Word: condor
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...only unhappiness among all these Edenic ways stems from the fact that her father is a member of the Condor people, a fierce warrior tribe to the north. His name is Terter Abhao, which translates into Kesh as Kills. When North Owl is nine, he reappears and spends the autumn and winter. The young girl watches his behavior toward the soldiers under his command. He tells her how to give them an order. She does so, and they instantly obey: "So I first felt the great energy of the power that originates in imbalance...
This knowledge guarantees that she will some day journey with her father to observe Condor society firsthand. But once she makes the trip, she is sorry. The Condors are everything that the Kesh are not: violent, destructive, acquisitive, caste ridden, competitive. "Everything they did," North Owl notes, "was war." High-born women are forced into lives of idle seclusion. All other females, along with foreigners and animals, are routinely abused as hontik. Condor warriors worship the god One and kill for his glory. North Owl concludes that her hosts are "a sick people destroying themselves" and yearns...
Prophetic literature is intrinsically political, since it is either a reaction against or an extension of known conditions of life. And Le Guin, who has moved gradually from straight science fiction toward visionary narrative, makes no secret of her polemical intentions. The Condor people manifest all the darker impulses of contemporary superpower states. The Kesh are what humans could become if they would stop trying to impose their wills and designs on the earth. The enormous swatches of pseudoanthropological material in Always Coming Home amount to a blueprint for an allegedly better world...
...most famous architecture in North Beach belongs to the Condor Club's Carol Doda, who began baring it 20 years ago just before the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, and will provide affirmative action for the Democrats four times a night next week. It is not an anniversary that many aging strippers would want to make a point of celebrating, but Doda says coyly, "I agree with Einstein, who said time is kind of a relative thing." Perhaps, and as long as the famous silicon implants that swelled her bustline to 44 inches remain a permanent thing...
...almost, but not quite, a perfect performance. As the early morning sun glinted off its wings, Challenger came swooping out of the skies like a giant California condor and touched softly down right on the runway's center line. "Great-looking landing," said Mission Control against a background of cheers and applause. About the only thing that marred the conclusion of the seventh shuttle mission, highlighted by the presence of the first American woman in space, was some damage to the shuttle's brakes and protective tiles. Yet Challenger's flight ended on a slightly disappointing note...