Yellow House Research Articles

Gaslamp Quarter Shines Again

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Information on Host CityFull AccessGaslamp Quarter Shines AgainJoan Arehart-TreichelJoan Arehart-TreichelSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:16 Feb 2007https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.42.4.0028aThe Gaslamp Quarter by night appeals especially to the young and hip.Courtesy of the Gaslamp Quarter AssociationAs the sun sinks behind the Pacific Ocean, gas lights in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter switch on, bathing majestic Victorian office buildings in a golden, mesmerizing glow.It may be time to “hang up your hat” as far as attending annual-meeting sessions goes and to head to one of San Diego's most historic and alluring districts.It all began in 1850 when a San Franciscan named William Heath Davis started developing land near Market Street in downtown San Diego. He had prefabricated houses delivered to San Diego by ship and settled in one himself.In 1867, a San Franciscan named Alonzo Horton arrived in San Diego. He built a wharf at the end of Fifth Avenue, near San Diego Bay, as well as a bank and public theater. He also purchased some 800 acres of land on the waterfront and then sold the property as commercial and residential lots. San Diego started to attract settlers from all over the country. Stalwart and elegant commercial buildings arose.However, San Diego's prosperity also attracted a less refined, rowdier crowd. Saloons with such sinister names as Old Tub of Blood and First and Last Chance sprang up in the area. So did gambling houses and bordellos. Probably the most infamous madam was feisty, redheaded Ida Bailey. In 1903, she opened a pale yellow house set behind a white picket fence at 530 Fourth Avenue, where she and her girls entertained men with fat wallets and lusty appetites.By 1913, influenced by a wave of citizen protests, prostitution had been outlawed in the quarter. Nonetheless, the area experienced more decades of decay, especially as San Diegans worked downtown but didn't stay past 5 in the evening. Criminals and the homeless populated the district.Finally, during the 1970s, San Diegans decided that downtown San Diego should be revitalized. And in a few short years it was transformed into the Gaslamp Quarter—a place that was beautiful, elegant, fun, and safe.“ Even the homeless were hired to walk security detail in the quarter,” one San Diegan proudly reported on her Web site in 2003.Today the quarter has more than 90 historic or architecturally notable buildings. Some have been converted into residences, with many affluent professionals choosing to make this area their home. Other buildings house art galleries, theaters, bars, coffee houses, restaurants, and shops. Most of the shops keep late hours so that shopping can be easily combined with other activities.For those interested in the Wild West, Gaslamp Books and Museum houses the largest collection of Wyatt Earp memorabilia available. Wyatt Earp, the gambler, sheriff, and boxing referee who populates many a Western legend, lived in San Diego in the 1880s. The museum also contains rare books and historic photos from San Diego's past.The focal point of the Gaslamp Quarter is William Heath Davis's house, located at 410 Island Avenue. There, visitors can tour the house and obtain information about the quarter's buildings, activities, and walking tours.The Gaslamp Quarter begins two blocks from the San Diego Convention Center. More information about the quarter is posted at<www.gaslamp.org>.▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Developing Children's Creativity and Participation Through a Community Development Project

This is a study of children's participation development which focused on Yellow House, a children's organisation in Klang Valley, Malaysia, established with a mission to develop children's creativity and participation. This organisation was established in conjunction with Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that stresses the right of the child to leisure, play and participation in cultural and artistic activities. The study investigated and analysed the activities and programmes organised by Yellow House, focusing on how children were given the opportunity to participate in the activities and programmes. This paper highlighted a proportion of the study that focused on activities carried out for children from residential cares and poor community areas in Klang Valley under the HE(althy)ARTS Programme from the year 2004 to 2005.

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

Amniogenesis in the African yellow bat, Scotophilus dinganii

The African yellow house bat, Scotophilus dinganii, was found to be seasonally monestrus, carrying a single foetus in each of the two uterine horns of the bicornuate uterus. Implantation was superficial, with amniogenesis initiated early during embryogenesis. The amnion in S. dinganii was a schizamnion, and it is deduced that its formation was preceded by cavitation of the inner cell mass, with formation of the definitive amniotic cavity, where the floor of the cavity eventually formed the embryonic disc and its roof the ectodermal part of the true or definitive amnion.

Amniogenesis in the African yellow bat, Scotophilus dinganii

The African yellow house bat, Scotophilus dinganii, was found to be seasonally monestrus, carrying a single foetus in each of the two uterine horns of the bicornuate uterus. Implantation was superficial, with amniogenesis initiated early during embryogenesis. The amnion in S. dinganii was a schizamnion, and it is deduced that its formation was preceded by cavitation of the inner cell mass, with formation of the definitive amniotic cavity, where the floor of the cavity eventually formed the embryonic disc and its roof the ectodermal part of the true or definitive amnion.

CRYPTIC SPECIES IN AN INSECTIVOROUS BAT, SCOTOPHILUS DINGANII

In recent years many cryptic bat species have been unmasked by differences in their echolocation calls. The yellow house bat (Scotophilus dinganii) is 1 of 3 species of Scotophilus currently described in southern Africa and is distinguished from the other 2 species by its size and yellow venter. Here we use genetic, morphological, and echolocation call data to show the existence of a cryptic species. We found that S. dinganii consists of 2 forms, one that uses a peak echolocation frequency of 44 kHz and the other a peak frequency of 33 kHz. Both forms have yellow venters. The 44-kHz phonic type is up to 15% smaller than the 33-kHz phonic type and differed genetically by an average cytochrome-b (Cytb) sequence divergence of 3.3%. Furthermore, combined phylogenetic analyses of Cytb and control region sequences indicate that the 2 phonic types are reciprocally monophyletic, suggesting that they are sibling species.

The Dark Flight Down (review)

Reviewed by: The Dark Flight Down Timnah Card Sedgwick, Marcus The Dark Flight Down. Lamb, 2005 [240p] Library ed. ISBN 0-385-90880-6$17.99 Trade ed. ISBN 0-385-74645-8$15.95 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7-10 Immediately after the cataclysmic death of the magician/scientist Valerian (in The Book of Dead Days, BCCB 12/04), his apprentice, Boy, is pressed into service with Valerian's rival, Kepler. Sent back to the Yellow House to recover Valerian's equipment, Boy is captured there by the Imperial Guard, who hustle him to the Emperor's Palace, where he is imprisoned by Maxim, the ambitious court doctor who has been charged with ensuring the Emperor's eternal life. Maxim knows that Valerian was also searching for the key to immortality, and he is certain Boy can help him find the prophetic book that Valerian used to guide his experiments. While Boy is questioned, Kepler, accompanied by Boy's girlfriend, Willow, gains employment with the Emperor and housing within the Palace in order to be closer to Boy. Unfortunately, the killing beast known as the Phantom also resides inside [End Page 114] the Palace, sallying forth at night to commit vicious, bloody murders. Caught between the senile whims of the Emperor, the political schemes of Kepler, and the devious machinations of Maxim, Boy and Willow still dream of escape and a life together. Though there's adventure aplenty here, Sedgwick's pacing in this sequel is slow, and the characterization is sometimes thin; the text's distancing of the Phantom's crimes ends up undermining as well as softening their impact. Boy and Willow nonetheless remain attractive players, and their triumph in spite of the odds will please their fans. Copyright © 2005 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

A tale of two ears.

A tale of two ears.

Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art

A leading scholar offers fresh insight into one of the key moments in modern art history During the fall of 1888, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin lived and worked together in Provence. There in a yellow house at Arles, they changed the course of modern art. The relationship between the two painters came at a critical point in each of their careers, and began as a plan for a new community of artist-brothers, who would flourish in a harmonious condition of mutual support. While the two painters never achieved the goal of brotherly harmony, they nonetheless found their creativity spurred by association. Until now, the Arles period has been interpreted in the light of the temperamental differences between the artists, culminating in the famous incident in which Van Gogh cut off part of his left ear lobe to spite Gauguin. In the shadow of the drama, their larger intellectual and theoretical debates at Arles have been neglected. Debora Silverman demonstrates here for the first time the great significance of their religious backgrounds and conflicts, with important new research on Van Gogh and Gauguin's respective Protestant and Catholic origins and formations, and fresh readings of the major pictures of the period. Both artists emerge in startling new ways, as the paintings they produced at Arles are reevaluated in the light of their divergent attempts to create a new sacred art.

Seasonal Variations of Saltation Activity on A High Plains Saline Playa: Yellow Lake, Texas

The Southern High Plains region of West Texas and eastern New Mexico is often described as a flat elevated tableland. Spaced across this vast and otherwise featureless plain are 21 large closed basins containing approximately 40 irregularly shaped saline playas. Yellow Lake, located on the Yellow House Ranch northwest of Lubbock, Texas, is among the largest of the High Plains saline playas. This paper represents the first report of a 4-yr. study of saltation activity at Yellow Lake. From December 30, 1998, to January 1, 2003, a fast-response piezoelectric saltation sensor was used to collect a continuous record of aeolian activity at a point on the playa surface. Since saltation activity is often associated with dust emissions, the saltation record also provides information regarding seasonal patterns of dust emissions from the Yellow House Basin. Results suggest that blowing events can occur at any time of the year when conditions are favorable; however, the necessary conditions are rarely satisfied. As a result, the saltation record is characterized by many hours of inactivity punctuated with brief periods of occasionally intense aeolian activity. From December 30, 1998, to January 1, 2003, saltation activity was detected for only 7% of the hours measured. Although there can be substantial deviations from one year to the next, it was found that saltation activity tends to peak during winter months when winds are moderately strong and precipitation is at a minimum. Hourly saltation activity values occasionally approached unity during intense winter blowing events, indicating nearly continuous sediment transport over a one-hour period. Saltation activity is at a minimum during summer months when winds are often weak and wet conditions prevail. Although winds are typically strongest during the spring season, the playa is relatively stable due to high threshold values produced by significant spring precipitation. This contrasts sharply with the surrounding cropland, which tends to be most active during the spring season.

Thinking about the Yellow House

For nine weeks in the fall and winter of 1888, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh lived and worked side by side in the French Provençal town of Arles. The culmination of this episode has become a central event in the mythic history of the modern artist: van Gogh's violent confrontation with Gauguin, and his subsequent self-mutilation and voluntary internment in a local asylum. Of all the world's events in the winter of 1888, perhaps none is better known. What is less well known is how this heady and mutually exhausting artistic cohabitation affected the output of both painters during and after their time together. Two recent and substantial studies address just this question: Debora Silverman's Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art, and Douglas Druick, Peter Kort Zegers, and Britt Salvesen's Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, published in conjunction with an exhibit of the same name at the Art Institute of Chicago. Both texts presume the importance of the collaboration, but understand it in quite different ways. The former sets out to question modernism as a secular movement in the arts, while the latter makes a more conventional case for mutual influence, assuming the participation of the artists in a general movement of late nineteenth-century European painting towards greater subjective expression.

Character and Narration in the Short Fiction of Saul Bellow (review)

Book Reviews 165 battle of making friends with her dead son's wife, and finds solace in comforting another survivor of the hurricane, a middle-aged woman in search of her own missing mother. The novel ends with Mrs. Bliss at peace: "Because everything else falls away. Family, friends, love fall away. Even madness stilled at last. Until all that's left is obligation." And all that's left for us, grateful readers of Stanley Elkin, are sixteen glorious books that have earned an eternal place in every personal and public library.1 William M. Robins, Ph.D. Director, Dunellen (New Jersey) Public Library Adjunct Professor, Hudson County Community College, Jersey City, NJ Character and Narration in the Short Fiction of Saul Bellow, by Marianne M. Friedrich. New York: Peter lang, 1995. 208 pp. $47.95. The short fiction of Saul Bellow has been pretty much overlooked by critics, and Marianne Friedrich attempts to fill part of the gap by analyzing seven of these works. She succeeds admirably with a readable, scholarly approach that could serve as a model for some authors. She does not attempt too much, she has excellent control of her material, and we close the book with a deeper understanding of Bellow. Dr. Friedrich writes of a "principle of variability," referring to "openness" or the elasticity of Bellow's esthetic concept. She tells us that "the goal of my study [is] to demonstrate in detail how a new evaluation of Bellow's short fiction may be achieved by persistently focusing on [his] general aspect of a correlation of character conception and its narrative representation." The first story examined is "Dora," and its links with Freud's famous hysteria patient by that name are made apparent. A dominant leitmotifof this monologue is unmarried versus married wrapped around threads of loneliness, work, alienation, responsibility, and death. Bellow leaves us with "a definite sense of the unknowable mystery of unconscious." 'This review was first published in The Chronicle (Middlesex-Dunellen, NJ), 14 September 1995. 166 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 "Looking for Mr. Green," Friedrich notes in agreement with other critics, indicates the central role in Bellow's development as an author concerned with the defense of the self. It is a story in which the metaphysician Grebe continuously seeks a mode of existence where being and seeming become identical. Friedrich agrees with Richard G. Stern that "Leaving the Yellow House" is about a female Henderson (referring to Bellow's famed novel) "on her last legs." Four major themes are observed in this tale: "death, identity, spiritual awakening and love." One ofBellow's best-known stories is next: "A Silver Dish." This work, about a son trying to become reconciled with his father on the old man's deathbed-the old man who committed a petty theft 40 years ago which thus alienated him from his son-contains a major theme in all of Bellow, says Friedrich, the father-son relationship. With the exception of Herzog, we read, this affiliation is basic to all of the Chicagoan's fiction. Friedrich examines three other stories. "What Kind of Day Did You Have?" (like"A Theft" more a novella than short story) is a slice of life, a "conspicuously realistic characterization ofaNew Yorker art critic." Artistic and fictional interpretations (by Bellow) are discussed beautifully by Friedrich. "Cousins," about a vision for "a world federation of cousins" (see Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slapstick for a similar idea) "transcends Hegel's insistence on the notion of a national state," among other things. "A Theft" is seen as a shift to romance, fairy tale, myth. Two disparate Western myths form the basis for character conception here: the medieval love myth of Tristan (resisting institutionalization through marriage) and that of Hera, with which it is contrasted. This six-part novella is given much detailed attention. The critic concludes that Bellow's "strategy of turning intellectual concepts or philosophical ideas into categories ofnarration" gives Bellow's work a unique and unmistakable stamp. When we finish this book, we are convinced by the author's unobtrusive erudition that what she has here written is insightful, helpful, and important. Harry James Cargas Webster University ...

Lucid Interval: Subjective Writing and Madness in History (review)

260 BOOK REVIEWS No such questions are raised in Literature and Aging about, for example, the kinds of gender and race relationships implied in the portraits of two elderly African-American women, Phoenix Jackson and Aunt Munsie, who are dignified but poverty-stricken, uncouth, and forgetful— the former drawn by a middle-class white woman (Welty) in "A Worn Path," the latter by a middle-class white male (Taylor), in "What You Hear from 'Em?" Similar portraits of elderly African-American women are drawn by African-American writers (Gwendolyn Brooks, in "The Bean Eaters"; Lucille Clifton, in "Miss Rosie"; Bambara, in "Maggie of the Green Bottles"; and Sterling Brown, in "Virginia Portrait"). The editors seem more balanced in their representations of elderly white women, since several are by white women similar in class to those they represent (Denise Levertov's poems "A Woman Alone" and "The 90th Year"; Amy Lowell's poem "A Lady"; and Olsen's story, "Tell Me a Riddle"). Except for Olsen, these writers picture the elderly woman as still longing for lost loves and beauty, as do two white males (Canin, in "We Are Nighttime Travelers," and Bellow, in "Leaving the Yellow House"), who supposedly know what it is like to be an elderly white woman. The editors do not raise questions about such portraits except indirectly through Le Guin's "The Space Crone." Thus, this anthology is troubling rather than satisfying because there are too many omissions of other significant voices in American culture and there is no interrogation of such crucial terms as variety, literature, aging, interpretation, and representation in the light of recent interdisciplinary discourse. —Carolyn H. Smith University of Florida George MacLennan, Lucid Interval: Subjective Writing and Madness in History . Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992. vii + 228 pp. Clothbound, $38.50. The interplay between madness and writing forms an eternally intriguing dimension of the history of consciousness. Though it has long attracted attention, however, scholarship on the subject has often been less than helpful. The extensive literature on madness and genius generated by fin-de-siècle psychiatrists from Lombroso onwards—works Uke Theophilus Bulkeley Hyslop's The Great Abnormals (1925)—now appears Book Reviews 261 to betray a voyeuristic fascination with freakishness and a barely concealed need to turn artists and intellectuals into pathological cases. Likewise , the school of psychoanalyzing dramatic and Uterary characters— putting Hamlet on the couch—has come to seem a sterile endeavor: as Duncan Salkeld's Madness and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) demonstrates, there are far more productive ways of analyzing the meanings of madness in Renaissance drama. Against the backdrop of such unsatisfactory approaches, often products of uncritical Freudianism, the attention recently given to the autobiographical writings of "mad people" is an auspicious sign. (In this review, mad people is to be understood as referring both to those labeled insane by society and by those identifying themselves as mentally disordered .) Starting with Dale Peterson's A Mad People's History of Madness (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), there have been various attempts by historians to analyze the apologiae pro vita sua of the insane. Literary critics too have risen to the challenge. Drawing upon new poststructuralist sensitivity to semiotics and to inner textual logic or paradox, Allan Ingram's The Madhouse of Language: Writing and Reading Madness in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1992) has examined the internal affinities between madness and bizarre discourse, both to probe the strategies of writers "out of their wits" and to explore the tropes by which poets and playwrights have identified lunacy through its stereotypical speech. In contradiction to Michel Foucault's notion that madness was "silenced" in the Age of Reason, scholars are now increasingly insisting on the continuing vitality of traditions, surviving from Renaissance philosophical philology, of privileging the utterances of the insane. Against this background, George MacLennan's study of the autobiographies of mad people from Thomas Hoccleve in fourteenthcentury England to Gérard de Nerval in mid-nineteenth-century France deserves a welcome. MacLennan is particularly concerned with, and sensitive to, self-representations of the insane. Often this takes the form of an assimilation (explicit...

Literature and Aging: An Anthology (review)

Book Reviews 257 Medicine in the English Renaissance—with Shakespeare functioning as a bibUographical afterthought. —Barbara J. Bono State University of New York at Buffalo and James J. Bono State University of New York at Buffalo Martin Kohn, Carol Donley, and Delese Wear, eds., Literature and Aging: An Anthology. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1992. xviii + 434 pp. Paperback, $29.00. Handbook and teaching guide available separately from the Center for Literature, Medicine and the Health Care Professions, Hiram, Ohio 44234. $12.50. According to their preface, the editors have selected works by primarily "distinguished" modern American writers representing "the American experience and vision of aging" (p. xiii). Most of the works are by well-known American writers whose selections are frequently anthologized, such as Eudora Welty ("A Worn Path"), Ernest Hemingway ("A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"), and Edward Albee (The Sandbox). Other works, by equally distinguished authors, have not been previously anthologized , as far as I know; for example, Bernard Malamud's "In Retirement " and Toni Cade Bambara's "Maggie of the Green Bottles." "Variety" is also one of the criteria by which the editors made their selection, with representative works by "persons of diverse color, ethnicity , and experience" (p. xiii). Yet of the sixty-four selections, only a handful are by African-Americans (Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Henry Dumas, and Alice Walker) and only one is by a Chinese-American (Amy Tan). Native Americans and ChÃ-canos are not well represented here. These omissions are curious, since even the Norton Anthology of American Literature, a standard teaching text, incorporates works about aging written by Native Americans and ChÃ-canos, including Leslie Marmon Silko's story ("Lullaby ") of the old Pueblo Chato, and Alberto Rios's verse portrait ("Advice to a First Cousin") of his Chicano grandmother. Also unaccountably absent are late-stage works by such writers as Robert Penn Warren, Richard Eberhart, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and Muriel Ru- 258 BOOK REVIEWS keyser. May Sarton's "On a Winter Night" appears, but she wrote this in her late forties; more meaningful would be poems or journal excerpts written when she was in her seventies and eighties. The editors also assert that the selections convey "the experience of aging, of being old," and they want "readers of this anthology to experience these fine works without the interference of editorial comment and interpretation" (p. xiii). These statements veil the interpretive interference the editors have already made in claiming that certain works illuminate aging. The editors nowhere offer their definition of what they mean by aging. Two definitions are implied, one in the way the anthology is divided according to what the editors see as four main concerns in aging: identity, love, family, community. Even if aging were defined as a time of these concerns—a definition contested by psychologists, sociologists , and literary theorists—how would the editors delimit the period before aging, since these concerns begin in childhood? A second definition of aging is impüed through the many works portraying characters who have had strokes or are suffering from cancer or some other debihty. This catastrophic concept of aging may be a response to contemporary warnings that too much focus on the healthy, active elderly person can create a false view of aging as "the golden years." The anthology would have benefitted from a more expUcit definition of aging, as well as from acknowledgment that any definition is partial and limited. The reader would have been better served had the selections been displayed in the Ught of other definitions. For example, the editors could have presented William Carlos Williams's "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," Ethan Canin's "We Are Nighttime Travelers," PhiUp Roth's "Epstein," and John Sayles's "DilUnger in Hollywood" in light of the definition of aging as a time of life review, suggested by the contemporary critical theorists Robert Butler and K. Warner Schaie. Even though Erik Erikson's late-stage conflicts between generativity and stagnation and between acceptance and despair seem enacted in Peter Taylor's "PorteCochere ," Tillie Olsen's "Tell Me a Riddle," Malamud's "Idiots First," and Saul Bellow's "Leaving the Yellow House," and...

Shaliko's "The Yellow House": Swimming Upstream Through the '80s: Notes on Script and Staging

Shaliko's "The Yellow House": Swimming Upstream Through the '80s: Notes on Script and Staging

Observations on the activity patterns of the lesser yellow house bat,Scotophilus viridis

The activity patterns of the lesser yellow house bat, Scotophilus viridis, were observed during December 1984. Whilst the activity patterns of the species as a whole were in agreement with published data, significant differences between the activity patterns of males and females were found. The majority of females were active between 19h00 and 21h00, whilst the activity of males peaked between 21h00 and 22h00.

Rodeo: Photography by Norman Mauskopf by Ben Maddow

Reviews 69 After Barbed Wire: Cowboys of Our Time. ByKurt Markus. (Pasadena, Cali­ fornia: Twelvetrees Press, 1985. 96 pages, $50.00.) One hundred years after L. A. Huffman first photographically captured the cowboy in Before Barbed Wire, it is appropriate that Kurt Markus has chosen to title his collection of cowboy photographs by paying homage to their originator. Markus’black and white photographs are simultaneously eloquent and austere. This is not, however, an update on modern ranching, but is more of a nostalgic regression back to the cowboys and cowboying in the 1880s as prac­ ticed today. The concentration of the subjects in the old-time buckaroo tradi­ tion is geographically narrow, somewhat romantic, but totally charming and compelling. The dirt and the stains on the clothing are organic. You’ll find no Conoco 10W-30 here; nor will you find neon, braided nylon reins or Fords pulling gooseneck trailers. And despite the title of the book, you’ll find little barbed wire. What you will find are slickfork saddles, chink chaps, unroached manes and dusty desert range. Unflinching and proud, here are cowboys either at work, or relaxed and unsmiling, challenging the photographer and his lens. At first glance After Barbed Wire is a collection of photographs without written copy; music without words. The words, if you need them or want them, are there, however. The viewer is free to provide the words or to have them choke in his throat like a sob over a way of life that isbeautiful and grim, proud and hard and although threatened with extinction, eternal. WALLACE D. McRAE Rocker Six Cattle Co., Forsyth, Montana Rodeo: Photography by Norman Mauskopf. Introduction by Ben Maddow. (Pasadena, California: Twelvetrees Press, 1985. 96 pages, $30.00.) The sport of rodeo attracts huge audiences annually, in part at least because it recreates the romance of the Old West for people today. This world of the rodeo cowboy is graphically and perceptively portrayed in the black and white photography of Norman Mauskopf. The book, in a format twelve inches wide and nine inches tall, quite appropriate for a coffee table collection, contains less text than is usually found in these books. Fortunately, the nearly seventy pictures, most covering an entire page, need little explanation. In fact, they express in stark terms the reality and the romance of professional cowboys and their environment. The volume contains the expected action shots of the major events— bull and bronc riding, roping, bulldogging, clowns at work, and even speciality acts. More important are emblems of this life—saddles, belt buckles, gloves, hats, female followers, and impromptu dressing rooms and sleeping quarters. Although no fear shows in the faces of the competitors, ample evidence of 70 Western American Literature pain appears in a bandaged arm, one cowboy down in the arena, and refer­ ence to another man killed in a bulldogging accident. Captions reveal the names of some men and identify locations in various parts of the American West, mostly Wyoming, Texas, Idaho, Colorado, Oregon, and California. A limited edition of five thousand copies in casebound covers, the book features inside the covers portraits of eight young bronc riders, most of them with their gear. Followers and scholars of the sport will find much to admire in this unusual book that documents the contemporary rodeo cowboy. LAWRENCE CLAYTON Hardin-Simmons University Plaintext: Essays. By Nancy Mairs. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986. 154 pages, $15.95.) Nancy Mairs is a well-known poet. Her book In All the Rooms of the Yellow House won a recent Western States Book Award for poetry. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Arizona, where she is a project director for the Southwest Institute for Research on Women. Plaintext is her first collection of essays. A feminist, Mairs is unafraid to confront the rough strife of her own life as a woman. These are personal essays. They discuss sexism, suicide attempts, rape, physical disability and the realities of motherhood. “I have tried to make everything clear, plain, to myself first and then to others who may then make the leap to making their own experiences plain to themselves,” she says. Her words sound...

The Yellow House

THE YELLOW HOUSE / Andrew Hudgins //TA7HY YELLOW?" I asked as my Uncle Billy walked out of the V V garage, carrying two cans of paint. He was wearing a pair of olive-green, fatigue-pant cut-offs, and he was covered from head to foot with flecks of dried-out white paint that had stuck to his sweatdrenched skin. Some of the flecks had settled in the tight brown curls of his hair and on his eyebrows, making him look older than forty-two. With a flat-bladed tool, I was scraping blistered and peeling white paint off the side of the house. We'd been at it since seven-thirty in the morning, and we were finally ready to start painting. "And what's wrong with yellow, I'd like to know?" "What's wrong with white? Everybody else's house is white." "That's why I got yellow," he said, grinning at me because he had, despite my arguments, convinced Mom to paint the house the color he wanted. For a moment I was afraid he was going to tousle my hair and I'd have to decide whether or not I was going to hit him. I rasped the scraper twice, hard, across a last section of wood, then stepped back, slapping tiny paint chips off the worn-out pair of seersucker pants I wore to work in. The flaked paint was crusty in my hair, and the muscles in my neck were bunched and swollen. At times during the day I'd been afraid I would start crying from exhaustion and humiliate myself. "Give that spot a few more licks, then grab a brush," he said. "I want to get some paint on this house before your mother calls us in for supper. Hell, boy, when I came home on leave I didn't know your mama was going to put me to work painting the house. If I had, I might wouldn't have come." I turned my back and forced the blade of the scraper through a few blisters I'd missed. It made a sound like heavy fabric being torn as the paint shattered into flakes and drifted away from the side of the house. "Oh, sweet hell," he said, his voice low and almost religious. His hands were resting on his hips and his mouth gaped half open as he stared at the house, which looked, after the scraping, like a huge white dog that lost its hair in clumps and was dying of mange. "What's the matter?" "That spot over yonder," he said, not pointing. "Where?" "Under the eaves, dammit!" We'd forgot to scrape the area under the apex of the eaves where the two sides of the roof met. "Hell," he said again and kicked the grass. "And if we missed this 60 · The Missouri Review side, you know goddamn well we missed the other side too. How could we be so stupidl" The muscles in his neck corded and stood out, then suddenly he lashed out and kicked the wall right beside me. He was still breathing hard—deep sucking blasts of air—when Mom opened the door on the other side of the house and called, "Billy? Warren? What was that noise? Are you okay?" "Sure, Bess," he called back. "Warren just tripped and fell against the house. But he's fine. Not even hurt." He gave me a look and sat down, his back against the house. "Can we borrow Mr. Hoskins' ladder?" I asked. "Earl's over to Thomaston, shingling a roof." "Well, why don't we leave this last little bit of scraping until tomorrow and start painting what we've already done?" Clenching his jaw, he glared at me as if it were the most stupid suggestion he'd ever heard. I shifted my weight back onto my heels in case he tried to slap me as he had the night before last. I'd been slouched in the easy chair after supper watching TV when Mom told me to wash the dishes. "I'll get them in a minute," I said. "Your mother told you to do the dishes," Billy said...

Phaeomelanin synthesis and obesity in mice. Interaction of the viable yellow (Avy) and sombre (eso) mutations.

Is abnormal regulation of phaeomelanin synthesis, which results in yellow coat color, inextricably linked to the development of obesity in viable yellow (Avy) house mice? To answer this question, black male mice of genotypes Avy/A eso/e+ and A/ae eso/e+ were produced from (DFT/Wf X C3H-1 vyfB/HeWf X SO/LeWf matings. The sombre (eso) mutation prevents phaeomelanin synthesis; therefore, all mice carrying this dominant allele are black regardless of the alleles present at the agouti locus. These black males were weighed weekly to 18 weeks of age. Simultaneously the agouti locus genotype of each male was determined by test matings to a/a e+/e+ females. The results of these test matings indicated that the two genotypes could be classified rather accurately by the intensity of pigmentation of the belly hair. Black Avy mice tended to have more dilute belly pigmentation that black A/ae mice. These gross observations were confirmed by microscopic examination of several hair types. Black Avy males reached a mean body weight of 44.2 +/- 0.6 g at 18 weeks, while black A males had a mean weight of 30.7 +/- 0.4 g at the same age. It is concluded that excessive weight gain resulting in obesity is induced by the Avy gene even when phaeomelanin synthesis is completely inhibited.