Word: customs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...From the territorial capital, Macapa, they rode 200 miles up the Amazon in motor launches, another 170 miles up the Jari, paying $75 to travel in dugouts with outboard motors; they portaged around twelve waterfalls and eight long rapids. Eronias Fernandes da Silva, discoverer of the gold and, by custom, proprietor of the field, rented them on a shares basis the right to pan or sluice along 20 to 30 yards of river bank...
Three Months of Begging. Sixty-five thousand saffron-robed bonzes (Buddhist priests) and the 12,000-man Khmer army welcomed him home. Dutifully he shaved his head and begged for his living for three months as custom prescribed. But the King was determined to emancipate Cambodia from the semifeudal monarchy under which it had slumbered for centuries. He pushed through a program of constitutional reforms which transformed his kingdom from an absolute into a parliamentary monarchy under French protection. Cambodians freely elected their own 75-man National Assembly...
Though Manx Shearwaters usually migrate roughly north-and-south, Puffinus did not hesitate. He turned east over Boston Harbor and headed straight for home and eggs. Ahead, by the shortest route, lay nearly 3,300 miles of the North Atlantic. Puffinus, if he followed the custom of his species, rested occasionally on the water or stopped in a likely spot to refuel with plankton, small water creatures found just below the ocean's surface. But Puffinus wasted no time. He finished the homing trip in 12 3/4 days, averaging about 250 miles...
...Lily, busy at a well-paid (about $4,000) job, it was also a chance to win what a trouper enjoys most: the cheers of an outsize audience. As is her custom before a performance, she went to bed at 6 the night before, spent the day in seclusion, took a sip of sugar water to ease the queasy feeling she still gets before going onstage. She sang carefully, in a tailored rather than flamboyant style, but the notes were true...
...died in The Bronx 36 years ago. Sholom Aleichem (real name: Solomon Rabinowitz) was a genuine folk artist. Between himself and his Yiddish public throughout the world there was an instinctive understanding; they could grasp his twists of idiom, his slightest reference to a Torah phrase or a ghetto custom...