Word: spate
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Alarmed by the recent spate of cases in which Americans have supplied U.S. military secrets to the Soviets, the Senate on Friday added an amendment to the defense authorization bill. If enacted, the provision will mandate execution or life imprisonment without parole for anyone convicted of espionage for a Communist country. Said Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd, who introduced the amendment: "Those who would even contemplate such an outrage must know that their punishment will be certain and irrevocable...
Before long, helped by a rising spate of dollars from transatlantic collectors and museums, the waters of taste closed over Dubuffet's work. His great years may be said to have wound up in the '60s, with the strips and wiggles of the Hourloupe cycle, a series of puzzle-like arrangements of such everyday objects as coffeepots and bicycles. But he remained contentious to the end, part magician, part sausage grinder. "Many artists," he said, "begin with the pig and make sausages. I begin with sausages from which I reconstitute...
...WHAT ARE they so worked up about? I mean it's not as if Harvard's divesting from companies in South Africa is going to do anything." An acquaintance of mine made these remarks after the recent spate of campus protests about university investments in firms doing business in South Africa. His tone was less hostile than incredulous; why are so many students willing to strike for divestment while remaining silent or inactive during, say, the recent Presidential election...
...once filled with happy families and harmonious relationships. But ever since Archie Bunker squared off against Meathead in Norman Lear's All in the Family, tongue-in-cheek antagonism has become the engine that drives most TV sitcoms--and, in the past few seasons, a spate of lighthearted adventure shows as well. The contours of these rocky relationships have become so familiar that the cliche alarm goes off every time a new one appears. Yet with the right mix of skilled performers, the old formula can yield a pleasing chemistry. Witness three new series debuting during the networks' third season...
Those words were spoken by a luckless grower in The River, one of a recent spate of Hollywood movies about hard times on the farm. But while those down- home films, which also include Country and Places in the Heart, are fiction, the dramas they depict are painfully true to life. Mired in perhaps the deepest farm slump since the Great Depression, American families are being driven from their land in growing numbers at a time when much of the rest of the U.S. is enjoying prosperity. Some 20,000 farms have been auctioned off since 1981, and the toll...