Word: fussing
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Clearly, the millenarian fuss is not attributable to any one thing. But one of its sources has long fascinated me: the prophecies of Nostradamus. Nowadays, every pulp television program on the millennium seems to place this enigmatic 16th century French citizen at center stage. He is touted constantly as the predictor of the Kennedy assassinations, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, AIDS and just about everything else. Finally, my curiosity compelled me to sit down and read his main work, Les Propheties...
...innocent child who indirectly causes all this fuss, emerges as the center of both rationality and emotion in the novel. Existence with his flighty mother Mirry is less than satisfactory; when post-murder complications force her to leave Ian to fend for himself for a while, Ian, instead of lamenting her absence, looks forward to "a really good tidy-up" of their filthy apartment. He alone remains calm through all the turbulence of chaotic events, yet it is his plangent, intermittent requests for paternal affection that add a touching although never cloying emotional dimension to the book...
...never hears that Prince Charles has worked for decades to improve the lot of inner-city children in Britain. One never hears that Diana's sister-in-law, Princess Anne, has always done at least twice as much social work as Princess Diana. Princess Anne worked without fuss, without claiming credit for herself and without complaint...
...fuss about P.S. 41? Well, buying extra classroom materials is one thing; buying extra teachers is another. When directed toward items like staff salaries, educators say, private funds can widen the disparity between schools in poor neighborhoods that rely on government funds, and those in middle-class communities that can tap off-the-books parental money. Even some parent advocates got uneasy over the New York parents' brazenness. "The running of public schools should be the responsibility of the public through tax monies," said Lois Jean White, president of the national PTA. Other critics weren't so diplomatic...
From the beginning, the fuss throughout Britain over how to grieve made it clear that the palace would be in a bind. Every gesture it made--or failed to make--was scrutinized like smoke from the Vatican and found wanting. For much of the week, the royal family took a battering from the press and from the people: the proper flags were not flying in the proper places at the proper heights; the royals were not attuned to the desires of the "people" for a suitably populist funeral for the "people's princess"; the brief statement of sorrow issued shortly...