Word: rueful
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...Malcolm's daughter Qubilah Shabazz. Kunstler's combative defense of the Chicago Seven brought him four years' worth of contempt citations (none of it served). His use of courtrooms as high- profile political platforms often worked to client's and cause's good, but not always-leading to the rueful observation that Kunstler was "the only lawyer who could get you the death penalty for a traffic ticket...
Alas, the plot committee takes over. An aunt and uncle reveal that Julia's long-gone mother is not dead but teaching school in Oregon. A reunion follows, not a word of which is believable, including the mother's rueful assertions that she deserted Julia's father for a lover, and later watched Julia's college graduation from a back row. This slack stuff is soap opera, and even a writer as gifted as Hegi can't dress it up as anything else...
...retired, says he was a conscientious teacher, imparting military instruction but simultaneously making sure that his students knew the difference between acts of war and acts of terrorism or human-rights violations. He expressly prohibited indiscriminate "wide area" attacks. "I said, 'Never, never, never do car bombs,'" he recalls. Rueful pause. "I never said, 'Don't do a camel bomb.'" That was a mistake. It was with horror that he later heard about the incendiary dromedary that, vaporized by remote control while tethered at a Soviet officers' canteen, killed or maimed more than a dozen people. There is an unpredictability...
...said, but our histories slammed down between us once again. The three of us who'd served couldn't help falling into a certain manner and language when recalling those days. "You're doing it again," one of the others said to us at such a moment, with rueful good nature. We understood him, but the old covenant was too strong to resist, and too dear...
...life "has been hopelessly wasted." He has sacrificed everything for his elderly brother-in-law, a pompous professor. Vanya's despair and resignation eventually give way to hysterical action: he picks up a pistol and goes after his brother-in-law. As usual, his aim is off, leaving him rueful: "To have made such a fool of myself: to have fired twice and missed...