Word: dourness
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...have doubled in strength each year since 1963. Their growing following is symptomatic of the stirrings within the realm that 19th century English Clergyman-Critic Sydney Smith dismissed contemptuously as "that garret of the earth, that knuckle-end of England, that land of Calvin, oat-cakes and sulphur." After dour decades of stagnation, the Scots are surging forward with a new spirit...
...source out of our soul, and in the cleverness and technical knowledge with regard to art, I find something that reminds me of what in religion one would call self-righteousness." As a Dutch preacher's son preparing for the Protestant ministry, he taught himself to draw the dour peasants and bleak countryside almost as a form of spiritual communication. "I see in the whole of nature, for instance in the trees, expression, and so to speak, soul," he said of an early sketch. "A row of pollard willows sometimes has something of a procession of orphaned men about...
...think of all the sailing I might have done." The sum total of his activities has nevertheless left its mark. He has certainly given conservatism a sheen of articulateness and thoughtfulness it has not always had. "The average American," says Ohio Congressman John M. Ashbrook, "thinks that conservatives are dour, always griping and clipping coupons. Bill puts down that notion...
...appearing before a Senate subcommittee on behalf of Green Thumb, a Government project that gives old folks jobs beautifying Arkansas roadsides. As the jug band sawed away, someone passed out Green Thumb hard hats (worn as protection against falling tree branches). One of the hats wound up atop that dour Arkansan John McClellan, 71. Without a change in his grim expression, McClellan stood up and began dancing a jig to the Arkansas Traveler, all the while slapping at the hat to keep it in place. Before long it was too much even for Stoneface. "He's actually smiling," said...
Died. General Walter Krueger, 86, commander of the U.S. Sixth Army in World War II (TIME cover, Jan. 29, 1945), a dour, supremely organized tactician who enlisted as a 17-year-old private in the Spanish-American War and commanded every size military unit, from squad to army, in his rise to full general, capping his career with 15 amphibious landings that pushed the Japanese back across the Pacific from New Guinea to the Philippines; of pneumonia; in Valley Forge...