Stamped For Kids Quotes

She's as plastic as you are. If you ever have kids, they'll come out of the birth canal with Fisher-Price stamped on their butts.

Everybody has a ‘gripping stranger’ in their lives, Andy, a stranger who unwittingly possesses a bizarre hold over you. Maybe it’s the kid in cut-offs who mows your lawn or the woman wearing White Shoulders who stamps your book at the library—a stranger who, if you were to come home and find a message from them on your answering machine saying ‘Drop everything. I love you. Come away with me now to Florida,’ you’d follow them.

She's as plastic as you are! I'm telling you, it's a bad idea. If the two of you have kids, they'll come out of the birth canal with Fisherprice stamped on their butts!

Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps.

we think of our children as amazingly fragile and entirely moldable. Both assumptions are mistaken. It’s harder to ruin our kids than we think and harder to stamp them for success than we’d like.

I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would never even have crossed a kid's mind to tell an adult to fuck off. There was plenty of bad there, I don't forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn't break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbors, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero. Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it's spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the businessmen shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can't have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.

On Rachel's show for November 7, 2012: We're not going to have a supreme court that will overturn Roe versus Wade. There will be no more Antonio Scalias and Samuel Aleatos added to this court. We're not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance. We are not going to do that. We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut. We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on. We are not going to redefine rape. We are not going to amend the United States constitution to stop gay people from getting married. We are not going to double Guantanamo. We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of Education or Housing at the federal level. We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want. We are not scaling back on student loans because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents. We are not vetoing the Dream Act. We are not self-deporting. We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt. We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January. We are not going to have, as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared, gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever. We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not bringing Dick Cheney back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War. We are not going to do it. We had the chance to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country. and we said no, last night, loudly.

Rose's work of art took her all day, including two playtimes, story time, and most of lunch. At the end of school it was stolen from her by the wicked teacher who had pretended to be so interested. "Beautiful- what-is-it?" she asked as she pinned it high on the wall, where Rose could not reach. "They take your pictures," said Indigo,... when he finally made out what all the roaring and stamping was about. "They do take them.... Why do you want that picture so much?" he asked Rose. "It was my best ever," said Rose furiously. "I hate school. I hate everyone in it. I will kill them all when I'm big enough." "You can't just go round killing people," Indigo told her...

I’m just like my dad. He stamped out my light when I was a kid, and now I get the world back by stamping out beautiful lights.

In every way there is, murder is chaos. Our job is simple, when you get down to it: we stand against that, for order. I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would never even have crossed a kid’s mind to tell an adult to fuck off. There was plenty of bad there, I don’t forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn’t break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbors, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero. Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it’s spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the businessmen shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can’t have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone. The final step into feral is murder.

Identity politics forces those who ask for our support to do their jobs: To understand that the self-made man got zoned into a good school district and received a high-quality education, one that wouldn’t have existed if his zip code changed by a digit. To recognize that the woman on welfare with three kids is the product of divorce in a state where she risks losing food stamps if her low-wage job pays her too much. Or that the homeless junkie is an Iraq War veteran who was in the National Guard but lost his job due to multiple deployments and didn’t qualify for full VA care. And that the laborer is a migrant farmworker who overstayed his visa to care for his American-born children. Single-strand identities do not exist in a household, let alone in a nation.

In my experience, most parents sincerely want their children to be assertive, independent thinkers who are unafraid to stand their ground . . . with their peers. When a child demonstrates the identical sort of courage in interactions with them, it’s a different story: At best, it’s a troublesome phase that kids go through; at worst, it’s an example of uncooperative, disrespectful, disobedient, defiant behavior that must be stamped out. The truth is that if we want children to be able to resist peer pressure and grow into principled and brave adults, we have to actively welcome their questioning and being assertive with us. We have to move beyond our need to win arguments and impose our will, beyond our fear that we’ll be seen as weak or permissive if our kids are given leave to challenge us.

GINGER. He and I established the most wonderful rapport. I think he's infatuated with me; he kept grabbing my ass and telling me how different I am. I think he senses the rebel in me. I've always been in rebellion ever since I was a kid. I remember how whenever my father's tell me to pick my toys up I'd stamp my foot and say "No" twice before picking them up. Oh, I was a mean one. My latest rebellion is my childhood religion; I've just rebelled against that. I used to be High Episcopalian. BONGI. What're you now? GINGER. Low Epicsopalian.

So Aunt Jillian quit her job and hitched her wagon to Brant. Lived off food stamps and her savings account in a spare bedroom at Brant's house for two years. Then she brokered their first deal and all of the Sharps moved their bank account decimals seven places to the right.

These are the little losers in the bunny derby, but they lose on a different route than the Mariannes, or the ones you see in the supermarket on the nights when they double the green stamps, coming in junk cars, plodding the bright aisles, snarling at their cross sleepy kids.

I am a man and what I have to recapture is the whole past of the world, I am not responsible only for the slavery involved in Santo Domingo, every time man has contributed to the victory of the dignity of the spirit, every time a man has said no to an attempt to subjugate his fellows, I have felt solidarity with his act. In no way does my basic vocation have to be drawn from the past of peoples of color. In no way do I have to dedicate myself to reviving some black civilization unjustly ignored. I will not make myself the man of any past. My black skin is not a repository for specific values. Haven’t I got better things to do on this earth than avenge the blacks of the 17th century? I as a man of color do not have the right to hope that in the white man there will be a crystallization of guilt towards the past of my race. I as a man of color do not have the right of stamping down the pride of my former master. I have neither the right nor the duty to demand reparations for my subjugated ancestors. There is no black mission. There is no white burden. I do not want to be victim to the rules of a black world. Am I going to ask this white man to answer for the slave traders of the 17th century? Am I going to try by every means available to cause guilt to burgeon in their souls? I am not a slave to slavery that dehumanized my ancestors. It would be of enormous interest to discover a black literature or architecture from the 3rd century B.C, we would be overjoyed to learn of the existence of a correspondence between some black philosopher and Plato, but we can absolutely not see how this fact would change the lives of 8 year old kids working the cane fields of Martinique or Guadeloupe. I find myself in the world and I recognize I have one right alone: of demanding human behavior from the other.

He showed them a survey that Lisa Koonin commissioned, of parents with children who used it: just one in seven, or 2.8 million, said they’d have trouble feeding their children if schools could not. If schools were closed, Carter concluded, the problem was not 30 million kids but fewer than 3 million; they could be fed with supplemental food stamps.

There were some children round him playing in the dust on the paths. They had long fair hair, and with very earnest faces and solemn attention were making little mountains of sand so as to stamp on them and squash them underfoot. Pierre was going through one of those gloomy days when one looks into every corner of one's soul and shakes out every crease. 'Our occupations are like the work of those kids,' he thought. Then he wondered whether after all the wisest course in life was not to beget two or three of these little useless beings and watch them grow with complacent curiosity. And he was touched by the desire to marry. You aren't so lost when you're not alone any more. At any rate you can hear somebody moving near you in times of worry and uncertainty, and it is something anyway to be able to say words of love to a woman when you are feeling down. He began thinking about women. His knowledge of them was very limited, as all he had had in the Latin Quarter was affairs of a fortnight or so, dropped when the month's money ran out and picked up again or replaced the following month. Yet kind, gentle, consoling creatures must exist. Hadn't his own mother brought sweet reasonableness and charm to his father's home? How he would have loved to meet a woman, a real woman! He leaped up, determined to go and pay a little visit to Mme Rosémilly. But he quickly sat down again. No, he didn't like that one!

Look, guys, I know you mean well and you’re doing your job, but it’d be better for everyone if you all got back in your cars and drove away. Pretend like this never happened. I promise I’m not going to blow anything up and the most un-American thing I’ve ever done is root for South Korea in speed skating during the Olympics. This whole thing falls so far out of your jurisdiction it’s not even funny.” I pictured the officers cuffing Reth and reading him his rights, then trying to detain Cresseda. “Okay, it’s a little funny. But seriously. As far as you’re all concerned, I’m just a teen girl who is really far behind on planning for the dance decorating committee. And also dating an invisible boy.” “Orders are orders,” the mustachioed man said gruffly, elbowing the men around him and startling them out of their paranormal-induced stupor. “We’re taking you in.” He walked down the steps. I sighed. “Don’t make me call the dragon.” He laughed, and so did most of the others, but a few looked back at Lend and the blood drained from their faces. “Look, kid, I’m with you. I think this is all a mistake, maybe even a clerical error. We’ll figure it out at the station.” Arianna swore, stamping her foot. “That’s it! She put her fingers to her lips and let out a shrill, earsplitting whistle. A rush of wind engulfed us as the dragon in all its serpentine glory snaked out of the trees, settling onto the ground and rearing up to stare down at all of us. I thought I’d learn a few new words, but the men were too shocked to even swear this time.

Then it was horn time. Time for the big solo. Sonny lifted the trumpet - One! Two! - He got it into sight - Three! We all stopped dead. I mean we stopped. That wasn't Sonny's horn. This one was dented-in and beat-up and the tip-end was nicked. It didn't shine, not a bit. Lux leaned over-you could have fit a coffee cup into his mouth. "Jesus God," he said. "Am I seeing right?" I looked close and said: "Man, I hope not." But why kid? We'd seen that trumpet a million times. It was Spoof's. Rose-Ann was trembling. Just like me, she remembered how we'd buried the horn with Spoof. And she remembered how quiet it had been in Sonny's room last night... I started to think real hophead thoughts, like - where did Sonny get hold of a shovel that late? and how could he expect a horn to play that's been under the ground for two years? and - That blast got into our ears like long knives. Spoof's own trademark! Sonny looked caught, like he didn't know what to do at first, like he was hypnotized, scared, almighty scared. But as the sound came out, rolling out, sharp and clean and clear - new-trumpet sound - his expression changed. His eyes changed: they danced a little and opened wide. Then he closed them, and blew that horn. Lord God of the Fishes, how he blew it! How he loved it and caressed it and pushed it up, higher and higher and higher. High C? Bottom of the barrel. He took off, and he walked all over the rules and stamped them flat. The melody got lost, first off. Everything got lost, then, while that horn flew. It wasn't only jazz; it was the heart of jazz, and the insides, pulled out with the roots and held up for everybody to see; it was blues that told the story of all the lonely cats and all the ugly whores who ever lived, blues that spoke up for the loser lamping sunshine out of iron-gray bars and every hop head hooked and gone, for the bindlestiffs and the city slicers, for the country boys in Georgia shacks and the High Yellow hipsters in Chicago slums and the bootblacks on the corners and the fruits in New Orleans, a blues that spoke for all the lonely, sad and anxious downers who could never speak themselves... And then, when it had said all this, it stopped and there was a quiet so quiet that Sonny could have shouted: 'It's okay, Spoof. It's all right now. You get it said, all of it - I'll help you. God, Spoof, you showed me how, you planned it - I'll do my best!' And he laid back his head and fastened the horn and pulled in air and blew some more. Not sad, now, not blues - but not anything else you could call by a name. Except... jazz. It was Jazz. Hate blew out of that horn, then. Hate and fury and mad and fight, like screams and snarls, like little razors shooting at you, millions of them, cutting, cutting deep... And Sonny only stopping to wipe his lip and whisper in the silent room full of people: 'You're saying it, Spoof! You are!' God Almighty Himself must have heard that trumpet, then; slapping and hitting and hurting with notes that don't exist and never existed. Man! Life took a real beating! Life got groined and sliced and belly-punched and the horn, it didn't stop until everything had all spilled out, every bit of the hate and mad that's built up in a man's heart. ("Black Country")

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954: I’m sure you’ve heard of this one. If you live in the South and go to a diverse school, this is why. This was the case that said racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The results: The schools began to mix. What’s really interesting about this case, though, something rarely discussed, is that it’s actually a pretty racist idea. I mean, what it basically suggests is that Black kids need a fair shot, and a fair shot is in White schools. I mean, why weren’t there any White kids integrating into Black schools? The assumption was that Black kids weren’t as intelligent because they weren’t around White kids, as if the mere presence of White kids would make Black kids better. Not. True. A good school is a good school, whether there are White people there or not. Oh, and of course people were pissed about this.

In my previous life, I learned something. I remember seeing it painted on the faces of the kids in the hospital. It is this: All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need. One undeniable fear. To be known. You can stamp it out. Kill it. Box it up and hem it in. Numb it and close the door. Bury it and nail it shut. Encase it in stone. But eventually, the needs of the heart will tear the door off the hinges, unearth it, and crack the stone. No prison ever built could house it. Those of us who think we can are lying to ourselves. And those next to us. Hope never dies.

So began my love affair with books. Years later, as a college student, I remember having a choice between a few slices of pizza that would have held me over for a day or a copy of On the Road. I bought the book. I would have forgotten what the pizza tasted like, but I still remember Kerouac. The world was mine for the reading. I traveled with my books. I was there on a tramp steamer in the North Atlantic with the Hardy Boys, piecing together an unsolvable crime. I rode into the Valley of Death with the six hundred and I stood at the graves of Uncas and Cora and listened to the mournful song of the Lenni Linape. Although I braved a frozen death at Valley Forge and felt the spin of a hundred bullets at Shiloh, I was never afraid. I was there as much as you are where you are, right this second. I smelled the gunsmoke and tasted the frost. And it was good to be there. No one could harm me there. No one could punch me, slap me, call me stupid, or pretend I wasn’t in the room. The other kids raced through books so they could get the completion stamp on their library card. I didn’t care about that stupid completion stamp. I didn’t want to race through books. I wanted books to walk slowly through me, stop, and touch my brain and my memory. If a book couldn’t do that, it probably wasn’t a very good book. Besides, it isn’t how much you read, it’s what you read. What I learned from books, from young Ben Franklin’s anger at his brother to Anne Frank’s longing for the way her life used to be, was that I wasn’t alone in my pain. All that caused me such anguish affected others, too, and that connected me to them and that connected me to my books. I loved everything about books. I loved that odd sensation of turning the final page, realizing the story had ended, and feeling that I was saying a last goodbye to a new friend.

I came to realize that this was about more than not offering up what some of his opponents craved—the picture of the angry black man, or the lectures on race that fuel a sense of grievance among white voters. Obama also didn’t want to offer up gauzy words to make well-meaning white people feel better. The fact that he was a black president wasn’t going to bring life back to an unarmed black kid who was shot, or alter structural inequities in housing, education, and incarceration in our states and cities. It wasn’t going to change the investment of powerful interests in a system that sought to deny voting rights, or to cast people on food stamps working minimum wage jobs as “takers,” incapable of making it on their own. The “last person who ever thought that Barack Obama’s election was going to bring racial reconciliation and some “end of race” in America was Barack Obama. That was a white person’s concept imposed upon his campaign. I know because I was once one of them, taking delight in writing words about American progress, concluding in the applause line “And that is why I can stand before you as president of the United States.” But he couldn’t offer up absolution for America’s racial sins, or transform American society in four or eight years.

Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it’s spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the businessmen shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can’t have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.

More often than not, the people around me weren’t simply deciding to give up. They were living in a culture of dependency that had been passed down from birth. My mother and grandmother gave in to the culture. And they expected me to figure out the best way to live on that same track, to game the system and not even try to escape. My friend Ben agrees. 'Most of the time, what you see in the housing projects are generations of families,' he says. 'People accustomed to this lifestyle. It becomes comfortable, so they don’t move away, and even their children stay and raise kids in the same environment.' In neighborhoods like the ones where Ben and I grew up, there is no perceived incentive to advance. After all, the checks for housing and the food stamps and assistance arrive every month. This is why the system must be reformed. Welfare should exist only for a certain period of time, unless you’re disabled and can’t physically work. It should not last for a generation or more. There are millions of jobs open, without enough people to fill them or, rather, without enough people who have the necessary skills and training. This is where the government should come in, providing incentives for real-world training and educating recipients about a life beyond government dependence.

...I drag the kids to the farmers' market and fill out the week's cheap supermarket haul with a few vivid bunches of organic produce...Once home, I set out fresh flowers and put the fruit in a jadeite bowl. A jam jar of garden growth even adorns the chartreuse kids' table...I found some used toddler-sized chairs to go around it...It sits right in front of the tall bookcases...When the kids are eating or coloring there, with the cluster or mismatched picture frames hanging just to their left, my son with his mop of sandy hair, my daughter just growing out of babyhood...they look like they could be in a Scandinavian design magazine. I think to myself that maybe motherhood is just this, creating these frames, the little vistas you can take in that look like pictures from magazines, like any number of images that could be filed under familial happiness. They reflect back to you that you're doing it - doing something - right. In my case, these scenes are like a momentary vacation from the actual circumstances of my current life. Children, clean and clad in brightly striped clothing, snacking on slices of organic plum. My son drawing happy gel pen houses, the flourishing clump of smiley-faced flowers beneath a yellow flat sun. To counter the creeping worry that I am a no-good person, I must collect a lot of these images, postage-stamp moments I can gaze upon and think, I can't be fucking up that bad. Can I?

My purpose in life. (Her Son) You are the making, the centre and the skin of my life. I couldn't adore anyone more. No one in this World can say that they educated me, changed me, yield me, broke me down, rebuilt me and strengthen me the way you can and have: and did it with love. You're the only one I can say I've had the pleasure of crying over, getting my heart stamped on by, living through the pain and recovering after it. Everything we've been through we will and have always come out on top: it's you and me kid. You are my Muse, my Heart, my Life and my Soul, and no matter the changes in life, my love, my dedication, my heart and my soul will never. Thank you for the ups and downs, thank you for my crazy smile and lets continue to face the World as we always have....together.

The kid in the newspaper was named Stevie, and he was eight. I was thirty-nine and lived by myself in a house that I owned. For a short time our local newspaper featured an orphan every week. Later they would transition to adoptable pets, but for a while it was orphans, children your could foster and possibly adopt of everything worked out, the profiles were short, maybe two or three hundred words. This was what I knew: Stevie liked going to school. He made friends easily. He promised he would make his bed every morning. He hoped that if he were very good we could have his own dog, and if he were very, very good, his younger brother could be adopted with him. Stevie was Black. I knew nothing else. The picture of him was a little bigger than a postage stamp. He smiled. I studied his face at my breakfast table until something in me snapped. I paced around my house, carrying the folded newspaper. I had two bedrooms. I had a dog. I had so much more than plenty. In return he would make his bed, try his best in school. That was all he had to bargain with: himself. By the time Karl came for dinner after work I was nearly out of my mind. “I want to adopt him,” I said. Karl read the profile. He looked at the picture. “You want to be his mother?” “It’s not about being his mother. I mean, sure, if I’m his mother that’s fine, but it’s like seeing a kid waving from the window of a burning house, saying he’ll make his bed if someone will come and get him out. I can’t leave him there.” “We can do this,” Karl said. We can do this. I started to calm myself because Karl was calm. He was good at making things happen. I didn’t have to want children in order to want Stevie. In the morning I called the number in the newspaper. They took down my name and address. They told me they would send the preliminary paperwork. After the paperwork was reviewed, there would be a series of interviews and home visits. “When do I meet Stevie?” I asked. “Stevie?” “The boy in the newspaper.” I had already told her the reason I was calling. “Oh, it’s not like that,” the woman said. “It’s a very long process. We put you together with the child who will be your best match.” “So where’s Stevie?” She said she wasn’t sure. She thought that maybe someone had adopted him. It was a bait and switch, a well-written story: the bed, the dog, the brother. They knew how to bang on the floor to bring people like me out of the woodwork, people who said they would never come. I wrapped up the conversation. I didn’t want a child, I wanted Stevie. It all came down to a single flooding moment of clarity: he wouldn’t live with me, but I could now imagine that he was in a solid house with people who loved him. I put him in the safest chamber of my heart, he and his twin brother in twin beds, the dog asleep in Stevie’s arms. And there they stayed, going with me everywhere until I finally wrote a novel about them called Run. Not because I thought it would find them, but because they had become too much for me to carry. I had to write about them so that I could put them down.

That’s where the shouts and yells of the twenty houses round about crash and rebound, even the cries of the concierges’ little birds, rotting away as they pipe for the spring they will never see in their cages beside the privies, which are all clustered together out at the dark end with their ill-fitting, banging doors. A hundred male and female drunks inhabit those bricks and feed the echoes with their boasting quarrels and muddled, eruptive oaths, especially after lunch on a Saturday. That’s the intense moment in family life. Shouts of defiance as the drink pours down. Papa is brandishing a chair, a sight worth seeing, like an axe, and Mama a log like a sabre! Heaven help the weak! It’s the kid who suffers. Anyone unable to defend himself or fight back – children, dogs and cats – is flattened against the wall. After the third glass of wine, the black kind, the worst, it’s the dog’s turn, Papa stamps on his paw. That’ll teach him to be hungry at the same time as people. It’s good for a laugh when he crawls under the bed, whimpering for all he’s worth. That’s the signal. Nothing arouses a drunken woman so much as an animal in pain, and bulls aren’t always handy. The argument starts up again, vindictive, compulsive, delirious, the wife takes the lead, hurling shrill calls to battle at the male. Then comes the mêlée, the smash-up. The uproar descends on the court, the echo swirls through the half-darkness. The children yap with horror. They’ve found out what Mama and Papa have in them! Their yells draw down parental thunders.

The Unknown Soldier A tale to tell in bloody rhyme, A story to last ’til the dawn of end’s time. Of a loving boy who left dear home, To bear his countries burdens; her honor to sow. –A common boy, I say, who left kith and kin, To battle der Kaiser and all that was therein. The Arsenal of Democracy was his kind, –To make the world safe–was their call and chime. Trained he thus in the far army camps, Drilled he often in the march and stamp. Laughed he did with new found friends, Lived they together for the noble end. Greyish mottled images clipp’ed and hack´ed– Black and white broke drum Ʀ…ɧ..λ..t…ʮ..m..ȿ —marching armies off to ’ttack. Images scratched, chopped, theatrical exaggerate, Confetti parades, shouts of high praise To where hell would sup and partake with all bon hope as the transport do them take Faded icons board the ship– To steel them away collaged together –joined in spirit and hip. Timeworn humanity of once what was To broker peace in eagles and doves. Mortal clay in the earth but to grapple and smite As warbirds ironed soar in heaven’s light. All called all forward to divinities’ kept date, Heroes all–all aces and fates. Paris–Used to sing and play at some cards, A common Joe everybody knew from own heart. He could have been called ‘the kid’ by the ‘old man,’ But a common private now taking orders to stand. Receiving letters from his shy sweet one, Read them over and over until they faded to none. Trained like hell with his Commander-in-Arms, –To avoid the dangers of a most bloody harm. Aye, this boy was mortal, true enough said, He could be one of thousands alive but now surely dead. How he sang and cried and ate the gruel of rations, And grumbled as soldiers do at war’s great contagions. Out–out to the battle this young did go, To become a man; the world to show. (An ocean away his mother cried so– To return her boy safe as far as the heavens go). Lay he down in trenched hole, With balls bursting overhead upon the knoll. Listened hardnfast to the “Sarge” bearing the news, —“We’re going over soon—” was all he knew. The whistle blew; up and over they went, Charging the Hun, his life to be spent (“Avoid the gas boys that’ll blister yer arse!!”). Running through wires razored and deadened trees, Fell he into a gouge to find in shelter of need (They say he bayoneted one just as he–, face to face in War’s Dance of trialed humanity). A nameless sonnuvabitch shell then did untimely RiiiiiiiP the field asunder in burrrstzʑ–and he tripped. And on the field of battle’s blood did he die, Faceless in a puddle as blurrs of ghosting men shrieked as they were fleeing by–. Perished he alone in the no man’s land, Surrounded by an army of his brother’s teeming bands . . . And a world away a mother sighed, Listened to the rain and lay down and cried. . . . Today lays the grave somber and white, Guarded decades long in both the dark and the light. Silent sentinels watch o’er and with him do walk, Speak they neither; their duty talks. Lone, stark sentries perform the unsmiling task, –Guarding this one dead–at the nation’s bequest. Cared over day and night in both rain or sun, Present changing of the guard and their duty is done (The changing of the guard ’tis poetry motioned A Nation defining itself–telling of rifles twirl-clicking under the intensest of devotions). This poem–of The Unknown, taken thus, Is rend eternal by Divinity’s Iron Trust. How he, a common soldier, gained the estate Of bearing his countries glory unto his unknown fate. Here rests in honored glory a warrior known but to God, Now rests he in peace from the conflict path he trod. He is our friend, our family, brother, our mother’s son –belongs he to us all, For he has stood in our place–heeding God’s final call.

Rebel [Verse 1] I don't give a fuck my brudda, I never have I'm straight from the gutter my brudda, we never had We living on a budget - holes in the rooftop Room full of buckets, it's getting bad Things could be worse I suppose, school trips, school kids Cursing my clothes, is it the same in every house When the curtains are closed? (daydreamin') I'm in a world of my own (I ain't leavin') It must be because I hate my reality That's why I'm on the verge of embracing insanity Put me in a padded room Throw away the key and let me escape the anarchy I can't take it, I turn my back on the world I can't face it, Ray-Ban gang fam Can't see my eyes cause I'm on my dark shades shit (Ray Charles) [Bridge] Black everything, you can ask David Cameron if we're living in the dark ages Black everything, you can ask David Black everything, you can ask David Black everything, you can ask David Cameron if we're living in the dark ages [Hook] (It's a living hell) I'm a rebel Always have been Where I'm come from it's a mad ting (It's a living hell) Standing in my Stan Smiths Stamping on the canvas for action (It's a living hell) All I acquired from the riot Is people are sick and tired of being quiet (It's a living hell) Dying to be heard That's why there's fire in my words [Verse 2] I don't give a fuck my brudda, I never will Straight from the gutter my brudda, rare real We been living life like "fuck it", living life like there's nothing To live for but the money, I'mma keep it 100 The hunger inside is what drives us That's why there's youngers inside who are lifers They say love is blind so you might just Fall in love with them crimes that'll blind us And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't out late Around H, scales out, another ounce weighed More pounds made, sounds great Salts under my tongue, my mouth's laced So many feds chasing me down, the ground shakes Helicopters, bikes and cars chasing So many officers behind, my heart's racing [Bridge] [Hook x2]

I told her one of the few stories that she'd told me of myself as a child. We'd gone to a park by a lake. I was no older than two. Me, my father, and my mother. There was an enormous tree with branches so long and droopy that my father moved the picnic table from underneath it. He was always afraid of me getting crushed. My mother believed that kids had stronger bones than grownups. "There's more calcium in her forearm than in an entire dairy farm," she liked to say. That day, my mother had made roasted tomato and goat cheese sandwiches with salmon she'd smoked herself, and I ate, she said, double my weight of it. She was complimenting me when she said that. I always wondered if eating so much was my best way of complimenting her. The story went that all through lunch I kept pointing at a gaping hole in the tree, reaching for it, waving at it. My parents thought it was just that: a hole, one that had been filled with fall leaves, stiff and brown, by some kind of ferrety animal. But I wasn't satisfied with that explanation. I wouldn't give up. "What?" my father kept asking me. "What do you see?" I ate my sandwiches, drank my sparkling hibiscus drink, and refused to take my eyes off the hole. "It was as if you were flirting with it," my mother said, "the way you smiled and all." Finally, I squealed, "Butter fire!" Some honey upside-down cake went flying from my mouth. "Butter fire?" they asked me. "Butter fire?" "Butter fire!" I yelled, pointing, reaching, waving. They couldn't understand. There was nothing interesting about the leaves in the tree. They wondered if I'd seen a squirrel. "Chipmunk?" they asked. "Owl?" I shook my head fiercely. No. No. No. "Butter fire!" I screamed so loudly that I sent hundreds of the tightly packed monarchs that my parents had mistaken for leaves exploding in the air in an eruption of lava-colored flames. They went soaring wildly, first in a vibrating clump and then as tiny careening postage stamps, floating through the sky. They were proud of me that day, my parents. My father for my recognition of an animal so delicate and precious, and my mother because I'd used a food word, regardless of what I'd actually meant.

When I was a kid, buying packets and penny approvals and filling spaces in my Modern Stamp Album, nothing was easier to find and to afford than those German issues. Think of it, a stamp that cost fifty billion marks! And it was mine for a penny!

The irony is that only by a particularly narrow definition does a Walmart job get you off welfare - as a matter of policy, Walmart encourages its employees to apply for government benefits. Indeed, Walmart and other minimum wage workers at McDonald's and similar McJobs are the largest group of Medicaid and food stamps recipients in the United States. That is to say, US taxpayers subsidize Walmart paychecks (and corporate profits) by paying welfare benefits to its workers and their children. Welfare reform eliminated virtually all education and job-training benefits beyond "work readiness" classes that taught women to dress nicely and get their kids up early. The result: women couldn't get the education to get a good job and they were still receiving welfare benefits, but they could be counted on to clock regular hours and make profits for their low-paying employers. From welfare reform to Walmart, it was all reproductive politics.

but many others who were silenced by the White House and by Black male leaders of the civil rights movement. Like… Black women. Daisy Bates read a short vow, a pledge on behalf of women working within the movement. But Dorothy Height, a powerful leader who helped organize the event and was the only woman to stand on the platform with Dr. King, was not invited to speak. Nor was Rosa Parks. Or so many other Black women whose work had fueled the movement. Black LGBTQ+ leaders. Bayard Rustin, a key adviser to Dr. King and an organizer of the event, was not invited to speak. Nor was James Baldwin, a Black novelist who, through his writings, had become a brilliant and bold political voice. Malcolm X. He attended the event but was not invited to speak.

The War on Drugs pushed by President Ronald Reagan. Even though White people and Black people were selling and using drugs at similar rates, the new drug laws targeted Black people. For example, one law made it a more serious crime to be caught with small amounts of the types of drugs more often found in poor Black neighborhoods than with larger amounts of the types of drugs more often found in rich White neighborhoods. The result of this new policy was that millions of Black Americans were sent to jail. It was a war on Black people, and it devastated Black communities.

candidate George H. W. Bush, who used the racist idea that Black people are a threat, to help win the presidency.

Black women like Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. They started not only a hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, they started a movement

And, what’s worse, he claimed that enslaving Africans was a mission from God. God? Can you believe that? And that it was the Europeans’ duty to civilize and tame them—to teach them Christianity in order to save their wretched souls. Over time, these racist lies would begin to convince even some African people that they weren’t as good as White people.

I love you, and I know in my gut that I want to be with you. I want to grow old with you and run through the sprinklers with our kids in the summer. And I want to take family camping vacations and teach our kids how to fish. And I want to fill up your passport with stamps. I want to take care of you, the same way you take care of everyone else in your life. To stand alongside you as we build up the camp, so kids have more opportunities. I want to make your dreams come true, Hannah.

Q: What did the stamp say to the envelope? A: Stick with me and we will go places! Q: Why was the belt arrested?

Yo momma's so tall when I tell her to bend over she's still taller than me. Yo momma's so tall, she did a push-up and burned her back on the sun. Yo momma's so tall she went to Leeds and her legs were still at home. Yo momma's so tall she called the Ocean a kitty pool. Yo momma's so tall, she can see her house from anywhere. Yo momma's so tall when she jump in the sky it hit jesus' balls. Yo momma's so tall she could "69" big foot. Yo momma's so tall she has to take a bath in Niagra falls. Yo Momma's so Stupid   Yo momma's so stupid, she told me everything she knows during a commercial break. Yo momma's so stupid, that if I need a brain transplant I'll take hers, because it's barely been used. Yo momma's so stupid she sent me a fax with a stamp on it. Yo momma's so stupid. She went to the eye doctor to buy an iPad. Yo momma's so stupid she threw the clock out the window to see time fly! Yo momma's so stupid she took a spoon to the superbowl. Yo momma's so stupid, if her brain was chocolate it wouldn't fill a M&M. Yo momma's so stupid if you stand close enough to her you can hear the ocean. Yo momma's so stupid, the smartest thing to come out of her mouth was a penis. Yo momma's so stupid, the government banned her from homeschooling her kids. Yo momma's so stupid, she's the reason women only make 75 cents on the dollar. Yo momma's so stupid, she filled her car with water so she can drive in the Car Pool lane. Yo momma's so stupid, I would ask her how old she is, but I know she can't count that high. Yo momma's so stupid she called Dan Quayle for a spell check. Yo momma's so stupid she put cheese on my dad because he's a cracker. Yo momma's so stupid she stepped on a crack and broke her own back. Yo momma's so stupid she makes Beavis and Butt-Head look like Nobel Prize winners. Yo momma's so stupid she got locked in a grocery store and starved to death. Yo momma's so stupid she tripped over a cordless phone. Yo momma's so Stupid when i said One mans trash is another mans Treasure she jump in a trash bin. Yo momma's so stupid she spent 20 minutes looking at the orange juice box because it said "concentrate". Yo momma's so stupid she thought she needed a token to get on Soul Train.

Sure, she was going to turn eighteen in less than a year. She’d been in the system long enough to know that eighteenth birthdays weren’t marked by celebrations. When the checks stopped coming, she’d be on her own. “Aging out” of foster care meant becoming homeless. She’d heard stories of kids ending up in jail and hospital emergency rooms, selling drugs, living on welfare and food stamps. How desperate did a person have to become before they broke the law to survive? For now, things were good, and she didn’t want to mess that up.

Sean had never stared into as many blank-eyed faces before. Throughout the high school civics talk, he felt as if he were speaking to the kids in a foreign language, one they had no intention of learning. Scrambling for a way to reach his audience, he ad-libbed, tossing out anecdotes about his own years at Coral Beach High. He confessed that as a teenager his decision to run for student government had been little more than a wily excuse to approach the best-looking girls. But what ultimately hooked his interest in student government was the startling discovery that the kids at school, all so different—jocks, nerds, preppies, and brains—could unite behind a common cause. During his senior year, when he’d been president of the student council, Coral Beach High raised seven thousand dollars to aid Florida’s hurricane victims. Wouldn’t that be something to feel good about? Sean asked his teenage audience. The response he received was as rousing as a herd of cows chewing their cud. Except this group was blowing big pink bubbles with their gum. The question and answer period, too, turned out to be a joke. The teens’ main preoccupation: his salary and whether he got driven around town in a chauffeured limo. When they learned he was willing to work for peanuts and that he drove an eight-year-old convertible, he might as well have stamped a big fat L on his forehead. He was weak-kneed with relief when at last the principal mounted the auditorium steps and thanked Sean for his electrifying speech. While Sean was politically seasoned enough to put the morning’s snafus behind him, and not worry overmuch that the apathetic bunch he’d just talked to represented America’s future voters, it was the high school principal’s long-winded enthusiasm, telling Sean how much of an inspiration he was for these kids, that truly set Sean’s teeth on edge. And made him even later for the final meeting of the day, the coral reef advisory panel.

America’s elite universities were once fertile ground for debate where students discussed ideas that were both classical and experimental, traditional and controversial. Students demanded the right to free speech. A generation later, students are demanding freedom from speech. Now, college campuses are places where coddled Millennials go to get indoctrinated by 1960s radicals. Ten years ago we worried about liberal bias on college campuses, but today students are demanding it, calling for protection from conversations and symbolism that they deem “triggering,” a catchall term for anything anyone anywhere might find mildly offensive. Censorship has long been a tool used by the politically powerful to stamp out dissent and stifle protest—yet today’s kids, ignorant of the past, are demanding it!

When summer began, I headed out west. My parents had told me I needed a rest. “Your imagination,” they said, “is getting too wild. It will do you some good to relax for a while.” So they put me aboard a westbound train. To visit Aunt Fern in her house on the plains. But I was captured by cowboys, A wild-looking crowd. Their manners were rough and their voices were loud. “I’m trying to get to my aunt’s house,” I said. But they carried me off to their cow camp instead. The Cattle Boss growled, as he told me to sit, “We need a new cowboy. Our old cowboy quit. We could sure use your help. So what do you say?” I thought for a minute, then I told him, “Okay.” Then I wrote to Aunt Fern, so she’d know where I’d gone. I said not to worry, I wouldn’t be long. That night I was given a new set of clothes. Soon I looked like a wrangler from my head to my toes. But there’s more to a cowboy than boots and a hat, I found out the next day And the day after that Each day I discovered some new cowboy tricks. From roping And riding To making fire with sticks. Slowly the word spread all over the land. “That wrangler ‘Kid Bleff’ is a first-rate cowhand!” The day finally came when the roundup was through. Aunt Fern called: “Come on over. Bring your cowboys with you.” She was cooking a barbecue that very same day. So we cleaned up (a little) and we headed her way. The food was delicious. There was plenty to eat. And the band that was playing just couldn’t be beat. But suddenly I noticed a terrible sight. The cattle were stirring and stamping with fright. It’s a scene I’ll remember till my very last day. “They’re gonna stampede!” I heard somebody say. Just then they came charging. They charged right at me! I looked for a hiding place-- A rock, or a tree. What I found was a tablecloth spread out on the ground. So I turned like a matador And spun it around. It was a new kind of cowboying, a fantastic display! The cattle were frightened and stampeded…away! Then the cowboys all cheered, “Bleff’s a true buckaroo!” They shook my hand and slapped my back, And Aunt Fern hugged me, too. And that’s how I spent my summer vacation. I can hardly wait for show-and-tell!

I’ve even seen kids wearing red and white jerseys with Garrison stamped across the back right above his number.

It really is something when you can make collecting and organising objects boring to a young kid with autism spectrum disorder (but that’s exactly what Stamp Explorer managed to do).

world? A: A stamp. Q: What did the computer say when it fell into quicksand?

It’s like stamp collecting. I used to collect stamps when I was a kid. You could send a letter to somebody in a foreign country and most of the time they’d write back. It didn’t matter what they said. All you wanted was the stamp.

But I guess you get good at kidding yourself when you’re grieving. You pretend that they’re merely on holiday, only to return very soon, armed with luggage and souvenirs from their travels. You expect a postcard plastered with stamps and photos from the beach through your letterbox saying, ‘wish you were here!’ It’s times like those that make seeing the grave feel like punch to the gut, acting as a stark reminder that they’re never coming back.

The primitive Japanese, so terrified of the resurrection of their dead, had folded the legs of the corpses and piled their graves with massively heavy slabs of stone. We too stamped the earth flat with legs stregthened by fear of our friend, once a comrade of ours, rising up from out of the earth and rampagning in the village where children had bren left behind alone and cut off.

The first hints of this emerged in the early and mid-1990s, at the tail end of the crack epidemic. Suniya Luthar is now sixty-two, with an infectious smile, bright brown eyes, and short snow-white hair. Back then, she was a fledgling psychologist working as an assistant professor and researcher in the department of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. She was studying resiliency among teenagers in low-income urban communities, and one of her early findings was that the most popular kids were also among the most destructive and aggressive at school. Was this a demographic phenomenon, she wondered, or merely an adolescent one, this tendency to look up to peers who acted out? To find out, she needed a comparison group. A research assistant suggested they recruit students from his former high school in an affluent suburb. Luthar’s team ultimately enlisted 488 tenth graders—about half from her assistant’s high school and half from a scruffy urban high school. The affluent community’s median household income was 80 percent higher than the national median, and more than twice that of the low-income community. The rich community also had far fewer families on food stamps (0.3 percent vs. 19 percent) and fewer kids getting free or reduced-price school lunches (1 percent vs. 86 percent). The suburban teens were 82 percent white, while the urban teens were 87 percent nonwhite. Luthar surveyed the kids, asking a series of questions related to depression and anxiety, drug use ranging from alcohol and nicotine to LSD and cocaine, and participation in delinquent acts at home, at school, and in the community. Also examined were grades, “social competence,” and teachers’ assessments of each student. After crunching the numbers, she was floored. The affluent teens fared poorly relative to the low-income teens on “all indicators of substance use, including hard drugs.” This flipped the conventional wisdom on its head. “I was quite taken aback,” Luthar recalls.

During the war they was certain things you couldn’t buy unless you had the stamps in the ration books.” Aunt Lillian explained. “Like what?” “Shoes, sugar, meat, gasoline, all sorts of stuff like that.” Grandma said.  “When you went to the store, you had to take your ration books, and the store clerk’d take out stamps before you could buy things.” “You mean before you could buy shoes you had to have a stamp?” “That’s right.” Corie Mae patted Jay’s back. “Ever’ year before school started, we’d take all the kids to town to buy shoes. We had a stamp book for ever’ one of you.

BERNARDINE QUINN: We’re calling marriage equality ‘equality’ as if the day that there’s a bill stamped saying lesbian and gay people can get married that we’ll have full equality. Yet in Meath, there isn’t one single support service for a young lesbian or gay person to attend; there isn’t one qualified full-time youth worker to work with young LGBT people; there is absolutely zero trans services, where the trans services in Dublin are mediocre at best. There’s something about ‘marriage equality’ – that we’ll all be equal when marriage comes in, when a kid in west Kerry doesn’t even have a telephone number of a helpline that he can ring for support. This was raised by our young people to Mairead McGuinness and to Mary Lou McDonald when they were here, just to say, thinking that your work around marriage equality – that that’s not all. The allocation of finances to LGBT work in this country is tiny compared to what is given to most other services. There’s something about calling it ‘equality’. It’s another step on the ladder and it’s a hugely important step … But it isn’t all. There’s another battle after that, and that is to get services to west Donegal, to Mayo, into the Midlands, to get real, solid support in these areas so that a young LGBT person has something in every county, trained qualified people to talk to. In some areas where those services aren’t available, where there isn’t training for schools, where there’s nobody that a kid can talk to, to say that they think they’re transgender – I don’t want to sound negative – I think marriage equality is going to be fantastic for a lot of lesbian and gay people. I think if you were 14 and coming out today, your story is going to be so much more different than when I was 14. The prospects of you considering yourself what every other young person considers themselves of 14 when you think about your future and what you’re going to do: you’re going to meet the person that you love, you’re going to get married, going to have kids, going to have the house and the picket fence. That will be an option for a kid. When I came out, those dreams were put very firmly away. I was never going to get married, I was never going to have children, I was never going to make my family proud, my dad was never going to walk me up the aisle. All of those kinds of things were not even an option when I came out. As a matter of fact, there was a better chance that I was going to have to go to London, I was going to bring huge shame on my family, I probably would end up not speaking to half my siblings and my parents, having to go away and fend for myself. That was my option. I think that option has dramatically changed. People can live in their home towns easier now … Anything that makes a young person’s life easier, and gives them more opportunities, is fantastic. I think that a young person, 14, 15, only starting to discover themselves, they’ve got a whole other suite of options. They can talk about, ‘I’ll eventually marry my partner.’ I think I’m only after saying that for the first time in my life, that there will be an option to marry my partner.

During the best of times, Silicon Valley brimmed with opportunity. It seemed that every kid with a laptop and a hoodie could slap the dotcom suffix on the end of almost anything—stamps.com, shoes.com, drugstore.com, webvan.com, eToys.com, garden.com—and become a millionaire overnight. Venture capitalists poured money into these companies, and their valuations soared. But there’s no piece of music in which the crescendo doesn’t eventually crash. Most people can’t recognize when they’re in a bubble—or they don’t want to recognize it. Markets and industries are cyclical by nature. During periods of significant innovation, bubbles form because expectations grow faster than reality, and hope gets too far out in front of a future that doesn’t currently exist. The problem was that the structures, timing, and valuations of these startups were all dependent upon assumed growth and the execution of ambitious business plans, and those assumptions and executions often weren’t reasonable or achievable.

So we seem okay as far as that goes, at least to the sort of people who really care about trying to get their children into Harvard. But I think that some of our snobbier friends suspect that Genie and I may also lead Wolfman-at-full-moontype double lives. Maybe at night we turn into junk-food-loving porkers, sneak off to a trailer park with our brood of kids and grandkids, and lounge in a Winnebago surrounded by brokendown cars up on blocks, watch wrestling on TV, buy liquor with ill-gotten food stamps, scarf corn chips and bean dip, gain weight and put on dreadful sweat pants, sprout mullet haircuts, then trudge the isles of Wal-Mart until dawn breathing the plastic smell and loving it while, with each step, the cheeks of our suddenly gigantic bottoms rise, quiver, fall, and rise again like massive sacks of Jell-O strapped to the hindquarters of water buffalo.

Look out, also, for the many powerful stories that depict us all as we truly are- human.

More often than not, the people around me weren’t simply deciding to give up. They were living in a culture of dependency that had been passed down from birth. My mother and grandmother gave in to the culture. And they expected me to figure out the best way to live on that same track, to game the system and not even try to escape. My friend Ben agrees. 'Most of the time, what you see in the housing projects are generations of families,' he says. 'People accustomed to this lifestyle. It becomes comfortable, so they don’t move away, and even their children stay and raise kids in the same environment.' In neighborhoods like the ones where Ben and I grew up, there is no perceived incentive to advance. After all, the checks for housing and the food stamps and assistance arrive every month.

Q: What does a computer do when it’s tired? A: It crashes. Q: What did the tooth fairy use to fix her wand? A: Toothpaste. Q: Why did the computer get glasses? A: To improve his web sight. Q: What stays in the corner but travels all over the world? A: A stamp. Q: What did the computer say when it fell into quicksand? A: “Help me! I’m syncing!” Q: What do you get when you have two doctors at once? A: Pair-a-medics. Q: What should you do when you get in a jam? A: Grab some bread and peanut butter. Q: How can you go surfing in the kitchen? A: On a micro-wave.

And what did Best use to prove this theory? Only one of the most irrefutable books of the time: the Bible. In Best’s whimsical interpretation of the book of Genesis, Noah orders his White sons not to have sex with their wives on the ark, and then tells them that the first child born after the flood would inherit the earth. When the evil, tyrannical, and hypersexual Ham (goes HAM and) has sex on the ark, God wills that Ham’s descendants will be dark and disgusting, and the whole world will look at them as symbols of trouble. Simply put, Ham’s kids would be Black and bad, ultimately making Black… bad. Curse theory would become the anchor of what would justify American slavery.

You are going to give us man lessons.”   Ariana let out a sharp bark of laughter, her eyes twinkling. “Him? Are you kidding? He’s going to give us man lessons?”   “We don’t need to look super convincing as men close up,” Kyra said. “We just need to give the impression of men Fred’s taken into his service. If you saw a potion bottle with a red stamp on it, your brain would make you think it was a red skull, and you’d think it was dangerous even if the stamp was actually a grinning squirrel.” Kyra looked at Fred skeptically. “I’m sure Fred can give us a few tips, at least, of how to act like men.”   “Hey! I am more than capable of giving man lessons.” Fred smiled broadly at Kyra. “What do you want to know?”   “For one thing, we need to know how to walk.”   “No problem. I’ve been walking most of my life.” Fred held up a hand. “Stop and watch.”   The girls leaned up against an apple tree with Rosie at their feet.   “First, you aren’t just acting like any kind of men; you’re going to be especially manly men. I picked you up to work for me, after all, and I wouldn’t choose just any men for that sort of thing. I need men who can fight and lift heavy things. You might want to spit occasionally.”   “Why?”   “It helps keep you from looking too smart. Now, because you are so manly, it naturally follows that you have large upper-arm muscles. Huge muscles, really. The way you let people know this is by slightly bending your elbows and holding your arms out from your body, like your muscles are so big they’re getting in the way.”   Kyra and Ariana bent their elbows and pushed their arms a couple of inches away from their bodies.   The edges of Fred’s lips quirked as though he was trying to restrain a smile. “Then you need to let them know that not only are you muscular, you’re confident of your abilities in all areas. You accomplish this by swaggering when you walk. Langley, stay.” He pointed for the dog to sit next to the girls.   Fred sauntered away from them under the lacey white boughs of the trees in a masculine strut.   “Your turn.”   The girls copied Fred’s walk while he stood back and watched.   “A little less hip swinging, Kyra.”   “I’m not—”   “And don’t walk so close together. Imagine there’s at least one invisible guy between you at all times.”   Ariana leaned over and whispered in Kyra’s ear. “He wants us to imagine him between us. Guys are so weird.”   “Men don’t whisper, but if you have to do it, at least do it the right way.”   Ariana and Kyra stopped walking and turned back to Fred.   “If you find you need to whisper, you don’t get up close to the other person and lean into their ear. Stay where you are, a person’s-width apart, and put a hand up on the far side of your face like a shield.” He demonstrated with his hand out straight from one side of his face. “Then turn your head slightly to the other person and say what you need to say.”   The girls exchanged a look.   “No ‘best friends’ glances at each other like that, either. Or ‘dears’ and ‘darlings.’ Men insult each other every chance they get.”   “Men don’t have best friends?” Kyra asked.   “You’d only know it by the ferocity of the insults. If a guy’s your really good pal, you let him have it at every opportunity.”   “Got it, fathead,” Ariana said.   “Perfect.” Fred plucked two blossoms from the tree above him and tucked one behind each girl’s ear, then grabbed another and tucked it behind his own ear. “You have officially completed man lessons. Now that you know how to act like manly men, what’s the plan?

Why? For lack of anything else to do with their time. Because they were impulsive and not bright enough to even understand the importance of birth control. And because the more kids they had, the bigger the welfare checks and food stamp handouts they received.

Reformers believed moral and political relationships were learned in play. Given street-afforded license, kids would grow up bad. “If we let the gutter set its stamp upon their early days,” Jacob Riis warned in 1904, “we shall have the gutter reproduced in our politics.” The antidote to the street was the supervised playground. Settlement houses had opened rudimentary play spaces in the 1890s. In 1898 the Outdoor Recreation League (ORL), founded by Lillian Wald and Charles B. Stover and housed in the College Settlement, opened the city’s first outdoor playground in Hudsonbank Park (at West 53rd Street), whose sand gardens, running track, and equipment were supervised by Hartley House’s headworker. Playground proponents insisted the city take over and expand these programs. An 1898 University Settlement report argued: “Waterloo was won in part on the playing fields of Eton said Wellington; good government for New York may partially be won on the playgrounds of the East Side.” In 1902 the city assumed responsibility for the nine ORL playgrounds created to date. And in 1903 Seward Park became the first municipal park in the country to be equipped as a playground.

What did the stamp say to the letter? A: I’ve become attached to you!

Puffing upon a deeply-curved pipe, he grinned over it's brim to add, "I don't 'love' kids so much as I love their potential. NEXT question? Yes! YOU, there!" [rubber stamp] "I approve THIS massage, oh.. YEAH.. sweet!:

And yet, after attending another wake for a teenager who was killed in a drive-by shooting in the Blue Hill Avenue section of Boston or after reading about the latest school budget cuts in impoverished cities and towns, I find myself close to despair. In many ways we seem to be regressing, with measures like the callous congressional elimination of food stamps for kids whose parents are unemployed or in jail; with the stubborn opposition to universal health care in some quarters; with psychiatry’s obtuse refusal to make connection between psychic suffering and social conditions; with the refusal to prohibit the sale or possession of weapons whose only purpose is to kill large numbers of human beings; and with our tolerance for incarcerating a huge segment of our population, wasting their lives as well as our resources.

If it was her diary, it would be wrong to open it. More wrong than leaving her dead in the hallway for the better part of a day? I shrugged my shoulders as I opened the black cardboard cover. It was all relative. It wasn’t a diary—not really. Carefully pasted onto the pages of notebook paper were magazine pictures of different houses. There was a picture of a wide, green lawn with a house perched way off in the distance and a family having a picnic on a postage-stamp-sized blanket. There were dining rooms with long tables where people could linger after a meal and talk about politics or sports. A bedroom with a white canopy bed big enough for a mom and kids to curl up on a Sunday morning and read the newspaper. Every now and then on the page would be something written very carefully in her sprawling handwriting.

Ithink the world is full of monsters. My therapist told me to start this diary. Weird that I have a therapist. No other kids my age do. She said it might help me ‘feel better’ or ‘let things out’ or whatever. I don’t know if I believe her, but I don’t want to talk anymore. So now I’m writing. Everything changed when it happened. Nobody talks about it, but I know they’re all thinking about it. Like it’s stamped on my forehead. The thing that makes me dirty, ruined. Mum’s smile is different now. And Dad… he never used to cry. But now he does. They don’t stop hugging me. I hate seeing them sad. It’s my fault. When I have to leave my house, I try to be invisible. I try not to speak or take up too much space because the more I’m here, the more I’m seen. The more I remember. The more I remember him. I hate him. How can I move on when every time I close my eyes, he’s there? He’s in the dark. In every man that passes me on the street. I feel like I’ll never be safe again. Not from the monsters. Not from the memories. I guess it’s not just men I’m afraid of. It’s people. All of them (apart from my family. And Li). They walk around like they’re normal, like they’re safe. But they’re not. Even the kind-looking ones can hurt me. Sometimes it’s like I’m just pretending to be a real human and everyone knows and is secretly judging me for it. My therapist says I wear a mask – not a real one, it’s just imaginary – to act the way people want me to. Maybe writing will help. Maybe it won’t. But I’ll keep trying because if I don’t, I feel like the monsters will win. And I can’t let them. PS I have a boyfriend now. I don’t want one. But it’s safer this way.