Word: somber
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...fate than the President. At the annual ceremony to light the Christmas tree on the Ellipse behind the White House, Carter bowed to a request by the hostages' families: except for a bright star of hope at the top, he left the 24-ft. spruce dark as a somber "vigil of remembrance." Said Carter: "Our American hostages have not yet come home. But most of our prayers have been answered. They have stayed in touch with their families. So far as we know, they are safe, and their lives have been spared...
...Main Street with maybe 300 souls in attendance, very few of them tourists-a flea market, old-fashioned cakewalks (for homemade cakes, each cook's name revealed so you know your source), bingo, food stands (one white, one black-with integrated patrons), puppets, a pleasantly inept bluegrass trio, somber teen-age gospel singers ("Praising the Lord the best way we can"), an integrated high school song-and-dance team (good enough for the Donny and Marie show), and the best clog dancing I've ever seen from the Muckalee Mudstompers, a local troupe with a world-class clogger...
However, the mirth is only the means to a more serious end. Ted Tally, who wrote a somber tribute to the moral courage of polar explorers in Terra Nova, now explores the contagious terrain of venality. He asks, in effect, How do creatures such as David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam"), Jim Jones and Gary Gilmore, men who occupy an appalling moral void, arc to celebrity status save for the vulpine collusion of the goldbugs - agents, publicists, the press, TV and films...
Director Travis Preston, recognizing the work's nature, has staged the work simply by placing the three singers on a dark stage instead of at the front of a concert hall. The performance of the songs by Robert Honeysucker, David Ripley and Kim Scown is remarkably emotional for such somber music, and Honeysucker especially in the "Second Report on the Unknown Soldier" creates an affecting vocal performance with no need of a set of other theatrical assistance...
...bureaucracy listened to Gaye Williams, president of the Radcliffe Lesbians Association, insist that "we're not trying to recruit students, we're trying to educate them." Then they listened to the 50 students who had come to the meeting applaud what Williams said. Then they listened to a somber Dean Rosovsky say that "it's not in the tradition of this committee to have applause or demonstrations of this kind...