Word: automatic
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Most of the time, a New York City municipal election has all the suspense and flavor of lunch at the automat-deposit the votes and out pops another machine-tooled Democrat. But two-term Mayor Robert Ferdinand Wagner has jammed the mechanism by breaking openly with the Democratic bosses (TIME, June 30) and choosing his own running mates for a third-term attempt in November. Ever since, the city's political future has been as confusing as a subway...
...pressed, most mothers will concede that they enjoy the affection anyway, commercialized or not. In fact, an anti-anti reaction may be developing. For many people, Mother's Day is so far out that it's in-like eating at the Automat or listening to Tchaikovsky. Although not necessarily an authority on anything this side of Samoa, Anthropologist Margaret Mead summarizes this feeling: "Mother's Day is synthetic. In our culture we just make up things as we go along. But I don't just laugh at it. Some kind of ritual is important in family...
...take them to museums, concerts, plays and sometimes we even get the conductor or lead actor to talk to them. We try to make each visit an excursion. If we take them to Carnegie Hall, we make sure they walk down 57th Street afterwards and go to the Automat, say, for something to eat. We want them to get the idea that they can walk on 57th Street and go into a restaurant just like anyone else...
Sipping coffee and reading the business section of the Times in an Automat at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, she came upon an ad announcing the opening of a new investment-counseling firm, Glass & Krey, just up the street. Sylvia made the trip over in such a hurry that her Phi Beta Kappa key was still swinging like a pendulum on her bosom when she arrived at the desk of Arthur William Glass. The sight of the pendant transfixed him. "I've always wanted to hire someone with one of those," he murmured before Sylvia could open her mouth...
Author Beagle, 20. has written a wry dialogue with death that may contain no large lump of wisdom but offers a fair selection of small ones. Except for an occasional lapse of taste (a coffin is a "worm Automat"), his ectoplasmic fable has a distinct, mossy charm...