Word: frailness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...visit to the North Carolina town where I was born. I was driving past a business run by the white grandson of my black grandfather's white daddy, when a mischievous impulse overcame me. I went in and asked to speak to the owner. When he appeared--a frail-looking older man--I bellowed, "Cousin!" and told him I had come for my share of the family business. The old boy nearly fainted...
Next to James Thurber, she was probably the funniest serious person who ever lived. She was learned and scrupulous and very brave. She spent the past three years dying of cancer, yet so alive was she with ideas about world events, she made one forget the inevitable. Her small, frail body would shake with rage or laughter at Clinton and Monica, at Congress, at her beloved city of Washington, which she would ridicule in private and defend against outside assaults, as one would a foolish child...
...flying objects. The propelling of objects within the confines of Quincy House is forbidden, because of the possibility of a collision between frisbees, soccer balls, or whatever, and the frail anatomies of Quincy House residents or the House's equally fragile glass windows. Practice your curve ball or golf swing somewhere else...
...Chang kill himself? We will probably never know. But what we do know is that we're not perfect. Beneath our tough veneer, we are frail. We are, after all, ordinary people and these are ordinary times...
...would appear on the doorstep of fellow mathematicians without warning--a frail, disheveled, elderly man, hopped up on amphetamines and wearing a ratty raincoat--and announce, in a thick Hungarian accent, "My mind is open." For a day, or a week or a month, the man or woman who answered the knock would have to take nonstop care of this helpless guest who couldn't figure out how to cut a grapefruit or wash his underwear--and in return would be permitted the exhausting, exhilarating experience of following the thought processes of Paul Erdos, the most prolific and arguably...