Word: pigeon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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What followed has not been easy on Japanese muscles. For generations Japanese have knelt on tatami (matting), staggered under heavy loads, shuffled pigeon-toed to keep their wooden clogs from slipping off. Many Japanese have thick thighs, knotty calves and short legs. But sturdiness of limb renders the Japanese dancers strong on point, and their natural determination makes for well-disciplined performers. And some observers have noted that the new generation's proportions are closer to the long-legged Western ideal. The cultural hurdle has been even more imposing than the structural difficulties. Ballet plots, often obscure at their...
...that had been bungled from the beginning: the prosecution of ex-Sergeant John David Provoo, a Californian who took up Buddhism in his youth, lived in a Japanese monastery, later enlisted in the U.S. Army. Captured on Corregidor in 1942, at 25, he served the Japanese as a stool pigeon, according to his fellow prisoners, and brought about the execution of a U.S. captain. But the Army brought no charges after the war, and Provoo re-enlisted; it was 1949 before he was indicted for treason, and 1953 before he was sentenced to life imprisonment...
...scientist to protest that if he cut the Bump of Amativeness right out of a pigeon's brain, it went on billing and cooing and laying eggs just the same. Phrenology offered an easy clue to the enigma of human life. In the U.S., furthermore, phrenology took on a democratic tinge. Everyone had a head, and everyone with the aid of a little chart could understand what was going on in it. It was optimistic-the "good" organs, by exercise, would increase in size. Two men with heads as massive as Beethoven's took the whole thing over...
...Normandy town of Pont-l'Evéque were an unimaginative crew-mostly drunks, chicken thieves, wife-beaters and petty racketeers-and their prison life was as dreary as their crimes. Then, on a certain hot afternoon in July, a new warden took over. Pert as a pouter pigeon, rotund little Fernand Billa was a jailer less interested in penology than in poetry and strong pastis (a variant of absinthe). With plenty of verses and good drink to hand, Billa could find even a prison wilderness paradise enow...
...Caspary auctions. Son Cyril runs the Bond Street office, while Bernard Harmer, the youngest son, is in charge of the busy Manhattan office. The Harmers, father and sons, collect stamps only for pleasure. Henry Harmer specializes in forgeries. Cyril has a collection of "pigeongrams," letters entrusted to commercial pigeon service by 19th century settlers on New Zealand's Great Barrier Island. Bernard collects Victorian "postal stationery," i.e., envelopes printed with grotesque designs and slogans in praise of temperance, penny postage and peace. Says Henry Harmer: "The great charm about stamp collecting is that you can collect what you like...