Steep Best Quotes

A man crushed by reality puts on a show of endurance. If that's beyond your comprehension, dear reader, then you and I will never understand each other. Life's a farce, so we might as well make it a good one. But real life is a realm that I may never reach. The best that I can hope for is to loiter in the memory of these four days, so steeped with empathy. Four days that count more than five or ten years of my life. Four days that count more than a lifetime.

It so happens that this is particular love was precisely the sort best suited to the state of her soul. It was a sort of remote worship, a mute contemplation, a deification by an unknown votary. It was the apprehension of adolescence by adolescence, her dreams becoming romance ad remain in dream, the wished-for phantom realized at last and made flash, but still without name or wrong or fault, or need, or defect; in a word, a lover distant and ideal, a chimera having form. Any closer and more palpable encounter at this first stage would have terrified Cosette, still half buried in the magnifying mirage of the cloister. She had all the terrors of children and all the terrors of nuns mingled. The spirit of the convent, in which she had been steeped for five years, was still evaporating from her whole person, and made everything tremulous around her. In this condition, it was not a lover she needed, it was not even an admirer, it was a vision. She began to adore Marius as something charming, luminous, and impossible.

One of the best exercises in meekness we can perform is when the subject Is in ourselves. We must not fret over our own imperfections. Although reason requires that we must be displeased and sorry whenever we commit a fault we must refrain from bitter, gloomy,spiteful, and emotional displeasure. Many people are greatly at fault in this way. When overcome by anger they become angry at being angry, disturbed at being disturbed and vexed at being vexed. By such means they keep their hearts drenched and steeped in passion.

The things I like best in T. S. Eliot’s poetry, especially in the Four Quartets, are the semicolons. You cannot hear them, but they are there, laying out the connections between the images and the ideas. Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.

If he had but a little more brains, she thought to herself, I might make something of him; but she never let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes...When he came home, she was alert and happy; when he went out she pressed him to go; when he stayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in comfort. The best of women {I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smile which they wear so easily are traps to cajole or elude or disarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models and paragons of female virute.

When Khubchand, his beloved, blind, bald, incontinent seventeen-year-old mongrel, decided to stage a miserable, long-drawn-out death, Estha nursed him through his final ordeal as though his own life somehow depended on it. In the last months of his life, Khubchand, who had the best of intentions but the most unreliable of bladders, would drag himself to the top-hinged dog-flap built into the bottom of the door that led out into the back garden, push his head through it and urinate unsteadily, bright yellowly, inside Then with bladder empty and conscience clear he would look up at Estha with opaque green eyes that stood in his grizzled skull like scummy pools and weave his way back to his damp cushion, leaving wet footprints on the floor. As Khubchand lay dying on his cushion, Estha could see the bedroom window reflected in his smooth, purple balls. And the sky beyond. And once a bird that flew across. To Estha - steeped in the smell of old roses, blooded on memories of a broken man - the fact that something so fragile, so unbearably tender had survived, had been allowed to exist, was a miracle. A bird in flight reflected in an old dog's balls. It made him smile out loud.

I don't want to be around people who accept me as is, in my unrefined state of becoming. I consistently want people around me who push and encourage me to be my ultimate best, who bring out the inner diamonds. I want to be around those intellectual giants who extract the gold within me, those who force me to read, to attend classes, seminars, conferences, and who steep me in an environment of perpetual growth and upward mobility. Not trying to be funny, but I've learned that I simply cannot afford to invest too much time around mediocrity. It's contagious.

At some point in our conversation, Ivan mentioned that strawberries grew on trees. I said I thought they grew on little plants close to the ground. No, he said—trees. “Okay,” I said. I knew that in my life I had seen strawberries growing, on plants, but this didn’t seem like irrefutable proof that they didn’t grow on trees. “You’re easy to convince,” he said. We walked for three hours. On the way back we got lost and had to climb down a steep hill. I really didn’t want to climb down the hill. I actually walked into a tree and then stayed there for a minute. “What are you doing?” Ivan asked. “I don’t know,” I said. He nodded. He said there were lots of possible ways down the hill, but probably the best way was one where you didn’t have to go through a tree. Then he started talking about the execution of Ceauşescu and his wife.

When tasting a tea that is new to you, start with a two-minute steep, taste it, and taste it again every thirty seconds. Jot down the results.

Always cover your tea when steeping; the tea leaves will unfurl more uniformly and the finished tea will taste better if the teapot or gaiwan has been covered.

WE ARE NOT AT OUR BEST PERCHED AT THE SUMMIT; WE ARE CLIMBERS, AT OUR BEST WHEN THE WAY IS STEEP.

As work continued, an important qualifier emerged. Low serotonin didn’t predict premeditated, instrumental violence. It predicted impulsive aggression, as well as cognitive impulsivity (e.g., steep temporal discounting or trouble inhibiting a habitual response). Other studies linked low serotonin to impulsive suicide (independent of severity of the associated psychiatric illness).107

One last caveat: water should be boiled only once. Heating water and regulating the heat to maintain a constant level for a short tea-steeping session is fine; reheating water that has come to a boil and cooled completely will create flat-tasting, lifeless water.

The breath of song in your remembering eyes cascades fragile reflections of time-steeped sunsets tinting delicate snowflakes with the solitude of a sleeping forest where ancient secrets lie waiting, undisturbed by knowing, tranquil in the forgetfulness of yesterday's silvery silence  

Personal happiness is an end game; it is not an immediate necessity. A person whom attains lasting happiness will necessarily endure many hardships. People earn happiness by courageously braving the storms of life, instead of merely existing. A person must steep oneself in the type of experiences that girds one when times on the streets are the meanest. I will garner a comforting sense of self-satisfaction from taking the longer and more difficult road to personal happiness. I can never again work exclusively for money. I shall seek truth wherever it exists, muster the courage to plunge along headfirst without fear, maintain personal dreams when all hope seems lost, and adamantly refuse to be mollified or satisfied with anything less than my very best work. I will dedicate personal efforts to mining my substratum while maintaining a diligent stewardship of a cherished central individuality.

Their quarry had been cornered in his defenses and their bloodlust was such that they were likely to pay top Julep to watch him escape, so that he might be brutalized and killed before their very eyes, as this was much more gratifying to them than simply watching justice be enacted. They, too, understood that societal constructs for justice were moderate gratification, at best, as they were empty and subject to contradictions and compromises steeped in moral relativism and an unconditional dependence upon overblown semantics that made the law a mockery of itself. As for the ideologies that these hollow systems of jurisprudence sought to define and uphold: these could easily be subjugated through a meticulous analysis of the trivial components of one statute or another. The rule of law had failed them. What the people wanted, in its stead, was rather simple: moral absolutes. Good versus evil. And evil was not to be simply prevailed over. Evil was to be dominated and effectively eliminated, because as long as it was able to while away the time somewhere—in some sweaty prison cell, far away, staring out the barred window with a wry smile, as it plotted its next offensive on the Common Good, a sense of wholeness could not be achieved.

So what is this journey called life? A wander in the park? A trek up a steep mountain? No! It's a trek along a road with many bends and craggy places; surprises that thrill; challenges that dismay. But best of all, we never walk alone. Our Guide goes before us and is even beside us every step of the way. Let Him lead.

We’re all so limited and disappointing and so, so wrong. Much of the time. Maybe even most of the time. We’re all so steeped in our own confirmation bias. We’re all so busy seeing what we expect to see. But we have our moments, too. Moments when we see that tire blowout and stop to help. Moments when we pay for the person behind us in the drive-through. Or offer up our seat to a stranger. Or compliment someone’s earrings. Or realize we were wrong. Or apologize. Sometimes we really are the best versions of ourselves. I see that about us. And I’m determined to keep seeing that about us. Because that really might be the truest thing I’ll ever know: The more good things you look for, the more you find.

The conundrum of the twenty-first (century) is that with the best intentions of color blindness, and laws passed in this spirit, we still carry instincts and reactions inherited from our environments and embedded in our being below the level of conscious decision. There is a color line in our heads, and while we could see its effects we couldn’t name it until now. But john powell is also steeped in a new science of “implicit bias,” which gives us a way, finally, even to address this head on. It reveals a challenge that is human in nature, though it can be supported and hastened by policies to create new experiences, which over time create new instincts and lay chemical and physical pathways. This is a helpfully unromantic way to think about what we mean when we aspire, longingly, to a lasting change of heart. And john powell and others are bringing training methodologies based on the new science to city governments and police forces and schools. What we’re finding now in the last 30 years is that much of the work, in terms of our cognitive and emotional response to the world, happens at the unconscious level.

She kept herself busy for a moment, pouring hot water into a mug and giving Jay a chance to absorb what she’d just asked of him, letting him consider her request. Before the dance and before they were a couple, there would have been nothing to think about; he would never have told on her. They’d kept each other’s secrets. No matter what. But now everything—everything—had changed, and Violet was sometimes surprised by how far he would go to keep her out of harm’s way. She knew that, for him anyway, it meant that he would even betray her secrets if it meant she’d be safer in the end. She carried her steaming mug, with the tea bag steeping inside, and set it on the table as she sat down. Jay reluctantly sat too. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, watching her warily. Finally he sighed, “I won’t tell . . . if you make me one promise.” She met his eyes, hesitating at the look she saw on his face. The unusual mixture of tenderness and fear were at odds, but it made Violet feel warm and soft inside. He reached out his hand to her, and she took it, letting him pull her toward him. She settled onto his lap as he wrapped his arms around her. He nuzzled her neck, inhaling deeply as if the scent of her was somehow reassuring. “Next time . . .” he insisted in a voice quieter than before, “you call me.” She nodded, satisfied that he would keep her safe . . . secrets and all. It was completely astonishing to her—even after all these months—being in love with her best friend.

There is another issue with the largely cognitive approach to management, which we had big-time at Google. Smart, analytical people, especially ones steeped in computer science and mathematics as we were, will tend to assume that data and other empirical evidence can solve all problems. Quants or techies with this worldview tend to see the inherently messy, emotional tension that’s always present in teams of humans as inconvenient and irrational—an irritant that will surely be resolved in the course of a data-driven decision process. Of course, humans don’t always work that way. Things come up, tensions arise, and they don’t naturally go away. People do their best to avoid talking about these situations, because they’re awkward. Which makes it worse.

Now, if two men have to walk along together for two or three hours at a time, even if they feel a really strong desire to communicate, they will inevitably, sooner or later, fall into awkward silences and possibly end up loathing each other. One of these men might be unable to resist the temptation to hurl his companion down a steep riverbank. People are quite right when they say that three is god’s number, the number of peace and concord. When there are three in a group, one of the three can remain silent for a few minutes without that silence being noticed. Trouble could arise, however, if one of the three men has been walking along plotting how best to get rid of his neighbor in order to make off with his share of the provisions, and then invites the third man in the group to collaborate in this reprehensible scheme, only to be met with the regretful answer, I can’t, I’m afraid, I’ve already agreed to help him kill you.

A recent study adds an important twist to this story. There are the kids with problems with impulse control—“I’m absolutely going to hold out for two marshmallow”—who then instantly eat that first one. That profile is a statistical predictor of adult violent crime. In contrast, there are kids with steep time-discounting curves—“Wait fifteen minutes for two marshmallows when I can have one right now? What kind of fool waits fifteen minutes?” That is a predictor of adult property crime.

Earlier that night, after dinner, I had sung a few folk songs for Paul. He had inquired about what I had learned during the school year and, already steeped in summer and drawing a blank, I offered a few songs I had memorized from Lan. I sang, in my best effort, a classic lullaby Lan used to sing. The song, originally performed by the famous Khanh Ly, describes a woman singing among corpses strewn across sloping leafy hills. Searching the faces of the dead, the singer asks in the song's refrain, "And which of you, which of you are my sister?

You did your best to be a good student. You chopped and cooked and measured and served according to her wishes. But sometimes you wondered if the stall could stand to be upgraded with modern comfort food. With pandan ensaymada instead of the increasingly popular but also growingly common ube, the fresh bread from the oven and the cheese still melting, sweetly fragrant from the infusion of those steeped leaves and as simple as a summer morning. Or chopped watermelons in bulalo soup to replace tomatoes, for that extra tang. Or even pork adobo, but with chili and sweet pineapples. You had so many ideas.

Through all these times and formative young years, Lara, my sister, was a rock to me. My mother had suffered three miscarriages after having Lara, and eight years on she was convinced that she wasn’t going to be able to have more children. But Mum got pregnant, and she tells me she spent nine months in bed to make sure she didn’t miscarry. It worked. Mum saved me. The end result, though, was that she was probably pleased to get me out, and that Lara finally got herself a precious baby brother; or in effect, her own baby. So Lara ended up doing everything for me, and I adored her for it. While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate--from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth. In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes. I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of.

Kisses bring viewers out of the woodwork. That’s pure and simple fandom fact, and #KevinThursday is a prime example. A kiss is the culmination of everything unspoken—all the hints and hopes and uncertainties in a budding romance. Until that moment, it’s heat and simmer, heat and simmer. It’s a look, a word, a gesture. But the kiss is the boiling point. It’s what everyone waits on and cheers for. I get that, but personally? I prefer what happens before the kiss: the accidental brush of a shoulder, the spark of a stolen glance, the seemingly throwaway comment that is steeped in history and means so much more. That’s what I love best, and it’s what I best direct.

My students remarked that the Fascist chiefs we remember best were charismatic. Through one method or another, each established an emotional link to the crowd and, like the central figure in a cult, brought deep and often ugly feelings to the surface. This is how the tentacles of Fascism spread inside a democracy. Unlike a monarchy or a military dictatorship imposed on society from above, Fascism draws energy from men and women who are upset because of a lost war, a lost job, a memory of humiliation, or a sense that their country is in steep decline. The more painful the grounds for resentment, the easier it is for a Fascist leader to gain followers by dangling the prospect of renewal or by vowing to take back what has been stolen.

What have I earned for all that work,’ I said, ‘For all that I have done at my own charge? The daily spite of this unmannerly town, Where who has served the most is most defamed, The reputation of his lifetime lost Between the night and morning. I might have lived, And you know well how great the longing has been, Where every day my footfall should have lit In the green shadow of Ferrara wall; Or climbed among the images of the past – The unperturbed and courtly images – Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino To where the Duchess and her people talked The stately midnight through until they stood In their great window looking at the dawn; I might have had no friend that could not mix Courtesy and passion into one like those That saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn; I might have used the one substantial right My trade allows: chosen my company, And chosen what scenery had pleased me best.’ Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof, ‘The drunkards, pilferers of public funds, All the dishonest crowd I had driven away, When my luck changed and they dared meet my face, Crawled from obscurity, and set upon me Those I had served and some that I had fed; Yet never have I, now nor any time, Complained of the people.’ All I could reply Was: ‘You, that have not lived in thought but deed, Can have the purity of a natural force, But I, whose virtues are the definitions Of the analytic mind, can neither close The eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.’ And yet, because my heart leaped at her words, I was abashed, and now they come to mind After nine years, I sink my head abashed.

If Fascism concerns itself less with specific policies than with finding a pathway to power, what about the tactics of leadership? My students remarked that the Fascist chiefs we remember best were charismatic. Through one method or another, each established an emotional link to the crowd and, like the central figure in a cult, brought deep and often ugly feelings to the surface. This is how the tentacles of Fascism spread inside a democracy. Unlike a monarchy or a military dictatorship imposed on society from above, Fascism draws energy from men and women who are upset because of a lost war, a lost job, a memory of humiliation, or a sense that their country is in steep decline. The more painful the grounds for resentment, the easier it is for a Fascist leader to gain followers by dangling the prospect of renewal or by vowing to take back what has been stolen.

HERE ARE MY TEN BEEF NOODLE SOUP COMMANDMENTS: 1. Throw out the first: always flash-boil your bones and beef to get the “musk” out. I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot. I would sometimes brown the meat as opposed to boil, but decided in the end that for this soup, you gotta boil. If you brown, it’s overpowering. The lesson that beef noodle soup teaches you is restraint. Sometimes less is more if you want all the flavors in the dish to speak to you. 2. Make sure the oil is medium-high when the aromatics go down and get a slight caramelization. It’s a fine line. Too much caramelization and it becomes too heavy, but no caramelization and your stock is weak. 3. Rice wine can be tricky. Most people like to vaporize it so that all the alcohol is cooked off. I like to leave a little of the alcohol flavor ’cause it tends to cut through the grease a bit. 4. Absolutely no butter, lard, or duck fat. I’ve seen people in America try to “kick it up a notch” with animal fats and it ruins the soup. Peanut oil or die. 5. Don’t burn the chilis and peppercorns, not even a little bit. You want the spice and the numbness, but not the smokiness. 6. After sautéing the chilis/peppercorns, turn off the heat and let them sit in the oil to steep. This is another reason you want to turn the heat off early. 7. Strain your chilis/peppercorns out of the oil, put them in a muslin bag, and set them aside. Then add ginger/garlic/scallions to the oil in that order. Stage them. 8. I use tomatoes in my beef noodle soup, but I add them after the soup is finished and everything is strained. I let them hang out in the soup as it sits on the stove over the course of the day. I cut the tomatoes thin so they give off flavor without having to cook too long and so you can serve them still intact. 9. Always use either shank or chuck flap. Brisket is too tough. If you want to make it interesting, add pig’s foot or oxtail. 10. Do you. I don’t give you measurements with this because I gave you all the ingredients and the technique. The best part about beef noodle soup is that there are no rules. It just has to have beef, noodle, and soup. There are people that do clear broth beef noodle soup. Beef noodle soup with dairy. Beef noodle soup with pig’s blood. It would suck if you looked at my recipe and never made your own, ’cause everyone has a beef noodle soup in them. Show it to me.

Bram stared into a pair of wide, dark eyes. Eyes that reflected a surprising glimmer of intelligence. This might be the rare female a man could reason with. “Now, then,” he said. “We can do this the easy way, or we can make things difficult.” With a soft snort, she turned her head. It was as if he’d ceased to exist. Bram shifted his weight to his good leg, feeling the stab to his pride. He was a lieutenant colonel in the British army, and at over six feet tall, he was said to cut an imposing figure. Typically, a pointed glance from his quarter would quell the slightest hint of disobedience. He was not accustomed to being ignored. “Listen sharp now.” He gave her ear a rough tweak and sank his voice to a low threat. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as I say.” Though she spoke not a word, her reply was clear: You can kiss my great woolly arse. Confounded sheep. “Ah, the English countryside. So charming. So…fragrant.” Colin approached, stripped of his London-best topcoat, wading hip-deep through the river of wool. Blotting the sheen of perspiration from his brow with his sleeve, he asked, “I don’t suppose this means we can simply turn back?” Ahead of them, a boy pushing a handcart had overturned his cargo, strewing corn all over the road. It was an open buffet, and every ram and ewe in Sussex appeared to have answered the invitation. A vast throng of sheep bustled and bleated around the unfortunate youth, gorging themselves on the spilled grain-and completely obstructing Bram’s wagons. “Can we walk the teams in reverse?” Colin asked. “Perhaps we can go around, find another road.” Bram gestured at the surrounding landscape. “There is no other road.” They stood in the middle of the rutted dirt lane, which occupied a kind of narrow, winding valley. A steep bank of gorse rose up on one side, and on the other, some dozen yards of heath separated the road from dramatic bluffs. And below those-far below those-lay the sparkling turquoise sea. If the air was seasonably dry and clear, and Bram squinted hard at that thin indigo line of the horizon, he might even glimpse the northern coast of France. So close. He’d get there. Not today, but soon. He had a task to accomplish here, and the sooner he completed it, the sooner he could rejoin his regiment. He wasn’t stopping for anything. Except sheep. Blast it. It would seem they were stopping for sheep. A rough voice said, “I’ll take care of them.” Thorne joined their group. Bram flicked his gaze to the side and spied his hulking mountain of a corporal shouldering a flintlock rifle. “We can’t simply shoot them, Thorne.” Obedient as ever, Thorne lowered his gun. “Then I’ve a cutlass. Just sharpened the blade last night.” “We can’t butcher them, either.” Thorne shrugged. “I’m hungry.” Yes, that was Thorne-straightforward, practical. Ruthless. “We’re all hungry.” Bram’s stomach rumbled in support of the statement. “But clearing the way is our aim at the moment, and a dead sheep’s harder to move than a live one. We’ll just have to nudge them along.” Thorne lowered the hammer of his rifle, disarming it, then flipped the weapon with an agile motion and rammed the butt end against a woolly flank. “Move on, you bleeding beast.

But what do we pray for if we aren’t asking God to tell us exactly what to do? Well, first of all we pray for illumination. We ask God to open our minds so we can understand the Scriptures and apply them to our lives. Don’t forget about this prayer. God can show you amazingly relevant things in His Word if you ask Him to. Second, pray for wisdom. We have not because we ask not. God wants us to make good decisions that will help us be more like Christ and bring Him glory. Third, pray for things that you already know are God’s will. Pray for good motives in your decision making. Pray for an attitude of trust and faith and obedience. Pray for humility and teachability. Pray for His gospel to spread. You know that He wants these things in the world and for your life. Pray for them. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, as Jesus asked us to (Matthew 6:33). And then after you’ve prayed and studied and sought advice, make a decision and don’t hyper-spiritualize it. Do what seems best. Sometimes you won’t have time to pray and read and seek counsel for a month. That’s why the way of wisdom is about more than getting a decisive word about one or two big decisions in life. The way of wisdom is a way of life. And when it’s a way of life, you are freer than you realize. If you are drinking deeply of godliness in the Word and from others and in your prayer life, then you’ll probably make God-honoring decisions. In fact, if you are a person of prayer, full of regular good counsel from others, and steeped in the truth of the Word, you should begin to make many important decisions instinctively, and some of them even quickly. For most Christians, agonizing over decisions is the only sure thing we know to do, the only thing that feels safe and truly spiritual. But sometimes, oftentimes actually, it’s okay to just decide.

Despite the struggle, every face is full of joy, a joy that comes from giving of themselves, and I am at the center of it all. I can’t stop smiling. They say it is better to give than to receive, but right now the gift I am receiving is incredible, indescribable. This is one of the most humbling experiences of my entire life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Back home, I have an inner circle of people whom I trust enough to do all the things I can no longer do. Kirstin and Patrick are the two at the very center of this circle. I didn’t go into my marriage thinking that one day my wife would have to feed me and brush my teeth. I never thought that one day I would ask my best friend to hold a urinal steady so I could pee, or wipe my backside because I could no longer hold toilet paper or reach. But this is now my reality. The first time I asked Patrick to help me use the bathroom, I hated it. I felt like I was a burden. Part of me was back on my front porch, questioning God. But Patrick, just like Kirstin, has never thought twice. He has always been happy to do whatever needs to be done. Just knowing that he can make my life a little easier brings him joy —the same joy I see on the faces of these people who are now carrying me up this incredibly steep mountain trail. Over the years, my pride has slowly been pushed aside as I have embraced all the things I can no longer do on my own, all the things others now have to do for me. I’m not sure who said it —or even where I heard it —but there’s a fundamental truth that has stayed with me over the years: “When you deny someone the opportunity to help you, you deny them joy in life.” I’ve had to embrace a lot of help over the past several years, and I have seen this truth play out in the lives of others time and time again. There is so much joy in giving, in helping others. A joy God intended for all of us to experience.

While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate--from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth. In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes. I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of. It is why we have always been so close. To her, I am still her little baby brother. And I love her for that. But--and this is the big but--growing up with Lara, there was never a moment’s peace. Even from day one, as a newborn babe in the hospital’s maternity ward, I was paraded around, shown off to anyone and everyone--I was my sister’s new “toy.” And it never stopped. It makes me smile now, but I am sure it is why in later life I craved the peace and solitude that mountains and the sea bring. I didn’t want to perform for anyone, I just wanted space to grow and find myself among all the madness. It took a while to understand where this love of the wild came from, but in truth it probably developed from the intimacy found with my father on the shores of Northern Ireland and the will to escape a loving but bossy elder sister. (God bless her!) I can joke about this nowadays with Lara, and through it all she still remains my closest ally and friend; but she is always the extrovert, wishing she could be on the stage or on the chat show couch, where I tend just to long for quiet times with my friends and family. In short, Lara would be much better at being famous than me. She sums it up well, I think: Until Bear was born I hated being the only child--I complained to Mum and Dad that I was lonely. It felt weird not having a brother or sister when all my friends had them. Bear’s arrival was so exciting (once I’d got over the disappointment of him being a boy, because I’d always wanted a sister!). But the moment I set eyes on him, crying his eyes out in his crib, I thought: That’s my baby. I’m going to look after him. I picked him up, he stopped crying, and from then until he got too big, I dragged him around everywhere.

from Mad for It, a short story in the Asian Erotica anthology: And I didn’t leave California with my pockets full of gold. About 20k in the bank and an old Taylor guitar on my back. I chew on dowry for a week or two, but she doesn’t like delays. I came to Thailand because I can live in a bungalow near the beach, swim every day and eat mango, coconut and banana. Drink red wine. She locks herself in my bedroom and talks on her cellphone for hours. Comes out in a denim mini-skirt and heels and leaves me alone until midnight. I’m licking paint off the walls. She gets distant. Starts the going out thing a few times a week. I try to follow her once, but get lost in the mountains. I’m on a steep, dark incline. No streetlights. Weird sounds from the forest. A cool and ominous wind shakes the trees. I’m the only man on the planet. On the way down, I crash into a guard rail. Call her for help, but she doesn’t answer. I know she’s fucking around. But it feels like a way out. I didn’t come to Thailand to be a wingman.

The man who best drew the contrast between Kiev and Ukraine was the novelist Mikhail Bulgakov. Son of a theology professor, he was brought up in a small house on Andriyivsky Uzviz, the steep cobbled lane that winds down from the High City to Podil. His Kiev, immortalised in The White Guard, is the middle-class city of the years just before the revolution – the Kiev of the La Marquise confectioner’s and the Fleurs de Nice flower shop, of chiming clocks and Dutch-tiled stoves, of sugar tongs and the green-shaded lamp in his father’s study. Writing from the inflation-wracked Moscow of the early 1920s, Bulgakov turned these vanished comforts into something rich and strange:

One of the other interviewers, whose name I had forgotten, quickly picked up the ball and posed a question to Steve. He asked, 'Mr. Cranston, what do you think of euthanasia?' Steve got a confused look on his face and asked the doctor to repeat the question. He listened to the question again and still looked befuddled. He then, in a hesitating voice, said, 'Gosh, I never thought about it before, but I think they are probably just as nice as the youth in the United States.' Dr. Waxman was still sitting with his head down and his hand over his eyes. At this point I could see he was shaking all over and doing his best to keep from exploding into laughter.

We will suggest he is led to these conclusions by a distorted view of the social and legal landscape. Where exemptions give believers an equal shot at living with integrity, Corvino sees favoritism. Where statutes give the occasional religious liberty claimant her day in court, he sees a teeming mass of claims about to choke the workings of government. Where a sprawling body of regulations sits, rife with exemptions for everyday secular purposes, Corvino sees a system of laws so necessary in its details that religious exemptions might be ruinous. In conservative professionals facing steep fines on conscience, Corvino sees new Puritans; and in their bureaucratic harassers, he sees freedom fighters. Down the path to exemptions he sees a slippery slope; when society doesn’t tumble, he imagines it stopped by legal barriers that aren’t there, because they aren’t needed. And at the horizon—where others search for harmony with the transcendent, their path cleared by freedoms of conscience and religion—he sees at best a socially useful mirage.

Although pundits and politicians, usually male, often claim that motherhood is the most important and difficult work of all, women who take time out of the workforce pay a big career penalty. Only 74 percent of professional women will rejoin the workforce in any capacity, and only 40 percent will return to full-time jobs.14 Those who do rejoin will often see their earnings decrease dramatically. Controlling for education and hours worked, women’s average annual earnings decrease by 20 percent if they are out of the workforce for just one year.15 Average annual earnings decline by 30 percent after two to three years,16 which is the average amount of time that professional women off-ramp from the workforce.17 If society truly valued the work of caring for children, companies and institutions would find ways to reduce these steep penalties and help parents combine career and family responsibilities. All too often rigid work schedules, lack of paid family leave, and expensive or undependable child care derail women’s best efforts. Governmental and company policies such as paid personal time off, affordable high-quality child care, and flexible work practices would serve families, and society, well.

We are the children of God, every one of us, and nearly nineteen hundred years ago He gave us the greatest gift of all the gifts He has, greater even than life. He gave us hope: a way back from every mistake we have made, no matter how small or how large, how ugly or how incredibly stupid, or how shameful. There is no corner of hell secret enough or deep enough for there to be no path back, if we are willing to climb up. It may be hard, and steep, but there is light ahead, and freedom...That is what Christmas is: everlasting hope, a way forward to the best in ourselves and all that we can become.

We need a revolution in mental health awareness to help us grasp the wonder and complexity of human behavior, health and functioning, and the nuances and intersections of brilliance and madness. This starts with dismantling myopic myths that prevent us from seeing the simultaneous wonder and complexity of our fullest selves. It involves providing access to the tools that mitigate being overtaken by the ravages of burnout and mental decompensation: the very risks of living in the modern world. Our sense-making approaches need to be comprehensive- grounded both scientifically and medically, steeped in love, and in ways that account for the multidimensionality of emotional and spiritual essence. Those that go beyond what the mind can first conceive of. This new mental health imperative relies upon universal precautions and a vehement resistance to linear checklists and binary labels that frame our gorgeous spirits solely as either complex and fraught or indomitable and wondrous. It also relies not on good will and best practices but the moral courage of policy makers to treat human beings like human beings. Dogs are often treated better than people. This is our new imperative: to radically change the way we care for ourselves and one another. We cannot extricate ourselves from the fact that the lines we walk are incredibly thin and blurry, and our only hope is to rewrite and navigate them together in solidarity, with every measure of creative reason and conscious community that can be mustered...

We're all so limited and disappointing and so, so wrong. Much of the time. Maybe even most of the time. We're all so steeped in our own confirmation bias. We're all so busy seeing what we expect to see. But we have our moments, too. Moments we see that tire blowout and stop to help. Moments when we pay for the person behind us in the drive-through. Or offer up our seat to a stranger. Or compliment someone's earrings. Or realize we were wrong. Or apologize. Sometimes we really are the best versions of ourselves. I see that about us. And I'm determined to keep seeing that about us. Because that really might be the truest thing I'll ever know. The more good things you look for, the more you find.

Surrounded by the best kind of crazy. The kind steeped in love and forged within the bonds of family.

Stopped by a sudden thought, though, he turned back. “I dinna suppose ye really are an angel, are ye?” he asked, quite seriously. “No,” Roger said, smiling as best he could, despite the coldness in his belly. And it isn’t you that’s talking to a ghost. He stood with Buck, watching the MacKenzies depart, Geordie and Thomas keeping up with little effort, as the horses went slowly on the steep, rocky path. The phrase “Blessed are those who have not seen but have believed” floated through his head. It was maybe not the believing that was the blessing; it was the not having to look. Seeing, sometimes, was bloody awful.

Ben wasn’t the soft easily trod pathways of this Earth; he was its steep climbs and rocky outcrops, the soaring cliffs and impossible reaches. He was the route you had to take if you wanted to be tested and “have the very best there was at the end. And you needed to be exceptionally fit and ready to take on such challenges. Ben wasn’t unstable at all. He was exactly as he was meant to be: a trial, which demanded and then rewarded unremitting effort.

Turkish Coffee Set and Turkish Tea Set Tea, called “çay” in Turkey, is the unofficial“national beverage” of the Turkish people. Turkish tea is very special kind of black tea with strong robust flavor and a lovely crimson color. Wherever you go in Turkey you’ll immediately be offered a cup of hot tea, in distinctive glass cups that look like an hour glass. There is hardly a single business meeting, meal or social gathering in Turkey in which tea is not served automatically. To turn down a cup of (almost always free) tea is considered a rude act in Turkish culture and will not win you any friends. All government offices, universities, and most corporations in Turkey have a full-time tea-server on their payroll called “çayci” whose sole function is to brew and serve tea all day long. Green and ever-moist mountains of Rize is ideal to grow tea Turkish tea, the same Camellia Sinensis cultivated all over Far East, is grown along the Black Sea coast of Turkey. Provinces like Rize are famous for their black tea plantation situated on the steep mountains that overlook the Black Sea. Turkish tea is both consumed widely within the country and exported as well. Usually export variety is a slightly more expensive but better brand. Some of the best-known Turkish black tea brands include Filiz and CayKur. Turkish People do not add milk to their tea but use sugar. Mengene mah Arıcı sok. 2/7 Konya 0505 357 10 10

Just as Audre Lorde warned against using patriarchal rhetoric, patriarchal structures of organization, and patriarchal privileging of solidarity over difference to dismantle patriarchy,40 I too am reluctant to wholeheartedly claim for the feminist cause a rhetorical mode so thoroughly steeped in male domination. On the other hand, if the goal is to dismantle patriarchal structures, and if feminist trolling helps accomplish those ends, then are the means, however problematic, retroactively justified? I look forward to further research that tackles these questions, including the question of how best to theorize the relationship between trolling and global activism. For now, I remain simultaneously intrigued by and wary of the political potential of trolling—a fitting end to a project and behavioral practice steeped in ambivalence.

It was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in a dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague were in the city and the dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar animal, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient world - all taboo with that enlightened strictness, that the ugly South sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed themselves at home again. Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind, or raise it up. Nothing for the spent toiler to do, but to compare the monotony of his seventh day with the monotony of his six days, think what a weary life he led, and make the best of it - or the worst, according to the probabilities.

A Squadron Commander who can't take his best friend out and shoot him can't Command worth s*#t" -Steep Turner

The best honey comes from a source you know, and is processed without heat. Raw, unfiltered honey retains its royal jelly, bee pollen and propolis—three major sources of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. 1 cup of locally produced, raw organic honey 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice Additional water, about 2 cups 2-½ cups water Ice cubes or crushed ice 1 tablespoon dried culinary lavender Combine honey and 2-½ cups of water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the honey. When the mixture reaches a boil, stir in the lavender and remove from heat. Let the mixture steep for 20 minutes. Strain the lavender from the liquid, then add the fresh lemon juice and an additional 2 cups of water. Use sparkling water if you wish. Pour into glasses full of ice and serve, garnished with a sprig of lavender or mint. [Source: Original]

The generation brought up during the Great Depression and the Second World War, still in measure steeped in the much-maligned Protestant work ethic, resolved to work hard and provide a more secure heritage for their children. And, in measure, they did. But the children, for whom the Depression and the War belonged to the relics of history, had nothing to live for but more “progress.” There was no grand vision, no taste of genuine want, and not much of the Protestant work ethic either.83 Soon the war in Vietnam became one of the central “causes” of that generation, but scarcely one that incited hard work, integrity in relationships, frugality, self-denial, and preparation for the next generation. That ’60s generation, the baby boomers, have now gone mainstream—but with a selfishness and consumerism that outstrips anything their parents displayed. There is no larger vision. Contrast a genuine Christian vision that lives life with integrity now because this life is never seen as more than the portal to the life to come, including perfect judgment from our Maker. At its best, such a stance, far from breeding withdrawal from the world, fosters industry, honest work for honest pay, frugality, generosity, provision for one’s children, honesty in personal relationships and in business relationships, the rule of law, a despising of greed. A “Protestant work ethic” of such a character I am happy to live with. Of course, a couple of generations later, when such a Christian vision has eroded, people may equate prosperity with God’s blessing, and with despicable religious cant protest that they are preparing for eternity when in their heart of hearts they are merely preparing for retirement. But a generation or two after that their children will expose their empty fatuousness. In any case, what has been lost is a genuinely Christian vision. This is not to say that such a vision will ensure prosperity. When it is a minority vision it may ensure nothing more than persecution. In any case, other unifying visions may bring about prosperity as well, as we have seen. From the perspective of the Bible, prosperity is never the ultimate goal, so that is scarcely troubling. What is troubling is a measuring stick in which the only scale is measured in terms of financial units.

It's a huge hole in the ground. No reported casualties. Not humanoids, anyway. Did vampires die?" Karzac lifted the boiling kettle off the flame and poured hot water over tea leaves in both cups. "A few," I said, watching him calmly make tea. He set a cup in front of me and we both waited for it to steep. "The bad ones," I continued when Karzac didn't say anything. "I got the rest out." "And how many was that?" "More than five hundred, I think." Karzac is a good physician, even if he is a little on the curmudgeonly side. "Are you well? Do you need assistance?" he asked, doing his best to give me a visual once over without appearing too obvious about it. "I'm okay," I said, sipping my tea. "There were a few broken bones among the others, but there were enough vamps there that had experience with that, so the injured vampires were taken care of. They'll heal with a good sleep." "How did you get that many out?" "By turning them to mist.

TIP: In Japan, green tea is steeped for one to two minutes, while in China it is steeped for three to five minutes.

According to accepted standards of internet marketing, an online presence is essential to the success of today's business. Unfortunately, the success of the Internet has also given the opportunity for unqualified and unprofessional Minneapolis web designers to market their services making it very difficult for clients to determine to best web designer for them. If your web site is made by a dreadful web designer, it can have a harmful effect on your business and cost you dearly! there has been a major increase in the use of Internet-related knowledge. An increase in the request of information technology in diverse fields has opened wider career opportunities. Operating a small business without a website is like trying to push an incredibly heavy rock up an impossibly steep hill. But a web presence means that your branding needs to be look at first. One part of that is finding the right branding agency Minneapolis not only has the best talent, but also professionals who understand that the heart is the target for any visual branding effort. Minneapolis web design aims at deliver the best customer solution in any . All these are obtainable with the intention of as long as you with an outstanding service so that we know about your services and the way you function.

Making an Herbal Fertility Infusion An herbal infusion is basically herbal tea, but it is made from a larger amount of herb and brewed for a longer length of time. Thus, an infusion is richer in nutrients (and taste) than tea. To make an infusion, take one ounce of dried herb (about a cup) and put in a quart jar. Then fill the jar with boiling water and cover. Let the infusion steep for 4-10 hours or overnight just sitting on your counter.

HOW TO USE: For tea: Pour 2 cups of boiling water over 1 oz. of dried damiana leaves and allow to steep for 10 to 15 minutes. Strain the water off the leaves, add honey and enjoy. You can drink damiana tea up to three times daily. You can also combine with chamomile and mint for better flavor (using equal parts of each herb).

Preconception Nourishing Infusion 1/3 cup dried red clover 1/3 cup dried red raspberry leaf 1/3 cup dried stinging nettle leaves Place all the herbs in a quart jar and pour boiling water up to the rim of the jar. Cover and let steep for at least 4 hours or overnight. Strain herbs and add honey or sweetener of choice. You may need to reheat the mixture in order for the sweetener to dissolve properly. Drink daily.

One of my favorite verses is from Proverbs 15:24: “The way of life winds upward for the wise.” Sadly, rather than winding upward, some people go on a steep decline, a downward spiral, because here’s what happens: Sin leads to guilt, guilt leads to shame, and ultimately shame leads to condemnation. Condemnation leads to death. If a building is condemned, that means it’s unfit for use. It’s disqualified. It’s only good for being pulled down. That’s

Fourth, I paid attention to every detail I could while working on my cases. I found that one of the most ironic facets of the law is that the correct answer to a problem often rests on small legal nuances and factual details. The presence or absence of a particular fact can frequently make or break the case. The senior attorney I worked for, Brad, was extremely adept at assimilating large amounts of information quickly, paying close attention to details, and using his mastery of them to weave brilliant defenses. His ability to identify the most critical of details while constructing solid defenses always impressed me, and I tried to emulate that particular skill. Fifth, I was conscientious about creating good first impressions. As I later learned, lawyers who work with new summer and permanent associates virtually always form quick conclusions about them, and give “hallway evaluations” to other lawyers in the firm. I often heard about or participated in these hallway evaluations, and know that even one negative impression can have a devastating impact. In general, young attorneys who get a reputation for sloppy work – earned or unearned – have a very steep climb up the law firm ladder. Sixth, I was vigilant about meeting deadlines, every time. This meant I had to carefully plan ahead, since partners, colleagues, clients, courts, and other parties often rely on assignments and legal services to be performed by a certain time. With the workload I had, and the interruptions I faced, of course this wasn’t always possible, and in those situations I found the best route wasn’t just to tough it out, but rather let the supervising attorney know as early as possible if I couldn’t meet a deadline. I learned this lesson the hard way. My first assignment as a summer associate was to research whether we could squeeze one of our clients into an exception to a well-settled legal doctrine. The senior attorney who gave me the assignment asked me to research the issue and then get back to him by Friday afternoon. I just didn’t feel comfortable with my research when Friday afternoon came around, and decided to buy some additional time by letting him contact me. He didn’t try to reach me Friday afternoon, so I took advantage of that and submitted the assignment on Monday. The incident later came back to haunt me, though, because in his evaluation of my work for my midsummer review, he mentioned that I didn’t report to him by the established deadline.

Has anyone by fussing before the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? If fussing can’t even do that, why fuss at all? Walk into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They don’t fuss with their appearance — but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. If God gives such attention to the wildflowers, most of them never even seen, don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? 29-32 “What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself.

February 11 The Dance of Grace Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.—James 3:13 Ladies, this week I came upon the following definition of humility as used in James 3:13: an inwrought grace of soul. Humility. Grace of soul. Stop for a moment; turn those words over in your mind a little. Isn’t grace of soul the perfect descriptor of that friend of yours who is steeped in humility? Is she not wise? Does she not say the right thing, do the very thing you need at the very moment you need it? Oh how elusive, humility. Yet grace describes it so well. Ah, but how to describe grace? I see grace not as a single entity, but as a compilation of the Spirit’s fruit. If you imagine a ballerina pirouetting, a vision of swirling chiffon, it is not the step you admire but the whole dance. Love, joy, peace—yes; patience, gentleness, goodness, kindness—for sure; carefully choreographed by the Spirit onto the soul. Inwrought. Then manifest wisely, in humility. Make no mistake; grace of soul does not come easily. The Spirit gently prods away, as life throws itself at us. Our souls would lack spiritual substance, left to their own devices. Neither is the life of a ballerina softness and fluff. Her muscles have to be firmed by years of training, before her routine can become a part of her being. I ask you ladies, does the ballerina train for years to recline on her couch? No. No. Absolutely not. Her mind twirls en pointe. Her muscles ooze ballet. So too soul grace, once inwrought. It cannot be contained, but dances out. The humble are not even aware of the rhythm they are in. Of course, grace is never a polished ballet until heaven. While on this earth, the best I can do is get in the rhythm of the Spirit and let grace dance the dance of life like the ballerina she is.

He moved down from the trail we had just been climbing and started to take the steep dirt path downward. Not paying a bit of attention to the trail because I was too focused on wondering how hard it would be to get myself off using his body and the vibrations, when his nose end hit the mud first, a huge wave of brown wetness covered us. And of course, because I was too busy trying to work at getting myself off, my back was arched. I had, in my mind, the best plan to arch my back and rub my core against the seat and his hard body. But when that mud wave came up and then back down, it shot straight down the back of my pants. “Oh, my God, Lee!” He doesn’t answer, just laughs harder. So hard, in fact, that he has to stop the four-wheeler. “This isn’t funny! I have mud . . . oh my God . . . I have mud in my ass!” His laughter picks up until he is forced to hold his sides. “Holy crap. I can feel it. It’s all in my panties, Lee!” Again, the big jerk just keeps on laughing until he has to pull his shirt up, flip it to the inside and wipe the tears his laughing has caused, rolling down his face. “I swear, Liam Beckett. I was this close, this freaking close,” I scream, holding my pointer finger just an inch from my thumb, “To having one hell of an orgasm. It was building so high, I was too busy wondering if I would fall off the back when I went off. This freaking close and now . . . now I have mud in my ASS!

Some people would argue that we don’t do a very good job. But taking the long view, that is clearly not true. Consider the historical trend in homicide (not including wars), which is both the most reliably measured crime and the best barometer of a society’s overall crime rate. These statistics, compiled by the criminologist Manuel Eisner, track the historical homicide levels in five European regions. The steep decline of these numbers over the centuries suggests that, for one of the gravest human concerns—getting murdered—the incentives that we collectively cook up are working better and better.

Perhaps the most famous and dramatic example of intellectual development in prison is that of Malcolm X.21 Malcolm Little (as he was born) entered prison immersed in drugs, sex, and petty crime. In prison he met a polymath named John Elton Bembry who was steeped in culture and history, able to hold forth on a wide variety of fascinating topics. On his advice Malcolm began to read—first the dictionary, then books on etymology and linguistics. He studied elementary Latin and German. He converted to Islam, a faith introduced to him by his brothers. In the following years he read the Bible and the Qur’an, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, and Kant, as well as works of Asian philosophy. He pored over an especially loved book of the archaeological wonders of the East and the West. He learned the history of colonialism, of slavery, and of African peoples. He felt his old ways of thinking disappear “like snow off of a roof.”22 He filled his letters with verse, writing to his brother: “I’m a real bug for poetry. When you think back over all of our past lives, only poetry could best fit into the vast emptiness created by men.

I love to flyfish. Over the last 30 years, I’ve found that if I want to get into a “zen” state just put me on a stream for a day and before I know it the day has gone blissfully by. If I am fishing by myself, I’ve gotten into the habit of spending 15 minutes watching the stream before making my first cast. I’m sure if a passerby would observe me during these first 15 minutes, I would look like just another guy staring at a stream. But these 15 minutes are the most critical part of my day. These first 15 minutes have more to say about my success than the most perfectly executed cast all day long. I watch the water for how it flows. I look for seams of fast- and slow-moving water knowing that fish lay in the slow-moving water to save energy while waiting for food in the faster water. I watch for any movement on top of the water to see if there are any insects hatching that might signal a particular food supply for that stream. One way to know an experienced fly fisher from a beginner is the experienced fly fisher only decides what fly to use after watching the water for a while. I watch for underwater flashes of color that might reveal an actively feeding fish on the stream bottom. I review the streambed and determine the best place to start without increasing the chances of spooking any fish. Lastly, I take in the environment around me and make note of obstacles I need to be careful to avoid: a tree branch in my back cast, a logjam that creates faster moving water, or a steep bank indicating deeper water. I take note of the weather and where my shadow is and where it will be as I enter the water. I even think about how I might land a fish if I hook one, and where it would be easiest to net them. Every detail counts and most of what is important is determined in those first 15 minutes. Listening is a lot like those first 15 minutes of fishing. You are taking in information. You are sensing what is going on around you. You are actively observing everything there is to be observed. You are focused and intentional. You are not only hearing and seeing and feeling, but you are understanding and extending this understanding to make a difference in your life when the time does come to act.

Hainanese Chicken Rice An entire chicken is steeped in broth at sub-boiling temperatures and is then served with rice steamed in the same broth. Originally a Chinese dish, it was spread across Southeast Asia by migrants from the Hainan Province. A well-loved staple, it is also known as Khao Man Tai or Singapore Chicken Rice. *Many restaurants that serve it will also serve chicken soup on the side. "That makes perfect sense! This dish is an excellent choice for emphasizing the unique deliciousness of the Jidori! I already know it can't help but be good!" "That one's yours." "Uh, thanks. I'll dig right in." Delicious! It's too delicious! The tender meat so perfectly steeped! Each bite is sheer decadence! The delicate yet bold umami flavors! But that's not all... Next comes the very best part! As if that one bite wasn't enough, after it's swallowed... ... There's the subtle and sophisticated aftertaste! "Mmm! That decadent flavor lingers in the mouth for so long! Exquisite! Simply exquisite! This dish is the pinnacle of Jidori cooking!" "Don't stop yet. I've made three dipping sauces to go along with it. Chili sauce, ginger sauce and some See Ew Dum." *See Ew Dum is a dark, thick and sweet soy sauce commonly used in Thai cooking. Its viscosity is similar to tamari. "I made the chili sauce by grinding red peppers and adding them to the broth from the steeped chicken. The ginger sauce is fresh ginger mixed with chicken fat I rendered out of the bird.

The cement-paved market is a straight shot from end to end, lined on either side by butchers, cheesemongers, and grocers selling everything from chicken feet to lettuce. The steep, hipped roof rises nearly fifty feet, traversed by white metal scaffolding, and what little sunlight there is today pours through the skylights and windows lining the walls. The air carries a funky mustiness, the combination of aged cheese mixed with fresh fish and bread hot from the oven. A crowd is gathered at the far end of the market in front of the Market Lunch, which serves some of the best blueberry pancakes and crab cakes in town.

[Jonas] Salk never stopped trying to be of “some help to humankind.” In 1962 he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which he hoped would serve as “a cathedral to science.” The competition to work there was so steep that Salk joked, “I couldn’t possibly have become a member of this institute if I hadn’t founded it myself.”42 Salk continued to work until he died of heart failure in 1993. During the last years of his life he devoted his attention to finding a vaccine for AIDS. He said he knew that many people expected him to fail in his attempts, but he maintained, “There is no such thing as failure. You can only fail if you stop too soon.”43 He never did develop that vaccine, maybe simply because death stopped him. But he never gave up. And he never stopped believing in the fundamental capacity for goodness in people. “What is important is that we, Number one: Learn to live with each other,” he said in 1985. “Number two: Try to bring out the best in each other. The best from the best, and the best from those who, perhaps, might not have the same endowment … the object is not to put down the other, but to raise up the other.” Sometimes, as we go about our lives, we’re angry, or other people are angry. We’re idiots, or they are. Maybe it seems a lot to expect that we can lift up our fellow man and bring out the best in everyone. But we’ve done it before. We can work miracles when we come together to help one another. Just look at how we all cured polio.

HOW MOST OF THE DREAMS GO First, it’s a fawn dog, and then it’s a baby. I’m helping him to swim in a thermal pool, the water is black as coffee, the cement edges are steep so to sink would be easy and final. I ask the dog (that is also the child), Is it okay that I want you to be my best friend? And the child nods. (And the dog nods.) Sometimes, he drowns. Sometimes, we drown together.

We steeped in a moment of silence. Frank and I had a special relationship. He was my best friend, yet I always felt like I couldn’t trust him, until now.

The old days were over, when sorrow could be sheltered by the empathy of the many, confronted by imported rage, a most foreign beast at war with a human emotion - terror. The invaders, such angry strangers steeped in madness, paraded the island as if they were its new and infernal overlords. How fathomless was Fazul the Egyptian’s betrayal of Pate and it’s people. The amorphous war he had stimulated cascaded over so many simple lives. It seized the best of Pate’s men, implicated in this sickness only because they were the best of men. Most of the taken would never return, not even as corpses. Those they left behind were forced to learn the languages of eternal hauntedness and silence.

Harry, the security guard, was way too old and overweight for his job, but he was well liked by everyone, and best of all, he let us use his telephone to make local calls. I sometimes brought him a sandwich and some fruit from the galley, for which he was always grateful. His job didn’t pay much and from the looks of his attire, I don’t believe there was a woman looking after him. He didn’t talk much about things, other than to tell stories about his seafaring life so long ago. His shaggy dog lay sleeping next to a big, glowing potbelly stove. Occasionally some scruffy friends joined him to play cards under a bare light bulb hanging over a sad looking card table. It was a trip into the distant past, when I heard him tell some of his sea stories. After the perfunctory greeting and some remarks about the miserable weather, I asked if I could use his telephone. “Anytime,” Harry said, as I picked up the receiver from its cradle. I started to dial the prefix, when I noticed a movement on the wooden shelf behind the phone. At first I thought it was my imagination but there, I saw it again, and this time I could tell what it was… It was a rodent! It wasn’t just a small rodent; it was a huge Norwegian Rat! Gasping, I jumped back, letting the receiver drop. Whoa, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck tingling! “What the hell is this?” I exclaimed. The damn thing did not scurry away as I would have expected but just sat there with its nose twitching. It didn’t seem at all afraid…. I knew that it could have attacked me, but instead it just sat there looking at me, as a cat would, except with small, black, beady eyes. “Harry,” I shouted. “Get over here and look at this beast. It looks bigger than your dog!” “Keep your shirt on, sonny,” he said. “You're looking at Nibbles.” Sure enough, I now saw Nibble's milk and food dish. The damn rat was Harry's pet! I guess everyone needs somebody, but a pet rat and a shaggy dog? That was just too much! I left without making my call…. I don’t even recall putting the phone back into its cradle, although I’m certain I did. I figured that it wouldn’t take me all that long to walk the steep incline from the docks, past the warehouses, up to Congress Street and then down to State Street. I was on my way to my girlfriend’s apartment, snow or no snow, rat be damned!

The impossibilities rise around me, steep and sheer. But I think of the hero of Fitzgerald’s last novel, Monroe Stahr, flying over the highest mountains and talking to his pilot about the old railroad men and how they had to lay a track through anyway. You can’t test the best way—except by doing it. So you just do it … You choose some way for no reason at all.

Only I can control the messages in my head. I may not have installed them, but, with great effort and a lot of practice, I can at least choose what to play at what time. These are the best two life lessons I ever learned on a tough trail in the great outdoors: One, not to look up and see how far I still have to climb. Instead to look back and see how far I’ve climbed already. When I see what I just did, I know I can do what comes next. Given time. And, two, to give myself time.

Chicken Salad à la Danny Kaye YIELD: 4 SERVINGS TO MOST AMERICANS, Danny Kaye is remembered as a splendid comedian and actor. I think of him as a friend and one of the finest cooks I have ever known. In every way, Danny was equal to or better than any trained chef. His technique was flawless. The speed at which he worked was on par with what you’d find in a Parisian brigade de cuisine. Danny taught me a great deal, mostly about Chinese cuisine, his specialty. Whenever I traveled to Los Angeles, Danny picked me up at the airport and took me to his house, where we cooked Chinese or French food. His poached chicken was the best I have ever had. His method was to put the chicken in a small stockpot, cover it with tepid water seasoned with salt, peppercorns, and vegetables, and cook it at a gentle boil for only 10 minutes, then set it aside off the heat for 45 minutes. As an added touch, he always stuck a handful of knives, forks, and spoons into the cavity of the chicken, to keep it submerged. The result is so moist, tender, and flavorful that I have used the recipe—minus the flatware—ever since. CHICKEN 1 chicken, about 3½ pounds ½ cup sliced carrot 1 cup sliced onion 1 small leek, washed and left whole 1 rib celery, washed and left whole 1 teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon black peppercorns 2 sprigs thyme 2 bay leaves About 7 cups tepid water, or more if needed DRESSING 2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar 1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper ½ teaspoon Tabasco hot pepper sauce 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil GARNISHES 1 dozen Boston lettuce leaves, cleaned 2 dozen fresh tarragon leaves FOR THE CHICKEN: Place the chicken breast side down in a tall, narrow pot, so it fits snugly at the bottom. Add the remaining poaching ingredients. The chicken should be submerged, and the water should extend about 1 inch above it. Bring to a gentle boil, cover, and let boil gently for two minutes. Remove the pot from the heat, and set it aside to steep in the hot broth for 45 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pot, and set it aside on a platter to cool for a few minutes. (The stock can be strained and frozen for up to 6 months for use in soup.) Pick the meat from the chicken bones, discarding the skin, bones, and fat. Shred the meat with your fingers, following the grain and pulling it into strips. (The meat tastes better shredded than diced with a knife.) FOR THE DRESSING: Mix together all the dressing ingredients in a bowl large enough to hold the chicken salad. Add the chicken shreds to the dressing and toss well. Arrange the Boston lettuce leaves in a “nest” around the periphery of a platter, and spoon the room-temperature chicken salad into the center. Sprinkle with the tarragon leaves and serve.

Paul’s expression, and its application to the Christian life, can be best understood if we think of a father helping his child to mount the side of some steep precipice. The father stands above, and has taken the son by the hand to help him on. He points him to the spot on which he will help him to plant his feet, as he leaps upward. The leap would be too high and dangerous for the child alone; but the father’s hand is his trust, and he leaps to get hold of the point for which his father has taken hold of him. It is the father’s strength that secures him and lifts him up, and so urges him to use his utmost strength. Such is the relation between Christ and you, O weak and trembling believer! Fix first your eyes on the whereunto for which He has apprehended you. It is nothing less than a life of abiding, unbroken fellowship with Himself to which He is seeking to lift you up. All that you have already received—pardon and peace, the Spirit and His grace—are but preliminary to this. And all that you see promised to you in the future—holiness and fruitfulness and glory everlasting—are but its natural outcome

You’re not the only person who looks for the best choice. Everyone does. As a result, the rewards for being first are enormous. It’s not a linear scale. It’s not a matter of getting a little more after giving a little more. It’s a curve, and a steep one.