Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2007 (19. évfolyam, 1-50. szám)

2007-04-20 / 17. szám

Kurt Vonnegut, Influential American Author Dead NEW YORK - Kurt Vonnegut, regarded by many critics as a key influence in shaping 20th-century American literature, died Wednes­day at the age of 84. He suffered brain injuries after a recent fall at his Manhattan home, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz. Vonnegut’s more than a dozen books, short stories, essays and plays contained elements of social commentary, science fiction and autobiography. “He was like nobody else,” said fellow author Gore Vidal. “Kurt was never dull.” A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking human­ist, Vonnegut lectured regularly, exhorting audiences to think for themselves and delighting in barbed commentary against the institutions dehumanizing people. Vonnegut said the villains in his books were never individuals but culture, society and history, which he said were making a mess of the planet. “I like to say that the 51st state is the state of denial,” he said in 2005. “It’s as though a huge comet were heading for us and nobody wants to talk about it. We’re just about to run out of petroleum and there’s nothing to replace it.” Vonnegut was born on Nov. 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, and studied chemistry at Cornell University before joining the Army. His mother killed herself just before he left for Germany during World War II, where he was quickly taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs firebombed the city. He would later write about the experience in what many consider his masterpiece, Slaugh­terhouse-Five. “The firebombing of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I am,” Vonnegut wrote in “Fates Worse Than Death,” his 1991 autobiography. But he spent 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with other POW’s inside an underground meat locker labeled slaughterhouse-five. Critics ignored him at first, then denigrated his deliberately bizarre stories and disjointed plots as haphazardly written science fiction. But his novels became cult classics, especially “Cat’s Cradle” in 1963, in which scientists create “ice-nine,” a crystal that turns water solid and destroys the earth. He retired from novel writing in his later years, but continued to publish short articles. He had a best-seller in 2005 with “A Man Without a Country. He called the book’s success “a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life.” Vonnegut, who had homes in Manhattan and the Hamptons in New York, adopted his sister’s three young children after she died. He also had three chil­dren of his own with his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, and later adopted a daughter, Lily, with his second wife, Krementz. Vonnegut once said that of all the ways to die, he’d prefer to go out in an airplane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He often joked about the difficulties of old age. “When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon,” he said. “My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not commit­ting suicide. And I’ll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children.” (Source: AP) Changes Along Hancock Park's "Váci Utca" BY SUSAN JANCSO Larchmont Village, the “walking street” in Hancock Park lined by popular sidewalk restau­rants and quite expensive little family stores, is facing changes that may not be for the best advan­tage of its patrons. Some residents fear that rising rents will overwhelm the neighborly character of the village and kill off some of its most prized attri­butes, such as Larchmont Hardware, which has existed for 75 years, Chevalier’s Books, a mainstay for 67 years, and La Luna Ristorante, a family­­friendly Italian restaurant and community favorite for 17 years. They fear a rich developer will raise the rents so high only chain stores can afford them, further diluting the village’s local flavor. Chain stores already exist along the strip, including Rite Aid Drugs, Starbucks Coffee, Peet’s Coffee and Tea, Jamba Juice, and Blockbuster Video. Larchmont Boulevard is my street also. It reminds me of Budapest’s famous shopping street, Váci Utca - in miniature, of course. That’s where my bank is, I go there almost every day, they know me and call me by name. That’s where I get my coffee in the morning. At first, it was “The Coffee Bean” on our morning walks with my daughter Kat, they used to have a punching card and after a dozen visits, you would get a free coffee drink, any of the large, thick, sweet lattes you wanted. But these days I walk alone - if at all - and ever since Peet’s opened, I have been a regular there. Their coffees - all of them, and they have many kinds - taste so good that once I tried to make the usual Taster’s Choice at home and my husband pushed it away, horrified, exclaiming, “What is this?” Larchmont has a Farmers Market every Sunday morning, with fresh fruit and vegetables and flowers. Last week they had fragrant lilacs, they should have charged even for a whiff of that perfume reminiscent of home, of old Europe. I have a friend at the market whose daughter married a Hungar­ian and is expecting a baby in May. My friend Maria went to Hungary several times, she is developing a taste for Chicken Paprikash and Mákos Beigli. Larchmont Boulevard is where I get my hair done by Baby Matsik at the O’Tiffe Salon. That’s where I go to get ice cream at Baskin Robbins on hot summer days, or look for my favorite magazines at the newsstand. I get my bagels and Salmon Shmear at Noah’s when the mood takes me. I do some window-shopping at the bookstore, they always have a current theme to the way they arrange their offers. I tried to buy pruning shears the other day at the Hardware Store, but they cost $38 plus tax, so I gave up on them. On the other hand, once I bought a pair of beautiful, soft, sand colored sandals at the little shoe store next to Noah’s for 60 bucks and they don’t even fit, yet somehow I don’t regret it. I just look at them sometimes, I take them out of the box and touch their soft leather and smell their characteristic scent and heave a big sigh: “Yes, this is the real thing, this is the good life I was destined to live! How come I spend my days working in an office and my nights check­ing emails and playing computer games?” Such a train of thought reminds me of a friend who used to say, “I wish I could afford to live the way I live...” Április 20, 2007 ÍD I love Larchmont Boulevard and I hope it will survive the glo­balization of small-town life. LISZT CONCERT L-R Eva Voisin, Honorary Consul General of Hungary of San Francisco, Peter Toth, the winner of the Budapest Liszt Competition Judith Neszlenyi, concert pianist, Los Angeles, member of the jury of the American Liszt Society. Last week the San Francisco Conservatory of Music hosted the annual meeting of the American Liszt Society. A recital by Peter Toth, from Hungary, the winner of the Budapest Liszt Competition, who made his American debut as a young classical pianist in San Francisco, terminated three days of concerts, lectures and receptions. Stem Cells May Cure Type 1 Dia­betes - But Not Without Risk Researchers have demonstrated that Type 1 diabetes can be checked — and possibly reversed — by a stem-cell transplant that preserves the body’s ability to make insulin, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The experimental therapy eliminated the need for insulin injections for months or even years in 14 of 15 patients diagnosed with the disease. The study suggests a new avenue for treating the intractable dis­ease, in which the immune system destroys insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Without insulin, patients can’t metabolize sugar and run the risk of developing nerve damage, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure and blindness. Patients with Type 1 diabetes typically compensate by monitoring their blood-sugar levels every few hours and injecting themselves with insulin as many as five times a day. After the stem-cell treatment, “patients are medication-free — they’re off insulin,” said Dr. Richard Burt, chief of the Division of Immuno­therapy for Autoimmune Diseases at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and senior author of the study. The strategy is similar to an approach that has shown some success in treating other immune system disorders, such as rheumatoid arthri­tis, lupus and multiple sclerosis. The researchers cautioned that the process was not without risk, because patients are vulnerable to infection during part of the therapy. Burt’s research group at Northwestern has performed 170 stem-cell transplants to treat a variety of immune system disorders, and two patients have died from the treatment. But other doctors said that even if the benefits of the therapy were temporary, the research provided valuable insight into the mechanism behind the disease. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in New York estimates that as many as 3 million Americans have Type 1 diabetes, and that 30,000 to 35,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. Most of those patients die from complications of the disease rather than from diabetes itself. The age of onset is considerably younger than for patients with Type 2 diabetes, who can still make insulin but can’t use it efficiently. The stem-cell approach mirrors the bone marrow transplants used to treat patients with certain cancers and blood diseases. The idea is to wipe out the faulty immune system and replace it with a new one that functions properly. Even if patients continue to require insulin shots, the treatment should be considered a success if it halts the destruction of beta cells, said Dr. Jay S. Skyler of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. Retaining at least some insulin-producing cells makes the disease easier to control and less likely to result in severe complications, like blindness. 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