Word: sanding
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...historic gold-rush country of Northern California, Lovetta Pyle has struck a vein of woe. Shortly after moving to the town of Sutter Creek, she learned that the gray "sand" that whole neighborhoods sit on is actually mine tailings, the grit left over after gold has been extracted from the ground. In those tailings is a toxic byproduct of the mining process: arsenic, in concentrations up to 50 times higher than the level deemed safe by the government. Now Pyle finds that her house is virtually worthless; no one will buy it, and no bank will write a mortgage...
...valid stories of the burdens of regulations gone awry. But this year the Republican majority has filled the Capitol with stories of absurd excesses, many of them apocryphal. According to one bogus story, the Federal Government requires buckets to leak so children won't drown in them. Another says sand has been ruled a toxic substance. Nevertheless, myth and personal anecdote are powerful weapons...
...jumped to the ground, looked around and felt as if I had been propelled backward in time. Shimmering in the heat of the sun was an earth-and-wood fortress ringed by pillboxes. But for the greenness, A Shau had a French Foreign Legion quality, Beau Geste without the sand. I stood there asking myself the question I am sure Roman legionnaires must have asked in Gaul-What the hell am I doing here...
Capitol Hill is the last best public place in America for smokers, a refuge where lighting up is countenanced as both a venerable tradition and an up-to-the-minute political statement about the evils of overregulation. The marble halls are decorated with sand-filled brass or ceramic urn ashtrays. Twin glass ashtrays on pedestals flank the entrance to the Senate. Smoking has always been allowed on the Senate side of the Capitol, and members have always smoked behind the railing on the House floor. But this session, smokers light up without shame in hallways and other public haunts. Smoke...
...drawn a line in the sand. But of course that works only if the other side sees it as a line...