Word: prosaicly
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...with Writer Russell Martin on a book, Entering Space, published this month (Stewart, Tabori & Chang; $24.95). Illustrated with scores of photographs, a few of which appear here, Entering Space is a knowing and scrupulously detailed account of the most ambitious American adventures aloft. It gives a sense of the prosaic minutiae and the dumb-struck wonder of traveling through space. Some excerpts...
Walter Mondale came to Dallas for that most prosaic of political events, a campaign fund-raising dinner, and he had intended to talk about a drab, unemotional subject-the problems facing small businesses. But he tossed away his prepared speech. As he rambled on last Monday night, he found himself turning his campaign talk into a rather passionate tutorial on religion and liberty. "The founding fathers spelled it out in great detail," he said, when it came to writing the First Amendment. "What they spelled out is the separation of church and state." Suddenly the 800 well-to-do Texans...
...many cases, these were menial positions, tasks performed without public credit. But no matter how prosaic (geraniums planted by...), aesthetic (pigeons released by ...) or majestic (jetpack flown by . ..) the chore, the 9,000 performers who fashioned the splendor seen on television last Saturday saw themselves as putting together something of first importance-sappy as that may sound. But when was the last time you saw a casually tossed cigarette butt snared by a youthful groundsman before it hit the sod? "My job is to keep this area clean," he said, walking away with the dirty object in the empty yogurt...
...anyone noticed, and he dropped out of the race after a year. In the Senate, he is a leading member of the Finance Committee, and also acutely attuned to the complexities of immigration. As head of the Senate Democrats' re-election apparatus, he seems to revel in the prosaic details of fund raising, telephone banks and tracking surveys...
...carrying nuclear codes, or the "android image" of the Secret Service, or how agents switch revolver style when they change clothes from casual (Smith & Wesson Model 10) to formal (Walther PPK), or the press "baying for names and quotes." Unfortunately, the prose that would result would be far more prosaic. The sense of pomp and ceremony and history would be sacrificed. But by taking refuge in an electronic cocoon, those who run the world might be able to travel through it more quickly, quietly and safely...