Word: incognita
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Like the ancient Chinese, we believe that we inhabit the "middle kingdom"--everything that happens at Harvard is of the greatest importance, and everything above or below it is terra incognita. The population of this tiny kingdom consists solely of 18 to 22-year-olds. It has no gross national product; it knows no war or famine or natural disasters. Every year the kingdom banishes its eldest citizens, yet somehow manages to survive from generation to generation. How strange this all is, and how much like Paradise it seems! You taste the bitter fruit of Knowledge, and four years later...
This is the travelling through time. In the current Loeb Mainstage production, Eric Overmyer's On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning), three game but proper ladies set out in 1888 to explore Terra Incognita, and end up eating Cool Whip in Nicky's nightclub in 1955. On the way, they find themselves in many a humorous situation--most of which turn on the juxtaposition of a Victorian lady with almost anything especially - and dispense marry an anachronistic bonmot...
...from infertility to aging to cancer. Moreover, the guidelines would bring some discipline to the currently unregulated field of fertility research. But experiments on embryos raise the same tough question already at the center of the abortion debate: When do life -- and human rights -- begin? "This represents moral terra incognita for us as a society," says James Nelson, an ethicist at the Hastings Center in New York. "We have a huge range of definitions of what an embryo is -- anywhere from a person to just a bunch of tissue like any clump in the body...
Menopause is not exactly terra incognita. Edith Bunker dithered through a few hot flashes on All in the Family. Kathy Bates' mood-swinging character in Fried Green Tomatoes tore down walls and built them back up again while Jessica Tandy exhorted her to "take those hormones!" and get on with her life...
International TV programming is the great terra incognita for American viewers. The occasional British mini-series or Australian soap opera makes its way to these shores, via PBS or cable, and news sometimes filters back about the latest hit on Japanese TV or those funny foreign versions of Wheel of Fortune. But for most of the U.S. audience, TV in the non-English-speaking world remains trapped in the twilight zone...