Word: westing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...adult eyes, a bad influence on anybody who knew him as a teenager. He ran away from his working-class family, smoked dope and organized a high school SDS chapter. Lacking money for college, he spent two winters camping out and gathering shells for a living in Key West. He was arrested at the Mayday antiwar demonstrations in Washington in 1971, and spent three days locked up in the basement of the Department of Justice. Afterward he sought spiritual growth in a Sikh ashram in Massachusetts, where he remained for five years before revolting against the power-hungry leader...
...perfectly. He was always good at organizing things. He has always tried to live a moral life. "I don't see any divergence in my program," he says. In 1979 he borrowed $7,500, started rehabbing buildings in New England and prospered; luck or savvy got him into Key West before the Northeast real estate market went flat...
Singh can be disarmingly frank about his failings: he has dealt with the problem of homelessness in Key West by putting up gates to close off his streets at night. His complex includes more affordable housing than required, but up to half may go to friends and vacationers, rather than to year-round residents...
...papers and I think, 'I could do that deal. Grrrrr.' " He makes a low self-mocking growl. "I could make $50 million on that deal." The fingers of both hands wriggle in acquisitive frenzy. Sheer insatiability has convinced him that he must give up the business after Key West. "I'm successful only if I can walk away from it and deal with who I really am." He aims to retreat to his sprawling farm in Vermont, where he has built a private Stonehenge, a Jeffersonian library in the middle of the woods, a Japanese teahouse. Cross-cultural follies...
Singh's efforts have generally gone down well among the blithe spirits of Key West. Without Singh, the Truman Annex might have become "Meldorado," a pirate theme park. But if islanders appreciate having a developer as sensitive as Pritam Singh, they are also worried that he is exerting a more profound influence on the island, as an apostle of good taste in a place long known for exuberant tackiness...