Word: squalidity
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...customer asked for a record made in Germany by a group called the Beatles. When Epstein discovered they were playing near by in a joint named The Cavern, he took a squint. "It was a smoky, smelly, pretty squalid cellar," he later recalled, "and their act was ragged, undisciplined, and their clothes were a mess. Yet I recognized the appeal of their beat, and I rather liked their humor. I sensed something big-if it could be at once harnessed and at the same time left untamed." That was Brian Epstein's life work: organizing the unruly Merseyside boys...
...Into a squalid Calcutta tenement apartment six lives are crowded: a gentle, ineffectual bank clerk, his wife and their small son, his parents and his sister. Money is scarce, and the wife takes a job selling home appliances from door to door. The old couple are shocked by the idea of a woman working. The husband's pride, too, is wounded, but the bank fails and he must accept the fact that the wife is now the family's sole breadwinner. In the end, she quarrels with her employer and quits. Husband and wife join hands to find...
...commuters could drive to work. For those who live within the city, driving is generally out of the question. They take a taxi if they can afford and find one (increasingly difficult), or the subway-which, according to the city's design task force, is "probably the most squalid environment of the U.S., dank, dingily lit, fetid, raucous with screeching clatter." And savagely crowded at rush hour...
Looking for a better life, thousands of peasants pack up every month and head for the big cities, where they find only deeper poverty and despair. In the Northeast's bustling port of Recife, 40% of the city's 1,000,000 people live in squalid, malodorous mocambos (shanties) strung out along the city's Ca-piberibe River. There is no fresh water, sanitation or electric light, and crime and disease are as oppressive as the millions of horseflies that swarm everywhere. In Rio, more than 600,000 people-15% of the city's population-live...
...deals with the conflict between the American idea of individualism and the Irish idea of the solid family. The occasion for the conflict is the chaotic world of Massachusetts politics in the late 1950's and early 60's. In the 30's and 40's, Massachusetts politics were squalid, sordid, and petty--primarily used as path for personal advancement, much like politics in any other state. But Catholicism with its doctrine of the resourceful steward ("to whom much is given, much is expected") and Puritanism with its sense of mission (John Winthrop's words when founding Boston, "We shall...