Word: solemn
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...port of Balboa, workmen nailed up a sign reading BIENVENIDO AL PUERTO DE BALBOA-BRIDGE OF THE WORLD. As evening fell, a solemn, subdued crowd of Americans watched as the Stars and Stripes was lowered-for the last time-at the U.S.-operated headquarters of the Panama Canal Co. Next morning an animated group of Panamanians cheered as their country's white, red and blue banner was run up a new flagpole atop bush-covered Ancon Hill. The Panama Canal Zone, the 648-sq.-mi. enclave that had been under U.S. sovereignty since 1903, had ceased to exist...
...meeting started at 9:35 a.m., Jan. 23. Le Duc Tho managed even on this solemn occasion to make himself obnoxious by insisting on ironclad assurances of American economic aid to North Viet Nam. I told him that this could not be discussed further until after the agreement was signed; it also depended on congressional approval and on observance of the agreement. Finally, at a quarter to one, we initialed the various texts. After this, Le Duc Tho and I stepped out on the street in a cold misty rain and shook hands for the benefit of photographers...
PERHAPS IT IS this hesitancy to generalize, to offer weighty and solemn judgements, that makes Didion's writing so evocative. Instead of pronouncements, she offers reportage. She focuses on an incident and notes every detail in uncluttered, harsh prose. Didion also has the reporter's curiosity about how things work. She investigates how orchids are tended, how freeways are monitored, how lifeguards live, how dams work, the philosophy and history of shopping malls. She is always honest in her examinations of a setting or person. She dams through accuracy, not forceful moral argument. In "Bureaucrats," for example, she perfectly captures...
...Soviet troops is stationed in Cuba?a disclosure that in turn produced a storm of angry reaction in the Senate. Although the State Department had emphasized that the Soviet force "poses no threat to the U.S.," Vance now assessed the situation in more ominous terms. In a solemn voice he told reporters, "We regard this as a very serious matter, affecting our relations with the Soviet Union. The presence of this [combat] unit runs counter to long held American policies ... I will not be satisfied with maintenance of the status...
...subject of more and more solemn study and the focus of boundless popular curiosity. It has become a truly prodigal fountainhead of entertainment, inspiring everything from sappy comedy to high tragedy, engendering chillers, thrillers and even fantasies that have been coming forth in salvos of histories, novels, movies and television shows. Furthermore, say experts who keep an eye on such trends, although it has not yet given birth to a Gone With the Wind, World War II is at last supplanting the Civil War as the country's favorite conflict for probing, pondering and-to be honest-enjoying...