Word: westwards
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Oops. Wrong boring American classic. But Longfellow's lines are appropriate nevertheless to a consideration of Michael Mann's ravishing realization of The Last of the Mohicans. From its first images of a deer hunt to its last shots of hero and heroine gazing westward toward mist-shrouded mountains, the film's sensuous evocations of an Arcadian wilderness draw us into a remote realm -- just as the need to penetrate the majesty and mystery of that landscape draws its characters irresistibly on to fates ennobling and tragic...
Gergiev is one of the few who read the signs of change early. Even before he got the Kirov's top job in May 1988, he was planning co-productions with European houses. That was the key: Russian arts had no choice but to look westward; as the rubles melted away and inflation sent costs soaring, survival depended on hard currency and touring. Both Russian and Western impresarios have sent a glut of performers on the road. Next year two groups currently calling themselves the Red Army Chorus will be in the U.S. Some tours have been so badly mishandled...
...experts, almost 300,000 Somali, Ethiopians, Sudanese and Ugandans have already reached Kenya; that number could double in a few months. One of the worst droughts in modern African history has added to the fear and hunger that warfare began. More than half the refugees are Somali, fleeing westward from continuous battles among their country's clans and subclans. From the north trek thousands of starving Ethiopians, and from the northwest Sudanese are fleeing from Khartoum's national army and the southern rebel forces it is pushing before...
Other states have identities. California has a metaphysic. Americans do not refer to the Pennsylvania Dream or the Missouri Dream. California has always been an immaterial, shimmering thing in the imagination, the golden exception, the California Dream. California is where the Europeans' westward trajectory ended. Americans become metaphysical about the place because when they run out of continent, they start to review the entire national experience and try to add up its meaning...
Columbus could be extremely petty, as when he claimed for himself the prize money he had promised to the first crewman to sight westward land. His reports to the crown were absurdly self-serving, especially those composed after the first voyage, which are a tissue of hustling lies about "incredible amounts" of gold and spices -- which, however, got him 17 ships for the second voyage. His fixations often skewed his charting, so that Columbus mistook islands for continental coasts and thus claimed to have found what...