Word: pageant
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...Coubertin revived brotherhood in 1896, he forgot to take temperature into account. Figure skating first appeared at the Summer Games in 1908, and brought hockey along in 1920. It was not until four years later that Nordic skiing, speed skating and bobsledding joined them for the first winter pageant, the others straggling in later, the biathlon (skiing riflemen) not until 1960, the luge 1964. But the premiere event is still the first: figure skating...
...pageant was a fitting close for 1983, a year that in some ways was more of a bicentennial for the U.S. than 1976, which was so grandly celebrated. In 1783 John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay signed the Treaty of Paris, which they had negotiated in months of close bargaining. The treaty brought true peace and launched this nation as a recognized member of the global community...
Perception is reality. Could Plato himself have said it better in his speculations about the imaginary cave where prisoners see life as a series of shadows flickering on the walls? Wasn't that what Shakespeare meant when he had Prospero conclude his pageant by declaring that "the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples" would all dissolve, for "we are such stuff as dreams are made on"? Trompe l'oeil (trickery of the eye) is the artistic term for it, and Italy is full of palaces with flat ceilings painted to look vaulted...
Jesse Jackson's claim that Vanessa Williams did for the Miss America Pageant what Jackie Robinson did for the Brooklyn Dodgers is absurd [Oct. 3]. Williams lives in a society that has legally abolished racial segregation. That was not the case when Robinson broke baseball's "color barrier" in 1947. Also, Williams did not endure the racial insults or physical intimidation that Robinson did. The two achievements are not comparable...
...much fun, according to many a former winner. You address Rotarians, Lions, Kiwanians, Junior Leaguers, and you appear at Miss America preliminaries. Here a blueberry festival, there a strawberry festival, and the odd hog-calling contest comes into the picture too. And you represent the sponsors of the pageant. This year that would be Gillette, American Greetings Corp., McDonald's and Nestlé. Jacque Mercer (1949) once told an interviewer: "You could take an orangutan, and, with a year's training, it would be a perfectly adequate Miss America...