Word: plastic
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...cream, San Francisco, corn on the cob, roadside picnic spots, "houses that look like the ones in the movies," and the variety of the population-"white, yellow and every shade of black," an Italian visitor noted. Tops among minuses are rude customs officers. Others: slums, dismal trains, violence, plastic flowers, women in hair curlers, "magic ringers" vibrating beds, difficulty in finding information booths and public toilets...
...Houston, a Mexican beautician named Mrs. Esperanza del Valle Vasquez, 37, was helped to survive ten crucial postoperative days by being hooked up to one of Dr. Michael DeBakey's plastic "half-hearts," developed at Baylor and Rice universities. Used mostly outside rather than partly inside the body-as in previous cases-the pump increased Mrs. Vasquez's heart output by as much as 40% while she recuperated from deft surgical replacement of valves damaged by rheumatic fever. Two previous patients of Dr. DeBakey's, both men in their 60s, died despite aid from the heart pump...
...gusty wind snapped in at 20 knots across Ohio's Clinton County Air Force Base, but all systems were Go. "T minus seven and counting," boomed the range officer's bullhorn. ". . . Five, four, three, two, one-ignition!" And with that, a 12-in. plastic, balsa and paper rocket zoomed aloft bearing a one-ounce payload of lead to the somewhat suborbital altitude of 800 ft. "Good shot," cheered the range officer. "A good bird...
Meantime, Sculptor Frazier was using vacuum cleaners to inflate his 50-ft.-tall "soft skyscraper," attended by scores of shoving children. "The fun is in the struggle," exhorted Art Critic Harold Rosenberg as the plastic building listed flaccidly to and fro and finally stood erect. With that, Frazier let it topple over on the beach, where, with cries of "Kill it!", the children ripped it to shreds in a scene right out of Lord of the Flies...
Operation Harelip. The Army, which operates most of the U.S. military hospitals in Viet Nam, is hesitant about letting its medics take on civilian care, insisting that "our mission is to support our own troops." After a rash of plastic surgery for cleft-palate victims won the nickname "Operation Harelip" for all U.S. compassionate services, the Army officially put aid to civilians on an "emergency only" basis, partly on the ground that noisy children were disturbing sick servicemen...