Dinners With Ruth Quotes

Anyone who thinks they're too grown up or too sophisticated to eat caramel corn, is not invited to my house for dinner

When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me. He was courteous and polite; he enjoyed being at home, but in the fantasy of his home I was not the one who sat opposite him and laughed at his jokes. He didn't want to change anything; he liked his life. The only thing he wanted to change was me. It would have been better if he had hated me, or if he had abused me, or if he had packed his new suitcases and left. As it was he continued to put his arm round me and talk about being a new wall to replace the rotten fence that divided our garden from his vegetable patch. I knew he would never leave our house. He had worked for it. Day by day I felt myself disappearing. For my husband I was no longer a reality, I was one of the things around him. I was the fence which needed to be replaced. I watched myself in the mirror and saw that I was mo longer vivid and exciting. I was worn and gray like an old sweater you can't throw out but won't put on. He admitted he was in love with her, but he said he loved me. Translated, that means, I want everything. Translated, that means, I don't want to hurt you yet. Translated, that means, I don't know what to do, give me time. Why, why should I give you time? What time are you giving me? I am in a cell waiting to be called for execution. I loved him and I was in love with him. I didn't use language to make a war-zone of my heart. 'You're so simple and good,' he said, brushing the hair from my face. He meant, Your emotions are not complex like mine. My dilemma is poetic. But there was no dilemma. He no longer wanted me, but he wanted our life Eventually, when he had been away with her for a few days and returned restless and conciliatory, I decided not to wait in my cell any longer. I went to where he was sleeping in another room and I asked him to leave. Very patiently he asked me to remember that the house was his home, that he couldn't be expected to make himself homeless because he was in love. 'Medea did,' I said, 'and Romeo and Juliet and Cressida, and Ruth in the Bible.' He asked me to shut up. He wasn't a hero. 'Then why should I be a heroine?' He didn't answer, he plucked at the blanket. I considered my choices. I could stay and be unhappy and humiliated. I could leave and be unhappy and dignified. I could Beg him to touch me again. I could live in hope and die of bitterness. I took some things and left. It wasn't easy, it was my home too. I hear he's replaced the back fence.

Ah, God, it's barbaric, however you look at it,' he told Ruth. 'What, cremation?' she asked. 'Death.

Losing your temper is not good for dealing with people, and it’s not good for you. The person who feels the worst afterwards is usually you.

It is possible to be a great friend by doing some things, but not attempting to do everything.

revolutionary it was in 1971. At that time, women had very few rights beyond the right to vote.

We think of all those we have loved and still love, and it is the eternalness of that love that brings them to this place at this time. Our remembrances do not detract from our joy but reinforce it.

poet Mary Elizabeth Frye’s words: Do not stand there at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow; I am the diamond glints on the snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain; I am the gentle autumn’s rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds encircled flight. I am the soft star that shines at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there; I did not die.

You wonder about me. I wonder about you. Who are you and what are you doing? Are you in a New York subway car hanging from a strap, or soaking in your hot tub in Sunnyvale? Are you sunbathing on a sandy beach in Phuket, or having your toenails buffed in Brighton? Are you a male or a female or somewhat in between? Is your girlfriend cooking you a yummy dinner, or are you eating cold Chinese noodles from a box? Are you curled up with your back turned coldly toward your snoring wife, or are you eagerly waiting for your beautiful lover to finish his bath so you can make passionate love to him? Do you have a cat and is she sitting on your lap? Does her forehead smell like cedar trees and fresh sweet air?

if there are no demonstrations of love between two people, there is no actual love. If one half of a couple never wants to hold hands, never wants to cuddle, won’t lift a finger to assist his or her partner in any way, forgets every important date, or barely says two words over dinner, then I say that person is saying loud and clear that he or she doesn’t have any love in his or her heart.

We, most of us, may be born with an innate desire for friendship, companionship, and love, but being good at any of those things takes work. There is no quick method for learning how to do it right. Floyd ultimately became a very wonderful and supportive husband No marriage is perfect; it’s a question of whether the marriage matters to you enough to be able to make adjustments and repairs—and we did that.

Mary Elizabeth Frye’s words: Do not stand there at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow; I am the diamond glints on the snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain; I am the gentle autumn’s rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds encircled flight. I am the soft star that shines at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there; I did not die.

Dad would really have loved this toilet. Sitting there, thinking of the great white about to take a bite out of my skinny white bottom, I think of a new word, or at least a new way of thinking about an old one. Squaring. As in “I just squared one.” Pretty much the same as “going number two” or “dropping a deuce” except even more scientific. It’s going potty to the power of two. Plus it’s more appropriate for dinner conversation than “making fudge nuggets” or “birthing a Baby Ruth.

One evening they stopped for dinner at the Great Wall of China restaurant in Harlem, Montana. The restaurant was empty and closing early. It was an extra security precaution, their waitress explained, when she brought their bill. “You never know who they’re gonna target next,” she said. “You think Arab terrorists will attack us here in Harlem, Montana?” Oliver asked. Harlem, Montana, had a population of just under 850. It was two thousand miles from New York City, and surrounded by desert. The waitress, who looked like she might be Mexican, shook her head. “We’re not taking any chances,” she said. Later, at the Super 8 motel, they watched a news report about the spate of hate crimes against Muslim Americans being committed across the country. “You know, I think I was wrong,” Oliver said. “About what?” “Our waitress. I don’t think it was Arab terrorists she was afraid of.

He sailed off again through the corridors. He must tell Gina he had invited little Jacoby to dinner and fix the exact time. Sister Helene would have to remind him. If possible, it had better be an evening when Ruth was free too. Why did he suddenly think about his daughter? Obviously in connection with little Jacoby. But why? Perhaps it was the earnestness, one really had to say, the frenzy, with which both pursued their aims. He, Edgar, smiled at Ruth’s Zionism. He ought to spend more time with her. Reason, reason, my daughter. Get thee not to a nunnery, Ophelia. It was a pity that the simplest things were the most difficult to understand. He was a German doctor, a German scientist. German medicine and Jewish medicine did not exist, the only thing that existed was science. He knew it, Jacoby knew it, old Lorenz knew it. But apparently Ruth did not know it, and certain others who mattered were still less aware of it. He thought with some uneasiness of the conference he was going to. In the end, little Jacoby would have to be sent to Palestine, he thought, smiling.

One by one, in a methodical clockwise direction, each person gave their individual reaction to my playing of the song. The first person said he was soothed by the melody, the second that she was inspired by the words. The third person said she had felt touched as it reminded her of someone precious that she loved. And on around it went, each person telling of a different need that was met, or another way he had been touched by my song. Dr. Rosenberg said he had felt inspired because I had mucked up the song a little in one place and had kept playing and finished it. When everyone had shared, strong feelings began to pour into my body and up into my throat. Gratitude and relief? No. Joy? No. Sorrow. Great sorrow, for all the years that I had not been playing. For all the people that could have been touched or inspired, had I given them the chance. For all the attention and connection I could have received but did not. As the sorrow eventually subsided like a passing rainstorm, warm powerful rays of sunny resolution began to radiate in my heart. It was a resolution and a clarity of commitment to myself to “perfect my selfishness.” In a moment, I saw how playing the miserable martyr’s role, sacrificing my passion to avoid disturbing other people, had too high a price. It also ripped other people off, by denying them what I had to give them. I swore then and there that I was not going to do that to me again. I Don’t Want To Do That To Me Again by Ruth Bebermeyer No use wasting life saying that I should have known better. No use wasting time regretting what has been. I just know I felt uneasy and I couldn’t settle down, Like my picture couldn’t fit into that frame. And I don’t, don’t want to do that to me again. No use wishing now that I had not had to learn this way. No use wasting time regretting what has been. I just know I wasn’t easy and I wasn’t who I am, But I guess I had to do it to see plain. And I don’t want to do that to me again. I just want to go on singing the same tune I’m playing. I want my self and my doing all the same. And I want to walk in rhythm to the beat of my own soul. When I’m out of step with me I’m into pain. And I don’t don’t want to do that to me again. The Treasure of Transparency Recently I held a potluck dinner at my house for a group of friends, most of whom had been learning and practicing the techniques of Nonviolent Communication. After we had finished eating, a woman asked if the group would like to hear a story she wrote. At first no one answered, but then a couple of people asked how long the story was and whether the essence of it could just be told to them. Finally an agreement was reached about how the gift of the story could be given so that the group’s needs for connecting with each other and relaxing at the party could also be met. I was struck by how rare it is in this culture for individuals

RBG firmly believed that for women to be equal, men had to be free. Decades later, an unnamed guest at a dinner party told the New York Times that RBG had fiercely interrupted another guest who mentioned she’d worked on behalf of “women’s liberation.” “She turned on him and said, ‘It is not women’s liberation; it is women’s and men’s liberation.’ I’d never seen her exercise such strength and vehemence.

RBG’s image as a moderate was clinched in March 1993, in a speech she gave at New York University known as the Madison Lecture. Sweeping judicial opinions, she told the audience, packed with many of her old New York friends, were counterproductive. Popular movements and legislatures had to first spur social change, or else there would be a backlash to the courts stepping in. As case in point, RBG chose an opinion that was very personal to plenty of people listening: Roe v. Wade. The right had been aiming to overturn Roe for decades, and they’d gotten very close only months before the speech with Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and Sandra Day O’Connor had instead brokered a compromise, allowing states to put restrictions on abortion as long as they didn’t pose an “undue burden” on women—or ban it before viability. Neither side was thrilled, but Roe was safe, at least for the moment. Just as feminists had caught their breath, RBG declared that Roe itself was the problem. If only the court had acted more slowly, RBG said, and cut down one state law at a time the way she had gotten them to do with the jury and benefit cases. The justices could have been persuaded to build an architecture of women’s equality that could house reproductive freedom. She said the very boldness of Roe, striking down all abortion bans until viability, had “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.” This analysis remains controversial among historians, who say the political process of abortion access had stalled before Roe. Meanwhile, the record shows that there was no overnight eruption after Roe. In 1975, two years after the decision, no senator asked Supreme Court nominee John Paul Stevens about abortion. But Republicans, some of whom had been pro-choice, soon learned that being the anti-abortion party promised gains. And even if the court had taken another path, women’s sexual liberation and autonomy might have still been profoundly unsettling. Still, RBG stuck to her guns, in the firm belief that lasting change is incremental. For the feminists and lawyers listening to her Madison Lecture, RBG’s argument felt like a betrayal. At dinner after the lecture, Burt Neuborne remembers, other feminists tore into their old friend. “They felt that Roe was so precarious, they were worried such an expression from Ruth would lead to it being overturned,” he recalls. Not long afterward, when New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested to Clinton that RBG be elevated to the Supreme Court, the president responded, “The women are against her.” Ultimately, Erwin Griswold’s speech, with its comparison to Thurgood Marshall, helped convince Clinton otherwise. It was almost enough for RBG to forgive Griswold for everything else.

The meal began with pickled squid, oyster shooters, marinated anchovies, and scungilli salad. Then Rosalie set an enormous bowl of pasta con le vongole in front of Sal, who ladled it out, talking the entire time. The pasta was followed by huge platters of scampi, which we passed around. It was almost eleven when Rosalie set three enormous stuffed turbots on the table, and it was near midnight when she appeared with a plate of warm sugar-dusted sfinge. "So our first taste of the New Year will be sweet," Sal whispered in my ear.

Leaving the Connecticut River March 8, 1704 Temperature 40 degrees The only good thing about this rough land was firewood. No human had ever gathered a fallen branch here. So they could stay warm, but they had nothing to cook over the flames. It seemed to Eben the Indians ought to worry more about this than they did. They spent every daylight hour looking for game, found nothing and did not mention it. Instead, they sat by the fire, smoked and told war stories. It was the captives who discussed food, describing meals they had had a month ago or hoped to have in the future. They discussed pancakes, maple syrup and butter. Stew and biscuits and apple pie. Ruth said to Mercy, “You and Eben and Joseph are so proud of your savage vocabulary. Tell them they’re Indians, they’re supposed to know how to find deer.” “There aren’t any deer,” said Joseph. Ruth snorted. “We just have stupid Indians.” Suddenly the whole thing seemed hilarious to Mercy: a little circle of starving white children, crouching in the snow, and a little circle of apparently not starving Indian men, sitting in the snow, all of them surrounded by hundreds of miles of trees, while Ruth spat fire. “Ruth,” said Mercy, “do you know what your name means?” “My name is Ruth.” “Your name is Mahakemo,” Mercy told her. “And it means ‘Fire Eats Her’.” Mercy began to laugh, and Joseph and Eben and Sarah laughed with her. Even Eliza looked interested, but Ruth, furious to find that the Indians were laughing at her instead of being respectful of her, began throwing things at Mercy. Mercy rolled out of range while Ruth pelted her with Joseph’s hat and Tannhahorens’s mittens and then with snowballs; finding them too soft, Ruth grabbed her Indians powder horn. Mercy jumped up and ran away from Ruth and out into the snow, and in front of her were a pair of yellow eyes. The eyes were level with Mercy’s waist. They were not human eyes. No deer for humans also meant no deer for wolves. Mercy meant to scream, but Tannhahorens got there first, in the form of a bullet. Wolf for dinner. It turned out that the English could eat anything if they were hungry enough.

..."You're getting a sort of vaccination this year. If you don't know it now, you'll find it out some day. But it's going to keep you from dying of a terrible disease." Lucinda was filled with amazement… "What is the disease, Uncle Earle?" she asked solemnly. "Snobbishness-priggishness-the Social Register. I don't care a damn what you call it, Snoodie, as long as you get your antitoxin before the disease gets you.

DES, or diethylstilbestrol, is a man-made estrogen that was first synthesized in 1938. Soon afterward, a professor of poultry husbandry at the University of California discovered that if you inject DES into male chickens, it chemically castrates them. Instant capons. The males develop female characteristics—plump breasts and succulent meats—desirable assets for one’s dinner. After that, subcutaneous DES implants became pretty much de rigueur in the poultry industry, at least until 1959, when the FDA banned them. Apparently, someone discovered that dogs and males from low-income families in the South were developing signs of feminization after eating cheap chicken parts and wastes from processing plants, which is exactly what happened to Mr. Purcell. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was forced to buy about ten million dollars’ worth of contaminated chicken to get it off the market. But by then DES was also being widely used in beef production, and oddly enough, the FDA did nothing to stop that. Here is a brief recap:

For the second time since she left Japan, she shivered with excitement. She’d felt it at the dinner table at Thanksgiving, and now, again, even stronger—as if somehow she’d been absorbed into a massive body that had taken over the functions of her own, and now it was infusing her small heart with the superabundance of its feeling, teaching her taut belly to swell, stretching her rib cage, and pumping spurts of happy life into her fetus.

She'd make all the ingredients individually for her kimchi-jjigae," he went on. "Anchovy stock. Her own kimchi, which made the cellar smell like garlic and red pepper all the time. The pork shoulder simmering away. And when she'd mix it all together..." He trailed off, tipping his head back against the seat. It was the first movement he'd made over the course of his speaking; his hands rested still by his sides. "It was everything. Salty, sour, briny, rich, and just a tiny bit sweet from the sesame oil. I've been trying to make it for years, and mine has never turned out like hers." My anxiety manifestation popped up out of nowhere, hovering invisibly over one off Luke's shoulders. The boy doesn't know that the secret ingredient in every grandma's dish is love. He needs some more love in his life, said Grandma Ruth, eyeing me beadily. Maybe yours. Is he Jewish? I shook my head, banishing her back to the ether. "I get the feeling," I said. "I can make a mean matzah ball soup, with truffles and homemade broth boiled for hours from the most expensive free-range chickens, and somehow it never tastes as good as the soup my grandma would whip up out of canned broth and frozen vegetables." Damn straight, Grandma Ruth said smugly. Didn't I just banish you? I thought, but it was no use. "So is that the best thing you've ever eaten?" Luke asked. "Your grandma's matzah ball soup?" I shook my head. I opened my mouth, about to tell him about Julie Chee's grilled cheese with kimchi and bacon and how it hadn't just tasted of tart, sour kimchi and crunchy, smoky bacon and rich, melted cheese but also belonging and bedazzlement and all these feelings that didn't have names, like the dizzy, accomplished feeling you'd get after a Saturday night dinner rush when you were a little drunk but not a lot drunk because you had to wake up in time for Sunday brunch service, but then everything that happened with Derek and the Green Onion kind of changed how I felt about it. Painted over it with colors just a tiny bit off. So instead I told him about a meal I'd had in Lima, Peru, after backpacking up and down Machu Picchu. "Olive tofu with octopus, which you wouldn't think to put together, or at least I wouldn't have," I said. The olive tofu had been soft and almost impossibly creamy, tasting cleanly of olives, and the octopus had been meaty and crispy charred on the outside, soft on the inside.

She had already tied on her apron and started tapping notes into her phone as Daisy laid out the ingredients: a whole kosher chicken; a bottle of olive oil, a pound of butter, a lemon. Onions, garlic, shallots, shiitake mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, and a container of arborio rice; fresh rosemary and thyme, a bag of carrots, a half-pound of asparagus, and a half-pound of sugar snap peas. That was for dinner. For pantry staples, she'd gotten flour, white and brown sugar, kosher salt and Maldon salt, pepper, chili, and paprika; for the refrigerator: milk, eggs, and half-and-half, and, for a housewarming gift, a copy of Ruth Reichl's My Kitchen Year and two quarts of her own homemade chicken stock.

We’re talking about an effect upon millions of people and the way they live their everyday life and the way they’re treated in their neighborhood, in their schools, in their jobs,” he said. “If you are a conservative, how could you be against a relationship in which people who love one another, want to publicly state their vows… and engage in a household in which they are committed

In the United States, banking and credit rules for women were not that different from the rules of conservatorship or guardianship that had prevailed in Victorian England; women almost universally needed the participation or the guarantee of a man. Not only that, but almost every time a woman brought a legal challenge—asking to be admitted to the bar in the state of Illinois, or to work as a bartender, or to be paid minimum wage, or to prevent her work hours from being restricted—the courts ruled against her, declaring that a woman’s primary job is to take care of the children and make hearth and home happy and safe. So, for a case to directly ask the questions why and on what grounds? was truly revolutionary.

In our current climate, could a Ruth and Nino, a Nina and Nino, or a Nina and Ted friendship ever take root and thrive? And what does the answer to that question mean for all of us?

She would make a comment, and it would go entirely unremarked upon. Fifteen minutes later, a male justice would make the same point, and the response around the table would be “That’s a good idea.” The day-to-day dismissal of a smart woman’s voice—which so many women have experienced—happened even on the Supreme Court.

it is quite an amazing thing to learn more and more about a ‘great man’ and to find that he really is great, that his beliefs are genuine, that his work is his life, that his soul is a gentle one, and that he has a rare gift of perception and tolerance of others, even when their beliefs threaten his.

Her memories were also strongly shaped by World War II, “the overwhelming influence,” she called it, adding, “Unlike our recent wars, there was a right side and a wrong side.

friendship is precious, that it involves showing up, that it involves supporting and helping, that it is not always about the grand gesture, but rather about the small one. It is about extending the invitation, making space at the table, picking up the phone, and also remembering.

My father came to the United States on an artist’s visa in 1938 and stayed. He was able to save his mother by getting her passage on the last ship to sail from Portugal for the United States before World War II began. Her passport was signed by Aristides De Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese diplomat who saved thousands of European Jews.

As one of nine women in her class at Harvard, she was invited to a dinner at the home of the law school dean, where he asked each of the female students to explain why they were taking a slot from a deserving man.

In those days, the Supreme Court docket was twice as big as it is now; the Court took on between 140 and 160 cases each term.

I thought the Fourteenth Amendment applied to African Americans after the Civil War. How does it apply to women? Ruth spent an hour walking me through her argument, that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection of the law to all persons, and “women are persons,” as she put it.

The argument may seem obvious today, to the point where it is hard to conceive of how revolutionary it was in 1971. At that time, women had very few rights beyond the right to vote. They could be fired for being pregnant. They often could not apply for credit cards in their own names—only in their husbands’ names; a woman generally could not get a mortgage by herself. Even if she was married, banks routinely refused to count her income.

In 1971, the Supreme Court applied two tests for evaluating whether a law violated the equal protection clause: “rational basis” and “strict scrutiny.” Rational basis was a much lower threshold, and most laws easily survived a challenge because the only justification required was that the law represented a rational state interest. Applying that test was how the laws that treated men and women differently had survived. But “strict scrutiny” was a much higher standard, used only for racial minorities, and it required, among other things, that the state prove that it had a compelling interest for treating people differently. The brief that Ruth wrote in support of Sally Reed’s claim argued that laws that discriminated on the basis of sex should also be subject to strict judicial scrutiny, because, like race, sex is an inborn characteristic, and women, like racial minorities, had been historically discriminated against.

The court did not adopt an “intermediate scrutiny” test until five years later, in another case that Ruth argued and won. The test would be strengthened further in a 1982 opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

All of them have taught me that friendship is precious, that it involves showing up, that it involves supporting and helping, that it is not always about the grand gesture, but rather about the small one.

You made it. Not exactly magisterial, Shakespearean prose, but words to live by, from beginning to end.

Whatever happens I’m determined no one is taking Duchess away from Ellen. Dinner is subdued. The boys understand what’s going on and are as determined as I am to keep Duchess. Worry clouds Mom’s face even though she’s trying to be brave.

Scott! This is the queerest bag of wheat I've ever seen! It's all lumpy-like, but the label says it's to go to Cranberry." The other sailors looked at the bag too, and my father, who was in the bag, of course, tried even harder to look like a bag of wheat. Then another sailor felt the bag and he just happened to get hold of my father's elbow. "I know what this is," he said. "This is a bag of dried corn on the cob," and he dumped my father into the big net along with the bags of wheat. This all happened in the late afternoon, so late that the merchant in Cranberry who had ordered the wheat didn't count his bags until the next morning. (He was a very punctual man, and never late for dinner.) The sailors told the captain, and the captain wrote down on a piece of paper, that they had delivered one hundred and sixty bags

You know, Nina, you can’t be there all the time. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for him. You need to go there, to the hospital. You need to make sure that he’s being properly cared for. You need to make your presence known to him. But you should only go for an hour. If you spend your whole day there, every day, you will lose who you are.” She paused and added, “He has to be able to come home, and you have to be able to really take care of him when he comes home, and you won’t be able to do that if you let yourself get sucked into this. You need to go back to work. It may not be your best work, but it will be good enough.” Of

begin to see the occasional recipe that could have been produced for dinner in the cottages of labourers. My personal favourite is the one entitled ‘To Frye Beanes’. First soak your beans, then boil them until they are cooked through. Next put a large lump of butter into a frying pan, along with two or three finely chopped onions, add the beans and fry it all together until it begins to brown, then sprinkle on a little salt and serve. Another recipe book adds large handfuls of chopped parsley towards the end of the cooking, which I think is an improvement.

You know, Nina, you can’t be there all the time. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for him. You need to go there, to the hospital. You need to make sure that he’s being properly cared for. You need to make your presence known to him. But you should only go for an hour. If you spend your whole day there, every day, you will lose who you are.” She paused and added, “He has to be able to come home, and you have to be able to really take care of him when he comes home, and you won’t be able to do that if you let yourself get sucked into this.

Widowhood after a long, debilitating disease is often a bit different. Perhaps the only good thing about having someone you’ve loved very dearly die after an extended illness is that you are ready for the death.

Even if your spouse has been sick for a very long time, as was true for both David and me, you find yourself realizing that a whole part of you is gone.

The justices could get away with this because they were not covered by the nation’s civil rights laws and the justices led lives much more remote from the public than they do today.

Confirmation hearings were not televised.

But there’s another facet of these relationships, on all sides, that no one should confuse: objectivity and fairness are not the same thing. Nobody is purely objective. It is not possible. Justice Powell was shaped by what he had seen in World War II and by the personal devastation of his young messenger in Richmond. To pretend otherwise would be simply to pretend. What all of us are capable of is fairness.

Women’s groups, however, continued to be hesitant about Ruth, in large part because of those lectures about Roe, where she had suggested the Court had gone too far too fast, and that the legal underpinning of the decision should have been more focused on the idea that laws forbidding abortion discriminate against women, denying them the equal protection of the law and their personal autonomy.

With Landsberg, Vivekananda had resumed vegetarianism and was happy to eat simply after the dinner parties and receptions. But Landsberg could not appreciate how cooking could be in some sense sacred, not least because Vivekananda was also a messy cook and Landsberg hated having to clean up after him: 'I regarded it as unworthy of men of spiritual aspirations to waste the greatest part of their time with thinking and speaking of eating, preparing and cooking the food, and washing dishes, while the frugal meals required by a Yogi could be had quicker and cheaper in any restaurant .... I only wonder that this 'doing our own cooking' suggested by some evil demon, did not land me in the lunatic asylum.

Brennan credited his time in the army with shaping his deep suspicion of government. While he was fighting at the front, his draft board sent a letter to his home stating he would be fined and imprisoned if he did not turn up for his physical. “Just goes to show how much the government knows about what’s going on,” he said. On April 4, 1919, Walter Brennan was one of six thousand returning troops that Governor Calvin Coolidge saluted as their ship docked. Six days later, while the demobbed Brennan was marching in a Swampscott parade, he spotted Ruth Wells, the daughter Lynn’s local sheriff, crossing the street. Walter’s and Ruth’s families knew one another, but Walter, three years older than Ruth, had not paid that much attention to her until he went away to war and began writing letters to her. When Ruth was six, she broke a bottle belonging to Walter’s mother, and nine-year-old Walter teased her to tears by telling her, “she’d get it when they got home.” During the war, she attended Simmons College, graduating in 1919 from a three-year program in secretarial studies, having taken courses not only in shorthand, typing, business practices, commercial law, and economics, but also in English, History, French, and German. Her yearbook entry in The Microcosm gives the impression of a lively and sociable personality with interests in the theater, parties, and dances. She was not one to sulk or spend much time worrying. “He kind of discovered you,” Ralph Edwards said to Ruth. “Oh, I did that,” she explained. “We were invited by Walter’s mother to dinner, my mother and my two sisters . . . Walter

Garlic Chicken   A little garlic never hurt anyone.

Holtz ended up writing down a list of 107 things in five different categories — things he wanted to achieve as a husband, things he wanted to do spiritually, things he wanted to achieve professionally, things he wanted to achieve financially, and things he wanted to do personally. Holtz’s list included some pretty audacious goals, such as becoming the Notre Dame football coach, meeting the president of the United States, landing on an aircraft carrier, and appearing on The Tonight Show — crazy things that would have caused most people to laugh at him for even considering. But guess what? Not only did Lou Holtz become the head football coach at Notre Dame, but he also led his team to a national championship. Among other things, he enjoyed dinner with Ronald Reagan at the White House, was a guest on The Tonight Show, met the pope, shot not one but two holes in one at golf, jumped out of an airplane, went on a safari in Africa, and, yes, he even landed on an aircraft carrier. To date, Lou Holtz has crossed off 102 of his 107 lifetime goals.9

stand there at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow; I am the diamond glints on the snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain; I am the gentle autumn’s rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds encircled flight. I am the soft star that shines at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry.