Word: woodenness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Introduced at the end of a decade of economic hardship, TV was touted early on as a creator of jobs as much as a purveyor of entertainment. The centerpiece of the Smithsonian's exhibit is a display of old TV sets -- clunky wooden boxes with tiny, anemic-looking screens. But perhaps more significant is a selection of print advertisements that tried to sell Americans on this strange new gizmo...
...astonished cabbie ("White people!" his face says) and go back through Sugar Hill to 145th Street and Broadway. The character of this area, with its many Dominican immigrants, is raffish and polyglot. One store, the House of Talisman, is downright polytheistic. In the window of this religious-goods mart, wooden Indians rub elbows with statues of the Madonna and an ebony St. Martin of Tours; inside, Holy Seven Spiritual Good Luck Bath Oil and the ever reliable Gamblers Drops are for sale. Next door is a nice place for early dinner: Copeland's, which speaks in tasteful tones (carnations...
...worker recalled, he had seen Kilroy, and pointed to a rust-colored wooden shed 400 yards away. There, under a gray, misty sky, the police made a ghastly discovery. In and around a corral, they found several makeshift graves; the overpowering stench of decaying flesh led to digging that eventually uncovered the corpses of 13 males, one as young as 14. Several of the victims had been slashed with knives, others bludgeoned on the head. One had been hanged, another apparently set afire and at least two pumped with bullets. Some had been tortured with razor blades or had their...
...resulting wealth, says Reynolds, ignited the flames of family ruin. Despite the author's wooden narration, he portrays a cast of heirs straight out of Dynasty: wastrels, alcoholics and eccentrics who became entangled in sordid divorces and murky crimes. Patrick's uncle Smith Reynolds, a daredevil pilot, died of a gunshot wound and was deemed a suicide. The author suggests that his uncle's second wife actually did the deed. Patrick Reynolds rarely saw his father, R.J. (Dick) Reynolds Jr., a chain smoker and heavy drinker who married four times and died at 58 of emphysema...
...window of the Moscow-Tambov express, the early-morning sky seemed so gray and thick that the horizon blended imperceptibly into fields of snow. Children on their way to school dawdled by a railway crossing, the flaps of their fur hats sticking out like ungainly wings. A settlement of wooden farmhouses with carved filigree windows swept by, seemingly unchanged in centuries."So, you're really going to Tambov," said a Moscow friend, surprised that I would be traveling to such a provincial and undeveloped place. "There's a Russian saying: the Tambov wolf is your comrade." I remembered his sneering...