Barnes Play Quotes

Everything’s a game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.

You think I didn’t fight the same fight? I halfway convinced myself that as long as Avery was just a riddle or a puzzle, as long as I was just playing, I’d be fine. Well, joke’s on me, because somewhere along the way, I stopped playing.

How did you do that?” I shrug. “I click my heels three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home.’” “Uh-huh. So … you think this is your home? My barn? His tone is playful, but the look he’s giving me is dead serious. A question. “Haven’t you guessed by now?” I say, my heart hammering. “My home is you.

Everything's a game. Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in life is if we play to win.

You're my escort?" Devon shrugged. "The Big Guy tells you to do something, you do it, even if it means babysitting a bratty little human girl who calls playing with glue an art." I reached over and smacked him.

What if he hates me?" "No one could possibly hate you, Xander," I told him, my heart twisting. "Avery, people have hated me my whole life." There was something in his tone that made me think that very few people understood what it was like to be Xander Hawthorne. "Not anyone who knows you," I said fiercely. Xander smiled, and something about it made me want to cry. "Do you think it's okay," he said, sounding younger than I'd ever heard him, "that I loved playing those Saturday morning games? Loved growing up here? Loved the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne?

Xander smiled, and something about it made me want to cry. “Do you think it’s okay,” he said, sounding younger than I’d ever heard him, “that I loved playing those Saturday morning games? Loved growing up here? Loved the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne?

Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'someone,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and in the end had to content himself with a cellar. Surely we must pity the Opera ghost!

What fun is it playing by other people's rules?

How do you turn catastrophe into art? Nowadays the process is automatic. A nuclear plant explodes? We'll have a play on the London stage within a year. A President is assissinated? You can have the book or the film or the filmed book or booked film. War? Send in the novelists. A series of gruesome murders? Listen for the tramp of the poets. We have to understand it, of course, this catastrophe; to understand it, we have to imagine it, so we need the imaginative arts. But we also need to justify it and forgive it, this catastrophe, however minimally. Why did it happen, this mad act of Nature, this crazed human moment? Well, at least it produced art. Perhaps, in the end, that's what catastrophe is for.

Is this all just a game to you?” “Everything’s game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.

The coin landed. “Tails,” I said. “I kiss you.” I wrapped my arms around his neck. I pressed my lips to his. And this time, the joke was on me— because I wasn’t playing. This wasn’t nothing. This was the beginning—and I was ready to be bold.

I used to play chess with him in the park,” I said. “Every morning.

Sometimes, in the games that matter most, the only way to really play is to live.

He saw dozens of permutations in how things could play out, planned for every eventuality, strategized for each and every possible future.

It might feel better to give to someone you know than a stranger, or to donate to an organization whose story brings a tear to your eye, but that’s your brain playing tricks on you. The morality of an action depends, ultimately and only, on its outcomes.

Everything's a game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.

So,” Libby said sagely, “chess.” “Chess,” I repeated. “The move—it’s called the Queen’s Gambit. Whoever’s playing white puts that second pawn in a position to be sacrificed, which is why it’s considered a gambit.” “Why would you sacrifice a piece?” Libby asked. I thought about billionaire Tobias Hawthorne, about Toby, about Jameson, Grayson, Xander, and Nash. “To take control of the board,” I said.

I recognized someone stacking the board, even if I couldn’t see the play underneath.

I often think . . . that the bookstores that will save civilization are not online, nor on campuses, nor named Borders, Barnes & Noble, Dalton, or Crown. They are the used bookstores, in which, for a couple of hundred dollars, one can still find, with some diligence, the essential books of our culture, from the Bible and Shakespeare to Plato, Augustine, and Pascal.

HALLOWE'EN Pixie, kobold, elf, and sprite All are on their rounds to-night,- In the wan moon's silver ray Thrives their helter-skelter play. Fond of cellar, barn,or stack, True unto the almanac, They present to credulous eyes Strange hobgoblin mysteries. Cabbage-stomps-straws wet with dew- Apple-skins, and chestnuts too, And a mirror for some lass, Show what wonders come to pass. Doors they move, and gates they hide, Mischiefs that on moon-beams ride Are their deeds, and, by their spells, Love records its oracles. Don't we all, of long ago, By the ruddy fireplace glow, In the kitchen and the hall, Those queer, coofllke pranks recall? Eery shadows were they then- But to-night they come again; Were we once more but sixteen, Precious would be Halloween.

We all play by rules our brothers will never even have to know.

In the silence, I could hear the distinct sound of goats maa-ing in the barn. Lying there listening to them made me smile, too. I'd always loved goats - every one of them different from every other one, and all of them goofy and playful.

It was better to meet friends at their houses, their mother, Aurora, explained, because Dad had a lot of breakable things around the farm. One of the breakable things: Aurora Lynch. Golden-haired Aurora was the obvious queen of a place like the Barns, a gentle and joyous ruler of a peaceful and secret country. She was a patron of her sons’ fanciful arts (although Declan, the eldest, was rarely fanciful), and she was a tireless playmate in her sons’ games of make-believe (although Declan, the eldest, was rarely playful). She loved Niall, of course – everyone loved larger-than-life Niall, the braggart poet, the musician king – but unlike everyone else, she preferred him in his silent moods. She loved the truth, and it was difficult to love both the truth and Niall Lynch when the latter was speaking.

Cowboy: ‘Come and see the barn.’ Visitor: ‘I’ve loved barns ever since I was a little girl.

Though I remember, sharply, last things. The last book she read. The last play (and film, and concert, and opera, and art exhibition) that we went to together. The last wine she drank, the last clothes she bought. The last weekend away. The last bed we slept in that wasn't ours. The last this, the last that. The last piece of my writing that made her laugh. The last words she wrote herself; the last time she signed her name. The last piece of music I played her when she came home. Her last complete sentence. Her last spoken word.

It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that … [it's] delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet.

Everything’s a game. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.

Well . . ." Lily prompted primly. "Ask me again." "Ask you what?" I played dumb. She'd shushed me. This was the price of shushing.

So, you see, we’re a played-out generation. All the best ones went. We were left with the lesser ones. It’s always like that in war. That’s why it’s up to your generation now.

So, you see, we’re a played-out generation. All the best ones went. We were left with the lesser ones. It’s always like that in war. That’s why it’s up to your generation now.’ But I don’t feel part

You should be ashamed of yourself,” Mrs. Laughlin said fiercely. “Playing with an old woman’s feelings like that. And dragging the boys into whatever you were doing in Toby’s wing? It’s cruel is what it is.

I have never been back to the Ozarks. All I have left are my dreams and memories, but if God is willing, some day I’d like to go back—back to those beautiful hills. I’d like to walk again on trails I walked in my boyhood days. Once again I’d like to face a mountain breeze and smell the wonderful scent of the redbuds, and papaws, and the dogwoods. With my hands I’d like to caress the cool white bark of a sycamore. I’d like to take a walk far back in the flinty hills and search for a souvenir, an old double-bitted ax stuck deep in the side of a white oak tree. I know the handle has long since rotted away with time. Perhaps the rusty frame of a coal-oil lantern still hangs there on the blade. I’d like to see the old home place, the barn and the rail fences. I’d like to pause under the beautiful red oaks where my sisters and I played in our childhood. I’d like to walk up the hillside to the graves of my dogs. I’m sure the red fern has grown and has completely covered the two little mounds. I know it is still there, hiding its secret beneath those long, red leaves, but it wouldn’t be hidden from me for part of my life is buried there, too. Yes, I know it is still there, for in my heart I believe the legend of the sacred red fern.

Little grudge?” I repeated. The last time I’d been this close to Thea, she had admitted to setting me up to attend my debut in Texas society dressed like a dead girl. “You play mind games. And Rebecca almost got me killed!

Metal is made up of many silly cliches, and Dio's songs rarely shied away from a good cheeseball lyric about medieval knights and crystal balls. But the amazing thing is, Dio the man never succumbed to the typical ravages of drugs, booze or hideous all-body tattoos. He never gained 75 pounds later in life or lost most of his voice through merciless shredding and ended it all playing county fairs for 19 drunk dudes in a barn before collapsing in a heap in a motel room in Jersey. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Or everywhere.

All right, already," Lia said, cutting me off. "Enough with the bonding, Cassie. I'll share the ice cream, but we're eating it somewhere else. I'm not in the mood to play well with others, and the next person who asks me to share something dies a slow, painful death.

Remember what the hare said to the hen when he opened the barn door.” She raised her eyebrows. “What’s that?” “With foxes, we must play the fox.

Seriously?” Xander wheezed. “You’re playing strip bowling without me? Never mind. Focus! This is me focusing.

Playing Cupid, I should have you know, isn’t just a matter of flying around Arcadia and feeling your tiny winkle throb when the lovers finally kiss. It’s to do with timetables and street maps, cinema times and menus, money and organisation. You have to be both jaunty cheerleader and lithe psychiatrist. You require the binary skill of being absent when present, and present when absent.

Rebecca’s been forbidden from seeing any of us.” Xander grimaced. “Her mom said that the Hawthorne family takes and takes. She said that we don’t play by any rules and don’t care who we hurt. She blames our family for Toby’s death.” “And Emily’s,” Grayson added roughly.

It started to rain suddenly and ferociously as they pulled up in front of Rose’s house. A mist covered the truck. It was as if a fire hose had opened up on the dusty, dry earthen roads. The smell of moist earth and damp, pungent flowering trees gave off the last bit of heat from the former Carolina summer sun of a few minutes ago. Now cooled suddenly by the rainwater, an immediate fog to rose off the hot metal of the truck and the soil. It was impossible to see more than a few feet in the formidable rain and sudden fog. Rose pulled Carmen to her and wrapped herself around her, one hand playing around through her T as she kissed her, one hand pushing gently at her pants.

Mariac tells us about the books he's read, the painters he's liked, the plays he's seen. He finds himself by looking in the works of others. He defines his own faith by a passionate anger against Gide the Luciferian. Reading his 'memories' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me; that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background of sooty walls, cables, and sudden brickwork. The transparent shape flickers and jumps, always a few feet away. You become accustomed to its existence, you move with its movements; and though you know its presence is conditional, you feel it to be permanent. Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and a burst of light; the face is gone for ever.

Sloane looked on from behind a veritable mountain of Oreos. “I’ll sit this one out,” she said. “Also, I’m entertaining the idea of eating some of my poker chips. Can we agree that an Oreo missing its frosting is worth two-thirds of its normal amount?” “Just eat the cookies,” I told her, eyeing her pile mournfully—and only partially joking. “You have plenty to spare.” Before joining the Naturals program, Sloane had been Las Vegas born and raised. She’d been counting cards since she’d learned to count. She sat out about a third of the hands, but won every single hand she played.

If you're an old geezer in his rocker on the porch, you don't play basketball with the kids. Old geezers don't jump. You sit and make a virtue of what you have. And what you do is this: you make the kids think that anyone, anyone can jump, but it takes a wise old buzzard to know how to sit there and rock.

Bekka treated her role has Frankenstein's bride more like an audition to be Brett's bride. Every part of her body had been colored bright kelly green - even parts that her mother had stressed were 'not to be seen by anyone except God and the inside of a toilet bowl.' Instead of wearing a wig, Bekka had teased and then shellacked her own hair into a windblown cone and she'd used female-mustache bleach to create white streaks. Her seams, made of real suture thread, had been attached to her neck and wrists with clear double-sided costume tape because drawing them on with kohl would not have been 'honoring the character.' Her Costume Castle dress had been exchanged for something 'more authentic' from the Bridal Barn. If Brett didn't see his future in her heavily black-shadowed eyes tonight, he never would. Or so she believed.

To my surprise, Sloane pushed past Michael, wrapped dainty little hands around the barbell, and rocked back on her heels, angling it into place. Dean wiped his hands on his jeans, grabbed a nearby towel, and sat up. “Thanks,” he told Sloane. “Torque,” she said, instead of you’re welcome. “The role of the lever was played by my arms.

There was an old char who came twice a week, Mrs. Dyer; she had poor eyesight for cleaning but perfect vision for stealing vegetables and pints of milk. But who else came to the house? No friends were mentioned. Each weekend, Macleod played a round of golf; Susan had the tennis club. In all the times I joined them for supper, I never met anyone else.

But Jameson excelled at pissing people off, and he'd always been taught to play to his strengths.

Everything is a game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.

Toby,” I managed. “I know him.” “You what?” Jameson walked toward me. Beside me, Nan went very still. “I used to play chess with him in the park,” I said. “Every morning.” Harry.

Frank sniffed. 'You know me well, wife. I thought those were in the basement.' 'They were. You should have been an English teacher, Frank.' 'What are we going to do?' Henry asked. 'We're going to build a wooden horse, stick you inside it, and offer it up as a gift,' Frank answered. 'Burn your bridges when you come to them,' Dotty said. She smiled at Frank, picked up the empty plates, and walked back into the kitchen. 'Can we watch?' Henrietta asked. 'You,' Frank said, 'can go play in the barn, the yard, the fields, or the ditches, so long as you are nowhere near the action. C'mon, Henry.' The girls moaned and complained while Henry followed his uncle up the stairs. At the top, they walked all the way around the landing until they faced the very old, very wooden door to Grandfather's bedroom. Uncle Frank set down his tools. 'Today is the day, Henry. I can feel it. I never told your aunt this, but my favorite book's in there. I was reading it to your Grandfather near the end. It's been due back at the library for awhile now, and it'd be nice to be able to check something else out.

Most people thought that training animals was about obedience and control. But in reality, the center of any search and rescue training program was play. For the dog, searching was a game. Animals who had a strong play drive would keep playing indefinitely—through ice and snow, over hard terrain, for hours upon hours—until the game was won. Until they found their target.

You're here because you know what it's like to feel powerless. Everyone you see here has been given every privilege that money can buy, but at the end of the day, there are some privileges that money can't buy. Money doesn't keep people from telling girls who look like me to go back to the other side of the border. And no matter what your family name is, or how white your skin, I'm willing to bet that there are still people who tell you to smile, because you look so pretty when you smile." She paused, just for an instant. "we all play by rules our brothers will never even have to know. "You want to know why we go cliff-diving and off-roading and drag you out to abandoned islands in the night?" Victoria's voice was no louder, but her delivery was suddenly crystal clear. "Because we can. Because when people say that well-behaved women rarely make history, they leave out the little tidbit that the women who do make history rarely do so alone.

I looked at the people playing, walking, loafing, hurrying, or sauntering across the little park in front of us. How many terrible stories were there, just there in front of me, never to be spoken?

He’s playing with them.” Michael finished with his second file and started in on the third. “He takes them. He cuts them. He watches them suffer. And then he cuts off their faces.” “Don’t say he,” I corrected absentmindedly. “Say I or you.” Michael and Sloane both stared at me, and I realized the obvious: their lessons were very different from mine. “I mean, say UNSUB,” I told them. “Unknown Subject.

You son of a bitch. She was dying and you just stood there! And don't even tell me it was shock. You would know, Jamie, about standing there and watching someone die. Emily. it always comes back to Emily with you. You know what I think Gray? I think the whole martyr act was a lie you told yourself. I think you need an excuse to draw a line so you could stay safe on the other side. You don't know what you're talking about. You can't let go. You couldn't when Emily was alive, no matter what she did, and you can't now. Are you done? Avery was dying, and you couldn't run toward her. What do you want from me, Jamie? You think I didn't fight the same fight? I halfway convinced myself that as long as Avery was just a riddle or a puzzle, as long as I was just playing, I'd be fine. Well, jokes on me, because somewhere along the way, I stopped playing. What do you want from me? Look at her Gray. Look at her, damn it! Est unus ex nobis. Nos defendant eius. -She's one of us. We protect her-

There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum, and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their homes, sank their wells, and built their barns. Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, the cattle, and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children whoe would be stricken suddently while at play and die within a few hours. There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example--where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh. On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs--the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit. The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were not lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died. In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams. No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of life in this stricken world. The people had done it to themselves.

My respiration and inspiration.... the beating of my heart.... the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and darkcolored sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belched words of my voice.... words loosed to the eddies of the wind, A few light kisses.... a few embraces.... a reaching around of arms, The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hillsides, The feeling of health.... the full-noon trill.... the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much? Have you practiced so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

They were sitting where Barnes always sat when he drove his boxers home and was asked, inevitably, in for a visit—the table central to eating, cooking, canning, drying, and processing foods, also playing pinochle and cribbage, bathing babies in dishpans, and visiting.

I have an idea,” Lia said in an overly innocent tone that I recognized immediately as trouble. “We could always take things to the next level.” She unknotted the white kerchief around her neck and tossed it to me. Her fingers played with the bottom of her tank top, raising it up just enough to make it crystal clear what the “next level” was. “It is my understanding that the rules of strip poker specify that only the loser is required to disrobe,” Sloane interjected. “No one has lost yet, ergo—” “Call it a show of solidarity,” Lia said, inching her shirt up farther. “Cassie’s almost out of chips. I’m just trying to even the playing field.” “Lia.” Dean was not amused. “Come on, Dean,” Lia said, her bottom lip jutting out in an exaggerated pout. “Loosen up. We’re all friends here.” With those words, Lia pulled off her tank top.

Let's dispel the idiotic notion that the plays were not written by Shakespeare. Of course they were written by Shakespeare. How can we look at someone with a body of work like Mozart and say that a human being is not capable of a body of work like Shakespeare's with language? We can't. He wrote the plays.

THE VOICE YOU HEAR WHEN YOU READ SILENTLY is not silent, it is a speaking- out-loud voice in your head; it is *spoken*, a voice is *saying* it as you read. It's the writer's words, of course, in a literary sense his or her "voice" but the sound of that voice is the sound of *your* voice. Not the sound your friends know or the sound of a tape played back but your voice caught in the dark cathedral of your skull, your voice heard by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts and what you know by feeling, having felt. It is your voice saying, for example, the word "barn" that the writer wrote but the "barn" you say is a barn you know or knew. The voice in your head, speaking as you read, never says anything neutrally- some people hated the barn they knew, some people love the barn they know so you hear the word loaded and a sensory constellation is lit: horse-gnawed stalls, hayloft, black heat tape wrapping a water pipe, a slippery spilled *chirr* of oats from a split sack, the bony, filthy haunches of cows... And "barn" is only a noun- no verb or subject has entered into the sentence yet! The voice you hear when you read to yourself is the clearest voice: you speak it speaking to you. ~~-Thomas Lux

So they all went home afterwards. My sisters and I sat on the veranda and cried until a storm drove us inside. We agreed to meet in the barn loft for crying once a week but after a while we forgot. Once we did but nobody could work up a cry and we started playing wolves and chickens and Little Mary had to be the chicken and Savannah shoved her out of the loft and broke her collarbone. The hearts of children are hard naturally because of their short memories. Everything they play with becomes true and unquestionable such as an acorn cap for a Holy Grail, such is the power of the untrained mind, and all our training of it is both of advantage and not.

Travis came up behind her, his hat brim bumping her head as he nuzzled her neck. She giggled and danced away, feeling playful yet oddly shy at the same time. Travis gave chase, his husky laughter blending with hers as the two of them darted out of the barn. When they neared the porch, he grabbed her about the waist and lifted her off her feet. Meredith squealed. “You can’t escape me,” Travis murmured in her ear as he gently settled her back on the ground. Meredith turned in his arms to face the man she loved. “I’ve no desire to.” His eyes darkened, and for a moment she thought he would kiss her. But then he scooped her into his arms and carried her up the porch steps. The front door proved more of a challenge to conquer. Travis had to juggle his hold on her a bit before he could get the latch open. Meredith laughed in delight, endeared by his awkward efforts. Once the door was cracked, he kicked it wide with his boot and carried her over the threshold. “Welcome home, Mrs. Archer.

And he had to say farewell to his hands, his eyes, to hunger and thirst, to love, to playing the lute, to sleeping and waking, to everything. Tomorrow a bird would fly through the air and Goldmund would no longer see it, a girl would sing in a window and he would not hear her song, the river would run and the dark fish would swim silently, the wind would blow and sweep the yellow leaves on the ground, the sun would shine and stars would blink in the sky, young men would go dancing, the first snow would lie on the distant mountains—everything would go on, trees would cast their shadows, people would look gay or sad out of their living eyes, dogs would bark, cows would low in the barns of villages, and all of it without Goldmund.

For a time neither the man nor the woman could speak. There was nothing in their humdrum, habit-smoothed tilling of the soil and washing of pots and pans to prepare them for a scene like this- a moonlight barn, a strange dead man, and that dead man;s son babbling of brooks and squirrels and playing jigs on a fiddle for a dirge. At last, however, Simeon found his voice.

Why do you think that?” she asked sharply. It was the kind of question Peter Viertel had warned me about. When they were making The Sun Also Rises, in which she played Hemingway’s Lady Brett Ashley, he told me: “I’d show her the script, she’d ask something innocuous like, ‘Would Lady Brett say that line?’ or ‘Does Lady Brett need to say anything here? Jake [Barnes, the narrator and hero of The Sun Also Rises, played by Tyrone Power] will understand from her look what she’s thinking. There will be no need to spell it out.’ “And suddenly she’s embroiled you in an almighty argument about the script, or about the book you’re trying to write for her. You can’t reason with her because she never approaches anything intellectually. She is the most intuitive woman I know.

There I was out in the barn playing midwife to a pregnant mare. I remember sitting there, spinning yarn in the light of a little oil lamp, a city girl who knew nothing about farming, sitting on the deel beside that mother in pain, already beginning the birthing process. All around me there was darkness and perfect silence, except for the mother's pain. It was as if the war didn't exist in those hours.

When all else failed, when there seemed to be nothing but nonsense in the world, he held to this: that good music would always be good music, and great music was impregnable. You could play Bach's preludes and fugues at any tempo, with any dynamics, and they would still be great music, proof even against the wretch who brought ten thumbs to the keyboard. And in the same way, you could not play such music cynically.

What if Susan, from religious or moral scruple, had discouraged his interest, and taught him nothing more than tactical astuteness when playing mixed doubles? What if Macleod had continued to hold a sexual interest in his wife? None of this might have happened. But given that it had, then if you wanted to attribute fault, you were straight away into prehistory, which now, in two of their three cases, had become inaccessible.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. Gossip briefly wondered if gossip had invented the whole story, but gossip decided that the worst interpretation of events was usually the safest and, in the end, the truest. Like most of his life's writing, the play was concerned with love. and as in his life, so in his writing: love did not work. Love might or might not provoke kindness, gratify vanity and clear the skin, but it did not lead to happiness, there was always an inequality of feeling or intention present. Such was love's nature. Of course, it "worked" in the sense that it caused life's profoundest emotions, made him fresh as spring linden-blossom and broke him like a traitor on the wheel. It stirred him from well-mannered timidity to relative boldness, through a rather theoretical boldness, one tragi-comically incapable of action. It taught him the gulping folly of anticipation, the wretchedness of failure, the whine of regret and the silly fondness of remembrance. In my opinion, every love, happy or unhappy, is a real disaster when you give yourself over to it entirely. But all love needs a journey. all love symbolically is a journey and that journey needs bodying forth. Madame Amelie briefly wondered if this was a philosophical truth or an empty platitude.

He remembered, at school, being guided by masters through books and plays in which there was often a Conflict between Love and Duty. In those old stories, innocent but passionate love would run up against the duty owed to family, church, king, state. Some protagonists won, some lost, some did both at the same time; usually, tragedy ensued. No doubt in religious, patriarchal, hierarchical societies, such conflicts continued and still gave themes to writers.

His brain was stubborn at giving house-room to his failings, his humiliations, his self-disgust, his bad decisions. He would like to remember only the things he chose: music, Tanya, Nina, his parents, true and reliable friends, Galya playing with the pig, Maxim imitating a Bulgarian policeman, a beautiful goal, laughter, joy, the love of his young wife. He did remember all those things, but they were often overlaid and intertwined with everything he wanted not to remember. And this impurity, this corruption of memory, tormented him.

Why do you think this house has so many secret passages? Why are there so many keys that don’t work in any of the locks? Every desk my grandfather ever bought has secret compartments. There’s an organ in the theater, and if you play a specific sequence of notes, it unlocks a hidden drawer. Every Saturday morning, from the time I was a kid until the night my grandfather died, he sat my brothers and me down and gave us a riddle, a puzzle, an impossible challenge—something to solve. And then he died. And then…” Jameson took a step toward me. “There was you.

If an evangelical alliance were also a diplomatic alliance, there is a chance of a new Europe, with new rules. But for now we are still playing by the old ones: setting France against Emperor, one great power against the other, seeing our safety only in their disputes, trembling whenever they come into amity; sneakily trying to disrupt their treaties and stir up mistrust, and bending our efforts to provoke, belie and betray. It is not work for a great nation. Barnes says, ‘It is up to you, my lord, to show the king how things could be different, and better.

You wanted the truth. You wanted my past and my secrets. You said you’d love me anyway. And now that I’m letting you in and you’ve seen what you wanted to see, you’re rejecting me. I guess I’m not the only one who lied,” she whispers, taking a step back, her hand still gripped tight around the handle of the blade. “You’re nothing but a voyeur, are you. You wanted to look into the heart of darkness. You wanted to see where the limits were. And then you found none. Like a child, playing with fire. You stamped it out while I burned the whole barn down and set myself free.

And one other thing: don't ask me about the weather. I don't much remember what the weather has been like during my life. True, I can remember how hot sun gave greater impetus to sex; how sudden snow delighted, and how cold, damp days set off those early symptoms that eventually led to a double hip replacement. But nothing significant in my life ever happened during, let alone because of, weather. So if you don't mind, meteorology will play no part in my story. Though you are free to deduce, when I am found playing grass-court tennis, that it was neither raining nor snowing at the time.

by have a home in the first place? Good question! When I have a tea party for my grandchildren, I'm passing on to them the things my mama passed on to me-the value of manners and the joy of spending quiet time together. When Bob reads a Bible story to those little ones, he's passing along his deep faith. When we watch videos together, play games, work on projects-we're building a chain of memories for the future. These aren't lessons that can be taught in lecture form. They're taught through the way we live. What we teach our children-or any child who shares our lives-they will teach to their children. What we share with our children, they will share with generations to come. friend of mine loves the water, the out doors, and the California sunshine. She says they're a constant reminder of God's incredible creativity. Do you may have a patio or a deck or a small balcony? Bob and I have never regretted the time and expense of creating outdoor areas to spend time in. And when we sit outside, we enhance our experience with a cool salad of homegrown tomatoes and lettuce, a tall glass of lemonade, and beautiful flowers in a basket. Use this wonderful time to contemplate all God is doing in your life. ecome an answer to prayer! • Call and encourage someone today.

Valéry held up Cézanne as ‘the example of the dedicated life’. Alex Danchev, in his new biography1, calls him ‘the exemplary artist-creator of the modern age’. An example more powerful than that of the artist who throws it all up (Gauguin found the voluptuous consolations of Tahiti in work and play; Rimbaud made good money as an arms trader), or the artist who goes mad and/or kills himself. More powerful because continuing to live can require more heroism than suicide: the constant work, constant striving, the frequent destruction of unsatisfactory work, and the need, as Cézanne saw it, for an incorruptibility in the life, on which incorruptibility of the work depended.

First memory: a man at the back door is saying, I have real bad news, sweat is dripping off his face, Garbert's been shot, noise from my mother, I run to her room behind her, I'm jumping on the canopied bed while she cries, she's pulling out drawers looking for a handkerchief, Now, he's all right, the man say, they think, patting her shoulder, I'm jumping higher, I'm not allowed, they think he saved old man Mayes, the bed slats dislodge and the mattress collapses. My mother lunges for me. Many traveled to Reidsville for the event, but my family did not witness Willis Barnes's electrocution, From kindergarten through high school, Donette, the murderer's daughter, was in my class. We played together at recess. Sometimes she'd spit on me.

She insisted that they focus their energies on raising a little girl who was, by nature, a tangle of mischief and motion and curiosity. Each day, Luna’s ability to break rules in new and creative ways was an astonishment to all who knew her. She tried to ride the goats, tried to roll boulders down the mountain and into the side of the barn (for decoration, she explained), tried to teach the chickens to fly, and once almost drowned in the swamp. (Glerk saved her. Thank goodness.) She gave ale to the geese to see if it made them walk funny (it did) and put peppercorns in the goat’s feed to see if it would make them jump (they didn’t jump; they just destroyed the fence). Every day she goaded Fyrian into making atrocious choices or she played tricks on the poor dragon, making him cry. She climbed, hid, built, broke, wrote on the walls, and spoiled dresses when they had only just been finished. Her hair ratted, her nose smudged, and she left handprints wherever she went.

My family is a classic American-dream story. My great-grandparents fled Russia to avoid being murdered for their religion. Just two generations later, my parents fled New York City weekends for their country house. I never felt guilty about this. I was raised to believe America rewards hard work. But I was also raised to understand that luck plays a role in even the bootstrappiest success story. The cost of living the dream, I was taught, is the responsibility to expand it for others. It’s a more than fair price. Yet the people running the country didn’t see it that way. With George W. Bush in the White House, millionaires and billionaires were showered with tax cuts. Meanwhile, schools went underfunded. Roads and bridges deteriorated. Household incomes languished. Deficits ballooned. And America went to war. President Bush invaded Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, a campaign which hit a snag when it turned out those weapons didn’t exist. But by then it was too late. We had broken a country and owned the resulting mess. Colin Powell called this “the Pottery Barn rule,” which, admittedly, was cute. Still, it’s hard to imagine a visit to Pottery Barn that costs trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives. Our leaders, in other words, had made bad choices. They would therefore be replaced with better ones. That’s how AP Government told me the system worked. In the real world, however, the invasion of Iraq became an excuse for a dark and antidemocratic turn. Those who questioned the war, the torture of prisoners—or even just the tax cuts—found themselves accused of something barely short of treason. No longer was a distinction made between supporting the president’s policies and America’s troops. As an electoral strategy, this was dangerous and cynical. Also, it worked. So no, I didn’t grow up with a high opinion of politicians. But I did grow up in the kind of environment where people constantly told me I could change the world. In 2004, eager to prove them right, I volunteered for John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

tuff. Almost all of us have it in abundance. What can we do with it? One of my favorite hideaways is an old faithful: the cardboard box. Cover it with festive Contact paper and stuff away. Or hang a shelf about a foot from the ceiling, and use it to store items you don't want sitting around. It's also great in a child's room for toys that aren't played with often. Get old school lockers or trunks, paint them, and use them for storage. Clutter around your house can cause clutter in your emotional and spiritual life too, so clean up and spend your best time enjoying life. re you reluctant to share your home with others? Maybe it's not your dream house or you don't have the money right now to decorate the way you'd like to. But you know what? It's not about having a perfect home. It's about your spirit of hospitality, your willingness to share your home and your life with others. Don't wait until everything is perfect because that will never happen. Focus on making your home cozy and comfortable. Your place will always be at its most beautiful when you use it to warm hearts. aking time for your husband doesn't have to be difficult or a hassle. With a little imagination and the desire to make him happy, you can make him feel loved. Are you thinking, Oh great, now Emilie 's telling me what I'm doing wrong with my husband. Not at all! I just want to give you a few ideas to help you let your

I left Brookstone and went to the Pottery Barn. When I was a kid and everything inside our house was familiar, cheap, and ruined, walking into the Pottery Barn was like entering heaven. If they really wanted people to enjoy church, I thought back then, they should make everything in church look and smell like the Pottery Barn. My dream was to surround myself one day with everything in the store, with the wicker baskets and scented candles, the brushed-silver picture frames. But that was a long time ago. I had already gone through a period of buying everything there was to buy at the Pottery Barn and decorating my apartment like a Pottery Barn outlet, and then getting rid of it all during a massive upgrade. Now everything at the Pottery Barn looked ersatz and mass-produced. To buy any of it now would be to regress in aspiration and selfhood. I didn’t want to buy anything at the Pottery Barn so much as I wanted to recapture the feeling of wanting to buy everything from the Pottery Barn. Something similar happened at the music store. I should try to find some new music, I thought, because there was a time when new music could lift me out of a funk like nothing else. But I wasn’t past the Bs when I saw the only thing I really cared to buy. It was the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, which had been released in 1965. I already owned Rubber Soul. I had owned Rubber Soul on vinyl, then on cassette, and now on CD, and of course on my iPod, iPod mini, and iPhone. If I wanted to, I could have pulled out my iPhone and played Rubber Soul from start to finish right there, on speaker, for the sake of the whole store. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to buy Rubber Soul for the first time all over again. I wanted to return the needle from the run-out groove to the opening chords of “Drive My Car” and make everything new again. That wasn’t going to happen. But, I thought, I could buy it for somebody else. I could buy somebody else the new experience of listening to Rubber Soul for the first time. So I took the CD up to the register and paid for it and, walking out, felt renewed and excited. But the first kid I offered it to, a rotund teenager in a wheelchair looking longingly into a GameStop window, declined on the principle that he would rather have cash. A couple of other kids didn’t have CD players. I ended up leaving Rubber Soul on a bench beside a decommissioned ashtray where someone had discarded an unhealthy gob of human hair. I wandered, as everyone in the mall sooner or later does, into the Best Friends Pet Store. Many best friends—impossibly small beagles and corgis and German shepherds—were locked away for display in white cages where they spent their days dozing with depression, stirring only long enough to ponder the psychic hurdles of licking their paws. Could there be anything better to lift your spirits than a new puppy?

Under the Sun by Maisie Aletha Smikle The year was seventeen ten When I turned ten I played with Maggy my hen And wrote a skit for a friend I fed Maggy corn That was fetched from the barn And milked the goats For breakfast I made porridge from oats On a bench I sat Eating my Pop When out flew Maggy my hen From her pen I left my meal This was unreal The hen had left her coop So I got some grain and stooped Then called out to Maggy my hen Maggy O Maggy come back to your pen The hen flapped her wings Her leg was caught between two strings Two men got my poor hen They grabbed me and my hen And stuffed us in a pen Then sold us for a stipend My precious hen they took Made fire slaughter and cook Then gulped water from a nearby brook My poor neck was hooked In chains like a crook It must be a nightmare The crooks were here To get more than their share Have I died and gone to hell I simply couldn’t tell I always do good And was never misunderstood Are these vultures One could not tell Their skin looked like the skin of bald head vultures O dear me roaming wingless vultures Are these aliens from hell One could not tell They looked like me head hands and feet They don't have four feet O Lord I did not make it to heaven Even though I had forgiven Heated red hot metal pierced my body Steam gushed from my broiling flesh There is no doubt these are the demons of hell Brandishing fiery stones and red hot iron Burning those who did not make it to heaven Shoving them into hell’s decked unlit pit The year was seventeen ten When I turned ten Maggy my hen flew from her pen And the sun stopped shining at half past ten

Mr. Edwards and the Spider" I saw the spiders marching through the air, Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day In latter August when the hay Came creaking to the barn. But where The wind is westerly, Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly Into the apparitions of the sky, They purpose nothing but their ease and die Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea; What are we in the hands of the great God? It was in vain you set up thorn and briar In battle array against the fire And treason crackling in your blood; For the wild thorns grow tame And will do nothing to oppose the flame; Your lacerations tell the losing game You play against a sickness past your cure. How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure? A very little thing, a little worm, Or hourglass-blazoned spider, it is said, Can kill a tiger. Will the dead Hold up his mirror and affirm To the four winds the smell And flash of his authority? It’s well If God who holds you to the pit of hell, Much as one holds a spider, will destroy, Baffle and dissipate your soul. As a small boy On Windsor Marsh, I saw the spider die When thrown into the bowels of fierce fire: There’s no long struggle, no desire To get up on its feet and fly It stretches out its feet And dies. This is the sinner’s last retreat; Yes, and no strength exerted on the heat Then sinews the abolished will, when sick And full of burning, it will whistle on a brick. But who can plumb the sinking of that soul? Josiah Hawley, picture yourself cast Into a brick-kiln where the blast Fans your quick vitals to a coal— If measured by a glass, How long would it seem burning! Let there pass A minute, ten, ten trillion; but the blaze Is infinite, eternal: this is death, To die and know it. This is the Black Widow, death.

My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history. I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad, which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list. But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels were punk. Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, Dennis Potter, and The Prisoner were punk too. A Clockwork Orange was punk. Lindsay Anderson's If ... was punk. Monty Python was punk. Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke's fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk. Even Richmal Crompton's William books were punk. In fact, as it turned out, pretty much everything I liked was punk. The world started to make sense for the first time since Mosspark Primary. New and glorious constellations aligned in my inner firmament. I felt born again. The do-your-own-thing ethos had returned with a spit and a sneer in all those amateurish records I bought and treasured-even though I had no record player. Singles by bands who could often barely play or sing but still wrote beautiful, furious songs and poured all their young hearts, experiences, and inspirations onto records they paid for with their dole money. If these glorious fuckups could do it, so could a fuckup like me. When Jilted John, the alter ego of actor and comedian Graham Fellows, made an appearance on Top of the Pops singing about bus stops, failed romance, and sexual identity crisis, I was enthralled by his shameless amateurism, his reduction of pop music's great themes to playground name calling, his deconstruction of the macho rock voice into the effeminate whimper of a softie from Sheffield. This music reflected my experience of teenage life as a series of brutal setbacks and disappointments that could in the end be redeemed into art and music with humor, intelligence, and a modicum of talent. This, for me, was the real punk, the genuine anticool, and I felt empowered. The losers, the rejected, and the formerly voiceless were being offered an opportunity to show what they could do to enliven a stagnant culture. History was on our side, and I had nothing to lose. I was eighteen and still hadn't kissed a girl, but perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say, and punk threw me the lifeline of a creed and a vocabulary-a soundtrack to my mission as a comic artist, a rough validation. Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In fact, it was mandatory.

The long year passed slowly. Then one day, as October winds blew golden leaves around the farm, Autumn heard his mother say that even though her son was gone she would bake a pumpkin pie for Halloween. And of course she would need a pumpkin. At last an idea came to Autumn. If he could just get his mother to the barn and up to the loft she would find the magic pumpkin. Autumn began to pull at his mother’s apron. “What’s wrong with you today?” cried his mother. “I have many things to do and I have no time for playing.” But Autumn kept pulling on her apron until she was out of the house and in the barnyard. Then he ran into the barn, barking louder than he ever had. His mother followed him into the barn, where it was so dark she could not see the little dog. “Now where have you gone?” she cried. Autumn began barking again and it seemed to come from above her. She looked up and dimly saw Autumn at the top of the loft ladder, barking wildly. “What are you carrying on about up there? There’s nothing up in that old loft.” But Autumn did not stop barking. “All right, all right, I’ll come up and take a look,” she said as she began to climb the ladder. When she got to the top, the morning light lit up the corner of the loft where Autumn, smiling as much as a dog can smile, stood next to a very large pumpkin. It was one of the largest pumpkin she had ever seen. “Now, how did this pumpkin get up here?” Of course there was no one there to answer her question except Autumn and he could not talk. So she decided to use the pumpkin for the pie she planned to bake. She pulled at it and rolled it, and finally after a great effort she managed to get the magic pumpkin down the ladder and into the kitchen, where Autumn ran barking around the table. “Calm down, Autumn, and let me get to work on this pie.” As she was about to cut the stem from the pumpkin, she thought of the days when her husband carved the jack-o’-lantern for Angus. “Well, maybe I’ll just do the same.” She went to Angus’s room and found one of his old drawings. She traced a jack-o’-lantern face onto the pumpkin. Then, taking a large kitchen knife, she cut into the pumpkin. When only one eye was carved, there were streams of light. And when she carved the nose, and the smiling mouth, great shafts of light like sunbeams filled the room. Again Autumn began to bark. But when she turned to quiet him, there, standing in the wonderful light, was her son.

We can’t walk through the house like this--we’ll make a mess.” Ryder’s jeans are soaked through and caked with mud. I’m wearing shorts, but my bare legs are spattered all over. “We’re going to have to strip here,” I say, shaking my head. “Just leave it all in a pile. I’ll toss it in the wash after lunch.” He just stares at me, wide-eyed. “What? Now?” “Yeah, you go first,” I say, amused by the blush that’s creeping up his neck. “Geez, Ryder. It’s not like I haven’t seen you in your underpants before.” I have vague memories of Ryder running around Magnolia Landing’s lawn wearing nothing but superhero undies. And after all the years of shared beach houses and hotel suites, well…like I said, we were more like siblings when we were little. “If it’ll make you more comfortable, I’ll turn around,” I offer. “Nah, it’s fine.” He reaches for the hem of his T-shirt and pulls it over his head in one fluid motion. And then I remember why this was a bad idea. My mouth goes dry at the sight of his tanned, sculpted chest, his narrow waist, and jutting hip bones. Oh, man. What was I thinking? I swallow hard as he unbuttons his jeans and slides down the zipper. Boxers or briefs? That’s all I’m thinking as he peels down the wet denim--slowly, as if he’s enjoying this little striptease. He steps out of them gracefully and tosses them into a heap beside his shirt before straightening to his full height, facing me. Oh. My. God. I exhale sharply. The answer is boxer briefs, heather-gray ones. And right now they’re clinging to him wetly, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. He looks like a god. A six-foot-four, football-playing god, and I am staring at him with my mouth hanging open like some kind of pathetic freak. Snap out of it. “Sorry,” I say, averting my gaze. My cheeks are burning now. I probably look like a clown. That’s what happens when a fair-skinned redhead like me blushes. “If you…um…want to shower. I mean, you know--” “I’ll just go put on something dry for now. We really need to eat and then get that stuff out of the barn.” I just nod, biting my lower lip. I can’t even look at him. This is crazy. “Your turn to strip,” he says, and my gaze shoots up to meet his. He’s smiling now, his dimples in full effect. “Ugh, just go and change.” I cover my eyes with one hand and flap the other toward the hall. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen in five,” he says. “Great.” I let my hand drop only when I hear his footsteps move away. Then yeah, I’ll admit it--I allow myself a nice long look at his backside as he walks away from me. And let me tell you, it was well worth the look.

Almost a decade ago, I was browsing in a Barnes & Noble when I came across a book called Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana. It was a music book about a band I liked, so I started paging through it immediately. What I remember are two sentences on the fourth page which discussed how awesome it was that 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was on the radio, and how this was almost akin to America electing a new president: 'It's not that everything will change at once,' wrote the author, 'it's that at least the people have voted for better principles. Nirvana's being on the radio means my own values are winning: I'm no longer in the opposition.' I have never forgotten those two sentences, and there are two reasons why this memory has stuck with me. The first reason is that this was just about the craziest, scariest idea I'd ever stumbled across. The second reason, however, is way worse; what I have slowly come to realize is that most people think this way all the time. They don't merely want to hold their values; they want their values to win. And I suspect this is why people so often feel 'betrayed' by art and consumerism, and by the way the world works. I'm sure the author of Route 666 felt completely 'betrayed' when Limp Bizkit and Matchbox 20 became superfamous five years after Cobain's death and she was forced to return to 'the opposition' ...If you feel betrayed by culture, it's not because you're right and the universe is fucked; it's only because you're not like most other people. But this should make you happy, because—in all likelihood—you hate those other people, anyway. You are being betrayed by a culture that has no relationship to who you are or how you live... Do you want to be happy? I suspect that you do. Well, here’s the first step to happiness: Don’t get pissed off that people who aren’t you happen to think Paris Hilton is interesting and deserves to be on TV every other day; the fame surrounding Paris Hilton is not a reflection on your life (unless you want it to be). Don’t get pissed off because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren’t on the radio enough; you can buy the goddamn record and play “Maps” all goddamn day (if that’s what you want). Don’t get pissed off because people didn’t vote the way you voted. You knew that the country was polarized, and you knew that half of America is more upset by gay people getting married than it is about starting a war under false pretenses. You always knew that many Americans worry more about God than they worry about the economy, and you always knew those same Americans assume you’re insane for feeling otherwise (just as you find them insane for supporting a theocracy). You knew this was a democracy when you agreed to participate, so you knew this was how things might work out. So don’t get pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn’t some kind of universal consensus. Because if you do, you will end up feeling betrayed. And it will be your own fault. You will feel bad, and you will deserve it. Now it’s quite possible you disagree with me on this issue. And if you do, I know what your argument is: you’re thinking, But I’m idealistic. This is what people who want to inflict their values on other people always think; they think that there is some kind of romantic, respectable aura that insulates the inflexible, and that their disappointment with culture latently proves that they’re tragically trapped by their own intellect and good taste. Somehow, they think their sense of betrayal gives them integrity. It does not. If you really have integrity—if you truly live by your ideals, and those ideals dictate how you engage with the world at large—you will never feel betrayed by culture. You will simply enjoy culture more.

Children Are a Gift Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. —PSALM 127:3 NASB     In a recent women’s Bible study, the teacher asked the group, “Did you feel loved by your parents when you were a child?” Here are some of the responses. • “A lot of pizza came to the house on Friday nights when my parents went out for the evening.” • “I got in their way. I wasn’t important to them.” • “They were too busy for me.” • “Mom didn’t have to work, but she did just so she wouldn’t have to be home with us kids.” • “I spent too much time with a babysitter.” • “Mom was too involved at the country club to spend time with me.” • “Dad took us on trips, but he played golf all the time we were away.” So many of the ladies felt they were rejected by their parents in their childhoods. There was very little love in their homes. What would your children say in response to the same question? I’m sure we all would gain insight from our children’s answers. In today’s verse we see that children are a reward (gift) from the Lord. In Hebrew, “gift” means “property—a possession.” Truly, God has loaned us His property or possessions to care for and to enjoy for a certain period of time. My Bob loves to grow vegetables in his raised-bed garden each summer. I am amazed at what it takes to get a good crop. He cultivates the soil, sows seeds, waters, fertilizes, weeds, and prunes. Raising children takes a lot of time, care, nurturing, and cultivating as well. We can’t neglect these responsibilities if we are going to produce good fruit. Left to itself, the garden—and our children—will end up weeds. Bob always has a smile on his face when he brings a big basket full of corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans into the kitchen. As the harvest is Bob’s reward, so children are parents’ rewards. Let your home be a place where its members come to be rejuvenated after a very busy time away from it. We liked to call our home the “trauma center”—a place where we could make mistakes, but also where there was healing. Perfect people didn’t reside at our address. We tried to teach that we all make mistakes and certainly aren’t always right. Quite often in our home we could hear the two

So long as we ‘play small’ others will accept us because we share the common bond of mediocrity.

aughter is such great medicine. So first of all, don't take life too seriously. There's so much to laugh about. In fact, look for the "sillies" in your circumstances. And laughter is contagious! One time our kids were telling a silly story. What they said set me off, and I started laughing and couldn't stop. No one knew what I was laughing about, but everyone joined in anyway. Make room for laughter in your life. Deliberately seek it out. Proverbs 15:15 says, "The cheerful heart has a continual feast." Be sure to smile today at someone. Find something worth laughing about and go for it big time. by not make a few healthy resolutions? • Don't let children watch TV or play video games on school nights. • Don't let feelings of inadequacy creep up on you because your kids aren't doing well in school. Encourage them and do what has to be done to correct the problems. Be available to help with homework, but realize ultimately homework is their responsibility. • Don't bail your children out when they leave their books at home. A couple of times of forgetting and doing without and you'd be surprised how their memories will improve. • Support your child's teacher. If there is a problem with a teacher, talk it over with your child and the teacher, together or separately, as appropriate.

  Action: Bring out one of your favorite games tonight and play it with the family. No TV allowed.   Today’s Wisdom: Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. —FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON

Lucas was courting a range of other potential buyers at the same time, including Siemens, Hallmark, General Motors’ EDS division, and Philips. But as one deal after another fell through, the balance of power tilted toward Steve, who didn’t need the group as much as Lucas needed the money. So he was perfectly willing to play tough himself. “At one point,” says Barnes, who helped with the negotiations, “the delays went on forever and he just went and told one of their executives to ‘fuck off.’ One of the Lucas team said, ‘You can’t say that to one of our EVPs.’ ‘Yes I can,’ he replied. ‘And fuck you, too.’ 

I never been to New York, but it must be a heavenly place for a vacation, if a feller c'n judge by what some of my present boarders have to say about it. It's a sort of play-actor's paradise, ain't it?" "It is paradise to every actor who happens to be on the road, Mr. Jones," said Barnes, slipping his big pack from his shoulders and letting it slide to the floor.

Miss Kristoffersen.” He offered his elbow to her. After a slight hesitation, she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, and the two of them walked toward the barn. Just before they reached it, guitar and fiddle, flute and banjo, drums and tambourine began to play a lively melody. Very soon, couples swirled by the open doorway, the women’s colorful skirts soaring out behind them. Colin dared to look at Felicia again and was rewarded with an enormous smile. “It’s wonderful,” she said, loud enough to be heard above the music. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” “Your first barn dance?” She nodded. “Would you like to dance?” The smile vanished, and she shook her head. It surprised him how much he wanted to change her mind. “Are you sure?” Color infused her cheeks. “I don’t know how to dance, Mr. Murphy.” “Tell you what.” He leaned closer so he didn’t have to raise his voice. “We’ll wait until they play something a bit slower. Then I’ll teach you. Okay?” For a heartbeat, he feared she would still refuse. But then she nodded, and pleasure flowed through him. Mrs. Summerville be hanged.

Then ask me what you want to know and I’ll tell you.” “What?” I blurted, flabbergasted by what he was offering. “I cannot risk you getting hurt, Shaselle, and your curiosity cannot disrupt what we have planned. If giving you information will keep you from disrupting things, I will do so.” “How are you doing it? Where are the weapons coming from? How are you getting them into the city?” Questions tumbled from my mouth, in no particular order, for my mind was in chaos. Straightforward as ever, Cannan expounded. “When London regained consciousness in the spring, he and I recognized the need to move quickly if we were to establish a stash of weapons. As soon as he could travel, he left the city to entreat aid form the neighboring kingdoms. Men from Sarterad and Emotana began leaving weapons in the forest for us, and London’s men took them into the palace through the escape tunnel we used to remove the royal family at the time of the Cokyrian siege. The Cokyrians, other than Narian, do not know of the tunnel’s existence, and he has neither closed it nor been monitoring it. In the night, we used servants within the palace to move the armaments out in delivery boxes, whereupon they were taken to Steldor, Galen and Halias. Select Hytanicans on the work crews hid them inside the buildings during the reconstruction work. Everything has been put in place.” “What will you do now?” “We wait.” I stood up and paced, agitated. “What are you waiting for?” “The right time.” “To do what exactly? Tell me that.” “To take back our kingdom.” This was a non-answer, one that gave me no information I could not have deduced on my own. “When, Uncle? I want to know when. I can--” “You don’t need to know when, Shaselle. You’re not part of this.” He was watching me, arms still crossed, and I stopped pacing, pulling the cloak tighter around me. “But I could be. I’m not just a curious child, Uncle, I can do things. I could help. If you would just tell me what to do, I wouldn’t be a problem!” The wind rattled the barn door, and Alcander whinnied, making me jump. “You’re scared of the wind, Shaselle,” Cannan said, shaking his head. “You’re a young woman, and this is dangerous. This is a game you’ve not trained to play, a game you could never handle.” “That’s not true,” I argued, resentment bubbling inside me at his denigrating words. “I’m sorry, but it is. If we’re discovered, every one of us will be executed before we even have a chance to revolt. And if we do revolt, there’s a very strong possibility we will die in the fighting, whether we’re successful or not. In case you’ve forgotten, a number of good men have already died.” His words hit me hard, breaking through my bitterness. Forced to contemplate a hangman’s noose, my zeal faded. “I don’t want any of you to die,” I murmured, a tremble in my voice. He shrugged. “We’re not eager for that end, either. But someone has to take a stand. Someone has to speak for Hytanica before we let her die.

Come Let Us Worship Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. —PSALM 95:6     A recent point of frustration, debate, and tension in many churches has been about defining worship and agreeing what it should look like. Older Christians are confused because of changes made to the style of worship. They wonder whatever happened to the old hymns that were so beloved. They knew the page numbers and all the old verses by heart. Today there are no hymnals, the organs have been silenced, and guitars, drums, and cymbals have taken over. The choir and their robes have been abandoned, and now we have five to seven singers on stage leading songs. We stand for 30 minutes at a time singing song lyrics that we aren’t familiar with from a large screen. What’s happening? If the church doesn’t have these components, the young people leave and go to where it’s happening. Are we going to let the form of worship divide our churches? I hope not! The origins of many of the different expressions of worship can be found in the Psalms, which portray worship as an act of the whole person, not just the mental sphere. The early founders established ways to worship based on what they perceived after reading this great book of the Bible. Over the centuries, Christian worship has taken many different forms, involving various expressions and postures on the part of churchgoers. The Hebrew word for “worship” literally means “to kneel” or “to bow down.” The act of worship is the gesture of humbling oneself before a mighty authority. The Psalms also call upon us to “sing to the LORD, bless His name” (96:2 NASB). Music has always played a large part in the sacred act of worship. Physical gestures and movements are also mentioned in the Psalms. Lifting our hands before God signifies our adoration of Him. Clapping our hands shows our celebration before God. Some worshipers rejoice in His presence with tambourines and dancing (see Psalm 150:4). To worship like the psalmist is to obey Jesus’ command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). There are many more insights for worship in the book of Psalms: • God’s gifts of instruments and vocal music can be used to help us worship (47:1; 81:1-4). • We can appeal to God for help, and we can thank Him for His deliverance (4:3; 17:1-5). • Difficult times should not prevent us from praising God (22:23- 24; 102:1-2; 140:4-8).

Each year they threw open the grounds of the manor house for a party attended by children from some of the roughest districts of Birmingham. They built a large hall known as The Barn in the park to provide tea and refreshments for up to seven hundred children. George Sr., with his love of nature, believed strongly that every child should have access to playing outside in clean air. Games were organized in the open fields, but the star attraction was the open-air baths. More than fifty children could bathe at any one time, and for the young visitors, most of whom had no access to a bath, it was thrilling. The sun on their backs, the sparkling water always inviting, the boys from the inner cities had no desire to leave and would stay in all day, until they were blue and shivering and cleaner than they had been in years.