Word: urbanely
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Polka Dots & Pioneers. Doubter Williams and, more particularly, the rear-guard of antistatehood people have a certain amount of cold logic on their side. Despite its rapid urban development, Alaska is still a wildly savage land. It is bigger (586,400 sq. mi.) than two of Texas plus one Indiana, and 99% of the land-much of it faceless tundra-is owned by the Federal Government. Nearly one-fourth of the 213,000 population is in military uniform manning a polka-dot pattern of defense posts, and the rest of its inhabitants depend chiefly on two sources of income: fishing...
Fairbanks was once a settlement quilted with sod-chinked log cabins. Today, livelier than ever, it still has many cabins, but the city has good utilities, the University of Alaska (on-campus enrollment: 700), a handsome Professional Building, and an urban redevelopment program that is chewing up the old cabins once inhabited by the bawds of "the line" to make room for more acceptable businesses...
Huxley ends with the familiar recommendations to cut the birth rate, boost the food supply and decentralize urban life. But his recommendations seem perfunctory. Watching his stereotype of the satisfied American teen-ager pleasurably floating in a television world, Huxley sees little real hope for the future. And when the brave new world comes, he concludes, it will likely stay forever: "Men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown...
...obviously absurd to say that the United States has reached Utopia, that it has no further need for development. The overcrowded schools, the urban slums, the obsolescent highways, and the inadequate health facilities throughout the nation give a different picture. But correction of these conditions is generally beyond the scope or daring of private enterprise. It is not, however, outside the realm of government concern, Presidents Eisenhower and Hoover to the contrary notwithstanding...
Playwright Paddy (Marty) Chayefsky, a specialist in soul-probing among the urban proletariat, gave a group of Washington, D.C. actors a spasm of comment on his own class: "I've never known a good writer who observed anyone but himself. Megalomania is one of the prime requisites of being a good writer. Writers write out of different convictions. For example, Saroyan believes life is beautiful. That's a hard message to get over in a recession...