From a New York Times obituary today —
By Robert D. McFadden
Francis X. Clines, a reporter, columnist and foreign correspondent
for The New York Times whose commentaries on the news and
lyrical profiles of ordinary New Yorkers were widely admired as a
stylish, literary form of journalism, died on Sunday at his home in
Manhattan. He was 84.
. . . .
As a national correspondent … he tracked political campaigns
and the Washington scene, taking occasional trips through the
hills and hollows of Appalachia to write of a largely hidden
Other America.
. . . .
From an Editorial Notebook piece by Clines in 2010 —
|
The sound of that student’s holler tale remains — how to say? — precious or cool or awesome, worthy of preserving. A good phrase was offered by Kathy Williams, the teacher who invited Dr. Hazen to deal with her students’ inferiority complex. She quoted her 93-year-old grandmother’s version of “cool!” “Grandma Glenna always says, ‘Forever more !’ ” “Forever more !” she shouted, offering the youngsters something old that sounded new. "A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 23, 2010, Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Say It Loud." |
From Piligrimage: The Book of the People by Zenna Henderson
(a 1961 collection, published by Doubleday, of earlier stories) —
But all things have to end, and I sat one May afternoon, staring into my top desk drawer, the last to be cleaned out, wondering what to do with the accumulation of useless things in it. But I wasn’t really seeing the contents of the drawer, I was concentrating on the great weary emptiness that pressed my shoulders down and weighted my mind. “It’s not fair,” I muttered aloud and illogically, "to show me Heaven and then snatch it away.” “That’s about what happened to Moses, too, you know.” My surprised start spilled an assortment of paper clips and thumb tacks from the battered box I had just picked up. “Well forevermore!” I said, righting the box. "Dr. Curtis! What are you doing here?” "Returning to the scene of my crime,” he smiled, coming through the open door. |
This is from Henderson's "Pottage," a story first published in 1955.