Word: switchboard
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Wornum’s desk is one of nine in the crowded room, each equipped with three phones, a switchboard laden with 84 black buttons, and four computer screens—some of which can graphically display the location of the 911 caller...
...maniacally prolific Vollmann won this year's National Book Award for his wildly ambitious, deeply serious panorama of life in Germany and the U.S.S.R. during World War II. With an empathy and insight that border on the psychic, Vollmann inhabits the lives of spies and generals, traitors and switchboard operators and artists (including the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich), all caught in the steel machines of war and fascism...
...told the grand jury--and we went over this in microscopic, excruciating detail, which may someday prove relevant--I recall calling Rove from my office at TIME magazine through the White House switchboard and being transferred to his office. I believe a woman answered the phone and said words to the effect that Rove wasn't there or was busy before going on vacation. But then, I recall, she said something like, "Hang on," and I was transferred to him. I recall saying something like, "I'm writing about Wilson," before he interjected...
Tens of thousands of Icelandic women walked off their jobs for 24 hours last week to protest "male privilege." Businessmen could not place telephone calls because most of Iceland's switchboard operators had joined their sisters on protest lines chanting, "We dare! We can! We will!" The government was temporarily leaderless because President Vigdís Finnbogadóttir had stayed away from her office to demonstrate solidarity with the striking women. Worst of all was the problem of breakfast. Many Icelandic men, having awakened to discover that their wives were refusing to prepare the morning meal, jammed restaurants...
Arguably the last totally terrific MGM musical, this 1960 adaptation of the Broadway hit preserves Judy Holliday's signature role as Ella the switchboard operator, who has all the answers for her callers but none for her lonely self. A nonpareil comedienne and prime show-tune belter, Holliday teams with Dean Martin in a delight that was her triumph and her elegy. She died at 43, of breast cancer...