Word: forte
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Under federal law, the Bureau of Reclamation must distribute Government power by a system of priorities, with publicly owned plants and cooperatives, like REA, the favored customers. Thus, South Dakota fears that Nebraska, a 100% public power state, will get the lion's share of Fort Randall's power. Nebraska, in turn, fears it may lose many of its best municipal customers who might buy direct from Randall...
...Fort Mill...
Young Lieut. Drogo is posted to the fort. Like any man in a lonely outpost, physical or spiritual, Drogo is awed by the terrible solitude, but strengthened by the thought that he is a dedicated sentinel. In weak moments he is appalled to think that he has renounced all the normal benefits and joys of life; in others, he feels so proud of his role as defender-of-the-faith that he scorns the city as a place of "streets in the rain . . . plaster statues . . . damp barracks, tuneless bells, tired and misshapen faces, endless afternoons, dirty dusty ceilings...
...what exactly, he asks himself, is he defending? What is his faith? He cannot say. Nor can any of the soldiers at the fort. Some of them are so disillusioned that they abandon the garrison at the first opportunity; many of them are duped into remaining against their will. All of them know that the fort's equipment is obsolete. But few of them worry. The invaders, say the skeptics, will come by a different route; probably they will not come at all. Only a handful of dedicated soldiers really believe in the threat of the North and yearn...
Dreams to Dust. Except for a couple of brief, unsatisfactory leaves, Lieut. Drogo stays at the fort until he is an old man. And when, at last, the "Tartars" suddenly advance upon the fort, Drogo is so decrepit that he is kicked out to make room for stronger men. Back in the city, utterly disillusioned by his wasted life, he is promptly attacked by a new enemy-death. Mustering his last reserves of discipline and courage, Drogo meets this fatal enemy with a brave smile. As he sees it, in his last moments, death only means that "The worst...