Sunday Times

Gleanings from Sunday's Times--as always, half-oblivious.

All Together Now
Shared Song, Communal Memory, Ben Ratliff, in East Lansing, Michigan:

From Hawaii to Santa Cruz to the Philadelphia suburbs, in living rooms, churches and festival tents, similar gatherings — called community sings, or singalongs — draw together the average-voiced and bring old songs into common memory. ...

Much of this impulse descends from Pete Seeger, who has championed the cause of group-singing for more than 60 years. “No one can prove a damn thing,” Mr. Seeger said in a recent interview, “but I think that singing together gives people some kind of a holy feeling. And it can happen whether they’re atheists, or whoever. You feel like, ‘Gee, we’re all together.’ ...

In 1973 Peter Blood, a Quaker, political organizer, teacher and folk musician in Philadelphia, put together a homemade songbook called “Winds of the People,” which quickly took off in the group-sing scene. “There was a demand for it in the circles we ran in, which were religious and summer-camp circles,” said his wife, Annie Patterson. In time Movement for a New Society and other nonreligious activist organizations adopted it for singalong events.

A decade later Mr. Blood and Ms. Patterson were envisioning a more ambitious book. They compiled and cleared the rights to 1,200 songs for “Rise Up Singing,” which was published in 1988. Mark Moss, editor of Sing Out! magazine, the pre-eminent journal of the folk movement, and also the publisher of the songbook, said it has sold about 800,000 copies, at $17.95 each. ...

Perhaps the book’s greatest strength is its tacit proposal that there are many, many songs Americans should know by heart. In 1943, when he was in the Army, Mr. Seeger conducted an experiment on his fellow soldiers, asking them to write down the names of the songs whose words and tunes they really knew. In his own memory file he counted about 300, but he was impressed by the competition.

“I was surprised how many the average person knew back then,” he said. He supposed that the number of songs crossing lines of generation, class and sex would be much lower today, outside of “Over the Rainbow” and “Happy Birthday to You.” ...

“In our little community,” he added, “the economy is horrible, and people are scared and sad. But you go to something like this, and you think, ‘Wow, our community is resilient.’ ”

Margaret Kingsbury, 67, a nurse who is involved with peace groups, sounded a similar note. “I honestly believe that this is one of the ways to create peace,” she said. “You go away from here, and you’re uplifted.”

Ms. Potter isn’t surprised by such reactions. “I think it’s all a result of people needing to come together and find some power somewhere,” she said. “It’s a political need and a spiritual need. How many people left early tonight? It’s a Monday night. They’re tired. But people didn’t leave. That’s how you know.”

Confusing results with reasons
Bollywood Princess, Hollywood Hopeful, Anupama Chopra:

Still, for a variety of reasons, no actor has successfully made the transition from Bollywood to Hollywood.

Schedules and expectations are difficult to match. Bollywood superstars are generally unwilling to play supporting roles in American movies, and there just aren’t many movies coming out of Los Angeles that feature Indians as leads.

Fashion stripped
Clotheshorse Confidential, Liesl Schillinger:

IN “The Meaning of Sunglasses,” her uproarious dictionary of style (or what passes for it), the journalist Hadley Freeman reveals that Condé Nasties aren’t the only ones who jockey for position during Fashion Week: even top designers agonize over their show’s time slot.

“If it’s at, say, 9 a.m., they are generally pretty much down there with Wal-Mart in terms of fashion credibility,” she writes. Ouch. Or as Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue, would say, “Aieee!” ...

Ms. Freeman also dismisses de rigueur nail grooming as “panicure” and reveals two of fashion’s most closely guarded secrets. 1) Why do collections change so drastically, so often? “The public just likes new things.” 2) Why is Anna Wintour the only fashion editor who doesn’t arrive late to the Bryant Park shows? Because she is the only one who doesn’t need to prove her status, “seeing as she is the big kahuna of the whole shebang.”

More like the other Americans, actually
The Other Iran, James Vlahos:

If you’re going to get lost, Esfahan (also spelled Isfahan), a city of 1.3 million about 200 miles south of Tehran in central Iran, is an extraordinary place to do it. There’s a centuries-old saying that Esfahan is “half the world,” meaning it contains fully half of the earth’s wonders.

Jean Chardin, a 17th-century French traveler, wrote that Esfahan “was expressly made for the delights of love”; in the 1930s, the British travel writer Robert Byron rated it “among those rarer places, like Athens or Rome, which are the common refreshment of humanity.” ...

The mullah, Abdullah Dehshan, didn’t shy away from asking meaty questions: Do you think Islam is violent? If you could have one wish for the world what would it be? Do you believe in God? Maybe, I said, but people often get in the way.

Do we need priests, rabbis, mullahs? I asked him. Mullah Dehshan smiled at this theological softball. If you want to go to Shiraz, he said, you would need a car, a road and a map. It is difficult to reach a far-off destination without help. “And so it is with God,” he said. ...

A waiter brought tea, sugar and a qalyan. The smoke was sweet and rich; there was so much in the air that the people across the room were hazy.

The man on my right asked where I was from. “America,” I said.

The room got quieter. Everyone seemed to be looking my way. Then the man clapped my shoulder and smiled.

“Our governments are bad,” he said. “But the people are good.”

We don't need you to clear us
Jennifer Bleyer, For a Book About Peace, a Dose of Trouble :

KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR, the 7-foot-2 basketball legend, seemed a fitting subject for a children’s coloring book about tolerance in the age of the war on terror. Mr. Abdul-Jabbar is a Muslim, and he has a distinctly Arabic name. With his status as a celebrity athlete, he seemed a perfect illustration of the principle that people defy stereotypes.

“He transcends religion in popular consciousness,” said F. Bowman Hastie III, the author, with Ricardo Cortés, of a new book carrying the provocative title “I Don’t Want to Blow You Up!”

That, at least, was the writers’ thinking. But when Mr. Abdul-Jabbar’s representatives learned in October of his forthcoming appearance in the book, they demanded that the authors, who both live in Brooklyn, remove any reference to him.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Abdul-Jabbar’s manager, Deborah Morales, declined to comment, beyond saying that her client “does not endorse this book or the unauthorized use of his image.” In response, Mr. Hastie and Mr. Cortés retained a lawyer, who argues that the First Amendment protects the right of artists and writers to depict public figures.

In the 32-page book, which is being released this weekend, simple text and graceful pen-and-ink drawings — not photographs — of 13 subjects, not all of whom are Muslim, are used to introduce young readers to figures like Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss academic and theologian; Omar Ahmad, a former executive with Napster; and Anousheh Ansari, a wealthy Iranian-American who became the first female space tourist. Despite Mr. Abdul-Jabbar’s protests, there he is on page 11, hitting a sky hook. ...

Mr. Cortés, an illustrator and publisher who has worked as an artist-in-residence in city schools, said the idea for the book arose in 2006 when he and Mr. Hastie were discussing how to show children that, as he put it, “the war on terror affects everyone.”

“That’s a kid’s way of talking,” Mr. Cortés said. “ ‘Is that person going to blow up New York? Are they going to blow up the train?’ It’s funny and ridiculous.”

The coloring book is being sold online and at independent bookstores. The two men are also hatching plans for a second installment. The short list of characters who might be included, they said, includes Muhammad Ali, Steve Jobs (who is half Syrian) and, of course, Barack Obama.

Things are rarely as they seem
Brothers in Arms, Adam Ellick and Jigar Mehta:

On this historic Thursday, however, neither the television nor the incessant callers from around the world managed to wake him. The previous day, Mr. Farooqi, the editor and publisher of The Pakistan Post, a free, Queens-based newspaper that reveres Ms. Bhutto, had completed his weekly 34-hour sprint to churn out his 20-page issue.

Among the more persistent callers was Khalil ur Rehman, a journalist who is Mr. Farooqi’s counterpart on the other side of the political fence.

Mr. Khalil, a stout, bearded 55-year-old who lives in Shirley, Long Island, is the editor of The Urdu Times, the city’s other top Pakistani weekly. His publication fervently supports President Pervez Musharraf, the former general who had been Ms. Bhutto’s chief rival since 2002 and who was immediately accused by some members of her party of orchestrating her assassination. He has denied the charge. ...

The contrast between these two men transcends politics and publishing.

Mr. Farooqi is a disheveled, chain-smoking Muslim who boasts of his journalistic exclusives. Mr. Khalil is a dapper, entrepreneurial atheist who enjoys his whiskey and boasts about the lucrative advertisements he garners for his publication.

While their Urdu-language pages exploit the divided political loyalties within New York’s 400,000-member-strong Pakistani community, these two editors are physically divided only by the wall between the unmarked storefronts in which they work, on Hillside Avenue in the Pakistani enclave in Jamaica, Queens.

With parliamentary elections in Pakistan scheduled for Feb. 18, these neighboring storefronts offer a window into Pakistan’s embattled politics. Yet in a nation haunted by 60 years of political turmoil, the situation is never as it appears. Nor is the 17-year relationship between these men, who, despite their differing styles and ideologies, were business partners and are now best friends. ...

“I’m a psych patient today,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “I’m talking, I’m walking, I’m driving, but I have no will to do anything.”

A year ago, on one of Ms. Bhutto’s final visits to New York, Mr. Farooqi had urged her to return home from exile. “I said to her: ‘You keep saying Pakistani people should speak out against the regime. Why should they when you’re in New York with a big car, a driver and kids in Dubai? You have to face the problem.’ ” Now he feels guilt-stricken. ...

“My only skill is journalism,” he said a few days after Ms. Bhutto’s death, taking a break from drafting an editorial. “I can’t do anything else, can’t fix a car. My children always say, ‘Turn off the phone.’ But you know, it’s an addiction. To educate people on what is going on, this is my love, this is my passion, this is my romance, this is what I believe my body desires. It’s my peanut and butter.” ...

Their publications, meanwhile, became local heavyweights, so much so that in 1995, Ms. Bhutto’s party, which was then in power, offered each newspaper $95,000 for a year of positive coverage. At the time, both editors declined the offer and publicized it.

Last May, the two had a full-fledged reconciliation, which they both attribute to “old age.” Now they talk several times a day and are bound by a shared skepticism of many groups within the Pakistani community, which, they contend, do not have local interests at heart. And each man is the other’s favorite companion.

“If I don’t find Mr. Khalil in the evening,” Mr. Farooqi said, plopping a cigarette butt into a stale cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, “I go directly home.”

On another occasion, Mr. Khalil said: “The moment I walk into my home, my wife says, ‘You’re hanging around him?’ I say, ‘How do you know?’ She says, ‘Because you smell like cigarettes.’ ”

“And believe me,” Mr. Farooqi interjected. “When I get drunk, my wife says, ‘You’re with Khalil.’ ” ...

And as these two men ponder an uncertain future, they are haunted by one dispiriting thought: despite 16 years of weekly reports, little if anything has changed in their homeland.

“I’m born in chaos, and I’m now working in chaos, and I have a feeling that when I die, Pakistan will be in the same position,” Mr. Farooqi said. “Since my childhood, I haven’t heard any good news about my country.”