Word: clocks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...said in a low voice, seated in front of a wood fire in the calm of the Oval Office. "You're sitting at that desk." He pointed across the room at his working chair. Only the muted crackling of burning logs and the tick of the old grandfather clock broke the silence. Reagan's eyes were squinted, his brow tense. "The word comes that they're (the missiles) on their way. And you sit here knowing that there is no way, at present, of stopping them. So they're going to blow up how much of this country...
...associated enterprises, the New York City subway system, and root-canal surgery. To her surprise, all the inadvertent intimates within earshot protest vehemently. "It's not as bad as you make it sound," argues a gentleman who is traveling with a box containing a large chiming clock. "So you're stuck belly to belly with a stranger. At least you're with the nicest commuters." He does not mean nicer than Chicago commuters, or even Connecticut commuters. He is a branch-line chauvinist, and he means nicer than the commuters on the Oyster Bay line or the Ronkonkoma line...
...commuter who gets a seat, salvation is a card game. Pinochle and hearts are played on the Syosset line, bridge on the Port Washington line. On the Oyster Bay line sanity is preserved by a swift suppression of sociability. The man standing with the chiming clock says that not enough of his usual players showed up tonight. Day after day, week after week, month after month, for 17 years, he has been playing pinochle with the same people. Are they friends, godfathers to one another's children, comforters in sorrow, celebrators in joy? "No, off the train we dislike each...
...ever happen? A pinochle player looks up with genuine tears in his eyes and says, "From afar." In the middle of the car a querulous drunk complains that his seat faces backward. His companion argues, "But you're facing west, and west is the city." The man with the clock says, "About this point, the lights usually go out." They...
...black households. Still, the report called Reagan's record on black problems "deplorable." The league's president, John E. Jacob, singled out Reagan's "continuing attacks against affirmative action" and "the unwarranted entry of the Justice Department into civil rights cases in an effort to turn back the clock." Jacob contended that blacks, whose gains peaked in the 1970s, "have been sliding back" ever since. Example: black unemployment nationally remained at 16%, more than double that of whites. Wrote Jacob: "That Black America is not worse off today than it is, is more of a testament to its traditional ability...