Word: vetting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...anthology of humor. Back in the '40s, the untried Herriot attempts to test a bull for fertility. His instrument: a vulcanized rubber tube filled with warm water. The bull, eying a potential mate near by, is in no mood for experiments and furiously charges the young vet: "I met him with a backhanded slash. The elastic came off and the water fountained in the bull's eyes ... I have often wondered since that day if I am the only veterinary surgeon to have used an artificial vagina as a defensive weapon...
...That was all I needed. The children were grown: Jim was a vet in my office, and Rosie was a doctor a few miles away. My evenings were my own, and I had no excuse for putting it off. I sat before the TV set and began typing my stories." His nom de plume came from a televised soccer player; his ideas from old notebooks. The first version was not promising. "What I turned out was like the essays of Macaulay. Awful. A simple style takes a lot of work...
...Only They Could Talk and it Shouldn't Happen to a Vet were modest hits in England. Thomas McCormack, president of St. Martin's Press, thought they could be something more across the pond. He combined the books and added three chapters, ending with the marriage of the young vet and the farmer's daughter. The new title came from an Anglican hymn: All Creatures Great and Small. The rest is history, geography and mathematics. The book hit bestseller lists before the reviews were in. Herriot went on to prove that despite his obscure locale and inarticulate...
...Herriot recalls a colleague's old prediction: "I tell you this, James. There are great days ahead!" But the days have not been cloudless. Recognition has brought gawkers, who have altered his little home town (even the local stationer offers soft-center candies FROM THE TOWN OF THE VET). Fans have sometimes tracked him to the unpretentious fieldstone home he shares with his wife of 40 years. Joan Wight- Helen in the books- is a handsome, white-haired woman who does not suffer tourists lightly: "Alf is too kind. I send them packing." And there have been lampoons...
...mistake to view all Viet Nam veterans as profoundly troubled, as walking wounded. About half of the veterans, the study found, still carry disturbing, unsettling psychic baggage from Viet Nam. Even so, most cope pretty well. Americans may now be too quick to indulge in a "Lo, the Poor Vet" rhetoric. Dr. Arthur Egendorf, a Viet Nam veteran and a psychologist who was a principal author of the study, points out that those who pity Viet Nam veterans simply relegate them to the role of victim (which is not much help to the veterans). Liberals use their pity to help...