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- <text id=93TT2555>
- <title>
- Jan. 03, 1994: Taking Stock In A Year
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Jan. 03, 1994 Men of The Year:The Peacemakers
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE BEST OF 1993, Page 69
- Taking Stock In A Year Of Sober Looks Back, And Dazzling Views
- Of The Future
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Year's end is a time of tradition and transition. So folks play
- the spiritual parlor game called Taking Stock, in which the
- players consider what the world's shapers have given them. In
- these pages is one view of life at the end of 1993: science
- looks ahead; art looks back.
- </p>
- <p> Each discipline could help the other. Those stratospheric Maytag
- repairmen from the Endeavour might be hired to wire the TV set
- of the future for 500 channels, and then maybe the gene wizards
- could splice some decent programming into it. Biosphere II might
- be a good place to lock away all those fun couples--Burt and
- Loni, John and Lorena, Ted and Whoopi--until they sort things
- out. But this is science fiction, mere dreamery. Art doesn't
- solve problems any more than (pace Janet Reno) it creates them.
- </p>
- <p> What art does, or did this year, is review those thorny issues
- in the past tense. So much of 1993's art amounted to a gigantic
- act of pained remembrance. Experience the Holocaust, in a museum
- or a movie. Look clearly at Jack Kennedy, or recycle Teddy into
- pulp. Watch the Great Depression in four weekly installments.
- Today those who forget the past are condemned to relive it--on the big screen or small.
- </p>
- <p> It is also salutary to recall 1993's failings: Mitch Williams
- in the World Series, Chevy Chase on late-night TV, Michael Jackson
- in the court of public opinion. Everyone, after all, builds
- a future on a resolve not to repeat old blunders. May we all
- profit from examining our yesterdays, todays and tomorrows.
- They are the only days we have.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-