Boot Season Quotes

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

However, the majority of women are neither harlots nor courtesans; nor do they sit clasping pug dogs to dusty velvet all through the summer afternoon. But what do they do then? and there came to my mind’s eye one of those long streets somewhere south of the river whose infinite rows are innumerably populated. With the eye of the imagination I saw a very ancient lady crossing the street on the arm of a middle-aged woman, her daughter, perhaps, both so respectably booted and furred that their dressing in the afternoon must be a ritual, and the clothes themselves put away in cupboards with camphor, year after year, throughout the summer months. They cross the road when the lamps are being lit (for the dusk is their favourite hour), as they must have done year after year. The elder is close on eighty; but if one asked her what her life has meant to her, she would say that she remembered the streets lit for the battle of Balaclava, or had heard the guns fire in Hyde Park for the birth of King Edward the Seventh. And if one asked her, longing to pin down the moment with date and season, but what were you doing on the fifth of April 1868, or the second of November 1875, she would look vague and say that she could remember nothing. For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie. All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said, addressing Mary Carmichael as if she were present; and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women at the street corners with their arms akimbo, and the rings embedded in their fat swollen fingers, talking with a gesticulation like the swing of Shakespeare’s words; or from the violet-sellers and match-sellers and old crones stationed under doorways; or from drifting girls whose faces, like waves in sun and cloud, signal the coming of men and women and the flickering lights of shop windows. All that you will have to explore, I said to Mary Carmichael, holding your torch firm in your hand.

It storms when you make love?” “Apparently.” Turning back to the large warriors in the hallway, Leah flashed them all a grin. “Well then, boys, you’d better put your rain boots on. Because monsoon season is coming.

It’s never been a matter for me to compare really. First hour of the day calls loudest as the last, no matter what the season.” Terrance said, adjusting his already faded Caterpillar cap, anxiously, clomping mud from his father’s old work boots, a glimmer of steel visible from the wear on one toe and the uncharted map of manhood sketched across the young boys face like a scar in the making.

You probably think that being a guest in your aunt's house I would hesitate to butter you all over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots, but you are mistaken. It would be a genuine pleasure. By an odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!' So saying, and recognising a good exit line when he saw one, he strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed him. (Spode to Wooster)

Well, fashion’s full of trickery, darling. But if you’re going to believe this season’s Prada boots will make you sexy and powerful, you should at least be as open to the concept that you have a soul and that that soul has a purpose as unique as your fingerprint and eye scan.

As long as you know 'to let' means to rent and not a place to pee, you’re all set to travel in the UK. The lifts and the boots and everything else don’t really matter.

The situation was absurd. He wore riding boots with spurs. Her hair tumbled about her like a shaggy pony's. They were in the schoolroom with the furniture pushed about higgledy-piggledy. But in that instant, she would have danced a fandango with a rose in her teeth if Lochinvar had asked her to.

The Sick Woman begins to see that life is wilder, more chaotic, harsher and more loving, paradoxical, and downright strange than she was ever taught. She discovers for herself the power of moon and the tides, the shifting of the stars and the seasons, the haze of pollen and shift in air pressure and how they impact her dreams, her moods, her body processes. She learns that she is not an independent automaton but a wild being woven of life and death, a chaos of magic, not a machine of logic. She learns that the outer impacts the inner in myriad ways. And vice versa. She learns that she is simultaneously weaker and yet more powerful than she ever knew. She is dangerous with this knowledge which does not appear in the medical books and bibles except as anomalies. She’s singing from the wrong hymn sheet and messing up the patina of perfection that the patriarchy is aiming for. In a display of a million marching soldiers with polished boots, gleaming medals and straight legs, there is the sick woman, bare breasted, hair loose, scars showing, shameless, dancing to her own tune.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.

Howard had a pine display case, fastened by fake leather straps and stained to look like walnut. Inside, on fake velvet, were cheap gold-plated earrings and pendants of semiprecious stones. He opened this case for haggard country wives when their husbands were off chopping trees or reaping the back acres. He showed them the same half-dozen pieces every year the last time he came around, when he thought, This is the season - preserving done, woodpile high, north wind up and getting cold, night showing up earlier every day, dark and ice pressing down from the north, down on the raw wood of their cabins, on the rough-cut rafters that sag and sometimes snap from the weight of the dark and the ice, burying families in their sleep, the dark and the ice and sometimes the red in the sky through trees: the heartbreak of a cold sun. He thought, Buy the pendant, sneak it into your hand from the folds of your dress and let the low light of the fire lap at it late at night as you wait for the roof to give out or your will to snap and the ice to be too thick to chop through with the ax as you stand in your husband's boots on the frozen lake at midnight, the dry hack of the blade on ice so tiny under the wheeling and frozen stars, the soundproof lid of heaven, that your husband would never stir from his sleep in the cabin across the ice, would never hear and come running, half-frozen, in only his union suit, to save you from chopping a hole in the ice and sliding into it as if it were a blue vein, sliding down into the black, silty bottom of the lake, where you would see nothing, would perhaps feel only the stir of some somnolent fish in the murk as the plunge of you in your wool dress and the big boots disturbed it from its sluggish winter dreams of ancient seas. Maybe you would not even feel that, as you struggled in clothes that felt like cooling tar, and as you slowed, calmed, even, and opened your eyes and looked for a pulse of silver, an imbrication of scales, and as you closed your eyes again and felt their lids turn to slippery, ichthyic skin, the blood behind them suddenly cold, and as you found yourself not caring, wanting, finally, to rest, finally wanting nothing more than the sudden, new, simple hum threading between your eyes. The ice is far too thick to chop through. You will never do it. You could never do it. So buy the gold, warm it with your skin, slip it onto your lap when you are sitting by the fire and all you will otherwise have to look at is your splintery husband gumming chew or the craquelure of your own chapped hands.

Darlin'," he drawled, "go when you are invited. Bring good boots, drive slow, take blankets, carry your own salt, but by all means... go where the light is. That's not bad advice, wherever you live. Darlin'.

Arinwald’s favorite film has become the version of 1984 starring John Hurt and Richard Burton; the moment that most satisfies in that production is when Burton says to Hurt, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

My horse knows that when I’m grown, we’ll ride the prairies all alone, drivin’ cattle ’cross dusty plains, in the saddle, sun and rain. I’ll never need the finest clothes nor put my hair in pretty bows, with cowgirl boots and cowgirl hat, nothin’ fancy’s where it’s at. From "Cowgirl Dreams,

As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch field, bundled up in a long moleskin overcoat, rabbit fur gloves, and enormous beaverskin boots. The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, Harry would be playing in his first match after weeks of training: Gryffindor versus Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the House Championship. Hardly anyone had seen Harry play because Wood had decided that, as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret. But the news that he was playing Seeker had leaked out somehow, and Harry didn’t know which was worse — people telling him he’d be brilliant or people telling him they’d be running around underneath him holding a mattress. It was really lucky that Harry now had Hermione as a friend. He didn’t know how he’d have gotten through all his homework without her, what with all the last-minute Quidditch practice Wood was making them do. She had also lent him Quidditch Through the Ages, which turned out to be a very interesting read.

THE MEETING" "Scant rain had fallen and the summer sun Had scorched with waves of heat the ripening corn, That August nightfall, as I crossed the down Work-weary, half in dream. Beside a fence Skirting a penning’s edge, an old man waited Motionless in the mist, with downcast head And clothing weather-worn. I asked his name And why he lingered at so lonely a place. “I was a shepherd here. Two hundred seasons I roamed these windswept downlands with my flock. No fences barred our progress and we’d travel Wherever the bite grew deep. In summer drought I’d climb from flower-banked combe to barrow’d hill-top To find a missing straggler or set snares By wood or turmon-patch. In gales of March I’d crouch nightlong tending my suckling lambs. “I was a ploughman, too. Year upon year I trudged half-doubled, hands clenched to my shafts, Guiding my turning furrow. Overhead, Cloud-patterns built and faded, many a song Of lark and pewit melodied my toil. I durst not pause to heed them, rising at dawn To groom and dress my team: by daylight’s end My boots hung heavy, clodded with chalk and flint. “And then I was a carter. With my skill I built the reeded dew-pond, sliced out hay From the dense-matted rick. At harvest time, My wain piled high with sheaves, I urged the horses Back to the master’s barn with shouts and curses Before the scurrying storm. Through sunlit days On this same slope where you now stand, my friend, I stood till dusk scything the poppied fields. “My cob-built home has crumbled. Hereabouts Few folk remember me: and though you stare Till time’s conclusion you’ll not glimpse me striding The broad, bare down with flock or toiling team. Yet in this landscape still my spirit lingers: Down the long bottom where the tractors rumble, On the steep hanging where wild grasses murmur, In the sparse covert where the dog-fox patters.” My comrade turned aside. From the damp sward Drifted a scent of melilot and thyme; From far across the down a barn owl shouted, Circling the silence of that summer evening: But in an instant, as I stepped towards him Striving to view his face, his contour altered. Before me, in the vaporous gloaming, stood Nothing of flesh, only a post of wood.

A clever, blond-haired fourth-grader named Damen McDermott got Sidney as his shopping pal. They picked out boots, a coat, ski gloves, and a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey. Crosby suggested he also pick up a toque. McDermott didn’t know what he was talking about. “What the heck’s a too-k?” he asked. “You know, a toque, a winter hat,” Sidney said, dangling the wool cap in front of the puzzled nine-year-old. “That’s a tossle cap,” Damen said matter-of-factly, lecturing Crosby on the Pennsylvania word for toque.

Though my mother and I hadn't parted on good terms, once a month, huge boxes would arrive, reminders I was never far from her mind. Sweet honey-puffed rice, twenty-four packs of individually wrapped seasoned seaweed, microwavable rice, shrimp crackers, boxes of Pepero, and cups of Shin ramen I would subsist on for weeks on end in an effort to avoid the dining hall. She sent clothing steamers, lint rollers, BB creams, packages of socks. A new "this is nice brand" skirt she'd found on sale at T.J. Maxx. The cowboy boots arrived in one of these packages after my parents had vacationed in Mexico. When I slipped them on I discovered they'd already been broken in. My mother had worn them around the house for a week, smoothing the hard edges in two pairs of socks for an hour every day, molding the flat sole with the bottom of her feet, wearing in the stiffness, breaking the tough leather to spare me all discomfort.

Mostly I love Halloween because it is the orange-and-black beginning of a season that tumbles into Thanksgiving, which tumbles into Christmas. And Zombies just seem a little out of place in that. Thanksgiving should have nothing to do with armies of shuffling undead. Don’t get me started on Christmas. The only undead at Christmas should be Jacob Marley, wailing about greed. The iconic image of Halloween should be the pun’kin. The pun’kin, carved into faces that are scary only because we want them to be, winking from every porch. The pun’kin cast in plastic, swinging from the hands of knee-high princesses, leering back from department store shelves, until it gives way to tins of butter cookies. But I fear for the pun’kin. How long before before he is kicked down the street by zombie hordes, booted into obscurity? Young people tell me that no one—no one— wants to dress up like a pun’kin any more. All a pun’kin does they say is sit there, and glow. This may be true, all of it, but try to make a pie out of a zombie, and see where that gets you. Though I hear that, when it comes to pies, your canned zombie is the way to go.

Della & I are drunk at the top of Mont-Royal. We have an open blue plastic thermos of red wine at our feet. It's the first day of spring & it's midnight & we've been peeling off layers of winter all day. We stand facing each other, as if to exchange vows, chests heaving from racing up & down the mountain to the sky. My face is hurting from smiling so much, aching at the edges of my words. She reaches out to hold my face in her hands, dirty palms form a bowl to rest my chin. I’m standing on a tree stump so we’re eye to eye. It’s hard to stay steady. I worry I may start to drool or laugh, I feel so unhinged from my body. It’s been one of those days I don’t want to end. Our goal was to shirk all responsibility merely to enjoy the lack of everyday obligations, to create fullness & purpose out of each other. Our knees are the colour of the ground-in grass. Our boots are caked in mud caskets. Under our nails is a mixture of minerals & organic matter, knuckles scraped by tree bark. We are the thaw embodied. She says, You have changed me, Eve, you are the single most important person in my life. If you were to leave me, I would die. At that moment, our breath circling from my lungs & into hers, I am changed. Perhaps before this I could describe our relationship as an experiment, a happy accident, but this was irrefutable. I was completely consumed & consuming. It was as though we created some sort of object between us that we could see & almost hold. I would risk everything I’ve ever known to know only this. I wanted to honour her in a way that was understandable to every part of me. It was as though I could distill the meaning of us into something I could pour into a porcelain cup. Our bodies on top of this city, rulers of love. Originally, we were celebrating the fact that I got into Concordia’s visual arts program. But the congratulatory brunch she took me to at Café Santropol had turned into wine, which had turned into a day for declarations. I had a sense of spring in my body, that this season would meld into summer like a running-jump movie kiss. There would be days & days like this. XXXX gone away on a sojurn I didn’t care to note the details of, she simply ceased to be. Summer in Montreal in love is almost too much emotion to hold in an open mouth, it spills over, it causes me to not need any sleep. I don’t think I will ever feel as awake as I did in the summer of 1995.

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over The bending poplars, newly bare, And the dark ribbons of the chimneys Veer downward; flicked by whips of air. Torn posters flutter; coldly sound The boom of trams and the rattle of hooves, And the clerks who hurry to the station Look, shuddering, over the eastern rooves, Thinking, each one, "Here comes the winter! "Please God I keep my job this year!" And bleakly, as the cold strikes through Their entrails like an icy spear, They think of rent, rates, season tickets, Insurance, coal, the skivvy's wages, Boots, school-bills and the next installment Upon the two twin beds from Drage's. For if in careless summer days In groves of Ashtaroth we whored, Repentant now, when winds blow cold, We kneel before our rightful lord; The lord of all, the money-god, Who rules us blood and hand and brain, Who gives the roof that stops the wind, And, giving, takes away again; Who spies with jealous, watchful care, Our thoughts, our dreams, our secret ways, Who picks our words and cuts our clothes, And maps the pattern of our days; Who chills our anger, curbs our hope. And buys our lives and pays with toys, Who claims as tribute broken faith, Accepted insults, muted joys; Who binds with chains the poet's wit, The navvy's strength, the soldier's pride, And lays the sleek, estranging shield Between the lover and his bride.

Matthew, we need your help. What do we do?” “Look at my new kicks.” He raised one boot. “Finn said I’m ballin’ like a pimp now.” Then he frowned. “Good thing?” “Yes, yes, but—” “He took care of me when you abandoned me.” God, the guilt. In a rush, I said, “I thought you’d be safer at Finn’s than going back out on the road with me! You know how dangerous it’ll be to reach the coast.” But then, I’d believed that before I’d understood how lethal I could be. “Dangerous Empress!” “This isn’t working!” “Tapped out.” My glyphs were dark, the fuel gauge blinking E. Selena’s hand shot out and smacked my face. “What the hell?” When I raised my palm to my cheek, she slapped the other one harder. I felt my glyphs stirring. “If you don’t want these cards to die, then get to work, Evie! You need to look like the Empress of Old, slithery and creepy and sexy all at the same time.” “Touch me again, and you’ll see slithery and creepy—” With her enhanced speed, she shoved me back before I could even react. I tripped over my pack, landing on my ass. “You bitch!” I bounded up, thorn claws bared. “That’s it! Sell it, sister, or we are dead!” I gazed down at my body, at my skin glowing through the fabric of my clothes. Sharp emotions like fury and utter terror always sparked my powers; Selena had pissed me off enough to give me a jump-start. I narrowed my eyes at Matthew. “This is why you want me angry, terrified, and sad for the rainy season?” Blank smile.

We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit. And if our bosses proved mean, why then we’d evoke their whole and genuine meanness afterward over vodka cranberries and small batch bourbons. And if our drinking companions proved to be sublime then we would stagger home at dawn over the Old City cobblestones, into hot showers and clean shirts, and press onward until dusk fell again. For the rest of the world, it seemed to us, had somewhat hastily concluded that it was the chief end of man to thank God it was Friday and pray that Netflix would never forsake them. Still we lived frantically, like hummingbirds; though our HR departments told us that our commitments were valuable and our feedback was appreciated, our raises would be held back another year. Like gnats we pestered Management— who didn’t know how to use the Internet, whose only use for us was to set up Facebook accounts so they could spy on their children, or to sync their iPhones to their Outlooks, or to explain what tweets were and more importantly, why— which even we didn’t know. Retire! we wanted to shout. We ha Get out of the way with your big thumbs and your senior moments and your nostalgia for 1976! We hated them; we wanted them to love us. We wanted to be them; we wanted to never, ever become them. Complexity, complexity, complexity! We said let our affairs be endless and convoluted; let our bank accounts be overdrawn and our benefits be reduced. Take our Social Security contributions and let it go bankrupt. We’d been bankrupt since we’d left home: we’d secure our own society. Retirement was an afterlife we didn’t believe in and that we expected yesterday. Instead of three meals a day, we’d drink coffee for breakfast and scavenge from empty conference rooms for lunch. We had plans for dinner. We’d go out and buy gummy pad thai and throat-scorching chicken vindaloo and bento boxes in chintzy, dark restaurants that were always about to go out of business. Those who were a little flush would cover those who were a little short, and we would promise them coffees in repayment. We still owed someone for a movie ticket last summer; they hadn’t forgotten. Complexity, complexity. In holiday seasons we gave each other spider plants in badly decoupaged pots and scarves we’d just learned how to knit and cuff links purchased with employee discounts. We followed the instructions on food and wine Web sites, but our soufflés sank and our baked bries burned and our basil ice creams froze solid. We called our mothers to get recipes for old favorites, but they never came out the same. We missed our families; we were sad to be rid of them. Why shouldn’t we live with such hurry and waste of life? We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to decrypt our neighbors’ Wi-Fi passwords and to never turn on the air-conditioning. We vowed to fall in love: headboard-clutching, desperate-texting, hearts-in-esophagi love. On the subways and at the park and on our fire escapes and in the break rooms, we turned pages, resolved to get to the ends of whatever we were reading. A couple of minutes were the day’s most valuable commodity. If only we could make more time, more money, more patience; have better sex, better coffee, boots that didn’t leak, umbrellas that didn’t involute at the slightest gust of wind. We were determined to make stupid bets. We were determined to be promoted or else to set the building on fire on our way out. We were determined to be out of our minds.

Suggestions to Develop Self-Help Skills Self-help skills improve along with sensory processing. The following suggestions may make your child’s life easier—and yours, too! DRESSING • Buy or make a “dressing board” with a variety of snaps, zippers, buttons and buttonholes, hooks and eyes, buckles and shoelaces. • Provide things that are not her own clothes for the child to zip, button, and fasten, such as sleeping bags, backpacks, handbags, coin purses, lunch boxes, doll clothes, suitcases, and cosmetic cases. • Provide alluring dress-up clothes with zippers, buttons, buckles, and snaps. Oversized clothes are easiest to put on and take off. • Eliminate unnecessary choices in your child’s bureau and closet. Clothes that are inappropriate for the season and that jam the drawers are sources of frustration. • Put large hooks inside closet doors at the child’s eye level so he can hang up his own coat and pajamas. (Attach loops to coats and pajamas on the outside so they won’t irritate the skin.) • Supply cellophane bags for the child to slip her feet into before pulling on boots. The cellophane prevents shoes from getting stuck and makes the job much easier. • Let your child choose what to wear. If she gets overheated easily, let her go outdoors wearing several loose layers rather than a coat. If he complains that new clothes are stiff or scratchy, let him wear soft, worn clothes, even if they’re unfashionable. • Comfort is what matters. • Set out tomorrow’s clothes the night before. Encourage the child to dress himself. Allow for extra time, and be available to help. If necessary, help him into clothes but let him do the finishing touch: Start the coat zipper but let him zip it up, or button all but one of his buttons. Keep a stool handy so the child can see herself in the bathroom mirror. On the sink, keep a kid-sized hairbrush and toothbrush within arm’s reach. Even if she resists brushing teeth and hair, be firm. Some things in life are nonnegotiable.

she had dark chestnut hair, a heart-shaped face, large wide eyes, full lips…and appeared about as miserable as he’d ever seen a young woman, a state he suspected had something to do with the older woman at her side. His gaze slid over the matron. Well-rounded with dark hair, she was pretty despite the bloom of youth being gone—or she would be if she weren’t wearing a pursed, dissatisfied expression as she surveyed the activity in the ballroom. Adrian glanced back to the girl. “First season?” he queried, his curiosity piqued. “Yes.” Reg looked amused. “Why is no one dancing with her?” A beauty such as this should have had a full card. “No one dares ask her—and you will not either, if you value your feet.” Adrian’s eyebrows rose, his gaze turning reluctantly from the young woman to the man at his side. “She is blind as a bat and dangerous to boot,” Reg announced, nodding when Adrian looked disbelieving. “Truly, she cannot dance a step without stomping on your toes and falling about. She cannot even walk without bumping into things.” He paused, cocking one eyebrow in response to Adrian’s expression. “I know you do not believe it. I did not either…much to my own folly.” Reginald turned to glare at the girl and continued: “I was warned, but ignored it and took her in to dinner….” He glanced back at Adrian. “I was wearing dark brown trousers that night, unfortunately. She mistook my lap for a table, and set her tea on me. Or rather, she tried to. It overset and…” Reg paused, shifting uncomfortably at the memory. “Damn me if she did not burn my piffle.” Adrian stared at his cousin and then burst into laughter. Reginald looked startled, then smiled wryly. “Yes, laugh. But if I never sire another child—legitimate or not—I shall blame it solely on Lady Clarissa Crambray.” Shaking his head, Adrian laughed even harder, and it felt so good. It had been many years since he’d found anything the least bit funny. But the image of the delicate little flower along the wall mistaking Reg’s lap for a table and oversetting a cup of tea on him was priceless. “What did you do?” he got out at last. Reg shook his head and raised his hands helplessly. “What could I do? I pretended it had not happened, stayed where I was, and tried not to cry with the pain. ‘A gentleman never deigns to notice, or draw attention in any way to, a lady’s public faux pas,’” he quoted dryly, then glanced back at the girl with a sigh. “Truth to tell, I do not think she even realized what she’d done. Rumor has it she can see fine with spectacles, but she is too vain to wear them.” Still smiling, Adrian followed Reg’s gaze to the girl. Carefully taking in her wretched expression, he shook his head. “No. Not vain,” he announced, watching as the older woman beside Lady Clarissa murmured something, stood, and moved away. “Well,” Reg began, but paused when, ignoring him, Adrian moved toward the girl. Shaking his head, he muttered, “I warned you.” -Adrian & Reg

Boys will be boys, and ballplayers will always be arrested adolescents at heart. The proof comes in the mid-afternoon of an early spring training day, when 40 percent of the New York Mets’ starting rotation—Mike Pelfrey and I—hop a chain-link fence to get onto a football field not far from Digital Domain. We have just returned from Dick’s Sporting Goods, where we purchased a football and a tee. We are here to kick field goals. Long field goals. A day before, we were all lying on the grass stretching and guys started talking about football and field-goal kickers, and David Wright mentioned something about the remarkable range of kickers these days. I can kick a fifty-yard field goal, Pelfrey says. You can not, Wright says. You don’t think so? You want to bet? You give me five tries and I’ll put three of them through. One hundred bucks says you can’t, David says. This is going to be the easiest money I ever make. I am Pelf’s self-appointed big brother, always looking out for him, and I don’t want him to go into this wager cold. So I suggest we get a ball and tee and do some practicing. We get back from Dick’s but find the nearby field padlocked, so of course we climb over the fence. At six feet two inches and 220 pounds, I get over without incident, but seeing Pelf hoist his big self over—all six feet seven inches and 250 pounds of him—is much more impressive. Pelf’s job is to kick and my job is to chase. He sets up at the twenty-yard line, tees up the ball, and knocks it through—kicking toe-style, like a latter-day Lou Groza. He backs up to the twenty-five and then the thirty, and boots several more from each distance. Adding the ten yards for the end zone, he’s now hit from forty yards and is finding his range. Pretty darn good. He insists he’s got another ten yards in his leg. He hits from forty-five, and by now he’s probably taken fifteen or seventeen hard kicks and reports that his right shin is getting sore. We don’t consider stopping. Pelf places the ball on the tee at the forty-yard line: a fifty-yard field goal. He takes a half dozen steps back, straight behind the tee, sprints up, and powers his toe into the ball … high … and far … and just barely over the crossbar. That’s all that is required. I thrust both my arms overhead like an NFL referee. He takes three more and converts on a second fifty-yarder. You are the man, Pelf, I say. Adam Vinatieri should worry for his job. That’s it, Pelf says. I can’t even lift my foot anymore. My shin is killing me. We hop back over the fence, Pelf trying to land as lightly as a man his size can land. His shin hurts so much he can barely put pressure on the gas pedal. He’s proven he can hit a fifty-yard field goal, but I go into big-brother mode and tell him I don’t want him kicking any more field goals or stressing his right leg any further. I convince him to drop the bet with David. The last thing you need is to start the season on the DL because you were kicking field goals, I say. Can you imagine if the papers got ahold of that one? The wager just fades away. David doesn’t mind; he gets a laugh at the story of Pelf hopping the fence and practicing, and drilling long ones.

The poet, when he wrote "Thou wilt come no more, gentle ANNIE," was clearly laboring under a mistake. If he had written "Thou wilt be sure to come again next season, gentle ANNIE," he would have hit it. Lecture committees know this. Miss DICKINSON earns her living by lecturing. Occasionally she takes a turn at scrubbing pavements, or going to hear WENDELL PHILLIPS on "The Lost Arts," or other violent exertion, but her best hold is lecturing. She has followed the business ever since she was a girl, and twenty-four (24) years of steady application have made her no longer a Timid Young Thing. She is not afraid of audiences any more. It is a favorite recreation of the moral boot-blacks and pious

He cocked his head to one side. "Callie, this is a ranch. If I remember right, you joined the Army because you hated every damn thing there was about ranchin'. Are you sure you want to live here?" "Guess I've found out there's worse things in the world than the cows, hay haulin', and calvin' season," she said. I'm not askin' for a handout here, Finn. I'm willing to work. I'll work outside. I'll work inside cleaning and cooking or both if you'll give me and Martin room and board.

The first truly autumnal day of the new season. Soft, pretty scarves looped necks, skinny jeans encased skinny and not-so-skinny thighs, spike-heeled boots tapped across the playground.

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” —Genesis 8:22 (NIV) As I walked to my mom’s house next door, I looked at the silhouettes of birds in the trees with the sun setting behind them. The road was still warm beneath my bare feet, and my leg muscles were tired from hours spent doing yard work and clearing the garden for winter (or “putting it to bed” as my husband calls it). Blackbirds rested on the stark branches, watching me until I was just beneath them, and then they flew away in a rush of energy. Today was warm. The sun bright. Most of our trees have lost their leaves, but our maple by the barn was holding on, wearing its marvelous colors like an ornate cloak. “Sabra, put shoes on!” the neighbor shouted from her doorway. “It’s nearly winter, don’t you know?” This is our joke. Every season she notices my feet and my tendency to be barefoot as long as possible. In March she calls out, “It must be spring! You don’t have shoes on!” And then when the snow falls, she yells, “Oh no, look at those boots! We must be in for a long winter.” With each step, I feel the warm tarry road beneath my feet. In a week or two, I’ll be wearing big thick socks and warm shoes. For now, I take in the beauty of a sunny path and hold it as a gift to help me through the long winter ahead. Dear Lord, may I always be mindful of the beauty in every season You have placed beneath my feet. —Sabra Ciancanelli Digging Deeper: Ps 19:1; Eccl 3:1–4

It was the Easter Hat Parade, and the St. Angela’s mothers were out in force, dressed up in honor of Easter and the first truly autumnal day of the new season. Soft, pretty scarves looped necks, skinny jeans encased skinny and not-so-skinny thighs, spike-heeled boots tapped across the playground. It had been a humid summer, and the crispness of the breeze and the anticipation of a four-day, chocolate-filled weekend had put everyone in good moods. The mothers, sitting in a big double-rowed circle of blue fold-up chairs around the quadrangle, were frisky and high-spirited. The older children who weren’t taking part in the Easter

Pilgrims WHEN MY OLD MAN said he’d hired her, I said, “A girl?” A girl, when it wasn’t that long ago women couldn’t work on this ranch even as cooks, because the wranglers got shot over them too much. They got shot even over the ugly cooks. Even over the old ones. I said, “A girl?” “She’s from Pennsylvania,” my old man said. “She’ll be good at this.” “She’s from what?” When my brother Crosby found out, he said, “Time for me to find new work when a girl starts doing mine.” My old man looked at him. “I heard you haven’t come over Dutch Oven Pass once this season you haven’t been asleep on your horse or reading a goddamn book. Maybe it’s time for you to find new work anyhow.” He told us that she showed up somehow from Pennsylvania in the sorriest piece of shit car he’d ever seen in his life. She asked him for five minutes to ask for a job, but it didn’t take that long. She flexed her arm for him to feel, but he didn’t feel it. He liked her, he said, right away. He trusted his eye for that, he said, after all these years. “You’ll like her, too,” he said. “She’s sexy like a horse is sexy. Nice and big. Strong.” “Eighty-five of your own horses to feed, and you still think horse is sexy,” I said, and my brother Crosby said, “I think we got enough of that kind of sexy around here already.” She was Martha Knox, nineteen years old and tall as me, thick-legged but not fat, with cowboy boots that anyone could see were new that week, the cheapest in the store and the first pair she’d ever owned. She had a big chin that worked only because her forehead and nose worked, too, and she had the kind of teeth that take over a face even when the mouth is closed. She had, most of all, a dark brown braid that hung down the center of her back, thick as a girl’s arm. I danced with Martha Knox one night early in the season. It was a day off to go down the mountain, get drunk, make phone calls, do laundry, fight. Martha Knox was no dancer. She didn’t want to dance with me. She let me know this by saying a few times that she wasn’t going to dance with me, and then, when she finally agreed, she wouldn’t let go of her cigarette. She held it in one hand and let that hand fall and not be available. So I kept my beer bottle in one hand, to balance her out, and we held each other with one arm each. She was no dancer and she didn’t want to dance with me, but we found a good slow sway anyway, each of us with an arm hanging down, like a rodeo cowboy’s right arm, like the right arm of a bull rider, not reaching for anything. She wouldn’t look anywhere but over my left shoulder, like that part of her that was a good dancer with me was some part she had not ever met and didn’t feel

Will appeared at Cameron’s door promptly at seven o’clock. With his coat unzipped, she could see that he’d worn a brown wool sweater over dark jeans with heavy mud-season-approved boots. He smelled of fresh air, soap and cologne so subtle she wasn’t sure it was cologne. No matter what it was, she wanted to get closer for a better sniff of the intriguing scent. His hair was damp and his face freshly shaven. That he’d gone to some trouble to prepare for their dinner pleased her.

her boot catching him right between the legs.

Then you’d best get started.” Millie eyed the birds, rubbing her hands together. “All right, ladies, let’s boot the men along and get started ourselves.” They had their feast, a happy family group, roasted wild pheasant seasoned with tarragon, stuffed with oranges, apples, shallots, and

I dropped the phone on my desk then looked out the window. Winter was coming to Boston, and it was bringing a deep chill. Soon the ground would be covered in snow. Everyone would huddle near the fires in the student lounge. Girls would don their boots and scarves. But winter was my favorite season. I wasn’t sure why

Dear Prudence, I’m sitting in this dusty tent, trying to think of something eloquent to write. I’m at wit’s end. You deserve beautiful words, but all I have left are these: I think of you constantly. I think of this letter in your hand and the scent of perfume on your wrist. I want silence and clear air, and a bed with a soft white pillow… Beatrix felt her eyebrows lifting, and a quick rise of heat beneath the high collar of her dress. She paused and glanced at Prudence. “You find this boring?” she asked mildly, while her blush spread like spilled wine on linen. “The beginning is the only good part,” Prudence said. “Go on.” …Two days ago in our march down the coast to Sebastopol, we fought the Russians at the Alma River. I’m told it was a victory for our side. It doesn’t feel like one. We’ve lost at least two thirds of our regiment’s officers, and a quarter of the noncommissioned men. Yesterday we dug graves. They call the final tally of dead and wounded the “butcher’s bill.” Three hundred and sixty British dead so far, and more as soldiers succumb to their wounds. One of the fallen, Captain Brighton, brought a rough terrier named Albert, who is undoubtedly the most badly behaved canine in existence. After Brighton was lowered into the ground, the dog sat by his grave and whined for hours, and tried to bite anyone who came near. I made the mistake of offering him a portion of a biscuit, and now the benighted creature follows me everywhere. At this moment he is sitting in my tent, staring at me with half-crazed eyes. The whining rarely stops. Whenever I get near, he tries to sink his teeth into my arm. I want to shoot him, but I’m too tired of killing. Families are grieving for the lives I’ve taken. Sons, brothers, fathers. I’ve earned a place in hell for the things I’ve done, and the war’s barely started. I’m changing, and not for the better. The man you knew is gone for good, and I fear you may not like his replacement nearly so well. The smell of death, Pru…it’s everywhere. The battlefield is strewn with pieces of bodies, clothes, soles of boots. Imagine an explosion that could tear the soles from your shoes. They say that after a battle, wildflowers are more abundant the next season--the ground is so churned and torn, it gives the new seeds room to take root. I want to grieve, but there is no place for it. No time. I have to put the feelings away somewhere. Is there still some peaceful place in the world? Please write to me. Tell me about some bit of needlework you’re working on, or your favorite song. Is it raining in Stony Cross? Have the leaves begun to change color? Yours, Christopher Phelan

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

Yeah, I know. We just have to get through this calving season. If we keep the practice growing, I think Dr. Schultz will take me on as a partner, and we could hire another associate. He’s been hinting at that.” The next day, Rosalie volunteered to take over the driving so I could sleep between calls. She napped while I was delivering the calves. We had been going for sixteen hours when we arrived at the Joneses’ ranch at one in the morning. John and Skipper came out of the house to greet us. “What’s with Skipper?” I asked. “She’s limping.” “The cold seems to be affecting her,” John answered. “Ferdie convinced me to spoil her. We’re letting her sleep in the mudroom.” We took off our boots and coats and entered the glowing kitchen. Kathy was waiting for us with hot coffee. There

Toward the end of March, in St. Louis, slush fills the gutters, and dirty snow lies heaped alongside porch steps, and everything seems to be suffocating in the embrace of a season that lasts too long. Radiators hiss mournfully, no one manages to be patient, the wind draws tears from your eyes, the clouds are filled with sadness. Women with scarves around their heads and their feet encased in fur-lined boots pick their way carefully over patches of melting ice. It seems that winter will last forever, that this is the decision of nature and nothing can be done about it.

So this is how a worthless creature repays the house that has done so much for him! Having lost me ten thousand men and the gains of an entire season, you dare come into my presence and stand? Get down, or I’ll put my boot upon your head and put it down for you!

You were really upset the other night. I know you were trying to put on a brave face, but it was obvious Darcy hurt you. Worse than you let on. Now “You were really upset the other night. I know you were trying to put on a brave face, but it was obvious Darcy hurt you. Worse than you let on. Now you’re agreeing to fake a relationship with her? Because of your family? Elle, if they can’t see how amazing you are . . . this isn’t worth it.” Elle ground the toe of her boot into the rug, tracing the singe mark in the paisley pattern from the Birthday Sparkler Incident of 2017. “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she admitted. The lump inside her throat grew, forcing her to swallow to keep her voice from cracking. “I’m just tired of falling short, Mar.” Margot’s face crumpled. “Elle—” She jerked her chin and sniffed hard, blinking away the film of tears blurring her vision. She smiled and shrugged. “If I can get my family to take me seriously about one thing, see that I have my life together in a way that makes sense to them, maybe they’ll come around to the rest.” Margot shook her head. “So you’re throwing in the towel? You’re going to be like Lydia now? Dating the sorts of people your parents want and shrinking yourself down to be palatable to people who don’t get you? Who don’t even try?” No. God no. Elle wasn’t going to actually compromise who she was or how she lived her life. No, this was a blip on Elle’s radar, a pit stop, a means to an end. Elle wasn’t settling. She just wanted her parents to be proud of her for who she was. If she had to speak their language for a brief bit of time, what was the harm? “No way. This is fake. I just want them to understand I’m not the letdown they think I am. Maybe hearing how awesome I am from someone else, someone like Darcy who’s the sort of person who satisfies their whole nine-to-five I’m a serious adult vibe, will help.” Margot stuck out her tongue, eyes rolling. “Boring, you mean?” Elle shrugged. “Besides, it’s cuffing season and Lydia’s got a boyfriend. Jane’s got Gabe and Daniel has Mike and I’m just—Elle. I’m not exactly jazzed about spending another holiday alone as the black sheep of the family.” “Just Elle is pretty great.” Margot smiled. “But I get it. I mean, I might not be in your shoes, but I understand where you’re coming from. I just want you to remember that you deserve someone you don’t have to fake it with.” Both her brows rose. “And I mean that in all ways.” Elle cracked a smile. “Thanks.

But how we act in one season wouldn’t be sustainable in another season. For example, in a Minnesota winter, you bundle up in a heavy parka and snow boots. You would freeze to death if you went out wearing a swimsuit or shorts and a tank top. Business seasons also change. Some will be busier, and some will be slower. You have to know what season you’re in and adjust your behavior accordingly. Not every season can be a sprint, because life is a marathon. If a sprinter were to run a marathon at their normal pace, they would end up quickly burning out. If a marathon runner were to run a sprint at their normal pace, they likely wouldn’t place.

We only have red wolves here at Sandy Ridge now,” Ryan says. “Summer is our slow season. But by fall, this place will be packed with wolves and coyotes.” “Why do you hold coyotes here?” I ask. “If we know one is holding a territory, we trap it, sterilize it and put a radio collar on it,” Ryan explains. “They stay here at Sandy Ridge while they recover, and then we release them back to their territory.” By sterilizing coyotes that set up territories in the red wolf recovery area and then tracking them, the red wolf biologists protect the red wolf’s unique genome from hybridization with coyotes. But a sterile coyote doesn’t solve the red wolf’s propensity for running with and mating with coyotes. It only prevents conception. It is an elaborate birth-control scheme to ensure the survival of an endangered species. One of the quirks of the genus Canis is that the various species within it can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Historically, hybridization of the last wild red wolves with coyotes was the single biggest threat that prompted the FWS to begin capturing the last wolves for breeding in captivity. When the first red wolves were reintroduced to Alligator River in 1987, the nearest coyotes were 500 miles west. Experts thought it would take them eight to ten years to pad their way to the coast - plenty of time, they thought, for red wolves to build up a big population and keep the invading coyotes at bay. But coyotes soon infiltrated the red wolf’s recovery area in the early 1990s. Suddenly, the Red Wolf Recovery Program had a problem on its hands: red wolves were once again hybridizing with coyotes. “Why don’t you just trap all the coyotes out of the recovery area?” I ask. “Even if we could remove them all, then more coyotes would likely just come in and take their territories,” Ryan replies. Plus, the team simply doesn’t have the manpower to trap all of the coyotes off the peninsula, though they put significant effort into patrolling certain areas to keep coyotes out. Coyotes are too adaptive and elusive for a large-scale trapping program to work permanently. In one of their biological quirks, coyotes are known to have more offspring survive to adulthood when their population is persecuted through lethal control efforts. The rascals can live on practically nothing, and they are prolific breeders to boot.

On election season politicos dawn their timber boots and red handkerchiefs. Many claim salt of the earth roots every time they eat a watermelon, but they never bite the bitterness of the rind. Everyone likes a good show and the politics of poverty never disappoint.

You see, that bridge is my gateway to the world. If you stay on this island for too long, you'll know what I mean. This weekend when I go to Alor Setar, I'll have to cross that bridge. It's getai season and there's extra cash to be made everywhere here in the north, as long as there are spirit-believing Taoists. I help the crew set up stage, do the wiring and man the lighting. The girl singer comes on, wearing knee-high boots and a spaceship suit. Sometimes I get a picture with her backstage, but sometimes the girls are so ugly I bet only ghosts are willing to look at them.

Ariel learned why humans wore shoes and boots on their feet, how many seasons there were in a year, what telescopes did, and how to spit out the olive seeds from the salad Eric had brought. And in turn, she taught Eric how to read a fish's face for emotion, why Atlantica had been kept a secret from humans, and the best tactics for evading sharks.

I have a foal to deliver, but if this is how my son is walking around speaking, said boot is about to be halfway up his ass.

ONLY INCLUDE SEASONALLY APPROPRIATE CLOTHES. There’s no need to sort through your sweaters to get to your sundresses in summer, or to search for your winter boots in a pile of sandals. Get the stuff you aren’t wearing out of sight so you don’t even have to think about it until you’re actually going to wear it.

We are all driven to select a mate. Those of us who don’t do not pass our genes on to the future. A human female is apparently driven to select a mate that will provide for her and her offspring. If nothing else, such behavior or motivation would be consistent with the tenets of sexual selection. A human male selects a mate that is, by his reckoning, well suited to carrying his genes forward. The female has to make her genes appear valuable by “playing hard to get,” as the old saying was and is so often said. But really … all things in moderation. Look around. So much of what goes on in our society is motivated by the process of sexual selection, and there are many subtle and not-so-subtle things that affect that process: There’s mascara. Expensive watches. Amazing shoes. Sports cars, perfume, skirts, ties, jeans, boots, and on and on. Now, compare us to everybody else. By everybody else I mean dogs and cats and lions and tigers and bears … and squids and whales. All the other animals around, and all the plants, have seasons to their mating. We humans don’t seem to. When it comes to our babies, birthdays are pretty well distributed around the calendar.

Thank you, Target, for depressing us by stocking your store with adorable jackets, sweaters, and boots in August even though it’s still a hundred degrees outside and won’t even dip into the seventies until November. This seasonal tragedy is not your fault, but we don’t need cute knit legwarmers in September. We still need a swimsuit section. Please download a weather app and send it to your buyers. Sincerely, Every Fall-Loving Texan Crying in Her Tank Top at Halloween.

The streets are crowded with young people in elaborate getups—giant lace skirts, elaborate umbrellas, ten-inch-tall boots, eyelashes that seem miles long, face masks that glow in the dark. Some of them have their Warcross level floating over their heads, along with hearts and stars and trophies. Others have virtual pets trotting alongside them, bright purple virtual dogs or sparkling silver virtual tigers. Still others wear all kinds of avatar items, virtual cat ears or antlers on their heads, enormous angel wings on their backs, hair and eyes in every color. “Since it is officially game season now,” Jiro explains, “you will see this quite often.” He nods toward a person on the street with Level 80 and 3,410,383 over her head, smiling as several people give her high fives and congratulate her on her high rank. A virtual pet falcon swoops in circles around her head, its tail blazing with fire. “Here, almost everything you do will earn you points toward your level in the Link. Going to school. Going to work. Cooking dinner. And so on. Your level can earn you rewards in the real world,

For me, the house and all its contents are like the mud collecting on my boots as I walk the dog round the fields in a rainy season. Holding me back, weighting me down, limiting how far I can travel.

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok you would never see him doing such a thing, tossing the dry snow over the mountain of his bare, round shoulder, his hair tied in a knot, a model of concentration. Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word for what he does, or does not do. Even the season is wrong for him. In all his manifestations, is it not warm and slightly humid? Is this not implied by his serene expression, that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe? But here we are, working our way down the driveway. one shovelful at a time. We toss the light powder into the clean air. We feel the cold most on our faces. And with every heave we disappear and become lost to each other in these sudden clouds of our own making, these fountain-bursts of snow. This is so much better than a sermon in church, I say out loud, bud Buddha keeps on shoveling. This is the true religion, the religion of snow, and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky, I say, but he is too busy to hear me He has thrown himself into shoveling snow as if it were the purpose of existence, as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway you could back the car down easily and drive off into the vanities of the world with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio. All morning long we work side by side, me with my commentary and he is inside the generous pocket of his silence, until the house is nearly noon and the snow is piled high all around us; then, I hear him speak. After this, he asks, can we go inside and play cards? Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk and bring cups of hot chlorate to the table while you shuffle the deck, and our boots stand dripping by the door. Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes and leaning for a moment on his shovel before he drives the fun blade again deep into the glittering white snow.

Lake Placid was alive with cars and campers and people. It was still early spring yet it felt like an Ontario tourist town at the height of the season. Traffic barely moved, shoppers wove through the cars as if the street were a parking lot and the stoplights meaningless. It felt like summer to Travis after a winter of heavy boots and thick jackets and shoveling snow.