Hanging Stockings Quotes

So from now on, screw "perfect." Forget for a while about what kind of person you want to be, and just be the best version of the person you are. Figure out which of your classmates you genuinely like (not who you want to like you), and get to know them by telling your own stories and listening to theirs. Hang out with the people you think are cool, not the people you'd like to be considered cool by. Do things because they interest you, not because they make you look interesting... and then, take stock in a month and see whether you're not happier, healthier, and working on some actual friendships with other imperfect-but-lovely humans.

Jesus said his Father's House has many rooms. In this metaphor I like to imagine the Presbyterians hanging out in the library, the Baptists running the kitchen, the Anglicans setting the table, the Anabaptists washing feet with the hose in the backyard, the Lutherans making liturgy for the laundry, the Methodists stocking the fire in the hearth, the Catholics keeping the family history, the Pentecostals throwing open all the windows and doors to let more people in.

Insulated from natural contacts with earth, air and sunlight, by corsets pressing on the solar plexus, by voluminous petticoats, cotton stockings and kid boots, the drowsy well-fed girls lounging in the shade were no more a part of their environment than figures in a photograph album, arbitrarily posed against a backcloth of cork rocks and cardboard trees.

It's sort of my go-to stock image of my childhood, actually. I think it has something to do with knowing I'll never be able to go back to that time that makes me cry every time I listen to it.

Mom, do you have pot hanging from the ceiling?

The faint aroma of gum and calico that hangs about a library is as the fragrance of incense to me. I think the most beautiful sight is the gilt-edged backs of a row of books on a shelf. The alley between two well-stocked shelves in a hall fills me with the same delight as passing through a silent avenue of trees. The colour of a binding-cloth and its smooth texture gives me the same pleasure as touching a flower on its stalk. A good library hall has an atmosphere which elates. I have seen one or two University Libraries that have the same atmosphere as a chapel, with large windows, great trees outside, and glass doors sliding on noiseless hinges.

There was something about Christmas Eve, they both felt, that demanded company; one needed somebody to whisper to, during the warm beautiful dream-taut moments between hanging the empty stocking at the end of the bed, and dropping into the cosy oblivion that would flower into the marvel of Christmas morning.

She's got a man's nightshirt on and stockings with holes in them. Somebody else's tie, a gold and green chevroned number, hangs around her neck and just at this moment it looks like a king's mantle draped over her shoulders. Her hair's all loose, her lipstick and eyeliner gone a-roving. She's got a cigar in one hand and a jar full of gin in the other, and she's laughing, laughing like for once that damned chicken crossed the road for something really good.

Mom, do you have pot hanging from the ceiling?” Noel asks. “You know your father needs it for his arthritis,” her mother sighs. “Pot—mistletoe, potato—potahto. It’s green and it’s festive, and you have to kiss under it.

Me: Did you get your tree yet? Ken: I'm a Jew, I don't decorate Christmas trees. Me: So you're going to go with a wreath instead? Ken: I just told you, I'm a Jew. Me: Oh, I get it. You're looking for a cheap wreath. Ken: I'm not looking for a wreath at all. Leave me alone, will you. Me: You're probably just tense because you haven't finished your Christmas shopping. Ken: I don't Christmas shop. Me: What are you telling me? That you make all of your presents. Ken: I don't give Christmas presents period. Goddamit, I told you, I'm a Jew. Me: Well, don't you at least need to buy something for your parents? Ken: They're Jews, too, idiot. That's what makes me one. It's hereditary. Do you understand? Me: Sure. Ken: Say the words "I understand." Me: I understand. So where are you going to hang your stocking?

You know, Piggly Wiggly never could hang on to a night stock manager. Your math skills would be a plus, maybe even your Spanish, and you don't mind staying up late." "Piggly Wiggly, wow. I hadn't thought about that. I'll swing by, pick up an application tomorrow. But if it doesn't pan out maybe ... Never mind, it's a crazy idea." "No, tell me. I want to hear it." "Well, just as a backup plan, I did hear that Sony has an opening. They're, um, they're looking for a rock star. The hours suck, but it's no worse than night stock manager at Pigs. I bet it pays better too." Isabel stopped in her tracks, playfully slapping his arm. "Aidan, that's genius! That's what you should do! I've heard you sing, you can carry a decent tune." She looked him up and down. "With a little work, you can probably pull off the image." He tugged on her arms until she was in his. "Only if you're sure. Only if it's what we want." "Aidan, it's who you are. I've known it since the day we brought that first guitar here. I'd never want to take that away.

I’ve always told you that home is wherever you hang your Christmas stocking, You’ll know in your heart when you’ve found the right place, or the right person.

You’re not gonna believe what just happened to me,” Jase says the minute I flip my cell open, taking advantage of break at the B&T. I turn away from the picture window just in case Mr. Lennox, disregarding the break sign, will come dashing out to slap me with my first-ever demerit. “Try me.” His voice lowers. “You know how I put that lock on the door of my room? Well, Dad noticed it. Apparently. So today, I’m stocking the lawn section and he comes up and asks why it’s there.” “Uh-oh.” I catch the attention of a kid sneaking into the hot tub (there’s a strict no-one-under-sixteen policy) and shake my head sternly. He slinks away. Must be my impressive uniform. “So I say I need privacy sometimes and sometimes you and I are hanging out and we don’t want to be interrupted ten million times.” “Good answer.” “Right. I think this is going to be the end of it. But then he tells me he needs me in the back room to have a ‘talk.’” “Uh-oh again.” Jase starts to laugh. “I follow him back and he sits me down and asks if I’m being responsible. Um. With you.” Moving back into the shade of the bushes, I turn even further away from the possible gaze of Mr. Lennox. “Oh God.” “I say yeah, we’ve got it handled, it’s fine. But, seriously? I can’t believe he’s asking me this. I mean, Samantha. Jesus. My parents? Hard not to know the facts of life and all in this house. So I tell him that we’re moving slowly and—” “You told him that?” God, Jase! How am I ever going to look Mr. Garret in the eye again? Help. “He’s my dad, Samantha. Yeah. Not that I didn’t want to exit the conversation right away, but still . . .” “So what happened then?” “Well, I reminded him they’d covered that really thoroughly in school, not to mention at home, and we weren’t irresponsible people.” I close my eyes, trying to imagine having this conversation with my mother. Inconceivable. No pun intended. “So then . . . he goes on about”—Jase’s voice drops even lower—“um . . . being considerate and um . . . mutual pleasure.” “Oh my god! I would’ve died. What did you say?” I ask, wanting to know even while I’m completely distracted by the thought. Mutual pleasure, huh? What do I know about giving that? What if Shoplifting Lindy had tricks up her sleeve I know nothing about? It’s not like I can ask Mom. “State senator suffers heart attack during conversation with daughter.” “I said ‘Yes sir’ a lot. And he went on and on and on and all I could think was that any minute Tim was gonna come in and hear my dad saying things like, ‘Your mom and I find that . . . blah blah blah.’” I can’t stop laughing. “He didn’t. He did not mention your mother.” “I know!” Jase is laughing too. “I mean . . . you know how close I am to my parents, but . . . Jesus.

Witnesses can be manipulated, too. They’re not robots. They are manipulated by television, newspapers, friends, corporate interests…Who has the real truth? As far as I understand, the truth is something that’s sought out by specially trained experts: judges, scholars, priests. Everyone else is ruled by ambition and emotions. [A pause.] I’ve read your books…You shouldn’t put so much stock in what people say, in human truth…History records the lives of ideas. People don’t write it, time does. Human truth is just a nail that everybody hangs their hats on.

I suppose you will be hanging up your stocking just once more: I hope so for I have still a few little things for you. After this I shall have to say “goodbye”, more or less: I mean, I shall not forget you. We always keep the old numbers of our old friends, and their letters; and later on we hope to come back when they are grown up and have houses of their own and children.

And there I was with the stars hanging above my house like live wires and the night sky the color of stockings. I stuck out my tongue to taste the sky but could not taste. I inhaled deeply but could not smell. I used to look to the sky for comfort and now there was nothing, not even a seam, and I looked down and saw that it did not even reach the ground. And my only company was the satellites counting their sleep

The summer dresses are unpacked and hanging in the closet, two of them, pure cotton, which is better than synthetics like the cheaper ones, though even so, when it's muggy, in July and August, you sweat inside them. No worry about sunburn though, said Aunt Lydia. The spectacles women used to make of themselves. Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings on them, no wonder those things used to happen. [...] And not good for the complexion, not at all, wrinkle you up like a dried apple. But we weren't supposed to care about our complexions any more, she'd forgotten that.

Miss Chauvenet." Morgan willed himself to speak his tongue near to tied. He was unable to take his gaze from her. She looked as fresh as springtime, her dark hair hanging in a braid beyond her hips, her eyes wide with surprise. Then her gaze moved over him, and he knew a moment of utter mortification. She's thinkin' you look like a peacock, laddie. With lace cuffs, silk stockings and drawers, and shoes with shiny brass buckles, he did look like a bloody peacock or, worse, like somoene that whoreson Wentworth would invite to his supper table. -Morgan

It wouldn’t be Hogswatch when I was a kid without a pillowcase hanging by the fire—” “A pillowcase?” said the Senior Wrangler, sharply. “Well, you can’t get much in a stocking,” said the Dean. “Yes, but a whole pillowcase?” the Senior Wrangler insisted. “Yes. What of it?” “Is it just me, or is that a rather greedy and selfish way to behave? In my family we just hung up very small socks,

Western clothes were intended for healthy, robust men: to anyone in a weakened condition they were quite insupportable. Around the waist, over the shoulders, under the arms, around the neck - every part of the body was pressed and squeezed by clasps and buttons and rubber and leather, layer over layer, as if you were strapped to a cross. And of course you had to put on stockings before the shoes, stretching them carefully up on your legs by garters. Then you put on a shirt, and then trousers, cinching them in with a buckle and the back till they cut your waist and hanging them from your shoulders with suspenders. Your neck was choked in a close-fitting collar, over which you fastened a noose-like necktie, and stuck a pin in it. If a man is well filled out, the tighter you squeeze him, the more vigorous and bursting with vitality he seems; but a man who is only skin and bones can't stand that. [...] It was only because these Western clothes held him together that he was able to keep on walking at all - but to think of stiffening a limp, helpless body, shackling it hand and foot, and driving it ahead with shouts of "Keep going! Don't you dare collapse!" It was enough to make a man want to cry...

and a heart that throbs most queerly. I’m queer for other queers, queer for their shapes and colors and sizes, queer for their tastes. I’m queer for the ruthless sea. I’m queer for all the little queer creatures in the tide pools. I’m queer for the light when it breaks the horizon and queer for it when it sinks behind the trees. I’m plain queer for these people and queer for this world. I’m downright queer in love with this wreck of a world, queer in love with love itself—love’s always queer, always arriving in our hearts from queer nowheres, queering everything—and there we are; wide awake all night, queer as queer can be; queer orphans, queer widows, queer boys, and queer girls; sorrel girls queer for ivory boys, daffodil boys queer for lilac girls; carmine girls queer for sable girls, cinnamon boys so very queer for boys of bluest milk. Wicked shepherds! Burn me at the stake and hang me from a tree. Clap me in the stocks; send me down the mine; set me in the burning fields. But I am queer. And I say, Here is water, bread, a dull penny. Here’re my old shirt, my plane and hammer, a roof I’ll help you raise above your head. Here is my queer old body, in a barn, behind a hedge, beneath a shadow, on a bare pallet—

He suddenly felt the intense sad loveliness of being as being, apart from right or wrong: that, indeed, the mere fact of being was the ultimate right. He began to love the land under him with a fierce longing, not because it was good or bad, but because it was: because of the shadows of the corn stocks on a golden evening; because the sheep’s tails would rattle when they ran, and the lambs, sucking, would revolve their tails in little eddies; because the clouds in daylight would surge it into light and shade; because the squadrons of green and golden plover, worming in pasture fields, would advance in short, unanimous charges, head to wind; because the spinsterish herons, who keep their hair up with fish bones according to David Garnett, would fall down in a faint if a boy could stalk them and shout before he was seen; because the smoke from homesteads was a blue beard straying into heaven; because the stars were brighter in puddles than in the sky; because there were puddles, and leaky gutters, and dung hills with poppies on them; because the salmon in the rivers suddenly leaped and fell; because the chestnut buds, in the balmy wind of spring, would jump out of their twigs like jacks-in-boxes, or like little spectres holding up green hands to scare him; because the jackdaws, building, would hang in the air with branches in their mouths, more beautiful than any ark-returning dove; because, in the moonlight there below, God’s greatest blessing to the world was stretched, the silver gift of sleep.

I tell him I’d better get going, because Margot’s coming home from Scotland tonight, and I want to stock the fridge with all her favorite foods. Peter’s face falls. “You don’t want to hang out a little longer? I can take you to the store.” “I still have to clean up the upstairs, too,” I say, standing up. He tugs on my shirt and tries to pull me back onto the bed. “Come on, five more minutes.” I lie back down next to him and he cuddles in close, but I’m still thinking about the yearbook. I’ve been working on his scrapbook for months; the least he can do is write me a nice yearbook message. “This is good practice for college,” he murmurs, pulling me toward him, wrapping his arms around me. “The beds are small at UVA. How big are the beds at UNC?” My back to him, I say, “I don’t know. I didn’t get to see the dorms.” He tucks his head in the space between my neck and shoulder. “That was a trick question,” he says, and I can feel him smile against my neck. “To check and see if you visited a random UNC guy’s dorm room with Chris. Congrats, you passed the test.” I can’t help but laugh.

It's three turns in the stocks for you," Cassandra told him. "Clapped in the stocks, merely for breaking the Sabbath?" West asked indignantly. "It's a severe game," Cassandra said. "It was invented at the turn of the century, and back then you could be put in the stocks or hanged even for stealing a piece of bacon." "How do you know that?" Rhys asked. "We have a book about it in the library," Pandora said. "'Crimes Of Fallen Humanity.' It's all about terrible criminals and horrid gruesome punishments." "We've read it at least three times," Cassandra added.

financial markets will become divorced from reality — you can count on that. More Jimmy Lings will appear. They will look and sound authoritative. The press will hang on their every word. Bankers will fight for their business. What they are saying will recently have “worked.” Their early followers will be feeling very clever. Our suggestion: Whatever their line, never forget that 2+2 will always equal 4. And when someone tells you how old-fashioned that math is ---zip up your wallet, take a vacation and come back in a few years to buy stocks at cheap prices.

I'm downright queer in love with this wreck of a world, queer in love with love itself—love's always queer, always arriving in our hearts from queer nowheres, queering everything—and there we are; wide awake all night, queer as queer can be; queer orphans queer widows, queer boys, and queer girls; sorrel girls queer for ivory boys, daffodil boys queer for lilac girls; carmine girls queer for sable girls, cinnamon boys so very queer for boys of bluest milk. Wicked shepherds! Burn me at the stake and hang me from a tree. Clap me in the stocks; send me down the mine; set me in the burning fields. But I am queer.

REGRET ME When you look in the mirror Take stock of your soul And when you hear my voice, remember You ruined me whole Don’t you dare sleep easy And leave the sleepless nights to me Let the world weigh you down And, baby, when you think of me I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll Regret me Regretfully When you look at her Take stock of what you took from me And when you see a ghost in the distance Know I’m hanging over everything Don’t you dare sleep easy And leave the sleepless nights to me Let the world weigh you down And, baby, when you think of me I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll Regret me Regretfully Regret me Regretfully

The plash of water, the sight of her shoes and stockings awry on the path where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her feet, and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her - remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive memory for that.

You, my dear, do not know how to have fun." "I do, too!" "You do not. You are as bad as Lucien. And do you know something? I think it's time someone showed you how to have fun. Namely, me. You can worry all you like about our situation tomorrow, but tonight ... tonight I'm going to make you laugh so hard that you'll forget all about how afraid of me you are." "I am not afraid of you!" "You are." And with that, he pushed his chair back, stalked around the table, and in a single easy movement, swept her right out of her chair and into his arms. "Gareth!  Put me down!" He only laughed, easily carrying her toward the bed. "Gareth, I am a grown woman!" "You are a grown woman who behaves in a manner far too old for her years," he countered, still striding toward the bed. "As the wife of a Den member, that just will not do." "Gareth, I don't want — I mean, I'm not ready for that!" "That? Who said anything about that?"  He tossed her lightly onto the bed. "Oh, no, my dear Juliet. I'm not going to do that —" She tried to scoot away. "Then what are you going to do?" "Why, I'm going to wipe that sadness out of your eyes if only for tonight. I'm going to make you forget your troubles, forget your fears, forget everything but me. And you know how I'm going to do that, O dearest wife?"  He grabbed a fistful of her petticoats as she tried to escape. "I'm going to tickle you until you giggle ... until you laugh ... until you're hooting so loudly that all of London hears you!" He fell upon the bed like a swooping hawk, and Juliet let out a helpless shriek as his fingers found her ribs and began tickling her madly. "Stop!  We just ate!  You'll make me sick!" "What's this? Your husband makes you sick?" "No, it's just that — aaaoooooo!" He tickled her harder. She flailed and giggled and cried out, embarrassed about each loud shriek but helpless to prevent them. He was laughing as hard as she. Catching one thrashing leg, he unlaced her boot and deftly removed it. She yelped as his fingers found the sensitive instep, and she kicked out reflexively. He neatly ducked just in time to avoid having his nose broken, catching her by the ankle and tickling her toes, her soles, her arch through her stockings. "Stop, Gareth!"  She was laughing so hard, tears were streaming from her eyes. "Stop it, damn it!" Thank goodness Charlotte, worn out by her earlier tantrum, was such a sound sleeper! The tickling continued. Juliet kicked and fought, her struggles tossing the heavy, ruffled petticoats and skirts of her lovely blue gown halfway up her thigh to reveal a long, slender calf sheathed in silk. She saw his gaze taking it all in, even as he made a grab for her other foot. "No!  Gareth, I shall lose my supper if you keep this up, I swear it I will — oooahhhhh!" He seized her other ankle, yanked off the remaining boot, and began torturing that foot as well, until Juliet was writhing and shrieking on the bed in a fit of laughter. The tears streamed down her cheeks, and her stomach ached with the force of her mirth. And when, at last, he let up and she lay exhausted across the bed in a twisted tangle of skirts, petticoats, and chemise, her chest heaving and her hair in a hopeless tumbled-down flood of silken mahogany beneath her head, she looked up to see him grinning down at her, his own hair hanging over his brow in tousled, seductive disarray.

(From Chapter 3: Puss In Corner) The visitors wear afternoon dresses with rows of buttons up their fronts, and stiff wire crinolines beneath. It’s a wonder they can sit down at all, and when they walk, nothing touches their legs under the billowing skirts, except their shifts and stockings. They are like swans, drifting along on unseen feet; or else like the jellyfish [...] They were bell-shaped and ruffled, gracefully waving and lovely under the sea; but if they washed up on the beach and dried out in the sun there was nothing left of them. And that is what the ladies are like: mostly water. I have looked at [the wire crinolines] hanging in the wardrobes, when I go in to tidy and empty the slops. They are like birdcages; but what is being caged in? Legs, the legs of ladies; legs pinned in so they cannot get out and go rubbing up against the gentlemen’s trousers.

Dr. Morris Netherton, a pioneer in the field of past-life therapy (and my teacher),7 relates the incident of a patient who returned to her previous life as Rita McCullum. Rita was born in 1903 and lived in rural Pennsylvania with her foster parents until they were killed in a car accident in 1916. In the early 1920s she married a man named McCullum and moved to New York, where they had a garment manufacturing company off Seventh Avenue in midtown Manhattan. Life was hard and money short. Her husband died in 1928. In 1929, her son died from polio, and the stock market crashed. Like many others during the Great Depression, Rita succumbed to bankruptcy and depression. On the sunny day of June 11, 1933, she hanged herself from the ceiling fan of her factory. Because this memory featured traceable facts, Netherton and his patient contacted New York City’s Hall of Records. They received a photocopy of a notarized death certificate of a woman named Rita McCullum. Under manner of death, it stated that she died by hanging at an address in the West Thirties, still today the heart of the garment district. The date of death was June 11, 1933.8

HERE ARE MY TEN BEEF NOODLE SOUP COMMANDMENTS: 1. Throw out the first: always flash-boil your bones and beef to get the “musk” out. I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot. I would sometimes brown the meat as opposed to boil, but decided in the end that for this soup, you gotta boil. If you brown, it’s overpowering. The lesson that beef noodle soup teaches you is restraint. Sometimes less is more if you want all the flavors in the dish to speak to you. 2. Make sure the oil is medium-high when the aromatics go down and get a slight caramelization. It’s a fine line. Too much caramelization and it becomes too heavy, but no caramelization and your stock is weak. 3. Rice wine can be tricky. Most people like to vaporize it so that all the alcohol is cooked off. I like to leave a little of the alcohol flavor ’cause it tends to cut through the grease a bit. 4. Absolutely no butter, lard, or duck fat. I’ve seen people in America try to “kick it up a notch” with animal fats and it ruins the soup. Peanut oil or die. 5. Don’t burn the chilis and peppercorns, not even a little bit. You want the spice and the numbness, but not the smokiness. 6. After sautéing the chilis/peppercorns, turn off the heat and let them sit in the oil to steep. This is another reason you want to turn the heat off early. 7. Strain your chilis/peppercorns out of the oil, put them in a muslin bag, and set them aside. Then add ginger/garlic/scallions to the oil in that order. Stage them. 8. I use tomatoes in my beef noodle soup, but I add them after the soup is finished and everything is strained. I let them hang out in the soup as it sits on the stove over the course of the day. I cut the tomatoes thin so they give off flavor without having to cook too long and so you can serve them still intact. 9. Always use either shank or chuck flap. Brisket is too tough. If you want to make it interesting, add pig’s foot or oxtail. 10. Do you. I don’t give you measurements with this because I gave you all the ingredients and the technique. The best part about beef noodle soup is that there are no rules. It just has to have beef, noodle, and soup. There are people that do clear broth beef noodle soup. Beef noodle soup with dairy. Beef noodle soup with pig’s blood. It would suck if you looked at my recipe and never made your own, ’cause everyone has a beef noodle soup in them. Show it to me.

Got a one-way ticket to the blues, woo, woo, . . . IF you want to sing it, sing it. These days people caught in the clutches of the one-way ticket never sing it like that. The soles of those who have only a one-way ticket are so thin that they scream when they step on a pebble. They have had their fill of walking. "The Round-Trip Ticket Blues" is what they want to sing. A one-way ticket is a disjointed life that misses the links between yesterday and today, today and tomorrow. Only the man who obstinately hangs on to a round-trip ticket can hum with real sorrow a song of a one-way ticket. For this very reason he grows desperate lest the return half of his ticket be lost or stolen; he buys stocks, signs up for life insurance, and talks out of different sides of his mouth to his union pals and his superiors. He hums "The One-Way Ticket Blues" with all his might and, choosing a channel at random, turns the television up to full volume in an attempt to drown out the peevish voices of those who have only a one-way ticket and who keep asking for help, voices that come up through the bathtub drain or the toilet hole. It would not be strange at all if "The Round-Trip Ticket Blues" were the song of mankind imprisoned.

More Activities to Develop Sensory-Motor Skills Sensory processing is the foundation for fine-motor skills, motor planning, and bilateral coordination. All these skills improve as the child tries the following activities that integrate the sensations. FINE-MOTOR SKILLS Flour Sifting—Spread newspaper on the kitchen floor and provide flour, scoop, and sifter. (A turn handle is easier to manipulate than a squeeze handle, but both develop fine-motor muscles in the hands.) Let the child scoop and sift. Stringing and Lacing—Provide shoelaces, lengths of yarn on plastic needles, or pipe cleaners, and buttons, macaroni, cereal “Os,” beads, spools, paper clips, and jingle bells. Making bracelets and necklaces develops eye-hand coordination, tactile discrimination, and bilateral coordination. Egg Carton Collections—The child may enjoy sorting shells, pinecones, pebbles, nuts, beans, beads, buttons, bottle caps, and other found objects and organizing them in the individual egg compartments. Household Tools—Picking up cereal pieces with tweezers; stretching rubber bands over a box to make a “guitar”; hanging napkins, doll clothes, and paper towels with clothespins; and smashing egg cartons with a mallet are activities that strengthen many skills.

With our desire to have more, we find ourselves spending more and more time and energy to manage and maintain everything we have. We try so hard to do this that the things that were supposed to help us end up ruling us. We eventually get used to the new state where our wishes have been fulfilled. We start taking those things for granted and there comes a time when we start getting tired of what we have. We're desperate to convey our own worth, our own value to others. We use objects to tell people just how valuable we are. The objects that are supposed to represent our qualities become our qualities themselves. There are more things to gain from eliminating excess than you might imagine: time, space, freedom and energy. When people say something is impossible, they have already decided that they don't want to do it. Differentiate between things you want and things you need. Leave your unused space empty. These open areas are incredibly useful. They bring us a sense of freedom and keep our minds open to the more important things in life. Memories are wonderful but you won't have room to develop if your attachment to the past is too strong. It's better to cut some of those ties so you can focus on what's important today. Don't get creative when you are trying to discard things. There's no need to stock up. An item chosen with passion represents perfection to us. Things we just happen to pick up, however, are easy candidates for disposal or replacement. As long as we stick to owning things that we really love, we aren't likely to want more. Our homes aren't museum, they don't need collections. When you aren't sure that you really want to part with something, try stowing it away for a while. Larger furniture items with bold colors will in time trigger visual fatigue and then boredom. Discarding things can be wasteful. But the guilt that keeps you from minimizing is the true waste. The real waste is the psychological damage that you accrue from hanging on to things you don't use or need. We find our originality when we own less. When you think about it, it's experience that builds our unique characteristics, not material objects. I've lowered my bar for happiness simply by switching to a tenugui. When even a regular bath towel can make you happy, you'll be able to find happiness almost everywhere. For the minimalist, the objective isn't to reduce, it's to eliminate distractions so they can focus on the things that are truly important. Minimalism is just the beginning. It's a tool. Once you've gone ahead and minimized, it's time to find out what those important things are. Minimalism is built around the idea that there's nothing that you're lacking. You'll spend less time being pushed around by something that you think may be missing. The qualities I look for in the things that I buy are: - the item has a minimalistic kind of shape and is easy to clean - it's color isn't too loud - I'll be able to use it for a long time - it has a simple structure - it's lightweight and compact - it has multiple uses A relaxed moment is not without meaning, it's an important time for reflection. It wasn't the fallen leaves that the lady had been tidying up, it was her own laziness that she had been sweeping away. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. With daily cleaning, the reward may be the sense of accomplishment and calmness we feel afterward. Cleaning your house is like polishing yourself. Simply by living an organized life, you'll be more invigorated, more confident and like yourself better. Having parted with the bulk of my belongings, I feel true contentment with my day-to-day life. The very act of living brings me joy. When you become a minimalist, you free yourself from all the materialist messages that surround us. All the creative marketing and annoying ads no longer have an effect on you.

Large-leafed plants at the edge of the jungle reflected the sun rather than soaking it up, their dark green surfaces sparkling white in the sunlight. Some of the smaller ones had literally low-hanging fruit, like jewels from a fairy tale. Behind them was an extremely inviting path into the jungle with giant white shells for stepping-stones. And rather than the muggy, disease-filled forests of books that seemed to kill so many explorers, here the air was cool and pleasant and not too moist- although Wendy could hear the distant tinkle of water splashing from a height. "Oh! Is that the Tonal Spring? Or Diamond Falls?" Wendy withered breathlessly. "Luna, let's go see!" She made herself not race ahead down the path, but moved at a leisurely, measured pace. Like an adventuress sure of herself but wary of her surroundings. (And yet, as she wouldn't realize until later, she hadn't thought to grab her stockings or shoes. Those got left in her hut without even a simple goodbye.) Everywhere she looked, Wendy found another wonder of Never Land, from the slow camosnails to the gently nodding heads of the fritillary lilies. She smiled, imagining John as he peered over his glasses and the snail faded away into the background in fear- or Michael getting his nose covered in honey-scented lily pollen as he enthusiastically sniffed the pretty flowers. The path continued, winding around a boulder into a delightful little clearing, sandy but padded here and there with tuffets of emerald green grass and clumps of purple orchids. It was like a desert island vacation of a perfect English meadow.

Why did you come here tonight?” she asked. “Other than the fact that you’ve finally come to your senses and realize you love me.” Chuckling, Grey reached up and untied the ribbons that held her mask. The pretty silk fell away to reveal the beautiful face beneath. “I missed you,” he replied honestly. “And you were right-about everything. I’m tired of drifting through life. I want to live again-with you.” A lone tear trickled down her cheek. “I think that might be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.” He grinned. “I have more.” She pressed her fingers to his lips. “I’m tired of talking.” She kissed him, teasing his lips with the ripe curves of hers, sliding her tongue inside to rub against his in a sensual rhythm that had him fisting his hands in her skirts. By the time they reached Mayfair, Grey’s hair was mussed, Rose’s skirts crushed, and he was harder than an oratory competition for mutes. “I can’t believe you came,” she told him as the entered the house, arms wrapped around each other. “I’m so proud of you.” “I wouldn’t have done it without you.” She shook her head. “You did it for yourself not for me.” Perhaps that was true, and perhaps it wasn’t. He had no interest in discussing it tonight. “It’s just the beginning,” he promised. “I’m going to go wherever you want to go from now on. Within reason.” She laughed. “Of course. We can’t have you attending a musicale just to please me, can we?” She gazed up at him. “You know, I think I’m going to want to spend plenty of evenings at home as well. That time I spent out of society had some very soothing moments.” “Of course,” he agreed, thinking about all the things they could do to one another at home. Alone. “There has to be moderation.” Upstairs in their bedroom, he undressed her, unbuttoning each tiny button one by one until she sighed in exasperation. “In a hurry?” he teased. His wife got her revenge, when clad only in her chemise and stockings, she turned those nimble fingers of hers to his cravat, working the knot so slowly he thought he might go mad. She worsened the torment by slowly rubbing her hips against his thigh. His cock was so rigid he could hang clothes on it, and the need to bury himself inside her consumed him. Still, a skilled lover knows when to have patience-and a man in love knows that his woman’s pleasure comes far, far before his own. So, as ready as he was, Grey was in no hurry to let this night end, not when it might prove to be the best of his new-found life. Wearing only his trousers, he took Rose’s hand and led her to their bed. He climbed onto the mattress and pulled her down beside him, lying so that they were face-to-face. Warm fingers came up to gently touch the scar that ran down his face. Odd, but he hadn’t thought of it at all that evening. In fact, he’d almost forgot about it. “I heard you that night,” he admitted. “When you told me you loved me.” Her head tilted. “I thought you were asleep.” “No.” He held her gaze as he raised his own hand to brush the softness of her cheek. “I should have said it then, but I love you too, Rose. So much.” Her smile was smug. “I know.” She kissed him again. “Make love to me.” His entire body pulsed. “I intend to, but there’s one thing I have to do first.” Rose frowned. “What’s that?” Grey pulled the brand-new copy of Voluptuous from beneath the pillow where he’d hidden it before going to the ball. “There’s a story in here that I want to read to you.

In his job as a financial educator, Keith had spent a fair amount of time breaking down the act — and sometimes art — of short selling, in a way that less savvy customers could understand. When a trader believed a company was in trouble, and its stock was overvalued, they could 'borrow' shares, sell them, and then when the stock went down as they'd predicted, rebuy the shares at a lower price, return them to whoever they'd borrowed them from, and pocket the difference. If GameStop was trading at 5, you could borrow 100 shares, sell them for $500; when the stock hit 1, you bought back the 100 shares for $100, returned them, pocketing $400 for yourself. You paid a little fee to the lender for their trouble and came out with a tidy profit. But what happened if the stock went up instead of down? What happened if GameStop figured out how to capitalize on its millions of nostalgic customers, who spent billions on video games every year? What if the stock went to 10 instead of 1? What happened was, the short seller was royally screwed. He'd borrowed those 100 shares and sold them at 5. Now the stock was at 10, but he still needed to return his 100 shares. Buying them on the market at 10 meant spending $1000. And what was worse, when he'd borrowed the shares, he'd agreed on a timeline to return them. There was a ticking clock hanging over his head, so he had a choice — buy the shares back at 10 now, losing $500 on the deal — or wait a little longer, hoping the stock went back down before his time limit was up. And what if he waited, and the stock kept going up? Sooner or later, he had to buy those shares back. Even if the stock went to 15, 20 — he was on the hook for those 100 shares. Theoretically, there was no limit to how much he could lose.

Suggestions to Develop Self-Help Skills Self-help skills improve along with sensory processing. The following suggestions may make your child’s life easier—and yours, too! DRESSING • Buy or make a “dressing board” with a variety of snaps, zippers, buttons and buttonholes, hooks and eyes, buckles and shoelaces. • Provide things that are not her own clothes for the child to zip, button, and fasten, such as sleeping bags, backpacks, handbags, coin purses, lunch boxes, doll clothes, suitcases, and cosmetic cases. • Provide alluring dress-up clothes with zippers, buttons, buckles, and snaps. Oversized clothes are easiest to put on and take off. • Eliminate unnecessary choices in your child’s bureau and closet. Clothes that are inappropriate for the season and that jam the drawers are sources of frustration. • Put large hooks inside closet doors at the child’s eye level so he can hang up his own coat and pajamas. (Attach loops to coats and pajamas on the outside so they won’t irritate the skin.) • Supply cellophane bags for the child to slip her feet into before pulling on boots. The cellophane prevents shoes from getting stuck and makes the job much easier. • Let your child choose what to wear. If she gets overheated easily, let her go outdoors wearing several loose layers rather than a coat. If he complains that new clothes are stiff or scratchy, let him wear soft, worn clothes, even if they’re unfashionable. • Comfort is what matters. • Set out tomorrow’s clothes the night before. Encourage the child to dress himself. Allow for extra time, and be available to help. If necessary, help him into clothes but let him do the finishing touch: Start the coat zipper but let him zip it up, or button all but one of his buttons. Keep a stool handy so the child can see herself in the bathroom mirror. On the sink, keep a kid-sized hairbrush and toothbrush within arm’s reach. Even if she resists brushing teeth and hair, be firm. Some things in life are nonnegotiable.

An unexpected sight opens in front of my eyes, a sight I cannot ignore. Instead of the calm waters in front of the fortress, the rear side offers a view of a different sea—the sea of small, dark streets and alleys—like an intricate puzzle. The breathtaking scenery visible from the other side had been replaced by the panorama of poverty–stricken streets, crumbling house walls, and dilapidated facades that struggle to hide the building materials beneath them. It reminds me of the ghettos in Barcelona, the ghettos I came to know far too well. I take a deep breath and look for a sign of life—a life not affected by its surroundings. Nothing. Down, between the rows of dirty dwellings stretches a clothesline. Heavy with the freshly washed laundry it droops down, droplets of water trickling onto the soiled pavement from its burden. Around the corner, a group of filthy children plays with a semi–deflated soccer ball—it makes a funny sound as it bounces off the wall—plunk, plunk. A man sitting on a staircase puts out a cigarette; he coughs, spits phlegm on the sidewalk, and lights a new one. A mucky dog wanders to a house, lifts his leg, and pisses on it. His urine flows down the wall and onto the street, forming a puddle on the pavement. The children run about, stepping in the piss, unconcerned. An old woman watches from the window, her large breasts hanging over the windowsill for the world to see. Une vie ordinaire, a mundane life...life in its purest. These streets bring me back to all the places I had escaped when I sneaked onto the ferry. The same feeling of conformity within despair, conformity with their destiny, prearranged long before these people were born. Nothing ever changes, nothing ever disturbs the gloomy corners of the underworld. Tucked away from the bright lights, tucked away from the shiny pavers on the promenade, hidden from the eyes of the tourists, the misery thrives. I cannot help but think of myself—only a few weeks ago my life was not much different from the view in front of my eyes. Yet, there is a certain peace soaring from these streets, a peace embedded in each cobblestone, in each rotten wall. The peace of men, unconcerned with the rest of the world, disturbed neither by global issues, nor by the stock market prices. A peace so ancient that it can only be found in the few corners of the world that remain unchanged for centuries. This is one of the places. I miss the intricacy of the street, I miss the feeling of excitement and danger melted together into one exceptional, nonconforming emotion. There is the real—the street; and then there is all the other—the removed. I am now on the other side of reality, unable to reach out with my hand and touch the pure life. I miss the street.

… The most important contribution you can make now is taking pride in your treasured home state. Because nobody else is. Study and cherish her history, even if you have to do it on your own time. I did. Don’t know what they’re teaching today, but when I was a kid, American history was the exact same every year: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims, Thomas Paine, John Hancock, Sons of Liberty, tea party. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we have to start somewhere— we’ll get to Florida soon enough.’…Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks, Paul Revere, the North Church, ‘Redcoats are coming,’ one if by land, two if by sea, three makes a crowd, and I’m sitting in a tiny desk, rolling my eyes at the ceiling. Hello! Did we order the wrong books? Were these supposed to go to Massachusetts?…Then things showed hope, moving south now: Washington crosses the Delaware, down through original colonies, Carolinas, Georgia. Finally! Here we go! Florida’s next! Wait. What’s this? No more pages in the book. School’s out? Then I had to wait all summer, and the first day back the next grade: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock…Know who the first modern Floridians were? Seminoles! Only unconquered group in the country! These are your peeps, the rugged stock you come from. Not genetically descended, but bound by geographical experience like a subtropical Ellis Island. Because who’s really from Florida? Not the flamingos, or even the Seminoles for that matter. They arrived when the government began rounding up tribes, but the Seminoles said, ‘Naw, we prefer waterfront,’ and the white man chased them but got freaked out in the Everglades and let ’em have slot machines…I see you glancing over at the cupcakes and ice cream, so I’ll limit my remaining remarks to distilled wisdom: “Respect your parents. And respect them even more after you find out they were wrong about a bunch of stuff. Their love and hard work got you to the point where you could realize this. “Don’t make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must. “If someone isn’t kind to animals, ignore anything they have to say. “Your best teachers are sacrificing their comfort to ensure yours; show gratitude. Your worst are jealous of your future; rub it in. “Don’t talk to strangers, don’t play with matches, don’t eat the yellow snow, don’t pull your uncle’s finger. “Skip down the street when you’re happy. It’s one of those carefree little things we lose as we get older. If you skip as an adult, people talk, but I don’t mind. “Don’t follow the leader. “Don’t try to be different—that will make you different. “Don’t try to be popular. If you’re already popular, you’ve peaked too soon. “Always walk away from a fight. Then ambush. “Read everything. Doubt everything. Appreciate everything. “When you’re feeling down, make a silly noise. “Go fly a kite—seriously. “Always say ‘thank you,’ don’t forget to floss, put the lime in the coconut. “Each new year of school, look for the kid nobody’s talking to— and talk to him. “Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work. “Cherish freedom of religion: Protect it from religion. “Remember that a smile is your umbrella. It’s also your sixteen-in-one reversible ratchet set. “ ‘I am rubber, you are glue’ carries no weight in a knife fight. “Hang on to your dreams with everything you’ve got. Because the best life is when your dreams come true. The second-best is when they don’t but you never stop chasing them. So never let the authority jade your youthful enthusiasm. Stay excited about dinosaurs, keep looking up at the stars, become an archaeologist, classical pianist, police officer or veterinarian. And, above all else, question everything I’ve just said. Now get out there, class of 2020, and take back our state!

Reading Group Guide  1.   The river town of Hobnob, Mississippi, is in danger of flooding. To offset the risk, the townspeople were offered the chance to relocate in exchange for money. Some people jumped at the opportunity (the Flooders); others (the Stickers) refused to leave, so the deal fell through. If you lived in Hobnob, which choice would you make and why? If you’d lived in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina, would you have fled the storm or stayed to protect your house? Did the two floods remind you of each other in terms of official government response or media coverage?  2.   How are the circumstances during the Prohibition era (laws against consuming or selling alcohol, underground businesses that make and sell booze on the black market, corruption in the government and in law enforcement) similar to what’s happening today (the fight to legalize and tax marijuana, the fallout of the drug war in countries like Mexico and Colombia, jails filled with drug abusers)? How are the circumstances different? Do you identify with the bootleggers or the prohibitionists in the novel? What is your stance on the issue today?  3.   The novel is written in third person from two different perspectives—Ingersoll’s and Dixie Clay’s—in alternating chapters. How do you think this approach adds to or detracts from the story? Are you a fan of books written from multiple perspectives, or do you prefer one character to tell his/her side of the story?  4.   The Tilted World is written by two authors. Do you think it reads differently than a book written by only one? Do you think you could coauthor a novel with a loved one? Did you try to guess which author wrote different passages?  5.   Language and dialect play an important role in the book. Do you think the southern dialect is rendered successfully? How about the authors’ use of similes (“wet towels hanging out of the upstairs windows like tongues”; “Her nylon stockings sagged around her ankles like shedding snakeskin.”). Do they provide necessary context or flavor?  6.   At the end of Chapter 5, when Jesse, Ham, and Ingersoll first meet, Ingersoll realizes that Jesse has been drinking water the entire time they’ve been at dinner. Of course, Ham and Ingersoll are both drunk from all the moonshine. How does this discovery set the stage for what happens in the latter half of the book?  7.   Ingersoll grew up an orphan. In what ways do you think that independence informed his character? His choices throughout the novel? Dixie Clay also became independent, after marrying Jesse and becoming ostracized from friends and family. Later, after Ingersoll rescues her, she reflects, “For so long she’d relied only on herself. She’d needed to. . . . But now she’d let someone in. It should have felt like weakness, but it didn’t.” Are love and independence mutually exclusive? How did the arrival of Willy prepare these characters for the changes they’d have to undergo to be ready for each other?  8.   Dixie Clay becomes a bootlegger not because she loves booze or money but because she needs something to occupy her time. It’s true, however, that she’s not only breaking the law but participating in a system that perpetrates violence. Do you think there were better choices she could have made? Consider the scene at the beginning of the novel, when there’s a showdown between Jesse and two revenuers interested in making an arrest. Dixie Clay intercepts the arrest, pretending to be a posse of gunslingers protecting Jesse and the still. Given what you find out about Jesse—his dishonesty, his drunkenness, his womanizing—do you think she made the right choice? If you were in Dixie Clay’s shoes, what would you have done?  9.   When Ham learns that Ingersoll abandoned his post at the levee to help Dixie Clay, he feels not only that Ingersoll acted

These were the horror stories I’d heard from job candidates coming from other companies. I interviewed veterans who’d worked for eight years in top studios and never shipped a game because of cancellations and changes from marketing. Some publishers didn’t allow their developers to play games, even after-hours (this was especially strange to us, since Blizzard encouraged this, stocking its hallway game cabinets with free copies of games for people to check out on a first-come, first-served basis). Yet some studios considered familiarity with other games bad for morale and prevented their employees from hanging posters from other projects or properties (including movies) because they didn’t reinforce “team spirit.” Many studios were highly structured, politically driven machines where argument was frowned upon and decisions were made by a small number of people. But the most common flaw in the industry at the time was its shortsighted nature—treating employees as temporary or easily replaced assets. Dev teams were often rebooted between projects, wiped before they ever established a rhythm or voice of their own. It was no wonder Blizzard retained its employees longer than other companies.

Our existence, even our intellect, hangs upon love- without it, we would be no more than stock and stones.

When was the last time a queen ruled here instead of a king? And look at what angry men do when they have power. We saw it in the underworld. Men run that city. Women are hanged, put in stocks, and whipped, all because men can’t bear the thought of women having the tiniest bit of control.

But few gain sufficient experience in Wall Street to command sucess until they reach that period of life in which they have one foot in the grave. When this time comes these old veterans of the Street usually spend long intervals of repose at their comfortable homes, and in times of panic, which recur sometimes oftener than once a year, these old fellows will be seen in Wall Street, hobbling down on their canes to their brokers' office. Then they always buy good stocks to the extent of their bank balances, which have been permitted to accumulate for just such an emergency. The panic usually rages until enough of these cash purchases of stock is made to afford a big "rake in." When the panic has spent its force, these old fellows, who have been resting judiciously on their oars in expectation of the inevitable event, which usually returns with the regularity of the seasons, quickly realize, deposit their profits with their bankers, or the overplus thereof, after purchasing more real estate that is on the upgrade, for permanent investment, and retire for another season to the quietude of their splendid homes and the bosoms of their happy families. If young men had only the patience to watch the speculative signs of the times, as manifested in the periodical egress of these old prophetic speculators from their shells of security, they would make more money at these intervals than by following up the slippery "tips" of the professional "pointers" of the Stock Exchange all the year round, and they would feel no necessity for hanging at the coat tails, around the hotels, of those specious frauds, who pretend to be deep in the councils of the big operations and of all the new "pools" in process of formation. I say to the young speculators, therefore, watch the ominous visits to the Street of these old men. They are as certain to be seen on the eve of a panic as spiders creeping stealthily and noiselessly from their cobwebs just before rain.

Why do you think I, a comfortable widower, made a fool of myself over Mrs. Fernsby until she finally consented to be my wife?” “Convenience?” she guessed. “Good God, no. There’s nothing convenient about joining your life to another person’s. Marriage is a sack race: you may find a way to hop together toward the finish line, but you would still reach it more easily without the sack.” “Then why do it at all?” “Our existence, even our intellect, hangs upon love—without it, we would be no more than stock and stones.

the parents who carried tennis rackets had children who carried tennis rackets. The parents with drinking problems and well-stocked home bars often were the ones called into the school counselor’s office about the Olde English forty-ounce found in Junior’s locker. The scientists had little scientists; the misogynists had little misogynists. Alice had always thought of her professional life in perfect contrast with her father’s—he’d had wild success, and she, none, just hanging on to something stable like a seahorse with its tail looped around some seagrass—but now she thought that she’d been wrong. He was afraid, too, and happier to stay close to what had worked, rather than risk it all on something new.

If Pitt tells you there's a Santa Claus, hang your stocking on the mantel, because you better believe it.

We leaned toward the window on the passenger’s side, watching him hunch around into his driving posture, setting himself casually between the door and the seat, his left arm hanging out the window. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “The little limp means nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It’s healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can’t harm you as long as it doesn’t settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough’s all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia’s all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less minute to do useful things. To cough or limp. Never mind the women. The women are all right. We rent a cassette and have some sex. It pumps blood to the heart. Forget the cigarettes. I like to tell myself I’m getting away with something. Let the Mormons quit smoking. They’ll die of something just as bad. The money’s no problem. I’m all set incomewise. Zero pensions, zero savings, zero stocks and bonds. So you don’t have to worry about that. That’s all taken care of. Never mind the teeth. The teeth are all right. The looser they are, the more you can wobble them with your tongue. It gives the tongue something to do. Don’t worry about the shakes. Everybody gets the shakes now and then. It’s only the left hand anyway. The way to enjoy the shakes is pretend it’s somebody else’s hand. Never mind the sudden and unexplained weight loss. There’s no point eating what you can’t see. Don’t worry about the eyes. The eyes can’t get any worse than they are now. Forget the mind completely. The mind goes before the body. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. So don’t worry about the mind. The mind is all right. Worry about the car. The steering’s all awry. The brakes were recalled three times. The hood shoots up on pothole terrain.

despise the idea that paintings are investments,” Auguste said. “Why not hang a Suez Canal stock certificate on the wall?

train me, nice as could be other than acting like she’s my mom, all honey-this and honey-that and “You think you can remember all that, sweetie?” Just three or four years out of high school herself. But she did have three kids, so probably she’d wiped so many asses she got stuck that way. I didn’t hold it against her. Coach Briggs’s brother stayed upstairs in the office. Heart attack guy was a mystery. First they said he might come back by the end of summer. Then they all stopped talking about him. As far as customers, every kind of person came in. Older guys would want to chew the fat outside in the dock after I loaded their grain bags or headgates or what have you. I handled all the larger items. They complained about the weather or tobacco prices, but oftentimes somebody would recognize me and want to talk football. What was my opinion on our being a passing versus running team, etc. So that was amazing. Being known. It was the voice that hit my ear like a bell, the day he came in. I knew it instantly. And that laugh. It always made you wish that whoever made him laugh like that, it had been you. I was stocking inventory in the home goods aisle, and moved around the end to where I could see across the store. Over by the medications and vaccines that were kept in a refrigerator case, he was standing with his back to me, but that wild head of hair was the giveaway. And the lit-up face of Donnamarie, flirting so hard her bangs were standing on end. She was opening a case for him. Some of the pricier items were kept under lock and key. I debated whether to go over, but heard him say he needed fifty pounds of Hi-Mag mineral and a hundred pounds of pelleted beef feed, so I knew I would see him outside. I signaled to Donnamarie that I’d heard, and threw it all on the dolly to wheel out to the loading dock. He pulled his truck around but didn’t really see me. Just leaned his elbow out the open window and handed me the register ticket. He’d kept the Lariat of course, because who wouldn’t. “You’ve still got the Fastmobile, I see,” I said. He froze in the middle of lighting a smoke, shifted his eyes at me, and shook his head fast, like a splash of cold water had hit him. “I’ll be goddamned. Diamond?” “The one,” I said. “How you been hanging, Fast Man?” “Cannot complain,” he said. But it seemed like he wasn’t a hundred percent on it really being me loading his pickup. He watched me in the side mirror. The truck bounced a little each time I hefted a mineral block or bag into the bed. Awesome leaf springs on that beauty. I came around to give him back his ticket, and he seemed more sure.

The old, the crippled, the children, everyone with their worldly goods on their backs, we’ll all have to fend for ourselves when our own soldiers flood the Marsh, but sheep are valuable. Look, nobody gives a damn for the Marsh except Marshmen. The government and the King don’t care if we starve. They put on the blockade but charge their rents and taxes same as ever, and they’ll let the sea or the French take us if that preserves their skins for another day. So we look after ourselves. And that means trading, and selling wool—some of it wool off the sheep that are going to be saved when old women and children will be left behind, acause if you think those landowners have given up their income for the sake of the war, you’re joking. They want their wool sold, just like the Quality in London want to wear silk and drink brandy, and the merchants want their shelves stocked. We run goods for them, and when they catch us doing it, they hang us for the look of the thing.

Haddam has always sheltered oddments like Paul, strangies you get used to seeing hanging around the Post Office or the newspaper kiosk, or at back tables in the library, reading China Today or Lancet and laughing about things only they know. These people wear the same clothes day-in, day-out, always appear fiercely involved in something, though in fact they’re doing nothing, since in an hour you see them involved in the same thing a block away. They are (or were) the love-child son or moody eldest daughter of some ex–New Jersey governor, long deceased, or the sallow, hollow-eyed offspring of some Swiss seminarian, who’s moved on. These aren’t the people who buy bump stocks or take up positions in a bell tower and rain terror upon an innocent world. They’re the watery presences at the periphery of yours and everyone else’s sight line, awaiting nothing, seemingly friendless (though not always), harming nothing and no one, growing old as you grow old, and who repair somewhere at night to sleep. It’s possible to think people like this don’t have lives full of expectancy and small triumphs. But they do.

The corner She sat there crouched in a corner, Her will was broken and nothing in her looked stronger, There were no signs of smiles or moments of joy, Around her an army of misfortunes time did deploy, So she lay there tied to her weariness, And her eyes revealed a deep emptiness, She had a benighted existence, And in her, sadness sought its own permanence, Many passed by her side, But all were busy dealing with their life’s own tide, A few turned and noticed her wretched state, But nobody wanted to uplift her spirits and mend her fate, She resided in a place that is neither hell nor paradise, Because in her state even soul refuses to rise, So she hangs between nowhere and nothing, Between everything and something, Between the Hell that is there and yet it is not anywhere, Between the Paradise that is there but actually nowhere, And her grief deepened every moment, And with every passing day she got cast into hopelessness’s basement, Now she lies there trapped and feelingless, Dealing with the life that is lifeless, Today when I saw her and her stock of misfortunes, I could hear her heart’s sad tunes, I stood there frozen in the moment, As she slipped deeper into despondency’s basement, And by the time I reached out my hand, There was the corner, an endless pile of misfortunes, and my empty hand, The basement had consumed her and everything related to her, It was an empty corner with nothing to offer and nothing to incur, But a realisation that how often we all fail, To sympathise with someone needy and frail, I too extended my hand but it was too late, And now for a lifetime I am caught in a debate, Where the guilt shall push all heedless passers by in the same basement, To clash with their own conscience and the girl’s every sentiment!

Refrain (by Jan Warren) Pick up your clothes, make your bed, is that a basket of ironing stuffed into your closet? How can you find anything in there? Clean it out, you´re not going to the park until it's done and I want you to take your sister with you, don't give me that look, just wait until your father comes home; I've never seen such a lazy kid, how did I ever get lucky enough to have you to deal with, you've got a chip on your shoulder; no, you can´t spend the night, because I said so, straighten that bedspread; wake up, you´ll be late for school, come right home after, I need you to go to the store and don't take forever, dinner has to be sometime tonight; set the table, make the salad, clean out the wastepaper basket, feed the dogs, sweep the floor, don't let the flies in, close that door, do you think money grows on trees, don't give me that look, just wait till your father gets home; who was that on the phone, why is he calling here? don´t talk to strangers, who was that walking with you, you better not have them hanging around, because I said so, you're too young, he's a boy, that's different, because I said so, that skirt is too short, take off that makeup, you look like a hussy in those fishnet stockings, where did you get that, you'll have to take it back, don't give me that look, just wait till your father gets home; the store called me today--you've taken practically nude pictures, you better stop or I'll tell your father, you're getting too big for your britches young lady, nice girls don't do things like that, keep going and you'll see what happens... don't give me that look...

Refrain (by Jan Warren) Pick up your clothes, make your bed, is that a basket of ironing stuffed into your closet? How can you find anything in there? Clean it out, you're not going to the park until it's done and I want you to take your sister with you, don't give me that look, just wait until your father comes home; I've never seen such a lazy kid, how did I ever get lucky enough to have you to deal with, you've got a chip on your shoulder; no, you can't spend the night, because I said so, straighten that bedspread; wake up, you'll be late for school, come right home after, I need you to go to the store and don't take forever, dinner has to be sometime tonight; set the table, make the salad, clean out the wastepaper basket, feed the dogs, sweep the floor, don't let the flies in, close that door, do you think money grows on trees, don't give me that look, just wait till your father gets home; who was that on the phone, why is he calling here? don't talk to strangers, who was that walking with you, you better not have them hanging around, because I said so, you're too young, he's a boy, that's different, because I said so, that skirt is too short, take off that makeup, you look like a hussy in those fishnet stockings, where did you get that, you'll have to take it back, don't give me that look, just wait till your father gets home; the store called me today--you've taken practically nude pictures, you better stop or I'll tell your father, you're getting too big for your britches young lady, nice girls don't do things like that, keep going and you'll see what happens...don't give me that look...

That a foreigner and fugitive from English justice should rise to such heights in his adopted country seems scarcely believable. Daniel Defoe, the keenest financial observer of the age, disparaged Law’s success. In order to rise in this world, wrote Defoe, The case is plain, you must put on a sword, kill a beau or two, get into Newgate [gaol], be condemned to be hanged, break prison if you can, – remember that by the way, – get over to some strange country, turn stock-jobber, set up a Mississippi stock, bubble a nation, and you may soon be a great man.

Ross’s “arbitrage pricing theory” and Rosenberg’s “bionic betas” posited that the returns of any financial security are the result of several systematic factors. Although seemingly stating the obvious, this was a seminal moment in the move toward a more vibrant understanding of markets. The eclectic Rosenberg was even put on the cover of Institutional Investor in May 1978, the bald, mustachioed man depicted as a giant meditating guru with flowers in his hair, worshipped by a gathering of besuited portfolio managers. The headline was “Who Is Barr Rosenberg? And What the Hell Is He Talking About?”8 What he was talking about was how academics were beginning to classify stocks according to not just their industry or their geography, but their financial characteristics. And some of these characteristics might actually prove to deliver better long-term returns than the broader stock market. In 1973, Sanjoy Basu, a finance professor at McMaster University in Ontario, published a paper that indicated that companies with low stock prices relative to their earnings did better than the efficient-markets hypothesis would suggest. Essentially, he showed that the value investing principles espoused by Benjamin Graham in the 1930s—which revolved around buying cheap, out-of-favor stocks trading below their intrinsic worth—was a durable investment factor. By systematically buying all cheap stocks, investors could in theory beat the broader market over time. Then Banz showed the same for small caps, another big moment in the evolution of factor investing. Follow-up studies on smaller stocks in Japan and the UK showed similar results, so in 1986 DFA launched dedicated small-cap funds for those two markets as well. In the early 1990s, finance professors Narasimhan Jegadeesh and Sheridan Titman published a paper indicating that simply surfing market momentum—in practice buying stocks that were already bouncing and selling those that were sliding—could also produce market-beating returns.9 The reasons for these apparent anomalies divide academics. Efficient-markets disciples stipulate that they are the compensation investors receive for taking extra risks. Value stocks, for example, are often found in beaten-up, unpopular, and shunned companies, such as boring industrial conglomerates in the middle of the dotcom bubble. While they can underperform for long stretches, eventually their underlying worth shines through and rewards investors who kept the faith. Small stocks do well largely because small companies are more likely to fail than bigger ones. Behavioral economists, on the other hand, argue that factors tend to be the product of our irrational human biases. For example, just like how we buy pricey lottery tickets for the infinitesimal chance of big wins, investors tend to overpay for fast-growing, glamorous stocks, and unfairly shun duller, steadier ones. Smaller stocks do well because we are illogically drawn to names we know well. The momentum factor, on the other hand, works because investors initially underreact to news but overreact in the long run, or often sell winners too quickly and hang on to bad bets for far longer than is advisable.

You have read New England history, dear, but you’ve let the ugly parts slip into the back of your mind. Your forefathers hanged helpless old women as witches.” “Yes, Lanny, but they believed the devil was in them.” “The Communists believe the devil is in the capitalists, the great landlords and others who monopolize the means of life and use them to exploit the laboring masses. It is a different set of ideas, but the fundamental attitude, the type of mind, is the same. Your forefathers put men in stocks, they ducked women in ducking stools, they drove Roger Williams, a gentle mystic, out into the wilderness.” “Surely they never murdered people wholesale as the Communists have done!” “Are you sure? Just go to your public library and get a history of Ireland, and see what Oliver Cromwell did to the Irish people, the names he called them, and the wholesale ferocious slaughter. Ireland is a smaller country than Russia, but proportionately I doubt if the Communists have killed as many people in Russia as the Roundheads killed in the Emerald Isle. You and I are used to seeing social progress made by means of the ballot, but we have to bear in mind that some peoples haven’t reached that stage of development and cannot get any sort of change without violence, and a lot of it.

Atlantic City" Well, they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night And they blew up his house, too Down on the boardwalk, they're getting ready for a fight Gonna see what them racket boys can do Now there's trouble busing in from out of state And the D.A. can't get no relief Gonna be a rumble out on the promenade And the gambling commission's hanging on by the skin of its teeth Well, now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact But maybe everything that dies someday comes back Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty And meet me tonight in Atlantic City Well, I got a job and tried to put my money away But I got debts that no honest man can pay So I drew what I had from the Central Trust And I bought us two tickets on that Coast City bus Well, now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact But maybe everything that dies someday comes back Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty And meet me tonight in Atlantic City Now, our luck may have died, and our love may be cold But with you, forever, I'll stay We're going out where the sand's turning to gold So put on your stockings, baby, 'cause the night's getting cold And everything dies, baby, that's a fact But maybe everything that dies someday comes back Now I been looking for a job, but it's hard to find Down here, it's just winners and losers and "Don't get caught on the wrong side of that line" Well, I'm tired of coming out on the losing end So, honey, last night, I met this guy, and I'm gonna do a little favor for him Well, now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact But maybe everything that dies someday comes back Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty And meet me tonight in Atlantic City Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (1982)

A brick would make a great stocking stuffer at Christmas—especially if you chisel it out of the fireplace the stocking is hanging from. Let the homeowner know how much you care.


Ok Kevin," he said to himself, "We were born for this! If we are ever going to find Laura then we can't be scared of the dark, can we?" He knew he had to press on, for both their sakes. He felt so awful thinking of her alone and scared, and probably always in danger. He knew the best help he could give her right now was to never give up. He knew he would find her, but he also knew he needed more supplies. He was going to hurry to his base to stock up, and then resume his journey. Taking a deep breath he said aloud, "On the count of three we'll run... ONE...TWO ... GO!!!" Kevin sprang from the tunnel entrance and launched towards the direction of his home. As he zoomed through the valley, he was pretty sure he passed a dozen spiders, some skeletons (arrows whizzed past his head a few times), and definitely a few zombies (he could hear their deep moans all around him). But it didn't matter; he just kept on running, passing through low-hanging tree branches and leaves as he went. He was so intent on reaching his home that he didn't see the drop off just a few blocks ahead of him, and went flying over the edge before his mind even registered what was happening. Falling

The day before Christmas came. Mama made her clove apple and began baking pies. Papa brought in a fresh pine tree and they decorated it with the beautiful apples. But to Katrina it just didn’t feel like Christmas. Even when she went to bed on Christmas Eve, Papa was still sawing away at the apple tree. On Christmas morning their stocking were filled with oranges, wild hickory nuts, black walnuts, and peppermint sticks. Josie gave Papa and Mama their scarves, and Katrina gave Mama the pincushion. But it still didn’t feel like Christmas to Katrina. Then Papa said, “Now my little ones, turn around and close your eyes. No peeking.” First Katrina heard Papa ask Mama to help him. Then she heard him hammering something to the beam, then he dragged something across the floor. “All right, you can look now,” said Mama. They whirled around. There, hanging from the beam, was Josie’s swing, the very same vine swing from the apple tree. Sitting on the swing was a little rag doll that Mama had made. Near the swing was a drawing board made from the very same limb that had been Katrina’s studio. On the drawing board were real charcoal paper and three sticks of willow charcoal. Katrina softly touched the drawing board. She wanted to say, How wise and wonderful you are, Papa and Thank you, Papa and I’ll always love you, Papa. But all she could say was, “Oh, Papa.” Papa didn’t say anything either. He just handed her the three sticks of charcoal. Josie began to swing with her doll and Katrina started to draw. Now she could see how beautiful Mama’s clove apple looked on the white tablecloth and how shiny red the apples were on the Christmas tree. Now she could smell the fresh winter pine tree and the warm apple pies. Now it felt like Christmas. Katrina gave her first drawing to Papa. It was a picture of the day when Papa picked the apples and Mama made apple butter and Katrina and Josie sorted the apples. In the corner Papa wrote: This picture was drawn by Katrina Ansterburg on Christmas Day 1881. Then he hung it in his woodshop and there it stayed for many long years.

The intruders spoke no words as they rushed in. Five boys carrying baseball bats and tire irons. They wore an assortment of Halloween masks and stocking masks. But Derek knew who they were. “No! No!” he cried. All five boys wore bulky shooter’s earmuffs. They couldn’t hear him. But more importantly, they couldn’t hear Jill. One of the boys stayed in the doorway. He was in charge. A runty kid named Hank. The stocking pulled down over his face smashed his features into Play-Doh, but it could only be Hank. One of the boys, fat but fast-moving and wearing an Easter Bunny mask, stepped to Derek and hit him in the stomach with his aluminum baseball bat. Derek dropped to his knees. Another boy grabbed Jill. He put his hand over her mouth. Someone produced a roll of duct tape. Jill screamed. Derek tried to stand, but the blow to his stomach had winded him. He tried to stand up, but the fat boy pushed him back down. “Don’t be stupid, Derek. We’re not after you.” The duct tape went around and around Jill’s mouth. They worked by flashlight. Derek could see Jill’s eyes, wild with terror. Pleading silently with her big brother to save her. When her mouth was sealed, the thugs pulled off their shooter’s earmuffs. Hank stepped forward. “Derek, Derek, Derek,” Hank said, shaking his head slowly, regretfully. “You know better than this.” “Leave her alone,” Derek managed to gasp, clutching his stomach, fighting the urge to vomit. “She’s a freak,” Hank said. “She’s my little sister. This is our home.” “She’s a freak,” Hank said. “And this house is east of First Avenue. This is a no-freak zone.” “Man, come on,” Derek pleaded. “She’s not hurting anyone.” “It’s not about that,” a boy named Turk said. He had a weak leg, a limp that made it impossible not to recognize him. “Freaks with freaks, normals with normals. That’s the way it has to be.” “All she does is—” Hank’s slap stung. “Shut up. Traitor. A normal who stands up for a freak gets treated like a freak. Is that what you want?” “Besides,” the fat boy said with a giggle, “we’re taking it easy on her. We were going to fix her so she could never sing again. Or talk. If you know what I mean.” He pulled a knife from a sheath in the small of his back. “Do you, Derek? Do you understand?” Derek’s resistance died. “The Leader showed mercy,” Turk said. “But the Leader isn’t weak. So this freak either goes west, over the border right now. Or…” He let the threat hang there. Jill’s tears flowed freely. She could barely breathe because her nose was running. Derek could see that by the way she sucked tape into her mouth, trying for air. She would suffocate if they didn’t let her go soon. “Let me at least get her doll.

By Lawrence Van Alstyne December 24, 1863 As tomorrow is Christmas we went out and made such purchases of good things as our purses would allow, and these we turned over to George and Henry for safe keeping and for cooking on the morrow. After that we went across the street to see what was in a tent that had lately been put up there. We found it a sort of show. There was a big snake in a showcase filled with cheap looking jewelry, each piece having a number attached to it. Also, a dice cup and dice. For $1.00 one could throw once, and any number of spots that came up would entitle the thrower to the piece of jewelry with a corresponding number on it. Just as it had all been explained to us, a greenhorn-looking chap came in and, after the thing had been explained to him, said he was always unlucky with dice, but if one of us would throw for him he would risk a dollar just to see how the game worked. Gorton is such an accommodating fellow I expected he would offer to make the throw for him, but as he said nothing, I took the cup and threw seventeen. The proprietor said it was a very lucky number, and he would give the winner $12 in cash or the fine pin that had the seventeen on it. The fellow took the cash, like a sensible man. I thought there was a chance to make my fortune and was going right in to break the bank, when Gorton, who was wiser than I, took me to one side and told me not to be a fool; that the greenhorn was one of the gang, and that the money I won for him was already his own. Others had come by this time and I soon saw he was right, and I kept out. We watched the game a while, and then went back to Camp Dudley and to bed. Christmas, and I forgot to hang up my stocking. After getting something to eat, we took stock of our eatables and of our pocket books, and found we could afford a few things we lacked. Gorton said he would invite his horse jockey friend, James Buchanan, not the ex-President, but a little bit of a man who rode the races for a living. So taking Tony with me I went up to a nearby market and bought some oysters and some steak. This with what we had on hand made us a feast such as we had often wished for in vain. Buchanan came, with his saddle in his coat pocket, for he was due at the track in the afternoon. George and Henry outdid themselves in cooking, and we certainly had a feast. There was not much style about it, but it was satisfying. We had overestimated our capacity, and had enough left for the cooks and drummer boys. Buchanan went to the races, Gorton and I went to sleep, and so passed my second Christmas in Dixie. At night the regiment came back, hungry as wolves. The officers mostly went out for a supper, but Gorton and I had little use for supper. We had just begun to feel comfortable. The regiment had no adventures and saw no enemy. They stopped at Baton Rouge and gave the 128th a surprise. Found them well and hearty, and had a real good visit. I was dreadfully sorry I had missed that treat. I would rather have missed my Christmas dinner. They report that Colonel Smith and Adjutant Wilkinson have resigned to go into the cotton and sugar speculation. The 128th is having a free and easy time, and according to what I am told, discipline is rather slack. But the stuff is in them, and if called on every man will be found ready for duty. The loose discipline comes of having nothing to do. I don’t blame them for having their fun while they can, for there is no telling when they will have the other thing. From Diary of an Enlisted Man by Lawrence Van Alstyne. New Haven, Conn., 1910.

Journals are, to a writer, deeply personal things. The moment we put our first thoughts on their pages they become a piece of our souls. My own favorite brown leather journal is where I always turn to give my fledgling ideas flesh; I have shaped entire lives and worlds between its covers before pushing them out into the world. That book (whose cover is still hanging on by sheer miracle) became my confidant, my talisman, my security blanket, and eventually my inspiration for Alice and her own journal. When I first started brainstorming her story in its pages, I thought I was going to be telling a story about a little girl whose journal was enchanted with the ability to transform the world around her into her most secret desires. I thought it would be a story about the dangers inherent in actually getting what we want and in learning to temper our desires with the needs of others. In a way, it still is. But eventually, it was writing in my journal that changed me instead of the other way around. Now Alice Will is also about laughing at ourselves and the empty traditions we value without knowing why. It’s about taking stock in our instincts before we let our fickle brains over-rationalize us out of the right choice. It’s about learning the hard way that maturity, at any age, is no match for experience. And finally, it’s about remembering that the right thing to do is still the right thing to do when no one is looking.

The best way to get this point across is to describe to you what Claudia was wearing at lunch that day. It was her vegetable blouse: an oversized white shirt with a green vegetable print all over it — cabbages and squashes and turnips and stuff. Under the blouse was a very short jean skirt, white stockings, green anklets over the stockings, and lavender sneakers, the kind boys usually wear, with a lot of rubber and big laces and the name of the manufacturer in huge letters on the sides. Wait, I’m not done. Claudia had pulled the hair on one side of her head back with a yellow clip that looked like a poodle. The hair on the other side of her head was hanging in her face. Attached to the one ear you could see was a plastic earring about the size of a jar lid. Awesome.

On another occasion, he opined, "But, if ever forgetful of her past and present glory, she shall cease to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave,' and become the purchased possession of a company of stock jobbers and speculators, if her people are to become the vassals of a great moneyed corporation, and to bow down to her pensioned and privileged nobility, if the patriots who shall dare to arraign her corruptions and denounce her usurpations, are to be sacrificed upon her gilded altar; such a country may furnish venal orators and presses but the soul of national poetry will be gone…That muse will 'Never bow the knee in mammon's fane.' No, the patriots of such a land must hide their shame in her deepest forests, and her bards must hang their harps upon the willows. Such a people, thus corrupted and degraded, 'Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying shall go down, To the vile dust from whence they sprung, Unwept, unhonored and unsung.

She dangled in mid-air, her skirt hooked up on the trellis, a pair of stockings and drawers on full display. "Tell me madam, have we met before?" he called up to her. "You look familiar, in an odd way." He pretended to think hard, rubbing his chin. "For pity's sake," she hissed, her voice muffled by the ivy. "Help me down you fool." "Hmmm. Let me consider it. Perhaps, for once, you ought to be polite to me and respectful for once. Or else you can hang there until Easter." "Suit yourself then! I can make my own way down." "Shall you swing from my chandelier as an encore?" he asked politely, greatly enjoying the show.

Maybe it’s not supposed to be sexy, but Teddy is bringing the sexy back to Christmas. He’s putting the X back into X-mas. He’s adding the hung into hanging the stockings. He’s about to Christmas bonus me into next week.

Yes, but what about tomorrow?” “There’ll be no tomorrow!” “But if there is. Say that there is—just for the sake of argument. That anger might take shape as something serious. After all, you know, the whole financial world’s been in a nose-dive the last few months. The stock market has crashed three separate times, or haven’t you noticed? Sensible investors don’t really believe the world is coming to an end, but they think other investors might start to think so, and so the smart ones sell out before the panic begins—thus touching off the panic themselves. And then they buy back afterward, and sell again as soon as the market rallies, and begin the whole downward cycle all over again. And what do you think has happened to business? Johnny Public doesn’t believe you either, but there’s no sense buying new porch furniture just now, is there? Better to hang on to your money, just in case, or put it into canned goods and ammunition, and let the furniture wait. “You see the point, Dr. Athor. Just as soon as this is all over, the business interests will be after your hide. They’ll say that if crackpots—begging your pardon—crackpots in the guise of serious scientists can upset the world’s entire economy any time they want simply by making some cockeyed prediction, then it’s up to the world to keep such things from happening. The sparks will fly, Doctor.

If Pitt tells you there's a Santa Claus, hang your stocking on the mantel, because you better believe it.

What was it I was hanging on to? What was it that was hanging on to me? What was standing between me and my freedom? The rest of the house was asleep. I lay on my back with my hands under my head staring at the darkened ceiling and all at once, very quietly, I let go of my ego. With a new note in the wind yelling at me not to be a fool, I turned myself over to God - lock, stock, and adventure. There wasn't much faith in my prayer. I just said, 'Lord, if You will show me the way, I will follow You. Amen.' It was as simple as that.

Why did you take it out of the window and hang up some old socks instead?” Peter asked. Uncle Jim laughed. “The stockings are for Christmas presents.” “Who’d want socks for Christmas?” Peter asked. “Not as a present! They hold presents. You know, lemon drops for your sisters…chocolates for your mother…” Jim said. Peter gave Jim a funny smile. “I don’t know if I’d want lemon drops after they’d been in one of my socks.

I was standing on two feet, without crutches, wearing two shoes. I could read and I could sing. I had walked to church even though it was a long way. I needed to remember that. I tried to force myself to feel happy, but underneath the happiness I felt prickly, like my skin was stretched too tight all over. I might not be a cripple, but I didn’t know who I was. • • • At home Susan made us hang our stockings and chivvied us off to bed. In the morning my stocking bulged with something I never expected, or wanted at all.

Do build on the child’s strengths: “You are such a good cook! Help me remember what we need for our meat loaf recipe. Then, you can mix it.” Or, “You have energy to spare. Could you run over to Mrs. Johnson’s house and get a magazine she has for me?” Think “ability,” not “disability.” Do build on the child’s interests: “Your collection of rocks is growing fast. Let’s read some books about rocks. We can make a list of the different kinds you have found.” Your interest and support will encourage the child to learn more and do more. Do suggest small, manageable goals to strengthen your child’s abilities: “How about if you walk with me just as far as the mailbox? You can drop the letter in. Then I’ll carry you piggy-back, all the way home.” Or, “You can take just one dish at a time to clear the table. We aren’t in a hurry.” Do encourage self-help skills: To avoid “learned helplessness,” sponsor your child’s independence. “I know it’s hard to tie your shoes, but each time you do it, it will get easier.” Stress how capable she is, and how much faith you have in her, to build her self-esteem and autonomy. Show her you have expectations that she can help herself. Do let your child engage in appropriate self-therapy: If your child craves spinning, let him spin on the tire swing as long as he wants. If he likes to jump on the bed, get him a trampoline, or put a mattress on the floor. If he likes to hang upside down, install a chinning bar in his bedroom doorway. If he insists on wearing boots every day, let him wear boots. If he frequently puts inedible objects into his mouth, give him chewing gum. If he can’t sit still, give him opportunities to move and balance, such as sitting on a beach ball while he listens to music or a story. He will seek sensations that nourish his hungry brain, so help him find safe ways to do so. Do offer new sensory experiences: “This lavender soap is lovely. Want to smell it?” Or, “Turnips crunch like apples but taste different. Want a bite?” Do touch your child, in ways that the child can tolerate and enjoy: “I’ll rub your back with this sponge. Hard or gently?” Or, “Do you know what three hand squeezes mean, like this? I-Love-You!

Activities to Develop the Proprioceptive System Lifting and Carrying Heavy Loads—Have the child pick up and carry soft-drink bottles to the picnic; laundry baskets upstairs; or grocery bags, filled with nonbreakables, into the house. He can also lug a box of books, a bucket of blocks, or a pail of water from one spot to another. Pushing and Pulling—Have the child push or drag grocery bags from door to kitchen. Let him push the stroller, vacuum, rake, shove heavy boxes, tow a friend on a sled, or pull a loaded wagon. Hard muscular work jazzes up the muscles. Hanging by the Arms—Mount a chinning bar in a doorway, or take your child to the park to hang from the monkey bars. When she suspends her weight from her hands, her stretching muscles send sensory messages to her brain. When she shifts from hand to hand as she travels underneath the monkey bars, she is developing upper-body strength. Hermit Crab—Place a large bag of rice or beans on the child’s back and let her move around with a heavy “shell” on her back. Joint Squeeze—Put one hand on the child’s forearm and the other on his upper arm; slowly press toward and away from his elbow. Repeat at his knee and shoulder. Press down on his head. Straighten and bend his fingers, wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, and toes. These extension and flexion techniques provide traction and compression to his joints and are effective when he’s stuck in tight spaces, such as church pews, movie theaters, cars, trains, and especially airplanes where the air pressure changes. Body Squeeze—Sit on the floor behind your child, straddling him with your legs. Put your arms around his knees, draw them toward his chest, and squeeze hard. Holding tight, rock him forward and back.

If Alessandro and Rosy are working from a disadvantage in terms of product recognition, they have put generations of accumulated experience into practice to fill the menu with dozens of little tastes of Como. They make fragrant, full-flavored stocks from the bones and bodies of perch and chub. They cure whitefish eggs in salt, creating a sort of freshwater bottarga, ready to be grated over pasta and rice. Shad is brined in vinegar and herbs, whitefish becomes a slow-cooked ragù or a filling for ravioli, and pigo and pike form the basis of Mella's polpettine di pesce, Pickled, dried, smoked, cured, pâtéd: a battery of techniques to ensure that nothing goes to waste. If you can make it with meat, there's a good chance Alessandro and Rosy have made it with lake fish. And then there's missoltino, the lake's most important by-product, a staple that stretches back to medieval times and has been named a presidio by Slow Food, a designation reserved for the country's most important ingredients and food traditions. The people still making missoltino can be counted on a single hand. Alessandro guts and scales hundreds of shad at a time, salts the bodies, and hangs them like laundry to dry under the sun for forty-eight hours or more. The dried fish are then layered with bay leaves, packed into metal canisters, and weighed down. Slowly the natural oils from the shad escape and bubble to the surface, forming a protective layer that preserves the missoltino indefinitely. It can be used as a condiment of sorts, a weapons-grade dose of lake umami to be detonated in salads and pastas. In its most classic preparation, served with toc, a thick, rich scoop of polenta slow cooked in a copper pot over a wood fire, it tastes of nothing you've eaten in Italy- or anywhere else.

Now did God want you to read that verse at that moment? Sure. God could have used a thousand other verses to speak to you, but He used that one for you in a specific way. God does that sort of thing all the time. He brings versus to mind. He gives us a powerful sermon in our moment of great need. He leads us to a passage of Scripture that says just what He wants to say. So the problem is not with God’s mysterious ability to direct us to the right verses. The problem is not only in treating random verses as holier than other kinds of Bible reading, but in taking verses out of context and making them say things they were never meant to say. I can imagine a young man dating a girl named Becky. He is considering marriage, but he’s not sure. So he asks the Lord to give him a sign. Well, the day is January 24 and his Bible reading plan has him reading from Genesis 24 (NIV). He gets to the end of the chapter and reads “and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her.” The young man takes it as a sure word from the Lord to propose to Becky. To delay any longer would be disobedience. Or what about the woman who turns at random to 2 Samuel 7:3: “Go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you”? Is that always good advice, straight from the Lord? Maybe you’ve heard the joke about the man who was hoping to get a word from the Lord and happened to turn to Matthew 27:5 where it says that Judas “went and hanged himself.” Not happy with this word for the day, the man flipped his Bible open to another page, where his eyes descended upon Luke 10:37, “And Jesus said to him, ‘You go, and do likewise.’” These may be extreme examples, but they are not too far removed from how many Christians approach the Bible. Even if the answers seem thrilling in their relevance, we must not put any stock in anachronistic, out-of-context answers we read into the Bible after asking questions the Bible never intended to address.

Cassandra,” Falco murmured. He reached up and twisted all her hair into one of his hands, pulling it slightly as he held it behind her head. His lips made their way across her cheek and her jaw and her brow bone. His other hand caressed her left leg through her cotton stocking. His fingers followed the repeating diamond pattern embossed into her leather garter and then stroked the soft skin just above it. Cass felt transported by his touch, his soft voice, and the mist rising off the canals. Everything felt otherworldly. It was a dream or a hallucination. Any moment now she’d wake up tucked beneath her covers with Slipper snuggled against her chest. Just let go. The batèla floated beneath a bridge. A man shrouded in darkness hung over its edge, leering at her. Cass sat up suddenly, wrapping the rough blanket up around her shoulders. She looked back toward the bridge. No one was there. “What’s wrong?” Falco asked. “I thought I saw someone. Hanging over the bridge. Watching.” “Probably just some deviant. Not lucky enough to have the company of a beautiful woman.” Falco moved to kiss Cass again. But fear was drumming through her. It sharpened her focus, and made reality come slamming back. Cass put her hand out. “Wait. We have to stop, to slow down.” Falco sighed. “You’re right,” he said, running both hands through his hair. “Sometimes I think--well, I fear that you shouldn’t trust me.” “Why?” Cass asked. Holding her lantern high in the air, she looked back toward the bridge again, but it was still deserted. “Because I don’t trust myself around you.” Falco’s voice turned soft again. He ran the knuckles of his right hand down the side of her face. “Who knows what I might do?” Cass blushed. “Who knows what I might let you do?” The words just slipped out, but she didn’t want to take them back. She didn’t want to hide any longer. Falco pulled her close to him, positioning her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her slender waist and leaned his chin on her left shoulder, his jawbone against her cheek. “Your beauty lights up the darkest night,” he said. “I could paint an entire chapel just for you. Maybe I will someday.

I know, now, that our lives are made up of changing seasons. Through the darkest days of bleak midwinter we have to do what we can to keep the faith, nourishing our bodies and our souls, keeping a flame burning—no matter how tiny or how tenuous—deep down inside our hearts. And that, in the bleakest moments of all, we should make a Christmas for ourselves, piling on the tinsel, lighting the candles and the fairy lights and rolling back the darkness that threatens to encroach, with the promise of a rebirth; a reawakening; a Réveillon. Because, if we can just hang on in there long enough, spring will return and the leaves, hidden deep within the bare branches and the stark vine stocks, will unfurl to the sunlight with tender, new promise.

Grant said, "I think I like the idea of hanging my stockings twice! But I would not like to run into Old Buck...and get bucked, or something.

It would be logical for any group whose only sense of identity is the negative one of wickedness and oppression to dilute its wickedness by mixing with more virtuous groups. This is, upon reflection, exactly what celebrating diversity implies. James Carignan, a city councilor in Lewiston, Maine, encouraged the city to welcome refugees from the West African country of Togo, writing, “We are too homogeneous at present. We desperately need diversity.” He said the Togolese—of whom it was not known whether they were literate, spoke English, or were employable—“will bring us the diversity that is essential to our quest for excellence.” Likewise in Maine, long-serving state’s attorney James Tierney wrote of racial diversity in the state: “This is not a burden. This is essential.” An overly white population is a handicap. Gwynne Dyer, a London-based Canadian journalist, also believes whites must be leavened with non-whites in a process he calls “ethnic diversification.” He noted, however, that when Canada and Australia opened their borders to non-white immigration, they had to “do good by stealth” and not explain openly that the process would reduce whites to a minority: “Let the magic do its work, but don’t talk about it in front of the children. They’ll just get cross and spoil it all.” Mr. Dyer looked forward to the day when politicians could be more open about their intentions of thinning out whites. President Bill Clinton was open about it. In his 2000 State of the Union speech, he welcomed predictions that whites would become a minority by mid-century, saying, “this diversity can be our greatest strength.” In 2009, before a gathering of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, he again brought up forecasts that whites will become a minority, adding that “this is a very positive thing.” [...] Harvard University professor Robert Putnam says immigrants should not assimilate. “What we shouldn’t do is to say that they should be more like us,” he says. “We should construct a new us.” When Marty Markowitz became the new Brooklyn borough president in 2002, he took down the portrait of George Washington that had hung in the president’s office for many years. He said he would hang a picture of a black or a woman because Washington was an “old white man.” [...] In 2000, John Sharp, a former Texas comptroller and senator told the state Democratic Hispanic Caucus that whites must step aside and let Hispanics govern, “and if that means that some of us gringos are going to have to give up some life-long dreams, then we’ve got to do that.” When Robert Dornan of California was still in Congress, he welcomed the changing demographics of his Orange County district. “I want to see America stay a nation of immigrants,” he said. “And if we lose our Northern European stock—your coloring and mine, blue eyes and fair hair—tough!” Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times, appears happy to become a minority. He wrote this about Sonya Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings: “[T]his particular wise Latina, with the richness of her experiences, would far more often than not reach a better [judicial] conclusion than the individual white males she faced in that Senate hearing room. Even those viewers who watched the Sotomayor show for only a few minutes could see that her America is our future and theirs is the rapidly receding past.” It is impossible to imagine people of any other race speaking of themselves this way.

REGRET ME When you look in the mirror Take stock of your soul And when you hear my voice, remember You ruined me whole Don’t you dare sleep easy And leave the sleepless nights to me Let the world weigh you down And, baby, when you think of me I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll Regret me Regretfully When you look at her Take stock of what you took from me And when you see a ghost in the distance Know I’m hanging over everything Don’t you dare sleep easy And leave the sleepless nights to me Let the world weigh you down And, baby, when you think of me I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll Regret me Regretfully Regret me