Word: vagrant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first thing you notice about Harvard Coach Joe Restic is The Nose. Large, long, and crooked as a crag, it functions in conversation as a kind of vagrant puppy dog, pursuing your glance with friendly persistence. You squirm and wiggle in your chair, brush imaginary lint from your shirt and tie your shoes a couple of times to avoid its forthrightness, but it's no use. Slowly, surely, you settle into your chair, turn to The Nose and submit to his intent eyes...
From as early as the second day of the fires that have blackened 200,000 acres of Southern California and rendered thousands homeless, it was obvious that some were not accidental. Aside from one blaze caused by a vagrant's campfire and a few others sparked by fallen power lines or kids playing with matches, everything else was labeled suspicious. But it was not until the smoke, literally, cleared over last week's ruins that police released a shocking estimate. Of the fortnight's 26 major blazes, 20 are regarded as set by arsonists...
Davies, a vagrant, rather self-righteous old man, is taken in by a mentally impaired man, Aston, and his sly and hostile older brother, Mick. The men continually talk at one another but never connect because they are unable to understand themselves. Each has a dream which he cannot act upon. The characters' constant repetition of their stories and of each other's words in absurdly circular dialogue provides both the play's humor and its tragic core...
Reiter devotes almost half of her editorial to an analogy: that of a family head deciding whether or not to take in a vagrant seeking shelter. After establishing that the family head does indeed have the prerogative to turn the vagrant away because of the intended or unintended harm he may cause the family, Reiter admonishes the Clinton Administration for reducing the list of medical conditions restricting immigration. Like the family head, the Administration should instead be turning away people with AIDS, syphilis, leprosy, and other diseases to protect the nation's citizenry...
Imagine you were the head of a family and a sick vagrant knocked on your door one night asking to be taken in. Though you would feel sorry for him and might try to direct him to a professional health care facility, you would probably consider yourself justified in refusing him shelter in your home, especially if he wanted to move in for a long time. You would be motivated by a sense of responsibility towards your family, whom the infectious guest could involuntarily endanger...