It's one of life's most deceptive illusions: that there seems to be a gulf of difference between these two giants: Science and Spirituality. The author of this article, like myself, believes and thinks the only gulf is in the mind of those intent on driving wedges in lieu of recognizing natural bridges. Enjoy
The New York Times
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February 28, 2006
Essay
The Oracle Suggests a Truce Between Science and Religion
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
It may seem that the longstanding war between science and religion is entering a new phase: Darwin versus intelligent design, religious opposition to stem cell research, Western secularism versus Islamic fundamentalism. All around we see growing tensions between the scientific demand for truth through reason and experiment, and the religious desire for consolation and revealed truth.
What seems like a clear trend, however, in fact misrepresents the underlying reality. We have indeed seen many conflicts over the centuries, vividly in the case of Galileo versus the church.
But the truth is that science and spirituality, rather than addressing similar ground, speak to very different realms of human experience and, at least in theory, have the potential to coexist in peace, complementing rather than constantly battling each other.
Some scientists, theologians and philosophers have acknowledged this exclusivity over the years. But their tolerant views are frequently lost in the din of metaphysical warfare and the worldly positioning of each side for power.
The recent discoveries of a renegade four-member team of scientists illustrate how the two realms are quite independent. They found the truth behind the Oracle of Delphi's legendary powers, showing how the most influential figure of ancient Greece prepared for ecstatic union with Apollo. The scientists, analyzing the Delphi region and the god's temple, discovered tons of bituminous limestone down below, its layers rich in intoxicating gases.
They also found two faults that crisscross beneath the shrine to form a geologic pathway to the surface. They even measured traces of intoxicants still bubbling up today. This and other evidence suggest that the Oracle inhaled a mist of potent gases that could promote trancelike states and aloof euphoria, helping send her into mystic ecstasies.
The scientists' triumph, however, did little to pierce the Oracle's veil, as the scientists were quick to acknowledge. They claimed no insights into how her utterances stood for ages as monuments of wisdom. They had no explanation for how the priestess inspired Socrates, or the seeming reliability of her visionary pronouncements. In short, the scientists, while solving a major riddle of antiquity, wisely left other mysteries untouched.
The modesty of the Delphic investigators stands in contrast to some of the world's top scientists and their champions, who have claimed that science can answer questions far beyond the usual realm of physical phenomena, such as puzzles of religion, culture, ethics and, most important because of their centrality to the rest, mind and consciousness. Some evolutionary theorists argue that religion works because it fosters beliefs that aid the struggle for survival, not because it is true.
Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher at Tufts, promotes this view in his new book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" (Viking). He likens spiritual belief to disease and looks to psychology, philosophy and history to explain its grip on humanity.
Edward O. Wilson, the distinguished Harvard biologist, argues in his book "Consilience" (Knopf, 1998) that "all tangible phenomena, from the birth of stars to the workings of social institutions, are based on material processes that are ultimately reducible, however long and tortuous the sequences, to the laws of physics." The insights of neuroscience and evolution, Dr. Wilson wrote, increasingly can illuminate even morality and ethics, with the scientific findings potentially leading "more directly and safely to stable moral codes" than do the dictates of God's will or the findings of transcendentalism.
Such views are more hope than fact, as the best theorists concede, and can exhibit a kind of arrogance.
For its part, organized religion has for centuries found means of accommodation, approval and even support for science to leaven its sometime resistance. The early Roman Catholic Church adapted cathedrals across Europe to serve as solar observatories. Muslims of the Middle Ages pioneered the forerunners of optics and algebra.
So too, many scientists in history have turned to the heavens. Galileo believed in the power of prayer. Darwin wrote "Origin of Species" as a theist, envisioning divine control of the universe. Today, surveys show that roughly 40 percent of scientists believe in a God who actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray in expectation of answers — hardly a mob of atheists.
The scientists who make sweeping metaphysical claims may represent a vocal minority. But hubris and celebrity are a potent mix, and threaten to intensify a cultural war that need not be. They might consider easing their rhetoric and learning a lesson in humility from the discoverers of Delphi's secret.
William J. Broad's book "The Oracle: The Lost Secrets and Hidden Message of Ancient Delphi," is published this month by The Penguin Press.
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Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Monday, February 27, 2006
Elder Non-hostile
Jim Wilson/The New York TimesRight: Some of the residents of the Glacier Circle complex gathered last week for a meeting at the home of Dorie Datel. Clockwise from left, Lois Grau, Mary Ellen and Ray Coppock, Ms. Datel (obscured), and Stan and Peggy Northup-Dawson.
Elderhood. We're all headed there. So why not design our own spaces ? This is one of those ideas whose time has not only come, but also has come for all the time thereafter.
This is such an important article that it will also be posted at "Living Well..." and "Favorite Things" Blogs today. Enjoy.
The New York Times
February 27, 2006
In California, New Kind of Commune for Elderly
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
DAVIS, Calif., Feb. 23 — They are unlikely revolutionaries. Bearing walkers and canes, a veritable Merck Manual of ailments among them, the 12 old friends — average age 80 — looked as though they should have been sitting down to a game of Scrabble, not pioneering a new kind of commune.
Opting for old age on their own terms, they were starting a new chapter in their lives as residents of Glacier Circle, the country's first self-planned housing development for the elderly — a community they had conceived and designed themselves, right down to its purple gutters.
Over the past five years, the residents of Glacier Circle have found and bought land together, hired an architect together, ironed out insurance together, lobbied for a zoning change together and existentially probed togetherness together.
"Here you get to pick your family instead of being born into it," said Peggy Northup-Dawson, 79, a retired family therapist and mother of six who is legally blind. "We recognized that when you're physically closer to each other, you pay more attention, look in on each other. The idea was to share care."
The four couples, two widows and two who are now living solo live in eight individual town houses, grouped around an inner courtyard. Still under construction is the "common house" with a living room and a large kitchen and dining room for communal dinners; upstairs is a studio apartment they will rent at below market value to a skilled nurse who will provide additional care. It is their own self-styled, potluck utopia.
"It's an acknowledgment that intimacy doesn't happen by chance," said John Jungerman, 84, a retired nuclear physicist and one of several Ph.D.'s in the group, who is perpetually clad in purple socks and sandals.
"At first John said, 'I'm not old enough,' " his wife, Nancy, said of the commune. "I said, 'You're 80 years old. How old do you have to be?' "
There are about a dozen co-operative housing developments for the elderly in development, from Santa Fe, N.M., to St. Petersburg, Fla., a fledgling movement to communally address "the challenge of aging non-institutionally," said Charles Durett, an architect in Nevada City, Calif., who imported the concept he named co-housing — people buying homes in a community they plan and run together — from Denmark in the late 1960's.
Though communal housing for the elderly is new, intergenerational communities have been around since 1991, when the first opened in this politically progressive university town. There are now 82 across the country.
In Abingdon, Va., residents are beginning to move into ElderSpirit, a development founded by a 76-year-old former nun, Dene Peterson. The community of 37, 10 years in the making, includes a "spirit house" for ecumenical prayer and meditation.
"I just thought there had to be a better way for older people to live," said Ms. Peterson, who formed a nonprofit development corporation with three other former Glenmary sisters, a Catholic order, and knit together a variety of private and governmental funds (16 of the 29 units are subsidized affordable housing).
Ms. Peterson says she was haunted and inspired by her work with elderly public housing residents in Chicago in the 1960's.
"The elderly were dying," she recalled, "and they were anonymous."
With millions of baby boomers moving toward retirement, gerontologists and developers are looking to communal housing for the elderly with growing interest, building on a generation's mythology that already includes communes and college dormitories.
In co-operative housing, said Janice Blanchard, a gerontologist and housing consultant in Denver, "the social consciousness of the 1960's can get re-expressed." Baby boomers, she predicted, "are going to want to recreate the peak experience of their lives. Whether a commune or a college dorm, the common denominator was community."
Rich Morrison, 79, a retired psychologist from Sacramento State University and the sole single man at Glacier Circle, only recently gave up his hobby, swimming the major rapids of the Colorado River. "Emotionally, there's no reason why I can't continue to grow until I'm 100, if I'm lucky," he said.
Mr. Morrison is once widowed and twice divorced. Like others in the group who have struggled through every loss, from a child's suicide to the death of a spouse, he speaks about now being able to make "heart choices," hard won.
"I've been lonely," said Lois Grau, 87, whose husband died three years ago. "Little things go wrong that he would have fixed."
Mrs. Grau and her friends have known each other for nearly 40 years, raising children in the same neighborhood. Many residents met through the local Unitarian Universalist Church, and they still begin weekly meetings by pledging to "listen deeply and thoughtfully" to each other. Davis is known for its involved citizenry who dash off to their book groups at 7 p.m. The Glacier Circle 12 even partake of what they call a "dream group," in which they discuss their dreams.
Their talents and resources are by no means typical. They are all accomplished professionals, and the market value of their homes allowed them to purchase land and build their dream at a cost of $3.2 million, or about $400,000 each, plus $350 a month in dues. They expect to collect $850 a month in rental income. Individuals own their own homes but share expenses of common areas.
Stan Dawson, 75, a resident who has a doctorate from the Harvard School of Public Health, retired as chief of air pollution standards for the State of California to navigate the project full time through bureaucratic hurdles.
"It was a wonderful thing my dad played golf every day," he said of his father's retirement. "But I wanted to further my life in old age."
The design-by-democracy may not work for everyone.
The architect, Julie Haney, 49, said tension broke out over the color of gutters and trim on their bungalow-style homes. As Ms. Haney explained, "Ann likes blue, Stan wanted brown, Ann hates brown, everyone liked purple."
Ms. Haney, whose own elderly parents died as the design was nearing completion, said the residents forgot things more often than her younger clients did but made up for it with perspective. "I asked, 'Do you want a 20-year roof or a 40-year roof?" she recalled. "They said, 'If it lasts five years, we'll be happy.' "
To be sure, the challenges are daunting. Sue Saum, 74, for instance, moved in with her husband Jim, 84, a retired professor who, during the course of planning the community, was told he had Alzheimer's disease. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Saum was operated on for breast cancer, and recently she had back surgery. At some point, she acknowledges, her husband may need care beyond their friends' abilities.
"It's one of those day-at-a-time, figure-it-out-as-you-go things," she said. "But creating a community like this, you learn a lot about the strength of the human spirit."
Twelve friends' buying land at age 80 requires a certain leap of faith. By its nature Glacier Circle will change over time. A homeowners association, consisting of one resident from each unit, has the right of first refusal to buy any home when a vacancy arises, for whatever reason, or what Dr. Jungerman nonchalantly calls a visit from "the great father in the sky."
Glacier Circle is too small to legally mandate age restrictions, but Ray Coppock, 83, a retired editor, thinks that will take care of itself. "They'll take one look at us," he said. "That should reduce the potential buyer situation."
At ElderSpirit in Virginia, which will be fully occupied in late spring, spirituality is the major draw. Ms. Peterson defined spirituality as "people finding meaning in their lives, acknowledging ways to give up the ego and grow the soul."
Six more ElderSpirit communities, in St. Petersburg, Fla., Wichita, Kan., and elsewhere, are in planning stages, with some financing from the Chicago-based Retirement Research Foundation.
Not surprisingly, a streamlined form of community housing may be in the wind, as efforts spring up around the country to speed up the planning process, which normally takes two and a half to three and a half years.
Unlike intergenerational co-operative housing, a niche market of about 5,000 people, communal housing for the elderly has "far more market potential," said Jim Leach, president of the Wonderland Hill Development Company in Denver, which is building Silver Sage, a communal housing development for the elderly scheduled to open in Boulder next year.
Dr. William Thomas, who developed the "Eden Alternative," a widely publicized effort to make nursing homes less institutional, is developing Eldershire in Sherburne, N.Y., south of Syracuse, a hybrid between co-operative housing and a traditional development. The idea is to build first and then attract residents who will run it themselves.
Dr. Thomas compares co-operative housing, and its time-consuming community planning, with "homemade bread — people get together, mix the ingredients, let the dough rise." He's trying to adapt the concept for broader consumption — "100 million people," he says, "buy bread at the store."
Even revolutionaries need to be flexible. At Glacier Circle, where the first tulips of spring are popping up, the group had approved special wall insulation for Mr. Morrison, who has a penchant for playing Mahler's Ninth Symphony at 3 a.m. When the bass and timpani pulse through his subwoofer, his neighbor Dorie Datel, a youthful 80-year-old, just lets it slide. For Ms. Datel, whose husband left her for "the other woman" he met at Elderhostel, this group's wisdom and resolve are embedded in the square footage.
"We've all lived through the Depression and war and the big stuff, so we know that things don't always stay the same," Ms. Datel said. "All of us are interested in living."
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Saturday, February 25, 2006
Rachel Weisz & My Love
Sometimes, if you are lucky, someone writes something that touches you right where you live, at the core of who you are. In this piece, the writer describes the attitude of one of my favorite new actresses, Rachel Weisz.
While reading it, I realized just lucky I am to know and love a special friend who loves me but struggles with intense personal issues (having nothing to do with me), and she must think of death every so often, as Rachel Weisz does. She also has much of Rachel's attitude, and that's a gift.
I just know that, despite her struggle, when I am in her presence, she mostly epitomizes the incredible courage of the Life Force, despite all the hellish, death-dealing demons around her that must be tempting her the other way. This article is a blown kiss to you, sweetheart.
Enjoy.
The New York Times
February 26, 2006
The Rachel Papers
By LYNN HIRSCHBERG
Rachel Weisz has a tattoo of a ladder on her hip. It's a symbol of her Cambridge days as a co-founder of Talking Tongues, an ambitious theater troupe that incorporated a ladder into one of its productions, and also of the spirit behind that endeavor.
The tattoo is a reminder to have guts, take chances and throw yourself into what's scary and hard. "It's very difficult to get great roles," Weisz said in early January, over a late-afternoon tea of yogurt and orange juice (she was five months pregnant) at a coffee shop near her Manhattan home in SoHo. Weisz can look smoky and irresistibly alluring on film, which seems to bring out the dark lushness of her hair and eyes, but in person she has a lovely, fresh-scrubbed quality.
On the day we met, this was accentuated by a white wool sailor cap and an oversize blue-and-white-striped nautical sweater. Although she had just returned from a Christmas holiday in sunny Jamaica with her fiancé, the director Darren Aronofsky ("I'm in charge of the wedding," she explained about the reverse order of baby first and ceremony later, "and I haven't figured all that out yet"), Weisz was alabaster pale and looked less like a siren and more like a radiant English schoolgirl, home from university.
While no one would admit it, Weisz (pronounced VICE) might have initially been cast in films for her unique and startling beauty. "I was not one of those talented children who starred in every production at school," said Weisz, who is 34. "In 'Alice in Wonderland,' I was cast as the Dodo — a nonspeaking part.
Later, when I played Ismene in 'Antigone,' which is the second lead and a great role, I wasn't very good. But I thought, This is where I want to be. Even if nobody else was saying that to me. My dad actually suggested that I think about other careers." She laughed. "I hadn't been the shining light, but I was still burning to pursue this profession. And then, with Talking Tongues, a plan was hatched."
There were only four members in the group, and they created a kind of extremely physical, highly personal theater based on improvisation and Eastern European techniques. "We'd hurl each other around the stage, and the dialogue was largely about how lovers try and possess each other," she said. "The plays don't read well — they had a kind of fraught naturalism."
After winning the student award at the prestigious Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the troupe performed at the Gate Theatre and, two years later, disbanded. Weisz then auditioned for an innovative production of Noël Coward's "Design for Living," directed by Sean Mathias, at the Donmar Warehouse. "It was a very romantic, very sexy production," she recalled between bites of fruit.
"In the first scene of the play, I was wearing only a loose kimono, and I open a freezer and rub an ice cube between my legs because I'm hot and sore from sex." The Coward play is about a triad of ambitious artists, and it was a sensation in London. "Sean gave me wonderful advice," Weisz recalled. "He said: 'Stop trying to be so nice. Bring out the monster!' He'd scream, 'We're all monsters."' She paused. "I thought a lot about that when I was playing Tessa."
Tessa Quayle is the doomed, infuriating woman whom Weisz portrays in "The Constant Gardener." She fought to get the part, flying at her own expense to London to meet with the director, Fernando Meirelles, and then writing him long personal letters during the five months of casting.
"I was passionate about this project," said Weisz, who was perhaps best known in films for playing the brainy, beautiful archaeologist love interest in "The Mummy." "Parts like Tessa don't come along very often. It was agony waiting to hear because it meant so much to me."
"The Constant Gardener" establishes Weisz as a complex cinematic presence. She won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress, and her work in the film has transformed her career: she can no longer be dismissed as just a thinking man's sex symbol.
Her next film, "The Fountain," which is due in the fall, is directed by her fiancé, Aronofsky, and is even more ambitious. It tells interlocking stories, set in different eras and woven together like a braid: Weisz plays Queen Isabella in 16th-century Spain, as well as a girl who is dying of cancer in present-day America and also living in outer space in the future. "The title refers to the search for the fountain of youth," she said.
The film has been in the works since her first meeting with Aronofsky five years ago. "Darren was never going to cast me," she recalled. "At the time, 'The Fountain' was to star Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett." Weisz smiled. "But everything changed, and here we are."
Weisz, whose mother is a psychotherapist and whose father invented an artificial respirator that is still used in emergencies, has often played characters who die. "I know," she said. "I keep dying. Tessa is murdered. And I'm about to die in 'The Fountain.' But then I've always had a preoccupation with death."
This preoccupation, she said, is both good and bad: "Bad because it has sometimes led me into hellish places, as part of my quest to devour life. And good because I recognize that time is short, and we must act on our beliefs. We're all looking for something great — something singular — to push us out of what's safe and easy."
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Barney Fife R.I. P.
Don Knotts as Barney Fife is one of my all-time favorite characterizations in comedy. His role on the old Black & White days of "The Andy Griffth Show" made that show a joy to watch then and since then - and I still love to catch episodes whenever i can.
Somewhere in Heaven today, angels are laughing, fondly. Thank you, Barney.
The New York Times
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February 27, 2006
An Appreciation
Don Knotts, Ever Proud to Be a Bumbler
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Don Knotts was a high-status comic who played low-status roles. Actors who worked with him almost universally deferred to him as a comedic grandmaster, yet his characters were not jokers but the butts of jokes. He was absolutely flappable. No one had a better tremor or double-take, and with his unmistakable homeliness — bulging eyes, receding chin, stooped shoulders, broad hips — he didn't bother to play the wise fool; he wisely stuck to just the fool.
Of Barney Fife, Mr. Knotts's character on "The Andy Griffith Show," Billy Bob Thornton said, "Don Knotts gave us the best character, the most clearly drawn, most perfect American, most perfect human ever."
Mr. Knotts, who died Friday, grew up during the Depression, in Morgantown, W.Va., where his mother leased a house and took in boarders. He slept in the kitchen. His older brothers, Sid and Shadow, were funny, but they also drank and fought, and Shadow died of an asthma attack while Don was a teenager. Their father, who had suffered hysterical blindness and a nervous collapse before Don was born, rarely left his bed.
The Depression was a high time for Mr. Knotts's act. He practiced magic and ventriloquism for the neighbors and the boarders, many of whom were students or jobless and welcomed satire. When World War II came, his friends thought the Army wouldn't take him, since he looked unwell and undernourished, but he ended up serving out his duty as a comedian in the Stars and Gripes, a revue that played in the South Pacific. At first, he performed only with his ventriloquist dummy, Danny, but one day he caught Red Ford, an older Texas comic, staring at him and laughing. "You know something?" Mr. Knotts remembered Ford saying in "Barney Fife, and Other Characters I Have Known," his 1999 autobiography. "You're a funny little son of a bitch."
He was a generous performer who liked to share the stage, and he thrived in duets, teams, variety shows, ensembles. Back in New York, he noticed a man whose hands shook and who spilled water; he combined that with Robert Benchley's famous apologetic speaker from the monologue "Treasurer's Report," and the nervous character, who went on to fame on "The Steve Allen Show," was born.
Mr. Knotts plainly stole stuff, and other comics didn't mind lending him material. He was wonderfully unthreatening to other male comics, all of whom could think of themselves as one step closer to leading men than Mr. Knotts was. It's hard to think of an actor, in fact, who got more helping hands than Mr. Knotts in his early days. Male actors were forever offering him parts, trying to get him to join their acts. Sharing the stage with this skinny, spazzy guy could only make them look more commanding.
Among these mentors was Andy Griffith, whom he met when they were both cast in the play "No Time for Sergeants" in 1955. Mr. Griffith and Mr. Knotts cracked each other up. A few years later, when Mr. Knotts proposed himself as a deputy to Andy Taylor on Mr. Griffith's sitcom, Mr. Griffith went for it. Andy's crinkly, deep-set eyes conveyed calm and sagacity, while Barney's popped ones expressed pure anxiety — something akin to horror at the demands of ordinary life.
Mr. Knotts's popular movies, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken," "The Incredible Mr. Limpet," "The Reluctant Astronaut" and "The Shakiest Gun in the West," put him on a winning streak. To comedy geeks, especially the preteen kind, his send-up of 60's superheroism came as a delight and a relief.
One by one, Mr. Knotts mocked the pretenses of the comic actor who often has his eye on nobler pursuits. In the nervous man, he reveled in the discomfort that most comics tend to pass off as indignation or savoir-faire. As Barney, he satirized swagger and self-importance. Finally, on "Three's Company" in the late 70's and 80's, he sent up the comedian's hypersexuality, which is often his pride. Mr. Knotts, over and over, was willing to play the desperate, pathetic low-man-on-every-pole. He did it so well — never forsaking his persona and trying to seize the lead, as nearly all major comedians do these days — that his talent for abasement became a source, paradoxically, of great authority. By revealing but never indulging these pretenses, he enlightened everyone he worked with, and his audiences.
And once in a great while he even got to be the hero. On "The Loaded Goat," a winning episode of "The Andy Griffith Show," it's Barney who saves the day. Playing an achingly melancholy song on his harmonica, he leads a dangerous goat, which has swallowed dynamite, out of town.###
The New York Times
February 25, 2006
Don Knotts, TV's Barney Fife, Dies at 81
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Don Knotts, who kept generations of TV audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on ''The Andy Griffith Show'' and would-be swinger landlord Ralph Furley on ''Three's Company,'' has died. He was 81.
Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, said Sherwin Bash, his friend and manager.
Griffith, who had visited Knotts in the hospital before his death, said his longtime friend had a brilliant comedic mind and wrote some of the show's best scenes.
''Don was a small man ... but everything else about him was large: his mind, his expressions,'' Griffith told The Associated Press on Saturday. ''Don was special. There's nobody like him.
''I loved him very much,'' Griffith added. ''We had a long and wonderful life together.''
Unspecified health problems had forced Knotts to cancel an appearance in his native Morgantown, W.Va., in August.
The actor's half-century career included seven TV series and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV immortality and five Emmys.
The show ran from 1960-68, and was in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each season, including a No. 1 ranking its final year. It is one of only three series in TV history to bow out at the top: The others are ''I Love Lucy'' and ''Seinfeld.'' The 249 episodes have appeared frequently in reruns and have spawned a large, active network of fan clubs.
As the bug-eyed deputy to Griffith, Knotts carried in his shirt pocket the one bullet he was allowed after shooting himself in the foot. The constant fumbling, a recurring sight gag, was typical of his self-deprecating humor.
Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, once said he was most proud of the Fife character and doesn't mind being remembered that way.
His favorite episodes, he said, were ''The Pickle Story,'' where Aunt Bee makes pickles no one can eat, and ''Barney and the Choir,'' where no one can stop him from singing.
''I can't sing. It makes me sad that I can't sing or dance well enough to be in a musical, but I'm just not talented in that way,'' he lamented. ''It's one of my weaknesses.''
Knotts appeared on several other television shows. In 1979, he joined the cast of ''Three's Company,'' also starring John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt.
Early in his TV career, he was one of the original cast members of ''The Steve Allen Show,'' the comedy-variety show that ran from 1956-61. He was one of a group of memorable comics backing Allen that included Louis Nye, Tom Poston and Bill ''Jose Jimenez'' Dana.
Knotts' G-rated films were family fun, not box-office blockbusters. In most, he ends up the hero and gets the girl -- a girl who can see through his nervousness to the heart of gold.
In the part-animated 1964 film ''The Incredible Mr. Limpet,'' Knotts played a meek clerk who turns into a fish after he is rejected by the Navy.
When it was announced in 1998 that Jim Carrey would star in a ''Limpet'' remake, Knotts responded: ''I'm just flattered that someone of Carrey's caliber is remaking something I did. Now, if someone else did Barney Fife, THAT would be different.''
In the 1967 film ''The Reluctant Astronaut,'' co-starring Leslie Nielsen, Knotts' father enrolls his wimpy son -- operator of a Kiddieland rocket ride -- in NASA's space program. Knotts poses as a famous astronaut to the joy of his parents and hometown but is eventually exposed for what he really is, a janitor so terrified of heights he refuses to ride an airplane.
In the 1969 film ''The Love God?,'' he was a geeky bird-watcher who is duped into becoming publisher of a naughty men's magazine and then becomes a national sex symbol. Eventually, he comes to his senses, leaves the big city and marries the sweet girl next door.
He was among an army of comedians from Buster Keaton to Jonathan Winters to liven up the 1963 megacomedy ''It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.'' Other films include ''The Ghost and Mr. Chicken'' (1966); ''The Shakiest Gun in the West'' (1968); and a few Disney films such as ''The Apple Dumpling Gang'' (1974); ''Gus'' (1976); and ''Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo'' (1977).
In 1998, he had a key role in the back-to-the-past movie ''Pleasantville,'' playing a folksy television repairman whose supercharged remote control sends a teen boy and his sister into a TV sitcom past.
Knotts began his show biz career even before he graduated from high school, performing as a ventriloquist at local clubs and churches. He majored in speech at West Virginia University, then took off for the big city.
''I went to New York cold. On a $100 bill. Bummed a ride,'' he recalled in a visit to his hometown of Morgantown, where city officials renamed a street for him in 1998.
Within six months, Knotts had taken a job on a radio Western called ''Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders,'' playing a wisecracking, know-it-all handyman. He stayed with it for five years, then came his series TV debut on ''The Steve Allen Show.''
He married Kay Metz in 1948, the year he graduated from college. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1969. Knotts later married, then divorced Lara Lee Szuchna.
In recent years, he said he had no plans to retire, traveling with theater productions and appearing in print and TV ads for Kodiak pressure treated wood.
The world laughed at Knotts, but it also laughed with him.
He treasured his comedic roles and could point to only one role that wasn't funny, a brief stint on the daytime drama ''Search for Tomorrow.''
''That's the only serious thing I've done. I don't miss that,'' Knotts said.
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Associated Press writer Vicki Smith in Morgantown, W.Va., contributed to this report.
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Thursday, February 23, 2006
Internet Democracy
This is the future. Enjoy.
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February 23, 2006
David Pogue
Wi-Fi to Go: The Hot Spot in a Box
YOU know what would be so cool? A portable Wi-Fi hot spot. Whenever you wanted Internet access, you wouldn't have to hunt for a wireless coffee shop or pay $24 a night to your hotel.
Instead, you'd travel with a little box. Plug it into a power outlet — or even your car's cigarette lighter — and boom, you and everyone within 200 feet could get onto the Internet at high speed, without wires.
Actually, such boxes exist. They come from companies like Kyocera, Junxion and Top Global, and they're every bit as awesome as they sound. (Unfortunately, the category is so new that it has no agreed-upon name. "Portable hot spot" is descriptive but unwieldy. "Cellular gateway" is a bit cryptic. Kyocera's term, "mobile router," may be as good as any.)
Before you start thinking that you've died and gone to Internet heaven, however, you should know that these boxes don't work alone. Each requires the insertion of a PC laptop card provided by a cellular carrier like Verizon, Sprint or Cingular. The card provides the Internet connection, courtesy of those companies' 3G ("third generation") high-speed cellular data networks. The box just rebroadcasts that connection as a Wi-Fi signal so that all nearby computers — not just one privileged laptop — can go online.
With those PC cards, you can go online anywhere there's a cellular signal: in a taxi, on a bus, in a waiting room or wherever. In major cities, the speed is delightful, like a D.S.L. or slowish cable modem (400 to 700 kilobits a second). In other areas, you can still go online, but only slightly faster than with a dial-up modem. (Also note that uploading is far slower than downloading.)
All right, go ahead, ask it: If you can already outfit your laptop with one of these miraculous cards, why do you need a mobile router that translates the cellular connection into a Wi-Fi one?
First, not all computers have the necessary card slot. ( Apple's iBooks and new MacBook Pro laptops come to mind.) Second, a mobile router can accommodate machines with no wireless features at all — like desktop computers — thanks to standard Ethernet network jacks on the back. (The Kyocera has four, the Junxion two and the Top Global one.)
Above all, Wi-Fi lets lots of computers share the same Internet signal. Cellular PC-card service is very expensive: $60 a month for unlimited use ($80 if you don't also have a voice plan). That's a lot to pay for a single computer to go online. A mobile router opens up that signal to any computer within about 200 feet; $60 a month is a lot more palatable when 10 or 20 of you are sharing it.
MOBILE routers have become essential equipment for traveling groups. Bus and train companies are experimenting with these boxes to see if having high-speed Wi-Fi on board appeals to passengers. These boxes are also becoming standard amenities for the casts of TV shows and movies and for rock bands, so that they can check e-mail or surf the Web between takes or whenever they're on location or on the tour bus.
But a mobile router might make sense even in stationary environments. Small businesses can use one as a backup connection when the power goes out. (A mobile router can draw its power from a car or battery pack.)
Other people are canceling their home D.S.L. or cable modem service altogether. Instead of paying twice for Internet access — for a cable modem and a cellular laptop plan — they use the cellular card at home and on the road and save a lot of money.
To use a mobile router, you insert your cellular laptop card (which must first be activated in a Windows laptop). Then you connect the router to your computer using an Ethernet cable (included). You type the box's numeric address into your Web browser, and presto: you're viewing its configuration page. Here's where you indicate which brand of PC card you have (Novatel, Sierra Wireless or whatever), turn on password protection, and fiddle with pages and pages of network and security settings, if you're into that sort of thing.
The Junxion box is a biggish slab of folded sheet metal, unimpressive except for its bright green paint job, measuring 6.3 by 10.3 by 1.1 inches and costing $600. As you can tell from the price, Junxion seeks corporate buyers, not individuals. Yet only a few of its features cry out "corporate." (One of them lets a network geek configure a fleet of Junxion boxes by remote control, from the comfort of company headquarters.)
For $600, you might expect more than two measly status lights, and geeks might expect the wireless signal to be 802.11g instead of the older "b" variant. On the other hand, the Junxion has some neat features, including the ability to greet colleagues with a splash screen. ("Welcome to Dave's free Wi-Fi highway! Click Connect to continue, and don't forget to thank Dave by dropping off cash or baked goods at his cubicle.")
The new Kyocera KR1, developed jointly with D-Link, is more attractive for a couple of important reasons. First, it costs only a third as much ($200 after rebate). It's also much smaller and better-looking (8.5 by 5.3 by 1.3 inches) and feels more like a finished commercial product.
Note, however, that the KR1 works only with Verizon and Sprint cards — or as the techies might say, it works only on EV-DO networks. Its rivals, by contrast, can accommodate almost any card from any service, including the new BroadbandConnect service from Cingular (so far available in 16 cities).
On the other hand, only the KR1 can draw its Internet connection from certain EV-DO cellphones instead of a PC card. That is, you can connect the Samsung A890 or Audiovox 8940, for example, with a U.S.B. cable. The phone becomes a sort of Internet antenna for the router.
If the Junxion box represents the complete absence of industrial design, then Top Global's 3G Phoebus represents the height of it. This mobile router is a white, gray or black plastic pyramid (7 by 7 by 5.5 inches) that makes no attempt to look like a piece of networking equipment. You either love that approach or you don't.
Design aside, the Phoebus has a lot to recommend it. It's the only model with an on-off switch — a clicky chrome marble on the front. It's also the only model that when used with Sprint or Verizon cards, automatically configures itself; you can skip the setup steps involving the Ethernet cable and Web browser. You literally plug the thing in, insert the card, and start surfing. That feature, and its super-clear browser-based Web setup page, makes the Phoebus the simplicity champion.
The only causes for pauses are the single Ethernet jack in the back, the price ($400) and the difficulty of finding a place to buy the thing. (Homemade-looking Web sites like americanevdo.net carry it.)
There's no overstating the joy of carrying around your own Wi-Fi hot spot, ready for your whole gang to enjoy wherever you can find a power outlet or even a car's cigarette-lighter socket.
Not everyone is happy about this product category, however. Verizon, in particular, strongly objects.
"Broadband access is designed for individual customers," said Brenda Raney, a Verizon Wireless spokeswoman. "When customers use unauthorized devices to share the service, they are in violation of their service agreements."
Yet this objection should sound distinctly familiar to anyone who remembers the dawn of the cable modem era. The cable companies originally hoped to charge $40 a month for each computer in your home, and did everything in their power to dissuade people from hooking up network routers that could share the signal. In the end, of course, common sense won, the cable companies lost, and now just about every home D.S.L. or cable modem signal is shared among two or more computers.
If you like the idea of a mobile router, any of these hot-spots-in-a-box will do the trick. But considering its polish and low price, the Kyocera KR1 has the edge (provided you're a Sprint or Verizon customer). Until the United Nations finally gets around to blanketing the earth with an uninterrupted cloud of Wi-Fi coverage, these gadgets are the next best thing to finding a wireless connection everywhere you go.
E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 23, 2006
David Pogue
Wi-Fi to Go: The Hot Spot in a Box
YOU know what would be so cool? A portable Wi-Fi hot spot. Whenever you wanted Internet access, you wouldn't have to hunt for a wireless coffee shop or pay $24 a night to your hotel.
Instead, you'd travel with a little box. Plug it into a power outlet — or even your car's cigarette lighter — and boom, you and everyone within 200 feet could get onto the Internet at high speed, without wires.
Actually, such boxes exist. They come from companies like Kyocera, Junxion and Top Global, and they're every bit as awesome as they sound. (Unfortunately, the category is so new that it has no agreed-upon name. "Portable hot spot" is descriptive but unwieldy. "Cellular gateway" is a bit cryptic. Kyocera's term, "mobile router," may be as good as any.)
Before you start thinking that you've died and gone to Internet heaven, however, you should know that these boxes don't work alone. Each requires the insertion of a PC laptop card provided by a cellular carrier like Verizon, Sprint or Cingular. The card provides the Internet connection, courtesy of those companies' 3G ("third generation") high-speed cellular data networks. The box just rebroadcasts that connection as a Wi-Fi signal so that all nearby computers — not just one privileged laptop — can go online.
With those PC cards, you can go online anywhere there's a cellular signal: in a taxi, on a bus, in a waiting room or wherever. In major cities, the speed is delightful, like a D.S.L. or slowish cable modem (400 to 700 kilobits a second). In other areas, you can still go online, but only slightly faster than with a dial-up modem. (Also note that uploading is far slower than downloading.)
All right, go ahead, ask it: If you can already outfit your laptop with one of these miraculous cards, why do you need a mobile router that translates the cellular connection into a Wi-Fi one?
First, not all computers have the necessary card slot. ( Apple's iBooks and new MacBook Pro laptops come to mind.) Second, a mobile router can accommodate machines with no wireless features at all — like desktop computers — thanks to standard Ethernet network jacks on the back. (The Kyocera has four, the Junxion two and the Top Global one.)
Above all, Wi-Fi lets lots of computers share the same Internet signal. Cellular PC-card service is very expensive: $60 a month for unlimited use ($80 if you don't also have a voice plan). That's a lot to pay for a single computer to go online. A mobile router opens up that signal to any computer within about 200 feet; $60 a month is a lot more palatable when 10 or 20 of you are sharing it.
MOBILE routers have become essential equipment for traveling groups. Bus and train companies are experimenting with these boxes to see if having high-speed Wi-Fi on board appeals to passengers. These boxes are also becoming standard amenities for the casts of TV shows and movies and for rock bands, so that they can check e-mail or surf the Web between takes or whenever they're on location or on the tour bus.
But a mobile router might make sense even in stationary environments. Small businesses can use one as a backup connection when the power goes out. (A mobile router can draw its power from a car or battery pack.)
Other people are canceling their home D.S.L. or cable modem service altogether. Instead of paying twice for Internet access — for a cable modem and a cellular laptop plan — they use the cellular card at home and on the road and save a lot of money.
To use a mobile router, you insert your cellular laptop card (which must first be activated in a Windows laptop). Then you connect the router to your computer using an Ethernet cable (included). You type the box's numeric address into your Web browser, and presto: you're viewing its configuration page. Here's where you indicate which brand of PC card you have (Novatel, Sierra Wireless or whatever), turn on password protection, and fiddle with pages and pages of network and security settings, if you're into that sort of thing.
The Junxion box is a biggish slab of folded sheet metal, unimpressive except for its bright green paint job, measuring 6.3 by 10.3 by 1.1 inches and costing $600. As you can tell from the price, Junxion seeks corporate buyers, not individuals. Yet only a few of its features cry out "corporate." (One of them lets a network geek configure a fleet of Junxion boxes by remote control, from the comfort of company headquarters.)
For $600, you might expect more than two measly status lights, and geeks might expect the wireless signal to be 802.11g instead of the older "b" variant. On the other hand, the Junxion has some neat features, including the ability to greet colleagues with a splash screen. ("Welcome to Dave's free Wi-Fi highway! Click Connect to continue, and don't forget to thank Dave by dropping off cash or baked goods at his cubicle.")
The new Kyocera KR1, developed jointly with D-Link, is more attractive for a couple of important reasons. First, it costs only a third as much ($200 after rebate). It's also much smaller and better-looking (8.5 by 5.3 by 1.3 inches) and feels more like a finished commercial product.
Note, however, that the KR1 works only with Verizon and Sprint cards — or as the techies might say, it works only on EV-DO networks. Its rivals, by contrast, can accommodate almost any card from any service, including the new BroadbandConnect service from Cingular (so far available in 16 cities).
On the other hand, only the KR1 can draw its Internet connection from certain EV-DO cellphones instead of a PC card. That is, you can connect the Samsung A890 or Audiovox 8940, for example, with a U.S.B. cable. The phone becomes a sort of Internet antenna for the router.
If the Junxion box represents the complete absence of industrial design, then Top Global's 3G Phoebus represents the height of it. This mobile router is a white, gray or black plastic pyramid (7 by 7 by 5.5 inches) that makes no attempt to look like a piece of networking equipment. You either love that approach or you don't.
Design aside, the Phoebus has a lot to recommend it. It's the only model with an on-off switch — a clicky chrome marble on the front. It's also the only model that when used with Sprint or Verizon cards, automatically configures itself; you can skip the setup steps involving the Ethernet cable and Web browser. You literally plug the thing in, insert the card, and start surfing. That feature, and its super-clear browser-based Web setup page, makes the Phoebus the simplicity champion.
The only causes for pauses are the single Ethernet jack in the back, the price ($400) and the difficulty of finding a place to buy the thing. (Homemade-looking Web sites like americanevdo.net carry it.)
There's no overstating the joy of carrying around your own Wi-Fi hot spot, ready for your whole gang to enjoy wherever you can find a power outlet or even a car's cigarette-lighter socket.
Not everyone is happy about this product category, however. Verizon, in particular, strongly objects.
"Broadband access is designed for individual customers," said Brenda Raney, a Verizon Wireless spokeswoman. "When customers use unauthorized devices to share the service, they are in violation of their service agreements."
Yet this objection should sound distinctly familiar to anyone who remembers the dawn of the cable modem era. The cable companies originally hoped to charge $40 a month for each computer in your home, and did everything in their power to dissuade people from hooking up network routers that could share the signal. In the end, of course, common sense won, the cable companies lost, and now just about every home D.S.L. or cable modem signal is shared among two or more computers.
If you like the idea of a mobile router, any of these hot-spots-in-a-box will do the trick. But considering its polish and low price, the Kyocera KR1 has the edge (provided you're a Sprint or Verizon customer). Until the United Nations finally gets around to blanketing the earth with an uninterrupted cloud of Wi-Fi coverage, these gadgets are the next best thing to finding a wireless connection everywhere you go.
E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Acadiana Open Channel (AOC)
left: Francine Plant and Ruth Yeager, back, work Friday on their show's computer files in the Acadiana Open Channel control room. In the early 1990s, I got involved with Acadiana Open Channel (AOC) and have stayed in touch ever since. Here's the latest on them. AS for me - I may be producing / hosting a show there soon ! (Stay tuned, as they say)
AOC: Tune in, speak out
Public station gives people forum for various topics
Marsha Sills
msills@theadvertiser.com
Surfing the channels, a stop on channels 5 and 19 is a bit like the clichéd box of chocolates.
The city-parish president could be explaining fiber - and not the kind in your vegetables. Live tabletop discussions could range from national debt to the deceits of the mainstream media. You could catch a pastor's sermon or residents helping city marshals pin those who haven't served their jail time.
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Programming on Lafayette's public access channel - Acadiana Open Channel - isn't so much Wayne's World, but more real world - and not like the one on that other cable channel.
AOC is on a mission to continue to change its image, as it has another three years before its contract with the city is up for renewal. The station also is trying to keep pace with emerging technologies and consumers' desire for "on-demand" information. All this comes as Congress is considering video franchising legislation that could change how public, educational and governmental access channels are funded.
The station still broadcasts amateur videos, like endless minutes of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn or hours of a wedding ceremony and the reception that follows. But, for the most part during the past few years, AOC appears to have grown out of the shock-value stage that once brought viewers a show hosted by a self-proclaimed Ku Klux Klan member and programming that bordered on slanderous and scandalous.
The station is all about letting the viewers decide just how much the AOC's programming truly reflects the community.
"This used to be a place where you could go down and make TV and have a good time and have no consideration," said Ed Bowie, AOC's executive director. "We're not as Wayne's World as we used to be. It's not as kooky. We've transformed over time, where we've reached our maturity level a little bit. ... Now we have people who want to sit down and talk about the community."
Like other public access channels across the country, the station prides itself on serving as the community's outlet to express their views and their First Amendment rights.
The channel is an invaluable resource, said Stephen Handwerk, who hosts AOC's Meet the Democrats. Handwerk admitted his concern about federal legislation that could impact the station's funding.
"People may tune in and see people's dogs or plants, but it gives people a voice," Handwerk said. "This is something that makes the standard of living in Lafayette better. The only other place in the state that has an operating public access station is New Orleans, and that's scary."
The channel gets $220,000 from the city, allocated from the city-parish's franchise agreement with Cox Communications and another $50,000 from Cox. Federal legislation mandates that cable operators pay a certain percentage to local municipalities for use of rights of way. The legislation also requires cable companies to provide channel space for public access.
Now, future funding could be at risk as companies like Verizon and AT&T lobby for video franchising. If video providers aren't required to pay the comparable franchise fees, it could mean that cable operators would fight to not have to pay the fees, which are used to help fund public access channels, according to Anthony T. Riddle, executive director of Alliance for Community Media. Riddle testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee during hearings Feb. 15.
"Alternatively, the incumbent cable operator might eventually transform itself into a broadband video service provider, thereby freeing itself directly from its PEG support obligations," Riddle testified.
The committee has not met again to discuss the issue.
Community service factor
While Bowie is executive director of the channel, he also finds himself in the role of teacher, leading orientation sessions and explaining camera composition and how to make a show more visually engaging for the viewer.
"You've got to keep their brain active," Bowie told members who produce News from the Underground on Friday when the crew came in to learn how to revamp their show.
The live call-in news show looks at topics not covered by the mainstream media. Filmed the first Monday of each month, they're preparing for a show about privacy issues with guest Rick Swanson, a political science assistant professor at the University of Louisiana, according to Barbara Conner, one of the show's producers.
For about two hours last week, Conner and the crew took a crash course on how to improve their show, from picking out the right font for their graphics to perfecting camera angles.
The training is provided free of charge. Last year and through February of this year, 290 people were trained at Acadiana Open Channel. The channel offers courses in editing, production, camera operation and even teaches people how to use their own camcorder.
The show is a tad boring, admitted Ruth Yeager, another producer of News from the Underground.
"We're not satisfied with the way it was," Yeager said Friday. "Basically, it's a talking heads show. We'd like to make it interesting. There are times we could have used graphics but didn't know how."
First Amendment forum
Public access channels put the First Amendment into action, Bowie tells those who show up for volunteer orientation. Those interested in having their own show or having their own work aired on the station first have to go through the orientation training. Before being allowed to submit programming or train on equipment, volunteers have to take the workshop.
"We're here to let you speak," is one of the first things Bowie tells first-timers.
At any given orientation, the reasons that bring people to AOC are different.
Last month, Jonah Bascle, a student at UNO, said he wanted to learn more about how to get involved.
Alvin Jones, the director of SMILE/Head Start, wanted to see how he could get his nonprofit's work some publicity.
Bowie discusses issues producers should consider, like privacy, community standards, copyright laws and the fact that the station can't be used to turn a profit - in other words, there's no chances for a local home shopping network.
"You're responsible for your content. I am not," Bowie said.
During last month's orientation, Bowie referenced one former show host, Andy Hebert, who "pushed the envelope" a few years ago, pointing fingers at city council members and the past city-parish president. The host no longer has a show on the station, but Bowie said Hebert wasn't asked to leave. However, Bowie said he thinks the station still is living down Hebert's comments. Hebert also attends and comments at city-parish council meetings regularly.
On air
Three minutes before his camera man gives him the go signal, Hesham Tillawi makes a confession.
"Right now, my heart is in my stomach," the host of Current Issues, a live call-in show, said, grinning. "But when they say 'Go,' it's fine."
About two years ago, Tillawi, created Current Issues because of his frustration with the mainstream media's coverage of the situation in Iraq.
"We decided to start the program up for people to see the truth as it is on the ground, not as it's fabricated in editors' offices," Tillawi said.
On a night last month, Tillawi's first caller who identified himself as "Freedom" gave Tillawi kudos for discussing lobbyist Jack Ambramoff's questionable practices eight months ago.
"And the mainstream media has just caught on," the caller said. "... Everything now is about bin Laden" - a planned distraction by the administration to divert attention from Abramoff, the caller said.
Callers aren't always polite, but their right to be heard supersedes formalities. But, as host of the live call-in show Talkmeisters, Mark Pope will cut callers short.
"People can say whatever they want. They can call me names. They can criticize what they want. I don't tolerate foul language or people talking about local people. If people say 'He's a crook' or 'He's dishonest,' I want them to back it up or I will cut them off," Pope said before his live show's filming one night a few weeks ago.
One rule Pope has, though, is that he doesn't discuss Lafayette Consolidated Government on his show. Pope is the city-parish environmental quality manager. Pope is also an AOC board member.
"I do this to inspire thought - even with people who disagree with me," Pope said.
Going global
With the help of the Internet, shows like Tillawi's and Meet the Democrats have attracted an audience on the Internet. Tillawi's show is simulcast on the Web.
Tillawi said his site has helped bring more attention to Lafayette, as well.
"They think Lafayette, Louisiana, is a huge metropolitan area," Tillawi said, smiling. "How would a small city do such a show?"
Tillawi noted some limitations producers have with the equipment.
"But it's public access, so we can't complain," he said.
Podcasting training is in the works, but financial constraints have put that project on hold, Bowie said.
Bowie said the station's mission will need to keep up with technology.
"The technology communication landscape is changing," Bowie said. "We've been given reason to believe that we'll be part of the (city-parish) fiber project. We're also going into media literacy programs and how-to programs."
Some of that involves teaching people how to interpret and use the information they're "bombarded with from their cell phones," computers and television.
"I think AOC's new position in the world will be how to make and interpret media communication," Bowie said. "Instead of coming in and spending hours producing a show, they'll be able to produce something on their living room couch, and we'll be a distribution hub. We have a bright future, but we've got to reinvent ourselves."
Originally published February 21, 2006
Saturday, February 18, 2006
The pictures are in !
Remember - SCROLL DOWN to find the Georgia pictures - they are below, beneath a few other articles.
Life Force Triumphs
Mary Knox Merrill/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images
National Guardsmen moved trees into place at the New Orleans Botanical Garden in November.This article is so important that i have loaded into three of my blogs - 3deye, New Orleans Pentimento, and We Constant Gardeners. It clearly describes the power of the life force - much more powerful, by far, than the death force in this or any world. Enjoy.
The New York Times
February 16, 2006
Nature
From the Scars of Katrina, Green Shoots and Blossoms
By ANNE RAVER
NEW ORLEANS
FIVE months after Hurricane Katrina blew through this city, a fragrant pale pink climber named Clotilde Soupert bloomed in the rose garden of the New Orleans Botanical Garden.
The brave little rose is less than a foot tall, and will take years to develop the character of the old climber it replaces, which died, along with more than 1,000 other roses, when their roots sat for more than a week in brackish water.
"I lost all my cuttings in our little nursery, and all the original stuff," Patrick Youngblood, the garden's rosarian, said early this month, leaning on the shovel he was using to plant 400 new roses. "I can't think about it too much." His eyes filled and he looked away, the way many people do in this city, as they go on, one foot in front of the other. Mr. Youngblood spoke above the high whine of saws as a construction crew rushed to ready the garden's pavilion for a March wedding. New tree ferns and tropical plants filled the glass conservatory, where most of the collections had either drowned in the floods or died from heat when flooded electrical systems failed to open vents. In about two weeks, garden administrators hope to open the doors of the conservatory to visitors. One recent Saturday, a blues band played by the lily pool (whose lilies had thrived in all that dirty flood water) and artists sold their work beneath a tent set up by newly planted Japanese yews.
This resurrection hasn't been easy, and it has a long way to go. But thousands of volunteers from all over the country, and contributions, from $15 checks to $1.2 million from the Azby Fund, a local foundation, are dragging this garden out of what seemed, months ago, like total devastation.
When weary residents need a little beauty and solace, they can visit these public gardens, where rescue and recovery began in mid-September. The National Guard cut a path through fallen trees in the 1,500 acre City Park, an oasis of green comparable to Central Park. Botanical gardens and preservation groups flew crews of skilled gardeners to New Orleans, to spend days hauling debris with local volunteers, planting shrubs and lending their expertise to the art of restoration. Months of communal labor may have rekindled the original purpose of the public garden — to offer the fragrant rose, the intimate bench, the sound of trickling water to those who have no gardens.
Earlier this month, a team of professional gardeners from New York and Rhode Island, assembled by the Garden Conservancy, wielded shovels and rakes at Longue Vue House and Gardens, a national historic landmark on the west side of the city where eight acres of gardens, originally designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman in the late 1930's were damaged by Katrina and its aftermath. "I worked harder yesterday than I've worked in years," said Marco Polo Stufano, the former director of horticulture of Wave Hill, the garden in the Bronx. "We pulled out 16 sweet olive trees and then cleaned up the goldfish garden."
The Yankee volunteers at Longue Vue followed on the heels of teams from the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland, Ohio, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Rio Grande Botanic Garden in Albuquerque, N.M., not to mention a steady stream of locals who showed up as soon as they could hack their way through the fallen branches and trees.
In both public gardens, it was water, not wind, that did the most damage. The water rushed eastward from a breach in the levee by the 17th Street canal, flooded Longue Vue and moved a mile and a half to City Park, where the botanical garden is tucked behind the New Orleans Museum of Art. It killed all the plants that can't tolerate standing in water. The flood also submerged irrigation equipment and shut off electricity. So when the sun came out after the storm, bringing five weeks of drought, watering systems no longer worked. The leaves of magnolias turned brown. Boxwoods and azaleas turned to dry sticks.
"It looked like an atomic bomb had hit," said Michael Liebaert, the managing director of the Azby Fund. "Everything was fried to a crisp."
In City Park, about 1,000 trees, including pine, cypress and red oak, had been upturned by the wind. The great limbs of 2,500 live oaks had also crashed to the ground, though 80 percent of these tough southern trees, with their wide-reaching roots, held steady. But in the deserted City Park, it was individuals who made the difference. Retired New York City police officers, hired as a security force by the museum, spent their spare time hand-watering any plants they could get to. "They saved our priceless cactus collection," Mr. Liebaert said. "One officer even called his wife on his cellphone, to get directions on how to water the succulents."
Other gardeners, in parts of the city untouched by the flood, were handing beauty over the garden gate. About 20 blocks south of the French Quarter, Jeanette Bell returned to her own garden on Baronne Street, weeks after the storm, to find the 500 roses she tends in a former vacant lot in full bloom. "I cut little bouquets and gave them to anybody who came by," Ms. Bell said.
Hundreds of volunteers showed up at City Park, on the cleanup days advertised on the radio. "Two hundred Mormons came one weekend from all over," Mr. Liebaert said. "They were as efficient as the military." Park department heads, with no desk jobs to go to, took up chainsaws and shovels. A crew of 30 laborers hired by the Azby Fund worked for 11 weeks clearing debris.
Paul Soniat, the director of the garden, operated the excavator that ripped out old magnolias, hollies and boxwoods, to make way for new plantings. He and Genevieve Trimble, the president of the garden board, used their cellphones and computers to organize an emergency fund drive. Sally K. Reeves, an historian who fled the city in September, and a local businessman, Scott Williams, organized a crew of workers who donned boots, gloves and masks and spent two days carrying out the sodden archives — moldy plans, maps, photographs, measured drawings — that document the evolution of the park, from its origins as a plantation on a bayou more than 150 years ago.
Unbelievably, the garden was able to open in early December for its annual Christmas event, Celebration of the Oaks, in which thousands of trees are lighted and carolers stroll through the grounds.
More than 50,000 people came.
The park receives no operating funds from the city and only a token amount from the state. Money is raised through entry fees to the park's three golf courses, its tennis courts and stadiums, and the garden and museum, all ravaged by Katrina and the flood.
"That's why we're working so diligently to get the pavilion open for that wedding," Mr. Liebaert said. The botanical garden was generating $2 million in rental fees and catering services for parties and banquets before the storm reduced that income to zero.
As people rebuild their own lives, they may eventually have the emotional energy to replant their gardens. And Mr. Soniat plans to be ready. A $25,000 contribution from the Garden Club of Virginia will be used to start the restoration of the Pelican Greenhouse, where stock plants were kept for propagation and thousands of annuals and perennials were produced for the displays. These too all died in the flood. But once the greenhouse is repaired, gardeners will begin to propagate plants with an eye to the home gardener.
"We need to be a little more creative," Mr. Soniat said. "We're building a stage for a music program. If we had a cafe up and running, we'd be very busy right now."
He and Mrs. Trimble know how to pull a garden up by its bootstraps. They joined forces more than 20 years ago, when the botanical garden was just a neglected rose garden. Built during the Depression by the Works Projects Administration, it was intended to provide the intimacy of a private garden for city dwellers with no roses of their own. It was the Friends of City Park — including Mr. Soniat and Mrs. Trimble — who not only restored the rose garden, but renovated the conservatory and many other WPA structures. Over the years, with the help of the Azby Fund and others, they built a long pavilion with great arched windows, where people flocked to lectures, dinners and weddings.
New Orleans could use something like the WPA again, Mrs. Trimble said: "It put people to work, not just digging ditches, but leaving something permanent and worthy of being saved."
Mr. Soniat, a songwriter and pianist, is sometimes called the Randy Newman of New Orleans. His song, "Born in New Orleans," written before Katrina, refers eerily to the city washed away in a hurricane.
Music can inspire. But seeds, germinating in the ruins, are a rebirth.
"My first project was assessing the dead plants," said Amy Graham, the head gardener of Longue Vue, who returned in late September. "I could only stand being here for about two hours at a time." So she started sowing seeds. "I would pull back branches and dead plants and sow seeds right in the ground," Ms. Graham said. She found the bag of seeds she had collected from the Wild Garden last summer, and stored on a shelf in the garden office.
"It was above the flood," she said, pointing out the water line that stopped just below the shelf.
Now, those seeds have produced thousands of seedlings in Longue Vue's greenhouse, a Sears & Roebuck kit that didn't lose a pane of glass.
The volunteers assembled by the Garden Conservancy have not just dug up dead trees and shrubs, pruned and planted, they have shared their thoughts with Ms. Graham, and Longue Vue's director, Bonnie Goldblum, on the sensitive art of restoration.
"Maybe we could bring in an intern to pull together documents and a plant database," suggested William Noble, the director of preservation projects for the conservancy. Studying the original plan for the Wild Garden, for example, could reveal how carefully designed it actually was. As plants are rejected that cannot hold up to New Orleans climate, or more to the point, to its hurricanes, what plants could be substituted without destroying the original intent?
Ms. Goldblum, who returned to Longue Vue in mid-September, when Oak Alley, the garden's front drive, was four feet high in tree limbs, and half the garden's camellias had died, welcomes such discussions.
"It's not only the physical support, but the emotional boost," Ms. Goldblum said. "Everybody here is so beaten down. But these volunteers know they are only here for a short time, so they give us 250 percent."
###
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Kiss
Something about kisses seems magical, and something seems preposterous. I'm for the magic. Enjoy.
The New York Times
February 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Kiss of Life
By JOSHUA FOER
Washington
SINCE it's Valentine's Day, let's dwell for a moment on the profoundly bizarre activity of kissing. Is there a more expressive gesture in the human repertoire?
When parents kiss their children it means one thing, but when they kiss each other it means something entirely different. People will greet a total stranger with a kiss on the cheek, and then use an identical gesture to express their most intimate feelings to a lover. The mob kingpin gives the kiss of death, Catholics give the "kiss of peace," Jews kiss the Torah, nervous flyers kiss the ground, and the enraged sometimes demand that a kiss be applied to their hindquarters. Judas kissed Jesus, Madonna kissed Britney, a gambler kisses the dice for luck. Someone once even kissed a car for 54 hours straight.
Taxonomists of the kiss have long labored to make sense of its many meanings. The Romans distinguished among the friendly oscula, the loving basia and the passionate suavia. The 17th-century polymath Martin von Kempe wrote a thousand-page encyclopedia of kissing that recognized 20 different varieties, including "the kiss bestowed by superiors on inferiors" and "the hypocritical kiss." The German language has words for 30 different kinds of kisses, including nachküssen, which is defined as a kiss "making up for kisses that have been omitted." (The Germans are also said to have coined the inexplicable phrase "A kiss without a beard is like an egg without salt.") How did a single act become a medium for so many messages?
There are two possibilities: Either the kiss is a human universal, one of the constellation of innate traits, including language and laughter, that unites us as a species, or it is an invention, like fire or wearing clothes, an idea so good that it was bound to metastasize across the globe.
Scientists have found evidence for both hypotheses. Other species engage in behavior that looks an awful lot like the smooch (though without its erotic overtones), which implies that kissing might be just as animalistic an impulse as it sometimes feels. Snails caress each other with their antennae, birds touch beaks, and many mammals lick each other's snouts. Chimpanzees even give platonic pecks on the lips. But only humans and our lascivious primate cousins the bonobos engage in full-fledged tongue-on-tongue tonsil-hockey.
Even though all of this might suggest that kissing is in our genes, not all human cultures do it. Charles Darwin was one of the first to point this out. In his book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," he noted that kissing "is replaced in various parts of the world by the rubbing of noses." Early explorers of the Arctic dubbed this the Eskimo kiss. (Actually, it turns out the Inuit were not merely rubbing noses, they were smelling each other's cheeks).
All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting. Among the Lapps of northern Finland, both sexes would bathe together in a state of complete nudity, but kissing was regarded as beyond the pale.
To this day, public kissing is still seen as indecent in many parts of the world. In 1990, the Beijing-based Workers' Daily advised its readers that "the invasive Europeans brought the kissing custom to China, but it is regarded as a vulgar practice which is all too suggestive of cannibalism."
If kissing is not universal, then someone must have invented it. Vaughn Bryant, an anthropologist at Texas A&M, has traced the first recorded kiss back to India, somewhere around 1500 B.C., when early Vedic scriptures start to mention people "sniffing" with their mouths, and later texts describe lovers "setting mouth to mouth." From there, he hypothesizes, the kiss spread westward when Alexander the Great conquered the Punjab in 326 B.C.
The Romans were inveterate kissers, and along with Latin, the kiss became one of their chief exports. Not long after, early Christians invented the notion of the ritualistic "holy kiss" and incorporated it into the Eucharist ceremony. According to some cultural historians, it is only within the last 800 years, with the advent of effective dentistry and the triumph over halitosis, that the lips were freed to become an erogenous zone.
For Freud, kissing was a subconscious return to suckling at the mother's breast. Other commentators have noted that the lips bear a striking resemblance to the labia, and that women across the world go to great lengths to make their lips look bigger and redder than they really are to simulate the appearance of sexual arousal, like animals in heat.
A few anthropologists have suggested that mouth kissing is a "relic gesture," with evolutionary origins in the mouth-to-mouth feeding that occurred between mother and baby in an age before Gerber and still takes place in a few parts of the world today. It can hardly be a coincidence, they note, that in several languages the word for kissing is synonymous with pre-mastication, or that "sweet" is the epithet most commonly applied to kisses.
But kissing may be more closely linked to our sense of smell than taste. Almost everyone has a distinct scent that is all one's own. Some people can even recognize their relatives in a dark room simply by their body odor (some relatives more than others). Kissing could have begun as a way of sniffing out who's who. From a whiff to a kiss was just a short trip across the face.
Whatever its origins, kissing seems to be advantageous. A study conducted during the 1980's found that men who kiss their wives before leaving for work live longer, get into fewer car accidents, and have a higher income than married men who don't. So put down this newspaper and pucker up. It does a body good.
Joshua Foer is working on a book about the science of memory.
###
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Georgia on my Mind
Patti teaching Andree at kitchen island how to count money just before spending it.
Bernard Sisters impression of (from left) Larry, Moe, Curley Joe
Phenomenol living room two-story window looking out to back yard full of roses, birds, and dog poop.
Dusting of snow Sunday Feb 12 barely visible on ground (friend's home where i stayed in Marietta).
Mel's deck overlooking backyard. Dying Kumquat tree across from wicker chair omitted out of respect for kumquat's next-of-kin. 
Mel and 15-yr-old son Corey, in his wife-beater shirt (ironically, Uncle Ray {Corey's grandfather} used to love to wear the same kind of undershirt ).
Scene setting from "Mel does Alpharetta" Soft X feature film
iMelda's collection of adornments for her feet.
Back of Mel's Beautiful home near Alpharetta Georgia. Bottom floor is a HUGE open, airy basement about to be remodeled into a more finished living space 
Mark Hancock and sons Tyler and Crawley
A rodent appears to be driving this SUV !!! Call the State Police !!!
The in-laws: Mark D (Sandy's), Mark H (Mel's) Mel, Andy M (Patti's) and Suzanne (Pep's)
Patti: appears well-groomed. Sandy: appears well-bred. Melissa: appears drunk.
Fashion model / Bag Lady Extraordinaire
The Beast and Beauty (This time-machine photo is of Joe in the present day and Sandy from 1956)
The Divine Miss M, Joe (proving he inherited Uncle Ray's hands), Spectacular Sandy
My only distaff first cousins: Sandy, Patti, Melissa. All teasing aside - these three Extraordinarily Beautiful Women (inside and out), are all over 41, and all look 10-15 years younger.
Aunt Jan, Peppy's wife Suzanne, his daughter Savannah in a laundry project. We found a whole master bedroom under the clothes !
Melissa's beautiful, warmly lived-in home, with surprises hanging on almost every fan inside.
Sandy and Peppy - who is a grandfather in his own right, and who, in this shot, looks like his great grandfather Galbert Bernard (JE's dad)Georgia Remembrances
It's Sunday - Feb 12th. My father's mother Fanny Ella Kruse Chaillot would be celebrating her 109th birthday today had she lived (Fanny Ella died in May 1987). Abe Lincoln would have been 200 today or very near it !!!
There's a dusting of SNOW here this morning in north Georgia !!!
Had a heartfelt reunion with my first cousins yesterday at their father's (Uncle Ray) funeral in Woodstock, GA. The best part of the day came later, at his daughter Melissa's home in nearby Alpharetta.
We talked and laughed and told stories and drank beer (in homage to Uncle Ray - who dearly loved his beer and could outdrink anyone twice his size) and ate and - best of all - watched a DVD on TV and a CD (on computer) with photos of Ray and family from 1930 (the year of his birth) right on up through recently.
Sandy, Peppy , Melissa, and Patti and their families have all created incredibly wonderful, beautiful, fulfilling lives. Aunt Jan (77 Jan 24th) - looking even more elfish than her usual 4'11" self, was stoic yet regaled us with stories about Uncle Ray and his final days and even final moments -
as he sat up in bed and ordered some Louisiana oysters for a midnight snack just minutes before he joined Lillian, JE and Sis. I have no doubt he is cracking open some bivalves and popping a cold one right now this very moment (wanna bet?).
I have some more photos of this visit and will be posting them here in the coming days - despite my teasing them, aren't my cousins beautiful ?
I want to suggest something right here on my blog for everyone to think about (but as Papa B used to say when we played cards with him: think long and you think wrong).
I propose that ALL of the descendants of Lillian Broussard and Joseph Essie Bernard hold their First Annual Lillian and J.E. Bernard Family Reunion this coming summer, at a place and date to be determined by consent of The 12 Apostles, who, as Grande de Mama Lil used to say "are going to make me a saint just putting up with them!" (She turned out to be exactly right: she WAS a saint !
So let's get some feedback to this idea. We simply must not allow our families (who grew up very close to one another emotionally if not always physically) to only see one another at funerals - which has EXACTLY been the case for many years now.
I will volunteer to handle all communcations through this website - all any of you have to do from here on out to circulate an idea is simply add a comment to this post (at the bottom) and i will post your comment for all to see (so CHECK BACK HERE regularly - put this address on your list of favorites.
Let's do Summer 2006 I suggest Georgia for this year, Lafayette in 2007, Houston in 2008, Steamboat Springs in 2009, and AUSTRALIA for 2010 (Lillian's Centennial Year) start saving your money !!!.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Uncle Ray
My mother's only sibling, our Uncle Ray, died today of a heart attack in Georgia. I will be out of pocket for a few days - going up there to be our family's representative at his service Saturday. Will be back in touch with everyone next week.
Uncle Ray's death brings a temporal close to that original family of four (Lillian, JE, Ray, Sis) that lived in Crowley from the early 1930s through to May of 1993 (when Lillian and JE died).
They are reunited now, with all of the hope and grace and laughter and care of that young family of four that moved to Crowley more than 70 years ago.
May they all rest in peace . . .
Uncle Ray's death brings a temporal close to that original family of four (Lillian, JE, Ray, Sis) that lived in Crowley from the early 1930s through to May of 1993 (when Lillian and JE died).
They are reunited now, with all of the hope and grace and laughter and care of that young family of four that moved to Crowley more than 70 years ago.
May they all rest in peace . . .
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Ancestor
Why am I so damn fascinated with every bit of news about dinosaurs ? Perhaps it's their staying power. This animal discussed in the following article was around 100 million years before the T Rex - and now appears to have been its ancestor.
We homo sapiens have been around a puny 4 million years. Where will we be in 100 million years ?
Enjoy.
The New York Times
February 9, 2006
Before the Tyrannosaurus, Guanlong Roamed China
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Chinese and American scientists have discovered what appears to have been the granddaddy of all tyrannosaurs, a primitive crested dinosaur that lived 160 million years ago in northwestern China.
The scientists announced yesterday that an analysis of two fossil specimens suggested that they were either remains of the most primitive tyrannosaur known or the first branch on the family tree leading to Tyrannosaurus rex, the symbol of tooth and claw predation in the age of reptiles.
James M. Clark, a paleontologist at George Washington University, said the discovery "shows us how ancestors of tyrannosaurus took the first step that led to the giant T. rex almost 100 million years later."
The research team, led by Dr. Clark and Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, named the new species Guanlong wucaii. The first, or generic, name is derived from the Mandarin word for "crowned dragon," a reference to its large, fragile crest. The second, or species, name refers to the rich colors of the Junggar Basin, the remote discovery site north of the Tian Shan range.
The discovery, made in 2002, is described in detail in today's issue of the journal Nature. Dr. Clark and other team members discussed the ancestral tyrannosaur yesterday at a news conference in Washington.
Two specimens of the new species were uncovered near one another. The most revealing one, the scientists said, was a nine-foot-long, 12year-old adult with the crested head believed to be typical of the species. The other was a smaller, 7-year-old juvenile. Almost immediately, Dr. Clark said, "we knew we had something fairly rare."
The clearest evidence of an ancestral link to tyrannosaurs were the teeth and pelvic structure of the two skeletons. Closer examination, Dr. Clark said, dispelled any lingering skepticism and showed a definite relationship with later tyrannosaurs.
Mark A. Norell, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a team member, said, "The discovery of this basal tyrannosaur is giving us a much broader picture of the diversity of this group and its ancestors."
Dr. Norell noted several primitive traces in the skeletons, including the presence of long forearms and three-fingered hands. The well-known T. rex, which lived about 70 million years ago, toward the end of the Cretaceous period of geologic time, evolved short forearms that were virtually nonfunctional two-fingered hands, and a mammoth body two or three times the length of these early ancestors.
The differences suggest that the newfound animals were an intermediate step in evolution between primitive coelurosaurs, a group of birdlike dinosaurs, and tyrannosaurs.
The skeletons were found in sediments from the late Jurassic period, when the site in the desert basin was a warm land of lakes and marshes. The region of the discovery, near China's borders with Mongolia and Kazakhstan, was previously explored by a Chinese-Canadian fossil hunting expedition in the 1980's. Other paleontologists said they were not surprised that the region had yielded more discoveries from earlier epochs in the time of dinosaurs.
Only a few scraps of dinosaur fossils were previously uncovered in the Jurassic deposits, but Dr. Clark said the age of the Guanlong specimen was "about where we would expect the oldest tyrannosaurs to be."
The earliest previously known tyrannosaur was a 130-million-year-old feathered specimen, Dilong paradoxus, which American and Chinese scientists reported two years ago. No signs of feathers were found on the two Guanlong specimens.
The presence of a crest on the Guanlong adult's head was a complete surprise, Dr. Clark said, showing that there was "clearly still much more to be learned about early tyrannosaurs."
The research team said the crest was about as thin as a tortilla and only two and a half inches high. It appeared to be filled with air sacs and reminded the paleontologist of the ornamental features found on some living birds, like cassowaries and hornbills.
Dr. Norell said the crest was too thin to have provided much protection, or to have been used in butting heads in combat. More likely, he said, the crest of these "crowned dragons" had something to do with attracting mates or identifying fellow species members.
###
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Opus Dei = Opie is God?
Gotta love this one. The Catholic Church reminding us that the upcoming film "The DaVinci Code" is fiction. Well, DUH ! Now if only they will admit same concerning most of what's taught as Catholic doctrine ! This is yet another reminder that there's too much man in God and not enough God in man.
Enjoy.
The New York Times
February 7, 2006
Catholic Group Says of 'Da Vinci Code' Film: It's Just Fiction
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
When "The Da Vinci Code" became a publishing sensation, leaders of the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei realized they had an image problem on their hands.
The assassin in the best-selling thriller is an albino Opus Dei monk named Silas, and the group is depicted as a powerful but secretive cult whose members practice ritualistic self-torture. In a preface titled "Fact," the author, Dan Brown, said his book was more than mere fiction.
When plans were revealed for a movie based on the book, Opus Dei leaders say they tried to persuade Sony Pictures to excise any mention of their group, sending a letter last year saying the book was "a gross distortion and a grave injustice."
Their effort failed.
With the film starring Tom Hanks now set for release on May 19, Opus Dei is trying to sate public interest and cast the group in a very different light than the religious home of a fictional assassin.
The group is promoting a blog by an Opus Dei priest in Rome, revamping its Web site and even arranging interviews with a member said to be the only "real Silas" in Opus Dei — a Nigerian-born stockbroker who lives in Brooklyn.
Silas Agbim, the stockbroker, said that Opus Dei taught its members to hold themselves to the highest standards. "If you do your work well, it's pleasing to God," said Mr. Agbim, a graying father of three grown children who is married to a professor emeritus of library science. "And if you think you will get holy by reciting 10 rosaries a day and doing your work sloppily, that is wrong."
Still, the "Da Vinci Code" movie is sure to revive a long-simmering debate among Catholics over whether Opus Dei is a positive or negative influence in the church. Critics say that while the group is relatively small, a few members seem to hold important positions in the Vatican, including the pope's chief spokesman.
Questions about whether Opus Dei has outsize influence grew when Pope John Paul II granted the group a unique status in the church in 1982, and 10 years later set the group's founder on an unusually speedy track to sainthood.
Opus Dei's reputation for secrecy developed partly because of the group's tradition that members should not publicly proclaim their affiliation. "Is he or isn't he Opus Dei?" guessing games have focused on prominent figures, particularly in Washington.
A controversy exploded last year in England when it surfaced that Ruth Kelly, the young new secretary of education in the liberal Labor Party, was affiliated with Opus Dei. She did not deny it but never clarified her status with the group, prompting even louder criticism. Robert P. Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent who pleaded guilty in 2001 to spying for the Soviet Union, confirmed that he was a member and acknowledged that he had confided his crimes to his priest.
Opus Dei leaders say they are neither secretive, nor particularly powerful, nor lockstep conservatives. They say the group is a decentralized network of more than 84,541 Catholic lay people and 1,875 priests around the world, relatively small numbers in a church of 1.1 billion.
They say they have no aspirations to control the Vatican and believe their calling is to live out their devotion to God by doing their jobs well, be it janitor, senator or full-time mother. Opus Dei is Latin for "the work of God."
Lynn Frank, an Opus Dei member in Walden, N.Y., mother of seven and the owner-entrepreneur of a business that promotes healthful eating, said: "The determination I have definitely comes from my vocation with Opus Dei, because every single day with Opus Dei, you wake up and say, 'I'm giving 100 percent of my day to you, Lord.' And if you slack off, that's a boss you don't want to answer to."
Since its founding in 1928 by a Spanish priest, Josemaría Escrivá, the group has found favor with several popes, in particular John Paul II, whose theological emphasis on holiness, the importance of the family and the dignity of work meshed well with Father Escrivá's beliefs. In 1982, John Paul granted Opus Dei the status of a "personal prelature," and it remains the only one in the church, meaning that it has its own bishop who reports directly to the pope.
Then in 1992, Father Escrivá leapfrogged other candidates for sainthood and was beatified a mere 17 years after his death. He was canonized a saint in 2002.
Joaquín Navarro-Valls, a spokesman for John Paul and now for Pope Benedict XVI, is a member, as was one of the co-authors of a controversial Vatican document released in 2000, Dominus Iesus, on the primacy of Christianity. When the pope wanted to clean up an Austrian diocese where pornography was found on a seminary computer, he appointed a new bishop from Opus Dei.
Also feeding the impression of influence is Opus Dei's American headquarters, in New York, a 17-story building at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 34th Street on which the group spent $69 million for the property, construction and furnishing.
Mention of the location in "The Da Vinci Code" has brought a constant stream of the curious and conspiratorial to the door, said the doorman, Robert A. Boone. He says he tells them, "You think I'd be working here if there were people like Silas walking around?"
Some Opus Dei members are incensed about how the three-year-old best seller presents not only Opus Dei, but also Christianity. In "The Da Vinci Code," a pair of sleuthing heroes discover that the doctrine of Jesus' divinity was made up by the fourth-century Roman Emperor Constantine, and that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children.
Mr. Agbim said he had read the book. "It is poison," he said. "It will lead the people to have doubts."
But Opus Dei leaders are taking a less confrontational approach. Opus Dei's United States leader, the Rev. Thomas G. Bohlin, said, "We don't want the controversy to pump up publicity for the movie." Father Bohlin sent the letter to Sony Pictures asking that Opus Dei be left out of the movie and said he had received a "polite but noncommittal" response.
Jim Kennedy, a spokesman for Sony Pictures, said: "We see 'The Da Vinci Code' as a work of fiction and not intended to harm any organization. At its heart the film is a thriller, and we do agree that it really provides a unique opportunity for Opus Dei and other organizations to let people know more about their work and their beliefs."
After researching Opus Dei for a book, John L. Allen, the Vatican correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, has concluded that its power and wealth have been largely exaggerated. The group's worldwide membership is about equivalent to the number of Catholics in the Diocese of Hobart on the island of Tasmania, Mr. Allen said.
Opus Dei keeps no central financial records, but Mr. Allen determined its assets to be $2.8 billion, a figure the group's spokesmen say appears accurate. Much of that is tied up in the schools and hospitals worldwide. Half of the expense for the New York headquarters was paid for by a single donation of stock, said Brian Finnerty, a spokesman.
"Opus Dei certainly is a growing force in church affairs, and they probably have a very disproportionate number of those church positions that have impact, but let's not mythologize that," said Mr. Allen, author of "Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church."
Some former members accuse Opus Dei of behaving like a cult, with aggressive recruiting and excessive control over members who choose to live in Opus Dei centers. Tammy DiNicola, who joined Opus Dei as a college student and left in 1990 after two years, said the organization pulled in idealistic and very spiritual people by deceiving them.
"They don't tell you you wouldn't spend any holidays with your family, your mail would be read, you would hand over your salary to them, and you wouldn't be able to watch television or radio or even leave the house without permission," said Ms. DiNicola, who helped found the Opus Dei Awareness Network to help former members.
Mr. Finnerty, the Opus Dei spokesman, said that contrary to accusations by some former members, independence and personal freedom were central to the doctrine.
Seventy percent of Opus Dei's members, like Lynn Frank and Silas Agbim, are working people, usually married, who live in their own homes, a category of membership known as "supernumerary." Although they maintain a rigorous schedule of daily prayer and reading, weekly confession and meetings with a spiritual director, they carry on with their lives and professions.
About 20 percent are "numeraries," who give their lives entirely to the organization, living as celibates in an Opus Dei center. Some hold outside jobs, but many work full time in affiliated institutions, like hospitals and schools. Ten percent are "associates," who are celibate but live on their own and not in Opus Dei centers.
Much of the eerie mystique surrounding Opus Dei comes from the numeraries' practice of "corporal mortification." In "The Da Vinci Code," Silas the murderous monk is shown whipping himself bloody and wearing a spiked chain around his thigh so tightly that it draws blood.
In reality, numeraries do wear a "cilice," a chain with points, under their pants for two hours a day. Once a week, they beat their backs with a small cord while reciting a prayer. Opus Dei says corporal mortification is an ancient Catholic practice that promotes penance and identification with the suffering of Christ.
Ms. DiNicola, the former member, said that wearing the cilice was supposed to be optional but that numerary members were made to feel guilty if they did not. "It does cut and it does leave little blood pricks," she said.
Despite the dismal portrayal of their group in "The Da Vinci Code," Opus Dei leaders acknowledge some benefits from the attention. Doubleday, the publisher of the book, is about to release "The Way," a collection of spiritual writing by Opus Dei's founder. Mr. Finnerty, the group's spokesman, said it was "The Da Vinci Code" that opened the door for the deal.
###
Enjoy.
The New York Times
February 7, 2006
Catholic Group Says of 'Da Vinci Code' Film: It's Just Fiction
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
When "The Da Vinci Code" became a publishing sensation, leaders of the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei realized they had an image problem on their hands.
The assassin in the best-selling thriller is an albino Opus Dei monk named Silas, and the group is depicted as a powerful but secretive cult whose members practice ritualistic self-torture. In a preface titled "Fact," the author, Dan Brown, said his book was more than mere fiction.
When plans were revealed for a movie based on the book, Opus Dei leaders say they tried to persuade Sony Pictures to excise any mention of their group, sending a letter last year saying the book was "a gross distortion and a grave injustice."
Their effort failed.
With the film starring Tom Hanks now set for release on May 19, Opus Dei is trying to sate public interest and cast the group in a very different light than the religious home of a fictional assassin.
The group is promoting a blog by an Opus Dei priest in Rome, revamping its Web site and even arranging interviews with a member said to be the only "real Silas" in Opus Dei — a Nigerian-born stockbroker who lives in Brooklyn.
Silas Agbim, the stockbroker, said that Opus Dei taught its members to hold themselves to the highest standards. "If you do your work well, it's pleasing to God," said Mr. Agbim, a graying father of three grown children who is married to a professor emeritus of library science. "And if you think you will get holy by reciting 10 rosaries a day and doing your work sloppily, that is wrong."
Still, the "Da Vinci Code" movie is sure to revive a long-simmering debate among Catholics over whether Opus Dei is a positive or negative influence in the church. Critics say that while the group is relatively small, a few members seem to hold important positions in the Vatican, including the pope's chief spokesman.
Questions about whether Opus Dei has outsize influence grew when Pope John Paul II granted the group a unique status in the church in 1982, and 10 years later set the group's founder on an unusually speedy track to sainthood.
Opus Dei's reputation for secrecy developed partly because of the group's tradition that members should not publicly proclaim their affiliation. "Is he or isn't he Opus Dei?" guessing games have focused on prominent figures, particularly in Washington.
A controversy exploded last year in England when it surfaced that Ruth Kelly, the young new secretary of education in the liberal Labor Party, was affiliated with Opus Dei. She did not deny it but never clarified her status with the group, prompting even louder criticism. Robert P. Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent who pleaded guilty in 2001 to spying for the Soviet Union, confirmed that he was a member and acknowledged that he had confided his crimes to his priest.
Opus Dei leaders say they are neither secretive, nor particularly powerful, nor lockstep conservatives. They say the group is a decentralized network of more than 84,541 Catholic lay people and 1,875 priests around the world, relatively small numbers in a church of 1.1 billion.
They say they have no aspirations to control the Vatican and believe their calling is to live out their devotion to God by doing their jobs well, be it janitor, senator or full-time mother. Opus Dei is Latin for "the work of God."
Lynn Frank, an Opus Dei member in Walden, N.Y., mother of seven and the owner-entrepreneur of a business that promotes healthful eating, said: "The determination I have definitely comes from my vocation with Opus Dei, because every single day with Opus Dei, you wake up and say, 'I'm giving 100 percent of my day to you, Lord.' And if you slack off, that's a boss you don't want to answer to."
Since its founding in 1928 by a Spanish priest, Josemaría Escrivá, the group has found favor with several popes, in particular John Paul II, whose theological emphasis on holiness, the importance of the family and the dignity of work meshed well with Father Escrivá's beliefs. In 1982, John Paul granted Opus Dei the status of a "personal prelature," and it remains the only one in the church, meaning that it has its own bishop who reports directly to the pope.
Then in 1992, Father Escrivá leapfrogged other candidates for sainthood and was beatified a mere 17 years after his death. He was canonized a saint in 2002.
Joaquín Navarro-Valls, a spokesman for John Paul and now for Pope Benedict XVI, is a member, as was one of the co-authors of a controversial Vatican document released in 2000, Dominus Iesus, on the primacy of Christianity. When the pope wanted to clean up an Austrian diocese where pornography was found on a seminary computer, he appointed a new bishop from Opus Dei.
Also feeding the impression of influence is Opus Dei's American headquarters, in New York, a 17-story building at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 34th Street on which the group spent $69 million for the property, construction and furnishing.
Mention of the location in "The Da Vinci Code" has brought a constant stream of the curious and conspiratorial to the door, said the doorman, Robert A. Boone. He says he tells them, "You think I'd be working here if there were people like Silas walking around?"
Some Opus Dei members are incensed about how the three-year-old best seller presents not only Opus Dei, but also Christianity. In "The Da Vinci Code," a pair of sleuthing heroes discover that the doctrine of Jesus' divinity was made up by the fourth-century Roman Emperor Constantine, and that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children.
Mr. Agbim said he had read the book. "It is poison," he said. "It will lead the people to have doubts."
But Opus Dei leaders are taking a less confrontational approach. Opus Dei's United States leader, the Rev. Thomas G. Bohlin, said, "We don't want the controversy to pump up publicity for the movie." Father Bohlin sent the letter to Sony Pictures asking that Opus Dei be left out of the movie and said he had received a "polite but noncommittal" response.
Jim Kennedy, a spokesman for Sony Pictures, said: "We see 'The Da Vinci Code' as a work of fiction and not intended to harm any organization. At its heart the film is a thriller, and we do agree that it really provides a unique opportunity for Opus Dei and other organizations to let people know more about their work and their beliefs."
After researching Opus Dei for a book, John L. Allen, the Vatican correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, has concluded that its power and wealth have been largely exaggerated. The group's worldwide membership is about equivalent to the number of Catholics in the Diocese of Hobart on the island of Tasmania, Mr. Allen said.
Opus Dei keeps no central financial records, but Mr. Allen determined its assets to be $2.8 billion, a figure the group's spokesmen say appears accurate. Much of that is tied up in the schools and hospitals worldwide. Half of the expense for the New York headquarters was paid for by a single donation of stock, said Brian Finnerty, a spokesman.
"Opus Dei certainly is a growing force in church affairs, and they probably have a very disproportionate number of those church positions that have impact, but let's not mythologize that," said Mr. Allen, author of "Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church."
Some former members accuse Opus Dei of behaving like a cult, with aggressive recruiting and excessive control over members who choose to live in Opus Dei centers. Tammy DiNicola, who joined Opus Dei as a college student and left in 1990 after two years, said the organization pulled in idealistic and very spiritual people by deceiving them.
"They don't tell you you wouldn't spend any holidays with your family, your mail would be read, you would hand over your salary to them, and you wouldn't be able to watch television or radio or even leave the house without permission," said Ms. DiNicola, who helped found the Opus Dei Awareness Network to help former members.
Mr. Finnerty, the Opus Dei spokesman, said that contrary to accusations by some former members, independence and personal freedom were central to the doctrine.
Seventy percent of Opus Dei's members, like Lynn Frank and Silas Agbim, are working people, usually married, who live in their own homes, a category of membership known as "supernumerary." Although they maintain a rigorous schedule of daily prayer and reading, weekly confession and meetings with a spiritual director, they carry on with their lives and professions.
About 20 percent are "numeraries," who give their lives entirely to the organization, living as celibates in an Opus Dei center. Some hold outside jobs, but many work full time in affiliated institutions, like hospitals and schools. Ten percent are "associates," who are celibate but live on their own and not in Opus Dei centers.
Much of the eerie mystique surrounding Opus Dei comes from the numeraries' practice of "corporal mortification." In "The Da Vinci Code," Silas the murderous monk is shown whipping himself bloody and wearing a spiked chain around his thigh so tightly that it draws blood.
In reality, numeraries do wear a "cilice," a chain with points, under their pants for two hours a day. Once a week, they beat their backs with a small cord while reciting a prayer. Opus Dei says corporal mortification is an ancient Catholic practice that promotes penance and identification with the suffering of Christ.
Ms. DiNicola, the former member, said that wearing the cilice was supposed to be optional but that numerary members were made to feel guilty if they did not. "It does cut and it does leave little blood pricks," she said.
Despite the dismal portrayal of their group in "The Da Vinci Code," Opus Dei leaders acknowledge some benefits from the attention. Doubleday, the publisher of the book, is about to release "The Way," a collection of spiritual writing by Opus Dei's founder. Mr. Finnerty, the group's spokesman, said it was "The Da Vinci Code" that opened the door for the deal.
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