Word: puritans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...poor can be forgotten in the name of remembering the protestant work ethic, then pluralism can be forgotten in the name of returning to our puritan roots. Private values, he told us last night, are at the root of public policy...
...like our Puritan forefathers, we New Englanders need to punish ourselves, and to insulate ourselves from the heathen. By banding together to affirm our allegiance to the Almighty Sox-Bruins-Celts, we share a communal misery (and occasionally a communal jubilation) that confirms our faith and purifies our sporting souls...
...arch toymaker's instinct that produced the streamlined gadgetry of late art deco, the Day-Glo plastics of Pop, the high-tech doodads and joke furniture of today. The other is a reformist urge. When not fashioning playthings, designers turn grave, producing furniture and other objects that are neo- Puritan, high-minded. The severe geometries of Frank Lloyd Wright's turn- of- the-century interiors and Steven Holl's beautiful side chair (1984), for example, can have an almost oppressive sobriety. As playfulness alternates with the more austere, missionary vision, the American cultural personality seems like a preacher's child...
...Boston area can be deceiving. Like most first-time travelers here, you may think the only things these people care about is maintaining the Puritan ethic and polishing monuments of guys who killed Brits more than 200 years...
...turn dethroned underhandedly by none other than the secretly depraved Prudence. At this point occurs the long-anticipated "surprise ending"--not much of an ending and even less of a surprise: the tables are turned through a climactic game of blackjack (at least it isn't trivial Puritan), in which the Devil is foiled by none other than the Narrator (Fred Pletcher), who has remained a grotesquely audible and visible presence since the beginning of the prologue. But there's more: the Narrator, reveals himself, much to chenagrin--"I'm the author of this play, he proclaims with inexplicable arrogance...