Word: ur
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...urge to find a nice, affordable house, something outside of town but not too far. In Crabgrass Frontier, the essential history of suburbanization, Kenneth T. Jackson quotes a letter to the King of Persia, inscribed on a clay tablet and dated 539 B.C., that describes the pleasures of the Ur-suburb. (Literally. It was in Ur.) "Our property...is so close to Babylon that we enjoy all the advantages of the city, and yet when we come home we are away from all the noise and dust...
...Ur shriveled. But the inclination to get out of town survived. Ancient Rome had its surrounding settlements. Chaucer mentions the 'burbs in The Canterbury Tales. All the same, it wasn't until the later 20th century that suburbia was imagined as the ideal human habitation, an arrangement of houses and lives so fundamental, it was taken for granted that the Flintstones lived there...
...recently in Baghdad to bemoan the "perverse" impact of the economic sanctions against Iraq. But Etchegaray--who is the Vatican's chief planner for the 2,000th-anniversary celebrations--was also laying groundwork for a papal visit. The thinking is that the Pope will visit biblical sites, including Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, in present-day Iraq. Other tantalizing events for 2000, in the talking stage, are a summit meeting for world Christian leaders and an interreligious gathering, Jews and Muslims included, on Egypt's Mount Sinai...
...recently in Baghdad to bemoan the "perverse" impact of the economic sanctions against Iraq. But Etchegaray -- who is the Vatican's chief planner for the 2,000th-anniversary celebrations -- was also laying groundwork for a papal visit. The thinking is that the pope will visit biblical sites, including Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, in present-day Iraq. Other tantalizing events for 2000, in the talking stage, are a summit meeting for world Christian leaders and an interreligious gathering, Jews and Muslims included, on Egypt's Mount Sinai...
...Badlands (1973). Terence Malick's teenagers-in-love-turn-killers-on-the-road movie, which inspired a thousand imitators. The unheralded gem of American cinema. Raging Bull (1980). The finest sports movie ever made, with grit courtesy of Marty. Citizen Kane (1941). Orson Welles' masterwork remains the ur-text of film schools worldwide because it blew wide open the envelope of cinematic possiblity. Mean Streets (1973). The gritty realism of Scorsese's breakthrough movie began the stylish exploration of the low-rent wiseguy that he completed in "Goodfellas." The Manchurian Candidate (1962). The finest American political film ever goes deep...