Word: cactuses
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Nature branded a curse on the Northeast. Except in a narrow coastal belt, rain is so scant that 87% of the area consists of parched, brown sertāo, a rolling hinterland matted with cactus-tough scrub where peasants hack at the hard soil with primitive hoes. Two months ago, the first rains in eight months brought a green fuzz to the sertāo. But drought had already ruined this year's crop of beans, corn and manioc-root flour, mainstays of the peasant diet. Famine swept the sertāo, sending thousands of camponeses to the towns...
...Berlin Wall. Workers' cadres have carved a 75-yd. clearing around the base and in Iron Curtain fashion have carefully smoothed its surface in order to spot the footprints of anyone trying to escape into the base. Gangs of teen-age "Young Rebels" are painstakingly planting a "cactus curtain" of bayonet grass, a tough century plant with half-inch sawtooth barbs...
There's something else, too. Do you realize we've walked all morning and haven't seen a single living thing? No cactus, no birds--not even a lizard...
Mescaline is an alkaloid produced by the peyote cactus which is native to the Rio Grande regions of Mexico and Texas. As peyote, this curious compound has been used for many years; indeed, the Aztecs worshipped this plant as the chief of three great deities. More recently, the ingestion of peyote for its drug effect has spread among Indians of Mexico and the United States. There is a Christian sect (The Native American Church) based on sacramental use of peyote wafers, and there is also an impressive black market that ships quantities of the cactus to American students, beatniks...
...jobs ranging from Uvalde County judge to Speaker of the House to Vice President. ("I am the only man," he once noted, "who ever walked from the most important office to one that doesn't amount to a hill of beans.") But this year the still spiny "Cactus Jack" gaveled down the traditional birthday shivaree that in years past has drawn such guests as Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman and the late Sam Rayburn. Said Garner: "I don't want any fuss or anybody raising a ruckus. I feel good some of the time...