Word: brinks
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...past eight years have been characterized chiefly by fiscal mismanagement and waste on the part of those on Beacon Hill. A deficit conservatively estimated at upwards of a billion dollars, a bond rating--already the lowest in the country--teetering on the brink of junk bond status, declining real estate values, 100,000 lost jobs and an economy spiraling headfirst into recession have been the results of their efforts...
...this contretemps occur, and what are its aftereffects? In answering these questions, Gordimer moves beyond individual problems toward the anguish of a society on the brink of change. Sonny, the father, was a teacher who ran afoul of the white authorities by allowing his students to demonstrate support for a black boycott of schools. Arrested and detained, Sonny is finally convicted of subversive activities and sentenced to two years in prison. But he has gained allies in his struggle, including Hannah Plowman, a white woman who represents an international human-rights organization...
...Here was an absolutely ordered society whose chief religious rite was human sacrifice -- penitential rituals, on an appalling scale, whose aim was nothing less than to keep reality in motion. The Mesoamericans believed that the world could stop at any moment, that the very cosmos was always on the brink of dissolution, its cycles maintained only by sacrifice. The sun would not rise in the morning over the lakes of Tenochtitlan if it were not refreshed by streams of blood...
However, the conflict right now is not about the principles of democracy and sovereignty, nor is it about a people's right to self-determination and self-rule. The U.S. and the Arab world are on the brink of war, a war which would devastate the whole region and result in the deaths of thousands of innocent people...
Were we ever this young, this sure, this innocent? There is a bittersweet melancholy about seeing someone on the brink of adulthood, all elbows and knees and untested conviction. Four years. It goes so quickly, but who can tell them? On my last day, I steal out early, trying not to disturb my two roommates. Danielle sleeps clutching her black-and-white teddy bear. Jennie has left a note on her desk. Underneath her name she has drawn a smile face...