Word: shiftlessly
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...possibility of getting lost in a place like Central Square; not now, perhaps only figuratively speaking, but Central Square reminds them of the possibility. Their association with Harvard, on the other hand, is supposed to assure that they'll never be trapped in a community that seems sort of shiftless, sort of dreary and ordinary...
...grey-working-class suburb of Milan. A Brief Vacation is the temporary escape illness provides for Clara (Florinda Balkan) from the crushing situation in which she is trapped. While her husband recovers from an industrial accident. Clara must support him, their two small children, his senile mother, and his shiftless brother. On her feet all day holding an acetylenc torch in a metals plant. Clara spends the rest of her time running the household. If she doesn't change a sick child's bandage or decide whether the dinner eggplant should be sliced or diced it doesn't get done...
...sidelines-view of University politics which I was afforded (and the complaints I was privy to) gave two lasting impressions; it was generally petty and generally bitter. The occasional shiftless or dishonest fellow administrator was perhaps more aggravating than students, who were at least sincere. But these administrators hid behind a shield of respectability unavailable to students. While students felt they had to work outside the system, some administration felt they could go underneath...
...memories were often harsh. The son of a shiftless, intemperate father, Shaw began tending the hardscrabble Alabama soil almost as soon as he could walk. When he was not plowing or picking cotton, he cut and hauled timber, hacked out railroad crossties, carved ax handles, wove baskets. At 21 he married, left his servitude to his father and entered another. Few economic systems can have been as cruelly deceptive as the one saddled on black Southern sharecroppers. They leased their land from whites, who also paid for the "furnishin' "-feed, fertilizer, tools-they needed to farm. At harvesttime sharecroppers...
...action is a bit shaky at first. A drawn-out scene introducing a band of "shiftless and lazy" characters is relatively unappealing. But the entrance of the skeptical Bill Walker, played with comic gusto by Dan Beckhard, threatens to shake the charitable base of the conversion-oriented mission. Beckhard acts as a conductor, setting the other characters on fire. They ignite at his caustic brutalizing of the mission's sacharine Jenny Hill...