Word: watered
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...astronomer, Percival Lowell of Boston, who established an observatory in Arizona and dedicated it to the study of Mars. By 1908, influenced in part by optical illusions and wishful thinking, Lowell had counted and named hundreds of canals, which he believed were part of a large network conveying water from the polar ice caps to the parched cities of an arid and dying planet. Lowell's observations and musings, in turn, inspired British novelist H.G. Wells to write The War of the Worlds, a dramatic account of an invasion of the earth by octopus-like Martians. In 1938 a radio...
This is not to say that Carver is predictable. In almost every story, the given is a couple, either recently married or recently divorced, but against that given, Carver works a magic of great variation. He can hop from the first person wife ("So Much Water So Close To Home") to the first person husband ("Feathers") or the third person couple ("A Small, Good Thing"). There are blind men, peacocks, euthanasia, horny adolescents and psychopathic politicians...
...Uranium mining on the edge of the Grand Canyon National Park creates a threat that flash floods might wash radioactive debris into the park's water sources. Some 50,000 small plane and helicopter flights a year for tourists have turned the place into a flying circus, prompting federal authorities to consider limits on low-flying aircraft...
Another frequently voiced concern was the environment. Rafik Nishanov, the Uzbekistan party chief, complained bitterly about a disastrous drop in the water level of the inland Aral Sea, which has been depleted over the years by efforts to irrigate the arid republics of Central Asia. The chief of a new environmental protection committee, Fyodor Morgun, blamed the "ill-considered drive to build gigantic plants" for a Pandora's box of ecological problems, including air and water pollution...
Survivors told of having to choose between trying to survive the flames in hopes aid would come and plunging 150 feet into a blanket of burning oil that covered water cold enough to kill...