Reading Remediation Quotes

Employees are savvy. They know the difference between disguising and remedying unfairness at work

Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read over noon; Read by the light of Goodnight Moon. Turn the pages together, Sitting close as you'll fit, Till a small voice beside you says, "Hey, don't quit.

[I]t is not hasty reading--but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that make them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee’s touching of the flower, which gathers honey--but her abiding for a time upon the flower, which draws out the sweet. It is not he who reads most--but he who meditates most, who will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian.

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.

To be truthful, some writers stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a different harbinger of personal failure, some innocent genius chosen by us for reasons having to do with what we see as our own inadequacies. The only remedy to this I have found is to read a writer whose work is entirely different from another, though not necessarily more like your own—a difference that will remind you of how many rooms there are in the house of art.

I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house by moonlight. "There is a charming quality, is there not," he said to me, "in this silence; for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist whom you will read in time to come asserts that there is no remedy but silence and shadow. And you see this, my boy, there comes in all our lives a time, towards which you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of light, the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the stillroom for darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.

Books are the best remedy for boredom, but it's a remedy you have to discover for yourself.

In the 18th century, a revolution in thought, known as the Enlightenment, dragged us away from the superstition and brutality of the Middle Ages toward a modern age of science, reason and democracy. It changed everything. If it wasn't for the Enlightenment, you wouldn't be reading this right now. You'd be standing in a smock throwing turnips at a witch. Yes, the Enlightenment was one of the most significant developments since the wheel. Which is why we're trying to bollocks it all up. Welcome to a dangerous new era - the Unlightenment - in which centuries of rational thought are overturned by idiots. Superstitious idiots. They're everywhere - reading horoscopes, buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics, babbling about "chakras" and "healing energies", praying to imaginary gods, and rejecting science in favour of soft-headed bunkum. But instead of slapping these people round the face till they behave like adults, we encourage them. We've got to respect their beliefs, apparently.

A person of my acquaintance said: . . . 'Study has always been for me the sovereign remedy against life's unpleasantness, since I have never experienced any sorrow that an hour's reading did not eliminate.

Only because books are better than people, Father. ... Because they are masters who instruct without a rod. If you approach them, they are never asleep; if you are ignorant, they never laugh; if you make mistakes, they never chide. They give to all who ask of them, and never demand payment. ... All the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, if God hadn't provided us with the remedy of books.

Reading really is one of the best remedies for stupidity.

Do not despise your inner world. That is the first and most general piece of advice I would offer… Our society is very outward-looking, very taken up with the latest new object, the latest piece of gossip, the latest opportunity for self-assertion and status. But we all begin our lives as helpless babies, dependent on others for comfort, food, and survival itself. And even though we develop a degree of mastery and independence, we always remain alarmingly weak and incomplete, dependent on others and on an uncertain world for whatever we are able to achieve. As we grow, we all develop a wide range of emotions responding to this predicament: fear that bad things will happen and that we will be powerless to ward them off; love for those who help and support us; grief when a loved one is lost; hope for good things in the future; anger when someone else damages something we care about. Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger. But for that very reason we are often ashamed of our emotions, and of the relations of need and dependency bound up with them. Perhaps males, in our society, are especially likely to be ashamed of being incomplete and dependent, because a dominant image of masculinity tells them that they should be self-sufficient and dominant. So people flee from their inner world of feeling, and from articulate mastery of their own emotional experiences. The current psychological literature on the life of boys in America indicates that a large proportion of boys are quite unable to talk about how they feel and how others feel — because they have learned to be ashamed of feelings and needs, and to push them underground. But that means that they don’t know how to deal with their own emotions, or to communicate them to others. When they are frightened, they don’t know how to say it, or even to become fully aware of it. Often they turn their own fear into aggression. Often, too, this lack of a rich inner life catapults them into depression in later life. We are all going to encounter illness, loss, and aging, and we’re not well prepared for these inevitable events by a culture that directs us to think of externals only, and to measure ourselves in terms of our possessions of externals. What is the remedy of these ills? A kind of self-love that does not shrink from the needy and incomplete parts of the self, but accepts those with interest and curiosity, and tries to develop a language with which to talk about needs and feelings. Storytelling plays a big role in the process of development. As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves. As we grow older, we encounter more and more complex stories — in literature, film, visual art, music — that give us a richer and more subtle grasp of human emotions and of our own inner world. So my second piece of advice, closely related to the first, is: Read a lot of stories, listen to a lot of music, and think about what the stories you encounter mean for your own life and lives of those you love. In that way, you will not be alone with an empty self; you will have a newly rich life with yourself, and enhanced possibilities of real communication with others.

A person of my acquaintance said: . . . "Study has always been for me the sovereign remedy against life's unpleasantness, since I have never experienced any sorrow that an hour's reading did not eliminate.

By the nineteenth century, society had given up burning witches. Yet the sexual exploitation of children continued. In late-nineteenth-century Britain, for example, men who raped young girls were excused because they did it to cure venereal disease. There was a widely held belief that children would take "poisons" out of the body. In fact, leprosy, venereal disease, depression, and impotence were part of a wide range of maladies believed cured by having sex with the young. An English medical text of the time reads, "Breaking a maiden's seal is one of the best antidotes for one's ills. Cudgeling her unceasingly, until she swoons away, is a mighty remedy for man's depression. It cures all impotence.

He is smitten on the brain, -he reads and writes verses! I caught him in the act! Fools might say he was inspired; but I know it is the first and worst symptom of lunacy. All other maniacs have lucid intervals; some are curable; but the madness of poets, dogs, and musicians, is past hope. Earth possesses no remedy, science no cure.

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent.

As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity.

Did you know that Jacques Benveniste, one of the world's leading homeopathic "scientists," now claims that you can *email* homeopathic remedies? Yeah, see, what you do is you can take the "memory" of the diluted substance out of the water electromagnetically, put it on your computer, email it, and play it back on a sound card into new water. I mean, that could work, right? (Nick's thoughts after reading Francis Wheen's book "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World")

Anyone who studies present and ancient affairs will easily see how in all cities and all peoples there still exist, and have always existed, the same desires and passions. Thus, it is an easy matter for him who carefully examines past events to foresee future events in a republic and to apply the remedies employed by the ancients, or, if old remedies cannot be found, to devise new ones based upon the similarity of the events. But since these matters are neglected or not understood by those who read, or, if understood, remain unknown to those who govern, the result is that the same problems always exist in every era.

All the world's diseases—and all the remedies—were concealed between the covers of books. That in books you found betrayal, solitude, murder, madness, rage—everything that could grab you by the throat and ruin your life, not to mention others' lives, and that sometimes crying over printed pages could save a person's life.

They want you to be able to read the Bible, and also tracts, as religion and thrashing are the only remedies for a depraved nature and our immortal souls must be considered.

These conversations were exhilarating. They alerted me to the way shared reading could be a source of light in a dark world, forging friendships and creating like-minded communities.

I'm all the readers I have been. . . . I'm still the thirty-year-old discovering the pleasures of returning over and over again to a good novel, the reader who learned that you don't have to be a kid to read kid lit, who revisited Anne and Emily and Valancy, who indulged in the pleasures of filling the inexplicable gaps in her book-filled childhood, remedying the situation by speeding through all the Little House books, then the Bestsy-Tacy books, and the Shoe series. Who blazed through all the Harry Potters in ten days,because they were that good.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything. Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

They want you to be able to read the Bible, and also tracts, as religion and thrashing are the only remedies for a depraved nature and our immortal souls must be considered. It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains

I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get ride of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed up me by my every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever.

...and I've learnt a lot more since being here, as they teach you on purpose. They want you to be able to read the Bible, and also tracts, as religion and thrashing are the only remedies for a depraved nature and our immortal souls must be considered.

Still—if I have read religious history aright—faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible—thank Heaven!—to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to her neighbour's child to "stop the fits," may be a piteously inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.

I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house, by moonlight. “There is a charming quality, is there not,” he said to me, “in this silence; for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist, whom you will read in time to come, claims that there is no remedy but silence and shadow. And see you this, my boy, there comes in all lives a time, towards which you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of light, the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.

It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of the task which it is performing, and survey what it has done; it is always looking for, and often finding, patterns. Now I said that an intelligence canjump out of its task, but that does not mean that it always will. However, a little prompt- ing will often suffice. For example, a human being who is reading a book may grow sleepy. Instead of continuing to read until the book is finished, he is just as likely to put the book aside and turn off the light. He has stepped "out of the system" and yet it seems the most natural thing in the world to us. Or, suppose person A is watching television when person B comes in the room, and shows evident displeasure with the situation. Person A may think he understands the problem, and try to remedy it by exiting the present system (that television program), and flipping the chan- nel knob, looking for a better show. Person B may have a more radical concept of what it is to "exit the system"-namely to turn the television off! Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the vision to perceive a system which governs many peoples' lives, a system which had never before even been recognized as a system; then such people often devote their lives to convincing other people that the system really is there, and that it ought to be exited from!

Choral reading goes by other names: reading-in-unison, shadow-reading, shared-reading, or the neurological-impress remedial-reading technique. It simply means that two or more people read together. The tutor says, “Say the words with me, or right after me. I will not ask you to read out loud all alone. If you ever want to read aloud to me, just let me know.” Choral

Reading through the newspapers and medical journals of the day, what stands out is not just the breadth of remedies proposed, but the breadth of people involved in the discussion: surgeons, nurses, patent medicine quacks, public-health authorities, armchair chemists, all writing the Times and the Globe (or buying classified advertising there) with news of the dependable cure they had concocted.

So I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you’ll see the reading scores keep going down—or hardly going up—in spite of the fact that we continually use these same people to improve the methods. There’s a witch doctor remedy that doesn’t work.

He there faces the fact that modern poets are read almost exclusively by one another. He looks about for a remedy. Naturally he does not suggest that the poets should do anything about it. For it is taken as basic by all the culture of our age that whenever artists and audience lose touch, the fault must be wholly on the side of the audience. (I have never come across the great work in which this important doctrine is proved.)

But I am so pathologically obsessed with usage that every semester the same thing happens: once I've had to read my students' first set of papers, we immediately abandon the regular Lit syllabus and have a three-week Emergency Remedial Usage and Grammar Unit, during which my demeanor is basically that of somebody teaching HIV prevention to intravenous-drug users. When it merges (as it does, every term) that 95 percent of those intelligent upscale college students have never been taught, e.g., what a clause is or why a misplace 'only' can make a sentence confusing or why you don't just automatically stick in a comma after a long noun phrase, I all but pound my head on the blackboard; I get angry and self-righteous; I tell them they should sue their hometown school boards, and mean it. The kids end up scared, both of me and for me. Every August I vow silently to chill about usage this year, and then by Labor Day there's foam on my chin. I can't seem to help it. The truth is that I'm not even an especially good or dedicated teacher; I don't have this kind of fervor in class about anything else, and I know it's not a very productive fervor, nor a healthy one – it's got elements of fanaticism and rage to it, plus a snobbishness that I know I'd be mortified to display about anything else.

The English word Atonement comes from the ancient Hebrew word kaphar, which means to cover. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit and discovered their nakedness in the Garden of Eden, God sent Jesus to make coats of skins to cover them. Coats of skins don’t grow on trees. They had to be made from an animal, which meant an animal had to be killed. Perhaps that was the very first animal sacrifice. Because of that sacrifice, Adam and Eve were covered physically. In the same way, through Jesus’ sacrifice we are also covered emotionally and spiritually. When Adam and Eve left the garden, the only things they could take to remind them of Eden were the coats of skins. The one physical thing we take with us out of the temple to remind us of that heavenly place is a similar covering. The garment reminds us of our covenants, protects us, and even promotes modesty. However, it is also a powerful and personal symbol of the Atonement—a continuous reminder both night and day that because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we are covered. (I am indebted to Guinevere Woolstenhulme, a religion teacher at BYU, for insights about kaphar.) Jesus covers us (see Alma 7) when we feel worthless and inadequate. Christ referred to himself as “Alpha and Omega” (3 Nephi 9:18). Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Christ is surely the beginning and the end. Those who study statistics learn that the letter alpha is used to represent the level of significance in a research study. Jesus is also the one who gives value and significance to everything. Robert L. Millet writes, “In a world that offers flimsy and fleeting remedies for mortal despair, Jesus comes to us in our moments of need with a ‘more excellent hope’ (Ether 12:32)” (Grace Works, 62). Jesus covers us when we feel lost and discouraged. Christ referred to Himself as the “light” (3 Nephi 18:16). He doesn’t always clear the path, but He does illuminate it. Along with being the light, He also lightens our loads. “For my yoke is easy,” He said, “and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). He doesn’t always take burdens away from us, but He strengthens us for the task of carrying them and promises they will be for our good. Jesus covers us when we feel abused and hurt. Joseph Smith taught that because Christ met the demands of justice, all injustices will be made right for the faithful in the eternal scheme of things (see Teachings, 296). Marie K. Hafen has said, “The gospel of Jesus Christ was not given us to prevent our pain. The gospel was given us to heal our pain” (“Eve Heard All These Things,” 27). Jesus covers us when we feel defenseless and abandoned. Christ referred to Himself as our “advocate” (D&C 29:5): one who believes in us and stands up to defend us. We read, “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler” (Psalm 18:2). A buckler is a shield used to divert blows. Jesus doesn’t always protect us from unpleasant consequences of illness or the choices of others, since they are all part of what we are here on earth to experience. However, He does shield us from fear in those dark times and delivers us from having to face those difficulties alone. … We’ve already learned that the Hebrew word that is translated into English as Atonement means “to cover.” In Arabic or Aramaic, the verb meaning to atone is kafat, which means “to embrace.” Not only can we be covered, helped, and comforted by the Savior, but we can be “encircled about eternally in the arms of his love” (2 Nephi 1:15). We can be “clasped in the arms of Jesus” (Mormon 5:11). In our day the Savior has said, “Be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, and I will encircle thee in the arms of my love” (D&C 6:20). (Brad Wilcox, The Continuous Atonement, pp. 47-49, 60).

as the mass of mankind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never assents long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by a novelty, which has not yet proved illusive. This element of inconsistency has been the cause of many terrible wars and revolutions; for, as Curtius well says (lib. iv. chap. 10): “The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition,” and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity’s common bane. Immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious reverence by the whole people—a system which has been brought to great perfection by the Turks, for they consider even controversy impious, and so clog men’s minds with dogmatic formulas, that they leave no room for sound reason, not even enough to doubt with.

The amount of alcohol in tinctures is incredibly tiny. Less than you will get from eating a few pieces of bread (yes, bread does have alcohol in it, enough to produce a breathalyzer reading of 0.05 just by itself). If you are taking 20 drops of a 60 percent alcohol tincture every hour for an acute condition, you will get about 1/17 of an ounce of alcohol over the course of a day (less than 2 ml). If you are taking a general dose (20 drops three times daily), you will be getting about 1/30 of an ounce over a day.

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye, And all my soul, and all my every part; And for this sin there is no remedy, It is so grounded inward in my heart. Methinks no face so gracious is as mine, No shape so true, no truth of such account, And for myself mine own worth do define, As I all other in all worths surmount. But when my glass shows me myself indeed, Beared and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity, Mine own self-love quite contrary I read; Self so self-loving were iniquity. ’Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

As a kid my mom loved to read and was good at it. But when schools were integrated and she went to high school, they put her in remedial English because she wasn’t reading at the level of the white students her age. They. Thought. She. Had. A. Learning. Disability (except I’m sure they didn’t say it that politically correctly). In reality, my mom did not have a learning disability. What she had was a syndrome called “Years of being educated at Black public schools that didn’t have the greater resources of white public schools because of racism-it is.” Heard of that syndrome? Turns out this country still has it.

This was a transformation from what the late Isaiah Berlin described as “Negative Liberty” to “Positive Liberty.”4 The idea of negative liberty is perhaps more familiar. It can be defined as the absence of restraint, a freedom from interference by outside authority with individual thought or behavior. A law requiring motorcyclists to wear a helmet would be, under this definition, to prevent them from enjoying the freedom to go bareheaded if they wish. Negative liberty, therefore, can be described as freedom from. Positive liberty can best be understood as freedom to . It is not necessarily incompatible with negative liberty, but has a different focus or emphasis. Freedom of the press is generally viewed as a negative liberty—freedom from interference with what a writer writes or a reader reads. But an illiterate person suffers from a denial of positive liberty; he is unable to enjoy the freedom to write or read whatever he chooses, not because some authority prevents him from doings so but because he cannot read or write anything. He suffers not the absence of a negative liberty—freedom from—but of a positive liberty—freedom to read and write. The remedy lies not in removal of restraint but in achievement of the capacity to read and write.

But what is there in man older and deeper than the religious sentiment? There is man himself; that is, volition and conscience, free-will and law, eternally antagonistic. Man is at war with himself: why? “Man,” say the theologians, “transgressed in the beginning; our race is guilty of an ancient offence. For this transgression humanity has fallen; error and ignorance have become its sustenance. Read history, you will find universal proof of this necessity for evil in the permanent misery of nations. Man suffers and always will suffer; his disease is hereditary and constitutional. Use palliatives, employ emollients; there is no remedy.

The ritual of the blood on the lintel of the door, which protected the Israelites from the angel of death, is an apotropaic (avoidance) ritual, such that the family in question would be 'passed over' by the aforementioned denizen of death. Later Jewish and Christian ideas that amalgamated this story with ideas about the scapegoat’s providing a substitutionary remedy should not be read into the original tale. The scapegoat symbolized the removal of sin from the nation and perhaps the judging of a substitute. The blood of the Passover lamb on the door symbolized not a sacrifice for sin but rather protection from divine judgment. There is a difference.

I feel empty finally and wonder why that's a good feeling. I drink water, and it's warm. It leaves my thirst unquenced. I can veer off this track any time I want to. I come across signposts to towns and hotels and could easily divert and seek comfort, but I don't. I'm forcing myself into this solitude and keep on walking. There's something about movement, the necessity of movement, to deal with trauma. Academic papers have been written about it, and I've read them, how animals shake to release fear in their muscles. I do that too. Under the sun, amidst the scrub, I shake, I shout, I scream. So I keep to the track, transfixed by the motion of walking. Trusting in an invisible remedy that will make me feel human once again.

Letters to the Dead" We read the letters of the dead like puzzled gods -- gods nevertheless, because we know what happened later. We know what money wasn’t repaid, the widows who rushed to remarry. Poor, unseeing dead, deceived, fallible, toiling in solemn foolery. We see the signs made behind their backs, catch the rustle of ripped-up wills. They sit there before us, ridiculous as things perched on buttered bread, or fling themselves after whisked-away hats. Their bad taste -- Napoleon, steam and electricity, deadly remedies for curable diseases, the foolish apocalypse of St. John, the false paradise on earth of Jean-Jacques . . . Silently, we observe their pawns on the board -- but shifted three squares on. Everything they foresaw has happened quite differently, or a little differently -- which is the same thing. The most fervent stare trustingly into our eyes; by their reckoning, they’ll see perfection there.

By looking after his relatives' interests as he did, Napoleon furthermore displayed incredible weakness on the purely human level. When a man occupies such a position, he should eliminate all his family feeling. Napoleon, on the contrary, placed his brothers and sisters in posts of command, and retained them in these posts even after they'd given proofs of their incapability. All that was necessary was to throw out all these patently incompetent relatives. Instead of that, he wore himself out with sending his brothers and sisters, regularly every month, letters containing reprimands and warnings, urging them to do this and not to do that, thinking he could remedy their incompetence by promising them money, or by threatening not to give them any more. Such illogical behaviour can be explained only by the feeling Corsicans have for their families, a feeling in which they resemble the Scots. By thus giving expression to his family feeling, Napoleon introduced a disruptive principle into his life. Nepotism, in fact, is the most formidable protection imaginable : the protection of the ego. But wherever it has appeared in the life of a State—the monarchies are the best proof—it has resulted in weakening and decay. Reason : it puts an end to the principle of effort. In this respect, Frederick the Great showed himself superior to Napoleon—Frederick who, at the most difficult moments of his life, and when he had to take the hardest decisions, never forgot that things are called upon to endure. In similar cases, Napoleon capitulated. It's therefore obvious that, to bring his life's work to a successful conclusion, Frederick the Great could always rely on sturdier collaborators than Napoleon could. When Napoleon set the interests of his family clique above all, Frederick the Great looked around him for men, and, at need, trained them himself. Despite all Napoleon's genius, Frederick the Great was the most outstanding man of the eighteenth century. When seeking to find a solution for essential problems concerning the conduct of affairs of State, he refrained from all illogicality. It must be recognised that in this field his father, Frederick-William, that buffalo of a man, had given him a solid and complete training. Peter the Great, too, clearly saw the necessity for eliminating the family spirit from public life. In a letter to his son—a letter I was re-reading recently—he informs him very clearly of his intention to disinherit him and exclude him from the succession to the throne. It would be too lamentable, he writes, to set one day at the head of Russia a son who does not prepare himself for State affairs with the utmost energy, who does not harden his will and strengthen himself physically. Setting the best man at the head of the State—that's the most difficult problem in the world to solve.

Baldwin's words can sound harsh, as if he's throwing away millions of Americans and declaring them irrelevant to the life and future of our democracy. It's easy to read him that way, and sometimes, when his rage boils, he might actually mean it. But in the end, he wanted us to see that whiteness as an identity was a moral choice, an attitude toward the world based on ugly things. People can, if they want to, choose to be better. We need only build a world where that choice can be made with relative ease. If we--and I mean all of us who are committed to a New America--organize and fight with every ounce of energy we have to found an America free from the categories that bind our feet, implement policies that remedy generations-old injustices, and demonstrate in our living and political arrangements the value that every human being is sacred, we can build a New Jerusalem where the value gap [between whites and people of color] cannot breathe.

When all was set in order, King Epimetheus stepped forward supported by a friend on either side, greeted Prometheus, and spoke to him these well-meant words: “I am heartily sorry for you, Prometheus, my dear brother! But nonetheless take courage, for look, I have a salve here which is a sure remedy for every ill and works wondrously well in heat and in frost, and moreover can be used alike for solace as for punishment.” So saying, he took his staff and tied the box of ointment to it, and reached it carefully and with all due solemnity towards his brother. But as soon as he saw and smelt the ointment, Prometheus turned away his head in disgust. At that the King changed his tone, and shouted and began to read his brother a lesson with great zest: “Of a truth it seems you have need of yet greater punishment, since your present fate does not suffice to teach you.” And as he spoke, he drew a mirror from the folds of his robe, and made everything clear to him from the beginning, and waxed very eloquent and knew all his faults.

There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advances from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and a patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man; but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it.

I had grown weary of so many rules. That's the thing about every discipline. There's often a format, a belief that if you don't follow the structure to the tiniest detail, you won't get the maximum value: mantras are private. Om is the most perfect sound in the universe. Never lay a sacred text to chant on the floor. If you are in a seminar, always wear a name tag. Put your name in the upper right hand corner of every essay. Just breathe. No, scream. No, cry or hit something. But don't lose yourself. Never do yoga on the full moon. Walk clockwise around a temple. Don't eat protein and starch in the same meal. Always begin the day with fruit. Don't eat any fruit. Never utter the word of G_d. There is no God. There are multiple gods. To be a good acupuncturist, "check your stuff" at the door. Bring all of you. Never do work on the Sabbath. Don't cary anything in your pockets. Consciousness is constant work. Accept Jesus. Read the Bible. There is no suffering. Acknowledge suffering as a noble truth. Tread lightly on the Earth. Leave no trace. Make your mark. Get noticed. Travel silently through life. Attend to the needs of others. Follow your bliss. Suppress. Express. Withhold. Let go. Let it in. Get off the grid. Join the marketplace. Go toward the light. Hadn't I heard enough?

They taught him how to milk cows and now they expected him to tame lions. Perhaps they expected him to behave like all good lion tamers. Use a whip and a chair. But what happens to the best lion tamer when he puts down his whip and his chair. Goddamnit! It was wrong. He felt cheated, he felt almost violated. He felt cheated for himself, and he felt cheated for guys like Joshua Edwards who wanted to teach and who didn’t know how to teach because he’d been pumped full of manure and theoretical hogwash. Why hadn’t anyone told them, in plain, frank English, just what to do? Couldn’t someone, somewhere along the line, have told them? Not one single college instructor? Not someone from the board of Ed, someone to orientate them after they’d passed the emergency exam? Not anyone? Now one sonofabitch somewhere who gave a good goddamn? Not even Stanley? Not even Small? Did they have to figure it out for themselves, sink and swim, kill or be killed? Rick had never been told how to stop in his class. He’d never been told what to do with a second term student who doesn’t even know how to write down his own goddamn name on a sheet of paper. He didn’t know, he’d never been advised on the proper tactics for dealing with a boy whose I.Q. was 66, a big, fat, round, moronic 66. He hadn’t been taught about kids’ yelling out in class, not one kid, not the occasional “difficult child” the ed courses had loftily philosophized about, not him. But a whole goddamn, shouting, screaming class load of them all yelling their sonofbitching heads off. What do you do with a kid who can’t read even though he’s fifteen years old? Recommend him for special reading classes, sure. And what do you do when those special reading classes are loaded to the asshole, packed because there are kids who can’t read in abundance, and you have to take only those who can’t read the worst, dumping them onto a teacher who’s already overloaded and those who doesn’t want to teach a remedial class to begin with? And what do you with that poor ignorant jerk? Do you call him on class, knowing damn well he hasn’t read the assignment because he doesn’t know how to read? Or do you ignore him? Or do you ask him to stop by after school, knowing he would prefer playing stickball to learning how to read. And knowing he considers himself liberated the moment the bell sounds at the end of the eighth period. What do you do when you’ve explained something patiently and fully, explained it just the way you were taught to explain in your education courses, explained in minute detail, and you look out at your class and see that stretching, vacant wall of blank, blank faces and you know nothing has penetrated, not a goddamn thing has sunk in? What do you do then? Give them all board erasers to clean. What do you do when you call on a kid and ask “What did that last passage mean?”and the kid stands there without any idea of what the passage meant , and you know that he’s not alone, you know every other kid in the class hasn’t the faintest idea either? What the hell do you do then? Do you go home and browse through the philosophy of education books the G.I bill generously provided. Do you scratch your ugly head and seek enlightenment from the educational psychology texts? Do you consult Dewey? And who the hell do you condemn, just who? Do you condemn elementary schools for sending a kid on to high school without knowing how to read, without knowing how to write his own name on a piece of paper? Do you condemn the masterminds who plot the education systems of a nation, or a state or a city?

Most of these reveal a psychological shrewdness about human fallibility: • A man of genius is but seldom ruined but by himself. • If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle. • There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by. • All censure of self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. • Man’s chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature. • No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. • Very few can boast of hearts which they dare lay open to themselves. • Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage you think is particularly fine, strike it out. • Every man naturally persuades himself he can keep his resolutions; nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment. Through his moral essays, Johnson was able to impose order on the world, to anchor his experiences in the stability of the truth. He had to still himself in order to achieve an objective perception of the world. When people are depressed, they often feel overcome by a comprehensive and yet hard to pin down sadness. But Johnson jumps directly into the pain, pins it down, dissects it, and partially disarms it. In his essay on sorrow he observes that most passions drive you to their own extinction. Hunger leads to eating and satiety, fear leads to flight, lust leads to sex. But sorrow is an exception. Sorrow doesn’t direct you toward its own cure. Sorrow builds upon sorrow. That’s because sorrow is “that state of mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession we have lost.” Many try to avoid sorrow by living timid lives. Many try to relieve sorrow by forcing themselves to go to social events. Johnson does not approve of these stratagems. Instead, he advises, “The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment…. Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life and is remedied by exercise and motion.

We went away, leaving Dan sitting on the door-sill reading his book, and Jimmy P. snoozing blissfully on the sofa. When we returned—Felix and the girls and I were ahead of the others—Dan was still sitting in precisely the same place and attitude; but there was no Jimmy in sight. "Dan, where's the baby?" cried Felicity. Dan looked around. His jaw fell in blank amazement. I never say any one look as foolish as Dan at that moment. "Good gracious, I don't know," he said helplessly. "You've been so deep in that wretched book that he's got out, and dear knows where he is," cried Felicity distractedly. "I wasn't," cried Dan. "He MUST be in the house. I've been sitting right across the door ever since you left, and he couldn't have got out unless he crawled right over me. He must be in the house." "He isn't in the kitchen," said Felicity rushing about wildly, "and he couldn't get into the other part of the house, for I shut the hall door tight, and no baby could open it—and it's shut tight yet. So are all the windows. He MUST have gone out of that door, Dan King, and it's your fault." "He DIDN'T go out of this door," reiterated Dan stubbornly. "I know that." "Well, where is he, then? He isn't here. Did he melt into air?" demanded Felicity. "Oh, come and look for him, all of you. Don't stand round like ninnies. We MUST find him before his mother gets here. Dan King, you're an idiot!" Dan was too frightened to resent this, at the time. However and wherever Jimmy had gone, he WAS gone, so much was certain. We tore about the house and yard like maniacs; we looked into every likely and unlikely place. But Jimmy we could not find, anymore than if he had indeed melted into air. Mrs. Patterson came, and we had not found him. Things were getting serious. Uncle Roger and Peter were summoned from the field. Mrs. Patterson became hysterical, and was taken into the spare room with such remedies as could be suggested. Everybody blamed poor Dan. Cecily asked him what he would feel like if Jimmy was never, never found. The Story Girl had a gruesome recollection of some baby at Markdale who had wandered away like that— "And they never found him till the next spring, and all they found was—HIS SKELETON, with the grass growing through it," she whispered. "This beats me," said Uncle Roger, when a fruitless hour had elapsed. "I do hope that baby hasn't wandered down to the swamp. It seems impossible he could walk so far; but I must go and see. Felicity, hand me my high boots out from under the sofa, there's a girl." Felicity, pale and tearful, dropped on her knees and lifted the cretonne frill of the sofa. There, his head pillowed hardly on Uncle Roger's boots, lay Jimmy Patterson, still sound asleep!

Maxims & Other Quotes If you need an adjective or adverb, you're still fishing for he right noun or verb. 34 Was this a true story? It seemed somehow unimaginable, a fantasy of some kind. But he told it with such conviction that, against my own wishes, I believed him. Was this indeed the essence of storytelling? Did one simply have to relate a tale in a believable fashion, with the authority of the imagination? 36 Memory is a mirror that may easily shatter. 81 Readers become invisible even to themselves. Only the story lives. It’s the fate of the writer, yes, as well, to disappear. ~ Alastair Reid 83 ‘There is only now,’ Borges exclaimed with unstoppable force. ‘Act, dear boy! Do not procrastinate! It’s the worst of sins. I’ve thought about this, you see: the progression toward evil. Murder, this is very bad, a sin. It leads to thievery. And thievery, of course, leads to drunkenness and Sabbath-breaking. And Sabbath-breaking leads to incivility and at last procrastination. A slippery slope into the pit!’ 98 Borges: I no longer need to save face. This is one of the benefits of extreme age. Nothing matters much, and very little matters at all. 100 Borges: Believe me, you will one day read Don Quixote with a profound sense of recollection. This happens when you read a classic. It finds you where you have been. 102 Parini: I try not to think of the phallus, except when I can think of nothing else, which is most of the time. Borges: This is the fate of young men, a limited focus. One of the few advantages of my blindness has been that I no longer focus my eyes on objects of arousal. I look inward now, though the mind has mountains, dangerous cliffs. 105 Borges: Writers are always pirates, marauding, taking whatever pleases them from others, shaping these stolen goods to our purposes. Writers feed off the corpses of those who passed before them, their precursors. On the other hand they invent their precursors. They create them in their own image, as God did with man.108 Borges: Nobody can teach you anything. That’s the first truth. We teach ourselves. 115 Borges: One should avoid strong emotion, especially when it interferes with the work at hand. We have European blood in our veins, you and I. Mine is northern blood. We’re cold people, you see. Warriors. 125 Borges: The influence of Quixote was such that Sancho acquired a taste for literary wisdom. Such wisdom in his aphorisms! ‘One can find a remedy for everything but death.’ Or this: ‘Make yourself into honey and the flies will devour you.’ 151 Borges: You see, I designed my work for the tiniest audience, ‘fit company though few.’ A writer’s imagination should not be diluted by crowds! 151 Borges: If you don’t abandon the spirit, the spirit will not abandon you. 181

He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just learned what it is to love—­to love with that adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift of venerating love has been given to too many humble craftsmen since the world began for us to feel any surprise that it should have existed in the soul of a Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there was yet a lingering after-glow from the time when Wesley and his fellow-labourer fed on the hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after exhausting limbs and lungs in carrying a divine message to the poor. That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills, or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough men and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers, and hypocritical jargon—­elements which are regarded as an exhaustive analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters. That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were anything else than Methodists—­not indeed of that modern type which reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes, but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as liberal. Still—­if I have read religious history aright—­faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible—­thank Heaven!—­to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to her neighbour’s child to “stop the fits,” may be a piteously inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost. Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.

Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. As creatures of habit, people have a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns. Sleeping later on weekends won’t fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week and will make it harder to wake up early on Monday morning. Set an alarm for bedtime. Often we set an alarm for when it’s time to wake up but fail to do so for when it’s time to go to sleep. If there is only one piece of advice you remember and take from these twelve tips, this should be it. Exercise is great, but not too late in the day. Try to exercise at least thirty minutes on most days but not later than two to three hours before your bedtime. Avoid caffeine and nicotine. Coffee, colas, certain teas, and chocolate contain the stimulant caffeine, and its effects can take as long as eight hours to wear off fully. Therefore, a cup of coffee in the late afternoon can make it hard for you to fall asleep at night. Nicotine is also a stimulant, often causing smokers to sleep only very lightly. In addition, smokers often wake up too early in the morning because of nicotine withdrawal. Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed. Having a nightcap or alcoholic beverage before sleep may help you relax, but heavy use robs you of REM sleep, keeping you in the lighter stages of sleep. Heavy alcohol ingestion also may contribute to impairment in breathing at night. You also tend to wake up in the middle of the night when the effects of the alcohol have worn off. Avoid large meals and beverages late at night. A light snack is okay, but a large meal can cause indigestion, which interferes with sleep. Drinking too many fluids at night can cause frequent awakenings to urinate. If possible, avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep. Some commonly prescribed heart, blood pressure, or asthma medications, as well as some over-the-counter and herbal remedies for coughs, colds, or allergies, can disrupt sleep patterns. If you have trouble sleeping, talk to your health care provider or pharmacist to see whether any drugs you’re taking might be contributing to your insomnia and ask whether they can be taken at other times during the day or early in the evening. Don’t take naps after 3 p.m. Naps can help make up for lost sleep, but late afternoon naps can make it harder to fall asleep at night. Relax before bed. Don’t overschedule your day so that no time is left for unwinding. A relaxing activity, such as reading or listening to music, should be part of your bedtime ritual. Take a hot bath before bed. The drop in body temperature after getting out of the bath may help you feel sleepy, and the bath can help you relax and slow down so you’re more ready to sleep. Dark bedroom, cool bedroom, gadget-free bedroom. Get rid of anything in your bedroom that might distract you from sleep, such as noises, bright lights, an uncomfortable bed, or warm temperatures. You sleep better if the temperature in the room is kept on the cool side. A TV, cell phone, or computer in the bedroom can be a distraction and deprive you of needed sleep. Having a comfortable mattress and pillow can help promote a good night’s sleep. Individuals who have insomnia often watch the clock. Turn the clock’s face out of view so you don’t worry about the time while trying to fall asleep. Have the right sunlight exposure. Daylight is key to regulating daily sleep patterns. Try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least thirty minutes each day. If possible, wake up with the sun or use very bright lights in the morning. Sleep experts recommend that, if you have problems falling asleep, you should get an hour of exposure to morning sunlight and turn down the lights before bedtime. Don’t lie in bed awake. If you find yourself still awake after staying in bed for more than twenty minutes or if you are starting to feel anxious or worried, get up and do some relaxing activity until you feel sleepy.

Smart Acupuncture Pointers That Will Boost Your Knowledge How much have you learned in the past about acupuncture? Acupuncture is often symbolized by the patient, face-down, with needles protruding from their bodies in various locations. Perhaps it would surprise you to know that acupuncture is really very beneficial; although, you must be informed to make a wise choice regarding treatment. Read this post to learn all that you can about it. There is a lot more to acupuncture than the treatments involving needles. This medicinal practice is associated with a philosophy. You should learn more about the philosophy of acupuncture to adopt a healthier lifestyle. There are plenty of meditation exercises, home remedies and other practices you can use to introduce acupuncture in the different aspects of your life. Keep in mind that it may take some time for you to feel the full benefits from your acupuncture treatments. It may take more than one or two visits to find relief from pain or improvement in your conditions. Make sure you are ready to commit to the full program recommended. If you want to know more about acupuncture, but fear needles, see if your practitioner is familiar with laser treatments. This type of acupuncture uses lasers instead of needles. This does not hurt at all, and lots of people claim that it works really well in relieving their conditions. You should drink plenty of water before you attend your scheduled acupuncture session. It has been shown that people who are well hydrated respond better to treatments. While you should not consume a lot of food before a session, it is a great idea for you to drink a good amount of water. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Before your procedure, the acupuncturist may recommend herbal treatments. Such herbs can be helpful, but they may result in undesirable side effects or harmful drug interactions. Therefore, talk with your doctor before starting any herbal regimen. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. Hopefully, you are more comfortable with the idea of scheduling an acupuncture appointment. Acupuncture can be very beneficial. Follow the tips presented here to make the most of your therapy by visiting rosholistic.com

THE TEN BEST NOVELS TO READ ON YOUR GAP YEAR

[...]We can see that blessings result through the permission of evil which, probably, could not otherwise have been so fully realized. Not only are men benefited to all eternity by the experience gained, and angels by their observation of man's experiences, but all are further advantaged by a fuller acquaintance with God's character as manifested in his plan. When his plan is fully accomplished, all will be able to read clearly his wisdom, justice, love and power [...] Had evil not been permitted and thus overruled by divine providence, we cannot see how these results could have been attained. The permission of evil for a time among men thus displays a far-seeing wisdom, which grasped all the attendant circumstances, devised the remedy, and marked the final outcome through his power and grace.

A study that appeared in a 2007 issue of Sleep showed that 81 percent of children who saw a medical professional for sleep-related problems were given a prescription. In my practice, my primary course of action isn’t doling out a prescription. I first encourage my patients to eliminate anything that might interfere with sleep, such as caffeine, alcohol, or reading Stephen King before bedtime. I also try natural supplements and treatments. Here are some of the natural remedies I recommend.

Whatever your ailment, our prescriptions are simple: a novel (or two), to be read at regular intervals. Some treatments will lead to a complete cure. Others will simply offer solace, showing you that you are not alone.

Maybe this is the ideal remedy for depression: a gun that can read your mind and is forever pointed at your head.

Kewauna traced a lot of her current academic difficulties to sixth grade, when, because of her poor grades and bad behavior, she was placed in a remedial class called WINGS. Officially, WINGS stood for Working Innovatively Now for Graduation Success, but Kewauna told me that at Plymouth, the joke was that it was called WINGS because the kids used to sit in class all day just eating chicken wings. That was an exaggeration, she said—but not much of one. “We never did anything in that class,” she said. “It was for kids who needed help, but they didn’t give us any help. We didn’t read. We didn’t study. We just played video games and watched movies and ate popcorn. It was fun, but that’s why I’m struggling with the ACT now. That’s why I’m getting denied from scholarships. Those two years were when we were supposed to be learning punctuation, commas, metaphors, all that stuff. When they bring it up today, they say, ‘Remember when we learned this?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I don’t! I never learned any of that.

This is a book in which we will dance with language, not a book in which we will trudge toward remedial correctness.

Adaptogens: Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief by David Winston and Steven Maimes An in-depth discussion of adaptogens with detailed monographs for many adaptogenic, nervine, and nootropic herbs. Adaptogens in Medical Herbalism: Elite Herbs and Natural Compounds for Mastering Stress, Aging, and Chronic Disease by Donald R. Yance A scientifically based herbal and nutritional program to master stress, improve energy, prevent degenerative disease, and age gracefully. Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients into Foods and Remedies That Heal by Rosalee de la Forêt This book offers an introduction to herbal energetics for the beginner, plus a host of delicious and simple recipes for incorporating medicinal plants into meals. Rosalee shares short chapters on a range of herbs, highlighting scientific research on each plant. The Business of Botanicals: Exploring the Healing Promise of Plant Medicines in a Global Industry by Ann Armbrecht Forbes In a world awash with herbal books, this is a much-needed reference, central to the future of plant medicine itself. Ann weaves a complex tapestry through the story threads of the herbal industry: growers, gatherers, importers, herbalists, and change-making business owners and non-profits. As interest in botanical medicine surges and the world’s population grows, medicinal plant sustainability is paramount. A must-read for any herbalist. The Complete Herbal Tutor: The Ideal Companion for Study and Practice by Anne McIntyre Provides extensive herbal profiles and materia medica; offers remedy suggestions by condition and organ system. This is a great reference guide for the beginner to intermediate student. Foundational Herbcraft by jim mcdonald jim mcdonald has a gift for explaining energetics in a down-to-earth and engaging way, and this 200-page PDF is a compilation of his writings on the topic. jim’s categorization of herbal actions into several groups (foundational actions, primary actions, and secondary actions) adds clarity and depth to the discussion. Access the printable PDF and learn more about jim’s work here. The Gift of Healing Herbs: Plant Medicines and Home Remedies for a Vibrantly Healthy Life by Robin Rose Bennett A beautiful tour of some of our most healing herbs, written in lovely prose. Full of anecdotes, recipes, and simple rituals for connecting with plants. Herbal Healing for Women: Simple Home Remedies for All Ages by Rosemary Gladstar Thorough and engaging materia medica. This was the only book Juliet brought with her on a three-month trip to Central America and she never tired of its pages. Information is very accessible with a lot of recipes and formulas. Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health: 175 Teas, Tonics, Oils, Salves, Tinctures, and Other Natural Remedies for the Entire Family by Rosemary Gladstar Great beginner reference and recipe treasury written by the herbal fairy godmother herself. The Modern Herbal by Maude Grieve This classic text was first published in 1931 and contains medicinal, culinary, cosmetic, and economic properties, plus cultivation and folklore of herbs. Available for free online.

Do you remember this from Alice in Wonderland? The Dodo begins a pompous long-winded speech: ”I move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies…” …but suddenly the Eaglet cuts him off: ”Speak English! I don’t know the meaning of half those long words, and I don’t believe you do either!

Optimal stress is the balanced, moderate amount of stress that appears to be necessary to grow the new neurons and neuronal connections that correlate with keeping the brain healthy. Research shows that just as too much stress creates a biochemical condition that damages neurons in the brain, too little stress leads to the atrophy, death and lack of replacement of old neurons. This is why lifelong learning is widely recognized as one of the key practices necessary to avoid Alzheimer’s disease. In my opinion, lifelong recovering is an exalted subset of lifelong learning. I believe that optimal stress is frequently attained when we practice the behaviors that remedy our developmental arrests. Examples of this include reading self-help books, attending self-improvement workshops, working at deeper self-discovery through journaling, or struggling to be more vulnerable and authentic in a therapy session or an evolving relationship. Moreover, it might be that minor flashbacks sometimes function as optimal stress. I certainly know a number of long term recoverees who seem to be evolving and becoming sharper in their old age.

The believer is not true to the Great Commission if he plans to disciple the nations without teaching the nations to obey the law of God as well as to observe the ecclesiastical sacraments (read Matthew 28:18-20). If the believer is going to be a trustworthy physician, then, he will give the unbelieving world not only a diagnosis of it's moral dilemma, but especially the gracious antidote from God-all of that antidote, which means the gospel with the entirety of God's law. The physician who gives only a portion of the remedy is untrue to his patient; but when the physician is the Christian taking God's remedy to sinners, and when he holds back from giving the full remedy, he is also tragically untrue to his Lord.

The history of the word treaty begins with a violence, which then moves through something that deals with it -- often writing. After which comes something like: healing. A remedy. All writing, then, and all art, is a kind of treaty -- between the ready and the writing, between the art and the world, between the fire of the past that burnished us and the fire of the present that consumes us and the fire of the future we might forge. Honor the treaty.

Those who read these pages will feel that there is little hope for humanity, but the remedy has been found, and can be quickly and mercifully applied. A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit—in other words, social failures—would solve the whole question in a century, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of victims of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful and inevitable solution of the whole problem and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased and the insane and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.

It was three weeks later that the letter from Rose’s publisher arrived. He had written to say that he loved the idea of a book about herbal remedies for humans. The letter contained an advance that would tide her over until well after the baby was due. “We’re going to be all right, aren’t we?” She passed the check to Lola, who passed it on to Nieve. They beamed at each other as the child read the amount out loud. “What’s that funny squiggle in front of the number?” She thrust the check up to Rose’s face. “It’s a pound sign—in England we have pounds instead of pesetas.” “How much is it—in pesetas?” When Rose told her, Nieve gasped. “Just for writing a book?” “It’s going to take me quite a long time.” Rose smiled. “And when she’s finished it, she’s going to need a rest.” Lola scooped Nieve up and sat her on her lap. “Why?” “Because next year—in the spring—Auntie Rose is going to have a baby.” Nieve turned to Rose, her mouth open. “Will it be a girl or a boy?” Rose laughed. “I don’t know! We’ll have to wait and see.” “Can I choose its name?” “Well, if it’s a girl, yes, you can—but if it’s a boy . . .” Rose glanced at Lola. “I already have a boy’s name.” “I think I can guess,” Lola said. “Nathan.

Never let go out of your minds the thoughts of a crucified Christ." Let these be food and drink unto you; let them be your sweetness and consolation, your honey and your desire, your reading and your meditation, your life, death, and resurrection.

To read or not to read...that is the question

The scream reached the ears of Simon Fronwieser along with the sound of pounding downstairs at the front door. The physician’s house in the Hennengasse was just a stone’s throw from the river. Earlier, Simon had looked up from his books several times, distracted by the shouting of the raftsmen. Now that the screams were resounding through the narrow lanes of the town, he knew that something must have happened. The knock at the door grew more urgent. With a sigh he closed one of his hefty anatomy volumes. Like all the others, this book never went below the surface of the human body. The composition of the humors, bleeding as a universal remedy…Simon had read these same litanies far too many times, but they hadn’t really taught him anything about the inside of the body. And nothing would change today, as along with the knocking there was now shouting downstairs.

Women are huntresses until the day we die. Our perpetual thirst for the chase endures until our last breath. It remains while we are too focused on our careers to pursue love, when we have been burned by past relationships, and even when we are simply enjoying the freedom of being single. It does not miraculously vanish once we are settled down in a monogamous relationship – we merely make the conscious decision to remain faithful. But a lioness in a zoo is still a lioness. Romance novels are the remedy for our restless hearts. They invite us to explore and experiment within the safety of their pages. Every book is an opportunity to satisfy our unending desire to fall in love. They allow us to experience it all over again, right from the start: The intoxicating newness. The thrill of the hunt. The exhilaration of the game. The building anticipation. The worsening hunger. And finally, the fulfillment of a much-needed release. Each book offers a chance to achieve a state of blissful, glowing contentment… Until the next one catches our eye, that is.

16But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, till there was no remedy.

Home Remedies For Chapped Lips Home Remedies For Chapped Lips Dry and chapped lips occur all of the time without warning. It might cause annoyance and affect the way that people live their lives, although this really is not life threatening. There are different indications that may be observed, for example, existence of one or several of these symptoms: sores, tenderness, flaking, cracking, redness and dryness. When left untreated, dry and chapped lips can worsen and affect the other elements of the oral orifice. Causes Reasons for developing dryness on the lips comprise an excessive amount of exposure to sunlight licking of lips, smoking, dehydration, allergy, vitamin deficiency and rigorous climate. Home Remedies for Chapped Lips There are over-the-counter ointments to remedy chapped lips, but there also other home remedies which are thought to be more effective and safer. Among them are: Natural oils Natural oils like olive oil, coconut oil or mustard oil are excellent in keeping the affected area moist. These oils are best for those instances where the offender is either dry or cold weather. Cucumber Slathering the area that is affected with the liquid and juicing cucumber slices is an excellent means of alleviating the discomfort of dry lips. It's recommended to keep the lips moistened by doing this several times per day. Aloe vera There is no doubt about the healing properties of aloe vera although its scent and taste are disagreeable. It'll be easy enough lather the lips with the juice and to simply pluck a leaf when the need arises. Rose petals When there's no aloe vera plant available, rose petal infusion is a great choice for relief of chapped lips. This extract mixed with raw milk can serve as a moisturizing agent. The recommended regimen is always to apply the mixture two to three times a day prior to going to bed, and after that once. If raw milk isn't accessible, glycerin is a great replacement. Water The calming and hydrating effects of water can alleviate the pain. Petroleum Jelly Petroleum jelly could be utilized several times a day before climbing the bed and also once. Coating the lips with honey before cleaning with petroleum may only do just fine if the concentrated greasiness of petroleum feels uneasy or if it's causing more pain. Milk cream Milk cream is a superb skin softener, and it has the aptitude hasten the elimination of dead skin. Judgment The key is to moisturize chapped lips as soon as possible to help hasten the healing by avoiding the thing that is certainly causing it in the first place. Keep hydrated, eat succulent foods or cruciferous, avoid sunlight and keep warm within your room during chilly nights. Must Read More ALL Friends tkplanet.com

There is a remedy and there is a hope but the remedy is not in the political party or in places that will take you away from hope. You better run to God, that is the only place you can find both.

The Supreme Court was beyond their constitutional power when they handed George W. Bush the victory in 2000 by ruling that if all the votes were counted in Florida, as that state’s supreme court had ordered, it would “cause irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush].” They were beyond their constitutional power every single time they struck down a law passed by Congress and signed by the president over the years. And most important, the Supreme Court was way beyond their constitutional authority every single time they created out of whole cloth new legal doctrines, such as “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, “privacy” in Roe v. Wade, or “corporations are people” in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. But in the fine tradition of John Marshall, today’s Supreme Court wants you to believe that they are the über-overlords of our nation. They can make George W. Bush president, without any appeal. They can make money into speech, they can turn corporations into people, and the rest of us have no say in it. And they’re wrong. It’s not what the Constitution says, and it’s not what most of our Founders said. Which raises the question: If the Supreme Court can’t decide what is and what isn’t constitutional, then what is its purpose? What’s it really supposed to be doing? The answer to that is laid out in the Constitution in plain black-and-white. It’s the first court where the nation goes for cases involving disputes about treaties, ambassadors, controversies between two or more states, between a state and citizen of another state, between citizens of different states, and between our country and foreign states. Read Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution—it’s all there. Not a word in there about “judicial supremacy” or “judicial review”—the supposed powers of the court to strike down (or write) laws by deciding what is and what isn’t constitutional. President Thomas Jefferson was pretty clear about that—as were most of the Founders—and the court didn’t start seriously deciding “constitutionality” until after all of them were dead. But back in the day, here’s what Jefferson had to say: The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves… When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity.177 Their elective capacity? That’s a fancy presidential-founder way of saying that the people can toss out on their butts any member of Congress or any president who behaves in a way that’s unconstitutional. The ultimate remedy is with the people—it’s the ballot box. If we don’t like the laws being passed, then we elect new legislators and a new president. It’s pretty simple.

I will take a case. I am sent for in an emergency, and it is the dead of night. A man is dying, smitten suddenly by the death-blast.[17] I go to his bedside, as requested. Consciousness remains, but he is evidently in mortal agony. He has lived an ungodly life—and he is about to die. I am asked by his wife and friends to speak to him a word that may bless him. Shall I tell him that he can only be saved by good works? Where is the time for works? Where is the possibility of them? While I am speaking, his life is struggling to escape him! He looks at me in the agony of his soul, and he stammers out, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Shall I read to him the Moral Law? Shall I expound to him the Ten Commandments and tell him that he must keep all these? He would shake his head and say, ‘I have broken them all; I am condemned by them all!’ If salvation is of works, what more have I to say? I am of no use here. What can I say? The man is utterly lost! There is no remedy for him. How can I tell him the cruel dogma of ‘modern thought’ that his own personal character is everything? How can I tell him that there is no value in belief, no help for the soul in looking to Another—even to Jesus, the Substitute? There is no whisper of hope for a dying man in the hard and stony doctrine of salvation by works!”–1891, Sermon 2210 2g.

I’ll remedy the deficiency. I’ll be Satan, I’ll be Death. Look into my bony skull sockets and see if you can read the secrets of the eyes that are not there. Read my riddle—why does a death’s head always grin?

The remedy is to read, re-read, deeply ponder and learn to live out of the truths of verses 18-30!

Similar fear was expressed by Lala Lajpatrai in a letter 49[f.150][f.5]  to Mr. C. R. Das — " There is one point more which has been troubling me very much of late and one which I want you to think carefully and that is the question of Hindu-Mohamedan unity. I have devoted most of my time during the last six months to the study of Muslim history and Muslim Law and I am inclined to think, it is neither possible nor practicable. Assuming and admitting the sincerity of the Mohamedan leaders in the Non-cooperation movement, I think their religion provides an effective bar to anything of the kind. You remember the conversation, I reported to you in Calcutta, which I had with Hakim Ajmalkhan and Dr. Kitchlew. There is no finer Mohamedan in Hindustan than Hakimsaheb but can any other Muslim leader override the Quran ? I can only hope that my reading of Islamic Law is incorrect, and nothing would relieve me more than to be convinced that it is so. But if it is right  then it comes to this that although we can unite against the British we cannot do so to rule Hindustan on British lines, we cannot do so to rule Hindustan on democratic lines. What is then the remedy ? I am not afraid of seven crores in Hindustan but I think the seven crores of Hindustan plus the armed hosts of Afghanistan, Central Asia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Turkey will be irresistible. I do honestly and sincerely believe in the necessity or desirability of Hindu-Muslim unity. I am also fully prepared to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about the injunctions of the Quran and Hadis ? The leaders cannot override them. Are we then doomed ? I hope not. I hope learned mind and wise head will find some way out of this difficulty.

Learn to admire others; it is the first step to overcome your ego.” “The ego destroys its egoist silently and suddenly, as a termite does.” “The ego is such a bullet that fires all your relations.” “The ego and vanity both hold such invisible fire that flames upon oneself.” “Your ego may hurt and damage you more than others.” Learn how to live and participate in people and society, how to help each other, and how to build harmony and peace among those who have lost their way. It can only be with respect, justice, and equality, without any distinctions. Be aware that your ego can destroy your ability if you focus on your caliber and status; it is a poison, not a remedy. Understand the outcomes and consequences of ego, egoists, and egotism. Read thoroughly to grasp the insight to enlighten your life and ways. “Everyone stands firm with their ego status; thus, I accept that I am zero and that everyone else is a hero, but remember that on every count, zero matters.” “The ego, vanity, jealousy, and other flaws define the imperceptive attitude and fly silently toward self-victimizing.” “Nothing else than the worst and abysmal self-defeat, which elucidates that one fetches and embraces itself to become the victim of ego, vanity, and jealousy.” “An egoist focuses on self-promotion and does not admire others or value anyone else. Unfortunately, such one remains the prisoner of egotism.” “A heart that contains love cannot keep the hate there A heart that performs forgiveness does not recognize revenge In a heart where there is altruism, there is no place for egoism Such a heart demonstrates a pure and real human.” “It proves not a difficult task if one discovers the universe; however, discovering one’s self-ego is the toughest matter, whereas overcoming that leads to a visionary victory.” “To show others, the quotes and sayings of the visionary figures, as a mirror instead of reform own conduct and character, indicates one’s worst egoism unless that reflects and demonstrates not their golden words.” “One can neither understand nor accept and respect others’ logic, view, and insight before overcoming their ego.” “After the jumping out of your ego, you liberate your own, and you see the way towards the values of others.” “The nurturing of morals is the language, and control of the ego is the eye of the soul.” “Surrender your ego to enjoy peace of mind and the beauty of equality and harmony.” “Everyone stands firm with their ego status; thus, I accept that I am zero and that everyone else is a hero, but remember that on every count, zero matters.” “Hatred, racism, discrimination, distinction, and vainglory germinate in the soil of ego.” “When one becomes capable of overcoming desires, hopes, and ego, one learns and understands the faculty of patience.” I Yield Not *** I suffer not from ego I let that not enter my life I yield not my will to avaricious As I am a truth of truths I dream not, impossibilities I become a dream of my dreams Since I exist as a reality Thus, it builds A sweet and lovely pleasure, Peace and calm I dance; I dance Without security Even no one can imagine My link to the spiritual world I am here and there No one is aware I wear and bear Every atmosphere. Deliberately *** I deliberately Become fool I enjoy that To punish My ego It is not strange Nor it is a surprise It is just an idea Of yourself What are you Who are you If my ego rules me I feel myself in the doom If I overcome my ego My ways become bright I see the destiny For that, I am here I deliberately Become fool To let people Enjoy and happy Let them heal Their wounds Caused by themselves Of their wrong deeds I deliberately Become fool To make the people active Put to use their time The great lessons That nowhere One can learn.

This is true in my own case, at any rate — plus also the “uncomfortable” part. I teach college English part-time. Mostly Lit, not Composition. But I am so pathologically obsessed with usage that every semester the same thing happens: once I’ve had to read my students’ first set of papers, we immediately abandon the regular Lit syllabus and have a three-week Emergency Remedial Usage and Grammar Unit, during which my demeanor is basically that of somebody teaching HIV prevention to intravenous-drug users. When it emerges (as it does, every term) that 95 percent of these intelligent upscale college students have never been taught, e.g., what a clause is or why a misplaced only can make a sentence confusing or why you don’t just automatically stick in a comma after a long noun phrase, I all but pound my head on the blackboard; I get angry and self-righteous; I tell them they should sue their hometown school boards, and mean it. The kids end up scared, both of me and for me. Every August I vow silently to chill about usage this year, and then by Labor Day there’s foam on my chin. I can’t seem to help it. The truth is that I’m not even an especially good or dedicated teacher; I don’t have this kind of fervor in class about anything else, and I know it’s not a very productive fervor, nor a healthy one — it’s got elements of fanaticism and rage to it, plus a snobbishness that I know I’d be mortified to display about anything else.

Both for perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same; sincere and spiritual worship. For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose - and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. Yes - worship in spirit and truth is the way to the solution of perplexity and to the liberation from sin.

To make matters worse, postmenopausal women are two to three times more likely than premenopausal women to develop new sleep problems, such as sleep apnea. While this disorder is typically considered a men’s issue, once menopause kicks off, women are also at increased risk, possibly because of changes in muscle tone. Sleep apnea is a chronic breathing disorder during which one repeatedly stops breathing mid-sleep. Typically, this is due to a partial or complete obstruction (or collapse) of the upper airway, often affecting the base of the tongue and the soft palate, or due to a depressed signal from the brain to initiate a breath. These events can last ten seconds or longer, sometimes occurring hundreds of times per night, causing severe sleep disruptions. Sleep apnea is more common than you probably think. The National Sleep Foundation reported that it likely affects as much as 20 percent of the population, although as many as 85 percent of individuals with sleep apnea don’t know they have it. That seems to be particularly the case for women, for two reasons. First, many women attribute the symptoms and effects of sleep disorders (like daytime fatigue) to stress, overwork, or menopause, rather than to sleep apnea. Second, the symptoms of sleep apnea are often more subtle in women than in men (read, women snore less). As a result, women tend to not seek evaluation for sleep apnea, which in turn delays diagnosis and treatment. Given the importance of sleep for your health, both physical and mental, I strongly recommend that you get a proper sleep evaluation if you are concerned that your sleep symptoms may be due to menopause, sleep apnea, or a combination of the two. Treatments for sleep apnea are available, which often include lifestyle changes and the use of a breathing assistance device at night, such as a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine. Sleep disturbances due to menopause are also just as important to address. As with the other symptoms so far, remedies are available, which we’ll review in part 4.

The history of the word treaty begins with a violence, which then moves through something that deals with it—often writing. After which comes something like: healing. A remedy. All writing, then, and all art, is a kind of treaty—between the reader and the writing, between the art and the world, between the fire of the past that burnished us and the fire of the present that consumes us and the fire of the future we might forge. Honor the treaty. THE LIMITS OF WHITE FANTASY

We read to pick up clues that help us to navigate our lives and relationships, and expand our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.

Austen’s heroine encouraged me to develop a to-and-fro way of reading, because I compared my life with hers as I read. My feelings and thoughts moved from the story to my own experiences and memories, and back to the story.

If reading Pride and Prejudice was, for me, especially about learning to read, then re-reading Emma was more generally about acquiring a love of reading in the very act of reading.

Curiosity has remained an enduringly present itch in my disposition. It ignited my urge to read and kept my passion burning with an intensity that drove me to re-read the fiction that captured my imagination. At times, curiosity is part of the remedy taking my mind off the pain of an experience and focusing it elsewhere, such as on trying to fathom the circumstances that surround it.

I have at last arrived at my own moment of daring, and that has given me the courage to share a precious gift, my reading remedy.

In Emma Austen gives us a heroine who, in her customary and contrary way, resists the experience of reading.

Like multitudes of readers before and after me, I read it several times. I heard it in my head. This was language, prose language, used as I had never heard it: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

I had read Jane Austen and absorbed her ideas about companionate marriages, but when the crunch came, when children arrived and the male was the breadwinner, I succumbed as unconsciously as many others to the hidden persuaders lying in wait in every magazine: the advertisements, advice columns and even women’s reportage that gave gold stars to the woman who made her husband happy.

if I were asked when reading became a source of nourishment and imaginative expansion, I would answer without hesitation that my reading life truly began with Pride and Prejudice.

For some years I have recognised that the love of reading has been one of the unexpected blessings in my life. Reading has defined my life and become a habit that is woven seamlessly into the way I think, feel and imagine.

In a larger framework, reading Jane Austen’s novels would offer me a remedy for some of the doubts, uncertainties and disappointments that have mingled with the better parts of any life.

Perhaps it was because Jane Austen and her companionate marriages seemed so far from my current reality that I came to neglect reading her novels for the time being. I also came, almost imperceptibly, to feel like a second-class citizen in the republic of marriage.