Parked Boat Quotes

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer better fantasies... And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

"The wanderer in Manhattan must go forth with a certain innocence, because New York is best seen with innocent eyes. It doesn't matter if you are younger or old. Reading our rich history makes the experience more layered, but it is not a substitute for walking the streets themselves. For old-timer or newcomer, it is essential to absorb the city as it is now in order to shape your own nostalgias. That's why I always urge the newcomer to surrender to the city's magic. Forget the irritations and the occasional rudeness; they bother New Yorkers too. Instead, go down to the North River and the benches that run along the west side of Battery Park City. Watch the tides or the blocks of ice in winter; they have existed since the time when the island was empty of man. Gaze at the boats. Look across the water at the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island, the place to which so many of the New York tribe came in order to truly live. Learn the tale of our tribe, because it's your tribe too, no matter where you were born. Listen to its music and its legends. Gaze at its ruins and monuments. Walk its sidewalks and run fingers upon the stone and bricks and steel of our right-angled streets. Breathe the air of the river breeze."

One thing which even the most seasoned and discerning masters of the art of choice do not and cannot choose, is the society to be born into - and so we are all in travel, whether we like it or not. We have not been asked about our feelings anyway. Thrown into a vast open sea with no navigation charts and all the marker buoys sunk and barely visible, we have only two choices left: we may rejoice in the breath-taking vistas of new discoveries - or we may tremble out of fear of drowning. One option not really realistic is to claim sanctuary in a safe harbour; one could bet that what seems to be a tranquil haven today will be soon modernized, and a theme park, amusement promenade or crowded marina will replace the sedate boat sheds. The third option not thus being available, which of the two other options will be chosen or become the lot of the sailor depends in no small measure on the ship's quality and the navigation skills of the sailors. Not all ships are seaworthy, however. And so the larger the expanse of free sailing, the more the sailor's fate tends to be polarized and the deeper the chasm between the poles. A pleasurable adventure for the well-equipped yacht may prove a dangerous trap for a tattered dinghy. In the last account, the difference between the two is that between life and death.

Maybe that's why I prefer this new library to my own bedroom: looking at the million book spines, I can imagine a million alternate endings. It turned out the butler did it all, or I ended up marrying Mr. Darcy, or we went and watched a girl ride the merry-go-round in Central Park, or we beat on against the current in our little boats, or Atticus Finch was there when we woke up in the morning.

You can make a boat, but you can't make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can't make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.

The pirates left the boat in the Thames, next to the Palace of Westminster. They deliberately parked across two disabled spaces, because that kind of behaviour was pretty much the whole point of being a pirate.

It isn’t a matter of wanting it or not,” Malcolm said, eyes closed. He spoke slowly, through the drugs. “It’s a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect to control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn’t control it. He’s at the mercy of it. “But you decide you won’t be at the mercy of nature. You decide you’ll control nature, and from that moment on you’re in deep trouble, because you can’t do it. Yet you have made systems that require you to do it. And you can’t do it—and you never have—and you never will. Don’t confuse things. You can make a boat, but you can’t make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can’t make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.

Matthias nodded to the fisherman and Rotty winked back at him, giving a brief tug on the beard of his disguise. He poled the boat rapidly down the canal. As they approached Zentsbridge, Matthias caught sight of the huge bottleboat parked beneath it. It was wide enough that the hulls scraped as Rotty tried to pass. The bottle man and Rotty broke into a heated argument, and Nina let loose another wail, long and loud enough that Matthias wondered if she was trying to compete with the plague siren. “Perhaps some deep breathing?” the medik suggested from the railing. Matthias gave Nina the barest warning glance. They could fake a pregnancy. They couldn’t fake an actual birth. At least he didn’t think they could. He wouldn’t put anything past Kaz at this point.

Gate C22 At gate C22 in the Portland airport a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island, like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing. Neither of them was young. His beard was gray. She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning, the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. We were all watching– passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths. But the best part was his face. When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth, as your mother must have looked at you, no matter what happened after–if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth. The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

One of Ronald Reagan’s fantasies as president was that he would take Mikhail Gorbachev on a tour of the United States so the Soviet leader could see how ordinary Americans lived. Reagan often talked about it. He imagined that he and Gorbachev would fly by helicopter over a working-class community, viewing a factory and its parking lot filled with cars and then circling over the pleasant neighborhood where the factory workers lived in homes “with lawns and backyards, perhaps with a second car or a boat in the driveway, not the concrete rabbit warrens I’d seen in Moscow.” The helicopter would descend, and Reagan would invite Gorbachev to knock on doors and ask the residents “what they think of our system.” The workers would tell him how wonderful it was to live in America.

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city. Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance.

It isn't a matter of wanting it or not. It's a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect co control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn't control it. He's at the mercy of it. But you decide you won't be at the mercy of nature. You decide you'll control nature, and from that moment on you're in deep trouble, because you can't do it -- and you never have -- and you never will. Don't confuse things. You can make a boat, but you can't make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can't make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.

Thorne shrugged. "They're still just fantasies. They're not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?" Kelly shook her head. "No, but. . ." "And you never will, because those things don't exist. No matter how seriously people take them," Thorne said. "A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies." Thorne shook his head. "And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

Olmsted’s greatest concern, however, was that the main, Jackson Park portion of the exposition simply was not fun. “There is too much appearance of an impatient and tired doing of sight-seeing duty. A stint to be got through before it is time to go home. The crowd has a melancholy air in this respect, and strenuous measures should be taken to overcome it.” Just as Olmsted sought to conjure an aura of mystery in his landscape, so here he urged the engineering of seemingly accidental moments of charm. The concerts and parades were helpful but were of too “stated or programmed” a nature. What Olmsted wanted were “minor incidents … of a less evidently prepared character; less formal, more apparently spontaneous and incidental.” He envisioned French horn players on the Wooded Island, their music drifting across the waters. He wanted Chinese lanterns strung from boats and bridges alike. “Why not skipping and dancing masqueraders with tambourines, such as one sees in Italy? Even lemonade peddlers would help if moving about in picturesque dresses; or cake-sellers, appearing as cooks, with flat cap, and in spotless white from top to toe?” On nights when big events in Jackson Park drew visitors away from the Midway, “could not several of the many varieties of ‘heathen,’ black, white and yellow, be cheaply hired to mingle, unobtrusively, but in full native costume, with the crowd on the Main Court?

And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That’s the sea. That’s real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That’s all real. You see all of us together? That’s real. Life is wonderful. It’s a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn’t really anything else.

I was glad to see the Irish coast, and found it very lovely, so green and sunny, with brown cabins here and there, ruins on some of the hills, and gentlemen's country-seats in the valleys, with deer feeding in the parks. It was early in the morning, but I didn't regret getting up to see it, for the bay was full of little boats, the shore so picturesque, and a rosy sky over head; I never shall forget it.

Martin got up and brushed off the seat of his pants with his hat. He put his hat on his head and started back toward the path. For when you woke from a long dream, into the new morning, then try as you might you couldn't not hear, beyond your door, the sounds of the new day, the drawer opening in your father's bureau, the bang of a pot, you couldn't not see, through your trembling lashes, the stripe of light on the bedroom wall. Boys shouted in the park, on a sunny tree-root he saw a cigar band, red and gold. One of these days he might find something to do in a cigar store, after all he still knew his tobacco, you never forgot a thing like that. But not just yet. Boats moved on the river, somewhere a car horn sounded, on the path a piece of broken glass glowed in a patch of sun as if at any second it would burst into flame. Everything stood out sharply: the red stem of a green leaf, horse clops and the distant clatter of a pneumatic drill, a smell of riverwater and asphalt. Martin felt hungry: chops and beer in a little he remembered on Columbus Avenue. But not yet. For the time being he would just walk along, keeping a little out of the way of things, admiring the view. It was a warm day. He was in no hurry.

After leaving this park the Vivonne began to flow again more swiftly. How often have I watched, and longed to imitate, when I should be free to live as I chose, a rower who had shipped his oars and lay stretched out on his back, his head down, in the bottom of his boat, letting it drift with the current, seeing nothing but the sky which slipped quietly above him, shewing upon his features a foretaste of happiness and peace.

All of these fanatics were white. They took slavery as a personal insult or affront, a stain upon their name. They had seen women carried off to fancy, or watched as a father was stripped and beaten in front of his child, or seen whole families pinned like hogs into rail-cars, steam-boats, and jails. Slavery humiliated them, because it offended a basic sense of goodness that they believed themselves to possess. And when their cousins perpetrated the base practice, it served to remind them how easily they might do the same. They scorned their barbaric brethren, but they were brethren all the same. So their opposition was a kind of vanity, a hatred of slavery that far outranked any love of the slave. Corrine was no different, and it was why, relentless as she was against slavery, she could so casually condemn me to the hole, condemn Georgie Parks to death, and mock an outrage put upon Sophia.

The Lakeland seems to have more water than land, so it’d be a crime not to get out on it. You can take three days to paddle the family-friendly Oravareitti (Squirrel Route), or head out into Kolovesi and Linnansaari national parks to meet freshwater seals. Tired arms? Historic lake boats still ply what were once important transport arteries; depart from any town on short cruises, or make a day of it and go from Savonlinna right up to Kuopio or across Finland’s largest lake, Saimaa, to Lappeenranta.

But I love you - " "Love your daughter. If you don't, I'll have given you up for nothing. So act if you have to, and soon you'll find you mean it." I touched his sleeve. "It's not that hard. Just be there. When she wakes in the night afraid. If she stumbles at school." "Rena doesn't want me there - " "Your daughter does. She wants you to teach her to sail a boat, show her off at the park. You don't know how powerful your love is, Paul. Without it she'll fall for the first boy who says he loves her, and he'll shatter her for good.

Back then the towering gums marched down to the water and the area was sparsely populated with fibro weekenders - simple cottages and boat sheds - mainly owned by coal miners from the nearby Hunter Valley. My grandfather worked in the mines. He'd lend my family the one room boffy attached to his boasted almost every school holiday, and I have such vivid memories of jumping off his jetty and boiling crabs for dinner and fishing with a line wrapped around a piece of cork and playing in the rock pools and parking about in his tin runabout.

After Brenda brought the baby and Tatiana fed him, she went to open the window again and then perched herself up on the window sill, cradling the infant in her arms. “Look, Anthony,” whispered Tatiana in her native Russian. “Do you see? Do you see the water? It is pretty, right? And across the harbor there is a big city with people and streets, and parks. Anthony, as soon as I am better, we will take one of those loud ferry boats and walk on the streets of New York. Would you like that?” Stroking her infant son’s face, Tatiana stared across the water. “Your father would,” she whispered.

The Jewish doctors and lawyers and the successful merchants who owned big stores downtown lived in one-family houses on streets branching off the eastern slope of the Chancellor Avenue hill, closer to grassy, wooded Weequahic Park, a landscaped three hundred acres whose boating lake, golf course, and harness-racing track separated the Weequahic section from the industrial plants and shipping terminals lining Route 27 and the Pennsylvania Railroad viaduct east of that and the burgeoning airport east of that and the very edge of America east of that—the depots and docks of Newark Bay, where they unloaded cargo from around the world.

The park was deserted. The arc-lights were turned off. The leafless trees stood quite motionless in the light of the clear stars. The world was sad to St. Peter as he looked about him; the lake-shore country lay flat and heavy, Hamilton small and tight and airless. The university, his new house, his old house, everything around him, seemed insupportable, as the boat on which he is imprisoned seemed to a sea-sick man. Yes, it was possible that the little world on its voyage among all the stars, might become like that; a boat on which one could travel no longer, from which one could no longer look up and confront those bright rings or revolution.

YOU CAN ALWAYS GET THERE FROM HERE A traveler returned to the country from which he had started many years before. When he stepped from the boat, he noticed how different everything was. There were once many buildings, but now there were few and each of them needed repair. In the park where he played as a child, dust-filled shafts of sunlight struck the tawny leaves of trees and withered hedges. Empty trash bags littered the grass. The air was heavy. He sat on one of the benches and explained to the woman next to him that he’d been away a long time, then asked her what season had he come back to. She replied that it was the only one left, the one they all had agreed on.

Instead of driving straight to the wharf where we usually parked the boat, Adam slowed at the marina dock so the boys could mock Mr. Vader, who hadn’t moved from the position he’d been in when I splashed him, except he’d started on another beer. The boys told him he was all washed up and he should enter a wet T-shirt contest with that figure, and so forth. My brother called to Dad, “Nice save, Pops.” “Hey.” Dad tipped his beer to us. “You’ve got to be fast with Lori around.” “I have to say, young lady,” grumbled Mr. Vader. “I was very impressed with all your shenanigans. Right up to the point I got doused. I want you to plan to close the Crappie Festival show until further notice.” Which meant, Until you screw up. That was okay. He’d told me I was better than the boys at something for once in my life! I turned to Sean and beamed so big that my cheeks hurt. Sean squinted into the sun, wearing that strange, fixed smile. Even my brother and Cameron gave each other puzzled looks rather than congratulating me again. Only Adam met my eyes. He shook his head at me. Oh, crap. Crappy. Holy Crappie Festival! I had upset the natural order. After Adam had already upset the natural order in team calisthenics. I should have thought all of this through better. Sean began, “But I didn’t even get a chance to-“ “I saw what happened,” Mr. Vader told him. “You had your chance. The Big Kahuna has spoken.

There was something very poetic about lying on the hay, beneath the polythene roof. This was how we had spent our first night, on the hay next to the bull in Harry Mann’s barn. During the 18 days in-between we had slept in a posh hotel, a canal boat, a student house, a pub, a tent in a car park, a hitman’s sitting room, an elderly lady’s spare bedroom, a hostel, a bunk house, a farm house, our own self-contained flat, our own house, and now we were back on the hay. We had gone full circle. Out of all of the different types of accommodation, our two nights on the hay were undoubtedly our most comfortable. Next time you hear the nativity story, don’t feel sorry for Mary and Joseph; they had it very lucky indeed.

There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, rushing frantically toward shore. He knew what that meant, as did everyone else in town with a boat, a gaff and a loaf of Wonder bread to use as bait: the stripers were running! Thousands of the highly prized, relatively expensive striped bass were, in a rare feeding frenzy, suddenly there for the taking. You had literally only to throw bread on the water, bash the tasty fish on the head with a gaff and then haul them in. They were taking them by the hundreds of pounds. Every restaurant in town was loading up on them, their parking lots, like ours, suddenly a Coleman-lit staging area for scaling, gutting and wrapping operations. The Dreadnaught lot, like every other lot in town, was suddenly filled with gore-covered cooks and dishwashers, laboring under flickering gaslamps and naked bulbs to clean, wrap and freeze the valuable white meat. We worked for hours with our knives, our hair sparkling with snowflake-like fish scales, scraping, tearing, filleting. At the end of the night's work, I took home a 35-pound monster, still twisted with rigor. My room-mates were smoking weed when I got back to our little place on the beach and, as often happens on such occasions, were hungry. We had only the bass, some butter and a lemon to work with, but we cooked that sucker up under the tiny home broiler and served it on aluminum foil, tearing at it with our fingers. It was a bright, moonlit sky now, a mean high tide was lapping at the edges of our house, and as the windows began to shake in their frames, a smell of white spindrift and salt saturated the air as we ate. It was the freshest piece of fish I'd ever eaten, and I don't know if it was due to the dramatic quality the weather was beginning to take on, but it hit me right in the brainpan, a meal that made me feel better about things, made me better for eating it, somehow even smarter, somehow . . . It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that?

there are so many more facts, now that I have not to invent them. How can I disinter the human character from the heavy scene—the daily newspaper, the daily meal, the traffic grinding towards Battersea, the gulls coming up from the Thames looking for bread, and the early summer of 1939 glinting on the park where the children sailed their boats—one of those bright condemned pre-war summers? I wondered whether, if I thought long enough, I could detect, at the party Henry had given, her future lover. We saw each other for the first time, drinking bad South African sherry because of the war in Spain. I noticed Sarah, I think, because she was happy: in those years the sense of happiness had been a long while dying under the coming storm.

at the moment—and looking for other boats. Kelly advanced the port throttle a notch farther as he turned the wheel, allowing Springer to pivot all the more quickly in the narrow channel, and then he was pointed straight out. He advanced the starboard throttle next, bringing his cruiser to a mannerly five knots as he headed past the ranks of motor and sail yachts. Pam was looking around at the boats, too, mainly aft, and her eyes fixed on the parking lot for a long couple of seconds before she looked forward again, her body relaxing more as she did so. “You know anything about boats?” Kelly asked. “Not much,” she admitted, and for the first time he noticed her accent. “Where you from?” “Texas. How about you?” “Indianapolis, originally, but it’s been a while.” “What’s this?” she asked. Her hands reached out to touch the tattoo on his forearm. “It’s from one of the places I’ve been,” he said. “Not a very nice place.” “Oh, over there.” She understood. “That’s the place.” Kelly nodded matter-of-factly. They were out of the yacht basin now, and he advanced the throttles yet again. “What did you do there?” “Nothing to talk to a lady about,” Kelly replied, looking around from a half-standing position. “What makes you think I’m a lady?” she asked. It caught him short, but he was getting used to it by now. He’d also found that talking to a girl, no matter what the subject, was something that he needed to do. For the first time he answered her smile with one of his own. “Well, it wouldn’t be very nice of me if I assumed that you weren’t.” “I wondered how long it would be before you smiled.” You have a very nice smile, her tone told him. How’s six months grab you? he almost said. Instead he laughed, mainly at himself. That was something else he needed to do. “I’m sorry. Guess I haven’t been very good company.” He turned to look at her again and saw understanding in her eyes. Just a quiet look, very human and feminine, but it shook Kelly. He could feel it happen, and ignored the part of his consciousness that told him that it was something he’d needed badly for months. That was something he didn’t need to hear, especially from himself. Loneliness was bad enough without reflection on its misery. Her hand reached out yet again, ostensibly to stroke the tattoo, but that wasn’t what it was all about. It was amazing how warm her touch was, even under a hot afternoon sun. Perhaps it was a measure of just how cold his life had become. But he had a boat to navigate. There was

As I went out one evening to take the evening air I was blessed by a blood-red moon In Lincoln Park the dark was turning I spied a fair young maiden and a flame was in her eye And on her face lay the steel blue skies Of Lincoln Park, the dark was turning Turning They spread their sheets upon the ground just like a wandering tribe And the wise men walked in their Robespierre robes Through Lincoln Park the dark was turning The towers trapped and trembling, and the boats were tossed about When the fog rolled in and the gas rolled out From Lincoln Park the dark was turning Turning Like wild horses freed at last we took the streets of wine But I searched in vain for she stayed behind In Lincoln Park the dark was turning I'll go back to the city where I can be alone And tell my friend she lies in stone In Lincoln Park the dark was turning

She’s contemplative; I can feel the air around her thick with her thoughts. “No,” she says at last, “I want to believe you’re being sincere but I know you’re not. So I say no, because even if I allow myself to fantasize a little about our lives in a cabin on the beach, I still find myself being left by you. There’s almost no scenario I can think of where we live happily ever after.” “There could be,” I tell her and mean it at the moment. Maybe mean it for longer. Her fingers stop moving and she sighs. I open my eyes and she’s staring down at me. The lights have come on around the parking lot and one of them shines directly into her face. She angelic, a neon seraphim under the brilliant skies of the spring. I can see us on our boat, eating our hand picked clams on the fire behind our place. I can see it so vividly I’m almost sure it’s happened.

June Afternoon" Didn't I tell you everything is possible in this deja vu? Try the river boat, the carousel, feed the pigeons, Bar-B-Q. Look at all the people, happy faces all around. Smiling, throwing kisses, busy making lazy sounds It's a bright June afternoon, it never gets dark. Wah-wah! Here comes the sun. Get your green, green tambourine, let's play in the park. Wah-wah! Here comes the sun Some folks are on blankets, slowly daydreaming and reaching for their food. Let's go buy an ice-cream and a magazine with an attitude and put on a cassette, we can pretend that you're a star cos life's so very simple just like la-la-la It's a bright June afternoon... There's a painter painting his masterpiece. There are some squirrels jumping in the trees, There's a wide-eyed boy with a red balloon. All my life I've longed for this afternoon.

It’s just theories. Human beings can’t help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what that is? No? Well, it doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t real anyway. They also believed that four humors controlled behavior. And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe the earth is four billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem. We think those beliefs are more scientific and better.” “Aren’t they?” Thorne shrugged. “They’re still just fantasies. They’re not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?” Kelly shook her head. “No, but …” “And you never will, because those things don’t exist. No matter how seriously people take them,” Thorne said. “A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They’ll say, ‘You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?’ They’ll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies.” Thorne shook his head. “And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That’s the sea. That’s real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That’s all real. You see all of us together? That’s real. Life is wonderful. It’s a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn’t really anything else. Now look at that compass, and tell me where south is. I want to go to Puerto Cortés. It’s time for us all to go home.

Later, this desire will invade and overwhelm me. It will begin, in the classic way, with an urge to travel to new places, destinations selected from maps and picture postcards. I will take trains, boats, planes, I will embrace Europe, discover London, a youth hostel next to Paddington Station, a Bronski Beat concert, thrift stores, the speakers of Hyde Park, beer gardens, darts, tawdry nights, Rome, walks among the ruins, finding shelter under the umbrella pines, tossing coins into fountains, watching boys with slicked-back hair whistle at passing girls. Barcelona, drunken wanderings along La Rambla and accidental meetings late on the waterfront. Lisbon and the sadness that’s inevitable before such faded splendor. Amsterdam with her mesmerizing volutes and red neon. All the things you do when you’re twenty years old. The desire for constant movement will come after, the impossibility of staying in one place, the hatred of the roots that hold you there, Doesn’t matter where you go, just change the scenery,

In 2004 the British government’s official advisers, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, proposed that 30 per cent of the United Kingdom’s waters should become reserves in which no fishing or any other kind of extraction happened.58 In 2009 an environmental coalition launched a petition for the same measure – strict protection for 30 per cent of UK seas – which gathered 500,000 signatures.59 Yet, while some nations, including several that are much poorer than the United Kingdom, have started shutting fishing boats out of large parts of their seas, at the time of writing we have managed to protect a spectacular 0.01 per cent of our territorial waters: five of our 48,000 square kilometres. This takes the form of three pocket handkerchiefs: around Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, Lamlash Bay on the Isle of Arran and Flamborough Head in Yorkshire. There are plenty of other nominally protected areas but they are no better defended from industrial fishing than our national parks are defended from farming.

The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither the Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For Childhood is short—a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day— And Adulthood is long and Dry-Humping in Cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes. Amen

His world turned on its head for the second time at precisely ten eighteen p.m. He’d been taken into custody a little under ninety minutes earlier, but that had nothing to do with it. They did the job efficiently, boxing him in, two in front and two behind. Four men, swift and grim, clearly plainclothes law enforcement officers. One of the men in front of him stepped close, said something. He shook his head. ‘Non parlo Croato. Solo Italiano.’ The man nodded as if unsurprised, tipped his head: come with us. He followed the front pair to the unmarked saloon parked up on the kerb ahead. Before he got in the back he glimpsed the glitter of light off the restless water of the bay, the masts of the boats shifting in the embrace of the marina at the bottom of the hill. He glanced at his watch. Five past nine. Fifty-five minutes to go. * The room was a cliché: ivory linoleum curling at the edges, dusty fluorescent lighting strips with one bulb flickering like an eyelid with a tic, cheap wooden tabletop with metal legs bolted to the floor. The smell was of tobacco and sour sweat. He sat facing the door, alone. After seventeen minutes, at nine forty-four by the clock on the wall, the door opened. A woman came in, dark-haired, with glasses like an owl’s eyes. Two of the men who had picked him up followed her in. One seated himself in the chair. The other leaned against the wall, arms folded. She stood across the table from him, his passport grasped loosely between her fingertips like a soiled rag. Without introduction she said, her Italian accented but fluent, ‘Alberto Manta, of Lugano, Switzerland. Arrived in Zagreb on September second. Checked in at Hotel Neboder here in Rijeka the same day.

One day, W.E. and I parked on the side of the highway and launched our boat in a ditch. Our fishing spot of choice that day was a bubbling culvert right under a fifty-five-mile-per-hour-speed-limit sign. When we started fishing at daylight, there was normal traffic on the road. But as the day went on, water came crashing over low points of the road and traffic stopped when the road was closed. We had set a goal of catching fifty-five largemouth bass under that sign, and we were paying more attention to reaching our goal than the rising floodwaters. As you have probably already realized, determination is a Robertson trait that is an asset most of the time. But this time, not so much! By the time we caught the fifty-five fish and returned to our truck, there was no sign of the road. The current from the water was so strong that our truck was shaking. I quickly realized we had underestimated the speed of the rising water and were now in a dangerous situation. I decided to get in the back of the truck with a life jacket on, while W.E. tried to navigate the submerged road. I had a better vantage point to see the painted lines of the highway, so every time he strayed from the road I banged on the roof of the truck. We traveled about a mile to a bridge on higher ground, where hundreds of people--along with the police--had gathered to watch the spectacle of the flood. I’m positive that we must have looked like Jesus walking on water. Noah might have used a giant ark to escape danger, but we used a truck and some redneck ingenuity! The crowd’s faces were filled with shock and bewilderment as they parted to make way for us. At some point, the people started cheering, and I felt like a politician running for office as I waved to the crowd. Even though we were basking in the glory of the moment and had an ice chest full of fish, we realized we were very fortunate to have survived.

Why?” “Why? Blimey, Harry, everyone’d be wantin’ magic solutions to their problems. Nah, we’re best left alone.” At this moment the boat bumped gently into the harbor wall. Hagrid folded up his newspaper, and they clambered up the stone steps onto the street. Passersby stared a lot at Hagrid as they walked through the little town to the station. Harry couldn’t blame them. Not only was Hagrid twice as tall as anyone else, he kept pointing at perfectly ordinary things like parking meters and saying loudly, “See that, Harry? Things these Muggles dream up, eh?” “Hagrid,” said Harry, panting a bit as he ran to keep up, “did you say there are dragons at Gringotts?” “Well, so they say,” said Hagrid. “Crikey, I’d like a dragon.” “You’d like one?” “Wanted one ever since I was a kid — here we go.” They had reached the station. There was a train to London in five minutes’ time. Hagrid, who didn’t understand “Muggle money,” as he called it, gave the bills to Harry so he could buy their tickets. People stared more than ever on the train. Hagrid took up two seats and sat knitting what looked like a canary-yellow circus tent. “Still got yer letter, Harry?” he asked as he counted stitches. Harry took the parchment envelope out of his pocket. “Good,” said Hagrid. “There’s a list there of everything yeh need.” Harry unfolded a second piece of paper he hadn’t noticed the night before, and read: HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY UNIFORM First-year students will require: 1. Three sets of plain work robes (black) 2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear 3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar) 4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings) Please note that all pupils’ clothes should carry name tags COURSE BOOKS All students should have a copy of each of the following: The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling A

...and the handsome jester, Devil’s Gold, is shaking his bead-covered rattle, making medicine and calling us by name. We are so tired from our long walk that we cannot but admire his gilded face and his yellow magic blanket. And, holding each other’s hands like lovers, we stoop and admire ourselves in the golden pool that flickers in the great campfire he has impudently built at the crossing of two streets in Heaven. But we do not step into the pool as beforetime. Our boat is beside us, it has overtaken us like some faithful tame giant swan, and Avanel whispers: “Take us where The Golden Book was written.” And thus we are up and away. The boat carries us deeper, down the valley. We find the cell of Hunter Kelly,— . St. Scribe of the Shrines. Only his handiwork remains to testify of him. Upon the walls of his cell he has painted many an illumination he afterward painted on The Golden Book margins and, in a loose pile of old torn and unbound pages, the first draft of many a familiar text is to be found. His dried paint jars are there and his ink and on the wall hangs the empty leather sack of Johnny Appleseed, from which came the first sowing of all the Amaranths of our little city, and the Amaranth that led us here. And Avanel whispers:—“I ask my heart: —Where is Hunter Kelly, and my heart speaks to me as though commanded: ‘The Hunter is again pioneering for our little city in the little earth. He is reborn as the humblest acolyte of the Cathedral, a child that sings tonight with the star chimes, a red-cheeked boy, who shoes horses at the old forge of the Iron Gentleman. Let us also return’.” It is eight o’clock in the evening, at Fifth and Monroe. It is Saturday night, and the crowd is pouring toward The Majestic, and Chatterton’s, and The Vaudette, and The Princess and The Gaiety. It is a lovely, starry evening, in the spring. The newsboys are bawling away, and I buy an Illinois State Register. It is dated March 1, 1920. Avanel of Springfield is one hundred years away. The Register has much news of a passing nature. I am the most interested in the weather report, that tomorrow will be fair. THE END - Written in Washington Park Pavilion, Springfield, Illinois.

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE

favorite places to go when she had been a girl, and an opportunity had arisen, like a church youth group trip. The place had a beach where anyone could come and hang out, and the restaurant sat right on the water with a clear view of passing skiers and fishing boats. “There’s music on the iPod,” Grier said. “Pick something.” Andy scrolled through the song list and punched play. “I can’t believe you like country,” she said. Grier smiled. “Oh, yeah. From way back.” The song was just right for a sunny day cruising for the lake with the top down. It was something Grier almost never did. City life didn’t exactly allow for it often. Sebbie sat on Andy’s lap with his paws on the doorframe and his face pointed joyfully into the wind. They were silent until they reached the entrance to Arrowhead Point. Grier lowered the volume as they rolled down the short gravel drive to the back of the restaurant where a line of pickups and cars sat parked in the nearly full lot. Andy stared hard at one particular truck and then said, “Maybe we ought to go somewhere else.

city – from the beach to the Olympic hillside. For tourists who don’t want to grapple with public transport, there is the Barcelona Bus Turistic made up of three bus lines – blue, red and green routes that explore different parts of the city. You can get on and off at any point. Normally, I stay away from these double‐decker tourist explorers, but for a city as large as Barcelona, the system makes getting from beach to cathedrals to hillside parks very easy. There are also walking tours for those with very comfortable shoes. Barcelona offers so much to visitors that I couldn’t possibly tell you what to visit. But items not to miss are, in my opinion, the architecture of Antoni Gaudi which includes his unique cathedral, La Sagrada Familia which remains unfinished, his apartment building, La Pedrera which has no straight lines on its exterior, and his idealistic Parc Guell, a colourful complex on a high hillside. Within the city of Barcelona you could spend a day or more walking Los Ramblas, a wide pedestrian tree‐lined promenade that is a wonderful place to watch people, taste great food, wine and enjoy life. Nearby is the Placa de Catalunya, the main square with fountains, street artists and restaurants. The Gothic Quarter is walking distance with its network of squares that stretch back to Medieval and Roman times. This city offers so much – a medieval city, art museums, flamenco dancing, cable car to the top of Montjuïc, need I go on? Tours to local vineyards are available as are boat trips that will show you the local coastline. And let’s not forget that Barcelona is a city with beautiful beaches – all relaxed, lined with cafes and restaurants. The

At the dedication, Walt’s older brother Roy O. Disney was asked by reporters why a grandfather had felt the obligation to tackle this impossible project at this point in his life. He told them: I didn’t want to have to explain to Walt when I saw him again why the dream didn’t come true. Later, Roy spent time in a boat on the Seven Seas Lagoon in front of the Magic Kingdom and when asked why he wasn’t in the park to handle all the media attention, he said: Today is my brother’s day. I want them to remember my brother today.

I knew you forever and you were always old, soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold me for sitting up late, reading your letters, as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me. You posted them first in London, wearing furs and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety. I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day, where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones. This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I see you as a young girl in a good world still, writing three generations before mine. I try to reach into your page and breathe it back… but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. This is the sack of time your death vacates. How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past me with your Count, while a military band plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last, a pleated old lady with a crooked hand. Once you read Lohengrin and every goose hung high while you practiced castle life in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce history to a guess. The count had a wife. You were the old maid aunt who lived with us. Tonight I read how the winter howled around the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound of the music of the rats tapping on the stone floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone. This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne, Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn your first climb up Mount San Salvatore; this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes, the yankee girl, the iron interior of her sweet body. You let the Count choose your next climb. You went together, armed with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed by the thick woods of briars and bushes, nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated with his coat off as you waded through top snow. He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled down on the train to catch a steam boat for home; or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome. This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue. I read how you walked on the Palatine among the ruins of the palace of the Caesars; alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July. When you were mine they wrapped you out of here with your best hat over your face. I cried because I was seventeen. I am older now. I read how your student ticket admitted you into the private chapel of the Vatican and how you cheered with the others, as we used to do on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll, float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors, to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional breeze. You worked your New England conscience out beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout. Tonight I will learn to love you twice; learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face. Tonight I will speak up and interrupt your letters, warning you that wars are coming, that the Count will die, that you will accept your America back to live like a prim thing on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose world go drunk each night, to see the handsome children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you, you will tip your boot feet out of that hall, rocking from its sour sound, out onto the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.

Idling the dinghy, bringing it quietly in closer and closer to the croc, Steve would finally make his move. He’d creep to the front of the boat and hold the spotlight until the last moment. Then he would leap into the water. Grabbing the crocodile around the scruff of the neck, he would secure its tail between his legs and wrap his body around the thrashing creature. Crocodiles are amazingly strong in the water. Even a six-foot-long subadult would easily take Steve to the bottom of the river, rolling and fighting, trying to dislodge him by scraping against the rocks and snags at the bottom of the river. But Steve would hang on. He knew he could push off the bottom, reach the surface for air, flip the crocodile into his dinghy, and pin the snapping animal down. “Piece of cake,” he said. That was the most incredible story I had ever heard. And Steve was the most incredible man I had ever seen--catching crocodiles by hand to save their lives? This was just unreal. I had an overwhelming sensation. I wanted to build a big campfire, sit down with Steve next to it, and hear his stories all night long. I didn’t want them to ever end. But eventually the tour was over, and I felt I just had to talk to this man. Steve had a broad, easy smile and the biggest hands I had ever seen. I could tell by his stature and stride that he was accustomed to hard work. I saw a series of small scars on the sides of his face and down his arms. He came up and, with a broad Australian accent, said, “G’day, mate.” Uh-oh, I thought. I’m in trouble. I’d never, ever believed in love at first sight. But I had the strangest, most overwhelming feeling that it was destiny that took me into that little wildlife park that day. Steve started talking to me as if we’d known each other all our lives. I interrupted only to have my friend Lori take a picture of us, and the moment I first met Steve was forever captured. I told him about my wildlife rescue work with cougars in Oregon. He told me about his work with crocodiles. The tour was long over, and the zoo was about to close, but we kept talking. Finally I could hear Lori honking her horn in the car park. “I have to go,” I said to Steve, managing a grim smile. I felt a connection as I never had before, and I was about to leave, never to see him again. “Why do you love cougars so much?” he asked, walking me toward the park’s front gate. I had to think for a beat. There were many reasons. “I think it’s how they can actually kill with their mouths,” I finally said. “They can conquer an animal several times their size, grab it in their jaws, and kill it instantly by snapping its neck.” Steve grinned. I hadn’t realized how similar we really were. “That’s what I love about crocodiles,” he said. “They are the most powerful apex predators.” Apex predators. Meaning both cougars and crocs were at the top of the food chain. On opposite sides of the world, this man and I had somehow formed the same interest, the same passion. At the zoo entrance I could see Lori and her friends in the car, anxious to get going back to Brisbane. “Call the zoo if you’re ever here again,” Steve said. “I’d really like to see you again.” Could it be that he felt the same way I did? As we drove back to Brisbane, I was quiet, contemplative. I had no idea how I would accomplish it, but I was determined to figure out a way to see him. The next weekend, Lori was going diving with a friend, and I took a chance and called Steve. “What do you reckon, could I come back for the weekend?” I asked. “Absolutely. I’ll take care of everything,” came Steve’s reply.

Filming wildlife documentaries couldn’t have happened without John Stainton, our producer. Steve always referred to John as the genius behind the camera, and that was true. The music orchestration, the editing, the knowledge of what would make good television and what wouldn’t--these were all areas of John’s clear expertise. But on the ground, under the water, or in the bush, while we were actually filming, it was 100 percent Steve. He took care of the crew and eventually his family as well, while filming in some of the most remote, inaccessible, and dangerous areas on earth. Steve kept the cameraman alive by telling him exactly when to shoot and when to run. He orchestrated what to film and where to film, and then located the wildlife. Steve’s first rule, which he repeated to the crew over and over, was a simple one: Film everything, no matter what happens. “If something goes wrong,” he told the crew, “you are not going to be of any use to me lugging a camera and waving your other arm around trying to help. Just keep rolling. Whatever the sticky situation is, I will get out of it.” Just keep rolling. Steve’s mantra. On all of our documentary trips, Steve packed the food, set up camp, fed the crew. He knew to take the extra tires, the extra fuel, the water, the gear. He anticipated the needs of six adults and two kids on every film shoot we ever went on. As I watched him at Lakefield, the situation was no different. Our croc crew came and went, and the park rangers came and went, and Steve wound up organizing anywhere from twenty to thirty people. Everyone did their part to help. But the first night, I watched while one of the crew put up tarps to cover the kitchen area. After a day or two, the tarps slipped, the ropes came undone, and water poured off into our camp kitchen. After a full day of croc capture, Steve came back into camp that evening. He made no big deal about it. He saw what was going on. I watched him wordlessly shimmy up a tree, retie the knots, and resecure the tarps. What was once a collection of saggy, baggy tarps had been transformed into a well-secured roof. Steve had the smooth and steady movements of someone who was self-assured after years of practice. He’d get into the boat, fire up the engine, and start immediately. There was never any hesitation. His physical strength was unsurpassed. He could chop wood, gather water, and build many things with an ease that was awkwardly obvious when anybody else (myself, for example) tried to struggle with the same task. But when I think of all his bush skills, I treasured most his way of delivering up the natural world. On that croc research trip in the winter of 2006, Steve presented me with a series of memories more valuable than any piece of jewelry.

The next morning, Steve took his boat out and saw what had happened. The big male had triggered the trap and was snared in the mesh--sort of. Even though the rectangular-shaped net was the biggest he had, the croc’s tail and back leg stuck out. But the black ghost had finally been caught. At Steve’s approach, the animal thrashed wildly, smashing apart mangrove trees on either side of the trap. Steve tried to top-jaw-rope the croc, but it was fighting too violently. Normally Chilli acted as a distraction, giving Steve the chance to secure the croc. But the dog wanted no part of this. She cowered on the floor of the dinghy, unwilling to face this monstrously large croc. Steve was truly on his own. He finally secured a top-jaw rope and tied the other end to a tree. With a massive “death roll”--a defensive maneuver in which the reptile spins its enormous body--the big croc smashed the tree flat and snapped it off. Steve tried again; the croc thrashed, growling and roaring in protest at the trapper in khaki, lunging again and again to tear Steve apart. Finally, the giant croc death-rolled so violently that he came off the bank and landed in the boat, which immediately sank. Chilli had jumped out and was swimming for shore as Steve worked against time. With the croc underwater, Steve lashed the croc, trap and all, in the dinghy. But moving the waterlogged boat and a ton of crocodile was simply too much. Steve sprinted several miles in the tropical heat to reach a cane farm, where he hoped to get help. The cane farmers were a bit hesitant to lend a hand, so Steve promised them a case of beer, and a deal was made. With a sturdy fishing boat secured to each side of Steve’s dinghy, they managed to tow it downriver where they could winch croc and boat onto dry land to get him into a crate. By this time, a crowd of spectators had gathered. When Steve told me the story of the capture, I got the sense that he felt sorry he had to catch the crocodile at all. “It seemed wrong to remove the king of the river,” Steve said. “That croc had lasted in his territory for decades. Here I was taking him out of it. The local people just seemed relieved, and a couple even joked about how many boots he’d make.” Steve was very clever to include the local people and soon won them over to see just how special this crocodile really was. Just as he was dragged into his crate, the old croc attempted a final act of defiance, a death roll that forced Steve to pin him again. “I whispered to him to calm him down,” Steve said. “What did you say to him?” I asked. “Please don’t die.” The black crocodile didn’t die. Steve brought him back to Beerwah, named him Acco, and gave him a beautiful big pond that Bob had prepared, with plenty of places to hide. We were in the Crocodile Environmental Park at the zoo when Steve first told me the story of Acco’s capture. I just had to revisit him after hearing his story. There he was, the black ghost himself, magnificently sunning on the bank of his billabong.

near-deserted parking lot, both buildings looking freshly painted and hopeful for a marina in which there were no yachts. The biggest boat moored at the dock looked to be a forty-footer. Most of the others looked to be lobster boats, aged and constructed of wood. A few of the newer ones were fiberglass. The nicest of those was about thirty-five feet long, the hull painted blue, the wheelhouse painted white, the deck a honey teak. She paid attention to it because her husband stood on it, bathed in their headlights. Caleb exited the car fast. He pointed back at her, told Brian his wife was not taking things well. Rachel was happy to note Caleb limped even as he speed-walked to the boat. She, on the other hand, moved slowly, her eyes on Brian. His gaze barely left hers except for the occasional flicks in the direction of Caleb. If she’d known she’d end up killing him, would she have boarded the boat? She could turn around and go to the police. My husband is an impostor, she’d say. She imagined some smarmy desk sergeant replying, “Aren’t we all, ma’am?” Yes, she was certain, it was a crime to impersonate someone and a crime to keep two wives, but were those serious crimes? In the end, wouldn’t Brian just take a plea and it would all go away? She’d be left the laughingstock never-was, the failed print reporter who’d become a pill-addicted broadcast reporter who’d become a punch line and then a shut-in and who would keep the local comics stocked with weeks of fresh material once it was discovered that Meltdown Media Chick had married a con man with another wife and another life. She followed Caleb up the ramp to the boat. He stepped aboard. When she went to do the same, Brian offered his hand. She stared at it until he dropped it. He noticed the gun she carried. “Should I show you mine? So I feel safer?” “Be my guest.” She stepped aboard. As she did, Brian caught her by the wrist and stripped the gun from her hand in the same motion. He pulled his own gun, a .38 snub-nosed revolver, from under the flaps of his shirt and then laid them both on a table by the

But the heat and the drought were in some ways the least of it. On May 9 a colossal dust storm had swung out of eastern Montana, rolled across the Dakotas and Minnesota, dumped 12 million tons of dirt on Chicago, and then moved on to tower over Boston and New York. As they had in November 1933, people stood in Central Park and looked skyward, aghast at the blackened sky. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 million tons of American topsoil had become airborne in that single storm.

Minding less can also serve the greater good. Some people have changed the course of history by stepping up to say the unsayable or do the undoable in later life. Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to give up her seat on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Today we need that willingness to rock the boat and speak truth to power more than ever. Why? Because we live in a world ruled by bullshit and branding, where spin trumps sincerity, where the pressure to perform is relentless, where online echo chambers insulate us from views that contradict our own, where Twitter mobs police opinions, jokes and language, where the keys to the kingdom are handed to those who find the most marketable way of saying what everyone else wants to hear. One remedy for this culture of conformity is to have more people around who are prepared to speak their mind because they mind less what others think of them – and that is exactly what the longevity revolution can deliver. As Oliver James, a prominent British psychologist and psychotherapist, puts it: ‘That bluntness, that refreshing authenticity you find in older people, is hugely to be valued.

When you have a boat or RV, you need to find a storage unit that can accommodate it. But with all of the options out there, how do you decide which one is right for you? You should consider the size of the storage unit and make sure the storage unit is big enough to fit your boat or RV. Also, pay attention to the location to find a storage unit such as boat storage Mobile AL that is close to you, so it is easy to get to. When you are not using your boat or RV, it is best to store it in an indoor storage unit. There are so many reasons to store your vehicle in an indoor storage unit and some of them are as follow: Protection From Extreme Weather This will protect it from the weather and keep it in good condition. It means that you do not need to worry about damage to your expensive vehicle due to bad weather conditions. You will also have peace of mind knowing that your boat or RV is not exposed to the elements. Ensure Safety Most indoor storage units such as RV storage Mobile have security features, such as surveillance cameras and gated access, to keep your boat or RV safe. Thus, it's a great way to protect your investment from thieves and criminals. Peace Of Mind You do not need to frequently keep checking your RV. When you have parked your expensive vehicle at a secure place, then you do not need to worry about anything. Thus, you should start looking for the best trailer storage near me. After shortlisting a few, you should pick the right one for your boat or RV.

Are you looking for a large storage space for your 45-foot motorhome or 28-foot boat? The best place to store your expensive large-size vehicles is indoor storage facilities such as RV storage Mobile. At the indoor storage unit, you will get the top level of professional’s service and they will ensure that your asset is safe. Storing your valuable asset in the indoor storage unit is beneficial and there are so many benefits of it: Large Space Professionally designed indoor storage units provide plenty of space where you can easily store your large RV and boat. Your large vehicle can stay safe inside the storage units. Keeping Watch On Your Property The indoor storage units such as boat storage daphne AL not just offer storage solutions, but they will also keep eye on your asset. They ensure 24/7 surveillance to keep your vehicle safe. All indoor storage units are installed with surveillance cameras, gated fencing, bay-door locks, etc. All these security systems make sure that your RV or boat is completely safe inside the storage unit. Protection From Outdoor Ravages Even the best cover for the RVs and boats cannot ensure high efficiency and they cannot protect your vehicle from icy cold weather. By storing your vehicles inside the climate-controlled ambiance, you can keep your vehicle safe and slow down the wear and tear. No More Street Parking Problems If you are worried about parking on the streets, then indoor storage units are the best solution for you. You can save your vehicle from various parking problems. Search the best “boat storage near me” and book the indoor storage units for your vehicles. Minimize Spring Cleaning When you will store your boat or RV inside the closed space, then you do not need to handle too much mess. It is so because your vehicle will be protected from dust, dirt, and debris. You will get a clean vehicle when you will take it back.

[...] the sightseers prefer concrete. Think of their passion for marinas, not for boats, but for the car parks, the amusement parks, the proliferation of restaurants and blocks of high-tower apartments. They like to see the sea pulverized out of its natural area by concrete. They dislike the beaches for the same reasons; bathing in the sea is too uneasy a freedom, they prefer swimming pools. They like nothing better than to sit in their cars and look at the sea from the safe harbour of a monstrous marina complex

Dogs flopped down in the middle of the street to take naps. Occasionally a car sputtered up the hill from downtown and detoured around the sleeping dogs before parking in front of Peerless Painless Dentist, its driver getting out and walking nervously into the office.

The boat slid off the trailer into the water. Once the boat was in the water, Aunt Claire and Victor began to unload everything from the van. “Cheri,” Aunt Claire called. “We could use your help.” Cheri frowned. She stepped out of the van and traded her sneakers for an old pair of hip boots as her aunt pulled the van away from the boat launch ramp and parked it up on high ground. Cheri helped her cousin load the boat. When Aunt Claire returned five minutes later she was pleased to see that everything had been loaded into the boat. She handed out life jackets. Once everyone had a life jacket on she said, “All aboard, the water taxi is departing.” Victor eagerly hopped into the boat and claimed the

CHRISTOPHER CALLAN, Number Twelve, drove across town to Hackney, following his satnav to Victoria Park. It was a hot, sticky night, and he drove with the windows open, the warm breeze blowing onto his face. He looked around distastefully. It was a mongrel area: million-pound houses cheek by jowl with slumlike high-rises. He reversed into a parking space in one of the better streets, locked the car, and set off the rest of the way on foot. His destination was marked on his phone’s map, and he followed it across the southern end of the park, alongside a wide boating lake with a fountain throwing water into the air and Polish immigrants fishing for their dinners from the banks. Finally, he turned onto Grove Road.

We can be intentional in our decisions about vacations and leisure time. Before we make our decisions, we can explore questions like, How far from home will we travel? Shall we go by bike, car, train, or airplane? Do we have closer alternatives nearby? What kind of tourism and recreation do we want to support with our choices? Travel has always been a big source of pleasure for Jim and me and we have struggled to find the right balance between saving and savoring. Some of our happiest times have been traveling to festivals and parks. We still travel but we are experimenting with the staycation. One day a month, we go off the grid. We wake up and make one decision at a time about what we feel like doing. We don’t take phone calls or look at our computers. We don’t pay bills or do housework. We just enjoy whatever we feel like doing in our area.

Dear friends and enemies, Season’s greetings! It’s me, Serge! Don’t you just hate these form letters people stuff in Christmas cards? Nothing screams “you’re close to my heart” like a once-a-year Xerox. Plus, all the lame jazz that’s going on in their lives. “Had a great time in Memphis.” “Bobby lost his retainer down a storm drain.” “I think the neighbors are dealing drugs.” But this letter is different. You are special to me. I’m just forced to use a copy machine and gloves because of advancements in forensics. I love those TV shows! Has a whole year already flown by? Much to report! Let’s get to it! Number one: I ended a war. You guessed correct, the War on Christmas! When I first heard about it, I said to Coleman, “That’s just not right! We must enlist!” I rushed to the front lines, running downtown yelling “Merry Christmas” at everyone I saw. And they’re all saying “Merry Christmas” back. Hmmm. That’s odd: Nobody’s stopping us from saying “Merry Christmas.” Then I did some research, and it turns out the real war is against people saying “Happy holidays.” The nerve: trying to be inclusive. So, everyone … Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Good times! Soul Train! Purple mountain majesties! The Pompatus of Love! There. War over. And just before it became a quagmire. Next: Decline of Florida Roundup. —They tore down the Big Bamboo Lounge near Orlando. Where was everybody on that one? —Remember the old “Big Daddy’s” lounges around Florida with the logo of that bearded guy? They’re now Flannery’s or something. —They closed 20,000 Leagues. And opened Buzz Lightyear. I offered to bring my own submarine. Okay, actually threatened, but they only wanted to discuss it in the security office. I’ve been doing a lot of running lately at theme parks. —Here’s a warm-and-fuzzy. Anyone who grew up down here knows this one, and everyone else won’t have any idea what I’m talking about: that schoolyard rumor of the girl bitten by a rattlesnake on the Steeplechase at Pirate’s World (now condos). I’ve started dropping it into all conversations with mixed results. —In John Mellencamp’s megahit “Pink Houses,” the guy compliments his wife’s beauty by saying her face could “stop a clock.” Doesn’t that mean she was butt ugly? Nothing to do with Florida. Just been bugging me. Good news alert! I’ve decided to become a children’s author! Instilling state pride in the youngest residents may be the only way to save the future. The book’s almost finished. I’ve only completed the first page, but the rest just flows after that. It’s called Shrimp Boat Surprise. Coleman asked what the title meant, and I said life is like sailing on one big, happy shrimp boat. He asked what the surprise was, and I said you grow up and learn that life bones you up the ass ten ways to Tuesday. He started reading and asked if a children’s book should have the word “motherfucker” eight times on the first page. I say, absolutely. They’re little kids, after all. If you want a lesson to stick, you have to hammer it home through repetition…In advance: Happy New Year! (Unlike 2008—ouch!)

Ray snorted. "Yeah, the air right around where the boat was parked is absolutely full of shit. Like the devil blew his nose all over it." "That's a pretty picture, Ray.

In a remote area on the western side of the island, near the town of Marrawah, a pod of sperm whales was stranded on the beach. One big male came to shore first. Over the next twenty-four hours, another thirty-four whales stranded themselves, including calves and pregnant mothers. Whale stranding is one of the heartbreaking mysteries of the animal world. It is little understood. At this moment no scientific reasoning mattered as we encountered the tragedy unfolding on that Tasmanian beach. I felt so helpless. All I could do was be there as the huge, gorgeous sea mammals fought pitifully to stay alive. The weather was cold, even though it was officially the Tasmanian summer, and the seas were too rough to get a boat out to help the whales. We put our arms around the dying animals, spoke to them, and looked into their eyes to share in their pain and grief. By the end of the day I was so cold that I had trouble getting my pants off over my pregnant belly. It took me half an hour of struggling in the car park to strip off my soaking-wet clothes and get into some warm, dry gear. Physically, emotionally, and even spiritually, it had been an exhausting day. I pondered what communication the baby inside me would have gotten from the event. The dying whales had sung among themselves. Steve and I spoke back and forth over their stranded bodies. What did baby Igor pick up on? Through our experiences, we were beginning to form our very own tiny wildlife warrior, even before the baby was born. Igor had only just begun his education.

As they had in November 1933, people stood in Central Park and looked skyward, aghast at the blackened sky. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 million tons of American topsoil had become airborne in that single storm. The New York Times proclaimed it “the greatest dust storm in United States history.

As his mind continues to drift away from his body, he had one final realization. The world itself was alive, too. It swirled around you and sped past your eyes and ears, so fast you could never see it, but slow at the same time, like a tree growing taller in a park. And all the sounds you hears-the wind whipping past your ears and the ocean's whispering and the tickle of the whitecaps against your boat-that was earth's blood pumping through imperceptible veins, and some of those veins were nothing more than people like Shy or Carmen, or Addie.

Happy New Year, Cuban Style In Havana, Christmas of 1958 had not been celebrated with the usual festivity. The week between Christmas and New Year’s was filled with uncertainty and the usual joyous season was suspended by many. Visitations among family and friends were few; as people held their breath waiting to see what would happen. It was obvious that the rebel forces were moving ever closer to Havana and on December 31, 1958, when Santa Clara came under the control of “Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, the people knew that Havana would be next. What they didn’t know was that their President was preparing to leave, taking with him a large part of the national treasury. Aside from the tourists celebrating at the casinos and some private parties held by the naïve elite, very few celebrated New Year’s Eve. A select few left Cuba with Batista, but the majority didn’t find out that they were without a President until the morning of the following day…. January 1, 1959, became a day of hasty departure for many of Batista’s supporters that had been left behind. Those with boats or airplanes left the island nation for Florida or the Dominican Republic, and the rest sought refuge in foreign embassies. The high=flying era of Batista and his chosen few came to a sudden end. Gone were the police that had made such an overwhelming presence while Batista was in power, and in their place were young people wearing black and red “26th of July” armbands. Not wanting a repeat of when Machado fled Cuba, they went around securing government buildings and the homes of the wealthy. Many of these same buildings had been looted and burned after the revolt of 1933. It was expected that Fidel Castro’s rise to power would be organized and orderly. Although the casinos were raided and gambling tables overturned and sometimes burned in the streets, there was no widespread looting with the exception of the hated parking meters that became symbolic of the corruption in Batista’s government. Castro called for a general “walk-out” and when the country ground to a halt, it gave them a movement time to establish a new government. The entire transition took about a week, while his tanks and army trucks rolled into Havana. The revolutionaries sought out Batista’s henchmen and government ministers and arrested them until their status could be established. A few of Batista’s loyalists attempted to shoot it out and were killed for their efforts. Others were tried and executed, but many were simply jailed, awaiting trial at a later time.

Captain Joseph Frye One of the nicest parks in present day downtown Tampa, Florida, is the Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park. The 5-acre park, which lies between the Tampa Bay Times Forum (Amalie Arena) and the mouth of the Hillsborough River at the Garrison Channel, is used for many weddings and special events such as the dragon boat races and the duck race. Few people give thought to the historic significance of the location, or to Captain Joseph Frye, considered Tampa’s first native son, who was born there on June 14, 1826. Going to sea was a tradition in the Frye family, starting with his paternal great-grandfather Samuel Frye from East Greenwich, Rhode Island, who was the master of the sloop Humbird. As a young man, Joseph attended the United States Naval Academy and graduated with the second class in 1847. Starting as an Ensign, he served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy until the Civil War, at which time he resigned and took a commission as a Lieutenant in the Confederate Navy. The Ten Years’ War, also known as “the Great War,” which started in 1868 became the first of three wars of Cuban Independence. In October 1873, following the defeat of the Confederacy and five years into the Cuban revolution, Frye became Captain of a side-wheeler, the S/S Virginius. His mission was to take guns and ammunition, as well as approximately 300 Cuban rebels to Cuba, with the intent of fighting the Spanish army for Cuban Independence. Unfortunately, the mission failed when the ship was intercepted by the Spanish warship Tornado. Captain Frye and his crew were taken to Santiago de Cuba and given a hasty trial and before a British warship Commander, hearing of the incident, could intervene, they were sentenced to death. After thanking the members of his crew for their service, Captain Frye and fifty-three members of his crew were put to death by firing squad, and were then decapitated and trampled upon by the Spanish soldiers. However, the British Commander Sir Lambton Lorraine of HMS Niobe did manage to save the lives of a few of the remaining crewmembers and rebels.

Daniel was a little slow getting out of the locker room afterward and was one of the last guys to head to the parking lot. He was nearly to his car when he saw Stacy emerge from the edge of the woods. “Hey,” she said. “Hey.” She hugged her books to her chest. “I don’t know if we ever officially met. I’m Stacy.” She was waiting for you. She wanted to talk to you! “I’m Baniel Dyers—Daniel. I’m Daniel Byers.” Oh, you are such an idiot! A glimmer of a smile. “I know who you are.” “I know you too.” “Really?” “Uh-huh.” “How?” “I’ve seen you around.” “Oh.” A long pause. “So.” “So,” he replied lamely. “Well, it’s good to meet you. Officially.” “Good to meet you too.” He had the sense that she would reach out to shake his hand, but instead she stared down at the ground between them for a moment, then back at him. “You played good against Spring Hill.” “You were there?” A slight eye roll. “Of course I was there.” “Not everyone comes to the games.” “I do.” “Me too.” Dude, that was the stupidest thing ever to say! “Of course you do,” she said lightly. He felt like he wanted to hide somewhere—anywhere—but when she spoke again she just did so matter-of-factly and not the least bit in a way to make him feel more put on the spot. “Um, I just wanted to wish you luck on the game. I mean, the one tomorrow night.” “Thanks.” She waited. Ask her to the dance on Saturday—at least get her number. “Um . . .” He repositioned his feet. “Say, I was wondering . . .” “Yes?” “About the game.” No, not the game, the dance— “Yes?” He took a deep breath. “So, I was . . .” Go on! “Um . . . So maybe I’ll see you there. At the game.” “Oh. Sure. So, good luck,” she repeated. “Right.” Ask her for her number. But he didn’t. And then she was saying good-bye and he was fumbling out a reply. “See you around, Stacy.” “See you around, Baniel,” she replied good-naturedly. As she stepped away he opened his mouth to call her back, but nothing came out. And then she was gone. But at least he’d talked to her. You can’t be expected to ask a girl out or get her number the first time you officially meet her, can you? Um, yeah. He climbed into his car and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. Man, you sounded like a moron! Well, talk to her tomorrow. You can still ask her. The dance was Saturday night, but at least that gave him one more day. Before starting the car, he saw a text from Kyle asking what he was up to tonight, and he texted back that he was going to be at home finishing up his homework and then head to bed early to get a good night’s sleep before game day. He didn’t bring up anything about the conversation with Stacy. It would have only made him more embarrassed if Kyle knew how he’d failed to sound like even a halfway intelligent human being talking with her. Imagine that. Daniel Byers not knowing how to talk to a girl. What else is new? That night back in his bedroom, it took him a while to write his second blog entry, the one he was going to have to read in front of Teach’s class tomorrow. Without Kyle there to help him, he felt like a guy stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean with no idea which direction to row toward land. Eventually he got something out, this time about hoping to send the vultures away, but it wasn’t nearly as good as if he’d had Kyle brainstorming with him. Then he went to bed, but his thoughts of Stacy kept him awake. Talk to her tomorrow at school, or at least before the game. But he also found that, just before falling asleep, his thoughts were drifting toward Nicole as well.

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. If you stop to think about it for a few minutes, you can’t help but conclude that the modern world has gone completely insane. Face it. Global conditions are one big chaotic swirling minefield threatening to tear through our trailer park. Meanwhile we consider which new golden gadget to buy while our government prints more money

A cluster of yachts was anchored at the far side, and a smaller boat with a National Park Service logo on the side was tied at the dock. We slowed, turned, and slid in next to it. I

There is a boat ride at Epcot across the World Showcase Lagoon and some could argue this is an attraction. However, there is a boat ride from the International Gateway at Epcot that goes all the way to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The ride consists of stops at Epcot, Disney’s Boardwalk, Yacht and Beach Club, Swan and Dolphin Hotel, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s a lovely cruise that connects the two theme parks. Most folks who are not staying in the resorts have no idea this 30-minute ride even exists. It is a fun way to see the different parts of the resort and it gives everyone an idea of how close Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios really is (if you don’t have to drive.) For those adventurous types, there is a walkway too and along the way you could check out the interesting architecture of the buildings.

To maximize the neurological benefits of nature, humans must spend • twenty minutes, three times a week outside doing something like a light stroll in a neighborhood park; • five hours per month in semiwild nature like a forested state park; and • three days once a year off the grid (the top of the pyramid!)—camping, renting a cabin, being on a boat in the ocean—surrounded only by wild animals and zero cell reception.

In Boat 6, Margaret Brown had doffed her sables to free her up for rowing. She had encouraged the other women to row as well, defying the quartermaster who railed at her from the stern. But Robert Hichens had chosen the wrong group of women to bully. In addition to the forceful Mrs. Brown, the plucky Mrs. Candee, and the voluble Berthe Mayné, there were two English suffragettes on board, Elsie Bowerman and her mother, Edith Chibnall. Both were active members of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, the most militant of Britain’s votes-for-women organizations. Edith was one of ten women who had accompanied Mrs. Pankhurst on a 1910 deputation to Parliament that had resulted in arrests after a scuffle with police. She had also donated a banner for a Hyde Park demonstration that read “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” A full-scale rebellion against one male tyrant was soon under way in Boat 6. The women tried to taunt the quartermaster into joining them at the oars, but Hichens refused, preferring to stand at the tiller shouting out rowing instructions and doom-filled warnings that they could be lost for days with no food or water. Eventually Boat 16 came near and the two lifeboats tied up together. Margaret Brown spotted a chilled, thinly clad stoker in the adjoining boat and after he jumped over into Boat 6 to help with the rowing, she wrapped him in her sables, tying the tails around his ankles. She then handed him an oar and instructed Boat 16 to cut them loose so they could row to keep warm. Howling curses in protest, Hichens moved to block this but an enraged Mrs. Brown rose up and threatened to throw him overboard. The fur-enveloped stoker reproached Hichens for his foul language in the broadest of Cockney accents: “Soy, don’t you know you are talking to a loidy!

Bridgetown lets me park the boat at the front door and then walk home.

Washington Boulevard until he reached another small park that had a view over the lake. He stopped and looked out at the churning grey water. One of the first things the police had done was attempt to trace Scarlett through her phone. Using GPS, they had been able to tell that Scarlett had been at Aidan’s apartment at eleven fifty, but then the signal had gone dead. Either her phone had died at that point or she had turned it off. Aidan wondered briefly if someone had broken into the apartment while he lay listening to his sleep story, but there was no evidence of it. The police believed Scarlett had done it herself. They had asked the phone company to retrieve her messages and call records from the couple of days before she disappeared, but there was nothing that shed any light on where she’d gone. ‘If she was using WhatsApp, it’s all secure and impossible to access or recover,’ the police reminded Aidan, who already knew that fact – and that Scarlett frequently used the app to message her friends. They had searched her laptop too and discovered that she had wiped her search history. Using special data tools they had been able to recover it, but hadn’t found anything interesting. She had mostly been on social media and YouTube, where she had watched a couple of make-up tutorials, various clips by her favourite content creators, and a video about the climate protest she and Aidan had got mixed up in. Aidan speculated that she had been looking to see if she could spot herself. There was nothing to indicate why she had felt the need to delete her history. Maybe it was something she did regularly, out of habit. On day three, someone had come forward to say he had seen a red-headed woman or girl on Lake Washington Boulevard in the early hours after Scarlett disappeared. Apparently, she had been walking down the hill, which made the police wonder if she’d gone back to Viretta Park. Over the next couple of days there had been a lot of activity on the lake. The police had gone out with boats. Divers had plunged beneath the surface and scoured the area close

As soon as the park opens, ride Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in Fantasyland. 3. Take Peter Pan’s Flight in Fantasyland. 4. In Adventureland, take the Jungle Cruise. 5. Experience Pirates of the Caribbean. 6. Ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Frontierland. 7. Ride Splash Mountain. While you’re in line for Splash Mountain, use mobile ordering to order lunch. The best spot nearby is Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn & Cafe, also in Frontierland. 8. Eat lunch. 9. Ride The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. 10. Take the It’s a Small World boat ride. 11. Tour The Haunted Mansion around the corner in Liberty Square. 12. See the Country Bear Jamboree in Frontierland. 13. Experience Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room around the corner in Adventureland. 14. Tour the Swiss Family Treehouse. 15. See Mickey’s PhilharMagic in Fantasyland. 16. Ride Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid. If you’re staying in the park for dinner, order dinner using mobile ordering. 17. Eat dinner.

Last night was moonless, and we took a boat out onto Scapa Flow. There was broken light all across the sky, and columns of cloud twisting and turning through the pieces. Dust and dragon fire. Professor Semyonov said: 'That's the Milky Way. As much of it as we can see, anyway.' It was so beautiful I kept my eyes on it in case it suddenly disappeared, or turned out to be some gigantic illusion. Maybe it was the rocking of the deck, or maybe I stared for too long, but after a while I felt it all moving against me, the light and the clouds and the darkness, countless stars and planets flying like arrows from a bow hidden further back. Not that we three on the boat were the target; that was just an accident of scale. We crush ants all the time just walking through the park. I thought the best plan was to leave before the sky arrived, just jump into the sea and drown directly. The second-best plan was to close my eyes, but Myrna made me keep looking up. She said her own fear had been that those pinpricks of light were growing and that as they did, she shrank. She made me keep looking up until the panic was singed away. All I knew how to do with puppets, all I used to want to do, was play unsettling tricks. That's not enough any more. I want to put on stubborn little shows, find places here and there where we get to see what we'd be like if we were actually in control of anything. Cruel fantasies, maybe, but they can't hurt any more than glimpsing a galaxy does.

Ignoring everything, he remained where he was, watching as the last few stragglers from the parking lot made their way to the door. As they passed inside the guard stood and waited, seeming to look directly at him in the third row, imploring him to come forward. When no movement came a bow of concession was offered before disappearing, the door closing without a sound.

He’d decided to Hel with it all when Bryce stiffened, her attention fixed on something beyond his wings. Hunt whirled, hand going to the knife at his thigh. He swore. This was not an opponent he could fight against. No one could. “Let’s go,” Hunt murmured, folding a wing around her as the black boat neared the quay. A Reaper stood atop it. Clothed and veiled in billowing black that hid all indication of whether the Reaper was male or female, old or young. Such things did not matter to Reapers. Hunt’s blood chilled to ice as the oarless, rudderless boat drifted right to the quay, utterly at odds with the elegant banners and flowers adorning every part of this city. The boat halted as if invisible hands tied it to the concrete walkway. The Reaper stepped out, moving so fluidly it was as if it walked on air. Bryce trembled beside him. The city around them had gone quiet. Even the insects had ceased their humming. No wind stirred the palms lining the quay. The banners hanging from the lampposts had ceased their flapping. The ornate flower wreaths seemed to wither and brown. But a phantom breeze fluttered the Reaper’s robes and trailing veil as it aimed for the small park beyond the quay and the streets past that. It did not look their way, did not halt. Reapers did not need to halt for anything, not even death. The Vanir might call themselves immortal, but they could die from trauma or sickness. Even the Asteri were killable. The Reapers, however … You could not kill what was already dead. The Reaper drifted by, silence rippling in its wake, and vanished into the city.

US merchant ships had already been told a month ago not to operate with their lights on at night, but back in New York City lights still made them perfect, dark silhouettes for U-boat captains who observed them through their periscopes. In April 1942, New York City finally decided to turn out the lights. However, the “blackout” that was desired by Admiral Andrews never materialized, as Mayor La Guardia argued for a compromise—New York City would institute a “dimout.” The Statue of Liberty’s torch was extinguished. The Wrigley’s fish and neon bubbles in Times Square were taken down. However, at night, the Camel man kept smoking, and blowing smoke rings over a dark street. Street lamps and traffic lights were dimmed, and cars either ran with just their parking lights on or had their lights painted over so light could only escape through a slit. Gasoline and rubber shortages saw fewer and fewer cars were on the road, and most cars running were yellow taxicabs that were exempt from rationing. Floodlights that illuminated the facades of New York City’s most recognizable structures—the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center—were turned off, making them look like “giant mausoleums.” In late April, sporadic blackout drills made the city even darker.

overloaded horses bent backwards by the chisel of the mason who once sculpted an eternal now on the brow of the wingless archangel, time-deformed cherubim and the false protests, overweight bowels fallen from the barracks of the pink house carved with grey rain unfallen, never creaking, never opening door, with the mouth wide, darkened and extinguished like a burning boat floating in a voiceless sea, bottle of rum down threadbare socks, singing from pavement to pavement, bright iridescent flame, "Oh, my Annie, my heart is sore!", slept chin on the curb of the last star, the lintel illuminated the forgotten light cast to a different plane, ah the wick of a celestial candle. The piling up of pigeons, tram lines, the pickpocket boys, the melancholy silver, an ode to Plotinus, the rattle of cattle, the goat in the woods, and the retreat night in the railroad houses, the ghosts of terraces, the wine shakes, the broken pencils, the drunk and wet rags, the eucalyptus and the sky. Impossible eyes, wide avenues, shirt sleeves, time receded, 'now close your eyes, this will not hurt a bit', the rose within the rose, dreaming pale under sheets such brilliance, highlighting unreality of a night that never comes. Toothless Cantineros stomp sad lullabies with sad old boots, turning from star to star, following the trail of the line, from dust, to dust, back to dust, out late, wrapped in a white blanket, top of the world, laughs upturned, belly rumbling by the butchers door, kissing the idol, tracing the balconies, long strings of flowers in the shape of a heart, love rolls and folds, from the Window to Window, afflicting seriousness from one too big and ever-charged soul, consolidating everything to nothing, of a song unsung, the sun soundlessly rising, reducing the majesty of heroic hearts and observing the sad night with watery eyes, everything present, abounding, horses frolic on the high hazy hills, a ships sails into the mist, a baby weeps for mother, windows open, lights behind curtains, the supple avenue swoons in the blissful banality, bells ringing for all yet to come forgotten, of bursting beauty bathing in every bright eternal now, counteract the charge, a last turn, what will it be, flowers by the gate, shoe less in the park, burn a hole in the missionary door, by the moonlit table, reading the decree of the Rose to the Resistance, holding the parchment, once a green tree, sticking out of the recital and the solitaire, unbuttoning her coat sitting for a portrait, uncorking a bottle, her eyes like lead, her loose blouse and petticoat, drying out briefs by the stone belfry and her hair in a photo long ago when, black as a night, a muddy river past the weeds, carrying the leaves, her coffee stained photo blowing down the street. Train by train, all goes slow, mist its the morning of lights, it is the day of the Bull, the fiesta of magic, the castanets never stop, the sound between the ringing of the bells, the long and muted silence of the distant sea, gypsy hands full of rosemary, every sweet, deep blue buckets for eyes, dawn comes, the Brahmanic splendour, sunlit gilt crown capped by clouds, brazen, illuminated, bright be dawn, golden avenues, its top to bottom, green to gold, but the sky and the plaza, blood red like the great bleeding out Bull, and if your quiet enough, you can hear the heart weeping.

Don't confuse things. You can make a boat, but you can't make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can't make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.

In Domestic Manners, Fanny Trollope gave an exaggerated account of a cheesy stunt: sending derelict boats over the falls to see how they would fare. She put the number of vessels sacrificed at three, but in fact there had been only one, the Michigan, cruelly loaded with circus animals. The Michigan disappointed an estimated ten thousand spectators by breaking up before it reached the falls, with some of the animals swimming safely to shore.

A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer, better fantasies... And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

Unlike White Seadrifters who had access to bank loans, the Vietnamese, many of whom struggled to speak English or make sense of the paperwork, were effectively sealed off from the usual sources of capital. What they had to their advantage, though, was a centuries-old system known as hui, which functioned as a private loan club. All members of the club contributed their earnings to a pool, which was then distributed to a single family each month on a rotating basis. No paperwork or lawyers were required; the system was bound by trust and intense stigma if a member failed to pay his share on time. Through the hui, a Vietnamese family could get enough money overnight to put a down payment on a boat or buy it outright, to the bewilderment of the Whites selling them the boats, often at an exorbitant markup. Where were the Vietnamese, crammed into trailers and working for peanuts at the plant, getting all this money? Rumors started to spread among White fishermen about a secret government program giving refugees interest-free loans. They were increasingly convinced that the government, which existed to them in the form of Parks and Wildlife agents inspecting their boats and catch – oftentimes writing tickets – was out to get them: perhaps the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees was part of some deeper plot.

He saw that the sun was riding low in the sky. It would be sunset soon. He had planned to be at the Mallory docks, Key West’s sunset mecca, for the island’s signature moment, but he was juiced by the idea that he might know where Finbar McShane was. There would be another sunset tomorrow. If he was still here to see it. The parking lane was one-way. It took him on a swing under the causeway and then out at the entrance to another marina. He saw boat ramps and, beyond them, the houseboats grouped together on the water like a floating village. Most of them had smaller runabouts with outboards attached to back-door docks and decks. The houseboats were painted in pastels, two-story structures sitting on barges and lashed together to create a community. From Bosch’s angle of view he counted eight houses extending out into Garrison Bight. The second

interests and, as importantly, the entrance to the St. Lawrence River and therefore the French-controlled cities of Québec and Montréal. Thus the stone stronghold of Fortress Louisbourg was conceived and built. In its heyday, it was North America’s third-busiest port behind Boston and Philadelphia, home port of over 60 fishing schooners and a fleet of some 400 shallops (two-masted open boats for daily inshore fishing ventures). After possession changed several times between France and England as wars waxed and waned, the British finally destroyed it in 1758. In the 1960s, Parks Canada began a long reconstruction of the fortress (and the town within) to 1744 condition using an army of archeologists and unemployed coal miners. It became North America’s largest reconstruction project. Today, Louisbourg is a place to experience life inside a rough New World military stronghold. You arrive by boarding a bus at the interpretation center—no cars allowed near the fortress. As you climb down off the bus and are accosted by costumed guards, the illusion of entering a time warp begins. Farm animals peck and poke about. The smell of fresh baking drifts on salty air that might suddenly be shattered by the blast of a cannon or a round of musket fire. Soldiers march about and intimidate visitors who could be British spies. Children play the games of 3 centuries ago in the streets. Fishermen, servants, officers, and cooks greet guests at the doors of their respective homes and places of work. Meals here consist of rustic, historically accurate beef stew or meat pie sided by rum specifically made for the Fortress (a full meal is about C$15 in one of four restaurants designated by class—upper or lower). If you want a more complete immersion, you can become a colonial French military

The British cryptographers, stationed at Bletchley Park, a Victorian redbrick, white-trimmed, and copper-roofed complex north of London, called the machine “Enigma.” Each day the enemy reset the code and each day the men at Bletchley tried to break it, often without complete success. But the Bletchley crowd decrypted enough messages often enough to give Churchill an over-the-shoulder look at German plans (except U-boat plans, for which a slightly different and more complex encoding machine was used). The Bletchley wizards tended to be young and bearded, with long hair, dirty fingernails, and disheveled clothing. When the prime minister first saw them, he remarked to their chief, “Menzies, when I told you to leave no stone unturned, I didn’t mean you to take me quite so literally.”25

Desperate times, desperate measures. Ever since the beating in the park Sancho had felt something go wrong inside him, not a physical ailment but an existential one. After you were badly beaten, the essential part of you that made you a human being could come loose from the world, as if the self were a small boat and the rope mooring it to the dock slid off its cleats so that the dinghy drifted out helplessly into the middle of the pond; or as if a large vessel, a merchant ship, perhaps, began in the grip of a powerful current to drag its anchor and ran the risk of colliding with other ships or disastrously running aground. He now understood that this loosening was perhaps not only physical but also ethical, that when violence was done to a person, then violence entered the range of what that person--previously peaceable and law-abiding--afterwards included in the spectrum of what was possible. It became an option.

Thorne shook his head. “And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That’s the sea. That’s real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That’s all real. You see all of us together? That’s real. Life is wonderful. It’s a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn’t really anything else.

If it keeps up,” Henry snorted. “When we reopen the park, we’ll have to advertise the lake as the amazing boiling lake. Cook your eggs in it for lunch! Hang your coffee thermos over the edge of your boat’s side, and keep it warm. Jump in the water and take a hot bath!

Outdoor Vehicle Storage provides a secure and accessible space for parking cars, RVs, boats, trailers, and other vehicles. Located in open, well-maintained lots, these facilities offer protection from the elements and potential damage. Often equipped with fencing, surveillance, and easy entry, outdoor vehicle storage is a convenient, affordable solution for long-term or short-term vehicle needs.

BARTON CENTRE, 912, 9th Floor, Mahatma Gandhi Rd, Bengaluru, Karnataka - 560 001 Phone Number +91 8884400919 **Find the Charm of Mauritius: An Ideal Visit Bundle from Bangalore** Mauritius, a little island country settled in the Indian Sea, is a mother lode of regular excellence, rich culture, and unending experience. For voyagers from Bangalore searching for a stunning escape, the Mauritius visit bundle presented by SurfNxt guarantees an encounter not at all like some other. This bundle catches the genuine embodiment of the island, mixing rich facilities with vivid neighborhood encounters that will leave you charmed. **Shocking Facilities Await** One of the features of the Mauritius Tour Package From Bangalore is the chance to remain in a portion of the island's most stunning properties. From ocean front retreats to beguiling store lodgings, every convenience choice is intended to guarantee an agreeable and serene stay. Picture awakening to the sound of waves lapping at the shore, with dazzling sea sees right from your overhang. A large number of these lodgings likewise offer first rate conveniences like pools, spas, and high end food encounters that commend the kinds of Mauritius. **Investigate the Regular Wonders** Mauritius is eminent for its amazing scenes, and this visit bundle permits you to jump profound into the island's regular miracles. You can set out on directed trips to notorious spots like the Seven Shaded Earths of Chamarel, where you'll wonder about the lively, multi-tinted soil developments. The Dark Stream Crevasses Public Park offers amazing climbing trails that wander through rich timberlands and past flowing cascades, ideal for nature devotees and experience searchers the same. You may likewise get the opportunity to investigate the brilliant coral reefs that encompass the island. Swimming and plunging journeys are essential for the agenda, permitting you to find the energetic marine life that possesses these waters. For the individuals who lean toward an all the more comfortable methodology, glass-base boat rides offer a remarkable perspective on the submerged world without getting wet! **Drench Yourself in Neighborhood Culture** No outing to Mauritius would be finished without encountering its rich culture and legacy. The visit bundle is intended to allow you to collaborate with the nearby local area and investigate the island's different history. Walk around the clamoring markets of Port Louis, where you can look for trinkets, flavors, and materials while absorbing the lively air. A visit to the Aapravasi Ghat, an UNESCO World Legacy site, gives a brief look into the island's past and the different societies that have formed it. Culinary experiences are likewise a feature of the visit. Enjoy the nearby cooking, which is a flavorful mix of Creole, Indian, Chinese, and French impacts. Take part in cooking classes or enjoy choice dishes at prestigious eateries that grandstand the island's exceptional flavors. **Custom fitted Encounters Only for You** SurfNxt comprehends that each explorer is extraordinary. Their is exceptionally adjustable, permitting you to pick exercises that suit your inclinations — be it experience sports, unwinding on immaculate sea shores, or social investigation. With proficient aides and a committed help group, you can anticipate that an improving encounter that caters should every one of your necessities. In synopsis, the Mauritius Tour Package From Bangalore with SurfNxt offers a remarkable excursion loaded up with experience, extravagance, and social lavishness. Gather your sacks and prepare for an island get away from that will pass on you with recollections to love for a lifetime!