Peg Best Quotes

I'm the best," Elena muttered to herself the next morning s she got out of the taxi in front of the magnificient creation that was Archangel Tower. "Hey, lady, you gonna pay me or just talk to yourself?" "What? Oh.... Keep the change." ... "...you got a big hunt coming on?" Elena didn't ask how he'd pegged her for a hunter. "No. But I do have a high chance of meeting a horrible death within the next few hours. Might as well do something good as up my shot at getting into heaven.

Believe me, Nóra. An old broom knows the dirty corners best

When we learn to work with our own Inner Nature, and with the natural laws operating around us, we reach the level of Wu Wei. Then we work with the natural order of things and operate on the principle of minimal effort. Since the natural world follows that principle, it does not make mistakes. Mistakes are made–or imagined–by man, the creature with the overloaded Brain who separates himself from the supporting network of natural laws by interfering and trying too hard. When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done. When you work with Wu Wei, you have no real accidents. Things may get a little Odd at times, but they work out. You don’t have to try very hard to make them work out; you just let them. [...] If you’re in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on you can look back and say, "Oh, now I understand. That had to happen so that those could happen, and those had to happen in order for this to happen…" Then you realize that even if you’d tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn’t have done better, and if you’d really tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing. Using Wu Wei, you go by circumstances and listen to your own intuition. "This isn’t the best time to do this. I’d better go that way." Like that. When you do that sort of thing, people may say you have a Sixth Sense or something. All it really is, though, is being Sensitive to Circumstances. That’s just natural. It’s only strange when you don’t listen.

Someone once asked Dad: “But what do you want to save time for? What are you going to do with it?” “For work, if you love that best,” said Dad. “For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure.” He looked over the top of his pince-nez. “For mumblety-peg, if that's where your heart lies.

On the other hand, I never pegged you for someone who would cower and not give their best when faced with a challenge. Whether it’s unfairly imposed or not,” he said, turning away and facing his laptop. “So, what’s it going to be?

Following a brief period of hard-won independence she came to appreciate the fact that people aren’t foolish as much as they are kind. Peg understood that at a relatively early age. Me, it took years.

Every idea is my last. I feel sure of it. So, I try to do the best with each as it comes and that's where my responsibility ends. But I just don't wait for ideas. I look for them. Constantly. And if I don't use the ideas that I find, they're going to quit showing up.

One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish: it helps you remember what you used to be like. Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you’d opened your old diary. These book-memories, says Hazlitt, are “pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours.” Or our unhappiest. Rereading forces you to spend time, at claustrophobically close range, with your earnest, anxious, pretentious, embarrassing former self, a person you thought you had left behind but who turns out to have been living inside you all along.

I roamed L.A. by night. I got repeatedly rousted by LAPD. I sensed that a cop-street fool compact existed. I behaved accordingly. I denied all criminal intent. I acted respectfully. My height-to-weight ratio and unhygienic appearance caused some cops to taunt me. I sparred back. Street schtick often ensued. I mimicked jailhouse jigs like some WASP Richard Pryor. Rousts turned into streetside yukfests. They played like Jack Webb unhinged. I started to dig the LAPD. I started to grok cop humor. I couldn't quite peg it as performance art. I hadn't read Joseph Wambaugh yet.

They don’t even visit the dying anymore. Their argument being that if someone is dying, there’s no point interrupting a good game of golf, and they’d best just get on with dying. However, they do give you a helpline number for an organisation called ‘Dying To Help You Out.’ A volunteer talks you through the process of dying alone without medical attention: “feeling a bit chilled are you, love, don’t fret, it’s just your lifeblood congealing in your veins, you’ll be gone any second now, hang on pet, I’ve got a corpse on line nine, if I don’t get back before you peg it, have a nice afterlife,” and then they bugger of leaving you with Robbie Williams singing Angels.

One study confirmed that women’s influence is so pegged to warmth and appearing caring and prosocial that the “performance plus confidence equals power and influence” formula that’s so effective for men blows up in women’s faces. The study’s author concludes: “Self-confidence is gender-neutral, the consequences of appearing self-confident are not.” Portraying confidence does not work for women, so telling women to simply be more confident is twisted.

That was why Peg loved the Messiah best of all. Because it showed people they were not alone. No matter about their differences, the music lifted them up and lowered them down, only to raise them even higher. It worked like a spell.

Years later, I read that someone had found genetic components to good motherhood. The Mest and the Peg3 genes occur on chromosome 19, and, ironically, they only work if they’re inherited from the father. Imprinting like this usually occurs in evolution because of a genetic battle of the sexes; it’s in the best interests of the female to have more litters, but it’s in the best interests of the male to protect the child that’s already been born. The jury is still out on these

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out - My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendent in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth still walks barefoot.

One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish: it helps you remember what you used to be like. Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you’d opened your old diary. These book-memories, says Hazlitt, are ‘pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours.’ Or our unhappiest. Rereading forces you to spend time, at claustrophobically close range, with your earnest, anxious, pretentious, embarrassing former self, a person you thought you had left behind but who turns out to have been living inside you all along.

The people who love you will offer you constructive criticism, because they want you to be the best version of yourself that you can be. They know you’re better than that. They know what you’re worth. They’re not having a pop because they want to bring you down a peg or two.

It's hard to get a second audition for such a dignified role when America knows you best as a..." he clicked around his computer for a bit and squinted, reading off of his screen. "A 'womanising douchelord.'" Amanda snorted loudly. She had been the first one to peg him as such on HDU, and for some reason, 'womanising douchelord' just caught on with users. It became his official nickname, and he their mascot of misogyny.

in Howard was in one of those moods during which crazy ideas sound perfectly sensible. A bullish, handsome man with decisive eyebrows and more hair than he could find use for, Lin had a great deal of money and a habit of having things go his way. So many things in his life had gone his way that it no longer occurred to him not to be in a festive mood, and he spent much of his time celebrating the general goodness of things and sitting with old friends telling fat happy lies. But things had not gone Lin’s way lately, and he was not accustomed to the feeling. Lin wanted in the worst way to whip his father at racing, to knock his Seabiscuit down a peg or two, and he believed he had the horse to do it in Ligaroti.1 He was sure enough about it to have made some account-closing bets on the horse, at least one as a side wager with his father, and he was a great deal poorer for it. The last race really ate at him. Ligaroti had been at Seabiscuit’s throat in the Hollywood Gold Cup when another horse had bumped him right out of his game. He had streaked down the stretch to finish fourth and had come back a week later to score a smashing victory over Whichcee in a Hollywood stakes race, firmly establishing himself as the second-best horse in the West. Bing Crosby and Lin were certain that with a weight break and a clean trip, Ligaroti had Seabiscuit’s measure. Charles Howard didn’t see it that way. Since the race, he had been going around with pockets full of clippings about Seabiscuit. Anytime anyone came near him, he would wave the articles around and start gushing, like a new father. The senior Howard probably didn’t hold back when Lin was around. He was immensely proud of Lin’s success with Ligaroti, but he enjoyed tweaking his son, and he was good at it. He had once given Lin a book for Christmas entitled What You Know About Horses. The pages were blank. One night shortly after the Hollywood Gold Cup, Lin was sitting at a restaurant table across from his father and Bing Crosby. They were apparently talking about the Gold Cup, and Lin was sitting there looking at his father and doing a slow burn.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe it was for the best. I tried and I failed. Maybe deep down I didn’t want it enough. Like you said, not everyone does.’ ‘True.’ Eventually she says something. ‘But is that really you talking? Or is it your grief?’ ‘I don’t know.’ I shake my head. ‘And that’s OK,’ she says quietly. I raise my eyes to meet Cricket’s. ‘I’m eighty-one years old and I’ve learned if there’s one gift you can give yourself in life, it’s the freedom and courage to say “I don’t know”. Because I’ll let you into a secret – you don’t have to know. You don’t have to know how you feel, or what you want, or if you’re happy or if you’re sad. Life is full of choices and decisions, and there is so much pressure on us to make all the right ones. But what if we don’t? What if we have doubts and misgivings? What if we make mistakes and contradict ourselves?’ She looks at me, her eyes shining. ‘What if we try our best and fail anyway?’ As her words peg out before me, I think about myself, about everything that’s happened. ‘What then? Should we feel bad about ourselves? Why not just accept that we don’t know? Because if you accept that, my dear girl, it will give you such immense freedom. It will allow you to change your mind, to take a different path, to grab opportunities that come your way that you might never have thought of . . . to be impulsive instead of being stuck, to stop feeling guilty.’ Cricket looks at me, her face imploring. ‘To stop feeling scared.

Something in the way he fastened his eyes on me, it was like he had something for me. But here’s the thing: I couldn’t believe the fast jolt it gave me. He wasn’t the type to set me going, but there was something. Something in the way he stood there, like a king, manicured hand curling around the edge of the bar like it was the arm of his throne, watching everything, appraising. And knowing something about me, knowing it. Who could guess, really, how much he might know about me. So sure, I gave him my best walk, half class, half pay-broad. If you can twist those two tightly, fellas don’t know what hit ‘em. They can’t peg you. It gets them—the smart ones—going. Spinning hard trying to fix you. You’re like the best parts of their grammar school sweetheart and their first whore all in one sizzling package.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats — the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill — The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it — and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

Who sent you, boy?” Fafhrd demanded. “How did you get here?” “Now who and how would you expect?” replied the urchin. “Catch.” He tossed the Mouser a wax tablet. “Say, you two, take my advice and get out while the getting’s good. I think so far as your expedition’s concerned, Ningauble’s pulling up his tent pegs and scuttling home. Always a friend in need, my dear employer.” The Mouser ripped the cords, unfolded the tablet, and read: “Greetings, my brave adventurers. You have done well, but the best remains to be done. Hark to the calling. Follow the green light. But be very cautious afterwards. I wish I could be of more assistance. Send the shroud, the cup, and the chest back with the boy as first payment.” “Loki-brat! Regin-spawn!” burst out Fafhrd. The Mouser looked up to see the urchin lurching and bobbing back toward the Lost City on the back of the eagerly fugitive camel. His impudent laughter returned shrill and faint. “There,” said the Mouser, “rides off the generosity of poor, penurious Ningauble. Now we know what to do with the camel.” “Zutt!” said Fafhrd. “Let him have the brute and the toys. Good riddance to his gossiping!

Lesson one: Pack light unless you want to hump the eight around the mountains all day and night. By the time we reached Snowdonia National Park on Friday night it was dark, and with one young teacher as our escort, we all headed up into the mist. And in true Welsh fashion, it soon started to rain. When we reached where we were going to camp, by the edge of a small lake halfway up, it was past midnight and raining hard. We were all tired (from dragging the ridiculously overweight packs), and we put up the tents as quickly as we could. They were the old-style A-frame pegged tents, not known for their robustness in a Welsh winter gale, and sure enough by 3:00 A.M. the inevitable happened. Pop. One of the A-frame pegs supporting the apex of my tent broke, and half the tent sagged down onto us. Hmm, I thought. But both Watty and I were just too tired to get out and repair the first break, and instead we blindly hoped it would somehow just sort itself out. Lesson two: Tents don’t repair themselves, however tired you are, however much you wish they just would. Inevitably, the next peg broke, and before we knew it we were lying in a wet puddle of canvas, drenched to the skin, shivering, and truly miserable. The final key lesson learned that night was that when it comes to camping, a stitch in time saves nine; and time spent preparing a good camp is never wasted. The next day, we reached the top of Snowdon, wet, cold but exhilarated. My best memory was of lighting a pipe that I had borrowed off my grandfather, and smoking it with Watty, in a gale, behind the summit cairn, with the teacher joining in as well. It is part of what I learned from a young age to love about the mountains: They are great levelers. For me to be able to smoke a pipe with a teacher was priceless in my book, and was a firm indicator that mountains, and the bonds you create with people in the wild, are great things to seek in life. (Even better was the fact that the tobacco was homemade by Watty, and soaked in apple juice for aroma. This same apple juice was later brewed into cider by us, and it subsequently sent Chipper, one of the guys in our house, blind for twenty-four hours. Oops.) If people ask me today what I love about climbing mountains, the real answer isn’t adrenaline or personal achievement. Mountains are all about experiencing a shared bond that is hard to find in normal life. I love the fact that mountains make everyone’s clothes and hair go messy; I love the fact that they demand that you give of yourself, that they make you fight and struggle. They also induce people to loosen up, to belly laugh at silly things, and to be able to sit and be content staring at a sunset or a log fire. That sort of camaraderie creates wonderful bonds between people, and where there are bonds I have found that there is almost always strength.

In other words, when you feel love, that means that the way you are seeing the object of your attention matches the way the Inner You sees it. When you feel hate, you are seeing it without that Inner Connection. You intuitively knew all of this, especially when you were younger, but gradually most of you were worn down by the insistence of those older and self-described “wiser” others who surrounded you as they worked hard to convince you that you could not trust your own impulses. And so, most of you physical Beings do not trust yourselves, which is amazing to us, for that which comes forth from within you is all that you may trust. But instead, you are spending most of your physical lifetimes seeking a set of rules or a group of people (a religious or political group, if you will) who will tell you what is right and wrong. And then you spend the rest of your physical experience trying to hammer your “square peg” into someone else’s “round hole,” trying to make those old rules—usually those that were written thousands of years before your time—fit into this new life experience. And, as a result, what we see, for the most part, is your frustration, and at best, your confusion. And, we also have noticed that every year there are many of you who are dying, as you are arguing about whose set of rules is most appropriate. We say to you: That overall, all-inclusive, never-changing set of rules does not exist—for you are ever-changing, growth-seeking Beings.

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out—My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendant in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth still walks barefoot.

Science is getting knocked on all sides these days, not only from religious fundamentalists, but from all kinds of people who perceive science as arrogant, one-sided, and the source of the troubles that come with the technology it produces. It's true that individuL scientists can be so arrogant and narrowly focused, they're blind to any but their own truths, and that new discoveries bring new problems with them. Still, I don't know many people who would refuse a biopsy for a newly discovered lump because they think science needs to be taken down a peg or two. Religion gets knocked for the same kinds of reasons as science: for its arrogance, narowmindedness, and tendency to create more trouble than it's worth. Religion is also accused of concealing reality under a comforting blanket of measureless faith -- the flip side, perhaps of the scientist for whom nothing can be real until she has measured it. My own sojourn into religion convinced me that good religion reveals rather than conceals. Religion is the soul in search of itself and its relationship to the cosmos. This journey requires looking at all of it: the joy, the sorrow, the beauty and the horror of life. We hope for the best. We want meaning and love to exist not only in ourselves, but in the very soul of the universe. At times this great hope might tempt us to pick and choose only the data that supports our desires. But in religion as in boat-building, the design must be tested in all conditions. When I say that I'm trying to pay attention, and that paying attention means being willing to look at all of it, I think I'm trying for the same moment of clarity that Graham experienced when the wind blew all over his theory. Looking at all of it is what good science is about. I believe that it's also what good religion is about.

Must we always kill the people?’ ‘Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it’s considered best to kill them — except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they’re ransomed.’ ‘Ransomed? What’s that?’ ‘I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so of course that’s what we’ve got to do.’ ‘But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?’ ‘Why, blame it all, we’ve GOT to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?’ ‘Oh, that’s all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ran- somed if we don’t know how to do it to them? — that’s the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?’ ‘Well, I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them till they’re ransomed, it means that we keep them till they’re dead. ‘ ‘Now, that’s something LIKE. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said that before? We’ll keep them till they’re ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they’ll be, too — eating up everything, and always trying to get loose.’ ‘How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?’ ‘A guard! Well, that IS good. So somebody’s got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that’s foolishness. Why can’t a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?’ ‘Because it ain’t in the books so — that’s why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don’t you? — that’s the idea. Don’t you reckon that the people that made the books knows what’s the correct thing to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn ‘em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.

After that, we don’t talk, instead we get hammered. Shot after shot we down, chasing each one with a Little Debbie snack. Before we know it, we’re hanging on to the bar counter floating around in a sugar and alcohol coma, just the way I like it. “There’s my girl,” Racer shouts as he topples off his stool and onto the floor, laughing hysterically. Georgie stops in her tracks and looks over at Emma, who’s standing next to her, both holding two boxes of Little Debbie snacks each. “Emmmmmmmma,” Tucker drags out, waving his glass in the air. “You brought the snacks.” “Oh, Jesus,” Emma mutters as she approaches us. I point to my mouth and say, “Feed me. Daddy needs sugar.” Racer is beside me, tangled in the pegs of his bar stool, still laughing. “Did you bring Oatmeal Pies, George? Please tell me you have the pies.” “Uh, I think you’ve had enough for tonight,” she says, looking down at her boyfriend. “Never!” Racer struggles to get up and finally knocks the chair over to free himself. “Fucking bitch chair, digging into me with its claws.” Talking to the stool directly he says, “I’m taken, warm someone else’s ass.” “He’s going to propose, chair, leave him alone,” Tucker announces, causing me to cringe. “Dude, don’t say it out loud.” I punch Tucker in the shoulder. “Georgie is right there.” All three of us turn to Georgie, who’s shaking her head in humor. Hopefully. “I’ll take Aaron,” Emma tells Georgie. “Seems like Racer is more of a handful.” “Hell yeah, I am.” Racer stumbles while cupping his crotch. “A giant handful.” Georgie rolls her eyes. “And that’s our cue to leave.” “But we didn’t eat our snacks.” “Seems like you had enough.” Georgie grabs Racer by the hand. “Come on.” As they walk away, Racer asks, “Want to have sex in the car?” “Not even a little.” “Here, you two, you can have your boxes of snacks.” Emma hands Tucker and me both a box of Oatmeal Pies that we clutch to our chests. “You’re the best,” I admit. “She is, isn’t she?” Tucker says. “I love her so fucking hard. Best wife ever.” She pulls on both of our hands to get us moving. “She wins wife of the year award,” I announce. “Best wife goes to Emma. Can we get a round of applause?” Tucker breaks open his Oatmeal Pies and starts spraying them like confetti. “Emma. Emma. Emma.” He chants, getting the three other patrons in the bar to join in. I pump my fist as well, forgetting everything from earlier. I knew I could count on my guys. “Emma. Emma. Emma . . .” And then, everything fades to black. Emotions and feelings are non-existent as I pass out, just the way I like it. Just the way I need it.

two girls descended the stairs and burst into the kitchen where Mrs Spencer was placidly ironing Rebecca’s best skirt. She looked up and smiled as her daughter entered the room. ‘Going out?’ she queried. ‘You’ll come in after five minutes out there like a pair of drowned rats.’ Rebecca shook her head. ‘Cassie’s going, I’m staying,’ she said decidedly, and turned to take Cassie’s navy mac from the peg on the door. ‘Want to borrow a brolly? Heaven knows we’ve got enough of ’em.’ ‘No thanks; the rain won’t melt me,’ Cassie said gaily. She

Someone once asked Dad: “But what do you want to save time for? What are you going to do with it?” “For work, if you love that best,” said Dad. “For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure.” He looked over the top of his pince-nez. “For mumblety-peg, if that's where your heart lies.

Plenty of Westerners come, though, to pick through its jumble for something off the peg that fits; they do yoga as exercise, which is a bit like walking the stations of the cross as aerobics.

God damn it, Peg! Now we’ve got us another vortex into a lost dimension, smack in the middle of town this time!” said the mayor in exasperation. “What are we going to do?” “Beats

It was the best grilled cheese sandwich I'd ever had—golden brown with a buttery taste, and the cheese all melted and gooey and oozing out the edges.

Managing has been pegged to promotion for so long it’s eclipsed what’s actually vital about the position. It’s not about power. It’s about figuring out how to actually create the conditions for your team to do their best work. That work is often invisible, but your company should be treating it as invaluable.

Leeda looked straight out of Martha’s Vineyard---all perfect cheekbones and alabaster skin with a smattering of sun-induced freckles and clothes that were totally season-appropriate. Even loose and sloppy like she was today, she looked like the kind of loose and sloppy you saw in People magazine when they caught a celebrity all tired and mussed up at the airport. Birdie, on the other hand, was curved and rosy and Renoir soft. She looked like the milk-fed farm girl that she was. The two were second cousins but nothing alike. Leeda was straight up and down, and Birdie was as gentle and easy as the rain. Leeda had grown up wearing mostly white and exceeding everyone as the glossiest, the smilingest, and the most southern of the southern belles in Bridgewater. Birdie had grown up with dirt under her fingernails, homeschooled on the orchard, her feet planted in the earth. Before Judge Miller Abbott sentenced Murphy to time on the orchard picking peaches that summer, Murphy had pegged Leeda for uptight and Birdie for weak. But their time together---picking peaches, sweating in the dorms at night, cooling off in the lake---had been like living the fable of her life. The lesson being that when you think you know more than you do, you end up looking like an idiot.

Her shiny black eyes watched while I lit Mr. Peg’s funeral candles and opened the bottle and poured the Thunderbird into paper cups. It felt like church, the part where they say, Remember who died for your sins. For Dori and me, all our best people died on us early, before we had any good shot at sin. So we had catching up to do. Maybe that’s why nothing we ever did felt wrong.

willing to close large distances in response to calls. Does that make them stupid? No! Due to the vastness of the landscape these birds often call home, it’s not uncommon for a walk-about tom to respond and come to a live-hen call that barely tickles his eardrums. When calling Merriam’s birds, I prefer to run calls that carry great distances and cut the all-to-often howling western wind. My favorite reach-out-and-touch-their-ears Merriam’s call is a trusty box call. Box calls get a bad rap. When I give seminars, I hear a lot of negative comments about them. They’re too easy to use. Every hunter on the planet hammers away on them. They don’t work on public land. You can’t get the exact pitch you want. I could go on forever with the complaints I’ve heard from hunters about box calls. Here’s my opinion on the matter. They work great to cut the western winds. They also work great when trying to raise the interest of a distant tom. On multiple occasions, I’ve been able to sit behind a quality spotting scope and watch a tom 500 yards away take notice of my box call. Once you master them, box calls can produce pitch-perfect tones. I especially feel this is the case when using a true chalk-on-wood system. Another Merriam’s eardrum ringer is an aluminum pot-and-peg call. I’ve found aluminum pot calls carry great distances. I’m also a fan of glass. What I love about pot-and-peg calls is that I can easily adjust the volume and pitch simply by swapping strikers. And that’s not all. Once you really know what you’re doing, these calls produce, in my opinion, simply the best turkey tones. Like many turkey fanatics, my go-to call is a diaphragm. Through this wonderful

The best job to get was as a doctor, at $45,000 a year. The worst was a teacher, at $17,000. If there was any disparity in salary between players, the game was over at the beginning: it didn’t take an extra eye to see that a doctor could whoop ass on a teacher. So we massaged the rules a bit: Why not both be doctors? How easy! How fair! That way whoever won did so by a slim margin of money and/or plastic children pegs in the car-shaped game pieces. Little did we know we’d reinvented Communism

There is a powerful difference between picturing an image that does not relate to you, and recalling something specific that you are connected with. When memory experts memorize something that is idle or vain, they’re only attempting to picture an image that does not relate to them. They don’t have to daily apply the digits of mathematical pi to live by them. They don’t have to apply the Declaration of Independence in a practical day to day life. As if Americans say when living life, “As it is written in the Declaration of Independence.” So they teach you how to memorize things idly, where as it is better to make a heartfelt connection with the word of God. Therefore Beloved, read the scriptures first and have a full connection with it before you memorize. As we stated before, it is good to memorize what is speaking out to you in the scriptures. Where God is speaking to you and teaching you in the word is the best place to memorize. It makes an emotional connection with you, and it’s applicable to your life in the here and now. Seeing that it is immediately applicable to your life you’ll be able to make an emotional connection with what you are memorizing. As a result, when you are past these teachings and have full understanding, even years in the future you’ll still remember the scripture because it made an emotional connection with you. Much like reminiscing over the cottage experience, every time the topic is brought up you’ll have waves of scripture rushing to you for practical application. Therefore in this method we are seeking to make memorizing the scriptures an experience and not merely a task or a goal for godliness. When it is relevant to experiences there is more for the mind to grasp onto the memory with thereby giving greater longevity to the memory itself. Similar to the peg method where you create an image for the mind to have more to grasp onto, you are using an already existing “image” so to speak, that the mind will grasp onto harder. But why does it grasp harder? Because it isn’t something silly thought of by oneself but it is an ongoing experience that led to a reminiscent memory. Therefore memorize what God is speaking to you and what has strong meaning to you. Whatever jumps out at you from the pages is what the Lord wants you to be memorizing. Therefore as a good pupil and good student, memorize what the Lord your Teacher is giving you to memorize. In school we do not memorize anything but what the teacher gives us, otherwise it would serve no purpose. Likewise it serves a greater purpose to memorize what God is giving you in the here and now, versus memorizing something that is not applying to you at this moment. Yes, all the word of God applies to your life and it always will. But certain things are speaking true to the immediate lesson in life and thus the scriptures speak out to you, and seem alive. Therefore memorize the words that are alive and you will have a continuous living memory of the word of God.

The importance of self-discovery and cocreation doesn’t stop with purpose. They are just as essential for making sense of challenges and for developing solutions that are likely to be adopted, adaptable, and successful. What is standard in most organizations is importing best practices or imposing practices from above. The assumption that a best practice will work everywhere is just too convenient to resist. So is the assumption that local context and people, though important, will not matter enough to make the difference. Plus, best practices fit nicely with the deep-seated notion that reinventing the wheel is a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, importing or imposing best practices usually involves trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Context, culture, and people do matter more than we like to admit, and resistance inevitably emerges when we discount them.

Steven didn’t see Emma again for a full week, and while he told himself it was for the best, he ached to see her every moment of that time. He spent his days pacing the room with Callie Visco under his left arm for support, and his nights cleaning the .45 and listening for Emma’s footsteps in the hallway. He supposed she was either embarrassed to face him or meting out punishment for the hard time he’d given her. He sure as hell hoped she hadn’t pegged him as a bad influence and decided to stay away from him. Of course, he reflected ruefully, he probably was a bad influence. He’d seen innocence in Emma’s dark blue eyes, as well as passion, and experience told him she’d never before allowed a man to touch her in quite that way. His

Harry Potter,” a voice says from my left. “Have you tried reading the Bible?” A woman, mid-forties, judgment scribbled all over her pinched, powdered face. Why do Bible lovers always have that constipated look on their face? Don’t stereotype, Helena! I do my best to smile politely. “Is that the book where that lady turns into a statue after looking back at a burning city after God told her not to?” I say. “And where three defiant men are thrown into a furnace and don’t burn. Oh, and isn’t there a gal who feeds and puts to sleep the general of an enemy’s army, and then uses a mallet to drive a tent peg into his brain?” She looks at me blankly. “But those are true. And that,” she says, pointing to Harry, “is fiction. Not to mention devil worship.” “Uh huh, uh huh. Devil worship? Is that like when the Israelites made a cow god of gold and worshipped it?” She’s enraged. “You would love this book,” I say, shoving The Goblet of Fire at her. “It’s PG-rated compared to the Bible.” “You,

I'd never had an audience like Rebecca Cross. Her shining eyes and respectful silence spurred me to ever greater heights of invention. Ever deeper trenches of imagined horrors. By Friday, I'd pegged half our class as speeding towards some kind of astonishing doom. And Becca was mine. We'd been written off as weirdos together. Together. Some girls treated their friends as athletes in competitive trials, constantly moving them up and down the ranks. But for us best friendship was deadly serious. More permanent than a tattoo. We invented code words and handshakes. We made repeated blood pacts. We scratched each other's arms with pine needles and sipped unholy potions we invented in our parents' gardens out of some nebulous, but passionate desire to show out devotion. We snuck clothes into each other's drawers, so we could swear to anyone who asked (no-one ever asked) that we lived together. Our mom's conducted hush phone calls, worried we'd burn bright then break each others hearts. They set up play dates with other children who never asked to come back. Our parents didn't get it. That was all. They didn't believe you could find your soulmate at six.

Rhys broke their kiss, swallowing to catch hold of his heaving chest. “You know what feels good?” Jevon licked his lips. “What?” “Riding someone like this—fucking them real slow while your dick slides against their stomach.” “Someone?” “Yeah, bloke or bird, it doesn’t matter to me. Some of the best nights I’ve had have been with a woman who knows her pegging.” A flush crept up Jevon’s neck. “I, uh, didn’t think you would bottom.” “Why not?” Rhys punctuated the words with a wet kiss to Jevon’s neck. “You think it’s a woman’s role? That a man ain’t a man if he likes it like that?

Once you’ve gotten the hang of being observational rather than relationship oriented, you can turn your attention to maturity awareness. This approach will grant you emotional freedom from painful relationships by taking the emotional maturity of others into account. Estimating the probable maturity level of the person you’re dealing with is one of the best ways to take care of yourself in any interaction. Once you peg a person’s maturity level, his or her responses will make more sense and be more predictable.

Raised on Walt Disney, most of us hear the phrase “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” and the first image that pops into our heads is that of the evil stepmother with her stark white face and red lips in the animated film and book spin-offs of Snow White. But like other folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm, their original source—and indeed their first version of the story, published in 1812—wasn’t about an evil stepmother but a mother-daughter pair, and it was Snow White’s own mother who was her envious antagonist. In the original version, the beautiful queen who pricks her finger while sewing and wishes for a child “as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the sewing frame” gives birth to Snow White. It is Snow White’s own mother who, obsessed with her own beauty, checks her magic mirror when Snow White is seven only to hear that her daughter, not she, is “the fairest of them all.” It is Snow White’s mother who tries her best to have her daughter killed throughout the rest of the story until innocence trumps maternal envy in the end. By 1819, the Grimm Brothers had banished to the cupboard of taboos the psychological truth mirrored in the original folktale—of the potential rivalry between a mother and daughter, or maternal envy—by having the “real” mother die after giving birth and a sinister stepmother take her place.

Gotta be tough or dumb to go down into the sewers these days. So, which one are you?” “I’m not dumb, but if I tell you I’m tough, you’ll peg me for a bravo, so I’m going to smile cryptically.” I gave him my best cryptic smile.

Kurt Fischer, my mentor and colleague at Harvard, where he is the director of Harvard University’s Mind, Brain, and Education program, goes so far as to say that today’s schools essentially fail about 80 percent of students. Sure, kids get through. Yet simply surviving is not a high enough bar for our educational system—not by a long shot. Worse still, our schools are often downright damaging in the long term for children who by temperament are prone to question authority—the kinds of kids who can’t help but think differently, who like to take risks, and who represent America’s best hope to innovate its way to a better future. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on changing an obviously broken educational context, we have to date largely put the blame on our hardworking teachers—and perhaps even more so on our children, millions of whom are themselves treated as broken because our system cannot deal with natural learning variability.

Trying to figure out the best way to do this.” Cylindrical peg into the round hole, it’s not that hard. Actually, yes, it was that hard, which is why I didn’t want it deflating before he figured out what to do with it.

She beamed. “Perhaps the best of the lot! He has a title—he is a baron. He has never been wed but he has several children. His home is quite nice, apparently, it is in Sussex, and he has a pleasing income! I believe it is two thousand a year.” She waited. He stared, appearing close to an apoplexy. “So he is a rake?” “You have bastards!” “I am a rake! Next.” She choked. “Next?” “Amanda is not marrying a rake. Her husband will be loyal to her.” “Then maybe you should consider de Brett? He is very handsome and I am sure that he might fall in love with Amanda!” “Who is Ralph Sheffeild?” Cliff ignored her. She had saved the best for last. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Sheffeild. “He was knighted during the war for his valor, he is the youngest son of an earl, the family is very wealthy, and he can marry as he chooses. He is not a rake. If he is taken with Amanda, it would be perfect!” “How do you know he is not a rake?” “I know his reputation.” “He must be a rake, or he would be wed.” “I feel certain he is not a rake,” she said quickly. “If he were a rake, the gossip would be all over the ton.” “Does he have a mistress?” “Not that I know of.” “Then he must prefer men.” Cliff smiled in triumph. “What a leap to make!” She was aghast. “He is too perfect. Something is wrong with him. If it isn’t that preference, perhaps he gambles!” “He doesn’t gamble.” She had to control her laughter now. She had no idea if Sheffeild gamed. “And Cliff, he likes women. I have met him personally, I am certain.” Cliff folded his arms across his chest and stared. “Something is wrong with this one, I can feel it. What aren’t you telling me?” “I have told you everything. He is perfect for Amanda!” He tore the paper not in two, but in shreds. Then he smiled, letting the scraps drift to the floor. “Cliff!” she gasped. “What is wrong with Sheffeild?” “No one is perfect,” he retorted. “He is hiding something.” “You cannot reject everyone!” “I can and I will, until I find the right suitor. Make me another list,” he ordered, walking away. She couldn’t resist. She took a book from the shelf and threw it, so it hit him square in the back. He turned. “What was that for?” “Oh, let’s just say I am going to enjoy watching you taken down a peg or two. And by the by, we are all rooting for Amanda.” He simply looked at her, clearly clueless as usual.

He rolled off the bed and unzipped his overstuffed duffel bag. Clothes erupted from it with such force that a pair of boxer shorts sailed across the room and nailed Warren in the face. Warren screamed in horror, stumbled backward over his own suitcase, and collapsed on the floor. “It’s not really supposed to be a vacation,” I warned them. “Erica says our lives could be at risk.” Chip laughed and shrugged this off. “Erica always thinks her life is at risk. Remember last year when she got all worked up about us having a mole in the school?” “Um . . . there was a mole,” I reminded him. “And our lives really were in danger. I almost got killed. Twice.” “Oh, yeah,” Chip recalled. “That’s right. Hey, I wonder if anyone will try to kill us this time.” “I hope so!” Jawa said excitedly. “That’d be amazing!” “Assuming they’re unsuccessful,” Warren pointed out. Chip pegged him in the face with another pair of boxers. “Well, duh. No one wants a successful attempt made on their life, you nitwit.” “What if it happened on the slopes?” Jawa asked, his excitement ratcheting up a few notches. “And we got to have an honest-to-goodness ski chase? How fantastic would that be?” “It’d be the best,” Chip agreed. “Warren, stop playing with my underwear, you pervert.” He snatched the boxers Warren had just removed from his head and tossed them into a drawer, along with a handful of random socks and gloves.

Peggy, to say, “Hey, Peg, let’s stop asking Wanda how many dresses she has.” When she finished her arithmetic, she did start a note to Peggy. Suddenly she paused and shuddered. She pictured herself in the school yard, a new target for Peggy and the girls. Peggy might ask her where she got the dress she had on, and Maddie would have to say that it was one of Peggy’s old ones that Maddie’s mother had tried to disguise with new trimmings so that no one in Room 13 would recognize it. If only Peggy would decide of her own accord to stop having fun with Wanda. Oh, well! Maddie ran her hand through her short blond hair as though to push the uncomfortable thoughts away. What difference did it make? Slowly Maddie tore the note she had started into bits. She was Peggy’s best friend, and Peggy was the best-liked girl in the whole room. Peggy could not possibly do anything that was really wrong, she thought.

The 4,765 Democratic delegates were split into two types: a set of 700-plus party leaders, called “superdelegates,” who could vote for whomever they chose, and more than 4,000 “pledged” delegates who were bound to vote for a candidate based on the outcome in their home district or state. Each candidate would win a percentage of the statewide pledged delegates based on the percentage of the vote he or she won, and each would take a share of the pledged delegates available in each of the state’s congressional districts based on his or her percentage of the vote there. Importantly, states with more population have a larger number of available delegates, and the delegates aren’t spread evenly throughout a state’s congressional districts. The total number of delegates available in a district is pegged to the district’s performance for Democratic candidates in previous elections. It’s all very complicated, but it boils down to this: A candidate who does best in the most Democratic parts of a state can rack up a lot of delegates fast. In many states, the delegate-rich districts are majority-minority. Hillary and her delegate-crunching team knew that running up the score among black and Hispanic voters would net her an outsize share of the delegates in populous states with more delegates available. Bernie had won New Hampshire by 22 points, but that netted him just a 15-to-9 delegate haul. Hillary could more than erase that with a good showing in a single black-majority district in Mississippi.

The enclosure next to the dingoes held Graham the crocodile. Wes, Steve, and other staff battled the flood in Graham’s home. One man stood on the fence to spot the croc. He had to shout to Wes and Steve as they cleared the fence line inside the enclosure in waist-deep, dark waters. With the vehicle spotlights casting weird shadows, he had to scope out the murky water and try to discern the crocodile from among the floating bits of debris. Once the backup man had the crocodile pegged, he kept a close eye on him. If Graham submerged, Wes and Steve had to be warned immediately. The spotter worked hard to keep a bead on Graham. Steve and Wes were synchronized with their every move. They had worked together like this for years. They didn’t even have to speak to each other to communicate. There was no room for error as the amount of time spent in Graham’s enclosure was kept to a minimum. They jumped into the enclosure, cleared on, two, three armloads of debris, then jumped back out and re-evaluated the situation. Graham’s fence line had a bow in it, but it wasn’t in any danger of buckling. Steve and Wes were doing a good job, and there was no need for me to be there with them. It was more urgent for me to keep the dingo fence line intact next door. Graham’s female, named Bindi, was nesting, and this added another dangerous dimension to the job, since Graham was feeling particularly protective. The men were also keenly aware that nighttime meant croc time--and Graham would be stalking them with real intent. They reached down for their three armloads of debris. Steve scooped up his first load, flung it out, and gathered his second. Suddenly, Wes slammed into the fence with such force that his body was driven in an arc right over the top of Steve. It only took a split second for Steve to realize what had happened. As Wes had bent over to reach for an armload of debris, he had been hit from behind by more than twelve feet of reptile, weighing close to nine hundred pounds. Graham grabbed Wes, his top teeth sinking into Wes’s bum, his bottom teeth hooking into the back of Wes’s thigh, just above his knee. The croc then closed his mouth, exerting that amazing three thousand pounds per square inch of jaw pressure, pulling and tearing tissue as he did. The croc hit violently. Wes instinctively twisted away and rolled free of Graham’s jaws, but two fist-sized chunks were torn from his backside. The croc instantly swung in for another grab. Wes pushed the lunging croc’s head away, but not before Graham’s teeth crushed through his finger. They crashed back down into the water. Wes screamed out when he was grabbed, but no one could hear him because of the roar of the storm. In almost total darkness, Steve seized a pick handle that rested near the fence. He turned toward the croc as Graham was lining Wes up for another bite. Wes was on his side now, in water that was about three feet deep. He could see the crocodile in the lights of a Ute spotlight that shone over the murk--the dark outline of the osteodermal plates along the crocodile’s back. As Graham moved in, Wes knew the next bite would be to his skull. It would be all over. Wes braced himself for the inevitable, but it didn’t come. Steve reached into the water and grabbed Graham’s back legs. He didn’t realize that Graham had released Wes in preparation for that final bite. He thought Graham was holding Wes under the water. Steve pulled with all his strength, managing to turn the crocodile around to focus on him. As Graham lunged toward Steve, Steve drove the pick handle into the crocodile’s mouth and started hammering at his head. Wes saw what was happening and scrambled up the fence. “I’m out mate, I’m out,” Wes yelled, blood pouring down his leg. Steve looked up to see Wes on the top of the fence. He realized that even though Wes was wounded, he was poised to jump back down into the water to try to rescue his best mate.