High Tea Quotes

She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.

Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls.

I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward.  I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer. We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?” He, of course, replied, “No.” “Well, we’re going to a better place.” When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds. Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.” “Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked. “My father’s a ghost,” he whispered. I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined.  Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path. “Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.

If you really want to change a culture to empower women improve basic hygiene and health care and fight high rates of infant mortality the answer is to educate girls.

After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur's mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-shocked fragments the previous day had left him with. He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

You said that you thought Queen Orlagh was waiting for an advantage to declare war. Instead, I think she is trying a new ruler—one she hopes she can trick or replace with another indebted to her. She thinks me young and feckless and means to take my measure.” “So what?” I ask. “Our choice is to endure her games, no matter how deadly, or engage in a war we cannot win?” Cardan shakes his head and drinks another cup of tea. “We show her that I am no feckless High King.” “And how do we do that?” I ask. “With great difficulty,” he says. “Since I fear she is right.

Shigure: Perhaps I can offer some advice? ...You know, Tohru-kun, when you get anxiety about the future it's better not to think about it. And let's not wipe our faces with dishtowels... For example let's say, Tohru-kun, that you are surrounded with a mountain of laundry piled so high around your feet that you can't move. Are you with me? Now, let's assume you don't have a washing machine, so you have to wash everything individually by hand. You would be at a loss for what to do, right? You'd worry about if you could ever wash everything, if you could get it all clean, if you'd ever have time for anything but laundry ever again! The more you'd think about it, the more anxious you'd get. But the time keeps passing, and the laundry doesn't wash itself. So what do you do, Tohru-kun? It might be a good idea to start washing the laundry right at your feet. Of course it's important to think about what lies ahead, too, but if you only look at what's down the road you'll get tangled in the laundry at your feet and you'll fall, won't you? You see, it's also important to think about what you can do now, what you can do today. And if you keep washing things one at a time, you'll be done before you know it. Because fortune is looking out for you. Sometimes the anxiety will start to well up, but when it does, take a little break. Read a book, watch TV, or eat soumen with everyone. Oh my, I'm shocked! Wow! What a wonderful analogy! I really must treat myself to some soumen as a reward... Oh! I'd like some tea, too! Kyo: Why you... You just wanted to eat soumen, didn't you?!

Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, ’Of course I am happy here! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!’ In its wholehearted acceptance of what is;I feel as if he had struck me in the chest. Butter tea and wind pictures, the Crystal Mountain, and blue sheep dancing on the snow-it’s quite enough! Have you seen the snow leopard? No! Isn’t that wonderful?

You can serve high tea around the dining room table, but afternoon tea is more of a living room occasion, with everything brought in on a tray or a cart.

I want to have the whole English experience. High tea, supervising manifestations, taking the waters, going to Harrods, discussing possible international conspiracies.

At first, we were all watching butterflies and chasing rainbows and seeking out moonbeams. Then something changed. The viper got hold of the rainbows and roared into life. The high-octane tea went to work. Everyone went crackers.

Yoh: Being popular with guys isn't something you can just stitch together! Haruna: What?! I Can't?! Yoh: OF COURSE NOT! Yoh: Mixing coke, tea and orange juice would taste nasty, right?! That's exactly what you're doing!

I'll tell the truth; all of my songs Are pretty much the fucking same I'm not a faerie but I need More than this life so I became This creature representing more to you Than just another girl And if I had a chance to change my mind I wouldn't for the world Twenty years Sinking slowly Can I trust you But I don't want to I don't want to be a legend Oh well that's a god damned lie - I do To say I do this for the people I admit is hardly true You tell me everything's all right As though it's something you've been through You think this torment is romantic Well it's not except to you Twenty years Sinking slowly Can I trust you But I don't want to I will swallow If it will help my sea level go down But I'll come back to haunt you if I drown Low tide and high tea The oysters are waiting for me If I'm not there on time I'll send my emissary If I photoshop you Out of every picture I could Go quietly quiet But would that do any good Will it hurt? No it won't Then what am I so afraid of Filthy victorians They made me what I'm made of The brighter the light The darker the shadow I don't need a minder I've made up my mind Go away

Iced tea! Nothing is half so refreshing as a glass of black tea piled high with ice! More than a quencher of thirst, it is a tamer of tempers, a lifter of lethargy, and a brightener of smiles. It is a taste of Winter’s chill, magically trapped in midsummer’s glass.

To be a butch girl in high school, to be better at masculinity than all the men around you, and then to be punished for it!

Things look familiar: the high shelves full of books, jars of green tea, dried flowers—also for tea, big rocks, and crystals that emit strong prana and light. The light trapped inside the crystals makes them brighter, stunning against the dark background of the wooden floor and ceiling.

Time is drowning, Hearts are burning, Heads are rolling, Nothing can save you now, Tick tock, tick tock; Creatures talking, Weak are rising, White Queen’s nearing, Nothing can save you now, Tick tock, tick tock; Cards are bleeding, Crowns are sweating, Tea is spilling, Nothing can save you now, Tick tock, tick tock; Red Queen, here’s your warning, Wonderland’s raging, Alice is coming, Highness, time is drowning, And nothing can save you now, Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock…

Do they have target priority protocols?” I asked. “Would they be able to differentiate between a high- and low-priority target?” Rogan’s face shut down. “No.” “No, they don’t?” I clarified. “No, I won’t let you do this.” We stared at each other. The tension in the room was so thick, you could slice it with a knife and serve it with tea. Leon whistled a melody from a gunfighter Western.

Tea Party adherents seemed to arrive at their dislike of the federal government via three routes--through their religious faith (the government curtailed the church, they felt), through hatred of taxes (which they saw as too high and too progressive), and through its impact on their loss of honor.

I thought Mr. Millward never would cease telling us that he was no tea-drinker, and that it was highly injurious to keep loading the stomach with slops to the exclusion of more wholesome sustenance, and so give himself time to finish his fourth cup.

Don't you know anything at all about numbers?" "Well, I don't think they're very important," snapped Milo, too embarrassed to admit the truth. "NOT IMPORTANT!" roared the Dodecahedron, turning red with fury. "Could you have tea for two without the two — or three blind mice without the three? Would there be four corners of the earth if there weren't a four? And how would you sail the seven seas without a seven?" "All I meant was—" began Milo, but the Dodecahedron, overcome with emotion and shouting furiously, carried right on. "If you had high hopes, how would you know how high they were? And did you know that narrow escapes come in all different widths? Would you travel the whole wide world without ever knowing how wide it was? And how could you do anything at long last," he concluded, waving his arms over his head, "without knowing how long the last was? Why, numbers are the most beautiful and valuable things in the world. Just follow me and I'll show you." He turned on his heel and stalked off into the cave.

So she sat down to morning tea, like any other old lady with a high nose, thin cheeks, a ring on her finger and the usual trappings of rather shabby but gallant old age...

Jin made a sound as high pitched as a tea kettle as his spherical body vibrated with excitement. "Pirate hunters. We're going to be pirate hunters." Damn it. She'd lost him. Jin bobbed up and down, looking like a jack in the box. "I never say this, but be yourself, Kira, and we can realize our lifelong dream." Jin screamed to himself as he careened in a circle. "We'll get a big fancy hat and an artificial leg. This is going to be great.

I’d consider it profession enough to have streaky bleached hair, to wear a green scarf, to spill spicy teas, to walk (slightly) unevenly on high heels. What more is there to give to the world than that? I realize this sentiment of mine is currently considered appalling, but these days I find the popularity of ideas even more meaningless than ever before.

I’ll deliberately order a jasmine tea and a fruit plate just to make a point to the client that I’m a serious and disciplined professional. I usually accompany that with a quick line about how shitty the hotel gym is. “The treadmill shakes too much at high speeds” is a fan favorite. The client is almost always impressed.

It was full of the most delicious displays, piled high with pink and white fancies, cakes piped with cream and scattered with nuts, and absolutely heaps of swirled golden-brown buns. They were studded with raisins and dripping with syrup. My mouth watered. It had been hours since those train sandwiches, their cheese slightly warm and their chutney gluey. Beyond the buns I saw tables full of people enjoying splendid teas. My stomach gurgled.

Tea no more! Down with bustles!

On the coffee table is a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff’s and two cans of NutraSlim. High tea in hell,

Oberon said from behind the counter. I busied myself making Emily's tea and spoke to him through our link. 'Yes, well, she's decided to take the high road, so I'll be happy to walk it with her as long as she likes.' 'Nope. She's a witch. A polite witch, but still a witch. She's got a charm on her hair that would have had me giving her anything she wanted if I hadn't been wearing protection. Don't take anything from her, by the way.' 'Oh yes she does. Emily has probably already told her.' 'How would you know the difference if she did? You think all sausages are magic.

I felt myself a new species of child. Not a boy (most assuredly) but neither a (mere) girl. That skirt-bound race perpetually moving about serving tea had nothing to do with me. I had such high hopes, you see. The boundaries of the world seemed vast. I would visit Rome, Paris, Constantinople. Underground cafés presented in my mind where, crushed against wet walls, a (handsome, generous) friend and I sat discussing—many things. Deep things, new ideas. Strange green lights shone in the streets, the sea lapped nearby against greasy tilted moorings; there was trouble afoot, a revolution, into which my friend and I must— Well, as is often the case, my hopes were…not realized.

The hour [...] can be anywhere between three and six o'clock in the afternoon. The general rule is that the earlier tea is served, the lighter the refreshments. At three, tea is usually a snack -- dainty finger sandwiches, petits fours, fresh strawberrries; at six, it can be a meal -- or "high" tea -- with sausage rolls, salads, and trifle.

Southern women are unique; there is no disputing that. We are women born of conflict, our pasts littered with battles and chaos, self-preservation, and protection. We’ve run plantations during wars, served Union soldiers tea before watching them burn our homes, hidden slaves from prosecution, and endured centuries of watching and learning from our men’s mistakes. It is not easy to survive life in the South. It is even more difficult to do it with a smile on your face. We have held these states together, held our dignity and graciousness, held our head high when it was smeared with blood and soot. We are strong. We are Southern. We have secrets and lives you will never imagine.

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again. This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.

We can house everyone in the palace. Just think of all the dinners and teas and dancing." "Just think of all the dinners and teas and dancing," said David glumly. Genya set her pen aside and seized his hands. "I promise to let you hide in your workshop. Just give me five events and one banquet." "Three events and one banquet." "Four." "Very well." "You're a dreadful negotiator," said Nikolai. "She would have settled for two." David frowned. "Is that true?" "Absolutely not," said Genya. "And do shut up, Your Highness.

Hot as hell isn't he?' Exie questioned from over my shoulder. 'Yeah, I guess he is' 'You guess? Are you blind? Girl, he is so fine it's scary. I nearly had an orgasm the other day when he asked me a cup of tea. But don't stare too hard, Meagan will scratch your eyes out if she catches you staring at her man.' Exie said with a high eyebrow warning.

Monsoons and tea were inseparable partners in love and their fidelity had stood the test of time. Together they oozed an unsurpassable romance so it sometimes evoked jealousy in those preferring the high of wine. - Page 124, Blue Jeans

He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariable delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The Nutri-Matic was designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaint department now covers all the major landmasses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system.

Ah, and that's why it is magic. Not all recipes in life are easily understood or followed or deconstructed. Sometimes you have to take what is given to you and use your talents to brew the best tea possible.

What he confessed was this. He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles. He had been on a satanic quest. These were some of James Jesus Angleton’s dying words. He delivered them between fits of calamitous coughing—lung-scraping seizures that still failed to break him of his cigarette habit—and soothing sips of tea. “Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars,” Angleton told Trento in an emotionless voice. “The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. . . . Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it.” He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day—Dulles, Helms, Wisner. These men were “the grand masters,” he said. “If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.” Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup. “I guess I will see them there soon.

True. This gluten-is-the-enemy thing is total bullshit. And don’t get me started on kombucha tea, kale, anything with antioxidants in it, and the fallacy that high-fructose corn syrup is the root of all evil.

The tea-masters held that real appreciation of art is only possible to those who make of it a living influence. Thus they sought to regulate their daily life by the high standard of refinement which obtained in the tea-room. In all circumstances serenity of mind should be maintained, and conversation should be conducted as never to mar the harmony of the surroundings. The cut and color of the dress, the poise of the body, and the manner of walking could all be made expressions of artistic personality. These were matters not to be lightly ignored, for until one has made himself beautiful he has no right to approach beauty. Thus the tea-master strove to be something more than the artist,—art itself.

Extraordinary—that Willowdale Academy and Calvin Coolidge High School should both be institutions of learning! The contrast is stunning. I had a leisurely tea with the Chairman of the English Department. I saw several faculty members sitting around in offices and lounges, sipping tea, reading, smoking. Through the large casement windows bare trees rubbed cozy branches. (One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them"!) Old leather chairs, book-lined walls, air of cultivated casualness, sound of well-bred laughter.

I had now been a servant for three years, and could act the part well enough by that time. But Nancy was very changeable, two-faced you might call her, and it wasn't easy to tell what she wanted from one hour to the next. One minute she would be up on her high horse and ordering me about and finding fault, and the next minute she would be my best friend, or pretend to be, and would put her arm through mine, and say I looked tired, and should sit down with her, and have a cup of tea. It is much harder to work for such a person, as just when you are curtsying and Ma'am-ing them, they turn around and upbraid you for being so stiff and formal, and want to confide in you, and expect the same in return. You cannot ever do the correct thing with them.

Mormons have to have absurdly high standards. Other people try not to drink to excess. Mormons refuse to drink at all. Other people cut back on their coffee at Lent. Mormons drink neither coffee nor tea, ever, and I know plenty of Mormons who think it is wrong to drink hot chocolate, or herbal tea, or decaffeinated coffee. Or anything that could be mistaken for tea at a casual glance. Or anything coffee-flavored. Or rum-flavored. Or even vanilla extract.

He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose sins are forgiven them. Everything his eye fell on it feasted on, not aesthetically, but with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy eating buns. He relished the squareness of the houses; he liked their clean angles as if he had just cut them with a knife. The lit squares of the shop windows excited him as the young are excited by the lit stage of some promising pantomime. He happened to see in one shop which projected with a bulging bravery on to the pavement some square tins of potted meat, and it seemed like a hint of a hundred hilarious high teas in a hundred streets of the world. He was, perhaps, the happiest of all the children of men. For in that unendurable instant when he hung, half slipping, to the ball of St. Paul's, the whole universe had been destroyed and re-created.

My personal view (and not the view of the LAS by any means) would be to prohibit alcohol, but legalise cannabis. Not only would it cut our workload by, at my estimate, 60-70%, but I’ve never had anyone high on cannabis try to hit me. Cannabis users are very rarely violent, tend to be generally easier to handle and seldom get loud and annoying. It’s true that there are long-term health consequences, and that heavy ‘stoners’ can waste their life away, but the same holds true of alcohol and alcoholics.

It was a beautiful room, not an office at all, and much bigger than it looked from outside--airy and white, with a high ceiling and a breeze fluttering in the starched curtains. In the corner, near a low bookshelf, was a big round table littered with teapots and Greek books, and there were flowers everywhere, roses and carnations and anemones, on his desk, on the table, in the windowsills. The roses were especially fragrant; their smell hung rich and heavy in the air, mingled with the smell of bergamot, and black China tea, and a faint inky scent of camphor. Breathing deep, I felt intoxicated. Everywhere I looked was something beautiful--Oriental rugs, porcelains, tiny paintings like jewels--a dazzle of fractured color that struck me as if I had stepped into one of those little Byzantine churches that are so plain on the outside; inside, the most paradisal painted eggshell of gilt and

A little boy, he can play like he's a fireman or a cop--although fewer and fewer are pretending to be cops, thank God--or a deep-sea diver or a quarterback or a spaceman or a rock 'n roll star or a cowboy, or anything else glamorous and exciting (Author's note: What about a novelist, Jellybean?), and although chances are by the time he's in high school he'll get channeled into safer, duller ambitions, the great truth is, he can be any of those things, realize any of those fantasies, if he has the strength, nerve and sincere desire...But little girls? Podner, you know that story as well as me. Give 'em doll babies, tea sets and toy stoves. And if they show a hankering for more bodacious playthings, call 'em tomboy, humor 'em for a few years and then slip 'em the bad news...And the reality is, we got about as much chance of growing up to be cowgirls as Eskimos have got being vegetarians.

Butter tea has been known for centuries to improve health in people exposed to high altitudes.

she’d learned to bring the kinds of things he asked for. Which, apparently, mostly consisted of tea, good food and high explosives.

Clara’s twin sister, Violet, passed by the open entrance to the den, heading toward the front door. “Hi, ladies.” She waved, passing on by, but then froze mid-step and turned toward us, staring straight at me, obviously taking in my presence amongst the High Tea Book Club with a frilly teacup on my knee. Then she burst into laughter and walked on toward the front door, muttering, “Priceless.

They were staying at the Plaza Hotel and, immediately after arrival, went to tea. At afternoon tea—never call it high tea, Barbara had said—Evelyn showed off what she and Barbara had been practicing at home.

Make tea. As the water boils, you think about the “her’s” like a love list. Valerie in the 4th grade, Naomi in the 6th, Linda in high school, Sammie in college, Camille from work, and the latest one to have signed your heart and left: Sophia. You think through each girl, wondering what she’s eating for breakfast. You miss them, not because you want a relationship, but because love only works in permanent marker.

Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations.

Think of all the requirements writers imagine for themselves: A cabin in the woods A plain wooden table Absolute silence A favorite pen A favorite ink A favorite blank book A favorite typewriter A favorite laptop A favorite writing program A large advance A yellow pad A wastebasket A shotgun The early light of morning The moon at night A rainy afternoon A thunderstorm with high winds The first snow of winter A cup of coffee in just the right cup A beer A mug of green tea A bourbon Solitude Sooner or later the need for any one of these will prevent you from writing. Anything you think you need in order to write— Or be “inspired” to write or “get in the mood” to write— Becomes a prohibition when it’s lacking. Learn to write anywhere, at any time, in any conditions, With anything, starting from nowhere. All you really need is your head, the one indispensable

You talked about some stones you found a while ago,” he says. “Three years.” Mee-Hae quickly turns around to face him, holding her unwashed panties. From this close, they smell prominently feminine to the Monk’s highly evolved nose. Mee-Hae Ra throws them with her faultless aim to a basket twenty feet away; she’ll have to wash them in the river later. “Your a while ago is actually three years,” she says. “You didn’t pay attention then. I wonder what happened? You even brought the rarest tea on the planet!” She throws a piercing gaze at him. Her pouty lips make her look angry. Abandoning her cleaning, she approaches the balcony, holding the tea package. “It looks hand-procured,” she mutters. “By any chance, did you pluck it yourself?” She looks at the Monk and already gets the answer that a modest monk won’t provide.

In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half, hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below. The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the needles of the pine branches, the chitter of insects and the cries of small arboreal mammals, as well as the birdsong; and from time to time a stronger gust of wind would make one of the branches of a cedar or a fir move against another and groan like a cello. It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was never still, never constant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and brushing every pine cone with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles. There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village-little more than a cluster of herdsmen's dwellings - at the foot of the valley to a half-ruined shrine near the glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the Perpetual winds from the high mountains, and offerings of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley in perpetual rainbows.

In high school algebra, someone had already worked out the formulas. The teacher knew them or could find them in the teacher’s manual for the textbook. Imagine a word problem where nobody knows how to turn it into a formula, where some of the information is redundant and should not be used, where crucial information is often missing, and where there is no similar example worked out earlier in the textbook. This is what happens when one tries to apply statistical models to real-life problems.

The Doper's Dream Last night I dreamed I was plugged right in To a bubblin' hookah so high, When all of a sudden some Arab jinni Jump up just a-winkin' his eye. 'I'm here to obey all your wishes,' he told me. As for words I was trying to grope. 'Good buddy,' I cried, 'you could surely oblige me By turning me on to some dope!' With a bigfat smile he took ahold of my hand, And we flew down the sky in a flash, And the first thing I saw in the land where he took me Was a whole solid mountain of hash! All the trees was a-bloomin' with pink 'n' purple pills, Whur the Romilar River flowed by, To the magic mushrooms as wild as a rainbow, So pretty that I wanted to cry. All the girls come to greet us, so sweet in slow motion, Mourning glories woven into their hair, Bringin' great big handfuls of snowy cocaine, All their dope they were eager to share. We we dallied for days, just a-ballin' and smokin', In the flowering Panama Red, Just piggin' on peyote and nutmeg tea, And those brownies so kind to your head. Now I could've passed that good time forever, And I really was fixing to stay, But you know that jinni turned out, t'be a narco man, And he busted me right whur I lay. And he took me back to a cold, cold world 'N' now m'prison's whurever I be... And I dream of the days back in Doperland And I wonder, will I ever go free?

The mock-heroic, in whatever guise. One example, from Alexander Theroux: 'It was high tea: the perfervid ritual in England which daily sweetens the ambiance of the discriminately invited and that nothing short of barratry, a provoked shaft of lightning, the King's enemies, or an act of God could ever hope to bring to an end.' This elaborate banality might serve as a lesson to all fifth-formers. The sentence is a wreck: ugly, untrue and illiterate; even in the interests of pseudo-elegant variation, you cannot start a clause with a which and then switch to a that.

Probit analysis provides a mathematical foundation for the doctrine first established by the sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus: “Only the dose makes a thing not a poison.” Under the Paracelsus doctrine, all things are potential poisons if given in a high enough dose, and all things are nonpoisonous if given in a low enough dose. To this doctrine, Bliss added the uncertainty associated with individual results. One reason why many foolish users of street drugs die or become very sick on cocaine or heroin or speed is that they see others using the drugs without being killed. They are like Bliss’s insects. They look around and see some of their fellow insects still alive. However, knowing that some individuals are still living provides no assurance that a given individual will survive. There is no way of predicting the response of a single individual.

When it’s that time of the month, try natural remedies to ease your discomfort. For example, drinking raspberry tea eases cramps, and chamomile tea relaxes you. Essential oils, herbal teas, and elevating your legs while lying down are time-proven solutions. A heating pad and sprinkling lavender oil around the room works wonders, too. Get plenty of rest and relax. As my grandmother would say to me, “This too shall pass,” and it always does.

At around four o'clock most Saturday afternoons, just when I make us all a cup of tea, I have a little glow on, maybe because this is after all my work, and it's going OK, maybe because I'm proud of us, of the way that, though our talents are small and peculiar, we use them to their best advantage.

So what does matcha taste like, if you've never had it? It's commonly described as tasting "green," which is true, albeit begging the question. Good matcha is naturally very sweet, a plant sweetness quite unlike bad matcha sweetened with sugar, which is common in shelf-table convenience store drinks and at coffee places. When you're drinking matcha, even high quality stuff, you can rub your tongue against the roof of your mouth and feel that it was whipped up from a powder. If you like the scent of newly mown grass, you would probably enjoy matcha. It's not much like brewed green tea at all.

The dream that I've been having, about my high-school sweetheart, is not really about my high-school sweetheart, when you get right down to it. It's not a dream about Alison Koechner and our lost love and the precious little three-bedroom house in Maine we might have built together, had things gone a different way. I am not dreaming of white picket fences and Sunday crosswords and warm tea. There's no asteroid in the dream. In the dream, life continues. Simple life, happy and white-picket lined or otherwise. Mere life. Goes on. When I'm dreaming of Alison Koechner, what I'm dreaming of is not dying.

On my way home from the junior high, I would sometimes stop at the edge of our property and watch my mother ride the ride-on mower, looping in and out among the pine trees, and I could remember then how she used to whistle in the mornings as she made her tea and how my father, rushing home on Thursdays, would bring her marigolds and her face would light up in yellowy in delight. They had been deeply, separately, wholly in love- apart from her children my mother could reclaim this love, but with them she began to drift. It was my father who grew toward us as the years went by; it was my mother who grew away. ~pg 153; love

Ironically, this *was* a kind of apocalypse—not the one that Tea Parties and their allies like Paul Broun had been warning about, but a different kind, a complete breakdown of Washington's ability to get anything done, even staring in the face of serious problems that required complex solutions, and some eventual compromise.

It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was never still, never constant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and brushing every pine cone with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles. There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village-little more than a cluster of herdsmen's dwellings - at the foot of the valley to a half-ruined shrine near the glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the Perpetual winds from the high mountains, and offerings of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley in perpetual rainbows.

…Sugar has become an ingredient avoidable in prepared and packaged foods only by concerted and determined effort, effectively ubiquitous. Not just in the obvious sweet foods (candy bars, cookies, ice creams, chocolates, sodas, juices, sports and energy drinks, sweetened iced tea, jams, jellies, and breakfast cereals both cold and hot), but also in peanut butter, salad dressings, ketchup, BBQ sauces, canned soups, cold cuts, luncheon meats, bacon, hot dogs, pretzels, chips, roasted peanuts, spaghetti sauces, canned tomatoes, and breads. From the 1980's onward manufacturers of products advertised as uniquely healthy because they were low in fat…not to mention gluten free, no MSG, and zero grams trans fat per serving, took to replacing those fat calories with sugar to make them equally…palatable and often disguising the sugar under one or more of the fifty plus names, by which the fructose-glucose combination of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup might be found. Fat was removed from candy bars sugar added, or at least kept, so that they became health food bars. Fat was removed from yogurts and sugars added and these became heart healthy snacks, breakfasts, and lunches.

I am reminded, now, of one of these complaints of the cookery made by a passenger. The coffee had been steadily growing more and more execrable for the space of three weeks, till at last it had ceased to be coffee altogether and had assumed the nature of mere discolored water—so this person said. He said it was so weak that it was transparent an inch in depth around the edge of the cup. As he approached the table one morning he saw the transparent edge—by means of his extraordinary vision long before he got to his seat. He went back and complained in a high-handed way to Capt. Duncan. He said the coffee was disgraceful. The Captain showed his. It seemed tolerably good. The incipient mutineer was more outraged than ever, then, at what he denounced as the partiality shown the captain’s table over the other tables in the ship. He flourished back and got his cup and set it down triumphantly, and said: “Just try that mixture once, Captain Duncan.” He smelt it—tasted it—smiled benignantly—then said: “It is inferior—for coffee—but it is pretty fair tea." The humbled mutineer smelt it, tasted it, and returned to his seat. He had made an egregious ass of himself before the whole ship. He did it no more. After that he took things as they came. That was me.

I find it really hard to believe you’ve taken an interest in nutrition.” “True. This gluten-is-the-enemy thing is total bullshit. And don’t get me started on kombucha tea, kale, anything with antioxidants in it, and the fallacy that high-fructose corn syrup is the root of all evil.” “Did you hear that Kraft Macaroni & Cheese took out all its preservatives months ago?” “Yeah, and the bastards didn’t tell anyone up front, either—

In the car inching its way down Fifth Avenue, toward Bergdorf Goodman and this glamorous party, I looked back on my past with a new understanding. This sickness, the “endo-whatever,” had stained so much—my sense of self, my womanhood, my marriage, my ability to be present. I had effectively missed one week of each month every year of my life since I was thirteen, because of the chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations I suffered during my period. I had lain in bed, with heating pads and hot-water bottles, using acupuncture, drinking teas, taking various pain medications and suffering the collateral effects of them. I thought of all the many tests I missed in various classes throughout my education, the school dances, the jobs I knew I couldn’t take as a model, because of the bleeding and bloating as well as the pain (especially the bathing suit and lingerie shoots, which paid the most). How many family occasions was I absent from? How many second or third dates did I not go on? How many times had I not been able to be there for others or for myself? How many of my reactions to stress or emotional strife had been colored through the lens of chronic pain? My sense of self was defined by this handicap. The impediment of expected pain would shackle my days and any plans I made. I did not see my own womanhood as something positive or to be celebrated, but as a curse that I had to constantly make room for and muddle through. Like the scar on my arm, my reproductive system was a liability. The disease, developing part and parcel with my womanhood starting at puberty with my menses, affected my own self-esteem and the way I felt about my body. No one likes to get her period, but when your femininity carries with it such pain and consistent physical and emotional strife, it’s hard not to feel that your body is betraying you. The very relationship you have with yourself and your person is tainted by these ever-present problems. I now finally knew my struggles were due to this condition. I wasn’t high-strung or fickle and I wasn’t overreacting.

I was starting to remember the whole problem now: I hate these fucking people [people at Tea Party rallies, ed]. It's never been just political, it's personal. I'm not convinced anyone in this country except the kinds of weenies who thought student council was important really cares about large versus small government or strict constructionalism versus judicial activism. The ostensible issues are just code words in an ugly snarl of class resentment, anti-intellectualism, old-school snobbery, racism, and who knows what else - grudges left over from the Civil War, the sixties, gym class. The Tea Party likes to cite a poll showing that their members are wealthier and better educated than te general populace, but to me they mostly looked like the same people I'd had to listen to in countless dive bars railing against "edjumicated idiots" and explaining exactly how Nostradamus predicted 9/11, the very people I and everyone I know fled our hometowns to get away from. So far all my interactions at the rally were only reinforcing my private theory - I suppose you might call it a prejudice - that liberals are the ones who went to college, moved to the nearest city where no one would call them a fag, and now only go back for holidays; conservatives are the ones who married their high school girlfriends, bought houses in their hometowns, and kept going to church and giving a shit who won the homecoming game. It's the divide between the Got Out and the Stayed Put. This theory also account for the different reactions of these two camps when the opposition party takes power, raising the specter of either fascist or socialist tyranny: the Got Outs always fantasize about fleeing the country for someplace more civilized - Canada, France, New Zealand; the Stayed Put just di further in, hunkering down in compounds, buying up canned goods and ammo.

Yogurt with active cultures is one of the best sources of probiotics; just avoid fruited yogurts high in added sugars. Other probiotic-rich foods include tempeh, miso, and natto (fermented soybean products); sauerkraut; kefir (soured yogurt); kimchi (Korean pickle); kombucha (a fermented tea drink); buttermilk; and select cheeses such as cheddar, mozzarella, and Gouda. Examples of prebiotic-rich foods include beans and other legumes, oats, bananas, berries, garlic, onions, dandelion greens, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, and leeks.

When other girls had tea parties on the playground, I brought out my secondhand Ouija board and attempted to raise the dead. While my classmates gave book reports on The Wind In The Willows or Charlotte’s Web, I did mine on tattered, paperback copies of Stephen King novels that I’d borrowed from my grandmother. Instead of Sweet Valley High, I read books about zombies and vampires. Eventually, my third grade teacher called my mother in to discuss her growing concerns over my behavior, and my mom nodded blithely, but failed to see what the problem was. When Mrs. Johnson handed her my recent book report on Pet Sematary,, my mom wrinkled her forehead with concern and disapproval. "Oh, I see,"she said disappointingly, as she turned to me. "You spelled ‘cemetery’ wrong.” Then I explained that Stephen King had spelled it that way on purpose, and she nodded, saying, “Ah. Well, good enough for me.

On this particular day her father, the vicar of a parish on the sea-swept outskirts of Lower Wessex, and a widower, was suffering from an attack of gout. After finishing her household supervision Elfride became restless, and several times left the room, ascended the staircase, and knocked at her father's chamber-door. 'Come in!' was always answered in a heart out-of-door voice from the inside. 'Papa,' she said on one occasion to the fine, red-faced, handsome man of forty, who, puffing and fizzing like a bursting bottle, lay on the bed wrapped in a dressing-gown, and every now and then enunciating, in spite of himself, about one letter of some word or words that were almost oaths; 'papa, will you not come downstairs this evening?' She spoke distinctly: he was rather deaf. 'Afraid not - eh-h-h! - very much afraid I shall not, Elfride. Piph-ph-ph! I can't bear even a handkerchief upon this deuced toe of mine, much less a stocking or slipper - piph-ph-ph! There 'tis again! No, I shan't get up till tomorrow.' 'Then I hope this London man won't come; for I don't know what I should do, papa.' 'Well, it would be awkward, certainly.' 'I should hardly think he would come today.' 'Why?' 'Because the wind blows so.' 'Wind! What ideas you have, Elfride! Who ever heard of wind stopping a man from doing his business? The idea of this toe of mine coming on so suddenly!... If he should come, you must send him up to me, I suppose, and then give him some food and put him to bed in some way. Dear me, what a nuisance all this is!' 'Must he have dinner?' 'Too heavy for a tired man at the end of a tedious journey.' 'Tea, then?' 'Not substantial enough.' 'High tea, then? There is cold fowl, rabbit-pie, some pasties, and things of that kind.' 'Yes, high tea.' 'Must I pour out his tea, papa?' 'Of course; you are the mistress of the house.' 'What! sit there all the time with a stranger, just as if I knew him, and not anybody to introduce us?' 'Nonsense, child, about introducing; you know better than that. A practical professional man, tired and hungry, who has been travelling ever since daylight this morning, will hardly be inclined to talk and air courtesies tonight. He wants food and shelter, and you must see that he has it, simply because I am suddenly laid up and cannot. There is nothing so dreadful in that, I hope? You get all kinds of stuff into your head from reading so many of those novels.

She wondered if her father had awakened yet, if he had missed her, if Jeweltongue would tell him she was only out in the garden, if Tea-cosy's wretchedness would give them all away immediately. She wondered if she had been right to guess that her father would not mend till she left--and that he would mend when she did. Had the Beast sent his illness? Did he watch them from his palace? What a sorcerer could and could not do could never quite be relied on--not even always by the sorcerer. She could hate him--easily she could hate him--for the misery of it if he had sent it. If he kept his promises like a man, did he suppose that they mere humans as they were, would keep theirs any less? The price was high for one stolen rose, but they would pay it. If he had sent her father's illness to beat them into acquiescence, she would hate him for it. The bitterness of her thoughts weighted her down till she had to stop walking. She looked again at the beech trees and, not waiting for a gap this time, fought her way through to the nearest and leant against it, turning her head so that her cheek was against the bark. The Beast is a Beast, even if he keeps his promises; how could she guess how a Beast thinkds, especially one who is so great a sorcere? It was foolish to talk of hating him--foolish and wasteful. What had happened had happened, like anything else might happen, like a bit of paper giving you a new home when you had none finding its way into your hand, like a company of the ugliest, worst-tempered plants you'd ever seen opening their flowers and becoming rose-bushes, the most beautiful, lovable plants you've ever seen. Perhaps it was the Beast's near presence that made her own roses grow. Did she not owe him something for that if that were the case? It was a curious thing, she thought sadly, how one is no longer satisfied with what one was or had if one has discovered something better. She could not now happily live without roses, although she had never seen a rose before three years ago.

What is there about our generation, man, that makes us sweat this root scene so much? Look at us. We wander across America in dedicated droves. Equipped with sideburns, sandals, and a steel string guitar. Relentlessly tracking our lost root beds. Yet all the while guarding against that most ignoble of ends, becoming root bound. What, pray, is it we hope to do with the object of our search if we succeed? If we have no intention of attaching ourselves to these roots. What use do you suppose we have in mind? Boil us up a tea and use them like sassafras as a purgative? Stash them away in our cedar chest with our high school diploma and prom programs? It's always been a mystery to me.

I’d like to build a house there someday. One with a big plate-glass window in the front so I can sip my tea and watch the flowers grow.” Eden leaned into his side as she stepped around a hole dug by a ground squirrel or some other burrowing creature, and Levi couldn’t help but picture himself behind that same window, moving up behind Eden to touch his lips to the sensitive skin along her neck. She’d smile and ask about his day. He’d wrap his arms around her and say that the best part of it was coming home. Then perhaps a little girl with reddish curls and moss-green eyes would run into the room, call him Daddy, and latch on to his leg. He’d swing her high into the air and laugh at her delighted squeals.

The herb ephedra has been used in China and India for five thousand years as a stimulant for cold and flu sufferers. Later known as Mormon tea, ephedra is now synthesized as pseudoephedrine and is found in many marketed cold remedies. (Unfortunately, it's also a key ingredient in the illicit manufacture of highly addictive and destructive methamphetamine.) Quinine, from the bark of the rain forest tree, Cinchona ledgeriana, is an effective preventive to malaria, one of the greatest killers of humanity, with up to one million deaths per year. The heart drug, dioxin, is synthesized from the foxglove flower. Aspirin's principle ingredients were recognized in willow bark by Hippocrates around 400 BCE. It was named and marketed by Bayer in 1899 and is still one of the biggest selling drugs in the world.

I'd take her to the top of the widow's tower at Ainsdale Castle, late at night, and we'd watch the moon rise. The widow's tower was very high but she wasn't afraid. Sometimes I'd steal a pie from the kitchens and we'd picnic up there. I brought up a blanket, too, so she wouldn't have to sit on the bare stone floor." Mrs. Crumb made an aborted movement, as if she'd meant to turn to face him and then changed her mind. He let the wineglass dangle by his side. "I told her a rabbit lived on the moon and she believed me. She believed everything I told her then." "What rabbit?" "There." He roused himself, straightening. He drew back, fitting her against his chest and setting his chin on her shoulder. She smelled of tea and housekeeperly things, and she was warm, so warm. He caught up her right hand in his and traced the moon with it. "D'you see? There are the long ears, there the tail, there the forepaws, there the back." "I see," she whispered. "I told her the rabbit had lavender fur and ate pink moon clover up there." His mouth twisted, as he remembered. "She'd watch me with big blue eyes, her mouth half-open, a bit of piecrust on her dress. She hung on every word." He could hear her breath, could feel the tremble of her limbs. Did she fear him? "D'you believe me?" he asked against her ear, his lips wet with wine. She was a housekeeper and housekeepers didn't matter in the grand schemes of kings and dukes and little girls who wished upon rabbit moons. But she was silent, damnable housekeeper. They breathed together for a moment, there in the night air, London twinkling before them, overhung by a pagan moon. At last she stirred and asked, "What happened to the girl?" He broke away from her, draining his glass of wine. "She grew up and knew me for a liar.

What both paradoxes show is that decisions based on probabilistic arguments are not logical decisions. Logic and probabilistic arguments are incompatible... Jerry Cornfield justified the findings that smoking causes lung cancer by appealing to a piling up of evidence, where study after study shows results that are highly improbable unless you assume that smoking is the cause of the cancer. Is it illogical to believe that smoking causes cancer?

I was a lonely nightwalker and a steady stander-at-corners. I liked to walk through the wet town after midnight, when the streets were deserted and the window lights out, alone and alive on the glistening tramlines in dead and empty High Street under the moon, gigantically sad in the damp streets by ghostly Ebenezer Chapel. And I never felt more a part of the remote and overpressing world, or more full of love and arrogance and pity and humility, not for myself alone, but for the living earth I suffered on and for the unfeeling systems in the upper air, Mars and Venus and Brazell and Skully, men in China and St Thomas, scorning girls and ready girls, soldiers and bullies and policemen and sharp, suspicious buyers of secondhand books, bad, ragged women who’d pretend against the museum wall for a cup of tea, and perfect, unapproachable women out of the fashion magazines, seven feet high, sailing slowly in their flat, glazed creations through steel and glass and velvet.

How Much Do I Love You? I love you more than pancakes, more than ice cream, more than pickles, more than my life. I love you more than dogs or cats or diamonds or gold, more than anyone else in the world. I loved brushing your hair every night and walking you to school. I told you every story you knew. I want you to remember our last day. I read you a story about two sisters who could find their way through the woods even if it was dark. I want you to remember the last evening we had. We drank tea made of roses. We baked a peach pie. We had spaghetti with butter for supper. We looked at the stars with your father, sitting high up on the roof, and then I took you inside. I kissed you both good night. I hope you remember everything. Someday you will find this and you’ll know that to the very end I thought about you. There is no ending to that. You still hold my heart in your hands. I loved you girls more than a fish loves a river, more than a bird loves the sky. Remember that. Remember me.

Bread plays favorites. From the earliest times, it acts as a social marker, sifting the poor from the wealthy, the cereal from the chaff. The exceptional from the mediocre. Wheat becomes more acceptable than rye; farmers talk of losing their 'rye teeth' as their economic status improves. Barley is for the most destitute, the coarse grain grinding down molars until the nerves are exposed. Breads with the added richness of eggs and milk and butter become the luxuries of princes. Only paupers eat dark bread adulterated with peas and left to sour, or purchase horse-bread instead of man-bread, often baked with the floor sweepings, because it costs a third less than the cheapest whole-meal loaves. When brown bread makes it to the tables of the prosperous, it is as trenchers- plates- stacked high with fish and meat and vegetables and soaked with gravy. The trenchers are then thrown outside, where the dogs and beggars fight over them. Crusts are chipped off the rolls of the rich, both to make it easier to chew and to aid in digestion. Peasants must work all the more to eat, even in the act of eating itself, jaws exhausted from biting through thick crusts and heavy crumb. There is no lightness for them. No whiteness at all. And it is the whiteness every man wants. Pure, white flour. Only white bread blooms when baked, opening to the heat like a rose. Only a king should be allowed such beauty, because he has been blessed by his God. So wouldn't he be surprised- no, filled with horror- to find white bread the food of all men today, and even more so the food of the common people. It is the least expensive on the shelf at the supermarket, ninety-nine cents a loaf for the storebrand. It is smeared with sweetened fruit and devoured by schoolchildren, used for tea sandwiches by the affluent, donated to soup kitchens for the needy, and shunned by the artisan. Yes, the irony of all ironies, the hearty, dark bread once considered fit only for thieves and livestock is now some of the most prized of all.

Ionizing radiation takes three principal forms: alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays. Alpha particles are relatively large, heavy, and slow moving and cannot penetrate the skin; even a sheet of paper could block their path. But if they do manage to find their way inside the body by other means—if swallowed or inhaled—alpha particles can cause massive chromosomal damage and death. Radon 222, which gathers as a gas in unventilated basements, releases alpha particles into the lungs, where it causes cancer. Polonium 210, a powerful alpha emitter, is one of the carcinogens in cigarette smoke. It was also the poison slipped into the cup of tea that killed former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. Beta particles are smaller and faster moving than alpha particles and can penetrate more deeply into living tissue, causing visible burns on the skin and lasting genetic damage. A piece of paper won’t provide protection from beta particles, but aluminum foil—or separation by sufficient distance—will. Beyond a range of ten feet, beta particles can cause little damage, but they prove dangerous if ingested in any way. Mistaken by the body for essential elements, beta-emitting radioisotopes can become fatally concentrated in specific organs: strontium 90, a member of the same chemical family as calcium, is retained in the bones; ruthenium is absorbed by the intestine; iodine 131 lodges particularly in the thyroid of children, where it can cause cancer. Gamma rays—high-frequency electromagnetic waves traveling at the speed of light—are the most energetic of all. They can traverse large distances, penetrate anything short of thick pieces of concrete or lead, and destroy electronics. Gamma rays pass straight through a human being without slowing down, smashing through cells like a fusillade of microscopic bullets. Severe exposure to all ionizing radiation results in acute radiation syndrome (ARS), in which the fabric of the human body is unpicked, rearranged, and destroyed at the most minute levels. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, hemorrhaging, and hair loss, followed by a collapse of the immune system, exhaustion of bone marrow, disintegration of internal organs, and, finally, death.

A high-pitched sound, like steam escaping from a kettle whistles through the dark room. But nobody’s making tea. We both turn toward the source of the eerie noise. A weak stream of unearthly light seeps through the window near the corner of the room and pours onto the floor. Its consistency seems to lie somewhere between a liquid and a solid, like mercury, only blue. Out of the gleaming, wobbly puddle, a phosphorescent vapor rises up. The ghost we thought was Daniel materializes and looms over us for two seconds before he lunges and wraps his hands around Wyatt’s neck.

behaviors. Alcohol becomes more important because drinking it excessively tricks a primitive, unconscious part of our brain into believing it’s more critical to our survival than it actually is. The artificially high levels of dopamine that flood the brain when we ingest alcohol begin a cascade of other reactions and responses. The brain has a hedonic set point (a term coined by Dr. Kevin McCauley), which means that it both needs a certain amount of dopamine to register pleasure, and is programmed to downgrade levels of dopamine when we receive too much pleasure. Our bodies are constantly trying to find stasis, or balance, and the hedonic set point is an example of that. When high levels of dopamine are regularly released into the system from chronic use of alcohol, the dopamine is down-regulated (or balanced) by something called corticotropin-releasing factor, or CRF—a hormone that makes us feel anxious or stressed. If we flood our system with higher-than-normal levels of dopamine, we also flood our system with higher-than-normal levels of CRF, or anxiety. Over time, when our system is assaulted by surges of dopamine, our hedonic set point goes up (requiring more dopamine to feel good), and things that used to register as pleasurable (like warm hugs or our children’s laughter) don’t release enough dopamine to hit that raised baseline. To boot, activities that normally relieve stress, like a bath or a brisk walk, also lose their effectiveness. Alcohol becomes the quickest way our body learns to handle anxiety (which begets more anxiety because alcohol is a depressant, and the body reacts to it by releasing cortisol and adrenaline, which means the net effect of a glass of wine is more stress, not less). Our bodies are adaptive, and they adapt to an environment that expects the effects of alcohol. So here we are: we start using alcohol because it gives us more pleasure than sex and does more for stress management than chamomile tea. Over time it gets wrapped up in our survival response, so we are motivated to drink with the same force that motivates us to eat—only the force is stronger than the desire to eat because our midbrain, which ranks everything based on dopamine, thinks we need alcohol more than food. That seems like enough fuckery to contend with, but there’s more to the story.

The Lama of the Crystal Monastery appears to be a very happy man, and yet I wonder how he feels about his isolation in the silences of Tsakang, which he has not left in eight years now and, because of his legs, may never leave again. Since Jang-bu seems uncomfortable with the Lama or with himself or perhaps with us, I tell him not to inquire on this point if it seems to him impertinent, but after a moment Jang-bu does so. And this holy man of great directness and simplicity, big white teeth shining, laughs out loud in an infectious way at Jang-bu’s question. Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, 'Of course I am happy here! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!' In its wholehearted acceptance of what is, this is just what Soen Roshi might have said: I Feel as if he had struck me in the chest. I thank him, bow, go softly down the mountain: under my parka, the folded prayer flag glows. Butter tea and wind pictures, the Crystal Mountain, and blue sheep dancing on the snow - it's quite enough! Have you seen the snow leopard? No! Isn't that wonderful?

He just wanted a walk- and a few books. It had been an age since he'd even had free time to read, let alone do so for pleasure. But there she was. His mate. She was nothing like Jesminda. Jesminda had been all laughter and mischief, too wild and free to be contained by the country life that she'd been born into. She had teased him, taunted him- seduced him so thoroughly that he hadn't wanted anything but her. She'd seen him not as a High Lord's seventh son, but as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him. Elain had been... thrown at him. He glanced toward the tea service spread on a low-lying table nearby. 'I'm going to assume that one of those cups belongs to your sister.' Indeed, there was a discarded book in the viper's usual chair. Cauldron help the male who wound up shackled to her. 'Do you mind if I held myself to the other?' He tried to sound casual- comfortable. Even as his heart raced and raced, so swift he thought he might vomit on the very expensive, very old carpet. From Sangravah, if the patterns and rich dyes were any indication. Rhysand was many things, but he certainly had good taste. The entire place had been decorated with thought and elegance, with a penchant for comfort over stuffiness. He didn't want to admit he liked it. Didn't want to admit he found the city beautiful. That the circle of people who now claimed to be Feyre's new family... It was what, long ago, he'd once thought life at Tamlin's court would be. An ache like a blow to the chest went through him, but he crossed the rug. Forced his hands to be steady while he poured himself a cup of tea and sat in the chair opposite Nesta's vacated one. 'There's a plate of biscuits. Would you like one?' He didn't expect her to answer, and he gave himself all of one more minute before he'd rise from this chair and leave, hopefully avoiding Nesta's return. But sunlight on gold caught his eye- and Elain slowly turned from her vigil at the window. He had not seen her entire face since that day in Hybern. Then, it had been drawn and terrified, then utterly blank and numb, her hair plastered to her head, her lips blue with cold and shock. Looking at her now... She was pale, yes. The vacancy still glazing her features. But he couldn't breathe as she faced him fully. She was the most beautiful female he'd ever seen. Betrayal, queasy and oily, slid through his veins. He'd said the same to Jesminda once. But even as shame washed through him, the words, the sense chanted, Mine. You are mine, and I am yours. Mate.

The passion of steeped leaves and stewed broth is a philter that triumphs in our veins. It is our heritage, it is our religion, it is the glory of our being. It is our honour to show the rest of the uncivilized world how a refined and educated society operates. Nothing can be done without tea. For a thing to be done right and to be done well, a hand must be furnished with a cup filled to the brim with the finest vintage of dried and simmered vegetation. There is no other way, I tell you. For a Marridon-born man not to like tea is immoral. It makes him low, shows him to be wholly vulgar and unable to appreciate and welter in all the rapture that such scandal-broth can supply. A sniveling guttersnipe might not like tea, but a knight, a member of the highest order, a banner of Marridonian heraldry, cannot dislike it. It is folly to think so, absolute humbuggery. You are one of the high boughs of Marridon’s ancient tree, sir knight. You are practically born with leaves to steep, to stew, to swelter, to sip. It is almost treasonous not to like tea. I am considered a recluse amongst Marridon’s high society, and even I understand why I must like tea. It is the drink of the thinking man, to be deliberated over and deliciated, to be relished and reveled in, that all its secrets of higher cogitation might be extricated and beloved. One must immerse himself in the distillation if he is to properly understand it. To drink tea ponderously is all the learned Marridonian should ever aspire to.

If I could wave a magic wand and have one wish granted, I’d wish for an end to world hunger; the small shit could wait in line. If, however, the god or genie who bestowed the magic wand told me my one wish had to do with American politics, I think I’d wave it and make the following proclamation: “Every liberal in the country must watch Fox News for one year, and every conservative in the country must watch MSNBC for one year.” (Middle-of-the-roaders could stick with CSI.) Can you imagine what that would be like? For the first month, the screams of “What IS this shit???” would echo high to the heavens. For the next three, there would be a period of grumbling readjustment as both sides of the political spectrum realized that, loathsome politics aside, they were still getting the weather, the sports scores, the hard news, and the Geico Gecko. During the next four months, viewers might begin seeing different anchors and commentators, as each news network’s fringe bellowers attracted increasing flak from their new captive audiences. Adamantly shrill editorial stances would begin to modify as a result of tweets and emails saying, “Oh, wait a minute, Slick, that’s fucking ridiculous.” Finally, the viewers themselves might change. Not a lot; just a slide-step or two away from the kumbayah socialists of the left and the Tea Partiers of the right. I’m not saying they’d re-colonize the all-but-deserted middle (lot of cheap real estate there, my brothers and sisters), but they might close in on it a trifle.

some older people who need to sit down, Barb. We can’t put chairs out. I don’t want them to get too comfy or we’ll never get rid of them.’ ‘Oh, you’re being ridiculous.’ Henry is thinking that this is a fine time to call him ridiculous. He never wanted the stupid vigil. In bed last night they had another spit-whispered row about it. We could have it at the front of the house, Barbara had said when the vicar called by. Henry had quite explicitly said he would not support anything churchy – anything that would feel like a memorial service. But the vicar had said the idea of a vigil was exactly the opposite. That the community would like to show that they have not given up. That they continue to support the family. To pray for Anna’s safe return. Barbara was delighted and it was all agreed. A small event at the house. People would walk from the village, or park on the industrial estate and walk up the drive. ‘This was your idea, Barbara.’ ‘The vicar’s, actually. People just want to show support. That is what this is about.’ ‘This is ghoulish, Barb. That’s what this is.’ He moves the tractor across the yard again, depositing two more bales of straw alongside the others. ‘There. That should be enough.’ Henry looks across at his wife and is struck by the familiar contradiction. Wondering how on earth they got here. Not just since Anna disappeared, but across the twenty-two years of their marriage. He wonders if all marriages end up like this. Or if he is simply a bad man. For as Barbara sweeps her hair behind her ear and tilts up her chin, Henry can still see the full lips, perfect teeth and high cheekbones that once made him feel so very differently. It’s a pendulum that still confuses him, makes him wish he could rewind. To go back to the Young Farmers’ ball, when she smelled so divine and everything seemed so easy and hopeful. And he is wishing, yes, that he could go back and have another run. Make a better job of it. All of it. Then he closes his eyes. The echo again of Anna’s voice next to him in the car. You disgust me, Dad. He wants the voice to stop. To be quiet. Wants to rewind yet again. To when Anna was little and loved him, collected posies on Primrose Lane. To when he was her hero and she wanted to race him back to the house for tea. Barbara is now looking across the yard to the brazier. ‘You’re going to light a fire, Henry?’ ‘It will be cold. Yes.’ ‘Thank you. I’m doing soup in mugs, too.’ A pause then. ‘You really think this is a mistake, Henry? I didn’t realise it would upset you quite so much. I’m sorry.’ ‘It’s OK, Barbara. Let’s just make the best of it now.’ He slams the tractor into reverse and moves it out of the yard and back into its position inside the barn. There, in the semi-darkness, his heartbeat finally begins to settle and he sits very still on the tractor, needing the quiet, the stillness. It was their reserve position, to have the vigil under cover in this barn, if the weather was bad. But it has been a fine day. Cold but with a clear, bright sky, so they will stay out of doors. Yes. Henry rather hopes the cold will drive everyone home sooner, soup or no soup. And now he thinks he will sit here for a while longer, actually. Yes. It’s nice here alone in the barn. He finds

I do not know the substance of the considerations and recommendations which Dr. Szilárd proposes to submit to you,” Einstein wrote. “The terms of secrecy under which Dr. Szilárd is working at present do not permit him to give me information about his work; however, I understand that he now is greatly concerned about the lack of adequate contact between scientists who are doing this work and those members of your Cabinet who are responsible for formulating policy.”34 Roosevelt never read the letter. It was found in his office after he died on April 12 and was passed on to Harry Truman, who in turn gave it to his designated secretary of state, James Byrnes. The result was a meeting between Szilárd and Byrnes in South Carolina, but Byrnes was neither moved nor impressed. The atom bomb was dropped, with little high-level debate, on August 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima. Einstein was at the cottage he rented that summer on Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, taking an afternoon nap. Helen Dukas informed him when he came down for tea. “Oh, my God,” is all he said.35 Three days later, the bomb was used again, this time on Nagasaki. The following day, officials in Washington released a long history, compiled by Princeton physics professor Henry DeWolf Smyth, of the secret endeavor to build the weapon. The Smyth report, much to Einstein’s lasting discomfort, assigned great historic weight for the launch of the project to the 1939 letter he had written to Roosevelt. Between the influence imputed to that letter and the underlying relationship between energy and mass that he had formulated forty years earlier, Einstein became associated in the popular imagination with the making of the atom bomb, even though his involvement was marginal. Time put him on its cover, with a portrait showing a mushroom cloud erupting behind him with E=mc2 emblazoned on it. In a story that was overseen by an editor named Whittaker Chambers, the magazine noted with its typical prose flair from the period: Through the incomparable blast and flame that will follow, there will be dimly discernible, to those who are interested in cause & effect in history, the features of a shy, almost saintly, childlike little man with the soft brown eyes, the drooping facial lines of a world-weary hound, and hair like an aurora borealis… Albert Einstein did not work directly on the atom bomb. But Einstein was the father of the bomb in two important ways: 1) it was his initiative which started U.S. bomb research; 2) it was his equation (E = mc2) which made the atomic bomb theoretically possible.36 It was a perception that plagued him. When Newsweek did a cover on him, with the headline “The Man Who Started It All,” Einstein offered a memorable lament. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb,” he said, “I never would have lifted a finger.”37 Of course, neither he nor Szilárd nor any of their friends involved with the bomb-building effort, many of them refugees from Hitler’s horrors, could know that the brilliant scientists they had left behind in Berlin, such as Heisenberg, would fail to unlock the secrets. “Perhaps I can be forgiven,” Einstein said a few months before his death in a conversation with Linus Pauling, “because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might succeed and use the atomic bomb and become the master race.”38

A long time ago, I collected the flower petals stained with my first blood; I thought there was something significant about that, there was importance in all the little moments of experience, because when you live forever, the first times matter. The first time you bleed, first time you cry — I don’t remember that — first time you see your wings, because new things defile you, purity chips away. your purity. nestled flowers in your belly, waiting to be picked. do you want innocence back? small and young smiles that make your eyes squint and cheeks flare the feeling of your face dripping down onto the grass, the painted walls you tore down, the roads you chipped away, they’ll eat away at you, the lingering feelings of a warm hand on your waist, the taps of your feet as you dance, the beats of your timbrel.’ ‘and now you are like Gods, sparkling brilliant with jewelry that worships you, and you’re splitting in order to create.’ ‘The tosses of your wet hair, the rushes of chariots speeding past, the holy, holy, holy lord god of hosts, the sweetness of a strawberry, knocks against the window by your head, the little tunes of your pipes, the cuts sliced into your fingers by uptight cacti fruits, the brisk scent of a sea crashing into the rocks, the sweat of wrestling, onions, cumin, parsley in a metal jug, mud clinging to your skin, a friendly mouth on your cheeks and forehead, chimes, chirps of chatter in the bazaar, amen, amen, amen, the plump fish rushing to take the bread you toss, scraping of a carpenter, the hiss of chalk, the wisps of clouds cradling you as you nap, the splashes of water in a hot pool, the picnic in a meadow, the pounding of feet that are chasing you, the velvet of petals rustling you awake, a giant water lily beneath you, the innocent kiss, the sprawl of the universe reflected in your eyes for the first time, the bloody wings that shred out of your back, the apples in orchards, a basket of stained flowers, excited chants of a colosseum audience, the heat of spinning and bouncing to drums and claps, the love braided into your hair, the trickles of a piano, smell of myrrh, the scratches of a spoon in a cup, the coarseness of a carpet, the stringed instruments and trumpets, the serene smile of not knowing, the sleeping angel, the delight of a creator, the amusement of gossip and rumors, the rumbling laughter between shy singing, the tangling of legs, squash, celery, carrot, and chayote, the swirled face paint, the warmth of honey in your tea, the timid face in the mirror, mahogany beams, the embrace of a bed of flowers, the taste of a grape as its fed to you, the lip smacks of an angel as you feed him a raspberry, the first dizziness of alcohol, the cool water and scent of natron and the scratch of the rock you beat your dirty clothes against, the strain of your arms, the columns of an entrance, the high ceilings of a dark cathedral, the boiling surface of bubbling stew, the burn of stained-glass, the little joyous jump you do seeing bread rise, the silky taste of olive oil, the lap of an angel humming as he embroiders a little fox into his tunic, the softness of browned feathers lulling you to sleep, the weight of a dozen blankets and pillows on your small bed, the proud smile on the other side of a window in a newly-finished building, the myrtle trees only you two know about, the palm of god as he fashions you from threads of copper, his praises, his love, his kiss to your hair, your father.

No one called him Fai except his grandmother. What sort of name is Frank? she would scold. That is not a Chinese name. I’m not Chinese, Frank thought, but he didn’t dare say that. His mother had told him years ago: There is no arguing with Grandmother. It’ll only make you suffer worse. She’d been right. And now Frank had no one except his grandmother. Thud. A fourth arrow hit the fence post and stuck there, quivering. “Fai,” said his grandmother. Frank turned. She was clutching a shoebox-sized mahogany chest that Frank had never seen before. With her high-collared black dress and severe bun of gray hair, she looked like a school teacher from the 1800s. She surveyed the carnage: her porcelain in the wagon, the shards of her favorite tea sets scattered over the lawn, Frank’s arrows sticking out of the ground, the trees, the fence posts, and one in the head of a smiling garden gnome. Frank thought she would yell, or hit him with the box. He’d never done anything this bad before. He’d never felt so angry. Grandmother’s face was full of bitterness and disapproval. She looked nothing like Frank’s mom. He wondered how his mother had turned out to be so nice—always laughing, always gentle. Frank couldn’t imagine his mom growing up with Grandmother any more than he could imagine her on the battlefield—though the two situations probably weren’t that different. He waited for Grandmother to explode. Maybe he’d be grounded and wouldn’t have to go to the funeral. He wanted to hurt her for being so mean all the time, for letting his mother go off to war, for scolding him to get over it. All she cared about was her stupid collection. “Stop this ridiculous behavior,” Grandmother said. She didn’t sound very irritated. “It is beneath you.” To Frank’s astonishment, she kicked aside one of her favorite teacups. “The car will be here soon,” she said. “We must talk.” Frank was dumbfounded. He looked more closely at the mahogany box. For a horrible moment, he wondered if it contained his mother’s ashes, but that was impossible. Grandmother had told him there would be a military burial. Then why did Grandmother hold the box

I still have no choice but to bring out Minerva instead.” “But Minerva doesn’t care about men,” young Charlotte said helpfully. “She prefers dirt and rocks.” “It’s called geology,” Minerva said. “It’s a science.” “It’s certain spinsterhood, is what it is! Unnatural girl. Do sit straight in your chair, at least.” Mrs. Highwood sighed and fanned harder. To Susanna, she said, “I despair of her, truly. This is why Diana must get well, you see. Can you imagine Minerva in Society?” Susanna bit back a smile, all too easily imagining the scene. It would probably resemble her own debut. Like Minerva, she had been absorbed in unladylike pursuits, and the object of her female relations’ oft-voiced despair. At balls, she’d been that freckled Amazon in the corner, who would have been all too happy to blend into the wallpaper, if only her hair color would have allowed it. As for the gentlemen she’d met…not a one of them had managed to sweep her off her feet. To be fair, none of them had tried very hard. She shrugged off the awkward memories. That time was behind her now. Mrs. Highwood’s gaze fell on a book at the corner of the table. “I am gratified to see you keep Mrs. Worthington close at hand.” “Oh yes,” Susanna replied, reaching for the blue, leatherbound tome. “You’ll find copies of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom scattered everywhere throughout the village. We find it a very useful book.” “Hear that, Minerva? You would do well to learn it by heart.” When Minerva rolled her eyes, Mrs. Highwood said, “Charlotte, open it now. Read aloud the beginning of Chapter Twelve.” Charlotte reached for the book and opened it, then cleared her throat and read aloud in a dramatic voice. “’Chapter Twelve. The perils of excessive education. A young lady’s intellect should be in all ways like her undergarments. Present, pristine, and imperceptible to the casual observer.’” Mrs. Highwood harrumphed. “Yes. Just so. Hear and believe it, Minerva. Hear and believe every word. As Miss Finch says, you will find that book very useful.” Susanna took a leisurely sip of tea, swallowing with it a bitter lump of indignation. She wasn’t an angry or resentful person, as a matter of course. But once provoked, her passions required formidable effort to conceal. That book provoked her, no end. Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies was the bane of sensible girls the world over, crammed with insipid, damaging advice on every page. Susanna could have gleefully crushed its pages to powder with a mortar and pestle, labeled the vial with a skull and crossbones, and placed it on the highest shelf in her stillroom, right beside the dried foxglove leaves and deadly nightshade berries. Instead, she’d made it her mission to remove as many copies as possible from circulation. A sort of quarantine. Former residents of the Queen’s Ruby sent the books from all corners of England. One couldn’t enter a room in Spindle Cove without finding a copy or three of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom. And just as Susanna had told Mrs. Highwood, they found the book very useful indeed. It was the perfect size for propping a window open. It also made an excellent doorstop or paperweight. Susanna used her personal copies for pressing herbs. Or occasionally, for target practice. She motioned to Charlotte. “May I?” Taking the volume from the girl’s grip, she raised the book high. Then, with a brisk thwack, she used it to crush a bothersome gnat. With a calm smile, she placed the book on a side table. “Very useful indeed.

Small Change Snack Tips 1. Limit a snack to approximately 200 calories maximum. 2. Turn coffee or a tea into a snack by adding a cup of low-fat milk or soymilk. 3. Do not have a carbohydrate alone (such as an apple or a serving of crackers); you will still be hungry. Instead, pair a carb with a lean protein or healthy fat. Have low-fat cheese with your apple, or some peanut butter on your whole grain crackers. 4. It’s okay to have carbs alone before bed (such as a piece of fruit) because it doesn’t need to keep you full—you’re about to go to sleep. 5. Don’t double dip. For instance, don’t do string cheese and nuts, or string cheese and yogurt. Instead, choose one high-fiber carb and one lean protein or healthy fat; otherwise your calories (and fat) can add up. 6. When you eat straight from the bag, box, or can, you’ll consume more. Preportion items like nuts in resealable snack-size bags. 7. Try to keep snacktime to three hours after you have eaten. If you eat it too close to your last meal, it won’t do its job for the next meal. 8. If buying an energy bar, read the label and look for more fiber and protein, less calories and fat. 9. Just because it’s a “100-calorie pack” doesn’t mean it is a healthy snack. Make sure it offers some fiber and protein or healthy fat—and if not, skip it.

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

GUAC AD HOC   Hannah’s 1st Note: This is Howie Levine’s guacamole recipe. He’s Lake Eden’s most popular lawyer. 2 ounces cream cheese 4 ripe avocados (I used Haas avocados) 2 Tablespoons lemon juice (freshly squeezed is best) 1 clove garlic, finely minced (you can squeeze it in a garlic press if you have one) cup finely chopped fresh oregano leaves 1 Italian (or plum) tomato, peeled, seeded, and chopped 4 green onions, peeled and thinly sliced (you can use up to 2 inches of the green stem) ½ teaspoon salt 10 grinds of freshly ground pepper (or tea spoon) ½ cup sour cream to spread on top Bacon bits to sprinkle on top of the sour cream Tortilla chips as dippers Howie’s Note: I use chopped oregano because Florence doesn’t always carry cilantro at the Lake Eden Red Owl. This guacamole is equally good with either one. Heat the cream cheese in a medium-sized microwave-safe bowl for 15 seconds on HIGH, or until it’s spreadable. Peel and seed the avocados. Put them in the bowl with the cream cheese and mix everything up with a fork. Mix just slightly short of smooth. You want the mixture to have a few lumps of avocado. Add the lemon juice and mix it in. It’ll keep your Guac Ad Hoc from browning. Add the minced garlic, chopped oregano leaves, tomato, sliced green onion, salt, and pepper. Mix everything together. Put your Guac Ad Hoc in a pretty bowl, and cover it with the sour cream. Sprinkle on the bacon bits. If you’re NOT going to serve it immediately, spread on the sour cream, but don’t use the bacon bits. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate it until time to serve. Then sprinkle on the bacon bits. (My bacon bits got a little tough when I added them to the bowl and refrigerated it. They were best when I sprinkled them on at the last moment.) Hannah’s 2nd Note: Mike and Norman like this best if I serve it with sliced, pickled Jalapenos on top. Mother won’t touch it that way. Yield: This amount of Guac Ad Hoc serves 4 unless you’re making it for a Super Bowl game. Then you’d better double the recipe.