The Marlowsphere (#1)
We are experiencing an age of “internationalism.”
International events are affecting our lives every day. Today no nation is economically independent in the field of commerce. Communications will soon enable us to reach anyone on earth, at any place and at any time. Soon technology will make world travel a matter of a few hours. All in all, the world’s nations no longer exist as individual entities separated by geographical, communicatory, or commercial barriers.
Yet Man has not mastered the political and national boundaries he has created, although geographical boundaries are being traversed every day.
The United Nations serves as the latest effort of the world’s nations to realize international cooperation. Yet great gaps still exist among the nations of the world, just as there is an abyss between the Charter of the United Nations and the realities of world politics. As students of a world community we have the responsibility of learning as much as we can about a world experiencing international ties in all spheres of human activity.
What you have just read is a quote from an editorial I wrote for a short-lived magazine called World Student Magazine. This publication was an outgrowth of my involvement with the International Students Club at Hunter College (uptown), now called Herbert Lehman College. Our first issue was distributed in April 1965!
That’s right: 47 years ago.
My idea was to have students from around the world contribute articles with the long range goal of bringing students together on a global basis to (perhaps) foster greater world peace through information sharing.
Part of the impetus for this publication was my six-month sojourn at the United Nations. I was there (in low level administrative capacities) during the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis. My larger background includes family histories from Russia (Ukraine), Poland, Germany, and Britain. My mother was German (she survived the Holocaust), my father English. I was educated at the Lyceé Francais de Londres before we emigrated to the United States in 1953. Clearly, my background had the stamp of “internationalism” on it from the very beginning.
The major reason why World Student did not survive beyond four editions was simply that I was drafted into military service because of the Vietnam War after graduation. Always one to take matters into my own hands wherever possible, I enlisted in the United States Air Force instead, a four-year sojourn that took me Texas, Illinois, California, and the South Pacific (Guam) and back. For most of the time I served as a wing historian—an experience that greatly broadened my understanding of organizational communications, or should I say mis-communications. I also spent a lot of time with music, especially jazz. More on this in later blogs. Since completing military service in 1970, in addition to four more college degrees (thank you the GI Bill), I have travelled to the Middle East, parts of Europe, Canada, Brazil, and China (twice). This is quite apart from visiting almost half the states in the United States.
My world view, clearly, is, pardon the redundancy, a world view–a perspective that extends to a strong interest in science, technology, media & culture, and the character of the universe.
It is my intention to post weekly blogs in The Marlowsphere with commentaries on the world of music and aspects of media and culture. In future blogs I will also publish portions of the book on jazz in China I am working to complete by this summer.
I look forward to your responses.
Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
March 18, 2012
© Eugene Marlow 2012
Dr. Eugene Marlow at the Great Wall of China (2006)