Paddy's Day Quotes

Do what you do. This Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve, Twelfth Night, Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, St. Paddy's Day, and every day henceforth. Just do what you do. Live out your life and your traditions on your own terms. If it offends others, so be it. That's their problem.

It was a sign of growing up, when the dark made no more difference to you than the day.

Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time. (...) Dropping acid on the Mekong Delta, smoking grass through a rifle barrel, flying on a helicopter with opera blasting out of loudspeakers, tracer-fire and paddy-field scenery, the smell of napalm in the morning. Long time.

The safest day at the Melody is St. Paddy's," adds another Mardi Gras girl. "All the cops are out vomiting at the parade.

They don't believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested." "They don't want communism." "They want enough rice," I said. "They don't want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don't want our white skins around telling them what they want." "If Indochina goes--" "I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles, wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don't like our smell, the smell of Europeans.

This misery of a gig called life is just a dream from which we all eventually awaken, he said. Nobody gets left behind. Even the most horrible dreams end.

Shamrocks And roses In an ever green flock Now Up to your noses Turning into a high stock! People nice and seen All around you green! These lucky streams Realizing major dreams. In strives, when in pain Call oh call up my name, Know it isn't in vain...

If you weren't humping, you were waiting. I remember the monotony. Digging foxholes. Slapping mosquitoes. The sun and the heat and the endless paddies. Even in the deep bush, where you could die any number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders. You'd be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching out below, and the day would be calm and hot and utterly vacant, and you'd feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn't water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you'd feel the stuff eating away at important organs. You'd try to relax. You'd uncurl your fists and let your thoughts go. Well, you'd think, this isn't so bad. And right then you'd hear gunfire behind you and your nuts would fly up into your throat and you'd be squealing pig squeals. That kind of boredom.

She's just nervous, Paddy. Don't worry, hon," saidSharon , her lips pulled into a generous smile. Her eyes sparkled with warmth and sincerity. "I'm used to these neck nibblers." "No offense,Sharon . But I'd rather have the chocolate," I said. She laughed and slapped her thigh. "Hell's bells, Patrick! She's the reason you've had me eating these Godiva truffles all day?" I looked at Patrick. "You're mean." His black brows formed question marks. Then his lips curled into a smile. "No, not just mean. Cruel." "I had her eat truffles for you," he said. "Are you insane? How is her eating my chocolate in any way helpful?" Sharon chortled. "You might not be able to eat the truffle, sweetie, but you'll taste it. Prob'ly be the best chocolate you ever eat, too." I looked at Sharon , then at Patrick. "Are you telling me that she's gonna taste like chocolate?" "Yes.

It was under English trees that I meditated on that lost labyrinth: I pictured it perfect and inviolate on the secret summit of a mountain; I pictured its outlines blurred by rice paddies, or underwater; I pictured it as infinite—a labyrinth not of octagonal pavillions and paths that turn back upon themselves, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms....I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars. Absorbed in those illusory imaginings, I forgot that I was a pursued man; I felt myself, for an indefinite while, the abstract perceiver of the world. The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day did their work in me; so did the gently downward road, which forestalled all possibility of weariness. The evening was near, yet infinite.

Having released the wartime images he was carrying in his unconscious, he became worried that he would now be at their mercy, plagued by them in day as well as by night. But what he found was just the opposite. While he did retrieve the horrible images, he rediscovered a lost innocence as well. The beauty of the jungle, the glistening white sands of the Vietnamese beaches, and the intense greens of the rice paddies at dawn all filtered back to him. Not only did he remember his trauma, he remembered himself before his trauma.

I was deeply embedded in a fat cake of lies

It was the sixties, exactly, all we wanted to do was to smoke a lot of dope and ball a lot of chicks. Vietnam, excuse me? Why would I wanna go get my ass shot off in some stinking rice paddy just so Nixon can have his four more years? Screw that, and I wasn't the only one who felt that way. All the big warmongers these days who took a pass on Vietnam, look, I'd be the last person on earth to start casting blame. Bush, Cheney, Rove, all those guys, they just did what everybody else was doing and I was right there with 'em, chicken as anybody. My problem now is how tough and gung-ho they are, all that bring it on crap, I mean, Jesus, show a little humility, people. They ought to be just as careful of your young lives as they were with their own.

An even more blatant example of the government’s hypocrisy was their role in regulating alcohol. The politicians and bureaucrats pretended to care about alcoholism but allowed minors to drink with adults all day and all night. They just opened more jail cells and operated additional paddy wagons, letting the drunks back out in time for Sam and me to fire cherry bombs at them. As Dad said, “Half the PhDs in the country study Indian alcoholism, but nothing changes. No one in the government really gives a shit. They just want the tax revenue.

Even in the deep bush, where you could die any number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders. You’d be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching out below, and the day would be calm and hot and utterly vacant, and you’d feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn’t water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you’d feel the stuff eating away at important organs. You’d try to relax. You’d uncurl your fists and let your thoughts go. Well, you’d think, this isn’t so bad. And right then you’d hear gunfire behind you and your nuts would fly up into your throat and you’d be squealing pig squeals. That kind of boredom.

Considerable thought was given to the shape of the village, on the grounds that a man who built a village like a fish while a neighboring village was built like a hook was begging for disaster. The finished shape was the outline of a unicorn, a gentle and law-abiding creature with no natural enemies whatsoever. But it appeared that something had gone wrong because one day there was a low snorting sort of a noise and the earth heaved, and several cottages collapsed and a great crack appeared the soil. Our ancestors examined their village from every possible angle, and the flaw was discovered when one of them climbed to the top of the tallest tree on the eastern hills and gazed down. By a foolish oversight the last five rice paddies had been arranged so that they formed the wings and body of a huge hungry horsefly that had settled upon the tender flank of the unicorn, so of course the unicorn had kicked up its heels. The paddies were altered into the shape of a bandage, and Ku-fu was never again disturbed by upheavals.

One has to imagine the impact of Paddy on an old count from eastern Europe, barely able to live off his much-diminished lands and keep the roof on a house stocked with paintings and furniture that harked back to better days. His children might take a certain pride in their ancient lineage, but they also made it clear that the world had moved on and they planned to move with it. Then a scruffy young Englishman with a rucksack turns up on the doorstep, recommended by a friend. he is polite, cheerful, and cannot hear enough about the family history. He pores over the books and albums in the library, and asks a thousand questions about the princely rulers, dynastic marriages, wars and revolts and waves of migration that shaped this part of the world. He wants to hear about the family portraits too, and begs the Count to remember the songs the peasants used to sing when he was a child. Instead of feeling like a useless fragment of a broken empire, the Count is transformed. This young Englishman has made him realize that he is part of living history, a link in an unbroken chain going back to Charlemagne and beyond.

As I became older, I was given many masks to wear. I could be a laborer laying railroad tracks across the continent, with long hair in a queue to be pulled by pranksters; a gardener trimming the shrubs while secretly planting a bomb; a saboteur before the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, signaling the Imperial Fleet; a kamikaze pilot donning his headband somberly, screaming 'Banzai' on my way to my death; a peasant with a broad-brimmed straw hat in a rice paddy on the other side of the world, stooped over to toil in the water; an obedient servant in the parlor, a houseboy too dignified for my own good; a washerman in the basement laundry, removing stains using an ancient secret; a tyrant intent on imposing my despotism on the democratic world, opposed by the free and the brave; a party cadre alongside many others, all of us clad in coordinated Mao jackets; a sniper camouflaged in the trees of the jungle, training my gunsights on G.I. Joe; a child running with a body burning from napalm, captured in an unforgettable photo; an enemy shot in the head or slaughtered by the villageful; one of the grooms in a mass wedding of couples, having met my mate the day before through our cult leader; an orphan in the last airlift out of a collapsed capital, ready to be adopted into the good life; a black belt martial artist breaking cinderblocks with his head, in an advertisement for Ginsu brand knives with the slogan 'but wait--there's more' as the commercial segued to show another free gift; a chef serving up dog stew, a trick on the unsuspecting diner; a bad driver swerving into the next lane, exactly as could be expected; a horny exchange student here for a year, eager to date the blonde cheerleader; a tourist visiting, clicking away with his camera, posing my family in front of the monuments and statues; a ping pong champion, wearing white tube socks pulled up too high and batting the ball with a wicked spin; a violin prodigy impressing the audience at Carnegie Hall, before taking a polite bow; a teen computer scientist, ready to make millions on an initial public offering before the company stock crashes; a gangster in sunglasses and a tight suit, embroiled in a turf war with the Sicilian mob; an urban greengrocer selling lunch by the pound, rudely returning change over the counter to the black patrons; a businessman with a briefcase of cash bribing a congressman, a corrupting influence on the electoral process; a salaryman on my way to work, crammed into the commuter train and loyal to the company; a shady doctor, trained in a foreign tradition with anatomical diagrams of the human body mapping the flow of life energy through a multitude of colored points; a calculus graduate student with thick glasses and a bad haircut, serving as a teaching assistant with an incomprehensible accent, scribbling on the chalkboard; an automobile enthusiast who customizes an imported car with a supercharged engine and Japanese decals in the rear window, cruising the boulevard looking for a drag race; a illegal alien crowded into the cargo hold of a smuggler's ship, defying death only to crowd into a New York City tenement and work as a slave in a sweatshop. My mother and my girl cousins were Madame Butterfly from the mail order bride catalog, dying in their service to the masculinity of the West, and the dragon lady in a kimono, taking vengeance for her sisters. They became the television newscaster, look-alikes with their flawlessly permed hair. Through these indelible images, I grew up. But when I looked in the mirror, I could not believe my own reflection because it was not like what I saw around me. Over the years, the world opened up. It has become a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural fragments, arranged and rearranged without plan or order.

we have much to learn from the struggles in Alabama and Mississippi in the early 1960s. In the spring of 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. King launched a “fill the jails” campaign to desegregate downtown department stores and schools in Birmingham. But few local blacks were coming forward. Black adults were afraid of losing their jobs, local black preachers were reluctant to accept the leadership of an “Outsider,” and city police commissioner Bull Connor had everyone intimidated. Facing a major defeat, King was persuaded by his aide, James Bevel, to allow any child old enough to belong to a church to march. So on D-day, May 2, before the eyes of the whole nation, thousands of schoolchildren, many of them first graders, joined the movement and were beaten, fire-hosed, attacked by police dogs, and herded off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. The result was what has been called the “Children’s Miracle.” Inspired and shamed into action, thousands of adults rushed to join the movement. All over the country rallies were called to express outrage against Bull Connor’s brutality. Locally, the power structure was forced to desegregate lunch counters and dressing rooms in downtown stores, hire blacks to work downtown, and begin desegregating the schools. Nationally, the Kennedy administration, which had been trying not to alienate white Dixiecrat voters, was forced to begin drafting civil rights legislation as the only way to forestall more Birminghams. The next year as part of Mississippi Freedom Summer, activists created Freedom Schools because the existing school system (like ours today) had been organized to produce subjects, not citizens. People in the community, both children and adults, needed to be empowered to exercise their civil and voting rights. A mental revolution was needed. To bring it about, reading, writing, and speaking skills were taught through discussions of black history, the power structure, and building a movement. Everyone took this revolutionary civics course, then chose from more academic subjects such as algebra and chemistry. All over Mississippi, in church basements and parish halls, on shady lawns and in abandoned buildings, volunteer teachers empowered thousands of children and adults through this community curriculum. The Freedom Schools of 1964 demonstrated that when Education involves young people in making community changes that matter to them, when it gives meaning to their lives in the present instead of preparing them only to make a living in the future, young people begin to believe in themselves and to dream of the future.

I’ll James you, you foxy-faced drippings of a cankered __, you poxy bastarding whore’s melt, I put it to myself, and thought it worth it to hit him a belt; but, when all is said and done, I was but sixteen and he was a grown man and had come through Borstal institutions, mostly, I would say, by sucking up to bullying big bollixes the likes of Dale, not by letting his backstraps down—he was too ugly for that, but maybe some of these bastards would get a bit of a drop. I was no country Paddy from the middle of the Bog of Allen to be frightened to death by a lot of Liverpool seldom-fed bastards, nor was I one of your wrap-the-green-flag-round-me junior Civil Servants that came into the IRA from the Gaelic League, and well ready to die for their country any day of the week, purity in their hearts, truth on their lips, for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland. No, be Jesus, I was from Russell Street, North Circular Road, Dublin, from the Northside where, be Jesus, the likes of Dale wouldn’t make a dinner for them, where the whole of this pack of Limeys would be scruff-hounds would be et, bet, and threw up again __et without salt. I’ll James you, you bastard. Then the smile had to fade and the joke was rejected and the gentleness refused, never a better nor my own sweet self, and it wasn’t off the stones I licked. The old fellow would beat the best of them round our way and him only my height now, though fully grown a hell of a long time. James, be Jesus, prepare to meet thy Jesus. And I just stood up, held up a bag and said, ‘Finished work,’ and the screw nodded, though I hadn’t said ‘sir’ because I hadn’t time.

You eat one meal a day, only what is given. Through these practices of surrender there grows a ripening of trust as the heart learns to face the mystery of life with patience, faith, and compassion. Monks must go out each morning with a bowl for alms rounds. This is not like street-corner begging. For me, it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Just as the sun rises, you walk across the green rice paddies to small villages with packed earthen lanes. Those who wish to offer alms wait for the monks to come and bow before they offer their food. Even the poorest villages will offer part of their food to make merit and as if to say, “Even though we are poor, we so value what you represent that we give of what little we have so that your spirit may be here in our village, in our community, and in our society.” Alms rounds are done completely in silence. When you receive the food, you can’t say, “Thank you; I appreciate the mango you gave me,” or “Thanks for the fish this morning; it looks really good.” The only response you can make is the sincerity of your heart. After you receive this food, you take it back to support and inspire your practice. When the villagers value the monk’s life and give of the little they have, you must take that. The extraordinary generosity of the village brings a powerful motivation in a monastery. The rules about alms food govern monastic life. Monks are not allowed to keep food overnight or eat anything that’s not put into their hands each morning by a layperson. This means that monks can’t live as hermits up in the mountains far from the world. They must live where people can feed them. This immediately establishes a powerful relationship. You must do something of enough value that they want to feed you. Your presence, your meditation, your dignity, has to be vivid enough so that when you bring your bowl, people want to offer food because that’s the only way you can eat! This creates an ongoing dynamic of offering that goes both ways, from those who are in the process of being initiated in the monastery, and those of the community whom it benefits.

The months of June and July passed. The monsoons were tardy this year—the nights hinted rain constantly with an aroma in the air, a cooling on the skin, soundless lightning across skies. But when morning came, the sun rose strong again, mocking Agra and its inhabitants. And the days crawled by, brazenly hot, when every breath was an effort, every movement a struggle, every night sweat-stewed. In temples, incantations were offered, the muezzins called the faithful to prayers, their voices melodious and pleading, and the bells of the Jesuit churches chimed. But the gods seemed indifferent. The rice paddies lay ploughed after the pre-monsoon rains, awaiting the seedlings; too long a wait and the ground would grow hard again. A few people moved torpidly in the streets of Agra; only the direst of emergencies had called them from their cool, stone-flagged homes. Even the normally frantic pariah dogs lay panting on doorsteps, too exhausted to yelp when passing urchins pelted them with stones. The bazaars were barren too, shopfronts pulled down, shopkeepers too tired to haggle with buyers. Custom could wait for cooler times. The whole city seemed to have slowed to a halt. The imperial palaces and courtyards were hushed in the night, the corridors empty of footsteps. Slaves and eunuchs plied iridescent peacock feather fans, wiping their perspiring faces with one hand. The ladies of the harem slept under the intermittent breeze of the fans, goblets of cold sherbets flavoured with khus and ginger resting by their sides. Every now and then, a slave would refresh the goblet, bringing in another one filled with new shards of ice. When her mistress awoke, and wake she would many times during the night, her drink would be ready. The ice, carved in huge chunks from the Himalayan mountains, covered with gunnysacks and brought down to the plains in bullock carts, was a blessing for everyone, nobles and commoners alike. But in this heat, ice melted all too soon, disappearing into a puddle of warm water under sawdust and jute. In Emperor Jahangir’s apartments, music floated through the courtyard, stopping and tripping in the still night air as the musicians’ slick fingers slipped on the strings of the sitar.

The day’s most notable clash occurred when a group of pacifists visited Lodge, an acerbic Boston Brahmin with a white beard. Lodge was an enthusiastic proponent of war who thought Wilson weak-willed, snorting contemptuously at the president’s call for “peace without victory” of a few months earlier. When the senator stepped into the hallway outside his office to meet the pacifist delegation, its spokesman, Alexander Bannwart, a former minor-league baseball player, attacked Lodge’s enthusiasm for war. The senator was furious. “National degeneracy and cowardice are worse than war!” he told Bannwart, who retorted, “Anyone who wants to go to war is a coward! You’re a damned coward!” This was too much for the 67-year-old Lodge, who shouted, “You’re a damned liar!” and punched Bannwart, 36, to the floor. Bannwart fought back, slamming Lodge against a closed door. Office workers, police, and even a passing Western Union messenger joined the melee in defense of the senator. Lodge triumphantly yelled, “I’m glad I hit him first!” but it was the bloodied Bannwart whom the police hauled away in a paddy wagon.

Might not get Easter or Paddy’s Day But Leo says maybe! Who’s he to say Men need their bets, pints and Grubb So Tony, Phil and Ronan let us go to the pub.

She slid into the booth beneath the framed photographs that told a pictorial history of Seattle dating back to the days when the wharf was filled with gambling and prostitution houses, and the city had almost as many bars as churches. Photographs depicted shoe-shine boys working their booths, sailors walking with young ladies on their arms, newspaper boys hawking daily papers on street corners, and tourists at the Pike Place Market lined up three rows deep watching fishmongers tossing a giant king salmon. The Paddy Wagon’s owner had told Patsy the booth had been used for clandestine meetings—when the mayor, the police chief, and the politicians were all as guilty as the sex workers for taking money for

So that started this thing, and Paddy never really thought about it much until the guitar. He wanted that guitar so bad, and he went to Ed and made a case to Ed but Ed told him to fuh—go away. How’d you do it?” “At first, I tried logic. I came at him head-on, and he blew me off. Because I was a woman he was mannerly enough, but it was clear he had no interest in selling the guitar. So I started calling him a few times a week. Then I sent him Sweet Hollow Ranch CDs. He got mad at me at first. And then I drove down there and showed up at his house.” “You did what? Christ! I told you not to go down there alone. He could have been insane or a serial killer or something. Paddy is going to kill me.” “Hush. You didn’t tell me that until after I’d already gone down there. So technically, once you told me not to, I didn’t. But anyway. I showed up, and I followed him around pretty much all day until he finally agreed to listen to one track if I’d leave him alone. So I played him ‘Be There.’ And I said, ‘Don’t you think your guitar would make magic with this man playing it?’” “You’re ballsy, Nats. Jeez.” “Pfft. Why do men say that? Balls? If you kick them or bump them or they get cold or too warm, you guys go down for the count. I say I have vagina. Way tougher than balls. Though it does hurt to get kicked there.” He sputtered and then laughed and laughed. “We need to think of another term, though. Vagina up? No. I’ll think about it and get back to you.

Paddy took her into the booth where Ezra turned, his face all business until he recognized her. “Nats, hello darlin’.” He gave her a hug. “What is it with all you guys and your need to call my girlfriend pet names and hug up all over her? Hnads. Off. Ezra. Jeez.” “But he’s so adorable and huggable, Patrick.” She gave Paddy what he called her puppy-dog eyes, and he grinned. “Ezra huggable and adorable? Okay, well, that’s gonna make me snicker for days.

Creative people in particular traditionally have strained relations with systems, structures, standards, and other perceived constraints on their creative freedom. Nowhere is this clearer than in big organizations where people often complain that “the systems” kill creativity, longingly thinking back to the halcyon days when the company was young and less bureaucratic. Going back to the unstructured start-up days is not an option, however. Established companies require a different kind of innovation: they need a culture in which creativity is part of the corporate ecosystem. The key to building a creative culture is not to declare war on systems, processes, and policies, but to embrace and redesign them so they support and actively enhance innovative behavior. Managers, in other words, have to fight systems with systems, creating an architecture of innovation in their teams and departments. The primary aim is to help people behave more like innovators.

February 8: Marilyn does her “black sitting” session with Milton Greene. Marilyn poses in black hat and fishnet stockings, her face partially in shadow. She also appears in a shot where she lies down, her left leg extended in the air, as she covers part of her face with her hands. She also kneels, drink in hand, smiling. She props herself up with her arms and draws her knees into her body, with half her face in the dark—a study in moody bifurcation. Greene’s photographs will eventually punctuate the text of Norman Mailer’s Of Women and Their Elegance. In the evening Marilyn, wearing a white fur coat over a low-cut dress, long black gloves, and jeweled earrings that stretch all the way down her neck, attends the premiere of Middle of the Night, a Paddy Chayefsky play directed by Josh Logan.

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I hope I’m not intruding on his work. I’m happy to pitch in if I can.” “No worries,” Hannah said, then smiled at her inadvertent use of his Australian colloquialism. “And you’re on vacation so we aren’t going to make you pitch hay.” Calder smiled. “Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind a bit of hard labor. Feels odd not to be putting in the hours.” “Your body is probably thanking you.” Cooper looked down at his booted toes at that, not wanting Kerry’s sister to spy even a hint of just how spent his body had felt when he’d woken up that morning, much less why. “Big Jack--my dad--would tell you that taking so much as a day off makes a man soft.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he realized the double entendre, then realized she wouldn’t get that it was a double entendre and decided maybe he’d just stare at his booted feet all day long. Then he thought he caught just a hint of a knowing smile on Hannah’s lovely face before she too decided to check out her footwear for an extended moment. Cheeky, like her sister, he thought. And sharp, like a defense attorney. The afternoon had barely gotten underway, too. Sweet Mary. Another few minutes of this and he wouldn’t be surprised to see Logan pulling up with the paddy wagon, ready to haul him off for putting his hands--and a whole lot more--on his baby sister.

You’re teaching nursing?” he asked, surprised. She nodded. “I’ve been doing that for the past year or so. Turns out I like it.” “My new sister-in-law, Shelby—she’s a student there, in nursing. Cutest thing you’ll ever see. Best thing that ever happened to Luke. Any chance you know her?” “What year is she in?” Franci asked. “First year. She got married in her first semester because Paddy and Colin were done with their deployments—she waited for all the Riordans to be available. She’s way younger than Luke and is just starting college.” Franci tilted her head and smiled, thinking how sweet it was that cranky, womanizing old Luke ended up with a sweet young girl who was determined to get an education. “I’m pretty sure I haven’t met Luke’s wife. Most of the freshmen are stuck in liberal-arts courses the first year. I teach one medical-surgical course and one that boils down to charting ER patients. I’m just one of many instructors. Mostly, I teach juniors and seniors. I share an office on campus with another nursing instructor and I only teach a couple of days a week. Except for meetings, of which there are too many.” “You never did go for the meetings,” he said with a smile. “I’ll have to tell Shelby to introduce herself. You’ll love her. You’ll—” “One thing at a time, all right?” Franci asked patiently.

There is no doubt that the GR20, traversing the rugged mountains of Corsica, is one of the top trails of the world. Its reputation precedes it, and most walkers who trek the route describe it afterwards as one of the toughest they have ever completed. Others find they are unable to complete it, having seriously underestimated its nature. The GR20 climbs high into the mountains and stays there for days on end, leading ordinary walkers deep into the sort of terrain usually visited only by mountaineers. The scenery is awe-inspiring, with bare rock and vertical lines in some parts, contrasting with forests, lakes and alpine pastures in other places. Those

I got three of those green milkshakes they serve at McDonald's around St Paddy's Day for a crazy Irishman named O'Malley;

Last of all, her schooling included one day each week helping with the righteous labor of the common people. Righteous labor, of course, was not the work the common people did every day in their offices and factories. Righteous labor meant the backbreaking work of the rice paddies. Every man and woman and child on Path had to perform this labor, bending and stooping in shin-deep water to plant and harvest the rice—or forfeit citizenship. “This is how we honor our ancestors,” Father explained to her when she was little. “We show them that none of us will ever rise above doing their labor.” The rice that was grown by righteous labor was considered holy; it was offered in the temples and eaten on holy days; it was placed in small bowls as offerings to the household gods.

Each turn leads to another; without the one, the second is impossible. 

VIRGINIA (Practically on the verge of tears) I just can't stand it no more! Every minute of the day! Do this! Do that! I don't have ten minutes alone with my husband! We can't even have a fight! We don't have no privacy! Everybody's miserable in our house! THOMAS All right, Ginnie, don't get so excited. THE MOTHER She's right. She's right.

Pintman Paddy Losty. Some of Dublin's great pintmen have been known to put away thirty pints or more in a day

I put my phone away and stare out the window at Japan's countryside, watching the scenery zip by at 320 kilometers per hour. Mount Fuji has come and gone, as have laundry on metal merry-go-racks, houses plastered with party signs, weathered baseball diamonds, an ostrich farm, and now, miles of rice paddy fields tended by people wearing conical hats and straw coats. Japan is dressed in her best this morning, sunny and breezy, with few clouds in the sky as accessories. It's the first official day of spring. Cherry blossoms have disappeared in twists of wind or trampled into the ground. Takenoko, bamboo season, will begin soon.

And Jem knew of Bill Perry from his days in the livery yard at Tipton Port before he came to the Bilston yard. And he knew what was said of him now. Paddy said he was old and broken with drink but, ‘I still wouldn’t put meself on his wrong side if I didn’t need to. Bill Perry was the best of all the old pugilists. But I hear he is a sorry sight these days.

It's something I'm seeing everywhere in Vietnam; what makes its food so good, its people so endearing and impressive: pride. It's everywhere. From top to bottom, everyone seems be doing the absolute best they can with what they have, improvising, repairing, innovating. It's a spirit revealed in every noodle stall, every leaky sampan, every swept and combed dirt porch and green rice paddy. You see it in the mud-packed dikes and levees of their centuries-old irrigation system, every monkey bridge, restored shoe, tire turned sandal, literless urban street, patched roof, and swaddled baby in brightly colored hand-knit cap. Think what you want about Vietnam and about communism and about whatever it was that really happened there all those years ago. Ignore, if you care to, the obvious - that the country is, and was always, primarily about family, village, province, and then country - that ideology is a luxury few can afford. You cannot help but be impressed and blown away by the hard work, the attention to detail, the care taken in every facet of daily life, no matter how mundane, no matter how difficult the circumstances. Spend some time in the Mekong Delta and you'll understand how a nation of farmers could beat the largest and most powerful military presence on the planet. Just watch the women in the rice paddies, bent at the waist for eight, ten hours a day, yanking bundles of rice from knee-deep water, then moving them, replanting them. Take a while to examine the interlocked system of stone-age irrigation, unchanged for hundreds and hundreds of years, the level of cooperation necessary among neighbors simply to scratch out a living, and you'll get the idea.

Over all them yrs what have passed since that bitter day I have discovered the comfort what comes from the knowing of your own Inconsequence. O but then there is a biting need to have your own particular song heard & understood by all the world.

But the more I think about it, the more certain I am that I had eight hogpiglets yesterday. And the day before I had one more than that. Ten!" 'That’s not right," Lennry said. "Eh?" Paddy counted on his fingers and moved his lips. "You said you had eight yesterday, and the day before you had one more than that. That makes nine, not ten." "Not true," said Paddy. "Look at my fingers. One, two, three." He counted to eight, then held out one more finger. "Eight plus one. That's ten. Ten hogpigs." "You forgot nine," Lennry said. "What's nine?" Paddy asked. It's between eight and ten. Paddy furrowed his brow and nodded slowly. "Nine. You’re right. Plumb forgot about that one.

But the more I think about it, the more certain I am that I had eight hogpiglets yesterday. And the day before I had one more than that. Ten!" 'That’s not right," Lennry said. "Eh?" Paddy counted on his fingers and moved his lips. "You said you had eight yesterday, and the day before you had one more than that. That makes nine, not ten." "Not true," said Paddy. "Look at my fingers. One, two, three." He counted to eight, then held out one more finger. "Eight plus one. That's ten. Ten hogpigs." "You forgot nine," Lennry said. "What's nine?" Paddy asked. "It's between eight and ten." Paddy furrowed his brow and nodded slowly. "Nine. You’re right. Plumb forgot about that one.

The cultures of our ancestors (even the aspects we no longer practice or ascribe to) influence our present-day behaviors.

Beltane, man! It’s, uh . . . Irish, I think. But even better than Paddy’s Day. It’s like Mardi Gras meets Halloween!

All day they walked downhill, through dark groves and dusty villages with sun-baked mud walls. As they descended into warmer country, Kusuma Sari grew excited by the sight of paddy fields.

Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.

A life had taken shape, after my arrest: for years, I had let it sprout, joyously absurd, naive and shameless. In that life you were never carried off, petted, saved; you stood up straight, in the dark cages of the paddy wagon, or sat up on the hard wooden slats. But in that life, all the same, you could get your kicks in secret in the certainty of each day’s routine. My new freedom imprisons and paralyzes me.

Fusako Morikawa was an adorable child, the eldest of three. She had straight black hair as shiny as moonlight on the still waters of a rice paddy in late spring. Every day her mother tied it up and complained, “You have too much hair! I can’t hold it all in one hand.” Fusako had a sweet mouth that everyone loved. Her lips were full, even as a baby. Her father loved them the most and often explained why. “Full lips mean you’ll always be rich. I won’t have to worry about you one bit!” And she had a round mole on the back of her neck. Her grandmother had told her, “A mole is like a little pouch that fills with wonderful things; one on the neck is for clothes. You’ll always have something new to wear.” Fusako also had earlobes that were a little longer than most everyone’s. Whenever she said anything that sounded enlightened, her friends would say, “You and the Buddha!

The Valley was settled, civilised and debauched - a depthless lake levelling out to a cluster of paddy-fringed temple cities that eventually merged into a sprawling dust bowl of a metropolis. Today the Bagmati [river] has shrunk to a snail's trail of gooey sewage. Modern-day Kathmandu festers around it, three million souls crouched across 900 square kilometres, hoarding the fat of the land, awaiting the day of reckoning.

was not a pleasant day, and to make matters worse it rained until late in the afternoon. The Story Girl had not recovered from the mortifications of the previous day; she would not talk, and she would not tell a single story; she sat on Rachel Ward's chest and ate her breakfast with the air of a martyr. After breakfast she washed the dishes and did the bed-room work in grim silence; then, with a book under one arm and Pat under the other, she betook herself to the window-seat in the upstairs hall, and would not be lured from that retreat, charmed we never so wisely. She stroked the purring Paddy, and read steadily on, with maddening indifference to all our pleadings. Even Cecily, the meek and mild, was snappish, and complained of headache. Peter had gone home to see his mother, and Uncle Roger had gone to Markdale on business. Sara Ray came up, but was so snubbed by Felicity that she went home, crying. Felicity got the dinner by herself, disdaining to ask or command assistance. She banged things about and rattled the stove covers until even Cecily protested from her sofa. Dan sat on the floor and whittled, his sole aim and object being to make a mess and annoy Felicity, in which noble ambition he succeeded perfectly.

which national cultures place the highest emphasis on effort and hard work. So, which places are at the top of both lists? The answer shouldn’t surprise you: Singapore, South Korea, China (Taiwan), Hong Kong, and Japan. What those five have in common, of course, is that they are all cultures shaped by the tradition of wet-rice agriculture and meaningful work.* They are the kinds of places where, for hundreds of years, penniless peasants, slaving away in the rice paddies three thousand hours a year, said things to one another like “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.

A soft wind rippled the rice, making green waves on a green ocean. Beyond our paddy were endless paddies, endless green oceans whose harvest would one day fill a million bowls. In the distance a heron stalked a frog, piercing it with its sharp beak, throwing it up in the air, and swallowing it with one gulp. With all the plenty there was cruelty. There had been Han Na's love as wide as a hai and now she was gone, snatched from me forever. I hunched down and, covering my face with my hands, cried until there were no tears left.

It is only two hundred years ago that we had the invention of industrial agriculture. What did that revolution do to us? It brought us power.” And freedom from a life spent kneeling in sodden rice paddies or struggling fourteen hours a day to collect cotton bolls or snap peas. Freedom, in short, from an existence governed by agony, injury, and pain—one that most farmers, and most humans, have always had to endure.

This point was driven home for me for the first time when I was traveling in Asia in 1978 on a trip to a forest monastery in northeastern Thailand, Wat Ba Pong, on the Thai-Lao border. I was taken there by my meditation teacher, Jack Kornfield, who was escorting a group of us to meet the monk under whom he had studied at that forest hermitage. This man, Achaan Chaa, described himself as a “simple forest monk,” and he ran a hundred-acre forest monastery that was simple and old-fashioned, with one notable exception. Unlike most contemporary Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, where the practice of meditation as the Buddha had taught had all but died out, Achaan Chaa’s demanded intensive meditation practice and a slow, deliberate, mindful attention to the mundane details of everyday life. He had developed a reputation as a meditation master of the first order. My own first impressions of this serene environment were redolent of the newly extinguished Vietnam War, scenes of which were imprinted in my memory from years of media attention. The whole place looked extraordinarily fragile to me. On my first day, I was awakened before dawn to accompany the monks on their early morning alms rounds through the countryside. Clad in saffron robes, clutching black begging bowls, they wove single file through the green and brown rice paddies, mist rising, birds singing, as women and children knelt with heads bowed along the paths and held out offerings of sticky rice or fruits. The houses along the way were wooden structures, often perched on stilts, with thatched roofs. Despite the children running back and forth laughing at the odd collection of Westerners trailing the monks, the whole early morning seemed caught in a hush. After breakfasting on the collected food, we were ushered into an audience with Achaan Chaa. A severe-looking man with a kindly twinkle in his eyes, he sat patiently waiting for us to articulate the question that had brought us to him from such a distance. Finally, we made an attempt: “What are you really talking about? What do you mean by ‘eradicating craving’?” Achaan Chaa looked down and smiled faintly. He picked up the glass of drinking water to his left. Holding it up to us, he spoke in the chirpy Lao dialect that was his native tongue: “You see this goblet? For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”5 Achaan Chaa was not just talking about the glass, of course, nor was he speaking merely of the phenomenal world, the forest monastery, the body, or the inevitability of death. He was also speaking to each of us about the self. This self that you take to be so real, he was saying, is already broken.

However, Tata had to go through the formal ritual of personally inviting members of the Karanth clan to my wedding, the memory of which amuses me hugely to this day. Tata took me along through the lanes, gardens and rice paddies around Kota to distribute the wedding invitation to friends and relatives. We would walk into a home and Tata would hand over the invitation card. He would then loudly announce, 'Ullas is getting married in Mangalore. But you should not come.' With his elder brother K.L. Karanth, he used a more polite variant, saying, You should not bother about attending. He would then go on and tell the invitees that 'they should not lose sleepover' the wedding ceremony because he was arranging a wedding feast in Kota a couple of days later. 'Do attend the feast without fail!' he admonished. We then walked off to the home of the next 'invitee', leaving the last one entirely befuddled. To Tata's many friends and admirers far away, he sent printed 'invitation cards', with a handwritten note, similarly disinviting them. Tata did not like the crowds, pomp and pageantry associated with traditional weddings. He just wanted my wedding over and out of the way.

However, Tata had to go through the formal ritual of personally inviting members of the Karanth clan to my wedding, the memory of which amuses me hugely to this day. Tata took me along through the lanes, gardens and rice paddies around Kota to distribute the wedding invitation to friends and relatives. We would walk into a home and Tata would hand over the invitation card. He would then loudly announce, 'Ullas is getting married in Mangalore. But you should not come.' With his elder brother K.L. Karanth, he used a more polite variant, saying, You should not bother about attending. He would then go on and tell the invitees that 'they should not lose sleepover' the wedding ceremony because he was arranging a wedding feast in Kota a couple of days later. 'Do attend the feast without fail!' he admonished. We then walked off to the home of the next 'invitee', leaving the last one entirely befuddled. To Tata's many friends and admirers far away, he sent printed 'invitation cards', with a handwritten note, similarly disinviting them. Tata did not like the crowds, pomp and pageantry associated with traditional weddings. He just wanted my wedding over and out of the way.