Word: ballasting
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...supernatural. The Book of Ephraim recounted how Merrill and his friend David Jackson used a Ouija board to contact Ephraim, a witty Greek Jew born in A.D. 8; it then followed the two-way conversations that ensued over the next 20 years. This device gave the added ballast of history to Merrill's already established lyric and autobiographical skills; Ephraim's was the spirit of a number of ages, and he proved himself to be a talkative and entertaining tour guide. The imaginary collaboration yielded a poem of rare ambition and scope, a sinuous, sensuous meditation on death...
...convey icy disdain and mock merriment. Her voice is a bed of nails on which she some times lies in self-contempt. As Ruth, Dewhurst was a Rock of Gibraltar. Marchand is better suited to the role, a homebody with artistic impulses who needs a hus band for ballast. Though she has her cranky moments, Wilson's Aunt Helen is a lamp of sanity, and if anyone could lift the evening out of the dumps, trust Carter's resilient Dixie. The pity is that these five remarkable actresses have been taken in miscarriage...
...light airplanes and helicopters that whizzed by in salute and formed an honor guard to escort them the rest of the way. One plane carried the three balloonists' wives, who waved frantically and blew kisses to their husbands. By this time, the adventurers had tossed most of their ballast overboard, including the computers that had helped them navigate and much of the elaborate radio gear that they had used to keep in close touch with monitors back on land...
...plied with splendid zucchini bread and coffee by Jacobson's wife, Georgia May, a schoolteacher at Warwick's Gorton Junior High School. On paper, operating the sub seems, well, child's play. Merely a matter of opening a few valves to let water into the ballast tanks until the S 250 has achieved "neutral buoyancy," then directing the thrust of two exterior electrical pod engines by manipulating two handles inside the hull, placed below and forward of the seated driver like the handle bars of a racing bike...
...breath is already fogging the bubble dome. Jacobson has been through the safety instructions: "To come to the surface turn the green knob by your right side to let compressed air drive the water out of your variable ballast tank." The bay is less than 20 ft. deep here. S 250 is insured by Lloyd's of London and her seaworthiness has been approved by the U.S. Bureau of Standards. But the student now finds himself plaintively inquiring, over the tiny walkie-talkie set: "Even if I'm submerged, can I still loosen the bubble and swim free...