Merely Birthday Quotes

Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch, or pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor, is merely a quiet way to spend one's time before the candles are extinguished on one's birthday cake.

i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any--lifted from the no of all nothing--human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any---lifted from the no of all nothing---human merely being doubt unimaginably You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch…is merely a quiet way to spend one’s time before the candles are extinguished on one’s birthday cake.

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense his own already ... It is like a small child going to its father and saying, 'Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.' It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.

-You know how to call me although such a noise now would only confuse the air Neither of us can forget the steps we danced the words you stretched to call me out of dust Yes I long for you not just as a leaf for weather or vase for hands but with a narrow human longing that makes a man refuse any fields but his own I wait for you at an unexpected place in your journey like the rusted key or the feather you do not pick up.- -I WILL NEVER FIND THE FACES FOR ALL GOODBYES I'VE MADE.- For Anyone Dressed in Marble The miracle we all are waiting for is waiting till the Parthenon falls down and House of Birthdays is a house no more and fathers are unpoisoned by renown. The medals and the records of abuse can't help us on our pilgrimage to lust, but like whips certain perverts never use, compel our flesh in paralysing trust. I see an orphan, lawless and serene, standing in a corner of the sky, body something like bodies that have been, but not the scar of naming in his eye. Bred close to the ovens, he's burnt inside. Light, wind, cold, dark -- they use him like a bride. I Had It for a Moment I had it for a moment I knew why I must thank you I saw powerful governing men in black suits I saw them undressed in the arms of young mistresses the men more naked than the naked women the men crying quietly No that is not it I'm losing why I must thank you which means I'm left with pure longing How old are you Do you like your thighs I had it for a moment I had a reason for letting the picture of your mouth destroy my conversation Something on the radio the end of a Mexican song I saw the musicians getting paid they are not even surprised they knew it was only a job Now I've lost it completely A lot of people think you are beautiful How do I feel about that I have no feeling about that I had a wonderful reason for not merely courting you It was tied up with the newspapers I saw secret arrangements in high offices I saw men who loved their worldliness even though they had looked through big electric telescopes they still thought their worldliness was serious not just a hobby a taste a harmless affectation they thought the cosmos listened I was suddenly fearful one of their obscure regulations could separate us I was ready to beg for mercy Now I'm getting into humiliation I've lost why I began this I wanted to talk about your eyes I know nothing about your eyes and you've noticed how little I know I want you somewhere safe far from high offices I'll study you later So many people want to cry quietly beside you

I merely called for my hat and stick in a marked manner and legged it. But the memory rankled, if you know what I mean. We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do - some things - appointments, and people's birthdays, and letters to post, and all that - but not an absolute bally insult like the above. I brooded like the dickens.

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds of women—those you write poems about and those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked within the confines of my character, cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan of your dark side. We don’t have a past so much as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power never put to good use. What we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught one another like colds, and desire was merely a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I’m still not immune to your waterfall scent, still haven’t developed antibodies for your smile. I don’t know how long regret existed before humans stuck a word on it. I don’t know how many paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light of a candle being blown out travels faster than the luminescence of one that’s just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffing into each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trick birthday candle—didn’t make the silence any easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kisses I scrawled on your neck were written in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d press your face against the porthole of my submarine. I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen years to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding off the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyriding over flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy of each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.

that it was valuable rather than merely expensive. Ramsey’s

If only, I thought, I could talk to Eugene just one more time. This was before I came to understand that you cannot make someone fall in love with you But here's what you can do. By arguing and pleading and screaming and crying and throwing plates and phoning a lot and bringing hot food and sending flowers and buying gifts and doing unsolicited favors and remembering a birthday and being nice and declaring your abiding love and trying hard or sometimes merely by being present, you can make someone who was hitherto lukewarm really detest you.

Wishing is merely a quiet way to spend one’s time before the candles are extinguished on one’s birthday cake

..I began speaking.. First, I took issue with the media's characterization of the post-Katrina New Orleans as resembling the third world as its poor citizens clamored for a way out. I suggested that my experience in New Orleans working with the city's poorest people in the years before the storm had reflected the reality of third-world conditions in New Orleans, and that Katrina had not turned New Orleans into a third-world city but had only revealed it to the world as such. I explained that my work, running Reprieve, a charity that brought lawyers and volunteers to the Deep South from abroad to work on death penalty issues, had made it clear to me that much of the world had perceived this third-world reality, even if it was unnoticed by our own citizens. To try answer Ryan's question, I attempted to use my own experience to explain that for many people in New Orleans, and in poor communities across the country, the government was merely an antagonist, a terrible landlord, a jailer, and a prosecutor. As a lawyer assigned to indigent people under sentence of death and paid with tax dollars, I explained the difficulty of working with clients who stand to be executed and who are provided my services by the state, not because they deserve them, but because the Constitution requires that certain appeals to be filed before these people can be killed. The state is providing my clients with my assistance, maybe the first real assistance they have ever received from the state, so that the state can kill them. I explained my view that the country had grown complacent before Hurricane Katrina, believing that the civil rights struggle had been fought and won, as though having a national holiday for Martin Luther King, or an annual march by politicians over the bridge in Selma, Alabama, or a prosecution - forty years too late - of Edgar Ray Killen for the murder of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, were any more than gestures. Even though President Bush celebrates his birthday, wouldn't Dr. King cry if he could see how little things have changed since his death? If politicians or journalists went to Selma any other day of the year, they would see that it is a crumbling city suffering from all of the woes of the era before civil rights were won as well as new woes that have come about since. And does anyone really think that the Mississippi criminal justice system could possibly be a vessel of social change when it incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than almost any place in the world, other than Louisiana and Texas, and then compels these prisoners, most of whom are black, to work prison farms that their ancestors worked as chattel of other men? ... I hoped, out loud, that the post-Katrina experience could be a similar moment [to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fiasco], in which the American people could act like the children in the story and declare that the emperor has no clothes, and hasn't for a long time. That, in light of Katrina, we could be visionary and bold about what people deserve. We could say straight out that there are people in this country who are racist, that minorities are still not getting a fair shake, and that Republican policies heartlessly disregard the needs of individual citizens and betray the common good. As I stood there, exhausted, in front of the thinning audience of New Yorkers, it seemed possible that New Orleans's destruction and the suffering of its citizens hadn't been in vain.

I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! In fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt. Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now.

In two decisive respects, the United States of America is unique. First, it has a definite birthday: July 4th, 1776. Second, it declares from the moment of its founding not merely the principles on which its new government will be based; it asserts those principles to be true and universal:

This investigation is nothing more to you than a mere crime among the multitude." Matron Kim's upper lip curled slightly. "My daughter died on her birthday. I made a jeogori jacket for her as a gift, sewed the silk pieces together myself, and I knew the length and circumference of her arms, the length and breadth of her torso, all measured meticulously. I knew her. She was my daughter. And from the day of her death, all you saw was a crime to be solved. From that day, you disrespected my affection for my daughter, and even now, you speak to me with a cruel, impatient look in your eyes.

And you could do it. I promise. It’s not even that hard. I mean look at me.’ She directed my attention to her unclean clothes, her swollen chest, damp spots on the cushions and looked about to laugh, then like she was going to cry, then merely exhausted. I asked her what she wanted for her birthday. Ingrid said, ‘When is it?’ I told her it was tomorrow. ‘In that case, a bag of salty liquorice. The kind from Ikea.’ The baby squirmed and pulled off. Ingrid let out a little cry and covered her breast. I helped her turn the cushion around and once he was on again, I asked if I could get her a kind of liquorice that didn’t require a journey to Croydon. She did cry then, telling me through tears that if I understood what it was like, being woken up fifty times a night and having to feed a baby every two hours when it takes an hour and fifty-nine minutes and feels like being stabbed in the nipple with four hundred knives, then I would be like, do you know what? I think I will just get my sister the liquorice she specifically likes.

If you don’t find your tribe in high school, relax; some of the best people don’t. We’re merely meant to make it out alive despite an oversaturated environment of both the best and worst examples of human existence, and then go on to assemble our tribes from the people we meet throwing up in bathrooms on our birthday, quoting Caddyshack in line at the DMV, and digging through piles of jeans at the Gap looking for the one size 18. Until

I am a person of binges. I have never understood the phrase “too much of a good thing.” Look: it’s irrational, impossible. See fig. 1: when I was a child, I became obsessed with horses. I know, I know, all little girls are obsessed with horses. But I lived for them. I gorged on them. I begged for them in any incarnation: films, toys, patterns, photographs, posters. Once, I cut the hair off a Barbie and superglued it to the base of my spine. I thrilled to wear my pony tail under my clothes, in secret, my parents knowing nothing, thinking me merely human, but it rubbed off after two days, leaving long blond doll hairs clotting in the corners of the house. My birthday came, and my parents, who were still together then, splurged on an afternoon of horseback riding lessons. When it was time to leave, they found that I had knotted my hair into the horse’s mane so elaborately that they had to cut me away from it with a pair of rusted barn shears. I still have the clump of matted girl-and-horse hair hidden in a drawer, though after all the times I put it in my mouth, I admit that it is somewhat the worse for wear.

It’s like taking a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. What’s actually going on gets less clear. Shadows get darker. Faces are blurred. Eventually, it’s all in the interpretation – but the interpretation is being done by people whose job is to look for danger. So they will err on the side of caution. Eventually, a photograph of a child’s birthday party becomes a blurred image of an arms deal. The pixelated face of Guthrie Jones, under-nines balloon-modelling champion, becomes the grizzled visage of Angela Hedergast, infamous uranium seller. Each investigation of the same facts increases the likelihood that something will be found which is frightening – or rather something will be found to be frightening. Eventually, the mere fact that something or someone has been investigated eleven times becomes suspicious.

To Harry James Potter,’” he read, and Harry’s insides contracted with a sudden excitement, “‘I leave the Snitch he caught in his first Quidditch match at Hogwarts, as a reminder of the rewards of perseverance and skill.’” As Scrimgeour pulled out the tiny, walnut-sized golden ball, its silver wings fluttered rather feebly, and Harry could not help feeling a definite sense of anticlimax. “Why did Dumbledore leave you this Snitch?” asked Scrimgeour. “No idea,” said Harry. “For the reasons you just read out, I supposed . . . to remind me what you can get if you . . . persevere and whatever it was.” “You think this a mere symbolic keepsake, then?” “I suppose so,” said Harry. “What else could it be?” “I’m asking the questions,” said Scrimgeour, shifting his chair a little closer to the sofa. Dusk was really falling outside now; the marquee beyond the windows towered ghostly white over the hedge. “I notice that your birthday cake is in the shape of a Snitch,” Scrimgeour said to Harry. “Why is that?” Hermione laughed derisively. “Oh, it can’t be a reference to the fact Harry’s a great Seeker, that’s way too obvious,” she said. “There must be a secret message from Dumbledore hidden in the icing!” “I don’t think there’s anything hidden in the icing,” said Scrimgeour, “but a Snitch would be a very good hiding place for a small object. You know why, I’m sure?” Harry shrugged. Hermione, however, answered: Harry thought that answering questions correctly was such a deeply ingrained habit she could not suppress the urge. “Because Snitches have flesh memories,” she said. “What?” said Harry and Ron together; both considered Hermione’s Quidditch knowledge negligible. “Correct,” said Scrimgeour. “A Snitch is not touched by bare skin before it is released, not even by the maker, who wears gloves. It carries an enchantment by which it can identify the first human to lay hands upon it, in case of a disputed capture. This Snitch”—he held up the tiny golden ball—“will remember your touch, Potter. It occurs to me that Dumbledore, who had prodigious magical skill, whatever his other faults, might have enchanted this Snitch so that it will open only for you.” Harry’s heart was beating rather fast. He was sure that Scrimgeour was right. How could he avoid taking the Snitch with his bare hand in front of the Minister? “You don’t say anything,” said Scrimgeour. “Perhaps you already know what the Snitch contains?” “No,” said Harry, still wondering how he could appear to touch the Snitch without really doing so. If only he knew Legilimency, really knew it, and could read Hermione’s mind; he could practically hear her brain whirring beside him. “Take it,” said Scrimgeour quietly. Harry met the Minister’s yellow eyes and knew he had no option but to obey. He held out his hand, and Scrimgeour leaned forward again and placed the Snitch, slowly and deliberately, into Harry’s palm. Nothing happened. As Harry’s fingers closed around the Snitch, its tired wings fluttered and were still. Scrimgeour, Ron, and Hermione continued to gaze avidly at the now partially concealed ball, as if still hoping it might transform in some way. “That was dramatic,” said Harry coolly. Both Ron and Hermione laughed. “That’s all, then, is it?” asked Hermione, making to prise herself off the sofa. “Not quite,” said Scrimgeour, who looked bad-tempered now. “Dumbledore left you a second bequest, Potter.” “What is it?” asked Harry, excitement rekindling. Scrimgeour did not bother to read from the will this time. “The sword of Godric Gryffindor,” he said. Hermione and Ron both stiffened. Harry looked around for a sign of the ruby-encrusted hilt, but Scrimgeour did not pull the sword from the leather pouch, which in any case looked much too small to contain it.

I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! In fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt. Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now.

For her seventh birthday, Mazy Gulliver got a Play Bride set that included a white veil, a plastic bouquet and a rhinestone ring. She immediately organized a wedding celebration under the basketball goal where she married Termy Latham, the boy next door. An argument could be made that the incident was merely the first in a long series of hasty, ill-conceived and unwise decisions about men.

The disciples begin to "speak in other tongues" as the Spirit enables them (Acts 2:4). This manifestation should be understood as more than a mere sociological event that enables foreign visitors who were in Jerusalem for the feasts of Passover and Pentecost to hear the gospel in their own language (Acts 2:6-12). Rather, it was a theological statement whereby God takes the initiative to overturn the chaos of Babel, which symbolized the global rebellion against God (Gen. 11:1-9), and in its place empowers the church for a global mission of redemption to the ends of the earth. At Pentecost, the birthday of the church, a small group of Jewish followers of Jesus are baptized into the reality of the infinite translatability of the gospel for every language and culture.' In the theology of Luke, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit for global mission is linked to the infinite translatability of the Christian gospel.

How old are you?” He gave her an odd look, almost as if the question embarrassed him. “Are you certain you wish to know?” “Of course.” Angelica frowned in confusion at his reluctance. She knew he was older than she was, but he couldn’t be much more than thirty. Avoiding her gaze, the duke replied, “I just had my two hundred and seventy-sixth birthday a few months back.” All the breath fled from her body. He was two hundred and seventy-six years old? “H-how long do vampires usually live?” He sat on the stone bench by the lilac bush and sighed. “We live for centuries. In fact, rumor has it that the oldest of us has been around since before Christ was born. Is this to be an interrogation?” He looked up at her sharply. Angelica was reeling from the information, so she almost didn’t notice the flicker of warmth in his eyes when she sat down next to him. “No—yes… perhaps. I am merely curious.” His

Some Tips to Preserve Flowers Fresh Longer Receiving new and lovely blossoms is among the most wonderful emotions in the world. It creates you feel loved, and unique, critical. Nothing really beats fresh flowers to mention particular feelings of love and devotion. This is actually the reason why you can tell how a celebration that is unique is from the quantity and type of flowers current, sold or whether available one to the other. Without a doubt the rose sector actually flowers online stores can not slow-down anytime soon and are booming. Weddings, Valentines Day, birthday, school, anniversaries, brand all without and the most significant instances a doubt flowers are part of it. The plants could have been picked up professionally or ordered through plants online, regardless of the means, new blossoms can present in a celebration. The challenge with receiving plants, however, is how to maintain their freshness longer. Really, merely placing them on vases filled up with water wouldn’t do the trick, here are a few established ways you'll be able to keep plants clean and sustained for times:  the easiest way to keep plants is by keeping them inside the refrigerator. Here is the reason why most flower shops have huge appliances where they keep their stock. If you have added place in the fridge (and endurance) you're able to just put the flowers before bed-time and put it within the fridge. In the morning you could arrange them again and do the same within the days.  If you are partial to drinking pop, specially the obvious ones like Sprite and 7 Up, you need to use this like a chemical to preserve the flowers fresh. Just serve a couple of fraction of mug of pop to mix within the water in the vase. Sugar is just a natural chemical and soda has high-sugar content, as you know.  To keep the petals and sepals fresh-looking attempt to apply somewhat of hairspray on the couple of plants or aroma. Stay from a length (about one feet) then provide the blossoms a fast spritz, notably to the leaves and petals.  the trick to maintaining cut flowers new is always to minimize the expansion of bacteria while in the same period give you the plants with all the diet it needs. Since it has properties for this function vodka may be used. Just blend of vodka and sugar for the water that you're going to use within the vase but make sure to modify the water daily using the vodka and sugar solution.  Aspirin is also recognized to preserve flowers fresh. Only break a pill of aspirin before you place the plants, and blend it with the water. Remember which you need to add aspirin everytime the water changes.  Another effective approach to avoid the growth of bacteria is to add about a quarter teaspoon of bleach inside the water within the vase. Mix in a few teaspoon of sugar for the blossoms and also diet will definitely last considerably longer. The number are only several of the more doable ways that you can do to make sure that it is possible to enjoy those arrangement of flowers you obtained from the person you worry about for a very long time. They could nearly last but atleast the message it offered will soon be valued inside your heart for the a long time.

For his 101st birthday, the nursing home where he now lives organized an exhibition of his art. The show features a delicate watercolor work he painted in art class when he was a mere boy of 13. He points to a piece of fruit in the painting, 'This apple here I had to bring back home from school. Mom wanted me to share it with my seven siblings. Can you imagine how poor we were?

So on my fiftieth birthday, deep within myself I had but one wicked wish—for something would tear me away from all these guarantees and comforts, that would necessitate my not merely continuing, but my starting anew.” When he wrote those lines in 1941, Zweig had already decided to kill himself,

It is a mere exchange of calendars. If you are not new, It is not new.

people of Wales gave Princess Elizabeth a child-sized, two-storey thatched cottage for her sixth birthday. Called ‘Y Bwthyn Bach’, this was no mere Wendy house, but a work of art as remarkable as Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House.IV With electricity and plumbing, it included a working wireless, the complete works of Beatrix Potter in miniature, an oil painting of the Duchess, personalized bed linen, a ship with Elizabeth’s crest on the vellum sail and a Lilliputian deed of gift from the Lord Mayor of Cardiff to ‘HRH Princess Elizabeth of York, hereinafter called the donee…’31

Pardon Index: the more lawless, capricious, and imperious a regime, the greater its propensity to make use of the pardon power. A pardon is a wonderful thing, particularly if you're the one being pardoned and particularly if, like the Sakharovs…, you are innocent.... But as politics or justice, the pardon is a fraud. "In all supremacy of power," said a 17th century philosopher, "there is inherent a prerogative to pardon." The reverse is equally true: in all prerogative to pardon, there is inherent the supremacy of power. The logic of the pardon is that justice is a gift to be dispensed by power. It makes of freedom a grant, an indulgence, an act of serendipity. What is meant as a show of humanity is often a mere show of cynicism: a display of arbitrary power (why clemency for A and not B?) for political ends.... In democracies, the pardon should be used as sparingly as possible. It is, after all, an admission of failure. It should be used not for dispensing clemency but for righting obvious miscarriages of justice that are otherwise unremediable (e.g., the 1913 Leo Frank case in Georgia). It might even be used, as was the Nixon pardon, to call an arbitrary halt to a national trauma. But only on these rarest of occasions should it supplant the workings of ordinary justice. Free countries have another mechanism for dealing with that. It is called law. The pardon is for tyrants. They like to declare pardons on holidays, such as the birthday of the dictator, or Christ, or the Revolution (interchangeable concepts in many of these countries). Dictators should be encouraged to keep it up. And we should be encouraged to remember that the promiscuous dispensation of clemency is not a sign of political liberality. It is instead one of those valuable, identifying marks of tyranny. Like winning an election with a perfect score.

To be eight years old when last night one was merely seven, this is pleasure; to hope for birthday presents without any doubt of receiving some, this also is pleasure. And doubtless you now think so, my children, and it is quite right that so you should think: yet I tell you, from the sad knowledge of my older experience, that to every one of you a day will most likely come when sunshine, hope, presents and pleasure will be worth nothing to you in comparison with the unattainable gift of your mother's kiss.

She returned to the kitchen, where she'd been making sugared flowers. Mint leaves, tiny violets and old-fashioned rose petals, heavy with perfume, lay on the counter. Very gently she dipped each one into the stiff egg whites, then in confectioners' sugar, and then placed them on the baking sheet, which she put in the warm oven, the door ajar. It gave the room the scent of a garden, heady and sweet. Sabine had planned to store the sweets in canning jars- there were still a few gaskets and lids left- and save them for cake. When she was a child, her grand-mère had once made her a Saint-Honoré for her birthday. It was the most wondrous cake in the world. Not a cake at all but a composition of tiny puffs of choux pastry filled with vanilla cream, very much like profiteroles, but molded together with caramel and covered with whipped chantilly cream fresh from the dairy. Her grand-mère decorated it with candied flowers and mint leaves. Sabine never had anything like it before or since and suddenly wanted to make that cake again.

The entire history of economic progress can be recapitulated in the four-stage evolution of the birthday cake. As a vestige of the agrarian economy, mothers made birthday cakes from scratch, mixing farm commodities (flour, sugar, butter, and eggs) that together cost mere dimes. As the goods-based industrial economy advanced, moms paid a dollar or two to Betty Crocker for premixed ingredients. Later, when the service economy took hold, busy parents ordered cakes from the bakery or grocery store, which, at $10 or $15, cost ten times as much as the packaged ingredients. Now, in the time-starved 1990s, parents neither make the birthday cake nor even throw the party. Instead, they spend $100 or more to “outsource” the entire event to Chuck E. Cheese’s, the Discovery Zone, the Mining Company, or some other business that stages a memorable event for the kids—and often throws in the cake for free. Welcome to the emerging experience economy.