November 20, 2000 Issue
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Features
The Last Farm Crisis
In the final triumph of free-market capitalism, farmers will become serfs.
William Greider
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Anthropologists as Spies
Collaboration occurred in the past, and there's no professional bar to it today.
David Price
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America and the World: The End of Easy Dominance
In the more trying period ahead, a modest internationalism would fare best.
Sherle R. Schwenninger
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From the ‘Burbs to the ‘Hood
Activists are finding success solving social problems on a regional basis.
Jay Walljasper
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Editorials
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Columns
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For Whom the Gong Tolls
If you stand in Tiananmen Square and keep your eyes open on a normal day, you will see the tour groups with their "keep together" flags, and the long line waiting to see the mummified Mao in his mausoleum, and the crowd around the entrance to the Forbidden City. Souvenir salesmen ply their trade where once the students massed around the Goddess of Democracy. And then you notice the militia vans endlessly circling, and the buses parked off to one side. It's a big space to police, and its vast openness makes it impossible to close off. Every few days, a group of supporters of the Falun Gong movement will suddenly unfurl their banners and wave them until the forces of order arrive, sweep them up and carry them away.
Christopher Hitchens
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Nader Voters: An Explanation
They thought they'd vote the Democratic slate,
But somehow felt they needed something more.
They finally found a candidate who was
More sanctimonious than Albert Gore.Calvin Trillin
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Books and the Arts
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Seducing the Sparrow (poem)
Why must the noble rose
bristle before it blooms, and why
must the frost declare
allegiance to the dew?
Don't tell me the robin's
forlorn invitation
could not be denied.
I've heard the magpie's lies.
Outside my window,
twenty-seven juncos
consort in a cedar tree,
fat and happy to be free
of all desire--ah, but
that's not true! See
how they dance and turn
when I throw out the seed.Sam Hamill
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Green Bee
It was curled on the pavement, forehead to knees,
as if it had died while bowing. Its stripes
were citrine-yellow, and the black of a moonless
starless, clear night. It did not
belong on a street, to be stepped on, I picked it
up in a fold of glove, and in the taxi
canted it onto a floral hankie,
a small, thin, cotton death-glade--
and the bee moved, one foreleg,
like an arm, feebly, as if old. It seemed
not long for this world, and it seemed I could not
save it, and had been saved, by its gesture,
from smothering it all day in my bag. I would have
liked to set it in a real glade,
but I thought that it might still, right now,
be suffering, yet I could not kill it
directly--I shook it, from the hankie, out the window,
onto West End Avenue,
hoping that, before a tire
killed it, instantly, it would hear
and feel huge rushes of tread and wind,
like flight, like the bee-god's escape.Sharon Olds
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America and the World: The End of Easy Dominance
In the more trying period ahead, a modest internationalism would fare best.
Sherle R. Schwenninger
-
Donate now to support The Nation's fearless, independent journalism.