Word: whim
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...haunts you as you speed down the Southeast Expressway, past the three-deckered homes of South Boston, past the innumerable suburbs. You didn't go skiing and the New York trip some-how fizzled out and you just can't bear Cambridge for one more day; so on a whim you try the Cape--sand dunes covered with snow, tufts of tall, yellow grass peeking out of the white cover--that kind of thing. And you find yourself driving over the canal, anxious for your first look at wintry Cape...
...divorce laws theoretically shun the idea of mutual consent because it offends religious tradition and raises the specter of too many marriages being dissolved by whim or passing despair. In practice, however, 90% of U.S. divorces actually involve mutual consent that is disguised by legal hocus-pocus or outright perjury. Reason: the whole U.S. approach begins with a disastrous premise. Instead of recognizing that both parties are almost always partly to blame, U.S. law demands verified proof of "fault" by one partner-and only one. The insistence seems almost sadistic: the "innocent" party must prove his or her mate "guilty...
...Affair. After Walter's death in 1957, the Louvre heard that the twice-widowed Mme. Walter was willing to give her collection to them, and curators turned handsprings to meet her every whim. When she suggested that the paintings looked best in warmer surroundings than a museum, the Louvre cheerfully erected a second floor inside the Orangerie to convey the intimacy of her elegant mansion...
...because style is so much of this one, and doesn't have to work against atmosphere or plot; perhaps it's because Godard's viewpoint is so consistently cool and noncommittal, and style doesn't have to create sympathy. At any rate, here style no longer seems a whim, or a self-consciously wielded tool, or a way of glorifying the director's role. Instead it fosters a sense of the film itself, as a medium. Scenes photographed with the camera on its side or shown in negative remind one not of the unseen creator but of the nature...
...JACK, by Louise Hall Tharp. An immensely readable biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, one of Boston's most colorful Victorian lady eccentrics. Armed with money, an unfettered imagination and a whim of iron, she kept Boston's newspapers in copy with her antics for half a century - and along the way assembled a collection of great art now housed in the Gardner Museum...