Observation Deck Quotes

You can see the most beautiful things from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. I read somewhere that people on the street are supposed to look like ants, but that's not true. They look like little people. And the cars look like little cars. And even the buildings look little. It's like New York is a miniature replica of New York, which is nice, because you can see what it's really like, instead of how it feels when you're in the middle of it.

He was dead; I needed to let his memory go, too. That was the first step for me, before discrimination. Yet my love was the ghost of a young girl's dream. It walked alone in the abyss, stubbornly, where only illusions prospered on tears and regrets. My love had a life of its own; it was perverted but nevertheless still vital. For that reason, I wanted to return to deep space. Honestly, I would have preferred it if we had traveled forever and never stopped at another star system. To fall into endless blackness, that was my new fantasy. The young girl with the ancient dream wept. I could hear her; I even saw her tears on the glass of the observation deck. It made me feel old. I didn't want to know her name. I couldn't forget Tem but I needed to forget her.

A short poem from my book: Perspective Of course there is a hell she said and it has an observation deck; so I may stand and wave to all those kind souls below who warned me I would go there.

In Venice, things not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli’s gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers, and quaysides of my native city. I row into the neck of the Grand Canal, and, one by one, the reflection of each colorful façade appears, only to dissipate into wavering, shimmering shards under my oar.

If you dine at SkyCity, revolving just beneath the 520-foot-high observation deck, the elevator ride is free (otherwise it’s $18), but be forewarned that the restaurant is one of Seattle’s priciest (you’re paying for the million-dollar view).

I had plans. I wanted to get Thomas help. But no sooner had he left for the observation deck than Nevvie showed up with Grace. “I need your help moving Hester,” Nevvie said, and I remembered that I’d promised her we could try to put the two African elephants together today

There's more to Philadelphia than Cheesesteaks and Wawa Hoagies, Here is a list of 1 places you will love in Philadelphia: The Betsy Ross House Reading Terminal Market Boat House Row/Kelly Drive National Constitution Center Delaware River waterfront The Liberty Bell Benjamin Franklin Parkway Franklin Institute Philadelphia Museum of Art City Hall and it's Observation deck

I RODE THE turbo elevator back up to the observation deck. The moment the elevator doors swished open and I stepped into the large domed room, the odor of burning cannabis filled my nose. The smell grew increasingly stronger the farther I ventured into the room, as did the familiar strains of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, punctuated by fits of only slightly suppressed laughter.

Joe had never flown in an airplane, never seen a city from any higher vantage point than that afforded by his own six-foot-three frame. Now, standing on the observation deck, he looked out at the many spires of New York rising through a pall of smoke and steam and heat haze and did not know whether he found it beautiful or frightening. He leaned over the low stone parapet and peered down at miniature cars and buses and swarms of tiny people scurrying along the streets. The city below him, Joe realized, murmured. The cacophony of honking horns and wailing sirens and rumbling streetcars that had as**saulted his ears at street level were reduced up here to something gentler and more soothing, like the sonorous breathing of an enormous living thing. It was a much bigger, more connected, world than he had ever thought possible.

I have something to show you." He sank down next to me and handed me a sketchbook. I opened it. And saw the mermaid. She was drawn in colored ink, exquisitely detailed; each scale had a little picture in it: a pyramid, a rocket, a peacock, a lamp. Her torso was patterened red, like a tattoo, like coral. She had a thin strand of seaweed around her neck, with a starfish holding on to the center. Her hair was a tumble of loose black curls. She had my face. I turned the page.And another and another. There she was fighting a creature that was half human, half octopus. Exploring a cave. Riding a shark. Laughing and petting a stingray that rested on her lap. "I'm calling her Cora Lia for the moment," Alex told me. "I thought about Corella, but it sounded like cheap dishware." "She's...amazing." "She's fierce. Fighting the Evil Sea-Dragon King and his minions." I traced the red tattoo on her chest. "This is beautiful." Alex reached into my sweater, pulled the loose neck of the T-shirt away from my shoulder. I didn't stop him. "It looks like coral to me." He touched me, then,the pad of his thumb tracing the outline of the scar. It felt strange, partly because of the difference in the tissue, but more because in the last few years, the only hands that had touched me there were mine. I set the book aside carefully. "Guess I don't see what you do." "That's too bad, because I see you perfectly." I curved myself into him. "Maybe you're exactly what I need." "Like there's any doubt?" He buried his face in my neck.I didn't stop him. "So." "So?" "We'll kill a few hours, watch the sunrise, have pancakes, and you'll drive home." "What?" I felt him smile against my skin. "I got you swimming with sharks. Next on the Conquer Your Fears list is driving a stick shift.Right?" "One thing at a time," I said. Then, "Oh. Do that again." In another story, the intrepid heroine would have gone running out and splashed in the surf, hypothermia be damned. She would have driven the Mustang home, booked a haircut, taken up stand-up comedy, and danced on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. But this was me, and I was moving at my own pace. Truth: My story started a hundred years ago. There's time.

Opening the door quietly, I slipped in without switching on the light. From the entrance hall, I could see the dining room at the end of the corridor, the table still decked out for the party. The cake was there, untouched, and the crockery still waited for the meal. I could make out the motionless silhouette of my father in his armchair, as he observed the scene from the window. He was awake and still wearing his best suit. Wreaths of smoke rose lazily from a cigarette he held between his index and ring fingers, as if it were a pen. I hadn't seen my father smoke for years.

When the sea is calm, the landscape (seascape) seems simple and even monotonous, sometimes with a distant, sometimes with a close coastline, but usually with no land in sight at all. You feel 'free', not only free of care, but also free of the solidity of the earth's crust. It is a wonderful sensation, feeling the liquidity of the water under the ship. This salutary freedom is constantly present, on deck by day, in bed at nights. The movements of the ship vary from a gentle rocking to swinging and hurtling; you are never motionless while at sea. Then you start to observe and assimilate all these natural phenomena surrounding you: the infinite variety of the waves and the swell of the sea, and for the first time in ages you look again at the heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon and the stars, and you see the living creatures in and over the sea, the fish and the birds.

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and "fall into a vortex" as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her "scribbling suit" consisted of a black woollen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally, to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?" They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on; in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew; and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew; and not until the red bow was seen gayly erect upon the gifted brow, did any one dare address Jo.

The geneticist Antoine Danchin once used the parable of the Delphic boat to describe the process by which individual genes could produce the observed complexity of the natural world. In the proverbial story, the oracle at Delphi is asked to consider a boat on a river whose planks have begun to rot. As the wood decays, each plank is replaced, one by one—and after a decade, no plank is left from the original boat. Yet, the owner is convinced that it is the same boat. How can the boat be the same boat—the riddle runs—if every physical element of the original has been replaced? The answer is that the “boat” is not made of planks but of the relationship between planks. If you hammer a hundred strips of wood atop each other, you get a wall; if you nail them side to side, you get a deck; only a particular configuration of planks, held together in particular relationship, in a particular order, makes a boat. Genes operate in the same manner. Individual genes specify individual functions, but the relationship among genes allows physiology. The genome is inert without these relationships. That humans and worms have about the same number of genes—around twenty thousand—and yet the fact that only one of these two organisms is capable of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel suggests that the number of genes is largely unimportant to the physiological complexity of the organism. “It is not what you have,” as a certain Brazilian samba instructor once told me, “it is what you do with it.

The last man crossed the deck: the clinking ship’s company was dismissed, and Jack said to the signal-midshipman, ‘To Dryad: Captain repair aboard at once.’ He then turned to Rowan and said, ‘You may part company as soon as I hear from Captain Babbington whether the transports are in Cephalonia or not; then you will not lose a moment of this beautiful leading breeze. Here he is. Captain Babbington, good day to you. Are the transports in Cephalonia? Is all well?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Mr Rowan, report to the Commander-in-Chief, with my duty, that the transports are in Cephalonia, and that all is well. You need not mention the fact that you saw one of the squadron crammed with women from head to stern; you need not report this open and I may say shameless violation of the Articles of War, for that disagreeable task falls to your superiors; nor need you make any observations about floating brothels or the relaxation of discipline in the warmer eastern waters, for these observations will naturally occur to the Commander-in-Chief without your help. Now pray go aboard our prize and proceed to Malta without the loss of a minute: not all of us can spare the time to dally with the sex.’ ‘Oh sir,’ cried Babbington, as Rowan darted over the side, ‘I really must be allowed to protest – to deny – ’ ‘You will not deny that they are women, surely? I can tell the difference between Adam and Eve as quick as the next man, even if you cannot; just as I can tell the difference between an active zealous officer and a lubber that lies in port indulging his whims. It is of no use trying to impose upon me.’ ‘No, sir. But these are all respectable women.’ ‘Then why are they leering over the side like that, and making gestures?’ ‘It is only their way, sir. They are all Lesbians – ’ ‘And no doubt they are all parsons’ daughters, your cousins in the third degree, like that wench in Ceylon.’ ‘– and Lesbians always join their hands like that, to show respect.’ ‘You are becoming an authority on the motions of Greek women, it appears.’ ‘Oh sir,’ cried Babbington, his voice growing shriller still. ‘I know you do not like women aboard – ’ ‘I believe I have had occasion to mention it to you some fifty or sixty times in the last ten years.’ ‘But if you will allow me to explain – ’ ‘It would be interesting to hear how the presence of thirty-seven, no, thirty-eight young women in one of His Majesty’s sloops can be explained; but since I like some decency to be preserved on my quarterdeck, perhaps the explanation had better take place in the cabin.’ And in the cabin he said, ‘Upon my word, William, this is coming it pretty high. Thirty-eight wenches at a time is coming it pretty high.

For many years, a family of ospreys lived in a large nest near my summer home in Maine. Each season, I carefully observed their rituals and habits. In mid-April, the parents would arrive, having spent the winter in South America, and lay eggs. In early June, the eggs hatched. The babies slowly grew, as the father brought fish back to the nest, and in early to mid August were large enough to make their first flight. My wife and I recorded all of these comings and goings with cameras and in a notebook. We wrote down the number of chicks each year, usually one or two but sometimes three. We noted when the chicks first began flapping their wings, usually a couple of weeks before flying from the nest. We memorized the different chirps the parents made for danger, for hunger, for the arrival of food. After several years of cataloguing such data, we felt that we knew these ospreys. We could predict the sounds the birds would make in different situations, their flight patterns, their behavior when a storm was brewing. Reading our “osprey journals” on a winter’s night, we felt a sense of pride and satisfaction. We had carefully studied and documented a small part of the universe. Then, one August afternoon, the two baby ospreys of that season took flight for the first time as I stood on the circular deck of my house watching the nest. All summer long, they had watched me on that deck as I watched them. To them, it must have looked like I was in my nest just as they were in theirs. On this particular afternoon, their maiden flight, they did a loop of my house and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed. My immediate impulse was to run for cover, since they could have ripped me apart with their powerful talons. But something held me to my ground. When they were within twenty feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away. But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land. After they were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I do not understand what happened in that half second. But it was one of the most profound moments of my life.

Another way to picture this is to use Galileo’s ship. Imagine a light beam being shot down from the top of the mast to the deck. To an observer on the ship, the light beam will travel the exact length of the mast. To an observer on land, however, the light beam will travel a diagonal formed by the length of the mast plus the distance (it’s a fast ship) that the ship has traveled forward during the time it took the light to get from the top to the bottom of the mast. To both observers, the speed of light is the same. To the observer on land, it traveled farther before it reached the deck. In other words, the exact same event (a light beam sent from the top of the mast hitting the deck) took longer when viewed by a person on land than by a person on the ship.59 This phenomenon, called time dilation, leads to what is known as the twin paradox. If a man stays on the platform while his twin sister takes off in a spaceship that travels long distances at nearly the speed of light, when she returns she would be younger than he is. But because motion is relative, this seems to present a paradox. The sister on the spaceship might think it’s her brother on earth who is doing the fast traveling, and when they are rejoined she would expect to observe that it was he who did not age much.

I’ve made myself into the character of a book, a life one reads. Whatever I feel is felt (against my will) so that I can write that I felt it. Whatever I think is promptly put into words, mixed with images that undo it, cast into rhythms that are something else altogether. From so much self-revising, I’ve destroyed myself. From so much self-thinking, I’m now my thoughts and not I. I plumbed myself and dropped the plumb; I spend my life wondering if I’m deep or not, with no remaining plumb except my gaze that shows me – blackly vivid in the mirror at the bottom of the well – my own face that observes me observing it. I’m like a playing card belonging to an old and unrecognizable suit – the sole survivor of a lost deck. I have no meaning, I don’t know my worth, there’s nothing I can compare myself with to discover what I am, and to make such a discovery would be of no use to anyone. And so, describing myself in image after image – not without truth, but with lies mixed in – I end up more in the images than in me, stating myself until I no longer exist, writing with my soul for ink, useful for nothing except writing. But the reaction ceases, and again I resign myself. I go back to whom I am, even if it’s nothing. And a hint of tears that weren’t cried makes my stiff eyes burn; a hint of anguish that wasn’t felt gets caught in my dry throat. But I don’t even know what I would have cried over, if I’d cried, nor why it is that I didn’t cry over it. The fiction follows me, like my shadow. And what I want is to sleep.

— ’tis flatten and fold, isn’t it, and flatten again, among the thicknesses of Hide, till presently you’ve these very thin Sheets of Gold-Leaf.” “Lamination,” Mason observes. “Lo, Lamination abounding,” contributes Squire Haligast, momentarily visible, “its purposes how dark, yet have we ever sought to produce these thin Sheets innumerable, to spread a given Volume as close to pure Surface as possible, whilst on route discovering various new forms, the Leyden Pile, decks of Playing-Cards, Contrivances which, like the Lever or Pulley, quite multiply the apparent forces, often unto disproportionate results. . . .” “The printed Book,” suggests the Revd, “— thin layers of pattern’d Ink, alternating with other thin layers of compress’d Paper, stack’d often by the Hundreds.” “Or an unbound Heap of Broadsides,” adds Mr. Dimdown, “dispers’d one by one, and multiplying their effect as they go.” The Macaroni is of course not what he seems, as which of us is?— the truth comes out weeks later, when he is discover’d running a clandestine printing Press, in a Cellar in Elkton. He looks up from the fragrant Sheets, so new that one might yet smell the Apprentices’ Urine in which the Ink-Swabs were left to soften, bearing, to sensitiz’d Nasalia, sub-Messages of youth and Longing,— all about him the word repeated in large Type, LIBERTY. One Civilian leads in a small band of Soldiers. “Last time you’ll be seeing that word.” “Don’t bet your Wife’s Reputation on it,” the Quarrelsome Fop might have replied. Philip Dimdown, return’d to himself, keeps his Silence.

Then the bitterness came to darken his soul. So, too, had Cress seemed fair and bright, but it had still been a city of greedy, grasping, men. He turned his back on it and slid down to sit flat on the deck. “It’s all a trick,” he observed. “All a rotten trick men play on themselves. They get together and they create this beautiful thing and then they stand back and say, ‘See, we have souls and insight and holiness and joy. We put it all in this building so we don’t have to bother with it in our everyday lives. We can live as stupidly and brutally as we wish, and to stamp down any inclination to spirituality or mysticism that we see in our neighbors or ourselves. Having set it in stone, we don’t have to bother with it anymore.’ It’s a trick men play on themselves. Just one more way we cheat ourselves.” Vivacia spoke softly. If he had been standing, he might not have heard the words. But he was sitting, his palms flat against her deck, and so they rang through his soul. “Perhaps men are a trick Sa played on this world. ‘All other things I shall make vast and beautiful and true to themselves,’ perhaps he said. ‘Men alone shall be capable of being petty and vicious and self-destructive. And for my cruelest trick of all, I shall put among them men capable of seeing these things in themselves.’ Do you suppose that is what Sa did?” “That is blasphemy,” Wintrow said fervently. “Is it? Then how do you explain it? All the ugliness and viciousness that is the province of humanity, whence comes it?” “Not from Sa. From ignorance of Sa. From separation from Sa. Time and again I have seen children brought to the monastery, boys and girls with no hint as to why they are there. Angry and afraid, many of them, at being sent forth from their homes at such a tender age. Within weeks, they blossom, they open to Ada’s light and glory. In every single child, there is at least a spark of it. Not all stay; some are sent home, not all are suited to a life of service. But all of them are suited to being creations of light and thought and love. All of them.

In the very midst of this panic came the news that the steamer Central America, formerly the George Law, with six hundred passengers and about sixteen hundred thousand dollars of treasure, coming from Aspinwall, had foundered at sea, off the coast of Georgia, and that about sixty of the passengers had been providentially picked up by a Swedish bark, and brought into Savannah. The absolute loss of this treasure went to swell the confusion and panic of the day. A few days after, I was standing in the vestibule of the Metropolitan Hotel, and heard the captain of the Swedish bark tell his singular story of the rescue of these passengers. He was a short, sailor-like-looking man, with a strong German or Swedish accent. He said that he was sailing from some port in Honduras for Sweden, running down the Gulf Stream off Savannah. The weather had been heavy for some days, and, about nightfall, as he paced his deck, he observed a man-of-war hawk circle about his vessel, gradually lowering, until the bird was as it were aiming at him. He jerked out a belaying pin, struck at the bird, missed it, when the hawk again rose high in the air, and a second time began to descend, contract his circle, and make at him again. The second time he hit the bird, and struck it to the deck. . . . This strange fact made him uneasy, and he thought it betokened danger; he went to the binnacle, saw the course he was steering, and without any particular reason he ordered the steersman to alter the course one point to the east. After this it became quite dark, and he continued to promenade the deck, and had settled into a drowsy state, when as in a dream he thought he heard voices all round his ship. Waking up, he ran to the side of the ship, saw something struggling in the water, and heard clearly cries for help. Instantly heaving his ship to, and lowering all his boats, he managed to pick up sixty or more persons who were floating about on skylights, doors, spare, and whatever fragments remained of the Central America. Had he not changed the course of his vessel by reason of the mysterious conduct of that man-of-war hawk, not a soul would probably have survived the night.

Stop!” she called out. To a one, the crewmen froze. A dozen heads swiveled to face her. Sophia swallowed and turned to Mr. Grayson. “What about me? I’m also a virgin voyager.” His lips quirked as his gaze swept her from head to toe and then back up partway. “Are you truly?” “Yes. And I haven’t a coin to my name. Do you plan to dunk and shave me, too?” “Now there’s an idea.” His grin widened. “Perhaps. But first, you must submit to an interrogation.” A lump formed in Sophia’s throat, impossible to speak around. Mr. Grayson raised that sonorous baritone to a carrying pitch. “What’s your name then, miss?” When Sophia merely firmed her chin and glared at him, he warned dramatically, “Truth or eels.” Bang. Excited whispers crackled through the assembly of sailors. Davy was completely forgotten, dropped to the deck with a dull thud. Even the wind held its breath in anticipation, and Sophia gave a slight jump when a sail smacked limp against the mast. Though her heart pounded an erratic rhythm of distress, she willed her voice to remain even. “I’ve no intention of submitting myself to any interrogation, by god or man.” She lifted her chin and arched an eyebrow. “And I’m not impressed by your staff.” She paused several seconds, waiting for the crew’s boisterous laughter to ebb. Mr. Grayson pinned her with his bold, unyielding gaze. “You dare to speak to me that way? I’m Triton.” With each word, he stepped closer. “King of the Sea. A god among men.” Now they stood just paces apart. Hunger gleamed in his eyes. “And I demand a sacrifice.” Her hand remained pressed against her throat, and Sophia nervously picked at the neckline of her frock. This close, he was all bronzed skin stretched tight over muscle and sinew. Iridescent drops of seawater paved glistening trails down his chest, snagging on the margins of that horrific scar, just barely visible beneath his toga. “A sacrifice?” Her voice was weak. Her knees were weaker. “A sacrifice.” He flipped the trident around, his biceps flexing as he extended the blunt end toward her, hooking it under her arm. He lifted the mop handle, pulling her hand from her throat and raising her wrist for his inspection. Sophia might have yanked her arm away at any moment, but she was as breathless with anticipation as every other soul on deck. She’d become an observer of her own scene, helpless to alter the drama unfolding, on the edge of her seat to see how it would play out. He studied her arm. “An unusually fine specimen of female,” he said casually. “Young. Fair. Unblemished.” Then he withdrew the stick, and Sophia’s hand dropped to her side. “But unsatisfactory.” She felt a sharp twinge of pride. Unsatisfactory? Those words echoed in her mind again. I don’t want you. “Unsatisfactory. Too scrawny by far.” He looked around at the crew, sweeping his makeshift trident in a wide arc. “I demand a sacrifice with meat on her bones. I demand…” Sophia gasped as the mop handle clattered to a rest at her feet. Mr. Grayson gave her a sly wink, bracing his hands on his hips in a posture of divine arrogance. “I demand a goat.

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen. Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist. It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed. So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.

waters, and even some that leave the water altogether. The Japanese flying squid (Todarodes pacificus) can take to the air like a flying fish; it builds up speed underwater and then launches itself out of the water and glides until reentry. Flying squid have been observed to cover distances as long as 100 feet above the surface, presumably to avoid predators, or utilizing jet-propelled aerial locomotion to save energy as they migrate. It has been shown that penguins, sea lions, and dolphins save energy by performing low-level leaps over the surface as they swim, which enables them to momentarily avoid the resistance of water and, concurrently, grab a breath of air. Squid don’t need a breath of air—they breathe water through their gills, like fishes—but several squid species can and do leave the water; mariners in all oceans occasionally find little squid on the decks after a night of sailing. The Humboldt squid (Dosidicus) has also been observed to get itself airborne; if a hundred-pound, ink-squirting, beak-snapping squid lands on your deck, you might have a bit of a problem.

Everyone crowded onto the bus’s observation decks to watch the show. Their flat surfaces extended out from the main body of the bus like a pair of stubby wings; each surrounded by an inertial field that trapped a bubble of air for the passengers. For all practical purposes they was standing outside, directly confronting the vacuum of space. “Am I the only one feeling nervous?” Carson said. Certainly the schoolchildren seemed unperturbed. They were daring each other to peer over the edge of the deck. “I mean, how can that be safe?” “You big silly,” chided Aiyana. To Carson’s horror she ran full tilt across the deck and leapt into the black abyss. At two meters out her trajectory came to a smooth halt; the inertial field spun her around and gently returned her to the surface. After a moment of frozen shock all the schoolchild began hurling themselves into the void. From that moment she was their idol. A

as we stared out that observation deck window across the infinite stillness in which we were floating. Eliot was right when he said, “This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

One of the methods that he and Bowie used on Low was the “Oblique Strategies” he’d created with artist Peter Schmidt the year before. It was a deck of cards, and each card was inscribed with a command or an observation. When you got into a creative impasse, you were to turn up one of the cards and act upon it. The commands went from the sweetly banal (“Do the washing up”) to the more technical (“Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation”; “The tape is now the music”). Some cards contradict each other (“Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities”; “Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics”). Some use Wildean substitution (“Don’t be afraid of things because they’re easy to do”). And several veer towards the Freudian (“Your mistake was a hidden intention”; “Emphasise the flaws”). The stress is on capitalising on error as a way of drawing in randomness, tricking yourself into an interesting situation, and crucially leaving room for the thing that can’t be explained—an element that every work of art needs. Did the Oblique Strategy cards actually work? They were probably more important symbolically than practically. A cerebral theoretician like Eno had more need of a mental circuit-breaker than someone like Bowie, who was a natural improviser, collagiste, artistic gadfly. Anyone involved in the creative arts knows that chance events in the process play an important role, but to my mind there’s something slightly self-defeating about the idea of “planned accidents.” Oblique Strategies certainly created tensions, as Carlos Alomar explained to Bowie biographer David Buckley: “Brian Eno had come in with all these cards that he had made and they were supposed to eliminate a block. Now, you’ve got to understand something. I’m a musician. I’ve studied music theory, I’ve studied counterpoint and I’m used to working with musicians who can read music. Here comes Brian Eno and he goes to a blackboard. He says: ‘Here’s the beat, and when I point to a chord, you play the chord.’ So we get a random picking of chords. I finally had to say, ‘This is bullshit, this sucks, this sounds stupid.’ I totally, totally resisted it. David and Brian were two intellectual guys and they had a very different camaraderie, a heavier conversation, a Europeanness. It was too heavy for me. He and Brian would get off on talking about music in terms of history and I’d think, ‘Well that’s stupid—history isn’t going to give you a hook for the song!’ I’m interested in what’s commercial, what’s funky and what’s going to make people dance!” It may well have been the creative tension between that kind of traditionalist approach and Eno’s experimentalism that was more productive than the “planned accidents” themselves. As Eno himself has said: “The interesting place is not chaos, and it’s not total coherence. It’s somewhere on the cusp of those two.

When I first went on deck I entered the captain’s room adjoining the pilot-house, and threw myself on a sofa. I did not keep that position a moment, but rose to go out on the deck to observe what was going on. I had scarcely left when a musket ball entered the room, struck the head of the sofa, passed through it and lodged in the foot.

Philadelphia has more to offer than Philadelphia has more to offer than Cheesesteaks and Wawa Hoagies Here’s a list of ten places to visit and you’ll never regret visiting this beautiful city of Brotherly Love. The Betsy Ross House- 239 Arch Streets Reading Terminal Market-12th and Arch Streets Boat House Row/Kelly Drive-1 Boathouse Row National Constitution Center-525 Arch St Delaware River Waterfront-121 N. Columbus Blvd The Liberty Bell-526 Market St Benjamin Franklin Parkway- Franklin Institute-222 N 20th St Philadelphia Museum of Art-2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy City Hall and its Observation deck-1400 John F Kennedy Blvd and WaWa Hoagies Here’s a list of ten places to visit and you’ll never regret visiting this beautiful city of Brotherly Love. The Betsy Ross House- 239 Arch Streets Reading Terminal Market-12th and Arch Streets Boat House Row/Kelly Drive-1 Boathouse Row National Constitution Center-525 Arch St Delaware River Waterfront-121 N. Columbus Blvd The Liberty Bell-526 Market St Benjamin Franklin Parkway- Franklin Institute-222 N 20th St Philadelphia Museum of Art-2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy City Hall and its Observation deck-1400 John F Kennedy Blvd

Philadelphia has more to offer than Cheesesteaks and WAWA hoagies, Here’s a list of ten places you’ll enjoy while visiting this beautiful city of Brotherly Love. The Betsy Ross House- 239 Arch Streets Reading Terminal Market-12th and Arch Streets Boat House Row/Kelly Drive-1 Boathouse Row National Constitution Center-525 Arch St Delaware River Waterfront-121 N. Columbus Blvd The Liberty Bell-526 Market St Benjamin Franklin Parkway- Franklin Institute-222 N 20th St Philadelphia Museum of Art-2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy City Hall and its Observation deck-1400 John F Kennedy Blvd

If we examine Lee first upon the art at which he surpassed, we find a curiously dispassionate understanding not just of the technique, but of the place of war in the life of civilized man. Napoleon too was a philosopher of battle, but his utterances are marred by cynicism. Those of Lee have always the saving grace of affirmation. Let us mount with the general the heights above Fredericksburg and hear from him one of the most searching observations ever made. It is contained in a brief remark, so innocent-seeming, yet so disturbing, expressed as he gazed upon the field of slain on that December day. "It is well this is terrible; otherwise we should grow fond of it." What is the meaning? It is richer than a Delphic saying. Here is a poignant confession of mankind’s historic ambivalence toward the institution of war, its moral revulsion against the immense destructiveness, accompanied by a fascination with the “greatest of all games.” As long as people relish the idea of domination, there will be those who love this game. It is fatuous to say, as is being said now, that all men want peace. Men want peace part of the time, and part of the time they want war. Or, if we may shift to the single individual, part of him wants peace and another part wants war, and it is upon the resolution of this inner struggle that our prospect of general peace depends, as MacArthur so wisely observed upon the decks of the Missouri. The cliches of modern thought have virtually obscured this commonplace of human psychology, and world peace programs take into account everything but this tragic flaw in the natural man—the temptation to appeal to physical superiority. There is no political structure which knaves cannot defeat, and subtle analyses of the psyche may prove of more avail than schemes for world parliament. In contrast with the empty formulations of propagandists, Lee’s saying suggests the concrete wisdom of a parable.

Across the room is a man lifting weights. His muscles are crazy big. He’s not bad on the eyes at all. “I’m telling you,” Cami says, her eyes still on Mr. Beefcake. “They should have an observation deck here, where we can sit with a glass of wine and watch the show. I’d come to the gym every day.” “I

Theologically Christmas Day is the greatest occasion for rejoicing offered to sinful mankind; but this aspect of it is so august and so great that the human mind refuses to contemplate it steadily, perhaps because of its own littleness, for which of course it is in no way to blame. It prefers to concentrate its attention on ceremonial observances, expressive generally of good will and festivity, such, for instance, as giving presents and eating plum-puddings. It may be said at once here that from that conventional point of view the spirit of Christmas Day at sea appears distinctly weak. The opportunities, the materials too, are lacking. Of course, the ship’s company get a plum-pudding of some sort, and when the captain appears on deck for the first time the officer of the morning watch greets him with a “Merry Christmas, sir,” in a tone only moderately effusive. Anything more would be, owing to the difference in station, not correct. Normally he may expect a return for this in the shape of a “The same to you” of a nicely graduated heartiness. He does not get it always, however.

Birds have been considered harbingers since the beginning of time. It’s true that a dead bird is often thought to be an omen, but like the death card in a tarot deck, it may not signify a literal passing.” Dr. Shaw observed me with kindly eyes. “It could be the death of something you’ve held on to for too long. An old relationship, for instance. Or the passing of an era. As with all things that end, the way then becomes clear for new opportunities. Perhaps a new destination.

6 P.M. on Thursday, April 11, the sound of the Titanic’s bugler was heard on deck, indicating it was time for passengers to dress for dinner. The dress code had been waived on the first night at Cherbourg but from then onward “full dress was always en règle” as the Washington aristocrat and amateur historian Archibald Gracie noted approvingly. For Gracie and the other first-class men, this simply meant donning white tie and tails or a tuxedo, a standard part of any traveling wardrobe. Archie Butt had slightly more sartorial choice since his seven trunks were packed with both his regular and dress uniforms along with civilian evening wear. (At the White House, Archie often changed clothes six times a day.) For this first formal evening he may have simply chosen his regular uniform or even civilian mufti, reserving a show of gold lace for later in the voyage. Most of the women, too, had a different gown packed in tissue paper for each night of the crossing but were saving their most splendid apparel for Sunday or Monday night. The beauty of the women on board “was a subject both of observation and admiration” according to Archibald Gracie.

Consider this famous passage from Galileo: Shut yourself up with some friend in the main cabin below decks on some large ship, and have with you there some flies, butterflies, and other small flying animals. Have a large bowl of water with some fish in it; hang up a bottle that empties drop by drop into a wide vessel beneath it. With the ship standing still, observe carefully how the little animals fly with equal speed to all sides of the cabin. The fish swim indifferently in all directions; the drops fall into the vessel beneath; and, in throwing something to your friend, you need throw it no more strongly in one direction than another, the distances being equal; jumping with your feet together, you pass equal spaces in every direction. When you have observed all these things carefully (though doubtless when the ship is standing still everything must happen in this way), have the ship proceed with any speed you like, so long as the motion is uniform and not fluctuating this way and that. You will discover not the least change in all the effects named, nor could you tell from any of them whether the ship was moving or standing still Galileo’s point is that the absolute velocity of a system of bodies is not detectable by any means available to a scientist who is part of that very system, because the relative motions of the bodies are unaffected by their overall velocity. Only by relating the bodies to some external system can the motion be detected

After nightfall, when most of the American planes had been taken aboard, a new formation of planes arrived over the task force. First, the drone of their engines could be heard above the cloud cover; then they slipped into view, at about the height of the Lexington’s masts. “These planes were in very good formation,” recalled Lieutenant Commander Stroop. They had their navigation lights on, indicating that they intended to land. But many observers on both carriers and several of the screening vessels noted that something was awry. Captain Sherman of the Lexington counted nine planes, more than could be accounted for among the American planes that were still aloft. They were flying down the Yorktown’s port side, a counterclockwise approach, the reverse of the American landing routine. They were flashing their blinker lights, but none of the Americans could decipher the signal. Electrician’s mate Peter Newberg, stationed on the Yorktown’s flight deck, noticed that the aircraft exhausts were a strange shape and color, and Stroop noted that the running lights were a peculiar shade of red and blue. The TBS (short-range radio circuit) came alive with chatter. One of the nearby destroyers asked, “Have any of our planes got rounded wingtips?” Another voice said, “Damned if those are our planes.” When the first of the strangers made his final turn, he was too low, and the Yorktown’s landing signal officer frantically signaled him to throttle up. “In the last few seconds,” Newberg recalled, “when the pilot was about to plow into the stern under the flight deck, he poured the coal to his engine and pulled up and off to port. The signal light flicked briefly on red circles painted on his wings.” One of the screening destroyers opened fire, and red tracers reached up toward the leading plane. A voice on the Lexington radioed to all ships in the task force, ordering them to hold fire, but the captain of the destroyer replied, “I know Japanese planes when I see them.” Antiaircraft gunners on ships throughout the task force opened fire, and suddenly the night sky lit up as if it was the Fourth of July. But there were friendly planes in the air as well; one of the Yorktown fighter pilots complained: “What are you shooting at me for? What have I done now?” On the Yorktown, SBD pilot Harold Buell scrambled out to the port-side catwalk to see what was happening. “In the frenzy of the moment, with gunners firing at both friend and foe, some of us got caught up in the excitement and drew our .45 Colt automatics to join in, blasting away at the red meatballs as they flew past the ship—an offensive gesture about as effective as throwing rocks.” The intruders and the Americans all doused their lights and zoomed back into the cloud cover; none was shot down. It was not the last time in the war that confused Japanese pilots would attempt to land on an American carrier.

the major trumps of the tarot deck of symbolic cards.664 The Yosher (straightness, uprightness) provides a framework and procedure for achieving enlightenment. Let’s pause for a moment and make a few key observations. The Yosher has 10 spheres and 22 paths between them and represents a road map to human

Trina is different. I don’t consider myself subordinate to her, and I don’t consider her my friend. But we interact civilly enough, I suppose, at meals and on deck. I notice myself not wanting her to learn any private things about me, because what if then she was able to look inside me and find those parts of me, like Linta observing ahsoken. What if she can find thoughts and feelings? And then I start thinking about my own Grace. A Grace isn’t always what you think it is, even your own. My mother told me my Grace was hiding, because she wanted me to live. But my Grace is other things too. I’m not sure what yet. But I’m using it more when I’m alone, to turn into whatever I want to try the feeling of. Water. The aurora borealis. A part of the ship. Sometimes when I’m in the rigging, I give myself gigantic wings that lie flat against my back, ready to unfurl, and I don’t really care if anyone sees me. Maybe that’s why some of the sailors don’t seem to know what to say to me. Whatever. I like it. It makes me feel like I’m figuring something out. If people can see me, then it makes me feel like I’m saying something. Like something about myself.

Speed is measured as distance divided by time (miles per hour or meters per second). For the speed of light to remain constant, distance and time have to change. Let’s go back now to Galileo’s shipboard experiment, using a beam of light instead of a stone. On a boat that’s moving at a uniform speed across the water, shine a flashlight down the mast, and it will strike the deck at the base of the mast. The observer on the dock agrees with that. But from her vantage point on the dock, if she had a precision measuring tool, she would see the light travel a tiny extra distance, the distance the ship has moved in the time it took the light to reach the bottom of the mast. But the speed of light, which is measured in meters per second—again, distance divided by time—is a constant. So if the observer on the dock finds that light traveled an extra distance, the only way its speed can remain constant is if the light also took a longer time to travel. Time, therefore, is not immutable. The duration of time— measured as the ticks of a clock—is dif­ferent for observers who move at dif­ferent speeds. Each sees the other’s clock slow down. Even more strangely, distance is not absolute either; it appears to contract in the direction of motion.

And of course I had a camera on the unfolding shitshow on the observation deck.

Speed is measured as distance divided by time (miles per hour or meters per second). For the speed of light to remain constant, distance and time have to change. Let’s go back now to Galileo’s shipboard experiment, using a beam of light instead of a stone. On a boat that’s moving at a uniform speed across the water, shine a flashlight down the mast, and it will strike the deck at the base of the mast. The observer on the dock agrees with that. But from her vantage point on the dock, if she had a precision measuring tool, she would see the light travel a tiny extra distance, the distance the ship has moved in the time it took the light to reach the bottom of the mast. Brought to you by | University of Wisconsin Madison Libraries Authenticated Download Date | 5/11/19 3:47 PM 12 • GRAVITY’S CENTURY But the speed of light, which is measured in meters per second—again, distance divided by time—is a constant. So if the observer on the dock finds that light traveled an extra distance, the only way its speed can remain constant is if the light also took a longer time to travel. Time, therefore, is not immutable. The duration of time— measured as the ticks of a clock—is dif­ferent for observers who move at dif­ferent speeds. Each sees the other’s clock slow down. Even more strangely, distance is not absolute either; it appears to contract in the direction of motion.

The water harmed him. Soon after Anyanwu had revealed herself, he began to grow ill. He became dizzy. His head hurt him. He said he thought he would vomit if he did not leave the confinement of the small room. Anyanwu took him out on deck where the air was fresh and cooler. But even there, the gentle rocking of the ship seemed to bother him— and began to bother her. She began to feel ill. She seized on the feeling at once, examining it. There was drowsiness, dizziness, and a sudden cold sweat. She closed her eyes, and while Okoye vomited into the water, she went over her body carefully. She discovered that there was a wrongness, a kind of imbalance deep within her ears. It was a tiny disturbance, but she knew her body well enough to notice the smallest change. For a moment, she observed this change with interest. Clearly, if she did nothing to correct it, her sickness would grow worse; she would join Okoye, vomiting over the rail. But no. She focused on her inner ears and remembered perfection there, remembered organs and fluids and pressures in balance, their wrongness righted. Remembering and correcting were one gesture; balance was restored. It had taken her much practice— and much pain— to learn such ease of control. Every change she made in her body had to be understood and visualized. If she was sick or injured, she could not simply wish to be well. She could be killed as easily as anyone else if her body was damaged in some way she could not understand quickly enough to repair. Thus, she had spent much of her long life learning the diseases, disorders, and injuries that she could suffer— learning them often by inflicting mild versions of them on herself, then slowly, painfully, by trial and error, coming to understand exactly what was wrong and how to impress healing. Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing.

Everyone knows this fairy tale: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" "Why, you are, of course." In the corner of their hearts, everyone is looking for a magic mirror. If there was a mirror that would reflect the image of them as they fervently wished to be, surely everyone would treasure such a mirror for as long as they lived. On the other hand, there are mirrors that don't do that, such as concave mirrors and convex mirrors. For a long time there have been two full-length fun-house mirrors on the observation deck of the Tsūtenkaku tower in Osaka. For people from other parts of Japan who are not familiar with Osaka's fun-loving and idiosyncratic culture, why such things are in that particular place is a complete mystery; but in any case, it is amusing to play with them. When you stand in front of the concave mirror, you appear stretched out as though you are being pulled up and down by your head and your toes—as though you have been transformed into a toothpick. In front of the convex mirror it is the reverse: you look short and fat as though you have been squashed in a mechanical press. Unsightly and with short legs, you look like a comic book character. Tourists look at their distorted appearances and laugh. But how can they laugh at such warped reflections? Is it because they can relax knowing that they could not possibly look like the twisted images in the mirror? People do not believe they really look like the grossly distorted images in fun-house mirrors, so they laugh them off. However, when a magic mirror reflects an image distorted in a beautiful way, people want to think: yes indeed, this is how I really look. All of you astute readers should understand by now. The image reflected in the mirror that I am talking about in this book is the image of Japan drawn by foreigners. However, this brings up a question. What kind of a distorted image would a Japanese accept as being him or herself? What sort of a distorted image would he or she laugh off? Where exactly is the boundary between the two?

With exaggerated deliberation, I climbed down the wooden ladder and entered the oil-covered water. My helmet was barely awash as I walked aft on the battleship’s main deck, skirting wreckage. The dense floating mass of oil blotted out all daylight. I was submerged in total blackness. Only a line of air bubbles that popped to the surface marked my path for topside observers as I traveled the thirty-five feet to the Arizona’s entrance.

There was. The problem was not somnolence; it was subservience. The members of the Board of Trade itself knew little about ships or safety at sea. They were mostly decorative luminaries like the Archbishop of Canterbury. On nautical matters they deferred to the professional staff of the Board’s Marine Department. But these men were bureaucrats—better at carrying out policy than making it. When it came to such questions as whether ships should provide lifeboats for all on board, these men deferred to the Department’s Merchant Shipping Advisory Committee. This group was dominated by the ship-owners themselves, and they were only too happy to make policy. They knew exactly where they stood, and they did not want boats for all. In the luxury trade, “boats for all” meant less room on the upper decks for the suites, the games and sports, the verandahs and palm courts, and the glass-enclosed observation lounges that lured the wealthy travelers from the competition. On the Titanic, for instance, it would sacrifice that vast play area amidships and instead clutter the Boat Deck with (of all things) boats.

She observes their habits and the games they play to stay alert. Regicide, Nine-gambit and Senet in the officers’ refectory; Ashtapada in cartography; Gow, and Hounds and Wolves, in the war room; games of dice and wager in the billet decks; hands of Tarock on the fuse canisters of the autoloaders; rounds of Song and Cartomance in the dining halls, fast-shuffled turns of Thrice-My-Trick in the boiler sumps.

As the Val dive-bombers sought other targets in addition to the Nevada, they found the battleship Pennsylvania as it sat in Dry Dock No. 1 along with two destroyers, Cassin and Downes. The lone occupant of Dry Dock No. 2 nearby was the destroyer Shaw. Several attacking planes dropped 550-pound bombs on the Shaw. Two penetrated the main deck near the five-inch guns forward of the bridge. A third went clean through the bridge superstructure and ruptured fuel tanks, setting the front half of the Shaw ablaze. This fire caused the forward magazines to detonate just as they had on the Arizona. A huge explosion, second only to that on the Arizona, sent a mass of flames and mangled metal into the air. A great deal of it landed on the decks of the nearby Nevada, making it twice in less than an hour that the battleship had come under such an assault. Meanwhile, the Shaw broke in two. Finding Hospital Point not so hospitable, a tug pushed the Nevada off the beach and across the channel to a new resting spot aground on Waipio Peninsula across from Ford Island. As Robert Meyer observed, the battleship “kept its deck above water but not by much.” Meanwhile, the Arizona and the rest of the battleships strewn along Battleship Row were not going anywhere.1

IF YOU’VE EVER BEEN to Nearside you’ll certainly know of the Overview Effect— there are whole towers, observation decks and hotels named after it. The Overview Effect is what happens when a human being surveys Earth from a sizable distance out in space. The Apollo astronauts were the first to feel the full force of it: that mind-blowing moment

During the first century ravens or crows were often taken on board “Viking Knarr’s,” to be released thinking that they would fly in the direction of land. The lookout would observe the direction the birds flew in, so that the navigator could follow their course. Since the crow's nest is high from the vessel’s center of gravity it is subject to violent motion in relatively calm or moderate seas. Any amount of movement of the ship is amplified, causing even seasoned sailors to become sea-sick. Therefore, being sent to the crow's nest was certainly not for everyone. More recently but still prior to the advent of radar, when the visibility from the bridge of the ship was inhibited by fog, heavy seas or limited night vision lookouts were posted on the bow or high on a mast, above the low lying sea fog. By tradition the protected structure fitted to the foremast high above the deck was named the crow’s nest in deference to the earlier Viking traditions. During the 19th century this vantage point was simply made out of a barrel lashed to the highest mast that allowed the lookout to look ahead for land, other ships, flotsam or other obstructions. In later years the crow’s nest was sometimes enclosed and even electrically heated. As a young midshipman I was assigned to the bow as lookout. Peering into the dark of night I suddenly saw a bright light on the horizon. Sighting this light was a thrill and an experience that validated my usefulness! Excited with my find and without a moment’s hesitation I hurried back to where I was within shouting distance from the ships bridge and loudly announced the light as being 2 points on the starboard bow. Proud of my announced discovery, I returned to my station at the bow only to discover that what I had reported was now obviously the tip of a Sickle Moon rising in the east. At the time everyone had a good laugh but I was told that I did the right thing. It took a while but eventually I lived it down and now it makes for a good “Sea Story!”!

to a lounge cum galley that evidently doubled as an observation deck.

Do you ever feel your mother?" Lydia's pencil stilled. "Yes," she said, quietly. "Sometimes I do." Later that evening, when supper was finished, she took up her mending and curled herself into her mother's old chair with its leather seat slung in the low X-shaped frame like a welcoming lap. She could almost imagine her mother's arms holding her, here in the room with the warmth of the fire and the light of the candles, the wind rising hard at the glass of the window. The men were still sitting around the long table in cross conversations, her brother and Mr. Ramírez discussing the length of the Bellewether's deck, while her father and Mr. de Brassart debated the merits of some play by Shakespeare, and Mr. de Sabran sat back and observed. All the voices ran into and over each other and blended like billowy waves folding into the sea, and she struggled to stay on the surface while all of those waves with the troubles they carried went by. "Feel them passing?" her mother asked, rocking her gently. Except they weren't passing. They bore her relentlessly down like great weights on her shoulders until she was sinking. And then in place of her mother's arms she felt the strong ones of Mr. de Sabran, protecting her as they had done in New York, and it suddenly wasn't so terrible, drowning. She held him and drifted down into the dark.

others all have fountains or parks!” “Okay,” Reynie said, rubbing his chin, “so they’re to meet in the square, by the statue, on the south side—I think we can agree that south is the opposite of north—and, well, I guess the opposite of noon must be midnight, right?” “We’ve done it!” said Kate. “We’ve figured out their rendezvous! Oh, and this is perfect—the observation deck of the Pittfall Building is on that square, and it gives a direct view of that statue! It’s even on the south side! If I go up there—” “You?” Reynie said. “Oh, well, Milligan then. Whoever. The point is you would be in a perfect spot to spy on their rendezvous without being seen yourself. It’s all glassed in with reflective windows and everything. We couldn’t have asked for a better setup! This is going to work out brilliantly!” It did seem perfect. The only catch was that no one knew about the rendezvous but them. Mr. Benedict still had not shown up, and midnight was less than an hour away. What if he was still asleep, wherever he was? What if he was awake but something had happened? What if he was trying to come to the library but was delayed? What if he wasn’t coming at all? After mulling these possibilities over, Kate jumped up. “Sorry, but I just can’t risk it! I can’t sit here and give up what may be our last chance to stop Mr. Curtain. I have to go! You three can tell Mr. Benedict everything when he comes. I’ll be careful, I promise!” She was already strapping her bucket to her belt. “You aren’t serious, are you?” Sticky said. “Oh, wait, it’s you—of course you’re serious.” “It’s only eight blocks,” Kate said. “I can be there in no time.

and that this is still Day 1 in such a big way. Jeff Bezos Amazon’s internal customs are deeply idiosyncratic. PowerPoint decks or slide presentations are never used in meetings. Instead, employees are required to write six-page narratives laying out their points in prose, because Bezos believes doing so fosters critical thinking. For each new product, they craft their documents in the style of a press release. The goal is to frame a proposed initiative in the way a customer might hear about it for the first time. Each meeting begins with everyone silently reading the document, and discussion commences afterward—just like the productive-thinking exercise in the principal’s office at River Oaks Elementary. For my initial meeting with Bezos to discuss this project, I decided to observe Amazon’s customs and prepare my own Amazon-style narrative, a fictional press release on behalf of the book. Bezos met me in an eighth-floor conference room and we sat down at a large table made of half a dozen door-desks, the same kind of blond wood that Bezos used twenty years ago when he was building Amazon from scratch in his garage. The door-desks are often held up as a symbol of the company’s enduring frugality. When I first interviewed Bezos, back in 2000, a few years of unrelenting international travel had taken their toll

On our first night looking at the new book, we marveled over the photo and description of Argiope aurantia, the Black and Yellow Argiope spider, common throughout the United States. And the very next day, for the first time ever, we found a wriggling cluster of freshly emerged argiope spiderlings under the lowest wooden step of our back deck. While Claire hovered over the spiderlings and sketched them in her notebook, I wondered over the fact that if we'd found these spiders just the day before, we would have known nothing about them. And I was sure, on some level, that it was learning about them that allowed us to find them, Whenever I renew a commitment to studying raptors or gulls or crows or the birds in my backyard, more are given, more show themselves. Our efforts are rewarded, our studies are enhanced in experience. I cannot explain this, and I am reluctant to sound too woo-woo but we can take this as confidently as if it came from the Oracle at Delphi: the more we prepare, the more we are "allowed" somehow to see. This is a guarantee: select a subject, obtain a proper field guide, study it well, and you will see more than you ever have of your chosen subject — and more than that besides.

The more time I spend with her, the more I want. I take her all over Chicago, showing her the city. I take her to the Art Institute and the Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park. We go shopping on the Magnificent Mile and visit the Lincoln Park Zoo. I offer to take her up to the 360 Observation Deck, knowing that she might decline since she’s not a fan of heights. But, buoyed by the success of our Ferris wheel ride, Yelena agrees to go.

I’ll be damned,” the captain murmured, leaning toward the screen, the light illuminating her angular face. “Those are lead blocks.” He suppressed a shiver. The River Queen had been right. Down to the last detail. “Circle them.” But … Chains draped from the block onto the seafloor. They were empty. The captain observed, “Whoever those chains held is long gone. They either got eaten or they exploded from the pressure.” Tharion marked the chains, nodding. But his gaze snagged on something. He glanced at the captain to see if she’d noticed the anomaly, but her face revealed no sign of surprise. So Tharion kept silent, letting her bring the small submersible back up to the surface, where the first mate hauled it onto the deck. Two hours later, back on land—soggy and muddy from the rain—Tharion calmed his chattering teeth long enough to call his queen. The River Queen answered after the first ring. “Talk.” Used to the curt, yet ethereal voice, Tharion said, “I found the lead blocks. The chains were still attached.” “So?” “There was no body.” A sigh of disappointment. He shivered yet again—not entirely from the cold. “But the shackles had been unlocked.” The sigh paused. He’d learn to read her pauses, as varied as the life in her river. “You’re sure of this?” He refrained from asking why the currents hadn’t told her about this particularly vital detail. Maybe they were as capricious as she. Tharion said mildly, “No signs of damage. At least as far as I could tell on the crappy screen.” “You think Sofie Renast freed herself?