Word: cocoon
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More than showmanship will be needed to strip away the cocoon of regulations that has kept the trucking industry insulated from competition. Kennedy's bill, which will be followed by one being drafted by the Carter Administration, is only one step in that campaign, a key part of the Administration's anti-inflation drive. Many regulations will have to be torn down by their creator, the once lethargic Interstate Commerce Commission...
...ordeal ended. They had been blasting for four days and they were sure all the snow that could ever come down that winter (on both sides of the road) was down. Two and a half days of skiing out of a promised seven. Now we emerged from our wooden cocoon and took the long hike up the stairs-all 250 of them-to see what had been wrought. But the snow had come down off the cliff and flooded into the tunnel, so we had to shovel our way out onto the road...
Neglected Lives even has a point to it. The title refers to all of the characters and their sadly solitary lives--each one is enveloped in a cocoon of lonliness, from the crazed general who spends his days shooting monkeys who make forays into his orchard to the old hermit having the life sucked out of him in a house infested with leeches. The characters trapped in the jungle village dream of escape from their solitude, but the city-dwellers are no better...
Webb's explanation of Americans' increased wakefulness is the "Edison effect," which has expanded their activities by turning night into day and nibbled away at their slumber time. He remarks: "We've ripped away the cocoon of darkness with electric light." Which is a small thought to sleep...
Marguerite Oswald also nourished Lee with the delusions of grandeur displayed in the celebrated interviews she gave Novelist Jean Stafford: "Lee Harvey Oswald even after his death has done more for his country than any other living human being." Once Lee emerged from Marguerite's cocoon, he seemed to regard himself as a rare and vivid specimen, on the wing in an ungrateful world...