Word: wheats
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...WHEAT THAT SPRINGETH GREEN by J.F. Powers (Knopf; $18.95). Father Joe Hackett, assigned in the late 1960s to a comfortable suburban parish, struggles to keep his mind on eternity while coping with the nigglings of bureaucracy...
Years passed, and it began to look as if there might not be any novel at all. Powers published another story collection in 1975, Look How the Fish Live, but after that came only silence. Now, at 71, he has produced Wheat That Springeth Green, and, praise be, he has made a liar of himself. There is a priest in the book. Wheat, in fact, is devoted entirely to Father Joe Hackett, who in the late 1960s arrives as the rector of the comfortable suburban parish of SS. Francis and Clare. And once again, the central dilemma is that however...
...Wheat has a few vivid set pieces, like Joe's precocious sexual initiation at 15, but no dramatic confrontations or full-orchestra effects. Instead, Powers works through a series of small, sharply observed moments. Joe gradually opens up to his curate, forging a paternal relationship that is a form of love. But as his emotions soften, his principles harden. Implicitly, he encourages an antiwar draft dodger, the son of a jingoistic local columnist. "I have to follow my conscience, informed or not, and you do," Joe tells the boy. "That, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is the mind...
...grim. But when an updated outlook was released last week, the figures were even worse. The Government forecast that the year's corn harvest will reach only 4.48 billion bu., down 37% from last year. A month ago, the decline was pegged at 26%. The estimate of the wheat harvest, down 13% for the year, is virtually unchanged from July, but the soybean crop is looking far more stunted than it did a month ago. Production may total just 1.47 billion bu., off 23% from last year. The Government had previously expected a 13% shortfall...
...drought-weary farmers in the West, hot weather and high winds have brought another threat to this year's dwindling crop. Hordes of Russian wheat aphids, which thrive on dry wheat and barley fields, are rampaging through 15 Western states, from California and Arizona to Montana. The tiny stalk suckers (size: 0.1 in.) have nearly wiped out harvests in some fields. The bugs are natives of the Soviet Union, Iran and Afghanistan, but were transplanted to Mexico by unknown means in 1980 and have been moving north ever since. Last year the insects caused $36 million in damage across...