Word: lumber
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...dollar has made U.S. exports artificially expensive to foreign buyers, and imports artificially cheap to American consumers. Quick example: loggers in the Pacific Northwest figure that the dollar's bloated exchange rate against its Canadian cousin (an American buck was worth $1.36 Canadian last week) gives Canadian lumber exported to the U.S. an automatic 30% price advantage, contributing to a $20 billion deficit in U.S. trade with Canada. With curiously bad timing considering the mood in Washington, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney last week proposed a new trade pact that would open the two countries still wider to each other...
...Chicago (a city that really symbolizes all metropolises) just before World War I, Jungle of Cities is about a duel between two men: Shlink (Nicholas Lawrence), the rich and heartless owner of a lumber mill and George Garga (Charles Puckette), the poor and lively library attendant. Spying the youthful fighting spirit in Garga at the play's beginning Shlink hands his business over to Garga, giving the poor agrarian boy a shot at material comfort and power. Garga nabs the offer while Shlink takes on the country boy's family obligations. The switch ultimately turns Garga's family relation...
...intend to make a social statement beyond the psychological wars going on between the characters. Namely, that the emerging modern city at the beginning of the 20th century brought some bad living conditions and, considering Brecht was a Marxist, an intensified capitalism that had extended not only into the lumber mills but also into people's sex lives. The proletarian hero George Garga's change into an authoritarian lumber owner also points to the submerged importance of the individual and the increased importance of the social role in which the individual acts. Garga and Shlink aren't such bad guys...
...mechanical at the start, Puckette plays in full-form after he's been tranformed into a mean-and-nasty lumber mill owner. Playing up the character's naivete and dislocation from the rest of the cast at the begining of the play would have made the metamorphosis more striking, however, Lawrence primes the hautiness and annoying overconfidence of Shlink well in the beginning and carries some of that luggage over to his new role without showing all of Shlink's new-found sensitivity...
Valenzuela feels more secure now that he is working for himself, in a shop that he built from scrap lumber. He got a permit to sell used tires from a local policeman who knows the Valenzuelas are illegal. The officer assured the family that they can report crimes without fear of exposure. Los Angeles Police Commander William Booth explains, "If someone is a victim of crime, we need to know about it, and it's not our policy to inquire about their status...