Word: firma
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...play has its merits-some whale-boned wit, metaphysical elegances, aphoristic insights. But Fry is more successful using life as a gymnasium than as a laboratory; theatrically, he is in less danger on a trapeze than on terra firma. He can make words perform all kinds of tricks, but not yet pulse with truth. Shaw, too, loved to send up rhetorical Roman candles. but Shaw's, unlike Fry's, sometimes came down hand grenades...
...predecessors and shown his intelligence, if any, by his ability to discriminate between the important and the negligible, by selecting here and there the significant stepping stones that will load across the difficulties to new understanding. The one who places the last stone and stops across to the terra firma of accomplished discovery gets all the credit. Only the initiated know and honor those whose patient integrity and devotion to exact observations have made the last stop possible...
...returning from his first visit since the war to Japan's northernmost islands of Hokkaido and Honshu. Two hours and one minute after taking off, the Emperor stepped again on terra firma at Tokyo, looking much less nervous than he had before. Crowds of his smiling subjects greeted him with banzais, while news photographers, perched on ladders high above the Emperor's head, told him when to take off and put on his straw skimmer...
...Fort Sam Houston and Camp Cooke, Calif., Reed kept his readers Posted on the daily life of a recruit by scrawling out his column in longhand at night or spending 20? to use the service club typewriter. "You'd be surprised how firma the terra is when you hit it suddenly, while running at full steam and carrying a lot of equipment . . . The cardinal rule brought to bear upon the soldier in the field is as follows: 'If you can't eat it, drink it, or carry it with you, bury it.' This is known...
...soprano who can trill for a quarter of a century on the coloratura's high and skittish vocal trapeze is a notable rarity; this musical generation has Lily Pons. At an age (about 48) when most coloraturas seek the terra firma of German Lieder (where they can be expected to last indefinitely), Trouper Lily pours out her Caro Nome, her Bell Song from Lakme and other acrobatic items of coloratura literature, and gives more than a dozen opera performances and two dozen concerts a year...