April 2003

Commentary: Saudi Arabia
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia may signify early trouble for the Bush administration's plans for a democratic transformation of the Middle East.

Moving
Real estate remains overpriced in places all over the country -- Boston, Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Bay area -- and in the Hamptons, where commentator Heather Dune Macadam lives. But she bought a house for a dollar. The catch: she had to buy her own land and move the house to it.

Iraq's Future
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says that today's meeting of political and religious leaders in Baghdad marks progress toward the birth of democracy in Iraq. But, there's a bumpy road ahead.

Sitting Up Front
Commentator Andrei Codrescu violates his own rule about never sitting up front in the theater, when his son takes him to a wild, freeform play. But things turn out OK. Codrescu made the rule based on experiences in which the audience had to burn their money, take off their clothes in the early 1970s -- and from the time he was soaked in beer at a Sex Pistols concert.

Horoscopes
Commentator Sharon Moshavi, like most people, checks out her horoscope in the newspaper, but her attempts to divine her future ended there. Or at least they did until she moved to Japan.

Commentary: Astronauts in Training
Recently, a fellow teacher pulled commentator Daniel Ferri aside to show him a picture in a textbook. It showed an astronaut-in-training, one of the astronauts who died in the recent space shuttle disaster. The teachers discussed how to deal with the picture when their class got to that chapter of the book, and whether the picture would be in future editions of the textbook.

Commentary: Beyond War in Iraq
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says rising anti-Americanism in Iraq proves there's more to regime change than deposing Saddam Hussein.

Commentary: Bad People
Commentator Beth Lapides offers tips for spotting and avoiding people who are bad. She says there are warning signs to look for.

Annual Meetings
Spring is proxy season, when many corporations mail proxy statements to their investors inviting them to attend the company's annual shareholder meeting. Commentator David Levin says that in the go-go '90s, shareholder meetings were gala affairs -- swanky, big-time bashes where companies could show off, woo the press, and celebrate in locations strategically picked to attract as many people as possible. Now, companies that aren't doing so well are picking obscure locations. Levin says that before you buy stock, check the location of the company's annual meeting. It may provide a clue as to the health of the business, and it's easier than trying to figure out what the fundamentals are.

The Showerer
Elissa Ely reveals wordless moments shared with a neighbor who, while never acknowleging it, let the commentator have an intmate peek into her private moments.

Becoming Aunt Ruth
Commentator Carol Wasserman worries -- and sometimes hopes -- she may find happiness the way her Aunt Ruth did.

Tackling SARS
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr has some thoughts on this new illness.

Remembering Ray Hicks
A man folklorists regarded as the patriarch of American storytelling died Sunday. Ray Hicks was 80 when the cancer he battled for years finally took him. Commentator Bill Harley knew Ray Hicks and has this appreciation.

Commentary: Maps
Sometimes everything seems strange in a foreign country. Simple stuff, like light switches and billboards, turn into metaphors for foreign-ness. When commentator Katie Davis was traveling in Latin America, she found a custom that seemed strange - but it became familiar once she got home.

Chicago Gentrification
When commentator John Green moved to Chicago, he moved to Wicker Park -- with all the other hip 20-somethings. But the older, richer people weren't far behind, and they changed the neighborhood. So he moved to their turf -- the Gold Coast -- and he encourages other Generation Y-ers to do the same to slow the gentrification of their neighborhoods.

Learning to Interview
The first year of medical school are full of classes that sound hard: pharmacology, immunology, microbiology. But commentator and medical student Joe Wright was surprised when he found that even a class that seemed like it would be easy -- interviewing patients -- was not easy.

Treasures
Experts from the British Museum and the United Nations cultural agency are headed to Baghdad to help catalog Iraq's destroyed cultural treasures. Looting began last week as the regime fell, and by Monday, the country's National Library also had been ransacked. News analyst Daniel Schorr says U.S. forces should be held accountable.

Codrescu on a Poet
Commentator Andrei Codrescu talks about the career of a fellow poet, Gregory Corso, and a collection of Corso's work called An Accidental Biography.

SARS Comment
Commentator Kurt Campbell has been studying and travelling in Asia for the last 10 years. This weekend, he got back from 2-1/2 weeks there. He says SARS made this trip different than any other he's been on -- and that he's concerned that SARS will bring long-lasting changes to the whole region. Campbell is a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Rebuilding Iraq Part 2
There are many unanswered questions about the re-building of Iraq -- among them, exactly what the role of the United Nations should be. Monday, a former ambassador to the U.N. argued it should not take the lead in Iraq. Today, we hear the opinion of Lee Feinstein, a senior State Department official during the Clinton administration. He says the U.S. and U.K. must begin the effort, but it is important for the U.N. to give its blessing to what they do.

Rebuilding Iraq
Commentator Ken Adelman was ambassador to the United Nations during the Reagan administration. He says it's important to rebuild Iraq quickly, so the United Nations should have limited involvement in the process. Adelman's comments are the first in a series of commentaries on the subject.

Military Success
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says the United States' military success in Iraq has inspired some of its other potential adversaries including "Axis of Evil" members Iran and North Korea to make greater conciliatory efforts.

Commentary on the War
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says if allied forces don't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, President Bush will have a lot of explaining to do.

Bush, Blair Conference
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says President Bush and Prime Minister Blair's meeting in Belfast may be Blair's chance to stake his claim in postwar international relations.

Arnett's Disservice
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says that by giving an interview to Iraqi state television, NBC's ex-correspondent Peter Arnett did his profession a disservice.

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