HOME/ARCHIVES http://www.kazooweb.com/textes/
Merci de choisir un ou plusieurs textes plutôt que d'imprimer la totalité... Les arbres vous sont reconnaissants...
********************************
J'attire votre attention vers quelques articles sur vos métiers. (3) Encore de la Dasani, (5) Un plaidoyer pour un renforcement du rôle des juristes d'entreprise, (7) Les problèmes de financement des PME allemandes.

********************************
Week 16, 2004
THE REGULARS: Summary
A) Song of the week: "You are my sunshine" by Norman Blake
B) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Kidzworld: Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" [Présentation et résumé du "Songe d'une nuit d'été".]
C) CNN/Global Office: Workers admit 'greeting blunders' [Des salariés avouent s'inquiéter lors de saluer de nouvelles personnes.]
D) The New York Times/The Ethicist: The Dating Doctor [Conseils sur l'éthique et la déontologie : Médecin dans une petite ville, puis-je sortir avec mes patientes ? / Je suis l'assistant d'un joueur de basket pro, et mes amis me demande de lui solliciter des avis sur les matchs en vue de parier.]
E) Slate/Dear Prudence: More mixed bag [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : (Je panache cette semaine) Ma mère veut que je la conduise à l'enterrement de l'oncle qui s'est abusé de moi sexuellement quand j'étais enfant alors que je n'ai aucune envie lui témoigner mon respect. /Comment faire avec ma collègue raciste ?]
F) Washington Post/Miss Manners: Myth Manners [Conseils sur les bonnes manières : Miss Manners s'attaquent aux fausses règles de bienséance qui nous gâchent la vie. / Comment se comporter lorsqu'on a une bouffée de chaleur ?]
G) NPR Morning Edition/Present at the Creation: The French Quarter [Topo sur la création du Vieux Carré de la Nouvelle Orléans ; vous pouvez écouter le reportage en entier, ainsi que visionner un diaporama sur la vielle ville de la capitale de la France en Amérique sur le site indiqué.]
H) The Entente Cordiale series: Miossec [Une série d'articles publiés dans Libé et The Guardian à l'occasion de la commémoration de l'Entente Cordiale. Ici, une critique de l'artiste français Miossec.]

********************************
A) Song of the week: "You are my sunshine" by Norman Blake

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms
But when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
So I hung my head and I cried.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

I'll always love you and make you happy,
If you will only say the same.
But if you leave me and love another,
You'll regret it all some day:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

You told me once, dear, you really loved me
And no one else could come between.
But not you've left me and love another;
You have shattered all of my dreams:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

In all my dreams, dear, you seem to leave me
When I awake my poor heart pains.
So when you come back and make me happy
I'll forgive you dear, I'll take all the blame.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

^RETURN TO TOP^

Kids Notes - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare can be downright confusing, but that won't stop your teacher from making you read his stuff. Kidzworld's got the 411 you need to understand this famous play by William Shakespeare.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Major Characters
THESEUS - Duke of Athens
EGEUS - Hermia's dad
LYSANDER - In love with Hermia
DEMETRIUS - Also in love with Hermia
PHILOSTRATE - Master of the Revels to Theseus
QUINCE - The carpenter
SNUG - The joiner (a kind of carpenter)
BOTTOM - The weaver
FLUTE - The bellows-mender
SNOUT - The door-to-door metal repairman
STARVELING - The tailor
HIPPOLYTA - Queen of the Amazons, engaged to Theseus
HERMIA - Egeus' daughter who is in love with Lysander
HELENA - In love with Demetrius
OBERON - King of the Fairies
TITANIA - Queen of the Fairies
PUCK or ROBIN GOODFELLOW - A Fairy
Setting: Athens

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Summary

Act One - Scene One: The play opens with Theseus looking forward to marrying Hippolyta. Hermia's dad, Egeus, arrives on the scene and he's choked that his daughter loves Lysander and not Demetrius (who he likes better). Hermina refuses to listen to her dad so they ask the local wise man, Theseus. He says that Hermina must either marry Demetrius or remain unmarried forever. Theseus says Hermina should be given some time to think about it.
Hermina's former friend, Helena, arrives. She wants to get with Demetrius. Hermina tells Helena to chill out - she doesn't want to marry Demetrius anyway. She let's Helena in on her plan to run away into the woods with Lysander. Then Helena (talking to herself - soap opera style) says that she will tell Demetrius about Hermina and Lysander's plan to run away. Helena thinks this will help her get on Demetrius' good side - she's not the brightest girl.

Act One - Scene Two: Now the play takes place at the carpenter, Peter Quince's house. He and his tradesmen pals (Snug, Flute and Bottom) are rehearsing the play they are going to perform at Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. It's pretty funny, cuz these guys sooo aren't professional actors.

Act Two - Scene One: This scene is set in the woods outside Athens. Puck (AKA Robin Goodfellow) is a naughty, playful spirit who works for the king. The fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania, arrive and they are in the middle of a fight. They're arguing about a boy that Titania has taken prisoner because Oberon wants her to give the boy to him. Titania gets mad and leaves. Oberon thinks he should get even with his wife by playing a joke on her. He gets Puck to find a magic flower that he will put on Titania's eyes to make her fall in love with the first warm-blooded animal she sees when she wakes up. While Puck goes to find the flower, good old Demetrius shows up and Helena is tagging along with him. With the king watching, Demetrius rejects Helena - and he's pretty harsh about it. Tricky Oberon decides that he'll give Demetrius a dose of the magic flower, too.

Act Two - Scene Two: In a different part of the woods, Titania is sleeping. Oberon shows up and puts the love potion on her eyes. Lysander and Hermina - the couple on the run - show up and take a nap too. Puck shows up and mistakes them for Demetrius and Helena and puts the potion on their eyes instead. When Helena arrives in pursuit of Demetrius, Lysander wakes up, sees her, and falls in love with her - majorly dissing Hermina. However, Helena still wants Demetrius and tells Lysander to get lost. Helena leaves to find Demetrius and Lysander chases her. Hermina sleeps through the drama and wakes up after he leaves.

Act Three - Scene One: Quince, Bottom, and the other amateur actors are rehearsing the play in the woods. Puck runs into them on his way back from casting the love spells. He turns Bottom's head into a donkey head. Bottom doesn't notice but the other actors are scared and run away. Bottom is sad that everyone left and he tries to cheer himself up by singing a song. The song wakes up Queen Titania who falls head-over-heels in love with him. She orders her staff to cater to all of his wishes.

Act Three - Scene Two: Puck reports back to Oberon that the joke on his wife has worked and it's super-funny. Just then Demetrius enters with Helena and he's still rejecting her. Oberon realizes that Puck has given the potion to the wrong dude. He tries to fix the problem by putting the love potion on Demetrius' eyes after he conveniently decides to take a nap. Oberon tells Puck to bring Helena over so that she will be the first person Demetrius sees when he wakes up. Lysander arrives just as Demetrius wakes up and they both throw themselves at Helena. Helena just thinks they're making fun of her.
Hermina arrives and she thinks she's being Punk'd. She blames Helena for organizing this show to embarrass her. The two ladies argue and call each other names - as do the guys. Oberon uses an antidote to fix the situation - so Lysander and Hermia fall in love again and Demetrius stays in love with Helena.

Act Four - Scene One: Oberon laughs as he watches Titania arrive with her new donkey boyfriend. Oberon tells Puck that Titania has given in and will give the boy (that they fought about earlier) to him. Puck changes Bottom's head back to normal and Oberon gives the antidote to Titania. Titania's fairies cast a spell on Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena, and all of the tradesmen so that they will think that the weird events of the night are just dreams.
Theseus, Hippolyta, and Hermina's dad, Egeus arrive and Egeus demands that Lysander is killed. Theseus disagrees, and says that since Demetrius is in love with Helena now, all the couples (including Theseus and Hippolyta) should get married. They all leave for the big group wedding - except for Bottom, who's still mulling his "strange dream" over.

Act Four - Scene Two: The tradesmen/actors worry that the play won't be the same without Bottom, but Bottom arrives and announces that the show must go on.

Act Five - Scene One: The tradesmen put on their performance at the wedding. The actors screw everything up - and everyone laughs. After the play, everyone leaves except the King, Queen and Puck. Puck now turns to the audience (that's you) and thanks them for watching such a silly play. He tells them not to worry - it was only a dream.

^RETURN TO TOP^

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Most workers believe first encounters can make or break a professional relationship, yet new research reveals their hopeless confusion when it comes to greeting colleagues and clients. Whether administering a "bone-crushing" handshake or a misplaced "smacker," more than 80 percent of workers admit having blundered their way through an introduction.

As with other aspects of working life, it is a habit that has been accurately spoofed by award-winning TV comedy The Office. In an effort to impress a secretary with his bonhomie, inept middle manager David Brent jumps forward too enthusiastically and ends up headbutting his new employee.

While few have failed so spectacularly, more than two-thirds of 1,500 workers polled by recruitment consultancy Office Angels said that getting it wrong had cause them embarrassment and 52 percent said it had affected working relations. More than half blamed the problem on modern society's preference for more casual forms of greeting etiquette while 45 percent said they were even more ungainly when greeting members of the opposite sex. A quarter were in favor of a return to the days when a firm handshake -- somewhere between the "bone-crusher" and the "wet fish" -- covered all bases.

One cheek or two?

The most common blunder -- committed by 32 percent of those polled -- was attempting to "go continental"; lunging forward with a two-cheek kiss, as the other person leaned in to kiss just once. In worst-case scenarios, admitted to by 12 percent of workers, such misjudgment could lead to the ill-fated "smacker" on the lips.

The more reserved world of the handshake is not without its pitfalls, however. Twenty-one percent said they had "turned the other cheek," offering a handshake as the other person goes for a kiss, while 27 percent admitted crushing the other person's hand. Eight percent said they had unintentionally administered a "bear hug" as a consequence of over-enthusiasm. A third of those polled feared their blunder would be remembered forever by the recipient, yet more than three-quarters considered an initial greeting as being vital in a successful business partnership.

Those working in creative professions, such as fashion, media or publishing, were generally considered to be kissers while the more traditional business world of law and accountancy was still considered to be the domain of the handshake. "Knowing how to greet colleagues and clients can be a difficult business, with most office workers having made a 'greeting blunder' at some point in their career," said Office Angels Managing Director Paul Jacobs. "Firstly, you need to judge how formal the situation or relationship is and opt for an appropriate greeting on this basis. If in doubt, the general consensus is to be too formal rather than too informal -- you can't really go wrong with a handshake. "If you do make a blunder, all is not lost -- just apologize straight away. In most cases, all will be forgotten or the recipient will see the funny side."

^RETURN TO TOP^

********************************
E) Slate/Dear Prudence: More mixed bag [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : (Je panache cette semaine) Ma mère veut que je la conduise à l'enterrement de l'oncle qui s'est abusé de moi sexuellement quand j'étais enfant alors que je n'ai aucune envie lui témoigner mon respect. /Comment faire avec ma collègue raciste ?]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2096902/
dear prudence: More mixed bag
Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004, at 5:45 AM PT

Dear Prudence,
My uncle sexually abused me from the time I was 2 years old until I was 10. Yesterday, I learned that he had died. My family members are asking me to attend his funeral, which is over 500 miles from my home. My mother is wondering why I am not overwhelmed with grief, but secretly I am glad that he is gone. I told my husband about all of this, and he thinks that I should just stay home. However, my mother needs me and can't drive. Should I just forget the truth and attend the funeral?

—Still Recovering

Dear Still,
Only make the trip if you want to make sure that it's really him in the box. That would be about the only reason Prudie can think of for going to the funeral of one's abuser. It is OK, by the way, to feel glad that this man is gone. It is also fine to tell your mother you choose not to go. She will have to find another ride or take public transportation. It is unclear why you haven't mentioned these evil actions to your mother. Perhaps now is the time. Or maybe not. This will have to be your decision.

—Prudie, supportively

-*-*-*-
Dear Prudence,
I work in a small office, and office politics are always an issue that I try to avoid if possible, but I can't ignore this. Our receptionist is a racist. If a person calls with a name like Habib or Lee, she'll make an offhand comment about "some foreigner on the line." She calls the Latina woman in the next office "our little coconut" and manages to make disparaging comments about clients of color. These are just the things that are fit to print. She is, however, smart enough to avoid making such remarks in front of the clients or our boss. Other than this (significant) issue, she's nice, good at her job, and would be hard to replace, but I can't stand these slurs. How can I handle this without starting a huge office war?

—P.C.O.C. (Office Chicken)

Dear P.,
You should take this woman aside and explain that naming Hispanics for fruits and her other xenophobic slurs and are not good for business or interpersonal relations. Tell her that the belittling comments that have become her trademark are offensive in polite society and, these days, are regarded right up there with harassment in the workplace. If she gives you guff or drums up some "explanation" for her language, simply invite her to run it past the boss and see what happens. It is unlikely that you can change the way this woman feels about "foreigners," but it will be progress to get her to keep her biases to herself.

—Prudie, pragmatically

^RETURN TO TOP^

Yet certain notions of etiquette have such a powerful hold as to survive. Unfortunately, they all happen to be wrong. Nevertheless, even people with no discernible manners cling to them and are outraged if others do not.

The Guest Towel Syndrome, Miss Manners calls it, in honor of the vast number of peopl e who believe that these bits of cloth exist for the purpose of tantalizing guests who might want to wash their hands but are strictly forbidden to touch them.

Amazingly, some of these errant notions are not self-serving. That is to say, one suspects that they were first promulgated by, for example, hosts who wanted to show off pretty towels without the trouble of laundering them, but such ideas were later convincingly sold to others.

Here is an incomplete list of persistent etiquette myths:

• That a proper place setting consists of a fork, knife and teaspoon, no matter what food is being served, and that a teaspoon is the proper implement for eating dessert, while the larger oval dessert spoons should be used for serving.
• That it is permissible to disrupt a social event with a telephone call or premature departure if citing a work demand.
• That wives who have used their husbands' names may no longer do so when they are widows.
• That invitations don't need to be answered unless there is a specific request to that effect, and preferably a stamped card and envelope with which to reply.
• That it is rude to invite a single person anywhere without the option of bringing along a date.
• That party invitations require the donation of a bottle of wine or an item of food because guests "can't come empty-handed."
• That all announcements and invitations concerning milestones in the hosts' lives require the recipient to send a present -- except for a death, which requires sending the bereaved a check.
• That it is the obligation of people who expect presents to make known what they want.
• That the monetary value of a wedding present must equal the amount spent on the guest's entertainment at the wedding reception.
• That a bride has a year in which to thank people for sending wedding presents. Or that she cannot begin to thank people until after the wedding.
• That purchasing a greeting card is more thoughtful than writing a letter.
• That formal letters should be written on small, fold-over cards known as "informals."
• That a donation to charity counts as a present if you tell people you have given it in their name.
• That it is generous to direct other people to give money to charity in your name, using funds you would otherwise expect them to spend on you.

There is not a word of truth in any of this.

-*-*-*-
Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

How does one deal with a hot flash in public? I have an attractive fan that I carry, preferring it to whatever piece of paper lies closest at hand, but is a fan obvious in an inappropriate way? Sometimes, dabbing my face discreetly with a pretty little linen handkerchief just isn't enough!

A:
Then Miss Manners suggests confessing that you have the vapors, and holding the back of your hand to your forehead while saying, "Oh, dear, I feel one of my spells coming on."

This will give you a reputation for having a delicate sensibility, not a bad reputation to have in these vulgar times. It will also enable you to fall back on a sofa, steady yourself on the arm of the nearest gentleman or otherwise make yourself more comfortable.

********************************
G) NPR Morning Edition/Present at the Creation: The French Quarter [Topo sur la création du Vieux Carré de la Nouvelle Orléans ; vous pouvez écouter le reportage en entier, ainsi que visionner un diaporama sur la vielle ville de la capitale de la France en Amérique sur le site indiqué.]
The French Quarter

April 8, 2002 -- Americans who have never set foot in the French Quarter of New Orleans would recognize it in a photograph: narrow streets lined with candy-colored houses, French doors and shuttered windows opening onto balconies that drip with lacy iron grillwork.

"Their chief beauty is the deep, warm, varicolored stain with which time and the weather have enriched the plaster," Mark Twain wrote in Life on the Mississippi in 1883.

But, as Renée Montagne reports for Morning Edition, the French Quarter that Twain saw -- and that survives today -- is really more Spanish and American than it is French. The city of New Orleans, established in 1718, was laid out as a grid with a central square in the style of a French fort -- in the middle of a swamp. "It's not a place we would build today," says Robert Cangelosi, an architectural historian and French Quarter native.

He says the watery location caused a multitude of problems: bodies that had been buried "used to come out of the ground," a levee had to be built to keep the Mississippi River from flooding the city, and mosquitoes from the swamp spread yellow fever. As the city developed into a port, ships brought in rats -- and more diseases. "We had the bubonic plague, we had cholera. Almost annually, the city of New Orleans was visited by one plague or another, and a lot of it had to do with all the water around us. Then you had the hurricanes... "

The troubles didn't stop there. By the late 1700s, when the Spanish took over the Louisiana colony, fire and rain had destroyed nearly all of what was French about the French Quarter, Montagne reports.

"The buildings today in the French Quarter are very close together, but during the French period, most of the buildings were still detached. They sat in their own yards, and you had a lot of open spaces," says John Magill, curator of the Historic New Orleans Collection. After a fire consumed the French Quarter in 1794, the Spanish instituted strict building codes mandating all structures be side by side and pushed to the curb to create a firewall.

The French peaked roofs gave way to flat roofs covered in tiles. Wood siding was banned and replaced with fire-resistant stucco painted in the pastel hues fashionable at the time. By the time the United States purchased Louisiana in 1803, the French Quarter was halfway to creation. The Americans finished the job. What had been a touch of Spanish wrought iron -- adding elegance here and there -- suddenly bloomed all over the Quarter, much like the vinyl siding seen around the country today.

As the 20th century began, the Quarter developed a reputation as an immigrant-filled slum. The poverty is one reason that the famous lacy ironwork still abounds in the Quarter. It was being pulled off buildings in other parts of the city, but landlords in the Quarter weren't willing or able to follow the trend. "So it was preservation by neglect," Magill says.

Some of the Quarter's most treasured buildings slid into disrepair. Among the buildings torn down was Gen. Andrew Jackson's headquarters during the Battle of New Orleans. There was a plan to raze the Cabildo, the building where the Louisiana Purchase transfer took place. All of which brought the citizens of New Orleans to their senses.

And the French Quarter suddenly became interesting: William Faulkner came to live there, followed by Tennessee Williams. Art galleries, theaters and clubs opened. In 1925, New Orleans passed the country's first preservation law aimed at saving the French Quarter. It went into effect a decade later -- after a series of court challenges and squabbling over the Quarter's boundaries.

And today, the sounds of repair -- and preservation -- can still be heard in the streets of the old Quarter.

********************************
H) The Entente Cordiale series: Miossec [Une série d'articles publiés dans Libé et The Guardian à l'occasion de la commémoration de l'Entente Cordiale. Ici, une critique de l'artiste français Miossec.]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1185948,00.html

Pop: Miossec, 1964 (Pais)

You could never say that the British ignored French rock and pop music during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They did not ignore it: they actively mocked it. But in the 1990s came the success of the Parisian duo Air, which led some commentators to suggest that Britain had finally opened its ears to continental music.

However, the predicted influx of French successes in Britain never happened. This may have less to do with xenophobia than a cultural clash. French audiences seem to like their artists rather more complex than the British. A quick scan of the internet reveals singer-songwriter Christophe Miossec revelling in the sort of dissolute reputation that French audiences seem to adore. If one gushing webzine review is to be believed, Miossec is "an alcoholic man with a tormented mind and blunt words". Another suggests he is both an existentialist and an irascible provocateur, who also happens to be afflicted with stage fright. Tormented, alcoholic, existentialist, irascible: these are adjectives that would cause your average British record company executive to utter some blunt words of his own. Stir stage fright into the equation and we can safely assume that no British label will be rushing to give Miossec a contract in the near future.

On the evidence of 1964, that's a shame. If you can't understand the blunt words, you are left to concentrate on the music, which at times sounds not unlike an edgier version of David Gray. The edge is lent mainly by Miossec's declamatory, tobacco-ravaged voice: he is the kind of singer you expect to suddenly burst into a coughing fit mid-song.

However, Miossec has a surprising way with the sort of sweeping, lovely melody that has its roots in 1940s chanson. Degueulasse rolls gorgeously along, backed by a wonderful orchestral arrangement. Brest, meanwhile, is a triumphant piano ballad that builds into a climax of distorted guitars. It recalls a less docile version of Coldplay - proof that Miossec's music is considerably less disconcerting than the reputation that precedes it.

--Alexis Petridis

^RETURN TO TOP^

Abbie Rapport, co-founder of a small jewelry company called Key Item Sales, took a business trip a few years ago and found herself seated on an airplane next to a woman who had six grandchildren. ''The Grandmother,'' the company Web site relates, ''pulled out a large album and proceeded to share her family photos.'' A lot of people have photo albums or scrapbooks, and while few of us go so far as to carry them around on airplanes, it's easy to understand why ''the Grandmother'' did -- what good is the archive of your life if no one else studies it?

Inspired by the encounter, Rapport came up with a very clever product that is, in a sense, a wearable scrapbook. The Memory Maker Photo Bracelet, which is six tiny picture frames linked in a circle, started showing up in stores about six months ago, and already more than a million have been sold at $20 to $30 a pop.

The bracelet has several consumer constituencies, but the most interesting and probably most important is the ''scrapbooker.'' People have made scrapbooks for decades, of course, but the practice is now a $2.5 billion business, having doubled in size since 2001, according to the Hobby Industry Association. That money is spent on materials like elaborate paper and special cutting tools and bead ''embellishments.'' Hewlett-Packard even makes a printer designed to handle digital scrapbook pages, notes Michele Gerbrandt, founding editor of a thick glossy magazine called Memory Makers (no relation to the bracelet). Her magazine alone has a circulation over 200,000 and recently told readers how to take page-design inspiration from Warhol and Kandinsky. Rapport and her husband, Jeff, who were in the jewelry business, were hardly aware of this teeming subculture as they designed their accessory -- but they know a lot more about it now.

''The women who are into scrapbooking like to go on the Web and talk to each other,'' Abbie Rapport says. ''They're very excited when they find something in scrapbooking they can do.'' Through no effort of hers, she continues, ''the word started to spread, and it was amazing, faster than any ad you could have taken out.'' The bracelet is now on sale in more than 15,000 locations, from department stores to crafts shops to Hallmark outlets.

Robbie Blinkoff is an anthropologist and the head of Context-Based Research Group, an ''ethnographic research and consulting firm'' that works for corporations. Last year he journeyed into the wilds of scrapbooking -- attending, for example, ''cropping parties,'' where moms and other familial enthusiasts gather (often under the auspices of a company called Creative Memories, whose 90,000 ''consultants'' earn commissions by selling tools and materials). He came to some interesting conclusions that help explain the photo bracelet's popularity in the scrapbooking world -- and beyond it. Blinkoff is ''a big fan of scrapbooking,'' because it helps participants be creative, yet doesn't seem like an indulgence, since archiving family life feels productive. That plays into the larger theme he's been exploring: how consumption habits have changed since 9/11. ''There's a need for people to feel they're creating products that they have put time into and invested in,'' he says, pointing to home improvement and personal makeovers as consumption crazes with a quasi-authorial dimension.

A major issue for scrapbookers, he adds, is ''the show.'' They can get positive feedback at those cropping parties, ''but what happens with the final product?'' Sure, some future generation of historians will be overwhelmed with exhaustive catalogs of quotidian life in the form of elaborately decorated chronicles of ''Billy's Favorite Things.'' But the Memory Maker Bracelet's role is in the here and now -- it is, in effect, a scrapbook highlight reel, a trailer for the movie of your scrupulously documented life.

And despite rather dowdy styling, it has spread beyond the obvious target market of ''the Grandmother.'' The influential style monitor The Tobe Report has highlighted the bracelet; Sharon Osbourne filled hers with pet pictures; and now it is even being worn by teenage girls who stock it with photos of friends or pop stars. Jeff Rapport, not surprisingly, is thrilled at how his wife's invention has taken off, and he can afford to sum it all up with jokey irreverence. ''It's a piece of junk jewelry -- until it has your kids' pictures in it! Then it becomes something really special.''

^RETURN TO TOP^

********************************
4) Slate/The Best Policy: Two is enough [Si les Etats Unis veulent augmenter le bien être général et le niveau de vie à venir, il faut qu'ils arrêtent leur politique fiscale nataliste.]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2097913/
the best policy
Two Is Enough: Why large families don't deserve tax breaks.
By Dalton Conley
Posted Monday, March 29, 2004, at 12:58 PM PT

The U.S. government encourages families to have children, as many of them as possible. Child tax credits, child-care tax deductions, and family leave policies all reward parents with big broods. The pro-child policies are based partly on romantic notions about mom, family, and apple pie, but they also have a rational goal: We subsidize kids so that our next generation of workers is ready to win in the global economy.

Problem is, these two goals—more kids and better-prepared kids—are at odds. If we really care about kids' welfare and accomplishment, the United States should scrap policies that encourage parents to have lots of children. As my recent research shows, having more than two children is tantamount to handicapping their chances for academic, and thus economic, success. In this information economy, what we ought to be doing through the tax code is making it easier for parents to ensure the quality of their first one or two children, not stimulating quantity. Pro-fertility tax policy is an outdated notion from an industrial era when we needed bodies to fill manufacturing plants. Today we need fewer, highly skilled kids who will compete with our rivals in math and science.

It's long been known that kids from large families perform worse in school, but it has been impossible to explain why. That's because research about the relationship between family size and children's educational achievement has been plagued by a nagging issue: Large families tend to be different from small families on a number of fronts—religiosity, commitment to education, orientation to the future, maybe even intelligence level. So it has been hard to assess the impact of the number of children in a family as distinct from these other differences. (Maybe Johnny can't read because he has unintelligent parents, not because he is the sixth of nine kids.) After all, with all due respect to Chairman Mao, we can't randomly assign parents to have different numbers of offspring for the purposes of social experimentation—that is, to find out if additional kids handicap offspring.

Here's where my research comes in. I deploy a natural experiment: I examine which sexes parents get for their first two children—a seemingly random event. The key is that families with two kids of the same sex are 17 percent more likely to go on and have a third than those with two kids of the opposite sex. As it turns out, no matter what most people say on surveys (or when their kids pop out), many parents desire at least one of each kind. So my research strategy boils down to the following: comparing children from families in which the first two were of the same sex ("treatment group") to those in which the first two were of the opposite sex ("control group") in order to see who fares better educationally. In other words, while only some of the variation in who goes on to have a third child is accounted for by the sex mix (that 17 percent), that variation is "pure"—that is, unbiased by all the other factors that determine family size and determine achievement—since it is a result of the random event of the sex mix. Its lack of bias is bolstered by the fact that it does not matter which sex the first two are—either way, parents are more likely to go on to have additional kids in search of a complete set.

With the addition of the third child, firstborns don't appear to suffer on the educational front. But middle-borns are severely hurt by the addition of another mouth to feed: His parents are 25 percent less likely to send him to private school, and he is several times more likely to be held back a grade. The third child is also less likely to receive parental financial investment in his or her education and can suffer from elevated risk of academic failure. Evidently, only firstborns get off scot-free.

The reasons that additional siblings hamper the intellectual growth of children (and particularly middle-borns) are fairly obvious—parental resources are a fixed pie, and children do better when they get more attention (and money). The conclusions to be drawn are more controversial. For example, we always talk about the goal of raising test scores and the overall "intellectual" or "human" capital of our population to fit the needs of the new information economy (and to compete with other nations in math and science), yet our tax policy does the exact opposite: It gives tax credits for additional kids. We have to confront the possibility that a more powerful educational (and antipoverty) policy is a tax structure that acts as a disincentive to have more children. Research has long shown that family background is a lot more important than school conditions in predicting academic success or failure. Just about the most controllable aspect of family background is how many kids are in that family. So it stands to reason that a more effective education policy may be to provide economic disincentives to large families.

Perhaps a suitable compromise would be to have a declining tax credit—granting a big subsidy for the first kid, a bit less for the second, then cutting back to nothing (not unlike the current system for the Earned Income Tax Credit). Such an adjusted tax credit (and associated deductions) makes economic sense since the addition of the first kid is the most expensive. It makes educational sense, and last of all, it makes common sense. After all, do we really want to subsidize kid No. 9?

Such a fertility-unfriendly policy would put us at odds with European nations that are desperately trying to stimulate population growth by increasing the tax incentives to have more kids; but then again, if we can't find common ground with the Europeans in foreign policy, what should make domestic policy any different? (Unlike most of Europe, we have a steady influx of immigrants to sustain population growth.) More important, the antibrood tax policies would anger those on both sides of the political aisle here in the United States. Religious conservatives—who see procreation as a divine imperative—may take offense at the notion that the government would not do all it could to facilitate this goal. Similarly, many on the left will protest that such a policy is class-biased, allowing rich people who would be less fazed by the additional expenses to have as many children as they please while leaving poor people to feel the extra pinch. Americans of all political stripes might take offense at the notion of the government getting involved in the sacred sphere of family life. But the truth is that we already are meddling with family fertility through our tax code. We're just not acknowledging it, and, furthermore, we're doing it the wrong way. We need honest discussion about the trade-offs between child quantity and quality.

********
Incidentally, it doesn't matter what sex the third child is; the middle child still suffers. If parents with two girls have the boy they desire, the middle girl suffers. But if the parents with two girls end up having a third girl, the middle girl still suffers.

Dalton Conley is director of NYU's Center for Advanced Social Science Research and author of The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why.

^RETURN TO TOP^

Face value: Where's the lawyer?
Mar 18th 2004

Nowadays every firm should have its own in-house lawyer-statesman, says Ben Heineman

“IT IS the best of times for general counsels and it is the worst of times.” So paraphrases Ben Heineman, who has just given up the title of general counsel—though not necessarily the influence that came with it—at General Electric after nearly 17 years in which he became arguably the world's most admired in-house corporate lawyer and, it is said, its highest paid. He will remain at GE as “senior vice-president, law and public affairs”.

For the worst of times, look no further than the recent ethical crisis in corporate America. As Mr Heineman reminded the “in-house bar” at last week's General Counsel Roundtable hosted by The Economist and Corporate Board Member, some general counsels have been indicted and others accused of heading departments where there is credible evidence of malpractice and breach of fiduciary duties. Still others, he observed, are now “haunted by the question ‘where were they?' as their enterprises literally collapsed in internal fraud and corruption”.

The best of times are not so obvious. Mr Heineman believes that the woes of corporate America have created an opportunity, and a pressing need, for general counsels to carry out the “rather grandiloquently named role of ‘lawyer-statesman' or ‘statesman-adviser'.” He has in mind a sort of éminence grise function, the corporate equivalent of Père Joseph to Cardinal Richelieu, instead of the narrow, technical lawyer that was too often the general counsel of recent years—though not, ahem, at GE.

The ideal of the lawyer-statesman first emerged after the second world war, along with the big modern corporation. Among his skills, the lawyer-statesman would supply practical wisdom, not just technical mastery; an understanding of long-term effects, not just how to achieve short-term advantage; and a deep concern (or, at least, the appearance of it) for the public interest as well as for the private good of his client. In those golden days, the lawyer-statesman was not in-house but, rather, a senior partner in a top private law firm, who provided counsel to top corporate clients as well as occasionally becoming a real statesman. Mr Heineman cites Cyrus Vance, secretary of state under Jimmy Carter, and James Baker, who did the same job under the first President George Bush—as well as helping to install the second with his legal strategy in Florida. In private practice, both men advised many corporate chiefs.

Long before the Enron scandal, the decline of the lawyer-statesman was being regretted in books such as “The Lost Lawyer”, by Tony Kronman, a dean of Yale Law School, and “The Betrayed Profession”, by Sol Linowitz, a former general counsel (and chairman) of Xerox. Among the reasons suggested for the decline were the growing specialisation of law firms, reducing their ability to offer a broad view; a greater emphasis on profit by these firms; and the use of competitive bidding by companies buying legal services. “A senior partner is more likely to be bidding for work than whispering in the ear of the CEO,” says Mr Heineman. GE recently increased such pressure by making law firms compete for its legal business in online auctions.

Though, says Mr Heineman, a few lawyer-statesmen remain in private practice, in future they are more likely to thrive inside companies. This view is controversial. After all, the pressure to compromise bearing down on an in-house lawyer from his sole client, in practice the chief executive, may be even harder to resist than that facing a private law firm, which can at least compete for work from many clients. Crucially, says Mr Heineman, the chief executive must “want, really want, unvarnished views” and the general counsel must be strong enough to give them, and to resign if they are not accepted.

And the role of in-house éminence grise may simply be impossibly demanding. Consider Mr Heineman's efforts to guide his long-time Cardinal Richelieu, Jack Welch, GE's former boss. If Mr Heineman gave Mr Welch unvarnished views about the obvious antitrust risks in Europe surrounding GE's planned acquisition of Honeywell, they went expensively unheeded. Nor did he succeed in preventing an embarrassing row about Mr Welch's perks in retirement, nor curb his enthusiasm for a compliant board or for smoothing GE's profits to keep investors sweet. On the other hand, he was impressively statesmanlike in quickly getting a grip when GE's record came under post-Enron scrutiny. He presided over a rapid, sweeping reform of the firm's corporate governance and executive pay that has won praise.

Trust me, I'm a lawyer-statesman
Some general counsels may feel that they have their work cut out just doing the narrow legal bits of their job. With new duties under the Sarbanes-Oxley act, greedy trial lawyers to the left of them and assorted government regulators and prosecutors to the right, surely they should spend every waking moment ensuring that their firm does not break the law? Besides, especially with pressure growing from regulators for the general counsel to act as a sort of in-house cop, is it really possible to be both an independent counsellor and a business partner, a lawyer and a member of the management team?

Mr Heineman thinks it is not only possible, but essential. The general counsel should be involved in everything from creating a “culture of compliance and integrity” to engaging in public debate and fighting the current cynicism about business. Making a “fair-minded and fair-sounding case for necessary public positions in our bitter political culture must be a core competency” of the general counsel, he says. GE is leading by example in one of the bitterest debates now gripping America. Its current boss, Jeff Immelt, has bravely spoken out in favour of outsourcing jobs abroad, although he has also said that he is reluctant to “become a poster child for this”. In the interests of free trade, if nothing else, here's hoping that lawyer-statesmen at other firms will persuade their bosses to follow suit.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2374391
Voting machines: Good intentions, bad technology
Jan 22nd 2004

High-tech voting machines are making things worse, not better

ANOTHER election year, another recount fiasco in Florida. On January 6th, a local election was held for a seat covering parts of Broward and Palm Beach Counties. A total of 10,844 votes were cast, and Ellyn Bogdanoff won by a margin of just 12 votes. There were also 137 undervotes, in which voters' choices failed to register. Under state law, there must be a manual recount of all undervotes and overvotes (ballots marked more than once) in any election where the winning margin is less than 0.25%. But no recount is possible, because the votes were cast using touch-screen voting machines whose only paper output is the final tally.

The machines can be asked to print out the same result again, of course. But as Robert Wexler, a Democratic congressman, likes to point out, “a reprint is not a recount”. He has just filed a suit arguing that the machines violate state law, and asking a judge to order that they be equipped with printers, so that voters can verify their decisions on paper. The paper copies would then be placed in a ballot box, for recounting if necessary.

This case has highlighted a growing debate about the merits of high-tech voting machines. Touch-screen machines are particularly controversial, since they generally do not produce paper output, cause confusion among voters, and seem to go wrong rather often. It is (just) possible that the 137 undervotes in the Florida case were all cast by voters who deliberately chose to go to the polls, stepped up to the machines, and then decided to abstain. It seems more likely that they pressed the wrong button, or that the machine failed to register their votes properly. But without a paper trail, it is impossible to say.

Machines that do not produce bits of paper verified by voters are also open to the charge that their software is full of bugs, or has been rigged to favour a particular candidate. Stories abound of voting machines producing dodgy results. In one case in Indiana, 5,352 voters somehow cast 144,000 votes. In Virginia, machines subtracted votes rather than adding them to a candidate's total in some cases. Machines have broken down and been taken away, only to reappear with their seals broken; memory cards (on which votes are recorded) have gone missing.

Notable Software, a consulting firm founded by Rebecca Mercuri, gives information on electronic voting. BlackBoxVoting.org campaigns on the dangers of electronic voting. Scoop, a New Zealand-based news site, investigates voting machines. See also the Help America Vote Act 2002 and Diebold Election Systems.

Conspiracy theories have been fuelled by damning memos leaked from Diebold, one of the leading makers of touch-screen voting machines. The firm's voting-machine software, which also leaked on to the internet, was found to contain numerous security flaws.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002 in the wake of the Florida fiasco of 2000, was supposed to sort things out by replacing old-fashioned punch-card machines (and their infamous “hanging chads”) with more modern voting equipment. But HAVA has only served to confuse matters further.

The federal government, for good reason, is not allowed to tell the states how to run their elections. Instead HAVA offered $3.8 billion, which the states could apply for in order to purchase HAVA-compliant voting machinery. But the technical committee that is supposed to decide on the HAVA standard has not even been appointed. In the meantime, the money is being doled out to the states anyway. Some of the new equipment purchased meets only the now-obsolete 1990 standard; other machines meet the 2002 standard, which experts also regard as flawed. The result is a mess. Even the regulations surrounding gambling machines are tighter.

Yet there is surely a simple answer: new voting machines should be required to produce a paper output that voters can check. Any funny business, whether accidental or deliberate, could then be exposed by a hand recount if necessary. In November, California became the first state to require that all voting machines must produce a paper trail by 2006. But the debate is far from over.

To begin with, some electoral officials oppose the idea of paper trails on the basis that printers will be too expensive, or they might jam. This strikes Rebecca Mercuri, an electronic-voting expert at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, as an odd argument: after all Diebold and other voting-machine manufacturers also make cash registers and ATMs, and they seem to work.

Another objection is that voters might walk off with the paper ballots. Dr Mercuri's preferred solution is that voters should be able to see the paper ballot under glass to verify it, after which it drops into the ballot box. Another option would be to use paper forms that voters place under optical readers, which would confirm their choice before the form is placed in the ballot box. The counting is automated, in other words, but not the voting.

It is hardly rocket science. But it is too late to sort out the mess before November, when perhaps 20% of the votes will be cast using paperless touch-screen machines. Worries over their reliability and security, and the lack of a common standard, mean the new machines may have made a Florida-like fiasco more rather than less likely. “We're going to have digital hanging chads,” says Dr Mercuri.

^RETURN TO TOP^

********************************
7) The Economist: Financing Germany's Mittelstand [Le crédit-bail est une réponse aux difficultés de financement des PME allemandes qui ne trouvent plus de crédit bancaire.]

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2179115

Financing Germany's Mittelstand: Without credit
Oct 30th 2003 | DRESDEN AND FRANKFURT

Though starved of bank loans, German companies are reluctant to tap alternative sources of capital

BY GERMAN standards, Rolf Heinemann's company is unusual, and not only because of its inspiring history. Mr Heinemann runs Robotron, a Dresden maker of data-warehousing software, and owns 53% of it. In Communist times he was a technician at Robotron's state-owned predecessor, a conglomerate of the same name with 70,000 workers in East Germany. He began on his own in 1990 with DM50,000 (then $30,000) of capital. After more than a decade of careful reinvestment of profits, the modern Robotron has sales of €11m ($11.5m) a year and employs 125.

The healthy state of Robotron's finances is unusual too. It has enough capital, no bank debt to speak of and a partner—Oracle, no less—with a 33% stake. Yet more than 3,000 other German companies are going bust every month. Germany's Mittelstand—the small and medium-sized, mainly owner-run firms that make up the bulk of the economy—are badly undercapitalised. Equity makes up just 20% of the liabilities of German middle-sized companies, compared with 35% in France and the Netherlands and 45% in America. Traditionally, the Mittelstand has relied on bank loans for finance, and banks are turning off the tap. Lenders are balking at the thinness of borrowers' capital; they are trying to repair the damage done by bad loans to bigger companies; and they are wary of the effects of new rules on bank capital, known as Basel 2, that are being drawn up. Companies in former East Germany, which have had less time to build up capital, are most vulnerable.

What can plug the financial gap? According to Herbert Lohneiss of Siemens Financial Services, the leasing and factoring arm of a big electronics company, banks' neglect of the Mittelstand has created opportunities for firms such as his. Their share of day-to-day funding has been rising. But this is operational money, not capital that will help companies grow.

For bigger Mittelstand companies, a stockmarket flotation might seem an obvious alternative to bank credit. But Germany's stock exchanges have yet to see a single initial public offering (IPO) this year (see chart). In a recent survey of firms with turnover of at least €35m by the Deutsches Aktieninstitut, which promotes public offerings, only 15 of the 881 companies who replied saw themselves as candidates for an IPO soon, although ten times that number were open to the idea.

In any case, flotations may have little appeal for investors. Top mutual funds and insurers focus on the shares of the 30 big firms in the Dax stockmarket index; smaller investment firms also favour liquid, seasoned shares. Nor, after the ups and downs of the past few years, are German private investors likely to have much appetite for Mittelstand shares. In 1999 and 2000, 265 companies were floated on the Neuer Markt, the “growth” segment of the Frankfurt stockmarket, which rocketed and crashed, and is now defunct. Corporate governance was often poor: a survey found that 90% of Neuer Markt companies did not report properly.

There are other options. Private equity funds are prowling Germany, and have been involved in several mergers and restructurings involving biggish companies. However, many Mittelstand companies, especially those in family ownership, see outside strategic shareholders as a threat. A compromise is mezzanine finance, which offers investors a yield of perhaps 18%, but is riskier than a secured loan.

Most companies not threatened with bankruptcy will probably wait for profitability to improve and then invest out of their own resources, or hope for lending conditions to ease. The former may be a while off, despite this week's buoyant Ifo business-confidence index; but there are signs of the latter. Thirteen banks, including KfW, a state-owned development bank, have a plan to securitise billions of euros of bank loans for resale to investors. This would remove the loans from banks' balance sheets, allowing them to lend more to German companies. Big German banks are also refocusing on the Mittelstand. Commerzbank, the fourth biggest, pledged recently to lend euro1.8 billion to Mittelstand companies. However, Nicholas Teller, the board member in charge of corporate banking, says there has been little demand so far from eligible companies.

Meanwhile, companies are learning to make themselves more attractive to lenders. Greater use of leasing and factoring is reducing their ratios of bank debt to equity. Even smaller firms are beginning to see the importance of a respectable credit standing. Credit ratings are no longer the concern of only the 100 or so German companies covered by leading rating agencies. Under Basel 2, every bank will have to rate every customer.

Commerzbank, for instance, has a service called “rating coach” to help clients work on their credit rating. Indeed, the Mittelstand's main preoccupation now seems to be getting good grades from its creditors, not displaying the business flair that made it famous. Until companies' finances are repaired, so it will remain.

********************************
8) The New York Times: Architect reinvigorates cities' forgotten corners [Un urbaniste paysager transforme les recoins urbains de villes américaines.]
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/state/8240829.htm

Posted on Sun, Mar. 21, 2004

Architect reinvigorates cities' forgotten corners
By Patricia Leigh Brown, NEW YORK TIMES

OAKLAND - Places, like people, can get the blues. Walter Hood listens to them.

Lafayette Park was for years one of those defeated American places. Long known as Old Man's Park, it was a respite of green where codgers gathered to play checkers and horseshoes under the generous boughs of an ancient oak -- the kind of tree for which Oakland, in more optimistic times, was named. The story of the park's descent into a corpse of a place has been told many times, here and in hundreds of other American cities. Less familiar is the tale of its rejuvenation by a 45-year-old landscape architect who is becoming the Frederick Law Olmsted of the city's dispossessed neighborhoods.

Hood, who likes to call himself an "urbanist," is a pioneer in a new approach to landscape design in which streets, squares, plazas, playgrounds and parks are fused into a jaunty new urban form, one resonant of a site's past.

Landscape architects are serving an increasingly visible role in reshaping cities. Hood is among those rejuvenating the forgotten urban edges of cities -- the vacant, often environmentally devastated stretches of land once consigned to industry and often in low income neighborhoods. Around the country, landscape architects are being enlisted by cities and community groups to rethink once-bleak land, from the waterfronts of Brooklyn and Louisville, Ky., to the newly reborn former military airstrip at Crissy Field in San Francisco.

At Lafayette Park, one of 10 landscape projects with which Hood is changing the face of Oakland's neighborhoods, he created a shaded plaza where women from nearby Chinatown practice tai chi, a resurrected horseshoe pit and a raised hillock that recalls an observatory that once existed on the site. Children cartwheel, grown-ups dry clothes in the sun and people gather to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July.

The park's design did not come only from his head, but from months of conversations with neighborhood residents. Perhaps more than anything, Hood, a professor of landscape architecture at UC Berkeley, notices things. He notices the girls playing tag in the church yard, the guys hanging out on the corner. He notices, then he designs for them, mining and divining the soul of places. "People respond to the familiar," he said, driving around his adopted home of West Oakland recently, not far from his studio in an old neon sign factory. "So we want to take the familiar and heighten it."

Hood's landscapes are about "connecting the dots," as he puts it -- understanding the deep history of a place, observing it over time, and listening to community needs. "Before, it was an ordinary park," said Philip Madison, 39, a Lafayette fixture, pointing out areas for skateboarding and getting cheap haircuts from an entrepreneurial park regular as he grilled chicken using a tree branch as a spatula.

Hood finds inspiration and even beauty in the shadows beneath the freeway. "I'm interested in how the everyday mundane practices of life get played out in cities, the unheralded patterns that take place without celebration," he said. "There's a structure to cities, a 4/4 beat. Designing is like improvisation, finding a sound for each place."

To Randolph Hester, a colleague at Berkeley who collaborates with community groups on landscape design, Hood elegantly honors the layers of places, however beleaguered. "Most people would simply see the things Walter observes and ignore them," Hester said. "He sees the guy who comes and hangs out at the park as someone who enriches the experience of being there. His genuine search for place give his designs a real heart."

Hood is himself a hybrid. Born in Charlotte, N.C., he is as at home among tumbledown Victorians and bottle-strewn parks in the West Oakland flatlands -- far from the Bay Area's vaunted good life -- as he is at the American Academy in Rome, where he was a fellow in 1996-97. One minute, he is zipping off to London to inspect stones for the Barbro Osher Sculpture Garden at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, scheduled to open next year. The next, he is prowling forgotten service roads along the Oakland waterfront where he is designing a network of parks and walking and biking trails, financed by a $198 million bond measure passed in 2002.

At Oakland's Splash Pad Park, palm-lined plazas, fountains with colorful spigots and undulating lawns are classically aligned a la Versailles with a once-onerous freeway. In Fruitvale, a heavily Latino neighborhood, his answer to urban despair -- a garbage-strewn creek on a dead-end street frequented by drug dealers -- was planting a formal procession of 150 flowering plum trees on a path between the creek and the street.

He begins the process with historical research. For example, he unearthed the path of a long-defunct trolley line and used it to place the trees and then extended the street to link it to another thoroughfare. "He saw that this poor neglected piece of land had incredible potential," said Christine Ralls, 52, a community activist in Fruitvale. When the city refused to clean the creek, Ralls and a group of neighbors spent hours one day pulling refrigerators, car parts, television sets and other junk out of the water, joined by a work crew of jail inmates and Hood. "There he was, pulling out couches," she said. "Those detainees had no clue that he was Professor Dr. Walter Hood from UC Berkeley."

Like a growing number of landscape architects, Hood considers community advocacy part of his job. Being attuned to the patterns of urban places and the hybrid roles they can play flows from his own experience as a boy in Charlotte, where he spent his younger years in a public housing project. "Everything happened in the street," he recalled. "You played football, watched the bigger guys play, so the street became a stadium. When you got called in for dinner, it became a street again, then after dinner it was a fort where you played army. When it rained, it was a river where you put sticks in the gutter and watched them wash down. It was the place where you courted. Everything happened in public view."

In 1976, he enrolled at North Carolina A&T State University, which was beginning a landscape architecture program under the direction of Charles Fountain, who had taught at Berkeley and who became a mentor. In graduate school at Berkeley, he made a galvanizing discovery while researching his boyhood neighborhood for a project. Looking at old maps of Charlotte, he figured out that the neighborhood had been built on landfill, on former bottomland. The revelation explained a lot, said Hood, who eventually earned graduate degrees in landscape architecture and architecture. "In the back of your head you're always thinking, what's the deal?" Hood said. "Why the insects? Why did we always have the Orkin man? It's nice to know 'why' about things. One thing I value about public work is that you can allow people to understand their predicament by making connections between the physical world and how they live. Then they can move forward. You don't get stuck in one place."

It takes an optimist to reimagine Seventh Street in Oakland, the terminus of the transcontinental railroad and once the hub of the African-American community. "It was jumping," said Esther Mabry, the 72-year-old proprietor of Esther's Orbit Room, the lone holdover of a legendary blues corridor. Today, it is "a wilderness zone," in Hood's words, bisected by fortress walls of unlovely concrete from the elevated BART train. With a state grant, Hood is working with the city to reclaim the street as an intimate neighborhood thoroughfare, weaving in the street's musical heritage, "to let the ghosts of the past out and breathe."

In Macon, Ga., he won a competition to resurrect what is considered the city's "back yard" with a sequence of squares, anchored with plinths reminiscent of bales of cotton. "It has to do with growing up with Martin Luther King and JFK on the walls, with race and where I'm from," he said.

Hood is designing the landscape for the new de Young Museum, where he is working not only with the architects Herzog & de Meuron, but also a fractious array of community groups bent on protecting historic Golden Gate Park, where it is located, from urbanization. His design extends the park to the foot of the copper-clad museum under construction, then goes further by bringing the giant tree ferns and eucalyptus that define the park indoors, into a series of terrarium-like courtyards, visible from different levels of the building. An outdoor children's garden will be what he calls "horticulturally jazzy," while the sculpture garden will take cues from the undulating sand dunes that existed before the park was born.

The approach combines indoors and outdoors, past and present, the manmade and the natural. "The choices shouldn't be this or that," Hood said of designing for urban places. "It should be this, that, other.

^RETURN TO TOP^