Word: numb
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STALIN'S DINNERS IN THE KREMLIN went on all night. he would sit at a long table and force his ministers and cronies to drink, hour after hour, while he plotted and probed and flattered and terrified them. At dawn, when their brains were numb with fear and vodka and confusion, the NKVD might lead one or two of the men away, without explanation, to be shot. That was the physics of paranoia under laboratory conditions: for every action, an opposite (if, in the Kremlin, somewhat unequal) reaction. Paranoia induces paranoia. Stalin refracted violent fear through alcohol, then presided over...
...brother George, 10 years his senior, contracted AIDS. The period before George's death, also in 1993, was a parlous time for Galindo. "For eight months, I drove George to the hospital every day," he says. "I carried him to the bath and changed his diapers. I got numb--to all the suffering around me, numb even to death itself. Nothing got through to me except skating in the morning. It was my only release...
...being abused physically or mentally, no effort should be spared to ensure that child's safety. People must be exhorted by all means possible--legislation, ongoing public-awareness campaigns or whatever it takes--to denounce the mistreatment of children. As the mother of a six-year-old, I am numb with sadness thinking that other poor sweet children like helpless Elisa are still living in hell on earth. CATHERINE F. ST.-AMANT Montreal...
...husband who took in stray dogs, fixed meals for sick friends and called his mother every day. And those pain-killers she needed after her caesarean section kept her from answering questions sooner. All these justifications were marinated in copious tears and stirred slowly until everyone but her was numb. The ordeal set a record in the talk-till-they-drop genre of damage control, easily exceeding the 90-minute event held by Geraldine Ferraro. Afterward, slightly more people believed Waldholtz than before, demonstrating that the myth of women as frail and financially inept persists--even if, like Enid, they...
Ives' goodness is tested, as it inevitably must be, by tragedy. His son is randomly gunned down at Christmastime in 1967, and Ives spends years withdrawn and numb. Unlike Macon Leary, whose child suffers the same fate in Anne Tyler's Accidental Tourist, Ives eventually finds quiet hope not in the arms of a quixotic woman but, less fashionably, through his faith in God. A faith that turns his indifference into compassion rather than hate. Never didactic, Mr. Ives' Christmas is a spare, moving meditation on the spiritual life...