Word: rituals
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...Islam." The end result of the expansion is an ever-growing number of pilgrims pouring into a remote site for a two-week period, increasing the likelihood of tragedies. In 1994, 207 Indonesian pilgrims were killed in a stampede as worshippers surged toward a cavern for the symbolic ritual of "stoning the devil," while in 1990, 1,426 people died during a stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel that leads from Mecca to Mina. Although Mohammed bin Al-Suhaily, director-general of the Saudi defense agency, said that 181 pilgrims are dead and 800 injured, witnesses placed the number of dead...
Last night, I repeated this ritual, this time scanning the heavens for Hale-Bopp. Dining halls had been abuzz with tales of sightings for days, and Harvard's armchair astronomers regaled whoever would listen with hyperbole and an occasional fact. Not wanting to miss out on the chance of four millennia, I turned my eyes skyward yet again. The same pea-sized white blob hung in the sky, and it was only after I cleaned my eyeglasses that I was convinced it was indeed a comet and not a piece of lint from the laundry room--piece of lint whose...
Tomorrow we lose an hour of sleep in that yearly spring event known as the change to daylight-saving time. We at Dartboard feel that this system unfairly discriminates against college students who lose not only winks, but their share of the sun in the antiquated ritual. (Granted, we certainly appreciate the extra hour added in the fall...
Once on a trip to Africa, Elizabeth Swados witnessed a ritual ceremony where a priest was "absolutely magnificent and fantastic" in the crowd. Curiously, Swados noticed this very same priest sulking under a tree the next night. She later learned that the village elders decided he could no longer entertain because he was "no longer possessed." Swados has since adopted this rule for her own work: To work with one of her productions "you have to be 'possessed' or you don't get to perform...
That was all Burton needed to hear. There is a cheerful babble today as his Catholic ritual class, having completed an earnest discussion on the intricacies of Lenten observance, joins the rest of the congregation for coffee and doughnuts. A woman comes up to Burton carrying a beautiful, cruller-smeared little girl in her arms and tells a visitor how much help, both spiritual and practical, Burton gave her in adopting a Chinese child. He is embarrassed but obviously pleased. The present and the future both look pretty good. "The important thing," he says, "is I know what...