1 of 4
This Week:
- Timeline: September 2003
- Places & Culture
- Weekly Digest
The problem with regret, William O'Rourke once noted, is that "it lacks immediacy." You can only have it after the fact, when it's too late to change what you're regretting. Indeed, if only second thoughts could be first thoughts, we kept thinking in September—as President Bush asked Congress for the money and the U.N. for the allied help he once figured he wouldn't need to rebuild Iraq; as a California appeals court second-guessed the state's ability to hold October's recall election (which was then third-guessed and reinstated); as candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized for his behavior toward women on movie sets; as Democrats seemed lukewarm about their current lot of presidential contenders and rallied around a new one, Wesley Clark; as the Nigerian woman who had been sentenced to stoning for adultery was cleared; as Rush Limbaugh made a racist comment on ESPN. Childhood buddies Simon and Garfunkel had second thoughts about their personal differences and announced their first joint tour in twenty years. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wished it could take back a published ad congratulating Dan Reeves on his 200th career victory, which it approved with Reeves' Falcons ahead 17-0 in the first half. They lost 33-31.
September was a month of mourning: as the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks was observed; as esteemed Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh was stabbed to death; as Yetunde Price, the half-sibling of the tennis-playing Williams sisters, was shot and killed; as Indiana governor Frank O'Bannon and sitcom star John Ritter died suddenly; as a Disneyland roller coaster crashed and killed a rider; as Hurricane Isabel devastated the East Coast. And it was a month of wonder. Paraplegic Keegan Reilly climbed Mount Fuji. The world's oldest known person, Kamato Hongo, turned 116. Toyota rolled out it first-ever self-parking car. As planned, the Galileo satellite retired itself by crashing into Jupiter. Archaeologists found fossils of a buffalo-sized rodent in Venezuela. A man accidentally found his long-lost brother after buying a cookie jar from him on eBay. The Cubs and Red Sox made the playoffs together for just the second time since playing each other in the 1918 World Series.
George Plimpton, founder of The Paris Review and briefly a boxer and NFL quarterback, who died last month at his Manhattan townhouse at age 76, was "a serious man of serious accomplishments who just happened to have more fun than a van full of jugglers and clowns," wrote the New Yorker. Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who made Triumph of the Will for Adolf Hitler, died at 101. As John F. Kennedy's interpreter, Robert Lochner coached the president as he practiced saying "Ich bin ein Berliner." Physicist Edward Teller was known as the father of the hydrogen bomb. Athea Gibson, who learned to play tennis on the sidewalks of Harlem, was the first African American woman to win Wimbledon. Edward Said was a literary critic and Palestinian nationalist. Rand Brooks played Scarlett O'Hara's first husband in Gone With The Wind. Legendary director Elia Kazan, who produced Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway and On the Waterfront and East of Eden in Hollywood, was said to have discovered Marlon Brando and James Dean. With his unforgettable baritone and black outfits, Johnny Cash chronicled the despair of the down-and-out, and hinted at the hope of faith.
PLACES & CULTUREFrom the New York Times:
America's internal compass has historically pointed westward. But out in New Mexico, where thunderstorms can be seen for miles and eternity feels like a next-door neighbor, history has traveled on a northward road. It is El Camino Real, the Royal Road, once the footpath of Indians and officially blazed in the 16th century by Spanish conquistadors—a hellish 1,800-mile trail extending from civilization in Mexico City to the wild, remote reaches of the "tierra nueva" north of Santa Fe. … Twenty-two years before the Mayflower, the road carried European colonists to what is now the United States. … In New Mexico, much of the Camino's route is through spare, forbidding terrain, where dust devils whirl up out of nowhere like smoke without a campfire. … Today, there is much news percolating along El Camino Real: some time in the next two years, depending on money, the new $6 million, 20,000-square-foot Camino Real International Heritage Center, now nearing completion, is set to open near Socorro, N.M. The Camino has been designated a National Historic Trail by Congress … Summary*
share this page
RSS Feed
