Word: ancient
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...significance, and also you feel like you're being washed down a mad stream somewhere. Fatigue becomes the currency with which you pay. It makes sense though. It is energy, after all, that you are looking for: buried." He recalls the mineral's origin, millions of years ago, in ancient seashores, and feels that there is a "frozen sea in me." Describing the geology of Alabama and Mississippi, he writes, "The old sea retreated two hundred and fifty million years ago . . . the sands, five and six thousand feet down, like plunging porpoises, sounding, headed back to the deep...
...Notes has many such phrases, evocative, amusing, but also a little silly. Bass writes that "all geologists are hyperbolic"; he certainly is. At one point he suggests putting a small bottle of oil to the ear, the better to hear the ancient waters. At another he intones, "You can't find oil if you are not honest; I'm not sure I know how to explain this." The rueful part, after the semicolon, redeems the rest. He natters on about his girlfriend, Elizabeth Hughes, whose mild, pleasant drawings accompany the text. Is he happy with her? Without her? Will they...
Senator Mark Hatfield arranged the Salem session to work out a compromise between two bitter enemies -- Oregon's powerful timber industry and militant conservationists. The industry needs to harvest trees to preserve some 68,000 jobs, while the environmentalists are fighting to protect ancient forests and creatures for which the old growth is an indispensable habitat. The meeting at times seemed overwhelmed by the whoop-de-do of 3,000 loggers sporting baseball caps with yellow ribbons and T shirts with provocative slogans (SAVE A LOGGER -- EAT AN OWL). But when it was over, the two sides appeared ready...
Friends say that Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul often talks in bis, a reference to the musical notation for "repeat phrase." But what could be mistaken for an affectation is actually a ritual of concentration that is performed on something as simple as the way a lintel rests on an ancient pillar or as complex as how the past weighs on the present...
Such declarations give Naipaul the appearance of a political curmudgeon. But, he says with some surprise, "I don't think that way. People turn things around. I'm for individual rights and for law." It is a long view that includes his fascination with ancient Rome ("I can barely express my admiration for it") and the imperial record of the English. Their achievement calls forth some of his best bis: "Pretty terrific. It would be churlish to say otherwise. It would be foolish to say otherwise. It would be unhistorical to say otherwise...