Word: tanked
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...professional dog walker" whose quote about gasoline prices you used in your Verbatim section [NOTEBOOK, March 23]. For the record, your reference should have been to "her tank," not "his tank." And for my mother's sake, I should have hyphenated my dog-walking occupation with "professional actress." After all, residuals bring in almost as much income as my Monday-through-Friday dog-walking clients. COLEY SOHN Venice, Calif...
...Look around. There's Lenin arriving at the Finland Station and Gandhi marching to the sea to make salt. Winston Churchill with his cigar, Louis Armstrong with his horn, Charlie Chaplin with his cane. Rosa Parks staying seated on her bus and a kid standing in front of a tank near Tiananmen Square. Einstein is in his study, and the Beatles are on The Ed Sullivan Show...
...meaning of his moment--it was no more than that--was instantly decipherable in any tongue, to any age: even the billions who cannot read and those who have never heard of Mao Zedong could follow what the "tank man" did. A small, unexceptional figure in slacks and white shirt, carrying what looks to be his shopping, posts himself before an approaching tank, with a line of 17 more tanks behind it. The tank swerves right; he, to block it, moves left. The tank swerves left; he moves right. Then this anonymous bystander clambers up onto the vehicle...
Occasionally, unexpectedly, history consents to disguise itself as allegory, and China, which traffics in grand impersonals, has often led the world in mass-producing symbols in block capitals. The man who defied the tank was standing, as it happens, on the Avenue of Eternal Peace, just a minute away from the Gate of Heavenly Peace, which leads into the Forbidden City. Nearby Tiananmen Square--the very heart of the Middle Kingdom, where students had demonstrated in 1919; where Mao had proclaimed a "People's Republic" in 1949 on behalf of the Chinese people who had "stood up"; and where leaders...
...sense of shame about his recreational pass-time. He offers explanations, however. "When it gets warm out, they start taking off the layers," he enthuses. "It's a great time--" his praise of female summer clothing is cut short by the appearance of a woman in a skirt and tank-top walking briskly down the sidewalk...