Word: maxed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...forest fires. Residents, tourists and area politicians have already sharply criticized the Park Service for waiting too long before moving to contain the latest blazes. "I question the wisdom of sticking to the policy in a year like this, with these severe drought and weather conditions," said Montana Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat. Wyoming Senator Malcolm Wallop, a Republican, agreed, adding his worry about the impact of the fires on the local economy. "We've had a catastrophe in our tourist industry," he said...
...1950s. After 20 years of depression and war, a future that promised a secure job, a steady mate and two children seemed more than enough. There were, of course, degrees of modest expectations. Maggie recalls the remarks of her childhood friend Serena, just before Serena married a boy named Max: "It's just time to marry, that's all . . . I'm so tired of dating! I'm so tired of keeping up a good front! I want to sit on the couch with a regular, normal husband and watch TV for a thousand years...
...fetches the old family Dodge from the body shop and immediately has a fender bender with a delivery truck. She had been distracted by the coming activities of the day: first, to drive with Ira 90 miles to Deer Lick, Pa., to attend the funeral of Serena's husband Max; second, and more important, to detour on the way home to try to persuade her estranged daughter-in-law Fiona to return to Baltimore with her baby...
Much of Breathing Lessons takes place while Ira and Maggie are in their car. Driving with one's spouse is, of course, a leading cause of marital tension, especially if one of the party has just banged up the conveyance. Max's funeral provides an opportunity for the class of '56 to indulge its nostalgia. Serena insists on showing her wedding movies. Snatches of Moonglow, I Almost Lost My Mind and Unchained Melody are recalled. Sugar, the aging class beauty, sings Que Sera, Sera during the service and wonders if it was in good taste...
Schavernoch's imaginative sets contribute greatly to the production's success. Like something out of George Miller's Mad Max movies, they depict an exhausted world where love can be found only among the ruins and the survivors get by as best they can. Hunding's hut is an underground shelter; Brunnhilde's rock, a barren stretch of moonscape, glowing radioactively. The Rhinemaidens disport themselves among the twisted remnants of what appears to be a power plant (shades of Chereau). It is a gloomy, godforsaken land that well suits the Schopenhauerian concept of pessimism with which Wagner suffused his text...