Word: bleak
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Oneida (pop. 500) and Sheppton (pop. 1,100) are bleak little towns about a mile apart in the worked-out anthracite fields of eastern Pennsylvania. The women age fast while their men scrabble for a living in bootleg mines-tiny, independent operations that ignore rigid safety standards. From one such mine, dug into the side of the hill that separates Oneida and Sheppton, two men were rescued last week after nearly 14 incredible days of imprisonment beneath the earth's surface...
...dropouts have a bleak employment future ahead of them. Over the past ten years, with overall employment steadily expanding, jobs for those without high school education have declined by 25%. Of the nation's 4,322,000 unemployed, about two-thirds are people who failed to complete high school. Many of them lack even the meager education required to pass qualifying tests for Government retraining programs. Among teen-agers out of school, the unemployment rate...
Although Beckett's Waiting for Godot is--despite most critics--an optimistic work, the title of Happy Days is blatantly ironic. Throughout the play, the outlook--both literal and figurative--is bleak. Death and annihilation are imminent. The whole work is a study in irony--and the irony, in both word and action, is heightened by the ludicrous situational context. And it is ludicrous. In spite of all the pathos and the spectre of death. Happy Days is on balance a comedy. Many of Winnie's actions are highly funny, and she is by no means reluctant to crack puns...
Caravans shows more research than imagination. Michener studs his skimpy narrative with Afghan legends and interminably breathless descriptions of the sere and bleak Afghan landscape. All he succeeds in doing is making Afghanistan seem like Hawaii West...
...older brother was already away at school near Scotland's bleak coast. Now it was time for Princess Anne, 12, to leave Buckingham Palace. She will be one of next year's "new girls" at upper-middle-class Beneden School, in Kent, 42 miles from London. She didn't have to take an exam to get in, but that was the only curtsy to royalty. Along with her 300 schoolmates, she'll be up at 7, make her own bed, take her turn setting the table and washing the dishes. And that's fine with...