Word: switchboards
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That is only one of the thousands of memories that Burns has taken with her into retirement after 30 years as a White House switchboard operator, the last three as chief operator. Part technician, part diplomat and security officer, Burns and the others like her live at the vortex of the White House nervous system. Without them, Presidents can be rendered blind and dumb...
Campaign headquarters for Francis W. Hatch Jr. '46--the quiet gentleman from Beverly Farms who wants to be governor of Massachusetts--are not what you would expect. The walls are yellow and peeling--just a little hole in the wall on 14 Beacon Street. One switchboard, six telephones, no hold buttons, no cotton ribbed turtlenecks--just a bunch of kids, sitting around stuffing envelopes. There is one sign on the wall. "Make the King the Ruler of Massachusetts for the next four years, and you'll think Henry the VIII was a nice...
...sensitive and a little ambivalent about his SQ. He knows with the intuitive self-consciousness of the upwardly mobile that occupation, education, ethnic background and the concepts of social identity and life-style also count. Of course money talks. Indeed it whistles, hums and croons through the tangled switchboard of class lines that bind the conflicting emotions most Americans have about their place in an open, competitive society. What money says is "This way to the good life," not good as in Plato, but good as in "a good house in a good neighborhood." Beyond that basic aspiration lies...
...being the stereotype of impersonal corporate power. But for the 1,800 folks of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island, 25 miles off the coast of Los Angeles, Pacific Telephone had always been downright neighborly. Almost everybody recognizes by voice the 19 operators who handle Avalon's manual switchboard, which is the last such one in the Bell system. Not for long. Because of increasing hordes of summer tourists and hard-to-replace parts, Santa Catalina will join the computer age this week when its switchboard is replaced by a direct-dial system...
Friends say the family is still hopeful that Moro's life may be spared. Nonetheless, Caritas last week closed its switchboard at night, no longer seeing the need to listen 24 hours a day for a possible signal from the kidnapers. Its well-advertised phone number had been dialed only by cranks or nameless volunteers offering to replace Moro as a hostage. From the kidnapers, apart from the latest cruel communiqué, there came only silence...