Word: silken
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...piece of desk equipment, a chintzy plastic tray with 365 nondescript pages on it. But now it is being replaced by the posh and prestigious desk diary. Bound in padded leather with the owner's name or initials stamped in gold on the cover and decorated with silken page markers, the best-bred datebooks look a bit like church hymnals, and they command nearly the same reverence...
...Delhi, a stately capital even under normal circumstances, sparkled for the occasion. Signposts and road markers had been freshly whitewashed, silken banners fluttered along the main thoroughfares, and garlands of spring flowers and marigolds hung from the brick walls leading to the international conference center of Vigyan Bhavan. The elaborate preparations signaled the arrival of delegates from 101 countries, including 60 national leaders ranging from Argentina's President Reynaldo Bignone to Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. They had come to India for the first summit meeting since 1979 of nations belonging to the nonaligned movement...
DIED. Leonid Kogan, 58, slight "aristocrat of the violin," cherished by worldwide audiences for his poker-face pyrotechnics and the silken refinement of his playing; of causes and in a location not announced by Soviet officials. A prodigy who burst into the international spotlight at age 27 by winning the 1951 Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels, Kogan's flawless but aloof technique could on occasion produce bloodless interpretations. A Jew who denied that Moscow was guilty of anti-Semitic discrimination, he publicly criticized dissidents like Andrei Sakharov...
...Bayreuth Festival, however, can see him as something other than a stalwart. In a brilliant bit of casting against type, the suave, silken Prey has been portraying the cantankerous Beckmesser in Wagner's Die Meistersinger. It may be the first time in history that Beckmesser out-sings his tenor rival in the prize-song contest. "In his letters, Wagner said that Beckmesser should not be too comic," says Prey. "So I said I will sing this music like Schubert's Winterreise. "And he does...
...recount the saga of the five nubile Zinn sisters of Bloodsmoor Valley, Pa., circa 1880. For these young ladies, the trajectory of love follows the customarily lunatic lines of an Oates romance. The youngest Zinn, Deirdre, is snatched away by a stranger in "an outlaw balloon of sinister black-silken hue" as she sits crocheting in a gazebo. Sister Malvinia escapes the toils of Victorian family life in her own way: she makes a career as an actress and is courted by a singularly repulsive Mark Twain. Octavia marries a closet sadist and feather-boa fetishist. Constance Philippa runs away...