Word: descenders
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...portrait in American fecundity: every day hundreds of young women, their bodies roundly pregnant, descend on the University of Southern California Women's Hospital. They overflow the available chairs and sprawl awkwardly on the floor. They come for prenatal checkups, gynecological care and, finally, to deliver their young. Last year more than 18,000 babies were born in this building, roughly 1 out of every 200 babies born in the U.S. "Sometimes they are lined up in the hallways and stacked up for C-sections like planes at LAX, six or seven deep," says obstetrician-gynecologist David Grimes...
...Kurds on Dugen mountain are not permitted to descend into the valley below because that would mean allowing them deeper into Turkey. So about 20 Turkish doctors waiting with medicine and ambulances in Cizre, 29 miles away, cannot reach them; the vehicles cannot navigate the dirt track up the mountain. Every once in a while, when the track dries out a bit, Turkish soldiers send up a tractor-trailer piled with loaves of bread -- the only food that reaches the refugees. On the mountaintop, the trailer is swarmed by struggling, fighting Kurds. The Turkish soldiers fire shots...
This opera is billed as "Harvard's official tribute to Leonard Bernstein." Indeed, Bernstein's long relationship with Harvard since his graduation is quickly becoming legendary. But Bernstein might have been a bit disappointed that this was his official tribute. If Lenny had to choose one occassion to descend to Earth to witness a "tribute," he might want to wait until next month's Mainstage production of West Side Story...
...Crimson reporter, who miraculously found time to attend the theater, reports that, in the middle of the student-produced musical The Errols three huge Confederate flags descend onto the stage. The flags, of course, are presented within the perfectly proper context of the plot, and the director managed to avoid the controversy that has surrounded other flag-hangers. But given the recent popularity of that Southern symbol, the producers of The Errols might consider holding a used flag sale after the show closes. We understand there might be some takers...
...applaud -- with one hand, anyway -- the multiculturalist goal of preparing us all for a wider world. The other hand is tapping its fingers impatiently, because the critics are right about one thing: when advocates of multiculturalism adopt the haughty stance of political correctness, they quickly descend to silliness or worse. It's obnoxious, for example, to rely on university administrations to enforce P.C. standards of verbal inoffensiveness. Racist, sexist and homophobic thoughts cannot, alas, be abolished by fiat but only by the time-honored methods of persuasion, education and exposure to the other guy's -- or, excuse me, woman...