David Halberstam and his book about the Vietnam War, “The Best and the Brightest”

November 26, 2006

David Halberstam (born April 10, 1934, in New York City) is an American journalist and author. His father was a surgeon and his mother a teacher. He was married to Polish-born actress Elzbieta Czyzewska, which led to his expulsion from communist Poland and caused her serious difficulties as well.

Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for the Nashville Tennesseean, he covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement.

In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for the New York Times, where his reporting caused U.S. president John F. Kennedy to request he be transferred to another bureau.[citation needed] At the age of 30, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.

Halberstam put an enormous effort into his book about the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest. Synthesizing material from dozens of books and many dozens of interviews, Halberstam focused on the odd paradox that those who crafted the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America — "the best and the brightest" — and yet those same men were unable to imagine and promote any but a bloody and disastrous course in the Vietnam War.

Thousands of readers began The Best and the Brightest feeling that the U.S. must pursue the war in Vietnam until "victory" was achieved — but became convinced by Halberstam’s book that the U.S. should withdraw from Vietnam [citation needed].

After publication of The Best and the Brightest in 1972, Halberstam plunged right into another "big" book and in 1979 published an informative book about some of the major media outlets in America. The Powers That Be gave compelling profiles of men like William Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time Magazine, Phil Graham of The Washington Post — and many others.

Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of sports, publishing an ambitious book on Michael Jordan in 1999 called Playing for Keeps and on the pennant race battle between the Yankees and Red Sox called Summer of ‘49.

After publishing two books in the 1960s, Halberstam published three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980’s and six books in the 1990s. He is on pace to publish at least six books this decade.

In 1980, an escaped convict from New York, Bernard C. Welch, Jr., murdered Halberstam’s brother, Michael, a Washington, D.C. cardiologist. Halberstam does not comment publicly about this incident.

Halberstam is currently working on a book about the Korean War. As of 2002, he still lives in New York City.

Editorial comment:  Halberstam is a great read on the Vietnam War (appropos what is happening in Iraq!)  I do hope he still has his radar on politics (as well as sports!)

[from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Halberstam

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Salmon play significant role

 
 
Nov 23 2006

The carcasses of spawning salmon play a significant role not only to the eagle, but to the productivity of the salmonid ecosystem.

Pacific salmonids are aradromous fish, spawning in fresh water but spending their adult life in the ocean. Salmon are found as far south as California and as far east as Siberia. Depending on the species, they spend from one to seven years in the Pacific before returning to the rivers and streams of their birth to complete the cycle.

Pacific salmon are semelparous, meaning they die after they spawn. Salmonids spawn in the fall, often migrating hundreds of kilometres up raging rivers and rocky streams to reach their spawning grounds.

They stop feeding when they reach freshwater and rely on stored fat and muscle to sustain them as they migrate. Physically, their sleek bodies maintain their shape, but the female swells in the abdominal area and her snout slightly elongates.

The male develops a prominent fleshy hump by the dorsal fin, the snout becomes longer and hooked, and the upper jaw elongates. Colour changes occur but are different between species. The backs of the sockeye salmon, for example, change to a brilliant, red colour.

Reaching their destination the females dig nests, or redds, in the gravel and lay their eggs. The males release milt to fertilize the eggs. Spawned out salmon carcasses provide food for insects, fish, birds and mammals, while land and aquatic plants and invertebrates are nourished by the nutrients released.

The eggs hatch in the spring and the young alevins live off the nutrients of a yolk sac until it has been absorbed.

The young salmon, now called fry, swim into the water to find food. Pink and chum fry migrate directly to the ocean. Other types of salmon stay in the freshwater a year before migrating to the sea. For these species a healthy and high quality stream habitat is extremely important. Vegetation along the streams creates shade and supports insects that are food for the young fish. Fallen trees, roots and boulders provide hiding places and keep flood waters from sweeping the fry downstream.

Changes in the environment create major physiological changes, called smolting, in the juvenile salmon. They swim downstream, adapting to salt water in estuaries before heading into the ocean to travel thousands of kilometres before returning to begin the cycle once more.

The Fraser Valley is blessed with an abundance of productive salmon streams that must be protected from the impact of urban development, agriculture and industry if they are to continue to thrive.

http://www.missioncityrecord.com/

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