Word: monumentously
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...U.S.S.R. is determined to turn them into a model show. Over the past three years, the Soviets have spent, by their official figures, $375 million in preparation for the Olympics, including the construction of 99 arenas, dormitories and other buildings. The Moscow Olympics are meant to be a monument to the Soviets' selfesteem, an extravaganza of self-congratulation that in a way betrays their profound insecurities. With so tempting a target, the Carter Administration last week was doing some purposeful sighting. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance announced a mid-February deadline for a Soviet pull-out from Afghanistan...
They transformed the band of undeveloped land that had once fortified the medieval city into the Ringstrasse, a sweeping monument to reason and prosperity. Museums and apartment houses went up in profusion, stony rebukes to the older aristocratic arrogance of church and palace. Lacking a past of their own, the bourgeois builders raided history for architectural facades. Critics arose to deride this use of art to disguise true functions. Something else about this vast project seems to have escaped notice: in its broad circularity, the Ringstrasse led nowhere...
More important, at the end of the convenient time span that has frequently been called the "Me Decade," reassurance lies in the fact that there remains at least one monument to endurance and selflessness. The beauty of sport stems from the symmetry inherent in the relationship between the individual and the team. Gordie Howe of the Hartford Whalers, whose familiar autograph graces even baseball gloves in Canada, mirrors the spirit...
Bach: Magnificat. Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms (Deutsche Oper Chorus, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conductor, Deutsche Grammophon). This is an apt pairing: a monument of the Baroque and a modern masterpiece whose liturgical austerity looks back to precedents in the Baroque and earlier. Karajan's Bach, velvety and well turned, may not be for purists, but the Stravinsky seems just right, with its tart syncopations dancing beneath a lustrous choral hymn of praise...