Word: rain
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last week's marathon of rain and mud and wind cost 15 lives and up to $2 billion in damage, as some of the country's richest farmlands turned to stew. In Monterey County particularly, Nature brought herself to ruin: winds wrecked the orchards; floods loosened the vines and dragged crops out of the fields, which were too wet for tractors to plant new crops. Bees stopped pollinating, leaving peach trees and cherry trees barren. Even the cows were troubled, growing stingy with milk when their feet were wet and their routines disrupted...
California's troubles are all entangled: lots of rain means lusher growth, which, if a dry season follows, means more tinder to burn. If the fires torch the hillsides, there's nothing left to hold the mountains together, so when the rains return, the mud slides are worse. And when earthquakes come, the spongy ground can turn to pudding, and a house quivering on top sinks to the bottom of the bowl...
These lives and deaths are ultimately linked in writer-director Milcho Manchevski's intricately structured Before the Rain, an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film. Anne and Aleksander are lovers--that is why her marriage is in trouble--while the refugee hiding in the monastery is the daughter of Aleksander's former lover. Even when the connections between characters are not that intimate, they sometimes know one another by sight, because commerce and communications keep shrinking the world. War zones nowadays have area codes, and the vision of a terrorist with a Kalashnikov in one hand and a cellular...
...sitcom, life is considerably more relaxed. In one recent show the characters are lounging around their neighborhood coffee bar, pondering one of those sophomoric questions that even most sophomores have outgrown: What would you do if you were omnipotent? (Says Phoebe, the spacey blond: End hunger, save the rain forests and get bigger boobs.) Later on, the show's three women spend most of an evening trying to catch a glimpse of George Stephanopoulos, who is supposedly eating pizza in an apartment across the street. By the end of the half hour, the whole gang is back together, playing--talk...
...maximum rain enjoyment wear Tevas, or another waterproof pair of shoes, and shorts--jeans stay wet forever, particularly when rolled up and stuffed in a backpack. Otherwise, relax, sink your toes into the mud and start singin' in the rain...