Word: gloom
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dawned cold and cloudy in the Baltic seaport of Gdansk-a morning of gloom that matched the city's mood. Gdansk (pop. 370,000) had seethed for days with resentment at the Polish government's sudden announcement of a dramatic rise in food prices, the more infuriating since it came just before Christmas. Now, at the Lenin Shipyards, grumbling workers spontaneously protested the hike by refusing to work. Before long, they decided to emphasize their anger by marching from the yards to Communist Party headquarters two miles away. Thus began a week of rioting and death that surpassed...
...detective was saying "The person we want for murder is . . ." Parliament debated, and the Queen took afternoon tea, by candlelight. Millions of homes were without heat, electricity or hot water for long periods, and whole areas of London resembled the capital during the wartime blitz. Darkness and gloom had descended on Britain because 125,000 Electrical Trades Union (E.T.U.) workers had decided to stage a slowdown. It was so effective that at any given moment during the week a quarter of Britain was without electricity...
...short, McLuhanesque gloom as usual; the juggernaut future is here, so let us all lie down. But as Lewis Mumford indicates in The Pentagon of Power, what McLuhan is asking for is utter human docility. "The goal is total cultural dissolutionor what McLuhan characterizes as a 'tribal communism'McLuhan's public relations euphemism for totalitarian control." Thus Sesame Street is indeed opposed to the message, if not the medium, of the Master. The show's civilized magic and surrealism seek to increase a child's sense of himself, to dilate his imagination and his capacities...
Photographer David Douglas Duncan, whose War Without Heroes was published last week (Harper & Row; 252 pages; $14.95), has managed to recapture the war in all its grisly tedium. Looking deceptively like a cocktail-table art book, Duncan's gloom-shrouded pictures of American fighting men are packed more with fatigue than fight. There are no heroic actions; men shave, take muddy baths, clean up after shellbursts, write letters, stare vacantly at absolutely nothing while waiting for the next pointless action. The photographs have the stink of death, the feel of futility and, on any cocktail table, far surpass alcohol...
Even more than usual, the outcome of the auto negotiations promises to have a large psychological, political and economic impact on the nation. A prolonged strike this fall could easily check a promising upturn in business, spread new gloom among investors and consumers, and raise unemployment to levels higher than it would otherwise reach. A severely inflationary settlement, however, would establish a pattern for 1971, when major union contracts covering about 4,000,000 workers must be negotiated...