Word: rite
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...past 15 years, says that "every fall, a fresh batch of freshmen come in," many with the assumption that a Harvard man smokes a pipe. (Not all of his customers are male, of course, though his female customers are mostly European women.) Macdonald sees it as a rite of passage, one that is often quickly discarded due to the amount of patience and work one must put into his or her pipe. It's amusingly easy, after all, to spot a novice pipe-smoker from their frustration in keeping the durn thing lit. For neophytes frustrated by packing, cleaning...
...reasons for doing it, moreover, are largely the same. Traditionally, body art has served to attract the opposite sex, boost self-esteem, ward off or invoke spirits, indicate social position or marital status, identify with a particular age or gender group or mark a rite of passage, such as puberty or marriage. It's this sort of strictly prescribed, highly ritualistic decoration that Beckwith and Fisher depict in African Ceremonies. "We've tried to show how body art is relevant to every stage of development, from birth to death," says Fisher...
Shaun Fernando, a junior at Texas A&M University, embarked this fall on a rite of passage that began in 1909. Alongside 5,000 of his classmates, he helped construct a massive tower of wood that would be torched before the Thanksgiving-week football game against rival University of Texas. In October, Fernando pitched in for "the Cut," early-morning trips to nearby fields to fell some 5,000 oaks. Afterward students broke ground on the edifice, pounding two thick pine trunks end on end 10 ft. into the earth to serve as a central support. Last week came...
...There used to be a custom for young men and women to meet. It was called dating," he said, adding that audience members were probably too young to remember this outmoded rite of passage...
...irony, of course, is that the affliction of adolescence is traditionally marked by a pronounced sense of isolation. At some critical moment in every proto-adult life comes a lonely, anguished, heartfelt plea: "Nobody understands me!" How can today's teens truly experience this tortured rite of passage when marketers seek them out relentlessly and programmers understand them so well? And with all those Hollywood talent scouts and Silicon Valley headhunters hunting them down and signing them up, why would they even care if their parents understand them at all? Even the lonely losers of yesteryear are no longer locked...