Playground Best Quotes

I still love you like moons love the planets they circle around, like children love recess bells. I still hear the sound of you and think of playgrounds where outcasts who stutter beneath braces and bruises and acne are finally learning that their rich handsome bullies are never gonna grow up to be happy. I think of happy when I think of you. So wherever you are I hope you’re happy, I really do. I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking I hope your lungs are open and breathing this life I hope there’s a kite in your hand that’s flying all the way up to Orion and you still got a thousand yards of string to let out. I hope you’re smiling like God is pulling at the corners of your mouth, ‘cause I might be naked and lonely shaking branches for bones but I’m still time zones away from who I was the day before we met. You were the first mile where my heart broke a sweat, and I wish you were here; I wish you’d never left; but mostly I wish you well. I wish you my very, very best

As long as we live, our self-absorption and our insecurity will walk together, holding hands and swinging them back and forth like two little girls on their way to a pretend playground they can never find. Human nature dictates that most often we will be as insecure as we are self-absorbed. The best possible way to keep from getting sucked into the superficial narcissistic mentality that money, possessions, and sensuality can satisfy and secure us is to deliberately give ourselves to something much greater...[Christ] showed us that giving, rather than getting, is the means to receiving...to find yourself, your true self, you must lose yourself in something larger.

I have no clue what happened to my best friend, the one who played with me on the playground when no one else would. But this Logan…” She gestured from my shoes on up. “This Logan can kiss my ass.

Who said childhood was the best time of life? When in reality it was the most terrible, the most merciless era, the barbaric time when there were no police to protect you, only parents preoccupied with themselves and their taller world.

This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O’Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks. It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best — less trouble).

You can’t always save a person from drowning. Sometimes it’s best to throw them a life preserver so they can learn how to save themselves.

Never rush to be the first. Slow down and be your best. Life is not a race. It's a playground to radiate your uniqueness.

play has become too domesticated and regimented while playgrounds themselves have become more and more barren. May today are devoid of vegetation with which to form nests, shelters, wands, dolls, or other playthings...These concerns are best explored in a heterogeneous habitat, where several secret niches are harbored, the kinds that can no longer be found on prefabricated metal and plastic jungle gym.

The best thing about recess is that it doesn't matter if you are having trouble paying attention in class--suddenly, you are paying attention to a million things on the playground.

Poetic Terrorism WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. ... Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc. Go naked for a sign. Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty. Graffiti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public monuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, Xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement... The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails. PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now. An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life--may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE. Don't do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don't stick around to argue, don't be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives--but don't be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you. Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don't get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.

Picture it.” Her tour guide voice came back in full force. “The playground. Kindergarten. Me and you. Sitting on the swings at recess, eating apple slices instead of sour candy straws, because even then Mom didn’t want me to live my best life.

If you want to know if your kid is going to be fast, the best genetic test right now is a stopwatch. Take him to the playground and have him face the other kids.' Foster's point is that, despite the avant-garde allure of genetic testing, gauging speed indirectly is foolish and inaccurate compared with testing it directly - like measuring a man's height by dropping a ball from a roof and using the time it takes to hit him in the head to determine how tall he is. Why not just use a tape measure?

Eliot, huh?" she says. The thin fabric of her long T-shirt brushes my arm. "Is everyone in your family named for a famous symbolist poet?" No, I'm named for someone who was supposed to be in the Bible but isn't." No? What happened to him?" I glance over at her, the way the corner of her mouth turns up, half-smirk, half-smile. Her hair moves as she walks. He was called to be a disciple, but he had, you know, stuff to do." Stuff, like...polishing his sandals? Making lunch?" We keep walking, over the bridge across the lake, past the swings and the playground equipment, just walking. Exactly. And what about you, Calliope...is everyone in your family named after a...what is it? A keyboard? An organ?" It's a steam-powered piano. It's also the name of the Greek goddess of poetry. You should read stuff other than chemistry; you'd know these things." Her smirky smile again, her sleeve touching my arm. I feel like my skin has been removed, every nerve exposed. I open my mouth, and this comes out: "I think you are more goddess than piano." Stupid, stupid. But she laughs. "You know, that's the nicest thing anyone's said to me today." You don't see too many calliopes," I tell her. I'm Cal, actually. I mean, that's what I prefer." I meant the steam pianos...you don't see too many." She stops and looks at me, full-on, and right away I put it on the list of the best moments in my life. Until you said that, Eliot, I wasn't fully aware of the demise of the steam piano, so thank you. Really." I smirk at her and we both fight not to smile. "Okay, smart-ass," I say.

College wasn’t their proving ground. It was their playground, with no sharp edges and no one keeping score.

The thoughts and emotions we stuff down into the darkness become a playground for the enemy, where his toxic filth breeds best. The compulsion to say the 'right thing' explains why so many of us have fallen spiritually sick.

During the school year, I practically lived in Dongguk’s modern, glass-walled library, with its stacks of tantalizing books and its high-speed Internet access. It became my playground, my dining room, and sometimes my bedroom. I liked the library best late at night, when there were fewer students around to distract me. When I needed a break, I took a walk out to a small garden that had a bench overlooking the city. I often bought a small coffee from a vending machine for a few cents and just sat there for a while, staring into the sea of lights that was metropolitan Seoul. Sometimes I wondered how there could be so many lights in this place when, just thirty-five miles north of here, a whole country was shrouded in darkness. Even in the small hours of the morning, the city was alive with flashing signs and blinking transmission towers and busy roadways with headlights traveling along like bright cells pumping through blood vessels. Everything was so connected, and yet so remote. I would wonder: Where is my place out there? Was I a North Korean or a South Korean? Was I neither?

I do not know who coined the statement “an idle mind is the devil’s playground,” but it is true. When camping in dangerous places, it is often recommended that you keep a campfire going to keep the predators away. When we set our hearts on fire, demonic predators stay out of our camp, which is my main point in this chapter. The apostle Paul put it best: “Love never fails” (see 1 Corinthians 13:8). We have spent several chapters talking about how to win spiritual battles in our own lives and in the lives of others. But when all else fails, remember this: Love cannot be defeated.

More interestingly, it could be argued that, if fantasy (and debatably the literature of the fantastic as a whole) has a purpose other than to entertain, it is to show readers how to perceive; an extension of the argument is that fantasy may try to alter readers' perception of reality. Of course, quack religions (etc.) make similar attempts, but a major difference is that, while the latter attempt to convert people to their codified way of thinking, the best fantasy introduces its readers into a playground of rethought perception, where there are no restrictions other than those of the human imagination. In some modes of the fantastic – e.g., magic realism and surrealism – the attempt to alter the reader's perception is overt, but most full-fantasy texts have at their core the urge to change the reader; that is, full fantasy is by definition a subversive literary form.

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told. You see, I'd never actually been to Florida before the war, much less Miami. I was a newspaper reporter from Chicago before the war and had never even seen the ocean until I was flying over the Pacific for the Air Corp. There wasn't much time for admiring the waves when Japanese Zeroes were trying to shoot you out of the sky and bury you at the bottom of that deep blue sea. It was because of my friend Pete that I knew so much about Miami. Florida was his home, so when we both got leave in '42 I followed him to the warm waters of Miami to see what all the fuss was about. It would be easy to say that I skipped Chicago for Miami after the war ended because Pete and I were such good pals and I'd had such a great time there on leave. But in truth I decided to stay on in Miami because of Veronica Lake. I'd better explain that. Veronica Lake never knew she was the reason I came back with Pete to Miami after the war. But she had been there in '42 while Pete and I were enjoying the sand, sun, and the sweet kisses of more than a few love-starved girls desperate to remember what it felt like to have a man's arm around them — not to mention a few other sensations. Lake had been there promoting war bonds on Florida's first radio station, WQAM. It was a big outdoor event and Pete and I were among those listening with relish to Lake's sultry voice as she urged everyone to pitch-in for our boys overseas. We were in those dark early days of the war at the time, and the outcome was very much in question. Lake's appearance at the event was a morale booster for civilians and servicemen alike. She was standing behind a microphone that sat on a table draped in the American flag. I'd never seen a Hollywood star up-close and though I liked the movies as much as any other guy, I had always attributed most of what I saw on-screen to smoke and mirrors. I doubted I'd be impressed seeing a star off-screen. A girl was a girl, after all, and there were loads of real dolls in Miami, as I'd already discovered. Boy, was I wrong." - Where Flamingos Fly

But Mandelbrot continued to feel oppressed by France’s purist mathematical establishment. “I saw no compatibility between a university position in France and my still-burning wild ambition,” he writes. So, spurred by the return to power in 1958 of Charles de Gaulle (for whom Mandelbrot seems to have had a special loathing), he accepted the offer of a summer job at IBM in Yorktown Heights, north of New York City. There he found his scientific home. As a large and somewhat bureaucratic corporation, IBM would hardly seem a suitable playground for a self-styled maverick. The late 1950s, though, were the beginning of a golden age of pure research at IBM. “We can easily afford a few great scientists doing their own thing,” the director of research told Mandelbrot on his arrival. Best of all, he could use IBM’s computers to make geometric pictures. Programming back then was a laborious business that involved transporting punch cards from one facility to another in the backs of station wagons.

Aldo Leopold had a dream. He dreamt of a time when people accepted their roles as citizens of the natural world rather than its conquerors, a time when the land was not viewed as a commodity to be exploited but as the source of our continued existence. He longed for a time when people appreciated and respected wilderness, not just as a hunting ground or a recreational playground, but as a truly awesome and unimaginably complex machine that required all of its parts to function well.

All those years ago on the playground, it would have been better if that teacher had just said, “Lysa, staying stuck in your fear is way worse than any other choice you could make right now. If you let go of that bar and happen to catch the next one, you’ll move forward and prove to yourself that you can do this. Or, if you let go of that bar and fall, you’ll see that the ground isn’t so far away. It won’t feel great to fall, but it won’t be worse than all the stress and exhaustion you’re experiencing just hanging there on the first bar.

Death, like so many great movies, is sad. The young fancy themselves immune to death. And why shouldn’t they? At times life can seem endless, filled with belly laughs and butterflies, passion and joy, and good, cold beer. Of course, with age comes the solemn understanding that forever is but a word. Seasons change, love withers, the good die young. These are hard truths, painful truths—inescapable but, we are told, necessary. Winter begets spring, night ushers in the dawn, and loss sows the seeds of renewal. It is, of course, easy to say these things, just as it is easy to, say, watch a lot of television. But, easy or not, we rely on such sentiment. To do otherwise would be to jump without hope into a black and endless abyss, falling through an all-enveloping void for all eternity. Really, what’s to gain from saying that the night only grows darker and that hope lies crushed under the jackboots of the wicked? What answers do we have when we arrive at the irreducible realization that there is no salvation in life, that sooner or later, despite our best hopes and most ardent dreams, no matter how good our deeds and truest virtues, no matter how much we work toward our varied ideals of immortality, inevitably the seas will boil, evil will run roughshod over the earth, and the planet will be left a playground in ruins, fit only for cockroaches and vermin. There is a saying favored by clergymen and aging ballplayers: Pray for rain. But why pray for rain when it’s raining hot, poisoned blood?

My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history. I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad, which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list. But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels were punk. Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, Dennis Potter, and The Prisoner were punk too. A Clockwork Orange was punk. Lindsay Anderson's If ... was punk. Monty Python was punk. Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke's fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk. Even Richmal Crompton's William books were punk. In fact, as it turned out, pretty much everything I liked was punk. The world started to make sense for the first time since Mosspark Primary. New and glorious constellations aligned in my inner firmament. I felt born again. The do-your-own-thing ethos had returned with a spit and a sneer in all those amateurish records I bought and treasured-even though I had no record player. Singles by bands who could often barely play or sing but still wrote beautiful, furious songs and poured all their young hearts, experiences, and inspirations onto records they paid for with their dole money. If these glorious fuckups could do it, so could a fuckup like me. When Jilted John, the alter ego of actor and comedian Graham Fellows, made an appearance on Top of the Pops singing about bus stops, failed romance, and sexual identity crisis, I was enthralled by his shameless amateurism, his reduction of pop music's great themes to playground name calling, his deconstruction of the macho rock voice into the effeminate whimper of a softie from Sheffield. This music reflected my experience of teenage life as a series of brutal setbacks and disappointments that could in the end be redeemed into art and music with humor, intelligence, and a modicum of talent. This, for me, was the real punk, the genuine anticool, and I felt empowered. The losers, the rejected, and the formerly voiceless were being offered an opportunity to show what they could do to enliven a stagnant culture. History was on our side, and I had nothing to lose. I was eighteen and still hadn't kissed a girl, but perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say, and punk threw me the lifeline of a creed and a vocabulary-a soundtrack to my mission as a comic artist, a rough validation. Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In fact, it was mandatory.

When a middle school teacher in San Antonio, Texas, named Rick Riordan began thinking about the troublesome kids in his class, he was struck by a topsy-turvy idea. Maybe the wild ones weren’t hyperactive; maybe they were misplaced heroes. After all, in another era the same behavior that is now throttled with Ritalin and disciplinary rap sheets would have been the mark of greatness, the early blooming of a true champion. Riordan played with the idea, imagining the what-ifs. What if strong, assertive children were redirected rather than discouraged? What if there were a place for them, an outdoor training camp that felt like a playground, where they could cut loose with all those natural instincts to run, wrestle, climb, swim, and explore? You’d call it Camp Half-Blood, Riordan decided, because that’s what we really are—half animal and half higher-being, halfway between each and unsure how to keep them in balance. Riordan began writing, creating a troubled kid from a broken home named Percy Jackson who arrives at a camp in the woods and is transformed when the Olympian he has inside is revealed, honed, and guided. Riordan’s fantasy of a hero school actually does exist—in bits and pieces, scattered across the globe. The skills have been fragmented, but with a little hunting, you can find them all. In a public park in Brooklyn, a former ballerina darts into the bushes and returns with a shopping bag full of the same superfoods the ancient Greeks once relied on. In Brazil, a onetime beach huckster is reviving the lost art of natural movement. And in a lonely Arizona dust bowl called Oracle, a quiet genius disappeared into the desert after teaching a few great athletes—and, oddly, Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers—the ancient secret of using body fat as fuel. But the best learning lab of all was a cave on a mountain behind enemy lines—where, during World War II, a band of Greek shepherds and young British amateurs plotted to take on 100,000 German soldiers. They weren’t naturally strong, or professionally trained, or known for their courage. They were wanted men, marked for immediate execution. But on a starvation diet, they thrived. Hunted and hounded, they got stronger. They became such natural born heroes, they decided to follow the lead of the greatest hero of all, Odysseus, and

The Biggest Property Rental In Amsterdam Amsterdam has been ranked as the 13th best town to live in the globe according to Mercer contacting annual Good quality of Living Review, a place it's occupied given that 2006. Which means that the city involving Amsterdam is among the most livable spots you can be centered. Amsterdam apartments are equally quite highly sought after and it can regularly be advisable to enable a housing agency use their internet connections with the amsterdam parkinghousing network to help you look for a suitable apartment for rent Amsterdam. Amsterdam features rated larger in the past, yet continuing plan of disruptive and wide spread construction projects - like the problematic North-South town you live line- has intended a small scores decline. Amsterdam after rated inside the top 10 Carolien Gehrels (Tradition) told Dutch news company ANP that the metropolis is happy together with the thirteenth place. "Of course you want is actually the first place position, however shows that Amsterdam is a fairly place to live. Well-known places to rent in Amsterdam Your Jordaan. An old employees quarter popularised amang other things with the sentimental tunes of a quantity of local vocalists. These music painted an attractive image of the location. Local cafes continue to attribute live vocalists like Arthur Jordaan and Tante Leeni. The Jordaan is a network of alleyways and narrow canals. The section was proven in the Seventeenth century, while Amsterdam desperately needed to expand. The region was created along the design of the routes and ditches which already existed. The Jordaan is known for the weekly biological Nordermaarkt on Saturdays. Amsterdam is famous for that open air market segments. In Oud-zuid there is a ranging Jordan Cuypmarkt open year long. This part of town is a very popular spot for expats to find Expat Amsterdam flats due in part to vicinity of the Vondelpark. Among the largest community areas A hundred and twenty acres) inside Amsterdam, Netherlands. It can be located in the stadsdeel Amsterdam Oud-Zuid, western side from the Leidseplein as well as the Museumplein. The playground was exposed in 1865 as well as originally named the "Nieuwe Park", but later re-named to "Vondelpark", after the 17th one hundred year author Joost lorrie den Vondel. Every year, the recreation area has around 10 million guests. In the park can be a film art gallery, an open air flow theatre, any playground, and different cafe's and restaurants.

Girls About Town, another Paramount film, again directed by George Cukor, gave Kay the opportunity to work with her good friend, the irrepressible Lilyan Tashman, who'd previously appeared with Kay in The Marriage Playground. Kay and Lil got to run around in lingerie and play characters who could only be high-priced call girls. "Kay Francis shows off her figure in undies while explaining she's through with the gold-digger racket and intends going straight because she's found love with a rich rube. The undie pose and that bit about going straight all in one has its own satirical kick."43 Andy Lawler, who would become one of Kay's best pals, also appeared in the film as Kay's no-good husband.

When you ask Web sophisticates why people are so vicious on the Internet, you get a set of stock responses. The very question is naïve. What do you expect? The world is full of angry people who don’t have a life. The Web offers a perfect outlet where they can be anonymous, important, and powerful, and attack others without fear of retribution. The Web has given them a voice when before they had none. These are people who find meaning in their lives by connecting with similar people on the net, who seek a sense of purpose and fulfillment online that they can’t achieve in the real world. Finally, the nature of the Internet, we are told, is also to blame — it’s a place where the human id runs amok, it’s a playground for disturbed people, it’s an echo chamber for the uninformed. We are advised that Internet nastiness is white noise, best ignored. It has little effect in the real world. While many these explanations are undoubtedly true, none go deep enough. None explain why the Web is a place where some human beings devote enormous effort to attacking strangers who have done nothing to them personally.

The great expansion of public institutions in America began in the early years of the twentieth century, when progressive reformers championed the idea that we all benefit from public goods. Excellent schools, roads, parks, playgrounds, and transit systems were meant to knit the new industrial society together, create better citizens, and generate widespread prosperity. Education, for example, was less a personal investment than a public good, improving the entire community and ultimately the nation. This logic was expanded upon in subsequent decades—through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. The “greatest generation” was bound together by mutual needs and common threats. It invested in strong public institutions as bulwarks against, in turn, mass poverty, fascism, and communism. Yet increasingly over the past three decades, “we’re all in it together” has been replaced by “you’re on your own.” Global capital has outsourced American jobs abroad. As I’ve noted, the very rich have taken home almost unprecedented portions of total earnings while paying lower and lower tax rates. A new wave of immigrants has hit our shores, only to be condemned by demagogues who forget we are mostly a nation of immigrants. Not even Democrats any longer use the phrase “the public good.” Public goods are now, at best, “public investments.” Public institutions have morphed into “public-private partnerships,” or, for Republicans, “vouchers.

Unfortunately these days, hardly a day goes by without news of an incident of childhood bullying. Some of these are so horrific or tragic that they defy understanding. Those really grab our attention. Others are all too easily dismissed as some sort of rite of passage, an acceptable part of growing up. The truth, though, is that bullying of any kind has the power to change who a child is, the kind of person he or she grows up to be. When ignored, the victim can be scarred for life, emotionally, if not physically. The perpetrator grows up with a skewed value system that suggests it’s perfectly okay to make another person’s life miserable, to feel powerful, even for a moment, at the expense of someone weaker. It’s up to adults—parents, teachers, entire communities—to take a stand, to say bullying is not okay, not ever, not by anyone! And that’s exactly what happens in Serenity when schoolteacher Laura Reed and pediatrician J. C. Fullerton realize a student is being bullied. Both Laura and J.C. have experienced the damaging effects of bullying, so what’s happening to Misty Dawson is personal and unacceptable. While there are often subtle messages tucked away in my stories, I hope the message in Catching Fireflies is loud and clear. There is nothing cute or normal or acceptable about bullying, whether it’s a toddler on the playground or a teenager using the internet to torment a classmate. Pay attention to what may be happening to your children, no matter how young or how old. Pay even closer attention to how they’re treating others. Bullying is wrong. It needs to stop. And alert parents and teachers and a united community can make that happen. I hope you’ll enjoy spending time with all the Sweet Magnolias once more, and that you’ll take their message—and mine—to heart. All best, Sherryl

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Thank you for a wonderful night, Ian. It’s the best night I’ve had in…years.” And then he heard her yawn. He didn’t move; couldn’t breathe. There was an odd sensation filling his chest, a gathering of moisture in his eyes. He wanted to say, No, thank you! But he couldn’t trust himself to form the words. She had no idea how it changed him inside—in his head and heart—just to have someone to talk to, to laugh with. The scrappiest little girl on the playground, like an angel come to draw him out, made him feel for the first time in such a long time, as if he was living instead of merely existing. It was a gift he was sure he didn’t deserve, especially after sealing himself off from the world as he had. And after trying to scare her away. Trouble

And though he would give anything to let Ture in, he knew better. He’d been down this bloody path too many times. As soon as his lovers realized that they could never supplant Darling in his heart, they turned on him with a justified hatred. Maris couldn’t help how he felt. Darling owned him. He always had. Even though they could and would never be anything more than best friends, Darling was his heart. He’d been there for Maris when no one else had. When the entire universe had slammed down on him and no one had cared, Darling, alone, had traversed hell itself to save Maris’s life. He shuttered every time he thought of where he’d be without his noble prince. If he’d even be alive. Sighing, he lifted himself out of the water to sit on the edge of the pool while Ture continued swimming. Memories surged as he reached for a towel. Even now, he could see Darling the day they’d met as tiny kids on a playground. Because

It turned out to be one of the best moments of my life. We may not always have a sense of belonging on the recess playground or at a big, fancy conference, but in that moment we knew that we belonged where it mattered the most—at home. Parenting perfection is not the goal. In fact, the best gifts—the best teaching moments—happen in those imperfect moments when we allow children to help us mind the gap.

Want to come over this weekend?’ I asked. ‘I can’t,’ she said. I didn’t like the way she didn’t look up from her phone while she talked. I was sure she was sending messages to Tracey, who, no doubt, was sending similar communiques right back. ‘Why are you being like this?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’ she said. She smiled a little and bit her lower lip. Her long blond braid dangled on her shoulder. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘I’m not doing anything.’ Something about the coyness in her face felt familiar. In that moment I recalled a pale redhead named Alison who had been Hanna’s best friend before me. This was years earlier, fourth grade, but I remembered the way Alison used to float toward us on the playground sometimes, how Hanna would ignore her while we practiced our tricks on the bars where there was room for only two. ‘I’m so sick of her,’ Hanna would say to me whenever she saw Alison approaching, and then she would look at Alison with the same fake smile that she was now using on me.

One parent was aghast at my suggestion that young children shouldn’t always win. She asked, “Are you saying I shouldn’t let my five-year-old win at chess each time we play? He’s just little.” I responded by asking her where she thought it best her child learn about not being the winner all the time. She contemplated this question and conceded that perhaps she did have a role to play in preparing her son for losing on the playground at school.

Hank liked to help people. He always had. Just as he’d always liked to protect people. Hank had been the kid on the playground that stepped up to the bullies, even if it got him a bloody nose or a black eye, even if he got detention. Hank had wanted to become a police officer when he grew up because he figured that it would just be the best job in the whole world to be a professional helper. A superhero. That’s not what the job had been, though. Not really. He had helped people, sure. But it took that terrible tragedy to make him realize that the ideals he held close, the ideals that governed his actions and behavior as an officer of the law, didn’t necessarily match up with the ideals of the institution at large, or with the institution’s history and legacy.

Dedicated to the Earth and Hope   Reality is where we are, Reality is who we are, Reality is what we are, Reality is always so near and never too far, It nestles as much in peace as much in war, And that is why it is important to know who we are, The inhabitants of the Earth where we are, Blessed with the warmth and life granting glow of a munificent star, That happens to be our reality in which we are, Whether we learn to bend it, Or stretch it, The realism of reality is where we always are; in an inescapable part of it. So let us not bend the reality, Because then roses will lose their beauty, And we as humans shall be deprived of our character and integrity, Let Saabir always find his rose and offer it to his beloved Hope, Even if time with reality does elope, Yet it always lies in a dimension of reality and hope, Let us all strive together to give Earth its second chance, For future generations a playground to feel loved and to romance, And then let reality get engrossed in its joyful dance, Where being trapped forever is an endless feeling of merriment, Because who knows what lies in that distant firmament, Our reality is Earth and it is a reality so permanent, Let us be the guardians of her soul, Let us protect it as a whole, And by doing so don’t you think we actually resurrect the reality of our own soul?

Just try your best, babe,” she said. “That’s the same thing Mrs. Williams’s contract says,” I complained. “How do I know what my best is?” “Your best is whatever you can do comfortably without having a breakdown.” She didn’t understand. According to my black-or-white view of the world, it wasn’t enough to do my best. I had to be perfect. To take care of my mother, to send her to college, I needed to eliminate all mistakes. Mistakes had led to our predicament—Grandma marrying Grandpa, Grandpa denying my mother’s wish to go to college, my mother marrying my father—and they continued to cost us. I needed to correct those mistakes by avoiding new ones, and by getting perfect grades, then getting into a perfect college, then a perfect law school, then suing my imperfect father. But with school getting harder, I couldn’t see how I was going to be perfect, and if I were imperfect, then my mother and Grandma would be disappointed with me, and I’d be no better than my father, and then my mother would sing and cry and peck at her calculator—this was how my mind raced on the playground as I watched the other kids playing tetherball.

The entire scene served as a reminder that the city was, at all times, on the verge of implosion. That we build endlessly without much foresight. That New York was bursting at the seams with money, but everything was done on the cheap. That it was the worst and best place to raise children. That the dangling construction worker who bore an uncanny resemblance to my father probably wasn’t part of a union and probably wasn’t from this country and probably had a child who would one day grow up to be middle class and queer and wary of doctors and playgrounds and any place where intentions might be suspect and that, despite his disposable income, he’d never truly enjoy his luxuries because even on planes he’d fear being trapped and he’d also fear the antiterrorism vigilantes that his distress and skin color might inspirit, and that no matter how much the experiences of father and son diverged, they would always be united by their outsider status.

Let me kiss you Irma! There in the middle, in the space between the light and dark, Let me love you in the corners bright, Where your heart beat is the mark, To guide me through the mist of time with all my might, Because my love it is you that spreads like brightness in my world, Where your memories cast everlasting light, On the darkest and desolate corners of my world, And then fills me with the spirit to fight, All my demons and my fears, Your simple look offers me endless joy, As my existence the drapery of your brightness wears, And I begin to foil life’s every ploy, To oust me from my dominion, that is mine, But little does it know one can never steal the scent from the rose, And your memories that enrich me, become my goldmine, Granting me courage that before the brightest flash of life, I may put up my best pose, So come let me bear you in my arms, Let me kiss you like the night kisses everything beyond those shadows, And as my heart with these beautiful feelings warms, Let me offer smiles to the life’s marooned widows, Who have moaned enough and grieved a lot, Let me kiss you and then wage the war, Between the right and the evil in the reality’s merciless plot, It may happen that then stars that seem too far, Would tumble from the skies, To bury the evil in the star dust, But let us tread with caution for haste is only good when catching flies, For lovers always do what they must, It is the destiny of love and maybe the price of the kiss, That we all pay for with our heart beats, So let me hold you in my arms and feel my real bliss, Before my fate confronts the destiny and my courage both of them meets, In the open playground of life and chance, Where the truthful and the valiant always wins, Because it is a well coordinated dance, Where one always has to win though it is a competition between the twins, So kiss me and wish for my victory, Because through me you shall win too, As we are cast in the life’s endless trajectory, Where there shall always be one constant Irma, that, I love you, So, let the stars bear witness to valour of love, And as you kiss me, let the stars tumble from the skies, Then let no one seek the Heavens above, Because for our love, our passions and joys, here is where a lover dies, And this is where Christ died, This is where crusades were waged, This is where goodness was promoted and this is where Judas lied, And this is where lovers are caged, So let our battles of love be fought here, For a kiss, for a warm embrace, for a sweet memory’s sake, Then as I see you and your beauty everywhere, Let me love you forever for love’s and my own sake, Tonight when the sky shall be lit with many a twinkling star, I shall wait under the open sky and the moonlight, And as my eyes behold their darling most star, We shall then be the shadows in the darkness secretly kissing our heart beats in the cover of the night. To cast particles of darkness and cover the moonlight, And make it a part of our own shadows, Then we shall create a romantic night, As we freely fleet across the night’s endless love meadows.

Every character I create begins with a personality trait or eccentricity and, like each of us, I add layers to the character – some good; some bad – until I have a multi-dimensional person who is real enough for the reader to believe they have met them or known someone just like them in real life. Some of these layers may be based on a trait I have recognised in someone I have known, whether it is a mum in the playground or a man I have sat next to on the train, but none of them are real people.

Does the winner take it all? 
 They say, in the end winner takes it all, The loser has to bear the despair and fall, The winner is there standing tall, And the loser is moving like shadow on the wall, While the winner is welcomed by the loud applause, The loser is still contemplating failure and its emotional clause, Where he feels time and life, in a state of pause, And is awakened by this thunderous applause, Not for him, today, not for him, And a feeling sad takes over him and he feels grim, The lights in the playground of life turn dim, And now nobody, just these faint lights and distant stars look at  him, He stares back at them in the darkness, With a sense of isolation a feeling of aloofness, And then a feeling a freshness and a look of brightness, Descends upon him amidst these moments of darkness, And he believes again, he hopes again, and he stands again, With the will not to surrender, and rise and gain, No matter how much the pain, His moment of applause, his winning moment, his new reign, Of triumph and endless glory, Where he will be the author of his success story, And he competes again, this time to win without seeking glory, Because there is always glory in the winner’s story, So, he runs and he runs, and reaches the finish line, He looks behind and claims, “today victory is mine!” For every failure something is always waiting, always there, the finish line, Only if you are willing to run again, compete again, and not let one  failure define, You, your life or your will to win, For winner may take it all, but he/she can never take your will to  win, The fish will swim, the fish will be happy as long as it manages to  flap its fin, So today let the winner take it all, but tomorrow if you have the will to win, you will win, Let them sing, “the winner takes it all,  The loser is bound to fall,” But the loser will rise again and stand tall, That is when everything else, except him shall lose and fall!

It is difficult to be understood, particularly when one thinks and lives gangastrotogati [like the flow of the river Ganges], among those who think and live differently, namely kurmagati [like the movements of a tortoise], or at best "froglike", mandeikagati [like the frog: staccato]- (I do everything to be "difficultly understood" myself!) - and one should be heartily grateful for the good will in some refinement of interpretation. But so far as "good friends" are concerned, those who are always too comfortable and believe they have a particular right as friends to a life of comfort, one does well to start by giving them a romper room and playground of misunderstanding: - one can thus laugh still; or else get rid of them altogether, these good friends - and laugh then also!

It is difficult to be understood, particularly when one thinks and lives gangastrotogati [like the flow of the river Ganges], among those who think and live differently, namely kurmagati [like the movements of a tortoise], or at best "froglike", mandeikagati [like the frog: staccato]— (I do everything to be "difficultly understood" myself!) — and one should be heartily grateful for the good will in some refinement of interpretation. But so far as "good friends" are concerned, those who are always too comfortable and believe they have a particular right as friends to a life of comfort, one does well to start by giving them a romper room and playground of misunderstanding: — one can thus laugh still; or else get rid of them altogether, these good friends — and laugh then also!

Oh, honey, "impossible" must be quaking in its boots 'cause we're here to crash its party! We're the dream-chasers, the rule-breakers, and the magic-makers. So, if you dare us to try, just watch us turn the impossible into our playground! Ready or not, here we come, turning dreams into reality, one witty step at a time!

The best way to make someone pay for their sins…is to strike when they least expect it.

Yard Apes!" yelled Ramona, her name for the sort of boys who always got the best balls, who were always first on the playground, and who chased their soccer balls through other people's hopscotch games.

Today, I’m marrying my best friend. I’m marrying the girl who was never afraid to pop life right in the nose when it dared to take her on. I’m marrying the girl who defended me on the playground and later kicked me in the ass when I needed it.

The worst thing about being a teacher is the mothers. These mothers think they know more than the experts, they think they know what’s best.

Anyhow, the Bible says all the former water in Egypt remained blood for (of course) seven days. I guess they had nothing but wine to drink and, in retrospect, it must have been some party! People stumbling drunkenly around, waking up in the wrong houses naked, little children all liquored up and falling off swings and slides and puking in the playgrounds, Uncle Tutmose drunkenly fucking a camel.

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told.

Best known as Glinda, the good witch in The Wizard of Oz (and as the wife of Ziegfeld), Billie Burke had a rosy, upbeat series promoting herself as “that bright morning star.” She portrayed a woman of uncertain age who would go out of her way to aid a bum in distress or help neighborhood kids get a playground. She constantly mixed metaphors, as in “Let sleeping dogs gather no moss,” and was well placed on Saturday mornings.

This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O’Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks. It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best – less trouble). Yet, despite all the mixing up, despite the fact that we have finally slipped into each other’s lives with reasonable comfort (like a man returning to his lover’s bed after a midnight walk), despite all this, it is still hard to admit that there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more Indian than the English. There are still young white men who are angry about that

When I finally escaped, I spotted Nicole with Daniel on the other side of the playground. He had an eighth-grader pinned to the grass, arm twisted behind his back. “Bully!” I shouted. Daniel glanced over and grinned. Then he let the kid--Travis Carling--go and got down on all fours so Travis could try the move on him. As Daniel gave instructions, Travis’s brother, Corey, made suggestions that had everyone within earshot laughing. Travis and Corey were Chief Carling’s sons. Dark haired, over six feet tall, big, and burly, Corey was the school’s second-best wrestler and boxer after Daniel. Also Daniel’s best guy buddy. I could only imagine what he was suggesting Travis do to Daniel while he had him pinned. It was drawing a crowd. Corey always did. He was one of those guys who can talk to anyone--and talk his way out of trouble, which in Corey’s case is a necessary survival skill.