Word: reckonings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Gorbachev probably didn't reckon with this, and nor did Karl Marx. From its first days, Marxism-Leninism has been peculiarly blind to the potentiality of nationalism to trample like an enraged warthog through the neat corn rows of class theory and inevitable revolution. "National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily vanishing," wrote Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto of 1848, "((and)) the supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster." But the same year was the apogee of European nationalist uprisings in the 19th century...
...among them one cereal-box hero, one shining exception to the inevitability of decay: Nolan Ryan, the greatest strikeout pitcher in history, 16 days my senior and still blessed with the fearsome fast ball that brought him to the cusp of yet another no-hitter this spring. Ryan, I reckon, will be the last survivor in this private tontine, but that honor could also go to Tommy John, baseball's Old Man River. Lured out of retirement like a veteran CIA agent asked to perform a final mission, John, 45, has miraculously emerged as the anchor of the Yankee pitching...
...something like the Fallbrook ramp isn't right handy, is swimming pools: big, high-sided, kidney-shape swimming pools -- drained, naturally, to allow for the most radical coasting up and down the sloping concrete. Skaters aren't much on giving out awards, but there is one sure way to reckon the most bio (for bionic, meaning best) skater in the neighborhood: count the trespassing tickets received for skating empty pools. In the world of thrashers, that beats a blue ribbon every time...
...cheek to cheek when there was a slow number. Then there were Mexicans in wide- brim hats and shy girls with dark eyes and red lipstick. John Klingemann, the Brewster County deputy sheriff, leaned quietly, arms folded, against a parked pickup truck in the street near the frolicking dancers. "Reckon a third of the folks here are from across the river," he offered. "They'll all go home again afterwards...
...thereafter taught the unreality of all physical ills. Spiritualism was the rage of the 1850s, and a heroine of Henry James' The Bostonians went into mesmeric trances to gather recruits for the cause of feminism. Walt Whitman believed in transmigration of the soul -- "And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,/ (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)" -- and so did the practical-minded Thomas Alva Edison...