Content & Context

This Week:

Timeline: October 2003
Places & Culture
City Scene: Huntsville
October book blog

TIMELINE: OCTOBER 2003

October was a month to sit back, watch, and shake your head and at one bizarre spectacle after another. Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of one of the largest and most troubled states in the nation, the first movie actor to assume that office since Ronald Reagan. Roy Horn, of the longtime Las Vegas act Siegfried and Roy, was mauled by one of his trusty tigers. One man became the first person to survive a plunge over Niagara Falls without safety gear. Fifteen school cooks in St. Cloud, Minnesota, pooled their quarters to buy what became a $95-million Powerball-winning ticket. Vanessa Lucero was crowned homecoming queen at her New Mexico high school after scoring her team’s opening touchdown as a running back. An Oakland man ate 115 M&M’s in three minutes using chopsticks (alas, the Guinness world record was set with Smarties). Scientists fashioned a robot arm that obeyed the mental commands of a monkey. A spectacular solar flare disrupted satellites and other communications on earth. But no spectacle was harder on the eyes than what befell the Cubs and Red Sox, each of whom was five outs away from going to the World Series before heartbreak struck yet again.

October exhibited the best and worst of the human spirit. In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, the government continued its attacks on separatists as the holy month of Ramadan began. Bombers struck Israel and Iraq, including a hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying. Human error played a role in the deaths of ten people in a ferry crash in New York City, and six more in an office high-rise fire in Chicago. As the anniversary of the Washington D.C.-area sniper attacks passed, suspect John Allen Muhammad pleaded not guilty. Basketball superstar Kobe Bryant was ordered to stand trial on charges of sexual assault. Speaking at a conference on domestic violence, the wife of the governor of Maryland said she wanted to “shoot Britney Spears” (a comment that, a spokeswoman quickly explained, was an “inadvertent figure of speech”). San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown compared his rival Chris Daly—who made unwelcome appointments as acting mayor, causing Brown to abbreviate his trip to Asia—to a stalker.

All of which made it all the more uplifting when Pope John Paul II celebrated his 25th anniversary as pope and beatified Mother Teresa, a step toward her sainthood, and when Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. China became the third country to send a person into space. After their successful separation in Dallas, formerly conjoined two-year-old Egyptian twins looked into each other’s eyes for the first time.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek, instrumental in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s anti-Communist efforts and one of the most powerful women of the World War II era, died of pneumonia at age 106. Walter E. Washington, the first African American chief executive of a major U.S. city, guided Washington D.C. through the tumultuous 1960s. William Steig drew New Yorker cartoons and children’s books, including Shrek! and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. James O’Gara spent more than 30 years at Commonweal magazine, many as editor. Joan B. Kroc was the widow of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc. Judy Hendren Mello was president of the First Women’s Bank of Manhattan, the first such institution to be operated by women. As a panoramic photographer of everything from presidential inaugurations to high school graduations, Edward Segal photographed more than 3 million people. Jockey Bill Shoemaker won 11 major races in horse racing’s Triple Crown. On television’s The Price Is Right, announcer Rod Roddy beckoned contestants to “come on down!”

PLACES & CULTURE

From the New York Times:

LOS ANGELES — Designed by Frank Gehry, the $274 million Walt Disney Concert Hall hall open[ed] on Oct. 23. Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Philharmonic’s charismatic young music director, conduct[ed] “The Rite of Spring.” Wrong season, right rite: Disney Hall is a riotous rebirth. Not just for downtown Los Angeles, where the building is situated, and not just for the whole sprawling mixed-up La-La. What is being reborn is the idea of the urban center as a democratic institution: a place where voices can be heard. Disney Hall has at least a dual personality and moods enough to spare. On the outside it is a moon palace, a buoyant composition of silvery reflected light. Inside, the light shifts to gold. Sitting atop the downtown Bunker Hill district, Disney Hall is the most gallant building you are ever likely to see. And it will be opening its doors to everyone who has fought for the chance to be generous, to others and to themselves. From some approaches Disney Hall first appears as a luminous crescent hovering between skyscrapers. The light playing off its surface is uncanny, though we have often been in its presence. It is the light of the silver screen and of the round reflectors used on photo and video locations: the light of the Hollywood dream. Summary*

Related: More on Gehry and Disney Hall in the New York Review of Books and PBS.org

SEATTLE — Nikkei Manor, where 46 Japanese-Americans are spending their old age, is one of a growing number of assisted-living facilities and nursing homes across the nation that cater to first- and second-generation elderly immigrants. It is a fast-growing population that has begun to embrace the very American tradition of living the last years with peers, not family. That phenomenon is driven by two-career families that have little time to care for their parents, increasing wealth for some immigrant populations and gradual acceptance of a lifestyle that was unheard of a generation ago. Assisted-living facilities, which allow the elderly to live independently with some supervision, became popular in America beginning in the 1980’s. For many immigrants—and their children—the move into nursing homes or assisted-living facilities runs counter to deeply held beliefs about elders and family. And for some, experts on elderly immigrants say, the decision to send a parent away is clouded with shame and ambivalence. Still, places like Nikkei Manor—where miso soup, soba noodles, red ginger and dark-roasted tea are staples of the daily lunch and dinner menus—are sprouting up at a rapid pace, from Seattle to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, signaling a major shift in how immigrants in this country care for their elders. Summary*

CITY SCENE: HUNTSVILLE

This week, Cathy Guiles, fellow veteran of the Calvin College Chimes, writes of her arrival in Huntsville, Alabama, where she interned this summer as a copy editor for the Huntsville Times. She is currently a copy editor at the Daily Star in Oneonta, New York.

“Yes, I Am A Rocket Scientist,” a driver announces via bumper sticker. And it’s no joke: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Space and Rocket Center give Huntsville its nickname, “The Rocket City.” Newcomers are greeted by an enormous rocket that sticks out of the ground and creates an odd tableau when viewed against the rolling hills that surround the city. But the shock of the rocket’s size is tempered by residents’ heartfelt hospitality. This is a forward-thinking “New South” city that holds fast to time-honored traditions. At a church get-together, a Northerner like me who’s never drunk sweet tea is quickly initiated by a new acquaintance, and people are too polite to mention my accent (or lack thereof, as it seems to me). Huntsville knows it would not be what it is today without the influence of outsiders, namely the German rocket engineers who arrived in the late 1930s, and hopes its willingness to extend a warm welcome—and a cup of sweet tea—bodes well for its future.

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