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Elizabeth Edwards prides herself on her ability to explain the fine print of
her husband's energy plan and the details of how John Edwards would
respond to the next Katrina-size natural disaster. She can rattle off the
127,000), how many schools there have failed to meet the Federal
the state ranks in teacher pay (24th). "I think it's important to learn policy,
so that people don't have to dumb down their questions because I'm the
spouse," she says. Nor, for that matter, does she feel a spouse should have
to sand down her edges. When a woman at a house party in Bow, N.H.,
asked her one recent morning how her husband's campaign would respond
to "the inevitable horrible mudslinging" that is part of presidential politics,
you might have thought she was the one in the family who had grown up in
a brawling mill town. "It's a question of being prepared and not having any
hesitation," she said. "You go straight to the nose because then they walk
have always been pretty clear. She (yes, that was the presumption) should
first do no harm. Her safest bet: stand silently at his side, beaming with
admiration and awe, the well-coiffed testament to a home life that was
tranquil, drama-free and utterly traditional. When the spouse became the
started throwing around quips like "Buy one, get one free" and musing
about the possibility of giving his outspoken lawyer wife a Cabinet post. In
no time, people were working out their own conflicted feelings about
feminism and family by arguing over Hillary Clinton ̶ the influences she
would bring to the White House, the state of her marriage, even her
spouse had been a paragon of cloth-coat humility, warned, "If the wife
comes through as being too strong and too intelligent, it makes the
Fast-forward four presidential cycles, and Hillary is leading the field for the
himself into the supporting role. With a spouse who can be counted on to
outshine the candidate, her campaign has had to handle the former
have expected him to be out immediately, and instead, he's sort of behind
the scenes and on the phone and doing fund raising," says Elizabeth
Edwards, 58. "It is clearly more complicated for them ... I'm just glad that's
those in the top tier ̶ more than a few are married to outspoken,
inclined toward melting into the background. They are comfortable with,
even eager about making news in their own right. Since the 2008 campaign
than any we've seen, the spouses are playing roles more typically
associated with the running mate than the mate of the person who's
running. In fact, the reality of today's politics seems to have turned Nixon's
prerequisite if you want to win. Sit down and talk to some of them, and you
will realize that while they all are charting the terrain ahead in their own
ways, they do so with the conviction that their partner can't get there
without them. As Cindy McCain, 53, put it, "He and I are the only two in it in
the end."
simply practical: two people can cover far more territory than one. "It's
obviously different. Not only am I going out and speaking, but I'm also
doing fund raising on my own," says Ann Romney, 58, whose five sons too
are being deployed across the map. "There are so many states in play now
that you can't possibly cover them all with the asset of just one candidate."
As the competition gets hotter, we'll see whether the traditional attack-dog
whether they are given leeway to say things that their husbands wouldn't
dare. There was no mistaking what Elizabeth Edwards meant when she said
Hillary Clinton is "divisive and unelectable." She has blasted Barack Obama
for being "holier than thou" on the Iraq war, contended Hillary Clinton has
had to "behave as a man" and "is just not as vocal a women's advocate as I
want to see," and complained that her husband is not getting as much
media attention as either of them because "we can't make John black; we
Edwards allows that she occasionally thinks, "Golly, I wish I hadn't said it
that way." And she insists that she is merely being herself, not part of a
calculation, anything with respect to this. The second thing is, I don't usually
But that doesn't mean all this is random. "My job is to move voters,"
Edwards says. "If you're not moving votes or moving voters to see the
candidate himself or herself, then you're not using your time very wisely."
unique situation in which Edwards now finds herself. What she calls "my
precious time" is even more so since it was revealed in March that her
getting a sympathy pass? Rival campaigns think so, though they won't say
Reporters are primed to hear an attack even when none is intended. When
Michelle Obama, 43, mused last month in Iowa that "if you can't run your
own house, you certainly can't run the White House" ̶ an innocent enough
observation, the full context of her remarks shows, about the challenges of
juggling her children's schedule with her husband's ̶ it was immediately
caption beneath her picture and Hillary Clinton's on Fox News. "That's a
totally different context," Obama now says. "So that's one of those things
where I take it, I learn a lesson, I say, 'O.K., let me be clearer' ... All I'm trying
our challenges. What I don't want to feel like is that we can't have any
First Ladies have been deeply involved in politics all through history. In
1776, even as John Adams was helping invent the Republic, Abigail was
warning him, "Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the
husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could." Mary Todd
Lincoln had such strong views about Cabinet members and Supreme Court
nominees that some White House aides called her "the Hellcat." Edith Wilson
husband, though she opposed giving women the vote. Rosalynn Carter was
basically in charge of mental-health policy. As her husband staggered
"Many, many women have brought to the table so many different things,"
says Cindy McCain. "It just depends on how deeply you want to look."
strategist John Weaver was fired; his 2000 campaign manager Rick Davis
was brought back from internal exile to take over. "Truly, the only person
my husband can trust is me," McCain says. "I don't have anything to lose by
telling him not only what I think but what I think he did wrong."
In the pre-Hillary age, with different expectations for gender roles, that kind
First Ladies: Bess, Mamie, Jackie, Lady Bird, Pat. It really was Betty Ford,
arguably the archetype for today's aspiring First Spouses, who changed the
after Watergate, she responded in the way that came naturally ̶ which is
because her Midwestern manners precluded the idea that you could just
ignore a question you didn't like. There was Betty on 60 Minutes saying she
her kids had tried pot. When she observed to a columnist that the only
question she hadn't been asked was how often she slept with her husband,
the reporter came back with: "Well, how often do you?" Her answer: "As
often as possible!" The Fords "flung open the White House windows and
declared there are real people living here," says journalist Kati Marton, who
But then, Betty Ford got the First Lady's job without ever having to
campaign for it. And not everyone was charmed by her candor. Some of
the President's aides wanted to muzzle her, and his pollsters said she could
cost him 20 points with conservative GOP voters. First Lady aspirants have
more typically acted as fabric softener. Tipper Gore made her husband
look looser, as did Kitty Dukakis, though in both cases that wasn't saying
much. Laura Bush has almost always been a more popular figure than W.,
though most people could not name a policy position that she's passionate
about.
The current class of candidates' spouses has plenty who still fit the
traditional mold ̶ like Mary Brownback, 49, who married Sam while she
was in law school and proudly declares that she's never worked outside the
home. "Basically," she says, "I live in the kitchen." Ann Romney calls herself
the CFO ̶ chief family officer ̶ and her husband Mitt's campaign website
says she "places primary importance on her role as a wife, a mother and a
grandmother." Mike and Janet Huckabee were high school sweethearts; now
52, she was 18 when they married, and they renewed their vows in a
covenant marriage on Valentine's Day, 2005. Jill Tracy Biden, 56, was a
student teacher when she and Joe Biden married in 1977, and has dropped
off the campaign trail now that the school year has begun again.
In fact, for a politician's spouse, some things never change. This is how
We're standing in grocery-store lines, and frankly, we're just trying to keep
body and soul and house and home and family together, while they go out
The spouses themselves don't sound so sure. "As much as it may sound a
little archaic, I think the American voter wants a traditional situation," says
Cindy McCain. "In other words, I don't believe they want a spouse who is
Administration. I'm just telling you what people have told me. They still kind
Even Elizabeth Edwards, for all her outspokenness, agrees. "There are
Many a first marriage has been the subject of rumor and speculation, but
the Clinton presidency put political marriage under the microscope in a way
it never had been before. In this new season of full disclosure, there's
Elizabeth Kucinich, 29, who told the Associated Press that a lazy day at
home consists of getting up for brunch and then going back to bed until
4:30 p.m., "John Lennon and Yoko Ono-style." But it's hard to think of
another spouse who has taken openness as far as Michelle Obama. Her idea
of managing her husband's image seems to begin with knocking him off his
pedestal.
"snore-y and stinky" that her daughters won't cuddle with him in bed. She
tells voters how he leaves his dirty socks around and invites them to tattle
if they see him violating their deal in which she would allow him to run if he
would stop smoking. Barack Obama has written with startling candor about
the strains that his political career has put on their marriage, particularly
when both were in their formative years. "Leaning down to kiss Michelle
goodbye in the morning, all I would get was a peck on the cheek," he wrote.
"By the time Sasha was born ̶ just as beautiful, and almost as calm as her
But you could argue that her acknowledgment of his flaws makes her more
effective when she turns that anger on his critics. "Don't be fooled by
people who claim that it is not his time," she exhorts. "We've heard this
spewed from the lips of rivals ... every phase of our journey: He is not
Michelle Obama says she is betting that voters will not only accept that
frankness but embrace it. "You win with being who you are and with being
clear and comfortable with that," she says. "I'm finding that people
completely understand me. For the most part, I think the women and the
men and the families and the folks that we are meeting on the campaign
Oddly enough, it is the republican spouses who are stretching the limits of
traditional values in ways they never have before. Ann Romney's story line
̶ the high school sweetheart and sunny stay-at-home mom who produced
a Mormon in the White House. "I think that people have seen Mitt and me.
They certainly know we have a very strong marriage and very strong
family," she says. "I think that is clearly helpful to him in breaking down
barriers that people have had in the past." But, she adds, "I don't know if
For the others, the question may be whether voters have seen too much.
The public displays of affection that front runner Rudolph Giuliani and wife
Judith put on for Barbara Walters ̶holding hands and calling each other
"baby" and "sweetheart" ̶ only served to remind viewers that this first
blush of love is also the third marriage for each, and that wife No. 3 is one
of the reasons his children with wife No. 2 won't campaign for him. "I have
just recently begun ̶ I think they call it in the political world ̶ being
'rolled out,'" Judith, 52, told Walters, but the process has been anything but
smooth. A scathing profile of Judith Stish Ross Nathan Giuliani in Vanity
Fair pored over her two failed marriages (one of which she acknowledged
provided for the Louis Vuitton handbag that is known around Giuliani
courtship, which started while he was still living with second wife Donna
Hanover.
Through all this, Judith Giuliani is trying hard to keep her game face on. "It's
a steep learning curve. It's all been new to me," she says. "What's really
important is, it's my husband who's running for office. He is the one. I do
think that is important for us to focus on. We aren't electing a spouse." And
while Rudy Giuliani told Walters he would be "very, very comfortable" with
having his wife, a nurse, attend Cabinet meetings ̶"I couldn't have a better
adviser"̶ Judith downplays her influence and her interest in his campaign
husband in the ways I have always supported him. I love to take charge of
his personal health needs, make sure he's exercising, getting the right food,
which is a real challenge on the campaign trail," she says. "I do attend some
meetings, but more often than not, it's for my own edification."
For Fred Thompson's wife Jeri, 40, who is a quarter-century younger than
he is, it's hard to figure out which female stereotype is more toxic: the siren
gop Congressman Joe Scarborough speculating that she "works the pole"
Macbeth who has been blamed for sending his campaign into disarray even
before it was launched. She was a major force in persuading him to run but
also a major one behind a series of shake-ups that had the campaign on its
second manager and its fourth spokesman before Thompson even
Her defenders note that Jeri Thompson has worked for years as a political
operative. "She gets Republican politics. She gets conservative politics. But
most of all, she understands where this man is and how best to help him,"
Their family portrait ̶ a man who qualifies for Social Security with a 40-
year-old blond, a toddler and a baby ̶ is a far cry from that of Ike and
Mamie. "He sadly now looks like their grandfather," says Marton. "It's not
what women want the presidential family to look like. No doubt
unintentionally, but to a lot of women it's almost a rebuke. It's too unsubtle."
marriages, the challenge for the Clintons has been a different one: making
The first time his wife ran for office, Bill Clinton was in the White House,
which kept him safely off her stage and minimized the amount of public
consultant in chief, reworking her speeches, stepping in when her staff was
putting too much on her schedule, rehearsing her for debates and
That was two successful Senate campaigns ago. Now the man who jokes
reaches for the biggest prize of all: his old job. He has joined his wife in a
couple of campaign swings and is her star fund raiser. But he has yet to
debates. As for his role in any future Clinton Administration, both she and
he have talked about the possibility that she might make him an unofficial
emissary. "I think she will ask me and former President Bush and other
people to go help the country. We have got to restore our standing in the
world," Bill Clinton told CNN's Larry King recently. "I wouldn't be surprised if
But in the meantime, there's an election to win. And while Hillary Clinton has
the best political strategist of her generation at her disposal, Bill is by all
while the couple talks several times a day, he rarely gets involved with the
workings of her campaign. "He's doing what he's asked, and he's doing what
he can," says an aide, "but he's certainly not meddling." In part, that's
because his own work his foundation and a tour to promote his new book
̶ keeps him plenty busy. And it also reflects the fact that she has an
enormous political machine around her that seems to be doing pretty well
on its own.
"If she's writing an important article or giving an important speech, she'll ask
me to read it," the former President told Oprah Winfrey. "And once in a
while she'll ask me for some advice on something strategic. But she knows
so much more about a lot of this stuff than I do because I'm far removed
from it." Occasionally, he says, he gets a call from her while he's on the golf
course, and she reminds him that she's 15 years older than he was when he
Bill Clinton, 61, is also making a conscious effort to stay out of the fray,
women's issues, he rode to his wife's defense. "If you look at the record on
women's issues, I defy you to find anybody who has run for office in recent
history who's got a longer history of working for women, for families and
children, than Hillary does," Clinton said in an interview with ABC's Good
Morning America. As for Edwards' contention that Hillary had behaved "as a
man," Clinton retorted, "I don't think it's inconsistent with being a woman
that you can also be knowledgeable on military and security affairs and be
can be for the person we think would be the best President." Of course,
that's easy to say when your candidate is safely ahead in the polls. If their
Small/Washington
Illness On the Tra il
By KAREN TUMULTY/WASHINGTON
Edwards who looks the picture of health. Her hair is full, and her blue eyes
as bright as ever. She has slimmed down since the 2004 campaign, but
insists that is the hard earned badge of dieting, not disease. Still, every now
and then, there comes a reminder. Before taking off her jacket recently in
television crew and a TIME photographer to move and shoot her from her
left side, because her right arm is swollen from the treatment of her lymph
someone asked her at a school in Manchester, she joked: "I call it chemo-
brain; I could blame it on the fact that I'm 58."
incurable breast cancer, much of the blame has been directed at her. In
devoting herself to her husband's goal, was she ignoring what might be
best for her children? Earlier this month, Edwards got into a public spat
with a Clinton supporter, who had blogged that she was a "terrible mother."
Elizabeth, a lifelong insomniac who spends her wakeful hours surfing the
internet, came across the post and wrote back: "You don't get to judge me
because you think you know exactly what you would do if you had my
But there is at least one person who did know. Ann Romney, who was
diagnosed in 1998 with multiple sclerosis, called Elizabeth shortly after the
you're still fighting," Romney told her. "I totally get it."
before you decide to run for President, but there is a whole other
dimension to the decision when one member of the family is also struggling
with a debilitating, even life-threatening illness. This year, there are not one
but two women on the campaign trail in that situation. Edwards calls
Romney "a lovely woman." And while their husbands are of two different
parties, pitted against each other for the biggest prize in politics, "the
spouses are not at war with each other," says Edwards. "It's much easier to
do this if you do not think of these other women who also making these
connection."
While Romney is vigorous, and looks at least a decade younger than her
age (like Edwards, she's 58), the disease has limited what she can do on the
campaign, she says. Romney tries to travel no more than three days at a
time, and keeps alert for signs that she is pushing herself too hard. "I've
learned, even within myself, I can start telling when I'm wearing down,"
Romney says. "What happens to me is I almost can't talk. I get to the point
where my brain doesn't even work, and I can hardly get words out and I
look at everyone with this glassy stare, like, "I'm done. I've hit empty. Bye. I
don't care what you've got on my schedule.'" At that point, she goes home
Her illness has meant she can't be campaigning with her husband as much
as he would like, given how his mood lightens when she is around. "They call
me the Mitt Stabilizer," she says. "I'm able to just make him laugh, and get
more lighthearted about the whole thing, and not take it so seriously." But
her limitations have also allowed her to touch voters in a way she couldn't
other people," Romney says. "They are grateful and their lives have been
Elizabeth Edwards has an additional challenge, given that she must also
factor in the needs of two young children. But she says her family has
found a balance that works for them. Emma Claire, 9, and Jack, 7, are
being home schooled, and join their parents on the campaign trail when
they are going to be out for a while, or when they are going somewhere the
upending their schedule: a few days on the road in the middle of the week;
school on the weekend. Their parents make sure there is also time for
Though there are plenty who wouldn't have done any of this the way she
did ̶ and have said so ̶ Edwards seems not to have any doubts. "The
choice we had to make was a very public choice, but the choice didn't
belong to the public. The choice belongs to us," she says. "Around the
country, every place that I've gone, people who have been in the same
shoes that I've been ̶ sadly ̶ have all made the same choice, to live, to
As for herself, Edwards insists that the life she is living now is not being
defined by the death she knows is coming sooner than it should. "I think
about the cancer on my way to the doctor, while I'm in the doctor's office,"
she says. "I get back in my car and I'm not thinking about the cancer. "I
don't talk about it. I don't think about it," she adds. "I'm just pushing on."
Life: Educa ti on - Fashion - Hist ory - Fo od - En vir onment - Health
The grand tradition of flip-flopping: Politicians change their minds for all kinds of reasons.
Lyndon Johnson spoke out against Truman s early efforts on racial equality and as Senate
majority leader helped pass a civil right bill in 1957.
Donald Uhrbrock / Time & Life Pictures / Getty
The line of politicians who have had a change of heart about the war in Iraq
October 2002 to authorize the use of force there, now wants the troops to
the war, wants to give the surge a chance: "Progress is being made and
there is real reason for hope." But politicians are often anxious about
changing their minds. They know opponents are waiting to hammer them as
accusations of flip-flopping over abortion, and John Kerry, who ineptly said
he had voted for a supplemental funding bill before voting against it, can
attest. Yet our nation's leaders often change their minds. If they didn't, we
might still be slave-owning British subjects. When and why they do so can
be instructive.
Wanting to be seen as responsible and practical, many politicians often
income taxes, declaring that his feet were "in concrete" on the issue. State
should be obvious and painful. But once in office, he found that there was
no other revenue stream that could balance the state budget, and so he
submitted an economic plan that called for higher withholding taxes. "The
sound you hear," he said at a press conference, "is the sound of concrete
cracking."
Reagan wasn't the first pol to reverse himself when a new office brought
argued for a stronger Federal Government and took a lead role in creating
leader of the fight against the war measures of President John Adams, he
became an advocate of states' rights, urging his native Virginia and its
Englanders to wield the power of their states against his war measures,
Sometimes the desire for a job makes a politician see the light. For the first
two decades of his career, Lyndon Johnson was a New Deal liberal, with
white Southern views on race (he called Harry Truman's early efforts on civil
rights "a farce and a sham"). This combination made him a popular Texas
Congressman and Senator, but he also wanted to be President. After a
stumbling run as Texas' favorite son in 1956, he realized that his ambitions
required him to change his profile on civil rights. The next year, after epic
act did not win him the Democratic nomination in 1960, but it allowed John
At their best, politicians change their minds because their principles tell
them to. John Quincy Adams, son of Founding Father John Adams, became
George Washington, a Virginian, gave him his first job. President James
the House Henry Clay, a Kentuckian, helped him win the presidency when
the election of 1824 was thrown to the House of Representatives. For most
of his career, Adams believed the South would handle slavery on its own,
wiping the great blot from national life. By his 60s, however, he had heard
Congress after losing the White House in 1828, Adams spent the remainder
of his life flaying slavery, supporting the mutineers on the slave ship
petitions.
No decision, of course, is ever the result of one pure motive. Johnson, his
compassion that his ambition finally allowed him to tap. John Quincy
Bush has made Petraeus the arbiter of Iraq policy when it should be set by the President.
Illustration for TIME by Stephen Kroninger, Petraeus: Susan Walsh / AP
as most of her colleagues did, about time spent on the ground in Iraq with
General David Petraeus, but it was not a recent visit. It was back in 2005,
when Petraeus was in charge of training the new Iraqi army. An aide pulled
out a blown-up photograph of the Senator and the general. "You were so
upbeat, General," Boxer said. "You said, 'You're about to see some terrific
optimistic as anyone I've seen on the planet ... and I believed you!" The
stage was set for Boxer to point out that the Petraeus effort to train the
Iraqi army had failed and to ask, "So why should we believe your optimism
now?" But she wandered off into an antiwar diatribe and never got around
to asking it.
The unasked question was so profound that Petraeus, a proud man, chose
to answer it anyway. "I believe that my optimism back when I showed those
very fine Iraqi forces to Senator Boxer was justified," he said. The good
work was undone, though, in 2006, when Shi'ite militias "hijacked" whole
units of the Iraqi military. But, he insisted, we are back on the right track
now. Petraeus may well be right̶or maybe not. The nature of military
essential when you go to war, but it lacks perspective. That's why civilian
soldier, in a position way above his pay grade. He has made Petraeus not
just the arbiter of Iraq strategy but also, by default, the man who sets U.S.
question: Which should have the higher priority in the war against al-Qaeda,
Iraq or the rebuilt al-Qaeda leadership and terrorist camps, festering on the
former ambassador to Pakistan, into a corner and then, inexplicably, let him
off the hook and turned to Petraeus, who rightly claimed a lack of
It seems clear the President has won this round. An optimistic general will
war in the oil-rich port city of Basra̶not even the most knowledgeable
Senators had the facts to dispute him. The general was armed with the
Crocker, for example, seemed particularly insistent on roping Iran into the
scenario. "The Iranian President has already announced that Iran will fill any
vacuum in Iraq," the ambassador testified. But Crocker also testified that
the Iraqi Shi'ites were Arabs who had fought fiercely against the Iranians in
the eight-year war and were very unlikely to cede control to their Persian
greatest threat to stability and as the greatest loser in the struggle, its
No doubt Crocker and Petraeus believe they were merely stating the
complexities of a difficult situation. But in a war, there is a need for
With al-Qaeda in Iraq on the run and, as Petraeus insisted, no need for
American forces to resolve the Shi'ite chaos in the south, what was the
rationale for keeping so many troops in Iraq? Why wasn't there a clearly
defined strategic path for dealing with the country's political collapse?
Crocker. And the Senators were left with bland assurances that the two
That's not nearly enough, of course. There was an important follow-up that
Boxer didn't ask either: Without a strong, credible central government, for
whom exactly is the re-retrained Iraqi army fighting? How can any Iraqi be
loyal to a government that doesn't exist? And, finally, now that the Sunnis
have decisively rejected the extremists, why should any American trooper
The Rule-Breaking Campaign. Most elections produce a surprise or two. Here is why this one
could upend all assumptions.
Illustration for TIME by Dave Wheeler
Michigan was ranked No. 5 in the preseason polls. It paid little Appalachian
State University of Boone, N.C., about $400,000 to have its football team
a stunning upset, Appalachian State won 34-32-- kicking a field goal with
26 sec. left, then blocking a Michigan field-goal attempt on the game's last
play.
race since Jimmy Carter's victory in 1976. We're due. And the 2008
surprise. Why?
1. It's an open-seat election. For the first time since 1952, there will be no
Republicans and two leading Democrats have never run for national office
factors like candidates' errors, campaign dynamics and external events than
2. It's a wartime election. Wars are volatile. Eight months ago, we were
losing in Iraq. Now it's not so clear. Where will Iraq stand four months from
November 2008? As wars are unpredictable, so are the politics of war. The
fact that we were a nation at war helped the Republicans in 2002 and
2004. It hurt them badly in 2006. What about 2008? George W. Bush
recently compared Iraq to Vietnam. Well ... is this 1968, when the party in
that make Iowa and New Hampshire more or less important? No one is
certain. I suspect that the slingshot effect out of Iowa and New Hampshire
could be greater than ever. In fact, in recent years Iowa has become an
increasingly good predictor of the nominee: Bob Dole and Bush won Iowa
in 1996 and 2000, respectively, and went on to win the GOP nomination; Al
Gore and John Kerry won Iowa in 2000 and 2004 and prevailed on the
we'll have for both parties, a few thousand votes--a few hundred votes--
could well mean the difference between first place and second and third or,
for that matter, third and fifth. And such a small difference could be utterly
decisive for who survives and who gets knocked out, who has momentum
have as her husband a former President of the U.S. Will the prospect of
having Bill Clinton back in the White House help or hurt Hillary Clinton when
been able to compete seriously for the GOP nomination since 1980. No
one has gone straight from the studio to the presidency (Ronald Reagan
had long ago given up his acting career and had served two terms as
runners.
hailing distance of the three Democratic front runners. What if the leading
candidates whack away at one another in TV ads and the personable
improve and the other Republicans slip and slide, couldn't the old warrior
pull off an upset? And what happens to a front runner once he or she
stumbles? The week after its defeat by Appalachian State, Michigan was
Every presidential election, it's been said, breaks one political rule. This one
One morning in March, while pulling out of the driveway, I saw a large
The envelope rode shotgun beside me for several miles until I opened it at
a red light, using a tire-pressure gauge from the glove box, at which time
color of New England clam chowder--was a handwritten fan letter from the
President of the United States. I was touched and flattered--my ego swelled
like a self-inflating raft. But more important, the letter has served in the
Brownie. "I read your final ... article in your literary home of 19 years. Like
many who enjoy your work, I'll miss your humor, your style, and compassion
..."
did he get our address?" I'm sure Dick Cheney, in his undisclosed location,
year-old and said, "They can't find Osama, but they tracked down yo'
reading list had turned into a debate about the Patriot Act.
corner.
My father, who framed a copy of the letter, said with pride, "The President
But others sometimes inflected the same sentence for maximum disdain:
"The President of the United States has the time to write ... you?" Whether
Many blue-staters have made the same joke, each one thinking he is the
first to do so. "He can write?" they say, always followed by, "He can read?" I
have now passed the letter to countless Americans and a few non-
Americans--so many people that I ought to have the letter laminated, like a
Waffle House menu. And the one thing that everyone agrees on--red-staters
and Greenpeacers--is that he does come off on paper as funny and self-
deprecating.
"Please don't worry about the mud in the West Wing," he wrote to me, a
tracked mud from the Kentucky Derby track onto antique carpeting in the
White House prior to an interview. "After a lot of scrubbing, I have finally
name during our interview (even though it was written in inch-high letters on
with my name boldly underlined to say, "I do too know your name, and I'm
And while the President no doubt forgot about the note the moment he set
his pen down, I'll always remember it as a kind and humanizing gesture. And
here I am, ungallantly airing it in public. For Presidents, no good deed goes
unpunished.
I've put the letter away for now, back in its tattered envelope, where it will
probably remain for the next 100 years, until some distant descendant has
Musharraf's reign began with an echo of the original sin of its first pages:
exile on Sept. 10 lasted just four hours; Musharraf had him deported again.
widespread acclaim, the second may well hasten the President's downfall.
declaring martial law, but that would be highly unpopular, even within the
party faithful, undaunted by their leader's absence and the arrest of many
of his aides, are planning mass protests. They are likely to be joined by a
wide swath of Pakistani society, from Islamist parties to liberal lawyers and
professors. Al-Qaeda and other extremist militants in the tribal areas
confined to tribal areas in the north, have spread across the country. Some
of Musharraf's political allies and fellow military officers are backing away,
and his enemies sense his vulnerability. "This is the death spasm of the
general's rule," says Supreme Court lawyer Iftikhar Gilani. "He can't survive
The most immediate threat to Musharraf comes from the Supreme Court,
expires on Nov. 15, and Supreme Court justices, who resent the general for
unlikely to give him another. If Musharraf sheds his uniform, they can block
him with another constitutional provision: retired soldiers must wait two
This is all alarming news for the Bush Administration, which regards
popularity. But Bhutto's own standing has plummeted since she started
dealing with the dictator. Now negotiations are stalled over her demands
that he resign as head of the military, drop corruption charges against her
and give up the power to dissolve parliament. U.S. officials predict Bhutto's
popularity will spike if she returns to power in an alliance with the general
Department official.
U.S. officials are counting on Musharraf to retain control over the military--
the presidency. "The hope is that Musharraf will continue to influence policy
in the war on terror as President," says the official. That may be wishful
says the Americans are "naive" for thinking that Musharraf will have any
clout once he steps down as military chief or that Bhutto will be able to
control the army as Prime Minister. "The Pakistani army is a one-man show,"
he says. "Whoever is chief gets to call the shots ... no civilian leader can tell
be better served by the man both leaders despise: Sharif. The Bush
relationship with the Clinton Administration, allowing the U.S. in 1998 to use
Pakistani airspace for missile attacks against al-Qaeda bases in
capture Osama bin Laden: 60 soldiers started training, but the program
was aborted when Sharif was deposed. Sharif's record in other areas is less
the country devastating economic sanctions that were not lifted until 2001.
official says Bhutto's party "has historically been more popular and closer
What Sharif does have going for him is a groundswell of public support.
his deportation, Sharif's numbers were climbing. Many of the groups that
sack the Supreme Court justice have thrown their support behind Sharif. As
change.
The parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann, Kate, background, and Gerry, carry their
two-year-old twin children Sean and Amelie as they return to England four months after
going on vacation on September 9, 2007. They deny any role in her disappearance.
Rui Vieira / AFP / Getty
British girl on vacation with her parents in Portugal, disappeared. She hasn't
been found in more than four months despite one of the most intensive
summer, Europe and much of the rest of the globe became fixated on the
JonBenét Ramsey.
The Pope and even bigger global celebrities--David Beckham and J.K.
People around the world have given more than $2 million to a private
investigative fund begun by Drs. Kate Healy McCann and Gerry McCann,
Madeleine's case and why it has mesmerized so many for so long. Only in
the past few days, when it emerged that her parents might be charged with
accidentally killing her, has Madeleine's image begun to appear with
southern Portugal. The resort they chose, the Ocean Club, had a reputation
for being kid-friendly. On May 3, the group was dining at the resort's tapas
bar while the kids slept. At about 10 p.m., Kate McCann has said, she went
to check on Madeleine and her siblings, 2-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.
Madeleine was gone. The McCanns were not initially suspected; they have
Relations between the family and the Portuguese police were difficult from
the first hours. Police believed that, like most missing young children,
Madeleine had simply wandered off and would soon be found. Crucial time
was lost to that assumption. The Spanish border is less than two hours
from Praia da Luz, yet authorities did not search cars leaving Portugal or
Police have since investigated thousands of leads and theories, some quite
pedophiles stakes out children for days and then extracts them with
Three days later, officials apparently leaked word that Madeleine's DNA had
been found in the trunk of a car her parents rented 25 days after the girl
went missing. (The parents were still in Portugal at the time. Vowing not to
return home without Madeleine, they stayed there until two days after
being named suspects, when they returned to England.) At first, the DNA
news seemed the first real break in the case in months, and a new theory
presented itself: the McCanns wanted a night out with friends, so they
drugged their little ones with painkillers or sedatives. Madeleine's dose was
mismeasured, or she had an unexpected reaction. The parents somehow hid
her corpse for weeks and then got the body out in the trunk of their rental
The McCanns called the theory ludicrous, and this time they got some help
in their denials from Portuguese authorities: police chief Alipio Ribeiro said
MADELEINE AND HER SIBLINGS WERE ALONE in their room while Kate and
Gerry ate and drank with seven friends. How much the nine vacationers
drank is another point of dispute; the amounts range from the just over
some Portuguese news reports. The Ocean Club offers babysitters, but
neither the McCanns nor their friends hired one. Instead, they apparently
agreed to check on their kids every half hour. Once again, there are
conflicting reports about whether the checks were carried out with precise
regularity.
The tapas bar is roughly a 400-ft. (120 m) walk from the apartment where
the McCann kids were sleeping. But the view from the bar to the
around the pool. What's more, the McCanns' apartment was on the ground
4. How did the case of one missing girl become so well known?
WITH ALL THE RUMORS THESE DAYS ABOUT the McCanns, it's hard to
recall the early days in May and June when they were granted much
devout couple. They were also savvy about our particular media moment,
They expressed regret for leaving the kids alone. Gerry started a blog, and
they traveled as far as Africa to publicize Madeleine's case. The couple had
a brief audience with the Pope, and Gerry flew to Washington to meet with
district attorney, who in turn submitted them to a judge who must decide
whether to bring charges against the parents. Given the usually glacial pace
supportive family. Some in Britain have called for the other McCann
that without a fight. They have hired top lawyers, including one who barred
Satellite image of airstrip on Diego Garcia, an atoll located in the heart of the Indian Ocean,
some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south off India's southern coast. Since the enforced
depopulation of Diego Garcia in the years leading up to 1973, it has been used as a military
base by the United States.
GeoEye Satellite Image
expanse of cerulean ocean. Glossy palm fronds twist in the temperate wind
along immaculate, powder white beaches. Leathery sea turtles bob lazily
offshore, and the light cacophony of birdsong accents the ambient sound
of wind and waves.
Now add concrete. Lots and lots of concrete. And B-2 bombers. Toss in a
likely hooded, shackled and headed for days and nights of the closest thing
to torture that American interrogators can come up with while still claiming
signed a secret agreement with Britain allowing the Pentagon to use the
territory as an air base in exchange for a big discount on Polaris nuclear
missiles. Five years later, hundreds of Navy Seabees arrived by ship and
bulwark of American cold war strategy and a key launchpad for the first
When I touched down aboard Air Force One with President George W. Bush
Diego Garcia looked drab: think early-'70s industrial park. But as a 1,700-
man springboard for the projection of military might to the far reaches of
the world, it rivals anything 18th century Britain or Augustan Rome ever
came up with.
efficiency to cruelty. First, the British and Americans had the islanders'
dogs loaded into sealed sheds and gassed, according to Professor David
Vine of the American University in Washington. Then the British packed the
Mauritius and the Seychelles, 1,200 miles (1,900 km) to the west across the
Indian Ocean, where many live to this day. A court case seeking right of
return is under way in Britain, and last year the Chagossians were allowed
to visit their relatives' graves for the first time. Defense Department
spokesman Commander Jeffrey Gordon says the U.S. gassed some dogs
but only for humanitarian reasons and denies Diego Garcia is used for
interrogations.
But its history and sensitive security role have helped keep the island
grail dateline for reporters covering the military. Not that I saw much of it.
After Bush deplaned, he was greeted by an honor guard on the tarmac. We
were taken to an auditorium while Bush met the base commander and
troops elsewhere on the grounds. When I tried to leave the building to look
around, some courteous airmen said I didn't have the proper clearance.
Hambali, who is believed to have been held on the island, I at least wanted
proof I'd been there. Some 20 years ago, TIME's chief of correspondents,
who filed a legitimate story from Diego Garcia. The equivalent in 2007
and came back with a bag of T shirts with pictures of scantily clad women
Before we were hustled back onto Air Force One, I managed to file a story
for TIME.com on Bush's surprise visit to Iraq. I'd rather have had something
time.
NOTEBOOK
Global Warning
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By NANCY GIBBS
In a week when cable screens were split among solemn ceremonies, falling
governments, the first serious congressional debate over a war now in its
fourth year and an economy with a nervous twitch, it was even harder than
usual to catch the sirens in the distance--to hear the sounds of ice melting,
species vanishing and cities choking the people who live in them. You can't
really cover a story that hasn't happened yet, but sometimes the news
was a week for warnings. U.S. government scientists announced that the
Arctic ice cap is melting even more rapidly than they had feared; by 2050,
40% of the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean could be gone, a loss that wasn't
supposed to happen for 100 years. One scientist called the news
The 2008 Old Farmer's Almanac predicts that the coming year will be the
warmest in a century. It turns out that years ending in 8 are known for
droughts. The World Conservation Union released its annual red list of
sprawling cities press deeper into habitats once left alone. The group
All this news is bad for polar bears. Bad for western lowland gorillas. And
very bad for people as well. When the winter freeze comes later in China, a
disease-carrying water snail will have all kinds of new opportunities to make
another grim award ceremony, the Blacksmith Institute released its list of
the world's most polluted places; it should not surprise anyone that people
"Earth, earth, riding your merry-go-round toward extinction," the poet Anne
Sexton wrote. How fearsome must the headlines be about tomorrow before
minutes after his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) suffered a historic
the legislature's upper house for the first time in Japan's postwar history.
Abe resisted immediate calls for his resignation and seemed ready to battle
for his job in the face of public antipathy. But on Sept. 12 the "fighting
politician," as Abe liked to call himself, suddenly lost his stomach for the
fight and submitted his resignation to a shocked Japan. "The people need a
leader whom they can support and trust," Abe told a national TV audience.
The LDP will choose a new leader--and the next Prime Minister--on Sept. 19,
and the odds-on favorite is former Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who
followed by early legislative elections, and unless the LDP can quickly turn
its fortunes around, it could find itself out of power for only the second
time in its 52-year history. "The true nature of the LDP--a dying body on life
Hirotada Asakawa.
Once the dust clears, Abe's departure could also signal a return to the old
Japan. Abe was elected less than a year ago, promising to centralize power
DIED
THOSE FAMILIAR WITH the cognitive skills of African gray parrot Alex will
never again use birdbrain as an insult. With help from researcher Irene
species' ability to learn human language. He knew 100 words and could
count, express frustration and differentiate among some colors, shapes and
textures. His last words to Pepperberg: "You be good. See you tomorrow. I
NOW IT'S COOL TO BE GREEN, but in 1976, when Anita Roddick launched
her eco-friendly Body Shop in Brighton, England, she was just odd. Taking
cues from myriad cultures, the former U.N. worker infused her moisturizers
develop Third World communities and used her visibility to protest human-
rights abuses. Roddick, who saw her company expand to 2,000 sites in 50
FEW EUROPEANS CAN SAY they changed American jazz. But with his
electrified genre of jazz fusion. He wrote the title song on Davis' first
electric-jazz album, In a Silent Way, and later co-founded the seminal jazz-
rock band Weather Report, which he led for 15 years. Zawinul was 75.
AFTER several of her friends died within a short period, author Madeleine
L'Engle aimed to make sense of her pain by writing about the universe.
Result: her iconic 1962 children's novel, A Wrinkle in Time, which follows
angst-ridden adolescent Meg Murry and her brother on a quest through
the sinister Dark Thing. With its mythic struggles, biblical and literary
references and themes of good and evil--Dad is saved with the one gift
Dark Thing lacks, the power of love--Wrinkle was seen by some as anti-
Christian and was often banned. (The spiritual author called it "great
publicity.") Wrinkle, which won the 1963 Newbery Medal, has sold more
BABY BOOMERS KNOW HER AS the icy matriarch on TV's hit prime-time
soap Falcon Crest, as Ronald Reagan's first wife and as mother of Maureen
and Michael Reagan. Yet in the 1950s, the unpretentious Jane Wyman was
such films as 1948's Johnny Belinda (her portrayal of a deaf and mute rape
victim won her an Oscar) and Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright. She broke
her long silence on Reagan after his death, calling him a "great President
"YOU SEE THAT BLACK MUD? Put a little sugar in it ... add a little water,
and you can paint all day." So said American folk artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth,
who got his start in mud painting as a toddler, accompanying his healer
mom through the Alabama woods. Using his fingers as a brush, plywood as
canvas, and sugar, berries and turnip greens for color and texture, Sudduth,
a star of the folk-art explosion of the 1980s, painted his life--his dog, farm
animals and, after traveling, the U.S. Capitol. Sudduth's works are in the
was 97.
APPRECIATION
An Opera King's Final Curtain Call
His family declined a state funeral in Rome, but the spirited, emotional
THE CASKET The bow-tied Pavarotti's white maple coffin was lined with the
maroon velvet used for the seats in La Scala and other houses. He held a
rosary and the trademark white handkerchief he carried to mop his brow.
TRIBUTE The Pope sent a eulogy referring to the tenor's "divine gift of
music"; 10 air-force planes flew overhead, trailing green, white and red
smoke; in the two days before the funeral, 100,000 visited the open casket.
Thornburgh
New Clinton, Old Woe
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By MARK HALPERIN
Who is Norman Hsu, and why does he matter? He has turned into major
trouble for Hillary Clinton's campaign, which fears the revival of Clinton
scandal fatigue. After all, even if people don't remember Travelgate, they
Talented Mr. Ripley types turning up as major donors. Hsu fits the model:
he came out of nowhere just a few years ago and quickly became a
is how the top financial "bundlers" for the Democratic front runner are
her behalf. He is also a two-time fugitive from justice, who fled a 1992
latex gloves. Then earlier this month, he skipped out on $2 million bail and
eluded state officials who tried to corral him after learning his whereabouts
from press reports about his role in the Clinton campaign. Federal
The Clinton campaign has blamed a faulty background check for its failure
to scrub Hsu's past and says it will return the $850,000--the largest such
evidence that Hsu received any special governmental access for his
Beepocalypse Now?
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By BRYAN WALSH
Hanging on: The honeybee is built for hard work, but it's no match for colony-collapse
disorder.
Getty
of U.S. beekeeping operations, scientists still aren't sure what causes them,
A VIRUS
A team of scientists chiefly from Penn State and Columbia universities and
the U.S. Department of Agriculture took samples from hives that had been
wiping out the bees--and decoded the genetic material inside them. In a
paper published in Science Express on Sept. 6, the group reported that one
present in more than 90% of the samples, indicating that IAPV might be at
with the U.S. Army, has done its own studies on CCD-afflicted hives and
found no clear links with IAPV. Also, the virus came to the U.S. from
PARASITES
Varroa destructor, which sucks the blood of bees. The mites first appeared
in the U.S. in 1987, and they've taken a severe toll on honeybees, which had
been in decline even before CCD. The bites of the mites don't kill the bees,
but they produce open wounds that leave the insects prone to further
infections. Tracheal mites, which attack the respiratory system, are also a
suspect.
What the Doubters Say: If Varroa is the sole cause, why did CCD not
appear until late 2006? It's more likely that Varroa is working in concert
with other parasites or pathogens to wear down bees' immune systems until
the slightest thing can kill them. One reason to believe this: many hives
PESTICIDE
Pollinating bees may be a farmer's best friend, but that doesn't save them
from being accidentally dosed by the pesticides used to rid fields of less
discovered by Bayer. Now banned in France, it's been blamed for triggering
CCD.)
What the Doubters Say: Despite France's 1999 ban, bee numbers there
beekeeper who first reported CCD. "And there's nothing I can do about it."
Hyper Kids? Check Their Diet
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By CLAUDIA WALLIS
Color crazed: Some kids got revved up after consuming the amount of food dye contained in
two 2-oz. (57 g) bags of candy — hardly a mega-dose.
White Packert / Getty
Parents have long observed that some kids go bonkers after eating foods
study.
of the pros. A carefully designed study published in the British journal the
Lancet shows that a variety of common food dyes and the preservative
sodium benzoate--an ingredient in many soft drinks, fruit juices and salad
additives if they notice an effect on behavior. In the U.S., there hasn't been
a similar response, but doctors say it makes sense for parents to be on the
alert.
The study, led by Jim Stevenson, a professor of psychology at England's
children were randomly assigned to consume one of three fruit drinks daily:
one contained the amount of dye and sodium benzoate typically found in a
third was additive-free. The children spent a week drinking each of the
three mixtures, which looked and tasted alike. During each seven-day
period, teachers, parents and graduate students (who did not know which
Stevenson found that children in both age groups were significantly more
Three-year-olds had a bigger response than the older kids did to the drink
with the lower dose of additives, which had about the same amount of food
coloring as in two 2-oz. (57 g) bags of candy. But even within each age
group, some children responded strongly and others not at all. Stevenson's
sensitivity. One of his colleagues believes that the additives may trigger a
adverse effects could affect the child's ability to benefit from the
experience of school."
The Lancet paper may be the first to nail down a link between additives
and hyperactivity, but as long ago as the 1970s, the idea was the basis for
away from preservatives and food dyes. "It matters for some kids, so I tell
watch the sweets too. "I've seen too many kids who flip out after soda and
birthday cake," he says. "I urge them to eat whole foods. They'll be healthier
anyway."
The food industry has responded cautiously to the study, calling for further
research. The food dyes used in the study "have gone through substantial
safety evaluations by government bodies," notes Cathy Cook of the
food-additive work of their own. People with disorders ranging from autism
with other additives, we'd learn they, too, have implications for behavior,"
crazy things with colors that are almost flashing," he says. The study is one
more reason to cheer the trend toward less processed, more natural fare.
BUSINESS
The Well
The real estate slump has no quick fix, and could expand into a full-blown recession. Here, a
For Sale sign stands in front of a home in Lee's Summit, Mo., on September 5, 2007.
Charlie Riedel / AP
The housing market in Detroit is a mess. Such a mess that nobody tries to
deny it, not even the real estate agents. "The market is very, very bad,"
Across the country, in the anti-Detroit that is San Diego, real estate is also
slumping. The gloom, however, is far less pervasive. "Yes, it's a troublesome
Detroit, the 11% drop in home prices over the past year was just one more
industry. In San Diego, the drop of 7.3% came out of the clear blue sky.
the U.S. economy. Detroit, Cleveland and some smaller Rust Belt cities are
practices. Now the "housing market is dragging down the rest of the
economy," says Alan Gin, an economist at the University of San Diego. The
same is true in and around Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Las Vegas,
Miami, Washington, New York City and Tampa, Fla.--all metro areas where
house prices skyrocketed until 2006 and have since fallen in the face of
For much of this year it was tempting to see this disconnect as a good
But when the Labor Department reported in September that job creation
had lurched into reverse after four years of gains, the tune on Wall Street
and elsewhere shifted abruptly. Economists began fretting that, for the first
time, a real estate bust would throw the country into recession--a sustained
period when the economy shrinks instead of grows and lots of people lose
their jobs.
so you shouldn't take this dire talk to the bank just yet. At the Economic
when recessions have begun, the indicators still point toward growth--albeit
less convincingly than two months ago. "Having a jobs report come in
negative does not mean that a recession has started," says managing
director Lakshman Achuthan. But the risk is there, and Achuthan guesses it
will worsen if loan markets fail to calm down. If a month from now a
borrower with good credit still can't get a jumbo mortgage at a reasonable
HOUSING'S TRAPDOOR
fitting because it was a real estate boom that kept the last recession, in
2001, so brief and shallow. Trying to stave off deflation in the wake of the
stock market to put their money piled into mortgage securities, driving
down the cost of fixed-rate loans. Housing markets, already doing well amid
accounted for 46% of the new jobs created in the U.S. between January
The main reason for the boom's doom was that in the nation's San Diegos,
double-digit annual price increases put most homes out of the reach of
Street responded with laxer lending standards and creative loans (no
downpayment, teaser rate, interest only, etc.) that really made sense for
borrowers only if prices kept going up and they could sell at a profit or
refinance. When prices stopped rising last year, the edifice began to
crumble.
It's in the nature of real estate that the crumbling may continue for a while
yet. "It's way too premature to be talking about light at the end of the
tunnel--it's still pitch black," says Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at
will lead to more job losses and so on. "I don't want to call it an endless
WHEN CONFRONTED WITH SUCH GLOOMY talk, many in the real estate
national basis," says Tom Kunz, CEO of real estate giant Century 21. "They
buy it on a local basis." Sure enough, many parts of the country aren't in
trouble. Prices are still rising in Seattle and Portland, Ore. In Atlanta, Dallas
and Charlotte, N.C., prices never went up all that much, and they're not
falling now. The same appears to be true in many smaller cities and towns.
But most of the country's big metro areas are caught in the downdraft.
one--real estate may not be as local as it used to be. It may not even be
national: house prices have been rising sharply in Europe, Australia, South
Africa and China. Two countries at the leading edge of this boom, the U.K.
and Australia, saw housing markets sputter in 2004 and 2005 but then
recover. This may indicate that a quick recovery is possible in the U.S. It
could also mean that the global boom will end only in a global bust--and
U.S. mortgage troubles are now ominously making themselves felt around
the world.
HOUSING'S MIXED HISTORY
Robert Shiller, who with Karl Case of Wellesley has done more than anyone
else to document the postmillennium real estate boom and warn about the
inevitable bust. Shiller first made his name in the early 1980s attacking the
notion, then widely accepted, that the stock market rationally reflects the
true value of the companies whose shares are traded on it. He and real
estate specialist Case then teamed up to show that home prices are even
more subject to booms and busts than stocks. They did it by measuring
repeat sales, which give a better picture of price movements than the
figures published by the real estate industry. In 1991 they turned this into
the business that supplied the price data used in this article.
Exuberance, just as the market peaked in March 2000, Shiller set to work
adding a chapter on real estate for the second edition. As part of that
going back to 1890, which showed that a) the price runup from 1997 to
2006 was by far the biggest on record and b) home prices can fall for
decades. Put those two together, Shiller argues, and it's at least possible
that we're due for an epic decline in prices. "People think that home prices
go up a lot," he says. "But home prices in 1990 were at about the same
level as in 1890." Shiller allows that the scarcity of property near the coasts
might mean prices there will remain high, but then notes, "We can't make
any more of the land, but we can build huge high-rises on the beach."
Huge high-rises on the beach, in fact, played a major role in Florida's boom
and bust. There are 40,000 condominium units being built right now in
greater Miami, and consultant Lewis Goodkin estimates it will take five to
seven years just to work through all that inventory. That's five to seven
employment and the like. The great test of the coming months and years is
pressure without buckling. Right now things aren't looking good, but this is
Apart from the risk that it will bring a recession, though, a housing boom
turned bust is far from an unmitigated disaster. Some buyers will get great
deals on Miami condos, that's certain. And in the San Diego suburb of La
Mesa, the downturn has allowed Amy and John Tuttle to finally buy a house.
"We tried to buy homes a few years ago, but the homes were too
expensive," says Amy, 31, a clinical psychologist. "We put three bids on
three different houses, and I think we were simply outbid." In August they
along the path to and from irrational pessimism, this real estate bust may
The eternal question in response to any market volatility — be it up or down, in stocks or real
estate — is a simple one: How does this affect me? In housing it depends, of course, on which
rung of the real estate ladder you occupy.
Illustration for TIME by David Goldin
1.With the number of homes on the market up 19% from a year ago,
buyers (finally) hold the best cards. To play them, start entertaining all the
offers homebuilders and real estate agents are hurling your way. How
about a finished basement? Or having the seller pay your closing costs?
The downturn has yielded less obvious opportunities too. John Mead, a
considering from people not as desperate to sell. (Don't feel guilty about
True, lenders have tightened standards, and some buyers qualify for less
house. Yet rates are still relatively low--though loans of more than
Just keep in mind that the housing market hasn't hit bottom. Looking at the
gap between how much it costs to rent a place or to buy one, Deutsche
Bank research analyst Lou Taylor concludes that in the bubbliest markets,
where rent runs about 40% of the monthly cost of buying, half of what it
did a decade ago. Of course, not everyone can wait for the trough to
become a homeowner. "If you just got married and your wife is pregnant
with twins, you've not got much of a choice," says Taylor. "Just buy
carefully and plan to stay for a number of years, because it may take that
N.D., or Binghamton, N.Y., might find they have a relatively easy time of it,
but in big chunks of the country, putting a home up for sale hurts.
The best way to avoid the fate of sellers who watch their property languish
(the average sell time is eight to 10 weeks) is to hit the field with a bang;
the house should look sharp (fresh paint, fresh flowers) and be priced to
move. "People used to try a higher price and see what happened," says
Realtor Judy Moore, based in Lexington, Mass. "Today, when the buyer has
so many choices, you don't want to sit on the market for 30 days and then
ponying up cash for expenses like condo fees and renovations. If you fix
the place up before you sell, stick to the kitchen and bathrooms, since
renos in those rooms (along with new siding and windows) return the most,
And try not to feel bad: there are larger forces at work, after all. "House
3. First, know that you are not alone: 1.4% of mortgages are now in
The most important thing is to call your mortgage servicer--which may not
be the outfit that made the loan--and talk to the loss-mitigation department
as soon as you sense trouble. The more temporary the help you seek--a
forbearance, say--the more likely you are to get it. Lenders prefer workouts
to foreclosure, but attitude is key. "It's not easy to be polite when you feel
dragged through the mud, but this is an art, not a science," says Scott
you seek relief for an investment property or second home, more will be
A housing counselor can help with the process. HUD provides names at
Chicago bankruptcy attorney David Siegel says that saves a house about
Marshall is hosting in Detroit later this month are sellout events (700
properties will be on the block, vs. 130 this time last year), but the real
money is made by people who get their hands on houses before the banks
investment can get as high as 25% to 35%. Make sure you are incredibly
well versed in your state's real estate laws and prepared for tasks like
evicting a family.
However you get your hands on a house, it's important to remember that
because it's priced less than other houses in the neighborhood doesn't
5. Even though home ownership peaked during the boom, landlords didn't
suffer, nor did renters benefit. Why? So many buildings were going condo,
Now, with sales slowed, builders are reverting to rentals. In the second half
of 2007, some 62,300 apartments will be added, double that of the first six
months, according to real estate tracker Reis. In the short term, that gives
renters the advantage, since their numbers aren't growing as fast as the
apartment count is. "In some cases, vacancy rates are going up," says Reis
chief economist Sam Chandan. Unless you're in a tight market like New
York City or San Jose, Calif., you might be able to win a free month or
other concessions.
There's another upside playing out in slack markets. When Karin NeJame
couldn't sell her Bethel, Conn., house after a year, she decided to rent it.
Now, for about $2,000 a month, her tenants get three bedrooms, a Jacuzzi
Nature Boys
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By LEV GROSSMAN
Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder, left to right, photographed at the Regency Hotel in New York
City on September 6, 2007.
David Johnson for TIME
They're both rich and famous, they're both notoriously earnest and left-
makes a kind of cosmic sense that Sean Penn and Pearl Jam front man
Eddie Vedder would be friends; they have been since 1995, when Vedder
wrote music for Dead Man Walking, in which Penn starred. Both are
currently experiencing second acts, Penn as a director and Vedder as a film
composer. The duo have now collaborated: Vedder has written the sound
track for Penn's movie Into the Wild, based on the book by Jon Krakauer.
Later this month Vedder will release a CD of songs written for or inspired
by the movie, the closest thing to a solo album he's ever done.
Into the Wild is the true story of Chris McCandless, a good kid from a
prosperous but unhappy family, who left home, burned his money, changed
his name to Alexander Supertramp and in 1992 walked off into the Alaskan
he looking for? Penn and Vedder--who are a lot funnier than they get credit
questions, like how you keep a huge grizzly bear happy on a movie set.
PENN: The cover grabbed me--the bus, the image of the bus with the title
Into the Wild on it. I've made a lot of decisions in my life that you could call
judging a book by its cover. And I've become a real advocate of it. So I
took the book home, and I read it cover to cover twice, and I went to sleep
in the wee hours and immediately got up in the morning, and I saw in
opportunities as they come, because what we'll find is that they don't come
somebody else in the movie: "If just once you put yourself in the most
ancient of circumstances ..." This is where nature comes into it--and I think
that Eddie and I share this feeling--that every sober-minded person of any
belief would probably agree that the biggest issue is quality of life. You've
gotta feel your own life to have a quality of life, and our own inauthenticity,
authentic.
Have you ever gone through anything like that? A rite of passage?
PENN: Formatively the experience I had, where I found the beginning of the
map to figure out how to feel my own life, would have come from surfing
Being alone like that can help people find themselves, but it can also make
VEDDER: See, I love it. I need it. I'm a better person because of it. I mean, I
somebody that somebody else could live with. That's another thing, when
you talk about the environment and how precious it is: it makes us better
people.
How did you get into doing sound tracks, what with being a huge rock star
VEDDER: Yeah, it's easy. Really. I almost don't remember a thing. It was like
I kinda went into some weird space for a week or two, and then I woke up
out of this daze, and it was done. I don't really remember it.
VEDDER: I was thinking about it yesterday. I don't trust art that was made
easy. If there's not some kind of pain involved, then I don't trust it. And I
thought, Well, how can I be honest and tell people that it was easy? But
what I figured out is that the hard part was 25 years ago, when I went
through what this kid went through. I went through pain, but it was just a
long time ago. And I guess what's a little bit worrisome to me is how easy it
was to access it. You know? That I just had to barely put my finger in. It
was right there on the surface. I thought I'd grown up much more. I'm glad
there was a use for it, but now I've got to tuck it away again.
So how does it work? Sean, do you just go to Eddie and say, "Here's a bit
with a guy hitchhiking. Write a song that would sound good with that"?
PENN: Well, I'd written the script originally structured for songs. I love that
kind of thing in movies. I was born in 1960, so you can do the math and
figure out that I was just coming into my own with Harold and Maude, and
earlier than that, Simon and Garfunkel and The Graduate, and Coming
VEDDER: It was like a factory, where I would sit in a chair and they'd hand
me instruments. We'd just keep going, and I didn't have to teach anybody
the part or talk them into the idea, the theory, the soul of whatever the
piece was. I'd just sit in the chair, and they'd hand me a fretless bass, and
they'd hand me a mandolin, and they'd take a second to do the rough mix,
and then I'd write the vocal, and it was just quick. It was as in the moment
as you could be, and in that way it's like a great feeling of being alive. You'd
hear two pieces at the end of the day--or three--and feel like you were
Some of the vocals were wordless, just these howling chants ...
VEDDER: That was all stuff I did not-to-picture. In a way--like the music for
the scene on the mountaintop--I don't think I would have done that [if I had
seen the footage]. I would have felt too--like if you could be both
achieve that?
PENN: Turns out he has phenomenal willpower. A 21-year-old kid, who just
got the right to go drinking with the guys in the bar, and he is by choice
sober. By choice a monk for eight months. He was in a room watching his
feet roll under him on a treadmill or doing pushups or eating another glass
of water with lemon in it for dinner every night for eight months. You know,
PENN: He was an 8-ft. 6-in. grizzly bear, and if he wasn't a good bear, I
wouldn't be here right now. But no flinching from Emile--he just stood there,
PENN: You say, "Good boy," all day long. Or the trainer does. And he gives
McCandless doesn't come off as a saint in the movie. I mean, he won't call
his parents even though they're desperate to hear from him. He's angry.
part--yours, mine. My answer to "He should have called his parents" is "Who
says?" I understand it, but I walked in my shoes, not his shoes. What I do
know is that if you're not feeling your life, you are obligated first to do
everything it takes to feel your life. I've done many things without the
intention of hurting people that have hurt people. And I'm saying this
knowing that I've got two kids that are coming up to that age myself right
now.
Eddie, you talked before about how much you have in common with
stepfather, as McCandless did with his father.] Did doing the movie help
VEDDER: Not enough. But it'll do for now. I don't think it's gonna go away. I
think in the last 10 to 15 years, I've just been able to not let that person
and that part of me be in charge--that guy is in the car, but we just don't let
him drive. That's something Springsteen told me once, and it really works.
He'll be talking in your ear in the backseat, but just don't let him get behind
the wheel. And you can be proud of it. I've talked to the people that raised
me, and I've thanked them for giving me a lifetime's worth of material. I was
family histories, and he was like, Wow, they really gave you some good
stuff to write about. It was like he wanted to hug them and thank them.
PENN: My mother was reading this article about me in Esquire last month,
and she called me up, and she said [Penn does his mother's voice], "Well, I
thought it was an interesting article, but you know, the one thing, every
time I'm sitting with you, you have a Diet Coke. Why is it that you're an
alcoholic? I'm the alcoholic!" It was as though I'd stolen her mantle!
The thing I can't figure out about Into the Wild is if it's a happy story or a
sad one. McCandless experiences so much joy, but then he dies in the end
...
PENN: Let me tell you what I think. My Uncle Bill, who was dying--with 13
cousins that he had all with my Aunt Joan, they had a great, happy
marriage for all their years. So there he is on his deathbed. He'd been in a
coma a couple of days, and a priest has come in to give last rites. This was
the first time, Irish that they are, that my aunt let a tear fall, trusting that his
coma would make him unaware of it. Well, open come the eyes, and he
sees. He catches her--she can't get away with it. And his last words were
"What're ya crying about? You're gonna die too." Chris McCandless lived
too short, that's true, but he, in my view, put an entire life from birth to the
Go West, young 'uns: Kid Nation put its kids to work in a frontier town, far from parental
doting.
Monty Brinton / CBS
If the measure of a successful reality show is how many people it ticks off
before airing a single frame (think Joe Millionaire), then CBS's Kid Nation is
one of the most successful reality shows of all time. The series, in which 40
children, ages 8 to 15, create their own society in a New Mexico ghost
have reported that several kids mistakenly drank bleach from an unmarked
bottle, and one was spattered with hot grease while cooking.
fade or snowball. (As of press time, CBS wasn't screening the program to
critics, perhaps to keep the hype building.) But even without injuries, the
show was bound to be controversial, and not just for putting kids in the TV
spotlight. Rather, the show's premise--sending kids off on their own, to take
risks, experiment and possibly fail, without parental intervention--runs
We are, after all, in the age of the involved parent, or the overinvolved
bed with Baby for early bonding. Schools complain of hovering "helicopter
parents," a label that some moms and dads wear proudly. The amount of
time candidates spend with their young kids is even an issue in the
primaries. For the enlightened 21st century mom and dad, quality time has
met quantity time. Never mind the bleach: the idea of having kids care for
than people spending a lot of time with their kids. But it's also exhausting,
and pop culture has started asking if kid life has overwhelmed adult life. In
the book Perfect Madness, Judith Warner worries that a "total motherhood"
culture makes moms feel inadequate, while in The Death of the Grown-Up,
kids have separate lives, and the kids' lives seem as alien, independent and
dangerous as in caveman times: they ride in cars un-seat-belted, play with
dry-cleaning bags and get sent off to shoot BB guns while the grownups
have cocktails.
Like the adult characters' smoking and sexism, this is not model behavior.
But does it make you a terrible parent to pine, just a little, for a time when
the job was less all consuming? Contrast Mad Men with HBO's couples-
therapy drama Tell Me You Love Me, in which, despite the buzz over its
explicit sex scenes, the most interesting couple is the pair who never have
sex. Dave (Tim DeKay) and Katie (Ally Walker) are devoted parents who
everyday chores and staying close to the kids emotionally and physically.
(Katie, we learn, breastfed them until they were 2 1/2.) "I guess, yeah, I
should be in the mood every time I clean out the gecko cage!" Dave yells,
minivan shopping. "Our entire life," Katie tells him, "that's what you just
trashed."
Our entire life. Granted, it's a false choice to say that it's either sexless
marriage or shipping the runts off to CBS reality camp. But beyond the
cheap shock, I suspect Kid Nation has touched on a real anxiety in the era
of extreme parenting: the horror, and yet the appeal, of children having
lives separate from Mom and Dad's. Because even to a good parent,
Geography lessons: The coolest designers redefine the idea of American style in an
increasingly global business. Here, models present creations from the Diane Von Furstenberg
spring 2008 collection during New York Fashion Week September 9, 2007.
Keith Bedford / Reuters
promoting a new image of Lord & Taylor, the U.S.'s oldest department-
family smile as they frolic in their vintage Mercedes convertible or slide into
a wooden canoe.
Despite their beauty, the photos and the inference that they epitomize
become global thanks to the Internet and the access it provides to ideas,
resources and products, American style is becoming increasingly difficult
to define. At New York City's Fashion Week there were 259 designers of
longer valid, nor does it look current," says Robert Burke, a luxury
consultant. "I've seen shows this week that could easily have taken place in
Paris or Milan." More and more, it is the itinerant lifestyles of multinational
factories, stores and suppliers--and the global reach of the Internet that
Take Tia Cibani, the Canadian-born designer of Ports 1961, a line that is
produced in southern China and shown in New York. While Cibani commutes
between New York City and Xiamen, inspiration can come from as far away
as East Africa, as it did this season. Her collection, called Safiri, pays
Other popular destinations for spring included Rome, with Vera Wang
excavating ideas from the city's ancient polycultural society and translating
them into toga-like dresses, and Bali, where Diane von Furstenberg found
28, who, along with Jack McCollough, designs the label Proenza Schouler,
"so the boundaries are not as strict. We're young, and we don't have the
money to travel that much, but we travel in our heads. We go online. With
technology, you can go anywhere on the Internet." This season they found a
trove of vintage kimonos in McCollough's parents' attic, and the trapezoidal
One of the reasons designers look so far afield for ideas is to stay one step
ahead of the mass-market manufacturers that copy trendy fashions and sell
them for much less. Designers like Hernandez and Panichgul say
craftsmanship is what sets their clothing apart. "I don't think we could have
survived in the late 1990s because minimalism, which was so popular then,
for the best price. As a result, Hernandez and McCollough feel the pressure
to make their clothing even more ornate. This season, for example, they
looking for this kind of elaborate work every season." And someone who
Road warriors: Racing on video-game bikes wins fans at Kirksey Middle School in Rogers,
Ark.
Marc F. Henning for TIME
Gym teachers and video games have never been a happy mix. While one
side struggles to pull kids off the couch, the other holds them fast. But Kim
selling kids on the virtues of sweat, did something unlikely last year: she
game equipment.
That would be more surprising if students in Rogers were the only ones
plugging into interactive workouts, but they're not. Some 2,000 schools in
motion sensors and touch-sensitive floor mats to allow kids to control the
action onscreen not just with their thumbs but also with their bodies. Do
enough dancing or kung-fu kicks, and you just might get the same level of
exercise as from chasing a soccer ball. What's more, this is a workout kids
don't try to duck. "Physical education used to be a joke," says Dr. John
Finding a way to help this most sedentary age group is more important
than ever. Nearly 17% of U.S. kids are considered overweight or obese, and
school budgets for P.E. are falling. As a result, fewer than 10% of
elementary schools meet the National Association for Sport and Physical
class.
The high-tech answer to the problem came two years ago when West
to use their feet to tap buttons on a sensor mat. After a pilot program
found the games were beneficial, the state vowed to install consoles in all
its public schools by next year. (It didn't hurt the study's credibility that it
like Nintendo and Sony, which are designing systems to meet the demand;
small companies like Expresso Fitness that donate equipment; and federal
grants and private donations that bankroll the purchase of equipment. "The
old system is failing kids," says Phil Lawler, director of training and
than, say, a kickball, but the fact is, it may work just as well. In January the
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found that obese kids burned six times as
many calories playing DDR as they did with a traditional video game. And in
July the wonderfully named Alasdair Thin, a researcher of human
game in which they dodged and kicked for 30 minutes as they did walking
on a treadmill. Studies have not yet shown how the new games measure up
Of course, since a child told to hustle around a track pretty much has to do
it, critics argue that there's no need for video games in gym classes even if
pull-ups after school." Develop a taste for aerobic video games, however,
But can anything hold the fruit-fly attention span of kids? "Video games are
not the answer," says Warren Gendel, founder of Fitwize 4 Kids, a chain of
traditional children's gyms. "Kids will get bored and be back on the couch."
Maybe, but that won't stop the games from coming. Fisher-Price just began
selling a video-game bike for toddlers. No word yet on a version for the
First, the good news: it turns out, millions of kids from low-income families
students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches rank in the top
quartile. Expand the category to include children whose families make less
than the median U.S. income, and the total rises to 3.4 million--more than
the entire population of Iowa. Now the bad news: nearly half of lower-
income students in the top tier in reading fall out of it by fifth grade. As
economically disadvantaged brainiacs get older, 25% of them drop ranks
in math in high school, and 41% don't finish college. "We're losing them at
the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which wrote the report with public-policy
These groups are trying to get the No Child Left Behind Act to at least
would go a step further by giving schools credit for moving kids from
backgrounds, Miami- Dade County public schools last year began testing all
graders screened for gifted placement shot up from some 100 the
Finishing salts aren’t meant for cooking. To get the most bang for you buck, use just a
sprinkle on top of your favorite foods. Here, a saltshaker filled with six different types of salt.
From top to bottom: Fleur de Sel, Alderwood Smoked, Bolivian Rose, Cyprus Black,
Hawaiian Red and Australian Pink.
James Worrell for TIME
Salt is back. Blamed for everything from high blood pressure to hijacking
the true taste of food, this essential chemical compound is once again
welcome on the table. Step into any upmarket restaurant or food shop, and
you'll discover a love affair with the flavor enhancer that was once on every
"Salt is the most important seasoning ingredient there is," says Thomas
Keller, owner and chef of swanky eateries Per Se in New York City and
and the jet black Molokai salt, which gets its color from volcanic ash and
pairs well with foie gras. He even tops his chocolate caramel dessert with
mineral deposits in its region, the shape of the crystals and the way the salt
is harvested. For example, fleur de sel comes from the top of sea-salt
Selling for about 50 times as much per ounce as your basic Morton's,
help buyers choose the perfect one, some stores, like Williams-Sonoma and
Whole Foods, offer tasting bars that allow you to try out different varieties.
If you still can't decide, the online gift company Red Envelope sells a 24-jar
sampler of salts whose origins range from Italy to India for $165.
But wait--isn't salt bad for you? Yes and no. "It is the huge amount of
sodium in processed food that's a problem," says Eve Felder, a dean at the
atop prepared food, so chances are those few extra sprinkles won't do you
in. Although, at $6 for a 3-oz. jar of your basic fleur de sel, the price just
might.
PEOPLE
50 Cent pulled the title for his new disc from his birth name, which is Curtis James Jackson
III.
Patrick Fraser / Corbis Outline
He was born Curtis Jackson, but he made his mark on the rap world
performing under his childhood nickname. His third album, Curtis, debuted
It's 50, but the album title is Curtis. It made perfect sense for me to title it
and I'm his first grandchild, so my mom named me after him. I'm Curtis III,
and this is my third album. 50 Cent was a name that kind of stuck. For me,
it was a metaphor for change. That's what made me utilize it when I actually
started rapping.
Angeles
You should expect a lot of surprises. For my last two albums, I isolated
myself to working with only members of G-Unit [50 Cent's original rap
group]. On this album I worked with Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, Mary
J. Blige, Akon, Nicole from the Pussycat Dolls, Dr. Dre and Eminem. I'm in a
place where I'm secure enough to have all these other talented people
around me because I've proven myself, with my first two projects selling
the Don Imus situation. I think it would cause a full uproar if I wrote [hard-
core] lyrics from that perspective all the way through my album. That's why
I released Curtis instead of my next project, Before I Self Destruct. It's more
Is y our beef with Kanye [West] for real? ̶Erika Ramirez, Houston
I said I would retire if his album [Graduation, also released Sept. 11] sold
more than mine. I think people would like for it to be a beef. Then it would
be really uncomfortable for Kanye, wouldn't it? I'm already conditioned for
Why d o rap pers use so much slang that the avera ge 50-year- ol d
Some audiences have to come to you. You can't cater to everybody. Kanye
West's record is aimed at a straight pop audience. It may work for him now,
but I don't believe that will exist long. That base has no loyalty at all.
And I have a hole in the back of my mouth. This is the voice that works,
though. This is why I believe it happened for a reason. The voice before I
got shot was the one that not many people listened to.
I generate a lot of interest in New York City, so it's difficult. If I was going
to a nightclub or if I was just getting out of the car to go to the store, it'd
be difficult. It's way different here, because it's a country setting. I don't
feels like I'm on vacation. All you have to do is turn the phone off. The
I've got a film called Righteous Kill. It's myself, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino,
Donnie Wahlberg, John Leguizamo. [Laughs]. If you ask me, I'm the next
Denzel Washington.
SPECIAL SECTION
Sam Neill, with his wife, Noriko Watanabe Neill, and daughter, Elena, tends the land at Two
Paddocks, their Central Otago family-run winery.
Peter Hunt for TIME
Call it a sideways moment. New Zealand vintners Sam Neill and Adam Peren
are surveying a rugged hillside vineyard and discussing why Pinot Noir is
the most sensuous and elusive of wines. "If Pinot were a woman, she'd be
Audrey Tautou in Amélie," says Neill. "Kristin Scott Thomas," offers Peren.
One guesses Neill might know, given that he co-starred with Scott Thomas
in 1998's The Horse Whisperer (although he did not appear in the Oscar-
grapes to a global audience). Neill, who has more than 60 movie credits
Showtime's The Tudors, leads something of a double life. Back in his native
planted his first five acres (two hectares) of grapes in 1993. Neill has
poured heart and soul not only into such successes as The Piano and the
Jurassic Park movies but also into the alluvial-schist soil of the South Island
of New Zealand, where his great-grandfather settled in 1859 and where
Neill helms Two Paddocks, which is dedicated to the quest for what he calls
Those who recall the debates of Miles and Maya in Sideways (which,
Pinot) might remember that Pinot Noir can be unpredictable yet potentially
spectacular. Part of the appeal lies in the fact that the vines thrive only on
km) stretch of Côte d'Or (Burgundy and Pinot Noir are synonymous) and in
spots in California. As for New Zealand's Central Otago Pinots, the pioneers
who planted this epic landscape with vines in the 1970s were deemed
madmen.
With its craggy peaks and glacial valleys, Central Otago would appear to
be the last place you could grow grapes. Located below the 45th parallel
near the tip of New Zealand's South Island and with elevations of 650 to
1,475 ft. (200 to 450 m) above sea level, this is extreme-sports country.
from Antarctica. In fact, Pinot vines don't mind a blanket of snow as long as
summer temperatures are warm enough for the slow ripening needed for
intense flavors and complexities to develop. "Pinot Noir is not one of those
complex," says Neill. "People say there's a lot of wine in the world, but
there's not a lot of Pinot Noir, and admirers are looking for regional
differences."
Worldwide, Pinot Noir's uniqueness is that it seems to carry in the most
pronounced way the taste of the land from which it hails. (The French refer
to this as the goût de terroir.) "Pinot from here does seem to reflect the
during Otago's gold rush and grew wealthy from selling supplies, including
alcohol, to miners. "So your family have been peddling hooch around here
for 150 years," jokes Peren, who hails from such quintessentially Kiwi stock-
-as New Zealanders would call it--that his grandfather even had a breed of
sheep named after him. Peren launched the Peregrine Wines label in 1998
vacations.) Peren's connection with the land that Peregrine has under vine
comes through his wife's grandfather, who won a small plot in a card game.
The Peren family also has a single-vineyard Pinot Noir called Two Sisters.
A great Pinot may taste heavenly, but it's a devil of a job to get it into your
glass. Birds love the sugar-laden grapes (hence the surreal sight in early fall
a vast expanse of white nets). If the grapes aren't picked exactly as they
Yields are low--about 2 tons per acre (5 metric tons per hectare, which
translates into about 350 cases of wine). Sauvignon Blanc vines would yield
three times as much. Add to that the risk that the fruit will be unstable
during the fermenting process (although we'll forgo the science lesson on
But the greatest enemy of all needs just one night to destroy everything.
While vines don't mind snow, grapes hate frost, and the only reliable way to
stop cold air from killing a crop is expensive and terrifying. Neill and Peren,
along with the other winemakers in a region that features such wine stars as
Felton Road and the well-named Mt. Difficulty, are all too familiar with frost
watch, which means helicopter flying at night. To keep the air moving,
because the valleys are crisscrossed with electricity cables. "It scares the
use windmills too, but the problem is, on one night your windmill might not
Noir. Neill makes sure to credit his mentors: the late Rolfe Mills of Rippon
winery, who started to plant in 1976, and Alan Brady, who today co-helms
a two-man boutique winery called Mount Edward. "It's a small region, and
we cooperate with each other," says Neill. "Everyone helps everyone else
Rippon, now operated by Rolfe's son Nick Mills, is also significant because,
situated on the banks of Lake Wanaka, it has what must surely be the most
do other wineries in Central Otago. But don't turn up at Two Paddocks. "We
my shirt off," says Neill, who prefers to drum up sales via a terse and
amusing blog.
As for how he splits his time, Neill notes that both his professions are "very
chancy and very weather dependent." But wine can be much harder work. "I
certainly wouldn't turn down a great acting gig so I could be on my hands
It's the secret dream of every oenophile: give up the desk job, move to a
vineyard and spend the days crafting wines. Then reality sinks in--bills,
But it's actually never been easier to make your own wine, often from the
enthusiasts who create vintages in, well, garages) have upscale equipment
and packaged kits to help them make their wines. Wineshops and vineyards
you can create your own blend and take home a bottle of the mix. But for
those who want the full winemaking experience, Crushpad, a San Francisco
once ripped up his San Francisco backyard to plant Pinot Noir and Syrah
vines. He found that lots of people shared his desire for a wine-country
lifestyle but lacked the millions of dollars needed to make their dream
come true. Tired of his career in software marketing, he quit his job and
vineyards. It's the best of both worlds. Customers get access to far finer
grapes than they could grow themselves, at a fraction of the cost, along
plans on the Web. Using Crushpad's online services and consultations with
the staff winemaker, home enologists select grapes from specific vineyards
(or provide their own) and are then led through the Crushpad 30, a list of
price from $5,000 to more than $10,000, depending on the wine they
make. One barrel produces about 25 cases, or roughly $17 to $40 per
bottle.
Once the process has begun, home winemakers can remain in daily contact
with their products via CrushpadWine.com where the Crushpad staff posts
grapes turn from green to red--the sign of veraison and a warning that the
The process continues remotely with online chats with Crushpad employees
and a webcam that allows customers to keep a watchful eye on their wine.
This year there will be more than 1,000. And Brill hopes to create more
Inbox
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007
asked to do something [Sept. 10]. During World War II, we all were asked to
country besides taxes and voting. One way to help accomplish this would
move toward what Patrick Henry expressed in saying "I am not a Virginian,
but an American."
hopes for this country and its citizens. I was in a state of euphoria as I read
about some of the programs I had visited during a Civicweek in the Bronx,
University. I fell in love with City Year, Teach for America and the Harlem
Children's Zone during that amazing, eye-opening week. I hope that our
that there are ways to encourage volunteerism without the dubious help of
the Iraq war and federal prisons, not in their stead. Whether through
I'm a Gen X mother of two and a volunteer, and I see many peers also
poorly, it will take generations to undo the damage. To offset this, I try to
preserve. His proposal would require funding and create organizations for
any number of corrupt officials to exploit. Such a plan would also obliterate
expenditures is no answer.
As a retired Chicago inner-city teacher and principal, I have long felt that
activity. Perhaps we should send teens who quit school to training camps
that, like F.D.R.'s Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, would be far
from cities so that gang ties would be cut. Do we need help in the national
John Edwards is wasting his time campaigning, since Clinton is the anointed
one [Sept. 10]. And unless Barack Obama attacks her more, he'll be wasting
his time too. The Democratic field is terrified of the Clinton machine, which
is expert at personal destruction and will stop at nothing to get her the
President, Pooley can just keep soaking in that sweet-tea voice while
electability. After all, the Clintons have a long track record of winning
Healing Currents
Congratulations to Jeffrey Kluger for his article "Rewiring the Brain," about
how deep-brain stimulation with electric current can help treat the tremors
had Parkinson's for nearly 12 years, so I know the crazy ways the incurable
disease chips away at my brain's control center. Stories like yours give all
at my local ymca fitness center, I've learned to face this awesome disease
by fighting back to reclaim my balance and range of motion. It's not easy,
Thanks to Anne Kreamer and TIME for the article on whether women should
color their hair [Sept. 10]. I'm 57 and started dyeing my hair in my mid-30s.
When I turned 50, I decided that since I'd been a grandma from age 39, it
was time I looked like one. Coloring your hair is a pain in the arse, as the
Irish say. Your roots grow out in a week or two, and you have to touch
them up or look like a skunk. Surely women have become liberated enough
to do what they want. But if they decide to fake it, they should use a lighter
I am 38 years old, and I don't understand what the big deal is over going
gray. I've been getting steadily balder since I hit 30, and my remaining hair
is turning gray. When I was growing up, my father made and serviced
toupees. I thought they were ugly and reflected the wearer's incredible
insecurity. I feel the same way about hair dye for men and women. Being
who you are rather than putting up some kind of façade shows much
stronger character. By all means, dress well, and stay healthy and fit. But
dyeing your hair is right up there with dressing like a teenager when you are
40. For those who claim it's different for women, I respectfully reply that it
I read "The Gray Wars" with smug amusement. When my glorious mane of
auburn hair started turning gray more than 15 years ago, I tried to maintain
51, long divorced, gray-haired and chunky, but I'm still very sexually active.
Boomers need to realize that if we fulfill our life expectancy, we will be gray
much longer than we were brunet, blond or auburn. Embrace the silver.
People will choose to be around you if you are adventurous and love life.
national service 76% A government call to service would enrich the nation
volunteerism