Word: wisp
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...give deprived groups a chance for betterment dramatizes the government slack of interest in making America a land of opportunity for those who most need it. The cuts and impending cuts in educational aid have turned the age-old ideal of economic betterment and class mobility into a wisp of myth...
Actually, the future does not exist except as a concept, a cosmic wisp of possibility. How people view it can make big differences. What befalls society around the bend in the river will not come hurtling out of space (weather excepted) but will have arisen out of today. "The present," as Philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz put it, "is pregnant with the future." The highest prudence consists not of looking ahead but of giving the best care to the burgeoning and, for better or worse, fruitful moment at hand. -By Frank Trippett
Dominating the action-in a way that most Mimis never quite manage-is the 5-ft., 100-odd-lb. figure of Teresa Stratas. Instead of the usual wisp of pathetic winsomeness, Stratas makes of Mimi a complete woman, one with physical and emotional desires and the will to achieve them. Impulsively planting a kiss on Rodolfo's cheek near the end of Act I, calmly singing at the center of the maelstrom of Act II, reaching out to her lover amid the snowdrifts of Act III or expiring serenely in Act IV, Stratas holds the attention with both...
...order to prove this point, I recently journeyed to the North Pole to conduct an exclusive interview with the one and only real Santa Claus. Upon arriving in the arctic wasteland, I quickly spotted a candy-striped house with a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney. Trudging toward it through the ice and snow, I heard a chorus of high-pitched angry voices. As I approached the source of this racket, I discerned a circle of tiny persons, marching determinedly while chanting, "Elfin power, elfin power!" I crossed the picket line and was assailed with snowballs...
...damage civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution, destroy the delicate balance of world peace and turn back the clock for social and economic justice. We are not willing to risk the gains of the last 50 years--and the values of peace, equality and justice--for a fleeting, fanciful wisp of a party and candidate that might never be heard from after November...