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This Week:
- Timeline: December 2003
- Places & Culture
- Weekly Digest
December is when we make resolutions for the new year, but this was a month of resolutions of the old year. The capture of Saddam Hussein, found cowering in a hole in Iraq, brought some resolution to the conflict there. While we wrapped Christmas presents, we learned of other stories that were similarly being wrapped up, some in unexpected ways. A 78-year-old African American woman from Los Angeles came forward with proof that the recently deceased Senator Strom Thurmond, once an adamant segregationist, was her father. "At last I feel completely free," she said. Reports emerged of a British man who was told by Ojibway Indians in Canada that he was the descendant of their tribal chiefs. After 59 years, a Polish son of Holocaust victims was reunited with the sister he thought was dead. "When I heard her voice, I knew it was her," he said. The former owners of an Iowa Falls restaurant closed in 1981 received an envelope in the mail, signed "Former Employee," containing five $100 bills. The anonymous correspondent confessed to stealing money while working for the McCauleys, and wished to pay it back, including estimated interest. In New York City, the final design was unveiled for Freedom Tower, beginning to resolve—if not remove—the emptiness at Ground Zero. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King opened in theaters, completing one of the greatest film trilogies ever.
Carl Henry, founding editor of Christianity Today, author of the seminal The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism and many other books, and believer that "reason is not an enemy but an ally of genuine faith," was one of the twentieth century's greatest Christian ethicists. He died in December at age 90 at his home in Watertown, Wisconsin. Senator and former presidential candidate Paul Simon—he of the unforgettable eyeglasses, bow tie, and integrity—died at 75. Otto Graham led the Cleveland Browns to ten straight NFL championship games. Michael Small composed numerous film and television soundtracks, including The Stepford Wives and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Jeanne Crain was nominated for an Oscar for her role as a black woman passing for white in the 1949 film Pinky. At 545 tons, Keiko starred in the three Free Willy movies before dying of pneumonia this month in Norway. He was 27.
• In this blog: Timeline 2003PLACES & CULTURE
Jan.|Feb.|March |April |May | June | July | Aug. | Sept. | Oct. | Nov.
From the New York Times:
MOSCOW — The morning starts with 100 push-ups for Constant Olivier Diboi Kath as he prepares for the most dangerous moment of his day — his subway ride to chemistry class on the other side of town. Mr. Diboi Kath, 23, is an exchange student from Cameroon, and like many other African college students in Russia he says he feels threatened by racist thugs every time he leaves his dormitory. He has been abused, beaten and even shot during his five years at People's Friendship University, where about one-third of the students come from developing countries. … Racist attacks on foreigners here—Asians, Arabs and especially blacks—have been a continuing problem whose victims have included diplomats and American Embassy Marine guards. Full story*
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles River is a river denied, dismissed, diverted. It stretches 51 miles from its official beginning behind the bleachers of Canoga Park High School in the San Fernando Valley to its mouth at the Long Beach Harbor. It is often hidden from view by barbed wire, cinder blocks, hurricane fencing and poisonous oleander bush. By unofficial count, the river is crossed by more than 100 bridges and 12 freeways. So subdued is the river that some maps do not acknowledge it. Rand McNally describes it as dry. This is untrue. About 80 million gallons a day flow along its channeled, concrete-lined banks in the dry season, fed by the sewage treatment plant near the Sepulveda Dam, a few miles from the high school, and street runoff. In the dry season, it is 18 inches at its deepest point. In places where the water is a steady trickle on bare concrete, it looks like a broken urinal. The Los Angeles River has appeared in movies as a setting for car chases. Some have suggested turning the riverbed into a freeway. Someone wanted to paint the concrete blue, to make it look more like a river. Little ever comes of such proposals. It is a glorified trench. Full story*
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