Cultural Relations

Fortified by muffins and coffee, the detectives gathered under the chandeliers in the hotel's Grand Ballroom. San Francisco Police Inspector Greg Ovanessian prepared to start his presentation. "Before I begin," he said. "Not all Gypsies or Rom are criminals." "Bull...!" yelled someone in the back. After the laughs died down, Ovanessian, a bespectacled, soft-spoken investigator, continued.

"Number fourteen, home " is an elaborate video requiem for the dead -- specifically for the great Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin but, by implication, for the entire network of cultural relations that made his work possible. Dutch artist and composer Guido van der Werve enacts a metaphoric lament for an era that has passed into history. At Marc Foxx Gallery, the 54-minute video screens every hour on the hour. In three movements and 12 acts, the artist performs a trans-European triathlon of swimming, bicycling and running from Warsaw, where Chopin grew up, to Paris,  where he died of respiratory disease at 39. Chopin was buried at Père Lachaise cemetery, but legend has it that his heart was smuggled out of France and interred at Warsaw's Holy Cross Church.

IN Switzerland, the land of watches, trains really do run like clockwork. "If I'm 30 seconds late, the train is gone," said Michelle Kranz, who commutes daily into Lucerne, where she works for the tourist board. Step across the border, and you're in a different universe. Italy has two rail schedules: the one printed in the brochure and another, flashing updates, on a board in the station. The first may be a fantasy; the second, reality.

When legendary Cuban group Los Van Van played Miami in October 1999, about 3,000 angry anti-Castro Cuban American exiles pelted fans with eggs, soda cans and rocks. In 2001, the Latin Grammy Awards did a last-minute shift from Miami to Los Angeles to avoid any similar uproar over Cuban nominees like Los Van Van, who've been supportive of Fidel Castro's communist government. The scene is likely to be far more tranquil when Los Van Van appear Thursday and Friday evening at the Conga Room in downtown L.A. ?

The boy's chest and back were covered with what looked like bruises, crimson slashes that were obvious signs of child abuse to the emergency room doctor. A team of detectives summoned to the San Gabriel Valley hospital handcuffed the parents and then called a county social worker to pick up the child. The parents, however, adamantly denied abusing their son and insisted they had merely administered an old Chinese folk remedy.

In an otherwise very readable "A Cultural Diamond in the Rough" (Aug. 2), Hector Tobar paints San Antonio as polarized racially and by class (based on race), missing out on the city's complexity. In fact, San Antonio appears as a model, not perfect but worthy of emulation, of race relations and cross-cultural integration to observant visitors; Anglos and Mexican Americans unconsciously hang around together, attending concerts and plays, playing sports. Intermarriage is commonplace, as reflected in the society page of the city's major daily.

Rap music is not polite. It's a noisy 'n' crude attack on mainstream sensibilities that has even liberal-minded adults who were raised on the rebellious, outlaw beat of Little Richard and the Rolling Stones asking themselves, "What happened to real music?"

"Number fourteen, home " is an elaborate video requiem for the dead -- specifically for the great Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin but, by implication, for the entire network of cultural relations that made his work possible. Dutch artist and composer Guido van der Werve enacts a metaphoric lament for an era that has passed into history. At Marc Foxx Gallery, the 54-minute video screens every hour on the hour. In three movements and 12 acts, the artist performs a trans-European triathlon of swimming, bicycling and running from Warsaw, where Chopin grew up, to Paris,  where he died of respiratory disease at 39. Chopin was buried at Père Lachaise cemetery, but legend has it that his heart was smuggled out of France and interred at Warsaw's Holy Cross Church.

When northern Germans answer the telephone or encounter a friend on the street, they say a simple guten tag--good day. But in the south, the salutation is gruess gott--greet God--an expression so common it no longer really alludes to religious worship but still puts off those unused to a custom dating to the Crusades.

When Michael Yoon, owner of the L. A. Slauson Swapmeet, saw members of the African-American community picketing his store and calling for a boycott of Korean-American merchants recently, his heart sank. The pain was not because of lost sales. The hurt came from the realization that his good intentions and personal efforts to establish positive relations with the community were not enough.

Fortified by muffins and coffee, the detectives gathered under the chandeliers in the hotel's Grand Ballroom. San Francisco Police Inspector Greg Ovanessian prepared to start his presentation. "Before I begin," he said. "Not all Gypsies or Rom are criminals." "Bull...!" yelled someone in the back. After the laughs died down, Ovanessian, a bespectacled, soft-spoken investigator, continued.

IN Switzerland, the land of watches, trains really do run like clockwork. "If I'm 30 seconds late, the train is gone," said Michelle Kranz, who commutes daily into Lucerne, where she works for the tourist board. Step across the border, and you're in a different universe. Italy has two rail schedules: the one printed in the brochure and another, flashing updates, on a board in the station. The first may be a fantasy; the second, reality.

While doctors acknowledge that communicating clearly with patients is a key factor in clinical decision-making, many resident physicians report being unprepared to adequately communicate with people who are culturally different from themselves. Residents -- up-and-coming doctors who treat tens of thousands of patients in the nation's teaching hospitals -- say they are not being adequately trained to cope with the increasingly diverse populations requiring medical treatment.

Hassan Lami was herding some sheep to a garbage-strewn city lot to graze when six masked men, using guns with silencers, shot him more than 30 times. As far as anyone can determine, the just-married 20-year-old was killed that July morning because he was a Shiite Muslim. One week later, another 20-year-old was gunned down, this time by men who didn't bother to wear masks.

It wasn't so long ago that aromatherapy was associated with extreme New Age practitioners, and "massage" conjured thoughts of illicit activity and visits from the vice squad. Today, aromatherapy, massage and a host of formerly esoteric body and skin care practices are so mainstream, it's hard to remember their beginnings.

As a crack interpreter for anti-terrorism investigators, "Wadad" fights the war of the words. She deciphers North African dialects, Middle Eastern accents and the French Arabic slang of jail yards and housing projects. She braves the crossfire during marathon interrogations of suspected terrorists who snarl at the presence of a female interpreter or recite Koranic verses.

A Russian rocket carrying a payload of religious icons, appeals for world peace and a stuffed toy dog took dreams of better business into orbit early today. The three-stage Soyuz rocket blasted off from the once-secret Plesetsk space center near the northern Russian port of Archangel. Mounted on the rocket is the Resurs 500 satellite and descent module, which will orbit Earth for about five days before splashing down in international waters about 200 miles off the coast of Washington state.

Shayla Mitchell is black. Her ethnic heritage is an international mix of Panamanian, Jamaican and African-American cultures, something her friends at Trabuco Hills High School learned only recently. An increased awareness among students of their peers' ethnic background has been one of the benefits of two new multicultural groups emerging at El Toro and Trabuco Hills high schools in the Saddleback Valley.

In Japan it's rude to remove splinters from your wooden chopsticks by rubbing them together. In Belgium, air kisses, a common greeting, come in threes, so you shouldn't turn away before the last is bestowed. And imagine the trouble you could get into in Bulgaria, where nodding your head up and down means no. The small gaffes travelers make often pass unnoticed -- or uncommented upon -- because people everywhere are increasingly aware of the strange habits of foreigners.

At first glance, few places on Earth seem like better candidates for a museum of tolerance than Israel, where Jews and Palestinians kill one another almost daily and mutual hatreds seem rooted in the stony soil. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is just one of the fault lines: secular Jews versus religious Jews, Israeli Arabs versus Israeli Jews.