Word: torpor
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...time to study the turkey vulture, especially in the tiny hamlet of Hinckley, Ohio, to which, like the swallows that regularly come back to Capistrano, the scavenging birds return every year. February, however, is not the ideal time to look for groundhogs. The woodchuck does awaken from his winter torpor earlier than most other ground animals but rarely as early as Feb. 2-unless roused from its den by meteorologists...
...Located in the fertile San Joaquin Valley, it is a sleepy little community whose most notable claim to fame is its unusual name, a garbled version of its early designation as a railroad's "Coaling Station A." Last week Coalinga (pronounced Clinga) was jolted out of its torpor, adding a puzzling footnote to California's seismic history...
Andropov has persistently worked to shake up the torpor that afflicts Soviet institutions. While what Soviet citizens are calling Operation Trawl tracks down truant workers who show up late at the factory, Andropov is seeking to free his creaking bureaucracy of its habitual corruption. Since assuming office, he has reshuffled some 20 top officials and summarily dismissed six others. He pointedly chose Crime Buster Geidar Aliyev, 59, former party boss and KGB chief in Azerbaijan, as Deputy Premier. He also fired Leonid Brezhnev's crony and Interior Minister, Nikolai Shchelokov, and replaced him as head of the bribe-prone...
...Tour (1593-1652). His own Fortune Teller (the subject was perhaps bound to be popular in a country as worried about the future as early 17th century France) is condemned at the moment to a period of freakhood, thanks to 60 Minutes, which briefly rose from its usual torpor about cultural affairs to pillory it as a modern forgery. Reputable scholars agree, however, that there is no real question about The Fortune Teller's authenticity; its age has now been scientifically confirmed. It remains one of La Tour's masterpieces. Cleaned of grime and later repaints...
...grown children, drug-frazzled Kirsten and lard-witted Owen, vow to wreak vengeance on their gorgeous mother Isabel, and their father's best friend from boyhood, whom they take to be the killers. Here, as elsewhere, the author has far more energy than her characters, who sag into torpor when she busies herself with other scenes and lurch groggily back into motion when she summons them again...