Word: rite
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Sometimes "progress" should be stopped dead in its tracks. Two years ago, my sleepy hometown of Chappaqua, New York was rudely awakened by the arrival of a Rite-Aid store in its downtown area. This is not such an unusual event; Rite-Aids, Blockbuster Videos, Staples and similar retail outlets are springing up in cities across America. But to a small suburban hamlet whose downtown district could easily fit inside the walls of Harvard Yard, the coming of such a superstore provided weeks of check-out counter chit-chat. We already had three drug stores within a mile...
...other three drug stores. And perhaps the good citizens of Chappaqua will be able to procure Sudafed at a discounted rate. But what's at stake is much more than Trojans and Pert Plus. The small town way of life, it seems, is rapidly disappearing. The clerks in Rite-Aid won't know my name and ask how school's going when I walk in. They won't extend me "credit" when I'm a dollar or two short. Stores like Rite-Aid probably won't have sidewalk sales during the Strawberry Festival or on Community Day. Will they permit...
...with the same endangered status afforded to other components of American multiculturalism. If we are not careful, gossipy barber shops and other Main Street institutions will find themselves relegated to historical theme parks. For now, only one of Chappaqua's original three drug stores remains open for business. And Rite-Aid thrives. Perhaps we can't fight this; "Gapification" might just be an inevitable stage in the development of capitalism. Maybe it's just a historical stepping stone on the way to something better; we'll just have to wait. In the meantime, I'm fresh out of Advil; maybe...
This is naturalism bent into ferocious misanthropy. The characters practice traditional English courtesy as if it is a vaguely remembered religious rite observed in the letter but not the spirit. And often they don't bother. Leigh's first TV film, the 1973 Hard Labour, has barely a kind word in its 73 minutes; even the nun to whom the saintly lead character offers charity is snarky and ungrateful...
Even so, the worst fear--the one that seeded a decade with despair, the foreboding sense that nothing could beat AIDS--has finally been exorcised. If any one person can be credited with having presided over that rite, it is Dr. David Ho of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York City. Starting in the early 1990s, he and others focused on the very first stages of HIV infection, hoping to learn what the body does right in fighting the virus and how to strengthen that response. What Ho and his colleagues have learned has fundamentally changed...