TIMELINE: FEBRUARY 2004

At its root, the word violence relates to violate. This nuance is often lost when we hear the word over and over in the daily news. To us, "violence" means the discharge of weapons and the resulting destruction of places and people. Its numbing regularity in news reports gives us the illusion that violence is one of the natural rhythms of the world, not a disruption of them. Every violent act is unique violation of a world created to lack suffering. We had much cause to reflect on violence in February. In Saudi Arabia, a panic-induced stampede at Mecca killed over 200 Muslim pilgrims. An attack on a police station in Fallujah, Iraq, left 23 people dead. Political riots in Haiti, race riots in Sydney, and a subway bomb in Moscow all ended lives. An 11-year-old girl whose abduction was captured by a surveillance camera was soon found dead. In Miami, a 14-year-old boy was stabbed in his middle school restroom. "I still can't believe this can happen," said his uncle. By definition, it shouldn't have.

As Lent began on Ash Wednesday, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ gave millions of moviegoers the most graphic imaginable re-creation of Christ's crucifixion. Critics, calling it "the most violent movie ever," suggested the film glorified the blood more than the bleeder. But for many Christian believers, each lash and each cry drove home the theological point that we were swinging the hammers that drove those nails and tore that flesh; our violations affixed those wounded limbs.

Earlier:
Timeline: January 2004

PLACES & CULTURE

From the New Yorker:

To understand what has happened to Haiti since 1994, consider the fate of a stockpile of vintage American M-1 and M-14 rifles in the central coastal town of Gonaïves. Having been provided in previous decades to the Haitian armed forces, the weapons were confiscated when the Army was abolished. But the ex-soldiers were never reintegrated into society, and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide … created and armed militias loyal to him. … The local Lavalas militia took the initiative to name itself the Cannibal Army. … Last fall, the Cannibal Army's leader was killed, allegedly by an Aristide supporter. Gonaïves, a city with an insurrectionary history, began to seethe. In early February, the Cannibal Army became the Artibonite Resistance Front, and launched a full-scale revolt. "We are fighting Aristide with the weapons he gave us," said the rebels' leader. … In the past few weeks, the revolt has spread to towns across Haiti's north.

An eastbound traveller on Route 3 sometimes has the serrated skyline of midtown straight ahead. At certain times of the year during the morning commute, the sun comes up right behind the city; the shadows of the buildings theoretically stretch the whole length of the highway, and slide backward gradually, like tide. When the road reaches the Meadowlands, the sky opens out, with the tall light poles of the Giants Stadium parking lot receding to a remote vanishing point and the pools of swamp water perfectly reflecting the reeds along their edges, the radio towers, the clouds, and the intricate undersides of cautious airplanes descending to Newark Airport. Along much of the road on either side, the landscape is as ordinary as ordinary America can be: conventioneers' hotels and discount stores and fast-food restaurants and office complexes … And then suddenly, just before the Lincoln Tunnel, that ordinariness ends, and you're in jostling, close-up surroundings about to become New York. At no other entry to the city is the transition between it and everyday, anywhere U.S.A. so quick.

FEBRUARY BOOK BLOG

• Literature and letters as a constant of human history, from the San Francisco Chronicle.
• The Closing of the Western Mind blames the stifling of reason on religion, says the New York Times .
• A history of the soul, from the London Telegraph (Earlier: the weight of the soul).
• Philip Jenkins on Charles Murray's theory of human accomplishment, from First Things.
• Christopher Caldwell on choice as a blessing and a curse, from the New Yorker.
• The triumph of mumbo-jumbo and other 'modern delusions,' from The Economist.
• The twilight of Sartre's life and thought, from Policy Review.
• The future of Japan, from The Economist.
• Shedding light on the 'invisible' working poor, from the New York Times .
• The state of ruins, from the New Republic.
• All about Roget and his thesaurus, from the Times Literary Supplement.
• The Reformation's effect on art patronage in the Netherlands, and other mysteries of art and money, from the New Statesman.
• The rise and decline of Coca Cola, from the San Francisco Chronicle.
• The history of the Hoover Dam, from the Christian Science Monitor.
• The history of patents in America, from the London Guardian.
• The true story of Capt. James Riley, shipwrecked and enslaved in Africa, from the San Francisco Chronicle.
• Christopher Hitchens on John Buchan and his seminal spy thrillers, from the Atlantic Monthly.
• Colm Tóibín's novel on Henry James a 'triumph,' says the London Observer.
• Essay: Julia Keller on how technology blurs the distinction between writers and readers, from the Chicago Tribune (A book in a day? From The Economist).
• January book blog
• Previous/Archive/About/Feedback/Links/CT blog

Nathan Bierma is editorial assistant at Books & Culture.