Word: larking
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...gallows. During Ireland's Black and Tan ordeal of rebellion "troubles" in 1921, a horde of citizens, ostensibly thumbing their beads, conspire to rescue a Condemned young revolutionary from his British jailers. Wearing saucy high heels under their false habits, two fake nuns thoroughly enjoy their patriotic lark at the death cell, wink, exchange secret smiles and repress girlish giggles while a fine broth of a boy barely escapes the noose...
Recently back into prominence in America with The Lark and Waltz of the Toreadors, Anouilh divides his output into four classes--pieces roses (rosy, pleasant plays), pieces noires (sombre, unpleasant plays), pieces brillantes (shining plays), andpieces grincantes (grating plays). Thieves' Carnival is a piece rose, a delightful comedy of wit and frolic. But even here, every once in a while little undertones of sadness poke through the surface...
Nearly Faultless. Invasion goes on to do for Operation Anvil-Dragoon in the South of France what it does for Neptune-Overlord. The fighting for the southern beaches was a combat lark compared to the close call at Omaha. Naval support was close to perfection, and Morison, who saw service on no fewer than eleven vessels, thinks the South of France invasion was the "nearly faultless" large-scale operation of the entire war. One thing the U.S. fighting sailor will readily acknowledge, whatever his theater: no other fighting arm in World War II has found a historian with the flair...
Cook downed his brandy and water, and later complained: "I've been sick as a cat. I do believe that damned Palmer dosed my grog, for a lark." He was dead a week later. Soon there were whispers about the deaths of 13 other people who had been connected with Palmer: patients, drinking companions, relatives, his wife (a possible suicide). The literary-minded might make cracks about "The Charnel House of Palmer." But Graves maintains stoutly that Palmer "never killed nobody," was the victim of prejudice and circumstantial evidence in the Cook case. In other hands this story might...
...shrinking spaces between the nation's cities, such adaptable species of wildlife as the white-tailed deer and the meadow lark manage to thrive and multiply. Not so the whooping crane, tallest (5 ft.) of North American birds. A stately, aloof marsh dweller with white plumage, black wing tips, a cap of bare red skin atop its head and a trumpetlike cry that can be heard two miles away, the whooping crane (Grus Americana) has become for U.S. conservationists, naturalists and nature lovers a symbol of their fight to save rare species from extinction...