Cleaning And Ironing Quotes

She pulled up Ash's shirt, revealing a layer of gauze that was just beginning to seep blood onto the mattress. "At least the bandaging was done properly," she mused. "Very nice, clean work. Your handiwork, I presume, Goodfellow?" "Which one?" "The bandage, Robin." "Yeah, that was mine, too.

She crawled,” Ben said. There were tears in his voice. That was wrong. Ben barely even tolerated me on the best of days. “She crawled to the bathroom to clean herself again. If it weren’t for the two subs in the pack, I’d be on the bottom. And she wouldn’t stand up in my presence for guilt.

You do not,’ cried Giovanni, sitting up, ‘love anyone! You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love your purity, you love your mirror—you are just like a little virgin, you walk around with your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold, silver, rubies, maybe diamonds down there between your legs! You will never give it to anybody, you will never let anybody touch it—man or woman. You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you will go out covered with soap—and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime.’ He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you—you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?

In part, that's because when we delay marriage, it's not just women who become independent. It's also men, who, like women, learn to clothe and feed themselves, to clean their homes iron their shirts and pack their own suitcases.

Why do you have to make everyone hate you? (Talon) What? You want to be my friend now, Celt? If I clean up my act, will you be my buddy? (Zarek) You’re such an asshole. (Talon) Yeah, but at least I know what I am. I have no pretensions. You don’t know if you’re a Druid, a Dark-Hunter, or a playboy. You lost yourself a long time ago in the dark hole where you buried the parts of you that once made you human. (Zarek) You are lecturing me on humanity? (Talon) Ironic as hell, isn’t it? (Zarek)

Forgiveness is a clean lotion that heals the wounds of misunderstandings! To iron out the differences; get the painful sores dressed up; Forgive and Forget!

Sure, I want to look like I’m worth the ef­fort. Washed but not ironed. Clean but not pol­ished. Con­fi­dent but hum­ble.

Lockwood sat up awkwardly, adjusting his Bubble-Wrapped loops of chain. 'We're in good shape,' he said. 'We've lost the heavy duty chains and the stuff in the bags, but we've got our rapiers, iron, and silver seals. And we've found what we wanted now.' I stared at the clean, calm surface of the door. 'Why couldn't it come after us? Ghosts can pass through walls.' Lockwood shrugged. 'In some cases a Visitor is tied so completely to the room where it met its death that it no longer has any conception of there being any adjacent space at all. So...when we left its hunting ground, it was as if we ceased to exist, as if we ceased to be....' I looked at him. 'You haven't really got a clue, have you?' 'No.

But housekeeping is fun. It is one job where you enjoy the results right along as you work. You may work all day washing and ironing, but at night you have the delicious feeling of sunny clean sheets and airy pillows to lie on. If you clean, you sit down at nightfall with the house shining and faintly smelling of wax, all yours to enjoy right then and there. And if you cook—that creation you lift from the oven goes right to the table.

Dear wife, I'm sorry that I am mysteriously incapable of folding clean laundry, but I iron, oh, I iron. Sweetheart, I'll make your white shirt so crisp and sharp that it will split atoms as you walk.

The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it - the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.

Jesse must have heard me because she stuck her head out of her bedroom and then rushed over. “Can I help?” I looked down to see what caused the consternation in her face. It wasn’t my nakedness. She’d grown up with werewolves, and shapeshifters can’t afford too much modesty. [...] No, it wasn’t my nakedness; it was the blood. I was covered with it. Appalled, I looked behind me at the carpet that was stained with my blood all the way up the stairs. “Darn it,” I said. “That’s going to be expensive to clean.

I had gone to no place where the roads were frozen and hard as iron, where it was clear cold and dry and the snow was dry and powdery and hare-tracks in the snow and the peasants took off their hats and called you Lord and there was good hunting. I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafés and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. Suddenly to care very much and to sleep to wake with it sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp and hard and clear and sometimes a dispute about the cost. Sometimes still pleasant and fond and warm and breakfast and lunch. Sometimes all niceness gone and glad to get out on the street but always another day starting and then another night. I tried to tell about the night and the difference between the night and the day and how the night was better unless the day was very clean and cold and I could not tell it; as I cannot tell it now

We tried to love the world. We cleaned after this world, scrubbed its hospital floors and ironed its shirts, sweated in its kitchens and spooned school lunches, cared for its sick and nursed its babies. But the world didn't want us.

It truly is ironic that we don’t have time to enjoy the gadgets and luxuries we can afford on a large income rewarded from long working hours. We spend much of our weekends catching up on laundry, running errands, and cleaning the neglected bathroom. It’s a chain-link downward spiral: We want stuff, so we work hard; our hard work allows us to buy stuff, but our hard work takes all of our energy, so we can’t enjoy our stuff as much as we would like.

It would be a greater pity to prostitute lessons of wisdom to rascals incapable of understanding and appreciating them; there is no file that can clean iron of its rust after the rust has eaten through.

It was a boy with a clean record, a winning smile and a glorious halo who broke me. Ironically, it’s the boy with the rap sheet, a body full of ink and the dangerous glint in his eye who’s putting me back together.

I have calmed down a little and my work is going better than yesterday, so well, in fact, that it does itself and I can slip back into the womb of time, into my youth, when I ironed my trousers and shined my shoes, soles included, every Saturday, because when you’re young you love keeping clean, you love your self-image, an image you still have time to improve.

So after some instruction, Joseph put on the apron and started carefully polishing the clean dishes even though it made no sense to him. Over the course of the day, he learned how to wash the floors and clean the windows and empty out the iron stove. Soon the kitchen smelled of lemons and spices, fresh bread and soap. There was a short break for lunch before resuming work. The light shifted during the afternoon and cascaded through the clean windows, burnishing the room with gold. Joseph was so focused on the work, on the patters of the silverware and the curve of the handles on the ancient pitchers and measuring cups, that he forgot for a little while about his parents, and St. Anthony's, and the fire, and losing Blink. He felt a kind of pride in being allowed to touch all the delicate glassware, plates, and bowls, and he hadn't broken a single thing.

When ironing, visualize yourself ironing out the wrinkles in your heart.

we steady thud of wind with lungs that empty moon, fill it back up with shine, feed my feet to pig iron anklets biting flesh where i am link. i will break. bleed, crack. shatter. crush. i'ma smash outta this choir, come up gasping new breath, my name burned clean, made mine

…be awake to the Life that is loving you and sing your prayer, laugh your prayer, dance your prayer, run and weep and sweat your prayer, sleep your prayer, eat your prayer, paint, sculpt, hammer, and read your prayer, sweep, dig, rake, drive and hoe your prayer, garden and farm and build and clean your prayer, wash, iron, vacuum, sew, embroider and pickle your prayer, compute, touch, bend and fold but never delete or mutilate your prayer. Learn and play your prayer, work and rest your prayer, fast and feast your prayer, argue, talk, whisper, listen and shout your prayer, groan and moan and spit and sneeze your prayer, swim and hunt and cook your prayer, digest and become your prayer, release and recover your prayer, breathe your prayer, be your prayer

We tried to love the world. We cleaned after this world, scrubbed its hospital floors and ironed its shirts, sweated in its kitchens and spooned school lunches, cared for its sick and nursed its babies. But the world didn't want us, so we left and gave our love to Upper Room. Now we're afraid of this world. A boy snatched Hattie's purse one night and now none of us go out after dark. We hardly go anywhere at all, besides Upper Room. We've seen what this world has to offer. We're scared of what it wants.

Ironically, a species of resilient bacteria—in fact, the same species in each case—was found in both a NASA and an ESA clean room. Clearly, nature abhors a sterile room and is very determined to visit Mars.

In the run-up to the election, Stephen Harper had rolled out the rhetoric on the need for clean and transparent government, expressing frustration with Paul Martin's Liberals over their alleged secrecy and obstructionism. "When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent," Harper declared in a statement to be later viewed as notable for ironic content, "Is frankly when it is rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.

His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was roped to a chair. He escaped. He was chained to a ladder. He escaped. He was handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, he was tied up in a strait jacket and put in a locked cabinet. He escaped. He escaped from bank vaults, nailed-up barrels, sewn mailbags; he escaped from a zinc-lined Knabe piano case, a giant football, a galvanized iron boiler, a rolltop desk, a sausage skin. His escapes were mystifying because he never damaged or appeared to unlock what he escaped from. The screen was pulled away and there he stood disheveled but triumphant beside the inviolate container that was supposed to have contained him. He waved to the crowd. He escaped from a sealed milk can filled with water. He escaped from a Siberian exile van. From a Chinese torture crucifix. From a Hamburg penitentiary. From an English prison ship. From a Boston jail. He was chained to automobile tires, water wheels, cannon, and he escaped. He dove manacled from a bridge into the Mississippi, the Seine, the Mersey, and came up waving. He hung upside down and strait-jacketed from cranes, biplanes and the tops of buildings. He was dropped into the ocean padlocked in a diving suit fully weighted and not connected to an air supply, and he escaped. He was buried alive in a grave and could not escape, and had to be rescued. Hurriedly, they dug him out. The earth is too heavy, he said gasping. His nails bled. Soil fell from his eyes. He was drained of color and couldn't stand. His assistant threw up. Houdini wheezed and sputtered. He coughed blood. They cleaned him off and took him back to the hotel. Today, nearly fifty years since his death, the audience for escapes is even larger.

Marlena and I were very different, but sometimes, when we were together, we could erase our separate histories just by talking, sharing a joke or a look. But in the kitchen with Mom, the kitchen that was always clean, where there was always something to eat, where the water flowed predictably from the tap and behind every cabinet door were dishes, only dishes, I saw how wrong I was to feel like Marlena and I had so much in common, and how lucky. Because here was the difference that mattered. My skinny mom with her Chardonnay smell and her forgetting to unplug the flat iron, with her corny jokes about broccoli farts and her teeth bared in anger and her cleaning gloves in the backseat of the car, my mom who refused to stop loving me, who made dumb mistakes and drank too much and was my twin in laughter, my mom who would never, ever, leave, who I trusted so profoundly that a world without her in it exceeded the limits of my imagination. That was the difference, and it was huge, and my never seeing it before is something that I still regret.

I made the coffee myself in Armande's curious small kitchen with its cast-iron range and low ceiling. Everything is clean there, but the one tiny window looks onto the river, giving the light a greenish underwater look. Hanging from the dark, unpainted beams are bunches of dry herbs in their muslin sachets. On the whitewashed walls, copper pans hang from hooks. The door- like all the doors in the house- has a hole cut into the base to allow free passage to her cats.

California, Labor Day weekend...early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Fricso, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur...The Menace is loose again, the Hell's Angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and ninety miles an hour down the center stripe, missing by inches...like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter's leg with no quarter asked and non given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of those kicks they'll never know...Ah, these righteous dudes, they love to screw it on...Little Jesus, the Gimp, Chocolate George, Buzzard, Zorro, Hambone, Clean Cut, Tiny, Terry the Tramp, Frenchy, Mouldy Marvin, Mother Miles, Dirty Ed, Chuck the Duck, Fat Freddy, Filthy Phil, Charger Charley the Child Molester, Crazy Cross, Puff, Magoo, Animal and at least a hundred more...tense for the action, long hair in the wind, beards and bandanas flapping, earrings, armpits, chain whips, swastikas and stripped-down Harleys flashing chrome as traffic on 101 moves over, nervous, to let the formation pass like a burst of dirty thunder...

Oh yes," said Randolph stretching his legs , lighting a mentholated cigarette, "do not take it seriously, what you see here: it's only a joke played on myself by myself... it amuses and horrifies... a rather gaudy grave, you might say. There is no daytime in this room, or night, the seasons are changeless here, and the years, and when I die, if indeed I haven't already, then let me be dead drunk and curled, as in my mother's womb, in the warm blood of darkness. Wouldn't that be an ironic finale for one who, deep in his goddamned soul, sought sweetly the clean-limbed life? bread and water, a simple roof to share with some beloved, nothing more.

The city had grown, implacably, spreading its concrete and alloy fingers wider every day over the dark and feral country. Nothing could stop it. Mountains were stamped flat. Rivers were dammed off or drained or put elsewhere. The marshes were filled. The animals shot from the trees and then the trees cut down. And the big gray machines moved forward, gobbling up the jungle with their iron teeth, chewing it clean of its life and all its living things. Until it was no more. Leveled, smoothed as a highway is smoothed, its centuries choked beneath millions and millions of tons of hardened stone. The birth of a city... It had become the death of a world.

When a woman with an iron fist tells you to get out there and clean spit off the door, you do it. Especially when the iron’s hot.

How Ironic, when you do business you create exceptions to create new opportunities, when you write code (do a job) you handle exception to make it clean.

When a woman with an iron fist tells you to get out there and clean spit off the door, you do it. Especially when the iron's hot.

Ironically, our desire to clean ourselves actually minimizes the problem of uncleanness. It assumes we can give ourselves a good enough scrubbing to get a little holy before we meet the Holy One.

We tried to love the world. We cleaned after this world, scrubbed its hospital floors and ironed its shirts, sweated in its kitchens and spooned school lunches, cared for its sick and nursed its babies.

She would give herself violently, then yawn at the wrongest moment. She would spend all one day cleaning up the flat, cooking, ironing. Then, pass the next three or four Boheminanly on the floor in front of the fire, reading Lear, women's magazines, a detective story, Hemingway. Not all at the same time, but bits of all in the same afternoon. She liked doing things, and only then finding a reason for doing them.

You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you will go out covered with soap—and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime.’ He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you—you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?

We want the Demon, you see, to extract from the dance of atoms only information that is genuine, like mathematical theorems, fashion magazines, blueprints, historical chronicles, or a recipe for ion crumpets, or how to clean and iron a suit of asbestos, and poetry too, and scientific advice, and almanacs, and calendars, and secret documents, and everything that ever appeared in any newspaper in the Universe, and telephone books of the future...

All around me are men carrying fallen comrades, limping on makeshift crutches, or crawling through the sand, dragging broken limbs behind them. I know them—their torsos full of scars my ointments have packed and sealed. Their flash that my fingers have cleaned or iron and bronze and blood. Their faces that have joked, thanked, grimaced as I worked over them. Now these men are ruined again, pulpy with blood and split bone. Because of him. Because of me.

He always had trouble opening his heart. Tonight it was stuck again. It was a wooden chest secured by locked iron bands. An army duffel, rusted zipper. Kitchen cupboards glued shut. Tabernacle. Desk. Closet. He had to wedge apart doors, lift covers. He was always disappointed to find a drab or menacing interior. To make a welcoming place of his heart was mentally slippery work. Sometimes cleaning was involved, rearrangements. He had to dust. He had to throw out old junk to make room.

My first sight of the fabled warrior was a surprise. He was not a mighty-thewed giant, like Ajax. His body was not broad and powerful, as Odysseos'. He seemed small, almost boyish, his bare arms and legs slim and virtually hairless. His chin was shaved clean, and the ringlets of his long black hair were tied up in a silver chain. He wore a splendid white silk tunic, bordered with a purple key design, cinched at the waist with a belt of interlocking gold crescents... His face was the greatest shock. Ugly, almost to the point of being grotesque. Narrow beady eyes, lips curled in a perpetual snarl, a sharp hook of a nose, skin pocked and cratered... A small ugly boy born to be a king... A young man possessed with fire to silence the laughter, to stifle the taunting. His slim arms and legs were iron-hard, knotted with muscle. His dark eyes were absolutely humourless. There was no doubt in my mind that he could outfight Odysseos or even powerful Ajax on sheer willpower alone.

...Not yet dry behind the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old enough to die for his country. He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must. He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional. He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march. He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient. ...He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts. If you're thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you are hungry, food. He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low. He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands. He can save your life-or take it, because that is his job. He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed. He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to "square-away" those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking. ...Just as did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over two hundred years. He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding. Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood. And now we have women over there in danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to war when our nation calls us to do so. As you go to bed tonight, remember this. A short lull, a little shade, and a picture of loved ones in their helmets.

It takes me forever to clean out my locker. I find random notes I saved from Peter, which I promptly put in my bag so I can add them to his scrapbook. An old granola bar. Dusty black hair ties, which is ironic because you can never seem to find a hair tie when you need one. “I’m sad to throw any of this stuff away, even this old granola bar,” I say to Lucas, who is sitting on the floor keeping me company. “I’ve seen it there at the bottom of my locker every day. It’s like an old pal. Should we split it, to commemorate this day?” “Sick,” Lucas says. “It’s probably got mold.

I was wondering if you..." He cringes, then sighs. "Never mind." "He wants you to teach him how to sign," Ridoc finishes, rocking back on his heels in clear boredom. "Ridoc!" Sawyer glares his way. "What? You made that way more painful than it had to be. For fuck's sake, it was like you were leading up to asking her out or something." He visibly shudders. "What if he had been?" I counter. "Then I'd be stuck cleaning little pieces of him off our shared floor when Riorson ripped him to shreds." Ridoc shakes his head. "So messy." "First, Xaden has more than enough confidence to survive me being asked out.

eggs, buttermilk, and bacon drippings, mixing well; add to cornmeal mixture and beat until smooth. Heat a well-greased 12-inch cast-iron skillet in the preheated oven until very hot. Pour batter into hot skillet; bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean and top is golden brown. Yield: 6 to 10 servings.

Did I...' 'Ser the curtains on fire?' He lifts a brow. 'Yes.' 'Oh.' I can't find it in me to be embarrassed, so I brush the backs of my fingers across the stubble along his jaw. 'And you put it out.' 'Yes. Right before I destroyed your throwing target.' He grimaces. 'I'll get you a new one.' I glance over at the armoire. 'And we...' 'Yep.' He lifts his brows. 'and I'm pretty sure you need a new chair, too.' 'That was...' I didn't even get the man's pants entirely off, and my dressing gown is haphazardly hanging from one shoulder. 'Frighteningly perfect.' He cups the side of my face. ' We should get you cleaned up and to sleep. We can worry about... your room tomorrow. Ironically, your bed is the only thing we didn't wreck.

Rose of Sharon Chapter 16 Me an’ Connie don’t want to live in the country no more. We got it all planned up what we gonna do. Well, we talked about it, me an’ Connie. Ma, we want to live in a town. Connie gonna get a job in a store or maybe a factory. An’ he’s gonna study at home, maybe radios, so he can get to be a expert an’ maybe later have his own store. An’ we’ll go to pitchers whenever. An’ Connie says I’m gonna have a doctor when the baby’s born; an’ he says we’ll see how times is, an’ maybe I’ll go to a hospiddle. An’ we’ll have a car, a little car. An’ when he gets done studying at night, why – it’ll be nice, an’ he tore a page out of Western Love Stories, an’ he’s gonna send off for a course ‘cause it don’t cost nothin’ to send off. Says right on that clipping. I seen it. An’, why- they even get you a job when you take that course-radios, it is—nice clean work, and a future. An’ we’ll live in town an’ go to pitchers whenever, an’ – well. I’m gonna have an ‘lectric iron! an’, the baby’ll have all new stuff-“white an’- Well, you seen in the catalogue all the stuff they got for a baby. Maybe right at first while Connie’s studying’ at home it wou’t be so easy, but-well, when the baby comes, maybe he’ll be all done studyin’ an’ we’ll have a place, little bit of a place. We don’t want nothin’ fancy, but we want it nice for the baby-“An’ I thougt-well, I thought maybe we could all go in town, an’ when Connie gets his store – maybe Al could work for him.

men worked fifty, sixty, even seventy or more hours a week; the women worked all the time, with little assistance from labor-saving devices, washing laundry, ironing shirts, mending socks, turning collars, sewing on buttons, mothproofing woolens, polishing furniture, sweeping and washing floors, washing windows, cleaning sinks, tubs, toilets, and stoves, vacuuming rugs, nursing the sick, shopping for food, cooking meals, feeding relatives, tidying closets and drawers, overseeing paint jobs and household repairs, arranging for religious observances, paying bills and keeping the family’s books while simultaneously attending to their children’s health, clothing, cleanliness, schooling, nutrition, conduct, birthdays, discipline, and morale.

This used to be a spring where women came to boil their wash clothes in iron pots. One time a woman was here they say, abeatin' a rug clean with a stick. Had he daughter along. The little girl disappeared but the woman just figured she was aplayn' hide and seek. the mother was athumpin' her rug when it commenced aturnin' red. She got vexed with the child for hidin' raspberries in the rug. SHe opened it to wash away the stain and her little girl rolled out. child was hid in the rug. Woman run off through the woods acryin'. 'I bludgeoned my baby! I BEAT MY BABY DEAD!' Next night she come here to a big oak and hung herself with a bedsheet. That sheet, they say, blowed in the trees until it rotted away. Terrified many a man acomin' through at night

Things were different back then. Today if a woman was asked to do the things we did back then, she would revolt, declare that she wasn’t anyone’s slave, wouldn’t be put upon in that fashion. But you have to remember that this was before automatic washers and dishwashers, before blenders and electric knives. If the carpet was going to get cleaned, someone, usually a woman, would have to take a broom to it, or would have to haul it on her shoulders to the yard and beat the dirt out of it. If the wet clothes were going to get dry, someone had to hang them in the yard, take them down from the yard, heat the iron on the fire, press them, and finally fold or hang them. Food was chopped by hand, fires were stoked by hand, water was carried by hand, anything roasted, toasted, broiled, dried, beaten, pressed, packed, or pickled, was done so by hand. Our version of a laborsaving device was called a spouse. If a man had a woman by his side, he didn’t have to clean and cook for himself. If a woman had a man by her side, she didn’t have to go out, earn a living, then come home and wrestle the house to the ground in the evening.

Gibbeting—though it hits the ear like a word for happy playground chatter or perhaps, at worst, the cleaning of small game birds—is in fact a ghastly verb. To gibbet is to dip a corpse in tar and suspend it in a flat iron cage (the gibbet) in plain view of townsfolk while it rots and gets pecked apart by crows. A stroll through the square must have been a whole different plate of tamales back then.

Try explaining to them that a working woman is no less responsible for her home. Try explaining to them that nothing is done if you do not step in, that you have to see to everything, do everything all over again: cleaning up, cooking, ironing. There are the children to be washed, the husband to be looked after. The working woman has a dual task, of which both halves, equally arduous, must be reconciled.

Then it was horn time. Time for the big solo. Sonny lifted the trumpet - One! Two! - He got it into sight - Three! We all stopped dead. I mean we stopped. That wasn't Sonny's horn. This one was dented-in and beat-up and the tip-end was nicked. It didn't shine, not a bit. Lux leaned over-you could have fit a coffee cup into his mouth. "Jesus God," he said. "Am I seeing right?" I looked close and said: "Man, I hope not." But why kid? We'd seen that trumpet a million times. It was Spoof's. Rose-Ann was trembling. Just like me, she remembered how we'd buried the horn with Spoof. And she remembered how quiet it had been in Sonny's room last night... I started to think real hophead thoughts, like - where did Sonny get hold of a shovel that late? and how could he expect a horn to play that's been under the ground for two years? and - That blast got into our ears like long knives. Spoof's own trademark! Sonny looked caught, like he didn't know what to do at first, like he was hypnotized, scared, almighty scared. But as the sound came out, rolling out, sharp and clean and clear - new-trumpet sound - his expression changed. His eyes changed: they danced a little and opened wide. Then he closed them, and blew that horn. Lord God of the Fishes, how he blew it! How he loved it and caressed it and pushed it up, higher and higher and higher. High C? Bottom of the barrel. He took off, and he walked all over the rules and stamped them flat. The melody got lost, first off. Everything got lost, then, while that horn flew. It wasn't only jazz; it was the heart of jazz, and the insides, pulled out with the roots and held up for everybody to see; it was blues that told the story of all the lonely cats and all the ugly whores who ever lived, blues that spoke up for the loser lamping sunshine out of iron-gray bars and every hop head hooked and gone, for the bindlestiffs and the city slicers, for the country boys in Georgia shacks and the High Yellow hipsters in Chicago slums and the bootblacks on the corners and the fruits in New Orleans, a blues that spoke for all the lonely, sad and anxious downers who could never speak themselves... And then, when it had said all this, it stopped and there was a quiet so quiet that Sonny could have shouted: 'It's okay, Spoof. It's all right now. You get it said, all of it - I'll help you. God, Spoof, you showed me how, you planned it - I'll do my best!' And he laid back his head and fastened the horn and pulled in air and blew some more. Not sad, now, not blues - but not anything else you could call by a name. Except... jazz. It was Jazz. Hate blew out of that horn, then. Hate and fury and mad and fight, like screams and snarls, like little razors shooting at you, millions of them, cutting, cutting deep... And Sonny only stopping to wipe his lip and whisper in the silent room full of people: 'You're saying it, Spoof! You are!' God Almighty Himself must have heard that trumpet, then; slapping and hitting and hurting with notes that don't exist and never existed. Man! Life took a real beating! Life got groined and sliced and belly-punched and the horn, it didn't stop until everything had all spilled out, every bit of the hate and mad that's built up in a man's heart. ("Black Country")

Boaz Asleep Boaz, overcome with weariness, by torchlight made his pallet on the threshing floor where all day he had worked, and now he slept among the bushels of threshed wheat. The old man owned wheatfields and barley, and though he was rich, he was still fair-minded. No filth soured the sweetness of his well. No hot iron of torture whitened in his forge. His beard was silver as a brook in April. He bound sheaves without the strain of hate or envy. He saw gleaners pass, and said, Let handfuls of the fat ears fall to them. The man's mind, clear of untoward feeling, clothed itself in candor. He wore clean robes. His heaped granaries spilled over always toward the poor, no less than public fountains. Boaz did well by his workers and by kinsmen. He was generous, and moderate. Women held him worthier than younger men, for youth is handsome, but to him in his old age came greatness. An old man, nearing his first source, may find the timelessness beyond times of trouble. And though fire burned in young men's eyes, to Ruth the eyes of Boaz shone clear light

Would that Ned had been able to say the same. Fifteen years past, when they had ridden forth to win a throne, the Lord of Storm’s End had been clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled like a maiden’s fantasy. Six and a half feet tall, he towered over lesser men, and when he donned his armor and the great antlered helmet of his House, he became a veritable giant. He’d had a giant’s strength too, his weapon of choice a spiked iron warhammer that Ned could scarcely lift. In those days, the smell of leather and blood had clung to him like perfume.

To keep lace crisp, iron it between sheets of waxed paper. We were kept busy learning. We had a million facts to remember. We memorized half the Old Testament. We thought all this teaching was to make us smart. What it did was make us stupid. With all the little facts we learned, we never had the time to think. None of us ever considered what life would be like cleaning up after a stranger every day. Washing dishes all day. Feeding a stranger’s children. Mowing a lawn. All day. Painting houses. Year after year. Ironing bedsheets. Forever and ever. Work without end.

In the house Ismelda was vacuuming, cleaning rooms that are already clean, the roar of the vacuum abrasive to the nerves but if Hannah were to tell her please never mind, don’t bother, you just vacuumed yesterday, Ismelda will blink at her employer in surprise, alarm; too much effort to try to explain and then, subsequently, Ismelda will neglect parts of the house that need daily cleaning like the kitchen floor and Wes will notice, for Wes invariably does notice such neglect. Hannah, what the hell? Why is the floor sticky? Or, Hannah? These shirts are poorly ironed.

You look a little glum these days,” he said. “You think so?” I said. “You must be thinking about things too much in the middle of the night,” he said. “I’ve stopped thinking about things at night.” “How’d you manage that?” “When I get depressed, I start to clean. Even if it’s two or three in the morning. I wash the dishes, wipe off the stove, mop the floor, bleach the dish towels, organize my desk drawers, iron every shirt in sight,” he said, stirring his drink with his finger. “I do that till I’m exhausted, then I have a drink and go to sleep. In the morning I get up and by the time I’m putting on my socks I can’t even remember what it was I was thinking about.

DECIDE HOW YOU CLEAN ONCE I loathe cleaning, and regardless of whether you share my hatred, deciding once can help the entire process feel manageable. Streamline Your Products When you buy a cleaner that’s on sale, a fancy microfiber cloth, or a magic mop you saw on Shark Tank, you’re making a fixed decision to use that item. If you use it and it adds value to your life, high five. If you don’t use it, it becomes clutter. Stuff is the enemy of clean, and the more stuff you have, the harder it is to clean your house. Ironically, when I’m discontented with my home, I buy things to make it prettier or cleaner, which only makes the problem worse by adding to the noise.

course, I grin back like the hussy I apparently am. ‘Hell yeah, she’s excited,’ Jake says mostly under his breath. ‘Later, she’ll be yelling your name in your overly clean bedroom with her naked ass pressed against your freshly ironed sheets.’ He slaps my ass as though I’m headed into a football game. ‘Who irons their sheets anyway?’ ‘I send my laundry out,’ I remind him. ‘I don’t iron them myself. That said… maybe she will. Don’t be jealous all you have to go home to is this.’ I motion to Brynn, who cocks her head, a pinch-lipped grin on one side of her face. ‘Not funny,’ she says, now digging through her bag. ‘I bought you this. I can’t even believe they sell them again.’ She pulls something from her things and hands it to me.

Cap’ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den!” and taking sharp aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bildad’s broad brim, clean across the ship’s decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight. “Now,” said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, “spos-ee him whale-e eye; why, dad whale dead.” “Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway. “Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship’s papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we’ll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that’s more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket.

chain kept moving, and Ball led the file down through Virginia into North Carolina at a steady pace. As the days wore on, the men, who were never out of the chains, grew dirtier and dirtier. Lice hopped from scalp to scalp at night. Black-and-red lines of scabs bordered the manacles. No matter: The Georgia-man would let the people clean themselves before they got to market. In the meantime, the men were the propellant for the coffle-chain, which was more than a tool, more than mere metal. It was a machine. Its iron links and bands forced the black people inside them to do exactly what entrepreneurial enslavers, and investors far distant from slavery’s frontier, needed them to do in order to turn a $300 Maryland or Virginia purchase into a $600 Georgia sale.

The ideal of progress also should not be confused with the 20th-century movement to re-engineer society for the convenience of technocrats and planners, which the political scientist James Scott calls Authoritarian High Modernism.14 The movement denied the existence of human nature, with its messy needs for beauty, nature, tradition, and social intimacy. Starting from a “clean tablecloth,” the modernists designed urban renewal projects that replaced vibrant neighborhoods with freeways, high-rises, windswept plazas, and brutalist architecture. “Mankind will be reborn,” they theorized, and “live in an ordered relation to the whole.” Though these developments were sometimes linked to the word progress, the usage was ironic: “progress” unguided by humanism is not progress.

NAMING THE EARTH (a poem of light for national poetry day) And the world will be born again in circles of steaming breath and beams of light as each one of us directs our inner eye upon its name. Hear the cry of wings, the sigh of leaves and grass, smell the new sweet mist rising as the pathway is cleared at last. Stones stand ready - they have known since ages and ages ago that they were not alone. Water carries the planet's energy into skies and down to earth and bones. The cold parts steadily as we come together, bodies and hearts warm, hands tingling. We are silent but our eyes are singing. We look, we feel, we know, we trust each other's souls, we have no need to speak. Not now, but later, when the time is right, the name will ring within the iron core of each other's listening - and the very earth's being. Every creature, every plant, will hear it calling, tolling like a bell - a sound we've always felt but never dared to hope to hear reverberating - true at last, at every level of existence. The poets come together to open the intimate centre. Believe in life and air - breathe the light itself, for these are the energies and rhythms that we need to see, to touch, to reach, to identify, to say, the NAME. Colours on your skin fuse and dissolve - leave the river clean for pure space and time to enter and flow in. We all become one fluid stream of stillness and motion, of flaring thought pulses discovering weird pools and twists within where darkness hides from the flames in our eyes but will not snare us. We probe deeper still, journeying towards a unity which will be more raw and yet also more formed than anything written or spoken before. Our fragile bodies fall away - and the trees, and the roots of trees, guide us - lead us away from the faces we remember seeing each day in the mirror - into an ocean of dreams seething with warmth, love, where the beginning is real, ripe, evolving. And the world is born again in circles of steaming breath and beams of light. An ache - a signal - a trembling moment - and the time is right to say the name. We sing as one whole voice of the universal - all the words, the names of every tiny thirsting thing, and they ring out together as one sound, one energy, one sense, one vibration, one breath. And the world listens, beats, shines, glows - IS - Exists!

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing. In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay blowing their whistles. The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying. Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down to the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again-quiet and magical. Its normal life returns. The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress-tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora's emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong's grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale through the junk in the grass-grown lot for some pan or piece of wood or metal he needs for the boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora's-- the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. Callers arrive at Western Biological to see Doc, and he crosses the street to Lee Chong's for five quarts of beer. How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise-- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream-- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will on to a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

Marie Forleo Many of us think that in order to find our passion, we have to look outside of ourselves. But I’ve learned that the secret, ironically, to finding your passion is to start bringing passion to everything you do. And I do mean everything. So no matter what task is in front of you, bring as much enthusiasm and energy to it as you possibly can. Whether you’re making the bed, brushing your teeth, or cleaning the cat box, do it like you really want to do it. This one habit can change everything, because we humans are creatures of habit. You can’t be complainy and miserable ninety percent of your day and expect to feel passionate the other ten percent. The willingness to take responsibility for your experience on a moment-to-moment basis is what we’re missing. Most of us don’t realize that passion is an inside job. It’s a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it.

A while back a young woman from another state came to live with some of her relatives in the Salt Lake City area for a few weeks. On her first Sunday she came to church dressed in a simple, nice blouse and knee-length skirt set off with a light, button-up sweater. She wore hose and dress shoes, and her hair was combed simply but with care. Her overall appearance created an impression of youthful grace. Unfortunately, she immediately felt out of place. It seemed like all the other young women her age or near her age were dressed in casual skirts, some rather distant from the knee; tight T-shirt-like tops that barely met the top of their skirts at the waist (some bare instead of barely); no socks or stockings; and clunky sneakers or flip-flops. One would have hoped that seeing the new girl, the other girls would have realized how inappropriate their manner of dress was for a chapel and for the Sabbath day and immediately changed for the better. Sad to say, however, they did not, and it was the visitor who, in order to fit in, adopted the fashion (if you can call it that) of her host ward. It is troubling to see this growing trend that is not limited to young women but extends to older women, to men, and to young men as well. . . . I was shocked to see what the people of this other congregation wore to church. There was not a suit or tie among the men. They appeared to have come from or to be on their way to the golf course. It was hard to spot a woman wearing a dress or anything other than very casual pants or even shorts. Had I not known that they were coming to the school for church meetings, I would have assumed that there was some kind of sporting event taking place. The dress of our ward members compared very favorably to this bad example, but I am beginning to think that we are no longer quite so different as more and more we seem to slide toward that lower standard. We used to use the phrase “Sunday best.” People understood that to mean the nicest clothes they had. The specific clothing would vary according to different cultures and economic circumstances, but it would be their best. It is an affront to God to come into His house, especially on His holy day, not groomed and dressed in the most careful and modest manner that our circumstances permit. Where a poor member from the hills of Peru must ford a river to get to church, the Lord surely will not be offended by the stain of muddy water on his white shirt. But how can God not be pained at the sight of one who, with all the clothes he needs and more and with easy access to the chapel, nevertheless appears in church in rumpled cargo pants and a T-shirt? Ironically, it has been my experience as I travel around the world that members of the Church with the least means somehow find a way to arrive at Sabbath meetings neatly dressed in clean, nice clothes, the best they have, while those who have more than enough are the ones who may appear in casual, even slovenly clothing. Some say dress and hair don’t matter—it’s what’s inside that counts. I believe that truly it is what’s inside a person that counts, but that’s what worries me. Casual dress at holy places and events is a message about what is inside a person. It may be pride or rebellion or something else, but at a minimum it says, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand the difference between the sacred and the profane.” In that condition they are easily drawn away from the Lord. They do not appreciate the value of what they have. I worry about them. Unless they can gain some understanding and capture some feeling for sacred things, they are at risk of eventually losing all that matters most. You are Saints of the great latter-day dispensation—look the part.

He pulled out a thick iron ring with dozens of keys. He turned it, staring as the keys slid and rang. Arin shut them up inside his fist. “My house,” he said thickly. He looked at Kestrel. “Keys can be copied.” His eyes pleaded with her. “I have no idea how many sets Irex’s family had. Cheat could have had this one, somehow, even before Firstwinter.” She saw how what he said might be true. She didn’t think anyone could fake the horror on Arin’s face when he first saw Kestrel on the floor. Or the way he looked now: as if what had happened to her was happening to him. “Believe me, Kestrel.” She did…and she didn’t. Arin undid the ring, slipped off two keys, and set them in Kestrel’s hand. “These are for your suite. Keep them.” She gazed at the dull metal on her palm. She recognized one key. The other…“Is this one for the garden door?” “Yes, but”--Arin looked away--“you wouldn’t want to use it.” Kestrel had guessed that Arin lived in the west wing suite, and that it had been his father’s as hers had been his mother’s. But it wasn’t until then that she understood what the two gardens were for: a way for husband and wife to visit each other without the entire household knowing. Kestrel stood, because Arin was standing and she had had enough of crouching on the floor. “Krestrel…” Arin’s question was something he clearly hated to ask. “How badly are you hurt?” “As you see.” Her eye was swelling shut, and the carpet had skinned her cheek raw. “My face. Nothing more.” “I could kill him a thousand times and still want to do it again.” She looked at Cheat’s slumped body as it soaked the carpet with blood. “Somebody had better clean that up. It won’t be me. I’m not your slave.” Quietly, he said, “You’re really not.” “I might believe you if you gave me the whole set of keys.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Ah, but would you have any respect for my intelligence?

The stories abounded, both recounting these cross-continental journeys and perhaps inspiring them – how Hellenic Jason gathered his Argonauts together (including Augeas, whose vast stables Herakles would be forced to clean) for adventure and profit, how he stopped off along the Bosphorus and discovered the land of the rising sun before other Greek heroes headed to Asia in search of Helen, Troy and glory. In the Homeric epics we hear of Jason travelling east where he tangles with Medea of Colchis, her aunt Circe and the feisty Amazon tribe. Lured by the promise of gold (early and prodigious metalworking did indeed take place in the region – perhaps sparking the Greek idea that the East was ‘rich in gold’) and then detained by the potions and poisons of Princess Medea, Jason succeeded in penetrating the Caucasus – a land which, in the Greek mind, wept with both peril and promise. It was here that Prometheus was chained to a rock with iron rivets for daring to steal fire from the gods. Archaeology east of Istanbul demonstrates how myth grazes history.

He was forever wallowing in the mire, dirtying his nose, scrabbling his face, treading down the backs of his shoes, gaping at flies and chasing the butterflies (over whom his father held sway); he would pee in his shoes, shit over his shirt-tails, [wipe his nose on his sleeves,] dribble snot into his soup and go galumphing about. [He would drink out of his slippers, regularly scratch his belly on wicker-work baskets, cut his teeth on his clogs, get his broth all over his hands, drag his cup through his hair, hide under a wet sack, drink with his mouth full, eat girdle-cake but not bread, bite for a laugh and laugh while he bit, spew in his bowl, let off fat farts, piddle against the sun, leap into the river to avoid the rain, strike while the iron was cold, dream day-dreams, act the goody-goody, skin the renard, clack his teeth like a monkey saying its prayers, get back to his muttons, turn the sows into the meadow, beat the dog to teach the lion, put the cart before the horse, scratch himself where he ne’er did itch, worm secrets out from under your nose, let things slip, gobble the best bits first, shoe grasshoppers, tickle himself to make himself laugh, be a glutton in the kitchen, offer sheaves of straw to the gods, sing Magnificat at Mattins and think it right, eat cabbage and squitter puree, recognize flies in milk, pluck legs off flies, scrape paper clean but scruff up parchment, take to this heels, swig straight from the leathern bottle, reckon up his bill without Mine Host, beat about the bush but snare no birds, believe clouds to be saucepans and pigs’ bladders lanterns, get two grists from the same sack, act the goat to get fed some mash, mistake his fist for a mallet, catch cranes at the first go, link by link his armour make, always look a gift horse in the mouth, tell cock-and-bull stories, store a ripe apple between two green ones, shovel the spoil back into the ditch, save the moon from baying wolves, hope to pick up larks if the heavens fell in, make virtue out of necessity, cut his sops according to his loaf, make no difference twixt shaven and shorn, and skin the renard every day.]

You do not", cried Giovanni, sitting up, "love anyone ! You never loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love your purity you love your mirror - you are just like a little virgin, you walk around with your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold, silver, rubies, maybe diamonds down there between your legs! You will never give it to anybody, you will never let anybody touch it- man or woman. You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you go out covered with soap- and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime." He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. "You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink love . You want to kill in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you - you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life . Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love ?

Before I knew it, the first animal had entered the chute. Various cowboys were at different positions around the animal and began carrying out their respective duties. Tim looked at me and yelled, “Stick it in!” With utter trepidation, I slid the wand deep into the steer’s rectum. This wasn’t natural. This wasn’t normal. At least it wasn’t for me. This was definitely against God’s plan. I was supposed to check the monitor and announce if the temperature was above ninety-degrees. The first one was fine. But before I had a chance to remove the probe, Tim set the hot branding iron against the steer’s left hip. The animal let out a guttural Mooooooooooooo!, and as he did, the contents of its large intestine emptied all over my hand and forearm. Tim said, “Okay, Ree, you can take it out now.” I did. I didn’t know what to do. My arm was covered in runny, stinky cow crap. Was this supposed to happen? Should I say anything? I glanced at my sister, who was looking at me, completely horrified. The second animal entered the chute. The routine began again. I stuck it in. Tim branded. The steer bellowed. The crap squirted out. I was amazed at how consistent and predictable the whole nasty process was, and how nonchalant everyone--excluding my sister--was acting. But then slowly…surely…I began to notice something. On about the twentieth animal, I began inserting the thermometer. Tim removed his branding iron from the fire and brought it toward the steer’s hip. At the last second, however, I fumbled with my device and had to stop for a moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that when I paused, Tim did, too. It appeared he was actually waiting until I had the thermometer fully inserted before he branded the animal, ensuring that I’d be right in the line of fire when everything came pouring out. He had planned this all along, the dirty dog. Seventy-eight steers later, we were finished. I was a sight. Layer upon layer of manure covered my arm. I’m sure I was pale and in shock. The cowboys grinned politely. Tim directed me to an outdoor faucet where I could clean my arm. Marlboro Man watched as he gathered up the tools and the gear…and he chuckled. As my sister and I pulled away in the car later that day, she could only say, “Oh. My. God.” She made me promise never to return to that awful place. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d found out later that this, from Tim’s perspective, was my initiation. It was his sick, twisted way of measuring my worth.

First, she must unequivocally say “no” to the housewife image. This does not mean, of course, that she must divorce her husband, abandon her children, give up her home. She does not have to choose between marriage and career; that was the mistaken choice of the feminine mystique. In actual fact, it is not as difficult as the feminine mystique implies, to combine marriage and motherhood and even the kind of lifelong personal purpose that once was called “career.” It merely takes a new life plan—in terms of one’s whole life as a woman. The first step in that plan is to see housework for what it is—not a career, but something that must be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once a woman stops trying to make cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, “something more,” she can say “no, I don’t want a stove with rounded corners, I don’t want four different kinds of soap.” She can say “no” to those mass daydreams of the women’s magazines and television, “no” to the depth researchers and manipulators who are trying to run her life. Then, she can use the vacuum cleaner and the dishwasher and all the automatic appliances, and even the instant mashed potatoes for what they are truly worth—to save time that can be used in more creative ways.

With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate--with every villainy of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close on life--here they lower our dear brother down a foot or two, here sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside, a shameful testimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism walked this boastful island together. Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too long by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to every passerby, "Look here!" With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands and looks in between the bars, stands looking in for a little while. It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and makes the archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly, looks in again a little while, and so departs. Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who "can't exactly say" what will be done to him in greater hands than men's, thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: "He wos wery good to me, he wos!

A little later, strolling about the town, I, stopped into a shop near the museum, where they sold souvenirs and post-cards. I looked over the cards leisurely; the ones I liked best were soiled and wrinkled. The man, who spoke French fluently, offered to make the cards presentable. He asked me to wait a few minutes while he ran over to the house and cleaned and ironed them. He said he would make them look like new. I was so dumbfounded that before I could say anything he had disappeared, leaving me in charge of the shop. After a few minutes his wife came in. I thought she looked strange for a Greek woman. After a few words had passed I realized that she was French and she, when she learned that I hailed from Paris, was overjoyed to speak with me. We got along beautifully until she began talking about Greece. She hated Crete, she said. It was too dry, too dusty, too hot, too bare. She missed the beautiful trees of Normandy, the gardens with the high walls, the orchards, and so on. Didn't I agree with her? I said NO, flatly. "Monsieur!" she said, rising up in her pride and dignity, as if I had slapped her in the face. "I don't miss anything," I said, pressing the point home. "I think this is marvellous. I don't like your gardens with their high walls, I don't like your pretty little orchards and your well-cultivated-fields. I like this …" and I pointed outdobrs to the dusty road on which a sorely-laden donkey was plodding along dejectedly. "But it's not civilized," she said, in a sharp, shrill voice which reminded me of the miserly tobacconiste in the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire. "Je m'en fous da la civilisation européenne!" I blurted out. "Monsieur!" she said again, her feathers ruffled and her nose turning blue with malice. Fortunately her husband reappeared at this point with the post-cards which he had given a dry-cleaning.

...He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively is he must. He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional. He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march. He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient. ...He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cool his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts. ...He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low. He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands. He can save your life- or take it, because that is his job. He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed. He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to "square-away" those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking. ...Just as did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over two hundred years. He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding. Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood. And now we even have women over there in danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to war when our nation calls us to do so. As you go to bed tonight, remember this. A short lull, a little shade, and a picture of loved ones in their helmets.

went off, without waiting for serving men, and unsaddled my horse, and washed such portions of his ribs and his spine as projected through his hide, and when I came back, behold five stately circus tents were up—tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment! I was speechless. Then they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and set them up in the tents; they put a soft mattress and pillows and good blankets and two snow-white sheets on each bed. Next, they rigged a table about the centre-pole, and on it placed pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels—one set for each man; they pointed to pockets in the tent, and said we could put our small trifles in them for convenience, and if we needed pins or such things, they were sticking every where. Then came the finishing touch—they spread carpets on the floor! I simply said, "If you call this camping out, all right—but it isn't the style I am used to; my little baggage that I brought along is at a discount." It grew dark, and they put candles on the tables—candles set in bright, new, brazen candlesticks. And soon the bell—a genuine, simon-pure bell—rang, and we were invited to "the saloon." I had thought before that we had a tent or so too many, but now here was one, at least, provided for; it was to be used for nothing but an eating-saloon. Like the others, it was high enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and was very handsome and clean and bright-colored within. It was a gem of a place. A table for eight, and eight canvas chairs; a table-cloth and napkins whose whiteness and whose fineness laughed to scorn the things we were used to in the great excursion steamer; knives and forks, soup-plates, dinner-plates—every thing, in the handsomest kind of style. It was wonderful! And they call this camping out. Those stately fellows in baggy trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a dinner which consisted of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose, potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands were better cooked than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a finer appearance, with its large German silver candlesticks and other finery, than any table we had sat down to for a good while, and yet that polite dragoman, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole affair, on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting under way for a very long trip, and promising to do a great deal better in future! It is midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morning. They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to be a pilgrim to the Holy Land.

The Monk in the Kitchen I ORDER is a lovely thing; On disarray it lays its wing, Teaching simplicity to sing. It has a meek and lowly grace, Quiet as a nun's face. Lo—I will have thee in this place! Tranquil well of deep delight, All things that shine through thee appear As stones through water, sweetly clear. Thou clarity, That with angelic charity Revealest beauty where thou art, Spread thyself like a clean pool. Then all the things that in thee are, Shall seem more spiritual and fair, Reflection from serener air— Sunken shapes of many a star In the high heavens set afar. II Ye stolid, homely, visible things, Above you all brood glorious wings Of your deep entities, set high, Like slow moons in a hidden sky. But you, their likenesses, are spent Upon another element. Truly ye are but seemings— The shadowy cast-oft gleamings Of bright solidities. Ye seem Soft as water, vague as dream; Image, cast in a shifting stream. III What are ye? I know not. Brazen pan and iron pot, Yellow brick and gray flag-stone That my feet have trod upon— Ye seem to me Vessels of bright mystery. For ye do bear a shape, and so Though ye were made by man, I know An inner Spirit also made, And ye his breathings have obeyed. IV Shape, the strong and awful Spirit, Laid his ancient hand on you. He waste chaos doth inherit; He can alter and subdue. Verily, he doth lift up Matter, like a sacred cup. Into deep substance he reached, and lo Where ye were not, ye were; and so Out of useless nothing, ye Groaned and laughed and came to be. And I use you, as I can, Wonderful uses, made for man, Iron pot and brazen pan. V What are ye? I know not; Nor what I really do When I move and govern you. There is no small work unto God. He required of us greatness; Of his least creature A high angelic nature, Stature superb and bright completeness. He sets to us no humble duty. Each act that he would have us do Is haloed round with strangest beauty; Terrific deeds and cosmic tasks Of his plainest child he asks. When I polish the brazen pan I hear a creature laugh afar In the gardens of a star, And from his burning presence run Flaming wheels of many a sun. Whoever makes a thing more bright, He is an angel of all light. When I cleanse this earthen floor My spirit leaps to see Bright garments trailing over it, A cleanness made by me. Purger of all men's thoughts and ways, With labor do I sound Thy praise, My work is done for Thee. Whoever makes a thing more bright, He is an angel of all light. Therefore let me spread abroad The beautiful cleanness of my God. VI One time in the cool of dawn Angels came and worked with me. The air was soft with many a wing. They laughed amid my solitude And cast bright looks on everything. Sweetly of me did they ask That they might do my common task And all were beautiful—but one With garments whiter than the sun Had such a face Of deep, remembered grace; That when I saw I cried—"Thou art The great Blood-Brother of my heart. Where have I seen thee?"—And he said, "When we are dancing round God's throne, How often thou art there. Beauties from thy hands have flown Like white doves wheeling in mid air. Nay—thy soul remembers not? Work on, and cleanse thy iron pot.

Successful con men are treated with considerable respect in the South. A good slice of the settler population of that region were men who’d been given a choice between being shipped off to the New World in leg-irons and spending the rest of their lives in English prisons. The Crown saw no point in feeding them year after year, and they were far too dangerous to be turned loose on the streets of London—so, rather than overload the public hanging schedule, the King’s Minister of Gaol decided to put this scum to work on the other side of the Atlantic, in The Colonies, where cheap labor was much in demand. Most of these poor bastards wound up in what is now the Deep South because of the wretched climate. No settler with good sense and a few dollars in his pocket would venture south of Richmond. There was plenty of opportunity around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—and by British standards the climate in places like South Carolina and Georgia was close to Hell on Earth: swamps, alligators, mosquitoes, tropical disease... all this plus a boiling sun all day long and no way to make money unless you had a land grant from the King... So the South was sparsely settled at first, and the shortage of skilled labor was a serious problem to the scattered aristocracy of would-be cotton barons who’d been granted huge tracts of good land that would make them all rich if they could only get people to work it. The slave-trade was one answer, but Africa in 1699 was not a fertile breeding ground for middle-management types... and the planters said it was damn near impossible for one white man to establish any kind of control over a boatload of black primitives. The bastards couldn’t even speak English. How could a man get the crop in, with brutes like that for help? There would have to be managers, keepers, overseers: white men who spoke the language, and had a sense of purpose in life. But where would they come from? There was no middle class in the South: only masters and slaves... and all that rich land lying fallow. The King was quick to grasp the financial implications of the problem: The crops must be planted and harvested, in order to sell them for gold—and if all those lazy bastards needed was a few thousand half-bright English-speaking lackeys in order to bring the crops in... hell, that was easy: Clean out the jails, cut back on the Crown’s grocery bill, jolt the liberals off balance by announcing a new “Progressive Amnesty” program for hardened criminals.... Wonderful. Dispatch royal messengers to spread the good word in every corner of the kingdom; and after that send out professional pollsters to record an amazing 66 percent jump in the King’s popularity... then wait a few weeks before announcing the new 10 percent sales tax on ale. That’s how the South got settled. Not the whole story, perhaps, but it goes a long way toward explaining why George Wallace is the Governor of Alabama. He has the same smile as his great-grandfather—a thrice-convicted pig thief from somewhere near Nottingham, who made a small reputation, they say, as a jailhouse lawyer, before he got shipped out. With a bit of imagination you can almost hear the cranky little bastard haranguing his fellow prisoners in London jail, urging them on to revolt: “Lissen here, you poor fools! There’s not much time! Even now—up there in the tower—they’re cookin up some kind of cruel new punishment for us! How much longer will we stand for it? And now they want to ship us across the ocean to work like slaves in a swamp with a bunch of goddamn Hottentots! “We won’t go! It’s asinine! We’ll tear this place apart before we’ll let that thieving old faggot of a king send us off to work next to Africans! “How much more of this misery can we stand, boys? I know you’re fed right up to here with it. I can see it in your eyes— pure misery! And I’m tellin’ you, we don’t have to stand for it!...

My father had a sister, Mady, who had married badly and ‘ruined her life.’ Her story was a classic. She had fallen in love before the war with an American adventurer, married him against her family’s wishes, and been disinherited by my grandfather. Mady followed her husband romantically across the sea. In America he promptly abandoned her. By the time my parents arrived in America Mady was already a broken woman, sick and prematurely old, living a life two steps removed from destitution. My father, of course, immediately put her on an allowance and made her welcome in his home. But the iron laws of Victorian transgression had been set in motion and it was really all over for Mady. You know what it meant for a woman to have been so disgraced and disinherited in those years? She had the mark of Cain on her. She would live, barely tolerated, on the edge of respectable society for the rest of her life. A year after we arrived in America, I was eleven years old, a cousin of mine was married out of our house. We lived then in a lovely brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. The entire house had been cleaned and decorated for the wedding. Everything sparkled and shone, from the basement kitchen to the third-floor bedrooms. In a small room on the second floor the women gathered around the bride, preening, fixing their dresses, distributing bouquets of flowers. I was allowed to be there because I was only a child. There was a bunch of long-stemmed roses lying on the bed, blood-red and beautiful, each rose perfection. Mady walked over to them. I remember the other women were wearing magnificent dresses, embroidered and bejeweled. Mady was wearing only a simple white satin blouse and a long black skirt with no ornamentation whatever. She picked up one of the roses, sniffed deeply at it, held it against her face. Then she walked over to a mirror and held the rose against her white blouse. Immediately, the entire look of her plain costume was altered; the rose transferred its color to Mady’s face, brightening her eyes. Suddenly, she looked lovely, and young again. She found a long needle-like pin and began to pin the rose to her blouse. My mother noticed what Mady was doing and walked over to her. Imperiously, she took the rose out of Mady’s hand and said, ‘No, Mady, those flowers are for the bride.’ Mady hastily said, ‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry, how stupid of me not to have realized that,’ and her face instantly assumed its usual mask of patient obligation. “I experienced in that moment an intensity of pain against which I have measured every subsequent pain of life. My heart ached so for Mady I thought I would perish on the spot. Loneliness broke, wave after wave, over my young head and one word burned in my brain. Over and over again, through my tears, I murmured, ‘Unjust! Unjust!’ I knew that if Mady had been one of the ‘ladies’ of the house my mother would never have taken the rose out of her hand in that manner. The memory of what had happened in the bedroom pierced me repeatedly throughout that whole long day, making me feel ill and wounded each time it returned. Mady’s loneliness became mine. I felt connected, as though by an invisible thread, to her alone of all the people in the house. But the odd thing was I never actually went near her all that day. I wanted to comfort her, let her know that I at least loved her and felt for her. But I couldn’t. In fact, I avoided her. In spite of everything, I felt her to be a pariah, and that my attachment to her made me a pariah, also. It was as though we were floating, two pariahs, through the house, among all those relations, related to no one, not even to each other. It was an extraordinary experience, one I can still taste to this day. I was never again able to address myself directly to Mady’s loneliness until I joined the Communist Party. When I joined the Party the stifled memory of that strange wedding day came back to me. . .

Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. (Revelation 19:11–16) The great Lord Jesus, the captain of the Lord's hosts, the King over all kings will descend to defend and protect His chosen people and put a once-and-for-all end to the evil of the Antichrist.

Do nothing” had long been viewed as an unacceptable position of helplessness by American foreign policy experts. The instinct to do something was driven by the desire to prove you were not limited to nothing. You couldn’t do nothing and show strength. But Bannon’s approach was very much “A pox on all your houses,” it was not our mess, and judging by all recent evidence, no good would come of trying to help clean it up. That effort would cost military lives with no military reward. Bannon, believing in the need for a radical shift in foreign policy, was proposing a new doctrine: Fuck ’em. This iron-fisted isolationism appealed to the president’s transactional self: What was in it for us (or for him)?

Now that she knew she was boring and physically repulsive, even to a man who did spellchecking for a living, there was no harm in standing up and giving her tights and knickers a really good yank. Then she gingerly lowered herself back on to the sofa and stared at the toes of her black patent Mary-Janes until Celia and Yuri, her sister’s flatmate, sat down on either side of her. ‘How did it go with Martyn?’ Celia asked eagerly, replacing Neve’s glass, which she didn’t remember draining, with a full one. ‘It didn’t. Can I please go home now?’ ‘I told Celia that it would never work with you and that sub-editor,’ Yuri said conspiratorially. Douglas, Neve and Celia’s elder brother, insisted that Yuri was the most terrifying woman in the world, which was ironic considering who he’d married. If Neve hadn’t seen Yuri in her pyjamas practically every morning as she came up the stairs to borrow teabags, milk and occasionally a clean teaspoon, she would have been terrified of her too. Neve had never met a Japanese person with an afro before, or one who sounded like Carmela Soprano, courtesyof the language school in New Jersey where Yuri had learned English. If Celia hadn’t come back from New York a year ago with Yuri in tow and Neve wasn’t Celia’s older sister, which according to Yuri automatically gave her ‘eleventy billion cool points’, Neve wasn’t sure that Yuri would ever have acknowledged her existence. Or happily list all the reasons why Martyn from the subs desk wasn’t the right man for Neve. ‘He drinks shandy and he sweats a lot,’ she finished scathingly. ‘Hey, Celia, Neve can do so much better.’ ‘I just wanted to ease her in gently.’ Celia made her thinking face. ‘What about a male model? They’re not as out of reach as people think. Like, they’re dead insecure about their looks so the bar isn’t that high.’ ‘Thank you very much,

God!...Once the lying spirit of a cause With maddening words dethrones the mind of men, They're past the reach of prayer. The eternal laws Hate them. Their eyes will not come clean again, But doom and strong delusion drive them then Without ruth, without rest…the iron laughter Of the immortal mouths goes hooting after. - Dymer, Canto IV, v. 29

Wing claws are effective weapons, but difficult to clean. Use them sparingly, unless you want to always be picking blood off of them. - The Malwatch

Ironically enough, when we returned to the zoo, the Dr. Dolittle cameo almost came true. We had to transfer a big female crocodile named Toolakea to another enclosure. Steve geared up for the move as he always did. “Don’t think about catching Toolakea,” he instructed his crew, me included, before we ever got near to the enclosure. “If you’re concentrating on catching her, she’ll know it. We’ll never get a top-jaw rope on. Crocs know when they’re being hunted.” For millions of years, wild animals have evolved to use every sense to tune into the world around them. Steve understood that their survival depended on it. So as I approached the enclosure, I thought of mowing the lawn, or doing the croc show, or picking hibiscus flowers to feed the lizards. Anything but catching Toolakea. It went like clockwork. Steve top-jaw-roped Toolakea, and we all jumped her. He decided that since she was only a little more than nine feet long, we would be able to just lift her over the fence and carry her to her other enclosure. Steve never built his enclosures with gates. He knew that sooner or later, someone could make a mistake and not latch a gate properly. We had to be masters at fence jumping. He picked up Toolakea around her shoulders with her neck held firmly against his upper arm. This would protect his face if she started struggling. The rest of us backed him up and helped to lift Toolakea over the fence. All of a sudden she exploded, twisting and writhing in everyone’s arms. “Down, down, down,” Steve shouted. That was our signal to pin the crocodile again before picking her up. Not everyone reacted quickly enough. As Steve moved to the ground, the people on the tail were still standing up. That afforded Toolakea the opportunity to twist her head around and grab hold of Steve’s thigh. The big female croc sank her teeth deep into his flesh. I never realized it until later. Steve didn’t flinch. He settled the crocodile on the ground, keeping her eyes covered to quiet her down. We lifted her again. This time she cleared the fence easily. I noticed the blood trickling down Steve’s leg. We got to the other enclosure before I asked what had happened, and he showed me. There were a dozen tears in the fabric of his khaki shorts. A half dozen of Toolakea’s teeth had gotten through to his flesh, putting a number of puncture holes in his upper thigh. As usual, Steve didn’t bother with the wound. He cleaned it out and carried on, but even after his leg had healed, he couldn’t feel the temperature accurately on his leg. Once, about a month after the incident, I got a drink out of the fridge and rested it on his thigh. “I can feel something there,” he said. “Hot or cold?” I quizzed. “I don’t know,” he said. The croc-torn khaki shorts he wore that day made an amazing souvenir for a lucky sponsor of the zoo. People who donated a certain amount of money to our conservation efforts received a bonus in return: one of Steve’s uniforms and a photograph of him in it. Steve was very proud to include his khakis with teeth holes in them as the gift for a generous supporter.

Hardie Boys- Exterior Millwork Exterior spaces on your property are largely exposed to the elements and that means they have to endure considerable wear and tear. This is why it becomes important to make sure that the structures, features and elements are manufactured by specialists that use high-quality, weather-resistant materials and products. We at Hardie Boys, Inc. are a leading manufacturer of various type of exterior architectural work. Since our inception in 1997, we have moved from strength to strength and created a niche for ourselves in this space. Today, when property owners across the region want any exterior millwork done, the first company they think of is us. Not only do we design, manufacture & install a variety of columns, soffit systems, brackets and louvers and a number of other similar products, but use very unique materials and techniques in making these features. Take a look at how our products differ from standard ones used in these applications: • Longevity- Traditionally, these features are made using materials such as foam, wood, concrete, plaster, brick, aluminum, iron etc. While most of these materials are quite hardy they aren’t always able to withstand the elements well. Wood can rot, while metal can rust and corrode over time; concrete tends to develop cracks when exposed to temperature fluctuations and plaster loses its resilience over time. All our products are made with a unique cellular PVC material which is extremely resilient and lasts for a number of years without any trouble. • Minimal maintenance- When you have exterior structures made of wood, they require specialized treatment and have to be polished or painted with regularity. Metal features have to be sanded and painted regularly as well and concrete needs to be resurfaced when it develops cracks. In comparison, the cellular PVC material we use is low-maintenance and only requires basic cleaning. • Aesthetics- As mentioned earlier, the material we use in exterior millwork is weather-resistant and doesn’t fade or deteriorate as much as traditionally-used materials do. This means the features and installations on your property continue to look attractive and add to the aesthetics and value of your property. • Fast and simple installation-The installation of the features made of cellular PVC is easy and quick. This means the project can be completed within a shorter timeframe and with the least amount of disruption to the daily activities on your property. • Versatility- This material is extremely versatile and can be used in the manufacture of various features and installation. We are also very creative and innovative in our approach and keep adding new products to our existing line of premium products. We are a customer-centric company that focuses on customization; and work very closely with our customers and provide beautifully-designed custom exterior millwork installations that are resilient and durable. While the British West Indies style is what we are more inclined towards, our products complement architectural styles including Dutch West Indies, Florida Vernacular, Coastal, Key West and more. For any more information about our custom designed cellular PVC, exterior millwork, contact Hardie Boys, Inc. on this number- 954-784-8216.

Hardie Boys- Exterior Millwork That Provides Value Over Time The outdoor areas on your property and the features on it, become the perfect backdrop for your home’s structure. They are also one of the first things that visitors to your property notice. The manner in which these features are designed and the finishing that’s used in them, go a long way in enhancing the overall appeal and value of your property. And so it follows that you ensure resilient materials are used in the work and hire expert technicians for the installation. When you start researching products and materials for outdoor installations, you will find that wood; iron, aluminum, plaster, brick and foam are commonly used in exterior construction. And this may lead you to believe that they are the best option for these applications. It’s also natural for you to be unsure about using new materials such as the specialized cellular PVC materials we use in our millwork. Some comparisons But the fact is that there has been a significant advancement in the manufacture of exterior-grade, manmade materials and cellular PVC is one of them. However, the higher upfront cost can sometimes become the other deterrent for property owners, to opt for this innovative material. Take a look at how the cellular PVC material that we at Hardie Boys, Inc. use stands up against other traditionally-used materials: 1. Weather impact Materials such as hardwood and metal are strong and durable, but need a significant amount of treatments before they can be used in exterior applications. For instance, untreated and unfinished wood features get affected by moisture and the sun’s rays and eventually crack and crumble. They can also develop rot or moss; and if these conditions are very severe, extensive repairs or complete replacement of the feature is the only option you are left with. Metal too gets affected by moisture and exposure to rain and frost; and rusts and corrodes over time. In comparison the unique PVC cellular material that we use in our millwork is moisture and heat-resistant and doesn’t corrode over time. 2. Termite damage Termites are extremely destructive creatures and they can bore through wooden features and cause extensive damage to them. In most cases, replacement is the only option you are left with, which represents a significant expense. Concrete surfaces get affected by the freeze and thaw cycles and crack over a period of time, and you end up spending considerable amounts on repair and replacements. On the other hand, cellular PVC doesn’t get impacted by termites or weather fluctuations at all. 3. Maintenance While choosing materials for exterior applications, most property owners fail to factor the maintenance costs into the overall cost of the installation. For instance, wood, plaster, foam, brick and concrete require annual mold prevention maintenance as well as sanding and polishing or painting. Metal surfaces have to be sanded, and painted regularly too. In comparison, our cellular PVC material features require only basic cleaning and they won’t warp, crack, fade, corrode, develop rot or mold. In short, this is an extremely low-maintenance option that is worth every penny you spend on initial costs. We at Hardie Boys, Inc. are the leaders in this space and provide excellent, customized, cellular PVC millwork solutions for residential and commercial settings. For any more information about our exterior millwork,

Nice to meet you, Verne, but don’t call me little lady.” I started to wipe the blood on the edge of the black jacket. Black’s good for that. “Don’t you ever give an inch?” Jamil asked. I glanced at him. There was blood all over his nice white clothes. “No,” I said. I motioned him over to me. He frowned. “What?” “I want to use your shirt to wipe the blood off the blade.” He just stared at me. “Come on, Jamil. The shirt is already ruined.” Jamil pulled the shirt over his head in one smooth motion. He threw the shirt at me, and I caught it one-handed. I started cleaning the blade with the unstained part of the shirt. Verne laughed. He had one of those deep, rolling chuckles that matched his gravelly voice. “No wonder Richard’s been having such a hard time finding a replacement for you. You are a solid, cast-iron, ball-busting bitch.” I looked at his smiling face. I think it was a compliment. Besides, truth was truth. I wasn’t down here to win Miss Congeniality. I was down here to rescue Richard and to stay alive. Bitch was just about the right speed for that.

A few months after my mom died, he said he was tired of trying. He said he couldn't understand me or why I couldn't throw a football straight or hit a baseball farther than the baseline. He didn't understand why I loved our neighbor's shih tzu and would play with her whenever she dug her way out of her yard into ours to spend some time with me when I came home from school. He said it was a little girl's dog and that young men wouldn't play with dogs like that." He spoke distantly, as if reading a detached script, trying to avoid any emotion. He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. "He made his feelings about me very clear when he threw me head first into the grass and I landed inches away from one of the presents she'd left in our yard I hadn't had a chance to clean up yet. He laughed and called it ironic considering I was a shitty excuse for a son," he said in a mocking deep voice. He paused again and swallowed heavily before looking over to Aidan. "He gave up on me and told me to leave. If I'm going to be honest with you, I didn't want to stay. I was terrified of becoming him.

Tap water is another example of a legally condoned public health hazard. As early as the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) in China, the imperial government strictly enforced laws which required the public to clean their wells and water storage facilities regularly in order to maintain the purity of public drinking water. These laws also specified that pipes, vats, and basins used to transport and store drinking water must be made of clay, not metal, because the health hazards of heavy metals werw well known to Chinese health authorities. Today, public water utilities poison our drinking water with chlorine, fluoride, aluminum salts, and other substances which they call 'purifiers', then run it through metal pipes which further contaminate the water with lead, iron, nickel, cadmium, and other metals that are extremely toxic to the human system. Public utilities and private corporations combine to poison the food, air, and water upon which we must all rely to stay alive. Orthodox Western medical practice compounds these public health hazards by ignoring them as causes of disease, then further aggravates the situation by prescribing toxic drugs, injections, vaccines, and radical surgery as cures for the ills they cause.

Instead of relying on human judgment to determine the verdict, the Count decided to place the matter in the hands of God. The suspected witch was subjected to "the trial by red-hot iron". This procedure required the accused person to take an iron from a furnace and carry it for three paces. Their hand would be bound for three days and then the wound would be inspected. They were declared innocent if the wound had healed cleanly, but condemned if it was found to be weeping or discoloured. The accused woman submitted to the ordeal with impressive confidence.

A (house)wife now performs the tasks once distributed between servants of different rank or undertaken by the maid of all work. Her ‘core’ jobs are cleaning, shopping, cooking, washing-up, laundering and ironing.44 She also looks after her children, frequently cares for aged parents or other relatives, and is sometimes incorporated to a greater or lesser degree as an unpaid assistant in her husband’s work. This aspect of being a wife is visible in many small shops or in the activities of the wives of clergymen and politicians, but the same service is provided, less visibly, to husbands in all kinds of occupations. A wife, for example, contributes research assistance (to male academics), acts as hostess (to a business man’s clients), answers the phone and keeps the books (for a small business man).45 However, as Christine Delphy has argued, to list the tasks of a housewife tells us only so much. The list cannot explain why exactly the same services can be bought in the market, or why a particular task is performed without pay by a wife, yet she would get paid for providing the service if she worked, for example, in a restaurant or for a firm of contract cleaners.46 The problem is not that wives perform valuable tasks for which they are not paid (which has led some feminists to argue for state payment or wages for housework). Rather, what being a woman (wife) means is to provide certain services for and at the command of a man (husband). In short, the marriage contract and a wife’s subordination as a (kind of) labourer, cannot be understood in the absence of the sexual contract and the patriarchal construction of ‘men’ and ‘women’ and the ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres.

His manly duties covered the gardening, the bulb-changing and general maintenance, the woman did the washing, ironing, cleaning.

13 Reasons to include Curry Leaves to your Diet Sambar. Upma. Dal. Poha. What do they all have in common? A tempering rich in curry leaves. But curry leaves – or Curry leaves, as they are commonly known in India – do more good than simply seasoning your food. Curry power benefits include weight loss and a drop in cholesterol levels. But there’s lots more that the Curry leaves can do. Here are 13 reasons to chew on those curry leaves that pop up on your plate. To keep anaemia away The humble Curry leaves is a rich source of iron and folic acid. Anaemia crops up when your body is unable to absorb iron and use it. “Folic acid is responsible for iron absorption and as Curry leaves is a rich source of both compounds, it’s the perfect choice if you’re looking to amp up your iron levels,” says Alpa Momaya, a Diet & Wellness consultant with Sunrise nutrition hub. To protect your liver If you are a heavy drinker, eating curry leaves can help quell liver damage. A study published in Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical and Clinical Research has revealed that curry leaves contain kaempferol, a potent antioxidant, and can protect the liver from oxidative stress and harmful toxins. To maintain blood sugar levels A study published in the Journal of Plant food for Nutrition has revealed that curry leaves can lower blood sugar levels by affecting the insulin activity. To keep your heart healthy A study published in the Journal of Chinese Medicine showed that “curry leaves can help increase the amount of good cholesterol (HDL) and protect you from heart disease and atherosclerosis,” Momaya says. To aid in digestion Curry leaves have a carminative nature, meaning that they prevent the formation of gas in the gastrointestinal tract and facilitate the expulsion of gas if formed. Ayurveda also suggests that Curry leaves has mild laxative properties and can balance the pitta levels in the body. Momaya’s advice: “A juice of curry leaves with a bit of lime juice or added to buttermilk can be consumed for indigestion.” To control diarrhoea Even though curry leaves have mild laxative properties, research has shown that the carbazole alkaloids in curry leaves can help control diarrhoea. To reduce congestion Curry leaves has long been a home remedy when it comes to dealing with a wet cough, sinusitis or chest congestion. Curry leaves, packed with vitamin C and A and rich in kaempferol, can help loosen up congested mucous. To help you lose weight Curry leaves is known to improve digestion by altering the way your body absorbs fat. This quality is particularly helpful to the obese. To combat the side effects of chemotherapy Curry leaves are said to protect the body from the side effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. They also help protect the bone marrow and halt the production of free radicals in the body. To improve your vision Curry leaves is high in vitamin A, which contains carotenoids that can protect the cornea. Eating a diet rich in curry leaves can help improve your vision over time. To prevent skin infections Curry leaves combines potent antioxidant properties with powerful anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and antiprotozoal properties. It is a common home remedy for common skin infections such as acne and fungal infections of the nail. To get better hair Curry leaves has long been used to prevent greying of the hair by our grandmothers. It also helps treat damaged hair, tackle hair fall and dandruff and add bounce to limp hair. To take care of skin Curry leaves can also be used to heal damaged skin. Apply a paste on burns, cuts, bruises, skin irritations and insect bites to ensure quick recovery and clean healing. Add more Curry leaves to your diet and enjoy the benefits of curry leaves.

And, insofar as the Freudian name for this radical negativity is the death drive, Schuster is right to point out how, paradoxically, what Sade misses in his celebration of the ultimate Crime of radical destruction of all life is, precisely, the death drive: “for all its wantonness and havoc, the Sadeian will-to-extinction is premised on a fetishistic denial of the death drive. The sadist makes himself into the servant of universal extinction precisely in order to avoid the deadlock of subjectivity, the “virtual extinction” that splits the life of the subject from within. The Sadeian libertine expels this negativity outside himself in order to be able to slavishly devote himself to it; the apocalyptic vision of an absolute Crime thus functions as a screen against a more intractable internal split. What the florid imagination of the sadist masks is the fact that the Other is barred, inconsistent, lacking, that it cannot be served for it presents no law to obey, not even the wild law of its accelerating auto-destruction. There is no nature to be followed, rivalled or outdone, and it is this void or lack, the non-existence of the Other, that is incomparably more violent than even the most destructive fantasm of the death drive. Or as Lacan argues, Sade is right if we just turn around his evil thought: subjectivity is the catastrophe it fantasizes about, the death beyond death, the “second death.” While the sadist dreams of violently forcing a cataclysm that will wipe the slate clean, what he does not want to know is that this unprecedented calamity has already taken place. Every subject is the end of the world, or rather this impossibly explosive end that is equally a “fresh start,” the unabolishable chance of the dice throw.”[6] Kant characterized the free autonomous act as an act that cannot be accounted for in the terms of natural causality, of the texture of causes and effects: a free act occurs as its own cause, it opens up a new causal chain from its zero-point. So, insofar as “second death” is the interruption of the natural life-cycle of generation and corruption, no radical annihilation of the entire natural order is needed for this—an autonomous free act already suspends natural causality, and the subject as such is already this cut in the natural circuit, the self-sabotage of natural goals. The mystical name for this end of the world is “the night of the world,” while the philosophical name is “radical negativity” as the core of subjectivity. And, to quote Mallarmé, a throw of the dice will never abolish the hazard, i.e., the abyss of negativity remains forever the unsublatable background of subjective creativity. We may even risk here an ironic version of Gandhi’s famous motto “be the change you want to see in the world”: the subject is itself the catastrophe it fears and tries to avoid.

He was a recluse, the old-fashioned sort with a housekeeper and a full staff. I’m not sure I would leave the house myself if I had someone to cook and clean for me, to iron the Times and place it on a tray with my morning infusion.

Hugh wished for something to happen. Some release. Someone to kill. Bucky raised his tail and shit on the road. “You gonna clean that up?” a male voice challenged. Thank you. Thank you so much for volunteering.

Dr. Fuhrman’s Famous Anticancer Soup Serves: 10 1 cup dried split peas ½ cup dried adzuki or cannellini beans 4 cups water 6 to 10 medium zucchini 5 pounds large organic carrots, juiced (6 cups juice; see Note) 2 bunches celery, juiced (2 cups juice; see Note) 2 tablespoons VegiZest* or other no-salt seasoning blend, adjusted to taste 1 teaspoon Mrs. Dash no-salt seasoning 4 medium onions, chopped 3 leek stalks, cut lengthwise and cleaned carefully, then coarsely chopped 2 bunches kale, collard greens, or other greens, tough stems and center ribs removed and leaves chopped 1 cup raw cashews 2½ cups chopped fresh mushrooms (shiitake, cremini, and/or white) Place the peas and beans and water in a very large pot over low heat. Bring to a boil, and reduce heat. Add the zucchini whole to the pot. Add the carrot juice, celery juice, VegiZest, and Mrs. Dash. Put the onions, leeks, and kale in a blender and blend with a little bit of the soup liquid. Pour this mixture into the soup pot. After at least 10 minutes, remove the softened zucchini with tongs and blend them in the blender with the cashews until creamy. Pour this mixture back into the soup pot. Add the mushrooms and continue to simmer until the beans are soft, about 2 hours total cooking time. Note: Freshly juiced organic carrots and celery will maximize the flavor of this soup. PER SERVING: CALORIES 296; PROTEIN 14g; CARBOHYDRATE 49g; TOTAL FAT 7.5g; SATURATED FAT 1.4g; SODIUM 172mg; FIBER 10.2g; BETA-CAROTENE 16,410mcg; VITAMIN C 90mg; CALCIUM 178mg; IRON 4.8mg; FOLATE 203mcg; MAGNESIUM 151mg; ZINC 3mg; SELENIUM 10.1mcg