Bulb Book Quotes

I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown. Eat interesting food. Dig some interesting people. Have an adventure. Be careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You’re going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about; I’m sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking 12 miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people—Americans and Europeans—come back and go, ohhhhh. And the light bulb goes on.

The reading area was a beautifully crafted trap set by the librarians, but it was too perfect. Even the dumbest book lover—and anyone who would regularly choose to come in contact with books could not be a bright bulb, Jackie thought—wouldn’t fall for this.

Yes, all of this is sorrow. But leave a little love burning always like the small bulb in the room of a sleeping baby that gives him a bit of security and quiet love though he doesn’t know what the light is or where it comes from.

On cloudy days I just want to raise my arm up, stand on my toes, and screw a light bulb into the sky. Don’t worry, my light bulb is energy efficient—it runs on solar power.

Not for the first time, Peter thought about how much of our lives we spend sequestered inside small patches of electric brightness, blind to everything beyond the reach of those fragile bulbs.

Get this: how many Weavers does it take to screw in a light bulb?' Kate folded her arms, her expression aloof. Acciper pensively scratched his beard, withholding his ignorance. 'One?' ventured Vivian. Lucian's boyish face split into a grin. His body filled up with the imminent rumble of laughter. 'Two Weavers. One holds the light bulb and the other one spins reality around it.

Thinking! Thinking! The process should no longer be merely this feeble flurry of hailstones that raises a little dust. It should be something quite different. Thinking should be a terrifying process. When the earth thinks, whole towns crumble to the ground and thousands of people die. Thinking: raising boulders, hollowing out valleys, preparing tidal waves at sea. Thinking like a town: that's to say: eight million inhabitants, twelve million rats, nine million pints of carbon dioxide, two billion tons. Grey light. Cathedral of light. Din. Sudden flashes. Low-lying blanket of black cloud. Flat roofs. Fire alarms. Elevators. Streets. Eighteen thousand miles of streets. 145 million electric light bulbs.

Books don't have bulbs in them, But the light they give out, brightens up even the darkest souls!

I told you before that Johnson would be off the board, and he will be. We didn’t take him at Tycho, and we’ll take him somewhere else. He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time.” Rosenfeld looked down at his bulb, his body hunching a degree in submission. Filip had felt his father’s victory like it was his own. “Didn’t finish reading that book, did you?” Rosenfeld asked mildly.

We were the only customers downstairs in the shop and there were no windows and only two dim bulbs, without shades. There was a pleasant soporific smell, as though the books had stolen most of the air.

There were pools of light among the stacks, directly beneath the bulbs which Philip had switched on, but it was now with an unexpected fearfulness that he saw how the books stretched away into the darkness. They seemed to expand as soon as they reached the shadows, creating some dark world where there was no beginning and no end, no story, no meaning. And if you crossed the threshold into that world, you would be surrounded by words; you would crush them beneath your feet, you would knock against them with your head and arms, but if you tried to grasp them they would melt away. Philip did not dare turn his back upon these books. Not yet. It was almost, he thought, as if they had been speaking to each other while he slept.

A Bible not read is like a bulb not lighted. Only insane people will love to work in the darkness with Kings' bulbs which are not switched on! ... and so goes the one who has the King James' but does not search into it!

put out light vibrations and you see them as radiating, such as a light bulb. Or

Dreams in your life are like light bulbs that brighten your room. But having them on the ceiling is just not enough; you got to make an effort by pressing on the switch and there it goes taking away the darkness!

One of the less apparent but most profound consequences of domestic electric lighting was the encouragement of reading at home. Increased reading broadened knowledge, stirred new interests, and created a more sophisticated society, especially away from centers of culture, which in turn increased demand for electricity. Persons who had trouble reading by dim fire- or candlelight, and especially young children who could not be left alone to regulate gaslights, could easily and safely read by electric light. Partly for this reason, the Muncie, Indiana, public library loaned out eight times as many books per inhabitant in 1925 as it had in 1890. The cartoon symbol of a light bulb being switched on over someone's head as they achieved new insight was firmly grounded in reality.

after Neruda a bronze song, something undone, salvia, a crushed butterfly. It is the blood on a light bulb, the seventh sadness, a fluctuation that closes oceans and eyes. The vermilion and solitary luminary shimmies and singes the feathers of the aviary. Moon, the clock’s word, dear mother, ruin, rain. — Simone Muench, “Elegy for the Unsaid,” Lampblack & Ash: Poems. (Sarabande Books; First Edition edition November 1, 2005)

her legs growing tired. She feels a twinge in her left ankle, the one she sprained last fall when she was knocked over by someone’s Labrador on the village green. That injury was just the latest insult: the thumb jammed by a heavy carton of books, the rotator cuff torn while changing a light bulb, the plantar fasciitis in both feet just because, the compressed disk in her neck for the same unfair nothing of a reason. “What can I tell you?” the chiropractor said. “Welcome to middle age.

Even as the Blue Marble was miniaturizing your conception of Earth, it was inflating your sense of importance in relation to it, endowing you a godlike perspective and agency. The image caused, in other words, a derangement of scale, from which you people still suffer. As your anxiety about the disastrous effects of your behavior on the biosphere grows, you console yourself with the thought that by changing a light bulb or recycling a bottle or choosing paper instead of plastic, you can save the planet.

Three Sides of a Coin" Am I in your light?                            No, go on reading       (the hackneyed light of evening quarrelling with the bulbs;       the book’s bent rectangle solid on your knees) only my fingers in your hair, only, my eyes splitting the skull to tickle your brain with love in a slow caress blurring the mind,                                    kissing your mouth awake opening the body’s mouth stopping the words. This light is thick with birds, and evening warns us beautifully of death. Slowly I bend over you, slowly your breath runs rhythms through my blood as if I said                                I love you and you should raise your head. listening, speaking into the covert night     :    Did someone say something?                               Love, am I in your light? Am I?       See how love alters the living face       go spin the immortal coin through time       watch the thing flip through space                      tick       tick Muriel Rukeyser, Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser. (University of Pittsburgh Press May 10th 2014)

That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know, truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all th things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student's exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat; well shepherded by the boats of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians; they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing - the stream.

is too high up in the air for my taste, too little on solid ground. And, after all, art itself is solid enough, that isn’t the trouble. But being a counting house is a passing thing, “être un comptoir cela passe,” is not a phrase of my own but of somebody whose sayings have come terribly true. I wish you were or would become a painter. I say this straight out, more emphatically than before, because I really believe that the great art-dealing business is in many respects a speculation like the bulb trade was. And the situations in it, dependent on chance and freaks of fortune.

A few scrapes, my ass,” she muttered, wringing her shaking hands. Constance shoved a bulb of garlic at her. “They’re Highlanders, dear. They’ll get themselves stabbed, dragged through a briar patch, thrown over a cliff, and punched in the face all before breakfast and call it ‘a fair interesting morn’.’ Now, peel those and put the cloves in the hot water.” The older woman nodded toward the steaming kettle a maid had deposited on the hearth. “Garlic water cleans wounds better than plain water and keeps infection away.” She latched onto the competence Constance radiated. While calming her with brisk assurances that all would be well, the older woman deftly deployed a small army of castle servants on various missions relating to “doctoring a bone-headed Highland husband.

But the clown did not disappear along that curve that seemed to define the edge of that old existence. Instead, it leaped with a scary, nimble grace onto a lamppost that stood in the extreme left foreground of the picture. It shinnied up like a monkey on a stick—and suddenly its face was pressed against the tough plastic sheet Will Hanlon had put over each of the pages in his book. Beverly screamed again and this time Eddie joined her, although his scream was faint and blue-breathless. The plastic bulged out—later they would all agree they saw it. Bill saw the bulb of the clown’s red nose flatten, the way your nose will flatten when you press it against a windowpane. “Kill you all!” The clown was laughing and screaming. “Try to stop me and I’ll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can’t stop me! I’m the Gingerbread Man! I’m the Teenage Werewolf!” And for a moment It was the Teenage

Doggerel by a Senior Citizen (for Robert Lederer) Our earth in 1969 Is not the planet I call mine, The world, I mean, that gives me strength To hold off chaos at arm’s length. My Eden landscapes and their climes Are constructs from Edwardian times, When bath-rooms took up lots of space, And, before eating, one said Grace. The automobile, the aeroplane, Are useful gadgets, but profane: The enginry of which I dream Is moved by water or by steam. Reason requires that I approve The light-bulb which I cannot love: To me more reverence-commanding A fish-tail burner on the landing. My family ghosts I fought and routed, Their values, though, I never doubted: I thought the Protestant Work-Ethic Both practical and sympathetic. When couples played or sang duets, It was immoral to have debts: I shall continue till I die To pay in cash for what I buy. The Book of Common Prayer we knew Was that of 1662: Though with-it sermons may be well, Liturgical reforms are hell. Sex was of course —it always is— The most enticing of mysteries, But news-stands did not then supply Manichean pornography. Then Speech was mannerly, an Art, Like learning not to belch or fart: I cannot settle which is worse, The Anti-Novel or Free Verse. Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith, Who dig the symbol and the myth: I count myself a man of letters Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters. Dare any call Permissiveness An educational success? Saner those class-rooms which I sat in, Compelled to study Greek and Latin. Though I suspect the term is crap, There is a Generation Gap, Who is to blame? Those, old or young, Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue. But Love, at least, is not a state Either en vogue or out-of-date, And I’ve true friends, I will allow, To talk and eat with here and now. Me alienated? Bosh! It’s just As a sworn citizen who must Skirmish with it that I feel Most at home with what is Real.

I The calluses on his feet have grown the size of garlic: a bulb for each heel. His skin is thick under the layers of thinning tatters: of various fading colors, worn-out labels of clothes and pesticide bottles that buried him in debt when the lean season came. The shadow of his nose, the dark in his sun-browned face creases as he narrates his story. A flame dances between us as his wife tells of how her hands were viciously lashed when she tried to save their crops from being inundated: livelihoods eventually needed washing off by the stream. Even without the onset of drought, even without the coming of storms calluses grow enourmous, hands get bloodied and torn. What do we know about exploitation? Who planted the greedy plunderers in our land? Where are its roots, when do we pull out abuse by its foundations? What kind of calamity is this semi-feudalism? II. The streams are being muddied by footsteps rushing towards each front, to the fields where a new government is a seedling born. What law of the land, law of the heavens, raging miracle or pains of hunger brought us over to the side of the people? There is none that was written or told, none that was carved or sculpted. No book, no legend. We are here asking: What law? We who are mere drops in an unstoppable surge that comes. - Translation of Kerima Lorena Tariman’s “Salaysay at Kasaysayan” By ILANG-ILANG QUIJANO

Why reinvent the light bulb Did you have a problem with the burning light? Thanks to Thomas Edison’s effort, we don’t need to invent a flashlight, we just go to the store or our closet and pull one out and fuck in. I’m sure you realize that Thomas Edison took many attempts before the lamp was mastered by someone who once asked him if he discouraged his failure and said, “Cut, I haven’t failed yet, I’ve discovered another way not to make a light lamp. You see, there’s nothing like failure, there’s just results. Someone once said that defining madness is doing something over and over and getting the same results. To do our lives right, we have to change the things we do. Just like light can burn, so we can. Life can become dark and depressed and we feel no light, no hope of sight. This picture is certainly not clear. Let me highlight this situation (intentional). When we feel down and deep in the hole, that’s when we need light to see our way through. Some of us are lucky enough to have some light on our hands, others have to come out and get it back. Many people try to invent light for themselves by thinking about positive ideas, but so far it takes them. It just gives a lot of light and there’s more light available, but people at a secondary level are about how to get it. We must not be like Thomas Edison, continue to look at the problem and think of ways to solve it. For every problem, there’s a solution. How do we find a solution? We can try, as we have said, to try to figure it out ourselves, or we can find someone who has already crossed this obstacle and do what they did. There are many books on the market today that can help us understand how to overcome obstacles in our lives. We have to read and learn from the failure of others, they’ve been through it before, and they can help teach us how to go through it. We all need more light in our lives and sometimes we can’t see light at the end of the tunnel, but there’s always hope and assistance. You know how others overcome their challenges and keep this education in you even when you feel weak and life seems bad. Don’t try to reinvent the light lamp. Learn how to carry light in yourself.

Just above Tommy’s face were the Maiden and the Troll, two of his oldest wall people. The troll lived in a cave deep in the woods. He was big (Tommy knew the troll was even bigger than his daddy, and if the troll told his daddy to sit down and shut up, he would in a second), and he looked scary, with his little eyes and crooked teeth like fangs, but he had a secret. The secret was that he wasn’t scary at all. He liked to read, and play chess by mail with a gnome from over by the closet wall, and he never killed anything. The troll was a good troll, but everyone judged him by his looks. And that, Tommy knew, was a mean thing to do, though everyone did it. The maiden was very beautiful. Even more beautiful than Tommy’s mommy. She had long blonde hair that fell in heavy curls to her waist, and big blue eyes, and she always smiled even though her family was poor. She came into the woods near the troll’s cave to get water from a spring, for her family. The spring bubbled out of Tommy’s wall right next to where his hand lay when he was asleep. Sometimes she only came and filled her jug and left. But other times she would sit awhile, and sing songs of love lost, and sailing ships, and the kings and queens of Elfland. And the troll, so hideous and so kind, would listen to her soft voice from the shadows just inside the entrance of his cave, which sat just below the shelf where Tommy kept his favorite toys and books. Tommy felt bad for the troll. He loved the maiden who came to his spring, but she would never love him. He knew from listening to his parents and the stuff they watched on television when he was supposed to be asleep that beautiful people didn’t love ugly people. Ugly people were either to laugh at or to be frightened of. That was how the whole world worked. Tommy rolled over on his side, just a small seven year old boy in tan cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He let his eyes drift over the bedroom wall, which was lumpy in some places and just gone in others. There was a part of the wall down near the floor where he could see the yellow light of the naked bulb down in the basement, and sometimes he wondered what might live down there. Nothing good, of that he was sure.

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE

Q: How many Java programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: One, to generate a “ChangeLightBulb” event to the socket. Q: How many C++ programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: You’re still thinking procedurally. A well-designed lightbulb object would inherit a change method from a generic lightbulb class. Q: How many Windows programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Three. One to write WinGetLightBulbHandle, one to write WinQueryStatusLightBulb, and one to write WinGetLight-SwitchHandle. Q: How many database programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Three. One to write the lightbulb removal program, one to write the lightbulb insertion program, and one to act as a lightbulb administrator to make sure nobody else tries to change the light-bulb at the same time. Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: None. That’s a hardware problem. Q: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: None. They will redefine darkness as an industry standard.

Classification of Vegetables The classification of vegetables is by a specific part of the plant, as follows:Δ Classification Example Roots Carrots, radishes, beets Bulbs Onion, garlic Tubers Sweet and white potatoes Leafy Lettuce, spinach, and most greens Stems Celery Flowers Broccoli Fruit Squash, cucumbers Seeds Peas, beans

Faith is thus the channel or connection to the power of the gospel, just as a light switch is the channel or connection between a light bulb and an electrical source.

They go out to their work, searching for food…. —Job 24:5 (NKJV) My husband, Keith, and I decided to drive down to Tulip Town and wander the fields of vibrant color the Skagit Valley is famous for. Enchanted, we ordered about twenty different varieties for our half-barrel planters. I loved deciding between the American Dream and the Peking Red, the Black Diamond and the Purissima, the Monte Carlo and the Gudoshnik. We planted the bulbs in September, but it was a bad winter. When spring came, I saw only about one-tenth of the tulips we’d planted. Closer inspection revealed squirrels had lived off our bulbs when other food was really scarce. I was upset and complained loudly, angrily, to Keith, but he only said, “The squirrels needed food.” I grumped about that for a while but slowly came to realize that he was right: Providing nourishment should trump surface beauty every time. I came to see the squirrels as survivors and was glad that the tulips had helped them get through the winter. Lord, help me to understand more quickly that being part of the balance of life means I don’t always get to do things my way. —Rhoda Blecker Digging Deeper: Prv 18:17; Ez 34:18

Senator, let’s face it, most reporters add two and two and get chocolate. You think those dim bulbs could ever figure out any of this? But the opposition’s another matter. They’re the smart guys in the room.

lit with purple and yellow bulbs like dingo balls. I

On the page in the book in the cabin on the mountain was a picture of an ant with what appeared to be a twig caught on its head, a twig tipped with a prickly looking bulb. But on the scale of ants, even what resembled a twig would be tiny. So the man looked, but did not see. He was supposed to know so much more about everything by now. “What am I looking at here?” The boy was patient with him, his slowness to comprehend. “That stick-looking thing? That’s a fungus growing into the ant’s head. Basically, it uses the ant as its legs to get around so it can do what needs doing.” The man stared at the ant, trying to divine anything he could from its little button eyes. At first he felt sympathy for it, then realized no, what he felt was kinship. The ant was lucky. He was lucky. Briefly, he wondered if his thoughts were really his own.

God’s Word is the most critical tool you could use. The Bible is the inspired Word of God. This means that God spoke to everyone that wrote a book in the Bible on what he wanted an account of. In the same manner, God has inspired me to write this book and has helped me to know what to include. Scripture is meant to edify, teach, correct, encourage, inspire, and give hope to all who hear and read it. Throughout this book I have shared scripture to back up what I was saying. God reveals things in scripture to those who seek it out. You can read the same passage of scripture for years, and then one day it seems a light bulb goes on. He will show you something deeper about that verse. God is multifaceted. He is not limited to one way of speaking to you, nor does he limit His Word to one message. What I mean by that is one scripture can teach you something, and then at another time, God may reveal even more meaning to that scripture. It is like there are layers to passages of scripture, just as you may pull back layers of wallpaper. Each layer is different and reveals a bit more. As you seek to draw closer to God, He will start to peel back those layers and teach you more and more, as you are able to receive it. If you are new to reading the Bible, it may seem a bit intimidating at first. Where do you start? What should you read? I suggest researching scripture that applies to what you are going through. If you are suffering from fear, then research fear. Once you have found some scriptures, read a few of the verses before and after the verse you chose to help you learn the context in which it was written. You may also want to read from Proverbs daily, consider the Psalms and the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. May I also suggest you consider finding a Bible study group to join or at the very least purchase a beginner’s Bible study guide. Next, choose a few of the scriptures you researched that really spoke to you and write them down on a 3x5 index card. Or you may want to print each verse out on a sheet of paper. Then hang them up where you will see them, such as your bathroom mirror, above your desk at home, or even throughout your house. If you can, take a few to work with you. Each day, multiple times a day, speak those scriptures out loud. I suggest at a minimum speak them when you get up in the morning and before you go to bed at night. The spoken Word is so powerful. As I mentioned before, it is a weapon against the devil. He loses power every time you speak scripture. It also triggers your mind to believe what you say. That is why it is so important to be very careful about anything you speak. Negative thoughts start to become real to you when you speak them. These steps are things I have practiced through the years and found them to be very helpful. If you are struggling with multiple negative thoughts, it may be easier to find scripture for one at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself with trying to deal with everything at once. You can switch out the verses or add to them as time goes on. Do what works for you.

Charlie thought of the flea-ridden couch, the bare bulb of the bike shop, and the gaunt lines in Spark Plug's face. He thought of his own dark nights when he felt the creeping hand of the government tracking him. Better men than he had cast morality aside to live in the mouth-watering world of wealth. Smarter men had seduced themselves into positions of power with half-truths and shoddy rationales. He had never been offered a chance to live in this Garden of Eden, but if he was, he suspected that the shiny red fruit of knowledge would send him tumbling away from the paradise of the wealthy. Charlie knew worried fathers who could not feed their families. He knew mothers who worked two jobs only to send their children to bed hungry. He had peeled apart the intricate layers of a socio-economic system that was riddled with rotten deals that screwed people over. He had tasted the bittersweet fruit of truth and his understanding of right and wrong barred the gate to a blissful existence in this garden.

But you are not ungrateful, you never have been. Always, you could see the whirling constellation of wonders that makes up your life. God, there is just so much to love. Dust motes lit up by stage lights, the creak of a book’s binding when it’s opened for the first time, the ache in the back of your throat from singing too loud, the whirring noise of a light bulb as it’s flicked on, a warm blanket in a cold room, a kiss when you didn’t know you needed one, dark pencils, the wet snuffle of a dog’s nose, strangers who say ‘Bless you’ when you sneeze, mahogany, the dusty silk of flower petals, good lines in bad poems, the watercolour mess of sunset, snow, liquid-ink pens and more. So much more.

My books show me what it’s like to live in a reliable country where you flick on a switch and a bulb is guaranteed to shine and remain on, where you know that cars will stop at red lights and those traffic lights will not cease working a couple of times a day. How does it feel when a plumber shows up at the designated time, when he shows up at all? How does it feel to assume that when someone says she’ll do something by a certain date, she in fact does it?

TOOLBOX   B - Bulbs, Batteries. D - Duct tape, Drills. E - Electrical tester. F - Fuses, Fan belt (spare). G - Glues (super, fabric, threadlock, multipurpose) H - Hammers. J - Jacks, Jumper leads. K - Knives (box and pocket). L - Level (spirit). M - Marker pen, Mallet. O - Oils (Engine and lubricating) P

Born in 1987 in Malawi, William grew up in a village with no electricity or running water, and in a family that barely survived on the food it grew with a little left over to pay for school. After a terrible drought in 2001, William had to drop out of school because his family could no longer afford his school fees. He kept educating himself by going to the library and reading everything he could. One day, he found a book on windmills and determined he'd build one. So he did. Starting with scrap parts he found in light bulbs and radios. William built the first windmill he or his village had ever seen. And it worked, generating electricity for his family and his neighbors. Williamkamkwamba.com

also dates from the war years. J. D. Starkey describes how he would lower a cluster of electric bulbs over the side of an Admiralty trawler to attract fish, which could then be easily caught. One night in the Indian Ocean he found himself gazing at a “green unwinking eye”. Shining a powerful torch into the water, Starkey saw tentacles two feet thick. He walked the length of the ship, studying the monster, with its parrotlike beak, and realized that it had to be more than 175 feet long. The squid remained there for about fifteen minutes; then “as its valve opened fully . . . without any visible effort it zoomed into the night”. The major problem, as far as science is concerned, is that it seems virtually impossible to study sea monsters in their natural

She changed her position, contemplated a row od apple shrubs that she had put in last autumn at the bottom of the terrace, and slowly filled up again with comfortable thoughts. Things wee coming to a head. Her inner life, her restless inner life, was still and lay asleep. She was at liberty now to think of material things; positions of wardrobes and chests-of-drawers; lists of books to be piled by her bed; dressing jackets; white wooly vests and pants. It was not often she could thus play dolls and doll-houses without feeling she ought to be doing something else; that life was short; that she was threatened by the melancholy of life itself whose vapors sometimes reached her with overpowering strength. from her present sea-deep content two things were absent now - the horror of the ultimate departure, and the need to express herself before the end. The baby seemed to swim and strike like a dolphin. "it is a mystery," she said. "Women bearing children, bulbs becoming hyacinths, acorns … sheep… lambs. Feet that never touched the earth… I shall become two people." She stared between the apple trees; hypnotized, drugged by that sea-deep peace; wonder drifting weedily in and out. She was a vase, a container, a plot oak for a gnome to live in, a split oak, a hollow elm.

woke up in the middle of the night. Strange sounds were coming from outside our spaceship. I've watched enough scary movies to know that you should never investigate strange noises. It never ends well for the eager investigator, but I checked it out anyway. The moons were bright and big. This planet had three, small, medium, and large. They were arranged in a triangle and they lit up the night sky, like three high powered light bulbs. I checked the perimeter of the ship.

The whole meadow was squishy with water and violet with flowers. “They’re camas, a kind of lily, and you can eat the bulb.” Mother, daughter, and Jay spread out, holding sacks to fill. “Only the violet ones,” said Julia. “The ones with the white flowers, that’s the death camas.

IT was autumn in London, that blessed season between  the harshness of winter and the insincerities of summer;  a trustful season when one buys bulbs and sees to the  registration of one's vote, believing perpetually in  spring and a change of Government.

You’re not the brightest bulb in the chandelier are you?

On my next book tour the theme was monkeys, and on the latest one it was items men shove inside themselves and later have to go to the emergency room to have extracted. This started when an ER nurse told me about a patient she’d seen earlier in the week who had pushed a dildo too far up his ass. The door had shut behind it, so he’d tried fishing it out with a coat hanger. When that proved the wrong tool for the job, he’d snipped it with wire cutters, then gone after both the dildo and the cut-off hanger with a sturdier, fresh hanger. You hear this from doctors and nurses all the time: their patients shove light bulbs inside themselves, shampoo bottles, pool balls…and they always concoct some incredible story to explain their predicament. “I tripped” is a big one. And, OK, I’m pretty clumsy. I trip all the time, but never have I gotten back on my feet with a pepper grinder up my ass, not even a little bit. I’m pretty sure I could tumble down all the stairs in the Empire State Building—naked, with a greased-up rolling pin in each hand and a box of candles around my neck—and still end up in the lobby with an empty rectum. Another common excuse is “I accidentally sat on it.” Implied is that you were naked at the time and this can of air freshener that just happened to be coated with Vaseline went all the way up inside

- The trouble is that man, going back to Freud - and excuse the metaphor - heats up like a light bulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand - and this is pure science - heats up like an iron, slowly, over a low heat, like a tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her. Like the steel furnaces in Vizcaya! I weighed up Fermin's thermodynamic theories.

I remember how I felt in those days. The fear didn’t set in for a long time: for almost a month everyone was on tenterhooks, waiting for them to announce that, under the leadership of the Communist Party, our scientists, our heroic firemen, our soldiers have once again conquered the elements. They have won an unprecedented victory, they have driven the cosmic fire back into a test tube. The fear took a while to set in. For a long time, we kept it out. Yes, that was it. Absolutely! As I now realize, we could not make the mental connection between fear and peaceful nuclear energy. From all the textbooks and other books we’d read, in our minds we pictured the world as follows: military nuclear power was a sinister mushroom cloud billowing up into the sky, like at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, incinerating people instantly; whereas peaceful nuclear energy was a harmless light bulb. We had a childish image of the world; we were living life as depicted in children’s stories.

All evening, my mother’s cheeks blushed a deep red that could be noticed even in the low light of the lamp. My books show me what it’s like to live in a reliable country where you flick on a switch and a bulb is guaranteed to shine and remain on, where you know that cars will stop at red lights and those traffic lights will not cease working a couple of times a day. How does it feel when a plumber shows up at the designated time, when he shows up at all? How does it feel to assume that when someone says she’ll do something by a certain date, she in fact does it? Compared to the Middle East, William Burroughs’s world or Gabriel García Márquez’s Macondo is more predictable. Dickens’s Londoners are more trustworthy than the Lebanese. Beirut and its denizens are famously and infamously unpredictable. Every day is an adventure. This unsteadiness makes us feel a shudder of excitement, of danger, as well as a deadweight of frustration. The spine tingles momentarily and the heart sinks.

Harmful to Cats and Dogs. The list was broken down into two categories. Toxic to Felines: Amaryllis, Autumn Crocus, Azaleas and Rhododendrons, Bleeding Hearts, Castor Bean, Chrysanthemum, Cyclamen, English Ivy, Lilies, Oleander, Peace Lily, Spanish Thyme, Tulip and Narcissus bulbs, Yews Toxic to Canines: Castor Bean or Castor Oil Plant, Cyclamen, Dumb Cane, Hemlock, English Ivy, Mistletoe, Oleander, Thorn Apple, Yews

I went for walks across the fields in my cozy, cotton-knit shirt, my worn out jeans, and my cowboy boots. I would stand at the pasture fence and watch the sun set. One day, pink ripples trailed its red ball; then the next it was a yellow bulb shining against gold-dusted clouds. Though it seemed as if heaven was on the other side of the hill, for some reason, the sunset was sad. At night, I would sit in the rocking chair by the fire with a cup of coffee and a book in my hand, a practice I had grown to love over the years. But what was once refreshing was now depressing. And when I stopped to ask myself what was wrong with me to see the world as so dull, dark, and worn-out looking, I remembered.

This is light.” He tightened his fist and then quickly opened his fingers releasing a magical burst of flame from his right hand. Swirling around his palms in different directions he caused the scarlet blaze to dance in thin air before he firmly clutched it and caused it to disappear, ”Light is the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible. It causes things to burn and sparks the act of ignition…In the Mortal Bible in the book of Genesis it is the beginning of life...” The Professor opened his arms wide as he spoke with great bravado “‘And God said, “Let there be Light!’” and there was light.’’ His hands released a stream of lightning bolts that flashed so majestically that it caused all of the onlookers to mask their eyes from its harsh glow before the bolts ceased in their gleaming, “But remember God also labeled that light as good and God divided the light from the darkness…” As quickly as the flame flourished in his hands before, he used his fists with the same intensity causing all of the fluorescent bulbs to dim and the room to suddenly fall into complete darkness.

«در مواجهه با تفکرات مارکسیستی و التقاطی مبنای فکری ما کتاب‌های #شهید_مطهری بود.» :closed_book: قایقی با هشت سرنشین، خاطرات شهید ترکاشوند، نوشته #مصطفی_رحیمی، #نشر_شاهد، ص۶۰ :small_blue_diamond: این مضمون در کتاب‌های #خاطرات #شهدا بارها تکرار شده است. :bulb: به نظر می‌رسد نسل اول امت حزب‌الله در دهه ۵۰ و ۶۰، #کتابخانه و #کتابخوانی به ویژه مطالعه آثار شهید مطهری را به منظور داشتن یک #نظام_فکری جدی‌تر گرفته بودند. :bulb: پاسداری از انقلاب، نیازمند کتابخوانی و انس با آثار شهید مطهری است؛ جدی بگیریم!

It was in Durmond that I made the wonderful discovery of interlibrary loan, the greatest invention since the light bulb. […] All the libraries were linked together, so no matter where I moved, as long as I had a library card I would be part of a web as powerful and beautiful as the one in Charlotte’s Web. Just as Charlotte the spider wrote messages in her web that transformed Wilbur the ordinary pig into “some pig,” this web would transform me. I would eventually collect nearly fifty different library cards. I was snagged forever in the wonderful web of the public library system.

The body’s reaction to recognizing truth is relaxation, a literal, involuntary release of muscle tension. When we surrender to the truth, even difficult truth, our bodies may go almost limp and we begin breathing more deeply. This may have happened to you when you read the statements at the end of Chapter 1, such as “I don’t know what to do” or “I need help.” When our minds recognize truth, we experience that invisible cartoon light bulb going on in our heads, the feeling of a riddle being solved. “Aha!” we think, or “I get it!” or “Of course!” All the puzzle pieces fit. The math works. Everything makes logical sense. To our heart, the ring of truth feels like a flower opening up. In total integrity, we’re completely available to all emotion: overwhelming love, deep grief, terrible anger, sharp fear. This emotion may be painful, but it doesn’t cause the intense, dull suffering we feel in the dark wood of error. The emotional pain of a hard truth is eased by our soul’s response to aligning with reality. Around and beyond mere emotion, we feel a sense of freedom, a vast openness that includes all aspects of our experience. We connect with an unalterable stillness around and within us. There’s space for pain. There’s space for joy. And the space in which all sensation happens is made up of absolute well-being. It is (we are) a perfect, fertile no-thing-ness in which everything, even pain, has a useful place.