Word: sierras
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Such outright farce as the film contains is confined to a sort of decorative frieze of character actors surrounding the main action. The most effective isGregory Sierra as a husband continually cuckolded and perpetually seeking revenge on the prince. Sierra is usually assaulting the wrong man entirely, ending up with his schemes backfiring on him-a sort of Wile E. Coyote in human form. Most of this comedy turns out to be perfunctory, as is Director Quine's handling of the straight action scenes. There is an unnerving feeling that most of the performers would like to do more...
...alliances followed, named Oyster Shell and Conchshell, Catfish and Abalone. They formed loose ties with scientists unhappy with the handling of the country's nuclear-power program, such as the Cambridge-based Union of Concerned Scientists. The movement affected a wide coalition of national organizations: environmentalists like the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Mobilization for Survival, antiwar groups like the War Resisters League, consumer groups like Ralph Nader's Public Interest Research Group, and economic activists like Tom Hayden's Campaign for Economic Democracy and William Winpisinger's Machinist's Union. Says Friends...
...fate of the Donner Party is a macabre legend in the winning of the West. A group of families set out from Illinois for California in 1846. Trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains by an early snowfall, they built crude shelters of logs and hides. They ate their animals and their shoes. But the darkest art of the 47 survivors out of a party of 82 was to eat their own dead...
Cradled between the Sierra Nevada on the east and the Diablo Range on the west, California's San Joaquin Valley is a farmer's paradise spread across an earthly 8.5 million acres. Its fertile soil yields tomatoes, sugar beets, grapes, hay, cotton and, usually, heavenly revenues (1977 total: $4.76 billion). Yet most of the valley gets less than 10 in. of rainfall a year; farmers import nearly 60% of their water. Now the water that has helped create the paradise is threatening to ruin...
Environmentalists too are worried about the unknown, particularly about the effect of heavily saline discharges into inland California waters. Recently, they forced a 15-mile rerouting of the proposed viaduct at an extra cost of $60 million. Says the Sierra Club's Peter Zars: "Our primary concern has been the amount of residual fertilizers and pesticides that would be discharged." Yet almost everyone agrees something must be done to save the San Joaquin. Warns State Conservation Department Director Priscilla Grew: "If we want to have long-term agriculture in the valley, we have to address the problem...