Word: heroic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...result of its proximity in range and expression to the human voice, and also the posture of its player, which is one of embrace. In Rostropovich's hands, this potent mixture of the familiar and the solitary turned the cello into an instrument of dissent, embodying the lone, heroic voice in its 20th century struggle against oppression...
Other than these bequests, what will remain of Rostropovich? Will his heroic playing be remembered as a cause of history or a futile response to it? Rostropovich famously performed an impromptu solo at the Berlin Wall in 1989, but he did not make it fall. He played with searing passion in London in 1968, but the tanks rolled on Prague regardless. Songbirds can't bring the dawn; they can only endure the darkness until it ends...
...miracle count. Normally the process of recognizing a saint takes decades or even centuries. But after Mother Teresa's death, Pope John Paul II waived a traditional five-year waiting period, initiating what some have called a "fast-track" canonization process. The first major step, the establishment of her "heroic virtue," proceeded quickly. However, verifiable reports of posthumous miracles have apparently been scarce. Teresa was beatified after the first one in 2003. But on Sep. 5 Teresa's successor, Sister Nirmala, told Agence France Presse that "We are waiting for a second miracle for sainthood to the Mother." The cure...
...their nasty fights, maybe George W. Bush and the United Nations were meant for each other. They speak the same wide-eyed language of idealism, setting goals that are heavy on optimism and light on planning. And they love to strike heroic notes in the face of discordant reality. Bush tapped into that romantic synergy at the General Assembly Tuesday, calling on the U.N. and its members to rise to the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and using that founding U.N. text as a sounding board for a speech on global liberation from tyranny, poverty and disease...
...line between heroic martyrdom and psychopathic self-destructiveness is ever a thin and shifting one, and Sean Penn, the writer and director of Into the Wild, has obviously poured his generous heart and sympathetic soul into his adaptation of Jon Krakauer's best-selling account of young man named Chistopher McCandless, who chose (to his sorrow and our discomfort) to walk that line...