Word: acrobatic
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...serene wandering acrobat named Bobi settles for a couple of years among the farm people of a lonely plateau in Southern France. All he cares about is joy-in useless beauty, in the purity of animals. Carried away by his precept and example, the farmers reduce their planting to what they can eat, turn their animals loose, crowd their fallow land with narcissi, make friends with a stag and his doe. Having set up his earthly paradise, Giono regretfully proceeds in his closing chapters to knock it to pieces. He does so none too logically. Jean Giono has a genius...
...Nimblest of the three disturbers of the Schaefer peace was Shack-Dweller Henry Frees, a onetime acrobat, who once used an $800 settlement for an injury to his arm to run for mayor of Belleville, Ill. He lost both the $800 and the election, went back to his shack. Emerging as a Congressional candidate, Mr. Frees stood on his head while he made campaign speeches, promised, if elected, to do backflips up the Capitol steps. His resounding advice to Congressman Schaefer: "If he doesn't play golf I think he should ought to learn. In case fishing...
...Less agile than Acrobat Frees was A. L. Bedel, built like the beer barrels he formerly inspected for the U. S. Government. To attract crowds he hired "The Great Chandu," a magician. A Chandu come-on: to tear up a picture of a bass, unfold the torn bits to exhibit an intact picture of a bigger bass, and announce: "If you like this trick, vote for Bedel instead of the fish...
...Eating Tree. The Andean Land is a colorful two-volume work on his travels in South America. In The Earth Upsets, he announced that the earth's axis tips a mile to the northeast every year. ("The earth is a drunken staggering thing . . . the greatest acrobat that we have.") His present passions are botany, and a theory that the aurora borealis (still a scientific mystery) "is light sifted through clouds of sub-microscopic insects...