“
Batman doesn’t want a baby in order to feel he’s ‘done everything’. He’s just saved Gotham again! If this means that Batman must be a feminist role model above, say, Nicola Horlick, then so be it.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
“
Who's to blame when your kid goes nuts? Is it a blessing to not have children? 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' became a hit cult book for women without offspring who were finally able to admit they didn't want to give birth. They felt complete, thank you very much, and lived in silent resentment for years at other women's pious, unwanted sympathy toward them for not having babies. With even gay couples having children these days, aren't happy heterosexual women who don't want to have kids the most ostracized of us all? To me they are beautiful feminists. If you're not sure you could love your children, please don't have them, because they might grow up and kill us.
”
”
John Waters
“
Children are our future we must take care of them with maximum effort.
”
”
Naomi Campbell
“
people used to tell me that i had beautiful hands
told me so often, in fact, that one day i started to believe them until i asked my photographer father, “hey daddy could i be a hand model”
to which he said no way,
i dont remember the reason he gave me and i wouldve been upset,
but there were far too many stuffed animals to hold
too many homework assignment to write,
too many boys to wave at
too many years to grow,
we used to have a game, my dad and i about holding hands cus we held hands everywhere, and every time either he or i would whisper a great
big number to the other, pretending that we were keeping track of how many times we had held hands that we were sure, this one had to be 8 million 2 thousand 7 hundred and fifty three.
hands learn more than minds do,
hands learn how to hold other hands,
how to grip pencils and mold poetry,
how to tickle pianos and dribble a basketball,
and grip the handles of a bicycle
how to hold old people, and touch babies ,
i love hands like i love people,
they're the maps and compasses in which we navigate our way through life, some people read palms to tell your future,
but i read hands to tell your past,
each scar marks the story worth telling,
each calloused palm,
each cracked knuckle is a missed punch
or years in a factory,
now ive seen middle eastern hands clenched in middle eastern fists pounding against each other like war drums, each country sees theyre fists as warriors and others as enemies.
even if fists alone are only hands. but this is not about politics, no hands arent about politics, this is a poem about love, and fingers. fingers interlock like a beautiful zipper of prayer.
one time i grabbed my dads hands so that our fingers interlocked perfectly but he changed positions, saying no that hand hold is for your mom.
kids high five, but grown ups, we learn how to shake hands, you need a firm hand shake,but dont hold on too tight, but dont let go too soon, but dont hold down for too long,
but hands are not about politics, when did it become so complicated. i always thought its simple.
the other day my dad looked at my hands, as if seeing them for the first time, and with laughter behind his eye lids, with all the seriousness a man of his humor could muster, he said you know you got nice hands, you could’ve been a hand model, and before the laughter can escape me, i shake my head at him, and squeeze his hand, 8 million 2 thousand 7hundred and fifty four.
”
”
Sarah Kay
“
I thought he jaunted around on yachts and baptized babies all day. Babies that would one day grow up to be swimsuit models, thanks to his touch.
”
”
R.S. Grey (Scoring Wilder)
“
If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny, then one begins to understand why men and women don't get on very well within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as many babies as possible with as many different women as he can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off from her busy schedule as astronaut or role model to lay an egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of us serial killers, killers of our own true nature.
”
”
Gore Vidal
“
A lot of people feel that way. That if you didn’t pay your dues by being ostracized then you’re not *really* a geek.
I don’t think that though. It’s not an exclusive club that you need to pay some social price to get in. Being a geek is about loving something passionately beyond all reason or sense. And it need not necessarily be related to science fiction, fantas, superheroes, etcetera. You can be a gardening geek, a model train geek, stamp collecting geek, a baby geek…
It’s about enthusiasm, in my opinion.
From his blog RE: Thirty years of D&D
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss
“
Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept of private property disappeared. Pliers ceased to be privately owned and a tire pump belonged to the last man who had picked it up. Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo Saxon home became so warped that it never quite recovered.
”
”
John Steinbeck
“
The techno-medical model of maternity care, unlike the midwifery model, is comparatively new on the world scene, having existed for barely two centuries. This male-derived framework for care is a product of the industrial revolution. As anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd has described in detail, underlying the technocratic mode of care of our own time is an assumption that the human body is a machine and that the female body in particular is a machine full of shortcomings and defects. Pregnancy and labor are seen as illnesses, which, in order not to be harmful to mother or baby, must be treated with drugs and medical equipment. Within the techno-medical model of birth, some medical intervention is considered necessary for every birth, and birth is safe only in retrospect.
”
”
Ina May Gaskin (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth)
“
The shots left a hard ringing sound within the closeness of the brick walls. Terry held the pistol at arm's length on a level with his eyes--the Russian Tokarev resembling an old-model Colt .45, big and heavy--and made the sign of the cross with it over the dead. He said, "Rest in peace, motherfuckers," turned, and walked out of the beer lady's house to wait at the side of the road.
”
”
Elmore Leonard (Pagan Babies)
“
The moms I knew when I was little didn't have to prove that it was okay to want a child. Sure, a lot of women I know wonder if they do want a child, but not why. It's assumed why. The question cis women get asked is: Why don't you want kids? And then they have to justify that. If I had been born cis, I would never even have had to answer these questions. I wouldn't have had to prove that I deserve my models of womanhood. But I'm not cis. I'm trans. And so until the day that I am a mother, I'm constantly going to have to prove that I deserve to be one. That it's not unnatural or twisted that I want a child's love. Why do I want to be a mother? After all those beautiful women I grew up with, the ones who chaperoned my classes on field trips, or made me lunch when I was at their house, or sewed costumes for all the little girls that I ice skated with — and you too, Katrina, for that matter — have to explain their feelings about motherhood, then, I'll explain mine. And do you know what I'll say? Ditto.
”
”
Torrey Peters (Detransition, Baby)
“
In Tar Baby, the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity which sees the individual as a kaleidoscope of heterogeneous impulses and desires, constructed from multiple forms of interaction with the world as a play of difference that cannot be completely comprehended.
”
”
Toni Morrison
“
To the one and only Alex Jenkins Reid: Thank you for understanding why this book was so important to me and for being so into it. But more important, thank you for being the kind of man who encourages me to shout louder, dream bigger, and take less shit. Thank you for never making me feel as if I should make myself smaller to make anyone else feel better. It brings me an absolutely unparalleled amount of pride and joy to know that our daughter is growing up with a father who will stick by her side no matter who she is, who will show her how she should expect to be treated by modeling it for her. Evelyn did not have that. I did not have that. But she will. Because of you. And lastly, to my baby girl. You were teeny teeny tiny—I believe the size of half the period on the end of this sentence—when I started writing this book. And when I finished it, you were mere days away from making your entrance. You were with me every step of the way. I suspect it was, in no small part, you who gave me the strength to write it. I promise that I will repay the favor by loving you unconditionally and accepting you always, so that you feel strong enough and safe enough to do anything you set your mind to. Evelyn would want that for you. She would say, “Lilah, go out there, be kind, and grab what you want out of this world with both hands.” Well, she might not have put as big an emphasis on being kind. But as your mother, I must insist.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
Many couples will fight in front of their children but reconcile in private. This skews a child’s perceptions, even at early ages, for the child always sees the wounding but never the bandaging. Parents who practice bandaging each other after a fight, deliberately and explicitly, allow their children to model both how to fight fair and how to make up.
”
”
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
“
Observe," she said. "You put the diaper under here, and around there, and you—if you had one—pin the whole thing ogether. Now you try it."
"Not me," he objected. "How about a paper clip? Or a paper staple?"
"I don't see what's bothering you," Meg said. "She's only a little girl."
"I did notice."
"And, if you follow scripture, was created after Adam."
"And—what's your point?"
"Being the second model, women turned out considerably better than men. God, when She did this second work, you'll note, got all the plumbing inside.
”
”
Emma Goldrick
“
Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo Saxon home became so warped that it never quite recovered.
”
”
John Steinbeck (Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1))
“
Too many baby daddies not enough fathers Too many rappers not enough role models Too many entertainers not enough educators Too many preachers not enough spirit-led men
”
”
Pierre Alex Jeanty (Unspoken Feelings of a Gentleman)
“
Perhaps periods of anxiety, sadness, panic, and sheer craziness are just part of the mental continuum that nature has provided to help us stay alive, make babies, and pass on genes.
”
”
Meredith F. Small (The Culture of Our Discontent: Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness)
“
Jane felt self-conscious each time Ghost saw her naked. A lifetime of fathood had left her with sagging skin. Ghost didn’t seem to mind. He had a paunch and a hairy back.
“All the supermodels are dead, baby,” he told her. “Let it go.
”
”
Adam Baker (Outpost (Outpost, #1))
“
And there is the note from Sherri that I found in my room while getting ready, rolled up in a 'best son-in-law ever' coffee mug, welcoming me to the family and ending, 'Take care of my baby, he may be on a permanent loan to you but he will always be mine.
”
”
Pete Buttigieg (Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future)
“
There is a theory of space and time embedded in the way we use words. There is a theory of matter and a theory of causality, too. Our language has a model of sex in it (actually, two models), and conceptions of intimacy and power and fairness. Divinity, degradation, and danger are also ingrained in our mother tongue, together with a conception of well-being and a philosophy of free will. These conceptions vary in their details from language to language, but their overall logic is the same. They add up to a distinctively human model of reality, which differs in major ways from the objective understanding of reality eked out by our best science and logic. Though these ideas are woven into language, their roots are deeper than language itself. They lay out the ground rules for how we understand our surroundings, how we assign credit and blame to our fellows, and how we negotiate our relationships with them. A close look at our speech-our conversations, our jokes, our curses, our legal disputes, the names we give our babies-can therefore give us insight into who we are.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature)
“
First, they illustrate clearly that what we do for each other before marriage is no indication of what we will do after marriage. Before marriage, we are carried along by the force of the in-love obsession. After marriage, we revert to being the people we were before we “fell in love.” Our actions are influenced by the model of our parents; our own personality; our perceptions of love; our emotions, needs, and desires. Only one thing is certain about our behavior: It will not be the same behavior we exhibited when we were caught up in being “in love.” That leads me to the second truth: Love is a choice and cannot be coerced. Dave and Mary were criticizing each other’s behavior and getting nowhere. Once they decided to make requests of each other rather than demands, their marriage began to turn around. Criticism and demands tend to drive wedges. With enough criticism, you may get acquiescence from your spouse. He may do what you want, but probably it will not be an expression of love. You can give guidance to love by making requests: “I wish you would wash the car, change the baby’s diaper, mow the grass,” but you cannot create the will to love. Each of us must decide daily to love or not to love our spouses. If we choose to love, then expressing it in the way in which our spouse requests will make our love most effective emotionally. There is a third truth, which only the mature lover will be able to hear. My spouse’s criticisms about my behavior provide me with the clearest clue to her primary love language. People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need. Their criticism is an ineffective way of pleading for love. If we understand that, it may help us process their criticism in a more productive manner.
”
”
Gary Chapman (The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts)
“
I know your sick and tired of arguing
But you can't keep it bottled in
Jealousy, we got to swallow it
Your heart and mind baby follow it
Smile, happiness you could model it
And when you feel opposite
I just want you to know
Your whole being is beautiful
I'ma do the best I can do
Cause I'm my best when I'm with you
”
”
Common
“
I totally deserved this, I realized. I deserved to get captured in this shirt. I was roped in like a calf. Stupid. So stupid. Just because it was on sale, I had to try on a baby shirt. This was so completely my fault. Maybe I should go to Baby Gap tomorrow and try to get into some Onesies or a romper. What was I thinking? Really?
”
”
Laurie Notaro (It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy)
“
There’s good reason for such worries. About a year after Pole created his pregnancy prediction model, a man walked into a Minnesota Target and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching an advertisement. He was very angry. “My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?” The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture, and pictures of smiling infants gazing into their mothers’ eyes. The manager apologized profusely, and then called, a few days later, to apologize again. The father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of.” He took a deep breath. “She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.
”
”
Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change)
“
The tabloids wanted to know whether the dragon was receiving benefits. The gossip magazines claimed to have found a woman who was bearing the dragon's baby. The fashion magazines did spreads on draconian style. This apparently consisted of gaunt models with sunken eyes, swathed in clouds of chiffon and arranged in awkwardly erotic positions on piles of gold coins.
”
”
Zen Cho (Spirits Abroad)
“
On weekends especially, the Showroom and Market Floor were packed with families, couples, retirees, people with nowhere else to go, college kids and their roommates, new families with their new babies… a legion of potential customers, clutching maps, bags stuffed with lists of model numbers written on sticky notes.. credit cards burning holes in their pockets, all of them ready to spend.
”
”
Grady Hendrix (Horrorstör)
“
My castle is very different from what I planned, but I would not alter it, though, like Jo, I don't relinquish all my artistic hopes, or confine myself to helping others fulfill their dreams of beauty. I've begun to model a figure of baby, and Laurie says it is the best thing I've ever done. I think so, myself, and mean to do it in marble, so that, whatever happens, I may at least keep the image of my little angel." As Amy spoke, a great tear dropped on the golden hair of the sleeping child in her arms, for her one well-beloved daughter was a frail little creature and the dread of losing her was the shadow over Amy's sunshine. This cross was doing much for both father and mother, for one love and sorrow bound them closely together. Amy's nature was growing sweeter, deeper, and more
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Illustrated))
“
Women of the baby boomer generation faced these same constraints in all professions. There was no other blueprint to work from other than to show that a woman could do the job as it had always been done, by a man. Follow our model, be tough, prove yourself by the standards we set. You weren’t even supposed to look like a woman. Dress like a man’s version of a woman. Our eyes can handle that. Think of how Patti Smith, Joan Jett, and Pat Benatar, women pioneers in rock music, presented themselves to the world: leather, black blazers, denim. Our eyes accepted them as women tough enough to take on a role meant for a man. Woman with a guitar. Woman with a gavel. Woman with a podium. Woman with an oval-shaped office. Women with objects of power. It has taken time for our eyes to adjust to them.
”
”
Jennifer Palmieri (Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World)
“
When texting begins to take the place of substantive in-person conversations for any of us, we are training the language and speech centers of our brain for a new, unnatural, and superficial model of connection. When that training starts early, as it does now for young texters, they get so used to it at such a young age that, unlike the newborn baby who innately knows something is missing and complains about it, our older tech-trained children don’t even know what they have lost.
”
”
Catherine Steiner-Adair (The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age)
“
...Women have preserved this `baby look' for as long as possible so as to make the world continue to believe in the darling, sweet little girl she once was, and she relies on the protective instinct in man to make him take care of her.
As with everything a woman undertakes on her own initiative, this whole maneuvre is as incredible as it is stupid. It is amazing, in fact, that it succeeds. It would appear very shortsighted to encourage such an ideal of beauty. For how can any woman hope to maintain it beyond the age of twenty-five? Despite every trick of the cosmetics industry, despite magazine advice against thinking or laughing (both tend to create wrinkles), her actual age will inevitably show'- through in the end. And what on earth is a man to do with a grown-up face when he has been manipulated into considering only helpless, appealing little girls to be creatures of beauty?
What is a men to do with a woman when the smooth curves have become flabby tires of flesh, the skin slack and pallid, when the childish tones have grown shrill and the laughter sounds like neighing? What is to become of this shrew when her face no longer atones for her ceaseless inanities and when the cries of `Ooh' and Ah' begin to drive him out of his mind? This mummified `child' will never fire a man's erotic fantasy again. One might think her power broken at last.
But no, she still manages to get her own way - and for two reasons. The first is obvious: she now has children, who enable her to continue feigning helplessness. As for the second - there are simply not enough young women to go around.
It is a safe bet that, given the choice, man would trade in his grown-up child-wife for a younger model, but, as the ratio between the sexes is roughly equal, not every man can have a younger woman. And as he has to have a wife of some sort. he prefers to keep the one he already possesses. This is easy to prove. Given the choice, a man will always choose a younger woman.
”
”
Esther Vilar (The Manipulated Man)
“
***Saturday, October 30th, 1943***
Sometimes I think God is trying to test me, both now and in the future. I'll have to become a good person on my own, without anyone to serve as a model or advise me, but it'll make me stronger in the end.
...
I'm no longer the baby and spoiled little darling whose every deed can be laughed at. I have my own ideas, plans and ideals, but am unable to articulate them yet.
...
I only wish I could see some results or, just once, receive encouragement from someone who loves me.
”
”
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
“
Charles Wallace had once again been contemplating the intricate model of the tesseract. He spoke softly to his sister. “Meg, no matter what happens, even if Dennys is right about her heart, remember that it was herself she placed, for the baby’s sake, and yours, and Calvin’s, and all of us—”
Meg looked at him questioningly.
Charles Wallace’s eyes as he returned her gaze were the blue of light as it glances off a unicorn’s horn, pure and clear and infinitely deep. “In this fateful hour, it was herself she placed between us and the powers of darkness.
”
”
Madeleine L'Engle (A Swiftly Tilting Planet (Time Quintet, #3))
“
Life is an adventure orchestrated by God, and our attempts to be in the driver’s seat will always result in mere frustration. Why? Because this is not the way of authentic love, which involves the total surrender of self. Authentic love calls for sacrifice. That is true of all of us. Whether it’s being up with a baby all night, caring for an aging parent, giving a hurting friend a landing place in your home for a while, or becoming a foster parent, we will be called on to sacrifice. That is the way of the Cross, and we are not offered anything else. It’s easy to think of parenthood as a season of sacrifice that ends so we can move on with our lives. But neither Christ nor the saints ever model living for ourselves. God never tells us, “Wow, thanks for your service. You’ve done your time and please enjoy the next four decades of your life living just for yourself. You’ve been serving others for awhile so grab your sunscreen and enjoy your remaining years drinking cocktails in Aruba.” Can you imagine that being the final chapter of a saint’s life? We are called to live out generous love in whatever opportunities present themselves to us.
”
”
Haley Stewart (The Grace of Enough: Pursuing Less and Living More in a Throwaway Culture)
“
Immigrants who had never failed to repay a debt, because they had never been given a loan, often had surprisingly high thin-file FICO scores. Thus a Jamaican baby nurse or Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 looking to borrow three-quarters of a million dollars, when filtered through the models at Moody’s and S&P, became suddenly more useful, from a credit-rigging point of view. They might actually improve the perceived quality of the pool of loans and increase the percentage that could be declared triple-A. The Mexican harvested strawberries; Wall Street harvested his FICO score.
”
”
Michael Lewis (The Big Short)
“
To be ridiculously sweeping: baby boomers and their offspring have shifted emphasis from the communal to the individual, from the future to the present, from virtue to personal satisfaction. Increasingly secular, we pledge allegiance to lowercase gods of our private devising. We are concerned with leading less a good life than the good life. In contrast to our predecessors, we seldom ask ourselves whether we serve a greater social purpose; we are more likely to ask ourselves if we are happy. We shun self-sacrifice and duty as the soft spots of suckers. We give little thought to the perpetuation of lineage, culture or nation; we take our heritage for granted. We are ahistorical. We measure the value of our lives within the brackets of our own births and deaths, and we’re not especially bothered by what happens once we’re dead. As we age—oh, so reluctantly!—we are apt to look back on our pasts and question not did I serve family, God and country, but did I ever get to Cuba, or run a marathon? Did I take up landscape painting? Was I fat? We will assess the success of our lives in accordance not with whether they were righteous, but with whether they were interesting and fun.
If that package sounds like one big moral step backward, the Be Here Now mentality that has converted from sixties catchphrase to entrenched gestalt has its upsides. There has to be some value in living for today, since at any given time today is all you’ve got. We justly cherish characters capable of living “in the moment.”…We admire go-getters determined to pack their lives with as much various experience as time and money provide, who never stop learning, engaging, and savoring what every day offers—in contrast to the dour killjoys who are bitter and begrudging in the ceaseless fulfillment of obligation. For the role of humble server, helpmate, and facilitator no longer to constitute the sole model of womanhood surely represents progress for which I am personally grateful. Furthermore, prosperity may naturally lead any well-off citizenry to the final frontier: the self, whose borders are as narrow or infinite as we make them.
Yet the biggest social casualty of Be Here Now is children, who have converted from requirement to option, like heated seats for your car. In deciding what in times past never used to be a choice, we don’t consider the importance of raising another generation of our own people, however we might choose to define them. The question is whether kids will make us happy.
”
”
Lionel Shriver
“
4. Radicalism of forms. If a new model once created meets with much success on account of its greater efficiency than its predecessor, it lends certain neighbouring forms a formal radicalism, which attempts to borrow from the appearance of the new form: for example, bronze tools that had reached the furthest development of their utility had a disastrous influence on stone tools, warping them toward an elegance that could only be attained in bronze. Today aviation has imposed its aerodynamic forms even on baby strollers and irons. This radicalism of forms is a result of the fact that people become bored when they do not find some unexpected element in the familiar. This radicalism might seem illogical, as the advocates of standardization believe, but we must not forget that discovery is only made possible by this need of humanity.
”
”
Tom McDonough (The Situationists and the City: A Reader)
“
I had six or seven close friends, most of whom I’m still in touch with. We used to have long discussions and arguments about everything from radio-controlled models to religion, and from parapsychology to physics. One of the things we talked about was the origin of the universe and whether it required a God to create it and set it going. I had heard that light from distant galaxies was shifted toward the red end of the spectrum and this was supposed to indicate that the universe was expanding. (A shift to the blue would have meant it was contracting.) But I was sure there must be some other reason for the red shift. Maybe light got tired, and more red, on its way to us. An essentially unchanging and everlasting universe seemed so much more natural. It was only after about two years of Ph.D. research that I realized I had been wrong.
”
”
Stephen Hawking (Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays)
“
What happened?” Dallas asked immediately, his hand reaching out toward Louie. I didn’t miss how Lou took his hand instantly.
“She called me a brat,” Louie blurted out, his other little hand coming up to meet with the one already clutching our neighbor’s.
I blinked and told myself I was not going to look at Christy until I had the full story.
“Why?” Dallas was the one who asked.
“He spilled some of his hot chocolate on her purse,” it was Josh who explained. “He said sorry, but she called him a brat. I told her not to talk to my brother like that, and she told me I should have learned to respect my elders.”
For the second time around this woman, I went to ten. Straight through ten, past Go, and collected two hundred dollars.
“I tried to wipe it up,” Louie offered, those big blue eyes going back and forth between Dallas and me for support.
“You should teach these boys to watch where they’re going,” Christy piped up, taking a step back.
Be an adult. Be a role model, I tried telling myself. “It was an accident,” I choked out. “He said he was sorry… and your purse is leather and black, and it’ll be fine,” I managed to grind out like this whole thirty-second conversation was jabbing me in the kidneys with sharp knives.
“I’d like an apology,” the woman, who had gotten me suspended and made me cry, added quickly.
I stared at her long face. “For what?”
“From Josh, for being so rude.”
My hand started moving around the outside of my purse, trying to find the inner compartment when Louie suddenly yelled, “Mr. Dallas, don’t let her get her pepper spray!”
The fuck?
Oh my God. I glared at Louie. “I was looking for a baby wipe to offer her one, Lou. I wasn’t getting my pepper spray.”
“Nuh-uh,” he argued, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Christy take a step back. “I heard you on the phone with Vanny. You said, you said if she made you mad again you were gonna pepper spray her and her mom and her mom’s mom in the—”
“Holy sh—oot, Louie!” My face went red, and I opened my mouth to argue that he hadn’t heard me correctly. But… I had said those words. They had been a joke, but I’d said them. I glanced at Dallas, the serious, easygoing man who happened to look in that instant like he was holding back a fart but was hopefully just a laugh, and finally peeked at the woman who I’d like to think brought this upon herself. “Christy, I would never do that—”
...
I cleared my throat and popped my lips. “Well, that was awkward.”
“I’m not a brat.” Louie was still hung up and outraged.
I pointed my finger at him. “You’re a tattletale, that’s what you are. Nosey Rosie. What did I tell you about snitches?”
“You love them?
”
”
Mariana Zapata (Wait for It)
“
My current best model of how a market works is fractional Brownian motion of multifractal time. It has been called the Multifractal Model of Asset Returns. The basic ideas are similar to the cartoon versions above-though far more intricate, mathematically. The cartoon of Brownian motion gets replaced by an equation that a computer can calculate. The trading-time process is expressed by another mathematical function, called f(\propto), that can be tuned to fit a wide range of market behavior. My model redistributes time. It compresses it in some places, stretches it out in others. The result appears very wild, very random. The two functions, of time and Brownian motion, work together in what mathematicians call a compound manner: Price is a function of trading time, which in turn is a function of clock time. Again, the two steps in the model combine to produce a "baby" far different from either parent.
”
”
Benoît B. Mandelbrot (The (Mis)Behavior of Markets)
“
She held up three hangers inside a vinyl garment bag and hooked them sideways on the coatrack to unzip. "Raw silk. Vintage. Sort of a purple-black."
"Aubergine," he declared and cracked the opening wider.
"I love a man who can make colors sound dirty." She grinned.
"Cross-dyed." He wondered if Trip had helped pick this out, if he'd seen her model it and convinced her to splurge. "Great suit."
"I gotta stand next to J.R. Ward. Feel me?" She fluttered her short nails at him. "Baby, I went and bought a pair of Givenchy boots I cannot even afford because the Warden is gonna be there in full effect, and you know what that means!"
He didn't really, but he got the gist. "So you want nighttime for daytime."
"Extra vampy, hold the trampy. Like, more Lust For Dracula than Breaking Dawn." Rina squeezed her shoulders together to amp her cleavage. "If I'm hauling the girls out, no way can I do sparkly anorexia.
”
”
Damon Suede (Bad Idea (Itch #1))
“
I argue that three key doctrines of postmodernist
thought have conspired to discredit the classical concept of ideology. The first of these doctrines turns on a rejection of the notion of representation--in fact, a rejection of an empiricist model of representation, in which the representational baby has been nonchalantly slung out with, the empiricist
bathwater. The second revolves on an epistemological skepticism which would hold that the very act of identifying a form of consciousness as ideological entails some untenable notion of absolute truth. Since the latter idea attracts few devotees these days, the former is thought to crumble in its wake. We cannot brand Pol Pot a Stalinist bigot since this would imply some metaphysical certitude about what not being a Stalinist bigot would involve. The third doctrine concerns a reformulation of the relations between rationality, interests and power, along roughly neo-Nietzschean lines, which is thought to render the whole concept of ideology redundant.
”
”
Terry Eagleton (Ideology)
“
Integration is a mentality which automatically gives the seeker a sense of inferiority. Integrationists desire to change from what they are into something better. No one in their right mind aspires to be integrated with an inferior. Those on a quest to be integrated are searching for a state of mind, any state of mind or being, that is superior to the one they currently exhibit or feel characterizes them as powerless and without a worthy identity. They feel that integration will somehow transform them from an inferior into the superior beings who dominate them. This makes integration focused individuals blind to the illnesses, inconsistencies and, specifically in reference to our discussion, peculiarities and immoralities of those they wish to be integrated (become like) into. Integrationists accept all of whom they want to be like as qualities they want to assume and be characterized by. They do not distinguish between the good and bad qualities of their model. They want the baby and the dirty bathwater. They assume that all of the characteristics and qualities of their reference group have good reason and that they all contribute to the superiority of those whom they want to be like. Perversion
”
”
Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti (Homosexuality and the Effeminization of Afrikan Males)
“
At first I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it on the outside at all. I’ve described prison society as a scaled-down model of your outside world, but I had no idea of how fast things moved on the outside; the raw speed people move at. They even talk faster. And louder. It was the toughest adjustment I’ve ever had to make, and I haven’t finished making it yet . . . not by a long way. Women, for instance. After hardly knowing that they were half of the human race for forty years, I was suddenly working in a store filled with them. Old women, pregnant women wearing tee-shirts with arrows pointing downward and a printed motto reading BABY HERE, skinny women with their nipples poking out at their shirts—a woman wearing something like that when I went in would have gotten arrested and then had a sanity hearing—women of every shape and size. I found myself going around with a semi-hard almost all the time and cursing myself for being a dirty old man. Going to the bathroom, that was another thing. When I had to go (and the urge always came on me at twenty-five past the hour), I had to fight the almost overwhelming need to check it with my boss. Knowing that was something I could just go and do in this too-bright outside world was one thing; adjusting my inner self to that knowledge after all those years of checking it with the nearest screwhead or facing two days in solitary for the oversight . . . that was something else. My boss didn’t like me. He was a young guy, twenty-six or -seven, and I could see that I sort of disgusted him,
”
”
Stephen King (Different Seasons: Four Novellas)
“
The charity and ally models, on the other hand, are so strongly rooted in the ideas of 'I' and 'the other' that they force people to fit into distinct groups with preordained relationships to one another. According to ally politics, the only way to undermine one's own privilege is to give up one's role as an individual political agent, and follow the lead of those more or differently oppressed. White allies, for instance, are taught explicitly to not seek praise for their ally work--especially from people of color--yet there is often a distinctly self-congraulatory air to the work of allyship, as if the act of their humility is exaggerated to receive the praise they can't ask for. Many white allies do their support work in a way that recentralizes themselves as the only individuals willing to come in and do the hard work of fighting racism for people of color.
Where ally politics suggest that in shifting your role from actor to ally you can diminish your culpability, a liberator or anarchist approach presumes that each person retains their own agency, insisting that the only way you can be accountable is by acting for your own desires while learning to understand and respond to the desires of other groups. Unraveling our socialized individualization until we can feel how our survival/liberation is infinitely linked to the survival/liberation of others fosters independence, and enables us to take responsibility for our choices, with no boss or guidance counselor to blame for our decisions.
Original Zine: Ain't no PC Gonna Fix it, Baby. 2013.
Featured in: A Critique of Ally Politics. Taking Sides.
”
”
M.
“
How I Got That Name
Marilyn Chin
an essay on assimilation
I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin
Oh, how I love the resoluteness
of that first person singular
followed by that stalwart indicative
of “be," without the uncertain i-n-g
of “becoming.” Of course,
the name had been changed
somewhere between Angel Island and the sea,
when my father the paperson
in the late 1950s
obsessed with a bombshell blond
transliterated “Mei Ling” to “Marilyn.”
And nobody dared question
his initial impulse—for we all know
lust drove men to greatness,
not goodness, not decency.
And there I was, a wayward pink baby,
named after some tragic white woman
swollen with gin and Nembutal.
My mother couldn’t pronounce the “r.”
She dubbed me “Numba one female offshoot”
for brevity: henceforth, she will live and die
in sublime ignorance, flanked
by loving children and the “kitchen deity.”
While my father dithers,
a tomcat in Hong Kong trash—
a gambler, a petty thug,
who bought a chain of chopsuey joints
in Piss River, Oregon,
with bootlegged Gucci cash.
Nobody dared question his integrity given
his nice, devout daughters
and his bright, industrious sons
as if filial piety were the standard
by which all earthly men are measured.
*
Oh, how trustworthy our daughters,
how thrifty our sons!
How we’ve managed to fool the experts
in education, statistic and demography—
We’re not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning.
Indeed, they can use us.
But the “Model Minority” is a tease.
We know you are watching now,
so we refuse to give you any!
Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots!
The further west we go, we’ll hit east;
the deeper down we dig, we’ll find China.
History has turned its stomach
on a black polluted beach—
where life doesn’t hinge
on that red, red wheelbarrow,
but whether or not our new lover
in the final episode of “Santa Barbara”
will lean over a scented candle
and call us a “bitch.”
Oh God, where have we gone wrong?
We have no inner resources!
*
Then, one redolent spring morning
the Great Patriarch Chin
peered down from his kiosk in heaven
and saw that his descendants were ugly.
One had a squarish head and a nose without a bridge
Another’s profile—long and knobbed as a gourd.
A third, the sad, brutish one
may never, never marry.
And I, his least favorite—
“not quite boiled, not quite cooked,"
a plump pomfret simmering in my juices—
too listless to fight for my people’s destiny.
“To kill without resistance is not slaughter”
says the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death.
The fact that this death is also metaphorical
is testament to my lethargy.
*
So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin,
married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong,
granddaughter of Jack “the patriarch”
and the brooding Suilin Fong,
daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong
and G.G. Chin the infamous,
sister of a dozen, cousin of a million,
survived by everbody and forgotten by all.
She was neither black nor white,
neither cherished nor vanquished,
just another squatter in her own bamboo grove
minding her poetry—
when one day heaven was unmerciful,
and a chasm opened where she stood.
Like the jowls of a mighty white whale,
or the jaws of a metaphysical Godzilla,
it swallowed her whole.
She did not flinch nor writhe,
nor fret about the afterlife,
but stayed! Solid as wood, happily
a little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized
by all that was lavished upon her
and all that was taken away!
”
”
Marilyn Chin
“
My Father mapped out the perfect blueprint for how to treat a woman. He caters hand and foot to my Mother. Even showers that love onto my sister. He never had to tell me how to treat my woman because his actions spoke louder. Did I cling to my woman? Absolutely. Being up under soft melanin skin pleased me. You want to read a book? Cool, what story we reading? Wanna go shopping? Take my card if you promise to model everything for me. Those females at work bothering you? Let’s get animated in the mirror and act like we about to tag team. Your period on? Baby, want me to rub your belly? You need me to get those diaper looking pads with the wings? How about some lemon ginger tea? What are your dreams? You want to sell weave? Let’s catch a flight to China or India and figure out how we can become wholesalers. You wanna make cute Snapchat filter videos? What filter do you want? Are they not liking your pics? Fine. I’ll blast you all over my page. Your Mother threatening to kick you out. Where you wanna move? Better yet, move in with me. Just focus on school and building your brand. I got everything else. You got finals coming up. Pick a tutor. Heck, can I pay for the answers to the quiz? You think those stretch marks make you unattractive? Come here and let me show you how much I appreciate your stripes of glitter. Do you want to go to Dr. Miami? Absolutely not. We going to the gym. Gym grown not silicone. We are working out together. Go ahead and hashtag us as #baegoals #coupleswhoworkouttogetherstaytogether. You want to switch the hair and get a tapered cut? Let me call my barber and see when we can go. Stressing and worrying? You keep hearing whispers while you’re sleeping? Nah bae, that’s not a ghost. That’s me praying for you.
”
”
Chelsea Maria (For You I Will (Chaos of Love #1))
“
Anarchists and antiauthoritarians clearly differentiate between charity and solidarity--especially thanks to working with indigenous solidarity movements and other international solidarity movements--based on the principles of affinity and mutual aid. Affinity is just what it sounds like: that you can work most easily with people who share your goals, and that your work will be strongest when your relationships are based on trust, friendship, and love. Mutual aid is the idea that we all have a stake in one another's liberation, and that when we can act from that interdependence, we can share with one another as equals.
Charity, however, is something that is given not only because it feels like there is an excess to share but also because it is based in a framework that implies that others inherently need the help--that they are unable to take care of themselves and that they would suffer without it. Charity is patronizing and selfish. It establishes some people as those who assist and others as those who need assistance, stabilizing oppressive paradigms by solidifying people's positions in them.
Autonomy and self-determination are essential to making this distinction as well. Recognizing the autonomy and self-determination of individuals and groups acknowledges their capability. It's an understanding of that group as having something of worth to be gained through interactions with them, whether that thing is a material good or something less tangible, like perspective, joy, or inspiration. The solidarity model dispels the idea of one inside and one outside, foregrounding how individuals belong to multiple groups and how groups overlap with one another, while simultaneously demanding respect for the identity of self-sufficientcy of each of those groups.
Original Zine: Ain't no PC Gonna Fix it, Baby. 2013.
Featured in: A Critique of Ally Politics. Taking Sides.
”
”
M.
“
People like Darlene who are particularly good at managing their attention tend to share certain characteristics. One is a propensity to create pictures in their minds of what they expect to see. These people tell themselves stories about what’s going on as it occurs. They narrate their own experiences within their heads. They are more likely to answer questions with anecdotes rather than simple responses. They say when they daydream, they’re often imagining future conversations. They visualize their days with more specificity than the rest of us do. Psychologists have a phrase for this kind of habitual forecasting: “creating mental models.” Understanding how people build mental models has become one of the most important topics in cognitive psychology. All people rely on mental models to some degree. We all tell ourselves stories about how the world works, whether we realize we’re doing it or not. But some of us build more robust models than others. We envision the conversations we’re going to have with more specificity, and imagine what we are going to do later that day in greater detail. As a result, we’re better at choosing where to focus and what to ignore. The secret of people like Darlene is that they are in the habit of telling themselves stories all the time. They engage in constant forecasting. They daydream about the future and then, when life clashes with their imagination, their attention gets snagged. That helps explain why Darlene noticed the sick baby. She was in the habit of imagining what the babies in her unit ought to look like. Then, when she glanced over and the bloody Band-Aid, distended belly, and mottled skin didn’t match the image in her mind, the spotlight in her head swung toward the child’s bassinet. Cognitive tunneling and reactive thinking occur when our mental spotlights go from dim to bright in a split second. But if we are constantly telling ourselves stories and creating mental pictures, that beam never fully powers down. It’s always jumping around inside our heads. And, as a result, when it has to flare to life in the real world, we’re not blinded by its glare.
”
”
Charles Duhigg (Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business)
“
I said to myself, This is going to be quick.
I also thought: I’ll take the epidural now! Because the contractions were starting to demonstrate what the pain of birth is all about.
The obstetrician came in. I smiled, ready for my shot.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said. “Your platelets are really, really low.”
“Okay,” I said. I knew what platelets were-blood cells whose job it is to stop bleeding-but I had no idea why that was significant. “So, my epidural?”
“You can’t have any medications.”
“Come again?”
“No drugs, no medications,” she said. “No epidural. I’ve called around to different anesthesiologists, and no one will touch you.”
“No epidural?”
“Nothing.”
There are girls from third-world countries who do it with no drugs, I reminded myself. My mother elected for natural childbirth. How bad can it be?
I got this.
It started to hurt. I thought to myself, I am not going to cuss.
Hell no! I am about to be a mother. I am bringing our baby into a positive environment and must be a good role model.
Wow!
The contractions built up quickly. My pristine vision of perfect, calm, quiet childbirth disappeared. A banshee snuck into the room and took over my body.
Arrrgggh!!!
No cursing!
There was a rocking chair in the birth room. I went over and sat in it and began moving back and forth. Chris put on a CD by Enya that we’d brought to listen to: peaceful, pleasant music. I took a deep breath.
Jeez, Louise! That one was a monster!
Then, a breather.
I’m doing goooooood! Breathe. Breathe…
Wow!
Then I said some other things. The banshee had a mind of her own.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I apologized to the nurses as I recovered from the surge of the contraction.
“It’s okay,” said Chris.
The pain surged again.
Dang!
Jiminy!
And other things.
Chris would watch the monitor. Suddenly he’d turn to look at me.
“What?” I asked.
“That was a strong one.”
“Uh-huh.”
The funny thing is, the stronger the contractions were on the monitor, the less they seemed to hurt. Maybe when things are really bad you focus more on being tough. Or perhaps my brain’s pain mechanism simply went on strike when the agony got too much.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
The translucent, golden punch tastes velvety, voluptuous and not off-puttingly milky. Under its influence, I stage a party for my heroines in my imagination, and in my flat. It's less like the glowering encounter I imagined between Cathy Earnshaw and Flora Poste, and more like the riotous bash in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Not everyone is going to like milk punch. So there are also dirty martinis, and bagels and baklava, and my mother's masafan, Iraqi marzipan. The Little Mermaid is in the bath, with her tail still on, singing because she never did give up her soaring voice. Anne Shirley and Jo March are having a furious argument about plot versus character, gesticulating with ink-stained hands. Scarlett is in the living room, her skirts taking up half the space, trying to show Lizzy how to bat her eyelashes. Lizzy is laughing her head off ut Scarlett has acquired a sense of humour, and doesn't mind a bit. Melanie is talking book with Esther Greenwood, who has brought her baby and also the proofs of her first poetry collection. Franny and Zooey have rolled back the rug and are doing a soft shoe shuffle in rhinestone hats. Lucy Honeychurch is hammering out some Beethoven (in this scenario I have a piano. A ground piano. Well, why not?) Marjorie Morningstar is gossiping about directors with Pauline and Posy Fossil. They've come straight from the shows they're in, till in stage make-up and full of stories. Petrova, in a leather aviator jacket, goggles pushed back, a chic scarf knotted around her neck, is telling the thrilling story of her latest flight and how she fixed an engine fault in mid-air. Mira, in her paint-stained jeans and poncho, is listening, fascinated, asking a thousand questions. Mildred has been persuaded to drink a tiny glass of sherry, then another tiny glass, then another and now she and Lolly are doing a wild, strange dance in the hallway, stamping their feet, their hair flying wild and electric. Lolly's cakes, in the shape of patriarchs she hates, are going down a treat. The Dolls from the Valley are telling Flora some truly scandalous and unrepeatable stories, and she is firmly advising them to get rid of their men and find worthier paramours. Celie is modelling trousers of her own design and taking orders from the Lace women; Judy is giving her a ten-point plan on how to expand her business to an international market. She is quite drunk but nevertheless the plan seems quite coherent, even if it is punctuated by her bellowing 'More leopard print, more leopard print!'
Cathy looks tumultuous and on the edge of violent weeping and just as I think she's going to storm out or trash my flat, Jane arrives, late, with an unexpected guest. Cathy turns in anticipation: is it Heathcliff? Once I would have joined her but now I'm glad it isn't him. It's a better surprise. It's Emily's hawk. Hero or Nero. Jane's found him at last, and has him on her arm, perched on her glove; small for a bird of prey, he is dashing and patrician looking, brown and white, observing the room with dark, flinty eyes. When Cathy sees him, she looks at Jane and smiles.
And in the kitchen is a heroine I probably should have had when I was four and sitting on my parents' carpet, wishing it would fly. In the kitchen is Scheherazade.
”
”
Samantha Ellis
“
One can take the ape out of the jungle, but not the jungle out of the ape.
This also applies to us, bipedal apes. Ever since our ancestors swung from tree to tree, life in small groups has been an obsession of ours. We can’t get enough of politicians thumping their chests on television, soap opera stars who swing from tryst to tryst, and reality shows about who’s in and who’s out. It would be easy to make fun of all this primate behavior if not for the fact that our fellow simians take the pursuit of power and sex just as seriously as we do.
We share more with them than power and sex, though. Fellow-feeling and empathy are equally important, but they’re rarely mentioned as part of our biological heritage. We would much rather blame nature for what we don’t like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like. As Katharine Hepburn famously put it in The African Queen, ”Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
This opinion is still very much with us. Of the millions of pages written over the centuries about human nature, none are as bleak as those of the last three decades, and none as wrong. We hear that we have selfish genes, that human goodness is a sham, and that we act morally only to impress others. But if all that people care about is their own good, why does a day-old baby cry when it hears another baby cry? This is how empathy starts. Not very sophisticated perhaps, but we can be sure that a newborn doesn’t try to impress. We are born with impulses that draw us to others and that later in life make us care about them.
The possibility that empathy is part of our primate heritage ought to make us happy, but we’re not in the habit of embracing our nature. When people commit genocide, we call them ”animals”. But when they give to the poor, we praise them for being ”humane”. We like to claim the latter behavior for ourselves. It wasn’t until an ape saved a member of our own species that there was a public awakening to the possibility of nonhuman humaneness. This happened on August 16, 1996, when an eight-year-old female gorilla named Binti Jua helped a three-year-old boy who had fallen eighteen feet into the primate exhibit at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. Reacting immediately, Binti scooped up the boy and carried him to safety. She sat down on a log in a stream, cradling the boy in her lap, giving him a few gentle back pats before taking him to the waiting zoo staff. This simple act of sympathy, captured on video and shown around the world, touched many hearts, and Binti was hailed as a heroine. It was the first time in U.S. history that an ape figured in the speeches of leading politicians, who held her up as a model of compassion.
That Binti’s behavior caused such surprise among humans says a lot about the way animals are depicted in the media. She really did nothing unusual, or at least nothing an ape wouldn’t do for any juvenile of her own species. While recent nature documentaries focus on ferocious beasts (or the macho men who wrestle them to the ground), I think it’s vital to convey the true breadth and depth of our connection with nature. This book explores the fascinating and frightening parallels between primate behavior and our own, with equal regard for the good, the bad, and the ugly.
”
”
Frans de Waal (Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are)
“
Make it a house rule that your toddler has to knock on your door. Model this yourself when you go into her room.
”
”
Tracy Hogg (Sleep: Secrets to Getting Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night)
“
the classic predator-prey model.
It begins with two equations. One tracks the prey population, which could be something like the number of bunnies in a forest. The second follows the predator population, which we could imagine as the number of wolves in the same forest.
The important point for modelers to capture is that the two populations are tied together. The wolves eat the bunnies, and that changes the bunny population. But eating bunnies lets the wolves reproduce, adding to their population.
So, the bunny population affects the wolf population, too. In these linked equations, there’s a part that describes how the bunnies get eaten by wolves, and another that describes how the wolves have more babies by eating bunnies.
Eventually, the bunny population peaks as the rapidly growing number of wolves starts having its impact. After that, the bunny numbers drop and they start to grow scarce.
The wolf population, however, takes some time to feel the change. Only later do their numbers peak and then start dropping. Eventually, the wolf population gets low enough for the bunnies to recover, and the cycle begins anew.
”
”
Adam Frank (Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth)
“
safely connected world: inclusiveness, willingness to repair, scaffolding, and support in struggling. This model allows people to develop security, flexibility, and coherent working models of attachment, through inclusiveness (responding to the entire range of their experience, and staying curious about internal needs, wants, desires, and beliefs, which fosters a relaxed approach to psychological exploration); a willingness to repair disruptions (as we as therapists take ownership of our own parts, while being appropriately transparent, which allows the client to learn and expect that disruption doesn’t disrupt the underlying solid therapeutic connection); scaffolding (helping the client to find the necessary baby steps in accessing their inner world, translating that into words, linking what’s going on inside their self-system with the intersubjective presence of the therapist); and support the client in a willingness to struggle (actively engaging, setting limits, making room for protest, all while staying connected through the conflict).
”
”
Deirdre Fay (Attachment-Based Yoga & Meditation for Trauma Recovery: Simple, Safe, and Effective Practices for Therapy)
“
While Mrs. Hisa steeped fresh fava beans in sugar syrup, Stephen dry-fried baby chartreuse peppers. I made a salad of crunchy green algae and meaty bonito fish cubes tossed with a bracing blend of soy and ginger juice. Mrs. Hisa created a tiny tumble of Japanese fiddleheads mixed with soy, rice vinegar, and salted baby fish.
For the horse mackerel sushi, Stephen skinned and boned several large sardine-like fillets and cut them into thick slices along the bias. I made the vinegared rice and then we all made the nigiri sushi. After forming the rice into triangles, we topped each one with a slice of bamboo grass, as if folding a flag.
Last, we made the wanmori, the heart of the tenshin. In the center of a black lacquer bowl we placed a succulent chunk of salmon trout and skinned kabocha pumpkin, both of which we had braised in an aromatic blend of dashi, sake, and sweet cooking wine. Then we slipped in two blanched snow peas and surrounded the ingredients with a bit of dashi, which we had seasoned with soy to attain the perfect whiskey color, then lightly salted to round out the flavor.
Using our teacher's finished tenshin as a model, we arranged most of the dishes on three polished black lacquer rectangles, first lightly spraying them with water to suggest spring rain. Then we actually sat down and ate the meal. To my surprise, the leaf-wrapped sushi, the silky charred peppers, candied fava beans, and slippery algae did taste cool and green.
”
”
Victoria Abbott Riccardi (Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto)
“
Your house always resembled a pet hotel.
”
”
Josie Riviera (A Snowy White Christmas)
“
Not to be confused with Der Flügel, which is an earlier form of the baby grand piano, the Flugelhorn is a wind instrument akin to the trumpet, but has a wider, conical bore. It is actually a descendant of the valved bugle, which had been developed from a hunting horn known in eighteenth-century Germany as a Flügelhorn. This valved instrument is similar to the B♭pitch of many trumpets and cornets and was actually inspired by the eighteenth-century saxhorn on which the flugelhorn is modeled. The German word Flügel means wing and in the early part of the 18th century Germany the leader or Führer of the hunt was known as a Flügelmeister who issued his orders of the hunt with, you guessed it, a Flügelhorn.
Some modern flugelhorns feature a fourth valve that adds a lower range and extends the instrument's abilities, however some players use the fourth valve in place of the first and third valve combination making the instrument somewhat sharper and more confusing. The tone range is "fatter" and usually regarded as more “mellow” and “darker” than the trumpet or cornet. The sound of the flugelhorn has been described as halfway between a trumpet and a French horn and is a standard member of the British-style brass band. Joe Bishop an American jazz musician and composer, not to be confused with Joey Bishop of the Rat Pack, was a member of the Woody Herman band and was one of the earliest jazz musicians to use the flugelhorn.
”
”
Hank Bracker
“
Fernando glanced at the parrot. “And I see some things never change, Margaret. Your house always resembled a pet hotel.
”
”
Josie Riviera (A Snowy White Christmas)
“
Gibson paused. Turned to her. Gave her another look, up and down. “When elephant trainers catch a baby elephant in the wild, they tie it to a tree. That baby elephant fights and thrashes to break free, but it’s not strong enough. Within a couple of days, it gives up. So even as the elephant gets bigger, it doesn’t believe it can break the rope. And then you get a full-grown elephant tied to a tree with a piece of rope it could snap with a simple swing of its leg. It’s called learned helplessness. Everything here is built on people who don’t think the rope will break. Which means the most dangerous thing in the world for my business model is someone who recognizes how fragile the rope really is.
”
”
Rob Hart (The Warehouse)
“
Each of those relationships ended because the love I gave was considered too hard… too suffocating. My father mapped out the perfect blueprint for how to treat a woman. He caters hand and foot to my mother. Even showers that love onto my sister. He never had to tell me how to treat my woman because his actions spoke louder. Did I cling to my woman? Absolutely. Being up under soft melanin skin pleased me. You want to read a book. Cool, what story we reading? Wanna go shopping? Take my card if you promise to model everything for me. Those heffas at work bothering you? Let’s get animated in the mirror and act like we about to tag team. Your period on? Baby, want me to rub your belly? You need me to get those diaper looking pads with the wings? How about some lemon ginger tea? What are your dreams? You want to sell weave? Let’s catch a flight to China or India and figure out how we can become wholesalers. You wanna make cute snapchat filter videos? What filter do you want? Are they not liking your pics? Fine. I’ll blast you all over my page. Your mother threatening to kick you out. Where you wanna move? Better yet, move in with me. Just focus on school and building your brand. I got everything else. You got finals coming up. Pick a tutor. Heck, can I pay for the answers to the quiz? You think those stretch marks make you unattractive? Come here and let me show you how much I appreciate your stripes of glitter. Do you want to go to Dr. Miami? Absolutely not. We going to the gym. Gym grown not silicone. We are working out together. Go ahead and hashtag us as #baegoals #coupleswhoworkouttogetherstaytogether. You want to switch the hair and get a tapered cut? Let me call my barber and see when we can go. Stressing and worrying? You keep hearing whispers while your sleeping? Nah bae, that’s not a ghost. That’s me praying for you. There are no stipulations with me. I gave it all. I had to. It was a part of my DNA. I needed to give the love I had in me unconditionally.
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Chelsea Maria (For You I Will (In Secrets We Trust Book 1))
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I’ve watched him hop from model chick to actress to singer and back again. Before he fell off the face of the earth and now, he’s cured? I don’t trust it. Even if you do, be careful. How are you going to be shooting a music video with a baby on your hip?
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Aubreé Pynn (Spinnin' The Block (Ganton Hills Romance Series Book 4))
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...the Boeing family of jetliners was bounded for over half a century by two enduring bookends--the 747, as 'Queen of the Skies,' held the high end, while the workaday 737 remained the 'Baby Boeing,' even as other models, sized between the two icons, came and went.
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John Andrew (Boeing Metamorphosis: Launching the 737 and 747, 1965–1969)
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These observations can underscore their sense of loneliness. The psychologist Erik Erikson said that adolescents’ essential task is to develop a sense of identity. They rebel against, but also look to, their chief role models, their parents, as they ask questions about who they’ll become. Among adoptees who lack access to their personal history, this process is complicated by the knowledge that no matter how they are loved, wanted, and wished for, they understand that a crucial part of themselves is lost. This can become a source of identity confusion, and some researchers say it results in shame, feelings of abandonment, embarrassment, and low
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Gabrielle Glaser (American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Secret History of Adoption)
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The best models we have for successful prevention and even eradication of global killers are the worldwide vaccination programs of the twentieth century.
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Kiran Musunuru (The CRISPR Generation: The Story of the World's First Gene-Edited Babies)
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The fifth model is the federalism model. It is in some ways the flip side of the residual rights model. Here the Ninth Amendment works with the Tenth Amendment to limit the federal government to a narrow reading of its enumerated powers. Instead of fighting against a conclusion that the federal government has general, unenumerated powers, the federalism model has the Ninth Amendment fighting against a conclusion that the federal government has broad enumerated powers.50 In other words, it fights against pretty much exactly how the post–New Deal Supreme Court has interpreted the Commerce Clause, allowing just about any regulation that has anything to do with commerce of any kind, which is basically any regulation.
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Anthony B Sanders (Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters)
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other “nonoriginalist” views of the Ninth Amendment so we have a better idea of how it is seen. One such view is that of Professor Laurence Tribe. He thinks the Ninth Amendment is important, but only as a reminder that the fact that a right is not enumerated is not a reason to conclude it is not constitutionality protected. In this way he is essentially in league with the originalist proponents of the individual rights model, although not entirely and only in a general sense. He argues that the Ninth Amendment does not itself protect rights, but prevents the argument that a right is not protected because it is not enumerated:
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Anthony B Sanders (Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters)
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The sixth model, that of Professor McConnell, pays close attention to the use of the word “retained” in the Ninth Amendment. McConnell argues the Ninth was adopted with the backdrop of the state of nature theory of philosopher John Locke. Under Locke’s view—recognized as influential at the time of the American Revolution and the Constitution’s framing—people have “natural rights” in the state of nature, the theoretical mode of living before people ever came together to form a government and establish civil society.51 People discover that it benefits them to give up some of their rights in exchange for creating a government that will then allow them to live in greater security and achieve greater prosperity. Thus they form a society where they give up rights, such as the right to punish others for wronging them, and turn those rights over to their collective body, the government. But they by no means give up all natural rights. Those rights that they do not relinquish they “retain.
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Anthony B Sanders (Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters)
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The first model of what the Ninth Amendment might have meant when it came into being is the state law rights model. Under this model, the Ninth Amendment simply tells us that rights enjoyed under state law “continue in force under the Constitution until modified or eliminated by state enactment, by federal preemption, or by a judicial determination of unconstitutionality.”43 The Ninth Amendment does not protect these rights from the federal government, it simply says the rights “continue in force” until changed or overridden. For example, state laws regulating the formation of contracts continue in force after the adoption of the Constitution, but might be pre-empted by federal legislation in the future.
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Anthony B Sanders (Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters)
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The second model for the original meaning of the Ninth Amendment is the residual rights model. Here the Ninth Amendment prevents a specific argument: that Congress has broader powers than it otherwise would have if enumerated rights had not been placed in the Constitution.44 Under this view, it could be supposed, for example, that because there is a prohibition on violating the freedom of the press, that means Congress actually would have a power to regulate the freedom of the press if it were not for the First Amendment. This would then imply that Congress has additional, unenumerated powers. Under this model, however, the Ninth Amendment makes unavailable that particular argument.
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Anthony B Sanders (Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters)
“
The fourth model, the collective rights model, believes the amendment is a rule of construction that does protect rights, but collective rights of people in the states. A foremost example of such a collective right, put forward by Professor Akhil Amar, is the right of the people to alter or abolish their government.48 Another is the right of a state’s body politic to choose the policies it wants to adopt free from federal government interference.
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Anthony B Sanders (Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters)
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The third model, the individual rights model, is that the Ninth Amendment tells us that just because there are enumerated rights in the Constitution does not mean that there are not other rights, and that those rights should not be “denied or disparaged” just because they are not enumerated.45 Those rights receive constitutional protection because if they did not they would be “denied or disparaged” simply because they were unenumerated.
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Anthony B Sanders (Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters)
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In Sweden, enforcing gender stereotypes in schools has actually been illegal since 1998. Instead, the government funds gender-neutral kindergartens, where you’ll find teachers saying “friends” instead of “boys” and “girls”; lessons are taught using gender-neutral mediums, like nature and modeling clay; toy animals replace baby dolls; and characters in books are pictured defying traditional gender roles
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Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
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I wanted to spit in your face when I woke up in Cedar Falls Memorial Hospital at twelve and you said, How dare you, baby? How dare you let the world win? Don’t you ever try to kill yourself again. If something were to happen to you, I would die. Do you hear me? I’d die.
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Rivers Solomon (Model Home)
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Gabriel picks up an anatomical model of a pregnant uterus. The plastic baby pops out, and he scrambles to catch it before it hits the floor. “Shit.” “Put that down before you get us kicked out,” Matthew hisses through his teeth. “I didn’t realize it was two pieces,” Gabriel says, defending himself. He puts the model down, but the baby pops out again. It clatters onto the counter. “Did you break it?” Matthew asks, horrified. “They’re never gonna let us come with her again.” “Haven’t you seen these models before?
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Alexis B. Osborne (Breeding Clinic (Heatverse, #3))
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I think they’re doing a photo shoot on the beach.”
“Those aren’t models, baby. Those are my brothers.”
“Oh.”
He covered my eyes, and I laughed. “Stop it. I want to meet them.”
“I’m not sure I want you to meet them now.”
“You’re the sexiest one.”
“You better think that.
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Eve Marian (Protecting Hailey (Billionaire Bodyguards Romance Book 3))
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Meme let herself be deceived by herself and believed that what was really going on was that she could not bear the desire to be alone with Mauricio Babilonia, and she was made indignant by the certainty that he understood that when he saw her arrive.
“I came to see the new models,” Meme said.
“That’s a fine excuse,” he said.
Meme realized that he was burning in the heat of his pride, and she desperately looked for a way to humiliate him. But he would not give her any time. “Don’t get upset,” he said to her in a low voice. “It’s not the first time that a woman has gone crazy over a man.”
She felt so defeated that she left the garage without seeing the new models and she spent the night turning over in bed and weeping with indignation. The American redhead, who was really beginning to interest her, looked like a baby in diapers. It was then that she realized that the yellow butterflies preceded the appearances of Mauricio Babilonia.
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Gabriel García Márquez
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The greatest wealth and satisfaction of our desires lies not in clear-cutting forests, stripping the oceans, or spewing billions of tons of toxins into the atmosphere but within the forces of nature's wild movement and growth. Nature is the mother of all invention and many of humankind's greatest achievements have been made by copying nature. However, our copies have been rough. We haven't succeeded in mimicking nature's grace, efficiency-and most importantly-sustainability. We're coloring outside the lines and making a mess. Let's look again, using nature as our model as the earliest humans did, but aided by the tools of science.
With nature, it's never too late. Nature is a survivor. Nature never gives up. She heals all wounds. Nature pushes up tiny little blades of grass through city concrete and asphalt and overgrows Mayan cities. She keeps putting out billions of seeds, spores, and baby spiders, growing mountains, evolving new species. She is always creating. It's not just okay to feel optimistic, it's natural, and essential. Combining our human intelligence with optimism is the best way we can give back to our earth. Right now, across the globe, we humans, the products of nature, have the skills and the technology to solve just about any problem we're facing, without sacrifice-if the will is there. There is a way, if we allow ourselves to be guided by nature's optimism and nature's wisdom.
We can do it.
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Jay Harman (The Shark's Paintbrush: Biomimicry and How Nature is Inspiring Innovation)
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Darn her dirty diaper money. At least I didn’t peak as a baby model.
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Mette Bach (Femme (Lorimer SideStreets))
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Where the techno-medical model of birth reigns, women who give birth vaginally generally labor in bed hooked up to electronic fetal monitors, intravenous tubes, and pressure-reading devices. Eating and drinking in labor are usually not permitted. Labor pain within this model is seen as unacceptable, so analgesia, and anesthesia are encouraged. Episiotomies (the surgical cut to enlarge the vaginal opening) are routinely performed, out of a belief that birth over an intact perineum would be impossible or that, if possible, it might be harmful to mother or baby. Instead of being the central actor of the birth drama, the woman becomes a passive, almost inert object - representing a barrier to the baby's eventual passage to the outside world. Women are treated as a homogenous group within the medical model, with individual variations receding in importance.
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Ina May Gaskin (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth)
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Researchers say that when babies babble, they produce all the possible sounds of all human languages, randomly generating phonemes from Japanese to English to Swahili. As children learn the language of their parents, they narrow their sound repertoire to fit the model to which they are exposed. They begin to produce not just the sound of their native language but also its classical intonation patterns. Children lose their polymath talents so effectively that they ultimately become unable to produce some language sounds.
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Christine Kenneally (The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language)
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There is a misperception about black women in society. When a black woman presents expectations to a man, she is seen as needy, bossy and a gold digger. When a woman who is not of African American descent expresses the same thing from a man, she is seen as a trophy wife. When a woman of European descent presents the same thing, she is viewed as a classy woman with standards. When a woman of European descent presents the same standards as a black woman, the Caucasian woman is credited for implementing rules of dating when she expects a man to pay for dinner or when she tells a man what she desires out of a relationship. The value of African American women is reduced not only by dominant culture and society, but by men, particularly African American men. The media, radio, music, television, newspapers and movies have devalued African American women when in reality African American women are honorable, respectable, classy, elegant, beautiful, educated and hardworking women. Dark skin women are viewed as angry, unattractive and uneducated within modern society. African American women are seen as loud, irate, insensitive and angry women as a result of labels from some African American men, media, movies and music. Television, magazines, social media, internet, videos and some music present Hispanic, Latino, White and Armenian women as trophy wives, idols and models while presenting African American women as mistresses, one night stands, casual sex, gold diggers and “baby mamas.” Latino and Dominican women are viewed as physically beautiful while Caucasian women are viewed as ideal and classy within media, music, music videos and movies. Media presents black women as bitter, scorned, ghetto, ratchet and promiscuous as if women of other races do not exhibit those characteristics. Women of other races are on television and the internet using profanity, fighting, engaging in sexual acts and cheating, however, there is an emphasis on African American women who exhibit those behaviors” (McEachern 85).
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Jessica McEachern (Societal Perceptions)
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I looked like a cologne ad had dirty sex with an underwear model, producing a freakishly sexy baby that was raised by a Calvin Klein billboard.
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Tracey Ward (Brawler (North Star, #2))
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You have nothing to feel insecure about. It's a thing of beauty for a man to have a real woman to hold onto. All the models and actresses I've been with are so friggin' thin, I swear their chests are flatter than mine. But you, on the other hand, have one killer body. I can't keep my hands off you, baby, your curves drive me crazy.
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Collette West (Perfect Game)
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The model for prayer taught us by Jesus is shallow enough for a baby to bathe in and deep enough for elephants to swim through.
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Mike Breen (Building a Discipling Culture)
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Men are so frustrating; sometimes I think they really do come from Mars. That's the planet where they take boy babies' souls at birth to raise them with no feminine influence of any kind. They use John Wayne as the primary role model and make them mean and tough. Then they return their souls to them when they start puberty. That's why they are so obsessed with the female species at that time. After all, they've been living on Mars, where no such things exist.
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Carolyn Brown (The Ladies' Room)
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Benefits of Going Green
The benefits of going green are sometimes not similar to obvious right away. For some people, because of this that going green can be so difficult. They have to see immediate or near immediate results of their green efforts. Unfortunately, some benefits take a while and dedication. Now and dedication can be a good thing about going green in itself. When we become more commited to an environmentally friendly lifestyle we study that lifestyle, the aspects of the life-style that is effective on our behalf and then we study new tips that make the lifestyle much better to create. Other merits of going green can be found especially zones of green lifestyles.
Benefits of Going Green at Home
Going green at your home is among the few places that green lifestyle benefits are shown quickly or in the next short space of time. The first home benefit that many individuals who go green see, is a drop in utility bills and spending. As people commence to make subtle and full blown changes in the volume of energy they use and the manner they make use of it, the utility bills will drop. This benefit shows itself within the first three billing cycles no matter the effective changes. Spending also reduces. The spending pattern of green lifestyles shows a spending reduction because of switching from disposable items to reusable items, pricey chemical items for DIY natural options and swapping out appliances for higher energy levels effiencent models. Simply not only are the advantages observed in healthier lifestyle options, but on top of that they are seen in healthier financial options.
Benefits to Going Green at Work
Going green at work is problematic to implement and hard to see immediate results from. However, the avantages of going green in the workplace might be incredibly financially beneficial regarding the business. A clear benefit for businesses going green that is the alleviates clutter and increased organization. By utilizing green techniques in your business such as cloud storage, going paperless and energy usage techniques a business will save many dollars each month. This is a clear benefit, but the additional advantage is increased business. Consumers, businesses and sales professionals love aligning themselves with green businesses. It shows an ecological awareness and connection and it has verified that the green business cares about the approach to life of their total clients. The green business logo and concept means the advantage of a higher customer base and increased sales.
Advantages and benefits of Going Green within the Community
Community advantages and benefits of going green are the explanation as to why many individuals begin contribution in the green movement. Community efforts do take time and effort to develop. Recycling centers, landscaping endeavors and urban gardening projects take community efforts and dedication. These projects can build wonderful benefits regarding the community. Initially the advantages will show in areas similar to a decrease in waste, increased organic gardening options and recycling endeavors to diminish waste in landfills. Eventually the avantages of going green locally can present a residential district bonding, closer knit communities and environmental benefits which will reach to reduced air pollution. There can also be an increase in local food production and local companies booming which helps the regional economy. There are numerous other benefits of going green. These benefits might be comprehensive and might change the thought of how communities, states and personal lifestyles are changed.
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Green Living
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He leans over the bed and peers at the lump in Annabel's arms.
"When do her eyes open?"
"I didn't give birth to a kitten, Richard. Her eyes have already opened. She's asleep.
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Holly Smale (Model Misfit (Geek Girl, #2))
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On the night my parents were such bad role models about Paul and me getting together, my mother wound up saying to me that the real reason he and I shouldn't have a baby together yet didn't have anything to do with our education or our careers, as important as those things are. She said, 'When you have a child with someone, you're bound to them forever. That can be beautiful and miraculous, and yet a burden, too. The knowledge that your life is intertwined with another's, for all time. It transforms your relationship in ways I can't begin to describe.
Before you take that step with someone, you must be ready to accept the destruction of the life you had together beforehand-and have faith that what you two create afterward can be even greater.
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Claudia Gray
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I lift the eye model and turn it over in my hands. “I feel like I’ve been standing underneath an open window, just as a baby gets tossed out. I grab the baby, right, because who wouldn’t? But then another baby gets tossed out, so I pass the baby to someone else, and I make the catch. This keeps happening. And before you know it there are a whole bunch of people who are getting really good at passing along babies, just like I’m good at catching them, but no one ever asks who the fuck is throwing the babies out the window in the first place.
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Jodi Picoult (Small Great Things)
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Rate of myelination in different brain areas The various brain areas begin and end myelination at different ages. For example, visual areas finish myelinating by six months. At that age an infant can see an object moving through space as a homogeneous object; before that, it’s just a collection of disconnected colors and edges. Watch babies wave a toy back and forth in front of their eyes. This rehearsal wires up the visual areas so they can begin to recognize and track objects. Over and over, the same groups of neurons fire together, forming visual functional groups that eventually work together well enough to let the baby recognize familiar objects. Babies’ other senses work along with sight to help form a mental image of objects. Here’s one study that continues to astonish me every time I think about it: Newborns, still in the hospital, were given pacifiers to suck. There were several different shapes: square, round, pointed. Large models of all the different-shaped pacifiers were hung above their cribs. The babies stared longest at the pacifier that matched the one that had been in their mouth. These infants appeared able to relate the mental image created with touch — what was in their mouths — with the one created with vision — what was dangling above their heads. I remember the first time our oldest daughter saw a book. She was about three months old — barely able to sit up — and we put a cardboard book with very simple pictures of toys in front of her. Instantly she put her face right above the book, and she inspected every square inch of the page from about an inch away. Then she sat back up and slapped the pages all over. We could almost see her brain working: “What is this? It’s flat but it reminds me a lot of the things I see around me.” She combined the senses of touch and sight together to examine a new phenomenon in her world. Speech begins with babbling at around six months of age. I remember our youngest daughter beginning speech by mimicking the up and down flow of the sentence before she began to make individual sounds. The flow of speech is supported by language centers in the right hemisphere; the details of speech are supported by language centers in the left hemisphere. Our daughter was practicing how to talk, using the brain areas that were currently available. Her right hemisphere appeared to mature before her left hemisphere. As the speech areas develop and these groups become more extensively coordinated, the child’s speech becomes clearer and connected. The auditory areas finish myelinating by two years. The child now has the brain foundation for speech production. She can distinguish the individual sounds that make up words, and can begin to string words together into phrases and sentences. The motor system is myelinated by four years. Before that, children are very slow to respond. Have you ever played catch with a three-year-old? He holds out his arms, the ball hits his chest, it falls on the ground — and then he closes his arms. It takes so long for the message to move from his eyes to his brain, from his brain to the spinal cord, and finally from his spinal cord to his arms, that he misses the ball. You can practice with him all you like, but his reactions won’t speed up until his motor system myelinates.
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Frederick Travis (Your Brain Is a River, Not a Rock)
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And you know, I really have to say this: If your baby isn't even in the room and you can't bear to come equipped with a blanket, kindly put your boob away in its rightful compartment. Don't leave it hanging out for ten to fifteen minutes at a barbecue like you're waiting for someone to hang a Christmas ornament on it.
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Laurie Notaro (It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy)
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If I had been born cis, I would never even have had to answer these questions. I wouldn't have had to prove that I deserve my models of womanhood.
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Torrey Peters (Detransition, Baby)
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Very funny, Kristy. Hilarious. I have stolen a man’s suitcase with a murder victim inside it, the mob is about to close in, I’m making my European debut looking like a cover model for Parenting magazine, and you’re making fun of me!
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Ann M. Martin (Baby-sitters' European Vacation (The Baby-Sitters Club Super Special, #15))
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Millennials are comfortable with therapy, with unpacking trauma, with healing the inner child and talking about foundational wounds. We were raised on all of that. Baby boomers are tougher. Constant analysis was not modeled for them. And to look too closely might open a wound long calloused. Smile and keep going. Keep calm and carry on.
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Jedidiah Jenkins (Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences)
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A memoir in which the author shares his impressive journey of emigrating to the United States to escape a difficult life in an impoverished Nigerian village.
Born into an extremely poor family in Nigeria, ‘Deji Ayoade had early memories of wanting to come to America to do better for himself. For years, he dreamed about having a bright future in the United States. At seven, he promised his mother that one day he would be a doctor in America and take her and his siblings away from their dangerous and impoverished existence. By the age of thirty-three, ‘Deji had been in the United States for five years and was living his dream. He had earned a master’s degree, married and had a child, been recruited into the Navy, and become a US citizen. He makes good on the promise to his mother and brings her, his sister, and his sister’s baby to the United States.
UNDERGROUND: A Memoir of Hope, Faith, and the American Dream is a well-structured, compelling memoir written by a determined man with big dreams, ambitious goals, and the strength to never lose sight of where he is headed. Commitment, intelligence, and drive contribute to his fulfilling what he deems to be his purpose in life. His accomplishments in the armed services are nothing short of admirable. Ayoade draws readers into the 1980s culture of the poorer regions of Nigeria with vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of areas in which they lived. His credible recreation of scenes reveals insight into the civilization that had considerable influence on him. Family dynamics also play a significant role in Ayoade’s life. His recollection of his father’s contradictory behaviors both confuse and enlighten him. His fond memories of his grandmother—the family member he trusted the most—are heartfelt and touching.
While coming to the United States offers many positive experiences for Ayoade, it doesn’t come without problems, and one that the author talks about with deep emotion and candidness is racism. Thoughtful in the way he acknowledges possible differences of perspectives, he describes how it feels to be looked at differently. One scene in particular demonstrates just how prejudiced and insensitive people can be when it comes to racial biases. Ayoade writes from the heart with emotion and honesty that demonstrate his passion for what he does in life. His ability to weave together a cohesive story from so many disparate fragments is remarkable. His religious faith and commitment to never-ending improvement for himself are inspiring and a basis for being a role model for others.
UNDERGROUND: A Memoir of Hope, Faith, and the American Dream–author ‘Deji Ayoade’s reflections on overcoming enormous obstacles and emigrating from Nigeria to the United States–is candid, heartwarming, and inspirational.
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IndieReader
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which reported that “photographer Ron Vogel has been snapping pictures of his daughter ever since she was a baby. At 21, she’s still his favorite model.
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Judith Reisman (Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America)
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it has faced the challenge of establishing its relevance to baby boomers who reject the Leisure World model of late adulthood
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Jonathan Rauch (The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Hard in the Middle, Then Gets Much Better)
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by the 1890s, this model of manly restraint had begun to falter. A new corporate, consumer economy meant that more men were earning a living by punching the clock, and self-discipline no longer promised the same payoff. As men moved to cities, the work they did changed significantly. For men whose strength had become superfluous, who no longer identified as producers, their very manhood seemed in question. There were other disruptions, too. Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe began arriving at the nation’s shores, and “new women” started going to college, entering the professions, riding bicycles, wearing bloomers, and having fewer babies. In response to all of these changes, old ideas of manhood seemed insufficient. In their place, white native-born Protestant men began to assert a new kind of masculinity—a rougher, tougher masculinity. Nothing less than the fate of the nation, even the future of white Christian “civilization” appeared to be at stake.
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Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation)
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This mess is yours, and I feel sorry for that baby because his mother is a liar and a cheater and a manipulator. With you as a role model, you’re either going to raise a serial killer or the next president.
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Helena Hunting (Making Up (Shacking Up, #4))