Word: spirited
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1990
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...only 18 months ago and has already lost two jobs because of the slumping economy. He does feasibility studies for new buildings -- of which there are not too many these days. "The last thing you want to say is, 'I've been laid off.' That really dampens the Christmas spirit...
...those with a merry nature, it may be possible to find some hidden value in the sober spirit of this Christmas season. There is a pleasure in searching for just the right gift, rather than throwing money at fads; in making presents rather than buying them; in savoring the lessons of the season, about generosity and devotion and mercy. Whatever the state of the economy, it would have been hard to waltz blithely through the holidays while the families of 280,000 troops kept vigil. As it is, the burdens, and hopes, of the season will be widely shared...
...come from and recognize, what you knew before uprooted: creatures carry an imprint of home, a stamp -- the infinitely subtle distinctiveness of temperature and smell and weather and noises and people, the intonations of the familiar. Each home is an unrepeatable configuration; it has personality, its own emanation, its spirit of place. Nature's refugees, like eels and cranes, are neither neurotic nor political, and so steer by a functional homing instinct. Human beings invented national boundaries and the miseries of exile; they have messier, more tragic forms of navigation that often get them lost. The earth is home...
...flesh is home: African nomads without houses decorate their faces and bodies instead. The skull is home. We fly in and out of it on mental errands. The highly developed spirit becomes a citizen of its own mobility, for home has been internalized and travels with the homeowner. Home, thus transformed, is freedom. Everywhere you hang your hat is home. Home is the bright cave under...
Barbara's attempt to keep the spirit of peace and good cheer alive at a time of trouble is part of a long tradition. White House Christmases have often been bittersweet affairs. None was bleaker than the 1963 holiday, observed under the shadow of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Back in 1929, just a few weeks after the stock-market crash, Herbert Hoover's family was having Christmas Eve dinner when fire broke out in the west wing of the White House. As fire trucks clanged, Lou Hoover gathered her grandchildren and read them Christmas stories to calm their fears...