Fathers escort their daughters to these promlike balls, where at some point — between the dancing, food, and entertainment (largely involving little girls doing ballet around big wooden crosses) — the girls recite a pledge vowing to be chaste until marriage...

The skin was somewhat pigmented, especially in certain regions, while over the whole there appeared whitish, rounded or oval mottlings or dapplings, most obvious where the surrounding cuticle was most deeply colored.

In 1980, Volvo engineers sweated in Arizona, testing their prototype 760 sedans. To keep Scottsdale’s upwardly mobile from figuring out what the cars were (fat chance), the Swedes broke the “t”s off of Talbot badges, screwed on the resulting “ALBO” labels, and told people that the cars were French. The ruse might have worked, except that the six-foot-four, blue-eyed blond overseers parlez-voused English in “Ya-shoor!” Scandinavian tones.

the flittings of birds