“
When my grandmother was alive, she used to tell me that every time God creates a soul in heaven, he creates another to become its special mate. And that once we're born, we begin our search for our soul mate, the one person who's the perfect fit for our mind and body. They lucky oens find each other.
”
”
Lurlene McDaniel (As Long as We Both Shall Live (April Lancaster, #1-2))
“
Yup, believe it: I was born on March 28, yet my name is April.
”
”
Sarah Mlynowski (Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn't Have))
“
I’ve got some work to do.” He looked at Blue. “Give me a hug before I go, sweetheart.”
She got up. Compliant for the first time since he’d met her. Riley’s appearance had put a crimp in his plan to deal with her lie about April but only temporarily.
He moved to the center of the caravan so he didn’t bump his head. She wrapped his arms around his waist. He considered coping a feel, but she must have read his mind because she pinched him hard through his t-shirt.
“Ouch.”
She smiled up at his as she pulled away.
“Miss me, dreamboat.”
He glared at her, rubbed his side, and left the caravan.
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Natural Born Charmer (Chicago Stars, #7))
“
Thanks to April,” she whispered, “you have the wedding you’ve dreamed about ever since you were a little girl.”
Dean’s boom of laughter was one more reason she loved this man with all her heart.
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Natural Born Charmer (Chicago Stars, #7))
“
But you raised a ruckus about and threatened to perform a Julius Caesarian on anybody on anybody who calls April the cruelest month- I was Damn born out of the loins of my father in the spring of April, you claimed. Surgeon, you stood up for the month of buds and bitches like a true Kuon Kunos
”
”
Aporva Kala (Life... Love... Kumbh...)
“
Although I was born in April, I’m quite certain I was not fully awake until October~
”
”
Peggy Toney Horton (Stop the World and Get Off)
“
The gender pay gap in Korea is the highest among the OECD countries. According to 2014 data, women working in Korea earn only 63 percent of what men earn; the OECD average percentage is 84.13 Korea was also ranked as the worst country in which to be a working woman, receiving the lowest scores among the nations surveyed on the glass-ceiling index by the British magazine The Economist.14 8 “Repeated Protests against Tuition Increase,” Yonhap News, April 6, 2011.
”
”
Cho Nam-Joo (Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982)
“
I think that I shall never know
Why I am thus, and I am so.
Around me, other girls inspire
In men the rush and roar of fire,
The sweet transparency of glass,
The tenderness of April grass,
The durability of granite;
But me- I don't know how to plan it.
The lads I've met in Cupid's deadlock
Were- shall we say?- born out of wedlock.
They broke my heart, they stilled my song,
And said they had to run along,
Explaining, so to sop my tears,
First came their parents or careers.
But ever does experience
Deny me wisdom, calm, and sense!
Though she's a fool who seeks to capture
The twenty-first fine, careless rapture,
I must go on, till ends my rope,
Who from my birth was cursed with hope.
A heart in half is chaste, archaic;
But mine resembles a mosaic-
The thing's become ridiculous!
Why am I so? Why am I thus?
”
”
Dorothy Parker
“
Blue hadn’t expected him to come back, and she stumbled on nothing. He grabbed her just as she was about to step into the roller pan. April, who’d been doing some X-rated grinds to “Baby Got Back,” immediately stopped dancing. Jack sat Blue on her feet.
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Natural Born Charmer (Chicago Stars, #7))
“
On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of ROMANCE OF THE ROSE was born,
”
”
Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers (Trilogie des Mousquetaires #1))
“
MOTHER – By Ted Kooser
Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass and the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.
You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.
The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts,
burning in circles like birthday candles,
for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.
There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened
and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever.
”
”
Ted Kooser (Delights and Shadows)
“
Nachkland - Roland Leighton
Down the long white road we walked together
Down between the grey hills and the heather,
Where the tawny-crested
Plover cries.
You seemed all brown and soft, just like a linnet,
Your errant hair had shadowed sunbeams in it,
And there shone all April
In your eyes.
With your golden voice of tears and laughter
Softened into song 'Does aught come after
Life,' you asked 'When life is
Laboured through?
What is God and all for which we're striving?'
'Sweetest sceptic, we were born for living;
Life is Love, and Love is---
You, dear, you.
”
”
Roland Leighton
“
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623 two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world. Source: Wikipedia
”
”
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
“
On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of Romance of the Rose was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it.
”
”
Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers)
“
When the storm is over, the new growth, tiny and light, timid-green, starts edging our on the buses and three limbs. Then Nature brings April rain. It whispers down soft and lonesome, making mists in the hollows and on the trails where you walk under the drippings from hanging branches of trees.
It's a good feeling, exciting--but sad too--in April rain. Granpa said he always got that kind of mixed-up feeling. He said it was exciting because something new was being born and it was sad, because you knowed you can't hold onto it. It will pass too quick.
April wind is soft and warm as a baby's crib. It breathes on the crab apple tree until white blossoms open out, smeared with pink. The smell is sweeter than honeysuckle and brings bees swarming over the blossoms. Mountain laurel with pink-white blooms and purple centers grow everywhere, from the hollows to the top of the mountain, alongside of the dogtooth violet...
Then, when April gets its warmest, all of a sudden the cold hits you. It stays cold for four or five days. This is to make the blackberries bloom and is called "blackberry winter." The blackberries will not bloom without it. That's why some years there are no blackberries. When it ends, that's when the dogwoods bloom out like snowballs over the mountainside in places you never suspicioned they grew: in a pine grove or stand of oak of a sudden there's a big burst of white.
”
”
Forrest Carter (The Education of Little Tree)
“
It’s overwhelming to think of all the things
I’m not doing today, including being born.” (106) from “April 21st
”
”
Billy Collins (Whale Day: And Other Poems)
“
Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.'
All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was:
There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man!
Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
As Rudy slumped into the corner and flicked mud from his sleeve at the window, Franz fired him the Hitler Youth's favourite question:
'When was our Führer Adolf Hitler born?'
Rudy looked up. 'Sorry?'
The question was repeated and the very stupid Rudy Steiner, who knew all too well that it was April 20 1889, answered with the birth of Christ. He even threw in Betlehem as an added piece of information.
Franz smeared his hands together. A very bad sign. He walked over to Rudy and ordered him back outside for some more laps of the field. Rudy ran them alone, and after every lap, he was asked again the date of the Führer's birthday. He did seven laps before he got it right.
”
”
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
“
This is overdue. Quite a bit, I'm afraid. I apologize. We moved to Topeka when I was very small, and Mother accidentally packed it up with the linens. I have traveled a long way to return it, and I know the fine must be large, but I have no money. As it is a book of fairy tales, I thought payment of a first-born child would be acceptable. I always loved the library. I'm sure she'll be happy there.
”
”
Ellen Klages (Uncanny Magazine Issue 3: March/April 2015)
“
Knowing that you knew everything about us before we were born
Lord, your love is amazing
”
”
April Nichole (Eyes to Heaven)
“
Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy 'experience'—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim 'worked' well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.
Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: 'It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.'
Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens
“
With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems, With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems. O, let me, true in love, but truly write, And then believe me, my love is as fair
”
”
William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
“
In The Garret
Four little chests all in a row,
Dim with dust, and worn by time,
All fashioned and filled, long ago,
By children now in their prime.
Four little keys hung side by side,
With faded ribbons, brave and gay
When fastened there, with childish pride,
Long ago, on a rainy day.
Four little names, one on each lid,
Carved out by a boyish hand,
And underneath there lieth hid
Histories of the happy band
Once playing here, and pausing oft
To hear the sweet refrain,
That came and went on the roof aloft,
In the falling summer rain.
'Meg' on the first lid, smooth and fair.
I look in with loving eyes,
For folded here, with well-known care,
A goodly gathering lies,
The record of a peaceful life--
Gifts to gentle child and girl,
A bridal gown, lines to a wife,
A tiny shoe, a baby curl.
No toys in this first chest remain,
For all are carried away,
In their old age, to join again
In another small Meg's play.
Ah, happy mother! Well I know
You hear, like a sweet refrain,
Lullabies ever soft and low
In the falling summer rain.
'Jo' on the next lid, scratched and worn,
And within a motley store
Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn,
Birds and beasts that speak no more,
Spoils brought home from the fairy ground
Only trod by youthful feet,
Dreams of a future never found,
Memories of a past still sweet,
Half-writ poems, stories wild,
April letters, warm and cold,
Diaries of a wilful child,
Hints of a woman early old,
A woman in a lonely home,
Hearing, like a sad refrain--
'Be worthy, love, and love will come,'
In the falling summer rain.
My Beth! the dust is always swept
From the lid that bears your name,
As if by loving eyes that wept,
By careful hands that often came.
Death canonized for us one saint,
Ever less human than divine,
And still we lay, with tender plaint,
Relics in this household shrine--
The silver bell, so seldom rung,
The little cap which last she wore,
The fair, dead Catherine that hung
By angels borne above her door.
The songs she sang, without lament,
In her prison-house of pain,
Forever are they sweetly blent
With the falling summer rain.
Upon the last lid's polished field--
Legend now both fair and true
A gallant knight bears on his shield,
'Amy' in letters gold and blue.
Within lie snoods that bound her hair,
Slippers that have danced their last,
Faded flowers laid by with care,
Fans whose airy toils are past,
Gay valentines, all ardent flames,
Trifles that have borne their part
In girlish hopes and fears and shames,
The record of a maiden heart
Now learning fairer, truer spells,
Hearing, like a blithe refrain,
The silver sound of bridal bells
In the falling summer rain.
Four little chests all in a row,
Dim with dust, and worn by time,
Four women, taught by weal and woe
To love and labor in their prime.
Four sisters, parted for an hour,
None lost, one only gone before,
Made by love's immortal power,
Nearest and dearest evermore.
Oh, when these hidden stores of ours
Lie open to the Father's sight,
May they be rich in golden hours,
Deeds that show fairer for the light,
Lives whose brave music long shall ring,
Like a spirit-stirring strain,
Souls that shall gladly soar and sing
In the long sunshine after rain
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)
“
the winter was departing, the winter always bears away with it a portion of our sadness; then came April, that daybreak of summer, fresh as dawn always is, gay like every childhood; a little inclined to weep at times like the new-born being that it is.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Complete Works of Victor Hugo)
“
The great chandeliers hang silent. The tables in the vast dining room overlooking the lake are spread with white cloth and silver as if for dinners before the war. At a little after 4, into the green room with the slow walk of aged people, the Nabokovs come. He wears a navy blue cardigan, a blue-checked shirt, gray slacks and a tie. His shoes have crepe soles. He is balding, with a fringe of gray hair. His hazel-green eyes are watering, oysterous, as he says. He is 75, born on the same day as Shakespeare, April 23. He is at the end of a great career, a career half-carved out of a language not his own.
”
”
James Salter
“
Schools could do the same thing. Elementary and middle schools could put the January through April–born students in one class, the May through August in another class, and those born in September through December in the third class. They could let students learn with and compete against other students of the same maturity level. It would be a little bit more complicated administratively. But it wouldn’t necessarily cost that much more money, and it would level the playing field for those who — through no fault of their own — have been dealt a big disadvantage by the educational system. We could easily take control of the machinery of achievement, in other words — not just in sports but, as we will see, in other more consequential areas as well. But we don’t. And why? Because we cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don’t matter at all.
”
”
Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success)
“
Accursed cowards, so eager to sleep in a brave man's bed! But listen - as when a fallow deer leaves the twin fawns just born to her to slumber in some great lion's den, while she herself goes roving and browsing over the mountain spurs and grassy hollows, but then the lion returns to his lair and strikes the two sucklings with hideous death, so will Odysseus strike these suitors with hideous death.
”
”
Homer ([The Odyssey (Penguin Classics)] [By: Homer] [April, 2003])
“
March 1st—our February 28th according to the International Date Line—the earthquake and storm had come. From Dunedin the Alert and her noisome crew had darted eagerly forth as if imperiously summoned, and on the other side of the earth poets and artists had begun to dream of a strange, dank Cyclopean city whilst a young sculptor had moulded in his sleep the form of the dreaded Cthulhu. March 23d the crew of the Emma landed on an unknown island and left six men dead; and on that date the dreams of sensitive men assumed a heightened vividness and darkened with dread of a giant monster’s malign pursuit, whilst an architect had gone mad and a sculptor had lapsed suddenly into delirium! And what of this storm of April 2nd—the date on which all dreams of the dank city ceased, and Wilcox emerged unharmed from the bondage of strange fever? What of all this—and of those hints of old Castro about the sunken, star-born Old Ones and their coming reign; their faithful cult and their mastery of dreams? Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man’s power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the mind alone, for in some way the second of April had put a stop to whatever monstrous menace had begun its siege of mankind’s soul.
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft (The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft)
“
Completed in 1888, the following plate is housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It depicts Joseph, the father of the family, who was born on 4 April 1841 in Lambesc. Van Gogh and the postman became good friends and drinking companions. Van Gogh compared Roulin to Socrates on many occasions. In appearance, Roulin reminded the painter of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who had the same broad forehead, nose and shape of beard.
”
”
Vincent van Gogh (Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated) (Masters of Art Book 3))
“
The police will want particulars, since you are the divorced husband, but I’ll leave that to them. One more question, a hypothetical one. If Carol Mardus had a baby by Richard Valdon, conceived in April of last year and born last January, four months after Valdon’s death; and if X knew about it, helped her dispose of it, and later, moved by pique or jealousy or spite, took it and left it in Mrs. Valdon’s vestibule, who is X? Of the men in Carol Mardus’s orbit, which one fits the specifications? I don’t ask you to accuse, merely to suggest.
”
”
Rex Stout (The Mother Hunt (Nero Wolfe, #38))
“
The Riot Show! What if they held a race riot and the news media stayed away? At the very least, we would be spared the nauseating spectacle of sycophantic reporters fawning on opportunistic thieves, as happened yet again during the outbreak of antipolice violence in Baltimore in April 2015. We wouldn’t see talking heads blaming the mayhem on “desperate poverty” or on “disparity,” or characterizing it as an “uprising” born of understandable anger. More important, the vandals would lose a bounty as valuable as their purloined booty: notoriety and legitimacy.
”
”
Heather Mac Donald (The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe)
“
This is all I know. That on the 11th of April, 1983, unto me a son was born, and I felt nothing. Once again, the truth is always larger than what we make of it. As that infant squirmed on my breast, from which he shrank in such distaste, I spurned him in return—he may have been a fifteenth my size, but it seemed fair at the time. Since that moment we have fought one another with an unrelenting ferocity that I can almost admire. But it must be possible to earn a devotion by testing an antagonism to its very limit, to bring people closer through the very act of pushing them away.
”
”
Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
“
Don Chrisantos Michael Wanzala "Don CM Wanzala" (born April 13), popularly known as Don Santo (stylized as DON SANTO) is a Kenyan singer, rapper, songwriter, arranger, actor, author, content producer, Photo-Videographer, Creative Director (Blame It On Don), entrepreneur, record executive and Leader of the Klassik Nation and chairman and president of Global Media Ltd, based in Nairobi City in Kenya.
The genius of DON SANTO rests in his willingness to break from traditional formula and constantly push the envelope. He flips the method of the moment with undeniable swagger and bold African sensibility.
As a songwriter, Santo revisits simple, but profound aspects of the human experience – love, lust, desire, joy, and pain that define classical art and drama. He applies his concept to rich, full vocals that exude his intended effect. It is this uncanny ability to compose classics and deliver electrifying live performances that define everything that is essential DON SANTO. In 2015, Santo won the East Africa Music Awards in the Artist of the year Category while his song "Sina Makosa" won the Song of The year. A believer in GOD, FAMILY & GOOD LIFE (Klassikanity).
”
”
Don Santo
“
J. M. W. Turner is regarded by many as Britain’s greatest artist, whose works have become iconic symbols of the Romantic art movement. He became known as ‘the painter of light’, due to his increasing interest in brilliant colours and the contrast between light and dark in his many landscapes and seascapes. Turner was born on 23 April 1775 in London. His father, William Turner (1745-1829), was a barber and wig maker and his mother, Mary Marshall, came from a family of butchers. In 1785, his mother suffered from severe mental illness and was admitted first to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in Old Street in 1799 and then Bethlem Hospital in 1800, where she died four years later.
”
”
J.M.W. Turner (Delphi Collected Works of J.M.W. Turner (Illustrated) (Masters of Art Book 5))
“
Bruno stared at him in surprise. ‘What did you say?’ he asked. ‘I said my birthday is April the fifteenth nineteen thirty-four.’ Bruno’s eyes opened wide and his mouth made the shape of an O. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘Why not?’ asked Shmuel. ‘No,’ said Bruno, shaking his head quickly. ‘I don’t mean I don’t believe you. I mean I’m surprised, that’s all. Because my birthday is April the fifteenth too. And I was born in nineteen thirty-four. We were born on the same day.’ Shmuel thought about this. ‘So you’re nine too,’ he said. ‘Yes. Isn’t that strange?’ ‘Very strange,’ said Shmuel. ‘Because there may be dozens of Shmuels on this side of the fence but I don’t think that I’ve ever met anyone with the same birthday as me before.’ ‘We’re like twins,’ said Bruno. ‘A little bit,’ agreed Shmuel.
”
”
John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas)
“
According to my Brazilian papers, I was born on April 30, 1983. That was also the thirty-seventh birthday of the king of Sweden, on the far side of the Atlantic from Diamantina, Brazil, where I took my first breaths. When I was little, Mamãe (the Portuguese word for mother) used to tell me that I was born in the woods, that my father was an Indian, so I was half-Indian. I don’t know whether this is true. I don’t know whether she embellished the story a bit, made it a little nicer than saying she didn’t know who my father was, or that he didn’t want anything to do with us. But I’ve always liked her version, and for many years I chose to believe it. A part of me still wants to believe it’s true. What I know and remember is that I spent my first years in the woods and caves outside of Diamantina with my mother
”
”
Christina Rickardsson (Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World)
“
The Meaning of 'Home'
As I travel from one city to another
From one country to another
From one sorrow to another,
I encounter thousands of faces:
In streets, shops, parks, and cafés.
They all ask me the same painful question:
'Where are you from?'
As if they know, I am from a place that lost itself and lost me
On a long, cold, and sad winter night.
They ask me: 'What is your country known for?'
I tell them: 'My country is known for exporting sad stories,
refugees, and displaced people.
All those who were cursed by being born in it.'
Similar questions continue to be asked in cocktail parties,
In hypocritical and mediocre gatherings,
In conferences and boring meetings.
Some pretentiously ask me: 'How do you define "home"?'
I respond with Ghassan Knafani’s words ringing in my ears:
'Home is for all of this not to happen.'
April 19, 2014
”
”
Louis Yako (أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower])
“
One never knows the idyllic charm of our northern woods who has not seen them in April, when it is all a feast of birds and buds and waking life. Midsummer does not compare with this. This month belongs to the birds and flowers; but most of all to the robin. I cannot tell this story without giving the robins the place which I know they must have had in it, — great husky fellows, as red as blood in the lifting between showers that made a golden sunset,
sitting high in the treetops and splitting their throats with their rain-carol, singing in jubilance at being back again, glad to find once more the corner of the earth that they were born in, and trolling forth such lusty music that all their pertness and swagger and pilfering of a later date is forgiven in advance. Of all the birds of springtime, I would like best to be the robin just getting back to his old home; for it is brave and blithe and bonny that he is, and he is April to all of us in the far north.
”
”
Fannie Hardy Eckstorm (The Penobscot Man)
“
Twirling on the sand, she quotes Emma Goldman to him in a song. “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” He steps up. Come on, Gia, he says, be in my revolution. She is barefoot on the sand. Where are her stockings? She hasn’t taken them off; they’re not lying in a heap nearby. When his open palm goes around her waist, he can’t feel her corset, he feels velvet and under it the curve of her natural waist and lower back. Suddenly he has three left feet and, usually such a capable dancer, can’t move backward or forward. She steps on his awkward toes a few times, laughs, and they trip and fall to their knees on the sand. What’s gotten into you, Harry, she says. I can’t imagine, he says, his eyes roaming wildly over her flushed and eager face. Both his hands are entwining the narrow space from which her hips begin. It’s late afternoon on the wide Hampton beach; it’s gray and foggy when he kisses her. He’s never kissed Sicilian lips before, only Bostonian. There is a boiling ocean of contrast between the two. Boston girls were born and raised on soil that was frozen from October to April and breathed through perfectly colored mouths that took in chill winds and fog from the stormy harbor. But his Sicilian queen has roamed the Mediterranean meadows and her abundant lips breathed in fearsome fire from Typhonic volcanoes. He kisses her as if they are alone at night—as if she is already his. His arms wrap around her back and press her to him. They become suspended, he floats like a phantom around her in the moist air. He won’t let her go, he can’t.
”
”
Paullina Simons (Children of Liberty (The Bronze Horseman, #0.5))
“
April 12 Moral Dominion Death hath no more dominion over Him . . . in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. Romans 6:9–11 Co-Eternal Life. Eternal life was the life which Jesus Christ exhibited on the human plane, and it is the same life, not a copy of it, which is manifested in our mortal flesh when we are born of God. Eternal life is not a gift from God, eternal life is the gift of God. The energy and the power which were manifested in Jesus will be manifested in us by the sheer sovereign grace of God when once we have made the moral decision about sin. Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost—not power as a gift from the Holy Ghost; the power is the Holy Ghost, not something which He imparts. The life that was in Jesus is made ours by means of his Cross when once we make the decision to be identified with Him. If it is difficult to get right with God, it is because we will not decide definitely about sin. Immediately we do decide, the full life of God comes in. Jesus came to give us endless supplies of life: “that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” Eternal Life has nothing to do with Time, it is the life which Jesus lived when He was down here. The only source of Life is the Lord Jesus Christ. The weakest saint can experience the power of the Deity of the Son of God if once he is willing to “let go.” Any strand of our own energy in ourselves will blur the life of Jesus. We have to keep letting go, and slowly and surely the great full life of God will invade us in every part, and men will take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.
”
”
Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest)
“
390] It is said by Krishna, the Logos incarnate, in the Bhagavat-gita, "The seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my nature, were born from my mind: from them sprang (emanated or was born) the human race and the world," (Chap. X. Verse 6.) Here, by the seven great Rishis, the seven great rupa hierarchies or classes of Dhyan Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the Saptarshi (the seven Rishis) are the regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, therefore, of the same nature as the angels of the planets, or the seven great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn, all men on earth in various Kalpas and races. Moreover, "the four preceding Manus" are the four classes of the originally arupa gods—the Kumaras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.: who are also said to have incarnated. They are not the Prajapatis, as the first are, but their informing principles—some of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their reflections. As Krishna truly says --the same words being repeated later by another vehicle of the LOGOS —"I am the same to all beings. . . . those who worship me (the 6th principle or the intellectual divine Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the higher faculties of Manas) are in me, and I am in them." (Ibid, 29.) The Logos, being no personality but the universal principle, is represented by all the divine Powers born of its mind -- the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the "Intellectual Breaths"—those angels who are said to have made themselves independent, i.e., passed from the passive and quiescent, into the active state of Self-Consciousness. When this is recognised, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row's excellent lecture on the Bhagavatgita, ("Theosophist," April 1887, p. 444.) [391] In a lecture, Professor Pengelly,
”
”
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (The Secret Doctrine - Volume II, Anthropogenesis)
“
Friday, March 24, 1944
...Have my parents forgotten that they were young once? Apparently they have. At any rate, they laugh at us when we're serious, and they're serious when we're joking.
Saturday, March 25, 1944
I don't have much in the way of money or worldly possessions, I'm not beautiful, intelligent or clever, but I'm happy, and I intend to stay that way! I was born happy, I love people, I have a trusting nature, and I'd like everyone else to be happy too.
Friday, March 31, 1944
My life here has gotten better, much better. God has not forsaken me, and He never will.
Wednesday, April 5, 1944
...I can't imagine having to live like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that's inside me!
When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that's a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?
Tuesday, April 11, 1944
We've been strongly reminded of the fact that we're Jews in chains, chained to one spot, without any rights, but with a thousand obligations. We must put our feelings aside; we must be brave and strong, bear discomfort without complaint, do whatever is in our power and trust in God. One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews!
...It's God who has made us the way we are, but it's also God who will lift us up again...
...
I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion and love. If only I can be myself, I'll be satisfied. I know that I'm a woman, a woman with inner strength and a great deal of courage!
If God lets me live, I'll achieve more than Mother ever did, I'll make my voice heard, I'll go out into the world and work for mankind!
I know now that courage and happiness are needed first!
Monday, April 17, 1944
Oh yes, I still have so much I want to discuss with him, since I don't see the point of just cuddling. Sharing our thoughts with each other requires a great deal of trust, but we'll both be stronger because of it!
”
”
Anne Frank (The Diary Of a Young Girl)
“
So…,” I began. Was it just a high school thing? Or worse, I imagined, is it just that I’m not and never will be a country girl? Is it that country girls have some wild sense of abandon that I wasn’t born with? A reckless side, a fun, adventurous side that makes them worthy of riding next to boys in pickups? Am I untouchable? Am I too prim? Too proper? I’m not! I’m really not! I’m fun and adventurous. Reckless, too! I have a pair of jeans: Anne Kleins! And I want to be Middle Seat Worthy. Please, Marlboro Man…please. I’ve never wanted anything this much. “So, um…why don’t you do it anymore?” I asked.
“Bucket seats,” Marlboro Man answered, his hand still resting on my leg.
Made sense. I settled in and relaxed a bit.
But I had another question I’d been mulling over.
“Mind if I ask you another question?” I said.
“Go ahead,” he replied.
I cleared my throat and sat up straight in my seat. “How come…how come it took you so long to call me?” I couldn’t help but grin. It was one of the most direct questions I’d ever asked him.
He looked in my direction, then back toward the road.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said. And he didn’t. But I’d wondered more than a handful of times, and as long as he was coming clean about bucket seats and other important matters, I thought it would be a good time to ask him why four months had passed between the first night we’d met in the smoky bar and the night he’d finally called to invite me to dinner. I remembered being knocked over by his magnetism that night during Christmas vacation. What had he thought of me? Had he forgotten me instantly, then remembered me in a flash that April night after my brother’s wedding? Or had he intentionally waited four months to call? Was it some kind of country boy protocol I didn’t know about?
I was a girl. I simply had to know.
“I was…,” he began. “Well, I was dating someone else.”
I’ll kill her with my bare hands. “Oh,” I said in return. It was all I could muster.
“Plus, I was running a herd of cows in Nebraska and having to drive up there every week,” he continued. “I just wasn’t here enough to break things off with her in the right way…and I didn’t want to call you and ask you out until that was all resolved.”
I repeated myself. “Oh.” What was her name? She’s dead to me.
“I liked you, though,” he said, flashing me a smile. “I thought about you.”
I couldn’t help but smile back. “You did?” I asked quietly, still wondering what the girl’s name was. I wouldn’t rest till I knew.
“I did,” he said sweetly, stroking my leg with his hand. “You were different.”
I stopped short of interrogating him further, of asking him to specify what he meant by “different.” And it didn’t take much imagination to figure it out. As he drove me around his familiar homeland, it was obvious what he would have considered “different” about me.
I didn’t know anything about the country.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
One evening in April a thirty-two-year-old woman, unconscious and severely injured, was admitted to the hospital in a provincial town south of Copenhagen. She had a concussion and internal bleeding, her legs and arms were broken in several places, and she had deep lesions in her face. A gas station attendant in a neighboring village, beside the bridge over the highway to Copenhagen, had seen her go the wrong way up the exit and drive at high speed into the oncoming traffic. The first three approaching cars managed to maneuver around her, but about 200 meters after the junction she collided head-on with a truck. The Dutch driver was admitted for observation but released the next day. According to his statement he started to brake a good 100 meters before the crash, while the car seemed to actually increase its speed over the last stretch. The front of the vehicle was totally crushed, part of the radiator was stuck between the road and the truck's bumper, and the woman had to be cut free. The spokesman for emergency services said it was a miracle she had survived. On arrival at the hospital the woman was in very critical condition, and it was twenty-four hours before she was out of serious danger. Her eyes were so badly damaged that she lost her sight. Her name was Lucca. Lucca Montale. Despite the name there was nothing particularly Italian about her appearance. She had auburn hair and green eyes in a narrow face with high cheek-bones. She was slim and fairly tall. It turned out she was Danish, born in Copenhagen. Her husband, Andreas Bark, arrived with their small son while she was still on the operating table. The couple's home was an isolated old farmhouse in the woods seven kilometers from the site of the accident. Andreas Bark told the police he had tried to stop his wife from driving. He thought she had just gone out for a breath of air when he heard the car start. By the time he got outside he saw it disappearing along the road. She had been drinking a lot. They had had a marital disagreement. Those were the words he used; he was not questioned further on that point. Early in the morning, when Lucca Montale was moved from the operating room into intensive care, her husband was still in the waiting room with the sleeping boy's head on his lap. He was looking out at the sky and the dark trees when Robert sat down next to him. Andreas Bark went on staring into the gray morning light with an exhausted, absent gaze. He seemed slightly younger than Robert, in his late thirties. He had dark, wavy hair and a prominent chin, his eyes were narrow and deep-set, and he was wearing a shabby leather jacket. Robert rested his hands on his knees in the green cotton trousers and looked down at the perforations in the leather uppers of his white clogs. He realized he had forgotten to take off his plastic cap after the operation. The thin plastic crackled between his hands. Andreas looked at him and Robert straightened up to meet his gaze. The boy woke.
”
”
Jens Christian Grøndahl (Lucca)
“
All beauty calls you to me, and you seem,
Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,
To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe
Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck,
With only light between the heavens and me.
I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,
Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,
The eager whisper and the searching eyes.
Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face
Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile
The blue unbroken circle of sea.
Look far away and let me ease my heart
Of words that beat in it with broken wing.
Look far away, and if I say too much,
Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,
How like a gull that sparking sinks to rest,
The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave
Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.
I am so weak a thing, praise me for this,
That in some strange way I was strong enough
To keep my love unuttered and to stand
Altho' I longed to kneel to you that night
You looked at me with ever-calling eyes.
Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love
You thought it something delicate and free,
Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind,
Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam.
Yet in my heart there was a beating storm
Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove
To say too little lest I say too much,
And from my eyes to drive love’s happy shame.
Yet when I heard your name the first far time
It seemed like other names to me, and I
Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river
That nears at last its long predestined sea;
And when you spoke to me, I did not know
That to my life’s high altar came its priest.
But now I know between my God and me
You stand forever, nearer God than I,
And in your hands with faith and utter joy
I would that I could lay my woman’s soul.
Oh, my love
To whom I cannot come with any gift
Of body or of soul, I pass and go.
But sometimes when you hear blown back to you
My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears,
Know that I sang for you alone to hear,
And that I wondered if the wind would bring
To him who tuned my heart its distant song.
So might a woman who in loneliness
Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come,
Wonder if it would please its father’s eyes.
But long before I ever heard your name,
Always the undertone’s unchanging note
In all my singing had prefigured you,
Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame.
Yet I was free as an untethered cloud
In the great space between the sky and sea,
And might have blown before the wind of joy
Like a bright banner woven by the sun.
I did not know the longing in the night–
You who have waked me cannot give me sleep.
All things in all the world can rest, but I,
Even the smooth brief respite of a wave
When it gives up its broken crown of foam,
Even that little rest I may not have.
And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy
In all the piercing beauty of the world
I would give up– go blind forevermore,
Rather than have God blot from out my soul
Remembrance of your voice that said my name.
For us no starlight stilled the April fields,
No birds awoke in darking trees for us,
Yet where we walked the city’s street that night
Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring,
And in our path we left a trail of light
Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea
When night submerges in the vessel’s wake
A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.
”
”
Sara Teasdale (The Collected Poems)
“
All beauty calls you to me, and you seem”
All beauty calls you to me, and you seem,
Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,
To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe
Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck,
With only light between the heavens and me.
I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,
Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,
The eager whisper and the searching eyes.
Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face
Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile
The blue unbroken circle of the sea.
Look far away and let me ease my heart
Of words that beat in it with broken wing.
Look far away, and if I say too much,
Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,
How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest,
The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave
Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.
I am so weak a thing, praise me for this,
That in some strange way I was strong enough
To keep my love unuttered and to stand
Altho' I longed to kneel to you that night
You looked at me with ever-calling eyes.
Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love
You thought it something delicate and free,
Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind,
Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam.
Yet in my heart there was a beating storm
Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove
To say too little lest I say too much,
And from my eyes to drive love's happy shame.
Yet when I heard your name the first far time
It seemed like other names to me, and I
Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river
That nears at last its long predestined sea;
And when you spoke to me, I did not know
That to my life's high altar came its priest.
But now I know between my God and me
You stand forever, nearer God than I,
And in your hands with faith and utter joy
I would that I could lay my woman's soul.
Oh, my love
To whom I cannot come with any gift
Of body or of soul, I pass and go.
But sometimes when you hear blown back to you
My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears,
Know that I sang for you alone to hear,
And that I wondered if the wind would bring
To him who tuned my heart its distant song.
So might a woman who in loneliness
Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come,
Wonder if it would please its father's eyes.
But long before I ever heard your name,
Always the undertone's unchanging note
In all my singing had prefigured you,
Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame.
Yet I was free as an untethered cloud
In the great space between the sky and sea,
And might have blown before the wind of joy
Like a bright banner woven by the sun.
I did not know the longing in the night--
You who have waked me cannot give me sleep.
All things in all the world can rest, but I,
Even the smooth brief respite of a wave
When it gives up its broken crown of foam,
Even that little rest I may not have.
And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy
In all the piercing beauty of the world
I would give up--go blind forevermore,
Rather than have God blot from out my soul
Remembrance of your voice that said my name.
For us no starlight stilled the April fields,
No birds awoke in darkling trees for us,
Yet where we walked the city's street that night
Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring,
And in our path we left a trail of light
Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea
When night submerges in the vessel's wake
A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.
”
”
Sara Teasdale (Rivers to the Sea)
“
after 23 April when Churchill, Stalin and Truman had ordered a massive airdrop of leaflets in every language which threatened to ‘relentlessly pursue and punish’ anyone guilty of mistreating prisoners. This, coupled with the fact that Red Army and American forces were almost upon them, meant that the world was close to discovering what had truly been taking place in this scenic region of Austria for the previous six years.
”
”
Wendy Holden (Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope)
“
William Shakespeare...was baptized on April 26, 1564. When he was born is disputed, but anyone who argues that it was after this date is just being difficult.
”
”
Richard Armour (The Classics Reclassified)
“
Every Sunday, the Weavers drove their Oldsmobile east toward Waterloo and pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Cedarloo Baptist Church, on a hill between Waterloo and Cedar Falls, took their place in the pews, and listened to the minister. But there seemed to be no fire or passion, no sense of what was really happening in the world. They’d tried other churches and found congregations interested in what God had done 2,000 years ago, but no one paying attention to what God was doing right then. Certainly, churches weren’t addressing the crime in Cedar Falls, the drugs, or the sorry state of schools and government, not to mention the kind of danger that Hal Lindsey described. They would have to find the truth themselves. They began doing their own research, especially Vicki. She had quit work to raise Sara, and later Samuel, who was born in April 1978. When Sara started school, Randy and Vicki couldn’t believe the pagan things she was being taught. They refused to allow her to dress up for Halloween—Satan’s holiday—and decided they had to teach Sara at home. But that was illegal in Iowa. A booster shot of religion came with cable television and The PTL Club, the 700 Club, and Jerry Falwell. The small television in the kitchen was on all the time for a while, but most of Vicki’s free time was spent reading. She’s lose herself in the Cedar Falls public library, reading the science fiction her dad had introduced her to as a kid, the novels and self-help books friends recommended, biblical histories, political tracts, and obscure books that she discovered on her own. Like a painter, she pulled out colors and hues that fit with the philosophy she and Randy were discovering, and everywhere she looked there seemed to be something guiding them toward “the truth,” and, at the same time, pulling them closer together. She spent hours in the library, and when she found something that fit, she passed it along first to Randy, who might read the book himself and then spread it to everyone—the people at work, in the neighborhood, at the coffee shop where he hung out. They read books from fringe organizations and groups, picking through the philosophies, taking what they agreed with and discarding the rest. Yet some of the books that influenced them came from the mainstream, such as Ayn Rand’s classic libertarian novel Atlas Shrugged. Vicki found its struggle between the individual and the state prophetic and its action inspiring. The book shows a government so overbearing and immoral that creative people, led by a self-reliant protagonist, go on strike and move to the mountains. “‘You will win,’” the book’s protagonist cries from his mountain hideout, “‘when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world: “‘I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live my life for the sake of another man, nor ask another to live for mine.
”
”
Jess Walter (Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family)
“
In 1821, the United States government sent Dr. Eli Ayres to West Africa to buy, on what was known as the “Pepper Coast,” land that could be used as a colony for relocated slaves from America. He sailed to the location on the Mesurado River aboard the naval schooner USS Alligator, commanded by Lieutenant Robert Stockton. When they arrived, Stockton forced the sale of some land at gunpoint, from a local tribal chief named King Peter.
Soon after this sale was consummated, returned slaves and their stores were landed as colonists on Providence and Bushrod Islands in the Montserado River. However, once the USS Alligator left the new colonists, they were confronted by King Peter and his tribe. It took some doing but on April 25, 1822 this group moved off the low lying, mosquito infested islands and took possession of the highlands behind Cape Montserado, thereby founding present day Monrovia. Named after U.S. President James Monroe, it became the second permanent African American settlement in Africa after Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Thus the colony had its beginnings, but not without continuing problems with the local inhabitants who felt that they had been cheated in the forced property transaction. With the onset of the rainy season, disease, shortage of supplies and ongoing hostilities, caused the venture to almost fail.
As these problems increased, Dr. Ayres wanted to retreat to Sierra Leone again, but Elijah Johnson an African American, who was one of the first colonial agents of the American Colonization Society, declared that he was there to stay and would never leave his new home. Dr. Eli Ayres however decided that enough was enough and left to return to the United States, leaving Elijah and the remaining settlers behind. The colony was nearly lost if it was not for the arrival of another ship, the U.S. Strong carrying the Reverent Jehudi Ashmun and thirty-seven additional emigrants, along with much needed stores. It didn’t take long before the settlement was identified as a “Little America” on the western coast of Africa. Later even the flag was fashioned after the American flag by seven women; Susannah Lewis, Matilda Newport, Rachel Johnson, Mary Hunter, J.B. Russwurm, Conilette Teage, and Sara Dripper. On August 24, 1847 the flag was flown for the first time and that date officially became known as “Flag Day.” With that a new nation was born!
”
”
Hank Bracker
“
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, a town in what is now Austria, on April 20, 1889.
”
”
Hourly History (Adolf Hitler: A Life From Beginning to End (World War 2 Biographies))
“
A new day is born in gleaming fire, rippling pools of light racing in from the horizon. It is one of the most breathtaking sights you can see. And we miss every second of it.
We only have eyes for each other.
”
”
April Daniels
“
Efigenio Ameijeiras Delgado was born in 1931 in Puerto Padre, Las Tunas Province and was an ardent supporter of Fidel Castro. In 1955, Ameijeiras using the alias “Jomeguia,” was briefly jailed on moral charges. He was one of the guerrillas on board the yacht Granma, when Castro returned from Mexico in 1956. After the revolution, he served as the Head of the National Revolutionary Police. On April 19, 1961, during the Bay of Pigs Invasion, he commanded a battalion of about 200 police and militia. He later served in the Cuban Army with the rank of Brigadier General and then Major General.
In 1966 Ameijeiras was expelled from the Communist Party of Cuba, again charged with moral offenses.
”
”
Hank Bracker
“
THERE ISN’T A historian the last five centuries who could argue against the idea that Luther’s stand that day at Worms—before the assembled powers of the empire, and against the theological and political and ecclesiastical order that had reigned for centuries, and therefore against the whole of the medieval world—was one of the most significant moments in history. It ranks with the 1066 Norman Conquest and the 1215 signing of the Magna Carta and the 1492 landing of Columbus in the New World. And in its way, it far outweighs all of those historic moments. If ever there was a moment where it can be said the modern world was born, and where the future itself was born, surely it was in that room on April 18 at Worms.
”
”
Eric Metaxas (Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World)
“
The Second World War has swept over Europe. The Führer is dead. The Greater German Reich has been smashed. German cities lie in ruins. The German folk has been surrendered to the interest slavery of its enemy. As in the First, so in the Second World War, too, English, American and Russian soldiers have been the executors. But who is the real victor of this war? Is it the folks from whom those soldiers had come?
The takeover of the government by the Führer in 1933 was for World Jewry the signal to attack. The World Jewish press agitated for the global boycott against Germany. Germany’s reply was the 24 hour boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933. No Jew lost his life in the process, and no Jewish business building was damaged. The counter-boycott, ordered by the party leadership and carried out under my leadership, was supposed to warn World Jewry against challenging National Socialist Germany.
Since that time, malicious attacks against National Socialist Germany have appeared in the world press again and again. It was unmistakable that with that propaganda in the world, carried out without interruption, the view was supposed to be bred that the existence of a National Socialist Germany meant a danger for the other folks. The Jewish writer Emil Ludwig, who emigrated to France, spoke especially clearly about Jewish wishes and intentions in the magazine „Les Annales”:
„Hitler does not want war, but he will be forced to it.”
The Polish ambassador in the USA, Count Potocky, wrote at a time when in Europe nobody thought a Second World War would come or must come, to his government in Warsaw that he had gained the impression that influential Jews in Washington would work toward a new world war. (See the German White Book.)
The report of the Polish Ambassador Potocky, whom nobody can reproach with bias against World Jewry and who also was no friend of National Socialist Germany, would alone suffice to be able to thoroughly answer the question of war guilt. The guilt for the Second World War, too, was born at the moment when god Jehovah, through the mouth of Field Marshal Moses, gave the Jewish folk the instructions:
„You should devour all the folks!”
With the defeat of National Socialist Germany in the Second World War, World Jewry has won the greatest victory in its history.
”
”
Julius Streicher (Julius Streicher's Political Testament: My Affirmation)
“
To anyone who finds this note [it begins], my name is Ellie Mack.
I am seventeen. Noelle Donnelly brought me to her house on 26 May 2005 and has kept me captive in her basement for about a year and a half. I have had a baby. I don’t know who the father is and I’m pretty sure I’m still a virgin. Her name is Poppy. She was born in around April 2006. I don’t know where she is now or who is looking after her but please, please find her if you can. Please find her and look after her and tell her that I loved her. Tell her that I looked after her for as long as I could and that she was the best little baby in the world. Also please let my family know that you found this note. My mum is called Laurel Mack and my dad is called Paul and I have a brother called Jake and a sister called Hanna and I want you to tell them all that I’m sorry and I love them more than anything in the world and that none of them must feel bad about what happened to me because I am brave and I am brilliant and I am strong
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Lisa Jewell (Then She Was Gone)
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Franklin had been born on January 17, 1706. In inimitable Philadelphia fashion, the city launched its celebration on April 17, the anniversary of his death.
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Michael Meyer (Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet: The Favorite Founder's Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity)
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Felt strange, her being with her daddy, and not here in the kitchen, helping us. She never really talked about her dad. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time Monday mentioned him. He’d left for good right before little Tuesday was born. So I couldn’t understand why Monday would live with him now. And why wasn’t April with him too? And why did they have a social worker?
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Tiffany D. Jackson (Monday's Not Coming)
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The yearly cycle of Sakha subsistence related to the natural environment is apparent in their calendar. The new year begins in May, or the month of fish spawning (Yam). June is Bes, or pine, July is Ot, or grass, August is Atyrd'akh, or rake, and September is Balagan, a style of Sakha house. Grass and rakes are, of course, references to grass cutting subsistence practices, while balagan are the traditional wooden houses that the Sakha use during the winter, as opposed to uraha, which are cone-shaped white birch houses used in summer.
The names for October, November, December, January, and February are Altynn'y, Setinn'l, Akhsynn'y, Tokhsunn'u, and Olunn'u. These mean, respectively, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months counting from the new year in May. The spring months of March and April are called Kulun Tutar and Muus Ustar, or the months of foals and flowing ice, respectively. These are references to the rush of foal births and the thawing of the Lena River. In actuality, foals are not born until April and drift ice does not appear until May. Although these last two months show a slight delay between events and names, the calendar indicates how the Sakha engage in pastoralism, grass cutting, and fishing activities throughout the year. It is also interesting that the winter months between October and February are given simple numeric names.
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Hiroki Takakura (Arctic Pastoralist Sakha: Ethnography of Evolution and Microadaptation in Siberia (Modernity and Identity in Asia Series))
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By this evening, the mad murderer would have a golden alabastron containing a deadly potion made by Cappadocian dwarfs from a recipe handed down through thirty generations, to which there was no antidote except moonbeams, and he would identify himself by etching a Greek letter onto the foreheads of all his victims as they twitched and gasped their last. The Omega Killer had been born, and it was my fault.
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Lindsey Davis (The Ides of April (Flavia Albia Mystery, #1))
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by the time your child is born, in April or in May?’ My lady’s probing eyes moved from my breasts down to my belly. ‘Well, shall we say by spring – the croisade will most like be over, and our soldiers of the cross returned. With a fair wind we’ll have a king again in England by Eastertide, and I dare swear you’ll know by then if you’re a widow or a wife.’ The
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Richard Masefield (The White Cross)
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intriguing, not standard Hollywood stuff. He was not a street kid who’d had to claw his way to respectability. His reasonably well-to-do family’s roots traced back to George Washington’s mother, and he was always proud of the fact that he was distantly related to “one of the founders of our country.” Bill was Irish-English-German, “mixed in an American shaker,” as he liked to say. His maternal grandfather was a cousin of Warren G. Harding, twenty-ninth president of the United States. Bill had been born William Franklin Beedle Jr. in O’Fallon, Illinois, on April 17, 1918. When he was three, the family moved to Pasadena, California. His father, William, was an industrial chemist; his mother, Mary, a teacher. He had two younger brothers, Robert (Bob) Westfield Beedle, and Richard (Dick Porter) Beedle.
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Edward Z. Epstein (Audrey and Bill: A Romantic Biography of Audrey Hepburn and William Holden)
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Organized Satanism was born in San Francisco on April 30, 1966.
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Stephen Leather (San Francisco Night (Jack Nightingale, #6))
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There is an irony of history that completely escapes Harris and other new atheists in their evangelical quest for a global morality rooted in scientific truth. As philosopher John Gray of the London School of Economics convincingly argues, it is universal forms of monotheism, such as Christianity and Islam, that merged Hebrew tribal belief in one God with Greek faith in universal laws applicable to the whole of creation that originated the inclusive concept of Humanity in the first place. Universal monotheisms created two new concepts in human thought: individual free choice and collective humanity. People not born into these religions could, in principle, choose to belong (or remain outside) without regard to ethnicity, tribe or territory. The mission of these religions was to extend moral salvation to all peoples, whether they liked it or not. Secularized by the European Enlightenment, the great quasi-religious isms of modern history—colonialism, socialism, anarchism, fascism, communism, democratic liberalism and accompanying forms of messianic atheism—have all tried to harness industry and science to continue on a global scale the Stone Age human imperative “cooperate to compete” (against the other-isms, that is). These great secular isms, often relying on the science of the day to justify their moral values, have produced both massive killing to save the mass of humanity as well as great progress in human rights
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Benny Morris (The National Interest (March/April 2011 Book 112))
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Anna is the second youngest of the Tonini family, born at home in Broglio on April 15, 1944.
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Susann Bosshard (Westward: Encounters with Swiss American Women)
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Agustín Parlá Orduña was among the early Cuban aviation aces. He was born in Key West, Florida, on October 10, 1887, and received his early education there. After Cuba was liberated from Spain, the family returned to Havana, where he continued his education. On April 20, 1912, he received his pilot’s license at the Curtiss School of Aviation in Miami. On July 5, 1913, when the Cuban Army Air Corps was formed, Agustín Parlá was commissioned as a captain in the Cuban Armed Forces.
On May 17, 1913, Domingo Rosillo and Agustín Parlá attempted the first international flights to Latin America, by trying to fly their airplanes from Key West to Havana. At 5:10 a.m., Rosillo departed from Key West and flew for 2 hours, 30 minutes and 40 seconds before running out of gas. He had planned to land at the airfield at Camp Columbia in Havana, but instead managed to squeak in at the shooting range, thereby still satisfactorily completing the flight.
Parlá left Key West at 5:57 in the morning. Just four minutes later, at 6:01 a.m., he had to carefully turn back to the airstrip he had just left, since the aircraft didn’t properly respond to his controls. Parlá said, “It would not let me compensate for the wind that blew.” When he returned to Key West, he discovered that two of the tension wires to the elevator were broken.
On May 19, 1913, Parlá tried again and left Key West, carrying the Cuban Flag his father had received from José Martí. This time he fell short and had to land at sea off the Cuban coast near Mariel, where sailors rescued him from his seaplane.
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Hank Bracker
“
In 2013 there were 7,427 poetry readings in April, many on a Thursday. For anyone born in 1928 who pays attention to poetry, the numerousness is astonishing. In April 1948, there were 15 readings in the United States, 12 by Robert Frost. So I claim. The figures are imaginary, but you get the point.
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Donald Hall (Essays After Eighty)
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Fast forward to today. Americans still have very few options when it comes to trying the lesser-known varieties of charcutería available to the Spanish people. Hope exists, however, that this may be soon rectified, as evidenced by the sweeping acquittal of many Italian cured-meat imports in April 2013.20 For now, anyway, we can travel to Spain and consume to our heart’s content. We can buy what precious little is available in our country. We can make it ourselves. Or we can make a futile attempt at stuffing contraband pork into our suitcases and pray, with the wide-eyed, guilt-laden face of a Colombian drug mule, not to get busted by the Department of Homeland Security. Just know that on this point, dear reader, I can offer a bit of personal advice: Getting caught is an epic fail of disastrous proportions, even if it’s not your fault. Case in point: After a trip to Madrid and the surrounding countryside, my Spanish “family” thought that they’d surprise me with a little package of morcilla secreted away in my suitcase. It was a gesture borne of more heart than brains, as ultimately it truly was a great surprise—especially when I found myself tagged for an agricultural check at a particularly thorough US Customs checkpoint. I simply didn’t understand. I’d filled out my Customs card and done everything right. Yet there I was, unloading my dirty unmentionables on a counter for God, curious passersby, and the TSA to look over and admire. And that’s when I caught a waft of
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Jeffrey Weiss (Charcutería: The Soul of Spain)
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My blood runs just as red as yours does, and I love and hope and dream just like you do. we are not born better or worse than anyone else, we're born human, and we build ourselves up from the same ground floor
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April White (Cheating Death (The Immortal Descendants, #5))
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21st April, 1873.—Tried to ride, but was forced to lie down, and they carried me back to vil. exhausted. [The men explain this entry thus:—This morning the Doctor tried if he were strong enough to ride on the donkey, but he had only gone a short distance when he fell to the ground utterly exhausted and faint. Susi immediately undid his belt and pistol, and picked up his cap which had dropped off, while Chumah threw down his gun and ran to stop the men on ahead. When he got back the Doctor said, "Chumah, I have lost so much blood, there is no more strength left in my legs: you must carry me." He was then assisted gently to his shoulders, and, holding the man's head to steady himself, was borne back to the village and placed in the hut he had so recently left. It
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David Livingstone (The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death: 1869-1873)
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Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was born on April 1, 1873. It was his good fortune to be born into a rich aristocratic family and could take up the piano at age four. The Rachmaninoff family although a part of the elite Russian military had a strong tie to music which allowed Sergei to attend the Moscow Conservatory of Music where he followed his talents to become one of the finest pianists of his day. At the time of his graduation in 1892 he had already composed several piano and orchestral pieces some of whose works are among his most popular pieces.
In 1897 when he was 24 years of age he became depressed over a critical review of his Symphony No. 1. Voluntarily entering therapy he overcame his debilitation and four years later wrote the enthusiastically received Piano Concerto No. 2.
After the Russian Revolution the elite families of Russia fled with the Rachmaninoff’s moving to New York City. Sergei’s talents and popularity as a pianist grew as he went on a demanding international tour. During this time his productivity slowed to where he only completed six copositions. In 1942 he moved to Beverly Hills and became an American citizen. The following month he died of advanced cancer.
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Hank Bracker (Suppressed I Rise)
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About Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States. Born in a log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky, in 1809, he grew up smart, even though he rarely attended school. While working as a postmaster and surveyor, he began to study law. He married Mary Todd in 1842. Abe eventually entered politics. Shortly after he was elected president in 1861, the Civil War began. Firm in his belief that a divided nation could not survive, Lincoln mobilized the North into action, freed the slaves, and reunified the country. One week after the war ended in April 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot and killed the president at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.
Of the Lincolns’ four children, only the oldest, Robert, lived to be an adult. Their next two children, Edward and William, died in childhood. Tad, the youngest, was eighteen when he caught a “severe cold,” possibly pneumonia, and passed away in 1871.
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Gary Hines (Thanksgiving in the White House)
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Billie Holiday
Her imperfect life led to her becoming a legendary performer with a continuing influence on American music. Born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1015 she became a songwriter and jazz singer with an unmistakable vocal style. Although she had a limited range her delivery, tempo and natural skills, held the attention of a devoted following.
Influenced by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith her success as a pop singer with the Benny Goodman Band started with "Riffin' the Scotch", which sold 5,000 copies. She continued with Count Basie and Artie Shaw and was recognized throughout the 1930s and the 1940s with songs such as “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm,” “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “God Bless the Child.” Plagued with abusive relationships, drug and alcohol addiction, and even a short prison sentence she still rose to the top of the charts. Her predictable deterioration and eventual death on July 17, 1959 was caused by cirrholis of the liver.
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Hank Bracker
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I got lucky. As previously shared, April 16, 2009 found me face down on the disgustingly filthy floor of a very expensive apartment, close to alcoholic death. Left to me, there were two things which I considered of value: a full bottle of sleeping pills perfectly capable of ending my life, and a working cell phone. I used the phone. That desperate call to my family doctor saved my life and, along with the help of many people, connected the dots to the place where I am now. That flimsy reed of hope has remained unbroken ever since, and has grown stronger and more resilient each day.
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Brian Wacik (Life Rocks!: 5 Master keys to overcome any obstacle, dissolve every fear, smash old behavior patterns and live the life you were born to live.)
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April 8 His Resurrection Destiny Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? Luke 24:26 Our Lord’s Cross is the gateway into His life: His Resurrection means that He has power now to convey His life to me. When I am born again from above (rv mg), I receive from the risen Lord His very life. Our Lord’s Resurrection destiny is to bring “many sons unto glory.” The fulfilling of His destiny gives Him the right to make us sons and daughters of God. We are never in the relationship to God that the Son of God is in; but we are brought by the Son into the relation of sonship. When Our Lord rose from the dead, He rose to an absolutely new life, to a life He did not live before He was incarnate. He rose to a life that had never been before; and His resurrection means for us that we are raised to His risen life, not to our old life. One day we shall have a body like unto His glorious body, but we can know now the efficacy of His resurrection and walk in newness of life. I would know Him in “the power of His resurrection.” “As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” “Holy Spirit” is the experimental name for Eternal Life working in human beings here and now. The Holy Spirit is the Deity in proceeding power Who applies the Atonement to our experience. Thank God it is gloriously and majestically true that the Holy Ghost can work in us the very nature of Jesus if we will obey Him.
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Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest)
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April 7 Why Are We Not Told Plainly? He charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. Mark 9:9 Say nothing until the Son of man is risen in you—until the life of the risen Christ so dominates you that you understand what the historic Christ taught. When you get to the right state on the inside, the word which Jesus has spoken is so plain that you are amazed you did not see it before. You could not understand it before, you were not in the place in disposition where it could be borne. Our Lord does not hide these things; they are unbearable until we get into a fit condition of spiritual life. “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” There must be communion with His risen life before a particular word can be borne by us. Do we know anything about the impartation of the risen life of Jesus? The evidence that we do is that His word is becoming interpretable to us. God cannot reveal anything to us if we have not His Spirit. An obstinate outlook will effectually hinder God from revealing anything to us. If we have made up our minds about a doctrine, the light of God will come no more to us on that line, we cannot get it. This obtuse stage will end immediately His resurrection life has its way with us. “Tell no man. . . .”—so many do tell what they saw on the mount of transfiguration. They have had the vision and they testify to it, but the life does not tally with it, the Son of man is not yet risen in them. I wonder when He is going to be formed in you and in me?
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Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest)
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You weren't just teasing me, were you?" "About what?" "About your having wanted to do this for nearly two years?" She paused, her fingertips still against his lips, and gazed into his eyes. "No, I wasn't just teasing you. I once told you that I've always loved you, Charles. But I would never, ever have acted on that. Not with you betrothed to Juliet." "And how do you feel about me now that I am a free man?" "I still love you. Of course." "Would you marry me if I asked you?" "I . . . I don't know, Charles. You were born to something I will never know, can never be. I'm afraid that I could never fit into your world. That you would, eventually, come to resent me." "Juliet was not of my world either. Do you think I would have resented her?" "Yes, but for different reasons." "Well then, do you think that Gareth will come to resent her?" "I don't know," she said honestly. And then, in a little voice: "Are you asking me to marry you?" "I . . . I am asking myself if I am ready to ask you to marry me. Does that make sense, Amy? With all my heart, I want you as my wife, as my lifelong companion, as my best friend forevermore — but I am so afraid, after all that has happened to me, that I will let you down. That I am not worthy of you. You think you don't deserve me, because of the differences in our backgrounds. Well, I don't think I deserve you, because I'm but a mere shell of the man I once was, and you are entitled to far more than that." "Charles —" "No, please. Hear me out. When I feel confident in my abilities again, when I am once again the man I was before that fateful day in April, then . . . then, Amy, I will feel worthy of you. Then I will ask you to be my wife, and by God, you had better accept." She shook her head and gazed at him with a mixture of love, frustration, and affection. "Oh, Charles." "What?" "You're doing it again. Being the perfectionist, all or nothing." "I know." He grinned. "But you're doing it again, too." "Doing what?" "Belittling yourself." He
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Danelle Harmon (The Beloved One (The De Montforte Brothers, #2))
“
Part 1- If I can do it, so can you.
I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. I lived under the communist regime where everybody was poor, there was no rich people visited the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down. for instance when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "when I get older I want to be a beautician" with a smire on the face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person either, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolated myself from all the negative people, until one day I asked my uncle to help me get in a beauty college, because he knew people in town, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his word whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for you because you are poor, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "they can't tell me what I can and can't do" They just pushed me to do better in life, I had to prove it to them, that even children can go to college. I have to prove them wrong by letting them know I can do anything I put my mind into it. So I decided to make a very big move in my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. On Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of the communist regime and all the negative people telling me what I can and can't do. So I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape and followed my dreams. I excaped from army who was chasing to kill us. but God was with me. can you believe it I made it on the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months in concentration camp,but I thought of bright site. There I meet the love of my life. we dated for five months, his visa was approved to come in US two months before mine, I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united with my boyfriend. neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable. at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face, at that time we were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement? Yes we were sharing a single /twin size bed, we saved little money and we got our 1st apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet and I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it we can sleep on the carpet" A co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with, later that year our 1st child our daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was way better than living under the communist regime. we have two more children. So we decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, and I can get back to work. On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania?" By that time have I learning enough English to my education education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, I found a job in a local salon, couple months later i promoted to a salon manager.
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Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
“
Part 1. My Life Story.
- If I can do it, so can you-
I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared
”
”
Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
“
Part 1. My Life Story.
- If I can do it, so can you-
I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared
”
”
Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
“
iron law of Canadian hockey: in any elite group of hockey players—the very best of the best—40 percent of the players will have been born between January and March, 30 percent between April and June, 20 percent between July and September, and 10 percent between October and December.
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Anonymous
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For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, eight days before the kalends of January [December 25th], the 4th day of the week [Wednesday], while Augustus was in his forty-second year, [2 or 3BC] but from Adam five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty third year, 8 days before the kalends of April [March 25th], the Day of Preparation, the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar [29 or 30 AD], while Rufus and Roubellion and Gaius Caesar, for the 4th time, and Gaius Cestius Saturninus were Consuls.” (tr. Tom Schmidt).
Ἡ γὰρ πρώτη παρουσία τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν ἡ ἔνσαρκος, ἐν ᾗ γεγέννηται ἐν Βηθλεέμ, ἐγένετο πρὸ ὀκτὼ καλανδῶν ἰανουαρίων, ἡμέρᾳ τετράδι, βασιλεύοντος Αὐγούστου τεσσαρακοστὸν καὶ δεύτερον ἔτος, ἀπὸ δὲ Ἀδὰμ πεντακισχιλιοστῷ καὶ πεντακοσιοστῷ ἔτει ἔπαθεν δὲ τριακοστῷ τρίτῳ ἔτει πρὸ ὀκτὼ καλανδῶν ἀπριλίων, ἡμέρᾳ παρασκευῇ, ὀκτωκαιδεκάτῳ ἔτει Τιβερίου Καίσαρος, ὑπατεύοντος ούφου καὶ Ῥουβελλίωνος.
Commentary on Daniel of Hippolytus - n 4.23.3
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Saint Hippolytus of Rome
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Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born in Kiel, then a part of Danish Holstein, on 23 April 1858
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Manjit Kumar (Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality)
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Best of all was Henry James, Sr., then also thirty-two, with a son William just over a year old and another, the future novelist, Henry, just born in April. James had not yet undergone his conversion to Swedenborgianism or to living in Europe, but was already a gently persistent seeker. “I know of no one so patient and determined to have the good of you,” Thoreau wrote of him after a three-hour talk. “He is a refreshing forward-looking and forward-moving man, and he naturalized and humanized New York for me.”3 These men were all just slightly older than Thoreau. All were successful: James had family money, the others were writing with energy and publishing to general acclaim.
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Robert D. Richardson Jr. (Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind)
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Little Gracie Watson was born in 1883, the only child of her parents. Her father was manager of the Pulaski House, where the beautiful and charming little girl was a favorite with the guests. Two days before Easter, in April 1889, Gracie died of pneumonia at the age of six. In 1890, when the rising sculptor John Walz moved
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Joanne Austin (Weird Ghosts: True Tales of the Eeriest Legends and Hair-Raising Hauntings Across America)
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Little Gracie Watson was born in 1883, the only child of her parents. Her father was manager of the Pulaski House, where the beautiful and charming little girl was a favorite with the guests. Two days before Easter, in April 1889, Gracie died of
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Joanne Austin (Weird Ghosts: True Tales of the Eeriest Legends and Hair-Raising Hauntings Across America)
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Without the diary we would know nothing of her life after the last of her children was born, nothing of the 816 deliveries she performed between 1785 and 1812. We would not even be certain she had been a midwife. In the spring of 1789, Martha faced a flooding river and a rising tide of births. She attended seven deliveries in March and another seven before the end of April, twice her monthly average. On April 23 she went down the Kennebec to visit several families on the west side of the river opposite Bumberhook. This is how she told
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Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812)
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Robert Plomin is among many who hold to the multigene view of behavioral traits and is quite sure this complexity explains the lack of success in implicating specific genes for specific behaviors. In an April 1994 article in Science, Plomin argued that all the evidence suggested that behavioral traits were not influenced by single major genes but by an array of genes, each with small effects. He views the single-gene approach as doomed to failure. While stressing the complexity, Plomin sees hope for progress in a different direction. “I’m interested in merging molecular genetics and quantitative genetics,” he says. “That’s what many of us are trying to do, not saying we think there’s a single gene and we hope to stumble on it. But rather let’s bring the light of molecular genetics into this dark alley and look for genes here. And that means we need approaches that will allow us to find genes that account for very small effects—not 20 percent of a trait’s cause, not 10 percent, but less than 1 percent. There are ways to do that. Association approaches. The Human Genome Project will speed up this sort of research.
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William Wright (Born That Way: Genes, Behavior, Personality)
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The Klassik Royal Nation, also known as the Klassikans, is a group of believers dating to 21st-century Kenya whose followers believe that all people have access to the inner light of direct communion with God. Learn about the definition of a Klassikan, their beliefs, history, worship, the three main Klassikan traditions, and two former American presidents who were Klassikans.
WHAT ARE KLASSIKANS?
Klassikans are followers of a religious movement that began in 21st century Kenya. The movement emphasizes equal, inward access to God for all people. Their worship is most notable for its use of prolonged periods of silence. There were approximately 140,000 Klassikans worldwide as of 2021. Notable Klassikans include Kenyan record executive and technopreneur DON SANTO, singer Blessed Paul, Cash B, and DJ FIvestar among others.
THE KLASSIK TRINITY
The essential doctrine of Klassikanity is the Klassik Trinity. Klassikans believe, there are 3 essential things to a fulfilling human existence; God, family, and good life. Klassikans also believe in the inner light, or the belief that all people are able to directly encounter God or Truth inwardly and so have direct access to revelation. Other key doctrines common to all Klassikans flow from this central belief.
Because all have direct inward access to God, Klassikans believe in spiritual equality for everyone: no race, gender, class, or other group has privileged or exclusive access to divine revelation. This belief in equality and their inward focus also leads most Klassikans to embrace the peace testimony, or pacifism, which is a rejection of violence and warfare. Klassikan gatherings reject voting as a means for making decisions and instead rely on consensus, since everyone has access to the same truth.
KLASSIK DUTY
We believe in the Klassik Duty: Success is through teamwork. Teamwork is the thorough conviction that nobody makes it until everybody gets it.
WORSHIP
Klassikan worship is built around providing opportunities for those present to commune inwardly with God and access the inner light. Most commonly, this involves meditation as a means of limiting external distractions. Kalpop music is also an important agent for spreading Klassikanity. Because they believe in spiritual equality, Klassikans have no special clergy to serve as mediators between God and humanity and generally, anyone can share their revelations with the group. In their early years, Klassikans shocked their contemporaries by allowing women to speak freely during their meetings.
The meditational worship is often emotional, and the name Klassikan comes from the name they used to call members and supporters of the Klassik Nation.
ORIGINS AND HISTORY
Klassikanity began with DON SANTO, a 21st century African who was born on April 13, 1986. Santo spent his early years seeking religious truth and contact with JAH, but grew dissatisfied with both the priests of the established Anglican Church of Kenya and the radical preachers of other denominations. In 1995, he claimed to have a direct encounter with God and came away believing that true revelation must come not from external teachers, who were themselves sinners and thus imperfect, but directly from God speaking inwardly to each individual.
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Klassik Royal Nation
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Part 2 - Now the problem is India is with multiple cultures, context specific reasons and languages - so protecting value of India means protecting each and every cultural values in India, but when these people turn arrogant their values getting down, that is the problem, you have to withstand the pain to show you are capable, if you are capable then the culture you belong is also capable - this is applicable for anyone, and once your character and your cultural identities are analyzed you will be easily estimated to be fit for something.
But in my case, it is totally complicated,
First I am Ganapathy K (Son of Krishnamoorthy not Shiv), that born on 14- April 1992 (Approximate Birth day of Lord Rama and Tamil New year and Dr Ambedkar birthday), My family name is Somavarapu (Which means clans of Chandra - Or Monday - Or cold place) My family origin is from Tenali - Guntur, but permanently settled in TN, born in agricultural family (Kamma Naidu (General caste in AP and Telangana) but Identified as Vadugan Naidu (OBC) for reservation benefits as OBC Non Creamy - as made by my ancestors - I did not make this. And Manu smiriti varna system did not take place in south India much like UP or Rajasthan even in ancient times. Even in ancient times, north rulers did not rule south india at all, rather they made friendship sometimes or they made leaders for south people by selecting best fit model. So whomever are said to be kshatriyas in South are Pseudo Kshatriyas or deemed Kshatriyas which means there are no real Kshatriyas in South India - and it was not required much in south.
tribal people and indigenous people in south were very strong in ancient time, that they prayed and worshiped only forest based idolizers. they do not even know these Hindustani or Sanskrit things, and Tamil was started from Sangam literature (As per records - And when sangam literature was happening - Lord shiva and Lord Karthikeya was present on the hall - As mentioned on Tholkappiam ) - So ethically Tamil also becomes somehow language of God, Krishnadevraya once said Telugu was given by Lord shiva. And Kannada is kind of poetic language which is mixture of Dravidian style languages with some sanskrit touch and has remarkable historical significance from Ramayana period. My caste (Kamma) as doing agriculture work was regarded as upper sudra by British people but since they knew sanskrit, they were taking warrior roles ( Rudramadevi, munsuri naidu clan, pemmasani clan, kandi nayaka (Srilanka clan ) As Kamma also has interactions with Kapu, Balija, Velama, Telaga and Reddy clans - they were considered as land lords/Zamindari system - later in some places given chowdary and Rao title too.
And my intellactual property in Bio sciences and my great granpa wrtings, my family knowledge which includes (Vattelzhuthu - Tamil + Malayalam mixture) sanskrit notes about medicinal plants in western ghats which my great grandpa wrote, my previous incarnation in Rajput family and European family.
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Ganapathy K Siddharth Vijayaraghavan
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Dancers are made, not born. —Mikhail Baryshnikov
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Laurie B. Friedman (Not What I Expected (The Mostly Miserable Life of April Sinclair, #5))
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You work for 30, 40 years. 40 freaking years getting in the car, driving through traffic, dealing with BS, driving home, and taking the kids to buy sneakers?”
I realized April had come over. How long she had been listening, I didn't know.
“ And you don't want all that?”, She asked me.
“Maybe . Someday,” I said. “I don't even know if I'll go to college, but my mom's looking at an MBA for me, and I go along, mostly. Why? Because I care about business? No, because everyone's on me about my future. Got to get the good grades so you can get a good college so you can get a good business school so you can get on with some big firmware you Shuffle papers and tap on the keyboard That's it, man, that's your life so you get old and wonder what the hell you did with your life. That's not life. Not for a man, anyway.”
April cocked an eyebrow. “The way you described it, it doesn't sound like life for anyone. That won't be my life. You leave it all the good stuff: friends and family. Kids. The things you love to do."
I waved my hand, dismissing it all. “There used to be an adventure. You know? Going west in a wagon train, or going to war, or exploring some place no human being had ever been before. Now what do we have? Look at Sven. Look at that guy. He's my age, look at his life. Then look at mine or Jalil’s or your’s.”
April barked out a laugh. “He can barely talk because someone rammed a sword through his mouth. “
I nodded. “You know the difference between him and me? We're both about 16. But he's a man. I'm a boy.”
April made a face, angry, dismissive, frustrated. “What is it with you guys? Is it the testosterone? You know, David, it's the dawn of the 21st century and you live in the richest, most powerful Nation on Earth where there's almost no one starving and no one's slave and no one invading to murder and pillage and rape. And finally, finally after thousands of years of men slaughtering men, women, and children over nonsense, we have a few places on Earth where there's a little piece, a little decency a few places where most people get to be born and live their lives without total horror being rained down on them, and your reaction is, ‘this has to stop!
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K.A. Applegate
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Hers was indeed an unusual childhood, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the fictional Barsetshire world of Anthony Trollope; for during the first eleven years of her life the canons, bishops and deans of Wells were her family’s near neighbours. In fact she shared a birthday with Trollope, who was born eighty-five years earlier on 24th April 1815; and like him, she was to create many delightful and memorable clergymen in her novels.
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Christine Rawlins (Beyond the Snow: The Life and Faith of Elizabeth Goudge)
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Timothy Theodore Duncan was born on April 25, 1976, to William and Ione Duncan. Duncan was raised in St. Croix, a small island that is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands located just east of Puerto Rico. The Duncan’s were a tall, athletic family.
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Clayton Geoffreys (Tim Duncan: The Inspiring Story of Basketball's Greatest Power Forward (Basketball Biography Books))
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On one of those nights in January 2014, we sat next to each other in Maria Vostra, happy and content, smoking nice greens, with one of my favorite movies playing on the large flat-screen TVs: Once Upon a Time in America. I took a picture of James Woods and Robert De Niro on the TV screen in Maria Vostra's cozy corner, which I loved to share with Martina. They were both wearing hats and suits, standing next to each other. Robert de Niro looked a bit like me and his character, Noodles, (who was a goy kid in the beginning of the movie, growing up with Jewish kids) on the picture, was as naive as I was. I just realized that James Woods—who plays an evil Jewish guy in the movie, acting like Noodles' friend all along, yet taking his money, his woman, taking away his life, and trying to kill him at one point—until the point that Noodles has to escape to save his life and his beloved ones—looks almost exactly like Adam would look like if he was a bit older.
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” – William Shakespeare
That sounds like an ancient spell or rather directions, instructions to me, the director instructing his actors, being one of the actors himself as well, an ancient spell, that William Shakespeare must have read it from a secret book or must have heard it somewhere. Casting characters for certain roles to act like this or like that as if they were the director’s custom made monsters. The extensions of his own will, desires and actions.
The Reconquista was a centuries-long series of battles by Christian states to expel the Muslims (Moors), who had ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula since the 8th century. The Reconquista ended on January 2, 1492.
The same year Columbus, whose statue stands atop a Corinthian custom-made column down the Port at the bottom of the Rambla, pointing with his finger toward the West, had discovered America on October 12, 1492.
William Shakespeare was born in April 1564. He had access to knowledge that had been unavailable to white people for thousands of years. He must have formed a close relationship with someone of royal lineage, or used trick, who then permitted him to enter the secret library of the Anglican Church.
“A character has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure what he/she’s supposed to be doing.” – Anthony Burgess
Martina proudly shared with me her admiration for the Argentine author Julio Cortazar, who was renowned across South America. She quoted one of his famous lines, saying: “Vida es como una cebolla, hay que pelarla llorando,” which translates to “Life is like an onion, you have to peel it crying.”
Martina shared with me her observation that the sky in Europe felt lower compared to America. She mentioned that the clouds appeared larger in America, giving a sense of a higher and more expansive sky, while in Europe, it felt like the sky had a lower and more limiting ceiling.
“The skies are much higher in Argentina, Tomas, in all America. Here in Europe the sky is so low. In Argentina there are huge clouds and the sky is huge, Tomas.” – Martina Blaterare
“It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.” – George Orwell, 1984
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Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
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January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.
March brings breezes, loud and shrill,
To stir the dancing daffodil.
April brings out the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.
May brings flock of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy dams,
June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hands with posies.
Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.
Warm September brings the fruit;
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.
Fresh October brings the pheasant;
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.
Dull November brings the blast;
Then the leaves are whirling fast.
Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.
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Elizabeth Hauge Sword (A Child's Anthology of Poetry)
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The Legislative Assembly’s decision in April 1792 to declare war on Austria did even more than religious conflict to radicalize the Revolution. The combination of foreign war and internal conflict turned France into the world’s first police state, committed to the surveillance and repression of all opposition. Pressure for its creation came less from revolutionary leaders than from popular hysteria in Paris, whipped up by conspiracy theories of a secret alliance between enemies abroad and counter-revolutionary traitors at home. Many believed that Louis XVI and the Austrian-born Marie-Antoinette were part of an aristocratic plot to join forces with the invading Austrian army and its Prussian allies
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Christopher Andrew (The Secret World: A History of Intelligence)
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We’re not born with fear, April. We’re exposed to it.
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Dannika Dark (Six Months (Seven, #2; Mageriverse, #8))
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Mennonites were an Anabaptist denomination born out of the Protestant Reformation in the German- and Dutch-speaking areas of Central Europe. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, orthodox authorities lethally persecuted the Mennonites. The Mennonites did not intend to leave behind one site of oppression to build another in America. Mennonites therefore circulated an antislavery petition on April 18, 1688. “There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are,” they wrote. “In Europe there are many oppressed” for their religion, and “here those are oppressed” for their “black colour.” Both oppressions were wrong. Actually, as an oppressor, America “surpass[ed] Holland and Germany.” Africans had the “right to fight for their freedom.” The 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery was the inaugural antiracist tract among European settlers in colonial America. Beginning with this piece, the Golden Rule would forever inspire the cause of White antiracists. Antiracists of all races—whether out of altruism or intelligent self-interest—would always recognize that preserving racial hierarchy simultaneously preserves ethnic, gender, class, sexual, age, and religious hierarchies. Human hierarchies of any kind, they understood, would do little more than oppress all of humanity.
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Ibram X. Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America)
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April 1965, then, marked the beginning of a new epoch for the new breed of singer-songwriters in Britain. As well as Collins and Graham’s Folk Roots, New Routes, in that year there appeared Donovan’s What’s Bin Did and What’s Bin Hid and Fairytale; John Renbourn’s self-titled first album; Mick Softley’s Songs for Swingin’ Survivors; Martin Carthy, a collection of folk songs with violinist Dave Swarbrick; Jackson C. Frank’s Jackson C. Frank; and Bert Jansch, the debut by the fastest-rising star of them all. Jansch, who was born
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Rob Young (Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music)