Had A Great Vacation Quotes

Kamala: You're WOLVERINE! My Wolverine-and-Storm-in-space fanfic was the third-most upvoted story on Freaking Awesome last month! Logan: Oh my God. Kamala: I had you guys fighting this giant alien blob that farts wormholes! Logan: Sounds great, kid. [pause] Logan: Wait--so what was the MOST upvoted story? Kamala: Umm...Cyclops and Emma Frost's romantic vacation in Paris? Logan: This is the worst day of my life.

To me, it was the most obvious thing that I could have been thankful for. My grandparents- who spoke no English, who had fled Vietnam on a stolen boat- had bested my classmates' new puppies and Disney World vacations and ski weekends.

There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast. "The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways. "Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller. "I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state. "You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.

Before becoming headmaster of Eton, Claude Elliott had taught history at Cambridge University, despite an ingrained distrust of academics and an aversion to intellectual conversation. But the long university vacations gave him plenty of time for mountain climbing.

Say you’re sitting in a cubicle and you hate your job. It’s terrible. Everyone around you is an asshole. Your boss is a dick. All of your work is just mind-numbingly soul-sucking. But in five minutes you are about to leave for your first vacation you’ve had in five years. You’re going to be gone for two weeks at this beautiful Bora Bora seaside bungalow. It’s literally the most lavish thing you’ve ever done in your entire life. How would you feel? You would feel great. Now imagine that you are in Bora Bora. You’re on this beautiful beach with amazing people, and you’ve had so much fun. In five minutes, you’re going to have to put down the piña colada with the little umbrella in it. You have to say goodbye to these people. You will go back to your terrible job and won’t take another vacation for another five years. How would you feel? You would feel terrible. Now, think about it. You’re sitting in the cubicle at the job that you hate and you feel awesome. And you’re sitting on the beach with a drink in your hand and you feel terrible. How you feel is entirely in your mind. Your mind has nothing to do with your environment. It has nothing to do with anyone around you. It is entirely your decision. Making a change in your life is as easy as making a decision and acting on it. That’s it.

Twilight never lasts long in India, but its advent was like opening time at the pubs our rulers had left behind. The shadows fell and spirits rose; the sharp odour of quinine tonic, invented by lonely planters to drown and justify their solitary gins, mingled with the scent of frangipani from their leafy, insect-ridden gardens, and the soothing clink of ice against glass was only disturbed by the occasional slap of a frustrated palm against a reddening spot just vacated by an anglovorous mosquito.

And so this end in confusion, where when things stop I never get to know it, and this moving is the space, is that what is yet to be, which is for others to see filled wherever it may finally be in the frame when the last pieces are fitted and the others stop, and there will be the stopped pattern, the final array, but not even that, because that final finitude will itself be a bit of scrolling, a percent clump of tiles, which will generally stay together but move about within another whole and be mingled, with in endless ways of other people's memories, so that I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else's frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their downtime, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren, I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this world because they were made from this world, even though the fleeting tenants of those bits of colored glass have vacated them before they have had even the remotest understanding of what it is to inhabit them, and if they -- if we are fortunate (yes, I am lucky, lucky), and if we are fortunate, have fleeting instants when we are satisfied that the mystery is ours to ponder, if never to solve, or even just rife personal mysteries, never mind those outside-- are there even mysteries outside? a puzzle itself -- but anyway, personal mysteries, like where is my father, why can't I stop all the moving and look out over the vast arrangements and find by the contours and colors and qualities of light where my father is, not to solve anything but just simple even to see it again one last time, before what, before it ends, before it stops. But it doesn't stop; it simply ends. It is a final pattern scattered without so much as a pause at the end, at the end of what, at the end of this.

Over the decades since, it had been updated and overhauled several times to include other Hughes classics like Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, She’s Having a Baby, Uncle Buck, Mr. Mom, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, The Great Outdoors, and the aforementioned Home Alone and Vacation flicks.

Matt Levine, a Bloomberg columnist who writes a detailed and witty daily email dissected by Wall Street bankers, had been on vacation when the prospectus went live. The following Monday morning, he wrote in his email that the “We” trademark news was “the news item that caused me to absolutely lose my mind—the item that, if I were a slightly more dedicated financial columnist, would have had me on the next helicopter back to the office.

The subway was the great leveler—underground, the Wall Street titans stood in the shuddering car and clutched the same poles as the junior IT guys to create a totem of fists, the executive vice presidents in charge of new product marketing pressed thighs with the luckless and the dreamers, who got off at their stations when instructed by the computer’s voice and were replaced by devisers of theoretical financial instruments of unreckoned power, who vacated their seats and were replaced in turn by unemployable homunculi clutching yesterday’s tabloids. They jostled one another, competed for space below as they did above, in a minuet of ruin and triumph. In the subway, down in the dark, no citizen was more significant or more decrepit than another. All were smeared into a common average of existence, the A’s and the C’s tumbling or rising to settle into a ruthless mediocrity. No escape. This was the plane where Mark Spitz lived. They were all him. Middling talents who got by, barnacles on humanity’s hull, survivors who had not yet been extinguished. Perhaps it was only a matter of time.

I did say that to deny the existence of evil spirits, or to deny the existence of the devil, is to deny the truth of the New Testament; and that to deny the existence of these imps of darkness is to contradict the words of Jesus Christ. I did say that if we give up the belief in devils we must give up the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments, and we must give up the divinity of Christ. Upon that declaration I stand, because if devils do not exist, then Jesus Christ was mistaken, or we have not in the New Testament a true account of what he said and of what he pretended to do. If the New Testament gives a true account of his words and pretended actions, then he did claim to cast out devils. That was his principal business. That was his certificate of divinity, casting out devils. That authenticated his mission and proved that he was superior to the hosts of darkness. Now, take the devil out of the New Testament, and you also take the veracity of Christ; with that veracity you take the divinity; with that divinity you take the atonement, and when you take the atonement, the great fabric known as Christianity becomes a shapeless ruin. The Christians now claim that Jesus was God. If he was God, of course the devil knew that fact, and yet, according to this account, the devil took the omnipotent God and placed him upon a pinnacle of the temple, and endeavored to induce him to dash himself against the earth… Think of it! The devil – the prince of sharpers – the king of cunning – the master of finesse, trying to bribe God with a grain of sand that belonged to God! Casting out devils was a certificate of divinity. Is there in all the religious literature of the world anything more grossly absurd than this? These devils, according to the Bible, were of various kinds – some could speak and hear, others were deaf and dumb. All could not be cast out in the same way. The deaf and dumb spirits were quite difficult to deal with. St. Mark tells of a gentleman who brought his son to Christ. The boy, it seems, was possessed of a dumb spirit, over which the disciples had no control. “Jesus said unto the spirit: ‘Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee come out of him, and enter no more into him.’” Whereupon, the deaf spirit (having heard what was said) cried out (being dumb) and immediately vacated the premises. The ease with which Christ controlled this deaf and dumb spirit excited the wonder of his disciples, and they asked him privately why they could not cast that spirit out. To whom he replied: “This kind can come forth by nothing but prayer and fasting.” Is there a Christian in the whole world who would believe such a story if found in any other book? The trouble is, these pious people shut up their reason, and then open their Bible.

Persuasion Alert Self-deprecating humor is an acceptable way to brag. Mentioning a moment of boneheadedness at my former company beats the far more obnoxious “I was a high-level manager at a publishing company that had twenty-three million customers the year I left.” The term du jour for this device: humblebrag. So I’m a lousy prognosticator of bestsellers. In retrospect, however, I can explain why the title was not such a bad idea after all. “South Beach” conjures an image of people—you—in bathing attire. It says vacation, one of the chief reasons people go on a diet. The Rodale editors stimulated an emotion by making readers picture a desirable and highly personal goal: you, in a bathing suit, looking great. So

The temperature was in the nineties, and on hot nights Chicagoans feel the city body and soul. The stockyards are gone, Chicago is no longer slaughter-city, but the old smells revive in the night heat. Miles of railroad siding along the streets once were filled with red cattle cars, the animals waiting to enter the yards lowing and reeking. The old stink still haunts the place. It returns at times, suspiring from the vacated soil, to remind us all that Chicago had once led the world in butcher-technology and that billions of animals had died here. And that night the windows were open wide and the familiar depressing multilayered stink of meat, tallow, blood-meal, pulverized bones, hides, soap, smoked slabs, and burnt hair came back. Old Chicago breathed again through leaves and screens. I heard fire trucks and the gulp and whoop of ambulances, bowel-deep and hysterical. In the surrounding black slums incendiarism shoots up in summer, an index, some say, of psychopathology. Although the love of flames is also religious. However, Denise was sitting nude on the bed rapidly and strongly brushing her hair. Over the lake, steel mills twinkled. Lamplight showed the soot already fallen on the leaves of the wall ivy. We had an early drought that year. Chicago, this night, was panting, the big urban engines going, tenements blazing in Oakwood with great shawls of flame, the sirens weirdly yelping, the fire engines, ambulances, and police cars – mad-dog, gashing-knife weather, a rape and murder night, thousands of hydrants open, spraying water from both breasts.

Rich Purnell sipped coffee in the silent building. Only his cubicle illuminated the otherwise dark room. Continuing with his computations, he ran a final test on the software he'd written. It passed. With a relieved sigh, he sank back in his chair. Checking the clock on his computer, he shook his head. 3:42am. Being an astrodynamicist, Rich rarely had to work late. His job was the find the exact orbits and course corrections needed for any given mission. Usually, it was one of the first parts of a project; all the other steps being based on the orbit. But this time, things were reversed. Iris needed an orbital path, and nobody knew when it would launch. A non-Hoffman Mars-transfer isn't challenging, but it does require the exact locations of Earth and Mars. Planets move as time goes by. An orbit calculated for a specific launch date will work only for that date. Even a single day's difference would result in missing Mars entirely. So Rich had to calculate many orbits. He had a range of 25 days during which Iris might launch. He calculated one orbital path for each. He began an email to his boss. "Mike", he typed, "Attached are the orbital paths for Iris, in 1-day increments. We should start peer-review and vetting so they can be officially accepted. And you were right, I was here almost all night. It wasn't that bad. Nowhere near the pain of calculating orbits for Hermes. I know you get bored when I go in to the math, so I'll summarize: The small, constant thrust of Hermes's ion drives is much harder to deal with than the large point-thrusts of presupply probes. All 25 of the orbits take 349 days, and vary only slightly in thrust duration and angle. The fuel requirement is nearly identical for the orbits and is well within the capacity of EagleEye's booster. It's too bad. Earth and Mars are really badly positioned. Heck, it's almost easier to-" He stopped typing. Furrowing his brow, he stared in to the distance. "Hmm." he said. Grabbing his coffee cup, he went to the break room for a refill. ... "Rich", said Mike. Rich Purnell concentrated on his computer screen. His cubicle was a landfill of printouts, charts, and reference books. Empty coffee cups rested on every surface; take-out packaging littered the ground. "Rich", Mike said, more forcefully. Rich looked up. "Yeah?" "What the hell are you doing?" "Just a little side project. Something I wanted to check up on." "Well... that's fine, I guess", Mike said, "but you need to do your assigned work first. I asked for those satellite adjustments two weeks ago and you still haven't done them." "I need some supercomputer time." Rich said. "You need supercomputer time to calculate routine satellite adjustments?" "No, it's for this other thing I'm working on", Rich said. "Rich, seriously. You have to do your job." Rich thought for a moment. "Would now be a good time for a vacation?" He asked. Mike sighed. "You know what, Rich? I think now would be an ideal time for you to take a vacation." "Great!" Rich smiled. "I'll start right now." "Sure", Mike said. "Go on home. Get some rest." "Oh, I'm not going home", said Rich, returning to his calculations. Mike rubbed his eyes. "Ok, whatever. About those satellite orbits...?" "I'm on vacation", Rich said without looking up. Mike shrugged and walked away.

The reason we were with Mama that day was because it was a snow day. School was canceled, but we were too little to stay alone in our apartment while Mama went to work—which she did, through snow and sleet and probably also earthquakes and Armageddon. She muttered, stuffing us into our snowsuits and boots, that it didn’t matter if she had to cross a blizzard to do it, but God forbid Ms. Mina had to spread the peanut butter on her own sandwich bread. In fact the only time I remember Mama taking time off work was twenty-five years later, when she had a double hip replacement, generously paid for by the Hallowells. She stayed home for a week, and even after that, when it didn’t quite heal right and she insisted on returning to work, Mina found her tasks to do that kept her off her feet. But when I was little, during school vacations and bouts of fever and snow days like this one, Mama would take us with her on the B train downtown. Mr.

Now, describe, in a single written sentence, your intended successful outcome for this problem or situation. In other words, what would need to happen for you to check this project off as “done”? It could be as simple as “Take the Hawaii vacation,” “Handle situation with customer X,” “Resolve college situation with Susan,” “Clarify new divisional management structure,” “Implement new investment strategy,” or “Research options for dealing with Manuel’s reading issue.” All clear? Great. Now write down the very next physical action required to move the situation forward. If you had nothing else to do in your life but get closure on this, what visible action would you take right now? Would you call or text someone? Write an e-mail? Take pen and paper and brainstorm about it? Surf the Web for data? Buy nails at the hardware store? Talk about it face-to-face with your partner, your assistant, your attorney, or your boss? What? Got the answer to that?

Bungie, like many large studios, dedicated a great deal of time to what could technically be called “preproduction” but what was really just the act of figuring out what their next game was going to be. That was one of the most challenging parts of making any game—narrowing the possibilities down from infinity to one. “I think that’s one of the things that plagued Destiny’s development,” said Jaime Griesemer. “We would work for a while, spend a lot of money in one direction, and then because there was this sort of impossible ideal of, ‘We’re following up the biggest game of all time, and this has to be the new biggest game of all time,’ there were several points in development where there was a total reset. And it wasn’t a graceful, ‘We go to prototype and that direction is wrong so we’re going to backtrack a little bit and go in a different direction.’ It was, I came back in from going on vacation for a week and everything I had worked on for a year was deleted. Unrecoverably, literally deleted. If I hadn’t had a copy on my laptop, it would’ve been gone forever. With no warning, no discussion, no nothing.

There was nothing I could do except homework. I cracked open Forsyth’s Basics of Cryptography, read until my eyes went bleary, then looked at my clock and saw it was only four thirty in the afternoon. Time really crawled when you were on lockdown. I struggled through another chapter, nodding off seventeen or eighteen times, then checked my clock again. It was still four thirty in the afternoon. Either time really crawled when you were on lockdown or my clock was broken. I checked my phone. In fact, it was eight thirty at night, which explained why I was so darn hungry. No one had come to get me for dinner. I wondered if this was part of my punishment or if the administration had simply forgotten about me. I’d now been at spy school long enough to guess it was the latter, which began to worry me. I could get through the night without food, but if someone didn’t remember I was in the Box by the next morning, things could get dicey. Still, it wasn’t worth panicking yet. Maybe this was merely a test to see how I handled pressure. If so, I’d show them I was a tough egg to crack. For the benefit of any cameras that might have been on me, I played it cool, as though I were really enjoying being on lockdown. I laid back on my cot and gave a contented sigh. “This is great,” I said to any concealed microphones. “All this time to myself. It’s like being on vacation.” Then I casually examined my clock to see if I could keep it from telling me that it was eternally four thirty in the afternoon.

I’ll go,” Thad said. Zane looked at him in surprise. “I appreciate the offer, but this isn’t part of your vacation. This is hard, dangerous work. Cold and wet, too.” Thad shrugged. “I want to help. I can ride and point the steers in the right direction. Will that be enough?” “I’ll go, too,” Martin said. “Me, too.” The last voice came from behind him. Zane turned to see Phoebe leaning against the wall. Maya groaned. “Dammit, Phoebe, if you go, I’ll have to, as well. Do you know what this weather is going to do to my hair?” Phoebe smiled. “Wear a hat.” “Oh, yeah, that’ll help in this rain.” “You don’t have to do this,” Zane said. “Not any of you.” “We know that,” Thad said. “We’re all in this together. Now I say we head out and save us some cattle.” Chase nodded. “They’re greenhorns, Zane, but there’s plenty of them. Without them, we can’t get the herd to safety.” Zane knew his brother was right. He didn’t have a choice. Not if he wanted to save the steers. “Get the horses saddled up,” he told Chase. “We’ll be out in five minutes.” He turned back to everyone else. “Dress warmly. Make the top layer as waterproof as you can.” He nodded at Eddie and Gladys. “We’ll need some food.” Eddie nodded, then grabbed Andrea and C.J. and pulled them toward the stairs. Zane turned to Phoebe, who smiled at him. “They’re going to help,” she said. He frowned. “I know.” “They like you. We all like you.” “Oh. My. God.” He turned and saw Maya staring at him. “I just got it,” she said. “You had sex with Phoebe.” She looked at Phoebe. “You had sex with Zane. I can’t decide if this is great or too gross for words.” Phoebe laughed. Zane walked toward his room. “Just get dressed.

-Write out a conversation with your inner voice. Begin the entry with a question directed to yourself, then write your mental response. It may help to label the different voices A and B. Dialogue writing is a very effective way to get to the heart of the matter. The following passage is an example of typical dialogue writing: A: Tomorrow is a big day. You have an interview at a college. How do you feel? B: I am really nervous. This is the first interview and I don’t know what it is going to be like. A: What are you afraid of? B: I’m afraid I’ll stutter and say something stupid. I’m worried the person will ask a question and I won’t know what to say. A: What do you want to discuss? B: I think it is good that I was on the basketball team for four years. That shows commitment and dedication. I also got decent grades and earned a blue ribbon at the science fair. A: What about your hobbies outside of school? B: I really like to read. I could mention that. I could talk also about the vacations my family has taken. They are pretty interesting. I enjoy my part-time retail job. A: It sounds like you do a lot. B: I guess I am good at organizing my life and accomplishing what needs to be done. Hey, that would sound good in an interview! -Try focused “freewriting.” Pick one topic, such as school, friends, or family, and write everything that comes to mind about that topic. Write for at least ten minutes or until you’re certain that you have run out of things to write. -Write your belief system. Start by writing “I believe…” at the top of a clean page. Then write whatever comes to mind. It may help to ask yourself questions when you get stuck such as “What do I believe about friendship?” “What is my personal style?” or “What are my gifts and abilities?” -Write about an event from your perspective, then write about the same event from someone else’s point of view. For example, if you had a hard time answering a question during class, write about how you felt, what you thought, and how you behaved. Next, pretend you are the teacher writing about the same event. What do you think he or she was thinking? How did he or she act? This exercise is a great way to show that there are multiple ways of seeing the same situation.

Dear Mom and Dad How are you? If you are reading this it means your back from the wonderful cruise my brothers and I sent you on for your anniversary. We’re sure you both had a wonderful time. We want you to know that, while you were away, we did almost everything you asked. All but one thing, that is. We killed the lawn. We killed it dead. You asked us not to and we killed it. We killed it with extreme prejudice and no regard for its planty life. We killed the lawn. Now we know what you’re thinking: “But sons, whom we love ever so much, how can this be so? We expressly asked you to care for the lawn? The exactly opposite of what you are now conveying to us in an open digital forum.” True enough. We cannot dispute this. However, we have killed the lawn. We have killed it good. We threw a party and it was quite a good time. We had a moon bounce and beer and games and pirate costumes, oh it was a good time. Were it anyone else’s party that probably would have been enough but, hey, you know us. So we got a foam machine. A frothy, wet, quite fun yet evidently deadly, foam machine. Now this dastardly devise didn’t kill the lawn per se. We hypothesize it was more that it made the lawn very wet and that dancing in said area for a great many hours over the course of several days did the deed. Our jubilant frolicking simply beat the poor grass into submission. We collected every beer cap, bottle, and can. There is not a single cigarette butt or cigar to be found. The house is still standing, the dog is still barking, Grandma is still grandmaing but the lawn is no longer lawning. Now we’re sure, as you return from your wonderful vacation, that you’re quite upset but lets put this in perspective. For one thing whose idea was it for you to leave us alone in the first place? Not your best parenting decision right there. We’re little better than baboons. The mere fact that we haven’t killed each other in years past is, at best, luck. Secondly, let us not forget, you raised us to be this way. Always pushing out limits, making sure we thought creatively. This is really as much your fault as it is ours, if not more so. If anything we should be very disappointed in you. Finally lets not forget your cruise was our present to you. We paid for it. If you look at how much that cost and subtract the cost of reseeding the lawn you still came out ahead so, really, what position are you in to complain? So let’s review; we love you, you enjoyed a week on a cruise because of us, the lawn is dead, and it’s partially your fault. Glad that’s all out in the open. Can you have dinner ready for us by 6 tonight? We’d like macaroni and cheese. Love always Peter, James & Carmine

A stranger. Young, well-dressed, pale and visibly sweaty, as if he’d endured some great shock and needed a drink. West would have been tempted to pour him one, if not for the fact that he’d just pulled a small revolver from his pocket and was pointing it in his direction. The nose of the short barrel was shaking. Commotion erupted all around them as patrons became aware of the drawn pistol. Tables and chairs were vacated, and shouts could be heard among the growing uproar. “You self-serving bastard,” the stranger said unsteadily. “That could be either of us,” Severin remarked with a slight frown, setting down his drink. “Which one of us do you want to shoot?” The man didn’t seem to hear the question, his attention focused only on West. “You turned her against me, you lying, manipulative snake.” “It’s you, apparently,” Severin said to West. “Who is he? Did you sleep with his wife?” “I don’t know,” West said sullenly, knowing he should be frightened of an unhinged man aiming a pistol at him. But it took too much energy to care. “You forgot to cock the hammer,” he told the man, who immediately pulled it back. “Don’t encourage him, Ravenel,” Severin said. “We don’t know how good a shot he is. He might hit me by mistake.” He left his chair and began to approach the man, who stood a few feet away. “Who are you?” he asked. When there was no reply, he persisted, “Pardon? Your name, please?” “Edward Larson,” the young man snapped. “Stay back. If I’m to be hanged for shooting one of you, I’ll have nothing to lose by shooting both of you.” West stared at him intently. The devil knew how Larson had found him there, but clearly he was in a state. Probably in worse condition than anyone in the club except for West. He was clean-cut, boyishly handsome, and looked like he was probably very nice when he wasn’t half-crazed. There could be no doubt as to what had made him so wretched—he knew his wrongdoings had been exposed, and that he’d lost any hope of a future with Phoebe. Poor bastard. Picking up his glass, West muttered, “Go on and shoot.” Severin continued speaking to the distraught man. “My good fellow, no one could blame you for wanting to shoot Ravenel. Even I, his best friend, have been tempted to put an end to him on a multitude of occasions.” “You’re not my best friend,” West said, after taking a swallow of brandy. “You’re not even my third best friend.” “However,” Severin continued, his gaze trained on Larson’s gleaming face, “the momentary satisfaction of killing a Ravenel—although considerable—wouldn’t be worth prison and public hanging. It’s far better to let him live and watch him suffer. Look how miserable he is right now. Doesn’t that make you feel better about your own circumstances? I know it does me.” “Stop talking,” Larson snapped. As Severin had intended, Larson was distracted long enough for another man to come up behind him unnoticed. In a deft and well-practiced move, the man smoothly hooked an arm around Larson’s neck, grasped his wrist, and pushed the hand with the gun toward the floor. Even before West had a good look at the newcomer’s face, he recognized the smooth, dry voice with its cut-crystal tones, so elegantly commanding it could have belonged to the devil himself. “Finger off the trigger, Larson. Now.” It was Sebastian, the Duke of Kingston . . . Phoebe’s father. West lowered his forehead to the table and rested it there, while his inner demons all hastened to inform him they really would have preferred the bullet.

The Goal of Pleasing God by Obeying His Commands (4: 1-2)American culture is caught up with the grand goal of enjoying life and pleasing oneself. For example, a recent magazine article discussing vacation homes as investments led with the caption: "The No. 1 reason to build a vacation home is to enjoy yourself. " Today more than ever society is caught up in concern for health and personal well-being. Churches sometimes try to attract people to their services by advertising that what goes on at church will be enjoyable to them. Some churches advertise that contemporary music and coffee will be served throughout the service. One can even enjoy breakfast beforehand at a church cafeteria or be entertained by "sitcom-like" plays. Some of these things may not be bad in themselves, but the impression is that of the church attempting to attract people by dangling before them the kinds of pleasures that they can find outside the church. If a church does this too consistently, then what it may have to offer may be no different, ultimately, than what the world offers. We must not fool ourselves and think that things were radically different in the first century. A few years ago I went to Turkey (old Asia Minor) to see the ancient sites of the towns where the seven churches of Revelation were located. At Pergamum I visited the ruins of an ancient Roman health spa, where, among other things, people would go to be rejuvenated emotionally because of depression. There were even rooms where a patient could rest; in the ceiling were little holes through which the priestly attendants of the spa would whisper encouraging things to help the victims recuperate psychologically. Whether in the ancient world or today, the chief end of humanity has often been to take pleasure in this life. In contrast, our passage begins by affirming the opposite: humanity's chief goal ought to be to take pleasure in pleasing God. Such passages in Scripture as this fueled the great confession, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. " Granted, Christians enjoy the material pleasures of this life, but only as a gift from the gracious God whom they serve (1 Tim 4: 4). This world is not an end in itself to be enjoyed. On the basis that God has begun to work in the readers and that they are beginning to live in order to please God, Paul appeals to them to excel in this: we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. The main point of 4: 1 is that the ultimate purpose of living as a Christian is not to please oneself but increasingly to please God (Rom 8: 8; 15: 1-6). This develops further the earlier reference to pleasing God (2: 4) and walking worthily for the goal of achieving God's glory for which they have been called (2: 12). The Greek text of 4: 1 reads "just as you received from us how it is necessary for you to walk so as to please God. " Although the NIV leaves out "it is necessary" (dei; so also Moffatt 1970 and NLT), most other translations attempt to express it, typically by "you must" or "you ought. " Some readers may understand this to mean that Christians should live in the way Paul had instructed, but if they do not they will not experience the full blessing they could otherwise. Paul's urging of them to excel, however, suggests that there is a necessity that his readers live this lifestyle and that such living is not optional for less seriously minded Christians. Indeed, this necessity is heightened by the fact that such a lifestyle is a divine commandment (4: 2), that God has called believers to this conduct (4: 7), that God has given true believers the power to fulfill this commandment (3: 12-13) and that to reject living in this manner is tantamount to rejecting God (4: 8). Consequently, it is necessary that God's true people live this way if they want to avoid the inevitable last judgment (4: 6). Paul says the basis for his appeal that they please God is grounded in the authority of the Lord Jesus

And just like the Soviet Union bankrupted itself trying to keep up with the United States technologically, the West was almost there. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus an out of control security apparatus in most Western nations demanding more and more funding to protect against a perceived threat, had almost bankrupted the mighty Western economies. A few more attacks, each using different methods, would soon tip them over the edge, and into the abyss of a global Great Depression the likes the world had never seen. The Dirty Thirties were terrible, but people were never used to living well. A good life meant food on the table and a warm bed to sleep in. Now a good life meant two cars, a large house, multiple televisions, computers, cellphones, tablets, Internet, cable, restaurants and vacations. This time when the economy collapsed, they would have a hell of a time trying to get out of it. And Islam would continue to spread. Hassan knew their birthrate was two to three times that of the West, and they would eventually win. But in the meantime, the West would be looking for a way out of their economic calamity. And a way would be offered, by the military industrial complex and the security apparatus that had sprung up around 9/11. War.

In 1871, much of the city of Chicago was on fire, hundreds of people died, and four square miles of the city burned to the ground. The Great Chicago Fire was one of the worst disasters in America during the nineteenth century. One Chicago resident, Horatio Spafford, was a good friend of D. L. Moody and a man who lived out his faith. Despite great personal loss in property and assets, Horatio and his wife, Anna, dedicated themselves to helping the people of Chicago who had become impoverished by the fire. After years of hard work helping others recover from their losses, the Spaffords decided to take a well-earned vacation to help Moody during one of his evangelistic crusades in Great Britain. Anna and their four daughters went on ahead while Horatio planned on joining them in a few days after tending to some unfinished business matters. One night en route, the ship that Anna and the girls were traveling on collided with another ship and sank within minutes. Anna and the girls were thrown into the black waters of the Atlantic Ocean, and only Anna survived. As hard as she tried, she could not save even one of her daughters. Anna was found unconscious, floating on a piece of wreckage. After her rescue, she sent a heartrending telegram to Horatio in Chicago that simply said, “Saved alone.” Horatio boarded the next ship to Europe to be reunited with his wife. As he was en route, the captain called Horatio to the bridge when they reached the spot where his daughters had drowned. As Horatio stood looking out into the blackness of the sea, heartbroken and no doubt with tears running down his face, with only his faith sustaining him, he penned the words to one of the greatest hymns ever written: “It Is Well with My Soul.” When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul Chorus It is well with my soul, It is well, it is well with my soul! My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part, but the whole, Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! How can a man who has just lost his four little girls praise the Lord? Where does a person get that kind of strength? The answer: by being deeply rooted in the Word of God. Horatio Spafford was a man of the Word, so when tragedy stuck, he could face it with strength and confidence. The centrality of God’s Word plays a critical role in the life of every believer, and this emphasis serves as the Big Idea throughout Psalms 90—150.

After the fall of Atlantis and Lemuria, the elements of civilization were brought by survivors to the British Isles and Scandinavia, which, along with the Arctic, make up the remnants of what had once been. Due to the devastating after-effects of the Age of Catastrophe, the inhabitants of Britain were forced to vacate their habitats and flee for safety to the eastern climes. They crossed the land-bridge between Britain and Scandinavia, and ventured into lands less affected by the great cataclysm. Southward and eastward they went, taking their customs, religious rites, technology, language, art, music and symbolism. However, because these forced emigrations occurred before the official dates posited for civilization's rise, they have been deliberately ignored. Nevertheless, in 2008, new found evidence revealed that Egypt was indeed colonized by Westerners over fifteen thousand years ago. Wall paintings dating from this remote period have been found in southern Egypt bearing a striking resemblance to those found in the caves of Lascaux, France. As Comyns Beaumont said, this artwork is Nordic in origin. It belongs to travelers from the North-West who desperately sought refuge from the cataclysm that made their own homelands uninhabitable. The races of Egypt, Libya and India knew these handsome visitors as “Men of Gold,” “God Men,” “Good Men,” “Goat Men,” and “Stag Men.” In the Bible they are cryptically referred to as “Edomites” or "Red Men." This title - attributed to early Egyptians - simply denotes sunburn. Red is the color a fair Caucasian man’s skin turns when exposed to intense equatorial heat. It is singular to find a white

But are challenge and love enough? Not quite. All great teachers teach students how to reach the high standards. Collins and Esquith didn’t hand their students a reading list and wish them bon voyage. Collins’s students read and discussed every line of Macbeth in class. Esquith spent hours planning what chapters they would read in class. “I know which child will handle the challenge of the most difficult paragraphs, and carefully plan a passage for the shy youngster … who will begin his journey as a good reader. Nothing is left to chance.… It takes enormous energy, but to be in a room with young minds who hang on every word of a classic book and beg for more if I stop makes all the planning worthwhile.” What are they teaching the students en route? To love learning. To eventually learn and think for themselves. And to work hard on the fundamentals. Esquith’s class often met before school, after school, and on school vacations to master the fundamentals of English and math, especially as the work got harder. His motto: “There are no shortcuts.” Collins echoes that idea as she tells her class, “There is no magic here. Mrs. Collins is no miracle worker. I do not walk on water, I do not part the sea. I just love children and work harder than a lot of people, and so will you.” DeLay expected a lot from her students, but she, too, guided them there. Most students are intimidated by the idea of talent, and it keeps them in a fixed mindset. But DeLay demystified talent. One student was sure he couldn’t play a piece as fast as Itzhak Perlman. So she didn’t let him see the metronome until he had achieved it. “I know so surely that if he had been handling that metronome, as he approached that number he would have said to himself, I can never do this as fast as Itzhak Perlman, and he would have stopped himself.” Another student was intimidated by the beautiful sound made by talented violinists. “We were working on my sound, and there was this one note I played, and Miss DeLay stopped me and said, ‘Now that is a beautiful sound.’ ” She then explained how every note has to have a beautiful beginning, middle, and end, leading into the next note. And he thought, “Wow! If I can do it there, I can do it everywhere.” Suddenly the beautiful sound of Perlman made sense and was not just an overwhelming concept. When students don’t know how to do something and others do, the gap seems unbridgeable. Some educators try to reassure their students that they’re just fine as they are. Growth-minded teachers tell students the truth and then give them the tools to close the gap. As Marva Collins said to a boy who was clowning around in class, “You are in sixth grade and your reading score is 1.1. I don’t hide your scores in a folder. I tell them to you so you know what you have to do. Now your clowning days are over.” Then they got down to work.

Where people were once dazzled to be online, now their expectations had soared, and they did not bother to hide their contempt for those who sought to curtail their freedom on the Web. Nobody was more despised than a computer science professor in his fifties named Fang Binxing. Fang had played a central role in designing the architecture of censorship, and the state media wrote admiringly of him as the “father of the Great Firewall.” But when Fang opened his own social media account, a user exhorted others, “Quick, throw bricks at Fang Binxing!” Another chimed in, “Enemies of the people will eventually face trial.” Censors removed the insults as fast as possible, but they couldn’t keep up, and the lacerating comments poured in. People called Fang a “eunuch” and a “running dog.” Someone Photoshopped his head onto a voodoo doll with a pin in its forehead. In digital terms, Fang had stepped into the hands of a frenzied mob. Less than three hours after Web users spotted him, the Father of the Great Firewall shut down his account and recoiled from the digital world that he had helped create. A few months later, in May 2011, Fang was lecturing at Wuhan University when a student threw an egg at him, followed by a shoe, hitting the professor in the chest. Teachers tried to detain the shoe thrower, a science student from a nearby college, but other students shielded him and led him to safety. He was instantly famous online. People offered him cash and vacations in Hong Kong and Singapore. A female blogger offered to sleep with him.

I know why you are here.” She knew! “We receive extensive financial statements, and I know you did not pay your own way, so let us put that drama out of the way, shall we?” “Is it a drama?” Jane said with a laugh, relieved the woman was just referring to Carolyn’s bequest. “Hm?” Mrs. Wattlesbrook would not budge from her intended course of conversation. Jane sighed. “Yes, my great-aunt left me this vacation in her will, but I don’t know what you mean by drama. I never intended to hide--” “No need to make a fuss.” She waved her arms as if wafting Jane’s exclamations out the window like a foul odor. “You are here, you are paid in full. I would not have you worry that we will not take care of you just because you are not our usual type of guest and there is no chance, given your economic conditions, that you would ever be a repeat client or likely to associate with and recommend us to potential clients. Let me assure you that we will still do all in our power to make your visit, such as it is, enjoyable.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook smiled, showing both rows of yellowing teeth. Jane blinked. Economic conditions? Usual type of guest? She made herself take two deep-rooted yoga breaths, smiled back, and thought of men in breeches. “Okay then.” “Good, good.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook patted Jane’s arm, suddenly the picture of hospitality and maternal tenderness. “Now, do have some tea. You must be quite chilled from your journey.” In fact, the temperature of the limo, unlike this pseudo-inn, had been quite comfortable, and in the blazing heat the last thing Jane wanted was hot tea, but she reminded herself to play along, so she sweated and drank.

Jane passed by the library. There in a corner sat Inflexibility. He raised his eyes when he heard her footfalls. “Oh,” said Jane, antsy with embarrassment. “Good morning, Mr. Nobley.” “You weren’t at breakfast,” he said. “I’m off.” She indicated her bonnet and spencer jacket. “Just saying good-bye to the house. It’s a lovely old house.” “New, actually. Built in 1809.” “Right.” His insistence on maintaining the charade chafed her. She had a surging and ridiculous desire to plop down beside him and shake him and make him talk to her like a real person. “Well, since I ran into you, I can thank you in person for a great vacation. I feel sort of sheepish that it didn’t turn out differently.” Mr. Nobley shrugged, and she was surprised to detect anger in his eyes. Still playing the jilted man? Or had she wounded his actor’s ego? Maybe he was denied a paycheck bonus for not getting engaged. “It has been a pleasure to have you here, Miss Erstwhile. I might miss you, actually.” “Really?” “It is possible.” “Hey, I’ve been wondering something…What is Mr. Nobley’s first name?” “William. You know, you are the first person to ask.” Any further awkwardness was cut off by the sound of an approaching carriage. Jane stepped out the front door for the last time, and she and Amelia, gratefully and mournfully, took their leave. Aunt Saffronia stood by the door, waving her handkerchief and shedding rather impressive tears. Colonel Andrews strolled out to wave good-bye with the stately line of house servants in their white caps and white wigs. Captain East smiled knowingly, his eyes earnest with whatever fake promises he and Amelia had made. Mr. Nobley didn’t bother to join the farewell.

A man strolled up to their table, dressed in the garb of a waiter. His blond hair was long and shiny, showing that he obviously took great care of it, probably more so than a man had any right to care for their hair. Light blue eyes were hidden beneath several strands of shimmering gold, and his pearly white teeth gleamed as he smiled. Kevin nearly groaned. Great. This was just what they needed. A bishie. “Good evening ma’am, madam… sir.” For reasons beyond Kevin, he felt like this man only added him at the last second as an afterthought. “Would either of you care for a refill?” he asked the two ladies at the table, though his eyes focused on Lilian. Kevin felt his blood boil. “No thanks. I’m good here.” Lilian dismissed the man without even looking at him. Vindication rushed through his veins when Kevin saw the pretty boy’s right eye twitch. He apparently wasn’t used to women ignoring him. “I see.” Kevin had to give the man credit. He kept his annoyance in check well. “And what about you, madam?” he addressed Kotohime. “Is the wine to your satisfaction?” He gave her his best smile. “It’s all right, I suppose.” Kotohime took a sip of the wine that he spoke of, managing to hide her grimace. “Though I do wish that you were in possession of some sake instead.” Another twitch. “I apologize that we could not accommodate you.” He bowed. “I have, of course, already suggested that we begin working towards importing sake, however, these things do take time. It will probably be at least a year before we see anything done.” “A shame,” Kotohime said, “I know that Kiara was most looking forward to trying some.” At the mention of Kiara, the man gripped the water pitcher in his hand hard enough that Kevin thought the handle would shatter. Did this man have a grudge against Kiara? He didn’t think so, but then, who could say for sure. For all Kevin knew, this man could have asked Kiara out on a date, thinking his bishounen good looks would make her swoon over him—and had then been disappointed when she told him that wimpy maggots who sparkled didn’t do it for her. Kevin could totally see that happening. “Yes, well, I am terribly sorry to disappoint a woman of her… esteemed position, but I am not in charge of imports, I’m afraid. I merely wait tables.” “Indeed.” “If you’ll excuse me.” “Hold it.” The man turned around. Kevin almost smiled when the man aimed an evil glare at him. He raised his glass. “I’d like a refill of water, please.” A twitch. “Of course, sir.” The man refilled his glass. Kevin leaned in. “If I ever see you stripping my girlfriend with your eyes again, I will rip your arms off and shove them so far up your ass that you’ll need to have surgery done if you ever want to use the restroom again,” he said, his tone and manner nonchalant. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the man said, his smile fixed. “I am merely doing my job as your host.” “Yes.” Kevin snorted. “I’m sure you are.

How long would it last? Rachel had no way of knowing. Chronic fatigue syndrome was the Great Decider. It had decided her career, where she traveled on vacation, with whom she could be intimate. It had influenced her relationships, stolen away friendships and forced her to live in constant uncertainty, robbing her of any practical ability to plan for the future. It had deprived her of normal. The privilege of having a choice. Yet, despite all these things, Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt was a fighter.

First of all, in my day, James Cash Penney had called his hourly employees “associates,” and I guess I always had that idea in the back of my head. But the idea to try it at Wal-Mart actually occurred to me on a trip to England. HELEN WALTON: “We were on a tennis vacation to England. We were there to see Wimbledon. One day, we were walking down a street in London, and Sam, of course, stopped to look at a store—he always stopped to look in stores wherever we went—anywhere in the world, it didn’t matter. On that same trip, we lost a lot of our things in Italy when thieves broke into the car while he was looking at a big discount store. Anyway, he stopped at this one English retailing company, and I remember him saying, ‘Look at that sign. That is great. That’s what we should do.’ ” It was Lewis Company, J. M. Lewis Partnership. They had a partnership with all their associates listed up on the sign. For some reason that whole idea really excited me: a partnership with all our associates. As soon as we got home, we started calling our store workers “associates” instead of employees.

The Great Questions of Life were things he didn’t much think about. For the most part, life in the Soviet Union was limited to yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The economic facts of life really didn’t allow a person to make long-term plans. There were no country houses to buy, no luxury cars to desire, no elaborate vacations to save for. In committing what it called socialism on the people, the government of his country allowed—forced—everyone to aspire to much the same things, regardless of individual tastes, which meant getting on an endless list and being notified when one’s name came up—and being unknowingly bumped by those with greater Party seniority—or not, because some people had access to better places.

McCall was reelected seven times, that is, until 1972, when Florida Governor Reubin Askew stepped in and suspended him after yet another violent assault on someone in his custody. This time, McCall was indicted for second-degree murder for allegedly kicking a black prisoner to death. The prisoner was in jail for a twenty-six-dollar traffic ticket. McCall was acquitted. But he lost the election that November. Blacks were now able to vote, and they turned out in force to defeat him the first chance they got. “We sent cars out and taxicabs,” Viola Dunham, a longtime resident and a sister-in-law of George Starling, remembered. “We started getting these people out to vote.” Then, too, a new generation of whites had entered the Florida electorate, the younger people who may have identified with the young freedom riders in Mississippi and Alabama even if they would not have participated themselves, and the snowbirds, the white northerners who were buying up vacation homes or retiring to central Florida with the boom that came with the arrival of Disney World and who couldn’t relate to the heavy-handedness of a small-town southern sheriff. And now it seemed that even the most steadfast traditionalists had finally tired of the controversies and felt it was time for him to go. The defeated sheriff retreated to his ranch on Willis V. McCall Road in Eustis, where he tended his citrus grove, welcomed his partisans, and held forth on his decades of lordship over Lake County. He could take comfort in the fact that, for better or for worse, Lake County would not soon forget him, and he took pride in his role of protecting southern tradition.

The grove owners and their packinghouses had a near monopoly on the growing and selling of citrus. They were among the richest men in central Florida; their European vacations and their daughters’ cotillions and the visits of their children from the best boarding schools in the South were all chronicled in the local papers that everyone, including workers like the Blye brothers and George, could read. It was a multimillion-dollar industry fed by the demands of wealthy and middle-class families from Chicago to Long Island who expected orange juice with their toast and coffee every morning.

Necessitous men are not free men," Franklin Roosevelt said in that 1944 State of the Union speech. "People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." A dire statement, demonstrably true, and especially unsettling now, a point in time when the American Dream seems more viable as nostalgia—make America great again!—than as present reality. Income inequality, wealth distribution, mortality rates: by every measure, the "average man" that Eleanor Roosevelt celebrated is sinking. A recent study by the Pew Research Center shows that the middle class has shrunk to the point where it may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S.21 And with widespread decline in economic prospects comes disillusionment: A recent poll shows nearly three-quarters of Americans across the economic and political spectrum believe that the U.S. economy is rigged. A quarter of these same respondents hadn't had a vacation in at least five years. Over half worried about missing their mortgage payment, and 60 percent of the renters expressed concern about making the monthly rent.22 Exceptional individuals continue to rise, but overall mobility is stagnant at best. More and more it comes down to the birth lottery. If you're born poor in Flint or Appalachia, chances are you're going to stay that way. And if your early memories are of July Fourth fireworks at the Nantucket Yacht Club and ski lessons at Deer Valley, you're likely going to keep your perch at the top of the heap.

The consumer society and its harassed citizens had other things to think of. Although it was a month to Christmas, the advertising orgy had begun and the buying hysteria spread as swiftly and ruthlessly as the Black Death along the festooned shopping streets. The epidemic swept all before it and there was no escape. It ate its way into homes and apartments, poisoning and braking down everything and everyone in its path. Children were already howling from exhaustion and fathers of families were plunged into debt until their next vacation. The gigantic legalized confidence trick claimed victims everywhere. The hospitals had a boom in cardiac infractions, nervous breakdowns, and burst stomach ulcers. The police stations downtown had frequent visits from the outriders of the great family festival, in the shape of Santa Clauses who were dragged blind drunk out of doorways and public urinals. . .two exhausted patrolmen dropped a drunken Father Christmas in the gutter when they tried to get him into a taxi.

Crowded,” I said. Zoe and Erica had lucked out; as the only two girls on the trip, they got a whole room and separate beds to themselves. “How’s yours?” “Great!” Zoe chirped, and then lowered her voice to even below a whisper. “Although it’s kind of freaky being with Erica. Half her luggage was ammunition. Who brings grenades on a ski vacation?” “I can hear you,” Erica said, even though she was still fifteen feet away. Zoe grimaced, alarmed that she’d been overheard.

Imagine each day that you have just received an emergency message and that you will have to leave town tomorrow for a month. If you had to leave town for a month, what would you make absolutely sure that you got done before you left? Whatever your answer, go to work on that task right now. Another way to put pressure on yourself is to imagine that you just received an all-expenses-paid vacation at a beautiful resort as a prize, but you will have to leave tomorrow morning on the vacation or it will be given to someone else. What would you be determined to finish before you left so that you could take that vacation? Whatever it is, start on that one job immediately.

Unchain yourself from your computer. Unsubscribe from all unwanted newsletters. Set up an autoresponder that says, “I check my e-mail only twice per day. I will reply as soon as possible. If this is an emergency, phone this number.” A journalist for Fortune magazine once wrote that when he arrived back at the office after a two-week European vacation, he had more than 700 e-mails waiting for him. He realized that it would take him a week to get through them all before starting on important projects. For the first time in his career, he took a deep breath and punched the Delete All button, erasing those 700 e-mails forever. He then got busy with the projects that were really important to him and his company. His explanation was simple: “I realized that, just because somebody sends me an e-mail, it does not mean that they own a piece of my life.

In longtime meditators, such as Tibetan monks who have meditated for over 10,000 hours, the parietal lobe shows greatly reduced activity during meditation. While the brain’s energy usage only fluctuates around 5% up or down each day, in these adepts it drops up to 40% as they enter an altered state of consciousness. People who are isolated and lonely show the opposite effect. Their parietal lobes may be highly active. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are increasing in our fragmented society, according to a number of studies, and they have detrimental effects on our health. We are social beings, and a sense of connectedness translates into overall physical and emotional well-being. In a meta-analysis of 148 studies with a total of 308,849 participants, the researchers found “a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow up.” Even when the researchers corrected for behaviors such as smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise, the effect remained consistent. Think back to the times of your life when you were happiest. For most of us, special moments with family and friends come to mind. We may have been on vacation with loved ones or enjoying a meal or a joke with friends. It may have been singing carols during the holidays, when billions of people join in affirming “peace on earth, goodwill to men.” What’s common to all those happy times is that your attention was fully in the present moment, the “timelessness” of Chapter 2. You weren’t worrying about the past or stressing over the future, the way you might be doing if you didn’t have precious people to engage your thoughts. Time and space receded as the love-filled present occupied your attention. Only in the present moment can you escape the demon’s obsession with the mistakes of the past and the problems of tomorrow. Experiences of timelessness, as the parietal lobe shuts down, shape our perception of the world and how we act in it. A Stanford study of people who experienced “the deep now” found that it changed their behavior. They “felt they had more time available . . . and were less impatient . . . more willing to volunteer their time to help others . . . preferred experiences over material products . . . and experienced a greater boost in life satisfaction.” A quiet parietal lobe promotes empathy, compassion, relaxation, appreciation, connectedness, and self-esteem.

was that before the snow melted one of them would be dead. And one of them would have done it. “Interesting” didn’t begin to describe what was about to happen. CHAPTER 8 “Don’t look now,” Beauvoir bent down and whispered in Gamache’s ear. “Brébeuf and Leduc have found each other.” Jean-Guy watched Leduc place a friendly hand on the older man’s arm. Confrères, Beauvoir thought. Brothers. Two of a kind. Commander Gamache didn’t turn to look. Instead he gestured toward a chair recently vacated. Jean-Guy considered it. It was black leather and looked like a mouth about to snap shut. Resigning himself to it, he sat down, sliding to the back of the seat. “Merde,” he whispered. It was, without doubt, the most comfortable chair he’d ever sat in. It was just one of a number of unexpected things in the room. So much had happened so quickly when Jean-Guy accepted the post as second-in-command, he hadn’t had a chance yet to ask Gamache about keeping Leduc on. And bringing Brébeuf back. Either decision would be considered ill advised. Together they seemed reckless, verging on lunacy. Putting them on the same campus was bad enough, but inviting them to the same party? Then giving them alcohol? Beauvoir wondered, in passing, if either man was armed. Gamache had forbidden firearms among the staff, even the Sûreté officers on loan to the academy. And so Jean-Guy, against his will and instincts, had left his pistol locked up at Sûreté headquarters. As Beauvoir watched, the two men grew more and more chummy. Leduc animated, and Brébeuf more contained, nodding. Agreeing. Michel Brébeuf, the former superintendent of the Sûreté, had been one of the most powerful officers in the force before his disgrace. Serge Leduc had been the most

George often boasted that with the apartment’s grand bedroom, its lofty view of the Seine and Notre Dame, and its endless supply of great books, the best Parisian vacation could be had without ever passing beyond the door.

the luxury vacations had come as a personal affront to a woman who had survived the Great Depression, a world war, the death of a husband, the loss of two children, and countless other hardships. Claire

All of us have felt like getting away, just packing our bags and saying, “I’ve had enough! I can’t take anymore! I’ve got to get away.” It’s a normal, natural reaction. But it is not a good solution to any problem. We usually take our problems with us. We can go on vacation and enjoy a short respite. But when we return, the battles and burdens are still there. In fact, sometimes when we try to run away, we only make the problems worse. Why does the Lord allow us to go through windy storms and tempests? They help us grow and mature. If we keep running away, we are like children who never grow up. No, we don’t need the wings of a dove to fly away. We need the wings of an eagle. Isaiah 40:31 says, “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.” The eagle faces the storm, spreads his great wings, and allows the wind to lift him above the storm. Don’t run away. Run to the Lord, and let Him lift you high above the storm.

So the first thing to do is make sure you are close enough to the outside that you do not have to depend on reports. The best example I know: Many years ago a man built one of the world’s major businesses, the first business that really took advantage of the great change in medicine when the practice shifted from the individual practitioner to the hospital. (That happened after the Second World War in the developed countries.) And he had a simple rule: Every executive in that company, from the time it was very small to when it became a huge multinational, spent four weeks a year outside the company. Whenever a salesman went on vacation, an executive took his or her place for two weeks, twice a year, and called on customers and sold to customers and introduced new products into the hospital market. As a result, that company understood the rapidly changing market.

As for employees working at organizations who treat all people the same way, it will be up to you to push for the things you value: the balance of vacation time versus pay, a flexible schedule, the way your role within the company works. If you’re a manager, make a list of the cognitive strengths of your team. Some of your employees may be great at memorizing things. Others may be better at quantitative tasks. Some have good people skills. Some don’t. Assigning work projects based on an employee’s strengths may be critical to your group’s productivity. You may discover you had a Michael Jordan on your team but couldn’t see it because you were only asking him to play baseball.

like frailty but mask a concealed strength; individuality disguised as oddity. Towering over Nicholas’s childhood was his father, Claude, a man of immovable Victorian principles and ferocious prejudices. Claude loathed music, which gave him indigestion, despised all forms of heating as “effete,” and believed that “when dealing with foreigners the best plan was to shout at them in English.” Before becoming headmaster of Eton, Claude Elliott had taught history at Cambridge University, despite an ingrained distrust of academics and an aversion to intellectual conversation. The long university vacations gave him plenty of time for mountain climbing. He might have

Members of the Legislature vacated their seats and left the State to avoid arrest, the penalty hanging over them for opinion's sake. The venerable Judge Monroe, who had presided over the United States District Court for more than a generation, driven from the land of his birth, the State he had served so long and so well, with feeble step, but upright conscience and indomitable will, sought a resting place among those who did not regard it a crime to adhere to the principles of 1776 and of 1787, and the declaratory affirmation of them in the resolutions of 1793-'99. About the same time others of great worth and distinction, impelled by the feeling that "where liberty is there is my country," left the land desecrated by despotic usurpation, to join the Confederacy in its struggle to maintain the personal and political liberties which the men of the Revolution had left as an inheritance to their posterity.

back. “WHERE ARE YOUR FEET?” “IN THE KITCHEN!” The Thomas/Brewer family was in total, utter chaos. It was 11:00 A.M. on the Sunday before Labor Day. My family was just waking up, groggy and jetlagged. We’d arrived in the wee hours of the morning from a vacation in sunny, exciting, beach-filled Hawaii. (I had a fantastic time, thanks for asking.) Our flight back had taken almost a whole day. That part wasn’t so great. You see, we’d left Hawaii on Saturday

Marco Cirrini had been skiing on the north face of Bald Slope Mountain since he was a boy, using the old skis his father brought with him from Italy. The Cirrinis had shown up out of nowhere, walking into town in the middle of winter, their hair shining like black coal in the snow. They never really fit in. Marco tried, though. He tried by leading groups of local boys up the mountain in the winter, showing them how to make their own skis and how to use them. He charged them pennies and jars of bean chutney and spiced red cabbage they would sneak out of their mothers' sparse pantries. When he was nineteen, he decided he could take this one step further. He could make great things happen in the winter in Bald Slope. Cocky, not afraid of hard work and handsome in that mysterious Mediterranean way that excluded him from mountain society, he gathered investors from as far away as Asheville and Charlotte to buy the land. He started construction on the lodge himself while the residents of the town scoffed. They were the sweet cream and potatoes and long-forgotten ballads of their English and Irish and Scottish ancestors, who settled the southern Appalachians. They didn't want change. It took fifteen years, but the Bald Slope Ski Resort was finally completed and, much to everyone's surprise, it was an immediate success. Change was good! Stores didn't shut down for the winter anymore. Bed-and-breakfasts and sports shops and restaurants sprouted up. Instead of closing up their houses for the winter, summer residents began to rent them out to skiers. Some summer residents even decided to move to Bald Slope permanently, moving into their vacation homes with their sleeping porches and shade trees, thus forming the high society in Bald Slope that existed today. Marco himself was welcomed into this year-round society. He was essentially responsible for its formation in the first place, after all. Finally it didn't matter where he came from. What mattered was that he saved Bald Slope by giving it a winter economy, and he could do no wrong. This town was finally his.

January 2013 Andy’s Message   Hi Young, I’m home after two weeks in Tasmania. My rowing team was the runner-up at the Lindisfarne annual rowing competition. Since you were so forthright with your OBSS experiences, I’ll reciprocate with a tale of my own from the Philippines.☺               The Canadian GLBT rowing club had organised a fun excursion to Palawan Island back in 1977. This remote island was filled with an abundance of wildlife, forested mountains and beautiful pristine beaches.               It is rated by the National Geographic Traveller magazine as the best island destination in East and South-East Asia and ranked the thirteenth-best island in the world. In those days, this locale was vastly uninhabited, except by a handful of residents who were fishermen or local business owners.               We stayed in a series of huts, built above the ocean on stilts. These did not have shower or toilet facilities; lodgers had to wade through knee-deep waters or swim to shore to do their business. This place was a marvellous retreat for self-discovery and rejuvenation. I was glad I didn’t have to room with my travelling buddies and had a hut to myself.               I had a great time frolicking on the clear aquiline waters where virgin corals and unperturbed sea-life thrived without tourist intrusions. When we travelled into Lungsodng Puerto Princesa (City of Puerto Princesa) for food and a shower, the locals gawked at us - six Caucasian men and two women - as if we had descended from another planet. For a few pesos, a family-run eatery agreed to let us use their outdoor shower facility. A waist-high wooden wall, loosely constructed, separated the bather from a forest at the rear of the house. In the midst of my shower, I noticed a local adolescent peeping from behind a tree in the woods. I pretended not to notice as he watched me lathe and played with himself. I was turned on by this lascivious display of sexual gratification. The further I soaped, the more aroused I became. Through the gaps of the wooden planks, the boy caught glimpses of my erection – like a peep show in a sex shop, I titillated the teenager. His eyes were glued to my every move, so much so that he wasn’t aware that his friend had creeped up from behind. When he felt an extra hand on his throbbing hardness, he let out a yelp of astonishment. Before long, the boys were masturbating each other. They stroked one another without mortification, as if they had done this before, while watching my exhibitionistic performance carefully. This concupiscent carnality excited me tremendously. Unfortunately, my imminent release was punctured by a fellow member hollering for me to vacate the space for his turn, since I’d been showering for quite a while. I finished my performance with an anticlimactic final, leaving the boys to their own devices. But this was not the end of our chance encounter. There is more to ‘cum’ in my next correspondence!               Much love and kisses,               Andy

at the Throttle ALL WEEK I WONDERED what could possibly have happened to Tom on his first train ride that made it the most exciting experience of his life. When I finally received his second letter I understood why he had said that all the kids in town would turn green with envy. When I showed the kids the letter they didn’t actually turn green any more than a yellow-bellied coward has a yellow belly. But you never saw such a bunch of envious kids in your life. When Tom came home for the Christmas vacation with Sweyn he told Papa, Mamma, Aunt Bertha, our four-year-old foster brother Frankie, and me all about riding in the locomotive from Provo to Salt Lake City.

I fell into the temporary role of spokesman for America, trying to answer questions as best I could: Why do Americans eat so much processed food? Why do they get so little vacation time? (Everyone in our group had more or less taken off the last month of summer.) Why do they love guns? Having been placed in this situation frequently during my travels, I blamed everything on the Republicans, which always satisfies Europeans.

he said, interrupting her. “It’s gonna be great. I promise.” He grinned again, and she forced a smile back. The vacation had been his idea; they were individually and collectively out of sorts, and they’d needed some time off, he’d argued. She’d reluctantly agreed—not because she’d wanted to go, but because