Word: dourness
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Below the dour, stone faces of famous Harvard benefactors, representatives from 30 University agencies gathered in Memorial Hall to eat donuts and popcorn, meet each other and tell each other what they do all day in their offices all around Harvard...
Another story that made its way to the White House is that the dour Georgi Arbatov, the Soviets' top U.S. expert, was playing Reagan in the Kremlin's dry runs for the Geneva confrontation. The thought is so singular that it provoked laughs in the back corridors of the White House. One wag suggested that if that went well, Arbatov could move on to Hollywood and Bedtime for Bonzo...
...Dour, deliberate and repressed residents, both Lutheran and Roman Catholic, suffer dangerous guilt complexes. Just as the middle Olson boy reaches out to examine the medallion between the breasts of a sultry waitress from Mom and Dad's Cafe, Lake Wobegon's four-story grain elevator explodes, showering the town with chunks of timber...
...Gromyko felt about the change remained, as usual, something of a mystery. After the 1,500-member Supreme Soviet gave unanimous approval to his nomination, the dour, stoop-shouldered diplomat, variously known as Grim Grom and Dr. Nyet, accepted Gorbachev's praise and his new title in typically expressionless style. "It is not for me to judge whether I deserve such words or not," he said. "I shall make every effort to discharge with honor my duty to the party, to the country, to the people...
...rare moment of levity in an otherwise dour and downbeat Franco-West German summit meeting between the two leaders. Five hours of discussion had failed to dissipate a growing malaise between Paris and Bonn, much less restore the intimate Franco-German relationship that flourished under ex- President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. The current differences, over trade talks and agricultural prices, seem certain to hinder progress toward greater West European unity. More important, on the prickly issue of Star Wars and Ronald Reagan's invitation to West Europeans to join in the U.S.'s Strategic Defense...