Highway Best Quotes

Darkness dwells within even the best of us. In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reins.

If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail, If you can't be the sun, be a star; It isn't by size that you win or you fail- Be the best of whatever you are.

People always want to know what it feels like, so I’ll tell you: there’s a sting when you first slice, and then your heart speeds up when you see the blood, because you know you’ve done something you shouldn’t have, and yet you’ve gotten away with it. Then you sort of go into a trance, because it’s truly dazzling—that bright red line, like a highway route on a map that you want to follow to see where it leads. And—God—the sweet release, that’s the best way I can describe it, kind of like a balloon that’s tied to a little kid’s hand, which somehow breaks free and floats into the sky. You just know that balloon is thinking, Ha, I don’t belong to you after all; and at the same time, Do they have any idea how beautiful the view is from up here? And then the balloon remembers, after the fact, that it has a wicked fear of heights. When reality kicks in, you grab some toilet paper or a paper towel (better than a washcloth, because the stains don’t ever come out 100 percent) and you press hard against the cut. You can feel your embarrassment; it’s a backbeat underneath your pulse. Whatever relief there was a minute ago congeals, like cold gravy, into a fist in the pit of your stomach. You literally make yourself sick, because you promised yourself last time would be the last time, and once again, you’ve let yourself down. So you hide the evidence of your weakness under layers of clothes long enough to cover the cuts, even if it’s summertime and no one is wearing jeans or long sleeves. You throw the bloody tissues into the toilet and watch the water go pink before you flush them into oblivion, and you wish it were really that easy.

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains.

That is the way Emerson said it. But here is the way a poet -the late Douglas Mallochsaid it: If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill. Be a scrub in the valley-but be The best little scrub by the side of the rill; Be a bush, if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a bush, be a bit of the grass. If you can't be a muskie, then just be a bass- But the liveliest bass in the lake! We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew. There's something for all of us here. There's big work to do and there's lesser to do And the task we must do is the near. If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail, If you can't be the sun, be a star; It isn't by the size that you win or you fail- Be the best of whatever you are!

The Doors The End This is the end, beautiful friend This is the end, my only friend The end of our elaborate plans The end of ev'rything that stands The end No safety or surprise The end I'll never look into your eyes again Can you picture what will be So limitless and free Desperately in need of some strangers hand In a desperate land Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain And all the children are insane All the children are insane Waiting for the summer rain There's danger on the edge of town Ride the king's highway Weird scenes inside the goldmine Ride the highway West baby Ride the snake Ride the snake To the lake To the lake The ancient lake baby The snake is long Seven miles Ride the snake He's old And his skin is cold The west is the best The west is the best Get here and we'll do the rest The blue bus is calling us The blue bus is calling us Driver, where you taking us? The killer awoke before dawn He put his boots on He took a face from the ancient gallery And he walked on down the hall He went into the room where his sister lived And then he paid a visit to his brother And then he walked on down the hall And he came to a door And he looked inside Father? Yes son I want to kill you Mother, I want to............. Come on, baby, take a chance with us Come on, baby, take a chance with us Come on, baby, take a chance with us And meet me at the back of the blue bus This is the end, beautiful friend This is the end, my only friend The end It hurts to set you free But you'll never follow me The end of laughter and soft lies The end of nights we tried to die This is the end

You can have the best intentions in the world, but if you do nothing, you are nothing. It is a harsh glare to shed that kind of light, but in my heart that is pure reality for me. How does the quote go? “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.” This is the downside to the longevity of sloth. It is an exit on a highway that leads to the worst parts of town.

Remember you future counselors and bringers of relief: there will never be a cure for life's problems because so many of tomorrow's problems will be new. Good words, like good work and good thinking, help, even if good words are a lot like highway paint. They can keep plenty of heavy things moving at 70 MPH from going the wrong way. But that doesn't mean life won't cross over if it has to. Learn to avoid the collisions. Find other directions. Often a new yes is the best no. Life lived well doesn't get easier but it does get better. Learn to let things go by. And don't be reluctant: life is al[l]ways surpassing us by. Enjoy it.

The road to your success is not a highway. You have to create it as you go

I. My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the workings of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. II. What else should he be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers who might find him posted there, And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare. III. If at his counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed, neither pride Now hope rekindling at the end descried, So much as gladness that some end might be. IV. For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out through years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope. V. As when a sick man very near to death Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bit the other go, draw breath Freelier outside, ('since all is o'er,' he saith And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;') VI. When some discuss if near the other graves be room enough for this, and when a day Suits best for carrying the corpse away, With care about the banners, scarves and staves And still the man hears all, and only craves He may not shame such tender love and stay. VII. Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest, Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ So many times among 'The Band' to wit, The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed Their steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best, And all the doubt was now - should I be fit? VIII. So, quiet as despair I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. IX. For mark! No sooner was I fairly found Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round; Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. I might go on, naught else remained to do. X. So on I went. I think I never saw Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove! But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind with none to awe, You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove. XI. No! penury, inertness and grimace, In some strange sort, were the land's portion. 'See Or shut your eyes,' said Nature peevishly, It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: Tis the Last Judgement's fire must cure this place Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.

I live completely without regret. Sure there are plenty of things that someone could second guess, but I see the path of life like driving down the road without a map. The thing is, some dark alleys open up in majestic places, and some bright and shiny highways to the top end in cliffs to the bottom. You never know until you get there. What I know for sure is that if many years ago I actually had a map to the path of life, the destination that I would have chosen is right here, with this family, in this place, and with these smiles. That makes anything that could have been regretful, the best decision in the world.

Also, Nathan, if you’re listening, and I assume you are, I’m the best and only friend you’ve got. Give her permission to share what she has, or I swear to God I’ll have you turning tricks out of a prefab shed on the side of the highway. I’m trying to save humanity here.

Style still matters, for at least three reasons. First, it ensures that writers will get their message across, sparing readers from squandering their precious moments on earth deciphering opaque prose. When the effort fails, the result can be calamitous-as Strunk and White put it, "death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram." Governments and corporations have found that small improvements in clarity can prevent vast amounts of error, frustration, and waste, and many countries have recently made clear language the law of the land. Second, style earns trust. If readers can see that a writer cares about consistency and accuracy in her prose, they will be reassured that the writer cares about those virtues in conduct they cannot see as easily. Here is how one technology executive explains why he rejects job applications filled with errors of grammar and punctuation: "If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use it's, then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with." And if that isn't enough to get you to brush up your prose, consider the discovery of the dating site OkCupid that sloppy grammar and spelling in a profile are "huge turn-offs." As one client said, "If you're trying to date a woman, I don't expect flowery Jane Austen prose. But aren't you trying to put your best foot forward?" Style, not least, adds beauty to the world. To a literate reader, a crisp sentence, an arresting metaphor, a witty aside, an elegant turn of phrase are among life's greatest pleasures. And as we shall see in the first chapter, this thoroughly impractical virtue of good writing is where the practical effort of mastering good writing must begin.

I’ll tell anyone who will listen,” he said softly. “What I can’t figure out is why everybody doesn’t do it. Look for the best, I mean. It’s easy, and it makes life go easier.

[Robert's eulogy at his brother, Ebon C. Ingersoll's grave. Even the great orator Robert Ingersoll was choked up with tears at the memory of his beloved brother] The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead, and every sweet, unselfish act is now a perfumed flower. Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft promised he would do for me. The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend, died where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows still were falling toward the west. He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks the highest point; but, being weary for a moment, he lay down by the wayside, and, using his burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence and pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock; but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights, and left all superstitions far below, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning, of the grander day. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, the poor, and wronged, and lovingly gave alms. With loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully discharged all public trusts. He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote these words: 'For Justice all place a temple, and all season, summer!' He believed that happiness was the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, 'I am better now.' Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and tears, that these dear words are true of all the countless dead. And now, to you, who have been chosen, from among the many men he loved, to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his sacred dust. Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there is, no gentler, stronger, manlier man.

Have you ever just listened to music with another person? Just listened and breathed—without dancing, without making love, without driving down the highway and screaming the lyrics with your best friend?

There is no denying that Francis Drake was a pirate and that the enterprise he conducted four years later in Panama was highway robbery, or at best, highjacking. But it was on the scale that transforms crime into politics.

In our civilized societies we are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best-paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all, in return for a few hours of daily toil? The socialists have said it and repeated it unwearyingly. Daily they reiterate it, demonstrating it by arguments taken from all the sciences. It is because all that is necessary for production — the land, the mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter, education, knowledge — all have been seized by the few in the course of that long story of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression, which has been the life of the human race before it had learned to subdue the forces of Nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged rights acquired in the past, these few appropriate today two-thirds of the products of human labour, and then squander them in the most stupid and shameful way. It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few can allow the many to work, only on the condition of themselves receiving the lion’s share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all socialism.

Hazel sometimes had a fantasy daydream at school where the teacher walked into the classroom and yelled, ISN’T EVERYTHING HORRIBLE? DOESN’T THE PAIN OF THE WORLD OUTWEIGH THE JOY BY TRILLIONS? WOULD YOU LIKE TO PUSH ALL OF THE DESKS INTO THE CENTER OF THE ROOM AND BURN THEM IN A GIANT BONFIRE? THEN WE CAN RUN AROUND SCREAMING AND WEEPING AMIDST THE SMOKE IN A TRUTHFUL PARADE OF OUR HUMAN CONDITION. SINCE YOU ARE SMALL STATURED, CHILDREN, IT MIGHT HELP OTHERS TO FEEL THE FULL BRUNT OF YOUR AGITATION IF YOU WAVE STICKS AND SHRUBBERY OVER YOUR HEADS ALL THE WHILE. WE DON’T WANT TO KILL ANYTHING WE DON’T HAVE TO KILL; EVERYTHING LIVING THAT WE’VE EVER SEEN OR KNOWN WILL DIE WITHOUT OUR INTERVENTION, OURSELVES INCLUDED; THIS IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL LEAD BLANKET THAT EVEN OUR MOST PERVASIVE MOMENTS OF COMFORT CANNOT CRAWL OUT FROM UNDER AND ONE UNEXTINGUISHABLE SOURCE OF DESPAIR, SO WE WON’T BE PERFORMING ANY RITUALISTIC SACRIFICES; THAT’S NOT THE DIRECTION WE WILL GO IN JUST YET; HOWEVER, ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL LAWRENCE IS ON THE PROWL FOR A ROAD CARCASS WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO USE AS A REPRESENTATIVE PROP BECAUSE NOWHERE IN OUR AUTUMN-THEMED POSTER BOARD DéCOR IS MORBIDITY OR DECAY SYMBOLIZED. OUR SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS CANNOT AGREE ON HOW BEST TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE BOUNDLESSNESS OF HUMAN CRUELTY. IN OUR SOCIETY SOME OF YOU ARE FAR SAFER AND MORE ADVANTAGED THAN OTHERS; AT HOME SOME OF YOU ARE FAR MORE LOVED; SOME OF YOU WILL FIND THAT CONCEPTS LIKE FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE WILL BE THIN, FLICKERING HOLOGRAMS ON THE PERIPHERY OF YOUR LIVES. OH, LOOK, CHILDREN—I SEE MR. LAWRENCE IN THE DISTANCE DRAGGING A PORTION OF A HIGHWAY-SLAUGHTERED DEER. LET’S GO HELP HIM LUG IT INSIDE AND BE REMINDED THAT WE TOO INHABIT BODIES MADE OF MEAT-WRAPPED BONES; LET’S MEDITATE ON THIS CORPOREAL TERROR. Whenever her mother had asked, Hazel always told her, School is great.

Off they went down the highway, the taillights fading, the song dying, the black metal of the car melting into the fabric of night, and then there was only the whispery sound of good tires on wet cement and finally not even that. Just the blowing sound of the wind and the rain.

What burned in these men that didn't burn in me? A difference of focus or something outside of me? A lack or too much of something? ... I'm not an authority, God knows, but if there is a way to talk into the Great Primal Ears - if Ears there be - music and silence must be the best way.

Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane. Still, I certainly don't want to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Best to learn from my mistakes and put that lesson into practice the next time around. While I still have the ability to do that.

the best-known and most direct of which was the Lincoln Highway, some 3,400 miles of road starting in New York City, wending its way through thirteen states, and ending in San Francisco. The highway was the brainchild of Indiana businessman Carl Fisher, who made his fortune selling automobile headlights.

The ride back to Kathmandu was comfortable and relaxing. There were more overturned trucks (the gas-powered ones seem to tip the most often, I’m surprised there weren’t more explosions), goats being herded across the highway by ancient women, children playing games in traffic, private cars and buses alike pulling over in the most inconvenient places for a picnic or public bath, and best of all the suicidal overtaking maneuvers (or what we would call ‘passing’) by our bus and others while going downhill at incredible speeds or around hairpin turns uphill with absolutely no power left to actually get around the other vehicle.

Many has been the night that I have knelt at the side of my bed and prayed to your mother, asking for guidance on how best to respond to your willfulness. And in all these years, your mother—God rest her soul—has not answered me once. So I have had to rely on my memories of how she cared for you. Though you were only twelve when she died, you were plenty contrary already. And when I would express my concern about that, your mother would tell me to be patient. Ed, she would say, our youngest is strong in spirit, and that should stand her in good stead when she becomes a woman. What we need to do is give her a little time and space.

But now as Phoebus anointed Phaethon With medicinal blocker To protect him from the burning And fixed the crown of rays on the boy’s head He saw the tragedy to come And sighed: “At least, if you can, Stick to these instructions, my son. First: use the whip not at all, or lightly. But rein the team hard. It is not easy. Their whole inclination is to be gone. Second: avoid careering Over the whole five zones of heaven. Keep to that broad highway that curves Within three zones, temperate and tropic. Avoid the poles, and their killing blizzards. Keep to that highway, follow the wheel ruts. Share your heat fairly Between heaven and earth, not too low And not crashing in among the stars. Too high, You will set heaven aflame—and, too low, earth. The middle way is best, and safest. And do not veer too far to the right Where your wheels might crush the Serpent, nor to the left Where they might be shattered against the Altar. Take a bearing between them.

The truck looked just like a Civil War truck if they'd had trucks back in those times. But the truck ran, even though it didn't have a gas tank. There was an empty fifty-gallon gasoline drum on the bed of the truck with a smaller gasoline can on top of it, and there was a syphon leading from that can to the fuel line. It worked like this. Lee Mellon drove and I stayed on the back of the truck and made sure everything went all right with the syphon, that it didn't get knocked out of kilter by the motion of the truck. We looked kind of funny going down the highway. I'd never had the heart to ask Lee Mellon what happened to the gas tank. I figured it was best not to know.

The most powerful country in the world has handed over all of it's affairs, the prosperity of an entire economy, the security of some 300 million citizens, the purity of it's water, the viability of it's air, the safety of it's food, the future of it's vast system of education, the soundness of it's national highways, airways, and railways, the apocalyptic potential of nuclear arsenal to a carnival barker who introduce the phrase "grab em by the pussy", into the national lexicon. It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say "if a black man can be president than any white man, no matter how fallen, can be president", and in that perverse way, the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Jackson were fulfilled. The American Tragedy now being wrought, is larger than most imaged and will not end with Trump. In recent times, whiteness as an overt political tactic has been restrained by a kind of cordiality held that it's overt invocation would scare off moderate whites. This has proved to be only half-true at best. Trump's legacy will be exposing the patina of decency for what it is and revealing just how much a demagague can get away with. It does not take much to imagine another politician, wiser in the ways of Washington, schooled in the methodology of governance, now liberated from the pretense of anti-racist civility, doing a much more effective job than Trump.

I heard the missing in her voice. Knew she dreaded me leaving, but even more, Bucky. He'd been in all of my AP classes, quietly earning grades almost as good as mine. He was only headed two hours down the highway to Virginia Tech, but Roni knew there were more than miles between here and there, more than hours between now and what might come. Bucky was way too smart to stay in Dale and pump gas so other people could go places.

As I’ve said, I’m not a very competitive type of person. To a certain extent, I figured, it’s sometimes hard to avoid losing. Nobody’s going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can’t always be in the fast lane. Still, I certainly don’t want to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Best to learn from my mistakes and put that lesson into practice the next time around. While I still have the ability to do that.

FAITH. Too many people have no faith. They are cynical. “This leadership training and personal development stuff doesn’t work.” Or “I’m too old to change.” Cynicism stems from disappointment. Cynical and faithless people were not always like that. They were filled with possibilities and hope as kids. But they tried and perhaps failed. And rather than staying in the game, recognizing that failure is the highway to success, they shut down and grew cynical. Their way to avoid getting hurt again.

In South Texas I saw three interesting things. The first was a tiny girl, maybe ten years old, driving in a 1965 Cadillac. She wasn't going very fast, because I passed her, but still she was cruising right along, with her head tilted back and her mouth open and her little hands gripping the wheel. Then I saw an old man walking up the median strip pulling a wooden cross behind him. It was mounted on something like a golf cart with two spoked wheels. I slowed down to read the hand-lettered sign on his chest. JACKSONVILLE FLA OR BUST I had never been to Jacksonville but I knew it was the home of the Gator Bowl and I had heard it was a boom town, taking in an entire county or some such thing. It seemed an odd destination for a religious pilgrim. Penance maybe for some terrible sin, or some bargain he had worked out with God, or maybe just a crazed hiker. I waved and called out to him, wishing him luck, but he was intent on his marching and had no time for idle greetings. His step was brisk and I was convinced he wouldn't bust. The third interesting thing was a convoy of stake-bed trucks all piled high with loose watermelons and cantaloupes. I was amazed. I couldn't believe that the bottom ones weren't crushed under all that weight, exploding and spraying hazardous melon juice onto the highway. One of nature's tricks with curved surfaces. Topology! I had never made it that far in mathematics and engineering studies, and I knew now that I never would, just as I knew that I would never be a navy pilot or a Treasury agent. I made a B in Statics but I was failing in Dynamics when I withdrew from the field. The course I liked best was one called Strength of Materials. Everybody else hated it because of all the tables we had to memorize but I loved it, the sheared beam. I had once tried to explain to Dupree how things fell apart from being pulled and compressed and twisted and bent and sheared but he wouldn't listen. Whenever that kind of thing came up, he would always say - boast, the way those people do - that he had no head for figures and couldn't do things with his hands, slyly suggesting the presence of finer qualities.

Algren’s book opens with one of the best historical descriptions of American white trash ever written.* He traces the Linkhorn ancestry back to the first wave of bonded servants to arrive on these shores. These were the dregs of society from all over the British Isles—misfits, criminals, debtors, social bankrupts of every type and description—all of them willing to sign oppressive work contracts with future employers in exchange for ocean passage to the New World. Once here, they endured a form of slavery for a year or two—during which they were fed and sheltered by the boss—and when their time of bondage ended, they were turned loose to make their own way. In theory and in the context of history the setup was mutually advantageous. Any man desperate enough to sell himself into bondage in the first place had pretty well shot his wad in the old country, so a chance for a foothold on a new continent was not to be taken lightly. After a period of hard labor and wretchedness he would then be free to seize whatever he might in a land of seemingly infinite natural wealth. Thousands of bonded servants came over, but by the time they earned their freedom the coastal strip was already settled. The unclaimed land was west, across the Alleghenies. So they drifted into the new states—Kentucky and Tennessee; their sons drifted on to Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Drifting became a habit; with dead roots in the Old World and none in the New, the Linkhorns were not of a mind to dig in and cultivate things. Bondage too became a habit, but it was only the temporary kind. They were not pioneers, but sleazy rearguard camp followers of the original westward movement. By the time the Linkhorns arrived anywhere the land was already taken—so they worked for a while and moved on. Their world was a violent, boozing limbo between the pits of despair and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. They kept drifting west, chasing jobs, rumors, homestead grabs or the luck of some front-running kin. They lived off the surface of the land, like army worms, stripping it of whatever they could before moving on. It was a day-to-day existence, and there was always more land to the west. Some stayed behind and their lineal descendants are still there—in the Carolinas, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. There were dropouts along the way: hillbillies, Okies, Arkies—they’re all the same people. Texas is a living monument to the breed. So is southern California. Algren called them “fierce craving boys” with “a feeling of having been cheated.” Freebooters, armed and drunk—a legion of gamblers, brawlers and whorehoppers. Blowing into town in a junk Model-A with bald tires, no muffler and one headlight … looking for quick work, with no questions asked and preferably no tax deductions. Just get the cash, fill up at a cut-rate gas station and hit the road, with a pint on the seat and Eddy Arnold on the radio moaning good back-country tunes about home sweet home, that Bluegrass sweetheart still waitin, and roses on Mama’s grave. Algren left the Linkhorns in Texas, but anyone who drives the Western highways knows they didn’t stay there either. They kept moving until one day in the late 1930s they stood on the spine of a scrub-oak California hill and looked down on the Pacific Ocean—the end of the road.

American cold war culture represented an age of anxiety. The anxiety was so severe that it sought relief in an insistent, assertive optimism. Much of American popular culture aided this quest for apathetic security. The expanding white middle class sought to escape their worries in the burgeoning consumer culture. Driving on the new highway system in gigantic showboat cars to malls and shopping centers that accepted a new form of payment known as credit cards, Americans could forget about Jim Crow, communism, and the possibility of Armageddon. At night in their suburban homes, television allowed middle class families to enjoy light domestic comedies like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and Leave It to Beaver. Somnolently they watched representations of settled family life, stories where lost baseball gloves and dinnertime hijinks represented the only conflicts. In the glow of a new Zenith television, it became easy to believe that the American dream had been fully realized by the sacrifice and hard work of the war generation. American monsters in pop culture came to the aid of this great American sleep. Although a handful of science fiction films made explicit political messages that unsettled an apathetic America, the vast majority of 'creature features' proffered parables of American righteousness and power. These narratives ended, not with world apocalypse, but with a full restoration of a secure, consumer-oriented status quo. Invaders in flying saucers, radioactive mutations, and giant creatures born of the atomic age wreaked havoc but were soon destroyed by brainy teams of civilian scientists in cooperation with the American military. These films encouraged a certain degree of paranoia but also offered quick and easy relief to this anxiety... Such films did not so much teach Americans to 'stop worrying and love the bomb' as to 'keep worrying and love the state.

Why trust this account when humanity has never been so rich, so healthy, so long-lived? When fewer die in wars and childbirth than ever before—and more knowledge, more truth by way of science, was never so available to us all? When tender sympathies—for children, animals, alien religions, unknown, distant foreigners—swell daily? When hundreds of millions have been raised from wretched subsistence? When, in the West, even the middling poor recline in armchairs, charmed by music as they steer themselves down smooth highways at four times the speed of a galloping horse? When smallpox, polio, cholera, measles, high infant mortality, illiteracy, public executions and routine state torture have been banished from so many countries? Not so long ago, all these curses were everywhere. When solar panels and wind farms and nuclear energy and inventions not yet known will deliver us from the sewage of carbon dioxide, and GM crops will save us from the ravages of chemical farming and the poorest from starvation? When the worldwide migration to the cities will return vast tracts of land to wilderness, will lower birth rates, and rescue women from ignorant village patriarchs? What of the commonplace miracles that would make a manual labourer the envy of Caesar Augustus: pain-free dentistry, electric light, instant contact with people we love, with the best music the world has known, with the cuisine of a dozen cultures? We’re bloated with privileges and delights, as well as complaints, and the rest who are not will be soon.

As I walked in the front door, with the glare of early morning sun still in my eyes, I had the illusion that I saw someone I recognized. She was sitting in a chair near the door, reading a magazine, and she looked for all the world like-- But it couldn't really be her, of course. She would have had to talk her protective father into giving her permission. She would have had to drive all night from Baltimore, taking the freeways and turnpikes north through New Jersey and New York and New England. That was the only way she could be here now, putting down her magazine and rising and coming toward me with a smile on her face. If I could have looked down the years then and seen everything from beginning to end--the good times, the best times, the bad times, the bad decisions, the indecision, and the finally the divorce--I still would not have traded anything for that moment.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

If you want to drive the isthmus lengthwise, down the gullet, Mexico to Colombia, where the land broadens and South America begins, your best bet is the Pan-American Highway, which starts in Alaska and continues thirty thousand miles to the bottom of the world. It’s a network of roads each charted by a conquistador or strongman. It’s disappointing in many places, rutted and small, climbing and descending, battling the jungle and mountains, then ending abruptly in the rain forest of Panama. It’s as if the road itself, defeated by nature, walked away muttering. It starts again sixty-five miles hence, on the other side of a chasm. This is called the Darién Gap. It symbolizes the incomplete nature of Central America, the IN PROGRESS sign that seems to hang over everything. Russia is the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Germany is the Autobahn. The United States is Route 66. Central America is the Darién Gap.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Thrasher" They were hiding behind hay bales, They were planting in the full moon They had given all they had for something new But the light of day was on them, They could see the thrashers coming And the water shone like diamonds in the dew. And I was just getting up, hit the road before it's light Trying to catch an hour on the sun When I saw those thrashers rolling by, Looking more than two lanes wide I was feelin' like my day had just begun. Where the eagle glides ascending There's an ancient river bending Down the timeless gorge of changes Where sleeplessness awaits I searched out my companions, Who were lost in crystal canyons When the aimless blade of science Slashed the pearly gates. It was then I knew I'd had enough, Burned my credit card for fuel Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand With a one-way ticket to the land of truth And my suitcase in my hand How I lost my friends I still don't understand. They had the best selection, They were poisoned with protection There was nothing that they needed, Nothing left to find They were lost in rock formations Or became park bench mutations On the sidewalks and in the stations They were waiting, waiting. So I got bored and left them there, They were just deadweight to me Better down the road without that load Brings back the time when I was eight or nine I was watchin' my mama's T.V., It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode. Where the vulture glides descending On an asphalt highway bending Thru libraries and museums, galaxies and stars Down the windy halls of friendship To the rose clipped by the bullwhip The motel of lost companions Waits with heated pool and bar. But me I'm not stopping there, Got my own row left to hoe Just another line in the field of time When the thrasher comes, I'll be stuck in the sun Like the dinosaurs in shrines But I'll know the time has come To give what's mine. Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

For Delta blueman Robert Johnson and his contemporaries, the train was the eternal metaphor for the travelling life, and it still holds true today. There is no travel like it. Train lines carve through all facets of a nation. While buses stick to major highways and planes reduce the unfolding of lives to a bird's eye view, trains putter through the domains of the rich and the poor, the desperate and the idle, rural and urban, isolated and cluttered. Through train windows you see realities rarely visible in the landscaped tourist areas. Those frames hold the untended jungle of a nation's truth. Despite my shredded emotions, there was still no feeling like dragging all your worldly possessions onto a carriage, alone and anonymous, to set off into the unknown; where any and all varieties of adventures await, where you might meet a new best friend, where the love of your life could be hiding in a dingy cafe. The clatter of the tracks is the sound of liberation.

Aurora was romantic and brooding and heartbreaking and volatile all at once. In the age of arena rock, Daisy Jones & The Six managed to create something that felt intimate even though it could still play to a stadium. They had the impenetrable drums and the searing solos—they had songs that felt relentless in the best way possible. But the album also felt up close and personal. Billy and Daisy felt like they were right next to you, singing just to each other. “And it was deeply layered. That was the biggest thing Aurora had going for it. It sounds like a good-time album when you first listen to it. It’s an album you can play at a party. It’s an album you get high to. It’s an album you can play as you’re speeding down the highway. “But then you listen to the lyrics and you realize this is an album you can cry to. And it’s an album you can get laid to. “For every moment of your life, in 1978, Aurora could play in the background. “And from the moment it was released, it was a juggernaut.

Long before I was ready to say good-bye, Hannah rose to her feet and beckoned to Andrew. “We’ve had enough excitement for one day. It’s time to leave.” After making sure Aunt Blythe wasn’t looking, Andrew pulled a leather bag out of his pocket. “She thinks you already have these,” he said. “They’re yours for keeps now.” I clasped the marbles to my heart and stared at him through a blur of tears. “Come back soon, Andrew.” He hugged me so hard he squashed my nose against his bony shoulder. “At my age, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do my best to see you again, and that’s the truth. After all, Hannah and I aren’t that far away. With modern cars and highways, Riverview’s a sight closer than it used to be.” Reluctant to let him go, I looked him in the eye. “No matter what happens, I’ll always keep you here.” I struck my chest with my fist. “Right here in my heart as long as I live.” Andrew smiled. “I fancy you picked up that pretty notion from Hannah.” Hugging me again, he said, “I hope your heart lasts as long as mine has, Drew. I want you to have all the time in the world to do whatever you like.

The next morning I showed up at dad’s house at eight, with a hangover. All my brothers’ trucks were parked in front. What are they all doing here? When I opened the front door, Dad, Alan, Jase, and Willie looked at me. They were sitting around the living room, waiting. No one smiled, and the air felt really heavy. I looked to my left, where Mom was usually working in the kitchen, but this time she was still, leaning over the counter and looking at me too. Dad spoke first. “Son, are you ready to change?” Everything else seemed to go silent and fade away, and all I heard was my dad’s voice. “I just want you to know we’ve come to a decision as a family. You’ve got two choices. You keep doing what you’re doing--maybe you’ll live through it--but we don’t want nothin’ to do with you. Somebody can drop you off at the highway, and then you’ll be on your own. You can go live your life; we’ll pray for you and hope that you come back one day. And good luck to you in this world.” He paused for a second then went on, a little quieter. “Your other choice is that you can join this family and follow God. You know what we stand for. We’re not going to let you visit our home while you’re carrying on like this. You give it all up, give up all those friends, and those drugs, and come home. Those are your two choices.” I struggled to breathe, my head down and my chest tight. No matter what happened, I knew I would never forget this moment. My breath left me in a rush, and I fell to my knees in front of them all and started crying. “Dad, what took y’all so long?” I burst out. I felt broken, and I began to tell them about the sorry and dangerous road I’d been traveling down. I could see my brothers’ eyes starting to fill with tears too. I didn’t dare look at my mom’s face although I could feel her presence behind me. I knew she’d already been through the hell of addiction with her own mother, with my dad, with her brother-in-law Si, and with my oldest brother, Alan. And now me, her baby. I remembered the letters she’d been writing to me over the last few months, reaching out with words of love from her heart and from the heart of the Lord. Suddenly, I felt guilty. “Dad, I don’t deserve to come back. I’ve been horrible. Let me tell you some more.” “No, son,” he answered. “You’ve told me enough.” I’ve seen my dad cry maybe three times, and that was one of them. To see my dad that upset hit me right in the gut. He took me by my shoulders and said, “I want you to know that God loves you, and we love you, but you just can’t live like that anymore.” “I know. I want to come back home,” I said. I realized my dad understood. He’d been down this road before and come back home. He, too, had been lost and then found. By this time my brothers were crying, and they got around me, and we were on our knees, crying. I prayed out loud to God, “Thank You for getting me out of this because I am done living the way I’ve been living.” “My prodigal son has returned,” Dad said, with tears of joy streaming down his face. It was the best day of my life. I could finally look over at my mom, and she was hanging on to the counter for dear life, crying, and shaking with happiness. A little later I felt I had to go use the bathroom. My stomach was a mess from the stress and the emotions. But when I was in the bathroom with the door shut, my dad thought I might be in there doing one last hit of something or drinking one last drop, so he got up, came over, and started banging on the bathroom door. Before I could do anything, he kicked in the door. All he saw was me sitting on the pot and looking up at him while I about had a heart attack. It was not our finest moment. That afternoon after my brothers had left, we went into town and packed up and moved my stuff out of my apartment. “Hey bro,” I said to my roommate. “I’m changing my life. I’ll see ya later.” I meant it.

This journey by time capsule to the early 1940s is not always a pleasant one. It affords us a glimpse at the pre-civil rights South. This was true in the raw copy of the guidebooks as well. The Alabama guidebook copy referred to blacks as “darkies.” It originally described the city of Florence struggling through “the terrible reconstruction, those evil days when in bitter poverty, her best and bravest of them sleep in Virginia battlefields, her civilization destroyed . . . And now when the darkest hour had struck, came a flash of light, the forerunners of dawn. It was the Ku Klux Klan . . .” The Dover, Delaware, report stated that “Negroes whistle melodiously.” Ohio copy talked of their “love for pageantry and fancy dress.” Such embarrassingly racist passages were usually edited out, but the America Eats manuscripts are unedited, so the word darkies remains in a Kentucky recipe for eggnog. In the southern essays from America Eats, whenever there is dialogue between a black and a white, it reads like an exchange between a slave and a master. There also seems to be a racist oral fixation. Black people are always sporting big “grins.” A description of a Mississippi barbecue cook states, “Bluebill is what is known as a ‘bluegum’ Negro, and they call him the brother of the Ugly man, but personal beauty is not in the least necessary to a barbecue cook.

When I arrived, I immediately saw the mother of an ex-boyfriend, the kind of ex-boyfriend that would make you want to look as good as possible if you ran into his mother at a shower when you were several months pregnant. She saw me, smiled politely, and made her way across the room to visit with me. We hugged, exchanged pleasantries, and caught up on what we’d both been doing. As we talked, I fantasized about her reporting to her son, my ex, the next day. Oh, you should have seen Ree. She was positively glowing! You should have seen how wonderful she looked! Don’t you wish you had married her? Deep into our small talk, I made mention of how long it had been since she and I had seen each other. “Well…I did see you recently,” she replied. “But I don’t think you saw me.” I couldn’t imagine. “Oh really?” I asked. “Where?” I hardly ever came to my hometown. “Well,” she continued. “I saw you pulling out of McDonald’s on Highway Seventy-five one morning a few weeks ago. I waved to you…but you didn’t see me.” My insides suddenly shriveled, imagining myself violently shoving breakfast burritos into my mouth. “McDonald’s? Really?” I said, trying my best to play dumb. “Yes,” my ex’s mother replied, smiling. “You looked a little…hungry!” “Hmmm,” I said. “I don’t think that was me.” I skulked away to the bathroom, vowing to eat granola for the rest of my pregnancy.

And that unfortunate loss? Was that really an accident,or did you lose deliberately so I wouldn't have to pay the bill?" He shrugged. "My lips are sealed." "I should have known." Once on the open highway he turned on the radio,and they both sang along with Garth as he lamented his papa being a rolling stone. When the song ended,Marilee looked over. "I'll consider that a sermon. According to Garth, a woman would be a fool to lose her heart to a man who'd rather drive a truck than be home with her." Wyatt winked,and in his best imitation of Daffy's smoky voice he said, "Honey, a man may love the open road,but any female with half a brain can figure out how to compete with a truck.Just bat those pretty little red-tipped lashes at any male over the age of twelve, and his brain turns to mush.Next thing you know, instead of revving up his engine, he's on his hands and knees, carrying a toddler on his back around a living room full of toys and baby gear." Though the image was a surprisingly pretty one,Marilee had to wipe tears from her eyes,she was laughing so hard. When she caught her breath she managed to say, "You've got Daffy down so perfectly,you could probably answer the phone at the Fortune Saloon and no one would believe it wasn't her." "She's easy." He chuckled. "I think she's the only female with a voice that's deeper than mine." She looked out the window at the full moon above Treasure Chest Mountain in the distance. "It's a shame to waste such a pretty night.Maybe you ought to pull over and park.We can make out like teenagers." "Not a bad idea." At his arched brow she added, "It would give me a chance to see if I could turn your brain to mush." "Believe it.

In 1979, Christopher Connolly cofounded a psychology consultancy in the United Kingdom to help high achievers (initially athletes, but then others) perform at their best. Over the years, Connolly became curious about why some professionals floundered outside a narrow expertise, while others were remarkably adept at expanding their careers—moving from playing in a world-class orchestra, for example, to running one. Thirty years after he started, Connolly returned to school to do a PhD investigating that very question, under Fernand Gobet, the psychologist and chess international master. Connolly’s primary finding was that early in their careers, those who later made successful transitions had broader training and kept multiple “career streams” open even as they pursued a primary specialty. They “traveled on an eight-lane highway,” he wrote, rather than down a single-lane one-way street. They had range. The successful adapters were excellent at taking knowledge from one pursuit and applying it creatively to another, and at avoiding cognitive entrenchment. They employed what Hogarth called a “circuit breaker.” They drew on outside experiences and analogies to interrupt their inclination toward a previous solution that may no longer work. Their skill was in avoiding the same old patterns. In the wicked world, with ill-defined challenges and few rigid rules, range can be a life hack. Pretending the world is like golf and chess is comforting. It makes for a tidy kind-world message, and some very compelling books. The rest of this one will begin where those end—in a place where the popular sport is Martian tennis, with a view into how the modern world became so wicked in the first place.

what was good for survival and reproduction in the African savannah a million years ago does not necessarily make for responsible behavior on twenty-first-century motorways. Distracted, angry, and anxious human drivers kill more than a million people in traffic accidents every year. We can send all our philosophers, prophets, and priests to preach ethics to these drivers, but on the road, mammalian emotions and savannah instincts will still take over. Consequently, seminarians in a rush will ignore people in distress, and drivers in a crisis will run over hapless pedestrians. This disjunction between the seminary and the road is one of the biggest practical problems in ethics. Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls can sit in some cozy university hall and discuss theoretical ethical problems for days—but would their conclusions actually be implemented by stressed-out drivers caught in a split-second emergency? Perhaps Michael Schumacher—the Formula One champion who is sometimes hailed as the best driver in history—had the ability to think about philosophy while racing a car, but most of us aren’t Schumacher. Computer algorithms, however, have not been shaped by natural selection, and they have neither emotions nor gut instincts. Therefore in moments of crisis they could follow ethical guidelines much better than humans—provided we find a way to code ethics in precise numbers and statistics. If we could teach Kant, Mill, and Rawls to write code, they would be able to program the self-driving car in their cozy laboratory and be certain that the car would follow their commandments on the highway. In effect, every car would be driven by Michael Schumacher and Immanuel Kant rolled into one.

Pale blue. A vast empty expanse of it lay between them and the searing white disk hovering overhead. Nothing else. It could have been painted there, ripped from a paper ceiling, proving they didn’t exist. None of it did. Best to lean back in the seat and feel the wind and hope to catch sight of something, an eagle, a cloud, a slight incline, a tumble weed, a curve in the highway.

Hill was sad and predicted that the ICC and the Sherman Act would ruin American railroads and threaten cheap trade throughout the nation. A 72-year-old Hill would even write a book, Highways of Progress, to argue this point. But his last days seem to have been happy. He had built the best railroad in America and had used it to beat subsidized rivals time and again. He helped open the Northwest to settlement and the Orient to American trade. He had made a difference in the way the world worked. To some viewers, he was the real hero in the drama of the American transcontinental railroads.

When you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat axe,” said Moses in response to the new challenges. “I’m just going to keep right on building. You do the best you can to stop it.

Not Exactly Speeding A cop was watching the traffic on Highway 22 when he saw a car puttering along at way below the speed limit. “Well,” he said, “they’re not exactly speeding, but driving that slow is just as dangerous.” So he turned on the flashing lights and pulled the car over. Inside were five little old ladies, two in front and three in the back. All of them looked scared and shaken up. After getting the license and registration of the driver, the police officer explained that while they certainly weren’t speeding, it was also dangerous for them to drive a lot slower than the speed limit and he had to write them a ticket for that. “Slower than the speed limit?” the driver asked. “Officer, I don’t understand. We were going exactly the speed limit – twenty-two miles an hour.” The officer suppressed a laugh at their expense and explained politely that twenty-two was the route number, not the speed limit, and the speed limit was actually sixty-five. The driver seemed to understand and promised to do better in the future, and the police officer decided to let them off with a warning. As they were about to drive away, he asked, “Ma’am, are all of you ladies all right?” because they seemed so frightened and shaken. “Oh, we’ll be fine in a few minutes, officer, don’t worry,” the driver said. “We just got off of Highway 118.

using walkie-talkies with enough batteries to talk to each other as they drove cross-country. They wound their way through city streets, farm to market roads, and state highways, trying their best to avoid the interstates. During the drive, they saw an unusual sight - United Nations vehicles going in the opposite direction that we were going or passing them on some of the roads. The five adults thought they’d never seen a United Nations presence in the United States outside of New York City and they wondered what was going on.

Once we finally get rid of the Christians, we can be free to do what we want without criticism. Just how many camps do we have, if someone could refresh my memory?” “Mr. President, we have one hundred camps, some states have more than two, while the Great Plains states, along with Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana having none of those facilities. Most of the governors have no idea they’re there, and we plan on keeping it that way,” answered Griffiths. “Why aren’t there ones in the Great Plains states?” “For one, there are not enough residents in flyover country to bother with. Secondly, we can cut off food and other supplies to them simply by stopping freight trucks and trains when the TSA shuts down the interstates, highways, and railroads. Starving them seemed like the best option,” answered Evans.

You’re so good to me.” She wrapped her arms around him. “Sliding off the highway was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” “You didn’t know it, angel, but you were coming home.

I was suffering with profound personality change, and if I had to go out onto the highway and stick out my thumb and secure a ride to a Waffle House in order to consume grits in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I would go to a Waffle House, leaving behind the unwanted back hair and the expanding belt lines and the godforsaken cheese grits to make of myself a person of the road, a person of the highway, a person of indeterminate location. You could get some grits at a Waffle House, and it wouldn’t cost you an arm and leg, because it was presumed at Waffle House that you were on your last nickel, that you had squandered opportunities, that all was illusion. A man still has to eat, however, and coarsely ground cornmeal was best. It needed nothing other than what it was, and if an inn with a bunch of nauseating pastels and some faux-Mexican decor could not provide you with true and authentic grits, then you might go elsewhere, as you did, eventually. ★

It’s a fact: laziness is rooted in self-love. It is the ability to take ourselves off the hook. It is the willingness to permit ourselves not to do things we know we should do. It is believing that good things should come our way without our having to work to get them. It is opting for what is comfortable for ourselves rather than what is best for our spouse. Laziness is always self-focused and self-excusing. Laziness is undisciplined and unmotivated. Laziness permits us to be passive when decisive and loving action is needed. Laziness allows us to avoid when we should be engaged. Laziness expects more from others than we require from ourselves. Laziness demands good things without being willing to invest in them. I am persuaded that laziness is a much bigger deal in our marriages than we have tended to think. Check out these proverbs. I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense, and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles and its stone wall was broken down. (Prov. 24: 30-31) Isn’t this exactly what we have been describing? Your marriage is inflicted with difficulty because you have failed to act to keep it what God intended it to be. The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labor. (Prov. 21: 25) Often, marriages are troubled by discontent and unfulfilled desire. Proverbs connects these to laziness. Because you are not doing the hard work of following the command principles of God’s Word, the good desires that you have for your marriage remain unfulfilled. This heightens your discontent, adding more trouble to your marriage and making it even harder to deal with the things you must deal with for your marriage to be what God designed it to be. The sluggard will not plow by reason of the winter; Therefore he shall beg in harvest, and have nothing. (Prov. 20: 4 ASV) The sluggard says, “There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!” (Prov. 22: 13) These proverbs capture the excuse dynamic of laziness. We take ourselves off the hook by giving ourselves plausible reasons (excuses) for our inactivity. The way of a sluggard is like a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is a level highway. (Prov. 15: 19) Where does laziness in marriage lead? It leads to disappointment, discouragement, discontentment, and future trouble. In a fallen world, very few things are corrected by inaction.

No, no, no,” replied Brynjolfsson. “From about the 1930s through about the 1960s, the [top] tax rate averaged about seventy percent. At times it was up at ninety-five percent. And those were actually pretty good years for growth.” Indeed they were. Between 1948 and 1973, real GDP grew 170 percent in the United States and per capita income nearly doubled. During that same period, the revenue collected through that progressive tax code made it possible to build an interstate highway system and fund the space program, while dramatically expanding the social safety net, with new programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and food stamps. Even with historically high tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, the period of economic expansion came to be viewed as a golden age of capitalism. And with government largely delivering for people in a way they had not seen before, these years were also not coincidentally an age that saw Americans two to three times more likely to express trust in their government than they have in more recent years.

Q: What can ordinary people with busy lives and not a lot of political access do to address this stuff? You can try to address it in your own life. You can try to set up your life so you have to drive as little as possible. In so doing, you vote with your feet and your wallet. When more people bike, walk and use public transit, there is greater pressure on elected officials and government agencies to improve these modes of transportation. It thus increases the profitability of public transit and makes cities more desirable places to live. It also helps reduce your carbon footprint and reduces the amount of money going to automobile manufacturers, oil companies and highway agencies. In a globally connected capitalist world, cities and countries are competing for highly skilled labor—programmers, engineers, scientists, etc. To some degree, these people can live anywhere they want. So San Francisco or my current city in Minnesota aren’t just competing with other U.S. cities but are competing with cities in Europe for the best and brightest talent. Polls and statistics show that more and more skilled people want to live in cities that are walkable, bikeable and have good public transit. Also our population is aging and realizing that they don’t want to be trapped in automobile-oriented retirement communities in Florida or the southwest USA. They also want improved walkability and transit. Finally, there’s been an explosion of obesity in the USA with resulting increases in healthcare costs. Many factors contribute to this but increased amounts of driving and a lack of daily exercise are major factors. City, state and business leaders in the US are increasingly aware of all this. It is part of Gil Peñalosa’s “8-80” message (the former parks commissioner of Bogotá, Colombia) and many other leaders. (2015 interview with Microcosm Publishing)

You are the divine result of crumpled receipts and pretzel salt, of expired condoms and forgotten phone numbers, of lipstick and longing, of hands opened and spread out, of dogs running and of trucks on the highway, of cheap champagne and of diner coffee, of address books thrown out the window, of paperbacks and of pregnancies, of crow’s feet and of silver streaks in the dark night of your hair.

of glittering armor and the forest of battle pennants, the main part of the emperors’ army was concentrated on Highway 24, forcing its way toward the Caldecott Tunnel. Enemy catapults hurled projectiles toward the legion’s positions, but most disappeared in bursts of purple light as soon as they got close. I assumed that was the work of Terminus, doing his part to defend the camp’s borders. Meanwhile, at the base of the tunnel, flashes of lightning pinpointed the location of the legion’s standard. Tendrils of electricity zigzagged down the hillsides, arcing through enemy lines and frying them to dust. Camp Jupiter’s ballistae launched giant flaming spears at the invaders, raking through their lines and starting more forest fires. The emperors’ troops kept coming. The ones making the best progress were huddled behind large armored vehicles that crawled on eight legs and…Oh, gods. My guts felt like they’d gotten tangled in my bike chain. Those weren’t vehicles. “Myrmekes,” I said. “Meg, those are myr—” “I see them.” She didn’t even slow down. “It doesn’t change anything. Come on!” How could it not change anything? We’d faced a nest of those giant ants at Camp Half-Blood and barely survived. Meg had nearly been pulped into Gerber’s larvae purée. Now we were confronting myrmekes trained for war, snapping trees in half with their pincers and spraying acid to melt through the camp’s defensive pickets. This was a brand-new flavor of horrible. “We’ll never get through their lines!” I protested. “Lavinia’s secret tunnel.

But abuse isn’t like an uncomfortable pair of boots you can just kick off. It’s like being the passenger in a car speeding the wrong way down the highway. You know there’s hurt ahead, but you’re too scared to jump out. All you can do is hope it slows down, or better still, that it stops completely. Maybe it’s different for other victims, who have more family and friends, or who live in a bigger town.

Pulling onto the highway a few minutes later, it occurred to me that Denny said that there were two ways he created synchronicities. To the best I could recollect, he had related only one.

I had to remind myself of all the ways that he might be Buffalo Bill, and my erotically charged moment was his puts the lotion on its skin. He could take me anywhere. He looked like the kind of guy who'd be savvy about which highway exit had the best wooded area for dumping a body. Maybe that was why he drove a truck. Which I was currently sitting in. Which of those options honestly scared me more--- that he could be up to some dark shit, or just that I had a crush? Maybe my true crime reading had desensitized me after all, because I knew which of those made my heart speed up.

The small town of Gunnison, Colorado, lies at the bottom of the valley carved by the Gunnison River into the Rocky Mountains. It is now crossed by the Colorado stretch of U.S. Highway 50, but in 1918, the town was mainly supplied by train and two at best mediocre roads. When the 1918–19 influenza pandemic reached Colorado as an unwelcome stowaway on a train carrying servicemen from Montana to Boulder, the town of Gunnison took decisive action. As the November 1, 1918, edition of the Gunnison News-Champion documents, a Dr. Rockefeller from the nearby town of Crested Butte was "given entire charge of both towns and county to enforce a quarantine against all the world". He instituted a strict reverse quarantine regime that almost entirely isolated Gunnison from the rest of the world. Gunnison became one of the few communities that largely escaped the ravages of the influenza pandemic, at least in the beginning – in an instructive example of the limited human patience for the social, psychological and economic disruption of quarantine, adherence eventually waned and the front page of the Gunnison News-Champion's March 14, 1919, issue reports that the influenza pandemic got to Gunnison, too. Nevertheless, Gunnison had a very lucky escape – of a population of over 6,900 (including the county), there were only a few cases and a single death.

Best Budget Travel Destinations Ever Are you looking for a cheap flight this year? Travel + Leisure received a list of the most affordable locations this year from one of the top travel search engines in the world, Kayak. Kayak then considered the top 100 locations with the most affordable average flight prices, excluding outliers due to things like travel restrictions and security issues. To save a lot of money, go against the grain. Mexico Unsurprisingly, Mexico is at the top of the list of the cheapest places to travel in 2022. The United States has long been seen as an accessible and affordable vacation destination; low-cost direct flights are common. San José del Cabo (in Baja California Sur), Puerto Vallarta, and Cancun are the three destinations within Mexico with the least expensive flights, with January being the most economical month to visit each. Fortunately, January is a glorious month in each of these beachside locales, with warm, balmy weather and an abundance of vibrant hues, textures, and flavors to chase away the winter blues. Looking for a city vacation rather than a beach vacation? Mexico City, which boasts a diverse collection of museums and a rich Aztec heritage, is another accessible option in the country. May is the cheapest month to travel there. Chicago, Illinois Who wants to go to Chicago in the winter? Once you learn about all the things to do in this Midwest winter wonderland and the savings you can get in January, you'll be convinced. At Maggie Daley Park, spend the afternoon ice skating before warming up with some deep-dish pizza. Colombia Colombia's fascinating history, vibrant culture, and mouthwatering cuisine make it a popular travel destination. It is also inexpensive compared to what many Americans are used to paying for items like a fresh arepa and a cup of Colombian coffee. The cheapest month of the year to fly to Bogotá, the capital city, is February. The Bogota Botanical Garden, founded in 1955 and home to almost 20,000 plants, is meticulously maintained, and despite the region's chilly climate, strolling through it is not difficult. The entrance fee is just over $1 USD. In January, travel to the port city of Cartagena on the country's Caribbean coast. The majority of visitors discover that exploring the charming streets on foot is sufficient to make their stay enjoyable. Tennessee's Music City There's a reason why bachelorette parties and reunions of all kinds are so popular in Music City: it's easy to have fun without spending a fortune. There is no fee to visit a mural, hot chicken costs only a few dollars, and Honky Tonk Highway is lined with free live music venues. The cheapest month to book is January. New York City, New York Even though New York City isn't known for being a cheap vacation destination, you'll find the best deals if you go in January. Even though the city never sleeps, the cold winter months are the best time for you to visit and take advantage of the lower demand for flights and hotel rooms. In addition, New York City offers a wide variety of free activities. Canada Not only does our neighbor Mexico provide excellent deals, but the majority of Americans can easily fly to Canada for an affordable getaway. In Montréal, Quebec, you must try the steamé, which is the city's interpretation of a hot dog and is served steamed in a side-loading bun (which is also steamed). It's the perfect meal to eat in the middle of February when travel costs are at their lowest. Best of all, hot dogs are inexpensive and delicious as well as filling. The most affordable month to visit Toronto, Ontario is February. Even though the weather may make you wary, the annual Toronto Light Festival, which is completely free, is held in February in the charming and historic Distillery District. Another excellent choice at this time is the $5 Bentway Skate Trail under the Gardiner Expressway overpass.

The best way for them to ensure their psychological survival is to be in control of their environment and the people in it at all times. That’s why it’s their way or the highway, and compromise and flexibility seem impossible.

Gracie sat quietly while Justin and Danielle talked. She eavesdropped halfheartedly, absorbed with re-creating the incident up at the latrine that Danielle seemed to have already forgotten. Something had happened up there that bothered her, because it suggested someone on the trip had an agenda besides the adventure itself. It reminded her that people could be evil, something she believed more and more the older she got. Danielle, however, was at her charming best. Subjects ranged from their schools to Facebook pages to sports, television shows, and bands. Gracie found herself rolling her eyes each time Danielle and Justin discovered more and more common bonds. When Danielle mentioned their parents were divorced, Justin said, “Shit, mine too.

Danielle narrowed her eyes at her sister and said, “This time I’m not going up to that stupid toilet. I’ll be back in a second. Don’t try to steal Justin away, as if you could.” After she was gone, Gracie and Justin sat together uncomfortably. Or at least Gracie did. Justin said, “Your sister seems nice.” “She isn’t.” Justin chuckled. “I guess what I mean is she could be nice, if she tried.” “Don’t count on it,” Gracie said, warming to him. “I know her.” “There’s good in everybody, Gracie.” She looked over to see if he was serious. He was. He said, “I always expect the best out of people. I think when you do that, you get the best most of the time. I just kind of bump along, expecting the best, and good things just happen. That’s my secret.

Asleep at the wheel nearly dead I think and feeling nothing on my skin but the dark eyes of the antelopes all around me in the Wyoming night watching me pass—a small animal growling down the highway with both eyes aglow. To keep awake I force my head out the window as into a guillotine the black sleet-filled air slipping under each eyelid like a child’s thin silver spoon. Looking back into the car through the ice and tears I do not recognize that body sleeping there. I no longer know that leg pressed hard to the gas, the blue coat or scarf or the hand reaching out to the wheel. Folks, you know I am doing my best— pushing hard toward you through this winter sky but reduced to this— just this head out a window streaming through space like a bearded rock, a hunk of pocked iron with melting eyes. A trail of fiery mist is growing out of the back of my head and stretches now for miles across the night. The odds, I know, are a thousand to one I'll burn up before touching earth but if somehow I do make it home smashing across the farmyard and lighting up the sky I will throw a red glow across the barn's silver roof and crash into the rough wood of your back door smaller than a grain of sand making its one childlike knock. The porch light will hesitate then snap on, as it always does when a car comes up the lane late at night. The two sleepy old faces will come to the door in their long soft robes— will stand there bewildered rubbing their eyes looking around and wondering who it was at their door no sooner come than gone a cinder in the eye.

back in the 1880s the town elders spent a whole week deliberating how best to christen the streets before deciding—with an eye to the future—that the east-west streets would be named for presidents and the north-south streets for trees. As it turned out, they could have settled on seasons and suits because seventy-five years later the town was still only four blocks square.

Then there was his dad. He wouldn’t be as emotional or judgmental about the situation. After all, he’d saved all their lives. But his dad was at best unpredictable. When Cody Hoyt had his fuse lit, anything could happen. Justin wasn’t sure he wanted to be the one holding the match.

We can't all be captains; we've got to be crew. There's something for all of us here. There's big work to do and there's lesser to do and the task we must do is the near. If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail, if you can't be the sun, be a star; it isn't by the size that you win or you fail, be the best of whatever you are!

There is this male tendency to believe that somehow the initial two weeks of snappy dressing, full eye contact, and best behavior will balance out thirty years of holey underwear, mumbling, and anatomic decline. It is one thing to be a work in progress, quite another to be a work in regress. Familiarity is no excuse for lowering your standards. - from Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace

The liberation of the human mind,” H. L. Mencken once wrote, “has been best furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe—that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.

However, the world being what it is, not five miles later, on that same highway, a beat-to-shit pickup crept alongside me. I turned and glanced at the kid in the passenger seat just as he hollered, “Nigger!” I shook my head as they drove on, but his ignorance didn’t fuck with me. That was his problem. In fact, the word he’d hoped would wound me bounced right off me. I was on the verge of running five hundred miles of ultra races in less than six weeks. That is a monumental output, and the reason I pulled it off is because I am focused on being my best at all times. When you live that way, there is no time to donate to small-town racists or anyone else whose perspective is defined by their narrow minds. At this point in my life, the supposedly offensive, unspeakable word with its dark, violent history has been reduced to a chain of harmless symbols: consonants and vowels that don’t mean a damn thing.

No, said a little voice in the back of her head, you can’t. She knew that voice quite well. She didn’t like it much, mostly because it told her the truth, a commodity whose supply had a tendency to exceed demand. For a genuine free spirit, the very best the truth can ever be is a starting point, a fixer-upper in need of a great deal of tender loving imagination. At its worst – like now, for example – it’s a brick wall across the highway, with barbed wire, searchlights and dogs. No, you can’t.

Modern life is becoming more and more like that bus hurtling down the highway: speedy, turbulent, stimulus saturated, and mobile. As a result, we are all becoming less and less able to think hard and well about what best to do in many situations. Hence, even the most careful-minded of us are increasingly likely to react automatically to the cues for action that exist in those settings. So, given the quickening pace and concentration-disrupting character of today’s world, are we all fated to be bozos on this bus? Not if, rather than raging against the invading automaticity, we invite it in but take systematic control of the way it operates on us.

Painting of love This afternoon I saw a painting hanging on the wall, It was of a maiden in the prime of her beauty, The background was painted in rainbow colours, one and all, I had every reason to admire the artists sagacity, Her form looked perfect worthy of every appreciation, Her eyes interacted with mine, Her lips had a strong and intense red sensation, And from her arose feelings divine, Although it was just a portrait, A still painting hanging on the still wall, She was a feeling that moved through eyes into the heart without any freight, And in me, just like other mesmerised onlookers, she did feelings of life and love install, Maybe I only felt so, maybe I wanted to feel so, Because her eyes, her form, her everything reminded me of someone, And I imagined her in this painting on the wall, and I allowed my mind to believe so, As long as she did not remind me of anyone, or everyone, but just her, my special someone, So I sat there looking at the painting on the wall, I admired the salient aspects of her colourful beauty, And now I too was still, still like the painting and still like the dead wall, Now, not the painting, but the stillness it exuded had become my new propensity, Like a flower that is beautiful in the presence of the beauty that holds itself within it so still, A state where all conflicts are exhumed and everything that represents profanity dies, That is when this painting with million joys my heart fills in the life’s unforgiving mill, And recreates her colourful visions within me, and now my life just on them relies, So, I often visit the painting on the wall, still hanging there, And maybe it will be so always, Until one day I find it everywhere, Because I wish to love her in a million ways, in the narrow lanes, on the byways and all the highways!

do you think you're going?" he says. "I'm going to Las Vegas. You can earn $400 for a blow job there, and I figured that I might as well earn money for what I do to you free." The husband thinks for a moment, goes upstairs, and comes back down, with his suitcase packed as well. "Where do you think you going?" the wife asks. "I'm coming with you...I want to see how you survive on $800 a year!!!" 27 A police officer was patrolling the highway when he sees a guy tied up to a tree, crying.

They turned off the highway and onto Somerset Street, driving until they reached Kensington Avenue. It was obviously not the best part of town.

Roses and they She had shown him many things, She had made him feel joys of many springs, They had been to many places together, They had found love in each other, He had believed in her and her every word, He had erected on the highways of his heart her every memories’ billboard, She had travelled on them for many years, She had never let time’s brevity be the reason for her fears, So they felt every passing day, they experienced life of love, So much, that they even felt loved by the feeling of love, She waited for him in every moment, She felt it was him whenever a leaf fell or she felt some movement, He too felt the same; as she felt, He to with her in his own heart dwelt, They lived a life that was unlamented by all virtues, They were kissed by life’s joys and and beauty’s all possible hues, He was unremitting when it came to loving her, He always wanted to be with her, forever together, Then one day they slept under a rose bush in full bloom, Then I beheld them being woven together on the life’s loom, He now lives within her and she lives within him, She is the rose bush that radiates with a different light under the moonlight dim, He is the roses which only bloom for her, And she is the rose bush that only grows for him forever!

Curled time It was the moment of last reckoning, The last moment for time and life as well, Because for long life had been meandering, Along the highways of time, until they all crashed and fell, They fell into the self terminating moments of time, For time no longer found a reason to tarry in this world, It had lost its melody, its symphony, and its every happy rhyme, Thus forcing time to create moments that always flowed in formations curled, Always moving back to where they began, Thereby cancelling every prospect of future, With future dead, the present too died and moments of time no longer ran, Because there was no present to stand on, no future to go to, and ah the time’s torture, To live in this curled formation, Where every moment ended the moment it began, Time existed but it had lost its original sensation, Now that present didn't exist , future had no existence at all; I wondered whose was this plan, Not the Sky, not the Earth, not the Sun and not at all the Moon, They all existed in their orbits like before, So who could be this senseless goon, Who forced time to lead a curled path, where only past existed now and rest it was forced to ignore, Life existed like a past memory, Where nothing new took place, It was like a devil’s ceremony, Whee the guest of honour was expected to be the grace, And can there be a worst oxymoron than this, Where the devil romances the grace, And when the devil approached her with the desire to kiss, Grace fled into the curled formation of time and thus began the eternal race, Where grace is at the front tip of these curled moments of time, The hungry Devil is chasing her in the last moment riding this curl, Grace who is keen not to commit this crime, Keeps running, as if on the fast moving rollet of life it were a forcefully cast pearl, Where the pearl wants to stop, to feel the moments passing by, But the rollet of life moves relentlessly in the time’s curl, And the pearl turns dizzy when the speed is too high, But the thought about the devil forces it to stay within this endless whirl.

Life’s greetings Yesterday, it was mildly sunny and life was seeking its usual delights, Rejoicing in human struggles and their feelings of despondency and wretched plights, It moved from one lane to another, one passage to the next and from the road to a new highway, To claim its victims whose number always increased whether it was night or it was day, And as it happened to cross an allay and it ogled at man who happened to be there, She went towards him and into him life sank at that very moment, right there, The man walked briskly clueless about what had happened, Suddenly his emotional senses deepened, And he ran in all directions, from lanes into gullies, from highways to narrow passages, Life had held him in ceaseless array of cages, Fate tossed him around, chance pushed him everywhere, and then serendipity held him somewhere, Until the man was lost in the strifes of life that had possessed him from everywhere, Life was happening right in front him but now it was acting through him, It did not matter whether he was passing through endless highways or gullies slim, Fate played its every trick on him while chance tried its best to make him believe in diabolic energy, He appeared to have lost with his own life that faint sense of synergy, Because life that represented everything was seeking something from this man, He experienced worlds that existed beyond common imagination of any woman or man, But life that stirred a heavock within him, wanted him to believe life was indeed pernicious, But the man kept believing life was indeed beatiful and not so noxious, So he dealt with fate, with chances, with serendipity as well, While he was trying to deal with life that represented everything and had created in him a strife’s bottomless hell, One day he realised it was but a cunning manipulation, where one street led to another, designed to go on forever, And when he decided to observe everything, appreciate all, but follow them all he should never, Because every street led to another lane, that further led to another street, Where life at every turn was waiting in a new desire’s disguise from which he could never retreat, And finally when he had reached the end of the street, that merged with another, He looked around, felt his heartbeat and whispered slowly, “I know visual desires make you seek one after another!” Then the life that had sank into him appeared before him and spoke, “You are the only man who has uncovered this secret, and you shall be the only one who my spell broke, So I grant you my all gifts and I shall be your guide now onwards, and never shall I leave you, Because in you I shall now rest, because the peace I have been seeking for long now, I only find it in you, And for this I shall live in you forever and be yours now and later too, When life doesn't walk on the streets, but there where heavens meet; there too I shall be waiting for you, Because you are the wonder life has never witnessed nor shall it witness ever, And I loved being nestled inside you as your slightly cussed lover, Go now, and seek your every wish, for I grant you the universe, And for you there shall be life waiting not in this verse but in the multi verse!” Since then the streets vanished, only the roads of reality reappeared, And now neither the man nor the life strayed!

Blake laughed at those who extracted deep meaning from Dylan’s lyrics. Agreed, the man was a genius, but only inasmuch as he was the greatest nonsense writer of the late twentieth century. When you added it up—and people often tried (there were plenty of professors waxing lyrical)—the only line connecting Dylan’s work (after his brief flirtation with sense, the folky protest period) was nonsense. He was capable of writing either great nonsense (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, most of John Wesley Harding) or sense composed entirely of atrocious clichés (the rest of John Wesley Harding onwards). It was as if Dylan, it seemed to Blake, was only successful when he wrote rubbish. Of course the man didn’t want to explain his lyrics: he couldn’t. Even the best of his narratives were completely nonsensical.

I ran every day. In the morning before it got too hot. I wasn’t used to that kind of heat. Like more than half the year too. Reaching the hundreds often. Good thing there was that lake to cool off in. I came to love running in the heat. I’d run along the highway and it was scary, those two-lane highways are pretty narrow and people drive hella fast but I bought one of those shiny vests with reflectors on it to make sure people could see me. I kept building miles. Started running once in the morning and once at sunset. It stayed hard. Like I had to keep at it and make the effort every day. And then one day it felt like I needed it in a way that kind of scared me. It wasn’t not like addiction. I went to running for a feeling. How it felt after the run. But something else happened on the runs. I wasn’t running away from anything anymore. I was running at whatever in me had needed the way I needed before. I was running at whatever I’d been afraid of. And I would cry. That shit would make me emotional. Not short runs. Not the first few miles, not even five. But after seven and eight miles something else is happening. The running outruns the running. Slow as I probably looked, sweating all the way through my shirt to where there wasn’t a dry spot left on it. It could feel like flying. I got way into numbers, into when I started and ended my run, how long the run would take, I would reduce the numbers by adding them together, it was something they did in numerology, and if I was doing right inside, if things were good the numbers would boil down to four or eight or nine, those three numbers were my favorite, felt lucky to me I guess, I guess I became superstitious, or had always been without knowing it, and I shuffled all the music on my phone and felt things were most right if the songs I liked best came on during my runs and crucial moments, I guess it might sound crazy if I were to ever tell anyone, but I never would.

She was a big blonde woman with more curves than the highway out front and just the right number of hills and valleys. Wearing a clingy, summery white dress, she was seated on one of the bar stools, with her bare legs crossed; they weren’t the best-looking legs on the planet, necessarily. I just couldn’t prove otherwise. That good a detective I’m not.

At a highway lookout I stood in the oceanic updraft feeling what Jack Kerouac called “end of the continent sadness.

It's not always ho ho ho on the high, high highway. Extended time in the car reveals human frailties. Dad's refuse to stop. They hearken back to the examples of their forefathers. Did the pioneers spend the night at a Holiday Inn? Did Lewis and Clark ask for directions? Did Joseph allow Mary to stroll through a souvenir shop on the road to Bethlehem? By no means. Men drive as if they have a biblical mandate to travel far and fast, stopping only for gasoline. And children? Road trips do to kids what a full moon does to the wolf man. If one child says, "I like that song," you might expect the other to say, "That's nice." Won't happen. Instead the other child will reply, "It stinks and so do your feet." There is also the issue of JBA---juvenile bladder activity. A child can go weeks without going to the bathroom at home. But once on the road, the kid starts leaking like secrets in Washington. On one drive to Colorado, my daughters visited every toilet in New Mexico. The best advice for traveling with young children is to be thankful they aren't teenagers. Teens are embarrassed by what their parents say, think, wear, eat, and sing. So for their sakes (and if you ever want to see your future grandchildren), don't smile at the waitstaff, don't breathe, and don't sing with the window down or up. It's wiser to postpone traveling with children until they are a more reasonable age---like forty-two.

Roses and they She had shown him many things, She had made him feel joys of many springs, They had been to many places together, They had found love in each other, He had believed in her and her every word, He had erected on the highways of his heart her every memories’ billboard, She had travelled on them for many years, She had never let time’s brevity be the reason for her fears, So they felt every passing day, they experienced life of love, So much, that they even felt loved by the feeling of love, She waited for him in every moment, She felt it was him whenever a leaf fell or she felt some movement, He too felt the same; the way she felt, He too with her in his own heart dwelt, They lived a life that was unlamented by all virtues, They were kissed by life’s joys and and beauty’s all possible hues, He was unremitting when it came to loving her, He always wanted to be with her, forever together, Then one day they slept under a rose bush in full bloom, Then I beheld them being woven together on the life’s loom, He now lives within her and she lives within him, She is the rose bush that radiates with a different light under the moonlight dim, He is these roses which only bloom for her, And she is the rose bush that only grows for him forever!

Highways of love He traveled on emotional highways, Followed by someone who knew his all ways, Together they invested in feelings new, Where there were many memories and moments of joy kissed by morning dew, He criss crossed the lanes and highways with her, As they felt new emotions and experienced new feelings together, The highways of emotions that eventually transformed into the highways of love, And on these highways you only saw them, whether you looked from any side or you looked at them from above, Because they traveled on highways, of which only they knew, Created by their feelings of love and emotions new, These highways stretched from heart to heart, And they experienced the unstoppable rush of intense emotions from the very start, And as the highway of one feeling ended, With a new heart beat a new one got instantly created, So it can be said they lived in their bodies but they stayed in each others hearts, To feel the highways of feelings from which that original moment of love never departs, Then as the day approached its end, These highways of emotions and love did tend to bend, Where they entered a circular formation, And as a single sentiment the highways circled around their hearts like purest form of love’s sensation, And as their eyes slept, their hearts stayed awake, creating circular highways of passionate feelings, Where their hearts secretly dealt with love kissed feelings, And at the break of the dawn, the highways stretched again, As they raced towards new emotions while being kissed by the love’s rain, It has been so, for centuries now, Because on these highways of emotions and passions, time exists only for them, every moment called then and every moment called now, It is just the highways, the two hearts, and the moments of time that never end, Because they know physical highways may end, but feelings of true love never end, nor do they ever bend!

Equally as much! In a far off place, a land distant but beautiful, Where the night is dark though the Moon is bright and full, There where they say is the place just right for you and me, A place where just with you my love, I wish to be, Under the Sun, under the Moon and under the Sky too, Where everywhere is the splendour of you, just you, When we get there, today, tomorrow or whenever, Let us be there forever with the feelings of love that we shall forsake never, I know this place exists somewhere, But when I am with you Irma, it feels this place is everywhere, In the streets, on the highways, in the markets, on the mountains and plains as well, Almost like the echo of mountain side church bell, So let me hold your hand Irma and be with you, For I am nowhere when I am without you, Then I shall not care about this fantasy place, whether it is far or near, Because in your presence my love everything becomes very clear, Like a dream that has been kissed by the reality, And that is the wonder of love Irma, you are the dream and you are the reality, So let me hold your hand once again and feel your touch, And let me confess, “My love, I still love you equally as much!

Once, when I was about ten, we were approaching the ranch after veering north to look at some pasturage when we saw a small barefoot boy racing along the hot road with terror in his face. My father just managed to stop him. Though incoherent with fear, the boy managed to inform us that his little brother had just drowned in the horse trough. My father grabbed the boy and we went racing up to the farmhouse, where the anguished mother, the drowned child in her arms, was sobbing, crying out in German, and rocking in a rocking chair. Fortunately the boy was not quite dead. My father managed to get him away from his mother long enough to stretch him out on the porch and squeeze the water out of him. In a while the boy began to belch dirty fluids and then to breathe again. The crisis past, we went on home. The graceful German mother brought my father jars of her best sauerkraut for many, many years.

Sliding off the highway was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” “You didn’t know it, angel, but you were coming home.

Here.” He held out his hand. “I’ll carry you on my back, but we have to move. There might be a highway within reach. You could hitch a ride into Belize and get to the coast, maybe to an airport.” “Why am I the only one hitching a ride?” When he ran his fingers through his hair, she said, “What? Tell me.” “The moon is full this eve.” “Oh.” Of course she’d noticed, but she hadn’t thought the ramifications could be this dire until she’d seen his expression just now. Oh, hell. “I’ve been debating the best way to get you out of my reach. If I run from you, I leave you vulnerable. If I stay with you . . .” He trailed off. “You look like the apocalypse has arrived. Is it really so dangerous?” Instead of reassuring her, he nodded. “Aye. I lose control over myself, and the difference between us in strength is just too vast. If given free leave to take you, I’d rend you in two.” She swallowed. “What exactly do you turn into, MacRieve? Describe it to me.” He answered, “The Lykae call it saorachadh ainmhidh bho a cliabhan—letting the beast out of its cage. My face will change, becoming a cross between lupine and human. My body grows larger, taller. My strength increases exponentially.” “I’ve seen the fangs and claws.” “Sharper and longer. And flickering over me will be an image of the beast inside me. It is . . . harrowing to those not of my kind.” “What would you do to me?” He looked away. “I’d take you in the dirt like an animal. I’d mark your body with my fangs, and even after the bite healed, Lykae could still see it forever and know you’d been claimed.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth, as if imagining it even then. “What does your gut feeling tell you to do with me?” he asked, facing her again. “Take away everything else—what do you sense?” She thought for a moment, trying to digest what he’d just told her. She’d known Lykae bit and scratched each other during sex. But she’d never imagined that Bowen would want to sink his fangs in her skin, marking her forever—or that he’d lose control over himself so totally. “Honestly, I have no idea. But I could ask the mirror what to do.” He clenched his jaw, clearly struggling with the idea. “What can it tell you?” he finally said. “I usually only get cursory answers. Classic oracular.” He hesitated for long moments, the conflict within him clear on his face. “Ask it, then. Would it be more dangerous to escape me—or to remain within my reach?

PARTIES, CONFERENCES AND NETWORKING EVENTS. You’ve got to be honest with yourself; this was the actual lesson you’ve been dreading, only if you are a natural extrovert, there are some things that are more stressful than going to parties and other networking activities. Today is going to be a bit tough, so you are going to have to be tougher. This is where all the lessons you’ve learnt so far will pay off. When you’re in a party, a conference or networking event, you are likely to hold one of four possible roles. How you react to the event will depend on this role. The possibilities include: Host/Greeter. Guest. Networker. Support. People will definitely come to you if you’re in the first category, making introduction moderately easy and opportunities for small talk plentiful. You may be in charge of giving a presentation or attending to a table at a convention or any similar event. Make sure to create eye contact and smile at strangers to acknowledge them, someone will approach you in no time. Topics that may outstand may include how successful the turnout was or other positive factors that craved out of the event. If you happen to be a guest or a visitor, the challenge is on you to approach and kick start conversations. The golden rule for breaking ice at events and starting small talks ate networking arena are remarkably the same. You have to keep one thing in mind; everyone attends a party with the intention of meeting a new person and talking with them. So, if you find out that your introduction is not so much an imposition as making it up to meet new people, you will find it much compelling and easy. Your best topics in this case are basically probing enquires about what brings your other party to the event and if you have mutual acquaintances. Your own work as a networker is a little bit different from being a host or guest. As a networker, you have to join groups, or even groups of groups in a cohesive way. You may need to go in to many conversations in the middle. The best way to go about this is to smile or enthusiastically go with something that was just said. When this is done, be careful not to shoehorn your conversation topics in to small talks, but try to carefully merge in to each of them as if you’re approaching from a highway on- ramp. Support is the final role, and the sad part about this is that you might find yourself at the end catering an event or working as a neutral staff. Even with that, you may still create opportunities for personal networking or even very revealing small talks during the course of the event. Conversation with other staff, special guests or even the host can turn out to invaluable connections that you can make use of later. With this at the back of your mind, always prepare for short conversations when you’re working an event just as seriously as if you were attending the event as a special guest. Maybe you’re not that kind of person that can withstand large crowd, take a break to regain who you are and review the topical assessments you prepared in the previous lessons. Don’t forget to excuse yourself so you can move around in the event centre on a regular basis, perhaps going for another role you think you’re capable of. This particular aspect does not have any other way to go about it. In fact, it might take the next 5 days before you put the whole concept together, and you may need to combine the zeal with tomorrow’s lesson. Now, you should go for a party or be the host to one yourself so you can utilize all these principles you learnt today. There’s no way to wave this, you have to learn it and be perfect. Bring your partner who has been your support all this while along to tackle the four roles and many more within the time frame. Until then, maintain the free flow with ease.

Before London swallowed it whole, Camden Town was the fork in the road best known for a coaching inn called the Mother Red Cap. It served as a last-chance stop for beer, highway robbery and gonorrhoea before heading north into the wilds of Middlesex.

One thing her trip taught, and that is apparent to scientists studying the pronghorn, is the vital importance of “connectivity.” It is a lesson being learned, and preached, by innovative environmental thinkers all over the West, and it applies to many of the region’s threatened species. It comes down to a simple point: wild animals need to roam. It’s true that putting land aside for our national parks may be, to paraphrase Stegner paraphrasing Lord Bryce, the best idea our country ever had, and it’s also true that at this point we have put aside more than 100 million acres of land, a tremendous accomplishment that we should be proud of. But what we are now learning is that parks are not enough. By themselves they are islands—particularly isolated and small islands—the sort of islands where many conservation biologists say species go to die. That would change if the parks were connected, and connecting the parks, and other wild lands, is the mission of an old friend of Ed Abbey’s, Dave Foreman. Foreman, one of the founders of Earth First!, eventually soured on the politics of the organization he helped create. In recent years he has focused his energy on his Wildlands Project, whose mission is the creation of a great wilderness corridor from Canada to Mexico, a corridor that takes into account the wider ranges of our larger predators. Parks alone can strand animals, and leave species vulnerable, unless connected by what Foreman calls “linkages.” He believes that if we can connect the remaining wild scraps of land, we can return the West to being the home of a true wilderness. He calls the process “rewilding.” Why go to all this effort? Because dozens of so-called protected species, stranded on their eco-islands, are dying out. And because when they are gone they will not return. A few more shopping malls, another highway or gas patch, and there is no more path for the pronghorn. But there is an even more profound reason for trying to return wildness to the West. “We finally learned that wilderness is the arena of evolution,” writes Foreman. Wilderness is where change happens.

In one day, life placed before you a series of lessons, each with its own important message, and the best you can do is come away with a single, pessimistic observation? That is not a pattern of thought that will serve you well over the years. It is certainly not a pattern that leads to happiness. I would suggest that if you wish to avoid becoming embittered by degrees, you should look for the positive lesson in all instances.