Word: cactus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...occupy. He uses the largest sheets of watercolor paper he can get, sometimes pastes four together. Starting with a light pencil sketch, he lays in his flat, thick colors layer on layer, while keeping the contours crisp. Burra's end results generally have the sharp complexity of cactus, and the effect of an unpleasant, totally unexpected laugh sounding from below the cellar stairs...
...Cranston Jones visited the small, sunburned, impoverished and nearly starved village of Bica, in the Brazilian state of Ceará, without rain for three years. "With the proud hospitality of the backlands we were invited to share the only food in the village. The meal was xique-xique (cactus), grilled over a small fire and eaten with a morsel of desert rat. When we left, we gave the mayor what food we had in the car: some oranges and biscuits. He thanked us and said the gift would go to the village children...
...Sacred Button. Peyote (pronounced pay-oh-tee) is a small, carrot-shaped cactus that grows wild in the valley of the Rio Grande. Cut off and dried, its top forms a bitter-tasting "button" that, eaten or brewed as tea, is capable of strong and strange effects upon the mind. Just what the effects are has not yet been scientifically determined.* The Indians have known about peyote for centuries; Cortez' men found the Aztecs using it when they invaded Mexico. It has always been associated with religious ceremony...
...Boeing has won itself a long head start on the rest of the industry in the jet transport race. The credit goes to Boeing's brilliant corps of engineers and to Bill Allen, the dry, deceptively plain lawyer who became Boeing's president (and custodian of the cactus) in 1945. Allen is the man who gave the final go-ahead for Boeing to spend $20 million on the 707, gambling that he could sell it to the Air Force and the airlines. With Air Force orders in the offing, Bill Allen has apparently won half his parlay...
...before, to plunk down Boeing's bankroll to back the aircraft its engineers build. Allen knows that the future will be risky, but he has unlimited confidence in Boeing's team. Nevertheless, Allen likes to stroll over and gently finger the sharp spines of his blooming cactus plant, remembering the dark days nine years...