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Folder Title: Millennium Toast 12/31/99
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001. draft Draft language for speech, "If we can learn to develop a real sense of n.d. P6/b(6) creative harmony..." [partial] (1 page) 002. fax Robert Pinsky to Lowell Weiss. Re: State of the Union Passeges 12117/99 P6/b(6) [partial] (7 pages)
COLLECTION: Clinton Presidential Records Speechwriting Weiss, Lowell OA/Box Number: 17199 FOLDER TITLE: Millennium Toast 12/31/99
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From: "Brent A. Archinal"
Jeff -
Here's the information you requested about stars at given distances away, and in the sky from D.C. on New Year's Eve about midnight. These were found by converting the distances in light years to parallaxes and looking up bright stars in the Hipparcos star catalogue which approximately matched (and are in the sky at the given time) As I . mentioned, please be aware that the Hipparcos distances are approximately - particularly the more distant an object is - as are the > matches to the distances specified. So when you quote distances, you . should always say "about" or "approximately". /~ , JUs-C.
If you're interested, you can also see http://astro.estec.esa.nl/Hipparcos/ for information on the ESA 37 Hipparcos satellite mission.
Anyway, here's the basic data. More explanation follows.
Light parsecs | parallax | Hipparcos | mag. other names years name
224 = 68.69 = 0.014558" - HIP 36917, V=4.6 = HD 60863 (in(^PuppisT)
1000 = 306.6 = 0.0032610" - HIP 23522, V=4.0 = Beta Camelopardalis ilo**^ ^^«fi_f__544_. 6 = 0 .0018361""' '- HIP 34444,"^=!^ = De±t^^anis--Ma#««rs- V-^J tens
2000 = 613.3 = 0.0016305" - HIP 23416,, = j^Ep^lonJ^LAurigar e V.j._V.^ _VV-_\ \t^_
where: / V'OP*^
light years" - The requested distances in light years. » J^V"'
"parsecs" - The same di in parsecs (divide light years by 3.216 to get this).
.../getmsg?disk=209.185.240.70_d561&login=molnar2&f=33792&curmbox=ACTIVE&_lan 12/16/1999 Hotmail Inbox Page 2 of 3
"parallax" - Amount star appears to move in one year due to Earth's motion about Sun (1/parallax), in arcseconds.
Hipparcos name - Hipparcos star catalogue number of a star whose distance approximately matches that specified.
mag. - Visual (i.e. human eye) magnitude of star. The brightest naked-eye stars are around 0, the faintest around 6. From Washington, D.C. on a good night, one can see down to about 4.5 (e.g. the first star on the list would be tough to see, the others should be visible if it' s clear) .
other names - Common names are given here. The first star has only a catalogue name, "HD 60863", from the Harvard "Henry Draper" catalogue from early in this century. The others have Greek letter and constellation names (when used with the Greek letter, the latin genitive form ot the~"constellation name is given, as here) .
As some auxiliary information, the "HD 60863" star_Jss_appax^efit"1 y paxt^of a double star system, and Epsilon Aurigae is aiCjSgortant variable star. It is a well-studied eclipsing binary, consisting of two stars that " occasionally pass in front of each other, diming the total light from the system.
If you should need/care to look these up on a star chart, the positions for the 4 stars are copied below for 2000.0. January 1 of the year 2000 is the standard epoch for star positions, atlases, and catalogues, so it just happens they'll be exactly right on the night in question!
HD 60863 (in Puppis) 07 35 22.89 -28 22 09.6
Beta Camelopardalis 05 03 25.09 +60 26 32.1
Delta Canis Majoris 07 08 23.48 -26 23 35.5
ipsilon Aurigae 05 01 58.13 +43 49 23.
The right ascensions between 5-8 hours indicates these objects will be on or near the meridian (due north or south) in late December near midnight.
Anyway, I hope this info proves of value. Give me a call if there are any questions.
Regards, - Brent Archinal
Brent A. Archinal Astronomer Earth Orientation Department U. S. Naval Observatory phone 202-762-1564 3450 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. fax 202-762-1563 Washington, D.C. 20392 BAA@CasA. USNO. Navy. mi 1
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Auriga, in astronomy, a constellation of the Northern Hemisphere. Auriga, Latin for "charioteer," lies west of Perseus far north of the celestial equator- the imaginary line formed by the projection of the Earth's equator onto the sky. Auriga is a significant constellation, both for its astronomical objects and for its ancient and complex mythology. The constellation contains Capella, the sixth brightest star in the sky and one of the seven stars (along with Castor, Pollux, Procyon, Sirius, Rigel, and Aldebaran) that make up the large, bright ring of stars known as the winter circle. In early January, Auriga reaches its highest point in the sky in the mid-northern latitudes at 10:00 PM. The pentagon-shaped constellation straddles the Milky Way almost directly overhead and lies northeast of Taurus, due north of Orion, and northwest of Gemini. From the mid-southern latitudes it appears very low on the northern horizon.
Auriga is often depicted as the torso of a charioteer holding a bridle and whip in his right hand and cradling Capella, or the "she goat," on his left arm. Two kids, the offspring of Capella, rest on his wrist or forearm. This representation can be traced back to early Babylonian times, 4000BC to 3500 BC. In Greek and Roman mythology, Auriga is associated with several figures. The Romans called the constellation Erichthonius, their translation of the Greek equivalent. Erichthonius was a legendary king of Athens and son of Vulcan (Hephaestus), who invented the four-horse chariot and as a result became a favorite of Jupiter (Zeus). Other legends associate Auriga with Myrtilius, who served as charioteer to King Oenemaus. One of Myrtilius' duties was to race to the death any suitor of the king's daughter, Hippodamia. When Hippodamia fell in love with Pelops, one of the suitors, she begged Myrtilius to lose the race. He did so and the king died. Myrtilius, himself in love with Hippodamia, tried to flee with her, and Pelops killed him.
Some sources associate Capella with the she-goat Amaltheia, who nursed Zeus as an infant and was placed in the sky in gratitude. However, the goat symbolism plays no part in the myths of the charioteers, leading some authorities to conclude that the animals are remnants of more ancient shepherding myths once associated with the constellation.
The Greek poet Aratus mentions Auriga in his work 'Phaenomena', from the 3rd century BC. Ptolemy, the great astronomer who lived and worked in Egypt during the 2nd century AD, cataloged the constellation.
At magnitude 0.08, Capella, also known as Alpha Aurigae, is the brightest star in Auriga. It is a spectroscopic binary star made up of two yellow individuals. Beta Aurigae, or Menkalinan, from the Arabic for "shoulder of http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/07448_Q.html 12/16/1999 Auriga Page 2 of 3
the charioteer," is a 1.9-magnitude eclipsing variable made up of two orbiting white stars. Zeta Aurigae and Eta Aurigae together are known as the Haedi, or "kids" (young goats). Zeta Aurigae is a well-known eclipsing binary, in which a smaller blue star orbits an orange giant, passing periodically between it and Earth and slightly dimming the larger star's appearance. Another eclipsing binary, Epsilon Aurigae, dims from magnitude 3.0 to 3.8 every 27 years. It is thought to have a disk of dark dust surrounding one star.
Auriga is well-known for its three open star clusters, M36, M37, and M38, which line up along the edge of the Milky Way between Theta Aurigae and Iota Aurigae. An observer can easily locate these clusters with binoculars. At the center of M37, the brightest of the three, is an orange star visible through a telescope. Another cluster, NGC 2281, also can be located with binoculars. A telescope reveals this cluster's crescent shape, with four comparatively bright stars forming a diamond shape within it.
Auriga (the Charioteer) Some Facts
Genitive: Aurigae Abbreviation: Aur Declination: +27.9 degrees to +56.1 degrees Right ascension: 4 h 35 m to 7 h 27 m Area covered: 657 square degrees Number of stars brighter than sixth magnitude: 90
Critically reviewed by James Seevers
Barton, S.G., and Barton, W.H. Jr. Guide to the Constellations, 2nd ed. (Whittlesey House, 1935). Berger, Melvin. Star Gazing, Comet Tracking, and Sky Mapping (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1985). Burnham, Robert Jr. Bumham's Celestial Handbook, rev. ed., 3 vols. (Dover, 1978). Chartrand, M.R. National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky (Knopf, 1991). Dibon-Smith, Richard. Starlist Two Thousand: A Quick Reference Star Catalog for Astronomers (Wiley, 1992). Henbest, Nigel, and Couper, Heather. The Guide to the Galaxy (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994). Hirshfeld, Alan, and others. Sky Catalogue 2000.0., 2 vols. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991). Levitt, J.I.M., and Marshall, R.K. Star Maps for Beginners (Simon & Schuster, 1992). http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/07448_Q.html 12/16/1999 Auriga Page 3 of 3
Liller, William. The Cambridge Guide to Astronomical Discovery (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992). Menzel, D.H., and Pasachoff, J.M. The Peterson Field Guide Series: A Field Guide to Stars and Planets, 2nd ed. (Houghton, 1995). Moore, Patrick, ed. International Encyclopedia of Astronomy (Orion Books, 1987). Ridpath, Ian. Star Tales (Universe, 1988). Ridpath, Ian, and Tirion, Wil. Collins Pocket Guide: Stars and Planets, 2nded. (HarperCollins, 1993). Rudaux, Lucien, and de Vaucouleurs, G. Larousse Encyclopedia of Astronomy (Prometheus Press, 1959). Sesti, G.M. The Glorious Constellations: History and Mythology (Harry N. Abrams, 1987). Stott, Carole. The Greenwich Guide to Stargazing (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989).
Internet Addresses
I Astro Web Database
I Guide to Stars and Galaxies
I The Messier Catalog
I Mount Wilson Observatory
I Centre de Donnees Astronomiques de Strasbourg
I STAR*S Family Databases
http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/07448_Q.html 12/16/1999 Constellation Auriga Page 1 of 2
Auriga
tEicl
Abbreviation: Aur English name: Charioteer Coordinates see Stellar data
Particulars:
• Spectroscopical binaries alpha Aur, beta Aur • Eclipsing binaries epsilon Aur (period: 27 years), zeta Aur (period: 2 2/3 years) • Double stars theta Aur, omega Aur • Planetary nebulaNGC(*) 2149 • Diffuse nebulae / 405,1410 • Star clusters M 36. M 37. M 38 , NGC 2281, NGC 1907, NGC 1664 • Meteor Showers: Aurigids, Alpha Aurigids, Delta Aurigids, Zeta Aurigids
General:
A quite large constellation of the northern hemisphere, located between DECL=55 degrees and DECL=28 degrees, RA=7h 30m and RA=4h 40m. There is no star gamma Aur. The reason for this is that the star, which would be listed as gamma Aur is shared with the constellation Taurus (its lying exactly on the boundary) and is listed as beta Tau.
As the Milky Way runs through this constellation it is quite a pleasure to view this part of the sky.
Stars and other objects The yellow giant alpha Aur, called Capella, is the 6th brightest star in the sky (0.08 mag). It is also a spectroscopic binary consisting of a G5III and a GOIII. They revolve each other every 104 days. Menkalinen, beta Aur, is also a spectroscopic binary. Within just four days the stars complete their revolution much faster than those of alpha Aur. Since they are eclipsing each other the brightness of beta Aur seems to vary. The eclipsing binary epsilon Aur has an extradinary long period; every 27.1 years the brightness varies from 3.0 mag down to 3.8 mag as the brighter component is then eclipsed by the darker companion. This eclipse lasts a full year (the last eclipse took place in 1983). Caculations show that the dark component of epsilon Aur has about 10-12 solar masses. Because of its small size it is a good candidate for a black hole; unfortunately this conflicts with the observed lost of brightness during the eclipse. According to studies of Wilson and Cameron the solution is a ring of obsuring material which surrounds the black hole. (There is still doubt that the companion is a black hole; a star which a 10 times smaller brightness would fit the model, too.) http://www.seds.org/Maps/Stars_en/Fig/auriga.html ^Ki'^J •^^
Today, the pace of invention accelerates faster than ever before. Within my lifetime, I believe children will know cancer only as a constellation of stars and human beings will walk on Mars. But I believe that the great miracles of the new century will emerge not only from brilliant minds but also from compassionate hearts. Miracles like a world-class education for every child. Safe communities and quality health care for every family. A dignified retirement for every senior after a lifetime of hard work. Discrimination finally purged from our national soul. This is our time. This is our moment.
The story of this millennium is truly the story of discovery, of innovation, of the search for the divine.
Recognize that our genes are 99.999 percent the same
When you hear how much we have inherited from people of many cultures who lived 1,000 years ago, it makes you think even more seriously about what the future will inherit from us. Nothing should challenge and inspire us more as we prepare to cross into the new millennium. From this remarkable vantage point, we can look out and see just how far we have traveled and where upon this broad horizon of possibility we want to go.
• History: • A millennium is just a blink of the eye, and yet look how far we have come.
The world is a better place today than it was a thousand years ago for people who have had a chance to drink fully of life's possibilities. We are obliged, all of us as human beings, to try to extend that opportunity to more and more of our fellow citizens on this small planet.
mountaintop of the millennium great vantage point to see how far we have traveled, where we now want to go. Vantage point of optimism, pride.
Joke alternatives: But look, if Carl Lewis could cover 100 meters in 9.86 seconds, I ought to be able to cover a thousand years in three minutes.
I am tempted to say that this is the most extraordinary collection of luminous and inspiring men and women ever gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when President and Mrs. Kennedy dined alone. Tonight, we rise to the mountaintop of the millennium
mountaintop of the millennium great vantage point to see how far we have traveled, where we now want to go. Vantage point of optimism, pride.
Inspiration, illumination, and sheer star power
As daunting of a challenge. Think of great responsibility of setting off on right path for next 1,000 years. Every one of us shares this challenge
Creators: * artists, dancers, actors, scientists (Watson), athletes, playwrights, opera singers, musicians, inventors, captains of industry, poets, scholars, astronaut (Glenn), directors
• welcome • daunting task joke • millennium • creators • mountaintop of the millennium great vantage point to see how far we have traveled, where we now want to go. Vantage point of optimism, pride. • poetry or quotation • history of American Century • surpassed all predictions. • story of discovery, restlessness, reach for the divine • DNA • Space • Internet • Vaccines • Public Education • Franchise • Erased discrimination from our books • Conclusion: Prayer?
You will see it in the stars tonight as the millennium turns. Look up into the heavens.
Tonight, as the sun set for the final time in this millennium, a star began to rise in the northern sky over the White House. The light
Millennium looked to the stars, guided by stars... Discovery involves looking to the past, imagining the future.
John Glenn: Overview effect from space (overview effect tonight)
Stars Heavens, reach for the divine. History, Future...
Daunting challenge to do justice to a thousand years of history in a 3-minute dinner toast. • But it's no more daunting than... • State of the Union Address, get an entire hour to cover a single year. And I can't even do that. • Trying to do justice to a thousand years of history in a 3-minute dinner toast is like...
Daunting to X. But it's no more daunting than trying to improve upon President Kennedy's unforgettable line about Jefferson dining alone. So I won't. But I will say...
Small miracle compared to miracles you have brought about...
Illuminate. Over past century.
Illuminated by a thousand years of history.
History always illuminates. Literal sense. Star is rising. 2000 light years away. Literally looking at history.
• welcome everyone • joke • task of toasting new millennium ... daunting task ... someone else who had a chance. • Hope to do justice to 1,000 years in 3 minute toast. State of the union, cover one year in under an hour.
I want to start this toast with a note of proper humility. It is a great honor for me to spend this evening - this remarkable moment in history - with all of you.
Trying to cover 1,000 years in one dinner post...kinda like.
Here's to guy who invented gregorian calendar.
Start with a note of proper humility. It is a great honor for me to spend this evening - this remarkable moment in history - with all of you.
Bookends: people will look back on this moment 1000 years from now. Or: light we emit tonight...
Psalm 90: "Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."
• story
part prayer, part poem, part literally see history.
Cover every Thomas Payne: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." when I was young, thought about this day. Hoped I'd still be around to see it. Never thought this would be my home. Share this evening with the great creators, inspirers of the century.
monuments of power that truly define and sustain us are those that arise from the mind and the soul - our innovation, inspiration, and search for the divine
More perfect union Questions for new millennium: We're more diverse than ever before - can we really be one America? How do we have a govt, that is flexible enough and strong enough to give people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives, and still avoid the abuses that our founders were concerned about? How can we widen the circle of opportunity to include everyone?
By honoring the past we see that our forebears were always imagining the future.
Predictions from 100 years ago
Reconcile the infinitesimal with the infinite
Light from stars - 2000 light years. STAR as symbol. MIRACLE as symbol. Way to look into the past. How to look into the future? Out on the mall, starry night.
"Let our rejoicing rise, High as the list'ning skies, Till now we stand at last, Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.... Thou who has brought us thus far on the way; Thou who has by Thy might. Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray. "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
Carl Sandburg, "A tough will counts; so does desire. So does a rich, soft, wanting. Without rich wanting, nothing arrives."
Settled on a lesser path. Joke fodder: Presidents wanting to be poets. Settling on lesser path. Poet laureate
Will have been printed in New York Times.
Poets for occasions.
Imagine the future.
Looking back.. .look at whole history of the republic Q Mr. President, first of all, thank you so much for letting us do this. It's a thrill for us all to be here in the Oval Office, and we're going to spend most of our time talking about this great moment in history - the millennium, which I'm sure you've talked about and thought about ad nauseum. But we're going to add to that. Are you one of those baby boomers who always contemplated how old you would be in the year 2000?
THE PRESIDENT: I did think about it, I think. I didn't obsess on it, but I always thought about it. I hoped that I would live to see the turn of the millennium. You know, it's an exciting idea, and since I am not in the camp that thinks it's an occasion for the end of the world, I'm looking forward to it.
Q Can you believe, though, after looking ahead for so many years - you're 53 now - that it's almost here? Does that seem strange to you?
THE PRESIDENT: It is amazing. And I think it's - probably some of us are more struck by it. I think most people are just looking forward to it, they're going to enjoy it, but they're still essentially forward-looking; they live in the present and the future. But to me, we're ending this 1,000 years with a remarkable century of extreme highs and lows, and we're ending it in good shape, and we're on the verge of something I think even more remarkable. ^
Q It's true that most people do live in the present and the future.
THE PRESIDENT: That's good.
Q Yes, but at the same time, it's nice to look back and respect history. I know that you believe very strongly -
THE PRESIDENT: I do.
Q - that we can learn so much from history. So this seems to have afforded people an opportunity to look back and kind of evaluate where we've.been as a country, how ,v» far we've come and how far we have to go.
THE PRESIDENT: I think - you know, most of the retrospectives, of course, have been focused on the last 100 years, not trying to imagine the sweep of the last 1,000 years. But I think that's very good. I think that Americans do well when they know a little more history and when they have a sense of where we are in the flow of history, and I think in some senses, the more you know about history and how we've come to where we are, the better able you are to imagine the future. So I've always been kind of a history buff, and I think this is - it's been a good occasion, everything from people saying, what were the 100 greatest movies, who were the 100 greatest athletes - all these lists, lists, lists, lists - I think it's done a lot of good, because I think as people have reviewed this, it's reminded them of things they knew, and then they've learned things they didn't know, and I think that's quite good. THE PRESIDENT: I like them, but I mean, I'm no wizard. But I think about them all the time, and I talk to people in Silicon Valley a lot. I've tried to - I've had to learn a lot conceptually about where we are, where we're going, what the problems and issues are, because I've had to make a lot of policy decisions that affect that whole part of the world, which is a huge part of our economy. It's like eight percent of our employment and income, but 30 percent of our growth since I've been President. And it's only going to accelerate. It's just - it's going to change everything, including television.
People - you know, these little pads people carry around with their little stick pens and they write numbers and draw up things and get all their information and have their telephones on there, too, and eventually, you'll have telephone, e-mail, typewriter, and the television will be in there, everything will be in there. Eventually, we'll all just be carrying around stuff that we now have to hang on walls or plug in or whatever, and it's going to change everything.
Q Let me ask you about the most important event or turning point in American history in the last 100 years.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, ! would say our victory in the Second World War, not only f because of what it ended, but what it began. And let me explain what I mean. It ended an unBefievable attempt by fascism to basically become the dominant organizing principle,.not... only of Europe, but of the whole world. And it was a profoundly impGrtMif^i^oi^oTKmnan freedom.
But it also began something. It began the first true international system with the United Nations, with the World Bank, with the International Monetary Fund, with the dawn of an attempt to have a rule-based global trading system. And with the United States firmly committed to a leadership role in the world and not withdrawing from the world, which is what we had done in the past after conflicts, like World War I. So I would have to say the end of the war. There were a lot of very important things that have happened in the 20th cenh^^Hot^f important econom the GiA^ wqme!flt?^Memeftt!bufI mmlc the turning point that was most sigmfi^ajnfwas the end of the Second World War.
Q Well, actually, one of my next questions is, what was the most important social movement? So you can mention one of the -
THE PRESIDENT: I would say the civil rights movement, because I think of the impact it had. I think that the women's movement was profoundly important and both speeded and reflected the changing role of women in our society. But I think the civil rights movement was the most important social movement because of the role that race has played in our own history, and because of the role that racial, ethnic and religious difference continues to play in the history of the world. THE PRESIDENT: Well, that's difficult to say because there were so many pharmaceutical discoveries. But I would say maybe'ittB^piiS^S^^ the parents of my parents' generation and the childrerRt>f*my generation when I was young. And I remember when the vaccine was developed, and how we all lined up to get our shots and what a big deal it was, you know. THE PRESIDENT: That we will find a way to go forward together and lead the world toward greater peace, as well as prosperity. And I think the two things will become increasingly interlinked. The information revolution has taken off now. The passion for scientific discovery has taken off. The American people are going to do really wonderful things, if we can keep growing together as we go forward. And we can have a very profoundly positive impact on the rest of the world, even as other big economic units grow - the European Union will get bigger and bigger and bigger, and their relative economy will grow larger. The Chinese will grow more prosperous; the Indians will grow more prosperous. But America will still be a very special place if we can be the world's greatest multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious democracy. If somebody said to me, well, you don't have another 13 months, you have to leave tomorrow, and you just get one more wish, what do you want to leave America with - I would leave America with a genuine commitment to becoming one America, to getting through these .divisions that have'so bedevllSaifffHffliole-rest of the woridyand getting to the point where we don't just tolerate each other, but we actually celebrate our differences because we think our common humanity is more important, and our honest differences of opinion we debate with great vigor, but not to the extent of demonizing our adversaries. Withdrawal/Redaction Marker Clinton Library DOCUMENT NO. SUBJECT/TITLE DATE RESTRICTION AND TYPE
001. draft Draft language for speech, "If we can learn to develop a real sense of n.d. P6/b(6) creative harmony..." [partial] (1 page)
COLLECTION: Clinton Presidential Records Speechwriting Weiss, Lowell OA/Box Number: 17199 FOLDER TITLE: Millennium Toast 12/31/99
2006-0470-F
RESTRICTION CODES Presidential Records Act - [44 U.S.C. 2204(a)] Freedom of Information Act - [S U.S.C. 552(b)]
PI National Security Classified Information [(aXl) of the PRA] b(l) National security classified information |(bXl) of the FOIA] P2 Relating to the appointment to Federal office |(aX2) of the PRA] b(2) Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of P3 Release would violate a Federal statute 1(a)(3) of the PRA] an agency |(bX2) of the FOIA] P4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or b(3) Release would violate a Federal statute 1(b)(3) of the FOIA| financial information 1(a)(4) of the PRA] b(4) Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial P5 Release would disclose confidential advice between the President information |(bX4)of the FOIA] and his advisors, or between such advisors (a)(5) of the PRA] b(6) Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of P6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy 1(b)(6) of the FOIA] personal privacy ((a)(6) of the PRA] b(7) Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement purposes 1(b)(7) of the FOIA] C. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed b(8) Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of of gift. financial institutions 1(b)(8) of the FOIA] PRM. Personal record misfile defined in accordance with 44 U.S.C. b(9) Release would disclose geological or geophysical information 2201(3). concerning wells |(bX9) of the FOIA] RR. Document will be reviewed upon request. If we can learn to develop a real sense of creative harmony and still necessary disagreement, I think there is literally nothing this country cannot do.
f 4 -01 pp/(|)(p)
^ 61
U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 73 THE YEAR 1000
LONDON —MDQEMAN ART UBRARY THE FACTS OF LIFE The exorcists. To treat ailing r Ipeasants, part-time witches in Europe used herbs and the touch of a dead man's tooth. The Mid dle East had traveling clinics run "i p:'\msmm mm 11m m by trained physicians on camel- back. There were dozens of hos Even peasants who farmed for their food ate a lot by current standards: around 6,000 calories a
pher lecturing on the solar system. An old ing knife. Although a two-pronged fork was lady in the audience avers: Earth rests upon a used as early as the 10th century in Byzantium large turtle. "What does this turtle stand on?" and introduced to Venetian society in 1071, the speaker needles. "A far larger turtle." As the utensil didn't really supplant fingers until the scholar persists, his challenger retorts: the 1700s. "You are very clever but it is no use, young As in Europe, China's fortunes fluctuated. pitals in Islamic cities, including, man. It's turtles all the way down." We get a Although Emperor Chin Zong built granaries In Egypt, the world's first mental laugh from such silliness. But the last time to stockpile food and imported affordable hospital, while Europeans tended a millennium expired, most audiences rice from Champa (now Vietnam), southeast to let the mentally ill run at large. might well have thought hers the better ern China suffered from a severe food emer In what could be an early use contention.-CAarfes W. Petit gency in 1027. But in the capital city of Kaifeng, of psychoanalysis, priests the affluent enjoyed prepared takeout food like sought to identify and drive out stuffed baked bans and candied fruits. They evil spirits that were said to in also had specialty restaurants that offered Food dumplings, broad noodles with various meat habit the insane. and vegetable toppings, and regional cuisine. Few hadforks-or broccoli By the late 11th century, food was more abun The high life. A piece of ot asses' milk? That's what the health con dant throughout Europe, thanks to agricultural 2 Mayan pottery is the earliest scious in 11th-century Europe preferred. improvements. And the idea that one could live pictorial record of smoking. It G Swan was a favorite dish, and bread of the longer by eating well had gained popularity. depicts a man puffing on a roll of finest flour was considered wholesome. (But The most famous medieval diet was the Regi tobacco leaves. Meanwhile, forgo the crust, sages warned; it could lead men SantitatisSalemitanum, which came out English peasants experienced a to peevishness.) Fruits were forbidden for ba of the medical school in Salerno, Italy. It was de different sort of high. The fungus bies, the elderly, and the ailing. Diners were signed to balance food with dispositions: Hot- that grew on moldy rye was a advised to skip the combination of eels and tempered men, for example, were to skip spicy source of lysergic acid, or LSD. cheese—unless they had plenty of wine to wash foods like onions—though onion juice was rec They would also mash up dried it down. Otherwise, it would leave them hoarse. ommended for hair loss. Silly though it seems poppies, hemp, and darnel to Eating at the turn of the first millennium today, the Salerno plan spread throughout Eu produce a medieval hash brown was largely a matter of feast or famine. Dur rope and remained fashionable for centuries. ie known as "crazy bread." ing the heyday of the Carolingian dynasty (A.D. But not everyone followed it, writes Reay Tan- 770-887), for instance, peasants consumed nahill in Food in History: "If physicians had Playtime in America. A big about 6,000 calories a day, including more been successful in imposing the Salerno regi sport in what's now the Unit than 3 pounds of bread. (Today, adults survive men on the population at large, the mortality 3 rate would have soared." -Linda Kulman ed States was chunkey, In which •very well indeed on an average of2,000 calo residents of the Mississippi Val ries a day.) When food was short, Europeans scavenged the woods and hedgerows for roots, ley and the Southeast threw nettles, and wild grasses to blunt their hunger. spears at a rolling stone disk, try Even in times of abundance, they had nothing Sexuality ing to mark the spot where It like the cornucopia of vegetables we have today. would come to rest Chunkey Carrots, onions, and leeks were commonplace, It was fun, but it was sin bets were common; gamblers but spinach, broccoli, and brussels sprouts omen in medieval Europe may not have sometimes lost all they owned. didn't make their way to European gardens had many rights, but when it came tf until the 12th century or latey. Meals were heavy W sex they had at least a few options. ^ on mutton and pork, instead, while beef and woman whose mate was inattentive could take poultry were luxuries. And dessert was hard matters into her own hands and whip up i ly the lavish afEair it is now: Honey was the only batch of love potion, circa 1000: The sex sweetener European cooks had on hand. starved lass would undress, cover her body witl Nor was there cutlery to enhance the plea honey, and roll around in a pile of wheat; ther sures of the table. According to Robert Lacey she'd pick off the grains and grind them inte and Danny Danziger in The Year1000, a din flour used for a bread dough, to be kneade( ner guest was expected to bring his own carv between her thighs and then baked. The resul
74 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 tlUSTMTlOM BY BWOOO MTU FOB USNU> THE YEAR 1000
was an aphrodisiac loaf said to be irresistible. of the riddles in the Exeter Book, compiled (Of course, a good Christian woman paid in the 10th century. "When the retainer hitch a price for such desire: 40 days of penance, in es his clothing high above his knee, he wants cluding prayers and a fast of bread and water.) the head of that hanging thing to find the The church at 1,000 was obsessed with sex. old hole that it, outstretched, has often filled Eliminating it, that is. "What they had were before." The documented answer-predictably concepts of what was natural and what was chaste—is a key. The alternative was left up to unnatural," says Karma Lochrie, a professor the medieval imagination. -Carolyn Kleiner at Indiana University and co-editor of Con- structing Medieval Sexuality. "The band of Brides and concubines. natural, acceptable sex was very narrow." 4 Girls ordinarily married at Sex was to take place in marriage for procre- Clothing 12 or 13. Those still single in ative purposes alone—and always in the mis their late teens often became sionary position. Too much desire was a sin, Long before "boxers or briefs" nuns or spinning-wheel opera as was sex in daylight hours; conjugal rela ho hasn't wondered, at one time or an tors, known in England as "spin tions were also forbidden during menstrua other, what monks wear beneath those sters." Women had few rights. A tion and pregnancy, as well as on Sundays and Wlong, hooded robes? typical noble lady remained in certain holidays. In total, a devout couple might In the year 1000, at least, quite a few sport the custody of her husband, who have managed to have sex an average of once ed underwear. Benedictine monks in England, bound by a vow of silence, even had a ges supported a concubine or two TWC P1CTPONT MOflOAN UBMRY. NEW YORK and brought his bastard off ture in their sign language for underpants spring into his castle. Canon law ("stroke with your two hands up your thigh"), encouraged men to beat their which were worn beneath black habits. wives for their own good. Many Elsewhere in Europe, bright, strong colors a noble lady, in turn, slapped her were the trend in outer garb-even for peas ants. Most wore simple, sacklike tunics of wool servants about. or coarsely woven linen dyed in a range of vivid hues. Women grew flax and raised sheep to Rules for outcasts. Lep make their own fabrics, which they colored 5 rosy amounted to a social with dyes made from homegrown plants; the death sentence. Communities unisex garments they fashioned were usual forced lepers to leave, then ly belted and fastened with clasps or thongs, marked their departures with as there were no buttons in the West at the make-believe burial ceremonies. Chastity was revered but rarely observed. time. The richer the person, the softer, brighter, Everywhere they went, lepers and more elaborate the clothing. wore long, distinctively colored a week over a three-year period. Still, at the turn of the last millennium, it robes marked with an "L." To These guidelines were laid out in peniten- was the East that was truly fashion forward. signal their approach, they were tials, handbooks for priest-confessors. In order Japanese courtiers, for example, wore thejum- expected to ring a bell or shout, to define what was "natural," the monks who hitoe, which literally means 12 layers of silken "Unclean! Unclean!" wrote these books also had to convey what was robes but could grow to as many as 20. The unnatural. The result is some of the kinkiest multicolored tiers changed according to fac literature of any time period. The German bish tors such as the seasons and holidays; addi- op Burchard of Worms's Decretum, written in 1012, describes a smorgasbord of 194 sexual transgressions—from bestiality to sex with a nun—in colorful detail. Ethelwold's choice. In the 10th century, the vast majority of priests were married. But as the church grew more sex-averse, it increas ingly favored celibacy—considered the purest Infants and Infections. lifestyle—for all clerics. Not everyone agreed. 6 Life was perilous from the In 964, the English bishop Ethelwold gave the start Midwives did not know that, married priests running the cathedral at Win unwashed hands, if not chester a choice between their wives and their scrubbed, could harm as much jobs. To a man, they opted for wedded bliss. as they helped. To preserve their While the church tried to suppress sexual clean bedclothes, women gave ity, other cultures operated more freely. Many ::nilillliiif3l birth on their dirty ones. A fourth Japanese courtiers remained single and had of all children died within a year countless affairs. And in Song China, homo of birth. Women were expected sexuality was considered fashionable for both back at work within hours of giv men and women. Still, despite Christendom's ing birth. Many never reached relative prudishness, sex-related humor was the age of 30. widely popular centuries before Chaucer wrote The Miller's Tale. "A strange thing hangs by man's hip, hidden by a garment," begins one The Byzantine court in full regalia, circa 1075
76 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 THE YEAR 1000
O. STMXJCT-V tional layers provided warmth in winter. Like the elaborate ly dressed noblemen and women in Japan, the Byzan tine court wore sumptuous, brightly colored silk, woven and dyed in imperial-con trolled factories. Who wore what was largely determined by complex rules laid out in the Knightly know-nothings. 10th-century Book of Cere monies. Purple, for example, 7At 7 or 8, well-bom boys in was reserved for the emperor; Europe chose one ot two careers: the dye recipe was a closely cleric or wanior. Those picking the guarded secret at the time (the church learned to read and write. key ingredient came from a Those choosing amis became rare mollusk found in the pages, hunting and waiting on Mediterranean), and the Monastic gardens were models of spirituality and utility. masters. At 16, they were squires, Byzantines wanted to keep it riding in armor and wielding that way. "As we surpass all other nations in The difficult work of gardening also ha swords. In their 20s, they became wealth and wisdom," declared a chamberlain symbolic importance. The church sloga knights—"conceited illiterate in 968, "so it is right that we should also of Ora et Labora—pray and work—linke young men," historian David surpass them in dress." -Carolyn Kleiner the various types of heavy manual labc Howarth called them, "whose only required in the garden to the very demanc interest in life was violence and ing liturgy in which the monks were oblige the glory they saw in it." to participate. Gardens After the 11th century, Clun/s prestig Print pioneers. While Eu diminished. The monastic gardens, too, lo: 8 rope's monks still copied Cultivating the spirit their appeal, as nobility and Europe's emerj manuscripts by hand, printers in onks were the master gardeners at the ing bourgeoisie adopted new sensibilities China were making books for a turn of the millennium, and their plots reflected in new designs, known as pleasui wide audience. The Chinese de M were models of practicality on the one gardens. -Charles Fenyvesi veloped movable type several hand and spirituality on the other. Like the centuries before Gutenberg did, monasteries they surrounded, the gardens were but the thousands of characters in perceived as standing at the nexus of the spir itual and corporeal worlds; their shared task Animals their language made searching for was to nourish and to improve both. symbols impractical. So they The so-called "garden of utility" was neat Creatures of fact and fiction carved raised characters onto ly arrayed to serve daily needs. One account rom the dragon not even the elephant, wii lists as many as 18 species of vegetables, as well its huge size, is safe. For lurking on pail as the herbs that were used for medicine and F: along which elephants are accustomed; seasoning. Only authorized experts had access pass, the dragon knots its tail around their le; to the herb garden, and traditional herbal lore and kills them by suffocation. was very precise about when to harvest and Today we know that dragons do not stalk el what proportions to use. phants. But in medieval times, zoology libe The cloister garden, by contrast, was a high- ally mixed fact with fiction in popular colle walled retreat inside the monastic grounds. tions of stories known as bestiaries. Off limits to the laity, it emphasized serenity People lived closely with animals in ove and simplicity. In fancy cloister gardens, all blocks of wood to create an im paths led to a fountain, known as the fountain pression for each page. oflife. Tending the vines. A bountiful garden was Wanted: eunuchs. A key supposed to embody the best of divine creation 9to success in the Byzantine and reflect the harmonies of the Garden of Empire was castration. Unable to Eden. In the network of Cluny monasteries— produce heirs, eunuchs had no the pre-eminent monastic movement in the hope of becoming emperor— 10th century—the monks who tended the gar which meant they had relatively dens followed instructions from the abbots in few political enemies. Many central France, who rejected asceticism and noble families castrated their allowed the monks to partake of the pleasures sons to improve their chances of of the palate. Indeed, the monks were ex becoming high cMI servants, pected to excel in maintaining a fine kitchen church patriarchs, or generals. garden, and they paid special attention to the vineyard, which was also a metaphor for a well-ordered world pleasing to God. To many, dragons were as real as elephants.
78 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 21.1999 THE YEAR 1000 whelmingly rural Europe, and both domestic and wild animals roamed I f\ People possessed. freely. Dogs-'man's best friend back J. VJ Slavery had plagued the then," according to Robert Lacey, co world for 1,000 years and would author of The Year 2000-led hunt ing expeditions and were kept as endure for centuries more. The pets, enjoying a more stable life than Domesday Book in 1086 listed 10 cats, whose skin was prized for cov percent of England's people as ering precious books and documents. slaves. Germanic tribes enslaved Hunting in vast expanses of forest, Slavic neighbors; a bondservant the upper classes pursued deer, was most likely a Slav—hence the wolves, and bears-driving one ani word slavery. Africans were sold mal, the ostrichlike European crane, across the Islamic world. Lacking into extinction. horses, warriors in America used Despite such firsthand experience, captives as porters. Western Europeans seem to have be lieved in bestiary fantasy-under Football and falcons. standable "in a time when there was UPeasant men used an inflat no distinct separation between ed pig bladder in a brand of foot church and science," writes Aura ball with few rules but many casu Beckhofer-Fialho in Medieval Bes alties. While noble ladies kept tiaries and the Birth of Zoology. In falcons, peasant women enjoyed deed, bestiaries had a single purpose: to impart moral and religious lessons. p Thus the hapless elephant ensnared * arm. by the dragon-which represents the Court life revolved around beauty, poetry, and courtly love. O Devil—dies by suffocation, "because anyone who dies fettered in the chains of his and intensely personal account of court life. offenses is condemned without doubt to hell." It is no accident that the two great figures of It was not until the Renaissance that bestiaries Heian Dynasty Japanese literature were women. were replaced by scientifically valid descrip Founded in 794, the Heian imperial state first tions of animals. -Laura Tangley mimicked China's system of administration by footraces, with smocks going to scholars. But by the 10th century, Japan had en tered a period of stability under the rule of the the winners. Middle-class women Fujiwara dan, who controlled die imperial house served as spectators. Court life hold by monopolizing the supply of wives, mak ing women key in the exercise of political power. | Royal shakedown. Poetry slams, but no sushi While men studied a distant, disused language- 1.2. More Anglo-Saxon coins onsider this moment from one of the great the Chinese classics and poetry—women per have been unearthed in Den est works of the last millennium: Sei fected the art of Japanese vernacular prose. This mark than in England. Reason: CShonagon creeps to a crack between the was Japan before samurai warriors, before Ethelred the Unready, England's bamboo blind and a curtain, and stares at geishas, without Zen Buddhism—or even sushi. king atY1K, extorted gold and the gathering on the other side: Empress It was a Japan whose aristocrats were utterly di silver from peasants and sent Sadako, her sister Shigei Sha, and their father, vorced fromth e masses of farmers and rural the danegeld to Denmark to Fujiwara No Michitaka, powerfid leader of the officials whose taxes they consumed. For a few keep Danes from grabbing his clan that effectively ran the Japanese imper brief generations this privileged nobility was free country. The bribes worked only ial government Just then, Shonagon's turn- to focus on the pursuit ofbeauty—and romantic temporarily. By 1016, England of-millennium ensemble-12 layers of color love—in a life that, by some standards, was deca belonged to a Dane, Canute, ful silk robes—spills out from under the curtain. dent or even promiscuous. who got from his new subjects " 'Oh, how embarrassing!' said the chan Poetry, calligraphy, painting, and music were still more treasure. But he later cellor [Michitaka], with a smug look. 'I've what made a Heian man, for whom it was put the English on equal footing known [Shonagon] for a long time and I hate natural to shed tears over the beauty of the ris with his Danes and began a her to see what ugly daughters I have.'" ing sun or weep in sorrow while leaving his Christianity-spreading alliance Michitaka's wry response-his daughters lover. "A good lover will behave just as elegantly with the church. England now were famous beauties-suggests he knew he at dawn as at any other time," Shonagon tells reveres him as a great king. was up against a tough intellectual match. us. "He tells her how he dreads the coming day, Novel observations. The years around 1000 which will keep them apart. Then almost im witnessed a brief but remarkablecultura l flour perceptibly, he glides away." Poetry followed, ishing in Japan that left behind some of the in the obligatory morning-after letter. But world's finest literature, including the Tale poetry was not only an art; it was also a serious ofGenji, the world's first psychological novel, game in which men competed in fronto f judges. written by Lady Shikibu Murasaki. It was then Shonagon seemed to relish her talent for out that Shonagon, a descendant of Emperor witting men in poetry duels: With an allu Temmu and lady-in-waiting to Empress sion to some obscure Chinese poem she would Sadako, penned her Pillow Book, a realistic leave her victims speechless. -Steven Butler •
U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 79 THE YEAR 1000 If you had lived back then Who would you have been? Most likely, a peasant At the turn of the last millen- conquer Pakistan, leable boys emerged as disci was killed by Louis IX's cru
11 nium, most of Europe's popu- Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and plined, well-connected, state- saders in 1249, mamelukes 11 lotion was dirt-poor, scratch parts of Kazakhstan. Soon of-the-art fighters. George murdered his successors, and ing out an existence at the other caliphs and sultans town University Prof. John a mameluke named Baybars whim of a lord. Elsewhere, were regularly dispatching Voll calls them "the atomic became the first ruler of the things weren't much better, . agents to the steppes of weapon of the Middle Ages," Mameluke dynasty, which though a lucky few could con \\ Central Asia to buy boys referring to their unique abili lasted until Ottoman Turks trol their destinies. as young as 10 from ty to shoot arrows from all di invaded Cairo in 1517. At its • their families or war- rections (including backward) height, this slave meritocracy \ lords. Thus began 10 while at full gallop. controlled Egypt, Syria, Medi A soldier's fortune N-V centuries of The mamelukes displayed na, and Mecca—the religious s the third son born to a \\ mamelukes—in skills off the battlefield, too. and commercial centers of the chieftain of a small prin \^ Arabic, "owned After the last Ayyubid sultan Middle East—making it the cipality in Turkistan, Abu C. ones,"—who, most prosperous and longest A surviving Islamic dynasty in Mansur Subuktigin seemed like Subuk destined for a life of shep tigin, history. -Margaret Loftus herding and marauding. But sometimes by the time of his death in ended up AuD. 997, he had become a quite the Peasant dangers renowned statesman and opposite. he Anglo-Saxon elite are founded the powerful Islamic Mamelukes were not no great mystery to schol Ghaznavid dynasty. slaves in the traditional sense. Tars. Scores of texts re Such was life for the ambi Although they were indeed counting their regal dress, tious Islamic slave soldier. owned by lavish feasts, and political The import of slaves to be caliphs, sul machinations have survived used as soldiers probably tans, and any the centuries. The peasantry, began on a large scale in A.D. one else who by contrast, is virtually absen 833. Al-Mu'tasim, an Abbasid could afford a from the chroni caliph, was in search of a few private army, cles of the good men to guard his palace they were elite day. The paucitj in Baghdad—preferably members of of information is so bright, strapping young fel Islamic soci- frustrating, says Henry lows who were good with ety-so ad Weisser, a Colorado State bows and arrows. Local boys mired that University professor and au were out of the question- several Mus thor of the forthcoming Eng Arabs were not inclined to be lims were land: An Illustrated History, warriors. But young Turkic caught trying that he remembers a col- men were. Already a hot com to sell themselves league once remarking that modity on the slave market as into slavery (under "he would give his right arm house servants and male sex Islamic law, Mus to know how a peasant felt." partners, Turks also had a lims cannot become Still, archaeological digs reputation as excellent slaves but slaves can and a few documents like tax archers and horsemen. become Muslims). decrees or church handbool Young Turiis. The caliph Their fierceloyalt y provide a dim picture of snapped up an army of them. was instilled in a vig hardscrabble peasant life. And what started as a small orous training course The typical hut was white personal guard became a so that could span most washed sod with a thatched phisticated regiment that of a boy's adoles roof, no windows, and a dirt helped Abbasid successors cence. Young, mal floor. A few stones at the cen ter harbored hot coals for warmth and cooking. Straw- ISLAMIC MAMELUKES were multi- filled pallets served as bed talented fighters, "the atomic ding; families slept alongsidt their underfed animals. weapon of the Middle Ages." The day began before dawi
80 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 UjUSniMION SV MATTHEW ntEV-WOOO flONSAVUf HAHUN «c. FOR MNt THE YEAR 1000
These so-called mandarins Serving the government FOR THE PEASANT, the line between subsis (the term was later coined by was a noble and powerful the British) were China's best profession, but it also was tence and hunger was fine, and a single and brightest-moral authori hard work. Court began at 5 misfortune could spell doom. ties versed in Confucian clas a.m., and 10-day workweeks sics and plucked to serve as were the norm, with two days with black bread and herb- imperial ministers or town off in between. Still, life was spiced ale. Clad in simple, magistrates by passing a se hardly glum. Along with ban coarse cloaks, men headed out ries of rigorouslocal , provin quets every other day, many to plow their tiny plots, while cial, and palace exams. Get mandarins had household en women tended to the beasts or ting accepted to Harvard is a tertainers and concu prepared gruel. The line be snap by comparison. "The tween subsistence and magnitude of their accom hunger was line, and a plishments is impressive," single misfortune-an says Stephen West, a profes early frost,sic k oxen- sor of Chinese literature at could spell doom. the University of California- Though plain, the Berkeley. "It would be as if a peasant diet of peas, Henry Kissinger was as gifted beans, and whole- a poet as Robert Hass. Or if grain breads was W. H. Auden was also a su much healthier than perb governmental policy the aristocratic fare of specialist." fatty game and honeyed Scholars In training. The treats. But good health process began around age 5, was evasive; as many as a when boys learned to bow re third of peasant children spectfully and recite lines never celebrated their from classical texts. Fami first birthday. Icy winters lies, many of them wealthy and dysentery were dead landowners or merchants, ly. Fungus-ridden grain, then might hire tutors to eaten during famines, teach the writing of Chi could lead to ergotism, or nese characters and the "St. Anthony's fire," a study of Confucius. Only poisoning that causes the most promising hallucinations and limb loss. teenagers would Settlements were routinely head to the capital pillaged and bumed by the city of Kaifeng to master merciless Norse. the poetry, essay writing, Players. Yet woe was not the and Confucian scholarship peasant's sole companion. [new] lord would look alien that formed the core of the There was ale-soaked celebra and foreign and speak a differ palace-level exam. Many tion on Midsummer's Day, ent language," says Weisser. failed. Only 50 students aced with wrestling bouts or other "But as far as life goes for a the highest, ovjin-shi, test in rough games. Though parish peasant, it was still nasty, 998, and Song literature is churches were rare, religious brutish, and short" -BJJL filled with tales of young devotion was the centerpiece scholars led astray by wine bines. Research by University oflife. "Peasants would sort and women. of California-Davis Chinese of worship at the fringes," Best and brightest Such brilliance was re historian Beverly Bossier sug says Allen Frantzen, an Eng hen Al Gore set out to quired to manage the bur gests that some of these con lish professor at Loyola Uni "reinvent" government, geoning commercial and cul sorts—as well as many moth versity Chicago and general Whe probably didn't have tural hub that China had ers and sisters—may have editor of the journal Essays in the sweeping transformations become during the 10th cen been almost as well educated Medieval Studies. "There of Song dynasty China in mind. tury. Tea, originally imported as the men in their lives. might well have been peas Pity. Because at the turn of the from Southeast Asia more -Mary Lord ants who would only have last millennium, an elite corps than 100 years earlier, now worshiped with roaming of scholar-officials established was the most popular drink preachers in the open air." one of the world's first meri on the planet and the central Bom to pray Survival was foremost in tocracies—a civil service based government included an elab or a Brahman around the peasant mind, a preoccu on brains, not bloodlines—and orate bureaucracy to regulate 1000, apocalypse would pation scarcely changed by set the stage for a host of in trade and collect taxes. Man Fcome in the blink of an one of the new millennium's novations that would endure darins managed the money eye, but the next one wasn't most seminal events-the for centuries, from school sys supply, maintained security due for another 427,898 Norman Conquest of1066, tems and foreign aid to the use in the provinces, and settled years. The blink would be which barely registered. "The of paper currency. legal wrangles. that of the god Shiva, who'd
82 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 UUSIMTIOM m KMO MMES-HWOO RONUVUE HUM MC. FOB USM I THE YEAR 1000 torian Rolf Alfred Stein, in THE POOREST PUJARI from the humblest Tibetan Civilization. Atisha to the rescue. The fishing village in the Indian realm of famed 60-year-old monk set Chola was superior to the king himself. down strict rules barring sex, possessions, travel, and in open the third eye in the cen products such as eggs, cheese, toxicants. Other Buddhist ter of his forehead and incin or milk. He had to avoid de teachers followed in his erate the entire universe with filement by members of ritual- wake, many fleeing Mus his all-piercing sight. He'd ly polluting castes, such as lim persecution in India. done it an infinite number of latrine cleaners, leather tan The religious orders times before, would do it an ners, and brewers of alcohol. founded by Atisha and infinite number of times Not only was he forbidden to those who followed him again, so there wasn't much have physical contact with were sponsored by noble cause for alarm. Indians in people then seen as "untouch families, who gained the year 1000 were living in able"; a Brahman couldn't eat credibility through the the Kali Yuga, the last (and food prepared by them, drink association. most miserable) phase of an water drawn from their wells, In exchange, the learned endless cycle of birth, flores or even (in some parts of the lamas served as teachers, cence, decay, and death. South) let one of their shad adminstrators, and priests. Even to a small-town pujari ows dart across his toe. Typically, the head of each (ritual priest), such knowl The son of a washerman be Tibetan monastery was the edge would be commonplace. came a washerman; the son of son of a noble family, and Pujaris were just one of the a pujari became a pujari. No the office was hereditary. many types of Brahmans, each change in this life—but there Since monks were celibate, of whom had distinct respon were an infinite number of control would pass from sibilities. The task of the pu lives left to live. An untouch uncle to nephew. Educat jari caste was to perform able butcher who worked hard ed and worldly, the lamas pujas, religious ceremonies might be reincarnated as a re helped run the monastic held on any occasion that spectable craftsman. An un estates and counseled might benefit from a bit of di just king might return as the the kings. vine oversight. Any Brahman lowest hauler of trash in all Bureaucrats. "After the could recite the holy scrip the lands he once ruled. Dhar- 13th century, the lamas tures, but a Hindu paying for a ma, the law of the cosmos, gradually came to form a bu puja for, say, a daughter's is also a Sanskrit word for Felonious monks reaucracy, administering the wedding would want to hire a justice. -Jonah Blank country but ultimately ac eligious reform is always countable to the kings and trained professional. tricky, but a millennium Higher than king. A pujari noble families," says Robert R ago, the rival kings of Tibet Thurman, professor of Indo- might have assisted in the managed to agree on a remark coronation of one of the Chola Tibetan Buddhist studies at ably modern solution: They Columbia. Scholars believe dynasty's greatest monarchs. hired an outside consultant. People in the tropical parts of life in the monasteries Coaxed north by a hefty changed little over the cen India knew A.D. 1000 as the sum of gold, legendary Indian 15th year in the reign of King turies. Unlike Europeans at guru Atisha trekked to the the time, Tibetan monks ate Rajaraja (the name is modest rugged Tibetan highlands in ly translatable as "King well. The staple of monastic 1042. He and his followers and peasant life was barley Kingking"). In a ritual sense, were faced with a challenge: however, the poorest pujari grown in mountain fieldstha t The Buddhism that had been were irrigated by glacial melt. from the humblest fishing introduced to Tibet centuries village in the Chola realm Monks supplemented their earlier was corrupt, rife with diet with a wide variety of yak was superior to King King- misinterpretations, and king himself; the mightiest products, including milk, mixed with the popular, cheese, butter, and meat monarch was still a mere shamanistic Bon religion. Kshatriya—one of a class of Later writings describe a The monasteries grew in knights and nobles inferior land in chaos. An empire that power, thriving until the Chi to the Brahmans. While not had rivaled China's just two nese invasion of Tibet in necessarily rich or powerful, centuries earlier was now 1950, when many of the Brahmans were considered broken and divided. Worse, largest monasteries and cen human manifestations of the some people had taken sacred turies-old religious libraries divine spirit itself. Even a metaphors far too literally. were destroyed. Led by the small-town pujari had to safe "These 'robber-monks' kid Dalai Lama, the monks who guard his purity with an elab napped and killed men and fled the country continue orate set of taboos. He could women, ate them, drank alco to follow the traditions eat neither meat nor (if he was hol, and indulged in sexual set down by Atisha. particularly strict) animal intercourse," according to his -Andrew Curry •
•JJJSTflATlONS BY MU. MLUMftS (TO**) AMD BOB WOOO (BOTTWl W0OO ftQNSA*Al£ HAAM MC FORUMMI U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 83 THE YEAR 1000
The Americas 84 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 BY LEWIS LORD merica was different then. Eagles soared over the oak and poplar forests of Manhattan, where the A fragrance of wild roses filled the air and deer, turkeys, and great horned owls inhabited what would become Fifth Avenue. Boston teemed with beavers. Herds of buffalo trod Chicago. And in the heart of the Mid west in that year—A.D. 1000—the first city in what is now the United States was on the verge historic earthen mound in the western of becoming an Indian metropolis. hemisphere-visitors see in the distance Archaeologists know it as Cahokia, the St. Louis's Gateway Arch. Much closer, busiest spot north of the Rio Grande when they hear the whine below of 18-wheel- the new millennium began. At a time when ers on an interstate highway built in the few settlements had even 400 or 500 res 1960s across the ancient city's site. idents, this 6-square-mile community on Com boom. One millennium ago, Cahokia the Illinois side of the Mississippi River was emerging from centuries in which peo boasted several thousand. In its 12th-cen- ple in the region foraged for nuts and tuiy heyday, Cahokia may have had 20,000 berries. Cahokia's rise very likely began or 25,000 residents, roughly the number with a breakthrough, the introduction in contemporary London. Not until 1800, around A.D. 800 of a variety of com suit when Philadelphia count ed as much for the Mid ed 30,000, would any (gVIN MOHAN FOn USH&Mt g west as for Mexico, the U.S. city have more. land where corn began. Cahokia enjoyed the New technology also same advantages that helped: Someone fas strengthened urban cen tened a stone blade to a ters of the 19th and 20th pole, and farmers in the centuries: a specialized heartland began culti labor force, an organized vating soil with a hoe in government, public con stead of scratching it with struction projects, and a a digging stick. All around trade network that ex Cahokia, corn-fed villages tended the length of the sprang up on the plain Mississippi River and made fertile by floods of reached east to the At the Mississippi and Illi lantic and west to Okla nois rivers. homa and Nebraska. But Indians for centuries it also was bedeviled by A cast made from a 900-year-old had built mounds in problems not unlike those artifact shows a woman fanning. many shapes—octagons, that plague modem cities, circles, even the zigzag of especially the havoc created by too much a snake. Around A.D. 900, Cahokia devel growth. Five or six centuries after its birth, oped another form: the four-sided pyra America's first city, unable to cope with mid with a flat top. To this day, no one has change, was a ghost town. shown that a single Mexican ever visited Yet, while the people vanished, their Cahokia. But someone, somehow, had Mex monuments remained, as can be seen in a ican ideas: Cahokia's earthen mounds were visit to Cahokia Mounds State Historical very similar to the stone pyramids built by Site, a 2,200-acre tract of open fields Mexico's then fading Mayans. And atop and Indian mounds 8 miles east of down Cahokia's mounds stood thatched-roof town St. Louis maintained by the state temples and houses for the privileged, like of Illinois. Among the scores of mounds structures crowning the Mayan platforms. still intact in the rich river bottomland is To build Monks Mound (so named after Monks Mound, towering as high as a 10- a local 19th-century Trappist monastery), story building and covering more ground Cahokians hauled 55-pound basket loads than the biggest of Egypt's pyramids. From of dirt on their backs from nearby borrow atop this grassy structure—the largest pre- pits. After they did this 14.7 million times
U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 85 THE YEAR 1000
MCHAEL HAMPSHIRE—CAHOKIA MOUMM STATE HSTORIC SITE
over three centuries, constructing one rec a cluster of old men in a house atop Monks of Monks Mound revealed the skeleton of tangular platform atop another, the 22- Mound raising their arms and emitting an early leader, a man about 40 years old, million-cubic-foot mound was complete. frightful howls as a man covered in tattoos resting on a bird-shaped platform of near Cahokia-style. The French explorers who arose from his bed. Not once did the Great ly 20,000 marine-shell beads. Nearby ventured into the Mississippi Valley in the Sim, as Mississippian chiefs were known, lay the remains of more than 100 women 1600s found nothing around Cahokia but bother to look at them. Instead, he stepped between 15 and 25 years old, plus four male vine-covered mounds, which they proba outside and howled a greeting to his per skeletons-apparently the chiefs atten bly mistook for natural hills. But further ceived brother, the real sun, as it emerged dants—with no heads or hands. When a south along the Mississippi, they came over the wooded flatlands. Then he lift Natchez sun died, many of his subjects vol across Indian tribes with lifestyles that ed a hand above his head and drew a line unteered to be strangled so they could join scholars believe were remarkably like Ca across the sky, from east to west. That him in his afterlife. A mass sacrifice, schol hokia's. The Cahokians are considered per showed the sun which way to go. ars believe, was also precipitated by the haps the earliest of a people known to an Cahokia's great suns apparently expected death of Cahokia's great sun. thropologists as "Mississippians'-Indians an eternity of female companionship. Ex A re-creation of the Cahokia chiefs bur of the Mississippi Valley and the South cavation of a small mound a half mile south ial, complete with the 20,000 beads, is part east who formed villages beside CAHOtOA HOUNDS STATE HPTOWC SfTE of a life-size diorama at the histor rivers, raised corn, built temple ical site's museum near Collinsville, mounds, and worshiped the sun. In 111. Among other scenes: a young the early 1700s, in what is now Mis woman grinding com, children play sissippi, French colonists settled ing with a doll made of cattails, a among perhaps the last Mississip- man with tattoos on his face and pian tribe—the Natchez-and, before shoulders (indicating high status) annihilating them 30 years later, kept trading salt for a knife, and a boy detailed accounts of their habits. heating rocks for a sweat lodge, Along with archaeological find where townspeople expected steam ings at Cahokia, the Natchez records to cleanse their bodies and spirits. give scholars plenty of clues about Cahokians could neither read nor Cahokian life. Evidence suggests, for write, but they had a knack for as instance, that each morning at Ca tronomy. West of Monks Mound hokia a millennium ago likely found Arrowheads were found in one of Cahokia's mounds. stands a reconstmcted circle of 48
86 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23.1999 THE YEAR 1000
wooden posts that scholars dubbed "Wood- croplands. "Cahokia was competing with of a more charismatic chief somewhere henge" because of its functional similar other people for resources," Iseminger says, else, a ruinous change in climate, or dis ity to England's Stonehenge. Nearly 10 cen "and warfare may have resulted." eases brought on by diminished diets and turies ago, such a circle apparently served What ensued was a defense program faulty sanitation. as the Cahokians' calendar: A pole at the that apparently helped spell Cahokia's Nor does anyone know where the Ca center, when aligned with the circle's east demise. Around A.D. 1100, the Cahokians hokians were going. Conceivably they ernmost post and the front of Monks enclosed their inner city within a 2-mile- canoed down the Mississippi to Memphis Mound, marked the equinoxes of spring long stockade built from the foot-thick or Natchez, or up the Ohio and the Ten- and fall. Wall of woe. The original Woodhenge went up when the city was on the rise, and CAHOKIA WRESTLED daily with challenges that its replica symbolizes Cahokian achieve ment. Just east of Monks Mound stands would confront Americans a millennium later: another re-creation—a portion of a 20-foot- high wall—that represents the commu military defense, runaway growth, smog. nity's decline. "More and more people were settling in Cahokia, and a lot of prob trunks of 20,000 oak and hickory trees. nessee to Alabama or Georgia. In all those lems developed," explains archaeologist Problems endured, but the wall didn't. places, Mississippian communities with William Iseminger, the museurti cura Thrice in the next 200 years, the Cahokians platform mounds and a culture akin to Ca tor. "They likely had smog fromal l the fires rebuilt their wooden perimeter, each time hokia's would emerge and endure into the that burned every day. You could proba at a cost of 20,000 trees and 130,000 16th century, only to vanish in the wake of bly smell Cahokia before you saw it." work-hours. Cahokia's forests were being Hernando De Soto's epidemic-spreading Most of the trees fromth e nearby forests, exhausted and so, too, were its people. 1540 trek across the South. Whether Ca Iseminger suspects, were cut for con By 1200, a gradual exodus from the hokia's refugees inhabited any of the towns struction and firewood. This damaged the inner city and its suburbs was under is anyone's guess. But the archaeological habitat of animals that provided meat for way. The wall still shielded Cahokia from findings that focus on Cahokia itself are diets not only in Cahokia but also in sur rival chiefdoms, but inside the dty, short clear: By 1400, it was abandoned. rounding communities. Reduction of the ages of fuel and food grew steadily worse. After a half-millennium run, the coun forests also probably led to silt buildups in No one is sure whether other problems try's first city had become its first victim streams, resulting in floods that wrecked emerged, such as inept leadership, the rise of urban stress. •
U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT. AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23.1999 87 THE YEAR 1000 Myths and conquests A tale of a Toltec god who came back as a man of war CHWS CALDCOTT- Il >
BY JONAH BLANK ica and the beginning of a new world. cities and temple complexes. What so The 600 years before the stranger's ar dispirited them? What stripped these hirteen years before the millennium, rival had seen a flowering of culture through proud skygazers of their confidence, forced an unusual man appeared on the out Mexico and Central America. At its them to cast their eyes downward rather shores of Mexico's Yucat&n penin height in the seventh century, the capital than up at the heavens? Is it mere chance sula. He had fair skin, wore his hair city of the Teotihuacanos (on the outskirts that the Mayan decline coincides with the T Toltecs' arrival? exuberantly untrimmed, and (most re of toda/s Mexico City) had a population markably to the bare-chinned populace) of200,000—10 times that of Paris at In A.D. 908—the last year a date was sported a flowing black beard. In his home the millennium. And the Maya, who inscribed in the fabulously complex land, legend had it, he had been known as lived farther south in what is now the Long Count calendar perfected by the a prince of peace. He was said to be fully Yucat&n, Guatemala, Belize, and classic Maya-a warlike peoph man, yet fully god. His people believed he Honduras, reached scientific emerged from the harsh had died in an act of supreme self-sacrifice heights not equaled until modem wastelands of the North. The and that someday he would come again. times. Astronomers using Neo Aztecs (who claimed c ;ni The Maya called the newcomer Ku- lithic technology, for example, from these ancients) woul(? kulkan. The Toltecs, whom he had ruled made calculations about heav call them the Toltecs, meaning before fate drove him into exile, knew him enly bodies that nearly match the "Artificers." From a remove as Quetzalcoatl. Some of his story is myth, those of modem astrophysicists. some is history, but what's certain is that By the mid-lOth century, Itzfi (above) the coming of this stranger marked the however, the Maya had all but and Toltec cultures. A end of a glorious era for all of Mesoamer- abandoned their spectacular 'sculpture of Que tl
88 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23.1999 NATIONM. MUSEUM OF ANTHWOiOOY. MGOCO- WEfWER FOfiMA of several centuries, the Aztecs of course their chronicles say, a force o had no way of knowing that any culture THE TOLTECS misappropriated Northerners arrived by sea anc had preceded their ancestors'. So they cred carved out a small empire. Th< ited the Toltecs with building the awesome America's past, but at the leader of this band was callec pyramids at Teotihuadin, discovering the Kukulkan—the Maya name fo: secrets of mathematics and astronomy, time of the millennium they Feathered Serpent. And ar and shaping the religious practices com chaeological evidence shows tha mon to all Mesoamericans. also shaped its future. the dty of Chichen Itza, the fines The Toltecs unknowingly misappropri amalgamation of Mayan anc ated America's past, but they (also un Aztec poems would later tell of Smok Toltec culture, was indeed founded just be knowingly) helped shape the continent's ing Mirror's parade of treachery, how he fore the millennium. future. The pivotal time was the millen tricked Feathered Serpent into drinking Whatever squeamishness Feathered Ser nium, and the pivotal character was a king an enervating potion, how he strolled pent had about human sacrifice didn't las called Topiltzin. It was he who moved the naked through the market to seduce the long: Chichen Itza has wall carvings of skd Toltec capital to Tula, a site near the sa king's daughter. Loyalists finally killed racks stacked high with severed heads, ant cred ruins of Teotihuacan from Smoking Mirror, but the trickster re altars for burning blood-sticky hearts. Th which his people would dominate tained enough posthumous magic to partisans of Smoking Mirror, meanwhile Mesoamerica for 200 years. prevent the citizens of Tula from re extended Tula's control from the Atlanti God or king? The monarch iden moving his rotting corpse. To save his to the Pacific. The Toltecs were indomitabl tified himself so closely with the city from the overpowering aura of warriors, but their descendants wouh god Quetzalcoatl—the Feathered death, Feathered Serpent decreed be felled by a myth. Serpent—that he took this name his own banishment He set In the Aztec calendar, "One Reed" wa as his own. Eventually, tales of sail across the eastern the name of the year Feathered Serpen the king and stories of the god ocean on a raft made of had been bom. Mesoamerican concepts c became so closely intertwined serpents, vowing that one time being cyclical, it was also the nam that later generations barely day he would return. used for the year Quetzalcoatl was destine, knew where one Quetzalcoad left The Maya couldn't match to return from his long exile. off and the other began. the Toltecs in arms, but they kept In a particular year One Reed—151: Feathered Serpent (the king) much better records. While the his by the Gregorian calendar—a band o abhorred human sacrifice, a main tory of Tula has to be pieced to strangers beached their ships after a. stay of Mesoamerican religion gether from Aztec accounts writ arduous voyage across the wide ocear from time immemorial. Perhaps ten centuries after the empire's Their leader had fair skin, exuberantly Ion this was seen as impiety, perhaps fall, the Maya (by then using the hair, and (most remarkably to the bare it left the restless Toltec warriors less precise 256-year Short Count chinned populace) a flowing black bearc itching for slaughter, or perhaps calendar rather than the 5,127- Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, later known a the battle was merely politics year Long Count) kept good track Montezuma II, king of the mightiest en. clothed in the garb of religion. of important events. In A.D. 987, pire on two continents, reverently opene' Whatever the reason, a rebellion the doors of his palace to the conquistadc was launched by devoteesj Stone warriors held up a pyra Hernando Cortls. How blessed, h Tezcatlipoca, or Smokh" mid dedicated to Quetzalcoatl thought, to welcome Feathered Serper patron of soldiers and sorcerers? (above); a Mayan figurine. home again at last. *
90 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 ANOENT AflT & AfCMTGCIU THE YEAR 1000 Weighing order and liberty The true measure of the millennium is our success in achieving balance
BY MICHAEL BARONE ulous Muslim country. Islam as a faith has never been strongei but the Muslim umma still has difficulty separating religioi n the spring of 1786, James Madison sat down in his study and the state. The model of Ataturk's secular Turkey, whicl in Orange County, Va., and studied the history of republics seemed capable of spreading 60 years ago, is still confined t ancient and modern. A century before, Orange County Turkey. The Muslim world fell behind the West technologi I had been wilderness; now it was the place where Madison cally in the 17th century and has fallen further behind ii drew on the experience of Europe to construct—as he more than the 20th. anyone else did in Philadelphia in 1787-a new Constitution for The Confucian world of East Asia diminished its influence America. That document addressed the question that world lead by withdrawing from world trade in the 15th century and ha ers of the year 1000 had grappled with: how to build a gov suffered terrible disruption ever since. China itself was in a stat ernment strong enough to preserve of civil war in most of the years fron order and yet leave society free enough the Taiping Rebellion of 1851-64 tt to prevent tyranny. Madison's Con the end of the Cultural Revolution ii stitution was the greatest leap for 1976. Nevertheless, the economi ward since the first millennium in growth of East Asia in the past half achieving a balance of order and lib century has been remarkable, ant erty, national pride and rational prin many countries-though not China- ciple, faith and reason. have developed stable government Balance is essential, and Madi with a fairly steady balance betweei son certainly got the balance better order and liberty. The uncomfortabl. than the Enlightenment rational question is whether China is revers ists of Europe. They had admired the ing its 15th-centuiy decision and look Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II ing to expand not just economicall; for setting up a unitary state, in which but militarily. all power belonged to the monarch. Bias toward tolerance. The Hindi But as political scientist Robert Put world of India is starting to catcl nam points out, that heritage has led up with China and East Asia. Indi to arbitrary governments and stag seems to be leaving behind the so nant economies, while republics that cialism and bureaucracy that th shared power with churchmen, mer British bequeathed, and it may star chants, and other institutions of civil nurturing the commercial instinct society have developed a free and of its Hindu heritage. It continue prosperous civic culture. to maintain, in a rough-and-read The West has not moved in a form, the democracy and role of la\ straight line toward balance between that the British also left behind. Hin liberty and order. Indeed, there have duism, which envisions a society c been huge setbacks—the plague of the many different peoples and beliefs 1340s, the religious wars of the 16th JAMES MADISON looked to the has a bias toward tolerance, whic1 century, the two world wars and the makes maintaining the balance be totalitarianism they spawned. In year 1000 for the political tween order and liberty easier tha: 1940-41, Nazi Germany and Soviet in Chinese societies, where order ha Russia were allies in control of most foundations of the republic. traditionally been paramount But th of the landmass of Eurasia. And until political dash between India and Pat Adolf Hitler invaded Russia, it was by no means clear how istan continues, and both have nudear arms. that alliance could be dislodged. That treacherous world may What will the historians of the year 3000 say about th seem distant today; indeed, we may have reached "the end of millennium between 1000 and 2000? They will likely be amaze history," in political philosopher Francis Fukuyama's phrase- at the huge biological increase in human life—in population an. that is, the end of serious argument over what constitutes a life expectancy, the spread of people across the globe, and th decent society. But maintaining the critical balance is not accumulation in great cities. They will be fascinated that pec easy and never inevitable. pie from Western Europe, so insignificant in 1000, came t But what of the rest of the world? The Muslim umma, the cover and rule most of the globe. They will be dazzled at ecc most dynamic part of the world in 1000, has continued to ex nomic growth and technological innovation. But perhaps th pand in the 1,000 years since; if it lost Cordova, it gained most impressive achievement—and the one always most at i Constantinople, surrounded the Hindu heartland in India, and is the development of governments that can maintain th spread to take hold in Indonesia, which is now the most pop- balance between order and liberty. L
92 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 panmir ar OCOME PEIBI «£WNoei ICM.T. OElACOOCeUTKMnUNOO EDITORIAL
BY DAVID GERGEN/EDITOR AT LARGE Keeping the flame alive Our forebears 1,000years ago spawned a rebirth of civilization
rom our modem vantage point, it is hard not to look What to make of all this today? It's too easy to pass it down upon life a thousand years ago. C. S. Lewis off as mere historical curiosity. There's something that called it the "snobbery of chronology," a natural ten goes to the root of existence when one thinks about those F dency to believe that earlier peoples were shorter, who came before us, how they prevailed against the odds, dumber, and poorer. What could we possibly learn from and how well we match up. Our own scorecard is a lop them about today? sided one. As this special issue of the magazine demonstrates, life It's true that in the 20th century, we have fought was indeed harsh back then. In the midst of our own Great off military threats at least as daunting as any posed by Depression, John Maynard Keynes was asked if we the Vikings. It's true as well that in our own age, we have had ever seen anything like it before. "Yes," he replied, begun to master the means of production and have "it was called the Dark Ages, and it extended the frontiers of science lasted 400 years." Western Europe and technology far beyond our in A.D. 1000 was just emerging from imaginations. As the revolution that shadow, and people still lived In the midst of hard in electronics gives way to a revo close to the edge, never certain when lution in the molecular sciences, we disaster would strike again. times, the people of could be on the edge of a new era of Yet in the midst of hard times, the the Dark Ages wrote a plenty. people of that era wrote a remark But will future generations also able chapter in the human story. In remarkable chapter in look back and say that in the year England, as author Robert Lacey 2000, there was a veritable triumph tells us, ploughmen developed a the human story. of the human spirit? Does the ques work ethic that became a basis for tion even deserve an answer? material success in the centuries ~,'w ~.ll> Men and women today are haunt that followed. ed by a sense that in the midst of In place of the autocracies of other empires, they built plenty, our lives seem barren. We are hungry for a greater social organizations that depended upon consent nourishment of the soul. In the England of today, a and cooperation, laying the foundations for democ businessman turned philosopher, Charles Handy, has racy. Prayer and music flourished. And they developed won a widespread following with his writing. Capitalism, a language that has become universal in our own age: he argues, delivers the means but not the point oflife. Now Computer analysis of the English spoken today shows that we are satisfying our outer needs, we must pay more that the 100 most frequentlyuse d words are all of Anglo- attention to those within—for beauty, spiritual growth, Saxon origin. Without them, Winston Churchill would and human connection. "In Africa," Handy writes, "they never have given roar to the lion. In short, says Lacey, say there are two hungers... The lesser hunger is for their lives were "a veritable triumph of the human the things that sustain life, the goods and services, and spirit." the money to pay for them, which we all need. The greater Keeping score. And that spirit spawned a rebirth of civ hunger is for an answer to the question 'why?,' for some ilization itself. The late Kenneth Clark recounts that in understanding of what life is for." the Dark Ages, the ancient Greek and Roman tradi In A.D. 1000, people could never truly satisfy their less tions very nearly perished. But not long after the Dark er hunger, but history suggests they were pretty good at Ages ended, around A.D. 1100, Western Europe expe fulfilling their greater one. Their lives were richer for it. rienced an extraordinary burst of energy, art, and tech and so were those that followed. A millennium later, nology. It was a leap forward seen only three or four times our situation seems just the reverse. Is this really where in history, and it was only possible because the people of we want to be? Or can we learn something from those pooi the year 1000 had kept the human flame alive. folks, after all? i
94 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 7HM~ TULi i'V:4Z t*AA 01/ «0» UU7 4^ MA UISIUKICAL l£|U01
The Adams Papers 0 Massachusetts Historical Society 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215-3695 Telephone: (617) 536-4042
TO: Jeff FROM: Anne Cecere White House Speech Writing Office Assistant Editor Phone:(202)456-5717 Phone: (617)646-0521 Fax: (202) 456-2505 Fax: (617)859-0074 Pages: 1
16 December 1999
Jeff,
Following is the passage I mentioned from John Quincy Adams" diary. Adams was in Berlin when he wrote this. He was Minister Plenipotentiary to Prussia at the time. The date of the entry is 31 December 1800, the last day of the eighteenth century. The manuscript is here at the Massachusetts Historical. Society in the Adams Papers.
"The sentiments of devotion which naturally recur to me at the close of every year,
must of course; be yet ^dnger thaii -usuiali; at a period which can not happen to me again.
., L I pass*d-fhe period of transition between the two centuries in communion
with my own soul, and in prostration to the being who directs the universe; with thanksgiving
for his numerous .blessings, in the past time, and with prayer for a mind to bear whatever the
future dispensations of his Providence may be, in such a manner as may be most
- conformable to hisr will:''; . Draft 12/17/99 3:30pm Lowell Weiss PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON TOAST REMARKS DURING MILLENNIUM "CREATORS DINNER" THE WHITE HOUSE December 31,1999
Tonight, on this historic night, it is our enormous honor to welcome to America's House so many of the brilliant creators who have helped to make this the American Century. I am tempted to conclude there is more luminous star power here tonight than ever before arrayed at the White House, with the possible exception of when President and Mrs. Kennedy dined alone.
I must admit, it is a daunting challenge to try, in a 3-minute dinner toast, to do justice to a thousand years - or even just a century. After all, in the State of the Union, they give me a whole hour to talk about a single year. Even then, I always run long.
Tonight, we rise as one people to the mountaintop of the millennium, at a time of great hope and prosperity for our nation. From this remarkable vantage point, we can behind the great distances we have traveled - and then imagine where on this broad horizon of possibility we all want to go. CONTENTS
BUBSTEW COUECTI.
COVER STORY What was life like in the last millennium? Nasty, brutish, and short, for most. Still, it was a tinu of great bravery, unrelenting ambition, and astounding legends. A look at who we were in 1000 PAGE 32
44 An Iberian chemistry 8 Letters U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT In Spain, Muslims and Jews built a world of 10 Washington Whispers 20 Hoedown showdown rare tolerance and enlightenment Asking for the moon; Rea Forbes bets the farm on Iowa's straw vote 52 Timbuktu: Same as it ever was gan plans; Gore's labor; 22 Hillary Clinton's true confessions Want to see the year 1000? Head to Mali Pentagon wish list; Christ Was she craftier than she seemed? 55 Muslims and Hindus at war mas in August 23 See you in September 15 Outlook Congress and Clinton get ready to rumble 56 Heroes: fearless, devout, and terrifying Parents: Turn off the TV! 24 A declining dollar could mean trouble Pope Sylvester II; Vladimir of Kiev; King Our fungus ancestors; JFI Weakening currency threatens the boom Olaf Trygvesson; Brian Bom; Avicenna film; expanding direct 66 A special foldout map 27 A direct hit on the wrong target? flights to Cuba Questioning a counterterror operation World trade at 1000, by sea and by land 18 People Plus: Ships, goods, and a very special camel 28 The Golan Heights is the key to peace James Dale, former Boy Israel and Syria have a lot of dickering to do 71 Vikings were the kings of exploration Scout; Vietnam hero Hug 29 Texas's death row record 72 Daily life, culture, and belief Thompson; Willie Morris Why it leads the nation in executions Forks were few, dragons prowled the Earth, writer of the South; slugg Mark McGwire 29 Clinton apologizes to a hero's family and poetry was a high-stakes game 30 On Politics 80 Who would you have been in 1000? Gloria Borger penetrates THE YEAR IOOO Soldier, scholar, monk, or priest? No—most the mystique of Bill 32 The way we were likely a miserable peasant Bradley, the Zen Candida On the eve of the year 2000, a look back at 84 The Americas: a Mississippi River city 84 Editorial the firstmillenniu m offers a glimpse of the Cahokia wrestled early with urban problems David Gergen has an up dawning of the modern world 88 Mayan myths and conquests beat take on Y1K 34 When commoners joined kings A Toltec god who came back as a man of war A change was coming: Out of near chaos, a 92 The millennium's true measure more stable political order was beginning to James Madison looked to the year 1000 for take shape, one that is still familiar today the political foundations of the republic U.S. News Online: www.uj
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U-SME & WORLD REPOnTO U.S. NEWSG WORLD REPOflTA NEWS YOU CAN USES WASHINGTON WHISPERS® Canadian Pool mtamailonal Publications Mafl (Canadian Distributton) Satas Agraamant No. 545643, Canadian Sa 4 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 THE YEAR 1000 Of Kings Ii and Commoners BY JAY TOLSON n the year 999, somewhere off the western coast of France, an Arab dhow heads for the distant city of Paris, where B. Yehoshua'two passengerss recent novel, A, Journea Norty to hthe Africa Mayan ncalenda Jewisr assigneh merchand special signifit and End ohif thse MillenniumMuslim, tradin"the Moroccag partnern ship, canc, have to the eimportan year 10.8.12.5.0t business. . advancinI g at the pace of a fast horse, seemed Even within the Christian core of West- "Eveto haven absorbe thougd hsomethin thereg waof thse nneow reasoem Europen wh, yit iths hare dChristia to say what nmos milt peo religious fervor radiating fromth e nearby ple made of the year "M," as it was then writ lenniuChristianm coast shoul" d trouble Jews otenr Muslim. Did it marks th sailine Secongd Cominalonge o upof Chrisnt If s an intriguing idea, but how credible or the beginning of Satan's reign? Not even this thies notiouniversan of a spreadinl ocean,g apocalypti" csay cons thee apocalypti narratoc momenr oft Abrahawas clearly mes tagion, circa 999? Probably not very. To tablished, since it could be 1,000 years after Muslims, the coming year was 391. and the birth of Christ or 1,000 years after his though there were divisions within the crucifixion. Either way, there were terri extended Islamic community, it was still ble portents, such as a famine in Burgundy a flourishing civilization. To the Chinese of that gave rise to cannibalism, or the Mus the Song dynasty—more than a fourth of the lims' destruction of the Holy Sepulcher in world's 280 million population—the year Jerusalem in 1009. But there was also the called gengzi promised further stability and Peace of God movement, an effort by cler prosperity. In fact, to find a people who could gy, the higher nobility, and commoners to In the year 1000, lay certain claim to living in apocalyptic limit the devastation of warring feudal lords. Cordova was the times, you would have to travel to the land In short, throughout what was just begin largest city in of the Maya: During the 10th century, they ning to be called Europe, there was, as Europe and, pos had seen their civilization, the most ad Princeton historian Natalie Zemon Davis sibly, the world. vanced in the Americas, undergo a dramatic observed in her White House Millennium decline. Yet no evidence suggests that the Lecture last January, "no dear-cut apoca- 34 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 THE YEAR 1000 lyptic movement led by a single prophet and focused on the single year IOOO, but THE EMPIRE OF BYZANTIUM was the best bet in rather a millennial spirit spread over several decades." Richard Landes, a co- all of Christendom. Then in an upswing, it had founder of the Center for Millennial Stud ies at Boston University, even argues that retaken lands earlier lost to Muslim armies. the very inconclusiveness of the millenni al moment, the general murk of disap pointment and relief, had a paradoxical ly decisive effect on Europe's subsequent development The year IOOO, he says, "was \ the moment when a people defined itself ™ and laid down a path for a millennium to come." More surprising is the fact that the early ^gMj^SSfeirid, with its crazy quilt of con tending empires, theocracies, principali ties, baronies, and bishoprics, bears a star- tling-if reverse-image—resemblance to our own, in which the dominant political form, the nation-state, is losing some of its sway. Today's challengers to the sovereignty of nations include transnational institu tions like the World Bank and the Inter national Monetary Fund, a border-defying global economy, and scores of competing allegiances that range from the suprana tional (the European Union) to the sub- national (Catalonia or Quebec). As the late Oxford scholar Hedley Bull first observed more than 20 years ago, our emerging political order might tum out to be the "sec ular equivalent of the kind of universal po litical organization that existed in Western Christendom in the Middle Ages." Christendom out of chaos The political-military order governing most of A.D. 1000 Europe was the system later dubbed fgtt£lsJism%Based on oaths of al legiance, it arose after the breakup of Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire in the early ninth century, as kings or great lords granted fiefdoms to lesser lords in re turn for their loyalty and services. The goal of feudalism was security, from both law less lords and marauding barbarians, but it often meant the opposite, particu larly when the upper nobles were weak and the lesser barons were freet o roam about like junior Mafiosi, pillaging and plun dering at will. A German prelate in 1016 sized up the situation bleakly: The king [of Burgundy] has now nothing save his title and crown.... He is not capable of de- Milestones 960 of 1000 Zhao Kuangyin be Kings, invasions, comes first emper and scholarship or of China's Song at the tum of the dynasty, which millennium lasts until 1279. 36 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 fending either his bishops or the rest of his subjects against the dangers that threat THE VIKINGS' conquest of England was perhaps en them. Therefore we see all betaking themselves with joined hands to serve the the most dramatic instance of a civilizing great In this way they secure peace." Yet out of this semichaos, a more sta transformation during the 10th century. ble political order was taking shape. Al though no kings or prelates would succeed in re-creating Charlemagne's empire, they would set Europe on the road to nation- states within the framework of an in creasingly coherent civilization. That civ ilization—Christendom-consisted not only of a religion but of literacy and learning, art and architecture, rule of law, and the powerful idea and commercial practices of urbanity. To be sure, there were stark con trasts between the ideals of this civilization and the realities of everyday life in the year v. -^W //x5 r i. 1000: Most people were peasants,4lUter-« ate, ill fed, and leadingro-etchfed lives in * actual 985 994 Maharaja Rajaraja VlUng chieftain |yom HI, a 18-year- ^ (tha Great) be Olaf Trygvesson is ^ olcl, is crowned as | comes niler of the baptized in England r Roman Emper- j Chola Ungdom in after surviving a ^ by his cousin, Southern India. mutiny. GregoryV. fii UONUD u Kun-coms U.S.NEWS & WORID REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 37 THE YEAR 1000 ilf 'mi Western Europe but eventually are drawn into its emerging order by the at THE SONG DYNASTY saw the first printed books, tractions of religion, literacy, lawfulness, a stable agricultural economy, and the the development of gunpowder, and the building first flickering of an urban life. In tum, these new Europeans play a role in sta of ships capable of carrying a thousand men. bilizing the political system, forging some of the early protonations—including remade those regions of the world that it them, and they can boast of sagacious Hungary, Russia, and England—and in conquered but challenged other civilizations princes and illustrious philosophers. Nev directly spurring the rise of others. wherever it came into contact with them. ertheless they believe that one is three and Just three years before the millennium, three are one." An Islamic golden age Moorish Spain scored one of its many Cordova, the caliph's capital (caliph But Christendom hardly represented the decisive victories over the Christian pow means successor, or lieutenant, of the only, or even the most compelling, ver ers of northern Iberia: The Muslim gen prophet Mohammed), was itself a pow sion of civilization in the year IOOO. The Is eral Almanzor razed the town of Santiago erful symbol of Islamic civility and order. lamic community, or umma, although less de Compostela and the holiest of all Chris With some 450,000 residents, it was Eu unified than earlier in the millennium, still tian shrines on the peninsula. Almanzor's rope's largest city and possibly the largest had impressive geographic reach. From martial superiority had its equivalent in in the world. More important, it ranked its Arabian and Middle Eastern core, it the condescension of a Moorish vizier and with Constantinople, Baghdad, and extended west across North Africa into Spain historian, who penned this assessment Kaifeng as a major center of commerce, and east into Central Asia and the Indus of Christendom a few years after the mil art, architecture, and learning. "When a River basin. A powerful military, cultural, lennium: "So great is the multitude of rich man dies in Seville," a saying went, and commercial civilization, it not only Christians that God alone can number "his library is sold to Cordova," which may 996 1000 Al-Haklm, the infa The Icelanders are mous "Mad ^becomes Pope converted to Caliph" of the Fa- ^Sylvester H, the Christianity under timids, begins his snrst rrenciunan to ^ orders from Olaf long, cruel reign. Siwldthattitte.-*"^ Trygvesson. 38 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT. AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23.1999 CMXMa/ or rtia or uworoFT-wmsH uafunr. LOWON THE YEAR 1000 Islamic conquests in South Asia, com bined with earlier Muslim trade activi ty throughout the Indian Ocean basin, reinvigorated and deepened Islamic civ ilization, even as they gave rise to a new regional order. As Dutch historian Andre < / Wink writes inAl-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World (1990), by the year 1000, Muslims had effectively built a "wprld econdifff fnlnd^irbund the In- raw, tdian Ocean—with India at its center and the Middle£ast and China as its two dy namic poles." The making of this "Ara bic-speaking Mediterranean," as Wink calls it, had two immediate effects on the peoples of the South Asian subcontinent. First, it spurred the growth of their economies by creating trade outlets along the coast. And second, by the contrasting example of their hard-edged monothe ism, Muslims compelled Indians to de velop and assert their own distinctive Hindu civilization. When King Rajara ja of the powerful Chola empire built a huge stone temple dedicated to the god Shiva, he did so not only out of piety. "The size of the building reflected his political ambition," says Wink. The Chola empire, John Man explains in his forthcoming Atlas of the Year IOOO, became "the linch pin of Asia's maritime economies, sitting astride Arab routes to southeast Asia, and reaching out to China." THE MAYANS: During the 10th century, they A growing player in the Indian Ocean trade, China itself had taken off around the had seen their civilization, the most advanced in year 1000, again partly as a result of the Is lamic challenge. Centuries earher, in 751, the Americas, undergo a dramatic decline. Chinese forces of the Tang dynasty, at tempting to extend the influence of the Mid explain why the city's library was reput most sophisticated commercialar^eijthe dle Kingdom into Central Asia, were ed to be the largest in the world. Locat wftflcthad yet sieen. trounced by a Muslim army not far from ed on the Guadalquivir River in south- But important changes were taking place Samarkand Humiliation led to instability central Spain, Cordova boasted graceful around the year IOOO, moving the umma's back in China, as powerful generals entered bridges, paved and lamp-lit streets, a sew center of geographic and cultural gravity politics and fomented rebellion. During the erage system, and aqueducts that provided from the Mediterranean world to the East first half of the 10th century, warlords con its residents a steady supply of pure water. The shift had actually begun in the eighth tinued to vie for mastery, but in 960 the Its vast array of mosques, public baths and century with the demise of the second, commander of the palace guard, Zhao gardens, palaces, grand villas, and mod Damascus-based caliphate and the rise of Kuangyin, prevailed. Founding the Song est but well-built homes made the city a a new one in Baghdad. The Baghdad dynasty, he pensioned off the troublesome model of cultural refinement. Muslims regime expanded into Persia and beyond generals and replaced military provincial were at the top of this society, but as in into Central Asia, spawning rival Mus governors with civil functionaries. other Islamic towns and cities, non-Mus lim dynasties as it grew. By the year 1001, The hallmark of Song rule, particular lims were tolerated as long as they paid a a new dynasty of Central Asian Muslims, ly that of the first, northern Song dynasty special tax. Christians, Jews, and others the Ghaznavids, had extended its reach (960-1126), was its emphasis on orderly were welcome to partake in the largest, into the northwestern region of India. and virtuous governance, achieved large- 1002 1003 1054 L066/|||| Brian Boru be Sylvester II dies, The Patriarch of i the Con- ; ^ comes high Hng after spending his Constantinople is iqueror and his..^^ of Ireland, and reign crusading excommunicated, t defeat Irish culture against nepotism formalizing the I Harold at the thrives again. >• and simony. Church's schism. ) Battle of Hastings. U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 39 THE YEAR 1000 ly through an efficient bureaucracy staffed plishments achieved by the Song: a level by mandarins who passed rigorous state of iron production in 1078 that would be examinations. The 20,000 mandarin of double that of England seven centuries later; ficials bore a heavy responsibility for gov the inflniifa«Th»«Miif*lw«^fHt'prittfed books: erning this empire of some 80 million peo the development of explosives, including ple. But they were also expected to embody gunpowder; the construction of six-mast, the very traditional cultural values that four-deck sailing junks capable of carry End-times were the essence of Chineseness. Never ing up to a thousand men and employing was this more the case than under the pivoting sails, watertight compartments, Song, when a revival of Confucian teach and mariner's compasses. Consider, too, the ing gave a particularly strong moral flavor rapid urbanization of Song China, sym to the dynasty. bolized most dramatically by the dynasty's visions Not to be involved in the moral order of new capital, Kaifeng-by 1020, its popu the Middle Kingdom was to be a barbar- lation approached 500,000-and the pro liferation of business and stores, When Judgment which remained open through the night. "People no longer found Day beckoned their way about the town by the • • BY JEFFERY L. SHELER names of districts," observes the uring the finalfretfu l moments of French Sinologist Jacques Gemet, the year 999, according to one an 1, "but by the names of streets." Ad cient chronicle, a throng of wor vances in industry, transportation, shipers huddled in the flickering and dty living all gave the domes D candlelight of St Peter's Basilica in tic economy such a forceful shove Rome, weeping and trembling as they that it expanded beyond the power ; awaited the tum of the millennium. of officialdom to regulate it, and ; Many were certain it would unleash the soon adventurous merchants were .- holy terror of Christ's Second Coming moving into the even less man and the end of the world. : ageable arena of iqt£Bfi$lfifflB3VBni- So convinced were some Christians merce. But a harbinger of China's that the apocalypse was upon them tha later stagnation can be glimpsed, they gave away all their possessions an< even at the height of the Song re fled to the magnificent Vatican sanctu naissance, in officialdom's reluc ary clothed in sackcloth and ashes. As tance to lose too much control. Pope Sylvester II calmly intoned the fa Fearing ungovernable merchants miliar Latin phrases of the midnight and industrialists as much as they mass on that dreaded millennium eve, feared unruly generals, the ad fearful believers prostrated them ves ministrative class waged a steady . on the polished marble floor, their eyes regulatory war against the free closed in anticipation of the trumpet wheeling ways of ambitious en blast that in a moment would herald th trepreneurs—proof that the ten arrival of Judgment Day. sion between the central political ; £Nourished by signs. It mattered little t control and the market economy the anxious worshipers in Rome that tl long predates the China of Mao Ze pope and other church leaders appar dong and his successors. ently did not share in such urgent apoc IN INDIA, the Chola empire Another aspect of China's fate alyptic expectations. There were plenty was bound up with the contempt of other priests and abbots who had ex became "the linchpin of of its long-nailed mandarins for pounded for years on how the turbulen hands-on experimentalism and events of the late 10th century fitper - Asia's maritime economies. fectly with the Bible's vivid description tinkering, which are so essential : to sustained progress in science of the Earth's finaldays . ian. Hence the earlier consternation caused and technology and perhaps even to a true \' X As the pontiff concluded the sacred by defeat at the hands of the Muslim bar "scientific revolution." China produced too liturgy, "die crowd remained rooted, barians. But in addition to causing polit few intellectuals of combined practical and ' motionless, transfixed, barely daring tt ical discord, the setback led to a burst of theoretical brilliance, too few Leonardos breathe, "not a few dying from fright unprecedented economic activity, includ or Francis Bacons who would bring vi giving up their ghosts then and there.' ing the rapid development of coal, steel, sionary genius to bear on the fine workings Re-creating this vivid scene in his and armaments i: . of the material world—one reason, among ; 1988 book AD. 1000: A World on the ly speedy many, that Europe would catch up with and Brink of Apocalypse, Richard Erdoes r centuries surpass China's formidable lead. concedes that the account is bi I afteriOOO, ChintfJSSJflfefctsiveiyiedtht! *' largely on historical hearsay and that woii4in:i^ftBloE^ffaa«*^««f 40 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 return in their lifetime. When he did not, the church developed a more de tailed theology on the matter based on sometimes controversial interpreta tions of the New Testament book of '•)• Revelation and on the Hebrew prophets Ezekiel and Daniel. And de spite Jesus's warning that no one would know "the day nor the hour" of his coming, the church continued to watch for signs and to speculate on the timing of the end. : Don't panic. But by the fifth century, the influential theologian Augustine of Hippo argued forcefully against literal readings of biblical prophecy and de tailed speculation about the timing of Christ's return. Augustine warned against making apocalyptic predictions so that "when we fall into a panic over present happenings as if they were the ultimate and extreme of all things, we may not be laughed at by those who have read of more and worse things in the history of the world." The church of ficially endorsed Augustine's view at its Council of Ephesus in 431. Yet it did not cool the apocalyptic fervor of many cler ics and laymen, which grew more in tense as the year 1000 drew nearer. While not all end-of-the-world expec APOCALYPSE THEN? Just how widespread the tations were focused precisely on the year 1000, some scholars say the 50- "terrors of the year 1000" were remains a matter year period on either side of the tum of the millennium was rife with apocalyp of debate among modern historians. <' - - tic belief. The French medieval monk Radulfus Glaber, a chronicler of the the dread of the apocalypse that held hu McGinn of the University of Chicago, in^ 10th and early 11th centuries, reported mankind in its grip" at the tum of the sist that while there was "a broad stream an outbreak of heresies in France and last millennium. Among the peasant of apocalyptic expectation" throughout 2 . Italy around the year 1000 that he inter- masses of Europe, wrote the eminent medieval Europe, "it is a mistake to sin- '. preted as the unleashing of Satan as French historian Henri Fodllon, "belief gle out the year 1000 as a special case." £ prophesied in Revelation. Glaber and in the end of the world [was] reawak In the middle are historians like "^n others report portentous "signs and ened by the approach of the fateful date, Richard Landes, director of the Center i wonders"—earthquakes, comets, and nourished by signs and wonders; for Millennial Studies at Boston Univer famines, and volcanic eruptions—that ... the time which the apostles prophe sity, who find indications of heightened were widely interpreted at the time as sied [had] come." apocalypticism surrounding the year heralds of the end. : ' • Just how widespread were the "terrors 1000—a period, says Landes, that is ; Focillon, in his historical study The of the year IOOO" remains a matter of "one of the high-water marks of such be Year IOOO, notes a marked decline in debate among modem historians. On liefs in European—or any—civilization." artistic and cultural activities in monas one extreme are the startling images, Attempts to pinpoint the time of the ; teries toward the end of the 10th centu drawn mainly by 19th-century French Second Coming date to Christianity's ry, a period he describes as "an evening historians, of a European continent en earliest days. In the Gospel of John, :;; of the world." . gulfed by apocalyptic panic On the Jesus says, "I will come again and re- When the year passed and the world other extreme is die contention of many ceive you unto myself." And in the was not destroyed, writes Focillon, modem scholars that there is no credi Gospel of Matthew, Jesus lists an assort mankind breathed a sigh of relief and ble evidence of end-times anxiety at ment of signs that he says would point "gratefully [set] out on a new road." The tached to the tum of the millennium, to the end—"wars and rumors of wars ; disappointed apocalyptic hopes of the and that most peasants had little aware ... famines, and pestilences, and earth year 1000, adds Landes, "were the ness of calendrical time other than the quakes in diverse places." -vv.:;? .. mother of a dynamic culture which, in agricultural seasons and the cycle of Most biblical scholars think the first both high medieval and modem incar Christian feast days. Some, like Bernard disciples were convinced Jesus would nations, we call the West" i' U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 41 THE YEAR 1000 civilizations. Any gambler bold enough to bet on Christendom almost certain ly would have placed his chips on the eastern Mediterranean empire of Byzan • v.": tium. Then in an upswing, it had re Pacifying the marauders of Hungary taken lands earlier lost to Muslim armies or the century before the millen and acquired new territory in the nium, pagan Hungarian bowmen tunes towm^HtunipSMM Balkans. The center of Byzantine great m, ;:- spread terror across Europe, ac- S themselves as'ihe biastidn'of the ness, Constantinople, dazzled visitors '^quirmF g a reputation for the deadly ac- West,' reisisting^he west^^ drives with its monumental imperial and re ^ curacy of their arrows. They sacked • of the .Ti^'^.Tu&^j^^^' . ^ and pillaged monasteries and man- ? The crown surviv^ centuries ot , , sions and defenseless villages as far as political chads.*In the final days of " ,; the Iberian Peninsula and Byzantium, World War n, Hungarian officers or Western Europeans on the Crusade: northern Germany, and southern dered the crown to be taken to Ger- •: of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries canu .;Italy. Christendom prayed for a mira- many; it ended tip in the hands of oc- . to consider Constantinople, its cour . > de to stop the relentless marauders cupying U.S. forces, who deposited it awash in purple silk and hammered gold . from Asia. •^^..'•^.•.•••'y:, a center of decadence, intrigue, and vice r- Then three men gained they would even contribute to the dis mantling of Byzantium, which the Ot power at the same time in dif- toman Turks in 1453 would complete ; ferent parts of Europe, and !; But in 1000, Western Europeans coulc •••^ everything changed. Pope i point to nothing in their realms tha ^ Sylvester II took over the papa- could equal the grandeur of the Easterr A cy, Emperor Otto III the Roman Empire. ^ Roman Empire, and Stephen, •i a like-minded Hungarian Indirectly, though, Byzantium woulc ' .: chieftain, dedded to turn his lift have a hand in Western Europe's rise. A ' nomadic pagan warriors into the millennium, the Germanic portion wa }: peaceful Christian farmers. ruled by the naively idealistic Otto III Stephen—bom with the .:. whose mother, Theophano, a Byzantim t pagan name Vajk but later noblewoman, filled his mind with Greel ^ baptized—inherited the Hun- culture and delusions of imperial grandeui S garian realm from his father Hoping to restore the unity of the Hoi; |;in 997- Young Stephen hinted Roman Empire, Otto squandered much o r .to the Vatican that he would his short rule on intrigues in and aroun< welcome a symbolic gesture— Rome and allowed his realms in German; something to acknowledge ''] to grow rebellious. But for all his grandios :'=^his nation's new embrace of m ity, Otto deserves lasting credit for raisin, ^Christianity and peace—and to the papal throne his former teacher an' Iparound the year IOOO Pope perhaps the greatest man of his time, th 'jijSylvester sent him, with Em- French deric Gerbert of Aurillac, crowne. it'peror Otto's consent, a mag- Pope Sylvester II in 999. ^hificent headpiece of gold Of the many explanations for Europe and predous stones. ascent, one of the more interesting wa ; : Special tribute. The signifi- first advanced by the French historia Henri Focillon in his book The Year lOOC #cance of this crown cannot be Focillon attributed great significance t ...joverstated. Other European The baptisni of Man^MJH^M^rt ft*. a shift in relative power and influence fror Ymlers had also converted to the Gothic eastern Franks to the Rc •H Christianit* FI y but had received no such in Fort Knox. Negotiations to return . °: manesque western Franks—and with it th ^ comparable honor from the pope. it broke down during the cold war. . ^^s flowering of a social order grounded i , But no scourge had been comparable It took President Jirnmy Carter contract law, and the restraint of powe / to the Hungarians, and the payoff for and his Polish-bom national security /l through dvil sodety. ^ peace was intended to be striking. adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to ^ iW:;-','V A milestone in this transformation wr The pope's decision to favor Stephen make poUtical use of the crown,' v 7 over other new converts in Eastern which had been sequestered in a " the death of the last Carolingian ruler t Europe was motivated at least in part vault for 32 years. In an elaborate France, Louis V, in 987. Partly as a rc 'by fear—fear that unless appeased, ceremony in 1978, Secretary of State suit of many years' plotting by Gerbei ' the fierce Hungarians might revert to Cyrus Vance presented the crown to against both Louis V and his father, a noi their old ways. The splendid papal Hungary's parliament Most Hun- ^-ii.; Carolingian nobleman, Hugh Capet wi . gift not only conferred the European garians view its survival during a tu elected king by the assembly of notable at Senlis. Hugh became the firstmonar c title "king* but sealed Hungary's loy- multuous millennium as nothing 1 short of a miracle, a sypibol of a na-'S^ of the Capetian dynasty, which, with it ; alty to Western Christianity. two branches, the Valois and the Bou; ' The gambit worked. Never again tional identity that is still being ; forged. -C^rfeFOTyiw .^*'--;' bons, would ride an increasingly unifie ' did Hungarian raiding parties ravage France until the French Revolution. A stable French dynasty only partly a' 42 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 nc atmu or MM n KNCZUR OTULK UUVAA NEUZETI HUSH. •uavEST-npaouNMirijeni THE YEAR 1000 McNeill, author hundreds of thousands of' both on the defensive V-^Jf /inside the wall, in what is ticated mechanism,* says :Vmen in a professional army against the "barbarians": < today northern China: David Grafii an assistant pro ^supported by kraerial taxes Turks, Mongols, Manchus, ' . When tiiey were attacked. fessor of history at Kansas "" 'd "^"hg^jm^, gtgy- ,,. and other groups who ^yiithe first line of Song defense '':; State Universily who is writ- ^ JThat industry also gave ' } medieval warfare. the Chinese a superweapon: If China's Army J^a sophisticated crossbow i 1 was so sophisticated, ;.;.that historians believe could why did it lose out to v penetrate leather armor. Al- Genghis Khan and, :• ;;\ though guns hadn't been in- eventually, his grand t Vented, the Chinese also had son Kublai Khan? S^8ft8f®^fi5» which ^ey used Part of the answer is . Cf^a^tSSmamTand bomb- ,•. that the Song emper- - • like devices, '•^•i;^' y^i'S^ qrs didn't trust their : ;)fp*Of course, Europeans did own Army and kept it ^have armor, spears, and '01 split up between bor : ^swords, but they simply der armies and capi ^Weren't organized on the tal armies. The unin Same scale the Chinese tended result was a fjwere. "Compared to Eu- weakened force that '•#irope, the Chinese had a ceri- in the end gave way to ' tralized military system," V J Mongol attackers. ^ says historian William H. n?" China had hundreds of thousands of men in a professional army. -William J. Holstein ""' i" counts for Europe's new social-political aristocracy and clergy to the peasantry. of legal-political standing. From this equilibrium. Just as important, Focillon They established an early civil society, in starting point, commoners would slow believed, were the combined efforts of which the rights and obligations of indi ly become the agents of their own des kings and clergy "to neutralize or restrain viduals and corporate bodies were clear tinies, owning their own land or moving feudal warfare." More recently, Richard ly delineated. And they forged an alliance into towns, working in crafts and trades Landes has argued that peasants, too, had between great lords, or kings, and a new and starting their own businesses, and a hand in making the new order. In the class of people, the commoners. This al eventually taking their full place as cit peace councils of the Peace of God move liance would in tum be essential to the rise izens. The enfranchisement of the com ment, where throngs gathered in fieldsout of absolute monarchies, the precursors of mon people would be as important as— side great towns or castles on dozens of oc modem nation-states. and directly related to-the commercial, casions preceding both 1000 and 1033, It is significant that the word enfran scientific, and political revolutions that great lords, clergy, and peasants came to chise originally meant "to be made a would make Europe, and its offspring in gether to form a compact against the ex Frank." For it was among the western the Americas, the most dynamic civi cessive, unruly violence of the brigand Franks that peasants first acquired a kind lization in the world. armies of lesser lords. "In these large but How citizenship will fare in an age of still face-to-face gatherings," says Landes, weakening nation-states—so far the "with the church taking the lead, men of For further reading strongest protectors of the rights and war took oaths before the populace to The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year liberties of citizens-is one of the great respect the rights of churches and of un 1000 AJ). James Reston Jr. Hie Year 1000: questions of our time. It is certainly one armed peasants. It was a social contract What Ufa Was like at the Turn of the First for which future historians will seek an by public oath and acclamation: The work MUleimium Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger. swers when they look back at the second ers would feed society, the prayers would The Year 1000 Herat Focillon. millennium as we now do at the first. • assure its salvation, and the fighterswoul d Atlas of the Year 1000 John Man. provide for safety." AJ). 1000: A World on the Brink of Apoca With research by Nancy L. Bentrup The peace councils extended the con lypse Richard Erdoes. For more information, see U.S. News tractual practices of feudalism beyond the Online (http://www.usnews.com). nmmHunmjKormtMMDMmBti U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 43 SAPtEHA—E. T.AACHIVC An Iberian chemistry It was a time and place to blend Muslim and Jewish cultures BY FOUAD AJAMI which could have had a population of some the sun in the early years of the 10th century. 250,000 people. One 10th-century trav One of its great rulers, Abd al-Rahman III, ong before the riseo f Spain and Span eler wrote with awe of a city that had no had taken for himself the title of caliph-oi ish culture, before that special run of equal in Syria, Egypt, or Mesopotamia for successor to the prophet Mohammed—and historical events that took the Iber the "size of its population, its extent, the staked out Cordova's claim to greatness. ian Peninsula from the Catholic sov space occupied by its markets, the dean- In the seven or eight decades that fol ereignL s Ferdinand and Isabella to the gold liness of its streets, the architec lowed, the dty would become a me en age of Cervantes and El Greco and ture of its mosques, the number tropolis of great diversity. Vel&zquez, there was another golden age of its baths and caravan Blessed with a fertile coun in the peninsula's southern domains. In saries." Cordova had no tryside, the dty had some 70C Andalusia's splendid and cultured courts urban rival in Western Eu mosques, 3,000 public and gardens, in its bustling markets, in rope at the time. Its equiv baths, illuminated streets academies of unusual secular daring, Mus alents were the great impe luxurious villas on the lims and Jews came together—if only fit rial centers of Baghdad and banks of the Guadalquivir fully and always under stress—to build a Constantinople, and cities River, and countless li world of relative tolerance and enlighten in remote worlds: Angkor in braries. Legend has it that ment. In time, decay and political chaos Indochina, Tchangngan in the caliph's library stocked would overwhelm Muslim Spain, but as China, ToMn in Mexico. some 400,000 volumes. the first millennium drew to a close, there City life. A Pax Islamica Andalusia was a polyglot had arisen in the dty of Cordova a Muslim held sway in the Mediter world, inhabited by Arabs empire to rival its nemesis in the east, the ranean region, and Cordo Jews, Berbers from North imperial world around Baghdad. va's merchants and scholars ica, blacks, native Chris- We don't know with confidence the pre took part in the cultural and ins, and Arabized Chris cise population of Cordova in the dosing mercantile traffic of that tians called Mozarabs, af years of the 10th century. The chroniclers world. In fact, the city made well as soldiers of fortune and travelers spoke of a large, vibrant dty, a bid of its own for a place in An age of artistic richness drawn from the Christian 44 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 uxMg.p«w8 Mvmxnwwreaouwa THE YEAR 1000 states of Europe. The Jews did particular ly well in this urban world of commerce, A mingling of philosophy, and secularism. The Jewish cultures In documents of that age depict a truly cos Andalusia's mopolitan world in which Jewish mer golden age chants traveled between Spain and Sicily, to Aden and the Indian Ocean, from Seville to Alexandria. Jewish academies were launched in Cordova, Granada, Toledo, and Barcelona. By the end of the 10th cen tury, Iberian Jews had declared their in dependence from the Talmudists of the Babylonian academies in Baghdad. A rich body of Judeo-Arabic literature became the distinctive gift of this age. Tenor and plunder. Even given these great cultural accomplishments, the success— and the hazards-of the Andalusian world are best seen through the deeds and valor of the Muslim soldier and strongman of Cordova, Almanzor. Cordova's de facto ruler, the first minister of the court in the final years of the 10th century, Al manzor was an able and ambitious ruler descended from the early Arab conquerors of Spain. He had risen to power in 976 and made the caliphate an instrument of his QMHQER COUECnON own ambitions. By some estimates, Al manzor led more than 50 expeditions JEWS AND MUSLIMS, though always wary against neighboring Christian states. In 997 he undertook his most daring sym- of one another, built a unique world of relative bolic campaign, sacking Santiago de Com postela, the Christian shrine and pilgrim tolerance and enlightenment. age center in Galicia. He laid waste to the church and took the church bells for sale contingents of Berber tribesmen from slaughter took place in 1013 when mer the Great Mosque of Cordova. Three years North Africa, and the enmity between ciless Berber soldiers besieged the dty, put later, in the year IOOO, he cut a swath of Berbers and Arabs would push the Cor a large number of its scholars to the sword, terror through much of Castile and plun dovan world into its grave. What unity the and torched its elegant villas. Many of the dered Burgos. He died on horseback in Andalusian political structure had once city's notables, Muslims and Jews alike, 1002, on his way back to Cordova from a possessed was irretrievably lost The open took to the road. military campaign in La Rioja. ing years of the 11th century would be ter One of these exiles was a talented Jew Almanzor had given Cordova's political rible years for Cordova. The dty was sacked ish child of Cordova, one Samuel Ibn center a military vocation but undone its by Catalan mercenaries in 1010; the Neghrela. He was given the gift of Cor prosperity at the same time. He had Guadalquivir overflowed its banks in the dova's greatness: He was a poet, learned brought into this Andalusian setting whole- year that followed; and a terrible mass in Arabic and Hebrew and Latin, the VILLAS & MOSQUES baked edifices of North said that one caliph asked Africa. But the most spectac his architects to simulate ular triumphs were the palm tree groves, as a re Constructing mosques, and chief among • minder of his native Syria. A them was La Mezquita, or vital innovation, adapted Andalusia Great Mosque, a 6-acre giant from the Visigoths, was the ndalusia's architects • built to hold 35,000. horseshoe arch, a semicircu thrived on Cordova's cul When the Moors arrived lar support that became the Atural stew, and their in 711, the existing temples Moorish trademark. In the work fused myriad regional were plain affairs. The new Great Mosque, these arches and cultural styles. The city's comers remade mosque in were made from alternating villas, built around patios teriors with marble columns bands of red brick and white and lined by terraces, are im taken from Roman and : ^ v stone, a pattern that tricks itated to this day. The Jewish Visigothic ruins, creating ' ! the eye into perceiving the quarter was home to syna dense thickets of pillars to ' interior as limitless in size. gogues inspired by the sun support wooden roofs; it is Cordova's Great Mosque —Brendan I. Koemer 48 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT. AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 OOOA OF MLWUMHI AT IKZQUftA ((MEAT V06QIX). CORDOVA, SPAM—WOCMAN AHT lAMMT* THE YEAR 1000 Berber and Romance tongues. But he also inherited the legacy of Cordova's collapse. IE MARGIN. '. He fled Cordova's upheaval to the coastal city of M&laga, then made his way to the court of Granada, where he prospered Zionist in Andalusia's golden age as courtier and chief minister. He saw . worlds. Jews watched? ,3 through the splendor and the hazards of that world. In a poignant poem, entitled | ,Hd^ Uved'in a sbtfetyffi wfad^ "A Curse," he wrote of his wandering and he andpther Jews werespoaDy •d to be astronomers, phQoso-'M^ | exile: "Heart like a pennant / On a ship's tverless ahdinfluenoed heavily by'; ; scientists, and poets. '^^ffi| mast, in a storm; / An exile is ink / In God's Hthe dominant Islamic <^tui^ ^ ofstatus.Butthiswasatimeof book. Across my soul, and every |jhe used his poetry to explore both partial autonomy. Jews were free I shore; / And all on whom wandering is ^(conflict and harmony among Arabs, in the Islamic world as long as ' written / Are driven like Jonah, and scav ^ and Jews. An outgoing physiciai ; '^ ^ :they paid a special tax to Muslim .• ; | and court poet-with many friends, ^ rulers and submitted to an order for- enge like Cain." 1 |;he wrote a collection of secular po- ding them to own Muslim slaves. ' -• Distant memory. It twisted and turned, ; Ifetiy and a huge body of religious ^ iJ^hadthefrownlegal system and ^ that world that had riseni n the West Ten 'Tverses; some of idiich have made , -''sbcial services, were forbidden to build years after Neghrela's death, his son and ; their way into modern Jewish ^ IneW synagogues, and were supposed \ heir, Joseph, was killed by a mob in Grana ? prayer books. (His famed Ode to ' ^tp wear identifying clothing. da, in an anti-Jewish riot in which some :' '••••»Vn, :'^These restrictions 1,500 Jewish families perished. By then led to a profound :'- the unity of the Andalusian world had be 'sense of alienation ; • come a distant memory. The age that fol ^for some Jews. It ?. • y lowed was dubbed the mulak al-tawa'if, iwas, says Raymond a time when warlords and pretenders iScheindlin, professor i i r carved up Muslim Spain into petty, war of medieval Hebrew ring turfs. No fewer than 30 ministates literature at New claimed what had once been a coherent York's Jewish Theo- v dominion. The robust mercantile econo logical Seminary, a my eroded. 'demoralizing daily Calamity soon struck this world. In ^reminder "that you 1085, Toledo, the ancient capital of the are part of a losing Visigothic kingdom, was conquered by Al team." Halevi reacted fonso VI, King of Le6n. For Christians this to that message. To was a sign of divine favor, and the con him, life in Spain— queror claimed no less than that. "By /though comfortable the hidden judgment of God," a charter of vin between harrow- i Alfonso read, "this city was for 376 years "bouts of persecu- I in the hands of the Moors, blasphemers ion—was like slavery of the Christian faith Inspired by God's pared with the grace I moved an army against this city, intended for where my ancestors once reigned in power in Palestine, and wealth." Cordova itself fell in 1236. neither with Its conqueror, Ferdinand III of Castile, Some Spanish Jews tatt at home in Islamic society. crescent nor the claimed the Great Mosque of Cordova ,: -V;..".f.V" . Halevi instead in a "purification" ceremony, and his bish iZionhas •r centuries in;: ops consecrated it for Christian worship led on a different destiny. To ' religious semces.) The poetry 1 . him, the Jews were a calamitous and as the Catedral de Santa Maria. The foun .^ brought forth a^deeper .sense of Jew- dations of the Great Mosque had been laid .founded people, unsure of their place : ish spirituiality.that had been tin^ •in human history. He wanted Jews to down in the closing years of the eighth i.heard of in previous generations.'1 century, and successive rulers had adorned Ibelieye what he was Confident of: that and enlarged it. It was the symbol of An Hebrew was superior to Arabic, dalusian authority, a sublime architec ^Palestine to Spain, and they were the vchosen people. ^"^U - *; > tural wonder into which rulers and pa 1 ; trons poured their reverence and *|When he was 50, Halevi underwent ambition, their desire for a new Muslim •f^som e Jews felt at home in.... an Islami. c fan emotional upheaval and decided to society, man^like Haleyi, longed for '"devote himself to God by going on a frontier as grand as the best Baghdad or ;;!'fin a battle of religious giants, the . ,, ^a world in which tfidrqfwn people>' "i " pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Legend Damascus could boast. In the peninsu ; •iljcbulI^Jewisdh minoritriMs'toifietop.';^^^^^^..,.y in medieval Spain ' has it that he met his death upon fi- la, one people's golden age was always an jras left with fewprivfleges. Although other's decline. What had once been a land .^•-'-In famti theyears between 900 and \nally arriving in Israel, where he was of three faiths would in time be cleansed $1200 in^ffiai^ Cnin over by an Arab horseman. With of its Muslims and Jews. A militant new f^lm<^;u^ie;Hebm the vision of Jerusalem set before r&aditof JewishItenaissana tlwt ai^ / , he recited the last verse of his doctrine—called limpieza de sangre, or : "purity of blood"—would dispense with all X;fromthe] iQdetoZion. —LindsayFaber: ' • • that tangled past and its richness. • 50 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 I i In an inexorable retreat What's 1,000 years? Today's Timbuktu isnestl a etri againsp t bacthe shorek, iconnecten timd be; BY WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE tracks, perhaps 20 miles wide, that serve loosely to guide the way across a danger gangplanks to a riverfront of small mud imbuktu, long a metaphor for geo ous wilderness. Though the traffic on them walled buildings. Boatmen dressed i: graphical and cultural isolation, has has been severely reduced, and the camel ragged clothes move among stacked bag recently become an even more remote trains have been replaced by tracks, the of grain, dates from the northern oase; place. It's a town that has retreated routes remain in use, and so therefore does salt cakes, dried fish,goats , and live chick Tso far back in time that it lives again much Timbuktu. ens. A few vendors sell soap or cooked ricr as it did in the year IOOO. It was about then Even fromth e populated south, the town The sky is white with light that Timbuktu grew from a desert en is hard to reach. The single dirt road is im City of somnolence. Timbuktu stands campment into a permanent settlement passable in the rain and vulnerable to ban miles inland through the desert It is ringe on the southern edge of the Sahara, stalked dit attack. Air Mali flies in from the cap by the encampments of refugees and nc by low-grade war and starvation, eking out ital, but on a sporadic schedule. So the old mads whose numbers fluctuate depend its existence from the perpetually dis way to go is still the best, by boat for sev ing on the circumstances of rainfall, re trustful contact between black Africa to eral days down the Niger River. Timbuk bellion, and reprisal. The city is dusty an the south and the Berbers of the vast north- tu's port is hardly more than a muddy em uniformly tan, the color of the land. It he em wastes. Little of that seems to have bankment Pirogues and native longboats a moribund market, three mosques mad changed. Timbuktu today is a town of of dried mud, and sand-choke 15,000 in Mali, a poor West African na streets lined by the typicall tion. It stands as it did before, on high TIMBUKTU is where black forbidding mud-brick walls c ground above the flood range, where trans- Saharan houses-little con. Saharan caravan routes converge on the Africans and Saharan Africans pounds closed off against a Niger River during its strange, slow tum forms of intrusion. The street through the desert Those caravan routes came together in mutual dis^ sleep during the high heat of da are not roads (as they are shown on some and they barely revive at nigh maps) but confused bands of braided trust. And they still do today. There are a few tracks, camel 52 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 THE YEAR 1000 and birds, but none of them seem ever to move. LOCATION, LOCATION People, however, do walk about, alone or in small groups of two or three, and they crouch in the doorways talking. They are From poor farmland, the envy of Africa the black African merchants who pre magine a king who had a nugget of Senegal and Niger rivers. They flour dominate in town, the traders from Al gold so large he used it to tether his ished for generations as fanners geria and Morocco visiting for a few weeks horse. His warriors braided bits of growing millet, cow peas, and kola to hustle for business, and the haughty I the predous metal into their hair and nuts. Then a seven-year drought, Tuareg nomads from the open desert, war ! i carried gold-mounted swords. The which they blamed on a failed ritual i riors who traditionally controlled the over streets of his capital dty—Kumbi sacrifice to their snake god, Bida, ru land routes and exacted payments from Saleh—sparkled fromth e gilded ined their crops. the caravans. Today they have taken up thread common townspeople wove Forced to scatter in search of food, their weapons and joined in a sporadic re into their dothes, and even the dogs they forged their plows into spears. bellion throughout the central Sahara. De wore collars flashing metals worth a The Soninke's mastery of iron smelt spite the official claims of peace and po fortune in the resto f the world. ing soon made them the dominant litical progress, these groups have no Ghana, West Africa's first great power in West Africa, where their reason to believe one another. Over the neighbors still fought with weapons past decade there have been killings by all empire, was such a kingdom. By A.D. 990, when it conquered the dty of ^: made of wood and bone. The Soninke sides—massacres in the dunes and on • ^ ^^..^ were considered so ' " the gravel plains north of town. There is mighty that their ter less consensus here, not more than cen ritory was called turies ago. There is less expectation. The -Ghana, the word for desert is again as wild as it was long ago. ."war chief." City of enlightenment. Timbuktu's return to As the Soninke the past is certainly not a perfect thing. Were building their The town does have electricity, a small tourist power, the trans-Sa- •' i trade, and satellite television. Moreover, it haran trade in salt has a long and dramatic history, with strong and gold was blos cumulative effects on the residents' under soming. West Africans standing of their homeland and themselves heeded salt to main as a people. From the 14th through the 16th tain their bodies' centuries, under the empires of Mali and water balance; North Songhai, Timbuktu grew into a city of African Muslims 100,000, with an enlightened judicial sys needed gold to mint tem and a great Islamic university, whose -their currency. manuscript collection remains here today. ^ And Ghana, the mid- Timbuktu for all of its difficulties has not for Idle ground between the gotten these proud accomplishments any ^desert salt flatsan d the more than it has forgotten its more recent igold mines of Bambuk, experience under the French colonizers or ^was the doorway. the rise of the troubled new Malian na Ghana reaped a mar tion. It knows itself as a modem dty that still velous profit by double follows the news. SOUTOM: AiKfnt OhnK Atlcmn /Onptora,- 7I» Ac** Kingdom ol Ohm. M*. nd Songhf • •• •.^•'•'••^•^•••'•'•5^^>.^^v-''-- • taxing traders from the Inexorably, however, Timbuktu contin Audaghost, Ghana's dominance in North who traveled through its territo ues its retreat. The United Nations has the richgol d trade Was unmatched. ry. West Africans exported between 2 listed it as one of 23 endangered "World Her Andent Ghana (which is actually and 3 tons of gold a year-taking a per itage" sites because its mud walls are crum near the site of modern Mali, not centage on the transactions—and kept bling away. That much is obviously true. Mud modem Ghana) was ah unlikely can just as much for themselves. Ghana walls vanish fast if they are not maintained, didate for a prosperous trading na was the envy of its region. and little evidence now remains of Tim tion. It was a landlocked nation at For centuries, Ghana repelled as buktu's former size and greatness. Short the foot of the world's largest desert saults from other regional powers. of a superficial rescue—turning the entire with no resources to call its own. Yet But in 1076, after 14 years of war, the dty into a museum, for example-the walls through might and savvy, Ghana Muslim Almoravids captured the will continue to impose a brutal honesty made a gilded gateway of its Texas- ; Ghanaian capital of Kumbi Saleh. on the dty, reflecting its return to the desert :• size plot of land. ' • "-t; Ghana never fully recovered and was Honesty may be the wisest response any . Plows and spears. The Soninke peo supplanted altogether by Mali in the way. The problems that beset this faraway ple, who still thrive in modem-day v 13th century. Ghana nevertheless left comer of the world are so deep that per ; Africa, founded Ghana perhaps as : : its mark. In 1957, when the Gold haps the best people can do is simply to early as A.D. 500: Migrating fromth e Coast won its independence from recognize them. There is little trade. There ' East, they settled in the West African England, the former colony chose the is little trust There is hardly a nation. Even name Ghana to represent its own T region between the southern edge of ^ those residents who try to think forward ; the Sahara and the cradle of the I xC* golden age. -Kenneth Terrell are riding a city that is heading back ward in time. • 54 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 THE YEAR 1000 mMQESOFMM as long as everyone contin ued to perform the tasks laid out in fiie Code ofManu (the text detailing the ideal Hindu Words into society), it didn't matter whether they prayed to Krishna, Ganesh-or Allah. In 997, all of that changed. swords The Muslim warlord Mah- mud of Ghazni stormed through the Khyfoer Pass and A historical clash of wreaked devastation through the rich provinces of Punjab Muslims and Hindus and Sindh. His Turkic cav alrymen looted all that lay in BY JONAH BLANK their path, desecrating tem t the tum of the millennium, a fer ples and smashing sacred tile flatland watered by five rivers idols in their pious, pitiless was experiencing a greater cataclysm iconoclasm. There would be than any comer of Christendom The 16 more attacks over the next Ahorsemen of this particular apocalypse three decades. thundered down from the Afghan moun Mahmud's invasions have tains, and life on the Indian subcontinent shaped the popular image of would never be the same. how Islam penetrated South India had seen many invasions, and the Asia, but they are only part pattern was drearily familiar: Brutal hordes of the story. It is also true would sweep in from the West, make a nui that the Muslim sultans who sance of themselves for a while, and even succeeded him included tually be absorbed into polite society. The tolerant princes like Sham- Rajput princes who fought the new ma SOUTHERN ASIA was a mish suddin Iltutmish and the rauders were themselves descended from great Mughal emperor barbaric Huns who had bumed and pil mash of kingdoms with many Akbar. And that the vast ma laged their way down from Central Asia jority of South Asian Mus- a few centuries earlier. Before them had languages and reUgions. lims-who now compose been Scythians, Greeks, and all sorts of nearly one third of the pop other unwelcome guests. Even the Indo- scriptures and people who did not. ulation of India, Pakistan, and Europeans, who brought the Vedas, the And people who did not were nothing Bangladesh—were converted to Islam by caste system, and other foundations of Hin new. Less than 200 years earlier, devotees the words of missionaries rather than the duism, were relative newcomers to the of Shiva and Vishnu (the two most widely swords of conquerors. neighborhood: 2,500 years earlier they'd worshiped Hindu deities, then and now) The spears and sdmitars of the first mil supplanted the fading Indus Valley civ had wrested political control of many prin lennium may have given way to the MiGs ilization, a literate, technologically ad cipalities back from Buddhists and Jains. and Stingers of the second. But to assume vanced culture created by still ear And even before that, India had been from the recent conflict in Kashmir that lier migrants. home to far more unusual be India's history is one of continuous reli Infinite variety. In the year IOOO. liefs: Christians, Jews and gious conflict would be quite wrong. Mod the Hindus of India didn't think (more recently)Zoroastrians — ern historians like Gyanendra Pandey of themselves as "Hindus," people who thought that di argue that until the late 19th century, most and wouldn't have identified vinity could assume only one Indians identified more strongly with their their homeland as "India." Those form—had found refuge in local community than with the faith that words had been coined far away towns up and down the western their community happened to follow. It is and used from the time of coast for 900 years. still quite common for Hindus to seek the Alexander the Great to de Perhaps the most stubbornly blessing of Muslim holy men at Sufi shrines scribe the people and the lands monotheistic newcomers were the throughout India. east of the Indus River. Indeed, Muslims. They'd arrived as mer Mahmud the Ghaznavid, hacking the the ideas behind those foreign chants in the late seventh centu heads off worshipers and the icons they words were equally alien: The in ry and had made thousands of worshiped, is an image burned into the habitants of die region lived in converts with their radical mes collective consciousness of the subconti a mishmash of kingdoms, spoke sage of social equality. It was a nent. But while Hindus and Muslims were myriad languages, and wor shocking notion—how could a dying at each others' hands in the icy shiped a multiplicity of gods in person who mucked out la mountains above Kargil last month, they a boundless variety of ways. As trines be considered the equal were living peacefully, side by side, far as religious identity went, of a Brahman or a maharajah? throughout most of India. The same was the only clear line they drew The new faith proved attractive true even as Mahmud carried out his was between people who to members of the lower castes, bloody depredations, almost exactly 1,000 ognized the primacy of Vedic but Hindus of all levels felt that years before. • WUVMUHM. CHOI* MOKZtHJTH C. HATOMM. UUHUU Of MIA. NIW ODM-anoOOUN MT UMUIty U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 55 THE YEAR 1000 The Hagia Sophia, in what was then Con stantinople, was the center of Byzantine religion in A.D. 1000. Later, the Ottomans made it a mosque. : 1 Ml 36 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 An avenging king. A marauding missionary. An intellectual gadfly. These seminal figures of the year 1000 made their names by displaying fearlessness, devotion—and, in some cases, a striking disregard for human life. No matter; they will be remembered more for their greatness, and none as much as the low-born Pope Sylvester II. [ POPE SYLVESTER II ] Man of the year 1000 Longbcforc the Renaissance, a Renaissance man erbert of Aurillac, better known to history as Pope G Sylvester II, was not merely one of the great fig ures of the end of the first millennium. In his life and work, he heralded the ideals of an emerging European civ ilization. Combining classical and theological learning with practical and scientific apti tude, Gerbert became a new kind of intellectual, a "univer sal man" anticipating the hu manists and scientists of the Renaissance. Gerbert also became an adroit statesman, using his many contacts to shore up old dynasties and to create new ones, even while rising to the highest office in the Roman Catholic Church. No wonder his enemies thought him a sorcerer and dabbler in black arts-or that his admirers called him stupor mundi, the wonder of the world. Boy wonder. Gerbert's ori gins make his achievements all the more remarkable. From boy monk to gifted academic to all-powerful pope •Bom to a lowly family in the French region of Aquitaine, and invited the gifted monk lims had contributed to as he was taken in, at age 12, by to return with him to Catalo tronomy and mathematics, the abbey of St. Geraud in the nia, whose proximity to the including Arabic numerals village of Aurillac There, the Moorish caliphate exposed it and the abacus. "He invented boy monk quickly mastered to the intellectual ferment of the pendulum clock and the trivium—grammar, Islamic civilization. In the learned how to tell time from rhetoric, and dialectic—ex town of Vich, Gerbert flour the stars at night," writes celling as a Latinist and ac ished, mastering the quadriv- James Reston Jr., in The quiring a life-long taste for tum—arithmetic, geometry, Last Apocalypse. "He also classical authors. Around astronomy, and music—as constructed sundials and ce 967, Count Borrell of well as many of the new ideas lestial globes and mastered Barcelona visited the abbey and instruments that Mus the science of the astrolabe." mm IMUUZ « aim mcma uismo-uMv twa nciuc uonwr U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT. AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23.1999 57 THE YEAR 1000 More impressive, he used ducted the infant king, Otto [ VLADIMIR OF KIEV ] these tools to advance novel III, and declared himself the ideas-including his belief new ruler of the Germans. that the world was a sphere. Gerbert quietly forged a coali Given his interests, Ger tion that undid Henry's A trader in theology bert might have remained in scheme and returned Otto to Catalonia, but in 970 Count his mother. The mercantile origins of Russian orthodoxy Borrell took him to Rome, Rising fortune. Politics in where he won no less an ad France then drew Gerbert in mirer than Pope John XIII. a different direction. From The pope in turn introduced 985 to 987, he plotted with Gerbert to the Holy Roman others to bring down the last emperor, Otto I. Otto the Carolingian kings of France, Great was a German prince Lothair and his son Louis V. of soaring ambition who No need; Louis died in a hoped to re-create the em horse-riding accident, allow pire of Charlemagne by con ing Hugh Capet, a former stu solidating under his rule the dent of Gerbert, to be elected lands now known as France, to the throne. Germany, and northern Otto III, influenced by the Italy. He also had a good eye Byzantine culture of his for talent and made Gerbert mother, Empress Theophano, his court mathematician. took as his model not only In 972, a year before the Charlemagne but Constantine first Otto died, Gerbert trav the Great, the first Christian eled to northern France to emperor of Rome. But from the moment he be came Holy Roman emperor in 996, Otto faced nothing but resistance from his various subjects, including Roman nobles, who insisted upon appointing In converting Kievan Rus, Vladimir made Russia what it is today. their own pope in stead of accepting ven to his contempo ligions—Islam, Judaism, and the emperor's raries, Vladimir, grand the Eastern church—to help choice, a German Eprince of Kiev, seemed a him figureou t which religion named Gregory V. peculiar poster child for was the best choice. It was a When Gregory died Christian principle. He ruled visit to Constantinople, the in 999, Otto chose his own countrymen with an capital of the Byzantine Em Gerbert as his suc army of foreign mercenaries. pire, that finallytippe d the cessor, even though He lured one of his brothers scale. "The emissaries who at Otto III (center) made Gerbert pope in 909. he knew that it into a fatal ambush with a tended a service in St. Sophia would further infu promise of safe conduct His in Constantinople relatedth a study at the cathedral school riate the Romans. stable of wives and less than they did not know whether of Reims. He soon was run Gerbert took the name chivalrous conduct toward they were on Earth or in ning the school, and seeded Sylvester II, a nod to Pope women led one commentator heaven," says the Russian his the cities and courts of Eu Sylvester I, who had served to describe him as a fornica torian George Vemadsky. rope with devoted former stu with Constantine the Great tor immensis et crudelis. And The missionary. Kiev provid dents. In 982, Otto II made But Otto's dream of a reunit yet Vladimir would gain ed a fertile ground for the im him abbot of the monastery ed Christian empire quickly sainthood for making one of ported religion. "Unlike the in Bobbio, a leading center of foundered, and he died in history's most fateful deci Balkan Slavic kingdoms, the learning in Italy. But Italian 1002. Still, though Otto's po sions. It was his idea, in 988, Kievan domain lay entirely be politics did not suit the Utical hope was lost, the to convert the subjects of his yond the confines of the old scholar. Upon the sudden civilizing force of Gerbert's realm, Kievan Rus, to the Roman Empire," says Librari death of Otto II in 983, the Christian humanism and Eastern Orthodox brand of an of Congress James Billing demoralized abbot fled north. his more modest poUtical re Christianity. ton, author of The Icon and Yet just as matters turned alism were not And long The choice was by no the Axe. "It was one of the last most threatening for his Ger after he died, in 1003, the ex means a foregone conclusion. distinct national civilizations man patrons, Gerbert proved ample of his wide-ranging There were Catholics among to accept Byzantine Christian his loyalty and political savvy. curiosity and intellect sur Vladimir's ancestors, and ity; the only one never clearly A Bavarian usurper called vived in European culture. Vladimir received emissaries to accept poUtical subordina Henry the Quarrelsome ab -Jay Tolson from the other great world re tion to Constantinople; and b 60 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 B. UOOK tr om m now THE YEAR 1000 i; far the largest-stretching Scilly Isles, off England's !j north to the Baltic and almost southwest coast The seer ac to the Arctic Ocean." curately predicted an unsuc Thirtl Rome." One of the cessful mutiny among Olaf s most powerful results of the troops, a foretelling that he change was the creation of a credited to the Christian God. militant Christian state in the Impressed, Olaf renounced east of Europe with a reli the Norse pantheon and was giously inspired belief in its baptized in 994. Accompa own special historical role. nied by missionaries, he re Later in Russian history, turned to his Norwegian Moscow would aspire to be homeland the following year, come the "Third Rome," the where he was accepted as chosen successor state of king and went about convert messianic Christianity; even ing his subjects en masse. later, Russian communism When bribery and gentle would claim a similar destiny. words failed, Olaf s methods But Vladimir's move has had of evangelization could tum far greater, and probably brutal. One famed Viking more lasting, geopolitical lord, Raud, had an adder repercussions than Lenin's shoved down his throat when introduction of communism he refused to accept Christ; to Russia 929 years later. another, Eyvind Kinrifa, was Communism imploded after tortured to death with a pan just 70 years, but Byzantine of glowing coals upon his Christianity is alive and well belly. Those who valued their from Lvov to Vladivostok. lives wisely converted when Even today citizens of Kiev, confronted by Olaf, who dis now the capital of indepen patched missionaries as dent Ukraine, make pilgrim far afield as Iceland and ages to a monument com Europe's most feared ViWng spread Christianity however he could. Greenland. memorating Vladimir's deed. The untter. Though Olaf s ef In a book published in 1997, a forts to spread the Word were Russian historian lauds [ KING OLAF TRYGVESSON 1 sincere, his work had a politi Vladimir as "our great ances cal aspect as well, according tor," the author of a "heroic to Penn State historian Paul deed." In fact, though, Norway's slave-king Blaum. "It appears he wanted Vladimir's decision probably to create a united Norway," had little to do with the spiri Spreading Christianity the Viking way says Blaum, "a Norway that tual glories of Orthodoxy; laf Trygvesson's reign as As a child, Olaf was cap would be able to resist en that nice story about hypnotic king of Norway lasted tured by pirates and sold into croachment from Denmark Byzantine ritual undoubtedly Ojust five years, and his slavery in exchange for a and Sweden." The young includes its share of 10th-cen brief life ended in catastro cloak. A distant relation dis king, says Blaum, was a tran tury spin-doctoring. The phic defeat. But the preco covered his plight and bought sitional figure,wit h one foot Kievan state, actually a loose cious Olaf, who rose from his freedom, and he was sent in the Viking wanderings of confederation of semi-inde slavery to become Europe's to live at the court of King the past and one foot in the pendent principalities, was a most feared Viking, is re Vladimir of Russia, where he more sedentary future. commercial powerhouse that membered with awe. A mili gained fame for his military Olaf s downfall was his fiftl straddled lucrative river trade tary commander as a teen and prowess, good looks, and ath wife, Thyre, sister of King routes from Scandinavia to the scourge of England as a letic feats. In 991, with the Sveyn of Denmark. She goad Constantinople. Byzantium, young man, he help of the Danes, ed Olaf into sailing to recap in other words, just happened was revered he laid waste to ture her property, which she'i to be one of Kiev's key trading among his Viking England, forcing forfeited upon fleeing an partners as well as an occa brethren as the the Saxon king, arranged marriage to a pagan sional military rival. It also strongest and Ethelred the Un earl. But on the way, Sveyn helped that the old-fashioned bravest ever to ready, to pay a hu and his Swedish allies am pagan religion of old Kiev got thrust a spear. His miliating tribute. bushed Olaf, who leapt into in the way of Vladimir's inter passion, however, Olaf might the sea to avoid capture. national ambitions. Its brutal was not plunder, have been con Though he was presumed practices just didn't suit the but the Cross; he tent to spend his drowned, legends abound modern and cosmopolitan sailed far and life amassing the that Olaf swam to shore and character of his state so, prac wide to spread spoUs of war had secretly became a monk, tical ruler that he was, he Christianity, by he not encoun living out his days serving chose a theology that means both gentle tered a prophetic God in a far more peaceful did. -Christian Caryl and harsh. Viking headgear hermit in the manner. -Brendan I. Koemer 62 U.S.NEWS SI WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 ITMBIS WTaOCXA MUaEET. STOOMOUt-WBtCR FOMMmRl THE YEAR 1000 mOM CANON O^W F. BOLOGNA 19TH CENTURY—ANCCNT ART IWOjfTKTURE [ BRIAN BORU i w .- The original Celtic tiger A once-and-former king is reconsidered reland's first golden age, a invaders with such valor that time of peace and scholarly Mahoun's mind was changed, I achievement, ended and the two joined to drive .'«» •«. .. . abruptly in 793 with the ar out the Danes. Mil >' rival of the Vikings. The Tough guy. Brian's conquests Norsemen made sport of forced Malachy, king of the burning fieldsan d monaster Ui Neill, long Ireland's most ies, while the Irish clans bick powerfid clan, to strike a ered over ancient grudges. deal in 999; Malachy would Chaos reigned until the close rule the North, Brian the of the 10th century when South. The compromise did A Muslim doctor-philosopher helped shape Western thought a crafty noble named Brian not appease the ambitious Boru ("Brian of the tributes") Brian. He marched on Tara, briefly restored the island to legendary seat of Celtic kings, [ AVICENNA ] its splendor. But Brian's and forced Malachy to abdi true nature remains clouded cate in 1002. Brian was by centuries of embellish awarded the title ard ri, or Jack of all trades ment. Was he really a great high king. Thus began a re naissance for the is Doctor, philosopher, and man about Persia land: A patron of the bn Sina was a boastful bach of the day. Translated into arts and learning, elor with a fondness for Latin around 1150, the Canon Brian funded the re I drink who wrote some of became the standard medical construction of monas the most renowned works of text of the Middle Ages. By teries, encouraged medicine and philosophy in the 16th century, it had been scribes to copy down the Arab world, a keen mind- copied by hand countless Ireland's classic myths, for-hire who spent his life times; it remained popular and scoured Europe for traveling across the tumul into the 17th. pillaged relics. tuous political landscape of Big thinker. One of Avicen- Though Ireland 11th-century Central Asia. na's interests was squaring prospered under his Known in Europe by his Latin the rational philosophy of the reign, Brian can best be name, Avicenna, he was a Re ancient Greeks with the characterized as a naissance man when most of monotheistic faith of Islam. warlord whose primary Europe was stuck in the Dark "He reconciles religious allegiance was to his Ages—and he shaped Western [thinking] with philosophi clan. "He referred to thought for centuries to come. cal, Mosaic [law] with Aris himself as being sort of Bom in 980 near Bukhara totelian, science with faith- an emperor or high (in modem-day Uzbekistan), things which were thought to long, but I don't think Avicenna began his education be incompatible," says Van- it was because of any early. "When I reached the age derbilt philosophy Prof. Lenn sense of national iden of 18," he says in his autobiog E. Goodman. Western tity, where he felt raphy, "I had completed the thinkers like Thomas Aquinas Boru: Great patriot or wily opportunist? faithfulness to Ire study of all the sciences." His turned to Avicenna to explore land," says Thomas knowledge put him in demand how faith and reason could patriot, as so many songs and Finan of Catholic Uni at the height of the Islamic coexist. But today, though legends claim, or just a wily versity, an expert on Irish golden age, when a new breed "his thought is alive," says opportunist? identity. of strongmen, the sultans, Goodman, "his method of Brian was bom around Brian met his end on April sprang up all over the Middle thinking isn't There tends 940, a prince in the Dal Cais 23,1014. His forces had East. To increase the glory of to be an assumption that the tribe of southern Ireland. He soundly defeated a coalition their courts the sultans fund way of reason doesn't get to grew up disgusted by the in of Vikings and rebellious ed hospitals and mosques and the deeper spiritual trath." cursions of the Danes into his Irish. But a group of retreat supported artists, philoso Avicenna perished as he ancestral lands, a hatred ing Danes happened upon phers, and scientists. lived: on the road. Trying to reinforced when Norse Brian during their flight; the Moving frompatro n to pa flee an approaching army raiders murdered his mother. aged ard ri was praying in tron, Avicenna wrote more while ill, he overmedicated When his older brother, Ma- his tent. He was dispatched than 100 books. Best known himself with harsh medicines houn, sought peace, Brian with an ax blow, and Ireland is the Canon of Medicine, a composed of celery seed and took to the hills with a band plunged into another dark comprehensive work summa opium and died at the age of guerrillas. He attacked the age. -B. I. K. rizing the medical knowledge of 58. -Andrew Curry • U.S.NEWS SL WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 63 By sea andby land, a k global economy is bom ^ ong before the g L Internet and E- s commerce, human- ' kind laid the groundwork for a global economy. Overland by camel.. caravans or across ';|: the Mediterranean '' and the Indian ^ Ocean on their famous dhows, Islamic traders began to connect ^Eurape started to become the the "old world- . majorptaywtaiwridtnuteta ,E thecenturiesafterAJLIOOO. a through long-range ^^^^^;^s>i commerce and exchange. Equally renowned j for their nautical daring were the dreaded ]| Vikings, whose ships brought Europeans to Vi the shores of North America almost five centuries before the arrival of Columbus. $! And even the relatively inSiilar Chinese took to the high seas around a thousand years ago, becoming vigorous players in the V;^. maritime trade of the South China Sea and * •. the TnHinn Ocean. ••">'••'• '-• :•/ '.-K. Below and top: medieval Norman ships and shlp- tatUding, fhrni the Bayem bpestiy, efcea AM. 1080 MAmu»wicoiTB»-m he line between traide and VIKING T piracy was often ignored by the KINGDOMS Viking.^frequentlyused intimidation to obtain goods from |Pppulatlon:1-2niillion unwilling trading partners. Based tfleOgion: in Scandinavia, these expert ptHyniBisin mariners went south and west to ^Exports: staves, furs, settle in northern France, Britain, phoney, gems, hoiy, Iceland, and Greenland, and east ...^^tSWeapons, Umber to settle in Russia. : -'S-'ir - conomic self-sufficiency fostered BYZANTINE E a strict provincialism among the Byzantines. Commerce was closely EMPIRE controlled by the government, and Population: 20 million Byzantine traders were discouraged Religion: Christianity from venturing beyond its reach. Exports: silk, purple Foreign traffickers brought in doth, ivoiy, luxury spices, perfumes, and gems from the «6 Islamic world and slaves, furs, and Byzantine coin wax fromRussia . g S i i - ' punhuang- • ^^^^'sJ^^li^. solated from its northern INDIAN vi I neighbors by high mountain ranges, India had been linked by ; KINGDOMS • maritime routes toAfrica , the " Population: 50 million ^J^6^8??^^^ mm•^uninn - ui^H.rf—, ^ Indonesia for several centuries; ; SSSSSL ^icesfrom^^^in^ Mmuiwswwuwm ••^ •V>>^J,' X V ^ ^ \ VVV^N X S V V S ^ V V v" V ^"^"7^^ 7 V V V V '\ \ V "\ V V V V - ; V^* ^^*1 V V * V N V > V S N * * - J* * / » / / J* * / J1' * ^ > ^ / ^ * * / ^ N > > J* > > S > J* )R CITIES IN iCD. lOOL 5. II HOLYROMAN hough not a great trading - j iJfSevendofthe toig^«^.ai social equality. rt -tY I 1) AnWIvaJa Population: 100,000 Qn modem-day India) The size and location of Anhitvada, like many Indian cities, were subject to 1 .changes In the path andflow o f nearby rivers. ^ : © Raxy Population: 100,000 M:^r^f( {Near modem-day Tehran) Known for Its superior .1 silks and ceramics, the city was described at the One as stunningly beautiful. J0£fa$:i:$ © Isjaton Popuiatioh: 100,000' "!.• •• (Ih modem-day Iran) Located high atop a fertile plain, Isfahan was a producer of grains and silk and was well known for its metalwoik and rugs, j (B Seville Population: 00,000 -^'W*. One of the wealthiest and most cultured cities in 4he Muslim state of Andalusia, Seville excelled in . .science and the arts. v::.;.^;v,^: ^c? I (D Dali Popuiatibn: 00,000 ' >Sj modern-day China) Dali peaked In 986, but I the fine marble that was widely sought for buOdings ;and sculptures is stlU quarriedtorn today. "lOVUT Population: 00^00 . was the capital of hidla's Chola dynasty. ,,1 King Raiaraja built a massive stone temple . f woTOO«WH»:myiiguouwo>«^i.upuvw.wj^Hw •A \' monomPHic tcuxnM now jtcou Mim/oa^ 00K UMOMUHW «roOWn)CK F000; AO*M WOOHT/OOIBB I THE YEAR 1000 Getting there first Vikings were kings of exploration BY TIM ZlMMERMANN he scattered ruins that can be found near L'Anse aux Meadows on New foundland's northern tip-three hous T ing clusters and a slag-filled forge- are modest. But the silent stones, dating back 1,000 years, are bold in their impli cations. For they provide indisputable proof that around 500 years before Colum bus stumbled upon the West Indies, Viking explorers had already pioneered a route from Europe to North America. The maritime world of A.D. 1000 did not want for audacity, feats of seamanship, or nautical sophistication. "It's a muddy world Viking ships like this one plundered European ports and sailed as far as North America. because it is often difficult to distinguish lore from reality," says Daniel Finamore, worthy, and it didn't capsize easily." curator of maritime art and history at the^ Viking navigation often relied more Peabody Museum in Salem, Mass. Yet as Cana- on serendipity than on science. (Green the millennium approached. Viking raiders ^"^Sffl^i^tiieretiehuilds "Leifs- land was also discovered by accident.) It had already descended upon Europe in buc^^^fftG^^^^ifim record was virtually instrument free and used the their graceful and deadly "langskips," plant ed EaftJpSH ~SSW&iietit: inftorth'America. positions of the sun and stars to estimate ing Norse culture and skills deep into Eng Tall ship tales. It might be hard to believe heading and latitude. Tellingly, however, land, Ireland, and France. the glorious claims of the Viking sagas were there is an explicit Norse term—"hafvilla"— Arab and Persian sailors in their dhows, it not for those weather-wracked ruins at to describe being totally lost as a result and Chinese merchants in their junks, had L'Anse aux Meadows (which many ar of fog or overcast skies. long since crisscrossed the Indian Ocean chaeologists believe to be Leifsbudir). But The Norsemen had the skills and and Asian seas with watery trade routes by the late 10th century, Norse seaman courage to reach North America, but they that dwarfed the fabled Silk Road. And in ship and shipbuilding skills had already could not sustain a presence. A few ex the Pacific, the millennium's greatest voy led to a network of settlements and sea peditions followed Leif to Vinland, but sup agers, the Polynesians, were routinely trav routes across the North Atlantic from the ply routes from Greenland were tenu eling thousands of miles with pinpoint nav Baltic to Greenland. Whether trading or ous, and Norse settlers also ran afoul of igation that is stunning in its precocity. exploring. Viking seamen sailed these North America's natives (whom they rude Still, it is hard to resist what Oxford his routes in the venerable "halfskip" or "knarr." ly dubbed "skraelings," or "ugly people"). torian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto has Shorter, broader, and deeper than the more Eventually, even the climate turned against called "the first millennium's best error." famous longship, the sturdy knarr was char them, as unusually warm average tem The accidental discovery ofNorth Amer acterized by a beautifully rounded bow and peratures in the northern hemisphere be ica, as set down in Viking "sagas," first a much greater cargo capacity. "It was just tween A.D. 1000 and 1200 started to drop. penned in the late 12th century, begins with a wonderful boat for its time," says Mag Norse exploration ofNorth America ap the loyal Bjarai Heijfulsson, who is deter nus Magnusson, a Viking scholar and trans pears to have been abandoned in the 11th mined to spend the winter with his father lator of sagas. "The knarr was very sea- century, and, by the 14th, even the Green in Greenland. Confounded by fog, he sails land settlement was withering ever westward until he sees a succession toward extinction. Ericson and of unfamiliar lands (probably Newfound THE MARITIME WORLD of about Heijfulsson may have become land, Labrador, and Baffin Island). Being footnotes to history. But it is a an exceedingly practical Viking, Heijfulsson A.D. 1000 did not want for testament to Viking seafaring presses on without landing (after all, it prowess that it was not until clearly wasn't Greenland) until he finally ar audacity, feats of seamanship, 1497 that a European—John rives at his father's settlement But his wan Cabot—explored those North derings excite the interest of Leif Ericson, or nautical sophistication. American shores again. • U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT. AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 71 THE YEAR 1000 72 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 16 / AUGUST 23,1999 MflOHKMOMn-CCm http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-...ma.eop.gov.us/1999/11/15/29.text. 1 THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary (Ankara, Turkey) . For Immediate Release Q^ovember 15, 1999 ^ REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT STATE DINNER Presidential Palace Ankara, Turkey 9:05 P.M. (L) THE PRESIDENT: President and Mrs. Demirel, Prime Minister and Mrs. Ecevit, to the government coalition partners, the other parliamentary leaders, Mr. Speaker, distinguished Turkish and American friends. Let me begin by thanking you, Mr. President, for the wonderful reception. I am delighted to see so many friends of our two countries at a moment of great optimism for our relationship, tempered by great sadness over the tragedy of the earthquakes you have suffered. President Eisenhower visited Turkey for a day in 1959. President Bush came for two days in 1991. I am proud to be spending five days here. Every visit seems to be twice as long as the last one. (Laughter and applause.) The good news is, our partnership is becoming more important every year. The bad news is, that if American Presidents keep this up, some day one of us will not be welcome here. (Laughter.) Our relations go back to the beginning of the United States. Not long after our country was created, a high official, the Grand Senor, at what was then Constantinople, saw a ship flying the American flag sail into the harbor. Because the flag with stars on it was considered to be a lucky sign, he predicted then that the people of Turkey and the United States would enjoy a long friendship. Now, his prophecy has come to pass. Our friendship deepened more than 50 years ago, when another ship sailed into the Bosphorus. I'm told that every citizen of your country then alive remembers the day the United States ship, Missouri, arrived to protect the peace in the uncertain days following World War II. That sent a message that America will always be there when our Turkish friends need us. Since then, it's been equally true that each time our common interests have been imperiled, the Turkish people have been there alongside America. This fall, another American vessel came to Turkey, under tragic circumstances, when the Kearsarge arrived to assist the victims of the earthquake. Now, Turkey again has suffered natural disaster. And again I send the same simple message: please, let us know what we can do to help, and we will be there. How we use our friendship will do much to define the century we are about to begin. What we do together will help to determine whether peace takes hold in the Middle East, whether tolerance takes root in the Balkans, whether young democracies succeed in the Caucasus. The way we do business together will help to determine whether our people have the jobs and reliable sources of energy necessary well into the new century. What we have stood for together, most recently in Kosovo, will help to decide whether the coming century is marked by democracy, 1 of 2 12/16/1999 2:52 PM 4 &otfj%hift My> 1/6 W erf Decembers, 1999 MEMORANDUM FOR TERRY EDMONDS FROM: LOWELL WEISS SUBJECT: STATE OF THE UNION IDEAS AND LANGUAGE The following riffs are a random assortment of ideas. They are in no particular order, and are mutually exclusive. If any are helpful, I'd be happy to develop them more fully. • Today, the pace of invention accelerates faster than ever before. Within my lifetime, I believe children will know cancer only as a constellation of stars and human beings will walk on Mars. But I believe that the great miracles of the new century will emerge not only from brilliant minds but also from compassionate hearts. Miracles like a world-class education for every child. Safe communities and quality health care for every family. A dignified retirement for every senior after a lifetime of hard work. Discrimination finally purged from our national soul. This is our time. This is our moment. • In 1900, as our nation entered a new century, not even the most far-sighted of our forebears could imagine the progress that Americans would produce. Some physicians predicted that a time would come when the threat of polio would not loom over every cradle. But no one foresaw a time when scientists would find, much less read or repair, the very blueprint of life. Some social reformers knew that America would someday end sweatshop labor and guarantee a minimum wage. But no one knew that in the 20th century America would swing open the doors of college to every child, of every background and every race. • Like this moment, the year 1900 was a time of great prosperity - the greatest America had ever seen. Our factories were sleepless, our industry was surging. Around the world, we could barely meet the demand for American iron and steel, bridges and tracks, cars and ships. We exported enough flour to feed all of Europe. We were traversing our territory with powerful locomotives and, in one of the greatest engineering feats of all time, creating a canal between the seas. Our army and navy were rapidly becoming the most powerful and modem in all the world. Jeffrey K. Nussbaum@OVP 12/14/99 06:01:39 PM Record Type: Record To: Lowell A. Weiss/WHO/EOP@EOP cc: Subject: thought you might like this... it bears the imprint of your tutelage... REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE SPALLATION NEURTRON SOURCE GROUNDBREAKING Wednesday, December 15, 1999 I'm delighted to be here today, to take part in a ground-breaking ceremony that means good new jobs for Tennessee, and stunning new advances for all of America. We meet today at the end of a century in which we have done more than ever before to harness the forces of science and technology - to build a stronger, healthier, and more prosperous future for American families. Look at any newspaper and you see it every day: we are on our way to the completion of the Human Genome Project, the first full genetic blueprint of the human body. We are on the verge of the first preventive cancer medicines. We will are creating the Next Generation of the Internet ~ 1,000 times as fast as the current one. And each new, isolated breakthrough ripples outward, reaching every area of science and discovery, making progress easier, faster, more dramatic. Nearly two years ago, I was proud to stand here and announce my proposal for a first-year payment to build the most advanced Spallation Neutron Source in the world - to open the floodgates of new research and innovation. Today, we're breaking ground on that pledge. Today, we're putting America on the path to reclaiming our leadership in the neutron scattering technology we invented. And today, we reach across party lines. For just as the neutron is neither positive nor negative, this project has been neither Democratic nor Republican. This is a bipartisan investment in America's future, and I want to thank the entire Oak Ridge community, as well as my Colleagues Governor Sundquist, Senators Frist and Thompson, and Congressmen Wamp, Duncan, and Gordon for their tireless work on it. As I mentioned, the SNS means good jobs for Tennessee ~ but it is not for Tennessee Withdrawal/Redaction Marker Clinton Library DOCUMENT NO. SUBJECT/TITLE DATE RESTRICTION AND TYPE 002. fax Robert Pinsky to Lowell Weiss. Re: State of the Union Passeges 12/17/99 P6/b(6) [partial] (7 pages) COLLECTION: Clinton Presidential Records SpeechwritinK Weiss, Lowell OA/Box Number: 17199 FOLDER TITLE: Millennium Toast 12/31/99 2006-0470-F wrl88 RESTRICTION CODES Presidential Records Act - |44 U.S.C. 2204(a)] Freedom of Information Act - [5 U.S.C. 552(b)| PI National Security Classified Information [(a)(1) of the PRA| b(l) National security classified information |(bXl) of the FOIA] P2 Relating to the appointment to Federal office 1(a)(2) of the PRA] b(2) Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of P3 Release would violate a Federal statute 1(a)(3) of the PRA] an agency 1(b)(2) of the FOIA] P4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or b(3) Release would violate a Federal statute 1(b)(3) of the FOIA) financial information 1(a)(4) of the PRA] b(4) Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial PS Release would disclose confidential advice between the President information [(b)(4) of the FOIA] and his advisors, or between such advisors |aX5) of the PRA] b(6) Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of P6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy |(bX6) of the FOIA| personal privacy 1(a)(6) of the PRA] b(7) Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement purposes [(bX?) of the FOIA] C. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed b(8) Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of of gift. financial institutions [(b)(8) of the FOIA| PRM. Personal record misfile defined in accordance with 44 U.S.C. b(9) Release would disclose geological or geophysical information 2201(3). concerning wells [(b)(9) of the FOIA) RR. Document will be reviewed upon request. 12/17/1999 08:30 ROBERT PINSKY PAGE 01 FAX TRANSMISSION ROBERT PINSKY rpinsky@mediaone. net To: Lowell Weiss Date: December 17, 1999 Fax #: (202) 456 5709 Pages: 7, including this cover sheet. From: Robert Pinsky Subject: State of the Union Passages This is much more of a constellation of paragraphs around a theme, than an overall structure. But maybe there is some language here that the President can use. I'm glad to have tried, and appreciate the invitation. 12/17/1999 00:30 ROBERT PINSKY PASE 02 Robert Pinsky 1 Generations of Americans before us, the heroes and heroines of war and hard times, of immigration and struggle, the ones to whom we owe a debt, dreamed of someday hanging up their shields and weapons—the armaments still shining in readiness but at rest, as proud reminders— and someday tum wholeheartedly to the instruments of peace. The victories and efforts of those past generations have provided us, now, with the moment of opportunity. The plough and olive are ready while the sword is bright. Let us not mismanage the harvest, but conduct it wisely, in respect for the past and for the good of those who come after us. In Joseph's parable to Pharaoh, the seven dreamed-of good years of rich harvest presented not a mere reward but a challenge: not an occasion for indulgence in luxury, but rather a responsibility—an occasion, in one word, for work. We who have inherited the inspiring military victory over fascism in the middle of the Twentieth Century, we who have witnessed the crumbling of communist tyrannies at the close of the century, must deal now directly with the great question that underlies those historical struggles: Will freedom thrive? The answer may lie less in how we deal with enemies than how we deal with ourselves. Will the new century bring individual people more dignity, greater security, enhanced well-being—or less? Will the power of twenty-first-century technology, bring people liberty or squash them into helplessness? Will a worldwide economy bring individuals respect, or doom them to anonymity? The answer is largely in the hands of us living Americans: will we choose to care for our common needs, or will we choose abject selfishness? Will we manage technology with consideration for human values, or will greed win out, so we allow our own inventions to trivialize us, isolate us and regiment us? - —7 jcz^-~~ 12/17/1999 00:30 llgggbf)^ ROBERT PINSKY PAGE 03 Robert Pinsky 2 That is up to us. It is up to us to decide: the cliche is that we have made the physical world smaller— will that accomplishment make our human lives larger? Will the devices of control protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or constrict them? In the world of linked, global systems, we need the old ideals to help us. There is no standing still. We will either become more free, and better able to care for one another—it is up to us— or we will surrender to meanness in our communal life, an inner tyranny that would echo the old defeated tyrannies of the past. Can freedom thrive? Yes it can, if we see to it. The Twentieth Century, for all its horrors, witnessed democracy defended in battle; human and civil rights extended; the needs of the elderly, the sick, the weak provided for at unprecedented levels. For that, we can thank those generations before us: besides their victories over dictatorship, they also attended to the aspirations of families; they preserved reverence for cultural differences and variety as a source of our strength; they fostered our system of public schools and universities—in these vital areas of daily life, the Americans who came before us have left us an abundance of civic wealth: a spiritual storehouse that, way beyond our material prosperity, endows us with this time of rich harvest. It is up to us, now, to fill the storehouses for the future. In this new era we must live up to those inherited values: what we enjoy today those before us labored, and endured hardship, and sometimes gave their lives. We need to pass on the goods, for the future: to stand still is to slide back: to enjoy the inherited gifts without contributing to them would be to squander the treasure and mismanage the harvest. We must be good stewards. 12/17/1999 60:38 [fglgafl ROBERT PINSKY PAGE 04 Robert Pinsky The scientific discoveries bom in the demands of war and cold war have supplied peacetime wonders, improving transportation, medicine, astonishing gadgets and vital means from the compact disc to the CAT scan, from gene-splicing to the digital computer. But depending how we use them, these wonders from the foundry of battle have potential for damage as well as good—damage to our freedom, to our communal spirit, to the civic processes of our political life, to our environment, even to life itself. To me, this double potential of technology, for good or bad, epitomizes the potential for good or bad in all our American material strengths in this new Century. We have inherited the mighty, magical instruments of transformation—and we must deal with them. Idealism is ready in our children—we must recognize and guide it. To me, this double potential of technology, for good or bad, epitomizes the potential for good or ill of all our American material strengths. We have inherited the mighty, all but magical instruments of transformation—and we must deal with them. Idealism is ready in our children—we must recognize it and guide it. The common saying is that the world is changing: indeed it is, and we must either use the changes to protect our ancient national treasures—our ideals— or succumb helplessly, and drifting without will, lose that inherited trove, embodied in our founding documents and the work of generations defending those spiritual goods. In meeting the challenge, government will have to rise above the trite formulas and stereotypes of mere electioneering. To deal with transformation, we must rely on our deepest convictions. The old, Eighteenth-Century ideals of the Bill of Rights are not less relevant in the Age of Information, but more so. Though in partisan debate about specific matters we will disagree, and argue strenuously, it is time to forge a new understanding of freedom and a new understanding of care. It is 12/17/1999 00:30 Robert Pinsky 4 time to agree that protecting freedom and caring for community must inform every decision. Policy must be rooted in respect for the dignity of people. In the coming century we need to maintain the American tradition of care for individuals, transcending differences-in taste, in religion, in ethnicity, in needs, in sexual preference, in opinion, in culture, in all the variety that has been a cornerstone of our greatest accomplishments. It is not enough merely to have preserved the victories of the Twentieth Century, as it is not enough merely to celebrate our oldest ideals, like trophies under glass—we must keep them bright with use. If we cannot use our brains and apply our ideas to preserve the victories of the past for the benefit of the future, then woe to us. If we cannot rise above partisan ambition and greed, if we cannot extend the double heritage of individual freedom and communal care, if we cannot harvest and store up the gifts of the past for the good of the future, then woe to us. This is, profoundly, a practical matter, though it is nothing less than a spiritual goal. Practically speaking, how do we refine our tax system so that every individual and family is treated fairly? Practically speaking, how can we educate our children to be not just skillful workers but judicious voters and fit public servants for a democracy? Practically speaking, how do we keep the avenues of communication open for truly free expression, for the dynamic variety that has characterized American culture? Practically speaking, how do we protect our civic spaces and schools from the technologies of weaponry that were undreamed-of in the age of the musket-whether the new technology of death is in the hands of disturbed children or of terrorists? How in these good-harvest years will we assure decent medical care for all? How do we apply the astonishing new medical technologies fairly and ethically? And practically speaking, how do we make sure that all Americans share in our abundance an abundance that otherwise will be stale, fruitless and even fearsome for all of us. 12/17/1999 00:30 IWMmwMM Robert Pinsky 5 We must decide, and our decision, in the Twenty-First Century, needs more than ever needs to be guided by ideals that hark back to the Eighteenth Century, to the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Our country is large and diverse, but Americans have found ways to hold it together in common purpose. Our unity has been imperfect, even fragmented and sometimes broken in strange ways: our historic racial division, which we are still trying to heal, is only the most egregious of these fragmentations—but when challenged Americans have always found ways to work together to defend our ideals. Our victories have been victories by all, and if we have authority in striving to resolve conflicts elsewhere in the world, that authority is not merely a matter of power, but a recognition that we are despite all our faults truly a democracy, truly believe in equality, and truly have taken up arms in search of victory, not conquest. We are not one folk or race, or religion, but many; but we are one nation, held together by our ideals and by the foregoers who conceived those ideals, and the foregoers who defended those ideals, as a precious seed-stock, for us. If the members of Congress, and all of us who hold office, find ways to formulate laws and policies guided by our real needs and our oldest principles, we can defend the victories of the century before. If all Americans approach our civic life in the generous, optimistic spirit of our heritage, we can overcome the internal enemies of cynicism and despair. And if young Americans, those who are still students, bring their skills and energy to the patriotic work of making our country more fair in practice, more generous in care, more free and tolerant in custom, then we can truly make a great harvest—in the storehouse of 12/17/1999 08:30 ^P^M^^^ MJBtKI riN^r -. Robert Pinsky 6 the future, we can fulfill the dreams of our ancestral heroines and heroes. As we benefit from the gifts and sacrifices of the past, let us sacrifice some of our partisan advantage to serve our country, sacrifice some of our personal gain to serve others, sacrifice narrow self-interest to serve a greater good. Let the old dream of the seven good years muster our imaginations toward a hundred. NO.486 P.l DEC.23.1999 2:12PM EDITORS OFFICE National Gallery of Art Washington. D.C. 20S65 FACSIMILE MESSAGE TO; Name Company Fax No. Phone No. FROM: Name: Fax No.: 202.408.8530 Phone No.: The followinig transmissiotransn>i§sipnn consists . page(s), including this leader. Please call ^ft^fT^-Lgta PS? if you do not receive the correct numbenumberi of pages. DEC.23.1999 2:12PM EDITORS OFFICE NO.486 P.2 ON MODfRN AMfRICAN AR m Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers P.3 DEC.23.1999 2= 12PM jjEDITORS OFFICE NO.486 s in Northern Romantic landscape le, tonic assaults of Uchtensteln's of Courbet's Realism or Seurat's */een the lessons learned from art me, I now see, a recurrent theme fize that art keeps living in both AT IS AMflRICAN ABOUI AMERICAN ARI? s to be how often new attitudes cs of historic art, so that the wildly ively forgotteti painter like Tack, jucdons may give us unexpected cdon of fony years of looking at iere are no absolute truths In the hat was once a burning question in ihe 1930s and 1940s—"What is American about j, Johns, and Stella seem almost American art?"—is net asked or answered very often in these days of airport interna ways 1 perceived them in later W tionalism, when McDonald's can open in Moscow, maple syrup can turn up on the break -s to grapple with what was then fast table of a hotel in Kyotd, and another Disneyland is scheduled to open northeast of Paris. f first encounters. It Is clear that '""That old question, In fact, 4ems to have had to do with the cultural inferiority complexes of - I antholoey will conHrm my belief the Roosevelt era, when it \tas clear to almost everybody that the best art of the century was ed prejudices and hierarchies to coming from across the Atlantic and landing at the Museum of Modem Art and that the native product, if obviously not the equal of Matisse, Picasso, and Mondrian, might be defended by vhich this book was transformed claiming that It had distinctive qualities that could only be found on these shores and that de. The editorial chores of sifting ought to be cherished and preserved against the aesthetic onslaught from alien territories. But id of purting what remained into with what was to be called in the title of Irving Sandler's important study of Abstract Expres- 5d by Barbara Burn. They were Sionism The THumph o/Ariierican Painrintr.tibpcnpe pqually rbar rhar Ameriran artists in might have been the stresses of ^ uflilt-Rpnyyelt^ rjiiTnniI'vtsly emerged as the torchbearersof not only theTjestiriiJ own the more than two hundred most inveptive of rnqtiprn arc but also of an art that was universal in character, an airso sur- ocher major task, and this was arisingly cpsmic In scope fhar i.wnw nationalism seemed piddling. Not only had the once mifer Bright, who magically re- uneven competition between European and American art apparently and unexpectedly been - the four winds. Last and hardly won by the 1950s, but it had been won on so grandiosely abstract a level that the search for Jaunting project of putting into an American identity seemed an embarrassing memory of a parochial past. om 1954 to the present. It was a b Nevertheless, that heroic myth, In which a provincial grass-roots patriotism is con so productively about preserving quered by a language of international breadth that can be understood around the planet, Is, like most myths, both xrue and false. If it Is true that the pictorial worlds of Pollock or Still Robert Rosenblum seemed to leap from American earth to timeless nature and emotions, it is also true that New York, March 1999 when such paintings were ficst seen In Europe in the 1950s, foreign critics often commented upon what they felt were peculiarly American qualities—a more expansive sense of scale consonant with the vastness of the American continent-, a toughness and crudity of paint han dling that spoke of traditions less suave and hedonistic than those familiar to French painting; a rejection,eithe r through intention or Incompetence, of the more harmonious composi tional conventions common to European painting. Although it was and still is dlfRcult to articulate intuitions about why we feel that something, whether it be an oil painting, the taste of butter, or the cut of a suit, belongs to one country and not another, such efforts to charac terize these responses suggest that che question of national character is a very real one. In HflAI l> ANilAllfLO liOUUI A ill I r. I i. A II AIM tail, just in rerais of ordiniry experience, even in these days at nonstop tourism with infer bilion at the Society of Artists in 1766, ic became not only the first American painting to be nalionaJized hotels, fasl-Jood chains, and shopping centers, we know thai when we cross a seen in Europe, but a painling LVf some British aitists thought lo be a work by one of their border Crom one country Lo mother, our antennae are aleit to eKacily those differences that own up-and-corning masters, Joseph Wrigfit of Derby. Copley's almost exact comemporcrv would distinguish, say, Belgium horn Holland or Spain from Portugal. Even in North Amer Wright of Derby's portraits, usually ignored by Americanists seeling the pure American uuth. ica, who has not crossed (he Canadian border without discerning that something, however in Copley, are in fact in every way comparable to Copley's, look allkes that also refuel a tough CL subtle, has changed? And (hough we would be veiy hard put to define that change In words new mld-elghteenlh-century breed of well-heeled and hardworking sitiets and their wives an outsider might understand, we would stilt know the experience to be true. But bowever and children, a sodal type that grew rapidly in the Midlands as In the colonies and that warned distinctive, the smallest, not to mention the largest, of nations still belong Lo coromunilies of the malerial facts of their lives to be pain ted as If they could be touched, grasped, and bought. internatioiul experience, sharing a broad range of space-time coordinates we might lump Both Copley and Wright of Derby can be seen as brilliant provincial painters in a new Anglo together under the vague rubric of Western culture. Ameilcan world of commerce and industry, standing in a similar relationship to the more arti So it is that the story of more than three centuries of American painting can be read ficial and tradition-bound styles of the capital, which, as in Sir Joshua Reynolds's poruaits. in varying ways. We miy concentrate on the American accent of the Jndrvidual voices, or we may try lo hear each voice In the coniext of an international chorus whose whole is more than the sum of the pans. ChancterislicaUy, American museums, at least when dealing with art before 1945, lend lo segiegate American art bom its European counterparts, keeping it to its own galleries, curators, and publications. Europe Is elsewhere when we visit, say, the Whitney Museum of American Ail in New York, the Nadona] Museum of American Art in Washington, the Terra Museum of American Ail in Chicago, or the Butlex Institute of Amer lean Art in Youngjtown, Ohio; and i f we go to the Oakland Museum, we may even think that California has Its own radianl iradilion as many light-years away from New Yorit as it Is from Paris or London. But Ihere are also other ways of shufUJng Oils familiardeck . For otaraple, at the Spencer Museum in (he University ot Kansas, American art Js completely Integrated with its European siblings, so that what emerges is less the particular flavor of the American Had! lion than a United Nalions history of Western art In which American artists join forces with their transatlantic colleagues in the experience ol Ihring in, say, 1790 or 1840 or 1890. Such an appioach, in keeping with loday"* world of Jei travel, tends to narrow lather than to wWen the Atlantic Ocean, making American achievements belong more to a com munal rather than a local history. A telling case in point here concerns the two painters who I. are generally considered the founding fathers of the American tradition In painting: John Sin folui Sn£eior. ( gleton Copley and Benjamin West, both bom, conveniently for this venerable genealogical Watson ind ibe table, In the same year, 1738. As (or Copley, it has long been i convention to divide the 1778 i coune ol his life and art into two sharply divided, even antagonistic, parts. Act I took place I—I S In colonial Amelia, concluding in 1774, two years before the Revolution, when he sailed were generally more suitable to dyed-Jn-the-wool arislocrais than to the growing new world fiom New England to Old England, never lo return lo his birthplace; Act II took.place In the of self-made men and women. Moreover, Copley's lough, foursquare Bostonian poinaits. center of the Anglo-Ameilcan empire, London, where Copley lived out his long life as a nour with their hard-edged polished tables and sharp-focus still liles, may even find aJfinities on the ishing artist in the middle of a sophisticated art world. Those who would nurtme the values Continent. Many ol David's own portraits of friends and family, painted both before and after of America versus ihose ol Europe tend to make a case lor the probity and ihe superiority of the Revolution, reveal a like insistence on the palpable facts of faces, clothing, and things CM the portraits Copley painted in Boston, often implying that In London his art was gradually unpolluted by arty conventions thai falsified the outh of the materia] world. Seen in such diluted and, by unplicaUon, corrupled by association with standards loieign to his roots. lights, Copleys archetypal Americanism In his Bostonian portraits can also be interpreted as cn Indeed, some early writers on American painting even Infer that an act of aesthetic as well as one more manifestation of a new international style that mirrored deep social changes on the (Tl patriotic treason was involved in Copley^ switch of allegiance. But (his simple parable is far eve of revolutions that were gradual and sudden. more complex and demands International angles of vision. When Copley's 1765 portrait of But Copleyfc pictorial output in London is no less bluiry when il comes to national a his half-broiher Henry Pelham, Boywth a Squirrel, was sent to London from Boston loreihi- classifications. Because Watson and the Shark [fig, 1) has always been considered a lembook o 112 W H A I 1) AAIKIIAII nvi :lasslc of American painting, one lends lo foigel that its hero and patron. Brook Watson, was, iftei all, a Londoner who com missioned the picture for a London audience at the Royal Acad emy exhibition of 1778. And the success of this leporlorial canvas, with its news-cameia clax- of horrific detail, would be ampliBed by Copley In the next decade with his fancier account of the on-the spot drama of another Englishman, Major Francis Pelrson, giving his life for his country on the island of Jersey, Bui il these paintings are steeped in Biltish history vg d culluie, they also have American reveiberadons. Watson and the Shark has been con- ^nclngly interpreted as, among other things, a contemporary allegory of American indepen- gince; and Major Peirson's more rheiortcat agonies provided the formula tor many American history painters, especially John Trumbull, who would patriotically document the wars of independence for posterity. As for West, allhougii he, too, Is worshiped as an American ancestrai figure, it should be recalled that he got out of the colonies even earlier and, in artistic terms, far more prema turely than Copley, sailing In 1700 from Philadelphia to Livomo before settling in 1763 in what he called "the mother country." A resident of London for the remaining fifty seven years of his life, West loomed so large in the British art establishment that he not only could paint the king and queen, his devoted patrons, but could also become, after Reynolds's death in 1792, the president of the Royal Academy itself. It would be hard to be more British. On the other hand, even if his ambitions could quickly rise to the classical mythologies or bibli cal ghost stories that v/ere growingy fashionable In the Bri tish milieu of the 1760s and 1770s, he shrewdly hawked the wares of his American origin, recording exotic Indians and faraway North American battles, features prominent In his famous Death of General Wolfe (fig, 2), which probably had as much issue in Britain and in the circle of David as il did among Wesfs 3. own American students. As for Indians, even il they seemed to be one of West's trademarks Cilieil Stuart. jjand selling points, they were also painted, after all, by Wright of Derby, not lo mention many The SScMtt tfonria o/WiUiim 'nan;.. u 1782 olher British and French artists of the period. Indeed, such international exchanges of North American Indian lore continued well into the nineteenth cenlury, when, for example. George CjlJin,,s'"fndlan GiUeTy," with Its poitraits of Indians and Wild West hunting scenes, was displayed to the London ol Queen Vjctorla and the Paris of Xing Louis Philippe. Again and again, what might be viewed as something singularly American often turns out lo be part of an Internatjonal network. Gilbert Stuarts picture of a young Scotsman, William Grant, on Ice skates (fig. 3), a surprising porirait inspired by an adventure boih irtisi and sitter had had on ihe thin and melting ice of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, may seem like a one-shot imagje of daring candor that only an unpretenlfous Yankee would have ihe audac ity to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1782; but in fact, there are at least two other !aie- elgtiteentb-century portraits oi genllemen on Ice skates—one by the Scotsman Sir Henry Raeburnj the other by the Frenchman Piene Delafontaine—which, together v/iih Swan's. 2. would compose a beguiling intematlonal trio. BHiJamlD West, Even Lumlnism, that American style and viewpoint most often singled out as oftering The Deitti of Ceneui Wolfe, an authentic and unique contribution to nineteenth-century painting, though it was only bap- 1770 Uzed In I9S4, a century after it flourished, is belter served when seen as pan oi a phenome- p KH4f IS UIRi'iAH UOUI A ft f R K A M UI' Jn the same expauiale category, (here is John Singer Sargem. v.'rose comusn; national identity made it possible for him to have, within receni memo:v. retrospecir^e e>:'r:- bitions al both the Naiional Portrait Gallery in London and the Whi'.ney Museum, ol Amen can Ail In New York. To thicken this international stew, Sargent, who was actuali;- born CL abroad. In Florence, though of American parents, traveled widely on the Continent: s:ud:ed with a French master; Carolus-Duian; exhibiled in. among other an czpials. New Yorn. Paris, Brussels, London; frequented and painted the internaiiorai let set of his div. who mrglv. be found anywhere from Majorca to Blenheim Palace. And il he was grand eno'-gt -.o ?cm; Ihe duke of Marlborough's family, he was also esteemed enough in democraitc Anertca :o ce 4. commissioned m do murals for the Boston Public Librin/ Yet if we would ucdensiand Ls a::. Martin Johnson Hade COJSIJI Scene wirfi v/e would do far belter to look not lo America, but to an imernaiional style of aro jnd 1O00. Sinking Sfiip, whose pictorial and social luxuries were also reflected in the equally cosmopofcan work of 1863 artists such as the Italian Giovanni Boldim, the Spaniard Joaquin Sorolla. the Frer.cr.mzr Jacques-Emlle Blanche, and OK Swede Anders Zorn. non familiar w many North European landscape piinters. To be sure, the eerie, all-engulfing Slill, even gran ling the obvious iniernaiionaUstn of so many arJsis who hold ?.rm light that dominates the silent, unpopulated landscapes of Martin Johnson Heade (flg. 4) or places in American biographical dictionaries, there is always che nagging queiiior. o; -.vheifce: Fllz Hugh Lane may evoke peculiarly American myths and experiences of an awesomely thelr art does not somehow disclose a distinctively Amencan inflection that would single I; vast, primeval terrain in which something akin to God casts itnmaleilal rays upon a land of oul from a multinational crowd. The question Is relatively easy to answer in the case of such blessed purity and innocence; but such a vision of what has been called "natural supematu- American classics as Winstow Homer and Thomas Eakins. Both ol Ihem had e: recalls, in Its tonic breeze and glare, the Channel coast scenes ol vacationers painled by Monet and Boudln In the same decade. But, Ihds said, we also Intuit a very diBerem mood In which even such a scene ol overt pleasure and camaraderie reveals a bate and lonely emotional skele ton. The two tashlon-plate ladles In the foreground, each with a paiasol, are aligned in tandem but appear as strangely isolated from each other as the lone male Jigure on the cabin porch sur rounded by drying Unens; and the relationship of these figures to this place on the American continent, which futs out into the tmmensity of (he ocean, Is almost that oflntruders upon a still uninviting and unpopulated land. It Is an experience that runs counter to (he French sense oflayered sodal history in a lemlory that has long been inhabited and civilized. Moreover, the white intensity of the sunllghl, rather than pulverizing and fusing figuies and landscape, pro duces quite the opposite effect, slaichlng clothing, hardening earth and grass, clarifying simple architectural shapes pitted against the rawness of nature. Looked at from an American rather than a European angle of vision, the feeling here Is less akin (o Monet than It is to Edward Hop per, whose figures,whethe r In city or country, similarly seem (o intrude upon a bleak envi ronment of blanching light and primitive geometric order. As For Eakins, this dour mood ol lonely human presences In an environment that teaches oul to nowhere is equally apparent, especially in the company of French parallels. His 1873 painting of the Blglen brothers In a scull on the Schuylkill River reveals In unexpected ways Eakins's training with G&fime, who constructed many exotic boating scenes on the Nile with (he same perspecttval precision and pholographic detafl that characterize the quasl- scienliflc approach of Eakins to the facts of Ihe seen world. But the American painter has turned these Orientalist trawelogues into a scene of inwardness and solemnity in which each 4. of the two scullers, brothers though tbey are, seems alone and in which the river and the far Tbomas Eakins, bank suggest such vast expanses of water and land (hat the few people we see recall early The Corxtn Singer, settlers on unfamiliar soil. Inevitably, Eakins's boating scenes (see fig. 158) echo the many isn French paintings of the 1870s and 1880s (hat depict spottiiy dressed men and women tow ing on the Seine; but here, too, the Parisian mood of cheerful, breezy conviviality on a shemius, Thomas Dewing, and, above all, Albert Pinkham Ryder (fig. 7)—could be put In thi: a bustling waterway underlines the austere silence of Eakins* American view. No less telling is pan-European .melting pot. All Ihese artists looked so far toward that the visible, palpahlt M Eakins's Concert S/nger(5g. 6], in which, despite the obvious clues that this is a live perfor world was gradually replaced by wispy dreams of longing and fevered imagination, frequemh mance before a conductor and an audience, we feel that the contralto, Miss Weda Cook, is Inspired, as in the more empirical approach of Eakins, by music, whether the long-ago sound; totally alone, lost In a dark and empty space and absorbed in the private reverie inspired by of a lute in a painting byDewingoilhe surging new sounds of Wagnert RingCycleinapainl the aria she sings horn Mendelssohn's Elijah. It Is tempting to discern In litis mood and Image ing by Ryder. It was the Wnd of search that could lead eventually to the mysteries of pun something that speaks with an unmistakably American voice of a kind that became almost a chronullc abstraction, a goal theoretically justified by analogies with music and one adalnec s trademark In Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World. In Paris on the eve of the Flisl World War by what was again an inlemationaf community o- SHU, such black and-whlte distinctions between America and Europe can always be aitists that, In addition to the Czech Kupka and the Frenchman Delaunay, included twe turned Into shades of gray, especially when one recalls, while thinking ol Eakins, how the Americans, Stanton Macdonald-WrighL and Moig^n Russell, who, in the name of Synchio- in psychological ambience of meditation and withdrawal, often prompted by music, gradually mism, would also try to hear the music ol the spheies as generated by their fantasies of free- permeated later nineteenth-century European painting as well, a stop on the way to that uni Qoating prismatic color. versal domain of ft all, visionary fantasies most conveniently categorized as SymboUsm. Amer But such adventures into the most daring reaches of modernism, often learned leans, loo, contributed to this ubiquitous world of twilight reverie that cast an eerie spell over directly at their European sources, could also be translated into a self-consdously Americar. Western art at the tum ol the century; and It has recently became dearer that what used lo idiom by the choice ol specifically American icons of modernity. Whether ihe New York sub be thought of as a weird cluster of downright eccentric American artists thai kept popping up way's rush hour, as evoked by Max Weber, or NewYodrt answer to the Eiffel Tower, the is the century drew to a close—Elihu Vedder, Ralph Blakelock, Arthur Davies. Louis Eif- Brooklyn Bridge, as praised again and again in works by John Marin and Joseph Stella, it was hi Q collection of contemporary art in London, v/e would be hard put to understand H without recalling the maiine paintings ol Winslow Homer in which the dramas of American nature and American passions are played againsl each other Like American people. American an lives both at home and abroad. CD "What Is American about American Art?" Published as the introduction to Donald Coddard, CL Amencan Painling (New York: Hugh Lauler Levin Associates. ITO01, pp. 10-15. GD d z: 7. Albeit Plnkhaoi HytfcQ Toilas o/the Sea, 1880-84 New Yolk's urban themes thatoflea inspired a Machine Age dynamism, which asserted how the most vital energies of the new century were to he found on new American soil. Small wonder that two Fiench masters of mechanical fantasy, Duchamp and Picatia, thrived In New York and, for once, helped to form on the American rather than the European side of the Atlantic a cosmopolitan group of artists that could set on fire the wildest Imaginalions of u Americans like Man Ray or John Covert- u Such alliances preview the accelerating speed of transatlantic dialogues in our own century, when we may often think that the world has become a space-time blur in which the nonstop traffic of art and people Instantly homogenizes everything In collections, publica tions, and exhibitions that can mix David Salle and Anselm Kiefer, Jennifer BartleU and i- Francesco Clemenle. Indeed, so inlematJonal has art become In the late twentieth century M that many admirers of, say, Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol hardly notice that the choice of the s American Qag or a Campbell's soup can Is as willfully American a subject as was, say, Grant Wood's choice of the Daughters of the American Revolution or Albert Blerstadfs of the Rocky z: CL Mountains. Contemporary sophistication, In fact, lends to Ignore the old-fashioned question in with which we began, "What Js American about Ameiican art?" Yet Americans belong not only lo Ihe world but to their own singular traditions and experiences. When v/e look at a painting by Rothko, we may well be reminded of many European m asters, horn Turner to the late Monet, but we also sense indigenous roots whose ancestry might take us not only to the realm of American Lumlnism bu t lo such oddball visions of American eternity as provided in EUbu Vedder's Memoiy (see 6g. 68}. And when we look at Eric Flschft The OldMani m Boat and the Old Man's Dog, even though the painting Ends its home In an International (NJ Q Draft 12/22/99 4:40pm Lowell Weiss PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON TOAST REMARKS DURING MILLENNIUM "CREATORS DINNER" THE WHITE HOUSE December 31,1999 Ladies and gentleman, good evening. And welcome to the White House. Tonight, I rise to offer three brief toasts. The first is to you. It is truly an honor to tum this page in history with all of you - for you have contributed so indelibly to the narrative of this American Century. The second toast is to my wife - for it is she who has inspired the nation to honor our past and imagine our future as we welcome the new millennium. Over the past two years leading up to this unforgettable night, no one has done more to imbue this milestone with national purpose - and I am deeply grateful. The third toast is the most daunting - for I am called upon to do justice to a thousand years of history in four minutes ... during dessert. In the State of the Union, I get a whole hour to talk about a single year. Even then, I always run long. Tonight, we are rising as a nation to the mountaintop of the millennium. Behind us we can see the great expanses of the American experience. Before us lie vast frontiers of possibility yet to explore. This is a wonderful vantage point for our nation - and a remarkable time to be alive. We are ending this 1,000 year sweep of history at a moment of soaring optimism. Never before has America had the combination of economic prosperity, social progress, and national self- confidence, with the absence of internal crisis or an external threat. Never before have we had such a blessed opportunity to build that "more perfect union'Vof our founders dreamsy j , J • r ^^S^- When our childrep^children look back on the century we leave tonight they will see i that this time of unlimited promise was not preordained. They will see tlmfjj was earned - by ^^Ay // men and women who iiid not merely celebrate our nation's oldest ideals/but kept them bright ^ju^* L*/ with use.v * Ui-iv^ ''uAjlus. vS -JA ^gfTwHTsee that we earned this moment through thdf riumph of freedom. From the beachheads of Normandy to the buses of Montgomery, patriots from all walks oflife have risen to advance the heroic march of human liberty. They will see that we earned this momenJJhrOugh the triumph of discovery. At the outset of the century, not even the most far^Med of our forebears could have predicted all the miracles of science that have emerged frpm-^ui^ab*: Antibiotics and vaccines, silicon chips and the Internet, microscopes that poor inteahe infinitesimal, telescopes that seap the infinite, the soon-to-be-complete blueprint for life itself ^ ^ L—^>c- j. ,fa eh^****-- And they will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of creativity. For what was true of the ancient civilizations is just as true today: National power may spring from economic and military might, but national greatness emanates from ennobling contributions to the life of the mind and the body of art. In this century, our artists of the page and canvas, stage ten their most significant and genuinely uupiring work. Traditional capitalism, they argue, has always neg lected to assign monetary value to its largest stock of capital—namely, the natural resources and ecosystem services that make possible all economic activity, and all life. Natural capitalism, in contrast, takes a proper accounting of these costs. As the first step toward a solution to environmental loss, it advocates resource productivity—doing more with less, wringing up to a hundred times as much benefit from each unit of energy or material consumed. Natural capitalism also redesigns industry on biological models that result in rero waste, shifts the economy from the episodic acqui- ^rl^^'l^jipftMii.to the continual flow of value and : ttmeet and prudently invests in sustaining and — —-r, stores of natural capital. Drawing upoup< n sound economic logic, intelligent tech nologies, and the best of contemporary design, Natural / Capitolum presents a business strategy that is both ^|/^«^3bj^ii»4 necessary. The companies that practice it vdlliTot'^nly take a leading position in addressing some vbf oujr most'profound economic and social problems, * decisive competitive advantage through the -Wor ' -—snt pf resonrces, money, and people. ^M^A>;a founder of "-^—-ijingjrigg^ jjinji the author ; and PBS series vfi ta Business. His most recent > ~ ilo& of Commerce. j^E08|f Jlocky:^ . g .« J^te^normrofit; >j-.' S&x- _^y of ^e worid's top awards. itimciiTtiuitstitaa i>f > \ ?jo«Ufilr«iijiisi«i/fiotosia ;.•;>:y: tioi tioTecuritt (Tin uvi ISMHII, < v^i »otiT •Mnui^stni^Annuti^-:;^?-;*.'^..'': • tot M>r«w.Twiesia«ii.cea" 4^ Draft 12/22/99 11:30am Lowell Weiss PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON TOAST REMARKS DURING MILLENNIUM "CREATORS DINNER" THE WHITE HOUSE December 31,1999 Ladies and gentleman, good evening. And welcome to the White House. Tonight, I rise to offer three brief toasts. The first is to you. It is truly an honor to tum this page in history with all of you - for you have contributed so indelibly to the narrative of this American Century. The second toast is to my wife - for it is she who has inspired the nation to honor our past and imagine our future as we welcome the new millennium. Over the past two years leading up to this unforgettable night, no one has done more to imbue this milestone with national purpose - and I am deeply grateful. *€> The third toast is the most daunting - for I am called upon to do justice to a thousand years in four minutes or- In the State of the Union, thejLgbi£J»5"a whole hour to talk about a single year. Even then, I always run long. 1" J**- Tonight, we are rising as a nation to the mountaintop of the millennium. Behind us we can see the great expanses of the American experience. Before us lie vast frontiers of possibility yet to explore. This is a wonderful vantage point for our nation - and a remarkable time to be alive. We are ending this 1,000 year sweep of history at a moment of soaring optimism. Never before has America had the combination of economic prosperity, social progress, and national self- confidence, with the absence of internal crisis or an external threat. Never before have we had such a blessed opportunity to build that "more perfect union" of our founder^reams. When our children's children look back on the century we leave tonight, they will see that this time of unlimited promise was not preordained. They will see that it was earned - by men and women who did not merely celebrate our nation's oldest ideals, like trophies under glass, but kept them bright with use. They will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of freedom. From the beachheads of Normandy to the buses of Montgomery, patriots from all walks oflife have risen peroifyaH^ to advance the march of human liberty. They will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of discovery. At the outset of the century, not even the most far-sighted of our forebears could have predicted all the miracles of science that have emerged from our labs: Antibiotics and vaccines, silicon cjiips and the Internet, telescopes that cair'peer into the origins of our universe, ti^oS^to-^cofflptete blueprint for life itself. And they will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of creativity. For what was true of the ancient civilizations is just as true today: National power may spring from ^ economic and military might, but national greatness emanates from ennobling contributions to the life of the mind and the body of art. In this century, our artists of the page and canvas, stage Draft 12/22/99 3:15pm JeffShesol PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON REMARKS AT MILLENNIUM GALA THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL December 31,1999 Tonight we celebrate two centuries. We celebrate the past century - and write an ending to a remarkable story. We celebrate the new century - and mark a new beginning that is now minutes away. Tonight, from the summit of this American century, we survey the great sweep of our history. We marvel at what has changed in the past hundred years, and imagine what will change in the next hundred - even in the next thousand. Americans do not fear change; we welcome it, we embrace it, we create it. Yet on this night I am struck less by what has changed than by what endures: our freedom, our faith, our dedication to the dreams of our Founders. These are timeless things. And these have been the great themes of our times - freedom's advance across our own land, from the lunch counters to the schoolhouse doors to the corridors of power; freedom's slow but steady march around the world, as more people, in more nations, secure the blessings of liberty. Freedom's triumph over tyranny and injustice does not mean our work is done. As the calendar carries us ever forward from the birth of our nation, let us pledge that each year brings us closer to our founding principles. Let us pledge that the new millennium brings, in the words of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, "a new birth of freedom." And let us finally fulfill the dream of another great American, Dr. Martin Luther King, who stood and spoke on these steps exactly one century after Gettysburg. As we ring in this new year, this new century, this new millennium, let us join hands and say - in the words of Dr. King, in the words of the old American hymnal - "Let freedomring! " 12/22/99 2 p.m. Orzulak PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON REMARKS TO THE MILLENNIUM AROUND THE WORLD CELEBRATION INTERNATIONAL TRADE CENTER, RONALD REAGAN BUILDING WASHINGTON, DC DECEMBER 31, 1999 nly three generations of Americans have been privileged to help lead this world into a new century. One hundred years ago, President William McKinley welcomed the 20th Century without giving a single major speech to the American people. The reason was a practical one - radio and television hadn't been invented yet, so there was no way for him to project his voice across space and time. It is one sign of how far we have come that my voice right now is being projected via satellite to millions of people worldwide./Although 4hcrc may be muie than a few— •0 who preferifid-thc cilorfocT)— We have never known as much about each other as we do today. Nations that began this century as unfamiliar places on far-away maps are, for many of us, one press of a remote control or one click of a mouse away. We no longer have the option of not knowing about one another. It means we share a special responsibility to act on that knowledge, and to work together to create a more hopeful future^or centuries, the season we now celebrate has been set aside tojwish one another "peace on earth and goodwill toward everyone." ^This world has never had a better _ j opportunity to tum that holiday wish into a reality. TodayVwe must seize that opportunity, not just to imagine a better future, but to create a better world for all humanity. Let that be at least one resolution for the new Millennium that we do not break. Two thousand years ago, the calendar that turns at midnight began with a flock of shepherds, the birth of a child, and a single light in the sky. But as we meet today in this grand International Center, we also recognize that for more than half the world, the number "2000" has little significance. For Muslims, it is the year 1420. For Hindus, it is 1921. For Buddhists, it is 2543. fRfayans honor the year 5119^nd the Hebrew calendar marks the year 5760. <~~x<0 What we come to celebrate here today is not so much a common calendar, but a common /message that all the major religions of the world share. A message that says love thy neighbor as we love ourselves. Treat a stranger as you would treat your God. See the spark of diviae^^ tf^jji inspiration in every single person. As long as there has been religion to practice, tha^heybeen the world's central teaching And yet, -gas-still the hardest lesson for us to learn. ^—u*— ^ ^^-<_ For all the fantastk- progress we have made the past 100 years, for all the new discoveries in science that are enanging the way we live, the biggest problem we face is still the oldest problem of human society: the fear of those who are different than us. History has taught us that people tend to be aftaid of those who don't look like them, and don't worship God the way they do, and come fromya different place. And when you're afraid of somebody, it's just a short step to disliking mem. If you dislike them, it's a short step to hating them. If you hate them, it's a short step to de lumanizing them. And once you do that, you don't feel bad about killing them. A hundred years ago, a woodengravejoer r named Frank Stockton wrote a tale in which a metal was invented to cool off people's hearts, because he was afraid of what would happen^those hearts became hot with hate. The 20th Century has proven those fears were well-fbundedj The amount of violence committed against people simply becaUije uf who they areTTasbeen stupefying, two World Wars, the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Middle East - and here at home, from Birmingham to Jasper to Laramie. Today, let us commit ourselves to doing all we , x^an to make sure that the darkest shadows of the 20lh Century do not stretch into the 21st Century. We know it won't be easy. As our world gets smaller and globalization spreads, intolerance is likply tnjgrQy/ with it Tn tnn many places, there are still leaders all too willing to exploit the differences between people to preserve their own power. It doesn't just happen because some peoplecan^get along^thappensTecause people live in places where the ability to express-^^-- {ftemselves peaceftrtlyTs denied, ftrthose places Wlieie-freedom is silenced, we mi;st cantwrarfo beTheir voices. We must continue to speak out for human rights and human dignity. Let it be said that the 21st Century was a time in which intolerance for other people was replaced by a healthy intolerance for aggression, for violence, and for suffering around the world. We must do so because it is the right thing to do - but also because it is the surest path to a world that is safe, democratic, and free. The last time representatives from this many nations came together in this building - during the 50th anniversary of NATO - 19 nations of the world stood together against aggression in Kosovo. Because we did, a million people in Kosovo are at home today with their families. From the Middle East to Northern Ireland, South Africa to East Timor, " Shis Century is ending with a very clear message toaUjJinsp^wjiQwould use hatred and aggression to beat others down: there is no place^ftSryour kind in)the 21s1 Century. ^^oday, for the first time in history, more than half the people of the world live under -^governments of their own choosing. Our newest discoveries promise to make real what centuries of human experience have strived to accomplish - to end suffering, to eradicate disease, to promote freedom, to educate our children, and to lift up families and nations. In a world once limited by borders, the only limits we face today are the limits of our own imagination. Today, let us resolve to do all we can to make sure that in the global economy, prosperity knows no borders, either. It is simply unacceptable that in a world with so many riches, more than 40 million people will die this year of hunger. Let us agree here today that in the next 100 years, the one war we will all fight to^dgj&ihe-waiUcLendgloba l poverty. If we do, we can make the new millennium not simply'^'cnanging of the calen^r, but a true changing of the times, and a gateway to greater peace'and freedom: This is a challenge to all of us, but this is a special challenge to the young people, both here and around the world. They are the ones who will live most of their lives in the next Century. Of all the bad predictions of the 20^ Century, surely the worst observation was the one that said children should be seen and not heard. I was reminded of that all over again this week when I received a letter from a sixth grade class in Northeastern Connecticut, who knew I would be speaking to you here today. Their message is one for the ages. They said, never forget that "God didn't put us here to fight, but to live in harmony ... we believe if we can help our children, our future leaders, to find their way to purity and love for all mankind and to teach them that there is no future in racism ~ then, we can find that the success and glory of world peace will grow and blossom into a never dying flower." Let that be our goal as well as our prayer here today. ' Twa4housand years ago, the change we celebrate tonight began with the birth of a child and a ligKt in the sky. When darkness falls tonight for the last time in this millennium, the brightest light in the sky will be the constellation Orion. For centuries, it has guided adventurers and travelers alike. From December to April, it is the only star system visible from every inhabited point on Earth. Scientists tell us that the light from one of those stars - which we will see tonight - began its journey here almost exactly 1,000 years ago. In the^ime it took that light to reach the Earth, Erickson sailed, Galileo drew, Leonardo painted, Gytfenberg printed, Mozart composed, Elizabeth led, Jefferson wrote, Lincoln saved, Edison H'nvented, Gandhi preached, Mother Theresa healed, and Mandela was freed. Now, that light shines upon us. For all the billions of people who came before us, Providence has decided that we are the ones to lead this planet and this world into a new millennium. When people look back on this day 100 y^ars from now, let it be said that we were up to the task. Let it be said that in the 2\si Century^rar children and grandchildren went further, reached higher, dreamed bigger, and accomplished more than anybody who came before them. And let it kfe said one day that in the third millennium, thanks in part to the decisions we made, humanity (/ finally lived up to its name. Thank youland God Bless you. THE WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF SPEECHWRITING Fax (202) 456-5709 Tel (202) 456-2777 TO: FAX: mr~%ZO PHONE ^ - %vt> PROM: Comments Date: — Numter of Pages (incWing cover): \3' Draft 12/22/99 11:30am Lowell Weiss PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON TOAST REMARKS DURING MILLENNIUM "CREATORS DINNER" THE WHITE HOUSE December 31,1999 Ladies and gentleman, good evening. And welcome to the White House. Tonight, I rise to offer three brief toasts. The first is to you. It is truly an honor to turn this page in history with all of you - for you have contributed so indelibly to the narrative of this American Century. The second toast is to my wife - for it is she who has inspired the nation to honor our past and imagine our future as we welcome the new millennium. Over the past two years leading up to this unforgettable night, no one has done more to imbue this milestone with national purpose - and I am deeply grateful. The third toast is the most daunting - for I am called upon to do justice to a thousand years in four minutes or less. In the State of the Union, they give me a whole hour to talk about a single year. Even then, I always run long. Tonight, we are rising as a nation to the mountaintop of the millennium. Behind us we can see the great expanses of the American experience. Before us lie vast frontiers of possibility yet to explore. This is a wonderful vantage point for our nation - and a remarkable time to be alive. We are ending this 1,000 year sweep of history at a moment of soaring optimism. Never before has America had the combination of economic prosperity, social progress, and national self- confidence, with the absence of internal crisis or an external threat. Never before have we had such a blessed opportunity to build that "more perfect union" of our founders dreams. When our children's children look back on the century we leave tonight, they will see that this time of unlimited promise was not preordained. They will see that it was earned - by men and women who did not merely celebrate our nation's oldest ideals, like trophies under glass, but kept them bright with use. They will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of freedom. From the beachheads of Normandy to the buses of Montgomery, patriots from all walks oflife have risen heroically to advance the march of human liberty. They will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of discovery. At the outset of the century, not even the most far-sighted of our forebears could have predicted all the miracles of science that have emerged from our labs: Antibiotics and vaccines, silicon chips and the Internet, telescopes that can peer into the origins of our universe, the soon-to-be-complete blueprint for life itself. And they will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of creativity. For what was true of the ancient civilizations is just as true today: National power may spring from economic and military might, but national greatness emanates from ennobling contributions to the life of the mind and the body of art. In this century, our artists of the page and canvas, stage 1 and screen have drawn on diverse cultural traditions and given rise to a wealth of uniquely American forms, [need quotation on American contributions to art] The new century and new millennium before us will bring a cascade of new triumphs. Already we see new hope for peace in lands bedeviled by ancient hatreds. We see new technologies both expanding and opening the storehouse of human knowledge for people across the globe. We see scientists rapidly approaching the day when newborns can expect to live well past 100 years and children will know cancer only as a constellation of stars. But by far my most solemn prayer for the new millennium is that we will find it in our hearts to keep growing together, as one America, as one people. Just look around you. Look at the glowing diversity of race and background that illuminates America's house on this historic night. Frankly, I have never seen such a vivid illustration of what I have believed all my life - that the human spirit is distributed equally across the human landscape. I cannot help but think of how America would be different - how history would be different - if you had not been allowed the chance to imagine, invent, and inspire. By the same token, I cannot help but dream of how our future could be different if we could give every child in America this same chance to live up to his or her God-given potential. That is the future I hope every American will take a moment to imagine in this millennial year. That is the future I pray we can all join together to build. * * * IIVZU/HU lOJOH FAA UXIUUUXUI.U Draft 12/20/99 4:30pm Lowell Weiss PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON TOAST REMARKS DURING MILLENNIUM "CREATORS DINNER" THE WHITE HOUSE December 31, 1999 Ladies and gendeman, good evening. And welcome to the While House. Tonight, I rise to offer three brief toasts. The first is to you. Ii is truly an honor to tum this remarkable page in history with all of you - for you have contributed so mightily to the narrative of this American Century. ? The second toast is to my wife - for it is she who has inspired the nation to honor our past and imagine our future as we welcome the new millennium. Over the past two years leading up to this unforgettable night, no one has done more to imbue this milestone with national purpose - and I am deeply grateful. The third toast is the most daunting — for I am called upon to do justice to a thousand years in three minutes or less. £ the State of the Union, they give me a whole hour to talk about a single year. Even then, I always run long. Tonight, we are rising as a nation to tin mountaintop o&he-milleimittm. Behind us we can see the great expanses of the American experience. Before us lie vast frontiers of possibility yet to explore. 5> (jfesjsgwpnderM^^^ - ancTTwondeiful t^^to-fee^vel e are ending ffiis 1,000 year sweep of history at a moment of soaring optimism. Never before has America had the combination of economic prosperity, social progress, and national self-confidence, with the absence of internal crisis or an external threat. Never before have we had such a blessed opportunity to build that "more perfect union" of our founders dreams. When our children's children look back on the century we leave tonight, they will that this time of unlimited promise was not preordained. They will see that it was earned - by men and women who did not merely celebrate our nation's oldest ideals, like trophies under glass, but kept them bright with use. They will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of freedom- From the beachheads of Normandy to the buses of Montgomery, patriots fromal l walks of life have risen heroically toihe-cause human liberty. They wjll see that we earned this moment through the triumph of discovery. At the / outset of the century, not even the most far-sighted of our forebears could have predicted / all the miracles of scienp&^t have emerged from our labs: Antibiotics and vaccines, \ silicon chips and the Mtem^telescopes that can peer into the origins of our universe, the / soon-to-be-complete Mne^ntfoTllfcitself.—. ^ ^^A**^-*^ /—^.^ And they will see that we earned this momenLtKrough the triumph of tpativity For what was true of the ancient civilizations is justfrue today: National^greatngw^pfings ^ L Bofcnnly from economic and military mighi, buuals6 through ennobling contributions to culture and an. In this century, our artists of thfe page and canvas, stage and screen have drawn on diverse cultural traditions and given rise to a wealth of uniquely American fonns. The new century and new i ennium before us will bring an ever-accelerating f new triumphs. Already : see new hope for peace in lands bedeviled by treds. We seei irks both expanding and opening the storehouse of human knowledge for people across the globe. We see scientists rapidly approaching the day when newborns can expect to live vdl past 100 years and children will know cancer only as a constellation of stars. But by far my most solemn prayer for the new millennium is that we will find it in our hearts to keep growing together, as one America, as one people. Just look around you. Look at the glowing diversity of race and background that illuminates America's house on this historic nighL Frankly, I have never seen such a vivid illustration of what I have believed all my life - that the human spirit is distributed equally across the human landscape. I cannot help but think of how America would be different - how history would be different - if you had not been allowed the chance to imagine, invent, and inspire. By the same token, I cannot help but dream of how our future could be different if we could give every child in America this same chance to live up to his or her God-given potential, That is the future I hope every American will take a moment to imagine in this millennial year. That is the future I pray we can all join together to build. * * * Igl UK]*/ UU 1 '99 12/22 14:47 O202 786 2682 HIRSHHORN MUSEUM Among the more endearing and exasperating features of Americans is the propen sity to claim that whatever transpires in our midst is evidence of manifest destiny. Foreword While the rest of the world looks upon our hubris with a mixture of admiration, amusement, envy, and resentment, we soldier on, embodying Emerson's happy paradox of being both practical and visionary. Maxrwell L. Anderson There is no more graphic evidence of our belief in ourselves than the title of this Director exhibition, taken from the epkhet(Henry Lucajused in 1941 to characterize our era. Whitney Museum of American Art America, as he saw it, was already "the inteilectual, scientific and artistic capital of the world," the nation that would guide the world to "the authentic creation of the twentieth century." As we approach the millennium, it seems essential to test Luce's superlative by examining the role of art in shaping and expressing our national iden~ tity, values, and aspirations. The American Century; Art i? Culture 1900-2000 is being presented at the Whitney Museum in two consecutive segments. In Part I, 1900-19^0, the period covered by this publication, massive immigration, technological progress, and expansionist ambi tions combined to catapult the United States into a position of global leadership. The art of these fifty years naturally reflects the tensions and hopes of the time, and rich ly documents America's tempestuous climb to world leadership. The ascendancy of American art after 1950 could not have been foreseen in 1900, when American artists found themselves sidelined by a system of patronage that excluded their creative achievements. America's wealthiest families had been amas sing collections and building museums on the model of those created by European oligarchs. Most of America's museums, established from the last third of the nine teenth century onward, were hastily erected amalgams of caqhedral, palace, and villa. The artworks within were culled from Europe's public and private collections and became the currency of upward mobility, allowing the newly affluent to find their way into a stratum formerly reserved for those born to social or economic aristocracy. Concomitant with the appetite for art of the Old World was a prevalent dis dain for the art of America. In freshly built manors from Fifth Avenue to Newport, self-made industrial barons preferred to surround themselves with pedigreed art. They were reluctant to risk failure in the one arena that money cannot guarantee: taste. Among wealthy patrons of art in the early years of the century, only Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney would stake her reputation—and her money—exclusively on the quest for quality in contemporary American arc. It was she who broke che chain of European acquisitions and asserted che value of American art of her time. The first commitment Mrs. Whitney made was in 1908, when she purchased four of the seven works sold at the now-celebrated exhibition of the renegade artists known as The Eight. In 1914, she created the Whitney Studio, an exhibition space for contemporary American artists in rooms adjacent to her own Greenwich Vil lage studio. The following year she helped found The Friends of Young Artists, a welcome vehicle for underwriting the needs of American artists, especially those rebuffed by the art establishment. In the Friends exhibitions, typically held in che Whitney Studio, "any entry could be submitted, regardless of aesthetic tendency, as long as it was sincere; the raw, the untried, che unready would get a chance." As a patron of the Society of Independent Artists, founded in «9i6, Mrs. Whitney con tinued to support exhibitions of work by American artists of all backgrounds. The Whitney Studio showcased new work for display and sale until 1917. It was followed by the Whitney Studio Club (1918-08) and the Whitney Studio Galleries (1928-30)— predecessors of the Whitney Museum. It was not Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's original intention to institutionalize American art through the creation of a muse' um. Indeed, such a traditionally stodgy establishment ran counter to the spirit of her patronage, which focused on support for the living artist. But in 1919 The Museum of Modem Art had been founded as an advocate of European modernism. That same year, The Metropolitan Museum of Art declined Mrs. Whitney's offer 99 12/22 14:48 O202 786 2682 HIRSHHORN MUSEUM 121006/007 Ohc MUSE HENRI DORRA ForevorJ ty HERMANN WARNER WILLIAMS, JR. A STUDIO BOOK The Viking Press : New York '99 12/22 14:49 ©202 786 2682 nnonnuivn wu^uiu THE AMERICAN MUSE American Muse, whose strong and diverse heart So many men have tried to understaad But only made it smaller with theic art. Because you are as various as your land... Stephen Vincent Bcntt, John Brown's Body, 1928 HE AMERICAN MUSE sings the epic of a people that has a short history and yet has strong traditions; that has multifarious origins and yet has developed a homogeneous civilization; that believes intensely in individualism and yet accep>ts ^cheerfully the conformism imposed upon it jb^ the m^ American Muse is diverse, and yetTt"snbws strong and consistent traits throughout its development. The pictures and quotations assembled in these pages are intended to suggest certain fundamental aspects of the American character and the main artistic and literary trends to which these have given rise. To each of these trends a chapter of the book is devoted. The chapters are divided into sections,, each of which is organized in an approximately chronological order. In most cases pictures are combined with quotations of the same period, but occasionally parallels have been drawn between works of diflterent dates, thus confirming the persistence of the trends. It is hoped that the juxtaposition of pic tures and quotations will enrich the meaning of both. Above all, it is hoped that the reader will be entertained by this excursion into America's past and will share the excitement that went into die preparation of this volume. Defining the American character has been a favorite occupation for many gen erations of travelers, scholarly and otherwise, from both sides of the Adantic. In the light of their observations a number of generalizations can be made. Amer icans, for instance, are said to be more practical and realistic than Europeans in everyday matters, but more idealistic in their long-term projects. They are par ticularly adaptable to change and are usually extroverts. In spite of their pro- HIRSHHORN MUSEUM •W 12/22 14l46e202 786 2682 Franklin D. Roosevelt lated into a routine, make it difficult for people of their political and economic sys either art or artists to survive. Crush in tems are simple. They are: dividuality in society and you crush art as Equality of opportunity for youth and well Nourish the conditions of » free life ; others. and you nourish the arts, too. Ibid- Jobs for those who can . work. Security for those who need it. A radical is a man with both feet firmly The ending of special privilege for the planted in the air. few. Badio address, October 26,1939. The preservau'on of civil liberties for all. A conservative is a man with two per The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific fectly good legs who, however, has never progress in a wider and constantly rising learned how to walk forward. Ibid. standard of living. Ibid, A reactionary is a somnambulist walking In the future days, which we seek to backward. Ibid. make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four, essential human free We are a nation of many nationalities, doms. many races, many religions—bound to The first is freedom of speech and expres gether by a single unity, the unity of free sion—everywhere in the world. dom and equality. Whoever seeks to set The second is freedom of every person to one nationality against another, seeks to worship Cod in his own way—everywhere degrade all nationalities. Whoever seeks in the world. to set one race against another seeks to en The third is freedom from want—which, slave ail races. Whoever seeks to set one translated into world terms, means economic religion against another seeks to destroy understanding, which will secure to every all religion. nation a healthy peacetime life for its in Address, New York, Nooember 1,1940. habitants everywhere in the world- We must always be wary of those who The fourth is freedom from fear, which with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal translated into world terms means a world preach the "ism" of appeasement. wide reduction of armaments to such a We must especially beware of that small point and in such a thorough fashion that group of selfish men who would clip the no nation will be in a position to commit wings of the American eagle in order to an act of physical aggression against any feather their own nests. neighbor—anywhere in the world. Ibid. The Four Freedoms Speech, Message to Congress, January 6,1941. Democracy alone, of all forms of govern ment, enlists the full force of men's en Certainly this is no time for any of us lightened will. . . . to stop thinking about the social and eco It is the most humane, the most advanced nomic problems which are the root cause and in the end the most unconquerable of of the social revolution which is today a all forms of human society. supreme factor in the world. The democratic aspiration is no mere For there is nothing mysterious about the recent phase of human history. It is human foundations of a healthy and strong democ history. racy. The basic things expected by our Third Ineugurol, January 20,1941. [593] aw 14:48 O202 786 2682 HIRSHHORN MUSEUM 11005/007 Robert H. Jackson—William James Newspapers, in the enjoyment of their James I Constitutional rights, may not deprive ac (1566-1625) cused persons of their right to fair trial. Opinion, Frankfurter concurring, re King of England versing Florida rape convictions, N. Y. Times, April 10, 1951. I will govern according to the coiflj weal, but not according to the The day that this country ceases to be will. Reply to Commons, 26| free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion-except for the sect that can A cusftm loathsome to the eye, ... win political power. to the nose, harmful to the brain, Zorach v. CZatuon, 343 U.S. 306 gerous to the lungs, and in the (2952). stinking fume thereof, nearest r&se the horrible Stygian smoke of the pftif If we concede to the State power and (s bottomless. wisdom to single out "duly constituted re A Counterblast to Tobacco, It ligious" bodies as exclusive alternatives for compulsory secular instruction, it would be logical to also uphold the power and Henry James wisdom to choose the true faith among (1843-1916) those "duly constituted." We start down AmcriCfln author a rough road when we begin to mix com pulsory public education with compulsory The fatal futility of Fact. godliness. Ibid. Treface, The Spoils of Poynl I am heartened by the fact that de Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite,.^ mocracy has not destroyed freedom of the is the power of personttlity. A union i press. But I am equally heartened by the two always makes history. fact that the press has not been able to Charles W. destroy the freedom of democracy. The press, despite doing its utmost unanimous J It is art that makes life, makes inti worst, hits not been able to destroy a makes importance. democratic government. The people know The facility of attention has vjtterly^ who is wjih them, despite all the packaged ished from the general Anglo-Saxon fl opinions handed them. extinguished at its source by the.' Address to N. Y. Press Association, blatant, Bayadcrs of Journalism, of Labor, February 8,19S8. newspaper and the picture (above] magazine. ^ Joseph Jacobs (1854-1916) William James English historian (1842-1910) The religion oS Israel freed mankind from American psychologist, philoso that worship of Luck and Fate which is at the basis of all savagery. The moral fiabbiness bom of Jewish Contributions to Civilization, elusive worship of the bitch-goddess 1919. CESS. That-with the squalid cash [358] America's culture has always been nourished by many streams? Even those who have arrived on our shores with only clothes on their backs have brought their rich cultural traditions. These traditions have merged in serendipitous ways, giving rise to uniquely American forms. Welcome to the White House. And welcome to the East Room. If you can believe it, when the White House was first built, this space was where President John Adams had his wash hung to dry. But ever since the East Room was finished in 1829, it has been one of the most important places for America to celebrate artistic;expression in all its wonderful forms. fitting tribute to President Kennedy, who lifted the arts to new heights of national purpose. The Kennedy Center is the nation's stage - and a showcase for musical traditions and talents from around the world. It is promise and proof of our shared values. And now with the Concert Hall reborn in this glorious form, the Kennedy Center is more than ever a deep source of national pride. President Kennedy often said that America would earn respect around the world "not only for its strength but for its civilization" if we were to recognize the place of artists and ,their contribution to the human spirit. This marvellous center is a living monument both to President Kennedy and to that shining sentiment Meriwether Lewis lived and worked in the East Room when he was Jefferson's personal aide. Jefferson, whose office was just down the hall, had carpenters create two rooms for Lewis on the south side of the East Room, where Abigail Adams used to hang her wash. As you surely know, President Kennedy once told a group of Nobel Prize winners that they represented "the most extraordinary collection of talent" ever gathered at the White House - - "with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Actually, Jefferson didn't dine alone. He dined with Meriwether Lewis. And over dinner he tutored his protege in geography and the natural sciences - broadening Lewis's horizons so Lewis and Clark could broaden the nation's. When you hear how much we have inherited from people of many cultures who lived 1,000 years ago, it makes you think even more seriously about what the future will inherit from us. Nothing should challenge and inspire us more as we prepare to cross into the new millennium. As President Kennedy once said, the arts "nourish the roots of our culture.... The nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate ... of having 'nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.'" Today, thanks in part to President Kennedy's patronage of the arts, creativity is thriving in America ~ our music, our plays, our dance have inspired performers and captured audiences around the globe. Celebrating these artistic accomplishments is one of the best ways we can honor the past and imagine the future. http://\v'ww.puD.wnuenouse.gov/uii-ic!>/ii....1jui.,,^,.u,.^^t..t:, .. THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release December 8, 1996 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT KENNEDY CENTER HONORS RECEPTION The East Room 5:48 P.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, and welcome to the White House. Every year, Hillary and I look forward to the Kennedy Center Honorees coming here, especially because this is such a great season of celebration. Tonight we pay tribute to five performing artists whose work has transformed the landscape of American art. America is more than the land we live on. It is even more than its people. It is an ideal. Our^artists express that ideal and give voice to^the common experience. They are the singers of the American soul. Their art challenges us and deepens our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. It is my privilege to welcome them, along with their families and friends, to the White House. Edward Albee's life epitomizes the rebellious spirit of art. Maybe I ought to repeat that. (Laughter.) From childhood, he challenged convention. He left college for the streets of New York where he worked by day and wrote by night. For 10 years he pursued his art with single-minded purpose, but without recognition. Then, in only three weeks in 1958, he wrote a play that took the American theater by storm and changed it forever. "Zoo Story," a play about a young drifter and a well-to-do stranger who meet on a lonely park bench. It was the first of many plays by Edward Albee that dared us to look at ourselves in the same stark light he turned on our fears, our failings and our dreams. For over 40 years, his work has defied convention and set a standard of innovation that few can match. From "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," to "Tiny Alice," to "Three Tall Women," his plays have invigorated the American theater and inspired a new generation of playwrights to do the same. Tonight our nation -- born in rebellion -- pays tribute to you, Edward Albee. In your rebellion, the American theater was reborn. (Applause.) Bennett Leslie Carter was born in the tough New York neighborhood that became the site of the Lincoln Center, where eight decades later he would be cheered to the rafters. From the small clubs of the Harlem Renaissance where he began playing saxophone to world tours for the biggest of the big bands, Benny Carter redefined American jazz. From the start, his fellow musicians said the way he played the sax was amazing. They say that about me, too. (Laughter.) But I don't think they mean it in quite the same way. (Laughter.) Benny Carter's influence on jazz is immeasurable. Whether he played with them or not, all the great bands used his arrangements. He virtually arranged the Swing era, and his rhythms have set feet 1 of 3 11/19/1999 10:46^ http://www.puD.wniienoubc.gov/un-i- tapping all over the world. Indeed, on our recent trip to Thailand when Hillary and I visited with the King and Queen, the King, as some of you may know, is one of the world's greatest jazz fans, and three minutes after I was introduced to him, he said, now, do you know Benny Carter? He was just here. (Laughter.) His sounds have suffused American films and television, from Busby Berkley to the Marx Brothers, from "Stormy Weather," to "Hannah and Her Sisters." And he brought jazz to the Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, ensuring its rightful place in our cultural pantheon. Benny's popularity is as strong as ever. He was named Jazz Artist of the Year in his '80s. And this year, at 89, he has performed from Bangkok to Boston. (Applause.) We are grateful that he -- we're glad he was willing to take the weekend off -- (laughter) --to receive our nation's standing ovation. Thank you, Benny Carter. (Applause.) Johnny Cash grew up chopping cotton in a small town in southeast Arkansas. Every Sunday in a little church, he was transported by gospel music from the hard world he knew to a far horizon. And he transformed the trouble he had known into gruff music of ache, heart and hope, even against the odds. He was still just a kid in the Army when he wrote "Folsom Prison Blues," and just out of the service when "I Walk the Line" hit the charts. Fifty million records and 27 albums later, Johnny Cash has redefined the boundaries of country music. He is the loner, the man in black. A hard edged writer with a soft heart. With his wife, the very gifted June Carter Cash, and family often by his side, he has traveled all over the world to give a voice to the feelings of farmers and workers, prisoners and lovers. From the Heartland of America, he sung for the people who are the heart of America. Through his music, he has proved again and again the redeeming power of struggle and faith. And he has made country music not just music for our country, but for the entire world. Johnny Cash, you have our applause, our admiration and we have your records. (Laughter and applause.) Jack Lemmon first appeared on the stage at the age of four. He had just one line -- "Hark. A pistol shot." -- (Laughter.) The audience laughed then, too. (Laughter.) And a star was born. Consumed with a passion for performing, the young Jack Lemmon didn't have much time for books. Even at Harvard, he spent more time writing songs than essays. But he was preparing himself for a different future, studying to become one of the most gifted actors of our time. Once called "a clown for the age of anxiety," Jack Lemmon embodies a typically American sense of humor -- fresh, irreverent, wryly optimistic, even when the chips are down. From "Mister Roberts," to "Some Like It Hot," to "Grumpy Old Men, I and II," he is at once a hilarious everyman and a complete original. And in dramatic works like "Missing," and "Glengary, Glen Ross," he has taken the kind of risks that elevate an actor's work from the unremarkable to the unforgettable. Mow, you know he is portraying a former President of the United States in a new movie, "My Fellow Americans." A president, I might add, of the other party -- (laughter) -- but I'd still like to have points from Jack Lemmon any day, and America thanks you. Jack Lemmon, for all the points you've given us. God bless you. (Applause.) Maria Tallchief was born in the Osage Indian Territory of Oklahoma. She was invited to dance at the Hollywood Bowl at the age of 15, and joined the famed Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo not long after that. Her talent destined her for distinction, and once she met George Balanchine their brilliant collaboration ensured her place in dance history. 11/19/1999 10:46 /j? Samir Afridi 12/17/99 11:40:32 AM Record Type: Record To: Lowell A. Weiss/WHO/EOP@EOP cc: Subject: State of the Union • Forwarded by Samir Afridi/WHO/EOP on 12/17/99 11:40 AM • "vinton g. cerf' Record Type: Record To: Samir Afridi/WHO/EOP cc: [email protected] Subject: State of the Union 17 December 1999 The Honorable William J Clinton President of the United States The White House Washington, DC Dear Mr. President: It was with considerable pleasure that I received your recent kind and thoughtful letter. Like you, I found the October 12 Millennium Evening extraordinarily stimulating. The First Lady's idea is producing dividends, not the least of which has been to draw many people, who might otherwise not take the opportunity, into deeper contemplation of things past and future. My mind still buzzes with ideas unleashed by that two hour conversation that seemed to last only a few minutes! A half Millennium ago, our Western civilization began the exploration of a New World, beginning a five hundred year saga of expansion and discovery. As we cross the threshold of the next Millennium, we are poised to begin a thousand year adventure powered by the twin engines of digital information and communication technologies. It is already clear that this will be a Millennium of Medical Miracles. Our increasing knowledge of the human body, its physiology and genetics, together with extraordinary developments that interface electronic devices to our neural systems, promise remarkable treatments for disabilities and disease. Page 2 LEVEL 1 - 1 OF 1 STORY Copyright 1992 The Time Inc. Magazine Company Time October 15, 1992, U.S. Edition SECTION: THE GREAT EVENT; Pg. 6 LENGTH: 1763 words HEADLINE: A Cosmic Moment; THE MILLENNIUM REPRESENTS THE RITUAL DEATH AND.REBIRTH OF HISTORY, ONE THOUSAND-YEAR EPOCH YIELDING TO ANOTHER ... BYLINE: BY LANCE MORROW ' -'• • :/;,: • BODY: '• ' ; "•'"'^V; - ';•. .••;''."; " THE. MILLENNIUM IS THE COMET that crosses the-'tealendar every thousand years. It throws off metaiphysical sparks. It promises a new age,:or an apocalypse. It • is a magic trick that time performs, extracting a millisecond from its eternal flatness and then, poised on that transitional instant, projecting a; sort of hologram that teems'.'with the '•sun^r.i'ze4;'j-:ii-f-e^of--the thousand years just passed * and with, visions of the thousand now ^o come.-, V • • ' r The approaching millennium year 2000 is; counted from the birth of Jesus Chriist in Bethlehem of Judea, in the year (so the Bible says) when Caesar Augustus decreed that a census of the world be taken. A millennial year has thus occurred only once before: fifty generations ago, in the year 1000, on what was a very different, more primitive planet earth. So this one has a strange, cosmic prestige, a quality of the almost unprecedented. The world approaches it in states of giddiness, expectation and, conpoiqusly pr unconsciously, a certain . anxiety. The millennium looms as civilization's, most spectacular birthday, but, •las it approaches, the occasion also -sends out gagging threats of comeuppance.• : • The millennial date is an arbitrary mark on the calendar, decreed around ,the year 525 by the calculations of an obscure monk. The celebrated 2000, a triple tumbling of naughts, gets some of its status from humanity's fascination with zeroes -- the so-called tyranny of tens that makes a neat, right-angle architecture of accumulating years, time sawed into stackable solidities, like children's blocks. And it is true, of course, that the moment may signify little to non-Christians. Nonetheless, the millennium is freighted with immense historical symbolism and psychological power. It does not depend on objective calculation, but entirely on what people bring to it -- their hopes, their anxieties, the metaphysical focus of their attention. The millennium is essentially an event of the imagination. Thousand-year blocks of time enforce a chastening standard of weight and scale. The millennium has a gravitational pull that draws in the largest meanings, if only because its frame of reference is so enormous. The millennial drama represents nothing less than the ritual death and rebirth of history, one thousand-year epoch yielding to another. Such imponderable masses of time f/0 LEXIS-NEXIS LEXfrNEXIS fp LEXIS-NEXIS Page 5 Time, October 15, 1992 We like to say that time will tell. But time is elastic and mysterious and, in its wild, undifferentiated state, uninhabitable by humans. Life needs its days and nights, its waking and sleeping, its seasons, its routines, its appointment books. People organize their lives by drawing lines, segmenting time, measuring their progress -- clocking themselves. Time is the organizing principle of conscious human effort. It may be difficult to understand sometimes, but it is what we have, all we have, the medium in which we swim. In that lies the meaning of the millennium. Delineated time is history's narrative framework -- the way to make sense out of beginnings, middles and ends. Everyone is bom, and dies, in the middle of history's larger story. The millennium is a chance (the rarest) to see, or to imagine that we see, the greater human story, filed in the file drawer with a click of completeness. Envisioning the end of one era and the beginning of another somehow infuses life with narrative meaning. And surviving the millennial passage, for those who do, may:even have about it a wistful savor of the afterlife. 'r^-^ GRAPHIC: Picture/ NO CAPTION descColor illustration.., LANE SMITH FOR TIME LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LEXIS-NEXIS- WA LEXIS-NEXIS* ## LEXIS-NEXIS* ih^r nf the RceH F.lwvier olc «TOUD Draft 8/17/99 9:50 a.m. PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON SUBMISSION TO TIME MAGAZINE NOMINATING FDR AS "PERSON OF THE CENTURY' When our children's children look back, they will see that above all else, the story of the 20th century is the story of the triumph of freedom - the victory of democracy over totalitarianism, of free enterprise over state socialism, of tolerance over bigotry. The embodiment of that triumph, the driving force behind it, was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Today, with the outcome known to all, it is tempting to conclude that victory was inevitable. But it wasn't. In the face of the 20,h century's greatest crisis, President Roosevelt decisively and irrevocably committed America to freedom's fight. Because of that commitment and its embrace by every American leader since, today we can say, for the first time in history, a majority of the world's people live under governments of their own choosing. Franklin Roosevelt was bom to privilege, but he understood the aspirations of forgotten Americans. My grandfather, who had but a sixth-grade education, believed President Roosevelt was his friend - a man who cared about him and his family and his child's future. Polio put President Roosevelt in a wheelchair, but in our most troubled times he lifted our nation to its feet and got us moving again. Disappointments and failures never broke President Roosevelt's spirit or his faith in God. Because he always rose to the occasion, so did we. FDR was guided not by the dictates of ideology but by the pragmatism of what he called "bold, persistent experimentation." If one thing doesn't work, he said, try another thing. But above all, try something. It drove his critics crazy, but it worked. In our century's struggle for freedom. President Roosevelt won two of America's proudest victories. In confronting the gravest threat capitalism had ever faced - the Great Depression - he taught us that free markets require an effective government in which individual initiative and the call of community are not at odds but rather woven together in one seamless fabric. In confronting the gravest threat to personal and political liberty the world has ever faced, he taught us that our destiny is forever linked to the destiny of the world - that humanity's cause must be America's cause. The new century will bring stunning advances in medicine and communications and commerce that President Roosevelt never could have imagined. But in all that we do as a nation, we must continue to follow FDR's lead - by expanding the reach of freedom, widening the circle of opportunity, and strengthening the bonds of our union. If we do so, we will make the 2151 century the next American Century - and the Happy Warrior will smile down on us. AUGUST 16-23. 1999 www.usnews.com THE Miat life was like in the last millennium Property of: EOP Library hi! Room 308 OEOB NON-CIRCULATING Keep On-Sale Until Sept. 30. 1999 Draft 12/20/99 4:30pm Lowell Weiss PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON TOAST REMARKS DURING MILLENNIUM "CREATORS DINNER" THE WHITE HOUSE December 31, 1999 Ladies and gentleman, good evening. And welcome to the White House. Tonight, I rise to offer three brief toasts. The first is to you. It is truly an honor to turn this remarkable page in history with all of you - for you have contributed so mightily to the narrative of this American Century. The second toast is to my wife - for it is she who has inspired the nation to honor our past and imagine our future as we welcome the new millennium. Over the past two years leading up to this unforgettable night, no one has done more to imbue this milestone with national purpose ~ and I am deeply grateful. The third toast is the most daunting ~ for I am called upon to do justice to a thousand years in three minutes or less. In the State of the Union, they give me a whole hour to talk about a single year. Even then, I always run long. Tonight, we are rising as a nation to the mountaintop of the millennium. Behind us we can see the great expanses of the American experience. Before us lie vast frontiers of possibility yet to explore. This is a wonderftil vantage point for our nation - and a wonderful time to be alive. We are ending this 1,000 year sweep of history at a moment of soaring optimism. Never before has America had the combination of economic prosperity, social progress, and national self-confidence, with the absence of internal crisis or an external threat. Never before have we had such a blessed opportunity to build that "more perfect union" of our founders dreams. When our children's children look back on the century we leave tonight, they will see that this time of unlimited promise was not preordained. They will see that it was earned - by men and women who did not merely celebrate our nation's oldest ideals, like trophies under glass, but kept them bright with use. They will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of freedom. From the beachheads of Normandy to the buses of Montgomery, patriots from all walks of life have risen heroically to the cause human liberty. They will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of discovery. At the outset of the century, not even the most far-sighted of our forebears could have predicted all the miracles of science that have emerged from our labs: Antibiotics and vaccines, silicon chips and the Internet, telescopes that can peer into the origins of our universe, the soon-to-be-complete blueprint for life itself. And they will see that we earned this moment through the triumph of creativity. For what was true of the ancient civilizations is just true today: National greatness springs not only from economic and military might, but also through ennobling contributions to culture and art. In this century, our artists of the page and canvas, stage and screen have drawn on diverse cultural traditions and given rise to a wealth of uniquely American forms. The new century and new millennium before us will bring an ever-accelerating cascade of new triumphs. Already we see new hope for peace in lands bedeviled by ancient hatreds. We see computers and digital networks both expanding and opening the storehouse of human knowledge for people across the globe. We see scientists rapidly approaching the day when newborns can expect to live well past 100 years and children will know cancer only as a constellation of stars. But by far my most solemn prayer for the new millennium is that we will find it in our hearts to keep growing together, as one America, as one people. Just look around you. Look at the glowing diversity of race and background that illuminates America's house on this historic night. Frankly, I have never seen such a vivid illustration of what I have believed all my life ~ that the human spirit is distributed equally across the human landscape. I cannot help but think of how America would be different - how history would be different ~ if you had not been allowed the chance to imagine, invent, and inspire. By the same token, I cannot help but dream of how our future could be different if we could give every child in America this same chance to live up to his or her God-given potential. That is the future I hope every American will take a moment to imagine in this millennial year. That is the future I pray we can all join together to build. * * *