Word: radiant
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...leprosy. His St. Francis (Graham Faulkner) is a dewy, light-stepping youth who recruits the young men of Assisi the way a rock singer might round up a band. Their rebellion against the opulent hypocrisy they see in the Roman Catholic Church is to run about in rags, looking radiant. In one scene they all get together in a church and sing a liturgical composition especially provided for the occasion by Donovan...
...seems ludicrous; one might as well posit that George Washington abandoned Long Island in a deliberate attempt to subvert the American Revolution. Yet in his new book, Code Number 72/Ben Franklin: Patriot or Spy?, Historian Cecil B. Currey raises the possibility that Franklin may not have been the wholly radiant patriot sanctified in school textbooks. Basing his case on what he describes as "previously unused papers of the British Secret Service," the author concludes that in the delicate negotiatory period of 1776-1785, when Franklin was ambassador to France, the supreme diplomat "may indeed have been an enemy agent...
...incredible breakthrough. But the Flock is blind to the bright future Jonathan has opened to knowledge and perfect flight. They cast him out. Alone now, Jonathan improves his flying-night navigation, slow rolls, loops, the gull bunt. Eventually two radiant gulls who can fly precise formation with him appear and take him to what he (and the reader) at first thinks is heaven...
...many men-from France's Baron Pierre de Coubertin to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to Adolf Hitler-have tried to make too much of the Olympic Games. The baron, father of the modern Games, once said: "The Olympic movement tends to bring together in a radiant union all the qualities which guide mankind to perfection." The general, as president of the U.S. Olympic Committee in 1928, wrote: "Nothing is more characteristic of the genius of the American people than is their genius for athletics." The Führer envisaged the 1936 Games in Berlin -the last time...
None deserves a gold medal for perception (though the baron might merit a silver for idealism). Since their rebirth at Athens in 1896, the Games have seldom been remarkable for radiant union, and the XX Olympiad, which begins on Aug. 26, is not likely to prove an exception. Bickering among officials has almost become a separate Olympic event. Squabbles among competitors are less common, though sometimes more dramatic. At Melbourne in 1956, for example, a water-polo match turned into a miniature of the Hungarian Revolution. The Hungarian team beat the Russians in a brutal contest for the gold medal...