Spelling Test Quotes

Wow,” said Adrian. He sat down on the bed and tested its bounciness, giving it a nod of approval. “This is amazing. What do you think, buttercup?” “I have no words,” I said honestly. He patted the spot beside him. “Want to try it out?

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.

Nix to Declan: Begin transcript— Testing. Hello, hellooo, anybody out there? Check, check, one, two. Soft pee. Puh, puh. Resonance! Sooooooft pee. Alpha bravo disco tango duck. This is Nïx! I’m the Ever-Knowing One, a goddess incandescent, incomparable, and irresistible. But enough about what you think of me. It’s a beautiful day in New Orleans. The wind is out of the east at a steady five knots and clouds look like rabbits … But enough about what you think of me! Now, down to business— Squirrel! Where was I? [Long pause] Why am I in Regin’s car? Bertil, you crawl right back out of that bong this minute! Oh, I remember! I am hereby laying down this track for Magister Declan Chase. If you are a mortal of the recorder peon class, know that Dekko and I go waaaaay back, and he’ll go berserk (snicker snicker) if he doesn’t receive this transmittal. … Chase, riddle me this: what’s beautiful but monstrous, long of tooth but sharp of tooth and soft of mind, and can never ever tell a lie? That’s right. The Enemy of Old can be very useful to you. So use him already. P.S. Your middle name’s about to be spelled r-e-g-r-e-t. And with that, I must bid you adieu. Don’t worry, we’ll catch up very soon. … [Muffled] Who’s mummy’s wittle echolocator? That’s right—you are! —End transcript

Most of my friends from Columbia are going on to get advanced degrees. And why not? A Ph.D. is the new M.A., a master's is the new bachelor's, a B.A. is the new high school diploma, and a high school diploma is the new smiley-face sticker on your first-grade spelling test.

In those stories, one is often asked to do something unimaginably terrible to the creature. Cut off it's head, say. A test. Not a test of love. A test of trust. Trust lifts the spell.

Everybody was asleep. Everybody except me, James Herriot, creeping sore and exhausted towards another spell of hard labour. Why the hell had I ever decided to become a country vet? I must have been crazy to pick a job where you worked seven days a week and through the night as well. Sometimes I felt as though the practice was a malignant, living entity; testing me, trying me out; putting the pressure on more and more to see just when at what point I would drop down dead.

Someone has to do it. It's all very well calling for eye of newt, but do you mean Common, Spotted or Great Crested? Which eye, anyway? Will tapioca do just as well? If we substitute egg white will the spell a) work b) fail or c) melt the bottom out of the cauldron? Goodie Whemper's curiosity about such things was huge and insatiable*. * Nearly insatiable. It was probably satiated in her last flight to test whether a broomstick could survive having its bristles pulled out one by one in mid-air. According to the small black raven she had trained as a flight recorder, the answer was almost certainly no.

I sat parked for a while in the parent pickup lot, watching a bunch of little kids run relays up and down the field. To be nine years old. To have life simply about family and friends and who was mad at who and which games you wanted to play at recess, and getting gold stars on spelling tests, an feeling that first crush. Laurel, you had everything back then, and you didn't even know it.

Dana raised her hand. "I learned about exaggeration," she said. "It was all my teacher ever talked about. We had like ten thousand tests on it, and the teacher would kill you if you didn't spell it right." "That's very good, Dana!" said Mrs. Jewls. "You learned your lesson well.

What I Found in My Desk A ripe peach with an ugly bruise, a pair of stinky tennis shoes, a day-old ham-and-cheese on rye, a swimsuit that I left to dry, a pencil that glows in the dark, some bubble gum found in the park, a paper bag with cookie crumbs, an old kazoo that barely hums, a spelling test I almost failed, a letter that I should have mailed, and one more thing, I must confess, a note from teacher: Clean This Mess!!!!

All is indeed a Blessing IF you can just see beyond the veils; for it is ‘all’ an illusion and a test, and one of the greatest Divine Mysteries of this life cycle.” This IS my constant prayer, my mantra, my affirmation, reverberation, reiteration and my ever-living reality.

Even though consciously I was completely in the present, my emotions were back in 1997, back when I was a little kid and making a mistake on a spelling test could literally be a matter of life and death. This return was an emotional flashback.

…[A] copyeditor must read the document letter by letter, word by word, with excruciating care and attentiveness. In many ways, being a copyeditor is like sitting for an English exam that never ends: At any moment, your knowledge of spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, syntax, and diction is being tested.

Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test.

I, Judy Moody, will get zero-wrong-plus-extra-credit on the spelling test! 110%! Pass it on.

On TV shows, the person who reports a crime is always a prime suspect.... Plus, Grace cheats. Once she copied off my spelling test. Cheaters often grow up to be thieves. Grace just jumped from cheater to thief early.

Seventeen more days,” Jessi breathed wonderingly. “God, you must be climbing the . . . er, walls . . . or whatever’s in there, huh?” “Aye.” “So, just what is in there, anyway?” She tested the glass by shaking it gently, and deemed it secure enough. It shouldn’t slide now. “Stone,” he said flatly. “And what else?” “Stone. Gray. Of varying sizes.” His voice dropped to a colorless monotone. “Fifty-two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven stones. Twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixteen of them are a slightly paler gray than the rest. Thirty-six thousand and four are more rectangular than square. There are nine hundred and eighteen that have a vaguely hexagonal shape. Ninety-two of them have a vein of bronze running through the face. Three are cracked. Two paces from the center is a stone that protrudes slightly above the rest, over which I tripped for the first few centuries. Any other questions?” Jessi flinched as his words impacted her, taking her breath away. Her chest and throat felt suddenly tight. Uh, yeah, like, how did you stay sane in there? What kept you from going stark raving mad? How did you survive over a thousand years in such a hell? She didn’t ask because it would have been like asking a mountain why it was still standing, as it had been since the dawn of time, perhaps reshaped in subtle ways, but there, always there. Barring cataclysmic planetary upheaval, forever there. The man was strong—not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. A rock of a man, the kind a woman could lean on through the worst of times and never have to worry that things might fall apart, because a man like him simply wouldn’t let them.

Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic. 　　Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed. What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’ 　　Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen: 　　First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort. 　　Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.) 　　Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure. 　　  　　What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’ 　　What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.

In the meantime, seemingly miraculously, the sun rises each day and sets each evening. The globe does not stop spinning, and there are spelling tests to prepare for, swim team carpools to drive, math homework; there are dinners to be made and, afterward, dishes to wash. There is work—articles to be written before inflexible deadlines.

We are talking about a cloak that really and truly renders the wearer completely invisible, and endures eternally, giving constant and impenetrable concealment, no matter what spells are cast at it. How many cloaks have you ever seen like that, Miss Granger?” Hermione opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again, looking more confused than ever. She, Harry, and Ron glanced at one another, and Harry knew that they were all thinking the same thing. It so happened that a cloak exactly like the one Xenophilius had just described was in the room with them at that very moment. “Exactly,” said Xenophilius, as if he had defeated them all in reasoned argument. “None of you have ever seen such a thing. The possessor would be immeasurably rich, would he not?” He glanced out of the window again. The sky was now tinged with the faintest trace of pink. “All right,” said Hermione, disconcerted. “Say the Cloak existed…what about the stone, Mr. Lovegood? The thing you call the Resurrection Stone?” “What of it?” “Well, how can that be real?” “Prove that it is not,” said Xenophilius. Hermoine looked outraged. “But that’s--I’m sorry, but that’s completely ridiculous! How can I possibly prove it doesn’t exist? Do you expect me to get hold of--of all the pebbles in the world and test them? I mean, you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist!” “Yes, you could,” said Xenophilius. “I am glad to see that you are opening your mind a little.” “So the Elder Wand,” said Harry quickly, before Hermione could retort, “you think that exists too?

It was a gloomy day, gloomy outside and gloomy inside. Nobody felt like having a meeting of the Baby-sitters Club. Dawn and I were depressed, Claudia was mad because she’d flunked a spelling test, Mary Anne was upset because her kitten, Tigger, had worms and Stacey was upset because she had a doctor’s appointment coming up and she hates doctor’s appointments.

trust.” Smiling fondly, she recrossed her ankles, switching them up, and leaned forward in her seat. “He’s your friend, Aoife, and you’re his. Never mind loving one another, that’s the easy part, you and Joey like each other. You enjoy one another’s company, and I can promise you that all of those wonderful aspects of your relationship, all of those effortless conversations you find yourself having with him, or all of the content spells of silence you spend in one another’s company, will only strengthen your ability to stand the test of time. And more crucially, the test of parenthood.

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them. If your law exacts a penalty, you must be able to enforce it – on the rich as well as the poor, the people on the Scottish borders and the Welsh marches, the men of Cornwall as well as the men of Sussex and Kent.

What do I think was modernism’s subject, then? What was it about? No doubt you can guess my starting point. It was about steam—in both the Malevich and the de Chirico a train still rushes across the landscape. It was about change and power and contingency, in other words, but also control, compression, and captivity—an absurd or oppressive orderliness is haunting the bright new fields and the sunlit squares with their eternally flapping flags. Modernism presents us with a world becoming a realm of appearances—fragments, patchwork quilts of color, dream-tableaux made out of disconnected phantasms. But all of this is still happening in modernism, and still resisted as it is described. The two paintings remain shot through, it seems to me, with the effort to answer back to the flattening and derealizing-the will to put the fragments back into some sort of order. Modernism is agonized, but its agony is not separable from weird levity or whimsy. Pleasure and horror go together in it. Malevich may be desperate, or euphoric. He may be pouring scorn on the idea of collective man, or spelling the idea out with utter childish optimism. We shall never know his real opinions. His picture entertains both. Modernism was certainly about the pathos of dream and desire in twentieth- century circumstances, but, again, the desires were unstoppable, ineradicable. The upright man will not let go of the future. The infinite still exists at the top of the tower. Even in the Picasso the monster flashing up outside the window is my monster, my phantasm, the figure of my unnegotiable desire. The monster is me—the terrible desiring and fearing subject inside me that eludes all form of conditioning, all the barrage of instructions about what it should want and who it should be. This is Picasso’s vestigial utopianism. You think that modernity is a realm of appetite and immediacy! I’ll show you appetite! I’ll show you immediacy! I shall, as a modernist, make the dreams of modernity come true. Modernism was testing, as I said before. It was a kind of internal exile, a retreat into the territory of form; but form was ultimately a crucible, an act of aggression, an abyss into which all the comfortable “givens” of the culture were sucked and then spat out.

When it grew cold enough to shut the doors, and have fire at night, first thing after supper all of us helped clear the table, then we took our slates and books and learned our lessons for the next day, and then father lined us against the wall, all in a row from Laddie down, and he pronounced words—easy ones that divided into syllables nicely, for me, harder for May, and so up until I might sit down. For Laddie, May and Leon he used the geography, the Bible, Roland's history, the Christian Advocate, and the Agriculturist. My, but he had them so they could spell! After that, as memory tests, all of us recited our reading lesson for the next day, especially the poetry pieces. I knew most of them, from hearing the big folks repeat them so often and practise the proper way to read them. I could do "Rienzi's Address to the Romans," "Casablanca," "Gray's Elegy," or "Mark Antony's Speech," but best of all, I liked "Lines to a Water-fowl." When he was tired, if it were not bedtime yet, all of us, boys too, sewed rags for carpet and rugs. Laddie braided corn husks for the kitchen and outside door mats, and they were pretty, and "very useful too," like the dog that got his head patted in McGuffey's Second.

Not that parents are alone in their extreme behavior. That have more than enough company among school boards and high-ranking politicians who think if you "fix the schools, they'll fix the kids." So, in Gadsden, Alabama, school officials eliminated kindergarten nap time in 2003 so the children would have more test-prep time. Two hours away in Atlanta, school officials figured that if you eliminated recess, the kids will study more. And just in case those shifty teachers try to sneak it in, Atlanta started building schools without playgrounds. "We are intent on improving academic performance," said the superintendent. "You don't do that by having kids hanging on the monkey bars." Meanwhile, Georgia's governor wanted the state to give Mozart CDs to newborns because research showed Mozart improved babies' IQs (which later proved to be mythical research). Right behind him is Lincoln, Rhode Island, where they canceled the district spelling bee because only one child would win, leaving all others behind, thus violating the intent of No Child Left Behind--or, as they might say in Lincoln, no child gets ahead.

In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a case. But who would accept such a definition? Writing is the production of meaning. Writing is thinking.

I need to do some tests and spells on you… to see what works... and what not." "For?" "My own pleasure." I scoot closer to him. My hand tugs down his shirt, uncovering his collarbone and my lips inked in bloody red below it. "Did you tattoo my lips on your cock as well?" "I have an appointment tomorrow." He burrows his face into my neck.

Laine had been very proud of herself last night. Nicholas had talked about ghosts and magic and woven a bit of a spell himself. He'd sounded so convincing, so logical, so sad, that she'd found herself wanting to believe him. But testing prods at his argument had made him angry, and long years with Gavin had taught her that angry, defensive people shared the lousy habit of being wrong.

I’m “Careless” My teachers were the first to point out how “careless” I was. I’d neglect to turn in my homework, miss deadlines, and forget my lunch. My tests came back marked up in red with “careless mistakes” scribbled in the margin. I was the kid who always won second place in the spelling bee but “could have done better” if I’d “actually studied.” I would have been able to answer the teacher’s question if I’d “bothered to pay attention.

She withdrew to the shadows again. There was one thing she could do; she was reluctant, because it was desperately risky, and it would leave her exhausted; but it seemed there was no choice. It was a kind of magic she could work to make herself unseen. True invisibility was impossible, of course: this was mental magic, a kind of fiercely held modesty that could make the spell worker not invisible but simply unnoticed. Holding it with the right degree of intensity, she could pass through a crowded room, or walk beside a solitary traveler, without being seen. So now she composed her mind and brought all her concentration to bear on the matter of altering the way she held herself so as to deflect attention completely. It took some minutes before she was confident. She tested it by stepping out of her hiding place and into the path of a sailor coming along the deck with a bag of tools. He stepped aside to avoid her without looking at her once.

I was certainly not the best mother. That goes without saying. I didn’t set out to be a bad mother, however. It just happened. As it was, being a bad mother was child’s play compared to being a good mother, which was an incessant struggle, a lose-lose situation 24 hours a day; long after the kids were in bed the torment of what I did or didn’t do during those hours we were trapped together would scourge my soul. Why did I allow Grace to make Mia cry? Why did I snap at Mia to stop just to silence the noise? Why did I sneak to a quiet place, whenever I could? Why did I rush the days—will them to hurry by—so I could be alone? Other mothers took their children to museums, the gardens, the beach. I kept mine indoors, as much as I could, so we wouldn’t cause a scene. I lie awake at night wondering: what if I never have a chance to make it up to Mia? What if I’m never able to show her the kind of mother I always longed to be? The kind who played endless hours of hide-and-seek, who gossiped side by side on their daughters’ beds about which boys in the junior high were cute. I always envisioned a friendship between my daughters and me. I imagined shopping together and sharing secrets, rather than the formal, obligatory relationship that now exists between myself and Grace and Mia. I list in my head all the things that I would tell Mia if I could. That I chose the name Mia for my great-grandmother, Amelia, vetoing James’s alternative: Abigail. That the Christmas she turned four, James stayed up until 3:00 a.m. assembling the dollhouse of her dreams. That even though her memories of her father are filled with nothing but malaise, there were split seconds of goodness: James teaching her how to swim, James helping her prepare for a fourth-grade spelling test. That I mourn each and every time I turned down an extra book before bed, desperate now for just five more minutes of laughing at Harry the Dirty Dog. That I go to the bookstore and purchase a copy after unsuccessfully ransacking the basement for the one that used to be hers. That I sit on the floor of her old bedroom and read it again and again and again. That I love her. That I’m sorry. Colin

Oral teaching was to a great extent ruled out; a large number of books on many subjects were set for reading in morning school-hours; so much work was set that there was only time for a single reading; all reading was tested by a narration of the whole or a given passage, whether orally or in writing. Children working on these lines know months after that which they have read and are remarkable for their power of concentration (attention); they have little trouble with spelling or composition and become well-informed, intelligent persons.

This isn't the first time I've used this, and the test subject showed no signs of impaired cognitive ability." "Who was the test subject?" asked Aurora. "I test everything out on myself before taking it into the field." She stared at him. "You zapped your own brain?" "And it didn't do me any harm apart from the dizziness and the vomiting spells and the weirdly persistent ringing in my ears. Also the blackouts and the mood swings and the creeping paranoia. Apart from that, zero side effects, if you don't count the numb fingertips. Which I don't.

I had always thought that having a flashback meant fully hallucinating your past. In the movies, soldiers would be transported back to Afghanistan—they’d see desert sand and automatic rifles in a waking nightmare. But even when I remembered moments of abuse, I knew where I was. I knew I was on the couch. I knew I was not going to die. But I soon learned that in trauma lingo, people often aren’t talking about the movie version of flashbacks. They’re talking about emotional flashbacks. For example, before I quit my job, my boss often came into my office to tell me I’d made some minor mistake. If my body and brain were totally in the present, I would have felt embarrassed for messing up but would recognize that it wasn’t a huge deal, acknowledge my faults, and get back to it. Instead, after my boss left, I always felt guilt and anxiety and shame and terror. I’d run downstairs to have a cigarette, text a friend about how I was a moron, and spend half an hour freaking out about how nobody respected me and I’d probably end up fired. Even though consciously I was completely in the present, my emotions were back in 1997, back when I was a little kid and making a mistake on a spelling test could literally be a matter of life and death. This return was an emotional flashback.

The Enchantress put a spell on it so it would age with me- and show me how I would look if I was still human. If I hadn't failed her test. I'm... always reminded of who I could have been." Belle cocked her head and really looked at the picture. It was painted by a consummate artist; the velvet on the Prince's jacket looked soft and furry enough to touch. But those eyes... "I'm not so sure it should make you feel bad," she finally said. "The man in that picture looks contemptuous. Self-important." The Beast looked at her, shocked. "Well, he does," she said, waving a hand to indicate the Prince's face. "It's supposed to show what you would look like on the outside. But does it show how you really are now, on the inside?

But I haven’t mentioned the cheer relentlessness of modern life, the crowdedness, the incessant thumping music and braying voices, the near impossibility of finding solitude and silence and time to reflect. I haven’t mentioned the commercial pressures, the forces urging us to buy and discard and buy again. When everything in public life has a logo attached to it, when every public space is disfigured with advertisements, when nothing of public value and importance can take place without commercial sponsorship, when schools and hospitals have to act as if their guiding principle were market forces rather than human need, when adults and children alike are tempted to wear t-shirts with obscene words on them by the smirking little devices spelling the words wrongly, when citizens become consumers and clients; patients and guests, students and passengers are all flattened into customers, what price the school of morals? The answer is: what it would fetch in the market. And not a penny more. I haven’t mentioned the obsession with targets, and testing and tables; the management-driven and politics corrupted and all the clotted rubbish that so deforms the true work of schools. I haven’t mentioned something that might seem trivial but I think its importance is profound and rarely understood: that’s the difference between reading a story in a book and watching a story on a screen. It’s a psychological difference, not just a technical one. We need to take account of it and I fear we are not doing it, and the school of morals is suffering in result.

In the high-stakes testing culture of modern education, schools are allowing grades and performance data to undercut real and meaningful learning. Study after study has found that students—from elementary school to graduate school and across multiple cultures—demonstrate less interest in learning as a result of being graded. Feedback in the form of grades is the ultimate restraint: The grade can’t be changed, the lesson can’t be relearned, and numbers and letters don’t spell out a way forward. Worse, teachers and students get stuck on the wheel of relentless grading, diminished interest in learning, poor outcomes, more tests and grades—the cycle quickly turns vicious. But the real victim is the knowledge that students might have otherwise gained had feedback amounted to more than a rating.

(1) Phonological awareness is recognizing the sound structures of spoken language, not just the meanings it conveys. This is a reading prerequisite. (2) Phonemic awareness is the skill of recognizing and manipulating individual speech sounds or phonemes. Students must be able to segment words and syllables into phonemes to learn to read. (3) The Alphabetic Principle is the concept that printed language consists of alphabet letters that are deliberately and systematically related to the individual sounds of spoken language. Reading depends on understanding this concept. (4) Orthographic awareness is recognition of printed language structures, such as orthographic rules, patterns in spelling; derivational morphology and inflectional morphology, i.e. structural changes indicating word types and grammatical differences; and etymology, i.e. word and meaning

the IPCC has been practicing ‘para-science’ in that, while it affects the appearance of practicing science, it has violated longheld scientific norms and practices of fully and accurately representing the current state of scientific knowledge, and of proposing and testing alternative hypotheses in order to extend knowledge.33 Instead, the IPCC and its authors have acted out of prejudice in a manner that has misled both politicians and a largely unsuspecting public. As a redress, I have spelled out here several of the IPCC’s numerous, specific and grievous errors in science. Each error has the effect of minimising the role of the sun and thereby supporting the IPCC’s unsupportable claim to be ‘95 per cent confident’ that most of the 0.7°C global warming since 1950 was manmade. That assertion is made without evidence. The assertion is also self-serving, in that the IPCC depends on it for its own continued existence.

In real life I fell easily under the spell of all traveling artists. En route to New Orleans, entertainments of many kinds would stop over in those days for a single performance in Jackson's Century Theatre. Then, as now, my imagination was magnetized toward transient artists - toward the transience as much as the artists. I must have seen "Acrobats in a Park" at the time I wrote the story as exotic, free of any experience as I knew it. At the center of the little story is the Zorro's act: the feat of erecting a structure of their bodies that holds together, interlocked, and stands like a wall. Writing about the family act, I was writing about the family itself, its strength as a unit, testing its frailty under stress. I treated it in an artificial and oddly formal way; the stronghold of the family is put on view as a structure built each night; on the night before the story opens, the Wall has come down when the most vulnerable member slips, and the act is done for. But from various points within it and from outside it, I've been writing about the structure of the family in stories and novels ever since. In spite of my uncompromising approach to it, my fundamental story form might have been trying to announce itself to me.

I probably won’t be seeing you again, will I? I mean, I know the others might come back, but you…” He trails off, but picks up the thought again a moment later. “Just seems like you’ll be happy to leave it behind, that’s all.” “Yeah, you’re probably right.” I look at my shoes. “You sure you won’t come?” “Can’t. Shauna can’t wheel around where you guys are going, and it’s not like I’m gonna leave her, you know?” He touches his jaw, lightly, testing the skin. “Make sure Uri doesn’t drink too much, okay?” “Yeah,” I say. “No, I mean it,” he says, and his voice dips down the way it always does when he’s being serious, for once. “Promise you’ll look out for him?” It’s always been clear to me, since I met them, that Zeke and Uriah were closer than most brothers. They lost their father when they were young, and I suspect Zeke began to walk the line between parent and sibling after that. I can’t imagine what it feels like for Zeke to watch him leave the city now, especially as broken by grief as Uriah is by Marlene’s death. “I promise,” I say. I know I should leave, but I have to stay in this moment for a little while, feeling its significance. Zeke was one of the first friends I made in Dauntless, after I survived initiation. Then he worked in the control room with me, watching the cameras and writing stupid programs that spelled out words on the screen or played guessing games with numbers. He never asked me for my real name, or why a first-ranked initiate ended up in security and instruction instead of leadership. He demanded nothing from me. “Let’s just hug already,” he says. Keeping one hand firm on Caleb’s arm, I wrap my free arm around Zeke, and he does the same. When we break apart, I pull Caleb down the alley, and can’t resist calling back, “I’ll miss you.” “You too, sweetie!” He grins, and his teeth are white in the twilight. They are the last thing I see of him before I have to turn and set out at a trot for the train.

While she was enjoying this heady control, she decided to test a few minor spells on the werewolf—because it would be good practice, and by good practice she meant amusing for her. She caused a root to hike up directly in front of his feet. When he tripped, she folded her lips in, biting back a laugh. Magick . . . good. For the next hour, whenever his boots came untied just in time for the laces to collect bullet ants, or limbs whacked him across the face, or he scarcely dodged bird and monkey droppings, he always regarded her with narrow-eyed suspicion. She would casually glance over at him with a “Whaaa . . . ?” expression. But he hadn’t said anything, and as for her, well, she could do this all day— Out of the corner of her eye she spied movement. What looked like a vine suddenly uncoiled from the ground and came flying toward her. With a shriek, she attempted a pulse of energy to ward it off. But MacRieve had already snatched the snake; her magick caught him and sent him flying, his body crashing through the brush, felling the trees in his way. After landing one hundred feet away and angrily tossing the snake, he shot to his feet, charging back to her, eyes ice blue with fury. “Goddamn it, witch, no’ again!” “It was an accident!” the witch cried, and she might have been truthful, but Bowe was beyond caring. “All morning you’ve toyed with me, have you no’?” He stalked closer to her, letting her see a good glimpse of the beast within. Yet after swallowing loudly and retreating several steps, she seemed to force herself to stand her ground. He was dumbfounded that she wasn’t cowering. Battle hardened vampires recoiled in the face of a Lykae’s werewolf form, but she’d planted her boots, and she hadn’t budged. She even raised her chin. Cade had started hurrying down the embankment as if to protect her. The very idea made Bowe draw his lips back from his fangs. No doubt thinking his renewed fury was for her, she pulled magick into her hands.

Isaac took a long swig from the unmarked bottle. He'd tasted her cider before, but this bottle was completely different, yet just as wonderful. The apple was more prominent, yet not sweet, almost funky but in a good, blue-cheese way. He held the bottle up to the light and could see the sediment swirling in the bottom. "This is amazing- so different from the other one." Sanna grinned. "You really like Olive? I wasn't sure when I blended it. Not everyone likes the murkiness." "Olive?" Sanna leaned against the counter, putting her weight on her wrist as she studied him for a long moment, her eyes squinting. She took a long drink from her own bottle. "I see colors when I make ciders. I can't explain it. Each juice has its own hue. That's what those paintings represent." She pointed at the watercolors over the fireplace. "A new color comes to me, and I blend the juices until I can re-create it in the flavor. And this one is Olive." "You color-code your ciders?" He struggled to understand what she was telling him. "No." She reached across the counter and pulled her journal toward her. She opened it and handed it to Isaac. As she sipped her cider, he studied the page, then the next page, then the next. On each was a swatch of layered color, all wildly different from one another- reds, greens, teals, colors he didn't really have names for. Next to the colors were measurements, apple varieties, percentages, and flavor notes. Scribbles filled the margins and equations contained both numbers and words. Things like sugars and acidity were measured and tested. It was part recipe book, part coloring book, and part wine label, with a hint of spell book. Looking at it was like opening a tiny door into the back of her head. She saw things that no one else did, an imaginary world of cider only she could see. "You can see the color in your head?" "It's the easiest way to explain it. A color pops into my head, and I know what it will taste like. When I blend the different raw ciders together, I know I have it right when it matches what I've imagined.

The Scientific Revolution was revolutionary in a way that is hard to appreciate today, now that its discoveries have become second nature to most of us. The historian David Wootton reminds us of the understanding of an educated Englishman on the eve of the Revolution in 1600: He believes witches can summon up storms that sink ships at sea. . . . He believes in werewolves, although there happen not to be any in England—he knows they are to be found in Belgium. . . . He believes Circe really did turn Odysseus’s crew into pigs. He believes mice are spontaneously generated in piles of straw. He believes in contemporary magicians. . . . He has seen a unicorn’s horn, but not a unicorn. He believes that a murdered body will bleed in the presence of the murderer. He believes that there is an ointment which, if rubbed on a dagger which has caused a wound, will cure the wound. He believes that the shape, colour and texture of a plant can be a clue to how it will work as a medicine because God designed nature to be interpreted by mankind. He believes that it is possible to turn base metal into gold, although he doubts that anyone knows how to do it. He believes that nature abhors a vacuum. He believes the rainbow is a sign from God and that comets portend evil. He believes that dreams predict the future, if we know how to interpret them. He believes, of course, that the earth stands still and the sun and stars turn around the earth once every twenty-four hours.7 A century and a third later, an educated descendant of this Englishman would believe none of these things. It was an escape not just from ignorance but from terror. The sociologist Robert Scott notes that in the Middle Ages “the belief that an external force controlled daily life contributed to a kind of collective paranoia”: Rainstorms, thunder, lightning, wind gusts, solar or lunar eclipses, cold snaps, heat waves, dry spells, and earthquakes alike were considered signs and signals of God’s displeasure. As a result, the “hobgoblins of fear” inhabited every realm of life. The sea became a satanic realm, and forests were populated with beasts of prey, ogres, witches, demons, and very real thieves and cutthroats. . . . After dark, too, the world was filled with omens portending dangers of every sort: comets, meteors, shooting stars, lunar eclipses, the howls of wild animals.8 To the Enlightenment thinkers the escape from ignorance and superstition showed how mistaken our conventional wisdom could be, and how the methods of science—skepticism, fallibilism, open debate, and empirical testing—are a paradigm of how to achieve reliable knowledge. That knowledge includes an understanding of ourselves.

Dr. Sperry, after detailed studies of split-brain patients, finally concluded that there could be two distinct minds operating in a single brain. He wrote that each hemisphere is “indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and … both the left and right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel.” When I interviewed Dr. Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, an authority on split-brain patients, I asked him how experiments can be done to test this theory. There are a variety of ways to communicate separately to each hemisphere without the knowledge of the other hemisphere. One can, for example, have the subject wear special glasses on which questions can be shown to each eye separately, so that directing questions to each hemisphere is easy. The hard part is trying to get an answer from each hemisphere. Since the right brain cannot speak (the speech centers are located only in the left brain), it is difficult to get answers from the right brain. Dr. Gazzaniga told me that to find out what the right brain was thinking, he created an experiment in which the (mute) right brain could “talk” by using Scrabble letters. He began by asking the patient’s left brain what he would do after graduation. The patient replied that he wanted to become a draftsman. But things got interesting when the (mute) right brain was asked the same question. The right brain spelled out the words: “automobile racer.” Unknown to the dominant left brain, the right brain secretly had a completely different agenda for the future. The right brain literally had a mind of its own. Rita Carter writes, “The possible implications of this are mind-boggling. It suggests that we might all be carrying around in our skulls a mute prisoner with a personality, ambition, and self-awareness quite different from the day-to-day entity we believe ourselves to be.” Perhaps there is truth to the oft-heard statement that “inside him, there is someone yearning to be free.” This means that the two hemispheres may even have different beliefs. For example, the neurologist V. S. Ramanchandran describes one split-brain patient who, when asked if he was a believer or not, said he was an atheist, but his right brain declared he was a believer. Apparently, it is possible to have two opposing religious beliefs residing in the same brain. Ramachandran continues: “If that person dies, what happens? Does one hemisphere go to heaven and the other go to hell? I don’t know the answer to that.

Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th in New York City. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are “the smart kids.” Thomas is one of them, and he likes belonging. Since Thomas could walk, he has constantly heard that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top 1 percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top 1 percent. He scored in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t. For instance, in the early grades, Thomas wasn’t very good at spelling, so he simply demurred from spelling out loud. When Thomas took his first look at fractions, he balked. The biggest hurdle came in third grade. He was supposed to learn cursive penmanship, but he wouldn’t even try for weeks. By then, his teacher was demanding homework be completed in cursive. Rather than play catch-up on his penmanship, Thomas refused outright. Thomas’s father tried to reason with him. “Look, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t have to put out some effort.” (Eventually, Thomas mastered cursive, but not without a lot of cajoling from his father.) Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts, lack confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges? Thomas is not alone. For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.

Guess What I Am Writing [Drawing]? Preparation and Instructions: To start this game, have the child turn around so his or her back is available to you as “pretend paper.” The Game: Tell the child, “I am going to write [or draw, depending on the child’s age and reading level] something on your back. See if you can guess what I am writing [drawing].” Make sure that what you write or draw is easy for the child to guess. The goal of the game is to touch the child and enjoy one another. It is not to test the child on spelling or to put the child in a position where he or she may not be successful. You may want to write letters or numbers. In this case, tell the child, “I am going to write a letter on your back. See if you can guess what letter it is.” For younger children, you may want to draw a shape. End the game with a relaxing back rub.

The only real test of character comes with the passing of the years and watching them perform - particularly when they are going through a bad spell or recovering from a setback. The ultimate judge of performance is Father Time.

But what is the real color of leaves? As a child I was once told that our blood is really blue, like the blue veins of our wrists; we only think blood is red because it turns color during a chemical reaction with the air. At the time I wondered how to test if this were true; I could think of no way to examine blood without exposing it to air. Unless blood is exposed to air, I thought then, we can't see it at all. Perhaps this is what happens to the birds here: perhaps it is the act of joining the air that calls forth their colors; perhaps the rest of the time the birds are really all green, and the leaves, though disguised by chlorophyll, are really the color of plumage.

I want to show you something,” he said, his voice dropping a little lower than usual and causing a shiver to run down my spine. “What?” I asked. “I said show, not tell. You have to come with me.” Curiosity nagged at me and the champagne urged me into recklessness. He’d promised to be nice after all, so why not? And even though I’d said I wanted to go back to the snooze fest party, I didn’t really. Given the choice, I’d just head back to the Academy. “You’d better not be about to whip your junk out again,” I warned. “Because I’ve seen way too much of you for my liking.” “Oh I think you liked it just fine,” he countered and the heat that flooded my cheeks at his tone stopped me from raising any further argument on the subject. He stepped a little closer to me and I fought against the impulse to lean in. “Come on then, don’t keep me in suspense,” I demanded though a little voice in the back of my head wondered if I meant something else by that statement. Darius’s mouth hooked up at one side and he inclined his head to yet another door on the other side of the room. I followed him as he led the way through the manor to a grand atrium before opening the door onto a dark stairwell which led down to what must have been an underground chamber. I eyed him warily but at this point I was pretty sure he’d have attacked me already if he was going to. Darius Acrux may have been a lot of things but it seemed he was a man of his word; he’d promised to be nice to me tonight and that was what he was delivering. I’d have to keep an eye on the time though, at midnight his Cinderella spell might come undone and he’d turn back into an asshole shaped pumpkin. Lights came on automaticaly as we descended and at the foot of the stairs, he opened another door and led me out into into an underground parking lot. I eyed the row of flashy sports cars in every make and model imaginable but he didn’t pause by them, instead leading me to the far end of the lot. A smile tugged at my lips as I spotted the lineup of super bikes. They were all top of the range, ultra-sleek, ultra-beautiful speed machines. My fingers tingled with the desire to touch them as the tempting allure of adrenaline called to me. “You said you could ride,” Darius said, offering me a genuine smile. “So I thought maybe you’d like to see my collection.” Damn, the way he said ‘my collection’ made me want to punch the entitlement right out of him but I didn’t miss the fire burning in his eyes as he looked at the bikes. That was a passion I knew well. He was a sucker for my kind of temptation too. “Have you done any modifications on them?” I asked, reaching out to brush my fingers along the saddle of the closest red beauty. “They’re top of the line,” he said dismissively like I didn’t know what I was looking at. “They don’t need any mods.” I snorted derisively. So he liked to ride the pretty speed machines but he didn’t know how to work on them. “Figures pretty boy wouldn’t know how to get his hands dirty,” I teased. “Maybe the kinds of bikes you’re used to riding need work to make them perform better but this kind of quality doesn’t require any extras. Besides, I could just pay someone to do it for me even if they did.” “Of course you could. That’s not really the point though.” And he was wrong about the kinds of bikes I was used to riding. I spotted four models amongst his collection which I’d ridden within the last six months. The others could easily be mine with a little bit of time and a tool or two. Not that I felt the need to tell him that. “You wanna take one for a ride?” he offered. “You can test your supposed skill against mine; there’s a circuit to the west of the estate.” My eyes widened at that offer. I’d missed riding since coming to the Academy and I hadn’t really thought I’d be able to get out again any time soon. ...

would my mother and I even survive until the next summer? That was assuming the spelling tests and five-paragraph essays didn’t kill me.

When the Cauldron was made,” the Carver interrupted, “its dark maker used the last of the molten ore to forge a book. The Book of Breathings. In it, written between the carved words, are the spells to negate the Cauldron’s power—or control it wholly. But after the War, it was split into two pieces. One went to the Fae, one to the six human queens. It was part of the Treaty, purely symbolic, as the Cauldron had been lost for millennia and considered mere myth. The Book was believed harmless, because like calls to like—and only that which was Made can speak those spells and summon its power. No creature born of the earth may wield it, so the High Lords and humans dismissed it as little more than a historical heirloom, but if the Book were in the hands of something reforged … You would have to test such a theory, of course—but … it might be possible.” His eyes narrowed to amused slits as I realized … realized …

The purpose of an enduring crisis is to teach you faith, patience and the art of surrender. Some crises last for short spells. And some really refuse to blow away. They stay on, testing you physically, emotionally and spiritually. There will be times when you will be brought to your knees. This is when everything you have tried to solve a problem has failed, and you feel weak, worthless and wasted. That’s when – and how – you begin to accept that some problems defy logic and don’t have a human-engineered solution. This is how faith blossoms in you. Faith, not necessarily in religion or a God, but faith as in trusting the process of Life. And slowly, but surely, you learn to be patient. As you patiently trust the process, you quietly, often unwittingly, surrender to the flow of Life. That’s when something magical happens: You discover that it is indeed possible to be calm and happy even when you are caught in the throes of a crisis. This realization is painful, paradoxical, cruel, beautiful and liberating – all at the same time!

Conjurors were born with a deep twilight inside them, allowing the work of crossing spells and tending to the dead in the Underworld. Now Ella would be the first one to enroll, and when she passed all the tests, she'd be the first to join the Marvellian community.

For all the monsters who are still waiting to be loved. Of course, my faith was tested. Isn't that always the way? The trouble with people is that unlike gods or bodhisattvas, we are only mortals, and so destined to disappoint and even harm one another. It wasn't just my world that was falling apart. It was everyone's. So I wrote. I wrote as though I might be casting a spell or chanting a religious litany. I wrote as though poetry and prayer might mean the same thing, as if words might reconnect me with what I once considered my unshakable relationship with the human divine. I wrote to summon the language that might help me fall back in love with being human. I wrote my way through the question: What happens when we imagine loving the people-and the parts of ourselves-that we do not believe are worthy of love? What emerged was a series of love letters to unexpected people and places, to the parts of the world and my own self that I thought were beyond saving. Yes, dear reader. This is a book of love letters- to dead people, to exes, to prostitutes and johns. Love letters to weirdos and monsters, to transphobes and racists, to everyone and everything I have ever had trouble holding in my heart. I needed to know that I could love them, because that meant I could still love myself- as hopeless and lost as I had become. From the depths of my rage and despair, I needed to find my way back to love. This book is my act of prayer in a collapsing world. My devotion to the belief that we are all intrinsically sacred. My bridge back to hope.

That afternoon, my friend Jimmy stopped by to find out why I hadn’t been at school. He said it had been Bring-Your-Skateboard-And-Have-Free-Ice-Cream-Day and I’d missed it. The spelling test was tomorrow. Sad face.

I have usually found that, in life, good things are followed by bad things. One day you get an A-plus on a spelling test, the next time around you get a C (or worse). A run of good luck is followed by a run of bad luck. Good news is followed by bad news.

I've got two smart boys," she'd say. "Two mighty smart boys." .... "First thing you're going to do is memorize your times tables." .... I learned the times table. I just kept repeating them until they fixed themselves in my brain... Within days of learning my times table, math became so much easier that my test scores soared.... "I've decided you boys are watching too much television," she said one evening, snapping off the set in the middle of a program... "From now on, you boys can watch no more than three programs a week." .... Mother had already decided how we would spend our free time when we weren't watching television. "You boys are going to go to the library and check out books. You're going to read at least two books every week. At the end of each week you'll give me a report on what you read." .... Slowly the realization came that I was getting better in all my school subjects. I began looking forward to. my trips to the library. The staff got to know Curtis and me, offering suggestions on what we might like to read.... By reading so much, my vocabulary improved along with my comprehension. Soon I became the best student in math when we did story problems. .... The final week of fifth grade we had a long spelling bee in which Mrs. Williamson made us go through every spelling word we were supposed to have learned that year. As everyone expected, Bobby Farmer won the spelling bee. But to my surprise, the last word he spelled correctly to win was agriculture. I can spell that word, I thought with excitement. I had learned it just the day before from my library book. As the winner sat down, a thrill swept through me--a yearning to achieve--more powerful than ever before. "I can spell agriculture," I said to myself. "and I'll bet I can learn to spell any other word in the world." .... I can learn about flax or any subject through reading. It is like Mother says--if you can read, you can learn just about anything.... As I continued to read, my spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension improved, and my classes became much more interesting.

1. Relationship: A relationship, which is bereft of respect, blows hot and cold, raises continual contentious queries, and where action does not match with words, is a dead one. 2. Honesty: Repose not trust in testing another's degree of honesty at the risk of one's loss in matters big, unless collateralized. 3. Character: The litmus test of illustrious character is recognized in the impeccable integrity and transparency in financial transactions. 4 Friendship: Being truthful, honoring one's word, a pleasant disposition, mostly positive in response, being in company purely for companionship's sake, all promote solid and fine friendships. 5. Gratitude: Gratitude is evidently short-lived in this world of ever-changing human emotions. 6. Apology: For wrong done regret, backed by adequate compensation. 7. Punctuality: Punctuality at any appointment spells organized time management.

Dylan, you okay?” Liv asked, sidling up beside me at the kitchen counter. “Yeah.” I shrugged. “I’m just pregnant.” “You’re what?” Her voice went up ten octaves, and she snatched the pregnancy test off the counter. Delia showed up next. “Why are we yelling?” “Dylan’s pregnant.” Delia’s eyes went as wide as saucers. I nodded and pressed my lips together. No use denying what was spelled out so clearly in front of us.

Congratulations, my son. If all has gone to plan, you passed the test we laid for you in the tomb. Merissa Vega assured me you would protect her daughter no matter what spell you were under. Pride doesn’t come close to what I feel toward you right now. If you have gained the Imperial Star, then I know you are the man I hoped you would become. Now, the star must remain hidden. Only your most loyal of friends can know its location. A star cannot be seen by Seers or divined by the arcane arts. So long as you protect the knowledge of its location, it can never be discovered by Lionel Acrux. This brings me onto your next task. You must reform the Zodiac Guild. Choose those strong of heart, mind and soul to swear an oath to protect the Vega royals. They will need a strong following to help them ascend, Fae who they can trust with their lives. Choose wisely. To bind new members to the Guild, you will need the Chalice of Flames, an item that has long been in my possession. Spill your blood beneath the light of the full moon to summon the chalice.

4KEEP SUBSTITUTIONS TO A MINIMUM We’ve all done it—used brown sugar when there’s no granulated sugar in the pantry, subbed in whatever cheese we have on hand for the Gruyère in the recipe, or poured the batter into a square pan when the round pan was nowhere to be found. In general, use the ingredients called for in the recipe to ensure your dish tastes the way it was intended to taste. This is especially true in baking, where even the slightest change can spell disaster.

scored zero in ten spelling tests in a row, which must be a world record for the most rotten spelling ever!

All of this told of harm done, of a drug that made a child depressed, lonely, and filled with a sense of inadequacy, and when researchers looked at whether Ritalin at least helped hyperactive children fare well academically, to get good grades and thus succeed as students, they found that it wasn’t so. Being able to focus intently on a math test, it turned out, didn’t translate into long-term academic achievement. This drug, Sroufe explained in 1973, enhances performance on “repetitive, routinized tasks that require sustained attention,” but “reasoning, problem solving and learning do not seem to be [positively] affected.”26 Five years later, Herbert Rie was much more negative. He reported that Ritalin did not produce any benefit on the students’ “vocabulary, reading, spelling, or math,” and hindered their ability to solve problems. “The reactions of the children strongly suggest a reduction in commitment of the sort that would seem critical for learning.”27 That same year, Russell Barkley at the Medical College of Wisconsin reviewed the relevant scientific literature and concluded “the major effect of stimulants appears to be an improvement in classroom manageability rather than academic performance.”28 Next it was James Swanson’s turn to weigh in. The fact that the drugs often left children “isolated, withdrawn and overfocused” could “impair rather than improve learning,” he said.29 Carol Whalen, a psychologist from the University of California at Irvine, noted in 1997 that “especially worrisome has been the suggestion that the unsalutary effects [of Ritalin] occur in the realm of complex, high-order cognitive functions such as flexible problem-solving or divergent thinking.”30 Finally, in 2002, Canadian investigators conducted a meta-analysis of the literature, reviewing fourteen studies involving 1,379 youths that had lasted at least three months, and they determined that there was “little evidence for improved academic performance.”31

With the aid of specialists in dendrochronology, for instance, the Rembrandt team can look at a painting on a wooden panel and tell the exact year that someone felled the tree that became the panel. But tree experts know about trees and not about Rembrandt. On one occasion the Rembrandt committee examined two paintings, both of them attributed to Rembrandt and both on wooden panels. The scientific tests proved not only that both panels were the same age, but that both came from the same tree.

The easiest test of an old master—and the one test almost certain to be carried out—is to dab the surface with rubbing alcohol. In a genuinely old painting, the surface will be hard, and the alcohol will have no effect. If the painting is new, the alcohol will dissolve a bit of paint, and the tester’s cotton swab will come up smudged with color.

Hero worship, when properly entered into, has a great deal of poetry in it. It inspires and motivates, renews and revives. It encourages introspection, investigation of desire, personal moral inventory and all manner of fruitful examinations. The cargo of goodwill that spells of extreme admiration create, can provide personal ballast against discouragement and grief. To be in the habit of fixing another with your highest personal regard over time increases your capacity to love. . . . Hero worship can be an emotional Olympics, a way of testing one’s lowest and highest drives. My Judy-love strengthens and inspires what is already good in me and what is bad. It helps me become more completely and entirely myself. And if the poetry of hero worship imparts some measure of heroism on the practitioner, then that is all to the good.

The Golem, The Monster was in love with herself; the Goy was in love with her too. She was in love with Club Golan. A perfect storm was approaching and I could almost feel it. I didn't know what was wrong with my beautiful girlfriend as her face gradually began to look like a monster's and she started treating me like garbage. What was controlling her mind? Who was behind her, making her get so sick again so quickly after meeting some new people at the beach bar? Why did Sabrina say that I would die lonely and sad, and why was Martina's perception of me so wrong and unreal? How was their plan on track, I didn't understand while I was running after Martina and I couldn't understand where our happiness had slipped out of our hands again? I was desperately trying to figure out what had happened to my life, my career, and what had happened to my pretty girlfriend, what had happened to my baby? It was almost like my girlfriend's perceptions were all wrong somehow. She had seen me as a useless homeless bum and she had seen the only value or service in Europe and Barcelona which could make a living or money as, 'short shorts and loose legs'. I felt hopeless and I didn't understand what the spell was. How was my 'Stupid Bunny' a Frankenstein? I could feel it on my skin, and I could see it in Martina's eyes, that the criminals' plans were in play and had been working since the moment Adam arrived in Spain, or maybe even before that somehow. Before I even met Martina. Before we even broke all up with Sabrina. Before the Red Moon, the last date and before the provocation the following night. I felt like 10-20 criminals were trying to bully me and trying to woo Martina and outsmart me with her, but I was so worried for her and was so busy trying to save her every day with her on my mind, as if I too was under spells, under possession and couldn't do anything about it to help her or break the illusions keeping her possessed, even when supposedly she was, we were, rid of the bad people. I felt like I was in a screenplay in the set up stages of a drama. I felt like someone had sat down with a piece of paper and a pen, and was drawing plans against my life. I felt like someone had written a screenplay on how to play this out, how to take the club from me and Martina. Someone must have written a list of characters. Casting. I never called Sabrina a bitch. Adam and Martina both called her “bitch.” Martina said “The Bitch” and Adam said “that Crazy Bitch.” ’The Goy’ ’The Bitch’ ’The Gipsy’ ’The Giants’ ’The Golem’ ’The Lawyer’ ’The Big Boss’ ’My Girlfriend’ ’The False Flag’ ’The Big Brother’ ’The Stupid Bunny’ ’The Big Boss Daddy’ ’The Italian Connection’, etc. I was unable to break any illusion, the secret, the code; I was dumbstruck in love with “my girlfriend” (who I thought was my “stupid bunny”), being the ‘false flag’, and maybe it was actually “the bitch” portrayed by Sabrina who was my true love perhaps, putting me to the tests, with Adam and the rest, using Martina and her brother, playing with strings, with her long pretty fingernails, teaching me a lesson for cheating when I thought she was cheating too and making me unhappy when I thought she was unhappy with me. As if I knew, Sabrina had been behind my new girlfriend, Martina playing roles; I had seen all the signs and jokes. I just couldn't comprehend it having a cover over my eyes. I was unsure what should I do what would be real wise? I didn't think Sabrina would be capable of hurting me at all. Why did Martina keep saying, Tomas you are so nice and tall?

NASA engineers and technicians at the Cape were pushing themselves so hard in the final weeks people had to be ordered home to rest. It was a grueling time and yet the sort of interlude of adrenal exhilaration that men remember all their lives. It was an interlude of the dedication of body and soul to a cause such as men usually experience only during war. Well … this was war, even though no one had spelled it out in just that way. Without knowing it, they were caught up in the primordial spirit of single combat. Just days from now one of the lads would be up on top of the rocket for real. Everyone felt he had the life of the astronaut, whichever was chosen (only a few knew), in his hands. The MA–1 explosion here at the Cape nine months ago had been a chilling experience, even for veterans of flight test. The seven astronauts had been assembled for the event, partly to give them confidence in the new system. And their gullets had been stuck up toward the sky like everybody else’s, when the whole assembly blew to bits over their heads. In a few days one of those very lads would be lying on top of a rocket (albeit a Redstone, not an Atlas) when the candle was lit. Just about everybody here in NASA had seen the boys close up. NASA was like a family that way. Ever since the end of the Second World War the phrase “government bureaucracy” had invariably provoked sniggers. But a bureaucracy was nothing more than a machine for communal work, after all, and in those grueling and gorgeous weeks of the spring of 1961 the men and women of NASA’s Space Task Group for Project Mercury knew that bureaucracy, when coupled with a spiritual motivation, in this case true patriotism and profound concern for the life of the single-combat warrior himself—bureaucracy, poor gross hideously ridiculed twentieth-century bureaucracy, could take on the aura, even the ecstasy, of communion. The passion that now animated NASA spread out even into the surrounding community of Cocoa Beach. The grisliest down-home alligator-poaching crackers manning the gasoline pumps on Route A1A would say to the tourists, as the No-Knock flowed, “Well, that Atlas vehicle’s given us more fits than a June bug on a porch bulb, but we got real confidence in that Redstone, and I think we’re gonna make it.” Everyone who felt the spirit of NASA at that time wanted to be part of it. It took on a religious dimension that engineers, no less than pilots, would resist putting into words. But all felt it.

Sorry but I’m revising for my spelling test tomorrow . . . . . . I know it’s only a 10 word test, but Miss Print said there will be a surprise bonus word. So I decided to be thorough and learn all 60,000 words in the English Dictionary.

When she added that graduates were known for having a “natural physical endowment,” Darby could have sworn she looked right at her, and not in a good way. What the heck did that mean? Pretty? Buxom? She’d pulled her shoulders back and sat up straighter. The classes were tedious, for the most part: typing, shorthand, communication, and spelling tests.

Then I stare at him for a while trying to determine what he wants. And if I want to give it to him. And then I start to panic a little. What if he wants to have an awkward conversation? Like more awkward than me? Or ask me about my sexual history? Or if I cheated on my third-grade spelling test in Mrs. Kallam’s class? Okay, I admit that last one is a little specific and not likely to come up. But I’m still a little ashamed of myself for doing it. “Would you rather eat stale pretzels or stale Cheetos?” “What?” I look at him, not sure I heard him correctly. He tilts his head in a nod, like, ‘you heard me correctly,’ but repeats the question. “Um, stale pretzels, I guess.” “Go a week without the internet or a week without coffee?” Oh, we’re playing the ‘would you rather’ game. “Internet.” I smile. “I think. Wait maybe the coffee? No, the internet.” “Play Quidditch or use the invisibility cloak for a day?” “You did not just Harry Potter me.” “I did.” “Well, I’m not sure that’s even answerable.” I shake my head and groan a little. “Who wouldn’t want to play Quidditch? But the invisibility cloak, wow.” I sigh, a dreamy expression on my face. Boyd just stares as if he’s not moving on until I answer. “Quidditch.” I finally relent. “Why?” “It looks like fun. Plus the invisibility cloak is basically spying, right? And I don’t really need to spy on anyone so it would be a waste.” “No point in being wasteful,” he agrees. “Plus I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that I’d be really good at Quidditch.” And I can’t help it. This tidbit comes out a little smugly. Boyd lasts two seconds before laughing at me.

At the end of his spell in Argentina he felt that he was better prepared than ever before; not totally, because Pep will never allow himself to be completely satisfied, but he felt ready enough to start putting everything he had learnt to the test.

She rolled to her feet and tested her new body, her laughter coming out as a soft chuff as she spun about in place. Suddenly Ramsay was beside her, larger still, his caramel-colored fur shining like bronze in the sunlight. He nuzzled his snout to hers and rumbled in affection. It was the perfect ending to the story she’d have to write one day. Goldilocks and her bear, she

personality to match. He had an opinion about everything that went on in her house, from where she kept the tea bags to Billy’s spelling tests to why she didn’t buy out Aidan and run the bar herself. And to make matters worse, he had a better social life

Oh, yes," Father Mancuso nodded. "As Father Ryan mentioned, I've seen and heard many who've come to me as a psychotherapist and as a parish priest." Chancellor Ryan picked up the thread. "Then there are the so-called extraordinary activities of the devil in the world. Usually these are material things around a person that are affected; that might be what you're up against. We call it infestation. It breaks down into different categories which we'll explain in a minute." "Obsession," Father Nuncio put in, "is the next step, in which the person is affected either internally or externally. And finally there is possession, by which the person temporarily loses control of his faculties and the devil acts in and through him." When Father Mancuso had come to the Chancellors' office to keep his appointment, he had been somewhat embarrassed as to how to approach his problem. But he relaxed as the two priests had shown keen interest. Now with their spelling out the guidelines he must take in this kind of situation, Father Mancuso raised his hopes for deliverance from this evil. "In investigating cases of possible diabolical interference," Chancellor Ryan went on, "we must consider the following: One, fraud and deception. Two, natural scientific causes. Three, parapsychological causes. Four, diabolical influences. And five, miracles. In this case, fraud and trickery don't seem plausible. George and Kathleen Lutz seem to be normal, balanced individuals. We think you are too. The possibilities therefore are reduced to psychological, parapsychological, or diabolical influences." "We'll exclude the miraculous," Father Nuncio broke in, "because the Divine would not involve itself in the trivial and foolish." "True," said Father Ryan. "Therefore the explanation would seem to include hallucination and autosuggestion - you know, like the invisible touches Kathy experienced - and when George thought he heard that marching band. But let's take the parapsychological line. Parapsychologists like Dr. Rhine, who works at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, define four main operations in the science. The first three come under the general heading of ESP-extrasensory perception. They are mental telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, which could explain George's visions and 'picking up' information that seems to coincide with known facts about the DeFeos. The fourth parapsychological area is psychokinesis, where objects move by themselves. That would be the case with the Lutzes' ceramic lion - if it did move," he added. Father Nuncio got up to refill his cup. "All of what we've said, Frank, is part of the suggestion we have for the Lutzes. Have them contact some investigative organization like Dr. Rhine's to come in and look at the house. They'll do extensive testing and I'm sure they can come to some conclusion short of diabolical influence.

Yet, as Brandon explained with a mixture of bitterness and regret, college proved to be the start of a long series of disappointments. Unable to pass calculus or physics, he switched his major from engineering to criminal justice. Still optimistic, he applied to several police departments upon graduation, excited about a future of “catching crooks.” The first department used a bewildering lottery system for hiring, and he didn’t make the cut. The second informed him that he had failed a mandatory spelling test (“I had a degree!”) and refused to consider his application. Finally, he became “completely turned off to this idea” when the third department disqualified him because of a minor incident in college in which he and his roommate “borrowed” a school-owned buffing machine as a harmless prank. Because he “could have been charged with a felony,” the department informed him, he was ineligible for police duty. Regrettably, his college had no record of the incident. Brandon had volunteered the information out of a desire to illustrate his honest and upstanding character and improve his odds of getting the job. With “two dreams deferred,”2 Brandon took a job as the nightshift manager of a clothing chain, hoping it would be temporary. Eleven years later, he describes his typical day, which consists of unloading shipments, steaming and pricing garments, and restocking the floor, as “not challenging at all. I don’t get to solve problems or be creative. I don’t get to work with numbers, and I am a numbers guy. I basically babysit a team and deal with personnel.” When his loans came out of deferment, he couldn’t afford the monthly payments and decided to get a master’s degree—partly to increase his earning potential and partly to put his loans back into deferment. After all, it had been “hammered into his head” that higher education was the key to success. He put on twenty-five pounds while working and going to school full-time for three years. He finally earned a master’s degree in government, paid for with more loans from “that mean lady Sallie Mae.”3 So far, Brandon has still not found a job that will pay him enough to cover his monthly loan and living expenses. He has managed to keep the loans in deferment by continually consolidating—a strategy that costs him $5,000 a year in interest. Taking

Thanks to the nation's testing mania (which I like to call 'No Child Left Untested' rather than 'No Child Left Behind'), children are being barraged with a nonstop volley of standardized tests. From kindergarten to graduate school, students are subjected to an unprecedented number of high-stakes tests