Word: despairful
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...offers a series of case histories of the famous and the obscure who entered the place as emotional basket cases and emerged as feisty, drug-free graduates. There are no miracles here, but there is a collective refusal to succumb to the temptations of self-pity or despair. Betty and Gerald Ford have witnessed some extraordinary changes in life and in politics, and the sounds that now emanate from the Betty Ford Center may be the cheery clatter of the last laugh...
...lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again." Lines like that were once the cynosure of adolescents and the despair of writers like Ernest Hemingway, who called their creator, Thomas Wolfe, a "glandular giant with the brains and the guts of three mice . . . the over-bloated Li'l Abner of literature...
Tomorrow's event: the reedmaking workshop. Even those who get to sleep after 5 will be prompt. Reedmaking is the essence of piping, the frustration of frustrations (a classic instruction book on the topic is The Piper's Despair). But it is a necessary evil for those who cannot afford to drop $25 or more every time a reed goes bad, which happens maddeningly often. In fact, says Britton, quoting an old oboe players' maxim, "there are no good reeds. We just learn to play the bad ones...
...more serious exertions. A score went to a Sioux reservation in South Dakota to do painting, tiling and light carpentry at a Y.M.C.A. center; a dozen arrived in Juarez, Mexico, to help build a "serviglesia," a church to serve the poor; another twelve headed for Appalachia's "Valley of Despair" to plant fir trees and work on construction and furniture-building projects. Says Vanderbilt Senior Ethel Johnson, 21, who stayed in Nashville with another team sowing gardens, making curtains and teaching English in a community of Cambodian refugees: "Students are vastly underestimated. They have a real desire...
Glowacki's text, translated by Jadwiga Kosicka, benefits from lively staging by Arthur Penn and sensitive performances. Ron Silver bearishly evokes the descent from self-doubt to despair. Dianne Wiest (an Oscar nominee for her role in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters) bubbles with fantasies of redemption: she stuffs a pillow under her clothes and says she will have a child; she tells an enigmatic joke and vows to become a stand-up comic. Each gently deflects the other in a tender marriage, unharrowed by grief...