on ways to doc
Istllnatlon. Along the trail, I got to usually appear as white blanks on
"Well, Mister big-shot explorer, you've been around. Tell us what's going on," my neigh
bors challenged. Lacking answers, I remained dumb. They didn't want to hear another talk about dinosaurs and ducks that didn't include answers. I related this to my friend George. I refer to him as the "Sage on the Hudson" and rely
on his advice. He told me one thing is certain: Answers come out of good survey work, and few repairs can be effected without first taking inventory. What's needed, said George, is a new set of observations from the field, as well as a vital accounting process informed by the past and steeped in historical references. He cautioned me not to rely on popular culture for answers or, heaven forbid, solutions. Today, America seems to celebrate a kind of spontaneous combustion: One moment there's a magician onstage, several sound bites later, abracadabra, he's disappeared, and the media rarely lingers to investigate cause or effect. Soon after, a short item in the newspaper caught my eye. It was on page nine, buried
near the bottom. It quoted a U.N. report that predicted 2.S million people would die in 1993 because of war and famine in southern Sudan. The item ended by quoting a relief worker who disputed the U.N. esti-
