Word: st
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...what he does before putting too much credence in his words. Western leaders have apparently decided, though, to take Putin at face value--his best face. Albright called him "a leading reformer" even before she met him. British Prime Minister Tony Blair went to the opera with Putin in St. Petersburg earlier this month and, in order to strike a friendly note, soft-pedaled Western concerns over Chechnya. Even though nothing substantive was accomplished, London declared that Putin was "a man we can do business with," an echo of what Margaret Thatcher famously said about Mikhail Gorbachev after...
...rule, old popes don't retire; they sit upon St. Peter's throne until called to their reward. John Paul is of the mold. Though he turns 80 in May and suffers from Parkinson's disease and a bad hip, the frail Pontiff has given no hint that he will be the first in six centuries to resign. Certainly John Paul will at least finish out Jubilee Year 2000 as Pope--God willing...
...journeys abroad as Pontiff has already logged more miles than all previous Popes combined. John Paul hopes to overcome snags with Saddam Hussein's government and venture to Ur, in southern Iraq, birthplace of Abraham. He wants to go to Damascus and visit the site of St. Paul's conversion. And he would like to go to Russia, but not without an invitation from the Russian Orthodox Church--which is not likely to be offered. This Pope, who has made much progress in Catholic-Jewish relations, has largely failed in his push for unity among Christians, as Orthodox churches rebuff...
...minor curiosity of art history: Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), a leading French Impressionist painter, friend and mentor to Cezanne and Gauguin, was born and raised on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas. An item of literary history: Derek Walcott (1930- ), who would grow up to win the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born and raised on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia...
...example, Walcott portrays Pissarro's choice--to abandon St. Thomas for France and high European culture--in different ways. At one point the poet gives his blessing: "There was no treachery if he turned his back/on the sun that plunges fissures in the fronds/of the feathery immortelles, on a dirt track/with a horse cart for an equestrian bronze." But later Walcott wonders whether Pissarro's Impressionist renderings of French scenery did not involve treachery after all: "Are all the paintings then falsifications/of his real origins, was his island betrayed?/Instead of linden walks and railway stations,/ our palms and windmills...