Word: obelisk
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...officials at Paris' Prefecture de Police finally granted permission. Of course, they demurred, one must proceed carefully in these matters. In 1876, it was said, an unprincipled character had climbed to the top of Paris' famed obelisk, in the Place de la Concprde, for the base purpose of advertising a new make of candle. But two Egyptologists who wished to make the ascent for the purpose of studying the obelisk's hieroglyphics-that was different. There was only one thing the officials asked: that the ascent be made as early in the morning as possible...
...Egyptologists agreed, and turned up at 3 o'clock of the appointed morning just as the refugees from Paris' nightclubs met the first milkman in the streets. The two scholars were equipped with a pink parasol and a walkie-talkie. At the foot of the obelisk, Parisian firemen stood ready with a hook & ladder. The younger of the pair, Mario Fabre, climbed to the top of the monolith; the other, François Guinet-Chaplain, established himself at its base. The hours went by. A crowd began to gather. At 10 o'clock the crowd was thick...
Someone once remarked that "there are more people buried in Old Granary who are known to more people than are buried in any other cemetery in the country," and he was probably right. Visitors are often disappointed that the conspicuous granite obelisk bearing the name "Franklin" is Benjamin Franklin's parents, not himself; but there is ample compensation for Ben's absence. Around the Franklin memorial are scattered the graves of such patriots as Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, and James Otis, as well as ten early Massachusetts governors and the victims of the Boston Massacre...
...tropical twilight of Ciudad Trujillo, the din of traffic along the sea front had hushed. A convoy of seven limousines drew up at the foot of the obelisk (white and floodlit like the Washington Monument), and from the car with the five-starred gold license plates stepped a beady-eyed little man. Bodyguards with their Tommy guns at the ready followed him to his customary concrete bench against the sea wall. There, opposite the statue of himself and within sight of the monument reared in his honor, His Excellency, Generalissimo Dr. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, Honorable Chief of State, Benefactor...
This is election week in the Dominican Republic, but El Jefe did little of the talking. There was no need to discuss the election; it was already rigged, with all the ruthless efficiency of the most thorough dictatorship in the Hemisphere. El Jefe cast a glance at the obelisk and its inscription: "I have put the ambitions of my youth and the brilliance of my career at the service of my country." Beyond such pap, inscribed far & wide on monuments through the Republic, he had no reason to worry about high-sounding ideologies. The dictator and President of the Dominican...