Word: edna
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Years before the Monty Python boys began flouncing about in frocks, Australia's Barry Humphries donned a dress as Edna Everage, Melbourne housewife. His "one-woman" London shows turned Edna into a British institution. In her hilarious Broadway debut, the self-dubbed dame sings a bit and muses about her family (Mum's in a "maximum-security twilight home"), but mostly she chats with the audience--or picks on it (though "caringly"). Humphries, a gloriously gaudy "megastar," has timing as sharp as a knife pleat...
...Webern's Piano Variations are mirror variations: Everything reflects. So too, Morris suggests, does everything in Reagan's life. His famous words, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!" are foreshadowed in his college days, when Reagan plays a part in Edna St. Vincent Millay's Aria da Capo and speaks the lines, "This wall is actually a wall, a thing / Come up between us, shutting me away." One of the most jarring moments of Reagan's otherwise happy childhood is when he comes home one night to find his father passed out, drunk, on the snow of their front yard...
...Steve Kroft tried to pin Clinton on specifics, he demurred, saying that the American people "got" what he meant. Bush is basically winking at us too when he says he was "young and irresponsible." We're just supposed to get it and move on. When your Aunt Edna says her stomach's been acting up, you're not supposed to shout a detailed follow-up question about her colon...
...Edna's "awakening" begins--and ends --at Grand Isle on the Gulf of Mexico, a two-hour drive south of New Orleans. A deadly hurricane in 1893 leveled much of the island, but the smooth beaches and sultry subtropical climate remain unchanged. It is not hard to imagine Edna in her final swim, lured by "the voice of the sea...seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude...
...quaint streets and charming bistros of Greenwich Village hold many treats for book lovers of all ages. The narrowest house in the Village, occupying just 9 1/2 ft. at 75 1/2 Bedford Street, was once the home of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Another tiny house, a lopsided cottage on Charles and Greenwich, is surely one of the most charming in the city. Named Cobble Court, it was once located on the Upper East Side, where it housed Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon. Sophisticated teens will want to stop for a hamburger at the White Horse Tavern...