Word: inchworm
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Tsarapkin's "concession," hedged with qualifications, came at the 132nd session in Geneva. Such inchworm progress has been characteristic of all postwar disarmament negotiations. In 14 years of dickering so complex that even the participants have trouble keeping the record straight, East and West have achieved only one concrete measure-a temporary suspension of nuclear testing, which expires, so far as the U.S. is concerned, Dec. 31. The U.S. is talking about resuming underground tests. And France made clear last week at the U.N. that unless "the first three atomic powers renounce their nuclear armament," it intends to explode...
...cities ("black toads"), conformity ("Let us have madness openly"), war ("Democracy must be saved at all costs," he sneers), American art ("The arts of this American land/Stink in the air of mountains"), and indifference ("It is ordered now/That you push your beliefs/Up out of the filth high enough/For the inchworm to get their measure...
Both men, the first an uncompromising romantic and the second a thoroughgoing realist, fortunately had simple tastes to match their small incomes. Ryder used to compare himself to an inchworm revolving on the end of a twig. The fact that he was able to take his time resulted in some of the richest painting ever done. Once, after 18 years of work on a picture, he said hopefully: "I think the sky is getting interesting." Eakins made only $15,000 (the price of a single Eakins canvas today) in all his years of painting, but he did have the appreciation...
...most genuinely affecting moments are in Danny Kaye's performance in the title role. Looking a little like a Danish Walter Mitty, Comedian Kaye foregoes his familiar scat type of clowning to give a gentle, appealing and restrained characterization. Whether he flies a kite, sings to an inchworm, talks to a dog or transforms his thumb into a little girl, Kaye succeeds in conjuring up something of the charm of a child's storybook world: that magical realm of slippered kings, pouting princesses, dragons and serpents, flowers that waltz, and porcelain figures that fall in love...