Word: frailness
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Within a month the books started arriving -- by the thousands. Soon Lansky was spending most of his time -- most of the next five years, in fact -- behind the wheel of borrowed or rented vans, collecting books from elderly donors who were too frail to pack and mail their books. Lansky no longer does the driving; a network of nearly 100 volunteers around the U.S. and Canada now handle most of the collecting. "We always expect the deluge to slow down," says Lansky. "Yet we're still getting 600 or 700 volumes a week." Late last year he visited half...
...Older people, once considered emotionally frail, are now regarded as exceptionally hardy. Their wealth of experience gives them a broader perspective to draw on. Children, on the other hand, appear to be very fragile. Psychologist Bill Locke of Texas Tech, who studied the aftereffects of a 1970 tornado in Lubbock, found that youngsters, even those as old as ten, regressed into clinging and infantile behavior and that some residual effects were felt in adolescence. Other high-risk groups: single parents, especially women, who usually carry the brunt of their family's emotional needs; and the poor, who are often already...
...dream that overtakes Eriksson years later, when he encounters a young Oriental woman on a train who reminds him of the long-ago victim. In the dream, Meserve -- arrogant, competent, headlong (in short, a born American leader) -- is an archetype of the worst in the national character. Eriksson -- frail-looking but articulate and morally alert -- is the beleaguered best. The remainder of the unit is, of course, the hulking, muddled majority, all too willing to be conned by anyone who seems to be sure of his goals, however perverse. Their victim represents all of the innocents who, by accident, find...
Nothing had changed, except the birth of hope. Its harbinger is a frail, shy Salesian priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. A charismatic preacher of liberation theology, Aristide was spokesman for Ti Legliz -- the "Little Church" of the slums, in contrast to the grand official church of Haiti's temporizing bishops and its French-speaking "mulatto elite." Yet even Aristide ends as one more victim of Haiti's misery. Army goons burn his church, murdering many of his congregants, and Aristide eventually becomes a priest sans pulpit when the Salesians dismiss him for being too political...
...lead to steady economic and social progress, why had chaos and barbarity suddenly descended on Beijing? No answer had meaning for long. Even as Li and Yang appeared at Deng's side, speculation was rife that the Premier and the chief of state were dispensable. Rumors about Deng's frail health were not resolved by his appearance on television: his left hand trembled, his face was puffy, his eyes ringed with dark circles. But as he spoke, his words grew in coherency and exuded authority. At one point, he dismissed an unwanted bit of prompting from Li with a withering...