Word: blocks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...folds of our brains, is a unique sense of purpose; we must exist for a reason, we think. William Wharton's soaring Birdy is about that sense of purpose. Birdy and Al--the novel's heroes--come to realize life is a game worth playing, not merely a block of time to pass away. They force their minds...
...years, these "frozen assets" have been a major block to trade because the Chinese could not send ships or planes to the U.S. for fear that they might be confiscated under court orders. Now the U.S. has agreed to free blocked Chinese bank accounts totaling $80.5 million, and Peking has agreed to pay just that amount against 384 separate American claims totaling $196.9 million. The China payout is about 41? on the dollar, a settlement that is high by the standards of other similar U.S.-Communist pacts, but which is worth only about 15? per dollar in 1949 terms...
...Blochs got another tough break-or so it seemed-some years later. By 1962 their H. & R. Block Co. was doing well enough in tax consulting to go public, but a big underwriter backed out at the last minute. The brothers were forced to keep most of the stock for themselves. Today they have by far the nation's largest tax-preparation firm, and the shares of President Henry, Chairman Richard and their families are worth $81 million...
This season, more than 10 million taxpayers will go to H. & R. Block with all the gusto of visiting the dentist. So it is rather appropriate that Henry Bloch, 56, the chief executive and prime-time TV pitchman, looks like a small-town tooth driller. He is a direct, plain-spoken Midwesterner in a brown suit and brown shoes, the type of fellow for whom the word unpretentious was invented. For his prodigious charities and civic good works, fellow citizens named him Mr. Kansas City, but he hides most of his trophies and awards in a small, dark closet...
More than anybody else, Bloch knows the mood of Americans as the ides of April draw near. The 8,445 H. &R. Block offices and storefronts become confessionals, in which Americans pour out their complaints, fears and frustrations (for an average fee of $25) to the company's approximately 50,000 moonlighting teachers, accountants and other tax preparers...