Word: twig
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...urban woman, I find myself brooding over the same bear stories as Barbara Ehrenreich in her piece on vacationing in bear country [ESSAY, Aug. 12]. When I am out camping and hiking, every snapping twig in the dark is surely a grizzly. It's amazing how many stumps on the hiking trail look exactly like a bear rearing on its hind legs. I've read that on the trails you should alert the bears you are coming by talking, singing or wearing a bell on your backpack. I was not singing or ringing when my daughter and I recently hiked...
Branson grew up comfortably in a 16th century farmhouse in a Surrey village of Merchant-Ivory Englishness, son of a happy, well-connected family. His father Ted carries on the family tradition as a lawyer. His mother, a former dancer and airline stewardess, gets credit for bending the twig. "She wouldn't let us just watch television. She would say, 'Be a doer!'" With second wife Joan and their two children, Branson manages a vaguely normal life-style. The children are not sent away to school; Joan does the cooking; the obligatory nanny is her niece. Weekends are spent...
Today, The U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt glides stealthily in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of what once was Yugoslavia. Ironically, the motto of the Western powers for most of the Bosnian conflict has been to "Speak hypocritically and thwack yourself with a small twig." Western leaders regularly repeat their mantra of how "Bosnia was a great failure of Western leadership," as if they are speaking of some other Western leaders and that with the admission of guilt all their sins are absolved...
Unabomber also sent a letter but no manuscript to Scientific American. It was a critique of a story about particle accelerators, so innocuous that staff members initially failed to twig to its authorship. The letter with Penthouse's manuscript, by contrast, contained one menacing and macabre touch. Since Penthouse was less "respectable" than the other publications, "we promise to desist permanently from terrorism, except that we reserve the right to plant one (and only one) bomb intended to kill, after our manuscript has been published." Bob Guccione, the magazine's headline-happy publisher, volunteered a page to Unabomber...
...bomb-making style, which has always been quirky and meticulous. The Unabomber's devices are generally handcrafted, with many parts, including tiny levers, carved from wood. fbi forensics experts have found everything from scrap wood to pieces of mahogany and other hardwoods used in furniture. One bomb contained a twig from a cherry tree. The bomber makes some of his own metal parts too, including pins and even screws. Then the whole thing is generally placed in a homemade wooden box before being mailed or delivered...