Word: traits
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Waite is also trusted by all sides to remain impartial and apolitical. "He has no political point of view whatsoever," says a British diplomat. "He carries out his missions from a strictly humanitarian point of view." Perhaps most important, Waite is a man known to guard confidences jealously. That trait has earned him the trust of not only Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Runcie but Gaddafi and Shi'ite kidnapers...
Honesty is a trait that has long marked Carter's music. So have obscurity, density and a resolute unwillingness to compromise. As one of the leading (and one of the last) exponents of academic serialism, a postwar compositional style marked by rigid mathematical organization of pitch and rhythm, Carter tends to be honored more in words than with performances. But his String Quartet No. 2 and No. 3 won Pulitzer Prizes in 1960 and 1973, and a hard core of enthusiasts rapturously greets each new work. The Second Quartet treated each instrument as an individual; the Third paired them...
...dogs, says Serpell, have characteristics compatible with humans. The wolf, a forerunner of today's dog, has strong pack instincts, an attribute that made attachment to early human groups relatively easy. Cats are highly territorial, making them suitable pets for the permanently settled. Both species share the desirable trait of eliminating their wastes outside their dens. Less tangible is the "cute response." Serpell's sources suggest that the pudgy features of all young mammals elicit sympathetic and nurturing reactions from adults...
...what can you do when the leader of the West is such a stickler for rules. So I cried to him, "Oh great arbiter of the West, please hear my cries. I pray to you have mercy (another great Western trait) on my soul and let me rejoin the just philosophical tradition that I learned at my mother's bosom. Your judgement is the right judgement Mr. President, and I obey your commands but now please reconsider. Please, pleeeze...." He didn't listen...
These are the essentials for obstinate individualism, a national trait elevated to a romance that not only endures but thrives. The literary descendants of Chandler and his contemporaries James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett have unleashed stalkers of the urban wildernesses across the country. Parker and George V. Higgins cover Boston; Elmore Leonard and Loren D. Estleman have a lock on Detroit; Stephen Greenleaf and Bill Pronzini have staked out San Francisco, and Washington is in the hands of Ross Thomas. In Cincinnati, the territory belongs to Jonathan Valin...