Jersey Day Quotes

New York. Anton Meyer’s wife had just gone to New Jersey to stay with her sister for a couple of days. For the first time in a while, his day hadn’t ended in an argument and he’d been able to enjoy a good night’s sleep. It was 10 in the morning and Meyer had already dealt efficiently with most of the files on his desk. He had taken a moment to congratulate himself on this when Maurice Kramer appeared at his door. “Daydreaming again, Meyer?” Kramer’s beady eyes glared meanly at him.

On typical days, (dust) is simply irritating. On Roid Rage days, it made me want to stomp down to the highway, pull drivers out of their cars, and bash their faces into pavement; Suck up that dirt like a good little Electrolux, Jersey Boy Bitch.

Hope is like the Sun. When it's behind the clouds, it's not gone. You just have to find it! —Matthew, Age 11, Lanoka Harbor, New Jersey, March 21

One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief. He had a theory about it. It happened, and re-happened, because it was a city uninterested in history. Strange things occurred precisely because there was no necessary regard for the past. The city lived in a sort of everyday present. It had no need to believe in itself as a London, or an Athens, or even a signifier of the New World, like a Sydney, or a Los Angeles. No, the city couldn’t care less about where it stood. He had seen a T-shirt once that said: NEW YORK FUCKIN’ CITY. As if it were the only place that ever existed and the only one that ever would. New York kept going forward precisely because it didn’t give a good goddamn about what it had left behind. It was like the city that Lot left, and it would dissolve if it ever began looking backward over its own shoulder. Two pillars of salt. Long Island and New Jersey.

If there’s any other message in this to readers, it’s in these two characters as icons of hope, that it doesn’t make any difference where you come from, or where you went to school, or who you are, there’s hope. That a kid from Jersey with Superman as the icon that kept him alive for years would one day end up writing the character is as absoutely unlikely as it is utterly inevitable. And if that’s true for me, it’s true for you, if you follow your dreams and your passions in full flight. Don’t give up. No Limits. It’s never too late to learn to fly.

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rusack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending.

Life, Jersey Girl, sometimes pauses. It stops. Sometimes we don’t even realize how everything around us is moving so quickly while we’re standing in the middle of it, allowing it to pass us by. Most of us, if not all, just lose the why. Some of us never figure it out to begin with. We lose sight of the purpose that wakes us up every morning and pushes our day forward. We lose a sense of hope and the feeling of life in general. We view life as more of a test, one that’s trying to beat us down every day.

I read about a famous mystery writer who worked for one week in a department store. One day she saw a woman come in and buy a doll. The mystery writer found out the woman’s name, and took a bus to New Jersey to see where the woman lived. That was all. Years later, she referred to this woman as the love of her life. It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.

I feel like today should be a perfect Meatball day... Let's just get wastey-pants!

Huxley: "Tell me something Bryce, do you know the difference between a Jersey, a Guernsey, a Holstein, and an Ayershire?" Bryce: "No." Huxley: "Seabags Brown does." Bryce: "I don't see what that has to do..." Huxley: "What do you know about Gaelic history?" Bryce: "Not much." Huxley: "Then why don't you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too." Bryce: "I don't..." Huxley: " What do you know about astronomy?" Bryce: "A little." Huxley: "Discuss it with Wellman, he held a fellowship." Bryce: "This is most puzzling." Huxley: "What about Homer, ever read Homer?" Bryce: "Of course I've read Homer." Huxley: "In the original Greek?" Bryce: "No" Huxley: "Then chat with Pfc. Hodgkiss. Loves to read the ancient Greek." Bryce: "Would you kindly get to the point?" Huxley: "The point is this, Bryce. What makes you think you are so goddam superior? Who gave you the bright idea that you had a corner on the world's knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then you'll ever have. You're the most pretentious, egotistical individual I've ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. I've seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, you've had them do everything but wipe your ass.

If by weirdo he meant that Nick didn’t play grab-ass with the wannabes on the street corner, didn’t yank at his crotch and call girls bitches, didn’t wear oversized jerseys and pretend to be a gangsta all day, then yeah, Nick had to agree.

She came to Neil last and stayed with him, feeling the line of his shoulder armor through his jersey. "How are you doing?" Neil drained both cups before answering. "I'm fine." Nicky fist-pumped in triumph. "Thank you for being so predictable, Neil. You just scored me ten bucks with two words." Matt looked up. "Are you serious? Who the hell bet against you?" Nicky jerked a thumb at Kevin. "There's a sucker born every minute.

Tastykakes are just another of the many advantages of living in Jersey. They’re made in Philly and shipped to Trenton in all their fresh squishiness. I read once that 439,000 Butterscotch Krimpets are baked every day. And not a heck of a lot of them find their way to New Hampshire. All that snow and scenery and what good does it do you without Tastykakes?

[Jürgen Habermas' obituary to friend and philosopher, Richard Rorty] One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title 'Wild Orchids and Trotsky.' In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky's dream of justice on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the 'holy', the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: 'My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.

I went over to Jersey and talked to the guy. I told him not to be cutting somebody else’s grass, to cut his own grass in his own yard. I told him this one’s spoken for. I told him to go get his own trim — which is what we called it in those days, getting trim. I told him to look for your trim elsewhere.

They might never be counted as a family by the authorities, but one day, many years from now, the girl will play her first game with the national team. When she’s asked what name she wants on the back of her jersey, she’ll give their name.

I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people…That year in New Jersey lives in my mind as though it were the year during which, having an unsuspected predilection for it, I first contracted some dread, chronic disease, the unfailing symptom of which is a kind of blind fever, a pounding in the skull and fire in the bowels…There is not a Negro alive who does not have this rage in his blood–one has the choice, merely, of living with it consciously or surrendering to it. As for me, this fever has recurred in me, and does, and will until the day I die.

Akan kuadukan pada Eomma. Hari kedua aku di New Jersey, Hyung sudah marah-marah tak jelas padaku dan akan menghajarku... akan kuadukan semuanya pada Eomma.

A rare day when Jersey is the side you want to be on,

by a moving reef? A gigantic horned narwhal? A mythical kraken? But I am letting myself be carried away by reveries which I must now put aside, writes Aronnax. Enough of these phantasies. All day Marie-Laure lies on her stomach and reads. Logic, reason, pure science: these, Aronnax insists, are the proper ways to pursue a mystery. Not fables and fairy tales. Her fingers walk the tightropes of sentences; in her imagination, she walks the decks of the speedy two-funneled frigate called the Abraham Lincoln. She watches New York City recede; the forts of New Jersey salute

In fact, I’d like even more than that, as in her wearing my jersey on game days and jumping in my arms when we win. That’s what I’d like, but unfortunately, I’ve been sabotaging myself for years.

Christmas Day was a sober, solemn occasion after her gruesome experience—but at least they were all together. Given the absences in other New Jersey homes that winter, that was something to be grateful for.

The refreshing serenity of mountains, streams and more forests in Pennsylvania gave way to small communities and the more thickly-settled towns of New Jersey. And finally, New York City. It took us six days to get there, and as I crossed the George Washington Bridge I remember thinking how amazing this was. I was back in New York. A city that takes no crap. I was back amongst Carefree Scamps who I could trust with my life

In the American Grain" "Ninth grade, and bicycling the Jersey highways: I am a writer. I was half-wasp already, I changed my shirt and trousers twice a day. My poems came back...often rejected, though never forgotten in New York, this Jewish state with insomniac minorities. I am sick of the enlightenment: what Wall Street prints, the mafia distributes; when talent starves in a garret, they buy the garret. Bill Williams made less than Band-Aids on his writing, he could never write the King's English of The New Yorker. I am not William Carlos Williams. He knew the germ on every flower, and saw the snake is a petty, rather pathetic creature.

Life was good. The sun setting on a sweet summer's day, the smell of freshly mowed lawns, the sounds of children playing-- A house across the river, on the Jersey-side. A beautiful wife and a baby girl. The American Dream come true. [Honey, I'm home!] But dreams have a nasty habit of going bad when you're not looking. --- Max Payne 1

Reggie always wears the team jersey - and a pair of shorts - no matter how cold it gets. I'm betting he dreams about one day being called on to make a comeback. 'We need five tries in the last three minutes. It's almost impossible, Reggie. That's why I'm asking you.' 'Piece of cake, Dusty. Here, mind me false teeth.' Dusty's been with the Gunners as long as I can remember. He's an institution - or he should be in one - it's one of the two.

A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.

I can’t help feeling as if this is my last chance,” Evan said. He was sitting opposite Dr. Lorne, a psychiatrist at the Havilland Recovery Cabin in north western New Jersey. It was the next to the last day of his fourth pass through a twenty-eight day program for sex and alcohol addiction. The sex addiction was questionable; the alcohol was not.

We picked up Grouper III and one of his buddies on the way to Media Day. The two of them were wearing Easton jerseys and didn’t shut the hell up in the back of my car the entire way to the stadium. Their excitement was contagious. “They always that loud?” My eyes slanted toward Grouper. He nodded. “The Good Lord made old people go deaf for a reason.

According to the L.A. news, the explosion at the Santa Monica beach had been caused when a crazy kidnapper fired a shotgun at a police car. He accidentally hit a gas main that had ruptured during the earthquake. This crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. Ares) was the same man who had abducted me and two other adolescents in New York and brought us across country on a ten-day odyssey of terror. Poor little Percy Jackson wasn’t an international criminal after all. He’d caused a commotion on that Greyhound bus in New Jersey trying to get away from his captor (and afterward, witnesses would even swear they had seen the leather-clad man on the bus—“Why didn’t I remember him before?”). The crazy man had caused the explosion in the St. Louis Arch. After all, no kid could’ve done that. A concerned waitress in Denver had seen the man threatening his abductees outside her diner, gotten a friend to take a photo, and notified the police. Finally, brave Percy Jackson (I was beginning to like this kid) had stolen a gun from his captor in Los Angeles and battled him shotgun-to-rifle on the beach. Police had arrived just in time. But in the spectacular explosion, five police cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had occurred. Percy Jackson and his two friends were safely in police custody.

The day my parents got swallowed by a rakkhosh and whisked away to another galactic dimension was a pretty craptastic day. The fact that it was actually my twelfth birthday makes it all that much worse. Instead of cake or presents or a party, I spent the day kicking demon butt, traveling through time and space looking for my family, and basically saving New Jersey, our entire world, and everything beyond it.

That had been two days earlier, and now the remaining Penderwicks—four sisters named Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty—were about to tear apart even more. Early the next morning, three of them would leave for Maine with the sisters’ favorite relative, Aunt Claire, while the fourth headed to New Jersey with her best friend. The girls had never been apart for an entire two weeks, and though all of them were nervous about it, the one going off on her own was the most nervous. This was the oldest, thirteen-year-old Rosalind, and she was having a terrible time accepting that her sisters could survive without her. Right

Later in 1776, Paine accompanied the Continental army in its retreat from New Jersey to Philadelphia.   During this time, Paine began a new series of pamphlets.   Eventually, these sixteen pamphlets became The American Crisis.   In them, Paine comments on the American war effort and urges the colonists to keep fighting.    This pamphlet, the first in the series, is perhaps the most famous.   The pamphlet was read to George Washington’s troops in December 1776.   Days later, these same troops crossed the Delaware River and attacked the British encampment in Trenton, New Jersey.   The pamphlet opens with a familiar line: “These are the times that try men’s souls.

The United States was of an anti-intellectual bent. And yet the two most technologically advanced laboratories in the world, as far as Paul could tell, were no longer in Paris’s Louvre or London’s Burlington House. They were now in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were operated by two self-made men with no formal training at all.

This, I presented as my long and noisy prayer, my magic trick. Hoping it would rock your very soul and then pass on, its spirit rendered, to be read, heard, sung and altered by you and your blood, that it might strengthen and help make sense of your story. Go tell it. EPILOGUE A few weeks before Thanksgiving, a sunny late fall day springs upon Central Jersey. Sixty-degree

The list of correlations to that night is as long as the Jersey coast. And so is the list of reasons I shouldn't be looking forward to seeing him at school. But I can't help it. He's already texted me three times this morning: Can I pick you up for school? and Do u want 2 have breakfast? and R u getting my texts? My thumbs want to answer "yes" to all of the above, but my dignity demands that I don't answer at all. He called my his student. He stood there alone with me on the beach and told me he thinks of me as a pupil. That our relationship is platonic. And everyone knows what platonic means-rejected. Well, I might be his student, but I'm about to school, him on a few things. The first lesson of the day is Silent Treatment 101. So when I see him in the hall, I give him a polite nod and brush right by him. The zap from the slight contact never quite fades, which mean he's following me. I make it to my locker before his hand is on my arm. "Emma." The way he whispers my name sends goose bumps all the way to my baby toes. But I'm still in control. I nod to him, dial the combination to my locker, then open it in his face. He moves back before contact. Stepping around me, he leans his hand against the locker door and turns me around to face him. "That's not very nice." I raise my best you-started-this brow. He sighs. "I guess that means you didn't miss me." There are so many things I could pop off right now. Things like, "But at least I had Toraf to keep my company" or "You were gone?" Or "Don't feel bad, I didn't miss my calculus teacher either." But the goal is to say nothing. So I turn around. I transfer books and papers between my locker and backpack. As I stab a pencil into my updo, his breath pushes against my earlobe when he chuckles. "So your phone's not broken; you just didn't respond to my texts." Since rolling my eyes doesn't make a sound, it's still within the boundaries of Silent Treatment 101. So I do this while I shut my locker. As I push past him, he grabs my arm. And I figure if stomping on his toe doesn't make a sound... "My grandmother's dying," he blurts. Commence with the catching-Emma-off-guard crap. How can I continue Silent Treatment 101 after that? He never mentioned his grandmother before, but then again, I never mentioned mine either. "I'm sorry, Galen." I put my hand on his, give it a gentle squeeze. He laughs. Complete jackass. "Conveniently, she lives in a condo in Destin and her dying request is to meet you. Rachel called your mom. We're flying out Saturday afternoon, coming back Sunday night. I already called Dr. Milligan." "Un-freaking-believable.

For all his manwhoring, the guy has a strict rule about not doing freshmen. I’m not sure I blame him, considering our little stalker incident at the start of the year. Dean had hooked up with a freshman, who, after one night of exquisite passion, decided they were madly in love. She then proceeded to show up at our house at all hours of the day and night, sometimes wearing clothes, other times not wearing clothes, usually armed with flowers and love letters and—my personal favorite—a framed photo of herself wearing Dean’s hockey jersey. Sometimes when I’m falling asleep, I can still hear her wailing Deeeeeeeeean outside my window.

Breakfast was Bond’s favourite meal of the day. When he was stationed in London it was always the same. It consisted of very strong coffee, from De Bry in New Oxford Street, brewed in an American Chemex, of which he drank two large cups, black and without sugar. The single egg, in the dark blue egg-cup with a gold ring round the top, was boiled for three and a third minutes. It was a very fresh, speckled brown egg from French Marans hens owned by some friend of May in the country. (Bond disliked white eggs and, faddish as he was in many small things, it amused him to maintain that there was such a thing as the perfect boiled egg.) Then there were two thick slices of wholewheat toast, a large pat of deep yellow Jersey butter and three squat glass jars containing Tiptree ‘Little Scarlet’ strawberry jam; Cooper’s Vintage Oxford marmalade and Norwegian Heather Honey from Fortnum’s. The coffee pot and the silver on the tray were Queen Anne, and the china was Minton, of the same dark blue and gold and white as the egg-cup.

One day, an unusually exciting event interrupted the rhythm of our regular middle-class teenage lives. A Russian woman, the mother of a girl in our class, was run over by a New York City bound train right in the center of town. Our classmate left school in the middle of the semester. The gossip was that the woman must have thrown herself under the train. The adults whispered about reasons, usual ones, but my friends and I were too busy planning what to wear to the prom to wonder about the savagery of adult passion.

Some days it seems like every lowlife in town has Tail ’Em and Nail ’Em on their grease-stained Rolodex. A number of phone messages have piled up on the answering machine, breathers, telemarketers, even a few calls to do with tickets currently active. After some triage on the playback, Maxine returns an anxious call from a whistle-blower at a snack-food company over in Jersey which has been secretly negotiating with ex-employees of Krispy Kreme for the illegal purchase of top-secret temperature and humidity settings on the donut purveyor’s “proof box,” along with equally classified photos of the donut extruder, which however now seem to be Polaroids of auto parts taken years ago in Queens, Photoshopped and whimsically at that. “I’m beginning to think something’s funny about this deal,” her contact’s voice trembling a little, “maybe not even legit.” “Maybe, Trevor, because it’s a criminal act under Title 18?” “It’s an FBI sting operation!” Trevor screams. “Why would the FBI—” “Duh-uh? Krispy Kreme? On behalf of their brothers in law enforcement at all levels?” “All right. I’ll talk to them at the Bergen County DA, maybe they’ve heard something—” “Wait, wait, somebody’s coming, now they saw me, oh! maybe I better—” The line goes dead. Always happens.

he will never let any player in any of them wear number "16." He will always keep hoping that Benji is going to turn up one day and demand his jersey. There's a hockey puck on a gravestone in Beartown. The writing is small, so that all the words can fit. 'Still the bravest bastard I know.' Beside the puck lies a watch.

The three thousand miles in distance he put between himself and Emma tonight is nothing compared with the enormous chasm separating them when they sit next to each other in calculus. Emma's ability to overlook his existence is a gift-but not one that Poseidon handed down. Rachel insists this gift is uniquely a female trait, regardless of the species. Since their breakup, Emma seems to be the only female utilizing this particular gift. Even Rayna could learn a few lessons from Emma in the art of torturing a smitten male. Smitten? More like fanatical. He shakes his head in disgust. Why couldn't I just sift when I turned of age? Why couldn't I find a suitable mild-tempered female to mate with? Live a peaceful life, produce offspring, grow old, and watch my own fingerlings have fingerlings someday? He searches through his mind for someone he might have missed in the past. For a face he overlooked before but could now look forward to every day. For a docile female who would be honored to mate with a Triton prince-instead of a temperamental siren who mocks his title at every opportunity. He scours his memory for a sweet-natured Syrena who would take care of him, who would do whatever he asked, who would never argue with him. Not some human-raised snippet who stomps her foot when she doesn't get her way, listens to him only when it suits some secret purpose she has, or shoves a handful of chocolate mints down his throat if he lets his guard down. Not some white-haired angelfish whose eyes melt him into a puddle, whose blush is more beautiful than sunrise, and whose lips send heat ripping through him like a mine explosion. He sighs as Emma's face eclipses hundreds of mate-worthy Syrena. That's just one more quality I'll have to add to the list: someone who won't mind being second best. His just locks as he catches a glimpse of his shadow beneath him, cast by slithers of sterling moonlight. Since it's close to three a.m. here, he's comfortable walking around without the inconvenience of clothes, but sitting on the rocky shore in the raw is less than appealing. And it doesn't matter which Jersey shore he sits on, he can't escape the moon that connects them both-and reminds him of Emma's hair. Hovering in the shallows, he stares up at it in resentment, knowing the moon reminds him of something else he can' escape-his conscience. If only he could shirk his responsibilities, his loyalty to his family, his loyalty to his people. If only he could change everything about himself, he could steal Emma away and never look back-that is, if she'll ever talk to him again.

You are America. Yes, you are, my wicked boy. When we flew to New York and drove in on the highway, whatever the highway is, and those graveyards that are surrounded by cars and the traffic, and that was very confusing and frightening to me. I said to Matija, 'I don't like this'. I was crying. Motorized America with all the endless cars that never stop, and then, suddenly, the place of rest is between that. And they are thrown a little here and a little there. It's so very scary to me, so extremely opposite and different that I couldn't understand it. Through you it is all different now. Do you know? Through you I can think of those stones with understading now. I only wish now I went places with you. I was wishing today, all day, thinking of the places." "Which places?" "To where you were born. I would have liked to go to the Jersey shore." "We should have gone. I should have taken you." Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda. The three blind mice. "Even to New York City. To show it to me through your eyes. I would have liked that. Wherever we went, we always went to hide. I hate hiding. I wouldn't mind to go to New Mexico with you. To California with you. But mainly to New Jersey, to see the sea where you grew up." "I understand." Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle.

finding a place to hide during the day while I search for another job. Not easy, considering that it’s still August in New Jersey, and that free places with AC and Wi-Fi are not common enough in the year of our Lord 2023. I find myself rediscovering the Paterson Public Library: it’s changed very little since I was seven, and welcomes me and my battered laptop to its underfunded bosom. God bless libraries.

Primer of Love [Lesson 7] "He disrespected the Bing." ~ Tony Soprano, Episode 34 Lesson 7)Don't diss'em or let'em diss you. We're back on Brooklyn's streets (or Newark) on this one. It's all about respect - show none and you get whacked. None of that 'alpha' shit flies here - you're equals and command equal respect. She watches the kids, you cart the garbage. The kids wear her down all day; the cops break your chops about a missing WalMart tractor trailer with 100,000 pair of Levi jeans 'somebody' jacked on the Jersey Turnpike. You twos gotta' to vent your daily shit to each other.Let it all out, but be careful not to anything you may regret or prepare to sleep with a Glock under your pillow for the rest of your live. Insist you be totally naked when having sex to make sure nobody's wearing a wire. Capisce!

Darren played with the ice cream before raising a spoonful to his mouth. I watched him lick it before he wrapped his lips around the spoon, closing his eyelids and savoring the flavor on his tongue. He slowly withdrew the spoon from his mouth and opened his eyes. He smiled coyly at my rapt attention. I just wanted to reach across the table, grab a fistful of his hair and lick the ice cream right out of his mouth.

The computer will still be unable to predict whether Princeton, New Jersey, will have sun or rain on a day one month away. At noon the spaces between the sensors will hide fluctuations that the computer will not know about, tiny deviations from the average. By 12:01, those fluctuations will already have created small errors one foot away. Soon the errors will have multiplied to the ten-foot scale, and so on up to the size of the globe.

The Ingallses had no way of knowing it, but the locust swarm descending upon them was the largest in recorded human history. It would become known as “Albert’s swarm”: in Nebraska, a meteorologist named Albert Child measured its flight for ten days in June, telegraphing for further information from east and west, noting wind speed and carefully calculating the extent of the cloud of insects. He startled himself with his conclusions: the swarm appeared to be 110 miles wide, 1,800 miles long, and a quarter to a half mile in depth. The wind was blowing at ten miles an hour, but the locusts were moving even faster, at fifteen. They covered 198,000 square miles, Child concluded, an area equal to the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont combined.49 “This is utterly incredible,” he wrote, “yet how can we put it aside?”50 The cloud consisted of some 3.5 trillion insects.

miss him?” Another slow sip. “How can you not miss Rake once you’ve played for him? I see his face every day. I hear his voice. I can smell him sweating. I can feel him hitting me, with no pads on. I can imitate his growl, his grumbling, his bitching. I remember his stories, his speeches, his lessons. I remember all forty plays and all thirty-eight games when I wore the jersey. My father died four years ago and I loved him dearly, but, and this is hard to say, he had less influence on me than Eddie Rake.

For being so early in the season, the tables on either side of the street were heavily laden with produce. I could see English peas, asparagus, arugula, several varieties of chard, kale, rhubarb, radishes... My mouth tingled as I walked slowly from booth to booth, drinking in the knowledge that the food I was checking out had not been trucked over the Jersey Turnpike or from a far-flung spot upstate, but from somewhere nearby, where people still felt dirt in their hands and not just in their nostrils after a day of walking in the city. I paused at the end of a block, and my gaze zeroed in on a mountain of gorgeous strawberries a few stands down. Cutting in and out of the throng, I reached the stand and stood under a banner that read FORSYTHIA FARMS. I crouched to be eye level with the berries, narrowing my eyes at their color, shape, and size. The red was deep, but still bright. Shape: irregular, as they should be, and still shooting delightful stems that poked out the tops like tiny berets. The berries weren't too small, and best of all, not too large. No Costco mutants, I was pleased to note.

sandy-haired, friendly, smiling, small-town attorney of Pennington, had been born in 1950 in a roach-infested Newark slum. His father had been a construction worker fully employed through World War II and Korea creating new factories, dockyards and government offices along the Jersey Shore. But with the ending of the Korean War, work had dried up. Cal was five when his mother walked out of the loveless union and left the boy to be raised by his father. The latter was a hard man, quick with his fists, the only law on many blue-collar jobs. But he was not a bad man and tried to live by the straight and narrow, and to raise his toddler son to love Old Glory, the Constitution and Joe DiMaggio. Within two years, Dexter Senior had acquired a trailer home so that he could move where the work was available. And that was how the boy was raised, moving from construction site to site, attending whichever school would take him, and then moving on. It was the age of Elvis Presley, Del Shannon, Roy Orbison and the Beatles, over from a country Cal had never heard of. It was also the age of Kennedy, the Cold War and Vietnam. His formal education was fractured to the point of near nonexistence, but he became wise in other ways: streetwise, fight-wise. Like his departed mother, he did not grow tall, topping out at five feet eight inches. Nor was he heavy and muscular like his father, but his lean frame packed fearsome stamina and his fists a killer punch. By seventeen, it looked as if his life would follow that of his father, shoveling dirt or driving a dump truck on building sites. Unless . . . In January 1968 he turned eighteen, and the Vietcong launched the Têt Offensive. He was watching TV in a bar in Camden. There was a documentary telling him about recruitment. It mentioned that if you shaped up, the Army would give you an education. The next day, he walked into the U.S. Army office in Camden and signed on. The master sergeant was bored. He spent his life listening to youths doing everything in their power to get out of going to Vietnam. “I want to volunteer,” said the youth in front of him. The master sergeant drew a form toward him, keeping eye contact like a ferret that does not want the rabbit to get away. Trying to be kindly, he suggested

In 2014, we learned that the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets were even more vulnerable to melting than scientists anticipated—in fact, the West Antarctic sheet had already passed a tipping point of collapse, more than doubling its rate of ice loss in just five years. The same had happened in Greenland, where the ice sheet is now losing almost a billion tons of ice every single day. The two sheets contain enough ice to raise global sea levels ten to twenty feet—each. In 2017, it was revealed that two glaciers in the East Antarctic sheet were also losing ice at an alarming rate—eighteen billion tons of ice each year, enough to cover New Jersey in three feet of ice. If both glaciers go, scientists expect, ultimately, an additional 16 feet of water. In total, the two Antarctic ice sheets could raise sea level by 200 feet; in many parts of the world, the shoreline would move by many miles. The last time the earth was four degrees warmer, as Peter Brannen has written, there was no ice at either pole and sea level was 260 feet higher. There were palm trees in the Arctic. Better not to think what that means for life at the equator.

Johnston wrote how by 1990, “Trump’s inability to pay his debts had put him at risk of losing his casinos.”64 The rules of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission required casino owners to have enough liquidity to pay their bills or see their ownership license revoked. Trump would either get a government rescue package or declare bankruptcy. Casino regulators, Johnston wrote, documented that Trump was down to his last $1.6 million.65 He had obligations to make payments on more than $1 billion worth of bonds every ninety days on his three casinos in Atlantic City. Johnston wrote: Trump’s obvious difficulty complying with the financial stability requirements of the Casino Control Act raised a glaring question: Had regulators been monitoring Trump’s finances since he got his casino license in 1982? The answer was no. The regulators had been too busy with work they deemed more important. There was, for example, the predawn arrest of a cocktail waitress named Diane Pussehl, who was pulled from bed and charged with a felony for picking up a $500 chip on the floor of Harrah’s casino. A judge tossed the case out, so the casino regulators filed a misdemeanor charge. It also was tossed. Then they went after Pussehl’s license, arguing she was morally unfit to work in a casino. Pussehl kept her license.66

Every year or so I like to take a step back and look at a few key advertising, marketing, and media facts just to gauge how far removed from reality we advertising experts have gotten. These data represent the latest numbers I could find. I have listed the sources below. So here we go -- 10 facts, direct from the real world: E-commerce in 2014 accounted for 6.5 percent of total retail sales. 96% of video viewing is currently done on a television. 4% is done on a web device. In Europe and the US, people would not care if 92% of brands disappeared. The rate of engagement among a brand's fans with a Facebook post is 7 in 10,000. For Twitter it is 3 in 10,000. Fewer than one standard banner ad in a thousand is clicked on. Over half the display ads paid for by marketers are unviewable. Less than 1% of retail buying is done on a mobile device. Only 44% of traffic on the web is human. One bot-net can generate 1 billion fraudulent digital ad impressions a day. Half of all U.S online advertising - $10 billion a year - may be lost to fraud. As regular readers know, one of our favorite sayings around The Ad Contrarian Social Club is a quote from Noble Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, who wonderfully declared that “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” I think these facts do a pretty good job of vindicating Feynman.

To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time—often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;—to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization—taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;—charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier—there is the untold fate of La Prouse;—universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand.

Tommy, Kate and Jesse emerged from the cab, and were hit instantly by the smell of New Jersey. The scent was like something caught between the Fulton Fish Market on a hot summer day and mildewed newspaper. Their thick-bearded driver had followed Jesse’s explicit directions without fault, but he was still a little tentative behind the wheel. After four other cabbies on Broadway said, “I no go Jersey,” (and after Tommy subsequently responded with, “I don’t blame you pal”), they finally found a driver who reluctantly agreed to take them to the once-familiar warehouse. The three of them were so calm and stiff along the way; the only signs of life in the taxi seemed to be the empty coffee cups and candy wrappers sliding back and forth across the dashboard.

Some people will tell you that Toronto, in the summer, is the nothing more than a cesspool of pollution, garbage, and the smells of a hundred ethnicities competing for top spot in a race won historically by curry, garlic, and the occasional cauldron of boiled cabbage. Take a walk down College Street West, Gerrard Street East, or the Danforth, and you'll see; then, they add—these people, complaining—that the stench is so pervasive, so incorrigible, nor merely for lack of wind, but for the ninety-nine percent humidity, which, after a rainstorm, adds an eradicable bottom-note of sweaty Birkenstocks and the organic tang of decaying plant life. This much is true; there is, however, more to the story. Take a walk down the same streets and you'll find racks of the most stunning saris—red with navy brocade, silver, canary, vermillion and chocolate; marts with lahsun and adrak, pyaz and pudina; windows of gelato, zeppole, tiramisu; dusty smoke shops with patio-bistros; you'll find dove-white statuary of Olympian goddesses, mobs in blue jerseys, primed for the World Cup—and more, still, the compulsory banter of couples who even after forty years can turn foul words into the bawdiest, more unforgettable laughter (and those are just the details). Beyond them is the container, the big canvas brushed with parks and valleys and the interminable shore; a backdrop of ferries and islands, gulls and clouds—sparkles of a million wave-tips as the sun decides which colours to leave on its journey to new days. No, Toronto, in the summer, is the most paradisiacal place in the world.

—a slave was owned by a Continental Army soldier who'd been killed in the French and Indian War. The slave looked after the soldier's widow. He did everything, from dawn to dark didn't stop doing what needed to be done. He chopped and hauled the wood, gathered the crops, excavated and built a cabbage house and stowed the cabbages there, stored the pumpkins, buried the apples, turnips, and potatoes in the ground for winter, stacked the rye and wheat in the barn, slaughtered the pig, salted the pork, slaughtered the cow and corned the beef, until one day the widow married him and they had three sons. And those sons married Gouldtown girls whose families reached back to the settlement's origins in the 1600s, families that by the Revolution were all intermarried and thickly intermingled. One or another or all of them, she said, were descendants of the Indian from the large Lenape settlement at Indian Fields who married a Swede—locally Swedes and Finns had superseded the original Dutch settlers—and who had five children with her; one or another or all were descendants of the two mulatto brothers brought from the West Indies on a trading ship that sailed up the river from Greenwich to Bridgeton, where they were indentured to the landowners who had paid their passage and who themselves later paid the passage of two Dutch sisters to come from Holland to become their wives; one or another or all were descendants of the granddaughter of John Fenwick, an English baronet's son, a cavalry officer in Cromwell's Commonwealth army and a member of the Society of Friends who died in New Jersey not that many years after New Cesarea (the province lying between the Hudson and the Delaware that was deeded by the brother of the king of England to two English proprietors) became New Jersey.

[...] Kevin had grown up playing left-handed. Seeing him take on Andrew right-handed was ballsy enough, seeing him actually score was surreal. Kevin kicked them off the court [...], but instead of following [...] he stayed behind with Andrew to keep practicing. Neil watched them over his shoulder. "I saw him first," Nicky said. "I thought you had Erik," Neil said. "I do, but Kevin's on the List," Nicky said. When Neil frowned, Nicky explained. "It's a list of celebrities we're allowed to have affairs with. Kevin is number three." Neil pretended to understand and changed the topic. "How does anyone lose against the Foxes with Andrew in your goal?" "He's good, right? [...] Coach bribed Andrew into saving our collective asses with some really nice booze." "Bribed?" Neil echoed. "Andrew's good," Nicky said again, "but it doesn't really matter to him if we win or lose. You want him to care, you gotta give him incentive." "He can't play like that and not care." "Now you sound like Kevin. You'll find out the hard way, same as Kevin did. Kevin gave Andrew a lot of grief this spring [...]. Up until then they were fighting like cats and dogs. Now look at them. They're practically trading friendship bracelets and I couldn't fit a crowbar between them if it'd save my life." "But why?" Neil asked. "Andrew hates Kevin's obsession with Exy." "The day they start making sense to you, let me know," Nicky said [...]. "I gave up trying to sort it all out weeks ago. [...] But as long as I'm doling out advice? Stop staring at Kevin so much. You're making me fear for your life over here." "What do you mean?" "Andrew is scary territorial of him. He punched me the first time I said I'd like to get Kevin too wasted to be straight." Nicky pointed at his face, presumably where Andrew had decked him. "So yeah, I'm going to crush on safer targets until Andrew gets bored of him. That means you, since Matt's taken and I don't hate myself enough to try Seth. Congrats." "Can you take the creepy down a level?" Aaron asked. "What?" Nikcy asked. "He said he doesn't swing, so obviously he needs a push." "I don't need a push," Neil said. "I'm fine on my own." "Seriously, how are you not bored of your hand by now?" "I'm done with this conversation," Neil said. "This and every future variation of it [...]." The stadium door slammed open as Andrew showed up at last. [...] "Kevin wants to know what's taking you so long. Did you get lost?" "Nicky's scheming to rape Neil," Aaron said. "There are a couple flaws in his plan he needs to work out first, but he'll get there sooner or later." [...] "Wow, Nicky," Andrew said. "You start early." "Can you really blame me?" Nicky glanced back at Neil as he said it. He only took his eyes off Andrew for a second, but that was long enough for Andrew to lunge at him. Andrew caught Nicky's jersey in one hand and threw him hard up against the wall. [...] "Hey, Nicky," Andrew said in stage-whisper German. "Don't touch him, you understand?" "You know I'd never hurt him. If he says yes-" "I said no." "Jesus, you're greedy," Nicky said. "You already have Kevin. Why does it-" He went silent, but it took Neil a moment to realize why. Andrew had a short knife pressed to Nicky's Jersey. [...] Neil was no stranger to violence. He'd heard every threat in the book, but never from a man who smiled as bright as Andrew did. Apathy, anger, madness, boredom: these motivators Neil knew and understood. But Andrew was grinning like he didn't have a knife point where it'd sleep perfectly between Nicky's ribs, and it wasn't because he was joking. Neil knew Andrew meant it. [...] "Hey, are we playing or what?" Neil asked. "Kevin's waiting." [...] Andrew let go of Nicky and spun away. [...] Nicky looked shaken as he stared after the twins, but when he realized Neil was watching him he rallied with a smile Neil didn't believe at all. "On second thought, you're not my type after all [...].

Whenever Spirit used to show me a horse, it usually meant that someone liked horses, was an equestrian, or bet the horses. But one day, I went through all the meanings with a client, and when he didn’t connect with any of them, Spirit showed me the strangest thing—an outline of New Jersey. So just like that, horses also began to symbolize the Garden State. Why? Beats me, but if it works for Spirit, it works for me. I went through the same process with oatmeal. It was always a symbol that meant someone liked to eat the gloppy cereal—obvious enough. But then once when I said that in a session, the client said no, so Spirit then made me feel like I was pacing up and down a driveway every day. I asked the woman if the deceased was very regimented, and when she said yes, Spirit established that oatmeal would now mean that the person really liked oatmeal and/or that the person liked a routine. Seems random to us, but listen, maybe Spirit thinks it takes a lot of discipline to eat a bowl of Quaker Oats!

some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time—often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;—to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization—taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;—charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier—there is the untold fate of La Prouse;—universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man—such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge. I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be filled; though you must everywhere build on piles of your own driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth. As this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be obtained.

That same day we drove to Seville to celebrate. I asked someone for the name of the smartest hotel in Seville. Alfonso XIII, came the reply. It is where the King of Spain always stays. We found the hotel and wandered in. It was amazing. Shara was a little embarrassed as I was dressed in shorts and an old holey jersey, but I sought out a friendly-looking receptionist and told her our story. “Could you help us out? I have hardly any money.” She looked us up and down, paused--then smiled. “Just don’t tell my manager,” she whispered. So we stayed in a $1,000-a-night room for $100 and celebrated--like the King of Spain. The next morning we went on a hunt for a ring. I asked the concierge in my best university Spanish where I would find a good (aka well-priced) jeweler. He looked a little surprised. I tried speaking slower. Eventually I realized that I had actually been asking him where I might find a good mustache shop. I apologized that my Spanish was a little rusty. Shara rolled her eyes again, smiling. When we eventually found a small local jeweler, I had to do some nifty subcounter mathematics, swiftly converting Spanish pesetas into British pounds, to work out whether or not I could afford each ring Shara tried on. We eventually settled on one that was simple, beautiful--and affordable. Just. Love doesn’t require expensive jewelry. And Shara has always been able to make the simple look exquisite. Luckily.

My mother worked as a saleslady at the well-known Five Corner bakery in Journal Square during the day. Her orders were that I do at least one page of homework for every one of my subjects before she came home. It didn’t matter what my teachers would assign, those were her rules and I didn’t dare to violate them! However, I usually allowed others to make the rules and then decide whether I would follow them. Turning on our small Bakelite radio, I would ignore my mother’s rules and listen to my favorite adventure shows. “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, Superman, who could leap tall buildings in a single bound, and Tom Mix were my favorite daily half-hour radio programs during the week. Tom Mix was forever solving some mystery that I could help him with, since I had a decoder badge that cost only 10 cents, along with a box top from a Ralston Purina’s “Wheat Chex” cereal box. Since it tasted like straw, wanting to get a decoder badge was the only way I would eat this blah cereal for breakfast. The radio shows were way too exciting, and my homework always took second place. When my mother finally came home and saw that I had not done my work, she would get quite upset and make me do twice as much, seated at the kitchen table where she could keep her eye on me. Being under her direct supervision wasn’t much fun, but I would sit there until she was satisfied that I had finished my assignments. My mother showed no mercy! If my father found out about my being lax, there would be hell to pay! For whatever reason, I never seemed to learn…. Oh, woe is me, woe is me…. I was in trouble again… No, I was still in trouble!

We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up. There’s really no other option. And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe. Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill. “We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.” I turn to my own ragtag crew. “Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!” A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?” The kid shrugs. And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.” “It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!” I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.” A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?” And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.” “No,” I try, “that’s not what I—” But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away. “Darn.” Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear. “They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.” I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him. “Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.” And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo. He laughs. And it’s beautiful. It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs? He’s heart-stopping. He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness. “Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.” It was a massacre. We never stood a chance. In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint. But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud

From the dairy a wall extended which formed the right-hand boundary of the octangle, joining the bull’s shed and the pig-pens at the extreme end of the right point of the triangle. A staircase, put in to make it more difficult, ran parallel with the octangle, half-way round the yard, against the wall which led down to the garden gate. The spurt and regular ping! of milk against metal came from the reeking interior of the sheds. The bucket was pressed between Adam Lambsbreath’s knees, and his head was pressed deep into the flank of Feckless, the big Jersey. His gnarled hands mechanically stroked the teat, while a low crooning, mindless as the Down wind itself, came from his lips. He was asleep. He had been awake all night, wandering in thought over the indifferent bare shoulders of the Downs after his wild bird, his little flower... Elfine. The name, unspoken but sharply musical as a glittering bead shaken from a fountain’s tossing necklace, hovered audibly in the rancid air of the shed. The beasts stood with heads lowered dejectedly against the wooden hoot-pieces of their stalls. Graceless, Pointless, Feckless, and Aimless awaited their turn to be milked. Sometimes Aimless ran her dry tongue, with a rasping sound sharp as a file through silk, awkwardly across the bony flank of Feckless, which was still moist with the rain that had fallen upon it through the roof during the night, or Pointless turned her large dull eyes sideways as she swung her head upwards to tear down a mouthful of cobwebs from the wooden runnet above her head. A lowering, moist, steamy light, almost like that which gleams below the eyelids of a man in fever, filled the cowshed. Suddenly a tortured bellow, a blaring welter of sound that shattered the quiescence of the morning, tore its way across the yard and died away in a croak that was almost a sob. It was Big Business, the bull, wakening to another day, in the clammy darkness of his cell.

I had this book when I was a little kid," Eddie said at last. He spoke in the flat tones of utter surety. "Then we moved from Queens to Brooklyn--I wasn't even four years old--and I lost it. But I remember the picture on the cover. And I felt the same way you do, Jake. I didn't like it. I didn't trust it." Susannah raised her eyes to look at Eddie. "I had it, too--how could I ever forget the little girl with my name...although of course it was my middle name back in those days. And I felt the same way about the train. I didn't like it and I didn't trust it." She tapped the front of the book with her finger before passing it on to Roland. "I thought that smile was a great big fake." Roland gave it only a cursory glance before returning his eyes to Susannah. "Did you lose yours, too?" "Yes." "And I'll bet I know when," Eddie said. Susannah nodded. "I'll bet you do. It was after that man dropped the brick on my head. I had it when we went north to my Aunt Blue's wedding. I had it on the train. I remember, because I kept asking my dad if Charlie the Choo-Choo was pulling us. I didn't WANT it to be Charlie, because we were supposed to go to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I thought Charlie might take us anywhere. Didn't he end up pulling folks around a toy village or something like that, Jake?" "An amusement park." "Yes, of course it was. There's a picture of him hauling kids around that place at the end, isn't there? They're all smiling and laughing, except I always thought they looked like they were screaming to be let off." "Yes!" Jake cried. "Yes, that's right! That's JUST right!" "I thought Charlie might take us to HIS place--wherever he lived--instead of to my aunt's wedding, and never let us go home again." "You can't go home again," Eddie muttered, and ran his hands nervously through his hair. "All the time we were on that train I wouldn't let go of the book. I even remember thinking, 'If he tries to steal us, I'll rip out his pages until he quits.' But of course we arrived right where we were supposed to, and on time, too. Daddy even took me up front, so I could see the engine. It was a diesel, not a steam engine, and I remember that made me happy. Then, after the wedding, that man Mort dropped the brick on me and I was in a coma for a long time. I never saw Charlie the Choo-Choo after that. Not until now." She hesitated, then added: "This could be my copy, for all I know--or Eddie's." "Yeah, and probably is," Eddie said.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and get lost in a sea of blue. A Jersey-accented voice says, “It’s about time, kid,” and Frank Sinatra rattles the ice in his glass of Jack Daniel’s. Looking at the swirling deep-brown liquid, he whispers, “Ain’t it beautiful?” This is my introduction to the Chairman of the Board. We spend the next half hour talking Jersey, Hoboken, swimming in the Hudson River and the Shore. We then sit down for dinner at a table with Robert De Niro, Angie Dickinson and Frank and his wife, Barbara. This is all occurring at the Hollywood “Guinea Party” Patti and I have been invited to, courtesy of Tita Cahn. Patti had met Tita a few weeks previous at the nail parlor. She’s the wife of Sammy Cahn, famous for such songs as “All The Way,” “Teach Me Tonight” and “Only the Lonely.” She called one afternoon and told us she was hosting a private event. She said it would be very quiet and couldn’t tell us who would be there, but assured us we’d be very comfortable. So off into the LA night we went. During the evening, we befriend the Sinatras and are quietly invited into the circle of the last of the old Hollywood stars. Over the next several years we attend a few very private events where Frank and the remaining clan hold forth. The only other musician in the room is often Quincy Jones, and besides Patti and I there is rarely a rocker in sight. The Sinatras are gracious hosts and our acquaintance culminates in our being invited to Frank’s eightieth birthday party dinner. It’s a sedate event at the Sinatras’ Los Angeles home. Sometime after dinner, we find ourselves around the living room piano with Steve and Eydie Gorme and Bob Dylan. Steve is playing the piano and up close he and Eydie can really sing the great standards. Patti has been thoroughly schooled in jazz by Jerry Coker, one of the great jazz educators at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. She was there at the same time as Bruce Hornsby, Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, and she learned her stuff. At Frank’s, as the music drifts on, she slips gently in on “My One and Only Love.” Patti is a secret weapon. She can sing torch like a cross between Peggy Lee and Julie London (I’m not kidding). Eydie Gorme hears Patti, stops the music and says, “Frank, come over here. We’ve got a singer!” Frank moves to the piano and I then get to watch my wife beautifully serenade Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan, to be met by a torrent of applause when she’s finished. The next day we play Frank’s eightieth birthday celebration for ABC TV and I get to escort him to the stage along with Tony Bennett. It’s a beautiful evening and a fitting celebration for the greatest pop singer of all time. Two years later Frank passed away and we were generously invited to his funeral. A

Oh, by the way, security told me earlier that some guy showed up, claiming to be your assistant.” “Already? What time is it?” “It’s almost one o’clock,” he says. “Are you telling me you actually hired someone?” My heart drops. I shove past Cliff, ignoring him as he calls for me, wanting his question answered. I head straight for security, spotting Jack standing along the side with a guard, looking somewhere between disturbed and amused. “Strangest shit I’ve ever witnessed in Jersey,” Jack says, looking me over. “And that’s saying something, because I once saw a chimpanzee roller skating, and that was weird as fuck.” “I’m going to take that as a compliment, even though I know it isn’t one,” I say, grabbing his arm and making him follow me. It’s about a two-and-a-half hour drive to Bennett Landing, but I barely have two hours. “Please tell me you drove.” Before he can respond, I hear Cliff shouting as he follows. “Johnny! Where are you going?” “Oh, buddy.” Jack glances behind us at Cliff. “Am I your getaway driver?” “Something like that,” I say. “You ever play Grand Theft Auto?” “Every fucking day, man.” “Good,” I say, continuing to walk, despite Cliff attempting to catch up. “If you can get me where I need to be, there will be one hell of a reward in it for you.” His eyes light up as he pulls out a set of car keys. “Mission accepted.” There’s a crowd gathered around set. They figured out we’re here. They know we’re wrapping today. I scan the area, looking for a way around them. “Where’d you park?” I ask, hoping it’s anywhere but right across the street. “Right across the street,” he says. Fuck. I’m going to have to go through the crowd. “You sure you, uh, don’t want to change?” Jack asks, his eyes flickering to me, conflicted. “No time for that.” The crowd spots me, and they start going crazy, making Cliff yell louder to get my attention, but I don’t stop. I slip off of set, past the metal barricades and right into the street, as security tries to keep the crowd back, but it’s a losing game. So we run, and I follow Jack to an old station wagon, the tan paint faded. “This is what you drive?” “Not all of us grew up with trust funds,” he says, slapping his hand against the rusted hood. “This was my inheritance.” “Not judging,” I say, pausing beside it. “It’s just all very ‘70s suburban housewife.” “That sounds like judgment, asshole.” I open the passenger door to get in the car when Cliff catches up, slightly out of breath from running. “What are you doing, Johnny? You’re leaving?” “I told you I had somewhere to be.” “This is ridiculous,” he says, anger edging his voice. “You need to sort out your priorities.” “That’s a damn good idea,” I say. “Consider this my notice.” “Your notice?” “I’m taking a break,” I say. “From you. From this. From all of it.” “You’re making a big mistake.” “You think so?” I ask, looking him right in the face. “Because I think the mistake I made was trusting you.” I get in the car, slamming the door, leaving Cliff standing on the sidewalk, fuming. Jack starts the engine, cutting his eyes at me. “So, where to? The unemployment office?” “Home,” I say, “and I need to get there as soon as possible, because somebody is waiting for me, and I can't disappoint her.

Yes, Cuthbert was at the party. But he wasn’t at chapel the day after, nor at school on Monday, nor at the meeting at Sunday school later. “… And you tell the gentleman why,” wound-up the mother, furiously shaking the captive in the jersey, until that garment slid round his neck and almost choked him.

Fads and crazes also garnered public attention for those Americans who craved the glare of the spotlight. Some people sought to perform feats so bizarre that no one else had ever done them, while others attempted to do something more times than anyone else ever had. For example, an Indiana high school student made headlines by chewing 40 sticks of gum while singing “Home, Sweet Home” and, between stanzas, chugging a gallon of milk. A New Jersey youth, subsisting only on eggs and black coffee, won a $150 contest by staying awake for 155 hours, continuously listening to the radio. A Boston man choked down 75 raw eggs in 10 minutes. A Chicago man slurped 1,260 feet of spaghetti in three hours. A Minnesota man gulped 85 cups of coffee (or five gallons) in seven hours and 15 minutes. A Texas man won a $500 bet by spending 30 days rolling a peanut up Pikes Peak with his nose.5 Journalists and critics often denigrated these media-hungry record breakers, but during the 1920s, millions of Americans, particularly college students, participated in

When a young employee gasped at his blue language, Simons flashed a grin. “I know—that is an impressive rate!” A few times a week, Marilyn came by to visit, usually with their baby, Nicholas. Other times, Barbara checked in on her ex-husband. Other employees’ spouses and children also wandered around the office. Each afternoon, the team met for tea in the library, where Simons, Baum, and others discussed the latest news and debated the direction of the economy. Simons also hosted staffers on his yacht, The Lord Jim, docked in nearby Port Jefferson. Most days, Simons sat in his office, wearing jeans and a golf shirt, staring at his computer screen, developing new trades—reading the news and predicting where markets were going, like most everyone else. When he was especially engrossed in thought, Simons would hold a cigarette in one hand and chew on his cheek. Baum, in a smaller, nearby office, trading his own account, favored raggedy sweaters, wrinkled trousers, and worn Hush Puppies shoes. To compensate for his worsening eyesight, he hunched close to his computer, trying to ignore the smoke wafting through the office from Simons’s cigarettes. Their traditional trading approach was going so well that, when the boutique next door closed, Simons rented the space and punched through the adjoining wall. The new space was filled with offices for new hires, including an economist and others who provided expert intelligence and made their own trades, helping to boost returns. At the same time, Simons was developing a new passion: backing promising technology companies, including an electronic dictionary company called Franklin Electronic Publishers, which developed the first hand-held computer. In 1982, Simons changed Monemetrics’ name to Renaissance Technologies Corporation, reflecting his developing interest in these upstart companies. Simons came to see himself as a venture capitalist as much as a trader. He spent much of the week working in an office in New York City, where he interacted with his hedge fund’s investors while also dealing with his tech companies. Simons also took time to care for his children, one of whom needed extra attention. Paul, Simons’s second child with Barbara, had been born with a rare hereditary condition called ectodermal dysplasia. Paul’s skin, hair, and sweat glands didn’t develop properly, he was short for his age, and his teeth were few and misshapen. To cope with the resulting insecurities, Paul asked his parents to buy him stylish and popular clothing in the hopes of fitting in with his grade-school peers. Paul’s challenges weighed on Simons, who sometimes drove Paul to Trenton, New Jersey, where a pediatric dentist made cosmetic improvements to Paul’s teeth. Later, a New York dentist fitted Paul with a complete set of implants, improving his self-esteem. Baum was fine with Simons working from the New York office, dealing with his outside investments, and tending to family matters. Baum didn’t need much help. He was making so much money trading various currencies using intuition and instinct that pursuing a systematic, “quantitative” style of trading seemed a waste of

IN MY NEXT LIFE LET ME BE A TOMATO lusting and unafraid. In this bipedal incarnation I have always been scared of my own ripening, mother standing outside the fitting room door. I only become bright after Bloody Mary’s, only whole in New Jersey summers where beefsteaks, like baubles, sag in the yard, where we pass down heirlooms in thin paper envelopes and I tend barefoot to a garden that snakes with desire, unashamed to coil and spread. Cherry Falls, Brandywine, Sweet Aperitif, I kneel with a spool, staking and tying, checking each morning after last night’s thunderstorm only to find more sprawl, the tomatoes have no fear of wind and water, they gain power from the lightning, while I, in this version of life, retreat in bed to wither. In this life, rabbits are afraid of my clumsy gait. In the next, let them come willingly to nibble my lowest limbs, my outstretched arm always offering something sweet. I want to return from reincarnation’s spin covered in dirt and buds. I want to be unabashed, audacious, to gobble space, to blush deeper each day in the sun, knowing I’ll end up in an eager mouth. An overly ripe tomato will begin sprouting, so excited it is for more life, so intent to be part of this world, trellising wildly. For every time in this life I have thought of dying, let me yield that much fruit in my next, skeleton drooping under the weight of my own vivacity as I spread to take more of this air, this fencepost, this forgiving light.

Growing up near the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey, I never saw it as anything of any great importance, just the woods I would disappear into for a day. Looking back on those memories, I realized just how far from that trail I had come and how far I had to walk to get back.

The next morning, Roy traded seats on the school bus to be closer to the front door. When the bus turned onto the street where he had seen the running boy, Roy slipped his backpack over his shoulders and scouted out the window, waiting. Seven rows back, Dana Matherson was tormenting a sixth grader named Louis. Louis was from Haiti and Dana was merciless. As the bus came to a stop at the intersection, Roy poked his head out the window and checked up and down the street. Nobody was running. Seven kids boarded the bus, but the strange shoeless boy was not among them. It was the same story the next day, and the day after that. By Friday, Roy had pretty much given up. He was sitting ten rows from the door, reading an X-Man comic, as the bus turned the familiar corner and began to slow down. A movement at the corner of his eye made Roy glance up from his comic book—and there he was on the sidewalk, running again! Same basketball jersey, same grimy shorts, same black-soled feet. As the brakes of the school bus wheezed, Roy grabbed his backpack off the floor and stood up. At that instant, two big sweaty hands closed around his neck. “Where ya goin’, cowgirl?” “Lemme go,” Roy rasped, squirming to break free. The grip on his throat tightened. He felt Dana’s ashtray breath on his right ear: “How come you don’t got your boots on today? Who ever heard of a cowgirl wearing Air Jordans?” “They’re Reeboks,” Roy squeaked. The bus had stopped, and the students were starting to board. Roy was furious. He had to get to the door fast, before the driver closed it and the bus began to roll. But Dana wouldn’t let go, digging his fingers into Roy’s windpipe. Roy was having trouble getting air, and struggling only made it worse. “Look at you,” Dana chortled from behind, “red as a tomato!” Roy knew the rules against fighting on the bus, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He clenched his right fist and brought it up blindly over his shoulder, as hard as he could.

I was reminded of Steve Adams, one of my sister Allie’s three sons my first wife Jane and I adopted after Allie’s unlucky husband Jim died in a railroad train that went off an open drawbridge in New Jersey, and then, two days later, Allie died of cancer of the everything.

New Brunswick, New Jersey, where I had to cut off two of its feet to get it upstairs to my third-floor office at 16 Stratford Place. There, for all I know, it remains to this day.)

Oh, she went to get us some bagels and fruit because we have two-a-days,” the answer came. “Our nutritionist says we should eat an hour after our first training and an hour before our next one.” Langel was again stunned. The players had double training days, and in between sessions, a player had to run out and get food because U.S. Soccer didn’t provide catering like they did at the men’s training sessions. That went on the list, too. Other small things added up. Players weren’t allowed to keep their jerseys after they played—they had to give them back to the federation, which was unusual in the world of soccer. There were no provisions that covered childcare for mothers on the team. Joy Fawcett and Carla Overbeck had children that they often took to national team camps.

Are you jackasses going to let me finish or no?” “Fine, go,” Nazem says, waving his hand in permission. “We get a pet tiger. A nameless pet tiger.” I snicker under my breath. “Anyway,” Beckett continues, “this tiger is great. Round the clock protection, top-notch wingman because all the chicks want to rub his ears or whatever. Basically, he’s a net positive in your life.” “But…?” Shane asks, because there’s always a but in these things. “But for three hours every day, you have to hear him bitch,” Beckett finishes. “About what?” Rand asks curiously, pulling his jersey over his chest protector. “About everything. I’m talking the most mundane, trivial, petty stuff.” Beckett nods. “Basically, for three hours every day, he turns into Micah’s girlfriend.

The Return Season On March 19, 1995, Michael Jordan officially returned to the hardwood floor as an NBA player in a game against the Indiana Pacers wearing jersey number 45, which was his brother Larry’s number and the number he used while playing baseball. Still feeling the rust of being away from competitive basketball for nearly two years, Jordan only had 19 points on a poor 7 out of 28 shooting clip in that loss to the Pacers. But while the Bulls may have lost that outing, they were happy enough that they had the franchise’s greatest player back in time to help them with their playoff push. While Jordan took his sweet time getting his groove back, he still had scoring explosions even as he was shaking off the rust. On March 28th he helped avenge the Bulls’ seven-game series loss to New York the previous year by exploding for 55 points against the Knicks. Just three days before that, he had 32 in a win over the Atlanta Hawks. Just as the Chicago Bulls had hoped, they got the push they needed when Jordan returned to the team. They won 13 of the 17 regular-season games that MJ appeared in and went on to make the playoffs with a 47-win season. In that brief 17-game campaign, Michael Jordan averaged 26.9 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 5.3 assists while shooting 41.1% from the floor. It was clear that

At the core of Victimanity are seven commandments. Ten commandments are too many. These short seven commandments are wisely enumerated dogmatic COTEV principles symbolized by Knee-sus’ jersey number. Nothing is ever thy fault. Thy is always a victim of circumstance. Every down is a punting down. Punt away responsibility. The most valuable real estate is in the hood — victimhood. Never partake of the Forbidden Fruit called accountability. Lest not even touch it, or ye shall suffer. A problem shared is a problem halved, so give thy problematic half away and make it a whole problem for someone else. Judgment day is every day. Therefore, be sure to judge others for your shortcomings. Thy is not thy own worst enemy; the enemy is always external.

I’m content. She’s mine. If I could see her in that jersey every day for the rest of my life, I would be all in.

But you weren’t trying to imply that this means more than it does. Right?” I wave a hand between the two of us. I’m holding my breath, waiting for his reply. “No, but I really wanted to see you in my jersey. Like you don’t even understand. It’s fucking hot. All I could think about the entire game was how I was going to make you keep it on while I sunk so deep inside your pussy that you wouldn’t be able to think about anything else the next day.

Listen, Starlight. I’m not being a hundred per cent honest here, and I’m sorry. I wanted to see you in my jersey because that’s what girlfriends wear. I want this thing between us.” He touches his chest, gesturing between us. “To be more. I want to be your boyfriend. I want it more than I can tell you. I want to make you smile every day so I can see that dimple. And I know you’re scared. I get it. I’m fucking terrified that I’m going to tell you this and you’re going to disappear on me again. But it’s the truth, and I owe you the truth.

hope one day to see you. I hope one day to feel your lips on mine and your arms wrapped around my body. I hope one day to laugh so hard that I almost pee my pants again from one of your stupid-ass jokes. I hope to watch you play football from the stands, wearing your name and jersey number on my back and screaming way too loud. And I hope one day to sing for you again. I hope for all of those things so damn much.

DIFFUSED SILICON had another use, too. Fifteen years had passed since the day Walter Brattain had been ushered into Mervin Kelly’s office to regard a strange piece of silicon that had been discovered down in Holmdel, New Jersey. The men had shone a light on the blackened chunk and the resulting electric charge had stunned them. In later years it came to be understood that this chunk of silicon contained a naturally occurring p-n junction where two types of silicon met. The junction is extremely photosensitive. In very general terms, the photons in light are hitting the semiconductor crystal and “splitting off” electrons from their normal location in the crystal; the process, if properly captured, can create a flow of electrons, that is, a flow of electricity.13 Kelly and Brattain and Ohl didn’t know it at the time, but in Kelly’s office the men had been looking at the world’s first crude silicon solar cell.

On the day the hulk was towed away from Asbury Park, George White Rogers opened a radio-repair shop in Bayonne, New Jersey. It was the first time he had worked in some months. Customers found Rogers a bombastic shopkeeper, fond of telling them how lucky they were to have their radio sets mended by him. His business dropped off. One day in February 1935, Rogers left the shop “to get a breath of air.” Shortly afterward it caught fire. Bayonne police files reveal: “An inventory made by Rogers disclosed equipment had suffered damage to the extent of $1200. Arson was suspected. But no proof existed to warrant an arrest. He collected from the insurance company.

I turn to find him standing there with a bouquet of twelve pink roses and an apologetic smile.  “You know, us Jersey Boys sometimes need a good knock upside the head when we’re being particularly dense. I wish you’d a reminded me it was Valentine’s Day this morning.

The day you realize that Tony Soprano's mama is not your mama. you don't live in Dunkin Donuts, and you hate northern New Jersey. . . It's that day you wake up healed, freed up from another fascination with America making itself over in the land of television. . .

You’re goddamn right I mean business. I’m over two hundred years old, so my days of enduring narcissistic, lying, cheating assholes are over. Did I overreact by destroying an entire township in Jersey? Maybe, but sometimes you have to weigh consequences against comeuppance and scorch some earth.

I have no naive notions of good and evil. While Kentucky is not the deep south, there is enough of that type of outlaw mentality in the rural areas that Hollywood movies based on corrupt backwoods cops have some credibility. Making someone disappear in the country is actually far easier to do than in a place like New Jersey. Lots of heavily wooded areas and farms to dispose of a body, should one happen to need to. The look in his eyes had scared me. There was clearly something behind them, something I didn’t want to ever see in the full light of day. Things of nightmares. There are places, dark damp hidden places, where things like that dwell, and to look upon them would drive a person mad with fear.

My brows drop in confusion as I stare at the ninety-nine on Blake’s shirt. “You told me the other day that you were number thirteen.” “I loaned my jersey to the sub and borrowed an extra from work.” My lips morph into a frown. “So, whose number am I wearing?” “That would be mine.” There could be a thousand people chattering around me, and I’d still be able to pick out Walker’s amused voice. I slowly turn around and meet his smug smile. My peripheral picks up the number thirteen across his chest matching mine. Well, that backfired. “How nice of you to wear my number, Jane.” Oh, that smugness. I would slap it off his face, except it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

The Probate Home Sale When an offer to purchase a home being sold through probate in New Jersey has been accepted, a notice will be mailed to heirs of the estate. This notice is the Notice of Proposed Action. The Notice of Proposed Action enables estate heirs to object to the sale of the home. Should an estate heir - or, should estate heirs - object to the sale of the home, a court date will be set. Any offer to purchase a home being sold through probate must be equal to - or greater than - 90% of the appraisal value of the home. The appraisal value of the home is provided to the court by a licensed real estate appraiser who has been designated by the court to conduct such an appraisal. Whats next? The attorney for the estate schedules a confirmation hearing. This hearing takes place within 45 days of the filing date. Throughout the process, the listing agent of the home being sold through probate continues to show the home to prospective buyers. One directive the listing agent has in continuing to show the home to buyers is to determine whether an over-bidder emerges. An over-bidder is a buyer who submits their offer to purchase the home at a sale price which is greater than offers which have been received, to date. Thus, raising the sale price of the home. Increasing proceeds for the estate. In the event that there is an offer submitted by an over-bidder, the over-bidder attends a confirmation hearing. At the confirmation hearing, the over-bidder is required to present a certified check which is equal to or greater than 10% of the proposed sale price.

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

They wore the uniform of the desert bro. Think frat boy who never went to college. Jersey Shore without the water. Farmer’s tans made by the sun instead of a cancer machine. Ed Hardy shirts and backward baseball caps. Oakley sunglasses, even at night. Goatees or shaped three-day growth. Essentially they all looked like middle relief pitchers on vacation. The kind of guys that thought they looked like MMA fighters, but really looked like assholes.

Day 210  You can pursue happiness by wearing a torn jersey. You can catch it by being good at something you love.  George F. Will

The day after our wedding, we flew off on honeymoon. I had recklessly waited until two days before our wedding to book the holiday, in the hope that I would get some great last-minute deal somewhere. Always a dangerous tactic. I pretended to Shara that it was a surprise. But, predictably, those “great deals” were a bit thin on the ground that week. The best I could find was a one-star package holiday, at a resort near Cancun in Mexico. It was bliss being together, but there was no hiding the fact that the hotel sucked. We got put in a room right next to the sewer outlet--which gave us a cracking smell to enjoy every evening as we sat looking out at the…maintenance shed opposite. As lunch wasn’t included in the one-star package, we started stockpiling the breakfasts. A couple of rolls down the jersey sleeve, and a yogurt and banana in Shara’s handbag. Then back to the hammock for books, kissing, and another whiff of sewage. When we returned to the UK it was a freezing cold January day. Shara was tired, but we were both excited to get onto our nice, warm, centrally heated barge. It was to be our first night in our own home. I had asked Annabel, Shara’s sister, to put the heating on before we arrived, and some food in the fridge. She had done so perfectly. What she didn’t know, though, was that the boiler packed in soon after she left. By the time Shara and I made it to the quayside on the Thames, it was dark. Our breath was coming out as clouds of vapor in the freezing air. I picked Shara up and carried her up the steps onto the boat. We opened the door and looked at each other. Surprised. It was literally like stepping into a deep freeze. Old iron boats are like that in winter. The cold water around them means that, without heating, they are Baltically cold. We fumbled our way, still all wrapped up, into the bowels of the boat and the boiler room. Shara looked at me, then at the silent, cold boiler. No doubt she questioned how smart both choices had really been. So there we were. No money, and freezing cold--but happy and together. That night, all wrapped up in blankets, I made a simple promise to Shara: I would love her and look after her, every day of our life together--and along the way we would have one hell of an adventure. Little did either of us realize, but this was really just the beginning.

temporary.” She got quiet and Ginger didn’t ask any questions. But even if Thomas hadn’t gone to stay with his father, Ginger soon realized she wouldn’t have been allowed to work for Evelyn. It would have been too upsetting for Glory. That was the main thing now: making sure Glory didn’t get more upset. With their return to New Jersey, her headaches had come back. She had one every day, incapacitating migraines that sometimes were so bad, Ginger could hear moaning from all the way downstairs. The only thing that brought relief was being alone, staying in bed, and switching up washcloths—a cool one on her forehead while a backup soaked in the bowl of ice water that took up permanent residence on her night table. Ginger was sure the headaches were, at least in part, because of her. She wasn’t sure exactly what her role was in the accident, but she knew accusations would be coming before long. Any minute now, they’d begin. That they hadn’t started yet was confusing. Every morning she braced herself for the blowup. But her mother did not emerge

U4NBA News: Notice The Version Of NBA 2K18 Is For You NBA 2K18 is scheduled to debut on store shelves until September 15th for those that who pre-order. It'll come to Xbox One, PS4, Windows PCs and mobile. You must have noticed some NBA 2K18 version informations to help you to decide which version of NBA 2K18 is the one to pre-order now or purchase on release day. NBA 2K18 Standard Edition NBA 2K18 Standard Edition is for mild fans of the series that don't care as much about Virtual Currency as they do getting access four-days before everyone else. Standard Edition is $59.99. Buyers get 5,000 in Virtual Currency, 10 Weeks of MyTeam Packs and some MyTeam themed cosmetic items for use in the game. This version will come to the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, PS3, PCs and the Nintendo Switch. This version of the game gets you access to the NBA 2K18 Early Tip-Off Weekend, provided you place a pre-order before September 15th. Also Read: Kyrie Irving Will Grace The Cover Of The Standard Edition Of NBA 2K18 NBA 2K18 Legend Edition NBA 2K18 Legend Edition is the upgraded version of the standard game and the version is for big-time fans of Shaq. It’s also for anyone that loves MyCareer and wants an early jumpstart to their character. It doesn’t come with any exclusive features. Instead, it packs Virtual Currency that could make starting out in MyCareer a little easier. Legend Edition is $99.99. There's 100,000 in Virtual Currency included with Legend Edition. Again, you can use Virtual Currency to buy upgrades for your character in the game. The more Virtual Currency you have, the easier it’ll be to get extras in MyCareer. Character add-ons include a Shaq Championship Ring, Shaq Attaq shoes, Shaq Jerseys and Shaq clothing. There are 20 weeks of MyTeam Packs instead of the 10 that the basic version comes with. Physical copies of this game come with 5 Panini cards, Shaq MyTeam Stickers and a poster. Xbox One, PS4, PCs and the Nintendo Switch will get this version. This version qualifies for Early Tip-Off Weekend. NBA 2K18 Legend Edition Gold NBA 2K18 Legend Edition Gold is for the player that enjoys the series year after year and will find themselves spending hours across MyCareer and MyTeam modes for a long time. It’s also for the fan that loves basketball games and doesn’t have a lot of free time to dump into the game to earn Virtual Currency. This version costs $149.99, the most that any version of the game does. Shoppers get 250,000 in Virtual Currency when they buy Legend Edition Gold. There's 40 weekly MyTeam Packs. Developers guaranteed that players who own those packs can get at least one of Shaq and a TEAM 2K Card. Buyers also get the Shaq Attaq Shoes, the championship ring and Shaq Themed Jerseys and apparel. Physical add-ons include a poster, 10 Panini Cards, Shaq MyTeam Stickers and a lenticular printing. Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows PCs and PS4 will get this version. The game qualifies for Early Tip-Off Weekend. In order meet player's demand for NBA 2K18 MT during Early Tip-Off Weekend, we decide to bring forward the activity where offers coupon code "NBA2017". You can buy NBA 2K18 MT from now on to gain up to 5% off.

I dream of the day I’ll get to hold you in my arms for real. It may be too soon, or too intense, but Jersey you’re the light in my dark world right now. You wrote to me at the right time, I think. Do you believe in fate? I sometimes feel like you were sent to me.

The City of Boston allowed us to dock at the dilapidated Mystic Wharves, right next to where the ships from the Havana Line used to tie up. Without knowing it, we were witnessing the end of an era. Steamship companies that connected Cuba with the United States were dwindling, as commercial aviation came into its own. The Havana Line was already gone, and the New York & Cuba Mail Steamship Company, commonly called the Ward Line, was a shipping company that operated from 1841 until 1954 and ran “Whoopee Cruises” during the prohibition years. Because of a number of accidents, including the fire on the SS Morro Castle off Asbury Park on September 8, 1934, the company was left hanging on by a thread. In the mid-1950’s it was still possible to buy a round trip passage from Miami to Havana for about $45.00, which was a bargain, even in those days.