Word: towns
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...with no singing, no dancing and a not-so-happy ending. And in last year's hit Billu, the shifting balance of artistic power wrought by Khan is on full display. Khan plays the eponymous barber whose world is upended when his childhood friend, a Bollywood superstar, comes to town. That star is played by none other than Shah Rukh Khan, who, in essence, is gently caricaturing his own persona. Irrfan is all praise for his co-star, who he says was "very sincere" in his acceptance and handling of the supporting role. "He wanted the film to be Billu...
...hostile to Democratic attempts to reregulate the economy. But these newcomers also understand that the health care status quo is unsustainable. They seek a middle way on abortion and gay rights. They want to protect the environment. And they eschew the inflammatory rhetoric of the tea parties and town halls. We don't even have a name for this kind of Republican. In the 1980s, we called them Gypsy Moths, after a pest prevalent in the Northeast. But this new strain is not found only in the Northeast, and it is not a pest. It represents the best home...
...Twain rehabilitated its image 40 years later, making it the destination of Huck and Jim's river voyage in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. At its 1920s peak, Cairo was a boomtown of 15,000 people. But as river trade declined, so did Cairo. In the 1960s and '70s, the town was engulfed in racial turmoil: white residents formed vigilante groups, while Cairo's black population waged a three-year boycott of businesses that refused to integrate. What's left, after decades of white flight and economic stagnation, is an expanse of abandoned buildings, bulldozed lots and forgotten history. Around...
That hasn't deterred Chris Johnston, 36, the proprietor of punk label Plan-it-X Records. A genial Indiana native with a blond widow's peak and a penchant for flannel shirts, Johnston was looking for a decrepit Midwestern river town to relocate his business to when he saw Cairo on the map. "I grew up by the Ohio River," he says. "The more I read about the town's history, the more intrigued I got." Like the urban homesteaders who have set up shop in recent years in economically depressed areas of Detroit and Pittsburgh, Pa., Johnston came...
...residents of Cairo are nonplussed by the newcomers, whose presence they view as voyeuristic - and temporary. Johnston and his friends aren't the first to come into town with grand dreams of urban revitalization. "People in Cairo are used to people coming to help and then leaving," says Donna Raynalds, director of SIDEZ, a southern Illinois economic-development nonprofit...