Deep Vibes

Today’s scene is a far cry from those tragic years of neglect and suffering. The 118 re­maining patients (admissions ceased in 1969) live in a neat cottage community called Kalaupapa, directly across the penin­sula from the now deserted east side where Father Damien began and ended his labor of love. Residents enjoy all the amenities of this modern age, including regular air ser­vice connecting them to anywhere in the world. They may go and come as they please, leave forever if they wish. (New cases are treated as outpatients by a Hono­lulu clinic.)

Day visitors willing to respect the pa­tients’ privacy are welcome: Each year thousands descend the three-and-a-half-mile cliff trail by mule-back or plane hop in from Honolulu to the peninsula’s tiny airstrip.

Only the fortunate few make the airport run with Kenso Seki, who has spent 52 of his 70 years here. We traveled in style in his 1928 Model A Ford, its fenders filigreed by salt-air corrosion, its leaking radiator aver­aging a mile a gallon—of water.

As we rattled past the movie theater, I asked Kenso why, in writing the current at­traction on the blackboard marquee, some­one had included its rating: R. He grinned. “With us, you can’t be too careful. After all, our average age is only 61.”

Kenso is on the move as much as anyone at Kalaupapa. His living room is papered with pennants from the many places he’s been—from San Francisco to the Kennedy Space Center, Mexico to Niagara Falls. He’s sav­ing now for an Australian tour.

“I don’t mind visitors; it’s one way for them to see they needn’t be afraid. I would hate to have to leave here for good; it’s the only home I know. But at the rate our numbers are going down, we may have to go one day. Upkeep will be too expensive for just a few.”

Kenso needn’t worry. Lifetime tenancy has recently been guaranteed by the state government, which operates the facility with federal funds. Concerned about what will happen after the last are gone, patients overwhelmingly supported legislation, which was passed in December 1980, to make the peninsula a national park.

Paul Harada, one of Kalaupapa’s prime movers in this matter, applauds the act for preserving many of the present structures “as a memorial to what has happened here and will never happen again. I’m one of the last generation to be admitted; I don’t want to hang around after the neighborhood is down to a handful. But I believe most of the buildings should remain where they are.”

Paul is glad his case preceded the sulfone breakthrough. “My wife and I—she’s a pa­tient, too—have seen our prospects for a long and full life advance dramatically. We’ve achieved a degree of normalcy we never expected back then. Kind of deliver­ance, in a way.”

Patients realize Hansen’s disease is not the only enemy; their incidence of blindness and kidney failure is well above average. Yet in this peaceful setting of flowering shade trees, immaculate lawns, and gardens painstakingly tended by badly crippled hands, I sensed a general feeling of content­ment, camaraderie; the oneness of a close family. As if everyone has taken to heart the message Ed Kato lettered on a streetside stone: Smile . . . It No Broke Your Face.

A Growing Future for Molokai?

Topside, as Kalaupapa residents refer to the rest of Molokai, the public mood is more difficult to diagnose. Certainly there’s no oneness here over the one issue uppermost in every mind: to grow or not to grow.

Last of the state’s major islands to be dis­covered by developers, Molokai has just be­gun making waves among speculators and those who think the nearest thing to earthly paradise (to say nothing of a foolproof in­vestment) is to own a piece of Hawaii. If you can’t find enough money to afford it, apply for a loan on http://citrusnorth.com/

This sudden attention after years of being ignored frightens some, delights others.

Many of Hawaiian descent as well as oth­er native-born Molokaians have joined Caucasian immigrants from the mainland and neighbor islands to form a substantial antibuilding bloc. Cerebral rather than com­bative in their efforts, they’ve made progress in staving off the megabuck invasion.

A splinter group seeks to do the same but through more militant means. Another fac­tion frankly favors the input of outsiders to fatten the island’s too lean economy.

A pretty standard stratification in many desirable spots these days.

Split as they may be over the expected on­slaught by off-islanders, nothing will divide Molokai’s people on their determination to preserve their identity, to control their destiny. Perhaps they’re in time to do both.

A Good Old Time

EVERY poor, old, lonely person is someone’s mother or father, someone’s auntie or uncle. The State shouldn’t have to have a “policy” for the old. Everyone belongs to someone.
What a government really ought to do is to encourage people to be nice to the old, to respect them and to integrate them in everyday life—not hive them off to some elderly ghetto. This is not entirely altruistic : it is also a recognition that we will all be old one day and will want to go on being useful and a part of everyday life.

As far as individuals are concerned 1 have always noticed that when people are kind and respectful to their parents, their own children are kind and respectful to them when they, in turn, become the older generation. That is how culture is passed on—and it is a lesson that some primitive peoples seem to understand better than we do. —Mary Kenny in Sunday Telegraph

Tourism Is Tops

FOREIGN visitors to Britain are now our top foreign currency earner, accounting for more than half of Britain’s invisible earnings.
Our 11.5 million foreign visitors in 1977 spent £2,750 million in Britain and on fares on British air and shipping lines. They played a major part in keeping British manufacturing industries alive, spending £250 million on footwear and textiles alone—about a quarter of exports in these goods. And tourism creates jobs —1.5 million at the last count.

“Tourism is solidly based, permanent and a reliable source of wealth to Britain,” says Sir Henry Marking, chairman of the British Tourist Authority. But its future growth and prosperity cannot be taken for granted. There must be further Government support for the national tourist boards and for overseas promotion, he stares. There could be grave consequences for the country’s future unless the Government creates an economic climate in which natural amenities can be developed.
—Adrienne Keith-Cohen in Tile Guardian

Free as a Bird

BATTERY hens are used ad nauseam as the prime example of the cruelty of many modern farming practices, but do we really know what the hen herself feels?
Marian Dawkins, from Oxford Uni¬versity’s zoology department, asked chickens’ “opinions” on the battery cage by giving them preference tests. Half of the test birds were already used
to a battery cage, half to a pen in the garden. Once the battery hens had sampled the open air for a few minutes, they seldom if ever went back to the cage. Birds already used to the country life never gave the battery cage a second thought.

How strong is the preference? Marian Dawkins gave her chickens a choice : outside on your own, or inside the battery cage with some friends. In every case the birds preferred a solitary life outside.

These preliminary results suggest that the hens would probably side with the RSPCA in any confrontation about
battery farming.    —New Scientist

A collection to enjoy and display in your home

One of the greatest pleasures of owning this collection is to display the thimbles in your home. And, to enable you to do so in an attractive and appealing way, a handsome, hardwood wall frame will be provided at no additional charge. This special, custom-designed wall frame will hold all twenty-five thimbles.

Thus, you can display the full set yet still invite your guests to hold the thimbles, feel the smoothness of finely glazed porcelain, and admire the intricate detail of the magnificent birds portrayed.

Available only for a limited time in our online cigar store. You are among the first to have the opportunity to acquire ‘The Garden Birds Thimble Collection! Because of worldwide interest in the collection, similar restricted offers will be made in other countries. A further opportunity to subscribe in the UK may be Oven, but cannot be guaranteed, before the final close date of 31st December, 1979. This advance application is valid only if received postmarked by 30th June,1979. Applications received bearing postmarks later than this date will, with regret, be declined and returned together with any accompanying remittance. There is a further limit of one collection per subscriber.

In the tradition of classic porcelain collectables, these fine bone china thimbles will be made available for a single year only. Thus, the collection will be offered solely during 1979 and will be permanently withdrawn at the end of the year. The only way anyone will be able to obtain any of the thimbles in the future is by direct purchase from an original subscriber.

A Certificate of Authenticity, attesting to the limited nature of the thimbles’ issue and their status as original works of art by Peter Barrett, will be provided to each subscriber. And an informative folder about the bird depicted on the thimble will also be included. The price for each porcelain thimble is just £7.50, and the collection will be issued at the convenient rate of one thimble per month, beginning in September. This price is guaranteed for the entire collection, except for any change there may be in the rate of VAT.

Since it will take time to craft these bone china thimbles, it is important that the advance subscription application be postmarked no later than 30th June, 1979. Please send your application directly to Franklin Porcelain, Bromley Road, London SE6 2XG, by that date.

Why does the planet Mercury have an irregular orbit? Towards the end of the 19th century, as NIGEL HENBEST reveals, astronomers thought they had found the cause: there was another planet, Vulcan, even nearer the Sun

PEERING THROUGH HIS TELESCOPE on 26 March 1859, a French amateur astronomer was startled by a strange event on the Sun. As he watched, a black speck moved slowly across the glowing solar disc until it finally disappeared off at one edge. The astronomer, a Dr Lescarbault, surmised at once that he had discovered a previously unknown planet — and his theory came to be supported by the best minds of the age.

The black spot that Lescarbault saw was moving too quickly to be a sunspot carried by the Sun’s rotation. It must be the silhouette of a planet travelling between the Sun and the Earth. And this planet was neither Mer­cury nor Venus, the only known planets closer to the Sun than us. Its speed across the Sun’s disc was faster than that of Mercury and showed it to be in a smaller orbit. Closer to the Sun than even Mercury, Lescarbault’s newly found world must be extremely hot, baked in the Sun’s glare: it was named Vulcan, after the Roman god of fire.

The discovery was not totally unexpected, however. The greatest French astronomer of the time, Urbain Leverrier (1811-77), had suspected its existence 20 years earlier, for purely theoretical reasons. He had been studying the effects that the gravitational pull of each planet has on the orbits of the others about the Sun. Starting with the innermost planets, he found a puzzling dis­crepancy for Mercury: like those of all other planets, its orbit is oval, roughly speaking ­but in the case of Mercury, the long axis of the oval gradually swings around the Sun as the other planets tug on it; that is, the orbit itself moves. But when Lcverrier computed what the motion of the long axis of Mercury’s orbit should be, it turned out to be slightly less than the actual motion. Leverrier con­cluded that either the mass of Venus was not known correctly, so he had miscalculated its gravitational pull on Mercury — or that there was another unknown planet contributing to the pull.

There he left Mercury, and turned to investigate similar oddities in the orbit of Uranus — most distant planet then known ­and his calculation led to the discovery of Neptune, the planet that was indeed causing the perturbation in Uranus’s orbit.

Leverrier visited Lescarbault to check the reliability of his sighting — for Lescarbault was a doctor by profession, not an astro­nomer, and his amateur’s telescopes were of very poor quality. The visit must rank as unique in the history of science. The greatest astronomer in the country disguised himself to pay a visit to a humble amateur — only when Leverrier was convinced of Lescar­bault’s reliability did he reveal his identity!

From Lescarbault’s observation, Lever calculated that Vulcan lies 13,082,000 miles (21,053,000 kilometres) from the Sun—about one third of Mercury’s distance from the Sun, and one seventh of Earth’s. It takes 19 days 17 hours to complete one orbit.

Vulcan’s path, like Mercury’s, is tilted, so it does not cross the Sun’s face as seen from Earth in every orbit, and Leverrier predicted that the next such transit would occur in March or April 1860. Astronomers smoked avidly throughout those two months, but nothing was seen. Leverrier concluded that the transit must have occurred at night, while the Sun was not visible.

In March 1862, Vulcan was rediscovered. An English amateur astronomer, a Mr Lummis of Manchester, saw a black spot crossing the Sun’s face. Using this in con­junction with Lescarbault’s sighting should have given a more accurate orbit for the planet, and the French astronomers Radau and Valz recalculated Vulcan’s orbit. Radau’s result was a radius of 13,174,000 miles (21,201,000 kilometres), and an orbital period of 19 days 22 hours — very similar to Leverrier’s original computation. Valz, oddly enough, found a rather smaller orbit of 12,076,000 miles (19,434,000 kilometres), and a period of only 17 days 13 hours.

The best way of observing Vulcan, and sorting out these discrepancies, was not to wait for its unpredictable transits across the Sun. During a total eclipse, the Sun’s face is blocked off by the Moon, and its brilliance is so reduced that the sky goes dark. Stars lying near the Sun then become visible, as do the planets Mercury and Venus. During an eclipse, if the theories are correct, Vulcan should be seen as a bright point even closer to the Sun than Mercury and Venus.

The total eclipse of 29 July 1878 was visible from the United States, and two experienced astronomers did indeed see an unexpected ‘star’ near the Sun. Professor James C. Watson, director of the Ann Arbor Observatory, saw a star 21′ south-west of the Sun, while Lewis Swift, an experienced amateur who had discovered several comets, noticed two stars some 3′ south-west of the Sun. (A degree is defined as twice the dia­meter of our Sun, as seen from the Earth.) He identified one as the star theta Cancri, the other as Vulcan.

Both astronomers described Vulcan as red in colour. Watson looked at it through a telescope. He saw not just a point of light, which is how a star would have appeared, but a definite disc, resembling the image of a small planet. The case appeared to have been solved. The scorched world of Vulcan seemed about to join the established planets of the solar system: no longer would the list begin ‘Mercury, Venus, Earth. . . .’, but `Vulcan, Mercury, Venus, Earth. . .

How did Einstein’s discovery of general rela­tivity affect the Vulcan theory?