Word: pith
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...shopping mall on Santa Monica Boulevard that evening scarcely noticed the newcomer in a tuxedo who had joined them in line at the flower stalls. Neither the young lady in the decal-covered bomber jacket nor the young gentleman with the sheepskin vest over his T shirt and the pith helmet saw any reason to fuss over someone evidently doin' his thing in a tuxedo costume. No, what turned their heads was the new arrival's inquiry...
...earliest visitors, the ancient Greeks and Romans, tried just about any concoction to have their way with her. A scholarly study on the subject by Alan Hull Walton tells us that the pith from the branch of the pomegranate tree and the testes of animals were considered hot stuff. So were certain foods. "If envious age relax the nuptial knot," advised the poet Martial, "thy food be scallions, and thy feast shallot." Onions were a favorite, as were garlic, pepper, savory, cabbage, asparagus, eggs, pineapples, snails ("but without sauce," cautioned the fastidious Petronius) and just about any creature dredged from...
Americans are not comfortable lurking in drugstores, waiting for a chance to ask sotto voce for a pack of pomegranate pith, so we disguise our pursuit of Aphrodite in more acceptable forms: the pulse-racing perfume, the sexy dress, the dirty dancing, even the lofty status. No less a personage than Henry Kissinger asserted that view in the '70s. "Power," he said, perhaps with sparrow's tongue in cheek, "is the great aphrodisiac...
...graduate, he was once a mainstay of a winning team, and his hopes were pinned on making the pros. Today he is in uniform all right -- as a doorman at a downtown Washington hotel. A gentle Goliath with a cavernous bass voice and a ready smile, he wears a pith helmet and has a whistle dangling around his neck to summon cabs. "There's more to life than sports," he says. "It's a hard reality." That is a lesson that Scates, and thousands of other student athletes across the land, are given a lifetime to mull over...
...messenger unaware, the pith-helmeted colored, or mixed-race, mailman pedaled his bicycle past the bougainvillea that lined the quiet suburban street. He stopped and rang the bell at the home of a theology professor at South Africa's Stellenbosch University. A tall, stoop-shouldered man came to the door. Curious, then amazed, the mailman watched the professor open the envelope, read the brief message and suddenly begin weeping. The mailman had no way of knowing they were tears...