Word: distressingly
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...walks away red-eyed, talking about empathy. Women in distress are especially troubling to him. His mother was found to have lung cancer in 1984 and got radiation treatments. When the disease returned in 1988, "when it was hopeless," she fled back to the Southern Baptist roots of her childhood. The hellfire sermons and finger-pointing bothered the 15-year-old Michael, but he felt they might be worth it if God cured her. One morning, "at about 2:45," her coughing was loud enough to wake him. His father told him "it was nothing"--that he would just take...
From a preview of the emotional turmoil of the final scene of the novel to a reflective image of Ruby's son Brian floating in a swimming pool, trying to block out his family's emotional distress, each short scene at the beginning of Floating reveals an important layer in the history of Ruby and her family. These layers combine to form a startlingly clear image, building in the space of only four chapters, detailed and emotionally charged histories and perspectives for each of the four main characters of the novel, without resorting to tiresome exposition, and effectively setting...
...many of us have occasionally tried the time honored flutter of the eyelashes and perhaps a tear or two when waved over by a cop for running a stop sign? Maybe you've played damsel in distress when faced with a flat tire or a particularly heavy suitcase that had to be lugged aways. Nothing drastic, no sleeping one's way to the top, just occasionally shedding mantle of "liberated woman" in order to make the day run a little smoother--strictly minor offenses. Was our ill-fated Monica aware of such powers? I guess yes. Is it naive...
...pilot's voice was calm, but his distress call described one of an aviator's worst fears: "We have smoke in the cockpit." Eleven minutes later, his radio fell silent, and six minutes after that, Swissair Flight 111 slammed into the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia, killing all 229 people onboard. While the cause of that Sept. 2 crash has not yet been determined, investigators have discovered indications of a fire in an electronics compartment below the cockpit, and the presence of smoke made the crash seem eerily similar to that of ValuJet Flight 592 in the Florida Everglades...
...Airport en route to Geneva, Switzerland, promptly at 8:18 p.m. E.T. Not quite an hour later, at 9:14, the Swiss pilot, Urs Zimmermann, radioed, "Pan! Pan! Pan!...We have smoke in the cockpit" to the control tower in Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada. (Pan is an international distress signal less urgent than Mayday.) The pilot requested diversion to Boston, but when told that Halifax, only 70 miles away, was nearer, he responded, "Prefer Halifax." When the plane was about 30 miles away from the airport, Zimmermann advised that he needed more than that distance to land...