Word: dirt
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...Ruins are typically reserved for tourists or for nobody, either ancient, splendid, worthy of a postcard or uncelebrated, accidental, vacant. The concept of "ruins for the present" is not new--Robert Smithson made a career of dropping truckloads of dirt onto houses and the like. But for all the time we spend walking around in built spaces, we rarely get to see them once they've been abandoned. Emotionally, "Crawl Space" combines the curiosity and trepidation of some kid as he pokes around a dilapidated house with a deep sense that we've already been in this house forever...
Teary-eyed apologists seem to have overlooked what, to dispassionate observers, is a glaring fact: The place is a dump. The floor is filthy, the tables rickety, the ceiling water-stained, and the wallpaper blackened with decades of dirt. The owners, as many have noted, are quite cheery, but even the most radiant smiles could not cut through the store's grime...
...laugh--the "funny-bone gene," if you will. By breaking down the DNA of such comedic greats of the past as W.C. Fields, researchers are hoping that they can learn what it was in these classic funnymen that made them funny. While the research has yet to hit pay dirt, an unexpected side benefit has been the discovery of a new "alcoholism gene...
Before Lindner bought in, Chiquita Brands was the old United Fruit Co., a ruthless buccaneer that earned a justifiable reputation as a tyrant that bribed officials of foreign governments, used armed force to keep its workers in line and generally mistreated its thousands of dirt-poor laborers on impoverished Caribbean islands and Central American plantations. All of which helps explain why Chiquita was--and is--the world's dominant banana producer...
...watch the countryside pass, content. We are surprised, with them and most riders, that they do not want to know where we're from. Why are they not curious about us, the Americans here to save them? At their house, a bent-over salmon-colored ranch on a brown-dirt street, they ask us if we'd like to come in for a cold drink. We decline, must move. They scoot out. In the process, the daughter's shoe catches on the seat and loses its heel. She looks up, embarrassed, horrified. "New shoes too," says Mom. We all chuckle...