Word: grimness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...which makes it all the more of a jolt when you actually start to care about them. As with all Ishiguro's books, the main characters - a group of friends, led by Kathy H. and Tommy D. - remain outwardly calm, accepting their fates. Even when contemplating the grim end that being "special" has in store for them, they're laconic. "I made my decision, and once I'd made it, I never wavered," says Kathy matter-of-factly about taking the first step toward becoming a donor. The restrained, almost detached style, says the author, springs from his international roots...
...spent several eye-opening days with colleagues last July in a group of eight Kenyan villages known as the Sauri sublocation in the Siaya district of Nyanza province. We visited farms, clinics, hospitals and schools. We found a region beset by hunger, AIDS and malaria. The situation is grim, but salvageable...
When our village meeting got under way, I canvassed the group and got very perceptive accounts of the grim situation. Only two of the 200 farmers at the meeting reported using fertilizer at present. Around 25% are using improved fallows with nitrogen-fixing trees, a scientific farming approach developed and introduced into Sauri by the World Agroforestry Center. With this novel technique, villagers grow trees that naturally return nitrogen to the soil by converting it from the atmosphere, thus dramatically improving yields. The new method could be used throughout the village if more money were available for planting the trees...
...maxim Keefe repeatedly cites throughout the book—that there is an inverse relationship between how much actual secret information someone knows and how much they are willing to talk—the possibilities for any substantial exposé of programs behind this impenetrable veil of secrecy seem grim...
...Wynhausen is at her wry best recounting the exhausting and mind-numbing work at a rural egg-packing plant, where she contends with fast-moving eggs and machinery as if she were doing battle. In a "grim, rancorous atmosphere," she and her co-workers sort, stack and pack about 47,000 dozen eggs a day, in busy periods working 10 hours a day, six days a week. By the time she has paid for rent, food, petrol and newspapers, she has $A7 left for the week...