Word: matriarchal
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While Waddah languished in captivity, his family embarked on an agonizing quest to try to find him. His mother Haseeba, 65, took charge of the situation, as befits a traditional Arab matriarch. Realizing that the search for Waddah would require manpower, she dispatched two of her sons to Fallujah and Ramadi to summon as many cousins and uncles as they could muster. Her oldest son Mohammed's job was to canvass the neighborhood to identify the "sheiks"--older men, heads of important families that had lived there a long time and could be tapped for local knowledge and advice. Their...
...eight or ten people in the Hollywood Hills, and Jane Wyatt, who died last week at 96, was among the guests. She was happy to speak about her career to two longtime fans (Mary C. and me) who had grown up watching her as the wise and indulgent matriarch of Father Knows Best. I didn?t want her to be my mother (I had, and have, a fabulous one, thank you), but I recognized in Jane an emissary from a vanished age of better manners, cleaner diction, gentleness and gentility. She was a lady, when that word could...
...Desperanians carry their complicated histories theatrically large-and none more so than the Phantoms of westside Pricklebush. There's matriarch Angel Day, who drags a statue of the Virgin Mary from the town dump, igniting a clan war in the process; her fish embalmer husband Norm, who dreams of the Gulf's mythical grouper hole; their rebel son Will, who violently opposes the local mine; and his mentor, Mozzie Fishman, who leads convoys of similarly disenchanted souls (and later Angel Day) to Dreaming sites across the state. Around them swirl stories large and small, glorious and grotesque, of epic quests...
...cars were very cool. Enjoyable though it was, the carnival will probably be forgotten. It was like Harvard-Yale without the hookups. Or alcohol. Or meaning. It was also like a large family reunion—noisy and irregular—with everyone smiling on for dear life. The matriarch had coerced everyone into attending, and that is why they did, secure in the return to routine upon its happy end. Ultimately, the carnival was probably a distraction from building a real community at Harvard. It was sporadic instead of regular, forced instead of voluntary and short instead of long...
...Depression made a big impact on me during my English major days and in one previous staging I've seen. But I was let down by this slack, erratically acted Broadway production, which was (again) unaccountably hailed by the critics. I'll buy Zoe Wanamaker as the strong-willed matriarch, but the overrated Mark Ruffalo is simply grating as the gigolo next door, and the estimable Ben Gazzara doesn't seem to have the energy to make much out of the Marxist grandpa. But expect to see at least some of them onstage on Tony night...