Mcnair Quotes

Neil McNair has become my alarm clock, if alarm clocks had freckles and knew all your insecurities.

I, um, I read what you wrote in my yearbook. In my defense, it was tomorrow, and I thought you hated me. But I’m in love with you, Neil McNair -Neil Perlman- and I think maybe I’ve been in love with you for a long time. It just took my brain a while to catch up to my heart. I don’t know how I missed it, but you are pretty fucking great.

You know it never ceases to amaze me how people twist your words.I used to et it bother me that I was so misunderstood, but now I realise, I can tell a lot about people by what they CHOOSE to see in me

Don't spend your days sitting around waiting for something to happen. Get outside and make it happen!Live like a warrior, be at one with nature, fearless in the moment....because this moment will never happen again so don't waste it!

The fantasy: that my perfect high school boyfriend would be the epitome of romance. The reality: Neil McNair has been here all along.

...and then I’m spiraling again. In the light, his freckles are almost glowing, his hair is a golden amber. Everything about him is softer nearly to the point of appearing blurry, like I cant tell who this new version of Neil McNair is, leaving me more uncertain than ever.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss. Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight. We've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together. For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers. And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them. I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it." There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." Thank you.

IF you don't do YOU. You doesn't get done and the world (God's Creation) is incomplete.

Nervous, Artoo?" McNair asks. "Not a bit." I straighten my cardigan. "You?" "Sure, a little." "Admitting that doesn't make you better than me." "No, but it makes me more honest.

This moment with my parents makes me wonder if today will be a day of lasts. Last day of school, last morning text from McNair, last photo with this aging backpack.

On Monday morning, I want to walk right back into home room with Mrs. Kozlowski, debate with McNair during AP Government, joke with Mara and Kirby at lunch. I’m not ready for the world beyond Westview yet.

Artoo, I'm switching back to regular handwriting. Calligraphy is hard, and I didn't bring my good pens. Or I need more practice. Right now you're sitting across from me, probably writing HAGS 30 times in a row. I know a little bit of a lot of languages, but even so, I struggle to put this into words. Okay. I'm just going to do it. First of all, I need you to know I'm not putting this out there with any hope of reciprocation. This is something I have to get off my chest (cliché, sorry) before we go our separate ways (cliché). It's the last day of school, and therefore my last chance. "Crush" is too weak a word to describe how I feel. It doesn't do you justice, but maybe it works for me. I am the one who is crushed. I'm crushed that we have only ever regarded each other as enemies. I'm crushed when the day ends and I haven't said anything to you that isn't coated in five layers of sarcasm. I'm crushed, concluding this year without having known that you like melancholy music or eat cream cheese straight from the tub in the middle of the night or play with your bangs when you're nervous, as though you're worried they look bad. (They never do.) You're ambitious, clever, interesting, and beautiful. I put "beautiful" last because for some reason, I have a feeling you'd roll your eyes if I wrote it first. But you are. You're beautiful and adorable and so fucking charming. And you have this energy that radiates off you, a shimmering optimism I wish I could borrow for myself sometimes. You're looking at me like you can't believe I'm not done yet, so let me wrap this up before I turn it into a five-paragraph essay. But if this were an essay, here's the thesis statement: I'm in love with you, Rowan Roth. Please don't make too much fun of me at graduation? Yours, Neil P. McNair

the fantasy: that my perfect high school boyfriend would be the epitome of romance. the reality: neil mcnair has been here all along

I said that we should be all right if we had some cigarettes. I only meant this as a joke; nevertheless half an hour later McNair appeared with two packets of Lucky Strike. He had braved the pitch-dark streets, roamed by Anarchist patrols who had twice stopped him at the pistol’s point and examined his papers. I shall not forget this small act of heroism. We were very glad of the cigarettes.

Worsley made sure that they followed the advice of Matty McNair, who had instructed them on Baffin Island: “Stay together, never separate.” She had drummed into them one other rule: “If you get wet, you die.

Because you’re interrogating me!” He whips off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “It was a slip of the tongue. And I hate that too, almost as much as the freckles. It always gives away how I’m feeling. I’ve never been able to talk to a cute girl without turning into a fucking tomato.” “Would I fall into that category?” His deepening blush says it all. Huh. Neil McNair thinks I am a cute girl. “You know you’re not unattractive,” he says after a few seconds of silence. “You don’t need me to validate that.

He also doesn’t need to know about the dream I had a few months ago. It wasn’t my fault—we’d been texting before bed, and it had screwed with my subconscious. For all I know, his subconscious gave him wacky dreams too. We were at a fancy restaurant eating math tests and lab reports when he took my face in his hands and kissed me. He tasted like printer ink. My logical side intervened and woke me up, but I couldn’t look him in the eye for an entire week after that. I’d dream-cheated on Spencer with Neil McNair. It was horrifying.

This message, it’s sweeter than any romance novel. It’s real. Neil loves me. Earlier today, I couldn’t picture him kissing anyone. Is it because I can only picture this happening with me, that Rowan plus Neil is this inevitability everyone has known except us? Kirby and Mara, Chantal Okafor in student council, Logan Perez who let us into the safe zone, my parents… Do I love Neil McNair? Even if I’m not entirely certain, the reality is that I really think I could. I have to get off this fucking Ferris wheel. Life is funny, though: the most romantic moment of my life, and I’m at the top of a Ferris wheel with a yearbook instead of the boy who wrote in it that he’s in love with me.

Thank God, he half smiles at that. “Only the best for Rowan Roth,” he says, and then I’m spiraling again. In the light, his freckles are almost glowing, his hair a golden amber. Everything about him is softer nearly to the point of appearing blurry, like I can’t quite tell who this new version of Neil McNair is, leaving me more uncertain than ever.

The ear may be a more open organ than the eye when it comes to the pleasure of words.

Nothing lasts forever, so live life large. Do all the things you've been putting off, avoid the drama, laugh it off! Make sure your loved ones know it and make every moment count.

Be a reflection of what you want to receive. TRUST is the beginning of CONNECTION

Poetry... It's a lot like prayer.

Artoo, I'm switching back to regular handwriting. Calligraphy is hard, and I didn't bring my good pens. Or I need more practice. Right now you're sitting across from me, probably writing HAGS 30 times in a row. I know a little bit of a lot of languages, but even so, I struggle to put this into words. Okay. I'm just going to do it. First of all, I need you to know I'm not putting this out there with any hope of reciprocation. This is something I have to get off my chest (cliché, sorry) before we go our separate ways (cliché). It's the last day of school, and therefore my last chance. "Crush" is too weak a word to describe how I feel. It doesn't do you justice, but maybe it works for me. I am the one who is crushed. I'm crushed that we have only ever regarded each other as enemies. I"m crushed when the day ends and I haven't said anything to you that isn't cloaked in five layers of sarcasm. I'm crushed, concluding this year without having known that you like melancholy music or eat cream cheese straight from the tub in the middle of the night or play with your bangs when you're nervous, as though you're worried they look bad. (They never do.) You're ambitious, clever, interesting, and beautiful. I put "beautiful" last because for some reason, I have a feeling you'd roll your eyes if I wrote it first. But you are. You're beautiful and adorable and so fucking charming. And you have this energy that radiates off you, a shimmering optimism I wish I could borrow for myself sometimes. You're looking at me like you can't believe I'm not done yet, so let me wrap this up before I turn it into a five-paragraph essay. But if it were an essay, here's the thesis statement. I am in love with you, Rowan Roth Please don't make too much fun of me at graduation? Yours, Neil P. McNair

He doesn’t need to know that a couple times, when our shoulders brushed in the hall, I felt this flip in my belly because I was fourteen and boys were a mysterious new species. Touching one, even by accident, was like passing your hand through a flame. I wasn’t proud of it, but my body hadn’t quite caught up with my brain. And my brain had decided twelve days into freshman year that Neil McNair was to be despised, his destruction earning slot number ten on my success guide.

AN INCOMPLETE LIST OF NEIL MCNAIR’S FAVORITE WORDS - petrichor: the scent of the earth after it rains (English) - tsundoku: acquiring more books than you could ever read (Japanese) - hygge: a warm, cozy feeling associated with relaxing, eating, and drinking with loved ones (Danish) - Fernweh: a feeling of homesickness for a place you’ve never been (German) - Fremdschamen: the feeling of shame on someone else’s behalf; secondhand embarrassment (German) - davka: the opposite of what is expected (Hebrew)

a tragic roster of activists and innocents had died for the crime of being black or supporting blacks in their state. There was Willie Edwards Jr., the truck driver forced off a bridge to his death by four Klansmen in Montgomery. There was William Lewis Moore, the man from Baltimore shot and killed in Attalla while trying to walk a letter denouncing segregation 385 miles to the governor of Mississippi. There were four young girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, killed by the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. There was thirteen-year-old Virgil Lamar Ware, shot to death on the handlebars of his brother’s bicycle in the same city. There was Jimmie Lee Jackson, beaten and shot by state troopers in Marion while he tried to protect his mother and grandfather during a protest. There was the Reverend James Reeb, the Unitarian minister beaten to death in Selma. There was Viola Gregg Liuzzo, shot by Klansmen while trying to ferry marchers between Selma and Montgomery. There was Willie Brewster, shot to death while walking home in Anniston. There was Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a seminarian registering black voters who was arrested for participating in a protest and then shot by a deputy sheriff in Hayneville. There was Samuel Leamon Younge Jr., murdered by a gas station owner after arguing about segregated restrooms.

In contemplating who should command the Army’s multiplying regiments and divisions, Marshall and his training chief, Lesley J. McNair, kept a list in a safe of more than 400 colonels with perfect efficiency reports. Allen, neither a full colonel nor perfect, was not on it. Rather, he was facing court-martial for insubordination in 1940 when word arrived of his double promotion, from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general. He was the first man in his former West Point class to wear a general’s stars. No man better exemplified the American military leadership’s ability to identify, promote, and in some cases forgive those officers best capable of commanding men in battle. Among the encomiums that followed Allen’s promotion was a penciled note: “Us guys in the guardhouse want to congratulate you, too.

His months of teaching experience were now a lost age of youth and innocence. He could no longer sit in his office at Fort McNair, look out over the elm trees and the golf course, and encompass the world within "neat, geometric patterns" that fit within equally precise lectures. Policy planning was a very different responsibility, but explaining just how was "like trying to describe the mysteries of love to a person who has never experienced it." There was, however, an analogy that might help. "I have a largish farm in Pennsylvania."...it had 235 acres, on each of which things were happening. Weekends, in theory, were days of rest. But farms defied theory: Here a bridge is collapsing. No sooner do you start to repair it than a neighbor comes to complain about a hedge row which you haven't kept up half a mile away on the other side of the farm. At that very moment your daughter arrives to tell you that someone left the gate to the hog pasture open and the hogs are out. On the way to the hog pasture, you discover that the beagle hound is happily liquidating one of the children's pet kittens. In burying the kitten you look up and notice a whole section of the barn roof has been blown off and needs instant repair. Somebody shouts from the bathroom window that the pump has stopped working, and there's no water in the house. At that moment, a truck arrives with five tons of stone for the lane. And as you stand there hopelessly, wondering which of these crises to attend to first, you notice the farmer's little boy standing silently before you with that maddening smile, which is halfway a leer, on his face, and when you ask him what's up, he says triumphantly 'The bull's busted out and he's eating the strawberry bed'. Policy planning was like that. You might anticipate a problem three or four months into the future, but by the time you'd got your ideas down on paper, the months had shrunk to three to four weeks. Getting the paper approved took still more time, which left perhaps three or four days. And by the time others had translated those ideas into action, "the thing you were planning for took place the day before yesterday, and everyone wants to know why in the hell you didn't foresee it a long time ago." Meanwhile, 234 other problems were following similar trajectories, causing throngs of people to stand around trying to get your attention: "Say, do you know that the bull is out there in the strawberry patch again?

Never try to hide the real you. Be yourself and stand up for what you believe in. Question what other people tell you, think things though. Never regret your mistakes as there's a reason for everything.Grudges are toxic and heavy to bear. Let them go, learn from everything and continue to grow.

Even dying, eaten alive...Threadgill still felt an uncanny true sorrow for the thing killing him. The beast was just so...ugly. Just so hideous. In its life, it would always be despised and deeply feared by every other living thing....It would live to kill, and killing would be its life. Forever.

It is a truly lonely world without animals.

Kindness and time might start life all over again.

J.F. McNair reported that Malays in Perak formally built and instituted a mosque whenever a village grew larger than forty houses.

Artoo, I’m switching back to regular handwriting. Calligraphy is hard, and I didn’t bring my good pens. Or I need more practice. Right now you’re sitting across from me, probably writing HAGS 30 times in a row. I know a little bit of a lot of languages, but even so, I struggle to put this into words. Okay. I’m just going to do it. First of all, I need you to know I’m not putting this out there with any hope of reciprocation. This is something I have to get off my chest (cliché, sorry) before we go our separate ways (cliché). It’s the last day of school, and therefore my last chance. “Crush” is too weak a word to describe how I feel. It doesn’t do you justice, but maybe it works for me. I am the one who is crushed. I’m crushed that we have only ever regarded each other as enemies. I’m crushed when the day ends and I haven’t said anything to you that isn’t cloaked in five layers of sarcasm. I’m crushed, concluding this year without having known that you like melancholy music or eat cream cheese straight from the tub in the middle of the night or play with your bangs when you’re nervous, as though you’re worried they look bad. (They never do.) You’re ambitious, clever, interesting, and beautiful. I put “beautiful” last because for some reason, I have a feeling you’d roll your eyes if I wrote it first. But you are. You’re beautiful and adorable and so fucking charming. And you have this energy that radiates off you, a shimmering optimism I wish I could borrow for myself sometimes. You’re looking at me like you can’t believe I’m not done yet, so let me wrap this up before I turn it into a five-paragraph essay. But if it were an essay, here’s the thesis statement: I am in love with you, Rowan Roth. Please don’t make too much fun of me at graduation? Yours, Neil P. McNair

My greatest recommendation is that you read some poetry. If you can’t come to terms with my prose, go with some RH Sin or Randall McNair, but read something.

According to Principal Meadows, you speak about a hundred languages," I continue. "So emojis might not be advanced enough to describe you." "True," he says, "but I'm shocked you'd pass up the opportunity to tell me I'm the poop emoji." "If you feel that's the emoji that captures the essence of Neil McNair, who am I to disagree?

caitiff,

To repair the agency’s standing with potential applicants, NASA brought on a celebrity spokesperson—none other than Nichelle Nichols, the former Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek. Relentless in her recruitment efforts, Nichols made her case across fifteen colleges and universities, thirty-four professional organizations for women and minorities, and in nearly forty radio and television appearances, like the one Ron McNair had seen.81,82 By the end of Nichols’s campaign, NASA was buried under eight thousand applications.

You could have lived quietly as slaves, but because you longed to be free you are with me here, and to gain that end you must be valiant, strong and undismayed. 24th June 1314, Robert de Brus Bannockburn Battle

McNair is one of the more interesting figures floating around in the crowded world of mid-1960s Soho, and his trajectory reveals much about the musical fluidity of the times. In the closing years of the 1960s McNair released his giddy flute to fly across John Martyn’s second album The Tumbler, Davy Graham’s Large as Life and Twice as Natural (1968), Magna Carta’s self-titled progressive-folk debut from 1969, and Hello (also 1969), an album of introspective, symphonic folk-pop by Marc Brierley.

Five years after Affectionate Fink the musical landscape was vastly altered, and McNair could make an album like The Fence, featuring free pianist Keith Tippett, Tony Carr, Traffic’s Steve Winwood and Ric Grech, and Pentangle’s Terry Cox and Danny Thompson. The same year (1970) he also turned out the Ellingtonian cocktail jazz of Flute and Nut with John Cameron, and appeared in Ginger Baker’s hard-driving Air Force supergroup, featuring the same Traffic members plus Denny Laine of Wings and Graham Bond. On his final cue on Kes, a thirty-eight-second, rain-sodden lament as the bird is buried, he blows a murmuring, unresolved line loaded with trepidation. The cancer that had been killing him since the late 1960s finally finished its work on 7 March 1971.

The difficult we do now. The impossible takes a little longer.

Seventeen years. Seventeen years since I pressed replay on my soul. Seventeen years of tears and ecstasies, lessons and experiences, dreams, disappointments, reality checks, and missed opportunities. Seventeen years of life. I have fallen in love with love, fell out of it, been repulsed by it, and fell back into it. Traveled the world, cultured my ignorant woes. Cruised to success, made wrong turns, slammed on my brakes, and speed to my temporary finish line. I have overflowed with rage and injustice, coping with my demons by burying my sorrows in worlds made of prose. I’ve created art from the lessons within those worlds and have laid my creations to rest. Learned the past is as terrifying as the future, but the future shines bright fore it can hold change in its’ palms. It’s been seventeen years since I pressed replay on my soul. Seventeen years full of guidance, love, heartbreak, joy, connections, and I still have a lifetime to fare.

One Yard Short exposes those “he’s not a winner” arguments for the suckerpunch they are, showing the keen edge that separates champions from also-rans. McNair earned immunity from such taunts that day, proving that he could, even though he didn’t. Thoughtful fans can return to that moment when pondering the legacy of other players, who may have come up five yards short, or twenty, but could still see the end zone, still gave their teams a chance at glory: A loss is not always a failure.