Word: codding
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...civilization and tincture its memory: Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, an image so raw and shocking, subsides at last into the ecology of memory where we also find thousands of other oddments from the time -- John John saluting at the funeral, Jack and Jackie on Cape Cod, who knows? -- bright shards that stimulate old feelings (ghost pangs, ghost tendernesses, wistfulness) but not thought really. The shocks turn into dreams. The memory of such pictures, flipped through like a disordered Rolodex, makes at last a cultural tapestry, an inventory of the kind that brothers and sisters and distant cousins...
Vision, delights to the eyes, the narcissism of seeing and being seen guides those who converge on Boston for the Head. People preen, primp, look, laugh and wave at old friends, newly discovered even if the name ("Cape Cod, right?") escapes. But not too self-conscious, now. Look as if you belong here. Smile...
Wilkinson, who has also written books about police work on Cape Cod and moonshine enforcement in North Carolina, finds and displays much genuine cause for outrage here, but he also brings back a richer, more complex story than he seems willing to acknowledge. Better pay and treatment from the growers might improve the cutters' lot, but nothing will ameliorate the reality of harvesting cane by hand. It is boring, backbreaking work, carried out in oppressive heat, surrounded by the dangers of poisonous snakes, fire ants and whirling, razor-sharp scythes. Some of those who suffer these miseries take pride...
...homeowners left a Fundamental Rule that their number in Cape Cod was not to be given to anyone: "not even the family," said the owner. Who am I to ask personal family questions...
...think the roses are the children they never had. Yet, I am still not sure whether the death of a fern constitutes an "emergency" worthy enough of contacting the owners in Cape Cod...