Word: lanka
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While he was researching and writing his third novel, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje was pretty much free of all expectations for the book except his own. Born in 1943 in Ceylon (which changed its name to Sri Lanka in 1972) and a longtime Canadian resident and citizen, Ondaatje enjoyed a modest following as a poet, filmmaker and educator. But when his novel appeared in 1992, all that comfortable obscurity came to an abrupt halt. The English Patient went on to win Britain's prestigious and commercially influential Booker Prize and was then turned into a 1996 Academy Award-winning...
...brief Author's Note, Ondaatje explains the historical background for his fictional events: "From the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, Sri Lanka was in a crisis that involved three essential groups: the government, the antigovernment insurgents in the south and the separatist guerrillas in the north. Both the insurgents and the separatists had declared war on the government. Eventually, in response, legal and illegal government squads were known to have been sent out to hunt down the separatists and the insurgents...
...Flowers That Bloom in the Spring refrain 11. Treat again, as leather 12. Sandler of Big Daddy 14. Gore was mistaken for Prince Charles on his show 16. Soccer standout Hamm 19. __ Lee Masters 20. U.N.-recognized group since 1974 21. Jockey's handful 23. Loop trains 24. __ Lanka 26. Yodeler's perch 27. 30-Across's "__ right-wing conspiracy" 28. "Early __ ads" (soft-money purchases) 29. Go hungry 30. Ex-candidate Forbes campaign manager Bill Dal __ 31. Made "it" 32. High-tech firm Lucent has agreed to buy 33. Execute perfectly 35. Candidate who dove into a mosh...
...generally content, generally at peace, generally optimistic, and with good reason. As a people, we are simply a lot more interesting and various. Our latest immigrants come from everywhere, with more Latino immigration than European, and new Americans popping up from places like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Korea, the South Pacific and Ghana. If I had been writing to you a hundred years ago, in 1900, my age group (55 to 64) would have represented 5% of the population. Today it accounts for 9%. In 1900 only 4% of the population was 65 and older. Now that number is 13%. Geographically...
...than in where it's been. His Alliance for Progress, Bill Clinton wrote recently in an editorial for the New York Times, is pledged to "elevate hope over fear and tomorrow over yesterday." Rousing words, but who's to say that tomorrow is better than yesterday, those in Sri Lanka or Peru might say, and why should we put hope (based on what might happen) over fear (based on what has palpably happened)? It isn't self-evident that mankind is really progressing, at a level deeper than machines, any more than it is that any of us is wiser...