Steam Iron Quotes

Thunder boomed overhead. Lightning flashed, and the bars on the nearest window burst into sizzling, melted stubs of iron. Jason flew in like Peter Pan, electricity sparking around him and his gold sword steaming. Leo whistled appreciatively. “Man, you just wasted an awesome entrance.” Jason frowned. He noticed the hog-tied Kerkopes. “What the—” “All by myself,” Leo said. “I’m special that way.

Quote taken from Chapter 1 of The Corpse Wore Gingham: "You love to figure out things as much as I do,” Piper said. “Like what?” Bill asked. “You fix broken stuff,” Piper replied. “Repairing a broken toaster or steam iron is far different than unraveling a murder mystery," Bill said.

What's silly is paying five bucks for hot milk and flavored syrup! But now I see what's really been going on all this time! They charge you all that money because they need it for the R & D! Somewhere on the outskirts of Seattle, there's a secret facility with higher security than Area 51, and inside there are men with poor eyesight and bad haircuts wearing white coats, and they're trying to make the Holy Grail of all coffee drinks. The bacon latte? No, Atticus, I already told you those exist! I'm talking about the prophecy! 'Out of the steam and the foam and the froth, a man in white with poor eyesight will craft a liquid paradox, and it shall be called the Triple Nonfat Double Bacon Five-Cheese Mocha!' Oberon, what the F---?

Wanted to give you a heads up: I heard that Flat Finn sustained an injury the other day. Nothing major, though. Something to do with Matt, a steaming iron, and maniacal shouts of, “There are no wrinkles allowed in this house! You may be flat, but you’re not smooth enough yet for this family!”

The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.

I slept and saw God's forge in frost. Its hearth was quelled, and as it cooled so swooned the verdancy it kept above. In slumber it grew a thick winter skin, white as bedsheets. In their folds the waker dreamt, her breath as steam, her touch as hot as iron, forgotten in the fire.

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lambsquarter, cutgrass, saw brier, nutgrass, jimson-weed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping Charlie, butterprint, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads nodding in a soft morning breeze like a mother’s hand on your check. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak’s thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A Sunflower, four more one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.

And Winterfell … grey granite, oak and iron, crows wheeling around the towers, steam rising off the hot pools in the godswood, the stone kings sitting on their thrones … how could Winterfell be gone?

All day you have been on my mind, a steam iron pressing the convolutions from my cortex, ironing me flat. Worrying cooks my cells feverish. I am irritable with love boiling into anxiety, till I grow furious with you, lying under the surgeon’s knife.

...Until they stood at last by a crumbling wall, looking up and up and still farther up at the great tombyard top of the old house. For that's what it seemed. The high mountain peak of the mansion was littered with what looked like black bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke out smoke signals from three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far below in dim bowels of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars.

Old Man River! That seems far too austere a name For something made of mirth and rage. O, roiling red-blood river vein, If chief among your traits is age, You're a wily, convoluted sage. Is "old" the thing to call what rings The vernal heart of wester-lore; What brings us brassy-myth made kings (And preponderance of bug-type things) To challenge titans come before? Demiurge to a try at Avalon-once-more! And what august vitality In your wide aorta stream You must have had to oversee Alchemic change of timber beam To iron, brick and engine steam. Your umber whiskey waters lance The prideful sober sovereignty Of faulty-haloed Temperance And wilt her self-sure countenance; Yes, righteousness is vanity, But your sport's for imps, not elderly. If there's a name for migrant mass Of veteran frivolity That snakes through seas of prairie grass And groves of summer sassafras, A name that flows as roguishly As gypsy waters, fast and free, It's your real name, Mississippi.

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lamb's-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother's soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak's thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers. Some crows come overhead then, three or four, not a murder, on the wing, silent with intent, corn-bound for the pasture's wire beyond which one horse smells at the other's behind, the lead horse's tail obligingly lifted. Your shoes' brand incised in the dew. An alfalfa breeze. Socks' burrs. Dry scratching inside a culvert. Rusted wire and tilted posts more a symbol of restraint than a fence per se. NO HUNTING. The shush of the interstate off past the windbreak. The pasture's crows standing at angles, turning up patties to get at the worms underneath, the shapes of the worms incised in the overturned dung and baked by the sun all day until hardened, there to stay, tiny vacant lines in rows and inset curls that do not close because head never quite touches tail. Read these.

Just then, thunder boomed overhead. Lightning flashed, and the bars on the nearest window burst into sizzling, melted stubs of iron. Jason flew in like Peter Pan, electricity sparking around him and his gold sword steaming. Leo whistled appreciatively. “Man, you just wasted an awesome entrance.

Don't know about my knives, but my gun's made of pain.

Shimin gulps. "The last thing I needed was another reason for the world to hate me. Though, now..." "Now?" Yizhi's voice goes as airy as the steam wreathing around them. "Now, I see-" Shimin grabs Yizhi's chin. "It's all fucking bullshit." He slams the window shut with his other arm, then leans down and takes Yizhi's lips with his own. My heart stutters, drawing my chest tight. But I'm at peace with this. Instead of a betrayal of any form, it feels like a completion. My killer boy, my sweet boy. The final line in this triangular formation we've been dancing in, making us stronger than ever. This is unconventional, yet another implicit rule we're breaking, but you know what? It works for us. And I think the three of us are done with letting the world tell us what's okay and what isn't.

Ironically, the serious study of the impossible has frequently opened up rich and entirely unexpected domains of science. For example, over the centuries the frustrating and futile search for a “perpetual motion machine” led physicists to conclude that such a machine was impossible, forcing them to postulate the conservation of energy and the three laws of thermodynamics. Thus the futile search to build perpetual motion machines helped to open up the entirely new field of thermodynamics, which in part laid the foundation of the steam engine, the machine age, and modern industrial society.

I have a date,' he explained. 'This is an emergency.' He paused to catch his breath. 'Do you know' - breath - 'how to iron?' I walked over to the pink shirt. It was wrinkled like an old woman who'd spent her youth sunbathing. If only the Colonel didn't ball up his every belonging and stuff it into random dresser drawers. 'I think you just turn it on and press it against the shirt, right?' I said. 'I don't know. I didn't even know we had an iron.' 'We don't. It's Takumi's. But Takumi doesn't know how to iron, either. And when I asked Alaska, she started yelling, "You're not going to impose the patriarchal paradigm on me." Oh God, I need to smoke. I need to smoke, but I can't reek when I see Sara's parents. Okay, screw it. We're going to smoke in the bathroom with the shower on. The shower has steam. Steam gets rid of wrinkles, right?

Similar (of course, far from identical) irritations in similar conditions call out similar reflexes; the more powerful the irritation, the sooner it overcomes personal peculiarities. To a tickle, people react differently, but to a red-hot iron, alike. As a steam-hammer converts a sphere and a cube alike into sheet metal, so under the blow of too great and inexorable events resistances are smashed and the boundaries of “individuality” lost.

around, sirens wail, banshees made of iron, steel and steam.

Like most soldiers, he’d wielded a Black and Decker steam iron far more frequently than an M16.

The summer I turned eleven, I found out that ghosts are real. Guess it's hard to rest nice and easy in your coffin if you got stuff on your mind. Your soul stays chained to earth instead of zipping up to heaven to sing in one of the angel choirs. Sometimes ghosts show up in the msot peculiar places. Sometimes ghosts fool you. Then you are those ghosts that hang around because we have unfinished business. Business that sinks like old crawfish left in a bucket for a week. That's some nasty smell let me tell you. But the most important thing I learned is that ghosts can help you spill your guts before guilt eats you up and leaves a hole that can't ever be fixed no matter how many patches you try to steam iron across it.

she was flighty and poor, a French studies major who quoted Simone de Beauvoir. She wiped her runny nose on her coat sleeve when it was snowing, stuck her head out of car windows the way dogs do, the wind fireworking her hair. That woman was gone now. Not that it was her fault. Vast fortunes did that to people. It took them to the cleaners, cruelly starched and steam-pressed them so all their raw edges, all the dirt and hunger and guileless laughter, were ironed out. Few survived real money.

Big iron upperworks rose out of this headlong structure, and from that twin funnels projected and spat a smoking blast shot with fire. It was the torpedo ram, Thunder Child, steaming headlong, coming to the rescue

Come,” he whispered. They all were welcome. They scattered for the racks, seizing their spiked swords, and their sharp axes, and the Bloody-Nine laughed to watch them. Armed or not, their death was a thing already decided. It was written into the cavern in lines of fire and lines of shadow. Now he would write it in lines of blood. “Die!” he roared, and the blade made circles, savage and beautiful, the letter on the metal burning red and leaving bright trails behind. And where the circles passed everything would be made right. The Shanka would scream and gibber, and the pieces of them would scatter, and they would be sliced and divided as neatly as meat on the butcher’s block The Bloody-Nine showed his teeth, and smiled to be free, and to see the good work done so well. He knocked a barbed sword from a Flathead’s hand, seized it by the scruff of the neck and forced its face down into the channel where the molten steel flowed, furious yellow, and its head hissed and bubbled, shooting out stinking steam. “Burn!” laughed the Bloody-Nine, and the ruined corpses, and their gaping wounds, and their fallen weapons, and the boiling bright iron laughed with him. Only the Shanka did not laugh. They knew their hour was come.

She had stepped into the thin strip of earth that they claimed as their own. Bound by the last building on Brewster and a brick wall, they reigned in that unlit alley like dwarfed warrior kings. Born with the appendages of power, circumcised by the guillotine, and baptized with the steam from a million non reflective mirrors, these young men wouldn't be called upon to thrust a bayonet into an Asian farmer, target a torpedo, scatter their iron seed from a B-52 into the wound of the earth, point a finger to move a nation, or stick a pole into the moon--and they knew it. They only had that three-hundred-foot alley to serve them as stateroom, armored tank, and executioner's chamber.

The troll rumbled away in the direction of the coal store and his place in front of Billy was taken by a smartly dressed young lady with an air of authority. ‘Sir, I think the railway is going to need a translator. I know every language and dialect on the Disc.’ Her voice was firm but there was a glint of excitement in her eyes as she looked at Iron Girder and the other engines in the compound and Billy knew she was hooked. He also knew that ‘translator’ was not on his list of vacancies and sent her off to Sir Harry’s office, while he returned to his search for shunters, tappers and other workers. And so the line moved on again. It seemed everybody wanted to be part of the railway.

Hallelujah might be putting itself on the map, but that mark would be made in blood, as well as iron.

It asked permission but to lie dead in autumn strewings, so much tired steam and iron gunpowder blowing away.

Out of the steam and the foam and the froth, a man in white with poor eyesight will craft a liquid paradox, and it shall be called the Triple Nonfat Double Bacon Five-Cheese Mocha!”>

The powerless life raft, sloshing around the North Pacific, emits a vast, spreading plume of steam like that of an Iron Horse chugging full blast over the Continental Divide. Neither Hiro nor Eliot ever mentions, or even notices, the by-now-obvious fact that Fisheye is traveling with a small, self-contained nuclear power source.... As long as Fisheye refuses to notice this fact, it would be rude for them to bring it up.

Vast fortunes did that to people. It took them to the cleaners, cruelly starched and steam-pressed them so all their raw edges, all the dirt and hunger and guileless laughter, were ironed out. Few survived real money.

They watch her when she comes to City Hall, they watch her at the social events, they watch the way she walks, hips rolling with no suggestion of provocation but with every sense that she knows more than any of the rest. A woman like that, they seem to be thinking, a woman like that has lived. Their wives from Orange County, they come from Minnesota or Dallas or St.Louis. They come from places with families, with sagging mothers and fathers with dead eyes and heavy-hanging brows. They carry their own promise of future slackness and clipped lips and demands. They have sisters, sisther with more babies, babies with sweet saliva hanging and more appliance and with husbands with better salaries and two cars and club membership. They iron in housedresses in front of the television set or by the radio, steam rising, matting their faces, as the children with the damp necks cling on them, sticky-handed. They are this. And Alice… and Alice…

Jane Austen’s world is a unique wedge of history, immortalized by her wonderful books. It is ironic that I am fascinated by the Regency world in all its details, when Jane Austen seldom mentions any of those facts. She never mentions the war raging in Europe, her characters are apparently unaware of the industrialization shortly to overtake them. The revolution of steam travel does not touch her people–they travel by coach, horse, and foot.” and “There is no doubt that Austen herself was aware of the world around her and its imminent change. But her characters live in the world of the family, the village and the heart–and are loved because of it. The trappings of the greater world do not impinge on Jane Austen’s books.

All his life he would cherish the memory of an endless caravan of camels alongside the railway line, the laden beasts plodding patiently through the snow, ignoring the twentieth century as it hurtled past them in a clash of iron and a shriek of steam.

The Dead Father was slaying, in a grove of music and musicians. First he slew a harpist and then a performer upon the serpent and also a banger upon the rattle and also a blower of the Persian trumpet and one upon the Indian trumpet and one upon the Hebrew trumpet and one upon the Roman trumpet and one upon the Chinese trumpet of copper-covered wood. Also a blower upon the marrow trumpet and one upon the slide trumpet and one who wearing upon his head the skin of a cat performed upon the menacing murmurous cornu and three blowers on the hunting horn and several blowers of the conch shell and a player of the double aulos and flautists of all descriptions and a Panpiper and a fagotto player and two virtuosos of the quail whistle and a zampogna player whose fingering of the chanters was sweet to the ear and by-the-bye and during the rest period he slew four buzzers and a shawmist and one blower upon the water jar and a clavicytheriumist who was before he slew her a woman, and a stroker of the theorbo and countless nervous-fingered drummers as well as an archlutist, and then whanging his sword this way and that the Dead Father slew a cittern plucker and five lyresmiters and various mandolinists, and slew too a violist and a player of the kit and a picker of the psaltery and a beater of the dulcimer and a hurdy-gurdier and a player of the spike fiddle and sundry kettledrummers and a triangulist and two-score finger cymbal clinkers and a xylophone artist and two gongers and a player of the small semantron who fell with his iron hammer still in his hand and a trictrac specialist and a marimbist and a maracist and a falcon drummer and a sheng blower and a sansa pusher and a manipulator of the gilded ball. The Dead Father resting with his two hands on the hilt of his sword, which was planted in the red and steaming earth. My anger, he said proudly. Then the Dead Father sheathing his sword pulled from his trousers his ancient prick and pissed upon the dead artists, severally and together, to the best of his ability-four minutes, or one pint. Impressive, said Julie, had they not been pure cardboard. My dear, said Thomas, you deal too harshly with him. I have the greatest possible respect for him and for what he represents, said Julie, let us proceed.

Martin thought of the iron El trestles winding and stretching across the city, of department store windows and hotel lobbies, of electric elevators and street-car ads, of the city pressing its way north on both sides of the great park, of dynamos and electric lights, of ten-story hotels, of the old iron tower near the depot at West Brighton with its two steam-driven elevators rising and falling in the sky--and in his blood he felt a surge of restlessness, as if he were a steam train spewing fiery coal smoke into the black night sky as he roared along a trembling El track, high above the dark storefronts, the gaslit saloons, the red-lit doorways, the cheap beer dives, the dance halls, the gambling joints, the face in the doorway, the sudden cry in the night.

She flung wild glances, like those of an entrapped animal, up and down the big whitewashed room that panted with heat and that was thickly humid with the steam that sizzled from the damp cloth under the irons of the many ironers. From the girls and women near her,

A scarlet steam engine was waiting next to a platform packed with people. A sign overhead said Hogwarts Express, 11 o’clock. Harry looked behind him and saw a wrought-iron archway where the ticket box had been, with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on it. He had done it.

Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today’s silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society.

To make his point, Ivan staged a sensational demonstration. Some time before Christmas he had arrested two Lithuanians employed in the Moscow Kremlin. He charged them with plotting to poison him. The accusations against Jan Lukhomski and Maciej the Pole did not sound very credible; but their guilt or innocence was hardly relevant. They were held in an open cage on the frozen Moskva River for all the world to see; and on the eve of the departure of Ivan’s envoy to Lithuania, they were burned alive in their cage.50 As the ice melted under the fierce heat of the fire and the heavy iron cage sank beneath the water, taking its carbonized occupants down in a great hiss of steam, one could have well imagined that something was being said about Lithuania’s political future.

The train? Pulled off on a spur in the warming grass, it was old, yes, and welded tight with rust, but it looked like a titanic magnet that had collected to itself, from locomotive boneyards across three continents, drive shafts, fly-wheels, smoke stacks, and hand-me-down second-rate nightmares. It did not cut a black and mortuary silhouette. It asked permission but to lie dead in autumn strewings, so much tired steam and iron gunpowder blowing away.

Matthew XV:30” The first bridge, Constitution Station. At my feet the shunting trains trace iron labyrinths. Steam hisses up and up into the night, which becomes at a stroke the night of the Last Judgment. From the unseen horizon and from the very center of my being, an infinite voice pronounced these things— things, not words. This is my feeble translation, time-bound, of what was a single limitless Word: “Stars, bread, libraries of East and West, playing-cards, chessboards, galleries, skylights, cellars, a human body to walk with on the earth, fingernails, growing at nighttime and in death, shadows for forgetting, mirrors busily multiplying, cascades in music, gentlest of all time's shapes. Borders of Brazil, Uruguay, horses and mornings, a bronze weight, a copy of the Grettir Saga, algebra and fire, the charge at Junín in your blood, days more crowded than Balzac, scent of the honeysuckle, love and the imminence of love and intolerable remembering, dreams like buried treasure, generous luck, and memory itself, where a glance can make men dizzy— all this was given to you, and with it the ancient nourishment of heroes— treachery, defeat, humiliation. In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.

Anomander Rake walked into Darujhistan. Howls rose like madness unleashed. The Son of Darkness reached up and unsheathed Dragnipur. Steam curled from the black blade, twisting into ephemeral chains that stretched out as he walked up the wide, empty street. Stretched out to drag behind him, and from each length others emerged and from those still more, a forest's worth of iron roots, snaking out, whispering over the cobbles. He had never invited such a manifestation before. Reigning in that bleed of power had been an act of mercy, to all those who might witness it, who might comprehend its significance. But on this night, Anomander Rake had other things on his mind. Chains of smoke, chains and chains and chains, so many writhing in his wake that they filled the breadth of the street, that they snaked over and under and spilled out into side streets, alleys, beneath estate gates, beneath doors and through windows.

I know you are tired. I know you are hurting. I know that even among the crowds and or with your closest loved ones, you feel terribly alone in the world. I know that in the quietness, a thousand hell hounds are barking and snarling at your heels. They tell you, "Everything is wrong with you. You are a failure. You will never live to see your dreams and visions come to pass. You know you should just throw in the towel. No one would even miss you if you were gone. Exit from this cruel insane assylum you call home. We will even tell you how to end 'it'." But don't you dare entertain those hounds of hell, no, not even for one moment. See, you not only have the elixir of Life inside of your organs and your veins; you are the Elixir of Life of a Celestial domain. For every hell hound nipping at your ears, there are eight hundred angels rushing to you with every holy breath....you take. Every step you make fuels the fire of Love in your behalf. See, nothing is wrong with you. Every thing is right with you. You are cut from iron. You have long exchanged your velveteen fabric and cotton stuffing for blazen guts and a heart of gold. You are the head and not the tail. You are the water in the desert, the ripple in the steam, the sword AND the stone and you, glorious being, are not alone! We are one and we are many. We've known lack, but we are plenty. We are not on the cusp of a break through. We are the cusp and we are the break --- through. We are the old and we are the new. Who knew? You did. You do. And don't you ever forget that.

How often things must have been seen and dismissed as unimportant, before the speculative eye and the moment of vision came! It was Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth's court physician, who first puzzled his brains with rubbed amber and bits of glass and silk and shellac, and so began the quickening of the human mind to the existence of this universal presence. And even then the science of electricity remained a mere little group of curious facts for nearly two hundred years, connected perhaps with magnetism—a mere guess that—perhaps with the lightning. Frogs' legs must have hung by copper hooks from iron railings and twitched upon countless occasions before Galvani saw them. Except for the lightning conductor, it was 250 years after Gilbert before electricity stepped out of the cabinet of scientific curiosities into the life of the common man… . Then suddenly, in the half-century between 1880 and 1930, it ousted the steam-engine and took over traction, it ousted every other form of household heating, abolished distance with the perfected wireless telephone and the telephotograph… .

In most cases the name is unpoetical, although the fact is poetical. In the case of Smith, the name is so poetical that it must be an arduous and heroic matter for the man to live up to it. The name of Smith is the name of the one trade that even kings respected; it could claim half the glory of that arma virumque which all epics acclaimed. The spirit of the smithy is so close to the spirit of song that it has mixed in a million poems, and every blacksmith is a harmonious blacksmith. Even the village children feel that in some dim way the smith is poetic, as the grocer and the cobbler are not poetic, when they feast on the dancing sparks and deafening blows in the cavern of that creative violence. The brute repose of Nature, the passionate cunning of man, the strongest of earthly metals, the weirdest of earthly elements, the unconquerable iron subdued by its only conqueror, the wheel and the ploughshare, the sword and the steam-hammer, the arraying of armies and the whole legend of arms, all these things are written, briefly indeed, but quite legibly, on the visiting-card of Mr. Smith.

Let’s each take a Sailfish and have a race,” George cried, running over to a pretty light-blue boat, with a yellow sail wrapped neatly around the mast. The mast and rudder had been placed carefully next to the hull. “That sounds like fun,” Nancy said enthusiastically. “Which boat would you like, Bess?” Nancy was eying a dark-green one with a red stripe around it. Its white sail, mast, and rudder were placed exactly like the others. “Someone keeps things shipshape around here,” she thought admiringly. “These boats look like painted wooden soldiers all lined up.” “I’ll stick to the rowboat, thanks,” Bess said. “I’d rather be under my own steam. If I took a sailboat, the wind might blow me somewhere I didn’t want to go,” she added, glancing at a breakwater of rocks not far away. “Don’t worry, Bess,” said Nancy. “Why don’t you come with me? We can always tack back when you say the word. It’s a light offshore wind,” she added, looking up at the pennant on the boathouse. “And I promise to head up into the wind, whenever you’re scared, although I don’t relish getting in irons. Oh well, if we do, you can jump out and push!” Nancy laughed.

She’d almost told him she loved him. So many times, she’d been on the edge of letting the words spill out, but her past had kept her cautious. And now she was glad, very glad, she hadn’t. Let him go back to a woman who didn’t care. [She] didn’t care either. What ran down her cheeks and tasted of salt wasn’t tears but good cleansing sweat. It poured from every part of her body. When she finally stood and ran outside, she trailed steam like a thing that had been through fire. As she dropped into the hole she’d cleared of ice, the bitterly cold water of the lake squeezed her hard, wrung her out, and left her wonderfully empty.

An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop. The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you’d tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass . . . when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you’ve just been discovered, you’re all subjects of the Emperor now, he’s keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests. That was an Outside Context Problem; so was the suitably up-teched version that happened to whole planetary civilisations when somebody like the Affront chanced upon them first rather than, say, the Culture.

Sisyphus cheated death,” Nico explained. “First he chained up Thanatos, the reaper of souls, so no one could die. Then when Thanatos got free and was about to kill him, Sisyphus told his wife to do incorrect funeral rites so he wouldn’t rest in peace. Sisy here—May I call you Sisy?” “No!” “Sisy tricked Persephone into letting him go back to the world to haunt his wife. And he didn’t come back.” The old man cackled. “I stayed alive another thirty years before they finally tracked me down!” Thalia was halfway up the hill now. She gritted her teeth, pushing the boulder with her back. Her expression said Hurry up! “So that was your punishment,” I said to Sisyphus. “Rolling a boulder up a hill forever. Was it worth it?” “A temporary setback!” Sisyphus cried. “I’ll bust out of here soon, and when I do, they’ll all be sorry!” “How would you get out of the Underworld?” Nico asked. “It’s locked down, you know.” Sisyphus grinned wickedly. “That’s what the other one asked.” My stomach tightened. “Someone else asked your advice?” “An angry young man,” Sisyphus recalled. “Not very polite. Held a sword to my throat. Didn’t offer to roll my boulder at all.” “What did you tell him?” Nico said. “Who was he?” Sisyphus massaged his shoulders. He glanced up at Thalia, who was almost to the top of the hill. Her face was bright red and drenched in sweat. “Oh . . . it’s hard to say,” Sisyphus said. “Never seen him before. He carried a long package all wrapped up in black cloth. Skis, maybe? A shovel? Maybe if you wait here, I could go look for him. . . .” “What did you tell him?” I demanded. “Can’t remember.” Nico drew his sword. The Stygian iron was so cold it steamed in the hot dry air of Punishment. “Try harder.” The old man winced. “What kind of person carries a sword like that?” “A son of Hades,” Nico said. “Now answer me!” The color drained from Sisyphus’s face. “I told him to talk to Melinoe! She always has a way out!” Nico lowered his sword. I could tell the name Melinoe bothered him. “Are you crazy?” he said. “That’s suicide!” The old man shrugged. “I’ve cheated death before. I could do it again.” “What did this demigod look like?” “Um . . . he had a nose,” Sisyphus said. “A mouth. And one eye and—” “One eye?” I interrupted. “Did he have an eye patch?” “Oh . . . maybe,” Sisyphus said. “He had hair on his head. And—” He gasped and looked over my shoulder. “There he is!” We fell for it. As soon as we turned, Sisyphus took off down the hill. “I’m free! I’m free! I’m—ACK!” Ten feet from the hill, he hit the end of his invisible leash and fell on his back. Nico and I grabbed his arms and hauled him up the hill. “Curse you!” He let loose with bad words in Ancient Greek, Latin, English, French, and several other languages I didn’t recognize. “I’ll never help you! Go to Hades!” “Already there,” Nico muttered. “Incoming!” Thalia shouted. I looked up and might have used a few cuss words myself. The boulder was bouncing straight toward us. Nico jumped one way. I jumped the other. Sisyphus yelled, “NOOOOOOO!” as the thing plowed into him. Somehow he braced himself and stopped it before it could run him over. I guess he’d had a lot of practice. “Take it again!” he wailed. “Please. I can’t hold it.” “Not again,” Thalia gasped. “You’re on your own.” He treated us to a lot more colorful language. It was clear he wasn’t going to help us any further, so we left him to his punishment.

Central Park It’s hard to describe how that day in the park was altered when I stopped to read an official sign I came across near the great carousel, my lips moving silently like the lips of Saint Ambrose. As the carousel turned in the background, all pinions and mirrors and the heads of horses rising to the steam-blown notes of a calliope, I was learning how the huge thing was first designed to be powered by a blind mule, as it turned out, strapped to the oar of a wheel in an earthen room directly below the merry turning of the carousel. The sky did not darken with this news nor did a general silence fall on the strollers or the ball players on the green fields. No one even paused to look my way, though I must have looked terrible as I stood there filling with sympathy not so much for the harnessed beast tediously making its rounds, but instead for the blind mule within me always circling in the dark— the mule who makes me turn when my name is called or causes me to nod with a wooden gaze or sit doing nothing on a bench in the shape of a swan. Somewhere, there must still be a door to that underground room, the lock rusted shut, the iron key misplaced, last year’s leaves piled up against the sill, and inside, a trace of straw on the floor, a whiff of manure, and maybe a forgotten bit or a bridle hanging from a hook in the dark. Poor blind beast, I sang softly as I left the park, poor blind me, poor blind earth turning blindly on its side.

Despite increasing committee interference and intensified conflict between Burnham and Director-General Davis, and with the threat of labor strikes ever present, the main buildings rose. Workers laid foundations of immense timbers in crisscrossed layers in accord with Root’s grillage principle, then used steam-powered derricks to raise the tall posts of iron and steel that formed each building’s frame. They cocooned the frames in scaffolds of wood and faced each frame with hundreds of thousands of wooden planks to create walls capable of accepting two thick layers of staff. As workers piled mountains of fresh lumber beside each building, jagged foothills of sawdust and scrap rose nearby. The air smelled of cut wood and Christmas

The smell of near-black tea leaves torn from the green mountains of India that would travel to Britain without losing their moisture, and without losing the sharp perfume born of the tears Buddha shed for the world's suffering, suffering that also travels in tea: we drink green mountains and rain, and we also drink what the Queen drinks. We drink the Queen, we drink work, and we drink the broken back of the man bent double as he cuts the leaves, and the broken back of the man carrying them. Thanks to steam power, we no longer drink the lash of the whip on the oarsmen's backs. But we do drink choking coal miners. And that's the way of the world: everything alive lives off the death of someone or something else. Because nothing comes from nothing.

NAMING THE EARTH (a poem of light for national poetry day) And the world will be born again in circles of steaming breath and beams of light as each one of us directs our inner eye upon its name. Hear the cry of wings, the sigh of leaves and grass, smell the new sweet mist rising as the pathway is cleared at last. Stones stand ready - they have known since ages and ages ago that they were not alone. Water carries the planet's energy into skies and down to earth and bones. The cold parts steadily as we come together, bodies and hearts warm, hands tingling. We are silent but our eyes are singing. We look, we feel, we know, we trust each other's souls, we have no need to speak. Not now, but later, when the time is right, the name will ring within the iron core of each other's listening - and the very earth's being. Every creature, every plant, will hear it calling, tolling like a bell - a sound we've always felt but never dared to hope to hear reverberating - true at last, at every level of existence. The poets come together to open the intimate centre. Believe in life and air - breathe the light itself, for these are the energies and rhythms that we need to see, to touch, to reach, to identify, to say, the NAME. Colours on your skin fuse and dissolve - leave the river clean for pure space and time to enter and flow in. We all become one fluid stream of stillness and motion, of flaring thought pulses discovering weird pools and twists within where darkness hides from the flames in our eyes but will not snare us. We probe deeper still, journeying towards a unity which will be more raw and yet also more formed than anything written or spoken before. Our fragile bodies fall away - and the trees, and the roots of trees, guide us - lead us away from the faces we remember seeing each day in the mirror - into an ocean of dreams seething with warmth, love, where the beginning is real, ripe, evolving. And the world is born again in circles of steaming breath and beams of light. An ache - a signal - a trembling moment - and the time is right to say the name. We sing as one whole voice of the universal - all the words, the names of every tiny thirsting thing, and they ring out together as one sound, one energy, one sense, one vibration, one breath. And the world listens, beats, shines, glows - IS - Exists!

The Camera Eye (38) sealed signed and delivered all over Tours you can smell lindens in bloom it’s hot my uniform sticks the OD chafes me under the chin only four days ago AWOL crawling under the freight cars at the station of St. Pierre-des-Corps waiting in the buvette for the MP on guard to look away from the door so’s I could slink out with a cigarette (and my heart) in my mouth then in a tiny box of a hotel room changing the date on that old movement order but today my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off sparks in my pocket like a romancandle I walk past the headquarters of the SOS Hay sojer your tunic’s unbuttoned (f—k you buddy) and down the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court with flowers in the middle of it the hot water gushes green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub through the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sunlight lengthens on the ceiling towel’s dry and warm smells of steam in the suitcase I’ve got a suit of civvies I borrowed from a fellow I know the buck private in the rear rank of Uncle Sam’s Medical Corps (serial number . . . never could remember the number anyway I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a gurgle and hiss and having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the fat woman who swept up the towels I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside only officers may set their whipcord behinds and order a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long pants in the iron chair an anonymous civilian

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight 1 You scream, waking from a nightmare. When I sleepwalk into your room, and pick you up, and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard, as if clinging could save us. I think you think I will never die, I think I exude to you the permanence of smoke or stars, even as my broken arms heal themselves around you. 2 I have heard you tell the sun, don't go down, I have stood by as you told the flower, don't grow old, don't die. Little Maud, I would blow the flame out of your silver cup, I would suck the rot from your fingernail, I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light, I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones, I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body, I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood, I would let nothing of you go, ever, until washerwomen feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands, and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades, and rats walk away from the culture of the plague, and iron twists weapons toward truth north, and grease refuse to slide in the machinery of progress, and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men, and the widow still whispers to the presence no longer beside her in the dark. And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry, this the nightmare you wake screaming from: being forever in the pre-trembling of a house that falls. 3 In a restaurant once, everyone quietly eating, you clambered up on my lap: to all the mouthfuls rising toward all the mouths, at the top of your voice you cried your one word, caca! caca! caca! and each spoonful stopped, a moment, in midair, in its withering steam. Yes, you cling because I, like you, only sooner than you, will go down the path of vanished alphabets, the roadlessness to the other side of the darkness, your arms like the shoes left behind, like the adjectives in the halting speech of old folk, which once could call up the lost nouns. 4 And you yourself, some impossible Tuesday in the year Two Thousand and Nine, will walk out among the black stones of the field, in the rain, and the stones saying over their one word, ci-gît, ci-gît, ci-gît, and the raindrops hitting you on the fontanel over and over, and you standing there unable to let them in. 5 If one day it happens you find yourself with someone you love in a café at one end of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar where wine takes the shapes of upward opening glasses, and if you commit then, as we did, the error of thinking, one day all this will only be memory, learn to reach deeper into the sorrows to come—to touch the almost imaginary bones under the face, to hear under the laughter the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss the mouth that tells you, here, here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones. The still undanced cadence of vanishing. 6 In the light the moon sends back, I can see in your eyes the hand that waved once in my father's eyes, a tiny kite wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look: and the angel of all mortal things lets go the string. 7 Back you go, into your crib. The last blackbird lights up his gold wings: farewell. Your eyes close inside your head, in sleep. Already in your dreams the hours begin to sing. Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among the ten thousand things, each scratched in time with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.

Then a great pall of smoke sent out by countless steam-boats was spread over the restless mirror of the Infinite. The hand of the engineer tore down the veil of the terrible beauty in order that greedy and faithless landlubbers might pocket dividends. The mystery was destroyed. Like all mysteries, it lived only in the hearts of its worshippers. The hearts changed; the men changed. The once loving and devoted servants went out armed with fire and iron, and conquering the fear of their own hearts became a calculating crowd of cold and exacting masters. The sea of the past was an incomparably beautiful mistress, with inscrutable face, with cruel and promising eyes. The sea of to-day is a used-up drudge, wrinkled and defaced by the churned-up wakes of brutal propellers, robbed of the enslaving charm of its vastness, stripped of its beauty, of its mystery and of its promise.

It is ironic that none of those who took issue with Schweitzer’s theology and cursed his writings gave up fame and fortune or membership in the highest stratum of German society to live among the poorest of the poor. They prepared their critiques in the comfort of the pastor’s study or the university library, while Schweitzer nailed patches of tin on the roof of his free medical clinic at Lambarene by the banks of the Ogoove River. Theologians who sat in endowed chairs took his Christology to task, while he scraped infectious lesions off blue-black natives in the steaming misery of equatorial Africa. Albert Schweitzer deserves to be remembered as the greatest Christian of the twentieth century, yet he did not believe in literal miracles— the blood atonement, the bodily resurrection, or the second coming, just to name a few. All he did was walk away from everything the world calls good to follow Jesus.

As an archeologist, when Thomsen divided the ages of man into Stone, Bronze, and Iron, naturally enough, he did so in accordance with the physical tools that defined each epoch. But what of man’s spiritual development? What of his moral development? I tell you, they progressed along the very same lines. In the Stone Age, the ideas in the caveman’s head were as blunt as the club in his hand; they were as rough as the flint from which he struck a spark. In the Age of Bronze, when a canny few discovered the science of metallurgy, how long did it take for them to fashion coins, crowns, and swords? That unholy trinity to which the common man was enslaved for the next one thousand years.” Mishka paused to consider the ceiling. “Then came the Age of Iron—and with it the steam engine, the printing press, and the gun. Here was a very different trinity, indeed. For while these tools had been developed by the Bourgeoisie to further their own interests, it was through the engine, the press, and the pistol that the Proletariat began to free itself from labor, ignorance, and tyranny.

Under the Sun by Maisie Aletha Smikle The year was seventeen ten When I turned ten I played with Maggy my hen And wrote a skit for a friend I fed Maggy corn That was fetched from the barn And milked the goats For breakfast I made porridge from oats On a bench I sat Eating my Pop When out flew Maggy my hen From her pen I left my meal This was unreal The hen had left her coop So I got some grain and stooped Then called out to Maggy my hen Maggy O Maggy come back to your pen The hen flapped her wings Her leg was caught between two strings Two men got my poor hen They grabbed me and my hen And stuffed us in a pen Then sold us for a stipend My precious hen they took Made fire slaughter and cook Then gulped water from a nearby brook My poor neck was hooked In chains like a crook It must be a nightmare The crooks were here To get more than their share Have I died and gone to hell I simply couldn’t tell I always do good And was never misunderstood Are these vultures One could not tell Their skin looked like the skin of bald head vultures O dear me roaming wingless vultures Are these aliens from hell One could not tell They looked like me head hands and feet They don't have four feet O Lord I did not make it to heaven Even though I had forgiven Heated red hot metal pierced my body Steam gushed from my broiling flesh There is no doubt these are the demons of hell Brandishing fiery stones and red hot iron Burning those who did not make it to heaven Shoving them into hell’s decked unlit pit The year was seventeen ten When I turned ten Maggy my hen flew from her pen And the sun stopped shining at half past ten

A small figure in crimson stood before the bench, sleeves rolled to the elbow, muttering. Dumai cleared her throat. “Master Kiprun?” The alchemist whipped around. He wore round amber panes over his eyes, clipped to his nose, huge and misty with steam. “I did ask for duck feathers,” he said, in a tone of sincere annoyance. Dumai could only blink. His cheeks were flushed, threads of hair were stuck to his forehead, and he brandished a grey feather. “You brought me goose feathers. Goose,” he barked, making her jump. “You do know the difference between a duck and a goose, don’t you? One quacks and the other honks, not to mention the neck. The neck alone—” “Master Kiprun,” Kanifa interjected, “this is Noziken pa Dumai, Crown Princess of Seiiki.” The alchemist sleeved the fog from his eyeglasses. “Ah. Yes.” He interlocked his fingers. Each bore a ring of a different metal: gold, iron, copper. “Princess Dumai. I am Master Kiprun, who shines—well, flickers really—for the Munificent Empress. And you?” he said to Kanifa. “Who are you, the Prince of Seiiki?” “No.” Kanifa cleared his throat. “I’m just a guard, a friend to Princess Dumai. Not a noble.” “Is it not noble to be a guard?” Master Kiprun wafted a brown hand, webbed with scars from burns, like his arms. “No matter. I never understand these things. Yes, your message caught my interest, Princess Dumai of the Faraway Isle. You don’t look much like a princess,” he said, cocking his head. “Aren’t you suppose to wear a crown, or something?” Dumai reunited with her tongue. “Well,” she said, indicating her headpiece, “this is—” “Madam, that is a fish.” After a moment, Dumai decided not to kick against the current. “It is a fish,” she agreed, taking a step toward him. “My fish and I flew here to seek your help, Master Kiprun.” “Yes, I did fear as much. Last time, it was a king who disturbed my work. He found me in the mountains, just to annoy me.” The alchemist snorted. “Once, it was the poor who sought my services, asking me to turn grass to gold. They were, at least, polite, if wildly optimistic. Now I am summoned hither and thither, disturbed by everyone from Golümtan to Ginura.

I might know a way we could repay that debt.” Everything inside Darius sharpened at that comment, just like it did when he stumbled across an idea for a new experiment. “Oh?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual. “The young lady drew me aside after she returned from her luncheon today. She made an odd request.” Darius recalled their earlier run-in at the pond. Odd didn’t begin to describe it—him stalking her through the grass in his sodden clothes and bare feet. She’d handled herself with plenty of spirit, though, and he’d thought they’d left on good terms. “I did have words with her this morning,” he admitted, though it seemed like forever ago now, with all that had happened since. “Her request did not pertain to you, sir. At least, not directly.” Darius arched a brow. “What did it pertain to?” Wellborn was always serious, but something in the man’s expression made the back of Darius’s neck prickle. “Miss Greyson requested, if anyone came to Oakhaven asking after a young woman matching her description, that I not reveal her presence here. Also, that I make her aware of the situation at once.” Darius fell back against the worktable. He grabbed the edge to steady himself. “She’s in some kind of trouble.” Wellborn dipped his chin in agreement. “It seems a logical conclusion. I’d thought to discuss the matter with you later this evening.” “Thank you for bringing it to my attention,” Darius said, ironically slipping into the same formality he had chided Wellborn for earlier. However, when a man lost his equilibrium, he tended to resort to old habits to regain his footing. “I found her phrasing of the request a bit odd.” A contemplative look came over the butler’s face. Darius mentally reviewed Wellborn’s account, analyzing each section as he would one of his journal articles until a hypothesis formed. “She’s more concerned over someone recognizing her appearance than her name.” Wellborn nodded. “That is the impression I gained.” Interesting. It seemed his new secretary might have accepted the position under false pretenses. Well, a false name, at least. Not that it mattered. The woman had proved herself more than capable. Her name didn’t matter. “Let’s adhere to her wishes for now. With one deviation.” Darius pushed up from the table and braced his legs apart, as if preparing for battle. “If anyone comes looking for her, inform me first. She deserves our protection, Wellborn. I intend to see that she gets it.

For unknown ages after the explosive outpouring of matter and energy of the Big Bang, the Cosmos was without form. There were no galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep, impenetrable darkness was everywhere, hydrogen atoms in the void. Here and there, denser accumulations of gas were imperceptibly growing, globes of matter were condensing-hydrogen raindrops more massive than suns. Within these globes of gas was kindled the nuclear fire latent in matter. A first generation of stars was born, flooding the Cosmos with light. There were in those times, not yet any planets to receive the light, no living creatures to admire the radiance of the heavens. Deep in the stellar furnaces, the alchemy of nuclear fusion created heavy elements from the ashes of hydrogen burning, the atomic building blocks of future planets and lifeforms. Massive stars soon exhausted their stores of nuclear fuel. Rocked by colossal explosions, they returned most of their substance back into the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the stars, new raindrops made of many elements were forming, later generation of stars being born. Nearby, smaller raindrops grew, bodies far too little to ignite the nuclear fire, droplets in the interstellar mist on their way to form planets. Among them was a small world of stone and iron, the early Earth. Congealing and warming, the Earth released methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen gases that had been trapped within, forming the primitive atmosphere and the first oceans. Starlight from the Sun bathed and warmed the primeval Earth, drove storms, generated lightning and thunder. Volcanoes overflowed with lava. These processes disrupted molecules of the primitive atmosphere; the fragments fell back together into more and more complex forms, which dissolved into the early oceans. After a while the seas achieved the consistency of a warm, dilute soup. Molecules were organized, and complex chemical reactions driven, on the surface of clay. And one day a molecule arose that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in the broth. As time passed, more elaborate and more accurate self replicating molecules arose. Those combinations best suited to further replication were favored by the sieve of natural selection. Those that copied better produced more copies. And the primitive oceanic broth gradually grew thin as it was consumed by and transformed into complex condensations of self replicating organic molecules. Gradually, imperceptibly, life had begun. Single-celled plants evolved, and life began generating its own food. Photosynthesis transformed the atmosphere. Sex was invented. Once free living forms bonded together to make a complex cell with specialized functions. Chemical receptors evolved, and the Cosmos could taste and smell. One celled organisms evolved into multicellular colonies, elaborating their various parts into specialized organ systems. Eyes and ears evolved, and now the Cosmos could see and hear. Plants and animals discovered that land could support life. Organisms buzzed, crawled, scuttled, lumbered, glided, flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through steaming jungles. Small creatures emerged, born live instead of in hard-shelled containers, with a fluid like the early ocean coursing through their veins. They survived by swiftness and cunning. And then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

Since 1884 Bath Iron Works was incorporated by General Thomas W. Hyde who had served in the Union Army during the Civil War. At first the shipyard made iron hardware and windlasses for the wooden ships of the day but soon built warships for the United States Navy although it also started builting commercial vessels. The USS Machias a schooner rigged, steam driven, gunboat was one of two 190-foot (58 m) gunboats, first built by the company. It has been said that Chester Nimitz commanded the Machias during World War I, although this has not been substantiated. In 1892 the yard built their first commercial vessel, the 2,500-ton steel passenger steamer the SS City of Lowell. From these humble beginnings BIW became a major United States shipyard and has designed and built almost every type of naval vessel that the US Navy had or has, including the new stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class. I first saw Bath Iron Works when I crossed the Kennebec River in 1952. I wrote about this in “Seawater One” describing how our bus crossed on the Carlton Lift Bridge and how I saw the USS Dealey (DE-1006) being built. During World War II, ships built at BIW were considered by Navy officers and sailors to be the toughest afloat, giving rise to the slogan "Bath-built is best-built." In 1995, BIW became a subsidiary of General Dynamics and at that time was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world.

The bus continued on to its last stop before Bangor. In the mid-nineteenth century, Belfast became known for its production of large five-masted schooners. This was due to the abundance of tall pines in the proximity that were used as masts. There were fortunes made in shipbuilding and some of the larger homes, which are still in existence, are testimony to that. Unfortunately, this all ended with the advent of iron ships and the steam engine. Even the labor-intensive shoe manufacturing industry, which followed shipbuilding, faltered. Belfast still had its poultry business in 1952, and once a year held a popular Broiler Festival that brought in many people.

There is a damn good reason why you should proceed slowly and methodically through any training program. The reason has to do with generating training momentum. Basically put, this means that if you build a head of steam by moving forwards more slowly, you’ll actually reach your goals much faster than if you proceeded with haste. This sounds like a paradox, but it’s true. The old-timers of the iron game understood this principle only too well. They used to talk in terms of “milking” a program, and “putting strength in the bank.” One of the old sayings wise weightlifting coaches used to force down the throats of eager young trainees was the phrase: the heavy weight isn’t going anywhere.

the trio showed the appropriate level of reverence as the waitress carried the steaming caquelon pot to their table and proudly placed it on the cast iron stand over the flame. They appreciatively inhaled its pungent, cheesy fumes and the waitress wished them bon appétit. The ritual thus complete, and mindful that a fondue cannot be kept waiting, they quickly tore at the crusty bread, stuck chunks on the long forks provided and dipped, twisted and turned them in the liquid-gold. 

The machines of the mind are more difficult to recognize than machines of iron and steam.

I grumbled to myself but headed into the hallway, making sure to check for anyone else before stepping out. Though a nice bruise on my head might make Sarah and Mrs. Williams even more interested in getting me out of this nightmare. But, I wasn’t up for the pain. In the dining room, the Robinsons were already in their seats. Viv had left her apron crumpled on the floor in the corner of the room. I bet she’d ask me to pick it up at some point and probably even make me iron the wrinkles out of it. The Robinsons were nice to me now, but I knew everything would go back to their twisted normal if the adoption went through. They would treat me like their modern-day Cinderella all over again. “Sit, sit,” Viv chirped. Avoiding any looks from Max, I took my seat next to Viv and placed my napkin in my lap. Even though I lived with these people, I still held onto the manners that my parents had taught me. Staring at the food in front of me, I saw instantly that it looked nothing like what I was expecting. In fact, it all smelled and looked delicious. I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d barely eaten all day, or because Viv had miraculously discovered a new found talent for cooking. A casserole dish and a steaming pot of piping hot chicken parmesan sat in the middle of the table. A pile of garlic bread sat on a plate between the chicken dishes and there were even a couple of bowls of very healthy looking salad.

Bade round the youth explosive steam aspire, In gathering clouds, and wing'd the wave with fire; Bade with cold streams the quick expansion stop, And sunk the immense of vapour to a drop.- Press'd by the ponderous air the Piston falls Resistless, sliding through its iron walls; Quick moves the balanced beam, of giant-birth, Wields his large limbs, and nodding shakes the earth.

Pitt arrived at the Broad Street Station of the Great Northern Railway just in time to catch his train to Lincolnshire. He slammed the carriage door as the engine started to belch forth steam and the fireman stoked the furnace, and with a roar and a clash of iron they moved out of the vast, grimy dome into the sunlight and began the long journey past the factories and houses and through the suburbs of the largest, wealthiest, and most populous city in the world. Within its bounds lived more Scots than in Edinburgh, more Irish than in Dublin, and more Roman Catholics than in Rome.

Puffed pastry. That's what the newspaper reporters called it. Department of Transportation inspectors called it disintegration. Deterioration; the over-saturation of iron bridgework by water and air that caused it to puff up and crust over like cheese over a steaming crock of French onion soup. If you touched it, it would flake away like a bad case of psoriasis.

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

Regardless of whether you think the industrial era has been good or bad, three profoundly fundamental shifts underlie this revolution. The first is that industrialists harnessed new sources of energy, primarily to produce things. Preindustrial people occasionally used wind or water to generate power, but they mostly relied on muscles—human and animal—to generate force. Industrial pioneers such as James Watt (who invented the modern steam engine) figured out how to transform energy from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas into steam, electricity, and other kinds of power to run machines. The first of these machines were designed to make textiles, but within decades others were invented to make iron, mill wood, plow fields, transport things, and do just about everything else one can manufacture and sell (including beer)7. A second major component of the Industrial Revolution was a reorganization of economies and social institutions. As industrialization gathered steam, capitalism, in which individuals compete to produce goods and services for profit, became the world’s dominant economic system, spurring the development of further industrialization and social change. As workers changed their locus of activity from the farm to factories and companies, more people had to work together even as they needed to perform more specialized activities. Factories required more coordination and regulation. In

Before the war, five-stories was the rule, and commercial life was carried on primarily at ground level—in streets and showrooms, at sales counters, on exchange floors. After the war, office buildings went vertical, climbing to unprecedented heights—six stories, seven, eight. “Our business men are building up to the clouds,” one newsman exclaimed. The elevator made this possible. Lift technology had improved since the vertical screw used at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Now the “steam and drum” method was available. Steel wire cables were run over a drum at the top of the shaft, which was then revolved to raise or lower the cab. An alternative model hauled the cage up and down the shaft by looping its wire cable over a pulley, then attaching a wrought-iron bucket almost as weighty as the cage. When filled with water from a tank, the bucket descended by gravity, pulling the cage up. At the bottom, an operator emptied the bucket, shifting the weight balance in favor of the cage, which then descended and pulled the bucket back up.

The definition for the “Poop Deck” as found in nautical books would lead you to believe that the name was derived from the French word for the stern of the ship, la poupe which in turn was derived from the Latin puppis. On sailing ships this deck was higher than the main deck, making it ideal to navigate from. It also was where the binnacle and ship’s wheel were located for the helmsman. The deck of the poop deck formed the roof or overhead of the Captain’s cabin making it convenient for the Captain to reach. His after cabin was frequently irreverently referred to as the “poop cabin!” As wooden ships with iron men were replace with wooden men on iron ships, the navigational functions, with the exception of setting the sails, were moved to the bridge. According to my father who was a ship’s cook in the early 1920’s, the term poop deck remained, but took on a totally different meaning. During the turn of the last century, with coal fired reciprocating steam engines replacing wind and sails, this rear deck was where animals were kept to be butchered for food. Salted meat packed in barrels and the lack of fresh vegetables was the frequent cause of constipation and even worse scurvy. Many ships of that era, and before, didn’t yet have refrigeration and this was the way they continued to have fresh meat. A cabin boy tended to the chickens, pigs, lambs and goats and it was up to the butcher or cooks to slaughter and quarter them. Of course the deck nearest the stern was ideal for this, leaving the ensuing smell behind in the wake of the ship. Seldom is the term “Poop Deck” used now since with the advent of cruise ships nautical terms are fading. Bunks have become beds, cabins became staterooms and the head is now the restroom. Oh, what has become of the days of yore?

You couldn’t hit the ball with a steam iron today,

Jane cupped her coffee in both hands and blew across the steam so it curled from her lips like a musing dragon’s breath.

Feisty Hummus Serves: 4 (yields 1½ cups) 1 cup cooked garbanzo beans or canned, no-salt-added or low-sodium, drained ¼ cup water ¼ cup raw unhulled sesame seeds 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon VegiZest* or other no-salt seasoning blend, adjusted to taste 1 teaspoon Bragg Liquid Aminos or low-sodium soy sauce 1 teaspoon horseradish 1 clove raw garlic Blend all ingredients in a high-powered blender until creamy and smooth. Serve with raw and lightly steamed vegetables or as a filling ingredient with a whole grain wrap or pita. PER SERVING: CALORIES 103; PROTEIN 5g; CARBOHYDRATE 12g; TOTAL FAT 4.5g; SATURATED FAT 0.6g; SODIUM 54mg; FIBER 3.6g; BETA-CAROTENE 6mcg; VITAMIN C 3mg; CALCIUM 95mg; IRON 2.2mg; FOLATE 71mcg; MAGNESIUM 45mg; ZINC 1.1mg; SELENIUM 3.9mcg

Broccoli and Chickpea Salad Serves: 4 For the Salad: 6 cups broccoli, cut into small florets 1½ cups cooked chickpeas or 1 (15-ounce) can no-salt-added or low-sodium chickpeas, drained ¼ cup chopped red onion 1½ cups halved cherry tomatoes ¼ cup pine nuts or walnuts, toasted For the Dressing: ¼ cup fresh lemon juice ½ cup water ¼ cup walnuts ¼ cup pitted and chopped dates 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard 1 clove garlic Steam broccoli until just tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Once cool, combine with chickpeas, onion, cherry tomatoes, and nuts. Blend dressing ingredients in a high-powered blender. Toss salad with desired amount of dressing. Leftover dressing may be reserved for another use. PER SERVING: CALORIES 298; PROTEIN 13g; CARBOHYDRATE 40g; TOTAL FAT 12.9g; SATURATED FAT 1.1g; SODIUM 70mg; FIBER 8.9g; BETA-CAROTENE 809mcg; VITAMIN C 139mg; CALCIUM 119mg; IRON 3.8mg; FOLATE 218mcg; MAGNESIUM 105mg; ZINC 2.5mg; SELENIUM 7mcg

Cauliflower, Coconut, and Turmeric Soup Serves: 4 ½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut 1 teaspoon chopped fresh ginger 1 cup water 1 medium onion, chopped 4 cloves garlic, chopped 3 cups sliced shiitake mushrooms 1 head cauliflower, cut into pieces 4½ cups low-sodium or no-salt-added vegetable broth ½ teaspoon turmeric ½ teaspoon ground coriander ¼ cup raw macadamia nuts ¼ cup raw walnuts 1 bunch kale, tough stems removed, chopped ½ cup shredded cooked chicken or ½ cup raw chopped shrimp, optional (see Note) Blend coconut, ginger, and water in a high-powered blender until smooth and creamy. In a soup pot, heat 2 to 3 tablespoons water and water-sauté onion and garlic for 2 minutes, then add mushrooms and sauté until onions and mushrooms are tender. Add blended coconut mixture, cauliflower, vegetable broth, turmeric, and coriander. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes or until the cauliflower is tender. In a high-powered blender, blend two-thirds of the soup liquid and vegetables with the macadamia nuts and walnuts until smooth and creamy. Return to the pot and reheat. Steam the kale until wilted and just tender, about 6 to 8 minutes. Divide steamed kale into four soup bowls and serve the soup on top. For added crunch, top with Crispy Chickpeas (page 328). Note: If desired, add chicken or shrimp after soup is blended and returned to the soup pot. Add ½ cup cooked shredded chicken and reheat or add ½ cup chopped raw shrimp and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes or until shrimp turns pink. PER SERVING: CALORIES 305; PROTEIN 9.3g; CARBOHYDRATE 29g; TOTAL FAT 19.7g; SATURATED FAT 8.1g; SODIUM 246mg; FIBER 9.1g; BETA-CAROTENE 7728mcg; VITAMIN C 175mg; CALCIUM 205mg; IRON 3.8mg; FOLATE 123mcg; MAGNESIUM 94mg; ZINC 1.7mg; SELENIUM 6.6mcg

Chickpea Mulligatawny Stew Serves: 6 ¾ cup unsweetened flaked coconut 4 cups low-sodium or no-salt-added vegetable broth, divided 3 Medjool dates or 6 regular dates, pitted 1 onion, chopped ¼ cup garlic cloves, chopped 1 carrot, peeled and diced 1 stalk celery, chopped 2 tablespoons white wine 4 ounces cremini mushrooms, chopped 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and diced 2 tablespoons curry powder 3 cups cooked chickpeas or 2 (15-ounce) cans low-sodium or no-salt-added chickpeas, drained 3 cups no-salt-added diced tomatoes, in BPA-free packaging Cayenne pepper, to taste 1 pound chopped fresh or frozen spinach (or greens of your choice) ½ pound steamed broccoli florets ½ pound steamed cauliflower florets Purée the flaked coconut, 2 cups of the broth, and the dates in a high-powered blender until smooth. Set aside. In a large soup pot, sauté the onion, garlic, carrot, and celery in the white wine until the onions are translucent and lightly browned. Add the mushrooms and apple and continue to cook until the mushrooms release their juices. Add the curry powder and sauté for another minute. Add the chickpeas, tomatoes, coconut purée, and the remaining broth and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, taste and adjust with more curry powder and cayenne if desired. Then, stir in the spinach, broccoli, and cauliflower and continue cooking until the spinach is wilted. PER SERVING: CALORIES 362; PROTEIN 15g; CARBOHYDRATE 57g; TOTAL FAT 10.8g; SATURATED FAT 6.9g; SODIUM 202mg; FIBER 16.2g; BETA-CAROTENE 6771mcg; VITAMIN C 75mg; CALCIUM 232mg; IRON 6.2mg; FOLATE 328mcg; MAGNESIUM 150mg; ZINC 2.7mg; SELENIUM 13.9mcg

Cuban Black Bean Soup with Garlic “Mashed Potatoes” Serves: 5 For the Soup: 1 small onion, chopped 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 tablespoon chili powder 2 teaspoons ground cumin 3 cups cooked black beans or 2 (15-ounce) cans low-sodium black beans, drained and rinsed 3 cups low-sodium or no-salt-added vegetable broth ⅔ cup low-sodium all-natural salsa 1 tablespoon lime juice A few dashes of chipotle hot sauce ½ bunch cilantro, chopped 4 green onions, chopped For the “Mashed Potatoes”: 1 large head cauliflower, chopped 1 small clove garlic, minced ½ to 1 cup soy, hemp, or almond milk (to desired consistency) ¼ teaspoon pepper, or to taste ¼ cup nutritional yeast 2 stalks green onions, chopped Sauté onion and garlic in a splash of low-sodium vegetable broth until tender. Add chili and cumin, stir until combined. Add beans, vegetable broth, salsa, lime juice, and hot sauce. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer about 45 minutes. Remove from heat and purée about half of the soup in a high-powered blender. Stir in cilantro and green onions. Cover and set aside until ready to serve. Steam cauliflower until tender. Place into high-powered blender along with remaining ingredients except for green onions and blend until smooth (add nondairy milk until desired consistency). Serve soup topped with “mashed potatoes” and garnish with green onions. PER SERVING: CALORIES 259; PROTEIN 20g; CARBOHYDRATE 42g; TOTAL FAT 3.1g; SATURATED FAT 0.7g; SODIUM 138mg; FIBER 15.2g; BETA-CAROTENE 503mcg; VITAMIN C 88mg; CALCIUM 134mg; IRON 4.6mg; FOLATE 260mcg; MAGNESIUM 123mg; ZINC 3.3mg; SELENIUM 3.1mcg

Some love is fire: some love is rust: But the fiercest, cleanest love is lust. And their lust was tremendous. It had the feel Of hammers clanging; and stone; and steel: And torches of the savage, roaring kind That rip through iron, and strike men blind: Of long trains crashing through caverns under Grey trembling streets, like angry thunder: Of engines throbbing; and hoarse steam spouting; And feet tramping; and great crowds shouting. A lust so savage, they could have wrenched The flesh from bone, and not have blenched.

Constantine’s mother Helena (now aged seventy-five) made a sinister intervention: she criticized his killing of Crispus and convinced him the boy had been seduced then framed by Fausta. As a result Fausta was boiled to death in the steam baths. It is ironic that this murderous mother-in-law would become a Christian saint.

the vesture of a Thought. This London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One;—a huge immeasurable Spirit of a THOUGHT, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was made but some man had to think of the making of that brick.—The thing we called "bits of paper with traces of black ink," is the purest embodiment a Thought of man can have. No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest and noblest. All this, of the importance and supreme importance of the Man of Letters in modern Society, and how the Press is to such a degree superseding the Pulpit, the Senate, the Senatus Academicus and much else, has been admitted for a good while; and recognized often enough, in late times, with a sort of sentimental triumph and wonderment.

Three Cards are missing,” Fenir said. “The Well, the Iron Gate, and the Twin Alders.” I stared at the pile, the unity of colors strange and beautiful, like a stained glass window. “Do you have a plan for finding the Well?” “The Well will be tricky to claim,” Jon Thistle said, rubbing his beard. “Given the nature of the Card, men keen to have it are usually wary to begin with.” The Yews were quiet, their brows knit. I chewed my lip, clicking my fingernails against the table. The Nightmare slithered behind my eyes, waiting for me to speak. When I did not, his voice filled my mind like steam off a kettle. Go on, he said. Tell them. My eyes fell back to the collage of color radiating off the Providence Cards. The Cards. The mist. The blood. I raised my gaze to the Yews. “I know someone who owns a Well Card,” I said. “He lives just down the street.

Mom covers the wrought-iron patio table with newspaper, and Dad dumps the steaming crawfish

Even so, Watt was nothing if not fair-minded. He may have resented the time Murdock spent inventing rather than on the company’s real business, which was installing, and collecting royalties based on the continued performance of, the Watt engines.* He was, however, just as often delighted by the inventions he made on behalf of Boulton & Watt, including a compressed air pump and a cement that would bond two pieces of iron, calling Murdock “the most active man and best engine erector I ever saw.”41 His value was never, however, to be higher than when Watt enlisted his talents on what came to be known as the sun-and-planet gear.

Asparagus, for example, is one vegetable that should be steamed before eating in order to unlock cancer-fighting properties, and the same goes for tomatoes. A quick sauté is also okay, but avoid overcooking or boiling, as you will then lose the highest quality properties.   Mushrooms should also be cooked in order to release muscle building-properties. Surprisingly, spinach should be cooked as well, because that is when you will be able to absorb the most calcium, magnesium, and iron. If you can’t stand to fully cook spinach, just give it a quick steaming, cooking it until it starts to wilt.

Serge,” said Coleman. “Are we shopping?” “No, I just love coming to the mall at Christmas, digging how stores tap into the whole holiday spirit, especially the bookstores with their special bargain displays.” “Displays?” asked Coleman. “Big ones near the front,” said Serge. “If you want to show someone you put absolutely zero thought into their gift, you buy a giant picture book about steam locomotives, ceramic thimbles, or Scotland.” “But why are we wearing elf suits?” “To spread good cheer.” “What for?” “Because of the War on Christmas.” “Who started the war?” asked Coleman. “Ironically, the very people who coined the term and claim others started the war. They’re upset that people of different faiths, along with the coexistence crowd who respect those faiths, are saying ‘Season’s Greetings’ and ‘Happy Holidays.’ But nobody’s stopping anyone from saying ‘Merry Christmas.’ ” “And they’re still mad?” Serge shrugged. “It’s the new holiness: Tolerance can’t be tolerated. So they hijack the birth of Jesus as a weapon to start quarrels and order people around. Christmas should be about the innocence of children—and adults reverting to children to rediscover their innocence. That’s why we’re in elf suits. We’re taking Christmas back!

Polson had always made butter from stale cream. He never collected milk to get fresh cream. The cream merchants would supply him with cans of cream, which went into his butter production. Sometimes these cans of cream would be kept for as long as ten days without refrigeration. Many pollutants – sometimes even maggots – contaminated the cream and turned it malodorous. Polson’s Manager, Foster, found an answer to all such problems. He acquired a vacreator – a machine that heats cream for pasteurisation with injected steam that quickly raises its temperature. The machine also creates a vacuum, which removes the steam molecules so that it does not dilute the cream. For Polson, the vacreator served a dual purpose: along with the steam, the vacuum also almost totally removed the foul odour from the stale cream. Some odour though did remain and, ironically enough, became a problem for us at Amul. Our butter, like butter from New Zealand, was made of fresh cream – milk to cream to butter, all in the same day. When we introduced this butter into the market, people exclaimed in distaste: ‘What kind of butter is this? There’s no flavour in it. It’s flat!’ Of course, the Parsis in Bombay city’s popular Irani restaurants would not touch it (although I suspect this could as well have been because of their loyalty to ‘apro Pestonjee’, Polson). This was a serious problem and we had to find a solution quickly. We did. At the end of the butter-making process we began to add a permitted chemical additive called diacetyl, which also gave the butter an added ‘flavour’. This solution to a rather unusual problem was legal as long as we printed the line ‘permitted flavours added’ on the packets. In its new form, Amul butter became more acceptable – and sales showed dramatic improvement.

Arab League summits often served as forums for letting off steam or ironing out differences. At times the way this took place was the stuff of caricature.

I couldn't tell if, as husbands went, Paul was unusual, but he seamed to need lots more care and feeding than I bargained on. If only he'd come with an instruction booklet, like our new steam iron did, or even with a little plastic stick with tips about watering and sunlight, like a florist azalea.

suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests. That was an Outside Context Problem;

Mara gave you my letter?" "Yes." "You must have been astonished." She had exposed her heart in that letter. His eyebrows shot up. "'Astonished' is a mild word for it." "But you came - so you must have read the other letters. They should have prepared you a little." "I received no other letters. I had no idea you were in this part of the world." She shook her head in confusion. "Then how did you know to come?" "Yasmeen and I were in New Eden again - I have written that story for you in another letter - when a supply ship arrived carrying the rumor that Zenobia Fox was under the protection of the Kraken King. Needless to say, we abandoned New Eden and flew to Krakentown and full steam.

Despite an icy northeast wind huffing across the bay I sneak out after dark, after my mother falls asleep clutching her leather Bible, and I hike up the rutted road to the frosted meadow to stand in mist, my shoes in muck, and toss my echo against the moss-covered fieldstone corners of the burned-out church where Sunday nights in summer for years Father Thomas, that mad handsome priest, would gather us girls in the basement to dye the rose cotton linen cut-outs that the deacon’s daughter, a thin beauty with short white hair and long trim nails, would stitch by hand each folded edge then steam-iron flat so full of starch, stiffening fabric petals, which we silly Sunday school girls curled with quick sharp pulls of a scissor blade, forming clusters of curved petals the younger children assembled with Krazy glue and fuzzy green wire, sometimes adding tissue paper leaves, all of us gladly laboring like factory workers rather than have to color with crayon stubs the robe of Christ again, Christ with his empty hands inviting us to dine, Christ with a shepherd's staff signaling to another flock of puffy lambs, or naked Christ with a drooping head crowned with blackened thorns, and Lord how we laughed later when we went door to door in groups, visiting the old parishioners, the sick and bittersweet, all the near dead, and we dropped our bikes on the perfect lawns of dull neighbors, agnostics we suspected, hawking our handmade linen roses for a donation, bragging how each petal was hand-cut from a pattern drawn by Father Thomas himself, that mad handsome priest, who personally told the Monsignor to go fornicate himself, saying he was a disgruntled altar boy calling home from a phone booth outside a pub in North Dublin, while I sat half-dressed, sniffing incense, giddy and drunk with sacrament wine stains on my panties, whispering my oath of unholy love while wiggling uncomfortably on the mad priest's lap, but God he was beautiful with a fine chiseled chin and perfect teeth and a smile that would melt the Madonna, and God he was kind with a slow gentle touch, never harsh or too quick, and Christ how that crafty devil could draw, imitate a rose petal in perfect outline, his sharp pencil slanted just so, the tip barely touching so that he could sketch and drink, and cough without jerking, without ruining the work, or tearing the tissue paper, thin as a membrane, which like a clean skin arrived fresh each Saturday delivered by the dry cleaners, tucked into the crisp black vestment, wrapped around shirt cardboard, pinned to protect the high collar.

One of the more useful things I learned as a midshipman at Maine Maritime Academy were the names of the seven masts of a seven masted schooner. When I mentioned to the 600 people in attendance at a Homecoming event that my degree was a BS in Marlinspike Seamanship no one laughed, leaving me in the embarrassing position of having to explain that actually I had a Bachelor of Marine Science degree. Later looking into a mirror I convinced myself that I really didn’t look old enough to have lived in an era when wooden ships were sailed by iron men. What I remembered was that we were wooden men sailing on iron ships that were actually made of steel, however I can remember schooners sailing along the coast of New England and I do remember the seven names of a seven masted schooner. In actual fact only one seven masted schooner was ever built and she was the she a 475 foot, steel hulled wind driven collier/tanker named the Thomas W. Lawson, named after a Boston millionaire, stock-broker, book author, and President of the Boston Bay State Gas Co. Launched in 1902 she held the distinction of being the largest pure sail ship ever built. Originally the names of the masts were the foremast, mainmast, mizzenmast, spanker, jigger, driver, and pusher. Later the spanker became the kicker and the spanker moved to next to last place, with the pusher becoming the after mast. Depending on whom you talked to, the names and their order drifted around and a lot of different naming systems were formed. Some systems used numbers and others the days of the week, however there are very few, if any of the iron men left to dispute what the masts were called. The Thomas W. Lawson had two steam winches and smaller electrically driven winches, to raise and lower her huge sails. The electricity was provided by a generator, driven by what was termed a donkey engine. On November 20, 1907 the large 475 foot schooner sailed for England. Experiencing stormy weather she passed inside of the Bishop Rock lighthouse and attempted to anchor. That night both anchor chains broke, causing the ship to smash against Shag Rock near Annet. The schooner, pounded by heavy seas capsized and sank. Of the 19 souls aboard Captain George W. Dow and the ships engineer Edward L. Rowe were the only survivors. Everyone else, including the pilot, drown and were buried in a mass grave in St Agnes cemetery.

Conglomerations of factories gave rise to the new industrial cities. Steam engines were later applied to mobile uses – the railway and steamship ushered in the age of mobility. Low cost ways were developed for making steel and steel replaced iron in most uses. Growth was underway.

Beetle-black iron hissed and popped and spouted steam. Guards marched atop the train cars, watchful. One sang a war song in Talbeg Kai couldn’t follow. Demon ice melted and steamed from the train, and tortured metal creaked. One car hadn’t made the journey intact: an enormous claw had torn its side open, and greenish fluid leaked from within. Blood and dried rainbows streaked the steel. Station hands swarmed the train, tossing nets of grounding wire over the hulk, binding it back into this world after its journey through another.