Descendants Ben Quotes

This is where the whole ape-descended thing reveals its worth, I thought madly. Sucks to be you, quadruped. Opposable thumbs - don't leave home without them.

Unlike everyone else in Israel, she and her descendants cannot become citizens of Israel for 10 generations. (De 23:3-7) What could be worse than a Moabite convert? A widowed Moabite convert! Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 27

put it bluntly, Prince Ben, this blows,” said Genie, who

The creation story itself is designed to demonstrate how the first man, Adam, used his innate power of choice wrongly—and we are all Adam’s descendants.

He had visited his family the evening before, eaten dinner with Renee and Chris, his grandson, in the pretence that everything was ordinary, but in fact to service his end-game ruse. He was going over the mountains, he'd said, to hunt for quail in willow canyons, he had no particular canyons in mind, he intended to return on Thursday evening, though possibly, if the hunting was good, he would return on Friday or Saturday. The lie was open-ended so that his family wouldn't start worrying until he'd been dead for as long as a week - so none would miss or seek him where he rotted silently in the sage. Ben imagined how it might be otherwise, his cancer a pestilent force in their lives, or a pall descending over them like ice, just as they'd begun to emerge from the pall of Rachel's death. The last thing they needed was for Ben to tell hem of his terminal colon cancer.

We should expect nothing less from the language that was originally given by God, to His human family. Hebrew was the method that God chose for mankind to speak to Him, and Him to them. Adam spoke Hebrew—and your Bible confirms this. Everyone who got off the ark spoke one language—Hebrew. Even Abraham spoke Hebrew. Where did Abraham learn to speak Hebrew? Abraham was descended from Noah’s son, Shem. (Ge 11:10-26) Shem’s household was not affected by the later confusion of languages, at Babel. (Ge 11:5-9) To the contrary, Shem was blessed while the rest of Babel was cursed. (Ge 9:26) That is how Abraham retained Hebrew, despite residing in Babylon. So, Shem’s language can be traced back to Adam. (Ge 11:1) And, Shem (Noah’s son) was still alive when Jacob and Esau was 30 years of age. Obviously, Hebrew (the original language) was clearly spoken by Jacob’s sons. (Ge 14:13)

She pushed through the door, closed it softly behind her, and faced Ben. Her lip trembled, and her eyes glistened. She held a piece of paper in her shaking hands. “Mal’s gone back to the Isle,” she said, “for good.

My own walls caved. Tears trickled from the corner of my eyes. Then strong arms enveloped me. “Don’t cry.” Ben’s hot breath on my cheek. “We’ll find her. And the twins. I promise.” “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” I hiccupped. “People always do that.” “I mean it.” Firmly spoken. “I won’t let us fail. Not at this.” The sobs broke free. I burrowed into Ben’s chest, letting everything go. I cried and cried and cried, unthinking, releasing a week’s worth of pent-up emotion in a few hot seconds. Ben held me, silent, softly rubbing my back. A thought floated from somewhere far away. This isn’t so bad. I pushed away, gently breaking Ben’s embrace. Looked into his eyes. His face was a whisper from mine. I thought of Ben’s confession during the hurricane. How he’d wanted to be more than just packmates. Emotions swirled in my chest, making me dizzy. Off balance. “Ben . . . I . . .” “Tory?” My father’s voice sent us flying apart as if electroshocked. Kit was descending the steps, an odd look on his face. “Yes?” Discreetly wiping away tears. I saw a thousand questions fill Kitt’s eyes, but, thankfully, he kept them shelved. “I hate to do this, kiddo, but Whitney’s party starts in an hour. She’s trying to be patient, but, frankly, that isn’t her strong suit.” “No. Right.” I stood, smoothing clothes and hair. “Mustn’t keep the Duchess waiting.” Kit frowned. “Say the word, and we cancel right now. No question.” “No, sorry. I was just being flip. It’s really fine.” Forced smile. “Might be just the thing.” “All right, then. We need to get moving.” Kit glanced at Ben, still sitting on the bench, striving for invisible. A smile quirked my father’s lips. “And you, Mr. Blue? Ready for a good ol’-fashioned backyard barbeque? My daughter will be there.” Ben’s uneasy smile was his only response.

Saying good-bye to Ben is Sarina's least favorite activity. So sad the number of times she's had to do it. Ball games, recitals, the homes of friends, rented shore houses, through car windows after dropping off some forgotten camera to Annie. Goodbye. See you later. Nice seeing you. She has mastered it: A dismissive peck on the cheek. A hug like an afterthought. Telling herself, Do not watch him walk away. Watching him walk away. Watching him drive away. Watching him descend the stairs to the subway. How many times have they said goodbye to each other? Already tonight, twice. He interrupts her before she can get the second goodbye out. "How would you feel," he says, "about missing your train?" Once at the beach, Sarina watched a crane bathing in a gully at dusk. It used its wings to funnel the water over its back, then shook out the excess in a firework of droplets. After several minutes it took off, arcing out over the fretless sea. That felt like this.

We began before words, and we will end beyond them. It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said ‘and’ meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words. If only words were a kind of fluid that collects in the ears, if only they turned into the visible chemical equivalent of their true value, an acid, or something curative – then we might be more careful. Words do collect in us anyway. They collect in the blood, in the soul, and either transform or poison people’s lives. Bitter or thoughtless words poured into the ears of the young have blighted many lives in advance. We all know people whose unhappy lives twist on a set of words uttered to them on a certain unforgotten day at school, in childhood, or at university. We seem to think that words aren’t things. A bump on the head may pass away, but a cutting remark grows with the mind. But then it is possible that we know all too well the awesome power of words – which is why we use them with such deadly and accurate cruelty. We are all wounded inside one way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people. Yes, the highest things are beyond words. That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something higher. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions. When things fall into words they usually descend. Words have an earthly gravity. But the best things in us are those that escape the gravity of our deaths. Art wants to pass into life, to lift it; art wants to enchant, to transform, to make life more meaningful or bearable in its own small and mysterious way. The greatest art was probably born from a profound and terrible silence – a silence out of which the greatest enigmas of our life cry: Why are we here? What is the point of it all? How can we know peace and live in joy? Why be born in order to die? Why this difficult one-way journey between the two mysteries? Out of the wonder and agony of being come these cries and questions and the endless stream of words with which to order human life and quieten the human heart in the midst of our living and our distress. The ages have been inundated with vast oceans of words. We have been virtually drowned in them. Words pour at us from every angle and corner. They have not brought understanding, or peace, or healing, or a sense of self-mastery, nor has the ocean of words given us the feeling that, at least in terms of tranquility, the human spirit is getting better. At best our cry for meaning, for serenity, is answered by a greater silence, the silence that makes us seek higher reconciliation. I think we need more of the wordless in our lives. We need more stillness, more of a sense of wonder, a feeling for the mystery of life. We need more love, more silence, more deep listening, more deep giving.

The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, as old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled. They wrestled with mysteries and transformed them into myths which coded the world and helped the community to live through one more darkness, with eyes wide open and hearts set alight. "I can see them now, the old masters. I can see them standing on the other side of the flames, speaking in the voices of lions, or thunder, or monsters, or heroes, heroines, or the earth, or fire itself -- for they had to contain all voices within them, had to be all things and nothing. They had to have the ability to become lightning, to become a future homeland, to be the dreaded guide to the fabled land where the community will settle and fructify. They had to be able to fight in advance all the demons they would encounter, and summon up all the courage needed on the way, to prophesy about all the requisite qualities that would ensure their arrival at the dreamt-of land. "The old masters had to be able to tell stories that would make sleep possible on those inhuman nights, stories that would counter terror with enchantment, or with a greater terror. I can see them, beyond the flames, telling of a hero's battle with a fabulous beast -- the beast that is in the hero." "The storyteller's art changed through the ages. From battling dread in word and incantations before their people did in reality, they became the repositories of the people's wisdom and follies. Often, conscripted by kings, they became the memory of a people's origins, and carried with them the long line of ancestries and lineages. Most important of all, they were the living libraries, the keepers of legends and lore. They knew the causes and mutations of things, the herbs, trees, plants, cures for diseases, causes for wars, causes of victory, the ways in which victory often precipitates defeat, or defeat victory, the lineages of gods, the rites humans have to perform to the gods. They knew of follies and restitutions, were advocates of new and old ways of being, were custodians of culture, recorders of change." "These old storytellers were the true magicians. They were humanity's truest friends and most reliable guides. Their role was both simple and demanding. They had to go down deep into the seeds of time, into the dreams of their people, into the unconscious, into the uncharted fears, and bring shapes and moods back up into the light. They had to battle with monsters before they told us about them. They had to see clearly." "They risked their sanity and their consciousness in the service of dreaming better futures. They risked madness, or being unmoored in the wild realms of the interspaces, or being devoured by the unexpected demons of the communal imagination." "And I think that now, in our age, in the mid-ocean of our days, with certainties collapsing around us, and with no beliefs by which to steer our way through the dark descending nights ahead -- I think that now we need those fictional old bards and fearless storytellers, those seers. We need their magic, their courage, their love, and their fire more than ever before. It is precisely in a fractured, broken age that we need mystery and a reawoken sense of wonder. We need them to be whole again.

We're all trapped. I'm as trapped as they are. The more Ben thought about it, the more he knew it was true. He hadn't chosen to be born a prince and become a king, just as they hadn't chosen who their parents were. They were prisoners for a crime they themselves had not committed. That was the greater crime, wasn't it? It's not fair. It's not our fault. We have no say in our own lives. We're living in a fairy tale someone else wrote.

Some 480 suspected enemy spies were detained in Britain in the course of the war. Just 77 of these were German. The rest were, in descending order of magnitude, Belgian, French, Norwegian, and Dutch, and then just about every conceivable race and nationality, including several who were stateless. After 1940, very few were British. Of the total intercepted, around a quarter were subsequently used as double agents, of whom perhaps 40 made a significant contribution.

In this first decade of the twentieth century, a large proportion of the Jews living in Palestine were still culturally quite similar to and lived reasonably comfortably alongside city-dwelling Muslims and Christians. They were mostly ultra-Orthodox and non-Zionist, mizrahi (eastern) or Sephardic (descendants of Jews expelled from Spain), urbanites of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean origin who often spoke Arabic or Turkish, even if only as a second or third language. In spite of marked religious distinctions between them and their neighbors, they were not foreigners, nor were they Europeans or settlers: they were, saw themselves, and were seen as Jews who were part of the indigenous Muslim-majority society.6 Moreover, some young European Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Palestine at this time, including such ardent Zionists as David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (one became prime minister and the other the president of Israel), initially sought a measure of integration into the local society. Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi even took Ottoman nationality, studied in Istanbul, and learned Arabic and Turkish.

Samwell Tarly looked at him for a long moment, and his round face seemed to cave in on itself. He sat down on the frost-covered ground and began to cry, huge choking sobs that made his whole body shake. Jon Snow could only stand and watch. Like the snowfall on the barrowlands, it seemed the tears would never end. It was Ghost who knew what to do. Silent as shadow, the pale direwolf moved closer and began to lick the warm tears off Samwell Tarly's face. The fat boy cried out, startled... and somehow, in a heartbeat, his sobs turned to laughter. Jon Snow laughed with him. Afterward they sat on the frozen ground, huddled in their cloaks with Ghost between them. Jon told the story of how he and Robb had found the pups newborn in the late summer snows. It seemed a thousand years ago now. Before long he found himself talking of Winterfell. "Sometimes I dream about it," he said. "I'm walking down this long empty hall. My voice echoes all around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening doors, shouting names. I don't even know who I'm looking for. Most nights it's my father, but sometimes it's Robb instead, or my little sister Arya, or my uncle." The thought of Benjen Stark saddened him; his uncle was still missing. The Old Bear had sent out rangers in search of him. Ser Jaremy Rykker had led two sweeps, and Quorin Halfhand had gone forth from the Shadow Tower, but they'd found nothing aside from a few blazes in the trees that his uncle had left to mark his way. In the stony highlands to the northwest, the marks stopped abruptly and all trace of Ben Stark vanished. "Do you ever find anyone in your dream?" Sam asked. Jon shook his head. "No one. The castle is always empty." He had never told anyone of the dream, and he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet somehow it felt good to talk of it. "Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream." He stopped, frowning, embarrassed. "That's when I always wake." His skin cold and clammy, shivering in the darkness of his cell. Ghost would leap up beside him, his warmth as comforting as daybreak. He would go back to sleep with his face pressed into the direwolf s shaggy white fur.

Lady Eliza.” As the voice washed over her, recognition set in and fury descended. “Who is that man?” Ben asked as he peered around her leg. “Why is he smiling at you?” “He’s an arrogant gentleman who is mistaken to think I welcome his smiles,” Eliza managed to get out. Ben suddenly tugged free from her hand and ran toward the man as fast as his short legs could carry him. Before Eliza had the presence of mind to react, Ben opened his mouth and clamped his teeth firmly onto the leg of Lawrence Moore, the Earl of Wrathshire. A howl of outrage escaped Lawrence’s lips. “Umm, Eliza, don’t you think it might be prudent to fetch Benjamin from that gentleman’s leg?” Agatha asked in alarm. “Give him another moment,” Eliza said even as she strode forward, her temper burning hot when she realized Lawrence was trying to shake Ben off his leg. “Don’t hurt him,” she snarled as she reached them and carefully pried Ben away from Lawrence. “He’s only a baby.” “With teeth like a shark,” Lawrence grouched, leaning down to rub his leg.

Then Ben’s mouth descended again and her thoughts, as fickle as tiny fish, swam out of her head. Gentle brushes of his lips turned into more insistent strokes of his mouth. Sexually frustrated widow or not, there was little doubt the man could kiss her into a melted puddle of goo.

This is where the whole ape-descended thing reveals its worth, I thought madly, sucks to be you, quadruped.

made more than a century ago? Certain individuals feel that the United States cannot be forgiven for slavery until reparations are made to the descendants of slaves. This belief goes back to Mosaic laws requiring anyone who caused harm to someone else to make reparations to that individual or to the family if the

Jake flattened the knife against the wall, filling the crevice. It was all he could do to smother a grin. He didn’t know which he’d enjoyed more, spending a couple hours alone with the kids or finding new ways to provoke Meridith. And to think he was getting paid. Maybe once she went back outside, the kids would come down and pretend to play a game at the kitchen bar while they talked. He could hear Meridith talking to them now, asking them about the game they’d supposedly been playing, acting all interested in their activities. If she really cared about them, she wouldn’t be ripping the kids from Summer Place just so she could go back and live happily ever after with her fiancé. And he was pretty sure that’s what she was planning. Their voices grew louder, then Jake saw them all descending the steps. Noelle led the pack, carrying her Uno cards, followed by the boys, then Meridith. Noelle winked on her way past. Little imp. The kids perched at the bar, and he heard the cards being shuffled. Dipping his knife into the mud, Jake sneaked a peek. Meridith was opening the dishwasher. Great. Ben kept turning to look at him, and Jake discreetly shook his head. Even though Meridith faced the other way, no need to be careless. “Noelle, you haven’t said anything about your uncle lately. He hasn’t e-mailed yet?” He felt three pairs of eyes on his back. He hoped Meridith was shelving something. Jake smoothed the mud and turned to gather more, an excuse to appraise the scene. Meridith’s back was turned. He gave the kids a look. “Uh, no, he hasn’t e-mailed.” “Or called or nothing,” Max added. Noelle silently nudged him, and Max gave an exaggerated shrug. What? “Well, let me know when he does. I don’t want to keep pestering you.” “Sure thing,” Noelle said, dealing the cards. Her eyes flickered toward him. “I was thinking we might go for a bike ride this evening,” Meridith said. “Maybe go up to ’Sconset or into town. You all have bikes, right?” “I forgot to tell you,” Noelle said. “I’m going to Lexi’s tonight. I’m spending the night.” “Who’s Lexi?” “A friend from church. You met her mom last week.” A glass clinked as she placed it in the cupboard. “Noelle, I’m not sure how things were . . . before . . . but you have to ask permission for things like this. I don’t even know Lexi, much less her family.” “I know them.” “Have you spent the night before?” “No, but I’ve been to her house tons of times.” He heard a dishwasher rack rolling in, another rolling out, the dishes rattling. “Why don’t we have her family over for dinner one night this week? I could get to know them, and then we’ll see about overnight plans.” “This is ridiculous. They go to our church, and her mom and my mom were friends!” Noelle cast him a look. See? she said with her eyes. Did Meridith think Eva would jeopardize her daughter’s safety? The woman was neurotic. Jake clamped his teeth together before something slipped out. “Just because they go to church doesn’t necessarily make them safe, Noelle. It wouldn’t be responsible to let you spend the night with people I don’t know. You never know what goes on behind closed doors.” “My mom would let me.” The air seemed to vibrate with tension. Jake realized his knife was still, flattened against the wall, and he reached for more mud. Noelle was glaring at Meridith, who’d turned, wielding a spatula. Was she going to blow it? To her credit, the woman drew a deep breath, holding her temper. “Maybe Lexi could stay all night with you instead.” “Well, wouldn’t that pose a problem for her family, since they don’t know you?” Despite his irritation with Meridith, Jake’s lips twitched. Score one for Noelle. “I suppose that would be up to her family.” He heard Noelle’s cards hit the table, her chair screech across the floor as she stood. “Never mind.” She cast Meridith one final glare, then exited through the back door, closing it with a hearty slam.

After I have demonstrated how ancient Egypt is connected with Mecca, let's look at the phrase 'Sema Tawy': It was not meant originally to be a reference to 'The Two Lands' because Sema as a noun means transcendence/elevation/sky, and as a verb it means to soar/rise/transcend; and Tawy as a noun is constructed from the verb which means to plummet/fall/descend and also to pleat/fold. Therefore, both words are references to the (Upper and/or Lower) Heavens and Earth/Land. However, trying to connect that which is above with that which is below should originally be observed on the Benben itself (aka, pyramidion) for that it resembled the mound that arose from the primordial waters 'Nu'; now one can appreciate with awe the repeating syllable of 'Ben' after I have proven the connection with Mecca, for that the water spring there (which saved the prophet Ishmael and his mother by God's order unto Gabriel to force its water gushing out of Earth to guarantee the survival of Noah's heir upon whom the tidings are yet to come) is called 'ZamZam'. Replacing 'Z' with 'S' takes place in non-Semitic and non pure Semitic tongues alike'; for example it even exists today in Italian when 'S' comes between vowels or before b, d, g, l, m, n, r, and v. In other words, that is a recurring theme which when applied to the word 'Sema', it shows how it is derived from 'Zam' = زم which means: 'tuck,tighten'. Therefore, not only the theme of the black cornerstone along with the Bennu bird were taken from Arabia's heritage, but even the creation story of the pyramidion is built upon that important site in Mecca which is a valley, or better said, a Tawy. Putting the capstone above it to lift it high into the sky thereby (while operating as a portal to the Upper Heavens as I have shown earlier) directly points to the fact that ancient Egypt was yearning to receive Noah's heritage for herself and it devised a whole tradition to reproduce Arabia's theme for that zeal. If 'Sema Tawy' later on came to mean 'Union of the Two Lands', then its context is now clear that: as in Mecca, so is in Egypt. Note that the word 'ZamZam' (bring together, collect) was that action which Ishmael's mother was doing once she saw water coming out of the ground as the sources tell us, for that she was afraid that what happened before her eyes was coincidental rather than being brought up from a well beneath her.

Where did you get the idea to apologize like that?" Ben asked Lonnie, when their new friends were out of earshot. "From my mother, said Lonnie. "I realized not every dispute has to be resolved with a sword. She said that sometimes a good apology can also do the trick.

Ben raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t heard that it was quite that big a failure.

…Ben still being in love with me just seems a little extra…cruel,

He shared his mother's love of reading, and he always had. Ben's fondest memories were of sitting next to Queen Belle at the hearth of her magnificent library's enormous fireplace, reading by her side. He'd been digging into a pile of books dragged from the lower shelves, while hers were always taken from the very highest. It was paradise. Once, when his father had discovered they had spent the entire day hiding in the library and scolded them for skipping out on a royal luncheon banquet 'for the sake of a story', his mother had mounted a passionate defence. "But these aren't just stories," she'd said. "They're whole kingdoms. They're worlds. They're perspectives and opinions you can't offer, from lives you haven't lived. They're more valuable than any gold coin, and more important than any state luncheon. I should hope you, as king, would know that!

Hold on. Whose side are they on?” asked Ben, baffled. The last time he’d seen Harry, the nasty pirate had him roped to a ship mast and was ordering him to walk the plank. The king was not a fan.

When you scale an organization, you will also need to give ground grudgingly. Specialization, organizational structure, and process all complicate things and implementing them will feel like you are moving away from common knowledge and quality communication. It is very much like the offensive lineman taking a step backward. You will lose ground, but you will prevent your company from descending into chaos.

Ben-Jochannan who has studied the polytheistic religions of the Arabian Peninsula points out that before Muhammad, Makkah was a holy site to the worshipers of El'Ka'ba (a goddess). Her worshipers knelt at her symbol, a jet black stone. This jet-black stone was probably a meteorite, and the Hajar Al-Aswad was once known as the 'Old Woman'. Popular tradition relates how Abraham, when he founded the Ka'ba, bought the land from an old woman to which it belonged. She however consented to part with it only on the condition that she and her descendants should have the key of the place in their keeping. Today the stone is served by men called Beni Shaybah (the Sons of the Old Woman).

worst student. I used my magic for selfish reasons. I even cast a spell on Ben because I wasn’t sure if he liked me.

in Auradon,” said Ben. His parents

Theo van Gogh was well known in the Netherlands, both as a descendant of the famous painter who shared his surname and as a critic of Islam even more provocative than Fortuyn.

Mal, imitating Ben’s tone, said, “Or the day that you showed four peoples where the bathrooms are.” Mal’s friends laughed. Ben grinned. “A little bit over the top?” “A little more than a little bit,” said Mal. “Well, so much for my first impression,” said Ben. He laughed.

Horseman is the haunting sequel to the 1820 novel The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and takes place two decades after the events that unfolded in the original. We are introduced to 14-year-old trans boy Bente “Ben” Van Brunt, who has been raised by his idiosyncratic grandparents - lively Brom “Bones” Van Brunt and prim Kristina Van Tassel - in the small town of Sleepy Hollow, New York, where gossip and rumour run rife and people are exceedingly closed-minded. He has lived with them on their farm ever since he was orphaned when his parents, Bendix and Fenna, died in suspicious and enigmatic circumstances. Ben and his only friend, Sander, head into the woodland one Autumn day to play a game known as Sleepy Hollow Boys, but they are both a little startled when they witness a group of men they recognise from the village discussing the headless, handless body of a local boy that has just been found. But this isn't the end; it is only the beginning. From that moment on, Ben feels an otherworldly presence following him wherever he ventures, and one day while scanning his grandfather’s fields he catches a fleeting glimpse of a weird creature seemingly sucking blood from a victim. An evil of an altogether different nature. But Ben knows this is not the elusive Horseman who has been the primary focus of folkloric tales in the area for many years because he can both feel and hear his presence. However, unlike others who fear the Headless Horseman, Ben can hear whispers in the woods at the end of a forbidden path, and he has visions of the Horseman who says he is there to protect him. Ben soon discovers connections between the recent murders and the death of his parents and realises he has been shaded from the truth about them his whole life. Thus begins a journey to unravel the mystery and establish his identity in the process. This is an enthralling and compulsively readable piece of horror fiction building on Irvings’ solid ground. Evoking such feelings as horror, terror, dread and claustrophobic oppressiveness, this tale invites you to immerse yourself in its sinister, creepy and disturbing narrative. The staggering beauty of the remote village location is juxtaposed with the darkness of the demons and devilish spirits that lurk there, and the village residents aren't exactly welcoming to outsiders or accepting of anyone different from their norm. What I love the most is that it is subtle and full of nuance, instead of the usual cheap thrills with which the genre is often pervaded, meaning the feeling of sheer panic creeps up on you when you least expect, and you come to the sudden realisation that the story has managed to get under your skin, into your psyche and even into your dreams (or should that be nightmares?) Published at a time when the nights are closing in and the light diminishes ever more rapidly, not to mention with Halloween around the corner, this is the perfect autumnal read for the spooky season full of both supernatural and real-world horrors. It begins innocuously enough to lull you into a false sense of security but soon becomes bleak and hauntingly atmospheric as well as frightening before descending into true nightmare-inducing territory. A chilling and eerie romp, and a story full of superstition, secrets, folklore and old wives’ tales and with messages about love, loss, belonging, family, grief, being unapologetically you and becoming more accepting and tolerant of those who are different. Highly recommended.

Even American hero Jim Bowie participated in illegal slaving,

Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves, the law was signed in 1807 by slave-owning president Thomas Jefferson.

In the end, Harrington documented more than 130 languages, including Chemehuevi, Mohave, Serrano, Paiute, even K’iche’. Many of them are no longer spoken anywhere on this planet. They are preserved only in Harrington’s careful records and perhaps in the fading childhood memories of the descendants of their last surviving speakers.

creation of Africatown, Alabama, the only community in the nation started by people who were born in Africa.

Introduction to the Types of Mankind.

By the early 1900s, Africatown was the fourth largest community in the nation governed by African-Americans, attracting the attention of Booker T. Washington, Zora Neale Hurston, and others. By the 1950s, there were movie theaters, grocery stores, barbershops, restaurants, and twelve thousand residents.

Today, Africatown is on the brink of disappearing. All the businesses and most of the people are gone. Fewer than two thousand people live in the old neighborhoods. The Meahers, the same family that removed the Clotilda’s passengers from Africa, have in effect continued to oppress their descendents into the twentieth century. Deciding to get out of the house rental business after nearly a century as one of Africatown’s most prominent landlords, the Meaher family suddenly bulldozed hundreds of rental properties they had built, destroying much of Africatown’s housing stock, rendering entire city blocks into vacant lots. They leased or sold their old plantation land surrounding the community for paper mills and other heavy industry, leaving residents saddled with high rates of cancers associated with environmental pollution. Even today, the Meaher Family Land Trust Group seeks to rezone property it owns in Africatown to bring more industry into the community.

Historians estimate the Kingdom of Dahomey may have been responsible for capturing and deporting about 30 percent of all the Africans sold into bondage worldwide between 1600 and the 1880s.

and created the first and only community in the nation started by enslaved Africans. They suffered through racial violence

Historic Sketches of the South,

Confederate Veteran magazine

Most, like Cudjo, had never finished the initiations required in their cultures to pass into adulthood. Their desire to immediately re-create a form of government familiar to all of them—with a respected elder in charge and laws everyone agrees to obey—speaks to their powerful instinct to build a society apart from the Americans, white or Black. For the Africans, reassembling a piece of their homeland by living together as a village was a way to reclaim their identity and power. They created a place beyond the insults and ostracizing of Mobile society. They created a place where they could be and, more important, feel African. Unlike the American Black people, who had been born into slavery and never knew freedom or citizenship, the Africans had only been captive for five years. Most of them were from Bante, a large market town. Their families back home had been sophisticated businesspeople, accustomed to buying, selling, trading, and the experiences of earning money and owning land. In essence, unlike their newly emancipated American counterparts, the Africans already knew how to be free.

One of the Africans’ first communal decisions was to ask Timothy Meaher to give them a piece of his land around Magazine Point so they could build houses. He had plenty of land, they reasoned, some of it purchased with the money they had made for him through five years of free labor. They appointed Cudjo to talk with Meaher. His chance to approach Timothy came when the old captain came strolling through a section of forest where Cudjo was chopping trees for the mill. Meaher sat down on a felled log and started whittling on a stick. The conversation occurred where the elementary school in Africatown stands today.

We call our village Affican Town. We say dat ’cause we want to go back in de Affica soil and we see we cain go. Derefo’ we make Affica where dey fetch us.… We here and we got to stay.

The next purchase was made by a group that had been enslaved on Thomas Buford’s plantation, about a ten-minute walk through the woods from the property bought from Meaher. Included among the group with Charlie Lewis, his wife, and several other Clotilda couples was an American-born couple who had also been enslaved on the Buford plantation. Horace and Matilda Ely were the first non-Africans invited to live in African Town. They would not be the last.

This group split up the seven-acre parcel, which was about a half mile away from the property purchased from Meaher. It has come to be known as “Lewis Quarters,” and the eight neat and tidy homes in the neighborhood are still inhabited today by descendants of the Africans.

As they started buying property and interacting with the government and organizations like the Freedmen’s Bureau, the Africans, like all newly emancipated Black people, had to formalize their names, and come up with both a first and a last name. They needed full names to become U.S. citizens, which they accomplished in 1868, less than three years after they were freed. And they needed names so they could vote, which they tried to do for the first, and perhaps only, time in 1874, in one of the most contentious elections in U.S. history, marred by racial violence across the South. It was a bold and dangerous step, and required much persistence on the part of the Africans. They told the story to Roche in great detail.

Cudjo picked up the last name Lewis at this time. It was not his first choice. At first, he tried to approximate Western-style names by adding his father’s name—O-lo-loo-ay—as his last name. “But it too long for de people to call it. It too crooked lak Kossula. So dey call me Cudjo Lewis,” he told Hurston.

Cudjo is the son which is born on Monday, that’s what this name means in our language. As we break it down though, Cu is death. Jo is liberation. Together it means death is gone, or free from death, or born again. It is possible he said his name was Cu Jo, but there was a problem with the translation a century ago. If I say ‘Cu Jo’ it is different than ‘Cudjo,’ ” Guely explained. “I think maybe he was talking about himself with that name. Kossula in his homeland was dead. But he still lived, in a new life. He was Cu Jo, dead and reborn.” A

The Africans fervently embraced Christianity, but they did not want to attend one of the established churches in the area. Cudjo said they didn’t want to “mixee wid de other folks what laught at us.” Too many of the members of those churches mocked the Africans for the way they spoke and the habits that identified them as foreigners. Instead, the Africans decided to build themselves a church where they could worship without scorn. The first version of the church was a brush arbor in a clearing next to Cudjo’s house. In time, they built a classic wooden church with a steeple and bell and called it the Old Landmark Baptist Church. Today, the sturdy brick edifice of the Union Baptist Church sits on the same spot. About a hundred yards away stands a brick chimney that used to be attached to Gumpa’s house. It is the last structure built by the Africans that is still standing

Meanwhile, the death of Timothy Meaher in 1892 reminded the nation of the story of the Clotilda and kindled new interest into what had become of her passengers. Obituaries in the Mobile Daily Advertiser and Register, the New York Times, and papers all over the nation, described Meaher as “the venerable steamboat man” and “swashbuckling.” But most of the ink in every obituary was spent telling the story of the Clotilda and the creation of Africatown. Many of the obituaries included descriptions of the settlement, such as this from the hometown Daily Advertiser and Register: “They mix very little with other negroes and preserve many of their native customs, using their native language, speaking English with difficulty and being ruled by a queen of their own choosing. They enjoy a high reputation for honesty and industry.

Scott’s eight novels, published under the pen name Sidney McCall, were well received in their day, and her poetry, often centering on flowers, was published in newspapers across the country. The article under consideration here, titled “Affika Town,” was also published widely. It includes the only interview conducted with Noah Hart, who as Timothy Meaher’s houseboy had a front-row seat to the Clotilda story. Scott wrote the breezy feature after her “pretty New York cousin,” came to town and asked to visit “an African Village near here. I have heard it spoken of so often.” It

wealthy Georgian named Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, who bought the Wanderer, a luxury yacht, in New York and outfitted her for slaving. Around the time Meaher made his bet, Lamar was being lionized as a hero in newspapers across the nation as tales of the Africans he smuggled into the country spread. Relying on family money to make his start, Lamar was involved in horse racing, gold mining, road building, and the shipping of cotton. However, it appears he was not particularly good at any of those endeavors, and was repeatedly bailed out of financial disasters by his father, Gazaway. A family history going back three hundred years contains a small mention of Charles, describing him as “a dangerous man, and with all his apparent recklessness and lawlessness, a cautious man, too.” Perhaps not too cautious, as he was known to often resort to violence. While serving as an alderman on the Savannah City Council in 1853, he was arrested for “disorderly conduct and fighting in the streets.” In 1858, he shot out a friend’s eye while attempting to defend his uncle in a fight. Ultimately, he was the last person killed in the Civil War, in a small battle fought in Columbus, Georgia, seven days after the surrender at Appomattox.

Almost all Ashkenazi Jews today are the descendants of 300 Jewish individuals who survived numerous genocides by the crusaders in the Middle Ages. Most Ashkenazi Jews today understand the continuous cycle of violent and often genocidal Jew-hatred faced by their families in Central and Eastern Europe, and why they had to flee this region in the 19th and early 20th centuries even before the Shoah.

Cleon Jones, the baseball hero, became a one-man Habitat for Humanity with his Last Out Society, organizing volunteers to paint houses, mow lawns, and try to restore the community’s curb appeal.

Long before the ship was found, a core group in Africatown worked to promote the Clotilda history, going back decades. For some, the goal was simply to honor their ancestors and the story of their struggle. Others wanted to use that history as a way to draw people in, to resurrect Africatown, to restore the prosperity and vitality they remembered from childhood.

They focused variously on successfully getting Africatown listed on the National Register of Historic Places, restoring the town’s housing stock to attract new residents, creating business connections to Africa, fighting the expansion of heavy industry, working to clean up legacy pollution, restoring the town’s access to the river, and trying to keep county officials from closing Africatown’s aging school.

The Gullah descendants—who were geographically isolated on barrier islands and remained socially isolated as those islands became playgrounds for wealthy beachgoers—have managed to turn their cultural provenance into a tourist draw, with museums, a heritage trail, and a healthy schedule of public events. Many of the people living in or tied to Africatown want to create something similar.

Before the ship was even discovered, Africatown’s activist groups applied for and won a $3.8 million grant from Alabama’s share of the BP oil spill settlement money, to build a new welcome center on the hill above the cemetery, to replace the destroyed mobile home. Then, in the wake of the ship’s discovery, another federal grant was given to create a “heritage center” in the community, which will be the initial facility designed to hold any relics found in the hold of the ship. But neither the welcome center nor the heritage center will be anything close to the scale and power of the new Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. To

You know that saying, the truth will set you free? Well, the ship is the truth. All the Black folks in America got here chained up on ships just like that.

I am a prince of Dahomey. It was my father’s ancestors who did this,” Posset said, explaining that he, like the mayor of Abomey, had royal lineage. “But my mother was Yoruba. Her ancestors came here to this country [America] forcibly, they didn’t choose. And it was my father’s family who sold my mother’s family. This is why I wept. I was insulting those who sold them back home. No money, no articles, no stuff can buy a life, but we sold our people. Brothers sold their brothers and sisters. Fathers sold kids and wife. I will never blame those who came here. I will always beg them for forgiveness.

When people talk about slavery, they think they are talking about Africa,” said Nathalie Blanc Chekete, with Benin’s National Agency for the Promotion of Heritage and the Development of Tourism. “But slavery was something that happened once they reached America or Brazil. What happened in Africa was deportation, where Africans took other Africans away from their lands and families and sent them away forever.

The most insidious of the destructive forces behind Africatown’s demise involves the paper mills, which were at the heart of a billion-dollar lawsuit filed by residents. After seventy years as the main employers of Africatown’s residents, both mills shut down in 2000. Suddenly, nearly two thousand jobs disappeared, along with the perpetual and noxious stench associated with paper making. But the job losses were just a scratch on the surface compared to the real, almost invisible damage the mills had inflicted. To fully understand the story, we must step back in time to the 1980s, to a time when environmental laws in Alabama were essentially meaningless. Today, Alabama ranks last in the nation for what it spends to protect the environment, and is widely regarded by industry trade groups as the most permissive state in the country when it comes to setting or enforcing pollution limits. Back in the eighties and nineties, things were much worse. James Warr, who was the head of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management from its inception in the 1980s until the early 2000s, was opposed to vigorous application of environmental regulations for businesses. He was an odd fit for the head of an environmental agency tasked with regulating polluters, but I believe that is precisely why he was chosen—to ensure that the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act didn’t slow industrial production in Alabama. I was an environment reporter for the Mobile newspaper for eighteen years, beginning in 2000, and had numerous interactions with Warr and his agency. During an interview in 2003, Warr told me that the federal Superfund law was illegal and he had no intention of enforcing it or adding new sites in Alabama to the list.

One hundred percent of the nearly 1 million pounds of chloroform released in Mobile County in 1988 was released in Africatown. Chloroform is classified as a probable carcinogen by the EPA. Chronic long-term exposure, such as one would experience living in the shadow of two paper mills, can cause liver disease and affect the central nervous system. One hundred percent of the chlorine dioxide in the county was released in Africatown. Nearly all of the 1.8 million pounds of hydrochloric acid released in the county in 1988 was released in Africatown. Nearly all of the acetone, methanol, xylene, chlorine, methyl ethyl ketone, and toluene released in the county were released in Africatown. The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, fertility problems, kidney and liver damage, nose and throat irritation, asthma, and loss of hearing and color vision.

Compounding matters was Mobile’s four-hundred-year history as a seaport. More than 280 shipwrecks have been located in Mobile Bay and the swamp immediately to the north. Most remain unidentified. Some of them are ships that sank as early as the 1600s. Others are ships or barges that were intentionally sunk after they’d become too worn-out to sail. Wooden ships like the Clotilda had a fairly short working life of about twenty-five years. Built before the revolution in construction techniques brought on by the mass production of screws, nuts, and bolts in the 1870s and ’80s, the wooden sailing vessels of the Clotilda era were held together with nothing but giant nails. Decades at sea, with the constant stress of rising and falling waves, gradually loosened them, making the ships leakier and leakier, until eventually they were no longer seaworthy. As a result, several bayous around Mobile Bay are well-known “ship graveyards” where old vessels were beached or sunk to get them out of the way of the shipping channels and rivers.

Saving America’s Amazon,

The French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, and English all built forts in Ouidah specifically to enable the slave trade.

Instead of coal, Meaher burned huge slabs of bacon as fuel. Bacon burns hotter than coal, leading to a significant increase in speed.

For years, the community couldn’t even get a traffic light installed on the highway so they could get from the church to the cemetery on the other side for funerals. The highway made Africatown a broken community, separating its three main neighborhoods from each other for the first time since the town was founded.

In 1927, the school started by the Africans, then known as the “Plateau Normal and Industrial Institute for the Education of the Head, Heart and Hands of the Colored Youth,” received a grant from the Rosenwald Fund to build a new, much larger school, with ten classrooms and living quarters for ten teachers. The fund was the brainchild of Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, the CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Co. The pair met in Chicago in 1911, after Rosenwald attended a speech by Washington. Rosenwald, whose fortune would have ranked him as a billionaire by today’s standards, was looking for a philanthropic cause to answer what he believed were “the special duties that capitalists and men of wealth owed to society.” Rosenwald provided an endowment for Washington’s Tuskegee Institute and embraced Washington’s dream of funding schools across the South to teach what the educator described as “industrial education.

The money allowed the school to significantly expand and saw it renamed Mobile County Training School.

Since his conversion to Christianity in 1869, Cudjo would point to the sky and say that when he died, “I want to go yonder.” His last words to Roche as she left his house for the final time were, “When they tell you Cudjo is dead say ‘No! Cudjo is not dead—he has gone to heaven to rest.’ ” The last of the Africatown settlers went yonder on July 26, 1935. He was buried in the hillside graveyard just beyond his front door, next to his wife, children, and shipmates.

Two of Africatown’s sons, Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee, were stars on the World Series–winning New York Mets of 1969 known as the “Miracle Mets.” Cleon made the game-winning catch that clinched the championship for New York. All of Africatown crowded around radios during the game and erupted in cheers when they heard their hometown hero had won the game.

After 1965, people in Africatown could shop anywhere they wanted. Cars had become common in the community, and the larger markets and department stores of Mobile’s downtown shopping district were just a three-minute ride away. Likewise, desegregation meant African-Americans were no longer confined to living near the few schools available to the Black population. People started moving out, to other parts of Mobile, or to several small African-American towns that surround Africatown, places where you couldn’t smell the overpowering stench from the paper mills. Contributing to the problem was a sudden dearth of housing when the Meaher clan decided to get out of the house rental business in 1967, after building more than five hundred rental houses in Africatown since the 1880s. Residents say the family simply moved people out and bulldozed the houses, destroying much of the area’s longtime housing stock.

Oh Lor’! Lor’! De wife she de eyes to de man’s soul. How kin I see now, when I ain’ gottee de eyes no mo’?

Because of our current representatives’ corruption, many Americans no longer trust the federal government. Some refuse to analyze the reasons for this distrust and prefer to think about other things, like sports, entertainment, and lifestyles of the rich and famous. We have the choice of continuing to be distracted by trivialities or of faithfully watching for and responding to abuse of the Constitution. If we choose the former option, our descendants will be faced with much less pleasant options.

For those who don’t: I’m the daughter of the wicked sorceress Maleficent—but hey, just ’cause I’m the spawn of a vile villain, it doesn’t mean I’m following in Mom’s fiery footsteps. Well, I guess tiny footsteps is more fitting, because Mom’s been a little lizard ever since she went all fire-breathing dragon on me and my friends and shrank to the size of the love in her heart. In case you missed that: not a lot of love. Big shock. Me and my friends realized that we didn’t have to be like our villain parents. We chose to be good over evil (actual big shock), and King Ben and I had our happily ever after.

On the green lawn, Ben led a choir of students in singing “Be Our Guest” as a way to kick off the event. A student banner read FAMILY DAY! GOODNESS DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER. Some students and their families danced, while others enjoyed plates of every type of delicious food imaginable from various tables and tents.