Word: heart
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...confront the critic face to face. Kazin's thoughtful critiques continued in On Native Grounds, his seminal 1942 appraisal of American writers, and in countless other essays, reviews and memoirs dwelling in depth on New York, Judaism and above all literature, the three topics dearest to Kazin's heart...
...time thought would be with us for the duration. Besides the obvious changes like hair loss and wrinkling, the lungs' capacity declines; joints start to wear out; bones, especially in postmenopausal women and older men, lose density and weaken; cholesterol levels begin angling upward; the walls of the heart thicken, reducing its ability to pump blood by 25% over the life-span; the eyes' pupils diminish, making it harder to see in dim light. And more serious things can sneak up. Around age 50, polyps in the lower intestine, precursors to colorectal cancer--the second leading cause of cancer death...
...blood pressure measures unexpectedly low, 112/74, a long way from 140/90, where hypertension, the condition most responsible for the strokes that kill more than 160,000 Americans every year, begins. And my resting heart rate, 60 beats per min., has not changed since college days. I feel almost euphoric and briefly entertain the naive notion that perhaps the aging process has overlooked...
...smart writing and the unique vocal stylings of Nancy Cartwright--makes him both "real" and surreally supple. Cartoon figures can do more things, endure more knocks on the noggin, get away with more cool, naughty stuff than the rest of us who are animated only by a telltale heart. The face-offs of Bugs and Daffy in Chuck Jones' cartoons of the '50s involved many shotgun blasts and rearranged duckbills, but the humor and humiliation, the understanding of failure and resilience were instantly translatable to kids and adults alike. The injuries were fake. The suffering, pal, was genuine...
Springfield boasts a teeming gallery of low- and medium-lifes--surely the densest, funniest supporting cast since the '40s farces of Preston Sturges. The church, school and pub are places of refuge and anxiety. But home, 742 North Evergreen Terrace, is where the show's heart is, where everyone's despair is muted by familial love. Homer (whom the writers hold in a sort of amazed contempt) bumbles into some egregious fix. Marge fusses and copes. Lisa sublimates her rancor by playing her sax. And Bart is...Bart...