Word: distractive
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Matthiessen's excursions into intellectual history and "one's true nature" distract from his sensuous descriptions of nature, and his discourses on Zen often get in the way of his personal reflections. He bears his pilgrim's burden with melancholy dignity, but, ironically, his book lacks an essential Zen element: wit, the lightness of touch that is absolutely necessary when jiggling the web of paradoxes nature has stretched across its secrets...
...cost him more time and effort than they saved. The dittographer was always breaking down. The way he made his home 'convenient' left his daughter and her children roofless, living under canvas for long periods of remodeling. Too much attention to the house's gimmicks can distract one from the home, which is perhaps Jefferson's most truly - original work, notion of equal opportunity but an exact uniformity in men's moral sense, a term that itself possessed exact meaning. The author argues that Jefferson included blacks in this equality of moral sense and therefore...
...perfect airplane book should distract during long, tedious hours of bad food and crying babies without absorbing so completely that the reader forgets to pray for a smooth landing. If, in addition, it whets the appetite for faraway places, the summertime traveler has the perfect prelude to vacation reading...
...cling, she says, "the being-done-to element in her personality isn't sufficiently balanced by the sense of mastery and active doing-to." When the mother goes out, the child is almost always depressed, but baby sitters should avoid trying to cheer the child up or distract it with a game. The reason: the child is learning how to manage loss. Advises Kaplan: "Accept the child's sadness. It's part of life...
...blind individual might only want to be told when it is safe to cross or he may want to help crossing, in which case the sighted person should allow the blind person to take hold of an elbow. One should never feed, pet or otherwise distract a guide dog unless expressly permitted by its master. Nor should one grab a blind person's cane or the arm holding...