Word: platforms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Kurds feel betrayed by the revolution and the government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan. They are especially enraged by the Pasdaran, who they say treat them "like a conquered province." Kurdish expectations are articulated in the platform of the Kurdish Democratic Party, which calls for locally elected city and provincial councils with responsibility for police courts and tax collecting...
Their perplexity is understandable. Ten feet above their cameras, a wiry man perches on a white wooden platform that stands out sharply, in the bright Ohio sun, against the green pasture beneath. His T shirt bears the words INTERNATIONAL CHICKEN FLYING ASSOCIATION, along with a picture of a chicken in full flight, wearing a flying helmet. Perched on the man's own head, helmet fashion, is a large yellow-and-white knitted chicken...
Periodically he bends down, takes a genuine chicken from the outstretched hands of someone on the ground and inserts the bird into a large rural mailbox on the platform. Then he seizes a plumber's helper and, like an artilleryman ram-rodding home a shell, nudges the chicken's tail feathers and plunges it into flight. Beneath the launching platform is a triangular corral, several hundred feet long, fashioned with snow fences. In it waits a squad of small boys cradling large fish nets. As each chicken takes flight squawking in protest and spraying feathers, a boy dashes...
Finally plunged through the box for an official start, the bird veers sideways into the crowd sitting behind the platform on folding chairs. Eleven more are launched with equally poor results before a hen named Stephanie soars 60 ft., to the cheers of the congregation. For most of the next two hours, birds with names like Chick en Little, Chickenmauga, Opeck, Granny Kluk and Herb W. Cluckerman drop stonelike or circle back over the crowd. Apparently unruffled by the Shake 'N Bake threat, Otis, when his turn arrives, drops out and down. Kamikaze literally lays an egg en route...
...Leasure, 32, a catering manager, decided to tie the knot during the Kinetic Sculpture Race, a Ferndale, Calif., festivity that draws some 10,000 spectators. Bailey's entry: a carousel-shaped contraption covered with pink, blue and white tissue-paper flowers. Powered by four children walking around the platform, the float broke down less than a block from the starting line. Though Bailey, Leasure and the bridesmaids ended up pushing their contrivance along the 200yd. course, they did get to the finish line- in time for the wedding ceremony...