Word: spellings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This has been going on since the 6th century, with the result that few of the accumulated images that spell "typical Japan" to a foreigner were invented by the Japanese themselves. Zen Buddhism was an import, and pagodas and brush calligraphy and bonsai trees (originally known to the Chinese as penjing). Likewise the microchip and the small, inexpensive car. Tempura, the name of one of the Japanese dishes most popular among foreigners, is a mangled Latin word that refers to the Portuguese Catholic propensity to eat fish on Fridays as penance, as distinct from the Japanese practice of eating...
...restricts herself to describing the hair and skin color or the banal speculations of minor players in the story, ("Strong? Of course she is, but only on one level...") They seem to have no personality, no motivation for their actions, and only Yasuko, under her mother-in-law's spell, can be believable in such a state. The author fails miserably in her attempts to provide a psychological portrait of her main character, Mieko, primarily because she dwells on events in the woman's past rather than their actual effects on the character herself...
...glitter. And like that sobering skull, the play, staged as it is in late July, reminds us that--both literally and figuratively--glorious summer will quickly fade to autumn and winter. O'Neill lets us know that even while comedy and music, sunshine and song still cast their spell, death and decay lurk inevitably in the shadows. They need simply wait...
...Sleeping Beauty, Christopher (Superman) Reeve is a goody-goody prince, a sort of prissy Cary Grant in a mail doublet. Bernadette Peters casts her spell as the princess who responds a mite too ardently to his wake-up kiss. The two also play their evil doppelgängers, giving a psychological twist to the old notion that fairy-tale characters are either all good or all bad. In this case, they are both. A gruff woodsman (George Dzundza) narrates the tale with the accent of a Borscht Belt comedian. "I gotta great princess for you," he tells the prince...
...chewing grass, sucking the roots of herbs and scrambling alongside animals to lap up water that spills out of pumps. In drought-plagued areas of the Philippines that have seen outbreaks of locusts, even those pests have been sold for food. Millions of Africans are aching through a dry spell perhaps less severe but certainly more widespread than the harrowing drought of 1973, which killed more than half a million. Refugees throughout these afflicted areas are often packed so tightly into camps that contagious illnesses spread swiftly and fatally. Kwashiorkor, a protein-deficiency disease, is sweeping through the infant population...