Word: talisman
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...eventually justify themselves as a fragmented tableau of that most fragmented experience: war. Here are just a few of the details of just one air drop, seen like a close-up of a Flemish tapestry: A paratrooper lands on a partridge and carries the dead bird with him: half talisman, half future meal. A British colonel calls his men to him with a copper hunting horn. Bagpipes play Blue Bonnets. The inmates of a bombed mental institution, clad in white robes, float through the surrounding woods like ghosts...
...couples exchanged kisses and handshakes at the helicopter door; Nixon touched Ford's elbow, as if in final encouragement. Though Ford was not to take the oath of office for another two hours, the famous black box, the repository for the nation's military codes-an ugly talisman that signifies the transfer of power in the nuclear age-was left behind with a military aide. It was the first time it had been away from Nixon since Jan. 20, 1969, the day he had taken charge of it from Lyndon Johnson...
...sharp contrast, the U.S. still believes in self-reliance and initiative (though not as strongly as in the past). But even in the U.S., the danger in the concept of leadership is that it can all too easily become a talisman, a form of magic. Instead effacing the problems and working at them, people tend to sit back and hope for leadership. "Everybody is looking for somebody else to do something for them, to take the responsibility," says Nelson Rockefeller. According to Chicago Psychoanalyst Jules Masserman, "We never get over being children. We're always looking for a parent figure...
Three Eyes. A curiosity of this process, kept on view in the laboratories as a sort of talisman, is an 18th century Madonna which, on patch cleaning, turned out to have a 17th century version under it. When that in turn was tested, the restorers found a 13th century Madonna by the so-called "Master of the Magdalens" beneath. The final palimpsest, a Virgin with three eyes, two noses and a pair of bambini (see opposite, lower right), was playfully christened "Picasso's Madonna...
...Harvard academicians as Economist John Kenneth Galbraith and Professor James Q. Wilson. The experts are offering the quartet not only vital inside tips on how to run their offices but also the details of some of the major legislative issues they will face. The course's founder, Mark Talisman, 32, for ten years an assistant to Ohio Congressman Charles A. Vanik, spent one nonstop 4½-hr. class session on such not-so-trivial basics as where to turn in a proposed bill (in the "hopper" at the side of the Speaker's platform), who will assign...