Word: merlin
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Meager prices will push more and more debt-ridden farmers off the land. The Agriculture Department says that the number of U.S. farms declined by nearly 2% during the past year, to 2.3 million. Last week Merlin Reiber of Griswold, Iowa, watched as an auctioneer sold his farm equipment. Said he: "I'm not going to roll over and play dead. But I don't have any idea what...
Until last year, when New York Yankees Pitcher Waite ("Schoolboy") Hoyt died grudgingly at 84, he served Rose as a Cobb historian and utility Merlin. Having been a pallbearer for Babe Ruth, Hoyt was a certified carrier of legends. In retelling tales of Cobb, Rose animatedly acts them out, clapping the dirt off his thighs just so, snatching up particles of outfield grass in the pristine signal that Player-Manager Cobb had for a knockdown pitch...
...student at Vanderbilt University. But it was his ferocious reviews of other poets, particularly in the New Republic and the Nation, that made his name and exacting standards widely known. Deciding that Conrad Aiken had become a lazy poet, Jarrell wrote, "He seems as much at ease as Merlin pulling a quarter from a schoolboy's nose." The best of Jarrell's contemporaries learned to fear his scorn but value his insights. Said Karl Shapiro after Jarrell had roughed him up in print: "I felt as if I had been run over but not hurt." Others, including Aiken, complained bitterly...
...Robertson and Jerry Falwell cost him dearly in the 2000 campaign. Howard Dean's anger was causing him to lose altitude long before he screamed. Which is why politicians have concocted an entire industry--the polling and consulting wizardocracy--devoted to telling them what not to say. From Merlin to Rove, the most powerful adviser has been the one who says, "My crystal ball says, Don't go there" or "If you say that, Your Majesty, the Goths won't be happy...
...career analyst. It is a cliche to call McLaughlin unassuming and modest; it is more telling to describe him as deeply analytical and alert to the ambiguities of his trade. An amateur magician, he is especially adept at sleight of hand, a skill that helped win him the nickname "Merlin...