Word: commoner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Such inspiring stories, once unheard of, are increasingly common these days. Just a decade ago, the physically handicapped were consigned by doctors, families and themselves to a life hemmed in by "can't dos." Today they are challenging all limits and proving they can succeed in virtually every sport. About 50,000 disabled Americans, from amputees and the blind to those with spinal-cord injuries or cerebral palsy, are taking up everything from cycling and scuba diving to rock climbing and rafting. That is still a small fraction of the 37 million handicapped in the U.S. But, declares Dave Kiley...
...idea is hardly new. The origins of matchmaking go back to antiquity, springing from the custom, once common in Europe and the Orient, of arranged marriages. Even today in the U.S. the Old World custom persists: Manhattan marriage broker Dan Field says he is often consulted by parents who want him to arrange a match for their children. But what is becoming more common in the U.S. is the gold-card matchmaker for the affluent among those 43 million unmarried Americans between 18 and 44. "Across America," says San Francisco matchmaker Barbara Tackett, "there are people making...
Johnston is also running a highly visible race for majority leader in an election to be held next Tuesday. His prospects are impossible to determine -- the ballot is secret and double crosses are common. But even if he loses to George Mitchell or Daniel Inouye, the other contenders, Johnston's opinions on a range of issues are significant. As a Southern moderate, Johnston is the kind of Senator Bush needs if his programs are to have any hope of passage. And unawed as he is by Bush, Johnston fairly reflects the mood of Congress. "Bush should consider the possibility that...
...deserted, maternal yet undependable, witty and gay in the midst of poverty and squalor, supremely self-confident and supremely self- destructive, Elise might easily seem nothing more than that old literary standby the bundle of paradoxes. As played by Nelligan, the character comes exuberantly alive. Vitality and beauty are common enough in star turns; so is warmth, although Nelligan, whose technical gifts are extraordinary, has never before shown it to this degree on the U.S. stage, and only once on film, in her 1985 performance as a heroic Greek mother in Eleni...
...Letters of John Cheever provides a quick, easy answer: no. The author believed, as he once wrote a friend, that "the common minutiae of life" are "the raw material of most good letters." Cheever's letters are crammed with everyday details, although such information does not shed much new light on his fiction, which was luminous enough to begin with. To learn more about Cheever is to take a refresher course in the pleasure of his company. He could toss off a letter that made even a motel remarkable: "The furniture was of no discernible period or inspiration...