Notebook:

...Michael and I weathered these reactions with and over the years, we had some difficulty defining "large...

...A cello player defied the mayhem and the snipers by performThose means include the everyday civilities that make life ing daily in a public square...

...Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Sarajevo itself seemed such a place to me...

...The president's package as approved Historical memories and associations-ethnic cleansing and the by the House will require significant compromises to pass the Holocaust, for example-play an important part...

...To straighten out the economic affairs of the adulthood...

...taking the extra half-step to placate, However history finally weighs the morality of the war to accommodate, to negotiate the irritations, the confrontations, against Iraq, the liberation of the citizens of Kuwait City ought the injustices-small and large-of public life...

...In trying to decide, painfully, fallibly, whether any given the president was learning from his problems and felt he had a resort to armed force is morally prohibited or called for, we sift viable vision of where to lead the country...

...maintain- a city and a form of life that are being torn from their mooring, ing a flower garden in the park for the enjoyment of the from the civilities of everyday life by the demons of tribalism neighborhood...

...Basically, we wanted a large family, gular, "Why...

...New Jersey...

...civilians (last year in the walled city of Dubrovnik, this year in Sarajevo), perhaps my passion on this matter is part of a EDITOR'S NOTE: For over a year now, we have been printing deep-seated belief that cities and city dwellers are not only para column, "An Editor's Notebook," written and signed by a ticularly vulnerable to the kind of no-holds-barred warfare the member of the editorial staff...

...Four years of the same In addition to watching the Serbs' unrelenting attacks against would be a disaster...

...The next issue will be dated July 16...

...his remarks on gays in the military and on abortion fund- NOTEBOOK ing in a Rose Garden town meeting were more temperate and politically sensitive than in the recent past...

...Michael and I were Gail M. La i'lor is a free-lance writer from Wantage, unaware that there was a quota...

...In 1968 with a group of students from France, I stood on the spot where a Serb, 4: 18 June 1993 Commonweal Gavrilo Princip, shot Archduke Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, an act that precipitated World War I. The guide referred to Princip In keeping with Commonweal's usual schedule, only as a "patriot...

...But in 1968, we could reflect on shift the physical and spiritual landscape of my everyday life...

...Nurses and doctors work to stem possible among city dwellers...

...They do not, and in order to underline this day ways-ways that become available to a whole society when distinction, we are changing the title to "Notebook...

...Ditto American adventures in the Dominican Republic, have got to get on with it...

...many stares...

...To destroy Sarajevo, its citizens, and their way of life is to Sarajevo under siege shows how fragile our civilities are even destroy the very means upon which negotiation, accommoda- in the presence of great personal courage...

...But then, like a roller coaster plunging after a momentary climb, the president reversed himself on the Lani Guinier nomination-claiming, rightly, that some of her views on civil rights ran "completely counter to all my ideas about a single soci- Most of my adult life I have believed that the ety"-and voters in Texas sent a Republican to fill Treasury last "good" war was World War II, which, Secretary Lloyd Bentsen's Senate seat...

...dry feeling the world was once again safe from our pro- And there lies the real reason Michael and I had nine creative talents...

...should weigh on the consciences of all those who continue to Sarajevo reminds us that New York or Chicago or San argue against military intervention...

...Now in the process of being whit- to my hesitant agreement that the effort to liberate Kuwait was tled back, it will be lucky to raise a fraction of the intended rev- justified and to my stronger conviction that our failure to relieve enues and may turn people against energy conservation out of the Bosnians and the siege of their cities is not...

...A visit to that we had fulfilled our duty to God, country, and soci- the local McDonald's produced pointed inquiries and ety-at-large...

...8, some folks seemed numb while some consternation, but most people adopted the "they're others degenerated into subtle avoidance...

...The public remains supportive of Central America, and more recently Grenada and Panama...

...clearly did not meet the just-war criteria I assiduously studied If the Guinier affair, which cost him personally and political- as a junior in college (though our ethics professor very defily, helps Clinton finally to clarify his "center," it will be a les- nitely thought otherwise...

...Some readers have ceptance, albeit sometimes begrudging acceptance, of taken these columns to represent the editorial position of "strangers," of "others," are practiced in ordinary and everyCommonweal...

...And of course, to weigh heavily in passing judgment on our decision to go civic life includes the more elaborate political, social, and phys- to war...

...And though Senate...

...When our fourth pregnancy was announced, there was With the advent of No...

...Vietnam was the war of my young son well learned...

...Hope they are needed...

...be the loser...

...and warring factions of the former Yugoslavia...

...the children began to ask, "Why...

...The remark most frequently heard at this children-to make people happy...

...Three words, three versions of Princip's motives...

...referred to as an "assassin," and finally another student, of a very conservative cast, retold the tale using the word "terrorist...

...However, a very trying for a girl" attitude...

...carrying a pregnant woman down the fire stairs and nationalism...

...that's clear...

...quences...

...My conviction rests, in part, on the fact that both wars were All the more reason for Mr...

...Clinton has fumbled too plicated calculations about available means and likely conseoften, the media have been guilty of piling on...

...I am still not June 6 New York Times poll, 69 percent of those asked said that sure...

...5. At The why of it this time and on through the births of Nos...

...at the World Trade Center...

...and discuss all of those interpretations peacefully and with a (Certainly one of the most disturbing and contested points of sense of irony at our experience of "living history," all the while American policy remains the degree to which Iraqi civilians admiring the city's charm and its urbane attitude toward this were subjected to death and disease by the bombing of bridges, past...

...for example, the New Yorkers I the flow of blood, but they cannot stop the shells and the bulsee every day-the ones that don't make the headlines-hold- lets...

...giving way in pedestrian gridlock...

...A shaky four months is bad...

...Destroying cities of Sarajevo and other cities and towns in Bosnia-Herzegovina and city dwellers destroys all this...

...some chagrin, still somewhat confused as to why our famAfter our first three boys were born, people greeted us ily size was a matter of such pressing concern...

...Clinton to refocus his political (are) wars against civilians and more specifically against cities...

...Much in this process is unavoidably subjective (which The Clinton "vision" will be put to a rigorous test when the is true, of course, about most of life's important decisions...

...By now, with the appropriate "oohs" and "ahs" and seemed to feel the older children were aware of some attention...

...sheer antipathy toward bureaucratic knotmaking...

...If not, the American peo- the military plane, but launched and continued their aggression ple will eventually throw up their hands, Republicans will feel respectively against civilians in Kuwait City and in Bosnian no imperative to work with the president, and the country will cities, especially Sarajevo...

...That is what lated all the just-war principles so carefully laid out in that ethics Clinton was elected to do, and he and the Democratic Congress class...

...The continuing international failure to end the siege ical infrastructures that keep a city humming...

...ly for military purposes but with significant collateral damage...

...Under sniper fire, tions, and ultimately peace can be reached among the tribes the Sarajevo zoo keeper fed the animals until the last bear died...

...GAIL M. LAWLOR time was: "Now you've had your girl...

...It was in Sarajevo, I realize, that for the first time I woke electrical grids, and other infrastructure in Baghdad, seemingto the sound of the muezzin's call to morning prayer...

...Some were mute, and others uttered a sinI had nine children...

...Senate votes on the budget...

...acto alter the nation's consciousness about energy consumption tion in the Gulf and potential action in Bosnia, I have been reas well as to raise needed revenue, has become a nightmare of flecting about one of those more elusive elements that contributed loopholes and regulations...

...I keep asking myself do I see Bosnia so difperformance, is willing to give him a chance...

...and his appointment of David R. Gergen as White REFLECTIONS OF A CITY DWELLER House counsel indicated an effort to regroup and regain the center...

...The firebombing It is time for President Clinton to show that he still knows of Dresden and Tokyo and the dropping of the lessons of his first defeat in Arkansas, and to convince the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki very American people that he takes the art of governing seriously...

...Francisco could be in similar straits...

...When the information was repeated by one French one issue is published each month during July and student to a less attentive member of our group, Princip was August...

...6 and 7, friends, neighbors, and family expressed a mix of dismay, regret, IP eople have often asked why Michael and and antagonism...

...of course, didn't end well...

...The administration's vaunted BTU-energy tax, meant the just-war calculus may ultimately prove negative on U.S...

...child was born: people suddenly became hysterical with and presumably returned to their lawns, dishes, and laun- side-splitting laughter as they counted our progeny...

...The siege of Sarajevo re- MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS Bewilderment set in because we weren't at all sure that we were finished, so a somewhat longer time elapsed before announcing the fact that we were expecting No...

...priorities, to impose greater self-discipline, and to declare pre- The Iraqis and the Serbs did not primarily engage their foes on cisely where his "political center" lies...

...There may be a sense through many factors, from geopolitical considerations to comamong some voters that though Mr...

...According to a ferently...

...change, and despite its growing doubts about the president's So why...

...These are people who have lived for generations, sharing ing doors open...

...Commonweal 18 June 1993: 5...

...his budget proposal, a potential presidency-breaker if it failed, passed the House THE VIRTUES OF SARAJEVO by a whisker...

...By 1964, it was clear-to me anyway-that it viocountry will take courage, vision, and endurance...

...In fact, she was born, and these curious phenomenon developed when our ninth and final same people slapped us on the back with a "Good job...

...And before that, to some extent, Kuwait...

...We stu- minds me, a city dweller, how siege and snipers, how hauling dents were reminded that history is complex and not easily settled water and foraging for food, how death and privation would as to cause or consequence...

...Our purpose: to break from Serbs practice and to the terror that goes with it, but that cities the anonymity of editorial writing and permit the expression and city dwellers are the very places where tolerance and acof personal views on a variety of matters...