Word: joylessness
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...however, was to have this huge project serve both the Back Bay and South End neighborhoods and to make it an integral part of the city. The designers, the Architects Collaborative, Inc., with Howard F. Elkus as the principal in charge, somewhat-but, alas, far from entirely-overcame the joyless-fortress syndrome. The composition of the building masses is pleasing. It starts low at the Copley Square side, nicely mending the turnpike damage done there, and steps up to the scale of the Prudential building on the other side. The saving graces of the design are three portals, with dramatic...
...Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won't do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags, and loyalty-parades...
...musical perfectly. Director Alvin Epstein and choreographer Kathryn Posin have thankfully kept the production loose and lively. If the opening number is a little ragged, and if the second act tends to sag a bit from loss of momentum, at least The Boys From Syracuse avoids that joyless Teutonic precision that seems to infect a lot of large scale Broadway productions these days...
...people are expecting "something" to happen. Life has become too joyless and humiliating for the average Iranian to allow for any attachment to the status quo. All basic commodities are supposed to be rationed. In fact, rationing is an excuse for black-marketeering. Clergymen in charge of militiamen's committees run the rackets. Their agents sell a pack of cigarettes at $5, about five times the official price, under the counter. Car owners, restricted to 40 liters (10.56 gal.) of gasoline a month, pay about $21 for an extra 20-liter (5.28 gal.) ration coupon, a hefty addition...
...what cannot be seen any more: the once ubiquitous Solidarity pins on coat lapels and the political slogans that seemed to be scrawled on every available wall. But if the shock and fear of the first dark days of martial law have now passed, the country seems sunk in joyless apathy. Though darkness comes late to Poland's northern summer days, the streets of major cities are empty by early evening. Cracow's ancient market square, normally crowded with youths, folk singers and tourists, seems as lifeless as a clock bereft of hands...