Word: townes
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...From the port of Mytilene, you can see the lights of the Turkish coastal town of Dikili twinkling on the horizon. Further north, where the strait between the two countries narrows to just three miles, traffickers zip immigrants across by Jet Ski. But the usual form of transport is a humble dinghy or decrepit motorboat crammed past capacity, and destined to be abandoned after the crossing - if the boat and its passengers make it. In October, in separate incidents, Greek and Turkish authorities recovered 18 bodies; the E.U. estimates that 3,000 or more people die annually attempting to slip...
...natural threats to our existence, from earthquakes to tornadoes to plagues. It's a mix of sobering facts enlivened by historical anecdotes. Take, for example, the Portuguese king who became morbidly afraid of buildings after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake or the poisonous red ants which descended on a Caribbean town during a 1902 volcanic eruption. More worrisome is the realization that mankind's existence is, according to the laws of probability, fleeting. Writes de Villiers: "The period of calm in which the human species was formed is only a brief drawing of the breath before the cosmic assault begins once...
...Klein's "Passing the Torch" was a tonic for me [Nov. 17]. During the Republican National Convention, when Rudy Giuliani sneered that he didn't even know what a community organizer is and Sarah Palin--with sarcasm that made my skin crawl--remarked that she guessed that a "small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," the insult was personal and deep. For the first time in my life, I donated financially to a political campaign--Obama's. My mother, a beloved longtime community organizer, has been gone for 10 years...
...that dates back to the days when Fort Bragg was a staging ground for Vietnam-bound troops. While the base was training draftees for combat, Fayetteville's sudden glut of strip clubs and bars seemed to be training them for a debauched night out in Saigon. People called the town Fayettenam, a slur that hasn't lost its sting. "I despise that term," Blackwell says. "Whoever says that needs to come see how much this town has changed...
...right. While there are still strip clubs and tattoo parlors on Bragg Boulevard, the town largely reflects the values of today's Army--professional, family-oriented. The community is bearing the hardships of war with admirable grace and a sense of shared sacrifice. "I get taken care of here better than other places," says Millie Ferris, 26, an expectant mother whose husband is in Iraq. She went to the baby shower with half a dozen other pregnant Army wives and says more of her friends are deciding to stay in Fayetteville when their husbands deploy instead of returning to their...