Word: singulars
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Appleton, Wis., is a midsize city in the heart of Middle America, as homespun and unpretentious as bread pudding or apple pie. Like other such cities, it has collected some singular claims to fame. Appleton, residents like to note, is the home of Lawrence University. It nurtured Novelist Edna Ferber and Senator Joe McCarthy. It also boasts the first house in the nation to light up with hydroelectric power. But what an outsider finds chiefly remarkable about Appleton is the ordinariness that spreads over the place like the warm October sunshine...
...first George Washington and that singular French genius Pierre l'Enfant planned a "President's palace" five times larger than the present structure. But many Americans were opposed to such monarchical pretensions, so Washington acquiesced. When workmen came to him in 1792 with L'Enfant's grand design for a capital city in which the President's house was to be at the center, Washington paced the ground and set the stakes marking the north wall of the more modest residence designed by James Hoban, which Theodore Roosevelt would dub the "White House...
...goodbye; he just doesn't do it." He has worked at it, though, and when Gray dropped around recently to visit Byrne, he passed a couple at the door. "Oh, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye," Byrne called to them earnestly, baffling Gray. Was he serious? Teasing? Or performing? For this singular creative spirit, there is no operative distinction between any of those alternatives. No question about it. Is there...
...often dissonant and usually constructed of homely materials -- unpainted metal and plywood, asphalt shingles, stucco, rough concrete. They typify no up-and-coming architectural trend. In the postmodernist era, when much fashionable architecture has been charming and playful and not much more, Frank Gehry's difficult, edgy buildings are singular and brave...
That well be the key to Reagan's singular willingness to meet again with Gorbachev. Reagan has met the man; apparently he feels he understands the Soviet leader and the political dynamics in which he governs. Perhaps he even empathizes with Gorbachev's difficulties. Buoyed by the progress made on various arms-control issues, Reagan's newfound view of the Soviets as possibly malleable rivals has combined with his deeply held conviction that Russians as human beings cannot help succumbing to the irresistible benefits of American democratic capitalism. This remarkable inner confidence -- both in himself and in the system...