Club Shares Quotes

The sweetest part of being a couple is sharing your life with someone else. But my life, evidently, had not been good enough to share.

Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it.

wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything. I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.

For most people, what is so painful about reading is that you read something and you don't have anybody to share it with. In part what the book club opens up is that people can read a book and then have someone else to talk about it with. Then they see that a book can lead to the pleasure of conversation, that the solitary act of reading can actually be a part of the path to communion and community.

Mattie rolled his eyes. "And I've have my fair share of ugly in my life, so I'm kind of used to it". "You better not be referring to me, sack-sucker".

The sweetest part of being a couple was sharing your life with someone else.

If you honestly feel you have done something so terrible that you cannot be forgiven, then I am willing to share your sins with you. When we die, if we should have to stand before God and be judged, then I will tell him I am as much to blame as you and that half your punishment should be portioned out to me.

Kaoru." "Hikaru? How long have you been there? "Kaoru, how do you feel about Haruhi?" "She's a funny little tanuki." "You don't have to lie to me. Sorry that I didn't realize it until now. I know you've been worrying about me, but you don't have to lie anymore. You like Haruhi too, don't you?" "What are you talking about, Hikaru? I don't--" "Then how about this? You know we talked about adopting Haruhi. That's the best solution. That way the three of us will always be together." "Are you completely stupid, Hikaru? Adopting Haruhi was just a joke. We're not playing house. It'd never happen. I'm so fed up with your childishness!!" "Kaoru..." "Besides, would you be happy being a threesome forever? You really want to share Haruhi with me? That's not what I want!" "Kaoru...?" "I won't share her with you or milord! Especially... ... If your willing to just give her up like that! I'll never step aside for you if that's the case!

Don’t tell me,” I snickered. “You’re in a club that gathers together like raving Trekkies to share secrets of the afterlife. I bet you even have an Enigma CD you crank up to get in the mood.” “Don’t be silly.” His face lit up with an enormous grin. “We listen to Enya, not Enigma.

Because there’s nothing more comforting than someone who actually gets it. Really gets it. Because they’ve been to the same hell as you have and can verify you’ve not made it up.

You want the truth? I’ve been fucked and betrayed often enough to not trust anybody. And that includes you.” Frank shrugged. “Don’t take it personal.” “Join the club. We meet Tuesdays. We never share the location with each other, and we show up armed.

The Book Charm Your Story Will Never End As Long As Your Chapters Are Shared

Reading and loving a novel written by a bastard is not to absolve him in any way, to share his convictions or connive with him, it’s to recognize his talent, not his morals or his ideals. I have no wish to shake Hergé’s hand, but I love Tintin. And after all, are you yourself above reproof?

Why bother with clubs? "Because you might get a shag," is the usual response. Really? If that's the only way you can find a partner - preening and jigging about like a desperate animal - you shouldn't be attempting to breed in the first place. What's your next trick? Inventing fire? People like you are going to spin civilisation into reverse. You're a moron, and so is that haircut you're trying to impress. Any offspring you eventually blast out should be drowned in a pan before they can do any harm. Or open any more nightclubs. Even if you somehow avoid reproducing, isn't it a lot of hard work for very little reward? Seven hours hopping about in a hellish, reverberating bunker in exchange for sharing 64 febrile, panting pelvic thrusts with someone who'll snore and dribble into your pillow till 11 o'clock in the morning, before waking up beside you with their hair in a mess, blinking like a dizzy cat and smelling vaguely like a ham baguette? Really, why bother? Why not just stay at home punching yourself in the face? Invite a few friends round and make a night of it. It'll be more fun than a club.

Pay attention, follow the directions, use good ingredients, practice technique, share with friends, and voila! Happiness abounds!

Your sense of guilt will linger. It will always be part of you. but sharing it, allowing people to love you anyway, will do you the world of good. Secrets need an outlet if they are not to fester and become an unbearable burden.

I’M LOSING FAITH IN MY FAVORITE COUNTRY Throughout my life, the United States has been my favorite country, save and except for Canada, where I was born, raised, educated, and still live for six months each year. As a child growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, I aggressively bought and saved baseball cards of American and National League players, spent hours watching snowy images of American baseball and football games on black and white television and longed for the day when I could travel to that great country. Every Saturday afternoon, me and the boys would pay twelve cents to go the show and watch U.S. made movies, and particularly, the Superman serial. Then I got my chance. My father, who worked for B.F. Goodrich, took my brother and me to watch the Cleveland Indians play baseball in the Mistake on the Lake in Cleveland. At last I had made it to the big time. I thought it was an amazing stadium and it was certainly not a mistake. Amazingly, the Americans thought we were Americans. I loved the United States, and everything about the country: its people, its movies, its comic books, its sports, and a great deal more. The country was alive and growing. No, exploding. It was the golden age of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American dream was alive and well, but demanded hard work, honesty, and frugality. Everyone understood that. Even the politicians. Then everything changed. Partly because of its proximity to the United States and a shared heritage, Canadians also aspired to what was commonly referred to as the American dream. I fall neatly into that category. For as long as I can remember I wanted a better life, but because I was born with a cardboard spoon in my mouth, and wasn’t a member of the golden gene club, I knew I would have to make it the old fashioned way: work hard and save. After university graduation I spent the first half of my career working for the two largest oil companies in the world: Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. The second half was spent with one of the smallest oil companies in the world: my own. Then I sold my company and retired into obscurity. In my case obscurity was spending summers in our cottage on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka, Ontario, and winters in our home in Port St. Lucie, Florida. My wife, Ann, and I, (and our three sons when they can find the time), have been enjoying that “obscurity” for a long time. During that long time we have been fortunate to meet and befriend a large number of Americans, many from Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation.” One was a military policeman in Tokyo in 1945. After a very successful business carer in the U.S. he’s retired and living the dream. Another American friend, also a member of the “Greatest Generation”, survived The Battle of the Bulge and lived to drink Hitler’s booze at Berchtesgaden in 1945. He too is happily retired and living the dream. Both of these individuals got to where they are by working hard, saving, and living within their means. Both also remember when their Federal Government did the same thing. One of my younger American friends recently sent me a You Tube video, featuring an impassioned speech by Marco Rubio, Republican senator from Florida. In the speech, Rubio blasts the spending habits of his Federal Government and deeply laments his country’s future. He is outraged that the U.S. Government spends three hundred billion dollars, each and every month. He is even more outraged that one hundred and twenty billion of that three hundred billion dollars is borrowed. In other words, Rubio states that for every dollar the U.S. Government spends, forty cents is borrowed. I don’t blame him for being upset. If I had run my business using that arithmetic, I would be in the soup kitchens. If individual American families had applied that arithmetic to their finances, none of them would be in a position to pay a thin dime of taxes.

Who was she in high school? Little Miss Nobody. She could have embroidered it on her sweaters, tattooed it across her forehead. And in small letters: i am shit, i am anonymous, step on me. please. She wasn't voted Most Humorous in her high school yearbook or Best Dancer or Most Likely to Succeed, and she wasn't in the band or Spanish Club and when her ten year reunion rolled around nobody would recognize her or have a single memory to share.

Everybody looked down on someone else. It didn´t matter that everybody shared the same sidewalk to spit on and suffered the same fast-moving diarrhea. We all had the same stink, but everybody complained someone else smelled the worst.

We share our secrets when we're ready and not a minute before.

She lay there wondering if someday, someone would explain what she'd done to deserve more than her fair share of bad things in life.

The kind of intelligent book club discussion as now happens on the book sharing site Goodreads might follow the book itself and become more deeply embedded into the book via hyperlinks. So when a person cites a particular passage, a two-way link connects the comment to the passage and the passage to the comment. Even a minor good work could accumulate a wiki-like set of critical comments tightly bound to the actual text.

She’d been hunting for an indescribable thrill, a feeling she remembered from nights out with her friends, but she’d misunderstood where the feeling came from. It wasn’t about drinking and partying in some dingy club. It had been about the people. The constant laughter they shared, too high on each other to care that they were being obnoxious. Group trips to the bathroom like a small army unit, where the mission objective was helping each other squat over filthy toilets without their dresses touching the seat. Belonging.

If you think I’m sharing your orgasms with a battery-operated device, you’re deluded, Kathryn.

The whole point of living on your own was that you didn’t have to share your home with anyone.

Upon seeing Evie, her friends rushed toward her with unladylike squeals, and Evie let out her own laughing shriek as they collided in a circle of tightly hugging arms and exuberant kisses. In their shared excitement, the three young women continued to exclaim and scream, until someone burst into the room. It was Cam, his eyes wide, his breathing fast, as if he had come at a dead run. His alert gaze flashed across the room, taking in the situation. Slowly his lean frame relaxed. "Damn," he muttered. "I thought something was wrong." "Everything is fine, Cam," Evie said with a smile, while Annabelle kept an arm around her shoulders. "My friends are here, that's all." Glancing at Sebastian, Cam remarked sourly, "I've heard less noise form the hogs at slaughter time." There was a sudden suspicious tension around Sebastian's jaw, as if he were fighting to suppress a grin. "Mrs. Hunt, Miss Bowman, this is Mr. Rohan. You must pardon his lack of tact, as he is..." "A ruffian?" Daisy suggested innocently. This time Sebastian could not prevent a smile. "I was going to say 'unused to the presence of ladies at the club.'" "Is that what the are?" Cam asked, casting a dubious glance at the visitors, his attention lingering for a moment on Daisy's small face. Pointedly ignoring Cam, Daisy spoke to Annabelle. "I've always heard that Gypsies are known for their charm. An unfounded myth, it seems." Cam's golden eyes narrowed into tigerish slits.

...in the eyes of her oldest friends and colleagues and extended family, she wasn't a painfully thin seventy-five-year-old gray haired woman dying of cancer- she was a grade school class president, the young friend you gossiped with, a date or double date, someone to share a tent with in Darfur, a fellow election monitor in Bosnia, a mentor, a teacher you'd laughed within a classroom or a faculty lounge, or the board member you'd groaned with after a contentious meeting

We’re all suffering. I guess I just relate to people who are willing to share more of themselves. A lot of pain in the world could be alleviated if we could all admit when we’re having a hard time.

For most people, what is so painful about reading is that you read something and you don’t have anybody to share it with. In part what the book club opens up is that people can read a book and then have someone else to talk about it with. Then they see that a book can lead to the pleasure of conversation, that the solitary act of reading can actually be a part of the path to communion and community

(If I were a member of the class that rules, I would post men in all the neighborhoods of the nation, not to spy upon or club rebellious workers, not to break strikes or disrupt unions; but to ferret out those who no longer respond to the system in which they live. I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of these groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is biding its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.)

Skinner shared how he came to worship an elite White Jesus Christ, who cleaned people up through “rules and regulations,” a savior who prefigured Richard Nixon’s vision of law and order. But one day, Skinner realized that he’d gotten Jesus wrong. Jesus wasn’t in the Rotary Club and he wasn’t a policeman. Jesus was a “radical revolutionary, with hair on his chest and dirt under his fingernails.” Skinner’s new idea of Jesus was born of and committed to a new reading of the gospel. “Any gospel that does not … speak to the issue of enslavement” and “injustice” and “inequality—any gospel that does not want to go where people are hungry and poverty-stricken and set them free in the name of Jesus Christ—is not the gospel.

Poshlust,” or in a better transliteration poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature—these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know. Poshlost speaks in such concepts as “America is no better than Russia” or “We all share in Germany’s guilt.” The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as “the moment of truth,” “charisma,” “existential” (used seriously), “dialogue” (as applied to political talks between nations), and “vocabulary” (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name—that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost’s favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wreckers, building crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, Zen stereos, polystyrene stinkbirds, objects trouvés in latrines, cannonballs, canned balls. There we admire the gabinetti wall patterns of so-called abstract artists, Freudian surrealism, roric smudges, and Rorschach blots—all of it as corny in its own right as the academic “September Morns” and “Florentine Flowergirls” of half a century ago. The list is long, and, of course, everybody has his bête noire, his black pet, in the series. Mine is that airline ad: the snack served by an obsequious wench to a young couple—she eyeing ecstatically the cucumber canapé, he admiring wistfully the hostess. And, of course, Death in Venice. You see the range.

There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast. "The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways. "Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller. "I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state. "You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.

In the intervening weeks, as they slowly began to poke their heads out of their own private failures, each would come to find that the curse was, in fact, not theirs alone. Instead, it was spread across the country: a club, a collective, a movement, a great populist uprising of failure in the face of years of shared national success.

THE LESBIAN AVENGERS Their motto playfully proclaimed “we recruit,” and recruit this group did. Formed in the 1990s to bring attention to lesbian causes, the Lesbian Avengers spent Valentine’s Day handing out chocolate kisses in Grand Central Station that read, “You’ve just been kissed by a lesbian.” In Bryant Park, they unveiled a papier-mâché sculpture of Alice B. Toklas embracing her lover, Gertrude Stein. The Avengers also ate fire, which would become their dramatic trademark—first practiced as an homage to an Oregon gay man and lesbian woman who were burned to death after a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the apartment they shared.

I felt it now, reading Ma’s email, wondering how someone who shared my blood could turn into a coxswain, Vineyard Vines-wearing, Niçois salad-ordering, country club-attending, nouveau riche douchebag, who surrounded himself with people named Brock, Chett, and Tripp with two Ps.

An awfulness was deep inside me, and I couldn't fight it; forced into submission and taken hostage by it, I could only just lie there, let it wash over me, and let myself be consumed by it. If I cooperate, maybe it won't stay too long; maybe it'll let me go free. But if I fight it, it might stay longer just to spite me. So I decided to let The Feeling inhabit me as long as it desired, while I lay still, cautious not to incite me, secretly hoping it would leave me soon and bother someone else, but outwardly, pretending to be its gracious host. The most discouraging element of what I felt was my inability to understand it. Usually when I was filled with an unpleasant feeling, I could make it go away, or at least tame it, by watching a light-hearted film or reading a good book or listening to a feel good album. But this feeling was different. I knew non of those distractions could rid me of it. But I knew nothing else. I couldn't even describe it. Is this depression? Maybe once you ask someone to describe depression, he can't find the words. Maybe I'm part of the official club now. I imagined myself in a room full of people where someone in the crowd, also suffering from depression, immediately noticed me-as if he detected the scent of his own kind-walked over, and looked into my eyes. He knew that I had The Feeling inside me because he, too, da The Feeling inside him. He didn't ask me to talk about it, because he understood that our type of suffering was ineffable. He only nodded at me, and I nodded back; and then, during our moment of silence, we both shared a sad smile of recognition, knowing that we only had each other in a room filled with people who would never understand us, because they didn't have The Feeling inside them.

Expressing our feelings out loud, especially to someone else, can bring a sense of relief. There is power in proclamation.

Whenever one of us introduced an old favorite, we savored the other's first delight like a shared meal eaten with a newly acquired gusto, as if we'd never truly tasted it before.

He left no one behind, no children, no shared memories, no history, no one told stories about him. All he left to mark his passing was pain, and that would fade over time.

A shared trouble is half joy. —Italian proverb

The sharing of a book is a statement—a message of affection that is also an act of self-revelation. Join my club, it says. Come and sit beside me.

Countless people live their whole lives without ever knowing this...this unnameable thing that we share. This exclusive and secret club that we are so blessed to be a part of. I suppose that by many people's definition, it would simply be called 'Love'. And yet, this is unlike any other love or feeling or emotion that I have ever felt. Simply calling it 'Love' would be an injustice...it would do a massive disservice to this feeling that seems to envelop me with every breath I take. It's as if wherever I go, it goes; and whichever direction I look, it sees. It moves with me as if we've been doing this dance forever...like we are one being and of one mind. It has to uncanny ability to affect change by just existing; it speaks to me and with me and through me and every time it says my name, it cloaks my entire being with a warm comforting familiar glow...like it's only ever meant to be said that way and no different. It's not just simply love...it's everything.

If I were a member of the class that rules, I would post men in all the neighborhoods of the nation, not to spy upon or club rebellious workers, not to break strikes or disrupt unions, but to ferret out those who no longer respond to the system in which they live. I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of these groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is biding its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.

I used to go to a kids’ club at Leatherhead Leisure Centre called Crazy Tots and I couldn’t wait to share my adventures with my friends there. I didn’t try to tell them about the Golden Gate Bridge or Caesars Palace or Times Square. I wanted to tell them about the important stuff: the room service, the Cartoon Network and, yes, the red puffa jacket. Pretty quickly, however, a hard truth presented itself. Literally. Nobody. Cared.

Ah have been lonely fur years now. Lonely long afore ma wife died. Don't get us wrong. She was a guid wummin, a guid wummin just like our Colleen, but we were jist stuck in our wee routine. When ye think about it, ah've been under the ground most of ma life. There wasn't much in me for sharing at the end of a day. After twenty years, what do you talk about? But she was a guid wummin. She used to make me these big hot dinners, with meat and gravy, the plate scalding hot cos she'd warm it up all day in the oven. We ate big hot dinners because we had nothing left to say. Nothing worthwhile anyway. Ah'm forty-three. That's four years older than when ma father died, so I should've been done. I should've been retiring from the pits, living the rest of ma days out with her and with nothing to say. When I saw ye I wasn't looking. I didn't know of you then, hadn't heard our Colleen lift your name. That's wummin's stuff, isn't it? They don't talk to the men about that. Gossip. Telling tales. Chapel. That's their club. All I know is when I saw you sat behind that glass, I saw someone lonely too, and I hoped we might have something to say to each other. I realised then. Ah don't want to be done.

At the beginning of my illness, hospital visits couldn’t be avoided. I needed tests, I had to have my diet and insulin regulated, and once I fainted at school and went into insulin shock and the ambulance came and took me to St. Luke’s. If one of my friends got that sick, I would have called her in the hospital and sent her cards and visited her when she went home. But not Laine. She seemed almost afraid of me (although she tried to cover up by acting cool and snooty). And my other friends did what Laine did, because she was the leader. Their leader. My leader. And we were her followers. The school year grew worse and worse. I fainted twice more at school, each time causing a big scene and getting lots of attention, and every week, it seemed, I missed at least one morning while Mom and Dad took me to some doctor or clinic or other. Laine called me a baby, a liar, a hypochondriac, and a bunch of other things that indicated she thought my parents and I were making a big deal over nothing. But if she really thought it was nothing, why wouldn’t she come over to my apartment anymore? Why wouldn’t she share sandwiches or go to the movies with me? And why did she move her desk away from mine in school? I was confused and unhappy and sick, and I didn’t have any friends left, thanks to Laine. I hated Laine.

Women are taught to sacrifice, to play nice, to live an altruistic life because a good girl is always rewarded in the end. This is not a virtue; it is propaganda. Submission gets you a ticket to future prosperity that will never manifest. By the time you realize the ticket to success and happiness you have been sold isn’t worth the paper it was printed on, it will be too late. Go on, spend a quarter of your life, even half of your life, in the service of others and you will realize you were hustled. You do not manifest your destiny by placing others first! A kingdom built on your back doesn’t become your kingdom, it becomes your folly. History does not remember the slaves of Egypt that built the pyramids, they remember the Pharaohs that wielded the power over those laborers. Yet here you are, content with being a worker bee, motivated by some sales pitch that inspires you to work harder for some master than you work for yourself, with this loose promise that one day you will share in his wealth. Altruism is your sin. Selfishness is your savior. Ruthless aggression and self-preservation are not evil. Why aren’t females taught these things? Instead of putting themselves first, women are told to be considerate and selfless. From birth, they have been beaten in the head with this notion of “Don’t be selfish!” Fuck that. Your mother may have told you to wait your turn like a good girl, but I’m saying cut in front of that other bitch. Club Success is about to hit capacity, and you don’t want to be the odd woman out. Where are the powerful women? Those who refuse to play by those rules and want more out of life than what a man allows her to have? I created a category for such women and labeled them Spartans. Much like the Greek warriors who fought against all odds, these women refuse to surrender and curtsy before the status quo. Being

I have indeed lived life in a very rough school and have seen more than the average man's share of inhumanity and cruelty, from the forecastle and the prison, the slum and the desert, the execution-chamber and the lazar-house, to the battlefield and the military hospital. I have seen horrible deaths and mutilations. I have seen imbeciles hanged, because, being imbeciles, they did not possess the hire of lawyers. I have seen the hearts and stamina of strong men broken, and I have seen other men, by ill-treatment, driven to permanent and howling madness. I have witnessed the deaths of old and young, and even infants, from sheer starvation. I have seen men and women beaten by whips and clubs and fists, and I have seen the rhinoceros-hide whips laid around the naked torsos of black boys so heartily that each stroke stripped away the skin in full circle. And yet, let me add finally, never have I been so appalled and shocked by the world's cruelty as have I been appalled and shocked in the midst of happy, laughing, and applauding audiences when trained-animal turns were being performed on the stage.

The Danes’ fondness for clubs and associations is shared by their Nordic neighbors. The Swedes have an even greater trade-union membership and in their spare time are particularly keen on voluntary work: they call this instinct for diligent self-improvement organisationssverige, or “organization Sweden.” The Finns are famed for their after-work classes, particularly their amateur classical musicianship and fondness for joining orchestras, while the Norwegians’ love of communal outdoor pursuits, most famously cross-country skiing, is one of their defining characteristics.

All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt. So at all events thought old Mr. Graysford and young Mr. Sorley, the devoted missionaries who lived out beyond the slaughterhouses, always travelled third on the railways, and never came to the club. In our Father's house are many mansions, they taught, and there alone will the incompatible multitudes of mankind be welcomed and soothed. Not one shall be turned away by the servants on that verandah, be he black or white, not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart. And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also? Old Mr. Graysford said No, but young Mr. Sorley, who was advanced, said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys should not have their collateral share of bliss, and he had sympathetic discussions about them with his Hindu friends. And the jackals? Jackals were indeed less to Mr. Sorley's mind but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, and was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr. Sorley? No, no, this is going too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.

The Rule of 150 says that congregants of a rapidly expanding church, or the members of a social club, or anyone in a group activity banking on the epidemic spread of shared ideals needs to be particularly cognizant of the perils of bigness. Crossing the 150 line is a small change that can make a big difference.

Of all the conceptions of the divine, of all the language Jesus could put on the lips of the God character in the story he tells, that’s what he has the Father say. “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” ... Millions of people in our world were told that God so loved the world, that God sent his son to save the world, and that if they accept and believe in Jesus, then they’ll be able to have a relationship with God... But there’s more. Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them the gospel does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God will have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell... A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormentor who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony... if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing or compelling language or good music or great coffee will be able to disguise that one, true, glaring, untenable, acceptable, awful reality... sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting “the gospel” is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn’t safe, loving, or good. It doesn’t make sense it can’t be reconciled, and so they say no... God create, because the endless joy and peace and shared life at the heart of this God knows no other way. Jesus invites us into THAT relationship, the one at the center of the universe... so when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will “get into heaven,” that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club. The good news is better than that.

I’ve shared with you that long stretches spent in noiseless contemplation is one of the secrets of the advanced mind. Ultimately, you’re the only person you’ll be with your entire life. Why not strengthen your relationship with your greatest self, fully know your genius and start a lifetime love affair with your most noble nature?

After years of experience running the club on St. James, Sebastian could talk easily with anyone from royalty down to the most hardened street criminal. Soon he had the men smiling and volunteering information about their work at Eversby Priory. "Your father has a common touch," came Mr. Ravenel's quiet voice near her ear. He watched Sebastian with a mix of interest and admiration. "One doesn't usually see that in a man of his position." "He's always mocked the notion that vice runs more rampant among commoners than nobility," Phoebe said. "In fact, he says the opposite is usually true." Mr. Ravenel looked amused. "He could be right. Although I've seen a fair share of vice among both.

IIf having people tell us apart is the first step towards independence, it's a simple thing. We just have to change the way we look on the outside. We should've done something like this sooner. We always blames other people for not being able to tell us apart...but maybe the reality is that we didn't put forth the effort so others could see the difference. If all we needed to do something as simple as this, I'm happy to do it. And if you want, Kaoru, I'm happy to have separate rooms too. But...nothing will ever change the fact that we are twins! I thought about it all night..and I remembered something Milord one said. Kaoru...you're wrong. It may be true that we can't continue on as we had before. Because if I'm dependent on you, nobody will take me seriously, least of all Haruhi. But to kill her emotions like this enforcer soaps to live separate lives isn't the only way to become independent, is it? Kaoru..we are twins. We share something very lucky and rare. It's called character. We may contradict ourselves but that's the way we are. Even the future, which most people alone face we face together. It's not a bad thing. From now on, we will influence each other and continue to grow individually.as long as we don't forget this or future will be many more times exciting that of most people. So we will remain close because if we don't do it be no point being born twins." -Hikaru

Mom went on to tell me, as we sat there, that she really believed your personal life was personal. Secrets, she felt, rarely explained or excused anything in real life, or were even all that interesting. People shared too much, she said, not too little. She thought you should be able to keep your private life private for any reason or for no reason.

There’s a poetry to it, engineer’s poetry…it suggests Haverie—average, you know—certainly you have two lobes, don’t you, symmetrical about the rocket’s intended azimuth…hauen, too-smashing someone with a hoe or a club…” off on a voyage of his own here, smiling at no one in particular, bringing in the popular wartime expression ab-hauen, quarterstaff technique, peasant humor, phallic comedy dating back to the ancient Greeks…Slothrop’s first impulse is to get back to what that Plas is into, but something about the man, despite obvious membership in the plot, keeps him listening…an innocence, maybe a try at being friendly in the only way he has available, sharing what engages and runs him, a love for the Word.

...The typhoon of madness that swept through the country [of Rwanda] between April 7 and the third week of May accounted for 80 percent of the victims of the genocide. That means about eight hundred thousand people were murdered during those six weeks, making the daily killing rate at least five times that of the Nazi death camps. The simple peasants of Rwanda, with their machetes, clubs, and sticks with nails, had killed at a faster rate than the Nazi death machine with its gas chambers, mass ovens, and firing squads. In my opinion, the killing frenzy of the Rwandan genocide shared a vital common thread with the technological efficiency of the Nazi genocide--satanic hate in abundance was at the core of both.

Because secrecy can become an addiction. That's been a problem as long as people have tried to covet power for themselves. Sure, governments need to keep some secrets, but too often the people inside the government create for themselves the illusion that because they know things nobody else does, it makes them more powerful. That kind of thinking creates a kind of contempt for anyone on the outside. It's born from a belief that their own power will diminish in direct proportion to the transparency of their actions. So secrets become the currency that buys them membership into a club so exclusive that their agendas are never shared, and the value of what the hold is measured only from a first-person perspective.

If the early English and LA punk bands shared a common sound, the New York bands just shared the same clubs. As such, while the English scene never became known as the '100 Club' sound, CBGBs was the solitary common component in the New York bands' development, transcended once they had outgrown the need to play the club. Even their supposed musical heritage was not exactly common -- the Ramones preferring the Dolls/Stooges to Television's Velvets/Coltrane to Blondie's Stones/Brit-Rock. Though the scene had been built up as a single movement, when commercial implications began to sink in, the differences that separated the bands became far more important than the similarities which had previously bound them together. In the two years following the summer 1975 festival, CBGBs had become something of an ideological battleground, if not between the bands then between their critical proponents. The divisions between a dozen bands, all playing the same club, all suffering the same hardships, all sharing the same love of certain central bands in the history of rock & roll, should not have been that great. But the small scene very quickly partitioned into art-rockers and exponents of a pure let's-rock aesthetic.

Each Sunday, as part of the service, Charles gave what was officially called an “Invitation to the Life of the Congregation.” This was a welcome to all who were in attendance and a listing of the events on deck for the week: gardening club, beach cleanup, Bible study, bake sale. Charles thought of it as the reminder that we are not alone. A public declaration of places to gather in and interests to share.

The Jews of Syria have no connection with the Zionist question,” read one plaintive advertisement that a Jewish youth club in Damascus, Syria’s capital, published in local papers in 1929. “On the contrary, they share with their fellow Arab citizens all their feelings of joy and sadness.” Muslims, it read, must “differentiate between the European Zionists and the Jews who have been living for centuries in these lands.

Everyone becomes equally conscious of his body as a separate and complete organism, [but] everyone does not become equally conscious of himself as a complete and separate personality. The feeling of apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is not always developed to such a degree as to make the difference between the individual and his fellows noticeable to the individual. It is such as he, as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are lucky in life, for they have the best chance of happiness: their activities are shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures because they are enjoyed in common; you will see them on Whit-Monday dancing on Hampstead Heath, shouting at a football match, or from club windows in Pall Mall cheering a royal procession. It is because of them that man has been called a social animal.

We jumped immediately into the kind of candid conversation women our age could have. We discussed our menstrual cycles and our favorite films and our most hated male writers. We shared our theories on David Lynch’s problem with women and our favorite episodes of Twin Peaks. We dispensed full biographies in which we detailed run-ins with school bullies and absentee fathers, dwindling career ambitions and would-be side hustles.

When I get to Club Mystique at nine, Alex sneaks up behind me outside. I turn around and wrap my arms around his neck. “Whoa, girl,” he says, taken aback. “I thought we were keepin’ this thing between us a secret. I hate to tell you, but a bunch of north siders from Fairfield are right over there. And they’re starin’ at us.” “I don’t care. Not anymore.” “Why?” “You only live once.” He seems to like my answer, because he takes my hand in his and leads me to the back of the line. It’s cold outside, so he opens his leather jacket and envelopes me in his warmth while we wait to get in. I look up at him, our bodies pressed together. “Are you going to dance with me tonight?” I ask. “Hell, yeah.” “Colin never wanted to dance with me.” “I’m not Colin, querida, and never will be.” “Good. I’ve got you, Alex. I realize it’s all I need and I’m ready to share it with the world.

It was weird to be with her in a group. I kept wanting to stop the conversation to make sure everybody had noticed what a cool thing she’d just said or done. It wasn’t because I was insecure or worried that they wouldn’t like her. I just wanted to have someone to share it all with, like that burst of excitement you get when you meet someone who likes the same obscure band or has the same favorite movie. I guess I was a Karen fan, and I wanted to start a fan club.

It had been almost 7 o'clock, the end of a long working day. Of course he should've been at home with Emily by then, but that evening - as on many other evenings - he had told her that he needed to work late, not so that he could slip away and spend a few hours with his mistress (Benjamin would never have a mistress), but so that he could snatch 30 minutes solitude alone with a book and his thoughts before coming home to the deeper, more oppressive solitude of his shared domestic life.

I marveled at the bonds between us--the way we shortened our words, or spoke, sometimes, with no words at all, the shared memories of corn-shucking, of hurricanes, of heroes who did not live in books, but in our talk; an entire world of our own, hidden away from them, and to be part of that world, I felt even then, was to be in on a secret, a secret that was in you. There were neither Quality nor Low among us, no jockey clubs to be ejected rom, and this was its own America, was its own grandeur--

Hockey is a club that holds its members tightly, the bond forged by shared hardship and mutual passion, by every trip to the pond, where your feet hurt and your face is cold and you might get a stick in the ribs or a puck in the mouth, and you still can’t wait to get back out there because you are smitten with the sound of blades scraping against ice and pucks clacking off sticks, and with the game’s speed and ever-changing geometry. It has a way of becoming the center of your life even when you’re not on the ice.

Unfortunately, most scientists were radicals, socialists, and liberals. There was hardly a conservative among them. And they believed that the truths discovered by science were for humankind to share, and should never be kept secret in the service of one regime or country. So while the American government was keeping this huge project top secret, the scientists held discussion groups about sharing nuclear technology with all the nations of the world. Oppie himself was suspect: the only reason he was not in the Communist Party was that he never joined clubs.

Come to my bedchamber now,' he whispered against her mouth ... 'I don't take -' 'Orders. I know.' He kissed her, over and over now, a delectable repetition that despite its simplicity made her cling to him tighter. 'Then your bedchamber.' ... 'It shares a wall with Madame Roche. I cannot -' He grabbed her hand and dragged her along the corridor. He opened the first door they came to. 'A linen cabinet?' But they had managed perfectly well on a staircase once. *Perfectly.* ... 'You are yanking me about a lot.' She was breathless. 'I am. Feel free to reciprocate.

When Holmes emerged as a consistent judicial defender of economic reform and of free speech, he became a hero to progressives and civil libertarians—to people like Louis Brandeis, Learned Hand, Walter Lippmann, and Herbert Croly. Holmes did not share the politics of these people, but he did not think it was his business as a judge to have a politics, and he did nothing to discourage their admiration. It suited his conception of heroic disinterestedness to serve as their Abbott—privately denouncing the stupidity of the views he strove, often boldly and alone, to defend.

watching this silently, as was my way, I marveled at the bonds between us—the way we shortened our words, or spoke, sometimes, with no words at all, the shared memories of corn-shuckings, of hurricanes, of heroes who did not live in books, but in our talk; an entire world of our own, hidden away from them, and to be part of that world, I felt even then, was to be in on a secret, a secret that was in you. There were neither Quality nor Low among us, no jockey clubs to be ejected from, and this was its own America, was its own grandeur—one that defied Maynard, who must forever carp about his place in the order.

Peace within leads to peace in your home, your community, and your country. When I was growing up, my father never let us belong to the country club near our home because, the club didn’t accept African Americans or Jews. He told us we couldn’t belong to a place that didn’t accept everyone. That has stuck with me my entire life. America’s story has been a place where people felt they could come and find belonging and acceptance. I’m a descendant of immigrants, and my children’s father is a first-generation immigrant. We all want to belong. We all want to be accepted. Recognizing that we share this desire can help us see our shared humanity.

Of all the conceptions of the divine, of all the language Jesus could put on the lips of the God character in the story he tells, that’s what he has the Father say. “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” ... Millions of people in our world were told that God so loved the world, that God sent his son to save the world, and that if they accept and believe in Jesus, then they’ll be able to have a relationship with God... But there’s more. Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them "the gospel" does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God will have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell... A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormentor who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony... if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing or compelling language or good music or great coffee will be able to disguise that one, true, glaring, untenable, acceptable, awful reality... sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting the gospel is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn’t safe, loving, or good. It doesn’t make sense, it can’t be reconciled, and so they say no... God creates, because the endless joy and peace and shared life at the heart of this God knows no other way. Jesus invites us into THAT relationship, the one at the center of the universe... so when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will “get into heaven,” that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club. The good news is better than that. (excerpts all from chapter 7)

Today each nation flies its own flag, a symbolic embodiment of its territorial status. But patriotism is not enough. The ancient tribal hunter lurking inside each citizen finds himself unsatisfied by membership of such a vast conglomeration of individuals, most of whom are totally unknown to him personally. He does his best to feel that he shares a common territorial defence with them all, but the scale of the operation has become inhuman. It is hard to feel a sense of belonging with a tribe of fifty million or more. His answer is to form sub-groups, nearer to his ancient pattern, smaller and more personally known to him - the local club, the teenage gang, the union, the specialist society, the sports association, the political party, the college fraternity, the social clique, the protest group, and the rest. Rare indeed is the individual who does not belong to at least one of these splinter groups, and take from it a sense of tribal allegiance and brotherhood. Typical of all these groups is the development of Territorial Signals - badges, costumes, headquarters, banners, slogans, and all the other displays of group identity. This is where the action is, in terms of tribal territorialism, and only when a major war breaks out does the emphasis shift upwards to the higher group level of the nation.

If it hadn’t been for this chance hospital encounter, accidental in all senses, Victor might never have courted a girl. He already felt well on his way to middle age, and his social life was still limited to the chess club. Victor didn’t really feel the need for another person in his life, in fact he found the concept of “sharing” a life bizarre. He had mathematics, which filled up his time almost completely, so he wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted with a wife. Women seemed to him to be in possession of all kinds of undesirable properties, chiefly madness, but also a multiplicity of physical drawbacks—blood, sex, children—which were unsettling and other.

Mr. Rohan,” she heard Beatrix ask, “are you going to marry my sister?” Amelia choked on her tea and set the cup down. She sputtered and coughed into her napkin. “Hush, Beatrix,” Win murmured. “But she’s wearing his ring—” Poppy clamped her hand over Beatrix’s mouth. “Hush!” “I might,” Cam replied. His eyes sparkled with mischief as he continued. “I find your sister a bit lacking in humor. And she doesn’t seem particularly obedient. On the other hand—” One set of French doors flew open, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. Everyone on the back terrace looked up in startlement, the men rising from their chairs. “No,” came Win’s soft cry. Merripen stood there, having dragged himself from his sickbed. He was bandaged and disheveled, but he looked far from helpless. He looked like a maddened bull, his dark head lowered, his hands clenched into massive fists. And his stare, promising death, was firmly fixed on Cam. There was no mistaking the bloodlust of a Roma whose kinswoman had been dishonored. “Oh, God,” Amelia muttered. Cam, who stood beside her chair, glanced down at her questioningly. “Did you say something to him?” Amelia turned red as she recalled her blood-spotted nightgown and the maid’s expression. “It must have been servants’ talk.” Cam stared at the enraged giant with resignation. “You may be in luck,” he said to Amelia. “It looks as if our betrothal is going to end prematurely.” She made to stand beside him, but he pressed her back into the chair. “Stay out of this. I don’t want you hurt in the fray.” “He won’t hurt me,” Amelia said curtly. “It’s you he wants to slaughter.” Holding Merripen’s gaze, Cam moved slowly away from the table. “Is there something you’d like to discuss, chal?” he asked with admirable self-possession. Merripen replied in Romany. Although no one save Cam understood what he said, it was clearly not encouraging. “I’m going to marry her,” Cam said, as if to pacify him. “That’s even worse!” Merripen moved forward, murder in his eyes. Lord St. Vincent swiftly interceded, stepping between the pair. Like Cam, he’d had his share of putting down fights at the gambling club. He lifted his hands in a staying gesture and spoke smoothly. “Easy, large fellow. I’m sure you can find a way to resolve your differences in a reasonable fashion.” “Get out of my way,” Merripen growled, putting an end to the notion of civilized discourse. St. Vincent’s pleasant expression didn’t change. “You have a point. There’s nothing so tiresome as being reasonable. I myself avoid it whenever possible. Still, I’m afraid you can’t brawl when there are ladies present. It might give them ideas.

But the thing that made it most interesting is what it had to say about books and religion. I love how Brooks shows that every great religion shares a love of books, of reading, of knowledge. The individual books may be different, but reverence for books is what we all have in common. Books are what bring all the different people in the novel together, Muslims and Jews and Christians. That’s why everyone in the book goes to such lengths to save this one book—one book stands for all books. When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter—they wanted books for their children.

We had really stretched to buy our house in a neighborhood with “good schools.” As I started to ask around and dig a little deeper, I learned that to get into the preschool I drove past every day I was going to have to camp out overnight and hope to secure a coveted spot. And the moms in the neighborhood told me if I wanted to make sure my child got the good teachers in elementary school I would need to start volunteering now for the fundraising committee so I would have influence with the principal. There were tips and tricks about getting into the right playgroups and music classes. Everything was whispered and shared secret club–style because there were only so many spots and everyone was vying for them.

Poor Scott. Briefly, briefly, as a boy on the verge of manhood, he’d been so handsome and promising that the sequel must have seemed a dream; behind the acne and brain damage and bewildering alienation, he was a golden boy still. Probably he thought he’d given his poor old stepmom the thrill of her life. One thing was certain: at that moment he’d loved her and was sorry for ever thinking ill of her—she’d packed his lunch!—and wanted to convey this in some meaningful way. Probably, too, he was drunk and/or high. As Scott’s only brother—a person who shared his sense of humor and some of his darker tendencies too—I considered explaining as much to Sandra, for what it was worth. Instead I said, “Welcome to the club.” “. . . No!” I nodded. “Tongue and all.” Sandra

Neurons on the two ends of the log-normal distribution of activity organize themselves differently. Fast-firing neurons are better connected with each other and burst more than slow-firing neurons. The more strongly connected faster firing neurons form a “rich club” with better access to the entire neuronal population, share such information among themselves, and, therefore, generalize across situations. In contrast, slow firing neurons keep their independent solitude and elevate their activity only in unique situations. The two tails of the distribution are maintained by a homeostatic process during non-REM sleep. The emerging picture is that a simple measure, such as the baseline firing frequency, can reveal a lot about a neuron’s role in computation and its wiring properties. The

Charlie Pop is 15 years old. He has 2 dogs: Bruno and Rex. He lives with his parents Kath and Ron. Today is the 22nd April 2025. Charlie and his friends have been going to the Landfawcett space bowling club all their lives. Charlie’s friends are called Harry Em, Eric Tweet, Paul Key, Robert Storm, Chris Leaf, Jay Laugh, Darren Rain and Tom Breeze. They all have short hair and dress casually especially Ben Steps and George Sing. Jake Train is the cleverest of them all. He has invented a secret waterproof wireless finger camera that takes photographs; it is attached to Charlie and his friend’s fingers. Rex and Bruno have a camera attached to the fur on their heads. Images are shared with each other from the app recording onto their phones and laptops. It is their space bowling tournament today.

Indians abroad tend to stick together. They join Indian clubs, regularly visit mosques, temples and gurdwaras and eat Indian food at home or in Indian restaurants. Very rarely do they mix with the English on the same terms as they do with their own countrymen. This kind of island-ghetto existence feeds on stereotypes - the English are very reserved; they do not invite outsiders to their homes because they regard their homes as their castles; English women are frigid, etc. I discovered that none of this was true. In the years that followed, I made closer friends with English men and women than I did with Indians. I lived in dozens of English homes and shared their family problems. And I discovered to my delight that nothing was further from the truth that the canard that English women are frigid.

Social groups are also a big part of Danish life. Called foreningsliv (or “association life”), these groups are based on a shared hobby or interest. The objective can be economic, political, academic, or cultural. Their function can be to change something in society, such as in a political association, or to express themselves in a way that meets the members’ social needs, such as in a choral society or a bridge club. Statistics show that 79 percent of Denmark’s business leaders have been active in associations before the age of thirty. Respectively, 94 percent, 92 percent, and 88 percent of managers with experience in associations believe that these years of involvement benefited their social skills and interpersonal skills and gave them a strong network. Ninety-nine percent of Denmark’s governors believe that participation in these voluntary associations promotes young people’s professional skills.

in Dumfries his moral career was downwards. Heron, who had some acquaintance with the matter, says, “His dissipation became still more deeply habitual; he was here more exposed than in the country to be solicited to share the revels of the dissolute and the idle; foolish young men flocked eagerly about him, and from time to time pressed him to drink with them, that they might enjoy his wit. The Caledonia Club, too, and the Dumfries-shire and Galloway Hunt, had occasional meetings in Dumfries after Burns went to reside there: and the poet was of course invited to share their conviviality, and hesitated not to accept the invitation. In the intervals between his different fits of intemperance, he suffered the keenest anguish of remorse, and horribly afflictive foresight. His Jane behaved with a degree of conjugal and maternal tenderness and prudence, which made him feel more bitterly the evil of his misconduct, although they could not reclaim him.” This is a dark picture—perhaps too dark.

That movie you made me watch, first time at your house. Love and redemption. You said, ‘The most beautiful stories ever told are the most difficult to take.’You said that, Red. Right out. And I knew if you got that, when it was later and I shared my shit with you, you’d get me. I never thought my story was beautiful. I thought it was shit. But you said that and when you did, I saw it. The ride is not over but if I can keep my Club together and find a sweet, feisty woman who’s got my back and enough to her that she’ll stay there, holding me up not dragging me down, I figure I’d find my way to beauty eventually. And I’d find absolution because I’d know, I earned the love of that woman, a woman who’s got so much to her it’ll take years to dig down and find the heart of her, that would be my reward.”Ohmigod. Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Did he just say that? Did. He. Just. Say that? “And you told me,”Tack continued, his face coming closer, “I had that when I first met you.”“I—”“So I was hooked to that shit, I did it, I participated in it, I was loyal to my brothers as I’d vowed I’d be and I pulled me and my Club out of it. I did that but that didn’t erase what we did. You are my absolution.

Once I've coated the parsnips in a honey-saffron glaze, Rachel helps me plate them alongside the brisket, stuffed cabbage, and sweet potato tzimmes, and we carry the plates out to the dining room together. "Let me explain a little about tonight's dinner," I say, addressing the softly lit faces around the table, which is covered with flickering votives and tapered candles. I launch into a description of the Jewish New Year and the symbolism behind all of the food: how the honey represents the hope of a sweet new year, how the challah is round instead of braided to represent the circle of life, how my grandmother used to make stuffed cabbage on every possible occasion because it reminded her of her Hungarian mother. I tell them lots things- about food, about my bubbe, about me- and to my surprise, they actually pay attention. They hang on my every word and ask intelligent questions and make thought-provoking points of their own. And I realize, hey, these are people who get it, people who love to eat and talk about food and culture as much as I do. Most of them aren't Jewish, but that doesn't matter. Every family has its traditions. Every family has a story to share. That's the point of this dinner- to swap stories and histories and see how food can bring people together.

In the winter of 18077, thirteen like-minded souls in London got together at the Freemasons Tavern at Long Acre, in Covent Garden, to form a dining club to be called the Geological Society. The idea was to meet once a month to swap geological notions over a glass or two of Madeira and a convivial dinner. The price of the meal was set at a deliberately hefty 15 shillings to discourage those whose qualifications were merely cerebral. It soon became apparent, however, that there was a demand for something more properly institutional, with a permanent headquarters, where people could gather to share and discuss new findings. In barely a decade membership grew to 400 – still all gentlemen, of course – and the Geological was threatening to eclipse the Royal as the premier scientific society in the country. The members met twice a month from November until June8, when virtually all of them went off to spend the summer doing fieldwork. These weren’t people with a pecuniary interest in minerals, you understand, or even academics for the most part, but simply gentlemen with the wealth and time to indulge a hobby at a more or less professional level. By 1830 there were 745 of them, and the world would never see the like again. It is hard to imagine now, but geology excited the nineteenth century – positively gripped it – in a way that no science ever had before or would again.

You’re holding a challenge in a fencing club?” “Yes. Is there something wrong with that?” He pulled on his black pants and the heavy silk green shirt I loved for him to wear because the material seemed to caress hisskin. No, it’s just kind of an incongruous place to hold something so serious as a challenge, isn’t it?” He finished with his shoes, grabbed another towel, and shook it out for me. I made sure Pal still had his back to me, hurrying out of the pool to clasp the towel around me. “It is no less incongruous than holding a challenge in a bar.” I smiled. “Yes, but my challenge to you wasn’t serious. I hope you’ll notice that I’m not freaking out about this at all. I haven’t even asked you how good you are with asword.” “I noticed.” His mouth burned on mine for a moment, his fire being shared between us as his tongue twined around mine in a fiery—albeit brief—dance. “You are learning to have faith in me as is proper between a mateand her wyvern.” “No, I am learning to ask around. Pal told me earlier today that Dmitri had picked swords and that you were pleased because you were some sort of master swordsman a few centuries ago. You’d better not have forgotten anything.” Pal peeked at me out of the corner of his eye, his grin not too obvious. Drake pinched my bare behind as punishment for my saucy tone. “I never forget. Istvan will drive you when you are ready. The challenge is not for an hour. Do not be late.” “Happy chevauchee-ing,” I called, feeling remarkably happy.

values of commons-based sharing and of private enterprise often conflict, most notably over the extent to which innovations should be patent-protected. The commons crowd had its roots in the hacker ethic that emanated from the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club and the Homebrew Computer Club. Steve Wozniak was an exemplar. He went to Homebrew meetings to show off the computer circuit he built, and he handed out freely the schematics so that others could use and improve it. But his neighborhood pal Steve Jobs, who began accompanying him to the meetings, convinced him that they should quit sharing the invention and instead build and sell it. Thus Apple was born, and for the subsequent forty years it has been at the forefront of aggressively patenting and profiting from its innovations. The instincts of both Steves were useful in creating the digital age. Innovation is most vibrant in the realms where open-source systems compete with proprietary ones. Sometimes people advocate one of these modes of production over the others based on ideological sentiments. They prefer a greater government role, or exalt private enterprise, or romanticize peer sharing. In the 2012 election, President Barack Obama stirred up controversy by saying to people who owned businesses, “You didn’t build that.” His critics saw it as a denigration of the role of private enterprise. Obama’s point was that any business benefits from government and peer-based community support: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.

An extensive biomedical literature has established that individuals are more likely to activate a stress response and are more at risk for a stress-sensitive disease if they (a) feel as if they have minimal control over stressors, (b) feel as if they have no predictive information about the duration and intensity of the stressor, (c) have few outlets for the frustration caused by the stressor, (d) interpret the stressor as evidence of circumstances worsening, and (e) lack social support-for the duress caused by the stressors. Psychosocial stressors are not evenly distributed across society. Just as the poor have a disproportionate share of physical stressors (hunger, manual labor, chronic sleep deprivation with a second job, the bad mattress that can't be replaced), they have a disproportionate share of psychosocial ones. Numbing assembly-line work and an occupational lifetime spent taking orders erode workers' sense of control. Unreliable cars that may not start in the morning and paychecks that may not last the month inflict unpredictability. Poverty rarely allows stress-relieving options such as health club memberships, costly but relaxing hobbies, or sabbaticals for rethinking one's priorities. And despite the heartwarming stereotype of the "poor but loving community," the working poor typically have less social support than the middle and upper classes, thanks to the extra jobs, the long commutes on public transit, and other burdens. Marmot has shown that regardless of SES, the less autonomy one has at work, the worse one's cardiovascular health. Furthermore, low control in the workplace accounts for about half the SES gradient in cardiovascular disease in his Whitehall population.

Mike continued to walk unhurriedly toward the crowd until he loomed up in the stereo tank in life size, as if he were in the room with his water brothers. He stopped on the grass verge in front of the hotel, a few feet from the crowd. "You called me?" He was answered with a growl. The sky held scattered clouds; at that instant the sun came out from behind one and a shaft of golden light hit him. His clothes vanished. He stood before them, a golden youth, clothed only in his own beauty, beauty that made Jubal's heart ache, thinking that Michelangelo in his ancient years would have climbed down from his high scaffolding to record it for generations unborn. Mike said gently, "Look at me. I am a son of man." . . . . "God damn you!" A half brick caught Mike in the ribs. He turned his face slightly toward his assailant. "But you yourself are God. You can damn only yourself and you can never escape yourself." "Blasphemer!" A rock caught him just over his left eye and blood welled forth. Mike said calmly, "In fighting me, you fight yourself... for Thou art God and I am God * . . and all that groks is God-there is no other." More rocks hit him, from various directions; he began to bleed in several places. "Hear the Truth. You need not hate, you need not fight, you need not fear. I offer you the water of life-" Suddenly his hand held a tumbler of water, sparkling in the sunlight. "-and you may share it whenever you so will . . . and walk in peace and love and happiness together." A rock caught the glass and shattered it. Another struck him in the mouth. Through bruised and bleeding lips he smiled at them, looking straight into the camera with an expression of yearning tenderness on his face. Some trick of sunlight and stereo formed a golden halo back of his head. "Oh my brothers, I love you so! Drink deep. Share and grow closer without end. Thou art God." Jubal whispered it back to him. . . . "Lynch him! Give the bastard a nigger necktie!" A heavy-gauge shotgun blasted at close range and Mike's right arm was struck off at the elbow and fell. It floated gently down, then came to rest on the cool grasses, its hand curved open in invitation. "Give him the other barrel, Shortie-and aim closer!" The crowd laughed and applauded. A brick smashed Mike's nose and more rocks gave him a crown of blood. "The Truth is simple but the Way of Man is hard. First you must learn to control yourself. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes." Another shotgun blast was followed by two more shots. One shot, a forty-five slug, hit Mike over the heart, shattering the sixth rib near the sternum and making a large wound; the buckshot and the other slug sheered through his left tibia five inches below the patella and left the fibula sticking out at an angle, broken and white against the yellow and red of the wound. Mike staggered slightly and laughed, went on talking, his words clear and unhurried. "Thou art God. Know that and the Way is opened." "God damn it-let's stop this taking the Name of the Lord in vain!"- "Come on, men! Let's finish him!" The mob surged forward, led by one bold with a club; they were on him with rocks and fists, and then with feet as he went down. He went on talking while they kicked his ribs in and smashed his golden body, broke his bones and tore an ear loose. At last someone called out, "Back away a little so we can get the gasoline on him!" The mob opened up a little at that waning and the camera zoomed to pick up his face and shoulders. The Man from Mars smiled at his brothers, said once more, softly and clearly, "I love you." An incautious grasshopper came whirring to a landing on the grass a few inches from his face; Mike turned his head, looked at it as it stared back at him. "Thou art God," he said happily and discorporated.

A veritable pacifist when it comes to social guilds or luncheon clubs, I turn into something of a militant on the subject of the only true and living Church on the face of the earth. . . . Setting aside for a time the heavenly host we hope one day to enjoy, I still choose the church of Jesus Christ to fill my need to be needed--here and now, as well as there and then. When public problems or private heartaches come--as surely they do come--I will be most fortunate if in that hour I find myself in the company of Latter-day Saints. . . . When asked "What can I know?" a Latter-day Saint answers, "All that God knows." When asked "What ought I to do?" his disciples answer, "Follow the Master." When asked "What may I hope?" an entire dispensation declares, "Peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come" (D&C 59:23), indeed ultimately for "all that [the] Father hath" (D&C 84:38). Depressions and identity crises have a hard time holding up under that response. . . . We cannot but wonder what frenzy the world would experience if a chapter of the Book of Mormon or a section of the Doctrine and Covenants or a conference address by President Spencer W. Kimball were to be discovered by some playful shepherd boy in an earthen jar near the Dead Sea caves of Qumran. The beneficiaries would probably build a special shrine in Jerusalem to house it, being very careful to regulate temperatures and restrict visitors. They would undoubtedly protect against earthquakes and war. Surely the edifice would be as beautiful as the contents would be valuable; its cost would be enormous, but its worth would be incalculable. Yet for the most part we have difficulty giving away copies of sacred scripture much more startling in their origin. Worse yet, some of us, knowing of the scriptures, have not even tried to share them, as if an angel were an every-day visitor and a prophet just another man in the street. We forget that our fathers lived for many centuries without priesthood power or prophetic leadership, and "dark ages" they were indeed.

HEART OF TEA DEVOTION Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn Throws up a steamy column and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful ev ning in. WILLIAM COWPER Perhaps the idea of a tea party takes you back to childhood. Do you remember dressing up and putting on your best manners as you sipped pretend tea out of tiny cups and shared pretend delicacies with your friends, your parents, or your teddy bears? Were you lucky enough to know adults who cared enough to share tea parties with you? And are you lucky enough to have a little person with whom you could share a tea party today? Is there a little girl inside you who longs for a lovely time of childish imagination and "so big" manners? It could be that the mention of teatime brings quieter memories-cups of amber liquid sipped in peaceful solitude on a big porch, or friendly confidences shared over steaming cups. So many of my own special times of closeness-with my husband, my children, my friends-have begun with putting a kettle on to boil and pulling out a tea tray. But even if you don't care for tea-if you prefer coffee or cocoa or lemonade or ice water, or if you like chunky mugs better than gleaming silver or delicate china, or if you find the idea of traditional tea too formal and a bit intimidating-there's still room for you at the tea table, and I think you would love it there! I have shared tea with so many people-from business executives to book club ladies to five-year-old boys. And I have found that few can resist a tea party when it is served with the right spirit. You see, it's not tea itself that speaks to the soul with such a satisfying message-although I must confess that I adore the warmth and fragrance of a cup of Earl Grey or Red Zinger. And it's not the teacups themselves that bring such a message of beauty and serenity and friendship-although my teacups do bring much pleasure. It's not the tea, in other words, that makes teatime special, it's the spirit of the tea party. It's what happens when women or men or children make a place in their life for the

Pull in Friendships and Fresh Adventures: Five men are walking across the Golden Gate Bridge on an outing organized by their wives who are college friends. The women move ahead in animated conversation. One man describes the engineering involved in the bridge's long suspension. Another points to the changing tide lines below. A third asked if they've heard of the new phone apps for walking tours. The fourth observes how refreshing it is to talk with people who aren't lawyers like him. Yes, we tend to notice the details that most relate to our work or our life experience. It is also no surprise that we instinctively look for those who share our interests. This is especially true in times of increasing pressure and uncertainty. We have an understandable tendency in such times to seek out the familiar and comfortable as a buffer against the disruptive changes surrounding us. In so doing we can inadvertently put ourselves in a cage of similarity that narrows our peripheral vision of the world and our options. The result? We can be blindsided by events and trends coming at us from directions we did not see. The more we see reinforcing evidence that we are right in our beliefs the more rigid we become in defending them. Hint: If you are part of a large association, synagogue, civic group or special interest club, encourage the organization to support the creation of self-organized, special interest groups of no more than seven people, providing a few suggestions of they could operate. Such loosely affiliated small groups within a larger organization deepen a sense of belonging, help more people learn from diverse others and stay open to growing through that shared learning and collaboration. That's one way that members of Rick Warren's large Saddleback Church have maintained a close-knit feeling yet continue to grow in fresh ways. imilarly the innovative outdoor gear company Gore-Tex has nimbly grown by using their version of self-organized groups of 150 or less within the larger corporation. In fact, they give grants to those who further their learning about that philosophy when adapted to outdoor adventure, traveling in compact groups of "close friends who had mutual respect and trust for one another.

If they hadn't found me, I'd be dead now. Harry stuck his wand up its nose and Ron knocked it out with its own club. They didn't have time to come and fetch anyone. It was about to finish me off when they arrived." Harry and Ron tried to look as though this story wasn't news to them. "Well- in that case..." said Professor McGonagall, staring at the three of them, "Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?" Hermione hung her head. Harry was speechless. Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets. "Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this," said Professor McGonagall. "I'm very disappointed in you. If you're not hurt at all, you'd better get off to Gryffindor tower. Students are finishing the feast in their houses." Hermione left. Professor McGonagall turned to Harry and Ron. "Well, I still say you were lucky, but not many first years could have taken on a full-grown mountain troll. You each win Gryffindor five points. Professor Dumbledore will be informed of this. You may go." They hurried out of the chamber and didn't speak at all until they had climbed two floors up. It was a relief to be away from the smell of the troll, quite apart from anything else. "We should have gotten more than ten points," Ron grumbled. "Five, you mean, once she's taken off Hermione's." "Good of her to get us out of trouble like that," Ron admitted. "Mind you, we did save her." "She might not have needed saving if we hadn't locked the thing in with her," Harry reminded him. They had reached the portrait of the Fat Lady. "Pig snout," they said and entered. The common room was packed and noisy. Everyone was eating the food that had been sent up. Hermione, however, stood alone by the door, waiting for them. There was a very embarrassed pause. Then, none of them looking at each other, they all said "Thanks," and hurried off to get plates. But from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.

Between 2003 and 2008, Iceland’s three main banks, Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, borrowed over $140 billion, a figure equal to ten times the country’s GDP, dwarfing its central bank’s $2.5 billion reserves. A handful of entrepreneurs, egged on by their then government, embarked on an unprecedented international spending binge, buying everything from Danish department stores to West Ham Football Club, while a sizeable proportion of the rest of the adult population enthusiastically embraced the kind of cockamamie financial strategies usually only mooted in Nigerian spam emails – taking out loans in Japanese Yen, for example, or mortgaging their houses in Swiss francs. One minute the Icelanders were up to their waists in fish guts, the next they they were weighing up the options lists on their new Porsche Cayennes. The tales of un-Nordic excess are legion: Elton John was flown in to sing one song at a birthday party; private jets were booked like they were taxis; people thought nothing of spending £5,000 on bottles of single malt whisky, or £100,000 on hunting weekends in the English countryside. The chief executive of the London arm of Kaupthing hired the Natural History Museum for a party, with Tom Jones providing the entertainment, and, by all accounts, Reykjavik’s actual snow was augmented by a blizzard of the Colombian variety. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008 exposed Iceland’s debts which, at one point, were said to be around 850 per cent of GDP (compared with the US’s 350 per cent), and set off a chain reaction which resulted in the krona plummeting to almost half its value. By this stage Iceland’s banks were lending money to their own shareholders so that they could buy shares in . . . those very same Icelandic banks. I am no Paul Krugman, but even I can see that this was hardly a sustainable business model. The government didn’t have the money to cover its banks’ debts. It was forced to withdraw the krona from currency markets and accept loans totalling £4 billion from the IMF, and from other countries. Even the little Faroe Islands forked out £33 million, which must have been especially humiliating for the Icelanders. Interest rates peaked at 18 per cent. The stock market dropped 77 per cent; inflation hit 20 per cent; and the krona dropped 80 per cent. Depending who you listen to, the country’s total debt ended up somewhere between £13 billion and £63 billion, or, to put it another way, anything from £38,000 to £210,000 for each and every Icelander.

Jak’ri nodded toward the cliff’s edge. “Shall we?” “Not if you give me time to think about it.” He flashed his teeth in a boyish grin. “One-two-three, jump!” he called and took off running, pulling her after him. Ava’s eyes widened and her heart thudded hard in her chest as she ran alongside him. Their feet hit the edge at the same time, and together they leapt off. Jak’ri whooped as they plummeted toward the ocean, the sound so wonderfully carefree and appealing that Ava found herself grinning big even as she shrieked and squeezed the hell out of his hand. He hit the water a split second before her. Cool liquid closed over their heads. Bubbles surrounded them as if they’d just jumped into a vat of club soda. Then he looped an arm around her waist and propelled them both to the surface. “That was crazy!” she blurted, unable to stop smiling as she swiped water from her face. “Crazy but fun?” he quipped, eyes sparkling with amusement. “Maybe,” she hedged. “But not as fun at this.” Propelling her upper body out of the water, she planted her hands atop his head and dunked him. As soon as she released him, she began a lazy backstroke. Jak’ri surfaced with a sputter and a laugh. When his silver eyes found her a few yards away, they acquired a devilish glint. “Oh, you’re going to regret that, little Earthling.” Ava shrieked when he dove for her. Rolling onto her stomach, she took off, swimming in earnest. Jak’ri’s fingers closed around one of her ankles. “Caught you!” She swam harder, getting absolutely nowhere, breaking into giggles as he issued dire threats in a villainous voice. When was the last time she had honest-to-goodness giggled? She yelped when he gave her ankle a yank. Then she was in his arms and he was grinning wickedly at her. “Think you can get the best of me, do you?” he taunted. Tucking his hands under her arms, he kicked his feet. Ava laughed as he tossed her up out of the water. Through the air she flew, landing on her back several yards away. The water again closed over her head. When she surfaced, she quickly bent her head to hide her smile and rubbed her eyes. “Hang on a sec,” she mumbled. Jak’ri immediately stopped laughing and swam toward her. “I’m sorry. Did you get something in your eye?” “No.” She grinned at him. “I just needed to lure you closer.” Then she swept her arm through the water in front of him, sending a cascade over his head. Sputtering, Jak’ri dove for her. Laughter abounded as they played, even more so when he started sharing tales of his exploits with his brother. Clunk. Ava jerked awake. Damn it! She really hated to wake up. She and Jak’ri had been romping and playing like children. Having to come back to the reality of this cell and the assholes who’d put her in it sucked.