Word: charm
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...Occasionally-as in the John F. Kennedy era-charm even seeps between the Puritanical cracks of the American edifice. Kennedy described Washington as "a city of southern efficiency and northern charm." Blessed with a bit of a European education himself, he knew what was missing...
...some-such as the ever-dour Doris Lessing-charm is merely a wasteful veneer pasted over more meaningful pursuits. "What is charm then?" she asks and then replies: "Something extra, superfluous, unnecessary, essentially a power thrown away." Nor is she alone in this conviction. "Charm always issues," the choreographer Paul Taylor once commented dismissively during a Harvard lecture, "from some terrible emptiness...
...America feels very much like what the poet W.H. Auden described as the state of most poets' output: good ideas, badly executed. Wealthy, work-obsessed, gobbling down small, hurried pleasures in cholesterol-laden chunks as we contemplate the risings and fallings of the Dow, we tend to forget that charm, as Camus observed in The Fall, can provide us with "a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question...
...charm, as so many Europeans realize, that makes life, with all its hovering Ds-death, disappointment, divorce, disease, decline and disfigurement-both bearable, and, at times, even beautiful. It is a very European thing, in the end. And it's something, for a change, I'm unconditionally...
...sold by Franklin, the Rex line of organizers was bought by Xircom last year and upgraded in all sorts of fabulous ways. First, Rex comes with a tiny stylus you can use to tap out words on the onscreen "virtual" keypad. It sounds weird, but it works like a charm. Second, you can download daily news and entertainment updates from the rex.net site into the device. Just set Rex in its cradle and push a button. I was even able to get movie listings for up to three local theaters...