Word: galbraithe
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...former editor of the Catholic Worker and a sincere social democrat, Harrington sees America as so self-satisfied that it missed the eloquence and the sarcasm in Galbraith's Affluent Society. Harrington considers Galbraith "one of the first to understand that there are enough poor people in the United States to constitute a subculture of misery, but not enough of them to challenge the conscience and the imagination of the nation...
...while the $700,000 residence, completed early this year, draws the same esthetic praise as the neighboring chancery, it also draws some practical complaints from the people who live in it: U.S. Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith and his family. While light and air move freely through Stone's interior grillwork walls, so does sound. "You can't have a quiet chat anywhere in the house without being heard everywhere," says Mrs. Galbraith, exercising a woman's right to a little exaggeration. "When we have house guests, my husband and I talk over plans...
When Under Secretary of State W. Averell Harriman stayed at Roosevelt House, he found he had a bedmate-the Galbraiths' Siamese cat Ahmed, who stalked in casually through a gap between the door and the grillwork. Sparrows nest in the grilles, and dust accumulates rapidly in the hard-to-reach crevices. Several times a week, barefoot houseboys clamber up the grilles to clean dust and bird droppings from the apertures. Fascinated by the scalability of his walls, Galbraith and his sons themselves have taken to climbing like so many human flies...
...multijetted fountain in the reception hall sounds like "a toilet permanently out of order," the ambassador grumbles. But when the fountain is turned off, the small pool is hardly noticeable. On one occasion, a U.S. colonel marched straight through it without breaking stride on his way to greet Galbraith, standing at the other side. Since then, the perimeter of the pool has been marked with potted plants...
Architect Stone is defensive about the Galbraiths' complaints: "Why are they carping about these little points? These petty features obscure the truth-they are living in a palace." Stone is right, and even the ambassador concurs in principle. When Roosevelt House was dedicated in January, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru admired its beauty but wondered about its practicality. Rejoined Galbraith: "I urge in reply that utility and economy are the enemies of good architects, and certainly no builder is ever remembered for practicing these traits...