Word: localism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...season of the festival, and a festival nowadays is a protean feast. It is a group of local notables trying to put clothes on live chickens in a contest at the Hamilton County Fair near Cincinnati. It is a baseball game at the New England Clown Convention in Salem, Mass., where no one knows who won because the bases kept moving and the umpire used a fire extinguisher to settle disputes. It is Cincinnati's Don Cook, who takes pride in being able to grow an instant beard by letting bees swarm to his chin. It is 102 vintage...
Despite the many and persistent theories about the homogenization of America, the remarkable fact is that virtually every community and region in the nation remains convinced of its own distinctiveness and proud of what it considers its superiority in one respect or another. In short, local chauvinism is alive and well and residing-where else?-in every best damn state/city/town/county/region in the good...
...greatest metropolis has lately begun to sound like one of those boosteristic burgs that Sinclair Lewis used to deride. There was a day when New York City was so smug, haughty and complacent about its firstness that Author Irvin Cobb thought the place possessed "absolutely not a trace of local pride." Yet in the 1970s, the Big Apple, as the city now cutely calls itself, has been larding the air waves so much with a treacly, self-addressed valentine of a song ("I love New Yorrrrrrrrrrk!") that even a tone-deaf statistician might wonder how all the fleeing industries...
...nature, to be sure, the voice of local pride always tends to reek of too much protest. And professional sloganeering is only the froth on the sea of real, continuing chauvinism. The parochial boast occurs everywhere, and its inspiration can be anything: a product, a geographical feature, the weather (good or bad), even notoriety. Many a place, in the Dodge City tradition, has nurtured its morale on a reputation for meanness: Harlan County, Ky., is famous for little else. Arizona hymns its dry air; Louisiana often builds a brag on its murderous humidity. Amarillo, Texas, brags about its yellow dust...
Collegium Musicum: 60 mixed voices. They perform often in local churches and Sanders Theater, with a repertoire from large choral works to unaccompanied Renaissance pieces...