Word: distaff
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Salt 'N' Pepa, as befits their name, serve things up with zest. In choosing to title their latest album Brand New, the distaff Dynamic Duo of rap are practicing their most characteristic double-play: making a straight-up bold declaration that is also coyly ironic...
Worse, still, than losing a lover is losing a muse. Gently, lovingly, at other times with parasitic intention or vampiric intensity, men have turned to women for inspiration. F. Scott Fitzgerald had Zelda, Rodin had Camille Claudel, Picasso had a distaff palette; and Bob Dylan, one of the most intriguing, important, irascible figures in rock, had whom? On Time Out of Mind, his first CD of new, self-penned material in seven years and his most consistently rewarding album since the '70s, Dylan seems to be haunted by an imaginary, unnamed muse who has come and gone, leaving him loveless...
...company is a sign of civilization. But in a collegiate setting, such a practice threatens the institution's very purpose. If a professor collects evidence that suggests, for instance, an innate male advantage in understanding mathematical concepts but is reluctant to present such a view lest he offend the distaff portion of his class, the University's search for truth has suffered a setback. And this sort of thing takes place more often than we know...
...Jackson Vineyard hired away John Hawley, the chief vintner at Sonoma's Clos du Bois. That was the sneaky equivalent of a chic bistro's signing up a rival's chef two hours before Saturday dinnertime. (Hawley's successor at Clos du Bois, as it happens, is another promising distaff vintner, Margaret Davenport...
...thought she was the glasnost equivalent of Nancy; no continent the two occupied at the same time seemed big enough. By comparison, last week's distaff summit was a close encounter of a gentler kind, and a small, makeshift stage at Wellesley College was more than space enough for both. This was Barbara Bush's coming of age as First Lady, her riposte to student complaints that she did not reflect "the self-affirming qualities of a Wellesley graduate." The Soviet First Lady confined herself to predictable Kremlin- speak about perestroika, leaving the ovations for her hostess...