Word: smiley
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...believe." Another physician, whenever faced with an "emotional" female patient, would draw in his notes a stick figure with a lightning bolt going into its head and write down a nonsensical diagnosis of "zigzybiasis," signifying "This patient is crazy." A pediatrician habitually marked his notes with a smiley face when a young patient had a good-looking mother...
...into giving them better care. Smith suggests that women approach their gynecologists "the way you do car dealers and insurance salesmen." Ask questions, he says, and take notes. Your doctor may mark down such assertive action in his medical records. But as a measure of respect, it beats a smiley face every time...
Novelist Jane Smiley won the fiction award for A Thousand Acres, a heartrending Americanization of King Lear in which a prosperous Iowa farmer divides his land among three daughters. Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet by Lewis B. Puller Jr. was cited in the biography category. Puller, whose late father "Chesty" was America's most decorated Marine, lost both his legs while serving as a lieutenant in Vietnam. The son's memoir provides unsparing commentary on how the nation has survived the agonies and complexities of that bitter conflict...
...THOUSAND ACRES by Jane Smiley (Knopf; $23). Based on a family feud over inherited farmland in Iowa, this modern-day King Lear has an exhilarating sense of place and a sheer Americanness that give it its own soul and roots...
Though she has never lived on a working farm, Smiley, 42, has roots in rural country. She once asked her grandmother what it was like on the family's Idaho ranch; the old woman replied, "I don't remember -- I was too busy cooking." Smiley, who teaches at Iowa State University, is a believer in the radical agriculture movement. But she sees an inescapable link between the exploitation of land and that of women, and here she parts company with farm reformers like Wendell Berry as well as nostalgia buffs who yearn for the smaller-scaled, prechemical days...