Known Star Wars Quotes

I love you and I love you and I love you, on battlefields, in shadows, in fading ink, on cold ice splashed with the blood of seals. In the rings of trees. In the wreckage of a planet crumbling to space. In bubbling water. In bee stings and dragonfly wings, in stars. In the deapths of lonely woods where I wandered in my youth, staring up - and even then you watched me. You slid back through my life, and I have known you since before I knew you.

I know there's no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks, but I don't care, I am me. My name is Valerie, I don't think I'll live much longer and I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography ill ever write, and god, I'm writing it on toilet paper. I was born in Nottingham in 1985, I don't remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tuttlebrook, and she use to tell me that god was in the rain. I passed my 11th lesson into girl's grammar; it was at school that I met my first girlfriend, her name was Sara. It was her wrists. They were beautiful. I thought we would love each other forever. I remember our teacher telling us that is was an adolescent phase people outgrew. Sara did, I didn't. In 2002 I fell in love with a girl named Christina. That year I came out to my parents. I couldn't have done it without Chris holding my hand. My father wouldn't look at me, he told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing. But I had only told them the truth, was that so selfish? Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free. I'd always known what I wanted to do with my life, and in 2015 I starred in my first film, "The Salt Flats". It was the most important role of my life, not because of my career, but because that was how I met Ruth. The first time we kissed, I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again. We moved to a small flat in London together. She grew Scarlet Carsons for me in our window box, and our place always smelled of roses. Those were there best years of my life. But America's war grew worse, and worse. And eventually came to London. After that there were no roses anymore. Not for anyone. I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like collateral and rendition became frightening. While things like Norse Fire and The Articles of Allegiance became powerful, I remember how different became dangerous. I still don't understand it, why they hate us so much. They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I've never cried so hard in my life. It wasn't long till they came for me.It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years, I had roses, and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An Inch, it is small and it is fragile, but it is the only thing the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you. -Valerie

This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most impeccable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known... just- didn't- have it.

Once upon a time, [...]. There was a world that was perfectly made and full of birds and striped creatures and lovely things like honey lilies and star tenzing and weasels— [...] And this world already had light and shadow, so it didn't need any rouge stars to come and save it, and it had no use for bleeding suns or weeping moons, either, and most important, it had never known war, which is a terrible and wasteful thing that no world needs. It had earth and water, air and fire, all four elements, but it was missing the last element. Love. [...] And so this paradise was like a jewel box without a jewel. There it lay, day after day of rose-colored dawns and creature sounds and strange perfumes, and waited for lovers to find it and fill it with their happiness. The end. [...] The story is unfinished. The world is still waiting.

He hadn't known her, didn't know her, of course. There wasn't the time.

I’m too young to die.” “Yeah, and I’m too well known.” -Droma and Han Solo

All ships... we are now at battle stations. I expect this will now be known as the Second Battle of Fondor.

...you must understand that not even the Jedi know all there is to be known about the Force; no mortal mind can. We speak of the will of the Force as someone ignorant of gravity might say it is the will of a river to flow to the ocean; it is a metaphor that describes our ignorance. The simple truth - if any truth is ever simple - is that we do not truly know what the will of the Force may be. We can never know. It is so far beyond our limited understanding that we can only surrender to its mystery.

the three-dimensional world of ordinary experience—the universe filled with galaxies, stars, planets, houses, boulders, and people—is a hologram, an image of reality coded on a distant two-dimensional surface. This new law of physics, known as the Holographic Principle, asserts that everything inside a region of space can be described by bits of information restricted to the boundary.

Crier wasn’t a book or a map or anyth8ing else that could be read once and known in its entirety. Nothing finite like that. There was no beginning to her, no end, no parameters; her body was not the truth of her; Ayla knew that Crier herself was something as wide and endless as the ice fields or the black sea or the evening sky, just as the first stars were beginning to appear. Those first pinpricks of light.

Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem. Elsewhere in the universe, a star manyfold the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole, its exhale bending spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced, every poem and statue and symphony we’ve ever known—an entropic spectacle insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why. “In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the “heavenly breezes” Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made love and war and mathematics on a distant blue dot. But until that day comes, nothing once created ever fully leaves us. Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries and countries and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die—in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love. I will die. You will die. The atoms that huddled for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self will return to the seas that made us. What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust.

His strategy of flying boldly into the face of adversity was studied and taught, and during the Clone Wars would come to be known as “the Tarkin Rush,

That’s not exactly true: I do know what I’m really known for. But there’s nothing I can do about that. A Star Wars duffel bag I could do something about.

The Empire is in chaos. As the old order crumbles, the fledgling New Republic seeks a swift end to the galactic conflict. Many Imperial leaders have fled from their posts, hoping to escape justice in the farthest corners of known space.

One did not need to believe in the Force to know right from wrong. Many who held no faith in the Force acted righteously, and he had known more than one sentient who had acted selfishly, even cruelly, and used belief to justify doing so.

In Star Wars, there was monetary confusion and competition. Despite being backed by metals, credits were refused by planets during periods of uncertainty, such as the Clone Wars. The credit was later known as the “Imperial Credit” and was used by Luke Skywalker to pay Han Solo for transport to the planet Alderaan. Yet smugglers avoided using state-sanctioned money and opted for precious metals like platinum. Those in the Ferengi Alliance traded gold-pressed latinum, a material that could not

I love you. If you’ve come this far, that’s all I can say. I love you and I love you and I love you, on battlefields, in shadows, in fading ink, on cold ice splashed with the blood of seals. In the rings of trees. In the wreckage of a planet crumbling to space. In bubbling water. In bee stings and dragonfly wings, in stars. In the depths of lonely woods where I wandered in my youth, staring up—and even then you watched me. You slid back through my life, and I have known you since before I knew you.

The Empire was not known for its roomy architecture. It was fond of austere pragmatism (that term, austere pragmatism, or sometimes pragmatic austerity, found its way atop many Imperial brochures and propaganda tracts), and so kept its hallways low and narrow.

I compared what was really known about the stars with the account of creation as told in Genesis. I found that the writer of the inspired book had no knowledge of astronomy -- that he was as ignorant as a Choctaw chief -- as an Eskimo driver of dogs. Does any one imagine that the author of Genesis knew anything about the sun -- its size? that he was acquainted with Sirius, the North Star, with Capella, or that he knew anything of the clusters of stars so far away that their light, now visiting our eyes, has been traveling for two million years? If he had known these facts would he have said that Jehovah worked nearly six days to make this world, and only a part of the afternoon of the fourth day to make the sun and moon and all the stars? Yet millions of people insist that the writer of Genesis was inspired by the Creator of all worlds. Now, intelligent men, who are not frightened, whose brains have not been paralyzed by fear, know that the sacred story of creation was written by an ignorant savage. The story is inconsistent with all known facts, and every star shining in the heavens testifies that its author was an uninspired barbarian. I admit that this unknown writer was sincere, that he wrote what he believed to be true -- that he did the best he could. He did not claim to be inspired -- did not pretend that the story had been told to him by Jehovah. He simply stated the "facts" as he understood them. After I had learned a little about the stars I concluded that this writer, this "inspired" scribe, had been misled by myth and legend, and that he knew no more about creation than the average theologian of my day. In other words, that he knew absolutely nothing. And here, allow me to say that the ministers who are answering me are turning their guns in the wrong direction. These reverend gentlemen should attack the astronomers. They should malign and vilify Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Herschel and Laplace. These men were the real destroyers of the sacred story. Then, after having disposed of them, they can wage a war against the stars, and against Jehovah himself for having furnished evidence against the truthfulness of his book.

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons. Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backward somersault through a hoop while whistling the “Star-Spangled Banner,” but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish. In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioral research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.

The mortgage industry, a mutant monster organism of lapsed lending standards and arrant grift on the grand scale, is going to implode like a death star under the weight of these nonperforming loans and drag every tradable instrument known to man into the quantum vacuum of finance that it creates.

In the rings of trees. In the wreckage of a planet crumbling to space. In bubbling water. In bee stings and dragonfly wings, in stars. In the depths of lonely woods where I wandered in my youth, staring up—and even then you watched me. You slid back through my life, and I have known you since before I knew you.

I have known Jedi. Many, many years ago. That knowing was not a gladness for me. I believed I would never know another, and I rejoiced in that belief. But it is a gladness for me to be proven wrong. I am happy to have known you, Jedi Luke Skywalker. You are more than they were. "That's--" Luke shook his head blankly, blinking against the darkness. "I mean, thanks, but I barely know anything." So you believe. But I say to you: you are greater than the Jedi of former days. Luke could only frown, and shake his head again. "What makes you say that?" Because unlike the Knights of old, Jedi Luke Skywalker... You are not afraid of the dark.

The America of today was nowhere near the America of World War II. The young adults of that time period were known as the Greatest Generation. Born in the twenties, they had endured the deprivation of the Great Depression and then patriotically volunteered to fight in World War II or make sacrifices at home to help the war

Your dying mother could not possibly have known how apt the name Victoria was for the year you were born. In 1924 the American Indian Wars will be declared over after a hundred and thirteen years. Any war that long becomes victorious by virtue of simply ending, has no winners or losers only what’s left, what could survive so much war is made more than war by virtue of surviving it.

The Winding Stair My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, 'Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul My Self. The consecretes blade upon my knees Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was, Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass Unspotted by the centuries; That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn From some court-lady's dress and round The wodden scabbard bound and wound Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war? Think of ancestral night that can, If but imagination scorn the earth And intellect is wandering To this and that and t'other thing, Deliver from the crime of death and birth. My Self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it Five hundred years ago, about it lie Flowers from I know not what embroidery - Heart's purple - and all these I set For emblems of the day against the tower Emblematical of the night, And claim as by a soldier's right A charter to commit the crime once more. My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows And falls into the basin of the mind That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, For intellect no longer knows Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known - That is to say, ascends to Heaven; Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone. II My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more? Endure that toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness; The finished man among his enemies? - How in the name of Heaven can he escape That defiling and disfigured shape The mirror of malicious eyes Casts upon his eyes until at last He thinks that shape must be his shape? And what's the good of an escape If honour find him in the wintry blast? I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul. I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest

Palpatine felt that the universe beyond the edges of our maps was where his power came from. Over the many years he, with our aid, sent men and women beyond known space. They built labs and communication stations on distant moons, asteroids, out there in the wilds. We must follow them. Retreat from the galaxy. Go out beyond the veil of stars. We must seek the source of the dark side like a man looking for a wellspring of water.

The economic boom that followed World War II had made them richer than their parents. Instead of a comfortable life with a husband they'd known since high school, they craved glamour and romance. "We all learned from the movie stars," says Loretta, who married three times and now lives in Lake Worth, Florida. "New York then was like long black gloves and little hats, and you met your sweetheart in New York for a drink, kind of thing. It was like Sinatra and stuff like that. The songs had words, and you closed your eyes.

Dr. Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” and a founder of the “Star Wars” missile defense system, proposed seeding the upper atmosphere with millions of tons of sulfur or other heavy metals to create a cloud cover to deflect sun rays and prevent further heating of the earth. Some scientists warned such a program would turn blue skies milky white and perhaps cause droughts and further ozone depletion. Teller admitted the difficulty in persuading the public to allow a program that would pollute the air with metal particles, many known to be harmful to humans.

No Sith remain,” Tashu says. “And the lone Jedi that exists—the son of Anakin Skywalker—possesses an untouchable soul. At least for now. We must instead move toward the dark side. Palpatine felt that the universe beyond the edges of our maps was where his power came from. Over the many years he, with our aid, sent men and women beyond known space. They built labs and communication stations on distant moons, asteroids, out there in the wilds. We must follow them. Retreat from the galaxy. Go out beyond the veil of stars. We must seek the source of the dark side like a man looking for a wellspring of water.

It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.

Nine months later, on September 1, 1939, Oppenheimer and a different collaborator—yet another student, Hartland Snyder—published a paper titled “On Continued Gravitational Contraction.” Historically, of course, the date is best known for Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the start of World War II. But in its quiet way, this publication was also a momentous event. The physicist and science historian Jeremy Bernstein calls it “one of the great papers in twentieth-century physics.” At the time, it attracted little attention. Only decades later would physicists understand that in 1939 Oppenheimer and Snyder had opened the door to twenty-first-century physics. They began their paper by asking what would happen to a massive star that has begun to burn itself out, having exhausted its fuel. Their calculations suggested that instead of collapsing into a white dwarf star, a star with a core beyond a certain mass—now believed to be two to three solar masses—would continue to contract indefinitely under the force of its own gravity. Relying on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, they argued that such a star would be crushed with such “singularity” that not even light waves would be able to escape the pull of its all-encompassing gravity. Seen from afar, such a star would literally disappear, closing itself off from the rest of the universe. “Only its gravitation field persists,” Oppenheimer and Snyder wrote. That is, though they themselves did not use the term, it would become a black hole. It was an intriguing but bizarre notion—and the paper was ignored, with its calculations long regarded as a mere mathematical curiosity.

Both C.K. and Bieber are extremely gifted performers. Both climbed to the top of their industry, and in fact, both ultimately used the Internet to get big. But somehow Bieber “made it” in one-fifteenth of the time. How did he climb so much faster than the guy Rolling Stone calls the funniest man in America—and what does this have to do with Jimmy Fallon? The answer begins with a story from Homer’s Odyssey. When the Greek adventurer Odysseus embarked for war with Troy, he entrusted his son, Telemachus, to the care of a wise old friend named Mentor. Mentor raised and coached Telemachus in his father’s absence. But it was really the goddess Athena disguised as Mentor who counseled the young man through various important situations. Through Athena’s training and wisdom, Telemachus soon became a great hero. “Mentor” helped Telemachus shorten his ladder of success. The simple answer to the Bieber question is that the young singer shot to the top of pop with the help of two music industry mentors. And not just any run-of-the-mill coach, but R& B giant Usher Raymond and rising-star manager Scooter Braun. They reached from the top of the ladder where they were and pulled Bieber up, where his talent could be recognized by a wide audience. They helped him polish his performing skills, and in four years Bieber had sold 15 million records and been named by Forbes as the third most powerful celebrity in the world. Without Raymond’s and Braun’s mentorship, Biebs would probably still be playing acoustic guitar back home in Canada. He’d be hustling on his own just like Louis C.K., begging for attention amid a throng of hopeful entertainers. Mentorship is the secret of many of the highest-profile achievers throughout history. Socrates mentored young Plato, who in turn mentored Aristotle. Aristotle mentored a boy named Alexander, who went on to conquer the known world as Alexander the Great. From The Karate Kid to Star Wars to The Matrix, adventure stories often adhere to a template in which a protagonist forsakes humble beginnings and embarks on a great quest. Before the quest heats up, however, he or she receives training from a master: Obi Wan Kenobi. Mr. Miyagi. Mickey Goldmill. Haymitch. Morpheus. Quickly, the hero is ready to face overwhelming challenges. Much more quickly than if he’d gone to light-saber school. The mentor story is so common because it seems to work—especially when the mentor is not just a teacher, but someone who’s traveled the road herself. “A master can help you accelerate things,” explains Jack Canfield, author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and career coach behind the bestseller The Success Principles. He says that, like C.K., we can spend thousands of hours practicing until we master a skill, or we can convince a world-class practitioner to guide our practice and cut the time to mastery significantly.

Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day- very much such a sweetness as this- I struck my first whale- a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty- forty- forty years ago!- ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without- oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!- when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before- and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare- fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul!- when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world’s fresh bread to my mouldy crusts- away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow- wife? wife?- rather a widow with her husband alive? Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey- more a demon than a man!- aye, aye! what a forty years’ fool- fool- old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!- crack my heart!- stave my brain!- mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearthstone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board!- lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!” “Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! But Ahab’s glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil. “What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.

Phil Klay’s collection of 21st century war tales resonates in Redeployment (Penguin Press, March). For more commercial debuts, there is Naomi Wood in a cross between The Paris Wife and The Women with Mrs. Hemingway (Penguin, June), while Australian Samantha Hayes tackles turbo-charged domestic suspense in Until You’re Mine (Crown, April), and Shane Kuhn looks at the homicidal side of office work in The Intern’s Handbook (S&S, April). Finally, debut novels from well-known personalities include one by Ruth Reichl, the memoirist and former Gourmet editor-in-chief, moving to fiction for the first time with Delicious! (Random House, May). Musician and former soap opera star Rick Springfield also tries his hand at fiction with Magnificent Vibration (Touchstone, May).

Each year they threw open the grounds of the manor house for a party attended by children from some of the roughest districts of Birmingham. They built a large hall known as The Barn in the park to provide tea and refreshments for up to seven hundred children. George Sr., with his love of nature, believed strongly that every child should have access to playing outside in clean air. Games were organized in the open fields, but the star attraction was the open-air baths. More than fifty children could bathe at any one time, and for the young visitors, most of whom had no access to a bath, it was thrilling. The sun on their backs, the sparkling water always inviting, the boys from the inner cities had no desire to leave and would stay in all day, until they were blue and shivering and cleaner than they had been in years.

We are known to be anti-authoritarian, anti-institutional, and notoriously anti-religious—more likely to quote Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Monty Python, or Star Trek than the Bible.

So this be how I bring the cure at last to all the Nighted States, save every poory children, young to die. Is how a city kilt for selfish love, and rise from this same smallness. Be how the new America begin, in wars against all hope—a country with no power in a world that hate its life. Be what I seeing, when our Russian boat pull to the nighten waters, as the shore hush from me, drift away all worlds I known. See the shore and see the smoke of Quantico afar, and I comprehend, this all a country, and is mine. Pasha be by me, in his sorrow, talking how he bad for life, and I hold his hand in habit, watch my townie stars, the brushy land beneath their eyes. And I know, inside this final loss, I going to save this place. I be small in all this blackness world, this ship of drunken vampires, but through my hearten wounds, I living yet, and all my love the same. Nor death been ever arguments to me, I know my truth. I know ain't evils in no life nor cruelties in no red hell can change the vally heart of Ice Cream Star.

Our life force bioenergy has been known by a multitude of names around the world. For instance: Ki is the Japanese equivalent of chi or life energy; Prana is the Hindu term for Life force, or Life energy. Lung is a Tibetan word meaning inner ‘winds’ of life force; Ruach Ha Kodesh is Hebrew for Breath of God; Nafs and Ruh is the Islamic terms for a kind of ‘soul breath’; Spiritus Sancti is the Latin (Catholic) term meaning 'Holy Spirit’; Pneuma is Greek for 'vital breath’; Élan vital is the term for 'vital life-force' in classical European Vitalism; Orgone was the revolutionary psycho-biologist Wilhelm Reich's term for vital life force; nilch'i is the Navajo term for ‘sacred life-giving wind or life-force’; ni is the Lakota Sioux term for life-force; Mana is an Oceanic-Polynesian term (and more recently also adopted as the term for life-force by several fantasy role-playing games); ha, or the more-specifically Hawaiian (Huna), is the term for ‘breath’ or sacred life force; Ka is the Ancient Egyptian idea of a vital essence or life energy; and, of course, the classic term for bio-energy that George Lucas adopted for his modern classic Star Wars is ‘the Force.

Tell me, why did it matter to you who won? I mean, even if you’d won, you still could have released me from the bargain. You could have said I didn’t have to spend those two days with you.” “I could have,” he acknowledged. “But after…after you told me about your father, I wanted you to have his horse back. Rava should have had more respect for his memory. She shouldn’t have taken him--them--away.” Tears stung my eyes, and I swallowed several times to loosen my throat. What a stupid reaction. “Thank you,” I murmured, and I felt his hand close around mine, giving it a squeeze. I sighed contentedly, letting myself enjoy the moment. “What was your father like?” “I don’t know,” he said offhandedly. “What do you mean, you don’t know?” As usual, my typical phrasing was somewhat coarse, driven by my curiosity, and I caught myself, adopting a more considerate tone. “Did he die when you were young?” “No, he’s still alive.” I turned my head to gape at him, greatly confused. “He left you?” “No.” “Then what?” I sat up again, close to exasperation; he just looked at me, bemused, my hand still in his. “Father’s don’t raise their children in Cokyri. They aren’t trusted with such an important responsibility. I never knew mine.” This was not an answer I could have foreseen, and I shifted uneasily, trying to figure out how to proceed. “I’m sorry,” I said lamely. He was quiet at first, his eyes fixed on the darkened sky as he pondered our different experiences. “I never felt sorry about it. My mother was a good woman--she and her maidens took care of me. But like I told you before, I had to work harder than you can imagine to achieve my military rank, and only because I’m a man. I can do everything Rava can do. I always could, but no one would see it, not even her. A struggle like that makes you question things.” “So now you wish you’d known your father?” Again, he reflected. “No. I wish I’d known yours.” I looked away, once more fighting tears. I didn’t understand how he could affect me so deeply. “I’m not sure my father would have been to your liking,” I finally said, meeting his eyes. “I found him brave for his willingness to fight, even when there was no more hope. You would probably have found him weak.” He sat up and gazed earnestly at me. “There is a way to accomplish things, but it’s rarely to declare a war, private or otherwise.” “Sometimes the war is not of your making,” I retorted. “You must fight, otherwise you’re a lamb. And lambs are slaughtered, Saadi.” His brows drew together, and we stared at each other for much longer than we should have, and I knew I had rattled him. Then he shook his head. “See those lights up there? They’re called stars.” I laughed. “I can take a hint. We should go back.” We caught and saddled our mounts, then took our time returning to the city, neither of us really wanting the day to end.

I’ve tried to analyze the four five-star Admirals that we’ve had in this Navy,” Smoot reminisced. “You have a man like King—a terrifically ‘hew to the line’ hard martinet, stony steely gentleman; the grandfather and really lovable old man Nimitz—the most beloved man I’ve ever known; the complete and utter clown Halsey—a clown but if he said, ‘Let’s go to hell together,’ you’d go to hell with him; and then the diplomat Leahy—the open-handed, effluent diplomat Leahy. Four more different men never lived and they all got to be five-star admirals, and why?”15 Smoot answered his own question with one word: “leadership.” Each of the fleet admirals, he said, had “the ability to make men admire them one way or another.” But

The black mask, with its slittled forehead and thick, snoutlike breathing apparatus, covered the face of the man he knew as Kylo Ren. Once, he had known the face behind the mask. Once, he has known the man himself. Now, to Lor San Tekka, only the mask was left. Metal instead of a man.

What was this? Putting aside their famous metallic-blue colors for a day, the Cowboys wore dark blue jerseys with white numerals, white pants, and white helmets with dark blue stars on the sides—their uniform from the early sixties, when they were a pitiful expansion team rather than one of the most popular sports franchises on the planet. The Chiefs wore white pants, bright red jerseys, and bright red helmets with the state of Texas outlined on either side—their attire from when they were known as the Dallas Texans of the American Football League.

Cinder had been a turning point. Loyal soldiers who had executed whole planets at the Emperor’s behest had seen billions of lives snuffed out for no strategic gain and known that the moral calculus had changed.

At the American cemetery in Henri-Chapelle, fifteen miles east of Liège, grave diggers with backhoes worked around the clock to bury as many as five hundred GIs a day. Each was interred in a hole five feet deep, two feet wide, and six and a half feet long, but only after their overshoes had been removed for reuse. One dog tag was placed in the dead man’s mouth, the other tacked to a cross or a Star of David atop the grave. Those whose tags had been lost first went to a morgue tent for photographs and dental charting. Fingertips were cleaned and injected with fluid to enhance prints, while technicians searched for laundry marks, tattoos, and other identifying clues, all to avoid conceding that here was yet another mother’s son known but to God.

Somehow one feels unfettered by any of the harsh, restricting influences of human existence as we live it these days. There are no buildings, no roads, no street lights, no artificial or even natural noises, no hustle and bustle, no need for anyone to shout or to have money or to pretend about anything; those human beings who are with you are probably fairly well known to you, and are there for the same reason that you are—they know the dangers and delights of solitude just the same as you do, and they will react to the unblemished and staggering loveliness of a huge expanse of desert sky, deep blue by day and of a marvellous purple at night sprinkled haphazardly with hundreds and thousands of stars silently lighting up that great canopy of night-time that drifts down with the close of day. I personally think I know of nothing more restorative than lying on the soft sand—cool now after the retirement of the day’s sun— and just staring at the miracle of such a sky. And then you fall asleep, rolled up in a sleeping bag against the considerable fall in temperature as the night goes on, perhaps waking an hour or two before dawn for just long enough to notice that those little stars are still there—as bright as ever—and do not even look as though they are getting ready to be extinguished by the advent of another day. It is a lovely, comforting feeling when the world around you is quite still; and there is no sound anywhere to penetrate the delightful peace that surrounds you. When the dawn comes, and the stars have all gone away, there is something sharp and exhilarating about the smell in the air. It is fresh and clean and tantalisingly different to the atmosphere which will pervade the day once the sun has come up over the distant horizon. Then there will be no escape from its merciless and desiccating heat, which drains you of energy and leaves you burned and incapable of any prolonged activity. And the bright reflection of the sun off the light-coloured sand can be piercing and painful to the eyes. There is probably not even a tiny breeze to move that sullen, sultry air, and there can be no relief from its effects until once more, and inevitably, the great ball of fire that is the sun will slide slowly below the land and allow it to grow cool. It would be foolish to pretend that all of those who served with the LRDG saw the desert in the way that I have described it, all or even much of the time. But I am quite sure that when their minds were not diverted by rather more pressing considerations concerning the enemy, there were few who were not moved by the beauty of the sky at night. They all spent quite a number of hours on sentry duty, when, alone with his thoughts and in such surroundings, no man can be oblivious of such a miraculous revelation.

Montreal November 1704 Temperature 34 degrees Tannhahorens did not look at Mercy. The tip of his knife advanced and the Frenchman backed away from it. He was a very strong man, possibly stronger than Tannhahorens. But behind Tannhahorens were twenty heavily armed braves. The Frenchman kept backing and Tannhahorens kept pressing. No sailor dared move a muscle, not outnumbered as they were. The Sauk let out a hideous wailing war cry. Mercy shuddered with the memory of other war cries. Even more terrified, all the French took another step back--and three of them fell into the St. Lawrence River. The Sauk burst into wild laughter. The voyageurs hooted and booed. The sailors threw ropes to their floundering comrades, because only Indians knew how to swim. Tannhahorens took Mercy’s hand and led her to one of the pirogues, and the Sauk paddled close, hanging on to the edge of the dock so that Mercy could climb in. Mercy could not look at the Sauk. She had shamed Tannhahorens in front of them. Mercy climbed in and Tannhahorens stepped in after her, and the men paddled slowly upstream to Tannhahorens’s canoe. The other pirogue stayed at the wharf, where those Sauk continued to stand, their weapons shining. Eventually the French began to load the ship again. “Daughter,” said Tannhahorens, “the sailors are not good men.” She nodded. He bent until he could look directly into her eyes, something Indians did not care for as a rule. “Daughter.” She flushed scarlet. On her white cheeks, guilt would always be revealed. “The cross protects,” said Tannhahorens. “Or so the French fathers claim. Perhaps it does. But better protection is to stay out of danger.” Did Tannhahorens think she had gotten lost? Did he believe that she had ended up on the wharf by accident? That she was waving the cross around for protection? Or was he, in the way of Indians, allowing that to be the circumstance because it was easier? When he had thanked the Sauk sufficiently and they had agreed to tell Otter that Mercy had gone home with her father, Tannhahorens paddled back to Kahnawake. His long strong arms bent into the current. Her family had not trusted her after all. Tannhahorens must have been following her. Or, in the way of a real father, he had not trusted Montreal. Either way, she was defeated. There was no escape. If there is no escape, and if there is also no ransom, what is there for me? thought Mercy. I don’t want to be alone. A single star in a black and terrible night. How can I endure the name Alone Star? “Why do you call me Munnonock?” she asked. She wanted desperately to go home and end this ugly day. Home. It was still a word of warmth and comfort. Still a word of safety and love. The homes she had known misted and blended and she did not really know if it was Nistenha in the longhouse or Stepmama in Deerfield or her mother in heaven whose home she wanted. “You are brave, daughter,” said Tannhahorens without looking at her, without breaking his rhythm, “and can stand alone. You shine with courage, and so shone every night of your march. You are our hope for sons and daughters to come. On you much depends.

The Federal District, known informally as the Core of Coruscant—or, even more informally, Core Square—was the undisputed center of the galaxy, both politically and socially.

Chester William Nimitz, Sr. was the last surviving officer to serve as a five star admiral in the Unites States Navy, holding the rank of Fleet Admiral. His career started as a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy where he graduated with honors on January 30, 1905. Becoming a submarine officer, Nimitz was responsible of the construction of the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine. During World War II he was appointed the Commander in Chief of the Unites States Pacific Fleet known as CinCPa. His promotions led to his becoming the Chief of Naval Operations, a post he held until 1947. The rank of Fleet Admiral in the U.S. Navy is a lifetime appointment, so he never retired and remained on active duty as the special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy for the Western Sea Frontier. He held this position for the rest of his life, with full pay and benefits. In January 1966 Nimitz suffered a severe stroke, complicated by pneumonia. On February 20, 1966, at 80 years of age, he died at his quarters on Yerba Buena Island in San Francisco Bay. Chester William Nimitz, Sr. was buried with full military honors and lies alongside his wife and some military friends at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.

Having been gathered in stages by an immense array of coupled collectors located on the other side of the planet, a tremendously compact volume of a type of dark energy known as quintessence had been accumulated at the center of the planet. Held in place inside a roiling molten metal core by the frozen world’s powerful magnetic field,

At incredible velocity and accelerating exponentially, the concentrated volume of quintessence escaped, transforming as it did so into a state known as phantom energy and following the artificial line of egress that had been provided.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. In Star Wars, a currency known as the “Galactic Credit Standard” or “credit” functioned as money.88 According to Wookieepedia, a website devoted to all things Star Wars, credit was created on Sojourn, a moon on which the InterGalactic Business Clan (IGBC) vacationed.

Known as "Ike,” Eisenhower was born prior to the Spanish American War on October 14, 1890. Graduating from West Point Military Academy in 1915, he served under a number of talented generals including John J. “Blackjack” Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall. Although for the greatest time he held the rank of Major, he was quickly promoted to the rank of a five star general during World War II. During this war he served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. Eisenhower was responsible for organizing the invasion of North Africa and later in 1944, the invasion of Normandy, France and Germany. Following World War II, influential citizens and politicians from both political parties urged Eisenhower to run for president. Becoming a Republican, the popular general was elected and became the 34th President of the United States. Using the slogan “I like Ike!” he served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. Having witnessed the construction of the German Autobahn, one of lasting achievements we still use is the Interstate Highway System, authorized in 1956. ] He reasoned that our cities would be targets in a future war; therefore the Interstate highways would help evacuate them and allow the military greater flexibility in their maneuvers. Along with many other accomplishments during his administration, on January 3, 1959 Alaska became the 49th state and on August 21, 1959 Hawaii became the 50th state. On March 28, 1969, at 79 years of age, Eisenhower died of congestive heart failure at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C. He was laid to rest on the grounds of the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. Eisenhower is buried alongside his son Doud, who died at age 3 in 1921. His wife Mamie was later buried next to him after her death on November 1, 1979.

Very like the wind, our feelings are," Yoda said. It was something he'd repeated many times over the years Kantam had been training with him, and Kantam had never totally known what to do with it. "The wind touches us. We experience it," Kantam said, finishing the teaching. "It is real. But it passes. So, too, do our feelings." Yoda nodded. "But sometimes, there is a hurricane. The winds are so strong, they lift us. Carried away, we can be. Everything we know and trust, gone, hm? Then easy it becomes to give in to anger, aggression, hm? Fear." "So I should stay?" Kantam knew that wasn't the right answer, that there wasn't one. But all these poems and metaphors just seemed a million light-years away, even as they hit home to what Kantam felt. Yoda opened his eyes, met Kantam's worried gaze. "You must choose the Force. One does not fall into being a Jedi Knight by mistake, hm? Or because it is convenient! You must choose the Force, with your whole heart. To do this, you must learn, again, to listen. To hear the world, the world outside of your own emotions. Even when they are very, very loud, heh, a hurricane.

This was also concerning. When most people said they had a slight problem, it meant they’d done something like burn the toast. For Erica, it was most likely something far worse. For example, a missile attack. A kid my age really shouldn’t have known what an incoming missile looked like. But sadly, I had seen one more times than I’d seen Star Wars. And so I instantly recognized the shiny silver object racing toward us outside my window.

dlaurent The Ballad of Johnny Jihad (Down Desert Storm Way). © c. 2001 During the Gulf War (1990-1991), American Pro-Taliban Jihadist John Philip Walker Lindh was captured while serving with the enemy forces. Here is his tale in song and legend. My nowex at the time did not want me to run to the radio station with this, thought I’d look singularly ridiculii. The following, 'The Ballad of Johnny Jihad' is sung to the tune of 'The Ballad of Jed Clampett' (1962), commonly known as 'The Beverly Hillbillies' song, the theme tune for the TV show series starring Buddy Ebsen. (Lyrics, Paul Henning, vocals Jerry Scoggins, Lester Flatt; master musicians of the art of the ballad and bluegrass ways, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs). The Ballad of Johnny Jihad (Sung) Come and listen to the story of Johnny Jihad, Who left home and country to study his Islam, And then one day he was shooting at our troops, So down through the camp did the government swoop. (Voice Over): ‘Al Que-da that is, Af-ghani Tali-ban, Terror-ist . . .’ (Sung) Well, the first thing you know ol’ John from ’Frisco roamed, The lawman said ‘he’s a lad misunderstood very far from home.’ Said, ‘Californee is the place he oughta be,’ So they request his trial be moved to Berkeley . . . (Voice Over): ‘Liberals that is, group-ies, peace-activists . . .’ Announcer: The Johnny Jihad Show! (Intense bluegrass banjo pickin’ music) . . . (Sung) Now its time to say goodbye to John and all his kin, Hope ya don’t think of him as a fightin’ Taliban, You’re all invited back again to this insanity, To get yourself a heapin’ helpin’ of this travesty . . . Johnny Jihad, that’s what they call ’im now Nice guy; don’t get fooled now, y’hear? (Voice Over): ‘Lawyerin’ that is, O.J.ism, media-circus . . .’ (Music) . . . end

Part Two: When St. Kari of the Blade Met Darth Vader, Star Wars Dark Lord of the Sith  (Earlier, the Emperor commanded Lord Vader to make contact . . . “I have felt a non-tremor in the Nether-Force” “I have not, my master.” “Yes, well, that is why I’m ‘the Emp’ and you are not . . . Um, we have a new enemy, the non-entity known as Blade Kári. She’s running around all over the place gunning for that brat kid of yours.” “Hmm. Interesting,” tight-lipped Darth. “Anyway, I–hey, how can all this mish-mash be?” “Search your feelings, Lord Vader” the Emperor solemnized. “If you feel nothing as usual, you know it to be true or false. By now your guess is as good as mine with this Force stuff.” “Damn!–If you say so,” Vader said smacking his hand. “If she could be turned she would make a powerful ally.” “Yesss . . . can it be done? Bring the Valkyrie creature to me. See to it personally, Lord Vader. The more she is loose the more of a train wreck waiting to happen she becomes to us. Besides, it will break up the monotony until Bingo Wednesday night.” “Okay. She will join us or die–again and again and again–until we all get it right. “Now, what about my son?” grumbed Vader deeply. “Why fish for guppies when you can land a Megalodon? Go on. Get out of here. You Annoy me.” “Yes, my Mahhster . . . ”). back to the action . . . “—Oh yeah? Who is he, this Vader person? Someone I should meet?” Kari percolated. Luke mulled. “No. He is evil and very powerful. A ȿith lord.” “A Scythian, eh? Humm.—for a minute there, you had me worried. “Look—there he is!” Luke shouted scrunching down and pulling the girl besides him. Vader stwalked down the landing craft’s platform decked in his usual evil attire looking at the pile of messy clones. “He doesn’t look so tough’st to me. Pretty trippy wardrobe though. Maybe that is why he is evil. Clothes do that, costuming up n’ all. I think I’ll go down and see him.” Kari launched off to meet him. Luke trying to pull her back, she running up to the battle line strewn with dead clones. “Hey Darth’st.” “Did you do all this? Hmmph. The Force is with you, young Blade Kári, but you are not a Valkyrie yet.” “Sez ‘st who? You’st? Do not be so blamed melodramatic. This ’tain’t no movie ʎ’know’st, well leastways, not yet. I shall have you know I am a charter member of your friendly neighborhood Valkyrie club and my dues are so in.” Vader ignited his red lightsaber (he was not one for small talk). “Where can I get one of those, she asked Vader, pointing to his glowing blade of laser evil. Do they come in assorted colors? I want one!” she yelled back at Luke. Vader struck savagely at the girl, she mildly pirouetting on her heels to evade the cut then giggling, diminutively popped him squarely in his breather-chest contraption bugging him. Again, he struck, the blade harmlessly passing through her. “Impressive, most impressive. And you say you can’t get a date?” “Best take it easy Sith-meister. You’re riling me.” Luke’s eyes bulged. He could not believe it, remembering his own stupid head words to Yoda, his spry little green master. Vader paused, breathing heavily as was typical of him like he was a 20-pack a day smoker. “Your destiny lies with me, young Kári. Look here, if you really want one of these red glow in the Nether dark cutters, come with me.” “Honestly?” Luke nodded his head back and forth as if agreeing with himself. Where had he heard that before . . . ? The kid was going to be nothing but trouble from here on out he foresaw. end stay tuned for part iii  

No, the only peace you’ve ever known has come from the barrel of a gun. You find peace by exploiting others. You see conflict on your own world and find peace by turning away and closing your eyes, pretending all the petty, selfish, self-centered ideologies that lead to war don’t exist.

A Star Wars comic book writer created Soon Bayts, who is also known as Jedi Master Bayts, as a joke and the publisher didn't notice until it was too late.

There are patterns in imperial communications, as there are in everything else. Once the pattern is known, knowledge is easier to obtain.

Bowes collected many honorary titles in his life: his real title, “major,” was often suspected of being a trump-up, but it was genuine enough—he had held that rank in the U.S. Army Reserve during World War I. In retrospect, the show produced few stars of the first magnitude (Beverly Sills, Frank Sinatra, and Robert Merrill were the best-known Amateur Hour winners). “To be sure, minor talents have been discovered,” Radio Guide conceded. “But even the best half-dozen performers who have moved up in the entertainment world through the Amateur Hour still are not averaging more than $100 a week. Compare this figure with Major Bowes’ own income of something like $40,000 a week, and compare that with the $40–60 earned by players in his units. It’s something to think about.

Palpatine smiled and gestured. Anakin knelt before him, and the words came—the words he had used to pledge to the Jedi, but changed, as he had changed. “I pledge myself to your care,” he said. “To the ways of the Sith.” “Anakin Skywalker, you are one with the Order of the Sith Lords,” Palpatine replied. “Henceforth, you shall be known as…Darth Vader.” “Thank you, my Master.

It hurt Obi-Wan to see black smoke billowing from the Jedi Temple. It hurt more to enter and find clones dressed in Jedi robes, waiting to ambush any real Jedi who came in. But what hurt the most was seeing the bodies of beings he had known and worked with, lying everywhere, and the Padawans and younglings. No one had survived.

Leia had always known this, had always been aware that she could never, ever look back.

Woodard was riding at the back of a Greyhound bus, because that is where Black people traveling through the South sat in 1946, no matter what they had done for their country. He proudly wore his green army uniform. Three stripes on each arm showed his rank. He had four medals pinned on his chest. There was a Good Conduct Medal, an American Campaign Medal, a World War II Victory Medal, and a battle star Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal. He was awarded the last one for bravery. When the bus arrived at a rest stop in a South Carolina town now known as Batesburg-Leesville, Police Chief Lynwood Shull and his officers dragged Woodard off the bus. The bus driver hadn’t liked the way Woodard asked to use the restroom fifty-four miles back, outside of Augusta. So, when the bus got to the town, the driver called the police, even though he and Woodard hadn’t shared two words since that stop. The police demanded to see Woodard’s discharge papers. Then the cops forced him into an alley, where they beat him savagely. For good measure, the police chief used his baton to gouge Woodard’s eye sockets until both eyeballs ruptured beyond repair. Woodard was blind from that day forward. He was twenty-seven. And remember, all this happened while he was wearing the very uniform that identified his service to his country

From the first moment he had set eyes on Eliana, he had known her in his bones, in the knit of his muscles, in the roar of his blood. As a boy, he had cradled her tiny infant body in his arms and done everything he could to hold on to her even as the world ripped itself apart at their feet. And now, as a man, her closeness changed the air around him, drawing his senses taut as bowstrings and lighting his skin from the inside out, as if he had consumed a brew of stars that wouldn’t stop spinning. But in the war room, the air remained dull and unremarkable, and he knew she wasn’t there even before he scanned the room to confirm it. Ordinarily, he wasn’t one to make a scene, but in that instance, he felt dangerously close to it. “Where is she?” he said very quietly,

Dark the sea was: but I saw him, One great head with goggle eyes, Like a diabolic cherub Flying in those fallen skies. I have heard the hoarse deniers, I have known the wordy wars; I have seen a man, by shouting, Seek to orphan all the stars. I have seen a fool half-fashioned Borrow from the heavens a tongue, So to curse them more at leisure-- --And I trod him not as dung. For I saw that finny goblin Hidden in the abyss untrod; And I knew there can be laughter On the secret face of God. Blow the trumpets, crown the sages, Bring the age by reason fed! (He that sitteth in the heavens, 'He shall laugh'--the prophet said.

Known as “Leni,” Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born on August 22, 1902. During the Third Reich she was known throughout Germany as a close friend and confidant of the Adolf Hitler. Recognized as a strong swimmer and talented artist, she studied dancing as a child and performed across Europe until an injury ended her dancing career. During the 1920’s Riefenstahl was inspired to become an actress and starred in five motion pictures produced in Germany. By 1932 she directed her own film “Das Blaue Licht.” With the advent of the Hitler era she directed “Triumph des Willens” anf “Olympia” which became recognized as the most innovative and effective propaganda films ever made. Many people who knew of her relationship with Hitler insisted that they had an affair, although she persistently denied this. However, her relationship with Adolf Hitler tarnished her reputation and haunted her after the war. She was arrested and charged with being a Nazi sympathizer, but it was never proven that she was involved with any war crimes. Convinced that she had been infatuated and involved with the Führer, her reputation and career became totally destroyed. Her former friends shunned her and her brother, who was her last remaining relative, was killed in action on the “Eastern Front.” Seeing a bleak future “Leni” Riefenstahl left Germany, to live amongst the Nuba people in Africa. During this time Riefenstahl met and began a close friendship with Horst Kettner, who assisted her with her acknowledged brilliant photography. They became an item from the time she was 60 years old and he was 20. Together they wrote and produced photo books about the Nuba tribes and later filmed marine life. At that time she was one of the world's oldest scuba divers and underwater photographer. Leni Riefenstahl died of cancer on September 8, 2003 at her home in Pöcking, Germany and was laid to rest at the Munich Waldfriedhof.

What is now Tanzania was once Tanganyika and before that part of British East Africa and prior to that a colony of Germany. During World War I the fighting actually came to the Continent of Africa. Known as the East African Campaign, many of the battles almost went unreported and are little known, however the romance of this war is portrayed by many novels and the well-known movie “African Queen,” starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. The film is a stretch, but strictly speaking it is based on a true story, however even saying this, neither the original novel nor the movie bears more than a passing resemblance to reality. The four years of warfare mostly fought in Europe, cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and affected many millions more. The campaigns, skirmishes and battles in Africa, although relatively small, cost the lives of 14 German soldiers with 34 being wounded whereas the British had a total of about 150 casualties. “In actual fact the four years of warfare from 1914 to 1918, cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and affected many millions more. The campaigns, skirmishes and battles although relatively small, cost the lives of 14 German troops with 34 being wounded whereas the British had a total of about 150 casualties. An example of the type of battles fought in Africa was the Battle of Bukoba. Here the British objective was the destruction of the Bukoba wireless station on the shore of Lake Victoria, it was decided that the raid should take the form of an amphibious assault by the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment and the 25th Frontier Royal Fusiliers who served in the African Theatre of war around Lake Tanganyika, British East African and German East African territory. Upon reaching the objective at Bukoba, the attackers were mistakenly landed in a large swamp and were pinned down by fierce rifle

In the nine years I’d known Snake, this was the first time I’d heard him reference Star Wars.

I think that is not true," Uncle Henrik said. "I think you are like your mama,and like your papa, and like me. Frightened, but determined, and if the time came to be brave, I quite sure you would be very, very brave." "But," he added, "it is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything. And so your mama does not know everything.Neither do I. We only know what we need to know." "Do you understand what I am saying?" he asked, looking into her eyes. Annemarie frowned. She wasn't sure.What did bravery mean? She had been very frightened the day--not long ago though now it seemed far in the past-- when the soldier had stopped her on the street and asked questions in his rough voice. And she had not known that the German were going to take away the Jews. And so, when the soldiers asked, looking at Ellen that day, "What is the name of your friend?"she had been able to handle him, even though she was frightened. If she had known everything, it would have not been so easy to be brave.

Dr. Adam Grant, professor of organizational psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says this is because J. J. Abrams is “a giver,” a rarity in an industry full of takers. No good TV show or film is made by one person, but whereas Hollywood bigshots are known for being credit-hogs, J. J. Abrams is a fantastic collaborator. Grant would know. He wrote the book on the subject. In his bestseller, Give and Take, he presents rigorous research showing that a disproportionate number of the most successful people in a given industry are extremely generous. From medical students to engineers to salespeople, his studies find givers at the top of the ladder. “Being a giver doesn’t require extraordinary acts of sacrifice,” Grant writes in Give and Take. “It just involves a focus on acting in the interests of others, such as by giving help, providing mentoring, sharing credit, or making connections for others.” Abrams is known, acquaintances tell me, for his kindness and lack of ego, in addition to his penchant for mystery. That’s how he attracts the best people to his staff. And that’s how he’s managed to climb so far so fast.* Staffers with whom I e-mailed and met at the “typewriter shop” were eager to keep Abrams away from me because, according to his reputation, he’d probably spend way too much time helping this shaggy-haired writer out when he ought to be, you know, filming Star Wars. Initially, Abrams helped out better-connected people than himself, and doing so helped him superconnect. But once he was the superconnector, he still helped people. That’s how to tell if someone is a giver, or a taker in giver’s clothing. “If you do it only to succeed,” Grant says, in the long run, “it probably won’t work.

Although Obi-Wan had never really known his own family, he did have sympathy for Anakin’s loss. And as Anakin’s powers grew stronger, Obi-Wan began to believe that his Padawan may have been transformed by the tragedy for the better.