Word: halfing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Canada was faced with the swiftest demise of any government in nearly a century, and the country faced an electoral struggle for which no one was really prepared. On one side: the youthful, untested Clark Conservatives, who have suffered a nosedive in popularity in little more than half a year in office. On the other side: the experienced Trudeau Liberal Party, unaccustomed to opposition after more than a decade in power, grown listless and, now, even leaderless. Just four weeks ago, in fact, Trudeau had resigned as party leader and had not been replaced. It was possible that he might...
...splats against wheel wells. The transmission howls. Linda Ronstadt, a half-ton Chevy pickup with a ton of yellow birch cordwood aboard, has sunk to her rusty frame in a mushy patch of logging road. Linda has four-wheel drive and a lot of heart, but this is a Sargasso of mud, the kind that bogs the wood lot every year after the leafless forest trees stop drinking water and the October rains come. Linda's friend and owner disembarks to consider the problem...
...himself. He is spinning wheels, wasting time. Great deeds remain undone, great orthodontist bills are unpaid. Awash with self-doubt, he heaves the birch chunks out to lighten the truck, then jacks, wedges, winches and ponders. At last Linda groans free, and all that remains is to retrieve the half cord of jettisoned birch. There is never a thought of leaving the firewood behind: in darkest February, it will heat the woodsman's ten-room New Hampshire house for a week...
...both Townshend's parents were dance-band musicians. "My dad's a great player," Townshend says. "Not a cowboy, but a great player. My mom was a singer. She was a bit of a cowboy." The band found its own cowboy, or show boater, one night when a half-drunk rowdy took the stage, displaced the drummer and gave an uninvited audition that ended when he kicked over the drum kit. Keith Moon was a member of the band on the next date...
...also dosing himself for disaster, and he began to undermine the group. During an American tour in 1975, he failed to show up for a sold-out concert in Boston and, Daltrey says, "Pete never forgave him." Townshend and Daltrey had wrangled bitterly over Quadrophenia, and during the first half of the '70s each member of the band had spent as much time on his own solo projects as he had on band activities. Each put out at least one solo album. By 1976 the band had effectively stopped touring, and there were rumors that it had collapsed...