Word: clan
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...also have political ties, like the 12-nation European Community. The contrasting trend is toward splitting up existing states into smaller ethnic nations, some of which then go on to divide amoeba-like into ever smaller pieces. Moldova conceivably might split in three: the Gagauz, a 150,000-member clan of Turkish Muslims, have proclaimed autonomy and appealed to Turkey for protection...
...EVERYONE STEALS A LITTLE" seems to be the mantra of the McCracken clan. Mother pilfers desk supplies from her office. Daughter shoplifts for "something to do" and to finance her adolescent drug taking. Brother-in- law is on the fiddle at work and with the tax office. Son-in-law traffics in "surplus" merchandise from the family factory. Even the clan's stern paterfamilias Jack, for all his talk of rectitude, is not above bribing a prying private investigator with a juicy no-bid security contract...
...Alice McDermott's lyrical novel At Weddings and Wakes, there is a joyous wedding celebration. The bride, an aging ex-nun, allows herself to be swirled by her staid groom, a mailman who unexpectedly proves a sure-footed dancer. Even Momma, the embittered matriarch of the Irish-American Towne clan, permits herself a few sentimental tears. But when the party ends, Momma reminds the Roman Catholic celebrators that they have been "dancing on graves." Four days later, there will be a fresh grave to dig -- that of May, the autumn bride -- and the family will sink back into the regret...
...news about the nation's deepest slump since World War II demonstrated one value of the House of Windsor today: as a distraction. At a time of anguish over Britain's national direction, a Hollywood-style cult of celebrity surrounding Queen Elizabeth II's offspring has endowed the royal clan with a more modern relevancy. The Queen's second son and his wayward wife provided everything in the way of gossip-page dramatics that their 1986 wedding seemed to herald. But in the end, the couple proved to be unsuitable for each other...
Significantly, country has achieved its new luster without abandoning its heritage: a heritage so stubbornly rooted in storytelling and simple melody that it has never quite left behind the farm in Poor Valley, Va., where a moody lumberman named A.P. Carter and his clan picked up guitars seven decades ago and invented the Carter Scratch. The new wave of country singers is dominated by artists who have succeeded largely on their own terms, consolidating an eclectic mix of contemporary sounds with old-fashioned catches in the throat, tinkles of the mandolin, sugary sobs and vertiginous swoops of pedal steel guitar...