Word: swanning
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...with the quirky genius of Jerome Robbins, whose seldom seen 1956 comic gem, The Concert, has just been auspiciously revived by the New York City Ballet. Completely restaged and updated by Robbins, it is still a hilarious, crowd-pleasing delight, especially for anyone who has ever suffered through a Swan Lake mangled by an underrehearsed road company...
After Columbus. The Swans may have been visited in 1502 by Columbus, who was making his fourth voyage in search of that elusive passage to the East Indies. Later expeditions established Spain's claim to them. Because there is no water on the islands, they were usually bypassed. In 1856, however, the U.S. passed the Guano Islands Act, which enabled it to pre-empt any unclaimed islands on which bird droppings or guano abounded. Under that proviso, Washington claimed Great and Little Swan...
...Great Swan became a weather station in 1914, but it was 1960 before the real Swan song began. A New York company called Gibraltar Steamship Corp.. which owned no steamships, set up shop on the island with a 50,000-watt transmitter. Gibraltar, of course, was a CIA cover, and Radio Swan was soon booming propaganda to Fidel Castro's Cuba, 350 miles away. It called Castro and his lieutenants "pigs with beards" and accused Brother Raul Castro of being "a queer with effeminate friends." In reply, Havana Radio called Swan "a cage of hysterical parrots...
Look to the Rainbow. Before the Bay of Pigs assault began in 1961, Radio Swan beamed coded messages like "Look well at the rainbow. The fish will rise very soon. Chico is in the house. Visit him." After the attack failed, Swan was gradually phased out of the spook business and used instead for weather reports and sending navigation signals. The U.S. eventually decided that the islands could be safely given away. For Honduras, which has claimed them since 1923, Swan has long been a symbol of Yankee imperialism. In 1961 a boatload of students sailed out to plant...
...Senate is expected to ratify last week's agreement by next spring. After that Honduras will leave things as they are on Swan. The U.S. technicians will remain, as will Glidden and his family. But another potential -though minor-international flash point has been damped down. Raising his glass in a toast last week, President Cruz remarked that Washington had been wise to give up the Swans. If it had not, he hinted with a straight face, Honduras would have had to resort to force...