It is widely believed that the   20   for the genocide came when a plane carrying the Hutu president Habyarimana was shot down by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front. But the actual root of the Hutu-Tutsi conflict was a tradition of racial hatred as old as the hills. 

　　The Tutsi had ruled over Rwanda since the fifteenth century, but the Hutu had always comprised a large majority (80-85%) of the population. The Hutu were generally considered peasants and were quite   21   compared to the Tutsi ruling class (the word Tutsi actually means “rich in cattle”). As the Tutsi continued to strengthen their power and authority, they distributed land to individuals they favored—usually other Tutsi—instead of allowing it to be passed from generation to generation as had been done for centuries. 

　　This caused immense   22   among the Hutu, as they were forced by the Tutsi to labor on  their own land in exchange for the right to inhabit it. Inevitably, a social revolution took place in 1959, and a Hutu was   23   as president, causing many Tutsi to flee the country. The tables had turned on the Tutsi. 

　　Still, after decades of Hutu rule, the Hutu and the Tutsi could not see eye to eye. It was agreed among many of the Hutu that the only way Rwanda could ever become a stable country would be if the Hutu drove out or killed all of the Tutsi people. The attack on President Habyarimana’s plane was the   24   that lit the gunpowder. The organization of the killings happened swiftly, as governmental forces sent radio broadcasts to Hutu citizens urging them to   25   their Tutsi neighbors. The Hutu succeeded in wiping out 75% of the Tutsi race, and the Rwandan genocide became known as one of mankind’s darkest moments. 

　　Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany in 1770. His father, Johann Beethoven, was also a musician and wanted his son to be a child prodigy.   26   

　　Johann’s resolution to make his son into a successful musician was so extreme that he would pull poor Ludwig out of bed in the middle of the night and force the young boy to practice piano until the early hours of the morning. 

　　At the age of 11, Ludwig received professional piano and composition training in Bonn under the royal court’s organist, and by the mid-1790s he had made a reputation for himself as a master pianist in Vienna, the musical capital of the age.   27   

　　A huge turning point in Beethoven’s life occurred in 1798, when his hearing started to become impaired.   28   This caused him to shun company and become depressed. He even contemplated suicide. 

　　Battling both depression and his loss of hearing, Beethoven continued to produce music with a special adaptation to his piano.   29   The music that he created during this period expressed heroism and struggle and went on to become some of his most famous compositions. 

　　 30   After the performance of his Ninth Symphony, he turned around to see the ecstatic applause of the audience but broke down in tears when he realized that he couldn’t hear them. 

　　 After a long illness, Beethoven died at the age of 56 on March 26, 1827. The true cause of his death was unknown for a long time, but later analysis of his hair and skeleton suggests that he was accidentally poisoned by his doctors, who prescribed excessive doses of lead-based medicine. Whatever the cause, the death of the great man shocked Vienna. Twenty thousand people attended his funeral procession, paying their respects to a true musical genius of their time. 

　　While the greater part of the average art connoisseur’s attention is given to the fine arts, the truly adventurous art lover is discovering the quaint appeal of folk art. In general, folk art is defined as art created by craftspeople and artisans opposed to those classically trained in the traditional disciplines of painting and sculpture. Although the range of folk art is a broad one, encompassing everything from the painting of hex signs on rural farmhouses to the carving of enormous figureheads for transatlantic vessels, the kind of folk art that is most readily identified with the northeastern coast of the United States is scrimshaw. 

　　Scrimshaw is a type of carving done on ivory or bone. The heyday of scrimshanders, as the scrimshaw artist is called, coincided with the peak period of whaling on the east coast, in the early 19th century. Scrimshanders were typically sailors on whaling ships who created their pieces during their moments of leisure, using the discarded whale teeth and bone left over after their whales were processed for artistic raw materials. For carving, they employed the sewing needles used to maintain and repair the sails. 

　　Scrimshaw requires a great deal of skill and patience on part of the scrimshander. First, the piece of ivory must be prepared or carved by careful sanding and polishing. The carving itself can be of two types: line-etch or stipple. The line-etch technique is the simplest and quickest method for engraving the piece of ivory, while the stipple technique requires considerably more time and effort. The advantage of the latter is that it permits much finer detail. After the design is carved into the ivory, inks are applied to the etching as a final step, producing an end-product that is an exquisite work of art, no less “fine” than any found in the world’s most well-known museums. 

　　Scrimshaw can be considered a folk art not only in its technique, but its choice of subject as well. The typical scrimshaw whale tooth portrays a scene from the hazardous life of these anonymous master craftsmen.