Sans Best Quotes

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.

...I know I’ve broken all the rules of all the games, that all the great players and best love calculators recommend that you play, if you want to make someone like you a lot. But that’s okay, because I give up. I’ve got my coffee sitting in my San Francisco cup, I’ve got Kona island and a working beating heart that’s not cold, hard, or numb—very workable and capable of loving, breaking, mending and repeating. So that’s just what I’ll do. Because I’m too tired. Too tired uping all nighting wasting my precious timing wishing it was your heart pumping, wanting me— like I used to want you.

Esteban fell face downward upon the floor. "I am alone, alone, alone," he cried. The Captain stood above him, his great plain face ridged and gray with pain; it was his own old hours he was reliving. He was the awkwardest speaker in the world apart from the lore of the sea, but there are times when it requires a high courage to speak the banal. He could not be sure the figure on the floor was listening, but he said, "We do what we can. We push on, Esteban, as best we can. It isn't for long, you know. Time keeps going by. You'll be surprised at the way time passes.

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the "brain" of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of "other people," which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that--well, lucky you.

Water beneath me, water above me, water in me--I was water. How appropriate that the one definition of the Japanese character for my name was "rain." I, too, was precious and copious, inoffensive and deadly, silent and raucous, joyous and despicable, live-giving and corrosive, pure and grasping, patient and insidious, musical and off-key--but more than any of that, and beyond all those things, I was invulnerable. ...From the heights and depths of my diluvian life, I knew that I was rain and rain was rapture. Some realised it would be best to accept me, let me overwhelm them, let me be who I was. There was no greater luxury than to fall to earth, in sprinkles or in buckets, lashing faces and drenching countryside, swelling sources and overflowing rivers, spoiling weddings and consecrating burials, the blesssing and curse of the skies. My rainy childhood thrived in Japan like a fish in water. Tired of my unending passion for my element, Nishio-san would finally call to me, "Out of the lake! You'll dissolve!" Too late. I had dissolved long before.

- Working hard isn't enough to ensure that your dreams always come true... In fact, it's often more common for them not to. But you can still find solace in the fact that you tried your best. [...] - I think that people should try to reach their limits and surpass them... That would be what's best for Yuigahama-san in the long run.

Suddenly, he had to ask himself, was love at first sight actually possible

One of the curious aspects of the Twenty-First Century was the great delusion amongst many people, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, that freedom of speech and freedom of expression were best exercised on technological platforms owned by corporations dedicated to making as much money as possible.

I have seen purer liquors, better segars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtesans here in San Francisco than in any other place I have ever visited; and it is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish the best bad things that are available in America.

We do what we can. We push on, Esteban, as best we can. It isn’t for long, you know. Time keeps going by. You’ll be surprised at the way time passes.

At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night... I wished I were a Denver Mexican, or even a poor overworked Jap, anything but what I was so drearily, a "white man" disillusioned. All my life I'd had white ambitions; that was why I'd abandoned a good woman like Terry in the San Joaquin Valley I passed the dark porches of Mexican and Negro homes.

And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind. "Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.

Raw ingredients trump recipes every time; farmers and ranchers who coax the best from the earth can make any of us appear to be a great cook.

But when I was living there, San Francisco was an escape for people who hadn’t been accepted in their small towns for who and what they loved or believed.

Morrell, ever a true comrade, too had a splendid brain. In fact, and I who am about to die have the right to say it without incurring the charge of immodesty, the three best minds in San Quentin from the Warden down were the three that rotted there together in solitary. And here at the end of my days, reviewing all that I have known of life, I am compelled to the conclusion that strong minds are never docile. The stupid men, the fearful men, the men ungifted with passionate rightness and fearless championship - these are the men who make model prisoners. I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, Ed Morrell, and I were not model prisoners.

DO WHAT YOUR HEART tells you to do, and hope for the best had been Lou’s advice. Elizabeth found it ironic that her heart was telling her to murder Caroline Bingley and dispose of the body in the San Francisco Bay. “No, those floatation devices on her chest will keep her from sinking,” she murmured to herself as she steered her car toward Darcy’s place. “Better to give her the dirt nap.” Homicidal fantasies had filled her mind for the past twenty-four hours.

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary. Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history. Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people. At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95). Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

That night our new husbands took us quickly. They took us calmly. They took us gently, but firmly, and without saying a word. They assumed we were the virgins the matchmakers had promised them we were and they took us with exquisite care. Now let me know if it hurts. They took us flat on our backs on the bare floor of the Minute Motel. They took us downtown, in second-rate rooms at the Kumamoto Inn. They took us in the best hotels in San Francisco that a yellow man could set foot in at the time. The Kinokuniya Hotel. The Mikado. The Hotel Ogawa. They took us for granted and assumed we would do for them whatever it was we were told. Please turn toward the wall and drop down on your hands and knees (...) They took us violently, with their fists, whenever we tried to resist. They took us even though we bit them. They took us even though we hit them (...). They took us cautiously, as though they were afraid we might break. You’re so small. They took us coldly but knowledgeably — In 20 seconds you will lose all control — and we knew there had been many others before us. They took us as we stared up blankly at the ceiling and waited for it to be over, not realizing that it would not be over for years.

The worst of times in San Francisco was still better than the best of times anywhere else.

In the dark apartment in San Diego, I grew up with the terrified boy who became my father.

Science fiction and fantasy literature has always been defined by tales of heroism. It is meant to represent humanity at our very best, willing to oppose all odds in order to protect the side of good.

Happiness we can only find in ourselves, it is a waste of time to seek for it from others, few have any to spare. Sorrow we have to bear alone as best we can, it is not fair to try to shift it on others, be they men or women. We have to fight our own battles and strike as hard as we can, born fighters as we are.

best Hitchcock films not made by Hitchcock. Here we go: Le Boucher, the early Claude Chabrol that Hitch, according to lore, wished he’d directed. Dark Passage, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall—a San Francisco valentine, all velveteen with fog, and antecedent to any movie in which a character goes under the knife to disguise himself. Niagara, starring Marilyn Monroe; Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn; Sudden Fear!, starring Joan Crawford’s eyebrows. Wait Until Dark: Hepburn again, a blind woman stranded in her basement apartment. I’d go berserk in a basement apartment.

Double Indemnity, Gaslight, Saboteur, The Big Clock . . . We lived in monochrome those nights. For me, it was a chance to revisit old friends; for Ed, it was an opportunity to make new ones. And we’d make lists. The Thin Man franchise, ranked from best (the original) to worst (Song of the Thin Man). Top movies from the bumper crop of 1944. Joseph Cotten’s finest moments. I can do lists on my own, of course. For instance: best Hitchcock films not made by Hitchcock. Here we go: Le Boucher, the early Claude Chabrol that Hitch, according to lore, wished he’d directed. Dark Passage, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall—a San Francisco valentine, all velveteen with fog, and antecedent to any movie in which a character goes under the knife to disguise himself. Niagara, starring Marilyn Monroe; Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn; Sudden Fear!, starring Joan Crawford’s eyebrows. Wait Until Dark: Hepburn again, a blind woman stranded in her basement apartment. I’d go berserk in a basement apartment.

You're innocent, Casaubon. You ran away instead of throwing stones, you got your degree, you didn't shoot anybody. Yet a few years ago I felt you, too, were blackmailing me. Nothing personal, just generational cycles. And then last year, when I saw the Pendulum, I understood everything." "Everything?" "Almost everything. You see, Casaubon, even the Pendulum is a false prophet. You look at it, you think it's the only fixed point in the cosmos. but if you detach it from the ceiling of the Conservatoire and hang it in a brothel, it works just the same. And there are other pendulums: there's one in New York, in the UN building, there's one in the science museum in San Francisco, and God knows how many others. Wherever you put it, Foucault's Pendulum swings from a motionless point while the earth rotates beneath it. Every point of the universe is a fixed point: all you have to do is hang the Pendulum from it." "God is everywhere." "In a sense, yes. That's why the Pendulum disturbs me. It promises the infinite, but where to put the infinite is left to me. So it isn't enough to worship the Pendulum; you still have to make a decision, you have to find the best point for it. And yet..." "And yet?" "And yet... You're not taking me seriously by any chance, are you, Casaubon? No, I can rest easy; we're not the type to take things seriously.... Well, as I was saying, the feeling you have is that you've spent a lifetime hanging the Pendulum in many paces, and it's never worked, but there, in the Conservatoire, it works.... Do you think there are special places in the universe? On the ceiling of this room, for example? No, nobody would believe that. You need atmosphere. I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe, to recognize it, we have to believe in it. Well, let's go see Signor Garamond." "To hang the Pendulum?" "Ah, human folly! Now we have to be serious. If you are going to be paid, the boss must see you, touch you, sniff you, and say you'll do. Come, let the boss touch you; the boss's touch heals scrofula.

Gate C22 At gate C22 in the Portland airport a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island, like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing. Neither of them was young. His beard was gray. She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning, the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. We were all watching– passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths. But the best part was his face. When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth, as your mother must have looked at you, no matter what happened after–if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth. The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

I've always preferred the city at night. I believe that San Judas, or any city, belongs to the people who sleep there. Or maybe they don't sleep - some don't - but they live there. Everybody else is just a tourist. Venice, Italy, for instance, pulls in a millions tourists for their own Carnival season but the actual local population is only a couple of hundred thousand. Lots of empty canals and streets at night, especially when you get away from the big hotels, and the residents pretty much have it to themselves when tourist season slows during the winter. Jude has character - everybody agrees on that. It also has that thing I like best about a city: You can never own it, but it you treat it with respect it will eventually invite you in and make you one of its true citizens. But like I said, you've got to live there. If you're never around after the bars close, or at the other end of the night as the early workers get up to start another day and the coffee shops and news agents raise their security gates, then you don't really know the place, do you?

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Promise you'll save your heart for God's best, a man who loves God as much as you do. Because therein lies a love like no other.

My best friend is he who rights my wrongs or reproaches my mistakes.

The city is changing, and she missed the very best parts... the hippies are just homeless.

The best lines always comes out when it is not in the script. Its like when one writes - each word forming sense in a sentence dies to make its purpose alive within you.

best for Yin Yu to pretend not to know him. “San Lang, should we also think of a way to get out of here?” Xie Lian said. Hua Cheng seemed to be enjoying himself where they were. “Hmm? Already?” Xie Lian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Well, yes. Do you want to live in here?” “If it’s with gege, I don’t see why not,” Hua Cheng said. “All right, fine. I was joking.

When San Pedro begins to affect your consciousness, it first feels as though a subtle wave of change occurs, and can best be described as a vibration of sunlight penetrating your energetic field. The medicine’s spiritual correspondence relates to masculine energies, the energy of the sun, and (in my personal experience) serves as a vehicle for remembering light through a presence of warmth.

One [project of Teddy Cruz's] is titled Living Rooms at the Border. it takes a piece of land with an unused church zoned for three units and carefully arrays on it twelve affordable housing units, a community center (the converted church), offices for Casa in the church's attic, and a garden that can accommodate street markets and kiosks. 'In a place where current regulation allows only one use,' [Cruz} crows, ' we propose five different uses that support each other. This suggests a model of social sustainability for San Diego, one that conveys density not as bulk but as social choreography.' For both architect and patron, it's an exciting opportunity to prove that breaking the zoning codes can be for the best. Another one of Cruz's core beliefs is that if architects are going to achieve anything of social distinction, they will have to become developers' collaborators or developers themselves, rather than hirelings brought in after a project's parameters are laid out.

As the mother of the ten-month-old hospitalized in San Diego said, if people want to make that choice, they should go live on an island with its own schools and doctors: “their own little infectious disease island.

My soul insists that I mourn not a man but a child. I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible patriotic holiday. But they are murdered children all the same. And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind.

The farmers, who rent out their house so they can stay afloat, and sleep all together in a studio, but spend their days off outside on a picnic blanket, living the lives they want to live. Drew and Melanie, with their two homes and their horses and their love story. And Rene, traveling across the world, painting temporary masterpieces. Even my uncle Pete has something good worked out with Melinda and his day trips and his best friend, my dad, who has a small nice house in San Francisco and a dozen neighborhood vendors who know him by name. All of these different ways of living. Even Sophie, with her baby in that apartment, with her record store job and her record collection. I imagine her twirling with her baby across her red carpet with Diana Ross crooning, the baby laughing, the two of them getting older in that apartment, eating meals on red vinyl chairs. Walt, too, as pathetic as his situation is, seems happy in his basement, providing entertainment to Fort Bragg's inner circle. All of them, in their own ways, manage to make their lives work.

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest, Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, And one by one crept silently to rest. And we, that now make merry in the Room They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth Descend — ourselves to make a Couch — for whom? Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End!

A glad zest and hopefulness might be inspired even in the most jaded and ennui-cursed, were there in our homes such simple, truthful natures as that of my heroine, and it is in the sphere of quiet homes—not elsewhere—I believe that a woman can best rule and save the world.

I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for practical and political reasons, because I think it’s best for the country. And even Ghandiji, who is supposed to be the father of non-violence, said that between cowardice and violence, he’d choose violence any time.

You know, Mark. I hate to bring this up, but you are living in San Francisco. Best city in the world as far as I’m concerned, but it’s a transient one renowned for its part-time Buddhists and general flightiness. I really hope you haven’t succumbed to these spiritual vices.

the best-known and most direct of which was the Lincoln Highway, some 3,400 miles of road starting in New York City, wending its way through thirteen states, and ending in San Francisco. The highway was the brainchild of Indiana businessman Carl Fisher, who made his fortune selling automobile headlights.

People always talk about the health benefits of Japanese food,’ he said, ‘but I’m fascinated by other aspects of the Japanese dining experience. Like the whole system of serving food at a counter like this, with the customers all facing the same direction, instead of each other. It’s strange when you think about it. At a sushi bar, for example, everyone’s facing the itamae-san, and you discuss the things you’re eating – what type of squid this is, and where they’re caught, and how this is the season for them but they’ll only be at their best for another couple of weeks, and so on. Discussing the food with the chef even as you eat it – that’s a peculiar system.’ ‘I suppose it is, isn’t it? I don’t go to sushi restaurants very often – they’re so expensive – and I could probably count the number of times I’ve sat at the counter, but I know what you mean. There’s something about that atmosphere.’ ‘At its worst, it’s almost an atmosphere of collusion.’ ‘Collusion?’ ‘Everyone at the counter becomes a member of the group. In some sushi bars, all the customers are regulars and they all know each other. As an outsider, you need courage to walk into a place like that and take a seat. It’s a tight-knit little community, and harmony is of the utmost importance. Nobody’s confronting anyone else individually. The conversation all proceeds through the chef, who’s like a moderator or a master of ceremonies. You couldn’t spend some quiet time with a lover, for example, in a place like that, because you’d be isolating yourselves from the others and spoiling the atmosphere for everyone.

I was in San Francisco for the quake, and much was made of the fact that fancy downtown hotels opened their doors to house people needing shelter. It’s worth noting that this generosity was for people made homeless by the quake, not people who were already homeless. For them the earthquake was just another day of scrabbling. The hotels supposedly required a credit card from people, not because they’d be charged for the room, but as evidence that this was the sort of person whose homelessness mattered. This well could have been apocryphal; it’s hard to imagine that the staff at reception needed to see someone’s plastic to tell the difference.

This is a plot: I hope he will keep quiet while he looks at them. I dive under the table and push the chest against his patent leather shoes, I put an armload of post cards and photos on his lap: Spain and Spanish Morocco. But I see by his laughing, open look that I have been singularly mistaken in hoping to reduce him to silence. He glances over a view of San Sebastian from Monte Igueldo, sets it cautiously on the table and remains silent for an instant. Then he sighs: 'Ah, Monsieur, you're lucky ... if what they say is true-travel is the best school. Is that your opinion, Monsieur?' I make a vague gesture. Luckily he has not finished. 'It must be such an upheaval. If I were ever to go on a trip, I think I should make written notes of the slightest traits of my character before leaving, so that when I returned I would be able to compare what I was and what I had become. I've read that there are travellers who have changed physically and morally to such an extent that even their closest relatives did not recognize them when they came back.

We are gathered here, friends,” he said, “to honor lo Hoon-yera Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya, children dead, all dead, all murdered in war. It is customary on days like this to call such lost children men. I am unable to call them men for this simple reason: that in the same war in which lo Hoon-yera Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya died, my own son died. “My soul insists that I mourn not a man but a child. “I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays. “But they are murdered children all the same. “And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind. “Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns. “I do not mean to be ungrateful for the fine, martial show we are about to see—and a thrilling show it really will be . . .” He looked each of us in the eye, and then he commented very softly, throwing it away, “And hooray say I for thrilling shows.” We had to strain our ears to hear what Minton said next. “But if today is really in honor of a hundred children murdered in war,” he said, “is today a day for a thrilling show? “The answer is yes, on one condition: that we, the celebrants, are working consciously and tirelessly to reduce the stupidity and viciousness of ourselves and of all mankind.

You fight your superficiality, you shallowness, as as to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untank-like as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong, you might as well have the brain if a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and them you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words, and then proposing that there word people are closer to the real thing than we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful consideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that - well, lucky you.

Prior to modern times, the term 'Islamic' (Islami in Arabic) was almost never used to define the provenance, status, or substance of things. There was no such thing as 'Islamic art', 'Islamic economics', or even 'Islamic law.' ... The encounter with the modern West, however, ultimately changed the status of 'Islamic.' Inasmuch as the rise of the West converted the achievements of Darwin, Descartes, and Hegel from mere English, French, or German achievements into explicitly 'Western' ones, it also engendered the need for a parallel convention for demarcating the non-Western 'other.' The Western provenance of the modern neologism 'Islamic' is perhaps best revealed in its tendency to connote geography and ethnicity. 'Islamic', in other words, connotes not simply that which is related to or a product of Islam as a religion but that which relates to a particularly non-European people in a non-European part of the world. In this capacity, it carries both a descriptive and a prescriptive force... For no modern Muslim nor non-Muslim would include the likes of such Arab Christians as Michel Aflaq or San' Allah Ibrahim among the 'thinkers of Islam.' Rather, in Western parlance, the modern 'Islamic' began as an instrument to demarcate the boundary between the west and a particular set of 'others.' In Muslim hands, it would go on to evolve into a full-blown signifier of normative Islam and a tool for delineating the boundary between it and Islam. Its added utility, moreover, as a mechanism for elevating the achievements of Muslims to the level of a civilization rivaling that of Europe rendered it all the more irresistible and gained for it universal acceptance throughout the Muslim world.

The worst have scraped out the mantle of the best and wear it around as something real. It takes no genius to see that. But I moved to San Francisco because the masquerade of kindly gestures is, at least, kind. And it remains kind. And all the people who would sit back and comment on the garishness of the costumes, the hollowness of the dialogue, the lack of divine conviction, well, all those people are either dead or fifteen years old.

San Francisco, which the Guide describes as a “good place to go. It’s very easy to believe that everyone you meet there also is a space traveler. Starting a new religion for you is just their way of saying ‘hi.’ Until you’ve settled in and got the bang of the place it is best to say ‘no’ to three questions out of any given four that anyone may ask you, because there are some very strange things going on there, some of which an unsuspecting alien could die of.

…San Francisco, which the Guide describes as a ‘good place to go. It is very easy to believe that everyone you meet there is also a space traveler. Starting a new religion for you is just their way of saying “hi.” Until you’ve settled in and got the hang of the place it’s best to say “no” to three questions out of any given four that anyone may ask you, because there are some very strange things going on there, some of which an unsuspecting alien could die of’.

And there was Adela Rogers St. Johns, her friend since their girlhood in San Francisco. Adela would also be nominated for Best Original Story in 1932, but lose to Frances when she won her second Oscar for The Champ. Yet Adela harbored no jealousy of the woman she claimed was “touched with genius. As a writer, she is the unquestioned head of her profession. . . . As a woman, she is a philanthropist, a patroness of young artists, and herself the most brilliant, versatile and accomplished person in Hollywood.

In interviews with riders that I've read and in conversations that I've had with them, the same thing always comes up: the best part was the suffering. In Amsterdam I once trained with a Canadian rider who was living in Holland. A notorious creampuff: in the sterile art of track racing he was Canadian champion in at least six disciplines, but when it came to toughing it out on the road he didn't have the character. The sky turned black, the water in the ditch rippled, a heavy storm broke loose. The Canadian sat up straight, raised his arms to heaven and shouted: 'Rain! Soak me! Ooh, rain, soak me, make me wet!' How can that be: suffering is suffering, isn't it? In 1910, Milan—San Remo was won by a rider who spent half an hour in a mountain hut, hiding from a snowstorm. Man, did he suffer! In 1919, Brussels—Amiens was won by a rider who rode the last forty kilometers with a flat front tire. Talk about suffering! He arrived at 11.30 at night, with a ninety-minute lead on the only other two riders who finished the race. The day had been like night, trees had whipped back and forth, farmers were blown back into their barns, there were hailstones, bomb craters from the war, crossroads where the gendarmes had run away, and riders had to climb onto one another's shoulders to wipe clean the muddied road signs. Oh, to have been a rider then. Because after the finish all the suffering turns into memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature's payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. 'Good for you.' Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lay with few suitors these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately. That's why there are riders. Suffering you need; literature is baloney.

Tracking how flavors and textures change and then discovering or master-minding the best balance of of flavor is fun. And striking that balance is not a skill reserved for an elect group with extraordinary palates. You need most of all to trust and pay attention to your own palate. Even if it isn't yet your habit to taste as you cook, training yourself to recognize where you need more salt, sweetness, fat, or acidity, or where a dish needs more cooking to concentrate or soften flavors, or improve the texture, is eminently doable.

But even though I loved being in water, I never enjoyed swim meets. It always seemed like they were imposing structure and stress on something that should have been freeing and fun. For example, going down a slide is awesome. But if you had to show up every day for slide practice at 7 A.M. and then compete against your best friend in slide competitions, while grown-ups screamed at you to slide better, until your friend won and you cried, slides would seem a lot less awesome. And yes, I cried after the 1994 breaststroke finals when the official said I lost even though technically I had a faster time. And yes, I was beaten by Steve Deppe. And yes, I just googled Steve Deppe and discovered he now runs a successful wealth management business in San Diego. And yes, his online corporate profile says, “As a former athlete, Steve continues to exercise daily, whether it’s lifting weights, running, swimming, or playing sports.” And yes, the fourth example he gave of “exercise” was “sports.” And yes, I just went out and bought goggles and a Speedo and went down to my local pool and didn’t leave until I “just went out and bought goggles and a Speedo and went down to my local pool and didn’t leave until I swam a hundred laps, hoping that would be more laps than Steve Deppe swam today. BUT REALLY, WHO EVEN CARES ANYMORE, RIGHT??? NOT ME!!! IT’S NOT A COMPETITION, EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT EVEN MARRIED YET AND STEVE IS ALREADY “THE PROUD FATHER OF HIS DAUGHTER, CAMRYN.” PLUS, HE’S “AN AVID SPORTS FAN, WHO NEVER MISSES HIS FAVORITE TV SHOW, SPORTSCENTER.” WE GET IT STEVE, YOU FUCKING LOVE SPORTS!” Anyway.

Kieran stilled, his whole body going stiff. “What do you use? Your fingers, or a vibrator?” I slid my forearm across my forehead, my body pounding again. “None of your business,” I forced out, my throat tight. “Can I watch?” He glanced back, his tone teasing but his eyes on fire. “You can use both methods, and then compare them with my cock. See which one gets you off the best.” “Vibrator, easy.” I cleared my throat. “It’s got all the bells and whistles. Men just aren’t equipped to compete.” “I’m not a man.” His voice was deep and rich. “I’m a god.

Pam was sixty-four years old by then and was not yet a grandmother, which worried her, and her two sons were no longer living in New York, which made her sad. And also her favorite son, the younger one, who lived in San Francisco, was causing her distress of a different kind. Her husband, Ted, had been (honestly) tiresome to her for many years. She still thought of herself as young but understood that she was not. She had a number of friends, many in East Hampton as well, and yet—this had felt rather sudden to her—she could barely stand them. They had become unbelievably insipid. Lydia Robbins was the one Pam considered to be her best friend. Lydia was ten years younger than Pam and had an energy that Pam enjoyed. As they took their walks, Lydia’s full glossy dark hair would fall across her face frequently as she turned to look at Pam, nodding at something Pam had said. But after they shared their confidences, Pam felt she couldn’t bear Lydia. Didn’t anyone ever have anything interesting to say? They talked of movies they were all watching, of series on Netflix, they spoke about their children, but always carefully

All that is best in me I have given to (animals) and I mean to stand by them to the last and share their fate whatever it may be. If it is true that there is to be no haven of rest for them when their sufferings here are at an end, I, for one, am not going to bargain for any heaven for myself. I shall go without fear where they go, and by the side of my brothers and sisters from the forests and the fields, from skies to seas, lie down to merciful extinction in their mysterious underworld, safe from any further torments.” —Preface to The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe

This new notion of freedom, resting upon liberation from poverty, changed both the course and goal of revolution. Liberty now had come to mean first of all “dress and food and the reproduction of the species,” as the sans-culottes consciously distinguished their own rights from the lofty and, to them, meaningless language of the proclamation of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Compared to the urgency of their demands, all deliberations about the best form of government suddenly appeared irrelevant and futile. “La République? La Monarchie? Je ne connais que la question sociale,” said Robespierre.

It wasn’t very long until all the land in the barren hills near King City and San Ardo was taken up, and ragged families were scattered through the hills, trying their best to JOHN STEINBECK scratch a living from the thin flinty soil. They and the coyotes lived clever, despairing, submarginal lives. They landed with no money, no equipment, no tools, no credit, and particularly with no knowledge of the new country and no technique for using it. I don’t know whether it was a divine stupidity or a great faith that let them do it. Surely such venture is nearly gone from the world. And the families did survive and grow. They had a tool or a weapon that is also nearly gone, or perhaps it is only dormant for a while. It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units—because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.

Well, guys”—he spread his arms—“I could thank Reyna all day long. She has given so much to the legion. She’s been the best mentor and friend. She can never be replaced. On the other hand, I’m up here all alone now, and we have an empty praetor’s chair. So I’d like to take nominations for—” Lavinia started the chant: “HA-ZEL! HA-ZEL!” The crowd quickly joined in. Hazel’s eyes widened. She tried to resist when those sitting around her pulled her to her feet, but her Fifth Cohort fan club had evidently been preparing for this possibility. One of them produced a shield, which they hoisted Hazel onto like a saddle. They raised her overhead and marched her to the middle of the senate floor, turning her around and chanting, “HAZEL! HAZEL!” Reyna clapped and yelled right along with them. Only Frank tried to remain neutral, though he had to hide his smile behind his fist. “Okay, settle down!” he called at last. “We have one nomination. Are there any other—?” “HAZEL! HAZEL!” “Any objections?” “HAZEL! HAZEL!” “Then I recognize the will of the Twelfth Legion. Hazel Levesque, you are hereby promoted to praetor!” More wild cheering. Hazel looked dazed as she was dressed in Reyna’s old cloak and badge of office, then led to her chair. Seeing Frank and Hazel side by side, I had to smile. They looked so right together—wise and strong and brave. The perfect praetors. Rome’s future was in good hands. “Thank you,” Hazel managed at last. “I—I’ll do everything I can to be worthy of your trust. Here’s the thing, though. This leaves the Fifth Cohort without a centurion, so—” The entire Fifth Cohort started chanting in unison: “LAVINIA! LAVINIA!” “What?” Lavinia’s face turned pinker than her hair. “Oh, no. I don’t do leadership!” “LAVINIA! LAVINIA!” “Is this a joke? Guys, I—” “Lavinia Asimov!” Hazel said with a smile. “The Fifth Cohort read my mind. As my first act as praetor, for your unparalleled heroism in the Battle of San Francisco Bay, I hereby promote you to centurion—unless my fellow praetor has any objections?” “None,” Frank said. “Then come forward, Lavinia!

During a workshop in San Francisco, I’d spent the night at the house of a lawyer named Anne. On her nightstand there was a thin book by a guy named Joel Kramer. Unable to sleep, I picked it up and leafed through the pages. He explained the emotions Caroline and I were feeling best: We have this idea that love is supposed to last forever. But love isn’t like that. It’s a free-flowing energy that comes and goes when it pleases. Sometimes it stays for life; other times it stays for a second, a day, a month, or a year. So don’t fear love when it comes simply because it makes you vulnerable. But don’t be surprised when it leaves, either. Just be glad you had the opportunity to experience it. I’m

I mean that I discovered there's a difference between acceptance and reignation - one is positive, the other is negative. Acceptance opens the door of hope wide, while resignation slams it shut. One says God is good and loves us, and the other says He is harsh and doesn't care. Abraham chose to 'accept' God's will, knowing full well that God loved him and not only wanted the best for him, but knew exactly what that 'best' would be. Neither is easy when it means relinquishing the desires of our heart, but 'acceptance' promises that God will bless our obedience with a greater good. 'Resignation,' however, can sever our relationship with God, which leaves us on our own, resulting in darkness and despair.

Despair could never touch a morning like this. The air was cool, and smelled of sage. It had the clarity that comes to Southern California only after a Santa Ana wind has blown all haze and history out to sea — air like telescopic glass, so that the snowcapped San Gabriela seemed near enough to touch, though they were forty miles away. The flanks of the blue foothills revealed the etching of every ravine, and beneath the foothills, stretching to the sea, the broad coastal plain seemed nothing but treetops: groves of orange, avocado, lemon, olive; windbreaks of eucalyptus and palm; ornamentals of a thousand different varieties, both natural and genetically engineered. It was as if the whole plain were a garden run riot, with the dawn sun flushing the landscape every shade of green.

The beauty of San Francisco is in these windows of redemptive splendor, we learned, the days when the fog “burns off,” as they say, and gives way to a piercing, almost perversely joyous sunshine. New Yorkers joke about being in an abusive relationship with the city. In San Francisco, I understood this. We were constantly being pummeled by clouds and rain, then promptly apologized to by sparkling sunshine. This is the thing the city does best: convinces you, through a blustery string of freezing, gunmetal-grey days, that life is shit, and then, when you least expect it and most need it, it seems to practically shatter open, revealing a crystalline brightness that pings light around, reflects it off of everything, and air-dries the pale, soaked buildings. It was a magic trick that got me every time.

Great cities invite you to love them in extreme close-up, to love every inch of them. And the more eccentric, convoluted, broken, and uneven they are, the more there is to love. The tenements on the Lower East Side in New York City, the decaying wooden houses above the waterfront in Istanbul, the fading rose-colored buildings in the magical little grid south of the Spanish Steps in Rome, the bombed-out villas near the Vucciria in Palermo—it is precisely the irregularity of these places that allows your heart to get a grip on them, like a climber finding a tiny hold that will not give way. Shimmering Venice has the most beautiful inches of any city in the world. San Francisco cannot compete, because it does not have streets made of water. But it has the next best thing: It has dirt trails. They make this city a place where mystery is measured in soft footsteps, and magic in clouds of dust.

To return to central Rome, it’s another two miles north along a busy stretch of road, not recommended on foot or bike. Instead, catch bus #118 from the bus stop about 75 yards past Domine Quo Vadis Church (across from the TI). Bus #118 makes several interesting stops (see below) on its way to the Piramide Metro stop. (Note that another bus, the #218, also goes from here to San Giovanni in Laterano.) For those with more energy, there’s more to see, especially if you’re renting a bike and want to just get away from it all. Other Sights on or near the Appian Way Consider these diversions if you have the time and interest. More of the Appian Way: Heading south (away from downtown Rome), past the Tomb of Cecilia Metella, you’ll find the best-preserved part of the Appian Way—quieter, less touristed, and lined with cypresses, pines, and crumbling tombs. It’s all downhill after the first few hundred yards. On a bike, you’ll travel over lots of rough paving stones (or dirt sidewalks) for about 30 minutes to reach a big pyramid-shaped ruin on its tiny base, and then five minutes more to the back side of the Villa dei Quintili.

Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, has written an entire book, The New Jim Crow, that blames high black incarceration rates on racial discrimination. She posits that prisons are teeming with young black men due primarily to a war on drugs that was launched by the Reagan administration in the 1980s for the express purpose of resegregating society. “This book argues that mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow and that all those who care about social justice should fully commit themselves to dismantling this new racial caste system,” wrote Alexander.4 “What this book is intended to do—the only thing it is intended to do—is to stimulate a much-needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetrating racial hierarchy in the United States.”5 Liberals love to have “conversations” about these matters, and Alexander got her wish. The book was a best seller. NPR interviewed her multiple times at length. The New York Times said that Alexander “deserved to be compared to Du Bois.” The San Francisco Chronicle described the book as “The Bible of a social movement.

You just said that you decapitated the major cartels,” one of the senators says. “Exactly,” Keller says. “And what was the result? An increase in drug exports into the United States. In modeling the war against terrorists, we’ve been following the wrong model. Terrorists are reluctant to take over the top spots of their dead comrades—but the profits from drug trafficking are so great that there is always someone willing to step up. So all we’ve really done is to create job vacancies worth killing for.” The other major strategy of interdiction—the effort to prevent drugs from coming across the border—also hasn’t worked, he explains to them. The agency estimates that, at best, they seize about 15 percent of the illicit drugs coming across the border, even though, in their business plans, the cartels plan for a 30 percent loss. “Why can’t we do better than that?” a senator asks. “Because your predecessors passed NAFTA,” Keller says. “Three-quarters of the drugs come in on tractor-trailer trucks through legal crossings—San Diego, Laredo, El Paso—the busiest commercial crossings in the world. Thousands of trucks every day, and if we thoroughly searched every truck and car, we’d shut down commerce.

On April 30, 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Reily, a former assistant postmaster in Kansas City, governor of Puerto Rico as a political payoff. Reily took his oath of office in Kansas City, then attended to “personal business” for another two and a half months before finally showing up for work on July 30.24 By that time, he had already announced to the island press that (1) he was “the boss now,” (2) the island must become a US state, (3) any Puerto Rican who opposed statehood was a professional agitator, (4) there were thousands of abandoned children in Puerto Rico, and (5) the governorship of Puerto Rico was “the best appointment that President Harding could award” because its salary and “perquisites” would total $54,000 a year.25 Just a few hours after disembarking, the assistant postmaster marched into San Juan’s Municipal Theater and uncorked one of the most reviled inaugural speeches in Puerto Rican history. He announced that there was “no room on this island for any flag other than the Stars and Stripes. So long as Old Glory waves over the United States, it will continue to wave over Puerto Rico.” He then pledged to fire anyone who lacked “Americanism.” He promised to make “English, the language of Washington, Lincoln and Harding, the primary one in Puerto Rican schools

You think I wanted to hurt you? No. No! No, the only thing I knew was that you, Juliana Crain, were the only hope any of us had. You asked me if you were in the films. You are, you were, over and over again. Sometimes... I'd see you in the background somewhere... a protest, a speech, a war zone, maybe. Some place that mattered. I started knowing where to look. You could never stay out of it. Some of the people you knew... I started seeing them, too, revolving around you like an atom. But... they would change... different behavior, different relationships, different points of view shaped by their lives. But you were always you. You and your unnatural consistent mind. What if I hadn't seen this film? Well, I got to know a woman who would bet on the best in us, who bet on people, no matter what the world said about who they were, who they should be. That woman would do anything to save a sick boy... a Nazi boy, even... because she would believe he deserved the chance, as slim as it might be, to live a valuable life. And I knew that was the key, the only way to make sure that your sister's father wouldn't prevent that boy's father from stopping a war. Dixon died in an alley so that son of a bitch Smith could live. San Francisco is still here. Millions of people will live because of the choice you made, the goodness in you, Juliana. One selfless act of love and hope. That's what I put my money on. 

One of our best dates was actually a weekend when we went to the wedding of a friend from the Teams. The couple married in Wimberley, Texas, a small town maybe forty miles south of Austin and a few hours’ drive from where we lived. We were having such a pleasant day, we didn’t want it to end. “It doesn’t have to end,” suggested Chris as we headed for the car. “The kids are at my parents’ for the weekend. Where do you want to go?” We googled for hotels and found a place in San Antonio, a little farther south. Located around the corner from the Alamo, the hotel seemed tailor-made for Chris. There was history in every floorboard. He loved the authentic Texan and Old West touches, from the lobby to the rooms. He read every framed article on the walls and admired each artifact. We walked through halls where famous lawmen-and maybe an outlaw or two-had trod a hundred years before. In the evening, we relaxed with coffee out on the balcony of our room-something we’d never managed to do when we actually owned one. It was one of those perfect days you dream of, completely unplanned. I have a great picture of Chris sitting out there in his cowboy boots, feet propped up, a big smile on his face. It’s still one of my favorites. People ask about Chris’s love of the Old West. It was something he was born with, really. It had to be in his genes. He grew up watching old westerns with his family, and for a time became a bronco-bustin’ cowboy and ranch hand. More than that, I think the clear sense of right and wrong, of frontier justice and strong values, appealed to him.

Filming was done outside San Antonio, Texas. The scale of the production was vast and complex. Whole battlefields were scrupulously re-created on the plains of Texas. Wellman deployed as many as five thousand extras and sixty airplanes in some scenes—an enormous logistical exercise. The army sent its best aviators from Selfridge Field in Michigan—the very men with whom Lindbergh had just flown to Ottawa—and stunt fliers were used for the more dangerous scenes. Wellman asked a lot of his airmen. One pilot was killed, another broke his neck, and several more sustained other serious injuries. Wellman did some of the more dangerous stunt flying himself. All this gave the movie’s aerial scenes a realism and immediacy that many found almost literally breathtaking. Wellman captured features of flight that had never been caught on film before—the shadows of planes moving across the earth, the sensation of flying through drifting smoke, the stately fall of bombs, and the destructive puffs of impact that follow. Even the land-bound scenes were filmed with a thoughtfulness and originality that set Wings apart. To bring the viewer into a Parisian nightclub, Wellman used a boom shot in which the camera traveled through the room just above table height, skimming over drinks and between revelers, before arriving at the table of Arlen and Rogers. It is an entrancing shot even now, but it was rivetingly novel in 1927. “Wings,” wrote Penelope Gilliatt simply in The New Yorker in 1971, “is truly beautiful.” Wings was selected as best picture at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. Wellman, however, wasn’t even invited to the ceremony.

BEYOND THE GAME In 2007 some of the Colorado Rockies’ best action took place off the field. The Rocks certainly boasted some game-related highlights in ’07: There was rookie shortstop Troy Tulowitzki turning the major league’s thirteenth unassisted triple play on April 29, and the team as a whole made an amazing late-season push to reach the playoffs. Colorado won 13 of its final 14 games to force a one-game wild card tiebreaker with San Diego, winning that game 9–8 after scoring three runs in the bottom of the thirteenth inning. Marching into the postseason, the Rockies won their first-ever playoff series, steamrolling the Phillies three games to none. But away from the cheering crowds and television cameras, Rockies players turned in a classic performance just ahead of their National League Division Series sweep. They voted to include Amanda Coolbaugh and her two young sons in Colorado’s postseason financial take. Who was Amanda Coolbaugh? She was the widow of former big-leaguer Mike Coolbaugh, a coach in the Rockies’ minor league organization who was killed by a screaming line drive while coaching first base on July 22. Colorado players voted a full playoff share—potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—to the grieving young family. Widows and orphans hold a special place in God’s heart, too. Several times in the Old Testament, God reminded the ancient Jews of His concern for the powerless—and urged His people to follow suit: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). Some things go way beyond the game of baseball. Will you?

Back home, Chris struggled to readjust, physically and mentally. He also faced another decision-reenlist, or leave the Navy and start a new life in the civilian world. This time, he seemed to be leaning toward getting out-he'd been discussing other jobs and had already talked to people about what he might do next. It was his decision, one way or another. But if I’d been resigned to his reenlistment last go-around, this time I was far more determined to let him know I thought he should get out. There were two important reasons for him to leave-our children. They really needed to have him around as they grew. And I made that a big part of my argument. But the most urgent reason was Chris himself. I saw what the war was doing to him physically. His body was breaking down with multiple injuries, big and small. There were rings under his eyes even when he had slept. His blood pressure was through the roof. He had to wall himself off more and more. I didn’t think he could survive another deployment. “I’ll support you whatever you decide,” I told him. “I want to be married to you. But the only way I can keep making sense of this is…I need to do the best for the kids and me. If you have to keep doing what is best for you and those you serve, at some point I owe it to myself and those I serve to do the same. For me, that is moving to Oregon.” For me, that meant moving from San Diego to Oregon, where we could live near my folks. That would give our son a grandfather to be close to and model himself after-very important things, in my mind, for a boy. I didn’t harp on the fact that the military was taking its toll. That argument would never persuade Chris. He lived for others, not himself. It didn’t feel like an ultimatum to me. In fact, when he described it that way later on, I was shocked. “It was an ultimatum,” he said. He felt my attitude toward him would change so dramatically that the marriage would be over. There would also be a physical separation that would make it hard to stay together. Even if he wasn’t overseas, he was still likely to be based somewhere other than Oregon. We’d end up having a marriage only in name. I guess looked at one way, it was an ultimatum-us or the Navy. But it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. I asked him if he could stay in and get an assignment overseas where we could all go, but Chris reminded me there was never a guarantee with the military-and noted he wasn’t in it to sit behind a desk. Some men have a heart condition they know will kill them, but they don’t want to go to the doctor; it’s only when their wives tell them to go that they go. It’s a poor metaphor, but I felt that getting out of the Navy was as important for Chris as it was for us. In the end, he opted to leave. Later, when Chris would give advice to guys thinking about leaving the military, he would tell them it would be a difficult decision. He wouldn’t push them one way or the other, but he would be open about his experiences. “There’ll be hard times at first,” he’d admit. “But if that is the thing you decide, those times will pass. And you’ll be able to enjoy things you never could in the service. And some of them will be a lot better. The joy you get from your family will be twice as great as the pleasure you had in the military.” Ultimatum or not, he’d come to realize retiring from the service was a good choice for all of us.

John Doerr, the legendary venture capitalist who backed Netscape, Google, and Amazon, doesn’t remember the exact day anymore; all he remembers is that it was shortly before Steve Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on January 9, 2007, to announce that Apple had reinvented the mobile phone. Doerr will never forget, though, the moment he first laid eyes on that phone. He and Jobs, his friend and neighbor, were watching a soccer match that Jobs’s daughter was playing in at a school near their homes in Palo Alto. As play dragged on, Jobs told Doerr that he wanted to show him something. “Steve reached into the top pocket of his jeans and pulled out the first iPhone,” Doerr recalled for me, “and he said, ‘John, this device nearly broke the company. It is the hardest thing we’ve ever done.’ So I asked for the specs. Steve said that it had five radios in different bands, it had so much processing power, so much RAM [random access memory], and so many gigabits of flash memory. I had never heard of so much flash memory in such a small device. He also said it had no buttons—it would use software to do everything—and that in one device ‘we will have the world’s best media player, world’s best telephone, and world’s best way to get to the Web—all three in one.’” Doerr immediately volunteered to start a fund that would support creation of applications for this device by third-party developers, but Jobs wasn’t interested at the time. He didn’t want outsiders messing with his elegant phone. Apple would do the apps. A year later, though, he changed his mind; that fund was launched, and the mobile phone app industry exploded. The moment that Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone turns out to have been a pivotal junction in the history of technology—and the world.

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that - well, lucky you.

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

CHALLENGES TO YOUNG POETS Invent a new language anyone can understand. Climb the Statue of Liberty. Reach for the unattainable. Kiss the mirror and write what you see and hear. Dance with wolves and count the stars, including the unseen. Be naïve, innocent, non-cynical, as if you had just landed on earth (as indeed you have, as indeed we all have), astonished by what you have fallen upon. Write living newspaper. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance level for hot air. Write and endless poem about your life on earth or elsewhere. Read between the lines of human discourse. Avoid the provincial, go for the universal. Think subjectively, write objectively. Think long thoughts in short sentences. Don't attend poetry workshops, but if you do, don't go the learn "how to" but to learn "what" (What's important to write about). Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces. Resist much, obey less. Secretly liberate any being you see in a cage. Write short poems in the voice of birds. Make your lyrics truly lyrical. Birdsong is not made by machines. Give your poem wings to fly to the treetops. The much-quoted dictum from William Carlos Williams, "No ideas but in things," is OK for prose, but it lays a dead hand on lyricism, since "things" are dead. Don't contemplate your navel in poetry and think the rest of the world is going to think it's important. Remember everything, forget nothing. Work on a frontier, if you can find one. Go to sea, or work near water, and paddle your own boat. Associate with thinking poets. They're hard to find. Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. "First thought, best thought" may not make for the greatest poetry. First thought may be worst thought. What's on your mind? What do you have in mind? Open your mouth and stop mumbling. Don't be so open minded that your brains fall out. Questions everything and everyone. Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and status quo. Be a poet, not a huckster. Don't cater, don't pander, especially not to possible audiences, readers, editors, or publishers. Come out of your closet. It's dark there. Raise the blinds, throw open your shuttered windows, raise the roof, unscrew the locks from the doors, but don't throw away the screws. Be committed to something outside yourself. Be militant about it. Or ecstatic. To be a poet at sixteen is to be sixteen, to be a poet at 40 is to be a poet. Be both. Wake up and pee, the world's on fire. Have a nice day.

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal. The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments. If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela's, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh. On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It's a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There's even a bakery called Bruno's that sells only biscotti- at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant until he retired from Mellon Bank at the age of sixty-five to bake biscotti full-time. There's a little hand-scrawled sign in the front of window that says, GET IN HERE! You can't pass it without smiling. It's a little after eight when Chloe and I finish up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company where, in addition to the prosciutto, soppressata, both hot and sweet sausages, fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and imported Parmigiano Reggiano, all essential ingredients for pizza rustica, I've also picked up a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes, which I happily note are thirty-nine cents cheaper here than in New York.

MY PROCESS I got bullied quite a bit as a kid, so I learned how to take a punch and how to put up a good fight. God used that. I am not afraid of spiritual “violence” or of facing spiritual fights. My Dad was drafted during Vietnam and I grew up an Army brat, moving around frequently. God used that. I am very spiritually mobile, adaptable, and flexible. My parents used to hand me a Bible and make me go look up what I did wrong. God used that, as well. I knew the Word before I knew the Lord, so studying Scripture is not intimidating to me. I was admitted into a learning enrichment program in junior high. They taught me critical thinking skills, logic, and Greek Mythology. God used that, too. In seventh grade I was in school band and choir. God used that. At 14, before I even got saved, a youth pastor at my parents’ church taught me to play guitar. God used that. My best buddies in school were a druggie, a Jewish kid, and an Irish soccer player. God used that. I broke my back my senior year and had to take theatre instead of wrestling. God used that. I used to sleep on the couch outside of the Dean’s office between classes. God used that. My parents sent me to a Christian college for a semester in hopes of getting me saved. God used that. I majored in art, advertising, astronomy, pre-med, and finally English. God used all of that. I made a woman I loved get an abortion. God used (and redeemed) that. I got my teaching certification. I got plugged into a group of sincere Christian young adults. I took courses for ministry credentials. I worked as an autism therapist. I taught emotionally disabled kids. And God used each of those things. I married a pastor’s daughter. God really used that. Are you getting the picture? San Antonio led me to Houston, Houston led me to El Paso, El Paso led me to Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Leonard Wood led me back to San Antonio, which led me to Austin, then to Kentucky, then to Belton, then to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to Dallas, to Alabama, which led me to Fort Worth. With thousands of smaller journeys in between. The reason that I am able to do the things that I do today is because of the process that God walked me through yesterday. Our lives are cumulative. No day stands alone. Each builds upon the foundation of the last—just like a stairway, each layer bringing us closer to Him. God uses each experience, each lesson, each relationship, even our traumas and tragedies as steps in the process of becoming the people He made us to be. They are steps in the process of achieving the destinies that He has encoded into the weave of each of our lives. We are journeymen, finding the way home. What is the value of the journey? If the journey makes us who we are, then the journey is priceless.

This pattern became particularly apparent in the 2000s. In 2002 the presidential election was won by Álvaro Uribe. Uribe had something in common with the Castaño brothers: his father had been killed by the FARC. Uribe ran a campaign repudiating the attempts of the previous administration to try to make peace with the FARC. In 2002 his vote share was 3 percentage points higher in areas with paramilitaries than without them. In 2006, when he was reelected, his vote share was 11 percentage points higher in such areas. If Mancuso and his partners could deliver the vote for Congress and the Senate, they could do so in presidential elections as well, particularly for a president strongly aligned with their worldview and likely to be lenient on them. As Jairo Angarita, Salvatore Mancuso’s deputy and the former leader of the AUC’s Sinú and San Jorge blocs, declared in September 2005, he was proud to work for the “reelection of the best president we have ever had.” Once elected, the paramilitary senators and congressmen voted for what Uribe wanted, in particular changing the constitution so that he could be reelected in 2006, which had not been allowed at the time of his first election, in 2002. In exchange, President Uribe delivered a highly lenient law that allowed the paramilitaries to demobilize. Demobilization did not mean the end of paramilitarism, simply its institutionalization in large parts of Colombia and the Colombian state, which the paramilitaries had taken over and were allowed to keep.

GOLD IS THE BEST THING THERE IS.

It was a popular and trendy neighborhood, but there was something bland about the bars and restaurants we visited. San Diego was nice - nice weather, nice beaches, and nice people - but it wasn't great. The diversity and texture I'd come to appreciate on the East Coast seemed to have been smoothed away by the surf and sand in sunny SoCal. I missed the tiny Ecuadorian restaurant a block from our Baltimor row home that served the best fried plantains, and our tiny local pub where we knew all the bartenders and they knew what we liked to drink. I missed houses built from bricks, and when summer changed into fall, most surprisingly, rain.

herself closer to their front door, as if that would hurry her parents along. Her best friend, James, who lived upstairs, would be there any minute with his family to walk with them to Hollister’s bookstore. Emily’s dad carried out a cardboard box that still hadn’t been unpacked, even though the Cranes had lived in San Francisco for three months. He set it in the hall and pulled out a colander, an art book about Diego Rivera, and a wad of fabric that unrolled itself to reveal two ties. He stood in the hallway outside the tiny bathroom and looked at his reflection in the mirror, holding up first the blue tie and then the red one. “These are kind of wrinkly.” Emily’s mom strode out of her bedroom, a long skirt swishing around her ankles and her

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Les humains étaient à présent des particules raréfiées qui ne se heurtaient guère. Ils tâtonnaient sans conviction dans leur crépuscule, incapables de faire le tri entre leur propre malheur individuel et le naufrage de la collectivité, comme moi ne voyant plus la différence entre réel et imaginaire, confondant les maux dus aux séquelles de l’antique système capitaliste et les dérives causées par le non-fonctionnement du système non capitaliste.

It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, even harder than quitting drinking, showing up week after week, pushing so much out of my core, onto the pages in front of me. But it was the best thing I’d ever done, too. I wrote things down that I’d never told another living soul, and when I’d written enough I didn’t want to drink so much anymore. The book I was writing was one of the ugliest I’d ever seen, but also the most beautiful, because it was the only good thing I’d ever done in my life. It was the only proof I had that I could stand and fight.

And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and vicious-ness of all mankind. “Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns. “I do not mean to be ungrateful for the fine, martial show we are about to see—and a thrilling show it really will be …” He looked each of us in the eye, and then he commented very softly, throwing it away, “And hooray say I for thrilling shows.

I knew you forever and you were always old, soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold me for sitting up late, reading your letters, as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me. You posted them first in London, wearing furs and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety. I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day, where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones. This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I see you as a young girl in a good world still, writing three generations before mine. I try to reach into your page and breathe it back… but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. This is the sack of time your death vacates. How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past me with your Count, while a military band plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last, a pleated old lady with a crooked hand. Once you read Lohengrin and every goose hung high while you practiced castle life in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce history to a guess. The count had a wife. You were the old maid aunt who lived with us. Tonight I read how the winter howled around the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound of the music of the rats tapping on the stone floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone. This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne, Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn your first climb up Mount San Salvatore; this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes, the yankee girl, the iron interior of her sweet body. You let the Count choose your next climb. You went together, armed with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed by the thick woods of briars and bushes, nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated with his coat off as you waded through top snow. He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled down on the train to catch a steam boat for home; or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome. This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue. I read how you walked on the Palatine among the ruins of the palace of the Caesars; alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July. When you were mine they wrapped you out of here with your best hat over your face. I cried because I was seventeen. I am older now. I read how your student ticket admitted you into the private chapel of the Vatican and how you cheered with the others, as we used to do on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll, float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors, to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional breeze. You worked your New England conscience out beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout. Tonight I will learn to love you twice; learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face. Tonight I will speak up and interrupt your letters, warning you that wars are coming, that the Count will die, that you will accept your America back to live like a prim thing on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose world go drunk each night, to see the handsome children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you, you will tip your boot feet out of that hall, rocking from its sour sound, out onto the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.

How, she wondered, unable to do anything but stare at his beautiful face and body with helpless longing, was he able to make passionate love to her one second and get back in character again just seconds after? It was one of the reasons she’d never wanted to be with an actor. She couldn’t stand the idea of just being part of another scene he was playing to the best of his ability. Only, when he looked into her eyes, she realized with stunning clarity that although he was again wearing his character’s clothes, Smith wasn’t the least bit in character. Because instead of the billionaire from the firm staring at her, instead of Smith Sullivan the movie star, or even Lori’s brother, the man who stood before her was her lover. One hundred percent. Hers. The realization of just how completely he’d given himself over to her left her staggered even as he said, “Since I know my sister’s going to want her answer before she’s through with you, you can let her know that your guy is definitely still putting in his best efforts for your heart.

I like Andrew well enough, I suppose, but not for Aunt Cait, so it’s best we leave lest I’m tempted to sink a spur into his ankle.” “Ooooo, I like the way you think.” Alli gave her a hug before tweaking Jamie’s neck. “Is that how you keep this one in line?” Jamie’s dark brows peaked high. “Hey, I run the MacKenna household, not the little missus, right, Cowgirl?” In a flash of his arm, he dipped Cassie back for a kiss. She broke free with a giggle and pinched his cheek. “Depends—with or without my lasso?” she quipped, sauntering over to give both Meg and Alli a hug. She shot Jamie a lazy smile over her shoulder on the way to the door. “I can still hog-tie steers—or Jamie MacKenna—in under fifteen seconds flat, so don’t you forget that either, Pretty Boy.” “How

Oh, my goodness! Megan Maureen McClare—you did, didn’t you?” Her mother’s jaw fell. “Uh-oh.” Alli’s voice squeaked with a nervous giggle, fingertips pressed to her lips as if to restrain further damage. She peeked at Meg out of the corner of her eyes, brows puckered in repentance. “Was I supposed to keep that a secret?” Meg laughed and hugged her tightly. “Not really, Al, so don’t worry. Not only will I have to adjust to this new me, but everyone else will too.” She glanced up at her mother with her usual sweet smile, although she was certain it lacked the timidity to which everyone was accustomed. “Please forgive me, Mother. I know a lady hopping aboard a motorbike with a near stranger is not the most dignified of scenarios. But Paris does something to you—it dares you, entices you, liberates you in ways I never expected.” “Sweet thunderation, Megs, you really and truly got on a motorbike with a complete stranger?” Cassie’s sagging jaw matched Meg’s mother’s. “Not exactly a stranger,” Alli piped up, eager to redeem herself, “a friend of the Rousseaus named Pierre.” She glanced at Meg with a sudden gleam of mischief in her eyes. “Apparently he was one of several smitten young men who asked Megs to marry him.” “What?” Uncle Logan was on his feet in a heartbeat, face ruddy with shock. “Megan Maureen, you best tell me there is nothing going on here, young lady—” “Nothing is going on, Uncle Logan, truly.” Meg offered a conciliatory smile, her gaze darting to where Bram was actually frowning—a most infrequent occurrence—before she returned to her uncle. “Pierre is Dr. Rousseau’s colleague’s son, and a dear friend of the Rousseaus, but I assure you, he and I are only friends.” “So, tell us, Bug,” Bram said, hunkering down on the table with a fold of arms, the lazy bent of his smile at odds with the slight narrowing of his eyes. “Exactly how many hearts did you break in Paris?” “More than I ever have, I can tell you that,” Alli said with a wink, shimmying in to prop her chin in her hand. “So tell us about riding the motorbike, Megs—was it exciting?” Meg’s gaze flitted to Alli with a mischievous grin that made her feel alive, as if she were coming out of the shadows for the very first time. “Oh, yes, very much so! The wind in your face while your hair whips behind you, free and unfettered.” She stole a glance at Bram, wishing his disapproval didn’t bother her so. “And I didn’t ‘break’ any hearts,” she said softly, “just the mold of who the old Meg used to be.

There are many reasons why girls should not travel alone, and I won’t list them, because none of them are original reasons. Besides, there are more reasons why girls should. I have the utmost respect for girls who travel alone, because it’s hard work sometimes. But girls, we just want adventures. We want international best friends and hold-your-breath vistas out of crappy hostel windows. We want to discover moving works of art, sometimes in museums and sometimes in side-street graffiti. We want to hear soul-restoring jam sessions at beach bonfires and to watch celestial dawns spill over villages that haven’t changed since the Middle Ages. We want to fall in love with boys with say-that-again accents. We want sore feet from stay-up-all-night dance parties at just-one-more-drink bars. We want to be on our own even as we sketch and photograph the Piazza San Marco covered in pigeons and beautiful Italian lovers intertwined so that we’ll never forget what it feels like to be twenty-three and absolutely purposeless and single, but in love with every city we visit next. We want to be struck dumb by the baritone echoes of church bells in Vatican City and the rich, heaven-bound calls to prayer in Istanbul and to know that no matter what, there just has to be some greater power or holy magic responsible for all this bursting, delirious, overwhelming beauty in the great, wide, sprawling world. I tucked my passport into my bag. Girls, we don’t just want to have fun; we want a whole lot more out of life than that.

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Man is born rich, but almost everywhere is poor. It is to the elucidation of this paradox that many of the finest minds ... have been devoted for nearly a century. And the best answer they have been able to give is that most men are poor because a few men are rich. And, by the same token, those few men are rich because most men are poor. On this view, wealth is a form of institutionalized plunder. Nothing had to be —or remains to be—discovered, invented, or developed. The wealth of the world has been the same since the beginning of time and will remain the same until the end of time. Hence your slice of the economic cake, both personal and international, necessarily decreases the size of mine, and thus poverty is always someone else’s fault. This means that the wealth of Europe and America was erected on a foundation of cheap bananas. These ideas—a kind of anti-Semitism sans the Jews—are so absurd that they are almost auto-refuting, at least for anyone with a few facts at his disposal and a minimal ability to think connectedly. Yet they have had an historical importance and influence vastly disproportionate to their intellectual merit, and have even constituted an unassailable orthodoxy among ... intellectuals, some of them of great distinction. Indeed, it was hardly possible for someone to be considered an intellectual at all in Latin America unless he subscribed to these ideas. A man who pointed out their logical and empirical shortcomings was considered a traitor to the patria and most likely in the pay of the CIA to boot.

Howard Rheingold: And it was all just words on a screen! R. U. Sirius: These were just text-based bulletin boards, but in many ways they were superior to social media today. You had really great conversations with extraordinary people. Larry Brilliant: Because it was Stewart, he attracted people who had these incredibly eclectic minds, and they were phenomenal writers, people who think in paragraphs. And the writing was fantastic! Kevin Kelly: That made for a very literate salon-like environment where people who could write were writing—and writing well and writing very directly. So some of the best writing I think of that decade was happening on The Well. Larry Brilliant: So just the opposite of Twitter. Lee Felsenstein: The Well, for its first five years at least, was the San Francisco bohemian scene online, where you could join the roundtable of whatever-it-was. There was a whole bunch of roundtables. And in there were the people who were the ones you had read about and so forth. Or had firsthand connections with the people you read about. San Francisco had had such a scene since the nineteenth century. And here it came direct to your home at your fingertips.

Best Budget Travel Destinations Ever Are you looking for a cheap flight this year? Travel + Leisure received a list of the most affordable locations this year from one of the top travel search engines in the world, Kayak. Kayak then considered the top 100 locations with the most affordable average flight prices, excluding outliers due to things like travel restrictions and security issues. To save a lot of money, go against the grain. Mexico Unsurprisingly, Mexico is at the top of the list of the cheapest places to travel in 2022. The United States has long been seen as an accessible and affordable vacation destination; low-cost direct flights are common. San José del Cabo (in Baja California Sur), Puerto Vallarta, and Cancun are the three destinations within Mexico with the least expensive flights, with January being the most economical month to visit each. Fortunately, January is a glorious month in each of these beachside locales, with warm, balmy weather and an abundance of vibrant hues, textures, and flavors to chase away the winter blues. Looking for a city vacation rather than a beach vacation? Mexico City, which boasts a diverse collection of museums and a rich Aztec heritage, is another accessible option in the country. May is the cheapest month to travel there. Chicago, Illinois Who wants to go to Chicago in the winter? Once you learn about all the things to do in this Midwest winter wonderland and the savings you can get in January, you'll be convinced. At Maggie Daley Park, spend the afternoon ice skating before warming up with some deep-dish pizza. Colombia Colombia's fascinating history, vibrant culture, and mouthwatering cuisine make it a popular travel destination. It is also inexpensive compared to what many Americans are used to paying for items like a fresh arepa and a cup of Colombian coffee. The cheapest month of the year to fly to Bogotá, the capital city, is February. The Bogota Botanical Garden, founded in 1955 and home to almost 20,000 plants, is meticulously maintained, and despite the region's chilly climate, strolling through it is not difficult. The entrance fee is just over $1 USD. In January, travel to the port city of Cartagena on the country's Caribbean coast. The majority of visitors discover that exploring the charming streets on foot is sufficient to make their stay enjoyable. Tennessee's Music City There's a reason why bachelorette parties and reunions of all kinds are so popular in Music City: it's easy to have fun without spending a fortune. There is no fee to visit a mural, hot chicken costs only a few dollars, and Honky Tonk Highway is lined with free live music venues. The cheapest month to book is January. New York City, New York Even though New York City isn't known for being a cheap vacation destination, you'll find the best deals if you go in January. Even though the city never sleeps, the cold winter months are the best time for you to visit and take advantage of the lower demand for flights and hotel rooms. In addition, New York City offers a wide variety of free activities. Canada Not only does our neighbor Mexico provide excellent deals, but the majority of Americans can easily fly to Canada for an affordable getaway. In Montréal, Quebec, you must try the steamé, which is the city's interpretation of a hot dog and is served steamed in a side-loading bun (which is also steamed). It's the perfect meal to eat in the middle of February when travel costs are at their lowest. Best of all, hot dogs are inexpensive and delicious as well as filling. The most affordable month to visit Toronto, Ontario is February. Even though the weather may make you wary, the annual Toronto Light Festival, which is completely free, is held in February in the charming and historic Distillery District. Another excellent choice at this time is the $5 Bentway Skate Trail under the Gardiner Expressway overpass.

I’m a librarian,” she said, “employed in the San Molinas library. For various reasons, I have never married. My position gives me at once an opportunity to cultivate a taste for the best in literature, and to learn something of character. I have nothing in common with the younger set who find alcoholic stimulation the necessary prerequisite to any attempt at conversation or enjoyment.