Word: peasant
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bohemia in the early 10th century, was surveying his land on St. Stephen's Day - Dec. 26 - when he saw a poor man gathering wood in the middle of a snowstorm. Moved, the King gathered up surplus food and wine and carried them through the blizzard to the peasant's door. The alms-giving tradition has always been closely associated with the Christmas season - hence the canned-food drives and Salvation Army Santas that pepper our neighborhoods during the winter - but King Wenceslas' good deed came the day after Christmas, when the English poor received most of their charity...
...were disappointed that Burton cut the recurring chorus, “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” the composer said he approved of the choice; in his opinion, choruses in musicals, during which nonessential background characters suddenly join the leads in song, have a “peasant on the green mentality”; his technique is ineffective in films, where the focus lies more on dramatizing interior emotions than creating theatrical spectacle...
Aside from being the cradle of the federation, this is also William Tell country: near Rütli is the town of Altdorf, where the legendary peasant farmer is reputed to have shot an apple from his son's head and then despatched the Austrian bailiff who forced him to do it. All around is the mountain scenery that inspired Rossini's operatic homage to the Tell legend. It is breathtakingly beautiful, yet remains largely unknown outside Switzerland. (See 50 essential travel tips...
...true - and all, for the most part, beside the point. After decades of investment in an educational system that reaches the remotest peasant villages, the literacy rate in China is now over 90%. (The U.S.'s is 86%.) And in urban China, in particular, students don't just learn to read. They learn math. They learn science. As William McCahill, a former deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, says, "Fundamentally, they are getting the basics right, particularly in math and science. We need to do the same. Their kids are often ahead of ours." (See pictures...
Over the weekend, gunmen murdered a peasant union leader and 14 others in the latest high-profile drug killings. With violence and bloodshed at the doorstep of our border with Mexico, America can no longer ignore the deteriorating circumstances of our neighbor to the south. Now that force has failed, an end to drug prohibition is the obvious next step...