Siege Book Quotes

You know the problem with heroes and saints, Nikolai?” I asked as I closed the book’s cover and headed for the door. “They always end up dead.

I'd like to think of myself as delightfully complex.

When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardour will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

Because to the poor, books are not diversions. Book are siege weapons.

Alone in the gloom, surrounded by books, it was hard not to feel overwhelmed.

So far today, I’d nearly died and possibly started a riot. Maybe I could set fire to something before breakfast. Bardugo, Leigh (2013-06-04). Siege and Storm (The Grisha Book 2) (p. 335). Henry Holt and Co. (BYR). Kindle Edition.

A department store two days before Christmas Eve is like a city in a state of siege....

Where were you?” he asked. “I was getting worried.” “I was waylaid by a gang of angry bears,” I murmured into his shoulder. “You got lost again?” “I don’t know where you get these ideas.” Bardugo, Leigh (2013-06-04). Siege and Storm (The Grisha Book 2) (p. 9). Henry Holt and Co. (BYR). Kindle Edition.

Please tell me you didn't bring all of Morozova's journals,' I said. 'Of course I did.' I rolled my eyes. There had to be at least fifteen leatherbound books. 'Maybe they'll make good kindling.' 'Is she kidding?' David asked, looking concerned. 'I can never tell if she's kidding.

I did apprentice with a Fjerdan shipbuilder. And a Zemeni gunsmith. And a civil engineer from the Han Province of Bolh. Tried my hand at poetry for a while. The results were … unfortunate. These days, being Sturmhond requires most of my attention.” Bardugo, Leigh (2013-06-04). Siege and Storm (The Grisha Book 2) (p. 132). Henry Holt and Co. (BYR). Kindle Edition.

The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege.

Why Do People become Shadowhunters, by Magnus Bane This Codex thing is very silly. Downworlders talk about the Codex like it is some great secret full of esoteric knowledge, but really itès a Boy Scout manual. One thing that it mysteriously doesnèt address is why people become Shadowhunters. And you should know that people become Shadowhunters for many stupid reasons. So here is an addition to your copy. Greetings, aspiring young Shadowhunter-to-be- or possibly already technically a Shadowhunter. I canèt remember whether you drink from the Cup first or get the book first. Regardless, you have just been recruited by the Monster Police. You may be wondering, why? Why of all the mundanes out there was I selected and invited to this exclusive club made up largely, at least from a historical perspective, of murderous psychopaths? Possible Reasons Why 1. You possess a stout heart, strong will, and able body. 2. You possess a stout body, able will, and strong heart. 3. Local Shadowhunters are ironically punishing you by making you join them. 4. You were recruited by a local institute to join the Nephilim as an ironic punishment for your mistreatment of Downworlders. 5. Your home , village, or nation is under siege by demons. 6. You home, village, or nation is under siege by rogue Downworlders. 7. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. 8.You know too much, and should be recruited because the secrecy of the Shadow World has already been compromised for you. 9. You know too little; it would be helpful to the Shadowhunters if you knew more. 10. You know exactly the right amount, making you a natural recruit. 11. You possess a natural resistance to glamour magic and must be recruited to keep you quiet and provide you with some basic protection. 12. You have a compound last name already and have convinced someone important that yours is a Shadowhunter family and the Shadowhunteriness has just been weakened by generations of bad breeding. 13. You had a torrid affair with a member of the Nephilim council and now he's trying to cover his tracks. 14. Shadowhunters are concerned they are no longer haughty and condescending enough-have sought you out to add a much needed boost of haughty condescension. 15. You have been bitten by a radioactive Shadowhunter, giving you the proportional strength and speed of a Shadowhunter. 16. Large bearded man on flying motorcycle appeared to take you away to Shadowhunting school. 17. Your mom has been in hiding from your evil dad, and you found out you're a Shadowhunter only a few weeks ago. That's right. Seventeen reasons. Because that's how many I came up with. Now run off, little Shadowhunter, and learn how to murder things. And be nice to Downworlders.

But you can go on thinking and imagining forever further and stop at no decisions to pick up a bag for the thinkings. Turn your thinking into your work, your thoughts a book, in sieges.

Andras Riedlmayer described a colleague who survived the siege of Sarajevo. In the winter, the scholar and his wife ran out of firewood, and so began to burn their books for heat and cooking. 'This forces one to think critically,' Riedlmayer remembered his friend saying. 'One must prioritize. First you burn old college textbooks, which you haven't read in thirty years. Then there are the duplicates. But eventually, you're forced to make tougher choices. Who burns today: Dostoevsky or Proust?' I asked Riedlmayer if his friend had any books left when the war was over. 'Oh yes,' he replied, his face lit by a flickering smile. 'He still had many books. Sometimes, he told me, you look at the books and just choose to go hungry.

TheBadGamer’s unfinished wall that looked like an upside down T. Everyone cringed.

In the universities, in the churches, in the corporations, in the professional associations, in the editorial offices, in the game studios, and just about everywhere else you can imagine, free speech and free thought are under siege by a group of fanatics as self-righteous as Savonarola, as ruthless as Stalin, as ambitious as Napoleon, and as crazy as Caligula.

« What was it? The crisp edge of a winter wind. Bare branches. The smell of absence, the smell of night. » Leigh Bardugo. « Grisha 02 - Siege and Storm. » Apple Books.

[A]lthough guns, tanks, and bombs win wars, they don't win peace. Peace takes research, planning reconstruction, the secrets to which can be found in books.

that’s what heroes do.” “I don’t want him to be a hero!” “He can’t change who he is any more than you can stop being Grisha.” I’d railed at him for wanting me to be something I couldn’t, and all the while, I’d demanded the same thing from him. “You know the problem with heroes and saints, Nikolai?” I asked as I closed the book’s cover and headed for the door. “They always end up dead.

The uncommon abilities and fortune of Severus have induced an elegant historian to compare him with the first and greatest of the Cæsars. The parallel is, at least, imperfect. Where shall we find, in the character of Severus, the commanding superiority of the soul, the generous clemency, and the various genius, which could reconcile and unite the love of pleasure, the thirst of knowledge, and the fire of ambition? ⁴⁴ ⁴⁴ Though it is not, most assuredly, the intention of Lucan to exalt the character of Cæsar, yet the idea he gives of that hero, in the tenth book of the Pharsalia, where he describes him, at the same time making love to Cleopatra, sustaining a siege against the power of Egypt, and conversing with the sages of the country, is, in reality, the noblest panegyric.

Now, I’ll take the prisoner back to her quarters, and you can run off and do … whatever it is you do when everyone else is working.” Ivan scowled. “I don’t think—” “Clearly. Why start now?” Bardugo, Leigh (2013-06-04). Siege and Storm (The Grisha Book 2) (p. 32). Henry Holt and Co. (BYR). Kindle Edition.

The Osage had been assured by the U.S. government that their Kansas territory would remain their home forever, but before long they were under siege from settlers. Among them was the family of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who later wrote Little House on the Prairie based on her experiences. “Why don’t you like Indians, Ma?” Laura asks her mother in one scene. “I just don’t like them; and don’t lick your fingers, Laura.” “This is Indian country, isn’t it?” Laura said. “What did we come to their country for, if you don’t like them?” One evening, Laura’s father explains to her that the government will soon make the Osage move away: “That’s why we’re here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country, and we get the best land because we get here first and take our pick.” Though, in the book, the Ingallses leave the reservation under threat of being removed by soldiers, many squatters began to take the land by force. In 1870, the Osage—expelled from their lodges, their graves plundered—agreed to sell their Kansas lands to settlers for $1.25 an acre. Nevertheless, impatient settlers massacred several of the Osage, mutilating their bodies and scalping them. An Indian Affairs agent said, “The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages?

The librarians sent books to the hospitals. They answered a thousand questions put to them by the military and civil authorities: How could Leningrad make matches? How could flint and steel lighters be manufactured? What materials were needed for candles? Was there any way of making yeast, edible wood, artificial vitamins? How do you make soap? The librarians found recipes for candles in old works of the eighteenth century.

One of the most oft-quoted records of the siege, scribbled in pencil over the pages of a pocket address book, is that kept by twelve-year-old Tanya Savicheva: 28 December 1941 at 12.30 a.m. – Zhenya died. 25 January 1942 at 3 p.m. – Granny died. 17 March at 5 a.m. – Lyoka died. 13 April at 2 a.m. – Uncle Vasya died. 10 May at 4 p.m. – Uncle Lyosha died. 13 May at 7.30 a.m. – Mama died. The Savichevs are dead. Everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left.

One step at a time, to do what can be done now, so that what must be done will follow as an ultimate consequence.

JIT TRIPPING, MAH GUY! GOOFY AH!” He cried.

AAAH! LEGGO! LEGGO!  THESE JEANS COST ME TWO EGGS!!!! ‘JIT ‘TRIPPING, MAH GUY! MAN!

night, mah guys. Back to muh mama’s crib. I’ll be back  at twelve-ish.

A book is read one page at a time. A shelf is read one book at a time. A library is read one shelf at a time.

In addition, there was a note from Gundar – the skirl had paid a professional scribe to write it for him. The new ship was nearly ready, he said. They had decided to call it Wolfwill.

Would you rather be a victim of genocide, or the architect of a genocide that saves you?’ ‘Fo–’ she growls. ‘Which I believe, by the by, is a guiding philosophy of the Imperial Project.

For the media, Cohen was a reliable leaker about Trump and the campaign. Among senior campaign aides, he was later regarded as a central voice in NBC correspondent Katy Tur’s book about the campaign,

The curse of great minds. Arriving young to an idea, surviving the siege that invariably assails it, then, finally, standing guard on the ramparts long after the war's over, weapons dull in leaden hands

Snow-laced pines loomed tall and motionless as sentinels around her. Something moved among them, half-smothered in the dark. Dianna glimpsed slivers of its lupine form. A chill slithered through her as she rose to her feet.

All in all, everything seems to be back to the way it was before, but with one important exception. You've changed. You're wary now. You walk into work as if entering a minefield. In every conversation, in every meeting, you're careful to watch your every word. Every casual encounter in the hallway becomes a potential confrontation. Every time you meet a co-worker's eyes, you wonder if they are well-disposed or a secret enemy seeking to destroy your job, your career, and your life. You walk on eggshells, and you learn to stop sharing your opinion with anyone about anything, unless it is about something safely innocuous, like sports. What you don't realize is that you've just survived your first SJW attack. And you're luckier than most. You still have your job, you still have your reputation, and you still have your friends and family. Tens of thousands of people are not so lucky. In the universities, in the churches, in the corporations, in the professional associations, in the editorial offices, in the game studios, and just about everywhere else you can imagine, free speech and free thought are under siege by a group of fanatics as self-righteous as Savonarola, as ruthless as Stalin, as ambitious as Napoleon, and as crazy as Caligula. They are the Social Justice Warriors, the SJWs, the self-appointed thought police who have been running amok throughout the West since the dawn of the politically correct era in the 1990s.

I have begun a new book, on purpose that I might have room enough to explain the nature of the perplexities in which my uncle Toby was involved, from the many discourses and interrogations about the siege of Namur, where he received his wound.

For a day or two Fleury became quite active. He had his book about the advance of civilization in India to consider and this was one reason why he had taken an interest in the behaviour of the Collector. He asked a great number of questions and even bought a notebook to record pertinent information. "Why, if the Indian people are happier under our rule," he asked a Treasury official, "do they not emigrate from those native states like Hyderabad which are so dreadfully misgoverned and come and live in British India?" "The apathy of the native is well known," replied the official stiffly. "He is not enterprising." Fleury wrote down "apathy" in a flowery hand and then, after a moment's hesitation, added "not enterprising".

We wanted to recreate inside ourselves our former front-line self-assurance. We were pups and we did not understand to what extent the Archipelago was unlike the front, to what degree its war of siege was more difficult than our war of explosives.

I will not belabor my experience here as the story is basically described in my books, Inside Saucer Post 3-0 Blue and in Situation Red: The UFO Siege. Apparently, the Colonel used the word, Foo Fighter, loosely as we in research, have loosely used, Roswell. His

Even the basic facts of Dmitri Shostakovich’s life are often contested, as a glance through the end notes of this book attests. How do we reconstruct the story of someone who lived in a period in which everyone had an excuse to lie, evade, accuse, or keep silent?

tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mother’s thread-paper into the book for a mark, as he spoke——that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.

Old Ella crinkled her nose, which is the closest she came to a groan. ‘Very well. Then the answer is yes. Of all the curves in the body, the cleavage is the coyest, holding promises of great adventure, a valley immune even to the siege of sweat; on the contrary, it amplifies it. A cleavage tempts but never seduces, a cleavage distracts but never demands, a cleavage is the poisonous dart of body parts, holding within it the power of gravity.’ ‘You speak as if from a book written by a man but…I won’t deny it. There is something very wrong and very seductive in that thought.’ ‘Precisely. Morality is the refuge of those blessed with an ordinary life.’ ‘And not of an outlaw princess attempting to wrangle out a treasure from a Rakshasa Prince.

There is no getting away from the fact, he is one of only a few screws in the system who are the real McCoy. Anyone reading this book who has spent time in Scottish prisons will no doubt agree, this chimp is up for it just as much as the prisoners. I personally would love to see more screws like him, as he doesn’t bother with all this shitty report piss. If you want to fight him, he comes into your cell, one-on-one, man-to-man.

Understand that the more clear-cut we are about this, the sooner they will come to you to see them. You yourself do not sell my work, so you are not doing business outside the firm of Boussod V. & Co. by showing it. So you will be acting quite correctly, which is always decent. However, should someone or other want to buy, very good, then they have only to apply directly to me. But be sure of this, if we can stand the siege, my time will come.

White folks have been Other-izing us for hundreds of years, initially because that served their purpose in justifying our enslavement. Brutes, or those labeled as less than human, needn’t be accorded respect. Just as they have policed our bodies, they have criminalized our tresses while attempting to extinguish our very existence. In minstrel shows, in books, on television, in kitchen-table conversations, our natural hair has always been under siege in a calculated campaign to devalue us.

-the apartment had been directly in the sight line of a Serb sniper across the river. Teta-Jozefina was a devout Catholic, but she somehow managed to believe in essential human goodness, despite all the abundant evidence to the contrary surrounding her. She felt that the sniper was essentially a good man because during the siege, she said, he had often shot over her and her husband's heads to warn them that he was watching and that they shouldn't move so carelessly in their own apartment.

And, substantially they hope to supplant the “disciplining of the higher faculty of the imagination” by what they call “education for democracy.” ... The very banality of the expression helps to ensure its triumph. Who could be against education? Who could be against democracy? Yet the phrase begs two questions: What do you mean by “education”? And what do you mean by “democracy”? The school of Dewey has long been fond of capturing words and turning them to their own purposes: they tried hard to capture “humanism”, and even laid siege to “religion” Now I am convinced that if, by “education,” the champions of this slogan mean merely recreation, socialization, and a kind of custodial jurisdiction over young people, then they are deliberately perverting a word with a reasonably distinct historical meaning and making it into what Mr. Richard Weaver, in his book, "Ethics of Rhetoric”, calls a "god-term"—that is, a charismatic expression drained dry of any objective significance, but remaining an empty symbol intended to win unthinking applause

What an advantage that knowledge can be stored in books! The knowledge lies there like hermetically sealed provisions waiting for the day when you may need a meal. Surely what the Collector was doing as he pored over his military manuals, was proving the superiority of the European way of doing things, of European culture itself. This was a culture so flexible that whatever he needed was there in a book at his elbow. An ordinary sort of man, he could, with the help of an oil-lamp, turn himself into a great military engineer, a bishop, an explorer or a General overnight, if the fancy took him.

As to the general situation, he (Pericles) repeated his previous advice; they must prepare for war and bring their property from the country into the city; they must defend their walls but not go out to battle; they should also equip for service the fleet in which lay their strength.Their allies should be kept well in hand, for their power depended on the revenues which they derived from them; military successes were generally gained by a wise policy and command of money.The state of their finances was encouraging; they had on an average six hundred talents of tribute coming in annually from their allies, to say nothing of their other revenue; and there were still remaining in the Acropolis six thousand talents of coined silver.(The whole amount had once been as much as nine thousand seven hundred talents, but from this had to be deducted a sum of three thousand seven hundred expended on various buildings, such as the Propylaea of the Acropolis, and also on the siege of Potidaea.) Moreover there was uncoined gold and silver in the form of private and public offerings, sacred vessels used in processions and games, the Persian spoil and other things of the like nature, worth at least five hundred talents more. (Book 2 Chapter 13.2-4)

the Temple was rebuilt, but by then the religion of Israel had been marked forever by the piety of the exile. Alongside the single Temple, where blood sacrifice was celebrated, arose numerous synagogues, places for meeting and for prayer, and the dominium of the priests yielded to the growing influence of the Pharisees and Scribes, men of the book and of study. In 70 A.D., the Roman legions again destroyed the Temple. But the learned rabbi Joahannah ben-Zakkaj, slipped covertly out of Jerusalem through the siege and obtained permission from Vespasian to continue the teaching of the Torah in the city of Jamnia. The temple has never been rebuilt since, and study, the Talmud, has become the real temple of Israel.24 This complex relationship to the Talmud is in fact a key to understanding the life and work of Mark Rothko.

I drew a long breath so I could point out to her all the fallacies in her argument, but then I thought; why? Out of an overwhelming duty to the truth? Fuck, as I may have observed before, the truth. If it was here, would it go out of its way to defend me? Unlikely. The truth is utterly selfish and doesn’t give a damn about anyone else. Serving the truth is like serving the empire. Nobody thanks you for it and you die poor. Besides, what is the truth, anyway? In a court of law, it’s the testimony of credible witnesses corroborating each other. She’d been a witness and she knew what she saw. So was I, but even my mother wouldn’t say I was credible. And there’d been hundreds of people there, all rock-solid upright pillars of Dejauzi society. And when I stabbed myself, there were loads of people watching, and they saw what happened with their own eyes. And, come to that, Alyattes was now the nephew of the old emperor and the rightful heir to the throne. He hadn’t been until quite recently, but pretty soon anyone who could testify against his claim would be dead or singing a very different tune, and what was once a lie would become the truth, official, carved on the lintels of triumphal arches; and if you can’t believe what you read on a government arch, what can you believe? All the books would tell it that way, and in a thousand years’ time it will be the truth, just as what was once the bottom of the sea is now a mountaintop. Ask the wise men at the university what truth is and they’ll tell you it’s the consensus of informed and qualified scholars, based on the best evidence available. Availability is governed by what gets burned in the meanwhile, but I see no real problem with that. All living things change or else they die, and why should the truth be any different?

What an advantage that knowledge can be stored in books! The knowledge lies there like hermetically sealed provisions waiting for the day when you may need a meal. Surely what the Collector was doing as he pored over his military manuals, was proving the superiority of the European way of doing things, of European culture itself. This was a culture so flexible that whatever he needed was there in a book at his elbow. An ordinary sort of man, he could, with the help of an oil-lamp, turn himself into a great military engineer, a bishop, an explorer or a General overnight, if the fancy took him. As the Collector pored over his manuals, from time to time rubbing his tired eyes, he knew that he was using science and progress to help him out of his difficulties and he was pleased. The inventions on his desk, the carriage which supplied its own track and the effervescent drinking vessel, watched him in silent admiration as he worked. The

In Fleury’s day, however, the grass was cut and the graves well cared for. Besides, as you might expect, he was fond of graveyards; he enjoyed brooding in them and letting his heart respond to the abbreviated biographies he found engraved in their stones . . . so eloquent, so succinct! All the same, once he had spent an hour or two pondering by his mother’s grave he decided to call it a day because, after all, one does not want to overdo the lurking in graveyards. This decision was not a very sudden one. From the age of sixteen when he had first become interested in books, much to the distress of his father, he had paid little heed to physical and sporting matters. He had been of a melancholy and listless cast of mind, the victim of the beauty and sadness of the universe. In the course of the last two or three years, however, he had noticed that his sombre and tubercular manner was no longer having quite the effect it had once had, particularly on young ladies. They no longer found his pallor so interesting, they tended to become impatient with his melancholy. The effect, or lack of it, that you have on the opposite sex is important because it tells you whether or not you are in touch with the spirit of the times, of which the opposite sex is invariably the custodian. The truth was that the tide of sensitivity to beauty, of gentleness and melancholy, had gradually ebbed leaving Fleury floundering on a sandbank. Young ladies these days were more interested in the qualities of Tennyson’s “great, broad-shouldered, genial Englishman” than they were in pallid poets, as Fleury was dimly beginning to perceive. Louise Dunstaple’s preference for romping with jolly officers which had dismayed him on the day of the picnic had by no means been the first rebuff of this kind. Even Miriam sometimes asked him aloud why he was looking “hangdog” when once she would have remained silent, thinking “soulful”. All

Miss Rudy, the former Harmony librarian, had single-handedly held off a siege of the town council bent on cutting her funds. She had locked the library doors and hid the only key in her bra, living on water from the toilet tank after the town had shut off water to the building to drive her out. She ate paste to keep up her strength. Oh, they had underestimated her. On the fourth day, the men of the council had capitulated, apologizing for cutting the funds, begging her to open the doors and come out. But she had stayed in the library an extra day, just to show them one could live on books, then marched out at noon on the fifth day, her head held high, and three pounds heavier. She had gained weight! When word got out, her picture made the cover of American Libraries magazine. Admiring letters poured in from librarians around the world – beaten down, beleaguered librarians who had drawn strength from her bravery. She answered each one in flowing, Palmer-method, handwritten script.

Everyone had heard about Abominations of Science but, like unicorns, they didn’t actually believe they existed. Thus everyone was rather grateful when the third Madrid Conference of Scientific Inquiry and Philosophical Horrors—Unleashed! released a codified list of things that constituted actual Abominations of Science. Over the years, this useful list has been updated and curated by our own Transylvanian Polygnostic University and has proven of great use to teachers, courts, and record books. The only downside was that one of the conference members—a Herr Doktor Spanakopita—was so embarrassed that none of his previous efforts met the requirements that he, in a fit of pique, bred a race of unicorns, who went about stabbing people while quoting the parts of the list that covered biological abominations. Before he was stabbed to death, he was graciously acknowledged as a genuine Tamperer in Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and his oft-desecrated gravestone lists his accomplishments in full.

The emotions commanding him were similarly simple and straightforward. He feared what he could not understand, and he despised what he feared. But acknowledging fear did not make him a coward – for he had proclaimed for himself an eternal war against all that threatened him, be it a devious wife who had raised walls round her soul, or conspirators against the empire of Lether. His enemies, he well understood, were the true cowards. They thought within clouds that obscured all the harsh truths of the world. Their struggles to ‘understand’ led, inevitably, to seditious positions against authority. Even as they forgave the empire’s enemies, they condemned the weaknesses of their own homeland – not recognizing that they themselves personified such weaknesses. An empire such as Lether was ever under siege. (...) A siege, inside and out, yes – the very privileges the empire granted were exploited by those who would see the empire destroyed. And there could be no room for ‘understanding’ such people – they were evil, and evil must be expurgated.

THREE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER JESUS DIED ON A ROMAN cross, the emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christians, who had once been persecuted by the empire, became the empire, and those who had once denied the sword took up the sword against their neighbors. Pagan temples were destroyed, their patrons forced to convert to Christianity or die. Christians whose ancestors had been martyred in gladiatorial combat now attended the games, cheering on the bloodshed. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. On July 15, 1099, Christian crusaders lay siege to Jerusalem, then occupied by Fatimite Arabs. They found a breach in the wall and took the city. Declaring “God wills it!” they killed every defender in their path and dashed the bodies of helpless babies against rocks. When they came upon a synagogue where many of the city’s Jews had taken refuge, they set fire to the building and burned the people inside alive. An eyewitness reported that at the Porch of Solomon, horses waded through blood. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Through a series of centuries-long inquisitions that swept across Europe, hundreds of thousands of people, many of them women accused of witchcraft, were tortured by religious leaders charged with protecting the church from heresy. Their instruments of torture, designed to slowly inflict pain by dismembering and dislocating the body, earned nicknames like the Breast Ripper, the Head Crusher, and the Judas Chair. Many were inscribed with the phrase Soli Deo Gloria, “Glory be only to God.” Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. In a book entitled On Jews and Their Lies, reformer Martin Luther encouraged civic leaders to burn down Jewish synagogues, expel the Jewish people from their lands, and murder those who continued to practice their faith within Christian territory. “The rulers must act like a good physician who when gangrene has set in proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow,” he wrote. Luther’s writings were later used by German officials as religious justification of the Holocaust. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Personally, I would agitate quite adamantly if I suspected that anyone were attempting to help me upward toward the middle class. I would agitate against the bemused person who was attempting to help me upward, that is. The agitation would take the form of many protest marches complete with the traditional banners and posters, but these would say, “End the Middle Class,” “The Middle Class Must Go.” I am not above tossing a small Molotov cocktail or two, either. In addition, I would studiously avoid sitting near the middle class in lunch counters and on public transportation, maintaining the intrinsic honesty and grandeur of my being. If a middle-class white were suicidal enough to sit next to me, I imagine that I would beat him soundly about the head and shoulders with one great hand, tossing, quite deftly, one of my Molotov cocktails into a passing bus jammed with middle-class whites with the other hand. Whether my siege were to last a month or a year, I am certain that ultimately everyone would let me alone after the total carnage and destruction of property had been evaluated.

Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it out to centre field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt towards the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radioactive isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle sixty feet with mattresses strapped to his legs he is under no formal compulsion to run; he may stand there all day, and as a rule, does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and everyone retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege. Now imagine all this going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue. There you have cricket.

The Osage had been assured by the U.S. government that their Kansas territory would remain their home forever, but before long they were under siege from settlers. Among them was the family of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who later wrote Little House on the Prairie based on her experiences. “Why don’t you like Indians, Ma?” Laura asks her mother in one scene. “I just don’t like them; and don’t lick your fingers, Laura.” “This is Indian country, isn’t it?” Laura said. “What did we come to their country for, if you don’t like them?” One evening, Laura’s father explains to her that the government will soon make the Osage move away: “That’s why we’re here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country, and we get the best land because we get here first and take our pick.” Though, in the book, the Ingallses leave the reservation under threat of being removed by soldiers, many squatters began to take the land by force. In 1870, the Osage—driven from their lodges, their graves plundered—agreed to sell their Kansas lands to settlers for $1.25 an acre. Nevertheless, impatient settlers massacred several of the Osage. An Indian Affairs agent said, “The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages?

The German Reformation stands out as an energetic protest of antiquated spirits, who were by no means tired of mediæval views of life, and who received the signs of its dissolution, the extraordinary flatness and alienation of the religious life, with deep dejection instead of with the rejoicing that would have been seemly. With their northern strength and stiff-neckedness they threw mankind back again, brought about the counter-reformation, that is, a Catholic Christianity of self-defence, with all the violences of a state of siege, and delayed for two or three centuries the complete awakening and mastery of the sciences; just as they probably made for ever impossible the complete inter-growth of the antique and the modern spirit. The great task of the Renaissance could not be brought to a termination, this was prevented by the protest of the contemporary backward German spirit (which, for its salvation, had had sufficient sense in the Middle Ages to cross the Alps again and again). It was the chance of an extraordinary constellation of politics that Luther was preserved, and that his protest; gained strength, for the Emperor protected him in order to employ him as a weapon against the Pope, and in the same way he was secretly favoured by the Pope in order to use the Protestant princes as a counter-weight against the Emperor. Without this curious counter-play of intentions, Luther would have been burnt like Huss...

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

In fact, properly speaking, no parish priest has any convictions on politics. At the back of his mind, he regards the state as an enemy that has usurped the temporal power of the Pope. Being an enemy, the state must be exploited as much as possible and without any qualms of conscience. Because of this innate and perhaps unconscious hostility to the state as an institution, the parish priest cannot see that it is the duty of a citizen to endeavour to make political life as morally clean as possible. He cannot see that the community as a whole must always come into the forefront of every citizen's political consciousness and that personal interests must be sacrificed to the interests of the nation. No. The parish priest regards himself as the commander of his parish, which he is holding for His Majesty the Pope. Between himself and the Pope there is the Bishop, acting, so to speak, as the Divisional Commander. As far as the Civil Power is concerned, it is a semi-hostile force which must be kept in check, kept in tow, intrigued against and exploited, until that glorious day when the Vicar of Christ again is restored to his proper position as the ruler of the earth and the wearer of the Imperial crown. This point of view helps the parish priest to adopt a very cold-blooded attitude towards Irish politics. He is merely either for or against the government. If he has a relative in a government position, he is in favour of the government. If he has a relative who wants a position and cannot get it, then he is against the government. But his support of the government is very precarious and he makes many visits to Dublin and creeps up back stairs into ministerial offices, cajoling and threatening. He is most commonly seen making a cautious approach to the Education Office, where he has all sorts of complaints to lodge and all sorts of suggestions to make. Every book recommended by the education authorities for the schools is examined by him, and if he finds a single idea in any of them that might be likely to inspire thought of passion, then he is up in arms at once. Like an army of black beetles on the march, he and his countless brothers invade Dublin and lay siege to the official responsible. Woe to that man.

Leonard H. Stringfield 1)Retrievals of the Third Kind: A Case Study of Alleged UFOs and Occupants in Military Custody. The first formal research paper presented publicly on the subject of UFO crash/retrievals at the MUFON Symposium, Dayton, Ohio, July, 1978. Original edition, dated April, 1978, was published in MUFON Proceedings (1978). Address: MUFON, 103 Oldtowne Road, Seguin, Texas 78155. If available, price___________. 2)Retrievals of the Third Kind: A Case Study of Alleged UFOs and Occupants in Military Custody,Status Report I. Revised edition, July, 1978, word processed copy, 34 pages. Available at author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 3)UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome, Status Report II. Published by MUFON. Flexible cover, typeset, illustrations, 37 pages. Available only at MUFON address: 103 Oldtowne Road, Seguin, Texas 78155. Price, USA___________. 4)UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence, Status Report III, June 1982; flexible cover, typeset, illustrations, 53 pages. Available from author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 5)The Fatal Encounter at Ft. Dix -- McGuire: A Case Study, Status Report IV, June, 1985. Paper presented at MUFON Symposium, St. Louis, Missouri, 1985. Xeroxed copy, 26 pages. Available at author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 6)UFO Crash/Retrievals: Is the Coverup Lid Lifting? Status Report V. Published in MUFON UFO Journal, January, 1989, with updated addendum. Xeroxed copy, 23 pages. Available at author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 7)Inside Saucer Post, 3-0 Blue. Book privately published, 1957. Review of author's early research and cooperative association with the Air Defense Command Filter Center, using code name, FOX TROT KILO 3-0 BLUE. Flexible cover, typeset, illustrations, 94 pages. Available from author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 8)Situation Red: The UFO Siege. Hardcover book published by Doubleday & Co., 1977. Paperback edition published by Fawcett Crest Books, 1977. Also foreign publishers. Out of print, not available. 9)Orbit Newsletter, published monthly, 1954-1957, by author for international sale and distribution. Set of 36 issues. Some issues out of stock, duplicated by xerox. Available at author's address -- see below. Price of set, USA___________. 10)UFO Crash/Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum, Status Report VI, July, 1991; flexible cover, book length, 81.000 words, 142 (8-1/2 X 11) pages, illustrated. Privately published. Available from author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. Prices include postage and handling. Mailings to Canada, add 500 for each item ordered. All foreign orders, payable U.S. funds, International money order or draft on U.S. Bank. Recommend Air Mail outside U.S. territories. Check on price. Leonard H. Stringfield 4412 Grove Avenue Cincinnati, Ohio 45227 USA Telephone: (513) 271-4248

siege

Cassilda: (speaking to herself) We strain our ears for the sound of love, but must all mothers bear the horror of seeing their Children grow from wonderful possibility to grim reality? Stranger: (Stands mutely in the shadows, his hands folding across his chest) Cassilda: If only we could stay a moment behind the veil of time, and live in that moment of indecision. Stranger: (Whispers so Cassilda cannot hear) Existence is decision. (...) [Te Child appears before the closed curtain] 1 Te Child: I am not the Prologue, nor the Afterword; call me the Prototaph. My role is this: to tell you it is now too late to close the book or quit the theatre. You already thought you should have done so earlier, but you stayed. How harmless it all is! No definite principles are involved, no doctrines promulgated in these pristine pages, no convictions outraged…but the blow has fallen, and now it is too late. And shall I tell you where the sin lies? It is yours. You listened to us; and all the say you stay to see the Sign. Now you are ours, or, since the runes also run backwards, we are yours…forever. (...) Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink behind the lake, The shadows lengthen In Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. Songs that the Hyades shall sing, Where flap the tatters of the King, Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa. Song of my soul, my voice is dead; Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa. (...) [As the gong continues to strike, everyone begins to unmask. There are murmurs and gestures of surprise, real or polite, as identities are recognized or revealed. Ten there is a wave of laugher. The music becomes louder and increases in tempo.] Camilla: You, sir, should unmask. Stranger: Indeed? Camilla: Indeed, it’s time. We have all laid aside disguise but you. Stranger: I wear no mask. Camilla: No mask? No mask! Stranger: I, I am the Pallid Mask itself. I, I am the Phantom of Truth. I came from Alar. My star is Aldebaran. Truth is our invention; it is our weapon of war. And see–by this sign we have conquered, and the siege of good and evil is ended… § [On the horizon, the towers of Carcosa begin to glow] Noatalba: (Pointing) Look, look! Carcosa, Carcosa is on fire! (...) The King: Te Phantom of ruth shall be laid. Te scalloped tattersof Te King must hide Haita forever. As for thee, Yhtill– All: No! No, no! Te King: And as for thee, we tell you this; it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living god. (...) Te Stranger falls, and everyone else sinks slowly to the ground after him. Te King can now be seen, although only faintly. He stands in state upon the balcony. He has no face, and is twice as tall as a man. He wears painted shows under his tattered, fantastically colored robes, and a streamer of silk appears to fall from the pointed tip of his hood. Behind his back he holds inverted a torch with a turned and jeweled shaft, which emits smoke, but no light. At times he appears to be winged; at others, haloed. These details are for the costumier; at no point should Te King be sufficiently visible to make themall out. Behind him, Carcosa and the Lake of Hali have vanished. Instead, there appears at his back a huge sculptured shield, in shape suggesting a labrys of onyx, upon which the Yellow Sign is chased in gold. Te rest of the stage darkens gradually, until, at the end, it is lit only by the decomposed body of the Stranger, phosphorescing bluely.]

Even a father can learn from his children. The restless fortitude of Jaghatai. The cunning of Alpharius. The confidence of Roboute. The dauntless heart of Mortarion, afraid of nothing, not even death. The way that Russ trained anger to be utterly loyal, while Angron enslaved anger so it could not master him. The patient resolve of Rogal, willing to make, abandon, and remake his plans, again and again, over and over, until he has refined the one that will work, unafraid to redraft and change his scheme.

The patient resolve of Rogal, willing to make, abandon, and remake his plans, again and again, over and over, until he has refined the one that will work, unafraid to redraft and change his scheme.

She observes their habits and the games they play to stay alert. Regicide, Nine-gambit and Senet in the officers’ refectory; Ashtapada in cartography; Gow, and Hounds and Wolves, in the war room; games of dice and wager in the billet decks; hands of Tarock on the fuse canisters of the autoloaders; rounds of Song and Cartomance in the dining halls, fast-shuffled turns of Thrice-My-Trick in the boiler sumps.

The dead now outnumber the living, but both the living and the dead are outnumbered by the deathless and the never-alive-at-all.

But mettle lasts where metal rusts.

The Israeli social media strategy aimed to involve both domestic and global supporters of its military missions. By doing so, and asking backers to post their own supporting tweets, Face-book posts, or Instagram images, the IDF created a collective mission that other nations could easily mimic by stirring up nationalist fervor online. During Operation Pillar of Defense, the IDF encouraged supporters of Israel to both proudly share when “terrorists” were killed while at the same time reminding a global audience that the Jewish state was a victim. It was a form of mass conscription to the cause through the weaponization of social media.12 This was war as spectacle, and the IDF was spending big to make it happen. The IDF media budget allowed at least 70 officers and 2,000 soldiers to design, process, and disseminate official Israeli propaganda, and almost every social media platform was flooded with IDF content. Today, the IDF Instagram page regularly features pro-gay and pro-feminist messaging alongside its hard-line militaristic iconography.13 On October 1, 2021, the IDF posted across its social media platforms a photo of its headquarters swathed in pink light with this message: “For those who are fighting, for those who have passed, and for those who have survived, the IDF HQ is lit up pink this #BreastCancerAwarenessMonth.” Palestinian American activist Yousef Munayyer responded on Twitter: “An untold number of women in Gaza suffer from breast cancer and are routinely denied adequate treatment and timely lifesaving care because this military operates a brutal siege against over 2 million souls.” On Instagram, however, most of the comments below the post praised the IDF.

I hope you choose peace. Even when wars rage within and around you. When someone tries to take you to battle, when it feels like your character and choices are under siege: be peaceful. Some people need your help learning to let go.

I come before you not as a politician or as a bureaucrat, but as a soldier and servant of Justinian Augustus, most happy and victorious Emperor of the Romans. I hereby pledge my life to your safety. If during the coming storm you suffer, know that I will suffer before you. If you are injured, know that the enemy will have to knock me down to get at you. If you are in peril of death, know that I will share that peril every day until the peril is gone. As Stilicho and Aetius, I do not fear my own destruction, but will put everything I have on the line to protect Rome from our enemies.

puts a bookmark in the book to keep his place,

Only present matters. The one we are currently in.

It's the color of the man who tried to kill him and regularly takes me hostage.

This world is in turmoil, with wars on many fronts, wars that are turning one village against another. There are wars on beliefs. The Pope is corrupt and is seeking out heretics and putting them to death. The pagan religion is under siege, and those who practice it are often arrested, tried, and put to death. The land is being pillaged, and the powerful are getting richer. our Lord God doesn’t want His people set against each other, and I believe He weeps.

Hopkins is best known to literary critics and historians for her novel Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (Colored Co-operative, 1900). The book, an example of the eighteenth-century literary genre known as sentimentalism, addressed racial issues in society by influencing readers’ emotions. This was a common characteristic of abolitionist writing and the work of African American activists and allies during and after Reconstruction. Sentimentalists would offer noble and morally strong protagonists and build readers’ compassion for characters who worked to better their financial standing and achieve education. These writers also strove to build sympathy for characters who were victims of abuse, such as young women whose virtue was under siege by unsavory villains.

Forging Mettle In popular depictions of Musashi’s life, he is portrayed as having played a part in the decisive Battle of Sekigahara on October 21, 1600, which preceded the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. A more likely hypothesis is that he was in Kyushu fighting as an ally of Tokugawa Ieyasu under Kuroda Yoshitaka Jōsui at the Battle of Ishigakibaru on September 13, 1600. Musashi was linked to the Kuroda clan through his biological birth family who were formerly in the service of the Kodera clan before Harima fell to Hideyoshi.27 In the aftermath of Sekigahara, Japan was teeming with unemployed warriors (rōnin). There are estimates that up to 500,000 masterless samurai roamed the countryside. Peace was tenuous and warlords sought out skilled instructors in the arts of war. The fifteen years between Sekigahara and the first siege of Osaka Castle in 161528 was a golden age for musha-shugyō, the samurai warrior’s ascetic walkabout, but was also a perilous time to trek the country roads. Some rōnin found employment as retainers under new masters, some hung up their swords altogether to become farmers, but many continued roving the provinces looking for opportunities to make a name for themselves, which often meant trouble. It was at this point that Musashi embarked on his “warrior pilgrimage” and made his way to Kyoto. Two years after arriving in Kyoto, Musashi challenged the very same Yoshioka family that Munisai had bettered years before. In 1604, he defeated the head of the family, Yoshioka Seijūrō. In a second encounter, he successfully overpowered Seijūrō’s younger brother, Denshichirō. His third and last duel was against Seijūrō’s son, Matashichirō, who was accompanied by followers of the Yoshioka-ryū school. Again, Musashi was victorious, and this is where his legend really starts to escalate. Such exploits against a celebrated house of martial artists did not go unnoticed. Allies of the Yoshioka clan wrote unflattering accounts of how Musashi used guile and deceit to win with dishonorable ploys. Meanwhile, Musashi declared himself Tenka Ichi (“Champion of the Realm”) and must have felt he no longer needed to dwell in the shadow of his father. On the Kokura Monument, Iori wrote that the Yoshioka disciples conspired to ambush Musashi with “several hundred men.” When confronted, Musashi dealt with them with ruthless resolve, one man against many. Although this representation is thought to be relatively accurate, the idea of hundreds of men lying in wait was obviously an exaggeration. Several men, however, would not be hard to believe. Tested and triumphant, Musashi was now confident enough to start his own school. He called it Enmei-ryū. He also wrote, as confirmed by Uozumi, his first treatise, Heidōkyō (1605), to record the techniques and rationale behind them. He included a section in Heidōkyō on fighting single-handedly against “multiple enemies,” so presumably the third duel was a multi-foe affair.

About the author. While still a boy, Russell Evans sought the road to high adventure the classical way - by stowing himself aboard a ship. But it had steam up for moving only from one to another and didn't leave port! On finishing school he tried again, but this time by getting a job as cabin boy on a tramp shipping wheat from Russia's Black Sea ports. This was at the height of the muzhik famine when every bushel of grain exported could have saved a peasant's life. The experience left him hating dictatorships and admiring the astonishing fortitude of people who have to endure them. After training as a newspaper reporter, he volunteered to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, only to end up being grilled by a kangaroo court in Red Montmartre on suspicion of being a Franco spу. Disillusioned, he left for South America on a madcap scheme for starting a new republic in a remote corner of Amazonia. Two years later he emerged from the wilderness to find Hitler's war had started and hurried home. He fought in Wavell's Western Desert campaign, including the siege of Tobruk, was rescued from a sinking destroyer, took part in the Sicily landings, then served in Italy and finally in the Far East. He was a captain in the Intelligence Corps, and one of his earliest assignments was frontier control work in Egypt with the late Maurice Oldfield who was to become, as chief of MI6, Britain's top spymaster. After the war Russell Evans returned to South America for a final adventure before marrying and settling down to the more predictable life of a newspaper reporter. For fifteen years he was editor of a county weekly in mid Wales and then taught journalism in Cardiff College of Commerce. Now he works from home, writing. His wife is a doctor and they have one son.

Traditionally,” Sir Bedivere continues, “we would be secure inside our castle stronghold, thoroughly protected from the enemy by high, thick walls. Our opponent would then attempt his siege in four distinct stages. First, the commander of the opposing army would call for our surrender, which we would immediately decline, resulting in a spirited exchange of well-crafted insults. Then, the enemy would attempt to scale our walls using waves of expendable foot soldiers. Of course, here we would simply deploy the usual means of repellent, such as flaming arrows, large stones, and boiling oil. Next, they would attempt to breach our defenses by hurling large objects at our walls, including rocks, boulders, and unfortunate prisoners of war. Finally, if they are successful in driving a breach, they would then dispatch their knights for hand-to-hand combat.

Sigismund lowers his blade as the tanks roll past him on either side. For a moment, he feels respect for the enemy’s resolve. They have not broken or run. Their ranks unstitched by raging fire, they have remained resolute. They are Astartes still, some shred at least. Then he corrects his thinking. It’s not Astartes courage. It’s stupidity. It’s the obstinate arrogance of a battle group that has become too used to being superior to anything and everything it meets on the field.

In Russia, the person who put Sevastopol on the literary map was Leo Tolstoy, a veteran of the siege. His fictionalized memoir The Sebastopol Sketches made him a national celebrity. Already with the first installment of the work published, Tsar Alexander II saw the propaganda value of the piece and ordered it translated into French for dissemination abroad. That made the young author very happy. Compared with Tolstoy’s later novels, The Sebastopol Sketches hasn’t aged well, possibly because this is not a heartfelt book. As the twenty-six-year-old Tolstoy’s Sevastopol diaries reveal, not heartache but ambition drove him at the time. Making a name as an author was just an alternative to two other grand plans—founding a new religion and creating a mathematical model for winning in cards (his losses during the siege were massive even for a rich person).

In Canada, after CBC producer Mary Lynk took the risky step of making the three-hour radio documentary Science under Siege based on some of the ideas contained in this book, a national discussion developed among scientists, journalists, and the public that brought politicians from the three opposition parties to the table to sign the Science Pledge of Evidence for Democracy, a nonprofit organization advocating for public policies to be based on evidence.

Dear Christopher, You’ve made me realize that words are the most important things in the world. And never so much as now. The moment Audrey gave me your last letter, my heart started beating faster, and I had to run to my secret house to read it in private. I haven’t yet told you…last spring on one of my rambles, I found the oddest structure in the forest, a lone tower of brick and stonework, all covered with ivy and moss. It was on a distant portion of the Stony Cross estate that belongs to Lord Westcliff. Later when I asked Lady Westcliff about it, she said that keeping a secret house was a local custom in medieval times. The lord of the manor might have used it as a place to keep his mistress. Once a Westcliff ancestor actually hid there from his own bloodthirsty retainers. Lady Westcliff said I could visit the secret house whenever I wanted, since it has long been abandoned. I go there often. It’s my hiding place, my sanctuary…and now that you know about it, it’s yours as well. I’ve just lit a candle and set it in a window. A very tiny lodestar, for you to follow home. Dearest Prudence, Amid all the noise and men and madness, I try to think of you in your secret house…my princess in a tower. And my lodestar in the window. The things one has to do in war…I thought it would all become easier as time went on. And I’m sorry to say I was right. I fear for my soul. The things I have done, Pru. The things I have yet to do. If I don’t expect God to forgive me, how can I ask you to? Dear Christopher, Love forgives all things. You don’t even need to ask. Ever since you wrote to me about the Argos, I’ve been reading about stars. We’ve loads of books about them, as the subject was of particular interest to my father. Aristotle taught that stars are made of a different matter than the four earthly elements--a quintessence--that also happens to be what the human psyche is made of. Which is why man’s spirit corresponds to the stars. Perhaps that’s not a very scientific view, but I do like the idea that there’s a little starlight in each of us. I carry thoughts of you like my own personal constellation. How far away you are, dearest friend, but no farther than those fixed stars in my soul. Dear Pru, We’re settling in for a long siege. It’s uncertain as to when I’ll have the chance to write again. This is not my last letter, only the last for a while. Do not doubt that I am coming back to you someday. Until I can hold you in my arms, these worn and ramshackle words are the only way to reach you. What a poor translation of love they are. Words could never do justice to you, or capture what you mean to me. Still…I love you. I swear by the starlight…I will not leave this earth until you hear those words from me.

On September 28, 1870, after heavy bombardment, during the Siege of Strasbourg, the French were forced to surrender the heavily fortified fortress. The Municipal Library housed in the Dominican church, with its unique collection of medieval manuscripts, rare Renaissance books and historical artifacts were destroyed by fire, as were many other Gothic buildings in the city center. Of the population of 150,000 people, over 600 were left dead and 3,200 were wounded and left without shelter. Strasbourg was surrendered to the Prussian General August von Werder and thus became part of the German Empire. In 1919, following the Treaty of Versailles, the city was returned to France in accordance with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points." With this many Germans left Strasbourg and went back to Germany. It wasn’t until in June of 1940 during World War II and after the Fall of France, that Alsace was annexed by Germany again. The final Liberation of Strasbourg took place on 23 November 1944, thus returning the Alsace district to France.

Very powerful, steel-lathed crossbows did evolve in the 15th century, but during the time of its greatest supremacy on the battlefield – roughly from 1100 to 1250 – the crossbow packed a more modest punch. Its martial merits hinged not on its power, but on other factors. These included ease of use, comparatively inexpensive ammunition and the ability to hold a bow at full span for a sustained period, waiting to seize the optimal moment for a shot. This latter element was of particular benefit in siege warfare, both for attack and defence, and also at sea. For the hunter, too, the crossbow’s chief advantage was that it could remain spanned and ready to shoot.

This is the conclusion I reached when I was young, poor, and lacking in prospects. While some people [...] read to know they are not alone, the poor read to know that they are not condemned. It is often said that children are the wealth of the poor. This was not my experience. But books are without question the wealth of the poor's children. Books are a guiding light out of the underworld, a secret passageway, an escape hatch. To the affluent, books are ornaments. To the poor, books are siege weapons.

Gentile’s office in downtown Las Vegas, I got on the elevator and turned around and there was a TV camera. It was just the two of us in the little box, me and the man with the big machine on his shoulder. He was filming me as I stood there silent. “Turn the camera off,” I said. He didn’t. I tried to move away from him in the elevator, and somehow in the maneuvering he bumped my chin with the black plastic end of his machine and I snapped. I slugged him, or actually I slugged the camera. He turned it off. The maids case was like a county fair compared with the Silverman disappearance, which had happened in the media capital of the world. It had happened within blocks of the studios of the three major networks and the New York Times. The tabloids reveled in the rich narrative of the case, and Mom and Kenny became notorious throughout the Western Hemisphere. Most crimes are pedestrian and tawdry. Though each perpetrator has his own rap sheet and motivation and banged-up psyche, the crime blotter is very repetitive. A wife beater kills his wife. A crack addict uses a gun to get money for his habit. Liquor-store holdups, domestic abuse, drug dealer shoot-outs, DWIs, and so on. This one had a story line you could reduce to a movie pitch. Mother/Son Grifters Held in Millionaire’s Disappearance! My mother’s over-the-top persona, Kenny’s shady polish, and the ridiculous rumors of mother-son incest gave the media a narrative it couldn’t resist. Mom and Kenny were the smart, interesting, evil criminals with the elaborate, diabolical plan who exist in fiction and rarely in real life. The media landed on my life with elephant feet. I was under siege as soon as I returned to my office after my family’s excursion to Newport Beach. The deluge started at 10 A.M. on July 8, 1998. I kept a list in a drawer of the media outlets that called or dropped by our little one-story L-shaped office building on Decatur. It was a tabloid clusterfuck. Every network, newspaper, local news station, and wire service sent troops. Dateline and 20/20 competed to see who could get a Kimes segment on-air first. Dateline did two shows about Mom and Kenny. I developed a strategy for dealing with reporters. My unusual training in the media arts as the son of Sante, and as a de facto paralegal in the maids case, meant that I had a better idea of how to deal with reporters than my staff did. They might find it exciting that someone wanted to talk to them, and forget to stop at “No comment.” I knew better. So I hid from the camera crews in a back room, so there’d be no pictures, and I handled the calls myself. I told my secretary not to bother asking who was on the line and to transfer all comers back to me. I would get the name and affiliation of the reporter, write down the info on my roster, and

This interpretation became popular many decades later, after the publication of Solomon Volkov’s supposed memoirs of Shostakovich, Testimony. In that book, Volkov has Shostakovich say, The Seventh Symphony had been planned before the war and consequently it simply cannot be seen as a reaction to Hitler’s attack.

He’d only taken the black after he’d lost an arm at the siege of Storm’s End.

In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived, many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain-lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

18 But behold, this was an advantage to the Nephites; for it was impossible for the robbers to lay siege sufficiently long to have any effect upon the Nephites, because of their amuch bprovision which they had laid up in store, 19 And because of the scantiness of provisions among the robbers; for behold, they had nothing save it were meat for their subsistence, which meat they did obtain in the wilderness; 20 And it came to pass that the awild game became scarce in the wilderness insomuch that the robbers were about to perish with hunger.

The world’s key strategy is peer pressure. Think of this as a siege tactic. They surround you and use your fear of rejection and reproach to keep you in line with them. One of the greatest things you’ll ever do is divorce yourself from public opinion. Only one opinion matters—what does the Lord Jesus Christ think of you? Along these lines, Paul wrote: Romans 12:2 — And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Are you going to do the will of the world or the will of God? Don’t be afraid to be different. If you want to overcome the world consistently, you’ll need to renew your mind daily. Remember every day that you are not your own; you are bought with a price. Jesus hung on an old rugged cross, despised by the world—rejected of men—so that you could be reconciled to God. Jesus wasn’t ashamed to suffer for us. Don’t be ashamed to stand for Him. Our Savior said: John 15:18 — If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. The Bible is filled with information about the world and how a Christian should approach it. The following is a series of verses about the word that I hope you will read and study at a later time: John 1:10; 7:7; 8:23; 15:18-25; 17:14; 1 Corinthians 1:20-21; 2:6, 3:18-19; Ephesians 2:2-3; 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:10; James 1:27; 4:4; 2 Peter 1:4; 1 John 2:15-17; 3:1, 13; 4:4; and 5:4.

I think books are like rain, wherever rain falls, things grow. So hopefully wherever our books land, the person who reads them will gain knowledge, and his or her mind will grow. This in turn, will help humanity grow. We will always be proud of our secret library and i am sure that good things will continue to flow from it"-[Syria's Secret Library: Reading and Redemption In a Town Under Siege by Mike Thompson] 5

Antioch was the last of the great cities of Arab Asia to have fallen under the domination of the Seljuk Turks: in 1084 it was still a dependency of Constantinople. Thirteen years later, when the Frankish knights laid siege to the town, Yaghi-SiyÁn was naturally convinced that this was part of an attempt

Lamentations The book of Lamentations in the English Bible takes its name from the Greek and Latin versions, which translate the Hebrew qinoth “dirges, laments.” The Hebrew Bible names a book by the first word or phrase. Lamentations is one of the “megilloth,” or five scrolls that are read during various of the annual festivals. Lamentations has traditionally been read in observation of Tish b’av (ninth of the month ‘Av), the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem. While Tish b’av is a later development, it is a likely extension of the communal mourning over Jerusalem reflected in Jer 41:5; Zec 7:3–5; 8:19. Historical Setting Lamentations focuses on the trauma experienced by the kingdom of Judah at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. In 604 BC Nebuchadnezzar’s military confronted the western states, and Babylonian power was brought to bear on Judah. In less than a decade the devastation of Judah had begun with the first deportation. Typical of ancient Near Eastern warfare, if time permitted, cities fortified as Jerusalem was were often “softened” by siege warfare. This protracted strangulation of a city deprived the defenders and citizenry of food and often of water. Thirst and starvation would decimate the besieged population. Though from an earlier period, the art and inscriptions of the Assyrian palaces provide insight into the horrors of the siege. They also show the intensity of devastation once the defenses were broken down. There was no theory of “separation of church and state” in the ancient Near East. The city-state was viewed as the realm of a patron deity. Palace and temple were intimately connected functionally and were often closely situated physically. One implication of this view is that in order to vanquish a city-state, not only must the military be defeated and the royal court put out of commission (either by killing the king or rendering him unfit to reign—often by mutilation), but the temple and its accoutrements were to be looted and put out of commission. Putting the god under submission was just as important as putting the king and his military under submission. When the kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonian Empire (586 BC), the temple and the palace were destroyed, along with the rest of the capital city, and the leadership and much of the population were carried away captive.

F*** you, *****!” Apollo yelled,

No, w-a-r-f-a-r-e, warfare. Art of War.” “Isn’t that a book?” “Yes, it is a book. A very  wise man he is .

Pretty amazing, I guess… feels like a day in Ohio.

My name is Nub.” Nub said. “Oh, I’m sorry.” FadedGZ said. “Noob. Am I saying it right?” “No, it’s Nub. N… U… B.” Nub answered. “Knob.” “No, it’s Nub. Nu-b.” “Wub.” “NUB!” “Cub?” “NUB!!” “Dub?” “IT’S NUB-!” “Nuts?” “NUB-!” Annie silenced him with a glare. “Yes, it’s Nuts.” Nuts said.

Hey what are these?” TheBadGamer said, trying to keep Nuts spirit up. “These what?” Nuts asked, looking up with tears in his eyes. “Deez Nuts!” TheBadGamer joked

Okay so uh… I am a leader of the group of bandits called Ohio  Squad…

Let’s go.” FadedGZ said. Before she left, she kicked him in the nuts. Annie and TheBadGamer followed her example. They grabbed their stuff and left except for Nuts who went for Jack's nuts. “ARRRRRRRGHHHHH!” Jack screamed. A flock of birds flew off. “Every man’s weakness.” TheBadGamer said as Nuts joined them. He held nuts in his hands. “Look what I found…” He popped them in his mouth and made slurping sounds. The group left Jack, whimpering and crying and missing his nuts.

GIVE ME BACK MY MAP!” TheBadGamer yelled as he seized the map. The two players played tug of war with the map, both angry from walking for so long. The map split in moiety and plummeted towards the ground. They looked down and saw the map get blown away by a gust of wind towards the sea.

He got out his bow enchanted with Fire Aspect just in case.

It will be a mistake making me a slave because when I leave, I will get my revenge.” The commander’s reply was a bitter laugh. “No one has ever escaped, and no one will.

My goons found me after I was there for five days.” Jack said. “From that point I was thirsty for revenge, so I followed you guys…” “Like a stalker?” FadedGZ asked, joking. Jack nodded. FadedGZ suddenly took two large steps back quickly. She stared at Jack with wide eyes and said nothing. “Wait, I didn't mean it like that!” Jack’s face twisted in anger.

edged weapons, incendiary weapons, kinetic weapons, melee weapons, energy weapons, auditory, thermal, light, olfactory, irritant, biological weapons, explosive, electronic, magnetic, vibratory, chemical weapons, nano-weapons, nuclear, area denial, siege weapons, thrown, hand carried, shoulder carried, surgically implanted, crew served, vehicle mounted, land/sea/air/space based – then I started thinking of how much damage was to be inflicted and at what ranges.

The Son of a vacuum Among the tall trees he sat lost, broken, alone again, among a number of illegal immigrants, he raised his head to him without fear, as nothing in this world is worth attention. -He said: I am not a hero; I am nothing but a child looking for Eid. The Turkmen of Iraq, are the descendants of Turkish immigrants to Mesopotamia through successive eras of history. Before and after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, countries crossed from here, and empires that were born and disappeared, and still, preserve their Turkish identity. Although, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the Arab world, they now live in one of its countries. Kirkuk, one of the heavens of God on earth, is one of the northern governorates of Iraq in which they live. The Kurdish race is shared with them, a race out of many in Iraq. Two children of two different ethnicities, playing in a village square in Kirkuk province when the news came from Baghdad, of a new military coup. Without delay, Saddam Hussein took over the reins of power, and faster than that, Iraq was plunged into successive wars that began in 1980 with its neighbor Iran, a war that lasted eight years. Iraq barely rested for two years, and in the third, a new war in Kuwait, which did not end in the best condition as the leader had hoped, as he was expelled from it after the establishment of an international coalition to liberate it, led by the United States of America. Iraq entered a new phase of suffering, a siege that lasted more than ten years, and ended up with the removal of Saddam Hussein from his power followed by the US occupation of it in 2003. As the father goes, he returns from this road, there is no way back but from it. As the date approaches, the son stands on the back of that hill waiting for him to return. From far away he waved a longing, with a bag of dreams in his hands, a bag of candy in his pocket, and a poem of longing by a Turkmen poet who absorb Arabic, whose words danced on his lips, in his heart. -When will you come back, dad? -On the Eid, wait for me on the hill, you will see me coming from the road, waving, carrying your gifts. The father bid his son farewell to the Arab Shiite city of Basra, on the border with Iran, after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, as the homeland is calling its men, or perhaps the leader is calling his subjects. In Iraq, as in many countries of the Arab world, the homeland is the leader, and the leader is the homeland. Months passed, the child eagerly anticipating the coming of the feast, but the father hurried to return without an appointment, loaded on the shoulders, the passion reached its extent in the martyr’s chest, with a sheet of paper in his pocket on which he wrote: Every morning takes me nostalgic for you, to the jasmine flower, oh, melody in the heart, oh balm I sip every while, To you, I extend a hand and a fire that ignites in the soul a buried love, night shakes me with tears in my eyes, my longing for you has shaped me into dreams, stretching footsteps to the left and to the right, gleam, calling out for me, you scream, waking me up to the glimpse of the light of life in your face, a thousand sparkles, in your eyes, a meaning of survival, a smile, and a glace, Eid comes to you as a companion, without, life yet has no trace, for roses, necklaces of love, so that you amaze. -Where is Ruslan? On the morning of the feast day, at the door of his house, the kids asked his mother, -with tears in her eyes: He went to meet his father. A moment of silence fell over the children, -Raman, with a little gut: Aunt, do you mean he went to the cemetery? -Mother: He went to meet him at those hills.

Personally, I see so many homeschooling parents stressing about the right curriculum, “getting behind,” or feeling inadequate, and I am immediately flooded with emotions. First, I feel angry because I know these are lies that continue to be repeated to parents over and over again. For twenty years, I’ve heard them play like a broken record as I watched homeschoolers constantly under siege. There are preconceived ideas and much misinformation about homeschooling floating around out there. As parents, we need to be discerning in whose opinions we value. Homeschooling can be challenging enough. It’s important to guard our hearts (Proverbs 4:23) and remember that our children have been given to us. With the exception of their Creator, no one knows them better than we do.

I picked this up again because every time I enter a really old building with a spiral staircase I remember this quote from this exact book about why spiral staircases spiral clockwise, and I don't know if it's true or apocryphal or just plain fiction -- I suppose I could look it up -- but I just love that it's permanently engrained in my memory at this point: "That stairway would be a narrow spiral, set to the left-hand side and twisting the right as it ascended. In that way, a right-handed swordsman climbing the stairs would be at a disadvantage to a right-handed defender. An attacker would have to expose all of his body in order to use his sword, while the defender could strike with only his right side exposed. It was standard design for the castle tower.

The criminal profile of corpse-eaters was surprising. Only 2 percent had a previous criminal record. They were primarily women, uneducated females with no employment and no local Leningrad address. They were, in other words, often refugees who had fled to the city and who therefore did not have ration books at all. They had to make a choice between eating those already dead or dying themselves.

What the books don’t tell you is, there’s a sixteenth way. You can use it when you’ve got nothing; no stuff, no men and nobody to lead them.

The consequences of this forgotten crisis—which remains blotted out of history books in Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim lands—last to this day.

Muslims did not force Galileo to let go of his discovery. In fact, most scientific discoveries found their way into Muslim areas without much opposition. When Mongols made Tigris River black with the ink of thousands of books in the siege of Baghdad, it was not Islam holding back science. Even after the Islamic Golden Age, the majority of scientists who did the ground-breaking work in major fields of modern science were religious. Doing science does not require faith. However, it would be a strange idea that one cannot believe in religion while simultaneously contributing to science.

Purkiss, Diane. The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations. New York: Routledge, 1996. Ray, Benjamin. “The Geography of Witchcraft Accusations in 1692 Salem Village.” The William and Mary Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2008): 449–78. Roach, Marilynne K. The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. Rosenthal, Bernard. Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Rosenthal, Bernard, Gretchen A. Adams, et al., eds. Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Scribner, 1971. Trask, Richard B. The Devil Hath Been Raised: A Documentary History of the Salem Village Witchcraft Outbreak of March 1692: Together with a Collection of Newly Located and Gathered Witchcraft Documents. Danvers, MA: Yeoman Press, 1997. Weisman, Richard. Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.

. I mention this because that’s how the world changes. It’s either so quick that we never know what hit us, or so gradual that we don’t notice. It’s only later, when books are written and scholars decide what mattered and what didn’t, that red lines are drawn

If the Emperor is divine, how can He permit the suffering and disaster that is occurring?’ said Andromeda. Sindermann nodded, his eyes on the books he had placed on the table, his gaze distant. ‘And He is divine – I have seen the truth. Philosophers of a different age would use the same question to undermine the concept of a higher power – there is suffering and darkness and so gods must be false. But gods are real, and there is suffering, so that must be because they permit it… I have not lost my faith. I have found that I believe in a God-Emperor who is less than the divinity I wanted, but the only thing that is true.

The Leningrad Public Library remained open throughout the siege and became a place for people to congregate. People came to the library to read, even when weak from cold and exhaustion . . . Some died in their places, with a book propped in front of them . . . In the course of the war, the librarians greatly expanded the collection, purchasing books from the starving, who were desperate to sell anything for food. Some of the city's librarians scoured bombed ruins for volumes, scrabbling over the piles of brick with their backpacks full of salvaged books.

Upon publication of Woodward’s new book, it was immediately evident that one of his key sources was H. R. McMaster, the three-star general who had joined the Trump administration in February 2017 as national security advisor, replacing Michael Flynn.

No, although that took great determination. She was fierce because she could always see past herself and find goodness in the world.” The Shield glanced at her. “And goodness can be harder to find than a mis-shelved book in a seven-story library.

The late Barbara Tuchman, an American historian and the author of some fine books on the Great War, has written that while the human race has made great progress in many fields of endeavour - science, medicine, the arts - since the siege of Troy to the present day, it has made no discernible progress whatsoever in the field of government. She adds that nations will frequently adopt policies which are not only dangerous to their national well-being, but which are seen and known to be dangerous even before they are undertaken.

God’s mysterious number. The Book of Genesis alone was ripe with sevens: the seven heavens, the seven thrones, the seven seals, the seven churches. The walls of Jericho crumbled on the seventh day of the siege. In Revelations, seven spirits of God were sent forth into the earth. There were exactly seven generations from David to the birth of Christ, the Lord.

The Siege

that’s how the world changes. It’s either so quick that we never know what hit us, or so gradual that we don’t notice. It’s only later, when books are written and scholars decide what mattered and what didn’t, that red lines are drawn – before this point, the world was this way, after this point, everything was different. You could be there and not have a clue. You could be asleep, or looking the other way, having a quiet shit or screwing in an alley, and an unseen pen draws a line. Here the Empire ended. Here the Dark Ages began.

This is not to say that aggression belongs only to those who are attackers,’ Silchas resumed. ‘Far from it, in fact. In my talent with the sword, for example, I am for the most part a defender. I rely upon timing and counter-attack – I take advantage of the attacker’s forward predilections, the singularity of their intent. Counter-attack is, of course, aggression in its own way. Do you see the distinction?’ Ryadd nodded. ‘I think so.’ ‘Aggression takes many forms. Active, passive, direct, indirect. Sudden as a blow, or sustained as a siege of will. Often, it refuses to stand still, but launches upon you from all possible sides. If one tactic fails, another is tried, and so on.

Thus, the vigorous defense of the Faith eventually deteriorated into what might simply be characterized as a defensive attitude. In his book The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America, David Carlin makes a point that resonates with Weigel’s historical analysis: One of the great hymns of the Reformation was Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” In its reaction to the Reformation, Catholicism might well have taken the title of this hymn for its own slogan—for that is what the Church became: it turned itself, metaphorically speaking, into a mighty ecclesiastical fortress. Eventually it recognized that the chances of regaining most of the lost provinces were slim, but it was absolutely determined to hold on to what remained: France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, southern Germany, Poland, Ireland, and (an area of great new gains) Latin America. This siege mentality prevailed in the Counter-Reformation Church—a mentality that placed primary importance on survival. The fortress mentality exercised enormous influence on the Church in the United States, where Catholics were always a minority, anxious to gain acceptance in a predominantly Protestant society. Ambitious Church leaders sought to build up their parishes, parochial schools, Catholic universities, and lay associations, for whose use the “parish plants” were built. With each succeeding generation, the Catholic Church became a more entrenched institution, with all the benefits—but also the dangers—of acceptance as part of the established American way of life.

We are the few who survived their attacks and found each other.

For there is one thing a vagrant knows–never call nowhere Nowhere, and never call Anywhere yours, for Anywhere is always someone else’s.

You fell into a rift,” he said, his low voice making eddies in her stream of memory. “That’s why the hunters didn’t find you, but we did. The wolf wants you to live. We want you to live.

I may no longer be a man of god, but I am a man of logic. Being without it very nearly drove me to madness.

We’re the same,” she said. “So, let’s be friends.

I’m here, Dianna,” he said. The words were unassuming, but he spoke her name with a subtle reverence. His tongue curled over it like a breath pulled from his throat, deep and sensuous, and it quivered like quicksilver through her bones. He spoke her name like he loved her.

In that moment, the wolf was gone. She saw the man who had lived without love for too long, who studied her with what seemed like pure fascination.

Our desire is not to quantify misery, but to liberate both peoples.

Tarvek rolled his eyes. “Great. All we have to do is figure out where an evil, paranoid genius would put the access to a secret room that protects his family’s greatest secrets.” “True. Let’s try to think like a diabolical, amoral megalomaniac.” Agatha thought for a second, then turned to Tarvek and smiled at him engagingly. “Where would you put it?” Caught in the light of her smile, Tarvek grinned back and tapped an unassuming book. “Oh, I’d put it right here!” Instantly a section of the bookshelf swung aside on smooth pivots. “I knew it!” She patted him on the cheek. “Thank you, Tarvek.” Realization of the implications of this played across Tarvek’s face and he glared at Agatha. “Now just a minute . . .

Though kin scatter the earth like seed and grow apart, their paths are rooted in the same ground.

Then let her be a strong girl,” she said. “Let the earth shape her into a wild thing, and let her dance like the wind and stand like a stone. Let your fears not become hers.

And I shall not fear the solitary fate of death, For as surely as we are born, the weight of death grows inside us all. But while there grows one true death, lives upon lives are collapsed within us, sleeping, folded as wings.

Dianna looked at the moon. That night it was barely a crescent cradling earthshine, a white wisp of silk or a sliver of creamy birch bark. Incomplete, but there. It would grow, as night-blooming jasmine would grow, or a blot of spilled milk, or a hillside gathering snow.

Cheers to trails yet traveled and tales yet told. May we learn the ways of long waters, of vast lands where feet have not yet fallen. Cheers to you, my steadfast family, bound by the path we share. May Faeralis protect and keep us. May fate be on our side.

I will be editing these sentences much later, after several dozen 27ths have passed, when the gap between the past and the present is more of a chasm. By then, I will be able to better control how I think of these absences. I will be able to proceed with a conversation without flinching when someone mentions the wrong movie or the wrong song. But right now, I am in denial that my friend is gone. I am, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in denial that the jewelry is gone. Human beings are the only animals that experience denial. All creatures will try to survive under attack, will burrow when under siege or limp through the forest. But they recognize trouble when it hits. Not one fish in the history of fish, having gotten its fins chewed off, needs another fish’s perspective: I don’t know, Tom, that looks pretty bad. Denial is humankind’s specialty, our handy aversion. We are so allergic to our own mortality; we’ll do anything to make it not so. Denial is also the weirdest stage of grief because it so closely mimics stupidity. But it can’t be helped. I can’t be helped. I am holding these losses as an aunt might, as if they are familiar but not quite mine. As if they are books I will be allowed to return to some centralized sadness library.

Courage isn’t a passive quality. Whether instinctive or forced, it’s the condition of acting in the face of danger.

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Plans are the delusion of man.

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The more popular our project became, the more it worried the Kremlin. At first they simply ignored us, but after a while began actively attacking. Pro-Kremlin journalists wrote that we were 'providing a mass platform for the wrong kinds of people' and 'creating the wrong sorts of trends.' Then the regime started overtly hindering our activities and trying in every way possible to discredit them. The debates were held offline, which made us vulnerable. The regime started putting pressure on the owners of the premises where we held them. There were 'inspections,' visits from the police, threats to cut off their electricity, anything to stop them from allowing us to hire their rooms. The regime began sending gangs of troublemakers regularly. A dozen people would turn up, begin yelling, throw things around, and start a fight, and the venue would turn down our next attempt to book it. The main aim was to marginalize us, to show that ours were 'not political debates at all,' but just a bunch of drunks getting together and starting a fight. See how disgusting they are, there's one with blood running down his face. I mention the blood because it was my face it was running down. A group of drunken young guys turned up at one of our debates, shouting insults, chanting 'Sieg Heil,' and snatching the microphone from those who wanted to ask questions. I tried form the stage to calm down the ruckus, but a fight broke out, with one of the invaders attacking me outside. I had a gun with me for self-defense that fired rubber bullets. I first shot in the air and then in the direction of my assailant. This made little impression on him, and he hurled himself at me. We were both taken away by the police but not charged. turns out my attacker was the son of some FSB higher-up and Daddy didn't want a fuss. I must admit that the Kremlin's tactics worked. We were faced with the purely logistical problem that no club wanted anything more to do with us, and even if they did, we could not guarantee the safety of our audience. The disruptions became predictable and overshadowed the meaningful part of the debates. The project would have to be abandoned. This taught me a useful lesson, and was a significant moment in my political career. I saw how much could be achieved without money and without the 'protection' of the Kremlin, indeed, in spite of the Kremlin. What I needed was a group of supporters to work with me, and I found that group through the internet. I have often heard it said that my rapid adoption of the internet provided unique political flair, that I was a visionary prophesying the dawning of a new era. That is very flattering, of course, but far off the mark. I took to the internet because there was no alternative; television and the newspapers were censored, and rallies were banned.

And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them. Jeremiah 19:8-9

THE FIFTH INTERVIEW: GREGORY A. BOYD, PH.D. Boyd first clashed with the Jesus Seminar in 1996, when he wrote a devastating critique of liberal perspectives of Jesus, called Cynic Sage or Son of God? Recovering the Real Jesus in an Age of Revisionist Replies. The heavily footnoted, 416-page tome was honored by readers of Christianity Today as one of their favorite books of the year. His popular paperback Jesus under Siege continues the same themes on a more introductory level.

The Lacedaemonian judges thought that no objection could be made to their question, whether the Plataeans had done them any service in the war. For they pretended to have expected neutrality from them in the times before the war, on the strength of the original treaty concluded with Pausanias after the defeat of the Persians .And just before the siege they had made to them a proposal of neutrality in accordance with the terms of the same treaty; but the Plataeans had refused. Considering that they had been wronged by them, after their own fair proposals had released them from the obligations of the treaty, they again brought up the Plataeans one after another, and asked each of them separately, Whether he had done any service to the Lacedaemonians and their allies in the war? When he said No, they took him away and slew him; no one was spared.They put to death not less than two hundred Plataeans, as well as twenty-five Athenians who had shared with them in the siege; and made slaves of the women. (Book 3 Chapter 68.1-3)

Recommended" - U.S. Review of Books "If You enjoy stories about families, redemption, and the search for meaning in a world that doesn't always provide easy answers, then this is the book for you. A sweeping historical saga of faith, doubt, and resilience." Literary Titan Gold Star Book Award Review "The spiritual reflections incorporated into Jordan's life are especially thought-provoking. ...Its vivid portrait of families and individuals under psychological and spiritual siege is hard to put down." Midwest Book Review "Logan has crafted a compelling narrator and central character, whose faults seem realistic and whose emotional journey will keep readers engaged." Kirkus Review Magazine "Shawshank Redemption meets Lilies of the Field meets A River Runs Through It... If you want gorgeous writing, a family saga set during one of the most interesting periods in U.S. history, or just a story that makes you think, then Jim Logan's Of Saints and Rivers is for you." Book Sirens Review -5 Stars "A beautiful blend of mystery, emotion, and humanity...I couldn't put it down." Jet Galley Review "Of Saints and Rivers successfully threads that thin line between being an academic- history lesson and a compelling personal story...an epic premise, very well written." D.B. Jackson, author, screenwriter, winner, Western Heritage Wrangler Award Author of Small Moving Parts "...intriguing, beautiful, and emotionally impactful." Dr. Darryl Tippens, author, Retired literary professor and Provost Abilene Christian, Pepperdine University

Pinpoint petechia mark the conjunctivae like freckles. The gaze has the empty, slack sightlessness of extinction, eyes open not to see, but simply because they are not closed. There is no point of focus. Beads of blood cling to his eyelashes like cabochon rubies, but no blink will ever come, not even when they drop upon the cornea.

(Thebans:) [H]aving once chosen the Athenians, fight on their side, and do not at the last moment be saying that the old alliance ought to save you [Plataeans]. For you have abandoned it, and by the violation of it, instead of striving to prevent, have aided in the enslavement of the Aeginetans and of other members of the alliance.And you were not, like us, under compulsion, but free, living under your ancient laws.Moreover, you persisted in refusing that last offer of peace and neutrality which we made to you before the siege began. Who more thoroughly than you deserve the hatred of the Hellenes? than you who have only displayed your virtues to their injury?You have given proof that the merit which you claim for your former actions does not properly belong to you!Your true nature and constant desire are now revealed in the light of day; for you have followed the Athenians in the path of injustice. Thus much we have to say as to our involuntary dealings with the Persians, and your voluntary dealings with the Athenians. (Book 3 Chapter 64.2-5)

Far too many stories, a million of them, all destined to be lost, for only the last line of the book matters. ' 'Then we had better make sure we're the ones who write it,' said Rann.

The Athenians, being in want of money to carry on the siege, raised among themselves for the first time a property-tax of two hundred talents, and sent out twelve ships to collect tribute among the allies, under the command of Lysicles and four others. He sailed to various places and exacted tribute; but as he was going up from Myus in Caria, through the plain of the Maeander, he was attacked at the hill of Sandius by the Carians and the Samians of Anaea, and, with a great part of his army, perished. (Book 3 Chapter 19)

All they need is that despoiler

For the sake of this book

Under these less than auspicious circumstances the siege of Guadal-canal began. It would constitute one of the longest and most complicated American campaigns of the war

I do not doubt that super-heavy bows existed for a super-elite of archers and that they could be of use in sieges or at sea, but I question the suitability of anything over 140lb for land battle. Even drawing a 100lb bow remains a considerable feat, and for the men who bent these bows in battle, the work rate was phenomenal. Lactic acid builds up quickly at these weights, and in a desperate fight archers would have to push through immense walls of pain in order to keep their shafts flying.

I fell in love for the first time at the age of thirty-four. It’s like other childhood ailments. If you catch it when you’re a kid

Me made me handle it.