Word: plum
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...booksellers each Christmas. Dickens' yuletide tales were hungrily awaited by hundreds of thousands; even when pressed by the demands of his novels, the author did not want to omit his annual story and thus "leave any gap at Christmas firesides which I ought to fill." Dickens patented the plum-pudding vision of Christmas that reality so often mocks, sending millions into holiday funks. "It is good to be children sometimes," he wrote in A Christmas Carol "and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself...
Rochefort brings some freshness even to obligatory scenes like the one in which he must face his officemates decked out in a plum-colored suit, mod haircut and hip new manner. Nodding his head to an imaginary cool beat, he has the odd, rueful grace of a stork with something caught in its throat, and we can almost believe, that a young girl's heart would indeed...
Aside from the shaky assumptions on which it rests, the juvenile court is notoriously inefficient (see box following page). Judges consider assignment to it not a plum but the pits. "I would rather die than preside in Family Court," says New York Criminal Court Judge Eve Preminger. "It's completely unrewarding." Cases are backed up in the overburdened, understaffed system. Complainants and witnesses, who are nervous to begin with and sometimes threatened by the offenders, become exasperated with waiting and walk out. Case dismissed...
...Plum blossoms welcome...
Since Charles II appointed John Dryden England's first Poet Laureate in 1668, the office has been occupied by a number of distinguished men, including Wordsworth, Tennyson, John Masefield and C. Day Lewis. But the job is no plum. As an officer of the royal household, a Poet Laureate ranks just above Bargemaster and Keeper of the Swans. By today's devaluated standards, his pay is $122.50 a year, plus $47.25 in lieu of a butt of sack-once part of the traditional stipend...