John Chodes

Latest by John Chodes in Chronicles

• Vital Signs

  April 1990

  Grandma's Appointment in Samara

  When my grandmother was 89 she became a mild celebrity as a painter. Another Grandma Moses. Only better, at least I thought so. She began painting in her late 60's, after her husband died, to fill the void and loneliness.

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• Vital Signs

  October 1989

  The Poet as Cleaning Lady

  Kristine Thatcher's play "Niedecker", produced earlier this year by the Women's Project at the Apple Corps Theatre in New York, is about paradoxes. It is the story of the reclusive poet Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970).

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  March 1989

  Education for a Conquered Nation

  Declining test scores. Illiterate, spiritless, and passive graduates who have little motivation to find a job or succeed. Youngsters with no skills to compete in the marketplace. This is the tragic record of American public education, after billions of dollars and 127 years of direct federal funding.

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  February 1988

  Mutiny In Paradise

  In December 1787 His Majesty's armed transport Bounty crept out of Portsmouth harbor on a clandestine mission, heading for the vast and largely uncharted South Pacific. Tahiti, a tiny pinpoint of land in the Polynesian Islands, was the goal.

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