Word: scratch
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Stephen Goodwin's "Scratch" contrasts with the tightly drawn plot of "A Common Mistake." The story meanders from a description of a river, to a poker game, to a quarrel between two men over money, to violence over a pool game. Structurally, "Scratch" is a terrible story. And yet, Goodwin probably has more writing talent than any other contributor to the Lion Rampant. His story begins, The water was named in derision by a generation of luckless farmers: Burnt Crop Creek, because they had watched the stalks of cotton and even of corn wither in the sun, and heard...
...Pepper Coast. Liberians had to build their country from scratch. "We did not have the luck to be colonized," is a standard Liberian joke, and it is true that there were no imperial rulers to leave behind post offices and palaces, schools and hospitals. The population, which the government estimates at around 2,000,000, consists of a 99% tribal majority living in primitive isolation in the back country and a 1% governing minority called Americo-Liberians, descended from a group of freed U.S. slaves sent to the Pepper Coast of Africa with the backing of President James Monroe...
What's mainly wrong with Texas, though, is what's wrong with all Clan pictures: the attitude of the people on the screen. They constitute an ingroup, and they seem bored with the outside world. Sometimes, perish the thought, they even seem bored with each other. They scratch, they mumble, they hack around. They appear less concerned to entertain the public than to indulge their private fantasies. Maybe they ought to call their next picture...
Dobbs ran mostly against Kennedy, with some sideswipes at Johnson; his campaign signs urged voters to "scratch Lyndon's boy Jake." After Kennedy's assassination and Johnson's succession as President, the wind went completely out of Dobbs's sails. He lost to Pickle 27,000 to 16,000, proving only that in traditional Democratic territory like the Texas Tenth, a Democrat who has the backing of the first Texas Democratic President would have a tough time losing...
With peace, Guy and Cousins Alain and Elie set out to put a fresh face on the aged Grande Dame of Paris banks. To keep the books, the young trio brought in machines to replace the old men with scratch pens. They sought out new banking customers as their more conservative fathers never would have done, and launched new companies to share in Europe's postwar boom. When Guy & Co. formed a consortium to explore for oil in the Sahara, the Rothschild name added glamour to the venture, and the entire stock issue was snapped up within hours...