Word: sisyphean
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...teaching Americans how to eat Italian sometimes seems like a Sisyphean task. "I can't ever get over how difficult it is to develop knowledge about Italian food," she says. "You go to a Chinese restaurant, and people are eating with chopsticks. But give them a spoon with pasta, and they don't know how to roll it on the fork!" That's not all. "Why is pasta overcooked in America? Why is it oversauced? I get depressed." She regrets having put a cold-pasta recipe in her More Classic Italian Cookbook, which apparently sparked America's pasta-salad boom...
...basic requirement in this line of work is authority: moral certitude, calm omnicompetence in the face of murderous excess and, if you can manage it, a touch of mature irony about the Sisyphean nature of law enforcement and order restoration. Like that other great fantasy form, the evening news, shoot-to-thrill movies require the services of an anchorman, someone who can ground implausible events in an attractive, recognizable reality...
Treating crack addicts can be as Sisyphean a task as busting crack dealers. There are thousands of excellent treatment centers across the country, but like the nation's prisons they are filled beyond capacity. Administrators at J-CAP, the Queens program that treats Jeff Woodberry, interview 20 prospective clients for every one they have room to take in. Only the most seriously addicted are admitted. Even the graduates of the best programs have a 50% chance of relapse. Says Ray Diaz, director of youth treatment at the Promesa center in the Bronx: "They need out-programs, often for the rest...
...course in the psychology of women in 1981, separated from her Pakistani husband and, looking timidly through the help-wanteds, got her first job in ten years -- at the Mercer Children's Center. "This is my calling," she says during a break in the Itsy Bitsy Spider's Sisyphean labors. "This is my chance to grow...
Congress will stage its Sisyphean ordeal again this year. In May Republican Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming introduced a new version of his much debated Immigration Reform and Control Act, and the Senate held hearings on the bill last month. It is the third time in four years that Congress has considered Simpson's legislation. In 1984, with the cosponsorship of Democratic Congressman Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky, immigration reform passed both houses, only to expire in conference committee. This year Simpson is carrying on the legislative struggle without Mazzoli, who has declined to cosponsor the bill without support from...