Word: blacking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Steven Ross, 61, had been up late into the night helping to reassemble the pieces of the biggest deal of his life, but he was feeling particularly ebullient at noon the next day. As he met with reporters last Friday, the chairman of Warner Communications playfully handed out black-and-yellow Batman lapel pins, a promotional item for his studio's big summer film. Shunning a chair, the executive casually plopped himself down on the floor and began extolling the deal he hoped to see through. Said he: "There could not be a better fit in the world...
...owes more to Los Angeles than Lonesome Dove. The city is a sprawling network of commercial strips, trailer parks and low-slung shingle-and-stucco developments ringed by citrus groves and cotton fields. If you think this overworked stretch of real estate is an unlikely habitat for Africa's black rhinoceros, spending a morning with Calvin Bentsen will change your mind...
Four years ago, Bentsen turned 80 acres of his 2,200-acre spread into an experimental breeding ground for a pair of endangered black rhinos. Zoos are cramped. Bentsen's expansive pastures offer the South African-born animals most of the comforts of home. "This is fine rhino country," says Bentsen, as he pulls off the highway onto a sandy dirt road. Suddenly you are in south Texas as it was before the developers paved it over. In a soft morning fog, a visitor might mistake the silvery mesquite thickets and rough grass clearings for Africa's Zambezi valley...
Bentsen, 63, is a tall man made taller by a Stetson hat and black ostrich- skin boots. His face is covered with a thin wash of freckles, and his steady brown eyes size up his conversation partners from behind thick, black- framed glasses. On most days Bentsen, who is a first cousin of Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, can be found in an air-conditioned office managing his real estate investments. He used to raise steers on his ranch until he realized that "cattle bore me to death...
...animals and saving them may seem like opposing ideals. Serious hunters say that is a misunderstanding. "True hunters have a love of the animal," says Bentsen. "And they're also interested in coming back and doing it again next year." When Bentsen was a younger man, he killed a black rhino bull with a single bullet from his Holland & Holland. It was a neck shot, and the huge animal dropped where it stood in the hot Kenya dust...