Word: skein
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Untangling the skein of someone's sexual contacts can be a time-consuming and onerous process. San Francisco's public-health department, for example, has been tracing the partners of heterosexual AIDS victims since April 1985. (Tracing would serve little purpose among San Francisco's estimated 90,000 bisexuals and homosexuals; 50% to 70% are thought to be infected with the virus.) Of 114 heterosexuals with AIDS, the department was able to interview 50, who identified 93 other people with whom they had been intimate. Of the 93, only 42 were located in the Bay Area, and of these...
...everyone agrees, however, that the decrease in fatalities last year stemmed from better management by the FAA or anyone else. "Our emphasis on safe operations has given us an incredible skein of good luck," observes William Jackman, vice president of the Air Transport Association, the airlines' trade group. "We've got to be the luckiest industry in the world...
...inconsistent Bruins have also had some very long afternoons--like the time they were crushed by the Penn steamroller last month, 34-0. The Red and Blue debacle touched off Brown's current three-game losing skein, which included a 27-9 drubbing at the hands of Cornell...
That is not all he considers. Before he boards the airplane that will take him to Memphis, either to defend his father from his sisters or vice versa, Phillip picks through a tangled skein of memories. The crucial incident in the Carver history, as he sees it, occurred in 1931, when his father moved his family, his wife and four children, including the youngest, Phillip, 13, from Nashville to Memphis. George Carver, an eminently respectable lawyer, had been "deceived and nearly financially ruined" by his business association with a Nashville entrepreneur. Old-fashioned honor demanded a move to a place...
With this problem firmly established, Mortimer backs and fills over the four decades of complications that preceded it. The fortunes of the Simcox family form one important skein. The successful end of World War II and the subsequent victory of Clement Attlee and the Labor Party inspire Simeon in his pulpit. He draws his sermons from Revelation 21: 1: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and earth had passed away." Firmly committed to social justice at home and abroad, the minister writes impassioned letters about the New Jerusalem to his bishop, signs...