He received all the sturdy, self-denying New England values, but also a measure of leeway.
On Afghanistan, he promised to adhere to the 2014 withdrawal deadline that he had earlier mocked, and even endorsed Obama's (arguable) claim that we are on course to stand up a sturdy, self-sufficient Afghan army.
And if you really want to stop a show properly, few songs will get the job done better than "Beautiful," which winningly conflates the sturdy self-regard of a pop star with the fragile self-confidence of an outcast.
It can't have gone without notice that – at least since Brave – Disney has gone full throttle to eradicate the sappy princess/fairy from its films, and instead substitute sturdy, self-reliant role models who may be subject to emotional trauma, but aren't subdued by it.
The moral of Smith's book is the right one: not that screens are bad and books are good, but that what books do depends on the totality of what they are — their turning pages, their sturdy self-sufficiency, above all the way they invite a child to withdraw from this world into a world alongside ours in an activity at once mentally strenuous and physically still.
"You know, the pioneering spirit and sturdy self-reliance -- these things which define the American character".
Both hail from Leeds, home to one of the UK's sturdiest self-sufficient scenes, where the noisy likes of Bilge Pump and That Fucking Tank, fanzines including Cops And Robbers and venues such as Wharf Chambers have fostered a deep sense of cultural community.
I mostly stuck with my brother, a sturdy enough, self-reliant kid, but who was after all only 13.
Instead, though, his earlier tension seemed to have evaporated and been replaced by a sturdy Caledonian self-assurance.
These Declarations of Rights... have cost much, and breathe the spirit of that sturdy and self-reliant philosophy of individualism which underlies and supports our entire system of government.
Every ghost story needs a Dr Faraday, a blunt literalist with a sturdy sense of self.
