Word: spirit
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Fallows tries to make a case for the inclusion of his history when he argues that he and his family also are products of the American spirit of individualism and determination. He, too, went West and found a new life, only a century after the first squatters did. The connection may be there, but it requires a creative imagination to find...
Through the centuries, few natural phenomena have inspired as much fear and awe as solar eclipses. The ancient Chinese used firecrackers and gongs to drive away the spirit they thought was devouring the sun. Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, aware that a most timely total eclipse was going to occur, escaped being burned at the stake by King Arthur's knights when he predicted that the sun would disappear. A benign form of sun worship continues to this day, not only among beachgoers but also by a group of intrepid American astronomy buffs who have traveled around the world...
...written of the impalpable reality that poetry must somehow approach: "To conjure up the negated object, with the help of allusive and always indirect words, which constantly efface themselves in a complementary silence . . . comes close to the act of creation." Wilmarth's singular project was to create the spirit of reverie that surrounds the "negated object," but in that most object-affirming of arts, sculpture, and to seek its poetic effects in heavy industrial materials -- steel and glass. Typically, Wilmarth, a Californian who spent most of his working life in New York City, adopted as one of his heroes John...
Take Ghostbusters II, for example. Once again the psychomagnotheric slime is flowing in Manhattan. Once again spooks are aloft among the other pollutants in its atmosphere. Once again paranormal phenomena (this time in the service of Vigo, a sometime Carpathian tyrant, whose spirit inhabits an antique portrait) have singled out Dana (Sigourney Weaver) for special attention. Once again the old team of exorcists -- wisecracking Venkman (Bill Murray), absentminded Egon (Harold Ramis), earnest Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and stouthearted Winston (Ernie Hudson) -- is ready to deploy its pseudo science in the service of exorcism...
What the people of Hong Kong discovered they want is democracy for Chinese everywhere, Hong Kong included. While Hong Kong is democratic in spirit, members of its legislature are mostly appointed. An elected legislature could be installed by 1997, but the Basic Law does not call for an elected chief executive until at least 15 years after the hand-over. But now a fearful Hong Kong is demanding a faster pace for its own democratization, to make it all the harder for Beijing to overturn...