Word: kites
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Third Culture Kids I read with great interest Hanna Kite's article about the benefits and disadvantages that expatriate youngsters experience [Oct. 13]. As the son of a Singaporean foreign-service officer, I fall into the category of children raised in countries other than their own. Your readers should be aware of an organization called Global Nomads International (gni) that aims to "promote opportunities for global nomads of all ages and nationalities" and explore the lifelong impact of an internationally mobile childhood. gni has established an amazing network that global nomads can tap into for social and professional purposes...
Nothing was more symbolic of the Taliban's fall than the appearance of a forbidden kite in the skies over Kabul. Breathless news accounts heralded it as a harbinger of Afghanistan's rebirth; the killjoy Talibs were gone and music, which they had also banned, played at their wake. But in Khaled Hosseini's debut novel, The Kite Runner, this symbol of liberation serves only to remind Afghan refugee Amir of a past he has desperately tried to escape. Exiled to San Francisco, Amir revisits that past in a series of flashbacks set amidst Afghanistan's war-wracked history. What...
...Amir believes he can gain his father's love by winning an annual kite-flying contest, where boys battle for supremacy armed with kite strings coated in ground glass. He longs to present his father with the last kite to fall: "I'd make a grand entrance, the prized trophy in my bloodied hands. Then the old warrior would walk up to the young one, embrace him, acknowledge his worthiness." Amir wins the battle and dispatches Hassan to capture the fallen kite. But Hassan is caught by a group of bullies who make him an offer: leave the kite...
...German philosopher Immanuel Kant called him the "new Prometheus." Most important, Franklin's fame helped open French hearts--and purse strings--when years later he came calling at Louis XVI's court on behalf of his embattled young nation. As the French financier Turgot would say of the kite flyer from Philadelphia, "He snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants...
...there were two Franklins: the stately philosopher revered by the French and the eccentric, shambling, adage-spouting guy with the kite, about whom America has had mixed feelings. In France the ugly American wears as many faces as he does baseball caps, but the model American wears the placid, loose-jawed countenance of Ben Franklin, Ur-republican. He stands in stark contrast to his sanctimonious and chauvinistic and mercantile countrymen, a model of what the French like most in their Americans: a skeptical, subtle faux naif with a sense of humor and a taste for culture and a deep appreciation...