Group Song Quotes

People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a 'common purpose'. 'Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they're going to visit at 3am. So, I dislike and despise groups of people but I love individuals. Every person you look at; you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking.

That sounds about right for this group. You bleeding hearts are going to be the death of me, I just know it.

This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. And when they spoke, they weren't just telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.

Rescuing bloodbags and saving puppies.” He sighed. “That sounds about right for this group. You bleeding hearts are going to be the death of me, I just know it.

here once was a group with Liam and Niall Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? They lived with Zayn and his room was vile Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Did you know Harry’s such a slob? He needs to win X-factor ‘cause he can’t get a job And oh Louis needs a boat He dresses like he owns one ‘Cause he’s got no other clothes They really need your vote Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Mick Jagger could be Harry’s dad Vas happenin’ mum? Vas happenin’ Mick? When Liam sings he makes his face look sad Vas happenin’ song? Vas happenin’ sad? And Zayn’s the master of echos And Niall was raised by leprechauns So he won’t ever grow And oh Louis needs that boat He dresses like he owns one And it’s becoming a joke They really need your vote Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys?

She was adamant that any organisation that labelled one group of people as evil would eventually do the same to others. That to treat any one person as less than human was to cheapen the very substance of humanity.

I Love Loving You You are my favorite song; a rhythm of beauty that captures my spirit. You are my favorite poem; an exquisite grouping of ideas set in motion with an unmatched enchanting elegance. You are my best friend; from our laughter to our deep conversations, our moments together are a timeless pleasure. You are my soul mate; a connection so pure, so powerful, that it can only be considered divine. You are my lover; a passionate entwinement, a chorus of ecstasy, and a feeling of complete unity that words could never adequately describe. You are my angel; you remind me of the goodness in this world and inspire me to be the greatest version of myself. You are my home; it is in your loving gaze that I find the comfort, acceptance, and the sense of belonging. You are my love ~ mi amor; there are not enough days in forever to allow me to fully express my love for you. I love loving you.

I tried to explain again. 'Perhaps it would have been easier if I said that not being able to find something is like suddenly not remembering the words to your favourite song that you knew off by heart. It's like suddenly forgetting the name of someone you know really well and see every day, or the name of a group who sang a famous song. It's something so frustrating that it plays on your mind over and over again because you know there's an answer but no one can tell you it. It niggles and niggles at me and I can't rest until I know the answer.' 'I Understand,' he said softly.

First thing I'd do is make sure the poor newbie demigods don't have to suffer through the orientation film." All conversation stopped. "What orientation film?" Will Solace asked. Nico looked puzzled. "You know ..." He glanced side to side, clearly uncomfortable with everybody watching him. Finally he cleared his throat and sang in a warbly voice to the tune of "The Hokey Cokey": "It lets the demigods in! It shuts the monsters out! It keeps the half-bloods safe, but turns mortals all about! It's Misty, and it's magic, and it makes me want to shout: the border is all about!" He punctuated the last line of the song with some half-hearted claps. We stared at him in stunned silence. "Nico." Will patted his boyfriend's arm. "You're scaring the other campers." "More than usual," Julia Feingold muttered under her breath. "Oh, come on," Nico protested. "You've all heard that annoying song, right? It's from Welcome to Camp Half-Blood." Nobody responded. "The orientation film," Nico added. We shared a group shrug. Nico groaned. "You mean I just sang in public and ... I'm the only one who's ever seen that stupid film?" "So far, anyway," said Connor Stoll.

What would you have me do? Seek for the patronage of some great man, And like a creeping vine on a tall tree Crawl upward, where I cannot stand alone? No thank you! Dedicate, as others do, Poems to pawnbrokers? Be a buffoon In the vile hope of teasing out a smile On some cold face? No thank you! Eat a toad For breakfast every morning? Make my knees Callous, and cultivate a supple spine,- Wear out my belly grovelling in the dust? No thank you! Scratch the back of any swine That roots up gold for me? Tickle the horns Of Mammon with my left hand, while my right Too proud to know his partner's business, Takes in the fee? No thank you! Use the fire God gave me to burn incense all day long Under the nose of wood and stone? No thank you! Shall I go leaping into ladies' laps And licking fingers?-or-to change the form- Navigating with madrigals for oars, My sails full of the sighs of dowagers? No thank you! Publish verses at my own Expense? No thank you! Be the patron saint Of a small group of literary souls Who dine together every Tuesday? No I thank you! Shall I labor night and day To build a reputation on one song, And never write another? Shall I find True genius only among Geniuses, Palpitate over little paragraphs, And struggle to insinuate my name In the columns of the Mercury? No thank you! Calculate, scheme, be afraid, Love more to make a visit than a poem, Seek introductions, favors, influences?- No thank you! No, I thank you! And again I thank you!-But... To sing, to laugh, to dream To walk in my own way and be alone, Free, with a voice that means manhood-to cock my hat Where I choose-At a word, a Yes, a No, To fight-or write.To travel any road Under the sun, under the stars, nor doubt If fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne- Never to make a line I have not heard In my own heart; yet, with all modesty To say:"My soul, be satisfied with flowers, With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them In the one garden you may call your own." So, when I win some triumph, by some chance, Render no share to Caesar-in a word, I am too proud to be a parasite, And if my nature wants the germ that grows Towering to heaven like the mountain pine, Or like the oak, sheltering multitudes- I stand, not high it may be-but alone!

there was a song i heard when i was in los angeles by a local group. the song was called "los angeles" and the words and images were so harsh and bitter that the song would reverberate in my mind for days. the images, i later found out, were personal and no one i knew shared them. the images i had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children. images of people, teenagers my own age, looking up from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. these images stayed with me even after i left the city. images so violent and malicious that they seemed to be my only point of reference for a long time afterwards. after i left.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900. To You WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true Soul and Body appear before me, They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, forms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem; I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. O I have been dilatory and dumb; I should have made my way straight to you long ago; I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you. I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you; None have understood you, but I understand you; None have done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself; None but have found you imperfect—I only find no imperfection in you; None but would subordinate you—I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you; I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all; From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light; But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d light; From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever. O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known what you are—you have slumber’d upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?) The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk; I pursue you where none else has pursued you; Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others, they do not balk me, The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside. There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you; No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you; No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you; I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you. Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you; These immense meadows—these interminable rivers—you are immense and interminable as they; These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution—you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution. The hopples fall from your ankles—you find an unfailing sufficiency; Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

Why was fabulousness important? The world was a scary, sad place and adornment was one of the only ways she knew to make herself and the people around her forget their troubles. That was why she had opened her store almost five years ago. Everyone who entered the little square white house with miniature Corinthian columns, cherub statues, and French windows seemed to leave carrying armloads of newly handmade and well spruced-up recycled vintage clothing, humming sixties girl-group songs, seventies glam and punk, eighties New Wave one-hit wonders, or nineties grunge, doing silly dances, and not caring what anyone thought. Weetzie loved the old dresses she found and sold, because they had their own secret histories. She always wondered where, when, and how they had been worn. What they had seen. Old dresses were like old ladies.

burning in hell this piece of me fits in nowhere as other people find things to do with their time places to go with one another things to say to each other. Iam burning in hell some place north of Mexico. flowers don’t grow here. I am not like other people other people are like other people. they are all alike: joining grouping huddling they are both gleeful and content andIam burning in hell. my heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people. I’d die on their picnic grounds smothered by their flags slugged by their songs unloved by their soldiers gored by their humor murdered by their concern. I am not like other people. Iam burning in hell. the hell of myself.

I detest love lyrics. I think one of the causes of bad mental health in the United States is that people have been raised on 'love lyrics'. You're a young kid and you hear all those 'love lyrics', right? Your parents aren't telling you the truth about love, and you can't really learn about it in school. You're getting the bulk of your 'behaviour norms' mapped out for you in the lyrics to some dumb fucking love song. It's a subconscious training that creates desire for an imaginary situation which will never exist for you. People who buy into that mythology go through life feeling that they got cheated out of something. What I think is very cynical about some rock and roll songs -- especially today -- is the way they say: "Let's make love." What the fuck kind of wussy says shit like that in the real world? You ought to be able to say "Let's go fuck", or at least "Let's go fill-in-the-blank" -- but you gotta say "Let's make love" in order to get on the radio. This creates a semantic corruption, by changing the context in which the word 'love' is used in the song. When they get into drooling about love as a 'romantic concept' -- especially in the lyrics of sensitive singer/songwriter types -- that's another shove in the direction of bad mental health. Fortunately, lyrics over the last five or six years have gotten to be less and less important, with 'art rock groups' and new wavers specializing in 'nonjudgemental' or 'purposely inconsequential' lyrics. People have stopped listening to the lyrics -- they are now only 'pitched mouth noises'.

Ever since they left Thies, the women had not stopped singing. As soon as one group allowed the refrain to die, another picked it up, and new verses were born at the hazard of chance or inspiration, one word leading to another and each finding, in its turn, its rhythm and its place. No one was very sure any longer where the song began, or if it had an ending. It rolled out over its own length, like the movement of a serpent. It was as long as a life.

There was a song I heard when I was in Los Angeles by a local group. The song was called ‘Los Angeles’ and the words and images were so harsh and bitter that the song would reverberate in my mind for days. The images, I later found out, were personal and no one I knew shared them. The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children. Images of people, teenagers my own age, looking up from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. These images stayed with me even after I left the city. Images so violent and malicious that they seemed to be my only point of reference for a long time afterwards. After I left.

In the beginning was the word, and primitive societies venerated poets second only to their leaders. A poet had the power to name and so to control; he was, literally, the living memory of a group or tribe who would perpetuate their history in song; his inspiration was god given and he was in effect a medium.

The Poem About Taking out the Trash In the vast emptiness of darkness, Stars are being born and are burning out; Galaxies expand, into what I have no idea, And dark matter fills the infinite space That has no bounds and no limits. In the middle of all this, I stand In a single moment and know how small I am. A group of atoms, the size of nothing in comparison. I am the observer of the play on a tiny stage. The onlooker who watches the painting Of a picture that few stop to see. The listener of a song where I hear only a fraction Of a fraction of a note in a song that will be forever sung And that has been being sung for eternity upon eternity, Before I knew breath and sound. I am but dust, stardust, a breath of a life, smoke Rising into oblivion, here then gone as quickly. Under all of this, I take out the trash.

4. Confusion in the Market Place Indeed it was, for as they approached, Milo could see crowds of people pushing and shouting their way among the stalls, buying and selling, trading and bargaining. Huge wooden-wheeled carts streamed into the market square from the orchards, and long caravans bound for the four corners of the kingdom made ready to leave. Sacks and boxes were piled high waiting to be delivered to the ships that sailed the Sea of Knowledge, and off to one side a group of minstrels sang songs to the delight of those either too young or too old to engage in trade. But above all the noise and tumult of the crowd could be heard the merchants’ voices loudly advertising their products. “Get your fresh-picked ifs, ands, and buts.” “Hey-yaa, hey-yaa, hey-yaa, nice ripe wheres and whens.” “Juicy, tempting words for sale.

Yaicha is named after a song by some group from the last century called the Pousette-Dart Band. Something about a girl, a candle in the falling rain shining amidst the pain. I kind of surprise myself when I can picture Yaicha as that candle. My father named Yaicha after the "haunting melody." I wonder if he ever listened to the lyrics.

My knees shook as they descended upon me like vultures, squeezing the life out of my fragile bones. Never had I witnessed such a loud group of guys who got wound up so high over nothing. All they did was hoot over Ellis’s new apartment and belch the school’s theme song. Joy.

The Hawk hired fifty harpers and jesters and taught them new songs. Songs about the puny fairy fool who had been chased away from Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea by the legendary Hawk. And being such a legend in his own time, his tales were ceded great truth and staying power. The players were delighted with the epic grandeur of such a wild tale. When they had rehearsed to perfection the ditties and refrains portraying the defeat of the fool, the Hawk sent them into the counties of Scotland and England. Grimm accompanied the group of players traveling to Edinburgh to help spread the tale himself, while Hawk spent late hours by the candle scribbling, crossing out and perfecting his command for when the fool came. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning, he would reach for his set of sharp awls and blades and begin carving toy soldiers and dolls, one by one.

Santiago thought about how at Slim Again, Begin Again the group talked a lot about why people ate, the hunger that was beyond food. They ate because it reminded them of their parents feeding them and the times they were taken care of. They ate because their parents did not feed them, and it’s how they learned to take care of themselves. They ate because they felt less alone when eating. Because they wanted to feel full, then wanted to feel nothing. Dominique said it was like that Bruce Springsteen song “ Hungry Heart ” from the 1980s. Everybody’s got a hungry heart. The trick is to learn when you’re eating to fill the heart instead of the stomach. Feeding the stomach, she said, is easy. That’s just diet. It’s learning how to feed the heart that’s hard.

Or consider “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down, or almost any song by the group Maroon 5. Those bands are so featureless that critics and listeners created a new music category—“bath rock”—to describe their tepid sounds.

The next phase of the Digital Revolution will bring even more new methods of marrying technology with the creative industries, such as media, fashion, music, entertainment, education, literature, and the arts. Much of the first round of innovation involved pouring old wine—books, newspapers, opinion pieces, journals, songs, television shows, movies—into new digital bottles. But new platforms, services, and social networks are increasingly enabling fresh opportunities for individual imagination and collaborative creativity. Role-playing games and interactive plays are merging with collaborative forms of storytelling and augmented realities. This interplay between technology and the arts will eventually result in completely new forms of expression and formats of media. This innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. In other words, it will come from the spiritual heirs of Ada Lovelace, creators who can flourish where the arts intersect with the sciences and who have a rebellious sense of wonder that opens them to the beauty of both.

Most feminist groups began with women talking about how we saw ourselves and other women, how we acted. We openly confessed our fears and hatred of other women. We talked about how to combat jealousy, the politics of envy, and so on.

Another experiment, conducted by Pascual-Leone when he was a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, provides even more remarkable evidence of the way our patterns of thought affect the anatomy of our brains. Pascual-Leone recruited people who had no experience playing a piano, and he taught them how to play a simple melody consisting of a short series of notes. He then split the participants into two groups. He had the members of one group practice the melody on a keyboard for two hours a day over the next five days. he had the members of the other group sit in front of a keyboard for the same amount of time but only imagine playing the song--without ever touching the keys. Using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, Pascual-Leone mapped the brain activity of all the participants before, during, and after the test. he found that the people who had only imagined playing the notes exhibited precisely the same changes in their brains as those who had actually pressed the keys. Their brains had changed in response to actions that took place purely in their imaginations--in response, that is, to their thoughts. Descartes may have been wrong about dualism, but he appears to have been correct in believing that our thoughts can exert a physical influence on, or at least cause a physical reaction in, our brains. We become, neurologically, what we think. (p33)

In front of the group was a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, who was singing at the top of his voice and banging two saucepans together. His name was Arnold Sideways. Pushing him along was Coffin Henry, whose croaking progress through an entirely different song was punctuated by bouts of off-the-beat coughing. He was accompanied by a perfectly ordinary-looking manin torn, dirty and yet expensive looking clothing, whose pleasant tenor voice was drowned out by the quaking of a duck on his head. He answered to the name of Duck Man, although he never seemed to understand why, or why he was always surrounded by people who seemed to see ducks where no ducks could be. And finally, being towed along by a small grey dog on a string, was Foul Ole Ron, generally regarded in Ankh-Morpork as the deranged beggars' deranged beggar. He was probably incapable of singing, but at least he was attempting to swear in time to the beat, or beats. The wassailers stopped and watched them in horror. People have always had the urge to sing and clang things at the dark stub of the year, when all sorts of psychic nastiness has taken advantage of the long grey days and the deep shadows to lurk and breed. Lately people had taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the affect. Those who really understood just clanged something and shouted. The beggars were not in fact this well versed in folkloric practice. They were just making a din in the well-founded hope that people would give them money to stop. It was just possible to make out consensus song in there somewhere. "Hogswatch is coming, The pig is getting fat, Please put a dollar in the old man's hat If you ain't got a dollar a penny will do-" "And if you ain't got a penny," Foul Ole Ron yodeled, solo, 'Then- fghfgh yffg mfmfmf..." The Duck man had, with great Presence of mind, clamped a hand over Ron's mouth.

I talk very often in my films that Paradise is not yet lost, there are little bits of Paradise preserved. I am very interested to keep and protect what has really come to us from the past, and to protect what is essential to human beings. I have one song on that subject, and that song you know I was singing three weeks ago with the Big Band group. I was singing, "We are not going to betray you/those who were before us/I am with you here and now/we are not going to betray you/you who did everything to make sure that humanity would go to some other more subtle direction..." So, in that sense I am very conservative. I want to conserve the best that has been done before us by others before us, in that sense.

Things are changing at a speed we never dreamed. We’ll be talking nuclear war. Pesticides will be a food group. No song birds, no wildflowers. Nothing but collapsing hives and lines of the rich getting ready to board a ship for a night on the moon.

Many people in this room have an Etsy store where they create unique, unreplicable artifacts or useful items to be sold on a small scale, in a common marketplace where their friends meet and barter. I and many of my friends own more than one spinning wheel. We grow our food again. We make pickles and jams on private, individual scales, when many of our mothers forgot those skills if they ever knew them. We come to conventions, we create small communities of support and distributed skills--when one of us needs help, our village steps in. It’s only that our village is no longer physical, but connected by DSL instead of roads. But look at how we organize our tribes--bloggers preside over large estates, kings and queens whose spouses’ virtues are oft-lauded but whose faces are rarely seen. They have moderators to protect them, to be their knights, a nobility of active commenters and big name fans, a peasantry of regular readers, and vandals starting the occasional flame war just to watch the fields burn. Other villages are more commune-like, sharing out resources on forums or aggregate sites, providing wise women to be consulted, rabbis or priests to explain the world, makers and smiths to fashion magical objects. Groups of performers, acrobats and actors and singers of songs are traveling the roads once more, entertaining for a brief evening in a living room or a wheatfield, known by word of mouth and secret signal. Separate from official government, we create our own hierarchies, laws, and mores, as well as our own folklore and secret history. Even my own guilt about having failed as an academic is quite the crisis of filial piety--you see, my mother is a professor. I have not carried on the family trade. We dwell within a system so large and widespread, so disorganized and unconcerned for anyone but its most privileged and luxurious members, that our powerlessness, when we can summon up the courage to actually face it, is staggering. So we do not face it. We tell ourselves we are Achilles when we have much more in common with the cathedral-worker, laboring anonymously so that the next generation can see some incremental progress. We lack, of course, a Great Work to point to and say: my grandmother made that window; I worked upon the door. Though, I would submit that perhaps the Internet, as an object, as an aggregate entity, is the cathedral we build word by word and image by image, window by window and portal by portal, to stand taller for our children, if only by a little, than it does for us. For most of us are Lancelots, not Galahads. We may see the Grail of a good Classical life, but never touch it. That is for our sons, or their daughters, or further off. And if our villages are online, the real world becomes that dark wood on the edge of civilization, a place of danger and experience, of magic and blood, a place to make one’s name or find death by bear. And here, there be monsters.

We lived only to dance. What was the true characteristic of a queen, I wondered later on; and you could argue that forever. “What do we all have in common in this group?” I once asked a friend seriously, when it occurred to me how slender, how immaterial, how ephemeral the bond was that joined us; and he responded, “We all have lips.” Perhaps that is what we all had in common: no one was allowed to be serious, except about the importance of music, the glory of faces seen in the crowd. We had our songs, we had our faces! We had our web belts and painter’s jeans, our dyed tank tops and haircuts, the plaid shirts, bomber jackets, jungle fatigues, the all-important shoes.

The grassy park was lined with dozens of kissing booths. Twinkle lights draped back-and-forth between tall trees, making a canopy of stars above the red and pink tables below. People were lined up at each booth, applying lipstick and perfume as they readied for their purchased kisses. Behind the booths stood a large white gazebo housing a group of musicians. As a love song filled the air, couples intertwined their bodies and swayed to the melody. Here and there, children ran about wearing red hats and eating lip-shaped chocolates, while women waited impatiently for quickie makeovers under a flashy pink tent. The park was littered with couples kissing behind trees and making out on park benches. And paper stars were everywhere; in trees, on the ground, above heads, inside mouths…. It was like Valentine’s Day. On crack.

Men did care enough to struggle with our demands. And some cared enough to convert to feminist thinking and to change. But only a very, very few loved us – loved us all the way. And that meant respecting our sexual rights. To this day I believe that feminist debate about love and sexuality ended precisely because straight women did not want to face the reality that it was highly unlikely in patriarchal society that a majority of men would wholeheartedly embrace women’s right to say no in the bedroom. Since the vast majority of heterosexual women, even those involved in radical feminist movement, were not willing to say no when they did not want to perform sexually for the fear of upsetting or alienating their mate, no significant group of men ever had to rise to the occasion. While it became more acceptable to say no now and then, it was not acceptable to say no for any significant amount of time. An individual woman in a primary relationship with a man could not say no, because she feared there was always another woman in the background who could take her place, a woman who would never say no.

BTS are unique because they’ve succeeded without the backing of a major music company, the members of the group are heavily involved with the writing and production of their own songs and, most notably, they’re not afraid to talk about their aspirations and their anxieties, and to be the voice of their generation.

The "four angels" were the Beatles, whom Manson considered ""leaders, spokesmen, prophets," according to Gregg. The line "And he opened the bottomless pit...And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth; and unto them was given power..." was still another reference to the English group, Gregg said. Locusts - Beatles - one and the same. "Their faces were as the faces of men," yet "they had hair as the hair of women." An obvious reference to the long-haired musicians. Out of the mouths of the four angles "issued fire and brimstone." Gregg: "This referred to the spoken words, the lyrics of the Beatles' songs, the power that came out of their mouths.

On Sunday, namely the day dedicated to music and song, the learned beings belonging to this group produced every kind of ‘melody’ on various ‘sound-producing instruments,’ as well as with their voices, and then explained to all the other learned beings how the knowledge they wished to transmit was indicated in these works of theirs.

The Osborne Brothers are a high-powered bluegrass group. Maybe the most high.

It’s from a Celtic group. Flogging Molly,” was all he said. Tom went onto iTunes and found the song easily enough: “If I Ever Leave This World Alive.

Jesus emerges not as the cultural captive of any one group of people, but as the promise of salvation to all believers and as the foundation of liberation in this life.

Baltic States won their independence from the Soviet Union by singing banned songs of hope in groups of thousands.

Uh-oh," Will muttered. "This is going to be ... interesting." It turned out the creative genius behind the movie was Will's dad - the god Apollo, which meant this was not going to be a typical orientation flick. No, as we soon found out, Apollo had written, directed, produced, hosted and starred in ... a variety show. For those of you who don't know what a variety show is, imagine a talent show on steroids, complete with canned laughter, pre-recorded applause, and an extra-large helping of hokeyness. For the next hour, we cringe-watched as Apollo and our demigod predecessors performed in song-and-dance numbers, recited poetry, acted in comedy sketches and harmonized in a musical group called the Lyre Choir. Naturally, Apollo featured prominently in most of the acts. The one of him hula-hooping shirtless while satyrs capered around with long rainbow ribbons on sticks ... you can't unsee that kind of thing.

We in the west think of unpredictability as a menace, something to be avoided at all costs. We want our careers, our family lives, our roads, our weather to be utterly predictable. We love nothing more than a sure thing. Shuffling the songs on our iPod is about as much randomness as we can handle. But here is a group of rational software engineers telling me that they like unpredictability, crave it, can’t live without it. I get an inkling, not for the first time, that India lies at a spiritual latitude beyond the reach of the science of happiness. At

We scoffed at the kids who weren't like us, the ones who already talked about careers, or bliddy mortgages and pensions. Kids wanting to be old before they were young. Kids wanting to be dead before they'd lived. They were digging their own graves, building the walls of their own damn jails. Us, we hung to our youth. We were footloose, fancy free. We said we'd never grow boring and old. We plundered charity shops for vintage clothes. We bought battered Levis and gorgeous faded velvet stuff from Attica in High Bridge. We wore coloured boots, hemp scarves from Gaia. We read Baudelaire and Byron. We read our poems to each other. We wrote songs and posted them on YouTube. We formed bands. We talked of the amazing journeys we'd take together once school was done. Sometimes we paired off, made couples that lasted for a little while, but the group was us. We hung together. We could say anything to each other. We loved each other.

I nominate this song as the "Song for the group" (from the Benefit CD): Chorus from the song "Inside" by Jethro Tull for it's positive mention of "joe": I'm sittin' in the corner feelin' glad, got no money comin' in but I can't be sad, That was the best cuppa coffee I ever had, And I won't worry about a thing because we got it made, here on the Inside outside's so far away.

It was quite a sight, Germans dancing, though I was used to it by then. Every now and then there was someone perfectly synchronized with the music, but most of the time I felt like I'd fallen into a colony of robots, each programmed differently and following a separate signal. If you observed them as a group you would never have thought they were responding to the same song.

That was the thing about Joy Division: writing the songs was dead easy because the group was really balanced; we had a great guitarist, a great drummer, a great bass player, a great singer.

Adults need spiritual apprenticeships as much as their children do—and adults need them first. Group spiritual direction, covenant groups, practice in oral prayer, lay leadership in worship, singing hymns and praise songs—and of course, the formal practice of testimony itself—are congregational practices that give adults, and not just teenagers, opportunities to put faith into words.

You have to break them early,” her father once said. Of course, he’d been talking about monsters, not teenagers, but they had a lot in common. Both had hive minds; they thought—and acted—in groups.

Lorsque j’ai commencé à voyager en Gwendalavir aux côtés d'Ewìlan et de Salim, je savais que, au fil de mon écriture, ma route croiserait celle d'une multitude de personnages. Personnages attachants ou irritants, discrets ou hauts en couleurs, pertinents ou impertinents, sympathiques ou maléfiques... Je savais cela et je m'en réjouissais. Rien, en revanche, ne m'avait préparé à une rencontre qui allait bouleverser ma vie. Rien ne m'avait préparé à Ellana. Elle est arrivée dans la Quête à sa manière, tout en finesse tonitruante, en délicatesse remarquable, en discrétion étincelante. Elle est arrivée à un moment clef, elle qui se moque des serrures, à un moment charnière, elle qui se rit des portes, au sein d’un groupe constitué, elle pourtant pétrie d’indépendance, son caractère forgé au feu de la solitude. Elle est arrivée, s'est glissée dans la confiance d'Ewilan avec l'aisance d'un songe, a capté le regard d’Edwin et son respect, a séduit Salim, conquis maître Duom... Je l’ai regardée agir, admiratif ; sans me douter un instant de la toile que sa présence, son charisme, sa beauté tissaient autour de moi. Aucun calcul de sa part. Ellana vit, elle ne calcule pas. Elle s'est contentée d'être et, ce faisant, elle a tranquillement troqué son statut de personnage secondaire pour celui de figure emblématique d'une double trilogie qui ne portait pourtant pas son nom. Convaincue du pouvoir de l'ombre, elle n'a pas cherché la lumière, a épaulé Ewilan dans sa quête d'identité puis dans sa recherche d'une parade au danger qui menaçait l'Empire. Sans elle, Ewilan n'aurait pas retrouvé ses parents, sans elle, l'Empire aurait succombé à la soif de pouvoir des Valinguites, mais elle n’en a tiré aucune gloire, trop équilibrée pour ignorer que la victoire s'appuyait sur les épaules d'un groupe de compagnons soudés par une indéfectible amitié. Lorsque j'ai posé le dernier mot du dernier tome de la saga d'Ewilan, je pensais que chacun de ses compagnons avait mérité le repos. Que chacun d'eux allait suivre son chemin, chercher son bonheur, vivre sa vie de personnage libéré par l'auteur après une éprouvante aventure littéraire. Chacun ? Pas Ellana. Impossible de la quitter. Elle hante mes rêves, se promène dans mon quotidien, fluide et insaisissable, transforme ma vision des choses et ma perception des autres, crochète mes pensées intimes, escalade mes désirs secrets... Un auteur peut-il tomber amoureux de l'un de ses personnages ? Est-ce moi qui ai créé Ellana ou n'ai-je vraiment commencé à exister que le jour où elle est apparue ? Nos routes sont-elles liées à jamais ? — Il y a deux réponses à ces questions, souffle le vent à mon oreille. Comme à toutes les questions. Celle du savant et celle du poète. — Celle du savant ? Celle du poète ? Qu'est-ce que... — Chut... Écris.

The classroom is a special place. It’s one of the few times a group of different people have to be in the same room. Outside, it’s only strangers in subway rides for a few minutes. It’s rare. We never really know people again.

Sometimes it seems as if writing a group of songs is like getting groceries, or doing the laundry—banal things I do more or less on a day-to-day basis. We deal with the issues involved in our mundane activities as they come up,

Sunday “Well then, as I have just told you, they devoted each day of the week to productions in one or another special branch of knowledge—either works of their hands, or some other form of consciously designed being-manifestation “Thus, Monday was devoted to the first group, and this day was called the ‘day of religious and civil ceremonies’, “Tuesday was allotted to the second group, and was called the ‘day of architecture’, “Wednesday was called the ‘day of painting’, “Thursday, the ‘day of religious and popular dances’, “Friday, the ‘day of sculpture’, “Saturday, the ‘day of the mysteries’ or, as it was also called, the ‘day of the theater’, “Sunday, the ‘day of music and song

Ten things you should always do when you form a group 1. Work with your friends 2. Find like-minded people 3. Have ultimate self-belief 4. Write great songs 5. Get a great manager 6. Live in Manchester 7. Support each other through thick and thin 8. Realise no one person is bigger than the group (thanks to Gene Simmons for that one) 9. Watch where the money goes 10. Always get separate legal advice for everything before you sign; failing that, ask your mam and dad

As we drifted away from the Tower Bridge, I saw a single silhouette standing against the bright lamplight. Even now when I was nearly asleep, I could recognise her. Her shoulders were hunched up as if she was upset. Whether she was upset that she had nearly killed me or that she had let me get away, I was unsure. Then she turned around and walked to join the other silhouettes standing in a group farther back. Now I could not see which one was Rose – they were all joint together to make one.

Words allowed our ancestors to communicate their needs and agree on shared rules and goals. But when it came to building emotional rapport and motivating people to prioritize the needs of the group over personal desires, language was woefully inadequate. Song and dance instilled a sense of community on a visceral level. By being united in the same rhythm, people didn’t just think of themselves as part of a group; they saw, heard, and felt a harmony that stretched beyond the boundaries of their own bodies.

Robert Kohlenberg, a professor of psychology, once thought that depression and anxiety were different things. But as he studied it, he discovered that "the data are indicating they're not that distinct." Depression and anxiety overlap. I started to see depression and anxiety as cover versions of the same song by different bands. Depression is a cover version by a downbeat emo band, and anxiety is a cover version by a screaming heavy metal group, but the underlying sheet music is the same. They're not identical, but they are twinned.

Hardcore groups were singing songs about Ronald Reagan. I wasn't interested in this and preferred to sing about the darkness shimmering beneath the shiny quilt of American pop culture. I suppose you could say that Sonic Youth was always trying to defy people's expectations.

The evangelical Old Testament biblical scholar Christopher Wright states the matter even more strongly: “We are listening, not to a single voice, not even to a single choir in harmony, but to several choirs singing different songs with some protest groups jamming in the wings.”[113]

Over the last year, Malachi has changed from a boy to a young man. For seventeen, he looks twenty with a chiseled jaw, long lashes, and bright, diamond-like blue eyes. He has muscles that are starting to become noticeable through his clothes, and he loves to run. He once signed to me that it helps clear his head.Sometimes, we run together. We’ll listen to the same song—usually Taylor Swift if I choose, or Bad Omens if he does—then we’ll sit by the lake and watch the sunrise before we go home and get ready for school.All my friends want to kiss him. He’s the quiet, mysterious Malachi Vize that everyone wants a piece of. It sickens me—especially when they go into detail in the group chat about things I’d rather not read. He’s not popular—he’s the “silent weirdo,” yet they say things behind his back because they’re too scared to say anything to his face.

Music?” he asked. I nodded and handed him my iPod. We’d been running together three more times now and had worked out our routine. We talked for the first mile or so, while we were warming up. When breathing became more important than talking, we switched to music, which we would listen to for the rest of the run, and then we’d turn the iPods off as we’d cool down and walk to one of our houses—we alternated. But the run before, Frank had proposed that we switch iPods so that he could see if my “music, not observational comedy” theory was effective in terms of helping him run faster, and I could apparently learn all about some group called Freelance Whales which was, apparently, an actual band. I’d made him a mix of my favorite songs that hopefully weren’t too alienating for someone who claimed he never listened to country and had no idea who the Cure was.

All of the day’s planned tasks are canceled. Bob stays inside Hot Topic for the rest of the day. Left to their own devices, the group huddles together in the communal Old Navy on the first floor. At first, I think they’re holding a memorial service, but then I hear the TV playing. They’re watching DVDs of Friends on a giant, monolithic plasma screen. A citywide blackout forces Monica, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, and Joey to hang out together. They light candles and talk about the weirdest places they’ve had sex. Phoebe sings a song. I hate Friends but I’ve seen most of the episodes.

They are also difficult to reconcile with archaeological evidence of how cities actually began in many parts of the world: as civic experiments on a grand scale, which frequently lacked the expected features of administrative hierarchy and authoritarian rule. We do not possess an adequate terminology for these early cities. To call them ‘egalitarian’, as we’ve seen, could mean quite a number of different things. It might imply an urban parliament and co-ordinated projects of social housing, as with some pre-Columbian centres in the Americas; or the self-organizing of autonomous households into neighbourhoods and citizens’ assemblies, as with prehistoric mega-sites north of the Black Sea; or, perhaps, the introduction of some explicit notion of equality based on principles of uniformity and sameness, as in Uruk-period Mesopotamia. None of this variability is surprising once we recall what preceded cities in each region. That was not, in fact, rudimentary or isolated groups, but far-flung networks of societies, spanning diverse ecologies, with people, plants, animals, drugs, objects of value, songs and ideas moving between them in endlessly intricate ways. While the individual units were demographically small, especially at certain times of year, they were typically organized into loose coalitions or confederacies. At the very least, these were simply the logical outcome of our first freedom: to move away from one’s home, knowing one will be received and cared for, even valued, in some distant place. At most they were examples of ‘amphictyony’, in which some kind of formal organization was put in charge of the care and maintenance of sacred places. It seems that Marcel Mauss had a point when he argued that we should reserve the term ‘civilization’ for great hospitality zones such as these. Of course, we are used to thinking of ‘civilization’ as something that originates in cities – but, armed with new knowledge, it seems more realistic to put things the other way round and to imagine the first cities as one of those great regional confederacies, compressed into a small space.

A lot of her songs were to do with Blake, which did not escape Mark’s attention. She told Mark that writing songs about him was cathartic and that ‘Back to Black’ summed up what had happened when their relationship had ended: Blake had gone back to his ex and Amy to black, or drinking and hard times. It was some of her most inspired writing because, for better or worse, she’d lived it. Mark and Amy inspired each other musically, each bringing out fresh ideas in the other. One day they decided to take a quick stroll around the neighbourhood because Amy wanted to buy Alex Clare a present. On the way back Amy began telling Mark about being with Blake, then not being with Blake and being with Alex instead. She told him about the time at my house after she’d been in hospital when everyone had been going on at her about her drinking. ‘You know they tried to make me go to rehab, and I told them, no, no, no.’ ‘That’s quite gimmicky,’ Mark replied. ‘It sounds hooky. You should go back to the studio and we should turn that into a song.’ Of course, Amy had written that line in one of her books ages ago. She’d told me before she was planning to write a song about what had happened that day, but that was the moment ‘Rehab’ came to life. Amy had also been working on a tune for the ‘hook’, but when she played it to Mark later that day it started out as a slow blues shuffle – it was like a twelve-bar blues progression. Mark suggested that she should think about doing a sixties girl-group sound, as she liked them so much. He also thought it would be fun to put in the Beatles-style E minor and A minor chords, which would give it a jangly feel. Amy was unaccustomed to this style – most of the songs she was writing were based around jazz chords – but it worked and that day she wrote ‘Rehab’ in just three hours. If you had sat Amy down with a pen and paper every day, she wouldn’t have written a song. But every now and then, something or someone turned the light on in her head and she wrote something brilliant. During that time it happened over and over again. The sessions in the studio became very intense and tiring, especially for Mark, who would sometimes work a double shift and then fall asleep. He would wake up with his head in Amy’s lap and she would be stroking his hair, as if he was a four-year-old. Mark was a few years older than Amy, but he told me he found her very motherly and kind.

In the boreal forests there is reason to hope that we’ll guide the human part of this relationship with forethought. Over the last two decades, continent wide planning for conservation, forestry, and industry in the boreal forest have brought people together who have fought for years in the law courts. Now timber companies, industry, conservation groups, environmental activists, and governments, including those of the First Nations, are talking to one another. Such human talk is part of the forest’s larger system of thought, one way that the living network can achieve a measure of coherence; a diffuse conversation, able to listen and to adapt. To date, swaths of boreal forest as big as many countries- hundreds of thousands of square kilometers- more than 10 percent of Canada’s boreal forest- have been mapped for conservation, for carbon-savvy logging, for threatened animals, and for sustainable timber production.

The belief that nature is an Other, a separate realm defiled by the unnatural mark of humans, is a denial of our own wild being. Emerging as they do from the evolved mental capacities of primates manipulating their environment, the concrete sidewalk, the spew of liquids from a paint factory, and the city documents that plan Denver’s growth are as natural as the patter of cottonwood leaves, the call of the young dipper to its kind, and the cliff swallow’s nest. Whether all these natural phenomena are wise, beautiful, just or good are different questions. Such puzzles are best resolved by beings who understand themselves to be nature. Muir said he walked “with” nature, and many conservation groups continue that narrative. Educators warn that if we spend too long on the wrong side of the divide, we’ll develop a pathology, the disorder of nature deficit. We can extend Muir’s thought and understand that we walk “within.” Nature needs no home; it is home. We can have no deficit of nature; we are nature, even when we are unaware of this nature. With the understanding that humans belong in this world, discernment of the beautiful and good can emerge from human minds networked within the community of life, not human minds peering in from the outside.

When I placed the album cover side by side with the screenshot of the game screen, the two symbols matched exactly. 2112’s title track is an epic seven-part song, over twenty minutes in length. The song tells the story of an anonymous rebel living in the year 2112, a time when creativity and self-expression have been outlawed. The red star on the album’s cover was the symbol of the Solar Federation, the oppressive interstellar society in the story. The Solar Federation was controlled by a group of “priests,” who are described in Part II of the song, titled “The Temples of Syrinx.” Its lyrics told me exactly where the Crystal Key was hidden:

IN OCTOBER 2006, A US NAVAL SUPERCARRIER GROUP LED by the 1,000-foot USS Kitty Hawk was confidently sailing through the East China Sea between southern Japan and Taiwan, minding everyone’s business, when, without warning, a Chinese navy submarine surfaced in the middle of the group. An American aircraft carrier of that size is surrounded by about twelve other warships, with air cover above and submarine cover below. The Chinese vessel, a Song-class attack submarine, may well be very quiet when running on electric power but, still, this was the equivalent to Pepsi-Cola’s management popping up in a Coca-Cola board meeting after listening under the table for half an hour.

Finally the last song was sung. Now began the fun part of the evening, the part they all looked forward to. The singers rose, and Jonas pitched in to help the other young men move the benches out of the barn. Groups formed, clusters of girls who giggled together and cast quick glances toward the boys under the watchful eyes of the parents who hovered nearby.

[T]he old stories of human relationships with animals can't be discounted. They are not primitive; they are primal. They reflect insights that came from considerable and elaborate systems of knowledge, intellectual traditions and ways of living that were tried, tested, and found true over many thousands of years and on all continents. But perhaps the truest story is with the animals themselves because we have found our exemplary ways through them, both in the older world and in the present time, both physically and spiritually. According to the traditions of the Seneca animal society, there were medicine animals in ancient times that entered into relationships with people. The animals themselves taught ceremonies that were to be performed in their names, saying they would provide help for humans if this relationship was kept. We have followed them, not only in the way the early European voyagers and prenavigators did, by following the migrations of whales in order to know their location, or by releasing birds from cages on their sailing vessels and following them towards land, but in ways more subtle and even more sustaining. In a discussion of the Wolf Dance of the Northwest, artists Bill Holm and William Reid said that 'It is often done by a woman or a group of women. The dance is supposed to come from the wolves. There are different versions of its origin and different songs, but the words say something like, 'Your name is widely known among the wolves. You are honored by the wolves.' In another recent account, a Northern Cheyenne ceremonialist said that after years spent recovering from removals and genocide, indigenous peoples are learning their lost songs back from the wolves who retained them during the grief-filled times, as thought the wolves, even though threatened in their own numbers, have had compassion for the people.... It seems we have always found our way across unknown lands, physical and spiritual, with the assistance of the animals. Our cultures are shaped around them and we are judged by the ways in which we treat them. For us, the animals are understood to be our equals. They are still our teachers. They are our helpers and healers. They have been our guardians and we have been theirs. We have asked for, and sometimes been given, if we've lived well enough, carefully enough, their extraordinary powers of endurance and vision, which we have added to our own knowledge, powers and gifts when we are not strong enough for the tasks required of us. We have deep obligations to them. Without other animals, we are made less. (from her essay "First People")

The political antagonisms of today are not controversies over ultimate questions of philosophy, but opposing answers to the question how a goal that all acknowledge as legitimate can be achieved most quickly and with the least sacrifice. This goal, at which all men aim, is the best possible satisfaction of human wants; it is prosperity and abundance. Of course, this is not all that men aspire to, but it is all that they can expect to attain by resort to external means and by way of social cooperation. The inner blessings—happiness, peace of mind, exaltation—must be sought by each man within himself alone. Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society. It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all, in order thereby to shield them from the external causes of pain and suffering as far as it lies within the power of social institutions to do so at all. To diminish suffering, to increase happiness: that is its aim. No sect and no political party has believed that it could afford to forgo advancing its cause by appealing to men's senses. Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory.

There’s no recipe for really complicated, dynamic situations. There’s no recipe for building a high-tech company; there’s no recipe for leading a group of people out of trouble; there’s no recipe for making a series of hit songs; there’s no recipe for playing NFL quarterback; there’s no recipe for running for president; and there’s no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap.

...this was all we collectively had, we knew no protest songs, had little to protest--and I felt a swelling in my chest, a surge of joy flowering out through my limbs; there is nothing like crooning in a group to a chorus to communicate to yourselves and the world that you are young and drunk and unhindered by responsibility, that the future stretches out endlessly before you like a California highway.

the most powerful and forgotten aspect of music is its role as a change agent; its potential as a transformative force for individuals and groups; its quasi-magical efficacy in ameliorating conditions, softening attitudes, recharging or redirecting energies, fueling or channeling emotions, its capability of purifying or refining or augmenting, and making our day-to-day existence better than it would be otherwise.

I was thinking: to go far away, where the roads leading to simplicity are known not merely to a select group, but to all; where love, laughter, songs, and prayers carry with them neither anger nor shame; where I can think about myself without anguish, without contempt; where the wine, Kathleen, is pure and not mixed with the spit of corpses; where the dead live in cemeteries and not in the hearts and memories of men.

In 1938, blues musician Lead Belly sang a song he wrote about “the Scottsboro boys,” a group of Black teenagers who were sent to jail after being falsely accused of raping two white women on a train (one of the women later admitted it was a made-up charge). After the song, Lead Belly talked about the case and advised fellow Black Americans “to stay woke—keep their eyes open.” Stay woke. The term has been a part of the Black American lexicon for a very long time. In more recent years, the term has evolved from the way Lead Belly was using it—warning Black people to stay alert to dangerous situations that might arise—to a broader meaning about staying aware of racist systems of oppression. After the release of Erykah Badu’s 2007 song Master Teacher, with a chorus that repeated the line “I stay woke,” the term exploded into the mainstream.

Italy still has a provincial sophistication that comes from its long history as a collection of city states. That, combined with a hot climate, means that the Italians occupy their streets and squares with much greater ease than the English. The resultant street life is very rich, even in small towns like Arezzo and Gaiole, fertile ground for the peeping Tom aspect of an actor’s preparation. I took many trips to Siena, and was struck by its beauty, but also by the beauty of the Siennese themselves. They are dark, fierce, and aristocratic, very different to the much paler Venetians or Florentines. They have always looked like this, as the paintings of their ancestors testify. I observed the groups of young people, the lounging grace with which they wore their clothes, their sense of always being on show. I walked the streets, they paraded them. It did not matter that I do not speak a word of Italian; I made up stories about them, and took surreptitious photographs. I was in Siena on the final day of the Palio, a lengthy festival ending in a horse race around the main square. Each district is represented by a horse and jockey and a pair of flag-bearers. The day is spent by teams of supporters with drums, banners, and ceremonial horse and rider processing round the town singing a strange chanting song. Outside the Cathedral, watched from a high window by a smiling Cardinal and a group of nuns, with a huge crowd in the Cathedral Square itself, the supporters passed, and to drum rolls the two flag-bearers hurled their flags high into the air and caught them, the crowd roaring in approval. The winner of the extremely dangerous horse race is presented with a palio, a standard bearing the effigy of the Virgin. In the last few years the jockeys have had to be professional by law, as when they were amateurs, corruption and bribery were rife. The teams wear a curious fancy dress encompassing styles from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries. They are followed by gangs of young men, supporters, who create an atmosphere or intense rivalry and barely suppressed violence as they run through the narrow streets in the heat of the day. It was perfect. I took many more photographs. At the farmhouse that evening, after far too much Chianti, I and my friends played a bizarre game. In the dark, some of us moved lighted candles from one room to another, whilst others watched the effect of the light on faces and on the rooms from outside. It was like a strange living film of the paintings we had seen. Maybe Derek Jarman was spying on us.

Among my associates, there were no takers. Understandably the boys of my age and social group were captivated by the yellow-or light-brown-skinned girls, with hairy legs and smooth little lips, and whose hair “hung down like horses' manes.” And even those sought-after girls were asked to “give it up or tell where it is.” They were reminded in a popular song of the times, “If you can't smile and say yes, please don't cry and say no.

Grateful Dead performances were by design not consciously planned, often reaching their artistic peak when the collective stumbled upon something stunning, when "the music played the band," as it were. Instead of using set lists, the Grateful Dead chose songs by experimenting together until a pulse, rhythm, phrase, or riff emerged from the group, suggesting a song. Their collective, improvisatory musical works communicate felling like any other artwork.

The Solar Federation was controlled by a group of “priests,” who are described in Part II of the song, titled “The Temples of Syrinx.” Its lyrics told me exactly where the Crystal Key was hidden: We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx Our great computers fill the hallowed halls. We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx All the gifts of life are held within our walls. There was a planet in Sector Twenty-one named Syrinx. That was where I was headed now.

Carl Franzoni perhaps summed it up best when he declared rather bluntly that, “the Byrds’ records were manufactured.” The first album in particular was an entirely engineered affair created by taking a collection of songs by outside songwriters and having them performed by a group of nameless studio musicians (for the record, the actual musicians were Glen Campbell on guitar, Hal Blaine on drums, Larry Knechtel on bass, Leon Russell on electric piano, and Jerry Cole on rhythm guitar), after which the band’s trademark vocal harmonies, entirely a studio creation, were added to the mix. As would be expected, the Byrds’ live performances, according to Barney Hoskyns’ Waiting for the Sun, “weren’t terribly good.” But that didn’t matter much; the band got a lot of assistance from the media, with Time being among the first to champion the new band. And they also got a tremendous assist from Vito and the Freaks and from the Young Turks, as previously discussed.

Recently a group of researchers conducted a computer analysis of three decades of hit songs. The researchers reported a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music. In line with their hypothesis, they found a decrease in usages such as we and us and an increase in I and me. The researchers also reported a decline in words related to social connection and positive emotions, and an increase in words related to anger and antisocial behavior, such as hate or kill.

At my current station in the life cycle I’m increasingly aware that this (or any) effort might be my last. I believe these songs contain something of that sense of finality and the urgency of countering it… My gratitude for your support in funding the recordings and my outsized appetite for sound knows no bounds. At certain times the urge to just give up has been quite seductive, but I’m reminded that there’s a core group of people that care about the work and receive meaning from it, and that knowledge helps to propel me forward.

I have come to your group for somewhere to belong, I promise I shall adapt before too long, I will accept anything you ask me to, I have come a long way, I have run away from home' 'But you are not like us', the pigeon said to her 'You cannot come and pretend you do, Pack your bags and go somewhere new, You can't even sing our song, This is not your home' All the other pigeons stopped talking and stared And their looks made it clear that they also shared That Romy could no longer stay and Romy felt there was no other way But to accept and fly away.

walked by. “Remember, they love tricking people in Wonderland,” Alex whispered. “Don’t talk to any of them.” “Hello there,” a rose said. “Welcome to the garden,” said a tulip. “Wouldn’t you like to stay and hear us sing a song?” an orchid asked. The group took Alex’s advice to heart and walked past the flowers without making eye contact. They kept their eyes on the ground until they were out of the garden. “If I haven’t seen that in a nightmare before, I definitely will now,” Conner said. They looked up and their hearts beat with excitement. In the distance, on the edge of a wood

retired physician from Alabama, Dr. Turner told us about the Tuskegee experiment of the 1920s and ’30s, when the government refused to cure a group of Black men with syphilis, just to watch the disease’s horrible progression. Another tangent was about Dr. Turner’s white professor in medical school. He had reminded his students that it was a well-known, scientific fact that the colored race didn’t have the same filial affections as other races. They didn’t feel physical pain much, either, the white professor had said. You could cut into their flesh with a scalpel and they wouldn’t even flinch.

Most of all I was inspired by the young leaders of the civil rights movement—not just Dr. King but John Lewis and Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash. In their heroic efforts—going door-to-door to register voters, sitting down at lunch counters, and marching to freedom songs—I saw the possibility of practicing the values my mother had taught me; how you could build power not by putting others down but by lifting them up. This was true democracy at work—democracy not as a gift from on high, or a division of spoils between interest groups, but rather democracy that was earned, the work of everybody.

Because I don't make the mistake that high-culture mongers do of assuming that because people like cheap art, their feelings are cheap, too,” the late filmmaker Dennis Potter once said, explaining why pop songs were so important in his work, from Pennies from Heaven to The Singing Detective to Lipstick on Your Collar, his paean to the 1950s, the time he shared with the Independent Group—and Potter was also defining a pop ethos, defining what I think is happening in Paolizzi's collage. "When people say, 'Oh listen, they're playing our song,' they don't mean 'Our song, this little cheap, tinkling, syncopated piece of rubbish, is what we felt when we met.' What they're saying is, 'That song reminds us of that tremendous feeling we had when we met.' Some of the songs I use are great anyway, but the cheaper songs are still in the direct line of descent from David's Psalms. They're saying, 'Listen, the world isn't quite like this, the world is better than this, there is love in it,' 'There's you and me in it,' or 'The sun is shining in it.' So-called dumb people, simple people, uneducated people, have as authentic and profound depth of feeling as the most educated on earth. Anyone who says different is a fascist.

The marketing geniuses on the corporate side of the country music labels had decided to start using focus groups to test their products before they were developed or released. An example of this would be to ask the focus group whether they liked sad songs or happy songs. “We like happy songs!” the focus group would chirp, and the word would go back to the writers and producers to come up with “happy” songs to record. This made it especially hard on the songwriters, who rarely feel a need to write when they are happy, as then they are busy luxuriating in the pleasure of happiness. When something bad happens, they want to find a way to transcend it, so they write a song about it. When Hank Williams, one of the greatest and most successful country artists of all time, wrote a song like “Your Cheatin’ Heart” or “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” he wasn’t writing “happy” songs, yet they made the listener feel better. The listener could feel that someone else had gone through an experience similar to the listener’s own, and then went to the trouble and effort to write it down accurately and share the experience like a compassionate friend might do. In this way, hearing a song like “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” could make the listener feel better, or “happy.

How do we know that the kingdom of God is here? That the awesome presence of God is among us? We know because there is laughing and singing; there are warm greetings and big hugs; there are children banging around and having a great time; there are conversations that bring joy, comfort, relief. There are songs sung that celebrate King Jesus and his great salvation. When we gather for a meal, we don’t clump together in groups only with those who are like us, but we sit and share with strangers and hear their stories. Because in the kingdom of God there are no strangers; only friends and neighbors. These are signs that the kingdom of God is here.

Fly with those who lift you up and thrust you forward A pilot friend of mine told me there are four main principles to master when flying airplanes: lift, thrust, weight, and drag. You have to take all these into account to make sure the plane will fly. It struck me that these same principles apply to specific types of people. There are some who lift you, brighten your day, cheer you up, and make you feel better about yourself. You meet them and you have a spring in your step. They’re a lift. Then there are people who thrust you. They inspire you, motivate you, challenge you to move forward and pursue your dreams. The third group are weights. They pull you down, dump their problems on you, so that you leave feeling heavier, negative, discouraged, and worse than you did before. Finally, there are those who are a drag. They’ve always got a sad song. The dishwasher broke. The goldfish died. They didn’t get invited to a party. They’re stuck in a pit. They expect you to cheer them up, fix their problems, and carry their loads. We all encounter people from each of these four groups. You have to make sure you’re spending the majority of your time with lifters and thrusters. If you’re only hanging out with weights and drags, it will keep you from becoming everything you were created to be.

They were testing for a particular driver of noise: social influence. The key finding was that group rankings were wildly disparate: across different groups, there was a great deal of noise. In one group, “Best Mistakes” could be a spectacular success, while “I Am Error” could flop. In another group, “I Am Error” could do exceedingly well, and “Best Mistakes” could be a disaster. If a song benefited from early popularity, it could do really well. If it did not get that benefit, the outcome could be very different. To be sure, the very worst songs (as established by the control group) never ended up at the very top, and the very best songs never ended up at the very bottom.

I hope you have all mastered the official Socialist jargon which our masters, as they call themselves, wish us to learn. You must not use the word ‘poor’; they are described as the ‘lower income group’. When it comes to a question of freezing a workman’s wages, the Chancellor of the Exchequer speaks of ‘arresting increases in personal income’ . . . There is a lovely one about houses and homes. They are in future to be called ‘accommodation units’. I don’t know how we are to sing our old song ‘Home Sweet Home’. ‘Accommodation Unit, Sweet Accommodation Unit, There’s no place like our Accommodation Unit.’ I hope to live to see the British democracy spit all this rubbish from their lips.

Under the leadership of religious professionals, modern worship has become passive—listening to a message and singing some songs. Seldom is there a call to service or an invitation to trust Christ. Baptisms take place inside the church where it is safe and comfortable rather than in public where there is opportunity to give witness to the saving grace of Christ. The great needs of society are left to para-church groups, government agencies, and other social service organizations. All the while the church is losing its muscle tone, its biceps are becoming loose and flabby and its belly is becoming round and soft. Not a pretty picture for one who once was toned and buff—a lean, mean fighting machine.

Do you like Phil Collins? I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins' presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don't you, uh, dance a little. Take the lyrics to Land of Confusion. In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. In Too Deep is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I've heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your asshole. Phil Collins' solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like In the Air Tonight and Against All Odds. Sabrina, don't just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is Sussudio, a great, great song, a personal favorite.

Of what subtle substance is the Fatherland then made, that it too can travel, emigrating with us in agreement with our vagrant fantasies or our forced exiles? However far our destiny may take us, it seems as if always a little of it kept company with us, exhaling its fragrance wherever we pitch our tent. Something familiar in the face of a stranger passing, a scrap of song caught in a gust of wind, the shadow of a tree, the fugitive emanation of a perfume—less yet, a detail, a meaningless trifle, a nothing—and something within us sounds a mysterious call; a sudden combination works upon our most intimate essence—eliminates all that is contrasting, groups all that frames into the loved picture of the distant Fatherland. The Breton soul lends itself more readily than any other to this mysterious work

The funeral was held on a rainy Tuesday at the church where the Brendan family were members. The high school was excused for the day so the teachers and students could attend if they wished, and many did. Avivah's parents mourned their only child from the front pew, tears falling as steadily as the droplets outside, smattering faces as well as painted window panes. After the eulogy, a song about heaven began to play over head, and as the song played, the Brendans lit a candle by the photo of their daughter, then returned to their seats. More than a few people in attendance were found dabbing at their eyes as the song came to a close. The group of mourners made their way slowly to the cemetery and laid the girl to rest, black umbrellas dotting the vivid green of the grass, grey sky bright, despite the rainfall.

1. Close Friend, someone who got yo back, yo "main nigga." 2. Rooted in blackness and the Black experience. From a middle-aged social worker: "That Brotha ain like dem ol e-lights, he real, he a shonuff nigga" 3. Generic, neutral refrence to African Americans. From a 30 something college educated Sista: "The party was live, it was wall to wall niggaz there" 4. A sista's man/lover/partner. from the beauty shop. "Guess we ain gon be seein too much of girlfriend no mo since she got herself a new nigga" From Hip Hop artist Foxy brown, "Ain no nigga like the on I got." 5. Rebellious, fearless unconventional, in-yo-face Black man. From former NBA superstar Charles Barkley, "Nineties niggas... The DailyNews, The Inquirer has been on my back... They want their Black Athletes to be Uncle Tom. I told you white boys you've never heard of a 90s nigga. We do what we want to do" quoted in The Source, December 1992). 6. Vulgar, disrespectful Black Person, antisocial, conforming to negative sterotype of African Americans. From former Hip Hop group Arrested Development, in their best-selling song, "People Everyday" 1992: A black man actin like a nigga... got stomped by an African" 7. A cool, down person, rooted in Hip Hop and black culture, regardless of race, used today by non-blacks to refer to other non-Blacks. 8. Anyone engaged in inappropriate, negative behavior; in this sense, Blacks may even apply the term to White folk. According to African American scholar Clarence Major's From Juba to Jive, Queen Latifah was quoted in Newsweek as criticizing the US government with these words. "Those niggers don't know what the fuck they doing

SOMETIMES A KIND OF GLORY lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking.

He said, “In the wild, wolves call to each other. It can be meant as a warning for others encroaching on a territory. It can be a rallying cry, to bring the pack together. It’s used in a hunt. To show location. And sometimes, they howl together. To show happiness. To make them seem like a bigger group than they are. It’s called group howls, and it’s a beautiful thing to hear.” “And that’s why you do it?” He closed his eyes and smiled. He was amused by me. I was enraptured by him. “I think we do it just because we like to hear the sounds of our own songs. Narcissistic creatures, we are.” The smile faded slightly. “Though sometimes, the songs are meant to sing a pack member home. It’s easy to get lost, Ox, because the world is a wide and scary place. And every now and then, you just have to be reminded of the way home.” We didn’t speak for a long time after that.

Chapter 13 - 1 Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against? Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken. And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Invisible Touch (Atlantic; 1986) is the group’s undisputed masterpiece. It’s an epic meditation on intangibility, at the same time it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. It has a resonance that keeps coming back at the listener, and the music is so beautiful that it’s almost impossible to shake off because every song makes some connection about the unknown or the spaces between people (“Invisible Touch”), questioning authoritative control whether by domineering lovers or by government (“Land of Confusion”) or by meaningless repetition (“Tonight Tonight Tonight”). All in all it ranks with the finest rock ’n’ roll achievements of the decade and the mastermind behind this album, along of course with the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford, is Hugh Padgham, who has never found as clear and crisp and modern a sound as this. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument.

He strove for the diapason, the great song that should embrace in itself a whole epoch, a complete era, the voice of an entire people, wherein all people should be included—they and their legends, their folk lore, their fightings, their loves and their lusts, their blunt, grim humour, their stoicism under stress, their adventures, their treasures found in a day and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty, their heroism and bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and obscenity—a true and fearless setting forth of a passing phase of history, un-compromising, sincere; each group in its proper environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the mine—all this, all the traits and types of every community from the Dakotas to the Mexicos, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe, gathered together, swept together, welded and riven together in one single, mighty song, the Song of the West.

From other shelters, there were stories of singing “Deutschland über Alles” or of people arguing amid the staleness of their own breath. No such things happened in the Fiedler shelter. In that place, there was only fear and apprehension, and the dead song at Rosa Hubermann’s cardboard lips. Not long before the sirens signaled the end, Alex Steiner—the man with the immovable, wooden face—coaxed the kids from his wife’s legs. He was able to reach out and grapple for his son’s free hand. Kurt, still stoic and full of stare, took it up and tightened his grip gently on the hand of his sister. Soon, everyone in the cellar was holding the hand of another, and the group of Germans stood in a lumpy circle. The cold hands melted into the warm ones, and in some cases, the feeling of another human pulse was transported. It came through the layers of pale, stiffened skin. Some of them closed their eyes, waiting for their final demise, or hoping for a sign that the raid was finally over. Did they deserve any better, these people? How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler’s gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? The hider of a Jew? Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children? The answer to each of these questions interests me very much, though I cannot allow them to seduce me. I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor. As is often the case with humans, when I read about them in the book thief’s words, I pitied them, though not as much as I felt for the ones I scooped up from various camps in that time. The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable.

I imagine you not telling me to whisper. I imagine you not saying oh don't say this literally. You want me to evoke as opposed to mere describing. You want me to be an invisible scribe that an octoepoose was hiding. I'm not sure if my facial features are an autograph that your Picasso smile is signing. Infamous for the mirror I shook when my sock puppets were pining? I am not just a fish that you gave wings to! I don't simply flop in the air whenever you brush some mannequinn's hair. There is a reason for the bad timing. Exquisite imbalances. A child enjoying the pink sky. I won't say that is my clue! Playing The Beatles on a kazoo is beautiful oooh ooooh Your laughter is a woman with alot of eyeballs on her stomach that pretends that she doesn't see the colors of all them songs. In the pre dawn hours we dance with delusions and illusions. The eternal seamstress does not care for Frakenstein's dress(she still loves our unique caress ) She loves and laughs despite some so-called scientist. Where is that emperor and his nakedness! Darling, our atoms need never split. We compliment in so many ways that all our night's and days have become one swirling sunrise/sunset that only true lovers can scoff at(those who shhhhh) The flower is not passive or apologetic. It blooms through the fractured net. Floating magnetic(eep eeep) You are not just some seductress. You are the leader of an elite group of intergalactic seductress impersonators who reveal corruption but then choose to love. We embrace conclusions that make the puddle heart awake with ethereal drum beat gongs. You think of a heroic poodle in the dark. We both know that the trapeze artist that followed us was not a cliche. He smelled differently. He had never met a floating lady that showed him how to appreciate a symphony without taking away his love for a good rock n roll melody. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities.-

It sure if terrific to be in the back seat of a car full of all the people in your affinity group, and as you zip down the center of the road the radio is going boodeley-boodeley-boo in some bluegrass heart song to open space, and, whoopee, you’re hugging all the committed girls who love you just as the boys love you but even more so, maybe, because Bug never forgot that a Swiss army knife, for instance, does everything well and nothing excellently; and to do something excellently a good navy surplus kelp-slitting blade is far superior to a thousand sawtoothed frogman’s specials; and a gun is worth a thousand knives; and a good friend is worth a thousand guns; and ten minutes’ bored talk about the weather with any girl is worth a thousand friends at your back on the Great Trek of 1836, at least at that time in his life, perhaps because until he joined the affinity group none of his friends had ever been girls; but now everyone was his friend, especially the girls (but he only thought that; he didn’t say it, didn’t want anyone to claim that he was a sexist).

It soon became apparent to me that deniers were a new type of neo-Nazi. Unlike previous generations of neo-Nazis—people who celebrated Hitler’s birthday, sported SS-like uniforms, and hung swastikas at meetings where they would give the Sieg Heil salute—this group eschewed all that.5 They were wolves in sheep’s clothing. They didn’t bother with the physical trappings of Nazism—salutes, songs, and banners—but proclaimed themselves “revisionists”—serious scholars who simply wished to revise “mistakes” in the historical record, to which end they established an impressive-sounding organization—the Institute for Historical Review—and created a benign-sounding publication—the Journal for Historical Review.6 Nothing in these names suggested the revisionists’ real agenda. They held conferences that, at first blush, seemed to be the most mundane academic confabs. But a close inspection of their publications and conference programs revealed the same extremism, adulation of the Third Reich, antisemitism, and racism as the swastika-waving neo-Nazis. This was extremism posing as rational discourse.

Mr. Haverstrom closes the door, leaving Patrick and me alone in the hallway. Pat smiles slickly, leaning in toward me. I step back until I press against the wall. It’s uncomfortable—but not threatening. Mostly because in addition to racquetball I’ve practiced aikido for years. So if Patrick tries anything funny, he’s in for a very painful surprise. “Let’s be honest, Sarah: you know and I know the last thing you want to do is give a presentation in front of hundreds of people—your colleagues.” My heart tries to crawl into my throat. “So, how about this? You do the research portion, slides and such that I don’t really have time for, and I’ll take care of the presentation, giving you half the credit of course.” Of course. I’ve heard this song before—in school “group projects” where I, the quiet girl, did all the work, but the smoothest, loudest talker took all the glory. “I’ll get Haverstrom to agree on Saturday—I’m like a son to him,” Pat explains before leaning close enough that I can smell the garlic on his breath. “Let Big Pat take care of it. What do you say?” I say there’s a special place in hell for people who refer to themselves in the third person. But before I can respond, Willard’s firm, sure voice travels down the hall. “I think you should back off, Nolan. Sarah’s not just ‘up for it,’ she’ll be fantastic at it.” Pat waves his hand. “Quiet, midge—the adults are talking.” And the adrenaline comes rushing back, but this time it’s not anxiety-induced—it’s anger. Indignation. I push off the wall. “Don’t call him that.” “He doesn’t mind.” “I mind.” He stares at me with something akin to surprise. Then scoffs and turns to Willard. “You always let a woman fight your battles?” I take another step forward, forcing him to move back. “You think I can’t fight a battle because I’m a woman?” “No, I think you can’t fight a battle because you’re a woman who can barely string three words together if more than two people are in the room.” I’m not hurt by the observation. For the most part, it’s true. But not this time. I smile slowly, devilishly. Suddenly, I’m Cathy Linton come to life—headstrong and proud. “There are more than two people standing here right now. And I’ve got more than three words for you: fuck off, you arrogant, self-righteous swamp donkey.” His expression is almost funny. Like he can’t decide if he’s more shocked that I know the word fuck or that I said it out loud to him—and not in the good way. Then his face hardens and he points at me. “That’s what I get for trying to help your mute arse? Have fun making a fool of yourself.” I don’t blink until he’s down the stairs and gone. Willard slow-claps as he walks down the hall to me. “Swamp donkey?” I shrug. “It just came to me.” “Impressive.” Then he bows and kisses the back of my hand. “You were magnificent.” “Not half bad, right? It felt good.” “And you didn’t blush once.” I push my dark hair out of my face, laughing self-consciously. “Seems like I forget all about being nervous when I’m defending someone else.” Willard nods. “Good. And though I hate to be the twat who points it out, there’s something else you should probably start thinking about straight away.” “What’s that?” “The presentation in front of hundreds of people.” And just like that, the tight, sickly feeling washes back over me. So this is what doomed feels like. I lean against the wall. “Oh, broccoli balls.

An Apple Gathering I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree And wore them all that evening in my hair: Then in due season when I went to see I found no apples there. With dangling basket all along the grass As I had come I went the selfsame track: My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass So empty-handed back. Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by, Their heaped-up basket teased me like a jeer; Sweet-voiced they sang beneath the sunset sky, Their mother's home was near. Plump Gertrude passed me with her basket full, A stronger hand than hers helped it along; A voice talked with her through the shadows cool More sweet to me than song. Ah Willie, Willie, was my love less worth Than apples with their green leaves piled above? I counted rosiest apples on the earth Of far less worth than love. So once it was with me you stooped to talk Laughing and listening in this very lane: To think that by this way we used to walk We shall not walk again! I let me neighbours pass me, ones and twos And groups; the latest said the night grew chill, And hastened: but I loitered, while the dews Fell fast I loitered still.

In E-CENT counselling, we teach our clients to explore the stories they are living, which mainly come from their family of origin. Even some novelists understand this process, as illustrated by Donna Tartt, writing about the family of Charlotte Cleve: “…the Cleves loved to recount among themselves even the minor events of their family history – repeating word for word, with stylized narrative and rhetorical interruptions, entire death-bed scenes, or marriage proposals that had occurred a hundred years before… … (T)hese family discussions were how the Cleves made sense of the world. Even the cruellest and most random disasters … were constantly rehearsed among them, her grandmother’s gentle voice and her mother’s stern one merging harmoniously with her grandfather’s baritone and the babble of her aunts, and certain ornamental bits, improvised by daring soloists, eagerly seized upon and elaborated by the chorus, until finally, by group effort, they arrived together at a single song which was then memorized, and sung by the entire company again and again, which slowly eroded memory and came to take the place of truth”. Donna Tartt, 2003. The Little Friend, London: Bloomsbury. Pages 3-4.

to be open and straightforward about their needs for attention in a social setting. It is equally rare for members of a group in American culture to honestly and openly express needs that might be in conflict with that individual’s needs. This value of not just honestly but also openly fully revealing the true feelings and needs present in the group is vital for it’s members to feel emotional safe. It is also vital to keeping the group energy up and for giving the feedback that allows it’s members to know themselves, where they stand in relation to others and for spiritual/psychological growth. Usually group members will simply not object to an individual’s request to take the floor—but then act out in a passive-aggressive manner, by making noise or jokes, or looking at their watches. Sometimes they will take the even more violent and insidious action of going brain-dead while pasting a jack-o’-lantern smile on their faces. Often when someone asks to read something or play a song in a social setting, the response is a polite, lifeless “That would be nice.” In this case, N.I.C.E. means “No Integrity or Congruence Expressed” or “Not Into Communicating Emotion.” So while the sharer is exposing his or her vulnerable creation, others are talking, whispering to each other, or sitting looking like they are waiting for the dental assistant to tell them to come on back. No wonder it’s so scary to ask for people’s attention. In “nice” cultures, you are probably not going to get a straight, open answer. People let themselves be oppressed by someone’s request—and then blame that someone for not being psychic enough to know that “Yes” meant “No.” When were we ever taught to negotiate our needs in relation to a group of people? In a classroom? Never! The teacher is expected to take all the responsibility for controlling who gets heard, about what, and for how long. There is no real opportunity to learn how to nonviolently negotiate for the floor. The only way I was able to pirate away a little of the group’s attention in the school I attended was through adolescent antics like making myself fart to get a few giggles, or asking the teacher questions like, “Why do they call them hemorrhoids and not asteroids?” or “If a number two pencil is so popular, why is it still number two,” or “What is another word for thesaurus?” Some educational psychologists say that western culture schools are designed to socialize children into what is really a caste system disguised as a democracy. And in once sense it is probably good preparation for the lack of true democratic dynamics in our culture’s daily living. I can remember several bosses in my past reminding me “This is not a democracy, this is a job.” I remember many experiences in social groups, church groups, and volunteer organizations in which the person with the loudest voice, most shaming language, or outstanding skills for guilting others, controlled the direction of the group. Other times the pain and chaos of the group discussion becomes so great that people start begging for a tyrant to take charge. Many times people become so frustrated, confused and anxious that they would prefer the order that oppression brings to the struggle that goes on in groups without “democracy skills.” I have much different experiences in groups I work with in Europe and in certain intentional communities such as the Lost Valley Educational Center in Eugene, Oregon, where the majority of people have learned “democracy skills.” I can not remember one job, school, church group, volunteer organization or town meeting in mainstream America where “democracy skills” were taught or practiced.

Alice's Cutie Code TM Version 2.1 - Colour Expansion Pack (aka Because this stuff won’t stop being confusing and my friends are mean edition) From Red to Green, with all the colours in between (wait, okay, that rhymes, but green to red makes more sense. Dang.) From Green to Red, with all the colours in between Friend Sampling Group: Fennie, Casey, Logan, Aisha and Jocelyn Green  Friends’ Reaction: Induces a minimum amount of warm and fuzzies. If you don’t say “aw”, you’re “dead inside”  My Reaction: Sort of agree with friends minus the “dead inside” but because that’s a really awful thing to say. Puppies are a good example. So is Walter Bishop. Green-Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: A noticeable step up from Green warm and fuzzies. Transitioning from cute to slightly attractive. Acceptable crush material. “Kissing.”  My Reaction: A good dance song. Inspirational nature photos. Stuff that makes me laugh. Pairing: Madison and Allen from splash Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: Something that makes you super happy but you don’t know why. “Really pretty, but not too pretty.” Acceptable dating material. People you’d want to “bang on sight.”  My Reaction: Love songs for sure! Cookies for some reason or a really good meal. Makes me feel like it’s possible to hold sunshine, I think. Character: Maxon from the selection series. Music: Carly Rae Jepsen Yellow-Orange  Friends’ Reaction: (When asked for non-sexual examples, no one had an answer. From an objective perspective, *pushes up glasses* this is the breaking point. Answers definitely skew toward romantic or sexual after this.)  My Reaction: Something that really gets me in my feels. Also art – oil paintings of landscapes in particular. (What is with me and scenery? Maybe I should take an art class) Character: Dean Winchester. Model: Liu Wren. Orange  Friends’ Reaction: “So pretty it makes you jealous. Or gay.”  “Definitely agree about the gay part. No homo, though. There’s just some really hot dudes out there.”(Feenie’s side-eye was so intense while the others were answering this part LOLOLOLOLOL.) A really good first date with someone you’d want to see again.  My Reaction: People I would consider very beautiful. A near-perfect season finale. I’ve also cried at this level, which was interesting. o Possible tie-in to romantic feels? Not sure yet. Orange-Red  Friends’ Reaction: “When lust and love collide.” “That Japanese saying ‘koi no yokan.’ It’s kind of like love at first sight but not really. You meet someone and you know you two have a future, like someday you’ll fall in love. Just not right now.” (<-- I like this answer best, yes.) “If I really, really like a girl and I’m interested in her as a person, guess. I’d be cool if she liked the same games as me so we could play together.”  My Reaction: Something that gives me chills or has that time-stopping factor. Lots of staring. An extremely well-decorated room. Singers who have really good voices and can hit and hold superb high notes, like Whitney Houston. Model: Jasmine Tooke. Paring: Abbie and Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow o Romantic thoughts? Someday my prince (or princess, because who am I kidding?) will come? Red (aka the most controversial code)  Friends’ Reaction: “Panty-dropping levels” (<-- wtf Casey???).  “Naked girls.” ”Ryan. And ripped dudes who like to cook topless.”  “K-pop and anime girls.” (<-- Dear. God. The whole table went silent after he said that. Jocelyn was SO UNCOMFORTABLE but tried to hide it OMG it was bad. Fennie literally tried to slap some sense into him.)  My Reaction: Uncontrollable staring. Urge to touch is strong, which I must fight because not everyone is cool with that. There may even be slack-jawed drooling involved. I think that’s what would happen. I’ve never seen or experienced anything that I would give Red to.

You don’t. But biological evolution isn’t the only great “designer” at work on this planet. There is also cultural evolution: the selective transmission of “memes”—beliefs, habits, rituals, songs, technologies, theories, and so forth—from person to person. And one criterion that shapes cultural evolution is social utility; memes that are conducive to smooth functioning at the group level often have an advantage over memes that aren’t. Cultural evolution is what gave us modern corporations, modern government, and modern religion. To put the question another way: What kinds of beliefs was the human mind “designed” by natural selection to harbor? For starters, not true ones. At least, not true ones per se. To the extent that accurate perception and comprehension of the world helped humanity’s ancestors get genes into the next generation, then of course mental accuracy would be favored by natural selection. And usually mental accuracy is good for the survival and transmission of the genes. That’s why we have excellent equipment for depth perception, for picking up human voices against background noise, and so on. Still, in situations where accurate perception and judgment impede survival and reproduction, you would expect natural selection to militate against accuracy.

It is a scene which combines the worst of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; it is mechanized Negro slavery; it represents the progress which the Negro has made from picking cotton to tailoring it. (Were they in the picking stage of their evolution, they would at least be in the healthful outdoors singing and eating watermelons [as they are, I believe, supposed to do when in groups alfresco].) My intense and deeply felt convictions concerning social injustice were aroused. My valve threw in a hearty response. (In connection with the watermelons, I must say, lest some professional civil rights organization be offended, that I have never been an observer of American folk customs. I may be wrong. I would imagine that today people grasp for the cotton with one hand while the other hand presses a transistor radio to the sides of their heads so that it can spew bulletins about used cars and Sofstyle Hair Relaxer and Royal Crown Hair Dressing and Gallo wine about their eardrums, a filtered menthol cigarette dangling from their lips and threatening to set the entire cotton field ablaze. Although residing along the Mississippi River [This river is famed in atrocious song and verse; the most prevalent motif is one which attempts to make of the river an ersatz father figure. Actually, the Mississippi River is a

Maybe a young Jacques Cousteau...?" Sadie was still working on the boy in the suit. "But that would just be silly. I mean, a suit...? On.No." Apparently our scrutiny hadn't gone unnoticed. Teddy-Jacques-Whoever was bearing down on us,smiling broadly under the mustache that,I noticed, was coming loose at one corner. "Good evening,ladies!" He was a senior, I thought. We didn't have any classes together; he was AP everything,but I thought I remembered seeing him during Performance Night in the spring, part of a co-ed a capella group. They'd done a Black Eyed Peas song-pretty well,too. He was cute, too, in a pale,lanky way. "Walter Elias Disney," he said with a bow. "At your disposal." "Walt Disney?" Sadie was obviously too intrigued to be shy. "Um...?" He grinned and waved his arm at the spectacle behind him with a flourish. "The myriad talents of Johnny Depp aside,it is debatable whether any of this would have come about without me. It seemed only appropriate that I should make an appearance." I nodded. "I'll buy that." He bowed again,but his eyes stayed on Sadie. "Would you care to dance?" "Oh.I....Oh." Several emotions flooded her face in an instant: terror, pleasure, uncertainty, and why-the-hell-not. She darted a glance at me. I gave a quick, emphatic nod. I would be fine. She absolutely should dance. "Sure," she said. And off they went.

Extract from 'Quixotic Ambitions': The crowd stared at Katy expectantly. She looked at them - old women in black, exhausted young women with pasty-faced children, youths in jeans and leather blousons chewing gum. She tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, she blurted out her short speech, thanking the people of Shkrapova for their welcome and promising that if she won the referendum she would work for the good of Maloslavia. There was some half-hearted applause and an old lady hobbled up to her, knelt down with difficulty, and kissed the hem of her skirt. She looked at Katy with tears rolling down her face and gabbled something excitedly. Dimitar translated: ‘She says that she remembers the reign of your grandfather and that God has sent you to Maloslavia.’ Katy was embarrassed but she smiled at the woman and helped her to her feet. At this moment the People’s Struggle Pioneers appeared on the scene, waving their banners and shouting ‘Doloy Manaheeyoo! Popnikov President!’ Police had been stationed at strategic points and quickly dispersed the demonstrators without any display of violence, but the angry cries of ‘Down with the monarchy!’ had a depressing effect on the entertainment that had been planned; only a few people remained to watch it. A group of children aged between ten and twelve ran into the square and performed a series of dances accompanied by an accordian. They stamped their feet and clapped their hands frequently and occasionally collided with one another when they forgot their next move. The girls wore embroidered blouses, stiffly pleated skirts and scarlet boots and the boys were in baggy linen shirts and trousers, the legs of which were bound with leather thongs. Their enthusiasm compensated for their mistakes and they were loudly applauded. The male voice choir which followed consisted of twelve young men who sang complicated polyphonic melodies with a high, curiously nasal tenor line accompanied by an unusually deep droning bass. Some of their songs were the cries of despair of a people who had suffered under Turkish occupation; others were lively dance tunes for feast days and festivals. They were definitely an acquired taste and Katy, who was beginning to feel hungry, longed for them to come to an end. At last, at two o’clock, the performance finished and trestle tables were set up in the square. Dishes of various salads, hors-d’oeuvres and oriental pastries appeared, along with casks of beer and bottles of the local red wine. The people who had disappeared during the brief demonstration came back and started piling food on to paper plates. A few of the People’s Struggle Pioneers also showed up again and mingled with the crowd, greedily eating anything that took their fancy.

But this isn't standard Japanese picnic fare: not a grain of rice or a pickled plum in sight. Instead, they fill the varnished wooden tables with thick slices of crusty bread, wedges of weeping cheese, batons of hard salamis, and slices of cured ham. To drink, bottles of local white wine, covered in condensation, and high-alcohol microbews rich in hops and local iconography. From the coastline we begin our slow, dramatic ascent into the mountains of Hokkaido. The colors bleed from broccoli to banana to butternut to beet as we climb, inching ever closer to the heart of autumn. My neighbors, an increasingly jovial group of thirtysomethings with a few words of English to spare, pass me a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and I begin to feel the fog dissipate. We stop at a small train station in the foothills outside of Ginzan, and my entire car suddenly empties. A husband-and-wife team has set up a small stand on the train platform, selling warm apple hand pies made with layers of flaky pastry and apples from their orchard just outside of town. I buy one, take a bite, then immediately buy there more. Back on the train, young uniformed women flood the cars with samples of Hokkaido ice cream. The group behind me breaks out in song, a ballad, I'm later told, dedicated to the beauty of the season. Everywhere we go, from the golden fields of empty cornstalks to the dense forest thickets to the rushing rivers that carve up this land like the fat of a Wagyu steak, groups of camouflaged photographers lie in wait, tripods and shutter releases ready, hoping to capture the perfect photo of the SL Niseko steaming its way through the hills of Hokkaido.

He found himself thinking of something Barry Grieg had once said to him about a rhythm guitar player from L.A., a guy named Jory Baker who was always on time, never missed a practice session, or fucked up an audition. Not the kind of guitar player that caught your eye, no showboat like Angus Young or Eddie Van Halen, but competent. Once, Barry had said, Jory Baker had been the driving wheel of a group called Sparx, a group everybody seemed to think that year's Most Likely to Succeed. They had a sound something like early Creedence: hard solid guitar rock and roll. Jory Baker had done most of the writing and all of the vocals. Then a car accident, broken bones, lots of dope in the hospital. He had come out, as the John Prine song says, with a steel plate in his head and a monkey on his back. He progressed from Demerol to heroin. Got busted a couple of times. After a while he was just another street-druggie with fumble fingers, spare-changing down at the Greyhound station and hanging out on the strip. Then, somehow, over a period of eighteen months, he had gotten clean, and stayed clean. A lot of him was gone. He was no longer the driving wheel of any group, Most Likely to Succeed or otherwise, but he was always on time, never missed a practice session, or fucked up an audition. He didn't talk much, but the needle highway on his left arm had disappeared. And Barry Grieg had said: 'He's come out the other side.' That was all. No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just . . . come out the other side. Or you don't.

I got back into my car and followed the trucks; at the end of the road, the Polizei unloaded the women and children, who rejoined the men arriving on foot. A number of Jews, as they walked, were singing religious songs; few tried to run away; the ones who did were soon stopped by the cordon or shot down. From the top, you could hear the gun bursts clearly, and the women especially were starting to panic. But there was nothing they could do. The condemned were divided into little groups and a noncom sitting at a table counted them; then our Askaris took them and led them over the brink of the ravine. After each volley, another group left, it went very quickly. I walked around the ravine by the west to join the other officers, who had taken up positions above the north slope. From there, the ravine stretched out in front of me: it must have been some fifty meters wide and maybe thirty meters deep, and went on for several kilometers; the little stream at the bottom ran into the Syrets, which gave its name to the neighborhood. Boards had been placed over this stream so the Jews and their shooters could cross easily; beyond, scattered pretty much everywhere on the bare sides of the ravine, the little white clusters were multiplying. The Ukrainian “packers” dragged their charges to these piles and forced them to lie down over them or next to them; the men from the firing squad then advanced and passed along the rows of people lying down almost naked, shooting each one with a submachine bullet in the neck; there were three firing squads in all. Between the executions some officers inspected the bodies and finished them off with a pistol. To one side, on a hill overlooking the scene, stood groups of officers from the SS and the Wehrmacht. Jeckeln was there with his entourage, flanked by Dr. Rasch; I also recognized some high-ranking officers of the Sixth Army. I saw Thomas, who noticed me but didn’t return my greeting. On the other side, the little groups tumbled down the flank of the ravine and joined the clusters of bodies that stretched farther and farther out. The cold was becoming biting, but some rum was being passed around, and I drank a little. Blobel emerged suddenly from a car on our side of the ravine, he must have driven around it; he was drinking from a little flask and shouting, complaining that things weren’t going fast enough. But the pace of the operations had been stepped up as much as possible. The shooters were relieved every hour, and those who weren’t shooting supplied them with rum and reloaded the clips. The officers weren’t talking much; some were trying to hide their distress. The Ortskommandantur had set up a field kitchen, and a military pastor was preparing some tea to warm up the Orpos and the members of the Sonderkommando. At lunchtime, the superior officers returned to the city, but the subalterns stayed to eat with the men. Since the executions had to continue without pause, the canteen had been set up farther down, in a hollow from which you couldn’t see the ravine. The Group was responsible for the food supplies; when the cases were broken open, the men, seeing rations of blood pudding, started raging and shouting violently. Häfner, who had just spent an hour administering deathshots, was yelling and throwing the open cans onto the ground: “What the hell is this shit?” Behind me, a Waffen-SS was noisily vomiting. I myself was livid, the sight of the pudding made my stomach turn. I went up to Hartl, the Group’s Verwaltungsführer, and asked him how he could have done that. But Hartl, standing there in his ridiculously wide riding breeches, remained indifferent. Then I shouted at him that it was a disgrace: “In this situation, we can do without such food!

Fifteen years had passed since I first learned to improvise by copying George Shearing records. From the beginning, the goal was to move beyond imitation and find my own voice, and I felt that that was finally happening. Miles had been the guiding light to my growth, encouraging all of us in the band to develop our own styles of playing, and during my five and a half years in the quintet I did start to develop my own sound. But it wasn’t until I got out on my own that I felt I could really explore it. Now that I had my own sextet, I started thinking analytically about what actually goes on within a jazz group. At every moment onstage players are making choices, and each choice affects every other member of the group. So each player has to be prepared to change directions at any given moment—just as Miles did when I played that “wrong” chord onstage a few years earlier. Everybody in a jazz ensemble has learned the basic framework of harmony and scales and how they fit. They know the basic song structure of having the rhythm section—piano, bass, and drums—playing together while the horns carry the melody. But apart from those basics, jazz is incredibly broad. There are really uncountable ways of playing it. For the pianist alone there are so many choices to make: what pitch, how many notes, whether to play a chord or a line. I have ten fingers, and they’re in motion almost all the time, so all of those decisions must happen in an instant. I’m reacting to what the rest of the band is playing, but if I’m only reacting, then I’m not really making a choice; I’m just getting hit and being pushed along. Acting is making a choice, so all the players must be ready to act as well as react. The players have to be talented enough, and confident enough, to do both. I had watched Miles surround himself with amazing musicians and then give them the freedom to act.

This new generation of Italian American entertainers shared Sinatra’s view of the new dance music that emerged in the 1950s. “Rock-and-roll is the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear,” Sinatra told Congress in 1958. “Rock-and-roll smells phony and false. It is sung, played, and written for the most part by cretinous goons, and by means of its almost imbecilic reiteration, and sly, lewd—in plain fact, dirty—lyrics … it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth.” In response to the raw, driving sexuality of black-influenced rock, young Italian American men in New York and Philadelphia did to the new music what Sinatra and his generation had done to jazz. A style combining smooth vocal harmonies, romantic lyrics, and a stationary stage presence, doo-wop was invented in the 1940s by black youth on street corners, but it shot to the top of the pop charts in the late 1950s when Italian Americans adopted it as their own—just as most African American performers moved toward “soul music.” From 1958, when Dion (DiMucci) and the Belmonts placed several songs on the pop charts, until the “British Invasion” of 1964, Italian American doo-wop groups dominated American popular music. All wearing conservative suits and exuding a benign romanticism, the Capris, the Elegants, the Mystics, the Duprees, the Del-Satins, the Four Jays, the Essentials, Randy and the Rainbows, and Vito & the Salutations declared the arrival of Italians into American civilization. During the rise of doo-wop and Frank Rizzo, Malcolm X mocked the newly white Italians. “No Italian will ever jump up in my face and start putting bad mouth on me,” he said, “because I know his history. I tell him when you’re talking about me you’re talking about your pappy, your father. He knows his history. He knows how he got that color.” Though fewer and fewer Italian Americans know the history of which Malcolm X spoke, some have reenacted it.

In their eagerness to eliminate from history any reference to individuais and individual events, collectivist authors resorted to a chimerical construction, the group mind or social mind. At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries German philologists began to study German medieval poetry, which had long since fallen into oblivion. Most of the epics they edited from old manuscripts were imitations of French works. The names of their authors—most of them knightly warriors in the service of dukes or counts—were known. These epics were not much to boast of. But there were two epics of a quite different character, genuinely original works of high literary value, far surpassing the conventional products of the courtiers: the Nibelungenlied and the Gudrun. The former is one of the great books of world literature and undoubtedly the outstanding poem Germany produced before the days of Goethe and Schiller. The names of the authors of these masterpieces were not handed down to posterity. Perhaps the poets belonged to the class of professional entertainers (Spielleute), who not only were snubbed by the nobility but had to endure mortifying legal disabilities. Perhaps they were heretical or Jewish, and the clergy was eager to make people forget them. At any rate the philologists called these two works "people's epics" (Volksepen). This term suggested to naive minds the idea that they were written not by individual authors but by the "people." The same mythical authorship was attributed to popular songs (Volkslieder) whose authors were unknown. Again in Germany, in the years following the Napoleonic wars, the problem of comprehensive legislative codification was brought up for discussion. In this controversy the historical school of jurisprudence, led by Savigny, denied the competence of any age and any persons to write legislation. Like the Volksepen and the Volkslieder, a nation s laws, they declared, are a spontaneous emanation of the Volksgeist, the nations spirit and peculiar character. Genuine laws are not arbitrarily written by legislators; they spring up and thrive organically from the Volksgeist. This Volksgeist doctrine was devised in Germany as a conscious reaction against the ideas of natural law and the "unGerman" spirit of the French Revolution. But it was further developed and elevated to the dignity of a comprehensive social doctrine by the French positivists, many of whom not only were committed to the principies of the most radical among the revolutionary leaders but aimed at completing the "unfinished revolution" by a violent overthrow of the capitalistic mode of production. Émile Durkheim and his school deal with the group mind as if it were a real phenomenon, a distinct agency, thinking and acting. As they see it, not individuais but the group is the subject of history. As a corrective of these fancies the truism must be stressed that only individuais think and act. In dealing with the thoughts and actions of individuais the historian establishes the fact that some individuais influence one another in their thinking and acting more strongly than they influence and are influenced by other individuais. He observes that cooperation and division of labor exist among some, while existing to a lesser extent or not at ali among others. He employs the term "group" to signify an aggregation of individuais who cooperate together more closely.

The end of the war will see the final ruin of the Jew. The Jew is the incarnation of egoism. And their egoism goes so far that they're not even capable of risking their lives for the defence of their most vital interests. The Jew totally lacks any interest in things of the spirit. If he has pretended in Germany to have a bent for literature and the arts, that's only out of snobbery, or from a liking for speculation. He has no feeling for art, and no sensibility. Except in the regions where they live in groups, the Jews are said to have reached a very high cultural level! Take Nuremberg, for example: for four hundred years—that is to say, until 1838—it hadn't a single Jew in its population. Result: a situation in the first rank of German cultural life. Put the Jews all together: by the end of three hundred years, they'll have devoured one another. Where we have a philosopher, they have a Talmudistic pettifogger. What for us is an attempt to get to the bottom of things and express the inexpressible, becomes for the Jew a pretext for verbal juggleries. His only talent is for masticating ideas so as to disguise his thought. He has observed that the Aryan is stupid to the point of accepting anything in matters of religion, as soon as the idea of God is recognised. With the Aryan, the belief in the Beyond often takes a quite childish form ; but this belief does represent an effort towards a deepening of things. The man who doesn't believe in the Beyond has no understanding of religion. The great trick of Jewry was to insinuate itself fraudulently amongst the religions with a religion like Judaism, which in reality is not a religion. Simply, the Jew has put a religious camouflage over his racial doctrine. Everything he undertakes is built on this lie. The Jew can take the credit for having corrupted the Graeco- Roman world. Previously words were used to express thoughts; he used words to invent the art of disguising thoughts. Lies are his strength, his weapon in the struggle. The Jew is said to be gifted. His only gift is that of juggling with other people's property and swindling each and everyone. Suppose I find by chance a picture that I believe to be a Titian. I tell the owner what I think of it, and I offer him a price. In a similar case, the Jew begins by declaring that the picture is valueless, he buys it for a song and sells it at a profit of 5000 per cent. To persuade people that a thing which has value, has none, and vice versa—that's not a sign of intelligence. They can't even overcome the smallest economic crisis! The Jew has a talent for bringing confusion into the simplest matters, for getting everything muddled up. Thus comes the moment when nobody understands anything more about the question at issue. To tell you something utterly insignificant, the Jew drowns you in a flood of words. You try to analyse what he said, and you realise it's all wind. The Jew makes use of words to stultify his neighbours. And that's why people make them professors. The law of life is : "God helps him who helps himself!" It's so simple that everybody is convinced of it, and nobody would pay to learn it. But the Jew succeeds in getting himself rewarded for his meaningless glibness. Stop following what he says, for a moment, and at once his whole scaffolding collapses. I've always said, the Jews are the most diabolic creatures in existence, and at the same time the stupidest. They can't produce a musician, or a thinker. No art, nothing, less than nothing. They're liars, forgers, crooks. They owe their success only to the stupidity of their victims. If the Jew weren't kept presentable by the Aryan, he'd be so dirty he couldn't open his eyes. We can live without the Jews, but they couldn't live without us. When the Europeans realise that, they'll all become simultaneously aware of the solidarity that binds them together. The Jew prevents this solidarity. He owes his livelihood to the fact that this solidarity does not exist.

The last game we played was another suggestion of Millie’s called...Truth or Dare Balloons. Millie and I had so much fun thinking up Truth or Dare options which we wrote on small pieces of paper and then slipped inside a heap of balloons before inflating them. To play the game, we needed some fun music so Jack took care of that by selecting some upbeat songs from the playlist on his phone. Everyone had to be dancing while one balloon was passed around the group by bumping it towards each other. If someone allowed the balloon to hit the floor, that person had to pop the balloon and then complete the truth or dare inside it. To

Armies, like families, are institutions that create a world. Both successfully engender the new member's respect, loyalty, love, affirmation, gratitude, and obedience. I speak of armies and families as creating social power, because the hold that each of these institutions has over its members comes to greatly exceed its moment-to-moment capacity to reward or punish and usually persists long after significant practical affiliation has ended. The following features are common to both of these world-making institutions, whether the new member experiences them as benign or malevolent: Barriers to escape Control of body and bodily functions What and when to eath When, where, and how much to sleep Body form (clothing, weight, haircut) When and where to urinate and defecate Lack of privacy regarding bodily functions Prolonged daily contact with power-holder in group Power-holder as source of small rewards, comfort, approval Inconsistent, unpredictable, capricious enforcement of rules Monopolization of communication, resources, control Secrecy regarding some activities and events Lack of alternative to seeing world through power-holder's eyes Required repetition of buzz words, songs, slogans, cliches, even if inwardly disbelieved and rejected

In their heroic efforts-going door to door to register voters, sitting down at lunch counters, and marching to freedom songs-I saw the possibility of practicing the values my mother taught me; how you could build power not by putting others down but by lifting them up. This was true democracy at work-democracy not as a gift from on high, or a division of spoils between interest groups, but rather democracy that was earned, the work of everybody. The result was not just a change in material conditions, but a sense of dignity for people and communities, a bond between those who had once seemed far apart.

join the rest of the party.” They walked to the backyard where couples danced cheek-to-cheek, and small groups huddled in conversation. The largest crowds gathered around the dance floor as the singer announced that it was time change things up, and began to belt out the lyrics to a Rihanna song, backed up by the band.

I’ve got a big problem: Mick was right about Bernie [Rhodes].” He had finally realized he had been manipulated. He caught a plane to the Bahamas, where Mick Jones was on holiday: an ounce of grass in his hand, he sought out the guitarist’s hotel, and presented him with this tribute, asking to get the Clash back together. But it was too late: Jones had already formed a new group, Big Audio Dynamite; although Joe Strummer ended up coproducing BAD’s second album, his own plans came to nothing.

Almost seventy years ago the Cuban folklorist Fernando Ortiz Fernández coined the awkward but useful term “transculturation” to describe what happens when one group of people takes something—a song, a food, an ideal—from another. Almost inevitably, Ortiz noted, the new thing is transformed; people make it their own by adapting, stripping, and twisting it to fit their needs and situation.

Up until the mid-1970s, Mick and I were inseparable. We made every decision for the group. We’d get together and kick things around, write all our songs. But once we were split up, I started going my way, which was the downhill road to dopesville, and Mick ascended to jet land. We were dealing with a load of problems that built up, being who we were and what the sixties had been.

In their heroic efforts—going door-to-door to register voters, sitting down at lunch counters, and marching to freedom songs—I saw the possibility of practicing the values my mother had taught me; how you could build power not by putting others down but by lifting them up. This was true democracy at work—democracy not as a gift from on high, or a division of spoils between interest groups, but rather democracy that was earned, the work of everybody.

We gain our understanding of group meaning collectively through aspects of the society around us that are shared and unavoidable; television, movies, news items, song lyrics, magazines, textbooks, schools, religion, literature, stories, jokes, traditions, and practices, history, and so on. These dimensions of our culture shape our group identities.

what we have here in this experience of America is a group of people who would not be downtrodden because they had a song to sing and we have a song to sing and there will be a new song for a new day but every day that there is a song we will sing it and our spirits will rise

Max grinned triumphantly and grabbed a chair, turning it so that he could sit on it backwards as he leaned close to me. “Tell me about the boyfriend who left you to drown in that car,” he urged, reaching out to touch my cheek. “Did you give him your V-card too?” A flicker of fear shuddered through me as I remembered sinking to the bottom of that river. But he’d been wrong about the V-card guess. I’d given my virginity to a wholly different asshole. “No,” I breathed. “I didn’t.” “You wanna tell the group who did then?” Max asked with a grin, his power wrapping me in thick cords and refusing to let go. In place of the fear that had been pulling at me, I felt lust building in my veins and my flesh heated at the memory of a dark room, roaming hands- Oh hell no, you psychotic asshole! I shoved all of my will into fighting off the pull of his gift and my fist snapped out with every inch of rage I was harbouring against this douchebag. My knuckles collided directly with the centre of his throat. Max fell back off of the chair with a cry of pain and hit the floor with the chair on top of him. The Siren spell was broken and I was on my feet half a second later, flames springing to life in my hands. I spared half a glance at the other Heirs but they only looked on in surprise. This was between me and Max and they weren’t going to get involved for once. “You crazy bitch,” Max wheezed, his voice strangled with pain. “I am a crazy bitch,” I agreed, glaring down at him. “And if you try that screwed up Siren shit on me ever again you’ll find out just how much of a bitch I can be.” He hissed a curse and raised a palm, throwing a wave of water at me. I unleashed the fire in my hands, throwing a torrent of power into the blow and the two Elements collided in the space between us, cancelling each other out with a hiss of steam. Max scrambled backwards, preparing a second blow and adrenaline shot through my limbs. I was outmatched here and he knew it. I may not have been able to fight him with magic but I’d grown up in the shittiest part of town and I sure as hell knew how to brawl like a cornered alley cat. Before he could cast another spell at me, I aimed a kick at his balls. Max grunted a curse as he doubled in on himself, clutching his manhood. I leaned down to speak to him in a low tone. “I’d think long and hard about trying to pull any more secrets from my lips,” I hissed. “Because some of the ones I’m keeping aren’t my own.” His eyes widened in surprise as he looked up at me. “If you tell anyone what I said when you were Song-Spelled then I’ll-” I interrupted him before he could threaten me with anything, my voice low and cold. “It won’t matter what you do to me after. Your secret will be out there. So I think you were just about to agree to keeping your leech powers to yourself.” Max scowled as he propped himself up on one arm, the pain in his balls obviously easing off. “Fine,” he spat, as if he was going to get up but I wanted to really make sure he got the point. I lifted my palms at Max as Darcy cried out in encouragement and I sent a wave of air crashing into him. It caught him in its grip and sent him flying into the air and tumbling away from me across the room. (Tory)

to.” “And only have one wife?” “Only one wife. They’re strict about that.” He thought about it. “I still think I should do it,” he said, “because Eadred’s god does have power. Look at that dead man! It’s a miracle that he hasn’t rotted away!” The Danes were fascinated by Eadred’s relics. Most did not understand why a group of monks would carry a corpse,

Extended kinship groups - sometimes located on one plantation, more commonly extended over several - became the central units of slave life, ordering society, articulating values, and delineating identity by defining the boundaries of trust. They also became the nexus for incorporating the never-ending stream of arrivals from the seaboard states into the new society, cushioning the horror of the Second Middle Passage, and socializing the deportees to the realities of life on the plantation frontier. Playing the role of midwives, the earlier arrivals transformed strangers into brothers and sisters, melding the polyglot immigrants into one. In defining obligations and responsibilities, the family became the centerpole of slave life. The arrival of the first child provided transplanted slaves with the opportunity to link the world they had lost to the world that had been forced upon them. In naming their children for some loved one left behind, pioneer slaves restored the generational linkages for themselves and connected their children with grandparents they would never know. Some pioneer slaves reached back beyond their parents' generation, suggesting how slavery's long history on mainland North America could be collapsed by a single act. Along the same mental pathways that joined the charter and migration generations flowed other knowledge. Rituals carried from Africa might be as simple as the way a mother held a child to her breast or as complex as a cure for warts. Songs for celebrating marriage, ceremonies for breaking bread, and last rites for an honored elder survived in the minds of those forced from their seaboard homes, along with the unfulfilled promise of the Age of Revolution and evangelical awakenings. Still, the new order never quite duplicated the old. Even as transplanted slaves strained their memories to reconstruct what they had once known, slavery itself was being recast. The lush thicket of kin that deportees like Hawkins Wilson remembered had been obliterated by the Second Middle Passage. Although pioneer slaves worked assiduously to knit together a new family fabric, elevating elderly slaves into parents and deputizing friends as kin, of necessity they had to look beyond blood and marriage. Kin emerged as well from a new religious sensibility, as young men and women whose families had been ravaged by the Second Middle Passage embraced one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. A cadre of black evangelicals, many of who had been converted in the revivals of the late eighteenth century, became chief agents of the expansion of African-American Christianity. James Williams, a black driver who had been transferred from Virginia to the Alabama blackbelt, was just one of many believers who was 'torn away from the care and discipline of their respective churches.' Swept westward by the tide of the domestic slave trade, they 'retained their love for the exercises of religion.

Kemper astutely explains how the highly integrated music industry created, developed, and eventually abandoned the Monkees." -- Library Journal "A keenly incisive---and, at times, refreshingly objective and even-handed---analysis of the entertainment machinery of the era, and the manner in which radio, television, and other areas worked together to manufacture The Monkees seemingly out of thin air." -- Musoscribe "I spent the entire summer of 1987 on the road opening up for The Monkees, and I didn't learn 1% as much about them as I learned from this thorough and remarkable book by Tom Kemper." -- "Weird Al" Yankovic "The Monkees gets into the vast machinery that goes on behind the scenes of producing perfect pop - still relevant today even if the names and corporations have changed - and does it with a lot of fun." -- Chris Shiflett, Foo Fighters "Kemper's book clarifies so much that is misunderstood in the Monkees story." -- Susanna Hoffs, The Bangles "A knowledgeable and incisive portrait of the popular music industry." -- Paul Hirsch, Northwestern University "Fascinating and witty . . .The book is full of interesting insights . . . [and] Kemper is impressive in unpacking particular songs . . . a fresh and engaging take on an oft-told story." ― Shindig! " Valuable, interesting, well-argued, and built on a pile of documented evidence. " - Psychobabble "Belittled at the time of their creation in the mid-Sixties, as made-for-TV Help-era Beatles clones, The Monkees' music has stood the test of time, and then some. Tom Kemper suggests, in his excellent book, that the initial snobbery surrounding the group, at least in elevated critical circles, came about because of the rise of a new rock culture based on authenticity, individual expression and idealism." - Pick of the Week, Choice "Kemper helps us understand what it is that continues to make the Monkees phenomenon 'compelling, fascinating and divisive." - The Spectator

The Incredible String Band were the most multi-faceted group in British popular music, and this book attempts to mirror this. Yes, there is stuff about dates and albums and personnel changes, but you’ll also find articles about their experiments with dance, film, theatre and lifestyles. Their music was always intertwined with the places they lived in, from Sixties Edinburgh to West Wales to the Scottish Borders, and these are all featured here. Their songs ranged from early folk-club whimsy to the material on, say, 5000 Spirits or Wee Tam And The Big Huge which, as Rowan Williams says, demanded an intimidating literacy to pick up all the allusions. The range of their musical palette was striking, too.

Weaning Your Baby Off Breast Milk The paediatrician in Sector 62 Mohali recommends the following tips for weaning your baby off breast milk: Recognize the Signs Your baby starts giving signs showing that they are ready for weaning. The signs include: Sitting with support. Holding their head in an upright position. Expressing interest in what you are eating. Losing their active tongue-thrust reflex. Acting cranky during feeding sessions. Apart from your child showing signs, you can also be the one to stop breastfeeding. You can check with your best paediatrician in Mohali to see if you are ready to start weaning. Set a Schedule Once you prepare yourself to start weaning, give yourself at least a month to move through the process. Giving some time to yourself and the baby gives you time for obstacles. If, however, your child is going through teething, you can wait for some time before weaning. Start Slowly Easing into weaning gives you and your baby some time to adjust to the change. You may start it slowly by dropping one breastfeeding session per week. Once you notice that both you and your baby are comfortable with the change, you can start dropping more sessions until your baby is having solids. Provide Physical Comfort Breastfed babies are used to skin contact with their mothers. Hence, when you are into weaning, you must give them the physical connection in other ways. For instance, you can cuddle them while singing a song reading a book or give them a massage. Let Your Baby Decide Some babies wean on their own when they are given the control. If you are comfortable with your child taking the lead, rely on one rule “Don’t offer, don’t refuse”. You nurse them when they show interest and do not initiate it when they don’t want it. Resistance is Normal If you are the one to start weaning, it will be normal for your babies to resist weaning. Once they become normal with it, they will start showing interest in solid foods and drinking liquids from a bottle. Take Care of Yourself Your baby is not only the one who will be adjusting to weaning. As a mother, you must also deal with a whole range of emotions. Some mothers may even feel rejected when their baby does not show interest in feeding. You may also feel nostalgia about your baby getting older. Accustom yourself to the routine and know that this is necessary. At Motherhood Hospitals, we have a team of experienced super specialists backed by the latest in infrastructure and facilities. We have the best Paediatricians in Mohali that consists of a team of paediatric specialists that cater to all the needs of children, across age groups, and provide the best care for your child’s development.

The soldier who led this group – a man of notched chin and significant thigh that under normal circumstances I’d find really quite enthralling – considered this a moment. Then he laid his hand upon my priestess’s shoulder and shoved her – he actually shoved my priestess, upon my sacred hearth! – so hard she lost her footing and half fell, caught by one of the waiting women before she could tumble entirely. Golden nectar splashed around the lip of the bath, spilling in shimmering pools about the white marble floor as I sat upright, the bones of my long, silken hand standing out white. I cursed the soldier who so dared touch my devoted one, barely noticing what I did: he would love and he would bind his heart to passion and when he had given his all, then he would be betrayed. And then genital disfigurement. One does not cross Aphrodite without some thoroughly explicit consequences.

The soldier who led this group – a man of notched chin and significant thigh that under normal circumstances I’d find really quite enthralling – considered this a moment.

dlaurent The Ballad of Johnny Jihad (Down Desert Storm Way). © c. 2001 During the Gulf War (1990-1991), American Pro-Taliban Jihadist John Philip Walker Lindh was captured while serving with the enemy forces. Here is his tale in song and legend. My nowex at the time did not want me to run to the radio station with this, thought I’d look singularly ridiculii. The following, 'The Ballad of Johnny Jihad' is sung to the tune of 'The Ballad of Jed Clampett' (1962), commonly known as 'The Beverly Hillbillies' song, the theme tune for the TV show series starring Buddy Ebsen. (Lyrics, Paul Henning, vocals Jerry Scoggins, Lester Flatt; master musicians of the art of the ballad and bluegrass ways, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs). The Ballad of Johnny Jihad (Sung) Come and listen to the story of Johnny Jihad, Who left home and country to study his Islam, And then one day he was shooting at our troops, So down through the camp did the government swoop. (Voice Over): ‘Al Que-da that is, Af-ghani Tali-ban, Terror-ist . . .’ (Sung) Well, the first thing you know ol’ John from ’Frisco roamed, The lawman said ‘he’s a lad misunderstood very far from home.’ Said, ‘Californee is the place he oughta be,’ So they request his trial be moved to Berkeley . . . (Voice Over): ‘Liberals that is, group-ies, peace-activists . . .’ Announcer: The Johnny Jihad Show! (Intense bluegrass banjo pickin’ music) . . . (Sung) Now its time to say goodbye to John and all his kin, Hope ya don’t think of him as a fightin’ Taliban, You’re all invited back again to this insanity, To get yourself a heapin’ helpin’ of this travesty . . . Johnny Jihad, that’s what they call ’im now Nice guy; don’t get fooled now, y’hear? (Voice Over): ‘Lawyerin’ that is, O.J.ism, media-circus . . .’ (Music) . . . end

I tried to go to group counseling, but the lady said they were full and so when I tried a 1-on-1 with a counselor, they didn’t respond to my calls. I tried so many times. It’s already so embarrassing asking for help. And you have to pick up my calls, too. Please, mom. When you don’t pick up the phone, my head goes all over the place and I think you’re dead.

One of the Bible studies her group had gone through contained a whole section on forgiveness and how important it was. It asked, if we truly possess forgiveness from God, can we give that forgiveness to others? And if you’re not ready to forgive another person, can you really say you’re ready to be forgiven by God?

Shiloh’s Recommended Listening Tears for Fears. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” By Olzabal, Roland, Stanley, Ian and Hughes, Chris. Somerset, UK: Fontana/Mercury/Phonogram. Songs from the Big Chair. 1985. Joey Ramone. “What a Wonderful World.” By Thiele, Bob and Weiss, George David. Sanctuary Records Group. Don’t Worry About Me. 2002. The Moody Blues. “Question.” By Hayward, Justin. London, UK: Threshold Records. A Question of Balance. 1970. The Church. “Under the Milky Way.” By Kilbey, Steve and Jansson, Karin. Australia: Arista. Starfish. 1988. The Pixies. “Where is My Mind?” By Francis, Black. Boston, MA: 4AD. Surfer Rosa. 1988. The Beatles. “All You Need Is Love.” By Lennon-McCartney. London, UK: Parlophone Capitol. Magical Mystery Tour. 1967. Styx. “The Grand Illusion.” By Dennis DeYoung. Chicago, IL: A&M Records. The Grand Illusion. 1977. The Flaming Lips. “Do You Realize??” By Coyne, Wayne, Drozd, Steven, Ivins, Michael and Fridmann, Dave. New York, NY: Warner Brothers Records. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. 2002. The Beatles. “Across the Universe.” By Lennon-McCartney, London, UK: Regal Starline. No One’s Gonna Change Our World. 1969.

The God of Israel modeled for us how to embed something in the memory of a group or peoplehood. When God instructed Moses in matters pertaining to the ongoing tutelage of Israel, he tells Moses the reason for the great “Song of Moses” that will follow in Deuteronomy 32. This song proclaimed God’s ways, his honor, his judgment, and his salvation. God wanted Israel to take this to heart, to hear it, to internalize it. So, he says, “Now write down this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it [‘by heart’ MSG], so that it may be a witness for me against them” (Deut 31:19 NIV). They were to learn the song by heart. So, the song of Moses is in memorable poetry and was to be formally articulated in ways to facilitate memorization by the community. It was to be sung, oralized. But we note also that it was to be written down.324 The textual version of the poem was necessary for maintaining its permanence from generation to generation, to check its accuracy. Here we see the dynamic dialectic between the written word and the oralized word—the oralized word can be ephemeral, so must be preserved in writing. The written word is enduring but must be oralized.325

A Lasting Legacy I return to Elkins now, to make a summary point and a single closing observation. The summary point is that even as a closed system, slavery, simply because of its long duration, produced over time a distinctive African American culture. This is a point stressed in Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll and in his mostly sympathetic critique of Elkins. Slaves, for instance, developed a repertoire of songs and stories and relationships—sometimes lifelong relationships—that ultimately helped to form a black identity in the United States. There is no analog for this in the concentration camps, partly because of the nature of the camps and partly because they lasted for just a dozen years from 1933 to 1945. In general, camp prisoners did not form close relationships, partly because this was discouraged by the guards and partly because prisoners realized that the very person you befriended last week could be summarily executed this week. So the only behavioral changes that concentration camps produced were in the nature of short-term adaptations to camp life itself. It follows from this that the cultural legacy of slavery long outlasted slavery while the cultural legacy of the camps—including the peculiar disfigurations of personality that Elkins detected—proved to be a temporary phenomenon. The phenomena of the zombie-like Muselmanner, the ersatz Nazism of the Kapos—all of this is now gone. It makes no sense to say that Jews or eastern Europeans today display any of the characteristics that developed within that temporary closed system. With American blacks, however, the situation is quite different. Although slavery ended in 1865, it lasted more than 200 years, and it had its widest scope during the era of Democratic supremacy in the South from the 1820s through the 1860s. Many of the features of the old slave plantation—dilapidated housing, broken families, a high degree of violence required to keep the place together, a paucity of opportunity and advancement prospects, a widespread sense of nihilism and despair—are evident in Democrat-run inner cities like Oakland, Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago. “There was a distinct underclass of slaves,” political scientist Orlando Patterson writes, “who lived fecklessly or dangerously. They were the incorrigible blacks of whom the slave-owner class was forever complaining. They ran away. They were idle. They were compulsive liars. They seemed immune to punishment.” And then comes Patterson’s punch line: “We can trace the underclass, as a persisting social phenomenon, to this group.” 39 The Left doesn’t like Patterson because he’s a black scholar of West Indian origin with a penchant for uttering politically incorrect truths.

We formalized our group as the Vantastix and sang at dinner parties and charity events. My favorite venue though, was the City of Hope, where we went room to room singing for kids battling cancer. In 50 plus years of show business, I never had a better audience. Most of those little kids were bald; a fair number could barely sit up in bed and there was a sad handful who could not even do that. We stopped at the bed of a very sick 15-year-old boy. We tiptoed into his room and quietly sang a song; he did not react. Thinking he was asleep, we began to file out but suddenly we hear a thin voice ask, "Could I hear another one, please?" We turned around and sang a whole bunch of songs. He barely opened his eyes. But after we finished Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, I saw his mouth curl into a faint smile. As far as I'm concerned, applause does not get any louder.

I know that the Beatles were a big-deal music group that changed the way people thought about getting haircuts. They sang songs that were pretty good because you can still listen to the today and not get angry.

To build a fire, you need more wood. To build a team, you need more people.

Rent answers the question of how people come together this way: through shared hardship, a message of the story that was readily adopted by the show’s most dedicated audiences. All theater brings people together in a room, but musical theater regularly brings people together to contemplate the spectacle of people coming together, in book, song, and dance. Musical theater also encourages and relies on the audience’s desire to perform the songs that they have heard performed, and to form communities based on that desire. In its examination and staging of the problems and pleasures of community on stage to a group of people offstage, live musical theater offers an experience unlike anything else.

All thanks to your little disappearing act upstairs. I'm lucky that I didn't get thrown out immediately." The sopranos' song surged. A nerve in her eyebrow was about to start twitching - she could feel it. "Now I get to listen to the world's most devoted a cappella group every night.

I was struck again by a big difference—between standing in a group of strangers singing with them, and interacting with groups of strangers through screens. The first dissolves your sense of ego; the second jabs and pokes at it. The last song we sang was “A Whole New World.

James 4:8 NKJV says, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." So, how do we do this? How do you do this? First, you develop a deeply personal relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Isn't that absolutely incredible? Some practical ways for me; reading His Word spending quiet time in His presence praying doing devotionals praying for others praying over meals Church attendance Home Groups/Bible Studies writing out scripture memorizing scripture, APPS: Bible, Church, Christian Leaders Podcasts fasting and praying listening and singing Christian songs volunteering giving of my time and treasure being kind walking in integrity doing the right thing and responding correctly connecting with like-minded followers of Christ being edified by those relationships and the strength that it brings

About the time the Beatles started to write songs, a group of linguists concocted a theory that modern people are too dumb to read books older than Curious George; so the experts decided to re-write them. In the 1970s, committees began to re-translate, notably, both the Bible and liturgical books.

Sometimes it seems as if writing a group of songs is like getting groceries, or doing the laundry—banal things I do more or less on a day-to-day basis. We deal with the issues involved in our mundane activities as they come up, and songwriting might be viewed similarly, as the response to specific and even pedestrian needs. It might seem that in our day-to-day activities there is no overall plan at work, no consideration of where things are ultimately going. So, too, sometimes, with the process of writing songs. Little decisions are made invisibly every minute, and the cumulative effect, and the often unspoken principles that have guided them, define what appears to be, in retrospect, a conscious plan, with an emotional center and compass. What begins as a random walk often ends up taking you somewhere, somewhere that you later realize was exactly where you wanted to go.

This third album by the group was the first to be entirely written by Lennon-McCartney.

Guitarist John Starling, mandolinist John Duffey, Dobroist Mike Auldridge, banjo picker Ben Eldridge, and bass man Tom Gray began The Seldom Scene during November, 1971. From the start, the group featured bluegrass standards, original compositions, and pop and rock songs given a bluegrass treatment.

In one of the most intriguing attempts, carried out at the University of Minnesota in 2014, a group of researchers led by Michael Travisano and William Ratcliff made a multicellular being evolve from a unicellular organism.

I made a statement at that time in an interview that is worth recording here. “Up until the mid-1970s, Mick and I were inseparable. We made every decision for the group. We’d get together and kick things around, write all our songs. But once we were split up, I started going my way, which was the downhill road to dopesville, and Mick ascended to jet land. We were dealing with a load of problems that built up, being who we were and what the sixties had been.” Mick would come and visit me occasionally in Switzerland and talk about “economic restructuring.” We’re sitting around half the time talking about tax lawyers! The intricacies of Dutch tax laws vis-à-vis the English tax law and the French tax law. All of these tax thieves were snapping at our heels. I was trying to wish it away. Mick was a bit more practical on that point: “The decisions we make now will affect blah blah blah.” Mick picked up the slack; I picked up the smack. The cures didn’t always stick through the periods off the road, when I wasn’t working.

Let’s get to your first assignment,” Lucky says. “Character. What I’d like you to do is venture out into the world somewhere, could be your local farmers’ market, your office building—Nancy, I see you work at the RMV, that’s a fertile environment—and choose two individuals to observe. Then I’d like you to dramatize a scene between the two with an eye toward developing this scene into a story. The late great novelist John Gardner famously said that there are only two plots: One, a person goes on a journey, and two, a stranger comes to town.” Lucky pauses and Sharon furiously scribbles on her legal pad. Sharon is hopelessly old-school; both Nancy and Willow type on their laptops. “Go forth and observe, then, my friends. We’ll meet again next week and you can share what you’ve written with the group.

Businesses also aggregate multiple publics by exploiting their spatial diversity, where different areas can be sectioned off to serve different groups of customers. Advertisements for San Francisco’s DNA Lounge invite patrons to listen to guest DJs mixing songs in one portion of the venue, and also promote the club’s resident DJs who spin for the crowd in another area of the bar. Similarly, the city’s Cat Club often advertises attractions in different spaces in the venue: “back room” DJs and “front room” DJs. The club aggregates different forms of entertainment in a single space, suggesting to customers that there are a bevy of attractions available there. By doing that, the advertisement suggests at least some variety in the publics that form there. Similarly, the Chicago bar Sidetrack uses its architecture to aggregate multiple publics.

Settled near a large group of tribespeople, not too far from the fire, it was obvious, from the sound of red-haired Dimitris, that there was more being passed around than just meat.

I felt like my heart was broken. All those songs people wrote about heartbreak? I got it now. They weren’t talking about romantic heartbreak. They were talking about losing a friend.

Chapter FEEDING YOUR ATTENTION HOG I was once at a New Age party and wanted to get the attention of some particularly lovely sari-wearing, belly-dancing women who were floating in and out of the various rooms. I had discovered that I could move past some of my fear and make a connection with people through singing. So I pulled out my guitar and started playing a song I had worked particularly hard to polish, Fleetwood Mac’s “A Crystalline Knowledge of You.” I was able to make it through without too many mistakes and was starting to feel the relief that comes from surviving traumatic experiences. Then one of the belly-dancing goddesses called to me from across the room, “You are some kind of attention hog, aren’t you!” As soon as she said it, my life passed before me. The room started to swirl, as a typhoon of shame began to suck me down the toilet of my soul. “Embarrassment” is an inadequate word, when someone pins the tail on the jackass of what seems to be your most central core defect. I am usually scrupulous about checking with people when I make requests for attention. But this time I was caught with my hand in the cookie jar up to the elbow. I remember slinking away in silent humiliation, putting my guitar back in its case and making a beeline for my car. I just wanted to get back to my lair to lick my wounds, and try to hold my self-hate demons at bay with a little help from my friend Jack Daniels. After that incident I quit playing music in public at all. Several years later I was attending a very intense, emotional workshop with Dr. Marshall Rosenberg. Our group of about twenty people had been baring and healing our souls for several days. The atmosphere of trust, safety and connectedness had dissolved my defenses and left me with a innocent, childlike need to contribute. And then the words popped out of my mouth, “I’d like to share a song with you all.” These words were followed by the thought: “Now I’ve gone and done it. When everyone turns on me and confirms that I have an incurable narcissistic personality disorder, it will be fifty years before I sing in public again.” Dr. Rosenberg responded in a cheerful, inviting voice. “Sure, go get your guitar!” he said, as though he were unaware that I was about to commit hara-kiri. The others in the group nodded agreement. I ran to my car to get my guitar, which I kept well hidden in the trunk. I was also hoping that I would not just jump in my car and leave. I brought the guitar in, sat down, and played my song. Sweating and relieved that I made it through the song, my first public performance in years, I felt relief as I packed my guitar in its case. Then Dr. Rosenberg said, “And now I would like to hear from each group member how they felt about Kelly playing his song.” “Oh my God!” my inner jackals began to howl, “It was a setup! They made me expose my most vulnerable part and now they are going to crucify me, or maybe just take me out to the rock quarry for a well-deserved stoning!

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

a. From one of the other parents: “Don’t try to manipulate us with those phony crocodile tears!” My response (hopefully): “So you don’t trust my sincerity?” b. From a big burly man: “Oh God, give it up!” My response: “Sounds like you are disgusted with the show of emotion and would prefer we all discuss this practically and logically?” c. From a psychologist in the group: “You are just a little out of control, aren’t you?” My response: “Are you concerned about straying from the agenda for the meeting? The psychologist’s response to the above: “Yes, you are monopolizing the meeting.” My response: “So you would like others to get equal time to speak? Yes, I am willing to give up the floor now.” (Or, “I would like to make two more points if that’s okay with the group.”) Ways to Feed Your Attention Hog Honoring and owning your Attention Hog is a learned habit and skill. It must become a conscious and willful act in order to counter the cultural training we have received to pretend we do not want the attention. You will also be honoring others’ needs to have their attention and appreciation received fully and gracefully. 1. When you are talking with someone and there is a radio or TV playing in the background, ask that it be turned off and not just down. 2. Ask groups to hear you play a new song you have learned. 3. Ask groups to listen to you read or recite poetry or prose. 4. Ask to be on TV or radio. 5. Submit articles for publication in magazines, newspapers or ezines. 6. When speaking to a group, and people are talking in the background, say “My attention hog would like everyone’s attention please.” 7. When you are not getting the eye contact you would like from someone, ask for it. 8. If you want someone to call you more often, tell them specifically how often you would like to be called. 9. If you are not getting the recognition you want at work, ask your boss to write down a number of things that he sees you contributing to the business. 10. When receiving the applause of a group, take it in. Stand there looking at them until the entire wave of appreciation has passed. Chapter FILLING THE HOLE IN THE SOUL I used to think that the need for approval was a misunderstood

Diane Louise Jordan Diane Louise Jordan is a British television presenter best known for her role in the long-running children’s program Blue Peter, which she hosted from 1990 until 1996. She is currently hosting BBC1’s religious show, Songs of Praise. Also noted for her charity work, Diane Louise Jordan is vice president of the National Children’s Home in England. When in late 1997 I was invited by the Right Honorable Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to sit on the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Committee, I was clueless as to why I’d been chosen. I was in the middle of a filming assignment in the United States when the call came through. Sitting on the bed in my New York hotel room, still with the receiver in my hand after agreeing to the chancellor’s request, I kept asking myself, “Why me?” The rest of the committee seemed to me to be high fliers of great influence or closely related to her. I was neither. I didn’t fit. But, perhaps, that’s the point. A lot of us think we don’t fit, don’t believe we’re up to much. Yet the truth is we’re all part of something big, and we’re all capable of inspiring others to be the best that they can be. This is what Princess Diana believed. The Princess influenced and inspired many through her life, and now I had an opportunity to be part of something that ensured her influence would continue. It was out responsibility as the Memorial Committee to sift through more than ten thousand suggestions by the British public to find an appropriate memorial to the life and work of the Princess. It was unanimously felt that the memorial should have lasting impact and reflect the many facets of Diana, so we came up with four commemorative projects: the Diana Nurses, a commemorative 5 pound coin, projects in the Royal Parks, and the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Award, for young people between the ages of eleven and eighteen. The Diana Award, as it is now known, was set up to acknowledge and support the achievements of young people throughout Britain. Each year the award is given to individuals or groups who have made an outstanding contribution to their community by improving the lives of others, especially the more vulnerable, or by enhancing the communities in which they live. The Diana Award is also given to those who’ve shown exemplary progress in personal development, particularly if it involves overcoming adversity. I’ve been associated with the Diana Award since it was established in 1999. And now, as a trustee, I’m extremely honored to be further involved, as I believe that the award holders are a living part of the late Princess’s legacy. They represent the kind of brave, caring, idealistic values Diana admired and championed. Like the late Princess, this award simply shines a light on what is already there, already being achieved. It’s as if Diana herself is telling the recipients how fantastic they are. The Princess said her job was to love people, and through this award she is still doing that. Recently, I was at an award holders ceremony. I was overwhelmed to be in an environment surrounded by beautiful young people committed to wanting the best. Like Princess Diana, they all demonstrate, in their individual ways, that when we strive to do our best, whether by overcoming personal adversity or contributing to the well-being of others, it changes us for the better. We see a glimpse of how we could all be if, like Diana, we have the courage to expose our hearts.

Whether the music is traditional or contemporary, classical or popular, there are some things that just should not be put before the assembly because some music doesn’t lend itself to group singing. Some songs have been written with a soloist in mind. Some hymns and songs have easily learned refrains but stanzas that are irregular. The stanzas can be sung by cantors or choirs while the people sing the refrain. Responsorial singing is an old practice in the history of liturgy that can make worship more dynamic. It is often used today in Roman Catholic liturgy as a means of singing psalms and canticles.

Christopher came up behind her. As Beatrix turned to face him, he searched her face with a gently quizzical gaze. “If you like, we can spend our first night together here,” he said. “But if this doesn’t suit you, we’ll go to Phelan House.” Beatrix could hardly speak. “You did this for me?” He nodded. “I asked Lord Westcliff if we might stay the night here. And he had no objections to a little redecorating. Do you--” He was interrupted as Beatrix flung herself at him and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. Christopher held her, his hands coursing slowly over her back and hips. His lips found the tender skin of her cheeks, her chin, the yielding softness of her mouth. Through the descending diaphanous layers of pleasure, Beatrix answered him blindly, taking a shivering breath as his long fingers curved beneath her jaw. He shaped her lips with his own, his tongue questing gently. The taste of him was smooth and subtle and masculine. Intoxicating. Needing more of him, she struggled to draw him deeper, to kiss him harder, and he resisted with a quiet laugh. “Wait. Easy…love, there’s another part of the surprise that I don’t want you to miss.” “Where?” Beatrix asked drowsily, her hand searching over his front. Christopher gave a muffled laugh, taking her by the shoulders and easing her away. He stared down at her, his gray eyes glowing. “Listen,” he whispered. As the thrumming of her own heart quieted, Beatrix heard music. Not instruments, but human voices joined in harmony. Bemused, she went to the window and looked out. A smile lit her face. A small group of officers from Christopher’s regiment, still in uniform, were standing in a row and singing a slow, haunting ballad. Were I laid on Greenland’s coast, And in my arms embrac’d my lass; Warm amidst eternal frost, Too soon the half year’s night would pass. And I would love you all the day. Ev’ry night would kiss and play, If with me you’d fondly stray. Over the hills and far away… “Our song,” Beatrix whispered, as the sweet strains floated up to them. “Yes.

Listen,” he whispered. As the thrumming of her own heart quieted, Beatrix heard music. Not instruments, but human voices joined in harmony. Bemused, she went to the window and looked out. A smile lit her face. A small group of officers from Christopher’s regiment, still in uniform, were standing in a row and singing a slow, haunting ballad. Were I laid on Greenland’s coast, And in my arms embrac’d my lass; Warm amidst eternal frost, Too soon the half year’s night would pass. And I would love you all the day. Ev’ry night would kiss and play, If with me you’d fondly stray. Over the hills and far away… “Our song,” Beatrix whispered, as the sweet strains floated up to them. “Yes.” Beatrix lowered to the floor and braced her folded arms on the windowsill…the same place where she had lit so many candles for a soldier fighting in a faraway land. Christopher joined her at the window, kneeling with his arms braced around her. At the conclusion of the song, Beatrix blew the officers a kiss. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she called down to them. “I will treasure this memory always.” One of them volunteered, “Perhaps you’re not aware of it, Mrs. Phelan, but according to Rifle Brigade wedding tradition, every man on the groom’s honor guard gets to kiss the bride on her wedding night.” “What rot,” Christopher retorted amiably. “The only Rifles wedding tradition I know of is to avoid getting married in the first place.” “Well, you bungled that one, old fellow.” The group chortled. “Can’t say as I blame him,” one of them added. “You are a vision, Mrs. Phelan.” “As fair as moonlight,” another said. “Thank you,” Christopher said. “Now stop wooing my wife, and take your leave.” “We started the job,” one of the officers said. “It’s left to you to finish it, Phelan.” And with cheerful catcalls and well wishes, the Rifles departed. “They’re taking the horse with them,” Christopher said, a smile in his voice. “You’re well and truly stranded with me now.

I want to single out one man in particular who spoilt Mugabe - Rugare Gumbo- who is still in the government. He had been in charge of publicity in the Chitepo-led external group before Mugabe left Rhodesia. He was a very effective propagandist, an ideologue. He began preaching Marxism. Mugabe liked the sound of this ideology and before long, he had completely fallen for it and begun to sing the Marxism/Leninism song. But that's all it was - rhetoric. There was no genuine vision or belief behind it.

I started to see depression and anxiety as like cover versions of the same song by different bands. Depression is a cover version by a downbeat emo band, and anxiety is a cover version by a screaming heavy metal group, but the underlying sheet music is the same. They’re not identical, but they are twinned.

Another disproportionately fascinating symbol is the Singing Commercial. Singing Commercials are a recent invention; but the Singing Theological and the Singing Devotional -- the hymn and the psalm -- are as old as religion itself. Singing Militaries, or marching songs, are coeval with war, and Singing Patriotics, the precursors of our national anthems, were doubtless used to promote group solidarity, to emphasize the dis­tinction between "us" and "them," by the wandering bands of paleolithic hunters and food gatherers. To most people music is intrinsically attractive. Moreover, melodies tend to ingrain themselves in the listener's mind. A tune will haunt the memory during the whole of a lifetime. Here, for example, is a quite uninterest­ing statement or value judgment. As it stands nobody will pay attention to it. But now set the words to a catchy and easily remembered tune. Immediately they become words of power. Moreover, the words will tend automatically to repeat themselves every time the mel­ody is heard or spontaneously remembered. Orpheus has entered into an alliance with Pavlov -- the power of sound with the conditioned reflex. For the commercial propagandist, as for his colleagues in the fields of poli­tics and religion, music possesses yet another advan­tage. Nonsense which it would be shameful for a rea­sonable being to write, speak or hear spoken can be sung or listened to by that same rational being with pleasure and even with a kind of intellectual convic­tion. Can we learn to separate the pleasure of singing or of listening to song from the all too human tend­ency to believe in the propaganda which the song is putting over? That again is the question.

With World War I over, the decade prior to my birth was universally recognized as the “Roaring Twenties.” Many rejoiced, with mostly young, wealthy people indulging in wine, women and song. Promiscuous sexual behavior and the social use of alcohol became normal to the liberal thinkers who gathered in the bohemian sections of the world’s leading cities. Although political unrest still existed, most people enjoyed the peaceful years that followed the horror of World War I. The United States, however, has always been a more structured, puritanical and religious country. From the time of the Pilgrims, spirituality and moderation has prevailed. In the United States, the concept of abstinence was advanced by the American Temperance Society, also known as the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance. This activist group was established on February 13, 1826, in Boston, Massachusetts, and considered the concept of outlawing alcohol to be progressive. The United States Senate first proposed the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, with the intent of banning the use of alcohol. After passage by the House and Senate, on December 18, 1917, the proposed amendment was submitted to the states for ratification. On January 16, 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, with an effective date one year later on January 17, 1920. The Volstead Act, passed on October 28, 1919, specified the details for the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment. A total of 1,520 Federal Prohibition agents, having police powers, were assigned to enforce this unpopular law. Many people, ignoring this new law, partied at the many renowned illegal speakeasies, many of which were run by the Mafia. This ban on alcohol proved to be contentious, difficult to enforce, and an infringement on people’s personal rights. Still, due to political pressure, it continued until March 22, 1933, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Constitution, known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, which allowed for the manufacture and sale of watery 3.2% beer. It took over a decade from its inception before the Eighteenth Amendment was finally repealed on December 5, 1933, when the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution was adopted.

And it kind of behooves you to pick a short song. I don’t care if Don freakin’ McLean shows up in a red-white-and-blue tuxedo, no one is allowed to sing “American Pie.” It’s actually kind of hostile to a group of partiers to pick a song longer than three minutes.

Inside the studio walls the alpha male personalities of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich battled for territory, their sometimes discordant creative visions coalescing to the point where no aspect of the music being made was left unexamined or unsubjected to alternative methods of interpretation. The pair were learning that in order that an instrument in a song be emphasised, by definition another instrument must be de-emphasised, thus beginning a battle between guitarist and drummer, the energy from which would fuel the group for years to come.

As I retold those stories, I watched the faces of the house-church leaders. They were listening in rapt attention. I felt that the Holy Spirit was moving and working in that farmyard. I could sense that these leaders were pulling real biblical principles out of the stories. Then, in the middle of the final story that I was going to tell, I heard a noise, a disturbance. I looked around and, in the back corner, I saw a movement. It was those two brothers that I had tried to interview a little earlier. They were standing up and waving their arms. I couldn't imagine what they were doing. I tried to ignore them, hoping that no one would notice the commotion. But they rushed forward. Weaving their way through the crowd, they made their way toward the platform. I tried in vain to figure out some way to keep them from coming up on the stage. As they drew closer though, I could tell that they were crying. Instinctively, I moved back and gave way. By the time they stepped up on the platform, they were shaking and sobbing. They said to the assembled group: 'Listen to this man! Listen to this man! The stories he tells are true! You can only grow in persecution what you go into persecution with.' Then they opened their hearts to their Christian brothers and sisters seated before them. What they said sounded like a confession: 'You have honored us and you have made us leaders just because the authorities arrested us and we went to jail for three years. But you never, ever asked us our story. We know that when most of you went to prison, you shared your faith, you preached the word of God, and you brought hundreds if not thousands of people to Jesus. You started dozens of churches, and you began a movement that has grown out of the prisons. The Lord used you in a might way. But when we were arrested, we barely knew who Jesus was! We did not know how to pray! We did not know the Bible! We did not know many songs of faith. We have to confess this to you today and beg your forgiveness. For three years in prison we did not share our faith with one person. We hid our faith. And yet, when we came out of prison, you made us leaders just because we had been put into jail. The truth is, we failed Jesus in prison. Would you please forgive us? You must listen to this man! Listen to this man! What he is teaching is true: You can only grow in jail what you take to jail with you. You can only grow in persecution what you take into it.' There seemed to be nothing more that I could add to that. I silently asked for God's forgiveness. I had been upset about my interview with these two brothers. Evidently, God had a purpose in bringing them to the front.

That is why, as Paul Westermeyer observes, “a group who sings together becomes one and remembers its story, and therefore who it is, in a particularly potent way.

The “Sons of the Pioneers” are amongst America’s earliest Country/Western singing groups. One weekend we’d drive south of the border to Tijuana, Mexico and the next weekend it would be to Knott’s Berry Farm, where I heard the “Sons of the Pioneers” singing Tumbling Tumble Weeds, Cool Clear Water and other Western songs that made the group famous. On many occasions, they performed with Roy Rogers, who was a movie cowboy and Dale Evans his cowgirl wife, from Victorville, California. The “Sons of the Pioneers” were popular at that time and were inaugurated into the Country Music Hall of Fame later in 1976. It was a summer that I will never forget! Knott’s Berry Farm is a 160-acre amusement park in Buena Park, California and the singing group has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Blvd.

What is it about the Greek character that has allowed this complex culture to thrive for millennia? The Greek Isles are home to an enduring, persevering people with a strong work ethic. Proud, patriotic, devout, and insular, these hardy seafarers are the inheritors of working methods that are centuries old. On any given day, fishermen launch their bots at dawn in search of octopi, cuttlefish, sponges, and other gifts of the ocean. Widows clad in black dresses and veils shop the local produce markets and gather in groups of two and three to share stories. Artisans stich decorative embroidery to adorn traditional costumes. Glassblowers, goldsmiths, and potters continue the work of their ancient ancestors, ultimately displaying their wares in shops along the waterfronts. The Greeks’ dedication to time-honored occupations and hard work is harmoniously complemented by their love of dance, song, food, and games. Some of the earliest works of art from the Greek Isles--including Minoan paintings from the second millennium B.C.E.--depict the central, day-to-day role of dance, and music. Today, life is still lived in common, and the old ways often survive in a deep separation between the worlds of women and men. In the more rural areas, dancing and drinking are--officially at least--reserved for men, as the women watch from windows and doorways before returning to their tasks. At seaside tavernas throughout the Greek Isles, old men sip raki, a popular aniseed-flavored liqueur, while playing cards or backgammon under grape pergolas that in late summer are heavy with ripe fruit. Woven into this love of pleasure, however, are strands of superstition and circumspection. For centuries, Greek artisans have crafted the lovely blue and black glass “eyes” that many wear as amulets to ward off evil spirits. They are given as baby and housewarming gifts, and are thought to bring good luck and protect their wearers from the evil eye. Many Greeks carry loops of wooden or glass beads--so-called “worry beads”--for the same purpose. Elderly women take pride in their ability to tell fortunes from the black grounds left behind in a cup of coffee.

Snacks? What kind of snacks?” I asked. “Something called chips, which are made from potatoes, and different kinds of candies.” “Oh, you’re gonna sell candy, too?” “Yeah, but totally different from the candy shop.” “I see.” “I hope you’ll come by for the grand opening.” “When is it?” “Hopefully, next week. I’ll let you know.” I nodded. “Okay, I’ll try to make it, Tes.” “Cool. Thank you. Alright, I’m going to get some more food,” he said and left. A few minutes later, Maky got on the microphone and announced that the dancing portion of the night was going to start soon. “Woohoo! It’s dancing time,” said Arthur excitedly. “You know who I’m going to ask to dance with me?” “Who?” I asked. “Autumn,” answered Pierce. “Yup! Hopefully, she’ll agree.” “What about you, Pierce? Are you gonna ask anyone to dance?” “Um, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just dance by myself or with a group of friends,” the knight answered. “Cool…” I said sadly because I felt a little bit left out. “Or you know, maybe I’ll just hang out with you.” “Naw, I’m fine. You don’t have to keep me company.” Then suddenly, music started playing from the speakers that were set up at all the four corners of the city square. “Oh, here we go! I’ll be back later,” said Arthur as he took off to find Autumn. As the music played, I looked around for Maky’s band, but they were nowhere in sight. “Hm. This music must be coming from the jukebox,” I said. “Yeah, I don’t think Maky is playing tonight,” said Pierce. “She’s not? Why not? They’re super good.” “I don’t know, Steve.” “Hm. Oh, look. People are starting to take to the dance floor.” Slowly, a couple of villagers made their way toward the center of the city square. They were nervous about being the first ones, but soon after, many others followed their lead. Before I knew it, there were a ton of villagers in the middle, jumping up and down and dancing to the music. “That looks like fun…” I said. “Yeah…” said Pierce. “You should go join them.” “N-nah. I like sitting here.” Right when Pierce said that, someone came by and grabbed his hand and pulled him to the dance floor. “Come on, Pierce, let’s show them how it’s done,” said Leila. “B-but I’m not that good!” said Pierce. I tried my best to smile and said, “Have fun…” With my fake smile on, I watched as Pierce was dragged into the middle. Leila had stolen my only company away from me, and that made me feel super left out. I sighed and thought to myself, I wish I was out of this chair already. But I knew I didn’t have a choice, so I just sat in my chair and nodded along to the music. A few minutes later, the first song ended and the next one came on. I just continued sitting there while watching my friends have fun. In the middle, I could see Arthur dancing with Autumn, Cindy dancing with Arceus, and Leila dancing with Pierce. Shortly after, someone came by to talk to me. “Hey, Steve! How ya doing?” Maky asked while breathing hard. “Maky? Why aren’t you playing tonight?” I asked. “Oh, because I wanted to dance and have fun tonight. I mean, playing my instrument is fun, too, but dancing is a different kind of fun.” “I see.” “So, what are you doing over here? You don’t want to join the fun?” “Uh, there’s not much fun to be had when I’m stuck in a wheel chair.” “Oh, that’s nonsense!” Then she ran behind my chair, tilted it slightly backwards and pushed me off toward the middle of the dance floor. “Whoa! What are you doing?!” “We’re going to dance!” “Huh?!

Amateur musical performances were extremely important for all of us during the war, and my experience of them started at the age of ten or eleven, when my friends and I took part in a custom that was very popular back then but now seems to have died out altogether. It was carried out at Halloween, but instead of going round asking for trick or treats we did something called ‘Guising’. A group of us lads would go to the front door of a house we thought might be welcoming and politely ask if we could come in and perform. Our particular playlet was suggested by my father; it was one he had performed when he was a lad, although whether there was any deeper tradition behind the verses we recited I cannot say. We were all dressed up in costumes, with one boy dressed as a king with a cardboard crown on his head. Once all were in the house most of us would cluster behind the sitting-room door, then the first boy would enter the room on his own and say, ‘Red up sticks and red up stools here comes in a pack of fools, a pack of fools behind that door. Step in King George and clear the floor.’ The boy with the crown on his head would enter and recite, ‘King George is my name, sword and pistol by my side, I hope to win the game.’ The first boy would answer, ‘The game, sir, the game, sir, is not within your power. I will slash you and slay you within half an hour.’ These two boys would then have a duel with toy swords and the first boy would drop down as though dead, at which the king would kneel down and say, ‘Is there a doctor in the town?’ A small boy with a little attaché case would then pop out from behind the door saying, ‘My name is Doctor Brown, the best little doctor in the town. A little to his nose and a little to his bum, now rise up, jock, and sing a song.’ It was an absurd little sketch, but we used to get showered with pieces of cake and home-made toffees and fudge, and we would pass from house to house performing the same sketch. Even now I can recall the words perfectly.

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: “tappers” or “listeners.” Tappers received a list of twenty-five well-known songs, such as “Happy Birthday to You” and “The StarSpangled Banner.” Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener (by knocking on a table). The listener’s job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped. Over the course of Newton’s experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only 2.5 percent of the songs: 3 out of 120. But here’s what made the result worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tappers to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50 percent. The tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought they were getting their message across 1 time in 2. Why? When a tapper taps, she is hearing the song in her head. Go ahead and try it for yourself — tap out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It’s impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can’t hear that tune — all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code. In the experiment, tappers are flabbergasted at how hard the listeners seem to be working to pick up the tune. Isn’t the song obvious? The tappers’ expressions, when a listener guesses “Happy Birthday to You” for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” are priceless: How could you be so stupid? It’s hard to be a tapper. The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge. When they’re tapping, they can’t imagine what it’s like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind. The tapper/listener experiment is reenacted every day across the world. The tappers and listeners are CEOs and frontline employees, teachers and students, politicians and voters, marketers and customers, writers and readers. All of these Groups rely on ongoing communication, but, like the tappers and listeners, they suffer from enormous information imbalances. When a CEO discusses “unlocking shareholder value,” there is a tune playing in her head that the employees can’t hear.

Or consider “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down, or almost any song by the group Maroon 5. Those bands are so featureless that critics and listeners created a new music category—“bath rock”—to describe their tepid sounds. Yet whenever they came on the radio, almost no one changed the station.

Officer Burroughs couldn’t believe his ears.  The man sang the old song from the foolish rebellion of 125 years ago.  A group of people had decided that the individual was better than the collective society.  Government forces cut them down easily and

Nik stands and walks over to us. He kisses my cheek before taking Ash in a full-blown man hug. A long one. They both seem to be a little emotional. Nik whispers something to Ash and Ash nods before he slaps Nik’s back a few times and they part. Nik moves to stand between us and says, “It’s my honor to present the new Mr. and Mrs. Asher Collins.” Everyone stands up, whooping and cheering. And that’s about the time I burst into tears. I’m suddenly being group hugged and Tina wails, “I’m so happy for you, you crazy lady!” I wail right back, “I’m so happy I could shit rainbows!” Lola cheers. “I’m so f**king happy right now!” Mimi kisses my head and rocks me slightly. She says in a sing-song voice, “I knew all along!

I felt part of a group for the first time in my life. Not a family, just a group of people who liked being together, who sat as we did, leaning towards each other, leaving just the right amount of space in between, whose thoughts and words flowed easily and naturally, whose voices and accents were so different from each other and yet mingled in harmony as though in a song.

By the fourteenth century, Romance dialects belonged to two broad categories. Those in which “yes” was pronounced oc—mostly south of the Loire River—were called langues d’oc (oc languages). Those in which speakers said oïl for “yes”—in the north—were called langues d’oïl, a term which came to be used interchangeably with Françoys. Oïl and oc are both derivatives of the Latin hoc (this, that), which at the time was used to say yes. In the south they simply chopped off the h. In the north, for some reason, hoc was reduced to a simple o, and qualifiers were added—o-je, o-nos, o-vos for “yes for me,” “yes for us” and “yes for you.” This was complicated, so speakers eventually settled for the neutral o-il—“yes for that.” The term was used in the dialects of Picardy, Normandy, Champagne and Orléans. Other important langues d’oïl were Angevin, Poitevin and Bourguignon, spoken in Anjou, Poitiers and Burgundy, which were considerably farther south of Paris. Scholars debate who created the designations langues d’oïl and langues d’oc. The poet Dante Alighieri, in his De vulgari eloquentia of 1304, was one of the first to introduce the term langue d’oc, opposing it to the langue d’oïl and the langue de si (Romance from Italy). A fifth important langue d’oïl was Walloon, the dialect of the future Belgium. The langues d’oc attained their golden age in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when groups of wandering musicians, or troubadours, travelled from city to city spreading a new form of sung poem that extolled the ideal of courtly love, or fin’amor. This new poetry was very different from the cruder epic poems of the north, the chansons de geste, and it enjoyed great literary prestige that boosted the influence of two southern rulers, the Count of Toulouse and the Duke of Aquitaine. Even many Italian courts adopted the langue d’oc, which is also known today as Occitan. Wandering poets of the north, the trouvères of Champagne, also borrowed and popularized the song-poems of the south.

Just smell that. It’s heavenly.” Jesus’s senses came alive with the sweet warm smell of freshly baked bread. His stomach cried out ferociously. Belial’s words were sing song seductive. “Well, look what we have here. I believe it is exactly the stone ground wheat bread your own mother, that blessed Virgin, used to bake for you.” Jesus was still on his knees. He looked over to see a loaf of steaming hot bread, fresh from the oven, sitting on a group of rocks not three feet from him. It had been pulled apart ready to eat. He could see the flakey crust, some of it floating away in the damnable breeze. Steam rose from the soft light brown interior. It took everything in Jesus’s soul to keep from reaching out and stuffing his mouth with the tempting sustenance of life. But it was not real. Belial was not a creator, he was a mimic and a master of illusion. He could manipulate the senses to create just about any hallucination with which humans could deceive themselves by. “If you are the Son of the God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. I want a worthy adversary, not a sickly weakling.” Jesus had the power to do so. He had after all provided manna for the children of Israel. That was true heavenly bread, the food of angels. And he had provided water out of a rock to satisfy the thirst of thousands of Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. He could taste that sweet cool refreshing water right now in his memory. He had gone so very long in his fast already. Perhaps it was time to feed himself and get to work with his plan. No. He had to finish what he started here. He replied to Belial, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” The mirage of bread faded away.

Rule number one: There will be no large gatherings of the people to preach to each other. Rule number two: You will not sing your stupid little songs to your imaginary savior or God. Rule number three: You will not quote passages from that book you so adore. Rule number four: You will get up in the mornings when your person in charge says you will get up. You will also go to bed when your person in charge says to go to bed. Rule number five: The person in charge can appoint someone to be their eyes and ears. Video cameras can only pick up so much, so we need to know who the subversives in your groups are so we can deal with them before they cause too much trouble. “If even one of you does not abide by these rules, there will be consequences for your group. Punishment is completely up to your person in charge. If you abide by these rules and be good boys and girls, I’m sure we’ll get along famously. Too-da-loo and so long for now.

The Allman Brothers were from my hometown of Macon, Georgia, so requesting this song was a small lapse into provincialism. In 1972, the group’s guitarist, Duane Allman, had died when his motorcycle had crashed into the back of a peach truck. They subsequently named the album they had been working on, Eat A Peach. Its memorable lyrics, which came pouring out of Wisconsin’s machine at 9,000 feet in the California mountains, go as follows: Well, I’ve got to run to keep from hiding And I’m bound to keep on riding And I’ve got one more silver dollar But I’m not gonna’ let ‘em catch me, no Not gonna’ let ‘em catch the midnight rider. The song is a paen to freedom and independence, which, come to think about it, is kinda’ what the PCT is. And the God’s-honest-truth is that for the next two days this song carried me a total of fifty miles in an elevated state of morale.

I turned forty this year. Forty! Which is so weird because I’ve always been young. I’ve been young my whole life, as a matter of fact. No matter how I dissect this, I’ve aged out of the “young” category and graduated to the “middle” group. My brain feels confused about this because I am so juvenile. I make up my own words to hip-hop songs and quote Paul Rudd as a parenting strategy. Surely I am a preteen.

Yamuna: Toward the end of the ceremony, Swamiji, smiling broadly, picked up a small bongo drum and said, “Now we will have kirtan.” His chanting started off slowly, and he appeared fully absorbed in it. His voice was vibrant and clear, the melody simple, the cadence strong and steady. I was relieved because this part seemed easy enough—quite unlike the Sanskrit recited throughout the wedding ceremony. After a couple of repetitions of Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Swamiji nodded his head and other voices joined in. Over and over they repeated the three-worded mantra. When Swamiji closed his eyes, I noted that many others did so as well. I speculated that this fostered a trance-like state, but I still kept my eyes wide open so as not to miss anything. I did not chant, fearing that if I were to add my voice to the mix, it might disturb its cohesiveness, its balance. In this way, I observed and listened to the chanting for a good five minutes or so. Chanting the mantra seemed different from any group singing I had ever experienced. The first thing that struck me was its simplicity: a simple melody, an easy rhythm, and only three words. When I too closed my eyes and joined the others, it was as though I had been chanting this simple song to God forever. I soon found myself soothed and relieved of all my anxieties, though I could not understand how or why this was happening. I just surrendered to the sound and let it envelop my senses, allowing myself to trust, to call out—to open my heart to its promise.

In school, this explicit teaching of facts and procedures is rampant in almost every subject area. In science, it’s called “the scientific method” and often includes steps such as: Observe something and/or do research. Construct a hypothesis. Make a prediction based on your hypothesis. Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment. Analyze the results of your experiment. Determine if your hypothesis was correct. The steps vary slightly between models. However, no matter the actual words on the checklist, or how many steps are included, we teach them to children as if they descended on stone tablets. Teachers devise songs or mnemonic devices to help students memorize the rigid steps. Then students memorize the vocabulary words that go along with the scientific method: hypothesis, fair test, variables, control groups, reliability, validity, etc. Finally, students fill out worksheets to match the vocabulary words with the correct definitions and put the steps in order. This is not science. Science is about wonder and risk and imagination, not checklists or vocabulary memorization. Alan Kay laments that much of what schools teach isn’t science at all, it’s science appreciation. (Kay, 2007)

The key to learning the fear of the Lord is to stay in Scripture. When you are in the Scripture, pray that God would teach you that he is the Holy One. 1. Review the creation psalms: Psalms 8; 19; 29; 65; 104. 2. Meditate on the enthronement psalms: e.g., Psalm 95-97; 99. 3. Memorize Psalm 139. It states that God’s providence is so extensive it goes into all the details of our lives. 4. Go through a hymn book and highlight songs that express God’s majesty and holiness. 5. Read the book of Habakkuk. It is similar to Job in that God directly addresses a man who had questions about what God was doing. All the questions were resolved when Habakkuk was schooled in the fear of the Lord. 6. Read The Holiness of God, by R. C. Sproul (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1985). 7. Review the New Testament passages on hell. Along with the ones mentioned in this chapter, you could consider 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10; 2 Peter 2:6; and Revelation 14:9-11. Be certain to talk with other people in your church about your meditations. Bless them with what God is teaching you, and listen to what God has taught them. 8. Begin a “fear of the Lord” or “knowing God” prayer group. 9. Take time to confess your fear of people and lack of fear of the Lord.

PARTNERS IN CRIME HOW THE CLINTONS WENT FROM DEAD BROKE TO FILTHY RICH And the money kept rolling in from every side. —Song from the musical Evita The quotation above refers to the Juan and Evita Peron Foundation, established in 1948 by Evita Peron for the purpose of helping Argentina’s poor. Evita professed to be a champion of the campesinos—the wretched workers who lived in shanties on the outskirts of Buenos Aires—and they trusted Evita. She had, after all, risen up herself from poverty and obscurity. Her fame was the result of her marriage to the general who became the military leader of the country, Juan Peron. Long before the Clintons, Argentina had its own power couple that claimed to do good and ended up doing very well for themselves. There are, obviously, differences between the Clintons and the Perons. Despite her personal popularity, Evita remained an appendage of her husband, seeking but never obtaining political office. At one point, Evita had her eye on an official position, but the political establishment vigorously opposed her, and her husband never supported her in this effort. Hillary, by contrast, was elected senator and now, having deployed her husband on the campaign trail, seeks election to the nation’s highest office previously held by him. The Perons also had a foundation that took in millions of pesos—the equivalent of $200 million—from multiple foreign sources, Argentine businesses, as well as contributions from various individuals and civic groups. With its 14,000 employees, the foundation was better equipped and more influential than many agencies within the Argentinian government. Evita and her cronies were experts at shaking down anyone who wanted something from the government; donations became a kind of tax that opened up access to the Peron administration. Trade unions sent large contributions because they saw Evita and her husband as champions of their cause. In 1950, the government arranged that a portion of all lottery, movie, and casino revenues should go to the foundation. While the foundation made symbolic, highly publicized gestures of helping the poor, in reality only a fraction of the money went to the underprivileged. Most of it seems to have ended up in foreign bank accounts controlled by the Perons, who became hugely wealthy through their public office profiteering. When Evita died in 1954 and the foundation was shut down, Argentines discovered stashes of undistributed food and clothing. No one from the foundation had bothered to give it away, so it sat unused for years. Helping the poor, after all, wasn’t the real reason Evita set up her foundation. No, she had a different set of priorities. Like so many Third World potentates, the Perons used social justice and provision for the poor as a pretext to amass vast wealth for themselves. The Clintons have done the same thing in America; indeed, Hillary may be America’s version of Evita Peron.

We seem to have a strange idea of Christian service. We will buy books, travel miles to hear a speaker on blessings, pay large sums to hear a group singing the latest Christian songs--but we forget that we are soldiers.

We remember England’s “terms of venery”— the jargon of hunting— for giving us specific words for groups of animals, such as a school of fish or a pride of lions , and also for such quaintly forgotten phrases as “a tiding of magpies” and “a kindle of cats.” Experts suggest that many of the terms that amuse us today—“ an unkindness of ravens,” “a shrewdness of apes,” “a disworship of Scots”— were fanciful even in their own time and never in common use. The true language of venery, however, did more than describe beasts by the bunch; it richly evoked their behavior. The lark’s habit of flying into the air to sing was known as “exalting.” The nocturnal song of nightingales was called “watching,” from the idea of keeping a watch through the darkness. Venery’s description of animal sounds was poetic, but also accurate: weasels really do “squeak,” mice really do “cheep.” Goldfinches chirm, boars girn, starlings murmur, geese creak. The seemingly slow, ambling walk of bears was referred to as “slothing.” Ordinary life in the past had an intimacy with other species that today we mainly associate with trained biologists and dedicated naturalists.