Word: quietness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...populations ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 (anything smaller is a village, anything bigger a city), then spent several weeks in Wilmington--and discovered that cherished notions of small-town life are colliding with the reality of an America that's changing with dizzying speed, even in such quiet places off the beaten track...
...safe and had its values straight. But then last winter, two white supremacists, brothers named Chevie and Cheyne Kehoe, got into a shoot-out with police outside the Crispie Creme doughnut shop--right across the street from Ruth's new medical practice. A passerby was wounded. "You move to quiet little Wilmington," says Mike, "and the craziness follows right behind...
...magazine with a front-page picture and article appears one day, depicting John as a "portly Lutheran Lothario" who "tried to 'psychologically seduce'" women at the public radio station where he works. However, up to that point in the book, readers are lead to believe that John is kind, quiet, in love with his girlfriend Alida, and not coming close to stepping on anyone's toes along the way. This sudden, almost violent disclosure of persecution makes the reader stop and wonder what he or she has been missing--or what Keillor is intentionally excluding from his character sketches...
...some suspension of disbelief has to be employed on the reader's part as well. Why is such an incredible catch attracted to this quiet Midwestern boy? And why does she suddenly say yes, after so many enthusiastic no's? After reading the sweetly sentimental poem John wrote for their wedding, Alida falls into his arms, and he realizes "why men have written poems all these centuries--it is to impress a woman in hopes that she will sleep with you." It is as if Alida has suddenly thrown away her previous desires to live life fully as a single...
...Conservatives are usually quiet," said Noah Z. Seton '00, president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Alliance. "But the more acclimated people get to the idea of active conservatives, the more active conservatives they're going...