Class Captain Quotes

Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did? Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty. Ms. Wormwood: See me after class, Calvin. Calvin: [retrospectively] I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.

Weapons weren't in the class description. It's about basic self-defense and hand-to-hand." "Why bother then?" Adrian strolled over to a glass case displaying several types of brass knuckles. "That's the kind of stuff Castile does all day. He could have showed us." "I wanted someone a little more approachable," I explained. "What, like Captain McTropicalShorts back there? Where on earth did you find him anyway?" "Just did an Internet search." Feeling a need to defend my research, I added, "He comes highly recommended." "By who? Long John Silver?

The ship was sinking---and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, "We've got to get the lifeboats in the water right away." But the crew said, "First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we'll take care of the lifeboats." Then the women said, "First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait." The racial minorities said, "First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly." The captain said, "These are all important issues, but they won't matter a damn if we don't survive. We've got to lower the lifeboats right away!" But the religionists said, "First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats." Then the pro-life contingent said, "First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else." The right-to-choose contingent said, "First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we'll help with the lifeboats." The socialists said, "First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that's done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats." The animal-rights activists said, "First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can't let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats." Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned. The last thought of more than one of them was, "I never dreamed that solving humanity's problems would take so long---or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.

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.

Failing to make it to the list of the best 5 students in class or not being named the team captain should not make anyone feel like they have failed.

There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is no room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw to-day, so come the Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors.

That doesn’t sound invisible to me.” “I’m saying it wrong, then.” Lydia searched for a better way to explain. “She was always holding herself back. She was cocaptain, not captain. She could’ve dated the quarterback, but she dated his brother instead. She could’ve been top in her class, but she’d purposefully turn in a paper late or miss an assignment so she’d fall closer to the middle. She would know about Mauna Kea, but she would say Everest because winning would bring too much attention.

People often attain and hold power within an organization by downplaying their qualifications. “We gain status more readily, and more reliably, by acting just a little less deserving than we actually are.

Third Year German was the only class where she felt vaguely human. They spent the period listening to "99 Luftballons" and trying to work out the lyrics back into English. Hielten sich fur Captain Kirk. When you found German comforting, you knew you were in trouble

I guess teaching maths at Chandan Classes didn’t keep me as fit as when I was the volleyball captain at IIT Delhi.

the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it.

The easiest way to lead, it turns out, is to serve.

group of individuals who were unremarkable alone, but together— potent, magical.

We do not choose as captain of a ship the most highly born of those aboard.

THE SEVEN TRAITS OF ELITE CAPTAINS 1. Extreme doggedness and focus in competition. 2. Aggressive play that tests the limits of the rules. 3. A willingness to do thankless jobs in the shadows. 4. A low-key, practical, and democratic communication style. 5. Motivates others with passionate nonverbal displays. 6. Strong convictions and the courage to stand apart. 7. Ironclad emotional control.

Don’t tell anyone but part of my reasoning for taking the flight class was this idea that if i could become my own navigator- a captain of the sky that perhaps i could stop looking for direction- from you.

Now it was the Germans who had to fall back to new defensive positions. Among the German soldiers who had fought throughout the retreat was Corporal Hitler. On August 4 he was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, for ‘personal bravery and general merit’. This was an unusual decoration for a corporal. Hitler wore it for the rest of his life. The regimental adjutant who recommended him for it, Captain Hugo Guttman, was a Jew.

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space and allowing me to travel with Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under the sea, fight with d'Artagnan, Athos, Portos, and Aramis against the intrigues threatening the Queen in the days of the secretive Richelieu, or stumble through the sewers of Paris, transformed into Jean Valjean carrying Marius's inert body on my back.

I cannot have men stationed outside the first-class promenade. How will that look to well-paying passengers? This is not a workhouse and I will not treat my passengers like prisoners. They’re not being terrorized with a theatrical murder tonight and I intend to keep it that way. I will not make them suffer.” I physically had to check to see if my head had exploded from such a ridiculous statement. Gentle prodding of my hair proved my skull was still intact, miracle of all miracles. “You cannot be serious.” Thomas tossed his hands in the air. “It would seem an awful lot better to have crew members posted along the decks than to see dismembered body parts floating about while first-class patrons made their way to breakfast and tea. ‘Oh, look, Miss Eldridge, there’s a mauled torso. Won’t you pass the cream and sugar?’” “Don’t be absurd,” the captain said, aghast. “Apologies,” Thomas said, not sounding at all sorry, “I’m only following your lead.

we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship. The captain then called to the signalman, “Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees.” Back came a signal, “Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees.” The captain said, “Send, I’m a captain, change course 20 degrees.” “I’m a seaman second class,” came the reply. “You had better change course 20 degrees.” By that time, the captain was furious. He spat out, “Send, I’m a battleship. Change course 20 degrees.” Back came the flashing light, “I’m a lighthouse.

Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.    Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, “Light, bearing on the starboard bow.”    “Is it steady or moving astern?” the captain called out.    Lookout replied, “Steady, captain,” which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship.    The captain then called to the signalman, “Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees.”    Back came a signal, “Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees.”    The captain said, “Send, I’m a captain, change course 20 degrees.”    “I’m a seaman second class,” came the reply. “You had better change course 20 degrees.”    By that time, the captain was furious. He spat out, “Send, I’m a battleship. Change course 20 degrees.”    Back came the flashing light, “I’m a lighthouse.”    We changed course.

There were many of the upper and noble classes who had also found this alluring lifestyle completely irresistible; so many, many folks – from all over the world – had made their way over to the Caribbean for one reason or other, to readily embrace this attractiveness which it had produced for them!

Ah, they are here for training… but not for my kind of training,” said the knight-captain. “What do you mean?” “We want to be rogues, sir,” the recruits said. “Oh! Then you want to be at Shadow’s dojo.” Devlin nodded. “I didn’t know how to get there, so…” “I see. I got it from here.” “Okay, back to class, then.

And I wanted to do something that Charlie hadn’t done. He’d never been a pageboy. And now he was too old, so he never would be. Charlie had always been the chosen one. He was captain of his soccer team again. When he was in grade six he was captain of Yarra house. And last week the girls in his class voted him as the boy they’d most like to kiss. It sucked.

By December 1975, a year had passed since Mr. Harvey had packed his bags, but there was still no sign of him. For a while, until the tape dirtied or the paper tore, store owners kept a scratchy sketch of him taped to their windows. Lindsey and Samuel walked in the neighboorhood or hung out at Hal's bike shop. She wouldn't go to the diner where the other kids went. The owner of the diner was a law and order man. He had blown up the sketch of George Harvey to twice its size and taped it to the front door. He willingly gave the grisly details to any customer who asked- young girl, cornfield, found only an elbow. Finallly Lindsey asked Hal to give her a ride to the police station. She wanted to know what exactly they were doing. They bid farewell to Samuel at the bike shop and Hal gave Lindsey a ride through a wet December snow. From the start, Lindsey's youth and purpose had caught the police off guard. As more and more of them realized who she was, they gave her a wider and wider berth. Here was this girl, focused, mad, fifteen... When Lindsey and Hal waited outside the captain's office on a wooden bench, she thought she saw something across the room that she recognized. It was on Detective Fenerman's desk and it stood out in the room because of its color. What her mother had always distinguished as Chinese red, a harsher red than rose red, it was the red of classic red lipsticks, rarely found in nature. Our mother was proud of her ability fo wear Chinese red, noting each time she tied a particular scarf around her neck that it was a color even Grandma Lynn dared not wear. Hal,' she said, every muscle tense as she stared at the increasingly familiar object on Fenerman's desk. Yes.' Do you see that red cloth?' Yes.' Can you go and get it for me?' When Hal looked at her, she said: 'I think it's my mother's.' As Hal stood to retrieve it, Len entered the squad room from behind where Lindsey sat. He tapped her on the shoulder just as he realized what Hal was doing. Lindsey and Detective Ferman stared at each other. Why do you have my mother's scarf?' He stumbled. 'She might have left it in my car one day.' Lindsey stood and faced him. She was clear-eyed and driving fast towards the worst news yet. 'What was she doing in your car?' Hello, Hal,' Len said. Hal held the scarf in his head. Lindsey grabbed it away, her voice growing angry. 'Why do you have m mother's scarf?' And though Len was the detective, Hal saw it first- it arched over her like a rainbow- Prismacolor understanding. The way it happened in algebra class or English when my sister was the first person to figure out the sum of x or point out the double entendres to her peers. Hal put his hand on Lindsey's shoulder to guide her. 'We should go,' he said. And later she cried out her disbelief to Samuel in the backroom of the bike shop.

Why this book is disliked by gay readers: Captain Ernst Roehm, was a stocky, bull-necked, piggish-eyed, scar-faced professional soldier—the upper part of his nose had been shot away in 1914—with a flair for politics and a natural ability as an organizer. Like Hitler he was possessed of a burning hatred for the democratic Republic. His aim was to re-create a strong nationalist Germany and he believed with Hitler that this could be done only by a party based on the lower classes, from which he himself, unlike most Regular Army officers, had come. A tough, ruthless, driving man—albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual—he helped to organize the first Nazi strong-arm squads which grew into the S.A.... (...) Murderers, pimps, homosexual perverts, drug addicts or just plain rowdies were all the same to him if they served his purposes. (...) The brown-shirted S.A. never became much more than a motley mob of brawlers. Many of its top leaders, beginning with its chief, Roehm, were notorious homosexual perverts. Lieutenant Edmund Heines, who led the Munich S.A., was not only a homosexual but a convicted murderer. These two and dozens of others quarreled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations, with their peculiar jealousies, can. (...) [Hitler] who was so monumentally intolerant by his very nature, was strangely tolerant of one human condition—a man’s morals. No other party in Germany came near to attracting so many shady characters. As we have seen, a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, homosexuals, alcoholics and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven. (...) Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop and ex-bouncer in a café frequented by homosexuals, whom Roehm had made leader of the Berlin S.A., had alerted the storm troopers...

All right, you. Stand straight. Pull your belly in. Pull your chin in. Keep your shoulders back. Hold your head level. Look straight front. Turn left. Turn right. Face front again and hold your hands out. Palms up. Palms down. Pull your sleeves back. No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective. Well, well, nice to see you, Marlowe. That’s all. Next man.” Much obliged, Captain. Thanks for the time. You forgot to have me open my mouth. I have some nice inlays and one very high-class porcelain jacket crown. Eighty-seven dollars worth of porcelain jacket crown. You forgot to look inside my nose too, Captain. A lot of scar tissue in there for you. Septum operation and was that guy a butcher! Two hours of it in those days. I hear they do it in twenty minutes now. I got it playing football, Captain, a slight miscalculation in an attempt to block a punt. I blocked the guy’s foot instead—after he kicked the ball. Fifteen yards penalty, and that’s about how much stiff bloody tape they pulled out of my nose an inch at a time the day after the operation. I’m not bragging, Captain. I’m just telling you. It’s the little things that count.

Wild Times Since Mexico accepted communism as a legitimate political party during the 1920’s and allowed refugees greater flexibility of thought, it became a haven from persecution. Moreover, living in Mexico was less costly than most countries, the weather was usually sunny and no one objected to the swinging lifestyle that many of the expats engaged in. It was for these reasons that Julio Mella from Cuba, Leon Trotsky from Russia and others sought refuge there. It also attracted many actors, authors and artists from the United States, many of whom were Communist or, at the very least were “Fellow Travelers” and had leftist leanings. Although the stated basic reason for the Communist Party’s existence was to improve conditions for the working class, it became a hub for the avant-garde, who felt liberated socially as well as politically. The bohemian enclave of Coyoacán now a part of Mexico City, where Frida Kahlo was born, was located just east of San Angel which at the time was a district of the ever expanding City. It also became the gathering place for personalities such as the American actor Orson Welles, the beautiful actress Dolores del Río, the famous artist Diego Rivera and his soon-to-be-wife, “Frida,” who became and is still revered as the illustrious matriarch of Mexico.

We're in her bedroom,and she's helping me write an essay about my guniea pig for French class. She's wearing soccer shorts with a cashmere sweater, and even though it's silly-looking, it's endearingly Meredith-appropriate. She's also doing crunches. For fun. "Good,but that's present tense," she says. "You aren't feeding Captain Jack carrot sticks right now." "Oh. Right." I jot something down, but I'm not thinking about verbs. I'm trying to figure out how to casually bring up Etienne. "Read it to me again. Ooo,and do your funny voice! That faux-French one your ordered cafe creme in the other day, at that new place with St. Clair." My bad French accent wasn't on purpose, but I jump on the opening. "You know, there's something,um,I've been wondering." I'm conscious of the illuminated sign above my head, flashing the obvious-I! LOVE! ETIENNE!-but push ahead anyway. "Why are he and Ellie still together? I mean they hardly see each other anymore. Right?" Mer pauses, mid-crunch,and...I'm caught. She knows I'm in love with him, too. But then I see her struggling to reply, and I realize she's as trapped in the drama as I am. She didn't even notice my odd tone of voice. "Yeah." She lowers herself slwoly back to the floor. "But it's not that simple. They've been together forever. They're practically an old married couple. And besides,they're both really...cautious." "Cautious?" "Yeah.You know.St. Clair doesn't rock the boat. And Ellie's the same way. It took her ages to choose a university, and then she still picked one that's only a few neighborhoods away. I mean, Parsons is a prestigious school and everything,but she chose it because it was familiar.And now with St. Clair's mom,I think he's afraid to lose anyone else.Meanwhile,she's not gonna break up with him,not while his mom has cancer. Even if it isn't a healthy relationship anymore." I click the clicky-button on top of my pen. Clickclickclickclick. "So you think they're unhappy?" She sighs. "Not unhappy,but...not happy either. Happy enough,I guess. Does that make sense?" And it does.Which I hate. Clickclickclickclick. It means I can't say anything to him, because I'd be risking our friendship. I have to keep acting like nothing has changed,that I don't feel anything ore for him than I feel for Josh.

Captain Ernst Roehm, on the staff of the Army’s District Command VII in Munich, had joined the party before Hitler. He was a stocky, bull-necked, piggish-eyed, scar-faced professional soldier—the upper part of his nose had been shot away in 1914—with a flair for politics and a natural ability as an organizer. Like Hitler he was possessed of a burning hatred for the democratic Republic and the “November criminals” he held responsible for it. His aim was to re-create a strong nationalist Germany and he believed with Hitler that this could be done only by a party based on the lower classes, from which he himself, unlike most Regular Army officers, had come. A tough, ruthless, driving man—albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual—he helped to organize the first Nazi strong-arm squads which grew into the S.A., the army of storm troopers which he commanded until his execution by Hitler in 1934.

My parents must have seen something in me that I missed. My teachers insisted that I didn’t apply myself… I know that I didn’t like doing the additional homework my parents gave me, so instead of being a scholar I became the class clown. Ouch! My grades, although passing, didn’t come near reflecting my potential. It was suggested that I was a bright child who just didn’t apply himself. Most of the time I received only “C” grades, although they should have been at least “B+” and perhaps by showing just a bit more effort I could have been an “A” student or better. Lazy, was the term they used, and for this reason they gave me lower grades. But nothing fazed me as long as I passed and was promoted with my class. Punishing me also didn’t work, and boxing my ears only made me more rebellious. It must have seemed futile to my parents, but they continued doing what they thought was right. Being defiant, I insisted that if they didn’t give me so much additional work, I would have more time for what was assigned. However, that was not to be.

And, in treating of the social relations with the middle classes which the Prince had at Doncières, it may be as well to add these few words. The lieutenant-colonel played the piano beautifully; the senior medical officer’s wife sang like a Conservatoire medallist. This latter couple, as well as the lieutenant-colonel and his wife, used to dine every week with M. de Borodino. They were flattered, unquestionably, knowing that when the Prince went to Paris on leave he dined with Mme. de Pourtalès, and the Murats, and people like that. “But,” they said to themselves, “he’s just a captain, after all; he’s only too glad to get us to come. Still, he’s a real friend, you know.” But when M. de Borodino, who had long been pulling every possible wire to secure an appointment for himself nearer Paris, was posted to Beauvais, he packed up and went, and forgot as completely the two musical couples as he forgot the Doncières theatre and the little restaurant to which he used often to send out for his luncheon, and, to their great indignation, neither the lieutenant-colonel nor the senior medical officer, who had so often sat at his table, ever had so much as a single word from him for the rest of their lives

Let us have peace." But there was the black man looming like a dark ghost on the horizon. He was the child of force and greed, and the father of wealth and war. His labor was indispensable, and the loss of it would have cost many times the cost of the war. If the Negro has been silent, his very presence would have announced his plight. He was not silence. He was in usual evidence. He was writing petitions, making speeches, parading with returned soldiers, reciting his adventures as slave and freeman. Even dumb and still, he must be noticed. His poverty has to be relieved, and emancipation in his case had to mean poverty. If he had to work, he had to have land and tools. If his labor was in reality to be free labor, he had to have legal freedom and civil rights. His ignorance could only be removed by that very education which the law of the South had long denied him and the custom of the North had made exceedingly difficult. Thus civil status and legal freedom, food, clothes and tools, access to land and help to education, were the minimum demands of four million laborers, and these demands no man could ignore, Northerner or Southerner, Abolitionist or Copperhead, laborer or captain of industry. How did the nation face this paradox and dilemma?

There is, perhaps, no class of men on the face of the earth, says Captain Bonneville, who lead a life of more continued exertion, peril, and excitement, and who are more enamored of their occupations, than the free trappers of the West. No tail, no danger, no privation can turn the trapper from his pursuit. His passionate excitement at times resembles mania. In vain may the most vigilant and cruel savages best his path, in vain may rocks and precipices and wintry torrents oppose his progress, let but a single track of a beaver meet his eye, and he forgets all the dangers and defies all difficulties. At times, he may be seen with his traps on his shoulder, buffeting his way across rapid streams, amidst floating blocks of ice: at other times, he is to be found with his traps swung on his back clambering the most rugged mountains, scaling or descending the most frightful precipices, searching, by routes inaccessible to the horse, and never before trodden by white man, for springs and lakes unknown to his comrades, and where he may meet with his favorite game. Such is the mountaineer, the hardy trapper of the West, and such, as we have slightly sketched it, is the wild, Robin Hood kind of life, with all its strange and motley populace, now existing in full vigor among the Rocky Mountains.

You love the sea, don’t you, Captain?”“Yes, I love it! The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert where a man is never alone, for he can feel life quivering all about him. The sea is only a receptacle for all the prodigious, supernatural things that exist inside it; it is only movement and love; it is the living infinite, as one of your poets has said. And in fact, Professor, it contains the three kingdoms of nature—mineral, vegetable and animal. This last is well represented by the four groups of zoophytes, by the three classes of articulata, by the five classes of mollusks, by three classes of vertebrates, mammals and reptiles, and those innumerable legions of fish, that infinite order of animals which includes more than thirteen thousand species, only one-tenth of which live in fresh water. The sea is a vast reservoir of nature. The world, so to speak, began with the sea, and who knows but that it will also end in the sea! There lies supreme tranquillity. The sea does not belong to tyrants. On its surface, they can still exercise their iniquitous rights, fighting, destroying one another and indulging in their other earthly horrors. But thirty feet below its surface their power ceases, their influence dies out and their domination disappears! Ah, Monsieur, one must live—live within the ocean! Only there can one be independent! Only there do I have no master! There I am free!

Freed slaves returned to Africa settled in a section of what was known as the “Pepper Coast” and on July 26, 1847, issued a Declaration of Independence and established a constitution based on the political principles denoted in the United States Constitution. In doing so they established the independent Republic of Liberia. Law and Order was something the ruling class of Liberians prided themselves on. The Americo Liberians, as they called themselves, were uber-Conservatives and had a glorified picture of what the American government was like. As Conservatives they saw themselves living a privileged lifestyle, sustained by their faith in God and the blessings that had been bestowed upon them by this deity. Amongst themselves there was much talk about the subjects of freedom, liberty, democracy and independence. They felt that these idealisms were deserved because of their exceptionalism. Taking a page from the concept of American exceptionalism, they fantasied of their very own Liberian exceptionalism, completely forgetting the indigenous natives living among them. Whereas the Americo Liberians lived an affluent lifestyle reflecting the antebellum era in the Southern tier of the United States, the local blacks, for the greatest part lived in squalor. In 1980, a violent military coup shattered the way of life in Liberia. Led by army Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, the country’s ruling group of Americo-Liberians were brutally overthrown and frequently executed. Doe's term as President of Liberia led to a period of civil wars, resulting in the devastation of Liberia’s economy. Liberia became one of the most impoverished nations in the world, in which most of the population still lives below the international poverty line.

Adeline is Battered & Threatened Not knowing the title of this bureaucrat, I addressed him incorrectly as Meine Herrschaften. With this silly fabricated title, I simply tried to explain to him that the corporal was a brave Frontsoldat. My efforts were in vain since he was intent on finding out the corporal’s name, and my stalling only made matters worse. “What’s his name?” he shouted again and again, this time hitting my breasts and punching me in the stomach, which caused me to vomit all over the floor. It didn’t matter to him that my husband was a German soldier fighting for das Vaterland. He continued to beat me and threatened to put me into the terrible prison camp at Schirmeck. Having passed by there recently, the crying and moaning sounds from inside the gates of this prison were still very vivid in my mind. He reached for his telephone and said, “With one call you’ll be there if you don’t answer me!” “Please, I won’t be able to live with myself if I’m the cause of an innocent person’s death,” I sobbed. I remember him saying, “I remember you! You’re the woman from Bischoffsheim who helped with the kindergarten class and did the art work there. You have two little girls, don’t you?” How could this man know so much about me? He continued his threats by saying that he would beat my little girls at 3 o’clock every afternoon in the Village center, until I gave him the names he wanted. I formed a mental image of this cruel act, however in spite of this, I firmly told him that I would never talk and that the only Etappenhase was the man standing in front of me. The last thing I can remember was him using the telephone to hit me. His last blow struck me above my right eye…. With this I fell down into my own vomit and lost consciousness!

You are a passenger. We are all, often, passengers. The boat, history, is going somewhere. You are not the captain. But you have excellent accommodations. Of course, down there in the hold are famished immigrants or enslaved Africans or press-ganged tars. You can’t help them—you do feel sorry for them—and you can’t control the captain, either. Cosseted though you may be, you are actually quite powerless. A gesture on your part might relieve your bad conscience, if you have a bad conscience, but would not materially improve their situation. How would it help them to give up your own spacious cabin, with the room you require for your copious belongings, since, although those below have very few belongings, there are so many of them? The food you are eating would never be enough to feed all of them; indeed, if prepared with them in mind as well, it would no longer be as refined; and of course the view would be spoiled (crowds spoil a view, crowds litter, etc.). So you have no choice but to enjoy the excellent food and the view. Nevertheless, assuming you are not indifferent, you think a lot about what is going on. Even if it is not your responsibility, how can it be your responsibility, you are still a participant and a witness. (First- or second-class passengers, these are the points of view from which most accounts of history are written.) And if those being persecuted are those who might have had accommodations as agreeable as your own, people of your own rank or who have your interests, you are far less likely to be indifferent to their present distress. Of course, you cannot prevent them from being punished if they are in fact guilty. But, assuming you are not indifferent, that you are a decent person, you will try to intervene when you can. Counsel leniency. Or at least prudence. The

He strode forward, heedless of the murmuring that began among the women when they saw him. Then Sara turned, and her gaze met his. Instantly a guilty blush spread over her cheeks that told him all he needed to know about her intent. “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said in steely tones. “Class is over for today. Why don’t you all go up on deck and get a little fresh air?” When the women looked at Sara, she folded her hands primly in front of her and stared at him. “You have no right to dismiss my class, Captain Horn. Besides, we aren’t finished yet. I was telling them a story—” “I know. You were recounting Lysistrata.” Surprise flickered briefly in her eyes, but then turned smug and looked down her aristocratic little nose at him. “Yes, Lysistrata,” she said in a sweet voice that didn’t fool him for one minute. “Surely you have no objection to my educating the women on the great works of literature, Captain Horn.” “None at all.” He set his hands on his hips. “But I question your choice of material. Don’t you think Aristophanes is a bit beyond the abilities of your pupils?” He took great pleasure in the shock that passed over Sara’s face before she caught herself. Ignoring the rustle of whispers among the women, she stood a little straighter. “As if you know anything at all about Aristophanes.” “I don’t have to be an English lordling to know literature, Sara. I know all the blasted writers you English make so much of. Any one of them would have been a better choice for your charges than Aristophanes.” As she continued to glower at him unconvinced, he scoured his memory, searching through the hundreds of verse passages his English father had literally pounded into him. “You might have chosen Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, for example—‘fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow. / And dart not scornful glances from those eyes / to wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.’” It had been a long time since he’d recited his father’s favorite passages of Shakespeare, but the words were as fresh as if he’d learned them only yesterday. And if anyone knew how to use literature as a weapon, he did. His father had delighted in tormenting him with quotes about unrepentant children. Sara gaped at him as the other women looked from him to her in confusion. “How . . . I mean . . . when could you possibly—” “Never mind that. The point us, you’re telling them the tale of Lysistrata when what you should be telling them is ‘thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper. /thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee / and for thy maintenance commits his body / to painful labour by both sea and land.’” Her surprise at this knowledge of Shakespeare seemed to vanish as she recognized the passage he was quoting—the scene where Katherine accepts Petruchio as her lord and master before all her father’s guests. Sara’s eyes glittered as she stepped from among the women and came nearer to him. “We are not your wives yet. And Shakespeare also said ‘sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more / men were deceivers ever / one foot on sea and one on shore / to one thing constant never.’” “Ah, yes. Much Ado About Nothing. But even Beatrice changes her tune in the end, doesn’t she? I believe it’s Beatrice who says, ‘contempt, farewell! And maiden pride, adieu! / no glory lives behind the back of such./ and Benedick, love on, I will requite thee, / taming my wild heart to thy loving hand.’” “She was tricked into saying that! She was forced to acknowledge him as surely as you are forcing us!” “Forcing you?” he shouted. “You don’t know the meaning of force! I swear, if you—” He broke off when he realized that the women were staring at him with eyes round and fearful. Sara was twisting his words to make him sound like a monster. And succeeding, too, confound her.

With the lessons learned from the Mike SSN disaster in the North Sea off Norway, the Typhoon’s captain decided to remain where he was to await rescue. Mack knew the Russian captain had lost his cool; he was now in the South China Sea, where no Russian ships could come to his rescue. What’s more, Cheyenne had finally picked up the last Akula, whose captain had elected to pull off to be able to fight another day and which had managed to distance itself from the fray. Cheyenne was there as the Typhoon reached the surface. The Russian submarine had been severely damaged, but Mack ordered four more torpedoes into the defenseless Typhoon. There was seldom mercy in wartime, and Cheyenne’s and Mack’s orders were clear. If he had allowed the Typhoon to survive, its crew would have cut the missile hatches open with blow torches and completed their launch against Taiwan. The result of the additional four torpedoes exploding beneath the Typhoon caused major seawater system flooding. The ensuing scene was similar to the devastation experienced by the Yankee class SSBN southeast of the Bermudas years before. Only this time there was no capability to protect and remove the crew. Life rafts were put over the side, only to be attacked by the South China Sea shark population, so the crew watched helplessly from the huge, flat missile-tube deck. The oversized submarine started settling slowly deeper, the water level rising to within meters of the missile- tube deck, with the crew topside. The captain—the admiral-to-be-had already sent a message to his North Fleet Headquarters concerning the impending demise of his capital ship and the lack of help from his Akula escorts by name, two of which had been sunk. He had not been given any means to communicate with the Chinese, so he resorted to calling home. After that he went topside to be with his men, sat down, and held hands in a circle as their submarine slid beneath the surface of the sea, sailors to the end, for eternity.

Baines told his son that children always got in the way of a marriage. Finding a state boarding school in England for Roland was good for everyone ‘all round’. Rosalind Baines, neé Morley, army wife, child of her times, did not chafe or rage against her powerlessness or sulk about it. She and Robert had left school at fourteen. He became a butcher’s boy in Glasgow, she was a chambermaid in a middle-class house near Farnham. A clean and ordered home remained her passion. Robert and Rosalind wanted for Roland the education they had been denied. This was the story she told herself. That he might have attended a day school and stayed with her was an idea she must have dutifully banished. She was a small nervous woman, a worrier, very pretty, everyone agreed. Easily intimidated, fearful of Robert when he drank, which was every day. She was at her best, her most relaxed, in a long heart-to-heart with a close friend. Then she told stories and laughed easily, a light and liquid sound that Captain Baines himself rarely heard. Roland was one of her close friends. In the holidays, when they did the housework together, she told stories of her childhood in the village of Ash, near the garrison town of Aldershot. She and her brothers and sisters used to brush their teeth with twigs. Her employer gave her her first toothbrush. Like so many of her generation she lost all her teeth in her early twenties. In newspaper cartoons people in bed were often shown with their false teeth in a glass of water on the bedside table. She was the oldest of five and spent much of her childhood minding her sisters and brothers. She was closest to her sister Joy who still lived near Ash. Where was their mother when Rosalind was minding the children? Her reply was always the same, a child’s view unrevised in adulthood: your granny would take the bus to Aldershot and spend the day window-shopping. Rosalind’s mother fiercely disapproved of make-up. In her teens, on rare nights out, Rosalind would meet her friend Sybil and together they

Weston, having been born in Chicago, was raised with typical, well-grounded, mid-western values. On his 16th birthday, his father gave him a Kodak camera with which he started what would become his lifetime vocation. During the summer of 1908, Weston met Flora May Chandler, a schoolteacher who was seven years older than he was. The following year the couple married and in time they had four sons. Weston and his family moved to Southern California and opened a portrait studio on Brand Boulevard, in the artsy section of Glendale, California, called Tropico. His artistic skills soon became apparent and he became well known for his portraits of famous people, such as Carl Sandburg and Max Eastman. In the autumn of 1913, hearing of his work, Margrethe Mather, a photographer from Los Angeles, came to his studio, where Weston asked her to be his studio assistant. It didn’t take long before the two developed a passionate, intimate relationship. Both Weston and Mather became active in the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles. She was extremely outgoing and artistic in a most flamboyant way. Her bohemian sexual values were new to Weston’s conventional thinking, but Mather excited him and presented him with a new outlook that he found enticing. Mather was beautiful, and being bisexual and having been a high-class prostitute, was delightfully worldly. Mather's uninhibited lifestyle became irresistible to Weston and her photography took him into a new and exciting art form. As Mather worked and overtly played with him, she presented a lifestyle that was in stark contrast to Weston’s conventional home life, and he soon came to see his wife Flora as a person with whom he had little in common. Weston expanded his horizons but tried to keep his affairs with other women a secret. As he immersed himself further into nude photography, it became more difficult to hide his new lifestyle from his wife. Flora became suspicious about this secret life, but apparently suffered in silence. One of the first of many women who agreed to model nude for Weston was Tina Modotti. Although Mather remained with Weston, Tina soon became his primary model and remained so for the next several years. There was an instant attraction between Tina Modotti, Mather and Edward Weston, and although he remained married, Tina became his student, model and lover. Richey soon became aware of the affair, but it didn’t seem to bother him, as they all continued to remain good friends. The relationship Tina had with Weston could definitely be considered “cheating,” since knowledge of the affair was withheld as much as possible from his wife Flora May. Perhaps his wife knew and condoned this new promiscuous relationship, since she had also endured the intense liaison with Margrethe Mather. Tina, Mather and Weston continued working together until Tina and Weston suddenly left for Mexico in 1923. As a group, they were all a part of the cozy, artsy, bohemian society of Los Angeles, which was where they were introduced to the then-fashionable, communistic philosophy.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN.” STILL? You’re on the Titanic II. It has just hit an iceberg and is sinking. And, as last time, there are not enough lifeboats. The captain shouts, “Women and children first!” But this time, another voice is heard: “Why women?” Why, indeed? Part of the charm of the cosmically successful movie Titanic is the period costume, period extravagance, period class prejudice. An audience can enjoy these at a distance. Oddly, however, of all the period mores in the film, the old maritime tradition of “women and children first” enjoys total acceptance by modern audiences. Listen to the booing and hissing at the on-screen heavies who try to sneak on with—or ahead of—the ladies. But is not grouping women with children a raging anachronism? Should not any self-respecting modern person, let alone feminist, object to it as patronizing and demeaning to women? Yet its usage is as common today as it was in 1912. Consider these examples taken almost at random from recent newspapers: Dateline Mexico:

James Boswell described what it was like growing up in Edinburgh in the 1740s, with its unceasing bustle and social diversity, as he would race home after class down Horse Wynd and up Borthwick’s Close, past “advocates, writers, Scotch Hunters, cloth-merchants, Presbyterian ministers, country lairds, captains both by land and sea, porters, chairmen, and cadies”—“cadies” being young men hired to do menial tasks (such as the one for which we still use the word, namely carrying golf clubs).

Somehow, though, Strachey and others on the vessel found the will to keep struggling, to fight for their lives though it seemed all was lost. Terrified now, the passengers forgot all class pretensions. Sir Thomas Gates and Admiral Somers and Captain Newport joined Ravens and Strachey and Rolfe and other crewmen and passengers in the half-flooded hold, where they began frantically searching the ship’s innards to find places where the planks had separated and seawater rushed in. Their chests heaving with exertion, their breathing ragged, their eyes wide with fear, they scrabbled in the dark, flooded belly of the pitching, rolling vessel, holding guttering candles high as they searched the ship’s ribs, the planks, every corner of the hold, listening to discover where the water was flowing in. “Many a weeping leak was this way found,” Strachey would later report. When a leak was found, Strachey or one of the others tried to stem the flow, using whatever was at hand. Perhaps one of the mariners, or possibly even Strachey himself, had heard how Magellan’s crew, almost a hundred years earlier, had used chunks of beef to stop leaks in the hull of their vessel as they sailed around the world. The Sea Venture’s crew tried the same remedy, using pieces of the beef taken on board in Plymouth to try to stop or slow the flow of water into the ship’s rapidly filling hold. But all, Strachey said, “was to no purpose.”10 The ship kept taking water despite the crew’s best efforts.

Although sledging was not considered gentlemanly at the time and seemed, temporarily perhaps, to die out after WG’s retirement from first class cricket in 1908, there had always been an undercurrent of hostility between the English and Australian players. Lord Harris’s 1878-79 tour to Australia set the trend for many of the ill-tempered Ashes clashes to follow, although the urn itself was not at stake. The home side hammered the English in the first Test in Melbourne, with the tourists’ captain so disappointed in his own performance that he hurled his bat across the pavilion. The bad feelings rolled over to the Sydney Test, and when Australian umpire George Coulthard adjudged local hero Billy Murdoch run out, two thousand spectators invaded the pitch and began attacking the English players. Lord Harris was beaten with a whip, Albert Hornby had his shirt ripped off and six English players were forced to defend themselves with stumps. In retaliation, many English clubs refused to play the touring Australians when they visited the following year.

Bill Aalto, the working-class Finnish-American boy from the Bronx, the tough, intelligent, street-wise kid who became a guerrilla captain and came out of Spain with the highest commendation of any awarded to a Lincoln brigader.

a team of suspected terrorists had boarded an aircraft in London that they were going to hi-jack.  Their target aircraft was a new 747 Jumbo Jet.  The terrorists didn’t realize the aircraft had been switched to a smaller 707 until after they were aboard and the aircraft was taxing.  Airline officials said they had planted a note in the first class bathroom notifying the Captain of their intent to take over the plane.  Sources also revealed that once they realized the aircraft wasn’t a 747 they tried to retrieve the note but it was too late, a stewardess had accidentally discovered it during the climb out while the fasten seat belt lights were still on and people weren’t allowed to move around the cabin.  The aircraft had been diverted to Shannon, and British authorities had taken ten suspected terrorists into custody.  After a slight delay, the aircraft had continued to the United States without further incident.      Marguerite and I looked at one another for several seconds.  She broke into a grin and said, “Well, looks like we sure dodged the bullet on that one and it will make a great story for our grandchildren.”      “Yes, it will.  I wonder if we’d ever known what happened if we hadn’t just happened to catch that news broadcast.

The Dorchester was assigned the role of troop transport, and suffered the indignity of having her luxurious, predominantly first-class accommodation gutted, and transformed into spartan quarters for up to 800 troops. She retained her 120-strong Merchant Marine crew, led by Captain Hans Jorgen Danielson, and was fitted with one 4-inch, one 3-inch and four 20-mm guns. This armament was manned by a squad of twenty-three US Navy Armed Guard seamen, under the command of Lieutenant William Arpaia.

You did a fine job with those science nerds over the course of this past year, John. Very fine job. Nothing but praise from the lot of them. Well done.” His thick English accent had a soothing effect every time he spoke. John remembered him fondly as a young man. His father and the Admiral had gone to the academy together and served side by side for many years before John’s father met an untimely death. Sitting here with him now and listening to him speak brought him back to those simpler times. “I was just doing my duty, Sir.” “Oh come now. You know and I know that there isn’t a bloody captain in this entire fleet that wanted that assignment. There isn’t a bit of action when you have the lot of them aboard. And on a bloody science mission besides. No, no, you are a real hero for saving all of us from having to do such a duty. And for a year! Bloody hell.” He opened up a drawer and pulled out two thick, stubby glasses, and then extracted a bottle of rum. Of course he brought out the rum. “I suppose you heard that we’ve been hard at work getting our first Deep Space Class starship ready to launch this year?” he asked as he filled both glasses half full with the amber liquid. He Offered one glass to John who took it with reluctance. He had never been one who liked liquor. “Heard she’s a beauty. The engine is something of a marvel as well?” “Damn straight,” he said as he downed his first glass in one pull. He filled his glass up half full for round two. “Currently our fastest ship will get you to the Wild Space region in twenty years. This buggers going to do it in six months and I’d like you to take her out on her maiden voyage.” John sat back in shock. The thought of taking out the prototype of the future… it was a great honor and one that hundreds of captains in star fleet would give anything for. He certainly wasn’t worthy of such an honor. He didn’t have nearly the amount of years as everyone else in the fleet. “I don’t think it’d be right to accept, would it? I mean… there are some captains who’ve…” “Bumshnickles!” he shouted. “Your father was the captain of the first Earth Starship Independence. It’s only right that the second to bear her name should have an Avery in the chair.

The next Monday, assembly seemed to go on forever. The kindy kids got up to sing ‘Kookaburra’, and then half of year two were awarded certificates for reading. Holly thought it would never end. Then

Eu costumava beber 15 horas por dia, mas em geral era vinho e cerveja. Eu deveria estar morto. Vou estar morto. Nada mal, pensando nisso. Tive uma existência estranha e confusa, em grande parte horrível, baixaria total. Mas acho que foi a forma com que me arrastei pela merda que fez a diferença. Hoje, olhando pra trás, acho que exibi certa compostura e classe, independentemente do que estava acontecendo.

Having your best friend move away is like finding a week-old tuna sandwich in the bottom of your back pack. It really stinks. When Luke moved away last summer, I knew things wouldn’t be the same.  Luke was more than just my best friend. He was the coolest person I’ve ever known. He could beat every level on Space Pod Invasion. He could burp the entire alphabet, forwards… and backwards. He could blast a baseball clear over the fence at Parker Field. In gym class, he was always chosen team captain. And for some reason, he always picked me first, even though I was the shortest kid in class. I still remember that day last August when he broke the news. That afternoon was so hot, I thought the rubber might melt right off my high tops. Dad was grilling burgers, while we were splashing around in the pool with my kid brother Dylan, trying to knock him off his

From the first-class luxury of Captain Claes to the shared hot bunks of the drivers and engineers, from Frenchman to Englishman to German to Turk, everybody shifted uneasily in their sleep.

Arguably the first concrete example of “national socialism” in practice was the Cercle Proudhon in France in 1911, a study group designed to “unite nationalists and left-wing anti-democrats” around an offensive against “Jewish capitalism.” It was the creation of Georges Valois, a former militant of Charles Maurras’s Action Française who broke away from his master in order to concentrate more actively on converting the working class from Marxist internationalism to the nation. It proved too early, however, to rally more than a few intellectuals and journalists to Valois’s “triumph of heroic values over the ignoble bourgeois materialism in which Europe is now stifling . . . [and] . . . the awakening of Force and Blood against Gold.” The term national socialism seems to have been invented by the French nationalist author Maurice Barrès, who described the aristocratic adventurer the Marquis de Morès in 1896 as the “first national socialist.” Morès, after failing as a cattle rancher in North Dakota, returned to Paris in the early 1890s and organized a band of anti-Semitic toughs who attacked Jewish shops and offices. As a cattleman, Morès found his recruits among slaughterhouse workers in Paris, to whom he appealed with a mixture of anticapitalism and anti-Semitic nationalism.80 His squads wore the cowboy garb and ten-gallon hats that the marquis had discovered in the American West, which thus predate black and brown shirts (by a modest stretch of the imagination) as the first fascist uniform. Morès killed a popular Jewish officer, Captain Armand Meyer, in a duel early in the Dreyfus Affair, and was himself killed by his Touareg guides in the Sahara in 1896 on an expedition to “unite France to Islam and to Spain.”81 “Life is valuable only through action,” he had proclaimed. “So much the worse if the action is mortal.

he renowned America painter Francis Davis Millet sent a letter from the Titanic’s last stop before attempting to cross the cold Atlantic Ocean. In it he wrote, “Looking over the passenger list I only find 3 or 4 people I know but there are a number of obnoxious, ostentatious American women, the scourge of any place they infest, and worse on shipboard than anywhere. Many of them carry tiny dogs, and lead husbands around like pet lambs.” It seemed that Francis didn’t think much of the women and their dogs that were of the snobbish set; however, it is safe to assume that there may have been at least a dozen dogs most of who were boarded in special kennels and others that shared the staterooms with their owners. Of these only 3 made it into the lifeboats with their owners and survived. We also know that there were chickens on the ship since later there was a claim made totaling $207.87 for lost chickens by a passenger named White. Other claims were made for lost dogs including a Chow-Chow dog that was valued by Harry Anderson for $50 and a claim of $750 by a passenger Daniel for the loss of his pedigree bulldog. Passenger Carter claimed $300 for the loss of his two dogs. There were a few pet birds on the ship and yes, the ship also had a cat named Jenny who was kept aboard as a working mascot. Jenny’s job was to keep down the ship’s population of rats and mice under control. However, it can be safely assumed that all of the rodents perished although one was seen running across the Third Class Dining Room just prior to the sinking.

All the captain's wives belonged to the literate, well-traveled ranks of the new upper-middle class. Family records say as little about them as such records generally say about women, but one of them - probably Sarah's great-grandmother Mary Furber - left an unsigned diary that the Jewett sisters discovered in the old house when they were well into middle age. Set in Exeter in 1782, it shows us a young woman much like one of Jane Austen's Bennett sisters (the younger, flighty ones), engaged in a ceaseless and rather cold-blooded appraisal of the marriage market. Young men are ruthlessly sorted into two categories, "Somebodies" and "Nobodies.

Mr Ellis was clearly very much at home in Captain Harte’s house, for without having to ask the way he walked to the sideboard, opened the lead-lined door and took out the chamber-pot, and looking over his shoulder he went on without a pause to state that fortunately the lower classes naturally looked up to gentlemen and loved them, in their humble way; only gentlemen were fit to be officers. God had ordered it so, he said, buttoning the flap of his breeches; and as he sat down again at the table he observed that he knew one house where the article was silver – solid silver. The family was a good thing: he would drink a toast to discipline. The rod was a good thing: he would drink a toast to the rod, in

Mr Ellis was clearly very much at home in Captain Harte’s house, for without having to ask the way he walked to the sideboard, opened the lead-lined door and took out the chamber-pot, and looking over his shoulder he went on without a pause to state that fortunately the lower classes naturally looked up to gentlemen and loved them, in their humble way; only gentlemen were fit to be officers. God had ordered it so, he said, buttoning the flap of his breeches; and as he sat down again at the table he observed that he knew one house where the article was silver – solid silver. The family was a good thing: he would drink a toast to discipline. The rod was a good thing: he would drink a toast to the rod, in all its forms. Spare the rod and spoil the child – loveth, chastitheth.

We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence, that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The women, the children, the negroes, and but few of the non-property holders were consulted, or consented to the Revolution, or the governments that ensued from its success. As to these, the new governments were self-elected despotisms, and the governing class self-elected despots. Those governments originated in force, and have been continued by force. All governments must originate in force, and be continued by force. The very term, government, implies that it is carried on against the consent of the governed. Fathers do not derive their authority, as heads of families, from the consent of wife and children, nor do they govern their families by their consent. They never take the vote of the family as to the labors to be performed, the moneys to be expended, or as to anything else. Masters dare not take the vote of slaves, as to their government. If they did, constant holiday, dissipation and extravagance would be the result. Captains of ships are not appointed by the consent of the crew, and never take their vote, even in "doubling Cape Horn." If they did, the crew would generally vote to get drunk, and the ship would never weather the cape. Not even in the most democratic countries are soldiers governed by their consent, nor is their vote taken on the eve of battle. They have some how lost (or never had) the "inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;" and, whether Americans or Russians, are forced into battle, without and often against their consent. The ancient republics were governed by a small class of adult male citizens, who assumed and exercised the government, without the consent of the governed. The South is governed just as those ancient republics were. In the county in which we live, there are eighteen thousand souls, and only twelve hundred voters. But we twelve hundred, the governors, never asked and never intend to ask the consent of the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom we govern. Were we to do so, we should soon have an "organized anarchy." The governments of Europe could not exist a week without the positive force of standing armies.

The single most important ingredient after you get the talent is internal leadership. It’s not the coaches as much as one single person or people on the team who set higher standards than that team would normally set for itself.

The key, Deschamps said, is to maintain self-control and to know when it’s okay to foul and when you are “too far up the referee’s nose” to get away with it. “It’s something you feel. It’s a feeling. It’s a form of intelligence.

Thanksgiving has become the first day of what in now thought of as the “Holy or Holiday Season.” The “holidays” as they are generally known, are an annually recurring period of time from late November to early January. These days are also recognized by many other countries as well, with the “Christmas Tree” and all the trimmings, generally being considered secular. This period of time incorporates the shopping days, which comprises a peak season for the retail market. Regardless of religious affiliation, children and adults alike enjoy the many window displays and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies. To a great extent it really doesn’t matter that there are still some people believing that the commercialism of these holidays is blasphemy and that they should be reserved strictly for worship. There are virtually, no valid reasons why we can’t all enjoy these days in our own way. Children of all faiths and ages should be able to understand the true meaning and still be able to enjoy the music, surprises and magic of the season… This year we are again faced with a severely, politically divided country; with a great number of people fearing for their future. It might be too much to hope for, that politicians will be able to put aside their differences. Unfortunately many of them still believe that their hypocritical concept of Christianity is greater than that of their opposition. Regardless, they should however understand that we are all equal in the eyes of God as well as the law, and that America was built by a diverse people. Let us not slip back into a newer form of “Small Minded Bigotry,” but rather forge ahead in a unified way making our country stronger. The time has come to energize our nation by rebuilding our bridges and highways. Rebuilding our airports, investing in high-speed trains, and making education affordable is the way to a more productive future. If we head down this ambitious path of development, we will create jobs and put more people to work. It will help the middle class to regain their footing and it will strengthen our slowly growing economy. When our citizens earn more, the economy will lift us all out of the recession that so many.

In 1469, the regions of Aragon (Aragón) and Castile (Castilla) were united by the marriage of Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I, thus creating España or Spain. The treasury of this fledgling nation had been depleted by the many battles they had waged against the Moors. The Spanish monarchs, seeing Portugal’s economic success, sought to establish their own trade routes to the Far East. Queen Isabella embraced this concept from the religious standpoint of going out into “all the world” and converting the pagan people of Asia to Christianity. At the same time, a tall, young, middle-class man, said to have come from Genoa, Italy, who held that his father was a fabric weaver and cheese merchant, sought to become a navigator. As such, Columbus sailed to Portugal where pirates allegedly attacked the ship he was on. Fortunately, he managed to swim ashore and joined his brother Bartholomew as a cartographer in Lisbon. Apparently to him, becoming a mapmaker must have seemed boring when there was a world to explore. Returning to the sea, he sailed to places as far away as Iceland to the north, and ventured south as far as Guinea on the West-African coast. It is reasonable to assume that he had heard or perhaps even read the stories about the Vikings that took place almost five hundred years prior to Columbus’ arriving there.

Our neighbor, Hugo du Toit, was a very handsome Afrikaner, who, with his two sisters, was a close friend of Louis Botha, the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, and also a close friend of General Jan Christiaan Smuts, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924. He became a South African military leader during World War II. Although some accuse Smuts of having started apartheid, he later stood against it and was a force behind the founding of the United Nations. He is still considered one of the most eminent Afrikaners ever…. At his expansive farm house, Hugo had autographed photos of both men on his study wall. Parties were frequently held at my grandparents’ home and the thought of roasted turkeys and potatoes which Cherie had prepared, brings back warm memories of a delightful era, now lost forever.” The Colonial History of South Africa For many years South Africa was occupied primarily by Dutch farmers known as Boers who had first arrived in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck established the Dutch East India Company and later by British settlers who arrived in the Cape colony after the Napoleonic wars in the 1820’s, on board the sailing ships the Nautilus and the Chapman. For the most part the two got along like oil and water. After 1806, some of the Dutch-speaking settlers left the Cape Colony and trekked into the interior where they established the Boer Republics. There were many skirmishes between them, as well as with the native tribes. In 1877 after the First Boer War between the Dutch speaking farmers and the English, the Transvaal Boer republic was seized by Britain. Hostilities continued until the Second Boer War erupted in October of 1899, costing the British 22,000 lives. The Dutch speaking farmers, now called Afrikaners, lost 7,000 men and having been overrun by the English acknowledged British sovereignty by signing the peace agreement, known as the “Treaty of Vereeniging,” on May 31, 1902. Although this thumbnail sketch of South African history leaves much unsaid, the colonial lifestyle continued on for the privileged white ruling class until the white, pro-apartheid National Party, was peacefully ousted when the African National Congress won a special national election. Nelson Mandela was elected as the first black president on May 9, 1994. On May 10, 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as The Republic of South Africa's new freely elected President with Thabo Mbeki and F.W. De Klerk as his vice-presidents.

On November 2, 1899, eight members of the United States Navy were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism and service beyond the call of duty. On the night of June 2, 1898, they had volunteered to scuttle the collier USS Merrimac, with the intention of blocking the entry channel to Santiago de Cuba. On orders of Rear Admiral William T. Sampson, who was in command, their intention was to trap Spanish Admiral Cervera’s fleet in the harbor. Getting the USS Merrimac underway, the eight men navigated the ship towards a predetermined location where sinking her would seal the port. Their course knowingly took them within the range of the Spanish ships and the shore batteries. The sailors were well aware of the danger this put them into, however they put their mission first. Once the Spanish gunners saw what was happening, they realized what the Americans were up to and started firing their heavy artillery from an extremely close range. The channel leading into Santiago is narrow, preventing the ship from taking any evasive action. The American sailors were like fish in a barrel and the Spanish gunners were relentless. In short order, the heavy shelling from the Spanish shore batteries disabled the rudder of the Merrimac and caused the ship to sink prematurely. The USS Merrimac went down without achieving its objective of obstructing navigation and sealing the port. ‎Fête du Canada or Canada Day is the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the Canadian Constitution Act. This weekend Americans also celebrate the United States’, July 4, 1776 birthday, making this time perfect to celebrate George Fredrick Phillips heroic action. Phillips was one of the men mentioned in the story above of the USS Merrimac. He was born on March 8, 1862, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada and joined the United States Navy in March 1898 in Galveston, Texas. Phillips became a Machinist First Class and displayed extraordinary heroism throughout the Spanish bombardment during their operation. He was discharged from the Navy in August 1903, and died a year later at the age of 42 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His body was returned to Canada where he was interred with honors at the Fernhill Cemetery in his hometown of Saint John, New Brunswick.

Our 182-passenger Boeing Classic this morning is under the able command of Captain Hiram Slatt, discharged from service in the United States Air Force mission in Afghanistan after six heroic deployments and now returned, following a restorative sabbatical at the VA Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Wheeling, West Virginia, to his “first love”—civilian piloting for North American Airways. Captain Slatt has informed us that, once we are cleared for takeoff, our flying time will be between approximately seventeen and twenty-two hours depending upon ever-shifting Pacific Ocean air currents and the ability of our seasoned Classic 878 to withstand gale-force winds of 90 knots roaring “like a vast army of demons” (in Captain Slatt’s colorful terminology) over the Arctic Circle. As you have perhaps noticed Flight 443 is a full—i.e., “overbooked”—flight. Actually most North American Airways flights are overbooked—it is Airways protocol to persist in assuming that a certain percentage of passengers will simply fail to show up at the gate having somehow expired, or disappeared, en route. For those of you who boarded with tickets for seats already taken—North American Airways apologizes for this unforeseeable development. We have dealt with the emergency situation by assigning seats in four lavatories as well as in the hold and in designated areas of the overhead bin. Therefore our request to passengers in Economy Plus, Economy, and Economy Minus is that you force your carry-ons beneath the seat in front of you; and what cannot be crammed into that space, or in the overhead bin, if no one is occupying the overhead bin, you must grip securely on your lap for the duration of the flight. Passengers in First Class may give their drink orders now. SECURITY:

His resistance to basketball awards was a rejection of the universal instinct to separate individuals from the collective. His brand of leadership had nothing to do with the outside world or how he was perceived. It was entirely focused on the internal dynamics of his team. So long as the Celtics won titles, he didn’t mind if nobody noticed his contributions.

It should come as no surprise that Berra, or any athlete who makes it to the highest levels of sports, was unusually determined. But the brand of perseverance Berra, Shelford, Puyol, and the other Tier One captains showed is peculiar, even among the elite. The main point of difference is that their natural ability seemed to bear no relation to the size of their accomplishments. Something enabled them to set aside their limitations and tune out the skepticism from their critics. But what was it? What allows some people to press on until they achieve mastery? —

Gibraltar Steamship Corporation never did any trading, and never owned or operated any ships, however it did operate a 50,000-watt, pirate radio station. Its president was Thomas Dudley Cabot, who in reality was the U.S. Department of State’s Director of the Office of International Security Affairs. In actual fact, the radio station, called Radio Swan, was a Central Intelligence Agency covert, black operation, known in intelligence circles as “Black Ops.” The station was in operation from 1960 to 1968. Pretending to be a normal radio station, it had commercial accounts including R. J. Reynolds, Philip Morris Tobacco, and Kleenex. It broadcast religiously-oriented programs, such as “The Radio Bible Class,” “The World Tomorrow” and a Christian program from the Dominican Republic, as well as others. Their news broadcasts were sponsored by the Cuban Freedom Committee, a part of Christianform, an anti-communist foundation. In May of 1960, the pirate radio station started transmitting Spanish language broadcasts to Cuba from Swan Island, or Islas del Cisne, in the western Caribbean Sea, near the coastline of Honduras. In 1961, Radio Swan became Radio America, with its headquarters in Miami.

According to the Treaty of Versailles, the post World War I German Navy was only permitted to have six light cruisers. One of these was the Emden, with a length of over 508 feet and a draft of 17 feet 5 inches. She was launched on January 7, 1925 and commissioned over nine months later on October 15, 1925. The light cruiser had a standard displacement of 5,400 tons, and was the only ship ever constructed in her class. She was built by the Reichsmarine shipbuilding company in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. As a new ship the Emden became the German Navy’s training ship and conducted several world cruises to train future naval officers. In September of 1934, Kapitan Karl Dönitz, the future commander of the German Navy, the Kriegsmarine, took command of the ship and remained her master until the following year. The Emden visited Cape Town in December of 1934 and was there for the Christmas celebration at the Cape Town German Club, described on page 30 of “Suppressed I Rise.” It was then that Adeline danced with the renowned Captain Dönitz, who would later replace the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, as the head of state in Germany. The cruiser Emden was severely damaged by British bombers in February of 1945. On May 3, 1945, the Germans scuttled the ship, to prevent her from being captured by the Allies. Ultimately in 1949, the ship was taken for scrap. Her bow ornament is still on display at the popular Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Captain Joseph Frye One of the nicest parks in present day downtown Tampa, Florida, is the Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park. The 5-acre park, which lies between the Tampa Bay Times Forum (Amalie Arena) and the mouth of the Hillsborough River at the Garrison Channel, is used for many weddings and special events such as the dragon boat races and the duck race. Few people give thought to the historic significance of the location, or to Captain Joseph Frye, considered Tampa’s first native son, who was born there on June 14, 1826. Going to sea was a tradition in the Frye family, starting with his paternal great-grandfather Samuel Frye from East Greenwich, Rhode Island, who was the master of the sloop Humbird. As a young man, Joseph attended the United States Naval Academy and graduated with the second class in 1847. Starting as an Ensign, he served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy until the Civil War, at which time he resigned and took a commission as a Lieutenant in the Confederate Navy. The Ten Years’ War, also known as “the Great War,” which started in 1868 became the first of three wars of Cuban Independence. In October 1873, following the defeat of the Confederacy and five years into the Cuban revolution, Frye became Captain of a side-wheeler, the S/S Virginius. His mission was to take guns and ammunition, as well as approximately 300 Cuban rebels to Cuba, with the intent of fighting the Spanish army for Cuban Independence. Unfortunately, the mission failed when the ship was intercepted by the Spanish warship Tornado. Captain Frye and his crew were taken to Santiago de Cuba and given a hasty trial and before a British warship Commander, hearing of the incident, could intervene, they were sentenced to death. After thanking the members of his crew for their service, Captain Frye and fifty-three members of his crew were put to death by firing squad, and were then decapitated and trampled upon by the Spanish soldiers. However, the British Commander Sir Lambton Lorraine of HMS Niobe did manage to save the lives of a few of the remaining crewmembers and rebels.

For many years South Africa was occupied primarily by Dutch farmers known as Boers who had first arrived in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck established the Dutch East India Company and later by British settlers who arrived in the Cape colony after the Napoleonic wars in the 1820’s, on board the sailing ships the Nautilus and the Chapman. For the most part the two got along like oil and water. After 1806, some of the Dutch-speaking settlers left the Cape Colony and trekked into the interior where they established the Boer Republics. There were many skirmishes between them as well as with the native tribes. In 1877 after the First Boer War between the Dutch speaking farmers and the English the Transvaal Boer republic was seized by Britain. Hostilities continued until the Second Boer War erupted in October of 1899 costing the British 22,000 lives. The Dutch speaking farmers, now called Afrikaners, lost 7,000 men and having been overrun by the English acknowledged British sovereignty signing the peace agreement, known as the “Treaty of Vereeniging,” on May 31, 1902. Although this thumbnail sketch of South African history leaves much unsaid, the colonial lifestyle continued for the privileged white ruling class until the white, pro-apartheid National Party was peacefully ousted and the African National Congress won. Nelson Mandela was elected as the first black president on May 9, 1994. On May 10, 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as The Republic of South Africa's new freely elected President with Thabo Mbeki and F.W. De Klerk as his vice-presidents.

The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, better known as the American Colonization Society was a group established in 1816 by Robert Finley of New Jersey which supported the migration of free African Americans to the continent of Africa In 1822, the American Colonization Society established a new colony on the West Coast of Africa that in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia. By 1867, the American Colonization Society had sent more than 13,000 black emigrants to this new country. Beginning in the 1830’s the society was harshly attacked by abolitionists, who tried to discredit colonization as a scheme perpetrated by the slaveholder’s to rid themselves of any responsibility regarding the freeing of their former slaves. Of course this was true prior to the Civil War and laterr during the “Jim Crow” era! The concept had a sizable following of, southern whites, who thought of this as a way to rid America of a growing black population. Others felt that since the slaves were brought to America against their will that it was only right that they be returned to Africa. Paul Cuffee and other free Blacks petitioned the Massachusetts government to either give African and Native Americans the right to vote or to stop taxing them. Cuffee also advocated the return to Africa of freed slaves. Some years later, after the Civil War, many freed blacks actually wanted to go to the new country of Liberia to make a better life for themselves, however the money necessary to send them back, as could be expected, dried up. The entire program came to an end during the latter part of the 19th century when the American Colonization Society stopped transporting former slaves to West Africa and concentrated instead on educational and missionary efforts. Those blacks that did come from the United States and populated Liberia became known as the Americo-Liberians who soon become the ruling class of Liberia.

Unlike many other types of starship in the fleet, Constitution-class vessels had no ready rooms for their captains. Most days, Pike didn’t miss having a ready room—except for those occasions when he received a classified transmission

I asked Google and it confirmed my suspicions: “The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. [She] may avoid suffering and sorrow, but [she] simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.” (Leo Buscaglia) So, while I am perplexed by the guilt, ever-present as it is, the Captain in me insists I sail in spite of it. This week’s expedition was to enroll in the advanced private equity class offered next term. As a classmate graciously pointed out, it’s laughable how little business I have being there. However, what I know from being an experienced jumper is that after terror comes exhilaration, and if I’m lucky, ecstasy—the ultimate reward. To be clear, I am not promoting that people change jobs every year for the rest of their lives (heaven forbid). I am merely shamelessly advocating headlong, plummeting, frontier-busting, head-shaking, free-falling adventure, however that looks, because it’s worth it. I don’t know about you, but I intend to keep up my dirty little habit of cliff-jumping for a very long time, even at the risk of a confusing epitaph on my tombstone.

A theory held that an anti-Castro group was behind the assassination…. Sylvia Orenstein, who was born in New York City on 22nd July, 1921, promoted this theory while taking evening classes at Brooklyn College. The marriage to her professor, James Meagher, accounted for her name change. As Sylvia Meagher, she became a research analyst at the UN’s World Health Organization. Her book, “Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report After the Fact,” published in 1967, supported this widely held theory. In her book, she expressed that she was not convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald had been a lone gunman. Her conclusion was that the Warren Commission had attempted to cover-up important details of the actual people behind the assassination. In 1980, Meagher co-authored another book named “Master Index to the John F. Kennedy Assassination Investigations.” Meagher continued to believe that John F. Kennedy had been killed by Anti-Castro exiles until her death at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City, at the age of 67, on January 14, 1989.

The search for better, for more competent men, from the presidents of our great companies down to our household servants, was never more vigorous than it is now. And more than ever before is the demand for competent men in excess of the supply. What we are all looking for, however, is the readymade, competent man; the man whom some one else has trained. It is only when we fully realize that our duty, as well as our opportunity, lies in systematically cooperating to train and to make this competent man, instead of in hunting for a man whom some one else has trained, that we shall be on the road to national efficiency. In the past the prevailing idea has been well expressed in the saying that “Captains of industry are born, not made”; and the theory has been that if one could get the right man, methods could be safely left to him. In the future it will be appreciated that our leaders must be trained right as well as born right, and that no great man can (with the old system of personal management) hope to compete with a number of ordinary men who have been properly organized so as efficiently to cooperate. In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before.

Meteorologists agree that our planet is heating up! Now I know that many people disagree with this or just think that it is part of a natural cycle. It doesn’t really matter what we think, because the Earth’s climate will do what it is doing with or without our influence. As part of my profession, I took classes related to the weather and I would just like to share some of my thoughts on this important topic. First, if I know something is heading in the wrong direction, I’ll try to do something about it and if I’m partially to blame, I’ll try a little harder! For years we have been putting carbon up into the atmosphere and now the chickens are coming home to roost! It doesn’t matter what we think about this, however here in Florida the hurricanes have been becoming more violent… as we saw last summer! Statistically the high tides have been just a little higher with each passing year. In fact the average tides have been going up by an inch for every 10 years. That’s an inch per decade! In the Miami area the water has been coming up through the sewer pipes with fish swimming in the streets and here in the Tampa Bay area the streets are flooding, like in the Venetian Isles neighborhood of St. Petersburg, where flooding has been happening about 70 time per year. Can you imagine being flooded out 70 times per year?

It’s the notion that the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it.

With little else to do I rode my Vesper motor scooter from Harbel to Roberts Field. Perhaps there might be some excitement around the airport, but no such luck. Eric Reeves the Station Master and Air Traffic Controller was in the tower and was in communications with the incoming airliner. Everything was quiet in anticipation of a Pan American Clipper's arrival. On the ground floor all was quiet except for a solitary passenger in the terminal. Apparently he was waiting for the next flight out, which wasn't due for another two hours. As I approached him, I could see that he looked familiar…. I immediately recognized him as a world class trumpet player and gravel voiced singer from New Orleans. He must have seen the look on my face and broke the ice by introducing himself as Louie Armstrong. "Hi," I answered, "I'm Hank Bracker, Captain Hank Bracker." I noticed that he was apparently alone sitting there with a mountain of belongings which obviously included musical instruments. Here was Louis Armstrong, the famous Louie Armstrong, all alone in this dusty, hot terminal, and yes he had a big white handkerchief! He volunteered that the others in his party were at the club looking for something to eat. With no one else around, we talked about New Orleans, his music and how someone named King Oliver, a person I had never heard of, was his mentor. At the time I didn't know much about Dixie Land music or the Blues, but talking to Louie Armstrong was a thrill I'll never forget. In retrospect it’s amazing to find out that you don’t know what you didn’t know. I found out that he actually lived in Queens, NY at that time, not too far from where my aunt and uncle lived. I also found out that he was the Good Will Ambassador at Large and represented the United States on a tour that included Europe and Africa, but now he was just a friendly person I had the good fortune to meet, under these most unusual circumstances. His destination was Ghana where he, his wife and his band the All Stars group were scheduled to perform a concert in the capitol city of Accra. Little did I know that the tour he was on was scheduled by Edward R. Murrow, who would later be my neighbor in Pawling, New York. Although our time together was limited, it was obvious that he had compassion for the people of the "Third World Nations," and wanted to help them. Although after our short time together, I never saw Louie again but I just know that he did. He seemed to be the type of person that could bring sunshine with him wherever he went.…

Because in America there is a naive belief that we are all rugged individuals and can make it on our own, stock market and banking regulations became nonexistent. Consequently, on October 24, 1929, the New York Stock Market crashed, ushering in the “Great Depression.” It became a human tragedy that could have and should have been prevented! Well, not everyone was dancing anymore. The vast middle class was struggling; coal miners were still digging for the dirty black energy, deep within the earth and only getting black lung disease for their efforts. Farmers worked long hours to sow and harvest uncertain crops and the new immigrants just off the boat, worked for very small returns in the many unregulated sweatshops.

The fact that the Titanic slowly resumed her course after hitting the iceberg is not included in many accounts of the disaster but it was noted by several others on board besides Lawrence Beesley. Quartermaster Alfred Olliver later testified that Captain Smith gave the “Half Speed Ahead” order for the engines not long after the collision. The captain had by then sent Fourth Officer Boxhall below on a tour of inspection, so it seems likely that he thought the ship would have to limp in to New York or Halifax under its own steam and that they could proceed slowly in the meantime. By best estimates, the ship moved forward for about ten minutes and may have stopped when Chief Officer Wilde reported to Smith that the forepeak tank, a water ballast tank deep in the forward bow, was taking in seawater.

When the fourth officer entered the post office on G deck, the mail clerks were hastily pulling armfuls of envelopes out of the sorting racks. On looking down into the lower storage room, he saw mailbags floating in water. When Boxhall reported this to the bridge, the captain gave the order for the lifeboats to be uncovered and went below to see the damage for himself. The ship’s designer, Thomas Andrews, was already making his own inspection tour of the lower decks. He went into the post office and soon dispatched a mail clerk to find the captain. The clerk hurried along the corridor and returned with Captain Smith and Purser McElroy. After they had viewed the damage, Andrews was overheard saying to Smith, “Well, three have gone already, Captain.” Andrews was undoubtedly referring to three of the ship’s bulkheads that divided the ship into the watertight compartments that gave the Titanic its reputation for unsinkability. With only three compartments flooded, however, there was a chance that the pumps could stay ahead of it. The captain then returned to the bridge and gave the order for women and children to go up on deck with lifebelts. Thomas Andrews, meanwhile, continued his inspection. At around twelve-twenty-five William Sloper saw Andrews racing up the staircase with a deeply worried look on his face. As the ship’s designer passed by Dorothy Gibson, she put her hand on his arm and asked him what had happened. Andrews simply brushed past the prettiest girl and continued upward three stairs at a time. He had just discovered that two more watertight compartments had been breached. Andrews knew how serious this was. The bulkhead between the fifth and sixth compartments extended only as high as E deck. As the ship was pulled down at the bow, the water would spill over it into the next compartment, and then the next, until the ship inevitably sank. In all his planning at Harland and Wolff, he had never imagined a scenario such as this. Andrews informed the captain that the ship had only an hour left to live—an hour and a half at best. Smith immediately told Fourth Officer Boxhall to calculate the liner’s position and take it to the Marconi Room so the call for assistance could be sent out. He also gave orders to muster the passengers and crew.

The lights of the Californian did indeed seem tantalizingly close. But the steamer was not responding to the Titanic’s CQD calls because its Marconi operator had turned off his equipment and gone to bed over an hour before, after being told to “Shut up” by Jack Phillips. Fourth Officer Boxhall had tried signaling the ship with a Morse lamp but had received no response. He was relieved when Quartermaster Rowe arrived carrying more distress rockets. Surely the ship would see these and come over. “Fire one, and then fire one every five or six minutes,” Captain Smith ordered. Boxhall continued flashing with his lamp between rocket bursts.

On the steamer Californian, which is estimated to have been anywhere from eleven to twenty miles away, eight rockets were sighted but none were heard. A recent study has revealed that the unusually flat sea that night would have acted like a mirror that reflected and thus deadened the sound, making it inaudible beyond five to six nautical miles. Yet the rockets were definitely seen if not heard by the Californian, and the fact that its captain, Stanley Lord, did not wake the ship’s wireless operator to find out why a ship was firing rockets in the middle of the night remains one of the most haunting “if only’s” of the Titanic story.

As 1:00 a.m. approached, Second Officer Lightoller was feeling frustrated. None of the lifeboats on the port side had yet been launched, despite his best efforts. He had managed to get Lifeboat 4 swung out and lowered half an hour ago, even though Chief Officer Wilde had twice told him to wait. Both times Lightoller had jumped rank and gone directly to Captain Smith to get the go-ahead to proceed. The captain had also suggested that Lifeboat 4 be lowered to A deck since he thought it would be easier for the passengers to board from there. But a crewman had just shouted up that the A-deck windows were locked. (Smith may have forgotten that, unlike the Olympic, the Titanic had a glassed-in forward promenade.) Lightoller sent someone to unlock the windows and to recall the passengers who had been sent down there. Meanwhile, he moved aft to prepare Lifeboats 6 and 8, ordering that the masts and sails be lifted out of them. Just then the roaring steam was silenced and Lightoller was slightly startled by the sound of his own voice. Arthur Peuchen overheard the order and, ever handy around boats, jumped in to help cut the lashings and lift the masts out onto the deck. After that the call went out for women and children to come forward. The “women and children only” order would be more strictly enforced here than on the starboard side where men were being allowed into boats. When a crowd of grimy stokers and firemen suddenly appeared carrying their dunnage bags, Chief Officer Wilde was spurred into action. “Down below, you men! Every one of you, down below!” he bellowed in a stern, Liverpool-accented voice. Major Peuchen was very impressed with Wilde’s commanding manner as he drove the men right off the deck, and thought it “a splendid act.” Helen Candee, however, felt sympathy for the stokers whom she later described as a band of unknown heroes who had accepted their fate without protest. She was waiting by Lifeboat 6 with Hugh Woolner, who had been by her side ever since he had gone down to her cabin from the smoking room after the collision. “The Two” had then walked together on the boat deck, amid the roar of venting steam, and had noticed that the ship was listing to starboard. They went into the lounge to escape the cold and the noise, and there a young man came over to them with something in his hand. “Have some iceberg!” he said with a smile as he dropped a piece of ice into Helen’s palm. The ice soon chilled Helen’s fingers, so Woolner dashed it from her and rubbed her hand and then kept it clasped in his.

They are democratic with their time—communicating with everyone equally and making sure all team members get a chance to contribute.

The antidote is the knowledge that someone else in the group is leaving nothing in reserve.

The less identifiable one person’s effort is, the less effort they put in.

When the sun came up fully, the ice field began to glow in mauves and corals, a breathtaking sight. There was one iceberg with a double peak about two hundred feet high. To Lucy Duff Gordon the illuminated bergs looked like giant opals, and May Futrelle noted how they glistened like rock quartz, though one of them, she thought, was doubtless the murderer. The scene reminded Hugh Woolner of photographs of an Antarctic expedition. Seven-year-old Douglas Spedden raised a few smiles in Boat 3 by exclaiming to his nurse, “Oh Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it!” Daisy Spedden recorded in her diary that as their boat was rowed toward rescue, “the tragedy of the situation sank deep into our hearts as we saw the Carpathia standing amidst the few bits of wreckage with the pitifully small number of lifeboats coming up to her from different directions.” After racing through the night to the Titanic’s distress position, the Carpathia had spotted Fourth Officer Boxhall’s green flares and had headed for them. “Shut down your engines and take us aboard,” Boxhall shouted up as the Carpathia drew alongside Boat 2 at 4:10 a.m. “I have only one sailor,” he added, as the boat tossed on the choppy swells. “All right,” came back the voice of the Carpathia’s captain, Arthur Rostron.

That morning Captain Rostron had considered several places he might land his more than seven hundred unexpected passengers. He’d first considered the Azores so that he could continue to the Mediterranean as scheduled; then Halifax, which was the nearest port. But on seeing the survivors come aboard, many of them in a distressed state and some in need of medical attention, it soon became clear that he should take them directly to New York. Rostron decided to visit Bruce Ismay to discuss the decision with him but the shattered White Star chairman quickly gave his agreement to whatever the captain thought was best. It was Rostron who had earlier prompted a dazed Ismay to send a wireless message notifying the White Star Line’s New York office about the accident. To Philip Franklin, the U.S. vice president of White Star’s parent company, the International Mercantile Marine, Ismay had written: Deeply regret advise you Titanic sank this morning after collision iceberg, resulting serious loss life. Full particulars later. Bruce Ismay.

Captain Rostron paid another visit to Ismay’s room that morning. He had received a wireless message from the Olympic proposing that the Titanic’s passengers be transferred to her. Rostron thought that putting the survivors into boats for a second sea transfer was a very bad idea. Even the sight of a ship that so closely resembled the Titanic might stir up panic among the survivors. Ismay agreed emphatically—the Olympic should stay out of sight. On board the sister liner, however, Frank Millet’s friend Daniel Burnham had been told that they were steaming to the rescue of the Titanic’s passengers, and he was preparing to give up his suite to Frank and Archie Butt. He could use the time on board with Frank to prepare him for the next meeting of the Lincoln Memorial Commission. In a letter waiting for Frank in New York, Burnham had written, “The rats swim back and begin to gnaw at the same old spot the moment the dog’s back is turned,” the “rats” being several congressmen who were still pushing for John Russell Pope’s design over that of Henry Bacon. The letter had concluded, “I leave the thing confidently in your hand.” When a list of the Titanic’s survivors was posted on the Olympic’s notice board the next morning, however, Burnham saw that Millet’s name was not on it. In his diary entry for April 16, the ailing architect recorded the news of the Titanic’s loss and noted that “Frank D. Millet, whom I loved, was aboard of her … and probably [has] gone down.” Burnham himself would die two weeks later, but the classical white temple he had championed for the Lincoln Memorial would prevail—a tribute to the architect’s persistence and that of the friend he loved.

The Olympic’s Marconi operators were relaying all the messages from the Carpathia to stations onshore, due to the Cunard liner’s limited wireless range. Marconi forms had been distributed to the survivors that morning but many of their messages would not be sent for another day or two—if at all. Captain Rostron had instructed that the first priority was to transmit a list of the survivors. The Carpathia’s chief purser and his assistant were busy compiling the names of passengers while Lightoller worked on the list of the surviving crew and engine room staff and a senior steward gathered the names of the cooks and stewards. The grim tally would come to 712 people rescued from a ship that had held 2,209. Over two-thirds of those on board the Titanic had perished.

In the afternoon, it was Second Officer Lightoller’s turn to answer questions, the first of nearly two thousand he would be asked by this committee and the British inquiry that followed. Throughout his testimony, Lightoller acquitted himself well and skillfully steered criticism away from Captain Smith and the White Star Line even while he considered the American inquiry to be “nothing but a complete farce.” The second officer came to have particular contempt for Senator Smith, whose ignorance of nautical matters led to him being ridiculed by the English press as “Watertight Smith” for asking whether the watertight compartments were meant to shelter passengers. The London Globe called Smith “a gentleman from the wilds of Michigan” who felt it necessary “to be as insolent as possible to Englishmen.” British resentment toward America’s waxing power was captured by the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who wrote in his diary that if anyone had to drown it was best that it be American millionaires. To the English elites, the U.S. inquiry seemed to be yet another example of American muscle flexing. But a Labor parliamentarian, George Barnes, noted more dispassionately that “it may be humiliating to some to have an [American] inquiry into the loss of a British ship but … the average person realizes that Americans get to work very quickly, and the average person, I think, is rather glad it is so.

In fact, the “women and children first” protocol for abandoning ship was not a particularly ancient one. It began with the HMS Birkenhead, a British troopship that was wrecked off Cape Town, South Africa, on February 26, 1852. The soldiers famously stood in formation on deck while the women and children boarded the boats, and only 193 of the 643 people on board survived. Hymned as the “Birkenhead drill” in a poem by Rudyard Kipling, it became a familiar touchstone of Britain’s imperial greatness and AS BRAVE AS THE BIRKENHEAD was a much-used heading in UK Titanic press coverage. A story that Captain Smith had exhorted his men to “Be British!” further burnished the oft-cited claim that Anglo-Saxon men had not forgotten how to die.

Chivalrous or not, there was no denying that of the 1,667 men on board, only 338, or 20.27 percent, had survived as compared with a 74.35 percent survival rate for the 425 women. On April 21 the bodies of the Titanic’s victims began to be pulled out of the north Atlantic by the Mackay-Bennett, a cable ship that had been sent out from Halifax with a hundred tons of ice and 125 coffins on board. The Mackay-Bennett’s captain described the scene as resembling “a flock of sea gulls resting on the water.… All we could see at first would be the top of the life preservers. They were all floating face upwards, apparently standing in the water.” John Jacob Astor’s body was found floating with arms outstretched, his gold pocket watch dangling from its platinum chain. To the ship’s undertaker it looked as if Astor had just glanced at his watch before he took the plunge. It is often written that Astor’s body was found mangled and soot-covered and that he must therefore have been crushed when the forward funnel came down. Yet according to three eyewitnesses, Astor’s body was in good condition and soot-free, and like most of the other floating victims, he appeared to have died of hypothermia. On April 25 the body of the Buffalo architect Edward Kent was recovered. In the pocket of his gray overcoat was the silver flask and ivory miniature given to him by Helen Candee on the grand staircase, and these were later returned to her by Kent’s sister. Frank Millet’s body was found on the same day and identified by the initials F. D. M. on his gold watch. The next evening the Mackay-Bennett left for Halifax with 190 bodies on board, another 116 having been buried at sea. A second ship, the Minia, had arrived on the scene, but after a week’s search it retrieved only seventeen bodies, and two other ships would find only an additional five. The Mackay-Bennett landed in Halifax on April 30 to the tolling of church bells and flags flying at half-staff. Horse-drawn hearses took the bodies from the dock to a temporary morgue set up in a curling rink.

What I realized about this glorious experience, years later, is that it had forever modified my expectations. The Bombers gave me a taste of what it was like to play on an excellent team, and this had rewired my brain to believe it was my God-given right to experience the same sensation many times over.

What I realized about this glorious experience, years later, is that it had forever modified my expectations. The Bombers gave me a taste of what it was like to play on an excellent team.

Davidson had become a strong believer in the concept of neuroplasticity, the idea that people’s brains will physically change over time and that those changes can depend on their life experiences.