inyourwords thelifeofaskyscraper · school bus, which he called starship ... thehead swami assigned...

2 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014 INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

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Find a retrospective of news from 1887 to2013 in The International Herald Tribuneat iht-retrospective.blogs.nytimes.com

See what readers are talking about andleave your own comments at inyt.com

1889 A Parisian ‘Jack the Ripper’The Commissary of Police of the Brédaquarter is actively searching for amanwho, within the last three days, hasmade four attempts tomurder women ofthe same unfortunate class to which thevictims of theWhitechapel horrors be-longed. His presence was first signaledon Saturday [Jan. 19] evening, when hemade two attempts inside of an hour tostrangle womenwho had consented toallow him to accompany them to theirlodgings. The police believe that thisParisian imitator of ‘‘Jack the Ripper’’ isan inhabitant of the neighborhood thathas been the scene of his exploits.

1939 Health Care Plan BackedWASHINGTON The uncompromisingstruggle between socializedmedicineand the AmericanMedical Association isexpected to enter its decisive stage to-morrow [Jan. 23] with a special messageto Congress by President Roosevelt urg-ing the passage of the Administration’s‘‘comprehensive, long-range’’ healthprogram to benefit the huge numbers ofAmericans who at present are too poorto obtain adequatemedical attention.The program calls for the developmentof health facilities over a ten-year periodat an annual cost to the Federal andstate governments of $850,000,000.

benefit from them commercially.He also founded a stargazing club,

Sidewalk Astronomers, which an-nouncedhis death, inBurbank, Calif. Theorganization now has chapters on everycontinentbutAntarctica.Hewrotebookswith inviting titles (‘‘Astronomy for Chil-dren Under 80’’ is one) and appeared onJohnny Carson’s ‘‘Tonight Show.’’ In2005, he was the subject of a documenta-ry feature, ‘‘A Sidewalk Astronomer,’’ di-rected by Jeffrey Fox Jacobs.Most compelling to him was divining

what ‘‘thewhole ball ofwax’’means.Hedelved intomatters like the origin of theuniverse with both passers-by on thestreet and astrophysicists. He de-nounced the Big Bang theory on theground that something cannot comefrom nothing— a view contrary to whatmany scientists believe — and wroteequations that he contended proved hispoint. All this was perhaps par for thecourse for amanwho spent 23 years liv-ing as a monk in a monastery of theVedanta Society, aHindu-inspired ordernoted for its intellectual rigor and vowsof chastity. The abbot there assignedhim to reconcile science and religion,and it was this mission that promptedhim to scrounge through trash for

BY DOUGLASMARTIN

Hourafterhour, night afternight, decadeafter decade all over planet Earth, JohnDobson rolled his homemade telescopesto street corners and national parks toshow people the heavens. ‘‘Look at Sat-urn,’’ hewould say. ‘‘No charge.’’He gave hundreds of thousands of

people a fresh view of the stars, prompt-

ing Smithsonian magazine to describehim as a ‘‘carny barker for the cosmos.’’A lanky figurewith a ponytail, he touredwith his road show in a creaky formerschool bus, which he called StarshipCentaurus A, after a galaxy. It towedone of his bulkier creations, a telescopeas large as amidsize automobile.Mr. Dobson, who died on Jan. 15, at the

age of 98—or, as hemight haveput it, 123days into his 99th orbit around the sun—is creditedwith developing the first high-poweredportable telescope thatamateurastronomers could build inexpensively,and tens of thousands havedone so.Dob-sonian telescopes, as they are knowngenerically, are still a popular itemon themarket, though Mr. Dobson chose not to

materials to make his first telescope.JohnLowryDobsonwas born onSept.

14, 1915, in Beijing, where his parentswereMethodistmissionaries. As a child,he said, he layonhis back, gazedupwardand imagined the sky as a vast ocean.After leavingChinabecauseofpolitical

unrest, the family settled in San Fran-cisco, and Mr. Dobson attended the Uni-versity of California, Berkeley, graduat-ing with a chemistry degree. Afterwardhe joined theRamakrishnamonastery inSacramento, Calif., where he ledworshipservices and cared for the flowers.The head swami assigned him to

spend the rest of his life reconciling an-cient Hindu scripture with modernphysics, Mr. Dobson said.It was as part of this quest that he de-

cided to make a telescope to look at theuniverse. As material he used plywood,cardboard tubes, glass from shipportholes and even cereal boxes. Whatresultedwas essentially the same as thetelescope Newton had developed in the17th century: a tubewith a concavemir-ror at the bottom to gather light, and aflat secondary mirror near the top tobounce light out to the eyepiece.Mr. Dobson’s chief innovation was

creating an axis at the base on awooden

mount that could move not just up anddown but also sideways, like a cannon.Mr. Dobson never sought a patent on

his design or a copyright for the name,saying he did not care about money andwanted the telescopes distributed aswidely as possible. Commercial manu-facturers, seizing on the design, eventu-ally did, selling versions in kits. Ama-teurs used them to see phenomenapreviously visible only to professionalastronomers—precisely asMr. Dobsonhad hoped. He said he had always

wanted to share the exhilaration he feltat seeing, for the first time, in close-up, athree-quarters-full moon through a tele-scope he hadmade.‘‘It looked as if we’re coming in for a

landing,’’ he said. ‘‘I thought, every-body has to see this.’’The abbot expelled Mr. Dobson in

1967, saying he was spending too muchtime outside the monastery with histelescopes. He left with only a $50 bill,slept on friends’ floors in San Franciscoand foraged for food in Golden GatePark. Though he lectured regularly, henever had a steady source of income.Mr. Dobson had a son, Loren, with

Ruth Ballard, a professor of genetics atSacramento StateUniversity. They bothsurvive him.Mr. Dobson had a knack for phrase-

making that delighted audiences at thenational parks he often visited. At Yel-lowstone, he was asked if the sky waspart of the park. ‘‘No,’’ he said, ‘‘thepark is part of the sky.’’His long view was long indeed. Hu-

man bodies, he told an audience, aremade of stardust. He pointed to a photoof a nebula. ‘‘If you give this cloud an-other 10 billion years,’’ he said, ‘‘it willgo to school and chew gum.’’

Photos said to show Syria tortureAs awful as this collection is, I would betthat at least some of the rebel factionshave done the same thing to members ofAssad’s forces. . . . Neither side is in theright and nomatter who wins, Syria will notbe a stable country after all of this. It wouldbe wise for foreign powers to keep theirdistance because anyone who agrees tosend in troops to help is going to be stuckthere for quite some time.SAM KELLEY, WASHINGTON

While the crimes in these photos are self-explaining, evidence of time and place isinexistent: Where and when were thesephotos taken? Also, the alleged reason forthe photos is strange: Why would torturerstake and keep proof of their crimes in suchan organized way? And then, the timingand the financiers of this report makemevery suspicious.ZOLKO, PARIS

U.S. offers Russia security helpAn estimated 15,000 Americans areexpected to travel to Sochi for the Games.If the administration refuses to cooperatewith the Russian authorities, it will get theblame, just like the aftermath of theBenghazi attack on the diplomaticcompound in 2012.J. VON HETTLINGEN, SWITZERLAND

Does anyone else think Russia, Europe,China and the U.S. probably are going tohave to figure out a way to get along andwork together before the world explodes?NEAL, MONTANA

Kiev protesters’ phones trackedWe have seen the social media used tobring down oppressive regimes. However,has no one yet thought about the ability ofpolice states to use social media asintimidation and control? The sword slicesboth ways!RMARC, ALBANY

Didi KirstenTatlow

LETTER FROM CHINA

BEIJING At 39, Xiao Cai knows time isnot on her side if she’s to fulfill heryearning and have a sibling for her 3-year-old son.Her dreams are modest; she wants

only two children.Yet two months after the Chinese

government announced a change to theone-child policy to permit some famil-ies a second child (the change will ap-ply to couples where one partner is anonly child), hundreds of thousands,perhaps millions, of women like XiaoCai who are pushing the limit of their

fertility find them-selves in a bizarreand painful situ-ation: Their dream ofhaving two could bedefeated at the finishline by the slow-turn-ing wheels of statebureaucracy.After decades of

the one-child policy, many Chinese stillfeel that two children is a more normalnumber than one.Xiao Cai, who asked to be identified

only by her nickname to maintain herprivacy, hopes deeply for a girl. A fam-ily of one girl and one boy — known inthe West as a millionaire’s family — isthe ideal here, too, like the two vasesthat make up the pair in traditionalChinese aesthetics.She knows that her biological clock is

ticking fast. But only in ZhejiangProvince has the policy become law. Inmid-January, the provincial People’sCongress revised the law to permitqualifying couples to apply to have asecond child. On Jan. 17 the Congressannounced the law ‘‘has been born,’’according to Xinhua, the state-run newsagency. In Beijing, Liu Zhi, the city’shead of family planning, said officials‘‘hope’’ to implement the change onMarch 1, The Beijing News reported.‘‘The authorities have said they will

change the law, but no one knows forsure when,’’ said Xiao Cai, a Beijingerand a health care worker. For now, shecan only wait, as she has done sinceNovember.‘‘I really want another baby,’’ she

said. ‘‘But if we try now, what if I getpregnant and the law doesn’t change intime?’’‘‘I’d like to just go ahead. But if it

doesn’t happen soon and I have a child,it could have really severe con-sequences for us,’’ she said. ‘‘If I don’tdo it now, I may never be able to. Ireally don’t know what to do.’’The financial consequences of break-

ing the law, even in its dying days,would be heavy. She has done hermath: the couple could be fined 300,000renminbi, about $50,000. It would finan-cially ruin them. Her husband left his‘‘iron rice bowl’’ state job some yearsago to work independently. Their in-come is adequate, but they’re not rich.In a later text message, she wrote:

‘‘I’ve read in the newspapers that thewhole country is researching this,when and how to bring it in. And I’veread other stories that say the govern-ment is saying, don’t rush to have asecond child, you must wait for the cen-tral government to announce it’s forreal, or you will have problems gettingall the papers you need.’’So for now, she anxiously waits.Xiao Cai is luckier than many of her

friends who she said are battling infer-tility, a condition she believes is grow-ing in China, based on anecdotal evi-dence. She already has her son. Yet shealso has an older sister with whom sheis extremely close, and she cherishesthat sibling love. What mostly drivesher, she said, was the fear that her sonwould feel alone.‘‘Only one child, isn’t it lonely for

him? He’s so clingy. I think it would bereally good for him to have a sibling,’’she said.So, as has been the case since 1979,

when the one-child policy began,Chinese remain dependent on the willof the state for that most intimate ofthings: procreation. Only now, formany, it’s a race against time.The government expects between

one million and two million additionalbirths per year after the law takes ef-fect countrywide, said Mao Qun’an, aspokesperson for the National Healthand Family Planning Commission. InBeijing, officials expect between 30,000and 50,000 more births per year, TheBeijing News wrote.Xiao Cai is hoping her dreamed-of

daughter will be one of them— if thelaw changes before her fertility runsout.

EMAIL: [email protected]

Birth policyputs Chinesein a dilemma

IN OUR PAGES

IN YOUR WORDS

John Dobson, 98, evangelist for sidewalk astronomers

OBITUARY

Some womencan’t wait forpolicy to be-come law be-cause of theirfertility limits.

STURDY SURVIVOR

A 54-story sky-scraper known asPonte City has dom-inated Johannes-burg’s skyline insuccessive eras ofapartheid, urbandecay and multieth-nic renewal. TheSouth African pho-tographer MikhaelSubotzky and theBritish artistPatrick Warehousehave spent yearsstudying the build-ing and its inhabit-ants. Their work isbeing shown at LeBal, an exhibitionspace in Paris,through April 20.

LITANY OF LIVES

Clockwise fromtop: a tenant of thebuilding riding anelevator; debristhat has accumu-

lated at the base ofthe curved struc-ture over the years;one of the parkingareas in the build-ing complex.

The life of a skyscraper

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MIKHAEL SUBOTZKY AND PATRICK WATERHOUSE/MAGNUM PHOTOS

GERARD PARDEILHAN

John Dobson in 1985. His stargazing clubhas chapters on almost every continent.

inyourwords thelifeofaskyscraper · school bus, which he called starship ... thehead swami assigned...

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