Word: plainness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...join an ad hoc tribe, and you belong. You can all put on white makeup and eyeliner. You can all wear trench coats. You can annihilate yourself and disappear in plain sight...
...under the tutelage of the N.R.A. It was not a flawless education: when I was 13, I nearly blew a friend's head off, by accident, with his father's .38 revolver. (I was lucky enough to be permitted to learn a lesson the hard way; my friend was plain lucky.) I find that I sympathize with both the gun culture and the anti-gun culture. I do wish the gun culture were a lot more intelligent...
...base, stem and bulb are decorated with some 80 tiny and exquisitely made enamel-glass plaques, representing mythical beasts, evangelists, angels, prophets and apostles. The gold surface between them carries a rich linear ornamentation that never gets congested. The silver-gilt cup, borne up on the stem, is quite plain: it shifts visual gear from the "worldly" solidity of the base to an abstract purity that seems transcendent. If you wanted a container for the blood of Jesus, it would be impossible to imagine a more fitting one than this...
...Alon set out to reverse the decline by lobbying for the preservation of green spaces as feeding grounds and nailing nesting boxes high on the outside walls of homes. He chose older houses that had been refurbished, so that the birds could return to familiar haunts. The birdhouses are plain pinewood, about the size of a shoebox, with an entry hole in front. So far, Alon and his colleagues in Operation Kestrel have put up 40 boxes in Jerusalem and 50 in Haifa. "The kestrels are dependent on people," says Alon, who started bird watching as a 13-year...
...hardly replicable by any other. Playing what was once considered the Bartok Violin Concerto (before the discovery of the First Violin Concerto), one was led to a feeling of extreme awe. Awe at the masterful execution by this petite Japanese virtuoso, awe at her apparent humility, and just plain heart-thumping, jaw-dropping...