Word: crafting
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Some people get their brainstorms while singing in the shower. Boris Popov had his during a death-defying plunge in a crashing hang-glider. "I was about 500 ft. up over Lake Owasso," says the Minnesota businessman of the 1977 accident. A powerboat that was towing his craft over the water throttled up too fast and literally pulled Popov's gossamer wings apart. "I got all caught up in the material and was petrified. I had a lot of time to think on the way down, and I promised myself that if I survived, I would figure...
Designing the new parachute was Popov's greatest challenge. Hang gliders weigh only 500 lbs., even if you include the pilot. A small Cessna, on the other hand, weighs more than 1,700 lbs., and a standard parachute big enough to float such a craft safely to the ground would fill up a 50-gal. drum. Not very practical. Undaunted, the BRS engineers figured out how to pack the parachute under pressure in such a way that it takes up no more space than a large briefcase and is mounted over the center of the wings. If the craft...
...past few years Hawthorne found roles that fully challenged him: as novelist-metaphysician C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands and as George III. The former brought him a 1991 Tony Award; the latter earned him, in the same year, London's Olivier Award. He is still deadpan-dismissive about his craft: "You have to understand that throughout life I have more or less played my father. George III's attitude to his sons I took from...
...BOTTOM LINE: And Bonnie and Clyde go to L.A.: this corpse opera takes the low road, but with high craft...
...alternative -- joking about it but meaning it too. His verse, unlike Hughes', was resolutely un-modernist; he clung to the notion that poems should be clearly written in everyday language and should avoid posturing and pretension at all costs -- though, in his hands, that left plenty of room for craft and eloquence. He steered clear of London and the literary life, spending his career as a librarian in provincial cities. Formidably shy, he never married, remaining deeply attached to a burdensome mother until her death at 91, when he was 55. He was a drinker and a jazz buff...