Indoor Play Quotes

For a moment it seemed as if he was going to lose his temper too. His strange, pale eyes all but glared at Sophie. But he controlled himself and said, "Now trot along indoors, you overactive old thing, and find something else to play with before I get angry. I hate getting angry.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves -- goes itself; _myself_ it speaks and spells, Crying _What I do is me: for that I came_. I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is -- Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Some indoor play gyms are ok. As long as they hose them down or light them on fire once every few years.

And we were taught to play golf. Golf epitomizes the tame world. On a golf course nature is neutered. The grass is clean, a lawn laundry that wipes away the mud, the insect, the bramble, nettle and thistle, an Eezy-wipe lawn where nothing of life, dirty and glorious, remains. Golf turns outdoors into indoors, a prefab mat of stultified grass, processed, pesticided, herbicided, the pseudo-green of formica sterility. Here, the grass is not singing. The wind cannot blow through it. Dumb expression, greenery made stupid, it hums a bland monotone in the key of the mono-minded. No word is emptier than a golf tee. No roots, it has no known etymology, it is verbal nail polish. Worldwide, golf is an arch act of enclosure, a commons fenced and subdued for the wealthy, trampling serf and seedling. The enemy of wildness, it is a demonstration of the absolute dominion of man over wild nature.

I offer no proof other than my whole life and your whole life as they dissolve in each other as we read or speak, as we watch or dance, as we play or sing, as we walk from being indoors to being out.

A generation of children is not only being raised indoors, but is being confined to even smaller spaces. Jane Clark, a University of Maryland professor of kinesiology . . . calls them "containerized kids"--they spend more and more time in car seats, high chairs, and even baby seats for watching TV. When small children go outside, they're often placed in containers--strollers--and pushed by walking or jogging parents. . . Most kid-containerizing is done for safety concerns, but the long term health of these children is compromised. (35)

jittery, neurotic parents don't need any more false scares to piss their pants over. They're already raising their twatty little offspring like mollycoddled prisoners: banned from playing outdoors in case a paedophile ring burrows through the pavement and eats them, locked indoors with nothing but anti-bacterial plasma screens for company, ferried to and from school in spluttering rollcaged tanks. . . Christ, half these kids would view choking to death as a release.

He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down… All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. Death has interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does. Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough. Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know. She is weeping. The executee helps her to stand up.

Compared to kids confined indoors, children who regularly play in nature show heightened motor control—including balance, coordination, and agility. They tend to engage more in imaginative and creative play, which in turn fosters language, abstract reasoning, and problem-solving skills, together with a sense of wonder. Nature play is superior at engendering a sense of self and a sense of place, allowing children to recognize both their independence and interdependence. Play in outdoor settings also exceeds indoor alternatives in fostering cognitive, emotional, and moral development. And individuals who spend abundant time playing outdoors as children are more likely to grow up with a strong attachment to place and an environmental ethic.

In three weeks, the women's team had done more for soccer in the United States than any team had ever done. Yet, the United States Soccer Federation was unprepared and unwelcoming in its acerbic response to the women's success. With petty, resentful, chauvinistic behavior, the federation would bungle what should have been its greatest moment as a national governing body. Its leaders would criticize DiCicco instead of congratulating him, they would threaten to sue the women over an indoor victory tour and they would wait an unacceptably long period before entering into contract negotiations with the team. Then, at the end of the year, the federation would offer a deal that the women found insulting. Unwilling to trust that the federation was bargaining in good faith, the women would boycott a trip to a tournament in Australia. They would become champions of the world, embraced by the president, by the largest crowd ever to watch women play and by the largest television audience for soccer in this country, embraced by everyone, it seemed, but the officials who ran the sport with the vision of a student council. Increasingly, it appeared, the only amateurs left in sports were the people running the federations that governed them.

Housewives forming covens as a means of survival. Stopgap police forces burning citizens to contain what they stubbornly believed was a biological agent. A young man encouraged by the chaos to play out delusions of vampirism. A troupe of ren-fair motorcyclists who believed their Arthurian code could withstand any strain. A paraplegic man trapped indoors, tortured by his helper monkey, begging her to send help. Such strange tales, and Hoffmann read them over and over. One day they might remind us who we used to be, and who we tried to be, and that recollection could save the world.

There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree. To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living-room as your roots may ruin the carpet. He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped his leaves. But his parents said look it is fall. Hilarious, obviously. That this is a "man" and not a child is important. I imagine someone in their late twenties still living with his parents and acting childish. He comes in and begins to play a game, he is a tree. His parents use the game as an excuse to kick him out of the house, playfully (but with a serious undercurrent) threatening him with expulsion. He sees this and feels threatened and ends the game, dropping his leaves. But his parents -- clever -- interpret his refusal to play as another part of the game, and now he is trapped in his own metaphor, unable to escape. The fall, of course, is the season in which things are done ripening and are ready for harvest, just as it is time for him to leave home. Games and metaphors are always more insidious than we know.

Leonora is the grownups’ version of Cinderella. She doesn’t take crap from any ugly stepsisters. She doesn’t sit indoors waiting to be rescued by prince charming. Oh, no, she rescues prince charming, Florestan, who’s locked up in a dungeon by his archenemy, Pizarro. Cinderella was fun when we were little girls, played with dolls and believed in passive fairytales. Now that we’re grown women who play with toys, it’s only fit to believe in active fairytales.

23 Emotions people feel, but can’t explain 1.    Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own. 2.    Opia: The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable. 3.    Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place. 4.    Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self. 5.    Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops. 6.    Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat. 7.    Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet. 8.    Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like. 9.    Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head. 10.    Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm. 11.    Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist. 12.    Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening 13.    Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out. 14.    Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence. 15.    Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire. 16.    Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it. 17.    Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone. 18.    Rückkehrunruhe: The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness. 19.    Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore. 20.    Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time. 21.    Liberosis: The desire to care less about things. 22.    Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years. 23.    Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective. John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Simon & Schuster, November 16, 2021)

Indeed, it is worth noting that most uses of the words "heaven" or "heavenly" in the New Testament bear little relation to the meanings we have so unscripturally attached to them. For us, heaven is an unearthly, humanly irrelevant condition in which bed-sheeted, paper-winged spirits sit on clouds and play tinkly music until their pipe-cleaner halos drop off from boredom. As we envision it, it contains not one baby's bottom, not one woman's breast, not even one man's bare chest - much less a risen basketball game between glorified "shirts" and "skins." But in Scripture, it is a city with boys and girls playing in the streets; it is buildings put up by a Department of Public Works that uses amethysts for cinder blocks and pearls as big as the Ritz for gates; and indoors, it is a dinner party to end all dinner parties at the marriage supper of the Lamb. It is, in short, earth wedded, not earth jilted. It is the world as the irremovable apple of God's eye.

The lacrosse game took place in the optimistically dubbed SuperDome, an air-inflated sports facility made from some sort of pliable material. Thomas was playing in an indoor league for the winter season. Ryan had come along too. He half watched his brother, half played catch in the corner with a couple of other kids. Ryan also kept looking over at his father. He did that a lot now, looked for his father, as though Adam might suddenly vanish into thin air. Adam got it, of course. He tried to reassure him, but what could he really say?

Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. I’d been shut up in my hotel for more than a week, afraid to telephone anybody or go out; and my heart scrambled and floundered at even the most innocent noises: elevator bell, rattle of the minibar cart, even church clocks tolling the hour, de Westertoren, Krijtberg, a dark edge to the clangor, an inwrought fairy-tale sense of doom. By day I sat on the foot of the bed straining to puzzle out the Dutch-language news on television (which was hopeless, since I knew not a word of Dutch) and when I gave up, I sat by the window staring out at the canal with my camel’s-hair coat thrown over my clothes—for I’d left New York in a hurry and the things I’d brought weren’t warm enough, even indoors. Outside, all was activity and cheer. It was Christmas, lights twinkling on the canal bridges at night; red-cheeked dames en heren, scarves flying in the icy wind, clattered down the cobblestones with Christmas trees lashed to the backs of their bicycles. In the afternoons, an amateur band played Christmas carols that hung tinny and fragile in the winter air. Chaotic room-service trays; too many cigarettes; lukewarm vodka from duty free. During those restless, shut-up days, I got to know every inch of the room as a prisoner comes to know his cell. It was my first time in Amsterdam; I’d seen almost nothing

I was certainly not the best mother. That goes without saying. I didn’t set out to be a bad mother, however. It just happened. As it was, being a bad mother was child’s play compared to being a good mother, which was an incessant struggle, a lose-lose situation 24 hours a day; long after the kids were in bed the torment of what I did or didn’t do during those hours we were trapped together would scourge my soul. Why did I allow Grace to make Mia cry? Why did I snap at Mia to stop just to silence the noise? Why did I sneak to a quiet place, whenever I could? Why did I rush the days—will them to hurry by—so I could be alone? Other mothers took their children to museums, the gardens, the beach. I kept mine indoors, as much as I could, so we wouldn’t cause a scene. I lie awake at night wondering: what if I never have a chance to make it up to Mia? What if I’m never able to show her the kind of mother I always longed to be? The kind who played endless hours of hide-and-seek, who gossiped side by side on their daughters’ beds about which boys in the junior high were cute. I always envisioned a friendship between my daughters and me. I imagined shopping together and sharing secrets, rather than the formal, obligatory relationship that now exists between myself and Grace and Mia. I list in my head all the things that I would tell Mia if I could. That I chose the name Mia for my great-grandmother, Amelia, vetoing James’s alternative: Abigail. That the Christmas she turned four, James stayed up until 3:00 a.m. assembling the dollhouse of her dreams. That even though her memories of her father are filled with nothing but malaise, there were split seconds of goodness: James teaching her how to swim, James helping her prepare for a fourth-grade spelling test. That I mourn each and every time I turned down an extra book before bed, desperate now for just five more minutes of laughing at Harry the Dirty Dog. That I go to the bookstore and purchase a copy after unsuccessfully ransacking the basement for the one that used to be hers. That I sit on the floor of her old bedroom and read it again and again and again. That I love her. That I’m sorry. Colin

recent research indicates that unstructured play in natural settings is essential for children’s healthy growth. As any parent or early childhood educator will attest, play is an innate drive. It is also the primary vehicle for youngsters to experience and explore their surroundings. Compared to kids confined indoors, children who regularly play in nature show heightened motor control—including balance, coordination, and agility. They tend to engage more in imaginative and creative play, which in turn fosters language, abstract reasoning, and problem-solving skills, together with a sense of wonder. Nature play is superior at engendering a sense of self and a sense of place, allowing children to recognize both their independence and interdependence. Play in outdoor settings also exceeds indoor alternatives in fostering cognitive, emotional, and moral development. And individuals who spend abundant time playing outdoors as children are more likely to grow up with a strong attachment to place and an environmental ethic. When asked to identify the most significant environment of their childhoods, 96.5 percent of a large sample of adults named an outdoor environment. In

Lost Things" There are many ways to understand the word lost, my love. When you were born, the last Pyrenean ibex, a tawny female named Celia, had not yet lived to see the view from Torla overlooking Monte Perdido, but her great- grandsire stood on the cliffs of Ordesa, positioned on hoof-tips dainty as dimes, and he shook his impregnable skull, a coffer of brass and nobility crowned with bayonets, as though in defiance of all who dwelt in the highlands from Catalonia to Aquataine. Their kind is vanished now. Forever lost. Perdido. And when you dressed in a Girl Guide’s uniform of Persian blue on Tuesday nights, my love, in the long-lost basement of Grace United Church, to play indoor baseball and make believe that faerie magic could make you rich or important or happy, pods of baiji dolphins still swam in a river you’d never heard of and would not think about until years later, when together we would learn from the evening news that the baiji were lost, at last, from the Yangtze, and in their place there came a universal emptiness. There are many ways to understand the word lost, but it does not help to imagine a secret place where lost things go. When last I held you in my arms, my love, the West African black rhinoceros was still magnificent and still alive, but now the gentleness of your breath on my bare neck is as lost as the dusty, confident snort of that once breath-taking beast. Great strength is no protection, and neither is love. We are born, and our births are lost. We can’t go back to them. Each embrace ends with an ending. When we become, what we once thought we’d be is lost. We keep becoming.

These days, the Lowe brothers knew better than to tempt the town’s wrath, but that didn’t stop them from sneaking over the fence in the throes of night, relishing the taste of some reckless thrill. “Do you hear that?” The older one, Hendry Lowe, stood up, brushed the forest floor off his gray T-shirt, and cracked each of his knuckles, one by one. “That’s the sound of rules breaking.” Hendry Lowe was too pretty to worry about rules. His nose was freckled from afternoons napping in sunshine. His dark curls kissed his ears and cheekbones, overgrown from months between haircuts. His clothes smelled sweet from morning pastries often stuffed in his pockets. Hendry Lowe was also too charming to play a villain. The younger brother, Alistair, leapt from the fence and crashed gracelessly to the ground. He didn’t like forgoing the use of magick, because without it he was never very good at anything—even an action as simple as landing. But tonight he had no magick to waste. “Do you hear that?” Alistair echoed, smirking as he rose to his feet. “That’s the sound of bones breaking.” Although the two brothers looked alike, Alistair wore the Lowe features far differently than Hendry. Pale skin from a lifetime spent indoors, eyes the color of cigarette ashes, a widow’s peak as sharp as a blade. He wore a wool sweater in September because he was perpetually cold. He carried the Sunday crossword in his pocket because he was perpetually bored. He was one year younger than Hendry, a good deal more powerful, and a great deal more wicked. Alistair Lowe played the perfect villain. Not because he was instinctively cruel or openly proud, but because, sometimes, he liked to.

Have no anxiety about anything,' Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track. Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can't help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen. The nagging headache turns out to be a malignant brain tumor. When your teenage son fails to get off the plane you've gone to meet, you see his picture being tacked up in the post office among the missing and his disappearance never accounted for. As the latest mid-East crisis boils, you wait for the TV game show to be interrupted by a special bulletin to the effect that major cities all over the country are being evacuated in anticipation of a nuclear attack. If Woody Allen were to play your part on the screen, you would roll in the aisles with the rest of them, but you're not so much as cracking a smile at the screen inside your own head. Does the terrible fear of disaster conceal an even more terrible hankering for it? Do the accelerated pulse and the knot in the stomach mean that, beneath whatever their immediate cause, you are acting out some ancient and unresolved drama of childhood? Since the worst things that happen are apt to be the things you don't see coming, do you think there is a kind of magic whereby, if you only can see them coming, you will be able somehow to prevent them from happening? Who knows the answer? In addition to Novocain and indoor plumbing, one of the few advantages of living in the twentieth century is the existence of psychotherapists, and if you can locate a good one, maybe one day you will manage to dig up an answer that helps. But answer or no answer, the worst things will happen at last even so. 'All life is suffering' says the first and truest of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, by which he means that sorrow, loss, death await us all and everybody we love. Yet "the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything," Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, 'but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.' He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us, as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him. He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God's will or God's judgment or God's method of testing our spiritual fiber. He simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them—even in the thick of them—they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends the worst things as he also unimaginably transcends the best. 'In everything,' Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come Hell or high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from them. What he promises them instead is that 'the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.' The worst things will surely happen no matter what—that is to be understood—but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have peace both in heart and in mind. We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be "in Christ," as he puts it. Ultimately not even sorrow, loss, death can get at us there. That is the sense in which he dares say without risk of occasioning ironic laughter, "Have no anxiety about anything." Or, as he puts it a few lines earlier, 'Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say, Rejoice!

Tell it to me.” “Why? We both know the tale.” “Even so. I want to hear it from your lips. Tell the tale. The room will keep rhythm.” Tell the tale. My heart clenched. I miss you, Gauri. Sinking into my old habit was easy enough. I sat on the floor, crossing my legs in front of me, my gaze flickering between Amar and the pillar. Amar’s eyes were closed, his head tilted back to expose his bronzed throat. I spun my tale and the sky shimmered with images. I told Amar of the demon king who wished to escape death so he performed the most severe penances until he was granted a boon by the gods. “He prayed that he would not die inside or outside his home. He prayed that he would die neither at night or day nor in the ground or in the sky. He prayed that neither man nor beast could kill him. He prayed no weapon could harm him.” Amar’s head snapped up. He looked at the pillar with a wicked smile. “And yet death found its way to him.” I nodded. “One day, the god appeared as part-man, part-lion and burst forth from the pillar.” A being of shadow tore through the pillar. A lion’s mane cast a torn shadow across the marble. Fangs lengthened in its mouth. “He came upon the demon king at twilight--” “--which is neither night nor day,” said Amar. “And he appeared on the threshold of a courtyard--” “Neither indoors nor out.” “And he spread the king across his lap.” “Neither above nor below ground.” The shadow story played out in front of us, a tusked hulking man dragged to his knees and then lifted onto the thighs of the beast god. “And he used his fingernails.” “Not a true weapon.” The shadow being lifted muscled arms above his head and claws erupted from his fingers. Amar grinned. “And then death took him,” I said. “Yes,” finished Amar. “He did.” The shadow beast tore its claws into the demon king. Blood spattered across the walls. Within seconds, the images collapsed and the beast god slunk back into the pillar, one eye slit to the outside world before the marble folded up and swallowed him. I stood up, my hands shaking for no reason. “Beautiful,” said Amar. “I found it gruesome,” I said, shivering. Amar rose and walked to where I stood. “I was not talking about the story.

Lyle and Luann are strict Pentecostal. They don’t have indoor plumbing, and decades from now, at the time of the trials, they still won’t. They don’t play music. They take in children who need help, they’re kind like that—but sometimes, with Luann’s sternness and the way they keep taking in children even when the cupboards are bare, you never can tell if it’s generosity or if it’s that God won’t give them enough suffering to prove their faith to him, and so they’ll arrange privation themselves.

My name is Charlie Chucky, I am in the sixth grade, I love playing Minecraft, and I am learning to become a Super Spy. My Dad is the world’s best Super Spy, and he is starting to teach me all his tricks. Lately, I’ve been battling invisible giants, crazy zombie teachers, and super ninjas! Life has been pretty crazy, and I’ve enjoyed every second of it. My best friend Harley is different to me. He doesn’t want to become a Super Spy. He doesn’t want to battle bad guys and save the world each week. Nope. He wants to sit indoors and stare at numbers all day. Harley’s dream is to become the world’s greatest math professor. He loves school, he loves studying, and he absolutely loves math tests.  He goes mad for them. It is the one thing he is really good at. He just loves numbers.  Numbers are like candy for him – he can’t get enough of it. He even asked Mrs. Jackson for extra math homework last night. Mrs. Jackson then decided to give the whole class extra math homework. Let’s just say Harley wasn’t that popular after school.  This is Harley. Mrs. Jackson always says that someday math will save our lives, but I can’t see how it will. Maybe one day, four giant numbers will attack our school, and I will defeat them using an algebra equation… or maybe the numbers in my textbook will go bad, and start attacking all the words on the pages, and I will stop them using a calculator!

The New Dog I. “I’m intensely afraid of almost everything. Grocery bags, potted poinsettias, bunches of uprooted weeds wilting on a hot sidewalk, clothes hangers, deflated rubber balls, being looked in the eye, crutches, an overcoat tossed across the back of a chair (everybody knows empty overcoats house ghosts), children, doorways, music, human hands and the newspaper rustling as my owner, in striped pajamas, drinks coffee and turns its pages. He wants to find out where there’ll be war in the mid-east this week. Afraid even of eating, if someone burps or clinks a glass with a fork, or if my owner turns the kitchen faucet on to wash his hands during my meal I go rigid with fear, my legs buckle, then I slink from the room. I pee copiously if my food bowl is placed on the floor before the other dogs’. I have to be served last or the natural order of things - in which every moment I am about to be sacrificed - (have my heart ripped from my chest by the priest wielding his stone knife or get run out of the pack by snarling, snapping alphas) - the most sacred hierarchy, that fated arrangement, the glue of the universe, will unstick. The evolution will never itself, and life as we know it will subside entirely, until only the simplest animal form remain - jellyfish headless globs of cells, with only microscopic whips for legs and tails. Great swirling arms of gas will arm wrestle for eons to win cosmic dominance. Starless, undifferentiated chaos will reign. II. I alone of little escaped a hell of beating, neglect, and snuffling dumpsters for sustenance before this gullible man adopted me. Now my new owner would like me to walk nicely by his side on a leash (without cowering or pulling) and to lie down on a towel when he asks, regardless of whether he has a piece of bologna in his pocket or not. I’m growing fond of that optimistic young man in spite of myself. If only he would heed my warnings I’d pour out my thoughts to him: When panic strikes you like a squall wind and disaster falls on you like a gale, when you are hunted and scorned, wisdom shouts aloud in the streets: What is consciousness? What is sensation? What is mind? What is pain? What about the sorrows of unwatered houseplants? What indoor cloudburst will slake their thirst? What of my littler brothers and sisters, dead at the hands of dirty two legged brutes? Who’s the ghost in the universe behind its existence, necessary to everything that happens? Is it the pajama-clad man offering a strip of bacon in his frightening hand (who’ll take me to the park to play ball if he ever gets dressed)? Is it his quiet, wet-eyed, egg-frying wife? Dear Lord, Is it me?

Along the rough cobbled streets that had served so well in surprise attacks and buccaneer landings, weeds hung from the balconies and opened cracks in the whitewashed walls of even the best-kept mansions, and the only signs of life at two o’clock in the afternoon were languid piano exercises played in the dim light of siesta. Indoors, in the cool bedrooms saturated with incense, women protected themselves from the sun as if it were a shameful infection, and even at early Mass they hid their faces in their mantillas. Their love affairs were slow and difficult and were often disturbed by sinister omens, and life seemed interminable. At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred the certainty of death in the depths of one’s soul. And

FATHER OF THE COMPUTER Alan Turing was sneered at for not being a tough guy, a he-man with hair on his chest. He whined, croaked, stuttered. He used an old necktie for a belt. He rarely slept and went without shaving for days. And he raced from one end of the city to the other all the while concocting complicated mathematical formulas in his mind. Working for British intelligence, he helped shorten the Second World War by inventing a machine that cracked the impenetrable military codes used by Germany’s high command. At that point he had already dreamed up a prototype for an electronic computer and had laid out the theoretical foundations of today’s information systems. Later on, he led the team that built the first computer to operate with integrated programs. He played interminable chess games with it and asked it questions that drove it nuts. He insisted that it write him love letters. The machine responded by emitting messages that were rather incoherent. But it was flesh-and-blood Manchester police who arrested him in 1952 for gross indecency. At the trial, Turing pled guilty to being a homosexual. To stay out of jail, he agreed to undergo medical treatment to cure him of the affliction. The bombardment of drugs left him impotent. He grew breasts. He stayed indoors, no longer went to the university. He heard whispers, felt stares drilling into his back. He had the habit of eating an apple before going to bed. One night, he injected the apple with cyanide.

recall how Yale history professor Marci Shore found the ideal of Europe in an indoor market as far east as the port of Odessa, where musicians from the local philharmonic were playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”—the anthem of the European Union—amid the “scaling of whitefish and cleaning of mackerel gills and weighing of anchovies…drowning, for a moment, the voices of Putin’s sirens” in the midst of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution.[4] Because Europe, in order to survive, should mean more than a specific geography, it cannot be too strictly limited by geography, and so must try to reach out to its shadow zones.

What is a pancake? Cooked batter, covered in sugar and butter. It is food. But it is not as food, not as sustenance that we crave the pancake. No, the pancake, or flapjack if you will, is a childish pleasure; smothered in syrup, buried beneath ice cream, the pancake symbolises our escape from respectability, eating as a form of infantile play. The environments where pancakes are served and consumed are, in this context, special playrooms for a public ravenous for sweetness, that delirious sweetness of long-ago breakfasts made by mother, sweetness of our infancy and our great, lost, toddler’s omnipotence. Look around. Notice, if you will, these lighting fixtures suspended from the ceiling like pretty mobiles over a crib. Notice the indestructible plastic orange seating materials designed to repel spills and stains. Notice these menus that unfold like colorful, laminated boards in those games we once played on rainy days at home, those unforgettable indoor days when we felt safe and warm, when we knew ourselves, absolutely, to be loved. We come to the Pancake House because we are hungry. We call out in our hearts to our mothers, and it is the Pancake House that answers. The Pancake House holds us! The Pancake House restores us to beloved infancy! The Pancake House is our mother in this motherless world!

These failures caused the perceived risk of fomites to be overestimated, and the perceived value of better respiratory precautions, like the use of masks, to be underestimated. We put far too much emphasis on cleaning surfaces, when we should have been taking more steps to improve airflow and filtration in confined indoor spaces and to get N95 respirators to individuals at high risk of bad outcomes. Asymptomatic spread played an especially large role in transmission from, and among, younger people.

As for why the three Keeley brothers were running around their neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon like crazed lunatics, grabbing all sorts of wacky stuff, well, it was their mother’s fault. She was the one who had suggested, “If you boys are bored, play a board game!” So Kyle had gone down into the basement and dug up one of his all-time favorites: Mr. Lemoncello’s Indoor-Outdoor Scavenger Hunt. It had been a huge hit for Mr. Lemoncello, the master game maker.

Vicarious musical pleasure by radio and phonograph, while it encourages listening to good music, seems to put a damper on musical self-expression. [In our childhood] we sang more. Children sang at school and in their play. Folks sang as they worked, indoors and out. Even drunks do not sing in the streets and buses as entertainingly as in [those] days.

Vigorous physical free play-- outdoors, and with other kids--is a crucial kind of play, one that our evolved minds are "expecting." It also happens to be the kind of play that kids generally say they like the most. (There is also a good case to be made for the importance of imaginative or pretend play, which is found not only in less rambunctious kinds of indoor free play but often in rough-and-tumble outdoor free play as well.)

stately homes of Britain. Trerice in Cornwall not only has its bowling alley still, but an original Tudor set of kayles, which are rather fat-bellied skittles, or bowling pins, to play with. And whether it really happened or not, Sir Francis Drake is reputedly said to have refused to break off his game of bowls when the Spanish Armada was finally sighted, a story that gains its credibility from the popularity of the game among gentlemen. The city of London had public bowling alleys, both indoor and outdoor.

play together. The simplest way to teach release is to drop your dog’s leash—assuming that you’re indoors or in a fenced area so that she can’t run completely away—and say “release” or “go play” with a happy voice as you pat her side, then point her to the play area. Most

We might believe that our world embraced everything, we might do our thing down here on the beach, drive around in our cars, phone each other and chat, visit one another, eat and drive and sit indoors imbibing the faces and opinions and fates of those appearing on the TV screen in this strange, semi-artificial symbiosis we inhabited and lull ourselves for longer and longer, year upon year, into thinking that it was all there was, but if on the odd occasion we were to raise our gaze to this, the only possible thought was one of incomprehension and impotence, for in fact how small and trivial was the world we allowed ourselves to be lured by? Yes, of course, the dramas we saw were magnificent, the images we internalized sublime and sometimes also apocalyptic, but be honest, slaves, what part did we play in them? None.

A Summertime Prisoner's Psalm O Summer, zenith of the year, I praise your robust life, your hot blood. You are a liberator who calls us out-of-doors into your desert-like sun and heat, just as the God of Moses and Aaron called the children of Israel out of the brickyards of Egypt. Those who work in the warmth of this day are blessed to be outside, while others are stuck in buildings built of brick, constructed with concrete and glass. Chilled-but-artificial air blows upon the new slaves of electric Egypt's indoor brickyards. Fortunate are those children who play today under the great yellow face of our giant daystar, the sun. Free to jump through sprinkler sprays or ride their bikes in the free flight of real air-conditioned coolness. Corporate giants in their stainless steel skyscrapers dream of their treehouse days when every kid was truly a millionaire. O Liberator God, who called your children away from the mile's sweaty slavery, lead me, this day, into the glorious freedom of which the spirit of summer sings.

Want to give it a try?” he asked. He held the brush in front of my face. I made a fist to stop my hand from shaking before I took it from him. “It’s okay to paint over the stencil,” he said. I nodded quickly. “I think I’ve got it.” “Are you afraid of heights?” “No, why?” “Because you’re shaking.” “I’m just a little cold. Not used to the weather yet.” Cold? What a lie! I was practically burning up. “Then I definitely don’t want you on my snow volleyball team.” “Snow volleyball?” “Yeah, me and the guys are gonna play later this afternoon. You could come watch us.” Was he asking me out? Should I tell him about Chase? “You know,” he added, “meet people. Besides, studies have shown that staying indoors can lead to depression.” “And emergency rooms have shown that staying outdoors can lead to frostbite, loss of limbs, and freezing to death.

When I was about twelve or thirteen, the Peabodys had a party just like this one—just like any of their parties, I guess. They are social creatures, the Families. They like to gather amongst their kind for luncheons or cocktails or dinners or bridge, any excuse will do. Because they generally prefer their dogs to their children, the three of us Winthrops used to sneak away and join Amory and Shep to watch the grown-ups at play the way you watched animals at a zoo, from the banister if the party were indoors, and if it were out on the terrace, we’d hide among the rocks. I remember the smell of perfume and cigarettes, how the women wore these colorful gowns, how their hair frizzled from their hairdos in the salt air, how they dangled their cocktail glasses between their fingers and smoked their cigarettes, stained with lipstick. I used to practice with rolled-up paper squares in the mirror at home.

also remembers much blood as the flagstone dropped and squashed my finger and I raced to the sink indoors, where it flowed and flowed. And then there were stitches. The result over the years —mustn’t exaggerate—may well have affected my guitar playing, because it really flattened out the finger for pick work. It could have something to do with the sound. I’ve got this extra grip. Also, when I’m fingerpicking it gives me a bit more of a claw, because a chunk came out. So it’s flat and it’s also more pointed, which comes in handy occasionally. And the nail never grew back again properly, it’s sort of bent.

IN DIRE STRAITS, WE HEAD STRAIGHT TO THE OCEAN The good Lord answered Beryl’s prayer when Dorjan came home next. On the cusp of the rainy season, when porch sitting Beryl was more inclined to watch tufts of moisture hung from invisible threads in fairytale skies than her playing children, he announced, “I have a will ‘ta move ‘ta the land of Hollywood and ‘burgeoning coastal developments,” like he’d read that phrase in a magazine. Then, he pressed on the horn in case she hadn’t heard his hollering. “I want a piece o’ that action, baby,” he said. “I can run my own company. ‘Reckon I know to do just about anything related to construction. Heya baby, why not?” He grinned as he rolled out of the driver’s seat. As she came down the steps to him, he smacked his thighs in a rhythm and did a fancy two-step. “The sun’s always shining. There’s bound to be work for me till I have no more need.” She went to hug him. “Lickety split, we’ll be going west… at the childr’n’s school break,” he said. That’s just what the Hudsons did. They left their free-of-charge huge, white house to the older brothers and sisters, taking brother Dennis along in the back seat with three of the children. Coalbert, sitting up front, sighed. “We’re just gonna leave the house like that? For someone other’n us to occupy, Daddy?” His heart was lying in that big white house with the wraparound porch. “Small thing. The place is tainted. It ‘taint yours and it ‘taint mine.” “I hope we get an indoor toilet, Mama!” Laila shouted. “Your daddy’s set on getting all the new things where we’re going to.

Over and over again, growing increasingly hostile as he went, he blackened the earth, drawing with the magnet of his rage the storm of the bloody century to my demesne. Worms screamed in anguish as they burned. Moles, disturbed from slumber, whimpered once then crumbled to ash. I suffered the soft implosion of larvae not yet formed enough to rue the beauty they were losing; subterranean life in all its dark, earthy grandeur. The occasional burrowing snake hissed defiance as it was seared to death. Sean O’Bannion walks—the earth turns black, barren, and everything in it dies, a dozen feet down. Hell of a princely power. Again, what the fuck was the Unseelie king thinking? Was he? Incensed by failure, Sean insisted hotly, as we stood in the bloody deluge—it wasn’t raining, that scarce-restrained ocean that parked itself above Ireland at the dawn of time and proceeded to leak incessantly, lured by the siren-song of Sean’s broodiness decamped to Scotland and split wide open—that I was either lying or it didn’t work the same for each prince. Patiently (okay, downright pissily, but, for fuck’s sake, I could be having sex again and gave that up to help him), I explained it did work the same for each of us but, because he wasn’t druid-trained, it might take time for him to understand how to tap into it. Like learning to meditate. Such focus doesn’t come easy, nor does it come all at once. Practice is key. He refused to believe me. He stormed thunderously and soddenly off, great ebon wings dripping rivers of water, lightning bolts biting into the earth at his heels, Kat trailing sadly at a safe distance behind. I was raised from birth to be in harmony with the natural world. Humans are the unnatural part of it. Animals lack the passel of idiotic emotions we suffer. I’ve never seen an animal feel sorry for itself. While other children played indoors with games or toys, my da led me deep into the forest and taught me to become part of the infinite web of beating hearts that fill the universe, from the birds in the trees to the insects buzzing about my head, to the fox chasing her cubs up a hillside and into a cool, splashing stream, to the earthworms tunneling blissfully through the vibrant soil. By the age of five, it was hard for me to understand anyone who didn’t feel such things as a part of everyday life. As I matured, when a great horned owl perched nightly in a tree beyond my window, Uncle Dageus taught me to cast myself within it (gently, never usurping) to peer out from its eyes. Life was everywhere, and it was beautiful. Animals, unlike humans, can’t lie. We humans are pros at it, especially when it comes to lying to ourselves.

It’s easy to forget that Shakespeare didn’t originally divide his plays into acts or scenes. Those delineations began after his productions migrated to the indoor Blackfrairs Theatre with its crew of ribald child actors. The need to replace candles demanded that breaks be inserted into the plays, and the rest, for better or worse, was structural history.

We love your pets. But Man's Best Friend is a hungry wolf to a bird, no matter the harmless, playful little scamp Fluffy may seem to you. And Athena, with her retractable claws, silent stalking, and high-jump pounce, is a bird-killing machine...The American Bird Conservancy estimates that in the United States, where the domesticated feline is a non-native predator disrupting the natural balance, cats slaughter 2.4 BILLION birds EACH YEAR. Keep cats indoors and dogs on the leash in protected areas, if they are permitted there at all. The birds--and other birders--will thank you.

It was also the suspicion that I was paying "rent" every time I went out for coffee or a walk, that there was no longer any public space to sit in, that a high charge was always associated with "hanging around"; once again I'd have to buy that unwanted second overpriced spice tea, or hand over another chunk of change for an hour at the indoor play space for my daughter.

The original house had been replaced by an indoor flower market with an arched iron and glass roof. Eliza Doolittle, as played by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, would have bought her violets there before moving off to display the worst cockney accent this side of Dick Van Dyke.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came. I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is— Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Do you believe that some people cut socks, put fiberfill inside and sew “snowballs” to play indoor “sock snowballs”?

An analysis in South Korea showed that outbreaks were more common in Zumba classes than Pilates classes for a similar reason.49 Heavy, rapid, deep breathing or shouting may be a risk factor for transmission, whereas slow, gentle breathing is not. But being indoors itself plays an important role.

Enjoy Swimming throughout the Year with Pool Enclosures One of the most fantastic activities that people like to do in all weather is swimming. But harsh winter season makes you sometimes miss that enjoyment and feel regretted of that open swimming pool. For that the technology has made you get a fruitful option. You can have now various type Pool Enclosures available in the market. These are so effective that can get you the feel of indoor swimming with the automated drive systems. You can make your open area as enclosed one with the available automatic retractable enclosures. This comes out to be the smart option to enjoy swimming even in the coldest weather outside year around. Just like an Indoor Pool you are free to enjoy swimming year around. In all climates the pool enclosure works effective as these are easy to open and close. Thus with this feature you can attach it to your home and detach as well. To choose the suitable you are open with two basic alternates that are tracked and trackless enclosures. The features are all clear as with the tracked system there is no tension of opening and closing while the trackless system requires two people to drag the path on both side equally. Not only using it as an enclosed area to enjoy swimming, there are other facilities too that you can get through it. Making it as a Sunroom in the clear weather and sunny day is one of the spectacular notion. There you can enjoy sunbath if the enclosure is made of glass. The glass made enclosures also work with greenhouse effect best for plants as well. The full height is one more specific feature that can make you enjoy walking around the pool area. You can make your pool safe and clean from dust and dirt particles from which the pool comes in contact obviously. Turn you outer Swimming Pool as an enclosed area and an important part of your home with the enclosures available in the market. There are many companies that are providing different range of products to be made as pool enclosure as per your requirements. You are even open with the option having them installed by the experts which many of the companies avail. Search for the suitable option online. The harsh winter season makes you sometimes miss the enjoyment of swimming and feel regretted of that open swimming pool. For that the technology has made you get a fruitful option of pool enclosures.

Have Enjoyable Swimming with the Indoor Pool by Patio Enclosures Whatsoever be the climate outside the craving for swimming always puts you jump into the swimming pool. And if you have an Indoor Pool then the enthusiasm gets doubled. For this you can make your pool inside the area of home. Or if you are already having an open pool then too there is nothing more to worry. These days the technology has made such advancements that can modify your home constructions without even doing any damage to it. This is well illustrated with the pool enclosures available in the market. You can get them to make your pool come into enclosed area to enjoy the enthusiasm fully. It is a well-known fact that weather has three natures but the most furious is the winter when the chillness is almost killing to roam outside. In that case you forget to swim or can say that miss swimming. There the pool enclosures come to be a supporting property that makes your outer pool to be an indoor swimming pool. With this convenience the Patio Enclosures are helpful in making you home look more extravagant with wonderful finishing touch. It is also known as an inexpensive way to decorate your home. There are various materials that can be made use of making these enclosures. The materials that are used in making enclosures most commonly are fiber, glass, timber, plastic, etc. These days many companies are keen in doing fabrication and installation of variety of enclosure present in their stock. So you need not worry for having construction or reconstruction of pools. They supply with most proficient workers expert in their performance. In the time of technology when every small thing you can get as automated then why not these. You can have the eccentric innovation of automatic pool covers present in the market provided by many companies. With the expected feature of covering and uncovering the swimming pool automatically this type of enclosures are in demand mostly. Through this feature you can have swimming in enclosed area in winters along with enjoying the open pool in summers too as required. You can even make the maintenance costs low by covering the pool not to come in contact with dust or dirt. Indoor pools are fabulous but if you have open pools then make them covered with the patio enclosures. This makes you enjoy swimming throughout the year and also makes the maintenance costs for swimming pools lower.

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there are many meaningless papers floating round. For example, there was once a study conducted to see whether rats can discriminate between the Japanese and Dutch languages when they are played backwards. The rats couldn’t tell the difference. What benefit this has for humanity when people are dying of all sorts of diseases, I don’t know. Similarly, the study outlined in the paper ‘People’s clothing behaviour according to external weather and indoor environment’ found that people wear warm clothes when it gets cold outside. Ground-breaking. Another study exploring the side effects of sword swallowing found that the activity can cause injury to people. Call the Nobel Prize committee!

As the transition from play-based to phone-based childhood proceeded, many children and adolescents were perfectly happy to stay indoors and play online, but in the process they lost exposure to the kinds of challenging physical and social experiences that all young mammals need to develop basic competencies, overcome innate childhood fears, and prepare to rely less on their parents. Virtual interactions with peers do not fully compensate for these experiential losses.