     Sunday, for my part, is a precious period of time.  To be more accur-
ate, it is a luxury in that I am now in the last year of my college life 
-- my weekdays are occupied with a heavy workload.  Only on Sundays can I 
have a change of pace and embark upon what I like to do.  I am an intro-
vert.  Unlike many others who enjoy such outdoor activities as mountain-
climbing and swimming, I prefer to stay home listening to some lyrical mu-
sic to ward off those troubling thoughts.  Once in a while, I will browse 
through a good novel should I have one at hand.  I take to translation.  If 
I happen to have read a well-written essay, I will render it into English.  
I am quite satisfied with the way I arrange my Sundays.  It refreshes my 
energy and enables me to face the challenge of another busy week with joy.
     It is curious that, while swimming comes natural to most animals, men 
have to learn to swim.  Such animals as dogs, horses, deer, and cattle can 
swim when they first go into the water, but a man will sink unless he has 
learned the art.  And, when we consider how necessary it may be to most 
people at some time in their lives to know how to swim, it is still more 
curious that comparatively few people take the trouble to learn the art.  
It is even said that many sailors and fishermen, who are in daily risk of 
drowning, are not swimmers.
     It is no secret that I am not one of those naturalists who suffer 
from cities, or affect to do so; nor do I find a city unnatural or un-
interesting, or a rubbish heap of follies.  It has always seemed to me that 
there is something more than mechanically admirable about a train that 
arrives on time, a fire department that comes when you call it, a light 
that health of a penniless man and provide for him the agencies of mercy, 
the X ray, the precious radium, the anesthetics and the surgical skill.  
For, beyond any pay these services receive, there stands out the pride in 
perfect performance.  And above all, I admire the noble impersonality of 
civilization that does not inquire where the recipient stands on religion 
or politics or race.  I call this beauty, and I call it spirit--not some 
mystical soulfulness that nobody can define, but the spirit of man, that 
has been growing a million years.
     At the end of 1989, the world saw the downfall of Communist govern-
ments in Eastern Europe.  Now people are watching the Soviet Union.  Could 
the same thing happen there?  To many people, it seems unlikely.  Eastern 
Europe became Communist in the 1940's.  By contrast, the Soviet system is 
over 70 years old.  Few people in the Soviet Union even remember the days 
before Communism.  In 1917, Vladimir Lenin and the Communists seize power.  
They believed that capitalism was bad.  Workers were not treated well.  Too 
many people were poor and illiterate.  If the people themselve owned every-
thing, their lives would be better.  The Communists claimed to represent 
all the people.  They took control of banks, factories and schools.  Since 
then, the Communist Party had controlled almost every part of the people's 
lives.
     Clothmaking was greatly increased by the invention of a machine to 
remove the seed from the cotton which grew abundantly in the southern area 
of the United States.  This machine was the work of Eli Whitney, a young 
man from New England who had gone south to teach school.  While visiting a 
plantation, he heard a good deal of talk about the cost of separating co-
tton fiber from the seed.  He was told that a man, working all day, could 
separate only a pound of cotton from the seed.  Both Georgia and South Ca-
rolina had offered a prize for a machine that could do the work, but no 
one had claimed it.  Whitney became so much interested in the problem that 
the quit teaching and put all his time into the effort of inventing a co-
tton gin.  In 1793 he completed a machine with which a man could clean fif-
ty pounds of cotton a day.  He wrote his father proudly:  it makes the la-
bor fifty times less without throwing any class of people out or business.  
He continued no work on his machine, improving it so that it would clean 
more and more cotton.  But his hopes of making a great fortune with the co-
tton gin were never realize because many people, after learning how, simply 
built gins and paid Whitney nothing for his invention.
     The New York outposts of the Japanese firms have been among the 
biggest beneficiaries of that time-honored back-scratching formula.  As 
Tokuro Isoda, president of Daiwa Securities America, Inc., notes, for years 
their main mission was to sell Japanese stocks to American institutional 
investors and U.S. stocks to the Japanese.  The American side of the 
equation was a pretty hard sell, partly because the depositary receipt 
market in some Japanese stocks here tends to be thin.
     It's halfway through 1990.  Has your English improved?  Your teachers 
at Studio Classroom hope so!  If your English hasn't improved as much as 
you would like, listen to "Running the Language Marathon."  Maybe you can 
get some new ideas.  Does your pronunciation need help?  We give you some 
useful tips in "How to Improve Your Pronunciation."  Each month we try to 
hive you many interesting topics to study.  This month is no exception.  
Visit the landmarks of the world with Victor in Basic, or travel with your 
Advanced teachers to Antarctica.  It's the cool place to be.  Speaking of 
changes, there's a big surprise for you in next month's Studio Classroom.  
Beginning in July, Studio Classroom is going to be completely in color!  We 
hope you will enjoy all the beautiful pictures.  Let us know how you like 
our new look.
     Their priests noticed that when a very bright star rose above the 
horizon concurrently with the sun, they could expect the river to overflow 
within a matter of days.  The importance of the Nile in their lives led the 
priests to study more carefully the motions of the sun.  The pharaoh Ptole-
my ordered astronomical tables compiled, which were used until well into 
the Middle Ages.
     The precinct itself was painted in what appears a standard apple green 
no Big Apple, a very flaked and faded apple thought by experts from the 
Metropolitan Museum to have been applied circa 1924.  A policeman is on 
permanent guard outside because of the increase in terrorist attacks.  
Inside the blinds are drawn permanently on account of the habit of 
unfriendly neighbors in the apartments across the vacant lot of taking 
pot shots.  Around the corner were, at a conservative estimate, a hundred 
pushers:  this district has the worst drug problem in the city.  The 
operators move from one abandoned building to another.  There are enough to 
last for years:  the controlled rent policy has brought about landlord 
neglect and the terminal spiral of building decay insultingly camouflaged 
by the city's new policy of popping up gaily painted blinds over the 
windowless holes in the walls.
     Bellow's life journey has left its physical and spiritual mark.  His 
wispy hair is white.  His handsome, almost feminine face, with its promi-
nent nose and deep-set brown eyes, is marked by crow's feet and creases.  
Pouches of flesh hang below his chin.  He thinks and writes frequently of 
mortality nowadays, since the death of his cousin Louis Gameroff several 
years ago and the critical illness last winter of Louis' younger brother 
Meyer, Bellow's last surviving cousin from Lachine.  Yet when Bellow 
laughs, as he does often a hearty, joyous guffaw, back arched, head thrown 
back, the boyish gap between his front teeth exposed-the decades seem to 
drop away, swept off in a wave of infectious exuberance and vitality.
     Gifted children often look at things differently from the average 
child.  Many like to spend time alone or just "daydreaming."  Unless your 
child is unhappy, try not to worry too much about the ways in which she or 
he is different.  Precocious youngsters also often find themselves in a 
conflict between the approval they receive for their accomplishments and 
the disapproval they feel for being different.  Help your children work 
this through by letting them know of your pride in their accomplishments 
and of your love for them as individuals.
