Word: vain
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Open-mike readings, at which anyone can get up and perform, are another popular audience booster in the clubs. Social issues, sexual and racial politics, and the general crassness of American culture are popular topics. "In the Persian Gulf bodies rained,/ Arab jets all worked in vain,/ The modern world is at the flood," declaims Joe Roarty at Chicago's Cafe Voltaire. Earnestness and energy also count for a lot. Donna Wozinsky, 36, a spunky special-education teacher from Queens, whose verse tends toward the excruciatingly personal ("I, the sperm bank of your soul . . .") attends at least three open-mike...
...certainly can't dance to it. Indeed, the piece emerges as a curious cross between Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius and the Who's Quadrophenia, but it lacks either the former's ecstatic fervor or the latter's nose-in-the-dirt realism. One waits in vain for the real McCartney to loosen his tie and do something a little rude, but the composer seems overwhelmed by the cassocks and surplices. His vital rock roots remain very much a band...
...casualties of mining cannot be measured by injuries alone. Generations of young men were lured from the classroom into the mines, many of them barely able to read or write. Communities staked everything on King Coal, neglecting to diversify. And still they cling to it, with vain hopes that the men will be called back to work. But tens of thousands of mining jobs have been lost as the process of extracting coal from Appalachia's deep seams has been transformed by cheaper, automated methods and by the development of surface mines in the Western states. Of the 20 most...
...several occasions Quasha's deals have been marked by apparent conflicts of interest. Last year he tried in vain to get Harken to buy a privately held refinery, Frontier Oil, in which he owned a sizable stake. In another instance Quasha sold Harken's Hawaiian retail unit to a company controlled by both his own family and the South African Ruperts. Harken booked an $8 million gain on the deal, only to write it all off later as a loss...
...most of their 17-year marriage, Ann and Fred Redman of Magnolia, Texas, struggled in vain to have children. "We tried everything from fertility treatments to laser surgery," recalls Ann. "Nothing worked." The avenue of adoption seemed blocked: Fred, 53, was considered too old for fatherhood by U.S. adoption agencies. Then the Redmans discovered Los Ninos International Adoption Center, a Houston-based, nonprofit organization that helps Americans adopt youngsters in Latin America. Within months the Redmans arrived in La Paz, Bolivia, where they were introduced to baby twin sisters and their Indian mother, who was offering the infants for adoption...