Word: freshingly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...discontent is rising. At a recent dinner party, all my guests rattled off fresh complaints about the government's misplaced priorities: a businessman who legally imports foreign goods says the government hasn't stopped the influx of smuggled products; a musician couple can't find affordable housing in Tehran; an English teacher at a government-run language institute complains of the school's harsh new dress code. "Instead of caring about our coat lengths, maybe [Ahmadinejad] should pay attention to what counts," says Farah, 32, the teacher...
...significance of a traumatic event like 9/11 changes with the passage of time. On the fifth anniversary of the attacks, memories were still fresh; to those who lived through that day, it was unfathomable that three decades later many Americans would have no memory at all of what happened back in 2001. As a 67-year-old writing in the year 2031--at an age that used to qualify me as a senior citizen before that term was banned as ageist, and before the standard retirement age was raised to 80--I can still remember 9/11 pretty clearly. But today...
Afghanistan also turned out to be harder to control than to conquer. In the summer of 2006, fresh contingents of U.S. and British troops had to be deployed to reassert the authority of the democratic government in Kabul over outlying areas like Helmand. Whereas in Iraq the capital city was the main conflict zone, in Afghanistan the capital city was the only place under any kind of control...
...very early morning this week, the people in my neighborhood who wanted fresh bread for breakfast congregated outside the local bakery, wondering why the doors were locked and the stone oven cold. Fifteen minutes later, when it became clear there would be no bread that day, people began speculating why a bakery that has been open every weekday for literally decades should mysteriously be shut. The small crowd swiftly concluded the worst: the Iranian government had sent all the country's flour to Lebanon...
...noon, when I was up and contemplating a sandwich, word had spread around the neighborhood. Everyone blamed the dearth of fresh bread on the government's over-generous aid to the Shi`ites of Lebanon, displaced in the recent fighting between Israel and Hizballah. I should point out that my neighborhood is split between religious and secular families, and that the most pious of the bread-deprived were just as quick to shake their heads with resentment. No one said "let them eat cake," but it came pretty close...