Word: towns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...bomb. Ever since, Los Alamos, like Bethlehem in Judea, has been a place difficult to visit in a neutral frame of mind. Los Alamos is part rich, overachieving exurb beset by worldly goods and ills familiar all over the U.S., but raised to the nth power; part lonely company town. But, above all, it is an intellectual hothouse not quite like any other...
...dropping acid. Yet even the performers were aghast at the drugs being passed around by the local students. The usual tales of suburban wife swapping, alcoholism, mental illness, divorce and suicide seem intensified by isolation. Laura Fermi, widow of Physicist Enrico Fermi, once described the genesis of the town's problems: "We were too many of a kind, too close to one another, too unavoidable even during relaxation hours...
Residents claim Los Alamos has the same joys and vicissitudes as any other smallish town. Among the obvious joys are splendid skiing, fishing, riding just minutes away. But to an outside visitor Los Alamos seems uneasy, an unnatural civic transplant of 19,500 souls, where a man is known, or unknown, by the sensitized badge he wears. Directly or indirectly, the Los Alamos Scientific Lab still employs everybody in town...
...them, noted that "almost everything in the place was gold: the ashtray that you didn't dare dirty, the box inlaid with emeralds, the knickknacks covered with rubies and sapphires." The ruler's sisters also basked in opulence. Princess Ashraf Pahlavi owns two town houses and a lavish triplex coop apartment in Manhattan. Princess Shams is said to have bought a seaside showplace in Acapulco and to have once planned a gold-domed palace overlooking Beverly Hills, Calif...
...formerly the Phnom, temporary home of teams from CARE, OXFAM and UNESCO. The unused swimming pool is filled with dirty water, prompting speculation that it has not been changed since the days of Lon Nol. It was never changed then either. The hotel bar, the only one functioning in town, can occasionally come up with a bottle of "33" beer imported from Viet Nam. The menu of the Samarki's dining room is limited to watery vegetable soup, chicken and rice. As a waitress admitted: "To tell you the truth, there is nothing, monsieur...