Word: oak
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Undeniably, the traditional translation by Constance Garnett (done in 1916) had a quality of oak paneling and stained-glass windows (not to say cobwebs), and Professor MacAndrew's new version is brisk and straightforward. A typical Garnett phrase like "bother the fellow" has become "the hell with him." And those elaborate patronymics have disappeared, so that Tatyana Pavlovna is now simply Mrs. Prutkov. But in his effort to be up-to-date, MacAndrew also afflicts us with such colloquialisms as "know-how" and "twerp." Mrs. Garnett's simple statement, "Don't be angry, Prince...
...book is a mosaic of fascinating vignettes, both ghastly and ridiculous. Railway workers were allowed to abandon the otherwise mandatory Heil Hitler arm salute because it was mistaken for a signal and caused accidents. Goethe's favorite oak tree near Weimar became the central point around which the Buchenwald extermination camp was built. In one village, a neighbor told a mother that the name of her missing soldier son had been read on a list of German P.O.W.s held by the Russians. Far from being grateful, the mother thereupon denounced her well-meaning informant to the authorities for listening...
...kibbutz in Israel? The geography might hint so: golden hills, oak trees and cypresses, pepper trees and eucalyptus. In fact, the setting is half a world away from the Galilean landscape it resembles-in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains of California, just 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Many of the devoted Sabbath worshipers are in fact ordinary young Jewish Americans, thoroughly the children of their secular culture. They come from homes where Hebrew is virtually unknown, where the Sabbath is observed only perfunctorily if at all, where a kosher kitchen is only a half-remembered custom sometimes...
...janitor nods half asleep on the front stairway, but jumps up when the door opens and starts vigorously buffing the oak handrail. This is the fifth time he has polished it this week...
Finding a remedy is complicated by the fact that the truffle is a mysterious fungus related to the mushroom, growing mostly on the roots of certain scrub oaks, usually five or six inches underground. Wet summers, a decline in oak planting and the unpredictable nature of the truffle itself have all contributed to its increasing scarcity...