Cotton Tops Quotes

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.

His scent is intensified in here perfectly, baked by summer, preserved by snow, sealed and pressurized inside glass and metal. I inhale like a professional perfumer. Top notes of mint, bitter coffee, and cotton. Mid notes of black pepper and pine. Base notes of leather and cedar. Luxurious as cashmere. If this is what his car smells like, imagine his bed. Good idea. Imagine his bed. He

Hair brushed and face washed, Holly put her jeans and top on, a plain, blue, cotton shirt with cute thin stripes. She had no bra because she had no boobs. She didn’t even have her period yet. Such a little kid. The other girls talked a lot about bras and boobs and periods.

Here I was just thinking all these wonderful things about you and now you’re trying to strip down before we can have sex.” His hands casually held in the air, he explained, “I was hot.” “It’s seventy degrees in here.” His hands went to his cotton pants, thumbing the cinched band, preparing for a total strip down. Gawd, how I secretly wanted him to do it, but for some reason, the word stop came out of my mouth. At least I agreed with myself when I said, “That is so not fair.” Neither was the way the left side of his mouth curled up, smiling wickedly as his eyes swept across my body. “You’re right. Your ogling is making me uncomfortable. You should remove your top to compensate.

When I see a picture like the 1861 cotton market, I ask myself, “What caused that? Why did that happen?” Then I try to figure it out. From that, you learn an enormous amount. In

Ohhhhh." A lush-bodied girl in the prime of her physical beauty. In an ivory georgette-crepe sundress with a halter top that gathers her breasts up in soft undulating folds of the fabric. She's standing with bare legs apart on a New York subway grating. Her blond head is thrown rapturously back as an updraft lifts her full, flaring skirt, exposing white cotton panties. White cotton! The ivory-crepe sundress is floating and filmy as magic. The dress is magic. Without the dress the girl would be female meat, raw and exposed. She's not thinking such a thought! Not her. She's an American girl healthy and clean as a Band-Aid. She's never had a soiled or a sulky thought. She's never had a melancholy thought. She's never had a savage thought. She's never had a desperate thought. She's never had an un-American thought. In the papery-thin sundress she's a nurse with tender hands. A nurse with luscious mouth. Sturdy thighs, bountiful breasts, tiny folds of baby fat at her armpits. She's laughing and squealing like a four year-old as another updraft lifts her skirt. Dimpled knees, a dancer's strong legs. This husky healthy girl. The shoulders, arms, breasts belong to a fully mature woman but the face is a girl's face. Shivering in New York City mid-summer as subway steam lifts her skirt like a lover's quickened breath. "Oh! Ohhhhh." It's nighttime in Manhattan, Lexington Avenue at 51st Street. Yet the white-white lights exude the heat of midday. The goddess of love has been standing like this, legs apart, in spike-heeled white sandals so steep and so tight they've permanently disfigured her smallest toes, for hours. She's been squealing and laughing, her mouth aches. There's a gathering pool of darkness at the back of her head like tarry water. Her scalp and her pubis burn from the morning's peroxide applications. The Girl with No Name. The glaring-white lights focus upon her, upon her alone, blond squealing, blond laughter, blond Venus, blond insomnia, blond smooth-shaven legs apart and blond hands fluttering in a futile effort to keep her skirt from lifting to reveal white cotton American-girl panties and the shadow, just the shadow, of the bleached crotch. "Ohhhhhh." Now she's hugging herself beneath her big bountiful breasts. Her eyelids fluttering. Between the legs, you can trust she's clean. She's not a dirty girl, nothing foreign or exotic. She's an American slash in the flesh. That emptiness. Guaranteed. She's been scooped out, drained clean, no scar tissue to interfere with your pleasure, and no odor. Especially no odor. The Girl with No Name, the girl with no memory. She has not lived long and she will not live long.

Let’s think about what this means: race was a political creation, an economic creation—all this hate developed to secure the interest of some seventeenth-century dudes who wanted to get rich growing sugarcane and cotton, who wanted to make sure they’d always be the class on top. Which is to say, racism has always been about power. Which is to say, we invented racism. Which is to say, maybe we can learn to uninvent it, too.

Doc bought a package of yellow pads and two dozen pencils. He laid them out on his desk, the pencils sharpened to needle points and lined up like yellow soldiers. At the top of a page he printed: OBSERVATIONS AND SPECULATIONS. His pencil point broke. He took up another and drew lace around the O and the B, made a block letter of the S and put fish hooks on each end. His ankle itched. He rolled down his sock and scratched, and that made his ear itch. “Someone’s talking about me,” he said and looked at the yellow pad. He wondered whether he had fed the cotton rats. It is easy to forget when you’re thinking.

There was something special about a carnival at night. Bright lights pierced the darkness; the tinkling music of the merry-go-round provided the perfect background for the shrill calls of the carnival workers; the giggles of the people aiming fake rifles at fake ducks were full of contagious fun; the distant shrieks coming from the roller coaster and the top of the Ferris wheel filled the air; and a warm breeze carried the tantalizing aromas of cotton candy and hot buttered popcorn.

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us. Donleavy

Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. For here were no long, straight furrows, such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into the river bottoms. It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.

This is what you get when you have a naked Lucy Kavanagh.” She reached behind her back to her bra clasp. “There are rolls.” The bra hooks gave way, and she shook it off, letting it drop where it may. “There are stretch marks.” She slid her thumbs into the waistband of her high-waisted panties meant to hold her not-perfect stomach in and pushed them with more force than necessary to her ankles. She kicked them off with enough power that they went flying through the night like a red cotton bullet and landed on a bush near where Frankie had parked. “There are curves where there should be dips.” She held her arms out wide. “There is all of this, and I’m not apologizing for it—not to you and not to anyone.

When we entered a classroom we always tossed our caps on the floor, to free our hands; as soon as we crossed the threshold we would throw them under the bench so hard that they struck the wall and raised a cloud of dust; this was "the way it should be done." But the new boy either failed to notice this maneuver or was too shy to perform it himself, for he was still holding his cap on his lap at the end of the prayer. It was a head-gear of composite nature, combining elements of the busby, the lancer cap, the round hat, the otter-skin cap and the cotton nightcap--one of those wretched things whose mute ugliness has great depths of expression, like an idiot's face. Egg-shaped and stiffened by whalebone, it began with three rounded bands, followed by alternating diamond-shaped patches of velvet and rabbit fur separated by a red stripe, and finally there was a kind of bag terminating in a cardboard-lined polygon covered with complicated braid. A network of gold wire was attached to the top of this polygon by a long, extremely thin cord, forming a kind of tassel. The cap was new; its visor was shiny. "Stand up," said the teacher. He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He bent down and picked it up. A boy beside him knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once again. "Will you please put your helmet away?" said the teacher, a witty man.

There will be a cauldron of spiced hot cider, and pumpkin shortbread fingers with caramel and fudge dipping sauces as our freebies, and I've done plenty of special spooky treats. Ladies' fingers, butter cookies the shape of gnarled fingers with almond fingernails and red food coloring on the stump end. I've got meringue ghosts and cups of "graveyard pudding," a dark chocolate pudding layered with dark Oreo cookie crumbs, strewn with gummy worms, and topped with a cookie tombstone. There are chocolate tarantulas, with mini cupcake bodies and legs made out of licorice whips, sitting on spun cotton candy nests. The Pop-Tart flavors of the day are chocolate peanut butter, and pumpkin spice. The chocolate ones are in the shape of bats, and the pumpkin ones in the shape of giant candy corn with orange, yellow, and white icing. And yesterday, after finding a stash of tiny walnut-sized lady apples at the market, I made a huge batch of mini caramel apples.

On fine summer evenings, at the hour when the warm streets are empty and the maids play shuttlecock in doorways, he would open his window and lean out on the sill. The river, which turns this part of Rouen into a sort of shabby little Venice, flowed by beneath him, yellow, violet or blue between its bridges and its railings. Some workmen were crouched down on the bank, washing their arms in the water. On poles projecting from the lofts up above, skeins of cotton hung out to dry. In front, away beyond the roof-tops, was a pure expanse of sky with a red sun setting. How good it would be over yonder, now! How cool under the beeches! He opened his nostrils to breathe in the wholesome country smells - which failed to reach him here.

It is sad when man’s unhappiness veils from him the smiling face of nature. The promise of the early morning was maintained. The sky was of a translucent blue, broken with islands and continents of clouds, dazzling white like cotton-wool. A soft, warm breeze blew from the west, the birds sang merrily in every garden bush, and Cullerne was a town of gardens, where men could sit each under his own vine and fig-tree. The bees issued forth from their hives, and hummed with cheery droning chorus in the ivy-berries that covered the wall-tops with deep purple. The old vanes on the corner pinnacles of Saint Sepulchre’s tower shone as if they had been regilt. Great flocks of plovers flew wheeling over Cullerne marsh, and flashed with a blinking silver gleam as they changed their course suddenly. Even through the open window of the organist’s room fell a shaft of golden sunlight that lit up the peonies of the faded, threadbare carpet. But inside beat two poor human hearts, one unhappy and one hopeless, and saw nothing of the gold vanes, or the purple ivy-berries, or the plovers, or the sunlight, and heard nothing of the birds or the bees.

When I first envisioned myself running, I saw myself as Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in the opening scenes of The Silence of the Lambs. So strong, so focused, so proud. She is utterly confident, completely single-minded about her training run across a terrifying assault course. At one point she runs past a tree with the sign HURT AGONY PAIN LOVE IT stapled to it. She doesn’t care what she looks like; she has shit to do, and she is going to get it done. And yet . . . she is wearing a phenomenally impractical outfit. She is in a heavy cotton sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms and is drenched in sweat. The top is sticking to both her chest and back and looks painfully heavy. She is summoned by a colleague and heads inside past a roomful of people dressed in khaki, faffing around with guns, and then gets into an elevator. All in the heavy, damp cotton. That wet fabric must have gotten incredibly cold the minute she stopped running, and it bothers me whenever I think of the poor woman in that meeting. For years the scene was my running inspiration, yet now I am unable to watch the first hour of the film without worrying about whether Clarice is shivering from the horrors of Hannibal Lecter or because she caught a dreadful chill.

Even more importantly, there simply is no direct relation between physical strength and social power among humans. People in their sixties usually exercise power over people in their twenties, even though twenty-somethings are much stronger than their elders. The typical plantation owner in Alabama in the mid-nineteenth century could have been wrestled to the ground in seconds by any of the slaves cultivating his cotton fields. Boxing matches were not used to select Egyptian pharaohs or Catholic popes. In forager societies, political dominance generally resides with the person possessing the best social skills rather than the most developed musculature. In organized crime, the big boss is not necessarily the strongest man. He is often an older man who very rarely uses his own fists; he gets younger and fitter men to do the dirty jobs for him. A guy who thinks that the way to take over the syndicate is to beat up the don is unlikely to live long enough to learn from his mistake. Even among chimpanzees, the alpha male wins his position by building a stable coalition with other males and females, not through mindless violence. In fact, human history shows that there is often an inverse relation between physical prowess and social power. In most societies, it’s the lower classes who do the manual labor. This may reflect homo sapiens position in the food chain. If all that counted were raw physical abilities, sapiens would have found themselves on a middle rung of the ladder. But their mental and social skills placed them at the top. It is therefore only natural that the chain of power within the species will also be determined by mental and social abilities more than by brute force. It is therefore hard to believe that the most influential and most stable social hierarchy in history is founded on men's ability to physically coerce women.

And what does work mean for loners? For some, the smart and lucky ones who work alone, it means accomplishing things without being made to suffer. Simple as it should be, no loner can take this point for granted. Along with whatever other hardships work brings-difficulty, danger, dullness, unfair pay-loners who labor any way besides alone endure one more. It is a hardship nonloners don't even know exists, cannot conceive of. How much time spent with others is too much? Side by side, within their sight, in earshot-forty minutes? Two hours, tops. Yet today's standard work shift lasts eight. Putting loners in busy workplaces all day is like making albinos pick cotton without sunscreen.

I had opened the obvious drawer, the top drawer of the room's only dresser, and found myself gazing into a masculine cache of compressed, crumpled things. Wash-worn Brooks Brothers white cotton shorts now a pale shade of gray. Snake-tangled, unpaired argyle socks, all in bright Easter colors like clover ad mauve which still showed fairly crisp near the tops, but down toward the heels were marred by thread pills and snags, and at the toes by the outright abjection of holes. To see laid bare in their entirety those socks, of which I'd heretofore glimpsed only brief merry stripes, when a pant cuff rose up from the rim of a shoe, was like seeing the man himself fully exposed to me--naked.

I took up a conversation with a gorgeous country girl wearing a low-cut cotton blouse that displayed the beautiful sun-tan on her breast tops. She was dull. She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. Once this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do. “And what else do you do for fun?” I tried to bring up boy friends and sex. Her great dark eyes surveyed me with emptiness and a kind of chagrin that reached back generations and generations in her blood from not having done what was crying to be done—whatever it was, and everybody knows what it was. “What do you want out of life?” I wanted to take her and wring it out of her. She didn’t have the slightest idea what she wanted. She mumbled of jobs, movies, going to her grandmother’s for the summer, wishing she could go to New York and visit the Roxy, what kind of outfit she would wear—something like the one she wore last Easter, white bonnet, roses, rose pumps, and lavender gabardine coat.

Then she took my hand and led me away from my friends and her friends. I’d expected to spend the evening at a distance from her, stealing glances across the fairground, maybe having a brief conversation. Now my hand was in hers, our fingers entwined like they had been that one night we’d walked home from the movies together. The night I’d been sure we would be together. it was like a montage out of a film, everything seen as if through a filter. We wandered the fairground for hours, me with my arm around her waist, and she didn’t even seem to care that people would see us. That night, Grace was not Grace; she was effervescent, lighthearted, a character out of a book. We competed against each other at bumper cars. Fed each other cotton candy. At the top of the Ferris wheel, we took swigs of straight vodka from her flask. The city, sprawled out in the distance, looked small from up there, a collection of toy buildings in a tilt-shift photograph. I even won her a prize at the laughing clowns. And I lapped it up, every moment of it, thinking that this was how things would be from now on.

Do you always wake up so sweet?” I ask. She’s like cotton candy in my arms. She smells soft and clean, and she’s not shoving me away. “I’m not awake yet,” she says. She spins over in my arms, facing away from me. My forearm is under her head and her bottom is tucked against my groin. Her head is beneath my chin, and I can’t see her face anymore. But I doubt she’s talking. She’s soft in my arms, and her breath rushes out of her open mouth with every exhale, searing my forearm with every breath. The bottoms of her feet are cold against the tops of mine, so I pull the blanket over us both, tucking it around her and throwing it over our feet. I don’t want to let her go, but I know I need to get up. I need to go back to the couch. I close my eyes and brush her hair down between us. She lets me wrap around her, and I’m willing to pretend she’s still asleep. Will it hurt to stay there? I keep holding her. I’ve never had a girl sleep the whole night in my bed before. Ever. I’ve never woken up with someone. I’ve never wanted to. Until now. I settle my arm around her waist. I’ll just stay a few more minutes.

There were many skies. The sky was invaded by great white clouds, flat on the bottom but round and billowy on top. The sky was completely cloudless, of a blue quite shattering to the senses. The sky was a heavy, suffocating blanket of grey cloud, but without promise of rain. The sky was thinly overcast. The sky was dappled with small, white, fleecy clouds. The sky was streaked with high, thin clouds that looked like a cotton ball stretched a part. The sky was a featureless milky haze. The sky was a density of dark and blustery rain clouds that passed by without delivering rain. The sky was painted with a small number of flat clouds that looked like sandbars. The sky was a mere block to allow a visual effect on the horizon: sunlight flooding the ocean, the vertical edges of between light and shadow perfectly distinct. The sky was a distant black curtain of falling rain. The sky was many clouds at many levels, some thick and opaque, others looking like smoke. The sky was black and spitting on my smiling face. The sky was nothing but falling water, a ceaseless deluge that wrinkled and bloated my skin and froze me stiff.

Carter stretched his arm out and relaxed into the softness of his own bed a moment before a scream three inches from his ear frightened him out of a few years of his life. He was up, fumbling for matches as the scream came again, echoing off the walls. It didn’t occur to him that he was totally nude until after the match flickered to light. Bailee stared at him with huge frightened eyes, and he stared back until the match burned his finger. They were in blackness once more. Silence. He listened. She didn’t even breathe. “I’m sorry,” he finally managed to stammer as he reached for his clothes only to find them gone from the peg where they were kept. He stumbled over what might be a rug where no rug had ever been before and opened the top drawer of his dresser. Lace and silk greeted his touch, not cotton as he’d expected. He pulled open the second drawer. The same. At the third drawer he decided he must have somehow crossed through the wrong passage. This wasn’t his home. Nothing was in the right place. Trousers flew from nowhere and slapped him across the face. ”Thank you,” he mumbled as he untangled them from around his neck. “You’re welcome,” came a whisper from the blackness.

But the crown jewel was the columned Greek Revival mansion, which dated from the mid-1800s, along with the manicured boxwood gardens that would serve as the backdrop for the couple's ceremony. Of course, everything was not only very traditional but also a standard to what one might imagine an over-the-top Southern wedding to be. As I said, "Steel Magnolias on steroids." The ceremony would take place outdoors in the garden, but large custom peach-and-white scalloped umbrellas were placed throughout the rows of bamboo folding chairs to shade the guests. Magnolia blossoms and vintage lace adorned the ends of the aisles. White, trellis-covered bars flanked the entrance to the gardens where guests could select from a cucumber cooler or spiked sweet tea to keep cool during the thirty-minute nuptials. It was still considered spring, but like Dallas, Nashville could heat up early in the year, and we were glad to be prepared. By the time we arrived the tent was well on its way to completion, and rental deliveries were rolling in. The reception structure was located past the gardens near the enormous whitewashed former stable, and inside the ceiling was draped in countless yards of peach fabric with crystal chandeliers hanging above every dining table. Custom napkins with embroidered magnolias on them complemented the centerpieces' peach garden roses, lush greenery, and dried cotton stems. Cedric's carpentry department created floor-to-ceiling lattice walls covered in faux greenery and white wisteria blooms, a dreamy backdrop for the band.

People in their sixties usually exercise power over people in their twenties, even though twentysomethings are much stronger than their elders. The typical plantation owner in Alabama in the mid-nineteenth century could have been wrestled to the ground in seconds by any of the slaves cultivating his cotton fields. Boxing matches were not used to select Egyptian pharaohs or Catholic popes. In forager societies, political dominance generally resides with the person possessing the best social skills rather than the most developed musculature. In organised crime, the big boss is not necessarily the strongest man. He is often an older man who very rarely uses his own fists; he gets younger and fitter men to do the dirty jobs for him. A guy who thinks that the way to take over the syndicate is to beat up the don is unlikely to live long enough to learn from his mistake. Even among chimpanzees, the alpha male wins his position by building a stable coalition with other males and females, not through mindless violence. In fact, human history shows that there is often an inverse relation between physical prowess and social power. In most societies, it’s the lower classes who do the manual labour. This may reflect Homo sapiens’ position in the food chain. If all that counted were raw physical abilities, Sapiens would have found themselves on a middle rung of the ladder. But their mental and social skills placed them at the top. It is therefore only natural that the chain of power within the species will also be determined by mental and social abilities more than by brute force. It is therefore hard to believe that the most influential and most stable social hierarchy in history is founded on men’s ability physically to coerce women.

Ah, my dear friend Hassim, seems our paths cross once again, how fortunate for this humble Sheik.” As Abdullah spoke in his usual self deprecating manner I realized that a favor was on the tip of his tongue and that I was about to be offered a quid-pro-quo. We were sitting crossed legged on large fat pillows with gold fringe. The tent was large with partitions dividing living, sleeping and cooking space. It was made from heavy cotton canvas erected on thick poles in the center giving the structure a peaked circus tent appearance. The women serving us were young, wearing harem pants low on their hips with cropped gauze tops made from sheer silk. Their exposed midriffs were flat and toned, their belly buttons were decorated in precious stones that glittered in the torch light as they moved. They were bare footed with stacks of gold ankle bracelets making the only sound we heard as they kept our glasses filled with fresh sweet tea and our communal serving trays piled high with dates and sugar incrusted sweets of undetermined origin. Abdullah took no notice of these women, his nonchalance intrigued me as I was obviously having trouble keeping my mind focused on the discussion at hand, this was all part of the Arab way, when it came to negotiation they had no peers. “So my dear friend, tell me, the region is on fire is there a solution?” I spoke in a deliberate and flat tone, little emotion just concern, one friend to another. “We were shocked by the American response in Egypt and Libya, never had we seen them move so fast with such efficiency. The fall of Gadaffi was unexpected and Mubarak’s fate stunned us; he had been a staunch supporter of the US in this region we fully expected the Obama administration to prop him up one more time, as they had done so many times in the past.” I looked carefully at Abdullah,

Too anxious to sit still, she stood in the stirrups to stretch her legs, then moved her bottom back and forth in the saddle until she found a comfortable spot to settle. She dallied her reins loosely around the saddle horn and reached up to unbutton the top two buttons of her blouse, then leaned over and shook the cotton cloth back and forth to cool herself. Her Stetson hat came off next. She settled it on the saddle horn, so what little breeze there was could reach the sweat on her nape. “What the hell kind of strip show are you putting on?” Bay nearly fell out of the saddle at Owen’s angry outburst. She jerked upright, knocking her hat off the horn and onto the ground. Her horse saw the shadow when it fell, figured it for a dangerous, horse-eating jackrabbit, and shied violently toward Owen’s mount. His horse took exception to being bumped and kicked out with both hooves, striking Bay’s horse in the rump, which grabbed for the reins, but they fell loose from the horn, and she was helpless to restrain her mount when he began to run helter-skelter down the canyon, sunfishing and crowhopping. Bay was thrown up onto her mount’s neck, where she held on for dear life. She heard Owen galloping behind her and knew it was only a matter of time before he caught up to her. But a narrow passage was coming up, and there wasn’t room for both her and her horse. She was going to be scraped off. Unless she jumped first. From her precious perch, Bay stared down at the rocky soil racing past her nose and thought of all the movies she’d seen where cowboys leaped from their horses and got up and walked away. Surely it couldn’t be that difficult. In a moment, when they reached that narrow passage, the choice was going to be taken from her. Bay closed her eyes and launched herself as far as she could from her horse’s flashing hooves. And landed like a sack of wet cement. She skidded for maybe two feet along the rocky bed of the canyon. On her face. And her right hip. And her left hand. When she stopped, she lay there stunned for a moment, then gave a shaky laugh. “Oh, that was not at all like it is in the movies.

I continued my explorations in a cobbled yard overlooked by broken doors and cracked windows. Pushing open a swollen door into a storeroom, I found a stream running across paving stones and a carpet of slippery green moss. My explorations took me beneath a gateway surmounted by a clock face, standing with hands fixed permanently at eleven o'clock. Beyond stood derelict stables; then the park opened up in an undulating vista, reaching all the way to a swathe of deep forest on the horizon. In the distance was the twinkle of the river that I realized must border my own land at Whitelow. The grass was knee-high and speckled with late buttercups, but I was transported by that first sight of the Delafosse estate. In its situation alone, the Croxons had chosen our new home well. I dreamed for a moment of myself and Michael making a great fortune, and no longer renting Delafosse Hall but owning every inch of it, my inheritance spinning gold from cotton. Turning back to view the Hall I took a sharp breath; it was as massive and ancient as a child's dream of a castle, the bulk of its walls carpeted in greenery, the diamond-leaded windows sparkling in picturesque stone mullions. True, the barley-twist chimneys leaned askew, and the roofs sagged beneath the weight of years, but the shell of it was magnificent. It cast a strange possessive mood upon me. I remembered Michael's irritation at the house the previous night, and his eagerness to leave. Somehow I had to entice Michael into this shared dream of a happy life here, beside me. Determined to explore the park, I followed the nearest path. After walking through a deep wood for a good while I emerged into the sunlight by a round hill surmounted by a two-story tower. A hunting lodge, Mrs. Croxon had called it, but I thought it more a folly. It had a fantastical quality, with four miniature turrets, each topped with a verdigris-tarnished dome. Above the doorway stood a sundial drawn upon a disc representing a blazing sun. It was embellished with a script I thought might be Latin: FERREA VIRGA EST, UMBRATILIS MOTUS. I wondered whether Michael might know the meaning, or Anne's husband perhaps. As for the sundial's accuracy, the morning light was too weak to cast a line of shadow.

The stench of the pigpens made him take shallow breaths. Michael desperately wanted another drink to drown his sorrows…or, more aptly, his angers. He promised himself that once he found the source of the problem, he’d head to Rigsby’s and let alcohol smooth the edge off his ire. Maybe with a few drinks in him, he could better handle Prudence. Nothing else I’ve tried has worked. “Michael!” At the sound of his wife’s voice, he stiffened. Speak of the devil. Is there a word for female devil? He couldn’t think of one. He nodded good-bye to Hong and was stepping away when--- “Michael, I want to talk to you!” Her voice rose until the timbre was almost a shriek. She ploughed pell-mell for him, her face red with anger. Hong ducked into his tent. Out of sight, maybe, but not out of earshot. The Guans’ should stuff cotton in their ears to block out the worst of Prudence’s screeches. “I need a drink,” he said, beginning to turn away. “Oh, dear Lord. Don’t tell me you’re a drunkard like that Obadiah Kettering. Is that another thing you omitted to tell me about your character?” He swung back. She was inches away, arms flung wide. “You omitted telling me I’d be marrying a shrew,” he said. “You should have written the word at the top of your fancy stationary in big block letters.” He sketched the word in the air and stated each letter. “S-H-R-E-W.” “Why…why I never!” Her mouth opened and closed as if she sought just the right words to hurl at him. “As for being a drunkard. Up until today, I only occasionally sought refuge in the bottle. But I think being married to you, my dear wife, will make me a frequent patron of Rigsbys Saloon. In fact, I might as well take up residence in the place.” Stepping forward, she brought up her hand to slap him. He leaped out of the way. Prudence missed, and her hand sailed past, making her off balance. Sure she was going to try again, Michael moved away, putting more space between them. Prudence slipped on a slimy rock and lost her balance, rotating and stepping sideways only to catch her heel in the hem of her skirt. She teetered backward toward the pigpen. Her legs hit the low fence, catching her at knee-height. Oh, no! Michael leaped to catch her. With a horrified expression, Prudence windmilled her arms in an effort to right herself. Michael missed, grabbing only a fold of her skirt. He yanked back, hoping to pull her upright, but instead, with a ripping sound, the fabric tore. The momentum toppled Prudence backwards into the pigpen, where she landed on her rump in the mire. “Grrrrrr!” She scooped up two handfuls of mud and flung them at him. Shocked, Michael didn’t dodge until the last minute, and the stinking mud went splat against his chest and face.

You’re…you’re what? Where?” I stood up and glimpsed myself in the mirror. I was a vision, having changed into satin pajama pants, a torn USC sweatshirt, and polka-dotted toe socks, and to top it off, my hair was fastened in a haphazard knot on the top of my head with a no. 2 Ticonderoga pencil. Who wouldn’t want me? “I’m outside,” he repeated, throwing in a trademark chuckle just to be extra mean. “Get out here.” “But…but…,” I stalled, hurriedly sliding the pencil out of my hair and running around the room, stripping off my pathetic house clothes and searching in vain for my favorite faded jeans. “But…but…I’m in my pajamas.” Another trademark chuckle. “So?” he asked. “You’d better get out here or I’m comin’ in…” “Okay, okay…,” I replied. “I’ll be right down.” Panting, I settled for my second-favorite jeans and my favorite sweater of all time, a faded light blue turtleneck I’d worn so much, it was almost part of my anatomy. Brushing my teeth in ten seconds flat, I scurried down the stairs and out the front door. Marlboro Man was standing outside his pickup, hands inside his pockets, his back resting against the driver-side door. He grinned, and as I walked toward him, he stood up and walked toward me, too. We met in the middle--in between his vehicle and the front door--and without a moment of hesitation, greeted each other with a long, emotional kiss. There was nothing funny or lighthearted about it. That kiss meant business. Our lips separated for a short moment. “I like your sweater,” he said, looking at the light blue cotton rib as if he’d seen it before. I’d hurriedly thrown it on the night we’d met a few months earlier. “I think I wore this to the J-bar that night…,” I said. “Do you remember?” “Ummm, yeah,” he said, pulling me even closer. “I remember.” Maybe the sweater had magical powers. I’d have to be sure to hold on to it. We kissed again, and I shivered in the cold night air. Wanting to get me out of the cold, he led me to his pickup and opened the door so we could both climb in. The pickup was still warm and toasty, like a campfire was burning in the backseat. I looked at him, giggled like a schoolgirl, and asked, “What have you been doing all this time?” “Oh, I was headed home,” he said, fiddling with my fingers. “But then I just turned around; I couldn’t help it.” His hand found my upper back and pulled me closer. The windows were getting foggy. I felt like I was seventeen. “I’ve got this problem,” he continued, in between kisses. “Yeah?” I asked, playing dumb. My hand rested on his left bicep. My attraction soared to the heavens. He caressed the back of my head, messing up my hair…but I didn’t care; I had other things on my mind. “I’m crazy about you,” he said. By now I was on his lap, right in the front seat of his Diesel Ford F250, making out with him as if I’d just discovered the concept. I had no idea how I’d gotten there--the diesel pickup or his lap. But I was there. And, burying my face in his neck, I quietly repeated his sentiments. “I’m crazy about you, too.

The phone was snatched from her grasp. She let out a screech, her fingers clasping at air. “Hey! Give that back.” Gracie slipped it down the V of her tank and into her ample cleavage. “Come and get it.” Billy plopped down on a vacant stool, eyes bugging out of his head. Maddie stared at Gracie’s chest and contemplated. She could stick her hand down a woman’s top. It was no big deal—just skin, for God’s sake. She jumped off the stool and straightened to her full five-foot-three inches. “What is wrong with calling him?” “It’s a girlfriend’s responsibility to stop her friend from the dreaded drunk dial.” Maddie scowled. She was not drunk dialing! “Telling him where I am isn’t a crime.” Gracie planted her hands on her hips. “Sorry, honey. I’m doing this for your own good.” “You don’t understand.” Maddie picked up her drink and took a slow sip. Her gaze was fixed on the stretch of fabric across Gracie’s ample chest. She wanted that phone, and with way too many margaritas in her system, she wasn’t above groping another woman to get it. “I’m getting that phone.” Billy’s mouth dropped open, and Maddie was surprised no drool hung down his chin like a rabid dog’s. “You’ll thank me later.” Gracie didn’t appear the least bit threatened. If anything, she thrust her breasts out farther, as though daring Maddie to come and get it. “Give it to me!” Maddie stomped her foot. “Like I said, come and get it.” Gracie batted her thick lashes, cornflower-blue eyes sparkling. She tucked her hand into her top and shoved it lower into her bra. “All right, but remember, I know how to fight.” Gracie laughed and Billy whooped like he’d hit the jackpot. Maddie charged. Gracie’s eyes widened in surprise, and she let out a holler, crossing her arms over her chest for protection. Maddie refused to be thwarted. She squeezed her lids together so she wouldn’t have to look and flung her hands out, praying she’d get hold of something. When her palm brushed against soft, pillowy cotton, she squealed. Pay dirt. “Maddie!” Gracie grabbed her hand, twisting her body to block Maddie’s progress. “That’s my boob!” Maddie reached again and this time her hand curled around the cotton neckline. She pulled, squirming down the deep V of the top. Her fingers brushed the phone and a surge of adrenaline pounded through her. “Now, why doesn’t this surprise me?” Mitch’s voice made her knees go weak. Before she could swing around, she was hauled against his warm, strong body. She sagged in relief. He’d come for her after all. “You girls are giving everyone quite a show.” Charlie stood next to Mitch, looking lethal in all black. Maddie could picture him with an FBI armband over his bicep. Wait . . . was that the FBI? Or was it SWAT? “With all these disappointed faces, I’m sorry we broke them up.” Mitch’s tone rang with amusement, and Maddie realized it had been too long since she’d heard him sound like that. “I wanted to call you, but she wouldn’t let me.” Her pulse raced from her girl fight and the buzz of tequila. His palm spread wide over the expanse of her stomach, his thumb brushing the bottom of her breast. “Well, here I am.” “See!” Gracie pointed and shook her hips in a little booty dance. “I told you so!” Yes,

I took out the round, crusty bread and made a hole in the centre with my thumb. Then I opened the tin of sardines with the little key that came with it, carefully twisting it sideways, smartly avoiding the released oil spurt. I poured the contents into the hole in the bread, gently spreading the sardines in tomato sauce evenly with my Swiss knife. I took out the cotton napkin, folded it over the bread and pressed lightly for a few seconds. I was very fussy about sardines and I had my own set of rules on how to eat them. I removed the napkin and examined the bread from all sides, making sure that it was thoroughly soaked with the juice on the bottom while remaining crusty on top. Satisfied, l bit into it

And here she was, in the middle of a tangled situation she didn't remember or understand, painfully aware that a killer or killers on the loose almost certainly knew a hell of a lot more about what was going on than she did. As independent and self-reliant as she was, Riley had never felt so unsure of herself. She was adept at role-playing-it was one of her strengths-but this? This was a very, very dangerous game of blind man's bluff, and the one wearing the blindfold-her-had cotton in her ears and a clothespin on her nose as well. With the exception of Gordon, she didn't know who to trust, and he could offer little more than moral support since, if she had even reached any conclusions or formed any theories since arriving here, she had not confided them to him. As for the other man she was intimately close to… "Riley? Ready to order?" She looked across the top of her menu at this pale-eyed stranger whose bed she apparently shared, and ignored the cold knot in the pit of her belly to say calmly, "I'm ready." It was the second time she'd said that in the last couple of hours. She only hoped it was true.

I have almost five hundred dollars saved.” Alison spoke slowly and deliberately. This time Laura did pull away. “Five hundred dollars?” Her eyes were incredulous. “How did you ever save that much?” Then, before Alison could answer, Laura’s eyes widened again and she let out a faint squeal. Mom half-turned to the back again, and Alison could tell that Laura was fighting to keep a normal look about her. After Mom had resumed her road watching, Laura finally spoke. “Just think of all the things we can buy on vacation,” she spouted. “Cotton candy at the carnival, model horses, saltwater taffy, postcards…We can even ride all the rides, more than once!” Alison shook her head and sighed again. “Let me remind you that this isn’t your money.” “It is if you want me to keep it a secret,” Laura challenged. “Why, you little rat!” “Well, it’s mostly yours,” Laura conceded. Alison rolled her eyes in exasperation. If she hadn’t needed her sister on her side she’d have been tempted to rap her. She tapped Laura on the top of her red head. “Think about it,” she prodded. “What could we buy with five hundred dollars?” All at once a light filled Laura’s eyes. All right, Alison thought. Laura is finally awake! “A pony!” The words slid from Laura in a hiss. “Are you going to buy a pony at the Pony Penning auction?” This time it was Alison who settled back smugly in her seat. “Every year we ask Mom and Dad, and every year they say we can’t afford one,” she said softly. “Now I have the money. How can they possibly say no?

Schaffer was feeling even more vague and woolly than Smith, if for different reasons. He was waking, slowly and painfully, from a very bad dream and in this dream he could taste salt in his mouth and hear a soft urgent feminine voice calling his name, calling it over and over again. In normal times Schaffer would have been all for soft feminine voices, urgent or not, but he wished that this one would stop for it was all part of the bad dream and in this bad dream someone had split his head in half and he knew the pain wouldn't go until he woke up. He moaned, put the palms of his hands on the floor and tried to prop himself up. It took a long time, it took an eternity, for someone had laid one of the girders from the Forth bridge across his back, but at last he managed to straighten both his arms, his head hanging down between them. His head didn't feel right, it didn't even feel like his head, for, apart from the fact that there seemed to be a butcher's cleaver stuck in it, it seemed to be stuffed with cotton wool, grey and fuzzy round the edges. He shook his head to clear it and this was a mistake for the top of his head fell off. Or so it felt to Schaffer as the blinding coruscation of multi-coloured lights before his eyes arranged themselves into oddly kaleidoscopic patterns. He opened his eyes and the patterns dimmed and the lights began to fade: gradually, beneath his eyes the pattern of floorboards began to resolve themselves, and, on the board, the outlines of hands. His own hands. He was awake, but this was one of those bad dreams which stayed with you even when you were awake. He could still taste salt—the salt of blood—his head still felt as if one incautious shake would have it rolling across the floor and that soft and urgent voice was still calling.

If you already hate tofu, the term "tofu skin" is probably an effective emetic. But this stuff is addictive. You start by making fresh soy milk. I'm not going to soft-pedal how much work this is: you have to soak, grind, squeeze, and simmer dried soybeans. The result is a thick milk entirely unlike the soy milk you get in a box at Whole Foods in the same way Parmigiano-Reggiano is unlike Velveeta. Then, to make tofu skins (yuba in Japanese), you simmer the soy milk gently over low heat until a skin forms on the surface, then pluck it off with your fingers and drape it over a chopstick to dry. It is exactly like the skin that forms on top of pudding, the one George Costanza wanted to market as Pudding Skin Singles. Yuba doesn't look like much- like a pile of discarded raw chicken skin, honestly. But the texture is toothsome, and with each bite you're rewarded with the flavor of fresh soy milk. It's best served with just a few drops of soy sauce and maybe some grated ginger or sliced negi. "I'm kind of obsessed with tofu skins right now," said Iris, poking her head into the fridge to grab a round of yuba. Me too. In Seattle, I had to buy, grind, boil, and otherwise toil for a few sheets of yuba. In Tokyo, I found it at Life Supermarket, sold in a single-serving plastic tub with a foil top. The yuba wasn't as snappy or flavorful as homemade, but it had that characteristic fresh-soy aroma, which to me smells like a combination of "healthy forest" and "clean baby." Iris and I ate it greedily. (The yuba, not the baby.) Yuba isn't technically tofu, because the soy milk isn't coagulated. Japanese tofu comes in two basic categories, much like underpants: cotton (momen) and silken (kinugoshi). Cotton tofu is the kind eaten most commonly in the U.S.; if you buy a package of extra-firm tofu and cut it up for stir-frying, that's definitely cotton tofu. Silken tofu is fragile, creamier and more dairy-like than cotton-tofu, and it's the star of my favorite summer tofu dish. Hiya yakko is cubes of tofu, usually silken, drizzled with soy sauce and judiciously topped with savory bits: grated ginger or daikon, bonito flakes, negi. It's popular in Japanese bars and easy to make at home, which I did, with (you will be shocked to hear) tons of fresh negi.

The door was suddenly thrown open, and there was Moog. He was wearing what looked to Clay like one-piece pyjamas: tiny moons and stars scattered across a dark blue sky. He was skinny as ever, and his long beard was white as cotton. He’d gone bald up top, but the fringe that remained was long and wisp thin. His eyes were the same startling blue beneath bushy white brows. “Gabriel! Clay!” The wizard cackled delightedly and did a little dance that only reinforced the fact that he was dressed like a child,

I left my car on the street, walked up across the dead yard, and a guy I took to be James Lester opened the door. He was average-sized in dark gray cotton work pants, dirty white socks, and a dingy undershirt. His hair was cut short on the sides and on top, but had been left long and shaggy in back, and he looked at me with a squint. He was thin, with knobby, grease-embedded hands and pale skin sporting Bic-pen tattoos on his arms and shoulders and chest. Work farm stuff. I made him for thirty, but he could’ve been younger. He said, “You’re the guy who called. You’re from the lawyer, right?” A quarter to eleven in the morning and he smelled of beer.

After Russell left her house that morning, Claire was a cooking fool. She finished making fig and pepper bread, and started in on soup. Simmering soup on a cold day was like filling a house with cotton batting. The comforting scent of it plumped and muffled and cuddled. She went on to make egg custard tarts for dessert, longing for pansies to place on top to decorate them.

Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file. Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cottonhouse can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a full head above my own. The path runs straight as a plumb-line, worn smooth by feet and baked brick-hard by July, between the green rows of laidby cotton, to the cottonhouse in the center of the field, where it turns and circles the cottonhouse at four soft right angles and goes on across the field again, worn so by feet in fading precision. The cottonhouse is of rough logs, from between which the chinking has long fallen. Square, with a broken roof set at a single pitch, it leans in empty and shimmering dilapidation in the sunlight, a single broad window in two opposite walls giving onto the approaches of the path. When we reach it I turn and follow the path which circles the house. Jewel, fifteen feet behind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window. Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face, he crosses the floor in four strides with the rigid gravity of a cigar store Indian dressed in patched overalls and endued with life from the hips down, and steps in a single stride through the opposite window and into the path again just as I come around the corner. In single file and five feet apart and Jewel now in front, we go on up the path toward the foot of the bluff. Tull’s wagon stands beside the spring, hitched to the rail, the reins wrapped about the seat stanchion. In the wagon bed are two chairs. Jewel stops at the spring and takes the gourd from the willow branch and drinks. I pass him and mount the path, beginning to hear Cash’s saw. When I reach the top he has quit sawing. Standing in a litter of chips, he is fitting two of the boards together. Between the shadow spaces they are yellow as gold, like soft gold, bearing on their flanks in smooth undulations the marks of the adze blade: a good carpenter, Cash is. He holds the two planks on the trestle, fitted along the edges in a quarter of the finished box. He kneels and squints along the edge of them, then he lowers them and takes up the adze. A good carpenter. Addie Bundren could not want a better one, a better box to lie in. It will give her confidence and comfort. I go on to the house, followed by the                                     Chuck.   Chuck.   Chuck.of the adze.

To create your own poppet, you’ll need: 2 large pieces of fabric or felt Scissors A needle and thread Cotton balls and/or dried lavender or rose herbs A few strands of your hair Rose quartz (optional) 1. To create the poppet, take the pieces of fabric/felt and lay them on top of one another. Cut out the shape of the doll you want to make, then sew the sides and top together. 2. Use the opening at the bottom to stuff the doll with the cotton or herbs and your hair (or other small item that symbolizes “you”). Add rose quartz if desired to symbolize high-vibe self-love. 3. Sew the bottom shut. 4. Hold the poppet in your hand and affirm that it is an extension of you. Imagine your energy radiating out from your heart into your arms, through your hands, and into the doll. Allow yourself to feel the emotions as they come, making sure to ground yourself afterward to rebalance. 5. Sleep with the poppet under your pillow for at least one night to solidify the bond. 6. Once you have bonded with your poppet, place it somewhere that is readily accessible to you. Treat it like an extension of yourself, taking care to speak to it kindly and hold it gently, giving it the respect and love that you would want from another to support you in healing. This poppet can be taken out during emotional moments, shadow work, or just when you want a visual cue to remind you that you’re a person too! The ultimate purpose is to create a proxy by which you can hold space for yourself and your healing.

From Shanghai, Meyer had sent seeds and cuttings of oats, millet, a thin-skinned watermelon, and new types of cotton. The staff of Fairchild's office watched with anticipation each time one of Meyer's shipments were unpacked. There were seeds of wild pears, new persimmons, and leaves of so-called Manchurian spinach that America's top spinach specialist would declare was the best America had ever seen. Meyer had delivered the first samples of asparagus ever to officially enter the United States. In 1908, few people had seen a soybean, a green legume common in central China. Even fewer people could have imagined that within one hundred years, the evolved descendants of soybeans that Meyer shipped back would cover the Midwest of the United States like a rug. Soybeans would be applied to more diverse uses than any other crop in history, as feed for livestock, food for humans (notably vegetarians), and even a renewable fuel called biodiesel. Meyer also hadn't come empty-handed. He had physically brought home a bounty, having taken from China a steamer of the Standard Oil Company that, unlike a passenger ship, allowed him limitless cargo and better onboard conditions for plant material. He arrived with twenty tons, including red blackberries, wild apricots, two large zelkova trees (similar to elms), Chinese holly shrub, twenty-two white-barked pines, eighteen forms of lilac, four viburnum bushes that produced edible red berries, two spirea bushes with little white flowers, a rhododendron bush with pink and purple flowers, an evergreen shrub called a daphne, thirty kinds of bamboo (some of them edible), four types of lilies, and a new strain of grassy lawn sedge.

Getting It Right" Your ankles make me want to party, want to sit and beg and roll over under a pair of riding boots with your ankles hidden inside, sweating beneath the black tooled leather; they make me wish it was my birthday so I could blow out their candles, have them hung over my shoulders like two bags full of money. Your ankles are two monster-truck engines but smaller and lighter and sexier than a saucer with warm milk licking the outside edge; they make me want to sing, make me want to take them home and feed them pasta, I want to punish them for being bad and then hold them all night long and say I’m sorry, sugar, darling, it will never happen again, not in a million years. Your thighs make me quiet. Make me want to be hurled into the air like a cannonball and pulled down again like someone being pulled into a van. Your thighs are two boats burned out of redwood trees. I want to go sailing. Your thighs, the long breath of them under the blue denim of your high-end jeans, could starve me to death, could make me cry and cry. Your ass is a shopping mall at Christmas, a holy place, a hill I fell in love with once when I was falling in love with hills. Your ass is a string quartet, the northern lights tucked tightly into bed between a high-count-of-cotton sheets. Your back is the back of a river full of fish; I have my tackle and tackle box. You only have to say the word. Your back, a letter I have been writing for fifteen years, a smooth stone, a moan someone makes when his hair is pulled, your back like a warm tongue at rest, a tongue with a tab of acid on top; your spine is an alphabet, a ladder of celestial proportions. I am navigating the North and South of it. Your armpits are beehives, they make me want to spin wool, want to pour a glass of whiskey, your armpits dripping their honey, their heat, their inexhaustible love-making dark. I am bright yellow for them. I am always thinking about them, resting at your side or high in the air when I’m pulling off your shirt. Your arms of blue and ice with the blood running to make them believe in God. Your shoulders make me want to raise an arm and burn down the Capitol. They sing to each other underneath your turquoise slope-neck blouse. Each is a separate bowl of rice steaming and covered in soy sauce. Your neck is a skyscraper of erotic adult videos, a swan and a ballet and a throaty elevator made of light. Your neck is a scrim of wet silk that guides the dead into the hours of Heaven. It makes me want to die, your mouth, which is the mouth of everything worth saying. It’s abalone and coral reef. Your mouth, which opens like the legs of astronauts who disconnect their safety lines and ride their stars into the billion and one voting districts of the Milky Way. Darling, you’re my President; I want to get this right! Matthew Dickman, The New Yorker: Poems | August 29, 2011 Issue

The room is a hundred shades of white. The enormous desk is the color of sand dollar beer foam with a plush cotton eggshell chair behind it. To its side, a tall shaving cream topped Swiss coffee lamp with a mozzarella sour cream lampshade. Official certificates the color of chalky whitecaps in limestone glacier frames hang on the frosted beluga whale wall. The wall is covered with rice powder cloud bookcases, full of books the color of moonstone jasmine, opal daffodil, quartz daisy, and polar bear hibiscus. The books are being tended by a man with his back to me, dressed in a milky, baking soda suit in seagull bone shoes, riding a rolling ladder the color of marshmallow tofu glue.

Most slaves achieved status within the black community by winning the respect of their fellow slaves, not their owners. Indeed, slave leaders generally secured their high standing by virtue of opposing their owners, not collaborating with them. Many were connected with the new religiosity in the quarter, as preachers, shamen, and conjurers - men and women who could join the natural and unnatural worlds together, whether through African folk rituals or biblical injunctions. Others were healers and midwives, and still others earned the respect of their peers in the field or workshop. A few secured a bit of book learning and were able to read the Bible. All were enmeshed in the expanding web of kinship and spirituality - connections of blood, marriage, and belief - that bound slaves together. While they may have exhibited some personal quality, such as courage, intelligence, honesty, or piety, that their compatriots found attractive, it was kinship - a sense of belonging to a common family, on this earth or in heaven hereafter - that carried them to the top of black society and provided the basis for solidarity. Whether their social position rested on knowledge of the cosmos or the key to the corn crib, whether their authority derived from the Big House or the quarter, it was to these men and women - not their owners - that slaves turned first in moments of distress. And few crises shook slave society as deeply as the transfer from the seaboard to the interior. Annealed in the furnace of the Second Middle Passage and the cotton and sugar revolutions, a new generation of leaders struggled to express the collective aspirations of a people who were often divided by their multiple origins, diverse expectations, and increasingly differential wealth.

Are you nervous?” I brushed the hair out of her face and slid my hands down to her waist, gripping over top of the worn cotton. Bailey’s eyes drifted shut for a beat before opening again and focusing on mine. “A little.” “You don’t need to be nervous with me, James.” “I know.” Her expression softened. “Are you?” I gave her a small smile. “Maybe a little.

How To Clean A Dab Rig? A glass chamber (dabber) is joined to a watertight foundation to form a dab rig. Cannabis concentrates are concentrated using a dab rig and butane as the solvent. Butane is an odorless, colorless, combustible gas. Home appliances like hair dryers, paint sprayers, and welding torches frequently use it. Cleaning a dab rig starts with getting rid of any residue that was left over after use. Your dab rig should always be fully cleaned before being stored. Your next batch of concentrates can become contaminated if you don't thoroughly clean the dab rig. You must unscrew the base and take off the lid before you can start cleaning your dab setup. After removing both components, you must use a moist towel to clean the chamber's interior. To help remove any debris or residue clinging to the surface, use a mild soap solution. Rinse the dabber with warm water after cleaning the interior. The air openings in the chamber must then be cleaned. You must disassemble the chamber in order to do this and remove the top portion from the bottom piece. The bottom piece's air holes must then be gently removed. The top piece must then be reattached to the bottom piece. You must insert cotton swabs or balls into the air holes after cleaning them out. Make careful to space these objects apart by at least 1/8 inch. The base must then be screwed back onto the chamber. Finally, use a moist cloth to clean the entire dabber again. Be careful not to spill any butane on the chamber's outside. When finished, put your dabber back in its container.

decide the middle one isn’t necessary. Tickling his tiny, sock-covered feet, I grab ahold, wiggling them back and forth with a big smile to pretend we’re playing a game. It works like a charm, and he stops flailing for half a second, just long enough for me to quickly slide on his cotton shorts. He screams then, his arms stretched out, fists opening and closing over and over, making grabby hands to let me know he wants me to pick him back up. “One second, mister.” I turn to my own mess of a wardrobe in search of another clean top, but my drawer is empty aside from the T-shirts I wear to bed, and when I look in my closet, bare hangers stare back. That is, on the side dedicated to the clothes that actually fit. My eyes

I wouldn’t know, though, about this supposed gallantry, because I’m not your lady friend.” “You could be.” He gave her another chance. She truly did draw him in with the roundness of her figure, hugged by faded denim and topped with a baggy sweatshirt that drooped enticingly off a shoulder, baring a black strap. Lace or cotton? A feline mind wanted to know. But apparently he wouldn’t know today, as she, yet again, managed to resist him. “Date you? Not likely.” Again words emerged from him without volition. “Why not?” “Oh please. I’ve seen enough to know you’re not my type.” Such a liar. Apparently he wasn’t the only one aroused by their repartee. The musky scent of her arousal tickled his senses. It made him bolder. “I guarantee when I’m between your thighs and you’re clawing my back, you’ll be screaming a different tune.” So he might have come on a tad strong with that last statement. That was still no excuse for what happened next. “Pig.” However it wasn’t the animal insult that was her most grievous crime. It was the gigantic hunk of hair she snipped off! An irreplaceable, thick chunk of his hair permanently removed. Accidental or intentional, it didn’t matter. Ack! My mane. My beautiful, precious mane. He couldn’t help a low rumbling growl. His eyes glinted in the mirror, the gold catching the light and reflecting it, along with his fury. “You. Did. Not. Just. Do. That.” And yes, he might have growled the last bit. “Oops? Did I do that? Sorry.” Said with no repentance at all. With a smirk and a blown kiss, she let her crime rain down over him in a golden, threaded shower. And then, she ran.

Wriggling out of his grasp she braced herself on his shoulders and tried to stand. Next thing she knew, he had her around the legs and took her down to the mattress in some sort of super-fast ninja move. She screamed and laughed, and he was laughing every bit as hard as he came down on top of her. And, oh God, his laughter was a sweet and sexy rumble that lit her up inside. “You fight dirty, Easy,” she said around her chuckles. “I haven’t had this much fun in so long.” She caressed his face with her fingers. “Me neither. Between overloading on classes and my epilepsy, I often feel like a little old lady trapped in the body of a twenty-year-old. All I need is some cats.” “Cats are awesome,” he said. “When I was a kid, I used to sneak stray cats into the house, just for a night or two. I’d keep them in my room and bring up bowls of milk and cans of tuna for them.” “Aw, you were a sweet little boy, weren’t you?” she asked, loving how he was opening up to her. The closeness, the sharing, the way his big body was lying on her legs and hips, leading him to prop his head up on her lower stomach—both her heart and her body reacted. “Maybe for about five minutes.” He winked. “Mostly, I was a hell-raiser. Growing up, we didn’t live in the best neighborhood. Drug dealers on the corner, gang activity trying to pull in even the younger kids, crack house one block over. All that. Trouble wasn’t hard to find.” He shrugged. “Army straightened me out, though.” “Well, we lived in a nice neighborhood growing up and here my father was the freaking drug dealer on the corner. Or close enough, anyway.” Jenna stared at the ceiling and shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get serious.” His thumb stroked along her side, sliding the cotton of her borrowed shirt against her skin in a way that almost tickled. “Don’t apologize. Our histories are what they are, you know?” She nodded and gave him a little smile. “Yeah.” Shifting off her, Easy stretched out alongside her and propped his head up on his arm. “I’m thirty, Jenna,” he said out of nowhere. And he was telling her this because? He thought their age difference was too great? He thought she was too young? He was worried she would think he was too old? Probably D) all of the above. Thing was, all she saw when she looked at Easy was a guy she really freaking liked. One who’d saved her life, helped make her sister safe, and gave her a sense of security she hadn’t felt in years. He was hot as hell, easy to talk to, and one of the kindest guys she’d ever known. Maybe some of that was because he was older. Who knew? “And I need to know this because?” she asked, resting her head on her arm. The muscles of his shoulders lifted into a shrug, but his face was contemplative. “Because there’s clearly something going on between us.” Heat rushed across her body. She held up a hand, and he laced his fingers between hers. “When I look at you, I don’t see a bunch of differences, Easy.” “What do you see then?” Warmth flooded into Jenna’s cheeks, and she chuckled. He’d said that she was beautiful, after all, so why couldn’t she give him a compliment in return? “A really hot guy I’d like to get to know more.” A smug smile slipped onto his face, and she might’ve rolled her eyes if it weren’t so damn sexy. “Really hot, huh?” “Well, kinda hot, anyway.” “Nuh-uh,” he said, tugging her hand to his chest. “Can’t take it back now.” Cheeks burning and big smile threatening, she rolled onto her side to face him. They lay there, side by side, her chest almost touching his, looking at each other. Tension and desire and anticipation crackled in the space between them, making it hard to breathe. “What do you see when you look at me?” she whispered, half-afraid to ask but even more curious to hear what he’d say. Did he mostly see someone who was too young for him? Or a needy girl he had to save and babysit?

I went to bed wearing my oldest, most faded flannel shirt, the bra that had looked all right in the catalog but was obviously an escapee from a downmarket nursing home when it arrived, white cotton panties that had had pansies on them about seven hundred washings ago and were now a kind of mottled gray, and the jeans I usually wore for housecleaning or raking Yolande’s garden because they were too shabby for work even if I never came out of the bakery. Food inspector arrest-on-sight jeans. Oh, and fuzzy green plaid socks. It was a cool night for summer. Relatively. I lay down on top of the bedspread. And slept through till the alarm at three-forty-five. He hadn’t come. T

Not a morning person, is she?” a lazy voice drawled. Maddie dropped her hand to stare into Sam Roberts’s amused face. He sat across from Mitch, long, denim-clad legs stretched out, one hand hugging a coffee cup. Of course. What was breakfast with Mitch if not another new humiliation? This town was custom-made to put her in awkward situations. She glared at Mitch, who grinned like the cat who ate the canary. “Do you ever have breakfast alone?” He shrugged. “They’re big fans of the drop-in.” “From the looks of her, she should be in a much better mood,” Sam said, clearly entertained. Maddie crossed her arms over her breasts. She might as well be naked in her skimpy tank top and cotton shorts. “No need to be shy.” Sam winked at her. “I saw you last night, although you were considerably less rumpled.” She rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it polite to allow a girl some dignity?” “What do you mean, last night?” Mitch asked at the same time, eyes narrowed on Sam. A muscle jumped in his forearm as his fingers tightened around his mug. “Don’t even tell me that’s what you were wearing.” “I was sitting on the front porch when he came home.” She ran her hand through her disheveled hair, getting caught in the wild mass of tangles. Sam gave Mitch a sly, devious smile. “Not my fault you left her alone for just anyone to come take a peek.” Mitch’s attention snapped to Maddie. She refused to fidget under his scrutiny. One golden brow rose. Maddie huffed. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.” “Hmmmm . . .” Mitch gave her a through once-over. Maddie’s chin shot up. “This is your fault, not mine!” Sam scrubbed his blond, stubbled jaw. “She’s got a point.” “I suppose she does,” Mitch said, but his tone spoke of a different story. Those amber eyes told her without words that she’d be paying later with his own delicious brand of torture. She

Jacob is being really good, and he sits on the edge of his chair when the recital starts. “I can’t see,” he complains. Next thing I know, he’s crawling into my lap. He sits his skinny little body right on top of mine and leans back so that his head is resting on my shoulder, and he snuggles in. He still smells like the outdoors and purple shampoo, and I want to hold him like this forever. Tears fill my eyes, and I blink them back furiously. Henry reaches into his pocket and hands me his cotton handkerchief. I wave him off. I’m going to keep it together, I promise myself. “Can you see now?” I ask Jacob. He nods, and his cheek brushes mine. I close my eyes and drink in the feeling.

Verjuice Collect ripe crab apples and leave them in a plastic bag to sweat. After a few days press out the juice and then bottle it, leaving cotton wool in the top as it will ferment because of the natural yeasts. It will be ready in about a month and makes a traditional substitute for lemon juice. It is particularly good in salad dressings and stir fries. After

Her hair was in two French braids, and she was wearing a blue-and-white flowered cotton pajama top, a necklace of large red beads, yellow denim shorts, yellow-and-mint green argyle socks, and pink flip-flops.

She wore a faded Tri-Delta sorority T-shirt over a green bikini top and stepped out of the backseat of a car with two other girls just as sun-kissed and heart-crushing. They sported pink cotton shorts with dolphins on them,

Matching Doll Pajamas Leveret is all about basic comfort in 100% cotton and environmentally sustainable organic cotton. Find pajamas in fun prints for the whole family and basic tops, tees, hoodies, pants, leggings and more. The Leveret brand is sought after for its comfortable garments made of soft cotton, organic cotton and cotton blend fabrics Find basic clothing like pajamas,tee shirts, hoodies, pants, yoga pants, fleece robes and more Pajamas come in matching prints for the whole family We have a large selection of seasonal and everyday designs. This is us, proudly. • Basic clothing that is very comfortable • We use mostly environmentally sustainable fibers • Most items are made of 100% regular cotton or organic cotton • Clothing for everyone; moms, dads, girls, boys and babies • Matching fun pajama prints for the whole family • Great selection of everyday and seasonal motifs • Quality workmanship for no-fade wash and wear ability • Basic tops and bottoms in a large variety of colors • Tops, tees, hoodies, bodysuits, pants and leggings

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I have some books if you need something to read,” I tell him, hesitation I have never before felt obvious in my tone. It's uncomfortable and I loathe it. “And if you get super bored, you can even alphabetize them. I know you like doing that.” He glances up at me and away. “I have plenty to do.” Blake's eyes narrow on me before he turns to his brother. “We'll be sure to bring you back some cotton candy.” “Don't bother.” “Graham doesn't like cotton candy,” I say. Blake's eyes twinkle as they meet mine. “More for me then. Ready?” Graham straightens as his brother walks toward me. “The cotton candy isn't yours to have. Just remember that.” What the heck is going on? They're arguing over cotton candy now? I mean, really? Do their competitive natures know no end? They're dragging spun sugar into their war now? Briefly pausing, Blake replies, “It is if no one else wants it.” With gritted teeth, Graham replies, “Maybe it isn't that no one wants it. Maybe they just don't want to pressure anyone into thinking they just want cotton candy and nothing else. Maybe they want to make sure everyone knows how much they really enjoy cotton candy, not just for now, but for always.” “But you don't like cotton candy,” I point out to Graham, since I guess he forgot. Rolling his eyes, Blake puts a hand on my arm and gently pushes. “Let's go, Einstein.” “Maybe I really actually love cotton candy!” he hollers as the door closes. I look at Blake as we loiter inside the apartment building. “What just happened? He so doesn't like cotton candy.” He sweeps a hand over the top of my head without touching it. “Never mind. Some things are beyond you.” “That sounded like an insult.” “Did it?” His facial expression is all innocent. “Apparently that wasn't beyond me,” I mutter as we head out into the scorching heat of a summer evening, Wisconsin style. A mosquito immediately attacks my arm, making the ambience complete

Finn wanted to collect the plants he knew he could sell, and he was teaching Maia. He climbed to the top of the leaf canopy and came back with clusters of yellow fruits which could be boiled up to treat skin diseases. He found a tree whose leaves were made into an infusion to help people with kidney complaints and brought back a silvery fern to rub on aching muscles. Most of these plants had Indian names, but as they sorted their specimens and put them to be dried and stored in labeled cotton bags, Maia learned quickly. “You’d be amazed how much money people give for these in the towns,” said Finn. But not everything he collected was for sale. He restocked his own medicine chest also. And every day he bullied Maia about taking her quinine pills. “Only idiots get malaria in the dry season,” he said.

I placed my pipe on its stand and started getting dressed. I took my pyjamas off, put on a shirt and trousers, and a dressing gown on top. When I had managed to do all of this, I put the cotton gloves on both my hands. And finally, it was time to put on my face. My mask.

She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. “I think I’m going to pass out.” “Alex, tell me five things you see in your room.” “What?” “Just do it.” “I … My desk. A chair. The blue tulle on Mercy’s bed. My Flaming June poster. Those sticky stars someone put up on the ceiling.” “Okay, now four things you can touch.” “Dawes—” “Do it.” “We have to warn the others—” “Just do it, Virgil.” Dawes had never called her that. Alex managed a shaking breath. “Okay … the bed frame. It’s smooth. Cold wood. The rug—kind of soft and nubbly. There’s glitter in it. Maybe from Halloween.” “What else?” “My tank top—cotton, I think.” She reached up and touched the dried roses on Mercy’s bedside table. “Dry flowers, like tissue paper.” “Now three things you hear.” “I know what you’re doing.” “Then do it.” Alex drew another long breath in through her nose. “The flowers rustle when I touch them. Someone’s singing down the hall. My own fucking heart pounding in my chest.” She rubbed a hand over her face, feeling some of her terror recede. “Thanks, Dawes.

Car Camping Tips and Tricks Arrive in camp with a full tank of gas. Gas stations can be few and far between in the mountains. Store food in the car at night to deter bears and critters. Slip a headlamp around a gallon jug of water, with the lens side facing the plastic, to illuminate your tent with ambient light. Freeze water in plastic jugs and bottles and use them in the cooler instead of loose ice. Make fire starters by rubbing petroleum jelly onto cotton balls. Store in a ziplock bag. Bring a Frisbee and after playing, clean it and use as a plate or cutting board. It can also be a shovel in emergencies. Before you leave, crack any eggs you’ll need into a reusable water bottle and store in your cooler. Place spices in a weekly plastic vitamin or medicine container and relabel the top.

When I was young, and my mother began filling my hope chest with bed sheets and serving spoons and cuttings of colorful fabrics, and saving pictures from the JC Penney catalog of china hutches and dinnerware and lush comforters for someday, I created shadow boxes for places I dreamed of visiting. I’d spend birthday money on bags of seashells and craft sand from the hobby shop for a Hawaiian beach scene, create a Swiss ski village with cotton balls and thrift store sweaters cut into tiny versions for Popsicle stick skiers, prop toothpick tents on top of papier-mâché Kilimanjaros and Everests. These adorned my room, anointing my dresser and the fake wood paneling of our trailer walls with my fantasies. My mother once came in while I was dusting them and said, “It’s all well and good to dream. Dreaming keeps a body moving.

When Paul’s shoe soles wore out, I couldn’t find leather pieces to mend them, so I cut a stack of cardboard in the shape of the insoles and padded them so they would last longer. He changed the liners every night. I wore heavy cotton stockings instead of nylon, and when the elastic garters wore out I learned to stick my finger in the top of the hose, twist it several times and tuck it in the binding to make it stay up. I wore them until the toes and heels were completely gone and I had blisters on my feet. It wasn’t long until every one of the women in my house was wearing white anklets. They lasted better than stockings.

Elevate your Cincinnati event with Cincinnati Bounce House Rentals - a top-tier choice for quality inflatable entertainment. From birthday parties to corporate gatherings, our vibrant bounce houses, thrilling water slides, and challenging obstacle courses cater to all ages. Add a nostalgic touch with our concession machines, offering cotton candy and buttered popcorn. We serve Cincinnati and surrounding areas including Anderson Township, Mount Washington, Milford, Loveland, Blue Ash & more.

At casinos, I see senior citizens grazing on slot machines clad in a trend that I call toddling. Toddling is dressing like a toddler: clamdiggers and a cotton top, no belt, mall-walking sneakers. It’s a look that says, I give up. Or, I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of me anymore. I’m not sure which.

One thing Angelo Dundee had no time for was cotton wool or sugar-coating when he saw his man Sugar Ray Leonard losing his fight with Tommy Hearn: ‘You’re blowin’ it son, you’re blowin’ it!’ was enough to change the course of the fight. If you want to take on the job of cornerman, to be Dundee to your prize fighter, try at all times to describe your contribution as modestly as he does: ‘I just put the reflexes in the proper direction.

were a tailor and it a gross basting cotton in a smooth lapel. All nonfiction writers—he remembered the long-ago days of his newspaper work and the discussions with other reporters—always tried to feel superior to all fiction writers. And fiction writers reversed the process and felt superior because they could create people and events which had never happened except in that world which sat between their foreheads and their top vertebra. The childish need to feel oneself bigger than, smarter than, stronger than

Taking this enthusiastic exhortation as a model, here we see the divine endorsement of sensible pleasures, that is, things that we enjoy through our bodily senses. Things we see-the brilliant purples, reds, and oranges of a sunset; the diamond blanket of stars arrayed every night; the panoramic glory of a fertile valley seen from the top of a mountain; the majesty of a well-cultivated garden in early summer. Things we hear-the steady crashing of waves on a shoreline; the songs of birds in early spring after the long silence of winter; the soul-stirring harmony of strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion; the innocent refreshment of laughter of children. Things we smell-the fragrance of roses, the aroma of pine, the delightful odor of cedar, the scene of a home cooked meal. Things we taste-the warm sweetness of chocolate chip cookies, the puckering sour of a glass of lemonade, the heavenly savoriness of a plate piled high with bacon, the surprising ye delightful bitterness of herbs, the piercing saltiness of well-seasoned meat. And things we touch-the cool smoothness of cotton bedsheets, the warm comfort of a wool blanket, the reassuring strength of a hug from a friend, the soft tenderness of a kiss from your spouse. All of these are gifts from God for our enjoyment.

Oz stomps barefoot to the dresser, yanks open the top drawer, and pulls out a gray cotton tee shirt. Wadding it up into a fabric ball, he whips it in my direction, sending it whizzing through the air and smacking me in the face. I barely catch it. “Please. Just go put that on. And come back uglier.

No exterior sounds were audible to dilute the glorious music that emanated from the Rolls-Royce’s top of the range sound system. The London Philharmonic Orchestra Choir were performing a stirring rendition of Thomas Tallis’s Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater. Leeson sipped twenty-four-year-old single malt and sang along in Latin. As the anthem finished he dabbed his watery eyes with an Egyptian cotton handkerchief and thumbed a button on the console to mute the speakers before he was enraptured by more beauteous sound. Tallis made Mozart and Beethoven seem like amateurs.

People by Maisie Aletha Smikle Annatto top Rust top Cotton top Butter top Night top Tight curls Loose curls No curls Tail length Ear length Lambs’ wool Goat strands Cotton ball Fur ball Spongy tall Donkey eyes Monkey eyes Triangle nose Square nose Pear nose Fat lip Flat lip Colorful tone Colorless tone People atone down to the bone

Chapter 5 Eyebright For Eye Strain The other night, I took a break from writing and went for a walk. It was dark, but the moon was bright giving me the light I needed to see my way up the road and back. When I returned I could see a few lights on in the house, but what really stood out was my laptop that I had left open; it’s bright white light standing out. I thought, “man, I stare at that light for hours at a time!” No wonder my eyes feel tired so often. Many people do this for eight or more hours every day. When we are viewing the screens of our devices, we blink less than normal which can cause dryness and soreness. The intense focus can also be the root of headaches and other eye related symptoms. Relief can be achieved by taking frequent ‘eye breaks’ which involve looking at something in the distance every twenty minutes or so (there are even apps to remind you!), and making sure your screen is just below eye level. But the reality is many of us are spending a lot of time focusing intently on electronic devices and straining our eyes. Symptoms of eye strain range from dry, sore, or itchy eyes, to headaches, light sensitivity and blurred vision. Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom has provided us with a wild herb that works directly to reduce the discomforts of eye strain and many other eye issues. Eyebright, a tiny flowered, weedy looking herb found wild in Europe, Asia and North America can be used to treat all eye disorders. Eyebright’s tannin content, which acts as an astringent, and its anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, combine to make the perfect eye wash. Its 3 major antioxidant vitamins bring in eye-specific support as well:  Vitamin C, in conjunction with Eyebright’s high content of Quercetin, assists in reducing swelled and runny eyes; Vitamin E has been shown to help improve visual sharpness; and Vitamin A protects the cornea and prevents dry eyes. Eyebright is the perfect solution for eyestrain symptoms, but it can also be used for many other eye disorders including conjunctivitis and itchy or runny eyes caused by allergies. Traditionally it has been used to improve memory and treat vertigo and epilepsy. Harvesting and drying Eyebright is easy. The high tannin content makes it a fast-drying herb. Simply cut the flowering tops of the plant and dry for a day or two in an oven with just the pilot light on, or in an airy spot out of the sun for several days. The dried herb will have retained its colors, though the flowers will have diminished considerably in size. How To Use Eyebright How to make an eye bath:   Boil 2 cups of water and pour over 1 cup of dried or fresh herb and let sit for 20 minutes or more. Strain well using cheesecloth or an unbleached coffee filter, store in a sterile glass jar (just dip in the boiling water before adding the herbs and let stand, open side up), cool, lid tightly and place in refrigerator for up to a week. When you wash your face in the morning or evening, use a sterile eyecup or other small sterile container to ‘wash’ your eyes with this herbal extract. If you are experiencing a painful eye condition, it is better to warm the eye bath liquid slightly before use. You can also dip cotton balls in the solution and press one on each eye (with lid closed) as a compress. Eyebright Tea: Using the same method for making an eye bath, simply drink the tea for relief of eye symptoms due to eyestrain, colds and allergies.

we forget Joseph F. Glidden's 1874 invention of barbed wire, which, more than the rifle or the plow, transformed Buffalo Bill's Great Plains by insuring the survival of thousands of family farms, and making possible the growth of enormous-and enormously profitable-cattle ranches. In addition, I feel a personal connection. In April 1855 my great-granduncle Alexander Carter Jr. and his younger brother, Thomas Marion Carter, left their home in Scioto County, Ohio, and headed west. Starting by steamboat, the two brothers floated down the Ohio River until it joined the Mississippi and then traveled upstream to St. Louis. In St. Louis they found little transportation west, so they walked, hitched rides, and rode horseback to reach St. Joseph, Missouri. There they caught a stagecoach to Council Bluffs, Iowa, riding on top of the stage, with seventeen men and women-a three-day ordeal. On May 14, nineteen days after leaving St. Louis, the brothers crossed the Missouri River and landed on the town site of Omaha, then a community of cotton tents and shanties, where lots were being offered to anyone willing to build on them. They refused this offer and pressed on to their final destination, DeSoto, Washington County, Nebraska Territory, where they found only one completed log house and another under construction. There they homesteaded the town of Blair, Nebraska. For three generations there were Carters in Nebraska, first in

It was the first time I’d seen him in over a week. We both froze. His presence was a physical caress, like a gust of warm air. My eyes pored over him. He had his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and he wore the shirt he’d won at trivia night—he wore the shit out of it too. It was amazing how anything he had on looked sexy on him. The man could wear a burlap sack and look incredible. I knew just looking at it what it would smell like, and I wished I could put my nose to the blue cotton. He’d lost weight. His muscles were more defined. His dimples didn’t show, because he didn’t smile. He looked good—but he looked sad. He’d get over it soon enough. A few babies from now and he wouldn’t even remember me. He didn’t make any move to get out of my path. I looked away and walked past him, and he stood like a statue, eyes on me. Then suddenly a hand shot out and touched my arm. It trailed lightly down my forearm as I walked on, across the top of my hand, over my fingers, and then it was gone. I didn’t jerk away because that would have been acknowledging that he was even there. But the few seconds of contact moved through my whole body. I felt it the rest of the day.

For a second, I’m too shocked to react. I don’t know why; this thing has been lurking between us for weeks, never dormant, always present. But she’s been wary, pushing me away, and I didn’t expect this. My surprise lasts almost no time at all. Just a second’s worth of her lips against mine, her hands, warm against the cool, bare skin of my shoulders. My last intelligent thought is that I’m not letting this go to waste, and then I’m kissing her back. Wrapping my arm around her, bringing her close so that her body lies flush against mine. My free hand tangles in her dark hair, wrapping it around my fingers, following it up to her scalp, the line of her ear. She tastes so good—sweet, like an apple. Her hands slide down my chest, leaving a trail of heat, coming to rest on my hips. Tina shifts her weight and then straddles me. My nerves light up at that, sparking with desire. Fuck, I want her. She’s wearing jeans. I’m wearing jeans. Doesn’t matter that there’s layers of thick denim between us; my body still recognizes the feel of hips pressing against my pelvis. The friction of fabric is rough against my cock, but it’s everything I could have asked for. Her hands rise again, sliding up my chest to rest against my shoulders. She kisses me like she’s been thinking of this as long as I have, like this kiss has been building from the first day we saw each other. She kisses me like there’s no space between us. And there isn’t—not much. I’m not trying to escalate things. I’m not even really thinking about it. But when she smoothes her palm down my chest, my hand creeps up by her side, sliding up until I find the fabric of her bra. Under other circumstances, I might rip it off. But I don’t want to freak her out. I cup her breast in the palm of my hand. She gasps instantly. I was already hard; with that, I find myself turning to stone. Needing, wanting, stone. If I’m stone, she’s fire. Her hips grind into me as my thumb finds her nipple. My lips graze her neck. My tongue darts out and traces down her collarbone. I can’t even remember why I ever thought it was cold in here. It’s a fucking furnace. I pull her close. She’s so fucking responsive. It’s hot beyond belief to watch her go up in flames on top of me, to watch how the smallest touch, the slightest pressure in the right place, gets her going. I don’t have much of a thought process, but it goes something like yes, yes, more now. And she must be thinking the same thing—thank God—because she takes her shirt off. She’s wearing a simple white cotton bra, no padding, and her nipples poke through. I lean forward and catch one in my mouth. She likes it. She grinds against me. Her fingers clench on my shoulders, gripping tight, so fucking tight. I find her other breast—small enough that I can palm it with one hand, so that my fingers can explore every last inch. She’s letting out little moans that seem to go straight to my dick. “You,” I growl out, “have awesome tits.” She freezes on top of me. And then, seconds later, she pulls away. “Don’t.” She reaches for her shirt. “Don’t lie to me. I have nonexistent boobs.” I run my finger over her nipple. “Yeah? What’s this, then?” She shivers. “You have awesome tits,” I repeat. “I love touching them. Licking. Sucking. It makes me fucking wild to be able to drive you crazy like this. Tits are a fucking gift for sexual pleasure. So never tell me you have nonexistent boobs again. I think I just proved otherwise.” She draws in a deep breath. Her eyes meet mine. She looks almost shattered.

For a second, I’m too shocked to react. I don’t know why; this thing has been lurking between us for weeks, never dormant, always present. But she’s been wary, pushing me away, and I didn’t expect this. My surprise lasts almost no time at all. Just a second’s worth of her lips against mine, her hands, warm against the cool, bare skin of my shoulders. My last intelligent thought is that I’m not letting this go to waste, and then I’m kissing her back. Wrapping my arm around her, bringing her close so that her body lies flush against mine. My free hand tangles in her dark hair, wrapping it around my fingers, following it up to her scalp, the line of her ear. She tastes so good—sweet, like an apple. Her hands slide down my chest, leaving a trail of heat, coming to rest on my hips. Tina shifts her weight and then straddles me. My nerves light up at that, sparking with desire. Fuck, I want her. She’s wearing jeans. I’m wearing jeans. Doesn’t matter that there’s layers of thick denim between us; my body still recognizes the feel of hips pressing against my pelvis. The friction of fabric is rough against my cock, but it’s everything I could have asked for. Her hands rise again, sliding up my chest to rest against my shoulders. She kisses me like she’s been thinking of this as long as I have, like this kiss has been building from the first day we saw each other. She kisses me like there’s no space between us. And there isn’t—not much. I’m not trying to escalate things. I’m not even really thinking about it. But when she smoothes her palm down my chest, my hand creeps up by her side, sliding up until I find the fabric of her bra. Under other circumstances, I might rip it off. But I don’t want to freak her out. I cup her breast in the palm of my hand. She gasps instantly. I was already hard; with that, I find myself turning to stone. Needing, wanting, stone. If I’m stone, she’s fire. Her hips grind into me as my thumb finds her nipple. My lips graze her neck. My tongue darts out and traces down her collarbone. I can’t even remember why I ever thought it was cold in here. It’s a fucking furnace. I pull her close. She’s so fucking responsive. It’s hot beyond belief to watch her go up in flames on top of me, to watch how the smallest touch, the slightest pressure in the right place, gets her going. I don’t have much of a thought process, but it goes something like yes, yes, more now. And she must be thinking the same thing—thank God—because she takes her shirt off. She’s wearing a simple white cotton bra, no padding, and her nipples poke through. I lean forward and catch one in my mouth. She likes it. She grinds against me. Her fingers clench on my shoulders, gripping tight, so fucking tight. I find her other breast—small enough that I can palm it with one hand, so that my fingers can explore every last inch. She’s letting out little moans that seem to go straight to my dick. “You,” I growl out, “have awesome tits.” She freezes on top of me. And then, seconds later, she pulls away. “Don’t.” She reaches for her shirt. “Don’t lie to me. I have nonexistent boobs.” I run my finger over her nipple. “Yeah? What’s this, then?” She shivers. “You have awesome tits,” I repeat. “I love touching them. Licking. Sucking. It makes me fucking wild to be able to drive you crazy like this. Tits are a fucking gift for sexual pleasure. So never tell me you have nonexistent boobs again. I think I just proved otherwise.” She draws in a deep breath. Her eyes meet mine. She looks almost shattered.

Monte Carlo was blocking the driveway. The trashcan was still on the curb, so he dragged it up to the garage. The motion lights came on, blinding him. Will held up his hand to block the light as he unlocked the front door. ‘Hey,’ Angie said. She was lying on the couch in front of the television, wearing a pair of cotton boxer shorts and a tank top. She didn’t take her eyes off the set as Will let his gaze travel along her bare leg. He felt the urge to climb onto the couch and go to sleep beside her, or maybe something else. That wasn’t how their relationship worked, though. Angie had never been the nurturing type and Will was pathologically incapable of asking for anything he needed. The first time they had met

Buffalo Bill is important to me as the symbol of the growth of our nation, for his life spanned the settlement of the Great Plains, the Indian Wars, the Gold Rush, the Pony Express, the building of the transcontinental railroad, and the enduring romance of the American frontier-especially the Great Plains. Consider what he witnessed in his lifetime: the invention of the telephone, the transatlantic cable, the automobile, the airplane, and the introduction of modem warfare, with great armies massed against each other, with tanks, armored cars, flame-throwers, and poison gas-a far cry from the days when Cody and the troopers of the Fifth Cavalry rode hell-for-leather across the prairie in pursuit of hostile Indians. Nor, though it is not usually considered a milestone in American history, should we forget Joseph F. Glidden's 1874 invention of barbed wire, which, more than the rifle or the plow, transformed Buffalo Bill's Great Plains by insuring the survival of thousands of family farms, and making possible the growth of enormous-and enormously profitable-cattle ranches. In addition, I feel a personal connection. In April 1855 my great-granduncle Alexander Carter Jr. and his younger brother, Thomas Marion Carter, left their home in Scioto County, Ohio, and headed west. Starting by steamboat, the two brothers floated down the Ohio River until it joined the Mississippi and then traveled upstream to St. Louis. In St. Louis they found little transportation west, so they walked, hitched rides, and rode horseback to reach St. Joseph, Missouri. There they caught a stagecoach to Council Bluffs, Iowa, riding on top of the stage, with seventeen men and women-a three-day ordeal. On May 14, nineteen days after leaving St. Louis, the brothers crossed the Missouri River and landed on the town site of Omaha, then a community of cotton tents and shanties, where lots were being offered to anyone willing to build on them. They refused this offer and pressed on to their final destination, DeSoto, Washington County, Nebraska Territory, where

connection. In April 1855 my great-granduncle Alexander Carter Jr. and his younger brother, Thomas Marion Carter, left their home in Scioto County, Ohio, and headed west. Starting by steamboat, the two brothers floated down the Ohio River until it joined the Mississippi and then traveled upstream to St. Louis. In St. Louis they found little transportation west, so they walked, hitched rides, and rode horseback to reach St. Joseph, Missouri. There they caught a stagecoach to Council Bluffs, Iowa, riding on top of the stage, with seventeen men and women-a three-day ordeal. On May 14, nineteen days after leaving St. Louis, the brothers crossed the Missouri River and landed on the town site of Omaha, then a community of cotton tents and shanties, where lots were being offered to anyone willing to build on them. They refused this offer and pressed on to their final destination, DeSoto, Washington County, Nebraska Territory, where they found only one completed log house and another under construction. There they homesteaded the town of Blair, Nebraska. For three generations there were Carters in Nebraska, first in Blair and then in Omaha, where I was bom. As a native Nebraskan, I feel a particular affinity for William F. Cody, who lived most of his adult life in Nebraska. My father, George W. Carter, could have seen Buffalo Bill's Wild West when it came to Omaha in August 1908. I wish I had known the old scout personally; I am glad I have come to know him better while writing this book. It is also my fond hope that readers will feel as I do, that Buffalo Bill Cody is well worth knowing. Writing a biography of someone long dead is always a challenge. You must come to understand the person, the motivations, the key events that altered the course of history. And there are the records, the letters, the reminiscences of contemporaries. In Bill. Cody's case the documentation is plentiful but sometimes contradictory. Did Buffalo Bill kill Yellow Hand-the "first scalp for Custer"-for example? There are those who say he did and detractors who say he did not. Who are. we . to ' believe? For the most part, if I found two or three accounts that agreed with each other, particularly if there were official government .records supporting him, I felt sure I could give the credit to Cody.

Evening,” Zane said. It was a pretty wordy opening for him. Phoebe debated inviting him in, then decided it would be too much like an offer to sleep with him. Instead of stepping back and pointing to the bed, which was really what she wanted to do, she moved down the hallway, shutting the door behind her, and did her best to look unimpressed. “Hi, Zane. How are the preparations coming?” He gave her one of his grunts, then shrugged. She took that to mean, “Great. And thanks so much for asking.” They weren’t standing all that close, but she was intensely aware of him. Despite the fact that he’d probably been up at dawn and that it was now close to ten, he still smelled good. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat, so she could see his dark hair. Stubble defined his jaw. She wanted to rub her hands over the roughness, then maybe hook her leg around his hip and slide against him like the sex-starved fool she was turning out to be. “Maya’ll be here tomorrow,” he said. “Elaine Mitchell is bringing her out to the ranch with all of the greenhorns in her tourist bus.” She had to clear her throat before speaking. “Maya called me about an hour ago to let me know she’d be getting here about three.” He folded his arms across his broad chest, then leaned sideways against the doorjamb beside her. So very close. Her attention fixed on the strong column of his neck, and a certain spot just behind his jaw that she had a sudden urge to kiss. Would it be warm? Would she feel his pulse against her lips? “She doesn’t need to know what happened,” Zane said. Phoebe couldn’t quite make sense of his words, and he must have read the confusion in her eyes. They were alone, it was night and the man seemed to be looming above her in the hallway. She’d never thought she would enjoy being loomed over, but it was actually very nice. She had the feeling that if she suddenly saw a mouse or something, she could shriek and jump, and he would catch her. Of course he would think she was an idiot, but that was beside the point. “Between us,” he explained. “Outside. She doesn’t need to know about the kiss.” A flood of warmth rushed to her face as she understood that he regretted kissing her. She instinctively stepped backward, only to bump her head against the closed bedroom door. Before she had time to be embarrassed about her lack of grace or sophistication, he groaned, reached for her hips and drew her toward him. “She doesn’t need to know about this one, either.” His lips took hers with a gentle but commanding confidence. Her hands settled on either side of the strong neck she’d been eyeing only seconds ago. His skin was as warm as she’d imagined it would be. The cords of his muscles moved against her fingers as he lifted his head to a better angle. His hands were still, except his thumbs, which brushed her hip bones, slow and steady. His fingers splayed over the narrowest part of her waist and nearly met at the small of her back. She wished she could feel his fingertips against her skin, but her thin cotton top got in the way. He kept her body at a frustrating distance from his. In fact, when she tried to move closer, he held her away even as he continued the kiss. Lips on lips. Hot and yielding. She waited for him to deepen the kiss, but he didn’t. And she couldn’t summon the courage to do it herself. Finally, he drew back and rested his forehead against hers for a long moment. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Try to be a little more resistible. I don’t think I can take a week of this.” Then he turned on his heel, walked to a door at the end of the long hallway, and went inside. She stood in place, her fingers pressed against her still-tingling lips. More than a minute passed before she realized she was smiling.