Word: vernon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that remains of the Trimountain is Beacon Hill, which is now a curious mixture of artists' colonies and famous houses with distinguished residents. Another peak of the Trimountain, Mount Vernon, disappeared; it used to be just above Louisburg Square (where the carollers go on Christmas Eve) and, according to Walter Muir Whitehill, appeared on most maps "quite unequivocally. . . as Mount Whoredom." To compensate for its disappearance, Scollay Square, also just beyond aristocratic Louisburg, has acquired a new sort of outdoor night life...
...else lives just the way he does." Suburbanite-Author Robert Paul ("Where Did You Go?" "Out." "What Did You Do?" "Nothing.") Smith (New York City's Scarsdale), complains that Scarsdale is "just like a Deanna Durbin movie: all clean and unreal. Hell, I went to school in Mount Vernon, N.Y., with the furnace man's son-you don't get that here...
Teacher John Vernon, 30, of St. Stephen's (Anglican) school in Burnley, England, is known for giving his ten-year-olds prickly essay themes. Recently, Vernon told the youngsters that Britain's new early warning radar system would beep just four minutes before the inbound swoosh of a nuclear missile. "Would there be any way of escape?" asked one little girl. "None," Vernon replied firmly as he announced the essay assignment for the day: Describe "My Last Four Minutes...
Delighted with the results. Teacher Vernon failed to observe a simple fact: the children were terrified. "I was crying when I wrote my essay," said Jean Francis. "So were Lesley Brown, Vicky Weir and Susan Howarth." Complained one mother: "My little girl came home sobbing about an H-bomb. Now she daren't go upstairs in the dark." Jean Francis' father gruffed: "This could upset their whole lives...
Last week school officials met to debate the matter. "Perhaps children should be made aware of possible disaster," said the Rev. Alan Clark, dean of Burnley. "But I do feel they should be spared undue emotional stress." Headmaster Rowland Williams, an old soldier, refused to censure Vernon: "I fully support him. There is no harm in children's being brought face to face with reality...