Cleaning beaches, for example, is a sisyphean task. At Carnota, one of the most heavily affected areas of Galicia, the high-water mark on the beach in February continues to be marked by a chain of thumbnail-sized oily gobbets. Dozens of volunteers and soldiers work their way along six ...
In the long slog through college prerequisites, lugging textbooks from class to library — fortress resembling a concrete Battlestar Gallactica — required reading voluminous, Sisyphean stabs at memorization, books became synonymous with desultory study groups, read-for-grade, all-nighters. Syllabi left...