Word: brooding
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...chicken out. Told the chances of escaping are a million to one, she replies, "Then there's still a chance." But she knows she faces longer odds than the pows of Stalag 17 or The Great Escape. Those lads might have been killed. Ginger and her brood--the chickens of Tweedy's Farm--may get cooked...
...years, I have suspected that others among the 88 million families who take annual vacations know magical ways to transform an unruly brood into a modern version of the Von Trapps, the tune-whistling family that managed in The Sound of Music to cross Central Europe on foot, without whining over whose turn it was to help the baby over the Alps. Then, a few weeks ago, psychologists at a meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society reported some research I find disturbing: vacations are good for your health, and measurably decrease a man's risk of dying young of heart...
Such distractions from contemplation are, of course, merciful, leaving Kate less time to brood over her mother's inevitable descent toward death. But her attention to detail can sometimes try a reader's patience. When her father, long divorced from her mother, pays a visit, Kate makes them breakfast from "a box of Shredded Wheat for her father (two biscuits carefully broken up in just enough milk to make them edible) and All-Bran for Katherine (with Sweet'n Low because of her diabetes, half a banana, whole milk to encourage weight maintenance)." This is probably too much...
...beginnings did little to ease the early life of the world conqueror--unless the myth was an omen for living like a wild animal in the steppes around Lake Baikal. His father Yesugei was poisoned by enemies and his widowed mother Hoelun chased away from their tribe with her brood, including her eldest, nine-year-old Temujin. The outcasts ate field mice and marmots even as they fought off thieves out for their horses, the most precious of nomad property. Bitterness cultivated a heart of iron. After a half-brother grabbed a fish he had hooked, Temujin would kill...
This is no glorified babysitting service. Mom can't swing by with a sob story about the pressures of modern parenting, unload her brood and zip off to the spa. The screening questions are intense, and parents--75% of whom earn less than $10,000 a year--have to map out a recovery plan. If there's a hint of abuse, a call goes out to the county child-welfare authorities...