This undated image provided by the US Army shows new Army grooming regulations for females. New Army regulations meant to help standardized and professionalize soldiers appearance is now coming under criticism by some black military women, who say changes in the requirement for their hair are racially biased. The Army earlier this week issued new appearance standards, which included bans on most twists, dreadlocks and large cornrows, all styles used predominantly by African-American women with natural hairstyles. More than 11,000 people have signed a White House petition asking President Barack Obama, the commander-in-chief, to have the military review the regulations to allow for neat and maintained natural hairstyles. (AP Photo/US Army)
Updated: April 7, 2014 1:50PM
WASHINGTON — New Army regulations meant to help standardize and professionalize soldiers’ appearance are now coming under criticism by some black military women, who say changes in the hair requirement are racially biased.
The Army last week issued new appearance standards, which included bans on most twists, dreadlocks and large cornrows, all styles used predominantly by African-American women with natural hairstyles. More than 10,000 people have signed a White House petition asking President Barack Obama to have the military review the regulations to allow for “neat and maintained natural hairstyles.”
Some black military women, who make up about a third of the women in the armed forces, feel they have been singled out with these new regulations.
“I think that it primarily targets black women, and I’m not in agreement with it,” said Patricia Jackson-Kelley of the National Association of Black Military Women. “I don’t see how a woman wearing three braids in her hair, how that affects her ability to perform her duty in the military.”
Even before the current controversy, the association had already planned to showcase the hairstyles of African-American women in the military throughout the years at its national convention in Phoenix in September.
While she also feels the new regulations unfairly target black women, former association president Kathleen Harris said she could understand why the regulations needed some uniformity. “The military is supposed to be conservative,” she said. “My thing is that some folks look gorgeous in their twists, and some people go overboard. The twists are not small twists but they’re real large ones and it doesn’t fit the cover, your hat.”
The changes and several other Army appearance modifications were first published in the Army Times.
“The Army is a profession, and one of the ways our leaders and the American public measure our professionalism is by our appearance,” Army Sgt. Maj. Raymond F. Chandler III said of the updates on the Army’s website.
The changes also banned several male hairstyles, including Mohawks and long sideburns. Body piercings were also specifically banned, with an exception made for earrings. Also banned was the use of wireless earpieces outside a vehicle and tattoos visible below the elbow or knee or above the neckline. Current soldiers would be permitted to keep any tattoos not deemed racist, sexist or extremist.
The United Nations (UN) celebrates the International Day of Human Space Flight on April 12 each year. The day remembers the first human space flight on April 12, 1961.
Statue of Yuri Gagarin, the world’s first cosmonaut to have travelled in outer space.
The International Day of Human Space Flight celebrates the start of the space era for humankind, reaffirming the important contribution of space science and technology in today’s world. The day also aims to promote aspirations to explore and maintain outer space for peaceful purposes.
Activities to promote the day have included photo exhibitions, conferences showcasing technology used for outer space, and the release of commemorative stamps.
Public life
The International Day of Human Space Flight is a UN observance and not a public holiday.
Background
April 12, 1961, was the date of the first human space flight, carried out by Yuri Gagarin. This historic event opened the way for space exploration. In 2011 the UN declared April 12 as the “International Day of Human Space Flight” to remember the first human space flight and to promote the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes and to the benefit of humankind.
Symbols
Commemorative stamps depicting human space flight have been released on or around the International Day of Human Space Flight in the past. A statue of Yuri Gagarin, the world’s first cosmonaut to journey in outer space, is located about 40km (about 25 miles) from Saratov, Russia. It was erected in 1981.
International Day of Human Space Flight Observances
The first of four consecutive total lunar eclipses takes place on the night of April 14–15, with excellent viewing prospects all across the U.S. and Canada.
North America hasn’t had a total eclipse of the Moon since 2011. But this long dry spell will break early on April 15th (beginning late on April 14th for the West Coast), when the full Moon passes through the umbra — the dark inner core of Earth’s shadow.
The diagram and timetable below tell what to expect and when if you live in North America. The eclipse will also be visible from South America and much of the Pacific. In eastern Australia the Moon doesn’t rise until the total eclipse is already underway on the evening of the 15th.
What to Look For
A total lunar eclipse has five stages, with different things to watch at each:
Penumbral eclipse: Shading starts to occur when the Moon’s leading edge enters Earth’s penumbra, the outer portion of its shadow. But initially the effect is weak — you won’t start to see a dusky fringe along the Moon’s leading limb (celestial east) until the disk intrudes about halfway across the penumbra. As the Moon glides deeper in, the shading becomes much more obvious.
Partial eclipse: More dramatic is the Moon’s entrance into the umbra, where no direct sunlight reaches the lunar surface. Few sights in astronomy are more eerie and impressive than watching this red-black shadow creeping, minute by minute, across the bright lunar landscape, slowly engulfing one crater after another. If you’re so inclined, there’s scientific value in carefully timing these crater crossings.
As more of the Moon slides into the umbra, a second, deeper night is falling around you as more stars come out in what had been a full-Moon-washed sky. An hour or so into partial eclipse, only a final bright sliver remains outside the umbra and the rest of the Moon is already showing an eerie reddish glow.
Total eclipse: From the Moon’s perspective, the Sun remains completely hidden for 1 hour 18 minutes. From Earth’s perspective, the lunar disk isn’t completely blacked out but instead remains dimly lit by a deep orange or red glow. Why so?
Our atmosphere scatters and refracts (bends) sunlight that grazes the rim of our globe, so that red glow comes from all the sunrises and sunsets around Earth’s terminator at the moment. If you were an astronaut standing on the Moon, you’d see Earth ringed with a thin, brilliant band of sunset- and sunrise-colored light. On rare occasions the eclipsed Moon does go black. Other times it appears as bright and coppery as a new penny. Sometimes it turns brown like chocolate, or as dark red as dried blood.
Two factors affect an eclipse’s color and brightness. The first is simply how deeply the Moon goes into the umbra — the umbra’s center is much darker than its outer edge. The second is the state of Earth’s atmosphere all around the terminator. If the air is very clear, the eclipse is bright; if it’s mostly cloudy (or polluted with volcanic ash from a major eruption), the eclipse will be dark red, ashen gray, or almost black.
Adding to the late-night spectacle will be the bright star Spica shining only about 1° or 2° from the Moon and brilliant Mars about 9° to the west.
Partial eclipse: Totality ends once the Moon’s leading limb peeks back into direct sunlight, and after that events unfold in reverse order. If you’re using binoculars or a small telescope to view the eclipse, watch as lunar features slide back into full view.
Penumbral eclipse: When all of the Moon has escaped the umbra, only the last, penumbral shading is left. This final duskiness gradually fades away, leaving the full Moon shining as bright and white as ever. Notably, of the three lunar eclipses in 2013, two were penumbra-only events.
Total eclipse of the Moon, April 14-15, 2014*
Eclipse event
UT
EDT
CDT
MDT
PDT
Penumbra first visible?
5:20
1:20 a.m.
12:20 a.m
11:20 p.m.
10:20 p.m.
Partial eclipse begins
5:58
1:58 a.m.
12:58 a.m.
11:58 p.m.
10:58 p.m.
Total eclipse begins
7:07
3:07 a.m.
2:07 a.m.
1:07 a.m.
12:07 a.m.
Mid-eclipse
7:46
3:46 a.m.
2:46 a.m
1:46 a.m.
12:46 a.m.
Total eclipse ends
8:25
4:25 a.m.
3:25 a.m.
2:25 a.m.
1:25 a.m.
Partial eclipse ends
9:33
5:33 a.m.
4:33 a.m.
3:33 a.m.
2:33 a.m.
Penumbra last visible?
10:10
—
5:10 a.m.
4:10 a.m.
3:10 a.m.
* Note: all a.m. times are for April 15th; all p.m. times are for April 14th
If it’s cloudy from your location in North America, you won’t have another long wait for the next total lunar eclipse. The next one comes on the morning of October 8th for the whole continent except the farthest northeast. In fact, April’s event is the first of four consecutive total lunar eclipses in 2014–15! Such eclipse tetrads are not common — the last one occurred a decade ago, but the next won’t begin until 2032.
Scientists have new insight into the damage caused by a Rhode Island–size asteroid that hit Earth more than 3 billion years ago, making the rock that wiped out the dinosaurs look like a lightweight.
You will know the League of the South’s street demonstrators by their flags – a variety of Confederate flags, yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flags and stark, black-and-white so-called Southern Nationalist flags. If the league’s organizers see their hopes realized, such demonstrators will be a common sight on city streets and plazas in the South.
The league’s leaders have developed a street demonstration strategy they hope will increase their public profile in the coming months. At a state conference in Alabama last month, they unveiled some of the details of that program, including a protest of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery in May.
The Alabama gathering, held at the league’s meeting hall in Wetumpka, near Montgomery, featured speeches by president Michael Hill, Georgia chapter chairman Ed Wolfe, South Carolina chapter chairman Michael Cushman and Brad Griffin, editor of the Occidental Dissent blog, who writes under the nom de plume “Hunter Wallace”. Griffin recently wrote about the league’s strategic shift in a post titled, “The Logic of Street Demonstrations.”
The shift appears to be primarily Hill’s idea, as he made clear in his opening remarks, and seems to be connected to the increasingly belligerent and radical positions he has staked out in recent years –symbolized by his exchange with a black reporter in Tallahassee earlier this year. Upon being asked if he minded if the league was depicted as a “bunch of racists”, Hill responded: “So what? I’m standing up for my people – white Southern people – no one else.”
Several of the conference speakers celebrated Hill’s response, including Griffin, who added: “We’re standing up for our people. It is the right thing to do, it is what we ought to do. We should have started doing it a long time ago. The fear of sticking our necks out has long been one of our worst enemies, and that more than anything has to be overcome before we can gather the numbers to move forth.”
Griffin and the other speakers argued that street demonstrations will provide people with a clearer view of their choices. They presented a disparaging view of counter-protesters, typically describing them, as Griffin did in a recent post, as “a bunch of queers and lesbians gyrating on a sidewalk with tambourine.”
Cushman celebrated the shift toward unapologetic racism by observing that the league was “smashing that taboo”: “We’re supposed to be embarrassed to talk about race. We’re supposed to turn red in the face and kind of turn away and whisper if we say anything at all about race. We’re smashing that taboo as well.”
Wolfe, meanwhile, demonstrated that the league is in the thrall of Posse Comitatus/sovereign citizen theories of government, describing at length how the United States is “not a nation, but a corporation.” Wolfe then argued that the Southern states more naturally made a true “nation” since the white people in it were “bound by blood”.
Hill, in a video made at the gathering, elucidated Wolfe’s point even farther, explaining that while people mistakenly believe “nationalism” relates to political borders, it actually relates to “borders that distinguish a people, a blood people.” He then went on a rant about those borders:
And who are our people? Our people are white European Southerners. Now, we’re mainly from the British Isles, but we’re also from other parts of northern and western Europe, and even parts of central Europe. But we are a distinctive people, based on blood. And from that blood comes culture. And from that culture comes our political institutions, and from the political institutions come our borders, and our nations – our nation-states, as we call them.
Germany, France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden – Dixie. They’re all the same. We are a people. We are a nation. We are a blood, with the land.
Predictably, Hill’s remarks at the gathering were all about whipping up ethnic fears, warning that the white majority population of the United States was on the verge of becoming a minority, which “will mean the end of our civilization.” He went on: “There comes a time when you got to get just pure mad-dog mean. If your civilization is worth fighting for, that’s what you will – you will let nothing deter you from it.”
The World Health Organization, the United Nations’ the directing and coordinating authority for health, annually highlights one of its priorities for global health on World Health Day.
Various local, national and international events are arranged to educate the public and policy makers about a specific aspect of the World Health Organization’s work. This event receives plenty of media coverage. A toolkit is provided for those who wish to plan events but emphasizes that these should be suitable for the local cultural, social and economic conditions. Examples of events include conferences for health workers, briefings for local politicians, and informational displays for children and young people. Public marches and demonstrations, as well as free or easy access to medical tests, can also take place on the day.
Public life
World Health Day is a global observance and not a public holiday.
Background
In 1945 diplomats from a range of countries formed the United Nations. One of the organizations formed was the United Nations Economic and Social Council, which first met in 1946. During this meeting, there were calls for the establishment of an organization in the United Nations, which would be dedicated to health issues.
The new organization would carry on the work of the Office International d’Hygiène Publique (the International Office for Public Hygiene) and the health units of the League of Nations. These organizations were established in the early years of the 20th century, but were overburdened by the huge health consequences of the aftermath of World War I and were unable to function effectively when World War II started. It would also carry on the work of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which provided medical aid to millions of people in the aftermath of the devastating military action in Europe during the last part of World War II.
The World Health Organization was founded on April 7, 1948. Since then, the organization has carried out a huge amount of valuable work, including the global eradication of smallpox and the implementation of a wide range of public health strategies. Now, 193 countries are members and the organization is still working to improve many aspects of health around the world.
At the First World Health Assembly in 1948, the delegates called for a World Health Day to mark the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization. This has been held on April 7 every year since 1950. The day is used to draw attention to particular priorities in global health.
Symbols
The WHO logo or emblem, which was chosen by the first World Health Assembly in 1948, is often associated with promotional material for World Mental Health Day. The emblem consists of the UN symbol surmounted by a staff with a snake coiling round it. The staff with the snake has long been a symbol of medicine and the medical profession. It originates from the story of Aesculapius who was revered by the ancient Greeks as a god of healing and whose cult involved the use of snakes.
The UN symbol features a projection of a world map (less Antarctica) centered on the North Pole, inscribed in a wreath consisting of crossed conventionalized branches of the olive tree. The olive branches symbolize peace and the world map depicts the area of concern to the UN in achieving its main purpose, peace and security. The projection of the map extends to 60 degrees south latitude, and includes five concentric circles.
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide 2015
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
The United Nations (UN) has named April 7 as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide. This day commemorates the deaths of 800,000 people who were murdered during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, central Africa.
A church building at Nyamata, Rwanda, where thousands of people were murdered. It now serves as a memorial.
Many people around the world hold memorial ceremonies that include candle-lighting and a minute of silence to honor the victims of the Rwanda genocide. This UN day is also a time for diplomats and key community figures to talk with communities about the atrocities of genocide and the importance of working towards a peaceful way of life. Student conferences, exhibitions, and other commemorative activities are also held.
Public life
The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide is an official UN observance and not a public holiday.
Background
In 1994, in the space of three months, about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in Rwanda in what came to be known as the Rwanda genocide. In 1995, the UN called for an outreach program entitled “The Rwanda Genocide and the United Nations” and “to take measures to mobilize civil society for Rwanda genocide victim remembrance and education” to help prevent future acts of genocide. The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide has been observed each year since 2004, 10 years after the genocide took place.
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide Observances
Weekday
Date
Year
Name
Holiday type
Where it is observed
Wed
Apr 7
2004
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Thu
Apr 7
2005
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Fri
Apr 7
2006
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Sat
Apr 7
2007
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Mon
Apr 7
2008
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Tue
Apr 7
2009
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Wed
Apr 7
2010
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Thu
Apr 7
2011
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Sat
Apr 7
2012
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Sun
Apr 7
2013
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Mon
Apr 7
2014
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Tue
Apr 7
2015
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Thu
Apr 7
2016
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Fri
Apr 7
2017
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Sat
Apr 7
2018
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Sun
Apr 7
2019
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
United Nations observance
Tue
Apr 7
2020
Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
Joan Miller, left, with Nadine Mozon, celebrating the 35th anniversary of her troupe, Joan Miller’s Dance Players, in 2005.Credit Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times
Joan Miller, a dancer, teacher and enduring presence in modern dance in New York since the 1970s, died on March 23 at her home in Manhattan. She was 77.
The cause was complications of diabetes, said Audrey Ross, her publicist.
Ms. Miller was the founder of Joan Miller’s Dance Players and the founding director of the dance department at Lehman College of the City University of New York.
Her signature works, rooted in the avant-garde and black consciousness movements of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, leavened sharp social commentary on issues like race and identity with a wry wit. Ms. Miller billed her troupe in its early years as the Joan Miller Dance Players: A Dance Company With a Sense of Humor.
In her autobiographical “Pass Fe White,” its title a play on the traditional pas de deux duet, a solo black dancer spins and heaves onstage as if at war with herself, discarding clothing and accessories in the process, including a blond wig, which she had used to “pass” for white. Ms. Miller’s dances often tackled sensitive issues — ghetto violence, class divisions, what she saw as American military aggression — in dances she gave whimsical titles, among them “Earth Wind and Flying Things,” “Jungle City USA,” “Boots, Backtalk and Beyond” and “Caged Bird Singin’ and Swingin’.” Her dances unfolded on urban landscapes as seen through Ms. Miller’s eye for the absurd.
“I consider myself a city person, and I like to deal with the problems of the city,” she said in a 1993 interview with Newsday. Despite the spirited titles, she added, the theme permeating her dances was “man’s inhumanity to mankind.”
“I hope that through my work,” she said, “people might question what it’s all about.”
Joan Miller was born in Harlem on Sept. 30, 1936, to parents from Jamaica and St. Lucia. She graduated from Brooklyn College and received a master’s degree from Teachers College at Columbia. She studied dance at Juilliard and privately with the modern dance pioneers José Limón and Doris Humphrey.
For several years she performed in Mr. Limón’s troupe and with the Judson Dance Theater, a Greenwich Village incubator of talent in the early 1960s, as well as with the companies of Anna Sokolow, Ruth Currier, Rod Rodgers and Rudy Perez. Ms. Miller began teaching at Hunter College in 1966.
Lehman College, in the Bronx, where she later headed the dance program, became the official residence of the Joan Miller Dance Theater from 1980 to 1990.
No immediate family members survive.
In 2007, when illness forced her to stop working, Ms. Miller was honored with a gala performance at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. It was organized by her many former students, protégés and fellow choreographers, including Abdel Salaam, director of the Forces of Nature Dance Theater; Eleo Pomare; Sheila Kaminsky; and Chuck Davis, founder of the African American Dance Ensemble.
The author, at his home in Sagaponack, N.Y., in 2008, won the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction.Credit Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times
Peter Matthiessen, a roving author and naturalist whose impassioned nonfiction explored the remote endangered wilds of the world and whose prizewinning fiction often placed his mysterious protagonists in the heart of them, died on Saturday at his home in Sagaponack, N.Y. He was 86.
His son Alex said the cause was leukemia, which was diagnosed more than a year ago.
Mr. Matthiessen’s final novel, “In Paradise,” is to be published on Tuesday by Riverhead Books.
Mr. Matthiessen was one of the last survivors of a generation of American writers who came of age after World War II and who all seemed to know one another, socializing in New York and on Long Island’s East End as a kind of movable literary salon peopled by the likes of William Styron, James Jones, Kurt Vonnegut and E. L. Doctorow.
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In the early 1950s, he shared a sojourn in Paris with fellow literary expatriates and helped found The Paris Review, a magazine devoted largely to new fiction and poetry. His childhood friend George Plimpton became its editor.
Peter MatthiessenCredit Jill Krementz, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
A rugged, weather-beaten figure who was reared and educated in privilege — an advantage that left him uneasy, he said — Mr. Matthiessen was a man of many parts: littérateur, journalist, environmentalist, explorer, Zen Buddhist, professional fisherman and, in the early 1950s, undercover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency in Paris. Only years later did Mr. Plimpton discover, to his anger and dismay, that Mr. Matthiessen had helped found The Review as a cover for his spying on Americans in France.
A Passion for Fiction
Mr. Matthiessen’s travels took him to the wilds of Asia, Australia, South America, Africa, New Guinea, the Florida swamps and even beneath the ocean. They led to articles in The New Yorker and other magazines and a raft of nonfiction books, among them “The Snow Leopard” (1978), about a grief-stricken spiritual journey to the Himalayas, and “Men’s Lives” (1986), about Long Island fishermen and their vanishing way of life.The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould called Mr. Matthiessen “our greatest modern nature writer in the lyrical tradition.”
Of his more than 30 books, nonfiction works far outnumbered the novels and short-story collections, but he considered fiction his first and highest calling.
“Nonfiction at its best is like fashioning a cabinet,” he told The Paris Review in 1999. “It can never be sculpture. It can be elegant and very beautiful, but it can never be sculpture. Captive to facts — or predetermined forms — it cannot fly.”
He holds the distinction of being the only writer to win the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction. And his fiction and nonfiction often arose from the same experience.
His fourth novel, “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” (1965), grew out of his reporting for “The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness” (1961). The novel, set in the Brazilian rain forest, depicts the interaction between missionaries and tribesmen — at one point Mr. Matthiessen, an early user of LSD, has his protagonist drink a native hallucinogenic brew — and Western civilization’s damaging impact on primitive peoples. A film adaptation directed by Hector Babenco was released in 1991.
Mr. Mattheissen’s fifth novel, “Far Tortuga” (1975), was inspired by a New Yorker assignment in which he reported on the vanishing Caribbean tradition of turtle hunting. Highly experimental — it drew on recordings of sometimes cryptic Caribbean dialogue — the novel drew mixed reviews.
He delved into another isolated world for his late-career “Watson” trilogy — “Killing Mister Watson” (1990), “Lost Man’s River” (1997) and “Bone by Bone” (1999) — parts of which he compressed into one long opus, “Shadow Country” (2008). It won a National Book Award, though many critics thought a reworked version of previously published fiction did not deserve the honor.
The trilogy uses the life and death of a fearsome historical figure, Edgar J. Watson, to address issues of race, environment and power in America. Watson, a mysterious cane planter in the Ten Thousand Islands region of southwest Florida, was suspected in dozens of murders, including that of the outlaw Belle Starr. Watson himself was killed in 1910 by residents of Chokoloskee, an island settlement where he was suspected in a string of deaths.
Peter Matthiessen, second from right, with, from left, William Styron, Tom Guinzburg and George Plimpton in 1976.Credit Jill Krementz, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
“Perhaps the power of Matthiessen’s writing in part derives from his ability to tap into his dark side, his Jungian shadow,” a biographer, William Dowie, wrote. “If so, it would explain at least one similarity between him and the writers to whom he is sometimes compared in his major fiction: Melville, Conrad and Dostoyevsky.”
Indeed, Mr. Matthiessen’s Watson carries an echo of Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz, the corrupted jungle lord in “Heart of Darkness.”
“Even a quarter-mile away, out in the channel, the figure at the helm looked too familiar, the strong bulk of him, and the broad hat,” Mr. Matthiessen writes in the voice of a character named Mamie Smallwood. “When he saw the crowd, he tipped that hat and bowed a little, and the sun fired that dark red hair — color of dead blood, Grandma Ida used to say, only she never thunk that up till some years later, when the ones who never knew him called him Bloody Watson.”
She goes on: “But it was that little bow he made that told us straight off who it was, and my heart jumped like a mullet, and it weren’t the only one. A hush and stillness fell on Chokoloskee, like our poor little community had caught its breath, like we was waiting for a storm to break from high dark thunderheads over the Glades in summer, just before the first cold wind and rain.”
New York to the C.I.A.
Peter Matthiessen was born on May 22, 1927, in Manhattan, a descendant of Scandinavian whale hunters and the second of three children of Erard A. Matthiessen, an architect and conservationist, and the former Elizabeth Carey. He grew up with his brother and sister on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park (in the same building as Mr. Plimpton), and in country homes on Fishers Island, N.Y., and in Connecticut.
He attended St. Bernard’s School in Manhattan (with Mr. Plimpton) and, in Connecticut, Greenwich Country Day School and Hotchkiss, where he graduated in 1945. He served in the Navy at Pearl Harbor and afterward attended Yale, where he majored in English but also studied biology, ornithology and zoology. He spent his junior year in Paris at the Sorbonne. He graduated from Yale in 1950 and stayed on for another term to teach creative writing.
Encouraged by winning the prestigious Atlantic Prize for a story he had written as an undergraduate, Mr. Matthiessen found a literary agent, the steely Bernice Baumgarten, and sent her the first chapters of a novel. “I waited by the post office for praise to roll in, calls from Hollywood, everything,” he told The Missouri Review in 1989.
“Finally my agent sent me a letter that said, ‘Dear Peter, James Fenimore Cooper wrote this 150 years ago, only he wrote it better. Yours, Bernice.’ I probably needed that; it was very healthy.”
It was around this time that he was recruited by the C.I.A. and traveled to Paris, where he crossed paths with young expatriate American writers like Styron, Jones, James Baldwin and Irwin Shaw. In the postwar years the agency covertly financed magazines and cultural programs to counter the spread of Communism. In interviews years later, Mr. Matthiessen said that in those days working for the C.I.A. was seen by many of his peers as honorable government service and that it had offered him “a free trip to Paris to write my novel.”
Mr. Matthiessen in 1975. His fifth novel, “Far Tortuga,” written that same year, explored Caribbean turtle hunting.Credit Jill Krementz, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The novel was “Race Rock,” a tale of wealth and troubled young lives set in a New England fishing village. While working on it in Paris, he met another aspiring novelist, Harold L. Humes, known as Doc, and the two, along with others seeking an outlet for the work of emerging writers, founded The Paris Review in 1953.
“I used The Paris Review as a cover, there’s no question of that,” he told The New York Times in 2008 after his C.I.A. connection had been discussed in “Doc,” a documentary film about Mr. Humes by his daughter Immy Humes. “But the C.I.A. had nothing to do with Paris Review.”
That assertion was challenged in 2012 by an article in the online magazine Salon; drawing on The Review’s own archives, it suggested that there were C.I.A. ties that had bypassed Mr. Matthiessen or had outlived his two-year relationship with the agency.
“I was getting information on people,” Mr. Matthiessen told Charlie Rose in a television interview in 2008. “I was a greenhorn.” He described the episode as “youthful folly.” Mr. Mattheissen had by then married Patsy Southgate, whom he had met at the Sorbonne when she was a Smith College student.
“Race Rock” was published in 1954, after Mr. Matthiessen had returned to the United States and moved to the South Fork of Long Island, where his daughter, Sara, was born. The couple had already had a son, Luke, in Paris in 1953. To put bread on the table, Mr. Matthiessen worked as a commercial fisherman and ran a deep-sea-fishing charter boat in the summer. He wrote during the winter and on days off.
A second novel, “Partisans,” about a young man in Paris in search of a political hero, was published in 1955, and a third, “Raditzer,” about the son of a wealthy family going to sea to find himself, came out in 1960.
By then he and his wife had divorced, and he had turned to nonfiction and had begun traveling widely, in one instance on assignment for Sports Illustrated to report on American endangered species. That led to the book “Wildlife in America” (1959), which gained the attention of William Shawn, the editor of The New Yorker. Shawn signed him up to roam the world to write about its endangered wilds.
His first assignment was a journey up the Amazon into Peru and south to Tierra del Fuego. It became the basis of “The Cloud Forest.” More explorations followed, leading to books that were often serialized in The New Yorker.
A sample of his titles convey his geographic reach: “Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons of Stone Age New Guinea” (1962); “Oomingmak: The Expedition to the Musk Ox Island in the Bering Sea” (1967); “The Shorebirds of North America” (1967, revised as “The Wind Birds” in 1973); “Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark” (1971); “The Tree Where Man Was Born” (1972), a contemplative account of East Africa; and “Sand Rivers” (1981), about a safari in the Selous Game Preserve in Tanzania.
Peter Matthiessen won a National Book Award for “Shadow Country.”Credit Fernando Ariza/The New York Times
It was after his divorce, in 1958, that Mr. Matthiessen bought his oceanfront house, on six acres, in Sagaponack. In 1963, he married Deborah Love, a writer and poet, and the Sagaponack house became one of many gathering spots for his literary circle of East End neighbors and visitors.
Zen Buddhism
His wife had already embraced Zen Buddhism in the late 1960s when Mr. Matthiessen followed suit, meditating cross-legged for hours on end and later becoming a Zen priest.
His spiritual hunger and the death of his wife from cancer in 1972 lay behind his decision to travel to Nepal in 1973. Ostensibly he went there to record a field trip with the biologist George Schaller. But the book it inspired, “The Snow Leopard,” also chronicled a spiritual journey and a pilgrimage of mourning shadowed by that rare animal, whose presence Mr. Matthiessen finally sensed even if he never actually caught sight of one. The book won the 1979 National Book Award for nonfiction.
He also reached outside himself to understand the struggles of the oppressed and neglected, an effort he traced to a lifelong “uneasiness about unearned privilege.” (At 15, he had rebelliously had his name dropped from the Social Register.)
Travels with Cesar Chavez, the champion of farm workers, led to the 1969 book “Sal Si Puedes (Escape if You Can): Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution,” referring to the barrio in San Jose, Calif., where Mr. Chavez had gotten his start as a union organizer.
Mr. Matthiessen went on to publish “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” (1983), a fulmination against the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans, centering on the prosecution and conviction of Leonard Peltier in the murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in 1975 at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
Mr. Matthiessen and the book’s publisher, Viking Press, were sued for libel damages in separate actions by an F.B.I. agent and a former South Dakota governor, causing Viking to withdraw the book. Both suits were eventually dismissed, but at a cost to the defendants of more than $2 million in legal fees.
In 1980 Mr. Matthiessen married Maria Eckhart, a former media buyer for an advertising firm in London who was born in Tanzania. Besides his son Alex and daughter Rue from his marriage to Deborah Love, Mr. Matthiessen is also survived by his son Luke and a daughter, Sara Carey, from his first marriage to Patsy Southgate; two stepdaughters, Antonia and Sarah Koenig; and six grandchildren.
He continued to write books and articles into his later years in his roomy art-filled home at Sagaponack.
His last novel, “In Paradise,” tells the story of a group that comes together for a meditative retreat at the site of a former Nazi death camp. Such retreats were familiar to him. He regularly welcomed Zen students to a zendo, a place of meditation, on his grounds.
“Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake,” he told the British newspaper The Guardian in 2002. “We tend to daydream all the time, speculating about the future and dwelling on the past. Zen practice is about appreciating your life in this moment. If you are truly aware of five minutes a day, then you are doing pretty well. We are beset by both the future and the past, and there is no reality apart from the here and now.”
Correction: April 6, 2014 An earlier version of this obituary misspelled, in one reference, the surname of Peter Matthiessen’s second wife, who died in 1998. She was Patsy Southgate, not Southgage. It also misstated where Mr. Matthiessen and George Plimpton attended school together. It was St. Bernard’s in Manhattan, not the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace 2015
Monday, April 6, 2015
April 6 is the United Nations’ (UN) International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace, which recognizes the power of sport in promoting peace and erasing cultural barriers worldwide.
Sport is a positive way of achieving goodwill, healthy competition and cooperation across all cultures.
Celebrate International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace
The International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace promotes healthy lifestyles and emphasizes the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) focus on giving as many people as possible access to sport. It is day when some of the world’s leading sportspeople work together with communities to bring sporting opportunities to enrich lives, particularly children.
Public life
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace is a global observance and not a public holiday.
About International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace
The IOC and the UN have a long-standing commitment to using sport as a tool for social change and have worked together on many projects over the years. Both organizations have used sporting events, such as the Olympic Games, to bridge cultural understanding and improve education, health, economic and social development.
On August 23, 2013, the UN proclaimed that the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace would be celebrated on April 6 each year. This date also marks the opening of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896.
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace Observances
Weekday
Date
Year
Name
Holiday type
Where it is observed
Sun
Apr 6
2014
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace
United Nations observance
Mon
Apr 6
2015
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace
United Nations observance
Wed
Apr 6
2016
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace
United Nations observance
Thu
Apr 6
2017
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace
United Nations observance
Fri
Apr 6
2018
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace
United Nations observance
Sat
Apr 6
2019
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace
United Nations observance
Mon
Apr 6
2020
International Day of Sport for the Development of Peace
April 4, 2014 | NASA has a fully functioning spacecraft orbiting the Moon, all science goals completed, and a lunar eclipse coming up. It’s a perfect opportunity to make some risky but potentially rewarding swoops within 2 miles of the lunar surface. > read more
April 3, 2014 | Data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have provided further evidence that Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus harbors a liquid ocean under its surface. > read more
April 2, 2014 | Astronomers have developed a new method to measure distances to bright but faraway galaxies, a tool which will help better constrain the expansion rate of the universe. > read more
March 31, 2014 | Infrared observations of the Circinus Galaxy may help reveal the shape of the dusty region fueling its active galactic nucleus and shed light on what governs dust structures in other galaxies. > read more
March 28, 2014 | North Americans haven’t seen a total eclipse of the Moon since 2011. But this long dry spell breaks late on the night of April 14–15 as the Moon makes a leisurely pass through Earth’s deepest shadow. > read more
March 28, 2014 | It’s a great month, celestially speaking: the brilliant stars of winter crowd in the southwest at nightfall, Jupiter is joined by Mars, and the first total lunar eclipse in 2½ years occurs at mid-month. > read more
Yes, springtime, flowers in bloom, morning and afternoon showers, and citrus trees with fruit to be that holds promise.
I have been a long time fan of the late and great William James “Count” Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) , also known simply as Count Basie, and what better way to herald in the month of April than to present one of his most famous compositions on an oldie but goodie.
Ann
