Word: seconds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Retired and a widower, he tries to recollect the odd story of Harry Fonstein, the nephew of his father's second wife. He has not seen Harry and his wife Sorella for 30 years, but he finds them disturbingly memorable. Harry had reached the U.S. through bizarre circumstances. Barely escaping his native Poland ahead of the Nazis, he finally fetched up in Rome, only to be arrested by Mussolini's police. Soon, he was approached by an Italian man and given instructions on how to walk out of jail, go to Genoa and get on a ship bound for freedom...
...Shanghai on China's eastern coast. He could have taken Russian in college but chose English because "there is no one to talk to in Russian and no one interested in learning it." Bi speaks English so well that only a careful listener might guess that it is his second language. He pays particular attention to his consonants, and the effect is riveting. It seems that everything he says has been carefully weighed and thought...
...guide and just about every other employed Chinese receives. Even so, for the next four years Bi must get by on $12 less each month. Five dollars is deducted automatically because the cash-starved government insists that state employees buy bonds. The other $7 represents a fine for the second child he and his wife had three years ago -- one child over Beijing's limit...
...Feng's second ace is electricity. Across China, electric power is in such short supply that even favored state-owned operations must routinely shut down for two or three days a week. Lun Feng beat the power problem with money. For about $3 million, the factory installed five auxiliary diesel generators. With eleven workers maintaining the equipment 24 hours a day, eight seconds is the longest Lun Feng has been without electric power...
...funny thing happening in the rural Northern California town of Laytonville (pop. 1,000) revolves around one of Dr. Seuss's fantasies, The Lorax. The book has been required reading for second-graders for two years, but recently Judith Bailey requested that the Laytonville Unified School District downgrade it to optional. In The Lorax, it seems, a villain fells a forest to make garments called thneeds, and Dr. Seuss urges, "Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack." Bailey's husband Bill, it turns out, is a logging-equipment wholesaler. After his son read the book, says Bill...