Word: shepherded
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...Ledda and his singular determination to acquire ever-deepening levels of knowledge and understanding, despite some very formidable obstacles. The opening scene loses no time in explaining why the cards will be stacked against Gavino for the better part of his life. Storming into Gavino's grammar school classroom, shepherd's staff in hand, Efisio demands custody of his son. He tells Gavino's awestruck teacher that the boy is more urgently needed in the fields with the family flock than behind a desk with a book, summing up his view of education by declaring, "There's no such thing...
PADRE, PADRONE then moves to the next stage of the narrative, picking up Gavino's story in his twentieth year. As implausible as it may seem, the son apparently discovers for the first time the possibility of alternatives to his shepherd's lot when he hears a Strauss waltz coming from the accordion of two minstrels on their way to a local fair. Gavino's self-education begins with his mastery of the accordion and proceeds apace, although he does comply with his father's orders by going off to the mainland to join the army. In the army...
Many of the pleasures of Padre, Padrone come from the Tavianis' imaginative use of classic gimmicks to punctuate Gavino's story. One such ploy uses the author Ledda himself to introduce the movie--he hands a shepherd's staff to the actor portraying his father--and to deliver the epilogue to his own story. Another device comes when the young Gavino (Fabrizio Forte) curses a goat for repeatedly defecating into his milk pail--and the animal responds in a surly feminine voice...
Death and taxes may be two great inevitabilities, but they are usually thought to be mutually exclusive. Kenneth Swenka, 48, a farmer in North Liberty, Iowa, found otherwise after the death of his three-year-old German shepherd, Lobo. When Swenka went to pay his county property taxes, he learned that they included a $1 levy on Lobo. Swenka told the authorities that the dog was dead, but was informed that since the tax had already been officially registered, he would have to pay. He reluctantly agreed. Then he found out that by Iowa...
...such carrier is J. Ventura Garcia, 43, of Las Cruces, N. Mex., an assistant professor of speech at New Mexico State University. During a five-month period in 1975 he and his German shepherd, Harmony, were denied admission to three restaurants in the Southwest. Blind friends had mentioned similar incidents, Garcia says, "but in most cases, they simply accepted the embarrassment." After one particularly galling experience at Luby's cafeteria in El Paso, however, Garcia filed suit charging humiliation and denial of civil liberties...