Word: wind
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...high noon in Managua. A strong wind off Lake Managua brought some relief from the scorching heat, but ice cream vendors did their usual brisk trade as people arrived to pay their taxes at the lakeside National Palace. Suddenly 24 soldiers in olive green fatigues and black berets, the uniform of the National Guard training school, drew up in trucks. "Make way. Here comes el Hombre," snapped one of the soldiers as he ran to a side entrance and opened a path in the crowd. Bystanders expected to see General Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza, Latin America's most notorious strongman...
...east wind blows...
...spiritual Pope first, not a politician. Catholicism, added Timothy Manning of Los Angeles, must recognize that "it has no political support in many places" and must depend on persuasion rather than power. Said Manning: "Remember the old Aesop fable about the contest between the sun and the wind over who could force the man to remove his coat? The wind nearly beat him to death, but he only clung on more tightly. Then the sun warmed him a bit, and he removed the coat. That is what the church must do in this era-change people through warmth...
Today any mishap, no matter how fluky, can wind up in court. Take the case of the woman who collected $50,000 damages from San Francisco with the contention that her fall against a pole in a runaway cable car transformed her into a nymphomaniac. Or the pedestrian who, as she crossed Chicago's Sears Tower plaza, suffered a broken jaw when the wind toppled her against a guard rail. She recently filed a $250,000 suit against the architects and manager of the building. Her argument: the structure's design increased wind velocities in the area; moreover...
...avant-garde of the litigant spirit that is most unsettling. If one can blame the Government for a lightning strike and a corporation for a wind gust, it is easy to imagine tracking almost any mishap to some distant agency. Should owners of property on which there is a public passageway prohibit barefoot pedestrians or else assume liability for every stubbed toe? Must the manufacturer of a knife clearly label it as dangerous or else be vulnerable to damages for a kitchen worker's sliced finger? Could the designer of a dam be blamed if a voluntary swimmer drowned...