Rolling Stones

(CAMBRIDGE, MASS.) For someone who grew up in a military family, the most ordinary opening rituals of conversation can cause momentary panic: "Where are you from?" "Well, I was born in Virginia." "Yes, and then what?" "Then we lived in 15 different places." Frequent family moves, intermittently to overseas bases, are a dominant feature of service life. In a transient society, the military leads the way in geographical mobility. The average American family pulls up stakes once every five or six years, but military families move twice that often.

Farewell To Shungnak

(SHUNGNAK, ALASKA) — To hear Charlie Lee tell it, it was quite a night. "Day shift, night shift, day shift, we was really working," he remembers. "It was fall time. They was about to close down the camp. At night, after everybody go to bed, I heard a lot of shouting. I thought something was wrong down there, lots of fellows hollering. The day shift had gone off. That night shift started drilling a little, and they found copper. Boy they was really happy. Go wake up the boss. Hollering, wake up everybody in camp. The boss run around with no pants on, in his underwear. Everybody happy. That was the first they find at Bornite."

The Western Imagination

(CALIFORNIA) — A few months ago I flew over the state of Utah on my way back from Washington to San Francisco. It was a late night in November, and a fierce early blizzard had swept out of the Rocky Mountain States. I had an aisle seat, and since I believe that anyone who flies in air airplane and does not look out the window most of the time wastes his money, I went back to one of the doors adjoining the rear galley of the airplane, a DC-10, and stood there for a long time, lulled by the heavy drone of the engines, staring out the door's tiny aperture. The frozen fire of a winter's moon poured cold light on the desert below. Six inches away from the tip of my nose the temperature was minus sixty-five degrees, and seven miles below it was, according to the pilot, nine above zero, but here we were, two hundred highly inventive creatures safe and comfortable in a fat winged cylinder racing over the Great Basin of North America, dozing, drinking, chattering, oblivious to the frigid emptiness outside.

The Masada Complex

(JERUSALEM) — Readers have been exposed to a great many words lately about the Islamic resurgence, some of them coming from this very typewriter. A rebirth of Koranic zeal helps explain to Westerners the recurring episodes of what looks to us like bizarre behavior in the Moslern world. Now I think it is time to turn our attention to its counterpart, the Judaic resurgence. For there is a revitalized religious urge discernible in Israel, and it has become an increasingly significant factor in determing whether there will be war or peace in the Middle East.

(NEW YORK) - In this passage Professor Hannerz is describing one of the central elements of black life style analyzed during his sociological study of a relatively contemporary inner-city community. The behavioral pattern described, however, besides its import as a means of survival within black communities and as a buffer against hostility encountered in interactions with whites, is also one of the essential characteristics of traditional black American humor. Moreover, despite its continued evidence in black communities, its roots extend nearly as far back as the initial presence of black slaves in North America.