December 13, 2005

The bomb craters and unexploded ordnance in the rice fields around Sam Ang’s village in Cambodia remind local residents that the war the United States fought against neighboring Vietnam more than three decades ago knew no boundaries. Yet there are no visible landmarks of that other horror, the genocide that the Khmer Rouge carried out against its own people between 1975 and 1979—nothing to commemorate those who died of starvation labor or of a strong blow to the head. Some Cambodians, however, carry the pain of those years in the unhealed wounds of their memory.

The opening earlier this year of the $90 million Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, sparked a battle over the place of technology in museums. Traditionalists among historians and museum directors wrung their hands at the computer-generated special effects and lifelike fiberglass figures, deriding the effort to popularize history as “Six Flags over Lincoln” or “Lincoln Disneyfied.” But advocates for the futurized museum asked how, in an age of cell phones and ADHD, the interest of young people can be captured without a bit of whiz-bang.

In his reflections on theology and politics, Catholic theologian William T. Cavanaugh has focused attention on how Christian liturgical practices embody and inform—or should embody and inform—Christian political witness. His book Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics and the Body of Christ (Blackwell) is about the Roman Catholic Church’s responses to the rule of Augusto Pinochet in Chile during the 1970s. Cavanaugh, who teaches at the University of St. Thomas in St.

Chanticleer brings its usual polish, balance and tonal beauty to these intimate sacred songs. The rich harmonies are powerful as the melodic lines crunch against one another. Has anyone ever been better at such writing than Henry Purcell? Whether as solos or as sung by the larger group, Chanticleer’s interpretations do not sound like the current English cathedral style, but natural and graceful; it suits the music well. Skip Sempé’s band Capriccio Stravagante brings additional elegance.

If Vietnam, with its baffling, Venus-flytrap landscape, is the perfect dramatic background for an existential drama, the Gulf War would appear to be an ideal setting for an existential comedy: so many servicemen all suited up but with nowhere to go and nothing to do. That’s how David O. Russell’s great 1999 film Three Kings began. It took the hormone-crazed young Americans in the gulf as its starting point and developed a quest story in which the search for illicit riches shifted into a moral imperative to save the lives of a band of nomads on the run from Saddam Hussein.