Word: skillfulness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...when Grandmother left some money, and Ditchley, through his grief, began dreaming of a nice vacation and maybe enough left over for a snowblower. Then the lawyers got into the act, clucking about what a mess Grandmother had left and how lucky Ditchley was that, thanks to their skill, the whole thing might not cost him too much. That made Ditchley worry about his own estate being picked clean, so he called on Thurmond Hotchkiss O'Mulvaney Garcia & Ginsburg, where a junior partner had a secretary copy a few paragraphs from a book and then presented him with a brand...
Perhaps what is most grating, ultimately, is the indispensability of lawyers in modern society: their skill at decoding the laws written by Congressmen-lawyers or their lawyer aides, at interpreting the regulations promulgated by bureaucrat-lawyers, at helping influence the decisions made by politician-lawyers. The swashbuckling entrepreneur may not be a vanished species, but he is an endangered one; and in a complex, technological society he may not get very far without a secular priest, his lawyer, to minister to him. "I can't believe the change," says Atlanta Attorney Sidney O. Smith, recently retired from the federal bench...
...been even since his election in 1974: how to inject enough reformism into his own Majority, to provoke the "opening to the Left" he desires. This requires two qualities he has not shown so far, despite his analytic intelligence and pedagogic talent: political imagination in devising reforms, political skill in overcoming obstacles. He now has a freer hand and a better opportunity, since he faces a deeply shaken Left and has won much greater influence for his supporters within the Majority...
...Wallenda devised a more complicated form of his pyramid- seven people in three tiers, six men connected by shoulder bars and one young woman perched on top on a chair, all swaying at the edge of the void, preserved only by their incredible combination of skill, balance and courage. Old Karl billed them as "the Great Wallendas," and he did his best to keep the act in the family...
...Rise and Fall of American Humor, English Professor Jesse Bier solemnly declared that "we are in great part humorless as never before." Other humor experts, who cannily refuse to be associated with their opinions, believe that laughter has continued to dwindle because Americans are losing their former skill at recognizing humor when it comes along unannounced. The good news: relief is at hand...