Word: tedium
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Popovich was picked for the Soviet space program in 1960. His jovial spirits often relieved the tedium of many of the training missions at the Russian space center. During one long isolation test in a cramped training capsule, he combatted boredom by dancing and singing operatic arias with such gusto that scientists and doctors often gathered to listen. A voracious reader, Popovich is an admirer of Hemingway and Stendhal, can quote passages from the works of Soviet Poets Sergei Yesenin and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Ironically, both Yesenin and Mayakovsky committed suicide after becoming disenchanted with Communism...
Release from Tedium. The range of reasons for this new phenomenon is as diversified as the summer houses themselves. First is the traditional American hankering for outdoor life, perhaps heightened by the brush-fire spread of urbanization. Second is the growing amount of leisure-longer weekends, longer vacations and more money to spend. There is also the stepped-up mobility of modern life: superhighways and fast cars-even private planes-are bringing vacation areas nearer to metropolitan centers. And with the nation's population of those 65 and older growing faster than almost any other age group, the conversion...
...more modest of the second houses are often used only on weekends, but the great majority become summer-long retreats (or, for many, winter retreats) where the children grow up for three months, mother is released from the tedium of city or suburban life, and dad, after rushing out of his office at 5 on Friday and making the trek by auto, train or boat (or a combination of all three), can take his leisure for at least a few days in sylvan surroundings. It is no matter that he must often drain his bank account to carry the second...
Parents who scorn the "See, See, See" tedium of "basal readers" have long cherished the story about the first-grade teacher who steps out of her wrecked car to cry, "Oh, Oh, Oh-Damn, Damn, Damn." Now the gag has grown to an entire parody of the best-known reader, Fun with Dick and Jane. At this month's convention of the National Education Association, delegates happily passed around the anonymous spoof, Fun with Hamlet and His Friends. Excerpts...
Lolita. Wind up the Lolita doll and it goes to Hollywood and commits nymphanticide. Sue Lyon, 14, is the titular heroine of the film, and Peter Sellers lightens the encircling tedium...