Neighborhood Get Together Quotes

But no matter what choices we make - solo or together - our finish line remains the same. It doesn't matter how many times we look both ways. It doesn't matter if we don't go skydiving to play it safe, even though it means we'll never get to fly like my favorite superheroes do. It doesn't matter if we keep our heads low when passing a gang in a bad neighborhood. No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.

I’m a sociable introvert. I enjoy coffee dates and Christmas parties and weddings and neighborhood picnics. I love noisy family dinners and hosting playdates and chatting with other parents on the baseball sidelines. I get a little restless when I don’t get regular doses of social interaction. But when I get out of balance—when I spend too much time extraverting, according to my personal definition of “too much”—I am useless. When I ignore the warning signs and keep extraverting until I enter the Overtalked Introvert Danger Zone, I get totally overwhelmed and borderline rude and can barely string sentences together. I wish I were exaggerating.

But no matter what choices we make—solo or together—our finish line remains the same. It doesn’t matter how many times we look both ways. It doesn’t matter if we don’t go skydiving to play it safe, even though it means we’ll never get to fly like my favorite superheroes do. It doesn’t matter if we keep our heads low when passing a gang in a bad neighborhood. No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.

Look at the evolution of the price of a kilogram of the drug, as it makes its way from the Andes to Los Angeles. To make that much cocaine, one needs somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 kilograms of dried coca leaves. Based on price data from Colombia obtained by Gallego and Rico, that would cost about $385. Once this is converted into a kilo of cocaine, it can sell in Colombia for $800. According to figures pulled together by Beau Kilmer and Peter Reuter at the RAND Corporation, an American think tank, that same kilo is worth $2,200 by the time it is exported from Colombia, and it has climbed to $14,500 by the time it is imported to the United States. After being transferred to a midlevel dealer, its price climbs to $19,500. Finally, it is sold by street-level dealers for $78,000.10 Even these soaring figures do not quite get across the scale of the markups involved in the cocaine business. At each of these stages, the drug is diluted, as traffickers and dealers “cut” the drug with other substances, to make it go further. Take this into account, and the price of a pure kilogram of cocaine at the retail end is in fact about $122,000.

The summer I was ten years old, there was a group of kids in my neighborhood who played together every night after dinner. I often watched them from my window…Every night around nine-thirty or ten, those kids would get called in one by one…I knew the first ones called were full of resentment. But they needn’t have been. Nothing ever happened after they left anyway. Things just sort of ended in a slow motion way, like petals falling off a flower. You couldn’t have people leave like that and have anything good happen afterward. Whoever was left couldn’t pay much attention to anything other than waiting for their turn to get called in. So, it wasn’t so bad to go first, to head back toward those deep yellow lights and beds made up with summer linens. It was much better than being last, when you would be left standing there alone, finally going in without anybody calling you.

Who hasn’t grown up knowing the bitchy cheerleader, a dumb jock, the computer nerd, an overbearing mother, a distant father, a misunderstood old person, or an alienated artist, writer, musician, or dancer? If everybody knows these people, are they really clichés or merely categories? Maybe the various cities, towns, neighborhoods, and blocks are really replicating microcosms? The same strands woven together to create one large tapestry of life?

The farmers, who rent out their house so they can stay afloat, and sleep all together in a studio, but spend their days off outside on a picnic blanket, living the lives they want to live. Drew and Melanie, with their two homes and their horses and their love story. And Rene, traveling across the world, painting temporary masterpieces. Even my uncle Pete has something good worked out with Melinda and his day trips and his best friend, my dad, who has a small nice house in San Francisco and a dozen neighborhood vendors who know him by name. All of these different ways of living. Even Sophie, with her baby in that apartment, with her record store job and her record collection. I imagine her twirling with her baby across her red carpet with Diana Ross crooning, the baby laughing, the two of them getting older in that apartment, eating meals on red vinyl chairs. Walt, too, as pathetic as his situation is, seems happy in his basement, providing entertainment to Fort Bragg's inner circle. All of them, in their own ways, manage to make their lives work.

is turning all life into a unified flow experience. If a person sets out to achieve a difficult enough goal, from which all other goals logically follow, and if he or she invests all energy in developing skills to reach that goal, then actions and feelings will be in harmony, and the separate parts of life will fit together—and each activity will “make sense” in the present, as well as in view of the past and of the future. In such a way, it is possible to give meaning to one’s entire life. But isn’t it incredibly naive to expect life to have a coherent overall meaning? After all, at least since Nietzsche concluded that God was dead, philosophers and social scientists have been busy demonstrating that existence has no purpose, that chance and impersonal forces rule our fate, and that all values are relative and hence arbitrary. It is true that life has no meaning, if by that we mean a supreme goal built into the fabric of nature and human experience, a goal that is valid for every individual. But it does not follow that life cannot be given meaning. Much of what we call culture and civilization consists in efforts people have made, generally against overwhelming odds, to create a sense of purpose for themselves and their descendants. It is one thing to recognize that life is, by itself, meaningless. It is another thing entirely to accept this with resignation. The first fact does not entail the second any more than the fact that we lack wings prevents us from flying. From the point of view of an individual, it does not matter what the ultimate goal is—provided it is compelling enough to order a lifetime’s worth of psychic energy. The challenge might involve the desire to have the best beer-bottle collection in the neighborhood, the resolution to find a cure for cancer, or simply the biological imperative to have children who will survive and prosper. As long as it provides clear objectives, clear rules for action, and a way to concentrate and become involved, any goal can serve to give meaning to a person’s life. In the past few years I have come to be quite well acquainted with several Muslim professionals—electronics engineers, pilots, businessmen, and teachers, mostly from Saudi Arabia and from the other Gulf states. In talking to them, I was struck with how relaxed most of them seemed to be even under strong pressure. “There is nothing to it,” those I asked about it told me, in different words, but with the same message: “We don’t get upset because we believe that our life is in God’s hands, and whatever He decides will be fine with us.” Such implicit faith used to be widespread in our culture as well, but it is not easy to find it now. Many of us have to discover a goal that will give meaning to life on our own, without the help of a traditional faith.

Who knows what advantages you might find in a smaller home, even beyond what you were initially hoping for, after you move in? Maybe you'll be inspired to become a more creative person when you take up residence in a quaint older neighborhood and get out of that suburban tract where you can have a house of any color as long as it's beige. Maybe by putting your preadolescent kids in a bedroom together, they'll socialize better and develop closer bonds. Maybe you and your spouse will rediscover each other when you're actually spending time together instead of tag-teaming on chores.

We really had a close netted structure to rely on for anything, you could have gone by anyone house and get something to eat. Whatever they were eating, they would’ve fed you, and all the mothers would’ve treated you just like they treated their own. What the gang also did, it provided some level of protection for a lot of the working adults in the neighborhood. They knew that their houses were safe, when they went out to work and didn’t have to worry about anyone breaking in to their homes. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members

All of our memories are, like S’s, bound together in a web of associations. This is not merely a metaphor, but a reflection of the brain’s physical structure. The three-pound mass balanced atop our spines is made up of somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 billion neurons, each of which can make upwards of five to ten thousand synaptic connections with other neurons. A memory, at the most fundamental physiological level, is a pattern of connections between those neurons. Every sensation that we remember, every thought that we think, transforms our brains by altering the connections within that vast network. By the time you get to the end of this sentence, your brain will have physically changed.

Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn't keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn't playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know. As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes. A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye. He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?" "I don't want to bother anyone." Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found. Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end. "Olly-olly-oxen-free." The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says "Come on in, wherever you are. It's a new game." And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.

Why are you having a neighborhood potluck? Because we like potlucks, and we have one every year. Why do you have one every year? Because we like to get our neighbors together at the beginning of the summer. Why do you like to get your neighbors together at the beginning of the summer? I guess, if you really think about it, it’s a way of marking the time and reconnecting after the hectic school year. Aha. And why is that important? Because when we have more time in the summer to be together, it’s when we remember what community is, and it helps us forge the bonds that make this a great place to live. Aha. And safer. Aha. And a place that embodies the values we want our children to grow up with, like that strangers aren’t scary. Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere.

It wasn't just this street that she was afraid of or that was bad. It was any street where people were packed together like sardines in a can. And it wasn't just this city. It was any city where they set up a line and say black folks stay on this side and white folks on this side, so that the black folks were crammed on top of each other—jammed and packed and forced into the smallest possible space until they were completely cut off from light and air. It was any place where the women had to work to support the families because the men couldn't get jobs and the men got bored and pulled out and the kids were left without proper homes because there was nobody around to put a heart into it. Yes. It was any place where people were so damn poor they didn't have time to do anything but work, and their bodies were the only source of relief from the pressure under which they lived; and where the crowding together made the young girls wise beyond their years. It all added up to the same thing, she decided—white people. She hated them. She would always hate them.

The same song was playing the second I met my ex–best friend and the moment I realized I’d lost her. I met my best friend at a neighborhood cookout the year we would both turn twelve. It was one of those hot Brooklyn afternoons that always made me feel like I'd stepped out of my life and onto a movie set because the hydrants were open, splashing water all over the hot asphalt. There wasn't a cloud in the flawless blue sky. And pretty black and brown people were everywhere. I was crying. ‘What a Wonderful World’ was playing through a speaker someone had brought with them to the park, and it reminded me too much of my Granny Georgina. I was cupping the last snow globe she’d ever given me in my small, sweaty hands and despite the heat, I couldn’t help imagining myself inside the tiny, perfect, snow-filled world. I was telling myself a story about what it might be like to live in London, a place that was unimaginably far and sitting in the palm of my hands all at once. But it wasn't working. When Gigi had told me stories, they'd felt like miracles. But she was gone and I didn't know if I'd ever be okay again. I heard a small voice behind me, asking if I was okay. I had noticed a girl watching me, but it took her a long time to come over, and even longer to say anything. She asked the question quietly. I had never met anyone who…spoke the way that she did, and I thought that her speech might have been why she waited so long to speak to me. While I expected her to say ‘What’s wrong?’—a question I didn’t want to have to answer—she asked ‘What are you doing?’ instead, and I was glad. “I was kind of a weird kid, so when I answered, I said ‘Spinning stories,’ calling it what Gigi had always called it when I got lost in my own head, but my voice cracked on the phrase and another tear slipped down my cheek. To this day I don’t know why I picked that moment to be so honest. Usually when kids I didn't know came up to me, I clamped my mouth shut like the heavy cover of an old book falling closed. Because time and taught me that kids weren't kind to girls like me: Girls who were dreamy and moony-eyed and a little too nice. Girls who wore rose-tonted glasses. And actual, really thick glasses. Girls who thought the world was beautiful, and who read too many books, and who never saw cruelty coming. But something about this girl felt safe. Something about the way she was smiling as she stuttered out the question helped me know I needn't bother with being shy, because she was being so brave. I thought that maybe kids weren't nice to girls like her either. The cookout was crowded, and none of the other kids were talking to me because, like I said, I was the neighborhood weirdo. I carried around snow globesbecause I was in love with every place I’d never been. I often recited Shakespeare from memory because of my dad, who is a librarian. I lost myself in books because they were friends who never letme down, and I didn’t hide enough of myself the way everyone else did, so people didn’t ‘get’ me. I was lonely a lot. Unless I was with my Gigi. The girl, she asked me if it was making me feel better, spinning the stories. And I shook my head. Before I could say what I was thinking—a line from Hamlet about sorrow coming in battalions that would have surely killed any potential I had of making friends with her. The girl tossed her wavy black hair over her shoulder and grinned. She closed her eyes and said 'Music helps me. And I love this song.' When she started singing, her voice was so unexpected—so bright and clear—that I stopped crying and stared at her. She told me her name and hooked her arm through mine like we’d known each other forever, and when the next song started, she pulled me up and we spun in a slow circle together until we were both dizzy and giggling.

For most of our history, walking wasn’t a choice. It was a given. Walking was our primary means of locomotion. But, today, you have to choose to walk. We ride to work. Office buildings and apartments have elevators. Department stores offer escalators. Airports use moving sidewalks. An afternoon of golf is spent riding in a cart. Even a ramble around your neighborhood can be done on a Segway. Why not just put one foot in front of the other? You don’t have to live in the country. It’s great to take a walk in the woods, but I love to roam city streets, too, especially in places like New York, London, or Rome, where you can’t go half a block without making some new discovery. A long stroll slows you down, puts things in perspective, brings you back to the present moment. In Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Viking, 2000), author Rebecca Solnit writes that, “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord.” Yet in our hectic, goal-oriented culture, taking a leisurely walk isn’t always easy. You have to plan for it. And perhaps you should. Walking is good exercise, but it is also a recreation, an aesthetic experience, an exploration, an investigation, a ritual, a meditation. It fosters health and joie de vivre. Cardiologist Paul Dudley White once said, “A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.” A good walk is anything but pedestrian. It lengthens your life. It clears, refreshes, provokes, and repairs the mind. So lace up those shoes and get outside. The most ancient exercise is still the best.

What the hell do you want, Bettinger?” I asked, already bored of him. “I wanted to let you know I haven’t forgotten about what you did.” “What I did?” I kept my voice even, almost conversational. I lifted my eyebrows. “And what was that?” He stepped closer, a snarl marring his pretty-boy features. “Payback’s a bitch,” he said low. “Is that a threat?” All the muscles in my body tightened. My eyes narrowed on his face. Braeden appeared beside me, planting his feet into the floor and mirroring my position. His arms folded across his chest as he glared at Zach. But he spoke to me. “What’s going on, Rome? Trouble in the neighborhood?” “Nothing I can’t handle.” I stared directly into Zach’s eyes when I replied. “I don’t make threats,” Zach replied, looking back at me. “I make promises.” I couldn’t help it. I grinned. “What the fuck is this?” I asked. “Some cheesy after school movie?” A couple snickers floated through the store around us, and Zach stiffened. “Get the hell out of here, man,” Braeden said. “Before you embarrass yourself more.” After another long, charged stare from Zach, he turned. “See ya later, Rimmel,” Zach called, making the muscles between my shoulder blades squeeze together. Braeden put a hand in the center of my chest like he knew I was seconds away from grabbing that bastard by the scruff of his neck and face-planting him into the closest hard surface. “Forget him,” Braeden said low. I grunted and turned back to Rimmel. She gave me and then Braeden a withering look. “What the hell was that all about?” Braeden whistled under his breath. “Tutor girl gets pissy.” Rimmel narrowed her eyes. Braeden spoke quickly. “Gotta jet. Hot girl is holding my place in line.” He slapped me on the shoulder and left. “Coward,” I muttered after him, and he laughed.

That's Branton, Michigan, by the way. Don't try to find it on a map - you'd need a microscope. It's one of a dozen dinky towns north of Lansing, one of the few that doesn't sound like it was named by a French explorer. Branton, Michigan. Population: Not a Lot and Yet Still Too Many I Don't Particularly Care For. We have a shopping mall with a JCPenny and an Asian fusion place that everyone says they are dying to try even though it’s been there for three years now. Most of our other restaurants are attached to gas stations, the kind that serve rubbery purple hot dogs and sodas in buckets. There’s a statue of Francis B. Stockbridge in the center of town. He’s a Michigan state senator from prehistoric times with a beard that belongs on Rapunzel’s twin brother. He wasn’t born in Branton, of course – nobody important was ever born in Branton – but we needed a statue for the front of the courthouse and the name Stockbridge looks good on a copper plate. It’s all for show. Branton’s the kind of place that tries to pretend it’s better than it really is. It’s really the kind of place with more bars than bookstores and more churches than either, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s a place where teenagers still sometimes take baseball bats to mailboxes and wearing the wrong brand of shoes gets you at least a dirty look. It snows a lot in Branton. Like avalanches dumped from the sky. Like heaps to hills to mountains, the plows carving their paths through our neighborhood, creating alpine ranges nearly tall enough to ski down. Some of the snow mounds are so big you can build houses inside them, complete with entryways and coat closets. Restrooms are down the hall on your right. Just look for the steaming yellow hole. There’s nothing like that first Branton snow, though. Soft as a cat scruff and bleach white, so bright you can almost see your reflection in it. Then the plows come and churn up the earth underneath. The dirt and the boot tracks and the car exhaust mix together to make it all ash gray, almost black, and it sickens your stomach just to look at it. It happens everywhere, not just Branton, but here it’s something you can count on.

I think about that often. I think about the boots and the bones, and how I didn't want to be so lowly as to stoop down and help another human being take off their layers of mud. to wind up with their dirt on my hands. I think that's because for a long time I believed freedom looked like getting to a place where none of the people were muddy. Where everyone was shiny and clean and took care of their own front yards. Where everywhere you looked, there were white picket fences and perfectly manicured pansies lining the front walkway. ... And then I think about God and what neighborhood He would live in. I think about Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. Those dusty busted-up, sandal-blistered feet they rolled up with to His supper table. I think about the Savior of the world kneeling there at His last meal, before His body was broken and His blood was poured out, first making sure that none of them had to walk around with muddy feet. At this I picture Jesus kneeling at the feet of my father. I think about the conversation those two might have. I think about the care Jesus would take in removing those heavy weights from around Dad's ankles. how He would hold all those broken parts in His light-filled hands and weep with Dad for all the pain he'd been walking around with. I think He would tell him that He sees how hard he's been fighting to hold it all together, sees all the sacrifices that he's made. I think Jesus would sit with him there for a while in the mud, not even caring about Dad's boots leaving marks all up and down His crisp, white robes. There comes a time when every person who believes in God also has to decide what kind of character they believe He has. Is He a cold and distant God, withholding every good thing, just waiting for the chance to take back what little He has given? Is He a God who only gives out begrudging scraps of joy after first putting you in very hot water, His red-letter way of ensuring that you've been washed clean? Or is He a God who sits with you in the mud, who stoops to serve before the sacrifice? I used to think freedom looked a lot like being around people who aren't muddy. Now I realize we're all pretty muddy and maybe just a little bit broken too, no matter what kind of place we call home. And when it comes right down to it, getting each other's mud on our hands--this serving one another in love--that's what true freedom has always been about anyway. Because love, like integrity, is also about what we do when no one else is looking. And how we do anything is how we do everything.

I first came to Chicago when I was in my early twenties and I was still trying to figure out who I was, still searching for a purpose in my life. And it was in a neighborhood not far from here where I began working with church groups in the shadows of closed steel mills. It was on these streets where I witnessed the power of faith and the quiet dignity of working people in the face of struggle and loss. Now, this is where I learned that change only happens when ordinary people get involved, and they get engaged, and come together to demand it.

Cass didn’t know what she and Falco were looking for, but whatever it was, they weren’t going to find it rowing around wealthy neighborhoods in the dark. “This is pointless,” she said. “The man with the falcon mask could live in any of these palazzos, or none at all. Besides, we don’t even know if he has anything to do with this mess.” Falco shook his dark hair back from his face. “I was worried this would be a dead end, but I…” He trailed off. “You what?” Cass asked. Falco rubbed at the scar under his eye. “I wanted to see you,” he said. “I wanted to spend time with you.” Cass looked away from him. Again, she felt like someone was stabbing her between her ribs. “Maybe that’s pointless too,” she said. Their boat floated past a gondola. Two forms were visible in the moonlight. A man and woman lay intertwined on the base of the boat. Bare skin, gentle rocking. Falco followed her eyes. “You know that I care about you, Cass.” “But it doesn’t mean anything.” Cass tried to keep her voice from trembling. “Because it can’t lead to anything more.” Falco set aside the oars and turned her face toward his. “You’re wrong. It means everything. You mean everything.” He held her chin between his thumbs and forefingers. “Why do my feelings have to lead anywhere at all? Why can’t we just be here, now, in this moment?” His touch made shivers dance up and down her back. Maybe Falco was right. Why did she care so much about the future? Maybe she should just be thankful that they could be together here, right now. “Why can’t you just be who you are?” Falco asked, his lips moving toward hers. Because I don’t know who that is anymore. “You’re changing me,” she whispered. “I see everything differently now.” Cass didn’t fight it when Falco leaned in and kissed her. She didn’t resist as he tipped her gently backward and laid her down on the wooden bottom of the batèla. Just be who you are. Easy to say, but so difficult to do. Falco unfolded a blanket over her. “So you don’t get cold,” he said. “What’s going to keep you warm?” Cass asked softly, reaching up to tousle his hair. Falco laughed. “Trust me, I’m plenty warm.” “Prove it,” Cass said, pulling him down to her level.

After years of living in New York and feeling depressed about its state, I finally decided to stop feeling sorry and start feeling activated. Recently I made a concerted effort to get to know my neighbors. I made sure to say hi in the halls. I emailed them when I had a question. I started offering people in the subway help with their heavy items. I filed a petition with the city to determine if the building I live in is meant to be rent-stabilized. It's unclear what the result of that will be, but it made me feel more connected to the place where I live. I began attending meetings about gentrification. These weren't just things I thought of as good deeds, but a way to help reorient myself in the city. Separately they felt insignificant, but together they helped me see myself, and my city, as connected entities that are capable of changing each other. I've begun to appreciate New York more now, and so I am more willing to fight for it. The question I still have is whether it will ever be enough. Or will the city keep changing so fast that it will not matter how many individuals attempt to put the brakes on that change or dictate how and why change happens?

She followed Wally up front where Miss Applebaum was placing two chairs, face to face, about three feet apart. “I want you to sit here,” she told them, “and I want you to talk to each other for ten minutes. Perhaps at the end of that time you will have said everything there is to say, and there will be no more disturbances in class.” No! Caroline thought. She would rather be paddled! One minute would be bad enough, five minutes would be cruel and unusual punishment, and ten was torture! She lowered herself sideways into one of the chairs. What was she supposed to say to a boy who, up until that morning, had thought she was dead? Miss Applebaum stood with arms folded. “Well? I’m waiting.” Caroline crossed her ankles. “You started it,” she said to Wally. “What did I do?” he mumbled, sitting sideways himself. “Dumping all that dead stuff on our side of the river.” “So you pretended to die.” “Is this a normal conversation?” asked Miss Applebaum as she picked up a box of supplies and headed for the closet at the back of the room. “No,” said Caroline, but she was talking to Wally, not her teacher. “This is not a normal conversation because you and your brothers aren’t normal human beings. Normal people don’t go dumping dead fish and birds around the neighborhood.” “It wasn’t my idea,” said Wally. “Well, actually it was my idea—dead fish, I mean—but it was Jake and Josh who—” “So none of you are normal.” “We’re not normal?” said Wally, his voice rising. “What do you call people who go burying each other in the river?” “It was a great performance, and you know it.” “It was dumb.” “You believed I was dead.” “I believe you’re crazy.” “We’ll see about that.” “Whatever you two are arguing about, you’d better get it out of your systems now, because when you come to school tomorrow, I expect you to pay attention,” Miss Applebaum called, sticking her head out of the supply closet. “You and your dumb brothers,” Caroline muttered because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “You and your stupid sisters,” said Wally. “We’re smarter than the four of you put together,” Caroline told him. “We’ll see,” said Wally. “If you’d just left us alone instead of dumping that dead stuff, things would be okay,” said Caroline. “If you’d go back where you came from, there wouldn’t be any more trouble,” Wally replied. “Oh, yeah? If you went back to where you came from, you’d live in a cave!” “That does it,” said Wally hotly. “The war is on.” “Okay,” called Miss Applebaum, coming back to the front of the room for another box. “If you two have settled things, you may leave now.” She looked from Caroline to Wally. “Unless, of course, you are not agreed.” “We agree,” said Caroline emphatically. The war is definitely on. She could hardly wait to get home and tell her sisters. What she discovered when she got outside was that she wasn’t the only member of her family who had been kept after school. Eddie had stumbled over Jake’s foot in the cafeteria and, sure that he’d tripped her on purpose, brought her tray down on his head. Beth, of course, had waited for Eddie, so there they were again, the three of them coming home late on the very first day. Mother was dusting shelves in the hallway. “Whatever happened to your nose?” she asked, looking at Caroline. “She bumped into something that needs a little fixing,” said Beth. “Needs a lot of straightening out,” put in Eddie. “Well, how was school?” Mother asked. “Urk,” said Eddie. “Ugh,” said Beth. “It has possibilities,” said Caroline.

But I’m not through with you, Gavin DeGrassi. I have plans to redden that ass and mark your skin. There are many more orgasms to deny you, and butt plugs to make you wear in public. D-rings I want to add to your corsets, since it’s clear you need restraining again. I haven’t bought our cabin in Colorado for our retirement. We haven’t been to the beach together. I want to go abroad with you. I haven’t picked out the porch swing we’re going to sit on when we’re eighty and yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off our lawn. I want a collar around your throat, and a ring on your left hand. I have plans for us, and I’m going to do everything in my power to see those plans through.

When you think about it, the living and family rooms are the most public places in your private home, aren't they? Here is where you can get together with all the loved ones you live with. Here is where you invite your friends to sit down with you and talk, or have tea, or watch the Super Bowl on television. If you host a club or a church or neighborhood group, it's likely you'll be gathering in one of these rooms. These are your "us" rooms. So minimizing in these rooms immediately starts helping you not only to enjoy the benefits of minimizing yourself but also to share them with others.

As a group which believed in civic responsibility and the salutary effect of applied social science, it was natural that the WASP elite would take an interest in housing. In cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston, the panels of experts in the housing field invariably had a definite ethnic cast. They became certified as experts either by going to the already mentioned Ivy League universities or by getting appointed to boards of the various cities’ planning commissions, which were often descendants of local ruling class initiatives that began with the city-beautiful movement or the settlement house movement around the time of World War I. The Philadelphia Housing Association was one such group. It started off as a blueblood organization complaining about backyard privies and piggeries in South Philadelphia and recommending common-sense measures for local improvement of the housing situation, things like liens against absentee landlords to pay for repairs. All of that changed in 1937 with the New Deal housing act of that year, which established local housing authorities across the country with federal money and government authority. The various housing authorities were charged with creating master plans by staffs of “experts” of a certain ethnic (i.c., WASP) cast which was invariably not the ethnic cast of the neighborhoods which were targeted for destruction. Urban renewal as practiced in the case of Berman v. Parker meant that certain people were empowered to come up with a master plan for the cities, one that would now have the power of law, specifically eminent domain, behind it along with enormous amounts of federal money, which was made available to tear down neighborhoods where people from other ethnic groups lived. The experts could do this according to their own purportedly scientific but ultimately ethnocentric criteria of things like blight, hygiene, decay, etc. Taken together the WASP penchant for meddling in housing along with residual WASP anti-Catholicism meant bad news for places like Bridesburg and Poletown, especially when this group was empowered to act on its ethnic prejudices by federal money and a Supreme Court that was willing to abridge property rights in the interest of increased social engineering.

Think about it. Why would a company like Emerald want a robust intercity transit system? They don’t want workers to commute elsewhere—and they definitely don’t want it to be easy for tourists to leave and spend cash in La Ronge or Moundville.” As Misha spoke, Sulfur had a vivid image of their not-so-distant future. They could almost hear the words that Verdance would use to make its announcement. We made a good faith effort, they would say. We got transit started and now it’s up to each city to carry on, they would add. And then, because most of the wealthy owners had private transit, there would be endless debates over where to plant those ugly tracks that Cylindra had already rejected. Nobody would want them next to their nice neighborhoods. There would be excuses about how trains messed up the Pleistocene purity of Sasky, but really it would be about not wanting to deal with the class of person who took public transit. Sulfur imagined the tracks slowly softening into mulch while millions of people tried to get around by cobbling together circuitous routes from dozens of local transit systems that each charged a separate fare. And then rich commuters would deal with the problem by building Mounts who couldn’t say whether they consented to be used that way or not.

Walking is mapping with your feet. It helps you piece a city together, connecting up neighborhoods that might otherwise have remained discrete entities, different planets bound to each other, sustained yet remote. I like seeing how in fact they blend into one another, I like noticing the boundaries between them. Walking helps me feel at home. There's a small pleasure in seeing how well I’ve come to know the city through my wanderings on foot, crossing through different neighborhoods of the city, some I used to know quite well, others I may not have seen in a while, like getting reacquainted with someone I once met at a party.

A few nights later we had a neighborhood-watch party, which is where everyone on the street gets together in the Crowleys’ yard and talks and laughs and pretends that nothing is wrong, and meanwhile all our empty houses are ripe for burglary.

For instance, if a Black person is watching tv, instead of being bombarded by anti-Black images and messages hour after hour, they should be able to relax and be at peace in the knowledge that Black people control the media.  When their children go off to school in the morning, Black parents and other members of their community who provide love and support for their children, should be able to know that the teachers won’t be anti-Black and won’t fill their children’s heads with ideas that make them hate themselves or feel less worthy and less valuable.  The Black community should be confident that their children are being taught their history, their ideas (Black Thought), and are being told they are beautiful and good.  There shouldn’t be any worries about schoolmates of another race making their children feel inferior.  When they grow up and go to college, Black students should be confident that Black administrators and Black professors have created an environment and curriculum which encourages their entire educational development, not only providing skills for the workplace but nurturing their minds and their sense of community.  And when these students go out into the workplace, they should be confident that Black-controlled industries will be hiring them with Black managers in charge.  Racism will become a non-factor. Most significantly, when Black people have control over their community and have Black citizenship they won’t be forced to go through every day under the constant terror of being harassed, brutalized and killed by the police.  The psychological weight that would be lifted from them would be historic.  A new sense of energy and security could be channeled into self-affirmation and community-building.  I have little doubt that such a moment in history would lead to unprecedented strong race relations between citizens of this Black nation and whites in the current nation.  It’s almost impossible to have truly strong or positive race relations when one group is constantly required to bear the burden of oppression, and the other group feels the need to ignore or deny the existence of this oppression while also enforcing it.  The levels of tension and dishonesty are an enormous drain on everyone involved.  What a sweet and beautiful day it would be when Black people would simply not have to think about whites anymore.  In the same way that amerikans spend so little of our time thinking about Lithuanians or Norwegians.  And when you aren’t forced to think about someone, or forced to live the way they tell you to live, it’s a pleasure to get together and visit voluntarily.  Black people and Europeans on this continent (amerikans) would still talk to one another.  We might even still live in the same neighborhoods.  But the difference is that Black people would be their own people.  They would no longer be surrounded by the circle of whiteness.  The black dot on the white page: the exception to the rule.  White rule.  Black people would be a nation.  An entity unto themselves.  They would not be required to imagine themselves within the context of whiteness.  Their minds would be freed from the perpetual interpretation of every action and word (it seems even every thought) through whiteness.  Africans (Black people) would simply be Africans.  A people defined by their own terms, their identity neither within nor without the boundaries of whiteness.

In this town, white politicians and black ministers seemed to go together like tears and tissues. At election time, the pols got religion and came looking for the blessings of black ministers as a way to get black votes without providing the kinds of services to black communities that they at least promised to East Boston and Charlestown and the other mostly white Boston neighborhoods.

Where I live, on the West Coast, most churches tend to be small and to have little influence in the culture. Stark and Finke explain, “A major reason for the lack of church membership in the West is high rates of mobility, which decrease the ability of all voluntary organizations, not just churches, to maintain membership. That is, people move so often that they lack the social ties needed to affiliate with churches.”25 To address this problem, one of the most effective church-planting networks in the United States began in Tacoma, Washington, by using a method of developing intensive community in neighborhoods. Soma Communities fosters deep and intense relationships by teaching church planters to get closely involved in their neighborhoods, opening their homes to neighbors, gathering friends together on a regular basis, and forming “missional communities” focused on discovering and meeting the needs of neighbors and the community. It is these relational bonds that make someone unfamiliar with Christianity want to try it out. Rick Richardson, who directs the evangelism and leadership program at Wheaton College Graduate School, argues that “belonging comes before believing.” He contrasts older methods of evangelism that focused on asking individuals to make a set of commitments. Today, asserts Richardson, presenting four spiritual laws and inviting people to make decisions for Christ is less effective. “Evangelism is about helping people belong so that they can come to believe. So our communities need to be places where people can connect before they have to commit.”26 The idea is held up by social science research showing that converts tend to sign on to a new faith only after their social ties become stronger to those in the new faith than to others outside it. “This often occurs before a convert knows much about what the group believes.

We can live in a house with a roof and a kitchen, surrounded by neighborhood. We'll both get jobs. We'll never talk about them. We'll watch TV together, things like that.

Imagine what you can give in these areas of the Twelve Areas of Balance: 9.​YOUR CAREER. What are your visions for your career? What level of competence do you want to achieve and why? How would you like to improve your workplace or company? What contribution to your field would you like to make? If your career does not currently seem to contribute anything meaningful to the world, take a closer look—is that because the work is truly meaningless or does it just not have meaning to you? What career would you like to get into? 10.​YOUR CREATIVE LIFE. What creative activities do you love to do or what would you like to learn? It could be anything from cooking to singing to photography (my own passion) to painting to writing poetry to developing software. What are some ways you can share your creative self with the world? 11.​YOUR FAMILY LIFE. Picture yourself being with your family not as you think you “should” be but in ways that fill you with happiness. What are you doing and saying? What wonderful experiences are you having together? What values do you want to embody and pass along? What can you contribute to your family that is unique to you? Keep in mind that your family doesn’t have to be a traditional family—ideas along those lines are often Brules. “Family” may be cohabiting partners, a same-sex partner, a marriage where you decided not to have children, or a single life where you consider a few close friends as family. Don’t fall into society’s definition of family. Instead, create a new model of reality and think of family as those whom you truly love and want to spend time with. 12.​YOUR COMMUNITY LIFE. This could be your friends, your neighborhood, your city, state, nation, religious community, or the world community. How would you like to contribute to your community? Looking at all of your abilities, all of your ideas, all of the unique experiences you’ve had that make you the person you are, what is the mark you want to leave on the world that excites and deeply satisfies you? For me, it’s reforming global education for our children. What is it for you? This brings us to Law 8. Law 8: Create a vision for your future. Extraordinary minds create a vision for their future that is decidedly their own and free from expectations of the culturescape. Their vision is focused on end goals that strike a direct chord with their happiness.

he asked them. “Too long. Don’t be such a stranger. Stop by if you’re in our neighborhood. We would love to sit and chat. We can talk about the good old days and we got lots of pictures and stories from Tuscany.” “Will do. Enjoy the evening.” Jack turned and was face to face with their daughter, Patti. “Hi, Jack,” she whispered. “Great to see you again,” she said and kissed him on the cheek. “It was so good to talk with you the other day. It meant a lot to see you.” He watched her as she started to walk away and turned to him and say, “I wanted to let you know that after we talked I gave my husband a phone call. Eric and I decided to get back together. We’ve shared a lot of history, and we’re at least going to give it one last try to see if we can make it work. Thanks for everything, Jack. Bye.” She kissed him on the cheek. Jack saw Hope walking across the floor. “She’s pretty. Who was that?” glancing at Patti walk away. “An old and dear friend. Both Charley and I had a crush on her when we were younger. I’ll introduce you to her and her mom and dad later. You’ll like her.” More people filed inside to an already full hall. Soon it was standing room only. Jack turned to Hope and whispered, “I can’t believe this. We’ve had over twenty businesses make donations to the veterans’ fund to help support job training and for overseas servicemen’s wives and families. We also got money from the Yankee Bookshop, the Woodstock Inn, the Billings Farm Museum, the bank, and Bentleys Restaurant. They all donated money.” “That’s great,” she said excitedly. “And we’ve received over thirty new membership requests for the Veterans Post and that’s just yesterday. This is better than I ever expected. And four companies have committed to hiring more vets locally, including King Arthur Flour Company. They’re planning to build a new distribution center just west of town. I can’t believe all of this is happening.” “You should,” Hope said. “I remember you sat down right over there at that table and laid out what you wanted to see happen and you kept working on it until it did. I’m so proud of you.” He hugged her close and kissed her. He never wanted to let her go. The distinct fragrance of fresh balsam, pine, and holly filled

The difference between these two alternatives couldn’t be starker. At Starbucks, the drink sizes are Italian words, not English ones. The array of coffee concoctions that one can choose from takes up multiple boards above the barista’s preparation station. There is, by contrast, no “barista” at Dunkin’ Donuts. Until recently, there weren’t an awful lot of choices at Dunkin’, either. Small, medium, or large. Cream, sugar, or both. (James usually goes with a medium coffee with sugar. It is practical and costs about two bucks. It gets the job done efficiently.) You’re unlikely to walk out of Starbucks with a two-dollar cup of coffee. But that’s not what the Bleus are looking for. Starbucks offers a kaleidoscope of options, many of them daringly offbeat, and the company’s ethos clearly aligns with the priorities of fluid people—even if it occasionally stumbles, as with its #RaceTogether campaign, which was intended to foster conversations about race among its customers, but which drew a harsh and speedy backlash from across the political spectrum. But that hasn’t stopped the Bleus from frequenting the chain. Indeed, the fluid’s love of nuance, the less traditional, and the pursuit of individual fulfillment is on full display at Starbucks (or any of the other cutting-edge coffee shops in the Bleus’ neighborhood, which are full of people expressing their individuality with lots of tattoos and piercings).

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter asserted it clearly, in capital letters, in the headline of one of her nationally syndicated columns: They Gave Your Mortgage to a Less Qualified Minority. Another conservative columnist, Jeff Jacoby, wrote, “What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities? Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs.” By 2008, Jacoby was declaring the financial crisis “a no-win situation entirely of the government’s making.” When asked during the market panic on September 17 about the root causes of the crisis, billionaire and then New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg told a Georgetown University audience that the end of redlining was to blame. “It probably all started back when there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone….Redlining, if you remember, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said, ‘People in these neighborhoods are poor; they’re not going to be able to pay off their mortgages. Tell your salesmen don’t go into those areas,’ ” Bloomberg said.

I think class in this country is in the air that people breathe. Everyone knows their place. Even the people who are angry about class have somehow accepted their place," Obinze said. "A white boy and a black girl who grow up in the same working-class town in this country can get together and race will be secondary, but in America, even if the white boy and black girl grow up in the same neighborhood, race would be primary.

So tell me, Ash, is your insistence to drive the drunk guy and his whore girlfriend home because you’re the perpetual good girl who helps everyone? ’Cause I know you don’t like me much, so I’m curious as to why you want to make sure I get home safe.” “Beau, you’re my friend. Of course I like you. We’ve been friends since we were five. Sure we don’t hang out anymore or go terrorizing the neighborhood together, but I still care about you.” “Since when?” “Since when what?” “Since when do you care about me?” “That is a stupid question, Beau. You know I’ve always cared about you,” I replied. Even though I knew he wouldn’t let such a vague answer fly. The truth was that I never really talked to him much anymore. Nicole was normally wrapped around one of his body parts. And when he spoke to me, it was always to make some wisecrack. “You hardly acknowledge my existence,” he replied. “That’s not true.” He chuckled. “We sat by each other in history all year, and you hardly ever glanced my way. At lunch you never look at me, and I sit at the same table you do. We’re at the field parties every weekend, and if you ever turn your superior gaze in my direction, it’s normally with a disgusted expression. So I’m a little shocked you still consider me a friend.

After a few more bites, I ask him, “Since you love A Wrinkle in Time, I was wondering if you’ve read When You Reach Me?” He shakes his head. “Never heard of it.” “Oh!” I say, clapping my hands together. Yes, dorky. But When You Reach Me was one of my favorite books in middle school, and I get hyper about things like that. “First of all, it’s amazing. You won’t be able to put it down. Also, it takes place in this neighborhood, but in the 1970s. It’s an homage to A Wrinkle in Time. That’s why I think you’d like it.

Regular exercise, all alone, can be boring. If you just can’t schedule it for yourself, organize a little neighborhood club. Get all those pleasingly-plump pals together regularly at a certain hour on certain days of the week—and compete. Competition is often just the stimulus you need.

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