Content & Context

This Week:

Timeline: May 2003
Places & Culture
May book blog

TIMELINE: MAY 2003

What qualities do we look for in a leader? The question was pertinent as the next presidential campaign cycle began in May. Piloting skills? President Bush displayed his while landing a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier to declare victory in Iraq, a scene ready-made for the reelection campaign he kicked off two weeks later. Squabbling and opportunism? Democratic presidential candidates demonstrated as much in their first televised debate. Running for the border? That’s what Texas legislators did to protest partisan redistricting (they turned up in a Holiday Inn in Oklahoma). Dazzling dunks? Evidently not, as the Washington Wizards suddenly dumped team president Michael Jordan. Consistency? Morality preacher William Bennett may not have technically done anything wrong, but revelations of his gambling habits were embarrassing. Youth and vitality? The Vatican finally confirmed that Pope John Paul II has Parkinson’s disease.

If ever we needed strong leadership, May’s crises called for it. There was disorder in Iraq and Afghanistan; bombings in Riyadh, Casablanca, and Israel; a record number of tornadoes in the American heartland; flooding in Sri Lanka; earthquakes in Algeria; and a new outbreak of SARS in Toronto. Yet our most urgent troubles in May were mundane compared with these global perils. The World Health Organization announced that traffic accidents kill five times as many people worldwide as wars do. We kept worrying about the job market after learning the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 6 percent in April. We were appalled by a barbaric hazing incident involving high school girls in an affluent Chicago suburb. Our trust in our arbiters of truth was dented when a New York Times reporter was revealed to have fabricated several stories. And on the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, when the nation swelled in size, we learned that we were doing the same, as the FAA increased its estimate of passengers’ average weight.

We saw history in new shades last month, literally so in the case of the colorful hues around Andrew Jackson’s face on the twenty dollar bill. Archaeologists in the Netherlands dug up a shipwreck of a Roman military transport. The stony face-like formation of New Hampshire’s “Old Man of the Mountain” crumbled away. The Senate released dozens of hours of tapes of Joe McCarthy’s interrogations of suspected Communists. Bob Hope turned 100. Nepal celebrated 50 years of climbing Mount Everest. “Les Miserables” closed on Broadway after a 16-year run. Annika Sorenstam was the first woman to play in a men’s pro golf tournament in more than half a century; she shot one-over-par in her opening round before missing the cut the next day. It was no minor personal achievement in a month full of them, including a mountain climber who cut off his arm with a pocketknife to loose himself from a half-ton boulder and a 13-year-old who graduated from college. Perhaps he will go on to make memorable discoveries, such as the findings this month that Pluto has a springtime, that butterflies have body clocks, and that fish feel pain.

Walter Sisulu, who mentored Nelson Mandela and was called the father of South Africa’s liberation, died in May. Wendy Hiller was handpicked by George Bernard Shaw to play Eliza Doolittle onstage in Pygmalion and onscreen in My Fair Lady. Robert Stack was unforgettable from television’s The Untouchables and Unsolved Mysteries. June Carter Cash was a Grammy-winning musician who married Johnny Cash. Frank White beat Bill Clinton to become Arkansas governor in 1980, one of only two people to defeat the future president. Broadcasting executive David Ives launched the PBS programs Nova, Frontline and Masterpiece Theatre (third item here). Basketball Hall of Famer Dave DeBusschere won two championships with the New York Knicks and was later the NBA’s youngest coach. They said Washington pastor Roy Schauer had cardiomyopathy, or a weakening heart, but in his years of ministry to children and the deaf, the opposite seemed to be true.

• Previous Timeline: April 2003

PLACES & CULTURE

From the Associated Press:

NOIDA, India—Music played, drinks were served and the priest got ready as 2,000 wedding guests waited on the sprawling lawn for the beautiful young bride to walk in for the ceremony. At that moment, Nisha Sharma, dressed in the shimmering red dress of a Hindu bride, was on the phone asking police to arrest her husband-to-be for mistreating her father while demanding an illegal dowry. In calling off her marriage Sunday night, 21-year-old Sharma defied centuries-old tradition and made headlines across a country of more than one billion people where women have made great strides, yet many parents still prefer sons. So rare was her stand that the software engineering student became an overnight celebrity. Her face has been splashed across newspapers and she has been flooded with proposals from men who say they would be honored to marry her without a dowry. Several political parties are vying to woo her into their ranks. link

NEW ORLEANS – Suddenly, the heart of the French Quarter looks a lot more like it did 30 years ago, and not everyone is happy about it. As of [last month], the incense-burning tarot card readers have been evicted from much of Jackson Square’s flagstone promenades. The fortunetellers were frequented by tourists but accused by many locals of overrunning one of the most scenic and historic public spaces in urban America. Their removal stems from the City Council’s latest effort to placate the artists who have painted in the square for more than half a century. The artists’ colony had been thinning out in recent years and members warned it would disappear without help. Artist Stanley Beck said he stopped working in the square for the same reason as a number of other artists: The fortunetellers were squatting in prime spaces along the wrought iron fence where painters display their work. But now, he said, he might return with his watercolors. link