Word: cements
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...schematic drawings in real life form a confusing jumble, one in which it's hard to tell where the order is. The red brick, while offset by inset balconies and windows, is still massive and intimidating. The pedestrian areas are claustrophobic, their trees in neat rows or sunk in cement, quite unlikely to be the site of casual gatherings. The river is nearby, but so is the noisy traffic on Soldiers Field Road, Western Ave. and the Mass Pike. The complex's curious siting isolates it from most of the surrounding area, so that if you wanted to buy something...
...black townships of Highfield and Harare outside Salisbury, the tin-roofed, cement-floored cinder-block houses are packed six to the acre. Blacks are not allowed to own their own homes. Instead, they must rent them from the Salisbury city council. Only the main streets are paved and lighted, although most homes now have electricity and running water. The schools are segregated and definitely unequal. The government spent $56 per black pupil last year, $494 for every white pupil. "We don't want to drive the Europeans out," says a black bricklayer who lives with nine relatives...
...bludgeoned the boys after they went to bed, since all of them were still wearing their pajamas when they were found. The mother and grandmother, who had on daytime clothes, were apparently attacked before retiring. The killer carried out the five bodies at night, lugging them over the 13 cement slabs that form a stepping-stone walk to the driveway, and presumably throwing them into the family's Chevrolet Malibu wagon, which has still not been found. The drive to the North Carolina grave site must have taken five hours...
...along with generators, electric fly catchers, Xerox copiers and even "Porta Potti" toilets. By September prefabricated concrete modules will be in place. Sand is even being shipped into the Sinai in a coals-to-Newcastle operation; the local sand is so salt-saturated that it is useless for cement mixing...
Cabrera's pessimism and deadpan ironic tone cement these vignettes into a book. Whether he is describing some feat of unbelievable bravery, such as peasants armed only with machetes attacking a Spanish cavalry unit, or some remarkable complacency or quite ordinary cowardice, he always deflates heroic claims that men control their destinies. Battles are planned with elaborate strategy and won by blind chance. So many of these images are both horrible and accidentally funny that they finally detach the reader from any feeling but irony...