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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 1989)
Thursday, January 26,1989 The Battalion Page 15 e sense, seems to he 'r lasts. )0u t.lost]c laid bad returns I It the uuu S’tal ° turn ioti ■as hauglti, some lor sing, “m e backtoitj le final son er good! reminiscen New Ori v Order r own, the >ew excitt ichsong.I; lull abooi rou like u i energetic Whistler finds musical career issic. Not ko. (\^\\ Cm l&M. ur CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio (AP) — In an increasingly high-tech world of music, all Ron McCroby needs to perform is his pucker. Of course, a microphone with a wind shield helps when he goes before a large audience as a jazz o^ - classical whistler. McCroby has coined the word “puccolo” to describe his wind in strument, a sort of piccolo formed by puckering his lips. “Puccolo is an instrument cre ated by the lips,” he says. “It’s my word. I think to have my word in the dictionary some day would be great. “I’m a puccoloist. I’ve been whistling ever since I was a little kid.” McCroby has gone from adver tising executive in Cincinnati to musician of some renown. He has performed internationally, ap peared at major jazz festivals and on network television, while cre ating two jazz albums and one classical album. Seven years ago, McCroby’s wife, Barbara, suggested he re cord his whistle. At the time, he was a part-time musician playing clarinet in dance bands. “I made a little tape and got some interest,” he says. “I started to think that maybe there is some thing here. In addition to just be ing able to technically do this, I had a lot of musical background. The listener could say, ‘Wait a minute. That’s real music this guy is doing, not some freaky bird call.’” A tape McCroby made in 1981 of jazz whistling landed him an appearance on the Merv Griffin Show. A guitar player on the show took his tape to the pro ducer of the Monterey Jazz Festi val, and McCroby was invited. He displayed the art of puccolo in 1982 at the 25th Monterey Jazz Festival, an event which featured many of the jazz greats. “Well, that was it,” he says. “That did it. That even got picked up by CBS Evening News. After that, I signed a recording contract.” McCroby, 55, the father of six, moved his family to Chagrin Falls 3-and-a-half years ago after living for about 20 years outside Cincin nati. He says his new neighbors have only a vague idea of his mu sical accomplishments. They do know he travels a lot. He says he feels accepted as more than just an oddity in jazz circles. “With a lot of the jazz players,” he says, “when I first came on the scene they would wonder, ‘Oh really? You’re going to whistle? Can’t wait, man.’ Then I start doing some things and they say, ‘This guy is an official player. He just uses a different instrument.’” McCroby says he does not need to practice his whistling tech nique. His “circular breathing” method makes his whistle consis tent, whether he inhales or ex hales. “It’s to the point now where if I can think it, I can pretty well exe cute it,” he says. “There are no fingering problems. There is no real range difficulty. There are no sharps or flats that I really have to worry about, although generally speaking I do most tunes in the standard key they are written in. I sound like a piccolo.” McCroby, a chubby, bald man with glasses, seems likely to be the start of a practical joke when he appears on stage with no instru ment in hand. Once he begins to whistle, his eyelids tighten, re flecting his concentration, and the fingers of his left hand often play notes on an imaginary clar inet. “When I’m out there perform ing, I am definitely into it, be cause it’s very serious work I’m doing,” McCroby says. One of his recent thrills was performing with the Cleveland Orchestra. “Of late, I’m doing quite a few symphony concerts,” he says. “It’s really fun when the orchestra people have not heard me before, and then I come out and do Vi valdi’s Piccolo Concerto.” Salsa brings together jjazz, Cuban rhythms for New York sounds ie Cellars ir of then iturday r v the gn] d trained will foll_ (AP) — Salsa is a musical style of make rest: Cuban origin, with other Central md South American rhythms and azz added. Salsa makes you want to rson 1:30 -ET lance. mmtm . And, said Willie Colon, now 38, 'HStj who has been playing salsa since he ^ ' was 15, it’s a New York sound and a fjk Mew York word. “I think Izzy Sanabria, who used ' :o have a magazine called Latin New fork, made up the word,” he said. We just decided to accept it. We wanted to distinguish a New York sound instead of Afro-Cuban music, “It’s a city music. In any big city where they speak Spanish, you’ll be ible to find somebody playing this. They won’t be singing about grass shacks and cutting sugar cane. “The U.S. is catching the fever for salsa. In America, Latin music sur rounds us a lot. Rock bands have Latin percussion. You’ve got the Mi- uni Sound Machine. Latin hip hop is Just another expression of salsa — ialsa kids.” Colon’s latest record, “Altos Se- :retos” (“Top Secrets”), which in dudes some salsa innovations, was released last month on Fania. In South America, he said, “Salsa :uts across borders. Each country las a basic folkloric music and will ™mt listen to the others. Colombia as a rhythm called ballenato; Vene- uela has gaita. “Salsa has a lyric content that’s jood enough to hold up on the radio \ and at a concert. It’s not just wall-to- wall banging on a tin can. It’s dy namic. You have to come across with a powerful sound and legitimate hard swing, a hard edge, and we (Colon’s band, the Legal Aliens) have got that.” Years ago, he said, “Dizzy Gilles pie and more and more jazz players came in to play this stuff, because of the rhythms. They influenced the music a lot. We have a lot of jazz har monies and jazz melodies in it.” Colon insists that smaller forces than a big band can play salsa. “I’ve made some changes,” he said. “Most of them have stuck. When I did them I got a lot of flack. I was the first guy to start changing Cuban rhythm to Puerto Rican, then to calypso. Some of the old-timers, their socks would go up and down, telling me, ‘You can’t do that.’ We didn’t have those Cuban roots to draw back on, since we’re all born here.” When he and the Legal Aliens tour in Latin America, he said, “I know there is culture shock when they see us relaxing. We’re talking English. We’re all Latins. On stage we’re singing in Spanish.” His previous record was “Especial No. 5,” named for the jail cell in Me dellin, Colombia, where he and the band were held for two days in 1985 after being late — not their fault, he said — for a concert. < Gravedigger works old-fashioned way OWENSBORO, Ky. (AP) — Dig- ^ng graves by hand is a dying art. According to Alvin Lewis, it takes in older man to do it. “I’ve worked with a lot of kids,” ays Lewis, 59. “Most of them don’t tick with it.” ■ Lewis, who’s been digging graves ■or 11 years, says it’s like anything Rise — you get used to it. Most people think heavy equip ment such as backhoes dig graves in a matter of minutes, Lewis says. But in older cemeteries where the mon uments are placed close together, it’s impossible to use machinery, so the graves are dug by hand. Lewis has dug as many as six graves in a week. The holes must be about 5 feet deep, 8 feet long and nearly 4 feet wide to accommodate the vault, Lewis says. Lewis grew up on farms in Hart and LaRue counties and has always worked with the soil in one way or another. Although many people think of digging graves as miserable work, Lewis says he loves just about everything about the job. “I’ll stay there until they let me go,” he says, “or I get too old, I don’t know which.” Former Marines see Vietnam from older, wiser perspective HUE, Vietnam (AP) — Winding their way over the green mountains of Vietnam through the misty Hai Van Pass, six former U.S. Marines revisited the battlefields of fallen comrades on a sentimental journey into the past. Where only heavily armed mili tary convoys dared to go two de cades ago, they rode in a van over the 68 miles of winding roads from Da Nang to Hue, stopping en route to embrace the beauty of the moun tains and the serene waters of the South China Sea. “This pass was continually ha rassed,” said Robert Dalton, a 54- year-old free-lance writer from Da- vidsonville, Md., during a stop Sun day at an old French fort. Dalton, as a captain 20 years ago, commanded Kilo Company, 26th Marine Regiment, 1st Division, which patrolled sections of the Hai Van Pass. “This is fantastic, the natural splendor,” said Nate Genna, 41, a maintenance man from Boston, dur ing another stop to look out over the bay at a tiny fishing village set off by a steepled church in its center. Their odyssey brought them at nightfall to the old imperial capital of Hue, where emperors sat in an cient times and where U.S. Marines fought in modern times. The capital was established more than 200 years before Christ and was the seat of the old Annam empire for 21 centuries, but it was here that U.S. Marines fought house-to-house and lost 142 men during North Viet nam’s Tet offensive of 1968. The Marines, on a 10-day visit to Vietnam, arrived in Da Nang by plane from Hanoi. “I always dreamed about returning here just to take a nice slow relaxed walk without any fear, and I finally did it 21 years later.” — Nate Genna, former Marine “I had butterflies in my stomach just seeing the place, the mountains around it,” said Frank Noe, a fire fighter from Stoughton, Mass. “I could see the strip from way ahead when we were comimg in.” For Noe, it brought back mem ories of his first arrival in Vietnam in November 1967 when he landed in Da Nang as a frightened 19-year-old kid. The revetments then were filled with U.S. jets that regularly bombed North Vietnam, and the air base rus tled with military activity. But this time, the 40-year-old Noe saw only the red noses of Vietnamese MiG fighters between the embankments, many of them rusting away. A warmer reception awaited them in Da Nang, which was once a part of South Vietnam. “There’s more of the relaxed at mosphere here than in the north,” said Mike Wallace, a 41-year-old farmer from Langdon, Kan. “Look at the reception,” Dalton said. “The people move a little bit brighter. Their faces are a little more open. They’re a lot less con strained and they know us, they know Americans. “They smile a little bit more than the people up north do, and they just accommodate Americans a lot more easily.” Genna said, “A lot look mys teriously familiar, but at the same time something isn’t the same. “I think what’s missing is my youth. You can’t go home, like the saying goes. I was trying not to think. I was just looking. I saw a place I saw a long time ago; it looks the same but it’s .not the same, be cause I’m not the same. I’m 22 years older.” In Hanoi, the former Marines were greeted with mostly stoic looks and an occasional forced smile from Vietnamese soldiers they once fought against. Gene Spanos, a 39-year-old police lieutenant from Rosemont, Ill., and the former Marines, all except Dal ton members of the 11th Marines, said they were concerned that land mines their engineer battalion had planted were still killing and wound ing civilians. “In wartime the Americans also sprayed chemicals,” one of the Viet namese officers said. They shook hands for photogra phers and television cameras in an embrace that was less than sponta neous. “You always had to carry a loaded rifle, a helmet and a flak jacket and anything could happen,” Genna said. “I always dreamed about return ing here just to take a nice slow re laxed walk without any fear, and I fi nally did it 21 years later.” Buddhist facilities expand to meet growing needs HOUSTON (AP) — At the front, the Rev. Hung-I Shih chants a San skrit prayer, facing a golden Buddha statue. Almost bowing in their seats, the worshipers respond in Chinese, echoing the monk’s low, resonant tones. The pace of the chant escalates. At the rear, an aging Chinese woman squeezes her eyes shut. She keeps chanting. Nearby a little girl in pigtails watches in wide-eyed wonder. She has not yet been schooled in the in tricacies of formal worship for the Texas Buddhist Association. Some Sundays, the association gathers at Bodhi Center, its educa tional wing located in a Bellaire shopping center. Other Sundays, services are at Buddha Light Temple on Land Road in southeast Houston. Either place, it is often standing- room only. To reduce crowding and better meet congregational needs, the asso ciation broke ground last month for a new Buddhist complex in south west Houston. That 2.5-acre site someday will be home to Jade Buddha Temple of America, a regional Buddhist center built with pagodas in Oriental style. A 7-foot jade Buddha from Burma will be the focal point of the worship area. The $ 1 million facility will include an education section, a meditation hall, research facilities, a retreat cen ter and quarters for overnight guests. “All who yearn to understand Buddhism will find a haven,” in the new complex, the association says in a description. “The devout shall find a sacred place to worship and express spiritu ality. In our hectic and demanding lives, we will find a quiet sanctum for divine contemplation.” For the Chinese-Americans who dominate the association’s mem bership, building the temple means coming of age as an American reli gious community. The association helps newcomers adjust to American ways. Founded in 1979, the association’s early members were graduate stu dents and scholars from the Univer sity of Houston. Gradually that nu cleus expanded. Today, members range from plumbers to physicians. While most are of Chinese de scent, other Asians also belong. And association leaders estimate white Americans comprise about 10 per cent of the membership. “Everyone has a different pur pose in being here,” said May C. Lu, a congregational leader. “Outside we may all look the same. But some are handymen. Some are professors. Probably the worship brings us all together from different (social) classes because the spirit of Buddhism is equality.” That spirit began with Siddhartha Gautama, the fifth century B.C. In dian philosopher known as Buddha. Also known as “Sakaymuni,” which stands for the Sakyan sage, he was born among the Sakya people in what is now Nepal. A prince reared in sheltered lux ury in a Hindu society, Buddha mar ried and had a son. Later, concerned about old age, disease and death, he retreated to the forest to become an ascetic. But he found no insight even in that path. Returning to regular life, Buddha ate normal food once again and real ized what is known as the “truth of the middle way,” a path between ex treme worldliness and asceticism. It emphasized self-discipline, self-re straint, cultivation of morality and spiritual development. From Buddha’s original teachings has come the diverse, vast body of experience, practice and philosophy known as Buddhism. It has been shaped and altered by various cul tures, including China, where Bud dhism filtered in during the first and second centuries. Well-known Buddhist strands to day include Theravadan, Mahaya- nan and Zen. All are represented in the United States, where Buddhism seems as pluralistic as Protestantism. Some Buddhists are working for greater dialogue and unity. But with so many different ethnic groups, im migrants and Western converts, in dividuality and decentralization are hallmarks of the estimated 5 million Buddhists in the United States. One international Buddhist fellowship lists 58 separate Buddhist organizations in America, while some Americans count several hun dred Buddhist fellowships. The Texas Association is of Ma- hayanan roots. Defined as “tradi tional” Buddhism by its followers, the “Mahayana” (or wide path) em phasizes that the way to enlighten ment is open to all. It developed in India shortly be fore the Christian era and now dom inates in nations north and east of India. Grasping the subtleties of even that single Buddhist strand can be difficult for Westerners schooled in Judeo-Christian tenets. “I think there are things which they would find radically different,” said John Whittlesey, a local Buddh ist who has studied the religion for three decades. “And they could find an obstacle in the ‘annata’ principle, which is the concept that the existence of a per manent self, soul or cental entity is a fiction. Also stressed is imperma nence and the ubiquity of suffering. “Perhaps one of the biggest dif ferences — this appeals to some Westerners — is there is no theology in terms of statements about the existence of God, the existence of an afterlife or an explanation of cre ation. These are foreign questions to Buddhism.” For Buddhists, the “way to salva tion is open to all and depends for its attainment neither on faith nor on divine grace but only on under standing ‘the way things really are,’ ” said Richard Gombrich in the intro duction to the book “The World of Buddhism.” “Such understanding, it says, can be achieved only after careful moral and psychological preparation. Salvation consists in a state of blissful calm so long as this life lasts and (there is) no rebirth when it comes to an end. This goal is some thing for individuals to aim at and reach.” In true Mahayanan Buddhist spirit, the Texas Buddhist Associa tion willingly opens its doors to out siders. 4 Tour of Duty gets new cast members LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kim Del aney had to read some history to get ready for her new role in the series “Tour of Duty,” which is set in a war she is too young to remember. Delaney joins the CBS series as it returns to the air on Tuesday night for its second season, this time with more emphasis on women in the war. She plays Alex Devlin, a combat correspondent for a wire service called American News International. “I had no real awareness of the war,” Delaney says. “The show’s set in 1968 and I was only 7 years old. I didn’t have much time to study be fore I got the job. But I’ve spent a lot of time since then reading and looking at documentaries, trying to get a feeling of the passion people felt then. It’s particularly hard to find something written by a woman.” In its first season last year, “Tour of Duty” focused on an Army pla toon assigned to combat duty in the late 1960s. This season, the time frame moves ahead slightly to 1968 and the platoon is reassigned to Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base in Saigon. Besides Delaney, Betsy Brantley and Dan Gauthier have also joined the cast. Brantley plays a civilian psy chologist working for the govern ment and Gauthier is a young heli copter pilot. The show’s returning stars are Terence Knox, Stephen Caffrey, Tony Becker, Stan Foster, Ramon Franco and Miguel A. Nu nez Jr. The changes in “Tour of Duty,” heretofore an all-male show that re volved around combat situations, undoubtedly reflect the success of ABC’s “China Beach.” That show, set at a hospital and rest and recre ation area, puts its emphasis on the women in Vietnam. Delaney says she is sometimes confused with Dana Delany, who stars as a nurse in “China Beach.” “My character has an office in Sai gon but she spends a lot of time in the field,” she says. “It’s a good role because I’m not with just one per son. I’m involved with all the people. Alex is innocent when she arrives. She hasn’t been corrupted by the world. She wants to get to the truth of each story, whatever it is, at any cost.” Alex Devlin also develops a love interest with Lt. Myron Goldman, the platoon leader played by Ste phen Caffrey. She’s also attracted to Lt. Johnny McKay, the helicopter pi lot played by Gauthier. Her role as a correspondent requires her to take frequent trips to combat zones in a helicopter. Delaney made her professional debut in the ABC soap opera “All My Children” in New York. She had a recurring role in NBC’s “L.A. Law” and earlier this year was in the NBC miniseries “Something Is Out There.” In the miniseries, she played the girlfriend of Joe Cortese, who is her boyfriend in real life. “I grew up in Philadelphia and went to all-girls Catholic schools,” she says. “I didn’t act in high school because I was very shy. I had four brothers and I probably spent more time at their school than mine. Actu ally, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. “My father came home from work one day and said how about court re porter? He wanted me to go to col lege, but he knew I was rebelling against more schooling. I studied court reporting some. I can’t imag ine doing that today.” Gibson deals with stardom LOS ANGELES (AP) — How does a young actor deal with sud denly being named an interna tional star and “the sexiest man alive”? “You deal with it by a trick of the mind,” said Mel Gibson. “You figure: Is it worrying me that much? Does anybody else give a damn as much as I do? So you de cide not to. It’s easy.” The Gibson method appears to be working. He seems unchanged from the time he first arrived here seven years ago after ap pearing as Mad Max in the Aus tralian movie, “The Road War rior.” He still displays a hint of shyness, contrasting with the self- assured roles he has played on the screen. The actor was here publicizing his latest Warner Bros, film, “Te quila Sunrise,” co-starring Kurt Russell, Michelle Pfeiffer and Raul Julia. Gibson’s last role cast him as a Los Angeles cop in “Le thal Weapon.” The new movie puts him on the other side of the law. “Things don’t quite match up, and that’s what appealed to me about the script,” Gibson said. “Here’s a man who has a very il licit lifestyle and has had an unsa vory career. Yet he always tells the truth and deals honorably with people. That makes an inter esting combination. “The script doesn’t deal with good and bad but shades of gray in-between. He’s retired (from drug-dealing). But nobody wants him to retire.” In “Tequila Sunrise,” Gibson is at odds with his high school buddy, Russell, a narcotics cop. Pfeiffer is the beauty caught be tween. The writer is Robert Towne, who wrote “Chinatown”; he also directed “Tequila.” “The script just lobbed into my mailbox one day,” Gibson said. “It was one of those scripts that you just kept turning the pages; you didn’t know why. It de manded a second read. I liked it.” Gibson sounds totally Ameri can in the movie. In conversation, the Australian creeps in. That’s only natural for a fellow who spent his first 12 years in Peeks- kill and Mount Vernon, N.Y. His mother was Australian, his father an American who decided to emi grate to Sydney with his 10 chil dren so the older sons would not be drafted during the Vietnam War. Gibson was going to be a chef or a journalist until his sister sub mitted an application at a drama institute for himat the University of New South Wales. He ap- eared in plays and a cheapie ick, “Summer City,” that at tracted director George Miller. The result was the star-making “Road Warrior.” Gibson filmed two sequels and also co-starred in the acclaimed World War I film, “Gallipoli,” and Peter Weir’s “The Year of Living Dangerously.” His Ameri can-made movies have been less successful: “The Bounty,” “The River,” “Mrs. Soffel.” Only “Le thal Weapon” has lighted up the box office.