The Christian Science Monitor back issues from December 1999:
Holiday survival.(Features)(Homefront)(Neighbor To Neighbor)
Dec 01, 1999 ... December is the season of Great Expectations. My family, especially the younger set, expects toys, lots of company, and holiday cookies. I have expectations, too, of a house gussied up with pine boughs and carefully matched bows. Of pageants and carol sings and goodwill toward ...
The pitfalls of tradition.(Editorials)(Homefront)(Parenting)(A Mother's View)
Dec 01, 1999 ... As a child, I loved Christmas. Living in Texas, I couldn't count on snow, or even being able to wear a sweater. But even if it was 80 degrees outside, when the preacher's wife hit the high notes of "O, Holy Night," I knew it was Christmas. The neighbors put lights on their ...
'Tis the season to shop.(Features)(Homefront)(On The Fridge)
Dec 01, 1999 ... If you're searching for a perfect holiday present - and you've already rejected the one-of-a-kind Kevlar-bodied Porsche 911 GT1 available for $1.1 million at www.menstoys.com - here are some other unusual suggestions: How about wearable art? Icon shoes are original works of art ...
O Tannenbaum.(Features)(Homefront)(On The Fridge)
Dec 01, 1999 ... Last December, Americans took about 33 million cut trees home to their living rooms for decorating. They made an environmental choice, says the National Christmas Tree Association (www.christree.org). The reason? Ninety-eight percent of those evergreens were grown on tree farms, ...
Festival of Lights.(Features)(Homefront)(On The Fridge)
Dec 01, 1999 ... Jews around the world will begin celebrating Hanukkah the night of Dec. 3. Families that are looking for holiday-related stories and activities for youngsters during the eight-day observance will find them in new books and at several Web sites. For ages 4 to 8, "Festival of ...
If you think you don't have enough light to grow great houseplants,; Resident Expert.(Features)(Homefront)(On The Fridge)
Dec 01, 1999; ... Q I would like to buy some houseplants to brighten up the rooms in my house during winter, but the spots I have for plants don't get a lot of light. Are there plants that I can grow in low light? - A.M. Watertown, Mass.. A Larry Hodgson, author of "Houseplants For ...
With color, throw caution to the wind.(Features)(Homefront)
Dec 01, 1999 ... Master painter-decorator Debbie Travis makes one point repeatedly about selecting room colors: Be brave. This message is underlined in her television show, "Debbie Travis' Painted House," which airs in more than 50 countries, including the United States (check local PBS ...
Why glaze should be part of your repertoire.(Features)(Homefront)
Dec 01, 1999 ... One of the favorite supplies in decorator Debbie Travis's paint box is glaze. Basically glaze is an additive that serves two functions when mixed with paint, Ms. Travis says: *It slows the drying process, allowing more time to play with the "wet edge" - to manipulate the ...
Hors d'oeuvres: Little bites that bite back.(Features)(Homefront)
Dec 01, 1999 ... "Can I make that ahead of time?" That question has become as familiar to cooking teacher Eric Treuille as "Are we there yet?" is to parents on a car trip with the kids. Especially when it comes to entertaining, says Mr. Treuille, program director at the Cordon Bleu cooking ...
When parents behave like children.(Features)(Homefront)(Connections)
Dec 01, 1999 ... For 6,000 children in West Palm Beach, Fla., the new year could bring welcome change at youth sporting events. If all goes as a local athletic association plans, there will be no more loudmouth parents on the sidelines, yelling at coaches, bullying players, and taking their children's ...
I finally reach the other side.(The Home Forum)
Dec 01, 1999 ... My first attempt to reach China was thwarted by my inability to dig deep enough in the rocky New England soil of our backyard, and by my father's insistence that I fill in the hole before someone stepped in it. For days I'd worked on that hole. And as I dug, my seven-year-old ...
Beyond crunch time - to God's time.(The Home Forum)(Today's Article On Christian Science)
Dec 01, 1999 ... Sometimes we all feel painted into a corner by time constraints. Maybe we have too much to do in too little time. Or face an impending deadline. Or fly halfway around the world - as a friend and I did recently - and find we've lost out on a whole day. Actually, though, these ...
A grand announcement, and a lesson in humility.(The Home Forum)
Dec 01, 1999 ... It seems only yesterday that I made the grand announcement. "My garden's in," I'd said, coming in the doorway through which I had emerged only 30 minutes earlier with four packets of seeds. "Your garden's in?" repeated Mother in surprise. "Nancy hasn't planted her garden yet." ...
Belfast's peace hard to export; N. Ireland clears milestones this week, but Basque separatists end.(World)
Dec 01, 1999; ... For much of the past year in Spain's violence-racked Basque region, politicians and peace activists from Northern Ireland have been thick on the ground. Inspired by the Good Friday peace accord, they have been leading discussions on disarmament, prisoner releases, and negotiations that ...
South Pacific battles for Y2K bragging rights.(World)(Sunrise Wars)
Dec 01, 1999 ... In the uttermost reaches of the Pacific, four nations are jostling to be first to welcome the year 2000. They're squaring off in a kind of geographic scrum that - in local terms - rivals the US-USSR race to be first to put a man on the moon. And it's more than a brouhaha over ...
Military under a microscope; This week, parliament members accused military generals - on television.(World)(Indonesia's Culture Clash)
Dec 01, 1999; ... Indonesian national television carried an unprecedented spectacle Monday night: Six feared generals under blistering attack from irate members of parliament, who one after another threw responsibility for human rights abuses in the rebellious province of Aceh at their feet. The ...
Today's Story Line:.(World)
Dec 01, 1999 ... A credible mediator and a willingness to give up something dear. These two basic ingredients of the Northern Ireland peace process are not yet present in Spain's Basque region. Indonesia's generals face a rare public challenge to their authority - and their methods. ...
Boom time or bad time?(Opinion)
Dec 01, 1999 ... Protesters are calling it the "battle in Seattle." Tens of thousands gathered in the Northwest city to demonstrate in 1960s style at the World Trade Organization's three-day ministerial meeting that began Nov. 30. The demonstrators charge the 135-nation trade group with letting the ...
Latin market orthodoxy.(Opinion)(Column)
Dec 01, 1999 ... For the past dozen years, most Latin American economies have been run in accord with the so-called Washington Consensus - a collection of free-market economic policies that called for privatizing state enterprise, dropping barriers to trade and investment, and keeping government spending ...
Common Ground; With farmland increasingly sold for development, an innovative program.(USA)(Homefront)
Dec 01, 1999; ... To farm or not to farm. That was the question. Kathy Melnik remembers pulling her then-teenage son, Peter, off the tractor on afternoons so he would experience more than farming. "I'd remind him he had a soccer game," she says, standing in the kitchen of her farmhouse a stone's throw from ...
The post-affirmative-action age; Colleges, under siege from the courts, are in vanguard of trying to.(USA)
Dec 01, 1999; ... In a social experiment with far-reaching implications, a growing number of colleges and universities are testing new ways to screen student applicants without resorting to the racial-preference systems of the past. The move by some of America's top institutions doesn't mark a ...
Bringing Allah to urban renewal; As politicians call for more religious involvement in communities, an.(USA)(Church Activism)
Dec 01, 1999; ... Most people here used to do just about anything to avoid driving down Quindaro Boulevard. It was a street lined with signs of inner-city trouble: dingy liquor stores sheathed in security bars, aimless men warily eyeing passersby, and an abandoned gas station that was home to shootouts and ...
Court weighs federal aid to religious schools; High court hears Louisiana school case, further clarifying church-state.(USA)(On The Docket)
Dec 01, 1999; ... In a potential watershed case involving aid to parochial schools, the US Supreme Court is considering whether providing government-funded computers to religious schools violates the separation of church and state. The case, set for oral argument Dec. 1, involves federal ...
Clinton acts to help new parents take a leave from jobs; A new rule will let states use money from unemployment insurance to.(USA)
Dec 01, 1999; ... President Clinton has opened the way for states to give financial support to new parents - a move intended to enable more US workers to get paid leave from their jobs to welcome a new baby. The move, which Mr. Clinton made unilaterally through an executive order, is seen as a ...
At Seattle trade extravaganza, real pageantry is in the streets; Protesters at WTO champion everything from sea turtles to Navajo.(USA)(A Letter From Seattle)
Dec 01, 1999; ... Meet "Freak." He has hitchhiked from Eugene, Ore., to protest the World Trade Organization meeting here. And he's toting more than just rain gear for the Seattle weather. On his backpack are two gas masks ("one organic, one non"), a first-aid kit ("I was a Boy Scout, ...
Peering into the 'event horizon' of a black hole.(Features)(Ideas)(Whatever . . .)
Dec 02, 1999 ... The Chandra X-ray Observatory, a $1.5 billion telescope launched last July, is transmitting pictures that scientists say are changing the way they think of space. "I've seen maybe 50 images .... There was something I didn't expect to see in maybe half of those," says Harvey ...
The scarlet letter isn't indelible after all.(Features)(Ideas)(Books)
Dec 02, 1999 ... Fortune's Rocks By Anita Shreve There's a new feminist movement afoot this fall. It has nothing to do with equal pay or quality day care or even sensible shoes. Just last month, author Sena Jeter Naslund rescued Ahab's wife from watery obscurity in a rousing revision of ...
Staring back into Rembrandt's face and life.(Features)(Ideas)(Books)
Dec 02, 1999 ... Rembrandt's Eyes By Simon Schama When Rembrandt van Rijn died in 1669, he was regarded as an important, but not necessarily great, painter. He was unsurpassed in his capacity to render light and shade, and his ability to represent human emotion was widely admired. But his ...
A father who put the sun first.(Features)(Ideas)(Books)
Dec 02, 1999 ... GALILEO'S DAUGHTER: A HISTORICAL MEMOIR OF SCIENCE, FAITH, AND LOVE By Dava Sobel I wrote in the colloquial tongue," Galileo explained when his book "Bodies in Water" was published in Florence in 1612, "because I must have everyone able to read it .... I want [common working ...
Shuffling responsibility for losses onto others.(Features)(Ideas)(Books)
Dec 02, 1999 ... DOUBLE DOWN: REFLECTIONS ON GAMBLING AND LOSS By Frederick and Steven Barthelme There is something sadly chilling about "Double Down," as if the reader is listening to a talkative coroner describing an autopsy. The corpse here is the gambling experience described by ...
Why morals are declining in the US.(Features)(Ideas)(Whatever . . .)
Dec 02, 1999 ... (c) Copyright 1999. The ...
What's New.(Features)(Ideas)(Whatever . . .)
Dec 02, 1999 ... SCIENCE X-ray 'eyes' peer into space NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory should soon have a friend - a companion with golden eyes. The European Space Agency expects to orbit it's X-ray Multi Mirror (XMM) satellite Dec. 10. This carries a trio of X-ray telescope modules ...
'Some animals are more equal than others' Legal rights for critters waddle, slither, and swing into the courtroom.(Features)(Ideas)
Dec 02, 1999; ... Back in 1641, Massachusetts Bay colonists included in their legal code an order that "no man shall exercise any Tirrany or Crueltie towards any bruite Creature which are usuallie kept for man's use." Here, in a nutshell, was the guiding principle for humankind's treatment of ...
Pleading the Fifth.(Features)(Ideas)(Soundings)
Dec 02, 1999 ... Growing up in New York in the 1950s, the closest I came to an animal rights' issue was to order my cheeseburger medium-well rather than rare. Truth be known, Gregory Peck, playing Captain Ahab in the Walt Disney movie "Moby Dick" convinced me that harpooning a whale was the shortest route ...
Burying world's extra CO2 on ocean bottom.(Features)(Ideas)
Dec 02, 1999 ... Federal energy officials have joined scientists worldwide in studying the disposal of carbon dioxide as a way of slowing down the "greenhouse effect." The US Department of Energy has funded two carbon "sequestration" programs - one on land and one in the deep ocean - for $9 ...
Now testing: pilotless planes to grab weather data over Pacific.(Features)(Ideas)
Dec 02, 1999 ... When a single-engine Aero-sonde airplane crossed the Atlantic last year, it did so on only a gallon and a half of fuel. Mere efficiency, however, wasn't the point. The project sent the message that model-size, pilotless planes are comers as long-distance scientific helpers. The ...
OK, really, how does he do it? Ron Divino balances rocks on the beach as a way to balance a sense of.(Features)(Ideas)
Dec 02, 1999; ... At first, you can't quite believe it. Ron Divino lifts up one of the rough shoreline rocks at the foot of Polk Street here - each rock weighing from 15 to 40 pounds - and finds a rounded or fairly sharp point. Slowly, patiently, with strong fingers moving the rock ...
'A soft answer turneth away wrath'.(Features)(Ideas)
Dec 02, 1999 ... Americans decry the loss of civility in many corners of daily life - from the schoolyard to the highway to politics and the Internet. Many are just as perplexed over what to do about it. The American Jewish community - all-too-familiar with the sting of incivility from others - ...
My musical debut rambled a bit.(The Home Forum)
Dec 02, 1999 ... The other day I was visiting a friend whose daughter, at age 15, had become a committed clarinetist. In a couple of weeks Katja would try out for "All State" - Maine's hand-picked coterie of serious young musicians. Her apprehension was palpable. And with good reason: Her audition piece ...
A rare painter's rare painting.(The Home Forum)
Dec 02, 1999 ... THE world knows little about the great Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. The 17th-century artist left behind no personal writings, and only about 35 of his paintings exist today. But American art lovers can now view one of his masterpieces. "The Art of Painting" (at left) was ...
What's new?(The Home Forum)(Today's Article On Christian Science)
Dec 02, 1999 ... A couple of days ago, we said goodbye to spring in the Land Down Under. Though summer is grand, spring is my favorite season. I tend to get a bit philosophical in the spring, when the air is filled with the fragrance of wisteria. Walking my dog in the early morning, listening to ...
Dad baffles me with his parting words.(The Home Forum)
Dec 02, 1999 ... At age 15, I stood at the tiny Kalandia airport between Ramallah and Jerusalem and said goodbye to my parents. The year was 1950. I was setting off on an adventure that would take me across the Atlantic on an ocean liner that, after several weeks, would land in New York. From there I'd ...
The metric system in America; P. Schatzman of Whitefish Bay, Wis., asks, 'Whatever happened to...?'.(The Home Forum)
Dec 02, 1999; ... The United States has been intending to "go metric" since 1866, when Congress first authorized using metrics. The decimal-based system of weights and measures is simpler to use, so it's faster and one is less apt to make mistakes using it, which means it saves money. Today, the US, ...
'Chapter 1' of gene code spelled out; Scientists announce that they have mapped a chromosome, the first of 46.(World)(Science)
Dec 02, 1999; ... In what is being called a landmark of 20th-century biology, the worldwide effort to read the human genetic code has produced its first "text." Scientists have written out most of the message carried by one of the smallest packages of human DNA. While they haven't yet deciphered ...
Wanted in Kosovo: a little law and order.(World)(U.N. Challenge)
Dec 02, 1999 ... Armed with a 9-mm semiautomatic pistol and a Berlitz phrase book, Cindy Seymour steers her red-and-white Land Cruiser through the dark, unruly streets of Kosovo's capital. The city at night is clogged with traffic. Tiny Yugos and Zastavas jockey with late-model Mercedes and BMWs, many of ...
Chechnya's divisions aid Russia; Russian forces pounding the capital, Grozny, are running up against.(World)
Dec 02, 1999; ... As the Russian Army plunges deeper into the breakaway republic of Chechnya, some powerful invisible allies have been marching alongside it. Divisions among squabbling Chechen leaders and the population's exhaustion after nearly a decade of deprivation, social chaos, and isolation have led ...
Today's Story Line.(World)
Dec 02, 1999 ... Walk the beat with a US cop in Kosovo, and the scope of the challenge becomes clear - no courts, few interpreters or forensic equipment. Quote of note: "I don't know what it was. I knew enough to know they needed help. And I wanted to help." - a policewoman from Tampa, Fla. ...
Mass graves could strain US-Mexico relations; As of yesterday, the remains of two people were found on ranches linked.(World)
Dec 02, 1999; ... The discovery of mass graves on at least two Mexican ranches near the Texas border is more than just another grisly reminder of the unmeasured violence of Mexico's drug traffickers. Both US and Mexican officials speculate that some of the bodies may be those of missing American ...
Ad for a missing American son draws 200 calls.(World)
Dec 02, 1999 ... From his home in El Paso, Texas, Jaime Hervella has mixed emotions about the search being conducted on the Ortiz ranch south of Juarez, He believes that his godson, Saul Sanchez Jr., is among the bodies to be found on the ranch. But part of him still doesn't want to accept that ...
Iran's prized, and political, nuts; It's harvesttime, and farmers hope to export more pistachios as they.(World)(Persian Exports In A Nutshell)
Dec 02, 1999; ... On a visit to the United States in the early 1980s, Iranian farmer Falli Karbassian remembers seeing a billboard on Santa Monica Boulevard in California. It read: " 'Would you rather buy pistachios from this?' and there was a picture of a little man leading a camel through the desert." she ...
A tiny minority fights extinction; The Sorbs - Germany's 'Amish'.(World)
Dec 02, 1999; ... The dancers skitter to the zesty music and the crowd of young and old, packed in a barnyard, loves every minute. It is not only music and merriment filling the air, but Sorbian, a language spoken by the world's smallest Slavic minority. Other barnyards in Crostwitz, population ...
Plumbing the depths of W.(Opinion)
Dec 02, 1999 ... If one had to describe George W. Bush's campaign in a phrase, it might be called Nike ad politics. He's got your attention, and the images he creates leave you with that warm, fuzzy feeling - maybe you're even considering buying - but it is not completely clear what he's selling ....
Coming: a way to introduce millions to the Monitor.(Opinion)(A Note To Readers)
Dec 02, 1999 ... Last year a Monitor reader called with a thought-provoking suggestion: How about producing an insert edition of The Christian Science Monitor for local newspapers each week? After months of research and development, scores of discussions with local newspaper publishers and ...
Return to Fortress America?(Opinion)(Column)
Dec 02, 1999 ... Evidence accumulates that there is a revival of the controversial pre-World War II defense doctrine called Fortress America. It envisaged a world in which the United States could be secure even if everybody else went up in flames. Those who thought that strategy had died in the cold war ...
No halting the trade juggernaut? Civil unrest in Seattle adds visibility to environmental, labor, and.(USA)(Wto Trades Mark)
Dec 02, 1999; ... One of the most spirited civilian protests in the United States since the 1960s has disrupted the global trade talks, turned Seattle into more of an armed camp than a Starbucks Inc., and beamed an antitrade message around the world. But beneath the tear gas and nightstick ...
Bush's tax plan: long on cuts; Candidate's proposal spreads tax breaks widely, but doesn't overhaul.(USA)
Dec 02, 1999; ... Voter surveys consistently report that cutting taxes is a low-priority issue in the 2000 election. But that matters not to Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, who announced yesterday a bold proposal to cut income and other ...
Arms sales: exporting US military edge? Pentagon backs an unusual sale in which an ally gets better planes than.(USA)
Dec 02, 1999; ... In one of the biggest US arms exports since the end of the cold war, a small sheikdom in the Persian Gulf is expected to receive 80 fighter jets with more-advanced technology than in those flown by American pilots. The deal between Lockheed Martin Corp. and the United Arab ...
New findings say genetically altered corn can poison the soil; The warning suggests that pesticides can stay in the ground for months.(USA)
Dec 02, 1999; ... Researchers are raising warnings about genetically engineered corn that makes its own pesticide, giving new perspective to concerns about a development meant to reduce the need for chemical pesticides. The corn's toxin is supposed to kill only the pests it's aimed at. But lab ...
Best look yet at an epic silent movie.(Features)(Arts & Leisure)(Television)
Dec 03, 1999 ... Movies are fragile. Store them improperly - or don't store them at all and throw them away like last month's magazines - and they decay, dissolve, disintegrate, or disappear. A vast proportion of our cinematic heritage has vanished forever. It's sad that so many films have been ...
A stocking chock full of musical goodies.(Features)(Arts & Leisure)(Music)
Dec 03, 1999 ... Tis the season of music overload. It's that time of year when record stores stock their shelves with a windfall of new albums and boxed sets. Sony takes on 100 years of music, the Grammy set features 40 years of musical gems, and longtime pop musicians Sting, Paul McCartney, and David ...
Scrooge is back! Patrick Stewart joins the exclusive club of classic Christmas curmudgeons.(Features)(Arts & Leisure)
Dec 03, 1999; ... Charles Dickens, some say, invented Christmas - at least as we celebrate it today. The stories he wrote about the season exult in hearth and home: the simple joys of family and friends, the delicious treats of the season. The deeper theme of redemption, though, lies at the heart of his ...
The Monitor Movie Guide.(Features)(Arts & Leisure)(Movies)
Dec 03, 1999 ... Red stars denote the reviews of Monitor movie critic David Sterritt unless otherwise noted. Ratings and comments by the Monitor panel ( blue stars) reflect the sometimes diverse views of at least three other moviegoers. Information on violence, drugs, sex/nudity, and profanity is compiled ...
Patrick Stewart on playing Scrooge.(Features)(Arts & Leisure)
Dec 03, 1999 ... Patrick Stewart's approach to Scrooge is less eccentric than most. In a recent interview he told why he chose to characterize Scrooge as a miser one might actually meet: "I think that if the character becomes too much of a caricature of the skinflint, that's a cliche. And then ...
TV treats for the holidays; Amid the standard Christmas fare are a handful of shining stars.(Features)(Arts & Leisure)(Television)
Dec 03, 1999; ... Longtime seasonal family favorites like "It's a Wonderful Life" (NBC, Dec. 19, 24) and "A Christmas Story" (TNT, for 24 hours, Dec. 24) light up the tube each December, amid less-inspiring fare such as the usual run of Santa cartoons. Many weekly series will have a special ...
Our shared journey home.(The Home Forum)
Dec 03, 1999 ... There's been a litany here for years. It goes like this. Our daughter Christina might ask: "When can I have my own bedroom?" The answer would always be: "When Daddy's a professor." Another daughter, Emily, might remark: "Will we ever stop moving and stay in one place?" To which we'd ...