John Carver Quotes

It was [John Gardner's] conviction that if the words in the story were blurred because of the author's insensitivity, carelessness, or sentimentality, then the story suffered from a tremendous handicap. But there was something even worse and something that must be avoided at all costs: if the words and the sentiments were dishonest, the author was faking it, writing about things he didn't care about or believe in, then nobody could ever care anything about it.

Now Flowers was arguing the same thing back to him. If Dannon and Carver had killed Tubbs, Lucas wouldn’t find out about it except by accident. If justice were to be done, it would have to be extrajudicial.

In the short term, there is scant room for dreaming, for one must choose between being taken seriously and being visionary. In the long term, however, leadership cannot afford to overlook the wisdom of dreams, even the wisdom of playful dreaming. Vision that bounds higher than the barriers that confine us often spring from earnest playfulness.

SCHIFFER WAS LEAVING, Dannon asked Carver to do a serious look around the yard. One of the radar buzzers had been going off, Dannon said, and he hadn’t been able to isolate why. “Probably another goddamn skunk,” Carver said. He pulled his jacket back on and went to look.

Just about killed ourselves out there in the dark,” Carver said. “He’s gone. Put a few concrete blocks on top of him, just in case.” “In case of what?” Taryn asked, fascinated in spite of herself. “Well . . . body gases,” Carver said. “The ground was a little wet, you wouldn’t want him popping up.

She made a moue, then said, “There’s one exception. If he is, in fact, in love with Ms. Grant, he might take one for her . . . if she’s involved. If he thinks Carver acted alone, he might also turn on Carver. Not because he wanted to, but to protect Ms. Grant.

I’ll have to think about it, but I can do that,” Taryn said. “Of course you can,” Dannon said. “But don’t think about ways to trick them or outsmart them. Just focus on your ignorance. You don’t know anything, but you’re willing to speculate, and you’d like some information from them—to hear what they think.” “What about you and Carver?” “We can handle it,” Dannon said. “We’ve spent half our lives lying to cops, of one kind or another. Nobody else on the staff knows. Might not be a bad idea for us to stay away completely . . . unless they ask for us.” “Let’s do that,” Taryn said. “Maybe you two could start doing some advance security work.” “I’ll talk to Ron,” Dannon said. He heard high heels, and said, “Here comes Alice.

She had to think seriously about Carver and Dannon. Dannon was well under control—he’d been her security man for four years, and for all four years had hungered for her. Not just for sex. He was in love with her. That was useful. Carver was cruder. He didn’t want her total being, he just wanted to fuck her. If she wasn’t available, somebody else would do. So her grip on him was more precarious.

THEY WALKED UP TO the front door, rang the bell. Del scratched his neck and looked at the yellow bug light and said, “I feel like a bug.” “You look like a bug. You fall down out there?” “About four times. We weren’t running so much as staggering around. Potholes full of water . . . I see you kept your French shoes nice and dry.” “English. English shoes . . . French shirts. Italian suits. Try to remember that.” “Makes my nose bleed,” Del said. The door opened, and Green looked out: she was still fully dressed, including the jacket that covered her gun and the fashionable shoes that she could run in. She took a long look at Del, and asked, “Where’re Dannon and Carver?” “Dead,” Lucas said. “Where’s Grant?” “In the living room.” “You want to invite us in?” She opened the door, and they stepped inside, and followed her to the living room. Grant was there, still dressed as she had been on the stage; she was curled in an easy chair, with a drink in her hand, high heels on the floor beside her. Schiffer was lying on a couch, barefoot; a couple of Taryn’s staff people, a young woman and a young man, were sitting on the floor, making a circle. Another man, heavier and older, was sitting in a leather chair facing Grant. Lucas didn’t recognize him, but recognized the type: a guy who knew where all the notional bodies were buried, a guy who could get the vice president on the telephone.

He looked directly at Grant: “I will tell them that I think you are guilty of the murder of three people and that you were the sponsor of the child-pornography smear, and that I think a person of your brand of social pathology—I believe you are a psychopath, and I will tell them that—has no place in the Senate. And I will continue to argue that here in Minnesota for the full six years of your term, and do everything I can to wreck any possible political career that you might otherwise have had.” Grant smiled at him and said, “Fuck you.” The governor said, “Okay, okay, Porter. Now, Taryn, do you have anything for us?” “No, not really. I’ll be the best senator I can be, I reject any notion that I was involved in this craziness.” She looked at Smalls: “As for you, bring it on. If you want to spend six years fighting over this, by the time we’re done, you’ll be unemployable and broke. I would have no problem setting aside, say, a hundred million dollars for a media campaign to defend myself.” “Fuck you,” Smalls said. And, “By the way, I’d like to thank Agent Davenport for his work on this. I thought he did a brilliant job, even if I wound up losing.” Grant jumped in: “And I’d like to say that I think Davenport created the conditions that unnecessarily led to the deaths in this case, that if he’d been a little more circumspect, we might still have Helen Roman and Carver and Dannon alive, and might be able to actually prove what happened, so that I’d be definitively cleared.” Smalls made a noise that sounded like a fart, and Henderson said, “Thank you for that comment, Porter.

Richard Durham was a black writer whose credits in radio would run a gamut from Irna Phillips serials to prestige plays for such as The CBS Radio Workshop. But in Destination Freedom Durham wrote from the heart. Anger simmers at the foundation of these shows, rising occasionally to a wail of agony and torment. On no other show was the term “Jim Crow” used as an adjective, if at all: nowhere else could be heard the actual voices of black actors giving life to a real black environment. There were no buffoons or toadies in Durham’s plays: there were heroes and villains, girlfriends and lovers, mothers, fathers, brutes; there were kids named Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson, who bucked the tide and became kings in places named Madison Square Garden and Ebbets Field. The early historical dramas soon gave way to a more contemporary theme: the black man’s struggle in a modern racist society. Shows on Denmark Vesey, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Carver gave way to Richard Wright’s Black Boy and the lives of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Nat King Cole. The Tiger Hunt was a war story, of a black tank battalion; Last Letter Home told of black pilots in World War II. The stories pulled no punches in their execution of the common theme, making Destination Freedom not only the most powerful but the only show of its kind.

After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication.

Local Teen Adopted Finds Adoptive Family Within 24 Hours of 18th Birthday The final chapter of a family tragedy was written yesterday at the county courthouse when Cynthia and Tom Lemry signed formal adoption papers, gaining custody of Sarah Byrnes less than 24 hours before her 18th birthday. Local readers will remember Ms. Byrnes as the youngster whose face and hands were purposely burned on a hot wood stove by her father 15 years ago. The incident came to light this past February after Virgil Byrnes assaulted another teenager, 18-year-old Eric Calhoune, with a hunting knife. “Better late than never,” said Cynthia Lemry, a local high school teacher and swimming coach, in a statement to the press. “If someone had stepped up for this young lady a long time ago, years of heartache could have been avoided. She’s a remarkable human being, and we’re honored to have her in our family.” “I guess they’re just in the nick of time to pay my college tuition,” the new Sarah Lemry said with a smile. Also attending the ceremony were Eric Calhoune, the victim of Virgil Byrnes’s attack; Sandy Calhoune, the boy’s mother and a frequent columnist for this newspaper; Carver Milddleton, who served time on an assault charge against Virgil Byrnes in a related incident; the Reverend John Ellerby, controversial Episcopalian minister whose support of female clergy and full homosexual rights has frequently focused a spotlight on him in his 15-year stay at St. Mark’s; and his son, Steve Ellerby, who describes himself as “a controversial Episcopalian preacher’s kid.” Sarah Lemry confirmed that following the burning 15 years ago, her father refused her opportunities for reconstructive surgery, saying her condition would teach her to “be tough.” She refused comment on further torturous physical abuse allegations, for which, among other charges, Byrnes has been found guilty in superior court and sentenced to more than 20 years in the state penitentiary at Walla Walla. When asked if she would now seek the reconstructive surgery she was so long denied, Sarah Lemry again smiled and said, “I don’t know. It’d be a shame to change just when I’m getting used to it.

Ah, she’s so loaded she couldn’t tell that she wasn’t smelling her own breath,” Carver said. He was a large man, thick through the chest and hips. A small head, with closely cropped brown hair, made his shoulders look especially wide. He had a 9mm Glock tucked into a belt holster in the small of his back, and, because he was slightly psycho, a little .380 auto in an ankle holster. Dannon was less psycho, and carried only a single gun, a .40-caliber Heckler & Koch, butt-backwards in a cross-draw holster on his left hip. Of course, he also carried a Bratton fighting knife with a seven-inch serrated blade guaranteed to cut through bone, tendon, and ligament, on the theory that you should never bring a fist to a knife fight.

Carver was truculent: “What’s a good part of it?

Carver was truculent: “What’s a good part of it?” “Quarter million, give or take, in cash,” Dannon said. “She’s not sure of the exact amount, but it started at a half million that she stacked up over the last six years, for the campaign. As it turned out, she only needed about half the cash. The good thing is, it’s all cold, in case we had to make some payoffs. Then there are two hundred gold Eagles, no serial numbers or anything else. Right now gold is selling for seventeen hundred an ounce, which is another three hundred and forty grand. That’s close to six hundred thousand that we can get our hands on tonight. The diamonds . . . She won’t give up the diamonds. They’ve all got sentimental value for her. She says that as soon as we get clear of the campaign, she’ll put another four hundred thousand on you, in Panama.

Dannon brought the .22 up and shot him in the temple. Carver’s head bounced off the side window and Dannon shot him again, the .22 shots deafening inside the truck, but hardly audible outside. Carver slumped, his face not even looking surprised.

Since Lucas had been in the same coffee shop that morning, talking to Green, he knew the layout of the place. He told the two women agents, Stack and Bradley, to park as close as they could to the coffee shop’s door, hoping that would push Carver away from a parking place that he could see from the shop, and give the technician a good chance to install the tracking bug.

We’re both going,” Lucas said. “We don’t need to track Green. But if Dannon killed Carver, he’s going to dump him. We need to be there—we need everybody to be there.” “I could drive,” Del said. “They’re too far ahead of us,” Lucas said. “I need to drive.” “Goddamnit. I hate it when you drive,” Del said. “I get so puckered up that I’ve got to pull my asshole back out with a nut pick.” “Thanks for the image,” Lucas said. “Let’s go.

Carver turned away, stepped up to the counter, got a large cup of black coffee, and Lucas thought, Scalding hot coffee. Carver was a big guy, thick through the chest, but moved easily, comfortable with his size. Lucas wondered, if it came to a fistfight, if he could take him; and he decided he could. Lucas watched as Carver got his coffee and crossed to Lucas’s table, put the coffee on the table, and sat down and asked, “What is this bullshit?

WITH THEIR CASUAL ACQUIESCENCE to the DNA tests, Lucas was left stranded. He asked some perfunctory questions—where were you last night at one o’clock? (At our apartments.) Did anyone see you there? (No.) Any proof that you were there? (Made some phone calls, moved some documents on e-mail.) Can we see those? (Of course.) Did you know either Tubbs or Roman? (No.) Lucas walked away and made a call, asking them to wait, got hold of a crime-scene specialist, and made arrangements for Carver and Dannon to be DNA-typed.

From what the army investigators say about what happened in Afghanistan, I don’t suppose the murders of a couple more people would bother you—nothing for me to work with, there,” Lucas said. Carver rolled his eyes up and sideways, as if to say, Please, the way New Yorkers say it. As if to say, Now you’re wasting our time. “That’s like asking me if I feel bad when somebody gets killed in a car accident. I mean, I gotta tell you, if I don’t know them, I don’t feel bad. It’s like that with this Tubbs guy. Don’t know him, never saw him. If I could snap my fingers and he’d come walking through the door, I’d do it. But feel bad, if he’s dead? No. Sorry.

That’s bullshit, man,” Dannon said. “That whole thing is buried so deep, and the guys who buried it all have stars now. They’d never get you.” “That’s what I told him,” Carver said. “I think he’s going to do it anyway. I’m telling you, he’s a crazy mean cocksucker. He’s got nothing unless I talk, except the ’stan, and he’ll use it to bust my balls.

Lucas was forced to admit it: “No. Not absolutely sure. But pretty sure. The other possibility is that the people who paid for the porn to be dumped on Porter Smalls, knowing that doing so involves a number of felonies, are breaking the link between themselves and the pornography. Breaking the link very professionally. I did the obvious: I looked for professional killers. The only ones I could find”—Lucas nodded at Carver and Dannon—“are employed by you.

What!” Schiffer blurted, not a question. Lucas had been watching Carver and Dannon again, and again, their eyes were blank; if they’d been lizards, Lucas thought, a nictitating membrane might have dropped slowly across them.

The next people on the tape were Grant, Lucas, Del, and the others, going down to investigate the bedroom. All of that supported what both Grant and Green had said, except on one point: Grant hadn’t been in the bedroom long enough to get to the bathroom and pee, not unless she’d set the women’s North American land-speed record for micturition. Nor had she reported the cut-out windows, which seemed impossible to miss. The toilet was in a separate booth, and the window was right overhead. But she was sticking to her story, saying that she hadn’t bothered to turn the light on in the bathroom and was in a hurry and simply hadn’t noticed the windows. In reality, Lucas suspected she’d gone back to talk with Dannon, but didn’t want to admit it, because the next thing Dannon did was kill Carver.

The short version of it is, he and a squad of special operations troops flew into a village in southern Afghanistan in two Blackhawks, with a gunship flying support. They were targeting a house where two Taliban leadership guys were hiding out with their bodyguards. They landed, hit the house, there was a short fight there, they killed one man, but they’d caught the Taliban guys while they were sleeping. They controlled and handcuffed the guys they were looking for, and had five of their bodyguards on the floor. Then the village came down on them like a ton of bricks. Instead of just being the two guys with their bodyguards, there were like fifty or sixty Taliban in there. There was no way to haul out the guys they’d arrested—there was nothing they could do but run. They got out by the skin of their teeth.” “What about Carver?” Lucas asked. “Carver was the last guy out of the house. Turns out, the Taliban guys they’d handcuffed were executed. So were the bodyguards, and two of them were kids. Eleven or twelve years old. Armed, you know, but . . . kids.” “Yeah.” “An army investigator recommended that Carver be charged with murder, but it was quashed by the command in Afghanistan—deaths in the course of combat,” Kidd said. “The investigator protested, but he was a career guy, a major, and eventually he shut up.” “Would he talk now? I need something that would open Carver up.” “I don’t think so,” Kidd said. “He’s just made lieutenant colonel. He’s never going to get a star, but if he behaves, he could get his birds before he retires.” “Birds?” “Eagles. He could be promoted to colonel. That’s a nice retirement bump for guys who behave. But, there’s another guy. The second-to-the-last guy out. He’s apparently the one who saw the executions and made the initial report. He’s out of the army now. He lives down in Albuquerque.

That hadn’t occurred to me,” Lucas said. “Because you’re not a natural politician,” the governor said. He laughed again. “This is the kind of thing that makes life interesting.” “Unless you’re Dannon. Or Carver.” “Well, yeah, I suppose,” the governor said. “I’ll assign somebody to say a prayer for them.

The board's position is, therefore, to act as the link between owners and management, directing and controlling the company on the owners' behalf. Put another way, the reason owners grant such authority is to enable the board to act as the ownership in microcosm.

When the bureaucratic details were handled, they broke up. Del, Shrake, and Jenkins followed him back to his office, where they talked some more about the surveillance aspects. A tech would put a tracking bug on Carver’s vehicle, and Del would try to get one on Dannon’s, if he could do it without being seen. “The big question is: Is he gonna talk, or is he gonna stonewall, or is he gonna shoot, or is he gonna run?” Jenkins said. “That’s four questions,” Shrake said. “It irritates me that you can’t count.

DEL, SHRAKE, AND JENKINS watched Lucas make notes, and five minutes later call Carver. Carver came up on the phone almost instantly. He said, “Yeah.” “This is Davenport, the cop that’s been following you around.” “How’d you get this number?” “I’m a cop,” Lucas said. “I need to talk to you. I need to talk to you right away, and somewhere private, where Dannon and Grant aren’t around.” “I don’t think I want to do that,” Carver said, and the line went dead. “Well, shit,” Lucas said. “You’re a smooth talker,” Del said. “I wonder if he’s got a smartphone,” Lucas said. He sent a text: “Six executed in Afghanistan. Want to hear the governor talking about it on TV? Take the call.” He sent it, and got back “delivered” a second later. Ten seconds after that, Carver took the second voice call and said, “What kind of bullshit is this?” “You know what kind of bullshit it is. It’s Leavenworth bullshit,” Lucas said. “Now, you need to take a little time off this afternoon, go out for a cup of coffee. There’s an obscure Caribou Coffee a couple miles from Grant’s house. Give me a time.” After a moment of silence, Carver said, “Three o’clock.

IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Domini; 1620.

Near our old apartment in Auburn, there is a trail of trees called the George Bengtson Historic Tree Trail, named after a white research forester and plant physiologist at the University of Auburn, Alabama. A great man, I’m sure. These trees are grafted from scions of heritage trees. Among the trees planted: Lewis & Clark Osage Orange. Trail of Tears Water Oak. General Jackson Black Walnut. General Robert E. Lee Sweetgum. Southern Baldcypress. Johnny Appleseed Apple Tree. Mark Twain Bur Oak. Lewis & Clark Cottonwood. Helen Keller Southern Magnolia. Amelia Earhart Sugar Maple. Chief Logan American Elm. Lincoln’s Tomb White Oak. John F. Kennedy Crabapple. John James Audubon Japanese Magnolia. No trees are named for Muskogee, the First People who died in the millions during epidemics, displacement, and land raids. Under the buildings and homes and replanted forests are remnants of Muskogee earthwork mounds, temples, and trenches, a complex network of pre-American cities. There is a single scion named for a northern Indian Iroquois, Chief Logan, another for the Trail of Tears, the only nod to the suffering of Indigenous people. There is no mention of Sacajawea, never mind that Lewis and Clark would’ve been lost in the American wilderness without her. George Washington Carver Green Ash is the only scion named after the Black inventor and scientist. No Black or Native women or femmes are named. No mention of a single civil rights leader, which Alabama birthed aplenty: Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Angela Y. Davis. Imagine a Zora Neale Hurston Sweetgum or a Margaret Walker Poplar.

Educator and agricultural chemist George Washington Carver made an incredible observation: “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

NOVELS Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace. Exley, Frederick. A Fan's Notes. Kohler, Sheila. One Girl. Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer. Salter, James. Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime. Stone, Robert. Dog Soldiers. Welch, James. The Death of Jim Loney. Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. White, Edmund. The Beautiful Room Is Empty. SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS Bloom, Amy. Come to Me. Cameron, Peter. The Half You Don't Know. Carver, Raymond. Where I'm Calling From. Cheever, John. The Stories of John Cheever. Gaitskill, Mary. Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To. Houston, Pam. Cowboys Are My Weakness. Johnson, Denis. Jesus' Son. Nugent, Beth. City of Boys. O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. O'Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories. Paley, Grace. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. Perrotta, Tom. Bad Haircut. White, Edmund. Skinned Alive. Yates, Richard. Liars in Love.

Killing too many people made as many problems as killing too few.

these have characterized the work of the best American story writers of the last half-century, from John Cheever to Raymond Carver to Lorrie Moore, and the best Canadians, from Alice Munro to Margaret Atwood to Clark Blaise.

Because owners are the source of a company's authority, it follows that the need for a governing board arises only when the owners are too numerous to direct and control the company themselves. Therefore, the notion of board authority as a distinct kind of authority occurs only when there is a gap between the ownership of assets and the management of those assets.

Underlying this book is the assumption that governing a company and managing it are different activities requiring different job designs. We maintain that governance is best seen as existing outside the phenomenon of management and inside the phenomenon of ownership. Governance operates at a level that transcends current issues and specific company traditions and elevates people to a higher conceptual plane, one from which accountability can be seen more clearly. Governance requires and engenders a passion for leadership, leadership that is not just over others but on others' behalf.

Clearly chairs, or CGOs, have a leading part to play in ensuring that governance boards work in the way the new model outlines. As Carver and Oliver say, "We believe that the chair's role is one of the most important keys to unlocking the potential of boards, and we are therefore going to give it considerable attention." I strongly support the importance that the model gives to the chair's role. This book stresses that the board must speak with one voice and that the CEO takes directions only from the board as a whole. The board will speak with one voice only as a result of directors' commitment to do so and the skill of the chair. I doubt that what is required of a person to serve well on any type of board or committee is a natural form of behavior. The key task of a chair is to enable the members of a board to work together effectively and to get the best out of them. This is what the servant achieved in the story on which Robert Greenleaf's concept of the servant-leader is based. Chairs have a major leadership task. It is they who are responsible for turning a collection of competent individuals into an effective team. The new model is demanding of its chairs, and much will depend on them. Another field in which

A move to the Policy Governance model looks straightforward because the logic behind the model is so clear. Precisely because it is driven by logic, it is uncompromising and cannot be bent to fit personalities in the way we usually treat our organizational structures. It requires a disciplined approach, and discipline is uncomfortable, perhaps especially for those of us used to moderately anarchic board procedures. The board has to discipline itself to deal with every issue through policy. This is considerably more demanding than making or agreeing to decisions as they arise and meddling in management from time to time. Thinking is hard work. Directors working under the Policy Governance model have to construct a framework that both gives the CEO a clear remit over the results to be achieved and sets the limits within which those results are to be achieved. The board has both to prescribe and to proscribe, as the authors point out.