Cook Law Quotes

There's no law that says I can't cook in my own house." - Charlie Swan

How as a young girl, Ismat Chugtai convinced her father to excuse her from learning how to cook, and give her instead the opportunity to go to school and get an education: “Women cook food Ismat. When you go to your in-laws what will you feed them?” he asked gently after the crisis was explained to him. “If my husband is poor, then we will make khichdi and eat it and if he is rich, we will hire a cook,” I answered. My father realised his daughter was a terror and that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

Life will cook; the seas will rise. The planet’s lungs will be ripped out. And the law will let this happen, because harm was never imminent enough. Imminent, at the speed of people, is too late. The law must judge imminent at the speed of trees.

If I die this instant will you be more content with the morning news? Will your coffee taste better? I am not your fate. I am not your government…I am not your mother, not your father or your nightmare or your health. I am not a fence, not a wall. I am not the law or actuarial tables of your insurance broker. I am a woman with my guts loose in my hands, howling and it’s not because I committed hari-kiri. I suggest either you cook me or sew me back up. I suggest you walk into my pain as into the breaking waves of an ocean of blood, and either we will climb out together and walk away.

So who the hell, exactly, are these guys, the boys and girls in the trenches? You might get the impression from the specifics of my less than stellar career that all line cooks are wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths. You wouldn't be too far off base. The business, as respected three-star chef Scott Bryan explains it, attracts 'fringe elements', people for whom something in their lives has gone terribly wrong. Maybe they didn't make it through high school, maybe they're running away from something-be it an ex-wife, a rotten family history, trouble with the law, a squalid Third World backwater with no opportunity for advancement. Or maybe, like me, they just like it here.

Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunch-backed makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed form kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries' vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers, heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters' sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottle-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night's rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

My first female lover was a Jewish woman. She was butch, but not in a swaggering macho way- she could pass as a yeshiva boy, pale and intense. Small, almost fragile, she exuded a powerful sense of herself. She had not been to a synagogue in years, but kept the law of kashrut, and taught me my first prayers in Hebrew. She cooked, she read, she ironed her dress shirts and polished her boots meticulously, and admired femme women enormously. She was also the first person ever- including myself- to bring me to multiple orgasms. She taught me to ask for what I wanted in bed, then encouraged me to expect it from her and future lovers. She taught me to get her off with fingers, tongue, lips, sex toys, and my voice. She showed me how to masturbate in different positions, and fisted me during my menstrual cramps to provide an internal massage- and to demonstrate that a sexual act without orgasm was also an acceptable, intimate act. She never separated sexuality from the rest of her life; it was as integral to her as her Judaism. This was how I wanted to be. Not just sexually, although certainly that way too. This is how I wanted to move through the world. -- Karen Taylor (from "Daughters of Zelophehad")

In order to be labeled organic, a crop must be grown without the use of certain synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, as specified by the USDA. Though produced with fewer synthetic compounds, organic vegetables are not necessarily tastier or more nutritious than their conventional counterparts. Also keep in mind that the certification process is often too expensive for small farms even though their practices may meet or exceed those set by the USDA. The smallest farms-those selling less than $5,000 worth of crops annually-may by law label their produce organic without being inspected or certified. Rather than rely on labeling, we prefer, when possible, to buy locally grown vegetables in their season.

Righteousness and love, law and grace, life and death, as well as time and eternity all intersect at the cross; displaying a divine wisdom that staggers the imagination and leads the humble heart to bow in thankful adoration. To understand the cross of Christ is to understand the heart of God toward a fallen world He wants to save.

Only to have a grief equal to all these tears! There's not a sob in my chest. Dry hearted Peer Gynt I pare away, no hero, merely a cook.

Lee’s hand shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his down in one gulp. “Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?” “Yes, I see. I do see. But you do not believe this is divine law. Why do you feel its importance?” “Ah!” said Lee. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But “Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.” Lee’s voice was a chant of triumph. Adam said, “Do you believe that, Lee?” “Yes, I do. Yes, I do. It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, ‘I couldn’t help it; the way was set.’ But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There’s no godliness there. And do you know, those old gentlemen who were sliding gently down to death are too interested to die now?” Adam said, “Do you mean these Chinese men believe the Old Testament?” Lee said, “These old men believe a true story, and they know a true story when they hear it. They are critics of truth. They know that these sixteen verses are a history of humankind in any age or culture or race. They do not believe a man writes fifteen and three-quarter verses of truth and tells a lie with one verb. Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and successful lives. But this—this is a ladder to climb to the stars.” Lee’s eyes shone. “You can never lose that. It cuts the feet from under weakness and cowardliness and laziness.” Adam said, “I don’t see how you could cook and raise the boys and take care of me and still do all this.” “Neither do I,” said Lee. “But I take my two pipes in the afternoon, no more and no less, like the elders. And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed—because ‘Thou mayest.

The proverb has it that Hunger is the best cook. The Law makes afflicted consciences hungry for Christ. Christ tastes good to them. Hungry hearts appreciate Christ. Thirsty souls are what Christ wants. He invites them: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Christ's benefits are so precious that He will dispense them only to those who need them and really desire them.

He was in his first year of law school when his life began appearing to him as memories. He would be doing something everyday—cooking dinner, filing books at the library, frosting a cake at Batter, looking up an article for Harold—and suddenly, a scene would appear before him, a dumb show meant only for him. In those years, the memories were tableaux, not narratives, and he would see a single one repeatedly for days:

All the fruit is ripe, plunged in fire, cooked, And they have passed their test on earth, and one law is this: That everything curls inward, like snakes, Prophetic, dreaming on The hills of heaven. And many things Have to stay on the shoulders like a load of failure. However the roads Are bad. For the chained elements, Like horses, are going off to the side, And the old Laws of the earth. And a longing For disintegration constantly comes. Many things however Have to stay on the shoulders. Steadiness is essential. Forwards, however, or backwards we will Not look. Let us learn to live swaying As in a rocking boat on the sea.

[M]an is not an island, he is more like a spaghetti junction.

[Christianity] is a religion for slaves and women!' said the warrior of old. (Slaves and women were largely the same thing.) 'It is a religion for slaves and women' says the advocate of the Superman. Well? Who did the work of all the ancient world? Who raised the food and garnered it and cooked it and served it? Who built the houses, the temples, the aqueducts, the city wall? Who made the furniture, the tools, the weapons, the utensils, the ornaments--made them strong and beautiful and useful? Who kept the human race going, somehow, in spite of the constant hideous waste of war, and slowly built up the real industrial civilization behind that gory show?--Why just the slaves and women.

The law isn’t always about what’s right. Or wrong. A lot of times it’s about somebody being guaranteed an advantage over somebody else. And that’s human nature. That’s the nature of any sentient species,

The journey through another world, beyond bad dreams beyond the memories of a murdered generation, cartographed in captivity by bare survivors makes sacristans of us all. The old ones go our bail, we oblate preachers of our tribes. Be careful, they say, don't hock the beads of kinship agonies; the moire-effect of unfamiliar hymns upon our own, a change in pitch or shrillness of the voice transforms the ways of song to words of poetry or prose and makes distinctions no one recognizes. Surrounded and absorbed, we tread like Etruscans on the edge of useless law; we pray to the giver of prayer, we give the cane whistle in ceremony, we swing the heavy silver chain of incense burners. Migration makes new citizens of Rome.

If a pot can multiply. One day Nasrudin lent his cooking pots to a neighbour, who was giving a feast. The neighbour returned them, together with one extra one – a very tiny pot. 'What is this?' asked Nasrudin. 'According to law, I have given you the offspring of your property which was born when the pots were in my care,' said the joker. Shortly afterwards Nasrudin borrowed his neighbour's pots, but did not return them. The man came round to get them back. 'Alas!' said Nasrudin, 'they are dead. We have established, have we not, that pots are mortal?'.

Respect the verbs in your life. Life is a verb. Live is a verb. Live Life. Action verbs bring life to writing. Love is a verb. Be is a verb. Be in Love Believe, love, give, receive,tag, Believing in love, giving love, receiving love, love tag(you are it) dance, prance, pounce, smile, try, trying to smile, dancing and prancing, pounce! laugh, do, go, grow, feel, touch, touching, feeling, growing, doing, going, laughing, sing, walk, run, cook, look, see, eat, meet, greet, smell, hear, look and see the cooking, singing and then walking into the kitchen to eat, eating the yummy food. running to see, seeing the food, meeting and greeting others; smelling the cooking, hearing the laughter; seeing the runners; touching the icing. licking the icing. tasting the licking of the spoon discover, realize, live, respect. discover life, realizing truth, living, respecting everyone under the sun, even all the universe love and respect all

Identity, though, is a difficult matter to tease out, especially in a time of flux. How to tell a spaniel from a retriever when all dogs have become middle-sized and brown? Should we go by some arbitrary blood quantum wherein half makes an Indian and forty-nine percent makes something else? Certainly forty-nine percent does not a whiteman make, at least not by the laws then prevailing in our state and most others. Or do we go by the old ways, the clans and the mothers, blood degree be damned? Or by what language someone dreams in or prays in or curses in? Or whether they cook bean bread and still tell the tales of Spearfinger and Uktena by the winter fire and go to water when they’re sick? And what if they did all those things but were blond and square-headed as Norsemen? Or do we just hold a dry oak leaf to their cheeks and cull by whether they are darker or lighter?

We’re practicing corporate law at the biggest firm in the entire world. Whether we know it or not, we’re blazing a trail for women in the future. The key to having it all is redefining what ‘all’ is. I wanted three kids. That means I have two nannies. I want them to eat home-cooked meals every night. That means I have a chef.

in which great difficulties are found to the present day by Englishmen, whose language presents no certain laws for rendering any given sound into a fixed combination of letters.

A brick could be used as a substitute for the steak my mother-in-law just cooked me. And I asked for medium rare. I wonder what well done would taste and chew like.


when you live outside the law, you have to be flexible

One of my greatest pleasures is a good cut of meat, and the bloodier the better. Just show them the flame, I always tell my cook. Just show it to them.

an iron law of warfare. No matter how clever you are at finding a new tool, your opponent will come up with a counter long before that can possibly be convenient for you.

Cook was a captain of the powder-days When captains, you might have said, if you had been Fixed by their glittering stare, half-down the side, Or gaping at them up companionways, Were more like warlocks than a humble man— And men were humble then who gazed at them, Poor horn-eyed sailors, bullied by devils' fists Of wind or water, or the want of both, Childlike and trusting, filled with eager trust— Cook was a captain of the sailing days When sea-captains were kings like this, Those captains drove their ships By their own blood, no laws of schoolbook steam, Till yards were sprung, and masts went overboard— Daemons in periwigs, doling magic out, Who read fair alphabets in stars Where humbler men found but a mess of sparks, Who steered their crews by mysteries And strange, half-dreadful sortilege with books, Used medicines that only gods could know The sense of, but sailors drank In simple faith. That was the captain Cook was when he came to the Coral Sea And chose a passage into the dark. Men who ride broomsticks with a mesmerist Mock the typhoon. So, too, it was with Cook.

In time-honoured fashion, this is really the eldest daughter-in-law’s investiture as the earthly, domestic symbol of the goddess. It is she who channels Lakshmi’s blessings on the family. In her is vested, by an understanding of priestly transference, the household’s economic prosperity, well-being and harmonious daily life. Beside it, her other daily chores as eldest daughter-in-law –supervising the cook and cleaners and servants and household accounts, caring for her elderly parents-in-law, looking after their meals and medication, deciding which tasks can be ceded to the wives of her three brothers-in-law, keeping a family of twenty (including the servants) ticking over without hiccups or mishaps –all these appear as milk-and-rice, as uncomplicated, bland and digestible as infant fare.

If you tell a guy in the street you're hungry you scare the shit out of him, he runs like hell. That's something I never understood. I don't understand it yet. The whole thing is so simple - you just say Yes when some one comes up to you. And if you can't say Yes you can take him by the arm and ask some other bird to help you out. Why you have to don a uniform and kill men you don't know, just to get that crust of bread, is a mystery to me. That's what I think about, more than about whose trap it's going down or how much it costs. Why should I give a fuck about what anything costs ? I'm here to live, not to calculate. And that's just what the bastards don't want you to do - to live! They want you to spend your whole life adding up figures. That makes sense to them. That's reasonable. That's intelligent. If I were running the boat things wouldn't be so orderly perhaps, but it would be gayer, by Jesus! You wouldn't have to shit in your pants over trifles. Maybe there wouldn't be macadamized roads and streamlined cars and loudspeakers and gadgets of a million-billion varieties, maybe there wouldn't even be glass in the windows, maybe you'd have to sleep on the ground, maybe there wouldn't be French cooking and Italian cooking and Chinese cooking, maybe people would kill each other when their patience was exhausted and maybe nobody would stop them because there wouldn't be any jails or any cops or judges, and there certainly wouldn't be any cabinet ministers or legislatures because-there wouldn't be any goddamned laws to obey or disobey, and maybe it would take months and years to trek from place to place, but you wouldn't need a visa or a passport or a carte d'identite because you wouldn't be registered anywhere and you wouldn't bear a number and if you wanted to change your name every week you could do it because it wouldn't make any difference since you wouldn't own anything except what you could carry around with you and why would you want to own anything when everything would be free?

What was Judaism if not an exacting, totalized system of laws handed down by the divine, then kitted out with redundancies and fail-safes by the scholars to eliminate any chance of an infraction—building a wall around the Torah, it was called, the process by which don’t cook a goat in its mother’s milk ballooned into never mix dairy with meat, buy two sets of dishes, wash them in different dishwashers—and then, finally, poked full of loopholes so the devout might obediently circumvent those laws?

Self-preservation and determination meant she could get away with anything. As her law-abiding, conventionally minded daughter, I secretly envied her this. She was not the clinging-vine type, nor one who could coax sugar from a lemon. Hers was the frontal attack with no inhibitions. She told the Nazis you could not trust Hitler, and they let her go. In the days of chaperones, she hitch-hiked a ride on a French destroyer along the coast of Crete; 'All quite proper, I had my cook with me,' she explained.

Here's what I want you to learn from this: Never let someone answer a question for you. Jump in with anything at all to make sure hat you're the one talking. Say, 'That's an interesting question', or 'I'm glad you asked that question,' or 'Oh goody, my favorite subject.' Say anything that will guarantee that you're in the conversation about yourself and not out of it like a teenager standing next to her mother at a cocktail party. You must tell your own story, never let someone, even someone as familiar to you as your sister-in-law think she knows you better than you know yourself. She only sees what you do, she doesn't' see who you are inside. If I regret anything when I look back, it's how often I allowed people to think what they wanted to thing. I should've stopped them sort. I should've laughed at their assumptions. I should've hooted with laughter, 'Hoo hoo hoo,' and followed with twinkling, mischievous smile just to throw them off, just to keep them guessing, The problem is they watch what you do, who you love, how you cook, what you read and what you don't read, and they decide what it means, and sometimes you're not there to stop them, or you get the timing wrong. I've always wondered why people look so much to action for meaning. When people tell you a story, something that happened to them, something important, don't ask them what they did , ask them what they wanted to do, what they want to do is who they are. Actions are whispers compared to dreams.

By 1715, John Law had cooked up a plan to take what the Bank of England had done and push it much, much further. When Law closed his eyes, he could see a whole financial system that linked together all of the hot new things—a bank, a stock market, a trading company, a new way for the government to get money.

IT was a sad if not an altogether broken young man who came to live in London after Wilde’s death. He could not yet realize that people, and particularly people in what was still called Society, had an uneasy conscience about their treatment of his friend and would fasten on him as a convenient scapegoat. We did not kill the man’s genius, they said in effect, we did not encourage a conspiracy to imprison him by means of a preposterous law, we are not to blame for his barren last years and early death; it was all the fault of this young man who bewitched him into a disastrous attack on his father, who is still free, rich, handsome, as we are not.

You ask me why the I.W.W. is not patriotic to the United States. If you were a bum without a blanket; if you had left your wife and kids when you went west for a job, and had never located them since; if your job had never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to vote; if you slept in a lousy, sour bunkhouse, and ate food just as rotten as they could give you and get by with it; if deputy sheriffs shot your cooking cans full of holes and spilled your grub on the ground; if your wages were lowered on you when the bosses thought they had you down; if there was one law for Ford, Suhr, and Mooney, and another for Harry Thaw; if every person who represented law and order and the nation beat you up, railroaded you to jail, and the good Christian people cheered and told them to go to it, how in hell do you expect a man to be patriotic? This war is a business man’s war and we don’t see why we should go out and get shot in order to save the lovely state of affairs that we now enjoy.

We all have our pasts. I suspect we keep them nebulous not because we are hiding from our yesterdays but because we think we will cut more romantic figures if we roll our eyes and dispense delicate hints about beautiful women forever beyond our reaches. Those men whose stories I have uprooted are running from the law, not a tragic love affair.

Ch. What does it matter that she fails in the laws of Vaugelas, provided she does not fail in the cooking? I would rather, I would, that in cleaning the vegetables she should make the verbs agree ill with the nouns, and say a hundred times a low or bad word, than that she should burn y  my meat or put too much salt in my soup; I live on good soup, and not on fine language.

By no means confined to the south, slavery was well entrenched in much of the north. By 1784, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had outlawed slavery or passed laws for its gradual extinction—at the very least, New England’s soil did not lend itself to large plantations—but New York and New Jersey retained significant slave populations. New York City, in particular, was identified with slavery: it still held slave auctions in the 1750s and was also linked through its sugar refineries to the West Indies. Even in the 1790s, one in five New York City households kept domestic slaves, a practice ubiquitous among well-to-do merchants who wanted cooks, maids, and butlers and regarded slaves as status symbols. (After

A problem with school is that you often become what you study. So if you study cooking, you become a chef. If you study the law, you become an attorney, and a study of auto mechanics makes you a mechanic. The mistake in becoming what you study is that too many people forget to mind their own business. They spend their lives minding someone else’s business and making that person rich.

Your mother can’t produce food out of thin air,” said Hermione. “No one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfigur--” “Oh, speak English, can’t you?” Ron said, prising a fish bone out from between his teeth. “It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some--” “Well, don’t bother increasing this, it’s disgusting,” said Ron. “Harry caught the fish and I did my best with it! I notice I’m always the one who ends up sorting out the food, because I’m a girl, I suppose!” “No, it’s because you’re supposed to be the best at magic!” shot back Ron. Hermione jumped up and bits of roast pike slid off her tin plate onto the floor. “You can do the cooking tomorrow, Ron, you can find the ingredients and try and charm them into something worth eating, and I’ll sit here and pull faces and moan and you can see how you--” “Shut up!” said Harry, leaping to his feet and holding up both hands. “Shut up now!” Hermione looked outraged. “How can you side with him, he hardly ever does the cook--” “Hermione, be quiet, I can hear someone!

When we think of an institution, we can usually see it as embodied in a building: the Vatican, the Pentagon, the Sorbonne, the Treasury, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Kremlin, the Supreme Court. What we cannot see, until we become close students of the institution, are the ways in which power is maintained and transferred behind the walls and beneath the domes, the invisible understandings which guarantee that it shall reside in certain hands but not in others, that information shall be transmitted to this one but not to that one, the hidden collusions and connections with other institutions of which it is supposedly independent. When we think of the institution of motherhood, no symbolic architecture comes to mind, no visible embodiment of authority, power, or of potential or actual violence. Motherhood calls to mind the home, and we like to believe that the home is a private place. Perhaps we imagine row upon row of backyards, behind suburban or tenement houses, in each of which a woman hangs out the wash, or runs to pick up a tear-streaked two-year-old; or thousands of kitchens, in each of which children are being fed and sent off to school. Or we think of the house of our childhood, the woman who mothered us, or of ourselves. We do not think of the laws which determine how we got to these places, the penalties imposed on those of us who have tried to live our lives according to a different plan, the art which depicts us in an unnatural serenity or resignation, the medical establishment which has robbed so many women of the act of giving birth, the experts—almost all male—who have told us how, as mothers, we should behave and feel. We do not think of the Marxist intellectuals arguing as to whether we produce “surplus value” in a day of washing clothes, cooking food, and caring for children, or the psychoanalysts who are certain that the work of motherhood suits us by nature. We do not think of the power stolen from us and the power withheld from us, in the name of the institution of motherhood.

Make cabbage illegal (anyone caught growing, cooking, or eating cabbage will be sent straight to prison). Make ice-cream free (duh!) Make it the law that bread must be baked without crusts. Ban school. (This could be going too far. I might decide that school can be taught on Wednesdays. Wednesday mornings. I’ll think about it.) Make the 25th of every month Christmas Day (or just Lots of Presents for Kids Day if you don’t do Christmas). Make it the law that parents have to take kids to Disneyland at least twice a year, (more if they want to). Order all the scientists to work out why you can’t tickle yourself and what the purpose of snot is. Make showering optional. For me. If I decide that you stink, then you must shower. Change dinner time around so that dessert has to be eaten first. Ban all lumps from yoghurt.

Brutally put, it makes little philosophical sense for the elected representatives of a government that is subordinate to the people to be able to disarm those people. As an enlightened state may by no means act as the arbiter of its critics’ words, it may not remove from the people the basic rights that are recognized in the very document to which it owes its existence. “Shall not be infringed” and “shall make no law” are clear enough even for the postmodern age. To ask, “Why do you need an AR-15?” is to invert the relationship. A better question: “Why don’t you want me to have one?

We wanted to do French toast for the brunch, but acknowledged that it is a dangerous item for a special event where people might be dressed up. Patrick had an awesome recipe for the toast itself, using day-old Challah, melted vanilla ice cream as a main ingredient in the soaking liquid, and just a hint of sea salt. I had come up with an alternative to the sticky drippy-down-your-front maple syrup problem by mixing equal parts maple sugar and demerara sugar, and having him sprinkle this on top of the already-cooked French toast and doing a quick brûlée under the broiler; giving the toast a thin crackly maple sugar shell. All the sweet and smoky taste, nothing ruining your mother-in-law's favorite silk blouse.

Free speech is a unitary issue in which there are no possible divisions. The moral standing of the speaker has no relevance, other than in our correlated free right to judge him in turn for his actions, and it should not matter whether the person speaking is the finest man who has ever lived or the worst, nor whether or not a majority concurs with his sentiment. It must not matter whether a writer is brilliant or moronic, or a cartoonist witty or bigoted, because it is not up to power, authority, plurality or orthodoxy to make that distinction. Parliament can not be the architect of its own opposition, nor the offended the authors of their own offense. Put bluntly, the law must not distinguish between the writings of Hitler and those of Shakespeare.

Jesus made it clear that he did not come to abolish the laws of the Torah, “but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). The life and teachings of Jesus, then, embody all that these laws were intended to be. Jesus is what the living, breathing will of God looks like. This includes compassion for the poor, esteem for women, healing for the sick, and solidarity with the suffering. It means breaking bread with outcasts and embracing little children. It means choosing forgiveness over retribution, the cross over revenge, and cooking breakfast for the friend who betrayed you. As Elton Trueblood put it, “The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus.

If the State says to him, “I take your money to pay the gendarme, who saves you the trouble of providing for your own personal safety; for paving the street that you are passing through every day; for paying the magistrate who causes your property and your liberty to be respected; to maintain the soldier who maintains our frontiers,” John Q. Citizen, unless I am much mistaken, will pay for all this without hesitation. But if the State were to say to him, “I take this money that I may give you a little prize in case you cultivate your field well; or that I may teach your son something that you have no wish that he should learn; or that the Minister may add another to his score of dishes at dinner; I take it to build a cottage in Algeria, in which case I must take more money every year to keep an emigrant in it, and another to maintain a soldier to guard this emigrant, and yet more to maintain a general to guard this soldier,” etc., etc., I think I hear poor James exclaim, “This system of law is very much like a system of cheat!” The State foresees the objection, and what does it do? It jumbles all things together, and brings forward just that provoking reason which ought to have nothing whatever to do with the question. It talks of the effect of this money upon labor; it points to the cook and purveyor of the Minister; it shows an emigrant, a soldier, and a general, living upon the money; it shows, in fact, what is seen, and if John Q. Citizen has not learned to take into the account what is not seen, John Q. Citizen will be duped.

What is your Christian life like? What is the shape of your gospel, your faith? In the end, it will all depend on what you think God is like. Who God is drives everything. So what is the human problem? Is it merely that we have strayed from a moral code? Or is it something worse: that we have strayed from him? What is salvation? Is it merely that we are brought back as law-abiding citizens? Or is it something better: that we are brought back as beloved children? What is the Christian life about? Mere behaviour? Or something deeper: enjoying God? And then there’s what our churches are like, our marriages, our relationships, our mission: all are moulded in the deepest way by what we think of God. In the early fourth century, Arius went for a pre-cooked God, ready-baked in his mind. Ignoring the way, the truth and life, he defined God without the Son, and the fallout was catastrophic: without the Son, God cannot truly be a Father; thus alone, he is not truly love. Thus he can have no fellowship to share with us, no Son to bring us close, no Spirit through whom we might know him. Arius was left with a very thin gruel: a life of self-dependent effort under the all-seeing eye of his distant and loveless God. The tragedy is that we all think like Arius every day. We think of God without the Son. We think of ‘God’, and not the Father of the Son. But from there it really doesn’t take long before you find that you are just a whole lot more interesting than this ‘God’. And could you but see yourself, you would notice that you are fast becoming like this ‘God’: all inward-looking and fruitless.

In my office, a married man almost never walks in alone for his appointment, he is always accompanied by his wife or daughter-in-law. They come to support him in his efforts to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and are willing to go all the way to ensure that no hurdles come in the way of his fitness. Married women, however, come alone; they plead helplessness over the ways of cooking and eating in the family, cite school timings or preferred meal timings when asked to make time to workout or advance dinner times. When it comes to the men or children in the family, their health, fitness and wellness, the women will change everything: meal timings, cooking styles, bedtimes, workouts, etc. When it comes to using the exact same resources for themselves, they can’t, the same drivers of change are helpless.

You can have no idea what it feels like to live in an ordinary woman’s skin. From the moment a girl is born she is tutored by her mother on what she may and may not do. The list of what she is allowed to do keeps on shrinking as she grows older—cover your head, lower your neck, conceal your breasts, hide your ankles, don’t go to the river alone, don’t step out in the evening, don’t laugh loudly, don’t ask questions, don’t expect answers … Then she marries and it only gets worse. A mother-in-law takes over to enforce the rules. Wake up first, sleep last. Cook feasts, eat leftovers. Feed sons, starve daughters. And when finally she grows older and the baton passes on to her, she starts battering the next generation with it, having seen nothing else in her life!’ ‘So are you saying women oppress women?’ I was surprised that her tirade was directed at mothers and mothers-in-law rather than at men. ‘Yes, precisely. Why blame the men alone? Why will they try to change an existing order in which they get a bonded slave to cook their food, wash their clothes, clean their homes, warm their beds, look after their aging parents and bear them children? But what reason do women have? Why do they fall all over themselves to tyrannise other women? Women can rescue each other. Women can refuse to starve, scare and suppress their daughters. They can be friends and comrades with their daughters-in-law. Women can look out for the safety of their house maids and farm labourers. Women can insist that other women be treated with respect and dignity. But for that they first need to stop feeling helpless and scared themselves. They need to stop needing a man to protect them. The price of that protection is just too high.

Arin said, “If I win, I will ask a question, and you will answer.” She felt a nervous flutter. “I could lie. People lie.” “I’m willing to risk it.” “If those are your stakes, then I assume my prize would be the same.” “If you win.” She still could not quite agree. “Questions and answers are highly irregular stakes in Bite and Sting,” she said irritably. “Whereas matches make the perfect ante, and are so exciting to win and lose.” “Fine.” Kestrel tossed the box to the carpet, where it landed with a muffled sound. Arin didn’t look satisfied or amused or anything at all. He simply drew his hand. She did the same. They played in intent concentration, and Kestrel was determined to win. She didn’t. “I want to know,” Arin said, “why you are not already a soldier.” Kestrel couldn’t have said what she had thought he would ask, but this was not it, and the question recalled years of arguments she would rather forget. She was curt. “I’m seventeen. I’m not yet required by law to enlist or marry.” He settled back in his chair, toying with one of his winning pieces. He tapped a thin side against the table, spun the tile in his fingers, and tapped another side. “That’s not a full answer.” “I don’t think we specified how short or long these answers should be. Let’s play again.” “If you win, will you be satisfied with the kind of answer you have given me?” Slowly, she said, “The military is my father’s life. Not mine. I’m not even a skilled fighter.” “Really?” His surprise seemed genuine. “Oh, I pass muster. I can defend myself as well as most Valorians, but I’m not good at combat. I know what it’s like to be good at something.” Arin glanced again at the piano. “There is also my music,” Kestrel acknowledged. “A piano is not very portable. I could hardly take it with me if I were sent into battle.” “Playing music is for slaves,” Arin said. “Like cooking or cleaning.” Kestrel heard anger in his words, buried like bedrock under the careless ripple of his voice. “It wasn’t always like that.” Arin was silent, and even though Kestrel had initially tried to answer his question in the briefest of ways, she felt compelled to explain the final reason behind her resistance to the general. “Also…I don’t want to kill.” Arin frowned at this, so Kestrel laughed to make light of the conversation. “I drive my father mad. Yet don’t all daughters? So we’ve made a truce. I have agreed that, in the spring, I will either enlist or marry.” He stopped spinning the tile in his fingers. “You’ll marry, then.” “Yes. But at least I will have six months of peace first.” Arin dropped the tile to the table. “Let’s play again.” This time Kestrel won, and wasn’t prepared for how her blood buzzed with triumph.

Relway mused, “Now that it’s happened I’m not so sure I’m happy with the outcome. Spared their racial theories The Call would’ve been good for TunFaire.” He would appreciate their interest in law and order and proper behavior. “Here’s a challenge you still need to meet. Glory Mooncalled. He’s weak now but he’s still out there somewhere. If you don’t get him now he’ll try to put something back together someday. He can’t help himself.” “It’s still great day for TunFaire, Garrett. One of pure triumph.” I don’t know if he meant that or was being sarcastic. You never quite know anything with Relway. And he wants it that way. “I liked the way you put it, Garrett. Faded steel heat.” I’d mentioned that to him the night he’d discovered the tanks in the old Lamp brewery. “But the war goes on.” “The war never ends. Tell you what. Send me a note when you do decide to roast that pigeon. I’ve got dibs on a drumstick.

Early on it is clear that Addie has a rebellious streak, joining the library group and running away to Rockport Lodge. Is Addie right to disobey her parents? Where does she get her courage? 2. Addie’s mother refuses to see Celia’s death as anything but an accident, and Addie comments that “whenever I heard my mother’s version of what happened, I felt sick to my stomach.” Did Celia commit suicide? How might the guilt that Addie feels differ from the guilt her mother feels? 3. When Addie tries on pants for the first time, she feels emotionally as well as physically liberated, and confesses that she would like to go to college (page 108). How does the social significance of clothing and hairstyle differ for Addie, Gussie, and Filomena in the book? 4. Diamant fills her narrative with a number of historical events and figures, from the psychological effects of World War I and the pandemic outbreak of influenza in 1918 to child labor laws to the cultural impact of Betty Friedan. How do real-life people and events affect how we read Addie’s fictional story? 5. Gussie is one of the most forward-thinking characters in the novel; however, despite her law degree she has trouble finding a job as an attorney because “no one would hire a lady lawyer.” What other limitations do Addie and her friends face in the workforce? What limitations do women and minorities face today? 6. After distancing herself from Ernie when he suffers a nervous episode brought on by combat stress, Addie sees a community of war veterans come forward to assist him (page 155). What does the remorse that Addie later feels suggest about the challenges American soldiers face as they reintegrate into society? Do you think soldiers today face similar challenges? 7. Addie notices that the Rockport locals seem related to one another, and the cook Mrs. Morse confides in her sister that, although she is usually suspicious of immigrant boarders, “some of them are nicer than Americans.” How does tolerance of the immigrant population vary between city and town in the novel? For whom might Mrs. Morse reserve the term Americans? 8. Addie is initially drawn to Tessa Thorndike because she is a Boston Brahmin who isn’t afraid to poke fun at her own class on the women’s page of the newspaper. What strengths and weaknesses does Tessa’s character represent for educated women of the time? How does Addie’s description of Tessa bring her reliability into question? 9. Addie’s parents frequently admonish her for being ungrateful, but Addie feels she has earned her freedom to move into a boardinghouse when her parents move to Roxbury, in part because she contributed to the family income (page 185). How does the Baum family’s move to Roxbury show the ways Betty and Addie think differently from their parents about household roles? Why does their father take such offense at Herman Levine’s offer to house the family? 10. The last meaningful conversation between Addie and her mother turns out to be an apology her mother meant for Celia, and for a moment during her mother’s funeral Addie thinks, “She won’t be able to make me feel like there’s something wrong with me anymore.” Does Addie find any closure from her mother’s death? 11. Filomena draws a distinction between love and marriage when she spends time catching up with Addie before her wedding, but Addie disagrees with the assertion that “you only get one great love in a lifetime.” In what ways do the different romantic experiences of each woman inform the ideas each has about love? 12. Filomena and Addie share a deep friendship. Addie tells Ada that “sometimes friends grow apart. . . . But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how far apart you live or how little you talk—it’s still there.” What qualities do you think friends must share in order to have that kind of connection? Discuss your relationship with a best friend. Enhance

At those moments I saw myself suddenly for what I was: a slave, willing to always do what he wanted, careful not to exaggerate in order not to get him in trouble, not to displease him. I wasted my time cooking for him, washing the dirty clothes he left in the house, listening to all his troubles at the university and in the many responsibilities that he was accumulating, thanks to the aura of good feeling that surrounded him and the small powers of his father-in-law; I always welcomed him joyfully, I wanted him to be happier with me than in the other house, I wanted him to relax, to confide, I felt sorry that he was continuously overwhelmed by obligations; I even wondered if Eleonora might love him more than I did, since she accepted every insult just to feel that he was still hers. But sometimes I couldn’t stand it anymore and I yelled at him, despite the risk that the girls might hear: Who am I for you, tell me why I’m in this city, why I wait for you every night, why I tolerate this situation.

But any intuition that vegetarianism and humanitarianism go together was shattered in the 20th-century by the treatment of animals under Nazism.266 Hitler and many of his henchmen were vegetarians, not so much out of compassion for animals as from an obsession with purity, a pagan desire to reconnect to the soil, and a reaction to the anthropocentrism and meat rituals of Judaism. In an unsurpassed display of the human capacity for moral compartmentalization, the Nazis, despite their unspeakable experiments on living humans, instituted the strongest laws for the protection of animals in research that Europe had ever seen. Their laws also mandated humane treatment of animals in farms, movie sets, and restaurants, where fish had to be anesthetized and lobsters killed swiftly before they were cooked. Ever since that bizarre chapter in the history of animal rights, advocates of vegetarianism have had to retire one of their oldest arguments: that eating meat makes people aggressive, and abstaining from it makes them peaceful. Some

So once we have the supersonic fart gun and everybody in the world is doing what I tell them, it will be time to make some changes. Here’s my list of changes (it’s only a rough draft at this stage): Make cabbage illegal (anyone caught growing, cooking, or eating cabbage will be sent straight to prison). Make ice-cream free (duh!) Make it the law that bread must be baked without crusts. Ban school. (This could be going too far. I might decide that school can be taught on Wednesdays. Wednesday mornings. I’ll think about it.) Make the 25th of every month Christmas Day (or just Lots of Presents for Kids Day if you don’t do Christmas). Make it the law that parents have to take kids to Disneyland at least twice a year, (more if they want to). Order all the scientists to work out why you can’t tickle yourself and what the purpose of snot is. Make showering optional. For me. If I decide that you stink, then you must shower. Change dinner time around so that dessert has to be eaten first. Ban all lumps from yoghurt. Actually, ban lumps from everything. Lumps are unnecessary. Nothing was ever made better with lumps. Ban the word ‘lump’. That’s all I’ve got so far.

Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunchbacked makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed from kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries’ vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters’ sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etoliated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men’s wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

Notice that your everyday, not-so-dire experience and behavior, what we can think of as your mental and physical worldline, unwinds smoothly from one moment to the next. Whatever it is that you’re thinking and doing and feeling right now will of course change, but it evolves into each successive moment according to transitions that, even though they might not realize your hopes, are nonetheless causally perfect. Although you don’t always get what you want, or even what you need, what you always get is an unobstructed, unhindered unfolding of experience and behavior into the next moment. What is this? It’s nature doing what it does, effortlessly: being the many-leveled, interlocked and evolving patterns, conforming to what we call laws of nature, that constitute you. You, in your compulsory struggle to control, achieve, persist and enjoy, are exactly what fits and gets expressed in this bit of space-time. You, a person, are in fact a process that’s perfectly entailed from moment to moment by the local configuration of impersonal factors cooked up by evolution and culture, genes and memes. We can trace the you-process historically and we can see it concurrently – what the organism and its mind do in transaction with immediate surroundings. Either way, what we see is an unhindered expression of cause and effect, the patterning of natural laws as they constitute you the person, whether in agony or ecstasy, joy or regret.

The three main mediaeval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism. Realism, as the word is used in connection with the mediaeval controversy over universals, is the Platonic doctrine that universals or abstract entities have being independently of the mind; the mind may discover them but cannot create them. Logicism, represented by Frege, Russell, Whitehead, Church, and Carnap, condones the use of bound variables to refer to abstract entities known and unknown, specifiable and unspecifiable, indiscriminately. Conceptualism holds that there are universals but they are mind-made. Intuitionism, espoused in modern times in one form or another by Poincaré, Brouwer, Weyl, and others, countenances the use of bound variables to refer to abstract entities only when those entities are capable of being cooked up individually from ingredients specified in advance. As Fraenkel has put it, logicism holds that classes are discovered while intuitionism holds that they are invented—a fair statement indeed of the old opposition between realism and conceptualism. This opposition is no mere quibble; it makes an essential difference in the amount of classical mathematics to which one is willing to subscribe. Logicists, or realists, are able on their assumptions to get Cantor’s ascending orders of infinity; intuitionists are compelled to stop with the lowest order of infinity, and, as an indirect consequence, to abandon even some of the classical laws of real numbers. The modern controversy between logicism and intuitionism arose, in fact, from disagreements over infinity. Formalism, associated with the name of Hilbert, echoes intuitionism in deploring the logicist’s unbridled recourse to universals. But formalism also finds intuitionism unsatisfactory. This could happen for either of two opposite reasons. The formalist might, like the logicist, object to the crippling of classical mathematics; or he might, like the nominalists of old, object to admitting abstract entities at all, even in the restrained sense of mind-made entities. The upshot is the same: the formalist keeps classical mathematics as a play of insignificant notations. This play of notations can still be of utility—whatever utility it has already shown itself to have as a crutch for physicists and technologists. But utility need not imply significance, in any literal linguistic sense. Nor need the marked success of mathematicians in spinning out theorems, and in finding objective bases for agreement with one another’s results, imply significance. For an adequate basis for agreement among mathematicians can be found simply in the rules which govern the manipulation of the notations—these syntactical rules being, unlike the notations themselves, quite significant and intelligible.

These usages are attested in the most formal manner. “I pour upon the earth of the tomb,” says Iphigenia in Euripides, “milk, honey, and wine; for it is with these that we rejoice the dead.”10 Among the Greeks there was in front of every tomb a place destined for the immolation of the victim and the cooking of its flesh.11 The Roman tomb also had its culina, a species of kitchen, of a particular kind, and entirely for the use of the dead.12 Plutarch relates that after the battle of Platæa, the slain having been buried upon the field of battle, the Platæans engaged to offer them the funeral repast every year. Consequently, on each anniversary they went in grand procession, conducted by their first magistrates to the mound under which the dead lay. They offered the departed milk, wine, oil, and perfumes, and sacrificed a victim. When the provisions had been placed upon the tomb, the Platæans pronounced a formula by which they called the dead to come and partake of this repast. This ceremony was still performed in the time of Plutarch, who was enabled to witness the six hundredth anniversary of it.13 A little later, Lucian, ridiculing these opinions and usages, shows how deeply rooted they were in the common mind. “The dead,” says he, “are nourished by the provisions which we place upon their tomb, and drink the wine which we pour out there; so that one of the dead to whom nothing is offered is condemned to perpetual hunger.”14 These are very old forms of belief, and are quite groundless and ridiculous, and yet they exercised empire over man during a great number of generations. They governed men’s minds; we shall soon see that they governed societies even, and that the greater part of the domestic and social institutions of the ancients was derived from this source.

I worry about you too,” I said softly as I caressed her head resting against my chest. “You look tired.” Lark didn’t speak for a minute. When she finally looked at me, I saw a lot of different emotions swirling in those bright green eyes. “I feel like shit. I’m tired and dizzy. I can’t eat ninety percent of the food I used to eat. I feel awful, but I’m afraid to complain.” “Why?” “Maddy just had her baby and she was so tough about the whole thing. I’m surprised she didn’t give birth in the middle of the grocery store then go back to picking up things for dinner. Next to her, I’m a weakling. Also, Farah is going to be all brave and awesome too. I don’t want to be the whiner.” “First of all, Maddy’s got that natural breeder look about her. Some chicks are like that and you can’t let the exception be your rule. Besides, you’re having twins. You have more baby cooking to do than she did, so screw comparisons.” “I just don’t want people to think less of me.” “By people, do you mean Aaron?” “We barely met and got married and now I’m getting fat and I’m tired all the time. I don’t want him to lose interest.” “Oh, Lark, you’re so fucking stupid sometimes.” “Yeah, I know,” she said, grinning. “We have that in common.” “So true.” “Mom said that I’m like her and she had a guy like Aaron and she suffocated him and he ditched her. I know Mom sucks, but what if she’s right and I wear down Aaron and he stops loving me?” “Any man who would want Mom must be shit. Aaron isn’t shit.” “I know, but I get scared of messing up everything I have.” Kissing her forehead, I stood up and walked to the bedroom door. “Hey, Mister Clean, get over here.” Laughing, Lark followed me into the hallway where Aaron appeared, clearly loving his new nickname. “Listen up, Yul Brynner,” I said, sending Lark into giggles. “My sister is cooking up two kids that you stuck inside her. She needs more damn love than you’re giving. If you don’t do a better job of babying her, I’m going to have to replace you. Hmm, I just saw this guy Jake that I knew from high school. He’s ripped and works at the gym. The gym, Aaron.” My brother-in-law stared unaffected until I finished then he gazed down at his wife. Lark must have known what was coming because she started giggling. “My sweet muse,” he murmured and she laughed harder, “do you need more love than I’m giving?” Aaron swept Lark into his arms and cradled her like a kid. “Poor thing. I’ll just need to pay more attention.” As he kissed all over her, Lark stopped giggling and began moaning affirmations. “Good thing you obeyed because I think Jake might be gay.” After giving me a wink, Aaron gestured for me to go away. I was the one to obey this time. Leaving them to cuddle and more in the bedroom, I watched television and finished the popcorn. Professor joined me, but Pollack was wary. I think it was because I was always barking at her. In my defense, she started it.

Sung was a land which was famous far and wide, simply because it was so often and so richly insulted. However, there was one visitor, more excitable than most, who developed a positive passion for criticizing the place. Unfortunately, the pursuit of this hobby soon lead him to take leave of the truth. This unkind traveler once claimed that the king of Sung, the notable Skan Askander, was a derelict glutton with a monster for a son and a slug for a daughter. This was unkind to the daughter. While she was no great beauty, she was definitely not a slug. After all, slugs do not have arms and legs - and besides, slugs do not grow to that size. There was a grain of truth in the traveler's statement, in as much as the son was a regrettable young man. However, soon afterwards, the son was accidentally drowned when he made the mistake of falling into a swamp with his hands and feet tied together and a knife sticking out of his back. This tragedy did not encourage the traveler to extend his sympathies to the family. Instead, he invented fresh accusations. This wayfarer, an ignorant tourist if ever there was one, claimed that the king had leprosy. This was false. The king merely had a well-developed case of boils. The man with the evil mouth was guilty of a further malignant slander when he stated that King Skan Askander was a cannibal. This was untrue. While it must be admitted that the king once ate one of his wives, he did not do it intentionally; the whole disgraceful episode was the fault of the chef, who was a drunkard, and who was subsequently severely reprimanded. .The question of the governance, and indeed, the very existence of the 'kingdom of Sung' is one that is worth pursuing in detail, before dealing with the traveler's other allegations. It is true that there was a king, his being Skan Askander, and that some of his ancestors had been absolute rulers of considerable power. It is also true that the king's chief swineherd, who doubled as royal cartographer, drew bold, confident maps proclaiming that borders of the realm. Furthermore, the king could pass laws, sign death warrants, issue currency, declare war or amuse himself by inventing new taxes. And what he could do, he did. "We are a king who knows how to be king," said the king. And certainly, anyone wishing to dispute his right to use of the imperial 'we' would have had to contend with the fact that there was enough of him, in girth, bulk, and substance, to provide the makings of four or five ordinary people, flesh, bones and all. He was an imposing figure, "very imposing", one of his brides is alleged to have said, shortly before the accident in which she suffocated. "We live in a palace," said the king. "Not in a tent like Khmar, the chief milkmaid of Tameran, or in a draughty pile of stones like Comedo of Estar." . . .From Prince Comedo came the following tart rejoinder: "Unlike yours, my floors are not made of milk-white marble. However, unlike yours, my floors are not knee-deep in pigsh*t." . . .Receiving that Note, Skan Askander placed it by his commode, where it would be handy for future royal use. Much later, and to his great surprise, he received a communication from the Lord Emperor Khmar, the undisputed master of most of the continent of Tameran. The fact that Sung had come to the attention of Khmar was, to say the least, ominous. Khmar had this to say: "Your words have been reported. In due course, they will be remembered against you." The king of Sung, terrified, endured the sudden onset of an attack of diarrhea that had nothing to do with the figs he had been eating. His latest bride, seeing his acute distress, made the most of her opportunity, and vigorously counselled him to commit suicide. Knowing Khmar's reputation, he was tempted - but finally, to her great disappointment, declined. Nevertheless, he lived in fear; he had no way of knowing that he was simply the victim of one of Khmar's little jokes.

A man can survive ten years--but twenty-five, who can get through alive? Shukhov rather enjoyed having everybody poke a finger at him as if to say: Look at him, his term's nearly up. But he had his doubts about it. Those zeks who finished their time during the war had all been "retained pending special instructions" and had been released only in '46. Even those serving three-year sentences were kept for another five. The law can be stood on its head. When your ten years are up they can say, "Here's another ten for you." Or exile you. Yet there were times when you thought about it and you almost choked with excitement. Yes, your term really _is_ coming to an end; the spool is unwinding. . . . Good God! To step out to freedom, just walk out on your own two feet. But it wasn't right for an old-timer to talk about it aloud, and Shukhov said to Kilgas: "Don't you worry about those twenty-five years of yours. It's not a fact you'll be in all that time. But that I've been in eight full years--now that is a fact." Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out. According to his dossier, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov had been sentenced for high treason. He had testified to it himself. Yes, he'd surrendered to the Germans with the intention of betraying his country and he'd returned from captivity to carry out a mission for German intelligence. What sort of mission neither Shukhov nor the interrogator could say. So it had been left at that- -a mission. Shukhov had figured it all out. If he didn't sign he'd be shot If he signed he'd still get a chance to live. So he signed. But what really happened was this. In February 1942 their whole army was surrounded on the northwest front No food was parachuted to them. There were no planes. Things got so bad that they were scraping the hooves of dead horses--the horn could be soaked In water and eaten. Their ammunition was gone. So the Germans rounded them up in the forest, a few at a time. Shukhov was In one of these groups, and remained in German captivity for a day or two. Then five of them managed to escape. They stole through the forest and marshes again, and, by a miracle, reached their own lines. A machine gunner shot two of them on the spot, a third died of his wounds, but two got through. Had they been wiser they'd have said they'd been wandering in the forest, and then nothing would have happened. But they told the truth: they said they were escaped POW's. POW's, you fuckers! If all five of them had got through, their statements could have been found to tally and they might have been believed. But with two it was hopeless. You've put your damned heads together and cooked up that escape story, they were told. Deaf though he was, Senka caught on that they were talking about escaping from the Germans, and said in a loud voice: "Three times I escaped, and three times they caught me." Senka, who had suffered so much, was usually silent: he didn't hear what people said and didn't mix in their conversation. Little was known about him--only that he'd been in Buchenwald, where he'd worked with the underground and smuggled in arms for the mutiny; and how the Germans had punished him by tying his wrists behind his back, hanging him up by them, and whipping him. "You've been In for eight years, Vanya," Kilgas argued. "But what camps? Not 'specials.' You bad breads to sleep with. You didn't wear numbers. But try and spend eight years in a 'special'--doing hard labor. No one's come out of a 'special' alive." "Broads! Boards you mean, not broads." Shukhov stared at the coals in the stove and remeinbered his seven years in the North. And how he worked for three years hauling logs--for packing cases and railroad ties. The flames in the campfires had danced up there, too--at timber-felling during the night. Their chief made it a rule that any squad that had failed to meet its quota had to stay In the forest after dark.

All mankind lives in a state of terrible ignorance. In the opinion of food addicts, the consumption of cooked food is something quite natural, while nourishment by the laws of nature is an experiment, and a dangerous experiment at that.

The laws of the solar system that previously only God had known could suddenly be read using scientific method. The view of the world changed. From one where God intervened, had opinions, smote, parted oceans, moved mountains and personally opened millions of flowers every day. To one where God was absent and the universe was a clock that he had created and wound up, but that now ticked of its own accord.

Because I had some law schooling, they asked for my help, and now I’m . . .” “You’re what?” The corner of his lips lifted in an irksome manner. Was he enjoying making this difficult? “I think you already know.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. “I have a pretty good guess, but I want to hear it from you. I seem to remember you didn’t need my help.” She squared her shoulders. Her discomfort seemed to amuse him. The insufferable man! He was not going to unnerve her. Walt needed her help, and that was that. “Well, I don’t, but he does.” “Say it.” “Mr. Cole—” The words stuck in her throat like one of Charlotte’s cooking experiments gone horribly wrong. He leaned forward, grinning. “Say it.

Her mother had never cut corners; even in Pennsylvania she had run her household as if to satisfy a mother-in-law's fastidious eye. Though her mother had been an excellent cook, her father never praised her for it. It was only when they went to the homes of others, and he would complain about the food on the way home, that it became clear how much he appreciated his wife's talent. Ruma's cooking didn't come close, the vegetables sliced too thickly, the rice overdone, but as her father worked his way through the things she'd made, he repeatedly told her how delicious it was.

You need to use this as a lever to urge politicians to pass cautionary laws to put a stop to drones and especially robotics and artificial intelligence. People urge gun control after a school shooting, right? Well, we won’t have to worry about a school shooter in the near future because he’ll be cooking up a genetically engineered supervirus in his basement, and everyone on earth will be dead. You need to ensure that these technologies are treated like radioactive nuclear material, because that’s how dangerous this is, and—

The first of the tests is the overcoming of appetite. This involves their doing a two days’ walk or hunt without food, and then being brought suddenly before a fire on which some choice kangaroo steak or other native delicacy is being cooked. They are required to take only a small portion of this. The next is the test of pain. The young boys and girls submit to having their noses pierced, their bodies marked, and to being laid down upon hot embers thinly covered with boughs. The third is the test of fear. The young people are told awesome and hair-raising stories about ghosts and the muldarpe, the Evil Spirit or the Devil-devil. After all these tests they are put to sleep in a lonely place, or near the burial-place of the tribe. During the night the elders, who are made hideous with white clay and bark headdresses, appear, making weird noises. Those of the candidates who show no signs of having had a disturbed night are then admitted as fully initiated members of the tribe. No youth or maiden is allowed to marry without having passed these tests. A proposed marriage is talked over first by all the old members of the tribe. The uncle on the mother’s side is the most important relative, and it is he who finally selects the wife. The actual marriage ceremony takes place during the time of festivals. The husband does not look at or speak to his mother-in-law, although he is husband in name to all his sisters-in-law.

Does God expect us to be holy? In Leviticus 11:44, 45, God says “consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy.” In all of this, God is teaching His people to live antithetically. That is, He is using these clean and unclean distinctions to separate Israel from other idolatrous nations who have no such restrictions, and He is illustrating by these prescriptions that His people must learn to live His way. Through dietary laws and rituals, God is teaching them the reality of living His way in everything. They are being taught to obey God in every seemingly mundane area of life, so as to learn how crucial obedience is. Sacrifices, rituals, diet, and even clothing and cooking are all carefully ordered by God to teach them that they are to live differently from everyone else. This is to be an external illustration for the separation from sin in their hearts. Because the Lord is their God, they are to be utterly distinct. In v. 44, for the first time the statement “I am the LORD your God” is made as a reason for the required separation and holiness. After this verse, that phrase is mentioned about 50 more times in this book alone, along with the equally instructive claim, “I am holy.” Because God is holy and is their God, the people are to be holy in outward ceremonial behavior as an external expression of the greater necessity of heart holiness. The connection between ceremonial holiness carries over into personal holiness. The only motivation given for all these laws is to learn to be holy because God is holy. The holiness theme is central to Leviticus (see 10:3; 19:2; 20:7, 26; 21:6–8).

So what are you cooking?” I asked. “Turkey pot pie,” Tara said. “But I require cooking wine.” “By cooking wine do you mean wine you use to cook?” Bailey asked. “Or do you mean wine that you drink while you cook?” Anna asked with a raised brow. “The second one,” Tara said.

Man, that smells good,” Paige said. “What did you make?” “Eggs, venison bacon, and hoe cakes,” Betty said. “I’m sorry,” Tara snickered. “Did you say hoe cakes?” “Yes,” Betty laughed. “They’re very popular in the south.” “They’re called hoe cakes because they were cooked on an iron pan that was called a hoe,” Paige explained. “I wonder what it did to deserve that,” Tara laughed.

Man, that smells good,” Paige said. “What did you make?” “Eggs, venison bacon, and hoe cakes,” Betty said. “I’m sorry,” Tara snickered. “Did you say hoe cakes?” “Yes,” Betty laughed. “They’re very popular in the south.” “They’re called hoe cakes because they were cooked on an iron pan that was called a hoe,” Paige explained. “I wonder what it did to deserve that,” Tara laughed. “Paige is right,” Betty chuckled. “Though the name is humorous.” Betty dished each of us a plate, and I dug in with a vengeance. Typically I wasn’t extremely hungry before a mission, but the smell of that venison bacon had made my mouth water, and I groaned when it hit my tongue. The eggs were fluffy and well seasoned, and the hoe cakes were savory and sweet. “This is delicious,” I said through bites. “Thank you,” Betty chuckled. “I’m glad you like it.” “We all already knew Tav liked hoes,” Anna said with a pointed look at Tara. “Hey!” Tara laughed and hit the redhead on the arm. “I do like the hoes,” I chuckled as I took another bite. “That sounded so wrong,” Paige said seriously, but then her expression cracked, and she broke into a laugh.

Fortunately, through gestures and speech, Cook was able to convince the chief and some of his elders that they should sit down on the beach with him to go over the incident. Banks revealed the outcome: … we got together a few of [the islanders] and explaining to them that the man who suffered was guilty of a crime deserving of death (for so we were forced to make it) we retired to the ship not well pleased with the day’s expedition, guilty no doubt in some measure of the death of a man who the most severe laws of equity would not have condemned to so severe a punishment.

When a family of grandparents, the sons and wives, their grandsons who may also be married, live together, perhaps under the same roof and sharing the same hearth and kitchen, it is important that its members should be compatible to the greatest possible degree. Suppose a young man from a rural area went to agricultural college in Ludhiana and somehow met a medical student who, it may be adduced, came from a well-to-do urban family with servants who did the cooking and cleaning. They fall in love and marry. She gives up her training, as would normally be expected, to live with her husband’s family where she is expected to cook, clean, help on the farm and perhaps even lay a cow dung floor. This may be an extreme example but hopefully it demonstrates the importance of arranged marriages in an extended family culture and the sense of marrying within the occupational group. Even in a less contrasting situation a girl has to fit in with her mother-in-law who rules the kitchen, and with existing and therefore senior sisters-in-law.

In 1910, on the grounds of health and safety, Contestabile supported a law that would have required every cook in Massachusetts to obtain a license.61 By erecting barriers to entry, the cooks revealed that the policing of boundaries to their occupation, rather than broader worker solidarity, was their preferred organizing strategy.

I opened up my dinner bucket the whole place was lined with these-here little brown ants, all gaumed into the dinner.’ ‘What did you do?’ Ellen asked. ‘How’d you get shed of them?’ ‘I reckon I didn’t eat my dinner that-there day. I never could abide to have ants in my victuals. A man over by Coulter’s sawmill said once, “Law, ants is such clean little things, I never take notice to an ant.” A woman over at grandpap’s said once she never ate blackberry jam because it was made in flytime. Said if you ever took notice to it blackberry jam was about half flies cooked up and most people never knowed the difference. The taste was about the same, she said. She said she never ate jam on that account.

A mixed group of workers on the land that was shared with the Wirrayaraay and nearby Europeans surprised the Aborigines with a violent attack. This led to the death of at least twenty-eight Wirrayaraay people of all ages and genders, even young children. Since Gipps had enacted laws that stated the Aborigines were British subjects, the offenders were put on trial, just as if they had killed European settlers. Despite the massive controversy, they were sentenced to be publicly hanged, which occurred at the end of 1838.

All so-called "laws of God" express in reality the will of man.

Love-Abiding Law (The Sonnet) Love is the master-key to social troubles, Law is but an inferior and cheaper stand-in. Instead of obsessing over cooking up more law, Let's shift the focus on loving and caring. Do you think love is nothing but a commercial object, With your olympian authority which you can legalize! Who do you think you are that you'll legalize order! You can legalize toys, telephones, not love and light. Know your place, o puny apes, on a puny little blue dot, Before standing as authority bearing your badge of law. There are more things in the vastness of time and space, Than dreamt up in your paleolithic construct of law. An ounce of love brings more change than a 100 pounds of law. What we need is not law-abiding love, but love-abiding law.

Basically, we have a finite amount of attention. When we divert it away from something useful, like spending time with our children or cooking a healthy dinner, we don’t get that time or mental energy back. This sounds very similar to what I call the law of substitution. In my world, this means that your mind can only focus on one prevailing thought at a time. I teach clients that if they recognize they are thinking a negative thought, they need to substitute it with a neutral one.

Sometimes sitting at a desk trying to force this doesn’t work. I never have writer’s block, exactly, but sometimes things do slow down. At those times I ask myself if my conscious mind might be thinking too much—and it is exactly at this point that I most want and need surprises and weirdness from the depths. Some techniques help in that regard. For instance, I’ll carry a microrecorder and go jogging on the West Side, recording phrases that match the song’s meter as they occur to me. On the rare occasion that I’m driving a car, I can do the same thing (are there laws against driving and songwriting?). Basically, anything—driving, jogging, swimming, cooking, cycling—that occupies part of the conscious mind and distracts it, works. The idea is to allow the chthonic material the freedom it needs to gurgle up. To distract the gatekeepers. Sometimes just a verse, or even a phrase or two, will resonate and be sufficient, and that’s enough to “unlock” the whole thing. From there on, it becomes more like fill-in-the-blank, conventional puzzle solving.

Keep your weak hand up by your face, so that you can easily defend your head if a punch is unexpectedly thrown. Use the weak hand to scratch your head or cheek, brush your hair, wipe your brow, adjust your hat, etc., but keep that hand up. Remember that you will most likely be reacting to an assault, and therefore it will take too long to bring a hand up from your waist to your head to defend yourself against a sneak attack. Cover This block/cover comes from boxing, and is identical to the one taught in my book The Cook Method of the Sap for Law Enforcement and Civilians. The weak (left) hand comes up and brings the hand to the ear as though you are talking on the phone. The upraised elbow and bent arm create a large, strong defense against any type of blow, especially a hook punch, which is difficult to defend against by trying to parry or block with the hand. You can also think of this move as raising the left elbow upward. In close, this shielding move can be used as a strike, hitting the attacker with an upward elbow strike. Train this move by having a partner slowly and lightly swing with his right hand at your head. If you get boxing headgear and gloves, you can gradually increase the speed and power of this strike. It is also possible for your partner to swing at your head using the punch mitts. Hammerfist As the left elbow comes up and the left hand is placed just off your ear, your right hand –which has been resting near your left armpit-- snaps outward, striking with the bottom of the fist. Aim for the opponent's jawline. A problem with punching on the street is that it's easy to damage your knuckles when hitting someone's skull or teeth. The bottom-of-the-fist blow, also known as a hammerfist, is a very powerful blow that can be delivered with little risk of injury to the knuckles or wrist. It has proven itself to be devastatingly effective in the full-contact cage matches of the mixed martial arts. Practice doing both motions at the same time; raising the left elbow up to cover the head while striking out with the right hammerfist. Practice slowly at first, then move to the heavy bag. You can also have a partner with the focus mitts swing the right mitt while holding the left mitt up as a target for you to hit with the right hand. Once you have the form down, make the move explosive. Burst outward with the elbow and hammerfist simultaneously. Snap the hammerfist, bringing it quickly back to the start position. Another tip as you practice this move is to drop your head down, so that your chin and the side of your face are not exposed. With your chin down, the striking right hand and arm will help to shield your head from attacks with the opponent's left hand. This is how you defend yourself when an opponent has surprised you with a flurry of punches –not by trying to block a rain of blows, but by striking while protecting your head.

Render us rich and flourishing,” says an Orphic hymn; “make us also wise and chaste.” Thus the hearth-fire is a sort of a moral being; it shines, and warms, and cooks the sacred food, but at the same time it thinks, and has a conscience; it knows men’s duties, and sees that they are fulfilled. One might call it human, for it has the double nature of man; physically, it blazes up, it moves, it lives, it procures abundance, it prepares the repast, it nourishes the body; morally, it has sentiments and affections, it gives man purity, it enjoins the beautiful and the good, it nourishes the soul. One might say that it supports human life in the double series of its manifestations. It is at the same time the source of wealth, of health, of virtue. It is truly the god of human nature. Later, when this worship had been assigned to a second place by Brahma or by Zeus, there still remained in the hearth-fire whatever of divine was most accessible to man. It became his mediator with the gods of physical nature; it undertook to carry to heaven the prayer and the offering of man, and to bring the divine favors back to him. Still later, when they made the great Vesta of this myth of the sacred fire, Vesta was the virgin goddess. She represented in the world neither fecundity nor power; she was order, but not rigorous, abstract, mathematical order, the imperious and unchangeable law, ἀνάγκη [“necessity”], which was early perceived in physical nature. She was moral order. They imagined her as a sort of universal soul, which regulated the different movements of worlds, as the human soul keeps order in the human system. Thus are we permitted to look into the way of thinking of primitive generations. The principle of this worship is outside of physical nature, and is found in this little mysterious world, this microcosm—man.

army of people paid to “gaslight” the public into thinking they are protected. Chapter 23, page 132. Trick #17 for Farming Humans is using stock markets to launder taxpayer backed, Fed created money to those who control the Fed. Chapter 25, page 136. Trick #18 for Farming Humans is the use of fake information to ensure that society never knows what is true and what is false. Elections, wars, headlines etc. Chapter 26, page 141. Trick #19 for Farming Humans is stimulation and distraction. This emotional hacking of humans is Trick #19 for Farming Humans. See Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking Book by Christopher J. Hadnagy Trick #20 for Farming Humans is the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine and 83 media regulations, including requirement for “honest, equitable and balanced”. Chapter 28, page 153. Trick #21 for Farming Humans is governments as handmaidens to corporations, not people. Chapter 29, page 157. Trick #22 for Farming Humans is in the invisible connections between government, professionals and corporations. Chapter 31, page 162. Laws, lobby groups, lawyers. Trick #23 for Farming Humans is a militarized police used to serve and protect power instead of people. Chapter 32, page 170. World Trade Organization, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, etc. Trick #24 for Farming Humans is virtually zero enforcement of crime above a certain level of money or power. Invisible friends and powerful people cannot be prosecuted. Chapter 33, page 175. Trick #25 for Farming Humans is cooking the financial books. Chapter 34, page 180. Valeant Pharmaceutical, IFRS vs GAP accounting standards, audit numbers rigged. Trick #26 for Farming Humans is printing infinite money to exchange for finite goods…”let me handle that for you.” Chapter 35, page 184. Trick #27 for Farming Humans is public servants spying on the public, and not on the public servants. Chapter 36, page 188.

She wanted only to have a small space of their own, so they could sleep without her siblings in the room. She wanted to be able to work in a shop and earn some money without having to take her hijab off and show her body. She wanted to live in the caliphate under the protection of Islamic laws, practicing her religion without anxiety, social judgment, and public shaming. She wanted to hang curtains that she had chosen and watch them flutter in the breeze as she cooked dinner in her own kitchen. She wanted to be free of having to hold her tongue when her parents told her what to do, because they were living off their generosity and she could not.

Although 118 rioters were arrested, a Cook County grand jury did not indict a single one. The grand jury, however, did indict Harvey Clark, his real estate agent, his NAACP attorney, and the white landlady who rented the apartment to him as well as her attorney on charges of inciting a riot

THE MOTHER Hobby! What can she do? She cooks and she cleans. You gotta have a house to clean. You gotta have children to cook for. These are the terrible years for a woman, the terrible years. THE GIRL You mustn't feel too harshly against her daughter-in-law. She also wants to have a house to clean and a family to cook for. (THE MOTHER darts a quick, sharp look at THE GIRL-then looks back

Make cabbage illegal (anyone caught growing, cooking, or eating cabbage will be sent straight to prison). Make ice-cream free (duh!) Make it the law that bread must be baked without crusts. Ban school. (This could be going too far. I might decide that school can be taught on Wednesdays. Wednesday mornings. I’ll think about it.) Make the 25th of every month Christmas Day (or just Lots of Presents for Kids Day if you don’t do Christmas). Make it the law that parents have to take kids to Disneyland at least twice a year, (more if they want to).

Anyone care for a drink?” Rolly asked as he pulled out a bottle of Bulliet bourbon whiskey. It was his favorite drink, and the girls had been nice enough to pick him up a bottle a few days before. “I’ll take a sip,” I said with a nod. I guessed that his willingness to share it with us said a lot about how he felt. I tossed the meat into the skillet along with a handful of morel mushrooms that looked like they had been picked fresh today. Then I accepted the bottle of whiskey and took a sip. The alcohol warmth was a nice way to end the day. I passed it back to the old man. “We should grab a bottle of soda. We worked hard today and can use the calories.” “Plus, I noticed that some of it started to go flat,” Bailey said. “I don’t know about you guys but I would rather drink it while it still has the bubbles.” “At least it still makes a decent mixer when it’s flat,” Tara said with a shrug. “I’ll go grab some kitchenware and soda,” Anna volunteered with a chuckle. “Just don’t eat all of that meat without me. It is starting to smell really good.” The meat sizzled in the pan as one side of it started to sear, and the smell of fresh cooked meat mixed with the wild mushrooms started to fill the air. “Don’t worry, Tav has enough meat for all of us,” Tara teased. “He most certainly does,” Paige agreed as she stared at me with a hungry look in her eyes. “I just want some of that venison,” Rolly said as he shook his head. “You guys have to wait until I go to bed to eat anything else.” “Of course, we aren't animals,” Bailey said. “Speak for yourself,” Paige growled as she shot her friend a wicked grin.

If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is someone to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labour for ourselves.

What would have happened if Julia—who once dreamed of becoming a novelist and, as a child, possessed, as she put it, “zero interest in the stove”—had returned home to California after that fateful bite of perfectly cooked fish? We can’t know for sure, but clearly in Julia’s romance with French food, that first bite of sole was just the first kiss. “Really, the more I cook, the more I like to cook,” she later told her sister-in-law. “To think it has taken me forty years to find my true passion (cat and husband excepted).

What would have happened if Julia—who once dreamed of becoming a novelist and, as a child, possessed, as she put it, “zero interest in the stove”—had returned home to California after that fateful bite of perfectly cooked fish? We can’t know for sure, but clearly in Julia’s romance with French food, that first bite of sole was just the first kiss. “Really, the more I cook, the more I like to cook,” she later told her sister-in-law. “To think it has taken me forty years to find my true passion (cat and husband excepted).” So, while we might envy those who love what they do for a living, we shouldn’t assume that they started from a different place than the rest of us. Chances are, they took quite some time figuring out exactly what they wanted to do with their lives. Commencement speakers may say about their vocation, “I can’t imagine doing anything else,” but, in fact, there was a time earlier in life when they could.

Because the Spirit is the source of all kinds of knowledge, no pursuit of knowledge—even electronics or car repair or cooking—is wholly apart from Him. This particular relationship is possible because we are persons, and we have both a spiritual aspect that is reached by ideas and a physical aspect that works and acts and creates in the world.

Mama, is that Aunt Eula’s chicken recipe?” Emily tore into a drumstick with enough fervor for both of them. “Sure is.” Her aunts had been up since before dawn cooking. The sweets table was piled with pies and sponge cake with fresh berries and Aunt Marline’s divinity fudge. She picked at her chicken, feeling her appetite improving with each bite of familiar cooking. “Can I have seconds, Mama?” “Of course. let me get some for you.” Alaine took Em’s plate to the buffet, still loaded with more food than an army could do away with. She chose a drumstick from the plate of chicken, then froze. “Now, Stella, it’s quaint,” Mrs. Mark Grafton, Pierce’s mother. Alaine stiffened. “They’ve done the best they can— and I think they rather expected us to enjoy a country luncheon.” “But chicken fricassee? For a wedding luncheon? Are they going to have us dance a reel next?” A woman younger than Mrs. Grafton, but bearing the same sharp dark eyes, tittered quietly. “I told Pierce they should have a fish course, at least. And a consommé. Of course I knew an aspic would be asking far too much.” “Pierce always did have an independent streak.” Stella said this as though it were a blight. “Marrying some country nobody when the Harris girls or Georgia Lawson would have—” “Not polite to speak of it now, dear,” Mrs. Grafton said with a tone that told Alaine it was only propriety keeping her from joining. Alaine seethed. Delphine wasn’t a nobody— she was better than any of these Perrysburg ninnies. “Pierce has his career to consider, that’s all I’m saying. She can’t go blundering about, mucking that up. After all, we stand to catch the ill effects of any mistakes she makes.” “I’ve advised Pierce how to handle himself, and he’ll make sure she knows her place. You needn’t concern yourself with your brother’s affairs.” Mrs. Grafton swept away in a wake of heady perfume, but not before Alaine heard her add in a sharp whisper, “He didn’t listen to me about marrying the girl, why do you think he’d listen about a fish course?” Neither Grafton woman had noticed Alaine; they were, Alaine presumed, well practiced in ignoring anything that didn’t benefit them specifically. Country nobody, indeed— Del would show them all up before Christmas. If the best chicken in the county wasn’t good enough for the Graftons, she would enjoy it double.


Life will cook; the seas will rise. The planet's lungs will be ripped out. And the law will let this happen, because harm was never imminent enough.

The absolute latest date where judicial review became a generally recognized tool of government is 1803, with the famous case of Marbury v. Madison. There is an incorrect but popular notion, not so much among scholars but among lawyers and the general public, that judicial review was “invented” by Chief Justice John Marshall in that case.73 But the evidence demonstrates that judicial review in fact goes back earlier to at least the framing of the U.S. Constitution. And arguably, at least as an idea, back to inventive common law judges in England, especially Lord Edward Coke (pronounced “cook”).

There is a Buskin in every city, though the name varies. It is a slum so bad the police dare go in only in force. Law there is haphazard at best, mostly enforced by self-proclaimed magistrates supported by toughs they recruit themselves. It is a very subjective justice they mete, likely to be swift, savage, unforgiving, and directed by graft.

I grinned. “The unwritten law of all armies, Captain. The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It’s the mortar holding an army together.