Kidding Aside Quotes

All kidding aside, this is a new beginning for Kate and me. A fresh start. I’ll be a perfect gentleman. Scout’s honor. Then again, I never was a Boy Scout.

Aside from the fact that they say it's unhealthy, my fat ain't never been no trouble. Mens always have loved me. My kids ain't never complained. Plus they's fat.

Is it too soon for me to put aside money for your kid’s college education in order to thank him for helpin’ me drag his mother’s head outta her ass?

Honestly, half the reason I like you is because you’re so...I don’t know. You like life.” He looked away from my eyes, amused as his thoughts spun, considering. “You’re fearless. Bold. Not afraid to enjoy yourself. You just go out there and do what you want. I like the whirlwind you exist in. I envy it. It’s funny, really.” He smiled. “I used to think I wanted someone exactly like me, but now I think I’d be bored to death with another version of myself. I’m surprised I don’t bore you sometimes.” I gaped. “Are you kidding? You’re the most interesting person I know. Aside from Hugh maybe. But then, he installs breast implants and buys souls. That’s a hard combination to beat. But he’s not nearly as cute.

In a spirit of hope and new beginnings, we linked arms like a couple of kids. Pushing aside sad thoughts, we strode off into our future.

He grabbed the nearest lizard, twisted it with a loud snap, and tossed it aside. “Hey, baby.” “Hi.” I beheaded a lizard. “Where are the kids?” “With the MSDU.” He disemboweled a beast with a quick swipe of his claws. “You’re having all this fun without me.” “I’m not doing much. Just having tea and cookies.” I cut at another lizard. “Thinking deep thoughts.” I love you. “Then I’ll join you.” He loved me, too.

All kidding aside, if everyone did yoga, we would have world peace.

All kidding aside, just be careful around this guy, okay, Gin? A slick smile can hide a lot of sins.” He paused. “Trust me. I know all about that.” “Of course you do. You’ve broken far more hearts than I’ve ever cut into.

I don’t plan. Anyone in my way can either step aside or I will step over them.

I think the best life would be one that's lived off the grid. No bills, your name in no government databases. No real proof you're even who you say you are, aside from, you know, being who you say you are. I don't mean living in a mountain hut with solar power and drinking well water. I think nature's beautiful and all, but I don't have any desire to live in it. I need to live in a city. I need pay as you go cell phones in fake names, wireless access stolen or borrowed from coffee shops and people using old or no encryption on their home networks. Taking knife fighting classes on the weekend! Learning Cantonese and Hindi and how to pick locks. Getting all sorts of skills so that when your mind starts going, and you're a crazy raving bum, at least you're picking their pockets while raving in a foreign language at smug college kids on the street. At least you're always gonna be able to eat.

Just shut up.” But he doesn’t. “I’m not saying you should do anything. And that’s why I stepped in and didn’t let you bring her home.” His tone turns serious. “All kidding aside, Pike,” he goes on, “she is exactly your type. You shouldn’t be alone with her.” Yeah. I know. I just hope he’s the only person who’s noticed. “Thanks for the intervention,” I tell him, “but even if I were attracted to her, I’m capable of controlling myself.” “You’re not seeing yourself from my perspective.” He looks out the front windshield, solemn. “You look at each other like…” “Like?” He swallows, an unusually troubled pinch to his brow. “Like the two of you have your own language.

How many graves has the government of Michigan set aside for the casualties of the water crisis that will end with a gunshot in fifteen years’ time? We all know how cops respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.

Stupid son of a bitch" His droopy eyes went huge. "What did you say to me?" "You heard me. You're too tight-assed. To stubborn, too stupid to put your feelings aside. I can't afford to lose a key member at this stage of the investigation. You know that, so don't come in here and tell me I've got cause to boot you." "You're the one who's going to get a boot, right straight up your ass." "You couldn't take me ten years ago," she shot back, "you sure as hell can't take me now." "Want to test that out, kid?

The hardest thing about being a parent is watching your kids make mistakes. Our instinct is to protect you. But you're right, Deenie. Sometimes we have to step aside and let you make them anyway. The best we can do is be there when you mess up.

My friends never seem to yell at their kids. Even when their kids are behaving hideously, they pull them aside and say, now sweetie, you know you shouldn't, blah, blah, blah. Please don't yadda, yadda, okay sweetie? Maybe it's some bullshit show they put on for non-family members, but I'd have to be on happy pills to act like that

Zack?” Anthony’s voice was suddenly serious. “You know, it’s not a great idea to seduce a woman you’re protecting. All kidding aside, do you want me to send Matthews over?” “Who?” “Junior.” “I will shoot him on sight,” Zack said and hung up so he could follow Lucy into the kitchen.

Everything suddenly felt perfect: an hour set aside, stretching ahead of us, and there wasn't a better way to spend it. I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on the pavement like a little kid.

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent.

Ill tell you the one that I think will: when a mans in love he wants to keep the one he loves- and cherish her. He wants to build a picket fence twixt them and the world. He doesn't want it temporary, a secret, hidden. He wants the world to know. The one he loves is somebody to him, not a thing to be taken, used and tossed aside. Hell, I'm not saying he shouldn't be interested in your pretty ankles and what a nice sway your bustles got. That's part of it too; but only a part. The rest of it is the long years ahead, the laughing together, and the crying, bringing up your kids, nodding together under the lamplight when your heads have turned white, and finally lying together forever in the long dark...

Genetics aside, I don't see myself having kids. Not one? Eric asks. If I had one, I would want to have two, and if I had two, I'd would want to have zero.

Well, you were sad about the kids for a while, for a month, two months, three months. You’re sad about the kids, sad about the animals, you don’t do the women, you don’t kill the animals, but after that you realize this is a war zone and everybody here lives in it. You don’t care whether these people live or die tomorrow, you don’t care whether you yourself live or die tomorrow, you kick the children aside, you do the women, you shoot the animals.

By the time we reached the front door of the party house—a total mansion, like Harrison had said—Nathan was far behind us. Well, he’d promised to stay out of our hair. “Wow,” I heard Bailey gasp as the front door swung open for us, though I wasn’t sure if that was her reaction to the freakishly large house or to the drop-dead-gorgeous guy standing in front of us. “Good evening, ladies,” he said, stepping aside to let us enter. Automatically, I found myself standing up taller and sliding my shoulder blades back for optimum cleavage exposure. It was like a flirting reflex. I just wished I wasn’t all sunburned. “Hello to you.” He grinned at me. A cocky, sexy grin. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. He glanced at Bailey then. “Any of us. I’m sure I’d remember those pretty faces.” I swear, Bailey was blushing so hard I could feel the heat radiating from her body. “Oh, you’d remember,” I agreed, tossing back my hair and putting a hand on my hip. “I’m Whi—” “Whitley!” I jumped and spun around involuntarily. Harrison was standing beside me, looking thoroughly delighted. “Hello again, darling. You look gorgeous—and the lack of flip-flops is making my day. Those slingbacks are perfect!” I nodded, glancing over my shoulder at the hot guy, but he’d already moved on and was chatting with a group of kids a few feet away. Goddamn it. “Wesley is just so busy,” Harrison said, following my gaze. “You have to give him credit for being a great host. He talks to everyone. Seems like way too much work to me.

He grabbed the nearest lizard, twisted it with a loud snap, and tossed it aside. “Hey, baby.” “Hi.” I beheaded a lizard. “Where are the kids?” “With the MSDU.” He disemboweled a beast with a quick swipe of his claws. “You’re having all this fun without me.” “I’m not doing much. Just having tea and cookies.” I cut at another lizard. “Thinking deep thoughts.” I love you. “Then I’ll join you.” He loved me, too.

6/17/10 My dearest Ruth—You are the only person I have loved in my life, setting aside, a bit, parents and kids and their kids, and I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago. What a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world!! I will be in JH Medical Center until Friday, June 25, I believe, and between then and now I shall think hard on my remaining health and life, and whether on balance the time has come for me to tough it out or to take leave of life because the loss of quality now simply overwhelms. I hope you will support where I come out, but I understand you may not. I will not love you a jot less. Marty -- Handwritten letter from Marty to Ruth

.... she was like a flower. And suddenly, for a vivid minute, Hercule Poirot had a new conception of the dead girl. In that halting rustic voice the girl Mary lived and bloomed again. "She was like a flower." There was suddenly a poignant sense of loss, of something exquisite destroyed. In his mind phrase after phrase succeeded each other. Peter Lord's "She was a nice kid." Nurse Hopkins's "She could have gone on the films any time." Mrs. Bishop's venomous "No patience with her airs and graces." And now last, putting to shame, laying aside those other views, the quiet, wondering, "She was like a flower.

Aside from wanting to write cracking good books that turn children into lifelong readers, I really want to create stories that enable kids to LOOK at the world around them. To see it for what it is, with wide open, wondering eyes. Our mass media is so horribly skewed. It presents this idea of 'normalcy' which excludes and marginalises so many for an idea of commercial viability which is really nothing but blinkered prejudice. People who are black and Asian and Middle Eastern and Hispanic, people who are gay or transgendered or genderqueer, people who have disabilities, disfigurements or illnesses - all have this vision of a world which does not include them shoved down their throats almost 24-7, and they're told 'No one wants to see stories about people like you. Films and TV shows about people like you won't make money. Stories about straight, white, cisgendered, able-bodied people are universal and everyone likes them. You are small and useless and unattractive and you don't matter.' My worry is that this warped version of 'normal' eventually forms those very same blinkers on children's eyes, depriving them of their ability to see anyone who isn't the same as them, preventing them from developing the ability to empathise with and appreciate and take joy in the lives and experiences of people who are different from them. If Shadows on the Moon - or anything I write - causes a young person to look at their own life, or the life of another, and think, 'Maybe being different is cool' I will die a happy writer. -Guest blog - what diversity means to me

The FBI and the Secret Service each published reports in the first three years, guiding faculty to identify serious threats. The central recommendations contradicted prevailing post-Columbine behavior. They said identifying outcasts as threats is not healthy. It demonizes innocent kids who are already struggling. It is also unproductive. Oddballs are not the problem. They do not fit the profile. There is no profile. All the recent school shooters shared exactly one trait: 100 percent male. (Since the study a few have been female.) Aside from personal experience, no other characteristic hit 50 percent, not even close. “There is no accurate or useful ‘profile’ of attackers,” the Secret Service said. Attackers came from all ethnic, economic, and social classes. The bulk came from solid two-parent homes. Most had no criminal record or history of violence. The two biggest myths were that shooters were loners and that they “snapped.” A staggering 93 percent planned their attack in advance. “The path toward violence is an evolutionary one, with signposts along the way,” the FBI report said.

A DOZEN PHALLACIES WOMEN BUY Phallacy 3. If you use your power to support a man, he'll always support you. Truth Alas, not true. It's wonderful to stand by your man, to give to the one you love, but you must never forget yourself, and your children, since he may. Being a man, he takes for granted that his needs come first. Being a woman, you take that for granted too. Don't. Protect yourself -- not with feminist rhetoric or argument, but with actions. A bank account and real estate in your own name, money put aside for your kids' education that he can't touch (or give to the next -- younger -- wife and her spawn), a profession of your own to rely on. Above all, empower yourself, and then help empower him if it pleases you to do so.

My role is insignificant. Sure, there’s diaper detail and fire watch and general fawning, but aside from keeping our noses above the poverty line, I’m as useful to the kid as a philosophy degree.

Drat.” She dropped the crowbar to the floor and marched over to the box of face masks. Ripping it open, she tugged a white mask from inside. It tore from the force of her pull. “Drat!” Kaine threw it aside and yanked on another one. This time the rubber band for securing it around the wearer’s head snapped from the side of the mask. “Are you kidding me?” she growled at the empty room. Kaine sent the second

When I was a kid,” he said, “my mother had lovebirds. She used to clip their wings so when she let them out of their cage, they wouldn’t fly away. The lovebirds always tried, but they never got far with their short, fucked-up wings.” I inched the bedroom door open and stepped into the pool of warm light spilling from the street outside. He moved behind me, tucking my hair behind my right ear aside, pressing his face to it. “Until one day, one managed to escape. My mother forgot to clip her wings. A moment of distraction cost her her favorite lovebird.” I knew why he was telling me this, and the happiness in my gut swirled with a shot of sudden pain. “Failure is inevitable,” he continued in a flat tone that didn’t hold much emotion or hope, “and heartache is unstoppable. One day, I’ll forget to clip your wings. When that day arrives, when you run away, I guess I’d be happy to know you’ll still have some money and the means to make it in this wild, tough world.

But that's just it. I ... I don't want to go. I don't want to see that..." She glanced aside at Mouse and shuddered. "Blood, like that. I don't remember what happened when you and Mother saved me from Arctis Tor. But I don't want to see more of that. I don't want it to happen to me. I don't want to hurt anyone." I let out a low, non-committal sound. "Then why are you here?" "B-because," she said, searching for words. "Because I need to do it. I know that what you're doing is necessary. And it's right. And I know that you're doing it because you're the only one who can. And I want to help." "You think you're strong enough to help?" I asked her. She bit her lip again and met my eyes for just a second. "I think ... I think it doesn't matter how strong my magic is. I know I don't ... I don't know how to do these things like you do. The guns and the battles and ..." She lifted her chin and seemed to gather herself a little. "But I know more than most." "You know some," I admitted. "But you got to understand, kid. That won't mean much once things get nasty. There's no time for thinking or second chances." She nodded. "All I can promise you is that I won't leave you when you need me. I'll do whatever you think I can. I'll stay here and man the phone. I'll drive the car. I'll walk at the back and hold the flashlight. Whatever you want." She met my eyes and her own hardened. "But I can't sit at home being safe. I need to be a part of this. I need to help.

The word is dissociate. There is no 'a' before the 'ss'. People invariably say dis-a-ssociate, which, if you're suffering Disso-ciative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder, can be irritating. People then want to know how many personalities I have and the answer is: I don't know. The first book about Multiple Personality Disorder to make an impact was Flora Rheta Schreiber's Sybil, published in 1973, which carries the subtitle: The True and Extraordinary Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Separate Personalities. Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley published the controversial The Three Faces of Eve much earlier in 1957, and Pete Townshend from The Who wrote the song 'Four Faces'. People seem to feel safe with numbers. The truth is more complicated. The kids emerged over time. Billy, the boisterous five-year-old, was at first the most dominant. But he slowly stood aside for JJ, the self-confident ten-year-old who appears when Alice is under stress and handles complicated situations like travelling on the Underground and meeting new people. The first entity to visit was the external voice of the Professor. But he had a choir of accomplices without names. So, how many actual alter personalities are there? I would say more than fifteen and less than thirty, a combination of protectors, persecutors and friends - my own family tree.

The dark girl's gaze lights on me again, and something passes over her face, something I've seen before. Her face is speaking: you can't kid me. I know what you're like, I know who you are. I know her too. She and the blonde are the same kind. They belong to the same tribe. The better and smarter tribe. They're the ones who push aside the duds, the dupes, the dopes like me. They're the ones who know what to do, how to do it. They know what they want. How do they get that way? Are they born with that knowledge? Do they learn it somewhere? I've always felt like a stranger everywhere, unsure what to do, how to act, waiting for someone to tell me the rules. What are they? Would somebody please tell me? The dark girl knows. The blonde knows. What are they, six, maybe seven years old? -- and already they know things I don't know. And they hate me and scorn me for it.

Then what’s wrong?” He couldn’t be that obtuse. “You’re kidding, right?” “Ah, yeah, gotcha. Modesty issue, huh?” He drove in a deceptively relaxed way. “Look, yours isn’t the first tail I’ve ever seen, okay?” Fury stole Priss’s breath. She reacted without thinking, slugging his hard in the shoulder. “Ow!” He grabbed her wrist and tossed her hand back at her. “I was trying to comfort you, woman.” “Comfort!” He couldn’t be serious. No man could be that dense. “You’re a . . . a Neanderthal!” “Am not.” Flattened by his careless attitude, Priss stared at him in disbelief. He was a gorgeous guy, but still a jerk. Shaggy blond hair, darker and more unkempt than Trace’s, piercing green eyes, a strong jaw and . . . she peeked at his naked chest . . . Built. Her chin lifted. “Where in the world did they even find you?” It had to be under a rock. Or deep in a cave. He glared at her. “They who?” “Trace and Dare.” Giving her a cautious frown, Jackson rubbed at one bloodshot, swollen eye. “That’s top secret.” That’s top secret, she mouthed, making fun of him, lashing out in her embarrassment. He went rigid with affront. “Goddamn it, woman, you blinded me, nutted me, and damn near clubbed me to death. Now you have to ridicule me, too?” He dared to complain to her? “You snuck into my bathroom. You saw me naked!” “Yeah.” His mouth twitched. He nodded just a little. “Yeah, I did.” As he turned on his headlights and pulled onto the street, he said in an aside, “Sorry ’bout that.” He did not sound sorry, not in the least. “Didn’t mean to stare.” He’d been staring? She should kill him. She really shoulder. But . . . she might need him for protection. And Trace probably wouldn’t like it if she offed one of his operatives. “Naked woman and all.” Jackson gestured lamely. “It’s instinct, ya know? Guy’s gotta look.

DEAR MAMA, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. Every time I try to write to you and Papa I realize I’m not saying the things that are in my heart. That would be O.K., if I loved you any less than I do, but you are still my parents and I am still your child. I have friends who think I’m foolish to write this letter. I hope they’re wrong. I hope their doubts are based on parents who loved and trusted them less than mine do. I hope especially that you’ll see this as an act of love on my part, a sign of my continuing need to share my life with you. I wouldn’t have written, I guess, if you hadn’t told me about your involvement in the Save Our Children campaign. That, more than anything, made it clear that my responsibility was to tell you the truth, that your own child is homosexual, and that I never needed saving from anything except the cruel and ignorant piety of people like Anita Bryant. I’m sorry, Mama. Not for what I am, but for how you must feel at this moment. I know what that feeling is, for I felt it for most of my life. Revulsion, shame, disbelief—rejection through fear of something I knew, even as a child, was as basic to my nature as the color of my eyes. No, Mama, I wasn’t “recruited.” No seasoned homosexual ever served as my mentor. But you know what? I wish someone had. I wish someone older than me and wiser than the people in Orlando had taken me aside and said, “You’re all right, kid. You can grow up to be a doctor or a teacher just like anyone else. You’re not crazy or sick or evil. You can succeed and be happy and find peace with friends—all kinds of friends—who don’t give a damn who you go to bed with. Most of all, though, you can love and be loved, without hating yourself for it.” But no one ever said that to me, Mama. I had to find it out on my own, with the help of the city that has become my home. I know this may be hard for you to believe, but San Francisco is full of men and women, both straight and gay, who don’t consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being. These aren’t radicals or weirdos, Mama. They are shop clerks and bankers and little old ladies and people who nod and smile to you when you meet them on the bus. Their attitude is neither patronizing nor pitying. And their message is so simple: Yes, you are a person. Yes, I like you. Yes, it’s all right for you to like me too. I know what you must be thinking now. You’re asking yourself: What did we do wrong? How did we let this happen? Which one of us made him that way? I can’t answer that, Mama. In the long run, I guess I really don’t care. All I know is this: If you and Papa are responsible for the way I am, then I thank you with all my heart, for it’s the light and the joy of my life. I know I can’t tell you what it is to be gay. But I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity. It’s not fearing your body, or the pleasures that God made for it. It’s not judging your neighbor, except when he’s crass or unkind. Being gay has taught me tolerance, compassion and humility. It has shown me the limitless possibilities of living. It has given me people whose passion and kindness and sensitivity have provided a constant source of strength. It has brought me into the family of man, Mama, and I like it here. I like it. There’s not much else I can say, except that I’m the same Michael you’ve always known. You just know me better now. I have never consciously done anything to hurt you. I never will. Please don’t feel you have to answer this right away. It’s enough for me to know that I no longer have to lie to the people who taught me to value the truth. Mary Ann sends her love. Everything is fine at 28 Barbary Lane. Your loving son, MICHAEL

Every kid had to do a different project for that class. Tana had made a diorama, with a shoe box and a lot of red poster paint, to represent a news article that she'd cut out of the paper - one about three vampires on the run from Corpus Christi who'd break into a house, kill everyone, and then rest among the corpses until night fell again. Which made her wonder if there could still be a vampire in this house, the vampire who had slaughtered all these people. Who'd somehow overlooked her, who'd been too intent on blood and butchery to open every door to every hall closet or bathroom, who hadn't swept aside a shower curtain. It would murder her now, though, if it heard her moving.

Is there anything better than iced coffee and a bookstore on a sunny day? I mean, aside from hot coffee and a bookstore on a rainy day. The shelves are built at wild angles that make me feel like I’m sliding off the edge of the planet. As a kid, I would’ve loved the whimsy of it—a fun house made of books. As an adult, I’m mostly concerned with staying upright.

Girls aside, the other thing I found in the last few years of being at school, was a quiet, but strong Christian faith – and this touched me profoundly, setting up a relationship or faith that has followed me ever since. I am so grateful for this. It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since. But it came to me very simply one day at school, aged only sixteen. As a young kid, I had always found that a faith in God was so natural. It was a simple comfort to me: unquestioning and personal. But once I went to school and was forced to sit through somewhere in the region of nine hundred dry, Latin-liturgical, chapel services, listening to stereotypical churchy people droning on, I just thought that I had got the whole faith deal wrong. Maybe God wasn’t intimate and personal but was much more like chapel was … tedious, judgemental, boring and irrelevant. The irony was that if chapel was all of those things, a real faith is the opposite. But somehow, and without much thought, I had thrown the beautiful out with the boring. If church stinks, then faith must do, too. The precious, natural, instinctive faith I had known when I was younger was tossed out with this newly found delusion that because I was growing up, it was time to ‘believe’ like a grown-up. I mean, what does a child know about faith? It took a low point at school, when my godfather, Stephen, died, to shake me into searching a bit harder to re-find this faith I had once known. Life is like that. Sometimes it takes a jolt to make us sit and remember who and what we are really about. Stephen had been my father’s best friend in the world. And he was like a second father to me. He came on all our family holidays, and spent almost every weekend down with us in the Isle of Wight in the summer, sailing with Dad and me. He died very suddenly and without warning, of a heart attack in Johannesburg. I was devastated. I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life. ‘Please, God, comfort me.’ Blow me down … He did. My journey ever since has been trying to make sure I don’t let life or vicars or church over-complicate that simple faith I had found. And the more of the Christian faith I discover, the more I realize that, at heart, it is simple. (What a relief it has been in later life to find that there are some great church communities out there, with honest, loving friendships that help me with all of this stuff.) To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened and loved – yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies. This is no one’s fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes. The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn’t want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn’t just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life. This really is the heart of what I found as a young teenager: Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fullness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being. Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak. It is no wonder I felt I had stumbled on something remarkable that night up that tree. I had found a calling for my life.

My roommate Allie also knows, but my other friends? Hell no. Most of them are music or drama majors, so I guess that makes us the artsy crowd. Or maybe emo. Aside from Allie, who’s had an on-again/off-again relationship with a frat boy since freshman year, my friends get a kick out of trashing Briar’s elite. I don’t usually join in (I like to think gossiping is beneath me) but…let’s face it. Most of the popular kids are total douchebags.

Are those chocolate chip?'' Cole reaches her first and claims one. ''Oh, my godness.'' Nana sets the tray aside and coos the guy. ''Cole, dear, you have a boulder-size knot on your jaw.'' ''River did it.'' Cole smirks at the guy. ''And he insulted my mom. And my dad.'' ''River Marks.'' Nana shakes her head, as if her heart is acually breaking. ''How could you be so rough? And so insensitive!'' River glares at Cole before bowing his head. ''I'm sorry, Nana.'' ''The human body is like a flower. Treat it well, and it will bloom.'' She approaches the ring and extends two cookies. River and I accept with eager thanks. ''Let's be kind to each other and keep our punches away from the face and groin.'' ''Yes, ma'am,'' we say in unison. Then of course, we devour the offering as if we've never tasted sugar. ''Good, good.'' She brushes the crumbs from her fingers. ''I'll leave you kids to your practice.'' She kisses Ali, then Cole, and leaves. ''Are you a rose?'' River sneers at Cole. ''Or a lilly?'' ''Orchid. And your jealousy is showing.'' Cole responds.

Jared stared at him. “Don’t do this to yourself.” “Why? Why do you care?” Jared stepped closer and hauled him to his feet. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty? Is that it?” Gabriel shrugged, looking aside, his jaw clenched. Jared chuckled, shaking his head. “Are you kidding me? So what am I supposed to do? What? Stay by your side, watch you build a family, and be alone for the rest of my life?” “You said you love me,” Gabriel said, still looking aside, his voice tight. “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t leave me.” Jared inhaled sharply. “You can’t use this against me. Not this. Do you have any idea how much this sucks? Unrequited love isn’t fun.

It didn't matter whether your farm was large or small. It didn't matter if you had a farm at all. Cause everyone was affected when water didn't run. The snow and frost continued without the warming sun. One day in June it got real hot and leaves began to show. But after that it snowed again and wind and cold did blow. The cows and horses had no grass, no grain to feed the chicks. No hay to put aside that time, just dry and shriveled sticks. The sheep were cold and hungry and many starved to death, Still waiting for the warming sun to save their labored breath. The kids were disappointed, no swimming, such a shame. It was in 1816 that summer never came.

A dachshund came out of the bushes. Ruzena's father extended his pole toward him, but the dog alertly evaded it and ran over to the boy, who lifted him up and hugged him. Other old men rushed over to help Ruzena's father and tear the dachshund out of the boy's arms. The boy was crying, shouting, and grappling with them so that the old men had to twist his arms and put a hand over his mouth because his cries were attracting too much attention from the passersby, who were turning to look but not daring to intervene. [...] Jakub was leading the dog by the collar toward the hotel steps when one of the old men shouted: "Release that dog at once!" And the other old man: "In the name of the law!" Jakub pretended not to notice the old men and kept going, but behind him a pole slowly descended alongside his body and the wire loop wavered clumsily over the boxer's head. Jakub grabbed the end of the pole and brusquely pushed it aside. A third old man ran up and shouted: "Its an attack on law and order! I'm going to call the police!" And the high-pitched voice of another old man complained: "He ran on the grass! He ran in the playground, where it's prohibited! He pissed in the kids' sandbox! Do you like dogs more than children?" The boxer scampered around the room curiously, unaware that he had just escaped danger. Jakub stretched out on the daybed, wondering what to do with him. He liked the lively, good-natured dog. The insouciance with which, in a few minutes, he had made himself at home in a strange room and struck up a friendship with a strange man was nearly suspicious and seemed to verge on stupidity. After sniffing all corners of the room, he leaped up on the daybed and lay down beside Jakub. Jakub was startled, but he welcomed without reservation this sign of camaraderie. He put his hand on the dog's back and felt with delight the warmth of the animal's body. He had always liked dogs. They were familiar, affectionate, devoted, and at the same time entirely incomprehensible. We will never know what actually goes on in the heads and hearts of these confident, merry emissaries from incomprehensible nature.

Remus,” said Hermione tentatively, “is everything all right . . . you know . . . between you and—” “Everything is fine, thank you,” said Lupin pointedly. Hermione turned pink. There was another pause, an awkward and embarrassed one, and then Lupin said, with an air of forcing himself to admit something unpleasant, “Tonks is going to have a baby.” “Oh, how wonderful!” squealed Hermione. “Excellent!” said Ron enthusiastically. “Congratulations,” said Harry. Lupin gave an artificial smile that was more like a grimace, then said, “So . . . do you accept my offer? Will three become four? I cannot believe that Dumbledore would have disapproved, he appointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all. And I must tell you that I believe that we are facing magic many of us have never encountered or imagined.” Ron and Hermione both looked at Harry. “Just—just to be clear,” he said. “You want to leave Tonks at her parents’ house and come away with us?” “She’ll be perfectly safe there, they’ll look after her,” said Lupin. He spoke with a finality bordering on indifference. “Harry, I’m sure James would have wanted me to stick with you.” “Well,” said Harry slowly, “I’m not. I’m pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren’t sticking with your own kid, actually.” Lupin’s face drained of color. The temperature in the kitchen might have dropped ten degrees. Ron stared around the room as though he had been bidden to memorize it, while Hermione’s eyes swiveled backward and forward from Harry to Lupin. “You don’t understand,” said Lupin at last. “Explain, then,” said Harry. Lupin swallowed. “I—I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and I have regretted it very much ever since.” “I see,” said Harry, “so you’re just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?” Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, the shadow of the wolf upon his human face. “Don’t you understand what I’ve done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I’ve made her an outcast!” Lupin kicked aside the chair he had overturned. “You have only ever seen me amongst the Order, or under Dumbledore’s protection at Hogwarts! You don’t know how most of the Wizarding world sees creatures like me! When they know of my affliction, they can barely talk to me! Don’t you see what I’ve done? Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, what parents want their only daughter to marry a werewolf? And the child—the child—” Lupin actually seized handfuls of his own hair; he looked quite deranged. “My kind don’t usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced of it—how can I forgive myself, when I knowingly risked passing on my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!

Adolescents need to cocoon. Cocooning is a term coined in the early 1980s by Faith Popcorn, a social trend analyst with a bizarre and compelling name. (That’s neither here nor there, but it can’t go unsaid.) Popcorn describes cocooning as “the impulse to stay inside when the outside gets too tough and scary.” Since its introduction to our lexicon, it has come to be used regularly to describe adolescents and their relationship to their rooms. Tweens and teens cocoon because at a time when most things in their lives are changing—their bodies, brains, emotions, friends, and even their self-concepts—bedrooms are safe havens. There, they can think about any and all things ad nauseam, or push them aside and take a break from the mental turmoil of their busy minds.

When it passes us, the driver tips his cap our way, eying us as if he thinks we're up to no good-the kind of no good he might call the cops on. I wave to him and smile, wondering if I look as guilty as I feel. Better make this the quickest lesson in driving history. It's not like she needs to pass the state exam. If she can keep the car straight for ten seconds in a row, I've upheld my end of the deal. I turn off the ignition and look at her. "So, how are you and Toraf doing?" She cocks her head at me. "What does that have to do with driving?" Aside from delaying it? "Nothing," I say, shrugging. "Just wondering." She pulls down the visor and flips open the mirror. Using her index finger, she unsmudges the mascara Rachel put on her. "Not that it's your business, but we're fine. We were always fine." "He didn't seem to think so." She shoots me a look. "He can be oversensitive sometimes. I explained that to him." Oversensitive? No way. She's not getting off that easy. "He's a good kisser," I tell her, bracing myself. She turns in her seat, eyes narrowed to slits. "You might as well forget about that kiss, Emma. He's mine, and if you put your nasty Half-Breed lips on him again-" "Now who's being oversensitive?" I say, grinning. She does love him. "Switch places with me," she snarls. But I'm too happy for Toraf to return the animosity. Once she's in the driver's seat, her attitude changes. She bounces up and down like she's mattress shopping, getting so much air that she'd puncture the top if I hadn't put it down already. She reaches for the keys in the ignition. I grab her hand. "Nope. Buckle up first." It's almost cliché for her to roll her eyes now, but she does. When she's finished dramatizing the act of buckling her seat belt-complete with tugging on it to make sure it won't unclick-she turns to me in pouty expectation. I nod. She wrenches the key and the engine fires up. The distant look in her eyes makes me nervous. Or maybe it's the guilt swirling around in my stomach. Galen might not like this car, but it still feels like sacrilege to put the fate of a BMW in Rayna's novice hands. As she grips the gear stick so hard her knuckles turn white, I thank God this is an automatic. "D is for drive, right?" she says. "Yes. The right pedal is to go. The left pedal is to stop. You have to step on the left one to change into drive." "I know. I saw you do it." She mashes down on the brake, then throws us into drive. But we don't move. "Okay, now you'll want to step on the right pedal, which is the gas-" The tires start spinning-and so do we. Rayna stares at me wide-eyed and mouth ajar, which isn't a good thing since her hands are on the wheel. It occurs to me that she's screaming, but I can't hear her over my own screeching. The dust wall we've created whirls around us, blocking our view of the trees and the road and life as we knew it. "Take your foot off the right one!" I yell. We stop so hard my teeth feel rattled. "Are you trying to get us killed?" she howls, holding her hand to her cheek as if I've slapped her. Her eyes are wild and glassy; she just might cry. "Are you freaking kidding me? You're the one driving!

He had a fresh change of clothes in a battered TWA flightbag; he had planned to change after making love tot he fancy cunt. No he hurled the bag across the shop. It bounced off the far wall and landed on top of a dresser. He walked across to it and batted it aside. He drop-kicked as it came down, and it hit the ceiling before falling on its side like a dead woodchuck. Then he simply stood, breathing hard, inhaling the heavy smells, staring vacantly at three chairs he had promised to cane by the end of the week. His thumbs were jammed into his belt. His fingers were curled into fists. His lower lip was pooched out. He looked like a kid sulking after a bawling-out. "CHEAP-SHIT!" he breathed, and went after the flightbag. He made as if to kick it again, then changed his mind and picked it up.

Here’s the thing, people: We have some serious problems. The lights are off. And it seems like that’s affecting the water flow in part of town. So, no baths or showers, okay? But the situation is that we think Caine is short of food, which means he’s not going to be able to hold out very long at the power plant.” “How long?” someone yelled. Sam shook his head. “I don’t know.” “Why can’t you get him to leave?” “Because I can’t, that’s why,” Sam snapped, letting some of his anger show. “Because I’m not Superman, all right? Look, he’s inside the plant. The walls are thick. He has guns, he has Jack, he has Drake, and he has his own powers. I can’t get him out of there without getting some of our people killed. Anybody want to volunteer for that?" Silence. “Yeah, I thought so. I can’t get you people to show up and pick melons, let alone throw down with Drake.” “That’s your job,” Zil said. “Oh, I see,” Sam said. The resentment he’d held in now came boiling to the surface. “It’s my job to pick the fruit, and collect the trash, and ration the food, and catch Hunter, and stop Caine, and settle every stupid little fight, and make sure kids get a visit from the Tooth Fairy. What’s your job, Zil? Oh, right: you spray hateful graffiti. Thanks for taking care of that, I don’t know how we’d ever manage without you.” “Sam…,” Astrid said, just loud enough for him to hear. A warning. Too late. He was going to say what needed saying. “And the rest of you. How many of you have done a single, lousy thing in the last two weeks aside from sitting around playing Xbox or watching movies? “Let me explain something to you people. I’m not your parents. I’m a fifteen-year-old kid. I’m a kid, just like all of you. I don’t happen to have any magic ability to make food suddenly appear. I can’t just snap my fingers and make all your problems go away. I’m just a kid.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam knew he had crossed the line. He had said the fateful words so many had used as an excuse before him. How many hundreds of times had he heard, “I’m just a kid.” But now he seemed unable to stop the words from tumbling out. “Look, I have an eighth-grade education. Just because I have powers doesn’t mean I’m Dumbledore or George Washington or Martin Luther King. Until all this happened I was just a B student. All I wanted to do was surf. I wanted to grow up to be Dru Adler or Kelly Slater, just, you know, a really good surfer.” The crowd was dead quiet now. Of course they were quiet, some still-functioning part of his mind thought bitterly, it’s entertaining watching someone melt down in public. “I’m doing the best I can,” Sam said. “I lost people today…I…I screwed up. I should have figured out Caine might go after the power plant.” Silence. “I’m doing the best I can.” No one said a word. Sam refused to meet Astrid’s eyes. If he saw pity there, he would fall apart completely. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.

Cade stood midfield, waiting for Zach to take his place at the line of scrimmage. “When’s the last time you threw a football?” Zach asked worriedly. Aside from the few times Cade had tossed one around casually with friends, a long time. “About twelve years.” Zach threw him a panicked look. “I won’t push it,” Cade said. It wasn’t as if his shoulder was entirely unusable; in fact, on a daily basis it didn’t bother him at all. His rotator cuff simply couldn’t withstand the repetitive stress of competitive football. “I just want to see what I can do.” He pointed emphatically. “And if the answer is ‘not much,’ you better not tell a soul. I’ve got a reputation to uphold here.” Zach smiled, loosening up. “All right. I don’t want to stand in the way of you reliving your glory days or whatever.” “Good. But in case this all goes south, my car keys are in the outside pocket of my duffle bag. When you drive me to the emergency room, if I’m too busy mumbling incoherently from the pain, just tell them I’ve got Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance.” Zach’s eyes went wide. “I’m kidding, Zach. Now get moving.

My radio show’s producer, Sherri, is African American. She just got back from a trip where she was a guest speaker at a youth event in a church that was primarily white. Just before the Sunday morning service, she was called into the minister’s study for prayer, and she met a man who was overtly hostile to her. The way he looked at her, dismissively and contemptuously, made her feel hated. She felt utterly unwelcome, lonely, and out of place. After she spoke, the same man approached her, took off his glasses, and started crying. He told her that hers was the most influential talk he’d ever heard, and it had affected him particularly because he is very racist against blacks. She was stunned by his honesty. “We’ve always been this way. My family has always been racist. I’ve learned this from my dad. I’m so sorry. I’ve got to change,” he told her. “I can see Jesus is using you. And he’s using you to change me.” Sherri then asked to meet his dad. She did. And she hugged him. I know Sherri takes racism very, very seriously. But, she says, she also has to forgive racists, because she has to love people in her family. And they are part of her family. She has to love them as Jesus loves her. Sherri’s love is not naive. But that’s exactly why it’s so profound. She’s setting her offense aside, not because it doesn’t matter, not because it isn’t completely understandable, but because of what Jesus has done for her. She’s choosing against offense, not just because God loves these men but also because God loves her and has set aside her very real offenses in order to be with her. There are those of us who pat ourselves on the back for loving our families and friends. “I’m loyal to the end; I’d die for my kids,” we’ll say. Truth is, that’s not really terribly remarkable. Everyone, or practically everyone, feels this way. What is terribly remarkable is when someone is willing to love a person, in the name of Jesus, whom he or she would otherwise despise. It makes no sense otherwise. Why would we ever regard someone as family who would otherwise be an enemy? Why ignore his faults, or cover her wrongs with love? Without Jesus, it simply makes no sense. Sherri’s very refusal, and our very refusal, to take and hold offense is evidence of the existence of God. This is how they’ll know we belong to Him, Jesus says. So let’s love—from this moment forward—because He first loved us.

Suddenly a violent noise leaped at them from no source that he could identify. He gasped in terror at what sounded like a man trying to gargle while fighting off a pack of wolves. “Shush!” said Ford. “Listen, it might be important.” “Im … important?” “It’s the Vogon captain making an announcement on the tannoy.” “You mean that’s how the Vogons talk?” “Listen!” “But I can’t speak Vogon!” “You don’t need to. Just put this fish in your ear.” Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur’s ear, and he had the sudden sickening sensation of the fish slithering deep into his aural tract. Gasping with horror he scrabbled at his ear for a second or so, but then slowly turned goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing the aural equivalent of looking at a picture of two black silhouetted faces and suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white candlestick. Or of looking at a lot of colored dots on a piece of paper which suddenly resolve themselves into the figure six and mean that your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a new pair of glasses. He was still listening to the howling gargles, he knew that, only now it had somehow taken on the semblance of perfectly straightforward English. This is what he heard … * Ford Prefect’s original name is only pronounceable in an obscure Betel-geusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out all the old Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford’s father was the only man on the entire planet to survive the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster, by an extraordinary coincidence that he was never able satisfactorily to explain. The whole episode is shrouded in deep mystery: in fact no one ever knew what a Hrung was nor why it had chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven particularly. Ford’s father, magnanimously waving aside the clouds of suspicion that had inevitably settled around him, came to live on Betelgeuse Five, where he both fathered and uncled Ford; in memory of his now dead race he christened him in the ancient Praxibetel tongue. Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy. The other kids at school nicknamed him Ix, which in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as “boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.

Grabbing my hair and pulling it to the point my skull throbs, I rock back and forth while insanity threatens to destroy my mind completely. Father finally did what Lachlan started. Destroyed my spirit. The angel is gone. The monster has come and killed her. Lachlan Sipping his whiskey, Shon gazes with a bored expression at the one-way mirror as Arson lights the match, grazing the skin of his victim with it as the man convulses in fear. “Show off,” he mutters, and on instinct, I slap the back of his head. He rubs it, spilling the drink. “The fuck? We are wasting time, Lachlan. Tell him to speed up. You know if you let him, he can play for hours.” All in good time, we don’t need just a name. He is saving him for a different kind of information that we write down as Sociopath types furiously on his computer, searching for the location and everything else using FBI databases. “Bingo!” Sociopath mutters, picking up the laptop and showing the screen to me. “It’s seven hours away from New York, in a deserted location in the woods. The land belongs to some guy who is presumed dead and the man accrued the right to build shelters for abused women. They actually live there as a place of new hope or something.” Indeed, the center is advertised as such and has a bunch of stupid reviews about it. Even the approval of a social worker, but then it doesn’t surprise me. Pastor knows how to be convincing. “Kids,” I mutter, fisting my hands. “Most of them probably have kids. He continues to do his fucked-up shit.” And all these years, he has been under my radar. I throw the chair and it bounces off the wall, but no one says anything as they feel the same. “Shon, order a plane. Jaxon—” “Yeah, my brothers will be there with us. But listen, the FBI—” he starts, and I nod. He takes a beat and quickly sends a message to someone on his phone while I bark into the microphone. “Arson, enough with the bullshit. Kill him already.” He is of no use to us anyway. Arson looks at the wall and shrugs. Then pours gas on his victim and lights up the match simultaneously, stepping aside as the man screams and thrashes on the chair, and the smell of burning flesh can be sensed even here. Arson jogs to a hose, splashing water over him. The room is designed security wise for this kind of torture, since fire is one of the first things I taught. After all, I’d learned the hard way how to fight with it. “On the plane, we can adjust the plan. Let’s get moving.” They spring into action as I go to my room to get a specific folder to give to Levi before I go, when Sociopath’s hand stops me, bumping my shoulder. “Is this a suicide mission for you?” he asks, and I smile, although it lacks any humor. My friend knows everything. Instead of answering his question, I grip his shoulder tight, and confide, “Valencia is entrusted to you.” We both know that if I want to destroy Pastor, I have to die with him. This revenge has been twenty-three years in the making, and I never envisioned a different future. This path always leads to death one way or another, and the only reason I valued my life was because I had to kill him. Valencia will be forever free from the evils that destroyed her life. I’ll make sure of it. Once upon a time, there was an angel. Who made the monster’s heart bleed.

He learned that we should keep our eyes on the goal and not on the ground. He learned so much about the Burger King’s operations that later when he was running the Investment Bank and was looking for high-profile American billionaires to sit on his Board of Directors, he met Joe Antonius, Chairman of the 32-billion-dollar conglomerate. The first thing they had in common was that Antonius ran that corporation where Mir once cleaned bathrooms. He went up to him, introduced himself, “Hi Joe! I am Mir Mohammad Ali Khan, founder and Chairman of KMS Investment Bank and my first job in America was washing bathrooms at one of your restaurants.” Joe burst out laughing and all top notch people – Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Peter Lynch – could not believe what the young man was saying. Joe took him aside and said, “Tell me honestly what did you like about cleaning bathrooms.” “Ammonia,” replied Mir. “Why?” Mir said, “I hated my job and it hurt my ego. I hated it so much that I cried throughout the first week and every time somebody saw me crying, I would tell them that it was because of ammonia. Ammonia helped me shelter my ego.” Later Antonius joined the Board of Mir’s bank for NO COMPENSATION and also brought 6 top people from Forbes, Yoblon, Mario, Andretti, and others. In the first meeting of the Board Antonius said, “I joined this board because if this immigrant kid can come from a family background that he has, compromise with his ego, wash bathrooms and smile and tell us in a corporate meeting of leaders that he is proud of it, then it means that he will go far in life. At 29 he owns a bank, imagine what he will do at 49.

her that when he had first raised the idea, I hadn’t known he was sick. Almost nobody knew, she said. He had called me right before he was going to be operated on for cancer, and he was still keeping it a secret, she explained. I decided then to write this book. Jobs surprised me by readily acknowledging that he would have no control over it or even the right to see it in advance. “It’s your book,” he said. “I won’t even read it.” But later that fall he seemed to have second thoughts about cooperating and, though I didn’t know it, was hit by another round of cancer complications. He stopped returning my calls, and I put the project aside for a while. Then, unexpectedly, he phoned me late on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 2009. He was at home in Palo Alto with only his sister, the writer Mona Simpson. His wife and their three children had taken a quick trip to go skiing, but he was not healthy enough to join them. He was in a reflective mood, and we talked for more than an hour. He began by recalling that he had wanted to build a frequency counter when he was twelve, and he was able to look up Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP, in the phone book and call him to get parts. Jobs said that the past twelve years of his life, since his return to Apple, had been his most productive in terms of creating new products. But his more important goal, he said, was to do what Hewlett and his friend David Packard had done, which was create a company that was so imbued with innovative creativity that it would outlive them. “I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,” he said. “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” It was as if he were suggesting themes for his biography (and in this instance, at least, the theme turned out to be valid). The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century. I asked Jobs why he wanted me to be the one to write his biography. “I think you’re good at getting people to talk,” he replied. That was an unexpected answer. I knew that I would have to interview scores of people he had fired, abused, abandoned, or otherwise infuriated, and I feared he would not be comfortable with my getting them to talk. And indeed he did turn out to be skittish when word trickled back to him of people that I was interviewing. But after a couple of months,

Aside from chocolate, the Aztecs also gave us popcorn!

Flying saucers aside, a visceral childhood fascination with what’s out there, launched by pop culture and propelled by real-life space missions during NASA’s heyday, is a recurring narrative among SETI researchers. “I’m a child of the Apollo era,” said Mark Showalter, a Sagan Center senior research scientist. “I’m in this room today because of Neil Armstrong. Watching the moonwalk — that was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen in my life.” To date, Showalter has discovered, or co-discovered, six moons in the solar system: Pan (orbiting Saturn); Mab and Cupid (Uranus); Kerberos and Styx (Pluto); and just last year, a Neptune moon, still unnamed. “We could be sending missions to all kinds of fantastic destinations and learning things for decades to come,” he said. But the scheduled NASA voyages to the outer planets appear nearly done.  The New Horizons spacecraft flies by Pluto next year; the probes to Jupiter and Saturn shut down in 2017. Even the much-heralded Clipper mission — the proposed robotic expedition to Europa — isn’t yet a go. So far, with a projected $2 billion cost, only $170 million has been appropriated. At 56, Showalter concedes that his professional career will conclude with these final journeys. “It takes twenty years from the time you start thinking about the project to the time you actually get to the outer planets,” he said. And without new missions, he worries, and wonders, about the new generation. “It’s the missions that capture imaginations. If those aren’t happening, kids might not go into science the way my generation did.

When it comes to generating writing material, teenagers are gold. Their world is a narcissistic, anarchic, paranoid hell of anxieties and stresses about how they look; how popular they are or aren’t; and how fast or slowly, big or small their private parts are growing. As an observer, it’s fantastic. Hilarious, at times. Poignant and heartbreaking. It is all the stuff of great human drama because, before your eyes, you get to witness character transformation. Boy grows into man. Girl grows into woman. Writers strain to make this shit up. But – and here’s the catch – we dare not discuss any of this if we want our kids to trust us or ever talk to us again. And that’s because, lifts and pocket money aside, teenagers crave privacy – the need for which hatches both swiftly and silently while we’re sorting out the laundry. It’s as if they suddenly wake up one day creeped out by the thought of all those years we wiped their butts and helped them put on their undies and they go into lock- down. They smoke us out, put up walls, close their doors, shut down their stories, and waft, earphoned, through our homes in a shroud of hormones and appetite. Their lives – in which, until recently, we participated with Too Much Information and gross oversharing – suddenly become ‘none of our business.

pushed the little girl aside as he wedged his way to the water fountain. The kid turned around to find Mr. Jackson staring down at him. “I’ve

What about the second floor?” Coop said. “Any other security up there?” My gaze flicked to the screen. I kept seeing the other photos, the ones I couldn’t show them, fresh in my mind’s eye. “Yeah. But that’s my job. Weird stuff.” “Weird stuff?” Augie asked. “Kid,” Coop told him, “something you gotta learn about livin’ the life. Every once in a while, on certain special jobs, a guy like Dan here will say the words ‘weird stuff.’ It’s…sort of a secret code. You know what you do when you hear those words?” Augie tilted his head. “What?” “You stand aside, you let him go in first and do what he’s gotta do, and you don’t ask questions. Trust me, your life will be a lot happier that way.

There’s a fog of fae magic on the first floor of the house,” he told her. “Where’s Charles?” “Downstairs,” she told him. “He sent me up here to make sure nothing happened to the kids.” “There’s a pool of blood just outside the door,” he whispered, stepping aside so Anna could see it while the kids were preoccupied. “Chelsea’s blood. I can’t scent her through the stink of fae magic that is coating this house.

You have a good time with Mel today?” “Yes. Was Christopher a lot of trouble?” He shook his head with a chuckle. “Nah, he’s a kick. He wants to know everything. Every detail. ‘Why is it a quarter teaspoon of that?’ ‘What does the Crisco on the tray do?’ And man, yeast blows him away. I think he has a little scientist in him.” Paige thought, he couldn’t ask his father questions. Wes didn’t have the patience to answer them. “John, do you have family?” “Not anymore. I was an only child. And my folks were older, anyway—they didn’t think they were going to have kids. Then I surprised ’em. Boy, did I surprise ’em. My dad died when I was about six—a construction accident. And then my mom when I was seventeen, right before my senior year.” “I’m so sorry.” “Yeah, thanks. It’s okay. I’ve had a good life.” “What did you do when you lost your mother? Go live with aunts or something?” “No aunts,” he said, shaking his head. “My football coach took me in. It was good—he had a nice wife, good bunch of little kids. Might as well have lived with him. He acted like he owned me during football, anyway,” he said with a laugh. “Nah, kidding aside, that was a good thing he did. Good guy. We used to write—now we email.” “What happened to your mom?” “Heart attack.

You said you’d give him a chance!” Noelle screamed. Tears leaked from her eyes. “You’ve been planning this all along and lying to us! You’re a liar!” She hated that word. Meridith tamped down her own anger. “I didn’t lie, Noelle. I just hadn’t told you yet.” “You were never planning to give Uncle Jay a chance! You were planning to sell our home and take us away from day one.” “No, I wasn’t—” “Uncle Jay would never take us away, he’d never sell Summer Place, and he’d never lie to us like you have!” “Well, your Uncle Jay wasn’t here to make those decisions, and if he’d be such a wonderful guardian, why isn’t he here now?” “He is here!” Noelle’s eyes went past Meridith’s shoulders. “He’s been here all along, right beside us, and we want him to be our guardian, not you!” The words sank in slowly. Noelle’s eyes, darting toward Jake. His hand tightening on her shoulder. The boys staring wide-eyed at him. He’s been here all along, right beside us. “Meridith, I—” Meridith jerked away from him. Think. She needed to think. Scenes from the past three months raced through her mind. Jake arriving on her doorstep. The low bid. Jake carrying Ben to his truck. Jake teaching her to dance. “Meridith.” Jake asking to stay here. Her chiding him for being alone with Noelle. Hysteria bubbled in her throat. His niece. Jake saving her from Sean. The day of the parade. The kiss in the dark. His declaration of love. She choked back a laugh. Her own declaration of love. “Meridith—” He set his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t talk to me.” She pushed his hand off, backed away. It made sense now, all of it. The way the kids had bonded to him so quickly. They’d been keeping a secret from her. Jake, the children. Everyone in the house knew but her. She felt like such a fool! But . . . the tender moments between her and Jake, his words . . . Was it just a show, some horrible pretense to get access to the kids, to get custody of the kids? She’d let herself trust him, let herself love him—told him she loved him—and it was all . . . “Get out.” He held out his hands, palms down. “Meridith, just let me—” Meridith put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear it!” Her thoughts spun in so many directions, making her dizzy. Max and Ben were crying. She couldn’t process the chaos, didn’t want to. “Get out, Jake. I mean it.” “All right.” His hands dropped. “All right.” He moved toward the door. “No!” Ben ran to Jake, wrapped his arms around his leg. “You’re the meanest person ever!” Noelle screamed. “Let go, Benny.” Jake pried his hands off. He set the boy aside. “I’ll be back.” His gaze flickered to Max, then to Noelle, and back to Meridith. No, he wouldn’t. She was never letting him in her house, in her heart again. Meridith walked around Jake, opened the front door. “Don’t go, Uncle Jay!” Noelle said. Jake motioned her to settle down. He paused beside Meridith. She wouldn’t look at him. Couldn’t. Could barely contain everything that was building inside. His shoes blurred. She would not cry. “I’ll call you,” he whispered. “Don’t bother.” He

Aside from church and rare family events, we were always home. I can recall our family going out to dinner once throughout my entire childhood — if you don’t count vacations. For starters, there was the issue of cost. My father was the sole breadwinner. Taking six kids and two adults to even a modestly priced restaurant cost well over $100 in today’s dollars — money my parents simply could not spare. Then there was logistics. In the early 1970s, my father drove a Plymouth Fury III — a Starship-Enterprise-looking thing with faux wood paneling on its sides.

Prepare a bundt pan by greasing and then sprinkle the pecans in the bottom of the pan. Cut the bread in half and then each half into 8 pieces. Roll the 16 pieces into balls, and place in the pan on top of the pecans. In a bowl, mix the brown sugar and melted butter and set aside. Sprinkle the pudding over the rolls and then cinnamon. Pour the butter mixture over the rolls. Cover the rolls with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 6 hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove the wrap from the pan, bake rolls for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 16 rolls.                               Apple Raisin Bread Pudding   Ingredients 6 eggs 1 cup milk 1/2 cup heavy cream 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1 tsp ground nutmeg 16 ounce loaf cinnamon bread with raisins, cut into 1-inch cubes 2 sliced apples  1 cup brown sugar 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1/4 cup melted butter 1 diced apple  

What do you need that for?” he asks about the Jack Daniel’s. “We might have to hit her over the head.” “Why are you smiling?” “Because this is a happy time,” I tell him honestly, even after I push aside the image of knocking Shannon unconscious with a bottle of JD. “This is fun. This is good. When this is all over, we’re going to have a baby.” He doesn’t look all that convinced, but he trots after me as we take our equipment into Shannon’s room. She’s sitting propped up on the bed with every pillow in my house behind her, blowing out air like a stalled locomotive. “You’re going to ruin my pillows,” I moan. “I’ll buy you new pillows,” she spits at me. “I’ll buy you a new bed. I’ll buy you a new fucking house.” “Watch your language,” I tell her. “There’s a little kid here.” “You think I care about a fucking little kid? Why is there a little kid here?” “Can we hit her yet?” Kenny asks. “Not yet.” Fanci

Now, be honest—or ask someone you can trust to tell you the truth about yourself: Are you one of those coaches more interested in your own kid—promoting them either for temporary success or trying to put them in position so they can fulfill some big dream down the road—than you are in the well-being of your team as a whole? If, despite all the other things going on in a game, you find yourself hollering your own kid’s name most of the time, it’s time to look in the mirror and reevaluate yourself as a coach. You might be unable to keep your eyes off your own kid. If that’s the case, you need to step aside, because until you can conquer that, a bunch of kids are going to pay the price. Too

Alarmist rhetoric aside, the United States is not about to lose its primacy because students in Estonia are better at factoring polynomials. Other aspects of U.S. culture—a unique combination of creativity, entrepreneurship, optimism, and capital—have made it the most fertile ground in the world for innovation. That’s why bright kids from all around the globe dream of getting their green cards to work here.

There’s no such thing as Divergent magic, Mar,” says Lynn. “And if there is, we shouldn’t be consulting it,” says Shauna. It’s the first thing she’s said since we sat down. She doesn’t even look at me when she says it; she just scowls at her younger sister. “Shauna--” Zeke starts. “Don’t ‘Shauna’ me!” she says, focusing her scowl on him instead. “Don’t you think someone with the aptitude for multiple factions might have a loyalty problem? If she’s got aptitude for Erudite, how can we be sure she’s not working for Erudite?” “Don’t be ridiculous,” says Tobias, his voice low. “I am not being ridiculous.” She smacks the table. “I know I belong in Dauntless because everything I did in that aptitude test told me so. I’m loyal to my faction for that reason--because there’s nowhere else I could possibly be. But her? And you?” She shakes her head. “I have no idea who you’re loyal to. And I’m not going to pretend like everything’s okay.” She gets up, and when Zeke reaches for her, she throws his hand aside, marching toward one of the doors. I watch her until the door closes behind her and the black fabric that hands in front of it settles. I feel wound up, like I might scream, only Shauna isn’t here for me to scream at. “It’s not magic,” I say hotly. “You just have to ask yourself what the most logical response to a particular situation is.” I am greeted with blank stares. “Seriously,” I say. “If I were in this situation, staring at a group of Dauntless guards and Jack Kang, I probably wouldn’t resort to violence, right?” “Well, you might, if you had your own Dauntless guards. And then all it takes is one shot--bam, he’s dead, and Erudite’s better off,” says Zeke. “Whoever they send to talk to Jack Kang isn’t going to be some random Erudite kid; it’s going to be someone important,” I say. “It would be a stupid move to fire on Jack Kang and risk losing whoever they send as Jeanine’s representative.” “See? This is why we need you to analyze the situation,” Zeke says. “If it was me, I would kill him; it would be worth the risk.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. I already have a headache. “Fine.” I try to put myself in Jeanine Matthews’s place. I already know she won’t negotiate with Jack Kang. Why would she need to? He has nothing to offer her. She will use the situation to her advantage. “I think,” I say, “that Jeanine Matthews will manipulate him. And that he will do anything to protect his faction, even if it means sacrificing the Divergent.” I pause for a moment, remembering how he held his faction’s influence over our heads at the meeting. “Or sacrificing the Dauntless. So we need to hear what they say in that meeting.” Uriah and Zeke exchange a look. Lynn smiles, but it isn’t her usual smile. It doesn’t spread to her eyes, which look more like gold than ever, with that coldness in them. “So let’s listen in,” she says.

Becky told Melissa over baba ghanoush, “Yesterday at church, a lady took me aside with the express purpose to tell me, ‘Don’t feel bad. When God closes a door, he opens a window.’ ” Melissa choked on some pita bread. “I kid you not. What the heck does that mean anyway? That I’m supposed to climb out a window now? Or is the window just to air out the house, which is stinking to high heaven, given the fact that the door has been shut indefinitely and NO ONE CAN GET OUT?!” “Okay,” Melissa said, fishing scrap paper and a pen from her purse, “I want name and address. Tonight I’m going to board up her doors.

All kidding aside…” I focus back on Pyke, genuine sincerity in my tone. “Thank you…for everything. For dragging my ‘clueless ass’ through the ocean, and over hill and vale, when you knew it was futile and stupid—but that I’d still try to do it, with or without your help. Thanks for tracking me down when I was alone and helpless; and for giving me a voice when I thought all hope was lost—” “Ugh, for crying out loud…Enough already,” Pyke squirms, a nauseated grimace twisting his hairy face. “Now you’re going way overboard with the gratitude…That kind of gushy crap is meant to be dished out in small doses,” he gripes. “Please make it stop…before I have to snap my own neck, just to end the suffering.” He backs away into the crowd, giving Tristan’s shoulder one more slap with a sly wink. “Hurry up, Man, and do something. Kiss her, muzzle her…shove a sock in her mouth—

While Prowse, given his penchant for revealing secrets, was kept in the dark, Hamill was debriefed by Lucas and then Kershner, who called over the actor not long before cameras rolled: “I met with Mark, and said, ‘Uh, you know that Darth Vader’s your father.’ ‘Wha—?’ ‘David Prowse will be saying stuff that doesn’t count, forget it. Use your own rhythm compared to what he’s doing.’ ” “They took me aside and said, ‘This is what he’s going to say,’ ” Hamill says. “ ‘You don’t know the truth, Obi-Wan killed your father.’ ” “I told Mark, ‘Don’t tell anybody—especially don’t tell David Prowse—but I want you to be able to know, to be able to act appropriately,’ ” Lucas says. “And then Kersh worked the scene with him.” “I love when Darth Vader says, ‘The only way you’ll ever beat me is with hate,’ ” Kershner says. “It’s a lie and the kids know it. The last thing Ben says is, ‘Remember, don’t use hate.’ It’s the most important thing in the film.

How Much Money Can We Afford To Give To Charity? Knowing how much money you can safely give to charity is challenging for everyone. Who doesn’t want to give more to make the world a better place? On the other hand, no one wants to become a charity case as a result of giving too much to charity. On average, Americans who itemize their deductions donate about three or four percent of their income to charity. About 20% give more than 10% of their income to charity. Here are some tips to help you find the right level of donations for your family: You can probably give more than you think. Focus on one, two or maybe three causes rather than scattering money here and there. Volunteer your time toward your cause, too. The money you give shouldn’t be the money you’d save for college or retirement. You can organize your personal finances to empower you to give more. Eliminating debt will enable you to give much more. The interest you may be paying is eating into every good and noble thing you’d like to do. You can cut expenses significantly over time by driving your cars for a longer period of time; buying cars—the transaction itself—is expensive. Stay in your home longer. By staying in your home for a very long time, your mortgage payment will slowly shrink (in economic terms)with inflation, allowing you more flexibility over time to donate to charity. Make your donations a priority. If you only give what is left, you won’t be giving much. Make your donations first, then contribute to savings and, finally, spend what is left. Set a goal for contributing to charity, perhaps as a percentage of your income. Measure your financial progress in all areas, including giving to charity. Leverage your contributions by motivating others to give. Get the whole family involved in your cause. Let the kids donate their time and money, too. Get your extended family involved. Get the neighbors involved. You will have setbacks. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks. Think long term. Everything counts. One can of soup donated to a food bank may feed a hungry family. Little things add up. One can of soup every week for years will feed many hungry families. Don’t be ashamed to give a little. Everyone can do something. When you can’t give money, give time. Be patient. You are making a difference. Don’t give up on feeding hungry people because there will always be hungry people; the ones you feed will be glad you didn’t give up. Set your ego aside. You can do more when you’re not worried about who gets the credit. Giving money to charity is a deeply personal thing that brings joy both to the families who give and to the families who receive. Everyone has a chance to do both in life. There Are Opportunities To Volunteer Everywhere If you and your family would like to find ways to volunteer but aren’t sure where and how, the answer is just a Google search away. There may be no better family activity than serving others together. When you can’t volunteer as a team, remember you set an example for your children whenever you serve. Leverage your skills, talents and training to do the most good. Here are some ideas to get you started either as a family or individually: Teach seniors, the disabled, or children about your favorite family hobbies.

What’s up, Sam?” “What birthday?” he panted. “What?” “What birthday, Anna?” It took a while for her to absorb his fear. It took a while for the reason for his fear to dawn on her. “Fifteen,” Anna said in a whisper. “What’s the matter?” Emma asked, sensing her twin’s mood. “It doesn’t mean anything.” “It doesn’t,” Anna whispered. “You’re probably right,” Sam said. “Oh, my God,” Anna said. “Are we going to disappear?” “When were you born?” Sam asked. “What time of day?” The twins exchanged scared looks. “We don’t know.” “You know what, no one has blinked out since that first day, so it’s probably—” Emma disappeared. Anna screamed. The other older kids took notice, the littles, too. “Oh, my God!” Anna cried. “Emma. Emma. Oh, God!” She grabbed Sam’s hands and he held her tight. The prees, some of them, caught the fear. Mother Mary came over. “What’s going on? You’re scaring the kids. Where’s Emma?” Anna just kept saying, “Oh, my God,” and calling her sister’s name. “Where’s Emma?” Mary demanded again. “What’s going on?” Sam didn’t want to explain. Anna was hurting him with the pressure of her fingers digging into the backs of his hands. Anna’s eyes were huge, staring holes in him. “How far apart were you born?” Sam asked. Anna just stared in blank horror. Sam lowered his voice to an urgent whisper. “How far apart were you born, Anna?” “Six minutes,” she whispered. “Hold my hands, Sam,” she said. “Don’t let me go, Sam,” she said. “I won’t, Anna, I won’t let you go,” Sam said. “What’s going to happen, Sam?” “I don’t know, Anna.” “Will we go to where our mom and dad are?” “I don’t know, Anna." “Am I going to die?” “No, Anna. You’re not going to die.” “Don’t let go of me, Sam.” Mary was there now, a baby on her hip. John was there. The prees, some of them, watched with serious, worried looks on their faces. “I don’t want to die,” Anna repeated. “I…I don’t know what it’s like.” “It’s okay, Anna.” Anna smiled. “That was a nice date. When we went out.” “It was.” For a split second it was like Anna blurred. Too fast to be real. She blurred, and Sam could almost swear that she had smiled at him. And his fingers squeezed on nothing. For a terribly long time no one moved or said anything. The littles didn’t cry out. The older kids just stared. Sam’s fingertips still remembered the feel of Anna’s hands. He stared at the place where her face had been. He could still see her pleading eyes. Unable to stop himself, he reached a hand into the space she had occupied. Reaching for a face that was no longer there. Someone sobbed. Someone cried out, other voices then, the prees started crying. Sam felt sick. When his teacher had disappeared he hadn’t been expecting it. This time he had seen it coming, like a monster in a slow-motion nightmare. This time he had seen it coming, like standing rooted on the railroad tracks, unable to jump aside.

I asked my daughter how many kids would come to her birthday party if all we offered was cake. No games, no entertainment. They could come to the house to spend time with her and bring gifts to celebrate her, but we wouldn’t have anything else for them. She thought for a minute and said, “Maybe just a couple.” Then I asked her how many would come if I rented out Dave & Buster’s and let them have unlimited tokens, food, and prizes. She laughed and said confidently that the whole school would show up. So let’s say that for her birthday party I rent out the arcade and her whole school comes. They’re all going nuts, having the time of their lives. Imagine if I pulled her aside during the party, put my arm around her, and said, “Look at all the people who came to be with you!” Would she actually believe those people were there because they love her and want to spend time with her? Or would my comment actually be insulting? Isn’t this basically what we do with God? We have learned that we can fill church buildings if we bring in the right speaker or band. Make things exciting enough and people will come. We say, “God, look how many people are coming because they love being with You!” But do we really think God is fooled by this? Do we think God is pleased? He knows how many would show up if it was just Him. He knows there might be only a few if all we offered was Communion or prayer.

We now know that, aside maybe from physical health, our emotional state is one of the most important aspects of our lives. It rules everything else. Its influence is pervasive. Yet it is also the thing we steer around most carefully. Our inner lives are uncharted territory even to us, a risky place to explore.

I thought my life with Kelli could be balanced, mitigated,. That Irene had just been doing it all wrong these years. I' thought we could hang out like normal sisters, run errands, go for lattes with Jessica Hendy, and every now and then go off and have a little temper tantrum if Kelli go on my nerves--leave her in the car, assume she'd be fine. I'd assumed I could indulge myself if need be, that there could be some kind of fulfillment beyond my sister's care--that I didn't have to give myself over to it completely. But here's what I needed to understand--what Irene understood. Either you were all in with Kelli, or you were not. But if you were, Kelli had to become your joy. Kelli would be where you went for meaning. Kelli was what it was all about. And Irene was right about this too-- it was like faith. It was exactly like faith in that you had to stop futzing around and let it take you over. No more hemming and hawing. No more trying to have it both ways. And once you put your petty shit aside --your petty ego and your petty needs and your petty ambitions--that was when at last the world opened up. The world that was Kelli. It was a small world, a circumscribed world but it was your world and you did what you could to make it more beautiful. You focused on hygiene, nourishing meals, a pleasing home that always smelled good. That was your achievement and more important that was you. Once you accept that, you were--and this was strange to think, but the moment I thought it, I realized I put my finger on the savagely beating heart of my mother's philosophy--free. When I was a kid, my mother had a lavishly illustrated encyclopedia of saints she would sometimes flip through with me, and I remember how she always made a point of skipping over Saint Teresa of Avila . She didn't want to talk about the illustration that went with it. It was a photograph of the sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, and it was pretty obvious to me even as a child why my mother disapproved. It was a sexy sculpture. The smirking angel prepares to pierce Teresa's heart with his holy spear, and boy oh boy is Saint Teresa ready. Her eyes are closed, her lips are parted, and somehow everything about her marble body, swathed in marble clothing looks to be in motion. Saint Teresa is writhing. She's writhing because that is what it is to be a Catholic Saint. This is your fulfillment. The giving over. The letting go. The disappearance. This is what it takes

To the right the reptilian bodies flew up and aside, as if bulldozed. Someone strong and very motivate was tearing down the battlefield. "What the hell is that?" Alix said. "That's my honey-bunny." Curran burst into the open, a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall monster clothed in steel muscle and gray fur. Faint stripes crossed his limbs like dark whip marks. Blood dripped from his clawed hands. On the left side, a patch of his skin was missing, muscle exposed and raw. He grabbed the nearest lizard, twisted it with a loud snap, and tossed it aside. "Hey, baby." "Hi." I beheaded a lizard. "Where are the kids?" "With the MSDU." He disemboweled a beast with a quick swipe of his claws. "You're having all this fun without me." "I'm not doing much. Just having tea and cookies." I cut at another lizard. "Thinking deep thoughts." I love you. "Then I'll join you." He loved me, too.

Old people vote. You know who votes in the swing states where this election will be fought? Really old people. Instead of high-profile videos with Cardi B (no disrespect to Cardi, who famously once threatened to dog-walk the egregious Tomi Lahren), maybe focus on registering and reaching more of those old-fart voters in counties in swing states. If your celebrity and music-industry friends want to flood social media with GOTV messages, let them. It makes them feel important and it’s the cheapest outsourcing you can get. Just don’t build your models on the idea that you’re going to spike young voter turnout beyond 20 percent. The problem with chasing the youth vote is threefold: First, they’re unlikely to be registered. You have to devote a lot of work to going out, grabbing them, registering them, educating them, and motivating them to go out and vote. If they were established but less active voters, you’d have voter history and other data to work with. There are lower-effort, lower-cost ways to make this work. Second, they’re not conditioned to vote; that November morning is much more likely to involve regret at not finishing a paper than missing a vote. Third, and finally, a meaningful fraction of the national youth vote overall is located in California. Its gigantic population skews the number, and since the Golden State’s Electoral College outcome is never in doubt, it doesn’t matter. What’s our motto, kids? “The Electoral College is the only game in town.” This year, the Democrats have been racing to win the Free Shit election with young voters by promising to make college “free” (a word that makes any economic conservative lower their glasses, put down the brandy snifter, and arch an eyebrow) and to forgive $1.53 trillion gazillion dollars of student loan debt. Set aside that the rising price of college is what happens to everything subsidized or guaranteed by the government.17 Set aside that those subsidies cause college costs to wildly exceed the rate of inflation across the board, and that it sucks to have $200k in student loan debt for your degree in Intersectional Yodeling. Set aside that the college loan system is run by predatory asswipes. The big miss here is a massive policy disconnect—a student-loan jubilee would be a massive subsidy to white, upper-middle-class people in their mid-thirties to late forties. I’m not saying Democrats shouldn’t try to appeal to young voters on some level, but I want them to have a realistic expectation about just how hard it is to move those numbers in sufficient volume in the key Electoral College states. When I asked one of the smartest electoral modeling brains in the business about this issue, he flooded me with an inbox of spreadsheets and data points. But the key answer he gave me was this: “The EC states in play are mostly old as fuck. If your models assume young voter magic, you’re gonna have a bad day.

Mother Mary wants to draft two more kids,” Astrid told Sam. “Okay. Approved.” “Dahra says we’re running low on kids’ Tylenol and kids’ Advil, she wants to make sure it’s okay to start giving them split adult pills.” Sam spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “What?” “We’re running low on kid pills, Dahra wants to split adult pills.” Sam rocked back in the leather chair designed for a grown man. “Okay. Whatever. Approved.” He took a sip of water from a bottle. The wrapper on the bottle said “Dasani” but it was tap water. The dishes from dinner—horrible homemade split-pea soup that smelled burned, and a quarter cabbage each—had been pushed aside onto the sideboard where in the old days the mayor of Perdido Beach had kept framed pictures of his family. It was one of the better meals Sam had had lately. The fresh cabbage tasted surprisingly good. There was little more than smears on the plates: the era of kids not eating everything was over. Astrid puffed out her cheeks and sighed. “Kids are asking why Lana isn’t around when they need her.” “I can only ask Lana to heal big things. I can’t demand she be around 24/7 to handle every boo-boo.” Astrid looked at the list she had compiled on her laptop. “Actually, I think this involved a stubbed toe that ‘hurted.’” “How much more is on the list?” Sam asked. “Three hundred and five items,” Astrid said. When Sam’s face went pale, she relented. “Okay, it’s actually just thirty-two. Now, don’t you feel relieved it’s not really three hundred?” “This is crazy,” Sam said. “Next up: the Judsons and the McHanrahans are fighting because they share a dog, so both families are feeding her—they still have a big bag of dry dog food—but the Judsons are calling her Sweetie and the McHanrahans are calling her BooBoo.” “You’re kidding.” “I’m not kidding,” Astrid said. “What is that noise?” Sam demanded. Astrid shrugged. “I guess someone has their stereo cranked up.” “This is not going to work, Astrid.” “The music?” “This. This thing where every day I have a hundred stupid questions I have to decide. Like I’m everyone’s parent now. I’m sitting here listening to how little kids are complaining because their older sisters make them take a bath, and stepping into fights over who owns which Build-A-Bear outfit, and now over dog names. Dog names?” “They’re all still just little kids,” Astrid said. “Some of these kids are developing powers that scare me,” Sam grumbled. “But they can’t decide who gets to have which special towel? Or whether to watch The Little Mermaid or Shrek Three?” “No,” Astrid said. “They can’t. They need a parent. That’s you.

He tossed the dumbbell aside. It went flying and hit with a loud thud, leaving a dent in the pavement of the roof. Curran strode toward me, eyes blazing. “If I let her go, I’ll need a replacement. Want to volunteer for the job?” He looked like he wouldn’t be taking no for an answer. I swiped Slayer from its sheath and backed away from the edge of the roof. “And be girlfriend number twenty-three soon to be dumped in favor of girlfriend number twenty-four who has slightly bigger boobs? I don’t think so.” He kept coming. “Oh yeah?” “Yeah. You get these beautiful women, make them dependent on you, and then dump them. Well, this time a woman left you first, and your enormous ego can’t deal with it. And to think that I hoped we could talk like reasonable adults. If we were the last two people on Earth, I’d find myself a moving island so I could get the hell away from you.” I was almost to the drop door leading to the ladder. He stopped suddenly and crossed his arms over his chest. “We’ll see.” “Nothing to see. Thanks for the recue and for the food. I’m taking my kid and leaving.” I dropped into the hole, slid down the ladder, and backed away down the hall. He didn’t follow me. I was midway down to the first floor when it finally hit me: I had just told the alpha of all shapeshifters that hell would freeze over before I got into his bed. Not only had I just kissed any cooperation from the Pack good-bye, but I had also challenged him. Again. I stopped and hit my head a few times on the wall. Keep your mouth shut, stupid. Derek appeared at the bottom of the stairway. “It went that well, huh?” “Spare me.

The concept of togetherness and hygge has so many implications but essentially it is putting yourself aside for the benefit of the whole.

Where were you planning on heading next, then, if not Australia?” Fiona asked. “Oh, I’ll just toss a dart at the map like I usually do,” Kerry said, as blithely as she could. Fiona eyed her closely, as if checking her sincerity. “Well, whenever you do head back out--wherever and with whomever that might be--we’ll make sure Gus hires someone to help him with the pub. So, you know, don’t let that part affect your decision making or anything.” “‘Wherever or with whomever’?” Kerry repeated with a roll of her eyes. Fiona beamed sweetly again. “Just saying.” “All kidding aside, I’m not the settling down type, Fi.” At the flash of real sadness Kerry saw flicker through her too-optimistic-for-her-own-good sister, she made a show of sliding Fiona’s arm out from where it had been looped through hers and dropping it as if she was suddenly contagious. “Don’t go trying to spread all your bride cooties on me,” she teased, hoping to shift them back to their more comfortable pattern of affectionately swapping insults, and far, far away from delving in to the fears and worries that were truly the reason behind her defensive attitude. Kerry knew her family and extended family--hell, everyone in the Cove--only wanted what was best for her, wanted her to be happy. She just wanted the space and time to figure out what, exactly, that was going to be, all by herself. “Some of us aren’t meant for home and hearth. For white picket fences. Or silly cattle dogs and stone fire pits.” It was only when Fiona’s gaze sharpened again that she realized she’d said that last part out loud. A knowing smile played at the corners of Fiona’s mouth and her eyes sparked right back to matchmaker life. “Don’t,” Kerry warned. “Whatever do you mean?” Fiona said with false innocence. “I hear what you’re saying. And I believe you. At least, I believe you believe you.

No, sarcasm aside, life is always worth living. Even when sometimes it seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s when it seems like more trouble than it’s worth that I want it the most. I mean, isn’t everyone like that?

The avalanche of expert advice—and nonexpert advice on nonetheless very enticing Web sites—undermines our belief that we are equipped with enough common sense to deal with most child-rearing issues. That battered confidence, in turn, leads us to look ever more desperately to the experts wherever we find them. At the library. In parenting magazines. On TV. Online. But a lot of those experts give advice so daunting and detailed and frankly nondoable (does anyone really want to spend the day retelling potty stories with the aid of a spoon puppet?) that we feel like failures. Then when—surprise—our kids turn out not to be perfect, we know who’s to blame. We are! If only we’d made one more pretend forest out of broccoli spears, our kid would be a veggie fiend. If only we’d put aside that deep-fried Oreo in our second trimester, she’d be in the gifted program at school. And if our child is cranky? Uncommunicative? Headed for five to ten years’ hard labor? That just might be because we told her, “Look, sweetie, a broken cracker is not the end of the world!” instead of saying, “Oooh, your cracker broke. Sad sad sad sad sad!” and respectfully relating.

He sighed. All good intentions aside, sometimes he wondered, who am I kidding? Because sometimes he wondered if what was really driving him was guilt; guilt for walking away that November morning, through the acrid smell of burning fuel and the burning rubber smell from the bombed-out Jeeps; for looking at his hands and counting his fingers while the smell of the moist earth ejected by exploding Viet Cong shells mingled with the stench of burning flesh; and most of all, for being able to walk at all and for being able to see, smell and experience the nightmares that still haunted him nightly and the visions that still came during the day. He was guilty for feeling relief— relief that it was not his mangled body lying half-in and half-out of the blackened shell of a burned-out military vehicle; it wasn’t his headless torso next to a crater; and, it wasn’t his body zipped into one of the dark plastic body bags that lined the edge of the tarmac, waiting for pickup and removal by the C-130 transports the day he went home.

I know nobody’s going to take care of me. I have to make sure that I’ve got things in place. Who will speak for me when I can’t speak for myself? One sister has her own grief. The other I simply do not trust. I’ve thought about bribing my nieces and nephews, who are in my will. Let’s not kid ourselves. Making plans that assure our elder years are managed to our liking and fit within our budget is more crucial for those without children. We know we can’t count on offspring to oversee our dotage. There’s even a name for what we may someday become—elder orphans. “Aging seniors face all sorts of uncertainties,” writes Susan B. Garland in Kiplinger’s Retirement Report. “But older childless singles and couples are missing the fallback that many other seniors take for granted: adult children who can monitor an aging parent and help navigate a complex system of health care, housing, transportation, and social services.” Perhaps we can push planning aside for a while, but then our care may fall to an inattentive relative, acquaintance, or potentially nefarious do-gooder to make decisions for us when we can’t make them ourselves. If we’re really in a jam, some judge will appoint someone to manage our affairs. No one wants to face the fact, but none of us is getting out of here alive. Some steer clear of making plans, procrastinate, or remain in denial that their day will come. Even partial planning risks chaotic consequences. -—-—-—

Don’t worry—we don’t blame you,” Livvy said when she noticed Amy’s frown. “No one should be held accountable for their ancestors’ mistakes, so long as they learn from them. And now that I’ve thoroughly overwhelmed you with difficult information, let me show you the best part of this room.” She crossed to the ornate silver wardrobe and pulled the doors open, shoving aside the fancy clothes hanging from the rack and knocking on the back. “It has a secret wardrobe passage?” Sophie asked as Livvy twisted a hidden knob and revealed a narrow doorway that led to a lush, airy conservatory lit with twinkling lights. Flowering vines draped across the crystal ceiling, and the walls dripped with blue papery flowers that smelled like vanilla and honeysuckle. Tendrils of jade-green grass covered the floor, and graceful trees had been scattered around the space, growing in giant crystal urns. “I thought your furry friends would love having their own private garden,” Livvy explained. “But like I said, you’re welcome to pick any room you—” “Are you kidding?” Amy interrupted. “I’m totally taking the Narnia room!

If we slip up and a bad fight happens in front of the kids, more repairs are needed. Babies need to be comforted and held. If at all possible, holding the baby between us both is best, but only if there’s peace between us. If there’s still some tension, one of us needs to take the baby aside for cuddling while our partner gets some space.

What promises can you make to a child about the world of possibility ahead of them when the state has poisoned their bloodstreams and bones such that their behavioral self-control and language comprehension are impaired? How many graves has the government of Michigan set aside for the casualties of the water crisis that will end with a gunshot in fifteen years’ time? We all know how cops respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.

If you’re a parent looking for ways to foster good character in your kids, create an environment that encourages these emotions. Show that it’s okay to ask for help and important to show gratitude for it. Teach that taking time to enjoy the beauty of nature or to recognize the good in others is worthwhile. And most important, ritualize these activities. Make it a point to read an elevating story about someone at a set time every week. Set aside a time for milk and cookies when everyone talks about things that made them feel gratitude during the past week. And try to combine as many elements simultaneously as you can. For example, recite a favorite poem about kindness or gratitude together out loud. While the result might not be as finely tuned a package as many religions use, it will still help you shape your children’s character while also nudging your own. You can magnify the effect of these rituals by drawing in people beyond your family circle whenever you can. As I noted above, children usually start learning about what God and society expect of them via prayer and rituals when they are between five and seven years of age. By that point, the importance of feeling connection with their peers is growing as well. Rituals can foster morality by enhancing these bonds—bonds that will help foster character development through positive peer pressure and support.

From his headquarters in Los Angeles, Bob Lorsch had entered the prepaid calling card space and built SmarTalk into a success. I was a VP at Salomon at the time and had heard stories about how crazy and fascinating Lorsch was, so I agreed to work with my colleague Mark Davis on a SmarTalk equity offering a year or so after the company’s IPO. We met at their Los Angeles offices at lunchtime. Lorsch burst into the room like a bad caricature of Danny DeVito, and even though I’d been warned that he was an unconventional CEO, I still wasn’t prepared for the encounter. We had put together the standard detailed presentation that analyzed the state of the public equity markets, how the SmarTalk stock had been performing, who owned it, et cetera. A young Salomon analyst who had been pulling all-nighters to assemble the books sat in a chair near the door. Mark and I passed around the presentation books. “So we’ve prepared a—” I started. “Just tell me,” Lorsch interjected. “Do we have Grubman or not?” Jack Grubman, Salomon’s famed equity analyst, had previously endorsed the SmarTalk IPO with a buy rating. “Yes,” Mark said. “We have Jack. We talked to him prior to the meeting and confirmed that he’ll continue to cover the company and support the offering.” “Then you’re hired,” Lorsch said with a smile, pushing his unopened book to the center of the table. “Let’s eat.” It seemed reckless to have made his decision on so little information, and I could only imagine how the analyst kid near the door felt, sleep-deprived and probably proud of his hard work, only to see the book tossed aside without so much as a cracking of the spine. While we ate the catered lunch that was delivered to the conference room, Mark mentioned that I was in the midst of planning my wedding for that summer. “Don’t get married!” Lorsch advised me. “Terrible, terrible idea.” He described a few of his own ill-fated unions, dropping in crude one-liners to punctuate the stories: “Why buy when you can rent? . . . If it flies, floats, or fucks, don’t buy it! . . .” Despite

Let me put your bag in the house, and then we can leave for dinner,” Rhodes kept going, before angling his body toward me. They were going to a dinner I hadn’t been invited to. I could read a cue. “In that case, it was nice meeting you, Mr. Randall. I will—” Rhodes’s hand landed on my shoulder, the side of his pinky landing on my bare collarbone just a little bit. “Come with us.” I jerked my head up to meet his gray eyes. He had his serious face on, and I was pretty sure he’d used his Navy Voice, but I hadn’t been paying enough attention because I’d been distracted by his finger. “I’m sure you three want to spend some quality time together….” I trailed off, cautiously, not sure if he wanted me to go or… not? “Come with us, Ora.” It was Amos who piped up. But he wasn’t the one I was worried about. Rhodes’s big hand gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze, and I was fairly certain his gaze softened, because his voice definitely did. “Come with us.” “Are you asking me or telling me?” I whispered. “Because you’re whispering, but you’re still using your bossy voice.” His mouth twisted, and he lowered his voice to reply, “Both?” I grinned. I mean, okay. I wasn’t at a good part in my book yet, and I hadn’t eaten dinner either. “Okay then. Sure, if none of you care.” “Nope,” Am muttered. “Not at all,” Mr. Randall answered, still eyeballing me speculatively. “I’ll wait out here then while you put his things up,” I said. “I’ll come along. I’d like to wash my hands before we leave,” Randall said with a sniff. Rhodes gave me another squeeze before he stepped aside and headed toward the back of his father’s Mercedes. In no time at all, he had pulled a suitcase out of the back, and he and his dad were heading inside the house. Amos stayed outside with me, and the second that door closed, I said, “I’m so sorry, Am. I just heard him being so rude, and you guys were trying to be polite, and I could tell your dad was about to lose his shit, and I just wanted to help.” The kid stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me, hesitated for a second, then patted me on the back awkwardly. “Thanks, Ora.” He hugged me. He’d fucking hugged me. It felt like my birthday. I hugged him back real tight and tried not to let him see the tear in my eye so I wouldn’t ruin it. “Thanks for what? Your dad is going to kill me.” I felt him laugh against me before he dropped his arms and took a big step back, his cheeks a little flushed. But he was smiling that sweet, shy smile he rarely shared. “He’s not.” “I’m 50 percent sure it might happen,” I claimed. “He’s going to bury me somewhere no one will ever find me, and I know he could do it because I’m sure he has a bunch of spots picked out where, if it ever came down to it, he could pull it off. 

Durstan Reginald McDonald, whom everybody called Dusty. Dusty became one of my most important mentors. Aside from being chaplain, he taught philosophy and had a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Probably in his late forties at the time, Dusty was a married father with a crew cut—in other words, a grown-up. Contrary to the iconic proclamation of the ’60s to “never trust anyone over thirty,” Dusty was trusted by every kid on campus, from conscientious objectors to conservative fraternity guys. Dusty helped me arrive at answers in the way a good chaplain does: He listened, asked questions, and maybe made a few suggestions. He never made a conclusion for you, instead helping light the way as you eked out your own path. We had one particularly influential conversation on an airplane, on our way to a student conference. I was still considering law school but starting to think more and more about ordination. I told Dusty about my father’s financial struggles. “I’ve seen what that’s like. I don’t need to be rich, but maybe I could go to law school and make some money and do good at the same time,” I said. “It’s true, you don’t get rich by being ordained,” he said. “But you’ll never starve, either. Your family will have enough to get by.” Thinking about my own family again, I realized that even under extreme circumstances, it was true. In the worst crises, we never starved, or even wanted. “You have to ask yourself what you want out of life. If it isn’t money, then maybe having enough is enough.” This conversation helped me get much clearer on myself. It wasn’t my dream to be rich. I knew I wanted to work for a better world. But should it be through law or public administration, or in the church? I meditated and prayed on that question, and I always felt myself coming back to my grandma.

This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path—the my-isn’t-that-impressive path—and keep you there for a long time. Maybe it stops you from swerving, from ever even considering a swerve, because what you risk losing in terms of other people’s high regard can feel too costly. Maybe you spend three years in Massachusetts, studying constitutional law and discussing the relative merits of exclusionary vertical agreements in antitrust cases. For some, this might be truly interesting, but for you it is not. Maybe during those three years you make friends you’ll love and respect forever, people who seem genuinely called to the bloodless intricacies of the law, but you yourself are not called. Your passion stays low, yet under no circumstance will you underperform. You live, as you always have, by the code of effort/result, and with it you keep achieving until you think you know the answers to all the questions—including the most important one. Am I good enough? Yes, in fact I am. What happens next is that the rewards get real. You reach for the next rung of the ladder, and this time it’s a job with a salary in the Chicago offices of a high-end law firm called Sidley & Austin. You’re back where you started, in the city where you were born, only now you go to work on the forty-seventh floor in a downtown building with a wide plaza and a sculpture out front. You used to pass by it as a South Side kid riding the bus to high school, peering mutely out the window at the people who strode like titans to their jobs. Now you’re one of them. You’ve worked yourself out of that bus and across the plaza and onto an upward-moving elevator so silent it seems to glide. You’ve joined the tribe. At the age of twenty-five, you have an assistant. You make more money than your parents ever have. Your co-workers are polite, educated, and mostly white. You wear an Armani suit and sign up for a subscription wine service. You make monthly payments on your law school loans and go to step aerobics after work. Because you can, you buy yourself a Saab. Is there anything to question? It doesn’t seem that way. You’re a lawyer now. You’ve taken everything ever given to you—the love of your parents, the faith of your teachers, the music from Southside and Robbie, the meals from Aunt Sis, the vocabulary words drilled into you by Dandy—and converted it to this. You’ve climbed the mountain. And part of your job, aside from parsing abstract intellectual property issues for big corporations, is to help cultivate the next set of young lawyers being courted by the firm. A senior partner asks if you’ll mentor an incoming summer associate, and the answer is easy: Of course you will. You have yet to understand the altering force of a simple yes. You don’t know that when a memo arrives to confirm the assignment, some deep and unseen fault line in your life has begun to tremble, that some hold is already starting to slip. Next to your name is another name, that of some hotshot law student who’s busy climbing his own ladder. Like you, he’s black and from Harvard. Other than that, you know nothing—just the name, and it’s an odd one. Barack.

Then they got to this dog named Hach-something-or-other. Hatchet-toe, maybe? Seems his owner died (for the record, I object to the word “owner,” but we’ll set that aside for now), and Hach-something-or-other sat around for over nine years in the same spot at the same train station, day after day, waiting for him to return. Thing is, the narrator guy was blabbing on and on about this dog, really over-the-top stuff: How loyal! How loving! Break out the Kleenex! Blah blah blah, wah wah wah! Man’s best friend! They made a statue of this dog. I kid you not. A statue of the dog who sat around nine years waiting for a dead guy. in my opinion That dog was a ninny. A numskull. A nincompoop.

Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping. This is what we’ve done: We’ve tried to find ways to get them to stop jumping. Convince them that burning alive is better than leaving when the shit gets too hot for them to take. We’ve boarded up windows and made better nets to catch them, found more convincing ways to tell them not to jump. They’re making the decision that it’s better to be dead and gone than to be alive in what we have here, this life, the one we made for them, the one they’ve inherited. And we’re either involved and have a hand in each one of their deaths, just like I did with my brother, or we’re absent, which is still involvement, just like silence is not just silence but is not speaking up. I’m in suicide prevention now. I’ve had fifteen relatives commit suicide over the course of my life, not counting my brother. I had one community I was working with recently in South Dakota tell me they were grieved out. That was after experiencing seventeen suicides in their community in just eight months. But how do we instill in our children the will to live? At these conferences. And in the offices. In the emails and at the community events, there has to be an urgency, a do-whatever-at-any-cost sort of spirit behind what we do. Or fuck the programs, maybe we should send the money to the families themselves, who need it and know what to do with it, since we all know what that money goes toward, salaries and conferences like this one. I’m sorry. I get paid outta that shit too, and actually, shit, I’m not sorry, this issue shouldn’t be met with politeness or formality. We can’t get lost in the career advancements and grant objectives, the day-to-day grind, as if we have to do what we do. We choose what we do, and in that choice comes the community. We are choosing for them. All the time. That’s what these kids are feeling. They have no control. Guess what kinda control they do have? We need to be about what we’re always saying we’re about. And if we can’t, and we’re really just about ourselves, we need to step aside, let somebody else from the community who really cares, who’ll really do something, let them come in and help. Fuck all the rest.

see us, if she had a new home with brand new kids, maybe she had forgotten all bought us. I wondered what we did, to make her leave us, never to come back to tell us goodnight or to greet us on those cold and lonely mornings when we sat on the kitchen floor waiting for her. Maybe all mothers left, as she did. I couldn't figure it out. I didn't know other kids' moms, so I didn't have anything to judge it by. I would quickly try to push these thoughts aside and replace

What’s in it for you, the money aside? You can’t tell me you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart. No woman possessing your beauty and intelligence would give up two years of her life to make some scrawny kid’s dream come true.

An eighteen-year-old must be able to contribute to the running of a household. The crutch: We don’t ask them to help much around the house because the checklisted childhood leaves little time in the day for anything aside from academic and extracurricular work; thus, kids don’t know how to look after their own needs, respect the needs of others, or do their fair share for the good of the whole.