Quotes Teachers Day Quotes

The Voice There is a voice inside of you That whispers all day long, "I feel this is right for me, I know that this is wrong." No teacher, preacher, parent, friend Or wise man can decide What's right for you--just listen to The voice that speaks inside.

What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.

When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness.

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements.

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, "May I have permission to go into battle with you?" Fear said, "Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission." Then the young warrior said, "How can I defeat you?" Fear replied, "My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power." In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.

There is no teacher equal to mother and there's nothing more contagious than the dignity of a father.

Any day that we are privileged to work at the chalk face is a good one," Van der Huffen replied dryly. "We should pay the Department for the privilege," Bruce Smith, Head Teacher Creative Arts and Languages, replied. "I believe that many of us have; the coin is sweat, fat, and tears.

Education is unfolding the wings of head and heart together. The job of a teacher is to push the students out of the nest to strengthen their wings.

The italian nanny was attempting to answer the teachers latest question when the moroccan student interupted, shouting "Excuse me, What is an easter?" it would seem that depsite having grown up in a muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean it," She said. " I have no idea what you people are talking about." The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain. The poles led the charge to the best of their ability. It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of god who call his self jesus and... oh shit." She faltered and her fellow country man came to her aid. He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two... morsels of... lumber." The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm. he die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father." he weared of himself the long hair and after he die. the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples." he Nice the jesus." he make the good things, and on the easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.

Though many non-Native Americans have learned very little about us, over time we have had to learn everything about them. We watch their films, read their literature, worship in their churches, and attend their schools. Every third-grade student in the United States is presented with the concept of Europeans discovering America as a "New World" with fertile soil, abundant gifts of nature, and glorious mountains and rivers. Only the most enlightened teachers will explain that this world certainly wasn't new to the millions of indigenous people who already lived here when Columbus arrived.

I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another [with sight and hearing]. Its people, scenery, manners, joys, and tragedies should be living tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom... But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of common day." Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college. The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures – solitude, books and imagination – outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.

He nodded toward the sub. "This is going to be a blow-off day." I dragged my mind away from magical intrigue. After being homeschooled for most of my life, some parts of the "normal" school world was a mystery. "What does that mean, exactly." "Usually teacher leave subs a lesson plan, telling them what to do. I saw Ms. Terwilliger left. It said, 'Distract them.

Poor Christopher-John had fallen into the hands of Miss. Daisy Crocker. I greatly sympathized him, but as in everything else, Christopher John tried to see the bright side in having to face such a shrew every morning. "Maybe she done changed," he said hopefully on the first day of school. However, when classes were over he was noticeably quiet. Well?" I asked him. He shrugged dejectedly and admitted, "She still the same.

As parents, guardians, teachers and school administrators, we should be giving our children better days, we are the outcome of their future, we are the pieces of the puzzle – pieces that restore their shattered confidence.

I still remember the day I got my first calculator Teacher: All right, children, welcome to fourth grade math. Everyone take a calculator out of the bin. Me: What are these? Teacher: From now on we'll be using calculators. Me: What do these things do? Teacher: Simple operations, like multiplication and division. Me: You mean this device just...does them? By itself? Teacher: Yes. You enter in the problem and press equal. Me: You...you knew about this machine all along, didn't you? This whole time, while we were going through this...this charade with the pencils and the line paper and the stupid multiplication tables!...I'm sorry for shouting...It's just...I'm a little blown away. Teacher: Okay, everyone, today we're going to go over some word problems. Me: What the hell else do you have back there? A magical pen that writes book reports by itself? Some kind of automatic social studies worksheet that...that fills itself out? What the hell is going on? Teacher: If a farmer farms five acres of land a day-- Me: So that's it, then. The past three years have been a total farce. All this time I've been thinking, "Well, this is pretty hard and frustrating but I guess these are useful skills to have." Meanwhile, there was a whole bin of these things in your desk. We could have jumped straight to graphing. Unless, of course, there's some kind of graphing calculator! Teacher: There is. You get one in ninth grade. Me: Is this...Am I on TV? Is this a prank show? Teacher: No.

An ordinary teacher teaches how to accumulate information. A good teacher teaches how to assimilate information. A great teacher teaches how to stand up and turn every challenge into opportunities. An extraordinary teacher teaches how to be larger than life by following your own dreams, own goals and own instincts.

Thomas looked like he was about to talk some smack at the malk, but only for a second. Then he frowned and said, "It's odd. You sound like...like a grade-school teacher." "Perhaps it is because I am speaking to a child," Cat Sith said. "The comparison is apt." Thomas blinked several times and then he looked at me. "Did the evil kitty just call me a child?

I'm a good girl. I'm a nice girl. I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and brother's shit and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died,after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father ever day on the telephone -- every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a big muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "Such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.

If you had to spend every second, of every day, of every year of your life with someone, would you do whatever it took to love that person? Would you be a best friend, a teacher, coach and mentor? Would you do whatever it takes to treat that person with respect? Well guess what? That someone is you! Who deserves the best more than you do? Think about it and have an outstanding day…!

Now anybody can be "kind." And everybody's supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn't help. Now it's just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class.

Distances and days existed in themselves then; they all had a story. They were not barriers. If a person wanted to get to the moon, there is a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions... on whether you knew the story of how others before you had gone. He had believed in the stories for a long time, until the teachers at Indian school taught him not to believe in that kind of "nonsense". But they had been wrong.

I thought about this for days, just as I thought of the special-ed teacher I met in Pittsburgh. "You know," I said, "I hear those words and automatically think Handicapped, or, Learning disabled. But aren't a lot of your students just assholes?" "You got it," she said. Then she told me about a kid - last day of class - who wrote on the blackboard, "Mrs. J____ is a cock master." I was impressed because I'd never heard that term before. She was impressed because the boy had spelled it correctly.

Etsuko was given the name Esther by her teacher, Mr. Slater, on her first day of school. "It's his mother's name," she explained. To which we replied, "So is yours.

How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of "accepting" Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him.

The storm you face is your teacher. The experience you gain is your lesson. The life you make from it all is your blessing. Always remember, the teacher teaches a lesson that becomes a blessing. Embrace the storm and watch your life change as you utilize the lesson. Your better days lie ahead...just hold on!

Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory," Gregory said, "It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good.

If an eagle is teaching you to fly, ignore the advice of turkeys.

On the path to greatness, life teaches you to walk with stones in your shoes.

Guess what? The Nazis didn't lose the war after all. They won it and flourished. They took over the world and wiped out every last Jew, every last Gypsy, black, East Indian, and American Indian. Then, when they were finished with that, they wiped out the Russians and the Poles and the Bohemians and the Moravians and the Bulgarians and the Serbians and the Croatians--all the Slavs. Then they started in on the Polynesians and the Koreans and the Chinese and the Japanese--all the peoples of Asia. This took a long, long time, but when it was all over, everyone in the world was one hundred percent Aryan, and they were all very, very happy. Naturally the textbooks used in the schools no longer mentioned any race but the Aryan or any language but German or any religion but Hitlerism or any political system but National Socialism. There would have been no point. After a few generations of that, no one could have put anything different into the textbooks even if they'd wanted to, because they didn't know anything different. But one day, two young students were conversing at the University of New Heidelberg in Tokyo. Both were handsome in the usual Aryan way, but one of them looked vaguely worried and unhappy. That was Kurt. His friend said, "What's wrong, Kurt? Why are you always moping around like this?" Kurt said, "I'll tell you, Hans. There is something that's troubling me--and troubling me deeply." His friend asked what it was. "It's this," Kurt said. "I cannot shake the crazy feeling that there is some small thing that we're being lied to about." And that's how the paper ended.' Ishmael nodded thoughtfully. 'And what did your teacher think of that?' 'He wanted to know if I had the same crazy feeling as Kurt. When I said I did, he wanted to know what I thought we were being lied to about. I said, 'How could I know? I'm no better off than Kurt.

No matter what, just let them write every day,even if you're not sure what to teach, just let them write. They'll do fine." -Lisa Cleaveland's words for her long-term substitute teacher.

These days, many well-meaning school districts bring together teachers, coaches, curriculum supervisors, and a cast of thousands to determine what skills your child needs to be successful. Once these "standards" have been established, pacing plans are then drawn up to make sure that each particular skill is taught at the same rate and in the same way to all children. This is, of course, absurd. It gets even worse when one considers the very real fact that nothing of value is learned permanently by a child in a day or two.

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

There was some kind of X-men emergency, so all the teachers were gone. This happens every now and then. It's one of the perks of having super heroes for your teachers - when the world is about to end (which is like at least twice a month), school gets canceled. Heck, three weeks ago there was a big chemistry final for the upperclassmen. Beast was the teacher - he's this big, burly guy who can do acrobatic stuff like a monkey, but he also happens to be a super-genius. He's, like, legendary for his tough finals, so there were kids walking through the halls, going, "Oh, God, please let Galactus try to eat the earth. Please please please let there be an alien invasion by the Skrulls!

My decision to become a teacher suddenly seemed even more appropriate. Life had just become that much more unpredictably precarious and ill-suited to long-term planning, and it felt that much more necessary to spread love and knowledge to those who would one day have to manage this messy and painful world of ours" Also in Zack Love's "Stories and Scripts: an Anthology

In one way, at least, our lives really are like movies. The main cast consists of your family and friends. The supporting cast is made up of neighbors, co-workers, teachers, and daily acquaintances. There are also bit players: the supermarket checkout girl with the pretty smile, the friendly bartender at the local watering hole, the guys you work out with at the gym three days a week. And there are thousands of extras --those people who flow through every life like water through a sieve, seen once and never again. The teenager browsing a graphic novel at Barnes & Noble, the one you had to slip past (murmuring "Excuse me") in order to get to the magazines. The woman in the next lane at a stoplight, taking a moment to freshen her lipstick. The mother wiping ice cream off her toddler's face in a roadside restaurant where you stopped for a quick bite. The vendor who sold you a bag of peanuts at a baseball game. But sometimes a person who fits none of these categories comes into your life. This is the joker who pops out of the deck at odd intervals over the years, often during a moment of crisis. In the movies this sort of character is known as the fifth business, or the chase agent. When he turns up in a film, you know he's there because the screenwriter put him there. But who is screenwriting our lives? Fate or coincidence? I want to believe it's the latter. I want that with all my heart and soul.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss. Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight. We've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together. For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers. And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them. I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it." There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." Thank you.

One day after the exams, the teachers sat at their desks correcting papers while the pupils read comics, played chess or cards or talked quietly in groups. Coulter at a desk in front of Thaw turned round and said, "What are ye reading?" Thaw showed a book of critical essays on art and literature. Coulter said accusingly, "You don't read that for fun." "Yes, I read it for fun." "People our age don't read that sort of book for fun. They read it to show they're superior." "But I read this sort of book even when there's nobody around to see me." "That shows you arenae trying to make us think you're superior, you're trying to make yourself think you're superior.

especially those of us who use magic on a regular basis, have to work the wards." "So hes basically blocking members of the Authority?" "Hounds use magic every day. Doctors, teachers." "Point taken. Good to know she's safe from evil magic-using teachers.

At age ten, I set out to find a Qur’an teacher who could open a gateway into this unknown world. Every other day after school I would ride the bus for an hour to study with a young African scholar for two-hour sessions. He sat opposite me cross-legged on the floor, our knees touching. I was captivated by the huge bookcases behind him laden with decorated Arabic tomes. My teacher placed a large blue book between us and began guiding me to read the opening chapter of the Qur’an. In our first session, it took two hours just to limp through the first line as I struggled to precisely pronounce the letters.

To teach you need books, to educate you need heart.

My mother is my teacher Her words make me richer I thank you oh my mother May you grow and live longer!

Learn more than others. Work more than others. Succeed more than others. Give more than others.

80% of teachers teach just to earn a salary. The rest of them teach purely to impart knowledge.

Alexander Hamilton Junior High School -- SEMESTER REPORT -- STUDENT: Joseph Margolis TEACHER: Janet Hicks ENGLISH: A, ARITHMETIC: A, SOCIAL STUDIES: A, SCIENCE: A, NEATNESS: A, PUNCTUALITY: A, PARTICIPATION: A, OBEDIENCE: D Teacher's Comments: Joseph remains a challenging student. While I appreciate his creativity, I am sure you will agree that a classroom is an inappropriate forum for a reckless imagination. There is not a shred of evidence to support his claim that Dolley Madison was a Lesbian, and even fewer grounds to explain why he even knows what the word means. Similarly, an analysis of the Constitutional Convention does not generate sufficient cause to initiate a two-hour classroom debate on what types of automobiles the Founding Fathers would have driven were they alive today. When asked on a subsequent examination, "What did Benjamin Franklin use to discover electricity?" eleven children responded "A Packard convertible". I trust you see my problem. [...] Janet Hicks Parent's Comments: As usual I am very proud of Joey's grades. I too was unaware that Dolley Madison was a Lesbian. I assumed they were all Protestants. Thank you for writing. Ida Margolis

The parental eye shed no tears when the time for leave-taking came; a half-rouble in copper coins was given to the boy by way of pocket-money and for sweets, and what is more important, the following admonition: "Mind now, Pavlusha, be diligent, don't fool or gad about, and above all please your teachers and superiors. If you please your superiors, then you will be popular and get ahead of everyone even if you lag behind in knowledge and talent. Don't be too friendly with the other boys, they will teach you no good; but if you do make friends, cultivate those who are better off and might be useful. Don't invite or treat anyone, but conduct yourself in such a way as to be treated yourself, and above all, take care of and save your pennies, that is the most reliable of all things. A comrade or friend will cheat you and be the first to put all the blame on you when in a fix, but the pennies won't betray you in any difficulty. With money you can do anything in the world." Having admonished his son thus, the father took leave of him and trundled off home on his 'magpie'. Though from that day the son never set eyes on him more, his words and admonitions had sunk deep into his soul.

Most peasants did not miss the school. "What's the point?" they would say. "You pay fees and read for years, and in the end you are still a peasant, earning your food with your sweat. You don't get a grain of rice more for being able to read books. Why waste time and money? Might as well start earning your work points right away." The virtual absence of any chance of a better future and the near total immobility for anyone born a peasant took the incentive out of the pursuit of knowledge. Children of school age would stay at home to help their families with their work or look after younger brothers and sisters. They would be out in the fields when they were barely in their teens. As for girls, the peasants considered it a complete waste of time for them to go to school. "They get married and belong to other people. It's like pouring water on the ground." The Cultural Revolution was trumpeted as having brought education to the peasants through 'evening classes." One day my production team announced it was starting evening classes and asked Nana and me to be the teachers. I was delighted. However, as soon as the first 'class' began, I realized that this was no education. The classes invariably started with Nana and me being asked by the production team leader to read out articles by Mao or other items from the People's Daily. Then he would make an hour-long speech consisting of all the latest political jargon strung together in undigested and largely unintelligible hunks. Now and then he would give special orders, all solemnly delivered in the name of Mao.

How angry am I? You don't want to know. Nobody wants to know about that. I'm a good girl, I'm a nice girl, I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and my brother's shit, and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died, after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father every day on the telephone -- every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a bit muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.

Rose's work of art took her all day, including two playtimes, story time, and most of lunch. At the end of school it was stolen from her by the wicked teacher who had pretended to be so interested. "Beautiful- what-is-it?" she asked as she pinned it high on the wall, where Rose could not reach. "They take your pictures," said Indigo,... when he finally made out what all the roaring and stamping was about. "They do take them.... Why do you want that picture so much?" he asked Rose. "It was my best ever," said Rose furiously. "I hate school. I hate everyone in it. I will kill them all when I'm big enough." "You can't just go round killing people," Indigo told her...

Though we were forbidden to speak anything but French, the teacher would occasionally use us to practice any of her five fluent languages. "I hate you," she said to me one afternoon. Her English was flawless. "I really, really hate you." Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help taking it personally.

In belief in what? In love with what? In hope for what?—There’s no doubt that these weak people—at some time or another they also want to be the strong people, some day their "kingdom" is to arrive—they call it simply "the kingdom of God" as I mentioned. People are indeed so humble about everything! Only to experience that, one has to live a long time, beyond death—in fact, people must have an eternal life, so they can also win eternal recompense in the "kingdom of God" for that earthly life "in faith, in love, in hope." Recompense for what? Recompense through what? In my view, Dante was grossly in error when, with an ingenuity inspiring terror, he set that inscription over the gateway into his hell:"Eternal love also created me." Over the gateway into the Christian paradise and its "eternal blessedness" it would, in any event, be more fitting to let the inscription stand "Eternal hate also created me"—provided it’s all right to set a truth over the gateway to a lie! For what is the bliss of that paradise? Perhaps we might have guessed that already, but it is better for it to be expressly described for us by an authority we cannot underestimate in such matters, Thomas Aquinas, the great teacher and saint: "In the kingdom of heaven" he says as gently as a lamb, "the blessed will see the punishment of the damned, so that they will derive all the more pleasure from their heavenly bliss.

Well, that's pretty much what the schools are like, I think: they reward discipline and obedience, and they punish independence of mind. If you happen to be a little innovative, or maybe you forgot to come to school one day because you were reading a book or something, that's a tragedy, that's a crime―because you're not supposed to think, you're supposed to obey, and just proceed through the material in whatever way they require. And in fact, most of the people who make it through the education system and get into the elite universities are able to do it because they've been willing to obey a lot of stupid orders for years and years―that's the way I did it, for example. Like, you're told by some stupid teacher, "Do this," which you know makes no sense whatsoever, but you do it, and if you do it you get to the next rung, and then you obey the next order, and finally you work your way through and they give you your letters: an awful lot of education is like that, from the very beginning. Some people go along with it because they figure, "Okay, I'll do any stupid thing that asshole says because I want to get ahead"; others do it because they've just internalized the values―but after a while, those two things tend to get sort of blurred. But you do it, or else you're out: you ask too many questions and you're going to get in trouble. Now, there are also people who don't go along-and they're called "behavior problems," or "unmotivated," or things like that. Well, you don't want to be too glib about it―there are children with behavior problems but a lot of them are just independent-minded, or don't like to conform, or just want to go their own way. And they get into trouble right from the very beginning, and are typically weeded out. I mean, I've taught young kids too, and the fact is there are always some who just don't take your word for it. And the very unfortunate tendency is to try to beat them down, because they're a pain in the neck. But what they ought to be is encouraged. Yeah: why take my word for it? Who the heck am I? Figure it out for yourself. That's what real education would be about, in fact.

A child's readiness for school depends on the most basic of all knowledge, how to learn. The report lists the seven key ingredients of this crucial capacity—all related to emotional intelligence:6 1. Confidence. A sense of control and mastery of one's body, behavior, and world; the child's sense that he is more likely than not to succeed at what he undertakes, and that adults will be helpful. 2. Curiosity. The sense that finding out about things is positive and leads to pleasure. 3. Intentionality. The wish and capacity to have an impact, and to act upon that with persistence. This is related to a sense of competence, of being effective. 4. Self-control. The ability to modulate and control one's own actions in age-appropriate ways; a sense of inner control. 5. Relatedness. The ability to engage with others based on the sense of being understood by and understanding others. 6. Capacity to communicate. The wish and ability to verbally exchange ideas, feelings, and concepts with others. This is related to a sense of trust in others and of pleasure in engaging with others, including adults. 7. Cooperativeness. The ability to balance one's own needs with those of others in group activity. Whether or not a child arrives at school on the first day of kindergarten with these capabilities depends greatly on how much her parents—and preschool teachers—have given her the kind of care that amounts to a "Heart Start," the emotional equivalent of the Head Start programs.

10 ways to raise a wild child. Not everyone wants to raise wild, free thinking children. But for those of you who do, here's my tips: 1. Create safe space for them to be outside for a least an hour a day. Preferable barefoot & muddy. 2. Provide them with toys made of natural materials. Silks, wood, wool, etc...Toys that encourage them to use their imagination. If you're looking for ideas, Google: 'Waldorf Toys'. Avoid noisy plastic toys. Yea, maybe they'll learn their alphabet from the talking toys, but at the expense of their own unique thoughts. Plastic toys that talk and iPads in cribs should be illegal. Seriously! 3. Limit screen time. If you think you can manage video game time and your kids will be the rare ones that don't get addicted, then go for it. I'm not that good so we just avoid them completely. There's no cable in our house and no video games. The result is that my kids like being outside cause it's boring inside...hah! Best plan ever! No kid is going to remember that great day of video games or TV. Send them outside! 4. Feed them foods that support life. Fluoride free water, GMO free organic foods, snacks free of harsh preservatives and refined sugars. Good oils that support healthy brain development. Eat to live! 5. Don't helicopter parent. Stay connected and tuned into their needs and safety, but don't hover. Kids like adults need space to roam and explore without the constant voice of an adult telling them what to do. Give them freedom! 6. Read to them. Kids don't do what they are told, they do what they see. If you're on your phone all the time, they will likely be doing the same thing some day. If you're reading, writing and creating your art (painting, cooking...whatever your art is) they will likely want to join you. It's like Emilie Buchwald said, "Children become readers in the laps of their parents (or guardians)." - it's so true! 7. Let them speak their truth. Don't assume that because they are young that you know more than them. They were born into a different time than you. Give them room to respectfully speak their mind and not feel like you're going to attack them. You'll be surprised what you might learn. 8. Freedom to learn. I realize that not everyone can homeschool, but damn, if you can, do it! Our current schools system is far from the best ever. Our kids deserve better. We simply can't expect our children to all learn the same things in the same way. Not every kid is the same. The current system does not support the unique gifts of our children. How can they with so many kids in one classroom. It's no fault of the teachers, they are doing the best they can. Too many kids and not enough parent involvement. If you send your kids to school and expect they are getting all they need, you are sadly mistaken. Don't let the public school system raise your kids, it's not their job, it's yours! 9. Skip the fear based parenting tactics. It may work short term. But the long term results will be devastating to the child's ability to be open and truthful with you. Children need guidance, but scaring them into listening is just lazy. Find new ways to get through to your kids. Be creative! 10. There's no perfect way to be a parent, but there's a million ways to be a good one. Just because every other parent is doing it, doesn't mean it's right for you and your child. Don't let other people's opinions and judgments influence how you're going to treat your kid. Be brave enough to question everything until you find what works for you. Don't be lazy! Fight your urge to be passive about the things that matter. Don't give up on your kid. This is the most important work you'll ever do. Give it everything you have.

What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.” ―One Day

Another thing your teachers didn't tell you is that one day, arguments over whether or not to capitalize the word internet would constitute half your workday and lead to severed ties with many people you once considered close friends and family.

Consider now the primal scene of education in the modern elementary school. Let us assume that a teacher wishes to inform a class of some 20 pupils about the structure of atoms, and that she plans to base the day's instruction on an analogy with the solar system. She knows that the instruction will be effective only to the extent that all the students in the class already know about the solar system. A good teacher would probably try to find out. 'Now, class, how many of you know about the solar system?' Fifteen hands go up. Five stay down. What is a teacher to do in this typical circumstance in the contemporary American school? "If he or she pauses to explain the solar system, a class period is lost, and 15 of the 20 students are bored and deprived of knowledge for that day. If the teacher plunges ahead with atomic structure, the hapless five—they are most likely to be poor or minority students—are bored, humiliated and deprived, because they cannot comprehend the teacher's explanation.

Progress is hardly ever dramatic; in fact, it is usually very slow. As every parent and teacher knows, education is never a matter of ten-step plans or quick formulas, but of faithful commitment to the mundane challenges of daily life: getting up from the sofa to spend time with our children, loving them and disciplining them, becoming involved in their lives at school and, most important, making sure they have a wholesome family life to return to at home. Maybe that is why Jesus teaches us to ask for strength little by little, on a daily basis - "Give us this day our daily bread" - and why he stresses the significance of even the smallest, humblest beginnings: "Wherever two of you agree about anything you ask for, it shall be done for you... For where two or three come together in my name, I shall be with them" (Mt. 18:19-20).

This was during a period in my reading life when I was given to understand that "relating" to the fictional characters or situation was of prime importance, and so I read, I'm sorry to say, narrowly, frugally, unadventurously, as though I had no interest in the greater world and no desire to experience other cycles of thinking and being. This idea of "relating", or identifying, was encouraged by my teachers and even, I believe, by the critical theories of the day. Naive as it may sound, one read fiction in order to confirm the reality of one's experience.

One day, the lotus spoke again. "You remember me? The flower that grows through the mud?" I did. I said as much. "Have you ever considered my significance? I'm everywhere - art, religion, nature.... Have you ever wondered why?" ... It spoke, "Nothing touches me. I radiate beauty. You can do the same." "How?" I asked. "Easy," it said. "I grow in a pond. I take the water and nutrients I need to grow, and let the rest sink to the bottom. What's in mud, anyway? Water, nutrients, life and a little bit of sludge. Let the sludge go like I do. Then stand tall above the leaves.

I know that the best time to see them is in that perfect hour before sunset when the sun sinks low on the horizon like a ripe peach and sends shafts of gold bursting through the trees. The "in between," I call it. No longer day, not yet night; some other place and time when magic hangs in the air and the light plays tricks on the eye. You might easily miss the flash of violet and emerald, but I- according to my teacher, Mrs. Hogan- am "a curiously observant child." I see their misty forms among the flowers and leaves. I know my patience will be rewarded if I watch and listen, if I believe.

And whether or not the educators who are trying to raise up America's students can actually set and meet higher academic standards, our cultural values make their job next to impossible. It's so much easier for pundits and politicians to point out figures and blame the people who are in the trenches every day than it is to get in there with them, or even to find out what actually goes on in those trenches. It's so much easier for parents to blame teachers when their kids get in trouble than to do the heavy lifting required at home to keep kids on track. And it's so much easier for us as a nation to cross our fingers and hope that we'll "get lucky" with the innovative "solutions" being tested on America's schools today than it is for us to roll up our sleeves and invest our own time, talent, and money in the schools that are even now-- with or without us-- shaping our nation's future.

There are people who say, 'Well, your name is also about patriarchy because it is your father's name.' Indeed. But the point is simply this: whether it came from my father or from the moon, it is the name that I have had since I was born, the name with which I travelled my life's milestones, the name I have answered to since the first day I went to kindergarten in Nsukka on a hazy morning and my teacher said, 'Answer "present" if you hear your name. Number one: Adichie!'.

Will non-English-speaking students start speaking English because their teachers were fired? Will children come to school ready to learn because their teachers were fired? It would be good if our nation's education leaders recognized that teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter, including the students' effort, the family's encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of poverty. A blogger called "Mrs. Mimi" wrote the other day that we fire teachers because "we can't fire poverty." Since we can't fire poverty, we can't fire students, and we can't fire families, all that is left is to fire teachers.

Years ago when I served as a missionary, we had a visit from Dr. James E. Talmage of the Council of the Twelve--a great student, a great teacher, great theologian, and a great prophet.. Here we sat at his feet every idle minute that we could find and plied him with questions and listened to his counsel. On one occasion he said to us, "I want to tell you missionaries something. The day of sacrifice is not past! The time will come, yet, when many Saints and even Apostles will yet lose their lives in defense of the truth!

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide. (Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?) Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other. In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own. I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel. Is there a tunnel?" he said.

Finally I had made that necessary imaginative leap - which is a real necessity, since most of us writers can't be out there living like crazy all the time. These days, very few are the writers whose book jackets list things like bush pilot, big game hunter, or exotic dancer. No, more often we are English teachers. We have children, we have mortgages, we have bills to pay. So we have to stop writing strictly about what we know, which is what they always told us to do in creative writing classes. Instead, we have to write about what we can learn, and what we can imagine, and thus we come to experience that great pleasure Anne Tyler noted when somebody asked her why she writes, and she answered, "I write because I want more than one life.

Silence is not always complacency. It is contemplation and forethought taking place in the minds of those who would be careful with their words and actions, unwilling to contribute to negativity that is fed by rashly-spoken comments. Quiet contemplation is a powerful tool for change because those thoughts, though silent, become actions built on conscientious pondering. Those actions then become examples. And quiet example is the greatest teacher, the most effective behavior modification tool of all. I am not listening to what you say half as closely as I am watching what you do. Think about that.

The first school shooting that attracted the attention of a horrified nation occurred on March 24, 1998, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Two boys opened fire on a schoolyard full of girls, killing four and one female teacher. In the wake of what came to be called the Jonesboro massacre, violence experts in media and academia sought to explain what others called “inexplicable.” For example, in a front-page Boston Globe story three days after the tragedy, David Kennedy from Harvard University was quoted as saying that these were “peculiar, horrible acts that can’t easily be explained.” Perhaps not. But there is a framework of explanation that goes much further than most of those routinely offered. It does not involve some incomprehensible, mysterious force. It is so straightforward that some might (incorrectly) dismiss it as unworthy of mention. Even after a string of school shootings by (mostly white) boys over the past decade, few Americans seem willing to face the fact that interpersonal violence—whether the victims are female or male—is a deeply gendered phenomenon. Obviously both sexes are victimized. But one sex is the perpetrator in the overwhelming majority of cases. So while the mainstream media provided us with tortured explanations for the Jonesboro tragedy that ranged from supernatural “evil” to the presence of guns in the southern tradition, arguably the most important story was overlooked. The Jonesboro massacre was in fact a gender crime. The shooters were boys, the victims girls. With the exception of a handful of op-ed pieces and a smattering of quotes from feminist academics in mainstream publications, most of the coverage of Jonesboro omitted in-depth discussion of one of the crucial facts of the tragedy. The older of the two boys reportedly acknowledged that the killings were an act of revenge he had dreamed up after having been rejected by a girl. This is the prototypical reason why adult men murder their wives. If a woman is going to be murdered by her male partner, the time she is most vulnerable is after she leaves him. Why wasn’t all of this widely discussed on television and in print in the days and weeks after the horrific shooting? The gender crime aspect of the Jonesboro tragedy was discussed in feminist publications and on the Internet, but was largely absent from mainstream media conversation. If it had been part of the discussion, average Americans might have been forced to acknowledge what people in the battered women’s movement have known for years—that our high rates of domestic and sexual violence are caused not by something in the water (or the gene pool), but by some of the contradictory and dysfunctional ways our culture defines “manhood.” For decades, battered women’s advocates and people who work with men who batter have warned us about the alarming number of boys who continue to use controlling and abusive behaviors in their relations with girls and women. Jonesboro was not so much a radical deviation from the norm—although the shooters were very young—as it was melodramatic evidence of the depth of the problem. It was not something about being kids in today’s society that caused a couple of young teenagers to put on camouflage outfits, go into the woods with loaded .22 rifles, pull a fire alarm, and then open fire on a crowd of helpless girls (and a few boys) who came running out into the playground. This was an act of premeditated mass murder. Kids didn’t do it. Boys did.

I remember one teacher there -- I can't recall her name now. She was short and spare, and I remember her eager jutting chin. Quite unexpectedly one day (in the middle, I think, of an arithmetic lesson) she suddenly launched forth on a speech on life and religion. "All of you," she said, "every one of you -- will pass through a time when you will face despair. If you never face despair, you will never have faced, or become, a Christian, or known a Christian life. To be a Christian you must face and accept the life that Christ faced and lived; you must enjoy things as he enjoyed things; be as happy as he was at the marriage at Canaan, know the peace and happiness that it means to be in harmony with God and with God's will. But you must also know, as he did, what it means to be alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, to feel that all your friends have forsaken you, that those you love and trust have turned away from you, and that God Himself has forsaken you. Hold on then to the belief that that is not the end. If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life." She then returned to the problems of compound interest ...

I can see that your thoughts are deeper than you yourself are able to express. But since this is so, you know, don't you, that you've never lived what you are thinking and that isn't good. Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think." This went straight to my heart. "But there are forbidden and ugly things in the world!" I almost shouted. "You can't deny that. And they are forbidden, and we must renounce them. Of course I know that murder and all kinds of vices exist in the world but should I become a criminal just because they exist?" "We won't be able to find all the answers today," Max soothed me. "Certainly you shouldn't go kill somebody or rape a girl, no! But you haven't reached the point where you can understand the actual meaning of 'permitted' and 'forbidden.' You've only sensed part of the truth. You will feel the other part, too, you can depend on it. For instance, for about a year you have had to struggle with a drive that is stronger than any other and which is considered 'forbidden.' The Greeks and many other peoples, on the other hand, elevated this drive, made it divine and celebrated it in great feasts. What is forbidden, in other words, is not something eternal; it can change. Anyone can sleep with a woman as soon as he's been to a pastor with her and has married her, yet other races do it differently, even nowadays. That is why each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden -forbidden for him. It's possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa. Actually it's only a question of convenience. Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them; things are forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and other things are allowed to them that are generally despised. Each person must stand on his own feet.

Much of Chinese society still expected its women to hold themselves in a sedate manner, lower their eyelids in response to men's stares, and restrict their smile to a faint curve of the lips which did not expose their teeth. They were not meant to use hand gestures at all. If they contravened any of these canons of behavior they would be considered 'flirtatious." Under Mao, flirting with./bre/gners was an unspeakable crime. I was furious at the innuendo against me. It had been my Communist parents who had given me a liberal upbringing. They had regarded the restrictions on women as precisely the sort of thing a Communist revolution should put an end to. But now oppression of women joined hands with political repression, and served resentment and petty jealousy. One day, a Pakistani ship arrived. The Pakistani military attache came down from Peking. Long ordered us all to spring-clean the club from top to bottom, and laid on a banquet, for which he asked me to be his interpreter, which made some of the other students extremely envious. A few days later the Pakistanis gave a farewell dinner on their ship, and I was invited. The military attache had been to Sichuan, and they had prepared a special Sichuan dish for me. Long was delighted by the invitation, as was I. But despite a personal appeal from the captain and even a threat from Long to bar future students, my teachers said that no one was allowed on board a foreign ship. "Who would take the responsibility if someone sailed away on the ship?" they asked. I was told to say I was busy that evening. As far as I knew, I was turning down the only chance I would ever have of a trip out to sea, a foreign meal, a proper conversation in English, and an experience of the outside world. Even so, I could not silence the whispers. Ming asked pointedly, "Why do foreigners like her so much?" as though there was something suspicious in that. The report filed on me at the end of the trip said my behavior was 'politically dubious." In this lovely port, with its sunshine, sea breezes, and coconut trees, every occasion that should have been joyous was turned into misery. I had a good friend in the group who tried to cheer me up by putting my distress into perspective. Of course, what I encountered was no more than minor unpleasantness compared with what victims of jealousy suffered in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. But the thought that this was what my life at its best would be like depressed me even more. This friend was the son of a colleague of my father's. The other students from cities were also friendly to me. It was easy to distinguish them from the students of peasant backgrounds, who provided most of the student officials.

The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say "My daughter is a nurse," or "My daughter is a school teacher," or even, "My daughter is a chemical engineer." You could not say, "My daughter is a philosopher." That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans. All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading. Sometimes she went for walks but she didn't like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men. She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

No one really just wakes up one day and decides to love themselves. It’s also rare for someone to be taught how to have self-love (unless you have a very self-aware parent, guardian or teacher in your youth). The choice is usually only made right after a significant moment. This is the moment I call the “Breakdown to Breakthrough.” There are typically tears, yelling, screaming (probably mostly to the air, or God, or the Universe—whatever you like to call it), or sometimes it can be a very deep and serious, “I’ve had enough, I can no longer live like this” moment.

You are not a hot mess or hopeless cause just because you're scared or out of sorts. We cannot hang up on the call for courage that speed dials us every day. If facing the simultaneous brokenness and possibility of living were easy, we wouldn't need therapists, besties, teachers, scientists, coaches, healers, artists, and comedians nudging us to critically think, take agency, be more self-compassionate, see our humanity, and stop taking ourselves and our so-called "failures" so seriously. "Failure" is how we learn and grow. Community and solidarity are how we heal.

We are supposed to consume alcohol and enjoy it, but we're not supposed to become alcoholics. Imagine if this were the same with cocaine. Imagine we grew up watching our parents snort lines at dinner, celebrations, sporting events, brunches, and funerals. We'd sometimes (or often) see our parents coked out of our minds the way we sometimes (or often) see them drunk. We'd witness them coming down after a cocaine binge the way we see them recovering from a hangover. Kiosks at Disneyland would see it so our parents could make it through a day of fun, our mom's book club would be one big blow-fest and instead of "mommy juice" it would be called "mommy powder" There'd be coke-tasting parties in Napa and cocaine cellars in fancy people's homes, and everyone we know (including our pastors, nurses, teachers, coaches, bosses) would snort it. The message we'd pick up as kids could be Cocaine is great, and one day you'll get to try it, too! Just don't become addicted to it or take it too far. Try it; use it responsibly. Don't become a cocaine-oholic though. Now, I'm sure you're thinking. That's insane, everyone knows cocaine is far more addicting than alcohol and far more dangerous. Except, it's not...The point is not that alcohol is worse than cocaine. The point is that we have a really clear understanding that cocaine is toxic and addictive. We know there's no safe amount of it, no such thing as "moderate" cocaine use; we know it can hook us and rob us of everything we care about...We know we are better off not tangling with it at all.

My name is Lev," said Lev. "My name is Lydia," said the woman. And they shook hands, Lev's hand holding the scrunched-up kerchief and Lydia's hand rough with salt and smelling of egg, and then Lev asked, "What are you planning to do in En gland?" and Lydia said, "I have some interviews in London for jobs as a translator." "That sounds promising." "I hope so. I was a teacher of English at School 237 in Yarbl, so my language is very colloquial." Lev looked at Lydia. It wasn't difficult to imagine her standing in front of a class and writing words on a blackboard. He said, "I wonder why you're leaving our country when you had a good job at School 237 in Yarbl?" "Well," said Lydia, "I became very tired of the view from my window. Every day, summer and winter, I looked out at the schoolyard and the high fence and the apartment block beyond, and I began to imagine I would die seeing these things, and I didn't want this. I expect you understand what I mean?

The list of correlations to that night is as long as the Jersey coast. And so is the list of reasons I shouldn't be looking forward to seeing him at school. But I can't help it. He's already texted me three times this morning: Can I pick you up for school? and Do u want 2 have breakfast? and R u getting my texts? My thumbs want to answer "yes" to all of the above, but my dignity demands that I don't answer at all. He called my his student. He stood there alone with me on the beach and told me he thinks of me as a pupil. That our relationship is platonic. And everyone knows what platonic means-rejected. Well, I might be his student, but I'm about to school, him on a few things. The first lesson of the day is Silent Treatment 101. So when I see him in the hall, I give him a polite nod and brush right by him. The zap from the slight contact never quite fades, which mean he's following me. I make it to my locker before his hand is on my arm. "Emma." The way he whispers my name sends goose bumps all the way to my baby toes. But I'm still in control. I nod to him, dial the combination to my locker, then open it in his face. He moves back before contact. Stepping around me, he leans his hand against the locker door and turns me around to face him. "That's not very nice." I raise my best you-started-this brow. He sighs. "I guess that means you didn't miss me." There are so many things I could pop off right now. Things like, "But at least I had Toraf to keep my company" or "You were gone?" Or "Don't feel bad, I didn't miss my calculus teacher either." But the goal is to say nothing. So I turn around. I transfer books and papers between my locker and backpack. As I stab a pencil into my updo, his breath pushes against my earlobe when he chuckles. "So your phone's not broken; you just didn't respond to my texts." Since rolling my eyes doesn't make a sound, it's still within the boundaries of Silent Treatment 101. So I do this while I shut my locker. As I push past him, he grabs my arm. And I figure if stomping on his toe doesn't make a sound... "My grandmother's dying," he blurts. Commence with the catching-Emma-off-guard crap. How can I continue Silent Treatment 101 after that? He never mentioned his grandmother before, but then again, I never mentioned mine either. "I'm sorry, Galen." I put my hand on his, give it a gentle squeeze. He laughs. Complete jackass. "Conveniently, she lives in a condo in Destin and her dying request is to meet you. Rachel called your mom. We're flying out Saturday afternoon, coming back Sunday night. I already called Dr. Milligan." "Un-freaking-believable.

I don’t know why—it’s just that—I don’t know—they’re not kin."—Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin—sounds like hillbilly talk—not of a kind—same root—kindness, too—they can’t have real kindness toward him, they’re not his kin -- . That’s exactly the feeling. Old word, so ancient it’s almost drowned out. What a change through the centuries. Now anybody can be "kind." And everybody’s supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn’t help. Now it’s just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class. But what do they really know about kindness who are not kin.

Dr. Mary Atwater's story was so inspiring. Growing up, Dr. Atwater had a dream to one day be a teacher. But as a black person in the American South during the 1950s, she didn't have many great educational opportunities. It didn't help that she was also a girl, and a girl who loved science, since many believed that science was a subject only for men. Well, like me, she didn't listen to what others said. And also like me, Dr. Atwater had a father, Mr. John C. Monroe, who believed in her dreams and saved money to send her and her siblings to college. She eventually got a PhD in science education with a concentration in chemistry. She was an associate director at New Mexico State University and then taught physical science and chemistry at Fayetteville State University. She later joined the University of Georgia, where she still works as a science education researcher. Along the way, she began writing science books, never knowing that, many years down the road, one of those books would end up in Wimbe, Malawi, and change my life forever. I'd informed Dr. Atwater that the copy of Using Energy I'd borrowed so many times had been stolen (probably by another student hoping to get the same magic), so that day in Washington, she presented me with my own copy, along with the teacher's edition and a special notebook to record my experiments. "Your story confirms my belief in human beings and their abilities to make the world a better place by using science," she told me. "I'm happy that I lived long enough to see that something I wrote could change someone's life. I'm glad I found you." And for sure, I'm also happy to have found Dr. Atwater.

Secondly, it is the very nature of spiritual life to grow. Wherever they principle of this life is to be found, it can be no different for it must grow. "But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Prov. 4:18); "The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger" (Job 17:9). This refers to the children of GOd, who are compared to palm and cedar trees (Psa. 92:12). As natural as it is for children and trees to grow, so natural is growth for the regenerated children of God. Thirdly, the growth of His children is the goal and objective God has in view by administering the means of grace to them. "And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints...that we henceforth be no more children...but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head" (Eph. 4:11-15). This is also to be observed in 1 Peter 2:2: "as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby, " God will reach His goal and His word will not return to Him void; thus God's children will grow in grace. Fourthly, is is the duty to which God's children are continually exhorted, and their activity is to consist in a striving for growth. That it is their duty is to be observed in the following passages: "But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18); "He that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still" (Rev. 22:11). The nature of this activity is expressed as follows: "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after" (Phil. 3:12). If it were not necessary for believers to grow the exhortations to that end would be in vain. Some remain feeble, having but little life and strength. this can be due to a lack of nourishment, living under a barren ministry, or being without guidance. It can also be that they naturally have a slow mind and a lazy disposition; that they have strong corruptions which draw them away; that they are without much are without much strife; that they are too busy from early morning till late evening, due to heavy labor, or to having a family with many children, and thus must struggle or are poverty-stricken. Furthermore, it can be that they either do not have the opportunity to converse with the godly; that they do not avail themselves of such opportunities; or that they are lazy as far as reading in God's Word and prayer are concerned. Such persons are generally subject to many ups and downs. At one time they lift up their heads out of all their troubles, by renewal becoming serious, and they seek God with their whole heart. It does not take long, however , and they are quickly cast down in despondency - or their lusts gain the upper hand. Thus they remain feeble and are, so to speak, continually on the verge of death. Some of them occasionally make good progress, but then grieve the Spirit of God and backslide rapidly. For some this lasts for a season, after which they are restored, but others are as those who suffer from consumption - they languish until they die. Oh what a sad condition this is! (Chapter 89. Spiritual Growth, pg. 140, 142-143)

It was a happy day when I discovered that in the English of Chaucer's day - which was also the time of the Black Death - the word "silly" meant "blessed." I am not sure when we strayed away from its original meaning, when blessedness took on a churchy aura and silliness became the realm of Monty Python and fourth-grade eschatological humor. As hard-working adults we too often lose the gift for letting go, for delight in simply being. We persuade ourselves that every moment must be lived productively; like the busy little bee, we feel a holy obligation to improve each shining hour. We would do well to take very small children or big silly dogs as our teachers. I have learned much about holy uselessness form Perry, the dog...

Next week is Negro History Week," said Simple. "And how much Negro history do you know?" "Why should I know Negro history?" I replied. "I am an American." "But you are also a black man," said Simple, "and you did not come over on the Mayflower—at least, not the same Mayflower as the rest." "What rest?" I asked. "The rest who make up the most," said Simple, "then write the history books and leave us out, or else put in the books nothing but prize fighters and ballplayers. Some folks think Negro history begins and ends with Jackie Robinson." "Not quite," I said. "Not quite is right," said Simple. "Before Jackie there was Du Bois and before him there was Booker T. Washington, and before him was Frederick Douglass and before Douglass the original Freedom Walker, Harriet Tubman, who were a lady. Before her was them great Freedom Fighters who started rebellions in the South long before the Civil War. By name they was Gabriel and Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey." "When, how, and where did you get all that information at once?" I asked. "From my wife, Joyce," said Simple. "Joyce is a fiend for history. She belongs to the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Also Joyce went to school down South. There colored teachers teach children about our history. It is not like up North where almost no teachers teach children anything about themselves and who they is and where they come from out of our great black past which were Africa in the old days.

The most sensitive period of their developmental age, when the kids are supposed to be taught to question everything and nourish their reasoning skills, they are taught that God created the world in seven days – that the human race did not evolve from apes through millions of years, rather it came from the amorous congress between two God-made humans, named Adam and Eve. And if you ask why? The answers of the uneducated primordial teachers would be that the scriptures say so. And now if you ask, can’t the scriptures be wrong – do I have to take these stories literally? They would lash out with rage and shout at you – how dare you question the scriptures! Every single word in it is true. There is no greater truth than the truth of these sacred texts.

I was never a child; I never had a childhood. I cannot count among my memories warm, golden days of childish intoxication, long joyous hours of innocence, or the thrill of discovering the universe anew each day. I learned of such things later on in life from books. Now I guess at their presence in the children I see. I was more than twenty when I first experienced something similar in my self, in chance moments of abandonment, when I was at peace with the world. Childhood is love; childhood is gaiety; childhood knows no cares. But I always remember myself, in the years that have gone by, as lonely, sad, and thoughtful. Ever since I was a little boy I have felt tremendously alone―and "peculiar". I don't know why. It may have been because my family was poor or because I was not born the way other children are born; I cannot tell. I remember only that when I was six or seven years old a young aunt of mind called me vecchio―"old man," and the nickname was adopted by all my family. Most of the time I wore a long, frowning face. I talked very little, even with other children; compliments bored me; baby-talk angered me. Instead of the noisy play of the companions of my boyhood I preferred the solitude of the most secluded corners of our dark, cramped, poverty-stricken home. I was, in short, what ladies in hats and fur coats call a "bashful" or a "stubborn" child; and what our women with bare heads and shawls, with more directness, call a rospo―a "toad." They were right. I must have been, and I was, utterly unattractive to everybody. I remember, too, that I was well aware of the antipathy I aroused. It made me more "bashful," more "stubborn," more of a "toad" than ever. I did not care to join in the games played by other boys, but preferred to stand apart, watching them with jealous eyes, judging them, hating them. It wasn't envy I felt at such times: it was contempt; it was scorn. My warfare with men had begun even then and even there. I avoided people, and they neglected me. I did not love them, and they hated me. At play in the parks some of the boys would chase me; others would laugh at me and call me names. At school they pulled my curls or told the teachers tales about me. Even on my grandfather's farm in the country peasant brats threw stones at me without provocation, as if they felt instinctively that I belonged to some other breed.

Original sin is a self-initiating act because it evidences human free will. If humanity were devoid of free will, it would relegate humankind to living by instinct. A person who lives by instinct might survive for an enviable period, but they will never live a heroic existence. Every hero’s story commences with an unsatisfied and optimistic person venturing out from the comfortable confines of their common day world, facing forces of fabulous power, and fighting a magnificent personal battle. The greatest traditional heroes were warriors whom survived on the battlefield and learned valuable lessons of honor, love, loyalty, and courage. Heroic warriors and spiritual seekers undertook a rigorous quest, an enduring ordeal that enabled them to transcend their own personhood’s shallow desire merely to survive. By enduring hardships, experiencing breathtaking encounters with the physical world, and undergoing a spiritual renaissance, the hero gains a hard-won sense self-discovery, comprehends his or her place in society, and accepts their role as a teacher. A hero is a bearer of light, wisdom, and charity. The hero reenters society and shares their culmination of knowledge by devoting their life to teaching other people.

I received comments on how extraordinary it was that I could keep up speaking for exactly 45 minutes. Indeed, in an age of soundbites lasting some seconds and of quick quotes in the news, all those minutes do seem like an eternity, easy to get lost in. Yet, wait a moment. Television is not the only place where speeches are given. Some hundred thousand teachers teach every day. They all speak 45 minutes, more times a day. They have been doing this for years. Every teacher knows exactly when the time will be over and that by then his speech will need to come to a natural end. It is this tension that determines the success of a lesson. It is a sign of the times that we forget these daily achievements in education. A million students daily attend several ‘live’ lectures and this in secondary education alone. These are high ratings!

What shapes the best in us dies when the best education dies! The best in us shall always be undermined when they that are responsible for shaping the best in us are always undermined! I stand for a different education: a different education where students will not just learn books but life! I stand for a different education: a different education where students will not just learn moral principles, but they shall be living examples of moral principles. I stand for a different education: a different education where students don’t just understand what they learn, but practice what they learn with understanding! I stand for a different education: a different education where students will not just learn about people of different beliefs, culture and backgrounds, but how to live with people who don’t share common perspective with them and know how to show their emotions of bitterness and misunderstanding rightly! I stand for a different education: a different education where students will be perfect ambassadors’ of God on earth and live their daily lives with all due diligence! I stand for a different education: a different education where students will understand why we all breathe the same air, sleep and wake up each day in the same manner to continue the journey of life! I stand for a different education: a different education where students will learn with inspiration even in their desperations! I stand for a different education: a different education where teachers are seen as true epitome of education! I stand for a different education: a different education in which the value of the teacher is well understood and the teacher is well valued as a treasure! I stand for a different education: a different education where students will not just learn, but they will reproduce great and noble things with what they learn! I stand for a different education: a different education where students will understand the real meaning of integrity and responsibility and with true courage and humility be that as such! I stand for a different education: a different education where education means creativity! Education is the spine of every nation! The better the education, the better the nation! The mediocre the education, the mediocre the nation! A good nation is good because of how education has shaped the perspective and understanding of the populace! A nation that does not know where it is heading towards must ask the machine that produces the populace who drive the nation: education! Until we fix our education, we shall always have a wrong education and we shall always see a wrong nation!

Remember? Remember what?" "Everything," she said. "And anything. Don't you go through a day without remembering something of it, and tucking that memory away like a treasure. Because it is. And memories are sweet doors, Cory. They're teachers and friends and disciplinarians. When you look at something, don't just look. See it. Really, really see it. See it so when you write it down, somebody else can see it, too. It's easy to walk through life deaf, dumb, and blind, Cory. Most everybody you know or ever meet will. They'll walk through a parade of wonders, and they'll never hear a peep of it. But you can live a thousand lifetimes if you want to. You can talk to people you'll never set eyes on, in lands you'll never visit." She nodded, watching my face. "And if you're good and you're lucky and you have something worth saying, then you might have a chance to live on long after-

John slowed and took a deep breath. “Why do you think I started with the Word, instead of the Son?” “A moment ago I thought that perhaps you used Word because you wanted us to know that Jesus is God’s message to us.” “Yes, indeed. Think back to your professor’s favorite quote from Karli.” I could feel his joy in leading me. “I could never forget it; my teacher said it a hundred times. ‘Not God alone, but God and humanity together, constitute the meaning of the Word of God.’” “Now,” he said, his voice quivering in anticipation, “substitute ‘Jesus’ in place of ‘the Word of God,’ and say the quote again.” “Not God alone, but God and humanity together, constitute the meaning of Jesus.” I repeated it several times, my whole body shaking as I did. The apostle watched me with delight, which made me proud. I changed the order of the phrases several times in my mind, then cried out, “Jesus means that God and humanity are together.” The apostle covered his mouth with both hands, leaning back in joy. Then he cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, as if cheering me to continue. But he couldn’t wait, and all but shouted, “What is the opposite of together?” “Separated!” Then it hit me. “Jesus means that God and humanity are not separated but together in union! And this union,” I said, fully aware that I was saying way more than I could possibly understand, “is the Word of God!” “ThatistheGospelAccordingtoSaintJohn!

I grew up in a relatively small town...Cruising up and down the main street in a car, going to the mall and attending drunken date-rape festivals called "parties" were the culmination of social interaction. I was never entirely comfortable in this setting. Until I was eighteen and left 'home," I was constantly at odds with this culture I grew up in. The older I got, the more clearly I saw what was supposed to be looming ahead for me as a woman. This conflict became increasingly unsettling with each passing year. I did not want to keep my mouth shut and act ladylike...or respect the idea that all of my teachers were smarter than me. Dealing with such opposition on a day-to-day basis disrupted the momentum of womanpower I was born with. I struggled to keep my power somewhat apace with my life. This proved difficult, as I expended a large amount of energy defending my own concept of the woman I wanted to be. Furthermore, deprived of the experience I needed in order to know exactly what "the woman I wanted to be" meant, things were not only difficult, but mind-bogglingly complex as well.

As youngest among us, but small no more, Your life can be trying, for we have the chore Of becoming your teachers, a terrible bore. "We've got experience! Take it from me!" "We've done this all before, you see. We know the ropes, we know the same." Since time immemorial, always the same. One's own shortcomings are nothing but fluff, But everyone else's are heavier stuff: Faultfinding comes easy when this is our plight, But it's hard for your parents, try as they might, To treat you with fairness, and kindness as well; Nitpicking's a habit that's hard to dispel. Men you're living with old folks, all you can do Is put up with their nagging -- it's hard but it's true. The pill may be bitter, but down it must go, For it's meant to keep the peace, you know. The many months here have not been in vain, Since wasting time noes against your Brain. You read and study nearly all the day, Determined to chase the boredom away. The more difficult question, much harder to bear, Is "What on earth do I have to wear? I've got no more panties, my clothes are too tight, My shirt is a loincloth, I'm really a siaht! To put on my shoes I must off my toes, Dh dear, I'm plagued with so many woes!

When Lauren returned from lunch there were two dozen breathtakingly gorgeous red roses in a vase on her desk. She removed the card from its envelope and stared at it in blank amazement. On it was written "Thank you, sweetheart," followed by the initial J. When Lauren looked up,Nick was standing in the doorway,his shoulder casually propped against the frame. But there was nothing casual about the rigid set of his jaw or the freezing look in his gray eyes. "From a secret admirer?" he asked sarcastically. It was the first personal comment he had addressed to her in four days. "Not a secret admirer exactly," she hedged. "Who is he?" Lauren tensed. He seemed so angry she didn't think it would be wise to mention Jim's name. "I'm not absolutely certain." "You aren't absolutely certain?" he bit out. "How many men with the inital J are you seeing? How many of them think you're worth more than a hundred dollars in roses as a way of saying thank you?" "A hundred dollars?" Lauren repeated, so appalled at the expense that she completely overlooked the fact that Nick had obviously opened the envelope and read the card. "You must be getting better at it," he mocked crudely. Inwardly Lauren flinched, but she lifted her chin. "I have much better teachers now!" With an icy glance that raked her from head to toe,Nick turned on his heel and strode back into his office. For the rest of the day he left her completely alone.

When he was twenty-three years old, he (George Fox) saw the inner light in a vision. For him it symbolized the spirit against the letter, silence against chatter, experience against dogma, and equality against all who build inequality on authority and power, be it of the state or religion. His mistrust of the official Anglican Church was immense. He spoke with disdain of the "towered houses" and was tormented by the ringing of church bells. He frequently interrupted preachers, standing in the church's doorway, a hat covering his head, and uttering threatening words toward the pulpit, causing great excitement in the gathered congregation. It often resulted in Fox being beaten up, banished, and, later on, jailed for years. What aroused his ire, above all, were the priests who, without ever having experienced or even looked for illumination, presented themselves as servants of God but, in truth, comprised a "society of cannibals." It is "not enough to have been educated in Oxford or Cambridge in order to become capable for and efficient in the service of Christ. To this day it is difficult for many Friends to speak of "Quaker theology." The Friends believe in Scripture - George Fox knew it by heart - but they also believe that the Spirit transcends Scripture and that the inner light is experienced by all human beings without human mediation. "The inner light," "the inward teacher" are names that the early Quakers gave to their experiences of the Spirit. They believe that everyone can meet the "Christ within," even though he has different names in different ages and places and is not tied to any form of religion. This light is open to everyone and, yet, it is not simply the natural light of reason. In a conversation that Fox had with Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, he vigorously resisted this rational interpretation. In every human being is "that of God," hidden, eclipsed, often forgotten. Linguistically a clumsy expression at best, "that of God in everyone" is the foundation of human dignity. In addition, it is the admonition to believe in it, to discover it in each and everyone and to respond to it. Fox said, "Walk joyfully on the earth and respond to that of God in every human being.

Marketa really desired, with both her body and her senses, the women she considered Karel's mistresses. And she also desired them with her head: fulfilling the prophecy of her old math teacher, she wanted - at least to the limits of the disastrous contract - to show herself enterprising and playful, and to astonish Karel. But as soon as she found herself naked with them on the wide daybed, the sensual wanderings immediately vanished from her mind, and seeing her husband was enough to return her to her role, the role of the better one, the one who is wronged, Even when she was with Eva, whom she loved very much and of whom she was not jealous, the presence of the man she loved too well weighed heavily on her, stifling the pleasure of the senses. The moment she removed his head from the body, she felt the strange and intoxicating touch of freedom. That anonymity of the body was a suddenly discovered paradise. With an odd delight, she expelled her wounded and too vigilant soul and was transformed into a simple body without past or memory, but all the more eager and receptive. She tenderly caressed Eva's face, while the headless body moved vigorously on top of her. But here the headless body interrupted his movements and, in a voice that reminded her unpleasantly of Karel's, uttered unbelievably idiotic words: "I'm Bobby Fischer! I'm Bobby Fischer!" It was like being awakened from a dream. And just then, as she lay snuggled against Eva (as the awakening sleeper snuggles against his pillow to hide from the dim first light of day), Eva had asked her, "All right?" and she had consented with a sign, pressing her lips against Eva's. She had always loved her, but today for the first time sh loved her with all her senses, for herself, for her body, and for her skin, becoming intoxicated with this fleshly love as with a sudden revelation. Afterward, while they lay side by side on their stomachs, with their buttocks slightly raised, Marketa could feel on her skin that the infinitely efficient body was again fixing its eyes on hers and at any moment was going to start again making love to them. She tried to ignore the voice talking about seeing beautiful Mrs. Nora, tried simply to be a body hearing nothing while lying pressed between a very soft-skinned girlfriend and some headless man.

Truly, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends. One pays back a teacher badly if one remain merely a scholar. And why will you not pluck at my wreath? You venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day col- lapse? Take heed lest a statue crush you! You say, you believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is Zarathustra! you are my believers: but of what account are all believers! You had not yet sought yourselves: then did you find me. So do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me, will I return to you. Truly, with other eyes, my brothers, shall I then seek my lost ones; with another love shall I then love you. And once again shall you have become friends to me, and children of one hope: then will I be with you for the third time, to celebrate the great noontide with you. And it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course between animal and overman, and celebrates his advance to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the advance to a new morning. At such time will the down-goer bless himself, that he should be an over-goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be at noontide. "Dead are all the Gods: now do we desire the overman to live." - Let this be our final will at the great noontide! - Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

ED ABBEY’S FBI file was a thick one, and makes for engrossing reading. The file begins in 1947, when Abbey, just twenty and freshly back from serving in the Army in Europe, posts a typewritten notice on the bulletin board at the State Teachers College in Pennsylvania. The note urges young men to send their draft cards to the president in protest of peacetime conscription, exhorting them to “emancipate themselves.” It is at that point that Abbey becomes “the subject of a Communist index card” at the FBI, and from then until the end of his life the Bureau will keep track of where Abbey is residing, following his many moves. They will note when he heads west and, as acting editor of the University of New Mexico’s literary magazine, The Thunderbird, decides to print an issue with a cover emblazoned with the words: “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest!” The quote is from Diderot, but Abbey thinks it funnier to attribute the words to Louisa May Alcott. And so he quickly loses his editorship while the FBI adds a few more pages to his file. The Bureau will become particularly intrigued when Mr. Abbey attends an international conference in defense of children in Vienna, Austria, since the conference, according to the FBI, was “initiated by Communists in 1952.” Also quoted in full in his files is a letter to the editor that he sends to the New Mexico Daily Lobo, in which he writes: “In this day of the cold war, which everyday [sic] shows signs of becoming warmer, the individual who finds himself opposed to war is apt to feel very much out of step with his fellow citizens” and then announces the need to form a group to “discuss implications and possibilities of resistance to war.

Oskar Schell: My father died at 9-11. After he died I wouldn't go into his room for a year because it was too hard and it made me want to cry. But one day, I put on heavy boots and went in his room anyway. I miss doing taekwondo with him because it always made me laugh. When I went into his closet, where his clothes and stuff were, I reached up to get his old camera. It spun around and dropped about a hundred stairs, and I broke a blue vase! Inside was a key in an envelope with black written on it and I knew that dad left something somewhere for me that the key opened and I had to find. So I take it to Walt, the locksmith. I give it to Stan, the doorman, who tells me keys can open anything. He gave me the phone book for all the five boroughs. I count there are 472 people with the last name black. There are 216 addresses. Some of the blacks live together, obviously. I calculated that if I go to 2 every Saturday plus holidays, minus my hamlet school plays, my minerals, coins, and comic convention, it's going to take me 3 years to go through all of them. But that's what I'm going to do! Go to every single person named black and find out what the key fits and see what dad needed me to find. I made the very best possible plan but using the last four digits of each phone number, I divide the people by zones. I had to tell my mother another lie, because she wouldn't understand how I need to go out and find what the key fits and help me make sense of things that don't even make sense like him being killed in the building by people that didn't even know him at all! And I see some people who don't speak English, who are hiding, one black said that she spoke to God. If she spoke to god how come she didn't tell him not to kill her son or not to let people fly planes into buildings and maybe she spoke to a different god than them! And I met a man who was a woman who a man who was a woman all at the same time and he didn't want to get hurt because he/she was scared that she/he was so different. And I still wonder if she/he ever beat up himself, but what does it matter? Thomas Schell: What would this place be if everyone had the same haircut? Oskar Schell: And I see Mr. Black who hasn't heard a sound in 24 years which I can understand because I miss dad's voice that much. Like when he would say, "are you up yet?" or... Thomas Schell: Let's go do something. Oskar Schell: And I see the twin brothers who paint together and there's a shed that has to be clue, but it's just a shed! Another black drew the same drawing of the same person over and over and over again! Forest black, the doorman, was a school teacher in Russia but now says his brain is dying! Seamus black who has a coin collection, but doesn't have enough money to eat everyday! You see olive black was a gate guard but didn't have the key to it which makes him feel like he's looking at a brick wall. And I feel like I'm looking at a brick wall because I tried the key in 148 different places, but the key didn't fit. And open anything it hasn't that dad needed me to find so I know that without him everything is going to be alright. Thomas Schell: Let's leave it there then. Oskar Schell: And I still feel scared every time I go into a strange place. I'm so scared I have to hold myself around my waist or I think I'll just break all apart! But I never forget what I heard him tell mom about the sixth borough. That if things were easy to find... Thomas Schell: ...they wouldn't be worth finding. Oskar Schell: And I'm so scared every time I leave home. Every time I hear a door open. And I don't know a single thing that I didn't know when I started! It's these times I miss my dad more than ever even if this whole thing is to stop missing him at all! It hurts too much. Sometimes I'm afraid I'll do something very bad.

As Mollie said to Dailey in the 1890s: "I am told that there are five other Mollie Fanchers, who together, make the whole of the one Mollie Fancher, known to the world; who they are and what they are I cannot tell or explain, I can only conjecture." Dailey described five distinct Mollies, each with a different name, each of whom he met (as did Aunt Susan and a family friend, George Sargent). According to Susan Crosby, the first additional personality appeared some three years after the after the nine-year trance, or around 1878. The dominant Mollie, the one who functioned most of the time and was known to everyone as Mollie Fancher, was designated Sunbeam (the names were devised by Sargent, as he met each of the personalities). The four other personalities came out only at night, after eleven, when Mollie would have her usual spasm and trance. The first to appear was always Idol, who shared Sunbeam's memories of childhood and adolescence but had no memory of the horsecar accident. Idol was very jealous of Sunbeam's accomplishments, and would sometimes unravel her embroidery or hide her work. Idol and Sunbeam wrote with different handwriting, and at times penned letters to each other. The next personality Sargent named Rosebud: "It was the sweetest little child's face," he described, "the voice and accent that of a little child." Rosebud said she was seven years old, and had Mollie's memories of early childhood: her first teacher's name, the streets on which she had lived, children's songs. She wrote with a child's handwriting, upper- and lowercase letters mixed. When Dailey questioned Rosebud about her mother, she answered that she was sick and had gone away, and that she did not know when she would be coming back. As to where she lived, she answered "Fulton Street," where the Fanchers had lived before moving to Gates Avenue. Pearl, the fourth personality, was evidently in her late teens. Sargent described her as very spiritual, sweet in expression, cultured and agreeable: "She remembers Professor West [principal of Brooklyn Heights Seminary], and her school days and friends up to about the sixteenth year in the life of Mollie Fancher. She pronounces her words with an accent peculiar to young ladies of about 1865." Ruby, the last Mollie, was vivacious, humorous, bright, witty. "She does everything with a dash," said Sargent. "What mystifies me about 'Ruby,' and distinguishes her from the others, is that she does not, in her conversations with me, go much into the life of Mollie Fancher. She has the air of knowing a good deal more than she tells.