Word: sorrowful
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...seems that in the land of artifice, only a chump would accept sorrow at face value. It's soft to let the dead rest in peace for a few days and naive not to administer the equivalent of a Breathalyzer for grief. The President often exhibits an overabundance of emotion. But in any other place, a person would be granted a presumption of sincerity if a dear friend and indispensable colleague had finally met a mountain he couldn't move...
Much the same was going on all over town. Anyone who had ever collided with Brown's whirling-dervishness could barely imagine him motionless, much less dead. And they didn't bother hiding their sorrow. Clinton, whose overabundance of emotion has made him a target of jokes in the past, assumed the mantle of national minister for the rituals of consolation. On Wednesday, after sitting vigil with Brown's wife and family, he paid a visit to the Commerce Department. Speaking without notes, the President thrummed into his preacher stance, drawing on Scripture from memory, invoking the Baptist lessons...
...land that is entirely linear is itself limited, and the sorrow of a place like California, it often seems, is that no one there knows who he will be (or who he will be with) a year from now. The absence of external rhythms forces everyone to try to make his own. And a world without seasons is as unnatural as a person without moods: even tropical islands speak of wet seasons and dry; and even places with climatic changes often add divisions of their own (thus the English ruling class follows the season from Henley to Ascot to Wimbledon...
Such a pattern is repeated in a number of other Jewish rituals and holidays. For instance, Yom Ha'Aztmaut, Israeli Independence Day, is immediately preceded by Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day, which commemorates all those who fell in defense of Israel. One goes immediately from sorrow to gladness...
...holiday of Purim itself embodies this sort of juxtaposition. As the book of Esther tells us, the day upon which the massacre was to have occurred "was turned from sorrow to joy, and from mourning to holiday." The day before Purim is traditionally observed as a fast day, which serves to remind us of the terribly real danger that the Jews faced, and of how narrowly the massacre was averted. Purim is not merely a celebration; it is a transformation of great sorrow into...