Word: direful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...There was a time when reduced income on the farm would soon make itself sharply felt in the whole economy. In 1956, despite the fact that farm income fell for nearly five years, the rest of the economy is at the greatest level of prosperity in history. Despite the dire warnings of farm-state politicos about the danger of "farm-fed farm-led depression," the 1956 conclusion is inescapable: since the U.S. economy has grown and shifted more to the industrial and away from the agrarian, the farm economy is no longer as critical a factor...
Fighting bravely to retain their franchise, the moviemakers-in the person of a top M-G-M costume designer-had provided suitable wedding costumes, but everywhere the actors in the play were forgetting their lines and ad-libbing with dire results. Europe's reigning royalty, to a man, refused to show up at all. Hordes of jostled press photographers, miffed at having to wait for hours in the rain while luckier invited guests danced away the night at the famed International Sporting Club, openly booed and hissed the bridal pair when they at last appeared...
...Blandings, Carey Grant spends most of his time looking dire, and he is an old hand at it. Few actors, probably, have gotten as many laughs out of standing in front of a mirror and trying to shave. Myrna Loy, as his wife, Muriel Blandings, and Melvyn Douglas, the old lawyer friend, are also old hands. Under such sure guidance, the movie grinds itself out at the Blandings bathroom mirror or in front of the Blandings building site...
More important and more basic than the questions of amount and segregation, is the dire shortage of teachers. Though intimately connected with school construction, it is badly neglected in the President's proposals. His only offering is "my earnest hope that ... the states and communities will give increasing attention to this taproot of all education ..." It is good to be earnest, but far more important to enact legislation and allocate funds when the nation's schools are short 180,000 teachers. The shortage of teachers and trained personnel can be met only by the federal government. "States and communities...
...entangled itself in its own red tape this fall, preventing students from securing tickets by any of the rules, the Council persuaded Mr. Lunden to open its doors one Friday afternoon to some two hundred undergraduates who had been baffled by his system. When PBH fell into dire financial straits, the Council came to the rescue not only with its own funds, but with three thousand dollars it "inspired" from other sources...