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Vol. 2, No. 1


Contents:

The Roots and Righteousness of the African American Demand for Reparations

Letters From Readers

A Charter School? What's Up With That?

Art & Revolution

Rubin Shouldn’t Escape Enron Investigation

Alloy Casting Dusting its Neighbors

Rose Marshack's Rock Reality

NewsPoetry

February IMC Calendar

 

Letters From Readers

Armory Fee? Say it ain't so...

For over a year now, I have regularly enjoyed exercising at the Armory on the University of Illinois campus.
The area in the Armory where the track is located is a cavernous and drab place where people come to burn calories. From my time spent there jogging, I've discovered that people in this community are highly creative when it comes to their methods of staying fit!
Beneath the high, curved ceiling, with sunlight filtering murkily in, the Armory plays host to a myriad of activities that go on all day, every day, during any season. Frisbees get tossed; soccer balls get kicked; baseballs are thrown; hopeful track and field athletes sprint, long jump, shot put, and hurdle with admirable determination.
There's much more at the Armory, too. I've seen riders on unicycles navigate the track next to middle-aged women simply walking. Jugglers finds space to juggle. During the summer, the Armory hosts the University's basketball camp. It's interesting to jog in sweltering heat as dozens of basketball hoops loom over the track as if standing guard, waiting for a new youngster to come in and take some shots.
Many groups use the Armory as a place to practice, to refine their skills. Batting cages are set up on occasion; running clubs use the Armory during cold winter months; cheerleaders are sometimes there to hone their routines, as are various African-American dance clubs; lancing lessons can be seen every single weeknight at the Armory; and despite what may sound like a circus-like atmosphere, yoga is practiced at the Armory on a routine basis.
The point is, the Armory is like an indoor playground where people - people of all ages, incomes, races, sexes, and interests - can come to enjoy themselves. And like an outdoor playground, they don't have to pay a fee or go through turnstiles to do so.
I'd hate to see the Armory become an institutionalized gym, as the University's Board of Trustees has proposed.
Usually the Armory is mostly empty, but I'd miss the spontaneity and freedom of the place when it's filled with people, which would all but vanish if regular community members had to pay a fee to use the Armory. My wish: let the Armory remain as it is - free for everybody.
On a recent Sunday afternoon visit I witnessed a young man acting as a mentor for a younger child. They were hitting tennis balls in the batting cages. "Are you having fun?" asked the mentor. "Yeah!" came the enthusiastic response from the child, who promptly whacked another tennis ball into the net of the cage.
Next week it might be Frisbee football or a game of soccer. Whatever free activity is going on, it certainly makes the Armory an interesting place to jog.

Sal Nudo
Champaign, Illinois

Why So Bloodthirsty?

Why have Americans been so gung-ho about engaging in a war? There is an overall context in which this conflict occurred, a history in which our nation has played an active and heavy hand, and so why do we call for the blood of others when we might more fruitfully examine our own backyards? Why does George W. Bush enjoy a nearly 90% approval rating, apparently unprecedented in history, for his simplistic (“This is a war of good against evil”) and brutal response to the events of September 11?
I suggest that we are a society that has been conditioned to violence. We were simply not prepared for an even-handed response to a genuine threat on our own soil. s.
I’ve heard it more than once: “It was like a movie,” referring to the horrid spectacle of the twin towers bursting, collapsing, pieces of people raining down on the street. In the movies, the bad guy is always REALLY bad, so bad he deserves to die. And we in our seats rejoice as he gets what he deserves and the threat is removed like a bad appendix. Force was called for, force was effective, and the ‘good guys’ live happily ever after.
In the movies, I sit uninspired by this trite and simplistic plot line. In real life, it scares the hell out of me. It doesn’t seem to bother the kids as they exterminate video-game villains with the touch of a button. But we, as adults, should be capable of grasping that real life is never quite so black and white.
During the holidays I watched “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”. It was the updated Hollywood version, and not a bad one, mind you, but one that like most of today’s Hollywood movies contained: 1) a celebrity star; 2) romance; and 3) the fiery explosion of a vehicle slamming into something. Upon seeing this, I reflected that if even a Dr. Seuss tale must now feature a fossil fuel explosion, we should not be surprised to live in a world in which jumbo jets crash into skyscrapers. We play with fire.
We are emotionally vulnerable. I could point to a thousand things, but take as a major example the diaspora of extended families and the degradation of even the nuclear family into a latchkey arrangement or worse. Television, school, and the streets have not proven to be worthy substitutes for the kinds of bonds found in healthy, intact communities (villages, if you will); they cannot as meaningfully teach the conflict resolution skills which would provide an alternative to unreflective violence. We bring a collective psychology of unmet, even unconsidered, needs to the problem of our own aggression and that of other nations. Scapegoating is inevitable.
We are physically vulnerable as well. Again I could catalogue elements of the debilitating American lifestyle, but onepervasive example is the simple lack of rest. The average adult has lost at least two nightly hours of sleep over the course of the past century. That’s seven hundred hours per year! In the 1970’s, Americans had 27 hours a week to devote to ‘leisure’ time. By the 1990’s we were down to 15 hours. Contrast this with contemporary France, where workplace parking lots are patrolled after closing time to make sure that no one works too long. Europeans also typically enjoy 4-6 weeks of vacation per year. We Americans, on the other hand, now average at least 48 hours of work a week, compared to 35 for the typical American worker of the 1970’s, and the Old World surely pities us our two weeks off per year. This not only makes us edgy enough to lash out when threatened, but who among us has the time for adequate research and reflection? And without such reflection, how can we possibly respond calmly and sanely to everyday events, muchless the slaughter of six thousand in the heart of New York?
Mark Twain wrote a story called “The Mysterious Stranger”, set in the time of stonings and witch hunts. During one such act of communal ‘justice’, the title character comments that not one of the stone-throwers truly wanted to participate; they were all simply afraid of what the others might do if they abstained. Perhaps we are not so gung-ho after all. Just uninformed…needy…tired…stressed.
We as a society may yet achieve a more rational perspective. After all, we are a young nation whose vast resources and ocean borders have so far shielded us from drastic international consequences. As those resources dwindle, and geographic obstacles shrink in the face of technology, perhaps it will become easier to appreciate our interdependence. I hope then we can drop the big stick and shake hands with our neighbors, our brothers - our own.

Jim Kotowski
Champaign, IL

train track mural Appearing beneath the train tracks near Downtown Champaign, this mural was photographed by Jason and Jacqueline Waters.

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