Word: wisp
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...colleagues. His hair is slate gray but abundant. His shoulders are only slightly stooped, and he walks without a shuffle. His dour, dark-eyed face has been etched over the decades with downturning lines, but it is still capable of all the familiar flashes of emotion: the rare, stray wisp of a smile, the characteristic sag of one side of his thin mouth to denote disapproval, the sudden contortions of carefully thoughtout anger. However he has changed over the years, Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko has also remained the same: the enduring personification of the ultimate Soviet diplomat...
...Foreign Radio Stations now features Beethoven symphonies too, and the numbingly familiar TV diet of propaganda and prayers is relieved on occasion by plays about Iranian historical heroes. Though even foreign women must don head scarves and can expect anxious nudges from security guards if a single wisp of hair falls into view, some Iranian women have begun with impunity to try on flesh-colored stockings or a touch of mascara. Even notorious Evin Prison, where up to 70 inmates have reportedly been kept in a single one-man cell and 200 killed in an evening, has been renamed...
...most cases, pitifully small funding, they persist against the lavishly bestowed resources of Scandinavia, East Germany and the U.S.S.R. And this year, while perhaps only four have medal prospects, the 50 or so plucky Olympians have dreams of personal bests and extra effort that will bring the U.S. a wisp more respect on the back slopes of the mountains. They are, says Bob Hughes, manager of the U.S. luge team, "the last real amateurs...
...trampled down by the police, who suspect him of terrorism. Seized and imprisoned, Michael K refuses to eat. A physician in the labor camp muses, "Maybe he only eats the bread of freedom." Still, Michael K has preserved a few seeds from the catastrophe. Though utterly emaciated, this wisp of a human creature slips away from his oppressors, so that he may live and die beside his pumpkin seeds. Coetzee mourns Michael K: "A creature that spends its waking life stooped over the soil, that when at last its time comes digs its own grave and slips quietly...
...years of preparation, the contest can founder on the merest wisp of bad luck. But Australia II's performance so far, along with the New York Yacht Club's anguished reaction to that success, has created extraordinary confidence in the Aussie camp. Australia II's skipper, John Bertrand, 36, is already contemplating how Australia will change the rules after it captures the Cup. "If we win," he says, "we're going to make sure all sailcloth must be made of kangaroo hide. Then we are going to fill up a salt lake in the outback...