Word: brasses
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...early spring of this year. Mark's Egyptian fiancee mailed him a package of his favorite tobacco, ending a three-month attempt at quitting his sheesha. A sheesha is an elaborate water pipe, with a glass bowl base, topped by brass fittings called 'alb al-sheesha, or "heart of the sheesha." "Above this fans out a copper dish that serves to catch any coals or ash falling from the haggar or "stone." Smoke is drawn through the lay (hose) which is connected to the 'alb al-sheesha...
Then the Lithuanian crisis complicated the work of Santa's helpers in Washington and steeled resistance in Moscow. The top brass of the military was already upset about "losing" Eastern Europe. Now it looked as though Soviet power might be humiliated even within the borders of the U.S.S.R. Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, Gorbachev's personal military adviser, bluntly said that no setback would be more galling than "seeing our East German allies defect to NATO." Yevgeni Primakov, one of Gorbachev's closest associates on the Presidential Council, agreed in a conversation a few weeks ago: "A united Germany in NATO...
...century. Hemingway complained bitterly when the management tried to attract a younger clientele by tarting up the bar and ordering all the waiters to shave off their mustaches. The Closerie is once again cozily moribund, and Hemingway, like the friendly red lampshades, has become part of the decor: a brass plate on the bar marks his presence, and his face ornaments the menu, which includes a rumsteak au poivre Hemingway...
Back when political courage was a more abundant commodity, the military was actively used as a crucible for social integration. In 1948, Harry S Truman issued an executive order to begin desegregating the military, a process completed in the same year that school desegregation began. The Pentagon brass protested then as they protest now. But their protests didn't matter, because the military is subordinate to the civilian government in this country...
...visits former battlefields and old soldiers, including Vo Nguyen Giap, the masterful North Vietnamese general. Safer is not awed by legends carved in brass: "The trouble with generals is that they live in the big picture, and Giap, I decide, is a perfect example. Utterly brainwashed by ambition." TV commentator Bill Moyers, formerly L.B.J.'s press secretary, is still "the sometimes overly pious public defender of liberal virtue." Safer also resents coziness between politics and press, the most blatant example being Vietnamese journalist Pham Xuan An. He worked two jobs: one as a reporter in Saigon for TIME, the other...