February Facts And Quotes

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." [Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962]

Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path. I shall be a litterateur, at least, all my life; nor would I abandon the hopes which still lead me on for all the gold in California.” EDGAR ALLAN POE TO FREDERICK WILLIAM THOMAS FEBRUARY 14, 1849

The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 billion was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his reincarnation. North Korea has an equivalent of Mount Fuji—a mountain sacred to all Koreans. It's called Mount Paekdu, a beautiful peak with a deep blue lake, on the Chinese border. Here, according to the new mythology, Kim Jong Il was born on February 16, 1942. His birth was attended by a double rainbow and by songs of praise (in human voice) uttered by the local birds. In fact, in February 1942 his father and mother were hiding under Stalin's protection in the dank Russian city of Khabarovsk, but as with all miraculous births it's considered best not to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.

And of course it has nothing to do with the fact that I haven't been with a women since I came to your bed back in February-Devlin.

If you want to see her, you can do it here, can’t you? I’ve no objection.’ ‘I fear you can have no romantic leanings,’ said Shield, before Miss Thane could speak. ‘A star-lit sky, the balmy night breezes–’ ‘But this is February! The breeze isn’t balmy at all – in fact, there’s been a demmed north wind blowing all day,’ pointed out Sir Hugh. ‘To persons deep in love,’ said Sir Tristram soulfully, ‘any breeze is balmy.’ ‘Hateful wretch!’ said Miss Thane, with deep feeling, ‘Pay no heed to him, Hugh! Of course, I did not go to meet him!’ Sir Tristram appeared to be overcome. ‘You play fast and loose with me,’ he said reproachfully. ‘You have dashed my hopes to the ground, shattered my self-esteem–’ ‘If you say another word, I’ll box your ears!’ threatened Miss Thane.

Talk of "witch-hunts" conceals an inconvenient fact: men charged with rape stand a better chance of walking free than other defendants. The conviction rate in rape trials – 63 per cent in 2012/13 – is quite a lot lower. Prosecutors are taking a bigger risk when they bring rape cases to court, especially when the alleged offences happened decades ago, leaving no forensic evidence. The Independent, 9 February 2014

Contempt. Back in February, “herd immunity” had been a new concept for the people… A man called George. He was alerting the officer to the fact that he was about to die. You’d have to hate a man a lot to kneel on his neck till he dies in plain view of a crowd and a camera, knowing the consequences this would likely have upon your own life. (Or you’d have to be pretty certain of immunity from the herd—not an unsafe bet for a white police officer, historically, in America.) But this was something darker—deadlier. It was the virus, in its most lethal manifestation.

In an ope-ed in The Washington Post in February 2020, Navy Admiral William McRaven, who was the U.S. Special Operations commander who oversaw the raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden a decade earlier said: As Americans we should be frightened - deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can't speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self preservation are more important than national security - then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.

She figured that the main problem in physics is physicists, that most of them are caught in a mind trap because they're so used to things being made of smaller things. So they instinctively believe that reality, at its most basic level, must be made up of and regulated by almost infinitely small elementary particles.

March 18...[1945] Brief morning reflection arisen from great love. In fact, the main point after all is that for forty years we have so much loved one another and do love one another; in fact, I am not at all sure at all that all this is going to come to an end. For certain, nothingness--en tant que individual consciousness, and there is the true nothingness--is altogether probable, and anything else highly improbable. But have we not continually experienced, since 1914 and even more since 1933 and with ever greater frequency in recent weeks, the most utterly improbable, the most monstrously fantastic things? Has not what was formerly completely unimaginable to us become commonplace and a matter of course? If I have lived through the persecutions in Dresden, if I have lived through February 13 and these weeks as a refugee--why should I not just as well live (or rather: die) to find the two of us somewhere, Eva and I, with angel wings or in some other droll form? It's not only the word "impossible" that has gone out of circulation, "unimaginable" also has no validity anymore.

Now that reading and writing are universal accomplishments, books are not bought so freely as they were about 1820. . . . [I]n fact, book-buying does not increase in proportion with the power of reading printed matter. People prefer periodical trash, snippets of twaddle. [February 1894, editor's introduction to Dana Estes & Company's The Betrothed, by Sir Walter Scott]

Hitler, to Bertrand de Jouvenel, February 1936: People have said that I owe my success to the fact that I have created a mystique… or more simply that I have been lucky. Well, I will tell you what has carried me to where I am. Our political problems appeared complicated. The German people did not comprehend them. In these conditions they preferred to leave it to the professional politicians to get them out of this confused mess. I, on the other hand, simplified the problems. I reduced them to the simplest terms. The masses realized this and they have followed me. Thus the class struggle, this famous class struggle! It is an absurdity, the class struggle, and I denounced the absurdity, and the people understood me! I made an appeal to reason. It was heard by the German people!

It’s estimated that more than forty thousand RVers dwell in the desert near Quartzsite from December through February. Bill Alexander has watched them come and go for what seems like forever. The outdoor recreation planner and lead park ranger at the Bureau of Land Management’s Yuma Field Office, he’s been working in this region for seventeen years. And after all that time, he says, he’s still impressed by the campers’ neighborliness. “We can have that guy who rides up on a bike with his dog on a leash and throws down his tent next to a guy in a $500,000 custom-built motorhome, and they get along just fine,” Bill told me. “That ability to coexist is based simply on their desire to enjoy the public land, and the fact that it belongs equally to the guy riding the bicycle as to the guy in the motorhome.

February 5, 2003, before the conflict began, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN he had absolute proof that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that were an immediate threat to world security. He declared: “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence . . . .

Issued in February 2012, and still online as of May 5, 2016, the report was written by one set of state officials for another. After a chilling description of a “cancer slope factor,” the report continues, in a matter-of-fact tone, to advise the recreational fisherman on how to prepare a contaminated fish to eat: “Trimming the fat and skin on finfish, and removing the hepatopancreas from crabs, will reduce the amount of contaminants in the fish and shellfish,” the document reads.

February 21 Have You Ever Been Carried Away for Him? She hath wrought a good work on Me. Mark 14:6 If human love does not carry a man beyond himself, it is not love. If love is always discreet, always wise, always sensible and calculating, never carried beyond itself, it is not love at all. It may be affection, it may be warmth of feeling, but it has not the true nature of love in it. Have I ever been carried away to do something for God not because it was my duty, nor because it was useful, nor because there was anything in it at all beyond the fact that I love Him? Have I ever realised that I can bring to God things which are of value to Him, or am I mooning round the magnitude of His Redemption whilst there are any number of things I might be doing? Not Divine, colossal things which could be recorded as marvellous, but ordinary, simple human things which will give evidence to God that I am abandoned to Him? Have I ever produced in the heart of the Lord Jesus what Mary of Bethany produced? There are times when it seems as if God watches to see if we will give Him the abandoned tokens of how genuinely we do love Him. Abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness. Personal holiness focuses the eye on our own whiteness; we are greatly concerned about the way we walk and talk and look, fearful lest we offend Him. Perfect love casts out all that when once we are abandoned to God. We have to get rid of this notion—“Am I of any use?” and make up our minds that we are not, and we may be near the truth. It is never a question of being of use, but of being of value to God Himself. When we are abandoned to God, He works through us all the time.

Götz Bergander, son of Dresden, eyewitness to its suffering, and the first objective historian of its destruction, summed up succinctly but tellingly: What began as routine led to an inferno and left behind a signal. What seemed capable of achievement only on paper—the coming together of favorable circumstances for the attacks—was suddenly an accomplished fact. But wasn’t that what the supporters of area bombing had always wanted? Too late came the question of whether they had really wanted it.Or, as the painter Goya—also no stranger to horror—expressed it with even more economy: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.

On 1 November 1983 Secretary of State George Shultz received intelligence reports showing that Iraq was using chemical weapons almost daily. The following February, Iraq used large amounts of mustard gas and also the lethal nerve agent tabun (this was later documented by the United Nations); Reagan responded (in November) by restoring diplomatic relations with Iraq. He and Bush Sr. also authorized the sale of poisonous chemicals, anthrax, and bubonic plague. Along with French supply houses, American Type Culture Collection of Manassas, Virginia, shipped seventeen types of biological agents to Iraq that were then used in weapons programs. In 1989, ABC-TV news correspondent Charles Glass discovered what the U.S. government had been denying, that Iraq had biological warfare facilities. This was corroborated by evidence from a defecting Iraqi general. The Pentagon immediately denied the facts.

On Contemporary Jazz—‘Bebop’” (from a handwritten journal dated February 24–May 5, 1947) focuses more intently on the effects of speed and virtuosity on stylistic changes in the jazz idiom, as embodied in the playing of figures such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk—all of whom Kerouac had seen perform in New York’s Fifty-second Street jazz clubs by the mid-1940s. Flexing his talents as a music writer, Kerouac presents an informed, condensed jazz history of the 1930s and 1940s. He not only recognizes the significance of bebop’s modern, avant-garde revision of jazz’s compositional vocabulary, but views those compositional developments in rhythm and harmony as the virtuosic equivalent of the European classical tradition. If “A Couple of Facts Concerning Laws of Decadence” displays Kerouac’s tendency at times to sentimentalize the premodern, this early essay on bebop valorizes propulsive, forward-looking art, the avant-garde abandon that came to characterize American expressive culture in the decades following World War II.

On February 14 Jefferson accepted the post. On February 23, 1790, Jefferson’s daughter Martha was married at Monticello to a third cousin, Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. Presumably, on the scene was her youthful aunt the slave Sally Hemings, daughter of Martha’s grandfather, John Wayles. The fact that Jefferson would have six children by Sally (half-sister to his beloved wife, another Martha) has been a source of despair to many old-guard historians, but, unhappily for them, recent DNA testings establish consanguinity between the Hemingses and their master, whose ambivalences about slavery (not venery) are still of central concern to us. If all men are created equal, then, if you are serious, free your slaves, Mr. Jefferson. But they were his capital. He could not and survive, and so he did not. He even transferred six families of slaves to daughter Martha and her husband. It might be useful for some of his overly correct critics to try to put themselves in his place. But neither empathy nor compassion is an American trait. Witness, the centuries of black slavery taken for granted by much of the country.

Moscow can be a cold, hard place in winter. But the big old house on Tverskoy Boulevard had always seemed immune to these particular facts, the way that it had seemed immune to many things throughout the years. When breadlines filled the streets during the reign of the czars, the big house had caviar. When the rest of Russia stood shaking in the Siberian winds, that house had fires and gaslight in every room. And when the Second World War was over and places like Leningrad and Berlin were nothing but rubble and crumbling walls, the residents of the big house on Tverskoy Boulevard only had to take up a hammer and drive a single nail—to hang a painting on the landing at the top of the stairs—to mark the end of a long war. The canvas was small, perhaps only eight by ten inches. The brushstrokes were light but meticulous. And the subject, the countryside near Provence, was once a favorite of an artist named Cézanne. No one in the house spoke of how the painting had come to be there. Not a single member of the staff ever asked the man of the house, a high-ranking Soviet official, to talk about the canvas or the war or whatever services he may have performed in battle or beyond to earn such a lavish prize. The house on Tverskoy Boulevard was not one for stories, everybody knew. And besides, the war was over. The Nazis had lost. And to the victors went the spoils. Or, as the case may be, the paintings. Eventually, the wallpaper faded, and soon few people actually remembered the man who had brought the painting home from the newly liberated East Germany. None of the neighbors dared to whisper the letters K-G-B. Of the old Socialists and new socialites who flooded through the open doors for parties, not one ever dared to mention the Russian mob. And still the painting stayed hanging, the music kept playing, and the party itself seemed to last—echoing out onto the street, fading into the frigid air of the night. The party on the first Friday of February was a fund-raiser—though for what cause or foundation, no one really knew. It didn’t matter. The same people were invited. The same chef was preparing the same food. The men stood smoking the same cigars and drinking the same vodka. And, of course, the same painting still hung at the top of the stairs, looking down on the partygoers below. But one of the partygoers was not, actually, the same. When she gave the man at the door a name from the list, her Russian bore a slight accent. When she handed her coat to a maid, no one seemed to notice that it was far too light for someone who had spent too long in Moscow’s winter. She was too short; her black hair framed a face that was in every way too young. The women watched her pass, eyeing the competition. The men hardly noticed her at all as she nibbled and sipped and waited until the hour grew late and the people became tipsy. When that time finally came, not one soul watched as the girl with the soft pale skin climbed the stairs and slipped the small painting from the nail that held it. She walked to the window. And jumped. And neither the house on Tverskoy Boulevard nor any of its occupants ever saw the girl or the painting again.

Postscript, 2005 From the Publisher ON APRIL 7, 2004, the Mid-Hudson Highland Post carried an article about an appearance that John Gatto made at Highland High School. Headlined “Rendered Speechless,” the report was subtitled “Advocate for education reform brings controversy to Highland.” The article relates the events of March 25 evening of that year when the second half of John Gatto’s presentation was canceled by the School Superintendent, “following complaints from the Highland Teachers Association that the presentation was too controversial.” On the surface, the cancellation was in response to a video presentation that showed some violence. But retired student counselor Paul Jankiewicz begged to differ, pointing out that none of the dozens of students he talked to afterwards were inspired to violence. In his opinion, few people opposing Gatto had seen the video presentation. Rather, “They were taking the lead from the teacher’s union who were upset at the whole tone of the presentation.” He continued, “Mr. Gatto basically told them that they were not serving kids well and that students needed to be told the truth, be given real-life learning experiences, and be responsible for their own education. [Gatto] questioned the validity and relevance of standardized tests, the prison atmosphere of school, and the lack of relevant experience given students.” He added that Gatto also had an important message for parents: “That you have to take control of your children’s education.” Highland High School senior Chris Hart commended the school board for bringing Gatto to speak, and wished that more students had heard his message. Senior Katie Hanley liked the lecture for its “new perspective,” adding that ”it was important because it started a new exchange and got students to think for themselves.” High School junior Qing Guo found Gatto “inspiring.” Highland teacher Aliza Driller-Colangelo was also inspired by Gatto, and commended the “risk-takers,” saying that, following the talk, her class had an exciting exchange about ideas. Concluded Jankiewicz, the students “were eager to discuss the issues raised. Unfortunately, our school did not allow that dialogue to happen, except for a few teachers who had the courage to engage the students.” What was not reported in the newspaper is the fact that the school authorities called the police to intervene and ‘restore the peace’ which, ironically enough, was never in the slightest jeopardy as the student audience was well-behaved and attentive throughout. A scheduled evening meeting at the school between Gatto and the Parents Association was peremptorily forbidden by school district authorities in a final assault on the principles of free speech and free assembly… There could be no better way of demonstrating the lasting importance of John Taylor Gatto’s work, and of this small book, than this sorry tale. It is a measure of the power of Gatto’s ideas, their urgency, and their continuing relevance that school authorities are still trying to shut them out 12 years after their initial publication, afraid even to debate them. — May the crusade continue! Chris Plant Gabriola Island, B.C. February, 2005

Mueller kicked off the meeting by pulling out a piece of paper with some notes. The attorney general and his aides believed they noticed something worrisome. Mueller’s hands shook as he held the paper. His voice was shaky, too. This was not the Bob Mueller everyone knew. As he made some perfunctory introductory remarks, Barr, Rosenstein, O’Callaghan, and Rabbitt couldn’t help but worry about Mueller’s health. They were taken aback. As Barr would later ask his colleagues, “Did he seem off to you?” Later, close friends would say they noticed Mueller had changed dramatically, but a member of Mueller’s team would insist he had no medical problems. Mueller quickly turned the meeting over to his deputies, a notable handoff. Zebley went first, summing up the Russian interference portion of the investigation. He explained that the team had already shared most of its findings in two major indictments in February and July 2018. Though they had virtually no chance of bringing the accused to trial in the United States, Mueller’s team had indicted thirteen Russian nationals who led a troll farm to flood U.S. social media with phony stories to sow division and help Trump. They also indicted twelve Russian military intelligence officers who hacked internal Democratic Party emails and leaked them to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Trump campaign had no known role in either operation. Zebley explained they had found insufficient evidence to suggest a conspiracy, “no campaign finance [violations], no issues found. . . . We have questions about [Paul] Manafort, but we’re very comfortable saying there was no collusion, no conspiracy.” Then Quarles talked about the obstruction of justice portion. “We’re going to follow the OLC opinion and conclude it wasn’t appropriate for us to make a final determination as to whether or not there was a crime,” he said. “We’re going to report the facts, the analysis, and leave it there. We are not going to say we would indict but for the OLC opinion.

Construction finally began that winter, and by early 1974 Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site bustled with 1,500 construction workers. But the deal remained tentative as cost estimates grew beyond the initial $1.5 billion to $2 billion or more and the federal government’s new budget arrived with punitive new taxes for oil and gas exports. Then, in the first week of December, one of the Syncrude partners, Atlantic Richfield, summarily quit the consortium, leaving a 30 percent hole in its financing. A mad scramble ensued in search of a solution. Phone calls pinged back and forth between government officials in Edmonton and Ottawa. Finally, on the morning of February 3, 1975, executives from the Syn-crude partner companies and cabinet ministers from the Alberta, Ontario and federal governments met without fanfare and outside the media’s brightest spotlights at an airport hotel in Winnipeg to negotiate a deal to save the project. Lougheed and Ontario premier Bill Davis both attended, along with their energy ministers. Federal mines minister Donald Macdonald represented Pierre Trudeau’s government, accompanied by Trudeau’s ambitious Treasury Board president, Jean Chrétien. Macdonald and Davis, both Upper Canadian patricians in the classic mould, were put off by Lougheed’s blunt style. By midday, the Albertans were convinced Macdonald would not be willing to compromise enough to reach a deal. Rumours in Lougheed’s camp after the fact had it that over lunch, Chrétien persuaded the mines minister to accept the offer on the table. Two days later, Chrétien rose in the House of Commons to announce that the federal government would be taking a 15 percent equity stake in the Syn-crude project, with Alberta owning 10 percent and Ontario the remaining 5 percent. In the coming years, it would be Lougheed, with his steadfast support and multimillion-dollar investments in SAGD, who would be seen as the Patch’s great public sector champion. But it was Chrétien, “the little guy from Shawinigan,” whose backroom deal-making skills had saved Syncrude

The Iran/Contra cover-up The major elements of the Iran/Contra story were well known long before the 1986 exposures, apart from one fact: that the sale of arms to Iran via Israel and the illegal Contra war run out of Ollie North’s White House office were connected. The shipment of arms to Iran through Israel didn’t begin in 1985, when the congressional inquiry and the special prosecutor pick up the story. It began almost immediately after the fall of the Shah in 1979. By 1982, it was public knowledge that Israel was providing a large part of the arms for Iran—you could read it on the front page of the New York Times. In February 1982, the main Israeli figures whose names later appeared in the Iran/Contra hearings appeared on BBC television [the British Broadcasting Company, Britain’s national broadcasting service] and described how they had helped organize an arms flow to the Khomeini regime. In October 1982, the Israeli ambassador to the US stated publicly that Israel was sending arms to the Khomeini regime, “with the cooperation of the United States…at almost the highest level.” The high Israeli officials involved also gave the reasons: to establish links with elements of the military in Iran who might overthrow the regime, restoring the arrangements that prevailed under the Shah—standard operating procedure. As for the Contra war, the basic facts of the illegal North-CIA operations were known by 1985 (over a year before the story broke, when a US supply plane was shot down and a US agent, Eugene Hasenfus, was captured). The media simply chose to look the other way. So what finally generated the Iran/Contra scandal? A moment came when it was just impossible to suppress it any longer. When Hasenfus was shot down in Nicaragua while flying arms to the Contras for the CIA, and the Lebanese press reported that the US National Security Adviser was handing out Bibles and chocolate cakes in Teheran, the story just couldn’t be kept under wraps. After that, the connection between the two well-known stories emerged. We then move to the next phase: damage control. That’s what the follow-up was about. For more on all of this, see my Fateful Triangle (1983), Turning the Tide (1985), and Culture of Terrorism (1987).

In this way we give our lack, we give what we do not have, Aristophanes’ claim that such a thing is impossible notwithstanding. Men in Western culture generally seem to have a harder time than women do admitting to lack, a harder time verbally admitting that they are missing something, incomplete in some respect, limited in some way – in a word, castrated. (The reader will, I hope, allow me to momentarily associate men with obsession here, and women with hysteria, in a way that vastly overgeneralizes things, in order to highlight something schematically at first.) I do not mean simply admitting that they do not actually know how to drive somewhere in particular or that they do not know some specific fact about something that has come up in a conversation – I mean a lack that is more far-reaching than that! To love is to admit to lack (Soler, 2003, p. 243), and Lacan even goes so far at one point – and here I am jumping ahead some 15 years in his work – to suggest that when a man loves, it is insofar as he is a woman (Lacan, 1973–4, class given on February 12, 1974). Insofar as he is a man, he can admit to desiring the so-called partial objects he sees in his partner, but he generally feels that perfectly good partial objects of much the same kind can be found in many different partners. Insofar as he is a man, he contents himself with the enjoyment he derives from the partial objects he finds in a whole series of interchangeable partners, and avoids like the plague showing that he lacks.But unlike desire, “Love demands love,” as Lacan (1998a, p. 4) puts it in Seminar XX; love insistently requests love in return. When one is fascinated by or lusts after a sexual partner, one’s desire does not necessarily wither or disappear if one does not feel desired in return. Even if “desire is the Other’s desire” (a claim often repeated by Lacan; see, for example, Lacan, 2015, p. 178), in the sense that we wish to be desired in return by the object of our desire, desire can do just fine without being requited. But “to love is to want to be loved” (Lacan, 2006a, p. 853): to love – at least in our times – is to implicitly ask the beloved for love that can make good or somehow compensate one for one’s own lack, the hollow or emptiness one feels inside. In this sense, all love seems to constitute a request for love in return. (In Alcibiades’ case, this takes the form of a pressing demand for Socrates to prove that he returns Alcibiades’ passion for Socrates.) Since to love is to show and declare one’s lack, love is feminine, as Colette Soler (2003, p. 97) says, following Lacan’s statements to their logical conclusion.

What’ll it be?” Steve asked me, just days after our wedding. “Do we go on the honeymoon we’ve got planned, or do you want to go catch crocs?” My head was still spinning from the ceremony, the celebration, and the fact that I could now use the two words “my husband” and have them mean something real. The four months between February 2, 1992--the day Steve asked me to marry him--and our wedding day on June 4 had been a blur. Steve’s mother threw us an engagement party for Queensland friends and family, and I encountered a very common theme: “We never thought Steve would get married.” Everyone said it--relatives, old friends, and schoolmates. I’d smile and nod, but my inner response was, Well, we’ve got that in common. And something else: Wait until I get home and tell everybody I am moving to Australia. I knew what I’d have to explain. Being with Steve, running the zoo, and helping the crocs was exactly the right thing to do. I knew with all my heart and soul that this was the path I was meant to travel. My American friends--the best, closest ones--understood this perfectly. I trusted Steve with my life and loved him desperately. One of the first challenges was how to bring as many Australian friends and family as possible over to the United States for the wedding. None of us had a lot of money. Eleven people wound up making the trip from Australia, and we held the ceremony in the big Methodist church my grandmother attended. It was more than a wedding, it was saying good-bye to everyone I’d ever known. I invited everybody, even people who may not have been intimate friends. I even invited my dentist. The whole network of wildlife rehabilitators came too--four hundred people in all. The ceremony began at eight p.m., with coffee and cake afterward. I wore the same dress that my older sister Bonnie had worn at her wedding twenty-seven years earlier, and my sister Tricia wore at her wedding six years after that. The wedding cake had white frosting, but it was decorated with real flowers instead of icing ones. Steve had picked out a simple ring for me, a quarter carat, exactly what I wanted. He didn’t have a wedding ring. We were just going to borrow one for the service, but we couldn’t find anybody with fingers that were big enough. It turned out that my dad’s wedding ring fitted him, and that’s the one we used. Steve’s mother, Lyn, gave me a silk horseshoe to put around my wrist, a symbol of good luck. On our wedding day, June 4, 1992, it had been eight months since Steve and I first met. As the minister started reading the vows, I could see that Steve was nervous. His tuxedo looked like it was strangling him. For a man who was used to working in the tropics, he sure looked hot. The church was air-conditioned, but sweat drops formed on the ends of his fingers. Poor Steve, I thought. He’d never been up in front of such a big crowd before. “The scariest situation I’ve ever been in,” Steve would say later of the ceremony. This from a man who wrangled crocodiles! When the minister invited the groom to kiss the bride, I could feel all Steve’s energy, passion, and love. I realized without a doubt we were doing the right thing.

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

Sporadic cases of plague were discovered throughout the summer and fall of 1900. Most alarming, at least to the native-born American population of San Francisco, was the first white plague victim discovered in August. In January 1901, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, who oversaw both the Marine Hospital Service and the Immigration Bureau, commissioned three nationally prominent plague experts to investigate the health conditions in San Francisco. Their report, using the best bacteriological methods then available, confirmed that plague did, in fact, visit San Francisco. The experts explained that the wisest precaution to take against plague's potential return was not to isolate people based on race but, instead, to intensify cleansing and fumigation efforts in any area where plague was found. Between March 1, 1900 and February 29, 1904, 121 cases of plague were diagnosed in San Francisco with 113 resulting in death. Of these deaths, 107 were Chinese, 4 were Japanese, and 2 were white.59 Alas, this episode hardly brought an end to the all-too-reflexive impulse Americans often have in establishing quarantine or public health policy based on race, ethnicity, or social disen-franchisement.

Moa mock hunt reconstructed by Augustus Hamilton Giant Haast's eagle attacking New Zealand moa by John Megahan Auroch bull restoration by DFoidl Dodo at Oxford University Museum of Natural History by BazzaDaRambler Elephant bird - author unknown Bluebuck by le Vaillant 1781 Great Auk reconstruction at Kelvingrove, Glasgow by Mike Pennington Quagga photograph - Regent's Park ZOO, London by F. York Stephens Island wren by John Gerrard Keulemans Honshu wolf from The Chrysanthemum Magazine February 1881

snowed in the Sahara desert for 30 minutes on the 18th February 1979.

As Kennan had written in the Long Telegram back in February 1946: “The very disrespect of Russians for objective truth—indeed, their disbelief in its existence—leads them to view all stated facts as instruments for furtherance of one ulterior purpose or another.” Now the internet could magnify their clandestine ambitions a millionfold.

TRUE or FALSE: Harry Styles, born 1 February 1994, is actually the youngest member of One Direction.

Kushner said that Scott Adam's approach could be applied to Trump's recent February 4 State of the Union speech when he had claimed, "Our economy is the best it has ever been." The economy was indeed in excellent shape then, but not the best in history Kushner acknowledged. "Controversy elevated the message," Kusher said. This was his core understanding of communication strategy in the age of internet and Trump. A controversy over the economy, Kushner argued - and how good it is - only helps Trump because it reminds voters that the economy is good. A hair-splitting, fact-checking debate in the media about whether the numbers were technically better decades ago or in the 1950's is irrelevant, he said.

TWO STYLES OF REASONING: PRINCIPLES-FIRST VERSUS APPLICATIONS-FIRST Principles-first reasoning (sometimes referred to as deductive reasoning) derives conclusions or facts from general principles or concepts. For example, we may start with a general principle like “All men are mortal.” Then we move to a more specific example: “Justin Bieber is a man.” This leads us to the conclusion, “Justin Bieber will, eventually, die.” Similarly, we may start with the general principle “Everything made of copper conducts electricity.” Then we show that the old statue of a leprechaun your grandmother left you is 100 percent copper. Based on these points, we can arrive at the conclusion, “Your grandmother’s statue will conduct electricity.” In both examples, we started with the general principle and moved from it to a practical conclusion. On the other hand, with applications-first reasoning (sometimes called inductive reasoning), general conclusions are reached based on a pattern of factual observations from the real world. For example, if you travel to my hometown in Minnesota one hundred times during January and February, and you observe every visit that the temperature is considerably below zero, you will conclude that Minnesota winters are cold (and that a winter visit to Minnesota calls for a warm coat as well as a scarf, wool hat, gloves, and ear warmers).

On February 15, 2013, a huge meteor streaked across the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia. For a brief moment it shone brighter than the Sun and cast stark shadows. At first it did not make a sound, but about two minutes later a sonic boom shattered windows and even knocked people over.

Mass killers have even explicitly talked about their desire to attack places where civilians can’t defend themselves. One need only listen to the February 2016 wiretap of an ISIS supporter who was planning an attack on one of the biggest churches in Detroit. Khalil Abu-Rayyan explained his choice of target this way: “A lot of people go there. Plus, people are not allowed to carry guns in church. Plus, it would make the news. Everybody would’ve heard.”32 Fortunately, Abu-Rayyan’s father alerted the FBI.

By focusing on the agreeable issues, the other party will get the sense that progress is being made—that an agreement is on the horizon—and they will be more inclined to continue moving forward with the discussions. For example, you might write down a counteroffer and say to a seller: Investor: “Okay, it sounds like we both agree on the major points— we’re going to pay for the property in cash, we’ll close on your preferred date of February 16, and my partner will need to see the property and sign off on the deal. Now, all we need to do is come together on price. I know you said that you couldn’t do $87,500—what if I can increase my offer to $90,000, and we include a five-day inspection period for me to bring in my contractors to take a look at the property? Will that work for you?” In this case, even if the parties were far apart in price, we’re sending the message to the seller that we’re actually pretty close to a deal. In fact, I like to reiterate all the things we agree upon every time I make a counteroffer.

On the Jewish side, the war years passed in the shadow of the White Paper, with its restrictions on immigration, a ban on most land purchases, and the prospect of an independent state in which the Jews would become a permanent minority. David Ben-Gurion famously pledged to ‘fight the White Paper as if there were no war and to fight the war as if there were no White Paper’. He also declared that just as the First World War had given birth to the Balfour Declaration, this new conflict should give the Jews their own state. Even before news of mass killings of Jews began to filter out of Nazi-occupied Europe, facilitating illegal immigration had become a preoccupation for Zionist institutions. Running the British blockade became a national mission. In November 1940, a rickety ship called the Patria sank in Haifa harbour after Haganah operatives miscalculated the force of a bomb they had planted. The intention had been to cripple the vessel and prevent the deportation of its Jewish passengers, but in the event three hundred drowned. Far worse was to come. In January 1942 the Wannsee Conference in Berlin secretly drew up operational plans for Hitler’s ‘final solution’. In February, an old cattle transport called the Struma was hit by a mine or torpedo and sank in the Black Sea, where it had been sent by the Turkish authorities after the British refused to transfer its Romanian Jewish refugees to Palestine. This time the death toll was 768, a grim dramatization of the plight of Jews fleeing for their lives and the impossibility of relying on British goodwill. ‘The Zionists,’ said Moshe Shertok, ‘do not mean to exploit the horrible tragedy of the Jews of Europe but they cannot refrain from emphasising the fact that events have totally proven the Zionist position on the solution of the Jewish problem. Zionism predicted the Holocaust decades ago.

In its conclusion, the report argued, "The wholesale condemnation of all comics magazines is one of the worst mistakes of some of the critics. The fact is both sides are right. The books are not all bad, as the more extreme critics say; nor are all good, as some of their publishers and defenders content. Like all other creative products, they must be judged individually. And that is what most critics, parents, and public officials have failed to do." Still, the city council found a third of published comics to be "offensive, objectionable, and undesirable," and, on February 2, 1949, it appointed a board to monitor news dealers' compliance with a blacklist of titles.

As the 2019 elections were approaching, the Modi government felt the need to appear less pro-rich and more pro-poor again. But the union budget passed in February was somewhat a missed opportunity so far as the peasants were concerned. No loan waivers were announced in their favor, simply an enhanced interest subvention on loans and an annual income support of Rs 6,000 (80 USD)—6 percent of a small farmer’s yearly income—to all farmers’ households owning two hectares or fewer.131 In fact, the union budget was once again more geared to pleasing the middle class. The income tax exemption limit jumped from Rs 200,000 (2,667 USD) to 250,000 (3,333 USD), and the income tax rate up to Rs 5 lakh (6,667 USD) was reduced from 10 to 5 percent. The income tax on an income of Rs 10 lakh (13,333 USD) dropped from Rs 110,210 (1,470 USD) to Rs 75,000 (1,000 USD).132 The poor were doubly affected by the fiscal policy of the Modi government in 2014–2019: not only did the tax cuts in favor of the middle class, the abolition of the wealth tax, and, more importantly, the reduction of the corporate tax rates have to be offset by increased indirect taxes, but the stagnation of fiscal resources did not allow the government of India to spend more on public education and public health—all the more so as Narendra Modi wanted to reduce the fiscal deficit. First of all, tax collection diminished. The exchequer “lost” Rs 1.45 lakh crore (1.933 billion USD) in the reduction of the corporate tax, for instance. That was the main reason why gross direct tax collection dipped 4.92 percent133 in 2019–2020, a fiscal year during which gross tax collections were less than those in 2018–2019. Tax collections had never declined on a year-on-year basis since 1961–1962.134 Second, government expenditures diminished. The central government reduced its spending on education from 0.63 percent of GDP in 2013–2014 to 0.47 percent in 2017–2018. The trend was marginally better on the public health front, where the Center’s spending declined from 0.37 percent of GDP in 2013–2014 to 0.34 percent in 2015–2016, before rising again to reach 0.38 percent in 2016–2017.

In fact, Britain was, in effect, buying back the PPE it had given China for free in February. It would also take another six to eight weeks before Britain was able to purchase these supplies from China and, by then, the NHS was already running out of protective kit, with some medical staff having to resort to buying their own makeshift kit from DIY stores.

off a direct address with commas. Examples Gentlemen, keep your seats. Car fifty-four, where are you? Not now, Eleanor, I’m busy. 8. Use commas to set off items in addresses and dates. Examples The sheriff followed me from Austin, Texas, to question me about my uncle. He found me on February 2, 1978, when I stopped in Fairbanks, Alaska, to buy sunscreen. 9. Use commas to set off a degree or title following a name. Examples John Dough, M.D., was audited when he reported only $5.68 in taxable income last year. The Neanderthal Award went to Samuel Lyle, Ph.D. 10. Use commas to set off dialogue from the speaker. Examples Alexander announced, “I don’t think I want a second helping of possum.” “Eat hearty,” said Marie, “because this is the last of the food.” Note that you do not use a comma before an indirect quotation or before titles in quotation marks following the verbs “read,” “sang,” or “wrote.” Incorrect Bruce said, that cockroaches have portions of their brains scattered throughout their bodies. Correct Bruce said that cockroaches have portions of their brains scattered throughout their bodies. Incorrect One panel member read, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” and the other sang, “Song for My Father.” Correct One panel member read “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” and the other sang “Song for My Father.” 11. Use commas to set off “yes,” “no,” “well,” and other weak exclamations. Examples Yes, I am in the cat condo business. No, all the units with decks are sold. Well, perhaps one with a pool will do. 12. Set off interrupters or parenthetical elements appearing in the middle of a sentence. A parenthetical element is additional information placed as explanation or comment within an already complete sentence. This element may be a word (such as “certainly” or “fortunately”), a phrase (“for example” or “in fact”), or a clause (“I believe” or “you know”). The word, phrase, or clause is parenthetical if the sentence parts before and after it fit together and make sense.

February 2 The Constraint of the Call Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel! 1 Corinthians 9:16 Beware of stopping your ears to the call of God. Everyone who is saved is called to testify to the fact; but that is not the call to preach, it is merely an illustration in preaching. Paul is referring to the pangs produced in him by the constraint to preach the Gospel. Never apply what Paul says in this connection to souls coming in contact with God for salvation. There is nothing easier than getting saved because it is God’s sovereign work—“Come unto Me and I will save you.” Our Lord never lays down the conditions of discipleship as the conditions of salvation. We are condemned to salvation through the Cross of Jesus Christ. Discipleship has an option with it—“IF any man . . .” Paul’s words have to do with being made a servant of Jesus Christ, and our permission is never asked as to what we will do or where we will go. God makes us broken bread and poured-out wine to please Himself. To be “separated unto the gospel” means to hear the call of God; and when a man begins to overhear that call, then begins agony that is worthy of the name. Every ambition is nipped in the bud, every desire of life quenched, every outlook completely extinguished and blotted out, saving one thing only—“separated unto the gospel.” Woe be to the soul who tries to put his foot in any other direction when once that call has come to him. This College exists to see whether God has any man or woman here who cares about proclaiming His Gospel; to see whether God grips you. And beware of competitors when God does grip you.

FEBRUARY 2 Two Heart Cells Beating If you place two living heart cells from different people in a Petrie dish, they will in time find and maintain a third and common beat. —MOLLY VASS This biological fact holds the secret of all relationship. It is cellular proof that beneath any resistance we might pose and beyond all our attempts that fall short, there is in the very nature of life itself some essential joining force. This inborn ability to find and enliven a common beat is the miracle of love. This force is what makes compassion possible, even probable. For if two cells can find the common pulse beneath everything, how much more can full hearts feel when all excuses fall away? This drive toward a common beat is the force beneath curiosity and passion. It is what makes strangers talk to strangers, despite the discomfort. It is how we risk new knowledge. For being still enough, long enough, next to anything living, we find a way to sing the one voiceless song. Yet we often tire ourselves by fighting how our hearts want to join, seldom realizing that both strength and peace come from our hearts beating in unison with all that is alive. It feels incredibly uplifting that without even knowing each other, there exists a common beat between all hearts, just waiting to be felt. It brings to mind the time that the great poet Pablo Neruda, near the end of his life, stopped while traveling at the Lota coal mine in rural Chile. He stood there stunned, as a miner, rough and blackened by his work inside the earth, strode straight for Neruda, embraced him, and said, “I have known you a long time, my brother.” Perhaps this is the secret—that every time we dare to voice what beats within, we invite some other cell of heart to find what lives between us and sing.

After January 1, 1959, the Castro Revolution changed the way business was done in Cuba. Abruptly, supplies for Cubana were no longer available, most routes were altered or suspended, and many of the pilots deserted their jobs or were exiled. In May of 1960, the new Castro administration merged all of the existing Cuban airlines and nationalized them under a drastically restructured Cubana management. At the time, many of Cubana’s experienced personnel took advantage of their foreign connections, and left for employment with other airlines. During the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April of 1961, two of the remaining Cubana DC-3’s were destroyed in the selective bombing of Cuba’s airports. Actually the only civil aviation airport that was proven to be bombed was the Antonio Maceo Airport in Santiago de Cuba. During the following years, the number of hijackings increased and some aircraft were abandoned at American airports, as the flight crews sought asylum in the United States. This corporate instability, as well as political unrest, resulted in a drastic reduction of passengers willing to fly with Cubana. Of course, this resulted in a severe reduction in revenue, making the airline less competitive. The Castro régime reacted by blaming the CIA for many of Cubana’s problems. However, slowly, except to the United States, most of the scheduled flights were restored. Not being able to replace their aging fleet with American manufactured aircraft, they turned to the Soviet Union. Currently Cubana’s fleet includes Ukrainian designed and built Antonov An-148’s and An-158’s. The Cubana fleet also has Soviet designed and built Illyushin II-96’s and Tupolev TU-204’s built in Kazan, Russia. Despite daunting difficulties, primarily due to the United States’ imposed embargo and the lack of sufficient assistance from Canada, efforts to expand and improve operations during the 1990’s proved successful. “AeroCaribbean” originally named “Empresa Aero” was established in 1982 to serve as Cuba’s domestic airline. It also supported Cubana’s operations and undertook its maintenance. Today Cubana’s scheduled service includes many Caribbean, European, South and Central American destinations. In North America, the airline flies to Mexico and Canada. With Cuban tourism increasing, Cubana has positioned itself to be relatively competitive. However much depends on Cuba’s future relations with the United States. The embargo imposed in February of 1962 continues and is the longest on record. However, Cubana has continued to expand, helping to make Cuba one of the most important tourist destinations in Latin America. A little known fact is that although Cubana, as expected, is wholly owned by the Cuban government, the other Cuban airlines are technically not. Instead, they are held, operated and maintained by the Cuban military, having been created by Raúl Castro during his tenure as the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Operation Detachment,” is more of a misnomer than anything. It was fought as part of a large American invasion directed by steps toward the Japanese mainland, and it was more like a siege that lasted 36 days from February-March 1945, with non-stop fighting every minute. In fact, the iconic flag-raising photo was taken just four days into the battle,

The Americans, Dutch and Australians had lost further vessels as well, notably at the battle of the Java Sea in February. As a result, when the summer of 1942 started, the only significant naval threat remaining to Japan in the Pacific was what remained of the American Pacific Fleet following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and some of those battleships had been pulled back to San Francisco. This fact was not known by Japan, but given their superiority in battleships, the Japanese were not overly concerned about the remnants of the American fleet either way. What had remained untouched by the attack on Pearl Harbor were the American carriers;

On Thursday, February 19, 2015, two months after the United States and Cuba announced a willingness to re-establish normal diplomacy, after over 5 decades of hostile relations, the United States House Minority leader and eight fellow Democratic Party lawmakers went to Havana to meet with the Cuban Vice President Miguel Díaz-Canel. On February 27th, Cuban Foreign Ministry Director for North America, Josefina Vidal, and her delegation met at the State Department in Washington, D.C. Although most Cubans and many Americans have a positive view towards improving diplomatic relations, there are conservative legislators in both the U.S. House and Senate that have not joined in the promotion and necessary détente and good will in easing the normalization of relations between the two countries. On May 29, 2015, by Executive Order, President Obama took a first step by removing Cuba from the list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism.” Since then President Trump has been determined to overturn most of what has been passed by the former administration. On June 16, 2017 President Trump moved to reverse many of President Obama’s policies towards Cuba. According to the CATO Institute the alleged justification for this reversal is that it will pressure the Cuban government to make concessions on human rights and political policies towards the Island Nation. Apparently Trump’s new restrictions will impose limits on travel and how U.S. Companies will be able to do business in Cuba. Although the final say regarding the normalization between the two countries is in the hands of politicians representing their various constituencies. The United States has long worked and traded with other Communist nations. Recently additional pressure has been applied by corporations that, quite frankly, are fed up with the slowness of the process. The idea that everything hinges on the fact Cuba is a Communist country, run by a dictatorship, does not take into account the plight of the individual Cuban citizens. The United States may wish for a different government; however it is up to Cuba to decide what form of government they will eventually have.

After the initial rebuff from the United States of America court of Judge John F. Keenan, the Union of India filed its proceedings at the district court in Bhopal in 1986, claiming $3.3 billion (approximately 50,000 cr.) One must assume that the claim was quantified after careful calculation and competent legal advice. Yet, without fighting the suit and without any transparency, the government, by negotiation, the facts of which even today are a complete secret, settled the claim of the unfortunate victims for a ludicrously low sum of $ 470 million, that is 2,400 cr (and this at 1986 rupee values.) In the interlocutory relief petition pending before the Supreme Court, this overall settlement for $470 million was recorded by consent of the parties, on 14 February 1989. The victims of Bhopal could not have been betrayed more inhumanly and cruelly.

Jack Reacher made his first appearance in print on March 17, 1997—St. Patrick’s Day—when Putnam published Killing Floor in the United States, which was Reacher’s—and my—debut. But I can trace his, and the book’s, genesis backward at least to New Year’s Eve 1988. Back then I worked for a commercial television station in Manchester, England. I was eleven years into a career as a presentation director, which was a little like an air traffic controller for the network airwaves. In February 1988, the UK commercial network had started twenty-four-hour broadcasting. For a year before that, management had been talking about how to man the new expanded commitment. None of us really wanted to work nights. Management didn’t really want to hire extra people. End of story. Stalemate. Impasse. What broke it was the offer of a huge raise. We took it, and by New Year’s Eve we were ten fat and happy months into the new contract. I went to a party, but didn’t feel much like celebrating. Not that I wasn’t content in the short term—I sleep better by day than night, and I like being up and about when the world is quiet and lonely, and for sure I was having a ball with the new salary. But I knew in my bones that management resented the raise, and I knew that the new contract was in fact the beginning of the end. Sooner or later, we would all be fired in revenge. I felt it was only a matter of time. Nobody agreed with me, except one woman. At the party, in a quiet moment, she asked me, “What are you going to do when this is all over?

If you reveal the fact that selfish principles control your life and character…your destiny will be decided, and you will be left outside the kingdom of God.

But the fact was Millat didn’t need to go back home: he stood schizophrenic, one foot in Bengal and one in Willesden. In his mind he was as much there as he was here. He did not require a passport to live in two places at once, he needed no visa to live his brother’s life and his own (he was a twin, after all). Alsana was the first to spot it. She confided to Clara: By God, they’re tied together like a cat’s cradle, connected like a see-saw, push one end, other goes up, whatever Millat sees, Magid saw and vice versa! And Alsana only knew the incidentals: similar illnesses, simultaneous accidents, pets dying continents apart. She did not know that while Magid watched the 1985 cyclone shake things from high places, Millat was pushing his luck along the towering wall of the cemetery in Fortune Green; that on February 10, 1988, as Magid worked his way through the violent crowds of Dhaka, ducking the random blows of those busy settling an election with knives and fists, Millat held his own against three sotted, furious, quick-footed Irishmen outside Biddy Mulligan’s notorious Kilburn public house. Ah, but you are not convinced by coincidence? You want fact fact fact? You want brushes with the Big Man with black hood and scythe? OK: on April 28, 1989, a tornado whisked the Chittagong kitchen up into the sky, taking everything with it except Magid, left miraculously curled up in a ball on the floor. Now, segue to Millat, five thousand miles away, lowering himself down upon legendary sixth-former Natalia Cavendish (whose body is keeping a dark secret from her); the condoms are unopened in a box in his back pocket; but somehow he will not catch it; even though he is moving rhythmically now, up and in, deeper and sideways, dancing with death

AUTHOR’S NOTE The First Assassin is a work of fiction, and specifically a work of historical fiction—meaning that much of it is based on real people, places, and events. My goal never has been to tell a tale about what really happened but to tell what might have happened by blending known facts with my imagination. Characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Winfield Scott, and John Hay were, of course, actual people. When they speak on these pages, their words are occasionally drawn from things they are reported to have said. At other times, I literally put words in their mouths. Historical events and circumstances such as Lincoln’s inauguration, the fall of Fort Sumter, and the military crisis in Washington, D.C., provide both a factual backdrop and a narrative skeleton. Throughout, I have tried to maximize the authenticity and also to tell a good story. Thomas Mallon, an experienced historical novelist, has described writing about the past: “The attempt to reconstruct the surface texture of that world was a homely pleasure, like quilting, done with items close to hand.” For me, the items close to hand were books and articles. Naming all of my sources is impossible. I’ve drawn from a lifetime of reading about the Civil War, starting as a boy who gazed for hours at the battlefield pictures in The Golden Book of the Civil War, which is an adaptation for young readers of The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Yet several works stand out as especially important references. The first chapter owes much to an account that appeared in the New York Tribune on February 26, 1861 (and is cited in A House Dividing, by William E. Baringer). It is also informed by Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, 1861, edited by Norma B. Cuthbert. For details about Washington in 1861: Reveille in Washington, by Margaret Leech; The Civil War Day by Day, by E. B. Long with Barbara Long; Freedom Rising, by Ernest B. Ferguson; The Regiment That Saved the Capitol, by William J. Roehrenbeck; The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, by Thomas P. Lowry; and “Washington City,” in The Atlantic Monthly, January 1861. For information about certain characters: With Malice Toward None, by Stephen B. Oates; Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald; Abe Lincoln Laughing, edited by P. M. Zall; Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries of John Hay, edited by Tyler Dennett; Lincoln Day by Day, Vol. III: 1861–1865, by C. Percy Powell; Agent of Destiny, by John S. D. Eisenhower; Rebel Rose, by Isabel Ross; Wild Rose, by Ann Blackman; and several magazine articles by Charles Pomeroy Stone. For life in the South: Roll, Jordan, Roll, by Eugene D. Genovese; Runaway Slaves, by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger; Bound for Canaan, by Fergus M. Bordewich; Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, written by himself; The Fire-Eaters, by Eric H. Walther; and The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, by Robert E. May. For background on Mazorca: Argentine Dictator, by John Lynch. This is the second edition of The First Assassin. Except for a few minor edits, it is no different from the first edition.

Yeah, young coders abound, but mostly only string together preassembled digital beads, and even today's brightest young nerdlets aren't immune to eventual wrinkles. As for real experts, well, as the dawn of the computer age recedes, so too have the hairlines of your true computer wizards, the males I mean. We females never change, we are eternally young.

February 26 Inferior Misgivings about Jesus Sir, Thou hast nothing to draw with. John 4:11 “I am impressed with the wonder of what God says, but He cannot expect me really to live it out in the details of my life!” When it comes to facing Jesus Christ on His own merits, our attitude is one of pious superiority—“Your ideals are high and they impress us, but in touch with actual things, it cannot be done.” Each of us thinks about Jesus in this way in some particular. These misgivings about Jesus start from the amused questions put to us when we talk of our transactions with God—“Where are you going to get your money from? How are you going to be looked after?” Or they start from ourselves when we tell Jesus that our case is a bit too hard for Him. “It is all very well to say ‘Trust in the Lord,’ but a man must live, and Jesus has nothing to draw with—nothing whereby to give us these things.” Beware of the pious fraud in you which says—“I have no misgivings about Jesus, only about myself.” None of us ever had misgivings about ourselves; we know exactly what we cannot do, but we do have misgivings about Jesus. We are rather hurt at the idea that He can do what we cannot. My misgivings arise from the fact that I ransack my own person to find out how He will be able to do it. My questions spring from the depths of my own inferiority. If I detect these misgivings in myself, let me bring them to the light and confess them—“Lord, I have had misgivings about Thee, I have not believed in Thy wits apart from my own; I have not believed in Thine Almighty power apart from my finite understanding of it.

February 17 MORNING “Isaac dwelt by the well Lahai-roi.” — Genesis 25:11 HAGAR had once found deliverance there and Ishmael had drank from the water so graciously revealed by the God who liveth and seeth the sons of men; but this was a merely casual visit, such as worldlings pay to the Lord in times of need, when it serves their turn. They cry to Him in trouble, but forsake Him in prosperity. Isaac dwelt there, and made the well of the living and all-seeing God his constant source of supply. The usual tenor of a man’s life, the dwelling of his soul, is the true test of his state. Perhaps the providential visitation experienced by Hagar struck Isaac’s mind, and led him to revere the place; its mystical name endeared it to him; his frequent musings by its brim at eventide made him familiar with the well; his meeting Rebecca there had made his spirit feel at home near the spot; but best of all, the fact that he there enjoyed fellowship with the living God, had made him select that hallowed ground for his dwelling. Let us learn to live in the presence of the living God; let us pray the Holy Spirit that this day, and every other day, we may feel, “Thou God seest me.” May the Lord Jehovah be as a well to us, delightful, comforting, unfailing, springing up unto eternal life. The bottle of the creature cracks and dries up, but the well of the Creator never fails; happy is he who dwells at the well, and so has abundant and constant supplies near at hand. The Lord has been a sure helper to others: His name is Shaddai, God All-sufficient; our hearts have often had most delightful intercourse with Him; through Him our soul has found her glorious Husband, the Lord Jesus; and in Him this day we live, and move, and have our being; let us, then, dwell in closest fellowship with Him. Glorious Lord, constrain us that we may never leave Thee, but dwell by the well of the living God.

What’ll it be?” Steve asked me, just days after our wedding. “Do we go on the honeymoon we’ve got planned, or do you want to go catch crocs?” My head was still spinning from the ceremony, the celebration, and the fact that I could now use the two words “my husband” and have them mean something real. The four months between February 2, 1992--the day Steve asked me to marry him--and our wedding day on June 4 had been a blur.

You've really helped him a lot." Samsara shrugged. "It's mostly Raz's insight. I just nudge him a little occasionally." "Which is what a good teacher does.

He was the least spiritual of all the monks here, accepting nothing without proof. This skepticism was simultaneously his greatest asset and his greatest impediment.

Based on radiometric dating of zircon crystal found in Western Australia scientists put the age of the earth at 4.4 billion years, give or take a few million years. Knowing man, Homo sapiens came on earth sometime between 100 to 250 thousand years ago (give or take a few tens of thousands of years)! This fact is brought home with amazing resonance by psychologist Robert Ornstein and his co-author Paul Ehrlich in their book New World New Mind: “Suppose the earth’s history was charted on a single calendar year, with Jan. 1 representing the origin of the Earth and midnight December 31 the present. Then each day of the earths ‘year’ would represent 12 million years of actual history. On that scale the first form of life, a simple bacterium, would arise sometime in February. More complex forms, however, come much later; the first fishes appear around November 20. The dinosaurs arrive around December 10 and disappear on Christmas Day. The first of our ancestors recognizable as human would not show up until the afternoon of December 31. Homo sapiens—our species—would emerge around 11:45 P.M. All that has occurred in recorded history would occur in the final minute of the year.” As

The next February I had a daughter born. She lived only 12 days. There were some things very strange connected with the birth of this child, which I do not think best to write, but I shall never forget, which I never shall know the meaning of until the first resurrection, when I shall clasp it again in my arms.

The enemy government quickly realised that the economic policy of the Dáil was as great a danger to them as its political policy, that in fact the elected Government of Ireland stood for social and economical deliverance, no less than for political deliverance.Without finance, however, the policy would be inoperative.The enemy must, therefore, at all costs prevent our getting the necessary funds. He attempted, certainly—and with a renewed determination and savagery.’ — Letter from Michael Collins to Éamon deValera on 10 February 1920

It was fair to say almost everyone was burned out by now. Morale was so low that the team, as a whole, didn’t crunch. The artists didn’t need to review their work in meetings anymore because everyone had the Warcraft look-and-feel down; they just moved from one art task to the next. Programming inched forward, mole-like, worrying only about the task immediately in front of them. Releasing the game in February didn’t look likely anymore. That meant more time crunching and bug hunting, and few were happy at the prospect. The game designers had the functionality they needed, but wowedit’s tools weren’t streamlined because David Ray had been reassigned to working on the god tool, an application that would be used by our GMs for in-game customer support. Most of the designers were too busy to socialize. The classes and combat were getting overhauled again, and the item system was getting revisited by adding procedurally created items to keep the loot tables feeling fresh. This meant possible delays for the friends-and-family alpha test, and everyone was tired of telling their nearest and dearest that our game wasn’t ready to play yet (and that they’d be the first to know when it was). Even the producers had resigned themselves to the fact that we wouldn’t be shipping in the first quarter of 2004. They were seeing stability problems, and we were having a hard time getting a playable build. This made things especially hard for the game designers, who needed to test their data, but no one was really coming down on the programmers, as they were already haggard. Nevertheless, when the game crashed, people were getting visibly upset. Our shipping date was pushed to June, although some people doubted even that was possible.

The best definition of true imagination is that it is the sum of our faculties. Poetry is the scholar’s art. The acute intelligence of the imagination, the illimitable resources of its memory, its power to possess the moment it perceives — if we were speaking of light itself, and thinking of the relationship between objects and light, no further demonstration would be necessary … What light requires a day to do, and by day I mean a kind of Biblical revolution of time, the imagination does in the twinkling of an eye. It colors, increases, brings to a beginning and end, invents languages, crushes men, and, for that matter, gods in its hands, it says to women more than it is possible to say, it rescues all of us from what we have called absolute fact… — Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (Vintage; Unabridged Edition, February 12, 1965)

February was the month of atonement and, as we have seen, the dead. The first day, in fact, linked the anniversary of Juno Sospita (on the Palatine) with the cult of Helernus.

February 8, 1904.

Japanese paranoia stemmed partly from xenophobia rooted in racism. This combination wasn’t peculiar to Japan, as the Nazis were demonstrating in Germany. In the United States, the 1924 Exclusion Act remained in force, prohibiting all immigration from Asia. Some Western states didn’t think the Exclusion Act went far enough, because it hadn’t gotten rid of the Japanese who had immigrated before the United States slammed the door. Xenophobes argued that these immigrants were now breeding more Japanese, who were recognized, outrageously, as American citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment. Farmers in California and Arizona were especially hostile. Even before the Exclusion Act, these states had passed Alien Land Laws severely restricting the property rights of Japanese. Then in 1934 a group of farmers in Arizona’s Salt River Valley began agitating to kick Japanese farmers out, alleging that they had flooded into the region and were depriving farmland from deserving whites who were already hurting from the Depression. They also demanded that white landowners stop leasing acreage to Japanese farmers. The white farmers and their supporters held rallies and parades, blaring their message of exclusion. In the fall of that year, night riders began a campaign of terrorism. They dynamited irrigation canals used by Japanese farmers and threw dynamite bombs at their homes and barns. The leaders of the Japanese community tried to point out that only 700 Japanese lived in the valley and most had been there for more than twenty years. Three hundred fifty of them were American citizens, and only 125 worked in agriculture, mostly for American farmers. Facts made no impression on the white farmers’ racist resentments. Some local officials exploited the bigotry for political gain. The Japanese government protested all this. Hull didn’t want a few farmers to cause an international incident and pushed the governor of Arizona to fix the problem. The governor blamed the terrorism on communist agitators. Dynamite bombs continued to explode on Japanese farms through the fall of 1934. The local and state police maintained a perfect record—not a single arrest. In early February 1935 the Arizona legislature began considering a bill that would forbid Japanese immigrants from owning or leasing land. If they managed to grow anything, it could be confiscated. Any white farmer who leased to a Japanese would be abetting a crime. (Japan had similar laws against foreigners owning farmland.) American leaders and newspapers quickly condemned the proposed law as shameful, but farmers in Arizona remained enthusiastic. Japanese papers covered the controversy as well. One fascist group, wearing uniforms featuring skulls and waving a big skull flag, protested several times at the US embassy in Tokyo. Patriotic societies began pressuring Hirota to stand up for Japan’s honor. He and Japan’s representatives in Washington asked the American government to do something. Arizona politicians got word that if the bill passed, millions of dollars in New Deal money might go elsewhere. Nevertheless, on March 19 the Arizona senate passed the bill. On March 21 the state house of representatives, inspired more by fears of evaporating federal aid than by racial tolerance, let the bill die. The incident left a bad taste all around.

[Our Contemporary Lexicon] As years go by And lives are wasted, As we lose everything, We discover the real meaning Of the words shaping our lives… Words that have filled our contemporary lexicon, We know the words yet don’t fully grasp them, And the more we hear them, The more confusing they become… Words like War Bank Justice Media Capital Investment Advertisement Weapon School University Hospital Humanitarian organization Civil society Ethnicity Race Religion Modernity Backwardness Secularism Trade Love Family Prison Home Immigration Visa Passport Borders Democracy Elections Car Plane And countless others… Words that may pretend to oppose each other publicly, Yet are secretly in bed with each other Making love, acting as synonyms and French kissing… Words that in reality Walk hand in hand and are united against us To achieve the mutual goal of depriving most of us Of having a decent life with dignity… Words used by allies and foes alike, as needed! Words that have become rustier than our souls, Yet their fake glitter continues to deceive millions upon billions Of people believing faithfully in them Or working hard to access their imagined benefits... As years go by, We learn late in the game That all the meanings we ascribed to such words Are in fact killing us Raping us In the homeland On the border And in exile! As the game continues, At a late hour, We discover that Our worries and sleepless nights In hopes of a bearable world Have all been wasted in vain… What is happening today Has happened throughout history… And the game shall continue Until we reexamine this lexicon Until we destroy it And rewrite all its pages To erase all the monsters its words Within all of us… (February 6, 2015)

Valentine’s Day in Japan is celebrated quite differently than in the rest of the world: it is women who give gifts to men, habitually in the form of chocolates or cookies.  On 14 March, exactly a month after Valentine’s Day, is White Day, when men are expected to reciprocate with gifts worth at least three times more than what they received on 14 February.

In fact, the “women and children first” protocol for abandoning ship was not a particularly ancient one. It began with the HMS Birkenhead, a British troopship that was wrecked off Cape Town, South Africa, on February 26, 1852. The soldiers famously stood in formation on deck while the women and children boarded the boats, and only 193 of the 643 people on board survived. Hymned as the “Birkenhead drill” in a poem by Rudyard Kipling, it became a familiar touchstone of Britain’s imperial greatness and AS BRAVE AS THE BIRKENHEAD was a much-used heading in UK Titanic press coverage. A story that Captain Smith had exhorted his men to “Be British!” further burnished the oft-cited claim that Anglo-Saxon men had not forgotten how to die.

Come February, all of our off time was spent composing letters for the hundreds of valentines we sent out around the globe. Valentine cards had become a tradition of ours, born of the fact that we could never get ourselves organized in time to send out Christmas cards. With our ever-enlarging network of family, friends, and Foreign Service colleagues, we found that Paul’s hand-designed valentine cards—usually a woodcut or drawing, sometimes a photograph—were a nice way to keep in touch. But they could be labor-intensive. One year’s design was a faux stained-glass window, with five colors in it, each of which had to be hand-painted in watercolors—which took hours. For 1956, we decided to lighten up by doing something different: we posed ourselves for a self-timed valentine photo in the bathtub, wearing nothing but artfully placed soap bubbles.

fourth text Kushner advised was necessary to understand Trump was Scott Adams’s book Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter. Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, explains in Win Bigly that Trump’s misstatements of fact are not regrettable errors or ethical lapses, but part of a technique called “intentional wrongness persuasion.” Adams argues Trump “can invent any reality” for most voters on most issues, and “all you will remember is that he provided his reasons, he didn’t apologize, and his opponents called him a liar like they always do.” Kushner said that Scott Adams’s approach could be applied to Trump’s recent February 4 State of the Union speech when he had claimed, “Our economy is the best it has ever been.” The economy was indeed in excellent shape then, but not the best in history, Kushner acknowledged.

February 4: Today (England) shows a smiling Arthur Miller with Marilyn in the polka dress she wears in The Misfits. The headline reads, “Monroe and Miller: The Full Facts.

You are invited to see the Earth turn, in the Meridian Room of the Paris Observatory, tomorrow, from 2pm to 3pm,” read a notice he sent out in February. A journalist who attended the performance wrote in Le National newspaper: “At the appointed hour, I was there, in the Meridian Room, and I saw the Earth turn.” Of course, the journalist and his friends did not see the Earth turn. Nor did they feel the Earth turn. Nor did they hear the Earth turn. The turning of the Earth was invisible, and it was silent. It was, in fact, completely hidden to human sensory perceptions. The spectators were informed of this profound but invisible aspect of the world through Foucault’s pendulum and their intellectual deductions. Foucault’s pendulum, along with the first microscope two hundred years earlier, marked the beginning of a new era in the history of human civilization, in which our knowledge of nature arises not from our own sensory experience but from instruments and calculations. Since Foucault, more and more of what we know about the universe is undetected and undetectable by our bodies. What we see with our eyes, what we hear with our ears, what we feel with our fingertips, is only a tiny sliver of reality. Little by little, using artificial devices, we have uncovered a hidden reality. It is often a reality that violates common sense. It is often a reality strange to our bodies. It is a reality that forces us to re-examine our most basic concepts of how the world works. And it is a reality that discounts the present moment and our immediate experience of the world.

Having a shared common source, or deriving from different but closely similar sources, provides a simple explanation for why the Cantino and Reinal maps are so much alike in almost all respects and also, crucially, why both contain similar mistakes. As I was already aware from Sharif Sakr's first report [...] these mistakes include the absence of the Kathiawar peninsula with its characteristic Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay; a distinct bulge in the north-west corner of India; enlargement of many small island groups, and a south-westerly orientation (with what Sharif describes as 'distinct lips') of the southern tip of India. In his e-mail of 23 February 2001 he then makes the crucial observation that: 'While these deviations are all errors relative to a modern map of India, they in fact match up extremely well with Glenn Milne's map of India 21,300 years ago at LGM. This inundation map shows a large indent at the mouth of the Indus, a bulge obscuring completely the Kathiawar peninsula, enlarged Lakshadweep and Maldives islands, and, most surprisingly, a SW-pointing 'mouth' shape at India's southern tip that is virtually identical to that shown by Reinal.' It seems to me that these correlations, and the others that Sharif reported [...], are obvious, striking and speak for themselves. The only questions that need to be asked about them are: (1) do they result from the workings of coincidence? Or (2) are they there because the source maps for Cantino and Reinal were originally drawn at the end of the Ice Age -- perhaps not as far back as the LGM but certainly before the final inundation of the Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay which created the Kathiawar peninsula around 7700 years ago?

FEBRUARY 1 FOLLOW ME ONE STEP AT A TIME. That is all I require of you. In fact, that is the only way to move through this space/time world.

As of February 2017, there were 3.7 billion users of email services worldwide, and every day 269 billion emails are sent. Broken down, this equates to 2.5 million emails sent every second and trillions of emails sent each year. An estimated 49.7% of all emails are spam messages, and the average person who works in an office receives over 120 emails each day. The email system has been around since 1971, and the highest open rates of email take place on Saturdays. Out of all the companies that send emails to users, Groupon is the company that sends the most emails per user. Only 22.8% of people open political emails, while between 13 and 18% of marketing emails are opened in

Pair 3: American Home Products Co. (drugs, cosmetics, household products, candy) and American Hospital Supply Co. (distributor and manufacturer of hospital supplies and equipment) These were two “billion-dollar good-will” companies at the end of 1969, representing different segments of the rapidly growing and immensely profitable “health industry.” We shall refer to them as Home and Hospital, respectively. Selected data on both are presented in Table 18-3. They had the following favorable points in common: excellent growth, with no setbacks since 1958 (i.e., 100% earnings stability); and strong financial condition. The growth rate of Hospital up to the end of 1969 was considerably higher than Home’s. On the other hand, Home enjoyed substantially better profitability on both sales and capital.† (In fact, the relatively low rate of Hospital’s earnings on its capital in 1969—only 9.7%—raises the intriguing question whether the business then was in fact a highly profitable one, despite its remarkable past growth rate in sales and earnings.) When comparative price is taken into account, Home offered much more for the money in terms of current (or past) earnings and dividends. The very low book value of Home illustrates a basic ambiguity or contradiction in common-stock analysis. On the one hand, it means that the company is earning a high return on its capital—which in general is a sign of strength and prosperity. On the other, it means that the investor at the current price would be especially vulnerable to any important adverse change in the company’s earnings situation. Since Hospital was selling at over four times its book value in 1969, this cautionary remark must be applied to both companies. TABLE 18-3. Pair 3. CONCLUSIONS: Our clear-cut view would be that both companies were too “rich” at their current prices to be considered by the investor who decides to follow our ideas of conservative selection. This does not mean that the companies were lacking in promise. The trouble is, rather, that their price contained too much “promise” and not enough actual performance. For the two enterprises combined, the 1969 price reflected almost $5 billion of good-will valuation. How many years of excellent future earnings would it take to “realize” that good-will factor in the form of dividends or tangible assets? SHORT-TERM SEQUEL: At the end of 1969 the market evidently thought more highly of the earnings prospects of Hospital than of Home, since it gave the former almost twice the multiplier of the latter. As it happened the favored issue showed a microscopic decline in earnings in 1970, while Home turned in a respectable 8% gain. The market price of Hospital reacted significantly to this one-year disappointment. It sold at 32 in February 1971—a loss of about 30% from its 1969 close—while Home was quoted slightly above its corresponding level.*

As of February 8, 1979, James Arthur Springer—Jim, as he went by—had been twice married. His first marriage, to a woman named Linda, ended in divorce. His second wife was named Betty. Jim Springer grew up in Ohio and once owned a dog named Toy. He had a son named James Allan (although perhaps with one L). He was a chain-smoker who liked beer. In his garage he had a woodworking bench. He drove a Chevy, suffered from high blood pressure and migraines, and once served as a sheriff’s deputy. His family lived on a quiet street—theirs was the only house on the block. As of February 8, 1979, James Edward Lewis—Jim, as he went by—had been twice married. His first marriage, to a woman named Linda, ended in divorce. His second wife was named Betty. Jim Lewis grew up in Ohio and once owned a dog named Toy. He had a son named James Allan (although perhaps with one L). He was a chain-smoker who liked beer. In his garage he had a woodworking bench. He drove a Chevy, suffered from high blood pressure and migraines, and once served as a sheriff’s deputy. His family lived on a quiet street—theirs was the only house on the block. As of February 8, 1979, Jim Springer and Jim Lewis had almost no knowledge of one another. They had met before, but only as infants. On February 9, 1979, the two met for the first time in nearly forty years. They were identical twins, given up for adoption as one-month-olds, now reunited. The shocking coincidence seems like that of myth, but it’s almost certainly not—shortly after the twins’ reunion, People magazine and Smithsonian magazine reported on the incredible confluence of genetically identical twins with anecdotally identical lives. The two men piqued the curiosity of a researcher named Thomas J. Bouchard, a professor of psychology and the director of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research at the University of Minnesota.

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(Are there, or are there not, two ‘c’s’ in recommend’? In spite of the fact that I am a B.A. I can never be certain. Fancy if the Pringles had discovered that before I found Andy’s diary!) Chapter 9 Trix Taylor was curled up in the tower one night in February, while little flurries of snow hissed against the windows and that absurdly tiny stove purred like a red-hot black cat.