Entry Home Quotes

Richard wrote a diary entry in his head. Dear Diary, he began. On Friday I had a job, a fiancée, a home, and a life that made sense. (Well, as much as any life makes sense). Then I found an injured girl bleeding on the pavement, and I tried to be a Good Samaritan. Now I've got no fiancée, no home, no job, and I'm walking around a couple of hundred feet under the streets of London with the projected life expectancy of a suicidal fruitfly.

That journal entry is fascinating, but all wrong. I was at home when you called that night. And I broke every speed limit to get to you.

Walking around, even on a bad day, I would see things – I mean just the things that were in front of me. People’s faces, the weather, traffic. The smell of petrol from the garage, the feeling of being rained on, completely ordinary things. And in that way even the bad days were good, because I felt them and remembered feeling them. There was something delicate about living like that – like I was an instrument and the world touched me and reverberated inside me. After a couple of months, I started to miss days. Sometimes I would fall asleep without remembering to write anything, but then other nights I’d open the book and not know what to write – I wouldn’t be able to think of anything at all. When I did make entries, they were increasingly verbal and abstract: song titles, or quotes from novels, or text messages from friends. By spring I couldn’t keep it up anymore. I started to put the diary away for weeks at a time – it was just a cheap black notebook I got at work – and then eventually I’d take it back out to look at the entries from the previous year. At that point, I found it impossible to imagine ever feeling again as I had apparently once felt about rain or flowers. It wasn’t just that I failed to be delighted by sensory experiences – it was that I didn’t actually seem to have them anymore. I would walk to work or go out for groceries or whatever and by the time I came home again I wouldn’t be able to remember seeing or hearing anything distinctive at all. I suppose I was seeing but not looking – the visual world just came to me flat, like a catalogue of information. I never looked at things anymore, in the way I had before.

Luce,' she says, 'I don't want my diary entry tomorrow to be: Stayed out all night. Went to prison. I have this urge to go home and watch TV with my parents and be completely boring.

A good journal entry ought be a love letter to the world. Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.

Fast reading of a great novel will get us the plot. It will get us names, a shadowy idea of characters, a sketch of settings. It will not get us subtleties, small differentiations, depth of emotion and observation, multilayered human experience, the appreciation of simile and metaphor, any sense of context, any comparison with other novels, other writers. Fast reading will not get us cadence and complexities of style and language. It will not get us anything that enters not just the conscious mind but the unconscious. It will not allow the book to burrow down into our memory and become part of ourselves, the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom and vicarious experience which helps to form us as complete human beings. It will not develop our awareness or add to the sum of our knowledge and intelligence. Read parts of a newspaper quickly or an encyclopaedia entry, or a fast-food thriller, but do not insult yourself or a book which has been created with its author's painstakingly acquired skill and effort, by seeing how fast you can dispose of it.

There is no doubt that the United States has much to atone for, both domestically and abroad...To produce this horrible confection at home, start with our genocidal treatment of the Native Americans, add a couple hundred years of slavery, along with our denial of entry to Jewish refugees fleeing the death camps of the Third Reich, stir in our collusion with a long list of modern despots and our subsequent disregard for their appalling human rights records, add our bombing of Cambodia and the Pentagon Papers to taste, and then top with our recent refusals to sign the Kyoto protocol for greenhouse emissions, to support any ban on land mines, and to submit ourselves to the rulings of the International Criminal Court. The result should smell of death, hypocrisy, and fresh brimstone.

I dance with people I despise; amuse myself with men whose only talent lies in their feet, gain the disapprobation of people I honor and respect; return home at day break with my brain in a state which was never intended for it; and arise in the middle of the next day feeling infinitely more, in spirit and flesh like a Liliputian, than a woman with body and soul. Entry (when she was eighteen) in her Commonplace Book, 1868-1869.

But perhaps there is another, more personal reason for my disagreement with Ramin: I cannot imagine myself feeling at home in a place that is indifferent to what has become my true home, a land with no borders and few restrictions, which I have taken to calling “the Republic of Imagination.” I think of it as Nabokov’s “somehow, somewhere” or Alice’s backyard, a world that runs parallel to the real one, whose occupants need no passport or documentation. The only requirements for entry are an open mind, a restless desire to know and an indefinable urge to escape the mundane.

Hiraeth is a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was. It is the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. I’ve always thought of it as the saddest entry in the dictionary.

Tonight I write this journal entry on my laptop. Other nights I have handwritten entries in notebooks. Sometimes I jot down notes as I ride home in the cab or wait for an appointment. I want all of this -- everything and everyone -- to stay with me.

She said to me, over the phone She wanted to see other people I thought, Well then, look around. They're everywhere Said that she was confused... I thought, Darling, join the club 24 years old, Mid-life crisis Nowadays hits you when you're young I hung up, She called back, I hung up again The process had already started At least it happened quick I swear, I died inside that night My friend, he called I didn't mention a thing The last thing he said was, Be sound Sound... I contemplated an awful thing, I hate to admit I just thought those would be such appropriate last words But I'm still here And small So small.. How could this struggle seem so big? So big... While the palms in the breeze still blow green And the waves in the sea still absolute blue But the horror Every single thing I see is a reminder of her Never thought I'd curse the day I met her And since she's gone and wouldn't hear Who would care? What good would that do? But I'm still here So I imagine in a month...or 12 I'll be somewhere having a drink Laughing at a stupid joke Or just another stupid thing And I can see myself stopping short Drifting out of the present Sucked by the undertow and pulled out deep And there I am, standing Wet grass and white headstones all in rows And in the distance there's one, off on its own So I stop, kneel My new home... And I picture a sober awakening, a re-entry into this little bar scene Sip my drink til the ice hits my lip Order another round And that's it for now Sorry Never been too good at happy endings...

Fast reading of a great novel will get us the plot. It will get us names, a shadowy idea of characters, a sketch of settings. It will not get us subtleties, small differentiations, depth of emotion and observation, multilayered human experience, the appreciation of simile and metaphor, any sense of context, any comparison with other novels, other writers. Fast reading will not get us cadence and complexities of style and language. It will not get us anything that enters not just the conscious mind but the unconscious. It will not allow the book to burrow down into our memory and become part of ourselves, the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom and vicarious experience which helps to form us as complete human beings. It will not develop our awareness or add to the sum of our knowledge and intelligence. Read parts of a newspaper quickly or an encyclopaedia entry, or a fast-food thriller, but do not insult yourself or a book which has been created with its author's painstakingly acquired skill and effort, by seeing how fast you can dispose of it

Before two years of age, human interaction and physical interaction with books and print are the best entry into the world of oral and written language and internalized knowledge, the building blocks of the later reading circuit.

Dear Daniel, How do you break up with your boyfriend in a way that tells him, "I don't want to sleep with you on a regular basis anymore, but please be available for late night booty calls if I run out of other options"? Lily Charlotte, NC Dear Lily, The story's so old you can't tell it anymore without everyone groaning, even your oldest friends with the last of their drinks shivering around the ice in their dirty glasses. The music playing is the same album everyone has. Those shoes, everybody has the same shoes on. It looked a little like rain so on person brought an umbrella, useless now in the starstruck clouded sky, forgotten on the way home, which is how the umbrella ended up in her place anyway. Everyone gets older on nights like this. And still it's a fresh slap in the face of everything you had going, that precarious shelf in the shallow closet that will certainly, certainly fall someday. Photographs slipping into a crack to be found by the next tenant, that one squinter third from the left laughing at something your roommate said, the coaster from that place in the city you used to live in, gone now. A letter that seemed important for reasons you can't remember, throw it out, the entry in the address book you won't erase but won't keep when you get a new phone, let it pass and don't worry about it. You don't think about them; "I haven't thought about them in forever," you would say if anybody brought it up, and nobody does." You think about them all the time. Close the book but forget to turn off the light, just sit staring in bed until you blink and you're out of it, some noise on the other side of the wall reminding you you're still here. That's it, that's everything. There's no statue in the town square with an inscription with words to live by. The actor got slapped this morning by someone she loved, slapped right across the face, but there's no trace of it on any channel no matter how late you watch. How many people--really, count them up--know where you are? How many will look after you when you don't show up? The churches and train stations are creaky and the street signs, the menus, the writing on the wall, it all feels like the wrong language. Nobody, nobody knows what you're thinking of when you lean your head against the wall. Put a sweater on when you get cold. Remind yourself, this is the night, because it is. You're free to sing what you want as you walk there, the trees rustling spookily and certainly and quietly and inimitably. Whatever shoes you want, fuck it, you're comfortable. Don't trust anyone's directions. Write what you might forget on the back of your hand, and slam down the cheap stuff and never mind the bad music from the window three floors up or what the boys shouted from the car nine years ago that keeps rattling around in your head, because you're here, you are, for the warmth of someone's wrists where the sleeve stops and the glove doesn't quite begin, and the slant of the voice on the punch line of the joke and the reflection of the moon in the water on the street as you stand still for a moment and gather your courage and take a breath before stealing away through the door. Look at it there. Take a good look. It looks like rain. Love, Daniel Handler

There are no beautiful houses in England now. Only ruins, mental homes, and Government offices.

I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice. A small bowl of water sits on my desk, a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room--evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have now entered another realm, call it the realm of the Spirit. I am mindful that when one writes, one leaves this world and enters another. My books are collages made from journals, research, and personal experience. I love the images rendered in journal entries, the immediacy that is captured on the page, the handwritten notes. I love the depth of ideas and perspective that research brings to a story, be it biological or anthropological studies or the insights brought to the page by the scholarly work of art historians. When I go into a library, I feel like I am a sleuth looking to solve a mystery. I am completely inspired by the pursuit of knowledge through various references. I read newpapers voraciously. I love what newspapers say about contemporary culture. And then you go back to your own perceptions, your own words, and weigh them against all you have brought together. I am interested in the kaleidoscope of ideas, how you bring many strands of thought into a book and weave them together as one piece of coherent fabric, while at the same time trying to create beautiful language in the service of the story. This is the blood work of the writer. Writing is also about a life engaged. And so, for me, community work, working in the schools or with grassroots conservation organizations is another critical component of my life as a writer. I cannot separate the writing life from a spiritual life, from a life as a teacher or activist or my life intertwined with family and the responsibilities we carry within our own homes. Writing is daring to feel what nurtures and breaks our hearts. Bearing witness is its own form of advocacy. It is a dance with pain and beauty.

Today, the most common use of SWAT teams is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

The Great Recession and its continuing aftermath have left many twenty-somethings feeling naïve, even devastated.Twenty-somethings are more educated than ever before, but a smaller percentage find work after college. Many entry-level jobs have gone overseas, making it more difficult for twenty-somethings to gain a foothold at home. With a contracting economy and a growing population, unemployment is at its highest in decades. An unpaid internship is the new starter job. About a quarter of twenty-somethings are out of work and another quarter work only part-time. Twenty-somethings who do have paying jobs earn less than their 1970s counterparts when adjusted for inflation.

I fear my heart will be forever tied to what I can’t have. The word “home” once meant everything good to me: safety, warmth, love. Now, however, I have no home. It was ripped from me by the devious dealings of Mr. Alfred Skaggs.

When a loving person dies, God sends angels to escort them on their journey to heaven. Angels are the messengers of God. They could be relatives or friends, but they will be exactly the right persons who represent God’s love to the individual. The persons you long for, who have gone to heaven before you, will be waiting for you when you die. They will be ready to comfort you and escort you to heaven. They will take you from the reality of this physical universe and transport you to a new reality where you get your first introduction to the wonder and power of God. There are as many entry points into heaven as there are individuals. Each person is escorted toward heaven according to his or her life, culture, and spiritual level. One person may be in a beautiful field, another may be in a magnificent castle, another in a setting similar to their grandparents’ home. God and the angels, for the specific comfort and beginning edification of that person, individually create each setting. It is difficult for us to understand and believe how much God cares about and respects our individuality. The angel guardians begin the process of explaining to the person that they have left the world and are beginning life. Everything behind was preparation for real life. What we call death is actually being born into a new life beyond our imagination. We will grow and be transformed. We will meet the personification of God, and eventually we will come before the very presence of God.

As if to proclaim his home a British Isle unto itself, Teabing had not only posted his signs in English, but he had installed his gate’s intercom entry system on the right-hand side of the truck—the passenger’s side everywhere in Europe except England.

Sometimes in the dark, I imagine I hear Leah knocking on the wall that separates us, neat little knocks that request not entry but only conversation. Not real, of course, but something to occupy my mind when my home seems to fill with water and I find myself without the correct materials to plug the gaps.

The pain was distant now because it had scarcely been bearable then. It could not really be recollected because it had become a part of him. (...) The old pain receded into the home it had made in him. But another pain, homeless yet, began knocking at his heart - not for the first time: it would force an entry one day, and remain with him for ever.

Clutter attracts clutter. If you drop the mail on the kitchen counter, someone else is going to find it natural to leave his keys there. A dresser with receipts is also going to collect coins. A purse dropped in the entry is soon going to be joined by shoes and gloves. An empty soda can on the end table usually winds up with a few candy wrappers next to it.

Privacy was a much different concept in former times. In inns, sharing beds remained common into the nineteenth century, and diaries frequently contain entries lamenting how the author was disappointed to find a late-arriving stranger clambering into bed with him. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were required to share a bed at an inn in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1776, and passed a grumpy and largely sleepless night squabbling over whether to have the window open or not. Even at home, it was entirely usual for a servant to sleep at the foot of his master’s bed whatever his master might be up to within the bed. The records make clear that King Henry V’s steward and chamberlain both were present when he bedded Catherine of Valois.

A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought be a love letter to the world. Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.

Commander Lewis was the last one to use this rover. She was scheduled to use it again on Sol 7, but she went home instead. Her personal travel kit’s still in the back. Rifling through it, I found a protein bar and a personal USB, probably full of music to listen to on the drive. Time to chow down and see what the good commander brought along for music. LOG ENTRY SOL 38 (2) Disco. God damn it, Lewis.

SATURDAY AT THE STORE is a nightmare. We are besieged by do-it-yourselfers wanting to spruce up their homes. Mr. and Mrs. Clayton and John and Patrick—the two other part-timers—and I are besieged by customers. But there’s a lull around lunchtime, and Mrs. Clayton asks me to check on some orders while I’m sitting behind the counter at the register discreetly eating my bagel. I’m engrossed in the task, checking catalog numbers against the items we need and the items we’ve ordered, eyes flicking from the order book to the computer screen and back as I make sure the entries match. Then, for some reason, I glance up … and find myself locked in the bold gray gaze of Christian Grey, who’s standing at the counter, staring at me. Heart failure. “Miss Steele. What a pleasant surprise.” His gaze is unwavering and intense. Holy crap. What the hell is he doing here, looking all outdoorsy with his tousled hair and in his cream chunky-knit sweater, jeans, and walking boots? I think my mouth has popped open, and I can’t locate my brain or my voice. “Mr. Grey,” I whisper, because that’s all I can manage. There’s a ghost of a smile on his lips and his eyes are alight with humor, as if he’s enjoying some private joke. “I was in the area,” he says by way of explanation. “I need to stock up on a few things. It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss Steele.” His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel … or something.

You who came of age in the past decade have had eight years of a Black U.S. president, and that gloss looked good, and there were even a few inches gained on some issues such as health care, and maybe that can cause a person to relax a bit. But think of how exponentially drone attacks increased under Obama, how many Black people were shot by police under Obama, because the violence is systemic. How many of the people now hearteningly pledging to sign up for a Muslim registry signed up for a Black Lives Matter or protested the discriminatory immigration program NSEERS? The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System subjected my students from the Middle East to hours of interrogation and intimidation every time they reentered after going home to visit their families, arbitrarily barred tons of innocent people from entry, and was ineffective against terrorism anyway. It's systemic injustice we are after changing, and we should not ever be lulled.

That was our first home. Before I felt like an island in an ocean, before Calcutta, before everything that followed. You know it wasn’t a home at first but just a shell. Nothing ostentatious but just a rented two-room affair, an unneeded corridor that ran alongside them, second hand cane furniture, cheap crockery, two leaking faucets, a dysfunctional doorbell, and a flight of stairs that led to, but ended just before the roof (one of the many idiosyncrasies of the house), secured by a sixteen garrison lock, and a balcony into which a mango tree’s branch had strayed. The house was in a building at least a hundred years old and looked out on a street and a tenement block across it. The colony, if you were to call it a colony, had no name. The house itself was seedy, decrepit, as though a safe-keeper of secrets and scandals. It had many entries and exits and it was possible to get lost in it. And in a particularly inspired stroke of whimsy architectural genius, it was almost invisible from the main road like H.G. Wells’ ‘Magic Shop’. As a result, we had great difficulty when we had to explain our address to people back home. It went somewhat like this, ‘... take the second one from the main road….and then right after turning left from Dhakeshwari, you will see a bird shop (unspecific like that, for it had no name either)… walk straight in and take the stairs at the end to go to the first floor, that’s where we dwell… but don’t press the bell, knock… and don't walk too close to the cages unless you want bird-hickeys…’’ ('Left from Dhakeshwari')

Gradually, the deportation and mass murder became an event of the past. By the summer of 1943, special teams had disinterred and burned the corpses of those gassed at Treblinka, Sobibor and Bełec and the three camps were dismantled during the following months. Even the exhuming and burning of the corpses of those shot in Galicia and Ukraine did not remain a secret from the home front. In the Reich, municipalities started to take down the quaint, out-of-date signs forbidding Jews entry to public libraries, swimming pools and parks.68

Homelessness is a recognised entry route into prostitution, which, in the case of young people and children, is often a result of running away (Home Office, 2004a). Running away can be an attempt to make a positive move, a means of breaking away from an intolerable home life in order to make a fresh start. It can also be seen as an attempt to exercise control over the situation. However, while a young woman may be making an attempt to be assertive, she would simultaneously be increasing her vulnerability to manipulation.’ (Cusick et al, 2003) The

Assault isn’t just for criminals. Elite military teams, hostage rescue, SWAT, and entry teams use this mindset as much as criminals do. They don’t want to be tested or find out what their limitations are, they want to get the job done and go home. The mindset is implacable and predatory. They use surprise, superior numbers, and superior weapons—every cheat they can, and they practice. On the rare, rare occasions when my team made a fast entry and someone actually fought, the only emotion that I registered was that I was offended that they resisted, and we rolled right over the threat(s) like a force of nature.

And finally the sad entry in May 1935. “Home again, and how queer, as we drove up there was Pinka’s basket being carried up by Percy, and she had died yesterday: her body was in the basket. Just as we were saying that we would see her in a moment . . . So that’s what’s bound to happen we said. A very silent breakfast. I had been saying how she would put out my match and all the usual jokes. And the intensity of the sense of death—even for a dog—how odd—our feeling of her character, and the grotesqueness—something pathetic, and the depression, and the I suppose fear of sentimentality, and so on”. Pinka was Flush.

I am happy,” I tell her, and it is true. Other than the nagging worry about the Little Green Men returning, I’m incredibly happy. My translator’s gone, and I have…Aehako. Big, flirty Aehako who treats me like I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Really, it’s the other way around. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I think even if I were offered a ride home back to earth tomorrow, I’d decline, just so I could stay with my big alien mate. Maybe that makes me crazy. But what did I have back on earth? No one that cared about me, an entry-level job in finance, and a mountain of student debt. Here I have an entire tribe of people, and Aehako.

The Great Recession and its continuing aftermath have left many twentysomethings feeling naïve, even devastated. Twentysomethings are more educated than ever before, but a smaller percentage find work after college. Many entry-level jobs have gone overseas making it more difficult for twentysomethings to gain a foothold at home. With a contracting economy and a growing population, unemployment is at its highest in decades. An unpaid internship is the new starter job. About a quarter of twentysomethings are out of work and another quarter work only part-time. Twentysomethings who do have paying jobs earn less than their 1970s counterparts when adjusted for inflation.

The plunge was easier than the pull. The serrated edge caught the flaps of skin on the way out. It wasn’t the nature of the blade; he’d chosen specific tools for the torture and wasn’t about to skimp on the final cut. Most would have picked the sharpest. The sharpest would allow smooth entry both into and out of the body. He’d used the sharpest on the torso; four quick stabs just above the waist and one to pierce his side. No water; only blood. This final task required a specific tool and he’d chosen a bread knife. It’d been used for that too; winter soups with a rustic loaf, hearty bacon sandwiches in the family home. Use only a little pressure, move it back and forth, letting the edge do the work. That was the easy way to do it, but this wasn’t

The Forgiveness Castle remains open all day and all night, and the best thing is that there are so many entrances, usually found where you'd never thing to look: behind potted plants, in crayon drawings, and on old birthday cards. I have it on good authority that one entrance is through a tree fort. Many of the Forgiveness Castle's entry points remain secret, which is why you hunt around, press the blue walls gently, and wait. Sometimes saying the most obvious words, 'I'm sorry', opens a hidden door right where there seemed not possibility." He looks away. "You're welcome to visit this castle to wait for a friend, to sit in one of its orange and yellow gardens, or to find your own reflection in the polished blue rock and whisper, 'Please.Come home.

On January 28, 1983, on the eve of the launch of the Human Genome Project, Carrie Buck died in a nursing home in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. She was seventy-six years old. Her birth and death had bookended the near century of the gene. Her generation had borne witness to the scientific resurrection of genetics, its forceful entry into public discourse, its perversion into social engineering and eugenics, its postwar emergence as the central theme of the “new” biology, its impact on human physiology and pathology, its powerful explanatory power in our understanding of illness, and its inevitable intersection with questions of fate, identity, and choice. She had been one of the earliest victims of the misunderstandings of a powerful new science. And she had watched that science transform our understanding of medicine, culture, and society.

In 1976, a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham in England demonstrated that randomizing letters in the middle of words had no effect on the ability of readers to understand sentences. In tihs setncene, for emalxpe, ervey scarbelmd wrod rmenias bcilasaly leibgle. Why? Because we are deeply accustomed to seeing letters arranged in certain patterns. Because the eye is in a rush, and the brain, eager to locate meaning, makes assumptions. This is true of phrases, too. An author writes “crack of dawn” or “sidelong glance” or “crystal clear” and the reader’s eye continues on, at ease with combinations of words it has encountered innumerable times before. But does the reader, or the writer, actually expend the energy to see what is cracking at dawn or what is clear about a crystal? The mind craves ease; it encourages the senses to recognize symbols, to gloss. It makes maps of our kitchen drawers and neighborhood streets; it fashions a sort of algebra out of life. And this is useful, even essential—X is the route to work, Y is the heft and feel of a nickel between your fingers. Without habit, the beauty of the world would overwhelm us. We’d pass out every time we saw—actually saw—a flower. Imagine if we only got to see a cumulonimbus cloud or Cassiopeia or a snowfall once a century: there’d be pandemonium in the streets. People would lie by the thousands in the fields on their backs. We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous, too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eye sees something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did I really take the time to see the tree? I glimpse hazel hair, high cheekbones, a field of freckles, and I think Shauna. But did I take the time to see my wife? “Habitualization,” a Russian army-commissar-turned-literary-critic named Viktor Shklovsky wrote in 1917, “devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war.” What he argued is that, over time, we stop perceiving familiar things—words, friends, apartments—as they truly are. To eat a banana for the thousandth time is nothing like eating a banana for the first time. To have sex with somebody for the thousandth time is nothing like having sex with that person for the first time. The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we’re not careful, pretty soon we’re gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack. In the Tom Andrews Studio I open my journal and stare out at the trunk of the umbrella pine and do my best to fight off the atrophy that comes from seeing things too frequently. I try to shape a few sentences around this tiny corner of Rome; I try to force my eye to slow down. A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought be a love letter to the world. Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.

He felt a dull, very distant pain. It all seemed very long ago, that gasping and trembling, freezing and burning time. The pain was distant now because it had scarcely been bearable then. It could not really be recollected because it had become a part of him. Yet the power of this pain, though diminished, was not dead: Rufus' face again appeared before him, that dark face, with those dark eyes and curving, heavy lips. Then out of hiding, leapt his other faces, the crafty cajoling face of desire, the remote face of desire achieved. Then, for a second, he saw Rufus' face as he stared on death, that water, the water which stretched before him now. The old pain receded into the home it had made in him. But another pain, homeless as yet, began knocking at his heart-- not for the first time: it would force an entry one day, and remain with him forever.

The quintessential "self-made man" (and it is almost always a man) is self-sufficient, confident, stoic, righteously industrious, performatively heterosexual, and power. His success is signified through acquisition--home ownership, marriage, and children--and display of taste and things--craft beer and Courvoisier, Teslas and big trucks, bespoke suits and I-don't-care CEO hoodies. On the surface, it looks like that idea has evolved some. We have our Beyonces, Baracks, and Buttigiegs. But that doesn't mean the American Dream has become liberated from its origins or that its promise of freedom is more free. It just means more of us are permitted entry to the club if we do the double duty of conforming to its standards and continuing to meet the ones set for us--women must lean in, queer couples must get married, people of color must be master code-switchers.

What to Make a Game About? Your dog, your cat, your child, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mother, your father, your grandmother, your friends, your imaginary friends, your summer vacation, your winter in the mountains, your childhood home, your current home, your future home, your first job, your worst job, the job you wish you had. Your first date, your first kiss, your first fuck, your first true love, your second true love, your relationship, your kinks, your deepest secrets, your fantasies, your guilty pleasures, your guiltless pleasures, your break-up, your make-up, your undying love, your dying love. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your secrets, the dream you had last night, the thing you were afraid of when you were little, the thing you’re afraid of now, the secret you think will come back and bite you, the secret you were planning to take to your grave, your hope for a better world, your hope for a better you, your hope for a better day. The passage of time, the passage of memory, the experience of forgetting, the experience of remembering, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago on the street and not recognizing her face, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago and not being recognized, the experience of aging, the experience of becoming more dependent on the people who love you, the experience of becoming less dependent on the people you hate. The experience of opening a business, the experience of opening the garage, the experience of opening your heart, the experience of opening someone else’s heart via risky surgery, the experience of opening the window, the experience of opening for a famous band at a concert when nobody in the audience knows who you are, the experience of opening your mind, the experience of taking drugs, the experience of your worst trip, the experience of meditation, the experience of learning a language, the experience of writing a book. A silent moment at a pond, a noisy moment in the heart of a city, a moment that caught you unprepared, a moment you spent a long time preparing for, a moment of revelation, a moment of realization, a moment when you realized the universe was not out to get you, a moment when you realized the universe was out to get you, a moment when you were totally unaware of what was going on, a moment of action, a moment of inaction, a moment of regret, a moment of victory, a slow moment, a long moment, a moment you spent in the branches of a tree. The cruelty of children, the brashness of youth, the wisdom of age, the stupidity of age, a fairy tale you heard as a child, a fairy tale you heard as an adult, the lifestyle of an imaginary creature, the lifestyle of yourself, the subtle ways in which we admit authority into our lives, the subtle ways in which we overcome authority, the subtle ways in which we become a little stronger or a little weaker each day. A trip on a boat, a trip on a plane, a trip down a vanishing path through a forest, waking up in a darkened room, waking up in a friend’s room and not knowing how you got there, waking up in a friend’s bed and not knowing how you got there, waking up after twenty years of sleep, a sunset, a sunrise, a lingering smile, a heartfelt greeting, a bittersweet goodbye. Your past lives, your future lives, lies that you’ve told, lies you plan to tell, lies, truths, grim visions, prophecy, wishes, wants, loves, hates, premonitions, warnings, fables, adages, myths, legends, stories, diary entries. Jumping over a pit, jumping into a pool, jumping into the sky and never coming down. Anything. Everything.

HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED RETURNS ‘In a brief statement on Friday night, Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge confirmed that He Who Must Not Be Named has returned to this country and is once more active. ‘“It is with great regret that I must confirm that the wizard styling himself Lord – well, you know who I mean – is alive and among us again,” said Fudge, looking tired and flustered as he addressed reporters. “It is with almost equal regret that we report the mass revolt of the Dementors of Azkaban, who have shown themselves averse to continuing in the Ministry’s employ. We believe the Dementors are currently taking direction from Lord – Thingy. ‘“We urge the magical population to remain vigilant. The Ministry is currently publishing guides to elementary home and personal defence which will be delivered free to all wizarding homes within the coming month.” ‘The Minister’s statement was met with dismay and alarm from the wizarding community, which as recently as last Wednesday was receiving Ministry assurances that there was “no truth whatsoever in these persistent rumours that You-Know-Who is operating amongst us once more”. ‘Details of the events that led to the Ministry turnaround are still hazy, though it is believed that He Who Must Not Be Named and a select band of followers (known as Death Eaters) gained entry to the Ministry of Magic itself on Thursday evening. ‘Albus Dumbledore, newly reinstated Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, reinstated member of the International Confederation of Wizards and reinstated Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, has so far been unavailable for comment. He has insisted over the past year that You-Know-Who is not dead, as was widely hoped and believed, but is recruiting followers once more for a fresh attempt to seize power. Meanwhile, the “Boy Who Lived” –

Entry: Barbary Vikings Where horned Helmets and fur Cloaks; otherwise you could misstake them for Northern Barbarians. They swagger hughly, quarrel hughly, drink hughly and boast hughly. They thing they like the best is killing people, particulary lots at once. If a Barbary viking goes berserk, he will kill even more freely. Stand clear if one does. All of them are excelent seamen. Their Boats have square sails and lines of Shields down the sides. Quite often, the Managment employs them as Pirates because they are good at raping and looting and burning. But on some Tours they appears as allies of a rather wilful kind, and will take Tourist for a sail. At home, which are somewhere quite northerly, they have a King, who is Good and to whom they are viciously loyal, and they womenfolk whom you scarly se at all because they are all at home berring warrios. Barbary vikings are even maler then Anglo-Saxoon cossacks.

Back in the twentieth century, American girls had used baseball terminology. “First base” referred to embracing and kissing; “second base” referred to groping and fondling and deep, or “French,” kissing, commonly known as “heavy petting”; “third base” referred to fellatio, usually known in polite conversation by the ambiguous term “oral sex”; and “home plate” meant conception-mode intercourse, known familiarly as “going all the way.” In the year 2000, in the era of hooking up, “first base” meant deep kissing (“tonsil hockey”), groping, and fondling; “second base” meant oral sex; “third base” meant going all the way; and “home plate” meant learning each other’s names. Getting to home plate was relatively rare, however. The typical Filofax entry in the year 2000 by a girl who had hooked up the night before would be: “Boy with black Wu-Tang T-shirt and cargo pants: O, A, 6.” Or “Stupid cock diesel”—slang for a boy who was muscular from lifting weights—“who kept saying, ‘This is a cool deal’: TTC, 3.” The letters referred to the sexual acts performed (e.g., TTC for “that thing with the cup”), and the Arabic number indicated the degree of satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10. In the year 2000, girls used “score” as an active verb indicating sexual conquest, as in: “The whole thing was like very sketchy, but I scored that diesel who said he was gonna go home and caff up [drink coffee in order to stay awake and study] for the psych test.” In the twentieth century, only boys had used “score” in that fashion, as in: “I finally scored with Susan last night.” That girls were using such a locution points up one of the ironies of the relations between the sexes in the year 2000. The continuing vogue of feminism had made sexual life easier, even insouciant, for men. Women had been persuaded that they should be just as active as men when it came to sexual advances. Men were only too happy to accede to the new order, since it absolved them of all sense of responsibility

After dinners in Ris-Orangis, Derrida would gladly offer to drive home any guests without transport. He enjoyed driving, and always went into Paris by car. He’d learned when still very young, on the job, with his father’s car. But since he had never studied the highway code, he had his own ideas about it, which could sometimes lead to spectacular results. He considered, for example, that most ‘no entry’ signs did not actually apply to him, and that big roads should automatically have priority over smaller ones. At the wheel, he rapidly lost his cool. In traffic jams, he could almost get hysterical. And, to crown it all, whenever he stopped for even a short time he would start taking notes. In a letter to Éric Clémens, he indicated in a PS: ‘Excuse the handwriting, I’m writing in the car (what a life!), but I’ve stopped, not even at a red light. I’ve just thought of the title for a book: Written at a Red Light . . .’33 But while he was not a reassuring figure at the wheel, he never had an accident.

Arin had bathed. He was wearing house clothes, and when Kestrel saw him standing in the doorway his shoulders were relaxed. Without being invited, he strode into the room, pulled out the other chair at the small table where Kestrel waited, and sat. He arranged his arms in a position of negligent ease and leaned into the brocaded chair as if he owned it. He seemed, Kestrel thought, at home. But then, he had also seemed so in the forge. Kestrel looked away from him, stacking the Bite and Sting tiles on the table. It occurred to her that it was a talent for Arin to be comfortable in such different environments. She wondered how she would fare in his world. He said, “This is not a sitting room.” “Oh?” Kestrel mixed the tiles. “And here I thought we were sitting.” His mouth curved slightly. “This is a writing room. Or, rather”--he pulled his six tiles--“it was.” Kestrel drew her Bite and Sting hand. She decided to show no sign of curiosity. She would not allow herself to be distracted. She arranged her tiles facedown. “Wait,” he said. “What are the stakes?” She had given this careful consideration. She took a small wooden box from her skirt pocket and set it on the table. Arin picked up the box and shook it, listening to the thin, sliding rattle of its contents. “Matches.” He tossed the box back onto the table. “Hardly high stakes.” But what were appropriate stakes for a slave who had nothing to gamble? This question had troubled Kestrel ever since she had proposed the game. She shrugged and said, “Perhaps I am afraid to lose.” She split the matches between them. “Hmm,” he said, and they each put in their ante. Arin positioned his tiles so that he could see their engravings without revealing them to Kestrel. His eyes flicked to them briefly, then lifted to examine the luxury of his surroundings. This annoyed her--both because she could glean nothing from his expression and because he was acting the gentleman by averting his gaze, offering her a moment to study her tiles without fear of giving away something to him. As if she needed such an advantage. “How do you know?” she said. “How do I know what?” “That this was a writing room. I have never heard of such a thing.” She began to position her own tiles. It was only when she saw their designs that she wondered whether Arin had really been polite in looking away, or if he had been deliberately provoking her. She concentrated on her draw, relieved to see that she had a good set. A tiger (the highest tile); a wolf, a mouse, a fox (not a bad trio, except the mouse); and a pair of scorpions. She liked the Sting tiles. They were often underestimated. Kestrel realized that Arin had been waiting to answer her question. He was watching her. “I know,” he said, “because of this room’s position in your suite, the cream color of the walls, and the paintings of swans. This was where a Herrani lady would pen her letters or write journal entries. It’s a private room. I shouldn’t be allowed inside.” “Well,” said Kestrel, uncomfortable, “it is no longer what it was.

Less extreme leftists have been no less enthusiastic for war’s potential to transform the home front, Nisbet added. Leftist intellectuals were practically unanimous in favoring U.S. entry into World War I since they understood the opportunity it presented for institutional change at home. Wartime economic planning, they were convinced, would help to erode Americans’ conservative beliefs in the limits of government and the inviolability of private property. The experience of wartime planning never entirely faded from the national consciousness, and certainly not from that of the Left. When the Depression came, the Left jumped at the chance to revive the spirit of government planning it had so assiduously cultivated during the Great War. The rallying cry was “We planned in war”; now, therefore, we shall plan in peace. War symbolism was ubiquitous in the imagery adopted by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. “In terms of frequency of use of such symbols by the national government,” wrote Nisbet, “not even Hitler’s Germany outdid our propagandists.

Sensuality is for you, not about you. It’s for you in a sense that you are allowed to indulge all of your senses and taste the goodness of this world and beyond. It’s also for you in a sense that you’re allowed to curate and express yourself in an authentic way (i.e. in the way you dress, communicate, live, love, play, etc.). However, sensuality is not ABOUT you, it’s about those to whom you were brought here to touch and inspire. It’s about the joy and pleasure you’re here to bring. You didn’t come here for yourself nor empty-handed, but you came here bearing special gifts. You were brought here to be a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures. Your passion is an indication of the sensual gift(s) you were endowed with before you made your grand entry into this world. Your divine mandate now is to exploit every sensual gift you have to the fullest whether it’s music, photography, boudoir or fashion modeling, etc. If you have a love for fashion, always dress impeccably well like my friend Kefilwe Mabote. If you have a love for good food and wine, create culinary experiences the world has never seen before like chef Heston Blumenthal whom I consider as one of the most eminent sensual innovators in the culinary field. Chef Heston has crafted the most sensually innovative culinary experience where each sense has been considered with unparalleled rigour. He believes that eating is a truly multi-sensory experience. This approach has not only led to innovative dishes like the famous bacon and egg ice cream, but also to playing sounds to diners through headphones, and dispersing evocative aromas with dry ice. Chef Heston is indeed a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures in his own right and field. So, what sensual gift(s) are you here to use? It doesn’t have to be a big thing. For instance, you may be a great home maker. That may be an area where you’re endowed with the most sensual innovative abilities than any other area in your life. You need to occupy and shine your light in that space, no matter how small it seems.

Palestinians make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, and despite the fact that they live in their own homeland, Israel relegates them to second- or even third-class status. One of my classmates had discovered that more than fifty laws discriminated against the Palestinian citizens of Israel based solely on their ethnicity. Another discussed how government resources were disproportionately directed to Jews, leaving the Palestinians to suffer the worst living standards in Israeli society, with Palestinian children’s schools receiving only a fraction of the government spending given to Jewish schools. They also talked about how difficult it was for Palestinians to obtain land for a home, business, or agriculture because over 90 percent of the land in Israel was owned either by the state or by quasigovernmental agencies (like the Jewish National Fund) that discriminated against Palestinians. And they lamented the fact that if they or any of their relatives chose to marry a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza, they couldn’t pass on their Israeli citizenship to their spouse, thanks to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law. Their spouse wouldn’t even be able to gain residency status to live with them inside Israel. This meant they’d be forced to leave Israel and separate from their family in order to live with their spouse.

The Obstacles That Lie Before Us There is an old Zen story about a king whose people had grown soft and entitled. Dissatisfied with this state of affairs, he hoped to teach them a lesson. His plan was simple: He would place a large boulder in the middle of the main road, completely blocking entry into the city. He would then hide nearby and observe their reactions. How would they respond? Would they band together to remove it? Or would they get discouraged, quit, and return home? With growing disappointment, the king watched as subject after subject came to this impediment and turned away. Or, at best, tried halfheartedly before giving up. Many openly complained or cursed the king or fortune or bemoaned the inconvenience, but none managed to do anything about it. After several days, a lone peasant came along on his way into town. He did not turn away. Instead he strained and strained, trying to push it out of the way. Then an idea came to him: He scrambled into the nearby woods to find something he could use for leverage. Finally, he returned with a large branch he had crafted into a lever and deployed it to dislodge the massive rock from the road. Beneath the rock were a purse of gold coins and a note from the king, which said: “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” What holds you back?

Because the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, when drug offenders are released, they are generally returned to racially segregated ghetto communities--the places they call home. In many cities, the re-entry phenomenon is highly concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods. According to one study, during a twelve-year period, the number of prisoners returning home to "core counties"--those counties that contain the inner city of a metropolitan area--tripled. The effects are felt throughout the United States. In interviews with one hundred residents of two Tallahassee, Florida communities, researchers found that nearly every one of them had experienced or expected to experience the return of a family member from prison. Similarly, a survey of families living in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago found that the majority of residents either had a family member in prison or expected one to return from prison within the next two years. Fully 70 percent of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in the impoverished and overwhelmingly black North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago's West Side are ex-offenders, saddled for life with a criminal record. The majority (60 percent) were incarcerated for drug offenses. These neighborhoods are a minefield for parolees, for a standard condition of parole is a promise not to associate with felons. As Paula Wolff, a senior executive at Chicago Metropolis 2020 observes, in these ghetto neighborhoods, "It is hard for a parolee to walk to the corner store to get a carton of milk without being subject to a parole violation.

The Bombay Chronicle asked Mohandas Gandhi what he thought of the fact that the United States was now in the war. It was December 20, 1941. 'I cannot welcome this entry of America,' Gandhi said. 'By her territorial vastness, amazing energy, unrivalled financial status and owing to the composite character of her people she is the one country which could have saved the world from the unthinkable butchery that is going on.' Now, he said, there was no powerful nation left to mediate and bring about the peace that all peoples wanted. 'It is a strange phenomenon,' he said, 'that the human wish is paralysed by the creeping effect of the war fever.' Churchill wrote a memo to the chiefs of staff on the future conduct of the war. 'The burning of Japanese cities by incendiary bombs will bring home in a most effective way to the people of Japan the dangers of the course to which they have committed themselves,' he wrote. It was December 20, 1941. Life Magazine published an article on how to tell a Japanese person from a Chinese person. It was December 22, 1941. Chinese people have finely bridged noses and parchment-yellow skin, and they are relatively tall and slenderly built, the article said. Japanese people, on the other hand, have pug noses and squat builds, betraying their aboriginal ancestry. 'The modern Jap is the descendant of Mongoloids who invaded the Japanese archipelago back in the mists of prehistory, and of the native aborigines who possessed the islands before them, Life explained. The picture next to the article was of the Japanese premier, Hideki Tojo. In the Lodz ghetto, trucks began taking the Gypsies away. They went to Chelmno, the new death camp, where they were killed with exhaust gases and buried. It was just before Christmas 1941.

No-knock entries are dangerous for everyone involved—cops, suspects, bystanders. The raids usually occur before dawn; the residents are usually asleep, and then disoriented by the sudden intrusion. There is no warning, and sleepy residents may not always understand that the men breaking down their door are police. At the same time, police procedures allow terribly little room for error. Stan Goff, a retired Special Forces sergeant and SWAT trainer, says that he teaches cops to “Look at hands. If there’s a weapon in their hands during a dynamic entry, it does not matter what that weapon is doing. If there’s a weapon in their hands, that person dies. It’s automatic.” On September 13, 2000, the DEA, FBI, and local police conducted a series of raids throughout Modesto, California. By the end of the day, they had shot and killed an eleven-year-old boy, Alberto Sepulveda, as he was lying facedown on the floor with his arms outstretched, as ordered by police. In January 2011, police in Farmington, Massachusetts similarly shot Eurie Stamp, a sixty-eight-year-old grandfather, as he lay motionless on the floor according to police instructions. In the course of a May 2014 raid in Cornelia, Georgia, a flash-bang grenade landed in the crib of a nineteen-month-old infant. The explosion blew a hole in the face and chest of Bounkham Phonesavanh (“Baby Bou Bou”), covering his body with third degree burns, and exposing part of his ribcage. No guns or drugs were found in the house, and no arrests were made. Sometimes these raids go wrong before they even begin. Walter and Rose Martin, a perfectly innocent couple, both in their eighties, had their home raided by New York Police more than fifty times between 2002 and 2010. It turned out that their address had been entered as the default in the police database.

Tim bid us good-bye after helping us carry in my three-hundred-pound suitcase, and Marlboro Man and I looked around our quiet house, which was spick-and-span and smelled of fresh paint and leather cowboy boots, which lined the wall near the front door. The entry glowed with the light of the setting sun coming in the window, and I reached down to grab one of my bags so I could carry it to the bedroom. But before my hand made it to the handle, Marlboro Man grabbed me tightly around the waist and carried me over to the leather sofa, where we fell together in a tired heap of jet lag, emotional exhaustion, and--ironically, given the week we’d just endured--a sudden burst of lust. “Welcome home,” he said, nuzzling his face into my neck. Mmmm. This was a familiar feeling. “Thank you,” I said, closing my eyes and savoring every second. As his lips made their way across my neck, I could hear the sweet and reassuring sound of cows in the pasture east of our house. We were home. “You feel so good,” he said, moving his hands to the zipper of my casual black jacket. “You do, too,” I said, stroking the back of his closely cut hair as his arms wrapped more and more tightly around my waist. “But…uh…” I paused. My black jacket was by now on the floor. “I…uh…,” I continued. “I think I need to take a shower.” And I did. I couldn’t do the precise calculation of what it had meant for my hygiene to cross back over the international date line, but as far as I was concerned, I hadn’t showered in a decade. I couldn’t imagine christening our house in such a state. I needed to smell like lilac and lavender and Dove soap on the first night in our little house together. Not airline fuel. Not airports. Not clothes I’d worn for two days straight. Marlboro Man chuckled--the first one I’d heard in many days--and as he’d done so many times during our months of courtship, he touched his forehead to mine. “I need one, too,” he said, a hint of mischief in his voice. And with that, we accompanied each other to the shower, where, with a mix of herbal potions, rural water, and determination, we washed our honeymoon down the drain.

Many of my friends around the world express surprise at the Palestinian attachment to place of origin and concerns for family ties. Some even scoff at it and contrast it with their own open-armed acceptance of adventure, discovery, a nomadic lifestyle and residence in places that they choose and change according to their fancy, without the slightest regret at leaving family or even homeland behind. They remind me that the world is wider and more beautiful than 'our villages' and 'our families'. I understand this beautiful sense of the vastness of the world. Like them, I love movement, journeys, and living in new places. What these friends forget is that it is they who choose to distance themselves. They are the ones who take the decision and make the plans and then present their passports (recognized everywhere) and get on planes and trains and cars and motorcycles and go to places where three conditions that the Palestinian cannot meet are fulfilled: first, that it is their preference and choice to go to specifically these places; second, that these places always welcome them; and third and most important, that it is in their power to return to their home country whenever they desire and decide. The Palestinian forced to become a refugee, to migrate, and to go into exile from his homeland in the sixty years since the Nakba of 1948, or the forty since the June 1967 War, suffers miseries trying to obtain a document by which he will be recognized at borders. He suffers miseries trying to obtain a passport from another state because he is stateless and has to go through Kafkaesque interrogations before being granted entry visa to any place in the world, even the Arab states. The Palestinian is forbidden to enter his own country by land, sea, or air, even in a coffin. It is not a matter of romantic attachment to a place but of eternal exclusion from it. The Palestinian stripped of an original identity is a palm tree broken in the middle. My foreign friends have control over the details of their lives but a single Israeli solder can control the details of the life of any Palestinian. This is the difference. This is the story.

[I]n the years that followed the persecutions, Christianity came to see itself, with great pride, as a persecuted Church. Its greatest heroes were not those who did good deeds but those who died in the most painful way. If you were willing to die an excruciating end in the arena then, whatever your previous holiness or lack thereof, you went straight to heaven: martyrdom wiped out all sins on the point of death. As well as getting there faster, martyrs enjoyed preferential terms in paradise, getting to wear the much-desired martyr’s crown. Tempting celestial terms were offered: it was said that the scripture promised ‘multiplication, even to a hundred times, of brothers, children, parents, land and homes’. Precisely how this celestial sum had been calculated is not clear but the general principle was: those who died early, publicly and painfully would be best rewarded. In many of the martyr tales the driving force is less that the Romans want to kill – and more that the Christians want to die. Why wouldn’t they? Paradoxically, martyrdom held considerable benefits for those willing to take it on. One was its egalitarian entry qualifications. As George Bernard Shaw acidly observed over a millennium later, martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability. More than that, in a socially and sexually unequal era it was a way in which women and even slaves might shine. Unlike most positions of power in the highly socially stratified late Roman Empire, this was a glory that was open to all, regardless of rank, education, wealth or sex. The sociologist Rodney Stark has pointed out that – provided you believe in its promised rewards – martyrdom is a perfectly rational choice. A martyr could begin the day of their death as one of the lowliest people in the empire and end it as one of the most exalted in heaven. So tempting were these rewards that pious Christians born outside times of persecution were wont to express disappointment at being denied the opportunity of an agonizing death. When the later Emperor Julian pointedly avoided executing Christians in his reign, one Christian writer far from being grateful, sourly recorded that Julian had ‘begrudged the honour of martyrdom to our combatants’.

these entries we can see Smith focusing on the human landscape and the tension he felt between isolation and the teeming churn of collectives, a tension he never reconciled, and many themes of home—creating or finding a home, leaving and returning home.

This “holy man,” a peasant from Siberia, had somehow gained entry to the highest levels of St. Petersburg society by preaching that people should sin as much as possible to find their path to God. He fully embodied his mantra by drinking to excess and hosting orgies at his home.

I For Marcel Proust. - The son of well-to-do parents who, whether from talent or weakness, engages in a so-called intellectual profession, as an artist or a scholar, will have a particularly difficult time with those bearing the distasteful title of colleagues. It is not merely that his independence is envied, the seriousness of his intentions mistrusted, and that he is suspected of being a secret envoy of the establishE:d powers. Such suspicions, though betraying a deepseated resentment, would usually prove well-founded. But the real resistances lie elsewhere. The occupation with things of the mind has by now itself become 'practical', a business with strict division of labour, departments and restricted entry. The man of independent means who chooses it out of repugnance for the ignominy of earning money will not be disposed to acknowledge the fact. For this he is punished. He is not a 'professional', is ranked in the competitive hierarchy as a dilettante no matter how well he knows his subject, and must, if he wants to make a career, show himself even more resolutely blinkered than the most inveterate specialist. The urge to suspend the division of labour which, within certain limits, his economic situation enables him to satisfy, is thought particularly disreputable: it betrays a disinclination to sanction the operations imposed by society, and domineering competence permits no such idiosyncrasies. The departmentalization of mind is a means of abolishing mind where it is not exercised ex officio, under contract. It performs this task all the more reliably since anyone who repudiates the division of labour - if only by taking pleasure in his work - makes himself vulnerable by its standards in ways inseparable from elements of his superiority. Thus is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game. It is as if the class from which independent intellectuals have defected takes its revenge, by pressing its demands home in the very domain where the deserter seeks refuge.

dedicated individuals and popular movements can shape history and have, though how and when we might win and how long it takes is not predictable. Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or will decline from it; despair is a confident memory of the future, in Gonzalez’s resonant phrase. Optimism is similarly confident about what will happen. Both are grounds for not acting. Hope can be the knowledge that we don’t have that memory and that reality doesn’t necessarily match our plans; hope like creative ability can come from what the Romantic poet John Keats called Negative Capability. On a midwinter’s night in 1817, a little over a century before Woolf’s journal entry on darkness, the poet John Keats walked home talking with some friends and as he wrote in a celebrated letter describing that walk, “several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature.

A critical but often ignored impact of FDI is that on the (current and future) domestic competitors. An entry by a TNC through FDI can destroy existing national firms that could have 'grown up' into successful operations without this premature exposure to competition, or it can pre-empt the emergence of domestic competitors. In such cases, short-run productive capabilities are enhanced, as the TNC subsidiary replacing the (current and future) national firms is usually more productive than the latter. But the level of productive capability that the country can attain in the long run becomes lower as a result. This is because TNCs do not, as a rule, transfer the most valuable activities outside their home country, as I will discuss in greater detail later. As a result, there will be a definite ceiling on the level of sophistication that a TNC subsidiary can reach in the long run. To go back to the Toyota example in chapter 1, had Japan liberalized FDI in its automobile industry in the 1960s, Toyota definitely wouldn't be producing the Lexus today-it would have wiped out or, more likely, have become a valued subsidiary of an American carmaker. Given this, a developing country may reasonably decide to forego short-term benefits from FDI in order to increase the chance for its domestic firms to engage in higher-level activities in the long run, by banning FDI in certain sectors or regulating it. This is exactly the same logic as that of infant industry protection that I discussed in the earlier chapters-a country gives up the short-run benefits of free trade in order to create higher productive capabilities in the long run. And it is why, historically, most economic success stories have resorted to regulation of FDI, often in a Draconian manner, as I shall now show.

Jews have grown so obsessed with Israel that the overt and covert signals of anti-Semitism beamed from the interior of the Trump campaign appeared to be disregarded by people like Adelson and Bernie Marcus, the Home Depot co-founder and Republican mega-donor who seemed wowed by candidate Trump’s solemn promise to immediately move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and to back Likud’s expansive settlement policy on the West Bank. Never mind that both moves were purely symbolic: Netanyahu was going to do what he was going to do regardless of Washington’s feckless policies or the location of its ambassador. What mattered was Israel, pure and simple. It was something of a comeuppance when President Trump immediately backed off his promise of an embassy move, swiftly sent a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu scolding him on settlements, and promised a new push for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But beyond leaked word that Adelson was really, really, really angry, no apologies or mea culpas were forthcoming from American Jewry. Trump did make Israel a stop on his first trip abroad—the earliest visit to the Jewish state by any American president. But before his arrival, his White House made no comment on the two Israeli-American journalists who were denied visas to follow the president into Saudi Arabia, where he happily danced with swords and his commerce secretary boasted that there had been no protestors. Once he had landed in Jerusalem, Trump did note that he “just got back from the Middle East,” a moment memorialized by Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, covering his face with his hand in frustration or amazement. Trump scheduled all of fifteen minutes for a stop at Yad Vashem, Israel’s revered Holocaust memorial and museum, and in his brief remarks there—from 1:27 to 1:34 p.m.—he managed both to extol the Jewish people and let slip his cherished stereotypes: “Through persecution, oppression, death, and destruction, the Jewish people have persevered. They have thrived. They’ve become so successful in so many places.” Ever solicitous, Netanyahu thanked the president, who “in so few words said so much.” No one took note of the irony that the Holocaust survivor who greeted Trump, Margot Herschenbaum, had been rescued in 1939 by the Kindertransport, which had whisked her out of Germany and had saved thousands of other Jewish children. Refugees like Herschenbaum had been denied entry to the United States during World War II, just as Trump has steadfastly denied the entry of Syrian children fleeing war and death in their own country.

This decision means that the police can enter a home or a business illegally, and if they see contraband or evidence of illegal activity, they can then go to a magistrate for a warrant. The police don’t have to tell the judge about their illegal entry. They

In 2020, 92.6 percent of CEOs on the Fortune 500 were white.36 A survey conducted that same year of more than forty thousand workers at 317 companies found that while white men make up just 35 percent of the entry-level workforce, they compose 66 percent of the C-suite.37 For every one hundred men who were promoted to manager, only fifty-eight black women and seventy-one Latina women were promoted. Only 38 percent of respondents in entry-level management positions were women of any race.

Ask Datatech is a Data Management and Lead Generation Company based in Surrey (Vancouver), the home of technology and innovations in Canada. A Data Management (Data Entry) role involves entering data from various sources into the company computer system for processing and management.

it is interesting to investigate how the mezuzah was turned onto an amulet which can guard the house against evil.[171] Historical and archeological research found that pagan nations from Mesopotamia used to mark their entries with different kinds of “mezuzahs”, which carried symbols of idols. Amulets of this kind were also found in Egypt, where this practice was made in order to keep the inhabitants of the home from all sorts of evil.[172

Our strength of resolve is not part of the formula of retaining his good will. When my two-year-old Benjamin begins to wade into the gentle slope of the zero-entry swimming pool near our home, he instinctively grabs hold of my hand. He holds on tight as the water gradually gets deeper. But a two-year-old’s grip is not very strong. Before long it is not he holding on to me but me holding on to him. Left to his own strength he will certainly slip out of my hand. But if I have determined that he will not fall out of my grasp, he is secure. He can’t get away from me if he tried. So with Christ. We cling to him, to be sure. But our grip is that of a two-year-old amid the stormy waves of life. His sure grasp never falters. Psalm 63:8 expresses the double-sided truth: “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

A Harlot Crashes the Party A very “nice” man named Simon, a Pharisee, brought Jesus to dinner at his home in Capernaum (Luke 5). As they were reclining around the table, a woman known to be a harlot somehow came in, bringing with her an expensive flask of perfumed lotion. She certainly had overheard Jesus teaching and had seen his care for others. She was moved to believe that she too was loved by him and by the heavenly Father of whom he spoke. She was seized by a transforming conviction, an overwhelming faith. Suddenly there she was, down on the floor by Jesus, tears of gratitude for him pouring down upon his feet. Drying them away with her hair, she then rained kisses upon his feet and massaged them with the lotion. What a scene! That nice man, Simon, was taking it in, and—no doubt battling a surge of disapproval—he tried to put the best possible construction on it. It just could not be that Jesus wasn’t nice. Clearly he was a righteous man. So the only reason he would be letting this woman touch him, or even come near him, was that he didn’t know she was a prostitute. And that, unfortunately, proved that Jesus didn’t have “it” after all. “If this fellow really were a prophet,” Simon mused, “he would know what this woman does, for she is filthy.” Perhaps Simon consoled himself with the thought that it is at least no sin not to be a prophet. It never occurred to him that Jesus would know exactly who the woman was and yet let her touch him. But Jesus did know, and he also knew what Simon was thinking. So he told him a story of a man who lent money to two people: $50,000 to one and $5 to the other, let us say. When they could not repay, the man simply forgave the debts. “Now Simon,” Jesus asked, “which one will love the man most?” Simon replied that it would be the one who had owed most. That granted, Jesus positioned Simon and the streetwalker side by side to compare their hearts: “Look at this woman,” he said. “When I entered your home, you didn’t bother to offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You refused me the customary kiss of greeting, but she has kissed my feet again and again from the time I first came in. You neglected the usual courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has covered my feet with rare perfume. Therefore her sins—and they are many—are forgiven, for she loved me much; but one who is forgiven little, shows little love.” (Luke 7:44–47 LB) “Loved me much!” Simply that, and not the customary proprieties, was now the key of entry into the rule of God.

I breathe in the fresh summer air as I pass a table covered with all sorts of cakes---Victorian sponge, Madeira, Battenberg, lemon drizzle. Again my mind drifts to my childhood, this time to the Michigan State Fair, which my family would visit at the end of every summer. It had all sorts of contests---pie eating, hog calling, watermelon seed spitting (Stevie's favorite)---but the cake competition was my favorite challenge of all. Every year I'd eye the confections longingly: the fluffy coconut cakes, the fudge chocolate towers filled with gooey caramel or silky buttercream, the cinnamon-laced Bundts topped with buttery streusel. The competition was divided into adult and youth categories, and when I turned twelve, I decided to enter a recipe for chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream and peanut brittle. My mom was a little befuddled by my participation (her idea of baking involved Duncan Hines and canned, shelf-stable frosting, preferably in a blinding shade of neon), but she rode along with my dad, Stevie, and me as we carted two-dozen cupcakes to the fairgrounds in Novi. The competition was steep---pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, German chocolate cupcakes, zucchini cupcakes with lemon buttercream---but my entry outshone them all, and I ended up taking home the blue ribbon, along with a gift certificate to King Arthur Flour.

I set up the skin of Estelle's bird number 5, the marbled godwit---- a migratory visitor to Florida, like me. I draw the beak twice as long as the head, tapering down to the width of a knitting needle, then fill in the back and wings with terrazzo mottling, brown and black and white. It has long legs and an exquisite neck. I hope this bird gets a prominent place in the exhibit. On my second sheet, a young woman kneels on black soil, her back to the viewer, dark hair in a chignon. She pulls at the weeds that crowd her precious bee balm, betony, dock, and rue. She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist, avoiding the dirt on her glove. I should go see my mother today, but to be honest, I don't feel like it. Yes, she's an oldish person, displaced from her home, who might count on someone to come and break her solitude. But that journal entry... I simmered while Loni played... gives new color to my lifelong weariness. Godwit. I draw the bird flying blessedly north, displaying her gorgeous cinnamon wings.

Bonney's last sentence in his final entry is indicative of the importance placed on returning home loaded with oil. Crew be damned, it was

The explosion At first the crew thought a meteoroid had hit them. As well as the noise of an explosion, the electrics were going haywire and the attitude control thrusters had fired. In fact, a short circuit had ignited some insulation in the Number 2 oxygen tank of the Service Module. The Service Module provided life support, power and other systems to the Command Module, which held the astronauts as they travelled to and from lunar orbit. The Lunar Module was a separate, though connected, craft that would be used to ferry the men to the lunar surface and back. The fire caused a surge in pressure that ruptured the tank, flooding the fuel cell bay with gaseous oxygen. This surge blew the bolts holding on the outer panel, which tore off free and spun into space, damaging a communications antenna. Contact with Earth was lost for 1.8 seconds, until the system automatically switched to another antenna. The shock also ruptured a line from the Number 1 oxygen tank. Two hours later all of the Service Module’s oxygen supply had leaked into the void. As the Command Module’s fuel cells used oxygen with hydrogen to generate electricity, it could now only run on battery power. The crew had no option but to shut down the Command Module completely and move into the Lunar Module. They would then use this as a ‘lifeboat’ for the journey back to Earth before rejoining the Command Module for re-entry. As for the mission, the Service Module was so badly damaged that a safe return from a lunar landing was impossible. These men would not be landing on the Moon. 320,000 km from home The Flight Director immediately aborted the mission. Now he just had to get the men home. The quickest way would be a Direct Abort trajectory, using the Service Module engine to essentially reverse the craft. But it was too late:

The enormous heat of re-entry ionized the air around the capsule causing a total communications blackout. For four and a half minutes the world held its breath. Were the men all right? Had the heat shield been damaged in the explosion? Was the craft now disintegrating in the upper atmosphere? There must have been a few whoops of joy in Mission Control when the radio finally sparked back into life. Odyssey splashed down in the Pacific Ocean southeast of American Samoa and just 6.5 km (4 miles) from the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima. The crew were generally in good shape. And they were home.

Revolutionary Guards since the age of eighteen, his address—Shahid Mahallalti Street, Tehran—his passport numbers—0009228 and 4229533—and even his home phone number—021-2448413. Fakhri Zadeh specialized in the complex process of creating a critical mass inside the atomic device to trigger the chain reaction and the nuclear explosion. His team was also working on the miniaturization of the bomb, to fit it in the warhead of the Shehab missile. Following these revelations, Zadeh was denied entry into the United

ultimately we won't and shouldn't feel completely settled anywhere because our true home is in Heaven.

of nature, which I most definitely was not. “So, Enola,” asked Mycroft gruffly after a while, “are you feeling well enough to tell us what has happened?” I did so, but there was little to add to what they already knew. Mum had left home early on Tuesday morning and had not returned since. No, she had left me no message or explanation of any sort. No, there was no reason to think she might have taken ill; her health was excellent. No, there had been no word of her from anyone. No, in answer to Sherlock’s questions, there had been no bloodstains, no footprints, no signs of forced entry, and I did not know

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The lord of the house is not at home, Your Majesty,” she informed me. “Is there anything I can do for you?” “I actually came to see Lord Steldor, if you would escort me to his room.” Now she seemed intrigued, for the reasons behind the annulment of my marriage to the former King had been kept quiet. I could read on her face her desire to eavesdrop. “Certainly, although I don’t know if His Majesty has risen.” “He has,” I said without thought. Not once during our marriage had I woken before him, and I doubted his sleep patterns had changed. With a puzzled glance, she led me up the stairs and into a hallway, stopping before the second door. She knocked on my behalf, and gave another small curtsey when Steldor’s voice invited entry. I opened the door, waiting for her to return to the first floor before entering, catching her regretful glance that she could not dally. Steldor was sitting up on the bed across the room, his legs swung over the side, pulling a shirt carefully over his head. “Should you be doing that so soon?” I asked, for it had only been a week since the lashing. The garment fell over his muscular chest, and he ran a hand through his dark hair. He came to his feet with the hint of a wince. “Making sure I’m cared for is no longer your worry. I’m not certain it ever was.” His mood was a bit dark, and I wondered if I should have given him more time to recover before paying him this visit. “Perhaps what you need is someone to keep you from coming to harm in the first place.” He smirked, turning his back to me to idly straighten his bed coverings. “What is it--did you come here to coddle me or lecture me?” “Both, I suppose.” I was frowning, amazed at how swiftly we had fallen into our old patterns. “I’ve come to talk--and to give you this.” He swiveled to face me as I removed his silver wolf’s head talisman from the pocket of my cloak. “I never expected to see that again,” he said, sounding awed. “Did you face the bitch yourself or get it from Narian?” I smiled at his word choice. “I approached Rava myself--I’ve been known to face down a bitch or two.” He stepped forward to take the pendant from my hand and immediately slipped the chain over his head. “Thank you. I feel better already.” “If you don’t mind my asking, what is the significance of the talisman? When I reclaimed it from Rava, she remarked that it might provide power and protection, and that started me thinking about its purpose.” He chuckled ruefully. “I hate to admit it, but Rava’s right. The wolf brings strength and protection. Depending on the mix of herbs and flowers put inside the talisman, other properties can be added, such as health and healing. The captain gave the pendant to me when I was four, following the death of Terek, at the time I was sent to live with Baelic and Lania. He didn’t want me to think he’d abandoned me or that I was in danger. It was originally his, and his father’s before him. I’ve worn it ever since.” “Then I’m very glad I was able to secure its return.” His eyes met mine, and the color rose in my cheeks, for I was still affected to some degree by his handsome features and soldier’s build. “I suppose that concludes the coddling,” he finally said, crossing his arms and watching me expectantly. “Yes, I suppose it does.

On January 3, 1745, Brainard set aside the entire day for fasting and prayer, pleading for an outpouring of spiritual power. He claimed the promise in John 7: Have faith in me, and you will have life-giving waters flowing from deep inside you.… Then he preached repeatedly from John 7, and the unfolding year proved the most fruitful of his ministry. His interpreter, an alcoholic named Tattamy, was converted. An immediate change seemed to transform Tattamy’s life and his translating of Brainard’s sermons. Scores of Indians were saved and baptized. Brainard grew weaker, and in 1747 he died at age 29 in the home of Jonathan Edwards. But his story moved his generation—Henry Martyn, William Carey, Adoniram Judson—toward missions. His diary became one of the most powerful Christian books in early American history, containing such entries as this one: Here am I, send me; send me to the ends of the earth; send me to the rough, the savage pagans of the wilderness; send me from all that is called comfort on earth; send me even to death itself, if it be but in Thy service and to promote Thy kingdom.

Yogyakarta, Indonesia (Java Island) Known as Jogja to locals and a small but steady flow of backpackers that fill up the budget accommodation in alleyways close to the town's main train station. The town itself has always had a reputation for attracting arts dealers from across Asia and is home to many impressive galleries and several significant palaces and monuments that show off different aspects of Islamic and Javanese culture and history. It is also very close to two of Indonesia's most important and impressive religious sites. Firstly the magnificent Borobodur, the worlds largest Buddhist monument outshines even Angkor Wat in terms of its size and grandeur. At sunrise especially it is a truly awe-inspiring sight. The other one is the Hindu temples at Prambanan which are equally important and it is easy to visit both Borobodur and Pramabanan on the same day although prepare for some fairly hefty entry fees of around US$20 at each site.

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

The morning following Shaselle’s arrest and release, I descended the Grand Staircase to the entry hall below and was drawn toward the antechamber by raised voices. I entered to find one of my worst nightmares unfolding--Steldor and Narian were in heated argument, both seeming to have discounted where they were and who might overhear. They stood opposite one another across the room from me, Steldor likely having come from Cannan’s office, while Narian had probably been passing through on his way to the Hearing Hall. I stared transfixed, not knowing what they were arguing about, but certain they would not appreciate my interference. “What business have you in the Bastion?” my betrothed demanded. “Business that is not yours, Cokyrian,” Steldor spat. Narian glowered at the former King. “Much as you might detest the thought, Steldor, I am no longer your enemy.” “These scars on my back argue differently.” “I was merciful in leaving you alive. You asked for execution and I ordered a lashing. If not for your ridiculous pride, you’d acknowledge that.” Steldor laughed mirthlessly. “I owe you nothing after all you’ve taken from me.” “Alera is not a possession,” Narian astutely shot back. “Alera hadn’t entered my mind.” The curl in Steldor’s lip revealed the lie, and the hostility he exuded would have made most men run in the other direction. But Narian wasn’t most men. “And yet I see you around this Bastion, her home, more than any soldier or son need be. You yearn for any chance glimpse of her.” “I come to the palace on business, you mongrel pup.” “Then pray tell, what business is that?” I stood miserably by, for it was apparent neither of them was aware of my presence. Still, the argument had come full circle, and I prayed it would soon be over. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” Steldor seethed. “You are not my superior.” His dark eyes glinted malevolently, a look he had once or twice directed at me during our unfortunate marriage. “True enough. But you are nonetheless one of my subjects.” Steldor’s fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, telling me how close he was to unleashing his hellish temper. Before I could intervene, he threw a right cross at Narian’s chin, which the commander adroitly dodged, stepping back and raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I suggest you walk away, Steldor,” he said, unnervingly calm. “I did so once,” my former husband retorted. “I don’t intend to do so again.” Narian perused his opponent, judging his strengths and weaknesses, then struck Steldor in the middle of his chest with the heel of his palm, sending him staggering backward. In a flash, a dagger appeared in Steldor’s hand, and panic seized me. Would they spill each other’s blood right here, right now? “Stop!” I cried. “Both of you!” They straightened warily at the sound of my voice, and I hurried to stand between them, so distraught my hands were shaking. “I don’t know what this is about,” I beseeched, hoping Cannan would hear and lend assistance. “But please, for my sake, leave things be.” They glared at each other over the top of my head, then Steldor moved away, his eyes on Narian until he could place a hand on the door leading into the Grand Entry. “Queen Alera,” he pointedly acknowledged me. “I humbly honor your request.” With a disdainful smirk for Narian, he tossed the knife onto the floor, then exited, pulling the door firmly closed behind him. Narian crossed to snatch up the weapon, examining it carefully before showing it to me. “Do you plan to tell me that you recognize this blade?” he asked, and I stared at him, dumbfounded. With a stiff nod, he strode through the same door Steldor had used, leaving me alone.

Just as he had before, Steldor glanced at me over and over again on our journey home, until I finally addressed his conduct. “Really, Steldor, I know I’m in a fine dress, but I can’t possibly look that different.” Since I had opened the conversation, he said what was on his mind. “Are you all right? You didn’t seem…yourself…when we left Lord Landru’s, although I never heard you scream.” For once, I didn’t feel like I was lying when I said, “I’m all right, I truly am. In fact, I’m better than I’ve been in a long time.” “Well, judging from your conversation, you and Grayden are made for each other.” I gave him a shove on the shoulder, and he laughed. “I don’t suppose you noticed all the horses? I hear Grayden is very good with them. Although he might lack Baelic’s way with people, I think he may have your father’s way with horses.” “I did notice,” I said with a smile, thinking it had turned into quite a beautiful day. When we arrived at my house, Steldor escorted me to the front entry and came inside to bid a cheery “Good day” to my family. With a wink for me, he departed, closing the door to leave me in my mother’s care. “How was lunch?” she asked, watching me bound up the stairs. “The soup was excellent,” I called over my shoulder, knowing she wasn’t inquiring about the food, but not yet ready to talk about Grayden.

A New Yorker by birth is David Karp, the child prodigy who at age 21, in 2007, founded Tumblr, whose headquarters are located just one block east of Hunch. The son of a composer and a science teacher, at 14 Karp began working as an intern in an online animation company; at 15, tired of traditional school, he continued to study at home alone, learning, among other things, Japanese; then he became the chief technology officer of the Internet site UrbanBaby and at 17 he went to Tokyo for five months by himself. In 2006, UrbanBaby was bought by CNET, and Karp used his share of proceeds to establish Tumblr, a blogging platform with elements of social networking that allows its users to follow other bloggers. Tumblr allows users to build a collection of content according to their own tastes and interests. Easy to use, with a format of short entries to be enriched with photos and videos, Tumblr has quickly gained many followers among the creative community as well as the public at large. Today it is home to nearly 70 million blogs, including those of Lady Gaga and Barack Obama, with a total audience of 140 million users. At 26, Karp is leading a company with over 100 employees, valued at more than $800 million, with shareholders of the caliber of Virgin Group’s Richard Branson. He defines Tumblr as new media, as opposed to technology, and seeks to attract non-traditional ads, inviting brands to create awareness and desire in their ads, rather than just trying to capture intent. Karp has already received several acquisition offers from other media groups, but he has always refused because he thinks big: he wants to reach billions, not millions of users and one day be in a position to acquire rather than be acquired. Meanwhile, in order to grow he is convinced that New York City, the capital of media and advertising, is the right city.[47]

In a journal entry the famed philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote about some tame geese who, week after week, attended church and heard teachings on God's great gift to geese - wings.  With wings, the preaching gander reminded them, they could fly and experience the many blessings known only through the utilization of that gift.  But, laments Kierkegaard, week after week they waddled home without flapping their way to the flight they were told was their destiny.  In a sobering conclusion Kierkegaard reports that these waddling geese were very well liked by the humans of the land.  They grew fat and plump and were then butchered, and eaten.  And that, says the philosopher, was the end of that.   Lesson?  God gives us wings

Going to the office wasn't as pleasant lately, Sam thought, as he made his way through the back entry to the detectives' division. There weren't so many people there that day, and it seemed like a lot of them were avoiding the place, just staying away as much as they could. He could understand that. After almost ten years as a Denver cop, Sam was sick of seeing what humanity was really capable of. He had grown up reading cop stories, always seeing how the cops would save the day, watching them rescue the innocent and punish the guilty every week on TV, until he finally knew that he had to be one himself. After a short stint in the Army that never even got him out of the country, he'd come home and applied for the academy. He'd been accepted, and that was the start of an illustrious career. Now, it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed in the mornings, make himself come in and see what new horrors he'd have to deal with. The past four months he'd been on loan to the DEA, and they'd made some big drug busts, shut down some of the most evil purveyors of sin and death that ever lived, but they were like the mythical hydra—as soon as you cut off one of its heads, three more grew back to take its place. Sam wanted to stop cutting off heads and find the creature's heart, but there was almost no evidence as to where that heart might be. They knew there was something big behind the drug operations in the city, but it was so well organized and so carefully designed that no one seemed to have any idea where or how to find it. His cell rang as he sat down at his desk, and he saw his partner's number. Dan Jacobs was already out on his station, watching one of the dealers they'd identified the day before. “Yo,” Sam answered. “Sam, it's Dan. I been thinkin', and it seems to me that we might be lookin' in the wrong direction, y'know?” Sam blinked a couple of times. “Danny, I've been awake for about fifteen minutes, and haven't even opened my Starbuck's yet. What the heck are you talkin' about?” “I'm sayin', maybe we're goin' about this all the wrong way, tryin' to find dealers and trail 'em, follow the tracks up the ladder. There's something about this whole setup that smacks of serious organization, something big enough to hide in plain sight, know what I mean? If it's that well laid out, we can follow minions all day long, we're never gonna find the top guy, because they don’t ever see the top guys.” Sam nodded. “Yeah, you're probably right,” he said, “but unless you got a crystal ball lead on where else to go, I don’t know what good it's doin' us. Where else we gonna find any leads at all? Got a clue, there?” “Maybe,” Dan said. “We've been tailing a lot of these clowns the past few weeks, right? Have you noticed one thing they all do the same?” Sam thought about it, but nothing jumped out at him. He looked at it from a couple of different angles, then shook his head. Into the phone, he said, “Nope. So, what is it?” “Facebook. No matter what else they're doin', these bastards never miss checking in on Facebook every day, several times a day. They go on, look at what people are sayin' on their pages, sometimes they answer and sometimes they don't, and then they go back to their drug dealin' ways.” Sam rubbed his temple. “Dan, everyone does that. Everyone on freakin' earth is on Facebook, and always checkin' it out. That's just part

Mid-June 2012 …Do you remember the arrogant male model who came to the Bahriji School to give a grooming course to us students when we were there? An evening after my return to London, while staying at Uncle James’ home, I visited one of the London sex clubs. Uncle James was in Hong Kong and I had his town house to myself before I moved to my own lodgings in Ladbroke Grove, recommended by the Nottinghill Methodist Church housing project. I was terribly lonely and needed company desperately. I ventured to “Heavens” located Under the Arches on Villiers Street, Charing Cross, a little before midnight. In 1972, this establishment was located in a large warehouse. For the uninitiated, the entrance was nondescript. It was dimly lit from the outside, and when a patron wished to gain entry, he pressed an obscure doorbell by the side of a huge aluminum sliding door. A pair of eyes would look through a peephole, checking to make sure that it was neither a police raid nor an underage client. If the patron was handsome and dressed like a macho gay man, he’d be asked for identification. Once approved, the green door would slide open to allow entry. Inside “Heavens” was a different world. Throngs of leather and denim-clad patrons checked their belongings in the tiny cloakroom next to the cashier’s booth. A small safety deposit box was then allocated upon request for each visitor to deposit his wallet or important documents for safekeeping. The safety deposit box key, attached to an elastic band together with the clothing claim tag, would then be handed to the patron to wear around his wrist or ankle. Most patrons were shirtless except for their jeans and leather pants. The uninhibited would strip down to their jock straps or sports undergarments. Their naked buttocks were ready to be in service for a night of unbridled debauchery.

One day, in the very early months of the project, I read several entries in a single week from girls who had been subjected to leering and shouting from men in the street while walking home from school in their uniforms. Dismayed, I posted a question on Twitter: Surely, I asked, this couldn't be a common occurrence? By the end of the day, a deluge of hundreds of tweets had confirmed that the experience was not only common but almost ubiquitous.

When I learn that in 1913, mass women's marches were held in South Africa which caused the rescinding of entry permit laws; that in 1956, 20,000 women assmesbled in Pretoria to protest pass laws for women, that resistance to these laws was carried out in remote country villages and punished bu shootings, beatings, and burnings; that in 1959, 2,000women demonstrated in Durban against laws which provided beerhalls for African men and criminalized women's traditional home brewing; that at one and the same time, African women have played a majow role alongside men in resisting apartheid, I have to ask myself why it took me so long to learn these chapters of women's history, why the leadership and strategies of African women have been son unrecognized as theory in action by white Western feminist thought. -Notes Toward a Politics of Location

The M/S Saint Louis was a German passenger liner owned by the Hamburg-America Line. She was best known for her voyage in 1939, in which her Captain Gustav Schröder attempted to find homes for her passengers. On May 13, 1939, just prior to the Second World War, 937 German-Jewish refugees boarded the ship in the hopes of escaping persecution and the holocaust that was to follow. Although the passengers had previously purchased legal Visas, they were denied entry into Cuba due to contrived red tape. While the ship was in transit, Cuba changed its laws restricting entry to all but U.S. citizens. Even though the Nazi régime had already started to persecute Jews, the Captain of the Saint Louis insisted that the crew treat the passengers with courtesy and respect. Even though the crew followed the captain’s orders, the passengers became distressed when it was announced that they would not be allowed to enter Cuba. President Roosevelt and his envoys Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, and Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury, as well as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, tried to persuade Cuba to accept the refugees. However, their actions were to no avail. It is believed that the German ambassador, on orders from Berlin, put pressure on Cuba. The passengers were refused permission to land, even though they were refugees fleeing persecution.

May 4, 2006 Blog Entry #1 There once was a girl who took everything for granted.
 She had friends.
She had good friends—friends who saw her geeky exterior but loved her anyway, friends who had known her since before she knew herself. But she wanted more.
She had people who loved her. She had a huge house on a hill. A bedroom as big as a studio apartment. But she still wasn't satisfied. She moved to the ends of the earth … Long Island, New York. She thought it would be exciting. And for a little while it was. But she soon found that life in the “city” wasn’t everything she hoped for. Before long, all the shops and landmarks were meaningless, and she realized that all the parties in the world meant nothing—especially if she didn't have the people to share them with. She decided to make a distress call. She lined up coconuts. H–E–L–P She spent one and a half years on her “deserted island.” Then, a moving truck finally answered her call. But little did she know that she was returning to her home as a different person. She was returning with lessons of contentment that would stick with her forever. Lessons of gratitude, integrity, faith, and love. Exposure to things and ideas she would have never seen in Snellville, Georgia. How she could be and how her life could be… She drove back down only to find that she wasn't the only one who had changed.

Modern nostalgia is a mourning for the impossibility of mythical return, for the loss of an enchanted world with clear borders and values; it could be a secular expression of a spiritual longing, a nostalgia for an absolute, a home that is both physical and spiritual, the edenic unity of time and space before entry into history.

My little boy was no more and even though he'd come home for vacations, our relationship would never be quite the same. Just as he would have to learn to be an adult in the world, so would I have to learn to live without him.

I wanted to do it once. Be a writer. Now I'm near 70, and the only thing I have to show for it is dictionary entries. Don't get me wrong -- I'm incredibly proud of it all. But let me say this, and I'll say it just once: don't fool yourself into thinking you're just on a detour as you sail home for Ithaca. A little pit stop, if you like, with the Lotus-Eaters or Calypso. There's no Athena interceding on your behalf. No guarantee you'll eventually arrive. If there's something you really want in life -- especially if it's something that scares you, or you think you don't deserve -- you have to go after it and do it now. Or in not very long you'll be right: you won't deserve it.

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