The youngest, Ayoub Haji Mamet, who was 18 when he was captured, had a quixotic plan to make his way across Europe and then fly to the United States to attend school.

Mr. Thomas's main hope for the town now resides with a quixotic plan to build a plant that would slaughter and process goats.

Not satisfied with colonizing the Moon, scouting for Martians and civilizing Iraq, President Bush is lavishing more gazillions on another audaciously quixotic plan.

Then there is footage of Mr. Skilling explaining his quixotic plan to conquer the heavens by trading in weather.

Surely Frank would have had some quixotic plan for catching this fish, and the patience to spend the entire evening attempting it.

But bureaucracy and his own unyielding nature guarantee that nothing much actually changes, and he grows increasingly bitter and alienated as he pursues a quixotic plan to build a factory in his cane field.

And this is where he ponders his quixotic plans for his tribe to, as he put it, "stop begging for crumbs from someone else's table" and live as lavishly as they choose.

They rallied forces to oppose a group home for the mentally disabled and, more recently, proposed a quixotic plan to wall off the small neighborhood from outsiders in an effort to reduce crime.

Unlike so many quixotic plans that never pan out, Mr. Rea's did.

The most ambitious of these projects, without serious rival, is the 92d Street Y's continuing exploration of Schubert's life work, soon to head into the second season of a quixotic 10-year plan.