Word: rite
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Harvard. with its rationalist spirit, has long encouraged students question even the most sacred or traditions. For having been bold enough to challenge the sanctity of this rite of modern paganism, the Harvard community should not censure but thank me. You're welcome...
...bright, brisk spring afternoon last week, Bill Clinton threw out the first ball at the Cleveland Indians' opening-day game. But his pitch, high and over the plate, was more than the usual springtime rite. The President helped kick off the baseball season in Jacobs Field, a sleek, brand-new, $169 million stadium, a large chunk of which was financed by a 4.5 cents-a-pack local tax on cigarettes. Yet no one, no matter where they are sitting, is permitted to smoke in the open-air stands...
When we see smoking in this context--as a rite of passage for so many, as an indelible part of our culture, and as an act still in many ways symbolic--it makes no sense to expect to eliminate it by legislating it out of existence. While outlawing cigarettes in our workplaces and restaurants may make the air in some areas cleaner, and play to specious claims about the dangers of second-hand smoke, it also makes tobacco more mysterious, more difficult to obtain, and makes smoking even more of a symbolic act. Suddenly those secret puffs become not just...
...game is a rite of spring. The only time "pring has sprung" makes sense to me is after Roger Clemens launches a 100-mile-per-hour fastball. The game consumes me, envelops me, shapes me. I have ditched class, missed tests, and created phony dentist excuse notes because of the game. I would rob a bank if that is what it took to go to the game again next year...
Although a 3-day conference on "Issues--'94" may not be your typical rite-of-passage, it nonetheless reminded me I have indeed grown older since high school. I wasn't afraid to sleep through a lecture and I didn't come back with any souvenirs this time...