. So I asked him if I might offer him a glass of wine. Well, he was good enough to accept, and I called for a bottle of the strange local wine. When the bottle had been uncorked and the wine poured out, like liquid tropical sunlight, I watched it go down under that black mustache. And when a certain amount had gone down, he began to talk.

\"We aimed at the mastery of the whole Caribbean,\" he said, \"and don't think that because we are a little country we could not have succeeded. War is no longer a matter of armies; it depends on the intelligence of scientists. And we had a scientist who, as I have since seen proved, had no rival west of the Atlantic.\" \"You proved it?\" I could not help saying. \"Yes,\" he said. \"You shall hear.\"

I had another bottle of wine set before him, and I did hear.

\"You may not have thought it,\" he said, \"but I was in our Ministry of Warfare.\"

And I had not thought it, for he was not at all what one would regard as the figure of a soldier. But warfare, as he explained to me, has altered.

\"Our Minister,\" he said, \"was a cavalry officer and could not adapt his ideas to modern science. He thought of war simply as an opportunity for cavalry charges and fine uniforms and glory. We had to get rid of him in order to fulfill our just aspirations.\" \"And what are they?\" I asked.

\"Why, the domination of the whole Caribbean,\" he said. \"And it is just that we should have it. We are the people who have been born to it.\"

\"Of course,\" I said soothingly, though I did not know for which country he spoke.

\"Once the Minister of Warfare was gone,\" he went on, \"we turned our minds to modern warfare, and we began to make great progress. Modern warfare gives grand opportunities to little countries. Once, if a nation had twelve battleships it was a Great Power, and we could only obey. But what if we know how to let loose a plague capable of destroying whole nations? Must we be silent then about our just aspirations? No. We shall speak.\"

\"Certainly,\" I said.

\"Other nations know something of germ warfare,\" the stranger said. \"We looked for a new and deadlier germ. And we had the man who could not only give us that, but a more effective way to spread it — his name was Silvary Carasierra. We knew that we had marvelous powers within our grasp, if only Carasierra could be kept at his work.\"

\"Idle, was he?\" I said, for I thought it very likely in a hot country like that.

\"No,\" said the stranger. \"Never idle. Always spurred on by a fierce ambition. His very life was devoted to making inventions. Yes, he worked and he was working for us on something wonderful. Ah, well. We relied, and rightly, on that man's wisdom; but we forgot his folly.\"

The man was silent.

\"What did Carasierra do?\" I asked.

\"That ambition was driving him all the time,\" he said. \"He knew that he was the greatest scientist in the world, and he was determined to show it. As long as the germ on which he was working seemed the most

wonderful thing ever invented, he was more than content. But before he had completed it, another inspiration came to him and drove him away. I tried everything: threats, appeals to him to think of our ancient glory, even bribes. But nothing would turn him from his project. The splendor of his new inspiration gripped him, and he was like a man drugged.\"

\"And the splendor of our position faded like dreams. We were so nearly one of the Great Powers but for a fancy that came to this man's mind.\" \"What was Carasierra's fancy?\" I asked.

\"I will tell you,\" he said. \"Day after day I went to his laboratory and appealed to him, almost in tears, to return to his work for us. But no, he would not listen. I gave him every chance. But at last I had to threaten him with death. I told him that if he would not return to his proper work he would have to be shot. But there was a queer light in his eyes that day, and really I think he hardly heard me. He would only say, 'I have done it, have done it.'\"

\"'Done what?' I asked him,\" the stranger continued.

\"'The most wonderful invention,' he said, 'the most wonderful invention ever achieved by man.'\" \"'You will be shot,' I repeated, 'if you don't get on with your work.'\" \"'This is more wonderful,' he said.\"

\"'Well, show it to me,' I demanded. He took me out to his lawn. And there he pointed. I saw only a square yard of grass, marked off with a strip of white tape. 'What is it?' I asked.\"

\"He took up his tape and marked off a smaller area, one of only a few inches. 'Do you see anything wonderful there?' he asked. 'Look close.'\" \"And I looked close and said, 'No.'\"

\"'That is what is wonderful,' he said. 'You see no blade different from the rest?'\" \"'No,' I said again.\"

'\"Then you have seen the most wonderful invention of all that man has made,' he replied with a wild look in his eyes. 'For one of those blades of grass I made myself.'\" \"'But what is the use of that?' I asked.\"

\"'Use! Use!' he repeated, and laughed. 'I do not work for use, but for wonder.'\" \"'It will be wonderful,' I said, 'when we dominate the Caribbean.'\" \"'It is far more wonderful,' he said, 'to have made a blade of grass. '\" \"That I had to admit. But I added, 'You will return to your work now.'\" \"And at that he laughed more wildly.\"

\"'No, now that I can do this,' he exclaimed. 'I am going on to make flowers.'\"

\"I examined his blade of grass, and he gave me every facility, showing me the entire process in his laboratory. The blade was perfect and was clearly alive, but he satisfied me that it was artificial. A marvelous man. It was a pity. But we responsible ministers cannot make threats that we do not carry out. I had threatened him with death, and he had to be executed,...\"

\"Whether it was that the stranger's tale was told,\" Jorkens concluded, putting down his glass, \"or that the influence of the strange wine was over, he fell then to silent brooding, gazing, as it seemed, into the past at the grip that his country had lost on the Caribbean, perhaps on the world.\"

8

Psychologically Speaking Lucretia Govedare

Characters

Thomas Kent, a middle-aged, pompous man Bessie Kent, his wife Eve Kent, their daughter

Stephen Sloane, the boy next door Professor Charles Waring, psychologist Thelma, the maid Time:

Late afternoon Place:

The living room of the Kent home Setting:

The comfortable, well furnished living room of an American middle-class family, the Kents. As the curtain rises, Mrs. Kent is seated in a large armchair beside a table, sewing. Thelma is arranging flowers in a bowl on the table. Puts them in, stands back, looks at them, takes them out, rearranges them. Repeats several times.

Mrs. Kent: (sternly) Oh, stop that, Thelma! I declare, you make me nervous, fussing and wasting time like that. What is it? I know you want something, or you wouldn't fool around so. Out with it.

Thelma: (Embarrassed, smiles, twists her apron and wriggles her shoulders.) Well, ma'am; I, well, it's this way. There's a dance up at Crosby's barn tonight, and Bill Fox, you know him, ma'am, he works in Paxley's garage he's asked me to go.

Mrs. Kent: (Stops sewing, looks at Thelma, speaks slowly.) We-ll, I don't know. (Pause.) About this Bill Fox, Thelma, are you sure he's genteel?

Thelma: (shocked) Genteel, ma'am? Why, he's that delicate-like — Mrs. Kent: How so, Thelma?

Thelma: (shyly) Well, he gave his mother a new coat last Christmas — but he wouldn't think of giving me anything so personal-like.

Mrs. Kent: Indeed. What did he give you?

Thelma: (proudly) He gave me a set of books called Greek Myth — mythic — mythiologgio, that's it! It's all about a tribe of people who lived in most peculiar places — like in the air, and under the sea — (Shakes her head.) Oh, I'd never believe a word of it if Bill hadn't given it to me!

Mrs. Kent: (Laughs.) That makes him perfectly respectable, Thelma, does it?

Thelma: (enthusiastically) Oh, yes, ma'am! I wouldn't go out with him, unless he was — not when I'm working for you. (Puts hand over mouth to stifle laugh.)

Mrs. Kent: Ok, (airily) Go along to the dance then, but see you behave yourself properly! Thelma: Oh, yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am.

(Starts toward door, when it opens and Eve enters. Thelma stops, stares, pretends to pick up threads from floor, straightens chairs, etc., in order to remain.)

Eve: (Rushes in impulsively, throws off her hat, sits down.) Oh, Mother, I'm glad you're here! I've been to the most wonderful lecture given by Madame Tergehova. She's simply too, too divine! Mrs. Kent: Indeed, dear? In what way?

Eve: (breathless) Oh, Mother, you've no idea how primitive we are — how simple, how bourgeois! You ought to hear how people in her country live — so happy, so free! None of our silly conventions and ridiculous standards of life! Why, her mother wouldn't have dreamed of marrying her father, it would simply have

seemed childish to her! And here we are, living like our colonial ancestors — Puritans or Quakers, really. It's too absurd!

Mrs. Kent: My dear child — stuff and nonsense! Eve： Now it's no use your saying anything， Mother — I've made up my mind. Stephen and I have decided on an experimental marriage. We're leaving tonight on the 12:15 for New York! If it works out, if we decide on a permanent marriage, we'll come back and be married at home. But if not, we're determined to go our separate ways, and each seek our own career in New York!

Mrs. Kent: (Dazed, rises, sewing drops from her lap to floor.) Why, Eve, you don't know what you're saying — you can't mean it. You're joking, I know you are! (Thelma comes forward, picks up sewing, hands it to Mrs. Kent, whose manner changes to one of sharp reprimand.) What, Thelma, you here still! How many times have I told you not to snoop! Listening to things that don't concern you! Leave the room at once! Thelma: (obediently) Yes, ma'am, (Exits hastily.)

Mrs. Kent: Now then. Eve, come here and tell me what you are talking about. (Sits down on sofa.)

Eve: (sitting beside her) Oh, you heard me, Mother. It's perfectly simple, and you needn't have sent Thelma out — it's nothing secret. That's the whole trouble, our stupid, small-town way of doing things, always under cover. We've nothing to hide or be ashamed of — why, Stephen is coming over here for tea, to say goodbye to you all. He'll be here in a little while!

Mrs. Kent: Eve, you just wait until your father —

Eve: Of course we're putting you and Dad on your honor. Mother. We don't expect you to be so childish as to lock me up in my room, call the police, or anything so naive as that!

Mrs. Kent: ( Weeps. ) I suppose there's nothing-nothing I can say or do to stop you, Eve. But youll be sorry someday.

Eve: Why will I be sorry? I don't think you and Dad are so ideally happy-I bet he's not even in love with you any more! He probably wouldn't even care if you went off with another man. Come now. Mother, confess — would he?

Mrs. Kent: (shocked) Eve! How can you say such things to me?

Eve: (laughing) Why, I don't know. Mother. There's no point in not saying them, if they're true!

Mrs. Kent: This — this Madame Tergehova, she may live like that in her own country, but it's not the way of life in America!

Eve: But it can be. Mother — it will be. This narrow, conventional way of living cant go on forever! Stephen and I, well be pioneers in this great crusade toward a new and free civilization! Mrs. Kent: (sadly) But at what a cost, child — at what a cost!

Eve: Oh, it's no use. Mother, you'll never understand! Ill go and pack my bag now. (Rises.) I'm not going to lead this silly, uncivilized life any longer, that's all.

(She goes out. Mrs. Kent sits crushed; Thelma enters.)

Thelma: Pardon me, ma'am, but there's a gentleman to see you. Here's his card, ma'am. (Hands Mrs. Kent a card.)

Mrs. Kent: (startled) Professor C. Waring! Strange — the same name! But I never heard of him. (Shrugs.) Show him in, Thelma.

(Exit Thelma. She returns, bringing in Professor Waring. Exit Thelma.)

Professor Waring: (Comes forward smiling, takes her hand.) I'm Charles Waring, and you're Bessie Kent — you were Bessie Waring once, wife of my brother Clifford, That's a long time ago. I've always wanted to know you, but right after Clifford's death I spent some years in Europe, then wandered over various other parts of the globe so that I never did get a chance to see you.

Mrs. Kent: Why, yes — now I do remember. Clifford spoke of having a brother, but it's all so long ago. I'd forgotten. But do sit down, I'm glad to know you, Charles, (Both sit down.) You must have had a most interesting life traveling around as you have. Tell me, was it solely for pleasure?

Professor Waring: No, I was continually working, investigating and studying, collecting material for my new book on experimental psychology. But tell me about yourself, Bessie — I always envied Clifford his brief happiness.

Mrs. Kent: (Sighs.) Oh, I was happy then! But it ended so quickly, as all perfect things seem to end. We had only a few short months together. Then the World War came, and in 1917 Clifford was killed in France. We never even found where his grave was for certain.

Professor Waring: I have heard, Bessie. But afterward? I knew you remarried and I have always hoped that you had in some measure found a new happiness.

Mrs. Kent: (Weeping as she talks, dabs her eyes continually with her handkerchief.) Oh, Charles, you are so kind! Yes, I thought, I was happy, ideally so — but, oh, Charles, it was a fool's paradise! I found that out just before you came!

Professor Waring: (sympathetically) Tell me all about it, Bessie.

Mrs. Kent: Eve, my little girl — she's eighteen now — has just decided to run off with the boy next door, and try an experimental marriage. Nothing I can say or do can stop her. And she has opened my eyes to my own life, too — has made me see that Tom only stays with me for conventional reasons and he wouldn't even care if I ran off with another man! Oh, Charles, I am very miserable, but I have no right to trouble you with my problems. Only I do feel close to you. You are a sort of relative to me, aren't you?

Professor Waring: Oh, yes indeed, Bessie, I want you to feel that way, and I want to help you if I can. Now let me see. (Rubs forehead speculatively, pauses.) Will your husband and daughter be here soon?

Mrs. Kent: Oh, yes, they'll both be down for tea in a few minutes. And Stephen too — he's the boy Eve is running off with. (Starts weeping.) Oh, Charles, what shall I do?

Professor Waring: Oh, yes indeed, what you want, Bessie, is this: to prevent this foolishness on Eve's part, and to know if your husband still loves you. Am I right? Mrs. Kent: Oh, Charles, yes, that's it!

Professor Waring: Well soon see if Tom would care whether you ran off with another man or not. Now listen to me, Bessie. Tom of course knows the circumstances of your early marriage and of Clifford's death? How at first we hoped he might be alive somewhere? And the final uncertainty as to just where he was buried? Mrs. Kent: (puzzled) Yes — oh, yes. Tom knows all that.

Professor Waring: Well then, Bessie, for the rest of the evening I am Clifford Waring, not Charles! Mrs. Kent: You Clifford-what do you mean? Professor Waring：Just this: I'11 pretend I'm your first husband. (excited, dramatic) I was not killed in action in France, as was supposed, but, wounded and shell-shocked, I lay helpless in an overseas hospital. Partially

recovering, I wandered all over the world, hunting some clue to my identity — hoping to establish some

connection with my past. Finally, one night, I had a shock, it all came back — my former life — and I am here to claim you, Bessie!

Mrs. Kent: (thrilled) Oh, Charles, the way you say it, it seems positively real. I feel absolutely wicked.

(delighted) (Goes up to mirror, pulls her hair out in a softer fashion, readjusts her dress.) But, Charles, why should you do such a thing for me? Why, for all you know, after tonight you may have me hanging around your neck for the rest of your life!

Professor Waring: I can think of worse things than that, Bessie. (Mrs. Kent laughs girlishly.) But I'm afraid it won't turn out that way. No, to me it will just be a very interesting little research in psychology.

Mrs. Kent: Shh — shh. I think I hear Tom and Eve coming downstairs now! Oh dear, I don't see how I can go through with this, Charles! (Enter Mr. Kent and Eve. Eve has changed into a tea gown. Mr. Kent's arm is around Eve. He talks in a low earnest voice. Professor Waring rises. Mrs. Kent, still standing, speaks dramatically.) Tom, I — I must prepare you for a shock.

Mr. Kent: (Stands with arm still about Eve.) If you mean Eve here, I —

Mrs. Kent: (hastily) No, no, not Eve. Tom, you remember — years ago — I was married once before — we thought my husband was killed in France. Still I always had a strange feeling — Oh, Tom, there's no use beating about the bush. This gentleman here — let me present him — Professor C. Waring! Clifford, this is Mr. Kent, my husband — at least I thought he was my husband! Mr. Kent: Waring! Bessie, what do you mean?

Professor Waring: Mr. Kent, she means just this: I was not killed in action in France, but circumstances over which I had no control kept me abroad all these years. As soon as I was free to do so, I came straight to Bessie, and I should like nothing better than for us to go away together at once. I want to take her out of the false position she has been in all these years, and the sooner the better.

9

Quick Fix Society

Janet Mendell Goldstein

My husband and I just got back from a week's vacation in West Virginia. Of course, we couldn't wait to get there, so we took the Pennsylvania Turnpike and a couple of interstates. \"Look at those gorgeous farms!\" my husband exclaimed as pastoral scenery slid by us at 55 mph. \"Did you see those cows?\" But at 55 mph, it's difficult to see anything; the gorgeous farms look like moving green checkerboards, and the herd of cows is reduced to a few dots in the rear-view mirror. For four hours, our only real amusement consisted of counting exit signs and wondering what it would feel like to hold still again. Getting there certainly didn't seem like half the fun; in fact, getting there wasn't any fun at all.

So, when it was time to return to our home outside of Philadelphia, I insisted that we take a different route. \"Let's explore that countryside,\" I suggested. The two days it took us to make the return trip were filled with new experiences. We toured a Civil War battlefield and stood on the little hill that fifteen thousand

Confederate soldiers had tried to take on another hot July afternoon, one hundred and twenty-five years ago, not knowing that half of them would get killed in the vain attempt. We drove slowly through main streets of sleepy Pennsylvania Dutch towns, slowing to twenty miles an hour so as not to crowd the horses and horse carriages on their way to market. We admired toy trains and antique cars in county museums and saved 70 percent in factory outlets. We stuffed ourselves with spicy salads and homemade bread in an

\"all-you-can-eat\" farmhouse restaurant, then wandered outside to enjoy the sunshine and the herds of cows — no little dots this time — lying in it. And we returned home refreshed, revitalized, and reeducated. This time, getting there had been the fun.

Why is it that the featureless turnpikes and interstates are the routes of choice for so many of us? Why

doesn't everybody try slowing down and exploring the countryside? But more and more, the fast lane seems to be the only way for us to go. In fact, most Americans are constantly in a hurry — and not just to get from Point A to Point B. Our country has become a nation in search of the quick fix — in more ways than one.

Now instead of later: Once upon a time, Americans understood the principle of deferred gratification. We put a little of each paycheck away \"for a rainy day\". If we wanted a new sofa or a week at a lakeside cabin, we saved up for it, and the banks helped us out by providing special Christmas Club and Vacation Club

accounts. If we lived in the right part of the country, we planted corn and beans and waited patiently for the harvest. If we wanted to be thinner, we simply ate less of our favorite foods and waited patiently for the scale to drop, a pound at a time. But today we aren't so patient. We take out loans instead of making deposits, or we use our credit card to get that furniture or vacation trip — relax now, pay later. We buy our food, like our clothing, ready-made and off the rack. And if we're in a hurry to lose weight, we try the latest miracle diet, guaranteed to take away ten pounds in ten days... unless we're rich enough to afford liposuction.

Faster instead of slower: Not only do we want it now; we don't even want to be kept waiting for it. This general impatience, the \"I-hate-to-wait\" attitude, has infected every level of our lives. Instead of standing in line at the bank, we withdraw twenty dollars in as many seconds from an automatic teller machine. Then we take our fast money to a fast convenience store (why wait in line at the supermarket?), where we buy a

frozen dinner all wrapped up and ready to be put into the microwave... unless we don't care to wait even that long and pick up some fast food instead. And if our fast meal doesn't agree with us, we hurry to the medicine cabinet for — you guessed it — some fast relief. We like fast pictures, so we buy Polaroid cameras. We like fast entertainment, so we record our favorite TV show on the VCR. We like our information fast, too:

messages flashed on a computer screen, documents faxed from your telephone to mine, current events in 90-second bursts on Eyewitness News, history reduced to \"Bicentennial Minutes\". Symbolically, the

American eagle now flies for Express Mail. How dare anyone keep America waiting longer than overnight?

Superficially instead of thoroughly: What's more, we don't even want all of it. Once, we lingered over every word of a classic novel or the latest best seller. Today, since faster is better, we read the condensed version or put a tape of the book into our car's tape player to listen to on the way to work. Or we buy the Cliff's Notes, especially if we are students, so we don't have to deal with the book at all. Once, we listened to every note of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Today, we don't have the time; instead, we can enjoy 26 seconds of that famous \"da-da-da-DUM\" theme — and 99 other musical excerpts almost as famous — on our \"Greatest Moments of the Classics\" CD. After all, why waste 45 minutes listening to the whole thing when someone else has saved us the trouble of picking out the best parts? Our magazine articles come to us pre-digested in Reader's Digest. Our news briefings, thanks to USA Today, are more brief than ever. Even our personal relationships have become compressed. Instead of devoting large parts of our days to our loved ones, we replace them with something called \"quality time\from book to music to news item to relationship, we do not realize that we are living our lives by the iceberg principle — paying attention only to the top and ignoring the 8/9 that lies just below the surface.

When did it all begin, this urge to do it now, to get it over with, to skim the surface of life? Why are we in such a hurry to save time? And what are we going to do with all the time we save besides, of course, rushing out to save some more? The sad truth is that we don't know how to use the time we save, because all we're good at is saving time... not spending time.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we should go back to growing our own vegetables or making our own clothes. I'm not even advocating a mass movement to cut all our credit cards into little pieces. But I am saying that all of us need to think more seriously about putting the brakes on our

\"we-want-it-all-and-we-want-it-now\" lifestyle before we speed completely out of control. Let's take the time to read every word of that story, hear every note of that music, and enjoy every subtle change of that countryside. Let's rediscover life in the slow lane.

10

Over the years Lottie had urged her sister Bess to prepare for her old age. Over the years Bess had lived each day as if there were no other. Now they were both past sixty. Lottie had a bank account that had never grown lean. Bess had the clothes on her back, and the rest of her worldly possessions in an old suitcase. Lottie had hated being a child, seeing her parents constantly worrying about money, Bess had never seemed to notice. All she ever wanted was to go outside and play. She learned to skated on borrowed skates. She rode a borrowed bicycle. Lottie couldn't wait to grow up and buy herself the best of everything.

As soon as anyone would hire her, Lottie put herself to work. She looked after babies, she ran errands for the old.

She never touched a penny of her money, though her child's mouth watered for ice cream and candy. When the dimes began to add up to dollars, she lost her taste for sweets.

By the time she was twelve, she was clerking after school in a small variety store. Saturdays she worked as long as she was wanted. She decided to keep her money for clothes. When she entered high school, she

would wear a wardrobe that no one else would be able to match.

But her freshman year found her unable to indulge this fantasy, particularly when her admiring instructors advised her to think seriously of college. No one in her family had ever gone to college. She would show them all what she could do, if she put her mind to it.

She began to bank her money, and her bankbook became her most precious possession.

In her third year of high school, she found a job in a small but expanding restaurant, where she cashiered from the busy hour until closing. In her last year of high school, the business increased so rapidly that Lottie was faced with the choice of staying in school or working full time. She made her choice easily. A job in hand was worth two in the future.

Bess had a boy-friend in the school band, who had no other ambition except to play a horn. Lottie expected to be settled with a home and family while Bess was still waiting for Harry to earn enough to buy a marriage license.

That Bess married Harry straight out of high school was not surprising. That Lottie never married at all was not really surprising either. Two or three times she was halfway persuaded, but to give up a job that paid well for a homemaking job that paid nothing was a risk she was incapable of taking.

Bess's married life was nothing for Lottie to envy. She and Harry lived like gypsies, with Harry playing in second-rate bands all over the country, even getting himself and Bess stranded in Europe. They were often in rags and never in riches.

Bess grieved because she had no child, not having sense enough to know she was better off without them. Very likely she would have dumped them on Lottie's doorstep.

That Lottie had a doorstep was only because her boss, having bought a second house, offered Lottie his first house at a price so low and terms so reasonable that it would have been like losing money to refuse.

She shut off the rooms she didn't use, letting them go to ruin. Since she ate her meals out, she had no food at home, and did not encourage callers, who always expected a cup of tea.

Her way of life was mean and miserly, but she did not know it. She thought she lived frugally in her middle years so that she could live in comfort when she most needed peace of mind.

The years, after forty, began to race. Suddenly Lottie was sixty, and made to retire by her boss's son, who had no sentimental feeling about keeping her on until she was ready to quit.

She made several attempts to find other employment, but nobody would hire her. For the first time in her life Lottie would gladly have worked for nothing, to have some place to go, something to do with her day.

Harry died abroad, in a third-rate hotel, with Bess weeping as hard as if he had left her a fortune. He had left nothing but his horn. There wasn't even money for her passage home.

Lottie, trapped by the blood tie, knew she would have to send Bess money to bring her home.

It took Lottie a week to get a bedroom ready, a week of hard work and hard cash. There was everything to do, everything to replace or paint. When she was through the room looked so fresh and new that Lottie felt she deserved it more than Bess.

She would let Bess have her room, but the mattress was so lumpy, the carpet so worn, the curtains so

threadbare that Lottie's conscience bothered her. She knew she would have to redo that room, too, and went about doing it eagerly.

When she was through upstairs, she was shocked to see how dismal downstairs looked by comparison. She tried to ignore it, but with nowhere to go to escape it, the contrast grew more intolerable.

She worked her way from kitchen to parlor, persuading herself she was only improving the rooms to give herself something to do. At night she slept like a child after a long and happy day of playing house. She was having more fun than she had ever had in her life. She was living each hour for itself.

There was only a day now before Bess would arrive. Passing her gleaming mirrors, at first with vague awareness, then with painful clarity, Lottie saw herself as others saw her, and could not stand the sight.

She went on a spending spree from the specialty shops to beauty salon, emerging transformed into a woman who believed in miracles.

She was in the kitchen cooking a turkey when Bess rang the bell. Her heart raced, and she wondered if the heat from the oven was responsible.

She went to the door, and Bess stood before her. Stiffly she suffered Bess's embrace, her heart racing harder, her eyes suddenly smarting from the onrush of cold air.

\"Oh, Lottie, it's good to see you,\" Bess said, but saying nothing about Lottie's splendid appearance. Upstairs Bess, putting down her shabby suitcase, said, \"I'll sleep like a rock tonight,\" without a word of praise for her lovely room. At the lavish table, top-heavy with turkey, Bess said, \"I'll take light and dark both,\" with no

marveling at the size of the bird, or that there was turkey for two elderly women, one of them too poor to buy her own bread.

With the glow of good food in her stomach, Bess began to tell stories. They were rich with places and people, most of them lowly, all of them magnificent. Her face reflected the joys and sorrows of her remembering, and above all, the love she lived by that enhanced the poorest place, the humblest person.

Then it was that Lottie knew why Bess had made no mention of her finery, or the shining room, or the twelve-pound turkey. She had not even seen them. Tomorrow she would see the room as it really looked, and Lottie as she really looked, and the warmed-over turkey in its second-day glory. Tonight she saw only what she had come seeking, a place in her sister's home and heart. She said, \"That's enough about me. How have the years used you?\"

\"It was me who didn't use them,\" said Lottie with regret. \"I saved for them. I forgot the best of them would go without my ever spending a day or a dollar enjoying them. That's my life story, a life never lived. Now it's too near the end to try.\"

Bess said, \"To know how much there is to know is the beginning of learning to live. Don't count the years that are left us. At our time of life it's the days that count. You've too much catching up to do to waste a minute of a waking hour feeling sorry for yourself.\" Lottie grinned, a real wide open grin, \"Well, to tell the truth I felt sorry for you. Maybe if I had any sense I'd feel sorry for myself, after all. I know I'm too old to kick up my heels, but I'm going to let you show me how. If I land on my head, I guess it won't matter. I feel giddy already, and I like it.\"

11

The skies above the old Colorado mining town of Telluride were a bright Rocky Mountain blue that Saturday, May 27, 19. It was a perfect day for rock climbers to test their skills.

Katie Kemble, a 34-year-old nurse and owner of a climbing school, had taken time off from her work to come here. Before she left, Katie and a half-dozen others had gotten together at her home, where she chatted with Ric Hatch, a 34-year-old salesman from California. Ric had heard Katie was a strong, disciplined climber, and he wanted to get to know her better. He wondered how a woman so small and soft-spoken could have such strength and endurance.

When they arrived in Telluride, the group discussed plans for a climb up Ophir Wall, a notoriously difficult cliff. Its sheer granite face juts up hundreds of feet, with only a few handholds to bear a climber's weight. This had always been the part of her vacation Katie loved best. At breakfast, Katie was paired with Ric. As they climbed up and down the wall that morning, she realized she was beginning to like her good-natured new friend.

By 2:30 that afternoon, Katie had finished climbing. Ric was on his last climb.

For a moment, Katie allowed the peace of the gorgeous spring day to embrace her. Sitting cross-legged and sheltered by the cliff, she was unaware of the 54-mph gusts sweeping over the top of the wall.

\"Rock!\" Ric's warning jerked her to attention. Rocks the size of garbage cans were crashing down the cliff and exploding around her.

Katie leaped to her feet. Then, with a loud crack, a rock bumped off Ophir's face and hit the back of Katie's left leg. The force of the blow threw her five-feet into the air.

Katie landed on sharp stones and felt burning pains in her left leg. Glancing down, she could see only two broken bones protruding below her left knee. Half her leg was missing!

Ric quickly came down while Katie looked around her for the rest of her leg. She found it lying close to the left side of her body. It was still attached to her knee by an inch-band of skin and muscle.

As a nurse, Katie knew she could bleed to death in a matter of minutes from an open leg artery. At her climbing school, Katie had taught the techniques of self-rescue. Through years of guiding difficult journeys, she had disciplined herself to control her emotions. \"Face the fear, know what you have to do and do it\" was her motto. Forcing pain off from her mind, Katie carefully lifted the almost severed leg and straightened it out. It felt odd-soft and warm, without the sensation of belonging to her body. Ric was now beside her, a look of horror in his eyes. \"We need to stop the bleeding,\" she yelled.

Scrambling over the stones, Ric brought some nylon rope he used in climbing. Pale-faced and trembling, Ric told her, \"I'd better go get help.\" \"There's no time,\" she said firmly. \"You have to get me out of here!\"

At 160 pounds, Ric was strong. But could he carry her a half-mile on the steep, rough slope? Ric picked Katie up and carried her in his arms.

\"Don't worry,\" he said. \"I won't leave you. I'll see you through this all the way.\"

As Ric struggled down the trail, he tried to ignore the gruesome sight of Katie's leg, clutched in her left hand, only eight inches from his face. He swallowed hard and choked back the nausea.

Katie saw fear cross his face. \"Ric, if I pass out, this is what you need to do.\" She gave him detailed

instructions, hoping to distract him from thoughts of her dying in his arms.

They came to a slope, a steep quarter-mile field of rocks. Exhaustion was catching up with him. Sweat soaked his shirt and mixed with Katie's blood. His heart was racing, and breath came in painful gasps from the altitude. It was the hardest physical effort he had ever experienced. But when he thought of the woman in his arms, he was able to push himself harder.

It was about 3:30 by the time Ric staggered off the trail. Another climber who had witnessed the rock-slide was there with his truck, and Ric lifted Katie into the back. As they sped down the road, bumps sent lightning bolts of pain through Katie's body.

Katie was amazed that she hadn't passed out from the pain. But she knew why. I'm the only one with a medical background. I've got to stay conscious.

The nurse on duty at the Telluride Medical Center heard pounding on the back door and opened it to find two police officers and several volunteer emergency-medical technicians. They had met Katie's truck on the highway. The nurse helped Ric and the others put Katie on the table.

Some of the volunteers were newly trained and had never seen a worse injury. When Katie saw their ashen faces, she took command: \"I'm a critical-care nurse. You're going to have to start an I.V. on me.\" She thrust out both arms, fists clenched to expose the veins, and gave them precise technical details of what they must do.

Katie's knowledge and presence of mind impressed Dr. Judy Ingalls. Katie needed advanced medical treatment, and soon, Dr. Ingalls's job was to stabilize her and get her to St. Mary's, one of the hospitals where Katie worked. The doctor put a cuff around the left thigh; if the arteries relaxed, Katie could die in minutes.

Within the hour, Katie was stabilized. As the initial shock began to wear off, the nerve endings became more sensitive, causing even greater pain.

At about 5 p.m. she was eased into a helicopter. As the helicopter arrived, Katie knew that her desperate need to direct her own rescue was over. She could now give herself to the care of those she knew and trusted.

The emergency-room staff prepared her for surgery. When Dr. David Fisher arrived, Katie looked him in the eye: \"Can you save my leg?\" \"No,\" he said.

But in surgery Dr. Fisher was surprised to find the lower leg warm. Both sections of leg had reparable arteries. \"This is one lucky young lady,\" he told his staff. \"She has a chance of using the leg again after all.\" A few hours later Ric sat in recovery with Katie. He couldn't believe this frail, unconscious patient was the same woman who had directed her own rescue and emergency care.

When Katie awoke, hours later, she couldn't remember at first where she was and why. Then the pain struck, and the awful memory came back. With a shiver, she looked down at her toes. There were ten of them! \"Look!\" she said with delight. Now at least she had a fighting chance.

Katie never anticipated what a fight it would be. Twice daily they dipped her into a warm bath to cleanse the wound. Over the next few months at St. Mary's, she endured half a dozen operations to replace lost muscle and skin. A vein was taken from her right leg to fashion an artery for her left.

Katie would have to wear a metal frame resembling a leg brace. Each day she would have to turn screws to lengthen the brace by one millimeter, stretching the soft tissue, nerves, arteries, veins and skin as the bone grew.

There would be no guarantees, but she already had sensation in her leg and foot, and there was hope.

Determined to remain strong, Katie held in her emotions for three weeks after her accident. Then it hit her. She was stuck in a hospital bed, in pain and with an uncertain future. Suddenly, the tears came. She cried for all she'd lost, for the tragic turn her life had taken. But as the tears stopped, she admitted she had gained one inestimable thing — Ric.

Through it all, Ric, a man she hardly knew, had remained by her side. For the first four weeks of her four-month hospital stay, he had slept in a chair next to her bed. There was always one white rose in a vase on her desk. It reminded her of his words on the trail: \"I'll see you through this all the way.\"

Katie knew that she had come to care for him as much as he obviously cared for her. And from that moment on, their relationship blossomed into love.

12

These notes are in the nature of a confession. It is the confession of a miseducated man.

I have become most aware of my lack of a proper education whenever I have had the chance to put it to the test. The test is a simple one: am I prepared to live and comprehend a world in which there are 3 billion

people? Not the world as it was in 1850 or 1900, for which my education might have been adequate, but the world today. And the best place to apply that test is outside the country — especially Asia or Africa.

Not that my education was a complete failure. It prepared me very well for a bird's-eye view of the world. It taught me how to recognize easily and instantly the things that make one place or one people different from another. Geography had instructed me in differences of terrain, resources, and productivity. Comparative culture had instructed me in the differences of background and group interests. Anthropology had instructed me in the differences of facial bone structure, skin color and general physical aspect. In short, my education protected me against surprise. I was not surprised at the fact that some people lived in mud huts and others in bamboo cottages; or that some used wood for fuel and others dung; or that some enjoyed music with a five-note scale and others with twelve; or that some people were vegetarian by religion and others by preference.

In those respects my education had been more than adequate. But what my education failed to do was to teach me that the principal significance of such differences was that they were largely without significance. The differences were all but wiped out by the similarities. My education had by-passed the similarities. It had failed to grasp and define the fact that beyond the differences are realities scarcely comprehended because of their very simplicity. And the simplest reality of all was that the human community was one — greater than any of its parts, greater than the separateness imposed by the nations, greater than the different faiths and loyalties or the depth and color of varying cultures. This larger unity was the most important central fact of our time — something on which people could build at a time when hope seemed misty, almost unreal.

As I write this, I have the feeling that my words fail to give force to the idea they seek to express. Indeed, the idea itself is a truth which all peoples readily accept even if they do not act on it. Let me put it differently, then. In order to be at home anywhere in the world I had to forget the things I had been taught to remember. It turned out that my ability to get along with other peoples depended not so much upon my comprehension of the uniqueness of their way of life as my comprehension of the things we had in common. It was important to respect these differences, certainly, but to stop there was like clearing the ground without any idea of what was to be built on it. When you got through comparing notes, you discovered that you were both talking about the same neighborhood, i.e., this planet, and the conditions that made it pleasant or hostile to human life.

Only a few years ago an education in differences of references fulfilled a specific if limited need. That was at a time when we thought of other places and peoples largely out of curiosity or in terms of unusual vacations. It was the mark of a rounded man to be well traveled and to know about the amazing variations of human culture and behavior. But it wasn't the type of knowledge you had to live by and build on.

Then overnight came the great compression. Far-flung areas which had been secure in their remoteness suddenly became crowded together in a single arena. And all at once a new type of education became necessary, an education in liberation from tribalism. For tribalism had persisted from earliest times, though it had taken refined forms. The new education had to teach man the most difficult lesson of all: to look at someone anywhere in the world and be able to recognize the image of himself. It had to be an education in self-recognition. The old emphasis upon superficial differences had to give way to education for mutuality and for citizenship in the human community.

In such an education we begin with the fact that the universe itself does not hold life cheaply. Life is a rare occurrence among the millions of galaxies and solar systems that occupy space. And in this particular solar system life occurs on only one planet. And on that one planet life takes millions of forms. Of all these

countless forms of life, only one, the human species, possesses certain faculties in combination that give it supreme advantages over all the others. Among those faculties or gifts is a creative intelligence that enables man to reflect and foresee, to take in past experience, and also to visualize future needs. There are endless other wonderful faculties, the workings of which are not yet within our understanding — the faculties of hope, conscience, appreciation of beauty, kinship, love, faith.

Viewed in global perspective, what counts is not that the thoughts of people lead them in different directions but that all men possess the capacity to think; not that they pursue different faiths but that they are capable of spiritual belief; not that they write and read different books but that they are capable of creating print and communicating in it across time and space; not that they enjoy different art and music but that something in them enables them to respond deeply to forms and colors and ordered sounds.

These basic lessons, then, would seek to provide a proper respect for humanity in the universe. Next in order would be instruction in the unity of human needs. However friendly the universe may be, it has left the conditions of human existence precariously balanced. All people need oxygen, water, land, warmth, food. Remove any one of these and the unity of human needs is attacked and the human race with it. The next lesson would concern the human situation itself — how to use self-understanding in the cause of human

welfare; how to control the engines we have created that threaten to alter the precarious balance on which life depends; how to create a peaceful society of the whole.

With such an education, it is possible that some nation or people may come forward not only with vital understanding but with the vital inspiration that people need no less than food. Leadership on this higher level does not require mountains of gold or thundering propaganda. It is concerned with human destiny; human destiny is the issue; people will respond.

13

He gave away his fortune for a hammer, a saw — and a dream.

As a boy, Millard Fuller was a whiz with money. He had a knack for turning a profit the way other kids had a knack for baseball. Starting with a pig his father gave him, Millard became a livestock trader during his teens, netting enough to pay his way through Auburn University.

Then he entered the University of Alabama law school in 1957. But he continued to make money. By age 29, Fuller was almost a millionaire, with a luxurious home, a vacation retreat, two speedboats, a Lincoln Continental and shares in three cattle ranches.

Several years earlier. Fuller had married Linda Caldwell, and for Millard Fuller, life was full.

Then one day Linda stunned Millard by announcing that she didn't think she loved him any longer. \"I feel as if I don't have a husband,\" she told him. \"You are always working,\" she said. \"I'm going away for a while.\" The next day she left for New York to talk to a minister they knew.

How could I have miscalculated so badly? Millard wondered. Surely my family matters more than money. For the next few days he tried to work, but couldn't concentrate. The business he had helped build was thriving — but what had it cost? His marriage? His health? Millard's neck bothered him lately, and he sometimes had trouble breathing, as if a weight were pressing on his chest.

When Linda called and agreed to his pleas to meet him in New York the following week, Millard asked his parents to stay with the children. The evening before he went to New York, he began idly watching a TV movie. A line in the film jolted him: \"A planned life can only be endured.\"

A planned life! That was exactly what he was living. The plan was to make a fortune, to turn a million into ten million. But he realized now that he had left out everything that counted; he could no longer endure it.

Then and there he vowed to give his money away and find a more satisfying reason for living. Whatever he settled on, his new life would have to mean something, to have a positive effect on others.

When he reached New York, Linda told him she wanted to keep the marriage together. That evening, as they were drinking orange juice at Radio City Music Hall, Linda broke down and began sobbing.

They left the theater clutching each other and went for a walk. Finally, they began to talk, with a rush of feeling. Millard spoke of his idea to go home, give everything away and start afresh. What did she think? Linda nodded yes and embraced him. Whatever comes next, she thought, we'll face it together.

The Fullers returned to Alabama and sold Millard's share of the company. They put their houses on the market, sold the boats and distributed the proceeds among churches, colleges and charities. Millard was feeling better — breathing came easier, his chest pain was gone — but now he needed a job. As a stopgap measure, he became a New York-based fund-raiser for a small college in Mississippi.

The Fullers moved into an apartment over a gas station in New Jersey. Millard commuted to Manhattan by bus. Their tight budget was made even tighter by the birth of their third child. But they didn't mind their scaled-down life-style. Now they were a team.

Millard found his work satisfying, but he still yearned for a mission that would summon all his energy and idealism. When the fund drive ended a year later, he wrote to his minister friend Clarence Jordan and asked if he had any ideas. Maybe, replied Jordan. He invited Millard to Georgia.

Jordan had been thinking about the dilapidated shacks that lined the red-clay roads around Americus. They often lacked heat and plumbing, and the poor families who lived in them couldn't afford repairs. Banks wouldn't give them mortgages, so they had to keep on renting. They were trapped.

\"These people don't need charity; they need a way to help themselves,\" Jordan told Millard. Together they decided to set up a corporation funded by donations. The capital would go for land and building materials. The corporation would erect simple, decent houses and sell them at cost. The buyers would make a minimal down payment and monthly interest-free mortgage payments that would go back into the fund for more houses.

The buyers themselves would be encouraged to put hundreds of hours of sweat equity into their own houses and to invest time in the construction of a neighbor's house.

Excited by the idea, Millard and Linda gathered up the children and moved to Jordan's Koinonia Farm.

Building would start at the farm, on land it already owned. Millard laid out 42 half acre lots and began touring to raise money and recruit volunteers. Letters to Koinonia Farm supporters around the country brought in thousands of dollars.

Millard hired contractors to lay the foundations and install plumbing and wiring. The price of the first house, which included three bedrooms and a modern kitchen, was about $6,000. The buyers were Bon and Emma Johnson, who lived with their children in a nearby shack.

At last Millard was certain that he had found his calling. By 1972 his first 27 houses were up and occupied. Many of the families had never lived in a warm house with indoor plumbing.

Millard wondered if the idea blossoming in Georgia might flower elsewhere. So he accepted a three-year assignment from the Christian Church to launch the building of 114 houses in Zaire, Africa. Linda and the children accompanied him.

When they returned to Americus in 1976, Millard had a mental blueprint for an international assault on poverty housing. He called it Habitat for Humanity.

Like the Koinonia project, Habitat would be financed by donations and buyers' monthly payments without a penny of government funds.

Habitat began building houses in Americus for needy people who could handle a small down payment plus about $65 monthly. An elderly couple named Lillie Mae and Jonas Bownes watched from their shack as their new house rose across the street. Mrs. Bownes frequently got up after midnight and peeked to make sure the unfinished five-room dwelling was still there. \"I never dreamed I'd have a place like this, \" Mrs. Bownes says. \"It makes us feel like people.\"

Habitat grew slowly at first. In 1981 there were 15 projects in the United States, 11 overseas. Last year the numbers ballooned to 241 in North America and 50 in 25 countries abroad. By 1996, if things go as planned, Habitat will be operating in 2,000 U.S. cities and 60 countries.

Volunteers apply for jobs at a rate of 40 a month. Habitat's generous philosophy seems to tap a reservoir of good will. \"I was looking for a way to measure myself in terms other than money,\" says a staffer who gave up an engineering career to direct fund raising at Habitat.

It is ten o'clock on a scorching July morning in Charlotte, N.C. Millard Fuller is pounding nails into a roof on one of 14 houses rising simultaneously. Around him, 350 volunteer builders, many of them veteran Habitat workers bused in from out of town, are hammering, drilling, fitting windows — building a neighborhood. \"Who's paying for all this?\" a passer-by asks. \"Nobody,\" Millard replies.

The man looks dubious. \"Folks don't do this sort of thing for nothing.\" \"It's worse than that,\" Millard says cheerfully. \"They paid to come.\"

\"You get a sense of joy in this word,\" says Millard after a long day on the roof.\" The most dynamic people I know are concerned about something beyond themselves. We're doing something that makes a real

difference. It won't fade away next week or next month. Every house is a permanent blessing — for builder and buyer both.\"

.

14

I witnessed the launch from the Kennedy Space Center press site just 4.2 miles from Pad 39B. It was my 19th shuttle launch but my first without the comforting presence of UPI Science Editor Al Rossiter Jr., a space veteran with all of the experience I lacked.

I arrived at the UPI trailer around 11:30 p.m. Monday night, Jan. 27. I always came to work before the start of fueling on the theory that any time anyone loaded a half-million gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen into anything it was an event worth staffing.

It was bitterly cold that night. I remember turning on the drafty UPI trailer's heaters in a futile attempt to warm up while I started banging out copy. I was writing for afternoon newspapers that would hit the streets the following afternoon. Because Challenger's launch was scheduled for that morning, the PM cycle was the closest thing to \"live\" reporting that print journalists ever experience... I had written my launch copy the day before and, as usual, I spent most of the early morning hours improving the story, checking in periodically with NASA public affairs and monitoring the chatter on the bureau's radio scanner. I would occasionally glance toward the launch pad where Challenger stood bathed in high power spotlights, clearly visible for

dozens of miles around. Off to the side, a brilliant tongue of orange flame periodically flared in the night as excess hydrogen was let out harmlessly into the atmosphere.

As night gave way to day, the launch team was struggling to keep the countdown on track. Problems had delayed fueling and launch, originally scheduled for 9:38 a.m., for two hours, to make sure no dangerous accumulations of ice had built up on Challenger's huge external tank. Finally, all systems were \"go\" and the countdown resumed at the T minus nine-minute mark for a liftoff at 11:38 a.m. Battling my usual pre-launch nervousness, I called UPI national desk editor Bill Trott in Washington about three minutes before launch. I had already filed the PM launch story to UPI's computer and Trott now called it up on his screen. We shot the breeze. I reminded him not to push the SEND button until I confirmed vertical motion; two previous launches were aborted at the last second and we didn't want to accidentally \"launch\" a shuttle on the wire when it was still firmly on the ground. But there were no such problems today. Challenger's three main engines thundered to life on schedule, shooting out blue-white fire and enormous clouds of steam. Less than seven seconds later, the shuttle's twin boosters ignited with a ground-shaking roar and the spacecraft rose skyward. \"And liftoff... liftoff of the 25th space shuttle mission, and it has cleared the tower!\" said NASA commentator Hugh Harris.

\"OK, let it go,\" I told Trott when Harris started talking. He pushed the SEND button and my story winged away on the A-wire.

Four miles away. Challenger was climbing majestically into a cloudless blue sky. We could not see the initial puffs of smoke indicating a fatal booster flaw. A few seconds later, the crackling roar of those boosters swept over the press site and the UPI trailer started shaking and rattling as the ground shock arrived. I marveled at the view, describing it to Trott in Washington. We always kept the line open for the full

eight-and-a-half minutes it took for a shuttle to reach orbit; should disaster strike, the plan went, I would start dictating and Trott would start filing raw copy to the wire.

But for the first few seconds, there was nothing to say. The roar was so loud we couldn't hear each other anyway. But the sound quickly faded to a dull rumble as Challenger wheeled about and arced over behind its booster exhaust plume, disappearing from view. NASA television, of course, carried the now-familiar closeups of the orbiter, but I wasn't watching television. I was looking out the window at the exhaust cloud towering into the morning sky. \"Incredible,\" I murmured.

And then, in the blink of an eye, the exhaust plume seemed to balloon outward, to somehow thicken. I recall a fleeting impression of fragments, of debris flying about, sparkling in the morning sunlight. And then, in that pregnant instant before the knowledge that something terrible has happened settled in, a single booster emerged from the cloud, corkscrewing madly through the sky. I sat stunned. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.

\"Wait a minute... something's happened...\" I told Trott. A booster? Flying on its own? Oh my God. \"They're in trouble,\" I said, my heart pounding. \"Lemme dictate something!\"

\"OK, OK, hang on,\" Trott said. He quickly started punching in the header material of a one-paragraph \"story\" that would interrupt the normal flow of copy over the wire and alert editors to breaking news. I still didn't realize Challenger had actually exploded. I didn't know what had happened. For a few

heartbeats, I desperately reviewed the crew's options: Could the shuttle somehow have pulled free? Could the crew somehow still be alive? Had I been watching television, I would have known the truth immediately. But I wasn't watching television. \"Ready,\" Trott said.

The lead went something like this: \"The space shuttle Challenger apparently exploded about two minutes

after launch today and veered wildly out of control. The fate of the crew is not known.\"

\"Got it...\" Trott said, typing as I talked. Bells went off seconds later as the story starting clattering out on the bureau's A-wire printer behind me.

Trott and I quickly corrected the time of the accident and clarified that Challenger had, in fact, suffered a catastrophic failure. While we did not yet know what had happened to the crew, we all knew the chances for survival were virtually zero.

For the next half hour or so, I simply dictated my impressions and background to Trott, who would file three or four paragraphs of \"running copy\" to the wire at a time. At one point, I remember yelling \"Obits! Tell somebody to refile the obits!\" Before every shuttle mission, I wrote detailed profiles of each crew member. No one actually printed these stories; they were written to serve as instant obits in the event of a disaster. Now, I wanted to refile my profiles for clients who had not saved them earlier. At some point — I have no idea when — I put the phone down and started typing again, filing the copy to Washington where Trott assembled all the pieces into a more or less coherent narrative.

For the next two hours or so I don't remember anything but the mad rush of reporting. Subconsciously, I held the enormity of the disaster at bay; I knew if I relaxed my guard for an instant it could paralyze me. I was flying on some kind of mental autopilot. And then, around 2 p.m. or so, I recall a momentary lull. My fingers dropped to the keyboard and I stared blankly out the window toward the launch pad. I saw those seven astronauts. I saw them waving to the photographers as they headed for the launch pad. I remembered

Christa McAuliffe's smile and Judy Resnik's flashing eyes. Tears welled up. I shook my head, blinked rapidly and turned back to my computer. I'll think about it all later, I told myself. I was right. I think about it every launch