There
is a village in western Serbia called Sljivovica, Serbian for the plum brandy known as slivovitz in English-speaking countries.

Hanifaru is so small a child could walk its entire scimitar-shaped coastline in a ten-minute stroll.

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The locals can show you the sites of machine-gun emplacements high above he river, and they will remind you - with feeling that still seems very fresh - that the Finns fought the Russians bitterly in the early days of World War II.

Regardless of which model prevails - agriculture as a diverse ecological art, as a high-tech industry, or some combination of the two - the challenge pf putting enough food in nine billion mouths by 2050 is daunting.

Every thousand feet above the river brings a new ecozone: crackling deciduous forests, yellow leaves strewn on the trail like brooches; evergreen broad-leaved forests silent as a shadow; temperate coniferous forests with pungent, almost foot-long pine needles webbed in strands of lichen; alpine meadows with green…

The son of an air-conditioner technician, he was an A/V monitor during elementary school, got his scuba license in high school, and was a finalist to be a NASA astronaut after graduate school.

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He leads the way beneath a giant walnut tree, down through skittish pigs and oblivious goats, over a stone fence, along a neon barley field, to a whitewashed Tibetan home.

Khudi vowed to placate the infernal powers with the sacrifice of a baby reindeer and a libation of vodka.

Many of her statues, images, and texts seem part of a carefully calibrated media campaign to bolster the legitimacy of her reign as king-and rationalize her transgression.

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The immaculate grounds include an aviary with peacocks, and the thriving bakery fills the air with the aroma of freshly baked bread.

On a voyage to Svalbard in 1612, the captain of a Dutch ship reported that the Barents sea was so full of whales that the ship's prow parted the beasts as though it were cutting through pack ice.

With all the other farmhouses closing up, the nearest boy for his son to play with now lives ten miles away.

This manna, or anti-manna - a gift not from heaven but from the deep - makes for an oasis in the sea.

Had Jonah been injected intravenously, instead of swallowed, he could have swum the arterial vessels of this whale, boosted along every ten seconds or so by the slow, godlike pulse.

Avalanches, in blocking the creeks, sculpted the lakes, but by legend, sky goddesses dropped their cosmetics into several, and mermaids swam in others.

The gray farms blur past, wrapped in whispers of snow.

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The newly dead were laid in chambers, called strainers, on terra-cotta slats over drains, where their body fluids could seep away and the corpses slowly desiccate, like prosciutto.

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There was even a case of what might be called love - a solitary and now elderly couple that broke the rules of wild horse society to be together.

In the worst hit areas people were reduced to eating roots, grasses, and tree bark.