Word: ballasted
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Branch went to all the offices, saying they gave him "ballast and steerage." It's a routine he says he would follow if he went back. But not everyone begging for reservations at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky (wait: one year), or New Camaldoli Hermitage, California (wait: six months, only because they refuse to book any further), is so sincere. The problem is not an entirely new one. The earliest monasteries were founded in the 4th century in the Egyptian desert. As Christianity became legalized and then haute, the Desert Fathers and Mothers found themselves overrun by hipsters from Alexandria...
...ship had made several trips to Aspinwall and back, but as Kinder relates, its steam engines leaked water, which sloshed without restraint, because the 300-ft. wooden hull was built without bulkheads. Coal, which was both fuel and ballast, was loaded at New York for the round trip, so with more than half its coal exhausted, the ship rode too high in the water on the return. Storm winds canted the hull sharply. Pumps failed. Water swamped the starboard fires...
...Academy goes ultra-lite this year, reveling shamelessly in feel-gooders to the tune of As Good As It Gets, Good Will Hunting and The Full Monty. Titanic is its idea of tragic ballast: never mind such trifles as lame dialogue, clunky plot contrivances and characters that are closer to caricatures...
...narrative and moral center of 4 Little Girls is Chris McNair, Denise's father. Her mother and the relatives of the other victims provide heartbreaking testimony, but McNair has a gravity that provides ballast for the entire film. When, with his rich voice, he recalls how he explained to Denise why she couldn't eat at a segregated cafeteria, or discusses his favorite picture of her (taken with her Brownie camera in her bedroom as she clutches a blond doll), he conveys both deep pain and resoluteness...
...spending nearly $22 billion more on child care. Others, like expanding college work-study grants and training more computer programmers, are relatively modest. Clinton is also talking more seriously about confronting Social Security's solvency crisis. What all these plans have in common is that they seek to give ballast to a nation sailing through choppy waters...