Word: yearning
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...impetus is neither a desire to play Lady Bountiful nor a shortage of paying summer jobs, but a useful blend of altruism and self-interest. High school seniors yearn to report a substantial entry in that "Civic Work?" blank on college applications; collegians may want to put sociology lectures to practice. The Peace Corps is the model−but most of the jobs to be done are right at home. Says one delighted Boston mother, whose teen-age daughter is toiling in a hospital ward this summer: "She goes charging out of here in the morning like Florence Nightingale riding...
...this dodge has its disadvantages too: at the speeds of landing and takeoff, sweptwing ships are hard to handle. Airmen began to yearn for wings that would be long, thick and straight for takeoffs, yet short, thin and swept-back for highspeed flight...
...another question comes to mind: why are people, like the letter-writer I just quoted, so unhappy with criticism? Why do they yearn so openly for "creativity?" To approach this question, we simply shift the previous argument in reverse: criticism is no more at home with itself than art is. And isn't this as it should be? Isn't homesickness at the very heart of the human mystery? Just as that critical letter yearns to be a poem, so a poem strives to be life itself. Both the critic and the artist are responding to something other than themselves...
...regime has cautiously permitted the opening of a few attractive clubs, such as Moscow's Aelita, where young people can sip soft drinks or wine and dance to Dixieland. The snag: Komsomol (Young Communist League) trusties at the door see that only the faithful get in. Young Russians yearn for spring, when they can flee jampacked apartments for the parks. Although Russia is generally a pristine society, on dance floors young couples often lock themselves in a pelvic polka that makes the twist look like a minuet...
Tallyho. Actors with plain, pronounceable, American Legion sort of names yearn for toning up. Ruby Stevens is Barbara Stanwyck; Peggy Middleton is Yvonne De Carlo; Norma Jeane Baker is Marilyn Monroe. Even Gladys Smith found a little more stature in the name Mary Pickford. On the other hand, embarrassed bluebloods shed their hyphens and thus declare their essential homogeneity with the masses. Reginald Truscott-Jones was too obviously soaked in tallyho. He became Ray Milland. Spangler Arlington Brugh denuded himself of all his nominal raiment and emerged as Robert Taylor. Audrey Hepburn-Ruston amputated it neatly...