Word: sproutings
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Barrels in the newly opened Habana Supermarket sprout stalks of green sugar cane; others are filled with hot peppers, avocados, rice and black beans. Spanish-language newspapers and magazines abound on the newsstands, and the air is pungent with the aroma of steaming black coffee. The sight of Cuban women in hip-hugging skirts and slacks is savored by Latin loungers on every streetcorner. Tickets for the bolita, an illegal lottery, are discreetly sold under the counter. The scene might well be Havana's Prado. But it is actually downtown Miami...
...edges by a saucer-rim of mountains, with few barriers against wind or sun. The flat landscape is banded by four distinct regions-the icy northern shelf of the tundra, where nothing grows except moss, lichen and dwarf shrub; the dense forest zone, or the taiga, where arctic birches sprout beside palm trees; the steppe, a black earth meadowland which, when properly farmed, is among the most productive soils in the world; and farthest south, the deserts. In this overwhelming setting, Russia made its way much as the U.S. did in its Far West. In each case there were nomadic...
...rate critic of literature (London's New Statesman) who can also write it, usually in a minor key. The people he writes of are, for the most part, determinedly average-tradesmen, housewives, laborers, accountants. But Pritchett has a gift for spotting the seeds of madness that threaten to sprout in the most prosaic minds. And he writes of his characters' inner cataclysms and defeats in a tone as dry and controlled as the featureless faces they present to the world...
...laws of natural selection as applied to U.S. automobile design make a fascinating Darwinian study: tailfins sprout timidly at first, grow into huge aerodynamic wonders and then recede; teeth and radiator ornaments come and go, sometimes leaving only vestigial traces; eyes, front and rear, grow from two to four, then slip back again to two; some rare species, such as the flat-backed, silver-mouth Edsel, vanish altogether. Thus, in the '50's, when cars became monstrous, chromium-plated caricatures, buyers reacted against this somewhat unnatural selection and rushed for the European small cars, so Detroit turned compact...
...works. The Corvette, the European-style sports car, again will get only the most minor grille changes. Pontiac will have a big car, the Grand Prix, with such pizazz optionals as four-speed manual transmission and tachometer. The compact Tempest, with a new convertible model in the works, will sprout two tiny ridges that are not quite tailfins, will change the traditional split-tear grille to a horizontal, continuous...