Rails Best Quotes

There comes a point in every man’s life where he can rail against the unfairness of the world until he loses, or he can do his best in it. Remain a victim, or become a survivor.

I put my hand on the altar rail. 'What if ... what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reason, or ...' Mam's pancakes with Toblerone sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, 'Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite'; or Jacko and Sharon singing 'For She's A Squishy Marshmallow' instead of 'For She's A Jolly Good Fellow' every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it's not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. 'S'pose Heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there for ever, but more like ... Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or ... upstairs windows when you're lost ...

You do realize you just insulted me, right?" "How so?" "You implied that I can't protect her or my people." I looked at him. "That's not at all what I meant." "Apologize and I'll let it go." I kept my hands firmly on the iron rail before me. Grabbing the weight bar and walloping the Beast Lord upside the head wouldn't be the best diplomatic move. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty." There. I was civil. It almost killed me.

I kept my hands firmly on the iron rail before me. Grabbing the weight bar and walloping the Beast Lord upside the head wouldn’t be the best diplomatic move. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty.” There. I was civil. It almost killed me. “Apology accepted.” “Will there be anything else?”Your Arrogance.

Well-meanin' man. Did it all for the best." Stalky curled gracefully round the stair-rail. "Head in a drain-pipe. Full confession in the left boot.

She ran, as best she could run; as she made her way toward the rail it became a jog, and then a desperate hop. She was on fire all the way, screaming all the way, unstoppable all the way.

Ten Best Song to Strip 1. Any hip-swiveling R&B fuckjam. This category includes The Greatest Stripping Song of All Time: "Remix to Ignition" by R. Kelly. 2. "Purple Rain" by Prince, but you have to be really theatrical about it. Arch your back like Prince himself is daubing body glitter on your abdomen. Most effective in nearly empty, pathos-ridden juice bars. 3. "Honky Tonk Woman" by the Rolling Stones. Insta-attitude. Makes even the clumsiest troglodyte strut like Anita Pallenberg. (However, the Troggs will make you look like even more of a troglodyte, so avoid if possible.) 4. "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard. The Lep's shouted choruses and relentless programmed drums prove ideal for chicks who can really stomp. (Coincidence: I once saw a stripper who, like Rick Allen, had only one arm.) 5. "Amber" by 311. This fluid stoner anthem is a favorite of midnight tokers at strip joints everywhere. Mellow enough that even the most shitfaced dancer can make it through the song and back to her Graffix bong without breaking a sweat. Pass the Fritos Scoops, dude. 6. "Miserable" by Lit, but mostly because Pamela Anderson is in the video, and she's like Jesus for strippers (blonde, plastic, capable of parlaying a broken nail into a domestic battery charge, damaged liver). Alos, you can't go wrong stripping to a song that opens with the line "You make me come." 7. "Back Door Man" by The Doors. Almost too easy. The mere implication that you like it in the ass will thrill the average strip-club patron. Just get on all fours and crawl your way toward the down payment on that condo in Cozumel. (Unless, like most strippers, you'd rather blow your nest egg on tacky pimped-out SUVs and Coach purses.) 8. Back in Black" by AC/DC. Producer Mutt Lange wants you to strip. He does. He told me. 9. "I Touch Myself" by the Devinyls. Strip to this, and that guy at the tip rail with the bitch tits and the shop teacher glasses will actually believe that he alone has inspired you to masturbate. Take his money, then go masturbate and think about someone else. 10. "Hash Pipe" by Weezer. Sure, it smells of nerd. But River Cuomo is obsessed with Asian chicks and nose candy, and that's just the spirit you want to evoke in a strip club. I recommend busting out your most crunk pole tricks during this one.

I don't get it?" she asked "I don't get it? Let me tell you something about what I get. You think you're so smart? I spent three years on a full academic scholarship at the best college-prep school in the country. And when they kicked me out I had to petition-petition!-to keep them from wiping out my four-point-oh transcript." Daniel moved away, but Luce pursued him, taking a step forward for every wide-eyed step he took back. Probably freaking him out, but so what? He'd been asking for it every time he condescended to her. "I know Latin and French, and in middle school, I won the science fair three years in a row." She had backed him up against the railing of the boardwalk and was trying to restrain herself from poking him in the chest with her finger. She wasn't finished. "I also do the Sunday crossword puzzle, sometimes in under an hour. I have an unerringly good sense of direction... though not always when it comes to guys." She swallowed and took a moment to catch her breath. "And someday, I'm going to be a psychiatrist who actually listens to her patients and helps people. Okay? So don't keep talking to me like I'm stupid and don't tell me I don't understand just because I can't decode your erratic, flaky, hot-one-minute-cold-the-next, frankly"-she looked up at him, letting out her breath-"really hurtful behavior." She brushed a tear away, angry with herself for getting so worked up.

Where has God promised to fulfill our every whim according to the minutia of our earthly desires? Where has He promised to keep us from suffering or disappointment? Things He did not spare His own Son? You were raised in one of the finest manors in the borough, by a man and woman who could not have loved you better. You have been given the best education, the best of everything. You are of sound mind and limb, and yet you dare to rail at God? I for one grow weary of it. Now leave off simpering like an ungrateful brat and make something of this new life you've been given.

These questions are difficult. The answers are not obvious, and so there should be some pausing, some angst, some honest uncertainty as people struggle to decide the best course of action. But I see none of this in the press releases and reports I read. Instead I see both sides telling us that to be uncertain, to dialogue instead of rail, is to betray the cause.

Compared to you,” said the Klavar soprano, “humans are joyful rosebushes bouncing through the stars. If you ever stopped napping long enough to escape Earth, you would sweep across this galaxy like nothing before, an endless wave of carnage. You would hunt our worlds one by one and ruin everything we’ve built. Only your laziness protects us.” Capo hopped down off the railing. She lifted her tail in the air haughtily and glanced back over her furry shoulder. “Most likely,” she purred. “Best keep mum, don’t you think? Wouldn’t want to wake us u

Summer: Are you okay? Willa: Yeah. Why? Summer: I just got a text from Cade asking. Willa: You can tell Cade I’m getting railed by ten dudes at the best gangbang of my life. Summer: Oof. Even I’m not that brave. I’ll let you tell him that yourself. Summer: He seems stressed, Willa. Just letting you know. Willa: Good.

How drunk do you need to be right now?” “What do you mean?” “It means whatever you want it to mean, Mikey.” Nunzio dropped onto the couch, extending his legs in front of him and folding his arms behind his head. “How drunk do you need to be for your best friend to rail you?” ~ Nunzio Excerpt From: Hassell, Santino. “Sutphin Boulevard

Welp, my best friend now knew what I sounded like when I was getting railed to within an inch of my life. My face flared with heat.

How drunk do you need to be for your best friend to rail you?

Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death and old age and change.

Once they got there, it wasn’t a pretty landing. With the oars damaged and the foresail torn, Leo could barely manage a controlled descent. The others strapped themselves in below—except for Coach Hedge, who insisted on clinging to the forward rail, yelling, “YEAH! Bring it on, lake!” Leo stood astern, alone at the helm, and aimed as best he could. Festus creaked and whirred warning signals, which were relayed through the intercom to the quarterdeck. “I know, I know,” Leo said, gritting his teeth. He didn’t have much time to take in the scenery. To the southeast, a city was nestled in the foothills of a mountain range, blue and purple in the afternoon shadows. A flat desert landscape spread to the south. Directly beneath them the Great Salt Lake glittered like aluminum foil, the shoreline etched with white salt marshes that reminded Leo of aerial photos of Mars. “Hang on, Coach!” he shouted. “This is going to hurt.” “I was born for hurt!

I smack into him as if shoved from behind. He doesn't budge, not an inch. Just holds my shoulders and waits. Maybe he's waiting for me to find my balance. Maybe he's waiting for me to gather my pride. I hope he's got all day. I hear people passing on the boardwalk and imagine them staring. Best-case scenario, they think I know this guy, that we're hugging. Worst-case scenario, they saw me totter like an intoxicated walrus into this complete stranger because I was looking down for a place to park our beach stuff. Either way, he knows what happened. He knows why my cheek is plastered to his bare chest. And there is definite humiliation waiting when I get around to looking up at him. Options skim through my head like a flip book. Option One: Run away as fast as my dollar-store flip flops can take me. Thing is, tripping over them is partly responsible for my current dilemma. In fact, one of them is missing, probably caught in a crack of the boardwalk. I'm getting Cinderella didn't feel this foolish, but then again, Cinderella wasn't as clumsy as an intoxicated walrus. Option two: Pretend I've fainted. Go limp and everything. Drool, even. But I know this won't work because my eyes flutter too much to fake it, and besides, people don't blush while unconscious. Option Three: Pray for a lightning bolt. A deadly one that you feel in advance because the air gets all atingle and your skin crawls-or so the science books say. It might kill us both, but really, he should have been paying more attention to me when he saw that I wasn't paying attention at all. For a shaved second, I think my prayers are answered because I go get tingly all over; goose bumps sprout everywhere, and my pulse feels like electricity. Then I realize, it's coming from my shoulders. From his hands. Option Last: For the love of God, peel my cheek off his chest and apologize for the casual assault. Then hobble away on my one flip-flop before I faint. With my luck, the lightning would only maim me, and he would feel obligated to carry me somewhere anyway. Also, do it now. I ease away from him and peer up. The fire on my cheeks has nothing to do with the fact that it's sweaty-eight degrees in the Florida sun and everything to do with the fact that I just tripped into the most attractive guy on the planet. Fan-flipping-tastic. "Are-are you all right?" he says, incredulous. I think I can see the shape of my cheek indented on his chest. I nod. "I'm fine. I'm used to it. Sorry." I shrug off his hands when he doesn't let go. The tingling stays behind, as if he left some of himself on me. "Jeez, Emma, are you okay?" Chloe calls from behind. The calm fwopping of my best friend's sandals suggests she's not as concerned as she sounds. Track star that she is, she would already be at my side if she thought I was hurt. I groan and face her, not surprised that she's grinning wide as the equator. She holds out my flip-flop, which I try not to snatch from her hand. "I'm fine. Everybody's fine," I say. I turn back to the guy, who seems to get more gorgeous by the second. "You're fine, right? No broken bones or anything?" He blinks, gives a slight nod. Chloe setts her surfboard against the rail of the boardwalk and extends her hand to him. He accepts it without taking his eyes off me. "I'm Chloe and this is Emma," she says. "We usually bring her helmet with us, but we left it back in the hotel room this time.

What a beautiful respite a train journey is and a good book, too, and best of all the book on the train, in life and out of it at the same time, before we arrive at Termini and disembark and the book is put down and we must all part and go our separate ways, forever.

If I had a choice between walking along a sidewalk with no rails and a thousand foot drop, or jumping in a tank full of blood and sharks, I’d choose the sharks.

If we resist and rail against what we’re experiencing, we take away from our growth and healing. Instead, we can acknowledge the awful thing that is happening and find the best way to live with it.

They were men linked more to one another, their schools, their own social class and their own concerns than they were linked to the country. Indeed, about one of them, Averell Harriman, there would always be a certain taint, as if somehow Averell were a little too partisan and too ambitious (Averell had wanted to be President whereas the rest of them knew that the real power lay in letting the President come to them; the President could take care of rail strikes, minimum wages and farm prices, and they would take care of national security).

Being a Negro means showing your best face to the white man every day. You know his wants, his needs, and watch him proper. But he don’t know your wants. He don’t know your needs or feelings or what’s inside you, for you ain’t equal to him in no measure. You just a nigger to him. A thing: like a dog or a shovel or a horse. Your needs and wants got no track, whether you is a girl or a boy, a woman or a man, or shy, or fat, or don’t eat biscuits, or can’t suffer the change of weather easily. What difference do it make? None to him, for you is living on the bottom rail.

Being a Negro means showing your best face to the white man every day. You know his wants, his needs, and watch him prosper. But he don't know your wants. He don't know your needs or feelings or what's inside you, for you ain't equal to him in no measure. You just a n****r to him. A thing: like a dog or a shovel or a horse. Your needs and wants got no track, whether you is a girl or a boy, a woman or a man, or shy, or fat, or don't eat biscuits, or can't suffer the change of weather easily. What difference do it make? None to him, for you is living on the bottom rail.

It's a fine day for a prayer. But then, most days are.' 'That's what you were doing? Praying?' At his nod, I asked, 'For what do you petition the gods?' He raised his brows. 'Petition?' 'Isn't that what prayer is? Begging the gods to give you what you want?' He laughed, his voice deep as a booming wind, but kinder. 'I suppose that is how some men pray. Not I. Not anymore.' 'What do you mean?' 'Oh, I think that children pray so, to find a lost doll or that Father will bring home a good haul of fish, or that no one will discover a forgotten chore. Children think they know what is best for themselves, and do not fear to ask the divine for it. But I have been a man for many years, and I should be shamed if I did not know better by now.' I eased my back into a more comfortable position against the railing. I suppose if you are used to the swaying of a ship, it might be restful. My muscles constantly fought against it, and I was beginning to ache in every limb. 'So. How does a man pray, then?' He looked on me with amusement, then levered himself down to sit beside me. 'Don't you know? How do you pray, then?' 'I don't.' And then I rethought, and laughed aloud. 'Unless I'm terrified. Then I suppose I pray as a child does. 'Get me out of this, and I'll never be so stupid again. Just let me live.' He laughed with me. 'Well, it looks as if, so far, your prayers have been granted. And have you kept your promise to the divine?' I shook my head, smiling ruefully. 'I'm afraid not. I just find a new direction to be foolish in.' 'Exactly. So do we all. Hence, I've learned I am not wise enough to ask the divine for anything.' 'So. How do you pray then, if you are not asking for something?' 'Ah. Well, prayer for me is more listening than asking. And, after all these years, I find I have but one prayer left. It has taken me a lifetime to find my prayer, and I think it is the same one that all men find, if they but ponder on it longer enough.

Another inventor, J. B. McComber, representing the Chicago-Tower Spiral-Spring Ascension and Toboggan Transportation Company, proposed a tower with a height of 8,947 feet, nearly nine times the height of the Eiffel Tower, with a base one thousand feet in diameter sunk two thousand feet into the earth. Elevated rails would lead from the top of the tower all the way to New York, Boston, Baltimore, and other cities. Visitors ready to conclude their visit to the fair and daring enough to ride elevators to the top would then toboggan all the way back home. “As the cost of the tower and its slides is of secondary importance,” McComber noted, “I do not mention it here, but will furnish figures upon application.” A third proposal demanded even more courage from visitors. This inventor, who gave his initials as R. T. E., envisioned a tower four thousand feet tall from which he proposed to hang a two-thousand-foot cable of “best rubber.” Attached at the bottom end of this cable would be a car seating two hundred people. The car and its passengers would be shoved off a platform and fall without restraint to the end of the cable, where the car would snap back upward and continue bouncing until it came to a stop. The engineer urged that as a precaution the ground “be covered with eight feet of feather bedding.

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry, -- determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.

Hopefully, over the years of being best friends, Lee would learn the truth about music: that it was the third rail of life. You grabbed it to shock yourself out of the dull drag of hours, to feel something, to burn with all the emotions you didn’t get to experience in the ordinary run of school and TV and loading the dishwasher after dinner.

Hopefully, over the years of being best friends, Lee would learn the truth about music: that it was the third rail of life. You grabbed it to shock yourself out of the dull drag of hours, to feel something, to burn with all the emotions you didn't get to experience in the ordinary run of school and TV and loading the dishwasher after dinner.

You can keep her here,” Curran said. “We'll look after her.” “Thank you for the offer. I honestly appreciate it. But things are hunting her. She'll be safe in the vault and I don't want to be responsible for any deaths.” He sighed. “You do realize that you just insulted me, right?” “How so?” “You implied that I can't protect her or my people.” I looked at him. “That's not at all what I meant.” “Apologize and I'll let it go.” I kept my hands firmly on the iron rail before me. Grabbing the weight bar and walloping the Beast Lord upside the head wouldn't be the best diplomatic move. “I'm sorry, Your Majesty." There, I was civil. It almost killed me. “Apology accepted.” “Will there be anything else?" Your Arrogance.

The Three-Decker "The three-volume novel is extinct." Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail. It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail; But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best— The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest. Fair held the breeze behind us—’twas warm with lovers’ prayers. We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs. They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed, And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest. By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook, Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed, And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest. We asked no social questions—we pumped no hidden shame— We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came: We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell. We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but—Zuleika didn’t tell. No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared, The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered. ’Twas fiddle in the forc’s’le—’twas garlands on the mast, For every one got married, and I went ashore at last. I left ’em all in couples a-kissing on the decks. I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques. In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed, I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain. They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws. Swing round your aching search-light—’twill show no haven’s peace. Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas! Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest— And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest! But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail, At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale, Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed, You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest. You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread; You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ’neath her leaping figure-head; While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine! Hull down—hull down and under—she dwindles to a speck, With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck. All’s well—all’s well aboard her—she’s left you far behind, With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind. Her crew are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make? You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake? Well, tinker up your engines—you know your business best— She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!

Attitude isn’t everything. We can’t erase hardships or make ourselves well with our outlook alone. But how we spend our time and mental energy does affect our health. If we resist and rail against what we’re experiencing, we take away from our growth and healing. Instead, we can acknowledge the awful thing that is happening and find the best way to live with it.

Belle blinked at the vision before her and inhaled sharply. Books! Books everywhere. The enormous room was two stories tall, with a spiraling stairway on each side leading up to the upper level. Leather-bound volumes filled the shelves from floor to ceiling on both floors, and the upper level looked down upon them with an open loft area surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron railing. Several rolling ladders were in front of the bookcases to allow easy access to even the highest-placed books. And best of all were the chairs and couches around the floor, and the pillows piled high by the windows, perfect for getting comfortable with a story. The library was filled with sunlight during the day, as well as having numerous lamps available for cozy nighttime reading.

Hold thy desperate hand: Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art: Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote The unreasonable fury of a beast: Unseemly woman in a seeming man! Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! Thou hast amazed me: by my holy order, I thought thy disposition better temper’d. Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself? And stay thy lady too that lives in thee, By doing damned hate upon thyself? Why rail’st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth? Since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose. Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit; Which, like a usurer, abound’st in all, And usest none in that true use indeed Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit: Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, Digressing from the valour of a man; Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury, Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish; Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, Misshapen in the conduct of them both, Like powder in a skitless soldier’s flask, Is set afire by thine own ignorance, And thou dismember’d with thine own defence. What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive, For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead; There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee, But thou slew’st Tybalt; there are thou happy too: The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend And turns it to exile; there art thou happy: A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back; Happiness courts thee in her best array; But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench, Thou pout’st upon thy fortune and thy love: Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed, Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her: But look thou stay not till the watch be set, For then thou canst not pass to Mantua; Where thou shalt live, till we can find a time To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back With twenty hundred thousand times more joy Than thou went’st forth in lamentation. Go before, nurse: commend me to thy lady; And bid her hasten all the house to bed, Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto: Romeo is coming.

Whatever the final cost of HS2, all those tens of billions could clearly buy lots of things more generally useful to society than a quicker ride to Birmingham. Then there is all the destruction of the countryside. A high-speed rail line offers nothing in the way of charm. It is a motorway for trains. It would create a permanent very noisy, hyper-visible scar across a great deal of classic British countryside, and disrupt and make miserable the lives of hundreds of thousands of people throughout its years of construction. If the outcome were something truly marvellous, then perhaps that would be a justifiable price to pay, but a fast train to Birmingham is never going to be marvellous. The best it can ever be is a fast train to Birmingham. Remarkably, the new line doesn’t hook up to most of the places people might reasonably want to go to. Passengers from the north who need to get to Heathrow will have to change trains at Old Oak Common, with all their luggage, and travel the last twelve miles on another service. Getting to Gatwick will be even harder. If they want to catch a train to Europe, they will have to get off at Euston station and make their way half a mile along the Euston Road to St Pancras. It has actually been suggested that travelators could be installed for that journey. Can you imagine travelling half a mile on travelators? Somebody find me the person who came up with that notion. I’ll get the horsewhip. Now here’s my idea. Why not keep the journey times the same but make the trains so comfortable and relaxing that people won’t want the trip to end? Instead, they could pass the time staring out the window at all the gleaming hospitals, schools, playing fields and gorgeously maintained countryside that the billions of saved pounds had paid for. Alternatively, you could just put a steam locomotive in front of the train, make all the seats inside wooden and have it run entirely by volunteers. People would come from all over the country to ride on it. In either case, if any money was left over, perhaps a little of it could be used to fit trains with toilets that don’t flush directly on to the tracks, so that when I sit on a platform at a place like Cambridge or Oxford glumly eating a WH Smith sandwich I don’t have to watch blackbirds fighting over tattered fragments of human waste and toilet paper. It is, let’s face it, hard enough to eat a WH Smith sandwich as it is.

Tis not enough, your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do; Men must be taught as if you taught them not; And things unknown proposed as things forgot. With mean complacence ne'er betray your trust, Nor be so civil as to prove unjust. Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise. 'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain, And charitably let the dull be vain: Your silence there is better than your spite, For who can rail so long as they can write?

I MEAN not to defend the scapes of any, Or justify my vices being many; For I confess, if that might merit favour, Here I display my lewd and loose behaviour. I loathe, yet after that I loathe, I run: 5 Oh, how the burthen irks, that we should shun. I cannot rule myself but where Love please; Am driven like a ship upon rough seas. No one face likes me best, all faces move, A hundred reasons make me ever love. 10 If any eye me with a modest look, I blush, and by that blushful glance am took; And she that’s coy I like, for being no clown, Methinks she would be nimble when she’s down. Though her sour looks a Sabine’s brow resemble, 15 I think she’ll do, but deeply can dissemble. If she be learned, then for her skill I crave her; If not, because she’s simple I would have her. Before Callimachus one prefers me far; Seeing she likes my books, why should we jar? 20 Another rails at me, and that I write, Yet would I lie with her, if that I might: Trips she, it likes me well; plods she, what then? She would be nimbler lying with a man. And when one sweetly sings, then straight I long, 25 To quaver on her lips even in her song; Or if one touch the lute with art and cunning, Who would not love those hands for their swift running? And her I like that with a majesty, Folds up her arms, and makes low courtesy. 30 To leave myself, that am in love with all, Some one of these might make the chastest fall. If she be tall, she’s like an Amazon, And therefore fills the bed she lies upon: If short, she lies the rounder: to speak troth, 35 Both short and long please me, for I love both. I think what one undecked would be, being drest; Is she attired? then show her graces best. A white wench thralls me, so doth golden yellow: And nut-brown girls in doing have no fellow. 40 If her white neck be shadowed with brown hair, Why so was Leda’s, yet was Leda fair. Amber-tress’d is she? Then on the morn think I: My love alludes to every history: A young wench pleaseth, and an old is good, 45 This for her looks, that for her womanhood: Nay what is she, that any Roman loves, But my ambitious ranging mind approves?

It’s done. We did our best. The Kindertransports from Germany are shut down. Yours was the last train across the border.” “What about the children still left there?” Marla asked. Sebastian shook his head. “We did what we set out to do. We saved as many children as we could, almost ten thousand.” “But what about Jules?” Marla asked. “I’m sorry. There is nothing we can do for him. It’s impossible. We don’t even know where he is. No one will be allowed in or out of Germany. Perhaps we can still get a few more Kindertransports out of the Netherlands, but the rail lines into Germany are shut down.

Since men who become embittered never win respect or admiration, those who sought fame did not rail at the undoubted hardship of their lives and the inevitability of death. Rather, they endured it or, even better, laughed at it. This accounts for the ironic tone in the fabric of the myths and explains, for example, the reaction of the gods when Tyr sacrificed his hand (Myth 7) in the interests of binding the wolf Fenrir. Men and women expected their share of trouble and the best of them attempted to use it, to rise above it and carve out a name for themselves through bravery and loyalty and generosity.

She was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front and two more reaching up towards the moon—and the idea was, to see which pair would look best and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room...

He needs to be talked to." "This is funny, but I know how to talk, too." Brian swore under his breath. "He prefers singing." "Excuse me?" "I said,he prefers singing." "Oh." Keeley tucked her tongue in her cheek. "Any particular tune? Wait, let me guess. Finnegan's Wake?" Brian''s steely-eyed stare had her laughing until she had to lean weakly against the gelding.The horse responded by twisting his head and trying to sniff her pockets for apples. "It's a quick tune," Brian said coolly, "and he likes hearing his name." "I know the chorus." Gamely Keeley struggled to swallow another giggle. "But I'm not sure I know all the words.There are several verses as I recall." "Do the best you can," he muttered and strode off.His lips twitched as he heard her launch into the song about the Dubliner who had a tippling way. When he reached Betty's box, he shook his head. "I should've known. If there's not a Grant one place, there's a Grant in another until you're tripping over them." Travis gave Betty a last pat on the shoulder. "Is that Keeley I hear singing?" "She's being sarcastic, but as long as the job's done. She's dug in her heels about grooming Finnegan." "She comes by it naturally.The hard head as well as the skill." "Never had so many owners breathing down my neck.We don't need them, do we, darling?" Brian laid his hands on Beetty's cheek, and she shook her head, then nibbled his hair. "Damn horse has a crush on you." "She may be your lady, sir, but she's my own true love.Aren't you beautiful, my heart?" He stroked, sliding into the Gaelic that had Betty's ears pricked and her body shifting restlessly. "She likes being excited before a race," Brian murmured. "What do you call it-pumped up like your American football players.Which is a sport that eludes me altogether as they're gathered into circles discussing things most of the time instead of getting on with it." "I heard you won the pool on last Monday nights game," Travis commented. "Betting's the only thing about your football I do understand." Brian gathered her reins. "I'll walk her around a bit before we take her down. She likes to parade.You and your missus will want to stay close to the winner's circle." Travis grinned at him. "We'll be watching from the rail." "Let's go show off." Brian led Betty out.

Jae reflected on the leader’s role: “You can jump in and teach and coach, but then you have to give the pen back. When you give that pen back, your people know they are still in charge.” When something is off the rails, do you take over or do you invest? When you take the pen to add your ideas, do you give it back? Or does it stay in your pocket? Multipliers invest in the success of others. They may jump in to teach and share their ideas, but they always return to accountability. When leaders fail to return ownership, they create dependent organizations. This is the way of the Diminisher. They jump in, save the day, and drive results through their personal involvement. When leaders return the pen, they cement the accountability for action where it should be. This creates organizations that are free from the nagging need of the leader’s rescue.

Roosevelt wouldn't interfere even when he found out that Moses was discouraging Negroes from using many of his state parks. Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people... He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!' ... He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just The Public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons -- just to make it a better public." Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit; he had vetoed the Long Island Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this reason. Now he began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low -- too low for buses to pass. Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouragingly long and arduous. For Negroes, whom he considered inherently "dirty," there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups found it very difficult to obtain permits, particularly to Moses' beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted to parks many miles further out on Long Island. And even in these parks, buses carrying Negro groups were shunted to the furthest reaches of the parking areas. And Negroes were discouraged from using "white" beach areas -- the best beaches -- by a system Shapiro calls "flagging"; the handful of Negro lifeguards [...] were all stationed at distant, least developed beaches. Moses was convinced that Negroes did not like cold water; the temperature at the pool at Jones Beach was deliberately icy to keep Negroes out. When Negro civic groups from the hot New York City slums began to complain about this treatment, Roosevelt ordered an investigation and an aide confirmed that "Bob Moses is seeking to discourage large Negro parties from picnicking at Jones Beach, attempting to divert them to some other of the state parks." Roosevelt gingerly raised the matter with Moses, who denied the charge violently -- and the Governor never raised the matter again.

Congress displayed contempt for the city's residents, yet it retained a fondness for buildings and parks. In 1900, the centennial of the federal government's move to Washington, many congressmen expressed frustration that the proud nation did not have a capital to rival London, Paris, and Berlin. The following year, Senator James McMillan of Michigan, chairman of the Senate District Committee, recruited architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to propose a park system. The team, thereafter known as the McMillan Commission, emerged with a bold proposal in the City Beautiful tradition, based on the White City of Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition. Their plan reaffirmed L'Enfant's avenues as the best guide for the city's growth and emphasized the majesty of government by calling for symmetrical compositions of horizontal, neoclassical buildings of marble and white granite sitting amid wide lawns and reflecting pools. Eventually, the plan resulted in the remaking of the Mall as an open lawn, the construction of the Lincoln Memorial and Memorial Bridge across the Potomac, and the building of Burnham's Union Station. Commissioned in 1903, when the state of the art in automobiles and airplanes was represented by the curved-dash Olds and the Wright Flyer, the station served as a vast and gorgeous granite monument to rail transportation.

You haven't been yourself lately." Nikhil shook his head and sighed. "You've gone off the rails. We just want you to go back to being who you were--- sweet, good, quiet, respectful. Listen to the people who know what's best for you." "Shut up, Nikhil." I was sick of him and his officious, condescending attitude, sick of him thinking he knew anything about me. Where was he when I was struggling at school? Where was he when I needed a big brother, or even a friend? "Why are you here anyway?" "To make sure you do the right thing." "And that would be what? Telling the head of a Mafia family I'm going to bail on his daughter's wedding? Do you know how much money he's paying me to see it through? You can't even count that high." Nikhil swallowed hard. He couldn't stand being bested in any way. "We've found a perfect match for you. He's a dermatologist and he's looking for a wife. The family all agrees this is the best thing for you." "Single and has a job. That's a pretty low bar." I said. "Personality. Interests. Political views. Sense of humor. Pets. Hobbies. Character. Intelligence. Values. None of those matter?" "Not when you've lost all sense of who you are." Nikhil leaned forward. "Not when the family honor is at stake." "Oh, I'm sorry." My voice dripped with sarcasm. "Did I go to sleep and wake up in the wrong century? The family honor? Since when does our family have honor? And in what universe did you ever think I would agree to something like this?

He conjured a spotlight, which travelled down along the balcony, and rested on her face. ‘Your hair,’ he said. ‘All of the lights land in it.’ (All of the lights land in it: an excellent line. While I try to deny it, there were times – when I was younger – when this would have impressed me, too.) ‘Is this how you usually spend your Saturday nights?’ Mother asked. ‘No. Sometimes. I like the technology, you see. And I like to help out.’ Mother leaned against the railing alongside him. She let her hair fall against his arm. ‘I’ve never had company before,’ Father said, and smiled. ‘This makes things much more interesting.’ ‘I’m not that interesting at all,’ Mother said. ‘I mean, I’m pretty boring. Actually.’ ‘I don’t believe you. What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you?’ ‘What?’ ‘Tell me the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Nobody’s boring when they tell you the best thing that’s ever happened. Go.’ Mother thought of her princess dress, and the faces of the villagers watching the Harvest Festival. In her mind, they multiplied, so that she led the parade through a crowd of hundreds – thousands – of well-wishers. ‘Fine,’ she said. She knew exactly how she would tell it. ‘See,’ Father said, at the end. ‘That wasn’t boring. But it wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to you, either.’ ‘It wasn’t?’ ‘Of course not,’ Father said. He concentrated on the fuse box, passing it from one great palm to the other. He was smiling, close to laughter. ‘That’s tonight.

How to Apologize Ellen Bass Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeleton you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying silver carp that's invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling the others into oblivion. If you don't live near a lake, you'll have to travel. Walking is best and shows you mean it, but you could take a train and let yourself be soothed by the rocking on the rails. It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human. When my mother was in the hospital, my daughter and I had to clear out the home she wouldn't return to. Then she recovered and asked, incredulous, How could you have thrown out all my shoes? So you'll need a boat. You could rent or buy, but, for the sake of repairing the world, build your own. Thin strips of Western red cedar are perfect, but don't cut a tree. There'll be a demolished barn or downed trunk if you venture further. And someone will have a mill. And someone will loan you tools. The perfume of sawdust and the curls that fall from your plane will sweeten the hours. Each night we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night we could dream back everything lost. So grill the pale flesh. Unharness yourself from your weary stories. Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt. There is much to fear as a creature caught in time, but this is safe. You need no defense. This is just another way to know you are alive. “How to Apologize” originally appeared in The New Yorker (March 15, 2021).

I went to the railing and looked out over the sea. It had been fussing earlier in the day, but now it lay greasy and hushed. 'You got a tremendous prospect from up here, Brother Assembly.' 'Aye. Two evenings hence, for instance, I noted thy schooner passing westward. I also saw a cutter at the same time, a low and black-hulled cutter, British from the look of her, beating eastward beyond Vandyke's. She kept the island betwixt herself and thee, and sailed on into yon flat ugly yellow clouds.' He nodded to the east. I got a crawly feeling between my shoulders, like I'd been hunting a panther and discovered it had been hunting me. 'Well, then,' I said, 'I guess I'd best be shoving off.' 'Tomorrow is the first of October. There have been no hurricanes yet this season worth mentioning, but a noteworthy one approaches now, thou mustn't doubt. Do not cling too tightly to ephemeral notions and worldly things, Brother, lest thou lose what thou most values.' He whistled an old Shaker hymn that was popular among the Brethren: 'Tis a gift to be simple, 'Tis a gift to be free, 'Tis a gift to come down Where we ought to be... I knocked on the railing, annoyed with myself for my superstitiousness but angrier with Assembly for baiting me. 'Of all the infernal meanness,' I said. 'Don't whistle for a wind in hurricane season!' 'Oh, as for that,' he said, the corners of his naked lip turning up just a little bit, 'God watches out for sailors and the wicked, is't not what sailors say? And the wicked, too, I doubt not.

Every place held every memory of what it had once been. A plain that had been the bottom of a lake, the floor of a shallow sea, the lightless depths of a vast ocean. A hill that had been the peak of a young mountain, one of a chain of islands, the jagged fang of the earth buried in glacial ice. Dust that had been plants, sand that had been stone, stains that had been bone and flesh. Most memories, Kalyth understood, remain hidden, unseen and beneath the regard of flickering life. Yet, once the eyes were awakened, every memory was then unveiled, a fragment here, a hint there, a host of truths whispering of eternity. Such knowledge could crush a soul with its immensity, or drown it beneath a deluge of unbearable futility. As soon as the distinction was made, that separation of self from all the rest, from the entire world beyond-its ceaseless measure of time, its whimsical game with change played out in slow siege and in sudden catastrophe-then the self became an orphan, bereft all security, and face to face with a world now become at best a stranger, at worst an implacable, heartless foe. In arrogance we orphan ourselves, and then rail at the awful solitude we find on the road to death But how could one step back into the world? How could one learn to swim such currents? In self-proclamation, the soul decided what it was that lay within in opposition to all that lay beyond. Inside, outside, familiar, strange, that which is possessed, that which is coveted, all that is within grasp and all that is forever beyond reach. The distinction was a deep, vicious cut of a knife, severing tendons and muscles, arteries and nerves.

And yet, I can’t believe it’s been only a month that I’ve known you. I can’t decide whether it’s been the longest month of my life, or the shortest.” His eyebrows gathered in an exaggerated frown. “I can’t decide which pays me the fainter compliment.” “Neither,” she teased, linking her arm in his. “To compliment you, I should tell you it has been the best month of my life. And it has.” Truer words, she’d never spoken. “Oh, nicely managed. My pride is rescued.” Despite his air of nonchalance, his eyes held genuine emotion. They were fully blue today-a rich, azure blue, clear and inviting and endless. Just like the sea. Sophia laughed at herself. How had she missed the obvious? All this time, she’d been puzzling out the color of his eyes. They were always shifting and changing, from green to blue to gray. And now she knew why. They always reflected the sea. “Do you know,” he said, “if you keep gazing at me like that much longer, I shall be forced to pack you off belowdecks.” “Am I truly gazing?” She fluttered her lashes at him. “I am making a trip to the storeroom soon, you know. But mind-this is the last good frock I’ve got.” “Siren.” He gave her a surreptitious pinch on the hip. “No, it’s the cabin I have in mind for you, and you’re going there alone. You need to rest.” He walked her toward the hatch. “You won’t come rest with me?” “If I come with you, neither of us will rest.” A current of pleasure shot straight to her center. Then a more practical thought intruded. “But what of the noon meal? It won’t make itself.” At that instant, a flying fish as long as her arm sailed over the rail of the boat and flopped on the deck at their feet. Gray looked at the thrashing fish, then raised his eyebrows at her. “Somehow I think we’ll manage.

Stick around, though. I’m going to need all the help I can get to figure all this out.” “That’s me! Mister Helpful. Captain Dependable.” “That sounds like a brand of adult diapers.” “This nickname needs some work. Lord Wonderful? The Incredible Hunk?” “Please, for the love, go inside.” He laughed, then clomped up the steps and into the house. “Reth,” I shouted. “Reeeeeeeeth! Reth! Reth, Reth, Reth! If you don’t come in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to do find David’s golf clubs!” “That tone and level of voice does nothing attractive you for, my love.” I jumped, startled, but of course Reth would be behind me, leaning heavily on the porch railing. “You,” I said, glaring. “Fix it. Now.” A look of disdain on his face, he leaned over and trailed his fingers across Lend’s forehead. A single whispered word, and then . . . Nothing. “You liar!” I shouted, standing so abruptly that Lend rolled off my lap and down a step. As he hit the first one, color bloomed through him into his usual glamour and his eyes flew open in panic. “He was asleep, Evelyn.” Reth’s lips were pursed, but I knew he was smiling gleefully on the inside. “Lend!” I lunged forward, knocking into him, and we both rolled down the next two steps, landing in a heap on the gravel at the bottom. “You’re awake!” “Evie! I’m . . . wow, why am I so bruised?” “Shut up,” I said, grabbing his head and pulling him in for a kiss. It was freezing and we were on the ground but I didn’t care, couldn’t care, not when I could touch my Lend and he was awake to touch me, too. I knew I’d missed it, but it wasn’t until now that it hit me just how empty and desperate it felt to be separated from him like that. “Maybe,” he said, between tracing my neck with kisses, “we could go inside?” “Maybe,” I agreed, not getting up. “Or maybe,” Reth said, his voice dripping with disgust, “Evelyn could come with me to determine how best to fulfill her end of the deal.” Lend lifted a hand off me and held it in the air. I couldn’t see what he was doing with it, but I had a good idea, and I heartily approved. “See what I meant about the ability to focus?” Reth snapped. “You two are ridiculous.

May I speak with you for a minute, Frank?” He stopped working. “James, Dan. Keep Janie out of trouble.” “Yes, sir.” Both boys gave a salute. Frank’s long legs consumed the expanse, and he met me in the bright sunlight. We rounded the corner of the barn and moved away from its wall, closer to the pigpen. “Is there a problem?” He bent slightly, resting his arms on the top of the rail fence surrounding the sty, one foot propped up on the lower slat. I picked at the jagged edge of a fingernail and cleared my throat. “I’m going home.” “I know.” He looked almost . . . stricken. But it passed. Worried about not having made arrangement yet for the children, I imagined. He cleared his throat, kicked at a clod of dirt. “At the end of the month.” “This morning, actually. I have my train ticket.” Only his jaw moved, the muscle tightening and loosening and tightening again. I paced behind him, reached the other side of the small enclosure, chewed my lip, waited for him to say something. Anything. But the silence closed in around me. I had to get free of it. “I’ve been here long enough. I know that now. You need to be with your family, Frank. You need to sleep in your own bed, be among your own things. The children are comfortable with you again. Besides”—I grabbed the top rail of the pen to hold me steady—“I have my own life to live.” I stared off into the distance, hoping he thought I gazed happily into the life I desired. The quiet boiled between us until his words spat out like a flash of lightning. “Just like that, you’d abandon us?” I whirled to face him. “Just a few days earlier than you promised to send me home, remember?” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his overalls and looked me over as if I were a possum in the bedroom. “They’ve lost their mother. And Adabelle. Now they’ll lose you, too. You don’t think they’ll feel that?” I shook my head, my heart breaking into tiny shards. “They’re young. They’ll take to whoever you bring in as quickly as they took to me.” His face reddened. He stalked toward the barn, then turned and came back, pointing his finger in my face. “Let’s get this straight. I’ve not asked you to leave. You’ve taken this on yourself.” “It’s for the best, Frank. It really is. But . . .” I hesitated. The intensity of his anger made me unsure of my final request. My voice shrank to nearly a whisper. “Will you tell them for me?” His eyebrows arched. He threw back his head and belched a derisive laugh. “You want to leave? Fine. I can’t stop you. But I’m not going to be the one to tell them. You are.

In Hiding - coming summer of 2020 WAYNE ANTHONY SEEKS REDEMPTION FROM A BAD DAY - Although warned about getting the stitches wet, he believed a hot shower was the only road to his redemption. Experienced taught him the best way to relieve the tightness in his lower back was by standing beneath the near-scalding water. Dropping the rest of his clothing, he turned the shower on full blast. The hot water rushed from the showerhead filling the tiny room with steam, instantly the small mirror on the medicine cabinet fogged up. The man quietly pulled the shower curtain back and entered the shower stall without a sound. Years of acting as another’s shadow had trained him to live soundlessly. The hot water cascaded over his body as the echo from the pounding water deadened slightly. Grabbing the sample sized soap, he pulled the paper off and tossed the wrapper over the curtain rail. Wayne rubbed the clean smelling block until his large hands disappeared beneath the lather. He ignored the folded washcloth, opting to use his hands across his body. Gently he cleaned the injury allowing the slime of bacterial soap to remove the residual of the rust-colored betadine. All that remained when he finished was the pale orange smear from the antiseptic. This scar was not the only mar to his body. The water cascaded down hard muscles making rivulets throughout the thatches of dark hair. He raised his arms gingerly as he washed beneath them; the tight muscles of his abdomen glistened beneath the torrent of water. Opening a bottle of shampoo-slash-conditioner, he applied a dab then ran his hands across his scalp. Finally, the tension in his square jaw had eased, making his handsome face more inviting. The cords of his neck stood out as he rinsed the shampoo from his hair. It coursed down his chest leading down to his groin where the scented wash caught in his pelvic hair. Wayne's body was one of perfection for any woman; if that was, she could ignore the mutilations. Knife injuries left their mark with jagged white lines. Most of these, he had doctored himself; his lack of skill resulted in crude scars. The deepest one, undulated along the left side of his abdomen, that one had required the art of a surgeon. Dropping his arms, he surrenders himself to the pelting deluge from the shower. The steamy water cascaded down his body, pulling the soap toward the drain. Across his back, it slid down several small indiscernible pockmarks left by gunshot wounds, the true extent of their damage far beneath his skin. Slowly the suds left his body, snaking down his muscular legs. It slithered down the scars on his left knee, the result of replacement surgery after a thug took a bat to it. Wayne stood until the hot water cooled, and ran translucent over his body. Finally, he washes the impact of the long day from his mind and spirit.

Keynes was a voracious reader. He had what he called ‘one of the best of all gifts – the eye which can pick up the print effortlessly’. If one was to be a good reader, that is to read as easily as one breathed, practice was needed. ‘I read the newspapers because they’re mostly trash,’ he said in 1936. ‘Newspapers are good practice in learning how to skip; and, if he is not to lose his time, every serious reader must have this art.’ Travelling by train from New York to Washington in 1943, Keynes awed his fellow passengers by the speed with which he devoured newspapers and periodicals as well as discussing modern art, the desolate American landscape and the absence of birds compared with English countryside.54 ‘As a general rule,’ Keynes propounded as an undergraduate, ‘I hate books that end badly; I always want the characters to be happy.’ Thirty years later he deplored contemporary novels as ‘heavy-going’, with ‘such misunderstood, mishandled, misshapen, such muddled handling of human hopes’. Self-indulgent regrets, defeatism, railing against fate, gloom about future prospects: all these were anathema to Keynes in literature as in life. The modern classic he recommended in 1936 was Forster’s A Room with a View, which had been published nearly thirty years earlier. He was, however, grateful for the ‘perfect relaxation’ provided by those ‘unpretending, workmanlike, ingenious, abundant, delightful heaven-sent entertainers’, Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace and P. G. Wodehouse. ‘There is a great purity in these writers, a remarkable absence of falsity and fudge, so that they live and move, serene, Olympian and aloof, free from any pretended contact with the realities of life.’ Keynes preferred memoirs as ‘more agreeable and amusing, so much more touching, bringing so much more of the pattern of life, than … the daydreams of a nervous wreck, which is the average modern novel’. He loved good theatre, settling into his seat at the first night of a production of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country with a blissful sigh and the words, ‘Ah! this is the loveliest play in all the world.’55 Rather as Keynes was a grabby eater, with table-manners that offended Norton and other Bloomsbury groupers, so he could be impatient to reach the end of books. In the inter-war period publishers used to have a ‘gathering’ of eight or sixteen pages at the back of their volumes to publicize their other books-in-print. He excised these advertisements while reading a book, so that as he turned a page he could always see how far he must go before finishing. A reader, said Keynes, should approach books ‘with all his senses; he should know their touch and their smell. He should learn how to take them in his hands, rustle their pages and reach in a few seconds a first intuitive impression of what they contain. He should … have touched many thousands, at least ten times as many as he reads. He should cast an eye over books as a shepherd over sheep, and judge them with the rapid, searching glance with which a cattle-dealer eyes cattle.’ Keynes in 1927 reproached his fellow countrymen for their low expenditure in bookshops. ‘How many people spend even £10 a year on books? How many spend 1 per cent of their incomes? To buy a book ought to be felt not as an extravagance, but as a good deed, a social duty which blesses him who does it.’ He wished to muster ‘a mighty army … of Bookworms, pledged to spend £10 a year on books, and, in the higher ranks of the Brotherhood, to buy a book a week’. Keynes was a votary of good bookshops, whether their stock was new or second-hand. ‘A bookshop is not like a railway booking-office which one approaches knowing what one wants. One should enter it vaguely, almost in a dream, and allow what is there freely to attract and influence the eye. To walk the rounds of the bookshops, dipping in as curiosity dictates, should be an afternoon’s entertainment.

Where's mummy?' thought the little girl in the red coat, as she stood quietly next to the railings; her hood pulled up over her shoulder-length blonde hair to keep her dry from the intrusive and cold, wet raindrops. It had been raining most of the day, which had meant the class had not been allowed outside at break-time. She didn't like the rain as it stopped her from playing and having fun with her best friends. 'Stupid rain,' she thought to herself. The little girl's name was Natalie Barrett

The unexpected dinner invitation from the budgerow started Mr Doughty off on a journey of garrulous reminiscence. 'Oh my boy!' said the pilot to Zachary, as they stood leaning on the deck rail. 'The old Raja of Raskhali: I could tell you a story or two about him--Rascally-Roger I used to call him!' He laughed, thumping the deck with his cane. 'Now there was a lordly nigger if ever you saw one! Best kind of native--kept himself busy with his shrub and his nautch-girls and his tumashers. Wasn't a man in town who could put on a burra-khana like he did. Sheeshmull blazing with shammers and candles. Paltans of bearers and khidmutgars. Demijohns of French loll-shrub and carboys of iced simkin. And the karibat! In the old days the Rascally bobachee-connah was the best in the city. No fear of pishpash and cobbily-mash at the Rascally table. The dumbpokes and pillaus were good enough, but we old hands, we'd wait for the curry of cockup and the chitchky of pollock-saug. Oh he set a rankin table I can tell you--and mind you, supper was just the start: the real tumasher came later, in the nautch-connah. Now there was another chuckmuck sight for you! Rows of cursies for the sahibs and mems to sit on. Sittringies and tuckiers for the natives. The baboos puffing at their hubble-bubbles and the sahibs lighting their Sumatra buncuses. Cunchunees whirling and tickytaw boys beating their tobblers. Oh, that old loocher knew how to put on a nautch all right! He was a sly little shaytan too, the Rascally-Roger: if he saw you eyeing one of the pootlies, he'd send around a khidmutgar, bobbing and bowing, the picture of innocence. People would think you'd eaten one too many jellybees and needed to be shown to the cacatorium. But instead of the tottee-connah, off you'd go to a little hidden cumra, there to puckrow your dashy. Not a memsahib present any the wiser--and there you were, with your gobbler in a cunchunee's nether-whiskers, getting yourself a nice little taste of a blackberry-bush.' He breathed a nostalgic sigh. 'Oh they were grand old goll-mauls, those Rascally burra-khanas! No better place to get your tatters tickled.' Zachary nodded, as if no word of this had escaped him.

Freshly sprung from my monogamous LTR, I had no idea how vulnerable I would be to the onslaught of chemicals your brain releases when you’re attracted to someone. These chemicals are responsible for every single people-in-love-are-crazy-fools song, movie plot, and Shakespearean drama ever written. They stimulate the same area of the brain that lights up when you snort a fat rail of cocaine. This state of mind, limerence, is a biological relative of obsessive-compulsive disorder. If you are an addict, or perhaps have the sort of low-dopamine, low-serotonin brain soup best served with a side of SSRIs, you are perhaps more sensitive to the mind-altering power of limerence. And if you are a romantic, you are perhaps more likely to label this heady, overwhelming sensation love. Being a low-serotonin addict with romantic tendencies, I had to experience many crashed-and-burned affairs to understand that for me, love really was a drug.

Soon after we were ushered on to an awaiting trawler, which had been commissioned to take us across the English Channel to Cherbourg in the darkness of that very cold winter’s night. Herded on to the deck we had only our kit bags to serve as seats. Slowly the trawler edged out of the harbour and into the Channel. It was a rough crossing and my first experience of sea-sickness. Within an hour the relentless heavy swell had me, along with many others, hanging over the rails being violently sick. I decided to move up near the bridge, thinking if I went higher I might not feel as if I were dying. From out of nowhere a hand grasped my shoulder and a voice said, ‘Here, laddie, get this down you.’ The trawler captain handed me half a mug of brandy and I did my best to gulp down the burning liquid. It was the first time alcohol had passed my lips and it tasted so awful that I could not imagine how anyone could actually enjoy the taste. The captain waited until I had finished then told me to go and sit at the stern. Thanking him, I did so and felt a bit better.

Right from the start he is dressed in his best - his blacks and his whites Little Fauntleroy - quiffed and glossy, A Sunday suit, a wedding natty get-up, Standing in dunged straw Under cobwebby beams, near the mud wall, Half of him legs, Shining-eyed, requiring nothing more But that mother's milk come back often. Everything else is in order, just as it is. Let the summer skies hold off, for the moment. This is just as he wants it. A little at a time, of each new thing, is best. Too much and too sudden is too frightening - When I block the light, a bulk from space, To let him in to his mother for a suck, He bolts a yard or two, then freezes, Staring from every hair in all directions, Ready for the worst, shut up in his hopeful religion, A little syllogism With a wet blue-reddish muzzle, for God's thumb. You see all his hopes bustling As he reaches between the worn rails towards The topheavy oven of his mother. He trembles to grow, stretching his curl-tip tongue - What did cattle ever find here To make this dear little fellow So eager to prepare himself? He is already in the race, and quivering to win - His new purpled eyeball swivel-jerks In the elbowing push of his plans. Hungry people are getting hungrier, Butchers developing expertise and markets, But he just wobbles his tail - and glistens Within his dapper profile Unaware of how his whole lineage Has been tied up. He shivers for feel of the world licking his side. He is like an ember - one glow Of lighting himself up With the fuel of himself, breathing and brightening. Soon he'll plunge out, to scatter his seething joy, To be present at the grass, To be free on the surface of such a wideness, To find himself. To stand. To moo. - A March Calf

I once asked a rail engineer as to what was the whole point of having a train schedule, if the trains never bothered coming on time and were always late. The engineer said, “If we didn’t have a schedule, how would you know that they are running late.

I find women friends easier. Openness is obvious (I like to think), undemandingness is total (I hope), loyalty invulnerable (I imagine). Intuition moves without prejudice, emotion is undisguised, there is no prestige involved. Conflicts which arise are trusting and not infectious. Together we have danced every imaginable turn: suffering, tenderness, passion, foolishness, betrayal, anger, comedy, tedium, love, lies, joy, jealousies, adultery, overstepping boundaries, good faith. And here are even more: tears, eroticism, mere eroticism, disasters, triumphs, troubles, abuse, fights, anxiety, pining, eggs, sperm, bleeding, departure, panties. Here are even more - best to finish before the rails run out - impotence, lechery, terror, the proximity of death, death itself, black nights, sleepless nights, white nights, music, breakfasts, breasts, lips, pictures. Turn towards the camera and behold another jumble of images: skin, dog, rituals, roast duck, whale steak, bad oysters, cheating and fiddling, rapes, fine clothes, jewellery, touches, kisses, shoulders, hips, strange lights, streets, towns, rivals, seducers, hairs in the comb, long letters, explanations, all that laughter, ageing, aches, spectacles, hands, hands, hands.

What are you in for?’ said Winston. ‘Thoughtcrime!’ said Parsons, almost blubbering. The tone of his voice implied at once a complete admission of his guilt and a sort of incredulous horror that such a word could be applied to himself. He paused opposite Winston and began eagerly appealing to him: ‘You don’t think they’ll shoot me, do you, old chap? They don’t shoot you if you haven’t actually done anything — only thoughts, which you can’t help? I know they give you a fair hearing. Oh, I trust them for that! They’ll know my record, won’t they? YOU know what kind of chap I was. Not a bad chap in my way. Not brainy, of course, but keen. I tried to do my best for the Party, didn’t I? I’ll get off with five years, don’t you think? Or even ten years? A chap like me could make himself pretty useful in a labour-camp. They wouldn’t shoot me for going off the rails just once?

For decades, communism was a third rail best avoided, even when talking about plants.

Some things aren’t forgivable. I’ve done my best to be a good prince in the time since, to take care of those who remain, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what I’ve done. There’s no atoning for it.” For what?! I railed internally, but as chatty as he was today, I didn’t think he’d tell me. And that wasn’t really the point here. “Not forgivable by them? I’m not sure I agree, but what about by God, is he allowed to forgive you?” Leith walked beside me in silence again. Maybe I’d pushed him too far. “Or whatever you believe in?” I asked. Did the Fae have religions? “If God is just and wise, then he will not forgive me either,” said Leith. And what about you? I thought, Will you ever forgive yourself? But I didn’t say the words out loud. I already knew the answer.

Indian Railways is the fourth largest rail network in the world These are the top 5 most luxurious trains which have the best beautiful views from the window of your seat and serve the best hospitality. These trains pass through beautiful places. Surely your experience will be at the next level. Maharajas' Express : It runs between October and April, covering around 12 destinations most of which lie in Rajasthan. Palace on Wheels: The train starts its journey from New Delhi and covers Jaipur, Sawai Madhopur, Chittorgarh, Udaipur, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Bharatpur, and Agra, before returning to Delhi. If you plan on experiencing this royal journey, make sure you have Rs. 3,63,300 to spend! The Golden Chariot : you can take a ride along the Southern State of Karnataka and explore while living like a VIP on wheels. You start from Bengaluru and then go on to visit famous tourist attractions like Hampi, Goa and Mysore to name a few. The Golden Chariot also boasts of a spa, a gym and restaurants too. The Deccan Odyssey: The Deccan Odyssey can give you tours across destinations in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat. It starts from Mumbai, covers 10 popular tourist locations including Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Goa, Aurangabad, Ajanta-Ellora Nasik, Pune, returning to Mumbai. Maha Parinirvan Express / Buddha Circuit Train: The Buddha Express travels through parts of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, where Buddism originated over 2,500 years ago. This isn’t as opulent as the other luxury Indian trains and instead drops passengers off at hotels at famous tourist destinations such as Bodhgaya, Rajgir and Nalanda.

In moments like this, my prosperity friends from all my years of research know me best. If poked and prodded they would probably agree with me that, while heaven is great, it is even better when it is enjoyed here on earth. Technically, this is all heresy. It's called an "overrealized eschatology," an exaggerated sense of what earth can reveal about the Kingdom of God. The famous Reverend Ike, pioneer of black televangelism, used to say it with a cheeky smile: "Don't wait for your pie in the sky by and by; have it now with ice cream and a cherry on top!" But I don't want ice cream, I want a world where there is no need for pediatric oncology, UNICEF, military budgets, or suicide rails on the top floors of tall buildings. The world would drip with mercy. Thy kingdom come, I pray and my heart aches. And my tongue trips over the rest. Thy will be done.

Consider the question posed at the beginning of this book’s penultimate chapter: how much do parents really matter? The data have by now made it clear that parents matter a great deal in some regards (most of which have been long determined by the time a child is born) and not at all in others (the ones we obsess about). You can’t blame parents for trying to do something — anything — to help their child succeed, even if it’s something as irrelevant as giving him a high-end first name. But there is also a huge random effect that rains down on even the best parenting efforts. If you are in any way typical, you have known some intelligent and devoted parents whose child went badly off the rails. You may have also known of the opposite instance, where a child succeeds despite his parents’ worst intentions and habits. Recall for a moment the two boys, one white and one black, who were described in chapter 5. The white boy who grew up outside Chicago had smart, solid, encouraging, loving parents who stressed education and family. The black boy from Daytona Beach was abandoned by his mother, was beaten by his father, and had become a full-fledged gangster by his teens. So what became of the two boys? The second child, now twenty-eight years old, is Roland G. Fryer Jr., the Harvard economist studying black underachievement. The white child also made it to Harvard. But soon after, things went badly for him. His name is Ted Kaczynski.

Arthur’s ties to the powerful New York State Republican machine won him nomination as candidate for vice president. To near-universal dismay, he had entered the White House when President James A. Garfield died from an assassin’s bullet. A good storyteller and man about town, fond of whiskey, cigars, and expensive clothes, the dapper, sideburned Arthur is perhaps best remembered for saying, “I may be president of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damned business.” On this trip to Florida, however, his private life fitted very nicely into someone else’s business. The owner of the Belair orange plantation was General Henry Shelton Sanford, the man who had helped Leopold recruit Stanley. Sanford did not bother to leave his home in Belgium to be in Florida for the president’s visit. With the self-assurance of the very rich, he played host in absentia. He made sure that the president and his party were greeted by his personal agent, and that they got the best rooms at the Sanford House hotel, which stood on a lakeshore fringed with palm trees in the town of Sanford. When the president and his guests were not out catching bass, trout, and catfish, or shooting alligators, or exploring the area by steamboat, the Sanford House was where they stayed for the better part of a week. There is no record of who paid the hotel bill, but most likely, as with the rail journey south, it was not the president. Ironically, the huge Sanford orange plantation the Washington visitors admired was proving as disastrous a venture as Sanford’s other investments. Some Swedish contract laborers found the working conditions too harsh and tried to leave as stowaways on a steamboat. A slaughterhouse Sanford invested in had a capacity fifty times larger than what the local market could consume and went bankrupt. A 540-foot wharf with a warehouse at the end of it that he ordered built was washed away by a flood. The manager of one of the hotels in Sanford absconded while owing him money. Foremen failed to put up fences, and wandering cattle nibbled at the orange trees. But if everything Sanford touched as a businessman turned to dust, as an accomplice of Leopold he was a grand success. Sanford was a long-time supporter of President Arthur’s Republican Party. For two years, he had been corresponding with Arthur and other high United States officials about Leopold’s plans for the Congo. Now, after the president’s trip to Florida, confident that Arthur would pay attention, he pressed his case with more letters. Seven months later, Leopold sent Sanford across the Atlantic to make use of his convenient connection to the White House. The man who had once been American minister to Belgium was now the Belgian king’s personal envoy to Washington. Sanford carried with him to Washington a special code for telegraphing news to Brussels: Constance meant “negotiations proceeding satisfactorily; success expected”; Achille referred to Stanley, Eugénie to France, Alice to the United States, Joseph to “sovereign rights,” and Émile to the key target, the president.

But if he couldn’t get it back? He wrestled with that problem, stared that possibility right in the face, so to speak, and reminded himself that just because he didn’t want something to happen, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t. Slowly, reluctantly, he came to the understanding that there was only one possible answer to that question. Then . . . I don’t get it back. I live with that. I do my best. And I figure out how to make everything work without it. Because every moment he wasted in fruitless railing and longing was going to be a moment he could be using to make things work, and every moment he wasted that way would be one less moment when he could be working toward being happy and enjoying what he had. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to cry over it; he would. He knew he would. He was on the verge of it now. But he was not, by all the gods that were, going to let it ruin his life and the lives of everyone around him. Just as he would learn how to make things work if he were blinded, or lost a hand or a foot or anything else, he would learn how to make this work. He wouldn’t like it. There was no reason why he should. And he wouldn’t stop trying to get it back, either. But in the meantime, just as he wasn’t going to curl up in a ball and wail helplessly and die because he was stuck in the howling wilderness without equipment or food or proper training, he wasn’t going to do the same because he’d lost his Mindspeech

He’s just worried I’ll steal you right out of his arms like I did his first girlfriend.” “She wasn’t my girlfriend. She was our babysitter. And you didn’t steal her, you threw yourself over the railing of the deck and landed on a rosebush on purpose to get attention.” “The things we do for true love.” “She was fifty. And our neighbor.” “Still true love,” Cole smirks. “That woman made the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever put into my mouth.

We look to the stars. Backs on the grass. Danny rolls on his side. Props his head up with his left hand. ‘Hey, you still wanna know why I was crying on the bridge?’ he asks. ‘Yeah.’ He sits up. He’s breaking fragments of a twig between his fingers. ‘It’s a bit messed up.’ ‘It is?’ I sit up now, too. ‘Well, now I really wanna know.’ He tosses a bit of a twig over his feet. ‘Sometimes I go to the middle of that bridge and I look over the edge and I think about jumping off,’ he says. ‘Right,’ I say, wondering where he’s going with this. ‘But I’m not doing that in a sad, death way,’ he says. ‘I’m doing that in an alive way.’ ‘An alive way?’ I nod, trying my best to keep up. ‘I don’t think I’d ever jump, but sometimes I really think hard about it, and it terrifies me,’ he says. ‘And then it makes me feel alive. It makes me feel grateful. Because in that instant I feel like I’ve saved myself from certain death. I don’t know what part of me wants to jump, I can’t explain where it comes from, but it’s like some weird part of me always wants to die. I think that’s why I’m scared of heights. Like, have you ever been on one of those balconies in one of those high-rise apartments on the Gold Coast?’ ‘No,’ I say. ‘I live in a van.’ ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Sorry. Entitled dick.’ ‘You’re entitled to be.’ ‘Those Gold Coast apartments have balconies as high as the clouds, but the railings on the balconies don’t even go up past your belly button. You could trip over and that’d be it. Splat. I think some people get scared on those balconies because they are scared of the part of themselves that wants to die. For most of us it’s among the few times in our lives when we come so close to so easily being able to end it all, and we’re terrified by that voice in our heads screaming, “Don’t jump, arsehole,” and it’s like, what sort of crazy fuck has to even say that to themselves? So, sometimes when I’m on that bridge I think all that stuff, and then those thoughts are like reminders of how fucking beautiful it all is. The thought of dying reminds me why I love it all so much. I look at the river and the buildings and the lights and the moon and the stars and the people going past and I say these same words: “You’re so fucking lucky.

There comes a point in every man’s life where he can rail against the unfairness of the world until he loses, or he can do his best in it. Remain a victim, or become a survivor

I stood in a stupor and would have continued to stand there were it not for a breeze that parted the smoke, revealing a sailor from the Vestal. It was Joe George. He had been following orders to cut the lines that tethered his ship to the Arizona so they could head to open waters. Since there was no one on the Arizona to help on our end, he was taking a fire ax and cutting the lines on his. We called to Joe through a seam in the smoke, motioning for him to throw us a monkey’s fist, which was a lightweight heaving line knotted around a metal ball and attached to a thicker rope. It was a long shot, but our desperate idea was that if we could secure a rope between the two ships, then perhaps we could make it to the Vestal. As Joe rummaged for the ball, I looked at my arms. A sheath of skin from each had peeled off and was draping them. I tore off one length of skin and threw it on the floor of the platform. Then the other. The remaining tissue was a webwork of pink and white and red, some of it black, all of it throbbing. But that didn’t matter. My focus narrowed to Joe George and the ball in his hand. He threw it, but it fell short. He gathered up the line and lobbed it again. Short once more. Joe was perhaps the strongest man in the harbor, an All-Navy boxer whom I described earlier as an “ox.” He was the only man with a prayer of getting that line to us—if he couldn’t do it, then it was impossible. The reality started to sink in: we were going to burn alive. Joe collected the rope once more. For a third time, he tossed it with all his strength. It sailed from one wounded ship to another, across flames, smoke, and carnage. I tracked it all the way and caught it in the air, pulling the smaller line until I felt the main rope. I tied the rope to the railing, cinching it tight, and Joe secured his end. The rope stretched seventy feet to span the water below us, which was forty-five feet down, slicked with fuel that had caught fire. Our only hope was to make it to the Vestal, hand over hand across the rope. But the flesh had been burned off all of our hands, and using those raw fingers and palms to get us across the chasm that separated us would be at best excruciating, and most likely impossible.

With that, Thengill went to the lower deck. Rig called out to him, alarmed at being left alone, but Thengill did not answer. Rig blew out an angry sigh and turned his back to the railing and sat down. He gave his best effort for the next hour and then he grew frustrated and impatient again. He began to curse and shout until in a rage, pulling at his own hair with curled fingers. It was at this point that William came up with Namir, who

and from her heart there runs a cold sad feeling that says she is going to die, she opens her eyes and knows she has crossed a border of some kind, wet light on the asphalt and rusting green on the railing that runs in unity along the path to the shops and she knows she is lying not against the road but against something endmost and is astonished by her calm, death is waiting and she was not prepared, death stood before her in brazen signal and she did not look but ran into its arms without thinking of her children, and it is grief that seizes hold of her when she sees her children abandoned, seeing how she was told and did not listen, it was your duty to deliver them from danger but instead you stood your ground, such foolishness and blindness before the facts, you should have got them out, hearing the words her father gave in warning again and again, to leave the country and make a better life, seeing the missed opportunities grow before her and how they could have escaped, all of it dust, all of it a nothingness in a false past and she sees herself in a hole in the earth and she sees the best parts of her love, sees how one thing gives to another thing and how her life has been consumed by some law of force that governs all and she is nothing within it but a speck of dust,

Beyond the Judging Eyes” Down a dusty road where the judgments fly, Where the gossips whisper and the rumors pry, If you're lean as a rail, they'll say you're chasing a high, If you're round as a barrel, they'll tell you to diet, oh my. But I'm sick of the box, sick of the fake, We're all just folks, make no mistake. Let's sing it loud, under the wide-open sky, We're all kin in this rodeo of life, Mending fences, not just tearing 'em down, In this country song, we all wear the crown. Dress up like a star, they'll say you're too proud, Wear your workin' boots, they claim you've fallen out, Speak your heart, they'll call you a loudmouth, Keep it to yourself, you're aloof, no doubt. But I'm done with the noise, done with the scorn, We're all diamonds, rough or adorned. Let's sing it loud, under the wide-open sky, We're all kin in this rodeo of life, Mending fences, not just tearing 'em down, In this country song, we all wear the crown. Whether you're the toast of the town hall dance, Or love the quiet of a wide-open expanse, We're each a verse in life's grand old song, In the chorus together, where we all belong. Let's sing it loud, under the wide-open sky, We're all kin in this rodeo of life, Mending fences, not just tearing 'em down, In this country song, we all wear the crown. We're side by side, through the highs and the lows, Lifting each other, that's how it goes, Forget the critics, their talk's just strife, We're the best we can be, in this country life.

It should be on leading my new team to a victory. Instead, I see my ex, Dakota, bare ass up, face down on our bed as my best friend Troy railed her from behind. While our baby sat in a dirty diaper and cried in the other room. Mentirosos. Liars. Both of them. I’ll admit I wasn’t excited to have a kid. Not at first. But despite my party reputation in high school, I would never let my responsibilities slide. Unlike my father, who eventually left us, I promised myself I’d be there for Dakota. She and I were a hookup after I’d seen my parents get into another screaming match on my mom’s front porch, one that almost made me come to blows with my father. I was pissed off at the world, drank too much, and banged the bombshell blonde at the party who straddled my lap and told me it was my lucky night. There was nothing lucky about that night. I rub the ache in my chest. No, it feels wrong to think that. I got Asher, and he’ll always be the highlight of my life even though his mother has made my life hell. I changed everything for her.

I find myself by the tunnel as the guys head for the locker room. I’ve just tucked away my cameras so I can grab some water when Jake and I make eye contact as he trots by. I’m so caught up in the excitement of the game, I run up to him and leap up into his arms to kiss him. “Great game! You’re killing it.” “Thanks, cupcake.” He laughs, kisses me again, before he pats my ass and rejoins the team. I touch my lips, which pull up in a huge smile. Life has never felt so good. Coming to Lone Star was the best decision I ever made. I’m busy thanking my lucky stars for Jake and our new school and all of the blessings we’ve had when I pause. Did someone just call my name? There it is again. It came from the stands. I grab my camera bag and look up, still smiling. Splash. That’s when I’m doused with a huge container of soda. I flinch as the cold liquid and ice hits my face and shoulders, but the debris keeps coming. More soda and some food. A hot dog with mustard and relish smacks my shirt and slowly slides to the ground. I gasp, afraid more crap will rain down on me. Someone must have tripped and accidentally dumped their food over the railing. When I look up, though, there are two girls in the stands, glaring down at me. I have a hard time making out their faces because they’re covered in face paint, but one yells, “Hey, skank! How does it feel to get Dakota’s sloppy seconds?” Horrified, I’m frozen stiff. I don’t see the soda can until it’s too late. 36 JAKE When we make it back onto the field, there’s a weird energy on the sidelines.

The very concept that dragons can recall their previous lives is so hard for humans to grasp. I should so dearly love to listen to whatever you wished to tell me, and to make a complete record of all you recall. Such conversations alone would make a journey worthwhile! Oh, please, say that you will!” A taut quiet followed her words. “Alise,” Sedric said warningly, “I think you should come away from the railing.” But she clung there, even though she, too, could feel the wave of uneasiness that swept through the ship. The smoothness went out of the sailing; the deck under her feet shifted subtly. Surely it was her imagination that the wind flowed more chill than it had? Paragon spoke into the roaring silence. “I choose not to remember,” he said. Alise felt as if his words broke a spell. Sound and life came suddenly back to the world. It included the sudden thud of feet on the deck behind her. A woman’s voice said, without preamble, “I fear you’re upsetting my ship. I’ll have to ask you to leave the foredeck.” “She’s not upsetting me, Althea,” Paragon interjected as Alise turned to see the captain’s wife advancing on her. Alise had met her when they embarked and had spoken with her several times, but still did not feel at ease with her. She was a small woman who wore her hair in a long black pigtail down her back. She dressed in sailor’s garb; it was well tailored and of quality fabric, but for all that, she was a woman in trousers and a jacket. Less feminine garb Alise could not imagine, and yet the very inappropriateness of it seemed to emphasize her female form. Her eyes were very dark, and right now they sparked with either anger or fear. Alise retreated a step and put her hand on Sedric’s arm. For his part, he turned his body so that he stood almost between them and said, “I’m sure the lady meant no harm. The ship asked us to come up and speak with him.” “That I did,” Paragon confirmed. He twisted to look over his shoulder at all of them. “No harm done, Althea, I assure you. We were speaking of dragons, and quite naturally, she asked me what I recalled of being one. I told her that I chose to recall nothing at all.” “Oh, Ship,” the woman said, and Alise felt as if she had disappeared. Althea Trell did not even glance at her as she moved forward to take Alise’s place at the bow. She leaned on the railing and stared far ahead up the river as if sharing the ship’s thoughts. “Par’gon!” A child’s voice piped up suddenly behind them. Alise turned to watch a small boy of three or four clambering onto the raised foredeck. He was bare armed and bare legged and baked dark by the sun. He scampered forward, dropped to his hands and knees, and thrust his head out under the ship’s railing. Alise gasped, expecting him to pitch overboard at any moment. Instead he demanded the ship’s attention with a strident, “Par’gon? You awright?” His babyish voice was full of concern. The ship swung his head around to stare at the child. His mouth puckered oddly and then suddenly he smiled, an expression that transformed his face. “I’m fine.” “Catch me!” the boy commanded, and before his mother could even turn to him, he launched himself into the figurehead’s waiting hands. “Fly me!” the imp commanded the ship. “Fly me like a dragon!” And without a word, the ship obeyed him. He cupped the child in his two immense hands and lifted him high and forward. The boy leaned fearlessly against the ship’s laced fingers and spread his small arms wide as if they were wings. The figurehead gently wove his hands through the air, swaying the youngster from left to right. A squeal of glee drifted back to them. Abruptly the charge of tension in the air vanished. Alise wondered if Paragon even recalled they were there. “Let’s leave them shall we?” Althea suggested quietly. “Is it safe for the child?” Sedric objected in horror. “It’s the safest place the boy can possibly be,” Althea replied with certainty. “And for the ship, it’s the best place, too.

There comes a point in every man’s life where he can rail against the unfairness of the world until he loses, or he can do his best in it. Remain a victim, or become a survivor.

the Touring Club, offering a prize for the best electric car, it occurred to me that I might put my battery into an auto, and win.” “Hum,” remarked Mr. Swift musingly. “I don’t take much stock in electric autos, Tom. Gasolene seems to be the best, or perhaps steam, generated by gasolene. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. All the electric runabouts I ever saw, while they were very nice cars, didn’t seem able to go so very fast, or very far.” “That’s true, but it’s because they didn’t have the right kind of a battery. You know an electric locomotive can make pretty good speed, Dad. Over a hundred miles an hour in tests.” “Yes, but they don’t run by storage batteries. They have a third rail, and powerful motors,” and Mr. Swift looked quizzically at his son. He loved to argue with him, for he said it made Tom think, and often the two would thus thresh out some knotty point of an invention, to the interests of both. “Of course, Dad, there is a good deal of theory in what I’m thinking of,” the lad admitted. “But it does seem to me that if you put the right kind of a battery into an automobile, it could scoot along pretty lively. Look what speed a trolley car can make.” “Yes, Tom, but there again they get their power from an overhead wire.” “Some of them don’t. There’s a new storage battery been invented by a New Jersey man, which does as well as the third rail or the overhead wire. It was after reading about his battery that I thought of a plan for mine. It isn’t anything like his; perhaps not as good in some ways, but, for what I want, it is better in some respects, I think. For one thing it can be recharged very quickly.” “Now Tom, look here,” said Mr. Swift earnestly, laying aside his papers, and coming over to where his son sat. “You know I never interfere with your inventions. In fact, the more you think of the better I like it.

How will it work when everyone is exactly equal?” my mother wanted to know. “Is there enough, really, to go around?” I was appalled by this sentiment, so chauvinist, racist, survivalist. I railed at her about the capitalist racket, the smallness of her Depression-era mindset (“But I don’t have a mindset,” she protested. “I have questions”). She was a good sport about it, really, mild-mannered in the face of my patronizing. But she persisted: Wouldn’t there always be some way people sorted themselves? If it wasn’t race or gender or class, would it be intelligence? Physical strength? Blood type? Weren’t there always bound to be haves and have-nots on account of finite resources? The constraints of weather and geography, for instance? Who got the high ground with fertile soil versus who got the desert? I think she honestly wanted to discuss this, but to me she sounded like a social Darwinist. I could see things only in oppositional terms. Today I’d love to have this conversation with her. I have an answer: The process of working toward greater equality is the point. The medium is the message. The journey is the destination. Something like that. It’s the effort to make life more equal, more bearable for everyone, that counts. And if we don’t try, what are we left with? A lifetime of showing off our most selfish instincts, protecting our own little slice of whatever it is we want—power, money, resources, the best seats on the bus. Life may be filled with struggle but what you struggle for is what matters. And if it’s only your own survival, you’re no better than the dinosaurs.

There come a point in every man's life where he can rail against the unfairness of the world until he loses, or he can do his best in it. Remain a victim, or become a survivor.

He takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair. Hugs his sketchbook to his chest. And then he cries. Rubs his eyes with the back of his right hand, which still clutches the sketchbook. I instinctively move four steps towards him along the bridge railing. I want to be beside him. I want to tell him what Ursula Lang says about tears, how she considers laughter the second best way to instantly connect with a stranger, and how she considers crying the first best way to connect with a stranger. A declaration to the world that you feel.

Possibilities of a Day in the Open.—I make a point, says a judicious mother, of sending my children out, weather permitting, for an hour in the winter, and two hours a day in the summer months. That is well; but it is not enough. In the first place, do not send them; if it is anyway possible, take them; for, although the children should be left much to themselves, there is a great deal to be done and a great deal to be prevented during these long hours in the open air. And long hours they should be; not two, but four, five, or six hours they should have on every tolerably fine day, from April till October. Impossible! Says an overwrought mother who sees her way to no more for her children than a daily hour or so on the pavements of the neighbouring London squares. Let me repeat, that I venture to suggest, not what is practicable in any household, but what seems to me absolutely best for the children; and that, in the faith that mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are demanded of them. A journey of twenty minutes by rail or omnibus, and a luncheon basket, will make a day in the country possible to most town dwellers; and if one day, why not many, even every suitable day?

Anders disentangled himself from Valerie’s clinging arms and took a step back. He paused to take several breaths, attempting to give his brain a chance to recover before turning toward Lucian. Once he faced the man, he simply asked, “What did you say?” “I said I’d rather my wife not look out our French doors and see your bare ass if you don’t mind,” Lucian said succinctly. Anders glanced down at himself, relieved to see that, as he’d thought, he hadn’t yet achieved undoing and dropping his drawers. Trying for dignity he straightened his shoulders and said, “I assure you my self-control would have kicked in before things went that far.” “Yeah right,” Lucian snorted. “One more minute and you would have been bare-assed and giving Valerie a good seeing to right there on the porch rail.” Grimacing, he added, “For future reference, I don’t recommend it. Leigh got some nasty slivers off that rail some months ago. It’s too rough for such endeavors.” Anders glanced over his shoulder to Valerie with concern at this news. The shorts she was wearing weren’t especially long and he had no doubt her upper legs at least had been ground into the wood as he’d dry humped her. “Are you all right?” Blushing brightly, she nodded. “I think so.” “I’ll check later.” Anders had meant that to be reassuring, but Valerie’s blush went from a becoming rosy color to the red of a tomato and her wide eyes shot to Lucian with embarrassment. “And that is precisely why we need help at the moment,” Lucian said dryly to Valerie, obviously having read enough of their minds to know that was what Anders had been trying to show her. He clarified, however, by adding, “I’ve lost most of my best Enforcers to life mate brain . . . which means more often than not, they’re as brainless as cats in heat. Even I suffer from it on occasion. We’ll need help for the next year or so until the worst of it passes.” “Oh,” Valerie breathed.

Richard Kay Richard Kay became friends with Diana, Princess of Wales, through his job as royal correspondent for London’s Daily Mail. After her separation in 1992, he used his knowledge to give a penetrating and unique insight into Diana’s troubled life, and they remained friends until the end. Richard is now diary editor or the Daily Mail and lives in London with his wife and three children. Over the years, I saw her at her happiest and in her darkest moments. There were moments of confusion and despair when I believed Diana was being driven by the incredible pressures made on her almost to the point of destruction. She talked of being strengthened by events, and anyone could see how the bride of twenty had grown into a mature woman, but I never found her strong. She was as unsure of herself at her death as when I first talked to her on that airplane, and she wanted reassurance about the role she was creating for herself. In private, she was a completely different person form the manicured clotheshorse that the public’s insatiable demand for icons had created. She was natural and witty and did a wonderful impression of the Queen. This was the person, she told me, that she would have been all the time if she hadn’t married into the world’s most famous family. What she hated most of all was being called “manipulative” and privately railed against those who used the word to describe her. “They don’t even know me,” she would say bitterly, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her apartment in Kensington Palace and pouring tea from a china pot. It was this blindness, as she saw it, to what she really was that led her seriously to consider living in another country where she hoped she would be understood. The idea first emerged in her mind about three years before her death. “I’ve got to find a place where I can have peace of mind,” she said to me. She considered France, because I was near enough to stay in close touch with William and Harry. She thought of America because she--naively, it must be said--saw it as a country so brimming over with glittery people and celebrities that she would be able to “disappear.” She also thought of South Africa, where her brother, Charles, made a home, and even Australia, because it was the farthest place she could think of from the seat of her unhappiness. But that would have separated her form her sons. Everyone said she would go anywhere, do anything, to have her picture taken, but in my view the truth was completely different. A good day for her was one where her picture was not taken and the paparazzi photographers did not pursue her and clamber over her car. “Why are they so obsessed with me?” she would ask me. I would try to explain, but I never felt she fully understood. Millions of women dreamed of changing places with her, but the Princess that I knew yearned for the ordinary humdrum routine of their lives. “They don’t know how lucky they are,” she would say. On Saturday, just before she was joined by Dodi Al Fayed for their last fateful dinner at the Ritz in Pairs, she told me how fed up she was being compared with Camilla. “It’s all so meaningless,” she said. She didn’t say--she never said--whether she thought Charles and Camilla should marry. Then, knowing that as a journalist I often work at weekends, she said to me, “Unplug your phone and get a good night’s sleep.

We strolled to the end of the platform. We came to a man with a signal lamp and I saw that as he passed us he looked at a conductor standing on another platform and made a drinking movement with his hand near his mouth. We stopped past the end of the roof and looked at the sun. "You see the sun, Koekebakker?" The sun was especially clear, right in front of us, close by, bigger and redder than I had ever seen it. It almost touched the rails, it didn't flash brightly on things anymore, there was a dull glow only on the frosted windowpanes of the train shed to the right of the track. "You think I'm drunk?" I did indeed. "It doesn't matter, Koekebakker, when I'm sober I don't understand anything anyway." "Do you understand what the sun wants from me? I have thirty-four setting suns leaning against the wall, one on top of the other, all facing the wall. But every evening it's there again." "Unless it's cloudy," I said. But he wouldn't let himself be distracted. "Koekebakker, you've always been my best friend. I've known you since--how long has it been?" "Thirteen years. That's a long time. You know what you need to do? Do me a favor. You have a hatbox?" I didn't say anything. "Put it in a hatbox, Koekebakker. In a hatbox. I want to be left alone. Put it in a hatbox, a plain old hatbox. That's all it's worth." Bavinck blubbered drunkard's tears. I looked around helplessly. A man in a uniform with a yellow stripe on his cap came up to us and spoke to me. "I think it would be better, sir, if you took the gentleman home.

Gayle? Is this what you want?” He looked up at her use of his name, a sad smile breaking through his frown. “It is what must be, Anna.” He kept his hands in his pockets. He did not reach for her. “You are a well-bred young lady, and I am a bachelor of some repute. If it becomes known you are under my roof without chaperonage, then your future will be bleak.” More bleak, Anna wanted to rail, than when Stull and Helmsley were hounding me across England? “I will miss you,” Anna said, turning her back to him, the better to hide her tears. God above, she’d turned into a watering pot since getting involved with the earl. “I beg your pardon?” He’d stepped closer, close enough she could catch his scent. “I will miss you,” Anna said, whirling and walking straight into him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and clung, while his arms gently closed around her. “I will miss you and miss you and miss you.” “Oh, love.” He stroked the back of her head. “You mustn’t cry over this. You’ll manage, and so will I, and it’s for the best.” She nodded but made no move to pull away, and he held her as closely as her wounded shoulder would allow.

It’s wonderful to see you falling in love at last, Caleb. I was beginning to think I’d never dance at your wedding.” Caleb went to the porch swing and sat down beside her, taking her hand in his and giving her knuckles a brief kiss. He didn’t know if he was in love, but he wasn’t about to spoil Gertrude’s delight. “If I can’t have you,” he teased, “I’ll have to settle.” “She’ll still be giving you trouble when you’re ninety, you know. Lily’s exactly what you need, Caleb. She’ll try your patience many a time, but she’ll also bring out the best that’s in you. And she’ll give you fine, handsome children.” Caleb allowed himself to imagine Lily bearing him a child and felt his groin tighten. “Are you suggesting that I court her?” he asked in a light voice, to cover the sweet despair he felt. “I know what John told you,” Gertrude answered, “and to a great degree I think he’s right. Lily’s the kind of person that’s got to be challenged; she doesn’t believe that anything worthwhile comes easily.” Caleb got up and walked to the porch railing again, bracing his hands on the whitewashed wood, searching the distance for Lily, but there was no sign of her. “I think she may drive me crazy before too long,” he said. Gertrude laughed, and the swing hinges creaked. She came and patted him gently on the back. “That’s a sure sign she’s the right one,” she said.

best soldiers to the southern Arabian tribal country and thus leaving Egypt defenseless in 1967, was not only a tactical military miscalculation; it was also strikingly hypocritical, coming from a man who had railed against foreign interference in his own country, and who would place pan-Arab unity at the top of his foreign policy agenda.

The private sector is ill suited to provide most of these services (subways, streetcars, light rail systems, energy efficient affordable housing along transit lines, smart electrical grids carrying renewable energy, research efforts to ensure we are using the best methods possible) because they require large up-front investments, and if they are to be genuinely accessible to all, some very well may not be profitable. They are, however, decidedly in the public interest, which is why they should come from the public sector.

With the best Trackless Train Rental Houston has to offer, look no further than Spring Party Rentals. This train will be a huge hit at your next birthday party, church function, corporate event, parade, fundraiser or civic event. A is a surefire way to make your next party in Houston, TX and the surrounding areas a huge success. With striking similarities to a real life train, your guests will feel just like they're riding the rails. With 3 cars to hold passengers and an engine in the front.

My parents did their best to feed their children’s bodies, minds, and hearts, every day, whether they felt like it or not. Now that I have had children, I am in awe of how consistently they did this at such a young age, without complaint. They made a commitment to each other and to my brother and myself, and they kept it. I do not know what this cost them. I may never know. But having had children of my own, I know how hard it is some days to do what has to be done. Many of my parents’ generation were raised with a belief that was both curse and blessing: commitments were to be fulfilled, duties carried out. There was no choice. When we are convinced there is no choice, we waste less energy on wondering what to do and railing against that which needs to be done. This is the blessing we have when the rules are clear, the duties delineated. But there is another side to the ease we feel when our duty is laid out for us. If the strict parameters of what is expected do not fit us, we must shape ourselves to meet them, regardless of the costs. My mother, if she did not by nature fit the role of full-time homemaker, successfully managed the Herculean task of bending to meet it, without losing her enthusiasm for life, her ability to experience joy. Other women and their children were not so fortunate. Behind closed doors, within spotless rooms, many of my friends mothers drowned the pain of not living who they were with alcohol and prescription drugs, and they sometimes descended into illness and suicide. Many of the women of my generation are torn apart daily by the choices available to us, choices I am nevertheless grateful to have. When I went to work, I felt worried and guilty about leaving my children at daycare. When I stayed home I thought I would go out of my mind with the mental boredom, the struggle to live without enough money, and the worry that I would never be able to go back into the workplace and make a living. I had inherited my parents’ values in a world with so many more choices and demands, plus my own expectations that I could, and should, develop my own interests and talents. So, I tried to do it all - to keep a house and care for my children according to the standards required of a full-time homemaker, to attend classes to develop my skills, and to work to provide money and financial security. And I got sick – very, very sick. One of the gifts of lying on the floor too ill to get up with two young children to look after is the ease and clarity with which you know what really does have to be done. No, when I work with men and women who are worn out with too much work and worry, you tell me all the things they have to do, I tell them, “You know, very little actually has to be done.” I found out when I was ill that cookies do not have to be baked, floors do not have to be spotless, PTA meetings do not have to be attended, the dish drainer does not have to be emptied, meals do not have to be exotic and innovative. Too ill to do anything that did not have to be done, I did the impossible: I lowered my standards.

language his parents understood best was a discourse of violent action, not words. Morris, in particular, was a heavy drug user and an alcoholic, and coke, dope, and Wild Irish Rose easily triggered his rages. When he came home at all, it was to rail at his family with

He wasn’t going to argue with Lee, but ignorance like that pained him. Hopefully, over the years of being best friends, Lee would learn the truth about music: that it was the third rail of life. You grabbed it to shock yourself out of the dull drag of hours, to feel something, to burn with all the emotions you didn’t get to experience in the ordinary run of school and TV and loading the dishwasher after dinner. Ig supposed that growing up in a trailer park, Lee had missed out on a lot of the good things. It was going to take him a few years to catch up.

I’m sorry for taking so long.” Tori straightened her shoulders as if readying herself for battle, then traipsed down the steps to the street. “I had a few last-minute details to see to.” Ben hurried around the back of the wagon to meet her and had opened his mouth to offer assurances that the delay was no problem when Lewis popped his head up. “About time! Sheesh, Ma. You took for-ev-er.” Ben cast a warning glance at the boy. “I’m sure whatever your ma was doing was important.” He turned back to Tori and gave her his most charming grin. “She’s worth waiting on.” Her lips tightened at that, but into a shape that looked more like disapproval than appreciation of a compliment. So much for his charm. “Yes, well . . . I suggest we delay no longer.” Tori lengthened her stride, giving him no chance to assist her into the wagon. She scrambled up the wheel spokes and onto the bench before he could even think about fitting his hands to her waist and hoisting her up. Unfortunate, that. Ben shrugged off his disappointment and moved forward to give his team a final check before climbing into the driver’s seat. Emma handed a large basket up to Tori and wished her farewell while Grace Mallory waved from behind the store railing. As he clucked to his Shires and set the wagon in motion, Ben grinned to himself. One of the best parts of this plan to call on area homesteaders was the sheer number of times they’d be required to enter and exit the wagon. Tori might have escaped him this time, but he’d have a couple dozen more chances to wrap his fingers around her slender waist.

You would be entirely justified if you spent your entire life railing against your misfortune. But there is another option. Rise above your fate. Internalize your calamity and give it a heroic dimension as Bhishma did. It was a thoughtful disquisition and its central insight applied to all of us since there is no man born who is not handicapped in one way or another. So it is up to us to make the best of a botched job. After

The Call of the Lord By Sue Buchanan, Tennessee Grits My young daughter Dana often visited her grandparents in a small Southern town where every day a siren blew to mark the noon hour. It was so loud that it terrified the poor girl and left her screaming. In order to soothe her and held her understand, her preacher grandpa (my daddy) told her the horn was to let the children know it was time to go home for lunch. He even suggested that Dana say the words “Go home and get your lunch” each time the whistle blew, which she would do at the top of her little lungs, albeit with the fear of god written all over her face. One Sunday, our entire family was packed into the second row of the church, listening to Dad deliver his sermon. He was pretty wound up that day, if I remember correctly. It was breezy and all the church windows were open. Well, right in the middle of his railing, and before we realized what was happening, darn it if that noon whistle didn’t blow. Dana stood up in the pew, turned toward the three hundred people in the congregation, and shouted, “Go home and get your lunch!” Do I have to tell you what happened? Church was over at that very moment. No benediction and no sevenfold amen! Later my preacher daddy, who had the world’s best sense of humor, admitted: “It wouldn’t have been so bad if half the congregation hadn’t shouted amen!

During World War II trolley tracks ran down Central Avenue, the main street of the Jersey City Heights, before traveling off of the cliffs and continuing down to Hoboken on a high wooden trestle. At best, it was a hairy ride as it jostled around, nearly coming off of the rails. For some of us kids, it was exciting to hop onto the back of the trolley for a free ride, and then snap the cord to the electrical rod, which provided power from an overhead wire, when I wanted to get off. This would leave the conductor spewing a streak of profanity, as his trolley ground to a standstill. Departing the scene in haste, I would run and quickly disappear into the darkness, leaving him with the daunting task of getting the rod back onto the overhead wire in the dark.